Pro Tips on working with your spouse 👩‍❤️‍👨

Try to be really clear on who's doing what. That is the key. You know, who's gonna be doing these things, who's gonna be doing those things. And so a lot of time works out this like, maybe the guy's doing the training or vice versa, and the other person doing the marketing, the admin, and the bills and all those kind of things, right? That's what generally happens when businesses on the growth trajectory, the person in there and the other person's gonna help in the backend, the admin, the marketing, the sales, and that kind of stuff. Welcome back to the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast Show, and today's episode is gonna be a little bit different. I thought I would bring you a bit of an insight of how you can work better, work smarter, and work with better intent if you're working with your other half— spouse, husband, wife, lover, whatever that may be for you. I've actually had experience working with family, brothers, sister-in-laws as well, so I can talk about that. But today's episode is specifically working with your spouse. Now, for those who don't know, my wife Joey is also works in the business of com marketing. And we've been doing not, not this just for com marketing. We've been doing it for every business we've had. We've had around, you know, 4 over this period and a whole bunch of different projects over the last, you know, probably 20 years. And I thought I'd share some insights on that because I don't think— not many people talk about it, and we certainly don't talk about it a huge amount because I think sometimes it's one of those things that happen. But more and more I see, you know, especially our clients, they are working with their partners and their spouses and their wives and their husbands. And it's a thing that sometimes doesn't work for a lot of people. A lot of people just cannot do it at all. And there's a lot of people that wanna do it but struggle. And there's some people that seem to be doing an okay job of it. And I think I'm one of those people. We've been doing it for a while now and never really talked about it a huge amount. She has been on this show. We did an episode previously where Ev interviewed us both about how we kind of work together. I do believe that was in season 2. You can check that out. I'll find that episode. And you can check out that one. But this one's, I'm just going solo and I'm gonna give you some quick tips to follow through. So if this resonates with you, it's gonna be great. And I kinda thought about this morning as I was sort of putting this together because it comes up more than I've probably got a course or, or, you know, really talk about a huge amount. And so I do wanna break this down because in small businesses, we do rely on our partners. We rely on our wives, our husbands, whoever that special person is for you to keep the business rolling, to keep the business flowing, especially in the early stages when things are touch and go and not sure how you're gonna make it week to week. You need those people around you. And there's a lot of conversations and talks about You know, that can kill a marriage. It can kill a partnership. Yep, it can. Definitely can. But I also think not working with your other half can also do that as well. That can do that because that other half, your partner, your husband, your wife, they don't know what you're doing. The other person's working long hours, and it also splits as well. So I don't think there's any one right or wrong way. But I mean, this is a path that I've gone down, so I'm happy to share it and happy to give you some insights into it. I've come up with a few points here, and I might just, you know, lay them out to— for you. And if anything, you know, if you get one tip out of this, I really hope that helps you to have a more, you know, loving relationship and more successful business. Because I don't think you have to split the two. I think you can do them both well. And yeah, this has been, you know, our experience. And I didn't ask Joey about these, but I'm pretty sure she'd be okay with them. All right. So number one, I just think, first of all, for anything to work, it had— there has to be a baseline. And when I say a baseline, I think if somebody's going in, new partner or new husband, new wife, new business, They may have kids in that relationship, new as well. That's definitely going to be a really challenging situation where you may not be able to come through that. There's a lot of new things going on there. So I think it's a layering approach, first of all. So definitely a layering approach. If I go back, you know, in my relationship, I went in business first. I actually met Choe as, as, as I was a personal trainer. So she wasn't really working in my business for a good probably 2 years. Her, you know, she had, I think she, she had a tutoring business at the time. So, so it was a relationship first. So in this situation, I think there's always gonna be a first that you move into first. I think moving to 3 or 4 things at the same time, definitely doomed to be very challenging. So number one, have a baseline first. So something's happening first and you're bringing the other part into it. So you might have relationship first, then you bring work into it. We're having work first and you bring a relationship into it, whatever it is, but do it in stages, not all at the same time, because a lot of different emotions that go on at the same time, and you may not have that understanding of the other person of what to do and when to do and, and how to respond to different circumstances. Like when someone meets straight away and they have kids straight away, they haven't had time together one-on-one. So I do think that there is a really important time to have time together, you know, prior to this going into business, I mean. So number one, if you are in that, that point and hey, you've got a business and you're both working in it, I would— my, my number one tip is definitely try to do different departments. Now it might be a small business