Balancing Marriage & Business: How I Work Full-Time with My Spouse, Jared Pumphrey
Episode 785: Show Notes
During today’s episode, I’m speaking with my partner in life and employee in business. Jared and I have been together for 15 years, married for 10, and working together since 2018. He’s been full-time at Boss Project for two years now, and under my management for about 90 days. Today, I’m answering all your questions about what it’s like to work and run a business with a spouse, and nothing is off the table!
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Jared’s Journey to Leaving Corporate and Joining Boss Project in 2019
Jared practiced as a trained landscape architect for seven years before an opportunity arose to leave and work full-time from home with me. Corporate burnout, moving in the ranks, and not having the protection of management led to him feeling ready to take the leap. It was super hard for me to watch Jared get taken for granted with no one being held accountable. It’s taken four years to unpack all those years of workplace trauma. One of his priorities at Boss Project has been setting up guard rails to ensure that no one here has the same experience. That’s also what’s behind our decision to put Jared and our other managers through training with Makeda Andrews and Kira from Paradigm Consulting.
What It's Really Like to Watch Your Spouse Build a Business
Jared remembers a phone call with a client at 11.30pm. I had emailed her half an hour earlier. When I was surprised that she was still awake, she said, “What do you mean? You’re an entrepreneur. You’re always working.” That was the last time I took a call so late at night. He remembers us working on a makeshift table from a lawn chair when all we had was a Gmail address for the business. We’ve come a long way! Needless to say, it took me some time to develop a relationship with work where it could be something I put down at the end of the day. I will also say that those early years of working so hard have set me up to work much less today.
Watching the Evolution of Boss Project From the Sidelines
Jared has been privy to every different product we launched. From doing client work full-time to the original co-op, courses, coaching, and much more. The fascinating thing is how, after eight years, Boss Project is still leaning into the original mission and rapidly evolving with it. He’s also been able to see the changes in me, most recently, how I’ve become more amenable to receiving feedback from my team. He’s also seen the team grow to a point where they can take what I’m envisioning and dreaming about and support me in analyzing and implementing my big ideas.
Why a Landscape Architect Was the Perfect Choice to Manage Our Marketing
It might seem like an unlikely choice, but Jared sees what he learned as an architect as essential to his work at Boss Project. You have to be overly communicative with clients. You have to work through multiple systems and processes that are complex. In the same way, we have some really complex systems in our marketing to help us make decisions with all the facts in mind. Before Jared came in as a contractor, we called him our most active volunteer. He has absolutely been a part of this team for a lot longer than he has been an official member of the team. Because he has been around for so long, he is our resident encyclopedia, and he knows where everything is stored since the very beginning of Boss Project.
How We Draw the Line Between Our Working Relationship and Our Marriage
Initially, I had no idea what Jared was doing on a daily basis. Because I wasn’t in a marketing capacity and Jared sat in a marketing role, I wasn’t in the day-to-day mix of what he was doing. I left the management, oversight, critique, and feedback to Emylee. This was a healthy way for us to find our footing and draw a line between Work Abbie and Jared, and At-Home Abbie and Jared. Most of our communication happens over Slack and Zoom, like any other member of our team. We qualify our conversations, and Jared is really good about creating a meeting around a topic rather than going over it at home. Learning how to communicate in this context has been critical for our marriage too.
The Most Challenging Part of Playing a More Active Role in Each Other’s Work Lives
It’s been a season of change since Memorial Day, both personally and professionally. Since I’ve taken a more active role in the marketing space, it’s given Jared and the team an opportunity to really turn over every stone and analyze what’s working and what needs to change. We know we need to work on the process of receiving and implementing feedback from one another. The thing that’s different between marriage and work is that in our day-to-day, we’re not at a point where we have a lot of feedback for one another at home. But at work, there’s a lot of new stuff on the table. Jared’s really excited to work together with clients in a more meaningful way, unlocking parts of the business that weren’t necessarily easily accessible before.
We’re both really excited about the future of Boss Project and all the evolutions that continue to change! We said that no questions were off the table today, so if there’s anything we’ve left unanswered, please send me a DM!
Quote This
The fascinating thing to me is that after eight years, we are still leaning into the original mission and we’re rapidly evolving.
Highlights
Jared’s Journey to Leaving Corporate and Joining Boss Project in 2019 [0:03:00]
What It's Really Like to Watch Your Spouse Build a Business [0:10:14]
Watching the Evolution of Boss Project From the Sidelines [0:14:02]
Why a Landscape Architect Was the Perfect Choice to Manage Our Marketing [0:18:06]
How We Draw the Line Between Our Working Relationship and Our Marriage [0:26:20]
The Most Challenging Part of Playing a More Active Role in Each Other’s Work Lives [0:32:51]
OUR GUEST:
Jared Pumphrey
Jared Pumphrey is the Marketing Manager at Boss Project. He is married to Boss Project founder, Abagail Pumphrey. Prior to joining Boss Project officially, Jared practiced as a landscape architect solving complex design, development, and planning issues for large-scale $500M+ entertainment projects across the United States.
Key Topics:
Marketing, Management, Marriage, Boundaries, Changes, Communication, Working Relationships, Business Evolution
