244 A Couple's Guide to Thriving in Business Together with Lindsey Epperly
Have you and your partner ever considered working together? Or maybe you already do. In this episode, I'm joined by Lindsey Epperly, co-founder of Jetset World Travel, to explore the intricate dance of working with your spouse. We delve into how shared values and robust communication form the bedrock of not just a thriving business, such as Lindsey's, but also a harmonious household. Lindsey brings her considerable experience to the conversation, providing a roadmap for others who might be navigating these same waters or simply seeking a more cooperative approach to their home life.
In this episode, we cover:
- Defining clear roles, responsibilities, and boundaries in a professional setting to maintain a healthy personal relationship
- Creating shared values and goals, both in business and in managing household responsibilities
- Lindsey's challenges and successes in working with her husband
Connect with Lindsey:
www.lindseyepperly.com
www.instagram.com/lindseyepperly
www.linkedin.com/in/lindseyepperly
Who Made You The Boss? Podcast
https://open.spotify.com/show/6Bp2Tim9szjyd9db6bPEES
Listen to the episode here!
Or watch the episode here!
Like what you heard here?
I’d be honored and grateful if you would head over to iTunes to leave a review and let other female entrepreneurs know what you learned! While you’re there, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss an episode.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Megan:
All right, friends. Have you ever A thought about what it would be like to honestly work with your spouse or significant other Maybe even if you own your own business, if they came to work for you? Or? B? Have you ever thought about maybe looking at your home life through a different lens, where you are co-workers in keeping a household up and running right, co-workers in keeping a household up and running right Outside of the potentially romantic side of your partnership or relationship? Well, when I met Lindsay, I knew I wanted to have her on the show because she has been working with her spouse very successfully for many years, and that always intrigues me because I have always been convinced there is no way my husband and I were together. So I'm really excited for the conversation we're going to have today. And again, listen to some of her tips. You know, if you don't own your own business, or you know you don't have a significant other you'd want to bring in, but you live in the same space with someone, I think there's a lot that you can learn from some of the tips that she's going to be sharing here today, especially around this idea of core values and communication. So let's go ahead and get started.
Megan:
Welcome to the Work-Life Harmony podcast. I'm your host, megan Sumrall. I'm the creator of the top program and top planner teaching all things time management, organization and productivity for women. I'm also a mom and wife and, just like you, I'm juggling hashtag all the things while running multiple businesses and a family. Guess what? You don't have to feel constantly overwhelmed, exhausted and stressed out. There is another way. When you have the right systems and tools to plan and manage your time, you can live a life of harmony. This is your show to learn from me and other amazing women how to master your time, planning an organization to skyrocket your productivity, so you can have work-life harmony. If you're ready to stop feeling overwhelmed, this is the show for you, and if you're new here, I'd love to get you started with my work-life harmony assessment. All you have to do is DM me on Instagram at Megan Sumrall with the word harmony and my team will send it right over. Hey, everyone.
Megan:
Welcome back to Work-Life Harmony podcast. I have a new guest today that I am very intrigued to chat with, lindsay Epperle. I'm going to let her introduce herself here in a moment, but the reason I'm really excited about this conversation is we're going to be talking about how to work successfully with your spouse and, from her angle, it is actually working in business together. But I think it's really important for us to have this conversation because if you running a household two people living in a home together to me that is working together Right. And I'm really interested to hear about this story because, as I shared, let's see the thought of my husband and I working together. I don't think we'd make it through one eight-hour day without helping her. So, lindsay, welcome to the show. I'd love for you to introduce yourself and then we will get chatting.
Lindsey:
Thank, you, Megan. You know I get that a lot about how people feel about working with their spouses. They immediately go into imagining what that would be like. So I'm excited to talk about why it has worked for us, what we've done right, what we've done wrong. But just to share a little bit more, I'm Lindsay Epperle, I own Jetset World Travel and I host the podcast called who Made you the Boss, and I love pouring into entrepreneurs, pouring into individuals who kind of want to assess what it means to tackle the illusion of control in their own life. Right, Because I think that often happens and maybe even us working together is evidence of that. It's just ways that I can make sure everything makes sense in my dominion and all the lessons I had to learn when it was evident to me that life is up for control. And here's how we have to embrace it.
Megan:
Yeah, and I think you know for so many of our listeners I hear this a lot Like. It's almost as particularly as women. The more overwhelmed we get, the more roles and responsibilities we absorb, the tighter our clutch on that desire for control is right. Like how many times and I'm guilty of this do I say to myself it's just better if I do it, because then I have control, it's done the way I want it done, but then I pay the price of being stuck in a place, of being overwhelmed, right. So part of it. You have to learn how to relinquish some of that, which is not easy.
