The Game with Alex Hormozi - Does Your Marriage Make You Money? [Successful Frameworks] | Ep 162

Episode Date: November 6, 2019

“Success to me is a choice, is being able to choose what I want.” Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) is joined by his wife Leila (@LeilaHormozi) as they discuss the importance of the shared mission, shared values, and complimentary skillsets in successful marriages and business partnerships. They also provide insights on the cheerleader vs fullback concept, making the first dollar together, and the definition of freedom for entrepreneurs.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(2:06) - 3 things for a successful marriage and business partnership.(6:53) - Cheerleader vs fullback concept by Gary V.(10:29) - First dollar together increases the likelihood of staying married.(12:17) - Society's definition of freedom vs entrepreneur's reality.(16:09) - Marriage is a partnership with priority, a partner in war.(20:26) - Helping partner and telling spouse as you do friends.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

Good morning, everyone. Hope you guys are having a wacky, fantastic Wednesday. I wanted to make this podcast because it's probably related to the, you know, probably the number one question that we get on personal lives when we have our events. And so we're, I'm on day five of nine straight days of events right now. And so I woke up a little bit earlier today before we have our fifth day of events to kind of talk about something that a lot of people ask about, which is marriage and money, right? And so I told this, does your marriage make you money?

And some people might read that and be like, oh, it's marriage isn't about money, which I find funny because it's the number one thing that people argue about in marriage, and maybe the work-life balance that the entrepreneur might have. And so what I want to do is I'm kind of speaking specifically to the entrepreneurs who are married or are considering marriage. And so I want to first lay out some context, which is, one, I have not been married for 20 years. And so I cannot say what that is like, and nor am I claiming to know. Layla and I have a very specific, very unique marriage, and we approached it somewhat differently than a lot of people do, and we get questions about it all the time.

And so rather than if you're having questions about your married situation, I never want to, you know, and marriages or anything like that. But what happens a lot of times after people come to our events is they either go all in on a relationship. We've had tons of people who were with, you know, partnered with someone who became, got married after, you know, hearing Layla and I speak about marriage at our events. And we've also had people who are at our events who, after our events, actually broke up, got divorced, separated, et cetera.

And so what I want to provide is just a framework that we use, used to look at our marriage. and I think a useful framework for entrepreneurs to look at honestly the ROI of the partnership that they're, you know, beginning, right, or they are in right now. And so first, I want to kind of lay out the three things that we think it takes to make a marriage work, but also a business partnership work, because ultimately they're very similar in terms of how you're figuring this out. And as a total side note, if you were a betting person, you should always bet against partnerships in marriage because the likelihood that someone makes, it their entire lives and does not end a business partnership or does not end a marriage is very low right the only way that it would be quote successful is if you you know if one of you dies essentially it's like the only way that our society defines success within the context of marriage and partnership right and so i think that's a little bit morbid um but uh i want to give you kind of

three three kind of frame sets to work with so the first is that um in order to have what we believe And this is also adopted from different billionaires that we've listened to, not just like personally, but also their podcast, their content, their books, et cetera. The first one is that there has to be shared mission, which is not just like within the business context, it's shared mission for what you want to accomplish. But within marriage, it's really just like life mission. Like, what do you want to accomplish together? What do you want your lives to look like? Because marriage and partnerships are truly just a set of agreements. And a lot of people enter their marriages based on, you know, chemistry and love.

and emotions, right? And a lot of times we know in business that emotional decisions tend to not be very good ones, which is kind of interesting because we make the biggest decision of our lives based on emotions. So anyways, figuring out

whether or not you and your partner are aligned, and I'm going to talk about more of this within the context of marriage. I'll probably do another one on like business partnership specifically, but within the context of marriage is the mission, right? Are we trying to go to the same place

and we want our lives to look the same way? And if you actually spell out what you want your life to look like a lot of times you'll find that it might be different, right? What you think ideal scene is versus someone else. And so a typical example of this that might present at one of our events would be we have somebody who comes up and entrepreneurs like, listen, all I want to do is work. I love working and all my spouse wants to do is like take vacations and take time off and I feel like we're at odds, right? I feel like we're not doing, we're not alive. We're not

doing what both of our ideal scene is different, right? What? What? We're, what, we're, what, we're, what, we're What we're trying to strive towards is different, right? And so that is the first piece. It's like, what does an ideal seem look like in terms of your life, right? The second piece is shared values. So it's cool to know where you're trying to go, but how you're going to get there is different based on the values that you want to have. And so for Layla and I, for example, we are both incredibly growth oriented.

