Welcome to the Success Architect, where we don't just build homes, we build legacies. I'm your host, Jake Lewendal, custom home builder and coach. Each week, I sit down with builders and entrepreneurs who are ready to 10x their business, their health, and their mindset. This is where blueprints become breakthroughs. Let's get to work. All right, what's up, guys? Jake Lewendal here on the Success Architect podcast. I have my lovely wife, Makenzie Lewendal, here with me today. And we are going to talk about an extension of what we talked about last episode, the building of the family business and thus the burning of it later on. And of course, as we talked about, she and I were newly married at the time. She is the daughter of my partner at the time. It was her father. And so she had a very close connection to all of this, obviously. And thank God from my point of view, she's sitting next to me today after all these years. But we want to talk through the building and burning of the family business, her perspective of that, and how we came out of it in a very positive manner and have then seen success and a growth in our love and connection together outside of that. So Again, this is Makenzie Lewendal and let's get into it. What I want to hear from you today is a discussion of your feelings, kind of the emotional strain of watching myself, your husband's get into business with your father and then watching it all fall apart. How did that feel emotionally? And, um, and yeah, what, what, like, where was the tension? Where Yeah. Well, like I need to be official and say, thanks for having me Um, yeah, that was definitely an interesting time in our life. I think looking back now, it, it's crazy. We were both babies and I think reflecting on it, just kind of going over even what we were going to talk about today, I was thinking in hindsight, if we were to encounter the same situation today, I know I at least I think would handle... I would have handled a few things differently, just having a little bit more experience under our belt. But I think that that lends a lot to a lot of people getting into family businesses you get in when you're really young. And so you don't often get into a family business after you've had years of experience under your belt. So you're dealing with just a different level of maturity on the front of both business and relationship. So I think for me, it was very, I felt a lot of conflicting feelings throughout a lot of it. Growing up, one thing my parents always instilled in my sister and I was putting your spouse first. And I watched them as a good example of what that looked like. And my dad would even describe this like circle of like, okay, there's a circle and it's my wife and I right here and then my kids and then everything else But that's how we were raised. And that's what I, that was instilled in us from a very young age. And so I think it felt very challenging to me It was all fun and games when we started in business and you guys started and it was exciting. But when things started to get a little bit tense, I felt that very conflicting feeling of, He was my dad, but you were my husband. And I could just always hear that in the back of my mind and watching my parents as we were raised, like you always put your spouse first. And it wasn't that I was just putting you first because of that. It was also this feeling of, I never met someone with so much honesty and integrity as when I met you. And it, there was that as well. So I think for me, the biggest, When it started to get the toughest was when all of our family get-togethers started fully just turning into business talk, and that's all And you could tell when everybody else started to get silent because that's all it started talking about. And for me, it started to get very hard when I would hear your side of things and then Nate's side of things. And then the truth was honestly probably somewhere in the middle because everyone has their own point of view when hearing and experiencing things. Um, but yeah, we were both babies. We were newly married. We were new in business and it was, yeah, there was a lot of different feelings. And going back, like, being a parent now, I think is probably where that adds a different level for me of being able to say that I would handle things a little different just because being a parent myself, it's... I don't know, even you. It's like we have the same values in our household that we always put each other first. But if one of our kids was like, Now I'm, you're proud of them for doing what you raised them to do, but then you're also like, but Hey, I'm your parent over here. So I also see how that was probably extremely, yeah, there's just a lot of, there was a And I guess one thing that I think you mentioned to me is, like you said, your parents did a great job of showing like the levels, the circle of, he didn't call it the circle of trust, but it essentially was. Love that movie. I was gonna say it's an awesome movie. Meet the Fockers, fantastic. But his circle of trust he talked about, he and his wife, uh, your mom first. And it was interesting when he started diving in the middle of our relationship and he started kind of going against his own rule because it wasn't his relationship. It was ours. And that's when I saw, I guess the, the trust and the loyalty degrade more. And I'm not sure, but it seems like that's when it started to It did. And I knew you well enough. There was things I remember specifically a couple of times where thinking to myself, that just doesn't even sound like something Jake would do. That doesn't even sound like something Jake would say. And then the trust started to dwindle from there even more because I was both that getting in the middle of our relationship when I was raised to always put my spouse first and then just, I remember specifically, I know where I was, I was parked in the bank parking lot, sitting in my car. And I remember he and I having this conversation and just thinking to myself, like, that just doesn't even sound like something Jake would say. And so from there, it really started, it really started to go downhill for me. And then when we approached kind of the separation of it for family purposes, and it seemed almost, I think I almost felt stuck in it. for a while. And it took from the time that we presented it to him to when we actually signed and wrote a check, I think And it was a very stressful eight months. Yeah. Super not fun. Um, so Looking at now really quick, just for our listeners, because