Welcome to Visionary’s Pursuit, a podcast where we explore what it takes to turn your bold and inspiring ideas into reality. I'm Carolina Zuleta. I'm a life and business coach and your host for this podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here.
Hi, welcome back. This is episode 91 of the Visionary's Pursuit podcast. Ten years ago, I started this coaching business on my own, and every year I kept telling my husband, "Oh my gosh, I wish I had a business partner," because I felt lonely in my decision-making. Even though he was there to listen to me, he was not part of the business, so he didn't really understand or had a way of seeing all the intricacies that are inside a business.
And secretly, I kept wishing that one day I could find a business partner because I love working with other people, I just think it's more fun to build something with someone else than by myself. But I, hadn't found that partner until about two years ago or a little bit more.
My husband and I sat down and had a conversation and decided that he was going to be the new partner to this business. And for the last two years we've been working together and it's been so much fun and all the reasons why I wanted a business partner are true, and I do feel more supported.
I love having someone who is so close to the business, who really understands it, to brainstorm, to problem solve. And there's also been moments that have been challenging. That said, I feel like Andrew and I have a lot of tools to navigate a relationship, so the balance is way more positive than maybe the challenging times. That is not true for the majority of business partners in the world.
Noam Wasserman is a researcher who has done investigations around the relationships between co-founders. One of the things he found is that around 65% of high potential startups fail because of conflict among co-founders. Those are a lot of businesses that are failing, not because of market conditions or supply chain issues or financial difficulties. They are failing because the relationship between the co-founders, the relationship between people.
One of the things I've reflected about my own coaching is that where I excel, where I feel like I add the most value to my clients, is sitting with complex human dynamics and understanding them and helping my clients navigate them, but also being able to see them and look at them as part of the strategy of a successful business.
I've helped business partners come together at the very beginning, and I guide them through this beautiful process where we look at their values, their vision, the contribution they plan to give to the business, so they're both very clear when they're deciding to start this business together.
I've also come to business partnerships when they're in the middle of conflict, and I've helped them understand each other and navigate a tough situation. And I've also helped other clients decide that it was time for one of them to exit because, in one of the cases, the way both founders were looking towards the future of the business was very different, one was moving three feet on to the right and the other one three feet to the left, and the business was getting stuck.
So all this to say is that the relationship with our co-founder is an amazing thing. It can be a beautiful thing if everyone's bringing different ideas, contributing, we're having good communication, we're understanding each other. But it could also become, as Wasserman's research shows, the reason why a business fails.
So what I wanna do today is talk about the human dynamics that are affecting businesses and offer you a couple of the tools that I use with my clients so you can apply them in your own relationships.
I think one of the biggest misconceptions we have is that once we enter into a professional relationship, we stop being human. There is this saying, "Don't bring your emotions to work," and I think that has created an expectation in all of us that when we're going to act rationally, we're gonna be direct, we're gonna regulate our emotions, we're gonna hold ourselves accountable, and we're gonna be mature all of the time. But the truth is that when we get to work, we do not leave the humanity at the door. The humanity is who we are, so we show up to our businesses with all of our insecurities, our fears, our old stories, our sore spots.
We come in with our human needs, the desire to be seen and to be valued and to be respected and to feel like we matter. All of us bring all this humanity to our work, and when there's another partner, that humanity gets amplified by both of us.
Because the truth is that a partnership is not just a legal structure. It's not just , "Okay, we're starting a business together," and it's all about the business. It is a relationship, and if you are building a business that matters, that's significant, that you want it to last throughout time, that relationship is incredibly important. It is kind of like a marriage, you know? You're committing to the other person for a bigger project in the long term and yet, when I talk with people about business partnerships, the type of things I hear are equity, roles, responsibilities, compensation, and all of that is important. And all of those things, trust me, we-- I do a lot of work with partners, so it's very clear on who does what, when do they do it, who's accountable for something. You know, what is the contribution each person is bringing to the business? Because if we are not clear on those things, that can create a lot of unnecessary conflict. But today, I don't wanna spend so much time talking about that. I wanna talk about the human side of partnerships.
Because two people can come together and have the perfect operating agreement and still create resentment. They might have the right titles for each of them, but still avoid difficult conversations. Even they can have the same vision and goals for the business, but maybe feel unseen, judged, controlled, abandoned by the other person. I really dislike when people say that the human side is the soft side because I actually believe these are the harder skills to learn because they imply that we need to have a lot of awareness of ourselves and true management of our thoughts and our emotions.
So the first principle I wanna share, the first tool that I use in coaching, is the following: the relationship you have with your business partner, the relationship you have with any other human in the world are the thoughts you have about that other person. If you think about the relationship you have with a newborn, right? I, I have a new nephew, and he's the sweetest thing, and all the thoughts I have about him are he's so cute. He's so capable. He's, you know, doing all these things at only two months old, and we're all in awe, and we're all so in love with this baby.
It's easy to have a relationship with a newborn even when the newborn is not contributing anything back. But because the thoughts you have about that newborn are so positive, the relationship is really good. But when we start talking about relationships with other adults, it is way more complicated.
I promise you, if you get anyone in your life, going from your business partner, an employee, an investor, but even in your personal life, and you write down all the things you think about that person, you probably have a mixed bag, and that mixed bag will be a great representation of your relationship to the other person.
I like to start with this principle of the relationship you have with others or the thoughts you have about them because it brings the responsibility of the quality of the relationship to your own hands. Many people come to coaching to complain about their business partner, their investor, their co-founder in a way that there's almost a secret desire telling me, "Hey, can you fix them so we can have a good relationship?" But I always tell them, "Listen, you are my client. They are not my clients, so what we're going to do is give you the tools so you are empowered to navigate this relationship." And the first one is to take 100% responsibility for the thoughts you have about the other person.
And here is a big disclaimer. With this, I do not mean that you have to ignore disrespectful things, things that really hurt you. I'm not saying that you should have all positive thoughts about the other person. What I suggest is that you first understand what are those thoughts and then decide, "How is it that I want to think about this other person?
What is a way that is helpful for me? What is a way that allows me to live my values, to grow towards my vision, to create the business that I have?" And sometimes that is having a lot of positive thoughts and recognizing the other person for the things that they are doing, the ways of being, not judging them because they act or make decisions differently than you.
And other times it's by saying, "Okay, this person, my thoughts about this person is that they have a hard time with difficult conversations. That's what I'm seeing, and that's what I believe. But what I wanna do next is think how can I create more safety so that person can express the challenging feedback, the parts that might make them uncomfortable."
So again, I wanna be very clear because I think sometimes this can be mistaken as, "Oh, you want me to have all positive thoughts even when my business partner is stealing from me." That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying to become aware of the thoughts you have And that you choose them in a way that supports the goals that you have
The second tool I want to share with all of you is called the drama triangle. This is a framework created by a man called Stephen Karpman. Uh, He was a psychiatrist, and he was a student of Eric Berne, who was the founder of transactional analysis. And you can imagine the drama triangle as an inverted triangle, and in one of the corners, there is the position of the victim, who is representing the, "I'm powerless. This is happening to me. It happens to me all the time. f- I feel bad about myself."
On the other corner is the persecutor and the persecutor is the role that is saying, "It's your fault. You are the problem. You are the one who has to change," who is always pointing their finger at the other person. And then in the last corner is the rescuer, who is the role that is saying, "Ah, see? I'm the one who has to fix it. Let me take it over.
I'm the one who has to always solve all the problems." And there's a couple of things that are important about these three roles. The first one is that they are not fixed identities. It's not like you can go to your company and say, "Here's the victim always." They are constantly moving. All of us, at some point, are the persecutor.
At another point, we might act like a victim, and in other times we might be the rescuer. But the other thing that I think it's very important is to understand the three positions, victim, persecutor, and rescuer, are all positions of victimhood, not of being empowered.
Although as human beings we absolutely love drama, I mean, we see it in our, all of our TV shows and movies. We see it, every day in the news even, we're making someone the villain, we're making someone the victim. And I'm not saying that there are not bad people and victims, that's true. But as human beings, our brain likes to think about the drama and stay in the drama instead of taking responsibility, of acknowledging our emotions, of taking the risk and having that difficult conversation, of showing our vulnerability.
And here is the challenge for businesses. When you have business partners engaged in drama, playing the different roles of the drama triangle, they are not using their brain power to grow their business, to solve the real problems that they need to solve.
In fact, when we are engaged in this triangle of drama, there's a very high probability that nothing is going to change, that the blame is going to continue being passed around, that we're gonna be justifying ourselves and our position, that we're going to create shame in another person or feel ashamed because then we feel like a victim and small instead of leaning into our creative competencies to the best parts of our leadership to move through to the other side.
And I see this not only happening between individuals, I see it happening between teams. I've worked in corporations where the sales department is pointing to the marketing department for the lack of leads, and therefore the lack of the results. Or the operations team is pointing their finger at the sales team because they're bringing the wrong type of clients, and it's too much work, and they have promised things they cannot deliver.
I think if you take a moment and look around you, you will find an example of the drama triangle. Or if not, you will find it in your own head. The part of you that is beating yourself up, the part of you that is feeling small and ashamed, the part of you that is feeling like, "Oh my God, nobody's helping me, so now I have to do all this, and I have to take all the responsibility," while at the same time feeling being taken for granted or being taken advantage of.
We even play this drama triangle in our head. But the important thing here like everything we talk in this podcast, first, we need to become aware when we are in this drama triangle, and then we need to find a way to step out of it, take responsibility for the relationship, take responsibility for the results, so that we can use our leadership skills to move ahead
One of the common mistakes I see happening between co-founders is that at the beginning of the partnership, it is often like they're in the honeymoon phase. They're excited, they believe in the vision, they admire each other. They are grateful even that they found someone who gets it and who's willing to pursue this dream with them, who wants to work. And because they both, or the three of them, really want this relationship to work, they avoid a lot of the conversations that are actually going to make them stronger.
So here's the other principle I like to talk about. When a relationship has a break, when a relationship has a difficulty, It is in the repair that the relationship becomes stronger. So when we're trying to avoid conflict, when we're trying to always be happy and keep the peace and, and, you know, maintain things as they are because they're good, I don't wanna raise it up. I don't wanna hurt anyone's feelings. I don't wanna create a conflict. I don't wanna rustle feathers. and we might even think to ourselves, "You know what? I'm just gonna let it slide this time."
And it makes sense, right? Most of us don't wanna have conflict. But here's the problem. Every time you don't speak up, every time you withhold something the other person did and it bothered you, something that's not sitting right with you, it's like if you took a step back from the relationship. And let's say next week you make a comment in a meeting, and your business partner is bothered by it, but again, they think, "I'm gonna let it slide," and it's as if they took a step away from the relationship.
And a step doesn't affect the relationship. It's a small step. You're still at a distance where you can talk and you can have conversations and have a good relationship. But with time, as both of you are accumulating withholds, as both of you are brushing things under the rug, both of you are taking steps away from the relationship until one day you have to shout to be heard. You have to shout to feel understood These withholds are not breaking the relationship like when you have a difficult conversation, that that tension is there, that there are emotions there. But they're creating the distance that ends up breaking the relationship for good.
The third principle that I wanna speak about today is that it's the withholds and brushing things under the rug that ultimately creates the biggest problems in a relationship, and that the solution is to have difficult conversations that might feel like the relationship is breaking in that moment or it's, you know, doesn't feel good, but when it heals, it gets stronger.
Let me explain. Imagine you are with your business partner and your business partner says something or makes a decision or does something that bothers you hurts your feelings or makes you upset for some reason, and you decide not to say anything about it but to pretend that it hadn't affected you.
And you push that under the rug and you keep it in and you tell yourself, "Ah, I'm just gonna let it slide this time." Then a week later, you do something that makes your partner feel uncomfortable or be upset or something she doesn't agree with, and then she also decides to keep it to herself, brush it under the rug, not say anything about it.
Every time one of you does this, it's as if you are taking a step back from the relationship and creating more distance between you and your business partner. And what I have seen is not that it's the big problems that are gonna break the relationship.
It's the smallest things that start triggering everyone because of the distance that has been created between the two people. So it might be a Slack message, a tone, a delayed response, a comment in a meeting. And now you have such an accumulation of withholds and resentments that that little thing feels huge.
And then you start now expressing it through your anger, through being quiet, through giving the silent treatment, moving even further away from your business partner, not having meetings. I've seen this all the time, they stop talking. Conversations are so uncomfortable they decide to meet when everyone else is meeting or, at the minimum, have a meeting every now and day, but they're not working together.
So Withholds, not having the difficult conversations in the moment, showing our vulnerability in that moment, allowing the other person to see us with all of our humanity and our imperfections, it's what ultimately damages a relationship in the long term. What I know about relationships is that there's gonna be many breaks because we're human beings, and we are all going to do things that bother the other person, makes them upset. We're gonna make mistakes. We're gonna say the wrong thing. But when we address them, when we sit down and we have a conversation about it and we take responsibility and we resolve the conflict and we repair the relationship in that moment, the relationship becomes stronger than how it was prior to the conflict.
It's kind of like bones. When a bone breaks and then it heals, where it had broken, that part of the bone is stronger than the rest of the bone. So you can think about that in your business relationships as well.
Every time you decide to show your vulnerability, to share something that bothered you, to have a difficult conversation, to give feedback about something that is bothering you. Yes, in the moment, it is going to feel uncomfortable. Yes, it might not only be in one conversation that you resolve it. But if you stay in it until you repair that moment that happened, then the relationship is going to be stronger.
