The Work Life Balance

March 9, 2008 by willng24.

Recently I wrote about the relationship between Asians and entrepreneurship, but how about “co-preneurs?” I learned the co-preneur term from a boston.com article about couples establishing businesses together. One of the highlighted couples is Joanne Chang and her fiancé Christopher Myers. If you didn’t already know Joanne Chang is the face of the successful Flour Bakery in the South End. Her fiancé (and business partner) is a successful restaurateur, but what makes them successful business partners?

This article caught my eye because it defines the modern mom and pop businesses. Even though the stereotypical dry cleaners and restaurants, which defined mom and pop business in prior generations, is being traded in for consulting firms and dot-com’s, the same challenges still exist.

I’ve always wondered how couples in this situation know where to draw the line between business and pleasure. Actually, is there a line? Does the relationship depict how the business is runs or vise versa?

“By one estimate, the “drop-out” rate may be steep. Twenty percent of co-preneurs surveyed in 1997 had quit working together by 2000, according to national surveys by Glenn Muske, a professor at Oklahoma State University. Still, the total number of such couples - 3 million - remained steady, meaning just as many went into business together as quit during that period, says Muske, adding that about one-third of US family businesses are led by couples.

So in an era when close to half of first marriages ultimately fail and two-thirds of new businesses collapse within four years, how do co-preneurs do it?”

I think that a relationship has too much feeling involved to provide a good partnership for a business. Love is a crazy thing that I will never truly understand and it makes people do some really stupid things. Now try to balance this with making sound business decisions is surely a recipe for disaster. Furthermore, much of business has to do with calculated risk taking, if we were to use these techniques to enter into personal relationships, well there will probably be more single people than there are today.

Are you in a business with your spouse? Do you know people who are? How do they manage? If any of you are like me you have family or friends of family that are in this situation. The drawback that I’ve seen is that the romance in their relationship has been replaced with thoughts of work. This is probably the only thing in a relationship that I’m not willing to risk losing.

Posted in AROUND C-TOWN | Print | 1 Comment »