7 Keys to Be a Loving Couple in Business

How can you be a loving couple in business? We’ll share 7 keys that have worked for us as we celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary.

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Click the player to hear George & Mary-Lynn share stories of how they manage marriage and being a couple in business, on The BIGG Success Show. Here’s a summary…

In November celebrated our 13th business anniversary. Our wedding anniversary is February 29th, 2008. We are often asked how we can live together and work together. We think these are the keys to make any relationship – life or business – work.

1. A Loving Foundation

When you’re building something. everything begins with the foundation. A house built on a bad foundation is a real problem. Same thing goes with a relationship because the strength of your foundation will be tested in difficult times.

We genuinely love each other. We are best friends and enjoy doing just about everything together. This strong foundation is the base for our relationship and our business partnership.

2. Shared Vision

What is vision? When you look down the road, 5, 10, 20 years, it’s your overarching goal. It’s what you’re trying to achieve over the long run, and it should be something that’s aspirational, that really charges you up, and get you moving. It’s your North Star.

As a couple in business, we have a shared vision for what we want as a couple, as well as the professional shared vision for our company.

For our personal vision, we are working to be able to have more walks along the beach. We live in Illinois and love the ocean. Our North Star is to spend more time ocean side in future years.

Our business vision is to help others find focus and fulfill their purpose.

We believe that BIGG success is peace of mind, which flows from 3 sources, and the very first one is finding and fulfilling your calling. That’s what BIGG success is all about is helping you find that focus, and keep that focus, so you live up to your full potential.

3. Shared Core Values

Picture a bowling lane with the guards up. The guards prevent your ball from going in the gutter. That’s what your core values are. They are the boundaries that keep you from going off course.

We talk about core values in more depth in a two-part series called Live Your Dream with Purpose. We share how defining your core values helps you to live the life that you really want. And in Part 2, we have an exhaustive list of values that you can download free.

Here are our core values…

Personal: Faithfulness, humility, honesty, compassion

Professional/Business: Commitment, service, trustworthiness

4. Respect

A relationship grows through respect because each person feels free to be themselves. Respect creates a space where you feel secure. It empowers you with confidence.

Mary-Lynn shares a personal story of how her early interactions with him, helped her get out of an abusive relationship. It starts at 11:20

To make our personal relationship work, we respect each other’s opinions and experiences.

As a couple in business, we respect each other’s unique skill sets and experiences. We have complimentary skills naturally fall into our roles.

George is our visionary who knows how to drive us forward strategically. I tend to be more of the technician, and figure out how we incorporate technology and marketing for our products and services.

Or as I like to describe it… I am the person who gets us into the mess. You are the person who gets us out.

That’s probably a better way of putting it!

___

5. Communication

This is important because if communication breaks down, everything does!

We have to communicate with each other about our dreams and desires so that we can keep our shared vision in alignment.

As a couple in business, communication is key because we both think about business differently.

Something else to keep in mind, a lot of times it’s not the problem that’s the problem. It’s the communication about the problem that becomes the problem.

Listen as George has some fun explaining this concept starting at 14:30

6. Conflict Resolution

How we talk to each other, when we are not seeing eye to eye is huge, and this goes for being a married couple and a couple in business.

Arguments are inevitable. But learning how to use the right words and tone is key. As Stephen Covey says in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, seek first to understand.

It’s also important to forgive and forget. This is such an important part of our relationship. Once again, this creates a safety zone, because we can have conflicts, but we know how to solve them.

By being quick to forgive, or quick to try to see the other person’s point of view, or quick to try to find commonality or common ground, it makes our relationship stronger, and that makes the business stronger.

7. Balance

It can’t be all work and no play and vice versa. One thing we’ve said over and over is to forget work-life balance. We don’t like the term because it’s not realistic.

The key is flexibility. It’s not about working all the time. It’s about intentionally moving towards your goals and doing the work that brings you satisfaction, but also helps you live the life that you want to live.

Hear how George & Mary-Lynn spent their anniversary weekend starting at 21:55

To be a loving couple in business takes work, but the 7 keys we shared today will help make you a power couple, and that leads to BIGG Success!

Here’s to your BIGG success!

George “The Professor” & Mary-Lynn
Co-Founders, BIGG Success