So this is why I came up, with a tool that I use with my clients that's called the monthly hard stuff chat. And what I do is I propose to my clients to meet with their business partners once a month just for this meeting. And this meeting has a special format. It looks like one person starts and say what they feel they're doing good, and then the other partner or partners gives them feedback as to what they consider that person is doing well.
Then that person says, "Here's where I think I could grow," or, "Here's where I missed a mark," or, "Here's where I made a mistake," or, "Here's the area of my side of the business that is feeling weaker and that I need to pay attention to." And then everyone else gives them, from their point of view, what is the area they could improve, and they do that for each of the partners.
That way, the feedback becomes part of their monthly routine, and not this thing that it only you give feedback when this thing got out of control and it's so big and now we need to have this difficult conversation. No, you have a practice. You have a habit of doing it every month. And at the end of the meeting, what I challenge my clients to do is to say, "One thing that scares me to tell you is..."
And then open their vulnerability and tell their business partners that thing that scares them. And that can be in many different shapes. "I feel like I deserve to be paid more because my contribution is bigger." "I am not enjoying what I'm doing, and I'm maybe thinking about leaving this company."
"I am feeling very insecure all of a sudden, I'm doing something that feels so hard that I'm not feeling the strongest." So you'll end with that question. What is something that feels hard to say or that you're scared to say? And everyone will hear you and listen and get to know you. Because the purpose of the monthly hard stuff chat is to stay current. And what I mean by current is that none of the parties involved are having withholds that as I explained earlier, will end up breaking the relationship there's nothing they've held back from sharing with the other. so there's nothing that they've held back from sharing with the other. Everything is on the table, and everyone knows what's happening with each of the partners, and then they can resolve it.
I understand that not everyone is willing to do this, and maybe you have a business partner or an employee or an investor that is unwilling to share their vulnerability with you, to receive feedback, to give you feedback. Those people that you notice they're getting more and more distant, but you cannot, understand or really have them share with you what they're feeling or what they're thinking. And I know that's a big challenge. But we go back to the first principle where we started.
That is that the relationship you have with another person are the thoughts you have about that person. So you clean your side of the street. You make sure that you are managing your emotions, that you are not withholding your resentments, that you are giving feedback even when it's not being received well, that you are being clear, that you're not judging and holding grudges towards the other person, but that you are being in a neutral place where you can navigate this relationship and these challenges better.
Now, I also think there are moments that a relationship might not be the right relationship to grow this business, and maybe one of the partners has to exit. And I think you will know when you get there. But I also know that if you have exit a partnership knowing you did everything that was under your control, you're gonna have a lot more peace of mind than if you leave the partnership just as a reactive move because one day you got so upset, and then you lose equity or money or your dream, right? So doing your work is the most important thing, and hopefully you have a partner that is willing and wants to work on your relationship and your partnership as well
The bottom line of this is that when we are in business with other human beings, we do not leave the humanity at home. All of our humanity is there. And the strongest partnerships are not those where nobody gets triggered and from a high level everything seems peaceful. The strongest partnerships are those where both individuals are willing to take responsibility for what gets triggered within themselves. They're willing to examine their stories, they're willing to communicate before resentments become very big. they want to repair.
They're willing to show their vulnerability and share their truth with care, and to see the other person, your co-founder, your investor, your employee, not just as a problem or the person that is creating the problem that is in front of you, but as a human being with all the complexities we have as human beings. Because when we deny our humanity in business, we create dynamics that are so complex that no strategy can fix them
So the soft skills, I think are the hard skills, but I think are also the m-most rewarding skills. Learning to navigate our emotions, our beliefs, calm our nervous system, review our stories. And when we become really good at doing that, not only are we gonna have a great relationship with our business partner, but all the relationships in our life are going to improve.
As that old saying goes, "The quality of our life is the quality of our relationships." When we have good relationships, we have a good quality of life.
And that is true for a business as well. The quality of the relationship with your co-founder determines the quality of your business.
I love doing this work with business partners. I think it's one of the most meaningful and significant work we can do. So if you have a business partner, you're interested in learning what it looks like to have a coach help you navigate those dynamics, please send me an email to info (at) carolinazuleta (dot) com we'll book an hour, and we'll resolve one specific issue you currently have , in your business relationships, and I'll share other ways that I can continue supporting you.
And that's our episode for today. I'll see you next week. Bye.
If you're currently pursuing a big, bold idea and would love some support, let's talk. In my coaching program, I'll teach you how to manage yourself, your own thoughts and emotions. as well as your team and your money so you can turn your beautiful idea into a reality. Go now to carozuleta.com slash consult that is c a r o z u l e t a dot com slash consult and complete the form to book a complimentary call with me.
See you there!
