Do You Take This Man to Be Your Business Partner?

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Liz picarazzi Jackie Russo and Laura Xander talk about what it's been like building a business in partnership with a spouse and they all agree on some important things for one they all say that had their husband been just another employee he probably would have been fired all three say that in their relationships they are the guest that drives the business and their husband is the break that sometimes keeps them out of trouble and sometimes frustrates their entrepreneurial instincts and all three agree that some things are best left undiscussed for example says Jackie Michael doesn't even know what we make he also doesn't know what any of the employees make but the three CEOs also agree on this in the final cost benefit analysis they wouldn't want to build a business any other way even in Good Times zing and running a business can be lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations brought to you by our principal sponsor the great game of business will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which in magazine named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to for free at 21 hass.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week on the podcast our regulars Liz picarazzi who's CEO of City bin which is based in Brooklyn New York and makes trash enclosures and package bins Jackie Russo CEO of brand Russo a marketing agency based in Lafayette Louisiana and Laura Xander who is CEO of Jimmy beans wool a digital yarn store based in Reno Nevada and meline TSH a yarn manufacturer and distributor based in Fort Worth Texas the episode is titled do you take this man to be your business partner welcome Liz Jackie and Laura it's great to have you here today I want to talk about Partnerships uh some people think trying to build a business with a partner is just a bad idea obviously it can work but but it can be hard but you guys have kind of doubled down on having a partner because not only do you have a partner in your business but that partner also happens to be your spouse which kind of UPS the ante so to start I guess I'm wondering did any of you have doubts about whether this would be a good idea before you chose to uh Embark down this path uh and if so how did you get past those concerns maybe start with you Jackie sure well I didn't originally plan on going into business with my husband at all I um met a cute guy who happened to also work in advertising he's a graphic designer I do uh media buying and Business Development kind of an a fractional marketing director and and we you know hit it off dated got married uh 10 months later had a baby and then about to have another baby 10 months after that so in the process of my second pregnancy realized this was not going to work for my current employer who had already decided that he gave me time off for the honeymoon and then he gave me time off for the first baby and the second baby was not going to fit with his schedule and actually said can you schedule the delivery on a Friday so you can be back at the office on Monday wow and I thought well the first kid almost died because he flatlined um the cord is wrapped around his neck three times it's a whole medical Saga uh the second one was going to be a breeze delivery I found out later but at the time I had no idea I only had the first experience and I assumed it was going to be as horrific as the first one so I'm thinking well taking four hours off to have a baby is not really going to work for me at least he was honest yeah you knew where you stood with him at all times that's very clear so father-in-law said you know why don't you go on your own and I thought well what do you mean I work for people I I don't even know what a 1099 was and in the effort of going out on my own as a freelance media buyer those media clients had needs that my graphic designer husband could fulfill so he just did it as a side hustle for me until six months in I have more clients than the agency where he works and he's like I can't keep doing two fulltime jobs with a wife and two kids can I quit my job and work for you and and now all of a sudden we have this partnership and then it turns out I'm pregnant with a third wow and he literally said can I come work for you like from the very beginning well I recall those words he you know the book is called he said she said he has a different version of events but that's pretty darn close to Accurate maybe he said with you he might have said with but I heard four that's amazing you know I really love that commercial where they throw the flag on the play and they do the replays of people's conversations I need that in my daily life well what was your initial thought did you think this was a great idea did you have concerns about you know the amount of time you would be spending together well I was knee deep in work and somebody had to pay the bills and so I think he's the best graphic designer I knew then and no now so that was a no-brainer it was more about we sometimes don't communicate very well and so how are we going to continue to be married and raise kids and now run a business together that's a lot of time a lot of time and then I'm hormonally pregnant and so the very first thing I did was hire an employee so now I would tell the employee and the employee would tell Michael what needed to happen and those buffers I think the buffer saved us yeah well I was just thinking um Jackie that I mean how much of your life together have you spent not working together I mean it doesn't sound like there's much so it's almost like well this is just the way it is this is this is what our life looks like together right we have these kids we have this business I mean it's not like you had 10 years working at different businesses together no I mean from the moment where we like met and had our first date in January to getting engaged in April to getting married in October