Some people think working with your partner is crazy. That business and marriage don't mix, that eventually the office spills into the dining room, the dining room spills into the office, and it gets hard to tell where work ends and your personal life begins.
I understand why some people might see it that way. Sharing a business, a home, a family, and practically every day takes communication, trust, and a whole lot of adaptability. But after years of working alongside Irka, it's never felt crazy to us. Quite the opposite. It's been one of the most natural ways to build the life we want.
Working together has allowed us to spend more time together, be more present for our kids, and understand firsthand what the other person is going through. It's also given us the chance to build something professionally that's part of our family's story. For us, it's not simply about mixing marriage and work. It's about bringing two important parts of our lives together in a way that works for us.
Finding our own rhythm
We work together practically every day. Sometimes we spend hours in silence, each focused on our own thing, and that silence doesn't feel heavy. It feels like company. Other times we talk nonstop about a campaign, a client, a proposal, or something we need to figure out. There are also moments when we're on separate calls, each wearing headphones, and all it takes is a glance to know exactly what the other person is thinking.
And often, all of that happens while one of our kids needs something, someone is looking for a snack, a question comes from the other room, or family life simply keeps going around us. Because life doesn't stop when you start working, especially with three kids.
That's exactly where one of the things I value most about our setup comes in. Working together has allowed us to be closer, not just to each other, but to our kids, too. It lets us organize our responsibilities differently, share everyday moments, and be present as a family in a way that would probably be much harder if our professional lives were completely separate.
That doesn't mean every day is easy. There are intense days, campaigns to deliver, meetings, proposals, client situations, and all the usual challenges of running a business. But even in those moments, there's something important: neither of us has to explain every detail of what we're going through to the other. Often, we already know because we were there.
When work and family can enrich each other
There's a concept in organizational psychology that I've always found interesting: work-family enrichment. The idea is that work and family life don't necessarily have to compete with each other all the time. The experiences, skills, resources, and positive emotions we develop in one area of our lives can carry over and benefit the other.
For example, learning to communicate better, negotiate, manage time, resolve conflicts, or handle situations under pressure can be valuable both in a business and within a family. In the same way, the trust, empathy, and deep understanding that develop in a relationship can become a strength when two people also have to make professional decisions together.
Research on couples in which both partners work has explored exactly how that enrichment can relate to family well-being and relationship satisfaction. That doesn't mean working together is the right formula for everyone. Every couple has a different dynamic. But it does help us understand that the boundaries between work and family don't always have to be seen solely as a source of conflict. Managed well, they can also become a source of support and growth.
Irka
My wife's name is Irka Pardilla. She joined Alterno in 2019 as an account executive, and she hasn't stopped growing within the agency since. Today, she plays an essential role in overseeing and managing some of our major accounts, coordinating clients, projects, content, and many of the moving pieces that have to come together for an agency to run every day.
I have the privilege of seeing her work up close. I see her negotiate, organize, write, coordinate, and figure things out. I see her handle a complicated situation with a client and, soon after, switch hats completely to take care of something for our kids. I see her keeping track of details I might have missed, questioning an idea when she thinks it could be better, and looking for solutions when something doesn't go as planned.
And above all, I see her roll up her sleeves and give it her all every day.
Because building an agency isn't just about having good ideas, creating campaigns, or developing strategies. A business is also built through consistency, follow-through, calls, messages, meetings, organization, and hundreds of small decisions that almost no one sees. It's built by solving problems even when you'd rather not have one more problem to solve that day.
Irka has played an enormous role in all of that. After so many years of talking about Alterno, its growth, and everything we've built, it's also important to recognize that no lasting business builds itself, much less depends on just one person. So much of who she is is part of Alterno today, too.
Sharing builds a relationship, too
Relationship psychology often talks about the importance of communication, mutual support, shared goals, and the ability to respond together to life's changes. In our case, working together has added another dimension to all of that. We don't just share a family and a home. We also share projects, responsibilities, decisions, problems, and accomplishments.
When a new client comes on board, we finish a major campaign, or someone recognizes our work, we both know everything that happened before we got to that result. We know the conversations, the worries, the last-minute changes, and the hours of work no one else saw. That's why the wins feel different, too. I don't have to come home and explain how my day went. Often, she was there. And I was part of hers.
We also know when the other person has had a tough call, when a project is taking up too much mental space, or when it's simply time to close our laptops. Over the years, learning to recognize those moments becomes another way of taking care of each other.
The true value of time
But if I had to choose one of the biggest benefits of working this way, I'd probably say it's time. As the years go by, you realize that time may be the most valuable resource we have. There can always be another project, another client, another campaign, or a new opportunity. Time with the people you love works differently.
Working together lets us share so much more of that time. We can have lunch together, pick up the kids, rearrange our day when one of them needs something, chat between meetings, or simply be present. It doesn't mean we have fewer responsibilities. It means we have more flexibility to decide how we want to handle them.
To me, that's worth so much. Because at the end of the day, a business can be important, but it's still just one part of our lives. Family is the life happening while we're building everything else.
Building together
Over the years, I've come to think that the question shouldn't be whether working with your partner is a good idea or a bad one. The question should be whether that dynamic works for you, whether there's respect, whether you know how to communicate, whether you can give each other space when it's needed, and whether you both feel you're building something meaningful.
Every couple finds their own way to organize life. This is ours. And after living it for years, I don't see it as crazy. I see it as an extraordinary opportunity to share more of our lives, learn together, raise our kids together, work together, solve problems together, and celebrate together.
It also means being able to look back someday and know that we didn't just build a business. We built an entire chapter of our lives side by side.
That's why I want to end with something I should probably say more often: thank you, Irka. Thank you for rolling up your sleeves every day, for looking after the details, for the clients, the calls, the messages, the ideas, and the decisions. Thank you for telling me when something could be better, for challenging me when I need it, and for helping me find another way to work things out.
And if there's one thing I've learned after all these years, it's that building together hasn't left us less room to be a couple. In many ways, it's given us more reasons, more experiences, and more time to keep growing together.
Sources and related reading
Greenhaus, J. H. & Powell, G. N. developed the concept of work-family enrichment in “When Work and Family Are Allies: A Theory of Work-Family Enrichment”, published in Academy of Management Review. View publication.
Van Steenbergen, E. F., Kluwer, E. S. & Karney, B. R. studied the relationship between work-family enrichment, work-family conflict, and marital satisfaction through an analysis of couples published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. View study.
Dunn, M. G. & O'Brien, K. M. analyzed work-family enrichment among couples in which both partners work in the study “Work-family enrichment among dual-earner couples: can work improve our family life?”, published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology. View study.
Lo Presti, A. and colleagues studied the effects of support, conflict, enrichment, and balance between work and family in dual-income couples, including the effects one partner's experience can have on the other. View research.
The literature has also specifically examined businesses run by couples as a distinct form of family business, analyzing how the business, family, and relationship dimensions interact. View academic review.
Keep reading: Owning a business: sanity or madness? and Three kids: millionaires in love.
