How to Build a Thriving Business Without Wrecking Your Marriage with Larry & Sue Pruett

What if your marriage was the secret weapon to your business success?

📌What’s covered in this episode:

• The hidden emotional toll of building a company side‑by‑side
• Role clarity vs. role collision: how unspoken expectations spark conflict
• The “veto power” decision model that prevents power struggles
• A contrarian priority: why the business can fail—but the marriage cannot
• Silent relationship killers entrepreneur couples overlook until it’s late

Larry and Sue have been married for over 35 years and are parents of five adult children. They have been entrepreneurs for over 20 years, with the last 12+ years being full-time. They are business and marriage coaches who help married entrepreneurs build the business of their dreams ... side by side!

🤝 More about Larry & Sue at  https://www.sidebysidebusiness.com/connect

🎁Get a free set of connection cards to help married couples connect at a deeper level.

🌟Join the WAITLIST for The Faithful Founders Collective at https://reinventing-perspectives.kit.com/231f666d82

💛 Thank you for listening in! 😀

P.S. Don’t forget to leave a review! Much appreciated.

Transcript

[00:00:00] I remember one day I did walk into his office with a very purposeful attitude and said, we have to talk because I'm about to break. She told me she was about to break. That got my attention 'cause I was very oblivious. To what was going on and just how overwhelmed she was. We also talk a lot about not weaponizing things in the business to let them affect your marriage.

The business can fail, but the marriage cannot. Sometimes one feels like they're getting walked all over by the other in the couple. Sometimes one feels like the other one isn't trying hard enough and they feel like they're trying to drag them along. They can both be looking at the same experience and thinking about it completely different ways.

There's two distinct individuals. Obviously two personalities. Matter of fact, many times the opposites attract, so there may be a lot of things that are different about the husband or wife, but together they complete one another.

[00:01:00]

Priscilla: Welcome to The Entrepreneur's Kitchen Today, I have two very special people for you, Larry and Sue Pruett. It's taken a lot to get to meet and to have this conversation happen, but thank you so much for being patient and, being willing to show up for me in the audience. In this way, Larry and Sue run a business called Side by Side, where they help Christian, married entrepreneurs build the business off their dreams.

Side by side. It's poetic. It's poetic. I love it. Larry, please and Sue, go ahead and let them know what you're about, please.

Larry & Sue Pruett: Yeah. Thank you so much for having us we're really excited to be on with you here today. Yeah, absolutely. Priscilla, thank you so much. And as far as what we're all about is we literally want to [00:02:00] help end divorce among Christians, and our experience is working together as a couple, as well as being married for nearly 36 years now.

And we want to help people thrive in their marriage even as they're building their business. Marriage by itself has a lot of opportunities and a lot of stressors, and you pile owning a business together on top of that. And there's some really unique challenges that come along. And our desire is to help couples thrive together in their marriage, get better at communication, get clarity on , where they are going, so they can confidently move forward and help them to grow both their business and their marriage.

Priscilla: We are here for it. It's one of those things people don't talk about enough and sometimes people build the business at the expense of their family. People create business success at the expense of their marriages and the devastation of that, no amount of success can.

[00:03:00] Fix that or restore that. So I'm so excited to be speaking to both of you. I came across your video on YouTube I think it was 12 rules of building a business with a spouse. And at first I thought to myself, there's that surviving the family when you run your business with the family .

And I'm thinking surviving the spouse in the business as well, and to see you guys, 30 something years in. And I'd love to know maybe I'll start with Larry, of the rules of building a business with his spouse, which one created the biggest challenge?

Larry & Sue Pruett: Yeah. I would just say, managing expectations is , one of the biggest challenges that we first went into owning the business together. So making sure that you've got those expectations clear is one of the most important things that you could establish

if you're getting ready to go into starting a business, it's great to have that foundation ahead of time, but if you're already in the business, it's good to take that step back and to get that established. But one of the things that happened for [00:04:00] us is that Sue would come into the office where we're at right now, and I would be working and Sue would just walk in and just say I've got something to say.

And she would just tell me whatever was going on or something that was on her mind. And I would turn around and I would start responding to that. And I would start maybe telling her something else. Okay, cool. You're here. We're gonna have this conversation. And she's thinking, her expectation was, I've got 15 seconds and I'm gonna drop this and I'm gonna walk out.

