5 Rules We Live By As Married, Self-Employed Business Owners

Building a business with your spouse? You're either building a weapon or building a divorce.

Most couples don't fall apart because they stopped loving each other. They fall apart because they stopped protecting the relationship while the business kept taking more.

In this episode, Mike and Rachael Novak share the five-rule operating system they live by to stay connected, stay aligned, and keep winning without burning the marriage down.

What you'll learn:

The non-negotiables that protect the marriage before the business model

Why every "yes" has a hidden "no" (and how to stop letting your calendar destroy you)

The difference between real growth and reactive chaos with a cute name

How to have hard conversations early so resentment never builds

Why seasons change but your standards shouldn't

Plus: Why "work-life balance" is a lie and what to aim for instead.

No fluff. No fantasies. Just rules that actually work.

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Transcript

Transcript:

Rachael Novak:

[0:33] Welcome back to the Growth Drivers Podcast. Today we are just going over some simple little

rules as two people who have been in business together for a very long time. I mean, we were

working together in 2005, 2006 in real estate space, got in the restaurant industry, we're in that for

years and years, and then of course now in real estate for the last nine years. Mike and I have had

some experiences when it comes to being married and being in business together and raising a

family. So we're going to go over kind of five rules that we live by as a married couple, being self-

employed, being in business together, and ways that we've kind of found success, ways that we

have been able to stay married, stay liking each other majority of the time.

Rachael Novak:

[1:28] And yeah, and now of course almost 21 years together, almost 18 married. Pretty cool. So

rule number one, the marriage always comes before the model. No matter what business that

we've ever been in, prioritizing ourselves and our relationship has always been really, really

important. We've gone through seasons, of course, that we didn't do that and had to learn the hard

way what distance felt like. And, you know, I see a lot of people in business, self-employed people

will say, you know, oh, God and family first, right? But then they build this business and their entire

business is a huge contradiction of what they're saying is important to them, right? They put their

business first. Business will always have demands, will always come first. So here are a couple of

ways that we make sure that the marriage comes before the model.

Mike Novak:

[2:23] Yeah. I mean, the, the date night for sure is one of them. You know, we do typically like sushi

date or something like that. Sometimes it's recovery based, like massage, but just go spend like

two, three hours together once a week and connect, you know, and catch up. It can be really hard

when you're both running different directions. You know, we kind of like see each other in passing a

lot, but we're actually usually doing totally separate things. And so it can be easy to lose connection

and conversation and communication about what's actually happening. You know, it's kind of a

chance to reconnect on that. So that's one, the 90 day rule going away for, you know, four to four

weeks or four days to two weeks, somewhere in that range. We've talked about 90 rule a lot, but

once a quarter, so four times a year is a nice, good rhythm that we've done for better part of a

decade now. And then we've implemented a 45 day rule in the last year and a half, which is just likea short getaway, like a three to four nights, just did one on Whistler. Those are usually without kids.

Whereas the 90 day rule, when we kind of alternate kid trip, us trip, we're So those are kind of like

the non-negotiable ones.

Rachael Novak:

[3:25] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, you know, other, other than, you know, really making sure

that date night and those trips are non-negotiable, it's really just checking in with each other during

hard seasons, right? Like it's really easy and we've gone through seasons in previous business

where one of us kind of silos ourselves and like, you know, kind of tries to take it all on and tries to

handle it. And so really, really checking in with each other consistently is so important. You have to

be so intentional about that because the one thing that we found, you know, from are, past

business failures and lessons that we've learned, and then in this one now, being in real estate,

having built this business, and then multiple ancillary businesses connected to that, is that a really

strong marriage, like a really strong connection, is going to create a better and a more solid

foundation for the business to be strong. If your marriage is a mess, it's very likely that your

business will follow. So that's number one, the marriage always comes before the model.

Rachael Novak:

[4:20] Number two, every yes you say has a hidden no. So we've talked about this before, how

every yes has a no. But when you are running a business together and you're married, not having

the boundaries or not protecting the boundaries of your time or of each other's schedules will really

quickly implode your relationship. So, you know, saying yes to more clients or projects when, you

know, you've got family time or you've got marriage time or, you know, relationship time on the

calendar and you start sacrificing that for business projects, that can definitely start imploding you.

Saying yes to urgency, right? Client comes up and now all of a sudden you have to drop everything

and go meet this client or do this thing. You know, that's not protecting your boundaries or the

overarching strategy maybe that you have in your business you know by doing these things by

prioritizing urgency and saying yes to more business and yes to more clients as opposed to

protecting the things that you really want your family or business or marriage you know it's it's not

normal to be exhausted all the time we spend years and years and years and exhausted and

constantly grinding and hustling. But it was because, and we kind of realized we weren't being as

disciplined as we should have been with the yeses that we were saying.

