Field Notes: Building a Boat to Sail Away

When a Partner Pulls Away

Most of my cases start with the same question: “Are we being paranoid, or is something really going on?”

A husband-and-wife team reached out to me about their family business. They’d built it from scratch over the last ten years, and it was doing well enough that they could breathe a little easier. The problem was their third partner. He had started pulling away. Late to meetings, vague about schedules, distracted when he was there. He used to be the first one to pick up the phone, now he was the hardest to track down.

They suspected he was making plans of his own. Maybe launching a competing company. Maybe trying to peel off their best employees or undercut their contracts. They didn’t know, and the not knowing was eating them alive.

From Suspicion to Proof

When I came in, I wasn’t there to play corporate therapist. My job was to figure out if their suspicion was rooted in fact or fear, and to give them something they couldn’t get on their own: proof and a plan.

The first step was to follow the money. I checked the state’s corporate filings, business license applications, and domain registrations. It didn’t take long before a new LLC popped up under his name, filed just a month earlier. Different branding, but the same industry, same service area. Strike one.

Strikes Two and Three

Next, I watched his movements. Not cloak-and-dagger, just practical surveillance and pattern analysis. Where he was going, who he was meeting. Sure enough, he was sitting down with one of the couple’s biggest clients at a café on the east side of town. They talked for an hour, shook hands, and left in separate cars. Strike two.

Then came the digital footprint. People are surprisingly careless online, especially when they’re excited about their “next big thing.” A quick sweep turned up a private Instagram account tied to his new company name. Only a handful of posts, but one of them showed a branded mock-up on his laptop screen. Strike three.

Why They Needed Me

By the time I sat down with the couple, I had a clear picture. Their partner wasn’t just drifting, he was already building the boat to sail away in.

And here’s the thing: without help, they never would have gotten there. If they had confronted him armed only with suspicion, it could have blown up fast. Denial, counter-accusations, maybe even a lawsuit. Instead, they had documentation, timelines, observations, and context. That’s the difference between paranoia and proof.

I didn’t just hand them a file and walk away. I walked them through what it meant and how to get ahead of it. Lock down contracts. Secure client data. Have conversations with key employees before he did. In other words, take control before the story got written for them.

The Business Divorce

The truth is, business divorces are often messier than the personal kind. At least in a marriage, you expect emotions to play a part. In business, betrayal hits differently. It’s not just about the money, it’s about trust.

The Lesson

In the end, the couple moved forward without him. He launched his new company, but without their client base or reputation, it didn’t get far.

The lesson? Don’t wait until suspicion turns into a crisis. When something feels off, get it checked. Because in business, knowing sooner rather than later isn’t just peace of mind, it’s protection.