Dear Maxine,
I’m thinking about starting a business with my wife, except there’s one problem, we disagree on pretty much everything. What time our kids go to bed, whether it’s necessary to wear pajamas or not, which direction the dishes should be loaded, what pizza place we should eat at. Albeit, these are petty things, and after a lot of years of marriage and a handful of kids later, we’ve learned to manage our differences in our own humorous way, but will this translate when money and other employees are involved? Our professional talents complement each other, but we don’t know how to resolve conflict in a healthy way. Are we doomed?
Sincerely,
Doomed
Dear Doomed,
I’ll keep this short and sweet.
I wouldn’t recommend starting or owning a business with your spouse. If you already know you don’t see eye to eye on most things now, it will just get more complicated when throwing a whole business in the picture.
Most likely, one of you will be able to compartmentalize and separate home life from career life, and one of you won’t be able to draw the line between the two, which can cut into all aspects of your life.
It’s good to have different perspectives when running any type of organization, business or household included, but when you can’t separate the two, which there’s a good chance might happen, it could get tricky.
Keep it simple, keep it consistent.
Sincerely,
Maxine
Everybody has issues from time to time. What’s yours?
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