Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 234 | marriage and business Q&A

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

We had the honor of speaking at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management all about balancing our business with marriage, family and everything in-between. We loved this interview and Q&A and couldn't wait to share it with you all. Love you guys! Shawn & Andrew Listen to our “Worst Dates” Episode ▶ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reacting-to-your-worst-date-stories-of-all-time/id1485740243?i=1000664610493 Follow our podcast Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/shawnandandrewpods/ Subscribe to our newsletter ▶ https://www.familymade.com/newsletter Follow My Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Shop My LTK Page ▶ https://www.shopltk.com/explore/shawnjohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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What's up, everyone? Welcome back to a couple things. With Sean and Andrew. Podcast all about couples. And the things they go through. This one's a little bit different. So we're going to piece this together because Andrew and I got to do like this cool keynote moderated speech at Owen Business School. That's right. My alma mater, which by the way, did you know that alma mater is actually a person? They went to Columbia University in New York City. really alma is a real person i don't understand why it's called alma mater then me neither me neither fact-checked me on that but i believe that's right my cousin went to columbia anyway i went to van because he went to columbia that's no they had a statue there with alma her name was alma mater

you know what we're off topic okay so i went to vanderville for undergrad and graduate school so went to business school there and they invited me back for what they called a distinguished speaker series Yeah, you are distinguished, but... Well, I talk about that because I got a good giggle out of that about that, because I don't even know how I ended up getting accepted into that, but... We were sitting there with the dean, okay? It was a big deal. It was an honor to be honest.

Stop trying to degrade yourself, Andrew. We wanted to share this with you, though, because we thought it was, I don't know, kind of a peek into our history, and I thought we shared some things that we haven't normally, which is kind of about our business from a high level. So we wanted to share it. We thought you may enjoy it. This is definitely a different episode. It's us getting interviewed.

But maybe there's some good stuff in there. I actually thought it was really cool. Most of the people who were there who had questions who wanted us to speak were there because they wanted to be business people and family people as well. Yeah. They wanted to know how to do both. and keep their priorities straight but actually still pursue their dreams

and I thought that was really cool that Dean actually had a conversation with me he's like there's this misconception and I totally agree I could go on a total rant about it of like needing to give up everything in your life in order to do business and he said that's just wrong you can do both you just have to find the balance

yeah I'm really thankful for our setup Sean and I work together 24-7, we're together 24-7, and it's really fun, but I actually, my dissertation topic that I'm working on now and chugging along, kind of chipping away at, is all about this idea that I think when you have these self-imposed boundaries of prioritizing certain things, so I think for most people they have family as a stated priority, not everybody lives that out, but when you have that, it kind of aligns everything and focuses you in a really power. powerful way that I think has positive business outcomes too. So anyway, more on that later. But the next couple of weeks are going to be fun. We're doing an interview with Drew and we're doing marriage myths. And yeah, so if you want to stay tuned for all that, then subscribe, give the show a rating. And we hope you enjoy this, us being interviewed.

With Sean and Andrew. It's great to be up here and it's interesting, right? You talked about it earlier in our lunch about how you're in this space and we don't often talk about the intersection. of family, business, sports, right? And then social media on top of that, right, at intersect. So I think for me, that's, that we're going to get right to it, right? You guys have three kids. Yes. I have two. It's a constant balance. And like, you've been in a limelight for the better part of your life. Like, how are you balancing family? sports, business, working together every single day, every hour of the day, and your business

partners, and you're still married. And she still likes me, right? A lot. I do, can I just start by saying, it's an honor to be here. It's hilarious to me. The committee's called Distinguished Speaker Series. If y'all knew how I got into the school, I mean, so I'm 2015 graduate of Owen. squeaked by. I think my application

slid in through the back door. Don't know how they let me in. I don't know how I graduated, but now here we are. And, you know, things have changed. You got nice new upgrades. The paper stock is just quality here. I don't know what that. It's a high quality paper. Didn't have it here. I think Professor Pace is here too. Maybe.

Grading me on my presentation skills. Oh, no. Anyway. And Mario, actually, I interviewed to be his intern when I was here. And he declined. my so it's going to be here

Mario it's okay back to the question yeah you want me to answer how does it all intersect how do we balance it all

I have no idea but I would say it's just been a long journey of trying to figure it out and figure it out in a very very messy way we have figured out everything that doesn't work

like straight up we have failed a million times we have gone months and years and turned around and said, yeah, that didn't work at all. And we've just kind of found our lanes and figured out what our priorities are. We overanalyze our life in a very, very detailed way very often. We have a lot of like planned meetings between each other and we'll bring in consultants and we'll bring in family counselors and we'll bring in mentors where we truly dissect our life and try to figure out how can we do this better to not

only protect our marriage, but to protect our children and protect our family, optimize our business, optimize our life to where we can do all of that in a seamless way. And we do that probably on a monthly basis, quarterly basis, annually basis. And it just never stops. We're just constantly trying to do it better. But it's asking ourselves every single night. are we good? Is the business good? Did we work too much today? We could have been with the kids more today.