And one of the issues that I think happens with entrepreneurs is that they outgrow their spouses because what happens is your business continues to force you to grow continues to force you to level up continues to force you to acquire new skills and your spouse many times does not do that and so what ends up happening is that people continue to grow I would say you know they continue to change in a certain way and if you're not in the same environment and responding to the same stressors oftentimes you grow apart right and so for us or for me especially because when I was looking you know evaluating spouses our spouse options

figuring out who was going to grow in alignment with me was going to be one of the most important things in my life. And so the final piece of the three kind of piece framework is complementary skill sets. And so a lot of times if you have two people who do the same thing, right, or have the same skills, you can step on each other's toes. And so I think just like in business, you want to have clear divisions and clear roles and defined roles, having clear roles in marriage and house works the same way. They found they did a study on when husbands basically this is kind of interesting. The more housework a husband does, the less likely the marriage is to stay, is to be successful, which I think is crazy to think about, right? The more housework a husband does,

the less likely the marriage is to be successful. Now, why would that be? The research is posthalated that it had to do with beliefs around marriage being more modernized as in like they the kids these days right if you were more likely to actually work and and have a split right you have a breadwinner and you have somebody who keeps care of the house you have clearly defined roles when those people start mixing in each other stuff it's like well i do dishes one way you do dishes another way whereas when there are two different roles you actually can have clear uh distinctions and then people end up understanding what the trade-offs are, right? What are our agreements? What do I do? What do you do to contribute to the success of this family, which is contributing to the shared mission.

And so, Gary V, I think probably popularized this concept, but the difference doing the cheerleader and the fullback, right? So I've only seen two different kind of structures work within marriage combinations, right? And so number one is the cheerback, cheer back, the hybrid, right? the cheerleader setup, which is you're the breadwinner, they are the cheerleader. And with the cheerleader's role is to 100% support the player on the field. And so the last thing that a true cheerleader, a real cheerleader would do is tell the quarterback, tell the player to come off the field when the game is on the line, right? That's not what a real cheerleader would do.

They would say, you go out, win the game, I've got this. And so what they're doing is actually giving you your attention back. They're actually making the rest of your life easier so that you can go out and win and fulfill your role and then they're fulfilling their role. And a lot of times there can be lots of fulfillment in doing it that way because everyone's sharing the same end goal. We're trying to win the game. Whatever winning the game means for you, right? For the fullback setup, which is the setup that Layla and I have, is that we're both in the game together. We're both in the trenches together.

We're blocking and tackling for one another to move the ball forward. All right. Personally, I had never had prior to Layla a fullback setup. I had always had a cheerleader setup. And I think it was difficult for me because all I thought about all the time was business and work. And it was really, honestly, the thing that I cared the most about. And obviously, I was younger, so I know that timing has to do something with this. But the things that I cared most about was the work.

that I was doing and I was trying to establish a career and build a foundation and build a base so that I could support a family that I would wanna have later on in life. And so Leila was the first person that entered my life and wanted to do the things that I wanted to do at the same time. And so a lot of times opposites attract, right?

And then attack, right? But opposites attract, but a lot of times they don't share similar interests. And so when Leela and I got married, It was a very calculated decision of like, okay, you're into fitness. You like living the same way I do in terms of healthy lifestyle, how you eat, how you exercise. These things are important to you. You're not going to try and off rail me if I'm trying to diet.

You're not going to try and tell me that, oh, no, don't work out. Like, that's not important, right? You're not going to start sabotaging the things that I deem are successful to the mission of my overall life, right? And so that's on the fitness and health side. But also on the business side, there are times when, your marriage may lose you money because your spouse does not agree with the commitment that you're making for your business. And that's going to cause a lot of cognitive dissonance. It's going to cause a lot of pain for you because you're trying to choose between two things that mean a lot

to you, the person and the relationship and the business. And ideally, if you have an agreement that's set up ahead of time of the fact of like, this is what we are both doing together, this is what this business is going to feed all of us, then you can make temporary tradeoffs of like this is going to be kind of rough for the next six months and I need you to bear with me right I need you to let me do this I need you to let me win this game because the game's on the line right now and I need to be in right I can't be thinking about these other things right now because it's not going to work and so it's it one of the fun things about the fullback setup is that a different entrepreneur told me this can court right that he had read a richer study that

when a couple enters a business together and makes their first dollar together the likelihood that they stay married increases like fivefold, which I think is fascinating. And I think it's like having a child together with someone, right? Is that like the business becomes your child? Because as soon as you make your first dollar together, like you're in it, you're committed in a new way. It draws yet another line to you.

