115: Move Past the Roadblock of Getting Your Partner’s Approval for Your Business

Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross. Each week, I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello, my friends and welcome back to the podcast. This is the first podcast that I am recording in 2023. The ones you listen to in January I recorded ahead of time before I took a little break over the holidays and now I'm back and so I am doing a little bit of batch recording today. I am not in my usual spot. I'm actually sitting in a very unusual spot. I am in my daughter's room surrounded by taped-up wardrobe boxes. She has vacated her room. She is back at school and we are kind of using her room as a holding ground for moving boxes.

Yes, we are going to be in this process pretty much for the next seven months as we finish our new house and live in some temporary housing, move out of this house. So much fun. Today's topic is something that I've wanted to talk about on the podcast for a while but I just couldn't figure out how to frame it. Over the holidays, I started following a guy by the name of Peter Shallard. He says he is The Shrink for Entrepreneurs, which I found an interesting title.

The way he describes what we're going to talk about today, I think, is really impactful. I think it's a great way for me to frame it for you. I really related to how he talked about this and I hope this also is relatable to you. Let's just dig in. We talk about the difficulty of achieving more wealth, more freedom, but keeping everything all together. How do you make more money? How do you not feel super tied to your business and have some freedom? How do you keep your sanity? If you can do that, then you've kind of hit the jackpot, the trifecta of entrepreneurial success.

But really there is another ingredient I think in this recipe and that is love. Love needs to be put into the secret sauce of entrepreneurial happiness. Sometimes I talk about love. What if love were a person? What decision would love make? But here's something that impacts our businesses: the loving relationships that we are in. Now, I'll get the bad news over with first. The bad news is that the most common relationship dynamic is really destructive when it comes to business goals

The people that love you don't want to see you do hard things, they don't want to see you go through the process. They're happy to celebrate with you afterwards but they don't want to see you go through the process for lots of reasons. One, it might affect them a little bit along the way but they don't like to see you suffering, and they love you. As Peter Shallard said, “The insanity, poverty and captivity experienced by business owners as they work their butts off trying to achieve success is not exactly conducive to a fantastic home life.”

I think this really drives a lot of my clients to me, they feel like they're not living a balanced life and they feel like their business is out of control, but yet they still have that desire to make money, to run it, and to serve their clients. But they feel like things are falling apart at home, or vice versa.

If you own a business, I'm sure that you can agree that there are times when you can admit because I'll admit this, there are times when I might act a little insane to the outside world. That's the sanity piece. I might be making some crazy decisions or what other people might think are crazy decisions.

There's also though money and I am definitely spending a lot of the money I am making in order to make more money, which again, people think business owner, especially coaching they're like, “What's your overhead?” You would be extremely surprised at what my overhead is. I'm sure your jaw would drop. Maybe I should do an episode on that.

Then there's the captivity piece. So there's the sanity piece. There's the wealth piece, and now here's the captivity piece. I am 100% held captive by my business. I mean, I love it. I think about it all the time because it's something I'm passionate about. It's something that I love, and I am driven by why I do this. This is one of those double bad situations. Entrepreneurs tend to be not so great at relationships and relationships tend to be bad news for entrepreneurs.

Now, you're going to tell me how supportive your spouse or partner is. I am sure they are very, very supportive. With Valentine's Day coming up, I'm sure you're thinking about how much you love them. But before you tell me how supportive they are, I want to tell you a little bit about my take on this that I kind of found through Peter. I've been doing a lot of research on the topic. Here's why. This played itself out last week perfectly. I have a great example for you.

I have a client, a past client actually who wants to come back to coaching because she is starting a business and she actually attended the Get a Grip masterclass when I did it in December. After that, she's like, “Okay, Andrea, I'm in for coaching.” I sent her all the agreements, just kind of like the one-page agreement, we had a conversation about it, sent her the agreement, she's like, “Yes, I'm in. I’m signing this and sending it back.”

After a week or two, I didn't see it back. I reached out to her and said, “What's going on?” She said, “Well, I'm super embarrassed to tell you this. But I'm not in.” “You're not in.” She said, “We decided,” we meaning her and her husband, “that right now, because the business is just getting off the ground, I really shouldn't be spending this money on coaching. We're thinking about our money right now as our money. I'm not thinking about it as money that goes into the business.”

