It is finished.

You’ve tried everything: you’ve taken inventory of the damage done and you’ve gone through the five steps as outlined on Life After Twitter: Reviving a Business Relationship in Social Media. You may have even gone one step further and entered formal mediation to try to resolve the issues between both parties. The patient on the table is dead, and you’re now harvesting the carcass for reusable organs.

Though I’m a “n00b” at Social Media, I have had both the privilege and the painful experience of seeing couples and businesses begin and end over my ten years as a nurse psychotherapist. Though I don’t know the details of your business, I know something of the hurt, fear, and recovery involved in making a decision to move on after sharing many hopes and dreams.

Humor me as I share with you a fictional tale. As I mentioned in my first article in this series, Death by Twitter, I went through the experience of ending a business relationship that turned sour quickly. Let’s now suppose that one outcome of the fallout was a decision to terminate my employment under someone who had become a friend to both of us. Let’s further suppose that just as I was feeling better for having moved on, I considered doing a Google search on the domain name, checking if anyone was infringing on the domain name and my trademark. Let’s suppose I didn’t know better, but I had heard that it was a good practice to do even with a dormant domain name laying around.

Continuing this fictional tale: what if I stumbled across both the domain name as part of a file name and the email address that we once used as our business together, even though he had made it clear to me that he found the name “too unprofessional to use” in an email? What if he had had diverted business through that Web site and email address that was rightly 50% mine, and had been doing so for months without your knowledge?

From this story, my parent’s computer business and learning center, and ten years of relationship counseling experience, I will share with you how to work towards clean closure when your business relationship has come to an end.

Ten Steps to Clean Closure (Patent Pending. Not.):

1. Write five brief statements addressing why you must end this business relationship. Each statement should be concise, free of emotional baggage or accusation, and indisputable from either business’ point of view. Make sure you “sit” with these reasons long enough to free yourself from over-reacting because of anger or retaliating for a perceived wrong.

2. Recognize that one or the both of you have already left the building. Face it, most of us would rather run away than face the responsibility of saying “no” or admitting failure. By the time most closure is done between two people, one or the other (or both) have left the relationship emotionally, physically (i.e. arriving late, calling in sick, extending vacations, procrastinating on deadlines), and mentally. You may have already considered another venture, another job, or even another business partner to replace your current one. Consider that the process is important on a mind, body, and spirit level, as well as a financial and relational one too.

3. Set up a face-to-face meeting with your business partner. Make sure the setting is a quiet, neutral place where you can be heard by each other, yet not overheard by any other employees. Make sure it is free of distractions and interruptions.

4. Share the brief statements from Step 1 without pause. Ask if any of the statements are unclear, need explanation, or fail to describe the observations of the other partner. If the other party disagrees, ask him/her to hold off from debating until acknowledgment of being heard is reached, but make a note of the specific points of disagreement.

After you have received that acknowledgement, ask the other party to create or amend the five brief statements about the end of the business relationship. If the party refuses, let them know they receive a written copy of your statements for their records.

5. Express gratitude for what you had, and express sorrow for what is being lost. At this point, you are beyond the point of negotiating, and you have reasoned your move all the way to the executioner’s block. Do not attempt to accomplish any of the elements of reviving a business relationship, such as the ones found in the article, Life After Twitter. If you do encounter an option you had not considered, request regrouping time, and end the current meeting. You were about to pull the plug for a reason. Take a time out to calmly and rationally think through the option before proceeding.

6. Acknowledge the need for a meeting to discuss the financial end of the business relationship at another time. You may not be able to discuss financial elements of a terminated business partnership in the same meeting. Instead, agree to create an agreement, or hire a mediator to assist both parties in doing so.

Don’t confuse emotion with money. Dr. Phil uses a phrase, “Solve emotional problems with emotional solutions; solve financial problems with financial solutions, and don’t mix the two.” When you feel your emotions taking over your decision-making process, don’t be afraid to ask for a time out; similarly, be sensitive to the needs of your business partner to do the same.

7. Revisit contracts as well as verbal agreements. By all means, comply with any written agreements, legal contracts, and financial obligations that were spelled out on paper. Neither of you needs to be embroiled in needless bickering nor lawsuits to receive what is legally yours or your business partner’s due.

Written contracts are, perhaps, the easy part. The hard part may be slogging through the things you said and the things your business partner said. There may be no documentation, no video, and no audio. There may only be your conscience. In Don Miguel Ruiz’s book, The Four Agreements, Ruiz begins with the most important point first: your word is your bond. You are nothing more — and nothing less — than your word. I often ask my clients, “When you get beyond the anger and the hurt, what can you live with? What allows you to sleep well at night, knowing you have done everything according to the only thing you have left to you — your word?”

I trust that you want to do the right thing — by yourself, and by your business partner. If you’ve left important verbal agreements unmet that you know you can complete, this would be the time to do it. Again, you may find your business partner following suit.

8. Decide if you want to leave the door open to future work together. As strange as this may sound, either the bottom line or a location in small community may bring the two parties to consider a collaboration in the future. Just because you can’t work together in a close business partnership does not mean you can’t scratch each other’s backs in a less intimate manner.

Of course, if your business partner is busy stealing office supplies, you might want to consider closing the relationship for good.

9. Draw up a plan for operations if you decide to become competitors. Competition doesn’t have to be a bad thing, unless it drives the price of your product so low that both of you lose (and only the consumer wins). Granted, if you did not sign a no-compete clause, you may have similar ideas for relaunches, or share patents or trademarks on unique ideas. If you didn’t sign a business version of a prenuptial agreement, you will need to have detailed legal discussions on how you proceed and what monies will be owed when one party takes over.

In some cases, both of you may have legal rights to develop similar products and services in the same 50-mile radius. Take time to consider your own uniqueness and value you will add to your business minus your partner.

10. Wish your business partner success. Why is this important after all that has occurred between you two? First, it underlines a basic belief that there is room enough in the world market for both of you. Second, it’s good karma. You are practicing what you are attracting. When you can wish your partner success, you won’t be choked by fear that you won’t achieve your own success with whatever it is you decide to do.

By letting go of your own bitterness, you are free to pursue your dreams, unencumbered by visions of revenge or self-righteousness if your former partner experiences difficulties. Of course, it’s always a little fun to see how your business partner moves on without you! For all that went wrong, there were reasons why you chose to work together for a time. When your partner achieves any kind of notable success, send a bottle of champagne and a note of congratulations.

Many of us live in a society where death is removed from the center of life. Because of this, there are many of us who have not experienced the ravages of illness, disease, or sudden death in a meaningful and conscientious way. Without that experience, closing relationships where there is no funeral is even that much more difficult. Closing a business relationship can be as painful as a romantic split, but with most endings, a period of evaluation, learning, and growth can follow. In the gap left behind, there is room for a new business partnership when the time is right. You can find my musings about this phase in my next post, “Twitter in Love.”

P.S. If you would like to know the ending to the fictional tale, email me offline and I’ll send you the rest of the tale (remember: this is a fictional tale). Some people might enjoy the surprise.

Bernice Imei Hsu, RN, MAC, LMHC is a nurse psychotherapist, yoga instructor, cat lover, dance enthusiast, audiophile, clean freak, occasional snowboarder, and globe trotter writing about her first 365-1/4 days as “the n00b” (today is Day #103). This is her third blog article for Lockergnome, and more of her writing can be found at www.hipsforhire.ning.com or @hipsforhire on Twitter. She lives with her cat and her BMW F650 motorbike in Seattle, WA.

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