Living a double life

Advantage: Alex and Angela Perry say being married is a winning combination in business.

A degree in chemical engineering might not prepare many students for running a bakery but Alex and Angela Perry say it groomed them for life in business together. The couple behind The Cupcake Bakery, ranked 31 in this year’s BRW Fast 100 with almost 80 per cent average annual revenue growth over three years, say studying together equipped them for working side by side.

“We did a difficult degree together and were used to working with that pressure,” chief executive Alex Perry says. “Whenever we were working through the night, making cakes it reminded me of uni. We did all-nighters for exams and assignments all the time and for what? A graduate job paying $40,000. So I’d say to Angela the rewards are potentially much bigger doing this.”

Initially they had trouble convincing their parents of this.

“Our families thought we were crazy, absolutely. We don’t come from families who take risks,” Alex says. “We were both chemical engineers and had decent jobs and we started baking and selling cakes at the markets. People were asking, ‘Why are you doing this?’”

It didn’t dissuade them and the orders kept coming. For several months the Perrys were working around the clock, engineering by day, baking by night.

“We literally had no time,” Alex says. “We’d get home and have massive orders to fill. Most business owners would think it was a great position but we didn’t have time to scratch ourselves. We were forgoing sleep and worked seven days a week. Eventually Alex persuaded Angela that they should leave their jobs to focus on the business. “I’m not as smart as Angela but I’m very convincing, so I convinced her it was a good idea to leave her career,” he says. “That’s probably the honest truth.”

Angela laughs and nods her head in agreement. “That’s pretty much how it happened.”

The Perrys are one of several husband and wife teams behind this year’s Fast 100 businesses. They say being married is a winning combination in business.

“I’d say we’re a perfect team because Angela likes doing things I hate doing and I love doing the things she hates,” Alex says. “We never fight over ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do this, or why do you do it like that’ because we have very different strengths and very distinct roles.”

They admit that it’s an intense experience.

“We’d already put ourselves through a lot of pressure and stress together and we really like each other’s company,” Angela says. “There was no break from one another initially. It’s very difficult to divide our personal life from work because it’s all one and the same.”

The Perrys have navigated a few conflicts, mostly stemming from the speed at which the business was growing.

“Alex is very determined and driven,” Angela says. “Most of our disagreements arise because I have wanted to slow it down a little bit. Where there is risk involved and I’ve wanted to hold back a bit.”

The presence of their two young children means their fights don’t descend into screaming matches. “We tend to go quiet and do things on our own for a bit,” Angela says. “We don’t want things to escalate – especially with children.”

The biggest conflict arose when Alex proposed that they open their first store in Sydney’s Paddington.

“I wanted to open a store and spend a hell of a lot of money that we literally didn’t have,” Alex says. “It upset Angela, probably rightly so. I said it was the right thing for the business to expand and not rest on our laurels and be complacent.”

They persevered and opened a store. Fortunately for the business and for them, it paid off. “Money coming in was the resolution,” Alex says. “Thank god all the stores exceeded expectations.” The stores now generate $4.64 million.

Angela says it can be tough to navigate financial decisions that directly affect their family.

“You don’t always view things objectively when you’re trying to balance family and business,” Angela says. “Those two areas can conflict. If you have other issues in your marriage, starting a business would probably escalate those.”

Louise Woodbury and her husband, William de Ora, experienced that first hand after finding themselves in business together, on the brink of divorce.

“We both come from divorced families and we could have taken that path of least resistance,” Woodbury says. “It’s a familiar solution. We were committed to not being part of that lineage and we fought not to get divorced. We’ve now celebrated 17 years of marriage and business.”

A key problem Louise and William faced was the clash of two strong-willed individuals. “We needed to channel our energy into our strengths instead of competing against each other, which is more of a subconscious habit,” Woodbury says.

They wrote a book called The Invisible Partnership: How to work with your spouse without getting divorced and now work with couples in business. Woodbury admits there was a time she wouldn’t have advised working with a spouse.

“It’s confronting but 17 years in I absolutely know it’s possible,” Woodbury says. “It requires a commitment from both parties to be 100 per cent responsible for the success of the business and the marriage. It’s not ‘I’ll put 50 in and you put 50 in’. It’s not a compromise, it’s boots and all into the business and the marriage.”

Woodbury says couples who make it work in life and business are those who are on the same page, are able to communicate openly and can enjoy themselves.

“The key point is alignment about what your business is about, where it is going and what it means for your marriage and life,” Woodbury says. “You need to be willing to be very transparent and authentic in how you communicate the good, the bad and the ugly.”

Woodbury advises against joining forces in business if one person’s ego and personality is too large to share the limelight. Generally, Woodbury says, couples struggling in business can overcome their problems.

“Most couples go through the motions and don’t realise it could be different,” Woodbury says. “Rather than tolerating that life isn’t working, you have to find what it will take to make it the best life and most successful business you can have together.”

