Ways to Improve Your Marriage While Growing a Business

22-06-22 John Crosby – How to Run A Business While Maintaining a Healthy Marriage

Tersh Blissett: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone out there in podcast, world. Hope you’re having a wonderful day. You’re listening to, or watching the service business mastery podcast. I am one of your hosts. Josh is actually not with us today. He had a slight emergency. He may be able to make it in after he takes care of that emergency.

Only time will tell, but on this episode, we’re gonna actually talk about balancing marriage and being a business owner and it’s one of those, it’s a tough topic. Honest, obviously being an entrepreneur, pulls you in a lot of different directions and then you’re taking work home with you.

Maybe maybe not. We’re gonna talk to John Crosby today. He’s a mentor of mine, long time mentor of mine, life, coach of mine. Julie and I for those of you who don’t know, this might be your first time listening to this episode or so the show and if that’s the case, please click subscribe for more amazing content.

But Julie and I work in our business together. Julie came on board with us full time. I wanna say 2020 and having spouse work with you in a business that you’re trying to grow is a challenge. And we were, we already had a relationship with John and Joe Crosby. And but at that point we really, it put a strain on our relationship and we, and that’s when we really started to deep dive with John and Joe they worked together [00:01:30] and We were having questions.

We’ve had questions in our, in different groups and masterminds about work life balance, but more, not necessarily work life balance more so like marriage work balance in both scenarios where you have two spouses that work together in the business that own the business together, or maybe one person owns the business, the other one doesn’t own the business.

And then you have a situation where you have a spouse that owns the business and the other spouse doesn’t work in the business. Maybe they’re a homemaker. Maybe they have a, another job somewhere else. And really trying

to balance that relationship and making sure that you’re doing the right thing.

And during the summertime, if you’re doing air conditioned, plumbing, electrical, this is typically our busy season. And so this is really. Where you can get pulled away from family. Like for me, I have three boys and a girl and an amazing wife. And the boys play travel soccer. My daughter, she’s doing dance and gymnastics and cheer.

She’s our youngest. But it takes a lot of time away from the family. Thankfully we work remote. So my kids come and go. They understand the boundaries. But that’s one of the things that Joe and John really helped us with creating the boundaries. If you ever heard me talk about do not cross the threshold of your bedroom and talk about work.

Once you cross that threshold, you never discuss work. [00:03:00] It came from John and Joe, but anyways, They helped us out with amazing things. Even, we’ve done one-on-one sessions with the two. And so as soon as I was asked these questions, it was a no brainer for me. I wanted to bring John on they have five stones, five stones.org is their website.

If you want to get in contact with them, they do virtual sessions with coaching and everything. John has an amazing background business wise. So it’s not just like he’s a a counselor or coach or life coach or anything like that. Like he has. An experience with running, operating successful businesses.

And also I wanna note that I’m Uber jealous about his amazing luscious locks, because as I’m bald and he’s been growing his out. So I’m super jealous about that. But before we get started I wanna say a quick shout out to the folks at Sarah, sarah.tech. The they’re one of our partners for the podcast and Sarah is a CRM focused on the trades, mainly HVAC, plumbing, and electrical.

They do a amazing job helping to streamline productivity and ensuring that you’re making money. And because they contract the margins and the productivity of each team member number two company cam amazing they capture Photos in high res resolution and can instantly upload it to the carousel on your website’s homepage, which is cool metadata on your homepage.

Google loves that, but shout out [00:04:30] to company cam and everything that they do to help support the show. But with that being said I hope you enjoy the show and let’s go ahead and get.

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Tersh Blissett: much more.

Let their nuggets of wisdom, gold

John Crosby: guide you in owning a thriving profitable, and ever growing business. Here are your hosts, tur and Josh.

Tersh Blissett: Hey, John, welcome to the show.

John Crosby: thank you. Hey, I wanna start by just saying thank you really. I really appreciate the opportunity to be on here. Thank you for the invitation. And I’m a, I, you talked about being jealous. I’m a little jealous that you’ve been able to do this so well, Joe and I have talked about starting a podcast for two years and I’ve let the details overwhelm me for two years.

We hadn’t pulled the trigger yet.

Tersh Blissett: So thank you. It’s definitely one of those things where you can overanalyze it. And [00:06:00] I, thankfully I was so ignorant to this situation when I started, I was just like, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just gonna do it.

John Crosby: And they say ignorance is bliss, so there you go.

True story.

Tersh Blissett: True story. Two parts here. And we may not be able to fit all of this into one episode. We may have to come back and do another episode but I’d like to talk a little bit about burnout and how to avoid it during the busy season and how to avoid burning out team members.

You and I we’ve spoke. The thing about John is he’s a wealth of knowledge and we’ve known each other for a long time now. And every time I talk to John, it’s

oh man, Great. Like all the epiphanies and everything. And a lot about business too. And you do business masterminds with local fellows.

And so I’d like to talk a little bit about that, but first I’d like to talk about relationships, that’s your specialty. Y’all do an amazing job. You and your wife, Joe with relationships. One of the things that’s really stuck with me I say one of the things I already said in the intro, crossing the threshold, not taking work to bed or into our space I believe it was Joe that mentioned the rubber band theory and how we kept stretching and stretching.

I even said in the intro that my kids play soccer, they play travel soccer, travel baseball, Gymnastics and everything else. And I believe Joe said that our relationship was like a rubber band. And, you can keep [00:07:30] expanding that rubber band and you can fit one more thing in there and you can fit in one more thing and you can just expand in an Spanish band.

And then what happens when you expand that rubber band? Just a tad too far at snaps. And that’s where our relationship was at that point in time whether 2000, 1920, whenever it was we were like, literally Julie would drive to South Carolina and I would drive to Florida every weekend or vice versa going to soccer and it was like, we can do it.

We can force ourselves to do it at the expense of relationships. And when. We had that conversation with you and Joe, it was like, oh man, learn to say no. Oh yeah. And at that point in time, it had to have been 2019 or 2018 because I was the president of small business chamber on the executive board for leukemia lymphoma society.

Like we were really going gung ho and Julie was working at two different hospitals and doing the air force. And so we legit where the definition of the future failed marriage. You’ve obviously wrangled that back together and we’ll be at, we’re celebrating our 10 year anniversary in a couple months.

