The best or worst decision of your life.. working with your spouse

For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, to love and to cherish, till death due us part. And to go to work every day together without causing death.

Ha! Wouldn’t it be easier if our wedding vows explicitly told us exactly what to do! I mean how great would it be to know if a decision such as working together would be the beginning of a beautiful relationship, or the end of one, literally?

Unfortunately, the wedding vows we have are pretty general. They essentially get the point across to stick together no matter what. But sticking together these days is harder than ever. Money, busyness, chores, kids, stress, there seems to be a lot working against couples, would we be crazy to throw our jobs into that mix as well?

To work together, or to not work together, that is the question?

At least that is the question that my husband and I pondered for over a year. This was not due to our inability to make decisions (although we do struggle on deciding what restaurant to eat at on Friday evenings). This pondering was due to the massive impact we knew this decision would have on us financially, and our relationship.

Here’s the run down. My husband purchased a dental practice almost three years ago. Yes, he’s a dentist. Now, before you go getting any ideas that he makes a ton of money and I don’t have to “work,” let me tell you this is not the case. I think it’s often a common misconception that just because someone is a doctor or dentist that they automatically make a lot of money.

The truth is, with student loan debt from dental school, the practice loan debt, and payroll, we are lucky to take home a paycheck certain months. And don’t cue the violins because I knew we are incredibly blessed and that we will eventually work ourselves out of this massive hole. But it won’t come without challenges, sacrifice, hard work, and long days of stress.

Before I came to work at my husband’s small business, I had a good job that provided a secure paycheck every two weeks. Hence, why financially this was a big decision for us. That’s why we did not take this decision lightly. It took careful consideration, both financially, and with our relationship.

I want to share with you things we considered and the strategy that helped us determine if working together was the best or worst decision of our lives. 

1.) Love and Respect

When my husband and I first got married my sister-in-law gave us an audio book called Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs 

If you haven’t heard or read this book, it’s fascinating, and I credit it for starting our marriage out on the right foot. It took a lot of the guess work out of our relationship and set the tone for what we both needed from one another. Gosh, it makes things so much easier when we don’t constantly guess what our partner needs. Here are some snippets from the book:

“Cracking the communication code between husband and wife involves understanding one thing: that unconditional respect is as powerful for him as unconditional love is for her. It’s the secret to marriage that every couple seeks, and yet few couples ever find.”

“When a husband feels disrespected, it is especially hard to love his wife. When a wife feels unloved, it is especially hard to respect her husband”.

“Often, we focus on our own needs and simply overlook the needs of the other person”

“The way to fully love a husband is to respect him in ways that are meaningful to him.”

Take a hard look at your relationship and ask yourself some honest questions before working together.

Do you and your spouse show each other love and respect? Do you make it a priority to grow as a couple? How well do you communicate well with one another? These are some crucial questions to ask.

If your marriage does not have deep, strong roots, you may not be able to withstand the strong gusts of wind that come from working together.

My husband and I don’t have a perfect relationship, no one does. But we do make it a priority to treat each other with love and respect. That alone gave us the confidence to take that faithful leap of mixing our business with our relationship.

If your relationship is not there yet, that’s ok. This is the step in the process where you could begin to build that deep-rooted connection before you jump into a situation like working together.

2.) Consider the dynamics of the workplace, will one person be in charge? Or will it be an equal partnership

This is an important boundary to establish as it will directly affect the dynamic of the work environment. In our story, my husband is the dentist and owns the practice. Although we consider it our business, when it comes down to who has the final say, it is him. And I’m more than ok with that.

It’s so important to discuss this before making the decision to work together. How bad would things have been if I came to work and thought I would be calling the shots? It would have been a disaster with adverse effects on the whole office.

Now I’m not saying that my husband has all the power and I sit passively as he tells me what to do. That’s not it at all. In fact, we don’t even look at it as either one of us has “power.” We look at it as our business and that we both are leaders. But he is the main leader of the team. I like to think of it like he’s the President and I’m the Vice President with one common goal, let’s make this business a success!

3.) Play to each other’s strengths

No one person is amazing at everything. We all have unique gifts and talents. How great would it be if you were able to work in an environment where you got to focus on the things you were good at doing?

This can be a huge advantage of working with your spouse. More than likely, you all have different strengths and weaknesses. Maybe even opposites? One of you may be creative and outgoing, while the other is technical and reserved. Put those two forces together, and you have a fantastic team!

