79: Relationships Can't Run on Autopilot: How to Avoid a Crash

Welcome back to Make More Love. I'm your host, Ellen Dorian. I've spent my career sitting across from business owners at the high stakes moments of their lives, from the key decisions to the personal turning points that everyone has to face from time to time. Being a business owner can become your whole identity. And when that happens, everyone and everything else ends up taking a backseat. The point of this show is to take a closer look at the interplay between relationships and business ownership. I designed it with men in mind because a lot of the traditional advice and therapy out there simply misses the mark for them. So in every episode, I offer straight talk about strategies, frameworks, and logical approaches to relationship problems. So nothing you care about gets left behind. These are the same tools I use to help my clients grow their businesses. I've adapted them so you can apply what you already do well to different aspects of your life. If this is your first time here, hit follow or subscribe so you don't miss anything. And now let's get into it. Today I wanna focus on what happens when your business takes off. It's thrilling when the momentum is building and you're pushing yourself hard to meet the increasing demands, but you're also constantly losing ground. You've probably got some systems, but they're really driven more by habit than design. There's no real way to track progress, no repeatability, no standard process, no way to delegate anything You're just moving too fast to put all of that in place. That leaves you as the central nervous system of your company. And really that is unsustainable. And while you are navigating all of that chaos, all of the other areas of your life are running on autopilot, including your relationship. And if you don't course correct, chances are you're gonna crash. Here's what's actually happening. Aristotle famously said, nature abhors a vacuum. Empty space doesn't stay empty. Something always comes in to fill it, and that principle shows up everywhere. In biology, it's called self-organization cells and ecosystems and ant colonies all develop systems spontaneously. In companies, it's the rise of a culture based on habits and processes, and heavily influenced by individual behaviors that the leadership may or may not want to perpetuate. And in your relationship, the exact same thing has happened. The system has sort of built itself. You and your partner probably didn't sit down on day one and lay out a system for how to operate your lives together. Couples generally don't do that. so a system evolved out of the default rather than intention. Reactions, and habits and whatever filled the vacuum. The problem is that these reactive systems aim more at surviving then in fulfilling needs and thriving. So we need something else So let's talk about what an intentional relationship system could actually look like and how to build one that meshes with everything else you are managing. I'm gonna walk you through the five points of a relationship operating system that I built on the same skills you already use in business. So it's all stuff you are already familiar with just in a new focus area. I am gonna go through this point by point. Point number one is strategic planning. This is just what it sounds like. In your business, you wouldn't make a major move without first understanding where you actually stand. It is crucial to evaluate what's working and what's not, what new conditions may have emerged and what's getting in the way of growth. And typically you've got tangible ways of measuring progress. Once you have that, then you can plan for the short and long-term future while you address issues. Now that I've said that, doesn't it just become clear that you could be doing the same thing for your relationship But people don't do that. They just wing it. They'll say things like, well, it's not perfect, or It could be better, but they rarely take the time to figure out what's not perfect and design something better. To go through the whole process of developing a strategic plan for your relationship is outside the scope of today's episode, but let's. Start with something easy. I recommend that you do a SWOT analysis of your relationship. I'm sure you know about SWOT analysis. Every business owner has heard of it, and so let's look at this. In terms of your relationship, what are your known strengths as a couple? What are your known weaknesses as a couple? What are the opportunities? What could you do right now that would make an immediate positive impact or a long-term one for that matter? and what are the threats? If nothing changes between now and your next strategic planning session, what is the cost to your relationship? Then use the results of your analysis to create short, medium, and long range plans for your future together. I recommend you revisit the plan every three to six months. Your long range plan might not change that frequently, but the short and medium range plans almost certainly will. Let's move on to point number two, which is about resource and logistics management. No business can run without some kind of structure for managing resources and logistics. There's always some version of a weekly staff meeting or a weekly team meeting. You look at schedules and budgets, priorities. You check for blocks and conflicts, so you can work through them as a team. Some businesses take it further with SCRUM, a project management methodology built around two-week sprints, with daily standups to track progress and flag issues fast. That's a great tactical tool, so I've adapted it for relationships. Here's how it works. Once a week, you sit down with your partner, same time every week, not a date night, not informal, not once in a while. Every week with a standard agenda that covers everything your marriage and your home need to run smoothly. So schedules, finances, upcoming commitments, Conflicts, purchases, whatever's coming up in the next seven days. This way, you're both carrying the mental load, and if you do it right, you'll have a much deeper understanding of each other's world. If you try just one thing from this whole episode, this should be it, and here's why. You find out pretty quickly that once you start living together, logistics becomes a thing. And over time, logistics can become the majority of conversations that couples have with each other. What's for dinner? Who's picking up the kids? When is the contractor coming? Did you pay the bill? You know that stuff. And it all has to get handled, but your relationship needs to have more connection than that. The weekly planning meeting gives logistics and resources the attention they need in one time and one place, so that they don't encroach on the rest of your one-on-one time. And that opens up space for conversations and interactions that strengthen the relationship. And maybe you're asking yourself, "well, what are we supposed to talk about?: And that's what Point 3 is about. I call it best practices. Now, Warren Buffet is often quoted as saying success is not about doing something big once. It's about