Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): As many of you know, Matt and I are co-founders of the company Mob Room. Though you’d find it really interesting to know that actually husband and wife co-founder teams are relatively common with approximately 10% of US for-profit businesses owned by spouses. While some investors view them as risky due to potential conflict, many successful companies such as Eventbrite, Cisco, and Canva were actually started by married couples. They often display extreme efficiency, definitely 100%. But face unique challenges balancing personal and professional lives and that is what we want to talk about today. So how do we make it work as husband and wife? Um, you know, a lot of people ask us that because marriage is hard, right? It’s it’s not something that just flows easily and perfectly, something you have to work at. And so involving the stress of starting a business and the finances that go with that and the decisions and and potential disagreements can be tricky. So yeah and honestly you know thinking about this topic as part of our series building mob you know every 10th episode we spotlight something on our personal journey of you know being founders as Christa said co-founders as husband and wife and just what we’ve been learning and I’ve had friends who have told me they very much separate work and marriage um and that it works better for them to do it that way and that’s Okay, we’re not here to say that there’s like a right or wrong with how you should approach those things,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): but we wanted to talk about what it’s like for us and uh and talk about the importance of um a strong marriage and how that can spill over to business and you know both sides of it I guess. So yeah, I wanted to share just a couple more kind of statistics about this, but over 297,000 US companies are jointly owned by spouses. Um, I mentioned that investors kind of get nervous about that, but a lot of high-profile uh companies have actually been successful with the married founders. Um, so some of the advantages, high trust, shared goals, and a shared long-term vision, which is something we’ll share about today, and then some disadvantages like inability to separate personal and work issues, potential for high stakes conflicts and power dynamics. Um, one little tip that I’ll just give right off the bat, experts suggest avoiding the 5050 stock splits to ensure clear decision- makingmaking authority. We’ll get into that a little bit, too. Oh, we’re going deep on this. No holding back there. So, there’s four companies mentioned. Um, Cisco Systems have a married couple.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Eventbrite, Canva, House, and of these four, three of them are still married. So, I thought that would be interesting to share. Is that above the average divorce rate? So, that’s like I mean that’s 75% but that’s a really small sample size. That’s a super small sample size. Not sure on that. You’ll have to do your own research there. But, um, so is building a company together strengthening our marriage or testing it? Matt, I think it’s definitely strengthened our marriage. I think about, you know, we’ve been married for almost 14 years. next month. And we’ve done a lot of hard things, you know, being parents. We have five kids. That’s a really big and significant part of our life. Uh we’ve flipped, well, not flipped, but renovated um our house. That was a huge multi-year project that required a lot of communication and a lot of uh work, a lot of give and take on designs. like we built this built-in on um like the entryway um for hanging coats and putting shoes and all this stuff.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And I had an idea of what I thought was like perfect and Christa had an idea what she wanted and the end result ended up being kind of a blend of the two and both of us agreed it was better than what our original ideas had been. Yeah. So like me that was very representative of how we’ve worked on a business level and doing that huge taxing project where you know we took down walls we changed. We were living in the house that we were renovating which is tricky too. I mean, we slept in our living room, multiple different basement rooms, you know, just all over all and had like the majority of our furniture in one room in our basement and our floor ripped up. We replaced the subfloor. Um it’s physically demanding. It’s definitely demanding on time. We were balancing our kids at the same time. We had, you know, a lot of money that goes into those renovations. Um there were definitely some arguments that happened. It’s just, you know, it’s just how it goes.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You’re tired, you’re stressed, you’re probably hungry a lot of times cuz of just working so hard. And I remember one night we received a load of dirt on our front yard lawn. Well, it wasn’t a lawn. It was just dirt. Totally ripped up. Yeah. And we received a dump truck load of dirt. And like we put all our kids to bed that night and we went out and shoveled dirt all over our yard. like midnight or 12:30. It was like 12:30. We had headlights on and it was raining a tiny bit, too. So, if you know, the things that we did, we can look back and it’s like, wow, that was awesome. But it was also like, how did we do that? I don’t know how we managed that with our kids. It feels like that’s something we could not do now, you know, but that’s how the business is for sure, too. Um, you have your financial stresses.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You have a lot of big decisions that you make that really affect each other and the business and ways that he thinks it should be done and ways that I think it should be done. And hopefully, just like the built-in, they come out with our ideas blended and better than they were before. Yeah. For me, I literally had zero reservations about launching a business with Christa as my wife. uh just from all the years of experience we’d had being married. But doing the house renovation was a very clear case study that we could really do something hard. We could give and take. We could collaborate. We could balance the project management components of a long-term project and align on a vision. Um, but also I think like for me when we were dating, I remember the day that I wanted to tell Christa that I loved her and that was like boop. As soon as I knew that, I was like 100% committed. And um you know, pretty soon we got engaged and everything.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And I never viewed our marriage relationship as something that was just there because it made sense. Like I was committing to being a spouse to Christa forever and that we’re family now and that doesn’t get separated. Um, and that’s a little bit different view than maybe some people have of what the marriage relationship means, but for me it was a permanent decision for better or worse, you know, through health and sickness, all the things that they say through business and not business. