S3E11: How to Collaborate in Business with your Best Friend
Welcome to Women Rocking Business, where we are here to help you rock yourself, rock your life, and rock the world as a woman entrepreneur, because the world needs you and the time is now. I’m Sage Lavine, CEO, trainer, unretired camp counselor, and best-selling author of the Hay House book Women Rocking Business. We’ve had the honor of serving over a hundred thousand women entrepreneurs around the globe just like you, who are here to do more, be more, and have more by giving your gift to the planet.
Let’s do this. So I wanna take a moment to introduce you to my dear friend, Debra Artura, who’s a lead trainer at Women Rocking Business.
Sage Lavine
00:00:41
She’s been one of my very best friends for like 10 years. I wanna talk a little bit about collaboration and what’s possible when you open up your world to collaborating in all kinds of ways in your business. And I wanna share just a little bit about our journey and what it’s looked like to inspire you to open yourself up to collaboration. It doesn’t mean you have to go into business with all your friends. You can start a business. I have a business. Debra has a business, and we have ways of playing together. And it’s, I think enhanced in so many ways, both of our lives. So many ways, so many ways.
One of our values at Women Rocking Business is collaboration rather than competition. When you collaborate, it’s so much more fun, it opens up doors and it allows you to, I really believe build a business that you just love waking up to even more so that you don’t feel like it’s a chore.
Sage Lavine
00:01:30
You don’t feel like you’re doing it alone. And I guess we should just start by sharing. Like we’ve stood on stage and made millions of dollars together now. And it was not always that way. When we first met, like, we were kind of scraping by like, we were trying to figure out how to make it work. Like, “Where are the clients, right?” You were healing. You were doing body work and hands on energy work. And I was like trying to figure out my co consulting degree. And we hung out at a baby shower where I offended the heck out of you.
Debra Artura
00:02:00
This is deeply true. So my story is that baby showers are sacred. Baby showers are a place where you’re doing ceremony. Baby showers are about honoring the mother to be. And as I was looking around this room, Sage was working it! She was over there promoting herself like a champion, absolutely rocking at promoting herself. But I was definitely not a fan of the self-promotion happening at the baby shower.
Sage Lavine
00:02:26
I was talking about my free upcoming purposeful business workshop for women entrepreneurs over the, you know, organic punch bowl and gluten-free non GMO appetizers. You literally like held up like a wall, like a knife or a wand or something. There was like a ladle in your hand. And you were like, “I think maybe we should save the promotion for another time.” I took a breath. I was like, “Totally get it right. Like, I’m so sorry.” I was new to Santa Cruz. I was trying to make friends. And like, we didn’t even really get off on the right foot. I just wanna say that some of your biggest advocates and some of your biggest allies might be out there right now is people that you totally don’t even think you vibe with.
Sage Lavine
00:03:09
And one of the things I think you and I have done really well is just keep leaning in and learning from each other.
Debra Artura
00:03:15
And be honest. That’s the thing I really value about our collaboration is the consistent leaning into telling the truth and asking for what we need and talking about how we feel. And upleveling the quality really upleveling the quality of our relationship.
Sage Lavine
00:03:29
Totally. The other thing that I wanna invite you all into is that when you have someone you wanna collaborate with in your business, a friend, colleague… that like it’s okay to wear multiple hats in this new paradigm, in this new era. Like there are business coaches that will tell you, like, “Never hire your friends. Don’t do business with your family.”
I wholeheartedly disagree. I think that’s a reason to do business, to hang out with people you love and see what you might be able to create together because one plus one equals infinity. And I think it’s just about being skillful and being willing to grow and being honest when you need to clear the channel between you so that you can keep an incredible relationship and you can let down your guard with each other when you’re not working and something that is important for you to know about Debra and I’s relationship is Debra has a business.
Sage Lavine
00:04:19
I have a business. Debra’s a trainer on our stage and Debra is my spiritual counselor. I go to Debra and let down my guard and have those moments where I get held and I lose my shit and I cry and all the things. And you’ve gotta have somewhere that you go to let down your guard and we’ve been clear enough about our communication that we can wear all those different hats. I just wanna encourage all of you guys not to throw out the possibility of collaborating because you think it’s gonna mess up a friendship. It’s like, I think it’s the opposite.
Debra Artura
00:04:50
I was just gonna say over here, it feels like having all these different relationships has enhanced our relationship and it gives us something to grow. We’re growing each other. We’re growing thousands and thousands of women all over the world. Our relationship now has a texture of aliveness that it wouldn’t have if we were just friends.
Sage Lavine.
00:05:11
One hundred percent. We’re on a mission together. This is a purpose based friendship. And I, I really believe the planet is calling us into more purpose based relationships. In fact, my videographer and her partner are standing behind the camera right now. They’re in business together. They’re amazing and hot.
This is why we’re on the planet. So we can make magic together. We’re living at a time where the world is outta balance. People are suffering. People are struggling. Old systems are dying. Old systems are breaking down and people need the gifts that you have to offer. People need the healing. People need the mentorship. People need the guidance. People need the exact personal development work that you have likely been doing for years.
