Here’s some free advice for Karl: Don’t mix business with pleasure

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Whenever there’s a celebrity crisis or people have been grubs or stupid (Luke Sayers – godsend), it’s a race between my friend Mia and me to see who can text one word fastest: “Cabo”.

It’s shorthand for Cabo Communications, the business we’ve been not-quite-joking about starting since forever. It’s named after Jennifer Aniston’s signature Mexican holiday spot. Mia and I love photos of Jen there, in a black triangle bikini, and yearn to be her and be in Cabo.

Karl Stefanovic has fallen out with his podcast business partner.It signifies zero problems other than where the next tequila is coming from.

That’s the point of Cabo – no worries. Which is what our imaginary business would do. Fix your stuff-ups.

Hiring Cabo would be like having Matron Sloan from A Country Practice tell you straight how to get out of a tight spot or make people stop hating you. Our credentials? A combined 70 years in media dealing with egos, divas, live crosses, bad bosses, bad calls.

Plus there’s the qualification which trumps everything: we’re mums in our 50s who’ve handled every tricky situation going, from school WhatsApp politics to kids being cast as Tree Number Two and husbands announcing they’re off. We know pear-shaped.

Ed Sheeran’s tour implosion? A text from Mia: “Cabo”. Whether Sydney Sweeney should have worn pants to sit on that cold basketball hoop? “Cabo.”

Cabo knows the biggest problem Meghan has (she’s embarrassing) and is expert at red carpet appraisals (“bad feathers – should have called Cabo”).

But. While Cabo gives excellent advice, it doesn’t exist. And it never will. Because Mia and I know the rule. Babies know the rule. You do not go into business with friends.

It sits in life’s top 10 somewhere near “never cut a fringe while sad”.

Stefanovic and Keshnee Ibrahim. The former Today host is in a legal battle with his podcast producer.InstagramPeople defy it, but rarely without tears and permanent rents in the friendship fabric. I give you Frank Costanza and Kramer’s bust-up over the Manssiere bra for men.

It’s something Karl Stefanovic should have remembered when he launched his podcast this year. Buoyed up, striding about in his skinny jeans and that hat, he went into business with Keshnee Ibrahim.

She’s a former magazine editor and – cue tension music – a close friend of Karl’s wife, Jasmine. Eight months on, the podcast went dark for three weeks and the biz partners are wrangling in the Supreme Court.

According to reports, the former Today host blamed his podcast producer Ibrahim for his departure from the Nine Network after an interview with right-wing British agitator Tommy Robinson. He allegedly also gave Ibrahim one business day to set a price to buy her out.

Good communication should feel like a warm day on a sandy beach.Getty ImagesThe lawyers, of course, will sort things out, but nobody can sort the rest.

What happens now to the former friends’ shared dinners and holidays? And what happens to Jasmine, now piggy in the middle between her husband and BFF? Very tricky.

Karl, because we love that you and Jasmine married in actual Cabo, Mia and I will tell you this for free: next time, don’t quit your $3 million day job. Also, do not get a business partner you drink Aperol Spritz with on boats or are going to see at toff Christmas parties.

Because friendship makes you gloss over the paperwork. Negotiating an exit clause with someone you really like feels like an insult, so you don’t. Next minute, you’re wondering how much Sue Chrysanthou, SC, costs.

Money keeps score. Suddenly, there’s a ledger: who worked on Sunday, whose name pulls in the clients, who’s lunching too long. The stakes are rarely equal. Someone needs the income, the other is enjoying a lovely creative outlet. Soon you’re wading in pools of resentment.

Possibly worst of all, as Karl is finding, collateral damage can’t be contained. A business divorce swallows up the group chat, mutual friends, the sharing of choppers to and from Derby Day. Carefully edited social life? Pulverised.

So. The Pilates studio with your bestie, the candle label, the long-planned cafe. Think hard, then think again. Dream, plot, name the imaginary company, then leave it there, glittering safely in Imaginary Land.

Which is awkward to admit because I’m on the cusp of launching a hot choc fudge business with my mate Deb. True story! Do as I say, not as I stir.

Kate Halfpenny is an author and the founder of Bad Mother Media.

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