Couplepreneurs: Finding Success and Balance in Business and Marriage

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. I’m excited for today’s episode. We’ve got two guests, two for the price of one. So we are talking to the co founders of Couplepreneurs. And what they do is they equip entrepreneur couples with proven strategies. They need to rapidly grow their business to seven figures or more without growing apart in the progress, which is.

Definitely a thing, right? So we’re talking to Kyle and Ariel Tresch. Hey Kyle and Ariel, you ready to rock?

Ariel Tresch: Absolutely. Good to be here.

Kyle Tresch: We are born ready to rock. So we are so looking forward to this conversation as nowadays, more and more people are working from home and enjoying the benefits of doing so. So if anybody’s listening and they happen to be working from home and working with their significant other, I feel like this is going to be a great conversation.

Tim Melanson: Yes, that’s awesome. Cool. And I’m one of them, right? My, my partner and I work together, so this is really cool. I’m looking forward to getting some, uh, some tips and tricks from you two. So, we always start off here on a good note. So tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by.

Kyle Tresch: Absolutely. Well, I’ll start. That’s cool. [00:01:00] Do area. All right. So, you know, it’s really interesting is today we have the opportunity to impact thousands of entrepreneur couples from all over the world. We’ve grown businesses by over 77 million using digital marketing strategies that we’ve learned. But as cool as that is, I would say that one of the things I’m the most grateful for is the marriage that Ariel and I have.

So my wife who is sitting right next to me, this. This marriage that we have that inspires so many other entrepreneur couples around the world. It was something that neither one of us planned for so much so that when I got off tour on a literal rock band, that’s why I love the conversation we’re having today.

I was touring as a drummer all around the country at the age of 19. We almost got famous. We didn’t quite hit it, but just close enough to be annoying. And then I got off tour. I started hanging out with Ariel again, and I noticed. Even though we didn’t have a romantic interest in each other, we just got along so well.

And we had no intention of getting married, no intention of even dating. And if you want an insight as to how unromantic I [00:02:00] was, the very first time that Ariel and I would start hanging out after I got off tour was going to a condo on Lake Erie in Ohio, where we used to live. And I will never forget sitting on a pier overlooking Lake Erie, starry night sky.

And I look at her dead in the eye. And I said, you know what? This would be really romantic if we actually liked each other. So that’s how unromantic I was.

Ariel Tresch: And I actually kind of liked him at the time. So that was a little disheartening.

Kyle Tresch: But wouldn’t you know it? Seven years later, that was the same exact place where I asked her to marry me.

Tim Melanson: Well, okay, well, drummers, eh?

Kyle Tresch: That’s it. And a lot to handle. That’s for sure.

Tim Melanson: Oh, that’s so cool. So now, along with the good note though, there’s sometimes some bad notes that we hit. So I’m wondering, you know, as musicians, tell me about a little bit of the struggles that might have happened, you know, along this path.

Ariel Tresch: Yeah. So, you know, what Kyle talked about was like a little earlier in our relationship, but for us, a lot of this whole [00:03:00] couplepreneurship thing started with what we call the anti honeymoon stage. So you know how when most people get married, they go through that phase, right? It’s the honeymoon phase, right?

And for us, we actually had the complete opposite. We went through some struggles that nobody was talking about that we had never experienced. So prior to getting married, we had been to, you know, we’d been together for 12 years. And both of us came from pretty humble beginnings. We grew up in a small town in Ohio, surrounded by cornfields, and both of us had separate businesses at the time.

So Kyle was a digital marketing consultant. I was on, I had a dog grooming salon, and then I went on to have an organic marketing coaching business. Um, we worked from home. And And by the blessing of both of our businesses, we got married in the Bahamas. We were able to move to sunny South Florida, which is where we always wanted to move.

And we just thought things were only going to get better from there for us. We were like, we’re both driven. We’re both entrepreneurial. We both work from home. Like this is amazing. And that’s, we had the opposite happen. That’s not exactly what happened for us. After we got married, we came home. We immediately dove back into work into our separate offices, and [00:04:00] we spent a lot of our time really just focused on the business, and we started to feel a little bit more like roommates rather than a romantic couple.

We started experiencing a lot of those things that, you know, nobody was talking about at the time, like, how do you stop thinking you’re talking about work when you’re both in the business? How do you and your partner align on where you’re going next and what the approach is to getting there when you sometimes have both?

Very different approaches. How do you give feedback to each other about the business or about, you know, personal decisions without somebody feeling criticized? Basically, how do you grow a business without feeling like it’s coming at the expense of your health and your relationship and your, you know, your passions and all the other things that you care about?

So this is really the place that we were, where our business, as our revenue, um, started to, or sorry, as our intimacy, Flatlined our income also flatlined at the same time. And it was a really interesting space to be.

Kyle Tresch: Yeah. You want to talk about a bad note. This was probably the worst note that we ever hit in our entire relationship because up until that point we were good, but over time, the stresses of business started to overcome the [00:05:00] romantic life that we had and we didn’t know where else to turn.