God to finding out in November that we were pregnant with a honeymoon surprise to having that baby the next August and so now this is the next um year I mean so yeah it's so two and a half years okay yeah I mean I think it's really really interesting and I think that like with Doug and I as well we met at work and then we always work together so we don't know any different you know like we don't really know what it's like I mean even when we did work at different businesses which was a couple of years either we would do projects on the side together or we would you know he we even programmed like in the same languages and it's part of our relationship um and just kind of always and always has been so did you start the business together Laura when you started Jimmy beans well it was a brick and morar yarn store and you sold coffee too right yeah yeah and was Doug invol involved in in that yeah because we were building the website together because we had started we started the business because he had a full-time job but I had I had started my own business building websites for people um and doing the backend stuff and more often than not I would need his help he's a better programmer than I am and so I would sell projects um and we would work on them together and so we built this platform which is you know 25 years ago which is the platform that we still use I built this platform for another company and then when we decided to open Jimmy beans yeah I mean it was me full-time in the store in the retail business filling the orders doing the operational stuff but he and I built the website and the platform and all that stuff together so from day one I mean it was always the two of us he just had another job um to pay the bills for the first couple years but it's always been I mean it's a joint investment you know from our standpoint so you didn't really take the time to stop and think is this a good idea it's just you been work together before and exactly yeah but I don't really take the time to think of anything as a good idea I mean you just jump off the cliff right right all gas no breaks yeah all gas no breaks that's me too he's my break yeah Doug is the break for sure I mean that's Jack too yeah we're so similar it's crazy right yeah except would say that he's never thought of himself and I've never thought of him as working for me for us it was always our business and then when I Lauren when I met you and I applied for that ernston young winning women you had to be a woman-owned business so I think we were 10 years in or eight n years in and so we changed the structure of the business to be 51% me and 49% him but I mean that was it's really just paperwork you know we're two equal Partners well and I Laura I would agree that we are equal Partners but we had a conversation very early on that somebody has to be the boss somebody has to be the final word and we collectively agreed it was me well and you know what I think that this here's the difference Doug and I have a very passive aggressive relationship so you know he's from the Midwest my family you know originates from Midwest so we don't have those quite rank conversations um and so we've never talked about it that specifically um we just you know I'm the figurehead if you will I'm and I did put CEO on my business cards but that was more from a PR standpoint I yes I'm the one who technically everybody comes to or I shouldn't even say technically operationally everybody comes to but it still is we're both the boss and so we just passively aggressively Let each other kind of make decisions in areas that we feel more passionate about and that's been our whole relationship I mean we don't argue you know we don't fight we never have we just you know if something's more important to him then he gets the say in it if something's more important to me then I get the say in it and so in a really weird unhealthy way we have a very healthy relationship it works you know it just works it works he has a whole team he's in charge of and I have a team I'm in charge of so we each manage our own teams but then I'm the final say by his admission and mine and so that has worked well for us we do not have of the Minnesota nice Midwest passive aggressive nice yall have because he's Italian and he's loud and I am Methodist and quiet and so that's a whole thing that you know our marriage counselor was like I don't know this is going to work out y'all you're Qui it yeah oh when it comes to when I'm when I'm disagreeing yes oh yeah I'm not a loud Yeller and that's and I think that again there's that like the yin and yang is in meetings I'm the loud one I'm the one who's always talking that should stop talking he's really quiet you know so he's a little more passive so we just you know yeah it just works it's yin and yang and it it just works Liz how about you you started City bin by yourself um actually after having started a previous business by yourself um and then uh Frank joined you later did you have any concerns about what it would mean for both of you to be working in the same business yeah we definitely did you know at the point that he joined the business I had already had it for eight years and then the previous business a couple before that I think for us it was less of a concern interpersonally or how it would affect our family our personal life it was more about the risk of having all of our income tied to the business you know previously you know I had had a corporate job and made good money and he had a corporate job and was making good money he lost his job in May of 2020 and you would think that the last thing we would do is have him join the business cuz we were losing all that income but we actually decided that's what the time was because he got a nice Severance you know he was on unemployment and we had a lot of things that needed to be worked on to pull us out of you know we had a rut for a couple of months in there in 2020 you know I think that I did worry a bit