Answering Juicy Questions About Our Relationship

How do I maintain being a husband that is present with my wife while also consistently grinding to achieve my goals?

You don't. Welcome to our special end of year Q and A couples edition. You guys have questions and we may or may not have good answers to them. Enjoy. What do you do for dates? Expensive restaurants, chill at home, etc.

I think we go out to expensive restaurants sometimes and sometimes we chill at home and just like watch movies and do nothing.

I will say that our need for dates is proportionate for how much we're working. So if we are working a lot, we will need to take dates. If we're not working a ton, we kind of have enough time with one another intermittently that I feel like our need for like carving out time goes down a lot for me. I delineate date night versus going out to eat because for context, we go out to eat pretty much every night of the week. And so what makes it special if you go out all the time? Like, is it the fanciness of the restaurant? Not really because we do a lot of business dinners and things like that. And so we go out to like five star restaurants probably three nights a week.

We go to Jimmy John's more nights.

Well, now we go to Jimmy John's too. Chick fil A. Chick fil A. Chipotle.

Chipotle.

We don't go to Chipotle.

I love those places.

I wish we went to Chipotle. It would be nice if we went to Chipotle.

Oh my God.

Anyways, anyways. Give me a stomachache. Let's not get into that. My point was that the difference between going out for a business dinner and going out on a date is that I dress up. And by dress up it means I don't wear this. And so that's the. Yeah, I shower, I put deodorant on and I don't wear a hat.

We go incognito mode.

Yeah, no one can recognize me. That's actually, in my opinion, the main delineation between going out to eat for. For work or whatever versus when we go out and actually like do a date. That's the main difference. If we do an at home version of that, it's like we're going to watch a movie together that we both feel like watching.

Like Twilight.

Like Twilight. I'm team Jacob.

We were both team Jacob.

Cameron is the next question.

Oh, I wasn't going in order.

Oh, you're just picking. Got it.

Okay.

Picking the movie. It's like ice cream at home. She'll pick out all the chunks, all the good ones, and then she'll just leave me like vanilla.

I feel like when we have, like, 17 pints of ice cream, that's exactly.

I feel like it's never.

I just buy another plank.

But you don't. You just leave it like a used corpse that just got, like, all of its organs taken out of it.

It's true. How do I maintain being a husband that is present with my wife while also consistently grinding to achieve my goals?

Easy. You don't. You just sacrifice yourself as a husband so you can achieve your goals. To give an actual realistic answer to the husband who asked that question. No one works effectively 24 hours a day. It's about doing effective work, not just sitting in front of the computer pretending to be productive. And I say pretending. Not that this person is, but like, I would be pretending to be productive. Productively procrastinating. If you know that your work output drops per unit of time. And I usually know what type of work I'm doing. So for me, if I'm editing, I know how many paragraphs I can edit per unit of time or how many pages I can type or how many slides I can make a presentation. So if you have work that you are comfortable knowing what your rate of progress is, if I start seeing that drop a lot, I usually call it, because then my quality of work also goes down because the next day and I have to fix all the stuff anyways. So the TLDR is when your output goes down. Sub that with a higher ROI thing. So it's like, if I have 16 hours of awake time per day, if I do 15 hours of work in one hour of marriage time, I'll get a really high ROI on that first hour of marriage time. And so, like, optimizing around life is like, the ROI I get from that one hour is worth dropping the last hour of work. And so I think I try and think about it like that. It's like, what's my minimum effective dose for each goal? And usually you can still heavily index on achieving your goals because it usually takes more time than your marriage does. And then have the time when you do need to rest and recharge to be dedicated to your spouse.

