Your Most Important -- and Challenging -- Partner in Leadership

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In this issue: Your Most Important - and Challenging Partner in Leadership

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A Surprising Way to Bring Together Two Alpha Lions

In the wild — and sometimes wonderful - world of entrepreneurship, (far too) much time is spent alone, stewing in one’s own juices.

Sure, there are vendors and suppliers, VAs, freelancers and all that.

When you scale and hire people, of course it’s a different equation.

But largely, the first few years are generally spent on your own, stumbling, fumbling, putting out massive fires, hustling, grabbing every possible opportunity you can, lots of really painful minesweeper with awful clients, bad software, less than perfect credit, you name it.

If you’re a true, diehard optimist, you’ll (hopefully) survive through the long, dark stretches of no revenue, the pump-and-cycle of hope and no luck and rest of the bumpy carousel of running your own business.

But perhaps the hardest thing to manage is the skepticism, frustration, anger and outright hostility of your family.

Ok, your spouse.

Not like on Instagram or FB, it’s a well-known truism that given the whole “opposites attract“ thing, it’s actually somewhat rare that in a couple, both are entrepreneurs or at least understanding AND sympathetic to the insane journey.

For various reasons having to do with physiology, genetics, social, financial and educational norms, one spouse tends to be the “stable one” while the other experiments more.

And as much as modern times have often flipped the script such that highly educated women in urban areas often make as much or more than men, there is still often a stronger pull for the man to be the more stable provider.

These norms don’t just disappear overnight.

And the disconnect in many two-income families between the newfound “equality” of expectations and the social norms that pull the woman toward more housework and childcare very often carries with it all sorts of resentment, frustration, anger, etc.

As such, when you have the woman working a corporate job and the man running his own business with all its ups and downs, all of these forces double and triple in strength.

Hardly surprising, then, that entrepreneurs have a significantly higher divorce rate than the average.

Running one’s own business consumer you.

Throw in kids and it’s too often a whole other level of dysfunction and risk and looming disaster.

You can parrot Grant Cardone and all the other gurus about hustling and griding and embracing the rollercoaster, but gravity wins every time.

If you can’t create stability from your business, you’ll either split up your family by continuing the same way or have to find stability in a job.

No shame in any of it, in my view, except of course, for the subjective personal shame due to norms of family, society, religion and so on.

The hype dies when your most important relationship starts breaking apart.

As such, on a more positive note, when faced with the void in your marriage, as an entrepreneur, you get your proverbial shit together despite all your baggage, your martyr’s complex (it’s a thing, believe me), a new dimension opens up.

Massive change ain’t pretty. It might mean waking up earlier, meditating or praying more, deflating your pride (especially as a man), shutting yourself up when presented with valid criticism and the places where you lack presence or impact or effectiveness.

It might mean “sucking it up” and getting a day job while you continue building your business.

It might re-evaluating your life to see the biggest gap as the biggest gain.

A gap in how you and your spouse see the world, for example (artist vs. engineer, scarcity vs. plenty, etc.).

A gap in how you see yourself and how your spouse sees you. Maybe (almost certainly) she’s not criticizing you to kill your ego, but rather giving you a helpful adjustment to grow, instead of letting you shrink away into your own pain and darkness.

And in leadership terms, it need not mean some catastrophic threat to be confronted with your own dysfunction and threatened with departure.

In fact, if your spouse really didn’t care, you wouldn’t get any more chances, period.

So let’s say, you put on your Big Boy (or Girl) pants and really take the initiative and work really hard for a few months and regain your spouse’s trust.

You show up on time, clean up more, bring in the dough more regularly, open up all sorts of opportunities that you slept on before, because you were stuck in “martyr mode.”

You adjust your attitude.

You stop whining and complaining and just get shit done.

You get over yourself.

Your spouse notices and reacts more and more positively.

It’s like a different person speaking with you.

You want to do nice things for each other.

You want to (and do) spend more quality time together, even though there’s seemingly less time than before.

You start feeling the support, rather than the scorn and disappointment and frustration.

You start feeling like a lion again, in demand, supported by your, well, pride.

You start asking, where the hell was I all this time?!

Why was I such a stubborn, selfish idiot for so long?

It boggles the mind, when you look back with your 20/20 vision.

But it all had to happen.

To avoid disaster, you often have to court it until the last moment.

It’s stupid, it’s childish and petty, but also absolutely true.

And this is true not just with leading yourself.

It’s also true with regard to leading others.

Coming up through the ranks, one often assumes that there are some sort of secret leadership handbooks, manuals, all those nuclear codes and emergency protocols and such.

Meh, too often, even if there is, especially for men, there’s some seemingly chaotic mash-up of training (army, business or law school, corporate jungle rules), instinct built up over decades of stepping on other people’s necks to get ahead and other “sense” based on last night’s dinner and this morning’s coffee time.

