OK, it may be me who may carry the disease … I may be jaundiced by my experiences with partnerships, but frankly I don’t see the need.
Unless your partner brings a unique skill-set that you can’t hire in, contract out, or simply acquire for yourself – or, provides a lot of capital then is willing to sit back and let you work your magic – I think that you would be well-advised to rethink your need for partners.
I was having coffee this morning with my insurance broker / friend who expressed a desire to acquire some residential property.
To digress, I would normally suggest commercial property for its superior income-generation ability (assuming that you buy / manage right … but, that’s another story), but in his case: he has a 50% share of a small broking practice that turns over $2.5 million a year and puts around 30% on the bottom-line.
If you set aside one client that provides about 25% of this revenue, that’s about $300k per year that he can pretty much safely ‘bank on’ as income year-in-year-out … with upside as he grows the practice.
So, income isn’t his ‘problem’ … for him it’s equity and taxes:
1. Equity: broking practices (as do many professional practices of other types and in other markets) tend to sell for a multiple of earnings (i.e. profits) or simply a smaller multiple of revenue; for insurance brokers in his market, right now, it’s bout $2 for every $1 of revenue. Since he has a 50% partner, he’s currently ‘worth’ about $1.8 – $2.5 million (depending upon what happens with that one big client) plus whatever equity he has in his house.
Again, not a lot of risk in that equity figure, and it will grow with the practice, but not a lot … his practice would need to double in size before he’s worth $5 Mill. (and, if that takes 20 years, then he’s really gone nowhere, slowly).
2. Taxes: How does a professional in a professional practice protect against taxes? The answer is that they don’t: these are the soft targets for the tax systems of most countries!
So, if he doesn’t need the income, then it may very well be that residential real-estate provides a suitable solution to his tax/equity ‘problems’ … one that fits into his investment ‘comfort zone’ (assuming that his Number is circa $5 Mill.):
If he buys Tax Cashflow (or better) residential property, he may have enough income/purchasing power to acquire enough property that he can afford to wait 20 years to supplement his ‘retirement’ when he eventually sells his practice.
So, what does this have to do with partnerships?
Not much, other than he asked if I wanted to go 50/50 with him on a small block of apartments … I said ‘no’.
The reason is that our interests may diverge: and if one wants to sell and the other doesn’t, what happens?
And, what’s so special about a block of apartments that we couldn’t each buy one on our own for about half the size/price of one that we could buy together (eg a duplex each instead of a quadraplex).
And, if you’re the type of person who needs a bit of motivation/hand-holding, you can always do what a friend and I did (in fact, this was my first-ever property acquisition):
We researched and found together two apartments in a new construction.
We negotiated a reasonable price from the bank-in-possession (it was a foreclosure) since we were buying two, and a reasonable loan … then we simply executed two sets of loan and purchase documents, one set in each of our names.
Sure enough, he ended up selling way before I did … but, it had absolutely no impact on me π
I couldn’t agree more Adrian. I’ve struggled with this for some time now. 2 people just have 2 different purposes, 2 different sets of goals, values and it’s darn near impossible to get them to mesh. Nothing turns my stomach more than when my partner comes around wanting to have “business lunches” and discuss my practice, how it’s doing and dealing with all of his “suggestions” that he immediately presses upon me.
It seems like the more he presses upon my practice with his ideas, methods, purpose, etc… the more my practice drops because it’s no longer me doing what i’m born to do and focusing on helping as many people as I can AND working towards my number. When he comes around we end up mixing purposes, procedures and values and things go down, not to mention it’s like pulling teeth anytime anything needs to be done with the practice, concerning its future direction, legal matters, paperwork, etc… just a big headache that can’t end too quickly for me in the next 32 months…
@ Scott – On the other hand, some partnerships prove to be fantastic: Rodgers & Hammerstein; The Captain and Tennille; Greta and Garbo … perhaps, though, they are just the exception that proves the rule? π
Yep, they are the .00001 percent that work. Not high enough repeatability for me.
It’s kind of like saying, “Lots of guys end up getting to pitch for the Yankees” π
BTW: The “Greta and Garbo” one was an obvious joke: they are just two members of a trio π
LoL, yep, I got that one π
Very good points Adrian. I don’t think I would want a partner in business. I have seen to many of them dissolved ,for lack of communication or lack of common goals and direction,sort of like many marriages.
Investor is another thing altogether. You design a contract where each party knows exactly what they are getting in the deal, and only 1 person owns the business. The investor should be well compensated for his money ,but doesn’t need to be included in the business.
@ Steve – Good luck in finding an investor who meets those criteria π
What? You think every investor wants to be part of the business? Some may only be interested in making a decent return on his money,Which I think he is entitled to,since he has risked his money to the venture.Its kind of like going to the bank,only instead of the bank , your using other people’s money π Leverage to wealth.
@ Steve – Thanks for your comments; in my experience, though, ‘silent partners’ rarely are π
Ok, well thats what I am searching for at this time,. Have a wonderful business in mind with lots of growth potential. Need start up cash (all my cash is tied up in other ventures at the moment) . So anyone out there looking for a place to make some money can contact me for complete list of details. Nice return . And you get passive income .
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