By Andra Bryan Stefanoni

news@joplinglobe.com

PITTSBURG, Kan. — Just a few weeks after their recent 40th anniversary, Dennis and Pat Pickering attended a wedding and overheard a guest say, “… just so I’m not working with my spouse.”

“The feedback we’ve heard through the years is that you’re not supposed to do that. It can’t work,” Pat Pickering said.

But the Pickerings, who run their own home-based educational services company in rural Pittsburg, are among a significant portion of the population who are married and are in business together — and find that it does work.

According to statistics gathered in 2003 by the National Federation of Independent Business, there are about 1.2 million husband- and wife-owned small businesses nationwide.

Give and take

In 1983, the Pickerings knew that if they could successfully build a house together with a toddler daughter, they could tackle any project together.

“It is all about give and take,” Dennis Pickering said. “You have to honor the other person’s thoughts. You have to have shared goals, but you have to honor the idea that no two people will have the same idea. You must be willing to put your ideas together to get a greater whole.”

They started their business, which serves school districts across the nation, after the Nation at Risk report in 1983 that outlined problems in American schools.

“We decided to tackle putting together scope, sequence and evaluations for curriculum, and try to stay ahead of where schools are as far as their needs with software and other products,” Dennis Pickering said. “That includes traveling often great distances to put on workshops together. It’s great fun for both of us.”

Their work styles are in contrast. Dennis Pickering has a desk that is neat and tidy, and if there’s a piece of paper on it, he feels compelled to take care of it. Pat Pickering’s desk is “just the opposite, and we’ll leave it at that,” Dennis Pickering said with a smile.

Pat Pickering agreed that her husband doesn’t understand her filing system, but she said she knows how to find what she needs when she needs it using her own methods.

“I think he respects that, and that’s important in working together whether you’re married or not,” she said.

Although they’re together most of the day, Pat Pickering said they really treasure their car time when traveling to workshops.