MBA1735 Q&A Wednesday: Is it time for me to break up with my business partner?

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Hey O welcome to the Hundred Doll, our MBA show. Making business and entrepreneurship more approachable every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014 with my partner and today's lesson is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On Q and A Wednesday we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just go ahead and email me over@omar00mba.net and I'll make sure to answer it right here the show Today's question is from Paul and Paul asks hey Omar, Love the podcast. I have a really important question. Me and my business partner have been working together for over 10 years, but in the last year things have not been going great. There has not been a week that has gone by without having a huge blow up. It seems like we're disagreeing on almost everything these days. We're under a lot of stress because we're expanding, but I feel like we're growing apart and maybe our vision for the company is no longer the same. I haven't approached my co founder about this yet and I may have the opportunity to buy out my co founder. But my question is, is it time to break up with my business partner? Any advice would be super helpful. Thanks so much Paul. Huge topic and I feel for Paul because a breakup in business is very much like a breakup in any relationship. There's a lot of emotions attached and there's a lot of legal and finances attached. So it makes sense for Paul to want to tread carefully. I'll be giving Paul my advice on when to know it's time to break up with a business partner. What are some of the steps that you should take before even making this decision and how to go about it in a way that will serve you and your partner or future ex partner? Let's get into it. So let's get down to business.

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This is a very timely question for today's Q and A Wednesday about breaking up with a business partner. Just on Monday, we had Mesh Lakhani, our guest teacher, talk about how to find the right co founder or business partner. I have to admit, an existing relationship is something that's not easy to manage, especially one that's been going on for a decade, like in Paul's case. So before we make a big decision like breaking up or buying them out, I have a few tips, a few things I want you to do or consider before you make this decision. First of all, if things have been intense for 12 months, for a year between you and your business partner, I'm sure they feel the same way. I'm sure they feel like this is not working. I'm sure they're frustrated and tired and if you approach them on the subject, they're not going to be surprised. Second, no one likes to be in this situation. So everybody in this equation wants relief. You want relief, they want relief. You just have to kind of initiate this conversation and that's where I want to begin. You have to have an honest and open conversation with your business partner. I suggest that you actually schedule this time and do it maybe at the start of the day, on a day that you're not busy, where you have other stresses to take care of. You want to have a bit of time and you don't want this meeting to be rushed in fact, maybe you should step away from the office and do this at breakfast, at a cafe, or on a walk and just block. Book three hours of time. You know, it may not take three hours, but the point here is that you don't feel rushed. And the purpose of this conversation is to just put the cards on the table and talk about, hey, this is not working. Let's figure it out, what's going on. Let's try to make this work. Okay? You want to try to salvage the relationship, because you have a lot invested in this relationship. If you ever were to replace this business partner, it's going to take some time to ramp them up and to build the same amount of trust. You guys have built an incredible trust with each other, and that has a lot of value in business. And I would just take the initiative of framing the conversation and say, hey, we've both been frustrated this past year. It's been a very rocky year, very stressful. We've been arguing a lot. You know, I actually noticed we've been arguing once a week. I want to clear the air. I want us to have a conversation where no one is judged. Everybody's allowed to express themselves and say what they want to say without any judgment or without any criticism. And this is a highly emotional conversation. So that intro is going to kind of calm things down. It also helps to have some structure, because when you're having conversations like this, it's easy to talk over each other. So even if you have to say, hey, let's allow each other to have a moment to say their piece and not interrupt each other. Even if you have a timer on your phone and you say, hey, everybody gets five minutes uninterrupted, just to get started. So everybody can just say how they're feeling. You'll be surprised. A lot of times when you do this, the other party is like, I feel exactly the same way. I agree with 99% of what you're saying. But there is something that we do disagree on, and that's where you want to get to, hey, this is one thing that we both don't agree on. This is what's really bothering us. And it could be various things. It could be maybe your approach to where you're going to go in the future, how you want to expand, what markets you want to expand in, what kind of customers you want to serve, if you want to take on funding or not, all that kind of stuff. Sometimes it's a wedge between two partners because one wants to do one and the other one doesn't. Want to because there's something under there, and that's what we want to get to. You want to ask them why? Why do you not want to do this? What about that makes you feel uncomfortable? And usually that's where the truth lies. People will say, well, I don't want to take on funding or debt because I want to be free. I didn't start a business to grow. By all means, I can grow at my own pace and keep my autonomy. And that's something I really value. But they're not just going to that just off the bat. It's hard. It's really dug deep in emotion. So we got to pull back the layers a little bit and ask, hey, why do you disagree with this? What's stopping you from doing this? Or you can express, this is what's stopping me. This is what's making me feel this way. The other thing you want to explore is maybe things have changed for either person in the relationship during this decade. Okay, their life might have changed. They might have gotten married, they must have kids. Maybe their life might have changed. You know, they might have gotten married, they might have kids, they might have different responsibilities. Maybe they have to take care of their parent now. And the circumstances they were in when they started the business are not the same. And they're trying to get something else out of the business than they started with. Once you get all that on the table, talk solutions say, hey, let's just have an open mind and be very objective about this. Let's be pragmatic. What are our options? What are all the options that we can take? And one of those options is one of us buys the other one out. And there could be other options, and you need to explore those. It could be one takes a leadership role and will consider the other person's opinion. But at the end of the day, it's their call and they're going to take on more risk. Another option might be one of the partners might just need a leave of absence for a few months to sort something that's really bothering them in their life so they can refocus back in the business. A lot of times the reasons why they're having a tough time in business is something external, something that's going on in life. Remember life, we have other things to do other than business that's really hindering them from being their best self at business. Once all the options are on the table, maybe narrow down a couple options and then say, hey, let's give each other time to think and give our opinions on our preferences on each option, which option we want to go with. And you can schedule a time. Just say one week from now. We'll schedule another walk, another meeting, another breakfast, and we'll discuss the options and we'll share which ones we prefer. This open, honest conversation is going to answer this question. Is it time to break up with your partner? Many times the answer will be no, and sometimes it'll be yes. But yes is not enough, and no is not enough, right? If you're not going to break up, what is going to change? So you guys have some relief so you don't have arguments every week. So know and know what's going to happen. Okay? What are we going to do differently? Same thing with yes. If you're going to break up, how are you going to break up? What is the business going to look like? What are the moves you're going to make together? Hey, Fidelity, how can I remember to invest every month?

