Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 95 Working With Your Spouse

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

In this episode, Shawn and Andrew discuss everything that comes along with working with your spouse including the importance of setting boundaries and making sure to carve out family time. You won't want to miss it! ANDD....WE ARE GOING ON TOUR!! Check out the link below to see if we are coming to a city near you in 2022! Click here to get your tickets now ▶ https://www.couplethingspod.com/ We are sponsored by these companies that we love. Check them out below:  Modern Fertility ▶ Get $20 off your fertility test when you go to modernfertility.com/EASTFAM Athletic Greens ▶ Athletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/eastfam. BYJUS ▶ Visit byjus.com/us to get your first class free, PLUS a $25 gift card for Roblox If you haven’t yet, please rate Couple Things and subscribe to hear more. Follow us on Instagram to keep the conversation going at https://www.instagram.com/couplething... And if you have suggestions/recommendations for the show, send us your ideas in a video format – we might just choose yours! Email us at [e-mail]. Subscribe for more! http://bit.ly/3rnOdNo Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Twitter ▶ http://www.twitter.com/ShawnJohnson Snapchat! ▶ @ShawneyJ Follow AndrewsTwitter ▶ http://www.twitter.com/AndrewDEast Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Snapchat! ▶ @AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Because I quit my job this morning. I literally walked it to Andrew and I was like, I quit. Hello and welcome back to Couple Things, a show all about couples and the things they go through. And that is the first time I've ever done this introduction solo for all 90-some episodes of the show. It's been Sean and I tagged to me that introduction. But today she's actually away on work. for the first time in two years, and it's crazy. It's also topical because today's show is all about what is like working with your spouse. So Sean and I have worked together for five years.

We've done a lot of different projects, a lot of different business, a lot of different travel, and learned a lot, or at least experienced a lot. So we wanted to take a step back and think about what have we learned from working together. And so we have come up with eight different lessons or things that we have gleaned from our experience of working together. And so whether you work with your spouse or not, whether you have business that's at all like what we do for work or not, we have tried to make these eight different things applicable to a broad audience. So I hope you enjoy this.

It's also an interesting thing for Sean and I to talk about during this time of really exciting, hectic, overwhelming, big business transitions and also having our second child, there's just a lot going on in life. And so for us to actually have this time where we could step back and think about what our arrangement is and what our goals are and work and in marriage and parenting and what do we want out of life, it was actually really good for us to kind of discuss this. So I hope you find it cathartic to some degree as well. And if you haven't yet, please subscribe to the show and give it a rating. We'd love to hear your thoughts. I would also love to give a comment of the week. So today's comment of the week comes from last week's

episode where we shared our experience at the People's Choice Award that we had this podcast nominated for. And so Nicole Lynn wrote, I love listening to your podcast. You're so relatable and down to earth. I love that you share the things you've learned, both good and bad and your marriage and how you share to help others. Keep up the amazing things that you do. Thank you, Nicole. And we're are so glad to hear that you're learning from us as we just share what things we're learning in life. So love to hear your feedback and please leave a comment if you have on. And also, while this is a solo introduction, this is a duo episode. Sean is just away so she couldn't join me for this introduction. But we have a really good discussion and I'm excited to bring it to you.

Without further ado, here it is episode all about what we've learned working with. with our spouse. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to a couple things. With Sean and Andrew. A podcast all about couples. And the things they go through. Today's episode is all about how to juggle working with your spouse.

And it couldn't be a better day. Is that why? Because I quit my job this morning. I literally walked it to Andrew and I was like, I quit. I'm done. And usually one of us feels like quitting. Yes. But today was an interesting mix of both of us wanting to quit.

Yeah. So. And it's like, you want to go for a bike ride? And he quit our job. I was like, yeah. So he went for a 30 minute bike ride.

That was fantastic. It was a really nice bike ride, by the way. Yes, it was. And I do feel weird. I'm doing what I never do, which is wear shorts while we film.

I know. Why are you so, you're so insecure about showing your legs on you too? I think it's weird. I'm just sitting in the chair and they're looking at it. He's like, oh my gosh, I feel naked.

