We have some exciting updates and announcements of some unbelievable things that we have been doing
In this episode, Paul and Stacey will share a talk that they recently had with their Relationship U students on what is going on in real life today behind closed doors when couples and families are stuck together because of the COVID-19 related self quarantining.
In this episode, Stacey will share part two of her talk on how couples (and parents) can maintain their sanity during these social distancing and self-quarantining times. She will talk about what she sees as two of the most common causes of kerfuffles that are going on right now and how to solve that, and how to deal with the effects of the current pandemic on our lives. She will also dive into how to look at everything that’s going on in a way that’s empowering, as opposed to feeling like it’s all just happening to us.
One of the things one must get rid of is unreasonable expectations and control. We must all drop a lot of our levels of control right now because our desire to want things to be a certain way will only lead to misery for us and others around us. One cannot control everybody else but they can set reasonable standards for others to follow when it comes to basic things in life. When something is complicated and out of one’s control, one should just let go of it. A great example of that is homeschooling.
People have certain invisible expectations about what it should be like, but what they don’t realize is that it’s a full-time job, takes a lot of commitment, and is very stressful. Stacey will share her insights on how to really go about that and so much more, so stay tuned to learn how you can navigate this from the same place, increase the peace and harmony in your home, and decrease the kerfuffles.
04/30/2020
Stacey 0:00
Hey relationship transformers. Welcome to the Relationship Transformers podcast. Okay, on this podcast, it is part two of how to get your sanity back during quarantine, and your marriage and your parenting. If you haven’t listened to last week’s podcast, be sure to listen to that. And in today’s podcast, I’m going to talk first about what I see as some two of the most common causes for kerfuffles that are going on right now during this quarantine time and how to solve that. And also how to deal with this and how to navigate when we kind of have a lot of extra things that have just been added to our plate. And really, how to look at that in a way that’s empowering, as opposed to feeling like all of this just happened to us, so that you can navigate this from the same place, and increase the peace and harmony in your home and decrease the kerfuffles. So let’s queue up the intro and dive into part two.
Intro 1:00
So the big question is this, how is it possible that one person alone can transform any relationship, save their marriage, great their unshakable love and unleash passion, divorce, prove their family without needing their partner to get on board and do this with them and yet still get to be happily, authentically you without compromise. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. We are Paul and Stacey Martino, and welcome to the Relationship Transformer podcast.
Stacey 1:34
Now, I do want to talk about unreasonable expectations and control. And of course, I could do a three day event all on this, and we usually often do, and I highly encourage you to check in with those, but we have to drop a lot of our levels of control right now. Because, our desire to want things to be a certain way, it just is only going to lead to misery for us and everybody else. You cannot control everybody else. You can set a few standards like, “Laundry has to be done every week. Cleaning your bathroom has to be done every week. Movement has to be done each day.” But other than that, you really need to release. And, one of those things is around screen time, and around homeschooling. So let’s just talk about those two things together, because so many people have these invisible expectations about what it should be like. And then they kind of just, take on, like, “Oh, okay. I’ll homeschool for sixth grade, fourth grade, and pre-school. Oh, sure, sure. Starting tomorrow. Yeah, I’ll do that.” What? That is a full-time job people. That is three full-time jobs for three different grades. Just saying you’re gonna homeschool because the school is closed is nuts.
Now, not everybody is going to agree with me, but I’m going to share my perspective with you as to what’s reasonable, and what’s not, after working with families for as many years as I have. Now, our son actually goes to online high school. That’s his regular high school. And that choice took us about five months to make. Five months of research, figuring out how he was going to do it, what the best online high school was going to be for him, how was that going to impact Paul and I, since we both work from home, how was that going to impact his sister and everybody else that’s here? What’s going to happen for him on days when we travel or we’re not home? Like, we worked on that for five months before we were like, “Okay. This is what it is going to take for you to go through online high school. These are the requirements for you. This is what dad and I are going to be responsible for, and we’re okay with that. We’ve worked it into our schedule. We can all do this. This is how the system is going to flow.” And we worked it out and he started online high school a while ago. And so, that is like an online high school. That’s not even homeschooling, which I can’t do, and would never do, because schooling is not my unique brilliance. I never in a million years want to do that, and I don’t have the bandwidth for it because I work full time. That’s just me.
Some people wouldn’t love to homeschool their children, this is what they want to do. That’s fantastic If that’s you, but you need to actually think it through and not let a school closure make that decision for you. Because that’s a big decision. So please understand that there’s a difference between homeschooling and online schooling. And some of you are totally wired for and phenomenal at homeschooling, you have the bandwidth for it, and you’d love to do it. Great. Then make that decision and make your decision to say okay, for and I’m going to research who’s the best of the best that teaches homeschooling? How many hours a day do our kids need to school? And that’s what I’m going to do. Some of us are not wired for that would never do that and don’t have the bandwidth for it. And then we need to say Okay, is there an online education option for my kids while they’re here now some of our schools are building that God bless their heart. Some of our schools cannot because like that is a massive undertaking to build an online educational system. So I will just say that as an example, our daughter is home, her school does not yet have any online education options. And I will tell you that we didn’t start homeschooling her because the school was closed, she’s in sixth grade should be fine, we’ll figure it out. Either they’ll extend the year or we’ll make up the time like, she’ll be fine. Just because the school closed, or we kept her out of school, even before the school closed, does not mean that I’m required to figure out what sixth grade is and how to teach her that that’s not relevant to me. Now, there are online services that you can use, which I highly recommend. Something like Khan Academy is a really, really good one. There are others that you can google search and find what is an online schooling. And if that’s a fit for you, by all means, do that with Something like a Khan Academy, you can sign your kid up for whatever grade they’re in. And then they start at a certain time, and they end at a certain time. And the online Academy takes them through the cadence of their day. With something like what we’ve done in our houses, our kids have a list of like museum tours, and then their shows for like, for 45 minutes, they take you through an entire country, and you get to learn what that country is about. We have ones for animals, and we have ones for nature. And so they’re doing educational programming during the day,
but it’s just like really super interesting watching the show, but they’re learning about something. We’re not trying to replace school, and that’s for our daughter, and then her school is going to start sending assignments, they said next week that they can do at home, which is great. That’s awesome. And if this ends up being a long term thing, we’re going to sign her up for something like a Khan Academy or something else where she can do on line in school where Somebody else is the educator. While she’s here, just thinking that you are going to replace a teacher and spend eight hours a day on taking your kids through a typical school day. There are entire administration’s that work on things like that. There are probably five to 10 teachers that impact your children in a day thinking that Oh, yeah, I guess if you’re home I’ll do that is an unreasonable expectation that you’re putting on yourself, that causes tremendous amounts of stress, because you can’t necessarily deliver on that real well. And you’re putting an unreasonable amount of stress on yourself at a time when we need to relax. I talked to one of the moms that was stressing about this the other day said to me, yeah, but like my kid is in ninth grade. And I have to make sure that he’s caught up because the year is about to end. And I said to her, oh, when is the school year ending and she’s like, well, his school year ends at the end of May so I don’t have much time. I sent to her school year ends at the end of May said Who? And she goes, Well, that’s what it is. That’s a school calendar. I’m like, why is the end of May so important that your child and what happens at the end of May? It’s like, well, that’s when School’s out. And I’m like,
Says who? Why is that relevant? Is that even a reasonable decision? Why not the end of June? If we miss three weeks now, can they not do that in June? Like and who cares? Who said that they need to get out of school at a certain time, who said that school needs to end at a certain time. These are imaginary deadlines. And you’re so blinded by accepting and visible expectations that I have to make sure that I create the same teaching experience and learning experience for my kid before the end of May like that is unreasonable. And you’re making yourself and everybody else miserable, for no reason. Now, maybe not everybody loves this message and doesn’t want to hear it and that’s fine. But if you needed to hear this message, giving you permission to just take a deep breath. It’s okay. Our kids are all going to be okay. They learn a ton all year. This is a temporary hiccup, and it happened on a dime. It’s going to take us some time to figure out okay, what should we do about this school year end dates are not necessarily a relevant thing right now because everything just changed. So just relax. Give yourself some time to figure it out. Whether it’s your school that’s going to provide work for home that your kids are going to do, or an online school that you can sign up for, that’s going to allow your kids to get educated or you would like to research homeschooling and you would like to be the one to be their educator from a place of really learning how to do this. Well. Any of those are wonderful and all of those take some time. So please do not have unreasonable activity. tations for like, I work nine hours a day, I also take care of the house and the meals and somehow I have to take my kids through three, four or five, six hours of school a day. In case you weren’t doing the math, there’s not that many hours in one day for anybody. So just relax, and give yourself a break. Whether it’s I’m gonna have my kids plug into online school, or I’m gonna wait to see what the school does and give them like, learn this country and do this art class and expand your mind this way and read or write or create something, whatever is a fit for your family culture, make that decision, as long as it’s reasonable that you can actually do it and use time chunks to move people through changes and energy changes and experiences all day long.