And my expectation was, we're gonna sit down and have a conversation. And so it actually created a little bit of strife, a little bit of difficulties. And , at some point we had to say. Sue will now come in and just say, I've got 15 seconds and I wanna say this, and I don't have time for a response.

And I'm good with that. I'm good with that because my expectation is lined up with that. And then from my standpoint, there's times where I'll say I need to have a more lengthy conversation. So are you available now? Do we need to get something on the books and schedule [00:05:00] that. , Once you both you're on the same page with that, then it works out great.

But when one's going one way, the other's going the other way, then it creates all kinds of challenges, problems.

Priscilla: absolutely I can see, the different personalities when you just said that. , Because I can see someone must be really fast-paced, wanna get things done. Especially I read you homeschooled, so I'm thinking in terms of time, you just wanna knock things out and keep things moving.

'cause things are waiting on you and. The person running the business is okay, let's think this through, but you don't have the time to think this through. I'm interested to know from your point, Sue, like how was that playing out for you and what did you guys gain from that?

Larry & Sue Pruett: Oh, it was so fascinating to experience it now to look back on it because it was not only that, because yes, a lot of it. Was, I have to get back to the kids. 'cause I we're homeschooling, I've got house chores, all those things going on. But another aspect of what happened was I had actually started the [00:06:00] business before Larry came home from his corporate job.

So when he came home, I was expecting to offload everything onto him for the business. And I was gonna go back to just doing home stuff, right? Just doing homeschool, taking care of the house, that kind of thing. But he needed some time to get ramped up and up to speed. And it took a lot longer than what I had expected it to take.

And I was starting to really feel that burden of trying to do everything myself is what it felt like, even though it probably wasn't a hundred percent that, but that is what it felt like. And I remember one day I did walk into his office with a very purposeful. Attitude and said, we have to talk because I'm about to break.

And when I said those words to him, that really got his attention and that was probably the first conversation that we had at that point about. What we were expecting and how we could move forward from here, so that neither one of us felt overburdened. [00:07:00] Neither one of us felt ignored. Neither one of us felt like we weren't getting the things done that we needed to get done.

And so that very much was a very important conversation to me. And I'll just add to that, is that's also where we really clearly defined our roles. Yes. In the business. Because again, so these two things are tied together. The expectations of what the roles are gonna be. And we had just gone into it, both of us, assuming different things.

And so when we sat down, whenever she told me she was about to break, that got my attention because I was very oblivious to what was going on and just how overwhelmed she was. And then we just, we realized that we needed to define those rules. Yeah. And I took on a lot more of. Of the business aspect, the hands-on part of the business and things really smoothed out for us.

Once we got those things. Yeah. Taken care of.

Priscilla: we already got into number two. I think setting those expectations and then defining your roles, I think those are so important because it's easy to see. When people [00:08:00] duplicate efforts and everyone does things their own way and how that can create, not that one way is better or the other way is better, it's just we all do things differently.

And when we try to do the same thing, I can see how that can cause tension on top of the fact that it's not just a work situation where you get to go home and not see that person and then you can totally hate everyone you work with you still.

Larry & Sue Pruett: Exactly. Very true.

Priscilla: You still need their help at dinner time, you still need their help to put the kids to bed. So that's a different dynamic. I laugh, but, it's great to have these kind of conversations. Now I'll go to Sue and to see from your side what was the number one rule that you feel either built everything else or was a challenge for you.

Larry & Sue Pruett: I think that probably one of the things that really helped me as we moved into this area of working together, and I always say I don't have much of a business mind, but one of the things that we did was very early on we gave [00:09:00] each other what we called veto power. We each had a 51% vote when it came to.

Putting the brakes on something. And I knew I was never going to be pulled into a decision against my will regarding the business. Now we have areas that. It's my domain or it's Larry's domain, and we also have authority in those areas to make decisions. But when it came to big decisions that we needed to make together, we gave each other the right to say, not right now.

If we weren't comfortable moving forward on it. And that gave me a lot of security knowing that I was not going to be, like I said, pulled into something against my will. Larry knew that I wasn't gonna go off with some hair-brained idea and just push him into doing something that he knew was really foolish.

And that has worked really well for us. It hasn't been used very often. But it has really helped with just my comfort and security level with him and with our business.