that I mean I'm definitely like the more kind of emotional one I'm definitely more of the sort of flighty entrepreneur so I thought that I didn't want him to be around my my grandiose ideas because I knew he's the break and he was going to shoot that down and so prior to him joining I could go on a lot of tangents and did and I have to admit that when he came in he did temper that and that was probably a good thing I mean we still run into it a lot and you know when he ended up not going back to corporate um we knew that if this experiment failed that he could go back back and he did have options to go back to the he used to work in um fashion kind of on the back end the operational side um we knew that he could go back and get the corporate job with the benefits the health insurance all of that but we decided to go for it and it ended up working and he's still with the business four years later I'm really intrigued by the idea that in each case it's your husband who you refer to as the break on your more entrepreneurial impulsiveness um if that's the right word do you guys have any thoughts on why do you all have that in common I think that in every partnership somebody is probably the gas and somebody's probably the break I think it speaks more to you Lauren that you've chosen these three women to spend time with today that might be the bigger question but no I you know I years ago a a group of um Founders from a very large now Regional Ambulance Company uh the two Founders were talking actually oddly enough both named Richard and one was saying that you know if he had been solely in charge he would have run and right off a cliff because he had no break and the other Richard said well and if i' had have been completely in charge we would have never left the starting blocks because I wouldn't take any chances at all and so I think in every partnership a good successful partnership you're going to have that blend because that's how you end up at just the right speed that's that are you guys familiar with like the EOS right um you know and the the Visionary and the integrator so you've got the one person obviously you know that hits the gas and then the integrator is the break and it just so happens with us that we're married to the integrator yep yeah it was really interesting for us um when we unlike Jackie it took us 10 years to decide to have a child so we spent the first 10 years like you know just in this great we just were on a great path I mean we worked seven days a week but we would you know go ski for a few hours here and there and so we worked together we played together we did everything together and we just had it dialed and then we had a kid um and all of a sudden and we have no family so we didn't really realize somebody has to watch the kid sometimes and you know we didn't know about the daycare stuff and you know we were completely unprepared and what we didn't anticipate and didn't realize I mean one of the 8,000 things we didn't realize was that we were going to lose our integrator you know I mean so I'm still driving the business cuz I'm the the gas and Doug is doing what he does best which is details like feeding the child and doing the things to make sure the kids's alive and so he wasn't able to spend as much time doing being the break in the business and it took us a couple years to really realize that this is what was happening and so I had to you know it took us forever to find a new integrator because now we had this third component at home that we had to take care of that we had never had to take care of before um it was super disruptive so I highly recommend avoiding this situation or planning for it and Wrecking and that's you know if we could go back that's what we would have done either I would have gotten somebody like an opair or somebody to come in and take care of the kid so we don't lose our integrator or I needed to replace the integrator at work which is what we ended up doing um and that helped I think the timing on that means a lot with Frank and I we had our daughter for 13 years before he joined the business and so all of our roles in the household and everything were really well established yep I have a feeling that if we had more than one child we might not have taken the risk either me or him to have a business luckily I was able to go at it for like eight years or so before he joined but you know if we had had two or three like nothing against Jackie people that have more children but I I quite I don't think I would be an active entrepreneur if I had a lot of kids I just wouldn't have been able to do it I wouldn't have been able to juggle it my brain as it is is just going in too many different directions so I think that for us that was actually one of the best decisions we made was to just have one child um I know my mother-in-law if she's listening to this would be furious hearing this but the truth of the matter is like it really made it a lot easier for me to make the decision to start a business in the first place cuz I was a mother of one and she was 5 years old I kind of knew how to be a mom our roles in the household were pretty well set so it a lot of it does depend on timing all three of you have talked very positively about how your relationship has worked with your husbands being the break but there must have been some times I suspect for each of you when his being the break produced some tension we're all entrepreneurs there have to have been times when you wanted to run a little bit faster I'm guessing how have you guys dealt with that I can talk to that because I feel like I'm in that a lot so with inventory in particular so we're a product business we buy things before we sell them we have inventory we have a cash flow a very up and down on our cash flow and I'm much more with purchasing inventory I would say I'm expecting and planning for Success which means I'm inclined to buy a lot more inventory than Frank is he's definitely much more conservative