Lindsey:
And sometimes life teaches us that, whether we're ready for it or not and I know you mentioned your listeners are well beyond just entrepreneurs. They're individuals who all feel this every day, and I really learned in business first, but then very quickly learned it in life in general that the tighter you cling, the slower you'll grow, and that lesson has played itself out in my business life, in my home life, as I become a mom like all the things.
Megan:
Oh, I kind of. That's such a powerful. The tight with the tighter you cling, the slower you grow. I even just had that visual of a plant or a flower being put into a tiny box right, and it can't. It can't flourish. That's really powerful, wow. So I would love for you to kind of share how you and your husband first landed in now working together and what that journey looked like.
Lindsey:
So it's very funny. So I founded my company, which is now known as Jet Set World Travel. We turned 10 this year, but I had been in the travel industry.
Megan:
Now for listeners. I want them to understand the size of a business you are running here. Share a little bit about how large your team is. This is not a. I'm doing this in 30 minutes a day.
Lindsey:
It's grown beyond my wildest imagination. It's really cool. We are now at 80 team members and we made the Inc 5000 list of the fastest growing privately held companies in America.
Megan:
Congratulations. All right, so I just wanted to kind of set that stage for our listeners. This is a massive company, thank, you.
Lindsey:
Yes, a lot of fun. That is another time and another place, right when we dive into all of those ins and outs. But the story of myself and Jeremy we actually had known each other in college. We met at a potluck. We tried to date. I was a year older, I graduated, we just stayed friends and he was always very attracted to this idea of working in the travel industry, to the point where I remember he applied for a job with me as a friend and I was like no, thank you, I'm over here building my own thing.
Lindsey:
Fast forward to, we fall in love. It's one of those like timing is everything. The person you're supposed to be with was right in front of you this entire time and we were engaged. And I'll never forget the moment that this happened. We were in the kitchen we're, like you know, talking about our wedding registry, talking about but what had happened that day is, my key right-hand employee had decided to abruptly just change industries and I just thought this is going to destroy me. You know, it's like the early stages of building a business, where you really rely on everyone, every single person's wearing all the hats. And Jeremy, you know, I'm like cutting vegetables and Jeremy goes well, what if I applied for the position? And I was like absolutely not, no. I mean well, what if I applied for the position and I was like absolutely not, no. I mean like we want to go forward with this marriage and stay together.
Megan:
I'm glad to hear that your initial thought was like exactly.
Lindsey:
I'm like don't make me come any closer with this knife. So we're cutting vegetables we still talking about. He said, just hear me out. So early on in our relationship we had identified our core values. We enjoy being present, we enjoy being playful, we chase the fun, we make our choices. Choice is a huge core value of ours. And he said what if we got to choose this and it could give us the freedom and flexibility we have always wanted? And you know what's the worst that could happen? I'm like well, the worst that could happen is we could fall apart in all the ways. Right, you can wreck my business and we can wreck each other, but other than that, maybe it's worth a shot to see if it can get us freedom and flexibility. So I even conducted interviews. Jeremy showed up to the Starbucks in his suit with a resume and said consider me, Please consider this. And I finally considered it and thank God I did.
Megan:
You know, I love that. You even said that you didn't treat the hiring of this any different than if it were somebody else coming. Instead of just a knee jerk, yeah, let me figure out a way for you know, to fit you into the business and all of that. So, from the beginning, was there a? Were there clear roles, responsibilities and boundaries between that for the two of you?
Lindsey:
That is an excellent question, and this is where we got a lot of things wrong in the beginning. With humility, Jeremy accepted a position as an assistant right, he's not coming in in full-blown nepotism and becoming a business partner and I also had no interest in having a partner at the time. I again the tighter you cling, the slower you'll grow. I have built this baby. It is my business, it is my business, it is mine. And over the course of time it became evident that we did not know the lanes that we were in.
Lindsey:
It also became evident that work Lindsay and work Jeremy were not in love like home Lindsay and home Jeremy. We were two different people at work, as most people are. You know, you don't think that's a bad thing or a good thing, because I think it gets you to where you need to be in your career and I think people would probably admit that to themselves about their own personas. You know, it's just that you probably don't interact with your partner every day in your work life, so you don't really get to see the differences. But for us, those differences were glaring. They were quick lessons of we've got to learn to respect each other from a professional standpoint or else this is truly not going to work. And what forced our hand, megan, what really made us learn that, what our lanes are, what our respect is, what eventually made me say I do need a partner actually, is that we were five months pregnant with a home under contract, march of 2020, and that is not the time of life to be in the travel industry.