Mike Novak:

[5:41] Yeah. And I think that that's both business and personal, you know, like the personal should

have a strategy behind it as well. Whether if it's just like deepening some really authentic

friendships and saying yes to those couple of things, or whether it's in business, you know, not

chasing just everything that's thrown at you, you know, there's, there's no shortage of opportunity

distractions. And if you say yes and go down the rabbit hole, every single one of them, you're going

to get nothing done. And so it's both personal and business.

Rachael Novak:

[6:07] Yeah. Good point. It's great. Number three, if it creates chaos in your life, it's probably not

growth. To your point, it's probably distraction. Every opportunity that presents itself doesn't mean

that you have to jump on that bandwagon, right? What we've really found is that when we've grownthe most personally and professionally, it's pretty stable. There's uncertainty, of course, and you're

running into fear potentially. But at the end of the day, that hustle and that grind that we celebrated

and is still celebrated by many, many people across multiple industries, especially in the real estate

space, a lot of times that whole hustle and grind thing is not actually structure. It's not actually

growth. It's just chaos.

Mike Novak:

[6:52] Yeah, it's usually a lack of... Actually like having a structured model.

Rachael Novak:

[6:56] Right right.

Mike Novak:

follow.

[6:57] Like you just react to everything instead of having like a plan and a model you're going to

Rachael Novak:

[7:02] And process it could.

Mike Novak:

see.

[7:03] Be like a lack of leverage and it could be a lack of systems which is typically the two things i

Rachael Novak:

[7:06] Yeah exactly so you know in different growth periods that we've had whether it's you know

building the team up building our business up building our past client or events up whatever it is

you know we've seen scaling done well we've we've also seen imploding and both have been

intentional and both can be useful. But if it creates a lot of chaos, if it just constantly feels chaotic,

it's not growth. It's probably a lack of process, probably a lack of structure, which is going to affect

your relationships and your life for sure.

Mike Novak:

[7:36] How do you fix that?

Rachael Novak:

[7:37] I mean, we found mentors and started creating structure around every single domain of our

life. So creating structure in the body domain and our bodybuilding, creating structure with date

nights, It's creating structure in your business, having a process, right? So if I know that, you know,

I have a process that I put people through with, you know, with a buyer, for instance. So a buyer

comes to me and I have this process. I'm not going to wing it outside of that process because that

particular buyer wants me to. And that's what a lot of people do in the industry, right? Like you said,

they are very reactive to things. They're taking any opportunity that comes at them as opposed to

slowing down enough to say, hey, I actually have a process and a structure here. So I can meet it

this time or this time. I mean, this is the process that we need to go through first. So slowing down

enough, I think, to put a structure in place.Mike Novak:

[8:25] I think, you know, being able to step back and look at things and say, like, is this just a season

of business or is this just kind of a new norm? Because I see a lot of people that they're like

hesitant to invest in leverage because they think like it's going to last a few months.

Rachael Novak:

[8:37] Yeah.

Mike Novak:

[8:38] When they really have an opportunity to kind of level up by adding leverage, you know? Yeah.

So just trying to like push through.

Rachael Novak:

[8:45] That's a good point. Yeah. And number four. Hard conversations early save relationships

later. Novak, how many hard conversations have we had in 20 years?

Mike Novak:

[8:58] Plenty.

Rachael Novak:

[9:01] Look, this is the hardest thing for people. People love peacetime. They love when things are

going well. They love when things feel happy and feel good. But those small little tensions that

come up in a marriage in business in your relationship those tiny little tensions that come up they

do something they say something they you know they they sacrifice that that that date night time to

you know handle a client or whatever it is those small tensions they don't ever disappear like those

ones that you feel that come up they simply deepen the misunderstanding potentially between you

and they become resentment toward that person. And we went through this and we had to

backtrack years and address resentments that we had held onto that we didn't even realize that we

had done. So having those hard conversations as things come up seems chaotic. It feels rough. It

feels aggressive. It feels like friction and tension. But true leaders don't avoid hard conversations.

They choose that confrontation with each other over the short-term peace so that they can stay in

alignment. And you and I have had plenty.

Mike Novak:

[10:19] I think there's a couple of rules to put around that just from personal experience. One, don't

do this on date night or you're not going to want to do date night.

Rachael Novak:

[10:26] Yeah.

Mike Novak:

[10:27] Two, don't do this when the person's trying to go to sleep. Like the person's tired, like get

them when they're fresh. And then three, don't have hard conversations when you've been

consuming alcohol.Rachael Novak:

[10:34] Absolutely true.

Mike Novak:

[10:35] Just full transparency.

Rachael Novak:

[10:36] Absolutely true.

Mike Novak:

conversation.

[10:37] So when you can separate emotion from logic, that's the place to have the actual

Rachael Novak:

[10:41] Yeah, great point. Yeah, I think that, you know, it's important to, But choosing to address the

uncomfortable, you know, the things that you maybe don't want to say or maybe, oh, it's not a big

deal or you want to sweep that under the rug. Like, those are the things that over time will build

resentment with each other. So choosing to address those before it gets explosive or before it gets

damaging or, you know, before you have a glass of wine and all of a sudden it's Festivus and you

want to unleash everything that you've, you know, ever thought or thing that you've held against

them for years. That's that's not the time to do it like you said especially the alcohol point like, have

the hard conversations sober have the hard conversations when you're relatively fresh like plan for

it and and don't ruin date night with a hard conversation yeah well what it's going to do is it's.