I felt like I need more of this tomorrow. But we do that every single day. Yeah. The saying, work smarter, not harder. We don't do that. That's not us. We have tried and failed.

And I think if there's anything that we've done while it is making room for reflection, and then adjusting future course based off of that. And I'm super thankful for Sean's role in that. I think as we've done this longer and been married longer, I've really appreciated our difference in perspectives, which I think once caused a lot of frustration. Now it's like, oh my gosh, this is so needed

because I come from one side of the fence. She comes from the other, and it's actually the compromise that makes the best. And yeah, and I think it ebbs and flow. So I feel like in my 20s, I had this ravenous ambition, almost out of like desperation to prove myself or something. I was graduate from Owen and then tried to play football in the NFL. I got signed and cut was with nine different teams. And it was like, I don't know.

I got to prove to myself and to other people that I'm worth something. And then, you know, I guess time goes on and you settle into doing something. And I think now in my 30s, our priorities are less of the career. of things and more on like oh man we have three young kids and these first five years are precious and we'll never get them back and so i think we've balanced by just constantly adjusting reflecting adjusting and doing that time after time i love it and it reminds me for those of you that are uh in my entrepreneurship class we keep going back to this right about the need to to fail small fail fast and then the reflection component of it how critical it is to come back so it sounds

engine your life like you would have business because your life is your business. And so when you look at the priority list, right, if you're saying it's a weekly sprint, it's a monthly, right, it's a quarterly meet, what goes first? What's the most important on that list when you sit down as business? This episode is brought to you by Defender. With its 626 horsepower twin turbo V8 engine, the Defender Octa is taking on the Dakar rally. The ultimate off-road challenge. Learn more at landrover.ca. You can get protein at home or a protein latte at Tim's.

No powders, no blenders, no shakers. Starting at 17 grams per medium latte, Tim's new protein lattes, protein without all the work, at participating restaurants in Canada. And you say, here's our calendar and here are the events and things that are the most important to us. what are the top first second and third things on that list our personal family whenever we're breaking it down for like prioritizing time it goes church us

our kids and then work I think actually community and friends comes before work to give you like an overview of something we did when's the first time we did the yearly thing 2018. In 2018, we were bouncing around the NFL and kind of like aimless. We were doing our job now. But we sat down around the beginning of the year. We categorized our life into 12 different categories, like faith, family, friends, personal work, all these different things. And basically independently of each other, wrote down exactly what we wanted from our life

like crossing the finish line what we wanted to do for the rest of our lives what we wanted it to look like in specific detail and it was really interesting that year we shared it with each other and kind of came up with a married version um it looked drastically different than our life at the time like the life we were living looked nothing like what we wanted and it was really eye-opening for us because we were working really really hard but we were just headed the wrong direction and ever since then And we do that every single year. We go back to the drawing board. And we now, it's really cool every year.

We will go back to it. And it's like we're living the exact life that we want. And there's really not much to change or tweak. But we kind of schedule out our entire year to reflect exactly where we want to be in a year, five years, 10 years. And it's let's prioritize our faith. Let's prioritize our marriage, then our kids, then our community. And then work, whatever time is left. Yeah.

and there's a lot of time for work uh you're a work at a lot to he is a work a lot a lot he's cleanses it in whenever I do I love what we do and that's been like it's a challenge to try to check that and and we were talking a little bit of lunch just like setting a cap or like a defining what's enough and then making room for the other things in your life uh we do try to quantify everything much to Sean chagrin it's like I'm I'm wearing wearables I got blood sugar I'm like tracking how many times I meet with this person or that person like when we go through those 12 things we I think we have 150 different data points that we'll pull of all different aspects of life which is I think at the beginning was super helpful just to get visibility on those

things and say holy smokes I traveled 60 nights that year and I need to do less that that that was too much so it's like identifying what the reality historical reality was and then adjusting up or down from there. And to Sean's point, like, I think I've tracked the specific metrics less as time has gone on because we've gotten closer and closer to where we want to be. It's like, yeah, this is, this is it. But, yeah, it's good. A couple. Let's get back to it. Let's talk about family made. Like, what was the inspiration, right? You've talked about. It's interesting, right? People know, sorry, your story. Very well. And so I think you said you were like 12 when you signed your first contract, right? So you're a lawyer. You have a couple MBAs. You probably have a

couple of dockerets given the life that you've led in the limelight. But you were the inspiration on kind of the YouTube and videos. And so tell us like why family made, how, how are you inspired to say this is what we want to do? And what is it? What is it? That's a great question. I still don't know if we got the elevator pitched out. We could still get your NBA. Yeah, someday. Chasing three babies around. We fell into content creation, literally overnight, fell into it.

