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Episode 246 - Bringing Your Spouse on Full-Time
57 Plays2 hours ago
Today's conversation was inspired by an Instagram Live we recently did with Sophie Amelia Designs to chat about working together as spouses. We're breaking down the practical ways we planned for and transitioned Davey, from full time high school teacher to master marketer.
This episode is sponsored by BDOW!, formerly Sumo, the very best intelligent form and pop-up tool for your website. Deliver the right message, to the right visitor, using our advanced targeting rules. Whether you want to display a pop-up to only new visitors, or generate a unique discount code for those who subscribe to your list, you can get the job done using BDOW!
As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check 'em out over at https://daveyandkrista.com/bringing-spouse-full-time-btb-246/. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts.
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Transcript
Importance of Financial Preparation
00:00:00
Speaker
I knew that if you were gonna come on and join me, I wanted to have six months of paychecks and expenses saved up in the business and that took some work to get to. It took some work to pay off all that diet and then it took work to save up all that money and have that big cushion.
00:00:16
Speaker
You're listening to The Brands That Book Show, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs who want practical tips and strategies to build engaging brands and craft high converting websites. We're your hosts, Davey and Krista, co-founders of a brand and website design agency specializing in visual brand design and show it websites. You're listening to The Brands That Book Show.
Inspiration Behind the Episode
00:00:38
Speaker
Today's conversation was fired by an Instagram live we recently did with Sophie Emilia Designs to chat about working together as spouses. We're breaking down the practical ways that we planned for and transition DV from full-time high school teacher to master marketer. We're sharing what worked in the transition, what didn't, and what we do differently if we went through this process again. This topic is something that we're asked about quite frequently, and if you've ever considered what it would be like to work with your spouse, I think you're gonna get a lot out of today's episode.
Sponsorship Message
00:01:08
Speaker
Today's episode is sponsored by Badal, formerly Sumo, the very best intelligent form and pop-up tool for your website. Deliver the right message to the right visitor using our advanced targeting rules. Whether you want to display a pop-up to only new visitors or generate a unique discount code for those who subscribe to your list, you can get the job done using Badal.
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Speaker
One of my personal favorite features is the show a tab function. Basically how this works is when visitors close the popup, it minimizes to the bottom of the page so that visitors can open it back up if they'd like, but it also remains out of their way while they browse. You can check out how that feature works over at the Davey and Krista website. Also use the code Davey and Krista to save 20% on your subscription.
Working with a Spouse
00:01:58
Speaker
Create an experience on your website using Badao.
00:02:02
Speaker
All right, the Brancid Book Podcast is back and we are finally talking with each other. You make it sound like we don't talk to each other all day, every day. Finally, she's talking to me again. married Yeah, no, it has been a long time since we sat down together to record a podcast episode together. So we've done a lot of episodes with other people. We've interviewed other people, but we have not actually done this just you and me and some time. That's right, but here we are, finally back together, chatting on the podcast. And guess what we're chatting about? We're chatting about working with your spouse. yeah This is actually part one of a two-part episode. The first part being how to take your spouse full time, and then part two is gonna be tips for working with your spouse. And this episode was inspired by Sophie Amelia, who just had us on an Instagram live to chat with her husband. They're interested in ways that they can get her husband to come on full time. And so that Instagram live is linked on our Instagram profile. If you want to go back and watch it, it was a great conversation, but we also thought it might be nice to record a podcast episode on this topic too, because this has always been something that we get asked frequently and you wrote a blog post on this topic years ago and it's always been one of our top posts on our website. So I think a lot of people are interested in working with their spouse. They just don't know how to actually make it happen. Yes. Don't do it. and I'm just i just i'm just kidding. i'm gonna It's been great. It's been great.
00:03:26
Speaker
Yeah, so I read that post back in 2017 and it continues to be, like you said, one of our most popular posts each and every year. It's funny to go back and read because it was written before we had kids. And obviously, I joined you in the business you were running at the time. Right. Full time before we had kids. And that's one thing we want to note at the outset is that, you know, had we had kids at the time, I think we would approach things very differently. Yes.
00:03:48
Speaker
That's not to say it's not doable, but I do want to recognize that because I think it would be unfair just to be like, hey, this is our experience. You know, back when we didn't have kids and we had all this time, we didn't have as much, you know, risk, right? You know, like we just had to take care of ourselves. So I think that's one thing to note. But with that said, I think a good place for us to start is just talking about our story and then talking about some of the things that maybe we do differently and maybe we can speak a little bit to maybe some of those things that we do differently if we had kids at the time.
