Megan Martin 0:00
This is talking small business with Kat Schmoyer. And Meghan Martin, a podcast for creatives who like to keep it real about what it actually takes to grow an online business.

Kat Schmoyer 0:09
We’re competitors turned to biz besties, who chat daily, and now we’re bringing you into the conversation. Alright, y’all, we are back. And this episode, I am really excited to bring this conversation to light, Megan, and I, gosh, we’re women, and we want to have a conversation around women and business and money and what it really looks like we have told y’all repeatedly like these conversations are real conversations that we have and our friendship in our Vox message conversations, and we want to have them with you too. And we feel like this is it’s, it’s a little taboo, right? Is that a good term to use here, it’s a little taboo. But it’s so real. And it’s so real for both of us. And particularly, because of the roles that we play with our spouses and in our businesses and with our family finances. And so we want to talk about it, we want to talk really openly and honestly and excited to get your feedback. So today, breaking down barriers, being the woman who makes money, right, like being the sole income provider for our families, being the reasons that our spouses were able to leave their traditional nine to five, like, first of all, I’m just gonna put it out there humblebrag for both of us, like I’m proud of us, I am proud of what we’ve been working so hard for. And I feel like we’ve we both have very different stories that brought us to this moment in our businesses and with our marriages. And I’m sure those of you guys listening, if some of y’all are in a similar season, like your story is going to look different. Or maybe some of you guys are listening. And you want this, like you want to bring yourself home from the nine to five, and you’re thinking about these conversations. So anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. All in all, this is what we’re talking about. So let’s start with a little bit more of our stories and our backgrounds within this. So Megan, I’m gonna, I’m gonna pass it to you and let you take us through your background with us. Yeah, I

Megan Martin 2:12
think we should start with our story, and the perspective of what our business story looks like and bringing our husband nine to five. And then I think later on, we should talk about more of like, our beliefs that we hold around being a woman love the money. So for my business story, so we’ve talked a lot about like what we’ve done in our business and the pivots that we made on this podcast. But what I think is an important thing to talk about in this conversation is a little bit different, like why did I start my business in the first place. And so for me, I started my business in 2011. It was right after we got married. And at the time, I was sort of in like this crisis of my life. I did not finish college. And I was working like hourly jobs. I worked the most random jobs in my life. I’ve worked as a waitress, I’ve worked as a medical assistant, I’ve worked as an aesthetician like I have the weirdest life I was I had my real estate license, like I have like, such a crazy array of past jobs that I tried out. And so at the time, when we got married, I was a medical assistant, literally, I was giving the 12 shots to eight year olds, like it was my life. When I got married. And I was in this space where I actually really loved the medical field, I was fascinated by my job as a medical assistant. And it kind of just sparked this curiosity Should I go back to college and get a degree and maybe pursue something like being a physician’s assistant. And so we had just gotten married. And we had just gone through marital counseling at the time. And a lot of our counseling, we talked about, you know, the vision of what we wanted our marriage and our life to look like together as opposed to individually. And for Jeremy and I both we knew from the get go that, that starting a family and growing a family and having children and prioritizing family as number one was like, top of both of our list we were we were in agreement on that. And so, you know, I’m post marriage, I’m in this medical assistant job and considering going back to college, and we had this conversation of Okay, what do we want the vision of our life to look like? And we had just gone through marital counseling where we said, okay, we know we want to have a family and prioritize growing a family. And it would not be it would not have made sense for me to go back to school to spend years studying to get a job as a physician’s assistant to be in a full time career while also trying to grow a family at some point. So instead of doing that, I decided I would start a business like literally it was just I have creative passions in my life. So I started my business on a whim just to explore creativity was never, never about making money as horrible as that sounds. When I started my business, it really wasn’t like I wasn’t trying to make money Jeremy and I always said from the get go, my business was going to be our fun money, like it was going to be his corporate job was going to pay our bills, and then anything that I made in my business was going to be fun. So that’s sort of how I started my business, which I think absolutely shaped my mindset around being a woman and making money as a business owner, but I would love to hear cat for me, like, what was your, like, you the reason why you got into business?

