Starting A Business with Your Spouse?
Starting a business with the one you love might sound dreamy, but you should give it careful consideration before making the business commitment.
1. What type of personality do you each have? If both of you are “alpha” people, or strongly opinionated, be careful. If you are constantly in disagreement, it could leak over to your home life.
2. Do you bring complementary skills to the business? This is important because if you overlap too much, you potentially could find yourselves going up against each other too often (see the last bullet). However, if you each have your own “domain” to manage, chances are you’ll have some new things to talk about at the end if the day.
3. What happens now when you have disagreements? Be careful if you are the type of person to go to bed angry. If disagreements go unresolved, not only will it make your home life uncomfortable, the tension could make your hours — and your employees’ hours — at work unbearable.
4. Is it ok for one of you to be the leader as opposed to the other? 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.
Photo by Paul Friel.
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