If you follow me on Instagram, or you’ve seen a few of my Facebook videos, you’ll know that I do this-thing-called-life with my partner – Paul.

Not only do we travel the world together, but we’ve also intertwined our business lives too.  When I first met Paul, my life was drastically about to change – I was about a month out from my Forbes article dropping and my universe exploding. Paul was working for a really cool start-up and travelling the world – can’t you see why I fell for him? – but we soon decided that our relationship was worth exploring – so he ditched his awesome job to come and ride the crazy rollercoaster of entrepreneurship with me.

But… we soon realised that working with your partner has its own set of rules.

Paul: There were times where we had no boundaries at all – we were both just crashing through each other’s boundaries and it was kinda messy. If I stayed in the business like that, I felt like our relationship would crumble and fall apart. Don’t get me wrong, we still struggle to work it all out sometimes – but I feel like we know exactly what I can do to support Sabrina now. Initially, the grey area was totally new for both of us.

We’ve learnt so much over the last year – which you can learn about in our Love & Money interview, but we’ve pulled together our 4 biggest tips for keeping the love alive, working with your partner and allowing the money to flow.

 1. Be each other’s biggest support

Paul reminds me of who I’m going to be – hell, sometimes I think he thinks I’m Oprah! He always tells me, “babe, I’m your biggest fan”. 

In the beginning, I was so busy that I didn’t see his needs – now, we communicate what we need support with and how that support could look. It sounds gross but being mega-crazy-transparent about what you want is the only way to stay sane when you’re with each other 24/7.

2. It’s ok that the struggle is real

For both of us, we struggle with different aspects of working together. For me, it’s noticing when Paul is being supportive and acknowledging that. Paul goes into his own head to think about the problem I’ve presented him with – meanwhile I’m like “hello!? Are you there?”. We have totally different mindsets about finance, responsibilities and problem-solving, but that’s ok!

Paul: What is ‘love and light’? What is an ‘affirmation’? Sometimes I think Sabrina might be a witch! LOL I’m a big ideas, data guy. My job is to keep Sabrina grounded, to keep the wheels turning and the ideas being actioned. We’ve had no one to model our relationship on, so navigating all of this was a process. 

Of course, it’s really hard to not take feedback from your partner personally. That’s a balance and a challenge that we struggled with a lot earlier on. Nowadays we have a much better flow of communication.

3. Hold space, but carve your own way

When Paul approached 30, our lives had become ‘The Sabrina Philipp Show’. My business was getting crazy, big and I was struggling to hold it all together. For Paul, looking in on what I was doing, he kinda felt he’d missed out on doing business for himself. Striking out on his own was one of the best decisions for us. 

As much as you need to be there for each other and cheerlead each others’ success, you need your own sh*t to handle too. You need your own independence.

4. Keep your finances separate

When you’re in love, it feels like you’d happily give your partner everything. But it just doesn’t work in reality. If your partner wants to be part of your business, you need a business agreement to define what that looks like – that means salaries, percentages of the business, defined roles and militant boundary setting.

In the unfortunate, but possible situation that you split up, or even go separate ways in business, you need a blueprint to follow that’ll take the emotion out of it.

Got questions for us? Want to know more about our love and money dynamic? Need more tips on working with your partner?