And I don't know how and I don't know why. But we, by nature, document everything in our life. We do a lot of home videos if you were to have met Andrew's father. That was his passion in life. That's just documenting family life and sitting around the fire and watching family videos. That's what we always did as a family. And it got passed on. So Andrew documented everything in our life.

And we would always make family videos. And we started posting them to YouTube in 2015. And Andrew's mind saw a world of analytics and data points and profitability, opportunities, and optimizing views and building a community that is not my business. I don't do that. But I also came from a sports entertainment world where I signed my first contract at 12 and I learned how to be the voice of companies. I learned marketing. I learned campaigns, commercializing, selling products.

I knew how to do that. That's what people signed me to do. I represented Coca-Cola at the Olympics and McDonald's and I could get you to buy a Big Mac. And so I kind of learned the ins and outs of that world. And over a long process of kind of figuring content creation out, we, looked around after we had, we said, we're actually a full-time marketing, um, broadcasting production company. That's what we do.

And any company can come to us and say, I want to sell bounty paper towels. And I can tell you, we can tell you exactly how to film the commercial, market it, sell it, advertise it. We can build your community behind it. We can build your branding. And we got really, really good at that. And so we created family made, which basically does that. that, but for families, for values-based, moral-based families, because there is a lot of

content out there that is polarizing, vulgar, and kind of separates the world, but families bring the world together. So now that we have three babies, we said, let's at least harness our capabilities and what we've learned to do some good, you know, by posting cringy videos. What's the cringiest you've ever posted? One of the slime videos, for sure. We got caught up and trying to do all the trend videos. So slime, it was, I don't know, what was in that? But we tried to do like that.

Yeah, it would fail. Remember the Game Master videos where we orchestrated this whole. I know, you did not. Don't even, don't ever look. Oh, don't know. Yeah. But look, because, like, you, right, you know, this brand as, as a football player, NFL, gymnast Olympian.

And so you have these personal brands. You brought them together through this marriage. And now you're leveraging them and like what you put out there never goes away. And so how do you, how do you, how do you want to think about the path that you took looking at your brands, bringing these two powerful brands together into a family?

And then also this the question after that at any point that you want to answer is like, all of us now have a brand that's out there, any of us that are on social media, it's been created. And so what advice do you have for people that, how do they leverage their brand if they want to leverage their brand for the business side? And what did you do when you brought those together when you think about your personal brand? I think there's so much power in storytelling.

And I think you're constantly telling stories consciously or not explicitly. or not it's like you know what you wear tell stories how you how you interact with somebody tells a story and then obviously your words do as well i think social media has been phenomenal for those people who have told stories intentionally and thoughtfully and it's done some damage and had some carnage as well uh we've it's been so fun that sean has 20 years she's been in the public eye for 20 years she has 20 years of people uh having the ability to connect with her story through gymnastics, TV shows, you know, her education process now with the family and even dating and marriage when we're doing that. And so I think just being aware

that you are telling a story and then figuring it out how your story is unique, what you want to accomplish with that. We reached a point back to the family made origination where I think it's a unique in our space. A lot of people in our niche are like 18-year-old TikTokers, right? And they don't have a team. They don't feel like they can creatively relax their controls to let an editor, you know, chop up their videos. And so I think we've been able to do that in a way that we wanted to help other people do.

And so we created a media network and it helps people thoughtfully tell their story. We realize that our, story of dating marriage and raising kids is so unique. And there's millions of other stories out there, stories of adoption and struggle and blended family, whatever that looks like. And so how can we actually use our skills and the team that we've been able to build to help get the other message out there? Because we've experienced so much amazing benefits and feedback when we get emails and dms of people saying like hey uh my marriage was in a tough spot and we listened to your podcast and they like changed the game for us or i felt so lonely as a mom and then we saw your

goofy video and it like really brought back hope to me and it's like that's what we're trying to do we want to speak to that mom who has five minutes uh between nap time and they're too exhausted to make a call or go out and do anything else and they don't have enough time to to accomplish you know whatever task it's like they're probably going to open Instagram and if we can be the video that they see and it brings a smile to their face or brings a thought that they might not otherwise have then it's mission accomplished you know and so you're intentional about that right and like family made you're also intentional about attracting all types of relationships all

types of families and so when you think about that right why is why is that why is that why is that important to you because you could say that you know it could be niche, right? In what you're doing, but you really want to be able to be that source of hope for families across a whole spectrum. Yeah. Do you mean? Yeah, you got it. Um, we've kind of bounced all over the place in like markets when it came to social content. Hey, so what did you want to talk about? Well, I want to tell you about Wagovi. Wagovi. Yeah, Wagovi. What about it? On And that. I might not be the right person to tell you. Oh, you're not? No, just ask your doctor about Wagovi. Yeah, ask for it by name. Okay. So, why did you bring me to the circus? Oh, I'm really into lion tamers. You know, with the chair and everything? Ask your doctor for Wagovi by name. Visit wagovi.combe. For savings. Exclusions may apply. Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Or you can't get a well-groom.

