There's no crying in baseball...in business however...

That’s the famous line from A League of Their Own- “There’s no crying in baseball!” (Screenplay by Lowell Ganz and Marc ‘Babloo’ Mandel…I would kill for a cool middle nickname like that).  What makes the line so great is that while Tom Hanks is shouting it at one of the female ball players, she’s blubbering away right in front of him.

I was brought up with the mantra that men and boys don’t cry. Ever. When the family dog died?  Not a tear. When I got the snot beat out of me by the mean kid down the street?  Zip.

So, it took me by surprise that for my lovely, Type-A wife, there was, indeed, crying in business.

I was even more shocked that at times, earlier on in the business, as we encountered extremely difficult times I found myself walking to the parking lot outside the business, weeping.

If this has been you, Ms. Entrepreneur, don't feel alone. 

 The Emotional Toll

When we started the business, we were pretty green.  Having never put it all on the line (the savings, the house, everything) we didn’t understand the emotional toll a business could take. The first few times we bid on a sizable chunk of business, and didn’t get it, my wife would disappear in the car and be gone for a bit.  She would return composed but puffy-eyed. 

In 2010 our company was burglarized.  The criminals that hit us had been on a spree for over a year and a half.  We were the 21^st business they hit, so they had really gotten the hang of it.  They took our computers, our camera equipment (we are a video production and design company) and our servers…almost everything.  Our company barely survived.  My wife and I lost weight, lost sleep and we both ended up at times crying in our respective cars when things looked impossible. 

And I watched my wife galvanize herself against the injustices and turmoil that we were learning life in business could deliver. Not that she became hard, or in any way bitter.  Just more determined.

I really admired her for it. 

 Under the Desk, Sobbing

A few years later, when I thought we were possibly done with big blunders and tragedies, she made an assumption about a major potential client she had been working on for literally years and sent an email that blew up in her face.  To put it mildly.  The email that she got in return was a devastating slap in the face.  I was copied in, so I knew when it hit her computer, and before I could go into her office I had to retreat into our mostly unused lobby and steel myself for what I knew she was going to be like. 

I found her in her office, under her desk sobbing.  All I could do was crawl in there and just sit with her.  

But we have survived it all so far.  Things that damn near killed us, did make us stronger, as they say.  And made us stronger as a couple and even friends.  Being married to a Type-A business woman is not the easiest thing I have done so far in life.  But hanging together through it all has forged an enduring team out of us. Tears and all.

More soon.