My business partner is using shared resources for personal gain - here's what to do.

dollhouse: ad agency

Fun fact: One of the earliest known newspaper ads in 17th-century England involved reward notices for missing or stolen property (such as horses), reflecting how early advertising began as simple public notices before evolving into commercial marketing.

The issue: 

Your business partner is using shared resources for personal gain. In other words, you feel stolen from.

An example: 

Let's say you and your business-partner, Sharon, run an ad agency together.

Your agency is very client-focused, and you both take clients out to dinners as part of your agency experience.

Sharon starts to add little expenses to these "dinners" - a latte and croissant before the dinner, a bit of last-minute groceries after the dinner, unnecessary Uber rides around town, etc.

Two hidden costs:

1. You have higher expenses, paying for your partner’s personal spending.
2. You miss out on opportunities that your money or resources, now going into your partner’s pocket, could have given you.

The reasons:

Here are the reasons why Sharon is using shared resources for her personal gain (and/or):

• She does not understand where to draw the line between "company" and "personal" resources.
• She does not see the big deal in using shared resources for her personal gain. The consequences aren't big enough to stop.

Your quick fix (honoring autonomy): 

Your goal is to make sure that your partner handles your shared resources in a way that respects both of you.

• Do you agree on exactly what, how much, and under what circumstances your resources can be used?
• Do you trust that your partner’s initial reasons for using shared resources won’t interfere again?

If YES, you can make compromises.

If NO, you have a fundamental incompatibility - you have different standards around the usage of resources.

Mending your partnership:

Book a consultation with Valerie.

Vetting for the future:

If you are searching for a business partner in the future, first figure out how they treat their own as well as other people’s resources.

This ensures that you can be on the same page with regard to sharing and how shared resources are respected.

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