So I asked some female friends, "Would YOU work with your husband?"
Unequivocally they answered, "No! I could never do it."
"Why not?"
The answers varied from 'we have different communication styles' to 'I don't want to have to answer to my husband' to the simplest, 'I don't want a divorce.'
What's the motive behind my pseudo-interviews? Confirmation that I'm not crazy. Confirmation that working with MY husband is HARD work. Confirmation that we're not the only husband-wife business co-owners with conflict, at work and at home. But the confirmations weren't enough.
Being the post-academic I am, I sought literature too, to help "explain" what I've already learned but haven't been able to articulate. Amazon.com offered up Kathy Marshack's Entrepreneurial Couples, a book about "making it work at work and at home". Intrigued, I hit the Prime, Two-day 1-click button and awaited some insight.
While not a huge fan of self-help books--self-assessments and checklists are littered throughout the text, I must shows that intimate partners, particularly with children, struggle to balance (meaningful) work, family life, and marriage. While this may seem a no-brainer, the specific challenges for copreneurs are different from, say, dual-career partners. Starting, maintaining, & growing a start-up is no easy task and the stresses often exceed that of traditional employer-employee relationships. For example, the risk of immersing the family's entire financial livelihood into a start-up can create insomnia in the best of us. In fact, the whole endeavor can be a recipe for disaster, or delight. The jury is leaning toward the former in our case.
Two years ago, Pat had been working as a sales rep for a software company when a long-time mentor introduced him to the property preservation industry. I believe he saw this as an opportunity to earn more money and overall fulfill the American dream of the self-made man. He started taking “orders” from the mentor’s son’s company and within months, built and claimed the Colorado market for himself. In fact, business took off so quickly that he quit his job in software sales, and requested my help to manage the volume. After all “Nikki, you’re not making any money, you’re dissatisfied with academe, and you’re not going to make tenure.” Given I couldn't argue with any of his claims, I quit my tenure track job and began to “help” Pat. Quickly, Pat and the mentor’s son argued over money and went their separate ways. Pat asked if I wanted to become his business partner (with me taking 51% ownership so as to take advantage of a woman-owned business status--which to date we never have). I agreed and we incorporated Helix.
In those early days, Pat and I shared high hopes that I’d draw upon my academic skills and contribute to Helix by researching and writing about the industry, and working with higher-level stakeholders to define and address the problems within the industry (there are many). But we quickly learned that running a small business demands all your waking hours and energies and resources, and within record time, the small business was running us. Recruitment, training, payroll, tax planning, paper processing, sub-contractor (subs) management, and other host of other daily tasks supplanted any lofty aspirations of industry reform. And those tasks quickly became divided along stereotypical gender lines. Pat worked “in the field” and managed subs, while I became the primary paper processor and bid writer.
Fast-forward to today, Pat and I continue to argue over when, how, and or if I'll contribute to Helix. And from Marshack’s categorization of entrepreneurial types, I can begin to see where some of the conflict is arising. Given her criteria, I’d surmise that we’re the “solo entrepreneur with a supportive spouse” type. We aren’t “dual entrepreneurs” who each have their own venture, and given our history and division of labor, we aren’t truly “copreneurs”. Instead, the whole endeavor fell in Pat’s lap, and I came on board to help. And, at the end of the day, I’m probably too competitive to be anyone’s helper, even (or especially?) my adoring husband’s.
Where to go from here? I don’t want a divorce either, so I guess I better start reading Chapter 2 now…
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Back to Work (?)
Summer vacation is officially over. The kids have been back to school for a week now. The morning air carries that old, familiar chill of autumn. And my husband has requested my presence back at work. Really? I thought I was finally “out”…
This past May, I called a meeting with Pat and our HR/organizational consultant, Courtney. I asked that she attend so there would be a 3rd party to mediate. (Working with your spouse is not always easy, and we had been less than discreet with our conflict in the office. In fact, our "disagreements" had reached an all-time high (low?). Our employees were suffering and our marriage was teetering as a consequence.) I needed to share how very frustrated I was with our business and its impact on our marriage, my self, and our family. Because all my earlier attempts to phase out of the business were unsuccessful (I’d tried over 6 different times to “leave” in the past 2 years), I was willing to pull the ultimate card—our business or our marriage. And while I didn’t want to leave Pat in a bind, I was simply at my breaking point.
The three of us sat outside on the local Panera’s patio. I began, "Look, I love you but I don't love the business. I have not contributed in ways we originally hoped for, and worse, my daily activities are unforgiving. I can't handle one more inane client phone call asking why I don't have a dump receipt to prove our sub removed a gas can from a property. I can't handle responding to one more insulting client demand to lower our bid prices--it's a BID for a reason, and no, our sub is not working for free!" Pat starts to interject with the specifics of some ridiculous work order when Courtney says, "Stop. Look at Nikki. She's literally curled her body into a knot as you were talking. Nikki?"
Holding my legs to my chest, I say with a finality that brings calm, "I'm done, for now. I choose Pat, not property preservation. For now, at least. I hope you understand."
