Welcome to the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast. The show created to help painting company owners build a thriving painting business that does well over one million and annual revenue. I’m your host, Brandon Pierpont, founder of Painter Marketing Pros and creator of the popular PCA educational series, Learn, Do, Grow Marketing for Painters. In each episode, I’ll be sharing proven tips, strategies and processes from leading experts in the industry on how they found success in their painting business. We will be interviewing owners of the most successful painting companies in North America and learning from their experiences.

In this series titled The Commercial Couple, Maggie and Matt Kiper of Harpeth painting will be discussing how they built a successful commercial painting company together advice they have regarding married couples working together and finally specific thoughts on female entrepreneurship and empowerment within the traits.

In episode one, Maggie Matt discussed the different kinds of commercial work and how to choose your niche. In episode two, they talked about how to break into commercial painting now that you know your niche. In episode three, Maggie and Matt Deep dove into completing the work successfully after you have landed your first commercial painting project. In episode four, this episode, they will be discussing how to decide whether or not working together with your partner is a good fit for your life. In episode five, Maggie and Matt will be laying out how to identify the superpowers of each partner and how to effectively work together.

And in episode six, the final episode, Maggie will be discussing female entrepreneurship and empowerment within the traits. If you wanna ask Mag your Mac questions related to anything in this podcast series, you can do so on our exclusive Painter marketing Mastermind podcast form on Facebook. Just search for pain marketing mastermind podcast form on Facebook and request to join the group or type in the URL, facebook. com/groups/painter marketing mastermind. Again that URL is facebook. com/groups/painter marketing mastermind. There, you can ask Mag your Mac questions directly by tagging them with your question as you can see how anything discussed here applies to your particular painting company.

How, hey guys, hey, it’s been a minute. It’s been a minute. It’s been a minute. It’s been a long minute. This has been the longest that the a series of the Painter Market Mastermind podcast has ever been paused. It’s paused for quite a few months. What happened? That was, that was my fault. Totally my bad. It, it actually was, it actually was totally your be better. Yeah. So shortly after uh I guess taping filming whatever you wanna call it these days, our last podcast um I was diagnosed with hairy cell leukemia, uh, type of leukemia, blood cancer.

Uh, thankfully pretty quick, four month treatment wasn’t pleasant but made it through and here I am ready to just been waiting to get back on this podcast with you. That’s been the only thing you’ve been thinking about, you know, like wife, kids, business, all that stuff. Sort of secondary, like, but I haven’t finished podcast series. Yeah. Well, we’re excited to have you back. I was kind of like a little bit angry that you were sort of ruining everything. But, uh, we’re ok. We had that beer in, uh, was that Nashville when we met up, had a beer in Nashville.

And so now we’re ok. I got to make fun of you a little bit, which is a horrible thing to do to someone in your position, but I did it. Yeah. Well, you were a little smaller. You lost a lot of weight, lost weight or still had his beard regardless of having cancer. Like what the heck. So, so awesome. So, yes, Matt has defeated, uh, defeated cancer has defeated death. So he is here. So how to decide what, what is it, how to, discussing, how to decide whether or not working together with your partner?

And in this case, a married couple is a good fit for your life. Were you guys worried at all when you started a business together? Um, man, initially. No, because we, I don’t know how to answer that question, that an answer. And then I started thinking about it. Were we worried? No, I don’t. Here’s, here’s the answer. When, when you start a business, you just, at least for me, I just start attacking things and going at it. It’s just the way it is and Aggie was going to be a part of that from the beginning and I didn’t really think if it was a good or bad idea at the time, it was just the way we did it.

And so um looking back there really wasn’t an option. That’s just the way it was the way we did it. So we made it work, I think, worries, definitely not anything we ever felt. But I think to Matt’s point, I think we just did it right. And that’s kind of been the story of, of, of us is um put your head down, go grind, do and then uh I think some of those emotional things have come second. You do the fine tuning later. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, both of our parents are entrepreneurs, uh very successful entrepreneurs, both of our dads are and it was like hard.

No, like I remember my parents still to this day joke that they would never ever, ever under any circumstance go in business together. And so it’s interesting because when you said that I thought, well given that message that we received well before we were ever, I mean, I remember hearing that when I was little, not just as we went into our entrepreneurship journey. So it’s interesting that even though that’s what we were, lack of a better word taught, um I never was worried. I, I think to your point it was always kind of like, no, we’re, we’re doing this together.

So, you guys, how many years have you been in business? Seven? And how many kids do you guys have? Three? So, you have three kids? Did you have any kids when you started the business? No. Well, yeah. Uh, yes, I, I remember I was doing in a bid the morning of Sam being born. So, yeah, we had, we had three. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow. Ok. I think I was, I think I was pregnant when, with our third, when the business started. But, yeah, he’s not kidding. I was not barely even in the recovery room and he was off doing a bit because it was just in and do what you gotta do. Yeah.

