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Good morning everyone, you guys are having a wacky, fantastic Wednesday.

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I wanted to make this podcast because it's probably related to the, you know, probably the number one question that we get on personal lives when we have our events.

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And so we're, I'm on day five of nine straight days of events right now.

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And so I woke up a little bit earlier today before we have our fifth day of events to kind of talk about something that a lot of people ask about, which is marriage and money.

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Right. And so I told all this does your marriage make you money. And some people might read that and be like, Oh, it's marriages and money, which I find funny because it's the number one thing that people argue marriage.

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And maybe the work life balance that the entrepreneur might have. And so what I wanted to do is I'm kind of speaking specifically to the entrepreneurs who are married or are considering marriage.

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And so I want to first lay out some like context, which is one, I have not been married for 20 years. And so I cannot say what that is like and nor am I claiming to know.

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Layland, I have a very specific very unique marriage. And we approached it somewhat differently than a lot of people do and we get questions about it all the time.

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And so rather than if you're having questions about your marriage situation, I never want to, you know, and marriages or anything like that.

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But what happens a lot of times after people come to our events is they either like go all in on a relationship with a tons of people who were with, you know, partnered with someone who became got married after, you know, hearing Layland, I speak about marriage at our events.

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And we've also had people who are at our events who after events actually broke up, got divorced separated, et cetera. And so what I want to provide is just a framework that we use, used to look at our marriage.

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And I think a useful framework for entrepreneurs to look at honestly ROI of the partnership that they're, you know, beginning right or they're in right now.

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And so first I want to kind of lay out the three things that we think it takes to make a marriage work, but also a business partnership work because ultimately they're very similar in terms of how you're figuring this out.

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And as a total side note, if you were a betting person, you should always bet against partnerships and marriage because the likelihood that someone makes it their entire lives and does not end a business partnership or does not end a marriage is very low.

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Right. The only way that it would be quote successful is if you, you know, if one of you dies essentially it's like the only way that our society defines success within the context of marriage and partnership.

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Right. And so I think that's a little bit morbid, but I want to give you kind of three, three kind of frame sets to work with. So the first is that in order to have what we believe, and this is also adopted from different billionaires that we've, we've listened to not just like personally, but also their podcast, their content, their books, et cetera.

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The first one is that there has to be shared mission, which is not just like within the business context, it's shared mission for what you want to accomplish, but within marriage, it's really just like life mission, like what do you want to accomplish together?

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What do you want your life to look like? Because marriage and partnerships are truly just a set of agreements. And a lot of people enter their marriages based on, you know, chemistry and love and emotions, right.

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And a lot of times we know in business that emotional decisions tend to not be very good ones, which is fine and interesting because we make the biggest decision of our lives based on emotions.

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So anyways, figuring out whether or not you and your partner are aligned, and I'm going to talk about more of this within the context of marriage, I'll probably do another one on like business partnerships specifically, but within the context of marriage is the mission, right.

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But are we trying to go to the same place and we want our lives to look the same way. And if you actually spell out what you want your life to look like, a lot of times, you'll find that might be different, right.

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What you think ideal scene is versus someone else. And so a typical example of this that might present at one of our events would be we have somebody comes up.

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Listen, all I want to do is work. I love working and all my spouse wants to do is like take vacations and take time off. And I feel like we're at odds, right. I feel like we're not doing we're not alive. We're not doing what we're both of our ideal scene is different, right.

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What we're trying to strive towards is different, right. And so that is the first piece is like what what is an ideal scene look like in terms of your life, right.

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The second piece is shared values. So it's cool to know where you're trying to go, but how you're going to get there is different based on the values that you want to have.

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And so for Layla and I, for example, we are both incredibly growth oriented. And one of the issues that I think happens with entrepreneurs is that they outgrow their spouses, because what happens is your business continues to force you to grow, continues to force you to level up, continues to force you to acquire new skills.

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Most many times does not do that. And so what ends up happening is that people continue to grow, I would say, you know, they continue to change in a certain way. And if you're not in the same environment and responding to the same stressors, oftentimes you grow apart, right.

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And so for us are for me, especially because when I was looking, you know, evaluating spouses are spouse options, figuring out who was going to grow an alignment with me was going to be one of the most important things in my life.

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And so the final piece of the three kind of piece framework is complimentary skill sets. And so a lot of times, if you have two people who do the same thing, right, or have the same skills, you can step on each other's toes.