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, we’ve helped each other through some really hard things. Um, some days she’s lifting me up, some days I’m lifting her up, but it’s usually more her lifting me up, I guess. But at least, you know, with Yeah. Yeah. I would say that happens more often. Yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, we had our renovation. We also wrote, I mean, Matt wrote the book The Review Cycle, but I did all of his citations and really helped support the editing with that.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I couldn’t have done that without that was another case study. So, yeah, there really were no reservations when we started our business that we shouldn’t work together or that we should keep them separate. Um, I’m just going to hop over to uh boundaries. Okay, so there have been times when Matt starts talking about business at like 11 p.m. Like we’re literally about I figured you were going to bring this one up. Yeah. We’re like literally about to turn the lights off and go to sleep and he just pops in his head and he starts talking about it and I remember saying to him like, “Okay, we need to have a boundary here where we do not talk about business after 10 p.m.” And like I think what I’ve just realized is it’s case by case and we we really don’t separate business and uh and our in our marriage. We really don’t. It’s part of it. It’s, you know, our business decisions can affect our marriage.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Our marriage can probably affect our business, too. But because we have such a good relationship and we’ve learned how to overcome disagreements and you know any tension contention we um we’ve learned how to make it not affect each other negatively. But back to the boundaries I think we’ve kind of just realized that if we don’t want to talk about it because we’re too tired or something we just say it at that moment. Um because we don’t always follow that rule and we go on dates and we talk about business and that’s and yeah it’s our date night. It’s a big part of our life. It’s just a big part of our life and we enjoy talking about it. There are times though where I’m like Matt. I’m too tired to even think about this right now or explore this or make a decision. Um, so now’s not the time. And it’s okay to have those like in the- moment boundaries. And if you feel like you want to have a boundary where that is never crossed, you can create that.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): We kind of have just realized that sometimes we are okay with talking business late at night and sometimes we’re not. And so we just kind of respect each other’s bound boundaries in the moment of how we’re feeling. Um there’s also times where uh so one thing about us is Matt um and I don’t always work in the same vicinity. Matt has an office away from our home. We also have our at home office. Um I typically am at home able to be with our kids. Um be there when they get home from school, be um that person for them and Matt is more prime, heavily more heavily focused on the business. And so that’s kind of how we balance things. We both will work in the evenings together sometimes. Um, yeah. Not like every day, but just when the creative juices are flowing or there’s something pressing. Yeah. Something more urgent. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so anyways, yeah, that’s just how we roll.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): We’re not always together. And Matt, he’ll call me like four or five times in a day sometimes and I just try to be, you know, responsive. Um, but there are times where I’m like, “Matt, my kid, the kids need me right now. They need my attention, and this is not something that I can give you my attention on right now.” And and then it’s just like, “Okay, we’ll come back to it in a little bit, you know?” So, um, or I’ll call you back when I have a minute. And so, that’s just something you have to be willing to communicate so often. And I think that’s why, you know, our little research shared that husband and wife duos are so efficient. It’s because we’re just like each other all the time. We’re communicating all the time and that constant communication keeps things moving forward. So yeah, and and you know, a couple thoughts that I have based on what you’re sharing here. one is, you know, I don’t think there’s anyone that I would want to have as my full-time co-founder partner for business other than Christa because all of that trust and um communication efficiency was already built in where compared to, you know, maybe I go find some person to start a business with, who knows if their goals or vision changes down the line, but I had that foundation with Christa that I knew we already had a shared vision and that even
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): if the business pivoted on certain things as time went on, we were already aligned on so many elements of how we wanted to live and everything we wanted to do that we could achieve something really special with the business. Another thing that I wanted to bring up is how we’ve handled loss like when we make a mistake in business and we lose money. That’s definitely happened. Before we started Moim, I tried an investment on something and lost um a few thousand dollars. It was legal. I’m not saying I did anything crazy, but you know, the stock market, you know, different things. Cryptocurrency. Oh, yeah. It it was it was cryptocurrency and um I felt horrible that that money was gone and it was like this weight on me and you know it was something that it took me a while to get through but Christa definitely helped me see like you know you learn and then you you make it up somewhere else and you move forward. It was money that we could lose.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You know, that’s kind of the biggest investing tip is don’t invest money in the stock market that you aren’t able to lose or a business idea or anything else. Like you need to be like it needs to be a calculated risk. So, like if you’re listening to this and thinking, “Hey, maybe my wife and I should start a business or my husband and I, you know, your spouse, whatever.” Um, that’s, you know, we had planned for the time of when we would go all in on Mobrium and we had a plan in place and it doesn’t mean that everything went perfectly, but um we were as prepared as we could be given the scenario. In fact, let’s talk about that. What did we think it would be like diving into full-time self-employment, Matt? Uh, well, I did. I can tell you what I didn’t anticipate, and that’s how many things we would have to figure out. I mean, yeah, just like how to get paid, like how you don’t have direct deposit anymore. It’s like how do we get a customer to pay us?
