Should You Start A Business With Your Best Friend?

0:00When someone comes to my door, I know, because I'm using SimpliSafe. I get an alert straight to my phone and I can see, is this someone I should unlock the door for because I know them? Or is it someone I need to tell to get lost? But here's the thing I love most about SimpliSafe. It works when I am not looking at my phone too, because when I'm not keeping an eye out, SimpliSafe is. SimpliSafe is proactive with a double layer of defense that stops crimes before they start. First, AI-powered cameras spot potential threats outside, and then live agents step in, talking to the person through the camera and letting them know they're on video and police will be dispatched if they don't leave.

0:44They can even trigger a loud siren or spotlight. That's how you help stop a crime before it starts. And SimpliSafe makes it easy to use. There are no long-term contracts, no hidden fees. You can cancel at any time. It was named Best Home Security Systems by U.S. News and World Report for five years running. It offers a 60-day money-back guarantee, so you can try it and see the difference for yourself. This month only, take 50 % off any new system. This is one of the best prices you will ever see for SimpliSafe, so don't miss it. Just go to simplisafe.com slash problem solvers. Again, that is SimpliSafe, S-I-M-P-L-I, S-A-F-E, simplisafe.com slash problem solvers and lock in your discount.

1:33There's no safe like SimpliSafe. From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

2:01Have you ever dreamed about starting a business with your best friend or your spouse or just someone you really like? It sounds like it would be perfect, right? You get to spend more time with them. You build something together. You have someone who you already know that you trust and who you work well with together. But it doesn't always go so smoothly. We had an enormous test. So we had two or three enormous tests. And not fun. Tests that test a business. Tests that test a central relationship in these women's lives. It was really tough for a while. Yeah. And you will hear the details of all that soon, I promise.

2:43But first, why don't we meet the women whose voices you are hearing? Two best friends, two co-founders, but could have been two ex-best friends and two ex-co-founders had they not played it right. So I am Julie Griggs from New Jersey and now live in New York City, where I am both a physician assistant and also co-founder and CEO of 4Play Social. And I am Danielle Dietzik. I am the other half of 4Play Social, the other co-founder and chief growth officer. I'm from Connecticut, and I am also a healthcare provider. I'm a nurse and nurse practitioner. Oh, I appreciate the completely extraneous information about where you live and where you grew up, but thank you.

3:27I look like, wait a second, are we following this formula? I'm going to be honest. I had COVID last month and my brain is not working the same. I shouldn't have trusted you. As you can hear, Julie and Danielle have a lot of fun together, which is great considering the vast amount of time that they spend together. And today we're talking about how two people like them can make it work, which is to say, to make sure that their friendship is healthy and that their co-founder relationship and their company is healthy. It's not easy. You have to build systems. You have to be incredibly intentional.

4:02Today on Problem Solvers, Julie and Danielle are going to pull back the curtain, get very personal on what that looks like and how they have done it. So what are they building, by the way? What is Foreplay? Foreplay is a social discovery app where single friends team up and match with other pairs of single friends for a more fun, lower pressure and safer way to meet new people. And why does it exist? What is the problem you're solving? That dating apps have completely ruined single life. They are not fun. They are high pressure and they pose a legitimate risk to both physical and emotional safety and well-being.

4:39This idea for poor play started because Danielle and Julie wanted to solve a personal problem for themselves. They didn't really initially set out to build a company, build a company together. And one of them, in fact, was much more interested in building a company together than the other one. Wasn't easy. But you know what? But none of this should be easy because fostering a really important personal relationship, that requires work. Building a company, that requires work. You have to be, as I said a moment ago, intentional about it. And these two women are. So after the break, they're going to explain how.

5:21On this show, we talk a lot about entrepreneurs who tackled business problems and came out the other end more successful. It's about learning from those experiences so that you can grow your business the smart way. Well, now U.S. Bank is offering a new product called U.S. Bank Business Altitude Power World Elite MasterCard. With this card, you can earn two times the points on whatever you're buying for your business, as well as a 75 ,000 point bonus. Just spend$10 ,000 on the account owner's card in the first 120 days of opening your account. There's no categories to remember or hoops to jump through.

