An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Be a team — Teamwork will make your dreams work, the more the two of you are on one accord, the more life you will get to enjoy together. “No one-man band ever makes it to the big stage.” ~Demetrius Walker
As a part of our series about lessons from Thriving Power Couples, I had the pleasure of interviewing Demetrius and Dhayany Walker.
Business moguls Demetrius and Dhayany Walker have coined themselves “Lovepreneurs.” The millionaire couple created the aptly name Lovepreneur, as a platform teaching entrepreneurial couples the importance of having both net worth and love worth. Unlike other relationship platforms, Lovepreneur combines the elements of love and business as success tools in entrepreneurship. The Walkers have bragging rights in the relationship industry: 88% of the married couples with memberships remain successful to this day.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you two to your respective career paths?
While dating in 2007 Dhayany decided to invest $10k in Demetrius’s automotive business. Demetrius was already a pioneer in real estate, but Dhayany was eager to help and learn the game, so with the return of the $10k investment from the car business, both Demetrius and Dhayany opened a daycare center in Philadelphia and purchased their first real estate property together to fix and flip.
We realized that working and building our business portfolio wasn’t easy, but it was completely worth it. Establishing businesses in real estate, automotive, childcare, consulting, philanthropy, and digital real estate, we became an unstoppable force. We recognized for us to continue building, we needed to be surrounded by other like-minded couples that are doing the same. Commitment lasts longer in community, so we created a community of like-minded entrepreneurial couples to help support and keep each other accountable. That later became a mission to help 1000 couples build and grow their business.
Can you share the most interesting story that has happened to you since you two got married?
As we scroll through our mental Rolodex of all the stories, we were able to create through our amazing 12 years of marriage, there is one story that sticks out the most. After about 8 years of being together building our businesses, we were in a season of high-level decision-making. During the 8 years prior, we stayed focused and hustled our behinds off working towards our financial goals. During this season, we had choices to make. We were in a great financial position and had to make some tough decisions. Do we go and buy our dream house and get new cars, or do we continue to invest in the next level of our business goals and dreams? It’s one thing to have to make hard decisions because life is forcing you to, but it’s a totally different feeling when you have the freedom of choice. We’ve always been the type of couple that focused on the R.O.I for every decision we’ve made. After constant discussions and prayers about our future, we decided to keep reinvesting our money into our real estate and business portfolio. During that season of our lives, we had 2 young children, so now our decision wasn’t just about our marriage, it was also about our family. As a result, God has enlarged our territory where we now own businesses and real estate in a few different states throughout the US.
A few things we’ve learned throughout our journey together is
- Have patience in well doing
- Fake it till you make it
- You’re destined for greatness if you are disciplined and courageous
- Choose impact over income
- You will never succeed past your level of belief
- Fear and faith can’t occupy the same space
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
We are boaters and one day my wife and I were coming back into the marina to dock our boat, and as I was backing the boat into our slip at the marina, as normal, my wife jumped out onto the dock with the lines to tie down the boat. Amidst me almost completely docking the boat, I noticed how strong the tides were and it was pulling the boat away from the dock and towards the neighboring boat. Currently, my wife is grabbing onto the side of the boat to pull it to her. I didn’t realize it initially, but when trying to avoid hitting the other boat and my wife holding onto the other side, she fell into the water. I had to let go of the steering wheel, hurry, and catch my wife from going completely into the water. Luckily, I was able to save her and get back control of the boat. What an experience!
The lesson we learned through this experience is communication doesn’t have an expiration date. Docking the boat is something we’ve done countless times and created a system for it, but what we realized was there will be times that the tide in your love and business, can be counterproductive. Balancing it all will cause you to have to pivot and if you’re not in constant communication with your partner, something catastrophic could happen and set you back. Communication is the key to victory!
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
“Lovepreneur” is the name of our company and the first and only community that serves as a safe haven for like-minded couples to come and be vulnerable. A community to be transparent bout their relationships and business challenges while seeking guidance with no judgment. Lovepreneur is a lifestyle; it’s something that doesn’t have an off button, it represents the pursuit of starting or scaling a business, all while pursuing a deeper level of love and commitment with your partner. We are more than just a community of mentees; we are a family. We hold each other accountable and share resources to help our love and business growth happen simultaneously.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Our annual “Lovepreneur Retreat Experience” is our next event. It is a trip with couples collaborating on business and relationship strategies. It is exciting for us and our community. The trip will consist of other like-minded couples, influential and successful guest speakers, luxury stays, and events.
What advice would you give to other CEOs or founders to help their employees to thrive?
As CEOs and aligning with our mission, it is worth investing in employees’ romantic relationships and marriages as equally as investing in their self-development. Studies have shown that a supportive spouse at home positively influences their partner’s performance in the workplace. Having a conscious spouse contributes to workplace success. Therefore, promoting partner consciousness, and cultivating a support system for employees can have a direct impact on work performance and the bottom line.
If your employees can start and end their days feeling loved and supported at home, there’s a very good chance that their attitude and productivity level throughout the workday will be highly productive because they’re not at work all day dreading what they have to look forward to when they get home. Even though happiness is a self-project, the environments and support systems that are attached to an individual matter a lot, and a person’s self-performance normally show based on how happy they are with their life, family, and career.