That seems to be a common theme. You know, it’s so nice to talk about entrepreneurship and have these platitudes and, you know, work on out in your business and all that stuff is generally good advice. But a lot of times you just have to, at least in the beginning just kind of get hit in the mouth and just keep going, you know, it just becomes a ground. Yeah. It, it’s, uh, you gotta walk. I think I heard someone explain that you kind of gotta walk through like a ring of fire to get to the point where then you, like you said, Matt, you can kind of start to fine tune things for Maggie.

You said the emotion kind of comes second. You just put your head down. It’s a hard thing. It, it is a hard thing to build that you’re growing something from nothing. You’re making something into the appear in the universe that isn’t there. And that, that requires a very, I think it requires a very strong force from you because the natural tendency is for it not to exist because it doesn’t exist. So you, you’re, it’s almost like alchemy or so you’re having to create something that’s not there and that requires a lot of effort.

One other perspective that I’ve learned uh from several friends of ours too and, and from our parents as Maggie and I were always really good at when we were in the corporate world or had our regular day jobs, we would talk about work with each other at the end of the day. Like, hey, decompress your day, how was it? What did you learn? What’s your struggle and vice versa? And a lot of friends that we have successful married couples, but they do not bring any of their work conversations home at all.

So they probably would not be good working together. We, I felt like we almost kind of always did work together even though we were at different firms in the past. Uh We just had that collaborative mindset around work. That’s interesting. Did you, have you guys ever experienced? I guess, issues that you think maybe arose in your marriage and, you know, you don’t have to go deeper than you want to but issues that maybe arose in your, in your marriage or your family that you think wouldn’t have existed if you guys did not work together.

Uh, I think we can’t, it’s, it’s tough because when we both have a bad day or when there’s a bad day in the company, we both have a bad day. Whereas if we’re at one person got promoted and the other is not a bad day. Yeah. So there’s, it’s hard to be parallel sometimes in that where one person can’t lift the other up because we’re both kind of having a shitty moment. Yeah. It’s like the, that was really to answer your question, but that’s, it is, it is a great answer and it’s not something I had actually even really thought about as entrepreneurs in general.

The highs are high and the lows are low. You know, it’s not quite as steady as a, a traditional job, usually emotionally. And so, yeah, you guys working together as a married couple with Children. I mean, that adds a lot of stress just in general, uh, because you have to support them and the stakes are higher, then the highs are probably going to be a bit higher and the lows are probably gonna be a bit lower than if you’re maybe just single or off kind of doing your own thing.

Stakes are high. Um, ok, Maggie, what are your thoughts on that? Would you say the question again? Worst podcast ever? I know. No, it, it was, um, essentially, have you guys had issues, fights, family, um drama, maybe that wouldn’t have potentially existed or, or maybe obviously there’s gonna be little issues but maybe anything kind of a little bit more serious that came about as a result of choosing to work together and growing a company. I think we could. Um I think we’re all human and so for who we are, um at least who Matt and I are at work is who we are at home.

Um We’ve always been privileged to work in places where we were ourselves and we were um continually supported to, to be our best selves. And so we’ve kind of always been having a growth mindset where we work thankfully. Uh So when we started together, I think there’s been a lot of opportunities for me personally to be frustrated or um Matt and I are very different. We think differently, we lead differently, we process differently. Um If you, I think the only reason that this works is because we’ve put in so much time and effort to emotional intelligence to communication, to boundaries, to, um, priorities and I think one slip of that and it would be real easy for me to be frustrated, you know.

Um, I don’t like how you handled this and now you’re handling the kids the same way or, you know, um, because it’s all we’re doing is taking the day job and moving it to the family life. Right. Because like I said, we’re not, we are ourselves in everything that we do. So I think there’s a lot of opportunities where I could have. But we’ve made the choice to work on our, like I said, on our emotional intelligence um on um just our, our processing of things and our, our balance.

That’s, that is really insightful. So we’re going to dive in a little bit to this. Thank you, Maggie. So the, I’m, I’m always kind of asking questions, right? And then figuring out where we’re gonna go from there, you guys asked me, Matt asked before we started the podcast. Do you have any questions? I said, are you ready? He said, do you have any questions? I said, no, I never have any questions. He said, yeah, then yes, I’m ready. So that, that was how we always start the podcast, which is, which is a good way to start because then it goes down pain her podcasts. Yes. Exactly.

So we let it, we let the conversation go where it goes, but I’m gonna share something a little bit personal here too because, you know, I, I have a wife and business is stressful and family. So, last night we were having a conversation, we had a little bit of a, a TIF, a little bit of an argument about something and we try to get to the bottom of it because what we were arguing about it a lot of times when you argue about something that’s not actually what it’s about, you know, and this isn’t like a whole marital therapy thing, but usually it’s something else.

The thing you’re arguing about is not actually the issue. So we figured out that some of it was I’m talking about business and strategy and just thoughts that I have because I, I like to think stra strategy and stuff and what we can do at times when I shouldn’t be. So for example, that we’re, we’re there and the kids are there and we have a three and a seven year old and, and they’re boys and they’re kind of insane in a good way. But, you know, there, there’s a lot of activity, a lot going on and then I have an idea and I’ll start running it by my wife.

