Job: Chief Executive Officer (CEO) (United States)

No one could have really prepared me for the emotions I have dealt with and the amount of energy required. I knew it would be hard and time consuming, I've read a lot of books. I felt my husband and I had (have) about the strongest marriage one could have. We have very successfully parented 2 children, one of them being very difficult with ADHD etc, while I dealt with the onset of Fibromyalgia. I felt if I could get through that, I could handle a new business. We started a new way of doing business in my husband's occupation of 30 years. I have never been much of a risk taker but had a very strong faith in my husband's ability to foresee future trends and his ability and desire to be an entrepreneur. Our youngest was 21 so I felt it was good timing to have a go for broke adventure. Inspired by Donald Trump's TV show, I felt, we had to take a big risk to gain a big reward. Being mainly in the role of homemaker/supportive wife, which I loved, for 25 yrs, I had always admired my husband's business success. Since we started the business, I am mostly surprised that to see my husband's weaknesses. That is, he is not detail oriented (not an uncommon trait, except that I am more on the obsessive compulsive side. It drives me up the wall and I feel the burden of the responsibility for the details. My husband doesn't have the ability to stay up late, I find it easy to "do what I have to do to get the job done" even if it means staying up all night. For the first year, I just couldn't let go of control of anything, except the financials. Now that's a good thing, to have separate job functions and responsibilities, that really helps. My husband does the technical stuff I hate, I do the relationships stuff I love. That really helps. I feel I had a pretty good handle on my weaknesses, what I have learned is a good sense of my strengths. I have learned that I have to dig in and do things I don't want to do, where I used to pawn those tasks on my husband. I am even enjoying it sometimes, it's a feeling of accomplishment to overcome your fears and do what you are afraid to do. What we did right, by necessity are, we ate out most of our meals for a year. Virtually eliminating shopping and clean up of which we had to time or energy for. I also had to hire a housekeeper, which I never wanted to do. I don't like that the house isn't cleaned the way I would but I have to admit it is nice to have it all done at once and come in to a clean place. I just don't have to worry about those details or feel guilty. We join our best friends at least once a week to basically blow off steam and escape (translate, drink!) I have to admit I enjoy a cocktail to relax, and can see how people in stressful situations and careers can become alcoholics. Luckily, I didn't have to work outside my home when my children grew up, and frankly can truly understand how couples have a hard time staying together when they both work. If you have children and you are starting a business together, I would say DON'T, unless just one of you will be working. I took care of my kids and husband for 25 years and I feel like I need someone to take care of me now. Instead, no one is taking care of either of us. I didn't have time or energy to shop for a year, that saved us quite a bit of money. Our big shopping trips were for office supplies, computers and business related stuff. I found it difficult to adjust to being a "boss" not "one of the girls". I used to work in the same office with the customer service people, I find it works better if I don't. Being in business for yourself also means you better learn to say no. We do more of what we want and less of what we should. That means some family members and friends are upset because we just don't attend all the parties and holiday functions and events we used to. If we have a day off, we need that time to ourselves. For a year, we didn't work on anything in our house, no decorating, no holiday extravaganzas which I loved (and suddenly I could care less about them) and no yardwork. Getting back to a more normal life with balance after making it and doing very well after the first year is wonderful. If the business wasn't successful, I am sure the picture would have been much different. We have no one to blame, we have learned through mistakes and experiences, we have spent some money we wouldn't have spent, had we known better, or had more time to learn about. (phone systems are quite expensive) The start your own corporation books don't teach you about what phone system is best, that long distance phone bills are astronomical, that you will have to learn so much on the fly...leases, zoning for your business, whether to expand, what you need accountants and lawyers for, that you should set up your personal life (form a living trust), where is best to spend your advertising dollars, how to find the right database designer, web page write, marketing company, what is the price we should pay for that. Accounting and invoicing is a HUGE time consumer. Learn how to run an accounting software program before you run your business or pay the money to get someone who can, don't save money and get the lady down the street who knows how to input data! We used to take at least a day and sometimes 2 to input the data for invoicing and payments. We spent Saturdays writing checks. We have had to let go of little details and pay to have more done for us as time goes on. It gets easier as you can get out of the day to day business and move into running the business and managing the expansion of the business. It was hard to allow our valued "team members" to make mistakes but I have learned to let them handle things on their own. I learned through keeping 1/3 of the people we started with that once you get the right people in place, life is good! We started hiring young inexpensive people we could train, but as the business grew we no longer had time to train people so we only hire experienced people now. The time saved offsets the cost of the labor. We also learned through sweat and tears that for the first year, the work is NEVER done, you never can go to bed with everything done, so you have to "let it go". You learn that someone is always out ill, or with appts. or time off, and you will be doing their job and yours...that is frustrating. We give ourselves days off now and we celebrate that time. We have learned to persevere through the difficulties and feel deeply encouraged that we are "on the right path" when things turn out well. We feel there is something bigger than us guiding us, Oprah says, "God can dream a bigger dream for us than we can dream for ourselves". We have faith in that. We have learned how many people appreciate our hard work and are supportive and proud of our success and achieving the American dream, even if we choose to do it in the worst possible and most expensive state we could locate our business in. (California) We are contemplating moving out of state but we really love the weather here, and our good friends who have been become the most fun part of our life. We are truly blessed.