For Richer, For Poorer

Introduction:

This week, Liz Picarazzi, Hans Schrei, and Laura Zander talk about something they have in common: They all own and run their business with a partner who also happens to be a spouse. Which suggests some interesting questions: Is someone in charge? How do they divvy up responsibilities? What do they talk about? What do they fight about? Do they fight in front of the employees? How do they make decisions? Who does the dishes? Do they ever wish they were not in business with their spouse? Do they know what would happen to the business if they were to divorce?

— Loren Feldman

Guests:

Laura Zander is CEO Jimmy Beans Wool.

Liz Picarazzi is CEO of Citibin.

Hans Schrei is CEO of Wunderkeks.

Producer:

Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word Productions.

Full Episode Transcript:

Loren Feldman:
Welcome, Liz, Hans, and Laura. Maybe the best way to start would be if you could tell us how you’ve structured your work relationship: Are you 50-50 partners? Do you have separate titles? How do you, basically, divide responsibilities? Liz, maybe we can start with you?

Liz Picarazzi:
Sure, absolutely. So my husband, Frank, is my CFO. And the delineation, totally simplified, is that he’s an implementer, and I’m the visionary, which is a great place to be. So that is really how we structure it. Right now, he actually leads the whole team. Everyone reports to him and not to me. And so that’s really enabled me to focus on growth, and on more partnerships and strategic projects. I can chat at some point here about kind of how it came to be, but that’s how we structure right now.

Loren Feldman:
I think just the one point that I think you’re alluding to is, you did not start the business together with this arrangement. Correct?

Liz Picarazzi:
Correct. I started the business eight years before I hired him, which, interestingly, people always assume that we started it together. They kind of have a hard time imagining that I started it, and then I hired him. But that’s a whole other topic.

But yeah, I started it, and then he ended up joining in May of 2020. At the height of the pandemic, as were many corporate people, he was laid off. And we needed to decide whether he was going to come and work for the business, which was very much struggling with probably a 90-percent reduction in revenue, awaiting PPP. We decided that was the time for him to join Citibin, and he did. And for me, part of the decision was that I was very weak in some of the areas that he was strong in. And so for us, in a way, it was less about the income—which yes, was important—and it more was about filling a lot of the gaps that could have hurt us if I didn’t fill them.

Loren Feldman:
And are you 50-50 partners in the business? How does the ownership work?

Liz Picarazzi:
So I’m 100 percent owner, but because we’re legally married, he’s 50-percent owner.

Loren Feldman:
Understood.

Laura Zander:
Wow. And Liz, like I keep hearing you say, “I hired him. And he reports to me.” How is he with that? Do you say that to him, to his face?

Liz Picarazzi:
No, I’m actually just kind of bragging here on the podcast. I don’t often talk that way. But you know what, he definitely wants people to know that I’m the founder. When we’re at trade shows, he’s really good about saying, “Do you want to meet the founder?” Because often I’m just sitting there in the corner on my phone or something.

And he understands how important that COO role is. So there’s no way that he’s going to think that somehow he’s lesser. And I certainly don’t treat it that way. I really see it as something that helped, and maybe even saved the business, because as we grew, we got into a lot more operational challenges—which not only do I not like, I actively dislike. So he filled in all of those gaps.

Laura Zander:
Do you think the staff sees you guys as equals?

Liz Picarazzi:
I would have to ask them, but I actually think they probably see a healthy interchange. They know there are certain things that are in his realm and other things that are mine. And we’ll argue—sometimes in front of the whole team—not in a nasty way.

But the other day we were having a conversation that when I thought about it, I was like, “Wow, that really wasn’t appropriate to have at a staff meeting with him and me.” And I know at one point I said, “You know, you and I, we should probably discuss this offline.” And he was like, “No, we’re going to discuss it right now!” And that’s something where, to the team, we all kind of laugh about it. It is sort of fun. But I could see, for some people, it could send some mixed signals.

Loren Feldman:
All right. I want to get back to that. But Hans, why don’t you tell us, How do you and Luis divide your roles?

