Running a small business is no easy task. It's messy and thrilling and terrifying all at the same time. But no matter what, it's definitely a journey worth taking. As a mom of two littles,
I know the daily struggles, and I'm here to walk this journey with you. If you're ready to feel empowered, encouraged and on fire for the things you truly love, and you're in the right place. I'm Rebecca Rice, a pizza loving hot chocolate drinking family photographer and educator. And this is the business Journey podcast. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of the business Journey podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca. And I'm so excited for today's episode. If you're listening live, Happy Valentine's Day. It's so fun that we get to record an episode going live on Valentine's Day. And we felt it was only fitting to do an episode today about what it's really like running a business with my husband. So we're going to peel back the curtain and kind of give you this like behind the scenes look at what it's like for me and Daniel running this business together. Now, before we go too far, I wanted to let you know about a free resource that I have available for you guys. It's a blueprint that will walk you through how to make your first $3,000 from a single set of mini sessions. So and when I say set of minis, I'm talking like one date two to three hours not having to shoot all day. If that sounds attractive to you then listen up. So maybe you've never read minis before, and you would like to or you have but you've never made more than $3,000 from a single set of minis. If that's you, then this Blueprint was created just for you. So I wanted to walk you through a system that is step by step that it's easy to follow and is repeatable. That's I feel like the key here because I've been there, I've done that. But it's one thing if something works for me, it's another thing if I can get this mini session thing to work for you and for other people. And so it's so great is my students call me the queen of mini sessions, because I've figured this mini session thing out. And so I wanted to share with you completely free, this blueprint. I call it a blueprint, because k is kind of like a house where when you're building a house, the builder uses a blueprint. And they can use that same blueprint and build however many houses they want. So the same thing goes to your business. I've created this blueprint because I wanted it to be repeatable for anybody to take and build themselves. So go download this blueprint. It's completely free. You can find it at Rebecca rice photo.com/ 3k Dash minis, that's the number three the letter K dash minis. And we're linking it here in the show notes for you just so you can have it. But if you're like personal likes to go type it in to the URL, go right ahead. But be sure to grab it because we created it just for you. All right, well, let's dive in to today's episode, I'm super excited to be talking about what it's like running a business with my husband. And honestly, I never felt like I would be this person running a business with my husband. This wasn't our plan. If you're not familiar with my story, basically my husband and I a little over a year ago, moved to Nashville, Tennessee from the Dallas area. So we were both born and raised in the Dallas area. And we upgraded our family and moved to Nashville. Before that in Dallas. We actually both worked at a church, we worked in different departments. So he was in the media department doing audio and video and graphics and stuff. And I was a youth pastor, we actually both grew up in this church and I grew up through the ministry. I had been on staff there for nine years. And then we moved to Nashville. And so at that time, I was doing photography on the side because it was fun. And I never had anticipated going full time. I really wanted to just do it part time because it was fun. I loved my ministry job with everything in me. And honestly, I would be fine doing that forever. But that's not what the Lord had in store for us. He asked us to move and so we move we obey. And so as part of that transition, I knew that he was asking us to, or me specifically to stay home with my kids and to be able to do that
we would be doing the business full time. So our original plan I was playing a lot and I just know that like God laughs when we make plans and so our original plan was that I was going to be doing photography and staying home with our kids and then my husband was gonna have another job and so in our moving process, he was looking for a job he applied it so many places we had like friends in HR departments were like, Oh, this will be great. Like that should be an easy in and even like those fell through. So it was super clear right away that it just was isn't an avenue that he was supposed to take. And so, long story short, Daniel ended up working for our business. That was a huge, unexpected step. But we're just really thankful that the Lord just bless our business. So that we were able to do that
