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Six
You can justify hiring household help. Lots of it
You might imagine that with the logistics of running two different businesses, standard two-company couples might need a little help when it comes to home life. Well, no. Actually, they need a lot of help.
Many couples find they need to hire some kind of domestic help, whether it's an au pair to look after the kids, a housekeeper to pick up after the kids, or a personal chef to cook after the kids are long gone.
Robin Bradford and Bill Hamilton decided they were going to have to wait to become parents. "I wanted to get the company up and running before I had kids," Robin says. She realized that she was going to have to throw a lot of hours at the business in the next few years to grow it to a comfortable size. "So we made a conscious choice to wait before we had kids." Robin had their first child at the age of 37. She and Bill now have two kids, ages 6 and 8.
Even though they postponed having children to a marginally less zany time, Robin and Bill still felt it was necessary to bring in an au pair. "It would be impossible to live our life without help," says Robin. "We had live-in help for seven years, up until a couple of months ago. Now we just have someone who picks up the kids and stays with them until we get home."
Other two-company couples simply decide they aren't going to have any children. Sherry and Ron Sacino feel that way; they're just not a kids couple, they say. "I need more independence than that," Sherry says. "I'm too spontaneous." Ron Sacino says that, although they never say never, right now kids aren't a part of the game plan. "Our lifestyle is not conducive to having kids right now," he explains. "Unless one of us gives up the business, we couldn't do it. And neither of us is the stay-at-home type."
Even without kids, the Sacinos have relegated the running of the household to a personal assistant. "Basically, we hired ourselves a nanny," says Sherry. The assistant helps with "all of life's little details," such as cleaning the house, paying the bills, decorating the house for Christmas, and shopping for holiday gifts. "We figure that people do only five things well and that you should identify those things and master them," explains Sherry. "I have zero domestic ability, and Ron knows he doesn't have any, either."
The Sacinos say that their crazy hours and hectic pace make eating regularly -- and healthfully -- a challenge. "We're both working our tushes off," says Ron. "Who's got time for buying groceries, let alone cooking?" Enter the personal chef, who specializes in low-fat and no-fat fare. "He cooks us healthy meals that we wouldn't have time to prepare for ourselves," says Sherry.
To keep the expense at a minimum, the Sacinos recruited a sous chef from a local restaurant who was looking to make some extra money. He's not a live-in; he just comes in to prepare the meals. "It costs us between $10 and $20 a person for each meal. If we ate out at restaurants, it would cost a lot more," Ron claims. "You can't get a healthy meal for $10 a person."
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Seven
You learn to value your relationship more. Or else
Robin Bradford admits that her relationship with Bill suffers from what she calls lack of TLC. "You can't say, 'I don't have time for you' to the kids, but you can put off dinner with your spouse," she admits. "There are only so many hours in a day." Robin says that although both she and Bill are aware of the danger, it would be all too easy to let a gap develop between them. "He knows that he wins the Most-Likely-to-Get-Blown-Off Award, because he's in business, too. Still, it doesn't justify it." Bill admits that sometimes he feels that the business gets the best part of him, with the kids coming in a close second. "The marriage unfortunately tends to come third," he says.
So there's no question that the stresses of having two companies in the family can place a strain on marital relations. But a number of couples have found that their arrangement makes them hyperaware of that danger. What really ends marriages, they say, is when one spouse doesn't understand what the other needs to do to grow a business.
When Elsa Brown started International Marketing Specialists Inc., a seller of industrial equipment and developer of medical-waste treatment facilities in St. Louis, in 1983, her husband was a high school teacher. He's not her husband anymore. "It was very difficult for me to explain to him why I had to spend so much time with the business," says Brown. "My ex-husband thought business was boring. So when I told him about problems I was having with the business, he couldn't contribute." Brown says that since he didn't understand what she was trying to accomplish, she got a lot of negative input from him. "When I discussed a new business idea with him, he'd use words like risky and dangerous," she says.
When Brown remarried, she found a mate who shared her goals: another entrepreneur. Her current husband, Burgess J. Brown Jr., owner of Stephen's Pipe and Steel, in Russell Springs, Ky., is in a much better position to understand. "B.J. is in the same boat that I am," Brown says. "He can analyze the risks with me, rather than just being negative. I don't want someone arguing with me about what to do. I want someone who can tell me how to do it better."
Such interactions may not sound all that romantic. But, frankly, some entrepreneurs actually find living with a fellow business owner to be downright alluring. Once they adjust to it, they can't imagine life any other way. "A lot of what I respect and love about Robin is echoed in her business abilities," claims Bill Hamilton.
According to Hamilton, there's something, well, sexy about being entrepreneurs in love. "When I first met Robin and saw what she'd done on her own, I knew she would be exciting to be around," he says. However, he adds, "little did I know that I was going to be so attracted to and stimulated by the fact that she was an entrepreneur."
So maybe you ought to forgo those separate vacations you've been planning. Separate companies might provide a much livelier spark.
