Couplepreneurs: Starting a Business Together | Highlight Reel

This is a highlight reel from our podcast conversation on what it takes to start and grow a business together as a couple. We share the history of the term “couplepreneur,” the importance of communication, and five key steps every couple should consider when launching something new.

In this short episode, you’ll hear us talk about:

• Why shared vision and communication matter most
• How marriage skills translate directly into business success
• The five essentials: purpose, brand, mission, marketing plan, and roles
• Avoiding bottlenecks and keeping your partnership balanced

💡 Takeaway: You don’t have to be perfect when you start, just start together, with commitment and clarity.

Don’t miss an episode—subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform. Find more at rollinwiththedolans.com or search #rollinwiththedolans on social media to join the conversation.

Transcript

Welcome to Rollin' with the Dolans. I'm Patrick Dolan. And I'm Tamekia Dolan. Our podcast focuses on the joys and challenges of blending families, our interracial marriage, parenting children of multiple ages, and the journey of entrepreneurship.

We share our daily life experiences with a positive but real perspective. Today we are gonna share some highlights of a recent podcast, uhoh. Okay. And today's topic is focused on creating a business together.

Okay, let's go. Okay. Here's the fact and stat. All right. So basically, the term CPR was coined in 1988. And that was couples who jointly own and operate a business, and that was by Susan and Michael Barnett. So more recently they've been using a term that they think is more representative, and that's couplepreneur.

Wait, so CPR is not the same as couplepreneur? It was the original, back in 1988. But were they just a man and woman or were they actually in a relationship? Oh, okay. So that's what it sounds like. So that's been around for a while where there's been a couple working on it, but I think it's more recent. More cooperation and more things, like a little bit more evolved as far as entrepreneurship and couples.

Okay. That makes sense. Okay. All right. You got a question for me? I do. What do you think we need to do to get started as a couplepreneur? We're already a couplepreneur. Or what do other people need to get started?

You definitely need to make sure you're on the same page about everything. Because even like with us, we both think a little bit different as far as you're more organized than I am. So you have to figure out how that works. I think both of our brains go on a super creative side, but then you have to reel me in. I have to reel you in. So I think that you definitely have to have a lot of communication. You definitely have to set goals. You definitely have to have the same vision.

Did I forget something? Yeah, there's other things like creating a brand and a purpose. Oh, you mean like after that initial, just everything in general. Oh, okay. That's all important. I think you know everything you're talking about. Oh, I thought you meant like from the very, very beginning stages. Okay. Yeah.

I do think that in the beginning you have to make sure you have that ability to cooperate. Not everybody can do it. I think that some personalities—and I think it really gets back into marriage. If you have that marriage where you're really complementary and you work together as a team and partners, and you have that love and that bond, I think it makes it easier to have a successful marriage. And I think that's some of the characteristics that go into being a successful entrepreneur together, couple, right? Couplepreneur. Oh, couplepreneur. Okay. Yep. Yeah, I agree.

Yep. Yeah. That comes back to the commitment and the scheduling. And a lot of these things we can use in marriage as well as business. In some of these conversations it's time—making sure that you have the time to commit to it. You have to be consistent. You have to have a schedule. Who does not like schedules? Sometimes when you're trying to balance things and you just hit upon something else that's really important: most entrepreneurs have multiple projects.

Yes. And multiple things that they're working on at the same time. So when you're working on couples’ projects, we need to make sure that we have that time as well. The other thing is finding a purpose I think is important, but I don't think it has to happen right away. I think that we're always exploring what we're trying to do as a purpose and what we're trying to do to offer and help others with some of the things that we're doing.

So five things you need to do to get started and why it's okay to start missing. You wanna talk about? You wanna start there? Yeah. So we haven't been doing it in order necessarily, but one of 'em that we jotted down ahead of time was pick a purpose. Okay. And the second one is create a brand. The third is define your mission, and the fourth is make a simple marketing plan. And then the fifth is what? Agree on roles.

Okay. And then commitments, things like that. One of the things that we have had challenges with is somebody is a bottleneck sometimes. Oh. What is the definition of bottleneck? Basically everything has to go through that person before you can get to the next stage. And if there's a lot to do and one person wants to make sure that all of it's reviewed prior, they have to review things faster or it becomes a bottleneck and nothing gets through it.

All right. All right. And with that, thanks for listening today.