We Moved to Portugal, Got Laid Off, and Started a Business Together — Here's How We Survived

When Life Pushes You Off the Cliff, You Build Wings on the Way Down

Most couples who relocate abroad are chasing something — a slower pace of life, lower costs of living, warmer weather, or simply a fresh start. Ashley and Cody were no different when they packed up their lives and moved to Lisbon, Portugal. What they didn't plan for was both of them losing their jobs within days of each other — or the audacious, terrifying decision that followed: launching a business together as husband and wife.

It's the kind of story that sounds either inspiring or deeply unwise depending on who's telling it. As it turns out, it was a little of both. But by leaning into the skills they'd already built in their marriage, they managed to keep both their company and their relationship standing. Here's what their experience can teach anyone considering the same leap.

The Portugal Move: A Fresh Start With Unexpected Consequences

By April 2025, Ashley and Cody were living out of suitcases in Lisbon, still adjusting to expat life in one of Europe's most sought-after destinations for digital nomads and remote workers. Portugal has become a magnet for Americans and other Westerners seeking affordable living, a sunny climate, and access to the European Union — and the couple fit squarely into that growing wave of relocation.

But the early romance of the move was quickly punctuated by financial reality. Both were let go from their respective jobs within a matter of days. Faced with uncertainty in a foreign country, still unpacked and unmoored, they made a decision that most people in their position would have considered reckless: they filed LLC paperwork with the IRS and launched a micro-marketing agency.

Ashley would contribute nearly 15 years of experience in content creation, brand development, and marketing strategy. Cody would handle project management and company finances. Together, they envisioned themselves as an integrated CMO and COO team — complementary in skill, unified in purpose.

Why Working With Your Spouse Is Terrifying (And Why People Do It Anyway)

The fear of mixing marriage and business is well-documented and entirely rational. When your romantic partner becomes your professional partner, the boundaries that keep a relationship healthy — separate identities, independent achievements, personal space — can blur or collapse entirely. Arguments about a client email can feel like arguments about something much deeper. Disagreements over strategy can quickly become disagreements about respect, value, and trust.

Ashley herself admitted to feeling nervous about the arrangement. At one point, in a moment of frustration during a client meeting debrief, she asked Cody whether they should consider a "work divorce" — a telling phrase that reveals how quickly the professional stress was bleeding into the personal. Cody's response was grounded and direct: they had only just filed their paperwork. Quitting wasn't an option.

That moment of tension is familiar to anyone who has tried to build something with the person they love. But it's also instructive. The fact that they named the feeling out loud, talked through it, and kept moving is exactly the kind of behavior that separates couples who make business partnerships work from those who don't.

The Skills That Saved Both the Marriage and the Business

What Ashley and Cody discovered — and what many entrepreneurial couples report — is that the communication habits and emotional tools developed in a strong marriage translate directly into business resilience. These aren't soft skills. They are operational advantages.

• Radical honesty: Couples who have built trust over years of partnership tend to communicate more directly than colleagues who tiptoe around difficult conversations. In a startup environment where speed and clarity matter, that kind of honesty is a competitive advantage.
• Conflict resolution under pressure: Every marriage weathers difficult seasons. Couples who have navigated those seasons together arrive at business challenges with pre-built frameworks for de-escalation, compromise, and repair.
• Shared values and vision: When two founders genuinely share a long-term vision — not just professionally, but personally — alignment on major decisions tends to come more naturally. There's less ego in the room and more genuine commitment to a shared outcome.
• Mutual accountability: In a spousal business partnership, there is no coasting. Both parties are too invested — financially, emotionally, and relationally — to let the other carry the weight alone.

What the Expat Context Added to the Equation

Building a business abroad adds another layer of complexity that shouldn't be underestimated. Navigating tax structures across jurisdictions, understanding local business culture, managing time zone differences with clients back home, and simply adjusting to life in a new country — all of these create friction that a domestic startup might never encounter.

Yet the expat environment also offers certain advantages for couples in business. The shared experience of displacement and reinvention can be deeply bonding. When you are each other's primary support system in a foreign country, the stakes of communication and cooperation are heightened in a way that forces growth. Many expat entrepreneurs report that the challenge accelerated both their personal development and their professional clarity.

Portugal specifically offers a relatively startup-friendly environment, with growing coworking infrastructure in Lisbon, a vibrant international community, and improving digital services for foreign businesses — all of which made the logistical side of launching remotely more manageable than it might have been a decade ago.

Is Starting a Business With Your Spouse Right for You?

Ashley and Cody's story isn't a cautionary tale, but it's also not a template to copy blindly. Before any couple considers launching a joint venture — especially one launched under the pressure of simultaneous job loss in a foreign country — there are honest questions worth sitting with. Do you have clearly defined roles that play to each person's genuine strengths? Do you have a way to disagree professionally without it becoming personal? Do you have financial runway to survive the inevitable early struggles? And crucially, do you both actually want this, or is one person pulling the other along?

If the answers lean positive, the evidence from couples who have done it successfully suggests that the foundation of a healthy marriage can become a genuine business superpower. The key, as Ashley and Cody found, is refusing to treat the business and the relationship as separate things to be protected from each other — and instead recognizing that the same principles sustain both.

The Takeaway: Love Doesn't Ruin Business. Poor Communication Does.

There is a pervasive assumption that mixing love and business is a recipe for disaster. And for couples who bring unresolved conflict, poor communication, or unequal commitment into a professional partnership, it often is. But for couples who have done the work — who know how to fight fair, to listen, to carry one another, and to stay the course — a shared business can be one of the most meaningful things they ever build together.

Ashley and Cody moved to Portugal chasing a new chapter. They didn't expect to get laid off, and they didn't plan to become co-founders. But when the moment came, they had the one thing most startups can't manufacture: years of practiced trust. And somehow — suitcases still half-unpacked, notebooks full of client notes, an LLC freshly on the books — they made it work.