Married to the Business: The Key a Successful Entrepremarriage w/Kalan Hubbard

This podcast was a fantastic conversation between myself and Remington Ramsey, founder and owner of Real Producers Podcast. As a serial entrepreneur, Ramsey could definitely relate to the challenges and unique effects that business ownership brings to a marriage. You can watch the video here or check out the transcript below. 

Three topics we discussed in our conversation were: 

-Stay On The Same Page
As entrepreneurs, it’s really easy to set a huge goal without properly bringing our spouses and families into it. How do we make sure we’re bringing them into our decision making? 

-Have The Important Conversations
Why are entrepreneurial couples prone to avoiding the issues that need to be addressed in their marriage? We have to stop using work to hide from our issues! 

-We Have To Fight Together
Conflict resolution is the biggest indicator of the health of a marriage. How do we stop fighting each other and start fighting the problems we face together? Enjoy the podcast (or the transcript below) and stay tuned for more tips and insights to help build, protect, and grow your Entrepremarriage™.

Transcript: 

Kalan: Conversation avoidance is insanely high. If there are troubles in the marriage There's most likely probably three or four conversations that at least one of them know that conversation needs to be had and they're either don't know how to have it or scared to have it. And they just kick it down the road and they can find something to focus on.

Remington: Welcome back to the show. My name is Remington Ramsey. And today my guest is Kalan Hubbard. Kalan how you doing?

Kalan: Doing well, happy to be here.

Remington: We're going to get into Kalan and his new pursuit. His new speaking around Entrepremarriage™ which he coined. How cool is that? You're coining your own words now and get to be on stage.

Just a quick note. We have an email address called [email protected] If you get a chance to send us any type of feedback, which is what you like about the show or who you'd like to see, or topics you'd like us to cover, be sure and do that. Today, Kalan you're on the show because two of my franchise owners who were on the last show told me that you got to be my next guest.

So that's coming highly recommended from Kelly and Devin, who were on one of our last previous episodes. They've had you out. A couple of times to speak. They even featured you in the magazine from your speaking, but you've been in real estate for 10 years. Wife's been in it longer. You guys got married in 2011, Jessica is your wife's name and one daughter named Quinn, who's also 10 years old.

He wasted no time there and decided after 10 years, 11 years of doing this, that you wanted to show other people how to do. Entrepreneurship, specifically real estate at a high level with your spouse. Am I getting that right?

Kalan: Yeah, pretty much. I looked around and saw some people that just meant the world to me, that great, amazing people building fantastic businesses.

And doing amazing, awesome, huge things in their careers while their marriages fell apart at home and broke my heart. And as we dug into it, we saw a need for it and saw that we could make an impact. So I think we're building this.

Remington: And what's interesting is, and that's, it's super admirable and I'm excited to dig into what it is that you cover in that content.

But in order to have people listen to you, you first have to be good at selling real estate, right? And so in your heyday, you've got up to 120 homes sold. You're in a small area, your home price, your average home price is a little smaller than some areas of the country. Where are you at located in Missouri?

Kalan: So we're in Southwest Missouri. We live in Joplin, Missouri. So we sell all over the Southwest Missouri. Area. So, yeah, when we were up and rolling in a really getting after it, we sold 100, 120 houses a year for several years. And now we're really focused on making an impact in this way with the speaking and teaching.

Remington: I love it. And when you have that many, when you have that much success and you have other people who are coming up either behind you or maybe even alongside you that are wondering, how did you get to be this good? That's probably sparking an interest just in helping teach in general. But as you're watching some of the passion that you have for marriage and you're like, you're watching some of your friends and cohorts struggle in that area.

It's cool to see that how organically you created your speaking engagements now. So now you travel all over and clay, and I know it's all over because one of those ladies is in Alaska. So you've gone quite far to talk about this, but tell me about Entrepremarriage™ How did you coin that term? What does it mean?

Kalan: So Entrepremarriage™ the mix of entrepreneurship and marriage, we looked at it. And the big thing that made us realize that this was a different type of marriage was really looking at the two, Marriages that were modeled for us from our parents, my mom and dad were very much a non entrepreneurial careers for their whole career.

