Latest / Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Mastery, Wealth Mindset, Leadership Principles, Intuitive Decision-Making, Human Design / 221 | Why This Business Partnership with My Husband Is Different (Part 3 of 3)
Transcript
- 0:01Erin Gray: Welcome back to the podcast.
- 0:03Erin Gray: In the first two episodes of the series, I shared what I learned from two very different business partnerships.
- 0:10Erin Gray: One involved my family's construction business and helping them navigate the dissolution of their partnership.
- 0:15Erin Gray: And then the other one was the actual partnership I had, and that was in personally, and ultimately chose to leave.
- 0:21Erin Gray: So if you haven't listened to those parts of the series, go back.
- 0:23Erin Gray: I think that's episode 219 and 220.
- 0:27Erin Gray: Go back and listen to those.
- 0:28Erin Gray: You'll see the evolution of me being in business and partnerships.
- 0:33Erin Gray: And today I want to talk about the partnership that I'm currently in with my husband.
- 0:38Erin Gray: What's interesting about this one is that I'm coming into it with 20 plus years of finance business experience, along with some pretty significant lessons that I've learned along the way.
- 0:50Erin Gray: Like I've said before, I feel like I'm coming full circle to where I started almost 20 years ago around money and people and expectations and boundaries and communication and relationships and all the things.
- 1:01Erin Gray: And my husband and I, we have completely different strengths and experiences to the business.
- 1:06Erin Gray: He loves being outside.
- 1:07Erin Gray: He loves the physical working with his hands, working with the trees, talking to the customers, taking care of the customers.
- 1:15Erin Gray: And I love the visionary side, the strategy, the financial side, figuring out how to grow and to scale a successful business.
- 1:22Erin Gray: And so after everything that I've experienced in those previous two relationships that I've been in in partnerships, I think I've become much more intentional about how I show up, who I am, anchored into my intuition, how we make decisions together, and what we're actually building.
- 1:38Erin Gray: So today I want to share what actually feels different about this partnership.
- 1:43Erin Gray: Hopefully, third time's a charm.
- 1:45Erin Gray: It feels like that, and what I'm actually doing differently and what I am continuing to learn along the way because being in business together while also being married is so much more than simply just running a business.
- 1:57Erin Gray: So let's dive in.
- 2:00Erin Gray: You know, I was looking through some journals back in gosh, 2019 or 2018.
- 2:06Erin Gray: And I remember like my perfect day or writing about that, or like what would I want?
- 2:12Erin Gray: What would Jason want to be doing in our daughter as well?
- 2:16Erin Gray: And I wrote something about like he is has a business or he's working with trees.
- 2:22Erin Gray: There was definitely something there about him working with trees.
- 2:26Erin Gray: So that was in 2018 or 2019.
- 2:28Erin Gray: Fast forward, now we're in year 2026.
- 2:31Erin Gray: We've left Texas, we've moved across the Pacific Ocean and lived in Maui.
- 2:35Erin Gray: We've traveled out of suitcases for months, and then we've landed in Boise, Idaho.
- 2:40Erin Gray: And now we have a tree business together.
- 2:43Erin Gray: It's so fascinating that it comes full circle like that.
- 2:47Erin Gray: Like, you know, we were talking the other day of because he was saying something around like, well, I wish I would have started seven years ago.
- 2:53Erin Gray: Like, look where I would be now, you know, if I would have started, and I said, and we both believe this, like everything happens perfectly exactly how it is.
- 3:02Erin Gray: Like, if you would have started when we were in Texas, would we have felt like we had to stay there?
- 3:08Erin Gray: Would we have had the experience of moving to Maui?
- 3:11Erin Gray: Would we have been able to travel?
- 3:13Erin Gray: You know, you would have closed up shop but or put it on pause or maybe had people work while we were doing that.
- 3:19Erin Gray: Like, I don't know what would have happened.
- 3:21Erin Gray: I don't really want to spend too much time going down that rabbit hole.
- 3:24Erin Gray: And I truly believe that everything that we have done along the way has gotten us to where we are today.
- 3:29Erin Gray: Probably over the last year or two, you know, he started working with someone because he was like, you know what?