Be like, hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about that while, you know, the kids are doing whatever they’re doing? And so we came up with a rule yesterday, like, hey, Brandon, shut up about business and just focus on me. Focus on the kids when we’re hanging out with the kids. Don’t talk about that because it adds too much input and it creates stress. So I think this idea of boundaries. I would love to hear if you guys have ever had similar conversations or if it’s ever, hey, you know, as soon as we sit down at the dinner table here, hey, as soon as we do this, we’re not gonna talk about business or how does that work for you guys?

It’s been uh I think it was more of a challenge earlier on. We’ve had some good guidance on the boundaries there. We, we definitely try to not do that around the kids or at the dinner table that, you know, when we’re cooking in the kitchen and we’ve got a screen porch on the back of our house. We, that’s kind of our decompress zone and if we can get the kids inside later at night, that’s where we can discuss some of this stuff because you can come up with a lot of good ideas when you’re just bouncing things off each other.

If you’re not in the office, you’re not being bombarded by 20.5 other questions. It’s really can be a valuable time. And I think that’s one of the things that leads to some of our success is the, the time we have just brainstorming and talking, but there’s definitely gotta be limits to it. I think it was hard for both of us to learn that, you know, I think, um, I find it interesting. Uh, yes, the, the, the boundaries have had to be set, part of, part of what’s hard is we’re still in theory, a young company.

Um, we’re, we’re doing great things but, you know, there’s still a lot of work to be done. You know, we’re not just in cruise control mode, so there’s not a lot of time for us during the day to talk about things. Um We’ve tried on behalf of all of our best advice to put in, you know, a standing owners meeting, whether it’s weekly, monthly and there’s just um genuinely more important things um to fill our day because to Matt’s point when the kids are home and the day is done, we want to be there.

And so, so what we’ve done is if, if Matt and I worked an hour longer every day, we could probably have great meetings, you know, we could have an owner meeting, but we’re choosing to be home when the kids get home, which then leads to. But we still need to create an opportunity in a place and that’s the rhythm we’ve created. Um not everybody, not everybody could do that. And so for some people, it may be no, we have to elongate the work day so that we can completely stop when the kids are home, you know, but we’re, we’re able to kind of ping back and forth.

It works for us. Like Matt said, typically if we’re at home at night, having a glass of wine talking about work, it’s more big picture dreaming. You know, we’re not digging into the nitty gritty of, you know, what happened on this job and what product are they using and you know, who’s in charge to relax, you’ll sleep great right after that. But that’s just it. You’re extending your work day and your jaws clenched when you go to sleep, if that’s what you’re doing. So we’ve been able to.

But I also will say that I’ve tried to make a point to talk about work in front of the kids. Um Maybe just as the day is winding down if we’re starting to cook or settling in, I not on purpose, but I’m not gonna hold back to ask questions because I think it’s important for our kids to see what we do. You know, I remember when I was a little girl. Um we, we used to have, you know, bring your dad, like your dad would come to work and talk about what his career was and the teacher was like, what does your dad do?

I was like, my dad makes money and no, he just works. But like, I had no idea what my dad did. He was an entrepreneur, starting a company. But I was like, oh my daddy makes money. And so uh yeah, so I think what we do is special and unique and not what the world teaches you that your job is gonna look like one day. And I want the kids to see that and hear that I want them, um, our oldest asked the other day she was like, so you guys are kind of like a big company, huh?

I was like, like our kid has no idea what we’re doing. Like, zero clue. She thinks we have like, two or three painters, you know, helping the neighbor’s front door get change color. Like there’s anything wrong with that. No, no, no, no. But like I want, no, it just shows the disconnect between what you guys are doing and what they think. You, I don’t want her to think that I’m not coming and having lunch with her at school because I don’t want to, like, I want her to see the magnitude of, of what we’re doing during the day. 245%.

And for reference, you guys are about like 9 million right now. Yeah. So that’s a big company. Yeah. No, I think that’s a great point. And even if you are like, Matt was saying, even if you are running a smaller company, you know, sometimes time can be even thinner at that point because you’re trying to grow, you don’t always necessarily have all the hands to help you if you’re not able to, you know, clue your kids into it. If you feel kind of guilty. Like I’ve sat down with, with our kids, our three year old doesn’t really understand, but the seven year old as I’ve gone through businesses and kind of sat down and explained what I’m doing.

Like, hey, you know, sorry, we haven’t had as many boys days recently, you know, I’m gonna, let’s carve, let’s put one on the calendar right now. Let’s look at the next few weeks. Ok. Here we go, carve it out, you know, and, and uh I think kids respond really well to that versus like you said, Maggie. And I don’t even think we think about that. I don’t really think about it like, oh, they might interpret it as though you just don’t want to. Whereas for you, you know, you’re doing everything you can so you can do it and so you can feel responsible about what you’re doing for your business.

But I think that communication is key. Yeah, I mean, if I’m, if I say no to your class party, I want you to understand that I’m out there working hard so that all of our painters can give their families dinner that night. Like that’s the message that I’m trying to create with looping them into some of what we’re doing is not that just mommy’s going to work and she’s busy and can’t be there. You know, mommy’s trying to work to support all these families that we keep employed to make all of our clients happy with the money they’re spending.