Hans Schrei:
Actually, I started the business, like 10 years ago, in Guatemala. And Luis joined me because I couldn’t really handle it anymore. But up until we decided to move to the U.S., it was really my business and he was helping me. And he had his own thing going on. He’s a photographer. But when we moved to the U.S., basically, we started over. “Okay, we’re partners, 50-50 here,” but it was kind of difficult to move away from the original dynamic. So it took us a while.

And actually, to this day, we go to couples counseling, which is great, because it’s like this space that you get to say, “Okay, that thing you said on Tuesday? I didn’t like it. I want to discuss it.” And you save it. You put a pin on it until we come to the next therapy session. And that’s super helpful because then you can let go of things.

And the way we have it set up now is, a lot of it has to do with each of our talents, because we are very different people. He is a people person. I really am not. He’s an extrovert, and I’m an introvert. So I’m very comfortable dealing with numbers and dealing with the operational side of things, and he’s great with people.

So actually, right now we are building a team and developing profiles and everything. And the way we set it up is that we have split it between internal and external. So one is outward focus, and the other one is inward focus. I take care of the inward—and inward means product—and outward is sales, partnerships, all of those things.

Loren Feldman:
Do you have separate titles?

Hans Schrei:
Yeah, technically, I’m the CEO, and he is the CMO, but we don’t really have titles, because it’s such a tiny thing that it doesn’t really make sense. And we’re going to have to figure this out at some point. Because at the end of the day, we are very aware that we need someone to make the final call on stuff. And I’m talking about, say, finances, and signing this document, that type of thing. So usually I do it, but that’s mostly because I am better at being on top of that type of thing. So I do it myself.

But we’re going to have to figure that out at some point, because as we bring people into the fold, we need to have a lot of clarity of who reports to who. And we have made the mistake of having not such a nice discussion in front of our staff. It takes so long to recover from those. It makes everyone so uncomfortable. And for ownership, because of our visa, I am legally required to own 51 percent of the company. So that’s how we have it set up.

Loren Feldman:
Laura, how about you? You’ve talked about Doug’s role in the company. But you did, in fact, start the business with him, correct?

Laura Zander:
Yes, kind of. I mean, he still had another job. So I started it, and opened the shop. But we’ve worked together since the very beginning. So he wasn’t necessarily in the store doing anything. He came on full-time and quit his day job, I think maybe three or four years into it. So the business was finally making enough money that we didn’t need his income after a few years. But, yeah, from day one, he’s worked on the website and worked on the technical side, which is what he continues to do.

And from day one—hindsight is 2020, of course—but from day one, he’s also been the strategic advisor. All big decisions we make together, and even small decisions we make together. So I tend to be more of, I guess, the face. Like, he’s never been to a trade show. He’s never met our vendors—I mean, very few of them. He has a team of one or two people who he works with. He works mostly from home, whereas I have a team of 70.

But we talk about everything. We divide our finances. He manages the cash flow and paying the bills. He does the stuff that requires a responsible adult. But then I’m the one who manages the profit and loss and the financial statements and the budgeting. And I’m looking at how much we’re spending and what we’re spending stuff on.

And then, in some ways, he’s really my mentor. We talk about things when there are problems, or we need somebody who’s not in the day-to-day to give a perspective. So as far as titles are concerned, I mean, we’re kind of like Hans. I guess technically, I’m CEO, and technically, I own 51 percent, but honestly, we made those decisions back in 2011 to join EY Winning Women. We changed it from 50-50 to 51-49 so that we’re a women-owned business. And then we made me CEO, because I’m the one who’s forward-facing, but we go through everything together. And we’ve always worked together. We met at work. So we’ve never even really had conversations about who does what. It just kind of happens organically. We’ve never really talked about it. We just kind of fall into those roles.

Loren Feldman:
All right, let’s take a quick break to hear from our sponsor, Work Better Now.

[Message from our sponsor, Work Better Now]

And we’re back.

Liz Picarazzi:
I have a question, Laura. Sometimes when I talk to other entrepreneurs who work with their partners or spouses, I like to ask the question: What do you discuss over dinner?

