BigDeal - #04 Why Getting Rich DOUBLES Your Chances of Divorce (feat. Bill Perkins)

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

🚀 Main Street Over Wall Street is where the real deals get done. Join top investors, founders, and operators for three days of powerful connection, sharp strategy, and big opportunities — live in Austin, Nov 2–4. https://contrarianthinking.biz/msows-bigdeal Divorce: a word that costs as much financially as emotionally. We all know how much it costs to get married, but how much does it actually cost to go from “I do” to “I’m through”? Codie explores the impacts of divorce and chats with Bill Perkins for relationship advice. She emphasizes the importance of mediations in divorce and prenuptial agreements for future marriages, rounding off with her own experiences and practical tips on staying married. Want help scaling your business to $1M in monthly revenue? ⁠⁠Click here⁠⁠ to connect with my consulting team. CHAPTERS: 0:00 Intro 01:47 Contrarian Idea: the real cost of divorce 06:12 Steal My Rich Friends: Bill Perkins on divorce and marriage 10:34 Realizing partnership is a priority 15:42 The power of a relationship coach 22:35 The statistics behind divorce 27:39 Codie's thoughts on prenups 35:19 Codie's Tinkering on her experience with divorce 38:47 The TEAM method 44:11 Meeting Jeff Bezos and his previous relationship MORE FROM BIGDEAL: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ OTHER THINGS WE DO: 🫂 ⁠Our community⁠ 📰 ⁠Free newsletter⁠ 🏦 ⁠Biz buying course⁠ 🏠 ⁠Resibrands⁠ 💰 ⁠CT Capital⁠ 🏙️ ⁠Main St Hold Co⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When men win the lottery, nothing really changes. When women win the lottery, the only really big change in their behavior is divorce. The 10 richest men also have 13 divorces between them. Holy shit. My divorce was like the biggest failure of my life. You just pick your human that you think is the best person for you and then you work at it. You can do something good alone. Yeah.

Great. No. Men usually come to therapy to try to stay and women come to therapy to try to leave. I'm just not a good human to be a partner to. If you assume that your relationship is passively stable, you'll wake up one day to divorce papers. Having another human to stand beside and knowing that you choose one other person to go through time with is a fucking superpower. Welcome back. It's Cody Sanchez, and this is the big deal podcast. For those who don't just want to get rich, but want to be free

and actually do what it takes to get there. All right, this week, we are talking about something that really nobody talks about, which is the D word, divorce. How does it happen to how many people, how much does it cost, maybe a few ideas on how to avoid it. And I've been through this before. I was married previously, remarried, and have been through a divorce. It is not something I wish on anyone. And the second that I meet somebody going through divorce, I usually say something like, I'm so sorry and also congratulations, because there's a conflicting set of emotions that happens when these things go down. And because nobody ever talks about it, I figured, let's ask some of my successful friends what it was like when they went through it. What did they learn? What would they do differently? And then let's go to the numbers and

research and see what's actually going on in this world of divorce, which seems like it's increasingly more and more common. I don't know. So I think today we're going to get kind of controversial, right? Rachel, where do you want to start? What's our contrarian idea for the day? So I think this is going to be a really interesting topic for me and other people listening who don't have divorce parents who I've never been married, I've never been engaged. I've never had a divorce. But I'm really interested to know how much it actually costs to get divorce and what is that aftermath, especially in the business world and Sam Parr had a really funny tweet. Actually, it's not funny, but it's really interesting, I guess, to catch my words there. The 10 richest men also have

13 divorces between them. Holy shit. Yeah. Wild. That's a lot, right? That's a lot. I also like Sahel Bloom's common afterwards, though. So divorce makes you rich. Yeah, there it is. There's. That's the funny part. And this is the chart of actually the 10 richest gents and whether they got divorced or not or how many divorces they have. I thought there were a couple interesting. things on here. One is like, Larry Ellison figured out how to get divorced and he likes it four times. That's tough. Obviously, we know Elon Musk's three. What else did you think was interesting here? I thought it was interesting that obviously, I feel like Mark Zuckerberg's wife has always been in the picture. And so I knew he wasn't divorced. But seeing that he was up here on the chart,

he's, I think he's number five. Seeing that he's had zero divorces amongst all these peers were really interesting to me. Yeah. So it looks like Zuckerberg and Larry Page, only two. of the, you know, top, let's say, 11 richest dudes who are not divorced, which is pretty wild, which then makes me think, okay, so that means the divorce rate is accelerating. This is normal. We've all heard the percentage that 50% of marriages ended in divorces. I just took that as sort of wrote, and then we looked into it a little more. And what we actually found is that it's more like 70% of marriages in the 1990s actually made it to their 15th anniversary and that this number is increasing from 65% for the 70s and 80s.

So maybe the 50% number isn't right, first of all. But it does appear that a few things really drive divorce more increasingly. One being money, apparently, Uber, Uber wealth leads to optionality, which apparently leads to increasingly more people getting divorced. And the second thing I thought was interesting was this tweet from Chris Williamson, which was basically like, when men win the lottery, it's kind of, nothing really changes. They get married at the same rate. They have kids at the same rate.

When women win the lottery, the divorce rates double. The only really big change in their behavior is divorce, which I thought was really, really interesting. And then I think he had another one that surprised me also. Do you want to read what the second tweet is? So this is from Chris Williamson, and he said people with nine or more premarital partners are 151% more likely to dissolve their marriages compared to people who tie the knot as virgins. In other words, the level of premarital sex increases the chance of divorce between twofold and threefold. It's fucking wild.