Priscilla: That's pretty good. How did you land on that [00:10:00] sort of veto power? I can imagine two entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs tend to get swept away with ideas, and especially now, with the many trends online and how you can make things happen.

So I can imagine how that veto power must have been very important in keeping the balance in your marriage and in your family.

Larry & Sue Pruett: I don't remember there ever being an issue that made that come up. It was just as we were discussing how we were gonna make decisions about the business. Probably in that discussion about our roles. Yes. And how are we gonna make decisions? We settled on that because that made both of us feel like , we knew we would come to decisions to move forward on things together that way and, it works.

Yeah. And I think a component of that is, my experience in the corporate world was many times I had this responsibility, but I did not have the authority. To actually carry out that responsibility. And I found it very frustrating. And so that's one thing when we started talking about the [00:11:00] roles, we just said, whoever's in charge of this has complete charge of this.

But then we recognized that there were some areas that neither one of us really should have complete authority on it. Neither one of us should be able to completely change our business model. Neither one of us should be able to go out and take a loan. Or to open up a new bank account, or we didn't want anything that would be even hinting at , I'm pulling a different direction from her, or I'm trying to hide something from her.

Anything that would hint like that we knew that would be damaging to the relationship. So I really think , it came out of that okay, you've got my area of responsibility, her area of responsibility, and then there's this common ground in the middle, and how are we gonna make that decision?

Who gets the 51%? And then we decided, we both do. And so if one of us again, maybe we're just saying just not yet, we need a little bit more information, we need a little bit more time, it's not the right season, then we can put the brakes on [00:12:00] those big decisions.

Priscilla: It's so interesting that you say that. I recently, saw something about, when we're pursuing all these business ventures and you think, oh, I've gotta do this because this big opportunity if we jump onto this and this will happen, you know how that happens, right?

And to know that if you honor as Christians, I'm talking Christian marriages, if you honor the marriage. God blesses that, you know, . 'cause sometimes you can think, oh, if my wife was like, or if my husband was like, we could have done, , those kind of conversations that people tend to have I think you're more privy to those conversations than I am with your business.

And I'm interested to know now with the clients you work with, what do you often see coming up or, repetitive themes that I think would really help the audience that is listening.

Larry & Sue Pruett: Oh, it's so fascinating that we had already talked about, this is one of the big things is that people sometimes one feels like they're getting walked all over by the other. In the couple sometimes. One feels [00:13:00] like the other one isn't trying hard enough and , they feel like they're trying to drag them along.

They can both be looking at the same experience and thinking about it completely different ways. And , it can be frustrating if one of the members of the couple is more comfortable with bigger risks. And more willing to take risks in various ways financially just with commitments and things like that.

And if the other one is less willing to take on risk, that can cause a lot of friction. And so that's partly why we teach our students, get that 51% rule going, give each other veto power. But then we also talk a lot about not weaponizing things in the business to let them affect your marriage.

Another statement that we have said in the past is the business can fail, but the marriage cannot. And so when you've got. What looks like priorities that are fighting for, top dog, so to speak, between your marriage and the business. Whatever is [00:14:00] affecting the marriage has to take top priority.

And that has to come first. Now, that doesn't mean that we've never had disagreements over business stuff. It doesn't mean that we. Just lay down and don't contribute so that we don't cause conflict. It doesn't mean any of those things. It means that we lean into hard conversations and we stick with the conversation until it's over, until the thing is resolved.

Even if we have to take a break sometimes or schedule, interrupts whatever we're doing, we do not let that conversation lie. We keep coming back to it until we have things resolved. And when you have that attitude of, I'm gonna lean into this difficult conversation and fight through all the way to the end, you would be amazed at how much you can get accomplished, but also how close it makes you feel afterwards.

When you come through difficult seasons and you have fought through to get to the right solution. That's a camaraderie thing. Yeah. That's a thing that can really build into the intimacy in your marriage [00:15:00] and just help you work better even.

That's great.

Priscilla: Yeah that's wonderful. ' Sometimes think that if you don't have those hard conversations, especially when it's about business, you think, oh gosh, I'm adding another layer to all the other hard conversations. So maybe not have that conversation or maybe put that aside. But when you're building the business together, that's important. That's important. And I like how you mentioned that camaraderie and the depth of the relationship can actually strengthen the marriage as well. I'm wondering, when do you stop talking about business, when you're now side by side in the business?

