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Archive for May, 2011

In the beginning, I thought it was going to be a breeze when my husband, Terry, joined me working full-time in my business. If anyone could do it, we could! We already had a healthy relationship built on trust and respect. We communicated well. We both strongly believed in what we were doing. We understood the need to help each other with the children, keeping the house, and with the business. We planned to allow for fluctuations in income to keep stresses over money to a minimum. Yet I still wasn’t prepared.

For anyone considering working with your spouse, here are 3 Essential Boundaries for Entrepreneurial Couples to help to ease your transition:

1. Clarify expectations for work/home.
Nothing can prepare you for the blurring of boundaries and turf that occur as you transition into working together. When you join together with your spouse, most likely, both of you have experienced success throughout your careers, and have developed your own working style. Suddenly you have a whole new dynamic in your relationship with your spouse you must learn to work through. I always knew that we had different gifts and talents: Terry is very techie and he loves to write, and I am a people person who is an administrative whiz. Even though I should have probably seen it coming, I was still surprised at the difference in our work styles. I multi-task all day long, and he prefers to work on one project at a time. Just like being newlyweds all over again, we had to put some effort into getting to know each other on a whole new level to be able to work well together.

Beth Butler, creator of the Boca Beth Program has some helpful tips for clarifying expectations with your spouse. “I make us lunch each day and we try to talk about BOCA BETH items that are pressing. It’s our time to reconnect – he works from home for the wine company he represents and I work from home sharing my passion for second language learning with young children. A funny mix, but it works! We talk about what each of us has planned the next day so there are no surprises – and I use that time to ask for his help. I can’t expect him to guess what I need so I have learned to be very specific.”

2. Schedule time for love.
Most entrepreneurial couples complain they have less time together than before. It is possible to work beside your spouse in the same office all day long and barely speak on a personal level. How difficult is it to turn off your cell phone and talk a walk with your love? It is imperative to make it a point to schedule time for your relationship so that the business does not overtake it. Terry and I plan ahead to sneak away for lunch or to take a break at Starbucks. We have found if we don’t take the time to schedule in these lunch or coffee dates, then they are less likely to happen as we work to meet deadlines or get a project done. We haven’t yet been able to master scheduling “regular dates”, but its next on our list of priorities in order to help keep our close relationship.
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A couple of months ago I had a small kitchen fire in my home. All is well now, but for a few days my family and I camped out in a hotel room and once we returned home we had no oven (it was destroyed in the fire) so we were forced to eat every meal out for several days.

On the day of the fire two representatives from the insurance company told me to “Hold on to your meal receipts, send them to us and we’ll cover your meals plus sales tax.” After the contractors restored my home and we settled back in, I was preparing to mail in my meal receipts for reimbursement and I gave my adjuster a quick call before dropping the envelope of receipts in the mail. He explained that reimbursement was actually for 50% of meals and not 100%. While a partial adjustment made sense to me, I clearly recalled two company representatives promising to “cover meals plus sales tax.”

My adjuster became sarcastic and defensive in both his words and tone and said, “No one in this entire company would have told you we cover 100% of meals. Our policy is to cover 50% because you would have been eating even if the fire had not occurred.”

I was livid. Now it’s no longer about the issue, it’s about the principle. So what did I do? I assembled all the facts that supported my case, presented an opening argument to the company’s corporate office calmly and methodically, and finally delivered a fervent and succinct summation of my evidence and closed the deal—walking away with 100% of my meal charges.

Here’s the lesson here: Had the claims adjuster done and said the right things during my initial phone call, the company would have been able to resolve this problem with a simple explanation and apology. Instead, they paid out nearly $200 more than they had to and had to spend 10 minutes listening to my case.

This costly scenario is played out countless times every day throughout the service sector because employees don’t know how to communicate with upset customers with diplomacy and tact and in such a way that creates calm and goodwill.

In my case, had the claims adjuster responded with, “What we were trying to explain is that your policy covers 50% of your meals plus sales tax. You would have been out of expenses for meals even if you had not experienced the regretful fire. We try to minimize your inconvenience during your loss by covering expenses above and beyond your normal meal expenses. Does this make sense? I’m so sorry for any inconvenience this misunderstanding has caused you.”

This approach certainly made sense and I would have very likely accepted the 50% policy. But instead, the claim adjuster’s attitude incited me and I was determined to accept nothing but full reimbursement. The wrong approach to an already upset customer only makes them more forceful and often results in a much higher payout from the company. I don’t want you to have to pay one dollar more than you absolutely have to and to help you manage costs better I’ll give you 5 things not to do with upset customers.

1. Don’t tell a customer they are wrong. Telling your customer he is wrong arouses opposition and will make the customer want to battle with you. It’s difficult, under even the most benign situations to change people’s minds. So why make your job harder by starting out on the wrong foot.
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