Ask any couple running a business together the secret to their success, and they might tell you they create time and space for themselves apart from the job. Ask Brian and Jamey Elrod, though, and you’ll get this answer:
“We never turn it off,” Brian says.
Jamey agrees. “I’ll wake up at 1 a.m. and roll over and say, ‘What about this idea?'” she says with a laugh. “For us, it’s a part of us. It’s personal.”
Over the last 20 years, the Elrods have launched three businesses together – two blockbuster successes and one flop, which is a pretty impressive ratio for founders who never tapped into the local startup funding scene.
“Being older entrepreneurs, we came up before all the start-up culture,” says Brian, who is 50. “This was just how you started a business.”