So we had to kind of figure things out the hard way. In fact, I will never forget one of the days that changed everything for us was the day when after. A lot of discussion with Ariel about how she should just, you know, come and be my assistant and her not agreeing with that at all. I found myself basically on my knees, praying out to God in the guest room of our house.

I was like, God, I don’t, I don’t want to sacrifice my marriage for our business, but I also don’t want to sacrifice our business for our marriage. So what do we do? Nobody else was talking about this. So here’s what happened. I got off the bed after praying out to God and I got on social media. Now, typically social media is the last place you want to look when you’re looking for the answers to life’s biggest problems.

But today specifically, it was because here’s what I saw. I saw a video that Ariel was doing for her organic coaching business. And I saw comments from women all over the world under her video. And those comments said, Ariel, thank you. Thank you for showing up and sharing your gifts with us because they have helped us so much.

And I’ll [00:06:00] never forget that day because I’m like, wait a second, Ariel is so gifted at what she does. Her work is helping stay at home moms grow and scale businesses without using any paid advertising at all. What if we came together and we co created a life that we both can feel excited about? So I will never forget.

I ran out of the guest room. I found Ariel and I was like, Hey, I am so sorry. Clearly what we’re doing right now isn’t working. So what if we took our individual passions and pointed them towards a unified purpose in business? And that day shifted everything for us because moving forward from that day, we created new strategies, new structures, new systems, new routines that we can implement to actually doing business as significant others.

Like we figured out how can you actually turn off work mode and turn on romance mode? How can you stop thinking about work? How can you actually treat each other like the significant other that we deserve to treat each other as simultaneously, how do we approach and navigate our different roles in business while respecting each other?

Even if we disagree, we [00:07:00] figured out how to do all of this the hard way. And here’s what happened. As we were figuring out these systems slowly, but surely not only did our intimacy return, um, More than ever before, but our income that was currently flatlined. It absolutely skyrocketed Ariel’s business took off.

She went from having a few clients to having 25 clients over a couple of months. On my end, my consulting practice three X in revenue, I was consulting companies that were doing eight figures and above, and both of our businesses just. Absolutely skyrocketed. The second we worked on our working relationship as a couple.

So in this moment, we were like, okay, I think we figured out something that’s pretty powerful. So what we would do is we would go on date nights and you know, how if you go on a date night, you don’t post it on social media. It didn’t really happen. So what we would do is we would go on social media. We would post our date nights and other entrepreneur couples would reach out to us and they would ask.

How in the world do you guys make it work? How do you actually work together without wanting to kill each other? So we just started sharing a little bit of what we know. And then fast forward a few [00:08:00] years later, we’ve now had the opportunity to train thousands of entrepreneur couples from all over the world.

We have the opportunity to conduct hundreds of coaching sessions, and we have seen more entrepreneur couples have more revenue in their business without sacrificing what matters most in their life. And I would say that was a bad note in our life that. Ended up being kind of retuned, so to speak, into probably the best note that we’ve ever experienced.

Ariel Tresch: That was good. You got

Kyle Tresch: it.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Yeah. And, and it tends to be that those bad notes do end up turning into the good notes. Right. And I think that’s kind of like the lesson from all these podcasts is that, uh, you know, it’s, it’s okay to have those notes. It’s okay to fail because really those are the learning experiences that end up shifting you into something else.

Right.

Kyle Tresch: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Ariel Tresch: Usually the pain that you go through becomes the purpose that you fulfill. So yeah.

Kyle Tresch: Your mess is your message.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. You don’t learn a whole lot from all the successes, do you?

Kyle Tresch: No,

Ariel Tresch: it’d be great if that’s all it was, but that doesn’t teach you much. Yeah.

Kyle Tresch: And what’s [00:09:00] really cool too, is a phrase that we like to say is we took the stairs. So that way, hopefully we can offer other entrepreneur couples the elevator. Yeah,

Tim Melanson: Oh, nice. That’s cool one too. So the, the business, the couple printers business kind of just turned into that. Like it wasn’t that to start. You guys were both had your own separate businesses to start.

Kyle Tresch: exactly. Right. Yep. That

Tim Melanson: Cool. And people were sort of looking at you guys as, as examples of the success that I guess they wanted in their relationship and thought, Hey, can you help us do what you guys are actually doing right now?

Kyle Tresch: Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. People would start reaching out to us and we would just kind of share tips and tricks. And, you know, because we’re also the marketing world, we’re like, maybe this is something that is, you know, marketable, that is beneficial. So we actually created a Facebook group called successful couples in business.

And at the time we didn’t know any other entrepreneur couples in the world. So we’re like, let’s just create a community where other entrepreneur couples can, can come and network and share ideas and bounce ideas off of each other. And today we have. Thousands of [00:10:00] couple in that group. We had no idea that there were not only other couples that were from home together, but thousands and thousands of them.

And that group still exists today. And we created that because we wish we would have had a community just like that. We didn’t, we had to figure it out the hard way. So hopefully if we can help anybody sidestep some of the mistakes we made. That’s why we do what we do.