I sent her back a little video. I said, “Listen, here's what I found. What I've found is that women who start businesses, and who don't create a separate business account start to fail very quickly.” Because there is an overarching guilt about spending money because they haven't made tons of money yet. They are still thinking of everything as ours. Now, everything is ours. But if she's going to be successful, she has to think that the money she's spending for coaching is a business expense because that's exactly what it is.

She is learning how to better be a business owner and run her business. That is a business expense. That does not come from the family pot of money or the vacation fund to go to Disney World. I said to her, “Why are you thinking about it this way? You're doing yourself a huge disservice. It's time to get creative. How can you start this business with not so much in the bank, but yet wanting to learn and grasp everything you can to take in knowledge?”

I told her the story of how I started with a zero-interest credit card, and I paid it off before the interest kicked in. That was actually a huge motivation. I put coaching on there. I put developing a website on there. I put all the things on there. This is not you and your husband, this is you. This is your business and you have to start making decisions as if you were a business owner. He actually probably shouldn't be involved in the decisions because it's not his business. He's not doing the work.

Then I send it. I'm telling you this because I love you. The women I know that don't have separate business accounts or run their finances all through their personal account, they never ever succeed. Ever. I haven't found one. The women who separated out and really treat this as like, “Let's go,” they succeed. This is a perfect episode for me to prepare for having that experience happened. Guess what? She came back and said, “I'm in, your right, I'm in.”

Here is why I told her that. Entrepreneurs need to be risk-takers. Risk is inherent in being an entrepreneur. The word risk actually is even inherent when we write SMARTER goals. Because as an entrepreneur, like pretty much everything in life, but definitely in entrepreneurism, you have to be willing to take risks. Even when my clients get to a place where their businesses are worth millions, and I do have clients where their businesses are worth millions and making millions, they still are taking risks.

Those who are really willing to risk everything to achieve something meaningful are the most successful. They're kind of bootstrappers who do whatever it takes to succeed. Entrepreneurs who go all in however tend to fail spectacularly. I have a few podcast episodes about failing that I will link in the show notes because I am 100% into failing.

But here's what happens when we fail, when we get zapped, or we don't get the result we want, we learn massively. Sometimes I talk about massive action. This is massive learning, and we never ever make that mistake again. Because of that going all in, possibly failing, they start to win the next time. It turns out that entrepreneurs who win big in business actually do have a track record of massive failures. All evidence points to the fact that a few big failures are mandatory for big success.

Just look at Apple. They have introduced products that just never ever took off or didn't take off like they wanted them to and certainly didn't stick around. Do they still even make that little iPod Shuffle anymore? It was great for a while but it wasn't a huge success in the long run. The iPhone certainly was. The iPad certainly was but that little Shuffle, not so much. The sting of a huge failure or even the possibility of failure and loss is not only a learning moment, it's really often what energizes and forces an entrepreneur to stop, [bleep] around, and get serious about their success.

Even that conversation my client had, that was a big fail because she was all in until she had the conversation with her husband, which was a fail. Then from it, she learned and she's in and ready for massive success. She's really ready to get serious. Almost every successful business owner, if you ask them, they can recall a specific day in their life where they said to themselves, “Enough, it's time to make things happen.”

When someone gets on a consult call with me, 99% of the time, that's where they're at: “It's time to make things happen,” but they're also in a relationship. Here's where the two things are connected: being a business owner and being in a relationship. They're connected because they impact each other and there is love mixed into both.

I'm going to share with you the two ways relationships prevent entrepreneurs from experiencing the empowering and educating failures that they need. I'm sharing with you two ways relationships prevent entrepreneurs experiencing the empowering and educating failures they need. Here is relationship way number one. Peter Shallard calls this cushion relationships.

A lot of my clients have partners with comfortable salaries I’ll call it, and as a family, they could scrape by on one income if worse came to worse. If the entrepreneurial partner's business failed, they would not all be living in a van down by the river. That's one of my famous sayings: “Are you envisioning living in a van down by the river?”