Sage Lavine
00:05:56
So you gotta get out from behind your computer. You gotta get out from behind whatever thoughts you might have that are holding you back and get into collaboration and get into relationships that are purpose driven. It’s like, it’s like the answer.
Debra Artura
00:06:09
And keep trusting yourself. Keep trusting yourself to stretch into ter territory that might feel new. Stretch into difficult conversations. Stretch into getting more resources, right? We keep leaning into resources to help us be better humans, better friends, better trainers, better CEOs.
Sage Lavine
00:06:30
We are not afraid to have the hard conversations. Any successful business is going to be built on several things. It’s gonna be built on your commitment to your message, your passion, your ability to take care of yourself, your ability to ask for the sale. And it’s going to be built on hard conversations. Any successful business is built on conversations that stretch you and any real relationship, including any relationship that’s close to you in your life or any relationship that’s close to you in your business. It’s not a real relationship until it’s been through some healthy level of conflict and it’s come out the other side.
Sage Lavine
00:07:10
And the definition of conflict doesn’t have to be something negative. Conflict is simply when two people are looking at something from a different perspective. And the truth is almost always what exists between those two people. And when there’s only one solution to something it’s probably not the right solution, right? You wanna be able to see things through other people’s eyes. And there’s one thing that I could say has supported Women Rocking Business to scale into the multi-millions quicker than most of the other training companies that I grew up with, and I say this with total humility, is I’ve continued to allow like life to kick my butt and to learn from it and to ask for advice from people I trust and to not think that I always have the right answer.
Sage Lavine
00:07:52
So I wanna just really encourage you right now to take a deep breath behind the camera, behind my voice, wherever you’re listening or watching this and give yourself that permission to not have to know how to do it. All right. Now, give yourself that permission to be able to make mistakes and clean it up. I mean, that’s the thing, cuz if we’re so afraid we’re gonna make a mistake. We’re never gonna be the leaders that we came here to be
Debra Artura
00:08:15
Truly and trusting yourself and each other to keep coming back into the, “Ooh, that didn’t feel good. Ooh. I feel like I need something else here. Oh, there’s something wanting to happen. I don’t know what it is.” Right? The vulnerability, right. That’s the thing that I would say for all of you is befriending vulnerability. It is vulnerable to be behind a camera it’s vulnerable to wanna be serving and not know exactly how. It’s vulnerable to wanna co-create with someone and not know exactly what that looks like and move into a conversation around like, “I wanna serve, but I don’t know what exactly my place is.”
Sage Lavine
00:08:47
I think we would both encourage you to date before you get married in business partnerships, just like in life partnerships… because you don’t totally know what it’s gonna feel like to be in collaboration with somebody. You might love them. For some reasons you love to go out drinking with them or you love to go walk in nature with them. But when you get into business that can bring up different things. So we highly recommend choosing a project, choosing like one single event you could lead together and, you know, set it up. So it’s a win-win. One of the great things about being in business for yourself and collaborating with other business owners is you can create win-wins where you refer to each other, but your entire worlds aren’t merged.
Sage Lavine
00:09:31
Can you feel the strength in that? You know, I send Debra clients, Debra sends us clients. Debra does train on the stage as Women Rocking Business has grown and it’s really kept things clean with us because we can set up ways of supporting each other. That aren’t always completely like in the same bed.
Debra Artura
00:09:50
Truly. That win-win principle is essential so that you can give yourself permission to do a trial with someone right, 30 days or one project. I love that you spoke to that because it’s so important to not avoid a relationship or a potential collaboration because you don’t know where it’s gonna go. If you lead with, “Hey, let’s do one project together and see how it goes.”
Sage Lavine
00:10:10
All right. So if this content is resonating, I’d like to invite you to consider attending our exclusive Women Rocking Business 3-day training, which you can attend virtually or at certain times of the year you can attend live.
This is a 3-day business building right of passage that thousands of women have attended from all over the world and used as a launch pad for their greatest entrepreneurial dream. Throughout the course of the three days, you’ll actually create your individualized launch plan to launch your business in the next 90 days and to grow it in a way that’s aligned with women’s values.
You’ll get our entire system for finding your clients online, so you can go out there and confidently enroll the perfect high paying clients, even if you’re just starting out. This is an experiential event where you’re actually interacting with the content all three days in small breakouts and meeting with our coaches. It’s amazing. You can get all of the details, the dates and grab your discounted VIP seat at womenrockingbusiness.com/rocksales/. And I can’t wait to see you there.
I’ll say one more thing. When you’re ready to move into that more intimate partnership where the two of you really are going to be working together. Ongoingly, what I highly recommend is that you take a few minutes to talk about how would one of us step out of this agreement respectfully when the time comes or if the time should come.
Sage Lavine
00:11:45
It’s a conversation a lot of people will avoid because we just wanna be all rainbows and butterflies and creative collaboration. Like “Ah, let’s just get into puppy pile and change the world together.” Right?