John Crosby: So you’re making it sound like Nancy Reagan just say no, honestly,

Tersh Blissett: That’s what we learned to do was just say no. Yeah.

John Crosby: A hundred percent, let’s start here. I think the [00:09:00] question that most business owners don’t ask enough is why do I have a business. To get rich. Why did I start a business?

The reality is if I ask you or if I ask most of our, most of your listeners what’s most important to you in your life? Most people, especially if you’re Christian and I, and we teach from a Christian perspective it’s God, first, if you’re not a Christian, you may not put God first, but most people would put family, marriage, and family and work somewhere behind those.

That’s the aspiration.

Tersh Blissett: But I don’t I wasn’t living that way. That’s

John Crosby: right. I didn’t. And that’s well, that’s the difference. That’s what I’m about to say. That’s the difference between the aspiration and the application? We know that between our ears, we have that head knowledge. We know that’s the order.

It should be. And most of the time that’s the order we claim that we have. But when we really look at how we live our lives, It’s as if our life is a subset of our business, rather than the business being a subset of our lives. True.

Tersh Blissett: That’s, that’s a mic drive right there. We can just go ahead and end the show ,

John Crosby: Most of us, if you own a business and I fall into this category too we identify not just with the business, but we identify as the business.

So when the business is successful or not [00:10:30] thing, we feel successful or not, depending on how the business, and here’s an interesting thing. It’s not really, even if the business is successful or not, it’s if it’s perceived as successful or not,

Tersh Blissett: , that’s a good point. Yeah.

John Crosby: When we feel successful or not, and there are seasons to every business.

those of us that have started a business knows that most people go in, if you’re sharp enough to start a business, you and grow a business, you’re sharp enough to realize on the front end, this is gonna take a lot of work to get off the ground. , we still see that most businesses fail and the, if not in the first year and the first three to five years, most businesses fail.

What I would tell you is the businesses that are successful. We spend a tremendous amount of time in the first three to five years because there’s so many new things coming at us. So many in that first five years, a lot of what we’ve see, we’ve never seen before. So we’re doing a lot of problem solving and a lot of trying to figure things out and how we are gonna address these either common or uncommon issues.

After about year five. most businesses that tends to flip. And when that tends to flip, what I mean by that is the majority of what on a day to day basis. You’ve seen before maybe different people, different customers, different [00:12:00] low locations, but same kinds of issues. It’s a minority of things that are new issues.

Now that was a little different over the last couple years with the pandemic. It didn’t matter how long you’ve been in business. That’s a new animal for all of us. Okay. But what happens during that time is we love routines. You and I, we love routines. We love habits and we develop routines, whether they’re intentional or not and overworking, begets, or gives birth to, or gives rise to overworking.

isolation from our spouse leads to more isolation from our spouse, disconnection from our children leads to more disconnection from our children. So you’re

Tersh Blissett: saying that we can’t, or it’s not feasible to I don’t know. You hear the people talk about I’m gonna put my head down and grind for three years and then I’ll after the three year period, then that’s when I’m gonna spend time with my family.

John Crosby: That’s the theory. And I would actually agree with that three years is a little longer. You have to figure out some strategies. I think. We could do two different, completely different podcasts on how do you do this in the first three years of a business to, or first three [00:13:30] to five years of a business.

And then how do you do it afterwards? Because it really is too completely different too completely different of organizational.

Tersh Blissett: I just threw three years out there. But any time, more than three years, is it you’re you think that’s gonna be too long of a time period?

John Crosby: I would tell you that what we have to be careful of is that there are seasons where we have to roll up our sleeves and put more work in for a business to succeed, especially to launch a business.

Yeah. What we have to be aware of is that we have to take the approach that this is seasonal and we have to know. When that season ends, we have to have a goal and we have to work toward that. And we ha because the easiest thing for us, once we develop a habit is to continue the habit. Oh us are great at change.

So what happens is guys tell their wives or tell their spouses, whether it’s male or female that we found. There’s not a lot of difference in the gender, whether male or female starting a business, or if you’re starting a business together, you accept. We’re not gonna have as much family time, as much connection time on a day to day basis for this long.

But once you establish that habit, it’s actually easier to continue the habit than it is to change. Even when the change is for the better

Tersh Blissett: it’s comfortable. Like it, it becomes comfortable as [00:15:00] weird as that sounds. It’s oh, you’re a workaholic. I guess I am, but I. I would be crazy. I’d go stir crazy if I was just sitting at the house because

John Crosby: another word for comfortable for most of us is familiar.

We like the familiar. And if we establish this is what I’m used to, this is familiar, then that’s what we’ll continue. Yeah. I’ll tell you what I did in my own life. And what I teach a lot of business owners is we, you’ve probably seen this this illustration before that uses the jar and you can put different things into it, but typically the jar, you have rocks, you put rocks in the jar, these big rocks, you put some smaller rocks in the jar.

Then you put some gravel, then you put some sand, then you put some water and it’ll all fit. . But if you take all that out and you start the other way and you start with the water and you start with the sand and not, you’ll never get the big rock in. Yeah. And the idea of that illustration is the big rocks represent the priorities.

And most of us are good at identifying on a cerebral level. We’re good at identifying what our priorities should be and what we espouse. Our priorities

can be. In other words, what I said earlier, aspirations, what we’re not good is we’re not good at settling in on what does that look like on a daily basis?

So let me give you an, let me give you a an example of my own [00:16:30] life right now. Okay. And let me say, first of all, this changes with seasons, they adapt. So the first priority, I would tell you, and I’m just sharing this in order. I’m not saying they’re 1, 2, 3, but like one of my priorities is my marriage.

And I wanna invest in my marriage. Okay. So if I wanna invest in my marriage that’s a priority, a second priority for me. And what I decided was my priorities was what are the essentials? What are the things that if these things are unhealthy, they will affect every other aspect of my life, including my business.

Because if I’m at work, thinking about my broken marriage, I’m not fully at work. And one of the, one of the goals for my life is I wanna be fully present wherever I am. I wanna be fully present with my kids. I wanna be

Tersh Blissett: like in technology world day.

John Crosby: Good question. It takes a lot of intentionality.

