FUZING YOUR AREA OF GENIUS: FINDING AND WORKING WITH A BUSINESS PARTNER

Learn how Brooke Curole Smith and Kelly Lanes successfully merged their agencies to create Fuze the Agency. Discover practical advice on finding business partners, navigating co-founding challenges, and building thriving partnerships.

Bio

Brooke Curole Smith and Kelly Lanes (she/her) are the founders of Fuze the Agency and the hosts of the Find Your Fuze podcast. They’re entrepreneurs, brand builders, and marketers who believe passion and mission should always be the main drivers in business. Through their agency and podcast, they help founders stop playing small and create brands that connect at every touchpoint- with strategy, creativity, and purpose.

TRANSCRIPT

Bethany: Welcome back to the show, everyone. Today I have two guests on because we are going to be talking about business partnerships. So I want to introduce you to Brooke Curole Smith and Kelly Lanes. Pronouns are she/her for both of these ladies. They are the founders of Fuze the Agency and the hosts of the Find Your Fuze podcast.

They’re entrepreneurs, brand builders, and marketers who believe passion and mission should always be the main drivers in business. Through their agency and podcasts, they help founders stop playing small and create brands that connect at every touch point with strategy, creativity, and purpose. Thank you so much, you two, for being on the show today.

Kelly: Thank you.

Brooke: Thank you for having us.

Bethany: So like I was saying, we’re going to be talking about business partnerships. You guys have built a thriving agency, which is so exciting by combining your areas of genius. You’ve navigated co-founding, which I think is so cool. Something I loved about what you had sent over is you guys are creating a culture where quote, I’m doing air quotes for those listening, “business unusual” isn’t just a catchphrase- it’s like how you drive your results for your clients and how you connect with your clients. So all that said, let’s talk about fusing your area of genius. Now, you know, I have that as the title, and working with a business partner. I want to just start by how did you first realize you might need or want a business partner? Either one of you like, what was the first moment that was crossing your mind.

Brooke: Yeah, so I can actually jump in here because, let’s bring this back to the end of 2023.

Kelly: It’s her fault, actually. It’s her fault, so we’re gonna let her answer it.

Brooke: Yeah, this is because of me. So let’s bring us back to like end of 2023. Actually, I’m going to bring it really quickly back to like 2020. Kelly and I met online on Clubhouse. We have a very Love Is Blind story with Clubhouse and we have very similar quitting corporate stories and our timelines were very similar. So when we met in Clubhouse back in 2020, we were both kind of at this place in corporate where like Kelly had just quit. I was about to quit and we were starting our own agencies, taking leaps and betting on ourselves.

And we kind of stayed friends throughout this entire process. So through, you know, 2021 all the way through when we finally fused last year, we were friends and we would constantly refer clients back and forth to one another because me being in the design world, there was always a need for marketing, you know, after beyond the project and Kelly being in the marketing world, there would be countless times that people would come to her and be like, but I also need branding before I can start onto this before, but I also need a site and she would refer them my way.

So, at the end of 2023, I remember I was talking to my husband and I was like, “I just want to be able to serve clients better and I want to be able to help people more beyond the project. But like I don’t want to be the one to have to do all of it.” Even though I do enjoy marketing, “I was like, I really love branding. My favorite thing is creating visual identities for people.” And I was like, “I just, I really want to grow my team and I really want to see what it looks like to have someone that could do marketing on my team.” Because at this point in my studio, I’d only ever had design assistance with me and that was lovely. But every time I thought about like, “Okay, who would I want? Kelly popped in my mind.” Like we had been so close in each other’s story throughout our entire entrepreneurial journeys and I was like, “well I want Kelly, but I was like I can’t afford Kelly.” Like which is the truth. 

She’s very good at her job. I could not afford to bring her on. And also, she wants to have her own business as much as I want to have my own business. So like, I know she’s not gonna want to be an employee. Like, I just knew that wasn’t gonna work. And I remember talking to my husband and I was talking to my husband and I was beating a dead horse trying to figure this out. And I also have always had this thought in my mind where I was like, “I know I want to grow the agency. I want to grow a team.” But if I’m completely blunt and honest with myself, it was very intimidating, not only just because yes, that’s a lot of work, but like the idea of managing an entire team on my own, I was like, “That’s a lot.” Like I am not a micromanager by trade. Like I am very much probably go on the other side in the sense of like, I’m a very problem or solution-oriented person. So I think I expect that of people a lot in some ways. So in my head I’m like, “I don’t want to have to tell you every detail of what you have to do. I kind of want you to be able to like, know”. And like that is so not the way you manage a team and I’m aware of that. So every time I thought about growing this agency, I was like, “God, like managing a whole team is also going to be a whole learning experience for me” and yada, yada, yada. Like I had managed in past like lives, but never in this way.

