Joy Stevens is the Founder and President of Alegria Collaborative, a premium addiction and recovery service based in Los Angeles.
Despite having over a decade of deep experience and an even deeper passion for my work, until I met Dia Parsons I’d never considered having a business partner. Like me, she had extensive experience in recovery and behavioral health, both as a CADC II counselor and in other areas of specialized, high-end intervention crisis care. The emotional awareness our field requires may have primed us for the transition of becoming business partners, but the journey has nonetheless been a big growth moment for both of us. Along the way, I’ve shed a few tears (all worth it) and picked up some tips.
If you’re lucky enough to find a friendship you’d like to segue into a business partnership, these are my top five:
1. Make sure you have a good foundation.
After a mutual friend in our industry said, “If you don’t know each other, you should,” Dia and I met and began to forge a friendship by hiking together in our downtime from equally demanding jobs. Our conversations covered topics both personal and professional. After discovering we shared a similar mindset around crisis care, I hosted some of my clients at the high-end treatment facility where Dia worked. It went really well, and I look back at this as a trial run of sorts: We hadn’t yet explored the idea of becoming business partners, but the success of this early collaboration acted as a springboard for the future.
2. Call in a coach.
It could be a strategist, a therapist, a psychic—do what works for you, just don’t try to do it alone. When we first started our company, we worked with a business coach who helped us identify and align on our brand identity, persona, ethics and practices. The three of us spent an intense weekend in Sausalito and the coach pulled a lot of tough truths out of us. It was important for our brand launch, but equally important was the bonding experience as we launched our partnership on a personal level.
3. Align on strategy.
Dia and I knew our values were aligned: We share the belief that a concierge approach rooted in compassion and companionship alleviates the urgency and complexity inherent in crisis care and supports positive outcomes. The next step was to create intention-based guiding principles for our business. From day one, we’ve been abundantly clear on what we do, who we work with and who we don’t.
4. Create supportive systems.
There’s a reason people compare business partnership to marriage. We often joke about how we spend more time together than with our significant others. But even if you work together and cohabitate, starting a business together will impact your work routines in personal ways.
Maybe one or both of you are leaving an existing job. Suddenly there’s no office, no water cooler and no work family to remind you to eat lunch. Those systems and workflows you always said you could build better? You’re the captain now, whether you like it or not.
Leading up to launch, set meetings to plan and prepare for the changes you can predict (there will be plenty of curveballs later). If you can, hire people who can do certain parts of the job better than either of you. Because even together—and especially as you grow—you and your business partner can’t be experts in everything.
5. Learn to have difficult conversations.
Learning how to productively and successfully navigate issues while growing a business together—while still honoring our individual emotions—has been a learning experience. Know that this process takes patience. It takes doing your own work as individuals. It involves learning how to identify your feelings and reflect on where they are coming from. Within a business partnership, difficult conversations must be resolved so you—and the business—can keep moving forward. You also have to recognize feelings that come up for you personally and know when it’s time to support yourself.
My last bit of advice is more about life than business: Remember to celebrate more than your successes—celebrate the vitality of your partnership in quieter times, too. Dia and I often slip into brainstorm mode on flights together. The conversation might be work-focused, but fewer interruptions create a fluidity that inspires ideas and solutions we may not have come to in a more structured environment. These are the moments that snap you out of the day-to-day and remind you why you became partners in the first place.
We have true gratitude for how special this work partnership is, and it’s not just because we went into it as friends—it’s also because of the ways it’s enriched us as professionals and brought more meaning into our work lives.
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