and you say departments, I don't have departments. Everybody's got departments. There's an admin section, there's a department, There's a marketing department, there's an accounts department, there's people training department, there's HR department. Even though there might be just you doing it, there are different departments. So try to be really clear on who's doing what. That is the key. You know, who's gonna be doing these things, who's gonna be doing those things. And so a lot of time works out this like maybe the guy's doing the training or vice versa and the other person doing the marketing, the admin and the bills and all those kind of things, right? That's what generally happens when businesses on the growth trajectory, the person in there, and the other person is gonna help in the backend, the admin, the marketing, the sales, and that kind of stuff. And that's fine, but as long as it's really defined. What I think is not a good idea is if that other person, let's say the wife or the, the female, which I've seen a lot, a lot happen, is that they come on and they be the assistant. They be the, oh, I don't have time for that. I'll do this. I'll do this. I'll do this. And that's okay. But if that's the role, You know, if that's like, that's my role in the system around it. But when someone's piled onto your work that you haven't finished, that's not a good look. And it's very draining on a relationship because it's like, oh, that needs to be done. This needs to be done. And, and then they didn't really know about that. So it's not like, don't pile on work. If, if it's starting to be that they're doing a lot of your work and they don't really have a position, start to create a position, a really clear position. Have that conversation. Hey, do you wanna do this? Yes or no. Or at that point there, if it's no, you're gonna have to go find someone to actually do that role for you. So it can't be like a— they're doing their job in another company or they're looking after the kids and all of a sudden they're just piled onto all this stuff. That's gonna be really challenging. So be really clear if that's gonna move into a role or not in a different department, not hopefully not the same thing as you, like, really, like, you've gotta have a little bit of space there. Number 2, Respect that you both need to learn things and go after them. So what I mean by that is that if you are wanting to learn a new skill, you need to go to a course or a conference, you don't both have to go. You can— one of you can go, and that gives you a bit of time, a bit of breathing time to do that. So it might just be they need to go for a day to learn something, and then they can sort of do that. So you gotta have that independence as well. So respect they're doing different things. They might have 2 different meetings. You don't have to be on every single meeting. Okay? You don't have to be in everything. single conversation. Have the, have that buffer time. Arguments. So if there's an argument that happens, what happens? Well, I've got this saying. It wasn't from me. It was my, one of my business partners, and we worked on it. It was like, if there comes an argument, you're not sure what to do. Basically, whoever has the firsthand knowledge. So me and Joe would say, well, okay, well, I wanna do this way. Joe wanna do it that way. Then we'll say, well, who's had the firsthand knowledge here, you or me? And the person who's had the firsthand knowledge wins the argument and they decide what to do. If there's nobody has that firsthand information, then yeah, that's a bit different. It's the one that's actually gonna make logical sense and they go after that. I don't really have a solution on that one, but most of the time people have had firsthand experience or knowledge in this area. They've had more practice on it. They've read more books on it. So that's the one that they're going after. So have a kind of word or a theme so the argument doesn't drag on all day. There's like, okay, we're having— there's not having an agreement, disagreement here. What do we do? The other thing too is a good avenue if you wanna avoid fights and in your relationship, never go to bed on a fight. It's pretty hard to work and have a relationship. So never Let the clock over to midnight until you've sorted that out. That's just not a key for work. That's just more of a key to marriage. I believe that works quite well, as hard as it is to have that conversation at that point. Let's talk about work and travel. Work and travel. We've done a lot of travel trips and work trips in our time. So I think working together is a big plus. Why? Because you're gonna find the opportunity to travel together. And you can do that if you have, you know, something that you need to go down to a different state, or you may need to go overseas with that. So find the opportunity to travel together, or again, you can travel apart as well. So find that opportunity. What about work and holidays? Well, conferences are a perfect way to take a holiday and to take a work trip. It's, it's the best way. We've done it for years, always go somewhere and we do a conference at the start and then we'll extend it for a holiday after that. To me, I think that's the perfect way to blend the both in, and you can definitely do that. And, you know, with that partner, because you can go to the same conferences together, you know, the same holidays together. So it makes it really, really easy as well. We've gone on conferences with our kids as well. We've brought my mother-in-law around for that one, and they were able to stay with us. We've got a hotel room for them. You can get friends at that time, particular time, or they can come with you. So it just depends on that. But when you do have kids, it does— there's a new level of organization of what that wants to look like. Work and family. You need to decide who is doing what and when. Boundaries is really important, especially again, as I mentioned, If you do have kids, there will be boundaries that you'll need to put into place. And those boundaries are