In the multifamily investing busi- ness, Chris ended up sitting in the CEO/COO seats, while I sat in the “owner seat.” We both still had small active roles in both businesses but having one person completely in charge and responsible allowed us stay out of each other’s way and stop doing the same work twice. This worked well and allowed us to grow both businesses much more effectively. After just a few short years, our multifamily business now has over 2,200 units, and our active flipping business flipped and whole - saled over 500 houses. TIP 2: KNOWEACH OTHER’S LOVE LANGUAGESANDUSE IT TOYOURADVANTAGE Apart from dividing and conquer- ing, one of the other things that really helped us become even stron- ger partners is understanding each other’s Love Languages (from the 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman). Each person has a certain way they receive love, that is their love lan- guage. That usually is also how they end up showing their love. Because we are both business partners and life partners, it was even more important that we had a deeper understanding of each other. When we started out in business, the first year was great, we made a lot of progress, and were very focused. During the second year though, our relationship started suf- fering. At first, we didn’t realize why. We were working 80-hour weeks (or more), but we both enjoyed what we did, and the success in real estate was very rewarding. So, we couldn’t quite put our finger on why our mar - riage was suffering. As hard as it is to say, we just didn’t feel like we loved each other.
A spouse may start in one of these three roles and transition in and out of them. When my husband and I first start - ed in real estate investing, we had no idea what we were doing. Literally. We had never bought a house before, never started a business before, and were not in management positions in our previous careers. We did, howev- er, both want to create financial free - dom and time freedom at an early age and were willing to do what it took to get there as soon as possible. It took us three years to create enough passive income to cover our needs, wants and more. Because we didn’t know what those three “spouse partner roles” were, we had challenging years where we didn’t know how to work together well, and those challenges inevitably bled into our relationship as a couple. Sometimes we would unknowing- ly sit in ALL three of the seats, and this resulted in us stepping on each other’s toes, or repeating the same work, which led to lack of progress, that then resulted to frustrations. If we had just clarified what seat each of us were sitting in, we would have reached our goals faster and would’ve had a healthier marriage. When we finally figured out which seat each of us wanted to and were equipped to sit in, we realized that both of us had very similar skillsets and wanted to sit in the same seat. But that doesn’t work. So, we asked some of our trusted mentors and advisors who told us that perhaps it would be best if we didn’t work in the same business. We could instead divide and conquer and have one of us work on another business. And that’s what we did. In the active house-flipping business, I end - ed up sitting in the CEO/COO seats, while Chris sat in the “owner seat.”
We would get annoyed at each other for the smallest things. Because we were working 80-hour weeks in the business, we had some time for each other, but not a lot. Chris’s love language is quality time. He wanted to spend time with me to feel love and show love. Mine is Acts of Service. I want someone to do something for me to feel love, and I show love by doing things for that person. When we weren’t working so much, we had time to do “all” the love languages for each oth- er. But when we were strapped for time, we just defaulted to our primary love language. So, I would do things for Chris, while Chris spent time with me. The problem was, since I kept doing things for Chris, that meant I wouldn’t do it with him. So he didn’t feel loved. And Chris would do things with me, which meant he couldn’t do things for me, and I didn’t feel loved. We had done this for a year, and we both didn’t feel loved at all. Even though we still liked and respected each other deeply. Once we found out what was happening, we became aware of how we were making the other person feel unloved and start- ed consciously showing love the way the other person wanted to receive it. This changed everything. Within just a few weeks, we started feeling more loved, we were happier, and our businesses thrived even more. You can take the short love lan - guage quiz on The Five Love Lan - guages site. TIP 3: MAKE TIME FORYOUR SPOUSE JUST LIKEYOUDO FORYOUR BUSINESS. Several years into our real estate businesses, we had great systems and processes. We would have daily
thinkrealty . com | 45
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter