From Friends to Founders: How We Started the Business as Best Friends
Starting a business with a best friend is a daunting prospect but when it comes to Laura and I starting The Doers, it wasn’t a decision that was difficult to make. Having met in a working environment (Laura was in fact my line manager back in the day), we already knew each other’s strengths, weaknesses, talents, and torments within the business world. When we both went separate work ways, our friendship had more room to grow and we became closer from there on out. Laura freelanced for a while before settling down at Maggie’s as PR & Comms Manager and I left the agency we both worked at soon after Laura left to launch west elm in the UK.
During both our transitions, we still leaned on each other for advice, guidance, and reassurance - never failing to positively impact each other’s journeys. After a fair few years, Laura was popping out babies and I moved out of the corporate world to start working for myself - something I thought would be easier than it was. Laura, who at the time was on maternity leave with baby no2, became my confidante and soundboard for my client's woes and self-employed challenges and in exchange, I helped her manage parenthood with a baby who never stopped crying (fun fact: I’ve got baby whispering skills). After several “therapy” sessions (for us both), it became a no-brainer to try and recruit Laura to join me and for us to build a business together. She was already involved by giving me general counsel, had some cracking ideas and I knew our skill sets would be hugely complementary to one another. After putting my negotiation skills into overdrive, she succumbed and The Doers was born.
To date, going from friends to founders has been nothing but strength for us. We set some clear boundaries quite early on to separate work from our personal lives. We’re good at switching off the work tap when we need to and have separate WhatsApp threads for work and personal chat. But the most intrinsic thing to us making our friendship and workship thrive is the understanding we have of one another. We both know when each other is burning out and can be quite forceful at ensuring we take time off. We are both fully aware of what’s happening outside of work in each of our lives and make sure that work isn’t adding to any stressful scenarios and vice versa. And we’re very authentically exceptionally proud of each other for the work we’re doing. We make sure we praise each other for our successes - something that I think is very underrated in its productivity power.
The rapport we have with each other doesn’t go unnoticed by clients either. It helps us feel like more of a team and removes and overtly corporate nuances to our day-to-day. That is something, I personally don’t believe, would be quite so impactful if it wasn’t for our friendship.
Pros of founding a business with a friend:
Incomparable understanding of one another both personally and professionally created a much needed self-employed support structure
Increased trust within the working structure - you both know you’ve got each other’s backs always
Strong communication skills - communication between you flows easily and having difficult conversations feels that bit easier
Top tips on founding a business with a friend:
Make sure it’s tried and tested - friendship alone is not enough to make your business work. You need to know each other in a business capacity before jumping in. Give yourselves a trial period first before making long term commitments
Define your roles - you’ll bash heads if you’re both doing the exact same things. Make sure you have different strengths and stay in your lane with them. Laura is an admin and project management guru. Jess is creative and comes up with ideas. Without Laura, the ideas amount to nothing. Without Jess, there’s nothing to work with. Mutually beneficial partnership!
Be honest with one another - you need to lay it all out on the table. What you want out of your career, your financial situation, and what you NEED to be earning to survive when something isn’t working for you, etc. Work through it together but vocalise it. Always.
Set clear boundaries between business and friendship. The lines will always blur a little, but setting up separate WhatsApp chats for work, making sure you have personal time together in the calendar and strictly turning off work chat out of hours (unless urgent) will help both your friendship and business thrive