And the other thing is about screentime so many people are like, Oh, I don’t want my kids sitting on screens all day, I don’t want my kids sitting on video games all day. I don’t want, like, and I get that. And we actually regularly have a family policy of two hours a day of screen time. 30 minute chunks. 30 minutes on 30 minutes off, no earlier than 8am no later than 6pm. That has been our family policy for 15 years. And our kids have always honored that policy. And when they haven’t, there are consequences in our house for that. So that is the way our family runs no problem. But now there needs to be a shift. Right? So when my kids do an online class, that doesn’t count for screen time, when my kids want to do the 45 minutes This is everything you wanted to learn about Greece, that is not considered screen time for them. When my kids want to do a zoom session with their friends so that they can play a game and hang out. That is not screen time for them. Alright, so connection time, learning time. Those things are not screentime when I need to do something for two hours in my work so that I can focus. And I put on a movie for the little ones so that I can focus and they can watch TV. That’s Oh, okay. See, what happens is we try to apply this like, Oh, we shouldn’t let them sit on screens all day. You know what, this is what Disney plus was made for. It’s okay. This is a temporary situation. And if one day your kids end up watching three movies, then so be it. That is what that was going to happen that day. Now, when it becomes everyday people start to get restless and the energy doesn’t isn’t good. That’s why we use time. chunking but please stop making screentime the demon here that you also have to fight screentime in addition to everything else, like it’s okay, relax. We did a virtual live event for our students last week. So many of our students were like, what am I going to do with my kids? Right? Each session is two to three hours, what am I gonna do with my children? And I’m like, well, that’s what frozen one and frozen two is for the frozen marathon and come do what’s important for you like, it’s okay. Do we live like this every single day of the year? No, we don’t.
But these are very different times. And you need to focus on what’s important. If you have little ones, like my kids are older. And so they know when mommy and daddy go to work, unless you’re bleeding, like, Don’t interrupt us. Because we’re working. We’re focused, we have to work. As a team, you guys need to allow us to work and we’ve built up that rapport. We’ve built up systems with our children.
That’s all in the relationship development parenting courses that we have, how to be able to create that kind of family culture, but even with little ones if you need to create like, okay, I do have to do work. It’s important to create these time chunks where, like for 90 minutes, they’re gonna watch a movie or do an hour projects or do something that they can do independently. And you’re going to have focus time because if they’re always constantly coming into your room or you’re constantly trying to do work while you’re sitting with them, all of this mixing, mixing leads to misery write that down. Mixing leads to misery.
One of the beauties of having time chunk is to give yourself the gift of focus, so that you can really be effective and fill up from what you’re working on. And they’re happy to focus on a movie so please use that if that’s the only tool that works right now. Please utilize that to allow them to play a video game or watch a movie if that’s what needs to be hop on a zoom with their friends and sit for an hour and a half talking to their friends and hanging out if that’s what needs to be and then you use that time effectively be like okay, they started on their focus and focus get Your stuff done during that time chunk, and then go back and say, Okay, now it’s time for I’m gonna like put lunch together for all of us. Let’s hang out for an hour. And then I’m back to focusing, you’re on to the next thing. And use that predictable pattern to give yourself some peace and some focus and some effectiveness. And allow them to have that time, whatever it is, and if they are doing online schooling, allow that to be time chunks as well, whatever it is, but give yourself a break on how to navigate this time.
This has never happened before. But it’s a fantastic learning experience that we can’t just live a life in reaction to every other human that lives in our home. We need to create some structure and some process. Now I know there’s going to be lots and lots and lots of questions around this and feel free to post them below. Paul and I are working on filming actually a training costs for you that we can give away for free About how to implement stuff like this, and how to navigate marriage and parenting during a quarantine time like this when you’re stuck together, and the tools and strategies for that. And we’re working on some of that, as well to try to give you some more tools and tips that you can start using. And certainly, of course, the biggest one is get into one of our programs right now. Like make that one of your time sounds like, man, I need some solutions, like solutions, like I just showed you right now, but much deeper. And for marriage specific interactions and parenting specific interactions with each child, there are solutions that you can use to lower the kerfuffles and raise the harmony. So these were just some to give you some sanity and predictability in your day. I hope this serves you. Please post in the comments below what you got from this and how you’re going to use that and if you have any questions, be sure to post them to maybe we’ll answer Through that in one of our next videos, if you want to get into one of our programs, you can start the 14 day boost that’s coming up at 14 day boost comm if you want to start the Quickstart program, you can email us at support at relationship development. org If you want to enroll in relationship view, we have a link that we can give you for that to get into the relationship Transformers Official Facebook group, the links are all there and we can help you understand the different programs. If you have not started listening to our podcast, the relationship Transformers podcast, please listen to that there’s like 40 something episodes that are available you can put them in and listen to it every single day. But this is the time to get the tools and strategies for your marriage and family. Now more than ever before, it’s so important to do that. I hope that this training has served you and until I see you again sending love everybody. Bye bye. Okay, I hope you got so much from this two part training. Remember, go back and listen to part one. One. If you miss that, you might want to listen to these again, right part one and part two. And the key is don’t just listen. start implementing take action, start being intentional about what you can take on what you will take on what’s best for your family, instead of being reactive, or using invisible assumptions and feeling like you just need to do everything. be intentional about it. Start using time chunks. Really start applying this in your regular day start showing up differently, so that you can navigate this time with increased level of sanity, but certainly increased level of peace and harmony and decreasing those kerfuffle and frustrations. Again, if we can help you with the tools and strategies to implement this and take a deeper dive. Whether you want to get into the next 14 day boost. You want to start the Quickstart program right now today. You want to enroll in relationship you and get one on one support and coaching. You want to get your ticket for relationship, breakthrough retreat, live event, whatever it is for you, like just get into our programs in our events. That’s where the tools and strategies are taught so you can take the action and until we see you again, sending love everyone.
