Can Couples Run a Successful Business Together?

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SUMMARY

The big question is can couples run a successful business together? Right now there are over 22 million businesses in the US and Three million of those businesses are run by couples. Not only that, starting a business together increases your overall income level as well.

This is a really cool topic, my wife and I are both entrepreneurs, so we’re in a household that we both have separate businesses but we both are entrepreneurs, so we have the challenges of not having enough time together, also raising a family of three kids, and how we’re able to put all this together.

This is some of the items that I want to be able to help you with and help you connect with and hopefully find a path to be able to have that time, that freedom, and that lifestyle that you deserve.

What we want to do is take a look to be able to illicit the best way that you can run a business as well as a thriving family. Also, in this episode we’re going to discover the number one problem that couples have in owning a business together, which is owning who does what. Owning your own role. We’re going to see how couples can maximize their business success and emphasize the importance of working together to create massive growth in your business and well as creating ideal beliefs and values for your family.

One of the biggest secrets in a couple-owned business is defining and owning your role 100%. With all the different clients that I’ve been able to work with over the years, we find that most couples, there’s no leader. They don’t want to step on each other’s toes, they don’t want to ruffle the feathers, because who knows? It might cause some problems in that family dynamic, in the family environment. We have to define who a leader is, especially if you both work and you both own the same exact business. That is going to help propel each of you forward and the business forward as well. It may be a different role than in the family part of it. Maybe the husband is the role leader in the business and then the wife is the leader in the actual family environment. We have to define who that is, as well as then own that 100%.

Also, owning your own role is finding where your strengths lie. If one of you are good with numbers and accounting and finances and everything else, don’t stick them in sales. Maybe the other person is a good communicator and they enjoy talking to people and create that excitement and story-telling, then they’re going to be better off in the sales role, not the accounting role. Find where your strengths lie, move each other towards those roles to propel and help your business move forward.

Also too, we have to have a mutual respect for one another as well as encourage and emphasize competition. As entrepreneurs, she and I, we like challenges. We like that competitive nature and so healthy competitiveness within couples is awesome, because you can then cheer each other on. You can encourage each other to hit those goals, to get those tasks done. You’re going to help move you guys and make it a fun environment as well in the workplace.

When we spend time together as a family, we have to cut out the business talk. I know I’m guilty of this. You sit down at dinner and then all of a sudden, maybe it was a bad day and clients have left or problems with maybe your website or just the business in general and you just start talking about it instead of focusing on the positive aspects of your family, what you guys were grateful for that day, and where things are moving forward in the family environment, not your business environment, or what’s going to make a better family time and committed time for both of you.

There’s time you can set apart for if you also want to sit down and discuss business, but let’s set that time aside for that. Entrepreneurial couples can actually thrive in business and family together. There are myth that we cannot succeed in this area and trust me, it can definitely be done. There are a lot of couples that are able to make this happen. Obvious Grant Cardone and his wife Elena. They have a thriving business as well as a thriving family. Jay-Z and Beyonce, they’re both in business together as well as have their own businesses. Melinda and Bill Gates with the charity and the foundations that they run together.

Let me expand on my story with my wife and I. She hasn’t always been an entrepreneur and just kind of fell into this role, and so we were able to make changes and make decisions that allowed us to grow as a family as well as grow as a business. No, we’re not perfect. We’re not like “oh yeah, we always have family time and we always have business time”. It overlaps. Some of the things that we started to really do is create and share in each other’s dreams and visions of moving the businesses and the families together. Number two was owning our own roles 100%. Number three was encouraging and empowering each other to move forward. Number four is disconnecting from the business for family time. The fifth and the biggest one is making love a priority, whether it’s weekly date nights, monthly, every other week, whatever it may be. Make love a priority in your business and your family time.

I want you to tell me. Comment below and tell me, what are some of the areas that maybe you have challenges in? Or how the show inspired you and I want you to be able to live a life fully charged and driven that you’ll do whatever it takes to achieve success and the lifestyle that you deserve.    You’re watching the Whatever it Takes Network. I am Josh Felber.