5:59Just use the card for any purchases related to your business and earn two times the points with no caps or expiration. How easy is that? Just because it's passive doesn't mean it's not powerful. It's the U.S. Bank Business Altitude Power Card. Power. See, it's right there in the name. So work smarter, not harder with this great credit card that puts more point earning power in your pocket. Apply for the U.S. Bank Business Altitude Power Card today at usbank.com slash bizpower. That's usbank.com slash biz, B-I-Z, power. Limited time offer. The creditor and issuer of this card is U.S. Bank National Association pursuant to a license from MasterCard International Incorporated.

6:48MasterCard is a registered trademark and the circle's design is a trademark of MasterCard International Incorporated. some restrictions may apply. And now our second sponsor. Looking for a rewarding, life-changing opportunity that enhances the lives of children in your community? With almost 50 years of experience, Huntington Learning Center is the nation's leading K-12 tutoring and test prep franchise, dedicated to shaping brighter futures for our students and franchisees. Huntington is the top revenue-producing supplemental education franchise in the U.S., and our proven system is the key to success for you and your students.

7:27The Huntington Advantage includes low startup cost, turnkey systems, dedicated support teams, national and local marketing support, and multiple revenue streams to help you build a life-enriching and profitable business. No education experience needed. In today's environment, the need for tutoring has never been greater. When you become part of Huntington Learning Center, you're filling an urgent need in the growing$5 billion supplemental education industry. To learn more, visit HuntingtonFranchise.com. Make a meaningful difference, pursue your dreams of business ownership, and be a positive force in your community.

8:05Don't wait. Visit HuntingtonFranchise.com today. All right, we're back talking with Julie and Danielle, the co-founders and best friends behind the dating app Foreplay. And we're going to be talking about some pretty personal stuff of theirs and some really wonderful advice that they have about how to work together, work with people that you love. But let's start at the top. Let's start with where this company came from and how the idea brought them together in ways they never expected. The first voice you hear is Julie's. So we were best friends who were solving our own problem, which was that we hated using the dating apps and wanted to find a way to do it together so that we can enjoy both our personal lives and our dating lives.

8:55And as a result of that, accidentally created this business. And it was not really ever supposed to be something that we were leaving our jobs and health care to pursue. So as a result, we didn't really think much of it. We just had an idea and it just escalated from there. Oops. Let's dig into the oops. Did you worry at any point or did it occur to you even at the beginning that doing this thing together, which must have felt really fun at first and hopefully still does feel fun most of the time, could also be a very complicating factor in a great friendship? Definitely. There was a concern. and in the beginning we had a conversation about how we would always prioritize the friendship and how that would be the only way that it would work as business partners and while people who are quote-unquote business people or investors might say oh you're you're prioritizing the personal relationship over the business relationship how is that good for the business in reality I think it's actually helped our business succeed because we are solid co-founders for that reason.

10:04So it's always been number one, friendship, maintain the integrity of the friendship. And if that value guides us, then we'll be okay. Also, I think it's important for us to just be totally honest that it was not great in the beginning and that Danielle had zero interest in being a co-founder and she had zero interest in starting a business. And if not for my family, specifically my brother, like pushing us to do it, I don't know if it ever what have actually happened, she would come home from work and be like, can you please remove me from your group chats with your brother? And I was like, it's a great idea.

10:41And then one day she came home and I was like, we're going to call it Foreplay. And she was like, okay, now I'm in because I'm not going to miss the opportunity to have a company called Foreplay. But because she really wasn't interested in the beginning, we definitely had a very big hurdle of I was all in and she was partly in, which we had to navigate in the beginning. That's frustrating. My wife and I wrote a romantic comedy novel together a number of years ago. Yes, I know. Totally darling, isn't it? It's called Mr. Nice Guy. You can find it wherever you find books. And the greatest source of tension in the creation of that book was that she was far more motivated to work on it than I was.

