Show Notes
Erin writes: "My husband supports me, but he really doesn't get it. He doesn't understand why I'm working nights and weekends on something that isn't paying off yet. I feel like I'm losing him."
This is one of the hardest parts of entrepreneurship that most people don't talk about.
Scott's story: Built a business for 17 months while suspecting his corporate job was ending. When it did, his wife asked: "Are you sending out resumes?" She didn't freak out—but she had concerns.
The belief shift: Your spouse is not the enemy. They are scared. Their resistance is often about love—disguised as doubt.
The Visibility Trap in relationships: They can't see what you see. They hear about your business—they don't live it. Money leaves the account. When is it coming back?
What not to do:
- Don't pitch them on the dream before understanding their concern (Episode 70 callback)
- Don't hide the business—that breeds resentment
- Don't make them the villain
What to do:
- Show them what's happening—talk about small wins, tangible progress
- Give them a role, even a small one
The pilot analogy: Passengers feel out of control. Give them a job—"help me look for other planes." Now they feel involved. Same with your spouse.
The ask: "Can we just go 90 days on this? Let's revisit then."
The hard truth: Some spouses will never get on board. You have to decide what matters most. The resistance from people who care about you piles onto the resistance you're already facing.
Scott's perspective: "I would want to protect the relationship more than the business."
Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask
📜 Full Transcript (Click to expand)
Scott Todd (00:03)
What do you do when your spouse, husband, wife doesn't support your business? That's what we're talking about on today's show. And this is because Erin writes in and she says, My husband supports me, but he really doesn't get it. He doesn't understand why I'm working nights and weekends on something that isn't paying off yet. I feel like I'm losing him, but what do I do?
Welcome to Fix My Business, the show that helps you fix your business. I'm your host, Scott Todd, and I have built multiple seven-figure businesses after leaving my corporate VP job at a Fortune 300 company. And this channel is dedicated to helping you build a business that you love, and in this case, your family loves too. So let's get going. You know, Erin, here's the thing: is that
This is one of the hardest parts of entrepreneurship that most people don't talk about. And it's that dynamic that happens when a member of the family is not necessarily adamantly against you building a business, but at the same time they're not on board with it. And by the way, this happens all of the time, and it can be not just a spouse.
A significant other. It can also be friends. That's this that's the thing. Your friends around you could kind of kind of convince you not to do this as well. And look, there's a lot of different scenarios where this could happen. And it could come off as really just, I don't want you doing this to other concerns. Let me tell you what happened to me. See, I had started to build a business when I suspected that my corporate job was on the ropes. I kind of got this.
Idea that, hey, this thing is not going to pan out well. There's a whole story behind it. You know, we can go into that later. But I knew I started building my business and I worked on it for 17 months. ⁓ before I found out, hey, you're right, you were right. This thing is not going to fly. And I had built a business that would replace my income. So when I found out that my job was moving on and I was going to be separated from that company, well, everybody else was interviewing.
Everybody else started interviewing for jobs. And then my wife asked me, like, hey, ⁓ like, are you sending out resumes? Are you what are you gonna do? She gave me a break when, you know, because I was devastated over losing this job, even though I knew it was coming. She gave me a break. And then she's like, Well, what is the plan here? And I told her, my plan is to basically move into my own business. And she didn't freak out.
She didn't freak out. She's a very supportive person, very supportive partner. ⁓ She was basically like, ⁓ can we can we afford that? Is this gonna work? All of those, all of those concerns came out in this conversation. And look, they can come out and manifest in many different ways, but the the most important thing to remember here is that your spouse is not the enemy. They are scared.
When you understand where they're coming from, the fact that they're scared, even though they may not say I'm scared, even though the fact that they may not really, you know, kind of put that out there to you, maybe you can feel like they're rejecting your dream. They probably aren't. What they're trying to do is they're trying to ⁓ protect the family and also remove any risk of things that they just don't understand. You see, their resistance
To what you're doing here is often about love and it's disguised really as is doubt. And it's not doubt in you, it's doubt in what what you're doing in terms of business is hard. Remember, a lot of businesses fail. And these are stats that that get shot around all the time, and they're not lies. Because business is hard.
But where there's a burning desire to do something, then you can overcome this. It's really about the time horizon and it's also about the runway, the cash reserves that are available to you. Now, on this channel, we've also talked a lot about the visibility trap. I talk about these four traps that are held up within every process within a company. The visibility trap applies when you don't have the data.
