Whenever we start a business, after some time, we need a helping hand in a way or another. Most of the time, young entrepreneurs get into a partnership with other entrepreneurs who share the same insight and vision. Even as a blogger, I’m sure you must be getting lots of proposals to work together or work as a partner.
Like you, even I received such proposals, and I get into a partnership. It didn’t work out really well in the end. I’m sharing few tips on how you can have a better partnership and how you can avoid any clashes or issues later on.
Documentation!
It doesn’t matter how good of a friendship you have with your parner and how much you trust each other. Paper work is the most important part of any partnership. If you miss this, you will probably regret it later. Most of the people who get into a partnership don’t do legal paper work and thus get into trouble later on. Even if you are working with another blogger and your work is purely online, make sure you people have crafted a document and both of you have signed it. It’s better to get everything done on legal paper (Stamp paper). Alternatively, if it’s a big partnership, hire a lawyer who can do paperwork for both of you.
How to move ahead?
When you get into a partnership, one common reason is both of you share the same vision or insight. This is the basic component that anyone needs for successful partnership. But, this is not everything. There is more to it. How do you work and in what ways do you want your company to grow? For example: My partner believed in getting clients from freelancing websites whereas I believed in letting the client come naturally through social media marketing and blogging. We both had a valid reason to backup our beliefs, but again, our way of doing things was different. I believed conversion is always higher when clients come naturally, where as on freelancing websites, conversion is far less.
My partner believed that freelancing websites can get more clients and thus more revenue for the company. Now, this is just an example where people have ways of doing things clash. It’s better to think about such things before getting into partnership. You need to agree on how you are going to market the company and how you are going to grow the company.
Line of control
As a partner of the company, both of you are responsible for its success. But for a successful work flow & business partnership, it’s important to limit your boundaries. For example, if you are responsible for increasing the revenue and for marketing the company, you should avoid interfering with development and coding unless asked. Same goes for your partner. He should not be interfering with your mode of working until it’s going against the company policies.
When you work in a partnership, both of you work for the growth of the company, and the best way to do that is to divide the responsibilities and establish your limitations and department. This way you will avoid any future collision.
Merging and exit clause
Especially if you are a blogger and merging with another blogger, it’s important to have an exit clause. This is to ensure each other safety and security if your partnership doesn’t work out. If you are planning to work on blog network, better to keep control of your blog for a while and merge everything slowly -server, users, email list and so on. Have an exit clause document prepared. This should have all the details (your blog, your partner blog, new blog which you will create under partnership) included in the document. While discussing these issues, you are likely to be reassured that entering the partnership is right for you or you might be led to reconsider. Also, keep control of your domain and hosting for a while (4-6 months) before you share each and every detail. Though if your legal documentation is done properly, you may not need to follow this point.
Money issues
This is where most of the issues come into the picture. Until a company is surviving financially, both the partners need each other. But once you get into a comfort zone, scenarios change. While documenting, make sure you talk about how the wealth distribution will happen if the company grows tremendously and who is going to bear wealth in terms of losses. More over, if you are working as a partner, get possession of company share within that time and keep everything transparent.
Getting into a partnership is more like sharing trust to achieve the vision that both of you have seen separately.
Especially if you are a blogger and planning to get enter a partnership, I would suggest you consider every aspect before getting into partnership:
- Do you really need to get into partnership?
- Can you achieve your dream alone?
- How this partnership will benefit you?
Do let us know if you have ever thought of getting into a partnership and if you have any partnership experience to share, do share with us.