Laura Zander:
Oh, yeah, well, the benefit of us working together is that we never run out of things to talk about. So I think it really helps our relationship a lot. We talk about work. We have a 13-year-old son, so we talk about our son. And then we dream about retirement and what we’re gonna go through when we have time off. We talk about travel a lot, and biking and skiing and running and surfing. That’s kind of our life. Before we opened the business and we worked at different companies, we would do side projects together just to earn extra money, like travel money. So it’s part of our relationship—to work on projects together. This just happened to be a bigger project.

Loren Feldman:
I wonder if any of you have felt the need to set guidelines—

Hans Schrei:
Oh, yes.

Loren Feldman:
—dividing personal and business, what’s in bounds and what’s out of bounds. You have, Hans?

Hans Schrei:
Yeah, what happened to us is that we moved here in 2019. And then the pandemic hit, so we knew no one the first year, because we’re just going to farmers markets. We were super busy, working super hard. And then we were stuck going from the office to home. So we knew no one, and it really took a toll on us. Luis is more of a people person, so he really misses going out with people. So he really suffered during the pandemic. And the thing is that it was not really obvious that it was the pandemic. But we had to force ourselves to actually divide those things and actually say, “Hey, I need to go out. I need to talk to people.” And in my case, it was like, “No, I need to stay home.” And it took us a long time to be comfortable saying, “Hey, I am fine going out today, but tomorrow I want to stay home, so you’re free to go,” that type of thing.

And it took us a while, because we spent so much time by necessity just being together 24/7, like joined at the hip, that when that was no longer necessary, it took us a while to adapt. And it really took a toll on us. So one of the things that we’ve been discussing lately, actually, is that it’s really hard. We’re spending a lot more time at home, working from home now, for many reasons. And when we hired this team, that’s not going to be possible anymore. And we’re actually excited about that. Because we feel that separating the different spaces really helps to separate the things, because otherwise, it’s kind of frustrating.

Because yeah, of course, you always have stuff to talk about, but the worst thing that can happen to us is that we get tangled in our work discussion at 6 a.m. It happens a lot. We wake up very early. But we are like, you know, when someone has a dream, or was thinking about this and wants to tell the other, and he’s super excited, like, “Oh my God,” this happened, actually, this morning. I was super excited. Like, “Yes, we’re gonna do this and that. What do you think and how do you feel?” And then the other guy is like, “I need to have my coffee first,” which is absolutely normal. And if this was just your co-worker, you would tell them at nine, when they are in the office. You wouldn’t be bothering them in their pajamas.

So it’s been really hard to learn that. But what we’ve learned to do is to say, “You know what? I’m not ready to talk about this. So let’s talk about it later, because it’s not a good time.” Usually what happens is that we end up fighting whenever we don’t respect that time. One is excited and the other is like, “I really don’t want to hear about this.” So we’ve learned to say, “Really, this is not the time. I don’t want to hear about this,” and to say, “You know what? No more work today.”

Loren Feldman:
How about you, Liz? Do you set guidelines?

Liz Picarazzi:
So I would say one guideline—it may be more of an informal one—is that we have a daughter who’s 16: We usually talk to her and with her and about her day before we talk about anything else. And I know that there have been a lot of times in the past when we didn’t maybe even ask her about her day, because we were talking about the business. So I think that was a really important shift. But we also do sometimes have fun talking about the business with her, especially in the last year, because there’s been so much drama with journalists and with different partners and city agencies. So it’s almost like, there’s gossip that we do that she’s a part of.

Laura Zander:
I have so much fun talking through profit and loss and profitability with my son, and like reinforcing. Because he’s like, “Math doesn’t matter. We’re never going to need algebra. Why do I have to take this stuff?” And I’m like, “Okay, so here’s the deal. This is our productivity.” And I give him these word problems, right? “One dyer can dye 100 skeins per day. If we have five dyers, and blah, blah, blah, how long is it going to take us to do this? And if we’re paying him this, then what’s our profitability?” And we go through this whole thing.

