So Happy Together: Working with Your Spouse or Significant Other

Blurry boundaries between personal and professional life are not unusual among building, servicing and retailing businesses in the pool/spa industry. Long hours plus evening and weekend calls and meetings come with the territory.

But add to the mix a business partner who also is your life partner, and the lines between work and home risk becoming utterly erased. Relationships can veer into strain if couples that run a business together aren’t intentional about maintaining healthy balances.

We spoke with four business owners who work with their spouses. Here, they share some of the keys to their success as working couples.

It’s about respect: Ron and Ruth Aveta

All our experts agreed that good communication plays a huge role in helping business and love make for happy bedfellows, so to speak.

But even more important to a rewarding husband-wife business alliance is a two-part epoxy of kindness blended with respect.

So says Ron Aveta, a contractor who joined forces with his wife, Ruth, a designer, to open Creative Master Pools of Lincoln Park, N.J. in 1995. They had their first child that same year, which could have set the stage for burnout before their cylinders ever got firing. Instead, they rocked Baby with one foot while talking to clients on the phone, and basically marched forward no matter what came along.

“If [owners] don’t have the will to be kind to each other, then they’re just not going to make it,” he says.

It’s especially crucial to avoid blaming each other for mistakes or shortcomings in the company. “You can’t do that,” Ron says. “You have to understand that you’re both human beings. You have to be kind to each other and work things out … and there has to be a lot of mutual respect.”

They have a favorite strategy for managing conflict and decision-making — what they affectionately call debates. These are not of the TV political ilk, they’re quick to note. Fond of solving challenges together, the duo tackles issues with friendly conversations aimed at defining the issue, putting pros and cons out on the table, identifying the best solution, then moving on.

“Sometimes I might have an opinion, but I haven’t heard the side of the story coming from the field that needs to be considered, or vice versa,” Ruth says. “All of those things need to be brought to light in order to make an informed decision on how to go forward.”

Down-the-Aisle Advice: Carla Sovernigo-Pawella and Stan Pawella

Listening matters.

Carla Sovernigo-Pawella, president and CFO of Alka Pool Construction in Vancouver, British Columbia, counts that as some of the best advice she’s ever received — and it came at a pivotal moment in her life.

“My father gave me this advice as he was walking me down the aisle at my wedding,” she says. “I asked him, ‘OK, Dad, last minute advice?’ He said to me — and it works in every relationship you have — ‘Always listen to the other side, because you already know your side of the story.’”

Carla and her husband, Stan Pawella, have a different kind of working relationship: She runs her family’s pool construction business with her cousin Raff Sovernigo, who is CEO. Stan Pawella, a master tiler and owner of InStyle Tilecraft, is their primary tile subcontractor. In fact, the couple met and came together as a result of their business dealings.

Today, however, they employ some strategic separation to maintain harmony, especially given Carla’s work-life situation of being around family members and her husband almost 24/7. She learned early that boundaries were the key.

She learned early on not to talk about work in the home. “That’s my sanctuary,” she says. “You need to mentally shut things off.”

They keep the work talk at work, during business hours and with the appropriate person, such as the project manager regarding scheduling issues.

“If there is a big conflict, [we] deal with it during office hours as professionals,” Carla says. “We’re not going to have that talk at home and bring our home personalities to it. We’re going to be in the office and talk to each other like we would talk to any other professional.”

Known as the family peacemaker, Carla Sovernigo-Pawella knows that with construction, “stuff happens,” so she deliberately chooses to approach problems by taking the emotion out of it.

“Focus on what’s the problem at hand and then what are the solutions, and take the person out of it,” she says.

“You want to have a profitable business, sure,” she added, “but there are ways of handling things, and it’s important to bond and to keep that relationship strong.”

To strengthen bonds with the family, the self-identified foodie couple has a standing monthly dinner date with Raff Sovernigo and his wife.

Define Roles: Paul and Nina Winans

Spouses who run a business together enjoy a major reward that couples with different occupations don’t experience — the enjoyed shared empathy that comes from fighting the good fight side by side.

But if husband and wife are literally beside each other all day and crisscrossing responsibilities, they may end up just fighting one another instead.

Paul and Nina Winans operated a remodeling business in the San Francisco area together for almost 30 years. They added business consulting and counseling to their repertoire even before selling the business in 2007.

Like the Avetas, the Winans, married 44 years, were bringing kids into the world at the same time they were building their businesses, so Nina didn’t become active until the children were a little older. But once she joined Paul in the daily operations, they were careful to keep their work roles well defined and separated. Paul, author of the book The Remodeling Life, says he was the “crazy entrepreneur,” the driving force behind the business who spent most of his time out in the field. Meanwhile, Nina managed the office’s administrative, bookkeeping and HR functions.

Each week, they’d make time for an offsite business lunch together to privately discuss issues in a neutral, fresh atmosphere.

Paul Winans says being intentional to enjoy non-work fun together was just as important. The couple would regularly leave the office midweek for a “Broadway in San Francisco” theatre performance or Oakland A’s baseball game. They participated in book clubs, and, like other successful spouse business teams we interviewed, the Winans have long enjoyed traveling together. In fact, their active roles in their industry association added to their extra-curricular interests and excursion opportunities.

Rock the Fun: Jamie and Chris Gaumond

From exotic travel and wining and dining, to engaging in kids’ activities, sources agree you’ve got to make fun a priority.

Fun comes naturally to hard-working pair Jamie and Chris Gaumond Valley Pools and Spas in Gatlinburg, Tenn., who have been running their pool service and retail business on their own since Chris’s dad retired in 2017.

Serving a busy vacation hub where hotels, cottages and Airbnb properties need constant pool attention, Chris is out on service calls full time while Jamie holds down the fort with a store that gets good traffic. Even after Chris returns to the office, their workday frequently stretches well into the evening hours.

All the more reason they keep fun at the forefront of their relationship —with music. Chris plays in a rock band and they have a recording studio next door to their business building. Between practices and weekend gigs, which Jamie gladly immerses in, the band has become an outlet where they focus time and energy apart from the daily demands of work. In the summertime, Chris and Jamie say hanging out by the river with friends is another big way they chill and relax together.

Even so, fun’s not the real reason love and business mix so well for the Gaumonds. Jamie says it boils down to this: “I like my husband. I genuinely like being with him, whether it is working or just hanging out.”

Addressing him, she adds: “As long as I’m hanging out with you, we could go sit at the park on the back of the truck and watch the sun go down, and I’d be perfectly fine with that.”