Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Hello everyone. We’re all the way to episode 80 today, which means it’s the check-in with Crista and I. We’ve had every 10th episode be an ongoing update for the building story and uh giving you updates on what’s new with us and sharing some tips on starting your own business, running your own business.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So, I guess a couple updates that we wanted to share. First, Mob Brim turned four years old. Woohoo. Yeah, that’s awesome. So, it’s been four years since we started Mobim to be the original employer reputation platform, which is pretty awesome. And, uh, you want to share about the office change? Yeah, we decided to, you know, do a little bit of take down, I guess, and um we left Bridgerland Technology College, our office space there, and we just optimized the office space that we have here at home.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So, we’re back to embracing the work from home mentality and uh minimalizing a little bit of expenses and also just less commuting, a little more convenience, a little more um just easy access to get some work done. So, that included Crista getting a new chair, executive chair. Yes. Super cool. The lazy boy version.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And uh we’ve also since episode 70 of our last part of this kind of ongoing story, we’ve onboarded our two largest clients to date. So we’ve gotten more at the enterprise level. Um, we’ve onboarded a publicly traded company. Um, so we’re very excited to have much more happening on the client side and to see the growth of larger companies using the Moberium platform to strengthen their culture from the outside in with our review automation tools.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So pretty cool to see that happening. So those are a couple of the bigger business updates since last time. Yeah. And just earlier today, we had a demo with a prospective customer and works on our product were pretty cool to hear. She was just really impressed with the one-stop shop option we have that incorporates the public facing element of employee feedback as well as the internal one that really just makes for a really amazing holistic view of your your culture and being transparent and caring

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): about your employees and helping them feel cared for. And um so it’s just cool to hear that from someone that we had just met. And uh yeah, we love where things are going. We have some exciting software enhancements that are ongoing always. Yep. And specifically in this episode, we want to talk a little bit about navigating the challenges of our husband, wife, and team as far as defining roles.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Um we share a house as well. We have kids and and so navigating, you know, what roles we have in the business while taking care of our home and our kids, our family, um how we do that. And what we’ve learned is that we’re not too rare of a situation. In fact, um I think it was 53% Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Oh, up 53% of fam I want to get this stat right. 53% of family-owned businesses feature a spouse as the primary day-to-day co-manager. And so what we have here is very common. You know, a lot of times a husband and or a wife will start something and they need their partner to help them get in further and and get their reach further.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And they usually both tend to have different skills that help them in that way. So, we’re going to dive into that and what tactics we use to keep things balanced to make sure our kids are attended to, that their needs are met, and that we’re taking care of our relationship as well. And we did touch on last time what it’s like being a husband and wife team.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So, today we’re going to actually just focus more on those tact tactical examples of how we navigate it. Um, just last week, I was talking with a friend. She’s soon to be a mother of three and she just related to me that her husband, he’s been working on a prototype of an accessibility type device that um and you know, our son has a disability and so we’ve been able to connect on that level.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): But she said as soon as he gets his final prototype ready to go, he’s going to want her to be more involved in the business, maybe helping with the books, the accounting side of things, which is something that I’ve done to help Matt. And she was just a little nervous about that. And I told her she could reach out to me if, you know, if that became more of a reality and she needed some advice on what that would be like and what it would entail and if she could manage it with her three kids and other responsibilities as well.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And so I thought that this would be a great topic for today. And yeah, I don’t know if you want to share a little bit just about that transition like working at Maloof. Um, I was a stay-at-home mom. I did have a job that was part-time at Utah State, but they let me bring my kids there.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So in my mind, I was a stay-at-home mom because the kids were always with me. And then Matt would go to work at Maloof um for six years he did that and then at two years at a company called IIT and then um at that point is when we kind of combined our efforts and started Mobram together. So yeah, and um this may feel a little controversial, but I think that it’s not as helpful for families or like two spouses to have really competing careers.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Like you’re both doing intense careers and uh they’re very different. Um because there can be a lot of hey you need to be doing this, you need to be doing that. We need to split household stuff equally. What does that look like? And it can feel like there’s some conflict within the family unit.