If this is you, and you've got one partner that's got a comfortable salary, and what the money that you are making, yes, is contributing, but if it wasn't all there, you would not be living in a van down by the river, if this is you, then there's a big chance you're living in a risk bubble. You are insulated from the real cost of your decisions because someone has your back.

The real cost, you are insulated. The mental cost, maybe not so much. But the real cost, you're in that risk bubble, you are insulated from it. Who's going to be more successful in your opinion: the newbie entrepreneur with a lawyer husband on a six-figure salary, or the newbie entrepreneur, with nothing and no one? Ironically, psychology, and if you read any business leader's autobiography from what they have to say, confirm that that second person, the latter will go on to be the rock star and hit the home run out of the park.

The one that's got no one or nothing. That's the one that's going to be successful. If you're in a cushion relationship, then it's likely that you're being robbed of the fiery motivational drive to get your venture off the ground. If you are still motivated and taking risks, then my friends, your friends might think you're crazy or not be able to relate to you like you've gone insane. “Why are you doing this?” they might ask, but that's for a different episode.

If you're being robbed of your fiery motivational drive, I have a simple solution—remember, I love things that are simple, doable, and fun—to escape the paralysis of this cushion relationship, you simply need to do that which you fear the most. You need to think bigger. You need to take bigger risks and build something with the momentum that takes you way, way, way out of your comfort zone, both psychologically and financially.

That think bigger actually, part of that is in the title of my book that will be coming out at the end of this year. This is exactly why you've got to think bigger. To build a business that could or will earn more than your partner's income, you need to think bigger. Build a business that intelligently risks more than your partner can afford to bail you out of and make it work. This is going to scare the “you know what” out of you and you will wake up every morning knowing that every action you take in the day matters enormously.

In other words, you're going to start to feel like an entrepreneur. Because remember, being an entrepreneur is just a journey in personal development disguised as an entrepreneurial adventure. I'll tell you, my relationship is somewhat of a cushion relationship, or was, and I still remember the moment when it hit me. We were sitting outside by the fire pit and I told my husband how much I wanted to invest in my business in coaching. This was the first time I invested in Stacey Boehman's 200k Mastermind and the investment was $25,000.

He thought I was crazy. I said, “Listen, if I invest $25,000 and I make $400,ooo, would that investment have been worth it to you? Or what do you think?” When I put it like that and he's like, “$400,000?” “Yeah,” then he said, “Alright, go for it. Take the risk.” Because it was a risk. Guess what, I did make $400,000. I did invest $25,000 actually twice with her and I invest more than that now in my own coaching this year.

But cushion relationship, if my business failed, we would not be living in a van down by the river. But if my business succeeds, and I can make that kind of money, then hey, all in. But I had to be all in. I had to be willing to take the risk and to do it regardless of what he said. I had to think bigger, and I had to think that eventually, I will be making more than he will because his income is somewhat capped. That isn't a very exciting thought to me.

What if you're not in a cushion relationship? The other common or even worse relationship dynamic for entrepreneurs is what Peter calls pillar relationships. The first one was cushion relationships and this is pillar relationships. They're kind of the opposite of cushion because you, the business owner, are supposed to be the cushion. Your partner is leaning on you and/or you lean on each other. Either the partner is leaning on you or you are leaning on each other for finances and well-being.

If you've been working a comfortable job for years in the corporate world, or your business is just fine and it produces a steady income, it's just clicking along, is your partner going to be okay for you to risk everything to have a shot at taking your business to that next level? Pillar relationships really happen when your partner grows kind of complacent, relying on your money-making abilities, and doesn't share your goal for freedom and wealth.

But this is where all my clients sometimes say, “Yeah, but things are okay. We should be grateful for what we have.” But I always say, “But what if you had more? Meaning more time, because your business will start to run on its own, and more money?”

“Why start a business,” people say, “when you could have a well-paid corporate position? Or why push it and hire more people in your business with the belief that you will have work for them, when in fact you have plenty of work for the people you have now? Why take the risk of hiring someone believing that the work will come if you hire additional help because it will take some responsibilities off you and then you'll be able to drive more business? Why would we do that? Because that's a risk and everything is okay right now.”

