Need Some Advice About My Business Partner

Fellow Warriors,

I'm in a bit of a sticky situation and I could really use some outside input. I will try to keep this to the point and spare unnecessary details, but it is a long story. Here goes...

February of this year I knew absolutely nothing about IM. Never thought about it and had no education on it whatsoever. My friend of several years had been gaining interest in it over the past year, slowly. The first course he bought, which was last year, was Frank Kern's Mass Control. He pretty much sat on the material for a while and didn't do anything with it, being that he had no product nor knew what to sell online. He started to introduce me to concepts and gained my interest and we decided we would start to learn what this was all about. We spent the next several weeks spending 20-30 hours on top of our normal jobs going through Mass Control. We watched all the material, the seminars, etc. Frank Kern made it entertaining too, so it wasn't like work at all.

By mid april (we started just about march) we were starting to understand "something". What it was we really had no idea yet, and now I realize that I didn't know **** because I had nothing practical I could use this information with. We decided to start with affiliate marketing and wanted to use video as the medium. We had learned about traffic geyser, so in a few nights I learned how to create videos with my mac and we created a nice quality sales video based around a clickbank product. I used TG to send it out to all the video sites (note that I made the video and did all the submissions, while he came up with titles, descriptions, and keywords). Within 3 days we had 2 sales already and it was like, woah! The video still brings in an average of 1 sale a week. This was done with little knowledge of how to actually presell or provide content. Thinking about it now, I realized at that point we should've just kept making more videos, and getting better...

My partner has a problem though, something that is well discussed on this forum. He is constantly looking for the next greatest thing, the automated, lazy, do nothing solution that will dump money in his lap. He consistently jumps from product to product, picking up bits and pieces of this and that, but never implementing anything or getting any practical knowledge by actually doing it. I bought a PLR package that came with articles, a review, keywords, and the product. Since after 3 weeks of me saying "we need to do market research and pick some niches/products to work with" and him never actually doing it, I decided I would buy someone else's work and see what I could do with it. He spent one night trying to create a blog and submit it and just gave up. I am highly technically proficient, and he is not. So I told him I thought the workload was unfair and that I didn't want to be responsible for research if I was going to be handling setting up websites, submitting, etc.

He agreed with me and said he would do some research. What did he do? He bought another product that supposedly gives you thousands of pre researched niches with all the keywords etc. 3 weeks later from that, he still had nothing done. Then I picked up a product I thought was really worth it, a WSO i found on this forum. I read the whole course and got it, and sent it to him as well and he said he read it. In 1 hour using Micro Niche Finder I came up with 5 really good keyword/product sets and 3 possibles.

He said he was going to come up with more and the last time I saw him he said he had 5 ready. I talked to him online 2 days ago and tried to get the info out of him of what research he had done. He barely answered my questions and only named 4 products, and he had little to no information on actual research he did. This was all after I wrote him this really long email detailing our whole game plan, step by step, and what each of us was responsible for. I also wrote several paragraphs of motivational material to try to get him on track. He never replied to it and only mentioned in the IM that he was going to have some of the content ready for me that night.

Well, two days later and still have heard NOTHING from him. He has not contacted me at all, not even to say that he couldn't get his **** done. Overall, I have spent a lot of time and energy trying to get him motivated and on point, trying to setup a business plan ( i went to a small business startup workshop at the local college too ), coming up with tasks and delegating responsibilities, and have been very patient with him. He has these ups and downs where he gets depressed and doesn't think it will work, and its like, NO **** ITS NOT GONNA WORK BECAUSE YOU AREN'T DOING ANYTHING!

The problem is, he is my friend, I care about him, I want him to have the good life and get out of the job he wants to leave so bad (so he says). If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't know anything about internet marketing (which is soon to be my main source of income). It's really tough because I've already gone to his house and had a 1 hour talk with him about my dissatisfaction of what was going on, the unbalance of the responsibilities, and his problem with always buying new products but never using anything. He also has a listening problem and usually thinks he has more value to add on any topic than anyone else, so you never know if he is actually considering what you are saying or if hes just "letting you speak".

I really can't figure out what his issue is and why its so hard for him to just stick to 1 plan and get something done. It is stressing me out big time because I have been ready to go for months now. I have plenty of tools and web knowledge/experience to be of great use by anyone with an idea and a little bit of research. I am not a fan of the research side, but am a master of implementation. If I have to, Ill start doing my own research, because I know I can make this work. I have a totally positive mindset and I do not doubt that I am going to make this dream a reality.

I am going away Friday-Sunday for a small vaction. I am thinking that if he still has not produced any content at all, any good research, or anything of actual value by the time I return, then I am going to tell him that I will not be starting a business with him.

I want some opinions here. Should I give him more time/more chances? Is cutting him off the best way to approach the situation? And what should I say to him to end the partnership so that I can still try to hang on to the friendship?

Thank you to everyone who read this and also everyone who replies. I appreciate the time and advice that people have, and am very grateful for the many treasures I have already found on this forum.

Vossman