So, with the present request to return to the office--to act as an office manager, help train new employees and subs, develop performance plans, to “make the employees more productive and efficient”—I’m faced with the "what have you accomplished in this time off anyway?" While I needed to recover from the stress and disappointment of property preservation, and wanted to redefine how I’m to contribute to the world and model for my children how good work can inspire and create and reform, the reality that my “vacation” has not necessary birthed any new ideas, routines, or income stands likes an insurmountable brick wall. 'Am I working outside of the home or Helix?' No. 'Am I regularly blogging?' No. 'Are you bringing any income to the household?' No.
“What the hell do you do all day?” Ok, Pat didn’t explicitly ask it, but the enthymeme feels like the elephant sitting in the living room. Perhaps it's my guilt, guilt derived from living in and coming from a family that considers work a necessary evil, not an (indulgent) fulfilling of one's passion.
As my sister, Cindy, says, "Helix is your family's livelihood. You can't quit because you don't enjoy it. Who the hell enjoys their work? That's why it's called, WORK!"
As my father says, "You job is to support your husband however you can. You have children counting on you."
As Pat says, "Your absence has caused great financial strain. You did the work of 3 processors, and now we have to pay those processors to take your place. That's a loss of income for our household."
Alas, competing paradigms of work are at work. On the one hand, Pat and I own a business that supports many households other than our own; people rely on us to feed their families. I did commit to Helix when I signed the Inc. papers. I implicitly ask my husband to own the lion’s share of responsibilities and bullshit each day I forgo the office. Bills do not get paid on their own…So I need to pull my share, lace up the ole’ bootstraps, and get my hands dirty, again. Get back to work!
On the other hand, I see how the trappings of middle class demand that we work harder at work that we don’t necessarily enjoy. (That I both enjoy and despise these indulgences does not help.) I see that our business is really not our business and in fact our clients’ demands shape how we work in ways that are simply not always humane. I don’t want to be part of the problem anymore; I want to be part of the solution.
Betwixt and between worlds of work…
This past May, I called a meeting with Pat and our HR/organizational consultant, Courtney. I asked that she attend so there would be a 3rd party to mediate. (Working with your spouse is not always easy, and we had been less than discreet with our conflict in the office. In fact, our "disagreements" had reached an all-time high (low?). Our employees were suffering and our marriage was teetering as a consequence.) I needed to share how very frustrated I was with our business and its impact on our marriage, my self, and our family. Because all my earlier attempts to phase out of the business were unsuccessful (I’d tried over 6 different times to “leave” in the past 2 years), I was willing to pull the ultimate card—our business or our marriage. And while I didn’t want to leave Pat in a bind, I was simply at my breaking point.
The three of us sat outside on the local Panera’s patio. I began, "Look, I love you but I don't love the business. I have not contributed in ways we originally hoped for, and worse, my daily activities are unforgiving. I can't handle one more inane client phone call asking why I don't have a dump receipt to prove our sub removed a gas can from a property. I can't handle responding to one more insulting client demand to lower our bid prices--it's a BID for a reason, and no, our sub is not working for free!" Pat starts to interject with the specifics of some ridiculous work order when Courtney says, "Stop. Look at Nikki. She's literally curled her body into a knot as you were talking. Nikki?"
Holding my legs to my chest, I say with a finality that brings calm, "I'm done, for now. I choose Pat, not property preservation. For now, at least. I hope you understand."
So, with the present request to return to the office--to act as an office manager, help train new employees and subs, develop performance plans, to “make the employees more productive and efficient”—I’m faced with the "what have you accomplished in this time off anyway?" While I needed to recover from the stress and disappointment of property preservation, and wanted to redefine how I’m to contribute to the world and model for my children how good work can inspire and create and reform, the reality that my “vacation” has not necessary birthed any new ideas, routines, or income stands likes an insurmountable brick wall. 'Am I working outside of the home or Helix?' No. 'Am I regularly blogging?' No. 'Are you bringing any income to the household?' No.
“What the hell do you do all day?” Ok, Pat didn’t explicitly ask it, but the enthymeme feels like the elephant sitting in the living room. Perhaps it's my guilt, guilt derived from living in and coming from a family that considers work a necessary evil, not an (indulgent) fulfilling of one's passion.
As my sister, Cindy, says, "Helix is your family's livelihood. You can't quit because you don't enjoy it. Who the hell enjoys their work? That's why it's called, WORK!"
As my father says, "You job is to support your husband however you can. You have children counting on you."
As Pat says, "Your absence has caused great financial strain. You did the work of 3 processors, and now we have to pay those processors to take your place. That's a loss of income for our household."
Alas, competing paradigms of work are at work. On the one hand, Pat and I own a business that supports many households other than our own; people rely on us to feed their families. I did commit to Helix when I signed the Inc. papers. I implicitly ask my husband to own the lion’s share of responsibilities and bullshit each day I forgo the office. Bills do not get paid on their own…So I need to pull my share, lace up the ole’ bootstraps, and get my hands dirty, again. Get back to work!
On the other hand, I see how the trappings of middle class demand that we work harder at work that we don’t necessarily enjoy. (That I both enjoy and despise these indulgences does not help.) I see that our business is really not our business and in fact our clients’ demands shape how we work in ways that are simply not always humane. I don’t want to be part of the problem anymore; I want to be part of the solution.
Betwixt and between worlds of work…
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