How To Work with Your Spouse
Your spouse is your best friend; that’s why you got married! Many people often fantasize about being in business with their spouse or partner and building the life together that they want. We agree, it’s a blissful place but it does require some work. Going into business with the love of your life, which you see every morning when you wake is a very big decision. Many couples lead separate professional lives mostly to be able to keep up with the expense of living and pursuing their individual passions and interests and perhaps fulfilling their post-education goals. More often than not, households decide against dual-entrepreneur roles due to unstable income, health insurance options, and more. Some just decide working together may not be a good thing if they argue about trivial things around the house.
These are all valid reasons and concerns about both breadwinners being self-employed. But like all decisions in life, there are ways to manage the expectations and the rewards if you use some guidelines and lay it all out on the table before the venture as a team begins.
Guidelines for building a business with your spouse
Here’s our list of good advice nuggets on how to “get into bed” with your spouse.
Communication
Start with this... Communication is our first piece of advice and the very first test you’ll have to pass upon deciding to build your dynasty together. You have heard the trite phrase that “communication is key” and we can not reiterate how true this is.
In a typical partnership or spousal relationship in a loving home, there are some basics that are required to make it work and to endure the years. When navigating your daily lives together you likely let each other know where you are going, you might share access to online accounts and social media profiles, and you probably communicate when a large purchase needs to happen or something life-changing is happening to you or your family. When these open lines of communication don’t exist, trust tends to erode and bickering and disagreements begin.
This same process applies to your relationship with your children or dependents. If you are not over-communicating and being clear with expectations, they tend to gravitate toward their own trajectory and assume that this will be fine. When you attempt to correct them, emotions can stir up and aggressive replies can happen which is typically followed by “well, I didn’t know that!” Communication…
Even if you have a professional career outside of your home life, you’ll find that over-communicating is the single most important thing that keeps your co-workers or downline reports on track. Without communication, proper expectations and guidance the team fails to perform.
Building a business together is much different than building your intimate life together, but you’ll find that they follow the same principles of some basic foundational work in order to succeed and overcome challenges. Remember how lucky you are to be doing life every day with your best friend and partner - find the positives and communicate about everything so you are aligned on the outcomes or possible failures together.
Setting boundaries
This one can be really tough, especially when both people are excited about their business and like to share their wins and ideas when they come to them. This can be detrimental, however… Understanding where your work/life boundaries are or are going to be crucial to any sort of success and by the way, you’ll have to use the above-mentioned skill of communication in order to set up your boundaries.
Examples of poor boundaries that can lead to disaster are:
The couple takes a vacation which was communicated to each other that it is a vacation, but when trying to enjoy vacation time, one spouse is looking at emails and verbalizing fires and issues happening in the business.
One or both partners interrupt work or home time by vocalizing work priorities whenever they enter their heads vs. scheduling regular meeting times to dive into business goals and challenges.
The couple has never defined what “work hours” are and which days of the week they are allowed to consume their lives together. For example, the business operates Monday - Friday, but one spouse makes it a part of breakfast lunch, or dinner on the weekends.
The couple allows clients/customers to infiltrate their lives at all hours.
The last point is perhaps to most important. Some couples can do very well with having their work life a part of everything they do. There is something to be said about living the life you love and building the web together. It’s not for everyone - most people need to detach but how you compartmentalize and deal with these integrations will be different than your spouse. But to the last point, the people that will push your boundaries the most will be your customers, because you want to please them and take care of them as soon as possible.
One of the best business practices we can give advice to if you are a husband/wife or partner business venture is to keep separate phones for your personal and business use. Nothing will push your partner, best friend, or lover… to the point of frustration faster than by allowing your customers to reach you every which way at every hour and expect a reply.
You may also want to limit text message communication with clients so they are forced to communicate through a channel like an email so that you can deal with their request the next business day when you read their message. Some people will allow their clients to text their personal phone and then reply to the client while sitting at dinner on date night. Don’t do that!!
Communication. Boundaries.
Honesty
I might sound like we’re just giving you relationship advice here but it’s true that the same principles that help you live together in harmony, raise a family and perform well at jobs, sports, hobbies, etc are the same things that will help propel you to happiness and success in your family business together.
BE HONEST with each other Don’t hold anything back, it will backfire every single time. Honesty needs to be practiced in your boundaries with each other at a bare minimum. Setting boundaries will be a fallacy if one partner simply lies or gives in to the other person’s boundaries because they don’t want to hurt their feelings. They’ve just hurt themselves and set both partners up for failure by not being honest.