And it’s really kind of neat to be able to round out his school stuff. I mean, it’s not like I put it on the whiteboard. Because I’m more comfortable in the financial world, so that when we have financial word problems to solve, it’s fun to get his two cents on it, too. And he’s been so great, again, because he’s objective and he’s a kid. So he’s just going to be honest. I can say, “This employee is doing blah, blah, blah,” and he’ll be like, “Just fire her.” [Laughter] Or he’ll be like, “Mom, it sounds like you’re being kind of a bitch.” You know, I appreciate that. That’s really helpful. Do you guys do the same thing?

Liz Picarazzi:
We do. I have her engaged more in marketing things and some of her skills with video editing that she’s learned in school but she hasn’t applied really in the real world. She has been able to help us—not only with marketing, for Instagram and whatnot, but even videos that we send to the factory to help illustrate things that we want, that we found is a much better way than operating through text on Basecamp with our factory.

So she’s really brought to life some of the important evolutions of the product, especially over this summer. So we pay her to do that. She has been asking for more hours lately, which is great, because we’re kind of short-staffed. But she’s very involved in the business. She hears us talking about it a lot, and I think she sees the practical application of some of the things that she’s learning in school.

Laura Zander:
That’s so cool. I love that. Really, really neat.

Loren Feldman:
So you guys brought up already the relationship between you and your spouse and the employees. And obviously, that can be a tricky situation, in that it can kind of put employees in a difficult position. For example, no one’s going to want to run into your office and say, “You know, your husband’s really driving me crazy.” I’m wondering, has that situation presented itself?

Laura Zander:
For me, it hasn’t. I can’t think of a time… But Doug and I have a very, very peaceful relationship. We’ve don’t argue. We don’t fight. It’s all him. Like, I would fight, but he’s not a fighter. And so, he’s taught me how to not fight and how to not yell. We don’t yell. And so, we have really clear lines of—I want to just kind of say respect, of what each one brings. So we just naturally defer to each other. Wwe don’t even have to talk about it.

Like, if he feels really passionate about x, y, and z, then I’m going to defer to him in that area, because that’s what he feels passionate about, and vice versa. So we just let things slide either way. And I think, at the end of the day, while I’m the face, and I’m the one who’s there, we all know that, at the end of the day, he probably is smarter than I am. And he’s definitely more mature. And so I’m always gonna kind of defer to him, even though I’m the one who’s technically in charge.

Loren Feldman:
But I’m sure that varies by topic. I mean, there must be aspects of running a yarn business, as opposed to handling the technology underlying the yarn business, that you’re more familiar with than he is.

Laura Zander:
Absolutely, and that’s where it kind of comes into—and this is gonna sound like I have daddy issues or something—but he’s just a really great mentor. So on the day-to-day stuff, I’m gonna handle it, and there’s a lot of stuff. I mean, like, we just found out we’re getting audited. And I haven’t even told him, and I’m not going to tell him. I’m just going to do it, and I’m just going to handle it. And he never needs to know. Because we’re so by-the-book. Everything’s going to be fine. Worst-case scenario, I mean, it’s gonna take up a lot of time, and there’s no need for him to know about that. And we’re being audited by the state of Nevada for sales and use tax and blah, blah, blah.

So there are areas where I feel very confident, and I don’t even need his input. But there are areas where it’s not that he is necessarily smarter, I guess, but he’s a great mentor. It’s like talking to Jay, or talking to one of you guys where you’re not in it day-to-day, but I can go to you and say, “What do I do about this? I don’t know how to handle this. What would a responsible adult do?” And then I take his input, and usually we’ll go with kind of what he says, because he has better judgment than I do. And I guess that’s what it comes down to. He’s got really, really good judgment. And he’s one of those people who, when he meets people, he can tell if they’re a good person or a bad person kind of right away. He’s got a good read, whereas I don’t.

And maybe part of it is just, in our areas, we know our shit. And we want to stay married. I mean, that was a decision that I made maybe 10 years ago. It was about 10 years ago when we were kind of on different trajectories, and I really wanted to grow, grow, grow. And I had all these big, huge wild dreams. Loren, you remember. And Doug was like, “I don’t want to take outside money. I don’t want to report to anybody else. I don’t want you on the road.” Not that he’s in control of me. But he’s like, “I don’t think that we will enjoy it, and you will enjoy going from franchise store to franchise store,” and blah, blah, blah.

