Entrepreneurship is a pillar of Lisa Hu and Luke Babich’s marriage, but it’s not because they are in business together.
Instead, Hu and Babich run separate St. Louis-based startups. Hu is founder of handbag company Lux and Nyx while Babich is CEO of real estate technology startup Clever Real Estate. That’s a dynamic that brings many of the same benefits and opportunities as couples that are business owners together, but also creates its own unique wrinkle for Babich and Hu.
While couples that run a single business together share in the ups and downs of that company, Babich and Hu said they benefit from each having dealt with challenges of running a business, but not necessarily experiencing them at the same time, which Babich said means “the stress is not coinciding.”
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“You have these ups and downs so needing one person to pull the other person out of a rut is helpful,” Hu said. “That understanding is not easy to get from people that haven’t gone through it.”
While they don’t run the same company, Babich and Hu, who married last year, spend a lot of time working together. After meeting at a birthday party in 2018, Babich asked Hu out and their first date involved spending time working together. Hu’s company currently is leasing a portion of Clever’s office in the Delmar Loop.
Like other couples that are both entrepreneurs, Hu and Babich said they have to balance the demands of being a business owner with their personal time. They do a weekly Friday date night and also share in hobbies, including their love of learning, which has included reading books together on topics like personal development and the Civil War.
The couple says that entrepreneurship has been infused in their relationship, and that their experience as business owners has created a “shared language” between the two. For example, they said they were inspired by how businesses establish their own operating values and set out to create a set of values for their own relationship. They came up with the values of purpose, learning and play.
"That's really stuck for us, for years now," Babich said.
