What’s The Episode About:
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:
- If there’s something wrong in your relationship, it comes into the business, and vice versa (00:52)
- The ceiling on your business is the ceiling on your relationship (03:38)
- It’s a relationship deficit of what we don’t see that creates a loop (06:35)
- Investing in our relationship skills for ourselves pays off for a lifetime (14:39)
- The importance of the strategic reason for each of you to work in the same business (18:59)
- Don’t try to solve personal problems with a business solution (22:59)
- You can’t win without systems and processes (27:51)
- Understanding the invisible assumptions that create problems (31:21)
Where Can I Learn More:
When Did It Air:
12/19/2019
Episode Transcript:
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