Tim Melanson: Wow. You know, what’s funny is that I, I think about like the history and I imagine that, you know, a hundred, 300 years ago, weren’t families working together?

Ariel Tresch: Yes.

Kyle Tresch: I would say, yeah,

Ariel Tresch: they were, you know, whether it was, um, you know, trading and, um, you know, uh, farming and there were so many different things where that was the normal thing. Whereas in today’s day and age, we thought we were the only crazy ones. Um, and then come to find out there’s actually quite a few.

Tim Melanson: So there probably is some sort of groove that you can kind of find because it existed a long time ago. It just sort of, we got craned out of it by, you know, dad goes away to work or whatever and mom stays at home. Like [00:11:00] I don’t think that’s. Natural

Kyle Tresch: Yes. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: quote unquote. I think the families are supposed to work together and maybe maybe at the time it was because, you know, mom didn’t definitely had a job, right?

Right. Keeping the home and dad had a job too. But, you know, I think it does make a lot more sense for the couple to know each other’s business rather than not know each other’s business, which is probably what created all the of Problems that we’ve had over the last, you know, a hundred years or so, right.

Kyle Tresch: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: so it’s cool that we’re starting to find, we’re starting to find that again. And, and I love what you just said because it seems as though we’re not alone. There’s a ton of couples out there that are actually finding this right now.

Kyle Tresch: Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: That’s so cool. Okay, so now let’s talk a little bit about getting fans.

’cause you know, we touched on, you touched on that a second ago, and, uh. You know, what is your or did you have a strategy to start or did this sort of just happen right based on [00:12:00] just Posting like you said your date nights,

Kyle Tresch: Yeah. Well, yeah, I think, So the short answer is that there absolutely is a strategy to start. Um, you know, where we have no, no shame in admitting that because both of us kind of came from marketing backgrounds when we had our separate businesses. So we understood the different marketing levers that we needed to pull the second we decided, okay, this is going to be a coaching business that we’re going to launch.

So 100 percent there’s a strategy and we are strategists by nature. That’s why all of the entrepreneur couples that we work with, essentially what we do is we help them combine. The unique way that they work as a couple with what objectively works in the marketplace to grow and scale businesses profitably.

So, you know, for us specifically, once we kind of put out content and saw that there was a demand for what we do, which is basically the first step that anybody listening could do if they’re considering launching a business, you want to test and verify that there’s a demand for the idea that you have first.

So after we did that, What we did is we put together a virtual event. We [00:13:00] invited people to attend that event. We helped train couples in a virtual environment where we help them have some breakthroughs, get some actual tangible, real evidence and results that they could see. And then once they realize, okay, I want to keep learning from Kyle and Ariel, then they have the opportunity to join our coaching program.

We’re just big believers in the. Age old wisdom of prove you can help by actually helping first, right? Like that’s, that’s our whole philosophy. And then once we did that, we, we launched with a beta program of our offer, because again, we want to not only test the market organically, but we also want to test the market by answering the question, will your target market vote with their credit card?

If the answer is yes, then that means, okay, we have a profitable offer. So the very first time we launched our program, it was just a 90 day program that, that couples would be a part of, and they would get insane results in 90 days, like absolutely insane. So then what we did is we moved from a 90 day to a 12 month program.

And what’s crazy is that even within a [00:14:00] 12 month program, the results just compound over and over and over, over time to where now. The investment is still a drop in the bucket compared to what we’re able to get results for, for the couples that we work with. So I would say that the, if anybody’s listening to this and they want to model, like what it takes to get a, an offer off the ground and start marketing it, number one, it’s, it’s deciding who you’re going to serve.

That is the most important part. And then number two, based on the, the, the people that you want to serve, you want to find out like, what do they actually want and what they, what are they going to pay for? And then what we do specifically is we, we will, we will test the market with organic offers, meaning non paid media, where we will put out social media posts and we’ll invite people just via DMs and things like that to be involved in some sort of conversion event that leads to the offer.

If we could prove a campaign organically, Then what we do is we get to go over to. Facebook advertising and Instagram advertising to just pour fuel on the fire. And now we’re at the place where, you know, our [00:15:00] primary lead generation is using paid advertising where we can put 1 into Facebook ads and know pretty confidently we can get anywhere from 5 to 10 back.

Tim Melanson: so i’ve got a question specific To to

Kyle Tresch: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: even my situation and i’m not sure if you guys run into this because you have a lot of couples So, my relation, it seems in your relationship that both of you are, are camera people, you both like to do the, the, the social media type stuff. Right. And you alluded to that earlier, but in my relationship, I’m, I’m more the camera person and Nicole is a little bit more private.

So she doesn’t necessarily want to be, you know, on the sales calls and doing all the social media, blah, and all that stuff. What do you do then? Can, can that still work?

