LLC Partnership w/ 1 member 0% stake to begin?

[Mitchell Brown]

Everyone, you will have to excuse my ignorance here. I'm not very well versed on the matter of an LLC. So let me explain what I'm asking.

My father owns a very small operation, him and 1-2 other employees, the company was passed to him from my grandfather when he retired, and would likely pass to me down the road. I won't bore you with all of the details, but essentially I want to take a roll within the business, but I want to essentially start over under a new entity. My thoughts are to form the company under an LLC to protect each of us from liability, but I don't expect (nor want) my dad to cough up ownership of his company to me right away. The business is failing slowly but surely due to not keeping up w/ innovations, and from general small business burnout on his part and just trying to maintain. To try to help him, I want to take over the "business" aspects, and have his role as more of a project manager, essentially overseeing the day to day operations. While I'm not a business expert by any measure, he has agreed to bring me in and allow me to take on this role to help growth. I have the desire to see it flourish as it did years ago and realize that I may not be the perfect one for the job, but I can do my best to be the start of a brighter future and hopefully re-light the fire within him to desire the same results.

Now here is the kicker, I have a W2 job currently, and make enough income from it to be happy with, for the time being. I'm 25 years old now, and my goal is to leave my W2 job by the age of 35 and be able to sustain my living via a combination of income from passive income from rental properties as well as my stake in the business at that time. So what I am hoping for, is to form an LLC with me taking a 0% ownership stake in the company to begin with, and having a "sweat equity agreement" outlining the equity I stand to gain, the vesting period, etc. In the meantime, I would like to not take a salary. I'm doing fine with the income I have and see it as being mutually beneficial if I was to not take a salary for a certain time period. It would allow us to reinvest the money we otherwise would be paying me back into the company for growth, as well as I avoid the tax liability in the mean time. Is this legal, or possible? I want to take a managerial role, and handle things like book keeping, taxes, marketing, and building business systems to increase efficiencies, etc., and focus my efforts on growing the business. My hopes are to eventually "build my dad out of a job" so he can enjoy his golden years, and then to eventually do the same for myself.

That turned out to be a longer explanation than I had planned. Now that I have explained the situation, can anyone tell me if this situation is possible, or how it would have to be structured?