there's, there's a lot of listeners who have contacted me in the past after hearing this story and said, Hey, I'm about to get into a family business. I'm about to buy out my father-in-law or my father or work with my brother, sister, all kinds of options. I've gotten emails and talked with people. Is there any key items that you would recommend coming from your point of view of what these people should think about Just say, have everything in writing and do a lot of the deep work up front. Have the hard conversations. Talk about what a separation or a buyout would look at. Nobody wants to have that happen, but I feel like it's more common than not in family businesses. And if it actually doesn't get to that point, you've talked about it. So if you've talked about how nasty it can get, you actually might not even, you don't even go down that road because you've already talked about how it could, how it could get there. Um, so I think having those conversations upfront, doing a lot of the talking upfront and just, you have to set aside the excitement of a new business. You have to set that aside and remove yourself from it. And you have to get everything down on paper so that you are not hearing what the other person is saying with any There's no bias. You're looking at it on paper and you're reading the words. I think that would have, I think that would have added some sort of, protection almost of just the relationships. And I mean, even us moving forward, I think in any business relationship, it's important because it's always so exciting. It's exciting from the beginning, but there's a lot of different nuances involved. So And I would almost say have a third party there of some sort having the conversations with you to be able to pull themselves out of the nitty gritty and like pull themselves up above and be able to almost tell you what you're saying as just, Yeah, triple check. There's two more things that I would consider as well. First off, know your value for listeners, for whomever getting into this business. If you are buying into a business, buying a father-in-law out, whatever that is, Know your value from the beginning because that's where I failed is I came into it and I thought I had no value So I put no value on me being a partner which hurt me in the end because at the end He saw me as having no value because that's what we wrote down on our napkin agreement essentially in in different words and so know your value and in fight for that value and Number two is think with the end in mind, because most likely, unless you're getting into business with like a brother or sister who's of equal age, if you're getting into business with someone who's older, they're going to want to exit. And that's where you have to think about the end and you have to think about it in a failure or a success. But even when you're thinking about it in a really positive light because you're excited, and you're excited about the success, you think about a very positive exit that keeps you in a place where you want to keep building the business. You can't give away everything when they step out, even though maybe that's what they want. And that's where you really have to keep your value in mind because then you don't give away the And that's where I think having a third party involved is helpful because when you're 23 and 24, I would never have been able to answer. I Nope. Third party is super helpful. Um, well, what I can say is I never, ever from the moment that I met you thought that that would be a reality of me putting you in that position. So I hate that it happened, but life happens for a reason and we are here now. And, uh, even before, during, and especially after that, it's, it's a wild ride and it's been super fun. So, a couple other things. One thing for our listeners, especially our young ones, I want to discuss a little bit of your business growth personally in your path throughout your life. But I also want to hear a really quick understanding of your expectations of what you thought your life would look like when you were small, when you were a teenager, then stepping into your twenties and thirties. What were your expectations? What did you think life would look like? And then what actually happened? And, and tell us what Okay. I'll start with what life would look like. Um, nothing like it does nothing like it does. I, I never in a million years saw myself in getting involved in a family business. Um, Growing up, my dad would always say like, work smarter, not harder. Don't ever be in the construction industry. And it was always, like we were, like he wanted us to go to college, be a doctor, a lawyer, a veterinarian, like those were kind of the things. So I thought that that's, I So I thought I would take the path of go to college, become a doctor, and I've always been very independent. So I guess I always looked at it as I would go to college, become a doctor, and I would kind of do my own thing inside of a marriage. And I don't know where that exactly stems from, but, um, Did you think you'd be working forever? Like, like you would be working while you were a mom and always, always be a working part of the marriage, I I never liked the control that money felt. I always felt like money had a very controlling power. And so I will say one of my, one thing I always knew I wanted when I was younger is to never let money be something that I would just work and I was, I, I was never one of those little girls who was like, Oh, I just want to be a mom and I want to have kids. I wanted to work and make my own money. And that was something that I knew I always wanted to do. Um, I started college and started in pre-med and hated it. And I was like, well, this is not going well. One year in hated biology. I hated the cadaver, like I did not like any of it. And I was like, well, okay, this is, so I think I switched to finance. And then I switched to. physical therapy. I, I switched my major so many times and then ended up wanting to go to aesthetic school. So I dropped out of college. Um, that was definitely a point of contention with my family of not taking the typical route. Um, but I moved to Arizona. I went to aesthetic school, absolutely loved it, ended up moving back and did that for a couple of years. And it was the first time I got a sense of what it was like to work for myself, grow my own clientele and started learning from that, but took the takeaway that my income was truly tied to my time there. And that was as you were getting into both real estate