Outro 19:17
Are you ready to catapult your relationship to the next level? Would you love to do that in just three days? Well, Relationship Breakthrough Retreat tickets are open. This is our live three-day event. We only do this event once a year. It’s a three-day live immersion experience with me and Paul, where you get to have your relationship breakthrough within those three days. This is not a couple’s event. Your partner does not need to come to this event. There are no couples work going on. It’s a fun, high energy, life changing, impactful immersion experience, where your relationships will catapult forward within those three days. It is not to be missed. Check out RelationshipBreakthroughRetreat.com for information and tickets
In this episode, Stacey will talk about how couples can maintain their sanity during these social distancing and self-quarantining times where parents have to be at home all day every day with their kids. She recently did training with their RelationshipU students on the same subject and it had immediate phenomenal results for those who applied the tools and strategies they learned in their households. Right now families are having a hard time being quarantined at home, and parents are having to navigate things that they’re not used to navigating. That is making frustrations and kerfuffles arise much more frequently and it’s causing more harm than good.
Parents always have an uphill task of raising their kids while also working and making sure everything runs smoothly, and a lot of the times they take on too many things at the same time because they feel it’s their responsibility to do so. Running a household, for example, is a full-time job all on its own, and it can be quite taxing. Especially if the parent responsible also has to work a regular job to make ends meet. The first step to gaining some sanity is to look at all the things one takes on every day and dropping those that can be done by someone else.
Stacey will talk about living a life in reaction and living a life by design, and how living a life by design is the only way to regain sanity, joy, and happiness in any household during these difficult times. Stay tuned as she shares some tools and strategies for reducing kerfuffles and increasing harmony during the current quarantine (and any other time you and your family find yourselves stuck together) to help you navigate everything as best as possible.
04/24/2020
Stacey 0:00
Hey relationship transformers. Welcome to the relationship Transformers podcast. Sorry, it’s been a couple of weeks without a podcast, but I’m really excited to bring you this week and next week’s podcast. It’s a two parter. I did a training on how to like get sane and get your sanity back during quarantine when your spouse and your kids are stuck in the house with you every minute with no end in sight. I know frustrations can rise, and kerfuffles can be on the rise, and patients can be short. And so, I did this training and I wanted to share it with you. It’s in two parts. And this week, we’re going to talk about how to use strategies and tools to be able to bring the sanity back when you have everybody kind of living on top of each other, and a lot of things that we don’t usually navigate we have to navigate and… I… when I did this training, so many people posted that they implemented it that day, and saw peace and harmony coming back to their household that day. Like really, really amazing. So, I’m sharing that today in part one. And then next week in part two, I’m going to share another set of tools and strategies, the second part of this training with you to give you some more tools and strategies for reducing kerfuffles, and increasing harmony during quarantine, or whenever you’re kind of stuck together kind of thing, to help you navigate this time. So let’s cue up the intro and then we will dive into part one.
Intro 1:40
So the big question is this, how is it possible that one person alone can transform any relationship, save their marriage, great their unshakable love and unleash passion, divorce, prove their family without needing their partner to get on board and do this with them and yet still get to be happily, authentically you without compromise. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. We are Paul and Stacey Martino, and welcome to the Relationship Transformer podcast.
Stacey 2:14
Hi there. It’s Stacey. I wanted to make you this video to talk about how to be sane, everybody at home during this time. So, a couple things, and I had just done this for our Relationship U students, and I wanted to come in and do a quick video for you. Because, what happens for a lot of us is, we kind of just take on the mountain, like especially as moms and dads, we kind of just like, “Oh, I’ll do that. I’ll do that”, like everything comes down to us, and when it comes to like, you know, running the house and taking care of the kids, and also working a job, like first of all, I just want to say, and this may not be popular for everybody, and if it’s not for you, you can ignore it, but if it resonates for you, I just want to say this out loud. Running a household, which means all the cooking, the laundry, the cleaning, the grocery shopping, the ironing, and all of that, is a full time job. Taking care of children, is a full time job. And working is another job. So, for many of us now, we’re up to three jobs. Right? Taking care of a household, taking care of children, and working. And now, with children not being in school, it’s like, “Oh, sure. I’ll… I guess we’re homeschooling as of Monday. So, ah, hello. That’s four jobs.
So, please just First of all, see it with clear eyes and be reasonable. That is too many full time jobs for any human to take on. So please just have a reasonable perspective about what can and cannot be done and what is reasonable to take on right now. Okay. So if you need to do some things to help yourself, be sane and calm and peaceful and Happy and have your household the same calm, peaceful and happy during this time too. I want to give you some strategies and tools that you can implement today to have things start running smoother, reduce kerfuffles and increase harmony now, when it comes to relationship and relating to your spouse, your kids, we have loads and loads of tools and strategies for that. Please join our relationship Transformers Facebook group, where we do a lot of training we have a lot of conversations going on and then get into one of our programs like that’s not an optional piece right now. You need the tools for how to relate in your marriage and with your parenting. Now more than ever, don’t wait if you haven’t done our booth get into our booth if you haven’t done our quickstart do that if you are hanging by a thread or if one of you is considering you know if you’re unhappy and possibly talking about divorce or separation. Please join our relationship you program before doing something Like that. So when it comes to all that I’ll do more videos on that. We have programs for that. What I want to talk about today are some strategies and tools that you can implement right now.
To help create more harmony and happiness now, with what everyone’s navigating during these times when you are with your partner and your kids more often and more minutes than you’re used to, the first thing I want to share with you is a dynamic that has probably been invisible to you. And I want to make it visible so that you can actually utilize this and understand part of the dynamic that’s going on. What I see most often and I’ve been doing this so many years, I just this is a pattern that’s very, very clear to me and I see this most often is we wake up in the morning, and it’s like, there’s a little bit of chaos. And there might be anything from like, Ah, that didn’t go so well to Wow, someone had a meltdown. And then they go off to school, somebody goes off to work, or we go to work, and we take a minute we’re like oh, my god. Okay, now We can focus, and we focus, we do our productive work, we fill back up with things that make us happy. And then they come home from school or somebody comes home from work, and a certain level of chaos and dizziness and bickering or fighting goes on. And it’s like anything from, you know, that was okay. Or that wasn’t so bad to somebody who had a total meltdown, or a fight or whatever it was. And then people go to sleep. And then we get like, Oh, God, thank God, we get a break. And we take care of ourselves, or we get things done that we want to do, we focus, and then we go to sleep.
And then we get up the next morning, and the pattern starts all over again. And we kind of go through years and then decades, with this pattern. It gets crazy. We get some relief. It gets crazy. We get some relief. We wake up the next day and do it again. We never actually solve it. We just escape it. And what I want to talk to you about today Just first of all understanding, so strategy number one, you’re not getting the escape that you used to get, your kids are not getting the escape, your partner is not getting the escape, you’re not getting the escape. And so it just keeps building and building and building and building where people just say like, I can’t take it anymore. And I just want you to understand this is a very real dynamic. It’s actually not any different than what was going on. Before you guys were all stuck at home. It’s just that now you’re not getting an escape from it. And you’re seeing this is what is the dynamic. This is why you must take the time now, to get one of our courses, start listening to it every single day, start implementing the new tools, because the only thing that was allowing you to coast before was that you guys were able to escape. But now you don’t have that and so the frustration start to build the tension starts to build the upset and the happiness starts to build This is the time start listening to one of our programs, start watching one of our programs and start making some changes so that each and every day you can actually solve some of what’s going on before the next day starts, it rises it rises, but you use the tools you start to solve that great let’s go into the next day. And you can stop this elevation of frustrations and stress by implementing real tools so this is a real dynamic it’s why so many of our our program students our relationship view students our relationship grants, swimmers have been sharing posts like oh my gosh, thank God I did this work before this happened. I don’t know how I would have survived the old me without these tools. Like it’s intense and were able to thrive and be so happy right now.
