6 ideas and 4 risks to avoid

The life of a couple is full of joint projects. Apart from home and kids, some want to develop their professional project together. But it is advisable to take all precautions before embarking on this great adventure. And for good reason, building a business represents a financial risk. But building a business as a couple also represents a personal risk. Hence careful upward thinking is essential to ensure the success of this project. Actually, we are giving you some ideas to start business as a couple.

6 ideas for starting a business as a couple

Before starting a business as a couple, you should find an industry that attracts you. Do you want to try the adventure of food? To work with animals? Do you have specific skills to promote to build your business as a couple?

1. Build a Food Truck

Food trucks (or mobile catering) are in fashion. Between a pizza truck, crperie truck, or healthy truck, you are spoiled for choice of putting your culinary skills at the service of your customers.

And the advantage of food truck is low investment compared to traditional restaurant.

In the same style, cafes and tea rooms are still very popular. Opening a traditional or more fancy cafe is the perfect activity for couples who want to start a business together.

2. Open or take control of a restaurant

Do you or your partner have a passion for cooking? In such a situation, opening or taking a restaurant is a good business idea. But be careful, to ensure the success of your business project as a couple, you need to think about separation of tasks. The catering world is often under pressure, it would be a shame to add more due to torque problems.

And why not open virtual restaurants? Not being too greedy in investment, this can allow you to get started before choosing a physical restaurant!

3. Build or own a grocery store

Grocery stores specializing in local, artisanal, tropical products and more. This local store is becoming increasingly popular. And for good reason, the French prefer to embrace sustainable and reasonable consumption. Hence grocery stores are being preferred over large shopping centers. So if you have a business building project as a couple, don’t hesitate to build a grocery store with your partner.

4. Open the Guest Room

Do you have a big house by the sea or in the countryside? Why not open the guest room? This will allow you to introduce your customers to the area you live in.

Unless you love investing in a bed and breakfast acquisition? Or invest in your dream home? Either way, the hotel industry is a demanding and regulated environment. Don’t hesitate to train yourself and prepare your business plan well.

5. Build a Dog or Horse Riding Pension

For animal lovers, there is no need to look too far to find the idea of ​​starting a business as a couple. You have the possibility to open a dog or equestrian pension. If you have more horses, you can develop your own equestrian center for racing or just for breeding. And if, on the contrary, you like dogs, you have a choice between raising, educating or caring for dogs.

The French have millions of pets to keep, groom or train. This is an activity that you can easily do at home with a wide time slot if there are 2 of you!

6. Build a Game Room: Escape Game, Laser Game, or Paintball

In recent years, escape games have invaded cities. They allow people to completely escape to solve puzzles. And the least we can say is that the concept is very successful. So to ride the wave, more and more entrepreneurs are flocking to the gaming room. Apart from the basic idea, these allow one to quickly profit from a good profitability. Laser games and paintball are fixed values ​​that have been proven over a long period of time.

What position to choose to build a business as a couple?

legal status of the company

Choice of legal status is essential when setting up a business as a couple. And for good reason, if difficulties arise, your assets can be fully or partially confiscated. As a couple engaged in business, you will not benefit from any financial support from your partner.

So it is better to know exactly the consequences of each situation:

For construction formalities and complete support, we recommend that you contact a legal professional or possibly LegalTech. And this, whether it is making SAS as a couple or SCI as a couple. On the other hand, if you opt for the Auto Entrepreneur Scheme, the procedures are simplified. In principle, therefore, you will not need to resort to a specialist.

Spouse Status

In order to build a business as a couple, it is possible for a spouse to opt for a variety of situations:

• associate spouse; Here, the participant has the status of a self-employed employee;
• related spouse; As a partner, your partner has contributed to the company (cash, nature or industry). In this case, he may then be assimilated-employed (with the same regime as the employee’s spouse) or self-employed (if the employee’s conditions are not met);
• Salaried Spouse: It is necessary to have an effective and regular job and get salary for this work. But above all, the salaried spouse is subordinate to the entrepreneur. Hence there is a hierarchical relationship between the partners. Still, this position has stability advantages that the self-employed person does not always have.

The independent plan will change the status of employee spouse during the year 2022.

Some Precautions to Take Before Starting a Business as a Couple

Entrepreneurship is never easy, but when it comes to doing business as a couple, there are some precautions to be taken.

Check Your Matrimonial Governance

As seen earlier, the legal status of the company as a couple is crucial for the formation of the company. Especially, if financial difficulties arise. In addition, your matrimonial regime is not always suitable for entrepreneurship:

• Community of property reduced to acquisition: this is the default matrimonial arrangement. Here, all the assets of the entrepreneur before marriage and generally acquired after marriage can be confiscated. Only the property of the spouse acquired before the marriage is protected. The choice of legal position should be done carefully so as not to find yourself in a delicate position;
• Separation of assets: Only the property of the business owner can be confiscated. This arrangement also applies to packs completed after January 1, 2007;
• Sovereign Communities: All property can be confiscated, even property acquired by the spouse before marriage. This is not a matrimonial arrangement optimized for building a business as a couple;
• PAC: If it expires before January 1, 2007, the joint ownership arrangement applies. Thus, all assets of the entrepreneur acquired before the PACS date can be forfeited, as can half of the assets acquired after PACS.

Learn to separate personal and professional life

Living and working together is a great adventure for a couple. But it still has one major drawback: the difficulty of separating personal and professional life.

To help you separate these two aspects of your life, clearly define the boundaries of each. So avoid talking about your customers at home, or those going shopping or operating a machine at work. And above all, plan activities for couples on weekends or evenings. This will allow you to find yourself in a more pleasant environment.

The second tactic to a successful business building project as a couple is to separate the tasks. Even if you have to make big decisions together, let your partner manage your tasks independently without interference.

being able to be together and work all day

If you are starting business as a couple then there is no doubt that you love your partner. But between loving it at home in the evenings and weekends, and loving it 24 hours a day at home and at work, there’s a big difference.

Therefore you must be certain of having a consistent character in a professional situation: stress management, resistance to pressure, absence of authoritarianism or increased sensitivity, etc.

ask yourself the right questions

Before you start building a business as a couple, you should ask yourself the following questions:

• What are the skills of each, and how do they complement?
• Do you manage to communicate well on all subjects without creating too much tension?
• Do you envision working and living together every day?
• What is your vision for the company? Has it been shared?
• Are you able to differentiate between your professional and personal life?
• Do you have a Plan B in case you fail?
• What are the legal steps to be taken? For example, how to make an SCI for a married couple? How is the formation of a limited liability company going?

Entrepreneurship as a couple is a wonderfully human and sometimes family adventure. By planning your project well in advance and making the right choices, there’s no reason for it not to be successful!

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