Married to the job
NEW YORK — Even after nearly a decade in business together, Shakoor and Marissa Watson, the husband-and-wife team behind Brooklyn bakery Shakoor's Sweet Tooth, find that being together 24/7 isn't exactly a piece of cake.
"When you don't have any space, you don't appreciate each other as much," said Shakoor, 49, noting that it sometimes causes them to bicker over small things.
The duo tries to work separate shifts at their tiny shop and find time for their own hobbies "so when we do come back together, we're refreshed," Marissa, 47, said. "As hard as you work on your business, you have to work on your marriage."
Whether you call them mom-and-pop shops or co-preneural ventures, entrepreneurs who marry their home and work lives face unique challenges.
"A couple that goes into business together finds that the business and the work life is a tremendous part of their marriage," said Wayne Rivers, president of the Family Business Institute. That means workplace frustrations can bleed into a relationship, and vice-versa.
Being compatible in a romantic way doesn't automatically make for a good business partnership, and differing work goals, ethics and priorities can foster a simmering resentment, Rivers said.
Elizabeth Cowell, 36, and Robert Wilson, 37, met as co-workers at a music retailer before they launched Brooklyn gift shop Sterling Place two years ago, so they felt confident they'd be a good fit as business partners.
Still, "the personal can intrude into the business," Cowell said. Something as trivial as forgetting to run the dishwasher sets a bad tone. For example, "We're still ticked off about this tiny thing that happened at home, and so we're not very receptive to the idea being proposed, and we get a little snippy," she said.
Having an impartial third party weigh in amid an impasse can help lower stress, said Michael Becker, a Connecticut lawyer and accountant. "The successful ones almost always have some method of dispute resolution," he said.
Couples in business together often fail to spell out who's responsible for what, leading them to potentially step on each other's toes or allow details to fall through the cracks. Critiquing each other's performance is very difficult, said family business consultant Jane Zalman, who ran a travel firm with her husband in the 1990s.
"They don't treat it as though it were a real business, they treat it as if it were a family," she said.
Work is smoothest when partners have complementary skills and take on separate and defined roles, Zalman said. She suggested creating an informal contract that specifies work hours, salaries and duties.
Jessica D'Amico, 31, and Paul Berliner, 31, try to run their company, Lady J Jewelry, as if she were the chief operating officer and he were the chief financial officer. The pair, who wed two years ago, have been working at their business since they began dating in late 2001. "I am the designer, the creative mind," she said. "Paul is the straight financial guy.""The tension comes in when I try to make a fashion decision for her," said Berliner, who also helps manage investments at a hedge fund. "I have to take a step back and realize that she's the designer and I am most likely wrong."The couple is hoping their daily after-dinner business strategy sessions will help quadruple sales to about $2 million over the next year. But between building Lady J and raising their 10-month-old daughter, Millie, "the worst thing is making alone time for each other that's not business-related," Berliner said.Keeping work and home life totally separate isn't realistic, so communication is key, said Henry Nunberg, a Manhattan psychiatrist who runs a family business counseling company with his wife, Marlene, a therapist."We set a model of: It's OK to have different ideas, and that there are different ways of doing things, and verbalizing problems is the first step," Marlene said."We've also been listening to each other for about 45 years," Henry said, "so that helps."