Larry & Sue Pruett: that's a great question because , it's actually interesting for some of our students. We recommend everybody establish boundaries. Okay? But for some couples, we'll say, okay you need to have date nights. You need to have times where you just do not talk about business.

But years ago we decided that everything is on the table for us at all times. And now there's still boundaries. There's one time it's not. Yeah, after 10:00 PM I [00:16:00] cannot bring up any new crazy ideas , that just popped into my head. 'cause I'm a NightOwl, she's an early bird. And so if. Just come up with some new idea and I try to bounce it off of her at 11 o'clock at night.

Then I just roll over and I just go to sleep. She's all wired about it and she can't sleep and she still gets up super early. But what I was referencing though is like whenever we go out to dinner or something like that we may talk about the kids, we may talk about the home, we may talk about the business, we may talk about church.

It just, everything is on the table for us because it works for us. For some people it doesn't, and sometimes these couples need to go out for dinner and just say, tonight, we're not gonna talk about the kids. We're not gonna talk about the business. We're just gonna talk about us.

And so again, , there's not necessarily right or wrong there, but sometimes for our students, we're seeing, okay, there's something unhealthy going on there and we need to help them to establish a boundary in that particular area.

Priscilla: I can see that a lot of it would have to do with personalities. [00:17:00] 'cause you have the people that all they wanna do is, eat, sleep, drink, think, business all the time. And someone may be into business but not wanting it to take over their whole mental space all the time, so that's really great.

Larry and Sue, what do you suggest to couples where you didn't intend to go into business together and life just led you that way and now you find yourselves building a business together and one of you might not be that interested in the business, and the other one might be very interested in the business.

How then do you build a business together I'm talking too much, but I'm trying to reference, situations where you find the other person decides, oh, she's not that interested in business, or he's not that interested in business and therefore maybe I don't need that kind of a partner.

, Do you get what I'm saying? How toxic things can become?

Larry & Sue Pruett: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And one of the things that we have definitely seen is if you are an entrepreneur, and if you are [00:18:00] married, then your spouse is involved in the business, they are affected by the business. 'Cause sometimes we've heard couples say my wife isn't involved at all, or My husband isn't involved at all.

But then we think, okay, if that thing collapses and you have to declare bankruptcy, is that gonna impact them? Yes, of course it is. And if you're wildly successful, is it gonna impact them? And yes it is. I run to the negative, but yes to the positive as well. And so what that means is you do need to discuss it.

Now, if you're 50 50, that's gonna be a different discussion versus if you're 99% and 1% in the business. But at least a I guess a full disclosure and making sure that 'cause again, , maybe you had the business before you got married even, and the other spouse is I don't know about all this.

So at some level you, they don't have to necessarily get into your balance sheet and your profit loss statement and just get into a lot of details, but I think that it is really healthy to have ongoing conversations about that. We normally recommend [00:19:00] weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual type of conversations about that.

Even if it's like super high level things, like even a , quarterly or an annual like kind of dreaming session like. What are our goals? Where are we going? What is our mission as a family? And that's really the first step that we go to with couples is to developing a family mission statement.

And that's something then that you can use as a filter whenever new ideas come up. And again, even if one spouse is predominantly working the business, it makes the other spouse feel a part of it, which I think is just really crucial. To the relationship. Absolutely. And I can't stress enough the importance of very clear, very open, very honest communication with each other about what you're thinking about, what is happening in the business, about how you're feeling about things.

And dreaming together. And where do you wanna go together? Have all of those [00:20:00] conversations because that, again, it's gonna deepen your connection. It's gonna help you gain clarity. It's gonna help you be more confident as you move forward with your plans, whether it's the business or the family, or both.

It's gonna make you feel more confident in taking the steps that you believe that you're being called to make.

Priscilla: that's so important. 'cause entrepreneurship is hard. It is hard and I can imagine if it becomes your thing and yet you're married and you have a whole world of rollercoaster emotions success and failure and all these things, happening in your little world , but you are affecting the family, you're affecting other people when you're going through all those emotions.