All right. Well, we did an episode last week on the People's Choice Awards, and I just wanted to reiterate how thankful we are that you put us in that position in the first place. Congratulations to Emma Chamberlain for winning. Yes. And to all the other nominees. We aren't bitter at all. And also we neglected, and I am embarrassed and ashamed about this, to thank our team who also does so much work behind the scenes to actually make the show happen. So the producers, we got the editors, Caroline. We've got the editors, Caroline. We have Lexi, we have Natalie, we have Layla, we have Ginny, we have Mike, Will. There's a lot that goes into it and needless to say, the talent to join us as well. So now that that's behind us, if you like the show, please give it a rating and subscribe to it. We try to bring you wholesome. Is that the right con? Sure. Like the right word?

Yeah. Wholesome, fun, real. you know real life experiences yeah so today we are talking about working with your spouse though also before we get started there aren't many tickets left if you guys didn't know this we are going on tour for a couple things we're doing live shows we're going to be having a fun time doing like embarrassing stories and questions games with the audience it's going to be drinking wine together it'll be an awesome great um an awesome great it's going to be an awesome great it's going to be an awesome great One of those.

Awesome date night or night out with your friends or night out solo. Make sure you check the description below for the cities we are going to and the few tickets that are left. Imagine like the parenting version of ridiculousness is how I'm describing it. It's going to be really fun. Okay. Are we ready to start the episode finally? Sure.

Should I talk about why I quit this morning? Yes. So we're going to cover all these topics. But working with your spouse today, I didn't quit because of like you. I quit because we have so much going on. And when I feel like I when I feel like my work is jeopardizing the quality of my life in the sense of like how well I can be a spouse or how well I can be a mom, I literally break down. And today there were five, there are still five million things that I have to figure out how to do. And I need to make sure that I give my baby's love and I need to give you love.

And I feel like when it comes to juggling work with your family and with your spouse, if ever the priority is out of whack where you put work before your spouse or your family, things go completely wrong. And so today I was like, you know what? I quit. I'm not going to do work. I'm going to hang out with my husband. We're going to go for a bike ride.

I'm going to hang out with my son and my daughter. And I'll figure the rest out later. We are entrepreneurs. I guess you could say and as such we can control our schedule and like hey we want to do this work because this opportunity came in or we don't want to do this work and so the the downside of that is there's always this temptation to hey you know we planned on having Sunday off but we have an opportunity to do X, Y and Z and make some more money right at the end of the day and this This week, I actually feel like was really healthy for us and a really good challenge

because Sean had like an emergency panic call from a company that was like, we need you to help us out in this way and we'll like pay you whatever you want, pretty much. And we were like, oh, you know, the first temptation is great. That's awesome. How exciting. And then we looked at the schedule and Drew has her first soccer practice. on Sunday. Well, yeah.

And it's a 30 minute soccer practice. And we sat down, we said, we're not going to take the business opportunity. We're not going to do it. And then it got to give a few more details, too, as to like all of this, we said yes to to this agreement. And we were like, okay, we're going to do it. I'm going to fly out. I'm going to leave Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.

And it was like 12 hours later that we realized we had scheduled it. over Drew's soccer practice and we have this other like Nashville fairy tale ball and all these things that we're going to do and we both just looked at each other and we're like yeah let's cancel it it's not worth it's not worth giving up those special moments and so we just texted the company we're like you know what I'm in I will give you a hundred percent of myself but I cannot leave until this stuff is done which it gets at the heart of like setting boundaries and not everybody has a job that's so sporadic and random and like you know last minute as ours can be but i do feel like that concept of hey you know if i just if i just did one more days of work i can get ahead for

you know for the next week and there's always this temptation to like add more more more i just finished this book called ruthless elimination of hurry highly recommend reading it we can link it down below but it's all about work is not the purpose of life it can be a really good thing and a really good component of life, but it's not the purpose. So how can you actually use work to just enhance what the good parts and the best parts of life are, which is like marriage and spouses? So it wasn't until about two or three months ago, we actually sat down and wrote our why, because with all of the content that we produced, that we share with you guys, we want it to be family focused. We want to show that our family is number one. And we have learned first and foremost and like firsthand, over the

