11 Tips for Running a Successful Business with Your Spouse

If you are running any business, it is going to influence the business owners to home life.

But when you are running a successful business with your spouse, it can present a whole new level of challenges. The business challenges you will experience will influence your marriage and your marriage will impact your business.   

While many people have run a successful business with their spouse, it takes a few extra considerations and a lot more teamwork than would be necessary if only one of you was running the business.  

So with this in mind, here are our tips for running a successful business with your spouse while maintaining a happy marriage

Prepare well.

1. Pay attention to the pitfalls

It’s all too easy to think that running a successful business with your spouse might be easy. It might also be easy to overlook any possible problems during the planning phase because the notion of running a successful business is too desirable.  So, you might not want to address the pitfalls of running a business with your spouse just in case you are put off from doing it.

The perception of running a successful business with your spouse can be too desirable to let yourself be put off by a few problems.

But if you don’t stop and pay attention to the possible pitfalls, or carefully plan for all aspects of the business, you won’t give yourself a chance to create the life you dream of.

Your marriage might just be compromised too.  

It’s vital for any startup to plan their business well, and failing to prepare is often the reason why so many people fail.

It’s especially important to address all potential problems when you are running a business with your spouse so that you don’t both lose your income, or start to blame each other for any problems you might experience.

2. Research well

To Make sure you are ready to run a successful business with your spouse, research the impact that running a business with a spouse has had on others.

Discuss between you and your spouse how you will handle similar situations if they crop up in your business. 

3. Plan for how you’ll deal with problems

In this planning phase, it helps to create a policy that you can both default to when there are problems. So that you can maintain clear communication and avoid unhelpful emotion.  

You could even form a code word for the times when one spouse is not recognizing that the other is serious about needing to discuss a problem.

4. Consider the pros and cons

There will be pros and cons for starting any business and pros and cons for running a successful business with your spouse. Make sure you address both and build strategies to handle the cons.  

5. Protect your family finances

When you are running a successful business with your spouse, you won’t need to be worried about money because it should be rolling in (if the business is indeed successful).

But in the start-up phase that’s not likely to be the case. You will probably experience cash flow problems from time to time and also make mistakes with your investments, products or services.

Having a contingency built into your budget for issues is a great strategy for protecting your family finances as is being clear about your budgets and financial boundaries. It’s also worth agreeing on what situations will cause you to have to quit to protect your finances so that you don’t continue sabotaging your private life and your marriage out of desperation for the business to work.  

6. Don’t be optimistic about the business costs involved

Overestimating the cost involved to run a successful business with your spouse is vital most people are far too optimistic.

Work out your living expenses and lifestyle budgets frequently so that you know what you are dealing with at any point in time.

7. Communicate well

At any phase of their marriage, this is not a piece of new advice for any married couple. But it’s so important.

If you don’t discuss your business plans, the pros, and cons of everything, and ground rules that you must stick by then before long things go awry, and that will have a direct impact on your marriage.

Just save yourself the hassle and make an effort to apply the groundwork and communication you’ll be glad you did in the long term.  

8. Play to your differing strengths

Share out the business responsibilities that play to each other’s strengths and factor in for the weaknesses. Assigning different roles within the business should help you work together harmoniously.  

9. Set up clear business rules

We’ve discussed setting startup rules and agreeing on ground rules for working together, but there also needs to be business rules too. Then you need to stick to them.

10. Trust your spouse

When you have agreed to the rules, assigned roles and have started running a successful business with your spouse, you’ll need to trust each other and support them with the decisions they make – even if you don’t always agree with them.  

There will be times when you won’t accept.  

If your spouse repeatedly makes a mistake that is causing problems in the business, it’s important to discuss this privately away from any clients and colleagues.  

11. Create solid marriage and work boundaries

Once again the ground rules apply here.

If you are going to be running a successful business with your spouse, you are going to need to be diligent about the boundaries that separate your business and your marriage. Make the line of separation between them as clear as possible so that you can avoid any confusion.

The advantages of running a successful business with a spouse

While we have highlighted plenty of challenges that will occur when you are running a successful business with your spouse, there can be some fantastic benefits too. Benefits such as working alongside your husband or wife every day and creating synchronized schedules.

You’ll also be able to have the level of trust in your business partner that you will only get from running a business with your spouse.  

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