Which basically means we were talking about it. Like, nobody ever wants to talk about body count, right? That's a weird thing to ask somebody. But now, apparently, if you've had nine or more premarital partners on either side, this isn't like, you know, what the Andrew Taters say, which is like, you know, women should be versions, we should be off. Apparently, on either side, dudes and chicks, they both are 151% more likely to get divorced if they've had nine or more premarital partners. And again, I don't think this says anything between your life choices, but I think knowing the numbers and not just assuming the narrative is right is like super important. And so when I look at this, I think, okay, well, I know already the odds are stacked in some ways. If you're really successful, monetarily, looks like you have a higher divorce likelihood. If you've had sex with more partners or your your significant other has, you might be more likely to get divorced. And also, you know, it looks like if you come into a big chunk of money, you might be more likely to get divorced. But have having been through divorce myself, I know nobody actually wants that. Like everybody talks about it like all of a sudden, if this happens, then divorce will be rampant. Like, nobody wants to get

divorced. It's an awful thing. You obviously want to make the right choice. You would never go through a wedding and all of the things and promises to a human if you thought you were going to get divorced eventually. And so I started digging into the numbers a little bit about how much divorce costs and it's not cheap. So for the average person, the average wedding in the U.S. is 30K, which is wild. the average cost of a divorce is like 12,000 to 100,000, obviously varying on total costs. And it takes, even without children, about 10 months, so almost a year on average. You can imagine the opportunity cost, how much time, attention, energy, it takes away from anything else you do. You probably earn a lot less during that period, too, because you're focused on something

else. So I don't think divorce should be something we strive for in any way or form. It's awful. But then the question becomes sort of like, what do you do to not have divorce happen? And I don't profess to be some sort of expert on it. But I did think that this from Bill Perkins was really interesting on his thoughts on divorce, marriage, and staying in it. We're doing a series sort of on dating relationship divorce in general. And with the full spectrum of, I don't fucking know. I have experience. Yes. Exactly. Like, I've been through it. I'm not an expert, not clinically trained. But one of the things that we realize is, like, people don't talk that much about divorce and what they would have done differently when they're successful. Right. And so,

I don't know if you have generalized thoughts on you've been through divorce. You're now happily remarried. You have a great family and kids. But what did you learn? Oh, I learned how I fucked things up. To me, my divorce was like the biggest failure of my life. It took a lot of unpacking to figure out, well, how did I screw this up? How did I go from happy pictures and a wedding and well wishes or whatever to, you know what I mean? Like, I can't do life with you, right? And so was it? a mistake in the beginning? Did I do this? What could I have done better? How could I have upheld these promises, right? And I say, well, at least I kept one promise. I will love you forever, right? So that was part of it. So there was a lot of like, you know, blame. It's so uncomfortable

and so painful. You want to discharge that discomfort. And the clinical definition of blame is discharging that discomfort. So, I had a lot of blame, blame of other people, my ex-wife, you know what I mean, the situation, you know, myself at times or whatever. And it's like, okay, where did I not do my best and why didn't I do my best? And what limiting beliefs led me to this failure? So that was a lot of, you know, this could be a whole episode in itself, right, getting there. And then, you know, what did I learn? Am I ever going to learn? Am I ever capable, you know, I came out of that like I'm just not a good human person to be a partner to. Like, I don't, I don't have it. Like, there's these things, right? Like, I was so down

on myself and I was so lost because so much of my identity was tied up to, I'm married. I have this person and they're there. And then when I was gone, it's like, holy, I'm in single deadline. I don't even know how to interact with my kids without the other person around, right? Like, there was this whole balance that was there that I wasn't really consciously aware of. You know, I knew it was there, like, superficially, but like, I didn't viscerally feel it. And when it was gone, I viscerally felt it. And there were, there were so many ties that bound us that when they broke, I was like, oh, just that human being being in the room was important to me.

And so going through that, rediscovering myself, rediscovering what I, I didn't even know what I liked and disliked. You know what I mean? Like I said before, like, I went, I was told to go. on a lot of dates, not to go get laid and not to go whatever, but just to discover what you like in people, you know, and I think that was great advice. Now, you must like being married, though, because you chose to go round too. And the first round is painful. I remember going through divorce and thinking, maybe it's Cabana Boys for life for me from here. Cabana Boy sounds great when you're a woman who you go through that. The pain is,

the hot stove effect is there. And particularly from my lens where I was like, okay, at the end of the day, this happened on my watch, I fucked it up. You know, the one common thing is me. Don't do it again because you're just going to, you're just going to eventually somehow, some way, f*** it up. And I enjoyed my freedom. I enjoyed like this kind of like, I'm not going to get into the risk associated with a long-term committed relationship. You know, while I was dating and while I was out there, living kind of this like polyamorous dating a bunch of people life, very, very transparent, very honest, I came to realize that of competing priorities and, you know, people have parties like, I want to have fun and I want to have a lot of sex or

and I want to, I want to do my own thing and I want to be my own boss or whatever. But there is a priority of partnership and I realized that was my number one priority and that I needed to sacrifice these other priorities for that. And so it took a while for me to discover what my new priorities were. And then once that was there, it was like, okay, how do I be a good partner? What can I change from the last time? How can I be more accountable to myself and another person? And can I love another person the way they deserve to be loved? And those were, it was still open questions, you know? But I was willing to take the risk again and go with what I deeply wanted was is partnership. And it didn't have to be a marriage, right? It could have been partnership in any kind of way,

but that was the requirement for being with my partner is that, you know, that was a, that was your mission price. Yeah, I mean, I talk about it with my husband a lot. And again, like you said, who knows, talk to me when I'm 85 and we'll see if we've been successful. Right. But I do think there's something wonderful when you're attempting, let's say, big things in any way, shape, or form to have somebody who's standing beside you and who's not instead of aligned to some outcome besides the two of you surviving for some period of time. And so with him, that sort of foundation is so, it's just, there's no more distraction. I'm not chasing around other people doing this other stuff that I used to do with competing priorities. And so I really love being in

partnership. And we were talking the other day about, you know, there was like the girl boss movement. Remember that? Like Sophia Marosa, girl boss, going to go be our own thing. And then I think the counter movement to that was sort of this alpha male movement that we're in right now, which is like, you know, manly men, you know, fuck women, blah, blah, blah. And then I kind of think that there might be this regression movement of partnership in some way. shape or form. And I don't know what that would look like, but we've been in a period of like increasing divorce rates and separation of sexes for a long time. As I talked to a lot of my most successful friends, one of the biggest things many of them talk to me about is their partnership. And

they all look very different, right? Which I think is great. What is it about, you know, being in a marriage that you find is beneficial? What does partnership even mean to you? On the transactional side, you know, my wife has a very high EQ, way higher than mine. And I learn and get a lot of value for that. But I think I get a lot of value out of loving somebody, right? Like, I want to prove to myself that I am capable of that. And so that in itself is my quest. But aside from, like, somebody standing behind me when I'm trying to do the thing, like, fuck the thing.