To understand, and then you're kind of like ⁓ managing or leading by intuition or gut. Well, the lack of data can also apply to relationships. You see, they may not be able to see what you can see. And in every business that you're doing, in that day-to-day that you're doing, they're not there. They only get to hear about what you're doing, they don't get to see it.
They don't necessarily see the vision. They may not see where this thing is going. They may not see the opportunity. You can tell them. You can tell them. You can be all excited about it. But what they probably see in the early days is that money is leaving the bank account. When is it coming back? Okay. And then if you're tight on income, that can put more stress on things. Okay, so really what this can.
comes down to is a visibility problem and not a spouse problem. You see, they can't necessarily see what you see. And that's part of the challenge here. Okay. So here's what I wouldn't do is I wouldn't try to convince them. I've seen this happen. I've seen spouses sit down and they try to convince their significant other that this is the right thing to do. And
just a couple of episodes ago when we were talking about sales, and I was talking about ⁓ pitching before we diagnose things. Well, the same thing apply can apply here. We can get into this mode where we feel like we have to pitch them or sell them on the dream, as opposed to understanding what the concern is, what their concern is, truly understanding what it is. And then we
understand that and then we can kind of show them. So what we don't want to do is we don't want to hide the business because that will ultimately breed resentment. What we really want to do is we want to kind of show them like, hey, this is what I think is possible. This is where I see it is. This is what the time horizon could be. It could be longer, it could be shorter, but this is like this is this is why this is important to me. And what you don't want to do also is you don't want to make them the villain
of this whole story, okay? Like you really don't want to do that. Because if you do, well then you become, you know, you become negative on them. And that's really not the thing that you want to do here. So what do you do? Well, I would say what we want to do is we want to show them what's happening within the business. They may not care at first. You might feel like you're talking to yourself, but you want to talk about the small wins, okay? The tangible things.
So like with me, I was involved in real estate investing. So as I started getting offers back, those small wins, I I was like getting excited about that. And I was just showing like, hey, here's how, here's how we can, you know, turn this into more money. And this is why this is stacking, and this is why this is important. And if you can kind of give them some role, even a small one, that's gonna be a game changer for you.
⁓ I am a private pilot. I have a, you know, I'm not a commercial airliner pilot, but I have the ability of flying myself. And one of the things that you learn through this process of learning how to fly a smaller plane is that when you have passengers with you, which ultimately is kind of a cool experience that you can take a significant other or spouse, a friend or whatever, as a passenger, well, they may all of a sudden feel like they have no control over that plane. That might flip them out. They might freak out.
But what you could do is we can give them a role within the plane to do. Even though they're not manipulating the controls, we can still give them a job to do. And that will give them some ability to feel like they do control something. So if you flow with me, for example, as a passenger, one of the things I'm going to ask you to do is I'm going to ask you to look around, your eyes outside of the plane, looking for other planes. Hey,
Help me look for other planes. Because now all of a sudden, instead of you feeling like you have no control, all of a sudden, because you're scanning the horizon and because you feel like you're making some contribution to this effort, now you feel a little bit more empowered. You feel a little bit more involved, and that will lower the stress. Same thing applies on boats. One person's driving, everybody else is holding on for dear life. But if you have people looking for other boats and hey, there's a boat over here, okay, cool. You've empowered people.
They feel like they're basically ⁓ involved in it. So give them a small role. Figure out what you can do to give your significant other a small role, and then they feel some sort of ownership in there. And then instead of like shutting down their concerns, saying, Hey, listen, can we just go 90 days on this thing? Let's revisit this in 90 days. And let's just see where we are. And in 90 days from now, the business will
Will change, it will transform your excitement. Sh listen, I can't tell you that you're gonna be more excited 90 days from now than you are today. Okay, because there's a lot of there's a lot of challenges that you're gonna face on this journey. This is not a short-term journey. This is not something that happens in 90 days. But again, you're not here to try to prove that you're gonna do this. You're here to show them, hey, these are the incremental changes that are happening.
This is why I remain positive about this. You see, to me, I would want to protect the relationship more than the business. Because look, even though you might feel this sense of like, hey, I really, really, really want to do this business, only you can determine which is more important here. Is it the business or the the marriage, the the relationship, whatever it is. Because the hard truth here is that some spouses
Are never going to get on board. Now, I'm not saying that in the in your case because I don't know. But you have to decide what matters the most to you. Because it's the resistance of the people who care about you. It's that resistance which will then pile on to the other resistance that you're already going to face. Because I've said it before, I'll say it again, I've said it in this episode: starting and growing a business.