11:23I had a whole lot of other writing projects. and this idea of doing a book was like a fun thing to do on the side. Whereas Jen, my wife, makes books a central part of her day and her product, she's written five or six of them. And so there would be these times where she would have done far more than her share and she was waiting on me and she was really annoyed with me. And it made me realize that one of the first things that has to happen with a partnership of any kind is a real understanding of the roles and responsibilities on both sides. And if not equal involvement, then at least a clear understanding of what each person's involvement should be.

12:15So it's interesting that you guys started with that kind of lopsided. Julie, I imagine that was frustrating for you as you wanted to get this thing going. and Danielle was feeling like a drag on the process. So it wasn't that frustrating because I had already known Danielle for 12 years. And so I knew what I was getting. Here's the thing. I felt from the beginning and I still believe it wholeheartedly, Foreplay would not be successful if Danielle was not my co-founder. I knew that. I knew the value that Danielle brought. The value that Danielle brought was that she was Danielle. Everyone that meets her loves her.

12:47She is truly the nicest, most gracious person. And in the beginning, my siblings were like, if she's not interested, why don't you just do it without her? And I was like, because it won't be successful. I know that I need Danielle in order for this to be a success. So I knew that that was the value that she was bringing in the beginning. The value that I was bringing in the beginning is that I am like a crazy work animal. And so I was on start a business dot com and got us to be an LLC in two days and was finding the dev shops that we were going to outsource to. So I knew early on where each of our strengths and value lied, but it became more and more frustrating as we started to actually become a business and she was still not fully in it.

13:34Danielle is nodding. All right, let's get into that. But first, I want to establish one other thing, which is that you said this very nice thing about how you both agreed at the very beginning to prioritize the friendship. And it's one thing to say that. It's another thing to do it when things get more challenging, as we'll talk about in a second. So did you come up with any kind of system or thing to check in on or some way to make sure that actually carried through in practice as you embarked upon the journey? Definitely. And I even have some examples of how this came into play and how difficult it was.

14:13but something that's really basic that we established from day one is that we will only communicate on WhatsApp for work-related communication. And we will only communicate on iMessage and phone call for personal conversation. And so a phone call. So you couldn't have a business phone call? No, no, no. You can only call. No, you can only WhatsApp call. Yes, you cannot. Oh, I see. Yeah. So if Julie ever and believe me, there are slip ups and they're awful. But once in a blue moon, we slip up. Julie will call me accidentally on regular and a regular phone call. And I'll answer because I think it's going to be a personal conversation and then it's work related.

14:56And then I immediately remind her that she has called me through regular phone. She calls me back on WhatsApp and I can determine whether or not I'm answering a work call. But my personal favorite is when we are on a regular phone call and then I say, OK, I have to I go, I have a word call. And then I hang up and then call her on WhatsApp. Call her on that. So that's one way that that is a really strict boundary for us. And it sounds silly, but it really actually does work. So I would recommend using different channels. And I mean, I really love that. Just articulate why it works. It works because I understand if Julie wants to open up to me about something she's struggling with, and that thing happens to be related to her job, I understand that my role is to be her friend if she's texting me about it or calling me on the phone.

15:52I understand that this is something that she might be struggling with personally, let's say, and so I am not going to respond in a professionally solution-oriented kind of way, as opposed to if she were to call me on a WhatsApp call, I would be looking for solutions as to how this could affect the business. So it's really about the way that it activates what hat I'm going to put on. And I think for you, you would say the same. I would also add that, and if anyone goes into business with their partner, romantic partner, or their friend, you will soon learn that every conversation becomes about your business.

16:31And then what is left of your relationship? Like we said last night, if we weren't co-founders anymore, what would we talk about all day, every day? And so it's a good way for us to have a boundary of work is ending now and let's go back to being friends. And I think that's really important. Very well said. Okay, let's talk about this whole thing getting rocky. So we've embarked upon it. We have laid some great groundwork. We have prioritized the friendship. And now you're going to have to put that to the test. What did that look like? We had an enormous test. So we had two or three enormous tests, but the first one was, and I wasn't planning on disclosing this, but in the midst of starting the business, I was struggling actively with an eating disorder and I was getting treatment for it locally.

