It’s time to talk about relationships and building a business empire with your significant other. In this article, I’ll share everything I’ve learned to run a successful business with my partner generating over six figures.

First, let me introduce myself and my partner. I’m Becca Luna, a web designer, and educator. I’ve been working alongside my husband, Willow Kaii, since 2016, when we started our digital nomad life. Since then, we launched our passive income template show, Bold x Boho, and started teaching other creatives how to build successful careers online.

There’s a stigma against building a business with your partner, and I’m not really sure why. Sure, there are downsides to it, but as long as you have a healthy relationship, the business side of things is pretty simple.

If you want to listen hear some additional content on running a business with your partner, check out our podcast, The Wealthy Web Designer, or listen below. ALSO, check out the rest of my blog for killer business and web design tips!

The Importance of Brand Photo + BTS of my Upcoming Shoot in NYC – Wealthy Web Designer

Join us this week as we sit down with Lo, our creative director, for an insightful discussion on the importance of brand photography for your business. And we will give you a sneak peek behind the scenes of our recent shoot in NYC (and we spill all the secrets and details of the shoot). Tune in for exclusive insights and behind-the-lens stories you won't want to miss!    P.S. If you have not booked a brand shoot yet, this will inspire you to get started!   Become a Wealthy Web Designer for 25% off | Use code: WWDPODCAST Start for FREE → Creative Career Course Get social with Becca Luna & Willow Kai: IG: FOLLOW BECCA LUNA ON INSTAGRAM FOLLOW WILLOW KAI ON INSTAGRAM   TIKTOK: FOLLOW BECCA LUNA ON TIKTOK FOLLOW WILLOW KAI ON TIKTOK Youtube: SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on iTunes, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave a review on iTunes. Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!

1. The Importance of Brand Photo + BTS of my Upcoming Shoot in NYC 41:58
2. Real Story: My Student Quit Her Job and Makes $10k a Month as a Web Designer 29:41
3. Real Story: Navigating Motherhood While Scaling to $15k Months With Web Design 45:01
4. How To Go Viral On Social Media 38:15
5. Becca Luna Courses: Are they worth it? 24:35

When Should You Build a Business With Your Partner?

It can be tough to know when you’re ready to build a business with your partner. In my opinion and experience, a lot of that depends on the nature and health of your relationship. To help you better understand, here’s our story of building a business together:

I learned about the online space in early 2016 before Willow. I started as a virtual assistant and quit my waitressing job as soon as it was financially possible. In simple, I paved the way for our business—the doors opened for me.

But I never wanted it to just be me. It felt unfair to Willow, being stuck in a job that didn’t offer him any flexibility or freedom—all while I had the ability to work completely remotely.

For some more detail, Willow was working at a marketing agency. Sure, he was learning a ton, but he also had a nagging boss from 8:00 am until 7:00 pm every day of the week. On the other hand, I was working half the time, with way less pressure, and with clients who gave me so much praise.

So, we knew we needed to start a business together. We both planned on staying in our relationship long-term and knew from past experience that we collaborated, communicated, and overall just worked well together.

Learn more about what we think about working together here.

How To Transition From Couple to Business Partners

Before we get into the next step in our story, here are a couple of tips to ensure the transition to starting a business is smooth for your relationship:

• Plan, Plan, Plan: You might think that it’s obvious, but it’s not. Trust me; you want to plan every step of your business plan, goal, and strategy before jumping in with both feet. If that means hiring a business consultant to help, do it. If it means working every weekend on your content strategy, do it. Whatever the planning looks like for you, do it.
• Implement Systems For Communication: I’ll just say it. If you’re starting a business with your spouse, there’s bound to be a conflict eventually. From day one, determine what your boundaries are in terms of time spent on your business, money invested, and communication regarding your differences.
• Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: Each person has their own unique strengths and weaknesses. For example, Willow is a lot better at creating a marketing and content strategy than me, and I’m better at the creative parts of the process. Try to leverage that so everybody can bring their best to your business.

