Starting A Business With Your Spouse: Part 2

Continued from Part 1

How To Get Along With Your Spouse 24 Hours A Day

Spending all day, every day together can be taxing on a married couple. Here are some ways you can make this transition easier on both of you:

• Identify your work hours and stop all business operations after that.
• Establish dedicated personal time to spend with your spouse outside of the business.
• When you are at work, think like business owners, not husband and wife.
• Make important decisions together as a couple.
• If you do not get along well at work, create separate tasks that give you a break from one another.
• Do not let personal fights affect your productivity.
• Don’t let your employees see you arguing. Reserve those moments for when you are at home.
• Assign responsibilities and hold each other accountable for them.
• Separate your personal finances from the business finances.
• Make sure each of you feels valued and appreciated.
• Hold a meeting each week to discuss new business strategies.
• Do not use your personal phone as your work phone. Forward calls from the work line to your personal phone when you are out, and then disconnect yourself from the business at home.
• Reserve time to take a family vacation at least once a year to get your mind off work completely.

Learning how to get along with your spouse is no different than learning to work with a new colleague or employee. It will take time to get used to your new roles, but it will ultimately work out for the best. Once you establish a sense of teamwork in your business, you will enjoy spending extra time with your spouse.

Sometimes, It Just Wasn’t Meant To Be

Some couples just weren’t meant to work together, and there is nothing wrong with that. Every person has a “work mode,” which is different than the way he or she acts outside of work. It’s possible that you and your spouse have different work modes that do not coincide well with one another. You have to decide at that point if you want to stick with the plan or not. If so, try to make compromises that work best for the business, not necessarily for your marriage. You need to have a sense of separation between those two fields if you ever want to be happy and successful. Keep work life at work and married life at home, you should have no trouble starting a business with your spouse.