You are at the end of your rope with your business partner. What once was a lucrative and agreeable partnership is now anything but. Could it be time to sever business ties? And if so, how to do it?
Business partnerships are often compared to marriages, and with good reason. Just as in a marriage, you are legally yoked to this person, and rise or fall, so are your fortunes. Knowing when it’s time to pull the plug may save you future business losses and quite a few sleepless nights. Read on to learn some red flags that indicate a partnership is irretrievably broken.
You can no longer communicate civilly
If your only form of communication now are snide remarks and icy emails or texts, it may be time to have the final conversation about ending your partnership.
Neither of you trust or respect the other
All successful business partnerships are based on mutual trust and respect. When those two concepts are missing, it can become impossible to achieve your shared goals.
Your skills are not complementary any more
The best business partnerships are between individuals with disparate skills and qualities that they bring to the table. Maybe you have always been the idea person while your partner crunched the numbers. But now your new bookkeeper is doing such a bang-up job that you’re wondering if your partner has mainly become a dead weight.
Your visions for the company differ wildly
You are content keeping your coffee house as a smallish business right here in Casselberry. Your partner wants to expand into other areas in Florida and perhaps even nationwide. Your goals have become impossible to reconcile.
Where do you go from here?
If you are lucky, your partnership agreement details the process of an exit strategy to dissolve the partnership. Follow it to the letter and wish each other well as you go your separate ways.
But if such is not the case, you may need to retain a Florida business law attorney to help legally extricate yourself and the business from the partnership. What’s important here is to take action sooner rather than later. Disgruntled business partners have been known to siphon off funds or squirrel away jointly-owned assets they can re-purpose when hanging out their shingle as a sole proprietor or other solo business entity.