over the years that we don't agree with being fake on social media. We don't agree with falsifying our life to make it look a certain way for you guys. And that's just not how we operate. So if our family is jeopardized or in a bad place, you're going to see that. And if we want to promote family, we have to make family our priority. So with work and with our marriage and everything, ever since we wrote down that why of we're doing this for each other and we're doing this for our life and our lifestyle and we're doing this for our kids. If any opportunity jeopardizes that, then it's a no. Yeah. And to give a more

succinct summary of what the phrase is, it's we're trying to tell compelling stories around family to make families the thing that people aspire to have that gets people most excited in life about because I feel like it's you know our families from our parents to our siblings to our kids to our marriage we have felt like it's just obviously this goes without saying it's just one of the most fruitful parts of life so that's what our goal is with every video podcast you know TikTok that we make is to display that and it was so helpful too as we're like building a business to be like, oh, we're actually putting at risk us making our family the thing we're most, you know what I'm saying?

So that was a really good challenge for us. Well, and I think that can be related to anybody in any business and any, any career. When you come home at night and you're looking at your family and you're like, oh, I just want the best for them, what usually happens is you in, you usually start sacrificing your family to work harder so you can provide for them. Does that make sense? Yeah. And it's so easy, Andrew and I have talked about this a million times, it's so easy to go down that rabbit hole of, I just want more. I want to be able to give them more. I want to be able to do more. I want to be able to have more. That can be a very dangerous rabbit hole to go down. And so for us, we constantly have to kind of ask ourselves, why are we working overtime? Why are we working on weekends? Why are we sacrificing time with our kids when we already live a lifestyle that we love and we don't need more? And so I think just having

that reality check with yourself of yeah the most important thing at the end of the day is sitting down with your family if you can and we had this discussion the other day about what does it actually mean to be content like yeah like we have every reason to be content right and it's so powerful whether even if your kids crying or your marriage you know you're in an argument there is there is the possibility of being content in that situation knowing that like hey this we only get this phase with the baby once and yeah they're going to cry but like embracing that phase it's not always going to be enjoyable but you can like find you can find the purpose behind it right and so with with the work you you just got to be cognizant of the fact that more is not where

you find contentment it is where you are now and if you can't find if you can't find joy and peace and contentment with where you are right now more money or a new promotion or whatever else is not going to bring that right it's like i mean we're not revealing any new concepts here but it's i think we're experiencing it live right now you yeah well and i want to go back over the past five years of all the things that we've learned and all the things we've done blatantly just wrong um i feel like we've learned everything the hard way and working together and the first thing is A question we are asked is, does our work build our marriage up or does it tear it apart? And I feel like over the past five years, we've definitely had those moments where the work has torn us, I don't want to say torn us apart, but like made us be more distant from each other because we didn't have that like common goal of like what it is we are working towards.

I remember there are so many times where when we are first starting this whole like vlogging life of showing our world. um Andrew would always pull out a camera to like film and there were so many times we were getting arguments because he would pull out a camera and I'd be like I don't know if you're pulling out a camera as my husband because you think this is beautiful or you think this is a fun moment that you want to keep for us or if you're pulling out a camera and that's the the entire world watching and it's going to be posted on Instagram so I didn't know where those boundaries were and I remember that kind of put a wedge between us for a while and trying to figure out that boundary but with that I remember we had a sit down conversation of like what boundaries can we put within our household and within our business to make our work successful and to actually build our marriage up instead yeah and I think initially I took that conversation as like a limiting like why are you not allowing me to do this but then we take a step back it's more like oh wait I love vlogging and Sean loves, you know, obviously having some protected family time.

Mm-hmm. And we can do both, but there will be, like, I can't vlog all the time and we can't have family time all the time. And if we communicate that openly, then we both could achieve our goal for a longer period of time without Sean getting mad and never wanting to do it anymore or me, you know, whatever, like, it goes both ways. So instead of viewing it as limiting, it's more like, oh, no, we can do this,

but here's how we can make it work to have both of us happy. If you're up for it, I'd like to list all of the rules, guidelines, and like boundaries we've actually put on our marriage and work situation. Do we, okay? Like just, we didn't write it down. I just want to see, because I feel like if someone were to ask us. Is this a test? No.

