The Art of Copreneurship: 6 Steps To The Ultimate Partnership [Part 2]

Talking and agreeing on what is important to you. Because every single one of you listening has a different perfect day, a different vision of where you want to go and what feels good to you. And I think really honoring that and not buying into like the ideal version of like, we're all going to be Elon Musk or something like, no, no, thank you. I don't want to be that guy.

Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy. We are back. We are back. We. I am joined by my lovely copreneur wife, Heather Fear.

Hello. Hello.

She's back. And this is the round two. If you have not listened to round one, the first version of this, where we went into detail of. Of Heather's background and kind of what we together have done over the last 16 years, go check that out. I think it'll set the stage nicely for this episode. So we'll try to keep this one short and sweet because we have six ways that we have been copreneur over the last 16 years. And it ain't perfect. Like, we presented this concept 10 years ago at my entrepreneurship class at a university, Cal State San Marcos, where I went to school. And it was this term, copreneur that was introduced to both of us by my professor over there, Dr. Ben Cherry. Shout out best teacher. And that's seriously. He's so cool. And I got to chat with him more. So, Ben, I'm coming your way. And this concept of copreneuring essentially means a husband and wife or partners, however you wanna label a partnership, is managing the same company. And that's what we have done for basically 16 years. But we've also run other businesses on the side, obviously. I was a partner with Matt for many years in multiple businesses. You and I have been a consistent partner in our business together. But you've also had a variety of things on the side as well. And there's a way to approach that, at least the ways that we've approached it. I feel like these six kind of tips and strategies will help you out. Anything that you want to do to set the stage. Before we get into this, Heather, um.

I think a good point to make is if you are an entrepreneur and your partner isn't, there is still some degree where you have to have buy in from your partner. I think any life partner needs. When you're on the wild road of entrepreneurship, you have to have some level of understanding and bringing them into the fold with you. Um, you know, with a normal job, maybe you could just be like, yeah, nine to five, come home, whatever, hang that hat up and don't talk about it. But when your income can vary, when there are new growth stages where you're going to be really tied up in work and then eras where maybe it's pretty low key like having that communication and having some of these tips we're sharing. Even if you're not both entrepreneurs are still pretty critical to just like maintaining a healthy partnership, um, in your life while you're an entrepreneur.

I like that. Good preference? Uh, yeah. This is, this is gonna be helpful for everyone. So definitely communicate, you know, and, and there's a lot of folks I know in business that don't communicate well with their partners because they feel like they're just not in it. And that's true. But you can get them in it and that's just gonna help your relationship and everything else. So that is. I'm getting ahead of myself. That is one of the points do. Should we just start right there?

Yeah.

Okay. Is that she was pointing at the monitor. So first tip of the ways to copreneur is to communicate openly and often and do that as best you can. It might not always be easy, but that's things like asking questions of each other, expressing concerns, sharing different ideas and creating some planning sessions out of that. Yeah, asking questions I think are good because you've. We've always done that great with each other is to try to be as honest as we can. There's no reason to hide things. And especially if like you're not you proud of something in the business, some like a failure or concern. I think it just feels good to talk about it. And then, then if you have a supporting partner, ideally you do, they will be able to ask questions and vice versa, you know, and we can kind of dive deeper into these things because if we're kind of bubbling it up, at least If I feel bubbled up, then there's stagnation. I don't feel like I'm getting the momentum and, and like fulfillment out of whatever I'm doing. But also it's nice to have support. So asking questions, concerns, you know, really addressing things before they become bigger than they need to be.

Yes, I think when you're an entrepreneur there's a lot of energy that can bubble up. It, it can be very intense. As I mentioned before, isolating all, all different feelings can come up when you're an entrepreneur. It can be really exciting and thrilling and you don't really have necessarily a huge team to share it with. So your partner becomes that support for you and is a really key person to just bounce ideas off of, discuss concerns. And I think the planning sessions is important because you might be a very high risk tolerance sort of entrepreneur and your partner might not be. And so having those discussions to figure out where the comfort zone is is really important. And often to check in to make sure everybody's feeling good about it. I think when you leave it unspoken and like bubbling up under the surface, the tension is there and it spills over into other areas of your life. Like all of a sudden someone's throwing a fit about putting dishes away and you're like, is this really about the dishes or something else?

