Update - My Brother Wants Me To Shut Down My Business
I made a post last week and it blew up so thought I'd follow up after a week. I can't link it unfortunately so if you'd like to see it, please look at my profile or just copy/paste the title into the search bar.
Quick refresher:
My brother came up with an idea involving reselling a niche good a few years ago. I took the idea, ran with it, made a good amount of money without him helping at all BESIDES the idea itself. My brother saw some changes in the market + was uncomfortable?, got upset, told me and my business partner to stop. And that left me in a weird spot: do I stop, or do I continue?
Before going onto the update, I think I left a few things out in my first post that may help clarify my situation.
I want to reiterate that I would never have come up with this business idea on my own. It's not like some tech startup idea that's popular; this is a really niche idea and a really niche market. Adding anyone into the market will affect it somewhat
When I first started working on this business, I told my brother immediately and he congratulated my success. All seemed well and I had even mentioned to my brother that if it ever turned south and he was starting to get affected by me being in the same market, I would get out and respect that he started in the market himself
Right before making this aforementioned post, I actually agreed to stop. Told him that we would get out of the market within 6 months. Immediately felt bad about that decision though, so I came back a few days later and told him that we needed to talk. I didn't mention this in my original post because I was pretty embarrassed about flipping decisions. I think I was being influenced a lot by my brother, parents etc. But, this may help explain the below...
Now, onto the updates. I am currently on a ski trip with my family and finally talked with my brother today in person about the issue and we argued a bunch. He mentioned he was annoyed that I took his idea and that he was feeling pressure within the market. While he did say he was making the same amount of money as before, he mentioned that it was much more difficult to do so - and as such, it was making his life more difficult.
I said that I thought he wasn't being respectful to me and the time I put in by asking me to stop point blank. I thought that he was attributing too much of our business to just solely his idea and not recognizing how much effort/time we had to put in to get where we were.
After a lot of talking, we eventually came to an agreement that he would get a certain percentage of our business TBD after I would talk it over with my business partner in a few days.
A few hours later, my brother decided to tell my parents about our conversation which turned everything into a whole mess. My mom and dad seemed disapointed in me - to me, at least, they seemed to be on my brother's side. They did say, however, that they understood both sides and offered a few alternatives.
The first - that I offered a percentage of the business to my brother PLUS that I couldn't engage in any other business that was tangential to his idea. The second - that he gave me some time (about a year) to continue with the business, then after that point I had to leave BUT could continue to operate any business that was tangential to his original idea.
A lot of complicated stuff. Still is a pretty difficult situation. Most of you told me last post to just say fuck you to him but I can't do that. He's my brother, I love him a lot and I don't want to do anything that will hurt him. I just want to get to a point where my needs meet his happiness; and right now, it seems difficult to meet both of those criteria...