Kat Schmoyer 5:43
I wanted to make money. Like, you know, here we go. Um, okay, yeah, so I graduated college, I was working a traditional nine to five and hating every single second of it. And this is not to knock any of you in a nine to five that you love. Like, please do work that you love. Like that is what I think Megan and I both collectively feel so passionate about is just do what you love to do. And if that’s in a traditional work setting you do you girl, for both of us, clearly it’s not. And I, I dreaded going to work, I dreaded. I remember this realization, like driving to work one morning crying, thinking like, I’m going to be doing this until I’m like, 60. Like, this sounds awful. Like, I don’t want this. So I started looking at the creative world. And I had some friends of friends and some women who I followed, who were bloggers and who were just kind of like in that realm of life and thinking like, could I do that? And like, what would I do and what would be like my ticket in then Matt for post, we’ve been together since high school. So we dated for seven years before we got married. So we you know, we were in it to the limit. And I’m planning our wedding and starting to think like, gosh, maybe this is my ticket into small business. Like I love wedding planning, I love that I would get to have a blog. And I would get to create like a little mini platform for myself and a space to share what I love. And I could also make money and leave this nine to five. So I absolutely jumped into business. Not just because I needed something that I loved doing. Like I was so drained in my traditional setting. But I had the mindset of I’m going to leave this nine to five as quickly as possible. And that shows from the get go in my small business. It was let me do all the things. Let me have as many offers as possible. Let me take as many clients as possible. It didn’t matter that I was just a few months into my marriage, which is a whole nother like marriage conversation. We could have y’all but my like work a hat came, workaholic hat came out. And I’m like, Nope, I’m gonna do this. And this is my goal. And I’m so goal oriented in German, I left my nine to five, I was like, over matching my salary. When I was 17 months into starting my business. I was done. I was out of my nine to five, and I was back and being able to just do wedding planning full time.

Megan Martin 8:09
Yeah, so totally different perspective

Kat Schmoyer 8:11
totally different makes me sound like super selfish, because knowing is over here, like marriage counseling and our vision for a family. And I’m like, Girl, where’s the money? Like, I need to leave my nine to five. Like, we got to do this, you know, but

Megan Martin 8:23
it’s I love it because it shows that there’s not just one path to success in entrepreneurship. Like I literally started my business. And it was like, we made the decision, I quit my job as a medical. Not because like I needed to replace that income, but we decided, hey, we’re probably going to start a family sometime anyway. So I might as well just go ahead and quit.

But we’re not goal driven. We’re not, you know, next level achievement driven type of people. And we were like, Okay, well, we make enough money, he makes enough money. So whatever I make in this random business that I’ve started is gonna be enough. But, you know, next steps for me is, you know, the story of all the pivots and the business growth and all of that. And then, you know, about year, I would say six, seven, and my business is when my website template part of my business kind of took off. And that really was such an eye opener for Jeremy and I and my business started. Like I said, it was a fun experiment. And it really like, took off around year six, year seven. And then both of us looked at each other like okay, we were not expecting this. This is happening. This growth is happening naturally. I wasn’t hustling I had three kids at the time. And so we both sort of just looking back at our life, we almost had to like revisit the marriage counseling around year six year seven and to be honest Around that time in our marriage, Jeremy and I were not, our relationship was not very good. Like we were struggling as a couple. And we got to the point where we both like, it’s like, we lost that vision that we established before we got married. And he was like chasing the corporate america dream. And I was over here building my own little business and staying home with the kids. And we really felt like we were living completely opposite lives. And that’s not to say like, if your husband’s in corporate that you guys have a messed up situation, it’s just us personally, we really were like, we, we were living this life of like, totally different goals, totally different visions. And when he would come home, at the end of the day, around like year five, year six in our marriage, like we weren’t connecting, and having like, time for us, we were just trying not to be mad at each other, and trying to like, keep the peace in order to go to sleep at night. And that is not the kind of marriage that I ever signed up for. I was not happy, he was not happy. And we both sat down and said, Let’s revisit the vision that we set for ourselves when we first got married. And we realized that the the way that we were living our life, and the the path that we were on, I mean, and let me be clear, Jeremy was making great money in corporate America, like we were on track to like, be completely comfortable, be able to travel and stay at the Ritz Carlton anytime we want. Like, that’s where we were at financially wise with him working in corporate America. And we said, you know, is this worth it? Is this worth it? And we’re like, our marriage is like on the brink of disaster. And because we are chasing this certain path, this certain American dream. And so we said, hey, look at this situation that like totally was an accident, like my business was a total accident, but it was making money. And we just got this hunch that maybe he could step away from corporate America. Like if we were going to continue on the trajectory that my business was making financially, my business could potentially match what we needed to make in order to survive. So like, that’s where our shift came from me being like the fun business owner to like, the serious business owner. Yeah, for you. Mine,