And so there was a little bit of tension and frustration on my part, because I’m like, “Why are you holding me back? Why don’t you just want these big, huge dreams the way I do?” And at some point, about 10 years ago, I was like, “You know what, I can make a decision: either I can stay married and have a nice, peaceful relationship and a healthy business that grows a healthy amount,”—and if you want to call it a lifestyle, family business, call it a lifestyle, family business—”or I can go for broke, and I can try to be the next Drybar. But realistically, I’m going to end up being divorced, seeing my kid once every other week. And I’m going to be working 90 hours a week.” So that was a conscious decision that our marriage and our relationship comes first, even if that means that the business is going to be smaller than somebody else’s.

Hans Schrei:
Yeah, we’ve had the exact same conversation. At some point, if decisions need to be made, that is a decision that needs to be made. And actually, we just did it again. We said, “Okay, we need to put ourselves first and say, ‘We’re going to rest a bit and gather our own thoughts and be comfortable again,’ because it’s been a rough ride for a while,” even if it means slowing down. And actually, we’re slowing down significantly for a couple months. There are a few opportunities that introduced themselves in the past couple of weeks that—actually, it was like on a silver platter that said, “Hey, there’s this opportunity, but it means you have to slow down and wait a little bit.” We’re like, “Okay, we’ll take it! We’ll slow down.” So we’re going to have three months that are slower and mellower. And that helps.

We’ve been very burnt out lately, so that doesn’t help. But we made a deal, a pact, to be very respectful of how each other feels about doing the business. Because in our case, particularly, we don’t have kids. We’re not going to have kids, and this is kind of our legacy. The whole safe spaces thing is definitely our legacy. So we just want to make sure that we’re giving it everything that we have, and we aren’t just doing it to go through the motions. So if at some point one of us feels like that, either one is free to say, “You know what, I give you a year, and after that I’m out.” And we had to be comfortable with that. If you’re the party that says, “I’m out,” be comfortable with the other party not wanting to. I don’t really see that happening, that only one of us remains, but that is in the rulebook right now.

Loren Feldman:
Liz, you’ve talked a little about the different ways that you and Frank see the business.

Liz Picarazzi:
So, I have a mostly very glowing report for Frank. If I were his boss in a corporate setting, he’d have a really good performance review. But there are a couple of areas where we persistently have tension. The first one is really about short-term versus long-term thinking. And a current example of that: I’m the long-term thinker. He’s the short-term thinker. We’re looking to move all of our operations from three places into one, and it’s a big five-year real estate decision on a lease. And he pulls together the analysis of the space that we should get, and I realized that it just occupies our current inventory and not any more.

So I said, “Well, what’s your growth factor that you applied to this?” And he said, “None.” I’m like, “Well, short-term thinking is that this is the size of our warehouse. What’s gonna happen if we double next year? We can be having this conversation again about moving.” That’s what I’m trying to avoid. So he’s definitely very conservative. With any sort of investment, he thinks about what’s in the bank versus what cash is coming in. As the entrepreneur, I know the cash coming in will run the business as it comes in. And he’s going to say, “Well, we can’t invest in this because we don’t have the money in our bank account right now.”

I would say the other area where we have persistent issues is kind of on our product assortment. So we’re very known for our trash enclosures, but we also do package lockers, and sheds and planters. And over the last few years, I’ve worked very hard to position Citibin as a premium outdoor storage brand, and not as that trash-enclosure business. But the truth is that the margin on our package lockers is much less than our trash enclosures. And he’s going to be really focused on that margin, because he’s putting our efforts toward that thing that sells the best by far, which for us is the trash enclosure. But what I’ll say is that: If we’re ever to be acquired, an acquirer is going to be impressed that we are a portfolio of outdoor products—multiple products—not that we’re just a trash-enclosure company.

