Building A Business and A Relationship: How To Keep Your Marriage Strong During Entrepreneurship

Episode #630

Are you an entrepreneur who is struggling to connect with your partner?

Do you feel like you’re not enough?

If you feel like you’re not enough, then it’s time to find the main issues in your marriage and start living your life from the inside out so you can keep your marriage healthy as an entrepreneur.

In this episode, Tim discusses why you feel unappreciated by your partner and what you can do to shift from 5 agonies to 5 freedom so you can stay happily married.

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TRANSCRIPTION

Doug Holt  00:01

Hey guys, welcome to The Powerful Man Show where we help married businessmen save their marriages without having to talk about it, get unstuck, and gain clarity in their lives. As I like to say, life is too short for average. I’m your host, Doug Holt with my co-host, Tim, The Powerful Man, Matthews. Now let’s get this started.

Tim Matthews  00:22

To build a business and a relationship that is strong, you’ve got to get to the root of what’s causing you to operate in these unconscious unhealthy ways. And when you do this, you can make the shift from living from the outside in, where your self-image and your self-worth is so dependent on everything outside of you; the money, the house, the car, whatever it may be, to living from the inside out.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Powerful Man Show. I am your host, Tim Matthews, without my co-host, Mr. Doug E. Fresh. As you guys know, we like to record these podcasts on the same day. So, he is still out enjoying skiing. Good for him.

So, on Monday, I think it was, yeah, it was Monday, I arrived back from an Alpha Reset. So, for those of you that don’t know, the Alpha Reset is our four-day intensive that a lot of married business owners choose to go through after they’ve been through the activation method.

Now, these guys were a bunch of amazing men. We tend to limit the men in the room going through the process to about anywhere between 10 to 11 men. So, terrible business model, we know. But we do that so we can make sure the men get the result. There’s usually a ratio of one coach for every two guys, two to three guys. It is a transformational event that gets to the root of a lot of the issues that really cause the disconnection within the marriage of a business owner when they are looking to grow their business. Or even when they’re just looking to be in business.

Being in business, balancing business and home life is incredibly hard. It’s a big challenge for most business owners. And most people deal with the symptom, right? They try and get home earlier or they try and they constantly make promises essentially. They find it very hard to keep and it keeps them in this juggling act torn between the need to provide financially and the need to be there physically. And it’s why a lot of guys end up feeling as though they’re not appreciated. Because they go to work all day slaying the dragon, overcoming hurdles, making decisions time and time again. It’s exhausting.

And then walking through the door and instead of being greeted with a smile, they’re greeted with a cold shoulder, right? Do you not realize what I’ve just done today? Do you not realize how hard I’ve worked for us so we can go on that trip? But the reality is, unless you get to the root of what is really going on, you’re always going to be in a position where you’re struggling to keep your marriage strong during entrepreneurship.

So, I’m just going to share with you a little bit the results that these guys experienced, because we had a select — a variety of men in the room, rather. We had everything from men who had been abused sexually. And you’ve got to remember these guys are business owners. They’re putting on a brave face, they are the ones that everybody comes to for the answers. And they’ve never told anyone in their life about what they’ve been through because they’re afraid. And they’re carrying the shame, the guilt, the anger, the sadness of all this stuff. And all of that stuff is bubbling beneath the surface while they go out there and build their business.

So, it’s kind of like you see a lot of musicians, right? The best musicians are the ones that typically write songs from a place of pain. Unfortunately, some of the most brilliant businessmen also build a business from a place of pain. They’re pushed by pain instead of being pulled by pleasure. And when we first introduced the men to the concept of being pulled by pleasure instead of being pushed by pain, it’s a foreign one. They don’t understand how it would actually be possible.

They associate ease with laziness, they associate flow with, what’s the word? Femininity was coming to mind for some reason then as though it’s a weak feminine concept to be in flow, which I’m not talking about the kind of flow that the psychologists have coined where you get into, you lose a sense of space and time when you take on a project. I mean, the flow of life, where things just seem to open up for you, things become a bit easier, start to swim downstream instead of upstream, right? We have such a culture and society where people reward the perseverance and the struggle.

So, therefore, what do we do? We seek out the struggle. We often fall into the trap of thinking and believing that things aren’t worth having if they aren’t hard, right? Anyway, I’m kind of going off on a rant here. But the point I’m making here, though, the men in the room, who, every single one of them, are business owners. Some of them have suffered sexual abuse, and never told anyone in their entire life, not even their wife. We didn’t know as we went into the event that this is what they were carrying. But it’s part of what, like I said, was causing them to be so driven. And it’s one of the reasons why no matter what they achieved, it never felt like enough.

