“Business” Time
Dear Maxwells: My partner and I have recently begun to discuss the idea of starting a business together. We have a great idea for this business and are both super passionate about the idea of pursuing it. I also feel that we would make a great team as our combined strengths really compliment one another. However, I’ve heard so many horror stories about people who go into business with their significant other and how it can ruin the relationship. Do you have any advice on this?
Dear reader, thanks so much for your question. Given the fact that we run our own coaching practice together, we are excited to write about this topic and provide some tools and ways of thinking that will serve you well if you decide to move forward with starting a business with your partner. Worry not, these horror stories that you’ve heard of are not a direct result of running a business with a significant other, but far more so are a result of going about it in the wrong ways. The truth is that if you have a strong foundation of honesty and communication already in your relationship, as well as smart tools to help you navigate this arena, running a business with your partner can be an extremely fulfilling endeavor as well as even augment the quality of your relationship overall. Additionally, these concepts can and should be applied to other areas of your relationship as well, especially to all of our readers who are parents or are planning on becoming parents at some point.
We’ve written a number of times about this concept of wearing different hats inside your relationship. Modern relationships especially require couples to wear more hats than ever before. There is the “roomate hat.” The “best friend” hat. The “financial partner” hat. For all our readers who are parents, there is the “mommy” or “daddy” hat. And hopefully there is still the “lover” hat that you each wear when it’s time to come together as intimate partners. The reason we like this metaphor of different hats to wear inside a relationship is because, for one thing, it’s easy to take off and put on a hat. This is important to understand because where most couples go wrong is they don’t clearly delineate between when they are wearing a certain hat versus another. When this happens, everything spills over into everything else and this is where problems start to arise. The reason being is that thriving relationships require polarity in order to maintain attraction and desire for one another. For instance, the “roommate hat” is a very different hat than the “lovers hat,” and requires a completely different energy. If you don’t clearly delineate between these different hats, polarity goes out the window.
Starting a business together is no different than becoming parents or becoming roommates or any other hat that you wear inside of your relationship. It’s just a new, additional hat that you both will be wearing called “business partners.” The most important thing to understand about this is to clearly delineate between when you have your business partner hat on, and when you don’t. You must create real boundaries and structures around these different parts of your relationship. We suggest getting really intentional about this. For example, when you put on your business partner hat, you should not flirt with each other or sit next to each other or touch each other romantically or sexually. Nor should you talk about any other aspect or part of your relationship. You should also conduct your business in a different area of your home or office than you would in your personal or intimate life. Keep the energy of “business time” separate from the other kind of “business time” if you know what we mean! Then, when it’s time to take off your “business partner hats,” make sure that you really take them off. No discussing business outside of business hours. Not on date nights, not with the kids, not while you are brushing your teeth before bed etc.
We even recommend each member of the relationship doing something that represents or signifies the taking off of these different hats and transitioning into a different energy. This is a great tool for parents too. Let’s say it’s time to transition from “work time” to “couples time,” or from Mommy/Daddy time of putting the kids to bed to time to a date night. Creating a small but simple ritual that signifies this transition can be a tremendously powerful tool. Some simple but powerful examples are things like changing your outfit from whatever you were wearing before to something with a different energy that compliments the new hat you will be putting on versus the previous one. Taking a shower or a bath, doing a 10 min meditation, putting on a song that gets you into that new and different energy, even spraying a different perfume can be a powerful shift in energy. Basically anything that signifies a clearly delineated shift in energy will work.
The key takeaway here is to be intentional about keeping the different energies in your relationship separate. Making sure that you fully take one hat off before you put on another. It’s incredible how many different things couples can do well together when they practice keeping the energies of these various parts of their relationship separate from one another. Practice this well and diligently and you can rock in business and in every other area of your relationship as well.