Yeah, no, that's actually absolutely right. And that might have happened a couple times. Never for me though. So planning sessions, that's a, that's a big one. And that goes for communication. This is all still the same. Number one, communicate open. And often is these planning sessions. Like we just did a yearly planning session where we mapped out what every month is the focus and tried not to stack too much. And that had a mixture of short term things and long term things that we're building towards together. And yeah, that's going to lead into the next thing. But also the short term are like these planning sessions that are more often like on our calendar we have, well basically every week we have something planned that could be a date too. And you should do make these fun, you know, our planning sessions, we try to do them weekly and we're not perfect but when we do them, you should feel relaxed for one. Like you shouldn't come in all like a ball of tension and things because I've definitely done that before. Like, ah, we gotta talk about the budget, you know, but no, like whatever it is that makes you feel good. But we want to do consistent planning sessions about whatever it might be, it's not always doesn't have to always be the business could be money focused. But then how about talk about the fun stuff. You want to plan trips you want to go on, things with the family, different, different things that you want to do in general. There's. There's all sorts of health related things. You can kind of go through the topics that are most important to you and your guys lives. It's not just about the business. It all spills over in some way. So figuring out a frequency, a cadence that works at a short term or like a more frequent level, like a weekly or it's probably weekly is good to check in at least and then and do some planning sessions and then check in on what you plan for that year. Let's go to number two and that is knowing your vision together. Heather, you talk.

Well the note you have here is to talk and agree on where you're going short and long term. And I do agree that is again if you're both entrepreneurs, you're copreneurs or just one entrepreneur and one person that's doing something else. I think you still kind of have to both buy into it. I think this is a place where I've seen some of our entrepreneur friends get tripped up in their relationships is that there isn't buy in from the other partner and there can be resentment that bubbles up, there can be frustration. You know, you have to have realistic expectations with this vision of how quickly maybe money will be coming in and your plans of in the short term how are you going to cover your income? How are you going to cover your bases and long term maybe it's a different plan and that's okay. It can be you know a stair step approach that way. But yeah, talking and agreeing on, on what is important to you because every single one of you listening has a different perfect day. A different vision of where you want to go and what, what feels good to you. And I think really honoring that and not buying into like the ideal version of like we're all going to be Elon Musk or something like no, no thank you. I don't want to be that guy. Great that he's helping society in the.

Ways he is generate dad.

I mean in certain ways he's helping the world but in other ways I'm like no Sir Rebob. I don't want to be him.

No Siri Bob. No Siri Elon. But there's a lot of good aspects to that. Heather spilling water and laughing over there. Yeah. So know your vision because that's that goes to What Matt and I used to talk about a lot too is any relationship should have a vision. You got to buy in together on that vision. If you're not synced up on a vision, if you don't have your North Star, at least like a general idea where you guys are working towards in the short and the long term, it's going to get confusing, it's going to get stressful. You're going to add too much on your plate that you don't need to. You're not going to feel like you have enough because you're to constantly be seeking when maybe that's not the. Maybe you don't need to seek anymore. Ideally, you're not going to have to all the time because that shit burns you out. We've done that before. So, yeah, sync up on your vision. That's number two. Number three is set clear expectations and boundaries. And this goes this, this obviously adds from communicating and planning and all this stuff and knowing your vision, that's how you can create clear expectations around what the heck you're doing. So what I have noted here is, okay, let's note whose responsibilities are whose, like based off their strengths, based off this planning sessions and what we agree, who's going to take something on and essentially. And this will truncate into the next one as well. Have an idea of how much time you're going to allocate to these things. And there's a whole ton of other expectations, but I think expectations and boundaries actually having limits the great thing, because those constraints are going to give us more freedom. It's allowing us to be more disciplined. I know that's great for me to stay consistent on certain things and have that expectation for myself, but also for others is, you know, my, my partner, but also just anyone. This is good to talk about.