That’s why I’m not at your class party. Not because I just am at work. Like, I want them to understand, like, work is good. Um, and I don’t want them to think that it’s just a reason we’re not around 100%. Yeah. Otherwise work becomes this bad thing. And I think the, the idea, I think kids understand more and want to know more than a lot of people give them credit for. I think there’s a natural curiosity as a child that unfortunately is beaten out of a lot of people through life, through school, through whatever, through fear of failure. Maybe.

But I think kids really crave that and, and I think business, I think money, they’re not bad words, they’re not, they’re important words. And I think I try to talk about money in front of the kids. You have to, I, I find you have to be a little bit careful, you know, you obviously don’t want them to feel financially insecure. You don’t want them to become like money grubbing people or something. But just the idea of weighing costs and, and benefits and opportunities. And I think it’s important for kids to start to process the world in that way.

Otherwise how do they get taught? They just get taught in school, they just get educated, you know, hey, try to answer all the ones right. You’re gonna get, you’re gonna get dinged for all the ones that you get wrong. So just try to minimize your mistakes. That’s how you succeed in life. You minimize your mistakes and you get more smiley stickers on your or you get more A’s on your exam or you get more whatever as you grow through the school system. I’m not obviously like the biggest proponent of the way that the school system is structured, but I think you can, you can fix that.

You can kind of teach them to think differently at home. If you’re an entrepreneur, I want to give a uh while we’re on the topic of family and kids and less so on work. A shout out to our friend Jason Paris who inspired us or led us into the uh family meeting template process, whatever you wanna call it, uh which has been a very valuable time for our family. We meet Sunday nights, usually, you know, 30 minutes to an hour and it’s a, it’s a chance for everybody to connect and, and talk about what’s going on and, and if anybody wants to reach out for that template, find me, find Jason.

But it’s been a great thing for our family to uh kind of keep everybody on the same page where they can feel heard. But it also has a little professional aspect to it where, you know, this is a meeting, everybody needs to sit and pay attention. Uh They kind of like that stuff because they get excited a budget like you said, I mean, and that all circles into what I was saying earlier, like we want these kids to understand that there is a budget and, and it’s based on mommy and daddy going to work and you know, we have to talk about it and stay in it.

So if you guys, if you, if you’re listening and you want to get that template, you can tag Maggie, you can tag Matt, you can tag Jason Perris in the Facebook group and ask for it. But while we’re talking about it, you mind just kind of discussing that. So budget is one of the items. What are the other major items you guys focus on in those meetings? Do you know what the purpose of the family meeting is? So we always start where one of the kids has to recite the purpose of family meeting and the purpose of family meeting is to have open and frequent open and frequent conversations.

So all the members of our family can realize their potential, which is exactly copied from Jason Paris. Um Yeah, and then we just kind of go through, we do a devotional and we go through uh the old business. So anything outstanding from last week, we talk about the past week. Looking back on what, what well, what they needed help with. Um We go over schedule for the upcoming week, we go over um budget household items like anything. And so again trying to key them in on conversations of like, oh, shoot man, we really got to get that new lawn guy on boarded.

Ok. All right. My mom is gonna make a note that she’s got to follow up with the law guy, you know. So hearing, hearing what goes into to being an adult and then every week someone raises their hand and says they want their room painted like, ok, not again the new week, new color. Yeah. So the rooms are getting smaller every minute closing it on. So, yeah, and then just um, you just feel tactical items and, and then we end with our favorite part which was fun to learn from Jason, which is compliments.

So everyone goes around the room and solicits two compliments from someone. And so it, it teaches the value of, of asking for compliments as well as giving them and then you get a silly family photo and dessert if, if everyone behaves. That’s awesome. Yeah. So it’s, it’s great. It’s a good, but again, it’s no different than the meeting templates we have at work, right? We’re the same persons that we are at work as we are at home and our team has a Monday meeting and we start with a, what are you grateful for?

And we end with a, a book club conversation. You know, there’s, there’s things other than work sprinkled throughout. Yeah, that, so that concept of being the same person, obviously physically and everything, you’re the same person. But it’s interesting because you brought up a couple of times, I think a lot of us, you know, we go to work and then we have kind of like a work persona. This is what we do at work and then you go, you come home and, and for a lot of people that’s when they let their guard down, so to speak, you know, so it ends up, the family gets sort of the worst, worst parts of you.

They get the leftovers because you went and you, you, you did the best that you could and work and you, you try to do great and then you come home and you’re like, oh, I’m so tired. Like what’s for dinner? And you, and you’re not really fully in, how do you counteract that? Because you do need to perform at work? You’re not a robot. Matt is Matt might be a robot. But you’ve already admitted you’re not a robot and so you’re not a machine. So, so how do you kind of like keep those energy levels even?

Or if you’re at work and you’re having to put out a bunch of fires and it is stressful, but you can’t start yelling at a homeowner or your team. How do you then go to work and maybe leave that there? So it doesn’t, they, they don’t then suffer, I guess the ramifications. Your family suffers, the result of your negative day. I think this is a, one of the main points I wanted to bring up. You lead me into this one plus one. In our scenario is somehow equaling three as far as our output.

