Chip Chick
For the past five years, this woman and her husband have been running their own contracting company.
Prior to this, her husband worked several odd jobs here and there, but over time, they decided to seriously dedicate themselves to their small business. Their business relates to roofing and siding contracting, and she owns 50% of the company.
“I made sure to find a good accountant and an attorney and made sure we had all our legal checks marked. Since then, I have made sure to keep all our insurance up to date, write our contracts, pay our bills, pull permits, do our marketing, and, additionally, I run our Google, website, and social media,” she said.
Not long ago, she and her husband planned to start working on the insurance claims side of things as part of their business as well. Even though it would be a struggle compared to the retail side of their business, they felt like, financially, it would be lucrative and, therefore, worth it in the long run.
To get ready for this, she took an insurance class and read up on the topic extensively. Thus far, she is the one who has handled every insurance claim from beginning to end.
“Since we started the business, my husband will NOT mention what I do to his family. As far as they know, I’m just happily reaping the benefits. When he speaks about our latest ad or latest marketing, he’ll say, ‘Look at this new ad I made.’ When I’ve confronted him about it, he’ll get mad and say, ‘They know what I mean. Why are you making it such a big deal?'” she explained.
From the beginning, their business phone number was her husband’s, and they’ve kept that as their business number in order to not make things complicated.
When a homeowner texts the phone number with questions or addressing issues, she is the one who drafts out the responses, but her husband sends them as if he was the one who wrote them.
She also drafts responses to emails from homeowners, so she is essentially a “ghost” who is communicating with homeowners. Her husband wants to keep it this way because he feels like it would “confuse the homeowners” if she made it clear she was the one writing these messages and emails, not him.
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