How To Structure A Business Partnership

How to structure a business partnership? Well, first of all, you're not going into a partnership without a corporate structure around you. We're going to get into the details of that. So the first thing I'm going to talk about is how do you actually do some due diligence and how do you structure this deal? The five habits that are going to pave a way for success. And the last point I'm going to talk about is planning for the end while you were at the beginning. And here's why I say design your divorce while you're in love. Everybody's in love at the beginning of a business partnership. When money starts coming in because you didn't make the right agreements in the operating agreement or the bylaws of the company, you have nothing to go back to and it becomes a war and you put each other at risk. So this is really important. So many of you are, you're just structured wrong. You got really bad advice, if any advice, and this lovely thing called the internet. I call it the bathroom wall because anybody can write anything in permanent marker. It's not going away. A lot of it's wrong. Not a lot's right, which is why I want you here on my channel. So it's an early ask, but I want you to be here. Subscribe to my channel. I want you to click that notification button because I need you here learning this lane, learning how to get rich three to five year millionaire, grow your means, don't shrink to your means. So how do you do this? How do you do a partnership? Well, due diligence begins with not a handshake agreement and not just some written cobbled together little agreement. It's a whole process that I love facilitating you through. How do you see making the money, spending the money, and being in this relationship with this partner? That is an activity you do separately without each other, including spouses. How do you see making money, spending money? What are your agreements? Just common sense stuff. Then you come to a conversation with me that I love to facilitate. Notice there's no lawyer here yet. And then I bring two or three other experts and we decide what kind of company is best given what you guys want, given what you ladies want, given what you partners want. How do you want to make the money? Where do you want to make the money? Is there brick and mortar? Is it all virtual? How is this all going to happen so we can put the right structure for the legal structure? Are you even in the same state? So then you might have to do more corporate structure. The things people don't think about in due diligence is one partner married or in a relationship, the other not. So are you going to put in your agreements that upon death the cash flow continues or is there immediate buyout? Is there voting? How's the voting happening? There's so many things people forget to talk about. And stock agreements over like a legal Zoom and a lot of those little stock places that are cheap and cheerful, they're not accurate. They don't provide enough detail. In fact, one of my partners, Scott and I do a nine steps, phenomenal on nine steps to an operating agreement that everyone leaves out except for him and I. So it is phenomenal. You got to lean in farther to get that document and get that source document, but it's so critical. You've got to design these divorces because you're going to have a divorce. So think about that with your business partner. We're going to get into this business together, say the chiropractic business or a supplement business or whatever we're doing, and we're going to get out. And because we're going to do it in such a healthy, amazing way, we're going to want to go again and be partners again. I've done this with real estate deals where we're in, we're out of the real estate. We go again, we're in, we're out and it stays healthy. That's because of the agreements lock it down. It provides a right to correct. So you can't just contaminate the other person and you go into the relationship protecting each other's families and assets. So it's just this business. You don't collude it with a bunch of travel and cars and vehicles and stuff like that. So due diligence is imperative. A few other points on due diligence. Again, always look at the numbers. Numbers don't lie. People do, right? And so really do your homework. Are those numbers valid given where the market is? Like I'm in the cannabis space. Those numbers change in a huge variance, very huge from 2021 to now 2024 from what you can charge to how you grow to what you could produce for completely different numbers. It's like you got to know the numbers. They don't lie and you better have a great, great team around you. I'd encourage both partners to have kind of an advisory coaching. Like I act as that for a lot of people. I call myself more of an advocate to the family and to a partnership. I'm going to look at you as equals and say, how are you going to get in and out of this alive and help facilitate that agreement? As we move on, I'm actually going to read these. These are five very specific success skills and tools. You better have the same big, hairy, audacious goal. Like you better be going in the same direction, right? Wherever you are on that map, where are you going and where it's the destination to actually a sale of the company or a dissolution of the company? How are you going to prioritize your revenue activities? Who's going to do them? Is somebody selling? Is somebody marketing? How are you being paid? Those are critical. Keep you and your team motivated through focus planning and forecasting. We meet every week to then plan monthly and monthly and monthly. We plan, you know, anywhere between, you know, one and two quarters out in detail of what's going to get done. So the team has a map. Grow your means. Again, don't restrict them. You don't say, well, we don't have this much money. Go make money. You know, in 2007, I wanted to buy the company a plane so we could all fly privately because I was going event to an event to event. So I didn't say, Laurel, oh my gosh, family, we have to give up or restrict or make we the family an extra 50,000 a month. You turn to the company and said, y'all want to fly private? We're all going to get on this bandwagon together. We're going to build a new plan and we're going to make 50,000 extra dollars. Let's just go for 75 or a hundred. Make sure we have enough. And then embrace lifelong learning and mentorship. Like some of you, you're just this do it by yourself means suffering. I don't know why you're suffering, why you're going slow. You're getting costly errors. It's not worth it. So again, if you've not subscribed to my channel, make sure you click that button and get here. Love to help you with this deal. Our office numbers below. So if you're in a business partnership and it's not incorporated, right? It's not either a limited partnership, right? A general limited partnership, LLC, an S-corp or a C-corp. In America, those are your five choices that better be done, right? Or getting in and out and having that business divorce or even closing it down gets rough for you and your families. So let us help you use experts, not just cheap online, you know, .com sites so you can click around. Last point, again, design this divorce while you're in love. So where do you have buy-sell agreements? Do you actually have an operating agreement or the bylaws? Be clear about how you're getting into the relationship down to banking controls, voting controls, all of it. And then how, when you dissolve it, like real estate's fascinating. Like a lot of people forget to put in what I call the first right of refusal. Like if I, if we're an apartment complex together, like, you know, say we have four of them and I want to buy three, you want to sell three, then what's the reduced price for me to buy? Or do we sell all retail to the market? What if you want to keep it? Cause you want the cashflow for your family. You got to think through all these things. And usually a third party helps you do that. So if you have any questions, go to askLaurel.com, A-S-K-L-O-R-A-L, ask questions, make a request, love to help you do these partnerships, right? So you don't kill each other. Talk to you tomorrow.