588: Introduction to the Challenges of Marriage & Business with Enoch Sears & Rion Willard: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

588: Introduction to the Challenges of Marriage & Business with Enoch Sears & Rion Willard

Enoch Sears39min

Enoch Sears

00:00

One of the key principles here that we found to be effective is putting the marriage first. Hello and welcome to the Business of Architecture.

Rion Willard

00:06

I am your host, Ryan Willard, and I'm joined here with the CEO of Business of Architecture, none other than Enoch Sears. And hello, Ryan, good to see you today. Pleasure to see you, and we are going to have a conversation today about something a little bit unusual, perhaps, but certainly something that fills a lot of the demographic of our clients. And we did a little survey not so long ago, and we found out that about a little over 25% of all of this of architecture clients actually fall into this very specific demographic, which is being a married couple. So actually, being a married couple running an architecture practice is surprisingly common and comes with it, a lot of problems, and it's also a sort of pertinent topic for us to discuss. As I, myself recently got married a couple of weeks ago, and Enoch came to the south of France and and enjoyed the and joined in with the the celebrations there. And it was, it was all a very moving and intimate and, you know, very powerful experience, as I'm sure many of our listeners who have gotten married have have gone through. So it seemed like a useful topic to talk about. We've had many of our clients in the past have been married couples have brought to us very specific types of problems that they've had whilst running a practice together, and I thought that we could talk a little bit about go through those problems, and then talk about some of the possibilities and some of the principles that might be useful to be considering and inquiring if you're running an architecture firm with your better half. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, business of architecture's flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smartpractice method.com or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how he might be able to help you. Please follow the link in the information. Hello, listeners. We hope you're enjoying our show. We love bringing you these insightful conversations, but we couldn't do it about the support of our amazing sponsors. If you're a business owner or know someone who would be an excellent fit for our audience, we'd love to hear from you. Partnering with us means your brand will reach over 40,000 engaged listeners each month. Interested in becoming a sponsor, please send us an email at support at Business of architecture.com, yeah. Beautiful,

Enoch Sears

02:48

Ryan, yeah. And, you know? And here's the thing, as we venture into this topic, is that it is. It's not easy, right? It's It's hard enough running an architectural practice. It's even harder when you're doing that with your life partner or someone that you're married to. You have a romantic relationship involved, like these two things, you know, they say the one thing people argue about and get divorced over the most is sex and money. Well, I mean, if you're married to your business partner, you're basically mixing the two dynamite sticks of marriage. You're just going all in. You're like, you're like, you know what? I'm not content just to play the game of marriage. I'm not content just to play the game we're gonna make we're gonna mix this up, make it even more challenging for us, and we're gonna play the game of marriage and business together while balancing seven plates and maybe even a little couple kids mixed in. Yeah, and

Rion Willard

03:36

I think it's interesting as well. I think we should both add here that neither Enoch and I run a business with our other halves, with our with our partners. I have, I have worked with Yvonne in various projects and capacities, and we have even done, we've even done a bit of architecture practice work together, and it was certainly fraught with all sorts of challenges. And it's something in a professional capacity, we tend to not do and have kind of made an active decision to not say that we wouldn't, we wouldn't ever go back to doing a project together. But I admire those people who run a practice with their other half. And you know, there's a lot of challenges there. There's a lot of things that can there's a lot of heightened sensitivity and emotions, and there's the recipe there for it being absolutely mind bendingly wonderful and one of the most powerful things you could ever do. And on the flip side, it can also cause just tremendous amounts of pain. And I think that's, you know, it's not, this is not easy. So let's have a look at, first of all, just the the sorts of clients that we've had in the past, who are architects, right? Or who married couples running a firm we've had the classic, which is two architects, and I'll include. Here the architect interior designer combo as well, but two design professionals who are running a business together. They're both kind of equally qualified, and they've become partners, and they're doing designs together and running a business. Well, the other type is that's one architect or design professional, and they've pulled their partner into their business, and their partner has given up their own career or their own field of expertise and is now working full time in the business. Now this both of these can work, and both of these can be tremendously painful. I don't know if you've seen any other, any other types there. Enoch,

