Power Up Your Marriage and Business

Why is it so hard to get your spouse on board with establishing a long term vision for your life and/or business? Is it just us? Yes, we’ve struggled with it at times and so have our clients. So in this episode, we’ll dive into why creating vision is a struggle and how to do it better.

If you’re married, you want more intimacy. As a business owner, you want more revenue. But somehow getting both at the same time is elusive. Why? Because as you’re going all-in on the business, your marriage tends to take a back seat and the relationship suffers. With it, goes intimacy.

How would like to ignite the intimacy in your marriage while growing your business? Meet Monica Tanner, entrepreneur and relationship expert. She’s will point out some of the things we’re doing that is blocking intimacy. Instead learn how to create greater work-life balance, allow conflict to evolve into intimacy and ultimately grow the business. All at the same time.

Dreaming big for your business is wonderful but trying to start big is detrimental. It stretches your time and resources thin which creates additional stress on you and your relationships. And if you need capital like a loan of investor, to finance the dream, “fo getta bout it.” That’s additional stress you don’t need. By starting smaller, you move forward much quicker and do so with less risk.

In fact, the odds of success are greater when you start small. 

This episode was inspired by a recent business we helped and the vault of other clients that faced similar situations. We review 3 case studies (my own example included) where the dreams was fine, it was the starting points that changed for the better. 

Want to live a better balanced life and win in marriage AND business at the same time?

Many business owners are great leaders at work but not so much at home. I may or may not have been one of those. The question is, why? Why can we be great at building teams, creating healthy cultures, and keep our customers happy but not do the same thing at home?

This question and more we ask this week’s guest, Jesus Sampedro. He’s a leadership consultant, college professor, author, husband and father. We dig deep into why we as business leaders often fail to build up our most important organization and serve or key stakeholders. - Our family.

Listen to this gripping episode.

We hope to save some marriages with this episode. Since money issues is the number one reason for conflict and divorce in a marriage, we would be remiss if we didn’t address it. The conflict boils down to this difference. One spouse is a saver while the other is a spender. It’s the same in our marriage. I (Robert) am the spender and Kay Lee is the saver. 

In this episode, we will share our story and how we’ve been able to reconcile these two extremes. You don’t have to choose one over the other. You can have both but it will take some compromise and creativity. So if you want to bring greater peace in your marriage, then click to listen and thank us later.

You may have been experiencing or hearing business owners grumble about how hard it is to find good workers. Or that the ones they have don’t put in max effort. According to Gallup, only 33% of employees in the U.S. are considered engaged in their job. That means there are a lot of “slackers” out there, right?

Before you start bringing out the axe to chop off part of your workforce, you need to start identifying “why” employees are disengaged. There are multiple reasons this can be happening but a common one is their personal life is being challenged and they don’t feel they have someone to talk to. So like it or not, what’s going on at home will effect their work performance. 

But as an employer, how can you help everyone’s personal needs? You have a business to run. Introducing Marketplace Chaplains. A unique twist on the chaplains you would see at a hospital or in the military. These are safe “spaces” for employees to confide with. 

Why should you care? It’s not only good for the employee but you’ll also see an increase in productivity, morale, and the bottom line. Basically, it’s good for business. Listen in as we talk to Danica Dedmon of Marketplace Chaplains and hear what your employees are dealing with and how you can improve the overall health of the organization by caring for their personal needs.

If you’re wondering what it takes to build a successful marriage it’s very business like. Take communication for example. In a business, good communication is a key to great marketing but also to foster better teamwork. In other words, the key elements that make a business successful can also be used in marriage.

Take vision, planning, rewarding success, delegation of tasks, vacation days, and logistics. Imagine if you implemented all of this into your marriage? You will be happier, efficient, and having fun. 

This week’s episode we discuss all the business like elements we institute into our marriage that gives us balance, keeps us connected, helps us grow, and keeps things fun.

Owning a business can be awesome. But it can also come with some challenges. Like dealing with difficult customers/clients. The demanding few can eat into your personal time. Unfortunately, you can’t blame everything on your customer. We always have a choice as to how much we work, how available we are to customers, and how fast we feel we need to respond to every “emergency.” 

Meet this week’s guest, Sheila Wilkinson esq. She knows firsthand what it’s like to put in 120 hour work weeks and be available 24/7. Not fun. Especially when the practice you were instrumental in building gets taken out from under you. Never again. 