It takes commitment. It takes saying, how do I do this on a day to day basis? And that’s where I’m going. So let me tell you the rest of this. So three, three priorities for me, one of mine is at my age, I look around and most of my friends are not in great shape and it takes ’em two minutes to get up off the couch and you can hear the joints cracking and all that.

And I decide, you know what, I’m gonna prolong that as long as I can, [00:18:00] because I think it’s better for my work. I think it’s better for my marriage, for my parenting, if I’m in good shape. So I PRI exercise is one of my priorities. Another priority is I decided I believe that we are all in the process of growing or dying.

Biologists tell us that every living cell is either growing or dying. And I believe that’s true for all of us. And I decided a long time ago. I want to grow as long as I can. And by growing, learning new things. So one of the things that I do is I decided I wanna be a lifelong learner.

, that’s one of my priorities. Now for me personally, I include my spiritual life in that. So I’m not leaving God and faith and Christianity out of this, I’m saying

that’s part of my learning. So part of my learning scripture and prayer and accountability with other guys, I include that in learning as well as reading books and watching podcast and videos and classes and those kind of things.

So what does that look like? What I did is I decided, you know what? These three areas, exercise learning and my marriage , I’m going to invest at least 30 to 60 minutes a day, every single day.

Tersh Blissett: That seems like a lot whenever you’re, when you can’t even get to all your emails or you can’t get all these fires put out, but then you think about how [00:19:30] many times you got on TikTok or Facebook or just mindlessly we’re scrolling through something else.

And it’s very doable as long as that’s the first thing that went in the jar, not the last.

John Crosby: So it does seem like a lot, but put it this way between those three things. Most days, it’s about two hours, some days significantly less. And some days I only get 20 minutes into one of those things. Okay.

But it’s significantly less, but at least five outta seven days, I want to get 30 to 60 minutes for those three things. So if you got 30 minutes in each one of those, it’s an hour and a half, that leaves. If my math is right, that leaves 22 and a half hours a day. To sleep, to work to parent, to do all these other things that I need to get done.

And I’m gonna tell you something that nobody believes until they try it. If you get the big rocks in the jar, first, everything else fits. If the big rocks are not in the jar, it’s amazing. The cost on the other things. The drain. If I’m not in shape, if I’m sick, if I’m not learning and I’m stuck in my old mindset and I’m not growing, if my marriage isn’t healthy, you don’t think left productivity is hurt.

You don’t think there’s a financial [00:21:00] cost to those three things. If they’re done right, they make you more efficient the rest of the day. And what I would tell you is motivation. Is often preceded by motion. See, we think that motivation comes first. I have I’ll do that when I feel like it, or I’m not gonna work out because I don’t feel like it if, but take that working outta illustration.

We’ve all had those days where you come home and you plan to go to the gym or you plan to take a run or workout or whatever, and you change clothes and

you got your socks in your lap and your tennis shoes on the floor. And you’re trying to decide, do I really want to do this? No, the answer is not that’s right.

I’m not motivated. And one of two things happens. You either put your socks on in your shoes and get started. And that five minutes into a. The motivation shows up, and those are often the longest workouts you do the best workouts you do. What’s the motivation you feel, you realize I feel better because I did that.

And then if you’re like me and at my age, I finish up and I step on my tongue walking back into the house. I’m so tired. But I get in the house and I get something to drink and I cool off, and I feel so much better than if I’d have spent the same 30, 45 minutes, 60 minutes scrolling through Facebook.

Yeah. Or, checking emails. Tell me

Tersh Blissett: this. Then you said that the motion[00:22:30] precedes motivation. Okay. Motion proceeds, motivation. And I don’t disagree with that at all. I like, because I’ve been told and I’ve been coached by others and mentors of mine that motivation.

Is short lived. You can’t be just, you can’t grow a business, you can’t grow a marriage just based on motivation because it weans off. And what you’re saying, it obviously confirms that, how do you keep the motion going? If you lose the motivation, just willpower.

John Crosby: So you, again, you start with what’s most important.

Tersh Blissett: Oh

John Crosby: okay. You start with what’s most important and you realize why I need to do these things. That’s why my list of things that I’m gonna do. Absolutely. Every single day is. It’s not any bigger than it. Cause

Tersh Blissett: We could write out a list and you and I have done this exercise before where you’re like, write out the top 10 things that you want to do tomorrow and then knock off three of ’em and then knock off three of ’em and then and it’s the whole Boulder, premise.

And and when you do something like that, you’re gonna knock out the ones

that you were left with. You’re gonna get those knocked out really quick. And that’s so let

John Crosby: me, let’s go back to marriage for a minute, cuz it’s important to tie this in. Okay. So years ago probably the best paying job I’ve ever had, the best the [00:24:00] highest position and title and all that.

I was working 60. To 80 hours a week. It was crazy. Always six days a week, I would go in at five o’clock in the morning, sometimes four 30 to be there with the night crew before the morning crew came in, we would have these meetings first thing in the morning. And then I would sleep on the couch in my office for about an hour between seven and eight.

And then I’d start my day and I’d get home somewhere around seven or eight o’clock. And, I think that was the worst my marriage ever was because we kept disconnecting and, we would take these long weekends and we would go somewhere or we’d take a vacation and I would or on my one day off a week, I’d be absolutely determined to to focus on Joe and to give her my full undivided attention.

The problem was I had disconnected so consistently. That we were starting from a negative place, so we would go away for the weekend and it would take a full day or two to get to neutral. Yeah. Before we could start to make progress. And then we made so little progress on the positive side of the relationship that it didn’t take long to drain that down.

So in essence, we were essentially doing, we were doing the essentials to survive. Okay. And what I really wanna do is thrive and what I’ve learned with this model. And I, I don’t [00:25:30] know if I finished, what I do is I exercise, 30 minutes a day, one of the learning and listen, my learning that 30 to 60 minutes a day, most often that’s in the truck.

That’s when I’m driving that I’m listening to podcast, I’m listening to audio books. Sometimes that’s early in the morning, sitting there with my Bible. It looks different. Every day, usually it’s combination of several things. And then the 30 minute 30 to 60 minutes with Joe, that’s just, I’m gonna give her my full undivided attention every single day for 30 to 60 minutes.

