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What’s it like to be married to a business owner? How do you split up home tasks when you both work full time? Do you ever feel like you come second to the business?

You asked and we’ve delivered! In this episode, I’m joined by my husband, Tim Smith, to share a behind the scenes look at my business and the role he plays in it. Listen in as we get real honest in this conversation and share a few unpopular opinions!

Want to join us live when I record my solo episodes? Head over to The Creative Entrepreneur Community Facebook Group!

Get to Know Tim (:23)

Do you ever feel like you come second to Laylee’s work? How do you handle that? (2:00)

Has Tim always been a part of the business? (3:59)

What has Tim been most surprised about in Laylee’s entrepreneurial journey? (6:40)

How do you break up home tasks when you both work full time? (8:30)

How do you handle finances and financial planning? (11:30)

Unpopular Opinion (15:17)

Does Tim enjoy going to conferences with Laylee or do his own thing? (16:38)

Links:
facebook.com/groups/thecreativeentrepreneurcommunity

Review the transcript for this episode below >>

Laylee Emadi 0:05
Welcome to so here’s the thing where we share candid conversations that lift the veil on what it takes to find success, even if that means sharing a few unpopular opinions. I’m your host Laylee Emadi grab some coffee or cocktail. And let’s get real.

Laylee Emadi 0:22
This is Tim’s first podcast episode, first podcast to ever be recorded. Right, Tim? This is Tim, he’s my husband, he is an attorney. We live in Dallas with our two cats in our cute little home that he spends so much time fixing up. He loves woodworking, and barbecue and all the fun things. And I’m really excited to have him on the podcast. A lot of people over the past couple of years that I’ve had the show, and I’ve been working on the show, have asked if he would be on it ever. And so I I’ve always wanted him to come on the show. But quite frankly, I didn’t have a lot of things that I wanted to necessarily ask him. And then over the past year and a half, two years, so many people have asked so many questions about Tim, and I’m so excited to be able to have him on the show and ask him all these questions and to hear his honest opinions. I feel like I don’t even know what he’s gonna say. So I’m really nervous. But I’m also really excited to be great. It’s gonna be great. Do you want to introduce yourself to the people?

Tim Smith 1:26
Hi. Well, you kind of set everything that was to say, Sorry, I like barbecue and woodworking. And I’m a lawyer. That’s about it.

Laylee Emadi 1:33
Yeah, and he’s a wonderful husband, okay.

Tim Smith 1:37
I try to be

Laylee Emadi 1:38
You are—best husband ever. Let me pull up the list of questions. And if you guys who are watching live on Facebook, if you guys have questions for Tim, or for me about anything about our marriage, or how we function as a marriage with two people working from home full time, one of which owning her own business? Let us know. I’m really excited. All right. So first question that we got the most of. And this one, I’m a little bit nervous to hear his answer, but I’m gonna ask it anyway. Do you ever feel like you come second to Laylee’s work? And how do you handle that?

Tim Smith 2:15
Yeah, I mean, you do? I mean, I do, I guess because you work so much, you know, but I think that’s normal. I mean, you come second to my work. Sometimes it’s just the nature of, you know, having a job and having responsibilities that you can’t put everything and everybody first some sometimes they have to come second, but you have to find the, you know, like a balance between it. And when something’s really important. You have to make time for that person, which you do.

Laylee Emadi 2:43
I try to Yeah, I mean, I totally get that. I think I mean, if I can give my own opinion here, I think that sometimes he does probably feel like he comes second to my work. Because even though I try to prioritize my like family and friends above my job, that doesn’t always happen. Because as an entrepreneur, I mean, in any job, like you said, but especially when your job is all consuming, and you’re the only one doing it. There’s just there’s just less of a balance, I think, and it becomes more difficult. So yeah, how do you the second part of that question was how do you handle that?

Laylee Emadi 3:16
Pretty well? No. I mean, if you know if I need something for me, I tell you, and I guess just communication is how you handle it. You know, sometimes I tell you to stop working so much, or put your laptop down? Or put your phone away?

Laylee Emadi 3:31
Yeah, we got to get that one a lot. Put your phone away. Yeah, I think I think Yeah, you do you do a great job of encouraging me to like, find balance, even even today quite, you know, transparently as I always am, I was really stressed out. And Tim just encouraged me to like, take a break. And he was like, take a break and come back to it later. I think that’s really important. And so I appreciate I appreciate the effort to encourage me to take breaks for sure.

Tim Smith 3:56
Yeah, you need it.

Laylee Emadi 3:59
Okay, the second question we got a lot of is has Tim always been a part of the business? I’ll let you answer.

