About Sunny Sabbini, MA
Cofounder Coach & Business Partnership Counselor.
This Is All I Do.
It's time to address what's not working in your partnership.
I'm Sunny Sabbini in the San Francisco Bay Area with remote clients nationwide. I offer partnership counseling for business partners and cofounders exclusively - established partners motivated to work through the recurring conflicts costing them time, money, growth, team members, and their own sleep and productivity, and done being at odds with the person they built this with.
Most people who find their way here have been trying to work around it for longer than they'd like to admit. They've tried to have the conversations, but the attempts didn't work or didn't last. And at some point it became clear they couldn't get the partnership back on track from inside it.
This is the only work I do. Not a niche I selected. The answer to a question I asked myself after working with hundreds of clients on the business side and the relational side.
Over 25 Years Working with Business Partners in Conflict
Years ago, I asked myself: among the hundreds of clients across counseling, organizational consulting, mediation, and facilitation, who did I most love working with, and who was I most effective with? The answer, both times, was the same.
Purpose-drive business partners.
Capable, well-intentioned cofounders and business partners exhausting themselves on friction they can't quite see. Personalizing problems that aren't personal. Treating structural gaps as character flaws. Trying to communicate their way out of patterns that communication alone can't reach.
So I narrowed my practice to this work alone, continuing to deepen the impact I bring my clients, realizing I'm among the few who are so uniquely suited and trained. Now, this is the only work I do. Not a niche I selected. The answer to a question I asked myself after working with hundreds of clients on both the business side and the relational side.
The combination training I'd accumulated was turned out to be perfect for partnerships in conflict because they required all of it at once: clinical, organizational, mediation-grounded, and group-facilitation-trained. And five solid years actively facilitating Stanford's Interpersonal Dynamics program.
How I Work With Cofounders and Business Partners
I'm calm, I'm direct, and I don't take sides.
Diagnosis before advice.
Every engagement begins with a diagnostic phase, including individual meetings with each partner before we begin any joint work. Each partner has a different perspective on the partnership and the things they can’t yet say in front of the other are often the most important things I need to hear. Before I recommend anything, I need to understand what's generating the friction, not just how it manifests. The reactive patterns, structural gaps, and trust ruptures.
Holding both layers.
A therapist holds the relational layer. A business coach holds the structural layer. But, in reality, what looks like a communication problem is often a structural gap. What looks like a structural gap is often carrying relational weight. Treating one without the other is why so much well-meaning support doesn't create lasting change, because the friction often lives where the relational and the structural meet. In joint sessions, I hold both layers to get to the real root of the friction.
Structured sessions.
Sessions are structured, not open-ended conversations. Each one has a focus and produces something concrete: a shared understanding of a pattern, a specific repair agreement, a decision about how authority will work going forward, If you're looking for practical help, that is what this work was built to produce.
How My Partnership Approach is Different
Clear vision and communication
Most partnerships have had someone try to help who could see part of what's happening. Rarely does anyone see all of it at once: the pattern between you, the structure underneath it, and the parts each of you is most defensive. I can see the whole system faster than either partner can describe it, including what neither of you wants to say out loud, and I've learned how to name it with enough warmth that you can actually hear it instead of bracing against it.
This isn't a one-time read. Partnerships keep arriving at genuinely new edges as they grow. Rather than repair and done, it's repair, then build, then whatever the partnership runs into next.
The combination of disciplines.
My training and experience is interdisciplinary. I’ve had clinical training in individual and couples work as well as organizational and systems work. I have experience with mediation, group facilitation including Stanford Interpersonal Dynamics. Very few practitioners working with business partners in conflict are trained across all areas of relational practice. The combination is the whole point, because business partnerships in conflict require all of it, simultaneously.
Alignment matters.
The work only sticks when there is a good fit between practitioner and clients. I work with six to eight partnerships at a time, to ensure a capacity for deep engagement. I’ll be frank with you iIf I'm not the right resource for your situation, and I’ll refer you to a trusted colleague. I am not a good fit partnerships in active legal disputes or where one partner is unwilling to fully participate. But if you're not sure yet whether you're trying to continue or trying to end well, that I can hold.
What it isn't.
This is not couples therapy or clinical treatment. I draw on clinical and relational training when it helps, but in service of the working relationship: facilitated conversations, clear agreements, practical repair. Where clinical care is what's needed, such as severe mental health symptoms, active addiction, or immediate safety concerns, I'll connect you with the right support.
This is also not generic business coaching. This work focuses on the partnership, the dynamic between the people running it, and the decisions they need to make together.
What I Believe About Business Partner Conflict
Friction is information.