. And what I found is when we did that, when we began doing that, and we did that every day, then we go on a vacation, we go on a long weekend and we’re

starting in a positive place rather than in a negative place. And we immediately start graining traction. Now we go deep into the positive side of the relationship.

So even if it does drain down the next week, it I still have enough margin that I’m staying on the positive side of the equation because I’m connection gives birth or gives rise or baguettes connection. The more connected you are, the more you want to connect, the more isolated you are.

Unfortunately, the more isolated we tend to want to be.

Tersh Blissett: We had this conversation before, this, we did a marriage retreat with a large group of people and probably thousand 17 or something thousand 17, 2018.[00:27:00] And I remember it was like a week long thing, long weekend thing. And it, it was very true.

That’s where we were very Julie and I, we were very focused on growing. Our business growing hitting goals and targets that we had set for ourselves. So we weren’t putting our relationship first. It was not a priority. So it w it was a, an amazing event Julie and I still actually talk about that event from time to time.

But it wasn’t until probably the last day or the last day and a half that we really started bonding and growing because it took that entire, three or four days prior to that to grow together because of getting so used to. Spending, time apart. And it’s a weird concept.

And whenever we were talking about this exact scenario recently I say recently it’s actually probably been about two years ago that we talked about it with kids. And we, because we work in our home and our kids at that time. Oh yeah, we were homeschooling to throw that into the mix.

That’s right. Something else we were doing that’s right. It was one of those things where you and Joe mentioned, Hey look, I know that we are physically together all the time, but we’re not mentally together with connecting with the kids. And the conversation that you gave that you told Julie and I to have with our [00:28:30] children we still have it to this day.

And that’s, if you’ll give me this time, And then set an exact time and follow through with it. At 5:00 PM, I will help you do X, Y, and Z, and spend 30 minutes of undivided attention with that child and worlds of difference, relationship

wise with children. And and then their mental health getting into going from remedial studies to within six months going to advance the next grade up because of having the security at home and knew that stuff like it’s it’s a game changer, but here, so based on what you said.

I wanna ask you this, because this is where we do. So 20, 20, 20, 21, 20 22, like you said, through a wrench in everybody’s plans for everything. It,

if you so let’s say that just assume that I have the same priorities that you do just for this conversation. And I put marriage first, not in the same or, just like you said. So I prioritize marriage, physical health and exercise and lifelong growth. And I knock it out.

I knock out growth in the mornings because I’m traveling to work or whatever. And so I feel accomplished [00:30:00] doing that and I really want to prioritize marriage or physical health working out. But can it be a priority if it’s not first thing in the morning? If it’s the first thing that we do in our list, it, yeah, that’s a good question.

It’s not one of those three, if it’s like your three lists that you wanted to do the night before, can it be a priority if it’s not first thing in the morning?

John Crosby: Good question. And a, I just aligned that with your business. Do you absolutely. Does. Does every important thing take place before lunch and you might like it that way?

We all might like it that way, but that’s not the way life goes. That’s why I was careful with not numbering the prior, because there’s not a sequence. I just know that in the next 24 hours, I’m gonna have this time there. I’m gonna build that time in. My priorities change a little bit. The marriage priority has stayed the same.

I have those priorities because my kids are out of the house. They’re done with college. They’re on their own. One’s married. So the parenting piece used to be a lot higher on that list on a day to day basis. And that’s what we’re talking about right now, day to day because again, it’s too easy to theorize or aspire to long term goals.

We need to bring ’em down to what are we doing today? But like my, these three have been so clear to me in so consistent to me for so long now that I

[00:31:30] just know I can tell you right now I get up so early and leave the house so early most mornings exercising in the, morning’s just not an option for me most days maybe three days a month, really.

And those are usually on the weekend. Other than that, I’m exercising right now because it’s so hot and I work out outside and in a barn behind my house. So I’m not going out there when it’s a hundred degrees. So I’m working out like eight o’clock at night. That time with Joe May be in the morning.

It may be before that eight o’clock workout a lot of times like yesterday. It’s right after that eight o’clock workout. So it, it’s not the sequence within a given day does not determine how important the importance,

Tersh Blissett: Can it become an issue though? If we keep putting it off to later and later in the day, so

John Crosby: it can be, and that’s why procrastination yeah.

Is tied directly to that motion motion precedes, motivation that’s really where you kill your procrastination. I think that’s a matter of discipline. I think if you struggle with the discipline and we’ll just, again, we’ll use my example since we’re on it. If you struggle with working out in the evening, if you tend to put it off, then shift it to the morning and try it in the morning.

I would say, if you cannot find a time during the day to prioritize it, it’s an aspiration, but it’s not a priority. It’s really not a priority. Yeah. That’s,

Tersh Blissett: it’s one of those things that, that, you should be doing, [00:33:00] but it’s not in your heart and soul. That’s not your priority. I don’t wanna dive into this rabbit hole cuz we’ve had hours of conversations on this.

What happens though? If. The circadian rhythm of the two people that you’re trying to grow this marriage. What happens if you grew by default for these years, and now you really want to be like intentional of growing. And now our circadian rhythm’s completely out of whack and outta sync, take that into scenario, but also take into a scenario that the spouse does almost resents the business now because of years of, neglect or whatnot.

Can you bundle that into less than about 12 hours of

John Crosby: conversation? I think that most of us particularly husbands, we want to be good providers and unfortunately, usually the way we divide we’ve we discuss dividing providing is usually first financially and materially. And imagine if I.

What kind of father would you think I am if my kids were small and I gave them apple watches and iPads and laptops and video games and big screen TVs and a car when they turned 16 and all that, but I would not allow them food or water. What kind of dad would I be on a great one and imprison wouldn’t probably right[00:34:30] but the point is there’s essentials and then there’s peripherals.

And what many of us have to realize is we’ve worked really hard in our businesses to provide the peripheral things for our families. And while doing that, we’ve denied them. The essentials. And the essentials is our presence from a relational standpoint the water and the food is our presence.

It’s intimacy being, giving someone else your full undivided attention while receiving their full undivided attention. It’s that it’s listening, it’s connecting, it’s sharing life. And if we’re not doing that, we can give them the very best, most expensive peripherals out there. And they’re starving to death relationally.