But I never would have been if I hadn’t done this program. That’s why you need the tools. That’s why you need the strategies. So strategy one is understand the dynamic that you’re not getting an escape right now. And I would say that’s happening for your own good because This is what was going on before. It’s just we ignored it because life is so busy and we always get another day. This is a great opportunity. There’s so much opportunity right now, a lot of your schedule has been cleared. And I’m going to teach you in a minute how to get more time in your day. This is the time to do the relationship development work so you can solve some of the kerfuffles that come up in your marriage and in your parenting so that you can increase harmony and decrease kerfuffles. So that’s point number one. Now the second thing is let’s talk about your sanity. So many people right now again, talk about like life by default. Oh, I guess we’ll just do that too. That’s life by default life by design is what can we do? What can we do? Well, what can we do to be happy?
And the strategy I want to give you here is about how to create sanity and predictability in your days when your kids are not in school and nobody’s leaving the house for work. It is not a perpetual Saturday, every day. We cannot Live in perpetual, it’s Saturday. Nobody has anything on the schedule to do, it becomes insanity we just don’t do well. Humans do well with structure and predictability, especially when there’s more than one human in a team. And so, in order to create sanity, we need to create some structure and predictability. I will just say that we’re a few weeks into this here of everybody being home. And Saturday and Sunday are very, very different in my house than Monday through Friday. It’s different for Paul and I, we work Monday through Friday, and it’s different for the kids. They have a different cadence Monday through Friday than they do Saturday and Sunday. And that gives everybody predictability and a way that they can flow through the week where everybody can get the time that they need. It is so critical that everybody have personal time during this everybody’s home and that comes down to are you Living a life in reaction, or you living a life by design a life that reaction is like, when everything comes at you and you’re like, Oh, you want to watch this, oh, you want to eat that?
Oh, you wanted and you’re constantly reacting to what everybody else wants a life by design is you sit down and you create a plan of how you’re all going to operate together as a team. You know, no sports team ever shows up at the first game, never having met before, never having decided who’s going to be in what position, never having practiced. Otherwise, it would be a total shit show. And so it’s the same thing in our households. We can’t just show up each day being like, okay, I wonder what’s going to happen now. And I’ll just react to it. It ends up creating tons of stress and tons of chaos, both for you and for your kids. And then we end up barking at them in a way that we’re not happy about. They’re not happy about and the same thing with your spouse. So one of the tools I want to teach you right now is to use time chunking. So time tracking is where there are blocks in the day. Time tracks, either a 90 minute time chunk or a 30 minute time chunk, and you set up your day from the time your kids wake up until the time they go to bed in these time chunks.
Now we did this the weekend before we had decided to take our kids out of school at a certain point, and we knew they weren’t going to be going to school on Monday. And so we sat down that weekend and said, Okay, here are the time chunks for the day. Here’s a list of 40 things that you can pick. For any given day. Let’s start making the blocks of what you want to do and what you want to do when and what we did was we set a timer in our kitchen using like the Alexa timer or something else. And the timer dings every 90 minutes. So everybody switches their activity. So there are certain time chunks that are electronics time chunks if it’s playing a game or watching a movie. There are others that are more academic like they might be reading or doing. We have a list of like museum tours that are free right now. We’re art classes that are free right now. We’re music lessons that are free online or something like that. Or it might be craft time. It might be outdoor walking, trampolining, soccer, whatever they’re doing. Or it might be doing their laundry or picking up their room.
There are time chunks for all of that. And so what happens is they put their time chunk schedule together. And once a week, we just sit down on the weekend before the week starts. And we talk about, okay, do you need anyone else on this team for any of your time chunks? And if they do, like they’re like, Oh, we wanted to go out and walk on the greenbelt for one of our time chunks. And so grace said that Jake was like, Oh, I would do that too. Okay, that requires a driver. So you guys need to plan that time chunks so that it just lines up together. And with a driver, one of us who can drive you, but the other time chunks are totally independent. You don’t need anybody else to participate in any of those. So structure them any way you want. This way. I’m not dictating you have to do Academic now or you have to do movie time now or you have to do exercise. Now you are dictating when you’re going to do things. The only things you need to collaborate on are things that involve other people on this team. And so we gave them the autonomy to say, okay, and they have a list that’s actually hung up in our kitchen, like, every single day, there needs to be movement time, whether that’s walking or, or dancing, or trampoline or whatever, we need to move our bodies. And if weather permitting every single day, there needs to be some outdoor time. And then twice a week, there needs to be laundry time, once a week, there needs to be wiping down the bathroom time. And three times a week, there needs to be you know, some other time. So there’s a list of like, these are the required chunks of the week. It’s very minimal because you don’t want to dictate too much of what someone else is doing, or that’s not really leading that’s just demanding. So they know like there’s a minimum but they can slide that time. trunk in wherever they feel happy if they want to do their laundry Wednesday morning, they should do their laundry and my kids are old enough to do that do their laundry Wednesday morning. If they’re like, No, I’m gonna do it Friday night before bed, then do it Friday night before bed. I don’t have to control that. But using time chunks, there’s predictability. And we never have this thing where like, I left you at nine o’clock this morning and you are watching movies in front of the TV. I came down at four o’clock in the evening and you were still watching movies in front of the TV. So they’re moving, they’re doing things and the time chunking helps them not to be so bored. And not to be like kind of get that energy where they’re like, they got what they wanted. They’ve been on video games all day and they’re like, Oh, I’m so unhappy because they’ve been sitting right all day. So the time chunking is one of those strategies. That really really works.
Okay, awesome. I hope you got a ton out of this episode. This was part one of a two parter. So your directive, your action steps from this is start implementing, start implementing this now into your days to get your sanity back and have some flow to your home and, and all the people in it. And then next week in part two, we’re gonna talk about now how do we navigate when we have so many other things on our plate? How do we navigate that in a way that reduces kerfuffle and increases harmony, I’m gonna talk about a couple of things that are creating some of the most kerfuffles that I’ve seen, and the strategies for how to solve that. So I will see you in next week’s podcast for part two.
Outro 16:43
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai
In this episode, Stacey will share a recording that she made to talk about pivoting instead of canceling their Breakthrough in Paradise live event in Jamaica, the decision that they made to pivot the event, what they will be doing instead, and how they made that decision in confidence and not fear
In this episode, Paul and Stacey will talk about a common point of view that most people in a relationship have that negatively affects their relationships without their knowing
In this episode, Paul and Stacey will talk about a dynamic where someone in a relationship gets stuck in the false belief that their way is the right way and that their partner’s way is all wrong, and they will share all the action steps we can use to free ourselves from that dynamic for the betterment of our relationships and marriages.
In this episode, Paul and Stacey will talk about a very common complaint that they get from women about how their husbands are too blunt and mean in their conversations, and how that triggers or embarrasses them.
In this episode, Paul and Stacey will talk about the invisible expectations that women have of their partners and the harm they cause their relationships.
In this episode, Paul and Stacey will talk about taking sides, a topic that is fundamental to what we think of when we think of relationship struggles.
In this episode, Paul and Stacey will talk about a persistent and repetitive kerfuffle that they used to have often in the car when Paul was driving
In this episode, Paul and Stacey will do part two of the two-part series on relationship development parenting, and talk about the misery of parenting.