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And so I think just like in business, you want to have clear divisions and clear roles and define roles, having clear roles in marriage and house works the same way.

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So they found they did a study on when husbands basically this is kind of interesting. The more housework, a husband does, the less likely the marriage is to stay is to be successful, which I think is crazy to think about, right.

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The housework husband does the less likely the marriage is to be successful. Now, why would that be the research is possibly that it had to do with beliefs around marriage being more modernized as in like the kids these days, right.

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If you were more likely to actually work and have a split, right, you have a red winner and if somebody keeps care of the house, you have clearly defined roles when those people start mixing in each other's stuff.

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I do dishes one way you do dishes another way, whereas when there are two different roles, you actually can have clear distinctions and then people end up understanding what the trade offs are, right.

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What are our agreements? What do I do? What do you do to contribute to the success of this family, which is contributing to the shared mission. And so Gary V, I think probably popularized this concept, but the difference between the cheerleader and the full back, right.

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I've only seen two different kind of structures work within marriage combinations, right. And so number one is the cheerback, cheerback, the hybrid, right.

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The cheerleader set up, which is you're the breadwinner, they are the cheerleader. And with the cheerleader's role is to 100% support the player on the field.

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And so the last thing that a true cheerleader or real cheerleader would do is tell the quarterback, tell the player to come off the field when the game is on the line, right.

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That's not what a real cheerleader would do. They would say, you go out, win the game, I've got this. And so what they're doing is actually giving you your attention back.

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They're actually making the rest of your life easier so that you can go out and win and fulfill your role. And then they're fulfilling their role. And a lot of times there can be lots of fulfillment in doing it that way, because everyone's sharing the same end goal, right. We're trying to win the game, whatever winning the game means for you, right.

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The fullback set up, which is the set up that Layla and I had is that we're both in the game together. We're both in the trenches together. We're blocking and tackling for one another to move the ball forward.

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Personally, I had never had prior to Layla a fullback set. I had always had a cheerleader set up. And I think it was difficult for me because all I thought about all the time was business and work. And it was really honestly the thing that I cared the most about.

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And obviously I was younger so I know that timing has to do something with this, but like the things that I cared most about was the work that I was doing. And I was trying to establish a career and build a foundation and build a base so that I could support a family that I would want to have later on in life.

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And so Layla was the first person that entered my life and wanted to do the things that I wanted to do at the same time. And so a lot of times opposites attract, right, and then attack, right, but opposites attract, but a lot of times they don't share similar interests.

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And so when Layla and I got married, it was a very calculated decision of like, okay, you're into fitness, you like living the same way I do in terms of healthy lifestyle.

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How you eat, how you exercise, these things are important to you. You're not going to try and off-rail me if I'm trying to diet. You're not going to try and tell me that, oh no, don't work out, like that's not important, right?

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You're not going to start sabotaging the things that I deem are successful to the mission of my overall life, right?

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And so that's on the fitness and health side, but also on the business side, there are times when your marriage may lose you money because your spouse does not agree with the commitment that you're making for your business.

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And that's going to cause a lot of cognitive dissonance. That's going to cause a lot of pain for you because you're trying to choose between two things that mean a lot to you, the person and the relationship and the business.

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And ideally, if you have an agreement that set up ahead of time of the fact of like, this is what we are both doing together, this is what this business is going to feed all of us, then you can make temporary trade-offs of like, this is going to be kind of rough for the next six months and I need you to bear with me, right?

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I need you to let me, I need you to let me do this, I need you to let me win this game because the game's on the line right now and I need to be in, right?

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I can't be thinking about these are the things right now because it's not going to work.

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And so it's, it, one of the fun things about the fullback setup is that a different entrepreneur told me this can court write that he had read a research study that when a couple,

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they're interested in business together and makes their first dollar together, the likelihood that they stay married increases like fivefold, which I think is fascinating.

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And I think it's like having a child together with someone, right? Is that like the business becomes your child?

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And because as soon as you make your first dollar together, like you're in it, you're committed in a new way, it draws yet another line to you, it's like, okay, one is you start having sex and you like each other.

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And it's like, okay, you're living together. Okay, now you have kids. Okay, now you have a business. It's like you are in, right? You are super committed.

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And so when couples come to us and they ask us these hard questions of like, okay, I feel like my partner doesn't support me in my, in my life.

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A lot of times we're like, well, then you need to have a really candid relationship with that, sorry, candid conversation with them about what the, what the goals of your life is supposed to be.