Career Transition Journey
00:04:16
Speaker
So.
00:04:16
Speaker
The story starts back in 2010. I just graduated from school. You were finishing up but already working full time. And you had a job as a website designer for a nonprofit. And you started a wedding photography business. It was really wedding photography and design.
00:04:32
Speaker
But yeah, we should say my degree in college was graphic design. So it's not like this was just an arbitrary topic that I decided to pursue. Sure. Sure. Yeah. but So you started this photography business. I out of school was a high school teacher and had lacrosse coach.
00:04:48
Speaker
So that's what I did. I coached high school, taught high school, making a ton of money, as you can imagine, but I really liked it for sure. So anyway, you started this business and I thought at the time it was cute. A cute little hobby. A cute little hobby. and Until it started to make money. Yes, that's right. And then all of a sudden you were making more money with your cute little hobby than I was as a high school teacher. That definitely piqued my interest for sure. And so I think you started to like slowly help me maybe in 2013, 2014. That's when I really started to pick up with a lot of weddings. I think at our peak, we shot 40 weddings together. I don't know if you shot all of those with me. I might've just shot a lot of those by myself too.
00:05:30
Speaker
but you started coming to wedding days, second shooting, and then I think eventually you started helping with engagement sessions and maybe like slowly easing you into some of the marketing and business side too, like doing the contracts and discovery calls with me and such. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, I think that was kind of key and I'm glad I slowly eased into it. There was definitely this transition period where, you know, I thought I wanted to join you full time in the business And neither of us were really sure what that would look like. And so we sort of made a decision at the end of one of the school years that the next school year, I was going to try to do both. You know, I was going to try to help you in the business as much as I possibly could while teaching.
00:06:13
Speaker
And like I said, I like teaching, you know, so it wasn't like, oh, you know, this was a real drag and, you know, but it had limitations. Right. And this is probably taps into some of the reasons why somebody might want to work with their spouse, like flexibility. You know, I had summers free, but if you had a cool opportunity in the winter, I usually couldn't go. Right. Like I couldn't take vacation time from school. My vacation time was the summer. Yeah.
00:06:37
Speaker
So there was this year where we decided, okay, I was basically going to try to do both of those things. And what I quickly learned was like, that was a good way to burn out, right? you know It was working all the time. I ended up enjoying both of those things less right as a result. And so by the springtime, we knew we kind of had to make a decision. Also, I didn't have enough time to devote to the business to really help you take it to the next level.
00:07:02
Speaker
And so we realized like to get it to the next level, I was going to have to either join you full time or you're going to have to go and find other help. So we started planning for taking me full time. And this is basically how we did it. All right. The first thing that we started with, much to my dismay,
00:07:22
Speaker
was learning about Dave Ramsey. ah Yes, thank you Michael Alsup for introducing us to the concept of Dave Ramsey. You have sent Michael some not so thank you texts before. Yes, that's right. When you wanted a certain car. So basically we started by making sure that all of our debts were paid off. So the only debt that we had at the time that wasn't paid off was our mortgage. So we paid off lots of student loans. Lots of student loans. We paid off our cars.
00:07:50
Speaker
And then, like I said, you know, pretty much we didn't have any credit card debt. Or if we did, it was like minor. Yeah. I mean, it was debt that we were paying off at the end of every month or whatever. And to this day, you pay our credit card off every week. But not the point. The point being is that we didn't have any debt outside of our mortgage. Beyond that, you were insistent that we create a certain amount of savings. Yes. I don't know if you want to speak to how much.
00:08:15
Speaker
Yeah, I am definitely like the s saver in our marriage. I definitely have more of a fear mindset. And so I knew that if you were going to come on and join me, I wanted to have six months of paychecks and expenses saved up in the business. And that took some work to get to. It took some work to pay off all that debt. And then it took work to save up all that money and have that big cushion. but I felt a lot more secure knowing that we had that there in case things slowed down or in case it took a while to have an ah ROI on you helping me. And so I'm really thankful that we did that and that's something I would recommend for other people to do if they can. We also knew that we had a certain amount of work booked out already because of the photography business. We are photographers, we're booking a year or two in advance and so we knew that by you coming on we had those projects and that money coming in.
