Why Business & Marriage are So Freakin Hard

What's up Business Freedom podcast listeners? Today's podcast episode is titled why Business and Marriage are so Frickin Hard. I had the pleasure this past weekend of going to a marriage seminar called Weekend to Remember. It is put on by family life. And Julie and I had been to this same event, had to be back when the kids were like one and three years old. So they're nine and 12 now. So probably seven, eight years ago. We've been to the same exact event and the event has only been rewritten, I think twice in 35 years or something. So it was like 1982 is when it came out, or 85, and then it was rewritten in 2012. So we went and received the same exact training, the same exact seminar seven or eight years ago after it was just rewritten. So the content was the same and the entire experience was completely different because of where we are in our journey with our kids and where we are in our journey with our faith and where we are just in our journey together in our relationship and the things that we have learned about living with one another and serving someone else and putting someone else's needs ahead of your own. And so it was this interesting, you know, I'm always at these events that have nothing to do with business and I'm always taking away things that I can apply in my business. And Julie, if you ever listen to this, I promise I was completely present at the event and I was thinking about our marriage and how I could show up better and just glorify God and you in all of it. That being said, there are three things that I took away from the event weekend to remember that apply to marriage as well as they do in business. And things that I've gotten really, really wrong in each area of my life, both my marriage and my business. Number one is to die to yourself daily. And so obviously this has a faith component to it. And do not tune out if you're not a believer because the life and business application is profound here. So in the scriptures it calls for, man just has a desire to put themselves and their need first. And in order to glorify God and show up in your marriage and just to love and serve others, you need to put your needs on the back burner so you can put others ahead of you. And they talked about this concept of in marriage of 50, 50 and so and the risk of like a tit for tat sort of existence or trade off bartering system with your spouse. And so this took me in my marriage. I was married in 2006. So 14 years this year. Probably took me a good eight, nine years or so to figure out that it doesn't work when you're always sort of keeping score with your spouse. It just doesn't work. So the 50, 50 for me became this conscious decision to give 100%, 100% of the time. At least had the intention to give to be all in all of the time in my marriage. And when I did that, you know, there are times where, like I'm not, you know, doing what I should in my marriage. I'm not pulling my weight. You know, I could even be physically just traveling and physically not there. So how can I give 100% if I'm not even there? When I'm physically present though, I'm giving 100%, 100% of the time. And in business, this shows up when you're, you know, let's say you hire an agent and you're not quite giving all of yourself, you're not quite investing all of yourself into training and getting that agent to be productive and successful and teaching them things that you've learned early in your journey. Maybe there's a risk or there's a fear that you think they may go and compete against you or you've had a bad experience in the past with another agent who you trained up and then they left you and they, they went to go do something else or to stay in real estate, but to not be on your team. So in business, the only way to do it is give 100%, 100% of the time to your team, to new agents on your team. Of course it helps if you, if you automate or you somehow systemize your, your new agent onboarding. So there's massive lever there. So you can give the hundred percent, 100% of the time by having a system that gives the new agent a way to become productive and successful on your team. It's this servant leadership concept of dying to yourself daily in your business and serving your team members and serving your clients. And hopefully you have an aspect of your business where you serve the community as well. Just the only way to do it with, you know, there's no shortage of competition or there's no shortage of ways that agents can go about being in real estate. They can be, they could hang their license at home, become a broker. They can go with just being in a sort of a big box brokerage, a Keller Williams or ReMax, or call a banker. They can be on a team or they can start their own team and so there's just a lot of different options out there. And so in your business, if you're not giving 100%, 100% of the time, you will lose. The second thing that really struck me in my marriage that I mess up on, and I did it for a long time in business, is I bring a lot of pride and not the good kind of pride to, in my marriage, and I've done it in business as well, versus humility. So it's this conversation, or at least looking, examining, how are you showing up in your, in any relationship. So if you're a team leader, you have relationships. And we tend in our business, you know, we were the one that got it up and running. We were the one that, you know, I'm thinking of the year we did 118, we went from 58 to 118 transactions into 178. I did 55 of the 58 and then I did, I think 66 of the 118. While I was recruiting, while I was building systems, while I was leading and managing and holding the team accountable, managing, tracking. I'm doing every job possible in the business. And it builds up this sense of pride around the fact that I can do everything. Look at all the stuff I'm doing. And you can't even sell fricking two houses a month, Are you kidding me right now? Where I can sell five