And this is why our most important partner in leadership isn’t our Vice President or COO or CFO.

It’s not our business or governing partner, at all.

For our business or governance or whatever other endeavor to be truly successful, we have to cultivate the leader in our spouse.

And our spouse may not need to be cultivated in this sense, at all.

In fact, she might be a better and more reliable leader than ourself.

But cultivation isn’t some sort of rah-rah motivation or complement with flowers over dinner.

It’s a way of thinking and seeing the other person, of appreciating her, of spending quality time despite whatever insane demands you have in life.

It’s planning together, building together, traveling together, raising kids together.

Sure, it’s being intimate together in a way that goes well beyond whatever intimacy education we might have received from “media” or learned from watching our parents or other couples we hold in high esteem.

But good intimacy is much more complex than just good sex.

It’s actually a totally different province, altogether.

Achieving true intimacy is in many ways much harder than just wine, candles and intercourse.

How do you get someone who is an engineer to understand your artist’s mind maps and thought flows?

How do you get someone who grew up in a different culture, with a different language, with wildly different expectations and baggage and sensitivities and sensibilities (or total lack thereof) to give you the time of day to explain yourself, to verbalize all those deep things you’ve held so dear for decades?

How do you unwind a dynamic that’s gone south because you’ve failed to live up to certain expectations, lost trust, etc.?

No, there’s no magic formula.

Do the hard work, work on yourself, change yourself, change your luck.

Create opportunity, convert it, make it last.

Lift your head up.

Good food helps. Sun, time off, childcare, a bit of travel, some complements, a bit of patisserie and wine.

Apparently, there’s one more thing.

It’s really not what one expects.

Let her give you a haircut.

Yes, a haircut.

Not in the financial sense.

I have my guy that always gives me a haircut at the salon.

But last night, I felt compelled and asked my wife to give me a haircut.

She’s amazing at whatever she does, truly.

She gave me a haircut once at the start of COVID.

No comb, nothing but scissors.

Risky, takes a lot of trust.

Not much hair, so maybe it’s not that hard to mess up.

But all jokes aside, it was one of the most intimate things we’ve ever done together.

Not only a great result, but a certain shared experience that’s very rare and formative.

She didn’t have to do it. I didn’t have to take the haircut.

But somehow, it was exactly what we both needed.

Thank G-d for that.

Nothing is guaranteed in life, from one moment to the next.

I will never take her for granted. I simply know much better than that.

She’s a lioness among lionesses.

And yet, two lions need not battle against each other.

Even when they’re so different and apparently meant to antagonize each other, they can choose to sheathe their claws and groom each other and build something together without destroying.

It takes two to tango and to rule the jungle.

First things first, there must be peace in the house.

And true, lasting peace can’t come without conflict and calibration and reinvention, often in quick succession.

Not even without retrenchment, from time to time, painful as it may be.

Sending y’all blessings for peace in the home, whatever your home may look like.

‘Tis the season of reinvention. Don’t sleep on it — or your own potential to change, quickly, drastically, and for much the better, even if you’re “too old.”

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We’ve launched the Commander in Chief Community 

WHAT’S INSIDE?

Basically, this has all my best stuff, coaching and consulting materials, latest tools, my book split into chapters, with a whole bunch of my best trainings, workshops, writing, podcast episodes you name it.

Oh yeah, the premium stuff?

When you subscribe (and help me pay the damn bills, only fair), you’re gonna get:

1) Group coaching - career, business, life, whatevs

2) Private monthly trainings and workshops. Think:

a. getting promoted,

b. getting paid more,

c. building a 6-figure side business,

d. building a brilliant personal brand.

3) Special discounts for 1-on-1 coaching

You’re gonna LOVE this. Yeah, it’s pretty MASSIVE value, amigo/a.

Time to get off the sidelines.

Like, this is basically all the best stuff I’ve ever produced, with weekly updates and a ton of new stuff.

YEP, IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING!! GET EXCITE!

And NOW, I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse…

THE COMMUNITY IS FREE TO JOIN FOR THE NEXT 14 DAYS.

I don’t want to hear any objections. You straight up have ZERO EXCUSE, homie.

Get in there, get active, help me keep building this amazing community.

Seriously, what are you still doing here? LOLZ.

Get in there and make some noise. Intro yourself.

Send this to 5 of your friends. NOW. Seriously. Pretty, please 🙂 

See you on the inside.

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Whether it’s the first time, or if it’s just been a while, let’s connect and get to know each other (better) as humans.

1. If we haven’t connected yet, connect with me on LinkedIN. I post some super useful stuff there, as well :)

2. Put 30 minutes on my calendar to chat. No strings attached, whatsoever.

Let’s get to know each other (in many cases after not chatting for a long time) as humans, friends.

Of course, if there’s something I can help you with, just ask and I’ll do whatever I can to ask.

Here’s my calendar link, again.

Don’t be a stranger, friend.