The 5 D's of Partnerships
In the last several weeks, I’ve been approached by four or five different people who were very enthusiastic in telling me about their plans to go into partnership with someone else. In my experience, conversations about partnership typically start with the person saying something like this: “I know that a lot of people complain about partnerships, but this one is going to be different!” or “I’ve known Joe for years and we get along great!”
Unfortunately, partnerships are a lot harder to make work then most people believe. There are a whole slew of issues related to things such as ownership, money, decisions, life changes, levels of risk tolerance, etc. Now, I’ll admit I tend to be overly cautious about the partnership idea because (1) I once had a bad experience myself with a partnership; and (2) my father-in-law lost his shirt when his partner embezzled from their company.
However, there are a lot of extremely successful partnerships out there, so it’s possible to have a strong, smoothly functioning business with multiple owners.
Continue Reading…Posted by Laddie Blaskowski on Aug 28, 2007