The Day I Fired My Business Partner
How I made the decision and how I felt about it
Having a business partner is like having a romantic partner. You won’t agree with everything; you’ll fight; you’ll get mad. Relationships are hard, but you hope that they will last forever. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen, though.
Ending a romantic relationship isn’t easy.
Ending a business relationship isn’t easy, either.
When you found a company, you expect to see your business partners going through entrepreneurial challenges with you. You desire to spend a lot of time together and achieving incredible things.
However, you don’t expect to see any of them leaving or you having to fire any of them. Being an entrepreneur isn’t comfortable, and sometimes the best option for your company to survive is for you to fire one of your business partners.
I founded a gaming company in 2012 with three more partners. After two years of working hard but few results, all of them gave up the entrepreneurial journey, and I became the sole partner. I was not expecting that to happen, and I didn’t want to give up.
For a while, I ended up being the only partner in my company. Because of that, I had no one to talk to about the pressure I had. We can share some of the stuff with people close to us. But nothing like another entrepreneur to understand the pains and challenges we face.
I knew that I would need help. Having lost my initial business partners made all the difference when I started to think about who my next partners should be. I needed the right people working with me.
As my gaming company grew, I invited people complementary to me. They had the necessary skills to help solve the main problem that the company was currently experiencing:
- In early 2015, a CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) joined to help our games reach more people and sell more;
- In early 2017, a COO (Chief Operations Officer) joined to help organize our processes;
- At the end of 2017, a CCO (Chief Creative Officer) joined to help improve our creative side so we could develop better games.
You need to be a different person every year
“To achieve something you’ve never achieved, you must become someone you’ve never been.” — Brian Tracey
Being an entrepreneur means that you always have to be learning something new. You will never know enough. As the company grows, it will demand different knowledge from you. There will always be something different to study and put into practice in your company.
There are many stories about companies that hire outside CEOs or other executives to help keep the company growing. It may need different profiles for different company stages.
Maybe the person that is good at founding a company isn’t good at leading it when it scales. Not always who starts a company is the one who keeps running it. You may try to adapt or decide to choose a different path.
The main reason founders leave their companies is related to the company stage. Many founders prefer to work in small environments. As their companies grew, they don’t like the new environment and, because of that, they decide to leave.
It’s not that they can’t learn or adapt to the new environment, but they prefer a different one. There is no right or wrong here.
You need to know what kind of company you want to have for yourself. If you want to work in a small one, maybe you don’t need to worry about growth, as I did during my entrepreneurial journey. People think that a company should always be growing, but that is not necessary. You have to understand what is best for you.
You need to make difficult decisions
“Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.” — Jerzy Gregorek
In 2017 we raised US$1 million, and in 2018, we had the challenge to keep growing. The company was demanding different knowledge from my partners and myself.
As the CEO, I was the one that pushed my business partners in the direction that the company needed them. Unfortunately, I noticed that one of my partners wasn’t giving his best to the company anymore.
I tried giving feedback and giving different tasks for him to do, but nothing I did seemed to work. His role has changed a lot since he joined the company, and apparently, the company would need someone with a different profile if he didn’t adapt.
The first time the idea popped into my head was after receiving mentorship from an executive from one of Brazil’s biggest companies (that’s where I’m from). He talked about profiles that move companies forward, and I noticed this partner of mine didn’t have that profile.
I started talking to some mentors about their thoughts about having to fire a business partner. One of them told me that he already has done that and that it happens more often than I knew. It is just something you don’t hear every day. He said that if I genuinely believe that the company would do better without this partner, I should move forward with firing him.
I never told my business partner about my thoughts of firing him. I’m not too fond of the idea of threatening people. Apparently, he lost his passion for the company. We wanted different things. Because of that, I decided that I would have to fire him.
That would be very difficult for me to do as we went through a lot together with the company. We were friends since high school, much before starting the company. I shared the news with my other partners, and they understood my decision.
I had a trip scheduled at the end of the month to participate in a conference with the business partner I was about to fire. I decided it would be best for the company to give him the news after coming back from the conference as we already have meetings scheduled.
We started a new week back home, and after lunch, I call my business partner to talk (we were a company 100% remote, and the talk was by Zoom). My other partners already knew about what I was going to do and supported my decision.
I was too nervous, but I kept saying to myself that that would be the best for the company.
I told my partner how his performance has decreased in the past couple of months and the company was demanding different knowledge from him. I also said I already have tried helping him by giving feedback and I decided it would be best for the company to continue without him anymore.
I didn’t know what to expect after saying that. I asked if he had something to say, but he didn’t.
After ending the call, I call my employees to share the news. I always was transparent when I fired someone. I believe everyone must understand why someone is leaving the company.
That was the first time I fired a partner. The team was surprised at first, but they understood the decision after answering some doubts they had.
Final thoughts
“We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” — Seneca
A couple of months later, I asked my former partner to meet in person. We haven’t talked since our last call. I told him that it would be good if we remain friends. He agreed to speak, and we went to a coffee place.
There, he thanked me for what I have done. He wasn’t happy with his job at the company anymore, that’s why his performance decrease. After leaving the company, he started a new one and started doing what he wanted to do. He was much happier, and that made me glad to know too.
If you are in a romantic relationship but want different things than your partner, you probably shouldn’t be together. The same is true for a business relationship.
If I had to go through something similar again, I would have talked more about what each one expects from the company. Instead of just thinking about what product to create or what service to offer, I would talk more about what type of life we want for ourselves and how the company might help. I would try to align our thoughts better, and if that didn’t work, I would suggest not working together anymore.
I believe that the most important thing is to be transparent.
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