How false harmony can damage your business and your friendship with Will and Joel

The Happy Startup School

Will and Joel are friends from university who went into business together. They put all their enthusiasm and energy into it and it grew. They worked hard and they got their rewards. However, at some point it stopped working so well. It went from simple to complex. It went from being exciting and rewarding to just feeling like a job. The spark had gone and they weren’t sure why. They’d focused their attention on trying to make the business work well again but had forgotten to also focus on their friendship. In this episode of the podcast we hear about how improving the communication between founders is more important than trying to improve the business. Particularly if before they were founders they were friends. Will and Joel honestly share the story of their business and their relationship as cofounders. They valued their friendship more than anything else but in creating a false harmony they were doing more harm than good. They’ve both been on a journey of learning not only about business but also about themselves and each other. By discovering what each of them really wanted they were more able to decide where the business needed to go and how it needed to grow. This isn’t just a story of business growth but also founder growth. Will and Joel, because of their friendship, found the courage to be truly vulnerable with each other and through that become stronger together. They reignited their passion for the business by discovering what they needed personally and then exploring how the business could meet those needs.