Monday- Working with Family Stress

So every book on entrepreneurship I have ever read has a warning withing the first few chapters about working with family and friends. There is a reason for this- it is HARD to do and will cause you lots of STRESS. But really, what small business or sole proprietor doesn't rely on family and friends at least once in a while to help out when times get rough.

Last year my dad retired from the workforce. It was planned as a semi-retirement, get off the road (he was a truck driver), reduce his stress both physically and mentally. He was going to find a local job, delivering flowers, or car parts, or something that still had most of the freedom he had as a truck driver, but not the nights and weeks away from home. Well the economy put a kibosh on that idea, with nothing to be found. As the savings dwindled, a job at Wal-Mart started looking like the only option.

In the meantime during the job hunt, in order to keep busy he had started helping in the workshop, and he liked it. He liked making the soaps and in the Spring we tried craft shows and farm markets, and he liked helping at those too. So with a little financial help from a trusty 401K, he could retire and help me out as much as his little heart desired.

This sounds like a warm fuzzy, straight out of Hans Christian Anderson tale, but it is closer to a Brother's Grimm, or Aesop Fable. Living with your father after 20 years is hard, working with him is harder. Not only does he know all my buttons, a great many were installed by him during childhood. He knows how to push them, over and over, and over. We have our days.

Most are great now, we have been doing this for a year. He has made all the changes in the workshop he wanted, mostly because I just gave in. It was too hard to fight it. So now things are in alphabetical order, and color order, and every order you can imagine. (I mean my OCD came from some where, right?) He has his own booth set up and I have mine, and we don't tell each other where to put stuff or how to deal with anything anymore. He comes to my booth and he has a place for his stuff out of my way, and I come to his booth and he has control over where I put my personal stuff.

But put us in a room when we are both in a bad mood and the fire crackers light up. Down goes the barrier between boss/daughter and father/worker and the claws come out. I rail on him about something personal and he bites right back. Many times if he was a real employee I would have fired him for crossing the line, and I am sure if I wasn't his daughter, he would have quit some days too.

Working with my Dad is the hardest, most stressful thing I have ever done in my life, and it is the most fun and rewarding thing I have ever done too. Do any of you work with your parents or siblings, want to share some tips and tricks.

I have two tricks: say them with me now:

"He didn't wake up this morning with the intent to piss me off. He is not doing this on purpose. Figure out what he is trying to do."

and...

"Just because he does things different, doesn't me he does them wrong"

I say these things to myself at least a dozen times a day. It helps me stay contained, it helps me get through.