Kat Schmoyer 12:19
we actually have some similarities there, which is fun to like, like, hear what you got not fun in that you went through that since obviously, that was really hard. But for us, it wasn’t the year like six or seven mark, it was the year three mark, that was really difficult. And I know I like kind of joked about, you know, I put on that workaholic hat, you know, at the beginning of our marriage, but I really did. And that caught up to us. And year three, for sure of it feeling like roommates, you know, and I, I’m coming and going and he’s coming and going and we’re not having that like actual like marriage communication. And like best friend fun that, you know,

Megan Martin 12:58
we wanted, I

Kat Schmoyer 12:59
mean, we’d been together since high school, we had been together for quite a few years before we got married. And we just we hit a really, really, really hard season in year three. And so for us, it was kind of this reality check of Okay, what am I doing? How am I operating in my business with him. And so for me in that point, it wasn’t even the thought of bringing him on in terms of he’s going to get a paycheck from the business. But it was this mental shift of, hey, yes, this is my business, but he’s my husband. And I want to be able to, like confide in Him and like, share things about the business with him and not necessarily need to, like ask permission for certain things that were happening in the business, but make him a part of those financial conversations. And even though I have to explain what a styled shoot is 17 times, like, let’s still try to have the conversation. You know, like, let’s be able to, like really talk about the business together. And so for me, that was, you know, year three of the business. And year three of our marriage since business marriage started at the same time, let’s start to have these conversations. And then the next year is when we decided we wanted to start trying to have a family. And we have a longer, you know, story for starting to have a family. We had two miscarriages leading into getting our son and it was a hard season for all of those reasons. And when we were in the middle of that season, we started thinking like, what can we do in our life right now that would bring us like joy and fulfillment right now, because we felt like we were in such a season of discontent, like we wanted a baby and we didn’t have a baby. And then that moment, we had some really close friends and our industry that in like the creative worlds that were husband and wife teams that we’ve kind of like scoffed at, like oh my gosh, how can they work together? Like how could they like be with each other like day in and day out all the time and like have this financial weight on the business like gosh, that like we could never do that. But then we have dinner with them and then we got to hear a little bit more about like, what that looked like. And then the conversations just started to come more and more and more. And literally, I will never forget where I was when Matt called me and said, I put in my notice today, like we’ve been getting around the bush, we’ve been beating around the bush of this conversation of like, should he leave? Should he not leave? And we had a really good, you know, you’re in the business and we felt like financially, okay, we can do it. And I will never forget, when he called me and said, I did it. I put in my notice, I was like, Oh my gosh, we’re like, actually like doing this thing. And so for us, like, it really just came down to like, if we want to, like, we want to build a life that we love, so why can’t we just start to build that life that we love, you know, and he loved his he was a teacher. So he loves teaching, and he loves kids. He was an elementary school PE teacher. So that was him. Yes, that’s like his jam. Um, but we found that like, we love the flexibility, and the lifestyle that we could create as a family. And we had joked for a while that like, whenever we had kids, he would be the stay at home dad, like that was like he could rock that roll and do it. So well. He does decided he does. He does it so well. And now we have two kids. So now he really is like in that role. We started him full time, a year before our son came out of just more of a desire to let’s just start living that life right now. And even though we don’t have kids, like, let’s just be at home together, and let’s figure out this journey together. Yeah,