So we have to find a way and it goes back to again, our business is a subset of our lives, not the other way around. And I know it’s cliche, but most of us wanna run a business and we end up the business running us. Oh yeah. But that’s that another way to say that is the business is the. Is the larger entity in our life as a subset.

And, that’s one of those situations where you’re gonna get the end of life and realize how poor Ru Kipling I wanna I wrote this down, I [00:36:00] thought I might get to share this. I just ran across this morning, Rutgers Kipling, the author that wrote the jungle book said this quote, I ran across it again just this morning.

And I love it. He said, beware of over concern for money or position or glory someday, you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. And then you will know how poor you are. Yeah. I think a lot of us are building. building wealth that will rust and RO . And we feel so proud that we’re giving that to our families and what our children really need. And you experienced it. You saw you’re, if we’re not careful, we’ll give ’em all these nice things. And then just the minimal amount of the essentials to survive.

And what you really want is you want your marriage and you want your children to thrive. And most business owners, it takes a long time for ’em to realize that no matter what your business is doing, you won’t personally feel like you’re thriving individually. If you’re marriage and kids, aren’t thriving.

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. That’s exactly how mentally just completely wiped and exhausted. And it’s unfortunately you, you knew it. You’ve seen it Our [00:37:30] businesses were successful outside, looking in the businesses were successful. Sure. Personal influence in the professional world, successful at the expense of family, spending time with kids and growing our family and our marriage.

And that’s where everything collapsed. Now I have more businesses that are run differently but I have support and very well structured times and relationships with. My family and kids now take, I’m not perfect. I’m far from perfect. Health is where I have struggled and sure.

I could blame it on COVID and say, it’s the, I got my COVID 20 and or 15 or four 30, whatever. But it’s because I allowed other things to become a priority. And so let me

John Crosby: ask you something ter I’m sorry to interrupt. Let me no, go ahead. On that same train of thought. Let me ask you something.

How many years from now, if you project for how many years do you hope that your businesses exist?

Tersh Blissett: I’d like to exit some of them beginning in five years. Obviously I’d like to be legacy businesses. I have one business that my children. I have shown interest in, and if they’re going to be interested in it, then, passing it along to them.

John Crosby: So how many [00:39:00] years, how many more years from today, will you have children living at

Tersh Blissett: home? Not very long. Years across, not very long. I’d say that jokingly. No, I get it. It’s ma’am my oldest son is about to turn 14. Like I remember yesterday he was born. That’s just the craziest thing in the world to me.

It, ain’t gonna be very long before he’s, out at college or, doing what he is

John Crosby: gonna do. And I think what I’m getting at is that most of us. if we just project from day one I would say most listeners on here, if they just think about today and how long they hope their business succeeds and how many more years they think their kids will be in their home, the kids are a shorter.

Yeah. So what should be the priority in that season? That, that what we’ve gotta be really careful of is we decide to put all of our focus and roll up our sleeves and make the business our priority right now this season. And it just happens to be the season when our kids need us the most. That’s tough

Tersh Blissett: though.

We’re, it is. Why are we this way? What. When we aren’t mess. I say this I, this is a blanket statement, but in general, when we aren’t fully matured as adults, we are having [00:40:30] kids. We’re learning how to be people at the same time as we’re teaching them how to do the right thing. And we don’t wanna regret it later in life.

And obviously listen to this podcasting, that’ll help some, but

John Crosby: but I would tell you that I think a lot of people get it, right? Yeah. I think a lot of people, I deal with people all the time that actually do get this right. But it’s a matter of knowing what season you’re in. How do we know that though?

You have to step back and say, where are my kids? Where is my marriage health wise? Where are things? What’s reasonable. Where can I, how do I. How do I think a good thing that you said one of the best things that you did with your kids, that I’ve heard is the idea of not just getting out of the habit of just saying, no, I can’t do that.

No, I can’t help. I have to work and saying, listen, if you’ll give me 30 minutes or if you’ll give me an hour or at two o’clock this afternoon, or at six o’clock tonight, I will give you my, if you’ll let me finish my work, I will give you my full undivided attention then. And then keeping that commitment.

It doesn’t, they don’t need you to spend a minute with them for every minute you spend at work. That’s not what this is about. It’s not about. And I will tell

you, I don’t use the term that you use to start to show balance [00:42:00] because balance does. Imply equal amounts of time or equal weight.

True. And the reality is most of us in this world, most of us are gonna spend more time at work, but we know that in terms of importance, our family’s more important. So what are you weighing? Are you weighing in ports? If you are, the family wins every time, if or should, if you’re weighing time, minutes, or hours, work’s usually gonna win.

So it’s not a matter of balance. It’s more, a matter of alignment. Have I aligned my day with my priorities? Am. Am I missing the things that I said are important, or am I working those in? And how do I adjust all these peripheral things? These secondary things like work. If we’re really if most of us would say, if we’re just making a chart of what’s important in our lives it comes behind God.

It comes behind their, our kids. It comes behind our marriage. It comes, but our day doesn’t actually look like that. And to look like that, it doesn’t mean that I have to spend all of my time in the morning before I go to work with God and with my wife and with my kids would

Tersh Blissett: be Uber mad at me.

If I looked them up, you’re waking them

John Crosby: up. That’s right. But it’s and the seasons change again, my kids aren’t as high on that party list right now [00:43:30] because I don’t get the opportunity to see them every day. Now I will tell you what changes is. when they’re adults and you do get a chance to see ’em you really guard that time.

Yeah. They’re on vacation with us or to the lake, or,

Tersh Blissett: so tell me this then. I have a couple different questions and I, and we’re running out of time, so I’ll try to keep it concise. What can we do? If it’s a, if it’s a one sided relationship so another thing and I’m, this is what if scenarios and mixed in with stuff that’s happened in our, in my personal past there was a point in time where people were like working to live.

and I was living to work like you said before, it was my comfort zone being at work was my comfort zone. And that is you described it perfectly. The more I

did it, the more it become natural for me to do to the point where losing all of habits and hobbies, hobby, hobbies, not habits. I was big in the cars and automotive and playing with cars and super ’em up and all that good jazz.

And then it that’s, no, that was no longer fun. That’s not fun, fun, quote, unquote air quote fun. Was me working and being successful in my [00:45:00] mind whether I was successful or not. I guess how do we. How do we pull ourselves out of that? And how do we avoid a situation to where, like Julie and I were in where it was like, really getting to the end of things before it’s like, all right, this is a reality check.

