(Note from Tawra: Here's the next article in the Work at Home Series by Patrice Lewis. She writes for my favorite magazine Countryside and I just love her articles on working at home.)
A customer once told me, "You two are the only people I know who live in the country and work from home." Then she added, "But I don't know how you can work with your husband. If I had to work with mine, we'd kill each other."
That exact same sentiment was echoed in an email I got in response to my last article ("The Home Craft Business: How to Succeed by Really, Really Trying"). A woman wrote, "Is it possible to start a craft business if I can barely work with my husband as it is?"
Unlikely.
The simple reality is that you have to get along with your spouse in order to work with him/her. If you and your spouse tend to argue, fight, belittle each other, or otherwise don't get along, then the stress involved in starting a home business might just be enough to tip you over the edge toward divorce. It isn't worth the risk.
If you're married, then you need your spouse's support for a home craft business to succeed.
Spousal support can come in many flavors and colors, ranging from a full-fledged partnership to a hands-off, this-is-your-cup-of-tea attitude on the part of the spouse. All these variations can work, as long as there is underlying respect and love for each other.
Obviously if there is a stone-cold, one-hundred-percent opposition from your spouse, then you shouldn't start a home business. (I'm assuming here that you value your marriage over the thought of working from home.)
If your spouse is violently opposed to you starting a home craft business, the first thing to do is find out why. Is your spouse worried about the amount of money it will take up? The amount of your time? The amount of your energy?
These are all legitimate concerns – did you hear that? legitimate – and you should make an effort to sit down with your spouse and plan things out and establish what boundaries your spouse is willing to accept. By planning this together with your spouse, you are far less likely to foster anger and resentment, and the chances that your business will succeed have just improved.
Starting a home craft business will impact your family life. I speak from experience here. When Don and I started our business, I was in graduate school full time and working part time. In my off-hours, I worked in the shop. We had no children... yet.
Then came kids. It's amazing what you can accomplish with a baby in a sling on your back and a toddler playing with pieces of wood at your feet. You incorporate your family life into the business – mostly because you have no choice.
Our girls have grown up knowing that our home life and our business life are inescapably intertwined. The up side of this is that they know precisely where the family's income derives. The down side is that they know precisely where the family's income derives... especially when we're in our slow season.
When things are slow, we enjoy letting the girls help us. They match the numbered bottoms to the numbered tankard bodies. They match handles. They've helped us pack boxes, fold and string up our guarantee cards, and even type up the invoices. They're too young yet to handle the power tools, but both are interested in learning.
When things are busy, we have to tell the girls that this isn't a good time to help (I'm sure you're all familiar with how such "help" never speeds things up). They understand; they've lived with this since birth. But even if they're not helping, they're in the room with us talking, reading, playing, doing schoolwork (we homeschool), whatever.
One thing we don't do is neglect our kids in favor of our business. Even during our busy season. Even if it means staying up until 2:30 in the morning to finish a job. Even if it means getting up at 4 a.m. to start packing a box for shipment. Our kids are THE most important thing in our lives.
We find that homeschooling fits well into our work schedule because of its flexibility. We can put aside the schoolbooks if there's a rush order to complete. We can make up the time on Saturdays or Sundays if necessary. And, since September and October are our busy season (when we've been known to put in 110 hours of work in a single week), then that is often our "summer vacation" from schoolwork. Of course, our children will work straight through the traditional summer break times of June, July, and August.
As you can see, it's a balancing act. While sometimes Don and I suffer from fatigue or lack of personal time, we never let that suffering affect our kids.
Nor do we let our marriage suffer. After all, to let our marriage suffer means that our kids are suffering – and we won't permit that. Our family life is far more important than the business.
Here's where the spousal support becomes critical: a husband or wife should not express resentment for the long hours the other spouse is putting in. Sometimes those hours mean your spouse is away from home, on the road peddling the wares. Sometimes those long hours means your spouse is in the shop until the wee hours of the morning, leaving you to do the evening dishes all by yourself. Deal with it.
Prepare for impact. Don't think that everything will be just ducky if you can chuck your stressful, commute-from-hell 9-to-5 job and finally do the things that you love. When starting your own business, it's automatic that money will be tight... and money, don't forget, is the Number One cause of problems in marriages.
Recognize that in starting your own home craft business, whether you quit your day job OR you do your new business in your off-hours, you'll be spending long (or longer) hours working. That time, even if you're home, won't be spent in interacting with your family while at leisure. It will be spent interacting with your family while you're working.
Even if you have a separate workspace, accept the fact that a home business may mean that certain household chores you ordinarily think are necessary won't get done. In our house, sometimes weeks will go by between bathroom cleanings or vacuuming the carpets (unexpected drop-in visitors can be a humiliating experience). You'll be doing dishes at 11 p.m. when the business work is finally finished for the day. It's a matter of working out a schedule for work and household responsibilities. It's do-able, if both spouses are willing to give 150% - just like in any good marriage.
