Tips For Being Successful as Couple-preneurs Working with your partner is a divine experience and here's how you can make the partnership successful
By Prachi Garg
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We all wonder how couples strike a balance between their personal and professional lives, especially when they are together all the time. In fact, working together helps determine your mutual career destinies, instead of spending many hours apart, working for someone else. This inspired us to as we see wonderful couples across India, who planned to be partners in crime in everything, and decided to build a meaningful life together by co-creating something that brings them joy and fulfilment and compile their stories in my book "Supercouples".
Be on The Same Page: Keen alignment and shared vision are the keys to success for any business. Though couples share a level of intimacy and friendship, it is important that they are aligned on their career vision and their life goals too. Because only then will both of them be able to do justice with the enterprise. Eg: Try to be a co-founder of a food enterprise only if both of you are a foodie or closely attached to the vision of starting something around food. Starting a business together just because one of you is passionate, might not be a great idea on a longer run.
Define Your Roles and Responsibilities: Since with couple-preneurs, the line between personal and business gets very blurred, it is very important to define their roles and responsibilities. In most of the interactions, The division of roles had a great impact on making their partnership a successful one. If one of them is managing operations, then the better half would manage marketing. This not only avoids day to day conflicts but also empowers both of their decision-making power. This has brought out the best in them, and also saved them from stepping into the other's shoes. As a couple-preneur, let your better half decide on the matter they are in charge of. Day to day poking will not only create conflicts but also will impact personal life.
Maintain Work-Life (and love) Balance: It is very important to keep a check on how your business decisions are impacting your personal life. Either it can do wonders, or wreck everything. We come across many such examples during these interactions. So my two cents here would be to keep experimenting to see what works well for you as a couple, and how a decision can reinforce your love for each other. Having said that, it is also important to celebrate small business successes together. Keep rekindling your love during office hours as you might not be able to sneak out free time both being the entrepreneurs:-)
Be Kind, Understanding and Respectful: It is very important to make sure that both of you respect each other. Since here lives are way too inter-wined, conflicts are bound to happen. It is important to handle them respectfully and keeping each other's priorities in mind. For me, it is more like being married to your work, and at the same time getting the chance to spend quality time with your spouse. Most of the couple-preneurs would agree to this. Most of them have been able to explore the other side of their spouse, which would not have been possible in the absence of this plunge. Their journey is definitely different, but as they always say: "No risk, no gain".