Megan Martin 16:28
cat, I would love to hear from you. If you had any, like limiting beliefs or any barriers, bringing that into the business with you being the face of the brand. I think this is like one thing that really I’ve struggled with. So I’d love to hear from you. Like, did you have any issues like now Matt, semi works for you? Yeah, weird.

Kat Schmoyer 16:52
So weird. Yeah. Um, yes, I definitely have had limiting beliefs and just mindset shifts over. It’s not mine. It’s ours. Yeah. And what can we do together? I think especially in the beginning, like in that first year, like it was not all like butterflies and rainbows as soon as he joined full time. Was it fun? Yes. Do we get to travel together? Yes, we get to like, we literally traveled like all across the country that first year, like doing fun work trips, and like just really bringing him in, like he would come on weddings, and, and all of that. But there was a lot of like back end conversations where he felt spoken at instead of like, spoken to, you know, like it was like I was trying to teach but not teaching well, and, and this like wife, husband, business owner, CEO, like all of these, like mixed hats were coming into play. And so something that I had to start doing pretty early on in the business was trying to really put on the hat that I was wearing in that moment, and coming to him and saying, like, Hey, I’m coming to you as the wife right now. Like, can we talk about this from like, a wife and husband role, like, let’s talk about this or like, Hey, we need to have a team meeting. Like, we need to have a team meeting. We need to be business owners, and we need to talk about this. And then having that team meeting and he would joke we literally still say it to this day. I’m like laughing while he say this? He would make he would make a mistake. If you’d be like, is this a verbal reprimand and be like Yes, yes, this is this is a massive verbal reprimand. But now it’s like, literally an inside joke for us of like, what verbal reprimand didn’t do that. But just so I think that is like a limiting belief I had was all of those varying roles playing and like, could I navigate them all? Well, in trying to figure out how to navigate them all? Well, and I feel like a way that I combated that was deciding what role I was in in that moment. And knowing that it is really hard to be CEO and wife at the same time, especially when I’m speaking to my spouse who is in the business. So how can I just be wife for a minute or just be CEO for a minute?

Megan Martin 19:07
Yeah, and that’s such helpful advice to even use that little tool, which is funny when you think about it, but to say, Hey, I’m coming at you as a wife right now. And that sets the tone of the conversation versus, you know, talking at Matt as like the CEO or whatever. But for us, like our situation looks a little bit different. I feel like Matt has such a more integral role in your business, then Jeremy has a role in my business. And I also like think back to the example that I had from my parents. And I want to be clear, like and sharing this example that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the way that my parents decided to structure their lives in their marriage. My husband my father had a more like the traditional American dream like he has a great job. Makes multi six figures and his job has always been super successful. And my mom was the stay at home mom. So that was the example that I had and I grew up with. And honestly, I’ll be real transparent with you. I never, ever imagined being anything else other than a stay at home mom, like when you would have asked me as a 12 year old, what was my dream, it would be to, like, have kids and stay home like that was it wasn’t me being lazy, it just honestly was my vision was being a mother, I always knew I wanted to be a mother. And obviously, part of that was shaped by the, by the example of my parents, right. And so I came into adulthood, and I came into taking care of ourselves financially with this example of the man makes the money and the woman stays home with the kids. And I know we’re in 2021. And like, the world is different. And views are different. And we have such much more of a progressive movement in terms of women making money and empowerment, and I absolutely want to cheer that on and like don’t hear my example of what I came into this marriage with as anything less, but that’s just what my experience was right. And Jeremy had the same exact experience, his dad actually owned his own business, but he worked full time and his mom was the stay at home mom. Now she did more like creative projects, similar to being a creative business owner, and did make money but it was like the fun money type of conversation. It wasn’t like paying my bills money. And so we both came into the marriage with this example of he works. I care for children, which is so like, the 1950s. You know, that’s just what we were modeling