How, or can you notice it before it actually gets bad? And what happens if it’s a one sided thing? Like I said earlier like your spouse is resenting you because of, or resenting the business, then how can we make them

wanting to, how I’m not saying that this is the case, but you know how, when you have some divorces, cuz I know that y’all talk to some couples and a divorce is imminent. It’s coming. But one person doesn’t want it. And the other person’s done. It’s almost feels that way.

Kind of when I’m being asked and described at the same time in different scenarios, like one person’s almost to that point of giving up and the other person is oh, this is my reality check. How do I do this? And the other person is just giving up. Can we make them that priority so much so that it rubs on them?

Cause I know you’ve gone through some exercises with me and I can’t remember right off the top of my head. This has been years ago. About [00:46:30] it’s the spiral thing. You remember this. Yeah.

John Crosby: Yeah. And that’s actually where I was going. I’m glad you remembered that. That’s cool. It’s been a few years.

Yeah. If we go to scripture, what scripture and indicates that every wife. Needs more than anything else from her husband? I translate the Hebrew word and I’ve seen it translated other ways, but I translated in the old Testament from song of Solomon as nurture. Okay. If you’re like me, most men, we don’t use the word nurture very often.

I usually define this and it shouldn’t surprise you that it’s like a diamond it’s

multifaceted. It’s not as simplistic as what men need. But for a woman to feel nurtured, she has to feel chosen. She has to feel cherished. She has to feel needed. She has to feel wanted. She has to fill adored.

She has to feel safe and protected. And I’m gonna tell you we’ve over the years, we’ve seen a lot of women in counseling. We’ve seen women. Of various nationalities and races and socioeconomic backgrounds and educational backgrounds and financial backgrounds. And I would tell you that this rings true.

Imagine that the scripture applies to everybody. It I’ve never seen a woman that didn’t agree to this. When we really got down to the nuts and bolts of what nurture is, what every man needs, according to scripture, more than anything else from his spouse is respect. Okay. And what we know is [00:48:00] if you remove either one of those doesn’t matter, which one you remove, if you remove respect, if a man feels disrespected, the most natural, intuitive instinctive, and this is important, subconscious response, Is to withhold what his wife needs most withhold, nurture.

You don’t gimme what I need most I’m gonna withhold. And again, it’s subconscious. When a woman feels UN nurtured, the most natural, intuitive instinctive subconscious response is to withhold respect. So you get in this spiral, it’s like the water circling the drain, the vortex gets tighter and tighter because a lack of respect leads to a lack of nurture leads, to a lack of respect, leads to a lack of nurture.

The key is if you, and I usually tell folks in my office, if you don’t have to trust your spouse, you don’t have to trust me. Trust God that said this. God says that when a woman feels nurtured the most natural, intuitive, instinctive, subconscious responses to respect her husband, To express respect.

And when a man feels respected, the most natural, intuitive, subconscious instinctive response is to nurture his wife. So it actually doesn’t take two people to start. It just takes one person to be intentional. The key is what are you gonna [00:49:30] be intentional about most of the time in the situation that you described, one person describes, I need to prioritize my marriage, but they have no idea where to start.

Yeah. So what do they start with? They start with roses, they start with jewelry. They start with the trip, they start with dinner. They start with all these highly

visible, highly superficial things. And it doesn’t get and even, none of these you’re gonna get the response you want immediate, you can’t withhold, nurture for years and then offer it one Friday night and expect that the world’s gonna change.

It took me years to get there. It’s gonna take you a little while to get out. Yeah. But here’s what I’d tell you for men out there. If you will start nurturing your wife, trust is an issue. If trust is broken, this takes longer. If trust has been compromised, contrary to what a lot of people believe, compromise trust, you can survive.

A marriage can survive damage trust a long time, but you cannot thrive with broken with any broken trust. With any you can’t thrive, you can survive, but you can’t thrive. Now, there are certain levels of trust. You can’t survive either, but if trust is broken, you’ve gotta work on that. You’ve gotta work on it’ll take longer to nurture, but if you start nurturing and you’re intentional about nurturing and you’re persistent [00:51:00] with your nurturing and you’re consistent.

With nurturing. In other words, you can’t nurture for a few days and then get drunk and yell and screaming, throw things and expect that you haven’t gone backwards. Yeah. But if you’re intentional and persistent and consistent, you’ll start feeling that respect

Tersh Blissett: now, John. And rightfully so our industry is very strongly sided towards the males business owner.

We have some females also. So if there were,

John Crosby: and that starts the same the females that they just focus on expressing respect.

Tersh Blissett: How do you do that though? If you’re, if you’ve gone years without nurturing or now without respect cuz some people think nurturing is physical affection and not going into the five load languages and everything like that.

Cuz that’s the whole, another episode too. The. Is that it like, do we do five love, love

John Crosby: we figure. So the five love languages actually is one of the most tried and true methods out there to figure out how does my wife feel loved? How does she feel nurtured? And it’s, it’s five, what you’re really looking for when you take the five love languages test, and you can take it online free.

Now I don’t have the website right here, but if you type in five love languages, you can take it in about 10 minutes. It’s not about your love language. You already pretty much know that. It’s about what you’re really trying to figure out. It’s, what’s your spouse’s [00:52:30] love language. And then how do I use that to know how to nurture her?

But I would go

Tersh Blissett: back to every day.

John Crosby: I have seldom had to explain to a woman how to respect a man. They get it. They’re far more perceptive than most of us with men, it is more complicated and we talk about it more, but if you just go through those steps, I want my wife to feel chosen. How does she feel chosen?

One, I stop pausing every time. There’s a good looking woman on a page and a magazine or pops up. I don’t take an extra look. I. I come home when I say I’m gonna come home, one simple fix that most guys, that own businesses, it would really go a long way is if you tell your wife when to expect you, and I’m speaking to men, cuz I’m talking about nurture right now, but you tell your wife what time to expect you or she knows there’s a typical time to expect you.

And then you come up with a window for Joe and I is about 20 minutes. So if I know that I’m gonna miss my expected arrival time, anywhere that Joe is by more than 20 minutes, I’m going to text her or call her and let her know I’m running late. It’s just that small little courtesy, I may not can help the fact that I had something last minute at work, come up and I have to stay, but I’m not gonna, I’m not [00:54:00] gonna leave her hanging.