17:19And it wasn't really impacting the way that I was working. However, it started to get worse and it was recommended to me that I go to residential treatment where I wouldn't have any access to a computer phone. Like I wouldn't be able to communicate. And so that was a very tough situation to deal with because I had to, I felt as though I needed to ask Julie's permission as my co-founder, if I could take time off from work, but I also knew that I'm also her friend. And so I believe that she should allow me to do that because she knows it's what's best for me. So that was the first test. And that's where Julie definitely prioritized the friendship.

18:05You also have selective memory about it, which understandably, but we were in the car on the way to visit Penn State, which is we went to college with our other friend. And we were talking openly about how Danielle was struggling. and Danielle said, they want me to go to inpatient. And our friend Katie said, why aren't you? And Danielle said, I can't do that because of foreplay. And when we got back from the weekend, I had a conversation with Danielle being like, if you're using foreplay as the reason why you can't go, it's not a reason. And you have to go because she was also being a really bad co-founder because she wasn't in a place that she could be a co-founder.

18:43How could you possibly run a business when you are having enormous difficulty running yourself as a person, right? And everything was in disarray in her personal life. And so how could you be responsible and actively run a business? So to me, it was, if we want the business to succeed, you have to go away to get better. Ended up being two months. And sayonara. And I want you to do this. And there's no bad blood. and I want you to get better and I want you to grow as a person and that's wonderful and you should do that and I will take over the business myself and I will replace you with somebody else.

19:22And that also was an option that we didn't consider. Yeah, that's interesting. It was an option, technically speaking, right? If you're just laying out every possible scenario, then it was an option. But if I think back to why Julie said that she wanted you in this business, it was because foundationally, she didn't think that this business would succeed without you. And so if that's her foundational understanding of the dynamics of you two, then I would understand. I could understand. And Julie, you jump in here and speak for yourself. But I would imagine that vision wouldn't have changed. And it would be clear that you would still feel like this business only exists if Danielle's a part of it.

19:57I for sure did. And what Danielle was suggesting as a solution kind of naturally evolved as one. So Danielle left and we were like two weeks out from launching the app. and I was two weeks into my first full-time job as a PA with a patient population that doesn't speak English. So I was learning medical Spanish and doing all of that and was definitely in over my head with everything and trying to figure out how you balance having this business, making sure your friend is okay, making sure your friend's parents feel like they're still included in the business because they gave an initial investment with your parents to get it going and everyone's a stakeholder.

20:39and everyone should feel included and also really needing help. And then having people help you, like my sister and our other best friend, Danny, shout out to Danny. And then feeling guilty when Danielle came back of what's everyone's position now and what happens now. And having two months by myself, essentially without Danielle and naturally falling into the role, I think of the CEO slash COO. And then Danielle coming back and feeling like this isn't my business anymore. and you've totally taken over, but I had to take over. Yeah, for sure. For sure. How did you resolve that? It was tough. It was really tough for a while.

21:19Yeah. Julie had also gotten her siblings involved and they, then what I felt was happening was that the family all kind of backed each other on decisions. And then I always felt like I was the odd one out. and so then I felt like it was more that they had more ownership of the company even though they didn't and so I actually needed to say to Julie they I don't believe that they can work with us anymore I think we it's just not healthy it's not healthy for us and that was a really difficult conversation that then she needed to have with her siblings and then later I was also looped in and I spoke to them myself, but that was another example of a challenging time where I felt that was putting the friendship first because I was feeling as though I, in the friendship, I was feeling resentful.

22:19And so we had to put the friendship first in that scenario, which in turn did help the business. And this is why people lose friendships when they go into business with their friend, because how complicated and muddy are those water is right there. I broke every rule in the book. I did it with my friends. I did it with my family. Every book about every rule of what you shouldn't do when you start a business, I did. That was challenging. But I think what it comes down to ultimately of how we were able to navigate that is our moral compass and our values are aligned. I know what Danielle's values are, and I know that they're aligned with mine.

