'Some couples would kill each other': How to work with your spouse

January 6, 2023 3:20 PM

Because they've worked together for a dozen years, people often ask Rosa and Alex Chalekian whether they should go into business with their partner as well. Rosa always tells them it's a bad idea. While there is "a lot of advantage" to it, the couple strives to separate their work and home life and set boundaries for the other employees at their firm, she said.

"You need to be careful not to bring your relationship into the office and have arguments," Rosa Chalekian said. "They'll take sides."

The Chalekians and four other pairs of spouses who are navigating the tricky terrain of working together in wealth management or personal finance shared their best tips with Financial Planning about how to get along in a manner that's most beneficial to their relationships and their businesses. By taking steps such as assigning specific duties to each partner or figuring out the best office setup for healthy personal space, the couples say they manage to avoid butting heads too much and tap into the positive aspects of collaborating professionally.

"Make sure that you have very clear and distinct responsibilities and roles set up, because that's going to be a problem," Alex Chalekian said. "Work is work. Home is home. Try not to let that bleed into too much."

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The couples have found best practices for them that may work for others. For example, financial planner Akeiva Ellis and her husband Meshack suggest that working in different rooms can help provide some distance.

"Some couples, they can just work on top of each other all day long," she said. "We learned quickly that that wasn't something we needed to do."

Not every relationship can handle the stress of running a small business, the couples said. Financial advisor Michelle Cortes-Harkins recommends establishing "very strong boundaries around work and personal life."

"It's not easy," she said. "I don't think it's for everyone. You have to get along very well."

When successful, partners complement each other. Cortes-Harkins said her husband Rick Harkins excels at "marketing and meeting people and talking to people," while he praises her listening skills.

"I tend to talk a little more than I probably should," Rick said. "Her ability to listen and really understand clients and get on the same page with them comes much more naturally."

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Couples should think carefully before going into business together, though, said David Auten-Schneider. He said they might first check their ability to handle a task like yard work or another home improvement project.

"If this is something that you are considering doing, look at how you work together on other projects that are not related to work," he said. "Do something together before you jump in."

Those spouses might think twice after a frustrating bout of gardening.

"Some couples would kill each other," his husband, John Auten-Schneider, said. But "if you're the right couple, it can really be a joy to work with your partner."

To see five profiles of spouses working together in small businesses across wealth management and personal finance, scroll down the slideshow. For a look at five personal stories to inform a career in planning, click here.

SoulSar/Anh Tran

Anh Tran and John Wong of SageMint Wealth and Modern Wealth Law

Tran, an advisor, and Wong, an estate attorney, moved SageMint Wealth and Modern Wealth Law into the same Irvine, California-based office last month. The spouses of nine years "started working together much closer once we got married, and that has now blossomed" with the new combined facility for their businesses, Wong said in an interview. Tran and Wong had been planning to share the same office for about a decade, though.

"We've always thought that we would come together at some point under one roof," he said. "Sometimes Anh's at her office and she's in a client meeting and she'll call me. Now, rather than having to call me on the phone she can just open the conference room door and yell at me."

Running two small businesses comes with challenges and flexibility, as Wong notes the pair "try to divide and conquer" with the tasks of parenting their 4- and 6-year-old sons. He often watches the boys in the afternoon, and Tran takes over in the early evening. Their time in the office "ebbs and flows in the needs of our practices," Tran said.

"The world of entrepreneurship is a very difficult one, and, unless you're in it, you don't really understand what the other person is going through," she said. "For us, it's really been a great support for each of us to know that we have each other."

Alex Chalekian

Rosa and Alex Chalekian of Lake Avenue Financial and Futurvest

The Chalekians have been working together at Pasadena, California-based Lake Avenue Financial, where Alex is the CEO and lead advisor and Rosa is the chief compliance officer, for a dozen years. The couple and their sons Ara, Julian and Jeremiah also launched an online financial education service called Futurvest last year.

Without going into details, Rosa and Alex said they have sometimes had disagreements over administrative tasks that led her to leave the firm temporarily a few times over the years. The pair often struggles to find the time to talk during the workday, but they don't like to talk about the office at home, either, Rosa said.

