The Conscious Entrepreneur

EP 117: Working With Your Spouse in a Family Business: How Married Co-Founders Stay Healthy & Happy Together

Host: Sarah Lockwood
Guest: Kayleigh Warner Klemp (co-author of The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, The 80/80 Marriage)
Date: December 1, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode dives deeply into the unique joys and challenges facing married couples who co-found or work together in a family business. Host Sarah Lockwood interviews Kayleigh Warner Klemp, an expert on conscious leadership and relational health, for practical insights on building a collaborative, fulfilling business and marriage. Together, they unpack the emotional realities, communication pitfalls, and leadership lessons relevant to both couples and their teams. Listeners receive concrete tools for cultivating radical generosity, navigating power dynamics, and repairing conflicts skillfully—at work and at home.

Main Themes and Insights

1. Intersections of Marriage and Business (00:00–06:34)

• Blending Personal & Professional Lives
  • Business success can often feel tied to relationship health: “When things are going well in the business, the marriage can feel steady. But when the company hits a tough stretch, it’s easy for that stress to spill into home life.” (Sarah, 00:18)
• Origins of Spousal Partnerships
  • Couples intentionally co-found businesses or are drawn in accidentally through necessity, with dynamics shifting accordingly.
  • “There’s a shared creative passion…and that’s a huge liability in working with your partner, because it’s so easy to let the conversation go back to the business.” (Kayleigh, 06:34)

2. Conscious Leadership & The 15 Commitments (02:13–04:02)

• Overview of the 15 Commitments
  • A framework for conscious leadership, distinguishing between “above the line” (curiosity, candor) and “below the line” (defensiveness, drama) ways of operating.
  • “What is so powerful about the 15 Commitments…is that then it means the same thing to every person involved. When I say, ‘Hey, are you above the line?’... that means something totally different if you’re engaged in conscious leadership.” (Kayleigh, 03:06)

3. The 80/80 Marriage Paradigm (04:02–06:34)

• From Scorekeeping to Radical Generosity
  • Modern couples pursue fairness (50/50 split of duties), but this easily leads to resentment and scorekeeping.
  • “The idea of 80/80 is about a mindset of radical generosity…so that you’re doing more than your fair share.” (Kayleigh, 05:05)
  • “As soon as you’re like, ‘wait a second, that’s not fair,’ you’re like, good. You’re doing it right.” (Kayleigh, 05:09)

4. Patterns and Pitfalls for Married Co-Founders (06:34–09:22)

• Shared Creative Passion—Gift and Risk

  • Couples working together enjoy ongoing creative dialogue, but risk letting business topics dominate their relationship.
  • “It’s important to remember both that you have interests in addition to the business, and that you’re people outside of just the working relationship.” (Kayleigh, 07:24)

• Emotional Spillover

  • Business performance often feels indicative of relationship health, creating “head trash” and unnecessary drama.
  • “The performance of the business can feel indicative somehow of the ‘performance’ of the relationship.” (Kayleigh, 08:10)

5. Employee Experience in Family-Run Businesses (09:22–13:33)

• Alignment vs. Triangulation
  • Employees may perceive co-founders (married or not) as an inseparable unit, heightening discomfort when visible disagreements arise.
  • “People just assume that the couple is going to be a unit…conflict feels more fraught sometimes even for the people around the couple than for the couple themselves.” (Kayleigh, 12:19)

6. Communication, Candor, and Transparency (13:33–20:17)

• Reveal and Request Practice
  • Tools like “reveal and request” facilitate preemptive alignment and transparency both privately and with teams.
    • “The reveal and request allows you and your partner to get aligned.” (Kayleigh, 14:39; 16:38)
• Radical Candor Defined
  • Candor is honesty + completeness + self-awareness.
  • “In conscious leadership, we want to add, ‘is it complete’…and that of self-awareness. Am I sharing this slice of the numbers because I want to encourage you to do something? …And so it’s those three together that give you above the line, conscious leader, radical candor.” (Kayleigh, 17:59)

7. Avoiding Scorekeeping and Cultivating Generosity (20:17–25:55)

• Radical Generosity & Appreciation

  • A mindset shift from “tit-for-tat” to appreciation underlies healthy relationships at work and home.
  • Availability Bias: We’re more aware of our own contributions and often oblivious to our partner’s unseen labor.
    • “I am aware of 100% of the things that I do, and I am aware of only the very tiny subset of things that I witness you doing.” (Kayleigh, 21:07)

• Contribution Lists

  • Tool for surfacing invisible labor and redistributing roles intentionally.
  • “It isn’t about credit. It’s about awareness, because then you can take a step back from those lists and say, ‘Wow, these are wildly uneven. I wonder if we should take a fresh look.’” (Kayleigh, 24:22)