Ariel Tresch: Absolutely. We see a lot of couples that fall into that dynamic. Um, I will even say even for us personally, um, I initially probably started as the person that wasn’t super comfortable on camera. I think I wanted to be there, but I wasn’t comfortable with it. So that was a little bit of our dynamic to begin with.[00:16:00]

Now we are both kind of the faces of the business, but that said, we see a lot of couples that fall into that specific dynamic where one is more of the face of the business, the public face, the other person is more behind the scenes. They’re doing operations, they’re doing finances, they’re doing, um, you know, all the things that don’t really require them to be on camera or really be in front of the customers and the audience.

And both of those dynamics can work very, very well because generally what it means is you both have different skill sets that you’re bringing to the table where you aren’t just one entrepreneur that has to go hire and find other people that fill in your gap. So to speak, you have a, the perfect counterpart that brings strengths that you don’t necessarily have to the table within the business.

So it creates kind of like one superhuman that can run a very profitable business.

Kyle Tresch: Mm

Tim Melanson: Right. And that’s exactly the situation where, you know, like we have exactly the opposite strengths in, in a lot of places. And, uh, so then in that, in that, uh, note, then, you know, when you’re posting about date nights and all that, like does that still work the same way? Or is just [00:17:00] the one person posting it and the, like how does that all work if you’re not both on camera all the time?

Yup. I love

Kyle Tresch: Well, you know, obviously for us, we happen to just brand ourselves as a couple. That’s why we do what we do, but that does not mean that anybody needs to do that if they’re going to a business together as a couple. So, you know, that’s just an example. And we just happen to be people who don’t mind, you know, sharing the spotlight and sharing what it is that we, we know, but I will say that’s actually.

Probably more of the exception than the norm. Most entrepreneur couples are like you and your wife, where you have somebody that is more forward facing and then you have somebody behind the scenes. And unless you want to brand yourself as a couple, there isn’t really a need to even worry about whether or not you bring your wife into the picture with you.

So I actually think that it, it could be an expectation or a standard that you’re holding to yourself that isn’t even needed and a pressure that, that you could just let go of just by simply deciding to let go. Yeah. I

Ariel Tresch: was going to say, we have a client specifically that, um, she is the fitness coach. So she kind of like the, the [00:18:00] forward facing, like everything is about her experience, her training, you know, everything that she does.

And her husband is on the backend of the business and that’s how they run things is everything is. She is in the, she is on camera. She is in the photos. She’ll take a photo of them together every now and then, but she is positioned as the expert. And he is just the person that is, um, running things and keeping things running like a well oiled machine on the back end.

Kyle Tresch: So musician to musician, I think you’ll understand this dynamic. It’s very similar to having a manager and an artist. When you look at traveling musicians, you have the artist that is great on stage and their, their role is essentially the performance side, but then behind the scenes, you also have the manager who takes care of all the stuff and make sure that the musician wakes up on time and actually shows up to the place and shows up sober enough to actually perform well, like, The, that, that same dynamic is what so many other entrepreneur couples use.

And it’s very, very powerful. Both

Ariel Tresch: are necessary. Both are valuable.

Tim Melanson: that. That’s awesome. Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about the cashflow side of it because, uh, this [00:19:00] can, um, I mean, I’m actually, I’m going to let you guys talk about it cause I’m sure that. Some, some tips you can have with this, especially working with your, with your spouse.

Ariel Tresch: Yeah. So when we think of, of cashflow, we don’t know of a single business who can’t benefit from more cash coming through the door. Like no, no matter what stage of business you’re at that, that, that can always be helpful, right? It can always be the thing that can allow you to get to the next level, to invest in the business, to invest in personal things.

Right. And so one of the first things that we like to do with clients that we work with is, is What we call a cash infusion campaign. So a cash infusion campaign is basically how can we generate a quick infusion of cash within the business to, you know, um, allow them to grow the business and scale it further.

So with that said, we have, um, kind of a couple of different options when, when it. Comes to a cash infusion campaign that we go for. So depending on the business, we will either do, um, we’ll start with looking at a lead inventory. So we’ll start with looking at depending on the business and the stage of business, what leads do they already have [00:20:00] in their market that they could tap into, right?

They could potentially become customers. And With that said, we, just to give an example of this, we had a client that she was a, um, brand building agency. She would take, uh, professional women, build a business around them and build the brand. And when we first started working with her, she had no email list, no digital aspect of her business whatsoever.

She had a written ledger of a few emails. That was it. And so when we first started working with her, we were like, okay, you have this of, of People, these are leads that you could tap into, right? So we had her take that written ledger of people and turn it into, you know, add it to a CRM. So she could actually reach out to these people via email, right?

So that was the first thing is looking at what leads does she already have access to? Once we did that, we then created a time based offer. So a time based offer is something that there’s a specific time that people have to take action by in order to get some sort of incentive. So in her case, in this specific client’s case, we did what we call a price hike campaign.

Price hike campaign is [00:21:00] she needed to increase her prices, but with those initial leads that we were talking about, she had the opportunity to reach out and say, Hey, I’m going to be raising my prices. But if you take action now by this specific time, then you can actually get in and get grandfathered into the old pricing.

