Building a firm when your business partner is your life partner

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Managing a business with a partner is hard work. Disagreements arise over which strategies to pursue or who manages what responsibilities. Maintaining a successful marriage is just as, if not more, difficult. 

That hasn’t stopped people from combining the two and starting a business with their spouse. In the United Kingdom, 1.4 million couples are running a firm together. In fact, many of the owners on LinkedIn who discussed their journeys as both business partners and spouses say it was one of the best decisions they ever made. 

While most admit they struggle at separating the business from their personal lives, some overarching ideas emerged for how to create a successful enterprise with a spouse and maintaining a healthy marriage. Below are some of the best takeaways, along with an interview with David Sandusky, who started a boutique with his wife in Denver in 2009.

• “The trick here is to consider your spouse as a business partner not as your husband or wife as soon as you enter the office. By doing so, you limit your emotional expectations of how your spouse is supposed to behave with you & this also helps in settling any arguments related to business decisions.  It is also important to leave aside office arguments as soon as you enter your house and vice versa when you enter the office.” - Tanvi A.
• “We support each others’ roles within the business: she is the hands on and day-to-day boss. I do all of the backroom work—orders, accounting, pay and pensions, etc. We have specific and defined roles for our staff to look to, but will always present a united front.” - Mark Smith
• “There is certainly such a thing as too much togetherness so we make time to pursue our separate interests, visit with our own friends, etc.” - Susan Fernandez 
• “One of our big ah-ha's early on was this: Every project needs a project manager but just one project manager. Once we got in the groove of deciding who was in charge of a particular project and who was in the support role for that one, things became smoother.” - Vicki Bigham

David Sandusky of Idea Chic says each person in the partnership should have a distinct, separate role in the business.

How do you separate the business from your life together? 

Work-life balance is not a thing, it’s integration. For us, there a couple of things we have to stick to. For Julie, it’s yoga. That’s her time, and for me it’s the gym. We have the same friends and worry about that a little bit. We both love to cook. When you’re really busy it’s easy to go out to eat or have things delivered. Julie and I decided that it’s important for us to cook. We like playing with food and it allows us to take the time to be together and plan meals.

How do you approach taking vacations or holidays since it means both owners are out of the office?

We don’t—we do short little getaways, like staycations. We have orders everyday and don’t have staff to take care of everything so we can’t be too far away. The holidays are an issue for us because we are so busy over that time. Our family understands that. Going to Thanksgiving is a break for us but it’s also just one day. We take our break right after Christmas before New Years because right after that we go into Valentine’s Day, which is a really busy time for us.

What advice do you have for others considering going into business with their spouse?

It’s important that people love what they do because there is a lot of stress with growing a business and a family and a lot of people can’t get through that, especially at the same time. If a couple starts a business together, they both have to love it and more than just the idea. They have to love the process of growing a business and their role in that process.

Would you ever start a business with your spouse? If you have, what’s worked for you and what are the common pitfalls others should watch out for?

Other news I’m reading:

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U.S. posts big job gains

The U.S. economy added a more-than-expected 128,000 jobs in October — despite the General Motors strike — as the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.6%. September’s 3.5% rate marked a 50-year low. The monthlong walkout by workers at the largest U.S. automaker helped subtract 36,000 manufacturing jobs in October, a finding echoing manufacturing softness in LinkedIn's Workforce Report. But the overall gain makes 109 straight months of employment expansion, more than double the previous record. | Here’s what people are saying