Some entrepreneurs, for financial or other reasons, decide to hang onto a full-time job while starting a new business. Now, there can be some unique challenges in getting a new business off the ground when one is balancing one’s new business with a full-time job.
One of these challenges comes from the fact that keeping full-time employment limits the amount of time and energy a person can put towards their new business. This could lead to concerns for an entrepreneur of whether their new company’s needs will be able to be met.
There are a variety of steps a business owner could take to try to address these concerns. One is to take on a partner or multiple partners for the business. Bringing on partners to help with starting and running a business can spread out the work related to the business, thus having the potential to reduce the time/energy burden placed on each partner. For an entrepreneur who plans to continue to have a full-time job, this can create some peace of mind that they don’t have to do everything when it comes to their new business and that there will be other people there to catch things that they are unable to get to.
Of course, deciding to try to bring on a partner leads to a whole group of additional decisions for a business owner. One is who to bring on as a partner. Another is what specific legal form to have the joint ownership of the company take. Also, there are the decisions on what legal documents and terms to have in place governing the relationship between the partners.
When a person who is planning on balancing a full-time job and starting a business opts to bring on partners to help them with their new business, what they ultimately choose when it comes to these follow-up decisions can be remarkably impactful. For while having a business partner could have benefits for such an entrepreneur, picking the wrong partner or making missteps when it comes to setting up the rules of the partner relationship could result in bringing on a partner hindering their new business rather than helping it.
So, when bringing on a partner, a business owner may want a skilled lawyer’s guidance on the little details and key legal issues related to taking on a partner.