Enoch Sears

05:47

probably just variations on those. And I'll probably just variations. I think those are probably the two major ones where we have two people who are already in the profession of architecture. Maybe they met at architecture school, or they met working for other firms. How they end up getting married. You know, interestingly, we have, we even have, it's not uncommon as well to have people running firms who are married to architects, but they don't do business together, like, for instance, their their other half is working for another firm. Or we have, you know, Romero Torres, who's a long time client firm of Business of Architecture, his wife works for an architecture firm as an accountant, right? And so there's, there's an interesting mix there, but obviously not, not the topic we're talking about today, which is mixing marriage and business we

Rion Willard

06:29

we have had, and this would be a kind of a riff of the first type of practice we have had in the past. A couple who were once married and ran a practice. They divorced, and then they carried on running the business together. Yeah, absolutely.

Enoch Sears

06:45

And, and just to clarify, Ryan, when you say when you say clients, you know our listeners. They may not know. They may not understand why, why these people are clients. So just for those of you who maybe don't know what Business of Architecture does, just want to clarify that, that small practice owners come to us because they're looking for best practices in their firm so they don't have to reinvent the wheel about how to have more time freedom or financial reward, less stress, less overwhelm, less feeling like the business runs them. Over the past 10 years, we've built smart practice to be a method that small practices can use to smooth and run their operations in a smooth like manner. So we have, I mean, hundreds, at this point, of small practices that we've worked with, both in the US and in the United Kingdom. And Like Ryan said, interestingly, and I was actually surprised by this, that 20% more than 20% of the firms that we work with are married couples. So it's, it's very common to be, you know, to be a small firm and have your partner involved, your romantic partner in some way, shape or form. So some of the problems that we see that occur when we have people who are both romantic partners, meaning they're married as well as business partners, is that number one is that the relationship, the romantic relationship and the work become collapsed. So what this looks like is now, every time you're on a date, even when you're having dinner, like it just becomes so interwoven and so intertwined. You're talking about business all the time. You know, there's no respite from the conversation about business. It maybe it sabotages date night because you're out for a nice meal, but then you get talking about some invoice or something that's not going well with the firm, and then there's a disagreement that happens, and so conflict then rolls over, and you really have blurred lines. As a matter of fact, they've become, you just don't even know where the line is. It's just become completely the same thing. It's like non duality. It's just all oneness. There

Rion Willard

08:40

is the added advantage on date night that you can now write it off as a business expense. Indeed, indeed, yeah.

Enoch Sears

08:47

If that's yeah, that's that is a that is a good reason to go this route. I mean, yeah,

Rion Willard

08:55

there are those things, but yes, the the relationship now knows no boundaries. And it's not so much of a problem when the business is going well and you're both excited about you're both mutually excited about the same things. But it can be particularly problematic when the business is, you know, not doing so well. You don't have this you know, you don't have the ability to kind of check out of it. You know, if you're a business owner and you go back home to your to your wife or your husband, you know there's an ability there to close the door. Work is finished for the day. I can be of my family, and we can just enjoy each other, and you can take some much needed respite from the day's stresses and activities when you're doing that with your other half, then all of this becomes collapsed, and it can be incredibly stressful. And of course, it will affect your marriage. It absolutely will. You'll be bringing that energy into the bedroom. You'll be bringing that energy into the into the house. If it's not going well, this is where. Both of you can be getting angry at each other if there's family dynamics involved with children, and of course, now children are having to deal with the stresses of the of the business when they do say that, I have heard the dictum before that every business is a family business, and with a married leaders running the organization. Of course, that's that's very, very obvious. It's very, very apparent. But those conversations, those stresses, they've been filtered down into the rest of the activities. The second problem is, and this is often relating to that second type of practice that we were talking about not always, but where one of you is really unhappy in your career choice and wants out, but the other but you're but they're scared of hurting the other person, and the other person gets really hurt and very takes it very personally that the other person has any kind of frustration or dissatisfaction about being in the business. And we've seen this play out a number of times with some of our clients. The kind of interpersonal relations that happen there that one of them, and it's usually the in the scenario where you've had the architect who's brought in the the other person who's not an architect, and now they're working in an architecture business, and they've given up their career, or they've given up some aspect of their own, you know what they were doing, and maybe they've become the office manager or the accounts or the bookkeeper, or it's a, it's, perhaps it's a support role as opposed to a real director role. But they're but they're involved in many of the very key decisions all throughout the business, and that can be a really heavy load and very, very sensitive. We've seen it before in the past, where that person wants to leave the business, and then any kind of conversation of that suddenly there's hurt, there's upset, and it's magnified because it's inside of the context of a relation. Relationship.

