NEW YORK TIMES - OCTOBER 9, 2005
In-House Nepotism: Hiring the Husband
By LISA BELKIN
Published: October 9, 2005
FIVE years ago, Teri Gault was working a collection of part-time jobs and raising two teenage boys in Santa Clarita, Calif. Her husband, Greg, earned most of the family's income working as a movie stuntman. Parsimonious by nature (her children often used other words for it), Ms. Gault had a favorite hobby - she clipped coupons, managing to feed her family for only $37 a week. It was a skill that came in handy when work dried up suddenly for Mr. Gault, a side effect of the movie industry's relocating much of its production to Canada.
Needing not only to save money, but to earn money, Ms. Gault turned her hobby into a business - TheGroceryGame.com - and built a network of franchisees in 48 states offering subscription advice on grocery savings. She now has 26 employees. Her husband is one of them.
Women are starting their own businesses at a far higher rate than men, and it follows that many, like Ms. Gault, are hiring their husbands. Couples have worked together since the days of the family farm and the mom-and-pop store. Is the dynamic different when he works for her?
"Oh, yes," said Tamara Monosoff, founder of Mom Inventors Inc., which licenses baby products invented by mothers. Her husband, Brad Kofoed, joined the company in July of last year and is now director of sales. "I couldn't work for him," she said, only half-joking. "If he ran this it would feel like a hierarchy. Women are more collaborative, so it's more of a partnership."
Ms. Gault acknowledges that "it was a little bit of an adjustment," when she first asked her husband to help out. It was in 2003, when she began franchising and desperately needed a "girl Friday to sit next to me" and take care of the details. Mr. Gault took on the role and "he just worked his tail off," his wife said, though he did have a tendency "to ask me for things he could find himself, like the number of our accountant, because he was used to asking me for things like that at home." He did so well that he is now the company's chief financial officer.
Gina Seamans, who founded Accent Public Relations seven years ago and whose husband, Jim, is her vice president for operations, said, "It took us both a while to get comfortable with me gaining the 'boss' power." The only thing they ever argue about as a couple, she says, is the to-do list she gives her husband, um, operations vice president, every week. "It is a constant issue," she said, "for me to walk the line of seeing it as 'work' rather than a 'honey-do.' "
Carefully delineated job descriptions seem to be crucial in these work-life relationships. Susan Dunk, inventor of the ToddlerCoddler, a device that provides head and neck support for children in car seats, invited her husband, John, to handle accounts payable and shipments when business grew 900 percent last year. "I told him I was founder and C.E.O. and he would get to be president," she said. "The C.E.O. gets to fire the president."
Separation of space is another. The Gaults share an office, but have a partition down the middle so they can talk to each other while maintaining separate turf. Sharon DiMinico, who started the franchise company Learning Express in 1995 and relies on her husband, Lou, to oversee the leasing agreements, needs more distance. "We have a 10,000-square-foot building," she said of their headquarters. "He's upstairs on the extreme right and I'm downstairs on the extreme left. We cross paths at meetings."
The biggest issue of all, however, seems to be money. Although a few of the women bosses I spoke to earn more than their husbands ("that makes sense to both of us," Ms. Dunk said), most avoid the landmine in the most collaborative way.
Ms. Gault said: "He's the C.F.O., so he decides our salaries. Every time I get a raise, he gets a raise. He will not let me make more. He just gave both of us bonuses and he gave us the same. I said I want one dollar more and he won't give it to me."
Ms. Seamans goes one step further. Having brought her husband on board to rein in her "control freak tendencies" about money, she keeps up on the broad strokes of their finances but remains purposely in the dark about their relative salaries. Every month, Mr. Seamans hands her two paychecks. The first one is hers. "He gives it to me upside down," she said, "so I can endorse it." The second one is his. "He gives that to me right side up so I can sign it. I always see what he gets paid, but I never see what I get paid. I hope I'm making more than him."
This column about the intersection of jobs and personal lives appears every other week. E-mail: Belkin@nytimes.com.
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