Yeah. Having those boundaries and what I see as constraints on your time is magic, you guys. It cannot. Can feel not like magic at first. It can just feel very stressful. I think Joe had this feeling of at first when I was like, hey, our vision is to spend a lot more time with our kid, to be present, to be able to do activities on weekdays when nobody else is at the zoo, like, let's go do it. And at first Joe was just like, but I've got to do all these things. And I'm like, we'll figure out how to do them more efficiently. Let's look at it together and figure out, can some of this big cut out, can some of it be handed off to someone else? Can Some of it just be refined a little, use those AI tools. You know, really if you have the boundaries and you know what goals you're aiming for, you can work on finding the solution to make that happen. And I think working as a team to do that, to build out the vision you want for your life, is really what this step is about.

Yeah. All right, so that was number three, which was setting clear expectations and boundaries with your partner. Number four is all about having separate roles and knowing what each other's roles are based off of your strengths, your weaknesses, all these communication sessions, daily communications, knowing each other as a partner in your relationship. Figure out what your roles are ideally going to be in the business side of things, but also on the personal side of things. We talked about fair play, the, the fair play quote unquote game that was in the, what two episodes ago that we recorded together. But check out the fair play cards. They're great for, I would say a lot more of the home life. It's not really a business focused thing, but. But that's gonna, you know, give you certain roles that then you can take basically just. Just take the load off of your partner in that way. But also in the business side, there's ways to analyze your guys strengths and own the task that you guys choose. And I think owning the task really allows the. Your partner to feel like, okay, I don't have to worry about that. It's just like the fair play cards, but for business. Maybe they should have a vision, a business version. Huh? What do you think? What do you think?

I think that would be really helpful for folks who are in the business world to have that even, I mean, just regular business partners, not couples, could also benefit from that. And I know that's a journey with the business that I'm running that we're working through all the time and iterating like who owns this task, who, you know, is kind of checking in on this other thing over there and dividing it up. So everyone feels good and inspired and is in their realm of genius, so to speak. So and I think with copreneurs, same thing. Even with, you know, again, one entrepreneur, one person, that's not same thing. Everybody has certain gifts and talents and other parts that are challenging for them. Like on you said on the home front, like for me, doing certain home tasks are like very triggering from just the family life I had as a kid where I'm like, oh, that makes me stressed immediately because it was always a stress as a kid. So there's. Those are items that for Joe are no big deal. And he's just like, oh, I enjoy it. It's meditative. I'll do that. And I can take on things that for him are maybe not his strengths. So work together. Remember that you and your partner are a team. And if you can focus on that, that you have each other's best interest at heart, even if some of these things are a little uncomfortable and painful to discuss, you know, it's worth doing. And if. And you have the goal together to grow through this and not beat each other down through having varied strengths and not being the same because you're not the same person. And that's okay.

And you never will be either. I think my big takeaway here is when I was looking into and thinking about roles and everything is really owning the role or owning the task that we, that we set for ourselves. And. And really that goes so we can take the load off of our partner. So always communicate those things too. It doesn't have to be a set in stone thing forever, but constant communication, checking in with each other is gonna help and make sure that things are swimmingly going the direction it should be. Momentum, something like that. All right, so celebrate successes. Heather, turning the mic to you.

