REAL LIFE WEEK - How I've Failed as a Husband

What's up, business Freedom Podcast listeners, I am fresh back from a week away. Do an annual honeymoon with my beautiful bride. This is our, it's our 13th anniversary. We just celebrated on the 20th of October. And I've been doing an annual honeymoon for about seven years now, which is just a surprise trip, like an epic vacation where I surprised Julie. So it was really, really awesome. And the theme, I think I'm going to go a little personal in these next few podcast episodes. Today I want to chat about how I failed as a husband and what I did about it. So the dot, dot, dot on this one is that I have figured some things out and I still fail constantly in many areas of my life. And in those failures, I think there's just an opportunity to do something different next time. If you really treat it as such, treat it as an opportunity to do something different. Show up a little different in the future. And what I found here as I was going through this, there's an obvious parallel. The way you show up in one area of your life typically is the way you show up in all areas of your life. And typically, and I'll speak for myself, I am really hard to be around. I have a level like standards that are hard to live by. You know, I have opinions on everything. You know, I'm hard charging all the time. It's really hard for me to decompress and relax and so just generally really hard to be around. And it's hard for my team members to be around me, let alone my beautiful Bride Julie of 13 years. So let's get into three things I failed at as a husband and what I've done about it in the parallel business. Number one is that I mentioned it. I have really high standards for myself. Part of it is not even based in any healthy thing. You know, I have a jacked up childhood just like everyone seems to have a jacked up childhood. My dad was an active alcoholic until age 15 and it really, really impacted me. My parents got divorced when I was 4 and just a really bad situation. We had to live somewhere that wasn't a great place to live and just a tough upbringing. And I know a lot of us, as you know now, business builders, hard chargers, we charge and we set these standards for ourself because we don't want to experience maybe what we experienced as a kid. And we have this sort of achievement thread to us that is a little unhealthy. And so I will just acknowledge it. I have done therapy, I have looked at it. I have made major Strides over the last five, six years or so to really temper the amount of even just mental rack space I put into my business. So the upside of having really high standards is that you can create something out of thin air and you can bring people up and you can inspire folks to kind of come around you and do a thing with you, which is great, right? 12 years into the real estate team, over six years into real estate B school, you know, two thriving businesses that are having major impact for our team members, for our clients and our communities. So that's great. And you know, I find if I judge people by my standards, my wife, if I judge her by my standards, she's just a different person in every aspect of being a human being. I think she scores infinitely higher than me. I mean she has such a tender heart. She is super smart, she's super sexy. She is, she just love, love is. She leads with her heart and she just loves people, she loves animals. She is super patient with me. She's way more patient than me than I would ever be if I was married to someone like a type A personality. And when I say better half, I mean my wife is really, really my better half. And that goes for most of my team members. Anyone who I'm working with right now in either business. They're just solid people that have come together to do great things. And I just have to go easy on, you know, holding everyone to a standard which is unattainable and then being let down if they don't achieve this sort of made up standard and you know, anyway, so that's just, that's just one realization I had in my marriage which also translates into business number two. I always have the answer. I always have the answer. And in my mind, 99.99% of the time it's the right answer. And probably I'm going to say this publicly here, way less than half the time do I have the right answer. And most of the time others left to their own thinking and their own God given abilities will have a better answer than I could come up with. Probably 80% of the time I think I know a certain part of business. I think that is unique to me and I excel in that area. And that's a small part of business. It's the higher level stuff, the strategy, the sort of seeing business as a business and then how to utilize resources to kind of achieve a common thing and inspire and that sort of thing. Other than that, all the details and the fulfilling the thing that we promised is all not my sweet Spot. So the challenge with always having an answer in a marriage is that your wife doesn't want an answer. Most of the time, a person coming to you and venting or airing a challenge or, you know, just getting something that's in their head out into the world, they don't really want you to solve it. In your marriage, it does really bad things because it just frustrates your spouse. In a business setting, you end up enabling your team members. They can't do things without you. You become this genius with a thousand helpers versus a true business owner and say, you know, how would you. How would you solve that? You know, or just listening to somebody and let them venting and maybe help them sort of think through it in their own mind versus just giving them the answer. And this is sort of a, you know, a typical marriage 101 thing, is that, guys, our wives don't want us to solve their problems. And we're wired to sort of, you know, we're like predators, like cavemen. Like, if we see a problem, we're just going to beat it over the head with a club until we submit that problem. And we all only have a club to beat it over the head with, right? Which is the one way we think all the time, and we think we're right all the time, and typically we're not. We've got to give space to those