By Robert Fukui
The Dream of Being Married and Owning a Business
The vision of being married and owning a business probably sounds something like this. You and your spouse have freedom because you’re not tied down to a 9 to 5, can set your own schedules, develop wealth to be able to do what you want and travel wherever you want whenever you want.
Sound about right?
The Reality of Being Married and Owning a Business
Then reality hits. Business is not growing and thriving the way you imagined, taking up more hours than you or your spouse like, have to take out a 2nd on the house to keep the business afloat, arguments over finance ensue, divide and conquer is your motto and struggle to even have date night.
Ok, so maybe (hopefully) your life is not this extreme but maybe there are some familiar tones to this scenario.
Being married can be challenging enough at times but add in business ownership and it just increases the complexity and stress.
As the business owner, the weight of the world lands on your shoulders.
Solutions
So how do you address the stress of marriage and business so both sides can thrive? Here are a couple helpful tips for you and your spouse to discuss and come up with solutions.
- Listen and understand – With every relationship, conflicts are inevitable. Whether the subject is about household finance, taking care of the kids, finding time to be together or a variety of business issues, a simple question or recommendation can turn into World War II. Most arguments escalate because each side is too busy trying to make their point and little time really listening to understand the other person that the argument feels like you’re on a merry-go-round. So instead of making quick assumptions and react, listen, ask clarifying questions and understand your spouse’s intent. This will help solve or even prevent the next “Cold War.”
- Increase margin of time and money – One of the major issue that is slowing business growth and preventing you from spending quality time with your spouse and family is time and money. Or lack thereof. Increasing the margin of time doesn’t come from adding more hours to the day but by increasing the efficiency of you and your team so you can do more with less. This will also increase profit margins because you will be able to produce more and serve more clients without adding extra labor cost. But this all starts with you. Most likely you so are controlling “everything” and doing too much. Spend the time to train and delegate tasks to employees, contractors or piece of software so that you can spend more time on productive tasks that will grow the business. Can’t afford to carve out time to train people you say? You can’t afford not to.
Summary
The length of this article will not allow me to expand on these two tips but they do work. It just takes commitment and a little bit of creativity to find the right solutions around this. I guarantee that if you do take the time to address these issues, your marriage and business will benefit.
If any of this resonates, I invite you to go the website https://www.powercouplesbydesign.com/ and download the cheat sheet “8 Steps to a Thriving Marriage and Prosperous Business.” It’s the Cliff Notes version of the exact steps I help my married couples accomplish their dream life of marriage and business.
Robert’s accomplished 24 year career in marketing/sales have been with Fortune 100 companies such as Coca-Cola, Novartis Pharmaceutical and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Has played pivotal roles in the launch of six major brands (2 reached $1 billion/year in revenue) and a recipient a variety of national sales and leadership awards. His successful experience in sales/marketing through ever-changing economic conditions has positioned him to be able to assist privately held, family run businesses achieve similar success in any economic environment.
In April 2016, he founded i61, inc. with his wife Kay Lee, which consults and coaches family run businesses become more profitable and make a transformative impact in the communities, cities and nations they serve. Optimal price and branding strategies are one of the key areas of marketing that the company specializes in.
You can reach Robert at 626.422.6628 or rfukui@i61businessdevelopment.com.