>Opportunity or risk?
>Learn as you go
>Dealing with change
>Is it right for you?
>Quiz: Do you have what it takes to be a copreneur?

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Many couples are combining what they love with who they love by running family businesses together.

On the surface, the Ross and Williams families have it all. Both couples have been married for more than 17 years. Both have large families. Both are “copreneurs,” working together to run the businesses they own. These days many people want to be just like them, fusing their work and home lives in an apparently ideal integration of values and skills. With 3.6 million couples in the United States running their businesses together, the copreneurial life appears to offer a flexible way to combine what you love with who you love.

Opportunity or risk?

Although the Williams’ business and marriage both are thriving, the Rosses are undergoing the painful process of breaking up both their family and their company. That’s the biggest risk copreneurs take when they combine their marriage with their business: If one fails, the other often goes down with it. Putting all your eggs in one basket might simplify life—or put the whole thing in jeopardy. How can you ever know which it will be?

Experience helps. Seven years ago, when Karen and Gavin Williams founded their telemarketing firm, Carelink International, they already were seasoned business people. Gavin had spent 15 years in the transport industry and Karen already had run her first successful business, Travel Accessories Ltd. “Even before we thought of romance, we both admired each other’s business sense. The seeds were sown then because each of us was really good at our own job.”

Karen eventually sold her company, but even with three children and enough money to retire, they were too young to quit. “We’d been married for eight years. Both of us had no illusions about how difficult it is.” Working together seemed an obvious solution to them. “We just hated being apart—we still do. Our friends all thought it was a terrible idea, but our families thought it was great.”

Similarly, when Kieran and Leslie Ross decided to start their own recruitment firm, JKL and Hide Ltd., they had years of experience in all aspects of their business. They were sick of working for other people, and it never occurred to them that putting their married and their business lives together was risky. “It just didn’t cross my mind,” says Leslie. (Kieran declined to be interviewed.) “It was more a case of thinking about the mortgage, Kieran needed a job, he knew recruitment and accounts, [and] I had experience as an operator. I was pregnant in February, and we planned to open in June. I thought ‘Well, I’ve never started a business or a family, so let’s just run with it.’ I never considered it would fail.”

Learn as you go

It’s in the nature of all entrepreneurs to be optimistic, excited, and to embrace risk rather than intimidated by the unknown. And it’s also in the nature of entrepreneurs to make it up as they go along.

“The first year,” says Gavin, “we thought we were both the governor. Then we defined our roles and stuck to them. Now we don’t interfere with each other; we realized that you each need your own job. There’s no point trying to work as Siamese twins.”

Kieran and Leslie did pretty much the same— first making the mistake of overlapping areas of responsibility but eventually delineating them clearly, for each other and for their growing staff. “At first, we started with a blank canvas, we all did everything. But this changed. Kieran was excellent at putting together sales proposals, keeping track of legislation, budgeting, forecasting. And I was really focused on sales, on getting the money in.”

They all learned—as copreneurs must—to deal with disagreement. “We have had robust debates,” says Gavin, “but, at the end, one person will see the other’s view and be prepared to go with that. You couldn’t have a company with directors not talking to each other. Companies fail that way.”

The same lesson had to be learned at JKL. “ Once, [the company] must have been two or three years old, we had a blazing row in the office. I was mortified with myself. And I learned: never never never never never [to do that]. I will wait until we’re in private. It’s a good discipline, frankly, whether you’re married or not,” Leslie says.

Learning these lessons brought both companies considerable success. It probably has been easier for Carelink because it was well funded with the proceeds from the sale of Karen’s first company. That money has bought them time and reduced the day-to-day pressure of meeting mortgage and payroll from the same source. But JKL too enjoyed some bumper years. “The year 2000 was the best year we had,” Leslie says. “I take an awful lot of pride in that. It was the product of huge learning—we really had come a long way and built a great reputation.”
 

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