A funny thing happens when you ask a married couple to describe each of their roles within their shared photography business. There’s a pause, a chuckle, and then one member of the duo makes a quip.

“I do as I’m told,” jokes Tim Walden with his wife and business partner Beverly.

“I do the stuff Marianne doesn’t like to do,” teases Steve Sabrier with his wife Marianne, who giggles and says, “He is not happy about that.”

“She’s pointing at me; she wants me to answer this!” laughs Travis Stitt with his wife Jen, who teases, “I’m just waiting to see what he’s going to say.”

Though these three professional photographer couples don’t state it, it is clear by the shared laughter and good-natured teasing that humor is a key ingredient for a successful couples-run business. Here’s what else we learned about running a business with your spouse from three couples doing it well: Travis and Jen Stitt of Fox & Brazen Photography in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania; Tim and Beverly Walden of Walden’s Photography in Lexington, Kentucky; and Marianne and Steve Sabrier at The Red M Studio in New Orleans.

PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTHS

Years ago, when Beverly Walden left her banking job of two years to join Walden’s Photography, a family portrait business passed down from Tim’s father, she planned to focus on the business side of the studio. But Beverly, who had been an art major in college before switching to business, was too creative for invoicing, explains Tim. She began learning photography and earned PPA’s master of photography degree.

Today, she takes photos and focuses on the “right-brained” aspects of the business—blog writing, social media marketing, and mixed-media portrait paintings. Tim’s focus, besides the photography, is strategy. “Tim is more like, ‘I see a goal, let’s go to it now’—boom—in a straight line,” says Beverly. Over the years, they’ve begun outsourcing the “reactive” aspects of their business, such as printing and framing, to focus on and hire staff for the “proactive” parts, such as improving upon and delivering an exceptional client experience that includes styling.

DRAW A LINE

Tim Walden once told a young staff photographer that when you go into the camera room and close the door, nothing else matters. If you had a rough night at home or are dealing with a personal issue, when that camera room door closes, you are on stage. That same advice applies to couples who work together, he says. “When we walk into the business and we are on the job, we don’t wear our feelings on our sleeves.” The same line is drawn when it comes to bringing business home. It’s silly to say things don’t sometimes overlap, Tim says, but the couple is intentional about not doing a business brainstorm, for example, during a family dinner. “We don’t want to bore our kids with our business. We bore them, but we do it as parents, not as business owners,” he laughs.

One of the biggest benefits of working with your spouse is spending so much time with them, says Travis Stitt. “It is an incredible experience watching something that we are working on together grow and change and be successful and evolve.” But as great as that is, your time together at work shouldn’t replace time together outside of work. “Go on dates, spend time with family, hang out with friends,” he advises couples in business together. “Do not swap the awesome business time with the awesome relationship time.” And never let a passionate business discussion spill over into personal time, or vice versa. “My biggest advice for spouses,” he says, “is to make sure you are able as a couple to clearly define what those boundaries are.”   

At The Red M Studio, the Sabriers also successfully run their wedding and family portrait business by playing to one another’s strengths. Marianne Sabrier is the primary photographer and handles editing and marketing. Steve is the second photographer who also handles tasks such as invoicing and IT support, including running the ProSelect software. “I do the talking, he does the driving,” Marianne tells her clients in the sales room.

Marianne is the extrovert who excels at corralling large groups for a photo, while Steve’s more introverted nature makes him a good fit for fading into the background of weddings and unassumingly capturing the details and impromptu moments. While Marianne photographs “from the heart,” she says, Steve is a technical photographer. “We call him the light ninja,” she says, since he captures those minute elements such as perfectly lit closeups of the wedding rings. Marianne is also grateful that Steve steps in to photograph on the dance floor. “I am really small and I don’t like to shoot receptions where large groups of people start dancing around,” she explains. “But he does a really good job of getting into the middle of the action.” By complementing each other, Marianne notes, “the final product is greater than what either of us could have done alone.”

At Fox & Brazen, there’s a Walt Disney/Roy Disney dynamic, explains Travis Stitt. Jen is a true artist, the Walt Disney of the duo, full of big ideas and concepts. “I am Roy Disney, saying, ‘OK, you have these ideas but how do we finance them, how do we build them, and how do we handle them from a logistical perspective?’” The magic of the pairing is that her ideas and ingenuity fuel Travis’s love for problem-solving, he says, which is how they’re able to make her vision come to life.    

COMMUNICATE WELL AND OFTEN

“It’s a cliché to say that the key to a relationship is communication,” says Travis Stitt, but when you are in business together, the adage is doubly true. “You cannot sit on things for a long time.” If something is not working, it should be addressed immediately. It’s also important to understand one another’s preferred way of communicating, says Jen. For example, she adds, “I know that Travis doesn’t like me to tell him bad things over text, so I have stopped doing that.” He also gets stressed if she shares difficult information on the way to an evening wedding job, so she’s mindful not to do that either. “Communication styles are like that,” Travis says.

It’s also important to stay on the same wavelength daily regarding the business. “Make sure you are aligned on what your expectations and goals are,” says Travis, “and if you aren’t, that’s OK; work to get aligned.” Be intentional about what you are going to accomplish each day, says Tim Walden. “Not just, ‘Who’s coming in today?’ We schedule marketing meetings, and we pull up our software and say, ‘OK, what’s on our docket?’”

TAG TEAM

How do two professional photographers work one business? Some wedded photographers work under one umbrella but photograph different events. Marianne and Steve Sabrier, however, are a package deal. The reason is simple: “It is time that we want to spend together.” Plus, Marianne and Steve know each other’s movements so well that they’re intuitively in sync as they make their way through a wedding day. “I know exactly where he is going to go, and he knows what we are going to get, and we know how to stay out of each other’s way,” she says. “It is a dance that we do.”

The Stitts, too, both create images at the same event. When they arrive at a wedding job, they first split up to take photos of each half of the wedding party. As they photograph, they text one another images, so each can play off the others’ posing and compositions. For example, Travis had one group of groomsmen recreating Renaissance art poses. He texted Jen those images: Were the bridesmaids game to do something similar? (They were.) During the formal portrait session with the couple and their wedding party, the duo takes turns creating photos that represent their individual creative visions. “We call it the leapfrog method,” says Jen, “where Travis will control a portrait and then I’ll control it for a few minutes, and we switch back and forth. It gives each of us a chance to put our best creative foot forward.”

By far the best thing about the teamwork involved in running a photography business as a couple is watching it flourish alongside your favorite person, these couples agree. It’s a comfort to work closely with someone who shares your vision, who has the same goal, and is 100% on board with growing the business, says Tim Walden. “Nobody is going to speak into me or me into them like a spouse would because we really have that goal, that desire to be exceptional,” Tim says. “And we think alike,” Beverly chimes in before Tim continues. “We understand the depth, the nuances, the details of our business better than anyone else.” 

Amanda Arnold is a senior editor.