with it you know because he's been in business for many less years than I have he's going to be very cautious about making purchases and unfortunately with our business or fortunately or unfortunately you know we've had a lot of growth and success the last couple of years and and we oftentimes are out of inventory because of his conservative purchasing so right now we're in that situation where our warehouse is virtually empty we're not getting inventory for another four to five weeks and so I would say that that's been a really major point of contention because you know that means customers need to wait we potentially are losing business because people don't want to wait 12 to 14 weeks understandably and it's a discomfort he has with spending the money that needs to be spent to get the inventory that we need to meet demand so I will look at what is the demand how are we growing I'll apply a growth metric to any of his projections and he's going to be more on the conservative end and you know we fight about it I can think of you know of our worst fights while he's been in the business like they've all been related to inventory and I can remember once it was in a summer it was it was during all the supply chain difficulties kind of near the end of covid you know and because we were always out of stock I wanted us to place really really big orders and he didn't and I hated to hear that we were about to place an order and I we were in the backyard it was a summer we were trying to like relax by the pool and I ended up basically getting hysterical and screaming at him and all of our neighbors heard it and um I may have even been crying and I realized in that moment we need to really get on the same page with the Cadence of ordering because I don't want to get like crazy about this I you know and so I've really laid down more criteria for making the inventory purchase the way it needs to be you know and right now we're placing an order I I think that we kind of met in the middle of what I wanted to buy with inventory and what he wanted but I will say things to him like well let's just see if this inventory runs out again you know we're g to how are you going to feel then if we have clients waiting which basically is threatening him not that I would do anything about it but that's the tension because when he's planning inventory he's got it all in Excel spreadsheet he's primarily looking at one cell and that cell is what is the total dollar amount and that dollar amount as we grow gets bigger and bigger and bigger and his comfort level is not growing with that number and that's that we need to work on that you know to have to explain you know we have a line of credit at the bank that's also growing for that very reason it means tap that line of credit instead of buying conservatively and having customers wait so you know if you ask more and you're asking kind of what have been the downsides that's been one area where we really have difficulty and in my worst moments I will say he's preparing for failure and I'm preparing for success and I'll get in this sort of black and white thinking tast take it person personally you know if he thought we were going to go as high as I think we're going to go he would be wanting to buy more but you know it's more of the conservatism and when that cell keeps growing and growing I think for most people who aren't entrepreneurs that would be terrifying so can I ask Liz so um we have gone through that's very very similar um to because we're an inventory based business as well so where it ended up um we reframed it because at the end of the day all of this money trickles down to us right so if the business is profitable that profit is ours right um and that is this business is our single largest personal investment and so we think about this in terms of like we just went through this I'm like look there is an opportunity to buy some closeout merchandise it's going to cost us $75,000 do we want to invest our person do we want to invest $75,000 in inventory that I am confident we can turn over in 60 days and so then we make it it's a personal investment strategy like or do we want to put that 75,000 in the market you know do we want to put it in our 401K do we want to go buy a house what are the options for this $100,000 this $50,000 and you know through these Acquisitions that we've done well it's a similar conversation like we can spend 100 Grand to buy X Y and Z what else could we do with that $100,000 personally to get us towards our retirement goals and then then we just kind of look at it together and we've gotten to a point so it sounds to me like he doesn't trust that you can turn this money into something yeah you know I mean it's if and I don't know how much you're talking about I mean we've gone up to 5 00,000 like it's a risk but are we in it together do we believe that we have the skills do we we believe that we can turn it and then what's the timeline for the investment and then we'll get down to I mean Doug you know has a finance major and worked in finance so you know we throw it into a spreadsheet and we're like okay if we put $500,000 into this here's best case scenario here's worst case scenario and here's how long it will take for us to recover our investment are we better off putting that 500,000 in a mutual fund you know that's going to produce 8% so if we think that investing it in the business will return greater than 8% let's say annually then we put it in the business and then it takes the emotion or at least for us that kind of reframing and thinking about it differently has really changed things I get that the thing that's a little bit different is that I'm not buying inventory in a speculative way this is inventory that for years has always turned so I'm not buying something where like oh let's see if this works yes I did this a couple years ago he probably has reason to believe what we're talking about is basic replenishment it's not even like oh let's see if this