Again, beating a dead horse. The idea finally popped into my mind. I was like, “I wonder if Kelly would ever just like merge with me.” And I don’t think things through super long when I get excited. So I quite literally FaceTimed her that night. And I was like, “You’re going to want to sit for this.” 

Kelly: Literally, that is exactly what happened. I was literally in my kitchen, like it was around Thanksgiving and she’s like, “I need you to be sitting down” And we’re friends, so I was like, “oh my God, who died?”

Bethany: You’re thinking the worst.

Kelly: I was like, “Brooke, what?” And I was like, “Oh yes ma’am, I’m gonna go sit now.” And that is when she said, she was like, “So I know you really wanna expand your team and I know you love, my business was Caffeinated Marketing Company, I know you love that and you’re proud of that, but you’re also trying to, you know, get some designers and build your own team. What if we decided to just merge our businesses and then grow a bigger agency and a bigger team together?”

Brooke: And also just to note for anyone who obviously does not know this detail, we had just rebranded Kelly’s marketing company from Caffeine with Kelly to Caffeinated Marketing Company.

Kelly: Yeah, like just a month before.

Brooke: If a month- like the paint was still wet, and I’m pretty sure I said it as, “I know we just rebranded you, but what do you think about shutting down your business?” And I’ll shut down mine too. And she would look at me like I was nuts for like three seconds and then it like- went.

Kelly: And then literally we both just had that moment of like, “Why the heck haven’t we done this from the start? Like, of course this makes total sense. This is scary. When do you want to do this, Brooke”  And she’s like, “Immediately.”

Brooke: I was like I just thought about this like 30 seconds ago.

And so we had the really real moment of like, all right, obviously, if we’re going to do this, going into business together is way more serious than a FaceTime where we’re kind of joking about it. Like there are some legal logistics we need to figure out logistics of like, how do we want this to work? When do we want it to launch? Are we both going to be CEOs? Like how is ownership going to work? We don’t live near each other even a little bit. Like there was a lot to figure out. So we did have a serious conversation not long after. But that was that moment. Literally like a random day standing in my kitchen beating a dead horse with my husband trying to figure it out.

Bethany: And then Kelly, did you after that call and you’re like, yeah, why haven’t we done this? Like up to that point, had you been having these same circular thoughts or where were you at?

Kelly: Yeah, so mine wasn’t like a ‘I should find a partner.’ It was never like that to me, but it was like, “How the heck am I going to keep growing by myself?” Like really, I had just reached like a ceiling and I would call Brooke and she’d be the first person that I’d call and bitch about it to. And I’d like, “I don’t know what I’m doing here or like I need to grow, but I can’t.” And so she knew very, very well that we were in a similar place. Asking Brooke to merge was never even part of my thought process because I was like, “That’s a pipe dream basically.” And I just left that one over there. And then when she brought it up, I was like, “There’s literally no one in the world that I would rather partner with because we can serve so much better together.”

Bethany: Amazing and then okay, so this leads me to my next question- how- like you kind of knew each other already so you have a little bit of an advantage there- but when you started having that serious those serious conversations and you kind of outline your roles in the company, like I want to talk about your zone of genius, what’s overlapping? What’s not? Who’s gonna do what? Like one- what did you decide on for each of you and then how did you get there? Were there any little like, “No, I want to do that” kind of things? Because I feel like that would be a very common conversation.

Kelly: This is actually a really good question because in this call, when she called me in my kitchen and she was standing in her kitchen and this was a dream that we were talking about, we probably talked for what, for like three hours? 

Brooke: Yeah, it was a whole Facetime.

Kelly: Like what does this look like for this, okay, but like what about this? Okay, but like I just told my clients this. Are you gonna tell your clients? How does this work? And so we had those conversations right away.

And then we decided we need a lawyer immediately to make this legit. So we called a lawyer friend of ours and he drafted up all these papers. And so we have a huge operating agreement on this is 50/50. What does that look like? And we had to have those hard conversations of what does it look like if Brooke dies tomorrow? What does it look like if Kelly dies tomorrow? Like, what does it look like if Brooke goes on maternity leave? And I don’t have children. Right. So like, what does that look like? How does that work 50/50. Aside from, you know, Brooke does X in the business and Kelly does X in the business. We had to have those conversations right away. Like where are we putting money? How does that work? Is it a joint account? What does that look like? There were so many, so many things like that that I’m blessed that we sat down with the lawyer right away to really hammer out those details. Cause I never would have thought about that ever.

Brooke: Yeah, it popped up too because my dad’s actually a lawyer. So I remember telling my dad that I was going to merge my company, like my company. And he knows, like our families knew each other. I mean, our families don’t know each other. How weird. They’re going to have to meet one day. But like our families know of each other. We were friends for so long. So like my parents knew like, “Oh, my friend Kelly.”