Listen to how Sheila has come back and built the business she wants to live the life she wants to live. She currently resides in two countries and has the most gracious way to set proper boundaries between life and business while still serving her clients with utmost respect. 

Intentional is a keyword that will help you create greater work-life balance and realize your dreams in marriage and business. Most couples we talk to have the mentality that if you just work hard enough your life will fall into place. There’s some truth to that but if you don’t have a clear direction of what you’re trying to accomplish how will you know when you’ve reached your destination?

Even for our own lives, we’ve found that the more specific we make our goals, the more likely we achieve them. 

 For example, if part of the vision in your marriage is to be able to take off whenever you want to wherever you want, how does your business need to be structured in order to accomplish that? In short, you’ll have to have key people in place so that the business can run itself and still grow. 

That may seem like a long way off from now but if you start taking intentional steps toward that goal, you’ll start to realize greater freedom in the present. Take a listen to how we walked through a series of steps to help one our clients start growing their business for greater freedom.

We all know communication is key when it comes to marriage. It’s also the foundation for great marketing. So we decided to bring in an expert in communication. Hall of Fame radio producer Steve Reiter. He knows great communication and communicators. 

Steve has produced some national and internationally syndicated radio shows. One of which edged out the “King of Radio” Howard Stern, to be inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame. 

Tune in to this episode as Steve shares the fundamentals of great communication but also the gripping story of how he lost his wife Elizabeth. When it’s all said and done, succeeding in business is grand but making relationships a priority is more important.

We just celebrated 17 years of marriage and we thought we’d record an episode during our getaway while the thoughts are fresh in our mind. What have we learned about marriage and doing business together? 

Being married brings along it’s own set of rewards and challenges but working together can make very interesting. What we’ve learned through counseling and working at our relationship is as long as you have the right tools, you can do anything together. And there aren’t any challenges you can’t work through together. 

Can you avoid conflict? No. But understanding that having to work through different points of view is a good thing. In this episode we summarize some of the do’s and dont’s in a relationship based on our experience.

Want to live a better balanced life and win in marriage AND business at the same time? Purchase our book Tandem: The married entrepreneurs’ guide for greater work-life balance. https://www.thetandembook.com/

“Show me the money!” If you remember that phrase then you’re probably as old as I am. HaHa! That’s a quote from the movie, Jerry Maguire. The movie was about a fledgling sports agent played by Tom Cruise, who was trying to land a big name football star to kick start his career. Money and fame was the end goal for the athlete. Simply money was the end game for Cruise’s character.  

This week’s guest, David Meltzer, was the CEO for the Leigh Steinberg Sports Marketing Agency the movie was based on. And like Tom Cruise’s character, David was all about the money. Until he lost it all.

Fortunately, before he went bankrupt, he re-committed his life to prioritize family and relationships over money. Thank God he did because it was the support of his wife, family and closest friends that allowed him to re-make himself and career to become even better than he was the first time around.

Except this time, he’s redefined success and has a motto, “make a lot of money, help a lot of people, and have fun.” As he shares in this interview, you can prioritize relationships and still make a S_it load of money. 

So before you go on with life prioritizing your business, take a listen to this ultra successful entrepreneur tell it like it is. You won’t regret it.

Many people think becoming a millionaire think you need to inherit it, take some big risks, invest into the next Amazon, win the lottery, or build a business that blows up. That does happen. But the average millionaire does it like we did. The boring way. No huge risks but what we did was invest early and often. 

The amount of money you invest is not as much of the issue as the fact that you do invest. In this episode you will hear our story, mistakes, successes, and 5 keys to become a boring millionaire. You’ll be surprised to hear that anyone can become wealthy if they have the right mindset and habits on how they treat money. 

So pull up and buckle up as we share how to become a millionaire the boring way.

I’m sure you’ve heard the term, “money can’t buy you happiness.” If you’re like many, you may be one of those that say, “try me.” But if you’ve been around enough rich people like this week’s guest, Marissa Nehlsen has, you’ll know it’s true. Not that money can’t help, but it takes more than money to live a happy and fulfilled life.

So tune into this week’s episode to lay out some keys to living a life rich in the fullness of the word. Marissa came from a dysfunctional background and lived in a trailer park before she decided to not be the victim but be the victor. After fighting her way out of her circumstance, she now owns several multi-million dollar companies and yes, even a mountain. With the second one in the works.