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If that mission isn't aligned, the likelihood that you're going to achieve it is really low, right?

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Like because you're both trying to go towards different things.

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I recently had someone who's like, you know, I've been dating my girlfriend for three years and all she wants to, she has a job and she just wants to take vacations all the time.

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Like that's all she wants. She doesn't like love her job. She just does it. And I just want to work all the time because they love what I do, right?

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That can be a really hard setup because they don't understand why you like working so much, right?

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Because to them work is just a means to an end rather than the actual end itself, right?

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And so one of the interesting things about entrepreneurship is that we aspire for freedom, right?

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Most of us sign up for this game because we want to be free. We want temporal freedom.

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We want to do things we want to do with our time. We want geographic freedom. We want to be where we want to be.

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We want financial freedom so that we can spend, we want to spend and do what we want to do, right?

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So let's do what you want to do when you want to do it where you want to do it and ideally with whom you want to do it.

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And so that's like the ultimate freedom that a lot of us are going after.

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But what's interesting is that the definition that society will give us in terms of freedom because that is like Hollywood, et cetera,

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is that they tell you freedom is not working, right? That's what freedom is to them, right?

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But the reality is that most entrepreneurs, if they don't work, they go crazy, right?

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Like you can only watch so many Netflix shows. You can only sit on a beach for two or three days before going insane, right?

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And so a lot of people have this goal that they isn't even realistic because they don't even actually want that.

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So I implore you to redefine your freedom as the freedom to choose, right?

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And so if you as the entrepreneur like what you do, then you've already achieved freedom because you're choosing actively to do the things that you want to do.

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And ideally with the people that you want to do them with. And so like for us, I work all the time.

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Do I have to work all the time from a financial standpoint? I don't need to work a day for the rest of my life.

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But I choose to work. And for that reason, I am free.

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And I think that if you can erase and break the, break the belief in your mindset about what has been given and passed on to us,

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about what freedom is supposed to be and what success means, right? Success to me as a choice is being able to choose what I want.

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Most of the nation real quick, if you are a business owner that has a big old business and wants to get to a much bigger business,

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going to $50, $100,000 plus we would love to talk to you.

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And if you like that and would like to hear more about it, go to acquisition.com and you can plan anywhere on the page and talk to one of our team and see if we can help you get there.

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And so if you sort of bring this back home, the setup that another entrepreneur says,

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like, hey, I'm involved. My wife has a job. When can she quit? Like that's an incredibly personal decision.

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And so I try not to give these like huge life decision pieces of advice like you should quit and join the business.

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Because that person might resent the entrepreneur for the rest of their lives because they left a career that they actually enjoyed.

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Or they didn't want to be in the game, right? I mean, it's definitely a high stress game, like sometimes cheerleaders should stay on the sidelines.

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But it's understanding what role that I make you have. Now, if you can't figure it out, if the person is not a cheerleader, they are not supporting you.

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They don't want you to stay in the game to win the game, right? When the game is on the line, when the best of you is required.

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If they're not there to support you, but they're not in the trenches with you, then that's when you're in No Man's Land.

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That's when someone is pulling away and saying, why are you working so much?

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You need to spend more time xyz, things like that. That is when it will start to grade on you.

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And that's where you have to have really clear candid conversations about what expectations are and what agreements you want to make.

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Because they're trade-offs. And at that point, it's a decision that you need to make.

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Like, is our mission in life aligned, right? Is the way we want to get their values aligned?

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And do our skill sets and our actions do they complement one another, or do they detract from one another?

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Are we stepping one another into the toes and creating conflict when there doesn't need to be any, right?

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And so, when you look at it in that framework, the cheerleader in the fullback, I think it will give you a lot of insight in terms of which dynamic you have.

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And if you're in the in between, you have to go one way or the other.

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And if you can't make the decision, then sometimes that relationship, if it's a girlfriend, whatever, or a boyfriend, might not be the best one.

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And that's okay. You know what I mean? Like, it's better than consistently for the rest of your life thinking, like, well, both try to accomplish a different objective.

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Well, they want their life to look different than you do. Well, that's going to be hard because you're literally trying to create different things.

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And that means by fundamentally, you're going to be in conflict all the time, right?

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And so, if you do not have, like, so if you have a fullback setup, which is what I can speak more, you treat your relationship like you treat a partnership.

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Because you are in a business partnership together, it's just, it's just double as important.

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Which means that your marriage has to come first before the business.

