Karla and her husband Alex Munoz Labart own Restaurant Labart and Paloma wine bar in Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast. Karla and Alex moved from Sydney to launch their lives as business owners: she has a background in PR and marketing, he had been head chef of Monopole and Cirrus, part of the Bentley Group. Couples in business and life, they’ve learnt along the way about communication, compartmentalisation and systems to protect and nurture time with their two young daughters
Tips for couples in business
Karla and Alex have actively worked on protecting their personal lives as busy proprietors. “The most important thing we’ve learned is to allocate time to talk about the business,” she says. “That means a sit-down meeting where you just talk about business every week.” She’s happy to admit that it doesn’t always happen. “But the weeks that we do sit down, say on a Monday, and have a business meeting and talk about everything, ask each other questions, get all of that out on paper and dealt with, we find that when we’re with our girls, we’re less inclined to talk about work.” If they skip the meeting, work creeps in. “We’ll be with the girls in the playground and I’ll ask Alex about an event we have coming up, and then the kids are like, Push me on the swing!”
Reporting structure
As owners of two businesses, Karla and Alex have stepped back a little from the day to day, handing over some responsibilities to managers and head chefs. “We’ve empowered them to have those roles without us needing to micromanage them,” says Karla. But that only takes a load off Karla and Alex – and helps them carve out family time – if those reporting structures are communicated and reinforced. “Other staff need to know that these senior staff are the point of contact, not us,” says Karla. “The kitchen team should be respecting the head chef and going to him. They really shouldn’t be coming to Alex unless it’s something that our head chef can’t deal with.”
Systems
When they started out, Karla and Alex were swamped with the many tasks of opening and running a venue. “There were systems, but they weren’t documented,” says Karla. “We knew what to do but nothing was written down.” As time has gone on, and the team has grown across a second business, it’s been important to document the many tasks necessary for smooth operation. “I’ve spent a lot of time creating handbooks,” says Karla. “What do you do if the toilet is broken? A checklist for opening and closing. If you’re there, you can tell people what to do, or cross-check it, but when you’re not, maybe someone leaves the air-conditioning on overnight. It’s just a human error but if that’s happening all the time, that’s a lot of money for a small business.”
Setting boundaries
“One day I was with the kids, trying to be a mum, and I had a phone call, a text, a WhatsApp message and an email all at once, all about the business,” says Karla. “I realised, this isn’t working, we need better systems.” She doesn’t believe fancy apps and interfaces are always necessary, and is a big believer in Google Sheets. One Sheet is an approval list for ordering large items. “Staff know I’ll check it on a Monday and they know not to contact me on my phone unless it’s urgent.” Setting boundaries is part of maturing as a business owner. “We’re not a group of five restaurants with an operations manager,” says Karla. “We are still playing that role. But if you have too many people coming at you from too many places, it can be pretty overwhelming.” It was important to communicate the personal impact to staff. “I explained it to them: you might message me about one thing, but we’ve got 20 staff across our venues and that can add up. The systems are there for a reason.”
Keeping it real
The nature of restaurants is that urgent actions will crop up, and it’s unrealistic to build brick walls between the business and the personal. “You’re never completely switched off,” admits Karla. “But systems are crucial and make a huge difference, as does making time to discuss the business.”
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