There are so many amazing women entrepreneurs out there: Susan Peterson of Freshly Picked, Amy Richardson of June & January and Elle Rowley of Solly Baby. Such amazing woman that I personally admire, respect and applaud for all their hard work. They have created companies that are taking over the baby industry (and the world), but they have major support by their side; their husbands.
Jared Rowley, husband to Solly Baby creator Elle, works directly with his wife building a company that is growing immensely. Jared was generous enough to take some time from his busy schedule to let us know what it’s like working with his wife, juggling family life and the fears that come from stepping outside your comfort zone.
Before working with Elle at Solly Baby Jared had just graduated the University of Utah with a degree in Political Science and was working with a start up that recovered written off claims for hospital using E.R.I.S.A. law. He was involved with the marketing and sales. “It was fun because we had to come up with creative ways to access Executives and convince them to let us tell them about this new service,” Rowley says.
Now, working for Solly Baby Jared is in charge of all the accounting, systems, website optimizing, SEO and any other random things that pop up that relates to those areas. “For a while we were both just doing everything and it was pretty chaotic,” Rowley states. ” There were some clear pressure points that we knew needed to change.” They have learned that “while pressure points are not pleasant, if you lean into them instead of trying to avoid them they will help clarify and define things that need to change.” They realized that after a while of leaning in and asking what needs to change to fix this, they were able to carve out clear roles for each of them.
“This whole process has helped us grow together. We have learned how to face problems together and have realized that when we are standing side by side looking at a problem we are pretty good at solving them.”
Being working parents is hard because you want to be with your kids as much as possible, but someone has to be in the office getting the work done. “Time management was one of the pressure points that needed to be solved. We realized that we both need clear working hours. Elle works better in the morning, so I get to be with the kids in the morning and then at noon we eat and I go get my work done while Elle is with the kids so we aren’t together all the time, but we try and overlap as often as we can.”
Personally, my biggest fear is making sure that my family is taken care of. For Jared to have complete confidence in his wife’s dream and leaving his career to start a new one is scary for some. “There is always that fear that things won’t get taken care of no matter what your job is. There are always some variables that are out of your control.” I know that for me I always fear, no matter what job I am in, that things won’t get taken care of. Jared says, “The one thing we realized when we took this on together is that we both had to be fully on board with running a business and the risks and struggles that come along with it otherwise we would be timid in our decisions and that can make it hard to grow a business. We have also put processes in place to try and minimize some of the risks. We try and do as many small tests as we can to get information so we can make confident decisions.”
As The Modern Dad I get asked all the time what I do for work and I get a little timid telling them because I work for a crafting company and it just isn’t the most masculine, but it’s my career and I love it. I wondered though if people ever say anything when they ask what he does for a living and he had a great response.
Not anyone that we know because they all know that it is OUR business and we both work hard for it. The only time I have ever heard anything about it was one comment online because Elle is very much the face of the business and my role isn’t very public. We figure people probably don’t want to pictures of me looking at charts to pop up on their Instagram feed. The person said they wondered why I chucked law school so that I could just surf and put Elle in the position of supporting the family. That one hurt but I get why they thought it since all everyone ever sees is Elle working and going to events etc so they don’t know that I am just as involved in the business.
What a joy it would be to be able to work with my wife, together and having a driving focus together. “Working together and having every aspect of our lives be something we are both involved in has created a unity that I don’t think we anticipated,” says Rowley. “You always hear horror stories of working with your spouse so I think we had some worries about what it might be like, but it has been a good experience for us. I really like being able to talk to Elle about anything that is a part of my life and she not only understands it but is interested in it because it is very relevant to her life as well.”
Jared Rowley is an amazing parent to his three kids, works hard not only at Solly Baby, but also on remodeling their amazing home and as a partner to his wife in everything they do. I hope that I can be more like him where I support my wife 100% with her dreams and ideas to want to make our life more enjoyable.
Thank you Jared and I hope you all enjoyed this. Be sure to watch for more stories of the Men Behind the Women of Instagram.