They were both school teachers and so they both taught almost 30 years a piece. And a lot of the people in my family, the adults, aunts, uncles, most of them were somewhere in that same type of careers. At the same time on Jessica's side, it's full of entrepreneurs. For Where there'll be locksmiths and builders and veterinarians and all kinds of things.

And when we got married, we just came from two totally different worlds and we saw things very differently. And then as we got into this situation where we're both in the business. We realized we are going to have different conversations. We are going to have very specialized conversations. Then the conversations I grew up hearing at home from two school teachers and they had a great marriage, still have a great marriage.

It's just a different one than what Jessica and I have now. So. We really dug into what does that look like? How does that bill? What are those challenges? What challenges are different for us than a lot of other marriages out there? And then we started building some structures to have some of those great conversations that we're lucky enough to have.

Remington: You were in real estate originally though, right? Because you came from, were you an entrepreneur before you were in real estate?

Kalan: Absolutely not. The running my own business was nowhere on my radar. Really? When we got married, We, when we first got together, I was teaching as well. I was a school teacher. I taught middle school math and in 2011, we started dating in May.

I proposed in July. We married that September. It was boom. Uh, I make the joke, the, I didn't know I was going to be in real estate. But I had that classic, once I got a verbal, I got it in writing really quickly mindset. So as soon as we knew this was going to be what it was going to be, we tied the knot pretty quick.

And then I went from April of that year, a single person living by myself to September of that year, I'm now married and live with somebody. And we see things very differently. We see time off, we see investments, we see time at home, we see what a career can do for you very differently. So it was a big learning curve for me to understand this entrepreneurial world. 

Remington: It's fascinating that you followed in your family's footsteps. She also followed in her family's footsteps. I wonder what percentage of people follow in their parents' career path. Maybe not directly teachers to teachers, real estate agents to real estate agents, but how many people, because for me … It skips a generation almost, right? Because if you have someone who's an entrepreneur, a business owner, and they have kids, a lot of times, either the kids will work for them and then inherit the business or just want nothing to do with it. And then some, in some cases, I'm sure they, they also have that itch, but my parents were not entrepreneurs, but that's, I.

Don't even know what I would do if I wasn't an entrepreneur. And then I wonder what my kids who are currently seven, six, and four, I don't know that they're going to be, but I wonder at what point like that shifts. Now you actually did fall in their footsteps. What converted you into wanting to be in real estate sales?

Kalan: I remember a very specific conversation. My wife came home…she was on the phone with her dad…She got off the phone and she explained that her mom and dad were going to spend a month in Colorado. And I couldn't understand what she meant. She said it so flippantly and plainly. “Yeah, they're going to be in Colorado.”

They've made, you know, fixed some things and moved some things around work wise. And they're just going to be in Colorado for a month. And I didn't know what she meant. I asked, okay, are they coming back on the weekends? They said, no, they're going to be there for a month. And I almost got agitated or mad.

Like, there's no way what you are saying is what's happening. Okay, when they go now, when are they going to come back? And she's like, a month. I just didn't understand it. And then at the end of that conversation, she asked, Something along the lines of, do you think you'll be a teacher the rest of your life?

And that really started me thinking of, maybe I do want to make a change. Maybe I do want to take more control over this life. That we're building outside of work, Jessica and I are big advocates of figure out the life you want outside of work. Where do you want to spend your time? Where do you want a vacation?

Where do you want to invest? Where do you want to give what do you want the time with your kids to look like figure that out and then figure out? What career is gonna put you in those situations that also allows you to follow some passions? And so once we started changing what? Our life could look like I decided teaching was no longer gonna build that life. And then we made a switch and got into real estate

Remington: And the capacity that you were teaching You're still teaching now. It's just in a different scale and you own the company. So it's so you're all right You're still realizing, you know, whatever dreams that you had originally in your vocation. It's just a different makeup I've always had that niche to teach so this to teach.

Yeah I can tell so you get into teaching you would tell me about At what point Uh, you decided to start Entrepremarriage™ within real estate because you were still selling real estate, got good at it. People are asking you questions about it and you're seeing the need. At what point did you say, Hey, listen, I want to spend more time talking about this within the industry than even selling homes.

Kalan: Yeah, I really got into real estate, like I said, because it could build the life I wanted while I wasn't at work So this real estate world allowed me to allowed Jessica and I both to build the things we wanted. And then, like I said, these things started to change. We wanted more time for different activities or for travel and things like that.