That's, you know, for other people, the thing is it. And they got somebody to help them do the thing and conquer the world. And I see that model on Twitter or Instagram. Like, you got to have a good woman behind you to do the fucking thing. I wouldn't have a good woman to show that I am capable of love and have. having the human experience. And that's what I want. You know, that's what I'm trying to do because I can be pretty robotic and pretty, pretty out there. And I always, I have a natural inclination to chase the thing and be the thing and change the world and have an impact and yada, yada,

and all those, all those great, grandiose things. But like, at the core level, I want to understand somebody, love them through all their facets, somebody to get the peek inside me and help love me through all my facets and have that partnership. Do you tell her that? Yeah, she knows that. She knows that. She knows that's the... She walked in.

She'd be like, yeah. That was my whole thing. Like, we were just dating. I really didn't want to, I didn't want to get married. I didn't even want to become monogamous. I was just like, I just want to be closer to you. I just want to have a partnership with you. I just want to be closer and I want to love you.

And that was kind of the base thing. And then how that can happen is where we're at, you know, where that could be fostered and growth. this year. And so, you know, and I, you know, my mindset, like, when my first marriage, like, if you had a coach or counseling for a marriage, something was wrong. Like, they go counseling? Somebody was counting. I'd be like, oh, they got problems. They already got a counselor, you know, whatever. And now I'm like, you're fucking idiot Bill Perkins. Like, you are so stupid. Like, nobody does anything great alone. Kobe Bryant has a coach. Babe Ruth had a coach. Fucking Martin Luther

King had student nonviolent coordinating committee, you know, King is Gong had the Mongrel horde. Like, nobody does anything great alone. Like, why the fuck do you think you can have a great marriage alone? Like, you have all these resources. Why aren't you bringing in extra resources and coaches to make your marriage great? And I was like, yeah, I was a fucking idiot. And so, like, one of the things, you know, I do is, like, we bring resources to bear

to help us with our marriage to being humans. Because being humans is tough. Like, you have competing. desires, you have this baseline sexuality that's kind of crazy that's changing in influence. You change over time. You're, you know, certain things you might be annoying or grading to that person or whatever and just like learning how to communicate, you know, you say something, you say it one way, it's like, why are you barking me? I'm not embarking. I'm not barking. I'm not talking all the time. You know what I mean? There's a lot going on to, and a lot of things

that are like people study in labs and have tons of clients, etc. And are good at like helping people have great relationships. And I don't want a good anything. I want a fucking great something. So nobody does anything great alone. So now I have a coach. And I tell all my friends, I'm like, you should have a relationship. I don't care how good your relationship is. You should have a coach. When the weather cools down, Golden Nugget Online Casino turns up the heat. This winter, make any moment golden and play thousands of games like her new slot Wolf It Up and all the fan favorite Huff and Puff games. Whether you're curled up on the couch or taking five between snow shovels,

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. We have one too, every single week. Yeah, you should have a coach. In the morning, early Monday morning, which is like the last thing I would typically want to do on a Monday morning. I want to get going.

But I think it sets the right precedent for what the priority is. Well, you're trying to do something great. That's right. And so you're bringing in resources. And so, you know, business, math, tests, SATs, I don't care what it is. Like, you know, we just, you can do something good alone. Yeah. Great.

No. Even Jesus had disciples. What about last question? Do you have anything that you guys do consistently that's maybe normal to you, but would be weird to other people? You have a coach. Do you have check-ins? Do you have some safe word that you use with each other when you're in a place and you don't

want to be there anymore. Is there anything that's uniquely layer eye and bill? We have this thing about not, like, doing our best not to create scores. Not that we haven't, but like, I think relationships die from a thousand cuts, not like this big thing. You know what I mean? Like, even relationships that they have, oh, they cheated on me or whatever, it's like probably the thousand cuts that's created the environment for the infidelity or whatever the big thing is. And so we have this thing of like, if things are getting heated or whatever, like, are you trying to, you know, like, we'll call each other out and hold each other accountable, like, not trying to create a scar. Like, we talk about this later, et cetera. I think adherence to that

kind of, like, let's not create these cuts. What's really cool to hear somebody like you who's had so much success is so intelligent talk about this stuff because it's not that normal. And it's typically stuff if you had talked to Cody, me, you know, two or three years ago, I would have been like, what the fuck are we talking about? Like, why are we talking about making money, buy businesses, building bigger things? But I realize it's all super related. You know, it's interesting. last I was talking to Lara. Her emotional intelligence is actually really impressive even from talking briefly because she was saying a few things where she's like, well, I felt a certain sort of way about that when some interaction you guys had a billion years ago. And I was sort of

laughing because I said, well, I had the exact same thing happen with me and my husband and I was annoyed, jealous, angry. She was like, well, you know, I might have felt that way. I was like, God, you're so enlightened about the way that you communicate. Were you guys like that when you first met? Is that why she became your one? First met, we were wild and crazy. Like, I was in a situation where I was like, I'll never get married again. You know what I mean? Like the hot my back was still burning, you know, from falling down on the hot coals of my own doing. Fortunately, Lauer was in a field where she had free time. I was in a mode of like, I just want to go hang out and travel. And we got to spend a lot of time together. Despite the wild and crazy

times, we were hanging out and getting to know each other. And, you know, I saw it. Right. Like, I saw, you know what I mean? There's something that I needed that I wanted, you know, I became attractive, you know, obviously physically attractive, but I became attracted to her soul, her way of being, her kindness, you know, the whole package. And I was like, okay, I want to get closer. I want to be partners with you. Like, even running around the world as a madman, I want you to be my part, my wingman,

wing woman as running around the world as a bad person. And then like when I'm hanging out with my kids, I want you with me. And I went here and it was like I always just wanted her around all the time. And then I realized like even beneath it just being her is like, oh, I really crave a love partnership. Right? And it took a while for me to figure that out because I was just like, no, being freedom is number one. You know?