- 3:35Erin Gray: I really do want to do trees.
- 3:37Erin Gray: You know, he had been a master mechanic at BMW for 15 plus years, been a firefighter, and he really loves doing genuine work with his hands and also thinking.
- 3:49Erin Gray: Like he loves that part of using his brain and imagining things and putting something that together that maybe wasn't there before, or creating something that wasn't there before.
- 4:02Erin Gray: It's fascinating.
- 4:03Erin Gray: What's coming to my mind right now is that there's different play personalities, and I don't remember exactly which one, but he definitely exhibits that.
- 4:10Erin Gray: Like he loves to take apart things and make them better.
- 4:15Erin Gray: And I think that that's part of what tree, the tree business is, right?
- 4:19Erin Gray: Like you're taking this crazy backyard that may have been neglected, or maybe another tree service company didn't take care of it the way that we do.
- 4:29Erin Gray: And then he comes in and he just makes it look magnificent.
- 4:32Erin Gray: And he loves that part of it.
- 4:33Erin Gray: And so about a year or two ago, he started working with someone to get more experience, climbing experience, just all of the ins and outs that I think are important when if you're gonna go and start a business on your own.
- 4:46Erin Gray: And I don't know at the time if he was thinking about that, but as he began to work with this gentleman, he started to see differences of how he would handle customers or the bidding or being with the people, you know, the other employees, than what this other owner of this tree business was.
- 5:06Erin Gray: I don't know when I said it, but I just said at some point, you have to start betting on yourself.
- 5:12Erin Gray: And I feel like I've always been that behind the scenes, you know, I love to lead from behind.
- 5:17Erin Gray: I've been this behind the scenes person of encouraging people, like I've talked about in my previous two episodes.
- 5:22Erin Gray: Of I always see like the potential and the greatest in all of the gifts and people that I am with.
- 5:28Erin Gray: And I knew that he could have his own tree business.
- 5:31Erin Gray: I knew that he would be phenomenal with customers.
- 5:34Erin Gray: And I could see like us having that as a business.
- 5:38Erin Gray: And I think he was at a point where he saw it, but he didn't yet feel ready to go there.
- 5:44Erin Gray: So he continued to work for this guy.
- 5:46Erin Gray: He put it in his reps and hours and things of that sort.
- 5:49Erin Gray: But then it got to a point where he was like, you know what?
- 5:51Erin Gray: I am, I'm, I'm ready to bet on myself.
- 5:54Erin Gray: And so, like I do what I do so well, is like, I was like, okay, great.
- 5:58Erin Gray: You know, I'll get everything set up, I'll do all the back end stuff, get everything ready, you know, so that you can go and start working with customers.
- 6:07Erin Gray: And we talked about like what would be, you know, your role in the business, what would be mine, you know, like I have no desire to go out there and work, do manual labor.
- 6:19Erin Gray: He absolutely loves that.
- 6:20Erin Gray: It's not even work for him.
- 6:22Erin Gray: It would definitely feel like work for me.
- 6:24Erin Gray: And I also said that this time around, learning, being in my family's construction business, I don't think I was as in that part of the business of the water and wastewater side.
- 6:36Erin Gray: Like I said, I do want to understand the tree business because I think I was a little removed from the construction.
- 6:41Erin Gray: Like, yes, I knew all the money and all that, but like I didn't pay attention to the piping and how that gets connected and how that actual part of the work actually works.
- 6:52Erin Gray: And that is something that I want to learn.
- 6:54Erin Gray: I don't necessarily want to do, but I definitely want to learn so that you never know, right?
- 6:59Erin Gray: You never know if something were to happen.
- 7:01Erin Gray: You want to hire people, which we will, but hire people and I do that side that I can talk intelligently about trees instead of just being the behind the scenes.
- 7:13Erin Gray: So I know I wanted that part to also be different than what it was when I was in my family's construction business.
- 7:19Erin Gray: And I think that we bring such a beautiful balance to our business because he genuinely loves going out there, doing the estimates, talking with the customers, you know, making this backyard and front yard, you know, that may not be what the client wants or has at the time and making it this beautiful thing.
