About us

STRENGTHENING YOUR BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP IS MY CALLING AND PASSION

Before I created Strengthening Business Partnerships, business owners often shared with me…

  • They don’t trust each other to get things done.
  • They don’t have a clear process in place for who’s responsible for what.
  • Partners complain about problems without offering solutions.
  • When they have a conflict they can’t resolve it, and it sits and aggravates them.
  • They don’t communicate.
  • They get paid the same but have different and unequal skills, and the partners with more skills end up doing all the work.

These themes kept coming up over and over and started me thinking about how I could help owners avoid these issues in the first place.

What really prompted me to create Strengthening Business Partnerships is my own personal experience.  I was the general counsel of a company, let’s call it Consult Corp, in which I had a stake.  After a long sales cycle, we landed our first client, let’s call it Square One.  Part of the deal was that Square One gave Consult Corp upfront equity so that Consult Corp became a co-owner of the business.  It was a promising, disruptive startup that had two primary owners.  Jack was the creative partner whose idea formed the basis of the business.  Barry’s business and finance expertise was the other half of the equation.  Both Jack and Barry had committed themselves fully to getting Square One off the ground. At that time, neither one had other business ventures.  Six months into the project, the business was not generating enough income for Barry’s needs, so he landed a CFO position in the private sector.  Although Barry assured everyone that he was still committed to doing his fair share at night and on weekends to help Jack, the next several months proved otherwise.  Barry, in the throes of a new executive role, was unable (and, at times, unwilling) to pull his weight.

Jack, now doing 90% of the workload between them and not enjoying the benefits of a full-time paid position, was growing weary of the unfair situation.  And so were we.  Jack and Barry were constantly asking ConsultCorp to do things outside the scope of our engagement without compensation.  SquareOne was a stalled car on the train tracks with a locomotive barreling towards it.  And the collision was ugly.  Jack unceremoniously announced by email that he was “quitting” because he no longer could do all the work necessary to keep the company afloat without Barry’s help.  This led to a destruction of Barry and Jack’s friendship, and a fallout with their investors who were friends and family.  That was the end of SquareOne and my first personal realization of why strong business partner relationships are vital to the success of a business.

My Story

Rocco Luisi is a #1 Bestselling Author, Speaker, Law Firm Partner, Chief Legal Officer, Board Member and Elected Councilman.

For over twenty years, Rocco has successfully worked with family businesses and other private companies.  After helping owners mediate and litigate internal business disputes, Rocco realized that they all shared common issues that were causing the disputes.  Rocco understood that he could help companies be more successful and avoid disputes, mediation and litigation entirely by improving relationships between owners through tailor-made solutions based upon trust, communication and fairness.  Rocco turned this idea into reality by inventing and launching Strengthening Business Partnerships as a new legal and business practice area.

Rocco is a partner in a New York City-based law firm with offices nationwide. He is also the Chief Legal Officer and a Board Member of Integral Board Group, LLC, a Board Service Provider, and has served on other Boards. In addition, Rocco has been elected multiple times as a Councilman in North Haledon, New Jersey where he lives with his wife Nicole and two sons, Luca and Andrew.