How to tell a “co‑founder” friend you’ll go solo without burning bridges

0:00I made the mistake of telling a friend about this this idea. Now he's acting like it's our idea and assuming he's a co-founder. I want to take this back and build it solo. How do I walk this back without it getting ugly? >> This is awesome. Welcome to entrepreneurship. Welcome to your first hard conversation that you get to have. I actually had this exact same situation happen to me. So when I first started gym launch, one of the launches was at a gym owner who had a gym marketing agency. And after I did it, he said, "Hey, let's go out to dinner. Let's talk." He brought his his uh partner in and he was like, "Hey, so, you know, let's partner and do this. I already have all these gyms that are my customers. You have this thing, you know, let's partner on it." And I remember this being one of the hardest moments of my life. Like I became a man in business when I was able to look at a older guy who was more experienced and say, "I'm going to do this on my own." And he said, "Well, I mean, if you're going to do this on your own." He's like, "I'm going to do this, too." Uh and I already have all the customers.

1:00And I said, "Then I guess we're just going to compete then." You usually have to decide what's more important to you, which is am I going to split all of my earnings for the rest of my life on this business because I don't want to have one hard conversation.