So my dad’s a lawyer and his first thing was, when are you setting down and writing an operating agreement? When are you going to answer all of these questions? So we obviously did not use him because that would be biased. But he was very much like, I need you all to seriously, like all jokes aside, he did get on a handful of calls with both of us, even though he was not the official lawyer that like drafted anything for us. But he was like, “I need you all to pretend you hate each other. And I need you to answer these questions from that lens because he was like nine times out of 10 when an operating agreement is used in a business, it’s because the business is fizzling out and because it’s not fun. It’s not a good thing.” So it was really weird. And it made us sit down and think long and hard about all of those types of details. 

Kelly: And my dad is a CFO, so I called him and he’s like, let’s talk about the money. Cause he was doing all of the finances for my business. Because that’s something that even today, Brooke and I hire out to an amazing book. Because there’s zero way I would be doing it. And he was like, “All right, let’s have a real conversation. This is how much money you’re bringing in. How much is Brooke bringing in and how does that actually work together? How are you paying a team?” Blah, blah, blah. And I was like, “I don’t know.” And so bless our dads really because they were the ones that really put us in that catalyst of a different co-owner, co-foundership brainwave that we needed that was hard. 

Brooke: Yeah.

Kelly: That was hard. Yeah.

Bethany:  I want to hear a little more about the nitty gritty of the merging part, because like the operating agreement essential, those hard questions essential, but then my mind is going to how are you merging clients and how do you do it without losing them? And then how much are you bringing into this joint business together in terms of funds, like, you know, savings and things that you had and excess initially, like what was that like? Because I think that would be for anyone listening, be it like top fear, like losing clients, like clients not understanding, that sort of thing.

Kelly: Yeah, so when it comes to clients, right away Brooke and I made a pact basically where we were each going to tell our clients- like this is what’s happening, this is exciting, this is what you can either add on or not have, but this is what’s changing. I had a lot of clients on the marketing side of things that were on a retainer and so for me I’m like, “This is awesome like you’ll still be in a retainer with me but hey I’ll have a designer eye” and honestly half the time the clients that I already had had worked with Brooke in building their website or in building something graphically that was stunning that I just can’t- I’m not that good at. And so it was almost easy.

When we were together, we got together for the physical launch of the business, we each filmed the videos together for every single client to say, “Hey today’s the day- it’s officially happening. Hi I’m Kelly if you don’t know me and Hi I’m Brooke if you don’t know me. This is- we are fusing and moving on this is it.” So all of them we had calls with and talked to them about it separately-

Brooke: Previously.

Kelly: – and then on the day of the physical launch we went, “Here you go, clients, like you’ll be seeing our faces together now.” So I don’t think we lost any clients. I think we just made it very apparent of like, “This is a good idea.”

Bethany: Yeah, and how it will benefit them. I love that personal touch of the video. That’s so sweet. 

Brooke: And it was two different iterations of the video. So the ones we sent to my previous clients, it was very much like, “Hi guys, this is Kelly” and you know, yada yada. And then Kelly’s was the same but inverted. 

And I will say we had a discussion where we were just in agreement that any client that wasn’t to be on board with it, the contract would pretty much end at the end of their contract. Obviously and ethically, we weren’t going to just, you know, we’re not canceling someone’s contract in the middle of it. Like we will finish that through, but we knew from get that it would be far too complicated to have this merged business together but I still take clients here in this way through my old studio and Kelly did it because of this client- and we were like we’re just gonna go straight into it and like if someone is not on board then it’s not fitting in this new journey of life but we luckily didn’t have that issue at all, so yeah.

Kelly: No, no, we were really blessed. Like our clients are literally the best people. So we were really, really blessed all around. When it comes to monetarily though, I know you had asked that and how we did that. Brooke came to Seattle and we walked into Chase together. And we were like, “Hey, this is what we’re doing. This is a lump sum for me, a lump sum for her.” They were equal parts. They went into our account and then we got credit cards and all of that stuff. So that’s really what started it. And that was a whole moment. Cause we were like, “Who’s credit are we pulling?” We had to have this conversation. Yeah, so we have multiple accounts and so my credit was pulled on this one, her credit was pulled on another one, and so that’s really how we did that. And I know I hear the people listening that are like, “I don’t have a lump sum of money to put in the bank.” And honestly, Brooke and I didn’t either, but we made it work and we found it and really lived on that dream of this is going to be better for us, for our clients, for the community. And we made it work.

Bethany: Amazing. My gosh. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about zones of genius, areas of genius. I know that you guys kind of knew each other’s skills because you complimentarily handed clients back and forth. But I imagine once you’re in it, once you’ve done this nitty gritty foundational work that we talked about- now the day to day, there’s a lot of other areas of genius I feel like that aren’t just like “You’re really great at branding and you’re really great at marketing.” So tell me about some of those and like working through processes. How did you even define that when things came up? What did that look like for you guys?