Enoch Sears

12:06

Yeah, absolutely. Ryan, hey, look another. You know, another challenge here that ends up happening when two spouses are working together is that the one partner who was brought in is unhappy and once out, but afraid of hurting the other,

Unknown Speaker

12:24

right? So,

Enoch Sears

12:27

you know, and these, these, these feelings of discontent can go on for years and not be, not be voiced, or maybe voiced in a passive way, or maybe even voiced in an aggressive way, but the stakes are so high when you're mixing marriage and business, that it feels like there's so much on the line. A lot of times we end up staying there because we feel like we're obligated. We owe this to the other person. And you know, when there's an energy, in my experience, was there an energy of doing something out of obligation? It's a it's a tainted energy. It doesn't come across as a gift. It comes across as more of a, you know, kind of doing a duty which is kind of hollow of heart. It's not uncommon when we have practices come in where we have married spouses, especially when one is not an architect. Often that person will take the office manager role or do a lot of the finances. But it's very common for when they come in to start working with our team here at Business of Architecture and we start unpacking the way that they're currently doing things and suggesting better ways to do them office time then the non architects always like, I told you, so I told you, I told you, the money's important. And they're like, Thank you for finally telling my husband. Usually it's the husband. They're like, Thank you for finally telling my husband. You know all the things that I've been telling him for years, but now he's listening to you.

Rion Willard

13:39

Yeah, yeah. It's funny. The the the next problem that we often see is that there's no clear roles that are actually defined in the business for each of them, and performance starts to fail, and finances start to fail as a as a result. So, you know, that doesn't sound fun Ryan, that is not good at all. So often we see this with the two architects. Scenario, it's much more pronounced where the clear roles are not are not defined, and they're doing absolutely everything, and then they're getting frustrated at each other. Again, everything, everything in all of these problems are just heightened because of the marriage relationship, and the example you were talking about just previously, where one of them wants out or feels resentful or feels obligated, it's difficult for the other person to see clearly with that one sometimes, because they feel like, well, if they're separating in business, this means the end of the marriage. This means that we're going to separate. And of course, that's not that's not often not the case at all, but it's difficult to be able to collapse that. So here, with the with the no clear roles, and everybody's trying to, trying to do everything. I mean, we see this as a common problem in architecture firms, anyway, amongst leadership teams, it just gets exaggerated in the context. Of of a marriage, and then you get these bickering kind of things that are happening and, well, you should have been doing this, and I've I'm meant to be doing this part of the role, or blah, blah, blah, especially

Enoch Sears

15:11

when they both like the same thing, right? Like, if they both like doing the same things, then now you have two people kind of doing the same things. It's like, okay, who's doing all the things that you don't like to do, who's doing all the things that maybe don't come naturally to you, and that can cause problems as well. It can cause problems of major inefficiencies in some things being left undone, and it's difficult when you have that makeup. Because if, let's face it, if you like doing one particular thing, it's it's probably not a good business move to switch over to doing something that you like less like really, in your business, as a business owner, you should be working on the things that really juice you the most and that really excites you the most and really bring you joy, because life is too short. And so it's important that if you're in that situation, and we'll go on to this as we talk about some of the solutions later, but it's important that number one, you're working in a role where you're excited about it, and then you have the support other than yourself to be able to do the things that SAP you. Because guess what, there are people in the world who love sitting and looking at numbers and spreadsheets like really just, I know it's hard to believe just as much as you love architects. I remember as an architect, Ryan, when I used to practice, he used to think, Man, those those accounts must be miserable. And Geez. I mean, even worse being an attorney. Oh, talk about eternal punishment. I mean, it's here. I talked with some of my attorney friends or my accountant friends, like, What are you talking about? I love this. I just spreadsheets of my life and crunching numbers is I couldn't stand trying to do anything creative or artistic like you do. That sounds like torture. And I was like, wow,