doing small things consistently. This is another important thing that business and relationships have in common. If you've listened to this show in the past, you know that I am a huge proponent of small, consistent effort instead of grand gestures. So incorporate this principle into your relationship, starting with a single, straightforward practice. Find 10 minutes every day for one-on-one uninterrupted undistracted, connecting time, talking, sharing, listening, cuddling. It's a daily standup meeting. Only. Don't do it standing up. This is not the time for logistics. That's what 0.2 was for. This is for building intimacy. Remembering who you both are at a deeper level. Remember the conversations you used to have early in your dating life. That's the kind of thing we're aiming for now. And you wanna know the tragic truth about this, if you do it for just 10 minutes every day, I can almost guarantee that you'll be spending more one-on-one time together than you are right now. I challenge you to prove me wrong. Let's move on to 0.4. Which I call innovation and reinvention. Because consistency shouldn't mean stagnation. If you wanna stay on top of your business, you have to keep looking for new opportunities and new ways to improve what you're currently doing. And there's an equivalent to this in relationships, we call it date night. Date night is your opportunity to inject new energy into the relationship and to try new things. If you are thinking about date nights and they're not new or consistent, you have work to do here, but you know, it's, it's fun work. I recommend two date nights a month rather than weekly. The reason for this is just practical. Because when I say date night, I'm not talking about family night. I'm not talking about hanging out with friends night. I'm talking about just the two of you doing stuff that could lead to doing other stuff. For those nights, don't be spontaneous. Plan them. Maybe each of you takes one night a month to plan a date and not just dinner at the same old place and not Netflix and Chill. If you put your imagination into it and do a little research, you can definitely each come up with 12 fun, interesting, and innovative things to do for date night., If you start running short to date ideas, I've got a bunch of them in the Passionate Partners Insider Community on Facebook. So if you're not already a member of that, you should be. There's also prompts there for what to talk about during your 10 minute daily connecting time, so there's lots of resources there just for you. You can check out the link for that in the show notes, let's move on to 0.5, which is incremental improvement. You know, I'm sick and tired of getting customer satisfaction surveys after every single interaction with every bot or every customer service rep that I ever do business with, but every company keeps doing it, so they must be onto something, right? They're learning what to improve. They're tracking what's wrong making small adjustments and then they're looking at it again, and that's why they keep asking us for our opinion. It would be pretty funny to design a customer satisfaction survey for your relationship, and I might have to do that at some point. But in the meantime, I recommend you take two opportunities to work on incremental improvement. The first one is at your weekly planning session. Here's the simplest possible version of that weekly check-in. Three questions bolted on to the end of the planning session or the beginning. Number one. What was the best thing that happened between us this week? Number two, what didn't work that we really need to address? And number three, what's one thing we wanna make sure happens next week? That's it. It takes five minutes and you're gonna learn a lot. Enough that it could change the entire course of your relationship. The other time it makes sense to do this is in your strategic planning sessions at the three or six month mark. I want you to keep that really straightforward too. Right. What's the best thing that's happened in our relationship since our last planning session? So, bigger picture, what have we learned about us? What's one thing we need to concentrate on fixing going forward, and what's one new thing we should try? notice I said one thing, one thing, one thing. Just because you're looking over a longer timeframe doesn't mean that you should pile up a huge list of things to change. You'll get burned out and you won't implement anything. So when you look at this as a system, it's actually pretty straightforward. Strategic planning every three months. Resources and logistics planning every week. Best practices, every day. Innovation and reinvention, twice a month. And incremental improvement baked in. If you don't do this in your business I suggest you start. You can use the same structure. That's the point of this system. And if you need help with any of it, that's what I'm here for. You can always book a free relationship reset call, and the link is in the show notes. The bottom line is this: when your relationship is solid, everything else gets easier. You think more clearly. You show up better, you lead better, you make better decisions. And when your relationship is off, everything else in your life gets harder and your chances of having fun go way down. This episode can get you started, but if you wanna go deeper and actually implement this as a system, I've created a short course that walks you through the relationship operating system step by step. You'll get the full lessons, planning tools and everything you need to work through the process. Right now, the course is in development and pilot mode. And I'm gonna offer it to the first group for just $7. After that, the price is gonna go up. So if you wanna be in on the pilot pricing and help us make the course the best it can be, you'll need to get yourself on the Pilot list. As soon as the course is ready, we'll send you everything you need to get access. The link to that pilot list is in the show notes. You know, don't sleep on the show notes 'cause there's a lot of stuff in there. You're gonna have the link to the relationship reset call a link to get on the list for the pilot program, a link to the Passionate Partners Insider Community Facebook group, which has got all kinds of date ideas and conversation starters. There's a lot in there. So, go check That out. All right. I hope today's episode got you thinking, but there's really only so much we can do in an open forum like this. If you wanna look at your specific situation, go to relationshipresetcall.com and book a time to talk with me. It's free, it's quick and it's private. We'll figure out the next best move for you and get you on track. And if you know someone who's struggling in their relationship, please pass this episode along. I've also included links to additional resources in the show notes so you can keep building on your relationship skills. I believe you had good reasons for choosing your partner. My mission is to help you reconnect with those reasons and discover new ways to Make More Love with your wife and in your life. I'm Ellen Dorian, and that's what I've got for you today.