Brooke: I wish I could say we had all of that perfectly listed out from get. I wish. 

Bethany: Oh no, I wasn’t expectating that. I wanna hear how that worked out. 

Brooke: I wish. The dirty reality. Yeah, no, I really do though, because every like operating agreement totally has like, “This is what we do”, you know, and that was easy in the sense of like, like you said, like I came in as the design half, Kelly came in as the marketing half. Pretty straightforward. Everything else, we have been figuring it out as we go and that is really the answer I think.

Throughout the process, we have figured out who’s better at what in regards to like, there are certain things that make Kelly’s skin crawl in business. There are certain things that make my skin crawl in business. And there was a phase where we kind of were both like, “No, we both need to know how to do everything in our business”, which I’m still not like 100% in disagreeance with because, okay, when the day comes that I do go on a maternity leave or Kelly does take a sabbatical or whatever it might be, we do need to be able to run our business with one of us being out seamlessly. 

However, we finally have this moment of like, I am better operationally in the sense of like my, I’m a Virgo and it shows in those things. Like when I’m in the middle of doing something, my mind always goes to ‘How can I make this an SOP? How can I make this a more well-oiled machine? And that way, one, everyone is doing it the exact same way every time and there’s no surprises’. Because I like things done certain way, and that doesn’t mean like we’re open to changing that way, but I am very much the person that likes to future cast in, “Okay right now it’s really easy for Kelly and I to just bounce things off of each other because we have a pretty small team. But when we have a team of five, we need to have some standard operating practices. So everyone is doing this the Fuze way.” And I would say my mind probably goes there before Kelly’s does. Kelly is very much like, “Let’s freaking go.” But…

Kelly: Yeah, my Scorpio comes out in that. I’ll just like make faithful action in every single piece. And I’m like, “Brooke, it got done!” And she’s like, “Did you go down the SOP?” And I’m like, “Where’d you put that again? I know it lives…” So…

Brooke: We balance each other so well in that because the Virgo in me is also a perfectionist and I will overthink something into the ground. So Kelly will eventually be like, “Brooke, we just got to do it.” And I’m like, “Um, but The SOP is not done.” So we balance each other well in that way. But I would say I take the operational stuff and this is newer. We only recently finally made this official like a handful of months ago. 

Kelly though is better with people management than I am. I love it. Like I want to be there. I’m obviously pumped for our team meeting every week. It feels so cool. But when it comes down to like the day to day check-ins and all of that kind of stuff, I’m down to be like, “Oh my God, hi, how are you? What’s up girl? What’s going on with your life?” Like creating a schedule and organizing the workflow and like doing everything else that goes with managing a team. Kelly is so good at that. And I’m so not. And that’s the truth.

Kelly: That makes me happy. I was like, she can write contracts all day. I will hang out with the team. Great.

Bethany: Amazing. Okay, and I love that you’re referencing your astrological signs because I was curious, like, did you run through the gamut of like Human Design, strengths finder, like all those things after you started working together just to find out, you know, kind of the background there?

Kelly: Yeah, the fun fact about that is Brooke and I have the same therapist. 

Bethany: Okay, what? Wait a minute.

Brooke: Yeah. We’re married in so many different ways. It’s not even funny.

Kelly: And this was way before we started the business together. We just had the same therapist. Like another friend of ours referred her.

Bethany: I need, oh my God, I need an interview with the therapist now because…

Brooke: Well honestly, we are trying to get her on our podcast!

Kelly: Yeah, she’s amazing, because she wants to go through like, she’s gonna go through enneagrams in detail about like what they are and then also like what ours are and how that makes us work and how it doesn’t. 

Bethany: Super cool.

Kelly: So fun fact, I mean, we are pretty deep in that because I like to know like, it is now September when we are recording this. It is Virgo season. Well, almost September it’s Virgo season. And I’m seeing random people in my life that are Virgos and random celebrities. And I’m like, “That’s so Brooke. This makes total sense.” And I’m sure the second Scorpio season flips over, she’ll be like, “Oh yeah, there’s Kel.” So…

Brooke: Yep. Human Design was another one for us too. 

Bethany: Okay, so you did all that before? Or you had done that with your therapist and then brought that to the table already?

Kelly: Yes.

Brooke: So our therapist is big on- I would say we had gotten into Human Design before Katie. Katie is the one that mentioned Enneagrams, which I still to this day don’t know quite as much about, but Katie is also very astrologically forward. She’s a cool therapist. She’s not a basic therapist. Like she’s like really into, she’s like this happy medium of woo-woo, but also like she is legally, like she has her master’s, doctors, whatever, all the things you need.

Kelly: She’s brilliant. Mm-hmm. Every way.

Bethany: She’s legitimate in all the ways. 