Rion Willard

16:42

yep, same and the same as sales, same as sales and marketing. Yeah, you guys might absolutely detest picking up the phone and making those calls and well, then there's, there's people out there who are good at it, so you've got that responsibility to get them on your team, because they love it, yeah? Because if you don't, then it's just going to be and then you decide not to do it, then that will be a sinking ship. So all of those things, those, those can, even, you know, cause a lot of tensions inside of the partnership dynamics. And the last one that we'll point to here is that just difficult conversations are either avoided so they go unsaid, uncommunicated Resentment builds up, or you try and have a difficult conversation, and it blows up immediately again, heightened sensitivity around being in the context of of marriage, and things become collapsed. So the possibilities that we can look at here is that the marriage and the business have clear boundaries, and both are powerful, right? So that means that you're protecting your marriage, protecting time with your spouse, and you're keeping it clear of all of the day to day runnings of the business, and you make a conscious effort for both of you to just keep it free in the same sense that married couples with children, you know, it's a good idea to create time where it's just the husband and the wife, or the two husbands, or whatever it is two wives, To make time without the children so they can actually connect. The same thing here you've got a children, a child which is your business, which is always screaming for attention and is can be tyrannical and have tantrums and all sorts of stuff. You need to be able to have. You've got to better get the babysitters in. You've got to better get the babysitters in and and better, have time and set powerful boundaries.

Enoch Sears

18:44

Boundaries. Boundaries are important and and difficult, like even in my own marriage, Ryan, this is something that I didn't understand, because oftentimes boundaries are they're tied up. They're part and parcel with having those difficult conversations, right and and so how do we know when we have a boundary that's being that is not being honored, like either we're not honoring or someone else is not honoring it and and just for clarification, those of you who are listening, some of you may be very clear. You understand what boundaries are, but just by way of explanation, a boundary, and Ryan, give me your perspective, but I'll say what I think a boundary is. And we can ask Google or chat GPT. But in my understanding, a boundary is something that, you know, we have preferences as human beings, and preference is like a boundary is a place where we draw the line, like, I don't want to give up this preference. And when we end up giving up that preference out of obligation or duty to another person, then oftentimes it can harbor resentment, as opposed to giving up a preference out of love, where we completely release attachment to that preference. And we're okay. We're like, hey, there's no boundary here. That's fine. I can compromise on this. No big deal. But there's some things. We're like, you know what? This is not for me. This is it's just not a compromise situation like I this is my line, where I want to be felt or I want to be respect, or. Want to be treated, and when you cross over that line, or don't treat me this way or or violate that boundary, then it's going to cause difficult emotions in me. I'm not going to be happy, and I don't feel like you respect me. I

Rion Willard

20:11

think that's a that's a great definition, and it also points to the fact that sometimes boundaries get established as a result of conflict, and indeed,

Enoch Sears

20:19

oftentimes, we're not aware of what our boundaries are until we have some sort of altercation over them that may involve emotions and difficult feelings, exactly.

Rion Willard

20:28

And so the other one of the other possibilities here is that powerful conversations are practiced and powerful conversations, they're not always happy, happy, clappy conversations. They're not always, you know, hugs and kisses and romantic poetry or anything like that, but they may be as a result of you establishing each other's boundaries and finding compromise and articulating what that boundary is and what that agreement is, particularly when it comes to, like, Where does the business end? Where does the marriage start? Or how are we going to be unified in making sure that we're not bringing our own emotional baggage into the office and, like, vomiting it all over the rest of the team so that they all feel shit. Or, you know, we've seen it before in practices where a marriage is starting to get really dicey in the practice, and then you've got the side is on the husband and the side is on the wife. And now you've got all of these kind of other players who are, you know, just getting caught up in the in the emotional dynamics of the business, which is only going to make the running the business even more complicated.

Enoch Sears

21:43

Certainly doesn't make it easier. Yeah, absolutely. So let's we're going to share some principles here that we've seen for effective partnerships when you're mixing marriage and business. And one of the key principles here that we found to be effective is putting the marriage first, like understanding that marriage commitment, that romantic relationship that you have is is integral to the success of the business that that that needs to come first. Now, if you if, if you decide to end the romantic relationship because it's not working, and you've decided that, hey, we're going to part ways, like the couple that Ryan mentioned earlier, where they decided to end the marriage, but there's no business partners, which is an extreme and strange example, but actually very beautiful, that they're able to continue on so amicably. But ultimately, the idea that you know what our marriage is first, because if we were to, if we were weigh these two things in a scale, the one typically that's going to have the most emotional weight, of course, is your your romantic relationship with your partner. And so that really needs to be the foundation of it needs to be the highly regarded and respected part, and that the business needs to be made to work around that and in honor of that, and not be a detriment to that. So That's principle number one.