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Um the approach that we’ve taken is we succeed as a family unit and that requires some specialization where Crista does some things more than me. I do some things more than her. Some things she does that I don’t do at all. Some things I do that she doesn’t do at all. And we have a shared understanding of what that looks like.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And we know every uh family is set up a little differently, but um we’re different for a reason so we can support each other and and have more together. And it’s a principle of economics, too. Specialization creates a greater abundance when there’s, you know, shared resources instead of everyone producing their own of everything. Yeah. And how we’ve done it up to this point, you know, where I was solely the the mom and the one with the who was with the kids for the first several years of having children.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Um, and in our scenario, it was kind of similar as my friend where Matt had this business idea. He wrote the book, The Review Cycle. Um, and then it led into Mobrium and he was like really overwhelmed with the idea of having to do all the ideas and start implementing those and start working with software developers while also figuring out how to accept payment from c customers, keep track of all the expenses and income, all the accounting side of things, taxes.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Um, you know, eventually we got we had employees. and it was my responsibility to figure out how to pay our employees and pay employment tax, payroll tax, and um and so you kind of support each other in the roles that you’re not comfortable doing, the ones that stress you out the most. Um when Matt wrote his book, he was really stressed about doing the citations, and that was something I felt like I could handle.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So that’s how we split that role. But, um, I definitely always tell people I lean heavily on caring for the kids and have a role in the business that’s more part-time, whereas Matt is very full-time in the business and more part-time on, you know, helping with kids and with household responsibilities. And that’s how we’ve managed it.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And it’s worked. It’s worked really well with us. Yeah. And like one example of me being involved in the family side is since I’m at home again, there’s literally no commute. And so my commute is taking all the kids to school in the morning. And um that’s worked out great. It’s a very positive small recurring touch point with the kids.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And I think that’s just an example of kind of the give and take cuz I know she’s working on the business stuff too sometimes which is, you know, it’s a good good thing. Yeah. This morning, shout out to Matt. He emptied the dishwasher and did the dishes. And I’ll be honest, like my first reaction was like,”Oh, he doesn’t need to do that. That’s my job.” But we have kind of we we’ve changed over time where it

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): used to be where I did all of those things while he was at work because he had a long workday from like 8 to 6. Um now he’s able to do more of those things and it’s been really great especially now that we have five kids and and while I am trying to support the business in the ways that I can too.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And just a touch note from my degree was in family finance and we did a lot on just managing family roles and responsibilities. And the main contributor to success was always that expectations were met. And this is something we preach about in our review platform too or just with company culture. If people expect a culture to be a certain way and it is that way, then they’re satisfied.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): if they expect it to be a certain way and it’s not that way, then they’re dissatisfied. And so having shared expectations, clear expectations in your marriage and your partnership with the business, that’s honestly the most important piece. We can tell you how we’re doing it, but that may not work for you. As long as you have clear expectations and you’re both happy with those and then they’re met, that’s how you achieve that satisfaction.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Mhm. So, yeah, and we have some very specific strategies that we’ll talk about um as far as how this could look potentially for you, but really uh the meat of today’s episode is for anyone One. who’s thinking about doing a business with your spouse and um the start of it is open communication for sure. You want to be able to talk about anything and everything and that’s where it should start is do you want to work together as business partners in addition to u being life partners in your marriage.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I think that’s probably the first question to address. Um but yeah, Crista. Yeah. Um one of one of the quotes is I I kind of prepared some statistics. I’ll always love the numbers, but 81% of working mothers and 62% of working fathers report that household and parenting logistics routinely bleed into their actual workday, making strict work life separation virtually non-existent.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): to me that you know 81% of mothers, 62% of fathers, um tells me that what tends to happen is women do tend to take on more of the responsibilities at home. And so if you have, you know, both partners are working full-time on separate careers and then the woman is maybe handling more of the at home things, that’s probably why that percentage is higher.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): that that could be just something that I’m guessing at, but um I think that’s probably the case though. But I thought that was an interesting stat. Uh 57% of working parents site time management as their single greatest struggle with parents of three or more children reporting the highest rates of exhaustion and need for structured routines. So with that said, I will say this is very true.