So we have to share a lot of duties both in work and at home. And for, for example, I, you know, I take the kids to school and I’ve got to do some grocery shopping sometimes and I’m unloading the dishwasher because Maggie may have a meeting or may have to go uh you know, meet a crew somewhere or whatever and vice versa. There’s times when it’s the other way around. So the sharing of the responsibilities both in work and at home is making us more productive than either one of us would have been on our own.

It’s great and you have to be, that’s a humbling process for especially some guys to realize you’re not just the Chief Honcho, tell everybody what to do guys. It’s more of a teamwork aspect, both at home and at work. Yeah. Yeah, like that, you know, I, I would argue the majority of business owners probably have a, a ratio of 10 to 1 business books versus parenting books or business books versus marriage books. And you know, I, I think balancing your per your personal development is, is super important. Uh You can’t, you can’t pour hours into listening to podcasts and reading books to make yourself a better leader and a better entrepreneur and then ignore the fact that you’re still a spouse or a parent or, or whatever you are. Maggie.

Have you been spying on me the last, last week or so? I’ve been reading different business books in bed and then Ariel’s been reading, uh, she’s been reading all parenting books and that was, you know what? And that was us for a very long time. I mean, I think, I remember at one point I said to Matt, I was like, here’s this awesome podcast I’ve been listening to about parenting and he just, like, never listened to it or I, like, tried to get him a book and it was even like a, like a spiritual parenting book.

You know, I was like, trying to, like, marry the two worlds and, and I think I would argue just now. Is he kind of over the last year, year and a half? But have you read a business book yet? So that is, that cuts both ways. There’s a bunch on my desk. So, maybe you guys are, are kind of similar here. We’re complimentary. Yeah. Exactly. Like, just make sure that we’re not like doing anything that they’re gonna be, be talking to their therapists about for like, 20 years and I’m gonna make sure that the business stays on track. Exactly.

But, yeah, that’s a joke that we make is, uh, I feel like as parents, you just, I don’t want to go too far off. But I feel like as parents you don’t, it’s hard to know, you know, it’s hard to like, like you do the best you can. I think educating yourself is really important, reading books, listening to parenting podcasts, things like that. It’s really important because people do kind of know there’s been a lot of research and homework on it, but it can feel like a guessing game, especially if you’re like me and you’re not reading enough parenting books and then you’re kind of just like, well, if I do this, they might get messed up this way.

But if I do that, they might get messed up that way. What’s the way that I can try to mess them up the least? Like if, if they’re not in, you know, I just, they’ll be talking to their therapist about something, let’s just try to make it something that’s not so terrible. Well, there’s something to be said about intentionality and all of this. So if, if you’re searching for knowledge to be a better parent, you’re gonna be a better parent. If you’re searching for knowledge to be a better business owner, you’re gonna be a better business owner.

You’re searching for knowledge to be a better spouse, you’re gonna be a better spouse, whether you think that’s the outcome or not. But just the pursuit of that indicates that you’re the kind of person that’s gonna succeed. I love that. Yeah. And I think the, if, if you’ve ever met me, there’s probably not five minutes that we didn’t get into the conversation that I didn’t say. One thing I learned from my counselor dot dot dot And, and Matt and I have been very open about and we haven’t even touched on that.

But, you know, the impact that both marriage counseling and one on one counseling has had on, on our ability to do what we’re doing both as professionals and humans. Um But, you know, I remember bringing this this very feeling to my, to my counselor 0.53 session and it was, you know, I just, I feel like I feel like my kids are just like, I don’t know what to do with them. And I feel like I’m not being the best parent and how can I, there’s three of them, they’re so different, all this stuff and she was like, hang tight, like they go to their annual doctor’s appointments, they show up to school on time, they’ve got clothes, they’re well fed, you’re not hurting them.

They have friends. Like she kind of started listing off these things that yes, are they basic needs in the grand scheme of things? But does every child in our town have those? No. You know, and so she kind of kicked me back down to realize um we complicate parenting. Like I think we forget the level that our kids are brought up to. Surely by the fact that they have a safe warm loving provided for home. Yeah. And I think it’s, it’s easy to beat yourself up too, you know, and think like, oh, you’re the worst parent or you’re really letting them down without giving yourself credit.

But, yeah, all the fundamentals that you’re able to provide that. Unfortunately not everyone does get and just love, you know, I think I find love goes a long way. Yeah. The council has nothing to do with, um, you know, where we’re going with your spouse. It kind of does though. It does. If you can’t have these conversations, you might want. Yeah, if this is making you really uncomfortable, you might want to re evaluate that right there. The, um, I think counseling is great at, we do counseling as well.

We do, we try to do it every 1 to 2 weeks. A lot of times I almost never want to do it. It’s never something I want to do honestly, unless we’ve got in a fight and I’m like, you’re gonna see, I’m gonna tell him, I’m gonna tell him and he’s gonna tell you I was right. So, it’s like I, I feel like I have a parent, you know, like I don’t have to prove to you. I was right. He’s gonna tell you. But the, but then it’s a, it’s more of a maintenance thing than anything.