lawn delivered but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered a cabana that's a no but a banana that's a yes a nice tan sorry nope but a box fan happily yes a day of sunshine no a box of fine wines yes uber eats can definitely get you that get almost almost anything delivered with uber eats order now alcohol and select markets product availability may vary by regency app for details we did slime we did game shows we did everything um because we went through a very long period time where it started out for fun and for a passion and then it became a job and when it became a job we wanted it to do well they wanted to make a lot of money and we would look at everything and say what's making the most money slime videos literally go home and make slime that's it

does anybody know what we're talking about when we say like you know it's like a tutorial how to make like you literally just make slime which we failed to do we were the worst on the video And through that process, we failed at it. We didn't connect with people. It just didn't work. We did not make a lot of money, do it. And then not to get into a somber story, but we found out we were pregnant. We literally started documenting the storytelling of that for us.

That was not content we would ever have shared with the world. That was way too vulnerable and raw. lost to that pregnancy, which was very shocking, kind of rocked our world, and created this video for us to heal through. I felt compelled to post to that because I felt very lost, and I didn't know how to even communicate with my husband, let alone anyone else, posted that thinking, truly, nobody would watch it, and it took off. And it was the very first time in our business that we had ever seen social media in the

internet. I said two-way street and not a one-way. Instead of serving content, we were actually communicating with people. And I sat there for days crying, communicating with strangers from all over the world who had gone through the same thing. And so when we created family made, it was very simple for us. It was like family is family. And it binds you to people all over the world in so many different ways. And we could create it to be so much more niche than that. But It's, but why? It just seemed too important. So we wanted to keep it wide open.

I appreciate it. I remember watching those videos and, you know, I think it's unfortunate the reality, right? So many of us lose children. And so my wife and I lost a child and it's one of those that you don't talk about. And so it's very much appreciate the fact that you, you know, that that was one place where we can all agree on, right? And that unfortunate grief. So from the other side of it, we very much appreciated seeing. that in such a public eye to be able to engage in it and at least try to get past it on

our own. So thank you for that one. Thank you. What else are we going to do? Like, what else, what other, I know you guys have a bunch of ideas, right? What are you going to do? So what else do you want to do with family made? What other ideas are up your sleeve? What's next? A lot. we were dead set on building a media network like barstall sports or the ramsie or daily wire let's build something that we can exit you know uh because you know there is something gratifying when the market says this is a valuable thing and so uh that was our intention up until we had our third kit and we were just humming along trying to to home along at the same RPMs, and then we hit a wall.

And we had to take a step back and start pruning things. There's a book by Henry Cloud called Necessary Endings, and it was like really challenging. It essentially said, hey, what are your priorities, and what do you need to prune to keep those priorities, priorities? And so I think we, I am so much a starter. I love, like, tinkering and experimenting, and I launch things. Like, I am not a perfectionist. It's a great quality I have.

I remember, and it's also the worst quality. You have done a couple of? Yes, please. I remember. Gosh, I was like, we need monthly recurring revenue. Sweet, okay. Let's do a subscription box. Great.

This is a good idea, Andrew. This is all happening within a five-second period. I said, all right, I'm going to build a website. We're going to launch it. We're going to introduce it to our millions of people. I did. I built this whole thing. It's all wheat.

Built the whole thing. I launched it that night. And it was like, we got like 10,000 people that subscribed to the subscription box. They bought orders. There was nothing to put in the subscription box. I didn't think through it that much. And then so I told Sean the next day, I said, babe, we did it. And I was like, you're refunding every single one of these.

Oh, I made so many mistakes. What was going to be in the box? He doesn't know. It was a great concept. I retroactively thought through it. You didn't even tell me. I just found you going around the house trying to find things to put in boxes. And I was like, this isn't going to work.

All right. Anyway. He also, he also, so his claim to fame within our business and our company, which is everyone knows when Andrew gets an idea, it's like, you better buckle up because this thing is going to be launched in 24 hours. And it's just a, it's a running thing and it happens all the time. but I, we gave birth to our first kid, Drew, our daughter, and the next day, without telling me, he launched a podcast. It's hype. Our podcast.

