When Tony Miller's father died, he needed to come up with a way to support his three siblings and his mom. So he started own a commercial office building cleaning business. That was back in the early '70s, when he was only 19 years old.
Mary joined the company in 1993, two years after she and Tony married. Today, Mary is the CEO, Tony is the president, and Jancoa has 320 full-time employees and sales exceeding $10 million a year.
Being married and working together that long requires some skillful navigation.
"The toughest part of business is forgiveness, forgiveness for myself the errors I make," said Tony. In addition to forgiving yourself, you also have to be able to forgive your partner. "You live together. You do everything. You have to be able to disagree and move on."
Having a non-family member to talk through issues with helps.
"I have a support group of girlfriends that are also business owners that work with their spouses," said Mary.
Tony has a group of guy friends that work with their wives.
"Whenever we leave our thoughts inside of our heads, imagination will always make it worse," said Mary. "We have found that it is really important to have those opportunities to get it outside, talk about it, and realize it wasn't really as bad as we thought."
These seven business owners are determined to become debt-free. They are ditching credit cards and giving their bank loans the old heave-ho.
