Find out how three such partnerships have overcome roadblocks—from hurricane devastation to divorce—and why they’re glad they didn’t go on the ride alone.

Sukie Honeycutt and Tony Ridgway, Ridgway Bar & Grill
Few surprises arise in the business relationship between restaurant owners Tony Ridgway and Sukie Honeycutt. This is partly because they’ve been partners for more than 25 years and share the same business goal: customer satisfaction. But mostly it’s because they also share 192 square feet of office space above the Ridgway Bar & Grill, their restaurant in downtown Naples.

"One of the things that has been crucial [to maintaining our partnership] is that we share an office," says Honeycutt. "It improves communication and we can have impromptu meetings."
Ridgway, whose wife, Wynne, is office manager, knows the importance of open communication. "When Sukie sees me and my wife working on the budget, she knows exactly where we stand," Ridgway says. "I’m not sitting in some office someplace else working on it."

Although their career paths originally headed in different directions—he was in the Air Force, she was a singer signed with Motown Records—their paths collided when both were looking for a change.

A natural in the kitchen, Ridgway decided to pursue his passion for food by opening up a restaurant in Naples called The Wurst Place. He eventually sold that business to open another restaurant in 1976 called The Chef’s Garden, which was in the same spot as the current Ridgway Bar & Grill. Above The Chef’s Garden, where they now share their office, he started a second restaurant in 1978, called Truffles.

After her music career hit a sour note, Honeycutt, then in Connecticut, also turned to the restaurant business. She decided to go to graduate school, and worked as a waitress and bartender to pay for her studies. Her knack for detail put her on the fast track to management, she says, and gave her the experience she needed to land the job as restaurant manager at Truffles and The Chef’s Garden.

"I actually came to Naples on vacation in 1979," Honeycutt says. "I really liked it here and was looking for a change. I was subletting my apartment up North and came down here and had three interviews set up. One of them was with Tony. He pretty much hired me on the spot."

She became a partner in 1981 and says it was actually their differences, not their similarities, that made them hit it off. "Tony is left-handed, I’m right-handed," she points out. "Tony is more creative. I’m more nuts-and-bolts oriented. I’m an organizational person, which you have to be when you’re in the [dining room], whereas in the kitchen, you’re cooking and creating. It’s a different environment."

While their differences brought the two together, the disparity between their vision and that of their three former partners pushed the partnership apart. As a result, the decision was made to combine Truffles and The Chef’s Garden, which Ridgway says were doing well at the time, into one restaurant called Terra.

"We were looking to downsize the physical space," Ridgway explains. "We were seeing some first competition and we made some incorrect judgments.

"I think that there are partners who are willing to work hard to make things better, then there are partners who would rather make a major change in the format than to work something really hard. When you have partnerships that are all about personal needs versus common needs of the business, then that partnership is bound to fail."

Ridgway and Honeycutt recognize Terra as a poor business choice, but they are happy with the end result: Ridgway Bar & Grill.

"Even though you and I don’t look at the Terra days with fond memories," Honeycutt says to Ridgway, "it did help us evolve and become what we are now. The physical layout is better for what we’re doing now, so it wasn’t all negative; there were a lot of positives that came out of it."
Optimism and common goals are what keep their partnership going during tough times, Honeycutt says.

Ridgway agrees: "For a partnership to work, you have to have one common philosophy, and that’s what you believe in as the bottom goal."

They admit, however, that they don’t always see eye-to-eye on how to get to reach that goal, and after working together for so long, they know exactly where their sore spots are.

"We don’t always agree on pricing," she says.

"We don’t always agree about what should go on the menu," he adds. "We have different opinions about different individuals and how they do or don’t perform their jobs."

But, at the end of the day, the two are content with agreeing to disagree.

"During the days, weeks, months and years, each person who is involved in the partnership will have disagreements," he says. "It’s inevitable and probably important. And when you have those disagreements, you go forward because you have the overall goal in mind."

Dawn Marx and David Aquila, Buffalo Graffix
hen Hurricane Charley stormed through Charlotte County in 2004, it took with it Dawn Marx and David Aquila’s 16-year investment into Buffalo Graffix. The morning after the storm, Marx and Aquila, who had been married until their divorce in 1996, discovered the entire roof of their printing business had been ripped off.

"That was the most stressful time in my whole life," Marx remembers. "We were like, ‘What do we do now?’"

What they did was start the search for a new location. They found one in the Murdock area, just north of their previous spot in Port Charlotte. "We went to look at it and then signed the lease the next day," she remembers. "We were fortunate to find it."

Marx and Aquila were able to recover most of their computer equipment; they had taken their hard drives home and covered the rest of the equipment to protect it from water damage. They moved what they could salvage into their new shop, and bought new tables, chairs and desks.

After advertising the new location with flyers, business at Buffalo Graffix began to pick up, with other businesses knocking on their door to replace signs that were destroyed in the storm.

That year brought in one of their highest net revenues to date. It also taught them that they can overcome almost any obstacle if they work hard and work together.

That philosophy has taken them through many difficult times, including their divorce. After that, the two decided to remain business partners, since they had invested much time and money into the business.

"There was a tension and emotions ran high," Marx says. "But we agreed to maintain a level of [professionalism]. You can’t be bitter and angry because a relationship didn’t work. We have three beautiful sons. We didn’t want to make a lot of changes for all of us."

"The divorce was a big adjustment," says Aquila. Still, he had also been a partner in a door and window business from 2002 to 2005, and he knows how good he has it with Marx. "I couldn’t ask for a better partner than Dawn," he says.

Although splitting up the business partnership isn’t a consideration, Marx says they have discussed selling the business. "Economically and mentally, there have been times we wanted to sell," she says. "We’ve owned it almost 20 years and said, ‘Let’s think about doing something else.’"

But now, with their 23-year-old son becoming an integral part of the business, Marx can’t see giving it up. "I’ve considered it a family business all along," she says.

A key to making a partnership work is selecting a partner who works as hard as you do, says Aquila, and Marx agrees. "You have to balance the load. When David was in the other partnership, I had a lot more responsibility on me because he wasn’t here," she says.

Their responsibilities have evened out since, and Marx says each plays different, but equally important roles in the business. While Marx handles public relations, Aquila operates the presses and works with customers.

"I handle one end and he handles the other," she says. "David is the visionary saying, ‘Let’s do a sign business.’ He was instrumental in growing the business."

Marx also acts as treasurer to make sure that Aquila’s ideas are financially feasible. Some of those ideas are risky, but Marx and Aquila have agreed to go out on a limb when it seemed the investment would pay off in the long run, as with technology.

"When computers started to become popular, we realized we needed one [to provide] typesetting and graphic design," Aquila says. "Back when we bought our computer system years ago, it was a $12,000 investment. That’s a lot of money for a company that was making $100,000 a year at the time."

Originally a print shop that provided only black-and-white prints on a typesetter, Buffalo Graffix now offers mailing services, embroidery, a sign department and advertising specials, thanks to the investment in technology they made years ago.

It’s risk-taking like this that has made it the multimillion-dollar business it is today, and caused business leaders in the community to take note. The Charlotte County Chamber of Commerce honored it as a Small Business of the Year in 2005.

"We started out as a two-person operation and now we’re at 20-plus," Aquila says.

Their secret? Selecting the right partner from the get-go, they say, and making sure that person is someone you know well—flaws and all.

"If you don’t know who you’re working with and you find out after you become partners, it’s too late," Aquila says. "It helps that we’ve known each other for …"

"Thirty-four years," Marx finishes.

Wiley Parker and Bill Mudgett, Parker/Mudgett/Smith Architects Inc.
To hear Wiley Parker and Bill Mudgett tell it, the worst thing they’ve had to deal with in their business is precisely what most businesses are aiming for: growing into a big company.

"You lose the contact with the clients," says Parker.

"You lose contact all around," adds Mudgett. "You wind up running a company rather than doing architecture."

In the early 1990s, Parker/Mudgett/Smith Architects Inc. landed contracts for three Collier County schools at once. Suddenly their firm was up to 30-plus people, and the partners found themselves dealing with administration as much as architecture.

"We want to build buildings and meet with clients and not get caught up in the business end of things, [like] meeting payrolls," says Parker. "And we worked real hard. We’d find ourselves coming down here on weekends or at night, getting things ready for the next day’s work, because you didn’t want five or six people hanging around doing nothing."

What’s more, adds Mudgett, "We had made absolutely no more profit with 30 people than we had with 10."

Parker and Mudgett, the senior partners at the Fort Myers firm—which now totals nine members, including the four partners—have been working together for 40 years, 35 as partners. It doesn’t take long to figure out how they’ve made it work for so long. They know each other so well that they finish each other’s sentences. They laugh a lot. And they’re good friends. In fact, not only do they work in the same office, they socialize together, live within a half-block of each other, sang in the same choir for years, and they and their wives even vacation together.

Shared friendship, values and ambitions make their partnership work, but they know they’re different from a lot of business partners. People considering a business partnership must find a partner with the same goals, they say.

"If you’re after making money, you need to look for someone with complementary skills so you can cover everything," says Mudgett. "If you’re looking to enjoy yourself and be satisfied with your relationship with the person you’re going to spend all this time with, you need to have similar characteristics."

Their similarities surfaced as soon as they met. Parker moved to Fort Myers from Atlanta in 1962 to work on the nascent Edison Junior College (now Edison College). Six years later, Mudgett arrived in Florida from Illinois in search of a job. With long hair and other "hippie overtones," he got a progressively chillier reception the farther south he went. In Ocala, he had his head shaved, "and then I got hired by Wiley, who had longer hair than I did," he says, laughing.

"I almost didn’t hire him. He looked too straight," says Parker.

Bolton McBryde hired Parker, and made him partner after McBryde’s former partner left. Mudgett was hired in 1968, became a partner in 1973, and McBryde retired in 1979. Since then, two other partners have joined them—Roger Smith in 1987, and Mudgett’s son, Jeffrey, in 2000.
Smith, who had worked as a general contractor and draftsman for years, brought "a real construction savvy," says Mudgett.

"And he’s a friend," Parker adds, "so it’s worked well."

Their biggest challenge? Hiring and firing. "We’re both avoiders of confrontation, and we’re willing to take additional work onto ourselves to avoid conflict," says Mudgett.

For all their similarities, Mudgett and Parker do have different, complementary strengths. "Bill is a really good designer and I’m more administrative and hands-on in construction," says Parker.

"We have clearly understood realms," says Mudgett. "We’ve never written them down; we just know what they are."

They also share clearly understood values and commitment to their community, which is reflected in the projects they focus on: public and private commercial projects, including a lot of schools.

They have never had a business plan, in spite of recommendations.

"We do keep abreast of what’s happening in the profession and the economy, but we’re at the size that we can just kind of go our way," says Parker.

"Our way" means accepting projects they believe will help the community and their profession. "Our ultimate client is really the public," says Parker.

As in the economic downturn in the early 1990s, when they had three school contracts, their specialty buffers the firm from the impacts of the current housing slump. "Institutional and public [clients] have to have the money in the bank before they sign contracts, as opposed to [residential] developers. We’ve had our share of bad surprises from [those] clients," says Mudgett.

And residential development is "not very rewarding," says Parker. "It’s generally the accountant that makes most of the decisions when you do those kinds of projects.

"We don’t make a lot of money, like some of those people do, but we don’t have to go through these real downturns," he says. "Florida has a history of boom and bust."