We even brought in an executive coach to help keep us accountable. Reflecting on these chats, we’ve gotten good at communicating honestly and openly. It’s a skill set I find myself using in other facets of my life too—with team members and with clients—and am particularly grateful for it.

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Understand each other’s genius zones

It’s important as an entrepreneur to know your genius zone and maximize the time you spend there. This is proving to be true but even more, it’s important to know and help make space for your partner’s genius zone. Where do they thrive that you don’t? And where do they thrive that you also thrive?

This understanding allows us to give space, celebrate our strengths, and more carefully distribute workload in the shared genius zones to ensure clarity on expectations and contributions.

It’s personal

This may be controversial, but I believe our societal emphasis on work-life balance is misguided; we often work from home, we have our best ideas at unexpected hours, and use so much of our personal life to derive human insights that inspire our work.

We should be striving towards integrating our work and life; pursuing things we’re passionate about with people we genuinely enjoy being around and learning from. It’s important to nurture the personal relationships around you, especially with your partner. Know their coffee order, Oura ring score and show up for them when they need it. Just like the rest of our lives, it’s our recognition of humanity that makes anything worth doing.

It’s an exciting time in advertising with many new agencies launching and partnership relationships along with them. If you’re thinking about co-founding an agency (which I highly recommend), it’s important to acknowledge that the partnership you’re entering has the potential to change both of your lives. The more intentional you can be about that, the more likely you are to find your professional ‘happily ever after.’