Entrepreneurs who had a romantic Valentine's Day might harbour dreams of going into business with their spouses.
But family business instructors and spousal business partners recommend plenty of advance planning before jumping into a business bed together.
"The first thing is to appreciate what each of you is bringing to the family enterprise and what role each is going to play," said Wendy Sage-Hayward, a professor at the University of British Columbia's (UBC) Sauder School of Business and an instructor at the UBC Business Families Centre.
She added that some mom-and-pop businesses thrive with one spouse primarily focused on the business while the other plays a supportive role and spends more time taking care of children.
"Understand each other's styles. If both partners want to be the lead dog or the lead player in the business, then it sets up competition. If both are very direct, assertive and authoritative, then they may find that they'll be clashing more than if they have one who is authoritative and the other who is in the background."
Effective communication is more than simply exchanging ideas.
In a business run by two spouses, each must be able to receive critical feedback from the other without becoming emotional or perceiving the critique as stemming from a personal gripe.
"You have to separate personal from professional communication," said Kharé Communications principal Sharad Kharé, who runs a public relations, video production and public speaking venture with wife Nisha Kharé.
"When I make a video, it reflects on our company. I ask for Nisha's opinion and when she says something, I can take it offensively but I've learned not to because she's not saying it from a place that's personal. It's professional."
Sage-Hayward also advises couples to understand each partner's strengths and to have clear job duties – something not all spousal business couples do.
For example, Cause+Affect branding experts Jane Cox and Steven Cox have similar design backgrounds, and there's a blurring of what each is responsible for at their four-employee firm.
One valuable thing the Coxes did, however, was chat and agree that having children was a personal priority. That prevents arguments about taking time away from the business to spend with their children, Jane Cox told Business in Vancouver.
But she added that one thing she and her husband should have done before launching their 10-year-old business was to discuss how they would split child-care duties. She said she now spends much of her time caring for the couple's two children, aged two and six.
Discussing spending habits and tolerance for debt is equally important before launching a business, given that such issues are the root of many arguments in marriages. When both partners are not in full agreement, there should at least be trust in the other's ability, said Shannon Bosa, who co-owns Glowbal Group with husband Emad Yacoub.
"It's not necessarily that a couple needs to have the same stomach for debt," she said. "It's having faith in your partner, because when we had one restaurant, I was happy with just that. Emad was like, 'One more, one more and one more.' Obviously that brings financial debt and stress and struggle. It came to a point where I just said, 'I trust you. If you think after all this stress that we'll be stronger and have more security at the end, I have faith.'" •