It's like, okay, one is you start having sex and you like each other. And then it's like, okay, you're living together. Okay, now you have kids. Okay, now you have a business. It's like you are in, right? You are super committed. And so when couples come to us and they ask us these hard questions of like, okay, I feel like my partner doesn't support me in my life, a lot of times we're like,

well, then you need to have a really candid relationship with that, sorry, candid conversation with them about what the goals of your life is supposed to be. If that mission isn't aligned, the likely that you're going to achieve it is really low, right? Like, because you're both trying to go towards different things. I recently had somebody who's like, you know, I've been dating my girlfriend for three years, And all she wants to, she has a job and she just wants to take vacations all the time. Like that's all she wants.

She doesn't like love her job. She just does it. And I just want to work all the time because I love what I do, right? That can be a really hard setup because they don't understand why you like working so much, right? Because to them work is just a means to an end rather than the actual end itself, right? And so one of the interesting things about entrepreneurship is that we aspire for freedom, right? Most of us sign up for this game because we want to be free. We want temporal freedom.

We want to do the things we want to do with our time. We want geographic freedom. We want to be able to be where we want to be. We want financial freedom so that we can spend what we want to spend and do what we want to do. So do what you want to do, when you want to do it, where you want to do it. And ideally, with whom you want to do it. And so that's like the ultimate freedom that a lot of us are going after. But what's interesting is that the definition that society will give us in terms of freedom

because that is like Hollywood, et cetera, is that they tell you freedom is not working. Right. That's what freedom is to them. But the reality is that most entrepreneurs, if they don't work, they go crazy, right? Like you can only watch so many Netflix shows. You can only sit on a beach for two or three days before going insane, right? And so a lot of people have this goal that isn't even realistic because they don't even actually want that.

And so I implore you to redefine your freedom as the freedom to choose, right? And so if you as the entrepreneur like what you do, then you've already achieved freedom because you're choosing actively to do the things that you want to do. and ideally with the people that you want to do them with. And so, like, for us, I work all the time. Do I have to work all the time from a financial standpoint? I don't need to work a day for the rest of my life. But I choose to work.

And for that reason, I am free. And I think that if you can erase and break the belief in your mindset about what has been given and passed on to us, about what freedom is supposed to be and what success means, right? Success to me is a choice, is being able to choose what I want. Moza Nation, real quick, if you are a business owner that has a big old business and wants to get to a much bigger business, going to $50 million plus. We would love to talk to you. And if you like that, we would like to hear more about it. Go to acquisition.com.

You can apply anywhere on the page and talk to one of our team and see if we can help you get there. Right. And so if you, so to kind of bring this back home, the setup that, you know, another entrepreneur says like, hey, I'm involved. my wife has a job, when can she quit? Like, that's an incredibly personal decision, right? And so I try not to give these, like, huge life decision, you know, pieces of advice, like, you should quit and join the business. Because that person might resent the entrepreneur for the rest of their lives because

they left a career that they actually enjoyed. Or they didn't want to be in the game, right? I mean, it's definitely a high-stress game. Like, sometimes cheerleaders should stay on the sidelines. But it's understanding what role dynamic you have. Now, if you can't figure it out, If the person is not a cheerleader, they are not supporting you. They don't watch you stay in the game to win the game, right, when the game is on the line,

when the best of you is required, right? If they're not there to support you, but they're not in the trenches with you, then that's when you're in no man's land. That's when someone is pulling away and saying, why are you working so much? You need to spend more time, XYZ, things like that. That is when it will start to grate on you. And that's where you have to have really clear, candid conversations about what expectations are and what agreements you want to make, right?

because they're tradeoffs. And at that point, it's a decision that you need to make is like, is our mission in life aligned, right? Is the way we want to get their values aligned? And do our skill sets and our actions, do they complement one another or do they detract from one another? Are we stepping on one under the toes and creating conflict when there doesn't need to be any?