"The rules are always broken," she said. "It's difficult, honestly. I find it challenging. We do make an effort not to bring work home, but it's almost inevitable … We don't get a lot of time together, so it's hard not to discuss work when I get into bed."

Regardless, the married couple of 10 years have come to learn "how rewarding it is to create and grow a business with your loved one," Alex said.

They met when Alex's planning practice was located in an office building where Rosa was managing the executive suite, and he hired her to an open role at his firm before they started dating. The Chalekians have divided the duties in the office, where Rosa oversees compliance and operations and Alex manages the clients and the business.

"There's no one else you would trust more than your spouse being able to help you out with this," he said. "Both of you have a vested interest in this business and you know that they're going to take care of it."

Akeiva Ellis

Akeiva and Meshack Ellis of The Bemused

The financial coaching website and accompanying YouTube series "The Bemused" launched in 2018, when planner Akeiva Ellis and Meshack Ellis, a human resources professional, were in a long-distance relationship, she in Boston and he in Maryland.

Meshack credits Akeiva with the idea to get out of their comfort zone by discussing their personal finance in videos that would be relevant to other young people trying to make sense of their money. The couple got married in October 2020, and they're now seeking to expand their business to college campuses and employers.

"The relationship has really evolved with the business," Akeiva said. "It's been a really fun ride to build a business with your life partner. It's a really interesting experience."

Besides getting separate offices in their home, the couple seeks to stay focused on their specific roles in the business as well, Meshack said. She takes a lead on planning topics and the financial aspects of the business as CEO, while he acts as the chief operations officer. In addition, they try to stick to a schedule.

"We are working full-time jobs, part-time jobs and also managing the business," Meshack said. "It's trying to not have everything just swirl up together. This is us time. This is business time."

Debt Free Guys

David and John Auten-Schneider of Debt Free Guys blog and Queer Money podcast

About a decade ago, the Auten-Schneiders began writing their book, "4: The Principles of a Debt-Free Life," to tell the story of how they paid down a combined $51,000 in credit card debt in less than three years. A year after the 2014 release of the book, they began a blog called the Debt Free Guys and eventually started the "Queer Money Podcast." David handles the writing, videos, editing and technology, while John works to identify partnerships, speaking opportunities and sponsorships.

"You split your responsibilities," David said. "You have to figure out who is good at what and let that person excel at what they're good at."

"We've been able to, fortunately, find what we're good at," John said. "We both have our strengths and weaknesses, and where we overlap is when we're both being the face of the brand."

The Auten-Schneiders each have financial backgrounds with tenures at firms including Charles Schwab, Envestnet and Cetera Financial Group. Neither has had any so-called day job for roughly the past four years. They were married in 2017 after 13 years together. The couple had their "two most heated arguments" about politics and business and they navigated severe challenges to their company during the pandemic, David noted. They never regret launching the business and running it out of their current home in Toledo, Ohio.

"We have a very strong relationship where we deeply love each other and we were not spending any time together, except for on the weekends," David said. "We didn't want to wait until we were 65 or 70 years old to spend every day together. That was the impetus."

"It still surprises me today that we still have a business that lets us live and work from anywhere in the world doing what we want," John said. "I don't know the last time I wore slacks."

Rick Harkins

Michelle Cortes-Harkins and Rick Harkins of Harkins Wealth Management

With planners Michelle Cortes-Harkins and her husband Rick Harkins alongside their son Chancellor, an advisor, and his fiancée Lisa Dinh, the director of client experience, Harkins Wealth Management is a family business. The practice, based in Providence, Rhode Island, has gone through several evolutions in recent years. After moving to Commonwealth Financial Network in 2019, Harkins Wealth became a fee-only firm, taking no commissions, and converted all of its clients' portfolios to socially responsible investments.

Rick recruited his wife of 33 years to join the practice about 18 years ago after her prior career in social work, with her subsequently transitioning to being a full-fledged planner.

"I was like, 'Oh, this is actually a lot like social work,'" Michelle said. "Just being able to listen and ask a lot of questions really drew me to the profession."

They credit the way they work together for helping to attract their base of clients, with the help of creative events such as a couple over the years entitled "Craft Beer, Crafting your Budget" and "Wine, Money and You."

"I think clients love the fact that they have both a male and female voice," Rick said. "We've gotten a lot of clients because of that."