Is probably one of the hardest things you're going to do. And this is why only 6% of the population own a business. Because it takes a longer-term perspective, a longer horizon than what we often think. But then you add on ⁓ resistance from a spouse, and it's even harder. So you have to get in front of this.
You have to get them on board. And you're only going to do that by doing some of the actions that we've talked about in this episode. So hopefully that helps you. If you have a business question, head over to scottod.net forward slash ask. And I will see you in our next episode.
What do you do when your spouse, husband, wife doesn't support your business? That's what we're talking about on today's show. And this is because Erin writes in and she says, My husband supports me, but he really doesn't get it. He doesn't understand why I'm working nights and weekends on something that isn't paying off yet. I feel like I'm losing him, but what do I do?
Welcome to Fix My Business, the show that helps you fix your business. I'm your host, Scott Todd, and I have built multiple seven-figure businesses after leaving my corporate VP job at a Fortune 300 company. And this channel is dedicated to helping you build a business that you love, and in this case, your family loves too. So let's get going. You know, Erin, here's the thing: is that
This is one of the hardest parts of entrepreneurship that most people don't talk about. And it's that dynamic that happens when a member of the family is not necessarily adamantly against you building a business, but at the same time they're not on board with it. And by the way, this happens all of the time, and it can be not just a spouse.
A significant other. It can also be friends. That's this that's the thing. Your friends around you could kind of kind of convince you not to do this as well. And look, there's a lot of different scenarios where this could happen. And it could come off as really just, I don't want you doing this to other concerns. Let me tell you what happened to me. See, I had started to build a business when I suspected that my corporate job was on the ropes. I kind of got this.
Idea that, hey, this thing is not going to pan out well. There's a whole story behind it. You know, we can go into that later. But I knew I started building my business and I worked on it for 17 months. ⁓ before I found out, hey, you're right, you were right. This thing is not going to fly. And I had built a business that would replace my income. So when I found out that my job was moving on and I was going to be separated from that company, well, everybody else was interviewing.
Everybody else started interviewing for jobs. And then my wife asked me, like, hey, ⁓ like, are you sending out resumes? Are you what are you gonna do? She gave me a break when, you know, because I was devastated over losing this job, even though I knew it was coming. She gave me a break. And then she's like, Well, what is the plan here? And I told her, my plan is to basically move into my own business. And she didn't freak out.
She didn't freak out. She's a very supportive person, very supportive partner. ⁓ She was basically like, ⁓ can we can we afford that? Is this gonna work? All of those, all of those concerns came out in this conversation. And look, they can come out and manifest in many different ways, but the the most important thing to remember here is that your spouse is not the enemy. They are scared.
When you understand where they're coming from, the fact that they're scared, even though they may not say I'm scared, even though the fact that they may not really, you know, kind of put that out there to you, maybe you can feel like they're rejecting your dream. They probably aren't. What they're trying to do is they're trying to ⁓ protect the family and also remove any risk of things that they just don't understand. You see, their resistance
To what you're doing here is often about love and it's disguised really as is doubt. And it's not doubt in you, it's doubt in what what you're doing in terms of business is hard. Remember, a lot of businesses fail. And these are stats that that get shot around all the time, and they're not lies. Because business is hard.
But where there's a burning desire to do something, then you can overcome this. It's really about the time horizon and it's also about the runway, the cash reserves that are available to you. Now, on this channel, we've also talked a lot about the visibility trap. I talk about these four traps that are held up within every process within a company. The visibility trap applies when you don't have the data.
To understand, and then you're kind of like ⁓ managing or leading by intuition or gut. Well, the lack of data can also apply to relationships. You see, they may not be able to see what you can see. And in every business that you're doing, in that day-to-day that you're doing, they're not there. They only get to hear about what you're doing, they don't get to see it.
