Partnership Counseling for Cofounders and Business Partners in Conflict
Navigate tensions and Improve the collaboration and communication in your business partnership
Business Partner Coaching for Recurring Conflict and Trust Strain
This is for partnerships still working at it, whether that means finding a way to keep building together or finding a way to end well. Both are situations this work can hold. What it requires is two partners still willing to look at their own part in what's happening, not just their partner's.
This includes partnerships in direct, ongoing conflict. Partnerships with competing visions for where the business is going. Partners carrying more than their share, for longer than makes sense. Situations where accountability or trust has eroded. If the partnership is draining more than it's building, this is built for that.
Built for Business Partners Who Are Still In It
Business Partner Coaching is ongoing, private work for partnerships ready to do something real about recurring conflict or trust that's taken a hit. Every engagement starts the same way: with the Partnership Diagnostic. Before anything gets recommended, you'll know exactly what's driving the friction, at what level, and what it will actually take to address it.
How Business Partner Coaching Starts: The Diagnostic
Every Coaching engagement begins with the Partnership Diagnostic. It's the same instrument and the same price whether you complete it on its own or as the start of Coaching. The fee doesn't roll over or get credited toward ongoing Coaching.
The one exception is the Partnership Operating System build, a group-format program, where the Diagnostic fee is creditable toward it. Coaching is individual work; crediting the fee there would cost real time and income on a one-to-one engagement. The build is structured as a group, so the same credit doesn't carry the same cost.
From there, Coaching is scoped from what the Diagnostic actually reveals. Some partnerships need repair before anything else. Some need structural clarity. Most need some combination, in a specific order. Coaching is priced and shaped once that's clear, not before.
What Comes After the Diagnostic
What Comes After the Diagnostic
Repair work.
For trust that's taken a hit and hasn't fully healed. The misunderstanding that was moved on from but not resolved. The agreement that was broken. The conversation that left residue neither partner has named. Repair is different from moving on. Real repair produces something moving on never does: a partnership that's stronger in ways that hold under pressure.
Communication practices.
Not communication training. The structures that let partners address things earlier, slow escalation, and have the honest conversation instead of the circular one. A Partnership Meeting that catches issues before they compound. A Repair Protocol that turns rupture into reset. A Debrief practice that makes difficulty productive instead of just costly.
Structural clarity where needed.
Where unclear roles, unassigned decisions, or missing agreements are amplifying relational friction, those gaps get made explicit. The aim is practical clarity, the kind that removes a significant daily friction load.
Ongoing advisory.
Partnerships don't stop needing attention once the immediate friction resolves. New conditions keep arriving as the business grows, and each one surfaces something the partnership hasn't built yet. For partnerships that want an advisor alongside them for that, not just the initial repair.
Is This the Right Fit?
● Frustrated, not terrified. This is wearing on you, but it isn't a crisis.
● You can hear hard things without shutting down or needing to defend immediately.
● You're willing to look at your own contribution, not just your partner's.
● You want depth and frameworks, not just a place to vent.
● You'd rather address this now than wait for it to get worse.
Who My Cofounder Coaching Isn't For
This work isn't for partnerships looking for someone to take a side. Both of you will be asked to look at your own contribution before you look at your partner's. If that sounds intolerable, this isn't the right place.
This isn't the right fit if either partner is already in active legal dispute, has already decided to leave and is primarily building a case, or isn't willing to look at their own contribution at all.
If that's where things stand, I'll tell you directly, and point you somewhere more useful.
Ready to See if This Is a Fit?
If what's above sounds like your situation, the next step is a short pre-qualification questionnaire, not a consultation booking. It tells me enough to know whether this is the right fit before either of us spends time on a call.
→ Start the Pre-Qualification Questionnaire
If it looks like a match from there, we'll schedule a real conversation.
Sunny Sabbini, M.A.
(415) 895-0786
San Francisco Bay Area
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