Food, Home and Style

My Wife is My Boss: An Entrepreneur Couple’s Tale

“Let’s go over this again: you’re going to spend our life savings on dried fruit?” I asked my wife, Noha, in 2004 when she first pitched me the idea of starting Peeled Snacks, a fruit and nut snack company.

Earlier in the year we’d both quit our jobs to go traveling before I started a stint as a public school teacher, but I’d assumed that she’d get back to work with a position lucrative enough to offset the modest teacher’s pay I’d soon receive. Instead, she decided to become her own boss and make negative money.

Though those first days truly did gobble up our savings at a frightening rate, watching a company grow and flourish from the front row is exciting. It was a real kick when people started to actually buy these treats. As I was wrapping up two years of teaching, Noha and I started talking about how maybe I could chip in to this whole Peeled Snacks thing. Initially I was dubious—work with my wife?

“No, no,” she clarified. ”You’d be working for me.”

Noha and I met in college and couldn’t have been more different. We’re darn lucky that we were powerfully attracted to each other because our personalities clashed constantly; she was the fiesty tiger, I was the easy-going monkey. It wasn’t until a couple years into our relationship that we took a back-packing trip through Mexico and found that our differences made us work really well as a team. I’d do the maps, she’d do the translation; she’d find food, I’d find shelter. Read: Are Gender Differences A Myth?

Vacation is one thing—and working together sounded like a recipe for marital strife if I’d ever heard one. Yet, there was so much at Peeled Snacks that needed to get done, and there was so much that I knew I could do. So she put me to work…

Want to read the rest of this article?  Visit Yourtango.com.

-Written by Ian Kelleher for Yourtango.com.

• How to Be a Stress-Free Wedding Guest
• 12 Relationship Red Flags
• Technology: The New Compatibility Test

Tags: entrepreneurship, relationships, The Working World, YourTango