I was like, I was, and freedom is like, you know, it's intoxicating. It's like when I told somebody, when you walk through an airport, you smell it at Cineabon. And you're just like, ooh, Cineabon. And you're just like, want to go over there and you're just like, that's freedom. You know, like, that's it. But like, you know, Sinabana make you fat as fuck. And it destroy you, right? And so like, you know, as much as I love my freedom, what I really, really craved and what was sustainable and what I realized was like my number one priority was partnership. And so I had to sacrifice some of these lesser priorities in order to get there.

So there's this balance, right? And so partnership won out. And Lara, Lauer was, you know, we both happened to be in the right place at right time in each other's lives. And, you know, at least one of us was fighting for it when the other one was kind of like, you know? Totally. At least one of us was fighting for it, right? Like, yeah. We just didn't let it go. And so we built, you know, a lot of people like, oh, you found this person. We're always like, both of us, particularly me. But Lara, too, is like, we didn't find shit. We built this brick by. brick. 100%. You know, so I don't, I don't believe in that fairy tale crap. I say, like, yes, like, the odds that you're meeting the, you know, is 8 billion of us, four billion or female, you know, one billion something in your, in your range, like the odds that you just happen to meet the person at work and that was, there you're

something. No, that's not it. You meet somebody, then you start building. And if you're not a builder, it'll eventually fall apart because you have to constantly be building. That's so true. So when people, you know, we go around and people like, oh, we love the way you interact or the way you guys hang out. And how you're in it's like, yeah, you can do this too.

You can build it. The only thing is special is our dedication to building the relationship. And we made that. That was a decision. Yeah, we get a lot of hate on the internet from, you know, whenever we talk about our relationship and say, here are the things that we do that we work on. And there are some practices around that that we find useful. It's wild how many people say, this sounds like work, not a relationship. It's like, yeah, same thing.

It is right. Yes, I don't agree. I don't disagree at all. Yeah, you know, warm feelings, warm or lusty feelings will only get you so far. Yeah, 100%. I do want to circle back all the way to some of these, like, notions about divorces and just ask you some questions. You know, Chris Williamson said, when men win the lottery, there's not that big of a

difference. But when women win the lottery, divorce happens. I feel like that could be because they are like, okay, I don't need to have a man now because I have some finances. moving on to like people with nine or more premarital partners. If you're not, if you're having like less amount of premarital partners or, you know, none before marriage, maybe that could be for like a religious reason or something that there's like a guilt factor. So maybe divorce just isn't held like as highly.

Like I feel like divorce is so, so nuanced. You know what I mean? So any stat that I read, I'm like, okay, like, but like read between the lines. Like we're seeing the top richest people here. I imagine they're not doing much besides working. If you're not seeing it, like you're their wife or your, I'm, Jeff Bezos, who, you know, who's had a divorce. You see how often they're working and what they're doing. They're probably not giving a lot of time to like their family and, you know, allocating that very well.

So yeah, they probably have had a lot of divorce. Yeah. You know, when I look at the statistics, I try to not say that correlation is causation, right? It's super important. What I just want to know about is what are the odds? And I guess you have to start at first principles, which is like basically, do you think that divorce is inherently a good or a bad thing? Do people want to avoid? divorce or not. And at my core, having been through it, I think we want to avoid divorce. And perhaps we also definitely want to avoid marrying the wrong person. We want to avoid those two things. So if we assume, one, you married the right person. It's just hard. Then the question is, how do you stay with somebody through the hard? And if you're going to work 70, 80 hours a week,

how do you set expectations where you two can stay happily together? I mean, we know the stats, to for children. Your kids are more likely to commit suicide or self-harm if you get divorced. Your kids have a higher likelihood of becoming divorced themselves if you have been divorced as parents. The happiness indicator for men in particular is much happier when they stay married. Single women who have never been married and have kids actually have the highest happiness as evidenced by studies. And so I think the question really becomes, in my mind, it's twofold. Yes, when you have a lot more options, you probably are more likely to get divorced. So I think it makes sense. You've had sex with other people. You realize that like there's probably not just one human only for you in this world. But the problem

with that is how many people are actually happy swiping left and right on Tinder all day? Do options really make us happy? Does it actually make us happy to get divorced from the person that we said we were going to do life with forever and keep moving on to somebody else? And I think the answer to that is no. Now, I don't have the data to support that. But I think as a society, We're lonelier than ever. We're having less sex than ever. And I think we actually would be happier if we committed to a partner over a long period of time. We did a lot of analysis on who that partner is and who we are and coming together as two fully formed humans. But once you say yes, and this is from a divorced person, I think you want to try to figure out how to work together to grow in partnership. And so for me, I think that's the difference is like getting divorce is awful. And so how do we make sure that if we're going to say I do, and you decide to do that and you vet the human properly and they vet you that you figure out how to work through it together because I don't think it's ever easy. I think it's a lot of work. I loved this quote. I stole this from Shane Parrish where he basically says there's two types of

stability, active and passive. People get in trouble when they confuse the two. Relationships, for example, require attention and care. If you assume that your relationship is passively stable, you'll wake up one day to divorce papers. And that's true. You also had some good advice in here about what women have to know before going through a divorce. Yeah. This one, people hate on the internet too, but typically what I've found is that women do not take care of the overall finances or understand the overall finances. Now, the data shows us that women have the purchasing power in the household.