Kat Schmoyer 21:46
with a little apron, like,

Megan Martin 21:50
um, you know, and it wasn’t anything wrong with that example. That’s just what we expected, you know. And so when my business started to take off, and we were looking at our marriage thing, hey, like, we don’t want this relationship, this is not the marriage that we signed up for. And we made that transition. Granted, we we didn’t just jump, he didn’t just leave corporate America, because we decided things were hard. We had to, we had to ramp up to that. So we had to make sure we had enough savings and an account to you know, Jeremy called it our runway, we had like a year’s worth of runway before he left corporate America to make sure that like, if by chance, my business plummeted, that we would have a year’s worth of income to fall back on and try to regrow it. If not, he would go back to corporate America, like that was just how we kind of defined what was going to happen. And so finally, by the time we got our years worth of runway, and he left corporate America, like there were some serious mindset shifts that needed to be made on both of our parts. Because he came from the perspective of I’m the man and I’m the provider. And all of a sudden, he had nothing to do like all of a sudden, like, he we tried to integrate him into my business in the beginning and he just didn’t fit like I you know, I’m a creative you guys call me like the unicorn or whatever, like when you call me. Yeah, people call me a creative unicorn like trying to fit my super logical, like, construction background husband into my unicorn, Rainbow business. Like it just didn’t work. He didn’t understand my products he didn’t understand my customers like, and he really didn’t find a great spot to fit in with what we actually needed help with. And so all of a sudden, he went from being the provider to not having any role in terms of the financial provision, to where now I stepped into this role of like, 100%, the financial provider, and it was like, our roles reversed. And we had to work through that as a couple of like, just like you said, for you and Matt, that you guys were it’s not your business, it’s our business. That that like we had to go through that same process of saying, hey, like, you might be doing more of the childcare work right now. But you doing the childcare work is still a part of us running this business. Ultimately, our business, we’re still running after the same goal, no matter what your role looks like. And I think that was like something that our parents generation and our grandparents generation missed the mark on passing down to us and our gyrations is that even if you are listening and your husband has a corporate job and you have a creative side hustle, you both are working towards the same vision, you both are working towards the same goal. It’s not the man’s role is more important than the woman’s role or vice versa. Absolutely. And

Kat Schmoyer 24:51
as you’re talking I’m also thinking about like within that conversation, I feel like it’s just a really beautiful reminder that like within working with If our spouses like, we’re not just working towards the long term vision, but we’re working for the vision, like right now. And that is, that is something that, like, I constantly have to remind myself because I am like long term like, futuristic, so goal oriented of like, we have our sights set on the dream house, and you know, we know the year, you know, we have this plan, and I’m gonna, we’re gonna, like work backwards from that plan. And while that plan is wonderful, there’s also like, the vision of right now. And like, but what about like, in August? What about in October of 2021? Like, what what does that look like for our family? And so trying to, like, find that beautiful balance? I think of Okay, I am, you know, working so hard for the family, and not just for the future? Because I feel like that’s a conversation we hear in the movies, right? You see, like, the workaholic man, and the woman’s like, you know, stuck at home with the kids. And he’s like, I’m doing this for the family. And it’s like, okay, yes, I do resonate with that, like, I’m doing this for the family. But also, I’m doing this for the family right now. And so what does that look like for our family and like our relationship right now. And that’s going to look different for every family and every vision for you know, the couple, and the kids and all of that, but I just think that’s something interesting to think about, too.