Yeah. I love how all these steps here, like nest egg with each other so well that really they feed off of each other. And celebrating the success is really what it's all about. Big and small successes. Making it through the day on a hard day could be your success. And that is important to celebrate and really supporting your partner in making it through challenging moments. And when something exciting happens, celebrate that too. I think for me, moving the focus from like milestone moments to just celebrating that we have this nice cadence and we have built things in a way where like day to day, we're living out days that are pretty much our optimal. Flow is a huge refocus or reframe for me. That helps and that keeps the motivation and momentum going that I'm like, okay, it's not about achieving X. It's about enjoying the journey towards getting to that goal and celebrating the little micro improvements along the way.

I would agree with that. The biggest things that bring me joy and I feel a success is when we're in flow. And that goes for individually together, when everyone's just kind of just doing their thing and there's not much friction. That's awesome. And we do celebrate those in a lot of ways. And we used to keep a jar. Remember that jar? We still have it. We should probably do it again. It was like this gold glitter jar that you glittered out. And anytime that we would have a success, be small, big, whatever it is, we'd write on the little post it note of whatever that thing is that we were proud of. And then we put it in the jar. And you know what? This is from Tim Ferriss. I think he. I don't know if it was his idea or someone on his podcast. And we would write that down. So we actually remembered that. And in the future, if you're ever feeling in the dumps, if you ever needed a little kick of motivation or whatever, you pick that thing out and you see that thing that you succeeded in whatever you thought was a big success, that was kind of like a way to keep motivation, keep your momentum going, maybe turn your brain on, into a different thing that you've already accomplished that you might have forgot about. That was something that we used to do to celebrate successes. I mean, now it's like we should probably bring that up again, because I like that. But at the same time, like just going on a walk, everyone outside, going to the zoo in the middle of the day on a Wednesday or whatever, like having freedom of our, our own time and schedule and knowing that it's up to us is, is almost like that, that's the way that we celebrate a lot is doing those things, date nights, you know, actually planning for those things and having things in advance to looking forward to something that's been good for my mind at least.

Yeah. Popping bottles of Dom every night. Oh yeah, every night. No, not at all. Guys, this is all very simple. This is very low key celebrating, but just really being in awe of the life we're building together. I mean, I think that's really the frame I have, and especially with a kid, just like trying to savor the moments when they're good moments. Because the day can hit all different, all different emotions. We can be really having a good moment and then having a full tantrum meltdown. So, you know, highs and lows and just really in the good moments and those peaceful moments, just going, wow, this is great. I'm going to appreciate this right now. I'm being grateful for it. And we have a sign on the wall in the office that says gratitude changes everything. And I really think if you can really ground yourself in that, it helps so much and ground yourself in being grateful for your partner as well and reminding them what there is to be grateful. So this is just kind of the part of this that's building each other up.

That's what we're doing here. We're all building each other up. So the very last thing is let's build ourselves up with this. This is the sixth piece is Take Time for Yourself. And this is the part that is all about your own self care and thinking about, selfishly, what do you need, and making sure that you are in this kind of harm or this balance of work and play. But also the fact that you're not always reliant on your partner for your own happiness, for your own mental freedom, physical freedom, you know, workout, whatever that thing is for you, that self care. I mean, there's a million things you could be doing. Think about it as an individual. And like, there's a lot of time for me that I've talked about it. I love going in the hot tub at night. It's like a nice little nightcap to my day. And I'm usually doing that alone. It's kind of like a little solitude thing. Working out in the morning. I'm kind of like reversing things, I guess. But in the morning. I love to work out in the morning. Don't always do it. But when I'm out there, I try to move my body or do something in the morning. I listen to Andrew Huberman a lot, so I do my sun gazing. Heather's always laughing at that. And it's kind of silly. But you know what? It's a little routine, and it's something I do for myself. It's something where I can kind of do a little mini meditation and set myself up for the day. Little things like that. I'm constantly sprinkling in and making sure that I'm keeping myself sane and happy and in the flow. But what are your thoughts on that?