So I’ve got that long-term vision. He’s got the short-term, “Let’s just focus on what sells.” And like there’s one product, one of our package lockers, that doesn’t sell very well, and he will do anything to get rid of them. He’s gonna probably fire-sale them, and he never wants us to make them again. And he’s really let me know that, every chance he gets, how truly unprofitable that was because of all the R&D that went into it, the tooling. Honestly, that was all my initiative. It all happened in 2019. I was very forceful on that project and on the investments, and it has not paid off. And so he’ll bring that up to me.

It’s not nasty—we don’t really fight like that. But he definitely has some good examples of my weaknesses and where my vision sometimes doesn’t go so well. And he’s counting the inventory all the time. So he’ll be in the warehouse, and he sees those package lockers, and it almost makes him angry because they’re not moving very fast. And he’s hands-on at that level that he can see the results of Liz’s decision two years ago to pursue this.

Loren Feldman:
Liz, do you agree with him at this point? Do you think that you should end that line?

Liz Picarazzi:
I mean, the holidays are coming up. So for package lockers, that’s our biggest season. I’m hoping that we do really well, and I’ll have the evidence to support my desire to keep the package locker. But we have two of them and one of them sells much less. That might be one that we decommission, or maybe do like a special order once a year for people who want it, that they just are gonna have to wait. That’s a special order. Because we’ve already done the tooling on that, so a lot of the upfront investment has already been made.

Loren Feldman:
It sounds like your differences could be a really healthy tension in a business—having people coming at issues from different perspectives. Is that the way you see it?

Liz Picarazzi:
I do. I think it’s a really healthy interaction. Like I said, if someone is an implementer, and the other is the visionary, it’s a really great combination—as long as you appreciate the other and you understand what you each do. My stuff with being the visionary is we’ve realized that if I have some idea that I’m urgently wanting to discuss with him, and he’s working on something in the weeds, then I will get irritated because I want to discuss my grand idea as soon as possible. He’ll say something like, “Why don’t you go call one of your entrepreneur friends, share your idea?” Because he knows that I want someone to get excited about what it is, and he just can’t manufacture it. Nor should he!

If I’m interrupting him during the middle of the day to come tell him about my latest marketing idea, that can be distracting. And I realize that can be distracting, so I do take that feedback. And I accepted that there are some ideas that are maybe really big that I need to call someone else about. But I don’t always realize it in the moment because I’m very impulsive. And when I want interaction about my latest idea, I want it right then.

Laura Zander:
God, he and Doug would just get along so well, I think. And do you do this in your personal life as well? I’m like, “You know what, I think we should move to New Zealand, or let’s move here, or let’s do this, or let’s do that.” We’ll be somewhere, and we’ll be talking with people who we don’t know very well, and they’ll come up to Doug. And they’ll be like, “So when are you guys moving to New Zealand?” And Doug laughs, “You just have to ignore like 98 percent of what she says.” Because apparently I say it really convincingly. And I’m super passionate about it in that moment. So he’s just gotten really, really good at basically pretending like he’s listening and smiling: “Yeah, that sounds awesome.” And then he knows I’ll forget about it by the next day, for the most part. He’s really good at not being a buzzkill, you know what I mean?

Liz Picarazzi:
Well, right. And he may know that if he does engage with you, if he’s not as enthusiastic as you might want him to be, then he’s going to be irritated. So yeah, it’s better just to not engage, because he knows that if he engages, you’re going to engage him back. And next thing you know, you’re talking for a couple of hours about Laura’s latest idea.

Laura Zander:
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it’s interesting. I’d be interested, like, who does the laundry in your house? And who does the dishes? And how do you guys divide up—

Liz Picarazzi:
He does both.

Laura Zander:
Yeah, Doug does all of that stuff, too. He’s a better parent than I am. I’m the one who travels. He’s the steady force. So really, really interesting. It sounds like we have very similar dynamics going on.

Loren Feldman:
Liz, does this ever translate into an issue with employees where they feel they’re being pulled in different directions by you and by Frank?

Liz Picarazzi:
Not by Frank, but by me. For sure.

Loren Feldman:
How big an issue is that, and how do you resolve it?