So before you decide to work with each other, make a thoughtful list of your strengths and weaknesses and see how you can create one super powerhouse business together.

When you can help each other fill in the gaps, that’s where a beautiful, strong business relationship begins.

4.) Are you willing to let the small things go

I can’t stress this topic enough. There will be little tiffs along the way. One of you may catch each other at the wrong time, or maybe one of you is just simply having a bad day. Mark my words, there will be a time when someone’s feelings get hurt.

But what I have learned is you can’t be super sensitive while working with your spouse, you just can’t. Like I know after Will gets finished after a long morning he is not in the mood to chat. He’s thirsty and needs a snack. If he’s short with me or in a mood, I don’t take it personally. And the same goes with me.

We still maintain that level of love and respect, but it’s not always warm and fuzzy. Sometimes it’s hectic, but we don’t hang on to the bad moments, we let them go. We are quick to forgive and move on.

5.) Set Expectations and job descriptions

This was probably the most helpful strategy in our decision to work together. Before I left my job, we came up with an actual job description for me. We created it just as if we were bringing in a new employee. It had my title, job duties, and expectations. It seemed a little silly at first like maybe we were going overboard. However, this tool gave us several things:

1.) It gave me the opportunity to make sure I would happy with what my job duties were. 

2.) Rather than just saying I work at my husband’s office, it provided me with my own job title that I was proud to share. It gave me a sense of work identity if you will.

3.) It gave me something to reference if I was ever unsure of what exactly I was supposed to be doing.

4.) I liked knowing what the expectations were. I believed it saved many little disagreements. For example, we agreed that I arrive on-time every morning. You can see how little details like this could be overlooked in the beginning and develop into tension later on. I mean not that I’m ever later for anything ;).

5.) It made the integration with the other team members a lot smoother. By having my job description, they knew exactly what I was doing there. There was no confusion about job duties, and I think it eased their mind about their own positions.

I highly recommend creating a job title, description, and expectations together with your partner. And you can make it fun! Will and I spent the evening at a coffee shop creating together! I keep the document in my desk and reference it often!

6.) Evaluate every financial impact

Although there are a lot of tax benefits of owning a small business, there are a lot of hidden costs that add up quickly. For example, the huge corporation I was working for is funded by the state, which meant I had amazing benefits. It provided great insurance for us both for little cost. Not to mention the match on the 401K plan was unheard of. Insurance costs hit smalls businesses so hard. Insurance was actually the one cost that held us from making this decision sooner. It was going to be $1,000 expense we would be taking on.

We added up every possible expense associated with me leaving my job. Even down to the minute details, like me needing a new laptop because the one I had belonged to the corporation where I worked.

We evaluated our expenses at home and at the office to determine what our new budget would be and if we were ok with that. For the time being it meant that there would be certain sacrifices. For example, one expense I was willing to give up was my monthly Barre membership. I made a little workout room in our house and purchased some barre DVDs.

It’s so important to evaluate your financial situation, even down to the small details. Something that could put a significant strain on your marriage is if you started working together and then realize it wasn’t working financially. You could get yourself into a dreadful situation. It’s also important that you both discuss if you are willing to give up certain aspects of your lifestyle for the short-term. You definitely want to be on the same page about that.

The great vision to keep in mind for these small sacrifices is that together, you should be able to grow your company or business and create an even better lifestyle for your family!

7.) Above all else, your relationship comes first

Rule number 1 that you must establish. If you make the decision to work together, your relationship comes first. That means that you must agree that if any point it puts too much strain on your relationship, you have to let the job go.

If you follow the above six strategies, I don’t think you would get to this point. However, you never know what can happen. My husband and I strongly agreed that if me coming to the office ever jeopardized our marriage, then it would be a no-brainer to make a change. Neither one of us would be prideful. We wouldn’t look at it as a failure. It’s only failure if you give up. Failure would be if we continued to work together unhappily and gave up on saving our relationship.

Takeaway

Will and I have always known that we wanted to work together. But it was still such a scary step. It took courage, faith, and prayer for us to make this decision.

I can honestly say that I’m so blessed to have the opportunity to go to work every day with him. Some people may absolutely cringe at this thought, and that’s ok. It certainly is tricky at times and not for everyone. But I believe our strategy has set us up for success!

We take small steps every day to build the business and build our relationship and we are having a blast! The other day we both wore the exact same outfit.. unplanned of course! It was hilarious!

 

I would love to hear any experiences you guys have had in working with a spouse or partner!

 

Take one small step today,

 

Xo-Jenna