We keep arguing about growing our business. Help!

This is a good reminder for all of us, and I find it quite timely for me in particular. Right now, my wife and I are starting up a coffee shop in a small Chinese tourist town, and these communication pointers are invaluable.

You are right when you say that this is important not only between husband and wife, but between any two business partners. Too true. There are added factors that come into play when the business partners are married, though.

Listening is key! The process you explain above sounds too slow to realistically communicate anything in real life. However, the time it saves in avoided miscommunication and arguments actually makes slowing our reactions and listening to the other person a time saver! With this reminder, I will make a point to listen more today.

Great advice Dave.

I'd add that maybe putting on the breaks for a while is a good thing. After doubling your size in a year it may be a good time to go into maintenance mode. After sometime you and your wife can assess: Yes, we've done well at this size and are ready to grow again. A little compromise and you both get what you want.

Hmm, must try this.

It's funny how you hit the nail on the head. It's not the first time I've been in an argument where I've been accused of not listening where I'm sure I have. The point made above about missing the latter part of a conversation because you have a point to make might be the reason behind this. Will watch out for it !

Well, Dave, I thought that was a very interesting take on the psychological aspect of the question, but I’d like to take a stab at answering this question from the business perspective.

First of all, dear writer, it sounds like you are the salesperson of the business and I would assume then that your wife runs the operation and likely manages the bank account. A natural conflict exists between sales and operations that is well documented.

Salespersons tend to work what I call ‘outside’ the company, while operations folks operate ‘inside’ the company. Salespersons work between the operation and the customer and rarely see or understand the operation, while operations folks rarely see the customer.

While the salesperson quite naturally wants to provide everything the customer wants, that effort tends to drive operations crazy. From the operations standpoint, being efficient and profitable means to narrow the focus much like Southwest Airlines did in making the decision to use only one kind of airplane and not use any ticketing services but their own resources.

So, I would suggest that some of the arguing that you are doing may have less to do with the husband/wife thing, and more to do with natural differences between operations and sales.

Another conflict that arises between two functions is between sales and accounting. You say that your company has doubled its revenue in the last year. That’s a fairly steep growth curve. Usually when that happens your cash flow tends to go in the toilet. Whomever is paying the bills will begin to wonder ‘what the heck is going on?’

One of the reasons that bankers don’t loan money to businesses that seek to sharply increase their sales is that most business owners don’t ask for enough money to cover what I call the ramp-gap… the operating cash that will be required to fund the growth ramp. Most owners don’t know how to figure it because the behavior of cash flow is a mystery to them.

In marriage, money is often one of the most difficult subjects to deal with. In business partnerships, money becomes THE most difficult subject. When you begin to have a shortage of cash, whomever is in charge of the cash begins to lose sleep, and quite often wants to put on the brakes. When cash flow stabilizes, a slower growth curve can be reestablished, and everyone can sleep at night.

To learn more about the behavior and control of cash flow, people, and processes in a business, check out my blog at www.SueCanyon.com.