About 80% of my clients are in business with their life partners to varying degrees.
‘In business with a life-partner or spouse’ can mean:
- A full partner with a clearly designed business operations agreement and established roles and decision making authority within the business.
- A spouse or partner who works in the business as an employee.
- A spouse who was a lawyer, accountant, or IT person and now does that part of the business for you.
- Or a spouse or partner who dabbles, helps out, and just pitches in when you need them.
I know in many circles being able to retire your spouse is a big deal. A sign of success. But for all the chatter about it, there’s very little support for the boomerang that awaits if the partnership isn’t designed well.
All-too-often women go into these arrangements with very high hopes and very few agreements and details.
Who’s in charge? Makes final decisions? How are decisions made? How do we handle it if one of us doesn’t do our job well or meet our commitments? Can I fire my spouse? What kinds of boundaries does the love partnership need from the business?
These questions and many more can plague your love if you don’t address them… head on!
Loving someone is very different from business-ing with them.
The good news is that it really can work.
The bad news is that if you don’t set things up initially or redesign them when necessary, the stress of unaligned leadership can weigh very heavily on a marriage.
I’m finding more and more that female entrepreneurs are silently struggling with how to make their partnership with their ‘person’ work… at work. And there are very few resources to help.
So, to get started I’m going to teach a workshop this week that outlines the foundational elements you have to have in place to lead a business with the person you love most.
If this is you… or you’re working toward the goal of retiring your spouse, please join me for a powerful hour.
Love is a beautiful thing. Let’s keep it that way. There is a way to work together and love together. But… just like all things in business, there are some unsexy parts we need to chat about.
CLICK THIS LINK to join me.