Tim Smith 4:05
I mean, not really. Not. I mean, you know, not in the very beginning, I guess. And, you know, I’ve always kind of helped you with contracts and some of the money funks you know, the, the taxes. I’ve always done that kind of stuff. But no, and I probably don’t have as big a role as people think to be honest.

Laylee Emadi 4:26
So, yeah, I would agree with I think a lot of people especially in the beginning, and this might be just like a, like a female business owner thing. I don’t know. But a lot of people gave a lot of credit to Tim and I, as a wife, I never wanted to discredit his his involvement, because his involvement was truly mostly like, on the encouragement side, he was always really encouraging while still, I think presenting like the reality checks that I needed. So you know, I wanted to go full time into my business probably two years before actually did. And I think a big part of that was Tim just presenting the logical like, well, we need your income, and we need you to have a full time job, and we need consistent income and things like that. But his encouragement and his his like, you know, just pushing me forward was was really worthwhile. But I do think a lot of people credited him with involvement in the actual business planning, just because I think that women in general get, we don’t get as much credit as we should for being smart enough to be able to start and maintain businesses on our own. And that’s like a whole different conversation, I think. But I will say Tim is always the first to say that he didn’t have like a business planning role in the building of my business. But now that my business has grown, and I’ve created a small team, Tim is definitely part of the team, he does a lot of the financial side, I rely on him to either give his opinion or help me figure it out, or contact our CPA or have conversations with our CPA. Because I don’t have the time and be I don’t feel like learning about all of that side of things. And he’s just naturally really good at it. So. So that’s been great for us, I think.

Tim Smith 6:11
Yeah.

Laylee Emadi 6:12
And it’s been fun to be able to, like, work together a little bit more, especially in the past. What like year two?

Tim Smith 6:18
Year or two? Yeah, since COVID. Maybe?

Laylee Emadi 6:19
Yeah, since like, COVID started, I think that was like a one good silver lining was having Tim be more involved. So that was cool. Oh, my gosh, I love the comments. Tim read these as they come in, because they’re really encouraging. I hope man is a big role. Tim, Don’t sell yourself short. That’s true. He really does a great job of encouraging. Okay, love this one question. It came off of Instagram. And Lauren asked, and I’m excited to hear this guy. I don’t know what he’s gonna say. Lauren asks, what have you, Tim, what have you been the most surprised about throughout les Lee’s entrepreneurial journey? And I have no idea.

Tim Smith 6:53
I’d say the biggest surprise is like how, how fast you’ve, like taken it and how, like how diverse It is, in a sense of like, you know, it started as photography. And that’s like, Oh, that’s all you’re doing. And now you’ve got like this podcast and like a million other things, which I tell you to not do so many things, but you still do them. That’s, that’s a surprise. You just like, I’m gonna do this. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just gonna do a podcast. I don’t know how to do it. And that’s kind of how you’ve always done it.

Laylee Emadi 7:23
That is the most accurate, but also really kind, but that’s the accuracy is the whole I don’t know what I’m doing. But I’m still gonna do it kind of thing. But thanks. I appreciate that. Yeah, it’s definitely been interesting. And, and Tim does a great job of reining me in when or trying to rein me in with like, oh, you’re not doing anything new now, right? Like this year, you’re not doing anything new. And I’m like, yeah, except I’m going to host a conference. And he’s like, oh, casual. So

Tim Smith 7:48
yeah, you kind of do this thing where like, I’m super busy. I can’t take anything more and then you add like two more things. Like, it’s you just finished something like, Oh, thank goodness, I can like, relax. So I’m gonna do like two more big things I’ve never done before. That’s kind of your Mo.

Laylee Emadi 8:04
really true.

Tim Smith 8:07
You’re like, I’m never gonna do this again. You do three more things. Just keep adding up.

Laylee Emadi 8:12
Does anybody else feel the sarcasm and explain?

Tim Smith 8:17
It is

Laylee Emadi 8:18
Sass–it’s pure Sass. Oh, well, he’s already being sassy. I’m scared to ask this next one. Because I know the answer very clearly on this. I know how you’re gonna react. You both work full time. How do you break up home tasks?

Tim Smith 8:35
Yeah, well. You know you kind of don’t. Laylee’s not the biggest home Tasker person. She’s more of a entrepreneur go getter. And she doesn’t love doing home tasks. You know, dishes, hates dishes, hates dishes. If she lived alone. It was just her kitchen was one giant mess of dirty dishes. So I do most of the home test, but I kind of enjoy it. You know, it’s relaxing to do that. She likes that I do it. So that’s okay.

