Coco & Dash: When Your Business Partner is a Close Family Member

The mother-daughter founders of Dallas-based specialty home decor retail shop 'Coco & Dash' share their story of starting and building their business together, how they nearly broke apart with contrasting personalities and contrasting work styles, and how they made one major move to save their relationship and the business. From there it has been climbing revenues and multiple awards for design and business. Coco and Dash, a mother-daughter business and life success story. www.cocoanddash.com | Instagram @cocoanddash SPONSORED BY: Executive Launch (www.execlaunch.com) - From corporate executive to startup founder...

1:30 - Introduction and welcome to the show

3:12 - Teddie & Courtney describe Coco & Dash, the store and what it’s all about

6:50 - SPONSOR: Executive Launch (www.execlaunch.com) - From corporate executive to startup founder...

9:30 - Courtney talks about her career background and how one simple conversation with her mother on a mother-daughter trip led to the creation of the Coco & Dash.

15:00 - Teddie talks about her background and how sitting by the pool retired (she tried it) wasn’t going to work for her.

22:10 - The importance of a plan and why you can’t launch a business based simply on your passion and interest.

23:30 - How we spent a full year planning and preparing before we opened the doors.

25:40 - How we stayed true to ourselves and our vision - and how we were scratching our own itch.

30:00 - When and why did things start going wrong? And how did ‘trying to have a life’ start to become a problem?

37:20 - How different work habits and different work styles between partners became a big problem - and what’s important can be situational and very different between partners.

39:10 - Who is doing what? Stepping on each other, dropping balls. And how it became uncomfortable and confrontational just being in the shop at the same time.

41:50 - Hitting the lowest point in the relationship.

44:20 - Teddie’s career was in conflict resolution, crisis management, and negotiation skills - but couldn’t resolve this for herself. Courtney was a professional counselor in her career, and also couldn’t resolve this.

46:20 - Teddie says ‘I was ok losing a business, I was not ok losing a daughter’.

52:30 - The breaking point, some harsh words - and then off to couples counseling.

55:00 - With counseling, things improved immediately. And we realized we needed to have clear roles and responsibilities in the business.

59:20 - We also needed to understand how the other person communicates and thinks and views situations - often not what it seems.

1:03:25 - We all have ‘tapes in our head’ that affect how we hear and interpret what other people say to us - often driven by our own insecurities or assumptions.

1:06:35 - Now we don’t let our relationship slide, we ‘check in’ and Teddie’s favorite quote from counseling is “clear is kind, kind is clear.”

1:08:20 - Final advice for going into business with a close friend/family member - follow your passion but it will be harder than you expect. And starting a business is the easy part, keeping it going and growing is the hard part. And step back once a year, meet, reassess, set new goals and measure old ones.

1:11:30 - What’s Courtney’s biggest pet peeve with her mom? What’s Teddie’s biggest pet peeve with Courtney?

1:13:40 - We are more committed than ever and energized having gone through almost losing the business, or worse, each other.

1:14:40 - Looking back, how important that difficult period was and how it came just as better and bigger things were possible - it’s always darkest just before dawn.

1:17:15 - Don’t make Allen cry on his own show

1:17:55 - Wrap up and how to contact Courtney or Teddie - and finally, Courtney leaves us with the favorite quote from her mom, still taped to her vanity at home, “Failure isn’t falling down, it’s staying down”.