8. Home Habits Mirroring Workplace Best Practices (25:55–29:50)

• Org Charts & Values at Home
  • Running a family like an organization: defining values, making roles explicit, and designing structure.
  • “Most of our families have the level of complexity of certainly a small business and maybe even a medium-sized business. The quantity of logistics that we’re figuring out…And yet somehow in our personal lives, we don’t make our values explicit.” (Kayleigh, 28:37)

9. Navigating Power Dynamics (30:15–34:33)

• Invisible Power and Structural Solutions
  • Power, like wifi, is only noticed when it doesn’t work. It’s often invisible to those holding it.
  • “Typically, power is invisible to the person who is exerting more of it.” (Kayleigh, 31:08)
  • Structures such as explicit budgets, decision rights, and role clarity minimize imbalance, in both personal and professional spheres.

10. Naming and Clearing Power Imbalances (34:33–39:08)

• From Confrontation to Collaborative Issue Clearing
  • Structure difficult conversations factually (what a video camera would record), then express the story you told yourself, and then name the feeling.
    • “So, for instance, hey, it feels like your flexing power is a story. What we would want to say is…‘Here’s what the video camera records…’.” (Kayleigh, 34:54)
  • Always finish with a clear request to reduce guessing and miscommunication.
    • “Make a request…so that the partner can respond thoughtfully and in a way that’s aligned with what the person really wants.” (Kayleigh, 39:08)

11. Repairing Conflict—Modeling Healthy Resolution (40:45–46:34)

• Reconciliation in Public and Private
  • If visible conflict occurs, repair publicly: explain what happened, what’s been learned, and how you’re moving forward.
    • “If you are co-founders and you have a visible conflict in front of your team…looping them back in…‘here’s how we resolved it, and here’s how we’re aligned on those next steps’.” (Kayleigh, 40:45)
• Sound Bites for Repair
  • “You saw both of us…get emotional. You just witnessed a conflict go below the line. And we want to bring our conflicts back above the line…” (Kayleigh, 43:57)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The 80/80 is about a mindset of radical generosity…As soon as you’re like, ‘Wait—that’s not fair’—good. You’re doing it right.”
  —Kayleigh (05:05–05:14)

• “The performance of the business can feel indicative somehow of the ‘performance’ of the relationship…that can create a lot of head trash.”
  —Kayleigh (08:10)

• “People just assume that the couple is going to be a unit because outside of the business, the couple is a unit. And so conflict feels more fraught sometimes even for the people around the couple than for the couple themselves.”
  —Kayleigh (12:19)

• “I am aware of 100% of the things that I do, and I am aware of only the very tiny subset of things that I witness you doing…when it feels like I’m overserving, that’s where it actually is quite balanced.”
  —Kayleigh (21:07)

• “Candor is honesty plus completeness plus self-awareness.”
  —Kayleigh (17:59)

• “Power is like wifi…when it’s working, no one pays attention to it…”
  —Kayleigh (31:08)

• “If you are co-founders and you have a visible conflict…looping them back in…‘here’s how we resolved it, and here’s how we’re aligned on those next steps’.”
  —Kayleigh (40:45)

Key Timestamps

00:00–02:31 — Introduction, the unique challenge of married co-founders
02:31–04:02 — 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership explained
04:02–06:34 — 80/80 Marriage: beyond fairness, toward generosity
06:34–09:22 — Patterns of creative passion and risk for couples in business
09:22–13:33 — Employee experience, alignment vs. triangulation
14:39–20:17 — Communication and the power of radical candor; reveal & request tools
20:17–25:55 — Scorekeeping, radical generosity, “contribution lists”
25:55–29:50 — Home as an organization: explicit values and roles
30:15–34:33 — Power dynamics and practical structures for balance
34:33–39:08 — Clearing issues with fact, story, and feeling; making actionable requests
40:45–46:34 — Conflict repair, modeling resolution publicly and privately

Practical Takeaways

• Explicit Communication: Use “reveal and request” and “issue clearing” structures for sensitive business and personal matters.
• Generosity Over Scorekeeping: Proactively recognize and appreciate each other’s contributions at home and work.
• Clarity in Roles: Make expectations and responsibilities visible, in both the org chart and household contribution lists.
• Transparency with Teams: If conflict happens publicly, repair it and narrate the process to your people.
• Attend to Power Dynamics: Routinely check for and rebalance power, using contracts, budgets, and explicit decision rights.
• Normalize Disagreement: Healthy conflict (above the line) leads to better decisions; model disagreement and repair for your team.

Further Reading:

• The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership (Klemp et al.)
• The 80/80 Marriage (Klemp & spouse)
• Upcoming: Busy Love: A Sexy Relationship System for the Overwhelmed (2027)