In this episode, Paul and Stacey will do part one of a two part series on relationship development parenting, and how we can create shifts in our households.
In this episode, Stacey will dive into step two of their 10-step planning and strategy day framework, and talk about the thing that keeps us from seeing the biggest version of ourselves and the reason why most goal-setting/strategy setting doesn’t actually work.
In this episode, Paul and Stacey will share the strategy and planning framework that they use in both their business and personal lives to get results that exceed their expectations every year.
In this episode, Paul and Stacey will talk about the Yellow Brick Road, a tool that they created to help people learn how life works, and what is required to move from one level of life to another.
In this episode, Paul and Stacey will answer the question, “What are the strategies for being able to work with your spouse in a way that strengthens your marriage instead of weakening it?” This is something that they get asked a lot because most spouses who work together find it nearly impossible to separate their marriages from their businesses.
Most of those spouses end up failing at one of those things, and usually, it’s the marriage that loses out since it’s easier to do business than to do marriage. Why? Because there are plenty of easily accessible resources everywhere like books and courses about business to help people run their businesses much more easily, but similar resources for marriage are limited.
Spouses working together is always a magnifier for their marriage relationship. If they have things in their marriage relationship that they can’t talk about, it’s always a hundred times that in their business relationship. That’s the dynamic that people need to understand, and Paul and Stacey will share the four main things that spouses who work together or wish to work together can do to ensure that they achieve the desired win-win in both their marriage and business relationships.
Key Points Discussed:
12/19/2019
Disclaimer: The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors
Paul: 00:00 Hey relationship transformers. Welcome to the Relationship Transformers podcast. Stacey and I get asked a lot about how we work together. What are the strategies for being able to work with your spouse in a way that strengthens your marriage instead of weakening it? So today, we’re going to answer that question. So let’s queue up the intro and dive in.
Intro: 00:24 So the big question is this, how is it possible that one person alone can transform any relationship, save their marriage, great their unshakeable love and unleash passion, divorce, proof their family without needing their partner to get on board and do this with them and yet still get to be happily, authentically you without compromise. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. We are Paul and Stacey Martino and welcome to the Relationship Transformer podcast. We are Paul and Stacey Martino and welcome to the Relationship Transformer podcast.
Paul: 00:52 So, there’s a loop that happens. When you bring your spouse into your business. There’s a loop that happens, which is, if there’s something wrong in your relationship, it comes into the business. If there’s something wrong in your business, it gets back into your personal relationship. And this dynamic can be destructive for obvious reasons. And it’s a loop. It’s a loop we want to avoid. So today, we’re going to talk about some things that are going to help you with that, so you can get some clarity and do something about it.
Stacey: 01:25 Yeah, we hear that from people all the time. They’ll say like, “How do you guys prevent the business crap from coming into your marriage and impacting your family? Like I feel like when we have stress in the business, we have stress at dinner. When we have stress in the business, we have stress on the weekend, in Target with the kids. Like, when we have a problem in the business, it spills over, and we talk about it all the time.” That’s what Paul’s talking about. There’s this loop that nobody really sees. It’s invisible until you’re in it. And if you don’t have the tools and strategies to navigate this, your business will impact your marriage, your marriage will impact your business, your business will impact your marriage, your marriage will impact your business, and round and round it will go, until somebody yells, “It’s enough.” And at that moment, the scary thing is, one of the two are going to lose. And I just want to say that we’ve worked with a lot of people over the years, and very often the marriage loses. Because let’s face it, it’s easier to do business than it is to do marriage.
Stacey: 02:30 There are books for business, there are courses for business, and until us, there was nothing for marriage, so people had found it easier to have success in business, get results in business, feel successful and significant in business. And very often, what would happen is, they’d feel like, “You know what? I’m winning here. I’m losing here. It’s my partner. This is not the right match or whatever. Let’s release the marriage. We’ll be co-parents, and I’m keeping the business.” And, I just… I want to… we’re doing this episode, and we’re going to give you the skills and the tools, but you have to understand that there’s a loop. And if your loop is running in a negative direction, I want to give you a heads up before somebody says, “Enough.” One of these has to go, because in your heart, you don’t want to part with your business, and you also don’t want to separate your family. So, let’s get ahead of it now, and we’ll talk about… there are four things we’re going to talk about, for how to strategically work with your spouse, in a way that builds up your marriage instead of weakening it. So, the first one is… is that cool? Like, do you have something you want to add?
Paul: 03:38 We typically say the ceiling on your business is the ceiling on your relationship. No question. You’re not going to challenge one over the other. The two will compete if you’re having problems, one will impact the other even if your spouse isn’t in your business.
Stacey: 03:50 Yes. Amen. All right, so the first thing is this dynamic of understanding that working together is a magnifier for your marriage relationship. If you have things in your marriage relationship that you can’t talk about, it’s going to be a hundred times that in your business relationship. If you have things in your marriage relationship where there’s hurt feelings, it’s going to be 100% magnified a hundred times magnified in your business relationship, right? If you have things that caused kerfuffle in your marriage relationship, you’re going to have a hundred times that in kerfuffle in your business relationship. Working together is a magnifier, so if there are things that you’re trying to fix in your marriage or avoid in your marriage or things that you’re not aligned on, if you haven’t figured out how to have a win, win and align in your marriage in a way that nobody’s pleasing, nobody’s compromising, everybody feels like their happiest, most authentic self.
Stacey: 04:45 If you don’t have that in your marriage, it’s going to be a hundred times that in your business. Now, the flip side of that is when you have that in your marriage, when you understand the differences between masculine and feminine in your marriage, you end your operate with your partner in a way that honors their masculine or feminine. You’re going to bring that to your business and you’re going to have a hundred times that power in your business when you understand how to create that, when, when in your marriage so nobody feels like they’re losing, you’re going to bring that to your business and you’re going to have a hundred times that in your business where you are always creating that, when, when together and having that dynamic. When you don’t have demand relationship in your marriage and you bring that to your business, you have a relationship development based culture in your business with no crappy demand, relationship backlash.
Stacey: 05:40 It’s going to be a hundred times more powerful in your business. When you understand how to navigate a brick conversation with your partner in your marriage, where you can talk about anything without fighting, you’re going to bring that skill to your business and it’s going to be a hundred times more powerful in your business. So the challenges that we have in our marriage will magnify in the business and the power that we have in our marriage will magnify in the business. And it’s just a skill set and it can be learned. But just understand right now, check in with yourself and your marriage and whatever it is. If you’re unshakable, great. If you are shakable and there are some challenges where there’s kerfuffles or you feel like we shouldn’t fight this much, or why can’t we agree on this? Okay, so you’re going to bring a hundred times that into your business relationship. And that’s just the fact. That’s the predictable dynamic. So first of all just get clear on where you’re
Paul: 06:35 absolutely, you know, it’s the case really where people look at this as if it’s not a relationship issue as if it’s a business issue. Like it just isn’t working out in the business as if I hired the wrong person and don’t get us wrong. And we’re going to talk about that too. There’s a strategic side to this as well too that we will cover for you. But the bigger issue here, the one that’s not being escaped, the one that’s creating the loop is a relationship issue. And as Stacey is saying, the answer here is not to either blame it as a business issue and just kind of walk away from it saying, Oh, this didn’t work out in the business or, or a lot of people will tell you, Oh, you can’t have your partner in your business unless they support you 100% everything your way like, Oh no, that’s an escape.
