Awkward! Working with your ex

10:00 PM Awkward, Working No Comments

Jenna Goudreau, Forbes

Most would a successful Janelle Copeland and Fabiola Gomez the business partnership. In 2009, the couple the cake Mamas founded bakery in Los Angeles, California. They have since sold tens of thousands of muffins, bragging rights won and $10,000 on food networks competition show "Cupcake Wars" and expanded to two locations.

What many may not know is that there is also an unusual business relationship. Copeland's husband, Edward, is Gomez of the ex and father of her two children. This is in fact how they met.

Sometimes life and love engage in an unexpected way, what complicated one to many (read: embarrassing) working relationship. Whether a business start with your partner off, say in the business with your own ex or even business partners in the trenches run high breaking up with your loved ones emotions, but you can work with it.

While she knew only Gomez the most Copeland of the eight-year marriage to Edward by the way drop offs or pick up their children waving Hello. In the year management lost their job 2009 Copeland at Circuit City and no luck, a new backup, decided that she had the time to watch their daughter, now age 7, and her stepdaughters, now at the age of 9 and 11. Rather than Edward communicate, she called Gomez himself.

Soon they were regularly speak. One night, Copeland had a dream they had a cupcake bakery, as Gomez learned of it, and she snapped after air, "my dream is to own a bakery!" Little, Copeland knew Gomez took her first job in a bakery and there nine years worked. You talked for three hours the night and angry the next morning Copeland competition in the field of research. "Edward thought that we were crazy," she says. "You really think that this is a good idea?" he asked at the time.

With Gomez the bakery, skills and Copeland's business savvy decided to go. They came up with the name "Cake Mamas" and they were by the end of the week to make business cards and website builder Wix.com to the design their website.

Questions today's customers, who know the story often: "which is the woman who is the ex?" Copeland is considering making aprons with "Woman" and "ex" printed on the front. She says the partnership is good for them to work, because it creates a closer unity of the family. When one of her daughters is ill or needs something you can work the bakery while the other takes care of the children.

However, it is not always easy. Increased sensitivity can quickly turn a business disagreement in personally hurt feelings. "The last person to hear criticism is your ex should the new woman," Copeland says. "The fact that our dynamics are strange, and it is already embarrassing means ego to be set aside. "We had differences at work, but at the end of the day we set aside for our lives."

Rhonda Sanderson, founder and President of the Chicago, ill.-based PR firm, Sanderson & Associates, learned the lesson first hand at work with her ex-husband. She started her company, which specialized companies such as subway and Jamba Juice in PR for franchise, 1986. Two years later divorced, she and her husband John Amato, five years. Because they had a child together, they see each other and remained friends.

Then in 1998, Sanderson was on a trip to Italy and was breaking the stairs put her leg on three. If Amato you picked at the airport, she confided that she would be for four months in a wheelchair and did not know how she would conduct their business. An entrepreneur himself, he offered from their Office for a while to work, to help her as much as he could. "It was an accidental partnership," she says. "He more and more started, help with errands. Finally I said, "How about you come work on the payroll, and with me?" "They have been working together."

Working with an ex-spouse has its highs and deep. Sanderson fully trust him and know he will always be in their corner, but there may be a power struggle. "He had not carried out a hard time the place", she says. "I have to say ' me to not speak." "Sometimes have the Office that disrupts the staff screaming hits in the middle. And though Sanderson never married Amato, his wife was not thrilled by the situation.

"I would recommend? No, "Sanderson says. "Sometimes it just happens."

Designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana a few years long worked together, before the relationship imploded. She launched the Dolce & Gabbana & at the happy together in 1982 and it grows spent more than two decades. When she broke in the year 2005, it had become a powerhouse brand. She decided to heartbreak aside for the business.

"The worst time for us was but together if we broke", Gabbana told the financial times this year. "We thought no about splitting up, but. And the truth is that everything is exactly the same. But no sex!"

While some lovelorn couples able are, their past aside, others are haunted by it. Tory Burch 2004 has her eponymous clothing company with the help of her husband Chris Burch. If the couple in 2006 after 10 years together, divorced, on they serve on the Board, as it grew into a billion dollar business.

Then, things got ugly. Chris started his own clothing company C. Wonder Tory called "a knockoff brand to sell products of inferior quality at lower prices." Last month, he sued her breach, engaged in the sale of its stake claim $600 million in their company. Weeks later countersued, claiming they "copies" the brand Tory Burch. Now they are against each other in court.