Everyone tells you not to mix love and business. Keep your personal life separate, protect your relationship, don’t let work get in the way of the good stuff. And look, I understand the reasoning. Building a business is stressful enough without bringing your relationship into it. But after spending the last few years building Gevity alongside my wife, Espoir, I’ve come to a very different conclusion.
I think they’re all wrong. I actually think building something with the person you love might be one of the most powerful things you can ever do.
Not because it’s easy. Good God, it’s not easy. But there’s something pretty extraordinary about two people who believe in the same thing, care just as deeply about making it happen, and are crazy enough to put everything they have into figuring it out together.
And funny enough, I think I knew that about Espoir long before we ever had a business to build.
A romantic dinner in Austria… sort of.
I met my wife completely by chance while traveling the world. Neither of us had any plans to start a business, settle down in Austin, or spend the next several years trying to bring a ridiculously ambitious idea to life. We were just two people who happened to cross paths, and somewhere along the way, realized we had something pretty special.
I remember one evening in Austria when she took me out for a romantic dinner at a restaurant where she used to work. We’re sitting there, enjoying ourselves, having a lovely evening, when suddenly she gets up, disappears into the kitchen, and starts washing dishes. I’m sitting there wondering whether I should order dessert or go find an apron. So much for our romantic evening.
The funniest part is that she didn’t even work there anymore. She simply noticed they needed help and jumped in. Nobody asked her, nobody was paying her, and she certainly wasn’t trying to impress me. It was just who she was. And I remember sitting there thinking… you know what, I could build something with this person.
It wasn’t really about the dishes. It was about watching someone recognize a problem and do something about it without expecting anything in return. Someone who cared about the people around her, who wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, and who seemed to find genuine happiness in helping other people.
I had no idea what we’d eventually build together, but I knew I wanted someone like that beside me.
From a 400-square-foot apartment to a pretty crazy idea.
Fast forward a few months, and we’re living in Austin in a 400-square-foot apartment, making basically no money, and writing a 150-page business plan for something that didn’t even exist yet. We got married three months after she moved here, so clearly we were taking things nice and slow.
That idea eventually became Gevity, a private wellness club in Austin, Texas, bringing work, movement, recovery, and community together under one roof. We wanted to create something that we felt was missing, a place where people could pursue their ambitions without feeling like they had to sacrifice their health, their relationships, or the rest of their lives in the process.
It sounded wonderful on paper. Actually building it was an entirely different story.
For the next 18 months, we poured just about everything we had into bringing Gevity to life. Our savings, our time, our energy, and a rather unreasonable amount of our sanity. We were learning an entirely new industry, figuring out financing, navigating construction, dealing with permits, building out operations, and trying to convince people to believe in something that, at the time, existed mostly inside our heads.
And for most of that journey, it was pretty much the two of us. Holy shit, that was hard.
We argued, made mistakes, drove each other absolutely nuts, and occasionally wondered whether we’d completely lost our minds. There were plenty of moments when the idea of having a normal job, a predictable paycheck, and maybe even a weekend off sounded pretty appealing.
The funny thing about building a business with your wife is that when you’ve had a difficult day with your business partner, you don’t exactly get to go home and escape. Your business partner is already home, probably sitting four feet away from you, equally exhausted and equally convinced that their opinion is the correct one.
But somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, we started realizing just how well we complemented each other.
Different minds. Same mission.
Espoir and I are very different people. I’ve always been the big-picture thinker, the one throwing out ideas, taking risks, and imagining what something could become. Sometimes that’s a strength. Other times it’s a fantastic way to create seventeen new problems before breakfast.
Espoir has a completely different set of strengths. She’s organized, thoughtful, incredibly good with people, and has an ability to recognize all the little details that I tend to overlook. I might be dreaming about what Gevity could become five years from now while she’s figuring out how to make the experience better for someone walking through our doors tomorrow.
And while those differences occasionally drove us crazy, they also became one of our greatest advantages. We didn’t need to think alike. We needed to believe in the same thing, trust each other’s judgment, and recognize that neither of us had all the answers.