But some guys in the room that abused other people because they’d suffered at the hand of abuse and they passed it on. Some guys have been addicted to drink, to drugs, to porn, a whole array of men, it was a really wild bunch of men and wild in the sense that varied, right. We had one man in there who had been diagnosed with a very rare form of leukemia and overcame it. So, an amazing group of business owners.

And coming out of that, the results that these guys are getting when they are returning home after realizing what the root of their issue is, instead of trying to seek out work-life balance, or try the latest productivity hack or whatever it is, when they were actually able to get to the root of what was causing them to have such an unhealthy drive and appetite for success that they weren’t in control of, it was actually in control of them.

When they were actually able to get to the root of it and understand it and shift it, and not only that, do it from a place whereby it was, how do I say this, it came from a place of empowerment, like it wasn’t something that happened to them, right? It was something that they chose to shift. Arriving back home this week, these guys have come from all over the world, the UK, US, Canada; the relationship that they have experienced with their wife after being away for a few days, one guy had his wife fall asleep on his chest.

That hasn’t happened in, I think he said five or six years. Because he walked in through that door and he shared with her what he had realized about where his drive had come from, why he had been struggling to connect and open up to her. And why he wasn’t able to be there for her in these terrible moments when things had — tragedy had happened in their lives. He wasn’t able to sit with her in the emotion of it because he wasn’t able to sit with himself in his emotions of shame and guilt, and sadness as well, and also anger in fact.

So many of the guys there described themselves as being numb. I don’t know if you’ve ever, if you can relate to that. And I know I certainly could. But the way the Alpha Reset is designed, it’s designed to get to the root of the issue and remove it. It’s three days, it’s why it’s called a reset. You come and you reset and you use it as a platform, a springboard, as rocket fuel. So, this guy walked back in through the door, literally a different person, he looked different. There was blood, there was life, there was color in his face. He’d relaxed. The grimace had gone from his face. There was no more fake smile.

I asked him and he was sharing at one point about a tragedy that had happened in his life. It might have been about his abuse or something else. And I said to him, “Hey, are you happy about that?” He said, “No. Why?” “Well, you’re smiling.” And I get the impression this is what you do. You smile when something’s uncomfortable and it’s a fake smile. It’s a mask. And I’m stood here wondering, hold on a minute, does this guy not get it? He’s trying to cover up for something. He’s like, “Yes, exactly what my wife says to me.” It’s because he hadn’t dealt with the reality of what had happened to him in his life. And therefore he had this unhealthy drive like I said that was setting his marriage up for failure during his journey in entrepreneurship.

So, I know we like to give you guys practical things to do on these podcasts. And I’m sorry that I don’t really have something as practical for you right now. Because I’ve just come out of the Alpha Reset and we’re receiving all these messages. I mean, you’ve heard it before. I’ve done tons of podcasts on the Alpha recap. And I’m just getting so many messages from the men as they arrive home.

Now one guy who didn’t even tell his wife he was going to the Alpha Reset because they’re in such a bad place. And his journey in entrepreneurship and his desire to constantly be there for everybody else at work but never for anybody else at home was creating a real strain on the marriage. So much so it was on its last legs. He’s sharing with us today how his wife is now posting pictures of him on her Facebook celebrating him on Valentine’s Day, celebrating the amazing man that he is. Now granted, he went to the Alpha Reset in January. So, he’s been home a little bit longer than some of the other guys who have just been and come back this week. But I’m just looking through my phone here and what I’ve received from these guys and it’s just incredible.

Yeah. So anyway, going back to the topic, building a business in a relationship, how to keep your marriage strong during entrepreneurship. Look, you’ve got to get to the root of what’s causing you to be in the five agonies in no man’s land. For those of you that don’t know, a lot of the guys that come to us, a lot of the root of the issues that you’re experiencing in your marriage, be it you going into DEER mode, be it you entering into no man’s land and the five agonies that you’ll experience in no man’s land, the first agony is greed. It’s where the feeling — It’s a feeling rather that no matter what you have, it’s never enough. Okay.

No matter how much money you have, it’s never enough. No matter how rich you are, it’s never enough. You’ve got this constant, never ending void that you just can’t fill. And the more you have, the worse you feel. Because the more you start to have, the very things that you thought were going to be the answer, it annoys you, it angers you because you can’t solve the issue. And your work you sell further and further into the ground. And it’s a scenario where you’re never going to win. Stuck on the hamster wheel of hustle and that leads to the second agony of anger.

You get frustrated, you push it down, your people pleasing nature, you cannot win. It irritates you. You become a volcano ready to erupt at any moment. And when you erupt, it’s usually around the people you love the most. Whether it’s a sharp word to your kids or sharp words, your wife, whatever it may be.

