Flint Co-Founders and Couple Try Not to Talk About Work After 6pm

Flint co-founders and real-life couple Rachel Henderson and Andreas Smetana say separating their business and personal lives helps them navigate client problems and stress, and sparked appreciation for each other’s strengths.

“I remember [Rachel] called me up and said, ‘We've got these two jobs, which one do you want to do?’ One was like $600,000 and the other one was $45,000. But for her, it was which one [do] you want to do?” Andreas told LBB.

“So it was never about the advertising industry, nor was it about the awards, [or] the money. And that's something I thought that has real longevity.”

Andreas finds Rachel’s organisational streak supportive, reciting a story of a client calling him up to say they had a problem. He turned to Rachel and said, “We have a problem.”

“She goes, ‘We didn’t have a problem five minutes ago, why do we have a problem?’ And I realised that my client just told me we have a problem,” and assumed Andreas shared the burden.

It was a moment Andreas decided Rachel was someone he wanted to survive the industry with. Rachel added they have “really different skill sets”.

“The organisational side of production would do his head in. We've always been very separate in what we're good at, and we've never intruded on each other's turf. But we've supported each other and let each other do exactly what we need to do to get the job done,” she said.

Alongside being organisational, Rachel is the “sounding board” when things get frustrating and the pair need to let off steam.

“I've learned to just let that happen, and then we pick back up again. I think knowing your husband/partner well enough to know that when things are getting stressful, which does happen often in this kind of industry, that we need to separate the work stress from the partner/marriage stress.

“For me, they're two separate things and I never take on board the work stuff because I just think ‘it's just work stuff.’”

But this wasn’t as easy for Andreas, who had to learn to separate the two. He was “so driven with work” that it was all he would talk and think about. “There was a moment in our relationship where we kind of said, ‘Great, but six o'clock, that stops’. And that was easy for [Rachel], hard for me.”

Andreas started as a photographer from Austria and Rachel began as an actor in New Zealand. The pair met through mutual photography colleagues in Australia and Andreas initially refused to talk to Rachel for fear of liking her. She surprised him with her frankness.

“I remember in the beginning, people would put us on the spot and Rachel would not know the answer and just say that. And I said to her, ‘[That] was so refreshing’ ... there's nobody who dislikes Rachel. Like every client we have comes back.”

Rachel thinks Andreas is “a master of his craft”, and has an “unbelievable way of seeing things”.

“Andreas has really amazing business instincts and a really great overview of things … he's constantly thinking ahead and he can vocalise that.

“I know that things need to change or we might need to pivot or there's something else we need to be doing. But he's really great at [looking] forward and seeing all of that.”

Andreas conceded he would never be able to run Flint without Rachel. “I don't have the patience with … keeping all this family together, like [you] are really an expert. I think that's the thing where you give your part and then you hope for the best and so there's a huge appreciation there really.”​