It’s time to talk about relationships and building a business empire with your significant other.

There’s a stigma against building a business with your partner, and I’m not really sure why. It was Willow’s and my dream to do this. I learned about the online space before Willow, and I quit my job before him too. I paved the way for our business. The doors opened for me, and I couldn’t imagine it any other way. I never wanted it to just be me while he was still working a shitty job that he hated. We have friends who work normal, corporate jobs, and I honestly wonder when they see their significant other during the day. We get to spend so much time together running our business. It’s been the dream, especially pre-COVID when we could travel all the time. We wanted the freedom and the ability to travel. Why would you not want to do that with your partner? Nothing is ever perfect, so I want to get real about expectations and share what it really looks like to be in business together.

We legit share clients so we are intertwined to the full max. We probably work more because of this. I’d imagine we would talk way less about business and work less if we weren’t 100% in this together.

 

Willow, when did you realize that you wanted to go online to build your own business and that you wanted it to be really involved with me?

I saw those two things hand-in-hand. I saw the freedom. Anything was possible for you. I was working for a marketing agency and learning a ton at the time. But, I also had a nagging boss from 8:00am until 7:00pm every day of the week, all the time. I was remote so I was teased with what it was like to work in the online space. I worked on my computer from wherever I was, but I better be available all the time, right when my boss needed me. I saw Becca not having that pressure at all. She had clients who gave her so much praise. I wanted that, and I wanted to do it with her.

 

When I knew I wanted to work together:

I always knew it from the beginning because it would be fun and we could travel. I thought Willow would have that same freedom when he got that remote marketing job. I was building something that I was so passionate about and was so happy doing. I loved how I spent my days, and my clients were amazing. I saw how miserable Willow was. He was really unhappy working for them. He didn’t feel appreciated or valued. I knew – because I was already doing it – that it was possible for him to be more fulfilled in his work. Willow would spend more hours of his day working than I did. He was being under-paid, under-valued, and wasn’t as happy in his work as I was in mine. I spent so much time listening to him complain. This had to stop because we needed to be on the same page.

 

Willow, what was the transition like?

I went into the agency world because I knew I wanted to get into marketing. I had a lot to learn, and getting into it would be the best way to learn. I knew it wasn’t my end goal to work for a marketing agency, though. It was where I was going to learn a ton, and then leave and join Becca. I didn’t know I wanted to be my own boss. I thought I liked the idea of working for someone else who had the ideas if I could still enjoy what I was doing. It took me a long time to get the confidence to do it for myself and feel like I was capable. There was a long time when I liked the idea of being an employee and being paid to, in a way, just show up.

 

We were in San Francisco for a while. In August of 2019, Becca had been dreaming up Bold x Boho and putting in so much work. Then, for the last 3 weeks leading up to the launch, I knew there was an end in sight. I was helping Becca with little things to create Bold x Boho. She was working from probably 9:00am to 2:00am 6-days-a-week. It was a grind. At the end of the tunnel though, there was a light of passive income. It was the thing we had always dreamt of. For this 3-week period, we were probably putting in 70-80 hours per week. I was still working my full-time hours at the marketing agency and helping Becca all night.

 

It only took me 3 weeks to leave my job after Bold x Boho launched. We had a huge launch on Pinterest, and it did more than we thought it was going to. It was just the time. The conversations aligned for me to put in my notice. Doing the math helped give me the confidence to leave the marketing agency. I was making $25/hour at the agency working 40 hours/week which is $4,000/month. That meant I needed to sell 8 of our $500 Bold x Boho templates per month. So doable. I knew that what I was able to do on social media would easily sell 8 if not 10, 20, or 30. Debuting our brand on Pinterest, we sold about 20 or 25 in the first couple of days organically. I saw that and felt like, “I’ve got this in the bag.”

 

This also helped me to see that Pinterest was a strength of mine to build my own business. I was doing it for brands at the agency. I realized so quickly that what Pinterest held for businesses of any size was being so slept on.

 

Willow, what changed in our relationship once you quit your job and starting working with Bold x Boho?