Joe is better at this than me. I'm sure he loves to hear that. He already knew that. It's hard for me to take time away from working. As I said, I'm a recovering workaholic. I said that last episode. It is true. And I tend to be moving and, like, doing tasks and cleaning things and picking up and running an errand and thinking ahead on some insurance thing that's gonna come up, you know, like all the little minutia of life tend to weigh me down. So I've had to really prioritize blocking off time for this. And it's a stretch for me. This is an area I'm still growing. But I do try to mark this on my calendar now of giving myself space to take care of myself in very simple ways. Looking at my schedule for the week and Going, oh, okay, I have this meeting at this time. I can go down the street from there and there's a beautiful pathway by the bay. I'm gonna go on a little walk before that meeting, just something like that where I can fit it in with everything else and give myself a little break. The thing I have been doing lately is doing on Insight Timer. It's a great app. Some little meditations, just quick like gratitude practice sort of things. And another thing I do consistently is a little one line a day journal at the end of the day. And I'm trying to each day write down one moment that day that was really enjoyable for me. That was a happy moment that I can be grateful for. I will say for a long time in my journal, I was not focusing on the grateful things. I was like, really negative. I look back at what I wrote in there and I was like, why do I wanna like hold onto that? So I've tried to switch it to writing down something that day that really was amazing and beautiful to me. So over the five years, five years that you have that journal, I will have, you know, all these beautiful moments recorded. And it's, it's kind of a nice thing to look back on. And one other thing is, yeah, we've been doing some yoga before bed. I normally go to bed earlier, so we kind of stretch out. And specifically it's this great program called Hips Like Honey. Might show up on your ads now because that's how they found me on Facebook. But it's amazing and really releases a lot of tension because according to this yoga practice, you hold a lot of tension and stress in your hips. So been trying to release some of that so we can go and actually get some good sleep.

It's been nice. It's been nice. And then something I do a lot of is breath work as well. So I practice all sorts of different interesting things. And yeah, all that is just to release any kind of tension at the end of the day. And that's what self care is all about. All right, so these six tips, copreneur ing tips also, it can work if you don't have, you know, your partner's not in the business with you. These tips, hopefully you can run with and leverage in your life to feel like you got more flow and less friction. So again, the six were, we started a little out of order, was communicating openly and often. Number one, number two, knowing your vision. And then number three, set clear expectations and boundaries. Four, have separate roles and owning those roles and tasks. And then five, celebrate the Successes big and small. And number six is taking time for yourself. All that self care stuff. All right, this was fun. This is. We'll do it again. I know we will.

I don't know if your audience can handle more of me. I've been on here a lot lately. But you guys, I'm around if you need me. Just give me a shout out.

Give her a shout. Go check your stuff out@wolferenco.com. any other shout outs or plugs that you want to put in there?

Well, Joe did mention I had a book he might have mentioned on the last episode actually, and it is currently not available on Amazon because I'm reworking that because we're going to bring it into the the brand we have now with Wolfer and Co. So yeah, check that out. There's the Union podcast, which is a podcast that I was the co host of with Jamie. I've kind of exited being the host, but I'm going to pop up occasionally on episodes to talk wedding industry marketing stuff. And then Jamie has a great podcast, if you're getting married, called Engage with Jamie Wolfer and then her YouTube channel. So if you're getting married or know someone who is, please intro, intro them to all those resources. It'll save them a bundle and make wedding planning a lot less stressful.

Maybe we'll have Jamie on here as well. That'd be a fun chat.

Oh yeah, she's awesome and she would be a great person to chat with about YouTube and just her skills are out of this world. She's amazing at engaging with her audience, for sure.

For sure. So I will hit her up. And yeah, this was fun. All right, so thank you everyone for listening. Let us know if you like this or what you learned. And of course, leave. Leave some reviews, some feedback out there. So other entrepreneurs magically find this podcast on their podcast app. You know how the algorithms work. Help them out, help me out, help us out, help everybody out. I don't know, I'm just begging at this point. All right, thank you for listening. Bye. All right, all right, that's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But you know, work can be fun and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others the way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list, writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast and I will see you next time.