Paul: 07:15 That’s an escape from actually solving the real problem because whether you do that with your spouse in your business or you do it with your coworkers in your business where someone you hired, you know, just getting rid of them actually isn’t the answer unless you want to keep repeating it, right? Is it’s either solve it and fix it or just keep repeating it in a different face, in a different form. So there’s a lot to it. So we will get into the strategic, but you know, it’s very important to get clear about where is the real problem and why. And it’s not about your partner. We just want to be really clear. These are dynamics. It’s not because your partner’s a bad person or flawed or not the entrepreneur. You are all these other things that we hear all the time. It’s a relationship deficit of what you don’t see that’s creating.
Paul: 07:58 They’re kerfuffle, they’re not incompetent, and we will get into where they are competent later. But the key thing here is we turn it into a fight about us as our partner or a resentment of how things didn’t go right, where as we expected in our business and we keep looking at the wrong targets and we keep creating labels about the wrong source of the pain. So we’re never going to fix it. And everyone walks away from that interaction feeling like it’s unfair or resentful of how that went. That’s all unnecessary. So first we have to get clarity about what is really going on. Let’s identify that loop and let’s talk about the strategic side because there’s another element here that is strategic. So let’s get both of those clear so that we don’t blame each other and our partners or our coworkers or people you hire your contractors. When in reality it was either a relationship deficit or a strategic one. And chances are is both, because there’s always a relationship aspect to all of these dynamics. If you’re interacting with another human, there’s a relationship aspect here that you need to be aware of and you need to be masterful with.
Stacey: 08:58 And when we say relationship aspect, what we mean is a relationship, skillset, relationship tools. And it’s so funny, people think that, you know what Paul and I do is marriage work and yeah, sure. I mean a lot, most people use this in their marriage. You’d be crazy not to, right? Who wants to live in a crap marriage or a mediocre marriage? But these are life skills. These are life tools and they’re relationship tools. And relationship means you interacting with another human. And that happens a lot. Yes it does. It happens a lot and it certainly happens in your business. So number two in this list of, of what we’re going to share with you today is you have to have the skills and tools you have to like, you can’t be, especially if you’re the business owner, right?
Stacey: 09:45 I forget who said the quote, so somebody will remind me. But someone said the bottleneck in your business is the mindset of the owner. So the mindset and skills and tools level of the owner is the ceiling of that business and you’re the bottleneck in the business. So you must expand your skills and tools if you’re going to be a business owner and run a team at all. But it’s really, really critical if you’re going to bring your partner into it because you know what? You can destroy a business. You can destroy a team, you can fire employees, you can be a solo preneur because you can’t figure out how to interact with other people or only hire other people that are just like you or whatever. You can do all those things, but once you bring your spouse into your business, it’s not so easy.
Stacey: 10:33 You can’t order them around. You can’t fire them the same way. It’s not the same dynamic and you’re really running the risk of taking this, burning this down and burning your marriage down with it. So it’s so critical. It’s mission critical that you get the skills and tools that are needed to understand the differences between the masculine and feminine. Understand how to wrap what you say to someone based on how they are wired and need to receive it. How to have a brick conversation so you can talk about anything without fighting. How to get to the win-win and never settle for the wind, lose all of these things. They’re not just for your marriage, they’re for your team, they’re for your clients. Oh my gosh. If you don’t understand how people are wired, you’re missing out on a lot in your business with respect to your clients, right?
Stacey: 11:20 If you’re an entrepreneur and you don’t have these strategic life skills for the interactions that you have with other humans, like you’ve got to get the training. This is part of being an entrepreneur and owning a business, but it’s also mission critical because you don’t want to destroy, just destroy your business if it’s going to have that loop, that impact on your marriage. There’s a huge ROI for being able to operate your business with these skills. Some of you have communities, right? Like we have community on Facebook for our relationship transformers community. It’s a private Facebook. Some of you have private Facebook groups and client groups and communities and Facebook and other platforms and there’s entitlement and complaining and negativity and people operating from demand relationship with you and you don’t like it, but there’s a solution to it. When your relationship transformer and you set community standards and demonstrate how to be a relationship transformer, eliminate so many problems in your culture like you have dream clients now, right?
Stacey: 12:23 Because they’re not doing demand relationship with you. Your customer service department isn’t responding to a demand relationship-based emails of like you said this and you better this, and I said jump and you better say how high. When you demonstrate that your culture is a relationship transformer culture. When you honor people for how they’re wired and let them know that you, we honor people for how they’re wired in this culture, like your team becomes more pleasurable, your client base becomes more pleasurable, even your community and everybody out who follows you becomes more pleasurable and you eliminate a lot of difficult problems of your team doesn’t know how to respond to this email of this person who’s freaking out or you’re giving out refunds all the time because people are just, the culture is rampantly bad. Like all of these skills and tools that we teach have a huge ROI when you take it into a business. Of course the most important one is the impact on your marriage, but there are a lot more,
Paul: 13:21 and I also want to add before we move onto some more about the strategic side of this on the ROI side, let’s go back to something Stacy said because I don’t want them to get missed and it’s very common, especially if you’re a new relatively new entrepreneur or you’re starting off in another business. Entrepreneurs have sort of our trajectory. And part of that trajectory is in the beginning you’re growing, right? You’re, you have your own unique gift and you start growing and you find yourself in that position where you have to hire these other people. In the beginning we find, you know, the tendency is the entrepreneur wants to find someone just like them. Like, Oh, they’re just like me.
Stacey: 13:52 Cool. You’re just,
Paul: 13:53 you’re just like me. And guess what? You don’t need another you in your business. You need people that are different than you that bring different skill sets. And guess what? You want that. And when you want that and you bring it in, you start to realize, Hey, they’re very different from me and I know some challenges. You can’t just fire them, you know, and say, Oh, I want someone more like me because you won’t grow. Again, on the ROI side, you’re going to continue to be where you are to a large degree and radically stunt your growth if you don’t embrace the people who bring the skills that you don’t have into your business that you know that you need. So again, there’s so many facets to this that get lost and it always amazes Stacey and I how you know, and I think we just need to keep getting that message out there.
Paul: 14:39 How people look at relationship as if it’s optional, like I don’t need relationship skills. I’ll figure it out as I go, and then they become entrepreneurs or get more complicated lives and wonder why things are going so wrong without realizing that like anything, well, I don’t want to invest the time or money into this because it’s not that important. Like my business is more important. You can’t separate these things. It’s funny how you’re dealing with humans and we just need to get that message out there more because I hope that this beginning of this podcast alone is showing those out there that investing in your relationship skills for yourself pays off for a lifetime in so many multifaceted ways. It’s crazy that people don’t recognize it as if they do like, I’m going to re save for my retirement or I’m going to invest in my health and and work out at the gym. Whatever it is they’re investing into. For some reason there’s still this false belief out there that people don’t see the real,
Stacey: 15:30 I don’t need any relationship skills. I don’t need any improvement in my skill level in interacting with any other humans. Every human relationship that I am is awesome. Everybody’s happy, everything’s always awesome. My family get togethers, awesome. My kids love me. It’s always awesome. Nobody buys my marriage, my business, my clients, everything is awesome. I don’t need any improvement. They’re like, it’s ridiculous. It’s crazy and we’re hurting ourselves because just like Paul says, I’ll give you a great example. Paul and I are polar opposites. We are wired completely opposite from each other in pretty much every possible way that two people can be opposites. That’s me and Paul and in our business too. I am very visionary and big idea and strategic thinker and possibilities and Paul is super like, get it done, implement it. How are we going to do this? What are going to be the problems? How can I solve those problems and how can we get this done and close the box and like we are the opposite and we need, obviously you just heard me, we need both sides of those skillsets in order to have a phenomenally growing mission based organization, right?
