Do you have a co-founder?

Partnerships are the trickiest ships to sail.

If you have a co-founder at your agency, you already know this. And if you don't know it yet, you will.

Over time, the following happens almost inevitably:

One of you will work harder. Maybe it's just a season - kids, health, life circumstances. Maybe it's a permanent difference in drive. But the hours won't be equal, and the one working more will notice.

One of you will be better at leadership. Better at rallying the team, making hard decisions, having difficult conversations. The other will be better at something else - but leadership is visible, and visibility creates perceived imbalance.

One of you will become the face of the company. The one clients want to talk to. The one who gets invited to speak. The one whose LinkedIn posts perform better. This happens organically, but it creates dynamics that are hard to navigate.

One of you will be ready to quit before the other. Burned out, bored, or just ready for something new. And that conversation - when one partner wants out and the other doesn't - is one of the hardest conversations in business.

One of you will have personal problems that impact the business. Divorce, illness, family crisis. Something that pulls them away, that makes them less present, that shifts the burden onto the other.

None of this is anyone's fault.

It's just what happens when two humans try to build something together over years.

Life isn't static. People change. Circumstances change.

And all of it leads to partner conflict.

But this conflict can be avoided. Or at least managed. If you start with the right frame.

Here's the frame: it doesn't matter who worked harder.

You started a business to gain freedom.

To do what you want, when you want.

That means the business is not about either one of you. It's not a reflection of your worth. It's not a scoreboard for who contributed more. It's a vehicle - and both of you need to be working yourselves out of it.

Even if you love what you do. Even if you want to keep working. The goal is still to build something that doesn't require you. Because that's what creates options. That's what creates freedom. That's what makes the partnership sustainable long-term.

When both founders are focused on building themselves out, the competition disappears.

It doesn't matter who worked more hours this quarter. It matters whether the business is becoming less dependent on both of you. That's the shared goal. That's the thing you're both rowing toward.

When the frame is wrong - when it's about who contributed more, who deserves more credit, who's carrying the weight - every difference becomes a source of resentment. The partnership slowly poisons itself.

When the frame is right, differences are just differences. One of you is better at leadership? Great, lean into that. One of you is the face of the company? Great, use it. One of you needs to step back for a season? Great, the systems should be able to handle that.

One of the biggest benefits I bring when I work with agency co-founders is simply being a third party.

Someone who can remind both partners of the bigger picture when they're stuck in the weeds of who did what.

Someone who can hold up the mirror and say: you're both losing sight of what this is actually for.

Want to talk through how this might apply to your agency?

Book a call: https://www.agencyacquisitions.io/book-a-call/

Nick

P.S.

I put together a resource on building the executive dashboards that give you visibility into your agency without having to be in every meeting and every decision.

It's part of building the infrastructure that lets both partners step back.

I want to make sure everyone on this list has access to it:

https://www.agencyacquisitions.io/agency-executive-dashboard-opt-in/