CHALLENGES OF RUNNING A BUSINESS WITH YOUR SPOUSE

Husbands and Wives in Business Together

Being an entrepreneur, self-starting business woman, and a wife is difficult. However, when you add in the dynamics of your husband being your business partner, things can get even more challenging. My husband and I have owned several businesses together and separately. The most successful businesses were the ones we worked on building together. They were also the most challenging business to manage because there were so many dynamics to doing it successful that clashed with our personalities, areas of passions, and work methods.

WHO IS THE BOSS?

That is the major hurdle that many couples have to establish. In our case, I had the business idea, but my husband was the business front man since he had the sales experience and passion for in person and phone sales. In his mind, he was the boss. In my mind, I was the boss. This bought challenges when it came to the goals of the business, who did what, who made the decisions, and of course the power struggle.

To fix this we had to:

·       Agree on mission of business

·       Create a business plan

·       Decide on how decisions were made

·       Divide areas of management determined by the person’s strength

·       Agree on expectations – write them down, make them visible

TIME MANAGEMENT

The other area that was hard to manage was our time. Since both of us needed to work the business, work our actual full time jobs, and parent our children, we had many times when we thought the other person was cooking dinner, putting the kids to bed or picking them up from school.

To fix this we had to:

·       Create weekly schedules

·       Assign each other or delegate task out

·       Cut time at full-time job (one of us) to part-time or hire a nanny

MAKE TIME FOR LIFE AND DATES

Sometimes the business takes over. It can cause stress to manifest in the personal relationship of the couple in business. Building a business is fun, exciting and like raising a child that you have more control over. If you aren’t careful though, it will consume everything you care about.

To fix this we had to:

·       Have standing date night – no talking business, kids, or work (we played board games, went to movies, or a day trip)

·       Take mandatory vacation (even if only for two days)

·       Do something special for each other, write notes to remind each other we love them, sneak off for breakfast.

·       Continue to work on our balancing act

By LM Preston, author of Building Your Empowered Steps and Homeschooling and Working While Raising Amazing Learners, www.EmpoweredSteps.com

Working For Someone Or For Yourself

My husband and I have always been entrepreneurs at heart. It was in our blood since we were both in grade school. When we started having kids while attending college, we both decided that we needed the stability of a full time pay check instead of the erratic and extensive but flexible hours of running a business.

Most all businesses need capital, and time to kick start. This could mean up to three years of investment without any real return. That makes selecting a business that you are passionate about even harder when that business may not return the dividends you hoped to get just to pay your bills and survive.

In our case we went for businesses that had a good infrastructure and at least moderate success, knowing we would have to work to fund the business. We chose Real Estate and worked that business for almost ten years.

HAVING A BUSINESS IS ABOUT THE HUSTLE OF THE SALE

Most people want to start a business to be their own boss. It sounds great until we as the sole source of income for our household realize that we aren’t making any money at it – initially. Pouring 50 to 60 hours of effort into something that doesn’t pay off can be a drain.

Here’s what we did to focus on sales, but not worry so much about returns when we first started.

Work part-time to fund marketing and sales for business

Use part-time job to network and gain customers through relationship building

Use part-time job to fund household while building business

Realize that business income is based on sales and that at the base of the business, you have to sell the business offerings

Partnering with someone that can help run the business and take some of the pressure off

Partnering with someone to get vacation time    

Many people are in love with the type of business they own, but hate the aspect of selling it. If that is you, maybe other options are better.

WORKING FOR A COMPANY – THE BENEFITS OVER OWNING ONE

With having a bill from college debt, we realized that owning the business didn’t gain us what we needed most at the time-a regular paycheck, health benefits, vacation paid time off, sick leave in some cases and standard work hours.

In most cases, working a job, you can depend on the pay being the same every week and getting the deposit with no more effort than what you were expecting going in.

DECIDING ON THE BEST-CASE SCENARIO

The best case for us was working for a company that allowed us to have our business as a part-time endeavor. Having a constant stream of income, we could count on most of the time, gave us comfort and joy in building our business part-time. We partnered with others and the part time business grew to the point my husband could work it full-time. It helped for one of us to stay employed to gain health benefits and others from a well-established company.

FINDING WHAT WORKS FOR YOU

Doing your research and evaluating what your reason is for starting your business is your first stop. Then map out a business plan. Decide when you need to make money on your business and if you are willing to put in the time and effort selling your product, marketing it, and being on social media to promote it. If you aren’t interesting in the selling of your product, are you willing to pay someone to do that for you? Then you will realize what the cost and benefit is of starting your own company or working for someone else.

By LM Preston, www.empoweredsteps.com, author of Building Your Empowered Steps, Homeschooling and Working While Raising Amazing Learners, blog: http://empoweredsteps.blogspot.com/

EMBARRASSMENT – A LESSON, A STRENGTH BUILDING EXPERIENCE

By LM Preston, author of Building Your Empowered Steps and Homeschooling While Working To Shape Amazing Learners, www.empoweredsteps.com

Many of us fear embarrassment to the point of going to great lengths to avoid it. With the exception of comedians, making fun of our past mistakes, goof-ups or unpleasant experiences isn’t common. Instead, we typically try to forget those situations ever happened.

ONE OF MY EMBARRASING MOMENTS

The kids in my neighborhood would spend tons of time making up games. One we played was truth or dare. Usually, I wasn’t invited to play because I was the youngest kid in the neighborhood. However, this particular time, they allowed me to play seemed like the best day of my life. I was going to play with the big kids, and no longer follow behind them. That day, Miniworm had arrived, and she was on top of her little world.

The SET UP

The game went on as usual. Dares were made, secrets were told and the bottle spun. Finally, it was my turn. My moment, my acceptance, and then it came. The kid that had made the last spin, looked at me with a sneaky grin, and I knew immediately that I was doomed.

THE DARE

“I dare you to eat this beetle!” the kid said. I gulped. Then I compared the penalty for not going through with a challenge. The penalty was to let every kid spit in your face. The decision was difficult, the choices were both gross. However, I refused to be made to eat something that I didn’t want.

STANDING UP TO MY SO-CALLED FRIENDS

At that moment of recognition, I felt strong and fierce. Ok, no really I was scared to death. However, I stood and said, “I renege on the dare!” There were gasp, snickers, and whispers. I held my ground, stuck out my chest and licked my lips. “You know what that means don’t ya?” the kid with the dead fat beetle snickered.

“Yeah, and I don’t care!” I said, and swallowed as a tear ran from my eye. Man, I was so angry. The other kids bustled to stand in line in front of me. Never before in our game of Truth or Dare had someone challenged their fate. I was the first, and they relished in the chance to demean me further.

There I stood, as each kid gathered as much saliva in their mouths as possible and spit in my face. My eyes closed as I felt the thick, cool, wet globs slide from my forehead, down my nose to my lips. I held back a gag.

Finally, it was over. My best-friend, who was last in line did a fake spitting sound that held little or no power. Then she took out a tissue and wiped my face.

“Why didn’t you just do the dare?" she whispered.

“I opened my eyes and smiled at her then said, “Cause I didn’t want to eat a stupid beetle.”

GROWING FROM YOUR EXPERIENCES and USING THEM TO HELP OTHERS

When I sit down to write my novels from a teenaged perspective, I have a lot of material to pull from. I was called all sorts of names, teased, and jeered at. I wasn’t the lowest on the totem pole, but I was somewhere near the bottom middle of the middle school pecking order. Yet, through these experiences I learned something about myself. I was a survivor and I was never a follower. That is what I portray in my fiction books and that is a skill I sharpen every day. We all have a purpose and the capacity to stand up for ourselves. Never forget that.

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/empoweredsteps/

Blog: http://empoweredsteps.blogspot.com/

Website: Fiction Books: www.lmpreston.com Empowered Steps: www.empoweredsteps.com

Overcoming the Challenges of a Female Video Gamer

Overcoming the Challenges of a Female Video Gamer

By LM Preston, author of Building Your Empowered Steps and Homeschooling Homeschooling and Working While Shaping Amazing Learners
 www.empoweredsteps.com

My youngest daughter has always been a video game fanatic, much like her father who she would play with endlessly as a child. When she was in 6^th grade, I started homeschooling her, asking her if there was one thing she could do all day what it would be. She, like me, had many aspects of herself she wanted to explore. However, the first was, play and develop video games.

GAMEPLAY ANONYMOUSLY

Since she was a teen, we allowed her to create her game persona with and name that could either represent a male or a female. Since I was an engineer, in a male dominated world, I knew the implied bias towards females and didn’t want her to deal with that as a teen. She was never to talk to anyone online, and we had her set up where we could watch her play. She loved that. Everyone loves an audience, especially a gamer. In addition to playing games, she started watching others play them, researching game development companies, absorbing information on the industry and growing in her knowledge of the field she desired to pursue.