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And what I mean by that is that if Layla and I are upset with one another, everything in life sucks because the business will also suffer.

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So it's like everything sucks. But if our marriage is good, if we're on good terms, then even if the business is having a bad day or whatever,

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I know that like my fundamental rock, which is our relationship because we can build another business, right?

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We can have another kid, but like the machine, the foundation that this is built on is still rock solid, right?

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And so in the fullback setup, a lot of the, like, the easiest thing to do is just ask really clearly, like, what do you want me to do?

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What do you want for me? What do you want your role to be? Like a four hours document, like, which is what we do for every role in the business?

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What's your four hours for wife and what's your four hours for husband?

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I know this sounds insane, but a lot of times if you don't actually define clearly what you want from the person, what their role and what the results you're expecting are,

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then that's when you come into conflict because you have unspoken expectations, right?

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And so then you're upset about something that they didn't do, that they didn't know that you wanted them to do, and then you sound like a crazy person, right?

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And then they don't understand why you're upset for some reason, or you are upset and you don't know why that they don't like that they didn't do x, y, and z, right?

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And so Leila was the first person that I ever jaded that made me money, right?

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When the moment that I knew that I was going to marry her was when things were crumbling in the business, and I was stressed beyond belief, and I actually asked for a one month break.

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I was like, I just need the time to just like get my shit together.

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And so she actually flew out to launch a gym.

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And in that month, she broke every sales record that we had ever had. She still holds the record. She did 240 sales in 28 days.

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And I saw that as someone who was strong, A, when I was weak, but stood tall when things were crumbling.

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So when the pressure was on, she was better. And for me, that was probably the single one of the, I mean, there were multiple turning points in the relationship.

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But when she came back from that, I was like, man, this bitch is hard.

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And I, I saw that and I was like, this is what I want to go to war with.

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And I think that if you look at your spouse as someone you're going to war with because a lot of times life is war, you know what I mean?

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It's a series of battles and the war is the mission of trying to accomplish, right?

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And the nice thing is that the mission can change together when you decide together with if you want your life to look differently.

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And the beauty of the fullback setup is you're both sharing the same experiences that are going to shape your viewpoints.

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And so my belief at least with Layla is that if we input the same data, we will come to the same conclusions because we have the same values.

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And so if we ever have disagreements, the first question is like, what information are you working off of?

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What experience are you projecting onto this that I'm not, that I don't have?

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And so when we do that, we can figure out what data we don't have together so that once we're both informationed up, then it's like, cool, we use the same decision making framework.

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Where you get in trouble is where you have different values, which means you see the world in different ways, which means you make decisions that are different based on the same information.

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And that's where things get trouble because you just, you get into a lock, you get into a standstill of like, oh shit, what do we do now?

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I think we should do this. They think we should do this. And like, you can compromise, but on some level, you disagree fundamentally with what you should be doing.

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All right, both of you were dissatisfied because you don't think it's the best way to do it. And that's where things kind of go awry.

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And so, anywho, if you're appraising your relationship, if you're looking about whether, A, you want to bring someone into your business.

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All right, do they fit clearly a cheerleader or full back framework? Are they a person who wants to cheer on the sideline?

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Give you your attention back. Take care of the kids. Take care of the house. Take care of all the things. Give you attention back.

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All right, the definition of help, by the way, is giving someone attention back. If you've ever had someone in your life who comes in,

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it's like, why'd you let it help you? And you're like, you are not helping me. You were making my life way harder, right? That is not help.

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The definition of help is that you were making someone in life easier. The noise in their life goes down so that they can take more attention and apply it to the thing that helps both of you in the long run.

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Right? And that's what agreements are based on. It is a contract, right? Like you literally sign a contract when you get married.

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And so you should look at the terms of that agreement before you sign it, right? And if you hadn't figured what out those terms are, you need to sit down and have a really real conversation very soon.

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And that conversation may be one of the hardest ones you have in your life, but it's one of the most important ones to not sugarcoat shit.

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And one of the easiest hacks to figure out how to have that conversation is everything that you tell your friends about what you wish your wife did or what she is not doing.

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Same thing goes for husbands, whatever. Save those words exactly the way you're saying it to them because usually when you say that you're not sugarcoating it, you're being real, you're being direct.

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Say those words to your spouse. And when you say that, then a lot of times you'll be shocked at the response, which is like, I just didn't know that that's what you want.