I already made way more than my ministry income doing photography. So we were easily able to carry my salary over, it was a bit of a stretch at first when Daniel was gonna potentially come up full time. But it was cool that God just really blessed our business in a short amount of time that all of a sudden, things just really started exploding. And it was very clear, very quickly that Daniel was able to securely come full time with us and for us to feel safe with him doing that. So he came on full time, and very, were in a brand new state. And I had associates in the Dallas area, helping me keep up with my clients, we were flying back and forth, or, you know, we drove most of the time, but we were traveling back and forth between Nashville and Dallas so that I could serve past clients, and we're just doing this business thing. And, you know, we got to focus a lot of time into education, and, you know, serving you guys, and it's just been awesome. So we're coming up on our, I guess we're a little over a year of working together. If you don't know, Daniel's role in our business is he runs all things production, okay, so anything you hear or see, it's got Daniel's fingerprint on it. So he does an amazing job processing this podcast, and our YouTube channel, and our more recent, you know, courses, I think PMC 2.0. And beyond anything after that has all been Daniel, and it's just been awesome. He does things with excellence, and he just really values hard work. And it's just a joy to watch him, you know, do his thing. So anyways, as you're here, with what it's really like running a business with my husband, I wanted to kind of walk through a few things that we've learned, you know, working together. And like I said, peel back the curtain and like, show you guys what it really does look like, there are some amazing aspects of it. And then there are some things that have been more challenging that we didn't expect. So if you're listening, and you're like wanting to go full time with your spouse, or are already full time with your spouse, maybe you can relate to some of this, just wanted to kind of walk you through some things. So the first thing was that it was really scary, putting all of our eggs in one basket, knowing that all of our family income would be dependent on our business was really terrifying for me, all of a sudden, I went from having zero pressure where my business income, we were not relying on it at all to live, we were living off of our ministry incomes and basically shoveling away my business income into savings. We went from that, to now relying for the first time on our business not only for my income, but also for Daniel's. And so that was really terrifying. But I found peace in the fact that I know this is where the Lord had us, this is exactly what he asked us to do. And that he would provide an understanding that this business is his and I'm just a vessel that I you know, I'm walking in obedience, I'm doing the things that I can, and then everything else, we're just trusting God that he's got it taken care of. And I can say with full confidence that we have never lacked, God has just totally, you know, blown every expectation we had out of the water for the last year, we hit revenue goals that we never thought we would our team grew like crazy, it's just been really awesome to watch, you know, walking through that season, knowing that it was terrifying what we were doing, but also trusting that God had us and continues to have us that we're able to really rest in that. So that's been something that we've really just been walking through navigating. Sometimes it's easier than other times where you know, those months that are the natural busy months, were like, Oh, we've got this thing. This is easy. And then some months, like last month, where we took the entire month off not only us, but our team too. So we're like, okay, can this thing like survive? Are we gonna you know, even get our paychecks like, was a little terrifying, but it was fine. All is fine. We are here we got paid. It was just scary. So just you know, wanting to be totally honest and transparent. That that's like the first thing I wanted to mention was yes, there was some like fear involved, but we got through it. And I would say the fear is more of like a whisper now just because we know as we've done this for a whole year that we're more able to trust that things are going to be okay. Now that you know it creeps in sometimes, but it's a lot quieter than it used to be. The next thing about running a business my husband is that the freedom has been incredible. We came from our church environment where we did not get a lot of time off. Daniel had one week a year off and one weekend and I had a Three weeks off, maybe, but I had been there for nine years. So it took me a long time to accumulate that time off. Daniel was not on staff nearly as long as I was, but we just couldn't travel very much. And we had to be in town for weekends. And we just didn't get a lot of time off. And so transitioning to working for ourselves was just like a floodgates were open of all this freedom that we had never had before. Now, I'll preface and say we loved working at the church, like it was rewarding. And even though it was a lot less flexible than what we're able to do now, it was still a good season. But man, we love working for ourselves, I we say all the time, like, I don't know, if I could go back to working for somebody else. Because of this freedom that we've experienced, we just love it, we're able to travel whenever we want, we're able to take time off whenever we want. If we you know, just wake up one day, you're like, you know, I just don't feel like working today, get the things done that have to be done. And then we can just rest, we're able to take a lot more time for our families and set our schedule, you know, and like today, yeah, at the time that I'm recording this, it