But I feel like if someone were to ask us, like what boundaries have you put in place, we'd be like, oh, we don't have any. But I actually think, like, in putting three. second thought into this. We have quite a few. Well, so I, I, we never post without like the other's approval. Yes. So can't post anything on social media about our family, about our kids, about each other, nothing unless the other person sees it. Any opportunities that come through the door, we always both discuss it. Yes. And the pros and cons of, of the deal. Yes. We always, um, have a very long discussion and kind of vetting process, whoever comes into our home.

as far as like work is concerned. So like photo shoots, videos, people we work with. That's a very, that's a huge discussion in protecting our family and our kids of do we feel comfortable having this person in our house. Um, we also have kind of like work hours where I know and we both know the outside of certain hours, it's husband and wife. And within those hours, it's, it's work partner, which is we usually try to start work any time between like 830 or 9 and we try to be fully wrap.

up by five or six five yeah and also if we're going to be working outside of those boundaries we need to clearly communicate that and we try to be on the more generous side of like hey this project might only take me 15 minutes but i'm going to tell sean 30 so that way that way it's not the opposite and she's mad because i'm 50 minutes late you know yeah um she's smiling because i'm bad at that one but yeah he is um we also have boundaries within our household we have like offices here um so there's like an office in the upstairs like landing we have a studio office and then andrew has an office and Andrew usually runs all of like the analytical and like the bills and the finances and everything of our business which can drive him absolutely insane

and he needs quiet time for so he actually has developed a system please explain it where he goes in his office and he shuts the door and he has um a list of of conditions. Conditions whenever the door is closed of whenever, like, when I can come in his office. Well, I'll have a Google doctor. I can just link it, but bottom of mind is you can never come in without knocking. And if the door's closed, it's only like emergency situations. It sounds really sketchy, but it's actually like a good process.

Well, the home office, this is not news. Everybody listening has probably experienced this sometime in the past year and a half, but it's like a battle. Oh, actually a huge boundary, huge boundary that we put on business. Wow, I can't believe it's just become norm for us. So during COVID, we actually, like we worked solely from home. And we learned very quickly that mixing our kids with our work was very, very hard. So if I'm sitting in my computer or Andrew's sitting on his computer and Drew comes over and she's like,

mama mama mama mama and I am basically ignoring her because I'm trying to like get work done that isn't good for her and that's not good for me so we very quickly put a boundary in her house that upstairs is work and downstairs is home if you go downstairs to our main level you are mom dad and you are part of the family you cannot talk about work you don't take business calls any of that around the kids if you're upstairs you're in the office so you are business partner CEO whatever and take your business calls, but the kids really don't come up here. Yeah. And well, Mallory Irvin told us, don't try to do both at the same time.

Yeah. Because if you're trying to do bills with the kids in their lap, that ends in frustration, 100% of the time. Absolutely. In our experience. So that's kind of the starter pack list. There's, I'm sure, a handful of more that don't come to mind. But I think having a common goal and being just really communicative around that and how you

can achieve that in a way that both parties are comfortable is super important. So the third, the third tip or idea we have in working with your spouse that I feel like has helped us is kind of like knowing each other's personality types and how we tick. So, you know, there's all these tests, whether it's Myers-Briggs or Enneagram. There's a bunch of different of these personality classifications. But knowing, like, love language is one of them, knowing that Sean likes quality time. and if she comes into my office like not it's it's not going to end well for me if I just like immediately shut that down or like ignore her because that that kind of negates the quality time

aspect but just communicating hey babe I would love to spend time with you but can I have 15 minutes before we hang out you know and Andrew and I'm not good at that but like we're working on it we actually went to a marriage counselor we started going it was one of our like new year's And we've been really excited about it, but that's something we've been working on is how to decipher and work through those those roles of husband and business partner because I'm very bad. I'm very emotional. I take things personally. And so I'm very bad if I like walk into his office and I just want to cuddle or something. And he's like in business mode. I'm like, wait, did my husband just shut me down? Or is that like my business partner being like, I'm busy? And it's very. hard to kind of decipher those roles that's why we've kind of put in the offices and stuff and those boundaries um but andrew's personality type which i have to reiterate to myself a lot is he's like a workhorse he is very focused and emotionless literally when you're when you're working you go ice cold you've never phrased this but i agree i've never noticed that about myself but

yeah yeah if he's in work mode he's ice cold and you'll ask a question And you'll be like, I don't even know an example, but you'll just be like, yeah. Yeah. No. So true because it's so accurate. It's so funny because I didn't realize it myself. That's what I love about marriage. And also, you know, there's a lot of, surely there's a lot of difficult things about working with your spouse.