It’s like, hey, let’s, and what I found it, we’ve been doing it for a while what I found in the beginning was it was actually causing more issues. It was like, we’d be doing fine and then we go in and then I’m like, I didn’t know that bothered you and she’s like, I didn’t know that but, and all of a sudden we’re like, well, what the heck was that? Why do you think now? Yeah, we’re like fighting and then we weren’t fighting before. But I think you get, it’s because it’s bringing some stuff up that maybe you’re just sort of ignoring or too busy to focus on.

But then you get into kind of like a maintenance thing, but it goes back to just mental health, you know, investing in your marriage and it, it is relevant to business because your, your business can only be as successful as you are and if your personal life is a mess, you might be able to hold it together for a while, business wise. But eventually you won’t, eventually, it will catch up. And I’m amazed at, at how people are still afraid to talk about that. I just yesterday I was talking to one of our, um, one of our repeat clients, somebody that we’ve been working with and for, for years and, and this very topic came up and he kind of said, you know, hey, I’m real sorry.

Um, kind of coming out of a fog. Sorry, I’ve not been on my game with work. He’s not an employee. But he’s a, a contractor that we work with and it’s just kind of like, you know, it’s been a, it’s been a rough go at home. And I was like, hey, man, like, I didn’t notice anything but like, you know, hey, are you good? Is everything ok. And the, the response I got was this, like, stuttering of like, yeah, and then, you know, marriage counseling and I was like, hey, like, just kind of put it in there.

Yeah, like hoping you don’t, you don’t, it doesn’t register. Yeah. And I was like, dude, we’ve done that forever and you know, good for you. He’s like, really like with who and, and how did it go? And like all of a sudden he just like lit up and I was like, man, if things are hard, like you don’t have to be falling apart to get help like, so yeah, I mean, we just need to bring more normalcy to, to doing it or not doing it right, but not doing it is not because it’s some shameful thing or because only people who have terrible marriages do it.

Maybe you choose not to do it. That’s OK. Yeah. Yeah, maybe you’re working on it in a different way. But um I mean, owning a business is hard and I assume most people listening to this podcast in some capacity are either entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs within, within and of their vertical. Um And so it’s, it’s not it’s not easy and emotional intelligence. I would argue is probably a huge indicator of success in entrepreneurs. Is can you, can you balance your emotions? Can you balance your processing? Can you continue to work on yourself?

I think all of those are, are necessary components of successful entrepreneurs. So let’s dive into that a little bit because we talked about the boundaries. And essentially if you’re sitting there making dinner or you’re, you’re at the dinner table, that’s probably not the right time to talk about strategic work stuff later at night. Uh is a good time to talk strategy. Maybe not the right time to talk about the angry customer or the, the painter who stole things or quit or whatever other fires you’re dealing with.

Probably wait till the morning to deal with that. And if I may say on the boundaries, you have to figure it out and, and verbalize it. I think that’s the key for, for every couple, it’s going to be different or for every partner, whether you’re a business partner or a married couple in business or whatever, you have to have a conversation about what the boundaries are gonna be. You can’t just decide I’m up here and hope that you’re on the same page, right? That communication, but the emotional intelligence.

So we’ve talked about reading, learning, you know, Matt won’t do it. He just wants to worry about business. So, Maggie, you’re basically to be cancer boy and have everyone be like, are you OK? Just want, yeah, he’s, he’s milking that for all it’s worth. Um, but you, so you’re basically single-handedly holding, I’m just kidding. You’re what else? What do you mean by emotional intelligence aside from? Ok, I’m gonna listen to podcasts and read, you know, read books. How about, sir? Is it? Hey, I know that Matt, you know, he, he responds really well to this kind of praise or like I know this really bothers him.

So I’m gonna be very careful how I discuss this kind of thing. Like, is that what you’re referring to? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Intentionality. Um Not there’s a time and a place for reactive, right? Obviously, um we’re allowed to have emotions and there’s allowed to be fires and emergencies and, and times when you can’t quite have it all together. Um and I would argue those are also important, important as leaders to be human, to be the theme of the conversation. But, um you know, I, I have really learned over the last year that you have to exactly what you’re saying.

You have to think about what you’re going to say based on who you’re saying it to. Um, you have to think about how you are going to approach a situation based on who’s involved and that’s common courtesy. That’s um I think it’s a form of love and it’s definitely strong leadership. Absolutely agree. So then for people, for people listening I guess maybe they are early on in their business. Maybe they’re, maybe they don’t even have a partner or, you know, maybe they’re, they, they’re working together and they’re not sure if it’s a good fit, I guess.

What would be some, some general signs that you guys think would say, hey, this might be a good fit or what would, you know, you guys talked about? Some couples would never talk about work. Whereas you guys have always been comfortable talking about work with each other. Are there other things that like, hey, if, if this is comfortable with you guys, it might be a good sign that working together would, would be a good fit or hey, if you guys tend to be really uncomfortable or fight over this kind of thing, it’s probably not a good fit.

I think people just know it instinctively. I’ve had so many conversations with people and I can never work with my spouse. That would be terrible. I have that mindset. Yeah. You know, we’ve heard probably heard more of that than, than the other way now, but I don’t know that there’s an answer to that. I think if you’ve been married for more than five years or been together for more than five years, you know, you’re stepping into a rat’s nest or if it’s gonna be a success. Yeah.

