Running a business with your spouse: moronic or genius?
“Marriage is not a noun; it’s a verb. It isn’t something you get. It’s something you do. It’s the way you love your partner every day.”- Barbara De Angelis
Many couples at one point or another wonder if their marriage could survive if they worked together, and a select few insane people wonder if their marriage could survive running a business together.
I happen to be in the group of insane people.
You see, years ago, I realized that corporate life away from my husband was a shitty fit. I hated it. I would come home to the love of my life who was all smiles, in a great mood just to see me, and I still needed time to decompress from a stressful day and even more stressful drive home. It was always difficult to be on the same page, and it hurt his feelings and made him fussy, which in turn hurt my feelings.
At the time, he was an entrepreneur, so he invited me to help him at his company. Zero percent of me was hesitant. That sounded awesome. And it was.
It worked for us in the early days…
In the beginning, there were growing pains, and we had only been married for two years, so we were still newlyweds, still working on our marital communications skills, so it wasn’t exactly easy.
We found, however, that our passions aligned, our enthusiasm level (which others often mock) was paralleled, and our willingness to have a naive view of the world in spite of being kicked in the teeth so many times was unique.
People have this idea that married people that work together are Realtors in matching Christmas sweaters that use their Black Labrador in their cheesy signs, but that is so far from reality, it is ridiculous.
It worked for us in the later days…
Fast forward to 2007 when my husband founded AGBeat and began bringing on writers from around the world. Then, just a blog, it consumed our lives and we knew he was onto something. Within two years, we realized we had to pivot into news because we were being seen as these super connected people ahead of business trends (true or not), so we did, with endless late nights tending to our business.
Fast forward to 2013 and I’ve earned a real title, work 18 hour days, and still share an office with someone as dedicated to what we do as I am.
So how did we make it work?
You may be thinking, “Lani, we know how to make it work — just be passionate and shit, and everything will fall into place!”
Wrong.
Super wrong.
Passion is maybe 10 percent of why working with my spouse is a genius move for us. Here is the formula for how we made it work:
1. Before ever working together, we decided who was the boss. Who was going to be the bad guy? Who would take credit if the company crumbled or if it succeeded wildly? Who carried that responsibility? For us, we decided Benn would take that role because I’m a worker bee, a workhorse, a constant worrier, but moreover, a constant doer. He is the yin to my yang and he can steer the ship like no one’s business. Every couple is different, but this is how we designed it from day one.
2. We mix business and personal. You heard me. We work after hours at home, we tweet news stories while with family, we frequently befriend PR people and sponsors that we work with. Some people advise keeping a clear line between the two, but we don’t, and it has been our secret sauce.
3. Our communication skills are wicked awesome. We’ve fine tuned our system over the years, but in marriage and work, we’ve become partially psychic. If you and your spouse don’t communicate well in personal life, working together will just make it worse — I don’t advise even trying to work together.
4. We are over the top in love with each other. This is the most important ingredient to a successful working relationship. Since we started dating in 2002, we’ve been inseparable. We sit next to each other at work, at dinner, at every event, and in the car to go to the store — we don’t have solo events, we don’t travel separately, we do everything together. Call it insane, but we enjoy each other’s company immensely.
So back to the original question…
Is running a business with your spouse moronic or genius? It depends on you. If the four steps above are impossible, or you laughed at any of them, working with your spouse would be moronic. If you relate to everything above, it will be the best experience you’ve ever had in the history of ever.
Barbara De Angelis said, “Marriage is not a noun; it’s a verb. It isn’t something you get. It’s something you do. It’s the way you love your partner every day.”
There is no better reason to run a business with your spouse than for this very reason — I cannot imagine doing anything without my husband because we share the same passions, the same enthusiasm, the same sense of humor, the same home, the same children, the same love…
Therefore, for us, there is no alternative but to run a business together.
Update: you had a lot of questions about HOW we decided who was the boss, so I wrote a followup just for you. I invite you to read it here and let me know what you think!