So that was kind of the incentive. So we created that time based offer. And then basically we just sent emails out about that specific offer. So she emailed out to that list and she shared the offer with them and she was able to bring in over a hundred thousand dollars within just four days of that specific campaign.

So that’s why we like to do these cash infusion campaigns is because it gives you that quick cash infusion based on just providing a time based offer to people. That’s going to be very valuable for them. And it allows you to get that quick infusion of cash as well.

Kyle Tresch: That’s right. And essentially for anybody that’s listening, most likely you have some Leads in your backyard, so to speak, and your social media, in your email list somewhere, there have been people who have contacted you or connected to you about your business.

So if you have people that have already connected with you, all we have to do is [00:22:00] put a time based offer together and strategically and sequentially communicate that time based offer to them. And if you’re like the many clients that we’ve done these cash infusion campaigns with, you can see a cash infusion very, very quickly.

Tim Melanson: So let’s talk a little bit about the, the price increases. Cause this is some, this is huge. Comes all the time. Now, first of all, like I, I think you probably agree that just about everybody could raise the price. Right.

Ariel Tresch: generally that’s what we see

Kyle Tresch: mm hmm.

Tim Melanson: that’s yeah. And I mean, I’m sure that there’s some reasons why the price is where they are.

Maybe you can help with that a little bit. But also, there’s a lot of fear as well of like raising the price. And there’s probably even I don’t even know misconceptions that you think that you’re going to get less business if you raise your price. What is your experience around raising prices?

Kyle Tresch: I love this topic so much. Do you want me or do you want to say? I was

Ariel Tresch: I just want to say that I think in terms of why people are generally priced a little bit too [00:23:00] low is I think most people price their offer based out of fear of what the market won’t buy versus looking at Here’s what I can provide.

Here’s the value that I can provide. And what’s the actual marketable value of that? And what would somebody be willing to pay for it? But I’ll let you take

Kyle Tresch: that. I mean, there’s so many different angles we can approach that we have so many stories of many clients who all felt exactly how you just mentioned, where they were, we, we took a look at their, their market.

We took a look at the demand for their business and the telltale sign that anybody listening needs to raise their price is when. A, your time is completely capped and B, you don’t still have the marketing budget or margin in your monetary funds in order to hire help or, you know, advertise more. If you, if your time is capped and your money is capped 100%, there is no reason to not raise your price because the demand is already there.

And we’ve done this with people who own car detailing shops. We’ve done this with people who have relationship therapists, businesses. We have done this with coaches, consultants, [00:24:00] agent, like there’s so many people we’ve done this with. And basically what it takes is honestly just recognizing that. If you are the cheapest, nobody is going to think you’re the best and vice versa.

Like if you are the best and yet you are less expensive than other people, nobody’s going to think you’re the best whatsoever. So what we need to do is we need to raise the price and from a very practical, like monetary value. Look at things like inflation. If you’re not increasing your price year over year, you can’t even keep up with inflation.

So a hundred dollars a day is the equivalent of like 70 bucks a couple of years ago, there’s that practical side, but even taking that out of the equation. When you look at. Um, the profit margins for your business, even if you were going to double your price and decrease the amount of sales that you have, I guarantee you, your profits will massively expand.

So even if you have less customers, you have more profit per customer, which means you as the business owner actually make more money. So if we know all of this kind of points to raising our price, what we do as marketing strategists [00:25:00] is we say, How can we kill two birds with one stone here? How can we raise the price while also putting a marketing plan in place that uses the actual price raise as the incentive for them to buy now?

So then what you have is like our clients who run a massage therapy business. We just did this with them. What they had is they had an extra 17, 000 of cash infusion just by sending a couple emails and telling their clients they’re raising their price. And then they raised their And you know how many people dropped off?

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Kyle Tresch: So now they got a, they had a 17 K infusion. They had less people drop off. They didn’t have anybody drop off and they’re making more profits in their business. And we can tell you story and story and story about that, but I would just encourage anybody who’s listening, just pick a date that your price is going to be raised.

Use the price hike campaign formula, generate some extra cash infusion, and then be very grateful for the fact that as you continue to move forward, most people are actually going to continue to buy from you and your profits will go up.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay. So let’s just say that your price is actually a decent [00:26:00] price, which is super rare, but let’s just say it is

Kyle Tresch: you sure.

Tim Melanson: How much should it raise every year in order to keep up with inflation then?

Kyle Tresch: You know, I don’t know the exact number. I should know the exact number. Uh, Alex or Mosey would know. So like, I’ll just nod to him on that. But you know, I don’t, I actually, I used to know, but I don’t know right off the top of my head. I’ll, I’ll make sure I prepare for that next time.

Tim Melanson: that’s, I I I think it’s, uh, it, it’d be interesting to hear what that is. ’cause I bet you he’s gonna say something like, it doesn’t matter. You just raise it by whatever

Kyle Tresch: Well, yeah, I mean, there is, there is that factor too, but I actually, so I heard him talk about it and I liked hearing him talk about it because he did, he made a very good case of like, you know, if, if you haven’t raised your price in the last couple of years, like you’re actually like making way, way less than, than you are, you know, even a few years ago.