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I can do that. I love you. I just didn't know that that's what you wanted and I didn't know that that's what you needed.

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And we can communicate that way a lot of times you will be able to win.

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And so to bring this all home, if you're appraising your relationship and you're in business together, clearly to find your roles.

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You have to have clear lanes just like you do at home, right? You have to have clear lanes of operation. You can't be stepping on one another's toes.

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It doesn't work if it's like, it's me and then so and so is my helper. It does not work because you're both doing the same things.

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It's like you end up having conflicts because anyone's going to do some things differently. I would operate the business differently than Layla does, but I think she's better at it.

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And she frees up my time so that I can market sell and folks on the product, right?

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Now, if you have the cheerleader setup, again, clear definition, clear roles, clear communication.

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But here, the definition of our roles is I'm 100% of the business, you're 100% out of the business, but your role is to support me so that I can support our family.

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Right? And so if you don't know where you stand, then you need to figure out where you stand with your partner and whether you want the same things.

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And if you get to the end of that conversation, you find out that given the same information you want to create outcomes, then it's something that you need to be able to have a very like.

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You need to be okay with breaking up a partnership that is not helping you towards your role because you're not helping them towards theirs.

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For real. And so, anyway, I hope this at least helps some of the people who are trying, you know, making the decision of like, am I going to go all in on this relationship? Right?

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Now, on the flip side, if you have someone who's been in your business, right? And this happens.

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Someone starts working for you. All right? That's all Layla. But I've seen this happen a lot in our community.

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Because someone starts working for you and you were the entrepreneur and they become the operator and they start just running things and just making your life easier.

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Oh, my God. And then all of a sudden you start having feelings for that person. A lot of times, those setups are actually really successful.

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Because those people came in with clearly defined roles and a shared mission and usually shared values.

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And so Layla and I's relationship started that way. She started working for me at basically the exact same moment that we started dating.

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And so if you if you can have one of those setups, sometimes you just need to go all in.

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Because as soon as you can actually make it clear that we now have one bank account, this is our business together. This is our child.

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Then I'll tell you that we got so much more attention back for especially from Layla not worrying like, what am I going to have to do if Alex breaks up with, right?

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Am I going to be stuck because I've been building his business. But as soon as it became our business, she got a ton of attention back from all of the other things that she was still contemplated because there's always sort of one foot out the door.

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Bullshit if you say there's not like until in my opinion, like until you're in it, like until you're both financially in because like when you're married, then my assets become hers.

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Like until you're shared there, it's really hard to not have one foot out the door because you're human, right?

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You're going to you're going to fight to survive. And so you're going to always think about what you have to do if shit hits the fan.

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And so if you have that dynamic, I've seen that dynamic be successful many, many times and sometimes you just need to go all in and it will multiply, it'll amplify the power of your dynamic.

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If you had a business before you started dating someone and then all they want to do is take you away from your business, a lot of times I see that dynamic not work, right?

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Because they're not cheerleading for you and they're not supporting you in your business and you made your business because you had a mission, you had a view of what you wanted to have in your life that you're working towards.

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And if they're not helping you, your romantic chemistry will fade, but your mission will not.

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On the flip side, sometimes if you had somebody who you started, you were with before you started your business, I've seen the cheerleader dynamic were there work really well, right?

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You might like maybe your high school sweethearts or your college sweethearts and they all, they've seen you since the beginning, they've seen these desires, they've seen these dreams and they've helped you foster these dreams and they believed in you and said, go do it. I got you.

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I want you to accomplish your dreams. I want to support you and those instances, those are more cheerleader dynamics and they work well and just more clearly defining the agreement, more clearly defining what outcomes we want will ultimately to better success.

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And so those are the frameworks that Layla and I are looking at when someone asks us like, what should I do about this relationship?

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It's incredibly personal decision. I could never say what to do, what not to do, because only you guys know your relationship dynamic, only you know what you really want, only they know what they really want.

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But all I can say is like, do not force your will on someone else, especially if you're the entrepreneur and you're a little bit more forceful, you're a little bit more dominant type personality.

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All you're going to do is breed resentment and someone who doesn't want to be doing what you're forcing them to do.

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And so look at those dynamics, look at the cheerleader, look at the full back, look at the middle of the road dynamic.

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And if you're in one of these, either figure out how you can get into the cheerleader or the full back or maybe you know, all right, have an amazing day.

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Hope you have a fantastic Wednesday and I will see you guys on the flip side keeping awesome.

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Bye!