And real estate was doing that, but real estate wasn't a big impactful thing that allowed me to follow my passions. Thanks. So we looked at, okay, what can still build this amazing life that we want, but also have major impact and allow me to follow the passions and public speaking has always been a passion of mine and making an impact in people's personal worlds has always been a passion of mine.

And yeah, I could sell you a house and I can tell you what color to paint your bathroom and what tiles to change to, but is it really going to make a big personal life long changing impact? Probably not. But in this, I can have people walk away and say, Kalan, I heard what you said. I'm going to have a great conversation with my wife tonight because of this.

I'm going to, we're going to make some changes. That's impact. And that's a legacy that, that. I'm super excited about

Remington: let's shift gears into marriage and entrepreneurship. Do you find that most of the people that you're talking to have is that most people are both entrepreneurs or is a lot of them where there's one entrepreneur in the family and then there's another supporting role within that?

What is the makeup that of the people you're talking to?

Kalan: Yeah. So it's a big mix. We define an entrepreneur marriage as any marriage that has at least one entrepreneur in it. And the career and the marriage live cohesively. So there's three different dynamics that can be an entrepreneur and a non entrepreneur.

That non entrepreneur might be a W2 employee, might be a stay at home parent, might be they work for a non profit, but there's one entrepreneur and one non, or it could be they're both entrepreneurs working in the same business. That would be like Jessica and I, we ran our team. She was our CEO of a team.

They should became the brokerage of the broker of our brokerage. So we were both in the same business. Now I'm doing the speaking and teaching and she's building a separate online company that's that she's working on. So we're both entrepreneur, but in different companies. So all, those are the three major dynamics and most of them are, they're either in it together or it's one entrepreneur and whatnot.

It's somewhat rare. It's a little bit less, I guess. Frequent that I run into two entrepreneurs that are in separate companies.

Remington: What do you find is the number one thing that people are struggling with in their marriage when it comes to entrepreneurship?

Kalan: I would say the conversation avoidance is insanely high.

If there are troubles in the marriage, there's most likely probably three or four conversations that at least one of them know that conversation needs to be had. And they're either don't know how to have it or scared to have it and they just kick it down the road and they can find something to focus on, whether that be, I'm going to dive deeper into the career and I'm going to, I'm going to fix my problems.

Instead of having that conversation, I'm going to make more money or I'm going to get bigger as a company. And they dive into it and that just creates a myriad of. Problems in the wake of your career, like your marriage gets lost in the wake behind the boat of your career. And that's where it usually ends up.

And I think there are one of my favorite quotes from our workshop is the success of your blank. is direct, directly related to the amount of tough conversations you're willing to have. You can put about anything in that blank. Success of your marriage, success of your business, success of the relationship with your kids, relationship with your parents.

Relationship with yourself, that maybe those conversations, maybe it's your health. And maybe those conversations need to be had yourself. Being willing to have those conversations is where it's at. So that's what we focus on in the workshop.

Remington: Now are you helping them build their business efficiently so that they are because you're Primarily speaking to real estate agents who are at least one factor of the entrepreneurship marriage, right?

Are you speaking in other circles as well, or is it primarily real estate? Cause that's,

Kalan: that's been organically where we've found a lot of our business, but now we've, I've spoke not too long ago into a community here locally, spoke a big chamber event. So it was full of just everyone in the community that were small business owners were there.

Remington: So is there practical, is there practical business advice that you give them that just right off the top helps them, uh, with their marriage and here I'll, I'll share with you where I'm going with this. So like we did a webinar a week ago and talked about goal setting and one of the steps that most people miss within goal setting is not only informing other people that are involved in the goal because it's going to impact their action.

I'll take over a seminar too, but so that's what I mean is, first of all, that's just, you should be doing that anyway for your business, even if it wasn't your spouse, who you're talking to, if you have a goal that directly impacts a partner or a kid or someone in your life, If that is going to change the dynamic of how you do life with them, you got to involve them in that.

So right there, if you don't do that, is it going to impact your goals because you're going to either feel bad hitting it or you're not going to hit it. And so do you give practical business advice within this marriage seminar? Like where do you start? Do you start with the marriage or do you start with the business?

