Your thoughts/opinion greatly appreciated!

[Lootmeister]

Hi Guys,

Great forum!

I ran into an issue today that has really got my panties in a bunch.

A little about myself...I'm getting ready to start my 3rd online business since 2001. The reason I mention that is to give you a little background about myself and make it clear that I'm not new to the game and am familiar with business and how to run a successful one.

So, I've got a partner in this venture... Our site will be a local advertising/information portal. We're basically building it using sweat (no capital).

Now that we've got that picture painted, here is my issue..

I'm the one with the experience in webmastering, seo, content publishing and all that jazz, all which will keep me very busy.

In the beginning, I thought that I had made it pretty clear to my partner that we'd be taking the sweat equity approach and that we'd BOTH need to be producing content for the site. SO, he says send me stuff you need written about. We're talking simple stuff, fetching info, etc. Not creative writing. So he says he's going to have his daughter do it. Great, I dont have a problem with that. She's a sharp kid. He said he was going to pay her x amount to do so.

So he mentioned that he paid her x amount and I started getting the feeling that he was expecting ME to pay half of the bill.

I have been handling "other" things within the biz.

Here's my question for you... If I'm over here on my side of the fence busy doing work, and he's taking the requests im sending him, having other people do them and then having the business pay for them, he's essentially "managing" to get things done. In my estimation, this falls outside the sweat equity situation.

Breaking it down even more. I'm spending 4 hours a day on our gig. He's taking the request, emailing it to somebody which takes 2 mins. Then I'm paying half of what his managed person is doing.

I believe that if he's going to take his job and have somebody else do it that he should be paying for that out of HIS pocket. I could have managed somebody else doing the work myself.

When I confronted him about it, he said whats the difference between us paying a contracted writer to do it or me having my daughter doing it and us paying her? He said as long as it's getting done, it's none of my business where it comes from.

The problem I have with that is that when I sit down and pencil this out, I see it as if though I'm doing my job and then paying to have his done. (Im on the hook for half of what he pays his daughter to do the job)

I'd have never gone into this gig if I thought my partner was just going to "manage" people. For all you newbies to biz out there, this is a perfect example of why you need to establish roles ahead of time. Not just decide who is going to do what, but be SUPER specific. Furthermore, as most attorneys will tell you, partnerships end up as a diaster most of the time. My partner brings some skillsets to the table that I dont have and deal with things I dont want to deal with, but the further we get into this the more Im starting to think that his plan is to delegate everything out, which is something I could have done myself.

Am I wrong in thinking this way? I kinda got sidetracked there with my post. My real question is, should I have to pay half of what he's paying somebody to do (his job in my estimation)?

Thanks for your time!

Loot

[rogerkirkness]

Do you trust this partner? Is it possible they would be skimming the invoices? just seems a little off to me.

If what you want is a writer on your payroll, great, if what you want is a partner, they need to do their share off the work.

Considering from the sounds of it this partner has invested niether time nor money into the project, the decision you must make is whether or not too keep them on (no cost to boot them as they have not formally invested themselves). Personally i like to do as much as i can myself and leave the rest up to contractors where possible, but this sounds like a contractor, not a partner to me.