Me (23M) and my brother (26M) are trying to start up an E-Commerce business and I have done most of the work on the first product from building the landing page, setting up the shopify to editing the videos and he only did an excel sheet of potential products and a couple profile pictures for the tik tok which we didn’t use
We are thinking of changing the products but I’m telling him that this can’t work if we don’t put at least one day of the week to see each other face to face and talk ideas and he says he can’t because his schedule is full and he wants to talk all business through the phone because he says that either way we would discuss the same ideas through the phone and face to face which i disagree, in person we get more done in my opinion and he also wants to buy 2 of the hero products so he can make videos by himself in his house and i do videos by myself of the product we are selling, I’m telling him that we need to produce all the videos together and he says that it is not necessary and i don’t agree with that, business partners need to see each other constantly specially when our whole selling strategies are through video creation of the product
I’m thinking of telling him that I prefer to keep the business off the table and go on our separate business paths so it won’t damage our relationship as family
Any feedback on this?
Sorry for the challenges you are dealing with. I’ve built a small (20 person) biz over the last 5 years and this past year had to fire my two co-founders and fiance (though she still married me last weekend!). Interestingly, she and one of my co-founders started their own business together when they were let go from my company. They were “like sisters”, but unfortunately due to similar challenges you are facing now, have folded the company (with $100K in inventory still to sell to get their investment back) and I’m not sure how they will ever be friends again. And if they do, there will always be a scar on the relationship.
If it isn’t too late to go separate ways without doing damage, I’d highly recommend it. There is no way (in my experience) to have a business relationship not affect (for better or worse) the personal relationship.
Happy to fill in details or provide more insight. Best of luck with your challenging decision!