Friend turned me into an employee after I brought clients, leads, and invested my own money — am I being used?
Need some genuine advice here because this situation is messing with my head.
A friend of mine was struggling badly in business when I met him. Very old school guy… no knowledge of computers, software, systems, lead generation, nothing like that. Financially also he was stuck badly. Around 80k debt became almost 8 lakhs because of loans and interest and all that mess. Business was making maybe 50k/month max.
To be fair, he is good at operations and getting work done once work comes in… but sales? marketing? growth? follow ups? completely weak there.
Past 3 years he jumped around 4 companies and got sacked from all of them. Even used fake salary hike stories while switching jobs.
Meanwhile for the last 3 months I’ve been building lead lists, finding clients, creating opportunities, learning systems, trying to scale things properly. I literally found a way where this business can potentially make 50k/day if executed correctly.
Now here comes the problem.
Instead of treating me like a partner, he registered a company and made me an “employee”.
Still I ignored it because I thought maybe once money starts coming he’ll do things properly.
First deal comes in…
I brought the client.
I helped close the deal.
I even invested my own money into it.
Total profit was around 68k.
He gave me only 8k.
Rest he kept.
When I asked him about it he suddenly started emotional talks like:
“bro you come from settled family”
“I’m in debt”
“I have problems”
etc etc.
But the thing is… I also have bills to pay. I can’t work for free or for charity. Feels like he expects me to work at minimum value while he benefits from the opportunities I bring.
At the same time he keeps saying:
“don’t come into this business”
“there’s no money here”
“this field is difficult”
But ironically I’m the one bringing leads and sales while he acts very lethargic about growth. He talks like even spending 50k/month is huge.
Right now I have around 350 leads which I have NOT disclosed to him yet because honestly I feel like I became the sales engine of the business while he only handles operations.
Another weird thing…
his brother is also in the same line and has almost the exact same mentality and attitude.
Now I seriously don’t know what to do.
Do I continue?
Do I demand proper partnership before sharing anything further?
Do I separate and build independently?
How do I recover the money I already invested?
And ethically/legal-wise… are the clients and leads mine since I generated them personally?
I genuinely helped this guy when he was struggling but now I feel like I’m being used.
(Used AI only for proofreading because my English typing gets messy sometimes.)