Shanu Singh Guliani

Working With Your Spouse?
January 21, 2007

Starting a business with the one you love might sound marvelous, but you should give it careful consideration before making the business commitment.

I’ll start with this. I’m crazy about my husband David and because we both want to make the new store successful and innovative…David being an expert when it comes to technology and me into selling and marketing using all the newest technology, together we are very involved in the start-up.

Flashback, Barcelona, Spain, on our honeymoon. We were traveling around the country, trying to decide what to do next in our professional lives. The light bulb went on! Since we both love the jewelry business but different aspects of it, we thought, “Let’s work together at the store. I will handle the front-end (selling, training the staff, organizing promotions and events) and you can do the accounting and get the internet side of the store up and running.”

So there we were in Spain, discussing to make David's role as CFO, and mine as CEO. Sounds marvelous, right?

Reality set in quickly. “Why might this be a bad idea for us?” We thought…let us count the ways:

1. All of our “eggs” would be in one basket. Risky? Yes. What if we failed? We'd have invested our cash into the business, spent time to grow it, and would have nothing to show.
2. We're down one paycheck. With him continuing his job, all the bills concerning the house and our day-to-day expenses would be covered. It would be one less thing to worry about when taking over a store or starting up a new store.
3. Lying in bed thinking this over it seemed that it might not be a good idea for our already great relationship. Since we both have Type A personalities when it came to work…competitive, highly aggressive, workaholics, and the list just goes on and on.

Our decision ended up being made for us. The store will not be opening until late 2007 and David returned to the military utilizing his technological attributes. David backed out of the new venture and is working to provide the household income. For the time being our decision was made for us, but if you're going to consider working with your spouse or significant other, you need to seriously consider the following:

• Can you work side by side? If both of you have Type A personalities, be careful. Constantly being in disagreement, could leak over to your home life. Ask yourself honestly, if you can work patiently alongside your spouse day in and day out, and then go from business partner to life partner after work.
• Do you have the same visions, yet compliment each other? Both of you want to see the business remain successful by adding your own specialties. Working towards a common goal is tough even more so when you have to get your spouse on the same page. Talk it over and make sure you two understand each other’s individual goals.
• Do you communicate effectively? Confront the challenges not one another. Be unified at the store and work out problems concerning the home at home.
• Who is the leader? If you can't support a chief or your spouse can't support you as the chief, beware. Having a leader in the company is important, especially if you have employees. This means not letting employees or customers pit one of you against the other. Never put a sale or a customer ahead of your spouse.

Working with your spouse isn't impossible, and it can work for the right people. Some of my colleague’s jewelry stores including my parents business are successful as a partnership because they each bring something complementary to the business.

Posted by Shanu Singh Guliani on January 21, 2007 | Comments (0)