Right. And so when you look at it in that framework, the cheerleader and the fullback, I think it'll give you a lot of insight in terms of which dynamic you have. have and if you're in the in-between you have to go one way or the other and if you can't make the decision then sometimes that relationship if it's a girlfriend whatever or a boyfriend might not be the best one and that's okay you know what i mean like it's better than consistently for the rest of

your life thinking like well both trying to accomplish a different objective well they want their life to look different than you do well that's going to be hard because you're literally trying to create different things and that means by fundamentally you're going to be in conflict all the time, right? And so if you do not, like, so if you have a fullback set up, which is what I can speak more, you treat your relationship like you treat a partnership because you are in a business partnership together. It's just double as important, which means that your marriage has to come first before the business. And what I mean by that is that if Layla and I are upset with one another, everything in life sucks because the business will also suffer. So it's

like everything sucks. But if our marriage is good, if we're on good terms, then even if the business is having a bad day or whatever, I know that like my fundamental rock, which is our relationship, because we can build another business, right? We can have another kid. But like the machine, the foundation that this is built on is still rock solid, right? And so in the full back setup, a lot of the, like, the easiest thing to do is just ask really clearly, like, what do you want me to do. What do you want for me? What do you want your role to be? Like a four hours document, like, which is what we do for every role in the business. What's your four hours for wife and what's your four hours for husband? I know this sounds insane, but a lot of times if you don't actually

define clearly what you want from the person, what their role and what the results you're expecting are, then that's when you come into conflict because you have unspoken expectations, right? And so then you're upset about something that they didn't do that they didn't know that you wanted them to do. And then you sound like a crazy person, right? And then they don't understand why you're upset for some reason or you are upset and you don't know why that they don't like that they didn't do X, Y and Z, right? And so, Layla was the first person that I ever dated that made me money, right? When we, the, the moment that I knew that I was going to marry her was when things were crumbling in the business and I was stressed beyond belief. And I actually asked for a one month break.

I was like, I just need the time to just like get my shit together. And so she actually flew out to launch a gym. And in that month, she broke every sales record that we had ever had. She still holds the record. She did 240 sales in 28 days. And I saw that as someone who was strong, A, when I was weak, but stood tall when things were crumbling. So when the pressure was on, she was better. And for me, that was probably the single one of this, I mean, there were multiple turning points in the relationship.

But when she came back from that, I was like, man, this bitch is hard. And I saw that and I was like, this is what I want to go to war with. And I think that if you look at your spouse as someone you're going to war with because a lot of times life is war. You know what I mean? It's a series of battles and the war is the mission you're trying to accomplish, right? And the nice thing is that the mission can change together when you decide together. if you want your life to look differently. And the beauty of the foolback setup is you're both sharing the same experiences

that are going to shape your viewpoints. And so my belief, at least with Layla, is that if we input the same data, we will come to the same conclusions because we have the same values. And so if we ever have disagreements, the first question is like, well, what information are you working off of? What experience are you projecting onto this that I'm not, that I don't have? And so when we do that, we can figure out what data we don't have. together so that once we're both informationed up, then it's like, cool, we use the same

decision making framework. Where you get in trouble is where you have different values, which means you see the world in different ways, which means you make decisions that are different based on the same information. And that's where things get trouble because you just, you get into a lock, you get into a standstill of like, oh shit, what do we do now? I think we should do this. They think we should do this.

And like, you can compromise, but on some level you disagree fundamentally with what you should be doing. All right, both of you are dissatisfied because you don't think it's the best way to do it. And that's where things kind of go awry. And so, anyhow, if you're appraising your relationship, if you're looking about whether, A, you want to bring someone into your business, all right, do they fit clearly a cheerleader or foolback framework? Are they a person who wants to cheer on the sideline? Give you your attention back. Take care of the kids.

Take care of the house. Take care of all the things. Give you attention back. All right. The definition of help, by the way, is giving someone attention back. If you've ever had someone in your life who comes in, it's like, I just wanted to help you. And you're like, you are not helping me.

You were making my life way harder, right? That is not help. The definition of help is that you were making someone's life easier. That noise in their life goes down so that they can take more attention and apply it to the thing that helps both of you in the long run, right? And that's what agreements are based on. It is a contract, right? Like, you literally sign a contract when you get married.

