3 Tips For Handling A Business Partnership That Goes South
When starting a new business with a business partner, all you might be thinking about is how successful you could become in the future. And while this might become the reality for some, if your business doesn’t flourish and your relationship becomes strained with your business partner, what might become most important to you is getting out of this situation.
For those finding themselves in this predicament, here are three tips for handling a business partnership that goes south.
Plan Ahead For The Possibility
To best protect yourself in this type of business situation, you should have ideally thought about the possibility of this happening at the very beginning of your business endeavor. It’s only through creating contracts that you can then hold people to that you can ensure that what you both want will be followed through on in the event that your relationship sours.
If you don’t have a contract that contains an exit strategy yet, try to create this document as soon as possible, even if your relationship has already started to go south. This will offer both sides some protection. But if you don’t have a legal document that they are bound to, all you can really do is hope for the best and potentially bring a case against them later on.
Determine If Your Non-Professional Relationship Is Worth Saving
Before your business relationship completely implodes, you may want to think about what is worth saving out of the partnership.
If you have had a relationship with this person well before you got into business together, you might feel that your relationship is worth saving outside of your business partnership. And if you do feel this way, you’ll likely react and respond to the failure of your business in a different way. But if you were solely interested in working with this person, maintaining the non-professional relationship likely won’t be a priority for you.
Commit To Having Calm Conversations
When a business partnership starts to turn south, emotions can run high. And while you might feel very passionately about what has happened and what should happen next, if you’re not in a calm place when trying to work through things with your business partner, you are very unlikely to get the results that you want.
Knowing this, when you are going to have a conversation with your business partner, make a commitment to yourself and to them that you’ll remain calm. And if you even start to feel your blood boiling, take a break and come back to the conversation at a later date so you don’t do or say something that you’ll regret.
If you fear that your relationship with your business partner is headed south, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you manage this.