I think that’s something people misunderstand about building a great partnership, whether it’s in business or in life. You don’t necessarily want someone who agrees with everything you say. You want someone who challenges you, sees what you’re missing, tells you when you’re wrong, and genuinely cares about the outcome.
And when that person also happens to be the person you love, there’s an entirely different level of investment involved.
It’s not just a company you’re trying to build. It’s a future you’re creating together. The sacrifices feel shared, the victories feel shared, and when things go sideways, you’re not sitting there wondering whether the other person is going to stick around.
Now, that doesn’t mean everything suddenly becomes easier. If anything, the emotional stakes are probably higher. You have to learn when to stop talking about work, how to disagree without taking everything personally, and how to make sure your relationship doesn’t become another item on the company to-do list.
We’re still figuring plenty of that out, by the way.
But I’ve also gotten to see sides of Espoir I might never have experienced otherwise. I’ve watched her navigate enormous amounts of pressure, solve problems I wouldn’t have known how to approach, and show up for people even when she had absolutely nothing left in the tank.
And I think that’s one of the greatest gifts this experience has given me. I’ve gotten to fall in love with a whole different side of the same person.
The moment it started feeling real.
I’ll never forget the days leading up to opening Gevity. We’d spent so long planning, building, struggling, and talking about this place that there were moments when I genuinely wondered whether it would ever become real. Every time we thought we were getting close, something else seemed to pop up.
Then suddenly, people started showing up. We booked 240 tours in 13 days. Two hundred and forty people wanted to come see something that had started as an idea between the two of us.
I remember sitting in our room with Espoir right before we opened, both of us completely exhausted. We looked at each other, hugged, and just started laughing. Not because anything was particularly funny, but because the absurdity of the whole thing finally hit us.
All those months in our tiny apartment. The late nights, the arguments, the financial uncertainty, the decisions we weren’t remotely qualified to be making when we first started. And somehow, this crazy idea we’d been chasing was actually happening.
I don’t think either of us had the energy to fully process it. We just held each other for a minute, laughed at how insane it had all been, and probably went right back to worrying about the next hundred things that needed to get done.
But I think about that moment a lot. Because when something you’ve worked so hard for finally starts becoming real, there’s something incredibly special about looking over and seeing the person who was there when it was nothing more than an idea.
Maybe we’ve been looking at this whole thing backward.
Here’s what I’ve come to realize. You can find plenty of talented people to help you build a business. You can hire employees, bring on investors, find advisors, and surround yourself with people who are far smarter and more experienced than you. And you absolutely should.
But finding someone who’s willing to put everything into something with you? Someone who believes in the idea before there’s any evidence it’ll work, who sees you at your absolute worst and still believes in what you’re capable of, who challenges you, picks you up, and cares just as much as you do?
That’s pretty damn rare.
And I think we’ve become so focused on the risks of mixing love and business that we’ve almost forgotten to talk about the possibilities.
What if the person you love isn’t someone you need to protect your ambitions from, but someone who can help you achieve things you never could have accomplished alone? What if building something together gives you an entirely new appreciation for each other? What if all those challenges, disagreements, late nights, and shared sacrifices actually make your relationship stronger?
I’m certainly not suggesting everyone should quit their jobs tomorrow and start a company with their husband or wife. It takes a particular kind of relationship, a lot of patience, and a willingness to have some very uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes you need to admit you’re wrong, sometimes you need to let the other person take the lead, and sometimes you just need to close the laptop and remember you’re married.
But I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything.
We’ve gotten to build something that means an enormous amount to both of us, alongside someone who understands exactly what it took to get here. Nobody has to explain the sacrifices, the anxiety, the excitement, or the strange mix of gratitude and exhaustion that comes with running a business. We both lived it.
And the best part is that we’re still figuring it out. Gevity is growing, we’re making plenty of mistakes, learning new things every day, and trying to become better at what we do. I don’t know exactly what the next five or ten years will look like, but I know who I want beside me while we find out.
So people can keep telling me not to mix love and business. I understand where they’re coming from, but my experience has taught me something completely different.
I genuinely can’t think of anything more powerful than two people who love each other, believe in the same thing, and are crazy enough to go all in.
And to think… it all started with a sink full of dirty dishes.