And so you should look at the terms of that agreement before you sign, right? And if you hadn't figured what out what those terms are, you need to sit down and have a really real conversation very soon and that conversation made me one of the hardest ones you have in your life but it's one of the most important ones to not sugarcoat shit and one of the easiest hacks to figure out how to have that conversation is everything that you tell your friends about what you wish your wife did or what she is not doing same thing goes for husbands whatever say those words exactly the way you're saying it to them because usually when you say that you're not sugarcoding it you're being real you're being direct say those words to your spouse and when you say that then a lot of

times you'll be shocked at the response, which is like, I just didn't know that that's what you want. I can do that. I love you. I just didn't know that that's what you wanted and I didn't know that that's what you needed. And we can communicate that way. A lot of times you will be able to win. And so to bring this all home, if you're appraising your relationship and you're in business together, clearly to find your roles, right? You have to have clear lanes just like you do at home, right? You have to have clear lanes of operation. You can't be stepping on one another's toes. It doesn't if it's like it's me and then so and so is my helper does not work because then you're both doing the same things it's like you end up having conflicts because anyone's going to do some

things differently i would operate the business differently than layla does but i think she's better at it and she frees up my time so that i can market sell and focus on the product right now um if you have the cheerleader set up again clear definition clear roles clear communication but here the definition of our roles is i'm 100% of the business you're 100% out of the business but your role is to support me so that I can support our family. Right. And so if you don't know where you stand, then you need to figure out where you stand with your partner

and whether you want the same things. And if you get to the end of that conversation, you find out that given the same information, you want different outcomes, then it's something that you need to be able to have a very, like, you need to be okay with breaking up a partnership that is not helping you towards your role because you're not helping them towards theirs, for real.

And so anyway, I hope this at least helps some of the people who are trying, you know, making a decision of like, am I going to go all in on this relationship, right? Now, on the flip side, if you have someone who's been in your business, right, and this happens, someone starts working for you, all right, this is how I'll lay a lot in our community. If someone starts working for you and you are the entrepreneur and they become the operator and they start just running things and just making your life easier, like, oh my God. And then all of a sudden you start having feelings for that person, a lot of times. those setups are actually really successful because those people came in with clearly defined

roles and a shared mission and usually shared values. And so Layla and I's relationship started that way. She started working for me at basically the exact same moment that we started dating. And so if you if you can have one of those setups, sometimes you just need to go all in. Because as soon as you can actually make it clear that we now have one bank account, this is our business together, this is our child, then I'll tell you that we're, we got so much more attention back, especially from Layla, not worrying, like, what am I gonna have to do

if Alex breaks up with me? Am I gonna be stuck because I've been building his business? But as soon as it became our business, she got a ton of attention back from all of the other things that she was still contemplating because there's always sort of one foot out the door. Bullshit if you say there's not. Like until, in my opinion, like until you're in it,

like until you're both financially in, because like when you're married, then my assets become hers. Like until you're shared there, it's really hard to not have one foot out the door because you're human right you're going to you're going to fight to survive and so you're going to always think about what you have to do if shit hits the fan and so if you have that dynamic i've seen that dynamic be successful many many times and sometimes you just need to go all in

and it'll multiply it'll amplify the power of your dynamic if you had a business before you started dating someone and then all they want to do is take you away from your business a lot of times i see that that dynamic not work right because they're not cheerleading for you and they're not supporting you in your business and you made your business because you had a mission you had a view of what you wanted to have in your life that you're working towards and if they're not helping you your romantic chemistry will fade but your mission will not and then on the flip side sometimes if you had somebody who you started you were with before you started your business i've seen the cheerleader dynamic there work really well right um you might like maybe your high school sweethearts or

your college sweethearts and they all they've seen you since the beginning they've seen these desires, they've seen these dreams, and they've helped you foster these dreams, and they believed in you and said, go do it. I got you. I want you to accomplish your dreams. I want to support you. In those instances, those are more cheerleader dynamics and they work well. And just more clearly defining the agreement, more clearly defining what outcomes we want will ultimately need to better success. And so those are the frameworks that Layla and I are looking at when someone asks us, like, what should I do about this relationship? It's incredibly personal decision. I could never, you know, say what to do, what not to do, because only you guys know you're

relationship dynamic, only you know what you really want, only they know what they really want. But all I can say is like, do not force your will on someone else, especially if you're the entrepreneur and you're a little bit more forceful, you're a little bit more de-dominate type personality, all you're going to do is breed resentment in someone who doesn't want to be doing what you're forcing them to do. And so look at those dynamics, look at the cheerleader, look at the fullback, look at the middle of the road dynamic. And if you're in one of these, either figure out how you can get into the cheerleader or the fullback or maybe get out. have an amazing day hope you have a fantastic Wednesday and i will see you guys on the

flip side keeping on some possible all right bye