That feels so. It leaves, her feeling vulnerable and vulnerable is just a synonym for what UN nurtured.

Tersh Blissett: And it’s both ways too. Yes. That’s a lack of nurture and a lack of respect. Yes. So she doesn’t do it. Then she doesn’t respect you your time and your effort and what you had planned possibly or not possibly.

And Julie and I have never had that actual conversation of like 20 minutes. This is where we’re gonna do it, but it’s wild. How it’s become natural for us. If we’re not, it might be 20 min. I don’t know. I probably need to see now, but it’s a natural reaction for us. If it’s not where we said we were gonna be there at the expected time, then there’s just a quick update.

And with technology today, it’s so simple just to do that. And that little bit goes a long way.

John Crosby: Let me give you the absolute simplest way to start the respect and nurture cycle. Doesn’t matter which side you’re on male or female it’s intimacy. It’s. And again, I defined that earlier for our purposes as giving someone else your full undivided attention while receiving their full and divided attention.

The challenge for most of us, if you think about this in the history of the world information has meant survival. We have SU having the right information at the right time, often determined your, [00:55:30] if you lived or done, okay. then we came to this point where newspapers and TV media came along TV news, and they determined what information we would get rather than us going out and forging for information or through observation.

Now they determined what we would get, and we largely started watching whatever they showed us. And we used that information, whether it was really relevant or not, we that’s what we filled that need for information. We are in eight information seekers and then digital media came along and they used these algorithms with social media and with newsfeeds to base based on your past behavior, they determine what it kind of information will be most captivating for you.

The problem is our brains haven’t changed. We’re still hungry for information, and now they’re feeding us this information that is completely irrelevant, but it’s in interesting. And we spend incredible amounts of time. Most of us on a weekly or monthly basis, online looking at information that has nothing to do with our predetermined goals or our priorities.

Okay. Even when we’re trying to connect with our spouse, our children, we’ve got the TV owner, we’ve got a device on we’re sitting, we’re on our phone, we’re listening to something we’re scrolling. As they’re talking, we’re [00:57:00] not fully present. We’re not giving, we don’t have that intimacy. Okay. If you

will set aside as little as 20 to 30 minutes a day with the people that are most important to you, turn off all the devices, all the distractions and give that person your full undivided, a.

what I said earlier is connection begets connection. You do that consistently, and you won’t have to ask how to nurture my wife or how to show respect to my husband. You’ll know. It will be clear the more we, if you wanna know somebody ter, if you and I wanted to get to know each other far better than we do right now, what would we do to to make that happen?

Tersh Blissett: Connect, spend time together.

John Crosby: We would do more things together, right? Yeah. We’d spend more time together. The more time we spend together, the more we get to know each other. And if we’re both trustworthy, the more we trust each other . And what you hope with your spouse? It’s not an arranged marriage, right?

You chose your spouse and she chose. At some point you chose each other and you, she

Tersh Blissett: just wouldn’t leave. She, I just got stuck with it. Yeah.

John Crosby: I know your wife you’re in over your head. I married, you married way up. That’s right. Careful. If we spend that increasing amounts of [00:58:30] time, we’ll know each other better.

And as each other better and, I, we talked about this years ago, but one of the things you want to do all successful marriages, both husband and wife commit to being a teacher and a learner. You will never know everything there is to know about your. And she will never know everything there is to know about you because you will change the things you like at 40 are not the things you liked at 20 the way you wanna spend your time, the kinds of food you eat, making your favorite color.

It changes that’s right. That’s wild. that’s right. And so there’s so much to learn there. So what we find is the more time you spend with somebody, the more you get to know, ’em the more interesting they are. The reason we find our spouses doll and the reason we find our spouses not engaging is cuz we’re not fully in present when we are we’re half there.

We, how many times is, have you found out something and you say, why didn’t you tell me that? And your wife said, I did tell you that never happens. Advice. Yeah. I’m sure it doesn’t. Yeah. I’m sure it doesn’t it’s cause you had really good counselors in your past. Yeah. That’s it right there. Hundred percent.

Yeah. So that’s where let’s start the respect, your nurture, the rebuilding, your marriage the being able to align your priorities with work. It really starts with spending focused time being fully present. And here’s the other thing. Most guys don’t get this, but I promise this will work. The more [01:00:00] you’re fully present with your wife and children when you’re not at work, the more fully present you’ll be with work when you are at work.

Good point. Yeah. How many times have you been distracted at work? Because of a conflict at home?

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. Yeah, I used to in the past it, it wasn’t common, but I remember it. And that gets to, that’s not just a business owner. Like I have team members who have been distracted and fell through ceilings and and just because of home life imbalance, I remember it vividly.

And it is one of those things where I actually paid for them to come see you. I was like, Hey, I want you to be better. I don’t want this to be the case. And I also don’t want you falling through Siemens anymore. So true. Have you personally ever seen a situation to where it was a, it all really bad on the rocks?

A relationship marriage wise? Not ne perfectly if it was in a business scenario, but not necessarily in business scenario. And one person really put forth that effort and it was. Like, and the other person, which is completely done.

John Crosby: That’s why we do what we do. Yeah. It, it happens more often than most people realize.

It’s pretty common. I would tell you that most couples that come to marriage counseling, they’re not equally vested. There’s almost always

Tersh Blissett: my wife, whatever. We knew you and we had [01:01:30] relationships with you and she was like, let’s go together. And I’m like no, let’s, don’t go together.

I’ll go by myself and I’ll talk to John and

John Crosby: that’s right. And what I tell you is that most couples, if they’re equally vest, They may not need counseling. Yeah. Usually what brings people to counseling is they’re not equally vested in improving things. And one person’s at the end of their ropes and the other person doesn’t care or vice versa.

And there is a point where you can’t get ’em into counseling. So we don’t see those couples a lot. I will tell you I’ve lost count of how many individuals come to counseling and say, my spouse is done. They won’t come. I’m not giving up. What will we do? And we walk them through the process of respect and nurture and how to start their side of it.