But even with all that financial success, she understands it takes more than money that leads to happiness. In this episode she will lay out her four forms of poverty that you must address to live a rich life. Click the play button and listen.

The reason many entrepreneurs struggle with resting is that it feels unproductive. If you rest, you’re not getting things done, right? The opposite is true. Rest is very productive for your business and marriage. 

First, you need to understand that rest is not simply sleeping or lounging around watching TV. It’s disengaging from work to allow your body and mind to recover. And it doesn’t take long either. Taking periodic, 5 minute breaks from the work at hand will rejuvenate your body and mind to perform better once you get back to work.

There are also many health benefits as listed below and you’ll be a much happier spouse and parent. 

The kicker, is how to get in a state of rest. That can be very hard to do especially for the “A” type personality. Tune in to this weeks episode as we tackle all these issues. 

You may have been told to focus on what you want, not what you don’t want. Your mind focuses on what you talk about so when you say, “don’t touch the fire,” you’re going touch the fire. As a golfer, if I tell myself, “don’t hit it in the lake, inevitably, I hit it in the lake.”

So, yes, mindset is a real thing and it will affect your marriage and business. We were just on a ski vacation in Park City, Utah and had an interesting mindset conversation on the ski slope. It wasn’t planned but we started out on a beautiful winter day, snow was perfect and the sun was out. We started out having fun on the slopes until Kay Lee slipped and fell. It wasn’t major. Just a minor slip. But she struggled to get up for some reason. 

She was so frustrated after she finally got up that she wanted to quit. On the first day! It wasn’t anything she hadn’t done before but for some reason, this fall got into her head. All the years of having fun skiing went out the window with this one fall. In this episode, we talk about some of the mindset lessons from that day and other sports that can help you focus on the right things in your marriage and business.

Most, if not all, employees want retirement benefits and I know most employers want to provide them. But many small business owners don’t think they can afford to provide them. So we sought out financial and retirement plan expert Pete Walkey, who dispels the myth that small businesses can’t afford to provide retirement benefits. 

You will find that you can and there are no-cost to low-cost options to provide this benefit that will help you attract and retain great talent. And these days, finding good employees are hard to find. So the more benefits you can provide, the greater value you are to employees. 

Plus, we talk about the concept of “practicing retirement.” Why wait till retirement to enjoy life when you can and should do it now?

Are you the high achiever, organized, hard working, and calm under pressure type of entrepreneur? Do you suffer from negative self-talk, perfectionism, struggle to relax, fear of failure/success, and have difficulty saying “no?” If you look like the pillar of strength from the outside but deal with some internal struggles (who doesn’t?), then you may not be truly happy.

Join us for a great conversation with Dr. Ellen Wong. She’s a naturopathic doctor who is also the Chief Happiness Officer for many entrepreneurs and executives. She’s going to show us how to be truly happy regardless of what’s going on in our life and business.

Working with your spouse is always a hot topic. We typically get three reactions. Either, “It’s amazing,” “never,” or “we’re doing the best we can.” Regardless of which camp you lie, this episode is going to help your marriage whether you work with your spouse or not.  

According to the Kaufman Foundation, 71% of business owners are married and about half of them work with their spouse. That means at least half of our audience already works with their spouse. The rest of you either will never work together or thinking about it. You’d think working with your “best friend” wouldn’t be that difficult but when you’re around each other all the time, you start taking things for granted. This leads to acting or saying things you wouldn’t otherwise do with an employee or customer. 

While working with your spouse can pose many challenges, there are significant benefits like working with someone you trust the most, combining complimentary skills, and higher earning potential. In this episode, we discuss THREE keys that will help you and your spouse form a winning team.

If you’ve never tried tandem surfing before, it’s not as easy as it looks. It takes a lot of skill, determination, coordination and teamwork. It’s two people moving as one on a surfboard. And if you don’t, you could fall and get hurt. Kinda like a marriage.

Meet this week’s guest, Bear and Cindy Woznick. Tandem surf champion, author, entrepreneur, speaker, and TV host. They provide some great insight into working well as a team inside and out of the business. But more importantly, how to be honoring as husband and wife.

Listen in as you’ll hear some great life, marriage and business lessons from the surfboard.