I just went into business with one of my friends, now what?

Published by Ryan Paugh on January 17th, 2008 in Entrepreneurship, Work/Life | 22 Comments

Ryan Healy and I have been friends for years. It all started in 616 Geary Hall at Penn State. We were randomly assigned to be roommates during out first year of college. What a wild time…

During our first year out of college, we bantered back and forth about our future careers. We wanted to start our own business. Create something where we could share our advice and experience with other young people like ourselves. And eventually, we did.

Learning to work together wasn't easy. Besides Healy tutoring me in Accounting during my senior year, our friendship was merely social. Our new business relationship took some patience to understand.

Every day is different. Some days are just like college. Others, we're nearly at each other's throats. Starting a business with one of your friends is an incredible experience, but if you don't prepare yourself for the unavoidable drama, it's really going to suck.

Talk about anything and everything

Men don't complain to other men, especially about things that might seem petty. In a business relationship, you have to let go of this mentality.

Healy and I had poor communication skills during our first month working together. At times we didn't say a word to each other over the course of an entire day. It was bad. Really bad.

I ended up flipping out. After lots of yelling, senseless pacing and god knows what else, things started to get better. But it didn't need to come to that.

Avoid an emotional collapse by sharing your frustrations early. We don't make that mistake anymore, and things have run a lot smoother since.

Give each other space

Living with someone you work with is hard, even when they're your friend. And it's not just us. Other young entrepreneurs run into the same problem.

Part of it develops from spending way too much time with one person. The other part occurs when you start scheduling your life around one another.

Sometimes Healy wants to work, but I want to watch T.V. or vice versa. It sucks. When someone else is working, you don't want to be the guy that's sitting around doing nothing. Or if someone is watching T.V., how do you concentrate on work?

What ends up happening is that your schedules will merge. You'll sacrifice spending your time the way you planned on spending it and you'll hate every minute of it.

This isn't good for a startup. The time you spend away from the business strongly influences the effectiveness of the time you put in.

The best thing to do is to get office space. Separate your work life from your home life and make few exceptions. But that's not feasible if your business isn't fully funded.

What can work for anybody is to create your own schedule, share it with your team and tell them to be respectful of the time you need away from the company.

Be understanding, even if you don't understand

We all have our quirks and they make for some interesting and/or irritating situations.

You must be willing to deal with the eccentric behaviors of your co-workers if you want your business to survive. People don't change because you want them to.

I'm a pretty eccentric guy sometimes. And Healy is about as even-keeled as they come. If you look at Healy, then look at me, you'd probably wonder how these two guys even ended up being friends. It happened because despite our differences, we're pretty understanding, even though we don't always get each other.

If you're not understanding with your friends, forget starting a business together. Save the friendship and keep things social. Not only will the company fail, but the friendship may too.

But, as counterintuitive as it may sound, if you're willing to be considerate in your dealings and communicate when times get rough, it may be one of the most amazing things for a couple of buds to do. It's an emotionally trying and physically exacerbating road. Sharing that path with a good friend is an immeasurable experience.