If you're anal about a perfectly clean house, then either (a) don't start a home craft business, or (b) make sure your business is not in your home (put it in a shop or barn or basement or garage).
Be aware that business concerns can sometimes take precedence over farm concerns, especially if (a) the business is your sole source of income, and (b) the business is seasonal. Our business is both. Our busiest season runs from about September 1st through mid-October, right smack in the middle of hay season, garden season, firewood season, and just about every other prepare-for-winter activity out there. As a result, we've had vegetables go to seed, hay rot, and wood lie uncut. There are only so many hours of the day, unfortunately, and after working 8 a.m. until 2:30 a.m., we don't have a lot of energy left to collect the hay bales from the fields before the rain gets them.
Sometimes it seems that our homestead operates on a crisis basis, meaning we don't get something done until there's a crisis. I guess you can be a good woodworker and a bad farmer, or vice versa, but not both. Dunno.
One of the most frequent – and successful – techniques for spousal support is a lack of criticism. Do you think your spouse's idea for making lavender-velvet frammerjammits is stupid? Well, maybe it is. However – and here's the trick – don't say so. At least, don't say so outright. Perhaps you could assist your spouse by doing some market research on frammerjammits in general, and then you can gently point out that since no one wants frammerjammits, then perhaps lavender-velvet ones aren't likely to go far. Or perhaps you can bite your tongue and not say "I told you so" when the LVFJ's don't sell.
But here's the trick to a free market economy: if no one wants lavender-velvet frammerjammits, then no one will buy them, and your spouse will learn quickly enough that there's no money to be made in that field. Or, to your considerable surprise, you might find that despite your attitude toward LVFJ's, people clamor for them and your spouse's business takes off. In that case, congratulate your spouse, apologize graciously for misreading the market, and smile at your bank account.
Please understand: I don't advocate support if the spouse is sacrificing the family's security to produce lavender-velvet frammerjammits. If your spouse wipes out your entire savings and takes out a second mortgage on the house in order to finance full-scale production of LVFJ's, then I think he/she needs to be reigned in.
My point is that attitude, more than anything else, can be one of the key ingredients in keeping a family craft business thriving.
A word to the wives out there: Your husband is attempting to start a craft business in order to ultimately improve your quality of life. If all goes well, your man will be home, and he'll be making money. But... here's the catch... he's still working. While he's working, don't nag at him to get busy with the "honey-do" list. Don't ask him to stop his work in order to take out the garbage, or watch the kids while you soak in the tub for an hour, or ask his opinion on which pair of shoes looks better with your dress. Sure, if there's an emergency you have every reason to interrupt him. But otherwise, let the poor guy work. You have to treat this like a business, and in a business you don't stop every five minutes to do some household chore. If that's what you expect your home work schedule to be like, you'll rapidly discover that your husband doesn't have a home business at all; all he's doing is staying home.
A word to the husbands out there: Let's say your wife has a nifty idea for a "woman's craft." Sure, you might think that making lavender-velvet frammerjammits is the stupidest idea since Pet Rocks, but the point is, you're a man. Women might be crazy about 'em… and women will buy them (remember how popular Pet Rocks were for awhile?). So don't pooh-pooh you're wife's ideas even if they don't appeal to you. Nor should you pat the little wifey condescendingly on the head and tell her to toddle along to do the dishes. Heck, man – she'll bring in money. How can you object to that?
Again, from both sides of the issue, what spousal support comes down to is R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Respect your spouse's business efforts, help and encourage whenever possible, and chances are higher that the business will succeed. And – even if it doesn't – you've scored mega-points on the spousal support scale, and your husband or wife will never forget it.
So with all these negative concepts, is it worth all the struggles and sacrifices in order to start a home craft business?
Oh my, YES. Every time you're stuck in rush hour traffic and fantasize about how nice it would be not to have to commute... it's true.
Every time you're frustrated by a boss who has no creative foresight or doesn't understand your latent genius, and you fantasize about how nice it would be not to have someone breathing down your neck... it's true.
Every time you get home barely in time to kiss the kids goodnight, and fantasize about what it would be like to be able to see your children any time... it's true.
We have a fifteen second commute. We have only ourselves to answer to. We see our children all the time. Good God, life doesn't get much better than this.
Patrice Lewis is co-founder of Don Lewis Designs (www.donlewisdesigns.com). She and her husband have been in business for fourteen years. The Lewis's live on forty acres in north Idaho with their two homeschooled children, assorted livestock, and a shop which overflows into the house with depressing regularity.