I am so excited. We have Jairek Robbins, a man dedicated to helping professionals like you achieve success by living with purpose in life and business. At one 23 years old, Jairek was award the congressional award gold medal from the United States Congress. Today, the thirty year-old with over a decade of performance of coaching experience continues to unlock secrets for maximizing performance in organizations success. He is just getting started.

As an innovator, Jairek is applying his own philosophy and living a life of adventure, philanthropy, and entrepreneurship. Whether he’s been cage-diving with great white sharks, hanging with the Silverbacks in the Rwanda, as well as white water rafting down the Nile, or as working as a volunteer in underdeveloped regions, or building powerful enterprises that’s built for results, Jairek does more than just talk. He stretches the boundaries of traditional thinking and makes it happen. I’m excited today to have you on with me, and let’s welcome Mr. Jairek Robbins.

Jairek:            Hey, thanks for having me. It’s good to be here.

Josh:               Awesome, Jairek. I’m just excited, man. Your new book is awesome and I’m diving into it and it’s just a wealth of information. One of the things that we were really discussing today, and I know you fit really well with this, is how couples can have a thriving successful business working together as entrepreneurs, as well as creating an awesome family based on great values and beliefs. I’d love to kind of get a little bit of your background, how you started out as an entrepreneur, where you’ve come, and how you are applying this to your business and your family for success in life.

Jairek:            Sure. For people tuning in, I think the easiest point to start with to set the framework is, mentally there’s an understanding of your twelve years as performance coach working with thousands of people all over the world, if you think of it from where I can stand at this moment in life, thirty years old, just married last September. My wife and I do work together. We travel the world to do volunteer projects, we philanthropy, we built a school last year in China and this year we’re building another one for a different organization.

Josh:               Wow.

Jairek:            We have a puppy. I don’t know if that counts towards a child.

Josh:               Pretty close.

Jairek:            It’s kind of a child. We have family and all kinds of stuff moving all the different time. We have a few different companies between us and what’s fascinating is looking at life from this stage, from this moment, as far out as I can see it, there’s really just three levels that exist in my framework so far. Now, I realize there’s probably more than that for people who are older or further along in life than I am. But from where I stand there’s really three stages.

Stage one is just figuring yourself out. That was my journey for the past probably ten years of my life was figuring out okay, who am I? How do I tick? How do I work?

Josh:               Right.

Jairek:            How do I go about just achieving the results I want? Living the kind of life I want? What kind of life do I want? That’s a lot of big questions for many people. Some people figure it out really soon, some people take a lifetime and never quite get there.

Josh:               Yeah, for sure.

Jairek:            Really, the very first step to start with is figuring out, level one, stage one. There’s three stages as far as level one. The first stage is figuring out who are you and how does life work?

Josh:               Yeah.

Jairek:            For most people this happens in fifteen, sixteen, eighteen. Nowadays 35 when the person finally leaves their house and goes out in the real world on their own to face life. No matter how that happens, the moment they enter the real world and take on life, the biggest challenge is how in the heck do I get it to work? What works? How do I get a job that I actually like or love even or enjoy to some extent? How do I make real money?

Josh:               Right.

Jairek:            What do I do with the money? How do I get healthy? How do I get happy? What the heck is performance all about in my life? You figure out what works. The very scramble, kind of like a tornado, a hurricane, a thunderstorm, all at the same time, I’m just trying to figuring out what in the world works in your life for you? How you graduate to level two of this first stage is just by figuring out what works and more importantly what works for you in your life in your specific situation. That’s different for everybody.

Josh:               Right.

Jairek:            The moment you define what that is for you, you’re now at level two, stage two and at this moment life is incredibly effort-ful. What I mean by that is you’ve figured out what works, but it takes a lot of mental, emotional, and physical effort every day to get it right.

Josh:               Sure does.