important for the sake of your family. So you need to decide who is doing what, who's doing what role, and who's taking the time off, who's picking the kids up, who's gonna be doing those activities as well. And a good way to look at this is that if you are not gonna be doing, like you say, oh, I'm doing them, one of them's gonna do the most amount of work. And that's generally the case. when you are going to have kids, one of them will do the most amount of work and one may do less physical, you know, business work, but they may be picking up kids. And that's really important too. So both are equal, but you've got to decide who's going to be doing more on this in the business and more outside the business. And that's really important to make a directive decision on that. Because if not, what happens is your business is going to suffer. And I've seen it so many times before. Your marriage will suffer. Your business will suffer. There's a saying, happy wife, happy life. If you don't have a happy spouse, I'll tell you what, the business is not gonna be happy and that's gonna suffer. So don't think of it as one's doing more than the other. They're both equal in what they do so you can run a successful business together. Right? And, and that's really important because otherwise the other one's gonna get a job and then you're gonna be looking, you're gonna have to, you know, find ways to pick up kids and so forth. And so that's gonna cost in different ways too. So you gotta really look at those and look at it as a whole listing approach. Working every day, like every day. When I say every day, it could be, what do you do day to day? How do, how do you make it work day to day? Well, the advantage here is we never do meetings inside the office. We've got a home office here now. We've got an office in Sydney. We never do that. We always do meetings outside, coffees, go for a walk along the beach. It might not start off with official meeting. We have kind of an agenda that we hope we get to. And when, when you're moving, when you talk it out, when you're in different environments, you can get a lot of inspiration that way. So sure, yep, those boring meetings tick off the box and so forth. But I always found that they're not gonna go anywhere fast if I'm not in that zone to really help and support and come up with a great solution. Spaces. Around work. So if you kind of like working in the same zone, like, you know, we've had— we've worked in offices for 10 years, our office for 10 years in Sydney. We always worked in different rooms at different spaces. We never kind of saw each other most of the day, which I think is key because you do need some buffer time as well doing your own thing. I think that's really important. So don't be working on top of each other. Work and money. Let's talk about that one. Both people should be paid a wage. Both people should pay the salary, whatever it looks like, or owner's drawing from the business based on what they're doing. Are they doing full-time or part-time? I don't think it has to be equal, by the way. It can be on, you know, what you do as a job description, job role. And I think that's kind of good because then if somebody else comes in and needs to replace that person, that really works well. You know what doesn't work well? If, if there's actually, you know, it's in those early stages, there's actually no official role title, there's no money coming from the role. It's just a compile of things we haven't done. That is really stressful. So very early on, you need to understand what the job role is and what does it pay, or what does it pay and what can we pay? You know, you might be in those early stages where you just can't pay much, but at least there's a job role. At least there's a goal of what you're going to pay and then you can make that happen. There's nothing better just on that. I don't think there's anything better than growing a business together, husband and wife, spouse, partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever it may be, and you're actually living on what you've created. I think that's really magical and I think it's really special. And so You know, never, you know, never not pay yourself. Never think that's, you know, not important. That is really important. You're the, you know, the backbone of the business in the early stages, of course. And that's really important to honor and to pay yourself to make that work. So they're kind of my tips. I might get some tips from Joey on this topic, working with your spouse successfully, I should say. And making the business be better for that. There's a lot of, a lot of talk. You shouldn't work with your spouse. You shouldn't work with your partner. But I think that's totally rubbish. You totally can. And I've done it. I've got 20 years experience doing it. And if you haven't done it or you've suffered in it, that's okay too, because it wasn't meant for you. It's not meant for everybody, that's for sure. But if it, if you are thinking about it, if you are trying it, if you're trying to make it work, definitely use some of these tips to your advantage to really reshape how or what you think work and working with your spouse is going to look like so you have a good life and a good relationship and a good business. I think that's really important to mold into 2. Guys, if you've got any more help with that, Be happy to answer that if we jump on a marketing muscle up. If that's a roadblock that you've had, even working with family, I've had a lot of experience working with family as well. Worked with my brother, my sister-in-law, my father-in-law. So I've had a lot of experience there in over the years, cousins and that kind of stuff. So if it's something that's really slowing you down for growth or helping you to grow, would love to hear from you. Jump on our website, commarketing.com.au. You can fill out a marketing muscle up. Or jump on my Instagram, Richard Toutounji, spelled T-O-U-T-O-U-N-J-A-I, and hit me up with message. I'd love to know how you're making it work for you. Thanks, guys. Until next time.