And I think it's also, like, seasons, you know, like when you're writing a book. I think in the very beginning, when you did the first bout, where I realized, like, oh, we're not gonna have a lot of time with each other, it took me a minute to, like, accept that we all are gonna go through seasons like that in our lives. And the bigger your goals are, one, I think the more understanding you need to be as a partner for that person because the bigger the vision they have for their lives, the more that you're going to have to recognize that that requires sacrifice and bouts you having those big goals for yourself. Was the first time in a relationship that I had a man who had bigger goals for himself than I even had for myself, which I was grateful for. And I'm grateful because I felt like the relationship at many times I had in the past was distracting from my goals. Whereas it should propel you faster to your goals because you support each other in a way that creates an environment where it's easier for each of you to hit your goals than harder. And I think a lot of people make it harder for their spouse to hit their goals than easier. There's always going to be times where we're going to give each other leftover and it is what it is. But I think what we're really good at doing is we communicate about it and it remains an open dialogue versus like complaining to other people or being passive aggressive. Like it doesn't turn into that ever.

And I think a lot of spouses have unrealistic goals for one another. And what they, what that means for me is that like, you have to accept the trade off for the thing that you want most. And so if you want a spouse who's super goal oriented and super ambitious, the trade off, the price tag for that is that they're going to work more and their schedule is not going to be as flexible, they're not going to be able to go, drop of a hat, get away, you know, weekends and vacations and stuff, if that's the season they're in. And so I just think it's unfair of either spouse to have dual desires of things that conflict. And so you just have to, in my opinion, pick the one that matters more to you. I think we have just changed our expectations over time so that they actually meet reality. And so if this individual is upset or feels like expectations, what he, quote, should be doing as a husband is not what he's currently doing. He either needs to change the expectations of what he needs to do to be a good husband, or he needs to accept that this is actually the new normal for whatever season he's in. Next question. This one's for you. Was there ever a time where you felt you shouldn't or couldn't be working together?

I think the only time that I ever even Questioned us working together was the one fight we got into. Basically, we had a large disagreement on where to take the business and what decision to make with our software business. I think we, like, locked ourselves in a room for, like, two days because we realized we completely disagreed. Alex steamrolled me, and I let him. But I, in a way, realized from that experience that I allowed him to take full responsibility for the outcome by not using better skills of influence to try and get him to see my point. Instead, I was just very frustrated, and I gave up. And I. And I was like, screw it. Whatever. We'll do it your way. What I don't have to do at that point is take responsibility for an outcome. Every time that you. You kind of do that in a conversation, what it really was doing was like, this is a really scary decision. And now I'll just let Alex take responsibility for the outcome.

One of the things that Layla's improved a lot on is I used to be like, sell me on it. Like, I want to believe you, but I'm not sold. Like, sell me on it. She would just say, like, this is what we need to do. Even though there was, like, a mountain of 100 things behind it. She would just say, the end of the problem, of the math problem. But it was like, show your work. I don't get how you went from here to here. And I just. I didn't see the dots connecting.

People see us now, and they're like, you guys have a really good partnership. But, I mean, it took years of work.

Oh, my God.

And communication. It was really hard for the first few years. Yeah.

We've only had one real big argument in our careers, and it was about business, even about, like, relationship stuff.

Do you train or do fitness together? If not, why not? I don't think I'm a good training partner. Historically. I don't train well with many people. Like, I like having a trainer to yell at me.

You also don't like that trainer who's yelling at you to be your spouse.

Correct. And that's how Alex trains people. So instead of him yelling at me and me doing the exercise, I just go, why are you yelling at me? Stop yelling at me. Actually, I think now if we train together, it would be completely different. To be fair, I actually just like going to the gym, listening to music and not talking to anybody.

Yeah. So we go to the gym at the same time, and we don't work out together.

It worked.

Seem to have worked fine.

We love the car ride there and the car ride back. Yeah.

We actually. Yeah, we. We enjoy the car ride. When did you know she was the one that was a fit for you as your spouse and her? The same to you.

I was waiting for you to say, how'd you know I was the one?

You looked at me creepily and I was like, that's how I knew. She looked at me like.

I was like, gets me going.

