Giving up. For understandable reasons, many entrepreneurs hate thinking about abandoning any of their goals. They certainly don’t want to give up on business ideas they’ve put tremendous energy into developing. Additionally, if they have business partners, they might not want to give up on those business partnerships.
Again, it’s easy to understand why many business owners feel this way. But that doesn’t mean giving into this impulse is necessarily healthy. There are many reasons why it might be time to call a business partnership quits. Doing so could be the best decision for both parties. The following are just a few examples of such reasons:
Key Reasons to End a Business Partnership
Different Standards
Successful business owners have high standards. They don’t want to accept anything less than the best from themselves or from those with whom they work.
Unfortunately, there are instances when one business partner may have significantly lower standards than the other. Maybe they no longer feel as passionate about the business idea. Perhaps they don’t have the energy to continue pursuing their vision. Maybe they’ve always had a weaker work ethic, but this didn’t become apparent until later.
Either way, you rely on your business partner to help you achieve your goals. If their low standards are preventing you from doing so, it might be time to part ways.
Obvious Reasons
It’s important not to overlook the basics when determining if a business partnership is no longer healthy. If your business partner is lying or engaging in unethical behavior, you need to end the partnership sooner rather than later. There’s no point in sabotaging your own success by continuing to work with someone you can’t trust.
Laziness
Sometimes a business partner may share your standards to a degree. Specifically, they hold the business itself and the workforce to the same standards as you.
That said, they might make one particular exception: they don’t hold themselves to high standards. They’re entirely willing to let others (including you) put in a lot of hard work, but they don’t expect the same from themselves.
You don’t need to let anyone take advantage of you. If your business partner isn’t contributing as much as you and other team members are, they don’t deserve to work with you.
Changing Goals
It’s worth noting that it sometimes makes sense to end a business partnership even when your business partner is continuing to work hard and behaving ethically. When you start a business together, ideally you will do so because you share the same goals. However, as a business grows, it’s often natural for entrepreneurs to adjust their goals according to new developments.
Sometimes this results in disagreements between business partners. They may not always see eye-to-eye when deciding the best course of action for the future.
That doesn’t mean anyone is at fault. It simply means it will be difficult for such partners to continue working together in a productive manner. If you’re in this situation, you should have a conversation with your partner about the future, deciding whether it’s worth anyone’s time to continue trying to pull the business in opposite directions.
These reasons to end a business partnership might not make the process of dissolving the relationship easy. That said, nothing about growing a business is always easy. Sometimes you need to make difficult decisions. These are just a few examples of those times. If you’re not sure when to end a business partnership, consider these points.