And if you have been married for a while and you, but you haven’t started a business, we’ll all, just go ahead and tell you it’s stressful. We will go through stress together. So to recognize that I know I had this, I, I read or someone told me this piece of advice when I was single and they’re like, well, if you want to know whether you can endure stress with someone intentionally go on like an awful trip, like travel, just this terrible trip. You can’t, it’s uncomfortable, you can’t shower, you don’t have as much food as you want to have and then just see how you guys fare.

I’m like, well, that sounds like weird, but I guess logically it does make sense. Isn’t that what they do in the military? Military is its own thing. We’re not talking about that. No, I think there’s very much truth to, um, to an intuition and an instinct. And also, um, if you, I always think about Dave Ramsey, he used to listen to Dave Ramsey all the time back when the radio show was like a thing before Spotify took over the world. And, um, he would always say, you know, before you get married, if you’ve built any type of wealth, you should always sign a prenup.

I don’t care what you believe. I don’t care what, um, you know, your stances as a Christian on divorce or whatever. You should always sign a prenup and, you know, I was 22 and made not enough money for a prenup and thinking like, oh my God. I can’t imagine having that conversation with someone. And now, you know, it’s exactly how you said it too. Probably. And now fast forward, I not necessarily saying people need to have a conversation about a prenup, but I mean, we have an operating agreement, you know, we have a, we have legal documents defining our roles within the company.

We have legal documents defining what happens if one of us is no longer in the company and those are odd conversations to have. But I think the more true logistical conversations that you can have and get through is also a pretty telling. Um I think it would be a good exercise to do. Like can you talk about who’s in charge of what and who’s gonna make the decision here or can you sign this agreement? Can you, you know, envision this, would you be willing to sign a prenup if you know, say maybe somebody has a company that’s flourishing and doing well and financially strong and they get married and want to bring the spouse in.

Um You know, these are as funny as it sounds but like paperwork and law and things like that are a pretty good indicator of, of where your comfort level is, where your communication level is. Yeah, I love that. That was as you were saying, I was like, oh go ahead man, married couples as an entity don’t run a business, the individuals do so especially as we’ve grown our team, we’ve had to add very clear roles of what each of us is responsible for. So it’s not confusing to them.

So that’s helped kind of back that up too of, hey, we both can’t be responsible for the same thing or answering the same questions or have the same clout to our team because that would be super confusing. Yeah. Uh Yeah, that’s a great point. And they can create a host of almost political issues, bureaucratic issues where it’s like almost like a mom and dad or something like, oh, that I can go to, I can go to Maggie and maybe she’ll say something different. So it, it’s interesting on our actual visual org chart.

We have Maggie and I as an entity as the owners, but then it flows into another bubble below that, which is Maggie only as CEO. It’s not Matt and Maggie as CEO or, you know, whatever other organization might be. So, it’s very clear that I work for her. It’s true. Yeah. 51%. Even though Nick only refers to us as the Kipper, it is definitely Matt and Maggie. That’s awesome. So, yeah, the, the idea of those uncomfortable conversations, the legal conversation, the conversations that you would have if you brought on a, an external business partner, it might be uncomfortable with a friend, but therefore you probably shouldn’t be business partners.

We’ve all heard of those terrible stories of friends who go into business together. But if you can’t sit there and, and have that discussion doesn’t mean you have to sign a prenup. Doesn’t mean you, you know, it doesn’t dictate what your outcome needs to be. But if you don’t have the comfort level to sit there and address it and no one gets too offended, no one’s squirming too much. You guys are trust and love each other enough to sit there and have that conversation respectfully. That’s probably a pretty good litmus test to whether or not you guys can do this.

Yeah, I like that a lot. Yeah, that’s uncomfortable. That’s really, really uncomfortable. It can be, makes it real, it makes it real. Yeah, 100%. Everyone says, you know, I used to say that I used to, I used to speak to girls, um, in high school settings about marriage and, and preparing yourselves as young women to potentially be wives one day mothers. Why? No, they were individual white. Ok. Um, I also taught English. So anyway, I don’t think you can ever say ws. Yeah, I don’t think so. I think Matt got you on that one.

Yeah, a wife’s purse is across the room. The apostrophe. We know you didn’t say it that way. Anyway, um, they, it, I kind of gave the same advice, right? I was like, when, you know, you know, like when you stop wondering is when it’s probably the right person, but then take it a step further but can you also sit down with that person and say, hey, fy, I divorce isn’t an option for us, you know, or Fy I living here is a non negotiable for me or my career goals.

Are this, are you ready to ride along with that? So it was like, yeah, you might have no more questions and feel all the feels and have no doubt in your heart that you can do it. But then can you also sit down and have the logistical conversations because it’s not just a emotional arrangement, it’s a logistical arrangement. Yeah. And I think the value, you know, so much about marriage and life in general, business partnership comes down to values. What’s your value system? What’s the framework that you process decisions in the world through?