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s very difficult to have work and life separation completely. Um, a lot of times I’m in here because I have to do something, but I would like to leave the door open like in the office. Yeah. In this office, leave the door open and the kids can come talk to me. There are times when I’m on a call or Matt and I are both on a call and we have to talk to the kids and we have to say,”Okay, 30 minutes. I’m not going to be accessible for 30 minutes.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): If you need something, you know, our oldest child can handle talking to you. She’s 11. So, um, and we have found that there are times when using screens is really helpful. So, for all of you who experience the mom guilt or or dad guilts about letting your kids watch screens, there’s times and places and you know, if you can limit that to not all the time, that’s that’s great.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): But there are times like when we have a meeting where we’re like,”Hey guys, you can watch a show right now.” And then because it’s a more rare thing, our kids, we know that they’re going to be focused on that show while we finish that eating. So that’s one thing I would say. Yeah, it’s okay to have screens just with Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Not too much, not overdoing it. So those moments are great. Yeah. Yeah. That’s Yeah, we’re giving you Yeah. Our take on I also know, you know, I know people who their child basically is on screens the whole day because they have to work full-time. And you got to do what works for you.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You know, there’s ideals of what your doctor will tell you to give your child and then there’s real life and you got to do what you got to do. So, Yep. Yeah. And uh the next one that we had on here was ditching the myth of uh simultaneous multitasking instead of both partners giving 50% attention to kids and 50% to your business efforts.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): um one partner can be 100% focused on the business while the other is focused on the family. And we’ve definitely done that where sometimes I’ll tell Crista like I really need to be in the zone for several hours at a time with absolutely no interruptions. Um because it’s just I’m working on more critical and sophisticated things for software methodology.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Um, and it’s been the other way where even just last week, yeah, maybe I have an accounting emergency or it’s the end of a quarter and I’ve got to submit our sales tax or whatever. That’s what I was going to mention, the tax because we had a big tax question about how to handle that across states and all that kind of stuff.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And so it was like, yep, this just popped into the urgent and important category. So my stuff for the next couple hours was less critical and more movable. So I went and hung out with our youngest kids so that I could really focus because I will say when you have the open door, it’s hard to focus.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You can maybe answer emails and do some nonfocus tasks, but it’s really hard to get stuff done when kids are home from school and they need you. And so as much as possible, I try to when my kids are home from school, I try to be fully available to them unless there’s something pressing. Um, and then if there’s something I needed to get to that I didn’t, we’ll wait till the kids are all in bed and we’ll go work a little bit more.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s a sacrifice that we’ve chosen to make with our business. And not everyone may want to do that, and that’s okay. But for us, it’s actually worked really well. We find that some of our best focused hours are after 8:00. So yeah. Yeah. And that’s that was one of us so Crista put together five specific strategies.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That was also one of them. So we can jump to that here and put that as number three. So, um shifting the times that you’re a little bit based on what fits into your schedule and your routine. And for us, after the kids go to bed, even if it’s for 45 minutes or an hour, sometimes we’ve had some evenings where we work for two or three hours, but that’s not all the time either.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): We’re not trying to say you have to be crazy workaholics to have business success, but no, it’s balancing and shifting where some days we’ll have a day that’s way intense on the business, another one it’s a lot lighter. And so you have to see what works out. But we’ve realized for us that after the kids go to bed, the window is a great time for focus.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Another reason why I love it is you’re way less likely to get emails. Um, most everybody has blocked out at that point. So, like it’s a great time to actually get things done. Yep. To really get in the zone and focus and and then you don’t have to be up and going the very first second right in the morning, which that’s been a shift for me when I was working on writing the book,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): the review cycle. I was squeezing that into early morning slots and weekend slots and then working a structured um time commitment for work. And so I was way more used to waking up and just working the second you’re up and getting up early. But now it’s kind of shifted where the morning isn’t quite as insane.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): like I don’t schedule any meetings typically uh before 900 a.m. um our local time and then in the evening there’s a little bit more that happens sometimes. Um so yeah, so we’ve hit on three so far. So screen time using that strategically to help um give some focus time for yourself when you need it for meetings. Focus.