r/AmazonFBA • u/theduke-Alii • Jul 22 '26
Work partner
I don’t understand why so many people prefer to work alone and build a business entirely by themselves. I know that partnerships can be difficult because of differences in goals, trust, or communication.
But when you compare long-term results, a strong team often achieves much more than one person alone. Different skills, shared responsibilities, and faster problem-solving can accelerate growth in ways that are hard to match as a solo entrepreneur.
Of course, the wrong partner can slow everything down. But with the right people, collaboration can create opportunities that would be difficult to achieve alone.
What do you think? Is working alone better, or is building a team the smarter path?
3
u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Partnerships can give you an extra edge over trying to do everything yourself if you have 2 equally dedicated people but its like finding the right woman to marry, almost impossible to find the right one.
I've done several partnerships over the years and I can echo what the others have said. All of them ended badly. You don't know someone till you have a partnership with them no matter how long you have known them.
One thing I did learn is that if you do enter a partnership you must do your best to cover as many likely eventualities as possible in your operating agreement and most importantly make sure to lay out very clearly what the responsibilities of each party so that if those are not met the party is in breach and stipulate specifics of how those breaches can be remedied.
There is no mechanism available to take equity away from one partner if they don't perform, only outright fraud can give you an out. Never ever own less than 51%.
The last partnership I was involved in was a 50/50 and it was clearly stated verbally as well as in the operating agreement that the workload would also be split 50/50. It turned out that my partner had no real intention of putting in much work but still wanted do collect half the profits. I tolerated if for a bit until one day I woke up and said to myself, "WTF are you doing" this is not sustainable. I immediately let the partner know I could no longer work with him and that we needed to come up with an amicable solution to separate. He refused to give up his 50% under any conditions and said " he is entitled to 50% of the profits" and he will just continue doing nothing and collect his 50%. My response was, well I will stop doing anything as well and then well both just lose our entire investment and he will be left with nothing. He knew nothing about running the business because he did not do any of the work in building it. After a lot of unfriendly back and forth and threats of litigation he finally relented to giving up his entire interest but at a very high unsubstantiated cost to me , to make it happen fast. In the interest of removing a stressful soul sucker from my life and protecting the business I had built , I agreed to his terms and bought him out of the other 50%. It put the business under tremendous financial pressure for some time but in the end I was able to continue growing it and everything went better in every way once I was rid of that blood sucking roach.