Megan:
Oh, wow.
Lindsey:
So it was decimated.
Megan:
Yeah, interesting. Now I was thinking about you know, this line of boundaries, roles, responsibilities, and thinking about it from the outside of work life and into home life, because now it's not just the two of you anymore, plus you still have the business. What, if anything, did you learn in navigating that through business together, that you've applied and how you essentially work together in the home? Because that is almost like running our own mini business. It feels like I always jokingly call myself the COO of our house. Right, I'm the operational officer of the schedules and the things and the appointments and all that kind of stuff.
Lindsey:
Yes, yeah, and for us, we both work from home as well, and so it is very easy for all of it to bleed together. I think some of the actionable items that we learned that we still to this day implement are and you'll appreciate this from a productivity standpoint Right, it's the matter of. We would just very easily come to each other and derail one another's days with oh, I have to talk to you about this, oh, I need to talk about it, and it could be about, you know, mila, our daughter has an appointment and I need you to take her to it. Or it could be oh, by the way, that employee asked about a raise.
Lindsey:
When you talk about you know, like it could be any side of this gamut and imagine you are in the zone you all, sense of the word comes in and gives you this like bomb drop that takes you out of that mode, and so we've really had to be intentional. We have Friday dates that are our coffee dates, where we kind of parking lot, almost every idea that is not a time sensitive emergency and we know that is where we can go and talk. So that way we're being respectful to one another and what our lanes are respectful to one another and what our lanes are, because I know if I interrupt his deep flow of work, well that's actually taking away from what he's able to bring to the household and to the business and to the family and vice versa.
Megan:
Yeah, so during that Friday date? Is that just work stuff, or?
Lindsey:
is it home stuff as well? It is anything and everything. It is that we call it parking lot. It is the parking lot or the ideas that we need to discuss.
Megan:
Okay, I love that and I'm trying to think like at home. It's interesting because my husband works from home as well. He's two stories up from me, tokyo. We don't work together in business, but I have noticed because I work right outside the kitchen. There's oftentimes he'll pop down for lunch and it's the quick pop in of personal and so we have kind of a signal of my little glass door's closed, meaning this is not a time to pop in if you happen to come downstairs, yeah, and I think for people where everybody's at home, having some kind of visual indicator to help with that is really important.
Lindsey:
That is really interesting, the visual indicator, something we've developed. This is the dorkiest thing. I don't know that we've even admitted this to our team, but early on, when we would kind of interrupt each other and someone's like I'm in the middle of a sentence. You know I can't, please don't interrupt me in the middle of a sentence. You know how, if you're at a hotel lobby and there's a bell and you ding it to get serviced, so we will ding, we will say I have a ding Interesting and just wait until your dean gets acknowledged because you don't want to interrupt that person's workflow.
Lindsey:
Right, they have something pressing that we need to talk about.
Megan:
Yeah. So, knowing that now, do you guys attempt to kind of have work hours that are set, since you're both at home and then work's done and now it's family time.
Lindsey:
Yes, yeah, we do. I think it's so important for us to be able to be present with our kids. I have a one-year-old, almost, and a three-and-a-half year old, and you know, the stage of life is just very precious, very meaningful. Any stage of life is, of course, right, but we're very intentional about delineating that work and home-life balance.
Megan:
So what are some things that you guys have navigated through? Figuring out how to work together in business. That translates over into how you work together, you know, in the home and managing children and the entire home and everything that goes along with it.
Lindsey:
Yeah, I think that learning one another's unique strengths and this is something that's so important as a human, whether you're doing this in the context of your partner or not right, it's knowing that just because you can doesn't mean you are called to do whatever it is that you feel really strongly about. That is your purpose. And so, as we learn that about one another we're in our 30s, this is still a growing like a work in progress we're really thoughtful about how we help one another, protect our time, whether that is home life or work life, and so, for instance, the number one role that cannot be replaced in home life is mom and dad. Nothing else can ever fill that gap, and so it's important to protect the time that we are mom and dad. And then, for me myself I've been pursuing a lot of the goal in the company this year is to amplify, is to get our voice and our story out, and for me, I enjoy speaking, I enjoy writing, I enjoy communicating.
Lindsey:
That is something that I feel is a purposeful activity for me, and we recently had an instance in the business where there was an opportunity for me to step further back into the weeds of the business and Jeremy was like, yeah, you can, but does that mean you should? And so just the helpfulness of challenging one another around, yeah, that's great, but you're going to be going back to Lindsay five years ago versus Lindsay now, and what she wants and what she knows in her heart is her purpose. So being able to remind one another of that, what are our specific callings and our unique gifts? That has been huge.