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): One of you focuses a hundred while the on the business while the other’s focusing on the family and giving each other that focus time and then the third one was the shifting the times that maybe you work and sometimes it’s in the evening. So you want to go to the next one? Yeah. So to me, a big part of of this success is that how you handle the transition from maybe one parent being a stay-at-home parent to and one who’s a full-time worker or or maybe there is some crossover there,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): but transitioning into working together and defining what those lanes of ownership are. So run your home with I this is my suggestion run your home with explicit domain ownership just like your um your tour chart right so you’re in charge of these set lanes like Matt he is in charge of all the software. Um, he handles all of our client calls and basically all the customer service.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Um, I have the lane of our giving back mob room smiles program and all the accounting and taxes and sales tax and invoicing. And so those are my lanes and those are his. And we kind of just do touch points along the way where I’ll say this is what I’m doing. just want to let you know where he’s like, aware of what my lanes are and what I’m covering and vice versa to make sure we don’t slip something that doesn’t slip through the cracks.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And then also having those with your home and family. So like Matt said, the expectation is that he’ll take the kids to school. There are times when I do it, you know, case by case basis, day by day, maybe he has an early appointment and so I’ll cover that. Um but he’ll usually take them. I am usually the bedtime routine person.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Um, I always make dinner. He often makes lunch and he’s our dish doer. He always does the dishes. Um, and so it’s really like it’s just like back and forth where I do something and then he does something and but for the daytime, you know, I kind of structure my workload around my kids schedule.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And so when my kids are at school, that’s the perfect time for me to go in and get some work done. Right now, I only have two hours twice a week of two hours, so a total of four hours where I have no kids. And so, how are we doing? is in preschool. Yeah, he’s only two right now.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So, um but he’ll be three pretty soon. And right now, how are we doing this podcast? He’s down for a nap and our kids are um riding the bus home right now. So, on their way. We’ll make sure we end this podcast before they walk in the door. Yep. Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And to go along with that number four um piece of advice of defined lanes of ownership, I would add, you know, you need to have some give and take. It shouldn’t be so rigid that it starts creating conflict within your relationship in the business of like, well, you were supposed to do that. You didn’t do it on time.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You messed it up. Like sometimes, just like Christa was saying, sometimes she’ll take the kids to school or vice versa. Um allow for some grace in in those lanes. Um it’s different running a business as a husband and wife in a family setting versus even being an entrepreneur with another person. Um because that relationship with someone else is a little bit more on the contractual side.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Whereas with your spouse, there’s just more built into that relationship than um what is on a contract for a business. And so yeah, you want to give each other some grace, help um just like in a marriage, if you’re thinking about the other person’s happiness more than your own, if you’re thinking about the other person’s success with their responsibilities, then that’s going to help.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Obviously, you’re both working together for the success of the customer and helping them achieve results. And that’s the absolute key and focus for us. And that’s kind of what drives not kind of, but does drive our priorities for what gets our our focus and attention and what comes before other projects based on what’s going to make the most impact for them.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And that goes back to what Matt was saying at the beginning that we have those shared goals. Like we both want our business to succeed. We both want our customers to be happy and to find that our platform really helps them and supports them to help their company be a great company and to treat their employees well.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): and and then at home, we really both have the same goals of our kids being great contributing members of society and that they feel loved and supported in the things that are important to them. And so on both ends, when we’re having a perspective of supporting each other and having grace for each other, when we don’t always rise up to all the expectations we might have for each other, um it just makes for a really positive relationship.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So yeah, and getting into this last one, um loving boundaries or flags for like why don’t you talk about that because that one’s more Yeah, this is something. Yeah, I I think we’ve established boundaries and then loving the boundary flags is more talking about um being okay to say, okay, we’ve crossed a boundary here, like, hey, it’s 11:30 p.m.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): and I I just But I want to tell you this business idea, Crista. I just can’t talk more at work right now unless it’s really urgent, you know, or um hey, this is my lane and I feel like you’re starting to micromanage me or something. Um or I feel like this is my decision and I feel really strongly about this, but can you tell me why you feel that way?

