‘Couplepreneurship’: the latest trend of starting a business with your life partner

You’re having a tough day at work. The client that you were pitching to for months is ghosting you. Your check has rebounded. Cherry on top: you missed a deadline and now risk losing a client. You cannot wait to rush home and call an end to this day. Except when you reach home, you find your co-worker - the same person you had a tense confrontation at work that day - perched on your couch.

Welcome to the life of a ‘couplepreuner’ - a term assigned to couples who are building a business together. Entrepreneurship is stressful and challenging as it is, but dynamics can change when you’re working with the person you love. The big question is: Can you really maintain a healthy relationship amidst a high-pressure entrepreneurial life? We spoke to five couples to get an idea.

One of these couples work full time to make other people laugh. Ali Al Sayed is an Arab-Muslim from the UAE and Mina Liccione is a New York-Italian Christian. Despite their vastly different backgrounds, the married duo shares one thing in common: their love for comedy. Coined the UAE’s ‘King and Queen of Comedy’ - Ali and Mina cofounded Dubomedy, the region’s first comedy school where they built the local comedy scene through weekly shows and festivals.

Although they have been couplepreuners since the last 16 years, Ali and Mina struggled with maintaining a healthy balance between work and life. Ali recalls the early days of their comedy business when they would discuss work all the time. “She used to wake me up at, like, 4 a.m. to test out a joke. Then she’s like, why aren’t you laughing? I’m like, because I’m asleep!” Ali laughs.

Over time, they’ve actively pushed to establish healthy boundaries. “That was hard in the beginning because when you’re a new entrepreneur, it’s your whole life invested into it so it’s really 24/7. So that was one thing that he was definitely like, no. Work hours are work hours, and then there has to be a line,” says Mina.

Delegating responsibilities

While some couplepreuners have struggled to sustain a healthy balance, others have felt the pressures of running a business together affect their relationship. Ronak Shah and Nikita Sukhnani began working together when they were in their late twenties to establish their interior design business, Wonderwall Interiors. At first, the couple struggled with dividing responsibilities, resulting in frequent clashes.

“The number of overlaps was so incredibly huge that either she was stuck because of me or I was stuck because of her. We were happy to be stuck and not holding each other accountable….in order to hold anybody accountable for anything…the role needs to be defined,” Ronak says.

Marketing, operations, finance, dealing with clients – both were handling a bit of everything which heavily stalled the progress of their business. These clashes eventually resulted in them meticulously dividing and assigning responsibilities which has tremendously improved their relationship, both professional and personal.

“I think drawing job descriptions for each other as employees of the company is critical. We did it much later than we should have. We’re actually still doing it. It is still changing and it’s still evolving every time we see a gap or an overlap,” says Ronak.

Delegating responsibilities is important but to do so, understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses is crucial. The qualities and skills that one spouse lacks can be fulfilled by the other. Sarah Lindsay and Rich Philips, couplepreuners and founders of Roar Fitness - a fitness chain based in the UK and the UAE - vouch for that. While Rich handles the business expansion, logistics and strategy, Sarah being a three-time Olympian is the face of the PR and marketing campaigns.

“The things that Sarah is good at, is not what I’m good at at all. And slightly vice versa, as well. Sarah isn’t good looking at a spreadsheet crunching numbers. And that’s just not what her skill set or her mindset takes. And I definitely don’t want to be in front of cameras going out to do mingling events and all that sort of thing any more than I have to,” says Rich.

Navigating conflicts and resentment

Although conflicts are an inevitable part of working together, one couple has taken a more formal route to ensure that resentments are avoided in the long run. When Nadia Shah founded Drip Burgers - a fast-food restaurant chain in Dubai - with her husband Mohamed Abdullateef (a well-known basketball player), she first and foremost devised an official business contract laying down necessary terms and agreements.

Nadia emphasises that although it might feel uncomfortable to treat a spouse like a business partner complete with contractual agreements, it is a necessary step. “If you are in doubt, put everything between you and your partner in a contract and treat it like a business professionally. I would do that with anybody. Doesn’t matter if they’re my father, brother, mother, sister,” says Nadia. “You (shouldn’t) mix personal with something that’s a business. That’s completely separate. It should be all clearly defined in a contract.”

Other couples have devised creative ways to manage and navigate intense workplace conflicts. Gaurav Prakash and Sakshi Chandel, founders of Social Kandura - a media company based in Dubai - are ‘couplepreuners’who have managed to do just that. “If we ever see that we’re getting into that conflict zone…we set a timer for ten minutes, and we tell each other whatever we have to in our head, in our heart, we don’t say it out loud,” says Gaurav. “Once you’ve vented that out and when the ten minutes are over, automatically, you’re like, you know what? It’s okay, I get it. So that trick works sometimes.”

Finding comfort in each other

Despite these conflicts, all five couples say that they have found immense strength and comfort in working together.

Gaurav admits that he would have trust issues if he was starting a business with someone other than his wife. “The trust factor comes in because it’s your wife or it’s your husband,” says Gaurav. “If you’re working with a partner in the business, there is always that 1% of doubt: Is this guy doing it for the business? Is he doing it for himself? But when you’re working with your partner, that trust factor, 100% is there.”

Comfort also comes in the form of enjoying the process together and throwing some fun in the mix. Mina and Ali’s jobs entail working with large groups of people, and they share unique, humourful observations about the different people they come across.

“You know how, like, you’re with a group of people…and then sometimes you leave, and you can’t wait to gossip about them? So, we’re comedians, and what happens is…we just notice so many things,” says Ali. “We almost break (the gossip) down, and then we get all the jokes out. It’s almost like you’re holding all these jokes in. So that’s one way we unwind as well.”

Other times, comfort seeps in because spouses have each other’s backs during stressful times. Rich and Sarah recall the time when their previous business faced a major financial setback. Although they describe that time as ‘difficult’ and ‘ugly’, they found comfort in leaning on each other.

“We were under a lot of stress and pressure, but we knew we’d be okay, because we had each other. if I was on my own in that situation, I’d felt very different,” says Sarah. “People can have wonderful relationships in wonderful times. But how strong are you when stuff goes wrong?”