This model can also work for individuals that are not in a relationship with anyone, encouraging them to join small groups outside the workspace based on things they have a high interest in and enjoy. Everyone needs a support system and wants to feel loved and accepted.
How do you define “Leadership”?
Leadership is about being the first to act while vividly explaining the vision and goals of the overall mission to the team. It’s about having the ability to motivate, create, communicate, delegate, and celebrate with the group that entrusts you as their leader. Leadership is to influence through consistency and sacrifice. It is the first layer of commitment, even if it means executing alone.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
So often couples are quick to seek outside the home for resources, guidance, and accountability. What a lot of couples don’t realize is that their partner is also equipped to provide that support. Couples overlook each other when should be learning more from one another first. Who better to keep you accountable to your goals than the person you spend the most time with? Your partner.
We are grateful for each other. The moment we read in the Journal of Sociology, that married couples experience a 77% higher net worth per-person than single people when they support each other at home and in the business, we were eager to take the steps necessary to have these results in our partnership/ relationship. We realized early on, that the more we invested time into really getting to know each other, we were able to find out just how resourceful we were as individuals. We also contribute our success to God, our parents, our spiritual advisors, and our business mentors. Throughout our journey, we’ve spent thousands of dollars on masterminds and high-level coaching, understanding that we had to sow at the levels we wanted to grow into our love and business. We made an intentional decision to be more “partner conscious” in our relationship.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
We use our success to bring goodness to the world through our nonprofit HIMIO (How I Made It Over), where we have entrepreneurship programs that we teach in high schools throughout Philadelphia, PA. Students that have come through our program, are now adults and full-time successful entrepreneurs who travel the world. HIMIO helped expose them to the endless possibilities of entrepreneurship. Because of the efforts of our team over at HIMIO, we are on a quest to create 10,000 new entrepreneurs.
As we built HIMIO we realized there was another community of people that also needed to experience our gift of teaching and cultivating safe spaces to learn. That’s when Lovepreneur was birthed. Learning from our own experiences as a married couple and having our fair share of ups and downs, we learned that other couples were experiencing the same thing. It grew into a community of like-minded entrepreneurial couples. With hundreds of case studies and members since 2012, Lovepreneur is the first and only platform to answer to the calling for couples in business together looking to build success in both.
What are the “5 Things You Need To Thrive As A Couple”? Please share a story or example for each.
We created a “Love & Business is Worth it Devotional” with our 12 commandments to help couples stay aligned and grow rich together. However, our top 5 are:
- Similar values — For a partnership and relationship to work, it’s imperative that both partners share similar values, this will heighten the chances of a successful relationship and help with tough life decisions.
- Forgive and let go — As a couple, it’s very important to remember that we grow through what we go through. Every one of our experiences is a teachable moment. Those moments should bring us closer together rather than push us apart. It’s very important to learn the lesson as quickly as possible, forgive, and let go. That way we can grow and go to the next level of love and business together. Constantly reopening the same wound won’t help heal it.
- Be a team — Teamwork will make your dreams work, the more the two of you are on one accord, the more life you will get to enjoy together. “No one-man band ever makes it to the big stage.” ~Demetrius Walker
- Know your role — It is very important as a couple to agree on roles. Where there is clarity, it lessens the chance of scarcity. You should respect each other’s role in the vision.
- One vision, different positions — It’s important that you have one vision in your home and businesses. It’s ok if one partner has a business that they oversee daily, and the other partner has a different one. There still needs to be one vision that is agreed upon in the partnership and home. Even though there are two different positions played by each partner daily, you’re both still playing on the same team with the same goal to win. The moment you are not on the same page, there is DI-VISION and division leads to DI-VORCE. We all can agree that divorce and having to re-establish your business and family structure is not the goal.
You are people of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
The Lovepreneur community is a movement. With the divorce rate at 44% and higher than 50% amongst small business owners, creating a community that exposes couples to a foundation that helps support their relationship will have a direct impact on these statistics. All while increasing their personal net worth by 77%. Overall, the Lovepreneur community encourages love, stability, and empowerment to achieve personal and business goals.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“People spend so much time preparing to land, that they miss their opportunity to fly”- Demetrius Walker. This quote was so relevant to our lives because we had a season in our business where we were waiting for the “perfect” time to activate certain elements. Then one night that quote came to Demetrius and woke him out of his sleep. From that day forward, our mission became to operate on purpose, with precision, swiftness, and not wait for the perfect moment to show up.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
A great representation of what a “Lovepreneur” couples are, is Oprah and Stedman. They are a perfect example of supporting each other’s goals, visions & dreams. They didn’t allow success to push them apart. It would be an honor to connect with them.
How can our readers follow your work online?
Instagram: @LOVEPRENEUR, @dhayany, @meettheemperor
Contact: Text “Love” to 215–461–3589
Email: [email protected]
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
Lessons from a Thriving Power Couple, With ‘Lovepreneurs’ Demetrius and Dhayany Walker was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.