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Not because I wanted a second opinion or anything, you understand (there's only room for one ego in this company). It's just that I had to go and spend the afternoon with our accountant, and the thought of it made me want to stick pins in my eyes. To me, the best thing about having a partner is that you only have to do half as much of all the stuff you hate doing most.
 
Generally though, I'm pretty happy flying solo. I like the idea of having someone who can genuinely empathise about your day-to-day troubles - i.e. someone who you can bitch about your staff to with a totally clear conscience - but aside from that, it strikes me that partners do more harm than good. I know there are some people who make it work, of course - a friend of mine has been in partnership with someone for eight years now, and apart from the odd minor squabble in the early days, they never seem to fall out at all. And those nice boys at Innocent seem to do OK too (although for all I know they might secretly hate each other by now). But I think these are the exceptions, not the rule.

The way I see it, the main problem is division of labour. Workload is one part of it - it's very rare that both of you get through an equal amount of work, and that often ends in resentment. And even if you do, how do you go about splitting the different functions of the top job? You can't have one leader and one manager; one who does all the visible stuff and one who does all the unseen stuff; one who's good cop and one who's bad cop - it just confuses everyone. And just because one's good at sales and one's good at spreadsheets, it's not fair that one always does the fun stuff and the other always has to deal with the bloody accountant.
 
As you may have guessed, I'm speaking from bitter experience here. I started my business in partnership with a male friend of mine (technically an ex-boyfriend, way back when). In fact if it wasn't for him I might not have taken the plunge - he was incredibly enthusiastic, a great sales person and generally a very positive influence to have around. Unfortunately he was also a bit annoying in large doses - which is why I dumped him in the first place - and after a year, we were driving each other round the bend. When he eventually started losing interest (as he always did once the novelty had worn off) I knew I had to get rid. But it was complicated - he didn't want to give up his equity, and I was far too skint to buy him out. I'd also done something very stupid - I'd left him to manage our big client relationships, while I looked after the operational stuff. So there was a good chance that if he went, the business might disappear with him.
 
Fortunately I'd spent the entire year assiduously wooing my bank manager (in retrospect, the smartest thing I ever did) and managed to persuade him that it was worth backing me to buy this guy out - though I did leave him with a small stake (no voting rights) in exchange for a promise that he wouldn't interfere or set up in competition. Of course now that I'm accumulating his retirement fund while he sits around in his pants playing Playstation, that doesn't seem like such a good deal - but it did at the time. I then spent three months taking every one of our clients out to lunch and teaching myself to be a salesperson; thankfully, not one of them left (though I suspect that was more to do with the product than my sales skills).
 
Three years on, I've not regretted it once. This way there's no excuses: if you get it wrong, you can't blame anyone but yourself. And not having a partner saves me the hassle of having to persuade them that I'm right every time there's a decision to be made. That's worth an afternoon with an accountant any day.

PS. Let me know your thoughts below or via secretdiary@managementtoday.com - and thanks to all of you for your kind messages so far! I’ll definitely be picking up on some of your issues in the coming weeks.

Previous Secret Diary entries:
25.07.08: About Me
01.08.08: Bad debts