MBA2682 How To Stop Fighting With Your Co-Founders

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: The $100 MBA Show
Host: Omar Zenhom
Episode: #2682 - How To Stop Fighting With Your Co-Founders
Air Date: September 26, 2025

This episode is dedicated to solving a common but crucial problem for entrepreneurs: how to stop fighting and improve teamwork between co-founders. Omar Zenhom shares a personal, actionable exercise that he and his co-founder (and wife) Nicole used to dramatically reduce conflict, increase satisfaction, and supercharge their partnership. The episode is packed with practical steps and wisdom on building a healthier, more effective co-founder relationship.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Real Source of Co-Founder Conflict

Timestamp: 02:52 - 04:41

• Fights are rarely about money, ideas, or even strategy. They’re usually about differing work styles and misaligned expectations.
• Each founder assumes, wrongly, that the other works the same way they do, creating friction and resentment.
• Omar shares his personal pain point: “One of the things I can't really tolerate much of… is being interrupted… Especially when I'm in deep work. I like to just be in that moment.” (04:02)
• Nicole, in contrast, prefers frequent short bursts of collaboration, which was a natural source of conflict until they addressed it.

2. The Step-by-Step Exercise to Build Understanding

Step 1: Separately Write Your Perfect Work Experience
Timestamp: 05:19 - 06:34

• Each co-founder answers: “If I could design my ideal work environment, how would I work best?”
• Questions to consider:
  • What’s your ideal day look like?
  • How do you prefer to communicate?
  • Do you like meetings?
  • What energizes or drains you?
  • How do you like to be supported?

"You want to just kind of be a hundred percent honest with yourself. Write your utopic work environment and how you'd like to work." (06:15)

Step 2: Read Aloud with Zero Interruptions
Timestamp: 06:36 - 07:14

• Take turns reading what you wrote, while the other only listens—no commentary or interruptions allowed.
• This creates an immediate boost in empathy and understanding.

"Let the other person fully express themselves without any commentary. Don't comment or say I agree or disagree. You'll be surprised how much this creates empathy right away by just listening." (06:49)

Step 3: Share Reflections and Appreciation
Timestamp: 09:22 - 10:30

• Reflect on what surprised or resonated with you from your partner’s write-up.
• Express appreciation for your differences, don’t jump to problem-solving.
• Recognize that having different working styles is a business strength.

3. Real-Life Example from Omar & Nicole

Timestamp: 10:31 - 11:18

• Omar reads a portion of his own write-up, sharing his highest value: freedom and autonomy.
• He thrives on creation, hates long meetings, loves clarity and progress, and values being able to focus deeply.
• Nicole’s workstyle is different, and reading each other’s write-ups created “lightbulb moments” for both.

"My most important personal value is freedom and autonomy. It's why I became an entrepreneur... I thrive when I can take action and test ideas, not when I'm stuck in endless meetings." (10:36)

4. Why the Exercise Works

Timestamp: 11:19 - 12:22

• It surfaces hidden assumptions (“You assume your co-founder likes Slack messages in mid focus time; they assume you don’t mind random last minute changes.”)
• Recognizes that “most people don’t change who they are… their preferences don’t change much.”
• The key: Stop trying to change each other; instead, learn how to work with each other’s natural styles.

5. Benefits and Implementation

Timestamp: 12:23 - 14:48

• Clarity: Clear understanding of each person’s preferences.
• Compassion: Less personal offense, more empathy for your partner’s quirks.
• Structure: You can make simple agreements (e.g., batch decisions to avoid constant interruptions).
• Treat your work preference documents as “living documents”—revisit and update every few months, and use the practice even when onboarding new employees.
• This proactive approach prevents unnecessary conflicts and boosts team performance.

6. Final Thoughts: Designing vs. Hoping

Timestamp: 14:49 - 16:50

• Don’t leave teamwork to chance; intentionally design your workflow to respect everyone.
• Fighting doesn’t have to be the norm—understanding and celebrating differences will greatly reduce tension.
• The whole exercise takes about an hour but can have a massive, positive impact on your business and your well-being.

“You can't just leave this to chance and hope that everybody just gets along. You need to design this… Try this exercise. Seriously. It's really game changing.” (15:34)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Workstyle Differences:

  • “It's not Nicole's fault. This is because this is how I work. This is my tendency. Nicole's style is just as good as mine.” (04:31)

• On Autonomy:

  • “One of the beauties of entrepreneurship is autonomy. You want to give that gift to your co-founder and you want that co-founder to do the same for you.” (09:57)

• On the Nature of Conflict:

  • “Fighting with your co-founder doesn't have to be the norm. This is something that I learned. You don't have to fight just because you're passionate and feisty and you want to go after it.” (14:57)

• On Practical Takeaways:

  • “All in all, it takes like an hour to do. It's absolutely free… but there's a massive upside. You're going to feel more aligned. You're going to avoid dumb fights… and your business is going to move faster.” (16:08)

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Practical Takeaways

• Proactively discuss and document your work preferences—don’t just hope things work out.
• Celebrate and leverage differences in your team—they allow better coverage of responsibilities and innovation.
• Use simple frameworks like the three-step conversation to continually improve co-founder and team relationships.
• Revisit and revise these documents; they’re valuable for both co-founder alignment and onboarding new team members.