Rion Willard

22:52

Yeah, I'd add a little bit more on that as well. Is, is that the prioritizing of the of the relationship or the marriage, and protecting it when it works, when the relationship between two people in an intimate union is working, that is such a empowering source of energy for human beings that it will just make the rest of the business dealings easier when it doesn't work, quite the opposite is true. It is so painful that it can really suck out the energy in the life of everything else. For some people, you know, when their marriage is not working, that's when they get that's when they then start using work as an escape. And you might see performance increase for someone, but it's being driven by unhappiness, and it's not going to last. It's going to be, there's going to be kind of something that's unsustainable about it. And with the the idea of the marriage and the business, you know, one is a covenant and one is a like a lifelong agreement that you've made in some context, it's going to be a spiritual agreement. And there's a faith and a religion that's, you know, that's, that's built around it, and it's, we're not leaving this marriage relationship. We are committed to working through everything else. The business partner relationship is a contract. It's contractual, okay, you do this, I do that, right? There's more, there's more, more black and white. And so it's important to just recognize the difference between between the two, and the emotional waiting on the marriage is is going to be way greater. So protect that one, and also, if you protect that one, then it means that the business one becomes more valuable as well, or more easy to manage,

Enoch Sears

24:45

which, which dives into another. Another principle here is the importance of values, purpose and vision. So oftentimes, you know, some, some marriages run the same way that businesses run. They're just very they're very intuitive. They're not intentional. They're just. Kind of they just happened. You know, that's the way. Let's just pretend like that's just the way that we run our it's not uncommon to have marriages that just run very organically, and they run that way because there's the partners haven't ever found a problem with that. They're like, Hey, we're both content to do this organically. And we see businesses run the same way, like, well, you know, business of Brooks coming in and and we're making enough money. So heck, let's just keep on doing it the way we're doing it, right? But then when suddenly it's not working organically, then it takes a great effort to be able to create some structure around the relationship. So this is where things like, values, what's your purpose? What's your combined like, where are we really going? Why? What does this partner mean beyond just being married, like, what do you want to get out of this relationship? What do I want to get out of it? Where are we headed? What's the green pasture that we want to what's the thing we want to create together? And then that ties into the vision, like that. Those things combine to make the vision. So it's important that you have those in the marriage. You have those kind of conversations, and as well

Rion Willard

25:59

for the business, yeah, those that can really work nicely together is that you've got your own purpose, vision, your mission, in place for where the marriage is going, and the values and that can often extend into the business, right? So that the business goals and and values can be, you know, they can be modeled off what, the values of the of the marriage are about, or the values of your business. Can you know they can reflect the values that you're bringing into your your marriage? But it's really important to actually spend some time and articulate these things, discuss them. Discuss where you want to go in terms of your finances. Do you want to be financial heavyweights, or do you want to be mediocre? And money is not that important to you. You better be on the same page about that, okay? And both, you know, both in terms of the marriage and also in terms of the business. If one of you just wants to, you know, happy earning 50k a year, and you want to poodle along, if you like, okay? And the other one wants to create a business of, you know, 100 people, and be bringing in half a million dollars in in salary, okay? Well, then those need to be conversations that are are had, and, you know, are seeking to see the difference in in perspective around it. And if you want to have, you know, a lot of financial abundance as a married couple, but then one of you doesn't want to be involved in the business aspects of making that finance happen, and you better get clear on that. Absolutely. Better be clear on what your what your roles are on it. Yes, the second principle we can look at here is learning how to fight, learning how to fight, or how to have these difficult conversations, which we've already kind of started to talk talk about, and this can be, in part, really getting well versed and practiced at being ruthlessly honest with each with each other, and being able to, you know, I would certainly we've seen it. We've seen a lot of good work happen with our own clients, when they've really put in energy around their own emotional domain, you know, they've really started, rather than be reactive to what their emotions are, they do some work about looking at what is the signal that my emotion is actually alerting me to? What is it? What is this emotion alerting me to about my own belief structure that might not be serving me well this moment, and doing that work is and that kind of self awareness is so valuable in being able to have difficult conversations with the other person so you're not automatically tripped. Because when you're in a marriage, in a relationship, both of you know the exact dial code. Hits enter to piss the other person off. You know those codes fast. You know them quick, and you're quite happily. Dial them up and let the other person get reacted. And then they know yours as well. And then there we go. We now just have an automated reaction between two people. And you can, kind of, you know, it plays out again and again and again. So learning the art of having difficult conversations in your intimate relationship is massive. It's so, so massive. You can do it there. It's, it's, it's a piece of piss when it comes to dealing with with your own team members and clients. And you know that that's, that's the place that's a place where you can do some real interpersonal communication work inside of your relationship, because it will, it will increase the capacity of your emotional leadership with your team.