Laylee Emadi 9:08
Yeah, we don’t we I feel very I feel very called out lovingly. Yeah, no, I don’t I don’t do a lot of the home tasks. Tim does most of the cooking. He does almost all of the cleaning. I will say I did. I did contribute by booking a housekeeping service to come in. That was my contribution. I can make phone calls. I can hire people. But Tim does the majority of the cooking and he does the majority of the cleaning. And I think for anybody listening who maybe has is, you know, more like a newlywed or is still trying to figure out the balance between owning our business working all the time and managing a household. With expectations that have maybe we put it put on you like from a societal standpoint, it can be really difficult. I mean, I think that in the front, we’ve been we’ve been married almost nine years. And I think that in, which is crazy. I think that in the beginning, I felt really guilty. I still feel guilty sometimes. But I think at the beginning, I felt really guilty that I wasn’t cooking that I wasn’t cleaning that I wasn’t doing laundry that I wasn’t like, I do my own laundry, but I don’t do his. And I feel like that pressure was really difficult for me. But I had other priorities. And like you said, I have the more like, entrepreneurial, go getter, whatever, that was really nice of you. But yeah, it was, it was it was really nice. Thanks for saying that. But yeah, I think that, I mean, I really appreciate the Tim doesn’t mind doing a lot of the household chores, and he enjoys cooking, and I enjoy eating. So it works out really well for us. Yeah. And I do appreciate you and I hope I communicate that at least

Tim Smith 10:46
Yeah, you do.

Laylee Emadi 10:47
Good. But yeah, definitely don’t we don’t break up home tasks. Really. I mean, we talk about what needs to be done in the home. I think that’s important. And we plan up things that need to be done in the home, but like the majority of of just like the chores, if you want to call them chores, I don’t do them. I do my own laundry, and I try to keep you know, keep my life somewhat together. But yeah, I think if I if I lived alone, I’d either have to have like somebody come help a lot or just live in squalor? No, I would just I would just eat out a lot and not have to have dishes. Okay. All right. And the last question before we go into the comments, because I see some questions, or at least one question, if you guys have any more in on my Facebook group, like throw them in? And we’ll answer them at the end. Okay, so the last question before we we get to that is, how do you handle finances and financial planning? Do you pay a salary or just pay yourself as needed? Do you rely on just one income? I’ll let you start with that.

Tim Smith 11:45
Um, well. So what we do is, obviously, my income is set every month, so we know how much that’s going to be. And then we can kind of set a budget based on that. And then usually what we do is like on a monthly basis, laylee will pay us a certain income. And but sometimes that changes, you know, sometimes it could be more sometimes it could be less, depending on what we need. Since we’re trying to pay off all my law school debt right now. You know, sometimes at the end of year, there’ll be a big chunk that we can contribute towards debt.

Laylee Emadi 12:19
Yeah, I feel like in the past few years, trying to pay off your debt, or your law school loans. I mean, it is, but it’s, you know, we we have tried to prioritize that, because we just see such benefit. And I’ll let you kind of tell them about like why we decided to do that. Because unlike a lot of people who are in like a debt free journey, we didn’t have like credit card debt we didn’t have, the only thing that we had was our car payment and Tim’s law school loans, I do pay, I basically pay myself or us a salary and then reinvest the majority of the rest of my money, either within my business or in other ways. And then, at the end of the day, like, if we see that I have a lot of a lot of money leftover, I will pay a big chunk into our debt free journey. If we were calling that or like our what would you call that, like a like a debt free fund or whatever. And, and we use that to pay off. And we’ve been able to make a really big dent in that. And that’s been really great. But maybe share a little bit about like, why we chose to focus on paying off because a lot of people when they hear of school loans are like, why don’t you just pay it off? So why did we do that? Why are we doing that?

Tim Smith 13:30
Well, because debt is not fun. And it kind of like haunts you, while you while you’ve got it. It it really like saps your ability to, like create wealth and to save money. And so many people just they think as long as they’re paying the monthly payments, and they can make those monthly payments that are fine. But then when you look at the interest that you’re that’s going into that and you think about well, you know, I could be saving these 1000s of dollars and either going on vacation or investing it or, you know, using it to buy a rental property or something like that. And that will just it just kills it.

Laylee Emadi 14:06
Yeah, for sure. I agree. I mean, I obviously agree because I live here. But yeah, I think that that’s that’s a hard choice for a lot of people to make. But I think at the end of the day, when you like sit down and look at the numbers, it’s just so beneficial to get that done and over with and not have to deal with interest and be able to actually like, like you said, grow your wealth in that way. I think that’s awesome.

Tim Smith 14:29
Yeah, there’s also the like, the freedom of not having debt. I mean, if I, if I were to lose my job, or if I were to say like, you know, I want a job that I like more or is different, but it’s less money. It’s hard to do that when you’ve got a bunch of debt. Or if we just want to take a month off. It’s hard to do that with that. So it just gives you a lot more freedom.