Also, inside the operations of the business, if one partner makes a big mistake, be open and honest upfront. Disclose what has happened, work together to rectify it, and revel in the fact that you’ve both learned what not to do together. This is a basic foundational building block for everything in life.
You find in a marriage that you learn new things about your spouse every year. When you’re in business together, you’ll learn even more about each other that you may have never learned before. Ticks, nerves, likes, and dislikes. One partner may explode professionally and shine bright through their passion, exposing a personality you did not know existed.
Remember that you chose the journey together growing and evolving together is what the journey is about. Sharing it together.
Drive in your own lane
If you’ve ever attended a national sales convention or listed to recognized speakers in the business area, they often talk about driving lanes. Staying in your lane ensures efficiency and specialization. Partners (whether married or just business partners) who cross lanes all the time will cause conflict in the business because opinions are always injected into every topic.
Example of driving in your own lane. Harry and Sally own a leather restoration business together. Harry really enjoys the physical side of the business and has a knack for talking to people in person and performing the work. He keeps a regimented calendar and ensures their customer success rate and helps drive positive company reviews. Sally tends to have more of a business mind, so she focuses on tracking company expenses, securing lines of credit, ordering supplies, and keeping Harry on track with appointments and directives.
Neither of them is good at keeping the books or building their website, so they identify an accountant and a digital footprint guy and those things stay off their plate so that they can focus on the delivery of goods and services and financial growth.
They build downlines of administrative support, delegate appropriately, and have regular meetings to keep a pulse on each other’s lanes. Their business grows and they have the personal capacity to take on more.
Example of not identifying lanes… Mitch and Peg also own a leather restoration business. Both people keep all company email on their phones and they both reply without communicating with each other. Neither of them really specializes in one thing or another so they both also perform the physical work. They don’t have regular office hours where one of them is available for customer communication, nor are there set times for scheduled business development so it often sits and doesn’t get done.
They try to keep the accounting and books up to date themselves and dread when tax season comes because it consumes them. They don’t know much about websites or digital marketing so their efforts are minimal and behind pace with local competitors. Since they don’t have a great process and separation of roles, they never really have regular meetings that are designed to identify strengths, weaknesses, tasks, and opportunities.
Their business is limited to their personal capacities which are overwhelming. Unexpected sickness causes business pains and vacations and time off are an afterthought due to a lack of business growth and supporting roles driving in additional lanes.
Though many home businesses are dreamt up in bed, the world’s problems shouldn’t be solved there. Schedule leadership meetings and tackle objectives with due dates.
Health & hobbies
Lastly, while it’s important to be passionate about your business (as it is your livelihood and future) it’s also important to have other passions and focuses. It’s a good idea to have a healthy mix of activities and educational puzzle pieces in your life in order to find new ways to progress.
Some entrepreneurs are born over-achievers, and while this isn’t a likely case for everyone, it’s a good guideline to help identify your passions. You often hear people say “I’m too busy” or “I wish I had time for that”. The truth is, you’re capable of adding more things into your life than you think. When you have enjoyable things in your life, the time needed to do them no longer becomes a chore, but a welcome healthy endeavor. Some examples of health activities outside of your business are:
Outdoor activities with friends, family, or just mother nature.
Painting or drawing in a studio space separate from your work office.
Running, cycling, or lifting weights.
Studying a new language.
Building a hit list of books and reading often.
Practicing your religion or just spending time with your God.
Keeping a journal or writing a blog about personal interests.
Training your dogs.
Spending quality time with your children if you have them.
Restoring an automobile, piece of furniture, or other antique.
Learn to cook healthy or expand your cooking routines. Learn new recipes and try new foods - especially if they are healthy for your family.
These are just examples. Successful people often have a mix of all of the things going on. Each one of these helps them expand their mind and learn new things that they can then share with their partner or someone else. The more diverse of an individual you become, the richer your conversations with your business partner, your customers, and most importantly your spouse. You might even find that some of your passions and hobbies are also enjoyed by your partner which will enhance the free time that you have together. You’ll also find that you offer your partner more in conversation than just business chit-chat.
Subscribing to some of these practices helps to make you smarter, happier, healthier, and sexier! You’ll be more equipped to deal with challenges and adversity as well.
Now… go design the life you love!