Working With Your Spouse

I'm going to tell you a little secret- Cam and I aren't just business partners. We're married. And have been for 9 years. We live with our seven year old kid, our eight year old dog, a dwarf hamster, a small water turtle and 2 box turtles (hence the name- "box turtle"= turtlebox). We juggle the pressures of running a small home based business, raising a young boy, and keeping the house running (laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, etc. You know the drill).

So many people comment on how they could never do it- work all day with their spouse. My standard answer has become that, for us, it's actually easier to be business partners than life partners.

I think our main secret is that our roles and skills are complimentary and different. I get off on Excel templates and he gets off on After Effects. When it comes to a modern marriage, the roles are, THANK GOD, less defined. There's a lot of "I thought you were going to do the laundry today." and "Do you want stories and bath or dog walk and dishes?" We can sit down and easily debate an edit, but debating the fine details on how to discipline our child has a lot more weight to it.

We also really value the roles we both play. I do not have the patience of an editor. He doesn't have the organizational mind of a project manager. But, we both see the value in what the other does. Occasionally one of us doesn't appear to value the other's work enough and that results in some conflict, but we work it out with a lot of "I couldn't do what you do, honey".

The other conflict has been respecting the other person's space. We work in the same room and we risk interrupting each other all day. Headphones are good for that. When he's editing away, he'll have the headphones on and sometimes I'll put mine on without any sound coming through them. Just as a signal- "leave me alone- I'm doing the bookkeeping."

We really love bouncing around ideas. We shine at brainstorming projects together. Oftentimes one of us will come up with the base concept and the other one will push it to something better. This is part of the reason why we started Turtlebox to begin with; we're good at executing creative projects together. We love working with clients who respect and trust our creativity.

Now, if we were only as good at figuring out how to handle the seven year old's new defiant attitude. Hopefully, it's just a phase.

The final secret behind working with your spouse? Well, it makes tired bedtimes not such a big deal, because you can always sneak away at lunch time, if you catch my drift...