Partners since childhood - FT.com Keeping mum: Ben, left, and Oliver Black come from an entrepreneurial family of four brothers that has a rule about not trying to advise each other on business The special relationship bet­ween siblings has sustained many famous partnerships, from chocolatiers Richard and George Cadbury in the Victorian era to serial technology company founders Oliver, Marc and Alexander Samwer in the 21st century. In other cases, siblings have played the role of saviour, such as Donatella and Santo Versace, who stepped in to run the Italian fashion label after the murder of their brother, and company founder, Gianni in 1997. However, sibling disputes are also as old as Cain and Abel's fatal falling out in the Old Testament and the words "sibling" and "rivalry" are regularly conjoined. Moreover, as Jonathan Ortmans at the Kauffman Foundation, which researches entrepreneurship, notes there is less of a stigma nowadays about changing the core team of a start-up. This militates against siblings, he says, because the backers usually want to bring in non-family members. So, why do they set up together, and how do they resolve tensions? For the past decade, Ben and Oliver Black have jointly run My Family Care, which provides childcare services to big companies such as Shell, IBM and Santander as well as operating a nanny agency called Tinies. Turnover was £5.5m last year and will pass £6m in 2013, says Ben Black. Oliver left a job at Procter & Gamble to acquire Tinies in 2000 in the expectation that childcare would become a big growth sector in the UK. Ben joined later, quitting his job as a lawyer. Although the partnership works, they say, they admit to tensions. "He can't spell and it drives me nuts," Ben says. Oliver shoots back that applying the standards of a legal document to all communications is equally irritating. There will be a draft going to someone very important and Ben is more interested if there is an apostrophe in the right place. The Black brothers have two other brothers, who have also started their own businesses - but not in partnership. They are all the sons of an entrepreneur: their father and uncle ran Peter Black, a slipper manufacturer that was sold to Li & Fung of Hong Kong in 2007. Although Ben and Oliver say all four siblings are close, they add that there is a family rule that none of them offers advice on another brother's venture. "Everyone is supersensitive about their own company," Oliver says. He adds that while he sometimes bears a grudge, this has never been the case with Ben: "We will fall out and back in with each other remarkably quickly." Ben says: "We have had quite a few huge run-ins. But you can afford to be ruder with your brother. In the early days, when the business was still lossmaking, they sought outside professional advice on strategic challenges - it took a mentor to help them decide to shut lossmaking branches of Tinies and start supplying childcare professionals to nurseries. Ben admits that the board sometimes has to act as marriage guidance counsellors to them but such support mechanisms are needed less now the business is profitable and growing. "It is easier to love your brother when everything is going well," he says. There were low points such as when a deal to buy a business from Bupa fell through because Ollie was doing his hard-man haggling. I was not happy. The good and the bad: what they say about each other ●My Family Care: Oliver Black on Ben Pros: "When Ben says something, he expects everyone else to get it . . . which is brilliant for cutting through a lot of the [rubbish]." Cons: "As his brother, I sometimes feel I have to make sure everyone else is on board, not just me." Ben Black on Oliver: Pros: "I absolutely trust his commercial judgment." Cons: "We can be pretty brutal with one another in an argument . . . We have frightened some people during meetings when we have done this. ●Get Smarter: Sam Paddock (pictured) on Rob Pros: "I don't need to second-guess Rob. There is an efficiency to the fact that you can understand each other. Cons: "There is this younger brother/older brother dynamic. For me to see my younger brother being seen as my equal, and in some situations my superior, was difficult to deal with at first. Rob Paddock on his brother Sam Pros: "We are both young bullish men and want our moment in the limelight." Cons: "That could be a problem!" ●Moneypenny Rachel Clacher (pictured) on Ed Reeves Pros: "Ed knows that there are times when he has to listen to me because I am his older sister." Cons: "Both my brothers are very competitive. I would rather stay out of that. Ed Reeves on Rachel Pros: "She is more tolerant of my idiosyncrasies than, say, Thomas [their brother]." Cons: "If Rachel had a broader understanding of the technical aspects of the business that would help" Sam Paddock founded Get Smarter, an online education business, seven years ago in Cape Town, in his native South Africa. Two years later the 31-year-old brought in his brother Rob, and they now share the managing director role. Although they played together in squash tournaments as youngsters, the brothers had never worked together before. Rob was closer to their sister Jen, but then the brothers discovered they shared an interest in entrepreneurship. "It was a no-brainer," Sam says. I could certainly never have become a joint managing director with anyone else. The reason for sharing the role, he says, is that "we wanted to get to a position where we were both responsible for the business." Get Smarter has turnover of R32m. The Paddock brothers talk about the strength of sibling trust and the advantage of not having to explain their motivations to each other when they face making a strategic decision. Like the Black brothers, they also seek outside support. But in their case it is in the form of regular visits every couple of months to a psychologist who specialises in family and professional relationship counselling. "It is just the two of us talking to the psychologist about what we do," Sam says. It is a way of being proactive about the relationship, getting us to have a conversation about the nitty-gritty stuff before we get into a situation where one of us feels he is not being given his fair due. Sessions with the psychotherapist yield certain psychological tools to help them control their emotions while running the business, Sam adds. "The simplest one she has given us, but by far the most effective, is that when we are in the heat of a discussion we have the ability to step back and say "is this right for the business?"" Ed Reeves says he always expected to go into business at some point with his sister, Rachel Clacher. The trigger for them getting together was when he needed someone to step in for him at short notice to deal with a client at his last business, when he was already on holiday. "I rang Rachel and said "you have got to get there." She understood the importance of the business to me, was close by and was able to resolve the problem. She had already been taking a sisterly loyal interest in how the business operated. Not only did this episode underline the value of working with his sister, but it gave Mr Reeves the inspiration for the business they then set up together, an outsourced PA service called Moneypenny. The business now employs 300 people and has a turnover of £12m. The sibling relationship works because they can discuss strategies without raising their voices, he says. "We have never fallen out because we defer to each other in that person's area of expertise," Mr Reeves says. "As his big sister I can remind him when he has overlooked the detail and know he will listen to me," Ms Clacher adds. There is a third sibling in the family, Thomas, who Mr Reeves and Ms Clacher gifted a 5 per cent shareholding on the understanding that he mediates if there ever is a dispute in which they cannot agree. So far, he has not had to step in to earn his money.