Working with another painter on a regular basis

My friend and I plan on working larger gigs together, for example we just booked an event together that will have over 100 kids. We plan on doing all our larger gigs together in the future. What we are wondering is, should we have a separate business name for when we work together? We think it might be confusing or frustrating to have the two sets of business cards, two names, two email addresses.....

We of course plan on keeping our existing clients our own, except for like if one of us cant make it, we will send the other... but for the gigs that we HAVE to have two painters, how would we combine our businesses to work together for these events while still maintaing our own business names?

Pick one who's job it is, and then they pay the other? Have cards in each other's business name with your own names on it? If you create a joint business it creates all sorts of partnership rules.....

Yeah, another person turns it into a partnership and things get much more complicated than a sole proprietorship. I occasionally work with my mom, but the gigs all come through me. So, I send the client one invoice with my business name, and then cut my mom a check for her portion. She is considered an independent contractor, which basically just means she is free to work for herself too and any other entertainment companies she wants, and I don't have to pay employment taxes.

I've worked w/ other artists before, but we've kept the business separate. We both handed out our separate cards, etc.

I work in a partnership and love it. We have made it 4 years without even a disagreement. We split everything 50/50, but I have to say we are not a huge business, I still don't think it would effect our friendship/parnership if we were.

You could try a generic sign n cards from vistaprint and instead of a company name just put it as Face Painting by Melody and ---------. You would probably only need to do that if you planned on working lots of events together. Just please make sure it is a person you can work with, and work things out with. I watched a friend do a face painting venture with her sister and it destroyed what relationship they did have. They couldn't work together. Where I think it has just made mine and Jens relationship stronger. Work out all the detail before you get started. Like what happens if one can't afford her half the booth, do you take it out of her profit, or do you hire her hourly and it's your booth. If jobs call from the event do you share them?? What if you get one lead from the event?? Who gets it?? These are things we worked out ahead of time,