And it charted at number one with no podcasts. Two more days go by and he starts panicking. And he comes to me and he's like, babe, I did a thing. we got to record a podcast and I was like what is this about it's now like our favorite thing that we do so it's it's held but it you you launch a lot of launch a lot of things mistakes were made mistakes anyway back to what's next I think we have we have right-sized our ambition very much and like I do love starting things and I realize that this might not be the phase for that though so we're going to shelf that for a little bit

and just focus on the things that we know work. And that's enough for us. We went through this whole, like, Paredos principle, 80, 20. It's like, we're just spending so much of our time for so little reward. It's like, why are we doing that? So just having the discipline to stay on the straight and narrow is what we're trying to focus on now. Only one. All right, you can only choose one.

When you think about your relationship, and not many people can do this because it's very unique, right? And so your public figures, you have this business, you're working together, you have three kids. What's kept, we're talking about the Owen Partners Association, right? Most of us here have partners, and we're going through this phase in our life. When you think about your marriage, right?

just the two of you, what's the one thing that's kept it gone? Three, two, one, go. I would say, one, I just love you to death, which is really fun. But we have a lot of fun. We have, we at the end of the day, laugh off these matters. massive fails, even though they cause arguments. But we have a lot of fun. Yeah.

I think embracing the concept of team in our marriage and family has kept it going. We're pretty good team, and I'm thankful for that. And that goes for in the house, outside the house, all the things. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I'll leave it at that because I think we have a bunch of questions that are going to come out of us. So unless you won't want to say sounds great for it.

All right, let's do it. Let's open enough questions, Maura. I appreciate that. If there are any. What do we got? I'm curious to hear a little bit more about how extended family plays into your lives and what's going on and how you balance maybe accepting input from family and how you balance appreciating that input with choosing your own fat and being

talk about in the maximum. Wow. There's levels to that question. So many. We kind of paved our own way. I don't think our extended family maybe still doesn't understand what we do.

My mom was not pumped. When we started publishing stuff online, she's very private, very quiet, and she was very reticent, still to this day of what we do. I've said many apologies. Sean's an only child, so it's, I feel like mostly my family that gives input, but I've said many apologies for all the nonsense that our videos create as far as like, whatever, people saying, oh my gosh, you're Sean Johnson's brother, brother-in-law, whatever. But then I also, So we definitely have our own nuclear family unit.

And then I am super thankful and have really spent quite a lot of time over the past couple months digging into the extended family. Tashon's earlier comment about how my dad was huge on home videos. My grandfather also was. So there's videos of my dad being born at the hospital. There's videos of me being born at the hospital. I have a lot of thoughts on how like, you know, I used to try to think I was some novel.

creation. I was like, there's never been Niger East and I like CrossFit and I like YouTube and it's like my grandpa used to wake up every day and do 15 minutes

on the Schwinn bike and that's pretty much what CrossFit is. You know, it's like this old thing. I like the film and make videos and that's what my dad

did, that's what my grandpa so it's like, you know, looking back actually does help. But they've been, I think every voice

has merit and every voice is valuable. I think there's tears to it though. So I value Sean's input more than my siblings out at this point I think that's the way it should be

but yeah thanks for the question when you guys were listing out your priorities both pretty confidently put your marriage about children which is not a insane concept like it's been spoken about before but I was wondering if you guys have never kind of struggled with that concept or been struggled with wrapping your mind around it

and then also how you guys actually do that how you probably ever time for your marriage kind of at that level which is your relationship probably more or something you struggle with them more for sure um i think moms have a hard time after we have kids of maintaining that priority because your identity changes massively when you have kids and trying to allow enough space to remember that our priority list goes spouse first than kids um is sometimes difficult for a mom, but something Andrew and I agreed on before we had kids is we are only

as good parents as we are as spouses. So if our marriage isn't good, we can't parent well. And if I lose my best friend and teammate as my number one to my child, then the whole dynamic of our family is off. And I'll never forget, like, leaving the hospital with my daughter and thinking, like, I was terrified that I might lose my best friend to her, if that makes sense. And so we have just really worked on keeping a pact of, you are my number one, no matter what, and our kids come after that. And they have to for our family and for our family dynamic.

So just kind of reminding each other. And then how we do that, we were talking about this during the lunch. we started when we got pregnant with our daughter, our oldest. Every single Thursday night is date night. Tonight? Tonight. Yeah. And no matter if we're in an argument, no matter what happens that week, we have date night on Thursdays. And we have gone to date nights where we barely speak, but we go on date nights. And it's just to show each other that we are still each other's number one priority it's a little things too like we'll put the kids down and then usually it's around 730 that that process is done and there was a solid period of time where one of us would come down

and the other one was on the phone and it doesn't feel very welcoming or hospitable you know like this concept of I was thinking of you before you arrive and so we came up with this Bev time is what we called it where we used to drink wine we don't anymore because we go to about eight now but it's like when the kids go down and the last person comes down the stairs it's like hey let's greet each other with eye contact make each other feel welcomed and like warm and then we have anywhere from five to an hour five minutes to an hour of like connecting debriefing and so it's just like we try to make room for connection don't always do it though we talked about that right that's all you get like 30 minutes an hour when you have kids that's it and you got to be intentional about that time or intentional to not spend it together and say like I need to sign off yeah to go all day down in bed without you talking to me so date night Thursday night right it's business school Friday so closing them oh oh oh oh oh yeah we're still doing it like that oh yeah we got the kegs and everything

I have no more cakes And then no more talking about. What happened to cakes? Does everybody know about that here? There might be kegs tonight. Okay. Yes. There you go.

Wow. This could change our plant. And we have a lot of non-alcoholic options, so. Okay. Great. Yeah. Wow. Oh, we are having kegs, so kegs is back.

I used to be, I used to pride myself on how spontaneous I was. If you knew Andrew of circa 2012, I was like, I literally had dreadlocks, wearing a poncho, like one shirt in my closet. And then I met Sean, so I got to button it up. You went to Vandy. That wasn't me. Even from that to collared shirts and spary shoes. Okay.

I think. I think I would rather skew towards being structured and regimented now with how our life looks with three kids and a marriage I want to protect than leaning on spontaneity. I used to love the fun, just like flogamous, fancy free, take a 12-hour road trip at the drop of a hat, whatever. But I think I realized more often than not I would tend to, when I had free time, use it poorly. It's like, hey, I'm just going to lay down on the couch for a little bit, or I'm going to open up Instagram. And so now we try to keep a pretty full schedule of things that mean a lot to us. Try not to

be like hectic, busy, but we try to fill our schedule with intentional things that get us closer to like what we want our life to look like, friends, business. We even structure in like Sundays rest day. And we have our list of things that we love doing on that day. So I, like, We're pretty regimented, and I think that's the way it's going to be for the next couple of years until the next chapter of life comes along. I agree. Tom, our dean, and our lunch mentioned, as he got further on in this career, like, planning months in advance, right? Putting that dinner, putting that vacation on the calendar, booking it six months out

because it forces you to do it. You don't have to think about it anymore. So I think that's one other piece is you get so busy, right? Stay on the kind of outlook calendar craziness and just book your vacations with your partner far in advance and make sure that you commit to doing it because by the time you get there, there's no opportunity to change it and just do it. I also think it makes it more enjoyable when you have the anticipation. People talk about vacations, like the weeks ahead of the actual vacation are just as enjoyable

and exciting and the actual thing. It's like, I don't know. There's a difference between mindlessly sitting down on the couch and turning on scrolling through Netflix to see what's watching or like what you can't watch and buying a movie ticket weeks in advance because you're excited to see that. It's like the anticipation is a real thing

and actually it means a lot. And that goes to all areas of life. Yeah. I was just a bit of being a family business for all. Have you all now to be your discredance of work preventing not from, you know, creepy end of honestly or some people What's the disagreement? I don't even know what that is. Do we do that thing? What's you say?

I don't know. We've never had an argument. We've actually brought in professionals to help with that. We've brought in consultants over our business and like we've tried hiring like CEOs to like literally be our bosses. And none of it worked. But I would say we've just kind of learned how. we spoke of this at lunch it's like own our lanes and we did this three day intensive with it was called the patterson house where they really helped us like discern what our roles are and like what we're good at and what to own within our business and what to own within our home so that as life gets busier with kids and you have less room to waste and time to waste whenever he makes a decision or I make a decision within our own lanes.

I'm like, okay, I respect that. That's on you. That's your thing. I can present maybe a challenge to it if I want, but that is yours. So I'm just going to hands off. But if we cross each other's lines and I try to get into his lane or vice versa, then we usually say, okay, we need to speak as business partners right now and figure this out. Or we also try to have like very clear boundaries as far as,

work we work in an office if we're in an office it's clearly business partners if we're at home i will even ask each other like are you working or is this my husband like can i ask you a question now um so we try to just respect boundaries that way but humility goes a long way that too what wasn't one of the boxes what was in one of the boxes I started immediately panicking, reaching out to companies. And it was pretty good box. I think we had some snacks in there. Yeah, it's mostly food.

I guess my own personal interest of food. For some reason, I thought when you said he was running around the house, I thought he was, like, putting in, like, a home item. I would have bought it to that. I would have this vase in the box. So other than being completely blind, so I respect to the podcast, It's been the most challenging aspect.

With the podcast? Yeah. I'm interested to hear your answer. Every, like, I love what we do. It's still a job. You know, it's like, there's, I think I saw that, there's seven million podcasts.