works it's more like what is the Cadence of buying this thing that we've proven for years is going to sell out as it has well then it sounds like you have the wrong supply chain manager you have the wrong guy in procurement independent of whether or not he's married to you I mean if he if that was an employee what would you say I mean I I don't know what exactly I mean I I don't want to say I'd fire him but I think that there would be more receptivity of a real employee to my feedback well do you have metrics that you're like hey we need to have this many days of inventory in stock and we just I mean it's just math yeah I think that I need to develop that more with this most recent inventory purchase I said that I have three criteria to say whether the buy is the right amount the first one is would clients still need to wait to get their goods even one week like there's no reason why that's needed with something's going to turn the second one was is our warehouse empty or full like throughout the cycle and the third one is do we ever need to burlow are installers because they have no bins to install those are three things that are metrics that are really easy to see and measure and you know right now we're in a spot where all three of those are bad are are empty clients are waiting you know where house is empty and guys don't have enough work in this next purchase that we have made I do think that we're probably going to recover on those but still maybe not as much as I'd like and when you say is the Warehouse empty or full is are you is that literally the metric like zero or one or do you have you've got something that's a little more specific than that right it's definitely something more in between so like I say right now it's empty like we maybe have 15% but you have a number that you're shooting for so that it's very black and white I like for us we have it's a dollar amount of inventory that we have on hand and we we actually do it based on days of inventory so how many days will it take us to sell through the inventory that we have and we've found a number that we feel very comfortable like holding on to and then the dollar amount can Will shift based on demand um but by just having that number I mean it just again it's it's quantifiable and in terms of do my does my staff have work Define that for me does that mean are they you know at 70% 90% 80% but then that metric it just it becomes very clear those are really good what has stopped you from being more assertive in this situation and and winning this fight so I think with this next round it really has laying laying out these metrics um the other thing is I will involve other team members more in the conversation so we have a salesperson in particular that doesn't like it that all these bins he sold that his clients who he wants to get repeat business from need to always wait so that's someone who without even coaching him I would do you know he's he's kind of taking my side on it like with this next purchase the other thing that I did was I contacted the factory and I said I think that we've made a good siiz purchase now but if we get another couple of big orders and we want to do like a fast follower like literally a month after we placed the first order is that possible I found out it is and that's a good thing because it doesn't mean a fast follower like they're going to throw in the second order with the first and delay the first it actually means the factory is going to turn its lights on twice you know one month and the next month do two separate Productions and ship two separate times that gives it a little bit of a cushion I don't know if that answers your question but I would say like involving other team members and putting out these three criteria is what been doing but then I also sometimes take a sort of perspective of let's see what happens here and maybe he's going to learn his lesson this time which is you know I I probably shouldn't have that attitude but the other thing is we haven't had any like major client major client complaints about waiting because we are still somewhat of a luxury good so if someone orders like really nice outdoor patio furniture the lead time on something like that is often longer than what ours is so it is that sort of a purchase it's not like we're you know selling refrigerators and they need it immediately Jackie are there issues that uh your instincts and Michael's instincts tend to differ on and that keep coming up I wish he was here for this because he would be laughing so hard at how kindly you worded that question so Michael doesn't really get involved in the um decision making around financial matters he he trusts me completely he isn't comfortable in the conversation doesn't have expertise in it neither do I but I'm figuring it out as I go and uh I think that that actually would be a source of contention and a cause of fighting if we had to hash out budgetary discussions so he's out Home and Office just handle it you know I don't care and that has worked really well for us what was a major source of contention early in our relationship now is not a contentious subject in either place same he's just doesn't care he asked me the other day so we've been married 25 years last October so this was maybe January we had gone to um a show in New Orleans at the Sanger like a touring Broadway we're driving home the bridge was closed so a 2-hour Drive took 5 hours we had time to kill and he said uh hey I was just wondering do we have any money saved for our retirement and I said I have so many questions for you right now but I want to answer this properly are you kidding and he said no I was just curious so some people were talking about the other day and I just wondered like do we have a plan and I said I don't know how detailed you want this answer to be but yes and he's like okay I said do you want more information than that he goes no I was like okay oh my God so okay here's what's interesting so I manage all