Liz Picarazzi:
So I think I’ve gotten better at really keeping track of what I’ve assigned to people and reprioritizing if need be, because—

Laura Zander:
Are you a tornado?

Liz Picarazzi:
I don’t know if I’d call myself that, but I’ve definitely got the bright-shiny-object thing. I will work on reprioritizing, or I’ll tell someone that maybe I’ve given like 12 totally disparate things to do, I can help reprioritize that because something has come up that’s more important than the others. But I would say the other thing is that, Frank, when there is something really important that really needs to be done but there isn’t buy-in from the team, or there’s just not enthusiasm, he’ll help me get it done. That has been from the very start that he joined. He knew that there were a lot of strategic projects that I felt were not moving.

And so, when I told him, “I really would like for you to help be that intersection to help make this thing move forward,” he’s done that over and over. And so for me, I’m very grateful that he’s an intermediary. And I don’t think it’s necessarily that the employees weren’t for the idea, but they just need someone to really follow up. And oftentimes, I will kind of issue proclamations but I’ll never follow up with anybody. And then when they hear two weeks later that it was something that was actually important to me, they’re surprised because some people probably forget. But with Frank in the middle, he knows the things that need to move ahead. And he’ll help me leverage the team to do it. But without him, I’m thinking, “Yeah, people are very confused.” I provide confusing directions.

Loren Feldman:
So you would need someone to play Frank’s role even if it weren’t Frank?

Liz Picarazzi:
Definitely.

Laura Zander:
It’s funny you say that. That’s the trajectory that we went through, and I didn’t realize that, obviously, until later. But when we got our general manager, when we hired her six years ago, I realized that she was actually a surrogate for Doug. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Doug really played kind of that number two role, and the one that would make sure that I was less confusing or that we have priorities going on. He and I would talk through all these projects, and blah, blah, blah.

And then—actually, well, long story—but when we brought on Shannon, who has now filled that role, Doug had stepped back because we had a kid. And so he became the parent. But I didn’t realize how important that role is, that you have that translator, if you will, who can translate all of these crazy big ideas and disparate priorities into something that the masses can understand and digest, and doesn’t drive them crazy. So, anyway, yeah, we had the same thing, same thing. What a huge roll that is.

Liz Picarazzi:
It’s so important.

Loren Feldman:
You know, it occurs to me that just being married is a challenge. I know in my marriage, I think it’s been a healthy thing that my wife and I have both been able to go off and do our jobs on a regular basis separately. And when there’s been tension, it’s served as a way of clearing our heads. And we come back and things that looked dire don’t look so dire after eight hours doing something else.

Laura Zander:
Oh my God. Mine’s the reverse. I’m like, “If we didn’t work together, what would we talk about?” I mean, we have this shared life goal. But we do everything together. We had worked out together. We exercise together. We ski together. I mean, it’s one of those sick relationships where we’re just together. For me, it would be so sad if we had different jobs and worked for different places. And then he’s got this whole life I don’t even really know about. He’s got all these co-workers I don’t know. And like I said, even when we did work at different places, like we came together on separate projects so that we could work together.

Loren Feldman:
How about you, Hans? Do you ever feel like having that separation would be helpful and healthy?

Hans Schrei:
Yeah, but that is one of those situations where the grass is always greener on the other side, I think. For us, what really helps is because we built the business, and then with building the business came the purpose of the business. And that is something that we both have absolute buy-in into. That is something that we’re absolutely passionate about, as opposed to the cookies, which frankly, it’s a love-hate relationship sometimes, as it is with any product.

The idea of building safe spaces has become our personal mission for the two of us as a couple, as an entity. And the way we see it is that, yeah, we’re not going to have kids, so that’s our legacy. So where we are is that those are two separate things, and one is there to serve the other. Where we are is that no matter what the business is, no matter if we choose to do something else with the business, this other mission that we’ve set ourselves to accomplish as people, as immigrants, as gay men, that is our legacy. That is our life’s project. The cookie company is incidental to that.

Loren Feldman:
How about you, Liz? Do you ever think it would be easier if you had more separation and you had someone else playing the role that Frank is playing?

