In the beginning of Vacation Nail Collective, there was a lot of “we” being said. As in “we are opening a nail salon”. It was stated the same way that some couples just loooove to say “we are pregnant” (PREGERNATE????) as if there is equal share of work being done by both parties. In some sense, the metaphor worked: I put in a lot of sweat equity right at the beginning, and a few months later a fully formed (business) entity was brought into the world. Also, lots of crying by everyone involved.

I made my wife the CEO, and basically said “you’re the boss!” in word and deed. Because, she was. Besides the fact I had my own full-time job to deal with, I knew barely anything about the nail business. And, even for the parts I did know, I wasn’t going to be in the salon for ~30 hours a week giving manicures, or making sure everything in the shop went smoothly day-to-day for our booth renters.

But, it turns out, wielding supreme executive power was not a dream my wife held, and having to decide the direction our little company took at any given point was more of a burden than a blessing. Instead, she wanted more of a Chief Creative Officer role, and all the boring CEO stuff was something she was more hoping I would handle. I thought I was rewarding her by giving her all the power, but it was more of a pain-in-the-ass she didn’t want to deal with.

So, while she is definitely still the boss and it’s her name that gets written down when we have to state who is CEO on corporate documents, I handle the required grinding when it comes to whatever she doesn’t have fun. Since there is only two of us, no need for really specific delineated corporate roles anyway. We are both doing eveything.