22:56And I know that she is a good person, and I know that she wants the best for me. And I didn't have to question her motives. And I think that you felt the same for me. And I think what just realistically happened was I went through the learning curve of learning how to run a business two months before she did. And when she came back, she had to go through that learning curve. And so she was making mistakes that I then had to correct. And then she felt like I was micromanaging her, which led to a lot of very difficult conversations and crying, one crying. She really cries. I don't really cry. But Danielle crying and me saying, I feel like I'm the husband who just, I can't win if I do or if I don't.

23:36Like it's wrong. She walked out on me one day, like the huffy puffy husband. She walked out. She was like, I can't be here with you. But it's because we're able to have those conversations, which not every friendship can handle that. We can handle the really hard conversations and we don't hold back because we know that the intentions are genuine. No one is malicious. What do you think enabled you to survive that moment, both as friends and as a business? Have you ever replayed that whole time from some kind of counterfactual where it fell apart? And what do you think was the moment in which it could have fallen apart, but was saved?

24:19I think that I think the moment when I got home and her siblings were involved in the business was a critical moment. If I had never said they should take a backseat, which was really difficult to say, but if I had never said it, I do think the business probably would fall apart or would have taken a different direction and might not still be successful today. I think that tactically, I feel that there needs to be a rule about outside people who come in and help. And can those people, do those people need to be consultants or can they be friends or can they be family? And we have just from that day moving forward have really just made the rule that they can't be family.

25:13because then there are egos involved and you want to protect your sibling's ego and make sure that their feelings aren't heard. But that's not as important to me as it is to Julie because it's her sibling. So yeah, I think I'm going off on a bit of a tangent, but that - No, I understand. What you're laying out here is at the core of this business is a complex, not in a bad way, but the relationship that you two have is complex. It is both a strong friendship, but now also a business partnership. And you had to figure out structures where that worked. Adding any more complexity to the relationships of the people who are making the core decisions of this business is too much complexity.

25:58It reminds me in a way of a conversation I once had with a co-founder of a business who'd started the business with some number of friends, I can't remember, three, four, five friends. And they were having really complicated leadership challenges. One of them had become CEO, but the CEO was not leading the way that a CEO would lead. And as we talked, I realized, I think part of the problem here is that you guys don't have a hierarchy when you're friends, but there is a hierarchy with the business. And I think either the people who are not CEO do not want to defer to the friend who is CEO or the friend who is CEO doesn't feel like he has the authority to boss his friends around.

26:39Yeah. And like something about this is not working and you guys need to make a decision about how you operate as business people that is separate in a way from how you operate as friends. That was a hurdle that you guys anticipated at the beginning. But the level of complexity that followed meant that you needed to, in a way, figure out what was going to be simple about this so that other parts could be complex. Absolutely. And to answer your question about what we think salvaged it, Danielle's answer is her answer. But my answer would be that we had a conversation with an early stage VC fund manager and who ended up becoming an investor in the company.

27:20And she said, I can't invest unless one of you is the CEO. Like this whole co-founder, co-CEO is not going to work for us because if there is an emergency in the middle of the night, whether it's amazing or whether it's tragic, who am I calling? I need to know. and we said we understood that and when she pushed back as to why don't you have a ceo i remember danielle said that she was worried that if i became ceo then when we got more investors when people started taking board seats they were going to want to oust danielle and replace her and so it was a way of protecting her position in the business and the investor totally rebutted that and was like you don't see the value that you bring that you are literally leading growth and you single-handedly acquired tens of thousands of people to this app as a nurse.

28:09Like it's insane. And she told us in that moment that it's not about that. It's just about you have to go from playing startup to being a startup. And so we hung up with her and we talked about it. And Danielle said, I think you're clearly the CEO. And I really appreciated that. And it really meant a lot and it still does. And so we moved forward with our role titles and a came with each of us owning our own domain of the business and being in charge of something, having ownership over something instead of sharing everything. And I think that actually saved the business. And the hierarchical part of it is certainly complex.