They say, “Don’t go into business with friends.”
- Gina Cotner
- Jul 10
- 4 min read
Or… should you?
In the early days of our company when I was hustling and networking and drumming up business with anybody that I thought I had street-cred with throughout my career history, I was talking to a friend named Tom. I was pitching him our services. At the end of the conversation he said to me:
"I won’t hire anybody I can’t fire."
Harumph.
I didn’t love that response. I could see the compliment in it. He liked me. We were friends. And he would feel very uncomfortable if he ever had to fire my firm, so he just wouldn’t hire us. Easy to see that logic.
Meanwhile, I was building this company with friends. They weren’t necessarily close friends yet, but they would go on to be some of the most important friends in my life.
How It All Started: Dorian
The first person I brought on board to work with was Dorian. I had done tons of personal development work alongside her at an organization called Landmark. We were moving through the spaces of our own leadership development and growth, while taking on more and more leadership, while championing and managing more and more people around the world.
So as we worked together here at Athena Executive Services, and worked together at Landmark, our love and respect and admiration for each other grew and grew. She went on to get married and have two beautiful daughters, who at this time are one and four years old.
We have ridden the roller coaster of life together over the last 10 years, the highs, the lows, the peaks, the valleys.
Then Came Jennifer
Six years ago Dorian brought Jennifer on board, and she was an EA like we all were in the beginning. She was an excellent EA and she loved the work. Her clients loved her! Soon, she fell in love with our company. She also had a similar leadership development background to Dorian and I.
In 2020 the pandemic hit and about three months into it, after losing about 40% of our client roster, I finally picked myself up off the floor and decided to take on a big project. After having turned over various processes within the company such as invoicing, payroll, vetting applicants, onboarding new staff, etc, I decided I was ready to turn over the all-important Sales Process. WHAT? Give away the sales process to someone else?! (That just spiked some founder’s blood pressure out there.)
So I went to Jennifer and I asked her if she’d like a bigger role in our company. She said she had recently been talking to her husband about how she would love just that. So I started the largest “turnover” project that I had done to date. About three months later she was managing most of our business development activities. It’s now five years later and she’s an incredible Business Development and Client Care Manager.
We’ve become close friends over the last five years.
The Power of Three
Now it’s the three of us: Me, Dorian, and Jennifer. I think of us as an all-powerful triangle. The most powerful shape in the world. Some people feel uncomfortable in a threesome. But I grew up as an only child, so being in a close knit tribe of three is comfortable for me.
We are very close friends. We know all about each other’s families and friends, along with all of our trials and tribulations, and hopes and dreams.
Athena Executive Services has always been 100% remote. There has never been an “office”. Twice a year the three of us get together in person and have a retreat. We look forward to it so much! And we don’t wanna be apart from each other during any of it., except when we all break into separate spaces to have calls or FaceTime with family. We all share a hotel room. Right before we go to sleep I pick a movie or a TV show with powerful women in it and we watch it. That’s a bit of a tradition now.
(We have an ongoing list of power-woman movies and shows, please let us know what you would add to our list!)
How does all this possibly work? How can you be so close to people and yet be in business together?
Here are a few key factors that make this work:
When we speak it is clear which hat we are wearing when we talk. Am I talking to my operations manager, Dorian? Or am I talking to my girlfriend Dorian? Whether it’s on the phone or in text, we regularly make that clear. Sometimes we even switch hats in the middle of a conversation, but we make a point to say that out loud to each other. “I now need to talk to my CEO,” Dorian will say.
We don’t gossip. Do Jennifer and Dorian talk about me? Yes. Do Dorian and I talk about Jennifer? Yes. Do Jennifer and I talk about Dorian? Yes. But it’s only with a commitment for high performance or wellness. How can we support each other in being more effective or in having more peace of mind? That’s where we’re coming from when we speak about each other.
We don’t share with each other anything that would put-down, or diminish the reputation of one of us. So I don’t gossip to Dorian about Jennifer. I might say to Dorian, “I’m annoyed about X. Here’s my idea for solving it. Do you have any other ideas?”
There’s always a commitment to resolution or forward progress in our speaking. So we might moan or whine about something for two minutes, but then one of us says, “Ok, what’s next to resolve that?”
So, should you not hire who you cannot fire? Should you not go into business with best friends? I don’t have the answer for you, but I have the answer for me.
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