They don't necessarily see the vision. They may not see where this thing is going. They may not see the opportunity. You can tell them. You can tell them. You can be all excited about it. But what they probably see in the early days is that money is leaving the bank account. When is it coming back? Okay. And then if you're tight on income, that can put more stress on things. Okay, so really what this can.
comes down to is a visibility problem and not a spouse problem. You see, they can't necessarily see what you see. And that's part of the challenge here. Okay. So here's what I wouldn't do is I wouldn't try to convince them. I've seen this happen. I've seen spouses sit down and they try to convince their significant other that this is the right thing to do. And
just a couple of episodes ago when we were talking about sales, and I was talking about ⁓ pitching before we diagnose things. Well, the same thing apply can apply here. We can get into this mode where we feel like we have to pitch them or sell them on the dream, as opposed to understanding what the concern is, what their concern is, truly understanding what it is. And then we
understand that and then we can kind of show them. So what we don't want to do is we don't want to hide the business because that will ultimately breed resentment. What we really want to do is we want to kind of show them like, hey, this is what I think is possible. This is where I see it is. This is what the time horizon could be. It could be longer, it could be shorter, but this is like this is this is why this is important to me. And what you don't want to do also is you don't want to make them the villain
of this whole story, okay? Like you really don't want to do that. Because if you do, well then you become, you know, you become negative on them. And that's really not the thing that you want to do here. So what do you do? Well, I would say what we want to do is we want to show them what's happening within the business. They may not care at first. You might feel like you're talking to yourself, but you want to talk about the small wins, okay? The tangible things.
So like with me, I was involved in real estate investing. So as I started getting offers back, those small wins, I I was like getting excited about that. And I was just showing like, hey, here's how, here's how we can, you know, turn this into more money. And this is why this is stacking, and this is why this is important. And if you can kind of give them some role, even a small one, that's gonna be a game changer for you.
⁓ I am a private pilot. I have a, you know, I'm not a commercial airliner pilot, but I have the ability of flying myself. And one of the things that you learn through this process of learning how to fly a smaller plane is that when you have passengers with you, which ultimately is kind of a cool experience that you can take a significant other or spouse, a friend or whatever, as a passenger, well, they may all of a sudden feel like they have no control over that plane. That might flip them out. They might freak out.
But what you could do is we can give them a role within the plane to do. Even though they're not manipulating the controls, we can still give them a job to do. And that will give them some ability to feel like they do control something. So if you flow with me, for example, as a passenger, one of the things I'm going to ask you to do is I'm going to ask you to look around, your eyes outside of the plane, looking for other planes. Hey,
Help me look for other planes. Because now all of a sudden, instead of you feeling like you have no control, all of a sudden, because you're scanning the horizon and because you feel like you're making some contribution to this effort, now you feel a little bit more empowered. You feel a little bit more involved, and that will lower the stress. Same thing applies on boats. One person's driving, everybody else is holding on for dear life. But if you have people looking for other boats and hey, there's a boat over here, okay, cool. You've empowered people.
They feel like they're basically ⁓ involved in it. So give them a small role. Figure out what you can do to give your significant other a small role, and then they feel some sort of ownership in there. And then instead of like shutting down their concerns, saying, Hey, listen, can we just go 90 days on this thing? Let's revisit this in 90 days. And let's just see where we are. And in 90 days from now, the business will
Will change, it will transform your excitement. Sh listen, I can't tell you that you're gonna be more excited 90 days from now than you are today. Okay, because there's a lot of there's a lot of challenges that you're gonna face on this journey. This is not a short-term journey. This is not something that happens in 90 days. But again, you're not here to try to prove that you're gonna do this. You're here to show them, hey, these are the incremental changes that are happening.
This is why I remain positive about this. You see, to me, I would want to protect the relationship more than the business. Because look, even though you might feel this sense of like, hey, I really, really, really want to do this business, only you can determine which is more important here. Is it the business or the the marriage, the the relationship, whatever it is. Because the hard truth here is that some spouses
Are never going to get on board. Now, I'm not saying that in the in your case because I don't know. But you have to decide what matters the most to you. Because it's the resistance of the people who care about you. It's that resistance which will then pile on to the other resistance that you're already going to face. Because I've said it before, I'll say it again, I've said it in this episode: starting and growing a business.
Is probably one of the hardest things you're going to do. And this is why only 6% of the population own a business. Because it takes a longer-term perspective, a longer horizon than what we often think. But then you add on ⁓ resistance from a spouse, and it's even harder. So you have to get in front of this.
You have to get them on board. And you're only going to do that by doing some of the actions that we've talked about in this episode. So hopefully that helps you. If you have a business question, head over to scottod.net forward slash ask. And I will see you in our next episode.