Megan:
One of the things I keep hearing over and over again, which it's so easy to, it sounds so obvious, but it's so easy to not do, is it sounds like there is just a lot of constant communication between the two of you around. These are our core values for Home, for Business. This is what's important to me. This is what's important to you. In the day-to-day, just hustle and bustle of life, I think it's very often we know inside the things that are important to us, but how we choose to communicate that externally to the people with which we live. So often that doesn't happen, and so there can be that clash or that feeling of lack of support when, at the end of the day, like I had no idea, what if he had no idea that you were wanting to amplify and speak and do all of that, then there wouldn't have been that opportunity to support that decision around where your time should go.
Lindsey:
Yes, I think it's really important to kind of camp out on this too, because we probably over-communicate to the point where, if the outside looking in, someone would be like that is asinine. Now they are just going into the little bitty nuances. But you have to. And Jeremy actually came up with a motto during the pandemic, as we were leading this team, as we were kind of like doubling down and saying all right, we're going to walk away from our home in order to save our business. We know that we can grow this thing. And the motto was silence breeds insecurity. And so every day, we were communicating with the team. We were communicating with each other, because if you don't over-communicate, the other person starts with the story in their head. As Brene Brown says right, what is the story in your head that you are creating that the other person is not communicating?
Megan:
So so good. Oh, my goodness. Now, if anyone listening is considering working, you know two different scenarios one bringing their spouse into business, or you know even a really good friend or a family member, right, or maybe they're feeling like the household in and amongst itself is kind of out of control and we need to get some co-work here out of control, and we need to get some co-work here. Where do you think people should start?
Lindsey:
What are some of those initial conversations to get the ball moving in a healthy working together way. That's a really good question, right? What can I go back and tell Lindsay chopping vegetables in the kitchen? Jeremy applied for the job.
Lindsey:
I think it's really important to go back to those values, those the values and the goal, right?
Lindsey:
So the knowing who you are and what is important to you, and also knowing where you are going. And so my advice to others would be if you're pursuing this because the goal is, you know, something kind of frivolous, like something that's not really super important to you, right, if it's only for financial gain, that's fine if that's your interest. But, like a lot of times, those types of goals will fall short because of the actual emotional grunt work it takes to put into getting there. So, for us, our goal again was freedom and flexibility. So well, if pursuing this lifestyle together helps us reach that goal, and then we can do that for our family, as we're building our family, and so, for instance, this summer we're able to spend the entire summer abroad because of what we've been able to build here, and we can run the company while we are abroad. So that's freedom and flexibility. To me, that's a very clear sign that we have been working toward this goal and it is working for us.
Megan:
So a shared, unified vision and goal with what you're after. Yes, that's so good, and I think again, like you said, of course there needs to be money to have that. You can't go spend a summer abroad if you can't afford to do it. But it was a deeper, because it's one thing to just say, hey, we're going to make this money, to make this money, but why? What is the underlying reason for that? I think that really creates a different, powerful story.
Lindsey:
Yeah, it does. You're not likely to abandon that. Why and honestly, for us, that was what kept us going through our industry's greatest crisis is. We knew our why and it would have been really easy for us to press the big red button of panic and say, all right, jeremy needs to go back to his job as a financial analyst. He made great money there. We are making negative money here as this business is bleeding during a crisis. But we knew we would ask ourselves but are we ready to give up on that coal and that dream? And we just weren't ready to walk away.
Megan:
So good, now are there any lessons learned? I always, I learn everything the hard way. That seems, well, go to your left. So are there any lessons learned that you would want to share with someone that is maybe just starting on this, where they're going to be working with their spouse of? Oh, learn this one the tough way. Here's what I would recommend.
Lindsey:
Yeah, you know, I actually wrote down some ideas because I thought Jeremy and I have really just enjoyed coming up and I actually even asked him, like, what are some of your favorite practices that we have gotten into? And one is something we call change of scenery, and I've heard this in like therapy speak, but it works so well in both the business and home perspective. But you know those times where you're talking with your significant other and you just kind of get in like a circular pattern. It's like a tense conversation, you're disagreeing and it's just going around. We have found that almost every single time we get in that you know you're sitting in the same place that you usually sit in, you have your preferred spots on the couch or in the kitchen and all of that and it helps so much.
Lindsey:
One of us will say, ok, we're not getting anywhere, change of scenery. And so it's either we take a five minute break and we then go for a walk or we just go immediately on that walk. We change what we're looking around and that actually changes the way that we approach these issues and these disagreements. And so I mean just one thing that we've had to learn over the years is the ability to call a change of scenery and respect one another when they do it of listen. We're not going to get this fixed here. Let's do a change of scenery.