Like, if you are Amazon or Walmart, you actually want to get to the female because she's typically the one doing a lot of the household spending. But the one with the understanding of the full financial picture is typically the man. And so one of the things I think that makes divorce really gnarly is anytime you have uncertainty, then you have tension, right? It's why like, you know, if there's uncertainty in the market, then you see the stock market fall. It's the same thing in relationships. And so when one party is at a knowledge disadvantage from the other, then you try to lie, cheat, steal, figure out the difference between the two. And so as a woman, if you're going to go through divorce and, you know, in advance, I'm sorry. And also, if you're a man going to go through divorce, there's a couple things you can do to make this a lot less emotional. The biggest trigger for divorce is getting gnarly is money and child custody. I don't know much about child custody because I don't have any, so I won't speak to that. But from a monetary standpoint, it's really important that you guys both know at all times, what's your financial situation? Who has access to the bank accounts? Who doesn't? How much money

do you guys both bring in? How much money do you both spend? And that knowledge, once you have it, can give you a level of sort of ease and understanding in the marriage. You can say, listen, this is what we have. We all know what the rules are in these states. We either have a pre-up or we don't, but it's probably a 50-50 split. So let's just like calm the emotions because this is what we both have. And the second thing that I think is really useful if you're going to go through a divorce is making sure you go through mediation and not a full-on trial with, you know, litigators. So it's actually really important. People try to go out and get the gnarliest, meanest divorce attorney that they can get. And that's actually a terrible idea. You'll spend a ton of money on your

divorce attorneys. And instead, you guys decided to commit to something for life. Try to exit it as peacefully as you entered it. And so when I did mine, it wasn't peaceful. Ours was pretty gnarly, but we managed to do it all through mediation. And because we both chose attorneys and I chose mine first, and I said, I'm committed to mediating through this. And so it'll be private. It'll be behind closed doors and will be adults and we will have a conversation as opposed to scream at each other and let a judge determine the outcome of her fate. We're not children. And so I think that's really important. Go for mediation and try to get the other party to do the same thing. What are your thoughts on pre-ups? I have one in my current marriage. It was actually something that Chris was pretty big

on saying that we should have. He basically didn't want any question about, you know, economic differences between the two of us. I don't really have emotional ties to it one way or the other. I think, you know, say that we're, it's, if this doesn't work out, like, this is it. This is kind of the last hurrah. I'm not interested in doing it three times. But I think preempts are nice because anytime you can have expectations set, it just makes sure incentives are aligned. And it seems to me a little bit of a red flag, if anybody would be concerned about getting a preempt on either side. And they might say, well, I'm concerned because you say it's going to be for life. Well, yeah, it is going to be for life. But if so, let's just go in and make sure that if the worst happens

and you, the other person, are the one that, you know, wants to get a divorce that we're clear and we don't have this fight at the end. So I'm actually pro pre-ups. I've had them. They're cheap, they're easy. You can draft them up really quickly yourself on a piece of paper. Here's the stuff we care about. You get them to a mutual set of attorneys. The attorneys are just there to paper it, not give you a ton of advice on the subject afterwards, so you don't make it expensive and contentious. And I think it can be really straightforward, just like a business partnership. So on here you said that your therapist believes that 100% of divorces happen because of infidelity. And that kind of stopped me in my tracks, reading that.

So what she said explicitly was in a divorce, infidelity is part of the equation 100% of the time. Now, I don't think she could say that they always happen because of infidelity, but that infidelity is there. And then she said, men cheat to stay and women cheat to leave, which I thought was fascinated. Obviously, the statistics on this are going to be hard, but she's the sweet little Texan, if you could picture like big blonde hair, kind of an older lady, a little twang, lots of pink in the office, and super religious. She was my therapist when I was going through my divorce, and, you know, I was really struggling with it, and with the fact that I had made a promise to a human forever and was going

to break that promise, and that was horrifying to me. And I said, you know, I don't think there's infidelity happening on either side of the equation, but I don't know. She said, it really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because it's almost always there. Once two people are pulling apart, it's happened for a long time. And when you guys get here, you know, she also said that men usually come to therapy to try to stay and women come to therapy to try to leave.

That's her two cents. We'll see if it's true or not. Now I'm a big believer in therapy up front, no matter what, for every single relationship. And I don't think you have to do it like, hi, nice to meet you. I'd like to date. Also, let's go to therapy right away. But once you start getting pretty serious, moving in together, thinking about long term, It just helps to have a guide.

You kind of say the same thing when you were talking with Bill about having like a coach for business as well. And I like that analogy between you two. Yeah, it's 100%. I mean, we do a ton of stuff to try to make our relationship the best that it can possibly be. And Bill said it nicely about a relationship. He doesn't want a good relationship. He wants a great relationship. And I want the exact same thing.

I saw firsthand, well, we could go over a deal of the week, basically. So the deal of the week for this one is I was at a finance company and this company was privately owned and the founder was a billionaire really, really successful. He was my boss, the CEO. And there was a partnership. So all the partners inside of the finance company basically have shares and get distributions and have transparency into what's happening in the business to some degree or the other. Well, the guy starts going through a divorce. And so for this period, none of the partners could take distributions because They had to value the business. They had to assess everything that's going on. And we basically got a giant colonoscopy because him and his wife got in a super contentious divorce. What I thought was interesting, he went through this divorce that he had been, he was probably married for 20, 30 years.

And when he got married, he didn't have a pre-up and they didn't sign documentation. This is super technical. But if you guys have a business where you have investors or you are an investor in an enterprise, I always make the partners of the founders that I invest in and the founders or investors in a fund, usually their partner needs to sign documentation to waiving their rights to the business. And this is really important because, you know, I saw it happen firsthand. They basically, it really, it really fucked with the business that they were going through this divorce. She wanted to be able to make decisions based on the business.

It actually hurt hundreds of us that worked there. And so when I went and was a partner at the next private equity fund, they make you sign this paperwork up front that basically says, hey, we need to have you and your partner sign this. And this says that they have no access to your shares, except, you know, through their divorce proceedings at their own time, XYZ. And so it's really important if you guys are going to do that, that you get something similar. And if you have to think that somewhere between, you know, 30 to 50% of marriages end in divorce, your likelihood to have this happen if you're going to be part of a partnership for 5, 10, 15 years is actually really high. And so making sure you get the right paper is super, super important.