Like a piece of meat. No, I mean, I had a handful of moments. Big moment. Number one was when you went to Hawaii and sold your ass off when we weren't together. So we split for, like, 30 days so she could do a launch. I just had a head on collision dui. My mother was in the hospital. I just split with two different business partners in the last 30 days. I just lost all my money. Like, it was. It was all. All of this happened in, like, a 60 day period. Honestly, it was just because she stood tall when everything else was crumbling around me and I didn't. I didn't deserve the loyalty that she chose to show me. You stood tall and, like, basically followed through with my commitments, even though you didn't owe me anything. Because I basically made the agreement to this gym owner that we'd launch it. But, like, we broke up. She could have just left and gone home like that. She could have done that and she didn't. When I lost everything the second time, Layla was like, I would sleep with you and her bridge if it came to that. I was like, I like you, but, like, I respect that. If you don't find me respectable at this moment, because I have nothing. She was like, I'm in. And so that was. I mean, honestly, those are probably two big moments for me. Yeah, we had all the hardship in the beginning of our relationship. Like, all the hard stuff was before we got married. What about you, Jim never asked that. Yeah, what were your moments?

One of them was after you got the DUI and real winner. No, I mean, and then I was like, what's he gonna do next? You just completely turn shit around when you see someone there in, like, their darkest moments, like, what are they gonna do? And he just. Just went right through it and picked his shit up and was like, I'm not gonna fucking indulge myself in that. And I respected that a lot. And I would say the second time is when maybe nine, ten months in the relationship, and I felt like, I wonder if he's ever gonna, like, let me in. And we were at one of your old gyms and somebody was saying something, and then you looked to me and you said, well, I'd really like your opinion. And I was like. And in that moment, I was like, I think he's making an effort to be more collaborative. And then he did. And then you, like, fat, like, very quickly accelerated in terms of, like, your team work.

No, I respected your opinion. If there was ever something that we built a relationship on, the bedrock has been respect, not love. I think feeling in love can come and go, but at least for me, respect is more unchanging.

Well, yeah, I think all feelings are fleeting. And respect is like, when I look on paper at this person and their character, and I admire this person's character. There are going to be moments when people are in a relationship where they're like, fuck this person. You fucking. So annoying. Whatever. Everyone has those moments. Everyone has those thoughts. But when someone has, like, really outstanding character and they're a respectable person, it's much easier in this moment to be like, I'm proud to be married to this person. And, you know, you're not going to be feeling super romantic most of your life. Like, you're going to be, you know, working at your job, you're going to be with friends, you're going to be out, you're going to be running errands, you're going to be stressed, you're going to be dealing with life shit. I mean, with family, you're enough kids, like, all these things. And so it's like, in all of those moments, outside of, like, the fairy tale 60 minutes every two weeks, you get like, how do you feel about that person?

Do you ever have communication issues? If not, what do you do to communicate so well? Ooh, a little assumption there. If yes, how do you resolve them?

I think that we're fairly good at recognizing when we're not communicating well. And we usually try a different method of communicating. We step away for a second. Oftentimes we step away and then we write to each other. Yep, that's probably the biggest go to because it gives us time to look at our thoughts before we say them to each other.

Number one hack, we text when we're angry, which is actually, like, seems like opposite.

No, it's not.

Yeah, that's not how it is.

We're not, like, angry texting each other.

No, it's like, let me clearly think out what I'm trying to say, and then I say it, and then I, like, reread it. Then I read hers. I'm like, okay, she's saying this, you know, and we just. It creates more space between the communication. So you can think about your response. And so for us, I think it's just decreased the emotionality that we resolve things with. I do think that one of the keys, besides the text thing is that we. We physically change environments. So it's like if you're in a tiff in the kitchen, if she goes to the living room and I go to my office and we text, it's like we both physically changed environments. We kind of left the scene. It just diffuses a lot.

I would also say that, you know, we are busy and so oftentimes we need to go do something and then we just come back to it later. And half the time we're like, yeah, let's just fucking forget about it. Like, we're like, it's not even like, we were just both whatever in the moment. It doesn't matter.

You were tired, I was hungry.

Yeah. And I think one thing that we do well is we're willing to just like, let go. What are the non negotiables in your relationship, if any?

It's a good question.

Yeah. It's funny because I think we talked about them more around when we got married, and now they're just facts.

