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Unbalanced partnership

C

CreativeP

New Member
Hi business people! I hope you can advise me and maybe somebody with similar experience can share their advice.

About 18 months ago myself and an associate set up a creative business, offering photography, videography, websites, graphic design etc.

We aren’t an official business in legal terms, i.e we aren’t a legal partnership or ltd company.

Fast forward to today and I have probably contributed 80%, if not more, to building the business, I am skilled in all of the services we offer, have built our website, spent hour after hour developing my skills and improving, and I’m starting to see real potential for it to grow into something. My associate hasn’t progressed at all, he cuts corners and has even set up his own ltd company offering some of the services we do. I’m not concerned about his new company as I don’t believe he will be successful on his own, my main concern is that he still wants to be part of the business we set up, and I think before long he will want to make it official as he can see that it’s growing.

If we become a partnership or ltd company, what can I do to make sure that we are fairly rewarded financially for the work we do individually? I don’t want to be doing 80-90% of the work but getting only 50% of the profits? Are there legal contracts we can draw up to say that whoever does the lions share of a job gets the bigger cut?

Just writing this makes me feel that most people will say I shouldn’t be going into business with him! But I’m confident if we protect ourselves from the start we will flourish, and he will make more effort to improve his skills to match my own.

Thanks!
 
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