Once in your life you are given the opportunity to start a business. Yes, you may have an amount saved to invest in a venture. But you’re afraid you don’t have the skills and finances to make it in the business world. Eureka! Your best friend whom you know quite well, a business owner (and a successful one) comes to mind and answers your fears and doubts.

However, are you in a daze about starting a business with your friend? Perhaps, you are pondering in your mind if things don’t work out, your friendship will break. Still, you know that when it comes to tax matters, you two totally have the same point of view. Well that’s a good sign! But teaming up with your best friend in a business venture is a completely different picture. Below are some favorable and unfavorable reasons why you should consider your friend as a business partner:

• Work and distribution of invoices.

Working with a friend can be fun. The fun is doubled because the bills are split in two.

• Flexibility in business management.

Your friend or associate may have the knowledge and skills to run a business that you don’t. Also, one of you might have enough time to run the business. Either way, if your strengths and weaknesses complement each other, it means you can both compromise. It is a give and take relationship, but in this sense you are giving and taking what is good for your business.

• Mutual and shared responsibility.

Each partner is quasi-responsible for its own decisions and actions, the decisions and actions of the other partner, and the actions of any of its employees.

• Fiduciary duty of conscience.

You decide and act for the benefit of another person or for the benefit of many, even leaving yours in the background. Let’s say you run a flower shop with a partner and you’re presented with an incredible offer to open another store without your partner, your fiduciary duty means you have to forgo the opportunity or share it with your partner.

• Having a business partner can give you skills you don’t have, money, and connections.

• Share the workload, financial burden, and creative ideas.

As the old adage goes, “two heads are better than one.”

• Disagreements on minor and major issues.

Having a friend as a business partner is supposed to be fun, but if you don’t want to screw that up by working closely with someone who irritates you, then you could run your own business now instead of buying your partner later because you realized that you basically didn’t agree with everything.

It is an excellent idea for any new business partnership to first do a trial period. Do one or two projects together and if you coordinated well and worked harmoniously, your styles fit together. If so, good luck to your business partnership. If not, it is a difficult lesson to learn and should be avoided.