In an industry that is known for bullying female game players and developers, we wanted her to be able to feed her interest, improve her skills, in a safe and fun way. Then find her path to changing the tides.

TURNING YOUR PASSION INTO A BUSINESS

Starting out as a female game developer seemed a fun idea and career path for my daughter. We decided to take her to some game developer conferences to talk to other females about the field. We were surprised to learn that the video game industry is one of the most vicious industries for women in engineering and programming fields do to the bullying and bias of the field towards women. It’s a surprising fact, considering that women initially led up key components in the software engineering and game development industry in its infancy.

My daughter, nor I, would give up. Instead she decided to one day work towards creating her own games, designing her artwork for them and writing the scripts. Then she would hire out the other aspects. Changing the industry by creating their own opportunities is the way in which women can impact the bias and bullying in the field.

Instead of depending on an industry to give you a way in, creating your own way, with your own rules is the best solution to turn the tides.

TIDES ARE CHANGING

With the conference bringing to light the bias in the industry, and more women taking the hits, and paving the way, there is a slow wave of change that is allowing more women to be integrated. It is also causing more males that had the ‘boys only’ philosophy and unconscious bias against female co-workers to respect the fact that the landscape is changing.

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/empoweredsteps/

Blog: http://empoweredsteps.blogspot.com/

Website: www.empoweredsteps.com

Sometimes We Dream, We Do, We Change Directions

MY TRIP TO AUSTRALIA and NEW ZEALAND

was a DREAM COME TRUE

Sometimes We Dream, We Do, We Change Directions

SOMETIMES WE HAVE TO TRY ON A DREAM 

Just to see if we like it.

MY DREAM TO BE A TRAVEL WRITER

Yes, I used to dream about being a travel writer. I followed this travel show starring SAMANTHA BROWN and I was hooked.

Actually, I believe it started when I was a kid and watched the Brady Bunch, a family of twelve that went to Hawaii. That planted the seed.

THE FIRST TIME I LEFT MY BUBBLE was WITH MY SINGLE MOM

My mother, who was a teen single mom when she had me, worked hard to get my brother and I through private schools. The first trip I took out of state was to Italy. I was lucky enough to get a scholarship and my mom worked extra hours at one of her jobs to pay for the rest. She started a spark in me and love of travel at that moment. I went on a fourteen-day trip that changed my life for the better and made me truly believe that sometimes, just sometimes dreams come true. 

MY HUSBAND GOT ON BOARD

He asked me to marry him and I told him I wanted an adventurous life. Boy, did he ever deliver. He has been my driver, adventure partner, ride or die, best friend and body guard through our travels with four kids.

DOING IT

I dabbled and created a family and friend newsletter of sorts when we started traveling as a family. We’d go somewhere every month by road trips, then upped the game to include week long road trips, then three to four-week trips and finally to flights, and cruising. We pretty much stuck with the international family travel by cruise only since it was easier and payment was simple.

-       I planned the trips, wrote newsletters, created video books

-       I started a travel business

-       I helped others plan their travel

And let me tell you, I learned so much. Mostly, that traveling isn’t perfect, it can be stressful, but oh boy, is it fun!

CHANGING DIRECTIONS

After the newsletter, and traveling with the kids for awhile, I realized, I loved to travel, but the video editing, photo editing, write-ups, details, trip plans, and all that went with it, sucked the fun out of the experience for me. Since this was my personal passion that bought me pleasure in being with my family while experiencing new places, I decided I would only focus on that experience. The time and effort that took away from something I enjoyed wasn’t worth the personal cost for me.

THE EXPERIENCE IN ITSELF is LIFE CHANGING

Always see to try, experience, grow through accomplishing what you are interested in and passionate about. Then realize that it’s okay, to keep the experience and the focus on your own personal pleasure from the experience.

-It’s benefits in trying it on for size

-It’s benefits in changing a course

-It’s benefits in saying, I’ve been there

-It’s benefits in saying, I don’t want to share this, it’s just for me

-It’s benefits in saying, I tried it, but I didn’t like all of it, I didn’t like it at all – but now I know for myself

WHAT HAVE YOU TRIED ON FOR SIZE? AND FOUND IT FIT? IT DIDN’T FIT? IT WAS FUN, but you are ONE and DONE.