How to manage Your Husband as a Successful business woman
Heart to Heart with
Mrs Ibukun Awosika,
Entrepreneur and business magnate.
First female Chair person of
First Bank Nigeria PLC.
Advise for Married Women
At first when you start a business, your husband might seem supportive because he thinks it is just a business to keep you busy.
But as the business becomes successful, he gets scared.
He gets scared because he feels that you might become something else. He has heard so many stories of women who have become rich and are now terrible. He is scared that you might not be able to balance it all.
You have the power to manage this transition.
1. Don’t start what you cannot finish
Breakfast in bed
Cooking fresh food everyday
The day you become busy and you cannot make breakfast in bed, he will say you have changed and will start treating you as if you are a horrible person
2. Make your husband a stakeholder in everything you do
You must have heard people say:
Your husband’s money is your money
Your money is your money
This is bad advice
If your husband has no stake in what you do, what is his benefit? You are making money everyday and you are still asking for housekeeping. After a while, he will begin to despise you.
All this money you are making, you can’t even help out in the house.
One of the wise things you can do is to empower him.
For example, you can say, “Let me take care of the house bills, you can use your money to build us a house”
When he sees how your money is helping him, he begins to get invested in what you do; he wants you to succeed because your success takes some burden off his shoulders.
Please note: This is why you should marry a hardworking man, who will not take advantage of you because you are contributing to the home front. If you marry a reasonable man, he won’t start spending his money on other women because you are helping out.
Money is a very sensitive topic in a marriage because it can break a home. A lot of ladies take advice from the older generation, forgetting that the generation of our mothers is not the same as our generation.
In that generation, not a lot of women were career focused.
In this generation, it is the norm for women to be career focused, and hence, the dynamics has changed, and we have to deal with that dynamic.
God knows what he was saying when he said, husband and wife are one
The two of you are one and he can bless the one through any of the halves of the one. He can bless the husband or the wife, but it does not change who is in charge.
Your husband is in charge of your home and you should never have illegal leadership because you have money
Money is nothing.
It is just a tool you can use to achieve what God has ordained for you.
Don’t allow money to control your home. If you do, you are in trouble.
When you understand this, you won’t become arrogant because you are making money.
I want you to understand this because we need to raise a critical mass of women who can be successful and use money wisely, so that men can become comfortable with successful women and it can be easier for our children to become successful
You also need to understand that your husband is facing so many things:
Pressure from inlaws
Pressure from friends
They will be telling him things about you, hence you have to be careful.
Don’t keep secrets from him, secrets breed mistrust.
If you want to invest in property, let him know what you are doing.
If you don’t trust your husband, you can keep the asset in your name or in your children’s name.
If you trust your husband, you can buy property and keep the asset in the both of you’s name.
If you have plenty cash, invest in assets immediately. If your husband knows that you are sitting on so much cash, he will ask you for it and if you don’t give it to him…trouble. You become the enemy.
Wisdom my daughters, you need wisdom.
