How We Started A Business Together And Stayed Happy
More couples today are taking the plunge and starting a business together. When life partners become business partners, finding a healthy balance of both comes with patience and trust. This month, I’m sharing my tips on starting a successful business together and staying happy.
Lockdown launch
We started our live e-learning platform, Learned.Live during the first lockdown of 2020. Perhaps the most daring time to start any business is when everything seems stacked against you. Yet our determination helped us find courage to stick at it. Education is the greatest gift we can give ourselves. It’s the path to freedom and empowerment. We’ve made it fun and engaging. Learned.Live allows people to discover like minded individuals and find their tribe. It’s a great legacy to leave behind.
Parents of another kind
Because of our strong relationship, it was easy to build a close family of staff and teachers. As parents, we couldn’t help but see our business as one of our own children. You have to nurture it, give it love and guide it. I think it makes you a better parent as well as boss.
Being perfect business partners
There is always an element of pressure on your relationship, even when you’re completely aligned in your goals. The key to any successful partnership is always great communication. Even when I think Jo can read my mind over an issue, we still sit down and talk it through, thoroughly.
Setting aside ‘you’ time is crucial for your survival in the partner/co-founder world. Your one to one time is precious and needs to be nurtured. Even if it’s only a quick drink at the weekend. You have to maintain a healthy flow of communication. If that sounds like business jargon, then there’s a reason for that; a healthy business operates in precisely that fashion. You have regular meetings to address issues and for us, our personal relationship is no different.
It’s still easy to sometimes miss a hint or misinterpret an off-hand remark. For any relationship to thrive both personally and professionally, it’s important to have enough emotional intelligence to address anything. That way, you can resolve it, move on and be stronger.
Sophia’s typical day
Being with Jo has certainly made me step up my game. I often look back to when I was a full time employee in one role and I wonder what on earth I did all day. I’ve always worked hard but it seems like another world! My days are now run with military precision. I’m up at 6, sort the kids out and make breakfast, squeeze in a quick workout before the school run and, if I’m lucky, a quick paddle on the way home. Then work, walk the dogs, do housework, spend some quality time with Jo, eat, collect the kids, cook, oversee homework, then special time with the kids, bath time and story time and then back to work making sure I’ve cleared my tasks. It’s no wonder I rarely have trouble sleeping!
Sophia’s takeaways for a perfect work/home relationship!
- Put love first and set aside regular ‘you’ time.
- Set boundaries.
- Know when to walk away from your business and start something else.
- Keeping communicating!
We set the boundaries right at the beginning. We promised each other love would always come first. No matter how much we poured into Learned.Live, if it affected our relationship we would address it. While we truly believe in what we’re doing at Learned.Live, if it soured our relationship we would know it was time to walk away and start another adventure. Happily that hasn’t happened and that’s down to our strong belief in what we’re doing.
Over to you!
Sophia Spencer
A highly successful female entrepreneur in her own right, Sophia and her partner, Johnathan Reynolds co-founded the UK’s first live online learning platform, Learned.Live, together, which launched in November 2020. They live with their growing family in Brighton.
