Conflict with partner is one of the major obstacles facing business owners both men and women. Business owners tend to spend countless hours to get their business off the ground and start making a profit – but it’s the getting there that often requires the long working hours.

And it’s these long working hours and less time for family life, chores not being done, and if you work from home the blurred boundaries between work time and family time that can cause upset.

Having an angry partner who is upset about how your homeworking is affecting family life will only cause more anxiety, stress and this could affect how successful you are in your home business. But ultimately, if you don’t work, you don’t make money, and that has it’s own stresses – so what is the best solution?

It is important that you maintain a positive attitude towards your business and if your family is working against you, that becomes almost impossible.

The key is to communicate (probably more than when you were not working from home) and time management. Here are some more tips to help you maintain a healthy balance between working from home and family life:

1.Make sure you have an additional source of income before you start your home-based business

If you are just starting out, you need an additional source of income – don’t just quit your job and start working from home without any money coming in. Even if it’s a part time job to cover your basic living expenses until your online business takes off, it will take away some of the financial strain – and the pressure to work long hours in desperation.

2. Share your goals and targets with your partner

Be honest and tell your partner about your desire to succeed, your ambitions and your reasons for running your own business. If you have a business plan and why don’t you if you haven’t?), show him what you plan to do to and how you intend to do it. That will make him clear on exactly what the task ahead entails, and hopefully encourage him to show you some support along the way.

3.Explain what working from home will mean for the family

Don’t take for granted that everyone understands the sacrifices and potential problems that working from home can bring. You need to explain that setting up and running a business whether online or offline needs a lot of time and effort to get it off the ground before your start to reap the rewards. And you may need to reaffirm this every so often (not just during a row, either), so that your partner remembers this.

4. Sell the benefits of working from home

Explain the benefits of working from home such as saving on rented office space, travel time and being able to set your own hours so you can work around the kids and the school run etc.

5. Get the family involved

Ask for their help, opinion (e.g. on your website design, your sales letter, and your ideas). Make them feel part of your business and show them that their opinion is important to you.

6. Get organised

Organise your time so you can give your family your full attention when you are with them – that means not replying to emails on your smartphone! Of course, they will get mad if the first thing you do once you wake up in the morning is rush to your PC and ignore them.

Sometimes it’s the little adjustments that can make a difference – like making sure you always sit down together for breakfast and dinner and focus purely on being a family, or not working on your home business during the weekends, or family outings. Don’t be selfish, always put yourself in their shoes, we all need love and attention.

7. Set boundaries between work and family life

Set up a work schedule to accommodate your families’ needs – you don’t need to work 24 hours seven days a week. So, if the plan is to work after you drop the kids off at school, then for an hour when they sleep, try to stick with it so that everyone is clear, and you have time for your partner, too.

8. Don’t ignore the chores

One annoying part of working from home is that your partner may wonder why the dishes haven’t been washed, or why there is nothing for dinner because even though you are clearly working from home, they don’t understand why you can’t do that AND keep everything at home running like clockwork. This is where some of the arguments can start. And you need to make it clear that you are working and that everyone in the household has to pull their weight – not just dump things on you because you are working from home.

9. Know when to call in the experts

If it means getting extra help – a cleaner for example – then arrange for this as soon as possible, and delegate the rest to everyone in the home, including you.

10. Know when it’s not working

If you are spending hours on your home business and not making any money, and yet the stress at home keeps growing, you’ll need to weigh up what matters the most to you. A failing business is not worth breaking up your family for!