Tips for happily merging marriage and business
- Set clear boundaries for work time vs. married time
- Determine what questions, issues, decisions and concerns you and your spouse need to be informed about and what decisions each of you has the autonomy to make in the business
- Recognize that conflict will occur and have a solid plan to address it
- Have a clear vision for the business and understand why you are committing to work together
- Be willing renegotiate roles and responsibilities as the business grows
- Maintain individual offices and make sure you have enough space for each of you to have a your own workspace, and then honor that space
- Remember above all else this is your spouse so be respectful and commit to putting your marriage first
- Allow your spouse to maintain their individuality and work style. If you know your spouse does their best work at night, honor that and recognize it is in the best interest of both the business and your marriage
- Commit to dividing or outsourcing your family domestic duties (laundry, meals, cleaning etc.) so that one spouse is not overly burdened
Source: Cornelia Shipley, CEO of3C Consulting, an atlanta-based executive coaching firm.
- J.D. "Dave" Powers' tips for business partners with children
- Dinner table conversations are educational and informative, and for the entrepreneur they're a great chance to get different, but informed perspectives
- Create a board of directors or advisers. This was one of the best things I did 25 years after I started my company. It gave us a way to stay focused. I got honest advice. It held me accountable for making decisions and setting goals, and sometimes provided a buffer when I had to make tough or unpopular decisions.
- Child labor is not such a bad thing, especially when it's your kids. It teaches them the value of money and entrepreneurship, and it lets them see what you spend so much time on. I gave my kids jobs at an early age that suited their capabilities like stuffing or putting mailing labels on envelopes. My wife supervised the work and kept track of their hours. The kids got a paycheck like other employees, including withholdings for taxes.
- If you want your kids to work and thrive in the family business as a professional some day, make sure they get experience outside of it. This will give them confidence and a better perspective about people and business.
- Help give your kids a network of advisers and mentors. You are the best mentor, but oftentimes they need to hear things from a different voice. These mentors and advisers should be from both inside and outside your company.
Source: J.D. “Dave” Power III, founder of J.D. Power and Associates, the subject of POWER: How J.D. Power III Became the Auto Industry’s Adviser, Confessor, and Eyewitness to History in bookstores now.
Sometime in April, Skip and Nancy Plesnarski will open 18|8 Fine Men’s Salon in the Towne Brookhaven shopping center.
The upscale grooming salon will be the Buckhead couple’s first foray into copreneurship — the term coined for partnering in love and work.
While there is little data on copreneurship, more couples are making the leap, said Alisa Harrison, senior vice president of communications and marketing at International Franchise Association.
“We give a franchisee of the year award and often up on stage it’s a husband and wife team,” Harrison said.
What’s driving the trend?
Some want more flexibility in their schedule. Some see it as a way to control their own destiny. Some hope to create a financial haven for their children. And some want all of the above.
When Skip Plesnarski, 62, and his wife, Nancy, 61, made the leap last year, they were looking to do four things: stabilize and build their retirement assets, have flexibility, recoup their investment in three years and remain mentally and physically active in a business venture.
Skip Plesnarski retired in 2012 from his job as director of global planning and logistics at Kimberly Clark. He started looking into franchise opportunities a year ago.
“18/8 satisfied each of those personal objectives,” he said. “It was a very new opportunity. There wasn’t a lot of competition in this particular industry so we got excited about it.”
Last Month, Ken and Kristine Jones, of Sandy Springs, launched CMIT Solutions of North Fulton, an IT service provider for small to mid-sized businesses, after Ken got a pink slip on his 50th birthday from First Data Corp., where he’d worked for 19 years.
“I searched for a job for quite a while but it felt like every position that came up was two or three steps back,” he said.
Last August, he said, he went to a franchise class.
“Surprisingly, it wasn’t all McDonald’s and Subway sandwiches,” he said. “One of them was actually IT management services which was something that appealed to me.”
He shared the notion with his wife Kristine.
“I thought he was cuckoo for cocoa puffs,” she said.
But after weighing the risk of Ken trying to get another corporate job and starting a business, and after learning more about CMIT, Kristine came around. She especially like having the chance to spend more time with Ken and being able to control their own destiny. Also, she could envision passing on the business to their three children.
While the benefits of husband-wife businesses can be numerous, mixing love and work can also magnify differences — in the worst cases leading to the end of the marriage, the business, or both.
Misunderstandings at home can lead to trouble at work or vice versa, said Cornelia Shipley, CEO of 3C Consulting, an Atlanta-based executive coaching firm.
“I have seen issues arise when both partners are not equally committed to the business or one spouse losses interest in the work,” Shipley said. “It is important, if you the business and your marriage are going to be successful, that you and your spouse are committed to making the marriage work first and foremost and then the business.
Shipley, who also owns a real estate business with her husband, said it can be hard to turn work off if, for instance, the couple has not set clear boundaries for when and when not to engage in work activities.
On the other hand, she said, spouses can fully use each others’ strengths for the good of the business.
“Sometimes we know our spouses better than they know themselves and we see things they don’t,” she said.
Early on, both the Plesnarskis and Joneses could see how that would work for them.
Kristine Jones, for instance, is really good at networking, Ken Jones said.
“I was going to be the one always in front,” he said. “But because of her social nature, she’s really good at generating leads.”
The couple said 21 years of marriage has prepared them.
“We’ve developed a good communication style,” Kristine said. “I think we’re going to be great together and I’m trying my best not to sexually harass him.”
After 40 years of marriage, Nancy Plesnarki said they’d never give up on each other.
“We’ve had a lifetime of joy and we’re not about to let business interfere,” she said. “When you move with corporate America all your lives, you have to deal with a lot tougher issues. Now we get to do something we want together.”
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