Megan Martin 26:16
Yeah, I do. I think when it comes to vision as well, like, I love how you talked about, you know, when we when you said, you, you speak to Mike or Matt as either the wife or the CEO, right. Um, but I think in this conversation of like bringing your husband into your business, and envision I think you can be the CEO, because you’ve been doing this business, and you’ve been running this business, and you know, what needs to get done, right. But I think when you bring your husband and or your spouse in that you need to, you need to realize that you’re bringing them in on in a visionary role, the same level of like your CEO role. So Jeremy doesn’t do as much stuff that I do in my business, he doesn’t understand all the facets of my business like I do. But I invite him in to the visionary role as if we are equal CEOs. That that it matters with what you’re talking about to about what do you want your season to look like right now? Like, it’s not when when you become a husband and wife team, especially if you have children, but even if not, it’s no longer just work time versus family time. It’s everything is in one bubble. Now, like my life and my family life are completely intertwined at this point. And so you need to invite your partner in to be a CEO visionary role as well, because they have a say in what your family life looks like. They have a say, in how you structure your work, right? Like you you even say you’re prone to being a workaholic, but that should be able to have a say in how much you work. Absolutely. And how that affects him. As you’re absolutely.

Kat Schmoyer 28:05
I think over communicating on this is so important. I remember the first year when we had mica. So then Matt was really like so when Matt stepped into the business to like back up for a second when Matt stepped into the business, he did step into like business tasks. Like we were like, let’s see, what do you like, what are you good at what’s exciting for him in the business and he’s someone who I don’t mean this in like a negative way. Clearly, I love him so much. I feel like he’s a little bit of a jack of all trades, like he can like dabble in like a variety of things. But he’s not necessarily passionate about one thing in particular. So for me in the business, I’m fueled by I want to do what I love. So what I am physically doing, like my zone of genius and the business, I want it to be like what I love about the business and I am quick to outsource the things that I don’t love. His mindset is I don’t care if I don’t love it, if I can do that, and we don’t have to outsource I’m gonna do it, you know. So it was just different mindsets in our business when we first stepped in so he stepped in doing a variety of business things for like that first year and we’re figuring out what is he like, what doesn’t he like what works well for us as like worker bees together like in the business. And then when I had Mike AB, he stepped more into stay at home dad role. So after that, you know, kind of a traditional maternity leave, I tried to take and I’m stepping back into business and he’s really wearing like dad hat with my dad. He’s doing like feedings and naptime and like all of these things that like would have been more of a traditional role of the mom and he’s thriving, but I felt like we constantly had to over communicate, and so I’m like almost pestering him like every few weeks, like are you still happy? Like is it still okay? Is it too much with the kid? Like do we need to like move this around? Like what is this need to look like? Because I genuinely wanted it to be something that like we both enjoyed and we needed. Like we didn’t get Perfect diverse, it took years honestly, like mica is three and may is a year and a half. And it’s taken us some time to figure out like, what structure works well for us, even with him wearing the stay at home dad hat more, because first of all, I still love my kids. So I still want to have mom hat on, you know, and I still want to have that time with them. But we also needed to find this balance of what is too much for him versus what is too much for me. And how can we do this in a working and in a marriage and like a working relationship and in a marriage relationship that’s thriving and like fruitful for both of us. So all of that to say over communicate on all of those things to determine like, what’s going to work best for you? And then what’s going to work best for your spouse?

Megan Martin 30:46
Yeah, I think another really practical thing that Jeremy and I did in order to make sure that we had space for communication is to schedule time. That’s for us. That’s not revolving around work. So for I don’t know about you, but I feel like as a creative entrepreneur, like my business could, could take over my brain 24. So always, yeah, always writing, there’s always something to think about always something to process. And so for example, like we have what we call wine down Wednesdays. So we have four kids, like we’re not going out to dinner for date night, like we nobody wants to watch for kids. So we like make these fun little traditions where we know on Wednesday night, like after the kids go to bed, we’re gonna have wine, and we’re gonna watch a movie, and we’re just gonna have fun, and it has nothing to do with our work. And that’s been something that we have been able to do to create that space for communication. So I don’t know if that’s helpful. But for us, it’s been really like fun to have these traditions and know that we can have like marriage time that’s not husband and wife work relationship time. No, I

