Marriage Partners and Business Partners?

Greeting Rabbi Daniel and Susan Lapin,

I have been listening mainly to your YouTube teachings for years and recently subscribed to be a happy warrior. I am married for 20 years with 2 kids. We are considering getting into Business.

Rabbi. I registered a company with me and my wife being the sole directors a few years back. My wife was really pushing for us to start something and one day I snapped and told her I am not ready yet.

Since then when I offer a suggestion on a business venture, I get a non-committal response with no interest. I am stuck on what to do. I was in a men’s group and some advised me that it is a bad idea to be in business with your wife.

What must I do to get the courage to get moving?

Greetings to your family.

A Happy Warrior from Zimbabwe

Dear Happy Warrior from Zimbabwe,

We are truly happy to hear from a Happy Warrior in Zim who has the soul of an entrepreneur. The country needs more of you and perhaps in the future you will play a role in cultivating many more Happy Warriors eager to become entrepreneurs. I [RDL] have been in Zimbabwe a few times, but it was a number of years ago while the country was still part of Rhodesia.

It is not completely clear whether you are asking us if it is a good idea to go into business in partnership with your wife, or if you’re asking us how to gather the courage to go into business with your wife. We hope you don’t mind us not answering your question about courage right now. We don’t think that is the important question here. If you develop the courage to move, say, forward when you instead should be backtracking, you’ll be going in the wrong direction. Courage can sometimes be confused with recklessness. For a husband and wife to be in business together is undoubtedly challenging and should only be undertaken once the marriage is very stable.

If we are understanding correctly, you registered a company name but that is the extent of progress. When you did so, your wife was eager to move forward with a specific business venture, and you were more hesitant. You should definitely examine, perhaps with the help of a mentor, what the basis for your hesitation was.

However, it sounds to us like this might have been a damaging episode in your marriage. Your wife may even have lost some respect for you. Now, when you propose an idea to her, she is noncommittal.

We don’t know how the two of you have been earning money over the past few years and these questions are very central to clarifying your current situation. For instance, are you or she the main income source? You’ve been married for twenty years so what is now leading you to want to make a change? Is your marriage in good shape or is it in trouble? Or somewhere in between? Has money been a sore point around the issue of childcare and running the home?

Since you’ve been following us for a while, you know that we work with the deep intersection between Family and Finance. However, to start with, we recommend that right now, you work on the two areas of Family and Finance separately. Do what you must to repair your marriage. At the same time, explore your financial life. Do you have the personality of an entrepreneur, what is your skill set, where do you need to up your game so that you can earn more? Perhaps your male friends can help you see yourself through an honest window.

Until your Family and Financial lives are both on track, we think it would be folly to try and start a business with your wife. If that becomes a good idea in the future, it will only be possible once you have repaired any possible damage of the past few years.

Wishing you clarity and success,

Rabbi Daniel and Susan Lapin

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