Businesses on the couch: the co-founders in couples' therapy

Sometimes it’s easy to take out the stress of running your own firm on your business partner. Photograph: Alamy

There are plenty of good reasons to set up a business with a co-founder rather than go it alone. A co-founder is another committed financial partner and someone who is likely to bring a vitally different skillset and will be a source of support when the going gets tough. Research by the Kauffman Foundation in the US suggests that co-founder teams can attract 30% more investment and can increase their customer base more quickly, improving business survival rates.

But there is still a lot to consider before taking on a co-founder. Startup life is stressful and sometimes is it’s all too easy to take it out on the only other person in the same boat as you: your business partner.

Therapy helped us remember why we went into business together

After becoming friends while on the same master’s degree course in their twenties, Ed Gillespie and Solitaire Townsend had a solid foundation in place to launch their sustainability and communications consultancy Futerra in 2001.

Co-founders of Futerra, Ed Gillespie and Solitaire Townsend. Photograph: Futerra

However, they’ve always had their differences; in fact, their business is based on combining their two competing visions about how to make organisations more sustainable.

“I enjoy working with Ed because he makes me think,” says Townsend. “It started with us having arguments on our master’s [course] about how to change the world, and those discussions are the heart and soul of Futerra,” says Townsend. “But over time, concerns over working hours, salaries, practical stuff, all got in the way and overshadowed our initial reasons for working together.”

The pair started to argue more in 2010 when they were battling through the recession. “As co-founders you’re always looking out for the team and the business first – we have had times when we both didn’t take a salary. So, you turn on each other,” Gillespie explains.

They decided to try a therapist who specialises in professional relationships. Their first big discovery was that they were speaking too much on the part of the other person. “We both kept saying ‘We must do this’, instead of ‘I want to do this’, says Gillespie. “One of us was always co-opting the other person.”

They give the example of differences over work-life balance. “If your business partner says ‘We must work harder’ when you want to improve your work-life balance you feel disgruntled, but if they are free to tell you what they want to do on their own terms, you’re likely to feel more helpful,” Townsend explains.

Their toughest exercise was a listening technique. “You have to listen silently to the other person, without nodding or interrupting, and then repeat back what they said without altering it. It’s great being the person who gets to speak but it’s hard to be the listener, especially if you have to hear a criticism,” Townsend says.

It was worth it though, they agreed. “The subtext of disagreement started to disappear and we found at board level that different views could be shared without it feeling hostile,” said Gillespie.

Best of all they managed to keep their business partnership and friendship intact while developing their roles in the business. “We don’t have to be carbon copies of each other to have an equal voice – we have very different jobs to each other now, and we remembered why we chose to do this in the first place,” Townsend said.

We no longer argue over small things like the price of a printer

Jon Chintanaroad and Mike Prestano first met working for the same staffing agency where they were both top performers. They soon decided to try and set up on their own and ended up living and working together while launching Aspire Recruiting, a tech recruiting firm, four years ago.

Aspire co-founders Jon Chintanaroad and Mike Prestano. Photograph: Aspire Recruiting

“The business initially went very well and we secured clients, but in the second year, it took more of a downturn and there was less revenue coming in,” Chintanaroad says. “Things started to become more tense – we were spending a lot of time together, and we have different personalities so we reacted differently. Our differences mean we complement each other, but it can make communication difficult.”

Prestano says: “I’m a lot more conservative and Jon’s more adventurous. I wouldn’t want to spend too much, whereas he would be more relaxed about spending now and paying back later.”

They decided to see Sunny Sabbini, a Silicon Valley-based family therapist. Sabbini helped them understand that the other person wasn’t putting a different view forward intentionally – they were just different.

The pair developed a numbering system to assess the level of importance each decision had for them both, one for “I couldn’t care less” and 10 for “very important, we should have a discussion”.

Prestano said this helped them see why the other person seemed relaxed about one decision, but stressed about another. “It helped us sort through decisions that we didn’t need to waste energy discussing, and therefore put us in a more productive mindset,” he says.

Prestano added that he also stopped worrying about any expenditure under $100 (£77), to curb unnecessary arguments, such as when he said no to the purchase of an $80 printer. “It’s all about having a ‘SOP’ – standard operating procedure – for as many things as possible so you can handle everything more easily.”

Alternatives to the therapist’s couch

If your budget doesn’t stretch to regular therapy sessions, Dr Patrick Meade, a New York-based therapist who runs a practice dedicated to counselling for business partners, recommends finding any external adviser such as a friend or former colleague to act as a sounding board.

He also recommends being prepared, in case things don’t got to plan. “One of the most common problems is optimism bias, in which co-founders believe that everything will go well. They make little preparation for when things go wrong,” he says.

“Another tool that can help is to take time to get the other perspective, to put yourself in your partner’s situation and write down the thoughts and feelings that go through his or her mind when he or she thinks about you and your joint business,” he adds.

Both the Futerra and Aspire Recruiting co-founders agree that keeping their friendship and shared purpose in mind has been crucial.

“Mike and I trust each other, we’ve been brought up in a similar way, we have the same core values,” says Chintanaroad. “For example, if one of us needs to take a day off for family reasons, we are both fine with it, I think that’s important.” Prestano says that remembering the reason they left their jobs in the first place is sometimes all it takes to keep going. “Looking back and remembering how much better it is to be running your own business can really help,” he said.

“Go out for a meal, get drunk and chat – you need to get out of the office if you can’t do anything else,” says Gillespie. For both the Futerra founders, it was their enduring friendship that they realised was at stake – and that wasn’t worth losing.

Townsend says: “I went to visit Ed’s new baby last week at his home, and I thought about how, while the company is so important, over the years of arguing I might not have ended up sitting there. If you start off as friends, you need to not forget that’s what you were first.”

[“Source-theguardian”]

Businesses on the couch: the co-founders in couples’ therapy

Therapy helped us remember why we went into business together

About The Author

Loknath

Therapy helped us remember why we went into business together

Related Posts

About The Author

Loknath