Mike Novak:

[11:30] Going to ultimately make one or both of you not want to do date nights in the future.

Rachael Novak:

[11:33] It's going to ruin that experience which is not the.

Mike Novak:

[11:36] Intent of date night.

Rachael Novak:

[11:36] Yeah it's a super good point so all right and number five rules that we live by being in

business together as a married couple is that Seasons change. Interests change. Business

seasons change. Personal seasons change. But the principles that we live by overall do not ever

change.

Rachael Novak:

[11:56] So, you know, we've covered kind of our rules of marriage before. And those rules of

marriage stay. Those are principles that we live by no matter what season we're in. So even if I'm

really busy or Michael's in a you know in a like in prep for instance right we were in a season where

both of us are stretching ourselves both of us are very tired both of us are very worn out and

depleted we still made sure that we are not swearing at each other we are not threatening you

know divorce like those are two specific roles that of our four that we live by and making sure thatthose principles don't change like just because you're a little bit emotional just because they're in a

season of struggle does not mean that all of a sudden you can compromise who you are and the

principles that you've laid down in your marriage. You have to honor those because if you abandon

those principles to survive a season, so say you're really emotional and they're really distant

because they are dealing with this huge project at work or they're, you know, you're building

something big together in business or whatever and it's frustrating and it's hard and it's difficult. If

you abandon your principles to survive that season together, you are not going to like who you

become through that season and you can do massive lasting damage not just your relationship but

to the other person and yourself by abandoning those principles do.

Mike Novak:

[13:18] You think it's possible to turn work off at home.

Rachael Novak:

[13:21] Honestly, no.

Mike Novak:

[13:23] It's pretty, pretty self-esteem.

Rachael Novak:

[13:24] I mean, I think that's, I think it's impossible to ever turn it off, right? When you're self-

employed and you're working for yourself, it's constant. You're thinking about it constantly. It's

interwoven into the DNA of your thought process, no matter what you're doing, right? If I'm training

at the gym, like I'm thinking about work stuff. Yes, I'm present at the gym. Yes, I'm there. I'm totally

in it. I'm in that lifting session. But of course, during the in-between moments, you're thinking about

everything else. Same with date night. Same with when you're with your kids, right? You think

about everything at all times. Are you able to have the discipline to not talk about things or be able

to compartmentalize things and say, hey, this isn't the time to actually discuss this. And I'm going to

be able to put that on the back burner till tomorrow when we do have an ownership meeting

together or whatever. Yes, that I think you can do. So you can compartmentalize it, but no, you can

never really, quote, turn it off, in my opinion. What do you think?

Mike Novak:

[14:17] I think it all integrates. I don't think that we try to have, quote-unquote balance like that's not

really our pursuit.

Rachael Novak:

[14:23] Right we've.

Mike Novak:

[14:25] Kind of gone after this work life harmony that we've talked about before you.

Rachael Novak:

[14:28] Know they.Mike Novak:

[14:28] Two just go together seamlessly like i don't think about work days versus like weekend days.

Rachael Novak:

[14:35] That's been the biggest shift for sure for me too it's just.

Mike Novak:

[14:37] It's all the same.

Rachael Novak:

[14:38] Exactly at this point it is there there are just there are days that we have structure for the

team that we you know have meetings or that you know i have recurring things that i do but there

isn't like uh oh the work days are monday through friday it's like every day is a work day and also

every day i have personal time and bodybuilding time and whatever else so yeah i totally agree it's

kind of a seven seven day week every week as self being self-employed.

Mike Novak:

[15:02] Yeah i think the only other thing that i would add is that if you can really value and honor

your partner's strengths and weaknesses and not look for a duplicate of yourself but look for

someone that's got different skills and weaknesses that's really where the you know synergy takes

off.

Rachael Novak:

[15:19] To the next level that that took us years yeah i know you always felt.

Mike Novak:

[15:24] Like you need to be a mini mike and we're.

Rachael Novak:

[15:25] Like no you.

Mike Novak:

[15:25] Don't need to be a mini mike you need to just be rachel.

Rachael Novak:

[15:27] Yeah exactly and.

Mike Novak:

[15:28] When you settled into just being rachel like that's where things got really fun.

Rachael Novak:

[15:30] Yeah there's a lot of synergy in our business absolutely right so that's a great point so those

are our five rules plus a bonus that we live by as a married couple who is self-employed and runs a

business and has kids and does all of the things so hopefully you took a little bit of value from that

today um i would love to hear if you listen to this screenshot this tag me on instagram i'm at rachel

novak tag mike he's at the real mike novak let us know what kind of value that we provide if we doand if there's anything that you're interested in hearing about tag us let us know love to do it see

you next time guys.