Yea, no problem.
My brother, my cousin, and myself are all partners in a law firm. We mostly do a lot of personal injury, contract, landlord/tenant, and corporate law. My brother and I do the majority of the work with the law firm, aside from corporate law, which is my cousin's area of expertise, so he usually handles that. Because the firm had been established prior to me graduating from law school, I "bought in" to the firm. The agreement included, for the first 3 years, me getting a normal 33% share of fees generated on cases that I brought into the firm and 20% of fees generated on cases that I didn't bring into the firm. After 3 years, I'll get the same 1/3 share on cases I didn't sign up. This was done to offset the initial start up costs of the firm, which I obviously didn't contribute to since I was still in school. Also, it serves as an incentive for me to grow the firm's book of business by bringing in my own cases. How much I actually receive from the law firm just depends on how many cases I settled during that particular month. But it's usually a few thousand dollars.
My brother, my cousin, and myself are also partners in a title company. We offer title and escrow services for both residential and commercial real estate transactions. We basically facilitate the sale between buyer and seller all the way up through the closing, which is typically done in our office. My cousin mainly handles the title company stuff by himself, I'll occasionally do the document exchange at the closing if he's busy or whatever. Because this was also in existence prior to me graduating, the same agreement and percentages apply for the first 3 years. This usually nets me a few thousand dollars per month as well.
The third company we have is a merchant services company that provides payment solutions to businesses. It's three of us and a 4th family friend who's been in the industry for years. This is typically done by providing existing or new businesses with credit card services, credit card terminals, POS systems and software, ability to offer and accept customized gift cards, etc. This is the most profitable of our businesses, and also the best IMO because it provides residual income on a monthly basis. I'm going to Atlanta on Tuesday to acquire some accounts and get them set up. Those accounts will pay me on a monthly basis for at least the next 3 years. I also have agents under me whose accounts I also get a cut of. To be honest, I'm currently in the process of transitioning the majority of my time to this business, as it's just more lucrative than the others and more consistent. With the law shyt, even if I sign up a case tomorrow, I probably won't see a penny from the settlement until 8-9 months down the road, and we're fronting costs along the way. I currently make around $4k a month from this, which is nice, because it's consistent. Basically takes care of all my bills for the month. There's really almost no overhead either, so the expenses spent are very little.
Just opened up my 4th business by myself a few months back. It offers the same payment solutions to overseas and online businesses. To be honest, I haven't had much time to really get this off the ground just yet and only started it in the first place because I was familiar with the business and had some good contacts, so I only make around a thousand a month from this.
Owning businesses is not easy by any means. Especially if you're in a situation like mine where you have employees, because that's just one more thing to deal with. We had a paralegal who we spent mad time training and she just told us she's pregnant and is going to take a long ass leave. Now we're scrambling to find someone to replace her. The other day, the internet at the office was down, so I couldn't send emails. Had to call Comcast and spent an hour on the phone while they tried to provide some answers, before finally just sending a technician out. The dude who works for Zephyrhills that drops off our big 5 gallon jugs shorted us one this month so we didn't have water to drink in the office last week, so I had to go get bottled waters because clients were coming in. It's the little shyt like that that's so damn annoying and that you don't really think about, but something pops up damn near daily that you gotta deal with.
What the hell did I get myself into?