And. That’s the logical side. But then there’s also just the, the reality of we live in a world where value is intrinsic. So, you know, if, if we’re able to work with a couple and help them not only grow a million dollar business, but also [00:27:00] grow them closer together with their significant other and create memorable vacations with their family and to salvage maybe some deep resentment between them as a couple, how much is that worth?

Right. Like for, for some that could be worth, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars. So at the end of the day, when I, when we look at pricing, we look at what can we charge that can give our clients at least a 10 X return, if not more from their investment in us. And that has been really helpful for us to just understand where we are to price ourselves in the market.

Tim Melanson: I think that’s, and that’s key to like, I mean, there’s some, I think there’s probably some, uh, feelings that come up when you, especially when you raise your price and there’s some people that, you know, just can’t afford it, right? Maybe their business is not growing the way that they would like it to grow.

And I’m wondering like, how do you handle that when that happens? Like,

Kyle Tresch: Yeah.

Ariel Tresch: So I would say.

Tim Melanson: [00:28:00] a, yeah.

Ariel Tresch: I would say a lot of that comes down to, um, just a reframe of what that means for the people that you have to serve. So, for example, um, if you, if you’re thinking of, you know, you want most people that we work with are very, um, servant hearted people. There are people that, um, want to do good in the world.

They want to provide the best value that they possibly can for the people that they serve and. What ends up happening is they create the opposite of that, because if you’re charging a lower price, what does that do ultimately that like Kyle said earlier, a lot of people aren’t going to believe that you’re actually the best at what it is that you do.

But in addition to that, there’s also the fact that if you’re charging a lower price, there’s sometimes a little bit of resentment. Towards the work that you’re doing, because you’re like, man, I’m doing all this work and I’m not getting paid what I feel like I should be getting paid. So there’s a little resentment that can build.

Um, it can also just destroy, because of that, it can destroy your confidence and what it is that you do. And ultimately it caps you and change you to the business for constantly working and working and working and not getting [00:29:00] the output that you want. And what that does is it prevents you from being able to actually grow the business so you can reach more people and help more people.

So yes, you may be doing a service, so to speak, to those few people that you can serve at a lower price point, but now you’re actually capped at how many people you can reach and you can serve because you don’t have the bandwidth to do anything else. You don’t have the bandwidth to do more marketing.

You don’t have the bandwidth to do more sales. And so it actually limits your potential. So it’s reframing it instead of viewing it as. You know, I, I just want to help these people and I want to do so at an affordable rate. It’s, I want to help people and I want to help as many people as I possibly can.

So what can I charge that allows me to do that? And then you can use your, you know, smaller offers that are a little bit more affordable or freebie offers or your free content that you put out online these days. And you can use that as your opportunity to speak into the lives of people who maybe can’t afford your other offers.

Tim Melanson: Great. Love that. And I [00:30:00] think that another interesting way to think about it, too, is that if you’re raising your price regularly, uh, then it kind of like goes downstream because now the client that you’re serving is going to need to raise their price in order to be able to afford you. And so it’s almost like you are people that you’re working with that it.

Scenario all up leveling their own businesses. It’s like you’ve got this tribe of people that are kind of moving up together, you know, and the ones that that are not able to do so or not willing to do so. And I’m going to say it’s not willing because everybody’s able to raise their price and whatever they’re doing.

I think anyway, it just means that they get to serve. Similar people, right? Uh, but if they’re not willing to do so well, that’s fine because they’ll they’ll they’ll find somebody who’s cheaper There’s always somebody cheaper. There’s always somebody more expensive. So, you know, it just is what it is, right?

Kyle Tresch: And you, you definitely don’t want to be the cheapest because that’s just a race to the bottom. And what you also [00:31:00] said was so powerful too, because when people pay you, they will pay attention to the work that they’re here to get from you. And one of the things that can give somebody the confidence to charge the amount they’re worth is to actually invest.

In other types of products or services like coaching or mentorships or masterminds that are a lot of money, because I can tell you, like, even when with us, we work with so many different coaches, consultants, agencies, et cetera, that have high ticket offers. And a lot of times they’ll ask us, like, how do we get the confidence to offer something that’s like 30, 000 and really.

For us, the fastest way we’ve gotten that confidence is to invest 30, 000 ourselves, realize it’s totally possible. Also realize that it was a drop in the bucket compared to what we got in return. And then all of a sudden we have the confidence to come back and charge that. And for us, like it totally makes sense.

And the more that you’re able to charge, the more your customers will pay attention to the value that you’re giving the less that you charge. Or let’s say you give something away for free. Here’s what we can tell you. Over and over again, [00:32:00] without failure, every single person that we’ve ever felt bad for that we’ve offered to work for, for free, 0 percent of them even opened the course portal to begin with 0%, but the people who pay us the most money, they’re the ones that get the most results because it also is an indication of those who are the most committed.