- 7:42Erin Gray: And he loves that side of it.
- 7:43Erin Gray: He's also extremely mechanically inclined.
- 7:46Erin Gray: I can't even sometimes open a jar of something, you know, like I know where his gifts are, I know where my gifts are, and we beautifully balance each other in that.
- 7:58Erin Gray: And I think we had some really candid conversations of like, I don't want to be the person writing the estimates because I know for me, Aaron would be the bottleneck if I'm gonna have to sit down every single time and write an estimate.
- 8:10Erin Gray: So teaching him how to write estimates, but me being able to convert them to invoices and bring the money in and then look at the PL and the balance sheet and like teach him those things, like those are recognizing where he shines and where I shine.
- 8:25Erin Gray: And I think that that, you know, where we have come also in our marriage of almost being together for 20 years.
- 8:33Erin Gray: I think that that, you know, I said to him last night, I was like, I don't know if we would have started this company seven, eight, 10 years ago if we would actually be, we wouldn't.
- 8:42Erin Gray: We wouldn't be the people that we are today.
- 8:44Erin Gray: You know, we both do emotional release work, we do the somatic work, we do the mindset work.
- 8:50Erin Gray: Like we are completely different people than we were seven, eight, ten, fifteen years ago.
- 8:56Erin Gray: And I think that because of that is why our partnership works so beautifully.
- 9:02Erin Gray: You know, I had the idea the other day to create like a fall newsletter.
- 9:06Erin Gray: And I was like, what do you think?
- 9:07Erin Gray: And he was like, Erin, by this time, he's like, all of your ideas are amazing.
- 9:12Erin Gray: He's like, I'm never going to say that they're not because they always work out so well.
- 9:17Erin Gray: So do it.
- 9:18Erin Gray: And I think that he knows where my gifts are and he sees my gifts.
- 9:22Erin Gray: I think that's the other thing that has been so such a blessing in our partnership because we truly do see what the other person, those gifts that the other person has, and we appreciate them.
- 9:34Erin Gray: Not only appreciate them, but we speak about them, we tell them to the other person on a consistent basis how grateful we are that we work together, that we get to have this business together, that we get to connect on this other level, right?
- 9:47Erin Gray: So we were husband and wife and parents to our daughter and all of these things, but now we also have this portion or piece of our relationship that we get to connect on and that we get to talk business about, which is one of my love languages.
- 10:01Erin Gray: And I think the fact that we we see each other's gifts and we state that on a very often basis is very helpful because when you are, not that you need to be seen by your partner, right?
- 10:16Erin Gray: That's res that's your responsibility.
- 10:17Erin Gray: And also when you are seen by your partner, like it feels good.
- 10:22Erin Gray: It feels good to be in business with someone who appreciates you and who sees all of the effort that you're putting in.
- 10:30Erin Gray: And I think that there was a part of me when I worked in my family's construction business where my dad and my uncle really valued the guys where they did that 3D manual work.
- 10:40Erin Gray: And I don't know if they truly saw the gift that I provided from that intellectual place.
- 10:46Erin Gray: And my husband does.
- 10:48Erin Gray: And we see both sides.
- 10:50Erin Gray: We see that you've obviously you gotta have somebody that will go and prune and remove trees, right?
- 10:56Erin Gray: Like I don't want to do that.
- 10:57Erin Gray: So there is value in that.
- 10:58Erin Gray: There's also value in someone that, you know, sees a vision and that can create something and that looks at all of the money and takes care of the money and knows who to talk to to expand and to grow and all of that behind the scenes stuff that I think sometimes is expected to occur, obviously, but also gets appreciated for doing that.
- 11:20Erin Gray: And so I think that appreciation of us both, of us giving each other the atta girl and the attaboys, of like, hey, I see you and I see what you're contributing to this partnership and it's amazing, and I truly appreciate you, I think goes a long way in business partnerships.
- 11:39Erin Gray: I think the other thing that I've come to realize, because I've grown up in very male-dominated industries, you know, financial planning 20-something years ago.
