An off-the-cuff moment with James Starkey, Director at Black Lab. With the dog, Basil, in tow, James reflects on six years of working alongside co-founder Nick, without a single argument. In this episode, he explores the foundations of a healthy business partnership, from clearly defined roles to mutual respect and shared ambition, and why staying humble, open, and aligned can be the difference between friction and flow.
Video Transcript: 6 years and no arguments | How we’ve made it this far | Black Lab
Look, I’ve even got the dog with me. I’ve come outside again. It’s such a nice day, I thought I’d just come and create this next video whilst I was out and about.
So this one I’ve been desperately trying to do with Nick for the last couple of weeks, but we’ve just struggled to get time together. He’s now going on holiday tomorrow, so he’s panicking about getting all his work done. So anyway, I decided just to crack on and do it myself.
So what I want to talk about today was our six years Nick and I working together. Probably a few more in terms of the less formal arrangement prior to that, but in those six years, we’ve never actually fallen out or had a bad word with each other. And as with any relationship, it’s unusual for that.
And I’m sure there’s been plenty of times where we’ve annoyed each other or slightly disagreed, but I think I thought about this a little bit more and actually what’s kind of occurred to me is I think from the get-go, we set out the relationship in terms of very formally in how we split the business, in what our roles are. And with that nice and clear, I think what it really boiled down to then, that success of being able to not fall out and argue, probably as with any relationship, is really give and take. I think both of us are quite amenable, malleable people.
We’ll always listen to the other person’s perspective. I’m very conscious of not wanting to upset the apple cart or really cause a stir. So I’m certain there’ll be times where Nick has kind of just thought, I’ll just let that slide and we’ll do it that way.
And I’m sure there’s times where I’ve just been like, I’m not really that bothered or I’m not too fussed about how we do that, let’s just go with your way. And I think that’s been critical to us in how we’ve progressed the business. And obviously we’re still growing and I think there’s going to be harder times ahead as with any business and things we can’t foresee now.
But ultimately those moments, they’re challenging. I think if you come at it with the right attitude, thinking how can we work together to get through this? And I’m a believer I don’t have all the answers. I suspect Nick is the same.
It’s a shame he’s not here to actually talk about it. And on that point about not having all the answers, I think the other thing is, neither of us take the business personally. We’ve dealt over our time with a lot of business owners in this role and other roles, but they’ve often seen the money very much as their own.
And I think with Nick and I, we don’t see it as our own, we see it as the businesses. And we’re just there to do the right thing for the business. So we’re always, we’re not liberal with how we spend money by any stretch of the imagination, but we’re not afraid of investing or spending money, getting outside support or investing in specialist help.
I mentioned we have a mentor, but at the same time, we’re looking at actual CFOs, we’re looking at people to help us with ops, lots of things like that that I think a lot of people think, oh, well, we can do ourselves. And actually, if you boil down your time, you don’t have time to do it. I mean, the fact that we’ve struggled to get Nick out here to do a video, I think just says a lot.
And I would like to get him helping more. It does a lot to help run the business, but I’d like him to be able to do more and help me. But at the same time, our setup as it stands now doesn’t allow for that because we need him helping with delivery and leading that team, which he does a great job of.
But long term, we need to grow out his team to free him up. And I know that’s an ambition of his and mine, we both share. So I think if we can both be thinking about things and the strategic side of the business, we’ll do much better.
And I think coming back to that point of not taking it personally, not too seriously, again, we do take it seriously and we care. We’ve obviously got things to worry about to make sure we pay everyone every month and things like that. But being up for just having a go is ultimately what’s the worst that can happen.
We’re not going to take stupid risks, but you do have to take some sort of risk for some sort of reward and gain. And there’s been times where we’ve pushed things, and I think we’re going to at the moment when we’ve taken on a BD guy, a guy called Rob, we brought him in and he’s got a decent salary that we’ve got to make sure we cover every month. But that for me feels like it’s an investment to the future.
So I think we’re both very much aligned and we’re lucky maybe we found each other and we could have equally been very different people, even though we knew each other for a few years before working together that we might not have always quite seen so eye to eye. But it’s interesting. I really did want to get Nick’s perception on this, but at the same time, I thought it was a topic I wanted to cover as well and get a video out there.
So I’m interested if anybody has any thoughts about why they’ve worked together with business partners or colleagues. I do believe there’s a degree of luck to it, but I also think our personalities, I think we are, as I said earlier, meanable and malleable people that will not think we’ve always got the right answer our way or the highway. So quite a short one, but hopefully that was interesting, inciting to how we’ve managed to go six years without ever having an argument or disagreement or even strong words with each other.
Yeah, it’s a really healthy, enjoyable relationship that I have with Nick and hope he would echo the same. I’m sure he would if he was here. If he doesn’t, I will post another video allowing him to confirm how much of a pillock I am.
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