So it is just a win win across the board, no matter what perspective you look at it.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, that that keeps coming up to you raise your prices. You tend to attract more client more grateful clients as well I find that when you’re at the very bottom and hey in music of music is a good example People that want me to play for free for exposure, they always expect the most they expect so much I’m like, really, dude, I’m doing this for free.

Seriously. Whereas someone pays you like top dollar and they’re like, Hey, you know, how can we help? You know, do we supply us down system for like, odd that it’s the exact opposite of what you would expect, right?

Kyle Tresch: 100%.

Tim Melanson: You know, and and another cool thing. Maybe you’re giving a gift to someone by raising a price.[00:33:00]

I know in my, in my, uh, circumstance, I’ve had, you know, fixed costs of maybe my hosting platform goes up and then it’s just, it’s just a reason now to send an email out to your list and go, hey, I’ve got some fixed costs that increases. I need to raise my prices. It gives you a really good reason rather than just saying I’m raising my prices because I feel like I flipped the coin and now it’s time.

You’re, you’re giving them a reason to raise the price that they can kind of go, Oh, okay. Yeah. That makes sense. And then pay you more.

Kyle Tresch: Yeah. And as long as you add some language into that, that basically communicates to the end viewer of that message that. The fixed costs that you are accruing are for their benefit in order to make sure that the service is the best offer that they have in the marketplace. Yeah. People are totally willing to pay for that because like, yeah, if like, if like us, you know, earlier before this podcast, you were complimenting our team.

You know, we have a team that we pay that also works with our clients that helps them and we, we do our best to treat them as best as we can and our costs to have a team that [00:34:00] works with our clients. In addition to us. Those costs are there in order to give entrepreneur couples the best experience that they could possibly have that blows other coaching programs out of the water.

So absolutely. I think that that’s a great reason. And I think other people can see the benefits of you doing so in the process.

Tim Melanson: Love that. Awesome. Okay. It’s time for your guest solo. So tell me what’s exciting in your business.

Kyle Tresch: Yeah. Yeah. Well, what’s exciting right now is a couple of different things. Number one, we have a Facebook group that is like, like we were talking about earlier, it is probably the largest group of entrepreneur couples on the planet. We haven’t seen other counter examples, so we can kind of say with. With a relative confidence that it’s the biggest group.

We have over 5, 000 couplepreneurs in there. And if anybody is listening and they want to surround themselves with other entrepreneur couples, this group is completely free. All you have to do is go to Facebook, type in successful couples in business. Look for Ariel’s beautiful face and my decent, somewhat looking face.

And you’ll know you’re in the right spot. Go ahead and [00:35:00] join that group and you’ll get to enjoy all sorts of free resources in there that are specifically designed for entrepreneur couples who are growing businesses together. I would say I’m excited about that because we did not know any other entrepreneur couples when we were first starting out and trying to figure out this whole thing.

And now. The void that we had in the past has now become a community of so many couplepreneurs from all over the world who get to do life together. So I’m really excited about that. We also have a live in person event coming up. It is April, what is it? April

Ariel Tresch: 2025. Yes, April 10th and

Kyle Tresch: 11th of 2025. It’s called Couplepreneurs Live where we are doing In person workshops and live conference feel events for entrepreneur couples.

And the next one we have coming up is so, so cool. So if anybody’s interested in that, all they have to do is just go to our Instagram, which is at couplepreneurs and they could just send us a message. In fact, if you, if you’re listening to the show and you send us a message, just type the word rockstar.

So that way we know you came from the work at home rockstar podcasts. [00:36:00] And then if you do that, we’ll hook you up with some cool stuff.

Tim Melanson: Nice. Awesome. So now is there a sort of a best type of couple that would get the most out of working with you?

Ariel Tresch: Yeah, so generally the, the couples that we work with are people who have been in business for a little bit of time. They’ve had a, a, a little bit to dip their toe in the water, so to speak, of what it’s like to work together. And we generally work with service based businesses. So, um, they have a, a service based business, not so much product based, meaning they’re, Um, they’re using online marketing to promote their service, whether it’s coaching, consulting agencies.

Um, we do a lot of, uh, like even

Kyle Tresch: financial planner, financial planners, private practices, attorneys, any, anybody who works with a client. Yeah. If you, if you’re a business that serves clients and you and your significant other work together, we are. The perfect fit for you. And essentially that’s just because we’ve had over a decade of not only growing and scaling service based businesses, but also having to do so as a couple.

So what we’re able to do is kind of combine our experience and share it with other people. And that way, when you have [00:37:00] both of those aspects fully aligned, your business and your relationship, you’re able to grow businesses without growing apart in the process.

Tim Melanson: So how does that, how does it work? Like what does the process look like? Do I, you know, do both, Partners have to get on a call with you. Like, is it one person? Like how, how does it, how does it work?