How much do you think it ended up, like setting you back? Oh, the divorce itself. I mean, I could probably go back and look at the numbers, but I think the divorce itself probably cost me $20,000 to $60,000 in legal fees. But it was in Texas. Texas is pretty quick. So I think it happened in 90 days, something like that. And then career-wise, how much do you think that set you back? Well, I had to give up a lot of my assets. So I gave up more in the divorce because I was the one that wanted it. So he took more. But I think, you know, that probably, that's a multi-million dollar expense for sure with breaking up the assets. And then from a business perspective, we actually worked together. So this was kind of wild. I ran the Latin American business and he worked inside of another district in the U.S. And so for a period, we had to work together. And then he left the company for a minute. And the part that was the hardest is the company brought him back after some drama happened at the company. And they brought him back without telling me. And I was, you know, like a senior person at the, at the firm. And so I never forgave him for that. And I ended up leaving and putting my number

two in charge because it's really hard. I mean, could you imagine working with your, your ex all the time? At the time, I think I lost all the friends I had in Dallas at the time because they were members of the same country club. They ended up sort of quote unquote, siding with him. And whether or not they would say that, I mean, it's Texas. It was more like, bless your heart, you know, not answering any phone calls. And then, you know, I ended up moving into a small place in Dallas to sort of stabilize myself. I have two friends that I kept from that time period. And then I ended up leaving Dallas because I just felt like I couldn't be the person I wanted to be in this town that I had been somebody else. There were too many memories. And so I ended up

leaving. And then I was building up this business and he came back into it. And I I just, I couldn't, I didn't want that. And so I ended up leaving that firm too. So my whole life kind of had to change after that. And thank God. I mean, I think sometimes the universe kicks you in the ass when you won't do it yourself. Like, I needed to leave because we weren't the right fit. I needed to leave the firm because our ethics did not align. I needed to leave Dallas because it's not my city. And it ever was. And so now I'm in Austin and it's just much more my vibe. And so thankfully it all worked out, but it was really, really hard. And I, why I had this little this little thing I wrote about it, which says it better than I can. So maybe I'll actually read

this to you guys. So I write this thing called the contrarian tinkering weekly snippet, and this is part of it. So anyway, you guys can hear this is a little personal. So sorry. I'm married to a handsome man with a beautiful house, country clubs, range rovers, and friends who look like they're on the real housewives. But tonight, I'm walking into the living room as the sun sets to break the heart of a man I promised forever to. He's far from perfect, but in this moment, all I feel is agony. I speak softly. It's not working. I want a divorce. And I'm leaving tonight. As soon as the words leave my mouth, I see the six foot one, 245 pound man crumpled the ground, sobbing, begging me to stay. It is an awful thing to watch someone so strong whom you once love to break. And I've never felt

greater guilt or shame than in that moment. With eyes so blurry I can barely see, I leave empty handed out of the door of the house I just finished decorating it into a home. I spent nights sleepless and alone. And when I told my own mother, she also cried. Tearsed. That's all I felt like I had to give. I never shared all the hardness in that marriage with her. It was my burden to carry, but I also didn't quite realize the moment would change my life forever. I left a man, a city, all my things, and eventually a career I spent more than a decade building. And I had to lose everything before I came to the knowledge. I hope my can leave some of you guys with today that, you know, I didn't have at the time. After I got divorced, everything changed for me. I started getting

pushed out of the company. I wasn't right for the culture anymore. And candidly, I didn't fit. I'd built up a business with nearly a billion dollars in assets under management. And despite that, I took nothing with me. No severance, no equity, no clients, no assets. I'd built someone else's castle twice and walked away with nothing. And I swore I'd never do it again. And in that moment, I knew I'd go all in on my own thing. I'd share it with the fucking world and I'd never play small for another person again. Ownership. The only true key to freedom. And maybe I share some of that too, because the truth of it is, is that when you get divorced, all that's going to happen to you, too, if you end up going through this awful thing. And so I'm sorry in advance, but sometimes when you know what's coming,

it makes it easier to bear. And nobody told me things like that. Like, I was, you know, I don't think I told anybody when eventually I told my parents that I was going to get divorced and I filed the next week. It usually takes a few years to build up the courage. And then I can kind of promise you also that you'll be okay on the other side, both of them. I think he's happier now. He's happily married. He's got the white picket fence he wants. He's got the white picket fence he wants. He's got the kids, he's got the wife at home. It's great. It's exactly what he wanted from life. And I was never going to be that person and that is okay too. I also don't think we have to villainize the people that were not right for us. And that's often what people do too. And that really just goes to show that you have

a little bit of shame and guilt that you're projecting out. And I try to not have that anymore. Maybe we go on to lighter subjects, which is how to try to not get divorced. Because I loved the, I don't know, I don't think it was Goldie Hawn, but I can never remember. So I'll just say, it's Goldie Ha'Han, but she said that the key to staying married was that her and her husband never wanted to get divorced at the same time. And that key of one person always wanting to stick it in, I think is really, really important. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Hear that. That's your next obsession. Every coffee, a new world. Every sip, a new taste. This is the new espresso. One touch, endless possibilities. Iceed, flavored, long, short. Because some days call for that

espresso kick. And sometimes a smooth silky latte just wins. It's exceptional, but effortless. Like actually effortless. Simply press, brew and explore. Nispresso. What else? Keep exploring at nespresso.com. So we're going to talk about another thing where people freaked out about on the internet. And it's like that one daily action that you and your husband do. It's called a team method. And the comments were crazy. Some people loved this. Some people were like, wait, what the heck, like this sounds like an assignment. So let us know, what is team? How do you approach this? So it actually does help us. And I can vouch for it. We have a therapist by the name of Brandy Salazar that we used to go to who's become a friend, actually. She's the one that came up with this method and we tweaked it a little bit.