homes a month and do all of these other things. And I had young kids at the time and I was, you know, all of this stuff. So it develops inside of you, humility goes away and it's all pride. And pride does not serve your team because you're showing up with like, I am not. Maybe you don't think this, but it comes across this way that I'm better, I have more capacity, I can do more than you. And it comes off like I really don't need you or respect you. And so the only way to do it is to bring a sense of humility into the business. And of course this translates in your marriage. And I continue to get this wrong up until yesterday. And so hopefully my pride has left my marriage. I sense my pride puffing up in my marriage when I'm coming across to my wife where I know the answer or this has to stop or why don't you just do this? And I'm not taking into account her view of something and her makeup, her unique composition, her God given sort of makeup, and it never works. And I continue to fail in this area. And the next podcast is about all the ways that I failed. So you'll have to tune in for that and hopefully learn some things that you don't need to fail on in business. The last thing I want to cover, and the third point here is I want you to lea before you pee. I have a tendency to pee all over people. Not the literal pee. The acronym leap. I can't remember where it's from or who I actually even heard it from. I think it was a business coach that I had who gave me this acronym. It's actually for. It's for marriage counseling, but the application was in business. This is worth writing down, I promise you. It's L is listen, E is empathize, A is affirm, and P is perspective. So I tend to give perspective before I listen, empathize, and affirm. So in my marriage, this is where the guy, sort of the stereotype is that the guy wants to just solve everything. So the wife comes to the husband and says, hey. Or they're just talking, right? They just want to sort of give a debrief of their day, and we're just giving perspective all over, peeing all over the place. They only really want us to listen, empathize, and affirm. And then if they ask for your perspective or they ask for your opinion, you can give it. In business, this comes off especially with team leaders, given our prideful nature that I just talked about. And if we're not sort of putting others needs ahead of our own, we tend to know the answer to everything. And we take away the ability for someone to discover for themselves how to move forward in a particular situation, Whether it's a member of your administrative staff or your sales team, we tend to save the day. And so giving perspective all of the time, it's exhausting for us. It's exhausting for our team members, and it actually hurts your ability to build a business that doesn't revolve around you. So it hurts the very thing that you're trying to do by giving perspective, where all you really need to do most of the time with your team members is listen. You know, hey, just listen, right? So listen to understand, not listen to respond. I do that as well. Always listen to respond. And I'm really actively working on listening to. To understand and to serve somebody. Then empathize and just say, man, that really is tough. I could see how you're empathizing and you're affirming. Girls, females do this really well for one another. They listen, empathize, and affirm. And very rarely do they even give perspective And I've gone through this acronym with Julie and she knows, and my team members know that, you know, this leap is something that has to be worked on if you're going to have a business that operates like a true business where you don't need to be in the center of it, giving everyone perspective all of the time. So 100%, 100% of the time, that was number one. Choose humility over pride. That was number two. And number three is Lea before up. And that, my friends, is why business and marriage are so freaking hard. Because these three things that I just told you, if you have passed the point where you've gone from a top producing agent to now you're running a team, you've done it because you've achieved at a level higher than most will ever achieve. And now it's hard not to bring that sense of pride. And you know, hey, come show me what you're going to do for me and then get perspective all the time. So if you're at the point in your business growth journey where, you know, maybe the thing you built isn't quite giving you the leverage that you want, whether it's freedom of time or freedom of money or, you know, less stress in your life and you're, you're crushing it in terms of every measure of traditional success. You know, you're 50, 75, 100, 150 homes a year with your team. All we can offer you is a conversation about what is working in your business, what's not working. Let's bridge the gap, let's talk about what you could do to have this thing look different in the future than it does now. We have members come in 3 to 500,000 or 3 to 5 million where they just set the thing up the wrong way. And that is where we come in and we do our best work. We sort of pick up where other coaching programs leave off. The only way to sort of enter into our world is in our pilot program and there is no obligation whatsoever. It is 30 days of free coaching where we do a deep dive on your business. We call it our strategic game plan, where we identify all of the weaknesses and the strengths in your business. We help you build a three year vision, a one year plan, and land on the first things you're going to focus in your 90 day world. And that happens all without any obligation from you. So if this rings true to you and you're just at the point where you need help, go to rebspilotprogram.com to fill out a short application. Just tell us a little bit about your business and we'll reach out for next steps. Or you can just go to real estate B school to check out some of our free resources there. We'll talk to you soon.