By Frank Duran & Randall Marshall

 

Most mornings, I call my partner on the drive to work. We’ve been together for over 30 years. We know what the other one’s ordering for lunch. We finish each other’s sentences. Our spouses know. They’re ok with it.

We own an advertising agency together.

Every business conversation these days seems to revolve around AI, automation, growth hacks, doing more with less. Apparently, the future belongs to whoever figures out how to run a company with fewer people in it.

Maybe so. But after 30 years, we believe the secret is stubbornly analog: whether a company survives usually comes down to whether the people in it actually want to keep working together. Technology turns over every six months. Human nature has a lot fewer updates.

At K2MD, we’ve always believed that growth comes from creating more human connections. The connections between leaders and employees, between brands and customers, between business partners. Connections that are more authentic, more meaningful, more intentional.

The stronger the relationship, the stronger the business. Like a marriage, a partnership only grows if both people keep choosing, again and again, to protect the relationship instead of winning the argument. It’s what’s kept our doors open this long and kept clients around for decades.

You don’t find the right partner. You become one.
We didn’t set out to be business partners. We worked together for years before we owned the agency. Long enough to watch how the other one handled mistakes, impossible clients, the you-know-what-just-hit-the-fan moments. Trust didn’t happen overnight. It was built little by little in unremarkable ways. Then one day you look up and realize you’ve built something that’s outlasted succession plans, staff turnover, challenging clients, a couple of recessions, and a pandemic.

Don’t marry yourself.
People confuse being similar with being compatible. If two partners agree on everything, one of them is just emotional support. Some of our best decisions started with one of us saying, “I disagree.” We think differently. We have different strengths. Different ways of looking at problems. Sometimes different political views. What we do share are values. The important part isn’t agreeing on everything. It’s agreeing on what matters. The friction makes the strategy sharper and the creative better.

Fight like grown-ups.
We’ve disagreed plenty over the years. We rarely, if ever, fight. A few rules developed along the way, none of them written down: never argue in front of employees or clients. Actually listen instead of waiting to talk (this one is still challenging). Assume best intentions. Go after the problem, not each other. And never go to bed angry. Or at least don’t hit send on that email you drafted at 10pm.

Money is never really about money.
It’s about values. Every partnership has to make tough financial decisions. How much risk can we take on? Where to spend? When to hold back? Do we care more about square footage or payroll? Do we really need a taxidermized hula-dancing bear in the lobby? Those decisions aren’t really about dollars, they’re about priorities. We don’t agree on every line item, but we agree on what matters most.

The kids are watching.
Your employees notice everything. How the two of you treat each other, who gets the credit, who takes the blame, who stays level-headed when the client wants more revisions after signing off. You don’t build culture with an onboarding packet or birthday cupcakes in the break room. You build it on some random Tuesday when you’re up against a deadline, the internet dies, and your senior designer calls in sick. People see all of it. So do clients.

Stay excited about the future.
Companies go stale the same way marriages do. It gets comfortable. Predictable. Everyone’s busy. It’s not that people stop caring, they just stop being curious. And then one day “we’ve always done it this way” quietly becomes strategy. Set some lofty goals and actually map out how to get there. Take the weird idea seriously. Learn the new tool. The companies that last decades aren’t the ones that refuse to change or the ones chasing every trend. They’re the ones still excited by what’s possible.

Don’t forget to laugh.
As much as you can. We know advertising matters. We’ve helped organizations across dozens of industries reach a lot of people and change a lot of lives, and we take that seriously. We just don’t take ourselves that seriously.

But arguably the most important rule we’ve learned after a 30-year partnership?

One of you orders the fries. The other orders the onion rings.