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Useful Timestamps

• 02:52 – Pinpointing the real source of co-founder conflict
• 05:19 – Step 1: Defining your perfect work environment
• 06:36 – Step 2: Sharing and listening exercise
• 09:22 – Step 3: Reflection and appreciation
• 10:31 – Omar shares his personal workstyle write-up
• 12:23 – Reviewing benefits and making the process ongoing
• 14:49 – Final thoughts on deliberately building strong co-founder relationships

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This episode offers a refreshingly honest, easy-to-implement exercise that can transform the way you and your co-founders work together—turning friction into fuel for your business’s growth and your own peace of mind.

Transcript

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Thanks. First things first, the problem isn't that your co founder sucks at communication or doesn't pull their weight or doesn't Know how to work. Right. The problem is that you're both assuming the other person works like you do. Okay? But they don't. They can't. Because you are different people. You're different human beings. You have different styles, you have different work histories. You have different tendencies, preferences, different ways of solving problems. And all of that kind of fits in the box of what you like to do when you work, how you like to work. And until you understand that and adjust how you work together, you're going to keep stepping on each other's toes. You're going to keep pushing each other's buttons. This is especially true because you're both emotionally invested in the business, which is good. You want to feel that fire. But working off different internal expectations is really a recipe for resentment. Let me give you an example from my own relationship with Nicole, my co founder. One of the things I can't really tolerate much of really bothers me a lot, really creates almost, I would say, physical pain for me is being interrupted. I don't like to be interrupted. Not in a conversation, but interrupted when I'm working. When I'm in deep work, I like to just be in that moment. I like to concentrate. I like the momentum of not having any interruptions. I don't have anything that distracts me. I don't even listen to music or anything like that. I just work. So Nicole, on the other hand, prefers to work in short spurts. She often might want to jump in and ask my opinion about something or maybe ask for help, or maybe even just share a win, which is all good, but that interruption would cause me so much pain, I had to talk about it. This is not Nicole's fault. This is because this is how I work. This is my tendency. Nicole's style is just as good as mine. And by me shutting her down and saying, I'm busy, I can't talk to you right now, whatever it is, because I don't want the interruption. I'm hindering her style, while I'm also frustrated because this is not how I work. So as you can see, there is an issue here. We got to solve it. And we did. And I'm going to show you how in the step by step exercise. What is this exercise? Well, here it is. This is exactly what Nicole and I did to kind of really take our relationship as co workers, as co founders, to another level of productivity, happiness, contentment, and teamwork, helping each other reach each other's goals. Now, you could do this with your co founder, your co founders, your business partners, Even your spouse. If you work with your spouse like we do, step one is to separately write out your perfect work experience. So you two do this separately. Answer the question by yourself, in a document or on paper. If I could design my ideal work environment, how would I work best? Not what's realistic, not what you're doing right now, but your utopia. What would be perfect? What would be the perfect day? How would you work? How do you like to communicate? Do you like meetings or hate meetings? What gives you energy? What drains you? How do you like to be supported? Right? Do you like somebody to give you encouraging words? Do you like somebody to give you a hug? Whatever it is, Right? Obviously, if you're not husband and wife, maybe make sure that it's consensual hug. But the point here is, how do you like to be supported? What does progress look like for you? For example, what do you find fun in work or meaningful in your work? So you need to sit down by yourself and write that all down separately. Do this, don't do this together. You want to just kind of be a hundred percent honest with yourself. Write your utopic work environment and how you'd like to work. Step two, you're going to take turns reading it aloud with zero interruptions. Let me be super clear. Let the other person fully express themselves without any commentary. Don't comment or say I agree or disagree. You'll be surprised how much this creates empathy right away by just listening. So one person shares, the other person listens. The second person shares, the other person listens.