the money for the business right he pays the bills but I manage the profit and loss I manage the spending I manage the budgets um if we have big decisions I'll go to him because he manages the cash I have no idea how much money we have sa for retirement or if we have anything I am laser focused on us getting having a profit at the end of the year and then I have no idea what happens to that money afterwards and I shouldn't say I'm exaggerating I mean I know you know we own a house and I could go look and see how much you know are two houses and see how much you know we owe on them and blah blah blah but we ours is divided he's very very good at the long-term thinking and the investment and all that kind of stuff and so I do I joke with him and I'm just like have you gambled like do we have money or have you gambled it away or you know do you have like three other families that you're supporting and you know every you know every couple years can you show me proof that we have stuff you know so but it's this blind trust he trusts me that I'm managing and that we and I've shown over 20 some years that we make a profit and I trust him completely that he is doing something with the money that we make from the business but Lord do don't you have to have some idea how much money you have and where it is when you're making decisions about buying inventory or buying another business no no because I just trust him I'm like do we have 50,000 bucks you know do we have 75 most 90% of the time in the idea is 95% of the time it comes out of you know the operating the cash flow from the business business itself but every once in a while it'll be like do we want to kick something in like personally we need some extra money or do we want to exercise our line of credit or whatever um but it took a long time for us to get to um like Jackie was saying it took us a long time to figure out what our relationship was and who was handling what and I don't handle it well when he gets a little negative about oh we you know cash is really tight and I'm like I don't need to hear that I don't want to hear that like it it's going to be fine it's going to be fine so he's learned to just you know really suppress his emotions um you know we've learned how to be more passive aggressive in some ways and that just makes things easier um and he's learned to just suck it up and if things are tight he knows and trusts that it's shortterm and that it'll turn out okay and you know we've learned when to raise the red flags and you know when to bring something up and say hey do we have 50,000 we've got a nice cash flow spreadsheet that it took us years to kind of come to terms with when we have you know I need to pay 250,000 to a Mill and four months so I put it in the spreadsheet and you know we've just kind of figured it out do you guys negotiate salaries with your husbands like our own salaries or other people's salaries your own salaries oh I don't know I mean we've just set it at whatever the accountant tells us to set it to and it's been that way for probably 10 years yeah we don't really have much debate we did double our salaries this year which was awesome but we also weren't paying ourselves enough and we just kind of joke about it I think I probably make close to double what he makes it's it's all just coming into the households there's no ego involved with that um Michael doesn't know what we he also doesn't know what any employees make when I say he's out of it I mean he's out of it and similar to what you saying Laura if we have a discussion about money it's not going to go well he is going to be uptight he is going to second guess everything I've done it is going to frustrate him it is going to piss me off so we just don't talk about as long as he's comfortable not being directly involved and I'm comfortable with him not being directly involved it works great for us it works great we realized very very early on that we have very different relationships with money in in our personal lives so when I um met him I owned a house in Los Angeles and had just bought a house moving back to Lafayette I had come from a really good paying corporate job in LA and had a really good paying agency job in Lafayette and he was living in an apartment with that some furniture from his parents from like 30 years ago and it flooded when it rained but it was fine because he just turned on a fan and he took me on our first date and this is actually in our book and said we went to a friend's um wedding celebration and then he said do you want to go to tji Fridays and grab a drink I said sure So we go to tji Friday it was on the way back towards town from where we had been to this event and we sit down and he said would you like a soda well I'm on first date Behavior so I said sure I'll have a d Coke and he never said do you want to drink he never said do you want to order food and so I mean it's a new guy we're getting to know each other I never asked five hours later and a whole lot of free refills I've been to the bathroom like 10 times I haven't eaten I'm starving he drops me off of my house he barely left the driveway I'm in my car I'm heading to Taco Bell I'm hitting the dollar menu I'm ordering all the food because I'm so hungry I find out later that he had taken another girl out three days before I mean like we're engaged when I find this out which is fine this is our first date I didn't care that he had another date 3 days before but he had spent he' been out with a whole group of people they had uh gone to a really f fancy restaurant in uh Baton Rouge steaks and bottles of alcohol and just like his share for the dinner was $250 so when we went out on our date he had $2.85 in his checking account so he picked TGI Fridays and soda because he knew his card wouldn't bounce when he paid so when I learned that story and I mean he you know graduated college with student debt and he had um bought a car for above asking price there's a whole lot and so I'm like okay hold