Tips for Working With Your Spouse - Happy 7 Year Working Anniversary!
January is always a month that creeps up on us. Every year I almost forget a very special anniversary that happens for us this time of year. January marks our 11 year dating anniversary (almost six years married) and 7 years of running our business together. To find out how we started and launched our photography and videography business click the link here to read our full story!
I think almost any couple who works together for a lengthy period of time will eventually get asked by other couples if they actually enjoy working together. We 100% love working together! We haven’t really known anything different either. Most of our dating was long distance so getting to spend extra time together was always felt like a blessing. During our summers in college, we worked at a camp near Santa Cruz which is where we quickly learned how we could make a great team.
Looking back on these last seven years of being entrepreneurs, we’ve learned some very valuable lessons. Lessons that would take pages and pages to share on the blog, so we narrowed it down to three key tips that have been incredibly helpful to us in our husband and wife entrepreneur venture. We hope you enjoy!
Define Your Roles - Stephen has his unique strengths and I have my own. Defining who does what in your business (and marriage) is so important from the start. This is something we had to learn the hard way over time. Early on in our business, Stephen did most of the emails and admin work. After a few years in business, we quickly learned that most of that responsibility needed to be given to me. I thrive in organization, tasks management, creating checklists and sticking to them. After processing through my hesitation I learned that fear was the reason for holding me back in this. I’ve struggled with dyslexia and grammar in the past and was afraid I would spell things wrong or my message would get mixed up in emails to clients. After talking things over with our business coach, I knew I needed to push through the fear and take this responsibility head on. It ended up being my strength and Stephen was freed up to do other tasks that were his strength.
Outsource Your Weaknesses - We see so many entrepenuaers struggling to outsource. This is something that I had to gradually learn to do in our business but now is totally paying off. Stephen was on board from the beginning but it took me a while to see the value. Thankfully we started outsourcing simple tasks early on so I was already in the habit when it came to make bigger decisions about hiring people on a more permanent basis. I know our business wouldn’t have been able to grow if we didn’t’ learn to let go of control and pay others to help. This has allowed us to focus on what we love doing, while having a life and preparing for running our business while having a family. We’ve outsourced so many things over the years. Things like editing, graphic design, writing, house cleaning, blog submission, Pinterest, social media management, taxes, accounting, bookeeping… and hopefully the list will be growing soon. I’ve heard people say before, “no one can ______ as good as I can” or “I’ve tried finding someone but no one fits”. To push past these mental barriers as a creative entrepreneur you need to do two things. 1.) Learn to release control so you can experience more freedom, and 2.) learn how to put into words what you need done. We’ve learned that if someone isn’t doing the task up to our standards, its’s because WE haven’t done a good enough job explaining how it’s done, or giving feedback. It’s our job to show people what we want and we need to learn how to communicate that effectively!
Create Passive Income - As entrepreneurs, we are always looking for a new opportunities to increase our revenue streams. I know Stephen and I will ever work a traditional 9-5 job because of that. As much as we love being wedding photographers and videographers, I don’t think when I’m 55 years old I’ll still want to be carrying around heavy equipement shooting weddings every weekend. Entrepreneurs need to have an exit strategy. Don’t worry, this isn’t happening anytime soon but it’s important to plan for the future financially. One of our favorite ways we’ve created extra passive income is building e-commerce brands and selling products passively through Amazon. We’ve had a lot of success in this realm and the best part is it runs itself in the background so it doesn’t take away from our main business of TréCreative. Last year we created an online course and coaching program that teaches others how to follow the steps we took to go from nothing to generating daily passive income online through Amazon. It’s been so fun to see other entrepreneurs walk through our course and experience the same financial freedom. If you’re interested in starting a passive income business, start with these 10 steps to see if Rainmakers Academy is a good fit. We love TréCreative, and the people we get to serve using our creativity. Having additional sources of income that aren’t tied to our “time” has allowed us to continue to grow TréCreative while not getting burnt out creatively.