around us to do their own thing and solve their own problems. All right, that's number two. Number three is that I'd like to say this is not true. And this is going to be tough to say, and it really does apply just as much in a marriage as it does in a business, is that I generally take my wife for granted. Now, I just shared this with her. We do a weekly on date night. We do a Saturday date night. It's a set of questions that we started to go through that once a week to kind of just calibrate, you know, wins for the week, challenges for the week. What can I do to love you better? And I said, or maybe it was. It was something recently. I forget what the context was. But a fear of mine that I have is that I'm taking Julie for granted and not in an obvious way where, like, we're just two ships, you know, you know, crossing in the night. What's the expression when a husband and wife sort of, you know, fall out of love and they're just sort of roommates. We're not that. And I know there are things that she does. I mean, she manages the Children. She's on the board of directors for school. We go to this super awesome Christian school that she serves. She gets the kids there and back every day. She has that moments with them in the car where she's unpacking their day and seeing how they're doing, you know, with their faith walk, with their social walk. They're 9 and 11 now, so they're getting into social drama. And then she's got a podcast. She's launching this amazing podcast. She adds like 200 followers a day. I think we were away for a week and I think she added probably 500 followers in a single week. And there's no capitalistic reason for this podcast except to share Everyday miracles that glorify God and hopefully bring people that are far from God closer to live a life with Christ. So a quick plug for that. It's Everyday Miracles podcast and her name is Julie. So if you would take a listen, that'd be amazing and give her a five star review, even more amazing. And I don't want to take her for granted and what she's doing, I think that's how, you know, the parallel in business is that generally I think we absolutely, we have this mindset as a business owner where we're doing so much work and we're taking all the risk with expenses. And as a result of that, it's feels like our team can never do enough, you know, and doesn't. I'm not proud to admit this, you know, admit this here. I see it pretty, it's pretty a common thing where we just, they. Our team members can work anywhere. You know, they're assuming they're on your team because they're the brightest people that are in the entire marketplace. They want to be part of something special, which is why they're working for a small business and not a big corporation. They want to do it with you because you're the one that have inspired them. And we have a tendency to take all of that for granted and just realize that they have their own stuff going on. They're struggling in areas of their personal lives where it's your job as their leader to help them in the areas that they're struggling in, not just to focus on what can they do for you. Same with your spouse. Like how can I serve my spouse? How can I serve my team members? And that is not preaching. That is not something that I've done forever and it's something that I'm learning. The mission of my businesses is to love and serve others. And really outside of That I think that's just good business practice and it's good marriage advice is just to love and serve your spouse in every instance. When you get in from a tough day at work, love and serve your spouse. Don't expect to be served. Your spouse had an equally tough day. Don't assume that your tough day trumps their tough day. Show up ready to serve in that moment, which if you go back to all the productivity, I think I did 12 sessions on this podcast on productivity. That's why it's vitally important that you are properly nourished, properly rested, hydrated, and you're ready to show up at 6 o' clock at night and finish the day super strong. So those are the ways that I failed as a husband. My standards are exhausting. I always have the answer and I tend to take people for granted and in my, in my marriage and equally in my business. And these are things that definitely not easy to talk about here where thousands are going to listen to this. And I say it because I think there's a lesson here at home and, and in your business that will hopefully serve you if you're at the point in your business where it's just a challenge. You know, in real estate b school, we talk a lot about time, money and stress. If the hours you're trading aren't worth maybe the dollars you're making or the stress you're enduring, or your net worth is not going the way you want it, or you don't track your net worth, or you don't have any margin, your life to do things other than stress about real estate, or you're a team leader that's in production and, and without your production, the team wouldn't even exist. If you're just at a point where you've already achieved a certain level of success, I'm talking at least 500,000 GCI and you've got maybe a small team all the way up to folks. We have team leaders that are doing 4 and a half, 5 million GCI that don't have things operating the way that they should. So there's no judgment anywhere in the 500 to 5 million that is our sweet spot. That's less than 1% of our industry will qualify for just a conversation about their business. So if that's you, go to realestatebschool.com There's a bright orange banner on the top where you can take action and book in a strategy session. We're going to talk about where your business is today, where you want it to be in the future and what is holding you back? What has gotten in the way of your growth in the past to more time, more money and less stress so you can show up in all the areas of your life that actually matter. And it's not about selling an additional home necessarily. Definitely want to be able to sell lots and lots of real estate because that fuels other areas of our life. But we don't want our business to consume our life like most real estate teams do. So go to realestatebschool.com we will see you over there.