Enoch Sears

29:43

Yeah, right. For me, this brings to mind the idea of reverse engineered production, which is a framework and tool we use here in Business of Architecture and smart practice and and the parts and pieces of this are because here's the thing, a lot of times in business, what we've noticed is. Uh, emotions are definitely generally not addressed or the left out of the equation. They're not really dealt with powerfully, right? So if you ever go to a powerful leadership training, or you have a mentor who's a really great leader, you'll find that there's always an emotional component that's addressed. Because we as human beings, let's face it, we're not just we're not just rational robots, and so reverse engineered production looks like this. We talk about being real, being raw, being relevant, and then focusing that on the results. So, as Ryan mentioned, this idea of being able to identify what stories our emotions are telling us. In other words, what, what is the what is the message that this emotion, that I can get from this emotion based upon how my practice is practice is working or not working, and then how can I use that message to then course correct and bring me more what I want be a better leader, so we can't leave out emotions when we're having the and this is why difficult conversations is so powerful, because it deal The reason they're difficult because there's emotions involved. Yeah, so the last principle here, which kind of goes over into the path, is to seek help and and get community right? I don't know how it is in the UK, Ryan, but I know that here in the US, what I've experienced is there's a lot of cultural shame around seeking out. For instance, a marriage therapist in some circles, right? Not everyone. I guess the more enlightened people, they see no shame around it. But what I do find is like, I have friends who've and even you know myself, passively, kind of resisted going to therapy for the longest time. And if you tell someone, hey, we're in therapy, the kind of the assumption is, oh my goodness, your marriage isn't working, you know. And so as powerful people who are seeking the best in leadership. For our businesses, it's mandatory that we shift this frame. This will keep us stuck, this kind of mindset that getting seeking help is a bad thing, like this is the sure fire way to be stuck on the hamster wheel again and again and again and again, to never have anything change in your life, to always be waking up like it's the same day over and over, dealing with the same fires, the same challenges, the same overwhelms, the same patterns that never change, reaching out and getting professional just getting professionals to help, mentors, coaches, communities that you can tap into, where you're not alone, where you're not suffering the the aloneness of being you know, the only one in your in your in your friendship circle that knows what it's like to be married and run a business. This is one thing that people when they come into come into smart practice, they get access to, of course, the network of other firm owners and, like, it's like a breath of fresh air. Oh, oh, my goodness, I wow, there's other people experiencing this as well. You mean,

Unknown Speaker

32:33

okay, oh, I'm

Enoch Sears

32:34

not alone. You know, this is what other people are experiencing when they're married and they're part that's what you're dealing with. Well, how'd you overcome that? And this, this. You know, in our society today, we're just, we're so separated, and we're so, you know, with modern life, we have these homes with walls and and properties and and you know, the people we see on the street, we don't know them very intimately. How different was human society, even 200 years ago, when everyone grew up in a town and you knew that person from death to grave. You knew their grandparents. You know their great grandparents. Is very different today, and so as a result of that, there's been this existential loneliness that we can have when we're running a business. Can feel very, very alone, and that alone, this can then result in not taking risks, not doing things that would powerfully moved the business forward, because we're so afraid to break the status quo.