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. When we got our first customer, we were like, how do we ask them to pay us? It was just like we get money. Okay, now we have to figure out invoicing. Um, I would say we’ve taken the approach with business just like with our home renovations, which is to put the hole in the wall first and then figure out how to patch it after. So, just jump in the demo first and then, you know, get to it after. Watch the YouTube video on how to patch the hole. You know, we did that with business like, let’s just go until we get a customer and as soon as someone says yes, then we’re figuring out how to do the invoicing. There wasn’t really a point in figuring out how to do an invoice before we needed to send one. Um, and so, yeah, we’ve just done one thing at a time like that. I think we definitely had this, you know, secret vision in our heads of like as soon as we quit our full-time job, we’re going to be the doors are going to be lined up with people to use our service and we won’t have to do a thing.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): The business will just come to us. Definitely. I thought I’d have 20 customers in six months. Yeah. No, we Yeah, we definitely, you know, if you hear that self-employment or starting your own business is just this glamorous thing that turns into a unicorn, but that’s not always the case. And, you know, for those that do, that’s that’s the minority for sure. Um, but we kind of realized quickly that that wasn’t the case and had to kind of adapt to that mindset of like, okay, we got to be in this for the longer hall and be okay with, you know, not just suddenly being successful, but actually having to, you know, you do your networking, your advertising, your marketing, and and get your name out there. So, yeah. And and because we have that long-term vision, we’ve been okay with putting just about everything back into the business to make the software better, to do more marketing, go to events, to reach more people, and even at the expense of paying ourselves where we’ve no, you know, dipped into savings and that type of a thing and learned to be really lean and uh and find activities around town that are free to do with the kids and stuff like that instead of, you know, some big vacation.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Like we’ve really um had to be creative. And one of my favorite sayings is creativity loves constraints. So we’ve worked with constraints which have forced creativity as far as how we run our family and household and also the business and giving priority to the business and certain things even above our household needs because we believe in the future vision of where it’s headed and what it can do. And we’ve already seen some pretty amazing results for clients and we love our clients. We love working with them and supporting their success. Um but also it has to be something that um makes sense for us in the long term and we believe that that’s the case. We just have to continue working on the plan. Um, but as Matt mentioned, we did come into this experience with savings and I think that’s a crucial piece is uh that financial stress, you know, that’s probably one of the top. I actually did my degree in family consumer science with an emphasis on family finance and we talked a lot about how finances are the top taboo topic to talk about for couples.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): a huge indicator for divorce when they have very different uh financial decision making or values. um and just the financial stress can be a big cause for contention or or lead to divorce. And so, um being prepared for that kind of jump of self-employment of starting your own business and being prepared for it to take 5 to 10 years for you to hit that sweet spot of business coming to you easily um is what you need to do. And as Matt said, our strategy for the last 3 years has been putting everything back into the business. Um, we’re now getting to the point where, you know, we have used up some of our savings and we’re ready to start paying ourselves back a little bit. And so we’re starting to make that transition, but because we were prepared for this jump, we were able to, you know, actually invest all that back into the business and make our product make our um get our name out there, make our product as good as it could be.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So yeah. Yeah. and and that’s something we’ve, you know, we’ve had ongoing conversations about over the years and as new information, new opportunities come up, then we’re okay to pivot as needed on different decisions. I did want to talk about, you know, I’ve definitely had people raise their eyebrows when they hear we have five kids and we’re doing a business and podcast and all the things. And uh, you know, it’s interesting. We got married relatively young. I was 23. Christa was 19 when we were married and we went to California the very first summer we were married and I remember um I was knocking doors selling pest control and some people would ask what they’d see my wedding ring you’re married it’s like yeah my wife’s 19 and then it was like what the that’s crazy but you know we I guess we just knew we wanted to be together and why would why would we wait to fully commit to each other and uh and that was important from the very beginning. And I love being a dad.