Prior to that, there was an easier separation between work and home. I could turn of Slack and turn off my computer and be done. It took me a little bit of getting used to with Becca literally being on 24/7 and being so all-in on the business all the time. She never takes breaks. But, now I’ve been doing the same. I’m in the business all day, and I can’t imagine it any other way. It gives such a sense of fulfillment, and we get to experience that fulfillment together.

 

One of my favorite things about being in business together:

I have friends and family that legit don’t understand what Willow and I do. The big wins we have in our business aren’t as celebrated. They’ll be like, “Okay, cool. Congrats, but I don’t know what that means.” But with me and Willow, when something happens it’s such a bigger celebratory thing. We know what it means. It’s a blissful state of being able to talk through problems, clients, and wins together. It’s beautiful.

 

The good things about working together:

1. We get to make our own schedules completely. When we plan trips, we have the same amount of flexibility.
2. When one of us gets sick or is having a bad day or a bad week, it’s easier for one of us to step away from the business. Looking forward to times when we’ll be having kids, having that flexibility to step up when one person needs to step back will be huge.
3. Because we’ve had our minds opened to the possibilities and endless shit we can make happen for ourselves, when one of us talks about a big thing to launch, there’s no resistance or scarcity mindset. We believe in each other and in the same dream. Our big goals and our future are synchronized.
4. We have a mutual understanding of what’s possible. When one of us wants to launch something new or create a new goal in life. We both share the mindset that it’s possible. When one person works in the online space and the other doesn’t, it’s so hard for that outside person to understand what’s possible.
5. We hold each other accountable and push each other. Since we are in it together, we can push each other and hold each other accountable to get to those goals. The ideas are always flowing, and the accountability never turns off. We have really high expectations for ourselves so we also have high expectations for each other.
6. We have a deep connection because we know what’s going on in each other’s lives at all times. If I were to talk to someone else about things like freebies, lead magnets, and all this stuff, they wouldn’t know what we were talking about.

 

The challenges of working together:

1. We push each other so hard, and we work so hard. Because we are so in it and involved, it can be too much sometimes. We have a really hard time shutting off. We try to use this to our advantage, though. We are really putting our heads down and trying to make shit happen for ourselves right now. So, the pro of it outweighs the negative for us, but it is a negative. It’s a real thing that you can work on, and we’re working on it. I hired a naturopath who basically said we are doing it all wrong. She said no phones in the bed and no talk about work after 5:00… We’ve established a routine in our relationship and business that would make those shifts really hard for us. We are always in bed after 5:00 closing clients.
2. We’re together all the freaking time. It’s tough combined with COVID too. I’m sure everyone is feeling that kind of the same way if they started working remotely due to COVID. We started in a 550 square-foot apartment. Willow’s desk was weather-proofed out on the patio to take coaching calls outside. We made it a studio by putting our bed in the living room so the bedroom could be my office. It was a shit-show. But now, our house is over 3,200 square-feet, and the space has helped us a lot. However, we still gravitate towards each other during the day even in this new, bigger space.
3. We can isolate ourselves because we are so ride or die for our business. We are both really quick to cut things out of our lives if it might get in the way of our business goals. This, again, is a pro and a con. We are cutting out the noise and the things that don’t serve us to our next level. I think a coach would advocate for this, but it also can be really isolating.
4. We’re on our phones all the time. The screen time is tough, but even before being an online business owner this was a struggle. Now, screen time is fully intertwined with our business.

 

Willow, do you think this dynamic would be for everyone?

No. Becca and I were together for 6 years prior to going into business together. The boundaries, communication, being able to work through problems were dialed in. We were at a point in our relationship where there wasn’t any real fighting. There was no toxic shit. We had worked through that already. We had worked through the big hurdles of being in a relationship.

 

When we started working together, I saw it as one of those make-it-or-break-it moments. If we could make being in business together work, then, holy shit, we can make anything work. Then, we fucking did.

 

What can you take away from this right now?

The inspiring life that you can create by being in business with your significant other makes all the cons seem so miniscule. If you have been thinking about going into business with your significant other and you can work it out, then it’s worth it.