Setting up a business with Friends
Barbra Carlisle • April 16, 2025
Setting up business with a friend - a blessing or a curse?
Introduction
Starting a business with friends is thrilling. There is an overarching sense of relief that you don't have to do it alone -you can do it with your bestie! yay!
Fast forward 18 months, and the Yay! can turn into Nay!
Misaligned expectations, unspoken assumptions, and personality clashes often threaten what was once a shared vision. How can co-directors stay aligned—and stay friends?
The Research
The UK’s ScaleUp Institute (2022) found that the biggest internal challenge to scale-up growth isn’t funding or sales—it’s leadership alignment. Misalignment at the top leads to strategic drift, team confusion, and burnout.
The London Business School’s study on entrepreneurial team dynamics (Lechler & Ensley, 2021) highlights that psychological safety, clear communication, and complementary leadership styles are essential for co-founder success.
The Voice of Alignment
Most founder teams don’t fall apart because they disagree on what they want to build. It’s how they build it—how they make decisions, how they handle conflict, how they communicate under pressure.
One founder might lead with relentless vision, what I call the Pioneer perspective, while another is carefully evaluating risk (taking a Guardian perspective). One might want harmony above all else (Nurturer), and another thrives on energy and visibility (Connector). The key is not to flatten those differences, but to name and honour them.”
As a co-director of a brilliant social research agency Michael and I were super excited when we set out - we even got to take clients with us! Yay!
However our personalities and life stage were so so different that tensions started to arise.
- One of us wanted to renegotiate the agreed starting salary - one of us didn't
- One of us was a laissez faire leader, one of us wasn't
- One of us put our people first, one of us didn't
- One of us blended work with social life, the other just wanted to go home and be with their family
- One of us was single and footloose, one of us was married with responsibilities.
None of the above were unresolvable but we were unable to resolve due to lack of appreciation of each other, and pressures from around us. I wish I had sought out the support of a coach, I would have loved it if we had both had coaching before it was too late.
The Call
If you’re building something with someone you respect and care about, take the time to build how you build. A business plan is vital—but so is a relationship plan. Talk to one another about your needs and desires, and share your observations on how you think the relationship, not just the business is going.
Let’s ensure your founding team is aligned not just on the product, but on purpose, pace, and process.
If you want to run through your thoughts get in touch with me, I would love to be able to help you, and your friend, be totally awesome!
https://zcal.co/barbracarlisle/30min
Ideas and thoughts on how to lead well through complexity and change
The Intergenerational Advantage: Why Construction Firms Who Blend Ages Will Outperform Everyone Else
If you’re worried about not having enough young people, including women coming into construction, you’re asking the wrong question. The real risk is what happens when you don’t use the people you already have properly. The Crisis No One Is Solving Properly Across the UK, the construction workforce is ageing faster than it’s being replenished. There are 20% more workers aged 55+ than under 25. And it gets worse: 35% of the workforce is now over 50, and only 20% is under 30. Yes this presents an industry risk, but closer to home we see organisational risk. Leaders worry about recruitment, apprenticeships, T levels, Skills Bootcamps all useful, but none of them address the real issue: Experience is walking out of the door every single day, and new capability isn’t being integrated fast enough. This is exactly what my conversation with Colin McEllin MCIOB of Clan Contracting highlighted. When a 21 year old commercial graduate joined Clan Contracting, Colin didn’t roll his eyes or think, “another kid who’s never been on a site.” He leaned into it and welcomes thoughts, ideas and advice from 'young Aaron'. Massive benefits for him, and Aaron, and the wider team. Why Intergenerational Leadership Is Now a Strategic Priority The construction sector is staring at a workforce cliff edge: • 140,000+ vacancies lie unfilled. • By 2036, 750,000 skilled workers will retire, stripping the industry of vital capability. • The UK will need nearly 1 million additional construction workers by 2032. Yet recruitment alone isn’t enough. You cannot hire your way out of this crisis. We must integrate generations on purpose, not by accident. What Younger Workers Bring (That Leaders Ignore at Their Peril) Younger talent offers: • Modern thinking around sustainability and digital tooling • Analytical approaches and better documentation habits • A willingness to question processes that haven't been updated since the 90s • A commercial lens shaped by newer training systems In Colin’s words, their thinking “took him right back to when he was 21” eager, energetic, ideas driven. You want that energy before they lose it. What Older Workers Bring (That You Can’t Replace) Your experienced people have: • 30+ years of instinct • Pattern recognition that no textbook teaches • Quiet influence that stabilises teams • Technical fluency on heritage, concrete, structure, sequencing, conservation, problem solving These people are your institutional memory. Once they go, they’re gone. And currently, UK engineering employers admit they only retain knowledge effectively from 57% of retiring staff. That is a crisis hiding in plain sight. Leadership Actions That Works 1. Create deliberate two way mentoring (not hierarchical mentoring). Younger staff teach digital skills, new processes, sustainability thinking. Older staff teach technical judgment, site sense, risk spotting. Both feel valued. 2. Give young people actual responsibility, not token tasks. The CITB plans 40,000+ industry placements a year. It means nothing if leaders hide young people in the corner. Let them make decisions, with support. 3. Systemise knowledge transfer. You cannot afford to rely on “ask Dave if you need help.” You need processes, templates, technical walkthroughs, shared documentation. 4. Remove the “that’s not how we do it here” reflex. 76% of construction workers say current training doesn’t adequately prepare people for the job. So your way probably isn’t the best way anymore. Your Competitive Advantage Is Sitting Right Under Your Nose When generations work in isolation, capability leaks. When generations work together, capability compounds. The firms who win over the next decade won’t be the ones who grab the talent, it will be the ones who blend talent. Listen to the full episode of the podcast here or watch on You Tube here About me I write about topics that my podcast guests bring to the podcast. They have years of experience with challenges and opportunities along the way, highs and lows and are in the thick of leading with purpose and passion, faults an'all. As a coach and trainer I work with leaders and their times to help them thrive, laugh, enjoy their work, be productive and to build teams of all ages.
We love what we do so we grow in that role, we end up as leader with people around us but we want to stay doing the thing we love doing. Balancing leadership is hard.