But I think there's so much benefit too because I've gotten to see this whole new side of Sean in, you know, another situation I might not. So by working together, it's like I see how much of a leader you are. I see how creative you are. I see how good with the team you are. Like last night you had that genius idea for the video. And it's like so fun because we like share the excitement together as opposed to one. You can still feel included if you're not doing the same thing.

But still, it's just I like our setup. I will say too. That's another thing that we've had to work on over the years is roles within our business. Yeah. Because since we are husband and wife going into business at the beginning, It was kind of this blurred, disorganized list of let's all just try to work on everything at the same time. And when we started learning each other's personality traits and what we are better at and what we, where our strengths were, we very quickly just kind of separated that list into 50-50 where Andrew is really good with finances. He's really good with like the business side of things.

Not very quickly. It took us a while. It took us a while. And we're still in the process of doing that. But the more you can be like, hey, you're in charge of this and you own it, the better, I feel like, and the less frustration there is, you know. Yeah. And that is another phrase that a business partner of ours has taught us is owning your stuff. And basically when you make that list of what each of you are doing or what each of us are doing, if it fails to get done, I will be the first to be like, I own that.

I came up short on it and it was my responsibility. And it also just gives you something finite to discuss, like a small, a small criticism as opposed to like, Sean never gets her work done. It's like, hey, Sean, we had agreed that you were going to take care of the bills and you didn't. Like, can I help you in any way? As opposed to making it a bigger thing, like when you have a clearly defined role, it really helps out. But then also the other side of the roles is, and this is a new thing we learned from the holdernesses, I think, of calling each other different names. Yeah. Depending on the time of day.

So if we're working, it's like Sean, or if we're with the kids, like with all the family time, it's like, I haven't really called you mom, but maybe. You call me mama, but to the kids. To the kids. And then when it's just you and I, it's like, babe. Yeah. And obviously those get mixed a lot, but like it does kind of help differentiate, you know, especially when I'm talking to Sean. If I was during the work day and I was like, babe, get your work done. Yeah.

That would be like love and then shot down. It would be rules crossing. which becomes hurtful. So we try to very clearly keep those on separate sides. I think that is too something we've gotten better at is like the collaboration versus micromanaging side of things. Yeah. At the beginning when we didn't have those clear lists of like,

Andrew's doing this and I'm doing that, there was a lot of micromanaging that would happen for both of us. I'd be like, babe, did you get this done? Where's the progress? Where's what all, you know, what all is going on? Yeah. and vice versa and now I just trust his side and he trusts my side and we very easily now are able to collaborate in our business instead of worry that things are you know loosens are

not being tied up yeah and the breakdown of what that collaboration looks like can go in phases right so sometimes I'm going to be doing more work that's just what that phase of life calls for and other times you'll be going through a phase where you're going to be doing more work but understanding that like hey this is probably phase and it can change and also communicating through it like yeah can be huge so obviously you don't want any pent up frustration to be left on the table that will just unearth later in an ugly way but there have been kind of these ebbs and flows of work capacity if you will so that's that has been helpful I will say a couple of like cute things and funny things that we do that are also very helpful

