Let's Not Ruin The Friendship

Doing business together makes friendship better, rather than endangers it

Our roles as friends, family, cowriters, duet partners, and business co-owners are distinct, but not separate. They wrap themselves around one another like those plastic gimp bracelets from elementary school.

We’ve talked far less about our roles as business partners, even though in some ways it is the very reason we are where we are today.

the relationship boondoggle

It’s often said that one should not get into business with family or friends. It complicates things; it leads to strife. Sing it, Cyndi. It’s a lot, on the face of it: parenting AND running a business together AND being friends. “You must really like each other.”

I mean, sure. But the practice of being in business together revealed the ways that we would be compatible in building other parts of our lives together. There’s the meet-cute stories and the epic friendship tales, all of which are true (and, uh, colorful). And yet, working together was what aligned our values, our resources, and our philosophies in a way that revealed something deeper: our plans for living a good life were not just complementary, but better unspooled in tandem.

Business is a testing ground for the real game of life; the part that isn’t about money but about relationships. My grandfather used to say, “money problems aren’t real problems.” This wasn’t meant to be flippant towards the suffering rendered by the cruelty of the American capitalist machine. But rather that health, and relationship, and happiness were not only at the core of many supposed “money problems,” but also these were the parts of life that couldn’t be mitigated with a to-do list and elbow grease.

Here is a brief window into some of the ways our business partnership foretold our “real life”:

ACCOUNTABILITY: Showing up for friends as friends, and as business partners, requires that you assume the responsibility of supporting a person’s pursuit in life to manifest their potential. It elevates that responsibility to a level of investment in both their emotional AND material needs. I support your feelings, but I also support your material world.

RESOURCES AND OWNERSHIP: Resource sharing. My money is your money. This was true from the start, when being roommates, much less having a baby, wasn’t in the plan for us.

In the 7 years we’ve been in business, we have never kept track of how much money each of us pulled into the business each year. We own the LLC in equal share, and we draw from it in equal share. Some years, the balance is probably off. And so what? If *I* make money, *we* make money. That is the baseline of the LLC partnership. Money is a resource for the things that matter. It is not a beacon of future (emotional) stability and eternal life.

SHARED (AND DIVERGING) GOALS: And that’s on Life goals, not business goals. Our revenue-generating ventures – from the start – were always about financing our creative lives, and to pay our respective rents in the meantime. Cash simply enables me to do the things I love (C.S.E.M.T.D.T.T.I.L).

Over the course of 7 years, 1 pandemic, and a baby, we have found:

1. There are times for making less, but working less.

2. There are times when one (or the other) of us needs to step off the gas, or pursue other priorities – professionally, artistically, personally.

We don’t need our individual goals to be 100% aligned in order to maintain our working relationship. We have also learned that a business can both contract and grow. The core goal of a business does not always have to be growth; there are seasons for both.

PRIORITIES: When it comes down to protecting the relationship, or protecting the business, there is no question about precedence. Why do we sacrifice our health for the health of a business? Whom does that sacrifice serve? This becomes much clearer in a business of friends.

ESTABLISHING TRUST AND INTIMACY: We make plans. We make mistakes. We make goals. We fall short. We set high expectations. We take responsibility. We divide and conquer. As a small business, we stay accountable not to a board or a shareholder, but to each other. We celebrate the wins and weather the disappointments of business, but just as two people, first. We knew what all this felt like in the lower-stakes sandbox of business first, versus “real life” things that “actually” matter.

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Years ago, someone once asked me for advice about whether she too, should start an LLC with a friend. They had worked together on someone else’s project, a frustrating one. They had felt that telltale creative spark of “imagine if we were working together on our own thing! [instead of this dumb thing].” They had big ideas for beautiful art together.

Looking back, I was overly cautious in my advice. Treat this like marriage! I’d said. Imagine the legal entanglements. Be so, so, so careful about embarking on this kind of commitment with someone unless you are beyond certain.

I would give different advice today. Give yourself over to these creative and financial commitments with a friend. Do so with open eyes and a foundation of trust, but just do it. This is how we discover our people, our values, and the possibilities of new intimacies.

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