Brooke: Yeah, so she had kind of intro’d us to our strengths and weaknesses in those different areas beforehand. And we were already into Human Design separately before that. So yeah, it’s definitely come into business a lot.

Kelly: Yeah, like I’m a Projector.

Brooke: I’m a Mani-Gen.

Bethany: Okay, yeah, I’m a Mani-Gen too. I was curious about that. Also Capricorn, so I feel the earth sign. 

Kelly: See- there you go.

Bethany: A lot of overlap there. Okay, and then, so you kind of knew your skills at least a little bit and like able to work around that. Is there a time you can think of where you guys had to navigate a difficult client situation or something with like conflict that brought about a surprise or challenged you in some way as you have now worked together for a while?

Brooke: We’ve had many. Not joking, I would say the first, what, four, three months of business were going so freaking well. Like, Kel and I were looking at each other and we were like doing the math and like looking at everything, we’re like, “Oh my God, like we should have merged forever ago.” Like this is lovely and it feels so good to be supported. 

And then we went through a season where we were like, “What is happening? I feel like so many relationships are blowing up.” And this season, we can call the dark night of the soul or we can call- Kelly and I having to finally learn boundaries and understand what we are and are not willing to put up with when it comes to clients and business. And what’s so interesting is we both had these lessons in business before merging. I had had the hard client interactions where I’d said yes to everything because that’s what you do when you first start business before you realize no no, pickiness is your friend. 

And Kelly had too and we naively or at least I can speak for myself I naively thought that since we were not babies in business anymore, to that same degree at least. we wouldn’t have to relearn those lessons because we already learned them. And here is your public disclaimer that if you’ve owned your own business and then if you go into a business partnership those are two different enchiladas and you’re gonna have to learn all the same lessons over again and it’s so fun- but a lesson- so that was like a big hard lesson for us. The one moment in particular was there was a previous client of ours that we ended up firing on a phone call. We did it together but this was definitely a previous client that I had brought in from my solo business that Kelly had also worked with as well, but she had already kind of released, because she was always, this woman was toxic and that’s what I’ll say there. 

Bethany: Yeah.

Brooke: I hadn’t left that relationship as quickly just because, without saying too much, there was also, there was a lot layered there. So it’s someone that I had kind of just kept saying yes to even though like I knew in my gut that I shouldn’t but she would also refer a lot of people my way so I was always stuck in this weird place of like- ugh I know I need to cut this relationship but also It’s abundant in many ways and I like the people she sends my way, but so that’s kind of where I was stuck.

And we finally ran into this moment together where she had asked us to work on a project. And I knew that there was some stickiness from Kelly’s time working with her, from my time working with her, from Kelly and I had a moment together that we were working with her. But Kelly was like, “Nope, it’s fine. Like, it’s going to be great. Like, I’m an adult. She’s an adult. We’re all adults. Like, we can make a professional relationship happen.” And that did not go as smoothly as we expected- at all.

I don’t know what I even expected, but I would say that was a hard moment and sitting down and figuring out, all right, how are we going to fire someone for the first time? I’m not going to let anyone walk all over my business partner- like I’m a square up real quick. And Kelly would do the same for me and has done the same for me. So that- answering without getting away every detail that I should not say aloud, but I want to.

Kelly: Yeah, yeah, it jumped from “Okay, oh, she’s on our calendar. We can do this. We are professionals. It’s going to be fine.” And we’re on this call and about halfway through her personality switched and basically was degrading both of us on this call while wanting us to sign with her. And we both went, “No.”

Bethany: Oh my gosh…that’s so rough.

Kelly: Yeah. And we got off the call and we were like, A. We felt like on fire and then B. We started crying because we’re like that was freaking hard. 

Bethany: Yeah.

Kelly: That was really hard and we don’t deserve that. We don’t deserve that anymore. Period. Never did. Never will. And I will never forget that because it was the first, one of the first times as a business partner that I was like Brooke has my back no matter what. Because we could have taken the project and it would have been fine proverbially and we would have made money and it would have been okay. And that was the first call that we got off and we both realized money isn’t everything and we need to work with people feels so dang good because we don’t deserve anything less.

Bethany: Yeah, oh my gosh. Do you feel like it- I don’t know. I mean, I was just thinking, “God, I’d love to have someone in my corner when I have to fire a client or something.” Like do you feel like you were like, “Yeah, like we’re badasses by working together in that way.” Like you were, and I don’t know if this is true either, but maybe it amplified the poor treatment from someone else that you normally would like take. Then you’re like, “You’re not going to treat Kelly that way. You’re not going to treat Brooke that way.” 

Brooke: That.