Kat Schmoyer 31:55
think that’s great. And just like in the beginning, when we talked about like, setting the lens at which you’re going to have the conversation. And so even for us like, because we work from home with both of the kids, and especially with like summertime and not have like Micah did like a little bit of preschool. So he was out of the house for like a few hours a week. But it’s not a lot of time. So we don’t have family close by so we don’t have the babysitter or the nanny or anything like that it is us with our kids. So are like quote unquote, team meetings, or like during naptime one day or like in the evenings, but we’ll make it fun. Like, well, we’ll work with a glass of wine, you know, like, we’ll do fun things around that. But it’s setting that setting the tone of what that conversation is going to be like. So sometimes when we’re both like cleaning up in the kitchen, I might say like, hey, I need Can I ask you like a word question right now? And like, I started like that, and if he’s like, Nope, can’t do it, okay, can’t do it. Or he’ll do the same thing for me like, Hey, can we talk about that one client? And I’ll be like, Nope, I can’t do it right now. Like, I just can’t. And it’s okay to be able to then say no, not right now. or enter into the conversation when you feel like the conversation needs to happen. So setting the lens at which the conversation can take place. And also, within that I wanted to make sure I made note of embracing, like the gray area within that, like, I feel like I am saying this for both of us. But I want Megan, I want you to comment in on this. Like, I love working from home with my husband. I love that we are together more than I am with anybody else in this world, literally, like that’s not some cliche thing from the notebook, like we are together all the time. And I like I love him so much. And I love that we get to like raise our babies and build a business and travel and like do all of these things together. So if that means that we need to embrace the gray area of like, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is on in the background, and we’re gonna talk about you know, we’re going to talk about business and that moment, like, that is our life in this season. And it is a beautiful life to live. Oh, 100%

Megan Martin 33:59
I mean, I still feel like pinch me because this is my dream life like this was I can’t even explain to you the feeling I have every day that I get to work. In my office. It’s like my desk as it is facing the window and Jeremy’s desk is behind me like and I’ll be on zoom meetings, and I’ll see his desk behind me and it’s just like, pinch me like he, we do this together day in and day out. And that’s our dream. And I think it goes back to like what we talked about in the beginning is like, what is your vision? And if your vision isn’t you guys working together? That’s totally fine. But I think even also bringing way back to the beginning of Episode You said you’re proud that you have created this business like I’m proud that I have built a business that takes care of my entire family’s income. I wasn’t always like boldly able to claim that I’m proud like that. But it is our dream and our vision. And so it was worth breaking down those barriers of what the what we expect Get our roles to be versus what they are now and then re focusing our like our my CEO perspective as it’s not my business. It’s our business. And it’s just been a really cool journey so far. I love it. I love it.

Kat Schmoyer 35:15
I know this one. This episode is getting a little long, guys, we just have like so much to talk about it there. I do though, I do want to bring up something just because I feel like I’ve actually had people like asked me this in person before. And I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about this in boxer. So this is fun for me to like, pose this question in this realm of being a woman is bringing in the income? How do you handle the pressure of that? Megan? Like, how do you handle the pressure of like, Well, yes, it is fun and wonderful. And we love it so much. And this is our dream. And it is pinch me moments when we wake up. But there’s also really hard moments of being nervous that the revenue isn’t going to be there, or the income isn’t going to be there or wanting to like throw off a CEO hat and be like, I just want to be that stay at home mom, and I want my husband to bring in the bills, and I don’t want to have to worry about it. Like, I want to talk about how you handle that pressure.