Jairek:            You have to wake up and do the thing and eat this thing and go here and do this and accomplish this and work at that and learn this and try this. Whatever those things are, from your morning routine to exercise, the diet, to the right activities at work and measuring your performance to make sure you’re getting the results you really want, to coming home and figuring out how in the world do I make time for other things in my life? Like friends and community or anything else. At that moment you’re trying to build the right habit and eventually once you do build the right habit and you get your mind and body to kind of go into auto-pilot on the correct habits, the habits that you know work for you and your life. Make you the happiest, healthiest, and most of them [inaudible 00:12:17].

Josh:               Right.

Jairek:            At that moment you’ve transitioned to level one, stage three, which is kind of life self-mastering. You as a single human being are happy, healthy, fulfilled, achieving, make progress, getting the results you want, living a life you want. You’ve kind of mastered level one. You got it. At this moment, you graduate to level two. The truth is, how you know you really mastered level one is even if something goes horribly wrong in your life …

Josh:               Sure.

Jairek:            You lose your job, something happens in an important relationship or family, no matter what happens, how you know you really mastered level one is when you get knocked down, the habits and routines you’ve built in your life naturally take you back to that place of abundance where you’re just solid again within a few days instead of a few months or years for some people. So how you know you’re there is you instantaneously get right back on track just by the natural habits you’ve built for your life. At that moment, I always look at this person and they’re like wow. They’re an abundant person. They’re overflowing in life mentally and emotionally because they have so much of the good stuff happening. All they want to do at this moment is find someone to share it with. This is the key distinction for going into that business relationship. Whether it’s in your business or your intimate relationship. Until you hit a point where you’re overly abundant with what’s going on in your life or business and all you want to do is find someone to share it with …

Josh:               Right.

Jairek:            You have no right whatsoever to even try to get into a relationship. If you go into a relationship before that moment, you’re going there to get something versus going there to give something. That is a natural disaster waiting to happen in any relationship on earth. Business relationship, intimate relationship, friendship. If all you do is go to get something out of it, eventually you will drain that relationship of it. It will be empty and now you will have to go find another source to drain it out of.

Josh:               Wow.

Jairek:            When you go to that relationship to give something, to give a service, to deliver value, to overflow with abundance of health and happiness to your significant other, or your lover, or your husband or wife. When all you want to do is go there to give …

Josh:               Hey J, we have a few seconds left, man. Can you stick around for a few more minutes?

Jairek:            Let’s do it.

Josh:               Awesome buddy. I’m Josh Felber. You’re watching the Whatever it Takes Network. We’ll be right back.

Welcome back. You’re watching the Whatever it Takes Network. I’m Josh Felber. This is Making Bank and we’ve been talking with Jairek Robbins and he’s been filling us in on the success strategies, how we can go from … Being our individual selves, knowing who we are, finding out who we are, to moving into a relationship and creating a successful partnership moving forward. Jairek, welcome back. I’m glad you could stick around. The information you’re sharing is just so awesome. I’d love to continue on where you left off at.

Jairek:            Absolutely. I was just teeing up the segment and thought of that’s what had to happen first. The truth is most people jump into business and jump into intimate relationships and then try to mate the two together before ever figuring themselves out as a single individual. My suggestion to those people is go read our freaking book because our book literally shows you how to master yourself as a human bring.

Josh:               Right.

Jairek:            Once you’ve done that, now it’s time to get into a relationship in business and in your personal life and now it’s time to enter stage two. Stage two repeats the same three steps as stage one. The very first thing that’s going to happen, just to give you a head’s up, and this certainly happened to my wife and I. This has happened for many different couples that we’ve interviewed or did business together. Regardless if they started the business together or if they were both highly successful in other companies and then joined together down the road. This happens inevitably anywhere you come together in business, especially if you’re a couple.

What ends up happening is level two, stage one is that crazy hurricane, tornado, thunderstorm concept, except for there’s two of them now. So two people are trying to merge two lives together and it’s all hell breaks loose in the beginning. One person wakes up at one time, one person gets up at 6 AM, the other person wakes up at 11 AM. One person goes to bed at midnight, the other person goes to bed at 4 AM. One person likes reading, the other person likes listening to stuff. One person likes bright lights in the house, the other person likes dim lights in the house. One person likes silence, one person likes noise. It’s just craziness and you can parlay this directly into how the business runs. One person wants order and structure and sustainability and systems.