And eventually the other spouse shows up and we’ve seen, we’ve had some tremendous success stories that way. It’s not every time it’s not foolproof, but and it really depends a lot of times. if it’s reached the point where one spouse is getting respect or nurture from a third party.

Oh yeah. Then that’s a little harder because they don’t have a void to fill there. That’s tough. Yeah. So there’s a lot of other issues that contribute. But to answer your question, yes. I would say that the majority of clients that come in they’re not equally [01:03:00] vested. But if we can get one side to really engage the process it’s amazing how, when a person feels respected, they become more open or a wife feels when a husband feels respected or a wife feels nurtured.

How they’ll often come around.

Tersh Blissett: John. I really appreciate you spending time with me and talking. There’s my pleasure. A lot of people asking questions TJ Harnett he’s like this whole episode’s fire, which is agree. We’ve obviously John and I have had communications in a relationship for years and years now.

And we could talk for a long time on things that I’ve gone through personally. I’ve I, my family’s gone through and things that, that John shared with us TJ also asked does John do personal coaching for couples still? If so he needs information. I did put the website down at the bottom of the page scrolling.

So

John Crosby: Let me, I guess I should to be completely honest. Here’s what I

probably need to disclose. We. Right now we have a waiting list to get in for couples. And part of the reason for that is Joe and I, my wife and I see couples together, neither one of us see couples individually. I only see males individually.

She only sees females individually, and then we see couples together. Joe’s individual counseling list or counseling client load is bursting at the seams [01:04:30] right now. She’s been counseling since 1989. This is the first time she’s ever had to stop taking new clients. It is temporary, but I doubt she will take any new clients until September.

And that includes couples. We don’t have as many men show up for counseling. Imagine that imagine that. So I do more coaching and working with men individually. And right now, if you called the office and got in our schedule I could probably get someone in two to three weeks to start. And that’s about how my schedule’s running now, but Joe’s it’s September.

Tersh Blissett: Now you’re able to do this virtually also, correct?

John Crosby: I am. I can do it virtually with anyone anywhere as long as you have a good connection, we use a HIPAA compliant platform called blink session. It’s a lot like Facebook live or like zoom or something. It’s just more HIPAA compliant. I can see someone anywhere I will say for couples.

Joe is a licensed professional counselor in the state of Georgia. And that licensure requires that both the counselor and the client be physically present in the state of Georgia at the time of services. Huh? So she can’t see someone out of state. I can, I’m under a little, I’m more, I’m a pastoral counselor.

And I have a little more liberal approach to that in terms of licensure and coaching. And [01:06:00]

Tersh Blissett: so technically if they were virtual in say, Atlanta,

John Crosby: we could do that. We could do that as a couple. Okay,

Tersh Blissett: cool. Now and that is five stones.org . And I also put a link to your Facebook page and good that, that quiz, I looked it up real fast.

Five love languages.com/quizzes/good love dash languages. So feel free to do

that if you’ve never done your love language quiz. It’s definitely interesting because mine’s not what you would normally associate with a guy. It is but most of the times physical touches is higher of a priority.

It’s a very low priority for me. And affirmation is definitely up there. And so learning your love languages and your spouse love language and your kids’ love languages and filling their love cup. As much as possible. That’s the game changer I could say for that. And that doing that and I know when I’m not doing that, when we have struggles then we do, we, we work on that deliberately work on that.

The difference and the changes that we have it’s wild, honestly. The stressors, they just go away. Like it, it’s weird. The things that would stress me out when we are not clicking don’t stress me out when we are clicking.

John Crosby: So well, think about it this way. If you think about your employees did they kept their trucks cleaned and they showed up on [01:07:30] time and they stayed late and they did everything they needed to do there in the.

but they never actually fixed anyone’s air condition.

Tersh Blissett: I’ve had guys like that. They like to hang out,

John Crosby: but I, the point were very long. There are things that we do in the course of our Workday and in the course of our marriage that carry more weight than other things. Yeah. And that’s what the love languages tell you.

They tell you, these are the things that carry more weight with my, this is fixing in the air condition for my life.

Tersh Blissett: Yes. You know this, honestly, like more weight if I just kept giving affirmation to Julie words of affirmation to Julie, I’m killing myself to do this. And she’s oh no, he ain’t doing nothing

for

John Crosby: me.

And here’s what happens in that scenario. I know we’re closing up, but here’s what happens in that scenario. You’re affirming, and it’s not her love language.

So it’s just sliding right off. But what’s happening then is you feel like I put on all this effort and she’s so ungrateful.

Then the resent, man. So you both pull away. Yeah. And that’s what happens when you try, when we go back to nurture and respect and you do the wrong things, you actually get further apart after putting in effort,

Tersh Blissett: which is, that’s just, that’s just mind boggling and you’re like, I’m working harder, but we’re getting worse off.

And it’s why am I doing this? That’s right. That’s right. [01:09:00] Yeah. I agree.

John Crosby: It’s funny how many times in counseling people come in and we sit down with them with a couple and pretty quickly we realize exactly what we’ve just said. And we just tweaked that just a little bit.

Tersh Blissett: And there’s so much better and it’s just click you’re.

You’re good. Yeah. Thank you again, John. Thank you. If anybody has any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to me and I’ll connect you with John and Joe and their whole team. If, until we talk again, next time, I hope you’ll have a wonderful and safe time safe day. If this is your first episode, thank you for hanging out with us to the end.

This is a long episode. But there’s a ton of value and we could have more and more conversations about this too. John’s full of knowledge, and I’d love to have Joe on here too. Maybe have Joe and Julie, and that’d be awesome. I don’t know. That might not be awesome. we might not to do that.

You and I may be out of a job. Yeah. Oh man. But honestly I appreciate you being here. If this is your first time. Listen. We would love for you to subscribe and leave us a review if it’s a five star, of course, five star reviews. But and share this with someone who you think would found value in it.

But that, with that being said I hope you have a wonderful and safe until we talk again next week. See you. Thank you.

John Crosby: Thank you for listening to this episode of service business mastery. Now that you are equipped with [01:10:30] essential business advice from this impactful conversation, you are one step closer to becoming the

successful owner of

Tersh Blissett: your

John Crosby: dreams. If this episode has been helpful to your business journey, don’t forget to subscribe to the show, leave a rating and share it with other

Tersh Blissett: owners as well.