on I appreciate what I need to bring to this relationship so I'm going to lean into this side of my skill set and this will be my domain I've got it he can cook like nobody's business we eat it's wonder I don't weigh 300 pounds we eat so well he has dinner ready at 5:00 it is tasty it is Italian it's from his great-grandmother's recipes back in Sicily and I am happy and he is happy you eat at 5:00 well we had four kids we ate at 5:00 for years what are you 90 yes yes wow yes 5 o' on the dot oh my God I love that oh you just made me so happy we're like 9 p.m. 10 p.m. oh my God I'm in bed at 10: I'm up at 5: like there's no way I should say it used to be I'm in bed by like 9: or 10 but okay so we eat at eight but it used to be like nine or 10 so now we eat at eight five is so much healthier I'm sure Lauren you asked a question about challenges and I I do want to share challenges with you because Michael as a coworker has a very loose relationship with deadlines and so the question that you asked Liz you know was what would you do if it was a regular employee well if an employee had the relationship with deadlines that Michael does they' have been fired within their 90-day review Doug would be fired too for some of his employee Behavior yeah same absolutely yeah but I'm sure I would be fired as well so you know did I mention that I've got Doug Michael and Frank lined up for next week's podcast be so awesome oh just kidding just kidding just kidding Lauren we've talked about this before at some point in the business we had to decide or maybe I had to decide because I'm the gas one whether to choose the business or the marriage and I chose the marriage so there are things that yes I if I had somebody a third party in his role that we would demand differently um and I would ask to be done differently but I'd rather be married and I think you know the the benefits outweigh the costs well I to chime in on that I know for a fact that if either one of us had a different work partner we would not have been as successful in our business because when he says I need to go back to work and take care of something I'm like absolutely go whereas if he was going to someplace where I didn't work great point we have invested because this is the biggest piece of our retirement we do have others if you talk to him later let him know this isn't it all of it but this is the biggest thing you know we built a company that at some point we could retire very comfortably when we sell it or do whatever we're going to do with it and so I love that he has even more work ethic than I do which is a lot and he's even more dedicated to this being successful and so no one would have put the heart and soul and sweat into this like he has yep I feel exactly the same with Frank I mean I have to say since he joined I work less than I used to he works insane hours he doesn't mind doing it you know I don't need to crack the whip on anything that he's like doing himself there are things that drop there are dead deadlines that are missed but sometimes it's hard for me to come down on him because then he he's doing all these other things that I didn't even realize needed to be done because I'm not close enough to operations but you know our skill sets he you know came from oper in planning and he definitely is more handson dayto day and I'm you know he's the implementor and I'm the Visionary using the EOS terms I don't think if I was someone else was in that role I don't know if that working relationship would last because it's kind of the chemistry in how we've been able to do things that has made it what it is and yes it has its flaws but I'm pretty sure that if I was myself working with someone else and had big expectations and they didn't want to work more than 40 hours a week like he works a lot and that's part of the reason why everything for the most part is getting done but yeah I'm really grateful for it and I would say the other thing I'm grateful for is that it's really lonely to be an entrepreneur like before he joined the business there were so many things I was stressed out about that I could kind of talk to him about but he had his own job to think about and so he would try to relate and help us could but now like everything we have in common to talk about anything with the business and that is maybe what the business needs you know for now at least and it definitely it works and I don't feel lonely at all once he joined I lost that feeling of loneliness and for me that's worth a lot that makes sense there's so much Synergy um like you said you can't call your other well I mean I do but I can't call my other integrator on Sunday morning while we're unloading dishes and talk through a problem you know so it's all these little things um that just seem to really add up Laura you mentioned early on that uh you guys are still operating off a a 25 year-old software platform that Doug built for the business you've previously mentioned um on the podcast that he's really the only one who can work with that platform he built it he's the only one who knows it and that he's come to view that as kind of a cage that's kept him trapped in the business even though he's had thoughts about leaving the business have you made any progress with that yeah yeah we're migrating to Shopify this summer I mean we're in the middle of it right now so yeah he's fully on board we're fully on board he broke he broke in about October or November um with having you know just all the maintenance that's required and being lonely and being the only one that really can make updates and make changes so yeah we're on a great path you had concerns about making the uh the switch I think you hesitated to do it for a long time what what what kept you from doing it sooner he just wasn't ready you know he needed to be fully and this is you pick marriage before you pick the business you know so yeah I mean we I had to wait for him to be fully on board and for him to be ready to make the