And this leads to the third agony of shame. You feel ashamed because you said it was going to be different. But you keep on breaking promises to yourself and to people that you love, which leads to the fourth agony of loneliness, you start to pull away. Well, maybe it’s easier if I just wasn’t around. So, you stay later at the office. You numb yourself when you walk in through the door with beer or cocktails or whatever it may be. Okay.

Which then leads to the fifth agony of uncertainty. You know, this cannot continue but you don’t know which domino is going to fall first. Is it going to be your health, the anxiety, the depression? Is it going to be your marriage? Is it going to be your business? You know you can’t continue treating people the way that you do. Which domino is going to fall first? This is what it’s like to be in no man’s land. And we try and out work and out hustle our way out of it and it does not work. It’s kind of like being stuck in the snow in a truck, right? And you put your foot on the accelerator trying to get out of it and all it does is the further you press down on the accelerator, the more it digs you into the mud and into the snow. It’s the same thing here.

To build a business and a relationship that is strong, you’ve got to get to the root of what’s causing you to operate in these unconscious unhealthy ways. And when you do this, you can make the shift from living from the outside in, where your self-image and your self-worth is so dependent on everything outside of you; the money, the house, the car, whatever it may be, to living from the inside out. Where you flip the five territories on their head and then organized self at the bottom, then health then relationships and wealth and business. You begin to live from the inside out and instead of the five agonies you move to the five freedoms.

The first freedom is the freedom to be, the freedom to be who you want to be without the need for validation or approval, or people pleasing or anything that comes with it. The second freedom is the freedom to thrive, is to have capacity, energy, the body to move to be able to have vitality. Which paves the way for the third freedom, the freedom to connect. To connect with the people you love, your kids, your wife, your friends, your family. It paves the way for the fourth freedom of contribution and the fifth freedom to create. You’re able to create something that serves your life instead of your life serving your business.

So, when you start to operate in this way that you start to build a business and a relationship, you start to build a life and you can keep your marriage strong during entrepreneurship because you stop being pushed by pain and begin to be pulled by pleasure. You go from the five agonies where you’re trapped, deactivated, falling into DEER, trapped in no man’s land to the five freedoms, enjoying the promised land, where you are free, where you are activated, where you are the wolf living from the inside out. You have to get to the root of the issue to do this.

Now luckily there’s different ways you can do this. For us, we have the men go through the Alpha Reset, that gets to the root of it within three days. It’s up to you. Everyone has a different journey, a different path. By no means am I sat here saying hey, you need to go through the Alpha Reset. We know it works. Hundreds of men have been through it. Like I said, we keep it to 10-11 min max per group. If you do want to find out more, just head over to thepowerfulman.com, click get started. You can reach out there and speak to one of the advisors, or you can shoot me a message on Facebook, I will respond to you.

But either way, look guys, again, I’m not going to sit here and give you loads of different hacks and tactics that deal with the symptom. Because I’d be lying to you if I didn’t tell you the truth of what I have seen to create the fastest shift in keeping your marriage strong during entrepreneurship. We have men that have literally been separated, on the brink of divorce, their wives having affairs, living in separate houses, all sorts of different scenarios have gone through that process and it shifted it.

Now I’m not saying it just happens overnight, but the reality is when the men get to the root, when they stop being pushed by pain and get pulled by pleasure, they operate in a very different way. They become the 1% of the 1%. So, anyway, I appreciate you joining me for this episode. If you do have any questions by all means, reach out to me or one of the advisors. And like Doug E. Fresh always says in the moment of insight, take massive action. Until next time, we’ll see you again on The Powerful Man Show.

Doug Holt  17:12

All right, guys, that’s a wrap for this episode. But as I always say in the moment of insight, take massive action. You see, there are two types of men that listen to a podcast like this, those that go on from one podcast or show to another just hoping things are going to change and realizing that they’re going to be in the same place month after month, year after year. You see, I was this guy so I completely get it. You may just not be ready. But there’s also a second man, a second man that listens to a show just like this. And this is a guy who takes massive action so they can shorten the learning curve, compress time, and get results to be the WOLF. See, WOLF is an acronym for Wise, Open, Loving, and Fierce.

Now ask yourself, which one am I? And just be honest with yourself there. And there’s no judgment on my end. But if you’re ready to move from deactivated DEER mode, which is Defend, Excuse, Explain, React to activated WOLF, Wise, Open, Loving and Fierce, then go over to thepowerfulman.com/grow. And go there now. In fact, I’ll make it super easy for you. I will even put the link right in the description here so you can just click it and go over there now to learn more. Guys, in the moment of insight, take massive action. Go from deactivated to activated, because like I said, life is too short for average and I’ll see you on the next episode.