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That'S o d o o.com step three share reflections and appreciation so right now, in step three, you're not trying to fix anything here. Don't jump into fixing, okay? Don't be like me, who's just trying to solve problems all the time. Pause. This step is important. First, just talk about what surprised you, about what the person said or the differences between the way you work, right? What did you appreciate? What did you learn about each other that maybe you didn't know about before? What did you? I certainly learned a ton. This is not about who's right. This is not about who's wrong. It's about understanding each other's playbook. One of the beauties of entrepreneurship is autonomy. You want to give that gift to your co founder and you want that co founder to do the same for you, right? You want to be able to work the way you want to work. That's the whole point of business, is to be free. So let them express themselves, listen to them, and just appreciate the fact that you have differences, celebrate those differences. And by the way, it's a good thing that you work differently. That means you guys can focus and work different ways and accomplish different things in your business. You're covering a lot more ground that way. So if you want an example of what I'm talking about? Let me share an excerpt from mine. The thing I wrote up. Okay. And shared with Nicole. And this is not the whole thing, but it's just a little bit. My most important personal value is freedom and autonomy. It's why I became an entrepreneur. I love creating. I love the fact that I get to podcast. And this is why I've been podcasting for so long. I get to make something every day. I thrive when I can take action and test ideas out, not when I'm stuck in endless meetings. I like decisions, I like clarity. And I like progress. And I love it when I can delegate to a great team member and be their coach and not the one doing everything. I like to know what I own and what I can let go of. I don't want disruption when I'm in deep work. And fun for me is seeing ideas come to life. Not just mine, but Nicole's too. Again, that's just a snippet, but you get an idea. I wanted to give you an example and be a little vulnerable so that you can do the same. Okay. Reading that aloud to Nicole helped her understand why I might get angsty in long meetings or withdraw when we're indecisive. It's not about her. It's about how I'm wired. And I want to know how she is wired so that I can work with her, not going head to head with her. I want to make sure that we're supporting each other's work style and when she shared hers, how she likes to work. I had several light bulb moments. It was just like, oh, you're right, that is true. That is how you like to work. And I can see how I was, you know, ruffling your feathers and in the way I was doing things. So why does this work? This exercise works because it surfaces assumptions. I love this term surfaces. Assumptions brings assumptions to the surface. You assume your co founder likes Slack messages in mid focus time. They assume you don't mind random last minute changes. Neither of you is wrong. You just haven't talked about what right looks like for each other. You might think this is the right way to do things, but at the same time, you have to understand that everybody works differently. You have to understand what works for them and work with them. Knowing that. Here's the thing I learned in business and in life of being around for 45 years. Most people don't change who they are as a person. Their personality, their likes, their dislikes. That much, okay? Their preferences don't change very much. So stop trying to change people and make them fit in a box that they don't fit in. Instead, learn about how they like to work. Learn about who they are as a person and work with that. That's how you get the most out of anybody. Now doing this exercise gives you incredible benefits for your relationship at work. Number one, it gives you clarity. You each know how the other prefers to work. Now it also gives you compassion. This is a relationship after all. You stop taking things personally. You start realizing, oh, this is just a function of work. This is how people like to, you know, get things done. It also gives you structure. You can make agreements like let's batch decisions into a weekly call so we don't interrupt each other constantly. Now one of the things I think is a good idea is to use your write ups right how you like to work as a living document. After the exercise is over, we each can keep our perfect work experience documents and revisit them every few months. Does it still apply? How are we doing? Are we respecting each other's way of working? You can even use it with new hires. Ask your new team member to write down their own version and you'll learn how to support them way better and avoid burnout. And they don't have to be new team members. They can be people that are exist in your team, that are already in your team and you can learn a little bit more about how to work with them. Before I wrap up, I want to share with you some things that I think are really important when it comes to your relationship with your co founder, especially people that are so invested financially, emotionally, time investment, there's so much being sacrificed here. Fighting with your co founder doesn't have to be the norm. This is something that I learned. You don't have to fight just because you're passionate and feisty and you want to go after it. It doesn't. Fighting is something that should be accepted all the time. Yes, disagreements happen, but when you understand how each other work, you really reduce the tension. Most of the tension actually fades. If your partner thrives on structure, for example, and you thrive on freedom, you don't need to compromise your values. You need to understand that, hey, this person needs this to thrive. So I need to provide that for them. I got to give them the space for that. And my whole point of this whole episode is that you can't just leave this the chance and hope that everybody just gets along. You need to design this. You need to design your workflow in a way that Respects everybody. Try this exercise. Seriously. It's really game changing. I really found it very interesting, very helpful. I thought it was just something that we stumbled upon. We just made up together and just implemented the same day. We thought of it and it really worked. All in all, it takes like an hour to do. It's absolutely free. You can make a cup of coffee or tea and enjoy it while you go through this exercise. But there's a massive upside. You're going to feel more aligned. You're going to avoid dumb fights, to be honest, and your business are going to move faster. You're going to move faster because you don't have all this friction. Now you're rowing in sync. Thanks so much for listening and thanks for Terry, who asked this question. This topic came from Terry as a Q and a Wednesday episode. If you have a question you want to ask, just go to 100 MBA and go ahead and submit your question there and we'll answer right here on the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Business is about people. It's about working with people. It's about understanding people. It's about being human, yourself and compassionate and understanding and having empathy and understanding that if you want to do well in life and in business, you have to work with people and know how to work with them. Okay, I know I'm repeating myself a little bit here, but the point here is that a lot of people want to avoid people skills and that's just not possible. Okay. Until the robots take over, that's not gonna be possible. So for right now, when we need people to do everything and work on our team and come up with ideas and implement and to lead and to be creative and all that kind of stuff. We need to understand who they are, how they like to work and just embrace the fact that this is part of the journey. Embrace the fact that this is actually the fun part, working and growing with other people. And hey, it's more fun to do this with other people. This whole thing called business. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or ever, you listen to podcasts by hitting subscribe. You get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.

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