switch and and he was ready this fall and so that's when we did it and it's going well so far I mean we're just you know we're in development phase so yeah I mean it seems fine is that one of those big Investments is it costing you a lot of money you know it's not as much as we thought it was as I thought it was going to be but there are going to be we're going to need to hire more people obviously to maintain it um it's going to be ugly you know this summer it'll take about a year um so you know but the outof pocket cost the direct out-of-pocket cash um wasn't nearly as much as I expected it was about half of what I thought but it will definitely cost us in other ways can you give us a hint of how much it was going to cost yeah um between 50 and 100 and is the goal for Doug to be able to leave the business you know yeah I mean eventually yes yes it is and the goal is for other people to be able to manage this stuff but yeah it's the goal is for him to do what makes him happy and to be creative instead of having to do maintenance all the time I have a question actually yes please so I know for a lot of us we've done like vistage or EO so we have a peer group that we've created and for me that's been really important do you with your spouses require them to have some sort of an external peer group you know or or or professional development or something that's outside of the daytoday that gets them focused externally for a little while I would say for me and this is just based on our relationship if I were to require him to do anything we would be divorced um you know we are both very independent rebellious you know don't like people telling us what to do so and that goes back to that kind of P passive aggressive like I don't tell him what to do ever no yeah we just that's not our relationship um I trust him he's got to find his own way he's got to figure it out and that means you know like a kid that sometimes we're going to slow down or sometimes he's not at the same Pace that I am or whatever and that's the kind of forgiveness and we recognize that it's a partnership you know I mean I can make suggestions and stuff but I'm not going to force him to do anything and I don't know that I would force any of my employees to do something I mean I'd suggest it and if they if they're not into it because if they're not into it they're not going to get value out of it yeah absolutely I did know what Laura said I um everything I do I think would I request this of a coworker or somebody else on the team am I saying this just because it's him what would my expectation be so I'm always doing a gut check on that and require oh my gosh if I even he thought I was sending him out and to quote unquote teach him a lesson that's going to piss him off there's a lot of balance there that has to happen but I I will say that he has been egoless yes in me being the face of the company and me attending all those things and me getting the awards and accolades and he really to his credit uh because I think there's a lot of men who would not be nearly as comfortable as Michael has been I got him to finally leave the house and the office and go out into the world and do his first thing which is 21 hats in Fort Worth that is legit the first time he's ever done anything like that that's so funny it's the same with Doug like I'll go to conferences and people are like does he really exist you you know like I keep hearing about this mythical guy but he has no interest he's like yeah none well for us it was even more so because you know husband and wives at agent that's not rare you know there's a lot of that and a bunch of the ones that Michael was familiar with were very small twers operations and we were building an agency like we were clear of that once we kind of got going like okay this is going to be a thing and so he didn't want it to ever feel like it was um husband and wife working out of the garage of their house kind of a deal so he had a rule for the first I'm going to say 20 years that whoever introduced thems first in the meeting was allowed to use the last name and the other person could only use their first name H so when we walked into the bank board for a meeting with the board of directors to present the campaign for the year if one of us said hi Michael Russo the next one said hi I'm Jackie because he didn't want somebody to say wait are y'all related are y'all married are y'all whatever we had clients for years that had no idea we knew each other outside of work oh interesting and when we did introductions and I would say you know I have four kids and then he would say I have four kids no one knew it was the same four kids which is ridiculous now but I got it at the time it was very important to him that we not look less than I may complain but I wouldn't do it any other way I wouldn't I mean I think it's really great for our family too my daughter she gets to be involved a bit in the business you know we get to travel together with work related stuff we went to China in December it's really good but it definitely has its tension and most people cannot believe that spouses can work together like they're incredulous so the fact that we've done it for four years and we're still very happily married and happy at work is I don't want to say it's a miracle I think it's it's really wonderful yeah it is really wonderful but a lot of adjustments needed to be made and if I had to pick a different coo I I wouldn't pick I would always want him to be there because he does most of his job really well I love it all right my thanks to Liz picarazzi Jackie Russo and Laura Xander and to our sponsor the great game of business which helps businesses use an open book management system to build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's l l o r n at21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think he can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess thubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone hey [Music]