MBA2682 How To Stop Fighting With Your Co-Founders

0:00Are you constantly arguing with your co-founder? maybe you're silently stewing because you don't like the way they work. They work differently than you. This episode might just save your business or at least your sanity. Because the truth is, most founder fights aren't about strategy or money. It's about how you work. And more importantly, how you work together and how misunderstood you might feel. Nicole and I used to butt heads a lot more Until we did one simple exercise that changed literally everything. It's not therapy. It's not a team building activity. Just one honest conversation that really brought us more fulfillment to our work.

0:43But more importantly, more peace with each other, more understanding, and way better teamwork. I want to share with you that exercise. I want to share exactly what we did that really changed things around for us. Now remember, my co-founder is also my wife, okay? So this is even more important for us to get right. I'm going to show you step by step how you can reduce the stress, reduce the tension, and work better than ever with your co-founder or co-founders. Let's get into it.

1:18Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you start, grow, and scale your business. Before we get started, I just want to take a quick second to say thank you for being here. You're a learner. You're a doer. You're my kind of person. And if you want to join people just like you in our growing community of entrepreneurs, hit follow right here in your podcast app. You grow, we grow, we all win. Thanks. First things first, the problem isn't that your co-founder sucks at communication or doesn't pull their weight or doesn't know how to work, right?

1:58The problem is that you're both assuming the other person works like you do, okay? But they don't. They can't because you are different people. You're different human beings. You have different styles. You have different work histories. You have different tendencies, preferences, different ways of solving problems. And all of that kind of fits in the box of what you like to do when you work, how you like to work. And until you understand that and adjust how you work together, you're going to keep stepping on each other's toes. You're going to keep pushing each other's buttons. This is especially true because you're both emotionally invested in the business, which is good.

2:36You want to feel that fire. But working off different internal expectations is really a recipe for resentment. Let me give you an example from my own relationship with Nicole, my co-founder. You know, one of the things I can't really tolerate much of, really bothers me a lot, really creates almost, I would say, physical pain for me is being interrupted. I don't like to be interrupted, not in a conversation, but interrupted when I'm working. When I'm in deep work, I like to just be in that moment. I like to concentrate. I like the momentum of not having any interruptions. You know, I don't have anything that distracts me.

3:15I don't even listen to music or anything like that. I just work. So Nicole, on the other hand, prefers to work in short spurts. She often might want to jump in and ask my opinion about something or maybe ask for help or maybe even just share a win, which is all good. But that interruption would cause me so much pain. I had to talk about it. This is not Nicole's fault. This is because this is how I work. This is my tendency. Nicole's style is just as good as mine. And by me shutting her down and saying, I'm busy, I can't talk to you right now, whatever it is, because I don't want the interruption, I'm hindering her style while I'm also frustrated because this is not how I work.

4:00So as you can see, there is an issue here. We got to solve it. And we did. And I'm going to show you how in the step-by-step exercise. What is this exercise? Well, here it is. This is exactly what Nicole and I did to kind of really take our relationship as co-workers, as co-founders to another level of productivity, happiness, contentment, and teamwork, helping each other reach each other's goals. Now, you could do this with your co-founder, your co-founders, your business partners, even your spouse if you work with your spouse like we do. Step one is to separately write out your perfect work experience.

4:40So you two do this separately. Answer the question by yourself in a document or on paper. If I could design my ideal work environment, how would I work best? Not what's realistic, not what you're doing right now, but your utopia. What would be perfect? What would be the perfect day? How would you work? How do you like to communicate? Do you like meetings or hate meetings? What gives you energy? What drains you? How do you like to be supported? Do you like somebody to give you encouraging words? Do you like somebody to give you a hug? Whatever it is, right? Obviously, if you're not a husband and wife, maybe make sure that it's a consensual hug.

5:25But the point here is, how do you like to be supported? What does progress look like for you, for example? What do you find fun in work or meaningful in your work. So you need to sit down by yourself and write that all down separately. Do this. Don't do this together. You want to just kind of be 100 % honest with yourself, write your utopic work environment and how you'd like to work. Step two, you're going to take turns reading it aloud with zero interruptions. Let me be super clear. Let the other person fully express themselves without any commentary. Don't comment or say I agree or disagree.

6:05You'll be surprised how much this creates empathy right away by just listening. So one person shares, the other person listens, the second person shares, the other person listens. Step three, share reflections and appreciation. So right now in step three, you're not trying to fix anything here. Don't jump into fixing. Okay, don't be like me, who's just trying to solve problems all the time. Pause. This step is important. First, just talk about what surprised you about what the person said, or the differences between the way you work, right? What did you appreciate? What did you learn about each other that maybe you didn't know about before?

6:44I certainly learned a ton. This is not about who's right. This is not about who's wrong. It's about understanding each other's playbook. One of the beauties of entrepreneurship is autonomy. You want to give that gift to your co-founder and you want that co-founder to do the same for you, right? You want to be able to work the way you want to work. That's the whole point of business is to be free. So let them express themselves, listen to them, and just appreciate the fact that you have differences, celebrate those differences. And by the way, it's a good thing that you work differently. That means you guys can focus and work different ways and accomplish different things in your business.