We all live in the same world. We don’t view it the same way. We’re, we’re viewing them totally differently. Events are viewed totally differently by everyone. So if you’re gonna build a, a life together, I mean, it’s just marriage in general. Do you wanna have kids? Not wanna have kids? What’s your value? What’s your goal? Do you wanna just travel a bunch and, and you really, really value freedom? Are you value a family and you wanna kind of pass on your pass on things to someone and that’s what you more value as a business.

Do you wanna grow really quickly? Do you, do you wanna really focus on the client and the customer. Do you want to focus more on efficiency? What are you passionate about? Where’s the business going? Because if a couple, even if you’re good together as a family, but just wildly different perceptions of what you want and what you’re passionate about a business, there’s going to be issues there. It’s almost like having another family together. Do you have your actual family now? Hey, do you want to go start this other business family?

Well, what would it look like? What would we do? What do we want it to do? It’s basically a kid. You’re, you’re kind of forming a, a thing meant to be together. Harvest, painting is our fourth child. I can guarantee you that. Yeah. So it’s probably the neediest too. Never stops crying. Stop. I give you so much attention and love. That’s right. Yeah, we definitely, I would say that’s probably where we’ve had to have the most existential conversation is, is growth. I mean, I say it’s so beautiful to work together with our spouse because we can create the lifestyle we want.

And I just don’t, I don’t mean just a monetary lifestyle that’s part of it. But I also mean our schedule, our routine, our, our focus and energies. But um I think Matt probably innately has more ambitious goals that he would like to pursue and, and is that fair to say, and grow? And I’m kind of over here, but like everything’s kosher and cute and like I can pick the kids up on Friday. Like, so it’s, it’s a good balance. I think we challenge each other to, to kind of um see the other perspective, but that is definitely one area we’ve, we’re continuing to have conversations and try to hear each other out is, is growth because to your point that is one of the things you can control in your business.

Yeah, Matt, are we gonna move into, uh, a Grant? Cardone? 10 X. Ok. You guys at nine mil we’re going to, we’re going 89 figures here. I’m anti 10 X, anti 10 X. Yeah. 10 X is an operational nightmare. I tell you that you just go out and sell it. You’re gonna get absolutely wrecked. Operations wise. I’m like 0.5 X. Let’s go 0.5. It’s a nice gradual uphill, kind of slight climb now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Slow burn, slow burn. Um, is there anything else? This has been incredible? I appreciate you guys coming back. Matt.

Thank you for beating the Grim Reaper. I know, I know this podcast was a big driver for you. It was pretty much the only thing that got me through. You’re, you’re welcome for giving you a reason to win. I get my flowers in the mail. Yeah. Yeah, I haven’t gotten them yet but I’m sure they’re coming so in the mail. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Uh Is there anything else that you guys wanna wanna add as we kind of wrap up this pretty, pretty interesting episode. Just let people know they can get in touch with us.

I have questions about marriage and family or even not business related. Yeah, it’s, it’s, I think we put in a lot of work long before we ever started Harper painting. And my understanding is, you know, you just listen the last 45 minutes and it probably sounded, I don’t wanna say flippant, but it sounded definitely like um things are smooth sailing, right? We didn’t have some big like knock down, drag out story to tell that we dug out of, but that those, those things and the hard work happened before Harpeth.

And so, um yes, please reach out because if anyone’s, you know, grappling with either currently working with their spouse or the idea of working with their spouse um wanting their spouse on board, but they’re not sure, you know, there’s, there’s so many dynamics that I hear from the community. Um And, and we, we’ve put in the work um in our marriage and our house and so we, we know what those feelings of uncertainty and, and all that look like. Maybe not in the story we told, but it’s definitely there and we’re happy to, to reach out and chat.

So just, just to clarify, you’re saying that work was work on your relationship and your family and kind of some battles you guys had to fight through and get to a good spot. And that a lot of that happened before Harper’s painting. I started there. Ok. Right. Right. Yeah. Awesome. So, yeah, you, I, I wanna give people multiple ways. So obviously you can tag them in the, in the Facebook group. But this is also a pretty personal, um, personal topic. Is there an email or something or a way that they could maybe privately reach out to you guys?

Yeah, I always say just shoot me an email. Um, Maggie Ma Ggie at Harpeth painting llc.com. Um Maggie Ma Ggie at Harpeth painting llc. com or you can shoot me a message on Facebook and I’ll tell you to email me. Just do one extra step. Yeah. Yeah, cool guys. This was a blast. I’m looking forward to in the next episode. We’re going to be laying out, uh, how to actually identify the superpowers of each partner, which will be really interesting. I think it, it uh is probably interesting to a lot of people, Matt, especially with how big and scary you were.

You’re not the man, you, you were, you’re actually more but you’re just physically less right now. Um That, that Maggie is the CEO and that you technically work for Maggie. I think that’s a lot of people are going to find that really interesting and I want to dive into that a lot on the next one and it also leads very well into episode six where Maggie talks about how to kick, you know what and uh in the trades as a female. So I’m very excited for all of this.

But guys, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate you guys. You’re welcome. It’s gonna be a good next couple episodes too. Thanks. It is. Yep, thanks.

Keep growing.