I've seen pillar relationships where the entrepreneur was only allowed to go full time in on their business if they could guarantee a salary that matched their old job no matter what. This, my friends, I really believe is kind of the fast track to insanity. The kind that kills you. Because when an entrepreneur is under pressure to achieve their goals, to keep their contractors or employees and customers and clients happy and stay in business all while keeping a partner in the lifestyle they're comfortable with, something's going to pop. Something's going to explode, but not in a good way.

Now don't get me wrong. I think pressure is good. Pressure is motivating and a bit of initial scrambling as you start up I think is hugely positive, even if it's only positive in the hindsight. However, there's such a thing as too much pressure. In a pillar relationship, what's happening, whether it's said out loud or not, is that the business owner, the entrepreneur isn't free to fail, and they're not free to learn. That's exactly what was happening with my client last week when she was making this decision about coaching, she wasn't free to learn.

When a spouse makes the cost of learning too high, an entrepreneur is going to go crazy trying to avoid that learning experience and make do with what they have, DIY it to death, or not seek support, guidance, or the coaching they need. A pillar relationship is one where the partner isn't willing to take the hit of a learning experience. It's a relationship where there's kind of an undercurrent of threat at all times.

What's the solution to this insidious relationship? Unfortunately, the solution is unavailable for some because really the partner has to be willing to utterly embrace the most cliched vow in existence, for better or for worse. In the movies, it seems like this is an easy cliche. Don't they always stay together for better or for worse? But it is kind of impossible in real life to maintain both a successful business and a relationship when this vow for better or for worse is missing.

If you're listening and you're thinking, “This is the kind of relationship I'm in,” for you to really flourish, your partner needs to understand that total failure is an option. In fact, if you're completely new to the self-employed business, some failure is guaranteed.

When your spouse gives you, the entrepreneur you, being the entrepreneur partner, that comment of for better or for worse vow, mean it and live it. If you do mean it and live it, it is so liberating. If they're living it too, then they are empowering you to play your game at 110% on the offense, with the safety and the knowledge that you might end up camping in a tent down by the river.

But a loving embrace is never too far away because they love you. When it comes to building businesses, this knowledge really helps. It massively helps and the certainty of a relationship that will never go away because of business mistakes is the most powerful psychological force you can possess and it is amazing for your relationship. The certainty of the for better or for worse vow, the certainty it creates, it creates a new kind of relationship that kind of goes beyond or transcends the reliance of any pillar relationship or the comfort of a cushion that relationship. It kind of creates a platform of trust and emotional safety.

If you've got that platform, you're going to go places. You're not going to get squashed. Your motivation and drive will withstand it, withstand any failure. Now, rockets launch into the sky. If you have this vow wrapped up and real, then you are going to go in the sky. But rockets tend to crash and burn and they waste millions. I mean even the experts at NASA get the wrong sometimes. However, when the rocket succeeds, and it achieves flight and velocity, it just makes everyone sit in gape, in awe.

I still watch those rocket launches, those space shuttle launches, and right, every time you watch it, you're like, “How is this happening? How is this happening?” You are in awe, but there were several launches that weren't successes, but those needed to happen in order to create the successes. Now whether there's a success, or failure of a space shuttle launch, either way, it makes the news. Wouldn't you like the opportunity to be part of the news that people are in awe of?

My friends, go talk to your spouse, and if you've wanted to go all in on your business to get what you need, but are in one of these kinds of relationships, a cushion or a pillar, then let's talk. I can help you work through this. Because whether or not it's starting a business or anything else in life, even if it's just a new workout routine, you need the support of your spouse even when things get hard and even knowing that you could fail. That support is priceless.

My friends, it's only February. There are 11 more months in the year. It's not too late. Let's get you going. Let's get what you need. Let's get you the learning that's going to make you sore. Until next time. Remember, it is always time to level up. If you enjoyed this episode, will you please share it with one person, just one person? I would so appreciate it. See you soon.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great. But you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.