At the end of the day, whenever, like, work is done, usually Andrew, I try to wrap up my work by, like, three or four so I can spend time with the kids and let our babysitter go. Andrew will usually wrap up work by five or six. And every time you come down the stairs, I try to be like, welcome home, babe. How is your day? And it's just kind of, like, I think in a strange way,

it kind of marks the end of our day and marks, like hi baby and yeah it's when husband and wife time start no matter what stress work broad it's like oh okay i got sean here and we also are very very good at if we're ever outside of the house outside of work hours whether it's the weekend or a day off or whatever it might be we're very good at asking each other if we have a work question one of us will say is it okay if we talk about work right now and if if the other person says i don't really want to great we're done yeah uh we're excited about this if you've watched our main channel youtube you've know that we have this content house per se under underway but really building out a space where we can record these shows uh in in a place

that isn't our home where there's not crying babies and dogs etc and then also with the idea of having other people being able to use that space as well uh if they have shows so you know i'm not saying that that's necessary to have an outside office outside of your home. I think it's really whatever works for you and your relationship. And if you prefer working from home, which I think there was a phase where we did. But now we, I think, prefer working separately outside of home. You just got to do what's best for you to make it work. And, you know, if that means getting a new space or hiring someone else to help with the kids, like, you know, whatever your situation can call for or allow, you just got to think through the different options, you know, it's helpful.

I think for us, we tried really hard at the beginning to be both parents and work at the same time. And we very quickly learned that that doesn't work for us. We are all in people. We can't do things halfway. So if I am being mom, I want to be mom and nothing else. And if I'm working, I want to work and be nothing else. And for us, hiring a nanny and a baby's or was like the greatest change for us because it allowed us to be parents when we wanted or not when we wanted, but when we were parents. And it made that much easier. Yeah, that's your mom.

But I am curious about what happens we were asked with if our marriage is in a funk or we're having a tough time, how do we work? Because it's always filming something. And I actually, I've not thought about this question, but I like how we do it, which I think is really just not filming anything. We will work through the issue at least to a point where we're both like, okay, we feel like we're on the same page and like it's not this versus, it's like me versus her feeling,

which it can sometimes be like. But it's like we will not film until that main issue gets addressed. I remember this. This happened like last week or two weeks ago where we were in an argument of not like a serious argument, but we were in an argument about something. And when we say argument, it was just like a scuffle.

and we needed to film a podcast and it was all about our it was a solo episode about our marriage and about love and all these things and um whatever topic it was I remember our like time came where we needed to film the podcast and we both looked at each other and we were like you know what I don't want to sit down and try to fake it like things are okay when they're not yeah and that's not what our podcast is about so we're not going to do this right now yeah and and some also sometimes it'll just be more of like a scheduling thing like hey yeah we actually like we we need to do these meetings so like if it's not filming and we just have meetings or calls it'll be like all right we have to take the calls but can we talk about this at 4 p.m. like and scheduling a time so that we both

know okay we do want to address this issue we do want to get to the other side of it and we do want to like be on the same page of connection that's been really helpful so and an example of like the podcast that we were trying to film last week that I think for me that's a perfect example of prioritizing your marriage over work. For us it could be very easy to be like oh tough like suck it up

tough it up let's just film this and fake it till you make it but that's not making our marriage the priority that's making the work the priority so I think for us being able to say you know what we're going to figure this out is a way for us to protect each other. And then the other thing is, and then we'll give some stats too.

Yeah. The other thing is sometimes when you're working from home, it can feel like the work never stops or just the home life, work life bleed into each other. And how do we, when one person wants to continue working and the other doesn't, how do you feel like we do with that situation? I feel like we're still working through that one because. I always want to film. I always have an idea.

I always like. And you always want to work, which is such a beautiful thing about you. You're so driven. So I'm usually the one that's like, I'm done. Like I'm done for the day. We're done for the day. Let's go be mom and dad. And I think for the most part, you compromise a lot more than I do that way.

I'm so glad you said that. I'm keeping the family strong, okay? But I think it's a beautiful thing because you so. easily we'll be like you know what give me 15 minutes and I'll wrap this up and I'm done and I think that's a great thing I think it's I think it's better that we're compromising towards family than we are compromising towards work and I do have this like urgency fallacy where I'm like I have this idea we need to film it now and we've both we've gotten better at understanding like hey hey you know it's 5 p.m and this is the end of our work day and I've come to terms with that like no this just isn't

going to happen right now I've been through this frustration of trying to film with the kids around or like trying to film when you're expecting family time. I've been through that a million times and it doesn't end well. And how can we like change that up? And so you've done a better job too at like not just shutting me down and saying, no, we're not going to film that, but being like, I would love to tomorrow. Yeah. And it's kind of like that whole scheduling a time to work out the issue.