Kelly: That’s exactly it. Yeah, because I could see it going either way because we, you know, I’ve done projects in the past with this human, so did Brooke, and Brooke would call me and be like, “So I just got off the phone with so-and-so and I signed again” and I’d be like, “What? Not my best friend? You didn’t do that.” And she’s like, “It’s fine.” And I had done the same thing. And so it was really powerful for us to be on the call together and going, “Absolutely not.”

Bethany: I love that.

Brooke: And what was a cool surprise in the moment too, and I will never forget, is it was cool to have, you know, that person in your corner. Like I knew, Kelly knew I was rooting for her and would defend her. And I knew the same. She would root for me and defend me. However, this specific experience was a client that I was the one that really needed to cut the energetic ties with more than she had. Kelly had already kind of fired her in a previous life or like their working relationship had ended. So for Kelly, for me, it was a bigger…

Kelly: No. It was a bigger no for Brooke. 

Brooke: In that call where we finally stood up for each other and ourselves and we’re just like, “No”- drawing a hard line, hard boundary in the sand. Cause this person wanted us to change our contract…

Bethany: Red flag.

Brooke: She was asking for things that were not reasonable, not even a little bit reasonable. And then when you would try to be like, “This is actually like an industry standard. Actually we charge less than what that would typically be.” She would be like, “But I know your industry better than you know.” Like it was just…it was a mess. It was a mess. 

Kelly stood up for me in those moments when it needed to happen. But for the most part, Kelly knew that I was the one that had to say those words and had to be like, “This is done.” So I felt her energy and she was like, we were slacking on the side. And she was like, “I’m gonna stay quiet, this is you.” And it felt so good to have someone kind of like, I’m gonna say tough love, but it really didn’t feel like tough love. Kelly was very much like, “No. I’m going to be here for you and I’m holding space on this call with you. But you have to do this. This has to be you.” Because if Kelly would have been the one to be like, “No, blank, you’re fired, you’re done.” Yes, it would have all been done, but it wouldn’t have been the same energetic tie, that cut that I needed. And so it felt really cool to be seen in that moment. Kelly knew what I needed for that relationship to have full closure. And she was there and held space for me on that call to do it. And the same has happened vice versa.

Bethany: Ugh, oh my gosh. That’s beautiful that that came through that way. That’s why I wanted to talk about the payoff of partnership because I was like there has to be so many pluses. I mean, that being a big obvious one. What about others like you’ve joined forces, you’ve had the ups and the downs. What are some other payoffs that you see directly in your business creatively? Like overall? Tell me about those.

Kelly: On a positive note, the wins are so much bigger. Like we will have dance parties together when we get a new client. We get to love on each other. Like, “Wow, they came to us because they saw something you created. Amazing.” The amount of referrals we get because someone’s like, “We saw that website that Brooke did.” And I’m like, “Yeah, you did!” That’s my business partner. She’s a badass. Like coolest thing ever. And then I get to love on them with what I do best. So the wins are so much bigger, which is such a blessing. Cause I would call her anyway. I’d be like, “I just got a new client!” and she’d celebrate with me. But when it’s your new client, it’s such a bigger deal. 

Something that’s really fun is every single client, we get to sit down and be like, “All right, let’s talk strategy together. How would you solve this problem? And how would you solve this problem?” And for me, that’s such a fun thing because I love talking strategy. I love being in it. But Brooke and I, when we had separate businesses, there were boundaries, right? Like we couldn’t have all those conversations. So now it’s so fun to be like, “All right, for an hour, we’re going to talk about this client and how they’re going to kick butt for this quarter.” And that’s such a fun thing to do even before we present to a client. It helps my creative brain click on differently when Brooke’s like, “But wait, but wait, but wait.” And I’m like, “yes, yes, yes, let’s go.”

Brooke: And vice versa.

Bethany: Yeah, I love it.

Brooke: It’s such a fun thing for our clients too, because now we always say like, “We’re coming at your project with a 360 POV.” Like we’re not, I’m not just looking at everything from a brand building perspective. And yes, like I do have like my, I have a minor in marketing. So it’s not like I’m completely lost on that material, but to have a marketer sitting with me as I am working through a brand strategy before designing. And then for Kelly to have a designer sitting with her as she’s working through like maybe an email marketing campaign or a social campaign thinking from like the brand POV of how to integrate that, like it has been incredible. So that has been like a huge perk of this partnership specifically and benefit to clients for sure and it’s been incredible. 

Another one I’ll add is peace of mind has been probably one of my favorite perks of partnership. And what I mean by that is I’m sure anyone who is a solopreneur can relate to the experience of never fully being able to clock off. And I’m not saying it’s still super duper easy to clock off as a partnership because like we still are so passionate about what we do and you know it’s your business so like you’re still obsessed with it and you think about it more than you should. But when I was a solopreneur there was no ‘I’m going on vacation for a week my business can keep going.’ Even when I had a design assistant.

Bethany: Hmm.