Our Transition To Running Our Business Together

Willow went into the agency world because he knew he wanted to get into marketing. Even though his end goal wasn’t working at an agency, he knew that the experience would be worth it. For a while, he was happy working corporate—just showing up, learning, and finishing his work. But, he quickly got tired of the day-to-day grind. He wanted flexibility, more freedom, and to be able to manage himself.

So, in August 2019, I launched Bold x Boho, and Willow left his agency. For about three weeks before the launch, I was working from 9:00 am to 2:00 am 6 days a week. It was a grind. At the end of the tunnel, though, there was a light of passive income, financial freedom, and complete control over our lives. It was the thing we had always dreamt of.

Willow and I had a huge launch on Pinterest when we released Bold x Boho. Lucky for it, it did more than we ever thought it would. The conversations lined up in just a way where Willow could put in his 2-week notice.

To make the decision to leave his job, we sat down and did the math. Willow was making $25 an hour at the agency, working 40 hours a week. In total, he was making $4k a month before taxes. All that meant was we needed to sell eight of our $500 Bold x Boho templates per month.

How Does Running a Business Change a Relationship?

Once you start a business with your spouse, your lives will be completely entwined. Here’s what we’ve noticed:

• Separation of Personal and Professional Lives: Prior to starting a business, there was an easier separation between work and home. Willow could turn off his computer and be done with work. With our own business, the line between personal and professional can get a bit blurry. That’s why setting boundaries is so important. That and, we’re always talking about personal design preferences.
• Your Partners Expectations: It took me a little bit of getting used to working with Willow. In all honestly, he takes more breaks than me. But, after some time, we’ve managed to blend our working styles to foster a healthy work environment for both of us.
• Your Friends & Family Might Not Understand: Willow and I have both experienced this firsthand. We have plenty of family members that just don’t get what we do or how we make money. No matter how much success we have, they seem to think of our business as a “small passion project.” So, even though your family might not understand, it’s nice to have a partner who can be 100% with you when talking about your business.

The Benefits of Working With Your Partner

Here are the top four benefits when you run a successful business with your partner:

1. Flexibility: We get to make our own schedules completely. When we plan trips, we have the same amount of flexibility. We can take a weekday off to go to the beach or work a weekend if we have extra work to do. It’s nice to make your own schedule.
2. Alignment: We’ve had our minds opened to the possibilities we can make happen for ourselves. So, when one of us talks about a big thing to launch, there’s no resistance or scarcity mindset from the other person. We believe in each other and in the same dream. Our big goals and our future are synchronized.
3. Accountability: 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 achieve 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.
4. Connection: 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. If anything, I feel our relationship has gotten closer because of our business.

The Drawbacks of Running a Business With Your Partner

From our experience, the pros of running a successful business with your partner outweigh the cons. However, the drawbacks still exist. Here are the top four:

1. Hard To Shut Off: Since we are so involved in our business and work super hard, it can be too much sometimes. We have a really hard time shutting off. We try to use this to our advantage, but it’s hard to relax. I hired a naturopath who basically said we are looking at our business all wrong. She said no phones in bed and no talk about work after 5:00 pm…
2. Together ALL the Time: We’re together all-the-freaking time. We started in a 550-square-foot apartment. Willow’s desk was weather-proofed on the patio to take coaching calls. We transformed the bedroom into my office by moving the bed to the living room. It was tough.
3. Lack of a Social Life: It’s easy to 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 gets in the way of our goals. This, again, is a pro and a con, but overall mostly a con.
4. Screen Time: We’re on our phones and computers all the time. The screen time is tough, but even before being an online business owner, this was a struggle for us. Now, screen time is fully intertwined with our business.

 Want to learn more about how we run our business together?

Check out my Wealthy Web Designer Course, where I take you through exactly how Willow and I built our web design business. With over 500 students, this is easily the best course on how you can build your creative empire in 2023.