does anyone run a business with their dh/partner? Recipe for disater???

[ClaudiaSchiffer]

DH and I have recently bought a business together. It's a totally new thing for both of us, dh ex Marketing and me ex teacher/social worker. This is something very different.

Anywayyyy . . . for this new biz dh will be doing most of the work and i'll be cooking doing the books. So far so demarcated.

But . . . this evening we have had our 2nd row about who does what and it is REALLY pissing me off. I also have 2 dds to take care of who are my priority in the day - I have a nanny who is due to start this Fri one day a week and dd1 will be at Kindy part of the week from next week (but will still have dd2 at home).

I am pretty concerned (REALLY worried actually) that with our personality types, it will be a whole bloody can of worms.

Does anyone else work with their dh? Got any tips for not getting divorced/bankrupt in the first year???

DH and I work together (as well as individually for other people) and we love it. We would happily spend every working day together. We recognise that we each have very different skills, so we have very different roles. But we also discuss each others' roles in detail and make decisions together - and sometimes that means one of us explaining the rationale behind something so that the other understands it and agrees in an informed way.

The key imo is to respect each other both as people and professionally, and not to take each other for granted...I mean to treat each other as well at work as you would at home, and as well as you would treat any other colleague. It's just like the rest of life really - respect, compromise, fun...

Well, I have a get-out clause in that I'm on maternity leave from my relatively safe public sector job and will go back there in December. So my income at least will pay the mortgage and bills.

DH is targeting the small businesses that the other print companies aren't particularly interested in. He is keeping overheads very low and can therefore be very price competitive and so far he is getting enough business for us to eat. He has had several offers of more lucrative work with other print firms and if these come to something then we'll be very happy. It is early days for us and as we have minimal overheads there is little risk involved.

From the networking and direct marketing we have done with small companies feedback has been good and most people are looking to spend money on printing in the short-term.

From our perspective, in these doom laden times we will be happy to survive. If we survive the recession then I'm sure we'll learn useful lessons re costs that will stand us in good stead for the future.

llareggub, do you have a website.

I (and others) might be able to put work your way if priced competitively...

Abetadad - we are doing really well, benefitting from people wanting to stay in this country and have had an increase in bookings from Europe. We are renovating an old coach house this winter which will give us more rooms, we are doing this mainly on inherited money and will probably need a small loan as we are doing everything that we need in our house as well.

We are in Australia where the recession hasn't really hit (yet). Things are slowing down but the economy is still in positive growth - particularly South Australia where we are.

We are in the building trade, which has been hit, but mostly bigger business'. It seems that small more flexible business' are still doing quite well. Banks are still happy to lend over here - but being more thorough than they were on checking business plans etc.

ABetaDad, maybe you and your dw should look at investing over here .

ABetaDad, my parents' business has been doing fine, quite well actually, but they actually tend to do well in recessions as they make a product that repairs and saves money on replacing an item, so it's a way that businesses can save money.

The other big difference is that they don't have any bank loan debt facilities so are free of bank's changes in policy.

We run a garage and are booked up 3 weeks in advance. We seem to have picked up more customers who have defected from the big dealerships for services etc which is great. Like ozziegirlys folks we don't owe masses of money to the bank which is I think the make or break at the moment.
My business is in the marine sector and very long established so I just bob along as I always have.

We are retail property consultants. We mainly used to let or acquire property for Landlord's or retailers but obviously, there are not many retailers expanding at the moment so things are a bit quiet. Luckily, one of our main clients is a discount retailer so they are still doing reasonably well and are acquiring new units.

A lot of our income is coming from doing rent reviews and managing properties for Landlords. It is more important than ever for retailers to keep their rents as low as possible and for Landlord's to get their rent in as soon as possible and keep their tenants happy so that they don't end up with void property.

We only started in Jan 2007 (yup - excellent timing ) but this year has already been worse than last year, albeit we are managing to pay the mortgage. have a reasonable lifestyle etc. If our main client goes bust though, we will be in deep shit. Scary times

We run a campervan business, converting and renting them. Dh is the craftsman and I'm the paperwork/books side of things. It's only really started to take off in the last month so we too are finding our feet.

I'm working from home at the moment and find that really difficult, the sooner I can get office space sorted at our unit the better I think.

I find allocating time to it hard too, I work 2 days in the NHS too, so what with that and all the usual running a home stuff, it's a real juggling act.

fourkids, we do have a website but I'll pay mumsnet a fee before posting. We were going to do it anyway. Thanks for asking!

Good to hear so many people are stil doing well. TBH the carpet fitter in our new house today has had to cut his fees by half but is keeping in work that way although Allied Carpets just went into receivership this morning.

The locksmith here today also is in pretty steady work and the satellite TV fitter is a young man with a one mand band outfit put himself through college and says the digital switchover is doing his business really good.

Sounds like small niche operators with skills that are not easily copiable or transferable overseas are still in demand even in a recession are doing well and especially so if they save people money. Interesting that even the hospitality business is doing well for FiveGoMad as foreign visitors find the Sterling cheap and even camper vans SurferMum* as an alternative to a foreign holiday for Brits will do well too.

Australia is interesting and surprising news CaludiaSchiffer* as it is a very commidity raw materials driven economy. I supect as commodity prices have only dropped relatively recently it takes time to feed through although I heard Australian property prices are already falling. Massive arguements over Chinese iron ore shipments going on and empty bulk carrer ships all over the place do not bode well. Oil/gas prices dropping too and probably mean less shipping of Australian coal to global coal fired power plants as they switch back to gas.

Still think we have a way to go in this global recession/depresison yet so we are off to do something interesting for a year and see what opportunities come along after that. Wishing you all well in your businesses.

Try the wise ladies over on the Childcare and Work/Freelancers and Self-Employed forum.

OK, then make sure we know you've posted it?