Kalan: We focus on the marriage and a lot of our tools and exercises and analogies all come from the business world. So we actually in the workshop, we have a, uh, we have an exercise where we talk about starting with the goal, figuring out what ripple effect that goal has on your house or your marriage. And then how to have a conversation to figure out what are the two or three other ripple effects that you don't know about that goal.

If you take the actions to accomplish that goal, those are the ripple effects that are going to happen throughout your marriage and your household. And does everybody involved agree with the goal and their ripple effects that are going to happen to that goal? Because like you said, It happens all the time in real estate.

Someone goes to, whether it be a conference or a team meeting, or just to take a webinar. Oh, yeah. Oh, we sold 30 houses next year. How many are we going to sell this year? 45. Oh, fantastic. We're going to raise by 50%. Oh, that's great. Okay, what are the activities? I did one open house a month last year. I'm going to do three open houses.

And I'm going to attend this conference. I look at that. And when I look at that, I see, did you tell your spouse that they are now a single parent for two extra weekend, like two extra Sundays? Did, did you run that by them? Did you run that financial commitment to go to that other conference? Are they okay with you investing so much here?

Without going to a marriage conference without, I'm going to read these six books. Have you read a book about being a good husband? Because they're watching you pour into this thing. They're watching you evolve. They're watching you become better. They're watching you stretch yourself for this thing. Do they see you do that for the marriage?

Because if you ask, they would say, Oh, my marriage is the most important thing. Yeah. And all the books I read and the conferences I go to and the classes I take are on this thing. So we talk about that a lot.

Remington: What books do you have that you would recommend on marriage as it pertains to the business world?

Kalan: In our workshop, we have, I'll send you the slide. We have, we show a slide with three books and a link to them all books that are either a business book. Disguised as a marriage book or a marriage book disguised as a business book. Number one, I would say, "Please, Sorry, Thanks" by Mark Batterson. That is a.

Relationship marriage book, or it is a business book that is disguised as a marriage or in relationship book. It will be in their marriage relationship section at the bookstore. It's a great business book.

Remington: What does it do? Yeah. Walk me through that. I'm confused. How did he, how did he disguise it and it's actually a business book?

Kalan: I, he wrote it and it's meant for relationships and businesses. I think if a business person were to read that and take all of that information and approach to life and apply it to how they talk to their employees, how they talk to their clients, how they talk to their affiliates, it would make a huge impact if they treated that book.

As a business leadership book,

Remington: I've heard that said about the purpose driven church that Rick Warren wrote the second most famous book of all time Purpose Driven Life. And he also wrote one called Purpose Driven Church. And a lot of businesses will steal that kind of and do what you said. What other ones do you share?

Kalan: Eight rules of love with Jay Shetty is a fantastic book for Entrepremarriage™, Entrepremarriages™. In that book, he talks about how part of your marriage should be chasing your passions and understanding your spouse's passions and how most of the time those passions align with a career. And he talks a lot about how to be a great support for your spouse's passions and things like that.

8 Rules of Love, Jay Shetty is a fantastic one. And last I'd say would be The Six Working Geniuses. That is more of a business book. This guy wrote it. It's great for anybody who's working in fairly small teams of say a dozen or less and understanding other people's working genius geniuses. However, if you took that book and took it home and you read it with your spouse and really understood your, the strengths and geniuses of your spouse, And maybe where you guys compliment each other or where you have some weaknesses Um one of those so that book has six categories and I can't remember the name of it now, but Jessica and I have one category that is in both of ours weakest Places neither one of us has this thing.

I can't read what it is as Something and that we're very strong at so we have to be aware of Of that and that's a threat or a weakness in our marriage that we're aware of now after going through all that

Remington: When you do these seminars, do you get, uh, you told me what you have noticed is the number one thing attacking marriages, which is a lack of talking when you need to, like having those hard conversations.

But when you're doing the seminars or just speaking at an office, and I imagine, you In a smaller setting, you get hands raised, you get people feedback. What seems to be the overall arching theme or questions that people want to know? I would feel like, I don't know this for sure, cause I haven't heard you speak, but when I hear stuff like this, I typically, my head goes to people.

