How Do You Work With Your Spouse Without Killing Each Other?
The eight principles Lisa and I built our life on.
“She's your lobster. Come on, you guys. It's a known fact that lobsters fall in love and mate for life.” — Phoebe Buffay, Friends
Sunday brunch in Sonoma, at a chateau where friends were celebrating their new baby. Michael's parents, Russian immigrants weathered by seven decades of life, were there too, marking their fiftieth anniversary. Wine glasses caught the golden light as the vineyard hills rolled endlessly toward the horizon.
Around the table, I asked Michael's mother the question that cuts through all pretense: What's the secret to fifty years of marriage?
Her husband, with the confidence of a man who'd survived Stalin and Silicon Valley real estate, said: "My good character."
His wife, in a heavy old-country accent, added: "Tolerance. Tolerance of his good character."
Everyone laughed. Tolerance. So very Russian, so practical, so unsentimental. But as I drove home through those hills, the word stayed with me. Tolerance. It sounded like resignation dressed up as wisdom. Half a century of managing flaws instead of discovering gifts.
Three days later, I realized she was right. Just not in the way I thought.
The Partnership
People ask us constantly: "How do you work together without killing each other?" Usually with disbelief, as if we've solved some impossible equation.
The truth? Working with your spouse isn't harder than marriage. It's marriage with better metrics.
Lisa and I met as college students in Washington, D.C., in 1994. By the time Om Malik tossed eight words at our Super Bowl party—"You should create the modern Condé Nast"—we had already survived my dropout startup, her ad agency grind, a cross-country move, and the dot-com crash.
Those words sparked POPSUGAR. First a hobby in 2005, then a real company in 2006. And working together revealed someone I hadn't fully known.
Lisa could see cultural shifts before they happened. She extended POPSUGAR beyond media into beauty, fitness, and retail years before influencer brands became the norm. When Sequoia's Michael Moritz grilled us on the future of media, she laid out visions that made grown men pull out their checkbooks.
I realized I'd married someone whose impeccable taste had been forming in what I thought were casual conversations about TV shows and lip gloss. Lisa understood what great consumer companies understand: the best brands don't disrupt categories, they perfect rituals.
Over fifteen years, POPSUGAR grew to 100 million readers. We built ShopStyle into a pioneer in content-to-commerce, launched products with Ulta and Target, and created POPSUGAR Play/Ground. Through it all, our marriage wasn't just along for the ride. It was the engine.
Here's what we learned, condensed into eight principles.
The Eight Principles
1. Shared Values and Vision
You can't dance if you're hearing different music.
Our alignment wasn't negotiated. It was natural. From the start, we both wanted to build something that mattered more than money. When you share a north star, decisions stop being arguments and start being obvious.
2. Clear Swimming Lanes
Brilliance needs boundaries.
Lisa owned brand and product. I owned revenue and technology. No overlap, no ego. When she made a call, I backed it. When I restructured a cap table, she trusted it. Specialization isn't weakness—it's survival.
3. Mutual Respect
Private debate, public unity.
We've argued plenty, but never in front of the team. In public, we were a single voice. Respect wasn't just love in a business suit. It was a force multiplier. Nothing is sexier than someone who thinks you're brilliant.
4. Resolve Conflict Fast
Resentment is cancer. Surgery is immediate.
Sacred rule: no sleeping angry. No next-day grudges. No storing IOUs. We fought hard, resolved quickly, and moved on. Clean fights, clear outcomes, complete amnesia. Tomorrow is too valuable to poison with yesterday.
5. Joy as Strategy
If you're not laughing, you're losing.
We made POPSUGAR fun. For us and everyone else. Cupcakes for silly milestones. Inside jokes in board meetings. Strategy sessions that felt like date nights. Joy wasn't a byproduct of success—it was part of the strategy.
6. Life Integration
Balance is for people who don't love both.
Our daughters think board decks are bedtime stories. Dog walks solved hiring problems. Date nights included cap table discussions. We didn't separate work and life; we designed them to fit.
7. Financial Transparency
If you can talk about money, you can talk about anything.
In lean years, we chose sacrifices like vows. No ego about who made what. Our money was our mission. Complete honesty about risk and reward removed the poison before it could spread.
8. Evolve Together
What got you here will kill you there.
How we worked in 2006 would have sunk us by 2016. We reinvented constantly. New roles, new rhythms, new ways of deciding. The core stayed solid, but everything else flexed. Long partnerships aren't monuments; they're rivers.
The Real Secret
Michael's mother wasn't wrong about tolerance. She was just thinking too small.
Tolerance keeps you together. Recognition makes you stronger.
After thirty years, Lisa still stops me in my tracks. The tastemaker who can dismantle a consumer pitch is also the woman who ugly-cries at laundry tv commercials. She is all of these people. And I get to work with the warrior and sleep next to the dreamer (sometimes planner).
You didn't marry a person. You married a mystery that will spend decades revealing itself. 💙