00:09:03
Speaker
Yeah, that was a really nice thing about being an event-based business is that we were bucking out a year in advance almost. So we knew that there was a certain baseline of income coming in.
Financial Cushion for Business Transition
00:09:13
Speaker
But going back to paying off debt and creating savings, you know, these do create sort of a buffer so that panic doesn't set in. Yes.
00:09:21
Speaker
you know as soon as you decide to join your spouse full-time in the business. And it puts you in a position where you don't have to make things work from day one. you know And I think in some cases, they just don't work on day one. you know We found that when we we expanded our team for the first time, right and we we approach it in a similar way. We had a certain buffer of savings, and we knew that it might take this person a little while to get established.
00:09:42
Speaker
so that we can then grow our business to a point where that person is now providing a return for the business.
Role Identification and Process Adjustment
00:09:48
Speaker
And that was certainly true of me as well. like It took me a while to settle into my role in the business where you know finally things were starting to click and we were able to grow the business to where we knew we'd be able to grow it. Yeah, and I think that's true of like, regardless of your spouse coming on or adding a team member, there's always a certain amount of time where they need to understand how to do things and the processes. And there were times where I had to learn to change my processes in order to serve you and have you actually contribute in a way that was meaningful.
00:10:16
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. One of the things that we also sat down to do was assess new expenses that we might have. Like at the time, healthcare was covered by my teaching job. We had great health benefits. And so figuring out how we were going to replace those, there are a number of different ways to replace those. I think we just ended up going to the marketplace, but we have friends who do things like what Christian Health Share Christian Hellshare, Metashare. And then these days we get ours through Gusto, which is our payroll system and they're, I guess, an insurance broker. And so it's kind of similar to going through the marketplace and that they source different offers for you and then present them to you and you just pick your insurance plan that way. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But realize that there might be new expenses that you have as a result of leaving your job. Yes, definitely.
00:11:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the things that I am great for is doing as much as possible prior to making the change. I think that this has two big benefits. One, you know I could figure out whether I actually wanted to do that, like I actually wanted to join you in the business or not.
00:11:18
Speaker
you know And I think that this is important because I think it sounds all well and good to go work with your spouse full time. But you know how that actually plays out, there's gonna be a lot of learning and a lot of adjustment. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute.
Skill Transfer and Business Growth
00:11:31
Speaker
And then, you know again, like I didn't have a background in business or marketing or photography or website design. You were a theology major. I was a theology major with a near philosophy minor. I had a master's in multicultural education. yeah know which is actually something that came up in our conversation with Sophie. She was concerned that her husband is an engineer and that it would just be such a huge learning curve. And we told her that those skills that you learn, and I think this is true of anybody, like the skills that you learn in one career, you can take with you to another. So you are excellent at writing and communication and teaching, which has been so vital to the growth of our business. And those are skills that you learned when you were teaching students and capturing their attention. Cause I'm so sure it's so hard to hold a 14 year old boy or girl attention. Yeah, for sure. And we told her the same thing when you and your partners started till agency. So your partner Ryan was an engineer and he came on to join you until, and he has all of this like technical knowledge and he can crunch spreadsheets and numbers like nobody we've ever seen. So those are skills that I think translate in so many ways. And I think that's probably going to mature regardless of what your spouse is currently doing.
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah, and I think like God wastes nothing, right? And so those skills that you learn in one area, you can bring to a new area and for Ryan, you know, his analytical mind, you know, just belongs in ad management, right? And then likewise, I was able to bring writing and communication over to at the time, Kristy Jones photography.
00:12:55
Speaker
And one of the things that we quickly realized was a source of leads for us was SEO. And so, you know, I wanted to learn, you know, how does that work? How does this SEO thing work? Because we're already getting some search traffic and we're already getting leads from search. So that's what I dug into was like blogging and figuring out how to make our blog more powerful and how to capture more search visibility. So all of a sudden, you know, I was teaching English to high school kids. Now I'm using a lot of those skills to optimize our blog.