Brooke: Yes, she could work on a handful of projects, but I was very much an employee to my business as a solopreneur. Like I had not figured out yet how to make this something that I could like check out of. And don’t get me wrong, Kelly and I are definitely still in the thick of figuring out how to continue to make this more of something that we can both step away from at different times because we would love that. For example, I’m leaving on a family vacation in two days and I don’t have to bring my laptop. And that’s huge because like if there is a fire, knock on wood, this is not even real wood, but knock on wood, if there is a fire.

Kelly: Don’t do this! Don’t do this.

Bethany: Yeah. Put that out!

Brooke: It’s fine. Like, Kelly’s got it. And I know she’s got the, I know she’s got us. I know she’s got me. I know she’s got our team. I know she’s got our clients. And it feels so good to know like, everything’s literally fine. And, and same vice versa. Like if Kelly needs to be out, no biggie. I got, “Tell me what you need.” And that has been incredible.

Kelly: Yeah, I think not to be too emo about it, but it is really, really special to build something with the common dream mission vision with someone else. And it really like our why and why we do what we do is so grounded and so in the foundation of Fuze and why we serve the way that we do unusually.

Brooke: Yeah.

Kelly: Like literally with tears in eyes, like it is such a blessing to have a business partner that’s like, “Nope”- kind of checks me sometimes where I’m like, “No, we could do this quietly.” And she’s like, “Nope, that’s not why we do this” or whatever it is. 

Brooke: Vice versa.

Kelly: It’s really beautiful to have someone that’s like, “This is my mission too. Let’s fricken go.” So cool.

Bethany: Yeah, oh my gosh. I love it. I love it. Okay, I want to pivot a little bit from your story and experience to you guys giving advice to anyone listening. And I have like a series of questions to ask here because- et’s start at the beginning. Not everyone can necessarily become business partners with their best friends. And I think that’s actually a common piece of advice is to not go into business with family or friends, which is interesting.

Brooke: We’re correct.

Bethany: But I’d love to hear your advice for the solopreneur out there doing everything alone. But this partnership idea is like something they feel like they need for all the reasons you’ve said. But maybe they don’t have that business bestie or like, what would you say? Like where do they start?

Brooke: I want to add in one thing here just to your comment though. That is definitely great advice. Don’t go into business with your bestie. And something Kelly and I said since day one, the second, the second this business becomes something that is affecting our friendship, it’s done. And that has been something that we have like legitimate,  in the foundation of this business, we are friends first. And that’s why this works. And have we had to set boundaries on when we’re talking with a friend hat on versus when we’re talking as business partners? Yes. And like we have legitimately said, “Slack is for business, text is for personal.” Like we’ve set some boundaries there that we’re not perfect with, but we try.

Bethany: Yeah.

Brooke: But that was something that we kind of made a moment together with of like the second this becomes an issue in friendship, when, if- it’s an if because it hasn’t and I don’t believe that it will, because we put so much intention on it, then the business is done because nothing is more important than that friendship. And I honestly think that because we have that mindset on it, it won’t become an issue because we are very aware of like, “Okay. Friendship is first, business is second. How are we ensuring that we’re nurturing both of those relationships separately? It can’t be all business all the time because then we’re gonna lose that friendship that we had for one another that really started this.” So that it’s just something I wanted to add in based on your comment. 

Bethany: Yeah. I think people also the attachment to that comment is that you would either choose the business and the money over friendship or, you know, family more so just because of human nature. And so hearing you say like, “We already made a decision about this,” I think is huge because I think whether that’s you or not, because you could be listening and being like, “No, I’d probably choose the business.” And that’s fine. But you know, like, I think that that has to be something you consider.

Brooke: Yeah. 100%. You have to think about it. And we have had moments of like, “Hey, if anything’s too much, you say the word. But like this doesn’t have to.” But another thing I’ll share with anyone on that is again, it shouldn’t be an issue if you are people who communicate with each other. We joke all the time that we’re married. My husband jokes all the time that he has two wives because I’m on the phone with Kelly so dang much. Like he’ll walk in and be like, “Hey, babe, how are you?” And both of us are like, “Hi, honey!”

Kelly: Hi!

Brooke: Like we are in a partnership that is- that’s a marriage- it is really as legally binding as a marriage it feels like. So in the same way that you would work on a relationship in your marriage you have to work on a relationship in your partnership. And communication is key and Kelly and I have talked about communication, like ways that I need communication to feel most love and nurtured, and ways that Kelly needs communication to feel most love and nurtured. And like it does help that we share a therapist, I’m actually not even joking. so maybe that’s a life hack that we didn’t know, because it was an accident for this. But I think the question mark on who or what you would choose in that scenario becomes easier to answer if you treat the business partnership like you would treat a marriage relationship, because it is the same, a little different, obviously, but. 