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Um, so having that really open communication is super helpful to just keep making sure that those expectations are aligned. You do have to continually check in because as our business grows and changes, our roles have changed. And with that, we have to check in and make sure that we’re still okay with the workloads that we’re sharing.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I just last week I asked Matt to cover something for me like I kind of dropped the ball on something and I just realized that it was something that I couldn’t have on my plate and so I asked him to take it and he just took it. So that’s something I would recommend is making sure that you continually check in with each other.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Weekly would be great for sure, at least monthly. Checking in on workload every night when we’re headed to bed or we get our kids down. We do like a quick check-in with each other like what do you need to be able to relax tonight? Mhm. Um, and last week I had a night where I was just like, I just really need to get a few things off my plate because I feel a little overwhelmed right now.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And so that became one of our work evenings. And he’s always happy to work alongside me. It’s usually me that’s the one pulling him from the work, but I was like,”Yeah, yeah, I just really need to work tonight.” And so I think that’s such a good way is just to, you know, once you get your kids to bed or whatever that moment is where you guys can check in with each other and just be like,”Hey, what do you need to be able to go to sleep well tonight?” You know,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): um, and the way in which you share that is also important. Like Crista chats to me and says, what does she say? What do you say? Like a soft reminder to get me the newsletter info. Uh, I’m notorious for very brief communication. I I don’t enjoy spending a whole bunch of time on emails to make them look really beautiful and kind and you know, I should run them through AI and just say make this sound really kind or something.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): But usually I just add the word gent the words gentle reminder. Yeah, gentle reminder. Yeah. Or soft nudge or Yeah. Yeah. because then I don’t feel like she’s attacking me because I literally send him a bullet line of what I need him to do, but I just say gentle nudge and then it’s But that that’s important because the way you say something matters, especially to your spouse and so when you have these loving boundaries, these flags of like, oh that’s my lane, or I I could really use your help doing this thing or let’s stop talking about work.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s almost midnight. Like those types of things, the way you say it matters. And in person, the tone matters. So, exactly. And one thing I would add to this that for me is one of the most important pieces to the whole conversation is it goes back to what Christa said of having shared goals and h and I think it goes further to having a shared vision for your future because we’ve had we’ve had to make a lot of sacrifices.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): We’ve had a lot of months of not paying ourselves anything and just completing more savings and keeping the business funded because we’re a bootstrap business. We haven’t taken on any investor money even though we’ve had a couple people that wanted to invest in Mobrium. We haven’t sought out for that um because we like being able to do things our way and that’s what works for right now.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And so, yeah, you have to have that long-term commitment that’s aligned because if one of you is like,”Hey, I’m willing to to be lean and to be scrappy for a few months,” and the other person’s thinking,”I can go for years.” That’s a misalignment that’s really going to be detrimental to the relationship and the business. You have to have alignment on those key things that matter.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Um what’s the long-term goal? Like we had one in the very beginning. Um so our very first customer that signed up for our software was in July and then this is 2023. Then we didn’t get the second one until December. Those were some intense months because we’re like,”Oh man, is it going to be months between getting a sign up. Um,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): and we had a pretty direct conversation of like, how long can we and are we willing to go before we second guess this and have a backup plan?” And and we decided on May of the next year. So, we had two customers in December and then we had several conferences and things that were in the works. And sure enough, God definitely blessed us because we got a couple in January, a couple in February, a couple in March.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I think we had six in just those three uh weeks. So, yeah, you’ve really got to align on those big things. Tolerance. Yeah. being uh sharing your risk tolerance. So what we found though is that you say one more month, one more month and you just kind of keep going.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You just keep uh in closing I I just wanted to share back when I worked at Utah State, I was juggling I I taught piano. I worked for Utah State. I I had three four I think four kids at the time and now we have five. But I was juggling work while parenting and literally doing all of them at the same time.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And I got an email that I didn’t realize was a fishing scam. And it was one of those like high alert ones, right? And I was already on high alert. where my brain, like the logical side, was almost turned off as I I was a little bit in the fight or flight zone, adrenaline pumping, getting all these things done, navigating, children fighting, whatever.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And uh I fell for the fishing scam. And I didn’t even realize it at the moment. I didn’t realize it until later that night when I was back in the cal zone. I was like, I I gave away I think I might have given away my social security number. Anyways, thankfully nothing bad happened from it that I know of.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Um it’s been several years so I think we’re in the clear. But that to me was a moment where I recognized that something needed to change. And that was actually when I quit my job at Utah State shortly after that and was able to kind of reestablish and give more focus to being a mom at that time.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And that’s what I would end with is you never want to be in those zones where you’re going to fall for a fishing scam. and and so if you can focus on those responsibilities that need your attention at that time and try to let the other ones wait, that is is the best way to go. So when your kids need your attention and you know they’re not able to just go watch a screen or something, just give them that attention.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Be that parent for them. Do that and let some of that work stuff save for post bedtime. That’s just an example. but um be mindful, focused, and present on the tasks that need your attention at that time. So, I love that. I think that’s a great closing message. So, thank you everyone for listening and for following along and uh we’ve got 20 more episodes to number 100. So, we’ll have more stuff to share with you on the culture profit. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks. Bye.