Ryan Deiss advises Mekki Kim, who moved his family to a small town and is considering a cybersecurity job offer, to prioritize his marriage over business momentum. Deiss says Mekki needs to talk with his wife about what financial security actually means and set concrete conditions the business must hit in 20 days to stay viable without the job.
Mekzi Kim says, wife is not happy. We recently moved from the Metroplex to a small town over 2 hours away. Moving the business has been much more difficult than I ever imagined. Since work and income has been scarce, my wife is pushing me to go back to work. I was down one day and applied for a management position at a nearby college in cybersecurity and technology. I got the job and will start in about 20 days. In the meantime, some projects are starting to take off. I want my family to be happy, financially stable, and most importantly, as stress-free as possible. I literally do not know what to do. If I take the job, I may lose all the traction I have finally made in the new location. If I don't take it, I'm pretty sure she's out. She's just tired of squeaking by. I am too, but if I give up, I lose. Tough situation, man. Tough situation. I'll tell you, for me, family comes first. Priority number one. I'm going to do what I got to do to make sure that my family is safe and that my, my wife is okay. Maybe not always like thrilled and happy, but if it's me, I probably do take the job if things really are that tight. And now I'm just working overtime still on my own business. A lot of people would say, but you really can't have a job and have your own business at the same time. Sure you can. So what I would do, I'd go to your wife and I would say, "What would need to be true in the next 20 days for you to feel comfortable and excited about me not taking this job and working on the business instead?" Have a conversation, make it collaborative, and let's get specific. If you got a partner in life who's not a partner in business, we need to make sure we have agreement in terms. What do you mean by security? What do I mean by security? Because so often the way that entrepreneurs are gonna define security is not how our partners are going to define security. Talk about it, have the conversation. If worse comes to worse, do both. Figure it out. Make it work. But no business is worth sacrificing your marriage for.
