一对创业者夫妻的幸福婚姻之道

    本文是与《时代》杂志联合发布的。以下文字起初发表于Entrepreneur.com

    对于我们而言，罗密欧与朱丽叶的意义已经远远超过了莎士比亚笔下的凄美爱情故事。我们选择用这样一种互补的方式给我们各自的公司命名，以此增进我们的感情。我们甚至还给家里的猫也起名为马克•安东尼和克里欧佩特拉。

    我们最初在一起时，只有一人在创业。如今，在幸福度过近七年的婚姻生活之后，我们俩都开始在纽约经营自己的公司。塔里克经营罗密欧(ROMIO)，一个让朋友和邻居对当地服务进行可靠推荐的平台。蕾切尔则经营朱丽叶(Juliette)，一个通宵提供优质洗衣服务的手机应用。

    要形容我们这段感情，最合适的一个词是“过山车”。我们以不同的速度在不同的方向上行进着。我们的日程完全相反，塔里克白天会见当地专家，搭建罗密欧平台，蕾切尔则是晚上办公，我们俩总是忙个不停。不过每晚7点，我们会解开安全带，离开过山车，并尽量在前往不同方向之前共进晚餐。

    我们找到了四种方式，在维持家庭关系正常发展的同时，照顾好我们蒸蒸日上的公司。

    放松身心：

    与另一个企业家结婚的最大好处在于，你能够控制自己的日程安排。持续工作和领导初创公司是十分耗神的事，因此我们会强迫自己休个短假借此充电。约两周前，我们去了趟圣托马斯，在那儿我们什么都没干，只是躺在沙滩上晒太阳。回来的时候，我们感觉精力充沛、浑身轻松。这样的休息能够起到很大的帮助，因为据《金融邮报》（Financial Post）报道，大部分小企业主每周的工作时间都超过50小时甚至60小时，而就我们自己的生活来看，的确如此。

    如果我们没法离开城市休个短假，那我们会努力一起做点事情来放松和平静下来，无论是共进晚餐还是去剧院看个新剧或电影。

    分享观点：

    尽管我们创立的公司处于不同的发展阶段，但我们发现在构筑各自公司时能够产生大量的协同效益，尤其是因为我们还在同一个行业。我们常常进行交流和分享，话题涉及从投资者到网站开发者等各个方面。而在把想法和理念公布给团队和投资者之前，我们也会毫不犹豫地征询彼此的意见，大声发表自己的看法并进行调整。

    比如，我们充分利用蕾切尔在营销和社交技巧方面的强大背景，以获取罗密欧用户界面的反馈意见。我们也借助塔里克的金融背景和精明的商业头脑来改善朱丽叶的经营模式。

    关心彼此：

    经营两家处于不同阶段的初创公司时，很有趣有时也很困难的一点在于：当一家公司已经运转良好，另一家却仍在遭遇成长之痛时，如何维持我们的关系呢？两家公司的发展并不总是同步的，尽管发展路径是类似的，但我们的旅程却可能完全不同。

    当朱丽叶正式推出，获得了许多正面反馈，拥有了许多客户时，罗密欧的网站重建却遇到了重重阻碍。我们在情感上出现了差异，蕾切尔兴高采烈，而塔里克沮丧不已，这让我们很难庆祝或是倾诉自己的感情。克服这种情感差异的一个好办法是交流彼此的困难和牺牲，不要让内疚和嫉妒滋生蔓延。

    This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Entrepreneur.com

    ROMIO and Juliette means more to us than a Shakespearean, romantic tragedy. We chose to name our separate businesses in a complementary way, which is the way we approach our relationship. Our cats are even named Mark Anthony and Cleopatra.

    When we first got together, only one of us was in the startup role. Now, happily married for nearly seven years, we’re both running our own businesses in New York City. Tarik runs ROMIO, a platform that provides trusted recommendations for local services from friends and neighbors, while Rechelle runs Juliette, a mobile app that offers premium overnight laundry service.

    The best way we can describe our relationship now is a roller coaster ride, traveling in different directions at varying speeds. We work perfectly opposite schedules, with Tarik building ROMIO by meeting local experts during the day and Rechelle running her service at night, and are always on the go. But every day at 7 p.m., we unfasten our seatbelts, get off the roller coaster and make an effort to share a meal together before parting in different directions.

    We’ve found four ways to keep our relationship at home healthy while balancing our growing companies.

    Time:

    The greatest benefit of being married to another entrepreneur is the ability to control our own schedules. Constantly working and driving a startup is draining, so we force ourselves to take short vacations to recharge. About two weeks ago, we took a trip to Saint Thomas and did absolutely nothing except lay on the beach and soak in the sun. We came back fully recharged and relaxed. This helps tremendously, especially since most small business owners work more than 50 to even 60 hours per week, the Financial Post reported, something we’ve definitely found to be true in our own lives.

    If we can’t take a short trip away from the city, we try to make an effort to relax and wind down together, whether it’s at dinner table or going out to see a new show or movie at the theater.

    Mind share:

    While we may be at different development stages in our startups, we see a lot of synergies to building our businesses—especially since we’re in the same industry. We often leverage mutual contacts and share campaigns, from investors to website developers. And we never hesitate to use each other as a sounding board for ideas and concepts, tweaking and brainstorming aloud, before taking it public to the team or investors.

    For example, we tap into Rechelle’s strong background in marketing and social skills to get feedback for ROMIO’s user interface. We also leverage Tarik’s background in finance and strong business acumen to strengthen Juliette’s business model.

    Awareness:

    The interesting, and sometimes difficult, part about having two different startups in different stages is managing our personal dynamic when one business is taking off, while the other is experiencing growing pains. The stages of each business may not always be in sync, and while the business paths are parallel, our journeys can be completely different.

    When Juliette launched and received positive feedback and strong numbers out of the gate, ROMIO was working through the developmental challenges of a website re-launch. The emotional differences we experienced, with Rechelle elated and Tarik frustrated, made it hard for us to celebrate and induced guilt from both of us. A good way we worked through the emotional difference was by communicating about each other’s difficulties and sacrifices, and trying not to let guilt or envy take over.