Kelly: Yeah, communication and trust are probably the number one and number two things that you need in any partnership. It doesn’t matter if it’s a friend, a partner, someone in a relationship with you. Those things are crucial. And there have been many times when Brooke and I are in a hard conversation, whether it’s about finances, whether it’s about the team, whether it’s about a client, whether it’s about a project, they’re going well or whatever. And she needs to feel loved in certain ways, by certain words, by how I present information and likewise back to me, like Brooke said. And if we didn’t have that, I could see it going really, really, really poorly, really fast. Because as business partners, you have to have these hard conversations almost every day. You have to, to move forward and to get to that next level, to take that big leap, you know, like we like to say, we’re reading that book right now.

Bethany: Yeah.

Kelly: And if really if I didn’t trust her that even when it’s hard things that we’re talking about that it’s that’s coming with love and empathy and support first, we wouldn’t be business partners. Period.

Brooke: 100%. Yeah. 

Bethany: Yeah, that’s huge. I think that’s like such a good self-reflector too for like my question for the people who are thinking about it or curious like if you are challenged having difficult conversations in your relationships or in with clients like think about that twofold inside a partnership and how that you know maybe it’s not the time or that’s work done in therapy or whatever it is before jumping right in. 

Brooke: To answer your question though, because I know I definitely seguayed us and I apologize. 

Bethany: Oh no, that’s okay.

Brooke: Where to start, it was trying to figure out if you are someone who would want a partnership or not. So for me, I can speak for myself. I did not wake up one day and go, “I dreamed to have a business partner.” But what I found in reflection, like, because obviously you all have heard the story about how this came to be. It was me trying to figure out because I wanted to expand and then me being like, “I would love to hire someone for my team.” You’ve heard that already. In hindsight and in reflection, I have always been the entrepreneur and human who loves collaborating. I would love to partner with different people on like launching different offers or partner for ideating different things.

I have always been someone who loves connecting with other humans. I am an extrovert through and through and I love collaboration and I love partnering. Now, in these previous iterations, like at one point I had a podcast with a friend and that podcast is not here anymore, but like that was just another example of something that I started with someone. And none of them stuck previously, which is fine, because also it takes a second to see what’s going to feel good and none of them were ever starting a business with anyone. But I’ve always been someone in hindsight who I realized was always seeking partnership. And it just took me a minute to realize that that could be in a bigger way. So I think kind of sit down with yourself and ask yourself, ‘Hey, am I the person that enjoys solo projects? Was I the kid in projects in high school who would do the entire thing and leave everyone else out of it? Or was I the person that enjoyed collaboration and enjoyed conversation and enjoyed partnership?’ Because if you were the latter, then maybe you are the kind of person who would prefer this over solo entrepreneurship.

Bethany: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah. That’s a good one. I love that.

Kelly: I think there are lots of ways to find a partner too, if you’re like, “I don’t have a biz bestie, but like, I feel like there’s a piece of me missing,” or “I feel like someone else could support in a new way.” There’s a lot of ways, like you could get silent partners that are there basically as mentors that can fund part of your business, but also maybe you have weekly calls with them. I have a friend who I call a mentor, he gives zero money into my business, but he has had a very, very, very successful partnership for about 40 years.

And so for me, I could call him at any time during the day and be like, this is the problem. And he will answer me right away and get into it and be like, “Oh yeah, back in 1985, we had that same problem and this is how we did it.” So there are ways, like go to networking events. Maybe you’re also a marketer like me and you don’t have every single skill. Maybe you find someone who’s an SEO expert, like someone that can do what you can do, but with an extra twist. That’s really what Brooke and I did. We went, “You’re the best in the industry in my eyes. You’re the best in the industry in my eyes. I want to partner with you.” And we were friends, like that was just a hidden blessing. But really Brooke was that person that I’m like, “You will take my business to the next level and vice versa.”

Bethany: Hmm, amazing. My gosh. I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing those nuggets, because I think this conversation is not one I hear played out too often. It’s like, just assumed that everything’s going well. And so I appreciate you guys being like honest about the ups and downs and formation, too, since it’s such a different process than doing it all on your own. It’s wild. But thank you. 

So I want to end by having you guys share where can people find you and connect with you? Both your podcasts and your agency.

Brooke: So please come find us! You can find us on Instagram. Our agency is @Fuzetheagency. And then my personal brand in all places is Brooke Curole Smith. The spelling will be in the show notes, I’m sure. Yeah.

Bethany: Yes, yeah, I was like, I’ll link it below.

Kelly: Yes, and if you loved hearing us yap on this podcast, Bethany will be on ours shortly and that is the Find Your Fuze podcast. And you can also find me on Instagram at most places @thekellylanes. 

Bethany: Amazing. Thank you guys. Thank you for being so transparent and sharing your energy today. 

Kelly: Thank you for the opportunity.

Brooke: Thank you.