Josh:               Right.

Jairek:            The other person wants flexibility and speed to get things done quickly on their terms. At the very moment, the first thing you have to do … We’re actually creating a program around this for couples who are just getting together. It works in relationships in business as well. What you first have to do is just to get on the same feet. What we mean by that is figuring out what are your rules? What are your values? What are your beliefs? What are the guiding principles behind how you think life works for you? You have to define that for yourself.

Josh:               Sure.

Jairek:            Most people don’t even know this for themselves. That first step is figuring out who am I? What do I value most? Not what I tell myself, but how I actually spend my time. The fastest way to figure this out, take a calendar. Chunk out how you spend each day of your life on average. Big blocks of chunk: work, home, gym, health, sleep, whatever.

Josh:               Right.

Jairek:            Mark it out and then circle and define where you spend the majority of your time. Most people like to say stuff like God, family, making a difference, being a good person, but for most people when they circle how they actually invest their time, the most valuable resource they own, it’s all work. If your work serves God and helps your family and certainly makes your relationship better, bless you. Go for it. Most poeple that have done this, for most people the very first thing that needs to happen is they need a reevaluation of what’s most important in their life. Once they reevaluate that …

I was listening to a speaker Eric Thomas. We had a chat. We actually did an episode with him, a bar show [inaudible 00:18:19]. One thing he said is … There’s a gentleman who raised his hand and he said “hey, Mr. Thomas, I’m new in business. I’m also newly married. I have to tell my wife sometimes that … It takes some of our personal time and put it into the start-up business because otherwise I won’t have an opportunity to really grow.” He says, “what do you recommend?” Mr. Thomas looked at him and says “son, when you get your priorities straight, you’ll find a way to make everything else work.” He goes, “what do you mean sir?” He said “the day you learn that your relationship comes first, you’ll find a way to make everything that needs to get done fit into all the other moments of your life.”

Josh:               For sure.

Jairek:            If you don’t, you’ll always find an excuse of why you need to go back to the business for twenty more minutes, thirty more minutes to meet your own needs, but that that point you’re being selfish in your own personal relationship. There’s an organizing principle, especially for start-ups, if anyone’s listening in this position, where you have to learn how to put yourselves first, how to put your relationship first above that business.

Josh:               Right.

Jairek:            It’s an organizing principle of what makes a business really succeed. When you learn to put each other first above everything. Call them as you’re about to negotiate a billion dollar deal. If your spouse needs you, you say “hey hold on a minutes. My spouse needs me. I’ll be right back.” When you get to that moment and you can get to that clarity with each other and get on the same page. Now we say okay, we have our values straight. Now the next stage is your rules. What has to happen for you to congruent with that value? Let’s say you both value success. One person says in order to successful … So much money, so many hours per day and have X, Y, and Z results in my life, in health. I have to have 10% body fat, be able to run a mile in five minutes, and all this other cool stuff. The person just says to be successful, I just have to wake up and breathe.

Josh:               Yeah, big difference.

Jairek:            You’re going to have some issues on judging if your business and projects are successful or not. One person thinks that anytime I’m alive, we’re always successful. The other person thinks no, there’s very specific detailed measurement that have to be met in order for us to be “successful”. This sounds ridiculous to most people because they think “oh, me and my spouse we’re totally on the same page. We’re totally doing this the same way.” Really? Studies show when you take a couple and separate them, and you ask them what do you value most in life? What do you think your partner values? Many times they assume that their partner values the same thing, but in actuality they’re drastically different. The number one reason why most people get into a relationship is due to just proximity. They’re around each other enough that they found something they liked about each other and got together.

Josh:               Right.

