Answering Juicy Questions About Our Relationship

Summary

• Balance between being present as a husband and achieving goals involves accepting you can't do everything. Prioritize effective work over time spent, and when productivity drops, use that time for your marriage.
• When determining date nights, differentiate them from regular meals out by making them special through dressing up or choosing activities meant just for the two of us.
• If we're enduring a busy work season, our need for dedicated date times increases; when we're less busy, we naturally spend enough time together.
• Communication within a marriage is key, especially during challenging times. Be open and adjust expectations based on the reality of your situations.
• Understanding the seasons of life and work is critical. Support each other's goals, recognizing that there will be times of sacrifice.
• A successful marriage includes respect, low expectations, and high commitment, allowing for individual growth and change.
• Shift the focus from business to marriage when necessary to maintain a happy relationship. This might involve reevaluating priorities to ensure a fulfilling partnership.
• In disagreements, change the environment, write to each other to articulate feelings clearly, and be willing to let minor issues go.
• Non-negotiables in a relationship should be clear agreements that both parties are free to renegotiate together if changes are needed.
• Start each day focusing on the most important task, dedicating the first few hours to this to achieve the greatest impact.
• Success could be achieved independently, but having each other expedites the process and contributes to learning important aspects of business and life.
• Quality time can vary; accept that you can't always get what you want and learn to cherish the moments you do spend together, as scarcity can enhance appreciation.

How To Take Action

I would suggest focusing on what matters most each day and tackling that first thing in the morning. Dedicate your first few hours to getting that important task done, because that's where you'll make the biggest impact.

A good way of balancing work and personal life is to recognize when you're not as productive, and use that time to connect with your partner. Prioritize effective work over just spending time for the sake of it. Make every hour count, like investing one solid hour into your marriage instead of dragging on an unproductive workday.

For dates with your spouse, don't just go out to eat—make it special. Dress up, do an activity unique to the two of you, and use this time to genuinely disconnect from work and connect with each other. Remember that the need for dedicated dates increases when you're both busy.

Communication is key. Keep an open line, adjust expectations based on reality, and be willing to let go of minor issues. If disagreements arise, try changing the environment or writing to each other to express yourselves clearly.

Finally, understanding and supporting each other's goals respects the seasons of life and work. Recognize that individual growth and change are part of a successful partnership, and commit to each other deeply, embracing life's ebbs and flows together. Cherish the quality moments you do have, knowing that you can't always get what you want, but scarcity can actually enhance appreciation.

Quotes by Alex Hormozi

"You don't. You just sacrifice yourself as a husband so you can achieve your goals."

– Alex Hormozi

"It's about doing effective work, not just sitting in front of the computer pretending to be productive."

– Alex Hormozi

"No one works effectively 24 hours a day."

– Alex Hormozi

"Optimizing around life is like the ROI I get from that 1 hour is worth dropping the last hour of work."

– Alex Hormozi

"Respect is more unchanging."

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

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&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 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 are not working a 10 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 Chipotle plac wish chipot it would be nice oh my God anyways anyway stomach 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 the main delineation between going out to eat for work or whatever versus when we go out and actually like do a date that's the main difference if we do a 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 she like 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 pins of ice cream that's acceptable I feel like it's never I just buy another pint you don't you just leave it like a 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 Pro productively procrastinating like if you know that your work output drops prit of time and I usually know what type of work I'm doing so for me 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 in 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 go down cu the next then 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 and 1 hour of marriage time I'll get a really high Roi on that first hour of of marriage time and so like optimizing around life is like the ROI I get from that 1 hour is worth dropping the last hour of work and so I think I try and think about it like that is like what's my minimum effective dose um 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 going to have a lot of time with each other it took me a minute to like accept that we but all are going to 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 just 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 leftovers 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 tradeoff 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's 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 or 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 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 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 2 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 I gave up 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 Lea's improved a lot on is um 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 a hundred 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 in the for the first few years yeah we've only had one real big argument in our careers and it was about business it was 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 work 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 fit for you as your spouse and her the same to you I was waiting for you to say how' you know I was the one you looked at me creepily and I was like that's that's how I knew she looked at me like I was gets me going like a piece of meat no I mean I had I had a handful of moments big moment number one was when you went to Hawaii and Soldier ass off when we weren't together so we 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 cuz 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 cuz I basically made the agreement to the gym own 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 uh Lila was like I would sleep with you under a 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 cuz 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 heart in the beginning of our relationship like all the hard stuff was before we got married what about you um 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 going to do next you just completely turn [ __ ] around when you see someone there in like their darkest moments like what are they going to do and he just just went right through it and picked his [ __ ] up and was like I'm not going to [ __ ] indulge myself in that and I respected that a lot and I would say the second time is when maybe 9 10 months in the relationship and I felt like I wonder if he's ever going to like let me in and we were at your 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 or they're like [ __ ] this person you [ __ ] 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 [ __ ] you're be with family you're going to have 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 oo 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 often times we step away and then we write to each other yep that's probably the biggest go-to y 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 and 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 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 often times 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 [ __ ] 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 that's a good question yeah it's funny cuz 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 change one of these agreements we both need to agree on it otherwise we stick with what our commitment was this will be quote unhealthy in the marriage world but um I actually told Lila I was like the business comes before our marriage that was the first three years of our marriage I know if I would say that's a great advice for many no I'm I'm just being I'm being candid yeah yeah so people get divorced because of money issues the business makes money and feeds us so feed the business the business will feed us and that was kind of my reasoning then we were both miserable at like threeyear point and L 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 had said like I love this this is great I think Lea would have been like this doesn't work for me and then that would have been it and the F if it had been the same way with Ila 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 I joked about it I was like I think we 3x 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 going to expect that you are going to not change and not only that you might get worse and right and I'm still committing to this provided you you know don't change your values and what you want to do things like that like the big 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 just not confronting [ __ ] cuz no one no two people are perfect together like there's just always like there people you have tons of different things and Communications and things like that we both know that both of us have these things that are 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 [ __ ] ton of [ __ ] done I also care so much about so many things that I 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 a different spouse might interpret that as Alex doesn't care about me I think Lea'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 he doesn't care he just doesn't think about I always appreciate it was that L 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 deck 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 but for me I'm a first thing in the morning guys 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 cuz 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 would like I don't know like it would have been I was a hard cell seriously I was a hard cell yeah like I was a hard cell it 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. comom when people apply all the time like often times the business 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 Laya have found someone else absolutely could I find someone like Laya absolutely how long would 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 something that we've learned and I 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's Lea's really intense work season so we don't match up much and so 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 with myself like in my young 20s like wanting something and being mad that you can't have it is a 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 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 lela'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 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 cuz then You' probably just get sick of each other I think it was Esther Perell wrote meeting in captivity which Lea 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 B 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 uh we can't wait to spend the next year with you keeping one of zero 2024