Megan:
Oh, I like that a lot and it's funny. I even think about sometimes realizing there are conversations that we need to have my husband and I, family matters or whatever and I'll have that little knowing not tonight, or hey, let's wait till we can get out to dinner or something and just get out of the grind of day-to-day stuff.
Lindsey:
Yeah, it's incredible how much your rut kind of like lives in your body. You know that you don't realize you're just going into that routine and that routine sometimes is even a bit like heels dug in. I want it my way, and so changing that perspective oftentimes allows you to actually embrace what someone else is bringing to the table.
Megan:
Oh, so good, so good. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. You've given me a different view of you know, maybe there would be a day that my husband joins the pink bee. I don't know, I still, or probably not, the pink bee. I don't know, I still don't, or probably not. But it allows me to view it differently. Hey, we have some common goals and desires that we want for our life. And what if there was a way where it was all in support of that? I think it would paint a very different environment. Now check in with me in five years.
Lindsey:
I think we'll wait, we'll do a reverse interview and you can tell me how it's going.
Megan:
Yeah, because he'll joke and every now and then I'll be like maybe just couldn't come work for you. And we both look at each other. We both just start laughing.
Lindsey:
We're like no you never know what I found. Megan is so funny. You know I run a travel agency and so part of our business model is end traveler, but also part of our business model is serving travel advisors, and we now have multiple travel advisors whose partners have quit their job to come join them. So I find it a little bit contagious.
Megan:
Same. Yeah, you know, I could see that because it's almost let's double down and do this one thing together instead of in. I mean, I can't imagine the intensity in a home of each person being their own entrepreneur, running their own business.
Lindsey:
That would probably be a lot Totally, you know what would feel that way, too is in a traditional nine to five type of setting or even, as you know, entrepreneurs two different roles, two different jobs, two different visions you only get like a 25% glimpse into what your other half actually does throughout the day. Absolutely. It is kind of interesting to have more visibility.
Megan:
Yeah, yeah, interesting.
Lindsey:
Like when they talk about this person.
Megan:
Maybe I won't say no anymore, maybe it'll turn into a.
Lindsey:
We're not. I appreciate the optimism.
Megan:
Yeah, you know it can be a I teach inside. All my planning stuff is we always start with especially when we're doing that longer term strategic quarterly annual planning is establishing what are our core values and we review those every single quarter inside the planning community to ensure that what's on our calendar is reflecting correctly what those core values are. And I think it's so important to you know. Back to what we've been talking about, of that communication, of establishing in your home and in your business, bringing those to say does this still feel right? Is our time in alignment with what we said was important to us?
Lindsey:
Yes, Do you encourage people to do that with their partner as?
Megan:
well, yeah, so you know they do that with their partner as well, and you know two very small ones in our family is we eat dinner together and we have a lot of music in our house. Like music is fills our home with joy, and so whether, yeah, you know, we all play some form of instrument that's usually on downstairs in the evening and all of that. So again, it doesn't need to be I'm going to solve world hunger, while great they can be, just the things that kind of center and ground you and give you that feeling of joy.
Lindsey:
I love that. I love that. And you probably have people regularly go back to the conversation and say what are these goals now? What are these dreams now? I think it's important to kind of much like a business plan, like it shouldn't just live in a drawer somewhere. It should be actively being updated as you grow too, and those are in that.
Megan:
Like, the very first page of my planner on the backside is these are my core values for the year, and so I'm seeing this regularly. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Where can people learn more about you and about your amazing business as well?
Lindsey:
Thank you for asking. Yes, I love connecting with people. I love hearing stories. I would encourage people to find me on Instagram or LinkedIn. Lindsay Epperly, you can follow me on Instagram. Thank you, jet Set World Travel is the company, so if you're looking for some travel planning help, you know where to find us. And then I also run a podcast called who Made you the Boss, where we talk a lot about imposter syndrome and burnout and the kind of gremlins that get in our head in a modern professional workplace, whether you're an entrepreneur or not. All the things that we deal with right on a professional level.
Megan:
these days For sure, yep. Oh, thank you so much. It has been such a pleasure, and now you've got me excited about thinking about some future trips. Getting on top of all things time management, organization and productivity doesn't have to stop just because this episode is over. If you want one tap access to all of my training and current top podcasts, go to the app store or Google play and download the pink B app. It's one word, the pink B. It is jam packed with simple yet powerful tips and strategies to get you out of overwhelm and into harmony. And if you have a question you want me to cover on a future episode, go to iTunes and ask your question in the podcast review section. And while you're there, don't forget to leave a five-star review.