Basically what happens is in a relationship, I find that, you know, you guys know this. You're in a relationship and what do you fight about? Like the same things again and again and again. The little things are typically what build up to create the big issues. And I found that in a relationship, it was sort of like tiny nags, nags all day. Like I wish you would shut the door. What happened here? And Chris and I are, you know, we are not peaceful fighters. We are intense. And so we found we were fighting a lot about little stuff because we were letting it boil. We were little teapots and the issues would boil and boil until eventually it would be like, you know, and it would boil over. And so we started doing this thing team. And I can pretty much guarantee you if you guys here ever see us fight,

it's because we forget to do this for like about a week, about a week. And then we start to get annoyed with each other. And basically what it is is it's this tiny method. It could take five minutes. It could take 15. But every single day, we get together, typically at the end of the day. And we sit down with a glass of wine, look at each other. And it starts with tea for touch. So basically you sit next to each other, you put your hands on each other. Sometimes we sit like, you know, my feet are on them or something. And that's just to remind you guys that you're not roommates. Like you guys are in this together, there's physical intimacy here that you're not going to do with another human. And then E is for education.

It means that you share something with the person about something interesting that happened to you that day. And the goal is really that you try to do something intriguing. So I might say to him tonight, like, God, we have this podcast today. And did you actually know that when a woman wins the lottery, she's like, you know, two X more likely to get a divorce? And then we would talk about that. And it reminds you that your partner is a fully evolving human all the time. And that, I think, helps because there's a natural tendency for humans to want novelty. That is how we're wired. And so you seek novelty in others. But when you're human comes home with something interesting for you every day, it reminds you that that human is smart and talented and can be new every single day too in a way that like your work colleague, you know, isn't going to tempt you. And then A stands for appreciation. So then we have to both say something nice to each other. And typically, if you're in a good spirit, you say something really lovely about the other person. And if you're kind of core, you know,

know, fighting a little bit, you just can't use the same thing. You have to come up with something new every day. But it might be very small. Thank you for taking out the trash. Thank you for sitting down and doing team with me. Because there's typically always something your significant other is doing to help you. And we largely ignore it and focus on the negative. And then lastly is metrics. So this is the hard part. So this is where we'd be like, all right, I keep a list of stuff that might annoy me that Chris is doing or that happened that day. And when I am not elevated and thoughtful and we're doing team, I just keep it for the end of the day. And it's 180. And so if we're not doing team, then we bring it up in that moment. Wait a second. I thought you were going to do this. Or I thought

you were going to do this. And it's like tiny. And if you hold it until the end of the day, when you're not elevated, then it just becomes an easy conversation as opposed to an argument. And so I think if you can get your partner to do this, it's really cool. The other benefit of it is that you never have dinners where you don't have anything to say. Like, it gives you a reason every single day to end with your partner and to have sort of an interesting, thoughtful conversation as opposed to, hey, babe, how was your day? Cool. How was your day? All right. Yeah. Like, it was cool. It was fine. Whatever. And you lapse into this boring life. So I highly, highly recommend. Do you do anything in your relationships? You have a dude. I do, but like not marriage, but I do something personally

that's called Report. And I saw it on TikTok. R is for reading. E is for eating, P's for play. O's for, like, obsessing, ours for recommending the second R and then T's for treating. So it's like a little personal check-in that I like doing throughout the week. I'm a big journaler. Like, I'm a big, like, onto your M. I'm a big metrics person. So I'm very much like, you can't manage what you don't measure. So it's like, okay, in this moment, like, what am I reading? What am I eating? What am I playing? My parents, though, at the dinner table, every night, my dad was always like, what are you doing for your mind, your body, and your spirit. And I think that helped us, first off, to, like, kind of see what our, what our parents were

saying? Like, what are they doing for their mind, body, and spirit? And not, like, spirit even religiously, but what are they doing to, like, get in the Zen mode? Like, you don't want to have, like, my dad had worked a lot growing up. What is he doing to not freak out? And seeing, like, my parents kind of give their answers and hearing, like, what my siblings had to say, first off, made us closer, like, as a family. But also it was nice seeing how, like, my parents got to know, like, the side of each other as well. I love hearing that because I adore my parents, but I don't think they had anything like this. You know, and a lot of the comments on this are, you know, something like my parents would roll over in their graves if they thought that you were doing a daily check-in

with a scorecard and a fucking, you know, report card at the end of the day. This is awful. And my point is, one, maybe they're all better than us. That's totally true. But two, there's just so much more noise today. We are like battling constantly noise. Every single day, there's temptation on Instagram. And temptation doesn't mean like infidelity. either. It could just mean like something else that will vie for your attention away from your other human. And then of course, you know, we're traveling more than ever. We have separate lives more than ever. It's just fast and intense. And I think if we don't take the time to focus on our number one partnership, then everything else falls apart. And that's why I think, you know, those top guys that,

you know, the list of the 11 richest people who by and large have been divorced is interesting because I remember I met Jeff Bezos really briefly. at Summit like a million years ago. And he was still married to McKenzie. And there were two things I loved about what he said. He said, the reason that he was married to McKenzie was because he wanted to be with somebody who could break him out of the third world prison. And she was that person. And I thought that was an incredible quote. And then the second thing he said about her was, I knew that she was the one because, you know, our kids were out somewhere. They were learning woodworking or something with a knife, something with tools. And he was like, aren't you nervous about the kids doing X, Y, and Z? And she's like,

well, I'd rather a kid have four fingers on one hand than no common sense. I thought, dude, this chick kind of seems badass. In my opinion, like one of my best girlfriends said, this is so inappropriate, but she was like, same dick, different day. She's like, if you get divorced from this guy and you move on to somebody else, like, we all have different problems and issues and quirks. And so the closer you get to somebody, you realize we're all super flawed. And you just pick your human that you think is the best person for you and then you work at it. And everything else is a fairy tale. And so I think it would be really useful if more humans had tools that were given to us. Like, where was the class when we were growing up about how to be in successful relationships?

