The legal structure of your business is extremely important.
Sole proprietorship affords the least amount of asset protection.
Anything you do in business as a sole proprietorship exposes your assets, while you try to make a living. There is no personal liability protection for acts done while doing business. In terms of asset protection, general partnerships can be even worse. Anything that one partner does affects all of the partners, because each partner of the of the general partnership is personally responsible for all obligations of the partnership. Thus each general partner's exposure to risk is increased by a factor equal to the number of general partners in the business.