The partnership is showing you something it needs. Every recurring pattern of conflict is pointing at something that needs to be understood, addressed, or built. My job is to help partners read what the friction is showing instead of just muscling through it.
Recurring conflict is often structural.
The way the partnership is designed plays as much of a role as the partners running it. What feels like a personality clash is often a system operating mismatched with the partnership or business needs. The invisible operating conditions, unspoken rules, unresolved decisions, and unclear authority. These structural issues generate most of the friction and hold the leverage.
The partnership carries the mission.
When the partnership is stuck, the mission stalls. Energy that should go into building the business and leading the team goes into managing the dynamic instead.
I’m always willing to customize my approach to your needs and preferences, and I will always be looking to balance support with challenging you in order to get results.
What clients have said
"The workshop did an excellent job of putting my partner and I on the same page and getting us to discuss even uncomfortable topics in a safe environment."
— Glen, workshop participant
"It was helpful addressing issues which had not come up during our regular business meetings. We can now have more open and honest discussions regarding difficult topics."
— Alice, workshop participant
"When we met Sunny, we were at a critical point in our business. We doubled our productivity easily and went from a business with very few clients to a fifth-year business with huge growth every year. All of that is through our work with Sunny."
— Simone and Haley, former clients
"Sunny was simply phenomenal and I have worked with two other coaches who don't compare to her unique combination of business and relationship skill."
— Traci, former client
Training and Experience: Cofounder Coach & Partnership Counselor
Credentials
- Master's degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. Sonoma State University
- Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching. Center for Right Relationships.
- Mediation training. Northern California Mediation Center
- Five years of group facilitation and OD training and consulting with Community at Work
- Stanford GSB Interpersonal Dynamics facilitator
- Brainspotting practitioner, including Expansion Brainspotting
- Path to Powerful Partnerships, co-designed and facilitated at San Francisco business incubators from 2004
- 25+ years working across counseling, org. development, and partnership work across industries and partnership types
- Co-founded a nonprofit
- Served on large and complex boards
Location and format
San Francisco Bay Area. Remote sessions nationwide.
I am available for in-person work in the Bay Area, but most ongoing engagements happen remotely. In-person intensives are available in the Bay Area and Sonoma County for partnerships where an immersive format is the right move.
As Seen In: The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, The Globe and Mail, U.S. Bank Financial IQ, StartupJuncture.
If the friction in your partnership shows up more as decision drag, role confusion, or a sense that the business has outgrown how you work together, the architecture-focused work at SunnySabbini.com is the better fit. Same facilitator, different door. → SunnySabbini.com
A few fun facts about me
I’m an INT/FP on Myers Briggs (balance of thinking and feeling). My top Gallup strengths are Strategic, Connectedness, Achievement, Intellection, and Relator
I spend a lot of time at the coast, two or three times a week, partly as recreation and mostly as practice. And I particularly love the North Shore of Kauai. There's something about the scale of the ocean that helps me keep perspective when the work has been intense.
I love West Coast Swing dancing. Leading and following. Ideally stealing the lead or follow back and forth with my partner within the same dance.
Where to Start
Every partnership is at a different point. The right next step depends on where you actually are, not on what's cheapest.
Not sure what's driving the strain?
Start with the Partnership Friction Assessment. Free, about fifteen minutes, and it gives you a clearer read on what's actually going on before you decide what to do about it.
→ Take the Friction Assessment
Ready to see the pattern clearly, together, in one session?
The Cofounder and Partnership Reset is a half-day working session for 3–5 partnerships. You leave with a clear read on what's driving the strain and practices that hold up when things get charged.
$350 per partnership · half-day · run when filled. Both partners strongly recommended. You can attend alone.
→ Register for The Reset
Already know it's real, and want a rigorous outside read?
The Partnership Diagnostic is a structured process: instruments for each partner, individual sessions, and a written report with a specific recommendation.
→ Learn About the Diagnostic
Ready to build what's missing, or want ongoing support?
Partnership Coaching is the full engagement: diagnosis, repair, and redesign, worked through together over a defined stretch of time.
→ Explore Partnership Coaching
The goal is simple: to stop feeling like you're wrestling with an adversary and start working again as allies.
Not sure your partner is ready yet? Many people start here alone. Download "Your Partner Doesn't Know You're Here Yet" for language on opening the conversation without making it weird.
→ Get the Free Resource
If the friction in your partnership shows up more as decision drag, role confusion, or a sense that the business has outgrown how you work together, the architecture-focused work at SunnySabbini.com is the better fit. Same facilitator, different door.
→ SunnySabbini.com
Sunny Sabbini, M.A.
(415) 895-0786
San Francisco Bay Area
Connect with me