Getting frustrated that their spouse doesn't support them or doesn't understand their role in it, and it feels like it could go very selfish in nature. And a lot of the principles that you're talking about is like what the entrepreneur, starting with the entrepreneur, not the other person, not the supporting person, but starting with the expectations of the entrepreneur and the relationship, in some cases too, how they Lead in that example, but what's seems to be like an overarching theme of questions or things that people are struggling with as they try to build their business and their marriage.

Kalan: Yeah, that's a great question. I would say a theme that comes across in those questions are, or it would be coming from a place of the spouse, the two spouses being in two very different places. I feel this way. And he feels this way, or I want to go this direction. Then she wants to go this direction or we see things very differently.

And my advice to that is, is getting to a, we have to get to a place where you guys are together, working on the same problem with the same goal, which is protect the nest, make sure the net and the nest is priority one. We're both here in the nest. Our career is involved in the nest and understanding where we want it to go and what are our obstacles along the way in Jay Shetty's book, he talks about the number one thing that that keeps a marriage going is not date nights is not knowing your person's love language and he lists all these things it's understanding how to fight and that's a very rudimentary way of saying, but he has, he talks about conflict resolution is, yeah.

The number one indicator of that relationship go in the distance. And he talks about if you fight or you have a conflict, if I win and she loses, we both lost, right? If she wins and I lost, we both lost, right? The only way everybody wins is, is it, we call that a win is if everybody wins. And so it's getting to a place of, it's no longer me against you.

It's us against the problem. Right. We're here and we're one side. The problem is the other side. Now let's work together and attack this problem, right?

Remington: So when you say it's like she she wins and I lose that you hear that and you're like or And you're thinking, okay, I win situations. Someone has to concede or the someone has to not get exactly what they want.

But that win is in the fact that you guys came up with something that is towards the common goal. So even though it's not exactly the way you thought, it's not a loss, it's not a loss, it's, Oh, this was the issue. And we worked together to figure it out. Now we both win. I love that perspective. What's one, since we're winding down on time, I'm just curious if you give us a mini seminar right now and give us.

like takeaways, because we talked a lot about what you do, but just give some practical advice for the end of this podcast, where someone was listening to this and they're, this is the top of their mind right now, right? Like we, this is a real estate podcast right now. We're talking about marriage within real estate.

And if we've gotten this far into the show, I want. To leave this show with things that I can go home today. Let's say where it's four o'clock, five o'clock, and I'm driving home. And this is a podcast I chose to listen to. What can I do when I walk in the door? Because I listened to Kalan Hubbard.

Kalan: Wow. That I would say, get in your mind. Like we just talked about getting your mindset. It's not me against the other person. What can I do to get that other person? What can I say to the other person to make them understand? Hey, I'm here with you. I don't want to be anywhere else. I'm here with you. I'm here in this nest.

I will build this nest with you from now to the end of time. I just want you to know I'm here and we got this. And we got some problems, or we got some things that we need to figure out. But I want you to know, you and I, we're in this nest and I'm happy it's you and I. Get to that place first. Everything else can be taken care of afterwards.

But you gotta get there first. And getting there. It's going to take time and just understand it's going to take time, but get to a point where you both know, that's the goal. And everything else is going to fall into place over time for we talked about before the show, I'm going to put a, give you a link that you can put in the show notes.

And then there is a structure of a pretty simple exercise that can just get you and your spouse talking and talking on a very safe place and talking about your marriage called the SWOT analysis, S W O T strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And that download gives you some structure. If you're lost of, where do we start?

This gives you some structure to start having some great conversations.

Remington: I love it. Yes. You mentioned it's Entrepremarriage™.com/opt-in. And obviously the best way to do that is just click on the subject line within our podcast notes. We'll send that link. Kalan, where can we find you on the socials?

Kalan: It is @kalanspeaks and that's. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, all the socials, Kalan, K A L A N is @kalanspeaks. Yeah, give us a follow, we're always trying to kick out more and more content.

Love for you to have us.

Remington: It's fantastic, man. And you're in the first year and a half of this journey of speaking, obviously 15 years into real estate with your wife, but first year, I would love to have you on the show later to see how things are going and how it's evolved.

And after all the tours of speaking, meeting of people, like the next thing for you, but thank you so much for being on the show.

Kalan: Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.