and building. And I remember in between clients texting you about everything, real estate and asking about where the contracts were at. And I was just had this excitement around real estate. It had the components of like building that I grew up in and also like just the contract. I was so enamored by the contract side and the negotiating side. So that was when I started getting my real estate license and became your licensed assistant. And I think real estate was my first true all of it. Um, yeah, so I went through, I mean, that was like through my late twenties and early thirties. I had a couple of times when the same lesson kept being put in front of me and I finally realized from that, I was like, okay, I need to learn something. I need to learn something from this. Like the same lesson keeps being put back in my face and an example How do I put that into like a small… Yeah, something small. Words. I think just interaction with people. I've always had a fiery personality. No, not really. I had to learn how to like channel that fire. And I think that was probably one of my biggest learning lessons in that regard. So, but it was my first real win in making money because growing up, it was, you have to be a doctor or a lawyer or a vet to make money. And so I kind of always had this like goal in my mind of what I wanted to make. And it was the first time where there was just no, I didn't And there was no time restrictions. There was no time restrictions. You were making way more money than Totally. And I loved it. Um, but I tied it throughout that. I tied my identity so strongly to And making money. And I felt a sense of worth, like as my checking account would grow, I was like, I'm just doing, I'm doing so well. And I started to tie my identity way too strongly to that. And, Then motherhood came along and it was during a transition phase for us to where we were both in this phase of grinding in our both lanes was just not working. It was working and Yeah, it was like, it was cool. Like my old business partner after my father-in-law used to call us dinks, uh, dual income, no kids. And he was always jealous because he had kids. And, uh, I don't know, Kenzie and I got to do a lot of cool things during that time. Cause we had the funds to do it and we weren't tied down. Um, but we were totally grinding and totally separate paths, which, I thought at the time was the way that we were going to be successful. Having two incomes was like, Ooh, this is super cool. Like, um, it just felt like, wow, there's, there's extra there. Like one of our incomes could handle our entire life and the rest was gravy. But then kids came and we kinda, we kinda made a change. And so was there a specific moment or was it over time that for you personally, you started realizing that I think it's Brene Brown that says something about like the messy middle is where the magic happens. And for the past four years, I feel like I finally crossed to the other side-ish. But for the past four years, I feel like I've really sat in that like messy middle. It's been the biggest period of time where I've had like the most personal growth. So now looking back at it, I'm incredibly thankful. But in In that four year time span, it was hard for me. Like I knew when we finally made the decision to go all in on momentum, like both of us, it was, it's like I could sit there and realistically look like this makes sense. Sitting there and looking at even just like starting with our strengths, like your strengths, visionary, huge goals. very risky, great leadership. And I'm just, I've always loved the details more and I've always just done better in the details of things and kind of, I don't like to be, that's one thing that would always burn me out of real estate. I didn't like to always be out at every social event and always networking and always selling. And just, I didn't like that part of it, but that was just part of it that came with it. So I think the realistic part of it was sitting down and looking at like, okay, yes, your strengths are there and my strengths are here. I knew that was what it was. I knew it was okay for us to get to the goals we want to get to. We can't both keep going at the rate we're going and raise a family, but we knew we wanted to raise a family. We knew we wanted to have kids. So it was, there was this like, again, kind of this like push pull of like me sitting there realistically looking at, okay, yes, this is the path. But then having my identity so strongly tied to a career that I loved and I let define me for so many years. And then almost trying to like find my new identity is what I thought it was, but it was more just really not needing to like have that identity and more just- More like stepping into the identity you already had. Exactly. Yeah, 100%. And it took about Yep. I used to hate the question when people would- If that doesn't define much. Be like, so what are you doing now? I was like, Oh, what am I doing? I don't stop from the time I get up in the morning. It's different every day, but it is truly putting you at the forefront of putting you at the forefront of it because you are the driver in you're the driver at work at home. And it was me stepping more into that support role, but not letting that define me either. So it's been this like messy middle journey. But it feels good now. Feels really good now. Feels Well, what we're going to do is we're going to come back with part two, and I'm going to ask you more questions. I don't know if you were coming back, you knew you were coming back for another episode, but you are. Um, so we're going to come back with Makenzie on the next episode. We are going to talk about the fact that we came from a family business that didn't work. And so now we're going to decide to jump back into it again together, but just she and I in a family business. And we're going to talk about Oh, I did the quote. She hates the quotes. Yeah, I really got to stop that. We're going to talk about how communication boundaries and understanding each of our lanes and where our strengths are, and how we work together to stay in love and run a business together. I'm excited to Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to The Success Architect. If today's episode helped you lay a stronger foundation for your business or your life, subscribe and share it with someone ready to do the same with theirs. You can follow me, Jake Lewendal, on social for daily tips on health, wealth, and building success that lasts. Until next time, keep designing,