- 11:47Erin Gray: I think I was one of three women in like 60 men, the construction industry is very male-dominated.
- 11:53Erin Gray: And I think that recognizing that I move differently, I think I probably took on a lot of masculine energy with those previous roles that I was in because I felt like I had to in order to keep up.
- 12:10Erin Gray: And recognizing now how my energy moves that I am a little bit slower, that I'm not gonna wake up at 5 a.m., that I don't want to stay up late working on stuff.
- 12:21Erin Gray: You know, there are times where he might wake up early and he might be working on estimates, and then he comes home after work and then, you know, he does some other things for the business.
- 12:28Erin Gray: And I'm like, I don't want to be doing that at seven o'clock at night, but he genuinely has no problem with it.
- 12:34Erin Gray: And that's how his energy moves.
- 12:36Erin Gray: And being in a partnership and in a business with someone who honors that and respects that, and he knows that my energy doesn't move that way, and that I am much more feminine in that regard and the receiving and the ideas and you know, being able to be who I truly am and to feel appreciated for who I truly am versus feeling like, oh, well, the guys are already at work and I need to be at work and I need to be doing this.
- 13:04Erin Gray: Because, you know, one of the things I used to always tell my dad in the construction business is like everybody has a wife, but Aaron doesn't have a wife.
- 13:10Erin Gray: Like, you guys can do these startups because all of you have wives at home that are with the kids.
- 13:14Erin Gray: Like, and yes, I didn't need to be there for startups, but there's a lot of times I think that for men, they are able to go and do things because they have someone at home supporting them, but I didn't have a wife, you know, to do all of the things I needed to do and to work at the hours and to the level that they were working at.
- 13:35Erin Gray: And I think that recognizing for me, what I have learned is that my gifts and my brilliance aren't actually always spent sitting at the desk.
- 13:46Erin Gray: My downloads come when I'm on a hike or when I'm driving or laying in bed most of the time at 10 o'clock at night.
- 13:53Erin Gray: And then I just get all of these downloads of like, oh, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this.
- 13:57Erin Gray: And recognizing that that is okay, that that's the way that my energy moves, and that he honors that as well because his energy moves vastly different than mine, and that's okay.
- 14:08Erin Gray: And I think that when we truly, the word that comes to mind is accept ourselves for who we truly are, and that we're not trying to change, you know, who we are to fit into some box because that's what we were taught, you know.
- 14:23Erin Gray: Like I said, oh, I didn't want to, I think there was a lot of proving energy that I used to be in in my family's construction business.
- 14:29Erin Gray: Like, well, I don't want to look lazy, you know, like these guys have already been at the at the job site for like three hours and I'm coming in versus no, my best work sometimes happens when I'm out in nature or like I had this whole download we're looking at like hiring someone.
- 14:44Erin Gray: And I I had this whole download while I was sitting on the couch and I just started writing, like, what are all the things that we need to do?
- 14:50Erin Gray: And I think when I've given myself the space to be who I truly am and the space to allow for those downloads to come in, because part of my role in this business is to be the visionary, is to have the ideas and to know where we're going before we're already there and know all of the things that we need to do to get there, which that's so easy for me, right?
- 15:12Erin Gray: And I think I had discounted that for a long time because that wasn't a physical manual labor thing that I was doing to contribute to the company.
- 15:20Erin Gray: I think that's one of the things that I've really anchored into of like my role is vastly different, and that's okay because we both complement each other in so many ways.
- 15:28Erin Gray: And there's not much that as a married couple that we get upset about, and I think that that is largely in part to how much we do with the emotional release work that he he goes to and I go to as well.
- 15:42Erin Gray: Really coming at it from a very fun and joyful place of growing this business versus pressure and scarcity and lack.
- 15:54Erin Gray: I think a lot of times people build businesses from that place.
- 15:57Erin Gray: Another thing that we've been able to connect together with to see, like I keep talking about this, but to see the gifts that we have in each other and what each person contributes, and to be able to connect and to commend each other for those gifts.
- 16:16Erin Gray: Truly, with him being, I think also something else that I have, you know, how much mindset work I have done over the last seven years, I think it's easy to think like we've invested in this amount of money and it's just been us, but really it has trickled down to my husband and to our daughter.