Jairek:            So in this first real moment of the relationship, the biggest thing you can do when you’re figuring out what works and what works for you is get on the same game page and set your rules so you’re both saying “hey, here’s our values of our organization together as a team.” Husband and wife together or whoever is there. Second, here’s the rules we play by. Here’s how we know when we’re being congruent with those values. And third, here’s the global beliefs. Here’s the organizing thoughts and beliefs that really wrap who we are as a team. Many organizations do this. If you walk in, you see the old plaque on the wall that says “here’s the values of our company for the last 75 years. Here’s the organizing principles that we live by.” That’s awesome. Those need to be renewed I think at least once a year between a couple where they sit down and say “hey, based on what we’ve achieved, based on who we are, based on how we’re going through life, let’s reevaluate.

What’s still most important to us as a couple in life? Based on that, how do we know when we’re being congruent?” We might have separate answers of our own, but together let’s choose how to connect these and how to write them together so that we have one set of guiding values for both of us. We have one set of guiding rules for both of us and we have one set of guiding beliefs that organize our community, our structure here as an entity that allows us to know when we’re on track, when we’re off track, when we’re going the right thing, when we’re doing the wrong thing, and how to measure it and hold each other accountable.

The moment you get that structure together, it’s really amazing what happens. Now everyone’s on the same page, everyone’s happy, everyone knows what’s going on and it’s very clear and easy to understand each other and to help each other through tough situations. My thought is once you figure that out, now you get the place where again you get to level two stage two which is incredibly effort-ful. At this moment it takes a lot of effort to do it right. That’s okay.

Josh:               Right.

Jairek:            This where you’ve got to grind. You’ve got to be willing to put in the time, the effort, the energy, the focus. You’ve got to be willing to call yourself out and be like “wow, I didn’t follow through on that. I didn’t show up when I said. I didn’t keep my promise here so I’ve got to step up and deliver.” You really have to hold yourself accountable to the highest level. Also, be there to support your partner or significant other when they need you through that process. That’s where my wife and I are right now.

Josh:               Awesome, man.

Jairek:            We’re at a point where it’s very effort-ful, meaning we know what works, we know how to do it. We’ve sat down, we’ve gotten on the same page and now it’s very effort-ful where it takes a lot of focus and a lot of effort to make sure we can consistently do it right for each other. The next step, as you know, becomes that point where we do it so long, so well that eventually it becomes effortless together. That’s what we’re really aiming for.

Josh:               Right.

Jairek:            We blog about this all the time on our website helpmefindlove.net. It’s just intimate relationship stuff and how to make it really work and also we do every now and then [inaudible 00:23:43] it gets fun. We try to really put this so eventually we can share it with other couples who are in this together. To teach them how to make it work not only in the board room but also in the bedroom.

Josh:               Sure. Dude, that’s an awesome framework. I think you being able to communicate that to our listeners and really … That even kind of takes what I talked about earlier, five different steps to help couples who work in business together … This even gives more of an in-depth framework to working on themselves, to being able to connect together, as well as making sure they know what the priorities are and everything to really grow and build that foundation for success in the business as well as in the family. I’m really excited to have you on. What’s the name of the book? Where can people find the book? I’d like to really make sure we can get this information in our listeners’ hands.

Jairek:            Oh, nice. Yeah. If people are trying to figure themselves out still and they’re trying to figure out how to master that level one of life, they’re welcome to go grab a copy. It’s liveitbook.com. So L-I-V-E-I-T.com. It was endorsed by Brian Tracy, Deppak Chopra, all kinds of great people.

Josh:               Sweet.

Jairek:            They said some nice things about it. They liked it. Yeah, pick up a copy. It’s out there. They can find it on Amazon as well. Check out our stuff. The other thing is, we have tons of free content on our blog on jairekrobbins.com.

Josh:               Okay. Awesome.

Jairek:            Every week we put out a podcast. It has a downloadable worksheet, actual things you can go do with it and it’s a simple lesson in anywhere from a five to seven minute format.

Josh:               Excellent, Jairek.  I really appreciate your time today and it’s such an honor to have you on the Making Bank show and be able to share, communicate this information with our listeners and everything. Again, I really appreciate your time today and what you’ve been able to share.

Jairek:            Thank you very much for having me.

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