I love that you said even if the other person is not that involved in the business, they are. Because even if it's not financially is the fact that maybe, you shut down because the business is not doing well, that affects the family. You are locked up in a room trying to accomplish whatever you're trying to do.

, That affects your marriage and your partner. So [00:21:00] they are always. Impacted by the things you do in the business. I'm interested to know one of your favorite stories, of, things you stumbled upon,

Larry & Sue Pruett: you want me to go first? Yeah, go for it. Yeah. It's really interesting how God just puts people in your path. We had an experience not long ago where, there's a whole lot behind it. I won't go into all of it behind it, but we ended up at the same table with another couple and ended up having just a really good conversation.

It was just, fun and friendly and getting to know them, letting them get to know us and things. And they actually for the first time that night we were just being ourselves. But we can't help but talk about business and the Lord and how he works in our life and everything.

And there were some other things that happened with them that day. This was just one piece of what had happened. But they shared with us that later on that night, they actually sat down and talked together as a couple about the Lord for the first time. They had never done that before. And so that was really exciting to know that we were able to influence them [00:22:00] in that way.

And later they became students of ours and they're walking through all the things right now of building a business and building their marriage at the same time and doing the hard work. And it's a lot of fun and it's very rewarding to see. Yeah,, that was a lot of fun.

And just another story that popped into my mind is that after a time that we had done some teaching and somebody came to us who had been married for a good amount of years, maybe 15 to 20 years, something like that and just came up and just said I've heard all of those things that you said before, but you were able to somehow help me to apply that.

So now I know how to put those biblical principles into action. And that was another one of those moments that was very rewarding. Because that is one of , our primary goals is not just to throw out a bunch of facts and information, but to help people to actually put it into action and apply it in their lives on a day-to-day basis.

Priscilla: I love that. There's that quote that, you get trained on everything [00:23:00] that's important in life, except that you don't get trained on the things that actually matter. Nobody knows how to do Marriage and nobody knows how to build a business and a marriage at the same time, the things that really matter.

So I'm grateful and thankful for you guys sharing what you do and building couples up. And I love that you talked about biblical principles. I think I don't do this enough on the podcast, I'd love to know, something that you could share with the audience of people who are married and Christians who are building businesses together.

Larry & Sue Pruett: Yeah. The framework that we have for our coaching program that we do, we call it the two two four pathway, and that's based upon Genesis 2 24, and that verse says, therefore, man shall leave his father and mother. Hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So the cute rhymey way of saying that is he needs to leave cleave and weave.

So he needs to leave his mother and father not abandon them but the marriage needs to become the primary relationship in his life. [00:24:00] And it's implied also in the wife's life, but she's a little bit more prone to just be natural in doing that. So leaving and then cleaving. So holding fast. So that's where there's this bond that takes place that is just a beautiful thing.

And then the weaving is where the couple becomes one flesh. There's two distinct individuals, obviously two personalities. Matter of fact, many times the opposites attracts. So there may be a lot of things that are different about the husband and wife, but together they complete one another. They become this power couple.

Whenever they start to recognize those differences and they start to appreciate those differences and where I'm weak, Sue is strong in many cases, and so together we can just do a lot more. Yeah.

One of my favorite scriptures around all of this is Psalm 1 27.

And we've been talking about this a lot lately actually, but Psalm 1 27 talks about that [00:25:00] unless the Lord builds the house. He who builds it. Labor is in vain, and I love verse two because it talks about I don't have the exact quote, but it talks about it is in vain that you stay up late and get up early and eat the bread of anxious toil.

I've probably got that mixed up a little bit but that, eating the bread of anxious to. We think about that in business. It's really easy to get caught up , in staying up really late and stressing out over, oh, how do I get one more sale? Or, how do I make this work? Or whatever. Or get up early and just get right to work and keep doing what I gotta do because I gotta grind this out, the Lord tells us that.

It is vain for us to do that. And , if he's not in it, then it's not gonna matter how hard you work. It's not gonna matter what you do. It's not gonna be rewarding. It might be worldly successful, but it's not gonna be rewarding. And so I love that scripture about, he gives to his beloved rest and so I think it's super important that you keep your life.

Give everything its [00:26:00] proper, attention. So yes, the business is gonna need some attention. The marriage is more important, it needs more attention and more focused attention. So I love that scripture. It just helps me really remember to keep my priorities straight.

