"If You Want To Test Your Marriage, Open a Pizza Restaurant Together"
Susan Mwenda-Mulongoti [BEng.AZIM]
Head of Growth | Digital Marketing Consultant @ Savvypro Consulting Ltd
Those were the words of Lynette Scavo, a character in the series Desperate Housewives after opening a new business with her husband.
Of course she’s a fictional character but running or starting a business with your spouse is a potential source of serious conflict. From putting your family’s finances at risk to deciding where the extra money or profits go, how much salary or bonus to give or whether a particular employee should be fired, how much discount to give a customer, which direction to take the business or indeed if you should have started that business in the first place.
Here are 6 things I find to be helpful.
1. Profits and shortfalls.
Where do they go, where do they come from? In the begining its usually shortfalls and they can cause some strains. Your family fincancial security is at risk.
2. Separate family roles from business roles.
Husband and wife. CEO and accountant. You can say you will help each other but like a marriage, each business role should have one person answerable for it.
3. There is no such thing as opportunity of a life time.
Richard Branson says ‘opportunities are like buses, there is always another one coming’. If a particular opportunity is a threat to your spouse, you can afford to leave it and wait for another one unless your relationship isn’t that important.
4. Pick your battles.
Not everything is worth fighting about. You can forgive and let go of certain mistakes without a fight.
5.Family time is family time. Business time is business time
The balance is not easy but schedule time when talking about business is not on the list.
6.Understand and respect each other’s risk tolerance levels.
One spouse might be comfortable to invest K10,000 without guarantee of success but the partner thinks it’s too risky. What will you do?
There is just one key: COMMUNICATION. Problem is money is not a comfortable topic for many but if you are going to do business together you have to train yourselves to be comfortable about discussing, arguing and negotiating money matters.Thanks for reading.Comments welcome.