snowed in Nashville. And that was super cool. And so we're able to go and play in the snow with our kids, just like in the middle of the day. So that's something that's just so beautiful, is we are really, really loving this freedom of working for ourselves. And getting to do that together has been just the coolest adventure to do with my spouse, that that's something that like I said, I never planned to work with my husband. But now like I couldn't see it any other way. Because it's just been so awesome. And it's great, because Daniel finishes all his work and he gets bored, he'll like come into my office and just sit there and hang out with me. It's just really sweet. So, you know, obviously, we love each other, we love hanging out with each other. And so it's cool to be able to have that freedom to do what we want and structure our lives the way that we want. Another thing that really, I learned in the past year of working with my husband was that I had to learn how to turn off my business brain, because I'm very much a visionary. I love what I do. I'm really passionate about what I do. And I have lots of ideas. So it's very common for me to, you know, have brand new ideas and say, oh my gosh, I know, you know, I can do this, I could do that whatever. And like want to vocalize that I'm very much an external processor when it comes to that kind of stuff. But I had to learn that my husband is not as like super pumped and excited about new ideas as I am, which is totally fine. And so there had to be a time where I turned the business brain off. And I took off the business hat and was able to put on the wife hat. Because you know, working together from our homes, we have to keep that balance. And I know for some, maybe it's fine for them to have, you know, business conversations over dinner for us, we decided we wanted to have more of like a clear line of, you know, work time versus just regular family time. And so in doing that, it really helped for me to set work hours. So that I knew outside of these work hours, I'm taking my business hat off and putting my wife hat on. And if I want to chat business stuff, I can you know, Vox cat or you know, FaceTime a friend, if I want to just hang out with my husband in those times. And that's how we're spending our time. Another thing that has been really funny just working with my husband is we found that we have different ideal work hours. So for me, I'm very much a morning person I like work my best from like 8am to about noon, sometimes a little bit after depending on the day. I'm recording this right now. And it's way after noon, because I'm really having to get a lot of stuff done today. But usually I'm not as productive in the afternoon. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, my husband's most productive time is in the afternoons. And so in the mornings, he really enjoys taking like a slow morning, you know, watching YouTube videos, reading articles in bed while waking up slowly. And then, you know, getting to just enjoy his morning without having to dive into work. And then the afternoon his brain is like wide awake, ready to dive in. Right when I'm like crashing, basically. And so that's just been funny kind of learning when we like to do stuff. It's posed a bit of a challenge, because you know, if he is needing something from me, I have to get it to him in time for him to be able to work on stuff. And so like for the podcast, I have to record the podcast and then he can go and edit the podcast. And so for us to do that. I've got to use my time efficiently and effectively so that he can use his time efficiently. So we like really depend on each other for a lot of stuff. And so that's been interesting to navigate. We had some, you know, struggles with communication at the start, but I would say we're getting a lot better at it. We're for sure not perfect, but we're getting a lot better at communicating what we need from each other in a way that, you know, I
can put the business hat on, and he can put the business hat on and say, Rebecca, I need you to record these episodes, or I need this from you, or I need that from you. And I'm able to say, Okay, I will get it done. And then later, we can take those hats off, and we can just be husband and wife. So it's definitely been such a fun adventure. I will say, I am so glad that we get to work together, I wouldn't have it any other way. It's really just been a huge blessing. Of course, it's come with its challenges, but we have navigated them. Well. I feel like and it's just been awesome. So we wanted to give you guys that inside look, one of these days. I'll convince Daniel to come on the podcast and do an episode with me. So if you want to see Daniel or I guess, hear from Daniel, like DM me on Instagram or something because I need to have some kind of social proof to be able to show him like people want to hear from you. So if you are listening to this, take the time. DM me on Instagram say we want to hear from Danielle bring him on the podcast. That way I can like literally show him all these people are DMing me because he's not going to believe me if I say that you guys want to hear from him. So that's my goal is to get Daniel on the podcast. I know he's listening to all this because he's gonna edit this podcast. So love, you're gonna end up on my podcast. Love you. Alright guys, so we're gonna go ahead and sign off for today. Hope this is helpful and we will see you back this time next week. Bye guys.
