The 8 Books Every Couple in Business Together Should Read

Running an amazing business together with your spouse has more challenges than normal business partners face. To stand out, you need to implement the right systems, structures, and processes that work within your ‘business relationship’ while making sure your ‘personal relationship’ is not neglected.

I put together eight book recommendations specifically for power couples looking to add value to their industry while maintaining that spark within their husband-and-wife relationship. I guarantee that there will be a book for everyone. Problems with communication and boundaries? Business strategy implementation? Struggling with getting engagement from your team or lacking in clarity? There will be a book to answer you and your spouse’s needs.

1. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

When anyone asks about starting a business, I, and many esteemed CEOs and business leaders will recommend this book. Think and Grow Rich is written for the high-achieving producer. It includes many lessons about commerce, but more importantly, lessons about being of service to humanity.

The greatest thing a couple can do in the world is to make it better, and commerce grants us the best way to do so. With a business, you are expected to help others, you are expected to scale your influence, and you are expected to do so in the best possible way you can. When couples focus their attention on helping others as a team, their love for each other becomes even more focused and stronger. When you read Think and Grow Rich together, you will strike the little match that ignites an ordinary couple into an ambitious power couple.

2. The Wealth Coach by Brad Sugars

With determination, patience, and true grit, The Wealth Coach brings a fictional ‘family’ out of financial despair and leads them to a place of genuine prosperity. Bradley Sugar’s style of writing in this book is so clear and convincing that this book has become a family heirloom.

The book is easy to follow, and the best part is, in the end, you will have walked away with several real strategies to begin your path to wealth. My husband and I followed these exact strategies to be where we are now with our strategy. We go back to this book every now and again to check our progress as a couple in business together.

3. The Power of Us: How we connect, act, and innovate together by David Price

Written by David Price, he harnesses the power of collaborative thinking resulting in real change. He shows business partners a practical toolkit of ideas centered on 8 key principles: Trust and Transparency, Engagement and Equity, Autonomy and Agency, and lastly, Mastery and Meaning.

I recommend this book for all educators as it is a cut-through guide to empowering and connecting with others. The book is an urgent call for leaders, teams, and individuals to challenge the status quo, transform lives and rebuild a better world for the future.

4. Couples That Work: How Dual-Career Couples Can Thrive in Love and Work by Jennifer Petriglieri

Petriglieri focuses on how dual-career couples can tackle and resolve the challenges they face throughout their lives - together. She identifies three key phases of exploration and personal growth in every couple's work-life journey, showing how partners must navigate these together to strengthen their bond.

This book is perfect for proactive couples as it has engaging exercises which will prompt unique answers from you and your spouse. These answers will give you a reflection on how you can build the relationship and business forward. It also has real-life stories and keen insights from couples who identify themselves as successful individuals that thrive in love and work.

5. Mindful Relationship Habits: 25 Practices for Couples to Enhance Intimacy, Nurture Closeness, and Grow a Deeper Connection by S.J. Scott

I included this book in the list because I believe that ‘marriage should come first before the business’. To have a strong business, your personal relationship with your spouse should not be fortified.

Mindful Relationships Habit brings a couple’s confusion about relationship difficulties into the light. So many of us feel ashamed to ask the right questions, or do not know where to begin. This book serves as a powerful (and much-needed) guide to heal ourselves and better understand our partners in times of distress. The ultimate goal of the book is for you and your spouse to make lasting relationship changes such as developing habits that nurtures, deepens, and strengthens it.

6. The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman

Similar to the previous book, 5 Love Languages leans more toward improving your marriage mindset rather than the business.

Chapman writes about the core idea of loving others the way they need to be loved. This might feel counterintuitive, but it is something so essential to growing as a person and understanding what love really is. Chapman doesn't promise easy; he promises a happier emotional love tank which can rebirth a stale/complacent relationship. The five topics are: WORDS OF AFFIRMATION, QUALITY TIME, RECEIVING GIFTS, ACTS OF SERVICE, and PHYSICAL TOUCH. I recommend this to couples in a long-term marriage as it personally changed both my and my husband's perspective, prompting us to be more conscious and more loving towards each other.

7. Agile Conversations: Transform Your Conversations, Transform Your Culture by Douglas Squirrel

We all have heard that we need to collaborate more. So how can we REALLY collaborate with our spouse? By having more useful conversations, or at least a way to respectfully agree to disagree.

This book by Squirrel and Fredrick provides much-needed guidance on how to have the key discussions that form the foundation for strong and resilient working relationships. I would recommend this book to new couples in business that struggle to set up the right terms and boundaries in place for a ‘work interaction’. The book is full of practical, real-world examples, and is a must-read for anyone who has ever been frustrated or puzzled by their interactions at work.

8. The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster: It's Your Turn to #JoinTheRide by Darren Hardy

Darren Hardy writes from his own experiences and that of perspectives from successful entrepreneurs in a wide variety of fields. He does not sugarcoat the twist and turns that entrepreneurs experience regularly. This book will help you and your partner decide the right expectation to set for each other as you go through this entrepreneurial journey together.

The book will warn you (of forthcoming fears, doubts, and the self-defeating conditioning of your upbringing and past), inoculate you (from the naysayers, dream-stealers, and pains of rejection and failure), and guide you (as you build those underdeveloped skills of independence, self-motivation, and self-accountability) safely past the landmines that blow up and cause the failure of 66% of all new businesses.

If you have read some of these books already, I’d love to know your thoughts! You can connect with me through my social media platforms including FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM.

If not, I encourage you to browse through these suggestions and read the one that fits your current situation with your business partner.

About the author, Sheles Wallace

Sheles is an award-winning business coach who gets results for her clients.
For over 15 years, she has helped business owners achieve their goals and
take their businesses to the next level. If you're ready to take the next
step in your business evolution and go from an owner who wears all hats to
creating a commercial, profitable enterprise that runs without you, find out

more here: https://calendly.com/sheles/introduction?month=2021-06