About Hardy Hasenfuss

I learned from experience.

I’ve been where you are now. I’ve walked in your shoes multiple times, and I’ve experienced the pain as well as the joy of partnering.

Just like you, I’m a work in progress. It inspires me to keep learning, doing, and growing, any way possible. I teach continuously as well, because sometimes we learn the most by teaching.

So what does this mean for you? When I serve as your executive business coach and consultant, you benefit from my on-going experience, study, and training.

An early passion for business.

I have always loved business: big and small, high tech and low tech.

My business adventures began in banking when I was age 16. I graduated to management positions at Citibank and State Street Bank before taking on financial management positions as International Treasurer and Corporate Treasurer of the Sheraton Hotel Corporation.

At heart I was always an entrepreneur, which led to my first partnership venture at age 40.

A common scenario.

One of my early business partnerships seemed to be a perfect match. He was a brilliant PHD physicist with a track record in industry: seeking a business partner with management and financial expertise. I was a successful business executive with a strong financial background in a large corporation: seeking a tech guy with product and engineering/ manufacturing experience.

We had a lot in common, but we didn’t know each other very well. We also lacked the skills to face challenges together. It’s a typical scenario for many partnerships, and that is why they often only last a few years.

In this case, our lack of communication skills led to a breakdown of trust, which eventually broke the relationship. We were still good people, but we reached a point where we needed to part company.

The rest of the story.

Over the next decade, I had four more business partnerships. With each one, I attributed our eventual downfall to the other person’s faults.

With the benefit of hindsight, I know I wasn’t ready to fully contribute to those partnerships, because of:

Little self-awareness
Little generosity in my heart and mind
A lack of trust in myself and others
A lack of good skills for open listening
Perfectionist tendencies – combined with an unforgiving heart
An unwillingness to understand my partner and where he was coming from
Little experience listening to my inner wisdom and acting on intuition
Making decisions based on fear

After these experiences, I was determined to figure out how good partnerships thrive, and I’ve pursued this line of knowledge ever since.

Be the change you want to see.

Coaching executives for over 15 years has taught me practical ways to facilitate active collaboration and communicating – helping partners learn to work with, rather than against, each other.

Today, I’m the business coach and consultant that my earlier self needed. Someone who:

Holds a mirror up to both business partners
Asks the critical questions we never asked ourselves or each other
Shows how to make differences in personality work for instead of against us
Guides us in re-introducing good will into the relationship

I developed Thriving Business Partners to create harmony and wealth by eliminating partnership conflicts in values, priorities, and goals. And I am honored to share my experience and tools with you today.

To your success,

Hardy Hasenfuss