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A lot of us forget that we're human, okay? We think business is a mental game, and it's all strategy and it's all analytics. No. At the end of the day, who is running businesses? Human beings, okay? And human beings have emotions, have baggage, have history, have wants, have needs, have ambitions, have pains that needs to be addressed. You can't just ignore all that stuff, especially when it comes to relationships in your business. Get that stuff out, okay? Discuss it, keep it structured, keep it respectful. Sometimes one of the best things to do when you start this conversation to set the tone is to do a bit of recap. Talk about all the wins you've had in the last 10 days. Talk about all the wins you've had in the last 10 years. Start with, hey, name three wins that you think were amazing that we've had in our journey. Start out on a positive. Understand that you've built something together. It's incredible. And even if this is the end of the journey together, that's okay. Together. You have to decide as a team how you're going to end the relationship, how you're going to continue to serve the customers, even when you guys break up. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you want to ask a question like Paul did today, go ahead and email me over at omar100mba.net and we'll answer it right here on your Q and A. Wednesday. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Last week in the world of music, the group Daft Punk broke their partnership 28 years, creating incredible music together. The only electronic music group to ever win album of the year with their album Random Access Memories. And they honored the end of their relationship with a video on YouTube called Epilogue. Why did they do that? Why didn't they just make an announcement and say forget it? Well, it's because they understand that they have people that look to them. They have customers, so to speak. They're listeners of their music. You have customers. And they respect their customers to the point with like, we have to leave them with some explanation because they respect their listeners. Their customers. Right. Your customers are the same. They need to be communicated what's going on? And it's okay. You don't have to create, you know, a short film. The point is, is that Daft Punk understood. Hey, there's a lot of people that love our music. Let's say goodbye the right way. Thanks so much for listening to the 100 omier show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take.

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