The Most Important Business Partnership Of My Career (And How I Found Her)
A couple of weeks ago I asked you for ideas for what to write in my newsletter. One of you asked, “How did you find your team?”
Holy softball!!
I could talk about that all day, which is good because I needed something light today. At the time of writing it’s day four of The Girlboss Apology Tour. We are extremely proud and also flat-out exhausted. So let me take a moment to tell you the most important business partnership of my career, with Sandra Booker.
Sandra and I met at a now-defunct meetup group called Cowork Niagara, that met every Tuesday afternoon.
Everyone there assumed I was more successful than I was, simply because I did actual work on my laptop while everyone else drank beer and socialized. Little did they know I was writing crappy SEO blog posts about made-up wellness trends, for an insurance company that paid me 10 cents a word. I was eking out just enough money to pay my mom $500/month in rent, and riding my bike because I didn’t have a car and preferred to spend the bus money on coffee. (Woe is me.)
Years later, with my business up and running, earning the $4K/month needed to support my young family, I called Sandra on a whim to see if she could fix a Mailchimp problem.
And thus, on April 15, 2016, our legendary partnership was born.
Not too many people can say they’ve worked with someone for ten years. In these ten years our two businesses have braided together to become a single rope. She has trained every team member I’ve hired, attended every monthly, quarterly and annual planning session, and put my finances under the microscope every month for years, assuring me that we’re going to be okay. For my part, I’ve made it my personal mission to make sure she never lacks for clients (even though she almost always turns them down), and that she is able to see, as clearly as I can, what a precious human she is, and how lucky people are to get to work with her.
It feels lopsided as I type that.
But I can say that this braided rope has proven strong enough to carry not only us, but also our families and probably a hundred employees and contractors over the years.
Sandra and I have had a recurring monthly retainer since September 2016, and it’s been renegotiated many times over the years. We started at $500/month – an astronomical sum at the time – and re-negotiate every year or two, based on the needs of my business and Sandra’s availability.
In the beginning, she was loading emails and making Zaps. But our partnership grew year over year. Sandra was in the room with me the day I let all my employees go back in 2022. Today she is the steady presence I turn to when I’m scared and don’t know what to do.
People often say to me, “I wish I had a Sandra.”
I’ve always assumed they meant someone to do their zips and zaps for them. But now I think what they are really saying is, “I wish there was someone who had my back the way Sandra has yours.”
So here’s the secret, my friend.
The foundations that make our relationship great are the same things that make any relationship great: ability to have hard conversations, mutual respect, deep and abiding love for each other, acceptance for the ways that we fall short, and a desire to see the other thrive, even if it means giving something up.
No one is the boss, despite who’s paying who.
No one has more authority because of their superior bank balance or follower count.
We both get to be messy, imperfect humans who are high-performers most of the time, and regular, nap-taking, self-doubting humans the rest.
I used to worry a lot that Sandra would die, in a way people worry their spouses will die. But as I write this, I know we would both be okay. (Let’s assume she's not actually dead, but rather moved on to another career.) Our partnership, and the businesses we’ve built side by side, have turned us into resilient humans who can weather change. And it is a real gift to know that about yourself.
But seriously, I hope she doesn’t die anytime soon. I would really miss having her at book club. ♥️
~ Tarzan
Tarzan Kalryzian [she/they]
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