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?
Both types of work are possible.
Working exclusively remotely is definitely possible and increasingly common, after COVID we’ve seen a huge spike, but this type of companies have existed a couple of years before even.
I for example only work with clients who don’t have offices, they collaborate remotely and I provide them an office-less IT infrastructure.
That said, what’s not feasible is each founder pulling towards their side or having this disagreement be dragged out.
The question needs to be settled either way, and you need to direct the company in whichever direction, this is a pretty foundational decision, you can’t move forward with a lot of things until it’s settled. Your workflow, tools, policies, marketing strategies will be significantly different based on the decision you make.
Another point is that this is a fairly standard business discussion and definitely nothing worth getting angry about or disrupting the family about, you should be able to discuss matters like this in the same way you discuss your colour palette or what vendors to choose. This disagreement should in no way cause you to reevaluate your partnership since it will be settled one way or the other like any other kind of business decision.
If you find yourself fighting over business decisions, then work on removing emotions from the process in order to move the business forward. If you find you can’t do that, or if this is about being more in touch with family, then yes, reconsider your partnership.