Most friendships can’t even survive a trip to Miami. Imagine what could happen when besties go into business together. Maintaining healthy professional relationships can be tough enough without factoring financials into it.
70% of business partnerships fail and according to some experts that sobering stat can be attributed to a poor management team, a lack of financial security, bad exit planning, or even children/family issues
Some businesses are able to meld friendship with professionalism and soar. Take the leaders behind the Aliya Huey and Scotley Innis, co-owners of Aliya, a rooftop restaurant located at the Hotel Indigo Williamsburg. In addition to the cocktail den, they recently opened Afro-Caribbean Asian Fusion eatery, Continent Brooklyn.
After knowing each other for years through working in the prospective fields, Innis in culinary entrepreneurship and Huey in hotels and hospitality, they decided to join forces almost on a whim.
“It just made sense,” Innis tells ESSENCE. “We’d always got along as friends and I’d watched her work so it just made sense to work on something together to take it to the next level.”
Now, more than a decade into their friendship, they’ve matured in their business partnership and realized how much they didn’t know that they didn’t know.
“We have wildly different communication styles,” Huey tells ESSENCE.
She explains that while her extensive experience in hotel management taught her to be diplomatic in most situations, Innis often takes a more blunt approach.
“We learned to meet in the middle and read each other’s cues.”
Besties in business Nicole Marzan and Nycole Flynn agree. Together they run NMF Collective, a brand and hospitality marketing consultancy. Co-leading the business looks very different from both their ends, they shared.
“Nicole has taught me to be a bit more pragmatic in my approach to things,” Flynn shares with ESSENCE. “The entrepreneur in me is ready to take anything on and get the work done for our clients by any means necessary, but Nicole has taught me to take a step back and assess our scope to figure out how much time it will really take from us. How much money it takes, and how much we should really be charging. She sees my blindspots.”
Overall, the overarching quality all business partners need to have is trust.
“Without that, there’s nothing,” Marzan says. “And that’s built through consistent transparency.” She suggests setting up regular times to check in with one another to go over financials, workflow process, and business goals. Some experts recommend daily status meeting to foster strong communication and quickly identify any challenges to the company.
More than anything, going into business with a friend requires “respect.”
“We try to treat one another the way we’d want someone to treat a family member,” Flynn shares. “Talk with one another, be honest, and understand any weaknesses the other has so that if something falls through the cracks, you’re prepared to take it on. Also, don’t go into business together just because you love one another. Make sure they can actually do the work.”