Laylee Emadi 14:49
Yeah, for sure. I love that. Well, those were all the questions that I have for you so far. We’re going to go into the comments and see that, see if anybody left any questions in here But you did so good. Yay, Tim, oh, before we do that, I saw somebody say they want to hear your unpopular opinion. But we talked about a lot of different topics. So do you have an unpopular opinion about having a partner in life? Who is a business owner and entrepreneur?

Tim Smith 15:19
Well, I think I mean, we kind of touched on it before, but I think there’s kind of like the, like the thought that like, each partner has to, like, share 5050, and everything, you know, in the 50s, the men would work and the women who do all the housework, which is obviously not the way it should be, but you know, there’s a certain there’s a certain something to like, one person takes care of this, and the other person takes care of that. And especially something like when you’re doing trying to build a business, it makes sense for you to focus on that rather than, you know, focusing on some of the smaller things. So I guess my unpopular opinion is it doesn’t have to be 5050. As long as each person is like contributing and sharing and like, you know, the hardships of just living life, then I think that’s okay.

Laylee Emadi 16:05
I love that. I totally agree. Obviously, that’s also just kind of like a really, the idea of being equitable in a partnership has changed so much. And I think that it’s really hard to like, decide what that looks like in your relationship. And so I love that you shared that because I hope that at least it brings up like a point of thought for the other people out there who are considering either working with a spouse or, or not working with a spouse but still pursuing their own businesses. That’s that’s a really good point. Dawn. Yeah, Dawn said, Tim, do you like going to conferences with Laylee? Or do you prefer to stay home and do your own thing?

Tim Smith 16:45
I love going to conferences. I haven’t been to that many. But we kind of, like make conferences, a vacation where we’ll go beforehand and do do stuff together. And yeah, I love it. Because I love traveling. And so I’d stay home occasionally. But even sometimes, when we go to conferences, I do my own thing that could go hiking, while she’s, you know, giving a talk or, you know, something like that. Yeah, I feel like you don’t actually attend. Yeah, I don’t necessarily attend them.

Laylee Emadi 17:15
And like, he just takes the trip sometimes when he can. Right. And we make like a vacation out of it on the front. And I love doing that. I think that’s my favorite thing. For me personally, like, if you were to attend the actual conference, I think it would be a little distracting for me.

Tim Smith 17:33
Yeah, well, you’re kind of in like, you’re doing your own thing with your own people there. And it’s like, you feel like you need to take care of me or like, watch out for me while I’m there. So

Laylee Emadi 17:42
you know, I know, I don’t I know, I don’t think he’s fine on his own. But I do feel that like, I feel the obligation of like, Oh, I need to make sure he’s good. Like, I have conference friends here. I have, you know, people I need to talk to where if I give a talk, and people want to come up and talk to me afterward. And he if he was waiting there think that would stress me out and add another layer of like, well,

Tim Smith 18:05
it’d be like, if I was going to trial, and you were like, I’m just gonna come along, and we can hang out. And it’s like, well, that’s, that’s fine. But, you know, you’re like, you’re, in some ways. It’s like a job. You know, when you’re at this conference, I mean, it is a job. And so sometimes you need to, you know, separate that from personal stuff.

Laylee Emadi 18:25
Yeah, for sure. So I think that was a kind of a two part answer. But we I really do enjoy when we’re able to kind of take a few days before after in a new location and travel together. And then typically, what he’ll do is he’ll either leave the day the conference starts, so that I’m able to focus or like he said, he’ll do his own thing. And maybe I’ll see him like, here and there throughout. But that’s something I think we just started doing recently, in the first few years of my speaking and traveling. You never really came. Yeah. Yeah. So we’re still figuring that part out. But I think I mean, I definitely have enjoyed having having you there the first couple of days while I’m getting my bearings, and were able to kind of relax and make a mini vacation out of it. I think that’s it, you guys. Yeah, you did it. Yay. Go, Tim. I’m so proud of you. You survived. It wasn’t a bad fun.

Laylee Emadi 19:17
Well, this was really fun. If you guys enjoyed this episode, please feel free to leave a rating or review. Wherever you listen to podcast, Apple podcasts, or wherever you do. And of course, feel free to reach out, hit us up on Instagram. Let us know what you thought about it. You can tag Tim. He doesn’t really use social media, but he sees it he sees it if you tagged me so I’m looking at it. I don’t really post anything. Yeah, he doesn’t. He’s not he’s not an Instagram has been. But anyway, so thanks, guys for listening. And we’ll see you next week.

Laylee Emadi 19:51
For show notes and resources mentioned on today’s episode head to so here’s the thing podcast.com and if you’re enjoying the podcast, I’d love to read your review on iTunes. Thanks so much for listening and I’ll catch you in the next episode.