What If the Person You Love Doesn’t Understand Your Business?

There’s a version of entrepreneurship that we don’t talk about nearly enough.

It’s not the strategy. It’s not the revenue goals. It’s not the offers, the marketing, or figuring out how to grow a profitable business.

It’s what happens when you’re building something you deeply believe in—and the person you share your life with doesn’t quite get it.

Maybe your partner questions how much money you’re making. Maybe they don’t understand why you’re investing in another program, attending another event, or spending so much time on something that hasn’t paid off yet. Maybe they’re worried. Maybe they’re skeptical.

And maybe every question starts to feel like: I don’t believe in you.

I recently sat down with my friend Binu Dhindsa, an intuitive coach and mentor who works primarily with women entrepreneurs over 50. Binu describes her work as helping women develop “self-talk mastery”—learning to catch the thoughts running through our minds in real time and intentionally shift them.

Our conversation started there, but it quickly became about something I see all the time with women entrepreneurs, especially mothers: What do you do when your partner doesn’t seem to support your business?

 

 

Binu shared something that immediately got my attention.

There was a time when her husband was asking questions about her business: How much money are you making? Is this worth it?

And internally, her response became: I’m going to make the money and prove him wrong.

I understand that impulse deeply.

Tell me I can’t do something and some part of me immediately wants to say, “Okay. Watch me.”

But Binu eventually realized that operating from that place wasn’t bringing her and her husband closer together. It was pushing them apart. She stopped wanting to talk to him about the business at all. Instead of trying to prove him wrong, she began asking how she could help him understand what she was building so he could actually be beside her through it.

That distinction is huge.

Because sometimes what sounds like a lack of support is actually a lack of understanding.

 

 

Entrepreneurs live in a weird world.

We talk about $20K months. We invest money before we know exactly what the return will be. We leave stable jobs. We pivot. We launch things that might flop. We willingly choose uncertainty because we believe in what could exist on the other side of it.

To another entrepreneur, that can feel normal.

To someone who has spent 25 years working inside a traditional system? Not so much.

And sometimes the questions you’re interpreting as criticism are coming from fear.

What happens if this doesn’t work?

What happens if you lose money?

What happens if you’re devastated?

What happens to our family if this business doesn’t become what you think it can become?

That doesn’t mean every unsupportive comment should be excused. There are absolutely situations where a partner genuinely isn’t willing to support what you’re doing.

But before we assume that’s what’s happening, there’s an opportunity to get curious.

Binu said something during our conversation that I loved: seek to understand them before asking them to understand you. Curiosity can move a conversation away from blame, shame and finger-pointing and toward understanding.

And I realized while we were talking that this is something I teach all the time—just through a different lens.

To me, curiosity is leadership.

 

 

One of Binu’s biggest pieces of business advice for mothers navigating this dynamic is surprisingly simple:

Talk about it.

Not in the middle of a fight. Not when you’re already defensive. Not after they’ve made a comment and you’re ready to explode.

Have the conversation when you’re both calm.

Tell them what you heard. Tell them how it landed. Ask what they’re actually worried about.

Binu described learning to tell her husband that while she knew he might not intend to put her down, his comments were leaving her feeling like he didn’t believe in her. That gave him the opportunity to explain what he actually meant—and sometimes what he was expressing was worry, not disbelief.

That is a very different conversation from: Fine. I’ll prove you wrong.

And this doesn’t only apply to marriage.

It applies to your team.

Your kids.

Your clients.

Your parents.

Your business partners.

Instead of entering a difficult conversation convinced that you already know why someone did something, what happens if you start with: Help me understand.

That one shift can change the entire conversation.

 

 

Here’s the other piece of this: your partner cannot necessarily be everything for you.

My best friend isn’t an entrepreneur. There are things about my business that she simply isn’t going to understand in the same way another business owner will.

And that’s okay.

It’s why community matters so much for female business owners.

You need people in your life who understand what it feels like to build something from nothing. People who understand why you’re excited about an idea that doesn’t make money yet. People who understand the emotional roller coaster of business growth.

Binu talked about leaving entrepreneurial events feeling less alone because she’d inevitably had a conversation about business, marriage, motherhood or something else she thought she was navigating by herself.

That’s one of the reasons I care so much about putting women entrepreneurs in rooms together.

Sometimes the most valuable thing you walk away with isn’t another business growth strategy.

It’s realizing, Oh. It’s not just me.

 

 

This conversation also reminded me that sustainable business growth requires more than tactics.

I believe deeply in strategy. I believe in foundations. I believe women need real business skills if they want to build profitable companies.

But eventually, strategy only gets you so far.

You also have to pay attention to what’s happening inside your own head.

When someone questions your business and you immediately spiral, what are you making their question mean?

When your launch doesn’t perform the way you wanted, what are you telling yourself?

When you feel overwhelmed, are you telling yourself you shouldn’t feel that way—or can you acknowledge that what you’re doing is genuinely hard?

Binu is very clear that this isn’t about forcing yourself to be happy all the time. She believes there’s room for anger, sadness and fear; the goal isn’t to bypass those emotions but to feel them without choosing to live there indefinitely.

I loved that distinction.

I tend to think of it as allowing myself to hold the bigness of all of it.

I can be grateful and overwhelmed.

Excited and scared.

Confident and unsure.

I can acknowledge that something feels really hard while still choosing possibility and curiosity as the place I want to move from.

 

 

Toward the end of our conversation, Binu talked about choice.

Sometimes that choice is internal: deciding which thought you’re going to continue giving your attention to.

Sometimes it’s extremely practical.

When Binu had an unusually busy stretch of travel and work, she looked at what didn’t actually need her. She ordered food instead of cooking. She moved coffee chats that didn’t need to happen that week. She removed things from her plate instead of expecting herself to somehow handle everything.

That matters for business owner moms because we have a habit of acting like every commitment is immovable.

It isn’t.

You can change your mind.

You can ask for help.

You can have the uncomfortable conversation.

You can decide that someone else’s fear doesn’t get to become your fear.

You can build the support system you need.

And you can keep going.

That was ultimately Binu’s message to the women listening: when someone tells you that you can’t do it, you’re too old, it’s too much, or you should stop trying so hard, go inward and ask yourself whether this is actually what you want.

If it is?