Megan Martin 36:06
That pressure is so real. And it’s so hard at times it was it’s I will say though we are he left corporate america and 2018 I think and it’s so it’s been a few years now for us. And I will say the pressure has gotten a little bit easier over time to deal with at first like that pressure was really scary. And like, I never had to care about how much money I was bringing in in my business. And because we knew we had Jeremy’s income to fall back on. And so when that switch happened, I was much more worried and anxious about that than even Jeremy was, again in our story. Like we had a year’s worth of runway and he was like, Whoa, you are like trying to goal set and create these milestones in these benchmarks. And you’ve never done this before. And now you’re like wanting to make all these changes, why don’t we just keep our business on the trajectory that it is and see what happens. So he was able to like encourage me in that way that I don’t need to try to change my whole personality just because Jeremy left his corporate job. And so over time, I overtime as he continued to encourage me in that. And as I continued to see my business, grow and work despite not changing much the pressure, like I felt less heavy on my shoulders, and I felt more trusting in Him. Because even though we have this role where I’m the income provider, and he doesn’t have a job, it doesn’t mean that we’ve changed our marital roles, I still look to him as a leader. I mean, I believe that we are equal in this marriage. But I He’s my husband, and I value his leadership in my relationship. And so I still look to him as a leader. And he was sitting there giving me this encouragement every single time the money conversation came up, he said, Listen, we’re fine. We’ve set this up for a reason, let’s move forward in the way that we’ve set this up. And so to allow that pressure to kind of like, slowly take, take its weight off of my shoulders, I will say now it still creeps in. And Jeremy and I just continue to look at what’s going on currently in our business. So are we making the income that we need to make If yes, there’s no point to like stress ourselves unless we want to accomplish something. But if we are not making the money that we want to make, at the end of the day, I know that sounds terrible. But at the end of the day, we always do have the backup that Jeremy can go get another corporate job. And so for us, like we just continue to prioritize what matters most to us. And that’s our marriage, and, and keeping our family first and keeping our faith first. And like letting the storyline write itself and not necessarily trying to like hold on to control over our life story forever. And we’re just like enjoying this for now. And we’ll see what happens later. That’s like, that’s how I’ve like taken the pressure off.

Kat Schmoyer 39:07
I think that’s the healthiest mindset to have with it. I mean, God really is in control. I’m holding it with an open hand. My realization of the pressure came later. Like I was super naive when Matt first joined and I didn’t I didn’t feel like extra pressure around it. My intensity over that pressure happened in 2020 when like the whole world was falling apart. And our business took a massive hit. And I absolutely felt the pressure of oh my gosh, like we need to keep paying our bills and it wasn’t because we didn’t have a runway like we had our savings. We were able to fall back. We were okay. But it made me anxious. It made me wonder if he may 2 guess decisions I was making and that’s where I think going back to when we talked about like I love how you said that like Jeremy’s It’s on that visionary seat with you. And like that, I think is the healthiest thing to do in any marriage, whether you work with your spouse or not, like I think it’s just helpful to bring your spouse into that vision conversation. And so for Matt, my, because he was so involved in the vision conversation, I was able to submit to His leadership when he was coming in and saying, like, hey, it’s okay. Like, we’re gonna be all right. Like, first of all, we’re gonna trust Jesus, like, we’re gonna trust the Lord invest, like, we’re gonna fall back on our faith, first and foremost. And then let’s look practically, like, let’s look at the money in the bank, let’s look at what’s going on. Like, let’s, you know, reevaluate some of these things and, and not let the pressure be the first thing that we see, yes, we’re gonna feel the weight of that, because we are the sole income providers, that’s natural, but letting that just be a part of the conversation, not the full focus and the spotlight so that the anxiety isn’t just like, pinpointing on that over and over again.

Megan Martin 41:00
Yeah. It’s interesting, for sure, being the woman who makes the money, but I hope that in listening to this episode, you feel encouraged and empowered. And if that’s your vision, to bring your husband or your spouse home from corporate America, that there is a journey, it’s going to be a juggle, and there’s going to be a lot of lessons to learn. But I think that I don’t think that there’s any specific definition of a role that you need to try to fit into. And I think just again, keeping your hands open with this storyline and seeing what happens and truly bringing your spouse into that visionary role is going to help you as you take the steps to make the money. Oh, yeah. All right, friends. Well, I cannot wait to catch you in the next conversation.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai