This is a guest post from one of our real women living savvy – Cat Matson.
“Starting a business with your spouse….. are you crazy?”
“You run your business with your husband? How on earth do you do that? How do you spend every minute of your day with each other?”
Yes, I do run my business with my husband… and I couldn’t imagine it any other way.
For us it works because that’s how we’ve always done it. But people often ask ‘how’ we do it that makes it work. So here are some of my tips for working and living with the same ‘partner’.
Keep your contexts ‘clean’.
What I mean by this, is don’t muddy the business waters with household or personal issues and vice-versa. This doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t talk business after 5.30pm (some of our best business meetings take place between 10.30 & 11.30pm over a glass of red after the kids have gone to bed), but we do our best to maintain ‘separate mental agendas’ for personal and business stuff.
Get clear on your roles – both in the business, and in the home.
When you run your own business, the boundaries between work and home are often blurry, and this is especially true when you’re both in the business together. When husbands and wives work together there is often a subconscious patterning that settles in – he does all the ‘revenue’ work, she does the admin/bookkeeping etc. Yet if you were both employed in a different scenario, your skill set might be harnessed quite differently. Take yourselves seriously and create role descriptions and responsibilities… and revisit them as required.
Likewise, in your home life, make sure you discuss your expectations about who does what in relation to kids, housework, meal preparation etc. Again, it’s easy to fall into ‘sub-conscious’ roles… but if you’re both slogging it out in the business, resentments will easily build up if one spouse is bearing the burden of keeping house. ‘Fair’, not necessarily ‘equal’ is my motto in this regard.
Get clear on outputs and deliverables, not ‘hours invested’.
This is very closely related to point 2 but focuses more on “what are we actually trying to deliver” rather than filling a standard 40-hour work week with tasks. I say this is important in any business, but it is particularly important in husband and wife businesses where there can be a higher scrutiny on how you each spend your time. So rather than getting involved in a conversation about ‘how hard’ you’ve worked this week, get clear on what outcomes you need to produce.
Have contingency plans for the money side of things.
Probably the biggest challenge of husbands and wives working together in their own business, is all their financial ‘eggs’ are in the one basket. Be clear on what you might do if things get tight… and what your ‘trigger points’ for those strategies might be. Understand too that each of your risk tolerances may be very different – one of you might be happy to mortgage the house to fund your business while the other may want to pay for everything in cash.
These kinds of differences can be very challenging on both parties – empathic, robust conversations are essential and having clear milestones are useful for minimising potential dramas.
Take time out.
This is obvious and often overlooked (yes, I speak from experience). When you live and work together (and when your business is also your passion) it is very easy to spend every waking moment thinking and talking about the business. But it’s also important to have a common reality that is NOT purely based on the business (or your family).
For the health of your relationship you need to have other interests and foundations. It doesn’t have to be huge (for us it’s a common interest in AFL, cricket, good TV shows like West Wing and interesting people).
Hang out with other ‘business’ couples.
If you’re only spending time with couples who don’t work together, it’s easy to start comparing your ‘lot’ with them…. ‘they have so much more family time’, ‘they don’t seem stressed about money’, yada yada yada.
The reality of running your business is challenging enough sometimes, to be doing it with your spouse is relatively unique. Make sure you share your reality with others who understand you. They might be doing it differently to you but they’ll experience common challenges, successes and will be able to relate to your situation.
Do what works for you.
There are so many ‘prescriptions’ out there for how to run a business, build a relationship, let alone combine the two. The fact is each business, couple and person is different, so a different ‘recipe’ is required for each scenario. Trial and error is one of my favourite strategies in life. Try something on, if it doesn’t fit, change it. The reason you’re running your own show is to be in control of how you life your life. So take control and be personally responsible for how you do it.
Cat Matson is the Director of Client Development at Alito, a mentoring, accounting and consulting practice for SME’s looking for integrated and robust advice about managing and building their businesses. Find more information and resources at www.alito.com.au or contact Cat – cat@alito.com.au or 3289 7055.
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