7:22You're covering a lot more ground that way. So if you want an example of what I'm talking about, let me share an excerpt from mine, the thing I wrote up, okay, and shared with Nicole. And this is not the whole thing, but it's just a little bit. My most important personal value is freedom and autonomy. It's why I became an entrepreneur. I love creating. I love the fact that I get to podcast. And this is why I've been podcasting for so long. I get to make something every day. I thrive when I can take action and test ideas out, not when I'm stuck in endless meetings. I like decisions. I like clarity and I like progress.

8:00And I love it when I can delegate to a great team member and be their coach and not the one doing everything. I like to know what I own and what I can let go of. I don't want disruption when I'm in deep work. And fun for me is seeing ideas come to life. Not just mine, but Nicole's too. Again, that's just a snippet, but you get an idea. I wanted to give you an example and be a little vulnerable so that you can do the same. Reading that aloud to Nicole helped her understand why I might get angsty in long meetings or withdraw when we're indecisive. It's not about her. It's about how I'm wired. And I want to know how she is wired so that I can work with her, not going head to head with her.

8:47I want to make sure that we're supporting each other's work style. And when she shared hers, how she likes to work, I had several light bulb moments. It was just like, oh, you're right. That is true. That is how you like to work. And I can see how I was ruffling your feathers in the way I was doing things. So why does this work? This exercise works because it surfaces assumptions. I love this term, surfaces assumptions, brings assumptions to the surface. You assume your co-founder likes Slack messages in mid-focus time. They assume you don't mind random last-minute changes. Neither of you is wrong.

9:24You just haven't talked about what right looks like for each other. You might think this is the right way to do things, but at the same time, you have to understand that everybody works differently. You have to understand what works for them and work with them knowing that. Here's the thing I learned in business and in life of being around for 45 years. Most people don't change who they are as a person, their personality, their likes, their dislikes that much. Their preferences don't change very much. So stop trying to change people and make them fit in a box that they don't fit in. Instead, learn about how they like to work, learn about who they are as a person, and work with that.

10:07That's how you get the most out of anybody. Now, doing this exercise gives you incredible benefits for your relationship at work. Number one, it gives you clarity. You each know how the other prefers to work now. It also gives you compassion. This is a relationship after all. You stop taking things personally. You start realizing, oh, this is just a function of work. This is how people like to get things done. It also gives you structure. You can make agreements like let's batch decisions into a weekly call so we don't interrupt each other constantly. Now, one of the things I think is a good idea is to use your write-ups, right, how you like to work as a living document.

10:44After the exercise is over, we each can keep our perfect work experience documents and revisit them every a few months? Does it still apply? How are we doing? Are we respecting each other's way of working? You can even use it with new hires. Ask your new team member to write down their own version and you'll learn how to support them way better and avoid burnout. And they don't have to be new team members. They can be people that are existing in your team that are already in your team and you can learn a little bit more about how to work with them. Before I wrap up, I want to share with you some things that I think are really important when it comes to your relationship with your co-founder, especially people that are so invested financially, emotionally, time investment.

11:25There's so much being sacrificed here. Fighting with your co-founder doesn't have to be the norm. This is something that I learned. You don't have to fight just because you're passionate and feisty and you want to go after it. It doesn't mean fighting is something that should be accepted all the time. Yes, disagreements happen. But when you understand how each other work, you really reduce the tension. Most of the tension actually fades. If your partner thrives on structure, for example, and you thrive on freedom, you don't need to compromise your values. You need to understand that, hey, this person needs this to thrive.

12:03So I need to provide that for them. I got to give them the space for that. And my whole point of this whole episode is that you can't just leave this to chance and hope that everybody just gets along. You need to design this. You need to design your workflow in a way that respects everybody. Try this exercise. Seriously, it's really game-changing. I really found it very interesting, very helpful. I thought it was just something that we stumbled upon. We just made up together and just implemented the same day we thought of it. And it really worked. All in all, it takes like an hour to do. It's absolutely free.

12:36You can make a cup of coffee or tea and enjoy it while you go through this exercise. but there's a massive upside. You're going to feel more aligned. You're going to avoid dumb fights, to be honest, right? And your business are going to move faster. You're going to move faster because you don't have all this friction. Now you're rowing in sync. Thanks so much for listening. And thanks for Terry who asked this question. This topic came from Terry as a Q &A Wednesday episode. If you have a question you want to ask, just go to 100mba.net slash Q and go ahead and submit your question there and we'll answer right here on the show.

13:10Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Business is about people. It's about working with people. It's about understanding people. It's about being human yourself and compassionate and understanding and having empathy and understanding that if you want to do well in life and in business, you have to work with people and know how to work with them. Okay? I know I'm repeating myself a little bit here, but the point here is that a lot of people want to avoid people skills, and that's just not possible. Okay? Until the robots take over, that's not going to be possible. So for right now, when we need people to do everything and work on our team and come up with ideas and implement and to lead and to be creative and all that kind of stuff, we need to understand who they are, how they like to work, and just embrace the fact that this is part of the journey.

13:54Embrace the fact that this is actually the fun part, working and growing with other people. And hey, it's more fun to do this with other people, this whole thing called business. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically, and it's the best way to support the show.

14:27It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. and now that you've subscribed I'll check you in the next episode