When couples rise to that challenge, Woodbury says, the rewards are huge.

The couple behind Pie Face (ranked 49 on this year’s Fast 100), Betty Fong and Wayne Homschek, say mixing business with betrothal is intense. But the chief executive and former investment banker Homschek says doing it together eases the strain on the marriage.

“From a lifestyle point of view you need to do this 24/7,” Homschek says. “You need to live it which is very hard to do if your significant other isn’t involved. Having both partners involved in the business allows us to understand that and be totally focused on it.”

They now employ 122 people and turned over $28 million last year selling pies. Sixty-three per cent average annual growth over three years has pushed them up from 79th position last year.

Pie Face chief operating officer Fong says having separate areas of responsibility that play to their individual strengths helps.

“I’m more about the details and Wayne’s better at strategy and so together that works,” Fong says. “I’m definitely a chief operating officer and Wayne is a chief executive officer. Occasionally, though, he steps into my area and I tell him to go away. Usually when he steps in it’s not positive, so I remind him of that.”

Staffing requirements are the most contentious decisions right now.

“Because we’re trying to double in size, we have to stretch people,” Homschek says. “We can’t afford to sit back, we need to give people the reins.

“That’s where we clash. If we have a shortage of people, I want to promote someone whereas Betty would prefer the job to be vacant.”

Fong says she is reluctant to promote people too early because it creates more problems than it is worth. “I remind him that promoting someone before they’re ready doesn’t work,” Fong says. “I tell him to leave my area alone.”

They agree that getting the right staff is a big challenge for any fast-growing business.

“Part of scaling from small to large is that we can’t be responsible for all the outcomes, we need to empower people for their roles,” Homschek says. “There’s less time worrying about you the individual and more about what other people are doing.”

Homschek believes being married allows them to be more open when they disagree.

“We can be brutally honest with each other and yell at each other and get through that. If we weren’t married that might be harder,” Homschek says.

Even so, Homschek says, being married doesn’t necessarily make a couple suited to join forces in business.

“You need to recognise the other person’s skills set and acumen,” Homschek says. “If you’re just doing it because you are husband and wife, you might not be suited. Being able to have mutual working respect is more important than being married.”

James and Kylie Breeze, the Sydney couple who run Objective Digital, debuting on this year’s Fast 100 in 57th position, say there is a stigma attached to being married in business. “Just last week someone said, ‘Oh, I don’t know how you do that’. There is negativity around it,” chief executive James Breeze says.

The Breezes didn’t intend to work together but a year after Kylie had encouraged James to set up his own business, it made sense for her to join.

“We almost fell into it,” Kylie says. “James required someone and it wouldn’t have made sense to hire anyone else when I had the skills,” Kylie says.

James worked in HR and organisational psychology before finding a role doing usability testing on technology in the dot com boom of the 1990s. That evolved into user experience and user design services that Objective Digital now offers clients.

Kylie worked in design and advertising for 12 years. “Basically I did project management and now, even though it’s a very different industry, I still do project management,” Kylie says.

“We completely divide the role. We discuss everything but we don’t step on each other’s toes.”

Having complementary skills and separate roles is the key to making it work.

“I do all of the sales, people management and client-facing work,” James says. “Kylie works through the details, resourcing and finance and writes proposals to ensure it’s profitable.

“We couldn’t work together if we were more similar in our skills. We’re black and white in what we do in the business.”

But without a similar approach to life and business, the Breezes say it would be impossible to work together.

“Because our over-arching values and goals are aligned, we generally want the same thing,” Kylie says. “There can be heated discussions but it’s rare that we disagree.”

Like the couples behind The Cupcake Bakery and Pie Face, the Breezes say there is no divide between the business and their personal life.

“There is no such thing as home life without work. It’s pervasive,” Kylie says. “But that’s not a chore because it’s our life and we enjoy it.”

James says not everyone can fathom how hard they work. “My family doesn’t understand it,” James says. “They wonder why we work so hard, they don’t understand that we love it and the more we work the better our lifestyle.”

The company had revenue of $2.4 million last year after having average annual growth over three years of nearly 59 per cent.

Regular meetings to plan and discuss work, as well as their personal lives, keeps the business and their marriage on track.

“We do get stressed about issues in business and it affects our personal life but we talk about it,” James says. “We have a WIP meeting together every week and if we’re busy we have it twice a week. We also have planning meetings about home life and goals. We look at the business and our relationship and set goals for our business and family. They’re all entwined.”

Kylie says it’s easier to balance the business because they’re jointly involved.

“If James was running a business on his own and got stressed and couldn’t talk about it, that would be harder,” Kylie says. “A driven, ambitious individual can divide a relationship and it could suffer. For us it’s a shared passion, so it keeps us focused.”

BRW

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