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How often have you sat around with friends and talked about how you could do things better when it comes to useful products or business?

For most people, that’s all it is, a conversation, and doesn’t go any further. But what if you decided to take to leap and go into business with a friend?

Plenty has been written about the potential pitfalls of being in business with family or friends, but these need to be balanced against the advantages too.

You Already Know Each Other

As you’re already good friends, you’ll have a bond that is already established. Whether you’ve known each other for a few years, or since childhood, it’s a step that is often hard to take in business when you don’t really know someone.

You’ll be aware of each other’s backgrounds, family situations, and responsibilities. You’ll also like spending time together, both inside and outside of work. Having that level of relationship can push you toward success. You’ll also know something about each other’s skill sets. Whether that’s bespoke website design or designing products, you each know what the other brings to the table.

On the other side of things, you’ll also be aware of each other’s weaknesses, and can compensate for or back each other up.

Trust Has Already Been Established

Any successful business needs to have a level of trust between leadership and employees. Without it, it’s only a matter of time before the cracks start to show. As friends, you already have a level of trust strong enough that you would risk going into business together. You can go straight from a stressful business meeting to a drink in a bar or game of football without any baggage.

You Have Your Own Communication Style

Communication is key. Within a business, issues can often arise when leaders have different styles of communication. With friends, you already have your own shorthand and expectations on communication style.

You Share The Same Goals

When you discuss going into business together, the certainty about your direction and what you want to achieve is something that you’ll focus on a lot. If you’re both going into it for very different reasons, then this can put leadership at odds, which will affect the business.  A power struggle will help no one.

The Cons

Of course, there are many things to consider when going into business with friends. If something goes wrong, then you potentially lose a friend forever. There also might be power dynamics at play that mirror those of your friendship so far. Plus, its always possible to know too much about someone in both a personal and professional environment.

Final Thoughts

There are many positives to starting a business with someone that you are already friends with. The trust and understanding that is there from the beginning is something that some businesses never manage to achieve.

Before committing, go through all of the potential pros and cons together and discuss how you would handle these. Mismatched expectations can be very bad further down the line, talking about them earlier means you can prevent this. 

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