Community business owners like you dedicate an enormous amount of time to getting companies off the ground, and the commitment doesn't end there. Even when the business is up and running, there is a myriad of daily tasks that require your attention – and if problems arise, these take up even more of your time.
Many entrepreneurs choose to leave work at the office rather than taking their troubles home to their spouses. This kind of approach can have both negative and positive effects.
Meg Cadoux Hirshberg – wife of Gary Hirshberg, president and CEO of New Hampshire-based organic yogurt company Stonyfield Farm – writes for Inc. magazine that she was happy to embrace ignorance when the business was going through a rough spot in its early years.
"I wanted to listen to a financial report the way I watch the movie 'The Shining': running out of the room during particularly terrifying scenes," she says.
Her husband went along with it because he didn't want to deal with stress at home after spending all day handling fraught situations in the workplace. Cadoux Hirshberg quotes one CEO as saying "Entrepreneurs have people freaking out on them all day long. We don't want the same thing at home."
However, at high-stress times when your financial plan is unraveling before your eyes and the future of the company may even be hanging in the balance, there's likely no-one you want to help shoulder the burden more than your spouse. In these instances, keeping quiet can actually do more damage to a relationship.
"Couples become disconnected from huge chunks of each other's emotional lives," writes Cadoux Hirshberg.
One couple she spoke to, Mitchel and Kristin Harad of San Francisco, ran two different companies and set aside half an hour a week to get each other up to speed on how things were going with their businesses. If your spouse can't handle hearing about problems on a daily basis – or would simply prefer not to – this is a useful way of keeping him or her in the loop within a controlled setting.
A community bank like My Bank works predominately with small business owners just like you. For advice from a financial services expert that could help mitigate the troubles you don't want to bring home, drop by your local My Bank branch, call us at 1-888-mybank4 or visit mybank4.com.