And I think only 500,000 of those have published more than 10 episodes. I think only 200,000 of those do video. And I think only 150,000 have over 100. So it's like, part of the game is like just doing it over and over and over and over again. And so there's like, there's the dread of like,

oh, we got to film our, another podcast and we've published 23,000 videos in eight years. And it's like, that's a lot, you know, it's like,

what are we going to freaking film a video on? So I think part of it's a creative exhaustion that you get. Yeah, I was going to say like content. You run out of ideas. And, and you fail to be creative.

But I'd say that's the hardest part. I think we've kind of figured out everything else, how to do it, how to shoot it, how to edit and mark it and put out. But the content is the hardest. Random question. Do you ever feel like you're living in the Truman Show? Yeah. Like we're just in a podcast, walking around the house.

Is this real? yeah a lot do you your life is super your life is way weird than mine shana like sneeze and you'd be like

Sean jott headline of people magazine it's like people freaking love a shot it's weird I think it's been good not good

yeah it's also interesting we've also created so many boundaries around what we post that it all is authentic and it all is is real, but we have figured out our system so much that it feels somehow so detached from our life

that it doesn't really feel like our life anymore. I don't know. It's all real, but it's not everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How do you, in boundaries, how do you make sure that what you post is not, like, susceptible to that cancel the culture? that's such a big thing I've been dead and they got many shoveled for that recently Wow Let's talk about that

I've worked with you Sean's a system Yeah She's been doing it for so long Yeah it sounds very weird But I've worked with a publicist For so long And I've worked

within that industry for so long before cancel culture started that I learned so inherently or like over time like what you can and cannot say and what's too far and what's within the boundaries and so every once in a while if there's like a line

I feel like it gets brought to my table and I'm like ah it's fine or absolutely we don't go there so Sean's the line of last offense we would probably have 10 times if it was up to me but it would probably be way more messy yeah

there's things that are like I think culturally no-goes and that's like when culture cancel somebody there's things that are like ethically no-goes and then I think like stylistically no-goes too it also depends on your brand yeah so like our brand has very clear

things that we can't take part in ever like we don't touch politics because we're family family shouldn't like be separated by that um we also you can't touch car seats don't touch car seats don't show them don't talk about them don't even act like you know what they are strong feelings um it's just like you you learn what you can and cannot talk about and so but yeah it's it's scary but it's also kind of toxic for how easily people get canceled for mistakes opinions

being human how do you deal with disagreements so like for example a minor a minor a person likes to

amp up our kids before we go to bed what's wrong with that I like this guy I like it it it could be more it could be more

anxiety of a moment basically we're trying to get a depression teeth than all dots it doesn't sound familiar

I'm the one doing the amping. I'm curious what you have to say. How do we handle parental disagreements about raising our kids? I don't know. How do we work through this? Well, I'm glad you brought this up because usually Sean gets her way, and I have been thinking about it for a long time. I think there is a, I mean, this is kind of what we try to, we try to just make people feel like they're not the only ones going through that.

And it's like, that's an age old problem, you know, and mother-in-law and, yeah, Sean and her mom and argue and they're not the first ones ever do that. And there's something like relieving when you realize, hey, this is kind of just the way it is. I don't know, you've been patient with me and you've told me not to amp up the kids, but I still do. We have a blast. And I'd let go of it. Kind of. Conversations. The only thing I would add there is advice on my mom gave me early on is to never fight in front of your kids and to never have that disagreement.

And I think I do this all the time. Liz gets so upset. I like, I play monster right before they go to bed. She's like, come on. They were just so calm. We're trying to read a nice bedtime story. and I'm like, brah. We just try not to disagree in front of them,

and then I get scolded. And I'm like, I'll be better. I'd have to do it, but we do it again. Hi, thank you so much for being here. You guys kind of seem to have it all, the great marriage, the beautiful family, the successful career, and people say it takes a village.

Can you speak to what role if a village has played your success? Don't have it all, but I would say we have enough. And I think we have a lot of what we want to have. We spend a lot of time building the village. We have a very large village. We're very, very blessed. Within our business, we have a bunch of people who help give us freedom to be parents.

We have editors, producers, lawyers, managers, all of them. at home my parents i am an only child moved to Nashville when we had our first kid they lived two minutes from us and they are at our house every single day and we're also very lucky to have a nanny who is our family and she is attached to us and she helps running like with running the kids everywhere but we truly have a village and i don't take that for granted i know we are it's a giant luxury for us to be able to have that much help around us. And then Andrew's family is four hours away, and we see them a lot. And we have worked really, really hard to build a very close community of friends who all

have kids the same age. And we're having dinner at least once a week with them and their kids. And we have our church community. and like we've worked really hard to build an entire village of people around us to help make sure this is still going counselors therapists marriage therapists this applies more to the business and the personal there's a book called who not how by dan sullivan and benjamin arty which is fantastic and it's uh i think like we naturally like to control things it's like let's do it our way

let's edit this video our way let's raise the kids our way and i think uh part of the beautiful derivative of having a village as you get other perspectives and other talents introduced and so we've tried to the best of our ability just like release that control a little bit and and work specifically if someone can do a task like 80% as well as we can we'll try to like dish that off and just like it's takes a lot of trust and patience usually like when we work with someone new it It takes like three months to get them onwarded, but, yeah, it's, it's fun to have this many people around. Usually.