00:13:23
Speaker
Although we definitely didn't land on that from the start. I think that we start thought that you would be like editing photos and I gave you some photos to edit and it took you like hours to edit a single photo. I was like, Davey, we're never going to get galleries out to people if you spend this long nitpicking every single thing about the image, you have to move on. So we learned that like there are things that you enjoy more and there are things that you are naturally gifted at. And it just took a lot of time to figure out what that fit was going to be.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And again, that's why it's nice to have a little bit of a buffer, right? To figure those things out because it does take a little bit of time. I would start with things that probably lend themselves to your strengths. You know, I think that was one of the things that were one of the mistakes we made early on was like, there was nothing about my skill set that screamed, oh, editing photos, right? Well, I think I just thought like this is where I need a lot of help right now. Maybe you can help me tackle it. Yeah, yeah for sure. But really, like, you know, again, if we could go back in time, I would get started with all the other stuff, the client management stuff, the contracts, invoices, basically some systems, and then also the communication, you know, marketing side of things. Because you know looking back again, you could say, oh, I could see how these skills transfer to these things. And by taking all of those things off your plate and doing them efficiently, you're then able to devote more time to you know photography and editing and yeah you know building websites and such. So for sure. And we're jumping ah ahead a little bit here, but for that transition period, like
00:14:55
Speaker
establishing roles and experimenting there, I think is really important. I think the other thing is to know your task. We're going to talk about this in another episode, but there's this concept that we've learned about recently called separation of tasks. We learned about it from a book called The Courage to Be Dislike. We highly recommend we're going to do a whole episode, you know, basically on our learnings from that book. I feel like we've referenced this book every day in our lives now, like, yeah is this your task? right Yeah.
00:15:21
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. and But I think early on, it was, you know, you had a certain way for blogging, for instance, and so you'd come to me and be like, you don't have to do it this way, or you shouldn't do it this way, or, you know, whatever. But really, you learned to let me make that task my own. It took me so long to learn that that lesson. I feel like you very kindly just made it seem like I learned that lesson quickly, and like, it was a very long time. I'm still learning that lesson. Still learning that lesson.
00:15:48
Speaker
But we talk about like, is this your task? you know And the flip side of that means that you have to own your task. But especially if you are the spouse already in the business, your spouse is going to come in and take things over and may not do things the exact way you would do them. And there is a fine line between giving feedback and assistance and then also micromanaging your spouse. So Kristin never, of course, micromanaged me.
00:16:17
Speaker
Nope, never. I'm just perfect in that way. Yeah. That was definitely hard for me to learn to let you take things over. And that was hard for me. Like when the, our first hires started coming on in the team, but in so many instances I've learned that there are so many things that I don't know that you can either figure out and probably do better than me, especially if I'm trying to juggle a million different balls at once. So I'm very glad that I learned that lesson and that you started taking over things. Yeah. Yeah. And you have to realize that first, I did things worse than you, right? And you have to be okay with that, letting somebody do things worse than you to get in the rep so that they can eventually do it better than you. And that is one of the reasons why having that cushion and like, like those systems are so helpful because it gives you time to learn and learn together and learn how to make it work. I think if we hadn't had that, we might've just gotten frustrated really fast and you probably would have gone and found another teaching job. Yeah, yeah. And you know, I should clarify that point too, because like whenever you're hiring somebody, you want to find somebody who can come in and pretty much do the work, right? There's only a certain amount of training that they ought to have to do. But I think especially in working with your spouse and bringing your spouse on full time in the business, they might not actually be the best fit for that position, you know? But so you might be making that decision based on other factors, like the lifestyle you want to have. But again, being patient with them in that is important.
Decision-Making and Work-Life Balance
00:17:42
Speaker
I think the only other thing I want to talk about and I don't want to talk about this time in terms of like the transition period is establishing rhythms early on and this ties into the segment we skipped here which is basically you want to have some certain conversations key conversations I would say prior to your spouse joining you in the business and then you want to continue having those conversations as they join you in the business. right One of those might be, who's the decision maker? yeah you know like Who owns the business? Because I think like at the time, right the business was Crusty Jones Photography.
00:18:15
Speaker
Yes. So it was like, am I joining you in this business and working for you? All right. Or am I? Yeah, that's right. oh Or am I joining you as a partner in this business? How are we going to make decisions about the business? And this is an important, even if Krista was the decision maker, this is an important conversation for us to have have had because so much of running your own business and working from home impacts the rest of your life too, yes you know? So you want to have those conversations early on.