I think it’s really mature to just say here’s how one of us would step out. If we ever wanted to most of our team members here at Women, Rocking Business have given us an agreement that they’re super happy to provide like 60 or 90 days notice if they’re gonna step out, you know, we’re a small team, we’re supporting thousands of clients and we’re not the kind of team that could just replace somebody if they were gone in two weeks. So, you know, we’ve got some agreements that we’ve made to each other. And that really, I think creates a lot of safety for us to thrive within the collaboration.
Debra Artura
00:12:30
Yeah, truly. It feels important to know if I were gonna make a different choice, that I’m making a different choice with the big picture, with the mission and the purpose in mind. It’s why I think it’s so important that people have the baseline tools to have difficult conversations so that if a challenge came up here, it wasn’t the thing that blew us apart.
Sage Lavine
00:12:51
Right? And that’s where mature collaboration happens. It’s like when one whole person and one and another whole person come together and collaborate, like there’s all this surface area of connection and creativity and expansion and impact we can create. But if we have these holes and we have these blind spots and we try to come together, we kind of collapse into each other. Right? So that’s that place of interdependency, right? Not creating codependency, but not trying to be so independent that it’s like, I’ll just go do this all on my own. Right? Like creating that healthy interdependency. And I think that’s a growing edge for a lot of women.
Debra Artura
00:13:25
I was gonna say, that’s a very significant edge. I see that in many, many, many of our clients, right? Many women, not even just our clients, but we’ve not felt safe in the world. So part of the gift of the Women Rocking Business community and moving towards the idea of collaboration is putting one toe step in the water, right? Like one experiment at a time and finding that place where you get to as an adult, feel safe in relationship.
That collaboration creates the opportunity to keep feeling safer and safer. And my witnessing of our clients, what I’ve seen in our clients, is as they move towards collaboration and they start feeling safer playing with each other, they start feeling even safer in their businesses.
Debra Artura
00:14:08
They feel more confident making offers. They feel more confident in the whole arc of growing their business because it’s not so easy to do alone. It’s much more fun and easier when you’ve got people that you are playing with.
Sage Lavine
00:14:21
One hundred percent.
I just wanna say that the last five or six years of collaborating with you has been some of the best years of my life. And I don’t know if I’d be sitting here at the helm of this company without your alliance and your faith and your creativity and Debra, you know, to watch you and your amazing husband launch a couple’s coaching business and to know how skilled you are and how you coached me, me to find my incredible partner Drew that I waited for for 10 years to burn through so many layers of self doubt with you and to now get to be celebrating, you know, the four of us as, as two couples hang out and Drew called Steven up the other day to ask him for advice.
Sage Lavine
00:15:09
And I just had tears in my eyes of like, “This is what real relationship, and this is what real honesty and, and, and true intimacy can create in our lives.”
Just this feeling of meaning and true connection. Just thank you. I’m so grateful.
Debra Artura
00:15:29
It feels so good to hear all those words and to feel the truth of them. And to know that part of what’s also true here is the work I’m doing in the world was lifted up so significantly by watching you be you and learning from you that very first moment of witnessing your self-promotion and feeling so challenged by it was the very thing that I really needed to learn how to do and become. And it’s through really what I’ve learned from you that my business has gone from here to here. Right? I don’t know that I would’ve started coaching couples. If it hadn’t been for really learning what I learned from Women Rocking Business and the tools that we teach.
Debra Artura
00:16:12
So from the bottom of my heart, and on behalf of all the incredible couples that I’ve gotten to serve, that we’ve served, that will continue to serve in addition to all the beautiful souls that I serve. I just wanna say, thank you, thank you for your courage to keep leaning into this business. Thank you for your courage to keep letting the universe use you so beautifully and humbly and fully thank you for your willingness. Thank you for saying “yes.” Thank you for inviting me to come play with you so that we could have this incredible faceted relationship and serve thousands and thousands and thousands of women. [Sage Lavine: I love you so much.] I love you too.
Sage Lavine
00:16:54
Here’s to soulmate collaborations, here’s to business collaborations, here’s to not shying away from true connection, honesty and collaboration. As you go out and grow your business alongside people you love. Keep rocking it. Your clients are waiting. They’re not just waiting for someone like you. They’re actually waiting for you. Mwah!
You’ve been listening to Women Rocking Business. I’m Sage Lavine. The next step is to join our private Facebook group, The Women Rocking Business Sisterhood. Introduce yourself over there for the real and vulnerable conversation of what it really takes to launch and scale a business you love in that Sisterhood group. We have each other’s backs, each other’s sides and each other’s fronts. This is true collaboration. So go grab a seat in the Sisterhood because we can go so much further when we go together, you’ll find a link to the private Sisterhood group and to our upcoming events in the show notes.
And if you have a woman in your life, who’s growing a business or starting a business, please share this podcast with her so she can create her big dreams and take a moment to subscribe and rate and review the podcast, because at the end of the day, we go so much further when we go together. I’ll see you on the next show and don’t forget, your clients are waiting. They’re not just waiting for someone like you. They’re actually waiting for you.