Usually. Content pressure, you said? Yeah. Content pressure. Bank more on course when you switch to a Scotia Bank banking package. Learn more at scotia bank.com slash banking packages. Conditions apply. Scotia Bank.

You're richer than you think. We use social media cautiously, and we actually, I was just saying, we walked on the Instagram headquarters, and the first thing they said was, you should create on this platform more than you consume on this platform. So I think there are times when we feel at the bottom of the barrel creatively. This is where having other people, we have producers for podcasts who will come up with concepts, and they'll help us in that process. And we can say, it's a great idea. This is not a good idea.

We don't want to do this one. But usually we try to create things out of like fulfillment and excitement. And then we, I think a lot of the burnout happens when people feel like they're just handcuffed to the whole process. It's like, you've got to publish YouTube videos. And we went through one chapter of that where we were like, we got nothing else. And that was like three months of pause that we took. But between that and like when you read comments and like you get caught up and all that stuff, we really don't read that many comments.

We have like a community manager who helps us do that stuff. And that's by design. It's like we love to celebrate the wins and get the emails from people that said we've positively impacted them. And that gives us the creative juice to keep them going. So we try to focus on that, like out of a. abundance rather than like, oh, shoot, we're, we're handcuffed to this thing, you know. And then I would also add keeping up with that, the content pressure of like creating content, enough of it to play into the algorithms and relevancy.

We have found a cadence that we agree with. And we as a full team will sit down and say in this phase of life, whether it's holidays or we're having a kid or we're getting busy because we're going to travel for a while. We'll kind of reset those cadences. But whatever we agree on as a company, we then schedule out. So, like, on Tuesday, we will shoot all Instagram content for the next two weeks. And then on Wednesday, we'll shoot two or three podcasts. And then on Thursday, we'll shoot.

So, like, we try to, like, bundle things up so that it doesn't feel like all you're doing every single day is, like, shoot a reel. shoot a TikTok show you too like all these things we try to like batch them so that by the time we come back around to fit filming Instagram or podcast we have more creativity because it's been three weeks since we last filmed that and we have all these ideas and you don't get as burnout or about six months planned out on each bot on with ideas and concepts and all that stuff which makes we have not always been that way yeah we have worked really hard hard to do that. We each work out almost every day, never together, which is funny.

We always have to work out independently. I would say coffee, reading. Oh, my house. Usually we'll connect with a friend, whether it be part of your book club. group or elsewhere. Yeah. Hang out with the kids. Cook dinner.

Yeah. We've loosened more of like the I need this mentality to be. And because there's just some days where it's like, all right, our kid was up until 2 a.m. And I got two hours of sleep. I would love to work out, but I'm not going to. And as opposed to like saying this is going to ruin my day, it's just like, all right, let's just roll up the punches. But I think the best day would be.

something fitness just to clear our mind in that way we connect best when we have an idea or like something we've read that's fun to philosophize over connecting with friends and then trying to trying to create something valuable through work all right before we wrap up I always have a final question and since you're a couple I'm going to do two and you get to choose one then you're going to respond to. So when you think about yourself, right, your business, family made, your life, what keeps you up that night?

And it could be in this crazy world and just, you know, living as a couple and working together. And then the other question is, if you had limited funds, what would you do? Not the boxes. What would you invest in?

Like, what would you watch? So you only get to choose one each. And it can't be the same question. Okay. My first answer would be what keeps you up at night. And I would say as a mother of three, my kids and giving them every opportunity to succeed in life specific to them. Just am I doing enough for them? Am I around enough?

Am I fostering their interests individually enough? am i am i being the best mother for each of my children as i can be i get the unlimited investment i remember uh okay what would i spend unlimited money on uh donating to vanderville you know we are opening up a campus in west phone beach in new york city what is happening Let's go. I don't know. You could stop. I actually.

I don't know. I mean, yeah. Dang, unlimited money. I don't think it'd be, I think it'd be honestly in like an entrepreneurship program. That's not Vanderbilt specific. But like I think when I look at the effect that businesses had on me, if I could inspire other people through that. and like it's really it's amazing beautiful process of hey you can create which i think we're all made to create and you can do something of value and like add uh like change people's lives

and then you can like also take care of your family doing so that's really exciting so whatever that would look like yeah thank you thank you both thanks everyone for thank you thank you so