- 16:35Erin Gray: And all of that mindset work, all of the awareness and the consciousness growth or you know, elevation that I have had, my husband has been able to reap the rewards as well.
- 16:48Erin Gray: And I think that is part of why our partnership is working so well and has worked so well, because we truly are on the same page and we do see the vision together and we are moving in that place and we do take responsibility.
- 17:08Erin Gray: I think that's the other thing that I've recognized is, you know, I told him I was like, if we're gonna do this together, we're gonna be completely transparent, authentic, we're not gonna be people pleasing.
- 17:18Erin Gray: And there have been some times when I'm like, hey, you're not being the business partner you said you were gonna be.
- 17:23Erin Gray: And owning that and me being able to say that to him, because I think from our relationship standpoint, I've always not wanted to say things that could be hurtful to people, you know.
- 17:35Erin Gray: I've had a story around being harsh, but being able to be completely transparent and be like, listen, I've asked you to do this a couple of times.
- 17:43Erin Gray: What's the resistance?
- 17:44Erin Gray: Like, do you actually not want to do this?
- 17:45Erin Gray: Are you, is there fear there?
- 17:47Erin Gray: Is there, you know, you don't know how to do it?
- 17:49Erin Gray: Like, what is going on?
- 17:51Erin Gray: And for us to have complete open conversations where we're able to talk about things, he's not, you know, upset.
- 17:58Erin Gray: I'm not upset.
- 17:59Erin Gray: I think that that has been really helpful for me that I have come, like that shows my growth where I'm not tiptoeing around and I don't want to upset someone or I don't want to people please.
- 18:10Erin Gray: I think very helpful for our business partnership because if I'm not doing something I said I would do or he's not doing something, we're able to address that.
- 18:20Erin Gray: And we don't, I think in previous partnerships, that has been able to slide because of the two of us, because of our relationship, because of our marriage, because of all of the work we do, you know, mindset-wise and somatically, we've been able to work through that and to speak to that and to just state it very factually, not emotionally charged.
- 18:39Erin Gray: So I think in closing, you know, if there's one thing or several things, I should say, that I've learned through all of these experiences that I've had, it's that business is never just business.
- 18:50Erin Gray: It's about people, it's about mindset, it's about some, you know, what's going on in your body, it's about the relationships and the dynamic that you have with yourself, that you have with your partner, that you have with the business, the relationships that you have with money and expectations and boundaries or lack of boundaries.
- 19:06Erin Gray: And ultimately, I think it really comes back to like the life that we're trying and that we want to create.
- 19:11Erin Gray: I shouldn't say trying to create, what we are creating.
- 19:13Erin Gray: You know, my husband this the other day of like, you know, that saying where you have to like kiss a lot of frogs in order to be able to get to the prints.
- 19:20Erin Gray: I feel like that's what I've done in my life.
- 19:22Erin Gray: Not that my family's business or my previous partnership was like that, but there were some trials and tribulations that I had to go through in order to get to where I am.
- 19:34Erin Gray: I'm really grateful for that.
- 19:35Erin Gray: I'm grateful for all of those experiences that I've had so that I could end up to be in a business partnership with my husband.
- 19:43Erin Gray: I think that when you're in it, it doesn't feel so great, but coming out on the other side, I think that I'm just so grateful that I've had those experiences to be where I am now.
- 19:51Erin Gray: So if you are someone who is looking for and wanting some support to help you navigate the financial and the strategic side of your business while also giving you space and having space for you to hold the vision for yourself of where you want to go, and that someone can navigate that bigger picture for you, you know, of what you're wanting to create and why.
- 20:12Erin Gray: I'd love to explore working together.
- 20:14Erin Gray: You can click the link in the show notes to apply for my private advisory.
- 20:18Erin Gray: As always, thank you for being here.
- 20:20Erin Gray: Thank you for letting me share my experience with you and the way that I think what I've been through.
- 20:26Erin Gray: And I hope that it helps you along your journey.
- 20:29Erin Gray: Okay, I'll see you in the next episode.