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No 81                                                                             December 2005

Survival Tips for Small Business Spouses

Part 3: Setting the Ground Rules

The third in a three part series on the things your spouse/partner should know before you start your small business

The final item on your checklist requires you and your spouse/partner to develop an infrastructure to define the procedures for interconnecting home and office with spouse/partner and small business owner. When setting up the business, the small business owner needs a home base, which is just that, your home. As the business grows it will outgrow your home, but until then, you need to set up some standard operating procedures regarding communication, scheduling and defining boundaries.

Communication: Imagine a Saturday afternoon and your spouse is sitting on the back deck playing with the dog. You need to ask a question, what do you do? The obvious answer is walk out there, flop down beside them and end up spending the next half hour enjoying the sunset while chatting. If you switch this scenario to an office setting, the answer changes: you call their extension, send an email, or more likely send them a text message. When you crunch the two together, feelings get hurt. You’re approaching your spouse expecting a warm, extended response, and you get a brief dismissive answer. You feel rejected, and your spouse feels harassed.

The two of you can address this problem by establishing how and when to communicate. The how, when and where need to be addressed together. If your spouse is in their office intent on their computer screen on Monday morning that should indicate that communication should fit a brief information-exchange only model that doesn’t require emotional exchange. However, if your spouse is kicked back in the living room easy chair late in the afternoon, your spouse needs to recognise that they have moved into the ‘home’ part of the house, and it’s your right to expect your partner to respond to you, not a harried CEO. Together, agree on the when and where, and then choose the how. If you grew up with weekends always being family time, then you probably need to agree that even if your spouse is working on a weekend, they are still ‘available’ to communication. If Mondays and Tuesdays are the heaviest work-flow for your spouse, then agree that you two will stick to minimal interaction on those days. Once you establish a pattern, it will be simple to adapt your communication to fit both your needs and avoid the negative results of constant, minor miscommunication.

Scheduling. As you define your communication framework, you will discover that you and your spouse are also discovering another requirement of infrastructure: hours and schedules. One of the most-touted perks of small biz ownership is the freedom to work when you want and how much you want. In the start-up phase though, the answer to when is always, and the answer to how much is too much. Every day is a deadline day when just addressing the high priority task items takes more time than the day allows.

Your first step in responding to this is realising – and accepting – that your spouse is committed to their dream and would happily work 24-7 to make it happen, usually without even being aware they are doing it. Even though it’s easy to reminisce of your spouse’s old 9-5 schedule, you need to remind yourself that you agreed to your spouse’s venture knowing that you might not get to see them much in the initial stages, and it does not reflect any change to their emotional commitment to you or the rest of your family.

That aside, you do have a claim to your spouse’s time too. When they said ‘I do,’ they handed it over to you. Knowing that, for now, you can only have just as much as you need, you get to do some quick soul-searching to determine how much quantity and quality time you need to maintain a healthy marriage or relationship. And you need to do this soul-searching before you sit down to discuss it with your spouse, because you have to look for any assumptions or expectations that you have that you haven’t necessarily defined before. When you were growing up, did your family hold dinner as a sacred time to be together? If so, you’re going to be hurt if your spouse wolfs down dinner and is already dialling a client on the way out of the dining room. Has Saturday always been hot date night for the two of you? Having your hot date switched to other nights could leave you feeling empty on Saturday. So decide what specific ‘hours’ you need your spouse to set aside for off-time. Once you’ve carved out three or four defined quality times, look at quantity. If you’re beginning to feel like your spouse has been away on business for days even though they’re sleeping next to you, your spouse needs to set aside some more face time. Bottom line, if you or your spouse is beginning to feel like the new business is superseding the marriage, it’s vital that both of you agree to drop everything to focus on each other for awhile. A successful business is not worth a marriage’s demise.

Defining boundaries. In addition to protecting your marriage, you also need to protect yourself. Because one of your roles is temporary staff and your spouse has set up office space in the basement, you need to set up boundaries for yourself. These boundaries are based on who you are as an individual and separating yourself both physically and psychologically from your spouse’s new business. Once again, you have to submit yourself to some self-analysis to identify your needs.

The more simple items are setting physical boundaries. When your spouse’s office and your home are living in the same house, you need to draw lines so that the office doesn’t overwhelm the home. Define which areas of your home that the office cannot violate. This is more than simply turning the spare room into an office. Are you OK with clients showing up at the door – and having to keep the house in decent shape for unannounced drop-ins? When the phone rings, do you mind answering it professionally, or should you get a second phone-line for the business? Can your spouse turn your dining room table into a project table? What if the spare room office needs to spill out into another room as the business grows? Obviously, there has to be give and take on this because the home and the office have to share the same space, but determine for yourself which ones you can’t give on. Maybe it’s OK to answer a phone with a set business phrase, but you can’t handle strangers wandering in and out of your house. Or the business can have as many rooms as it needs, but business paraphernalia is outlawed in core living spaces – living room, kitchen, etc.

You are sharing not only your house with the business, but also your time. When you take on the role of temporary staff or hired help, the first response is, ‘Of course honey, I’ll do whatever I can to help.’ But what this really means is that you’re on call for a part-time job now. A part-time job could be fine, except you may already have a full-time job, and what about managing the house, kids, finances, etc. which is a full-time job in and of itself? An extra hour or two a week won’t hurt, but beyond that, it can get rough. Since this new business is basically a joint-venture as a married couple, the easiest way to manage is for you and your spouse to break things into hours and divide them that way. If you’re day job is actually 50 hours a week and the new business is 60 hours a week, that doesn’t mean you take over all the household chores. It means that maybe you take on 5 hours of chores plus 5 hours of helping with the business, but beyond that, you both split the remaining chores. It is very easy to think that because your spouse is working so hard and taking on the risk of a new business, that it’s your responsibility to take up the slack; and you end up resenting your spouse because of the extra work they’re subjecting you to.

The other boundaries you need to define are psychological, and they can cover a range of issues. Keep an eye open for them, so that you will recognise when a personal boundary is being crossed. Otherwise, it comes out in resentment and frustration toward your spouse, without you even realising it. Make sure that you and your spouse are keeping the new business in perspective with the other important things in your lives.

A lot of these steps for setting up a working relationship seem vague. However, the difficulty level of translating a personal relationship into a working relationship is no more than it was when you were two individuals moving into a married relationship. Simply being self-aware of your needs and communicating clearly with your spouse about your needs and their needs is the keystone to all of this.

© 2003 The Nework Centre   |   email neworknz@yahoo.co.nz

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