It's like, no, we can do that, but just on a different time table. So that's been really helpful. I also, well, you're going to bring. I was going to talk about eating a meal together, I feel like has helped. It's a good break, like a lunch break. It is. We try to do a lunch break where we all sit down and we eat, and that's more husband and wife.

And then I also thought of another boundary that we put in. Okay. Because our life is filming our life, or because our business is filming our life, another very strict boundary that we have is if for some reason any of our, or either of our kids are in our videos or in our pictures or whatever it might be, the second, I mean the nanosecond, nano second, nanosecond, said a thing. Yes. Either of them gets unhappy.

We're done. We're absolutely done. We do not push them to be a part of our business in any way, shape, or form. And if they don't want to be, that's when we're both like, we're out. They're out. We're not doing it. Yeah, that has been a new feeling of frustration, a new level of frustration where It's like when someone else wants to film our kids, like for an interview or whatever, it's like this, no.

Absolutely. That's not. They're not here for that. They are children. So anyway. If we're filming a video and Drew is playing in the background and she's perfectly happy and it's like, hey baby or whatever, that's fine. But the second something has been asked or whatever and Drew says no or she gets unhappy, all production shuts down, all production shuts down. business stops and she gets to be full kid and she has no tie whatsoever to any of it yeah all right

before we shut down here i do want to ask the people um if you could share the best advice that you've received about working with your spouse that'd be great and if you're curious more about what our workday looks like or what a day in the life looks like we actually on our main channel did post a day in the life so you can see you know what we do in a day and how we navigate that space uh we show some funny moments like Drew coming in the studio and turning on and off the lights. It's wild. But I also think it carries over to this, anyone who's working from home, it can apply to. But that's all we have for you.

I hope that was helpful. Again, we love work. Sorry, I'll talk for myself. I love working with my spouse. But it has been helpful to kind of talk through how are we comfortable and how are we uncomfortable? What can we make work and what can we not make work? And then setting limits to, and like, it can all be helpful.

So we'd love to hear your input, but thank you so much for listening. And so as we start talking about this subject of working with your spouse, I did want to talk about some stats that we pulled up. The first being that 22% of married couples in the United States met at work. I think that kind of reveals this concept that seeing your significant other, your partner in their zone, like where they were meant to, you know, have a career and be productive and build. things, it can be really attractive. And I like that number. 22% is a huge number. And then also

two thirds of businesses in the United States are family owned and one third of those are run by couples. That's a huge number. If you think about the hundreds of thousands of small businesses in the United States, there are one third of the two thirds are run by couples. And so this is obviously a prevalent issue. The next is working mothers can make up to 32% of the workforce as of 2020. So moms are working more and more. That's something that I feel like, you know, Sean has related to and appreciates the ability to do that

and not just, you know, be a stay-at-home mom. Obviously, that doesn't apply to everybody, but moms are a massive part of their workforce. So navigating these personal boundaries can be really tricky. The next is nearly 40% of married or long-term couples living together don't know how much money their spouse makes. What? I read that I couldn't believe it.

This kind of, I feel like, negates our rule of transparency and really kind of just knowing the situation of your significant other is helpful and money plays not the whole role, but some role in that. And so piggybacking off of that, this makes sense.

Women with younger children seem to work less. So 75% of working females or working age females with school age children, so age of 6 to 17 work versus 62% of working mothers with young children. So age 0 to 5. And then the last is, and this is a red flag for me, nearly 40% of married or long-term couples living together don't know how much money their spouse makes.

That's crazy to me. I feel like that violates our concept of transparency and just knowing as much as there is to know the other person. I feel like that's a goal in our relationship is how well can I get to know Sean? And there's different aspects that bring that out. And, you know, money is not everything, but it is something. So discussing that issue for me makes sense with your partner. And if you made it this far, please like the show and subscribe to it on whatever platform.

And we will see you next week. I'm Andrew. I'm Sean. And we are the East Fam.