Stacey: 16:43 You know that we need each other because we’re different. But if you don’t have the skillset to navigate a relationship with someone who’s polar opposite from you and you’re okay with them being polar opposite from you, you want it. But on the day to day, you know some times people want to scratch their eyes out. You must learn how to navigate life with team members who you’re a big thinker but you need the checkbox people. You need the doers. But sometimes you want to pull your hair out with the doers cause you really don’t know how to wrap your conversation for their ears. You don’t know how to be an effective communicator for how they’re wired, not how you’re wired. Like these are critical, necessary skills and if you don’t have them, it’s just causing more kerfuffle. And if you do have them, man, life is good and as hard as businesses, it’s easier and the ROI starts to skyrocket when it comes to your team, when it comes to your clients. But most importantly when it comes to your marriage,
Paul: 17:44 even if you’re not that person who is saying like, Oh my business is great and living sort of what we know is not true, right? Not living in a a reality based perspective. When you’re telling people that, um, most often what we see too is they’re just saying everybody else is wrong. Nobody gets me. I’m so misunderstood. I’m the genius here in my business. And just if everybody could see things my way, you know, then they would be corrected and they would truly hop on board and we would still be missing the boat. Right? We still be looking at the wrong target. So there’s so many ways to this space
Stacey: 18:15 or they’re a demand relationship. You know, they’re stuck in demand relationship where everybody that works in my business needs to support me and if you don’t get it, you’re out. Right? If you don’t support me, you’re out. Like that whole thinking. Like if you’re not seeing this the same way I’m seeing this, you’re gone. Like I can’t even be with you. That demand, that’s the same in marriage, by the way, is the same in parenting. It’s the same in friendship in my way or the highway. The wind lose. Like if you’re operating that way, it’s, you know, you’re living in the results of that. And so is your team. And if your spouse is involved, that’s where now we’re in a loop and it’s a dangerous loop. And so that’s why must have these skills. You must have these tools. So let’s go on to number three.
Paul: 18:59 Yeah. So there needs to be a strategic reason for each of you to work in the business. You know, very often what we see is, again, entrepreneurs have this sort of trajectory and it’s a good one and it’s a challenging one. It’s not an easy path. I’m not saying that you should have known better, it’s not as complicated, but we’re trying to shortcut that for you from being a little higher up on the mountain. And what happens is typically when entrepreneurs start getting to that point where they’re bringing in others or they just really want to bring in their spouse into the operations for one reason or another because they just want to spend more time with them or make them part of the business. Whatever your reason is, them work from home.
Stacey: 19:31 Yeah, them out of their job because their job is causing stress to the families. So we’re like, well, come work for the business this way. You won’t have to answer to a boss. We won’t have vacation day problems. All of the yada, yada, yada is, you won’t have to travel. All of those reasons are usually very common for why we’re bringing a spouse into our business.
Paul: 19:50 So it starts off that way, right? We start off with all these good intentions of why that’s going to be a great thing and it’s not really thought through. We just figured, Hey, we’ll work this out, which is going to require some relationship skills. Right? But nonetheless, we bring them in with the best of intentions, but there needs to be a strategic way of bringing them in or it doesn’t make sense and it’s not gonna work. So let’s look at both sides of it. There’s this is now where we’re going to get into the strategic part of this that we really have to be clear about. As you get into this decision, you don’t want to just make that decision and just decide, well, we’ll figure it out along the way. There’s a way to avoid a lot of unnecessary kerfuffle upfront if we can see it.
Stacey: 20:27 So if you have this invisible assumption like, Oh, we have personal reasons for both wanting to work in the business, so we’re going to do that and then they’re going to help out. It’s going to be super helpful to have them here. Like catch yourself on that word helpful. Just catch yourself because the way that it works, if you want to know what are strategies for how to successfully work with your spouse in your business, the one of the strategies is you need to have a strategic reason why each of you needs to work in the business. And that is comes down to understanding what is your unique brilliance. What is their unique brilliance? How are you wired? How are they wired? What is the role that you have in your business that they are the best choice for? Yeah, that’s exactly it. You need to know.
Stacey: 21:20 So when Paul was still working in corporate it and I was primarily running relationship development and growing this organization, it came to a point where I said, I need to hire my husband. We need to grow this organization to make enough to hire Paul, right? Because there’s nobody better at it infrastructure than Paul. There is nobody better at operations than Paul. There’s no better manager than Paul. And Paul develops half, at least half of the content around here. Like, I need him in the business full time because it’s holding us back that he’s not here. He is the best at all of those pieces. That is how he’s wired. It’s the opposite of how I’m wired. And yeah, in the beginning I could kind of grow this organization with some VA’s doing those roles, but as we got bigger, I needed to go beyond a VA and I’m not going to pay an employee when I could pay for Paul Martino. Right? He’s like the best. So there was a strategic reason for him to come into this business. He had a strategic role that he’s uniquely brilliant and wired for. And so he came into that. That is a strategic approach to working with your partner.
Intro: 22:32 Exactly. So the key operative word here is role, right? So what is the role that they are the best choice for? And if you’re just bringing them in for the sake of bringing them in because you think there’s a a good reason. It also needs to have a clear role where they can actually serve the business. It’s not something you want to make up as you go along. Chances are really small that’s going to work out for you from a strategic perspective alone.
Stacey: 22:59 Yeah. Don’t try to solve personal problems with a business solution. Don’t try to solve personal problems of my partners miserable where they are, so I’ll hire them. My partner travels too much in their jobs, so I’ll hire them. Do not use your business as a solution to a personal challenge because if we don’t actually solve the challenges in our lives, they run after us. Bigger hairier and scarier wherever we go. And the way that that ends up usually biting people in the butt is that you didn’t have a role for your partner and so now you’re going to fight about that. You’re going to, you’re going to fight about like, why aren’t you taking care of that? Like I don’t know how to take care of that. I thought I did the way you want, like why aren’t helping you this way? I thought you were going to be more help to me.
Stacey: 23:47 I thought you were going to like all of these. I thought you were all of these arguments that come into, Hey, we ended up in this situation where we actually didn’t have a clear role in, you’re not actually qualified for that role and a biting you in the butt. So because your problems chase after you bigger hairier and scarier if your partner isn’t happy where they are in their work. The solution for that is to learn how to be happy regardless of where you are in your work. If your partner travels too much for work, the solution is looking for something that makes their heart sing without that much travel in their work. And if they are uniquely brilliant for something in your business, God bless, that’s awesome. But think of it strategically. Make sure there’s a role, there’s a whole concept of role-based businesses versus personality driven businesses.
Stacey: 24:32 The old way of thinking in business as a personality based, a personality driven business where you’re like, Hey Betty, so smart, give Betty this. Hey Betty, so smart, we’re growing. Let this person report to Betty. Hey Betty, so good. Let her take on this. And we have a personality based business where you know Betty’s great Betty does things Betty’s way and we just keep putting more on her. But if you know, God forbid Betty got hit by a bus, nobody knows how to do anything around here because it was just Betty did it the way she was going to do it. Whereas a role based organization maps out what are the individual roles based on how somebody would be wired because you can’t have one role that needs to be serviced by the way to humans would be wired, right? Can’t ever roll. That would be both phenomenal for me as the visionary, strategic, big thinker and phenomenal for Paul as the how do you do it?