Agreements.

Agreements.

Yeah, actually, they were the negotiables. They were like, what are the things that we both mutually agree to? And if we want to change one of these agreements, we both need to agree on it. Otherwise we stick with what our commitment was. Yeah, this will be, quote, unhealthy in the marriage world. But I actually told Layla, I was like, the business comes before our marriage. That was the first three years of our marriage.

I don't know if I would say that's great advice.

No, I'm just being. I'm being candid. Yeah. So people get divorced because of money issues. The business makes money and feeds us. So feed the business. The business, feed us. And that was kind of my reasoning then. We were both miserable at like three year point. And Layla and I sat on the bench one day outside of our house and we were like, I don't like this. And she was like, I don't like this either. And we were both like, I wouldn't want to continue this way. And she, I know going into that conversation was afraid, like, well, what if Alex just like, this is what he likes and this is what he thinks.

Normal.

And honestly, if I'd said, like, I love this, this is great, I think Layla would have been like, this doesn't work for me. And then that would have been it. And on the flip side, if it had been the same way with Layla, I probably would have been like, it won't work for me. And so, you know, we tweaked the how. How we were going to work. And so we said, well, if we're miserable, we won't stick with the business. So we were like, let's make our marriage first, and if we're happy, then the business will win or not, but at least we won't be miserable. And so when we flipped it, it actually tremendously improved our lives. I think we, like I joked about it, I was like, I think we 3x'd our marriage this year when we made that change. And she was like, only an entrepreneur would say that. But yeah, we definitely tripled that year. When we got married, we both looked at, like, the highest success marriages are people who have low expectations and high commitment. I'm gonna expect that you're going to not change. And not only that, you might get worse and. Right. And I'm still committing to this, provided you don't change your values and what you want to do. Things like that, like the big core things.

In order to have a relationship where two autonomous people can be together, you have to give each other that space to just be, experiment, do what you want to do, find yourself at times, change, adjust. You know what I mean?

Not freaking out about things, not being to your expectations or to your desires. It just lowers the pressure in conversations. Like, the reason a lot of people split up during, like, engagements is because whenever you have conversations, you're like, wait, you didn't pick up your socks? Does that mean that you're never going to pick up your socks? For the rest of my life, and for the rest of my life, I'm going to see socks on the floor. Like, they just catastrophize. And so I think just being like, huh, I don't like this. Okay, we're busy right now. When we have time, I'll bring it up. Like, it's not going to end anything. And if I forget by the next time we talk, then it's probably not.

That big of a deal.

Yeah. And the flip side is, if everything is super so easy, like, you just, like, let everything roll off. It's like, usually you're just not confronting shit because no two people are perfect together. Like, there's just always, like, you're people, you have tons of different things and communications and things like that.

We both know that both of us have these things that were huge strengths for us, and so then we each get to deal with each other's. Like, downsides of those strengths, you know, which, you know, one for me is like super high activity, high output driven, can get a fuck ton of shit done. I also care so much about so many things that I tend to stress more over stuff. Yeah.

And I'm super, super distracted for the most part. I can seem aloof and disinterested in a lot of small stuff, which I think a different spouse might interpret that as, Alex doesn't care about me. I think Layla's just never done that. It's just been like, oh, Alex just doesn't care about any of this stuff. And that's not a reflection of his care for me. It's just he just doesn't care. He doesn't. It's not even that he doesn't care. He just doesn't think about it. I always appreciated was that Layla never tried to change me.

I think we seek each other's opinion on things because we respect each other's opinion, not because we need the approval.

Yeah. Here's one that you'll love. How do you decide what to do when you wake up and start your day?

Try to get, like, the most important things done early.

I mean, I usually work on the exact same thing for a very long time. I spent a long time thinking about what one thing I'm going to do, and then once I decide that that's the thing that makes the most sense from the most angles that'll give me the most leverage, then that's what I do. And then that's like my first six hours of every day. And I've been doing that. That habit of like, the first six hours of every day is dedicated to the thing that matters most. I've been doing for. Since I started working, so, I mean, like a decade plus, some people, it's like late at night. So I think it really just depends on who you are. For me, I'm a first thing in the morning guy.