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s a lot of fun. Sometimes it’s crazy, but most of the time it’s amazing. And uh and I think that’s what life is all about is prioritizing your family and let the other things work around that. Like we’ve very much intentionally built ourselves into a business that supported the lifestyle that we wanted to be able to be there as much as possible for our kids. Um, like sometimes I’m here working at home and I can be there when they get home from school and then I work a little bit in the evenings or you know we have some flexibility with that. It doesn’t mean that there’s less work to do. There’s still a lot to do, but just intentionally designing the life that we wanted. And um for us, we always knew we wanted to have a larger family. And it’s been amazing. And yeah, there are expenses that come with kids and other stresses, but you know, as soon as you hold that little baby in your arms, there’s nothing better.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And then seeing them grow and being able to rough house with them, at least for me, when they get a little bigger is always so fun. And then seeing them learn and grow and experience new things. Seeing the world through a child’s eyes is pretty amazing. Yeah. Um I think our top I would give to married couples that are trying to start a business together or or are already doing that is commitment. You know, Matt mentions that we just like there’s no back door that we ever look at. We never say the D-word divorce. You know, we never even cross that. Um, we are committed to each other. We are devoted. We’re loyal to each other. And we’re also committed to this business. And um that shared vision, that shared goal, like it’s our business um is what keeps it going and what keeps our marriage strong. And uh you know, I mentioned that like our research recommended that you do 5050 or avoid doing 50/50 for your uh business ownership, your stock ownership.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. And so I wanted to just share what we do. And I might get some flak for this, but um but Matt actually owns 100% of the company on paper. And the reason that we’ve chosen to do that is there are some tax reasons and um and just like liability reasons. But also, it’s just that the number doesn’t really matter to us. And it’s like a paperwork change that we just don’t feel is very important. Um because we’re in this together. Our money, the way we pull our money um is all of his money is my money. My money is his money. We were just one unit for that is what it comes to. All of our money goes into one account. And yeah, that’s just how we do things. And I don’t think there’s one right way to do things, but certainly, you know, women, we don’t need to be like, I need 50%. Because I’m part of this. Like, I don’t think we need to, you know, be that way.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And honestly, for investors, it’s going to be better for us in the future to have it’s more attractive, at least from conversations with investors. Yeah. To have one person with 100%. But that’s honestly that’s a smaller detail to the larger conversation. Um yeah. Yeah. Um but I I will say it is important to have one person that kind of does get the final say because you have to keep moving the business forward. You can’t get stuck on one decision. And um this business is is Matt’s brainchild. It really is. and I’ve always just been high supporter for him. And so, um, yeah, and so I shoot, help me out. You know, it it’s kind of like, you know, you have to have a pilot and a co-pilot. If you have two pilots with the exact same authority on every decision, then you could have some analysis paralysis when so some certain decision comes up. And we overlap like I’m number one on the business, number two on the family.
 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Christa’s number one on the family, number two on the business. That doesn’t mean one’s more important than the other, but it means we have a shared vision and also some specialization to help us achieve a greater amount of success in both fields. Essentially, Christa drives so many things that I would not be very good at when it comes to family and also her responsibilities in the business when it comes to the finance side and other other things like she’s unlocked doors that I don’t think I could have and she’s been able to do things that I don’t think I could do. And I think the same goes where I have a specialty that, you know, I’ve worked really hard to obtain and that’s one of my unique ads to the business. One one other thing I did want to mention is, you know, we were also um Christian and so our faith in Jesus Christ is a core piece of our marriage relationship and that totally spills over to our business that you know we strive to live um principles that are um aligned with Christianity and with good ethics and we believe that that is beneficial to the business and to our marriage. Um, we’re definitely not perfect. We make a lot of mistakes, but um, we’re we’re doing we’re not saying we’re doing things every day to try to move things forward to produce the best results for our clients and for our family and for the business um, and for each other. We definitely have to make time for each other, which we do. We do have fun date nights. stuff. Anyways, we would love to hear your thoughts, your comments, what has worked well for you when you are in your marriage, whether you’re working together on a project, a home renovation, or a business. Love to hear from you. And follow us for the next episode. Yep. Thanks, guys. We’ll see you next time.