Priscilla: I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. Immediately I thought of especially the younger people. Much younger than us who are growing up in this kind of develop yourself and if you wanna be an entrepreneur and you've put in all this time to work on yourself and then you enter a marriage where maybe the other person hasn't followed the same pathway as you.

And trying now to create one world from those two different experiences. I think the work that you guys do. And the message that you have is something that's so important for young people. People who have been married, people who have been doing business for a long time, even for professionals.

They are people who have built their careers at the expense of their marriages and their family. So thank you so much, [00:27:00] Larry and Sue,

if you can just give us both of you, each just something for them to remember as well as letting them know how to follow you

Larry & Sue Pruett: yeah. , What you just said was just really resonating with me because especially people are getting married later now. That means they're more established in their professional career. Again, maybe they've had a business going for a while and being married is tough because there's two different people, two sinners who sometimes there's a conflict that happens there.

And I think most people still go through some premarital counseling before being married. I think that's less often than what it should be. I think everybody should go through premarital counseling. But then once they say I do, everybody just says, good luck. We'll see you later. Hope this works out for you.

And we talk to so many couples who are, especially in those first 10 years of marriage, and there's just really a lot of struggles that go on there. That is a great time for us to work with that couple because. So they [00:28:00] had the premarital counseling. Now real life has hit them. Maybe there's a business involved and that adds that extra layer of stress.

But now is the time for that couple to get that really that biblical foundation established to make sure they're on the same page as a couple to make sure that they understand each other. One of the most challenging verses in the Bible, in my opinion, is one Peter three, seven. It says that a husband is to live with his wife in an understanding way.

And that's like a little bit of a joke for a man to understand a woman. How in the world is that possible? But I'm telling you, it is possible, but it takes work and it takes dedication and it takes a lifetime as well. A big part of what we do is we help the couples to understand themselves and to understand each other better as individuals.

But then they come together as this perfect match that God has put together where they complete one another. And so I think the main thing that I want to kinda wrap up this to say [00:29:00] to people here at the end is I wanna encourage couples. If you're going through struggles, it's worth the fight to save your marriage.

It's worth the work that it takes to have a strong, successful marriage. Ephesians five. God could have chosen any earthly example that he wanted to represent Christ's relationship with the church, but he chose marriage. And so if you look at the last part of Ephesians five, chapter five, it talks about that the husband represents Christ, no pressure guys, and that the wife represents the church.

A lot of pressure there as well. And so when we think of marriage that way, we see the value that God puts on it. The world is watching and so we can be a representation to the whole world about Christ and the church. And so I just wanna encourage couples to do the hard work, have the hard conversations, and to make sure that your marriage is strong and represents [00:30:00] Christ well.

I don't think I can add to that. That was pretty awesome.

Priscilla: thank you so much. Larry and Sue, please to the audience your website. I'll link it in the description. And are you guys active on social media or where can people learn more about your.

Larry & Sue Pruett: Yeah, , you can find us on Facebook also side by side business on Facebook so I think the main thing would be to get the connect cards. So this is a gift we'd like to give people who tune into this podcast.

We have it's a set of connection cards that it's basically. Like 56 different questions you pull out one a day and some of 'em are fun, some of 'em are about marriage. Some of 'em are about business. Some of 'em are serious. Some of 'em are, like I said, funny or humorous , and it's just a chance to.

Make sure that you connect on a personal level every single day. And so you can get those cards at side-by-side business.com/connect and that's where you can sign up to get those cards. But that's just a really good [00:31:00] way to initiate some connection. It might spark some conversations that you haven't had yet and allow you to dive into some things a little bit deeper if you want to.

But you can keep it really short and sweet if you want to. Also, it's pretty flexible.

Priscilla: Oh, that sounds really good because I know some people are like I've been with him for years. What am I gonna talk about? Get the cards.

Larry & Sue Pruett: That's right. Yeah, absolutely.

Priscilla: I've heard all her stories. No, you haven't. Get the cards. Get some new stories. Discover something new side-by-side business.com. Thank you so much Larry and Sue. Thank you for the work you do and I think you'll bless a lot of people and it's great work that you're doing.

So thank you so much.

Larry & Sue Pruett: Thanks so much, Priscilla. Yeah, thanks for having us.