Liz Picarazzi:
Well, it’s actually a funny question, because we’re doing a renovation on our house. We’re kind of transforming it from a two-family to a one-family. And during the renovation, me, Frank, and Lydia have all been sleeping in the same room. So not only are we living in the same house, but we’re literally sleeping in the same room every night since July. And it was really difficult at first to adjust to that, but I have to say, we kind of are enjoying spending more time together, and especially with our daughter. Because she’s at the age where she would just sit in her room alone, on her phone for hours and hours. And now, for her, she’s kind of forced to hang out with us all the time. So in terms of our physical separation, right now, I’ve been surprised that we’ve been okay with these cramped quarters.

But I would say in terms of just other types of separation, not just physical, we each have our own hobbies. So I’m really into DIY home projects. He doesn’t care at all about it. So this renovation for me has been—I’m really enjoying picking out tile and choosing doors and all these things that he has no interest in. And that’s fine, he defers to me on that. But he’s a musician. And so then his time outside of the household and outside of work and parenting is composing and performing music. And so we know that because we have our own hobbies, it not only strengthens our marriage, but it also strengthens our work relationship, because we have a strong marriage. And I know that’s very difficult to achieve, but I think we’re kind of uniquely… we just click. We click. We don’t always get along, but our life works really well. But I don’t think it would be if we didn’t each have our own hobbies.

Loren Feldman:
It’s kind of conventional wisdom that any business partnership should have an agreement at the beginning that stipulates what would happen if the partnership ends. Now I know none of you will ever need this, but I’m wondering if each of you has that kind of agreement with your spouses. In other words, do you know what would happen to the business if your marriage relationship ended for whatever reason?

Hans Schrei:
We’ve talked about it, and where we are is, we could probably keep it going, even if the other one was to disappear. So it’s a very frank conversation that we had to have at not a great moment in the relationship. Of course, in our case, a lot of it has to do with our ability to stay in the country. So it’s not like, “Oh, I’m going to find a job.” But still, something that we are, I guess, if push came to shove, we’re prepared to do.

Loren Feldman:
How about you, Laura?

Laura Zander:
Yeah, we don’t have anything written down. But in the dreams that I have—my abandonment dreams, which happen when I travel a lot—I get the business. I get the dogs. Doug will have full custody of Huck. You know, we’ve got it all split out. I mean, realistically, I would probably run the business because I’m the one who’s on the ground more often. And Doug has no deep desire to work forever. And apparently, I’m more wired to work forever, and I have more support than he does on the business side of it. So I’m assuming that that’s what would happen.

Loren Feldman:
How about you, Liz?

Liz Picarazzi:
So we’ve never discussed it. I can say, though, that I think our marriage has improved since he joined the business. So I guess it feels like the conversation is less applicable now than it would have been a couple of years ago when our marriage wasn’t as strong. But I guess I just figured that if something happened with the marriage that we would just split the business 50-50 in terms of ownership, and then see whether or not we could still work together. And I kind of feel like we could. But it’s not something I have really thought about. But if I do, I feel like it would probably be somewhat simple. Because I think we would just understand it’s 50-50, and then we’ll figure something out with whether the company continues and who’s in leadership. I don’t know, I feel like maybe it’s not that difficult to figure out.

I would say, if you look at the things that attracted you to your partner—like in Frank’s case, he’s very intelligent. He’s very fun. He’s fun to be around. So that’s kind of, on the personal side, what attracted me to him. When I see him being smart and funny in the workplace, it actually—this is cheesy, but it kind of rekindles the original love, because I see people see him as smart and funny. And I don’t know, sometimes you don’t always see your spouse in the way that you originally came to know them. And so I’ve found that I really admire him in the workplace. And it brings me back to when I first met him, like really what I thought.

Loren Feldman:
Well you know, when we went into this, I kind of thought I might have to offer each of your spouses equal time. But I don’t know that that’s necessary. You guys were very kind to your spouses, and I’m sure they’ll appreciate that. My thanks to Liz Picarazzi, Hans Schrei, and Laura Zander. Thanks for sharing, guys.