00:18:47
Speaker
All right, what are the expectations? You know, like when I joined Krista full time, we're gonna talk about this a little bit more in part two of this episode, Krista treated Krista Jones photography as kind of a nine to five, right? I mean, like generally it was like, hey, you know, I'm up, it's nine o'clock, I'm working, yeah I'm gonna work until the end of the day and then I'm gonna be done. Me on the other hand, I was like, hey, I'm working for myself now. You're like, I'm gonna go to the gym at 10 a.m.
00:19:12
Speaker
I'm going to go to the you know morning CrossFit workout or whatever. And for me, and maybe it's also just personality types, but my personality was like, oh my gosh, like we're never going to bake it if he's going off and working at the gym or working out at 10 a.m. Like he needs to be working right now, which thankfully I have lightened and and learned.
00:19:31
Speaker
We'll talk a little bit more about that, like I said in episode two, but the point being is like having those conversations early are important. right yeah When and how will you evaluate whether you know working together is working out? This goes both ways, I guess is what I'm trying to say. On the one hand, you know I might have joined Krista in the business and decided, you know I actually really like teaching you know and I wanna go back. Yeah, you really hate photos and SEO and all of the things. yeah yeah right And then on the other hand, you know I think there's it's what within the realm of possibility that I join you in the business and you're like, it's just not working out. you know like Maybe there just isn't a place for you in this business. like It doesn't make sense. And you know I don't think there's any judgment on the marriage for for that. you know So those are conversations that are important to have, I think beforehand. Those are conversations we didn't have.
00:20:23
Speaker
And going back, we would definitely have those conversations. I think now that we have kids, there's probably a few things that we would do a little bit differently. One, I think that we would probably, we'd have at least the same amount of savings, you know but we'd probably do more. yeah know Again, you're pretty conservative in terms of like spending and things. And you alluded to maybe more of a fewer mindset around money, yeah which you've made so many strides on over the course of running a business.
00:20:51
Speaker
So maybe having a little bit more money put away, I think like conversations around like healthcare care and what we're going to do for that, you know, we would definitely focus on those, some of those decisions. I think childcare is another big one. Yeah, I was thinking that because there's always a cost for childcare, at least like unless you're sending your kids to public school and they're old enough to take care of themselves. That's something that we like have to budget for now. And so we yeah would also have to figure out like, okay, if you're coming on, and are we hiring someone to watch the kids or are you watching the kids and like working in the meantime or am I watching the kids? So there's just a lot more conversations and things to consider when it comes to kids and childcare for young ones. Yeah, and when they get a little bit older, yeah, they can go off to school
Impact of Family on Business Dynamics
00:21:32
Speaker
and whatnot. But certainly if you have young kids in the home, that season is just tough, right? Because, you know, I mean, even for us, having kids after having gone full time with each other, you know, adjusting to those seasons of, you know, who's watching Jack? Who's watching Bennett right now? Well, and planning for maternity leave. And like, I was really sick when I was pregnant, so there's a lot more to consider.
00:21:56
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. But I think that the same basic principles, you know, are true. You know, I think it's a good, you know, wise yeah to be debt free as much as possible. Wise to have savings. All right. And then, you know, have these conversations.
00:22:13
Speaker
Yes, I think that communicating with one other another and learning each other's strengths and talking about all of this ahead of time and just planning is so important. And i I think this is definitely an area that we should have done a lot more of before you came on full time. Yeah. And I think that's the last bit of advice. I think this is a good place to end here is a lot of this stuff you can't figure out until you do it.
00:22:35
Speaker
you know and There's only a certain amount of planning you can do. Don't take that to mean, oh, i well, might as well just rush into this. yeah You can plan. You can actually anticipate some of these things. There's some things that you're just going to have to jump in and do and figure out. you know One of those things is like I had to jump in and just take on tasks in the business to figure out which one sort of stuck, where I could add the most value to the business.
00:22:58
Speaker
Our daily schedule has changed over the years. I mean, it continues to, especially with young kids. you know It seems like almost every quarter or at least twice a year, our schedule is undergoing some sort of big change. So you're just continually having those conversations. right yeah All right, well, part one in the books. Listen, if you have questions about working full time with your spouse, we want to answer those. So you can drop those to us on DM on Instagram and it might lead to another episode around this. But we want to answer your questions. A lot of the questions that we answered on this episode came from or inspired by our conversation with Sophia. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Thanks, guys. Thanks.
00:23:41
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Bransa Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, and sharing this episode with others. For show notes and other resources, head on over to DavianKrista.com.