The Survival Guide to Working with Your Spouse: Build a Business with Your Lover without Losing Your Mind

By Brad Casebier

Running a business with your spouse is a high-stakes game. You can't afford to lose either one—your business or your marriage.

But statistics are not in your favor. More often than not, this journey leads to an endless loop of scraping by with no clear way out. The dream of success fades into disillusionment and resentment. Fortunately, there's a better way.

Brad and Sarah Casebier built a simple plumbing and air conditioning company from nothing into $33 million in annual revenue, dominating the Austin market and sweeping the "Austin's Best" awards year after year.

Now Brad shares the key decisions they made along the way, shaping the booming success of their business and deepening their love in the process.

Learn how to be co-creators of a thriving business as you build your relationship along with your financial security. The Survival Guide to Working with Your Spouse provides all the tools you need to win in business and still want to share a bed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781544521770

Book preview

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Copyright © 2021 Brad Casebier

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5445-2177-0

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I watched my parents wrestle with embarrassment and a little bit of pride while they discussed my oldest sister’s creative writing teacher’s feedback: You see, she is a truly talented writer, but she uses her talent to make fun of me and disrupt the class with what she writes. My parents were proud of her sharp wit but just as frustrated as the teacher when it was directed at them. As a seven-year-old, I was impressed with my sister and made a decision, that day, to write as outrageously as she did.

Thank you, Michelle, for showing me writing was cool.

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Contents

1. How We Worked Together

2. Working for Yourselves

3. Working as a Team

4. Aligning Your Vision (Foundational Key #1)

5. Knowing Your Roles (Foundational Key #2)

6. Your Business and Your Relationship (Foundational Key #3)

7. Business Owner Mindsets

8. Working Together

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Chapter 1

1. How We Worked Together

I’ve been thinking about walking away from my career as a nurse. I want to work on something that is ours. I feel like it would be more gratifying to put my efforts into something that we both own, instead of just giving my time away with nothing at the end of it.

A few short weeks after stating this, Sarah quit her job at Seton Medical Center as a labor and delivery nurse to become a full-time partner in my plumbing business.

This was the fateful conclusion to several conversations born out of what had become a very dysfunctional year. My business had grown, and I had more and more obligations. At the same time, Sarah’s job placed ever-increasing demands on her. Any flexibility we once had, in our schedules, had completely disappeared. We had three young children, at the time, who needed more from both of us. It simply was not working, and we needed to decide what was going to give. Either I needed to scale back my business, to be more available, or Sarah needed to consider a part-time role. The idea came up in a conversation: What would be possible if we combined our efforts into my business?

Years earlier, in 1999, I launched my solo venture in new-construction plumbing. I was only twenty-three years old but had grown up in the industry, working with my father since I was thirteen. Launching a business wasn’t particularly scary for me at the time. I grew up surrounded by small business owners. Uncles, family friends, all the contractors whom I had met over the years working with my dad—all were small-business owners. When I started up my business, Sarah agreed to help me out with bills and taxes, in addition to being a nurse, and I went to work bringing home the bacon. This was the model I had seen over and over again. We did some simple math and thought there should be plenty of money for us.

We soon discovered things would be more difficult. Sarah will tell you that, yes, she agreed to do this, but she had no idea what she was signing up for. She had no prior training or even interest in managing finances before she agreed to help me out. When we started working together, we had one bank account. We didn’t even have a business account. We bought groceries and plumbing supplies, with our personal account, and sorted out business expenses when we did out taxes. I wrote up contracts and sent invoices on Word documents. This is about as backwards as things can get, but this is how many businesses get started. The more concerning truth is this is where a lot of businesses stay.

In the beginning, it was just me doing my work in the field, 100 percent solo. I began to hire people, and eventually, I had three trucks and five employees. But we were losing money faster than we could make it. Sarah’s pay the bills and do the taxes part of the deal had become vastly more complicated, and our initial estimate that there should be plenty of money for us was clearly not working out. We were right on the edge of becoming another failed-business statistic.

Stepping away from her nursing career was a big decision. Sarah’s degree came at a significant cost to her. She paid for every penny of her education and worked incredibly hard to support herself and pass the tests. Once she started working in the healthcare industry, she really enjoyed it, but there came a day when she realized she was not going to find fulfillment working for a big corporation. She began to get the sense that she was a cog in a huge machine. She found that her professional growth came at a huge price, requiring more education, significant time on the job, and intense competition with her peers for that next rung on the ladder. The massive investments of time and effort didn’t seem to come with a sufficient pay increase. Looking back now, I think the real problem was—like many businesses—the hospital she worked at lacked a personal cause worth fighting for. It was just a job. She was simply working for a paycheck. At the same time, she could see the business I had built getting bigger and more dangerous by the day.

Her decision to step away from her lifelong dream of being a nurse and embrace being an owner of a plumbing company was a decision that forever changed the trajectory of our lives.

I suspect that, had she not made that decision, instead of writing this book now, I would likely still be getting the guys some supplies, reviewing blueprints, and stressing about the jokers who owe me money. I was completely stuck in my concept of what the business could become and who I could become. Sarah, on the other hand, saw something totally different from the very beginning. She saw a big, beautiful, organized, profitable business—one that made money whether you were there or not. To be completely honest, I thought she was a little crazy and setting her sights too high. Yet here is the single most important gift that Sarah brought to the table: she was able to see this vision because she was willing to ask for help.

Apparently, asking for help is a superpower. Sarah didn’t just wake up out of a dream with this big, shiny, profitable business concept. She found several business coaches who were willing to talk to her for zero dollars, and they all told her the same things:

You guys can build a great business!

You need to become a master of your financials.

You need to raise your prices.

You need to learn sales.

I want to be perfectly clear: Sarah was the one seeking this information. I was out in a ditch with a shovel, working with my guys, doing it the old-fashioned way. I would come home, and she would fill me in on what her coaches were telling her. My eyebrows would furrow, and all

Reviews for The Survival Guide to Working with Your Spouse

[Marie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very helpful especially for couples like me who also run a business. The title says it all. A must read if you want to move your business and relationship to a happier era.