I’m 19 years old and have a window cleaning business with my friend who is also the same age. We started door knocking and for each house we did we split the pay 50/50, however recently we knocked on a door where a person who owns hundreds of housing commissions in Sydney decided to give us a chance by cleaning the windows of her properties as the owner likes helping out young entrepreneurs like ourselves. When this happened my friend called me wanted to talk about a pay change, where he gets more as he feels he has brought more value to the company e.g. getting in contact with friends who are builders who need concrete removed from windows and selling more than me in terms of door knocking. I realised that this is true and was put in a position where I had to make a big decision on the pay change of the company. He would threaten me at any time that he would leave me and keep all the clients to himself as he was the main person in contact with them. At the end I ended up agreeing that he should get more since he is bringing more value to the company, however the definition of partnership gets wonky here as I made my first mistake of agreeing to receive how ever much he decides because at the end of the day he is my friend and I had trust in him and I also slipped up by agreeing that he owns the business because he thought of the idea of window cleaning, however legally this is not true since I own the ABN.
I admit to my mistakes, but now it has come to the point where we have done an our first job and the pay he has calculated equates to 70/30 his way. I did not agree with this because he told me the way he calculated the pay was based on how much work I did, and with that property I did more than half the work. He is doing sneaky things like asking his friend who works in law to write up a contract so everything is in order, he told me about this and said nows the time to discuss what to have on the contract, I began by saying my ideas and then he switches up and says I’m not here to negotiate, he also tells me that he doesn’t want me to get more clients probably because he doesn’t want me to have leverage over him, he also wants to pay me for all the money that we split 50/50 investing in the company I guess to try to clear my name from ever investing in it so he looks like the owner. Keep in mind that anytime I disagree with anything he threatens to leave with all the clients who he has made a great relationship with. He then tells me that he has a new way of calculating the pay which is by asking the business owner who owns all the housing commissions how much to pay me.
He kept threatening to leave me and that I should go back to my 9-5 so I tried to save it by saying that I’d transfer the abn to his name. But I’m having second thoughts and a hard time putting all my trust into him. I don’t know what to do since i do feel like I am getting walked over but at the same time this is my only source of income but it isn’t for him so he has the power to bend my hand.
First point, this friend is evil and I would absolutely avoid any kind of relationship or partnership with someone acting like this.
Find another partner that is the first rule, tell your friend to fuck off and try to keep the main client for yourself. Incorporate basic company (don’t know where you live it changes from place to place) and convince the client that you do the job and that he will be extremely satisfied. Offer him a discount for a few moment or find any other way to keep him for you.
Build a brand around your cleaning business and follow all the steps to make your company grow (business plan, brand, staff and so on). Let this horrible friend out of your life.
If you lose the main client whatever, keep on doing what you did and go back from the beginning if necessary. Having a client or even a few is a fraction of making a business work and scale, don’t worry about losing your partnership.
Things could be different if you already incorporated 50/50 with your friend. Then he has no right to decide anything more than you. As a 50% shareholder your decision can block any other decision that hasn’t been made before. I would need to know more about your company status to give you further advice. You told us about initial investment, what did you invest and what did you buy with this money ?