I am a lawyer and a business owner. It wasn’t easy becoming either. With respect to being a business owner, I learned a valuable lesson from my past about the proper structure that works for businesses in which I am involved. It has a lot to do with me and how I work and operate, but I don’t mind sharing.
Many years ago, I started a corporation while I was doing my undergraduate degree at U of T. I started the corporation with 4 of my best friends and my cousin. There were 6 of us total. We handn’t settled on a particular business for the corporation to be involved in, but we started it anyway and said ‘that part will come to us later’. Boy were we ever wrong. Each of us had equal decision-making powers, equal votes, and equal shares. As I’m sure you guessed, nothing got done. Whenever I or someone else came up with an idea, we could never reach concensus or even a majority. There was bickering and a lot of time wasted on business plans and meetings.
Sufficed to say, I’m glad I had that experience and I’m glad that we didn’t end up doing anything with that company. It was a great learning experience because I got to see first hand how business and friendship mix, how to start and maintain a corporation, and how businesses should not operate. Learning these life lessons, when I started my own business thereafter, I knew that it would not be with family and friends (but rather the most competent and motivated person with sufficient time). I also knew that there had to be a leader and that not everyone would have equal decision-making powers or equal votes. So the business model turned more into a dictatorship with consultants who were specialized in their respective field(s). The reason democracies don’t work well for businesses is because things don’t get done – either at all or as quickly and cost-effectively as they would otherwise. Less voices means more action. Sure, there is less accountability when you’re running a business like a dictatorship, but at the end of the day business is about making profit regardless of how it’s internal mechanisms operate.
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