There was no class. Instead, I learned a bunch of stuff that I couldn't apply continuously. And I wish I could go back to the next generation and say, here's how to set boundaries, you know? here's how to actually know what you want. Here's how to have a conversation with somebody that's an elevated conversation, but in a way that is peaceful. Those are things we're kind of taught in leadership, maybe, if we went to a corporation, but they're the skills that are going to last the test of time. I think it's interesting, too, because as young people, we only have, especially in America,

like, I'm only living with my parents, my grandparents aren't living with us. So I only see one example of what a relationship's going to be. So oftentimes when you're going into a relationship with somebody else, like the two of you together only have one example of, you know, adult relationships and what they are going to be. And if you were back when you were my age, if you were 25, what advice would you give yourself around trying to find a partner and aiming to, you know, not have that partner be somebody you were going to get divorced to? Especially for women, I'd say, don't rush into the shit. And I think our generation is realizing that. Now, you don't want to wait forever.

There is a real thing as a biological clock. That's real if you want to have a kid one way or the other. But, you know, I was not the person I am today when I got married the first go-round. And I became, like, they talk about it, eat, pray love, that movie, like the morphous self that just like meshes into another human. I just meshed into another human. And I let so much of who he was become who I was. And at some point, I woke up and I started thinking, this is not what I want at all. And that's one, it's not really fair to the dude because, you know, he thinks he's getting X. And you haven't been honest enough with yourself. to say, I am not that. And I watched all of these women in Dallas, one, not want to be friends with me while I was going through this. And then I watched a ton of them, then get divorced later on. Because they thought they wanted to stay home and have this, like, wealthy, you know, lifestyle and raise kids. And at some point, they realized, oh, my gosh, this isn't everything that I want. And so the second thing that I'd say is, you don't have to work. You don't have to be a boss, babe, or girl boss or any of that nonsense people talk about. But I personally think it's really useful for

you to have a very strong sense of self and that self to not only be wrapped up and being married and having kids. I have just seen that not work a million times. It doesn't have to be monetary. It could be that you're really into gardening, working out, but make sure that your full identity is not given to others. Because guess what? You cannot allow somebody else to be the source of your happiness. You are the key to that. And so I think that's why we're seeing this, rise in antidepressants. And it's like, there's this silent generation. I think it will be the next thing that comes out. Right now, we're starting to hear about like the alpha men and we're starting to hear about testosterone levels lowering. And we're starting to hear about

in cells and men not having sex in increasing amounts. And we're starting to hear about men having a tough time sort of like the silent depressive generation. And I think the next thing we're going to realize is that women have the same thing. I agree. Like the loneliness epidemic being geared toward men. I'm like, okay, there's like a loneliness epidemic in general. Like I feel super happy where where where where where I'm at and I have friends and everything like that. And then I think about if I wasn't living in a major city like New York, how would I operate? Like I think I would be somebody that would be totally in the loneliness epidemic with how often I'm working and kind of like my hobbies. Like thank goodness I live in a city where like that kind of lifestyle that I really like

living is done by a lot of other people so I can have friends. But so much of my life is like very, very alone. It's like I don't know. I don't think the loneliness epidemic is definitely geared toward man. No, I think it's, it's, I don't think it's fair that they have to be tough about it all the time. I don't think that's reasonable. I think, you know, you can be a strong man and also have emotions, 100%. But what's wild is, how old are you, Rachel? 25. Yeah. So 25. And what I see end up happening for a lot of these women is they get into like late 20s, early 30s into their 40s. And if you look at the users by and large of sleeping pills, antidepressants, adderol, a lot of these users end up being middle-aged women. And I've seen it happen personally to multiple friends, and I'm certainly no doctor. But what ends up happening is they're

like a little sad after the kids have gotten old enough to not need them all the time. And then, so what do they do? They go to the doctor and the doctor says, here is an antidepressant. Well, antidepressants often make it hard to sleep. So then they get layered some sort of sleep medication on top of it. But then they're like lethargic and sleeping funny. And so then they get layered at all because they're distracted. They can't focus. And we give them this cocktail of drugs that feels to me like what we used to do to veterans when they came back with PTSD. That we're over-medicating these women who are now increasingly part of a loneliness epidemic that I don't think anybody is even talking about yet. So in the future, I don't think it's going to be

men versus women. I don't think it's going to be boss babes and alpha men. I think the focus hopefully is going to be on strong partnerships and humans who can be honest about where they're sitting in life. And so it'll be interesting to see what happens in the coming generations. I guess where I would leave this for people today is start with the end in mind and a couple things with divorce. And the end in mind basically means this. We now know statistics are 30 to 50 percent divorce rates, something like that, right? If that's likely, one, you can protect the house. You can get a pre-up. you can make sure you vet your partners. But two, you're crazy if you think that you can be with another human and not work at building a life together. When two humans collide and there is more surface area,

aka more time spent together, there is naturally more friction. This is a law of physics. The more things touch against each other, the more they rub against each other. The more they rub against each other, the more friction and thus the more intense actions on either side of the house. And because of that, I think choosing to determine a partner who will grow with you and work on the relationship is crucial going forward on both sides, whether you're a man or a woman. And the questions that I would be asking are, are you open to having coaching or therapy? Coaching might make people feel better. That word, you know, going forward, you know, how do you think about relationships? How do you want to work through being partnered with somebody. Because let me tell you what, the most powerful thing I have ever had in my

life and my husband and I talk about this constantly is my partnership with him. Don't get me wrong. We're pissed at each other sometimes. We get in each other's faces sometimes. But when my multiple businesses have things going sideways, when we're getting sued, when somebody is getting sick, having another human to stand beside and knowing that you choose one other person to go through time with is a fucking superpower. All right. Thank you guys for joining in. This is the big deal podcast. Also, little spoiler, I'm going to give you guys a free download of the team method. If you guys want it, the link will be in the show notes. So you can go to the team method, grab that framework if you guys want to use it. We'll put it in the show notes for you.

Also, please like, subscribe, and share. We want to make sure that more people hear about this. And maybe we can decrease that divorce rate a little bit, huh? Okay, till next week. I only speak facts. If I say that I have it, you know that I got it, no need to look all in the bag.