Could either of you have achieved the success you have without one another?

Yeah, I think we could have. I think it would have been harder and I think it would have taken longer. And it's interesting because I think right now, if I knew what I know now, I could redo it. And I think if you knew what you knew now, you could redo it. But to know what we know now, I don't know how long it would have taken me to realize how important operations were. Culture, people. I don't know. Like, it would have been. I was a hard sell. Seriously, I was a hard sell. Yeah. Like, I was a hard sell. It was very rare that I had somebody that I respected so much and who was so persistent for such a long time and had so much evidence behind them that eventually I realized that the way that I saw business in the world was not entirely true. Like, there was more to the picture. And so I think, like, knowing what I know now. Yes. How would I have known what I know now? I don't know.

Finding the right business partner is difficult. And so to say that you'll have the same amount of success. I think, at some point, yes. And you will find eventually a partner. But like, it is, that's one of the hardest things. I mean, we see it in acquisition.com and people apply all the time. Like, oftentimes the business is not where it could be because the partnership is not right. And that is just more often than.

Not, you can count on one hand the amount of good partners you have in your life. You look at Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett like they found each other, and we're like, great, this works. We don't need anyone else. We're just going to keep doing this. And so, like, could Layla have found someone else? Absolutely. Could I find someone like Layla? Absolutely. How long would it have taken? I don't know. Could I do it on my own? Absolutely not. We had so much in common that we were like, I don't know if we should date or be friends or whatever, but, like, let's.

Are we related? Yeah.

Are we related? You could be my sister. What is your version of quality time with your partner? As business owners, what do you do when your partner wants to work and you want to spend time away from work for a bit, wondering, because my partner and I own companies and work a lot of the time.

I think that's something that we've learned, and I, at least I can speak for myself. I have learned is that you can want something and also not get it, and that is okay. And there are many times in a relationship where maybe I'm. Because we tend to trade off seasons where Alex has a really intense work season. Next season is Layla's really intense work seasons. So we don't match up much. And so I might want to go do something with Alex for the entire day and also realize that I'm not going to get what I want. And I've. I've recognized myself, like, in my young 20s, like, wanting something and being mad that you can't have it is very childlike stance to take. But we're adults, so I can want that and accept that I'm not going to get it and do something else instead. If there's a season where I have a day that's free and Alex doesn't, I go do other things. I make plans for myself, I entertain myself. I can still do things I like doing, even though I would prefer to do them with him. I can accept that he's not in that season, and the last thing I ever want to do is deter him from his goals and the things that make him happy and fulfilled at the end of the day. And so I think it's understanding that you can want something and not get it, and it's not a problem because there are many seasons where that's just life.

I want to emphasize Layla's point, which is that because we work in the same business, we are almost always in a different season. Now, sometimes we're both in a busy season, but we're almost always one of us is. And so I think we've just grown accustomed to the fact and we've shifted our expectations around what the other person must or should do in our relationship in order to be satisfied.

Desire comes from a place of lack. And so when you don't always get to see your spouse when you want to or get to spend time with them when you want to, when you do, it feels. It's that much more fun, it's that much more exciting. It's that much more that you cherish it. And I know for us, as we've gotten bigger goals and we have more demand on both of our plates, and we're probably both in a really busy season right now, the time that we do get together, like, even this last weekend, we spent like, an evening together and it was like, just chilling together, doing nothing. It was like the highlight of my whole week. And it felt better than it may have if that were like an everyday thing, because then you probably just get sick of each other.

I think it was Esther Perel wrote Mating in Captivity, which Layla read the book and then just told me what was in it. But she said. She said that you need to create space to be missed, and I just love that. Boys Nation. What's up? You guys are amazing. We are beyond grateful. We don't feel like we deserve it, but we are appreciative of all the support you guys have had over the last year, and we can't wait to spend the next year with you. Keep being one of ZO 2024.