Kyle Tresch: Yeah. So it depends on what level of coaching a couple might be interested in. Um, we have different types of levels, you know, for, for the most part, we have a mix of couples who do join us as a couple. So we will have a mix of group coaching and one on one support depending on the level of access that couples want with us.

But essentially what we do is we take a look under the hood of Couples who are running businesses together because we come from a consulting and coaching background. We don’t believe in a one size fits all approach for couples. So we will look at a couple’s schedule. We will look at their, their personality types and how their personality overlaps.

We will bring their strengths, their weaknesses, what has worked in their business up to this point, what is the unified vision that they want to go to? [00:38:00] We will take all of these things into account. And then based on that, we will combine that with our experience and we will just make recommendations on what is the fastest path to strategically grow a business that not just gives them the revenue they want, but also gives them the lifestyle that they want.

So that’s essentially the work that we do with couples and we do that. Um, group coaching calls, which is kind of our lower tier option. And then for those that want to just accelerate the process, we also add some one on one coaching in there as well. So that way you have, you know, Ariel, myself, our team in your back pocket to kind of help you navigate the complexities that quite frankly, nobody else is talking about in the coaching space.

Yeah.

Ariel Tresch: And we work with a lot of couples where, you know, um, Both couples are involved in the business. We also work with a lot of them where we, you know, we’re just kind of talking to one of the, the, the partner, so to speak, and the other person gets it by proxy because, you know, maybe they’re working on a different aspect of the business and maybe the, the person that we’re talking to is the one that really wants to be involved in what we’re working on together.

So we do a little bit of both there.

Yep.

Tim Melanson: So would you say that the majority of your coaching is on the business side or on the personal side?[00:39:00]

Kyle Tresch: You know, it’s so hard to answer that question because they are so inextricably tied together. Yes. And I’ll give you a perfect example. So one of the couples that we’re coaching right now, they actually own a, a chiropractic practice. They, when they came to us, they were working 12 to 15 hour days every single day, their income was pretty capped.

So they’re kind of flatline, the revenue and their expenses are roughly the same. And their relationship was suffering as a result. So what we have here is, is kind of like a, a constraint on both the relationship side and the business side. On the business side, they’re working 12 hour days, which means if you’re working all the time and you’re working all the hours, there are some things you were focusing on that are not the right things to focus on.

So we have some things that we have to untie there from a constraint perspective. Simultaneously, they were not having. Anytime to connect as a romantic couple. And here’s how that is completely tied together. When you believe as a couple, that more business success is going to lead to more [00:40:00] strain in your relationship, you will subconsciously sabotage your next level of growth.

So what we do specifically, even using this couple as an example, as we will take a holistic picture at what their personal life looks like and what the business life looks like. And one by one, we will simultaneously remove the constraints. So for this couple specifically, what we did is we actually took a look at where all their time was going.

We helped them basically get rid of so many things that were eating up their time and their energy in the business and help them take that free time and allocate it towards growing in their intimacy together as a couple. As they were able to grow their intimacy together as a couple, they were able to keep the revenue the same while having less work to do.

Now, what you have is. More intimacy. And you have the ample amount of time going towards the business, which gives you then confidence to then do the things necessary in business to increase the profit margins. So that’s an example of what we’re doing literally today. Not just with this one couple, but for so many other entrepreneur couples from all over the world.

That’s when you ask that question, it’s hard for us to answer because they are so [00:41:00] inextricably tied. Most of the time, we don’t have business problems. We have personal problems that show up in the business, but if we can Solve the personal problems and solve the business problems simultaneously. That’s how some of the couples we’re working with are able to accomplish more in a couple of months than they did in multiple years of working in other programs.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And I’m guessing happy people make good businesses too.

Ariel Tresch: Oh, yeah. For sure. Yeah. When you’re stressed, you will make worse decisions within the business, but when you are happy and when things are thriving, you’re able to make clear, confident decisions that allow you to grow a lot faster in a variety of different arenas. Oh yeah.

Tim Melanson: Wow. I love that. Okay. So how do we find out more then?

Ariel Tresch: Yeah. So, um, I would say the, the first thing would be to, um, follow us on Instagram. And again, just it’s at couplepreneurs, send us a message for, uh, with the word rockstar. So we know where you heard us from. Um, so that would be the main step. And then from there, of course we can, um, talk to you, get to know you and figure out what would be the best next step for you based on your specific relationship dynamic and your business.

Tim Melanson: Cool. And what was the couple of preneurs [00:42:00] group two that you’ve mentioned?

Ariel Tresch: Yeah. It’s called successful couples in business. So if you go to Facebook and in the Facebook search bar, you just search successful couples in business. We should be the only group that pops up for that.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Thank you so much for rocking out with me today. You guys have been awesome.

Kyle Tresch: Awesome, Tim. Thank you. It’s good to be here. Yes. Awesome. Rocking out as always. Love it.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. And to the rock stars listening, make sure you subscribe, rate, comment. We’ll see you next time in the work at home rockstar podcast. Make sure you go to work at home rockstar. com for more information.