AS AGNETHA, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid know only too well, going into business with friends and family can be both fabulous and fraught. Abba sold more than 300 million records at the height of their fame but finally disbanded after both couples divorced.

However, a couple of relationship splits for two brothers and their girlfriends, who are sisters, hasn’t thrown the West Cornwall Pasty Company off course. In eight years the brothers, their father, the sisters and a school friend, Mark Christophers, have grown the business from from one shop to 45 shops. Christophers says that the keys to the pasty pals’ success are complementary skills and clearly defined roles. They also all agree on where their priorities lie. “We are friends foremost and want to have fun. We are not in it just for the money,” he says.

Clearly defined responsibilities and shared goals are essential for friends and family thinking of doing business, says Lorna Collins, director of the Flying Start programme at the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship. The most common pitfall for those going into business is “not being clear about expectations and goals”, she says. Collins learnt this the hard way. She and her husband split after disagreeing over the direction their company was taking: “You need to be clear about who is in control and who has responsibility. We weren’t.” She advises against partnerships and favours limited companies with a clear leader who holds a controlling share of the stock. “You can’t run a company by committee or consensus,” she says.

But Lawrence Gilbert, who runs Company Partners with his wife Hazel and is a director of another business, Holistic Services, with his brother Henry, recommends partnership agreements. These should set down anything that might be wrongly assumed: the decision-making process, profit-sharing arrangements, what will happen if there is a dispute, or if someone leaves.

In contrast to Collins, Gilbert’s experience of being in business with his spouse is a positive one. Although he admits that you have to be careful not to let things become emotional, he says that being married helps because you have already learned how to “cope with each other”.

The course of true love rarely runs smoothly, though. Mark Stuart and Danny Turner met and decided to set up a company, Rosebox, while on an MBA course at Saïd Business School in Oxford. The creative, extroverted American and the business-minded introverted Canadian seemed to have perfect complementary skills. But a series of setbacks — including Stuart being refused a UK visa — eventually forced the duo to split. “Working together is like a marriage. You have to recognise that you are going to have arguments, but you have to have faith that it will work,” Stuart says. Sadly, more than a third of marriages fail.

FRIENDS UNITED

YOU know how it is, late night brainstorming in the pub and the killer idea hits. But beware, going into business with friends, lovers and family can be fraught with peril.

Most of us crave a varied career, including a stint working for ourselves. There are many ways to do this and in the coming weeks we will talk to entrepreneurs to find out what makes them successful. This week we spoke to Lorna Collins, of the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship (www.ncge.org.uk); Mark Christophers, from the West Cornwall Pasty Company (www.westcornwallpasty.co.uk); Lawrence Gilbert, from Company Partners (www.companypartners.com) and Holistic Services (www.holisticservices.com ); and Mark Stuart, from Rosebox which will relaunch in June (www.therosebox.com).

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