I know, I know. Marks and Spencer did well as a partnership and B and Q (Block and Quayle) haven’t done badly, but trust me, the first rule of starting a business is to not to even entertain a partnership.
Let me expand – like my collection of Apple tech.
Naively, I ventured into the world of self-employment in 2014 with a partner. The choice of partner wasn’t an issue, looking back. It was the actual concept of business partnership. We failed in that venture, and acrimony followed, like a marriage ending.
A year later, supposedly wiser, I created another alliance. That lasted longer, but again ended badly. Perhaps it’s me, as the common factor?
And yet.
When I talk to others about partnerships, many agree that they’re a really bad idea. You both start off with great intentions. You each invest time and money but something starts – it goes like this.
Each partner begins to resent the other and the initial honeymoon phase dies along with the professional and personal relationship you’ve engendered.
Before long, you wind it up, amicably or not, as in each of my joint ventures and realise after wasting months and a year that the advice never to sail in a ship called partnership was something you should have heeded and not ignored.
Firstly, you’re not really splitting work 50-50. I was completely obsessed with growing the first business and worked incessantly with it, and it failed. The second one was where I put less effort and passion in, and it failed.
The only success I’ve had since leaving teaching in 2015, was this solo venture of Get Pro Copy Ltd.
I put a grand status on LinkedIn about wanting to help others and several people have contacted me.
To each one, I say Go Solo. Like Fred Elliot, I’ll say it again – Go Solo.
Your next step, once you’ve accepted this commandment, is to decide what you’re going to go solo at.
Easy for me.
I’ve got a degree in English, 27 years of teaching English under my belt and selling the subject to disaffected audiences of teenagers.
Writing, marketing became my thing.
Not only do I love crafting copy and selling my services and those of others, I work alone. It’s not because I’m socially inept or awkward.
Far from it. I’m highly sociable. I just don’t like partners. I like raking in the money and only splitting it with the taxman, VAT man and family.
I don’t want to hand over 50% of a payment project to a partner.
I think I’ve laboured the partnership hate enough?
The next blog post will look at how to financially manage when you start a business – with the much-repeated tale of me earning just £6900 in one year of self-employment after losing a £45,000 Head of English salary.
Trust me, it was a challenge.
But now, if someone offered me £100k to teach, it would be a pay cut. Not bragging, not bullshit, just the truth.
I’ll explain more next week.
