At the suggestion of a colleague I’m opening for discussion here a conversation about the impacts on a relationship where both parties own and or work in the newsagency business.
Is it stressful? Or not? Does the experience enrich the relationship? Or challenge it? Who’s the boss? Does it work? Would you recommend it?
Does it work better with one partner not working in the business?
I look forward to reading what people think.
Working with my wife is the best thing ever there is nothing better than working with someone all day then going home with them at night , in my situation it gets even better i also have my inlaws involved with us in the business so i also get the pleasure of working with them as well .
🙂 My mother inlaw will read this so i should say hello and a hello out to my wife .
I run the news agency myself and I think it is better that way if you can. Having both partners working in a business I believe will tie you both down and will be very hard to go away on holidays when you need to.
My wife and I have ran the newsagency together for 13 years.
I like that way as each person knows how stressful the business can be.
Biggest disadvantage is no other income.
As who is the boss?
We divide the business up. My wife looks after the back office (accounts ordering stock mag returns etc)
I look after distribution part of the business and staff.
Some areas over lap and we can take over from each other.
And we are still married.
can have its moments 🙂
Our Family has been involved in the Newsagency game since 1977. My parents worked as a couple plus employing 3 daughters. My husband and I took over the business 8 years ago and share the work load. Working together has never been an issue, however you are both tied to the business and have no other income stream. You are totally reliant on the business to support you. We both work together as a team and discuss everything, I think we would find to stressful if there wasn’t someone else there to take some of the load.
When we first started in the business it was stressful. Both learning. Ian always says I am the boss and is happy for it to be that way although we do discuss issues I make the final decisions. I am mostly in the back office and Ian is at the front so we are not working side by side all the time. We rarely get a day off or holidays. Can’t afford to pay extra staff if we do take a break. Right now I have one staff about to take a couple of weeks off and one has retired. She was my right hand man more so than my husband is. I had a heart attack 10 years a go that I attribute to stress in the business. I just need a buyer so if anyone wants a sea change to FNQ …..
We have done 25 years together, and still very happily married!
When we bought our first shop the workload just sorted itself out, no one is the boss, we just work together.
It is a 7 day a week business so it is a huge part of our lives, I think it would be more stressful on our relationship if only one of us was involved in the business.
I think working together enriches the relationship, so yes I would totally recommend it.
It also has worked well for us bringing up our children as we could swap places when it suited.
Great question Mark, Working with my Wife has lots of pros and cons. Like a lot of the comments above, niether of us is the boss (secretly she is though) as we both have very different responsibilities in our store. Working together does give you a great sense of ownership and direction, bouncing ideas off each other and always trying to do our best for each other. A downside is that at the end of the day we dont really have that “how was your day” chat, we already know the answer. The conversation at night is more like an analysis of the day/week/month/year. This business has at times tested our relationship but at the same time strenghtened it in ways too. I do sometimes think to myself “gee, I hope this place is not the only thing we have in common” but when I start thinking like that it is time for a holiday. As testing as it can be at times at least I know we will someday look back on the experience and see it as a stepping stone in our life together, if she can put up with me for that much longer….!
Interesting discussion. My partner and I have just completed our first week in our first newsagency. Roles were defined in our business plan and partnership agreement, but look like changing as we experience the life.
Looks like I’ll be doing more customer facing, less back office, while Chris will learn accounts and do more back office work.
Guess that’s the result of me enjoying customer contact after 10 years in an office, and Chris enjoying the back room after 23 years as a bank teller.
Will it work? Time will tell, and like everything in the business, we will experiment until we think we’ve got it right.
David, make the back office harder to get into or padlock it altogether.
I think that working together can put a real strain on a marriage if you are both not of the same mindset and work ethic. That can be particularly so if the going gets a little tough as it can in this channel.
Kudos to those here that enjoy it and have found a balance that works for them.
Mark i think if David locks his wife in the back room that could cause some major strain on their relationship .:)
Well after 13 years working together on the farm, we’ve now had the newsagency for 4 years. I manage the shop, he manages the farm; on my time off I work in the paddock, in his time off I put him to work in the shop. 😉 Works for us, now to get the slave labour… I mean kids, working LOL
We tried it and it didn’t work,we were too like minded,it was also hard to go away together with both having an active role in the business
We have a great relationship now and we do have holidays together
I have worked with my husband in the newsagency for 38 of our 50 years of marriage and IT IS A MIRACLE WE ARE STILL TOGETHER.
I don’t think the business enhances the relationship at all but it has done its job in that our 6 children have all worked for us (and have now left us just when we are getting old and probably need them more) and now we have 2 of our 9 grandchildren working at weekends.
To hear my children (grownups now) with their own children and their excellent work
ethic I feel justified in spending my WHOLE WORKING LIFE in this industry.
When I know what I want to be I will post it here so that everyone knows that I am going to have another career ??? after this
one.
I might become a famous author.
Let’s be brutally honest folks – this is an industry in decline (like me) and we are on stage every day working to keep other people happy. Some people thrive on this and some don’t so the answer to the vexed question is “who needs to be locked in the backroom and who needs to be at the counter”.
In our case I lock my husband in the backroom where he still does a pretty good job (at 77). He buys a lot of our gifts online and does all the accounts and all the returns (after I scan them) so he is
very useful and sometimes he even puts the kettle on.
Most valuable asset to have in a newsagency – A SENSE OF HUMOUR.
By the way in 1978 my husband PROMISED that we were going to be in business for 5 years and then we would get out – liar liar, pants on fire!
Come on June it’s not a miracle, you must just love each other to bits!
Well done on both stats 🙂