Stacey: 25:24 What are the holes? Let’s get it done. Like that’s not going to be the same role. There is no role that needs to be one person wired both ways. We’re polar opposites. So once you break down your business and to role base and there’s all kinds of stuff you can do searches on that for how to do that, then you need to think about how are you uniquely brilliant, how are you wired and your partner or vice versa. Let’s not overlook that. The power of that unique brilliance. So here’s the other side of this that’s often not seen. Not only do you want them to be serving the business in a way that they’re wired for because it will benefit the business, but longterm you want this to last. If they are not wired for that job, they will not like it. If they got into it and you’re like, I need someone to hit, I’ll just make up an example.
Paul: 26:08 I need somebody to handle mail, pick up, drop off the returns and pay the bills and my business. Not your role. And their job used to be one that was fulfilling for them in some way at least. Yeah. Like, or, or like they enjoy the creativity, creativity or getting things done or you know, whatever it is that they enjoyed about it and you’re not using what they’re uniquely wired for, they will become unhappy in that role. And now again, it’s a source of a fight. So it’s lose, lose and win-win and everything when it comes to relationship, including hiring for strategic reason, right? Based on their unique brilliance. You really want to find that for them as much for your business if you want it to last long term. And by the way, I learned unique brilliance. It was a concept that Dan Kennedy taught. Um, I think there are stuff out there.
Stacey: 26:51 If you Google Dan Kennedy unique brilliance, you can learn his quadrants and how did you figure out what yours is and what someone else’s is? We do our unique brilliance quadrants. Everyone on our team does theirs. It’s just a super great way to make sure that people are in the right seat. Right? And that brings us then to number four that we want to cover today, which is every role in your business needs systems, processes, and explicit communication in order for the person who’s in that role to be able to operate effectively. And here’s where invisible assumptions and personality based businesses really become miserable places to work. Because when someone does their job and they don’t meet your expectation and then you’re unhappy and they’re unhappy because they wanted to do a good job and you’re not happy with them, they don’t understand why it is a miserable loop of like, this isn’t good enough.
Stacey: 27:51 You need to bring your best, and you have all these invisible expectations of how something should be done, how it can be effective, but it’s not written down. There’s no system, there’s no process, there’s no checklist. They really can’t win. And so when you, as the owner of the business, that’s your personal responsibility to ensure that there are systems, processes, and explicit communications for every single role in your organization. And this is mission critical. If you and your spouse both work together. This is where some of the biggest breakdown happens is when we bring our invisible expectations and assumptions to our work and their work. When we say to them, Hey, I’m bringing you in like just help me out with the client. Help best this week, please. It’s just crazy. Just go in there and help out and then they do all kinds of things.
Stacey: 28:42 That to them is totally helping from their visibility, from their lenses, from how they’re wired, for how they see the world, but like the four things that you’re like, I’m still having to do these four things and customer service. What happened this week? They don’t see the world that way. They didn’t know what your four things were. It was implied right when you thought they were going to take workload off of you, but it was never actually communicated explicitly or there was no process for that. You, we carry these invisible expectations. They are so damaging to relationships. I want you to check in with yourself right now. If you work with your partner, focus on that. If you don’t work with your partner, focus on some other team member or some other function in your business or at work. What is something that’s going on that is really disappointing you, really frustrating you, something that’s not being done the way you want it to be done and ask yourself, are there explicit communication around this?
Stacey: 29:41 Are there systems and processes and checklists for how this gets done? Is that, does that process include checking in for completion and success factors and moving things up or down as they need to be moved? Correcting things and auto adjusting as it needs to happen? Is this moving forward with a process or a system or a checklist and if it’s not and we’re just counting on bill to do a good job and do it right, it’s our responsibility. That is a demand, relationship based skillset that is coming back to bite you in the butt, which is what demand relationship does. It breaks down relationships between two people because we’re carrying around this invisible expectation is hurting us and it’s hurting them and things aren’t moving forward. This is mission critical. If this person is your spouse, the worst thing you can do working with your partner in a business is having visible expectations as to how they should be operating and stuff that you never thought to mention.
Stacey: 30:45 Stuff that you never thought to explain. Stuff that you’d never had to create a system or process for before because you were the only one who did it and because they’re awesome and you love them or whatever, you just assume they would pick it up and run with it, but there’s no process. There is no SOP, there’s no system for it and it’s not fair. It’s not going to go well and it’s not just your business that’s going to suffer. It’s your relationship with them that’s going to suffer and then that loop kicks in from business to marriage, marriage to business, business to marriage, marriage to business. It’s not good. It’s too risky.
Paul: 31:21 So as you can see, if you take all that in and really look at it, it really wasn’t about the other person, right? It was about understanding these invisible assumptions, all these invisible layers that we’re bringing to this situation, which is creating a problem that was unnecessary and what we really have to do as entrepreneurs or the business owner is learn how to become a good business owner. Learn how to hire people that are different than you. Bring in those skills that you get to snap onto your business to make you so multifaceted, which you need to be if you want to survive, right, and becoming that person that can lead the business. That’s what this is about. Making the decisions as the leader of the business based upon clarity of what the real root issue is. Preparing for it, investing the time and getting it right and then make the decision, not a, I’ll make a decision and then I’ll figure this out later.
Paul: 32:09 That’s actually not a great approach to take in pretty much anything in your business except for maybe learning a new path of what your customers might need. That might be the only time because you have to see what people are wanting from your business, whatever the case may be. So it’s really not a good idea to just form this as it goes and hopefully with the clarity of what we already covered here, you now see the roadmap ahead of what you need to be doing so that you can handle this smartly upfront knowing it’s still not easy, you know, it’s not like, Oh, this is just going to snap into place. We have to grow to become that person. So you will, if you’re starting this endeavor off, you’ll have some growing, but you’ve got it covered now because you know what the targets are.
Stacey: 32:50 So let’s get the action steps down. What can we start doing now?
Paul: 32:53 All right, so number one, get the skills, start one of our programs, get your ticket to the next live event, but get the skills you need to become that person that can interact with those people that are not like us and our spouse and not have relationship. Become part of that negative loop that we talked about earlier. Number two, strategic thinking. Start looking at how your spouse is wired. How are you wired? How are your team members wired and understand how to interact with them in a way that’s constantly building up that relationship, building up your rapport, building up that productivity and that good feeling of working with each other. Learn to start looking at those things. Number three, roll base business. Start looking at the roles in your company, not the personalities and how someone would need to be wired to be the best at that role, especially if you expect that person to be around for a long time.
Stacey: 33:45 Awesome. If you love this podcast, take a screenshot of it and share it. Hashtag RT podcast hashtag relationship transformers tag me and social media and share it with the people who need it. And until next time, remember together we are changing the way relationship is done.
Outro: 34:07 Hey, would you like to get big results in your relationships in just 10 seconds a day? If so, then subscribe to our daily inspiration for relationship transformers or the D.I.R.T at www.MartinoPodcast.com/DIRT
We all have those moments where we get triggered by our partner, and unfortunately, people don’t know what to do at that moment, and it happens to the best of us.
In this episode, Paul and Stacey will share the surprising answer they have to the popular questions, “Why do people make promises they don’t keep?” and “What can I do when my partner keeps making promises they don’t keep?”
In this episode, Stacey will share a special video that she recorded where she shares the three secrets that can revolutionize the way any of us does relationships. She will talk about how we can implement the relationship development tools in our relationships in order to get the love and passion that we really want.
