View from the Summit

At the beginning of my career in 1978 I felt a partnership was the only way I could get started.

Here are a just a few:

• Do you and your partner have similar ideals?
• Are your core values the same?
• Does integrity, honesty and character take first position?

When your young, desperate or anxious some of these questions go unanswered or simply overlooked.

Reality will set in though at the first hiccup:

• You are offered significant profits if you are willing to compromise your integrity. What will your partner do?
• Your partner has a moral failure, bankrupts and divorces. What will you do?
• The business thrives, you expand to multiple locations. You find yourself working double time but your partner is golfing 2 days a week. Now what?

There will be countless forks in the road along the way.

Having your core values and business strategy in place will certainly help, but life happens and plans change. Even the best thought out arrangements have pitfalls. The more time spent on the front end developing your business model the less time you'll spend on problems later.

A few tips for a successful partnership:

• Be a servant leader to your partner.
• Have everything in writing (did I say everything?)
• Clearly define your responsibilities
• Create an Organizational & Operational Agreement
• Create Corporate Bylaws
• Create a Partnership agreement
• Define Buyout provisions
• Key man insurance
• First right of refusal
• Oh yeah, did I say have everything in writing?

Partnerships are grand if properly thought out, and fifty grand if not!