Rion Willard

33:24

It's really interesting when we got married in the church, and my partner is Catholic, and as part of getting married in the Catholic Church, which was something we were both very keen on doing, we had to attend a number of marriage training seminars. And I thought it was a bargain. I was like, this is brilliant. We get to get married in a beautiful church, and they're giving us kind of free coaching. And I thought it was a really nice thing to do before you even get married. And von and I have been together for a long time prior to getting getting married. But even even still, the the the doing those kind of interpersonal trainings, I thought was brilliant, and it was also very interesting. There was a point in one of the weekends where they split the women up together, and they split all the men together, and all of the men, the men were in their room talking about what it was to be a husband for about two and a bit hours. The women were done in 30 minutes, and they all went off to have lunch. But I thought it was really interesting that that for men, particularly, that, like, we don't talk about that kind of aspect of married life a lot, and just being able to have community. And there was a couple of older guys who were there, you know, they were in their 60s, and they were, you know, they were clearly really just relishing being able to give this support and wisdom to young guys who are about to enter into the covenant of marriage. And I just thought the whole thing was just a really healthy perspective, and kind of just goes on to what we're talking about here, about about making. Ensure that we have community around us, and also, there's a particular kind of community as well, where you know you going and speaking and finding solace or help about your you know when you're in a problem with your partner, you want to be selective of who it is that you're talking to as well. And you know, make a an effort to find people who are going to challenge your own perception and who are going to support your partner, as opposed to, you know, if you go to a group of friends and you say something about my husband, my wife, and they'll go, yeah, he's an ass

Speaker 1

35:36

Bloody hell. The wanker, the wanker. I know. I go, man, how you tolerate him, you know? Or vice versa. Man, you put up with her away

Rion Willard

35:47

Exactly. And they start, and now you're now you're in a conversation where you're slagging off your or complaining about your partner to other people. Good luck with that. How long that you know? How long that that lasts because now, now you're accelerating a process, but you it's important to find community and the right help, and to be able to learn to fight healthily, expand

Enoch Sears

36:12

the perspective. Well, Ryan, with that, Lee, look, we wanted to let all of our listeners know, if you've listened this far, perhaps you're in a marriage and you're a partner right now a business partner. You've mixed marriage and business. You are where you are, and you're looking for solutions to make it better, or maybe even deal with some challenging struggles that you're having. Now, we put together a PDF file that has some of the best advice from married couples who also run businesses that have been through smart practice program, and you can get access to that by going to Business of architecture.com forward slash married. They've been kind enough to share their top insights and perspectives, and you can get access to that at Business of architecture.com forward slash married.

Unknown Speaker

36:54

Amazing, Alright,

Enoch Sears

36:55

Ryan, wonderful. Talking to you again. Look forward to catching up on the next episode and to all of our listeners out there, as always, carpe diem and goodbye for now,

Rion Willard

37:03

and that's a wrap. Hey. Enoch Sears here, and

Enoch Sears

37:06

I have a request, since you are a listener here of the Business of Architecture podcast, Ryan and I, we love putting this podcast together. We love sharing information as much as we can glean from all the other industries that we're a part of to bring it back, to empower you as an architect and the designer. One thing that helps us in our mission is the growth of this podcast, simply because it helps other architects stand for more their value spreads the business information that we're sharing to empower architects together, so architects, designers, engineers, can really step into their greatness, whatever that looks like for each individual. And so here my my simple ask is for you to join us and be part of our community by doing the following, heading over to iTunes and leaving a review of the podcast. And as an expression of our sincere thanks, we would like to give you a free CEU course that can get you one professional development unit, but more importantly, will give you a very solid and firm foundation on your journey to becoming a profitable and thriving architect. So here's the process for that, after you leave us a review, send an email to support at Business of architecture.com let us know the username that you use to leave the review, and we will send you that free training. On the training you'll discover what 99% of architecture firm owners wish they would have known 20 years ago, and the other 1% well, they just didn't even know that. They didn't know head over to iTunes and leave us a review. Now

Rion Willard

38:48

this episode is sponsored by Smart practice, business of architecture's flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smartpractice method.com or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how he might be able to help you, please follow the link in the information. Hello, listeners. We hope you're enjoying our show. We love bringing you these insightful conversations, but we couldn't do it about the support of our amazing sponsors. If you're a business owner or know someone who would be an excellent fit for our audience, we'd love to hear from you. Partnering with us means your brand will reach over 40,000 engaged listeners each month. Interested in becoming a sponsor, please send us an email at support. At businessof architecture.com the views expressed on this show by my guest do not represent those of the host and I make no representation, promise, guarantee, pledge, warranty, contract, bond or commitment, except to help you be unstoppable. Do.

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