Was ist Liebe wirklich?

0:00with Leila. I know we kind of like alluded to this in like previous conversations. A lot about Leila. But [laughter] I It's always about Leila. It's got to >> I am sorry, man. She's You got an interest here or what are we doing? She's interesting, okay? You guys live, I am sure, incredibly challenging, incredibly busy lives. And maintaining a relationship, I know we've talked about this before, but maintaining a relationship in that environment can be incredibly challenging. And you said last time that you have an algorithm.

0:26Like you have logic that determines the success of your relationship with Leila. And if something isn't fitting, then you need to change the inputs. Sure. I'm wondering not when is the last time this has happened because I'm not going to ask that question. Last night, Jack. Yeah, that's the answer. Right before I got here. Like Twice. Has it And [laughter] then once And then once again right after that. Has it continued to serve you to see it as an algorithm?

0:53Because I like to think that love is this thing, that it's more of like a non-describable, non-descript thing that [snorts] kind of just like occurs between two people. And it's not so like algorithmic and equational, you know what I mean? Well, I think just for the audience's sake, it's not like I have this Excel sheet at home of like, "Okay, three hugs equals, you know, like a a kiss or you know what I mean?" I don't have like >> One Chanel bag. >> Yeah, one Chanel bag equals two good days, you know, whatever, you know. Um Well, I would say this, which is that if you feel like it is that ephemeral thing that's so hard to capture and so hard to describe, like I'd be like, "Good luck finding it." And honestly, I think the big difficulty with love and marriages in general is that everything's n equals one.

1:32So, even like like my relationship with Leila is unique in that I am one of one and she's one of one and together like like I have seen and you probably have too. I have seen like 60-year marriages, you know, people are 90 in their 90s. Very different dynamics with all of them. And like you have you guys have unique partnership for this podcast. Like and everybody else has unique dynamics for their partnership and we We what has worked for them. I share what has worked for me if some of those things help other people, awesome. If they don't, then ignore them, you know?

2:02Um both of us tend to be very uh agreement-oriented, meaning neither of us like to be controlled. Uh both of us have a lot of uh agency. Like we like to make our own decisions and kind of operate freely. And so like how do you how do you get two people together that are really strongly independent? Um we make agreements. And like these are like I agree to I agree to these things, you agree to these things, and like as long as that works for us, then we don't change the agreement. It's worked great.

2:28And if we if something comes up, then it's like, "Hey, let's revisit this." And if it makes sense, then we we revisit it. And that has worked really well because we have exceedingly clear expectations of one another uh in terms of like what we're going to do and what we're not going to do. And and that has worked really well. And there's always resolve between these disagreements. Yeah. Eventually. I mean, pretty quickly usually, yeah. We don't argue much. Do you have some other like silver lining that kind of not silver lining, but like other thing that arbitrates these disagreements between you and her? Maybe some fundamental agreements that you made off, you know, right in the beginning that you can then use as rules to decide current disagreements? Well, I think fundamentally Leila and I also both believe that love is conditional, not unconditional.

3:12And so even the idea of marriage for us has been based on agreements. Which is like if there were time in the future where Leila no longer wanted to do the things that I want to do, then we're not I would not hold her to her commitment to be with me because it was contingent on that we want these same things. And so it's like similar mission, similar values, similar interests. Like if you if you want to go to the same place and gather the same way, values, and you know, what you spend your time on in between, interests, is aligned, then you'll probably be okay. And I think the problem is that a lot of people will this is my, you know, one man's two cents is that a lot of people will look for are are are actively looking for hookups and then thinking hookups will turn into life partners and wives and spouses. But if you were to look for a hookup, you would look for a very different thing than you would for a spouse. And so expecting one to become the other, I don't know if that's the best the best frame.

4:07This has worked for us because we are that way. Now there are there are people that I know who have amazing relationships where one is completely subservient to the other. And that works for them. I really enjoy our relationship because I get tremendous utility from Leila. Like she she serves me in a lot of ways. Um more than I would say most men get from their spouses. At least businessmen, you know what I mean, who are married. Like it's very it's not common at all for a wife to be even close to Leila's level. I mean, sometimes they're like, "Oh yeah, she's like the secretary in the business." And sometimes they over title the person to make her make her feel better or whatever. But like that's I would say more of the norm, if at all, in the business. Like Leila absolutely runs the business. She is CEO, period.

4:46I'm like off to the side and I like think of good things every once in a while. Like [clears throat] she's the one who runs everything. And like only the people inside of our company can actually like appreciate that. And I will still always get the credit because I am who I am and I look the way I look and I talk the way I talk. But like she's really the one that does it. And so I get a ton out of that. And that this is how it has worked for us. Like Leila in every other relationship in her life was always the dominant one. Like because most guys will fold to Leila.

5:11She's incredibly strong-willed. And like it's I mean, it's my belief at least, if you if you enjoy a male-female dynamic, you just need a Like if you are a strong woman, you need a more strong man. What sort of personal uh contentions do you have between the two of you? Cuz it seems like everything is really [clears throat] just business oriented. Yeah, I mean, we we we we talk about business all day. That's what we do. Yeah. Um I would say [clears throat] that the busier we are with business, the more we will try and carve out time to not be business. If things are more like normal pace, we don't really need to carve the time out. The time kind of happens on its own. And so, you know, I've I've seen, you know, clips and stuff where people say like, you have to have a date night once a week and you can't talk about business and like people are just like throwing these rules out. I just hate all of that.

5:55Um like if we feel like we need to like reconnect cuz it's like we're a little bit too distant in terms of like, hey, I feel like I haven't seen you in a week. Then like, let's go out to dinner. Let's let's take some time and let's just hang out and and catch up. I mean, sometimes equal opposite like I feel like I've been with you all day. Like I'm going to get some space, go to the gym, hang out, you know, get some food with some guys and like I'll be back. And so, I think we just manage that and I think um especially if especially in like of the world of remote work, um I actually think that uh my opinion, uh people spend too much time together.

6:25I think I need I think you this is Esther Perel, but I think you need to create space to be missed. Like there's probably there's no time where like I'm more excited to see Leila than the time that I haven't seen her. Motivation's the equal opposite of deprivation. If I haven't seen her in a while, I'm deprived of Leila, I'm more motivated to see her. I've seen her a ton, then I'm probably less motivated to see her. So, you think a lot of times in relationships [clears throat] people could be spending too much time together? Absolutely. Nowadays, for sure. They live in the same house, they they literally spend all day together. Like I don't think that's I don't think that's at least normal from how we kind of came

6:53>> need two experiences to come together and then you can do you have something to talk about because otherwise, if you're if you had the same experiences all day for weeks, it's like what do you talk about beyond a certain point? Yeah. Like how was your day? I don't know, I was there. Like yeah, we have nothing else to say. So, like I think So, like and when we when we figured this out for our relationship, it was still like two or three years in. Um we actively just like created a ton of space. We worked on opposite sides of the house. We didn't attend I came off the meetings that she was on. And so like at the end of the day, I was like, oh oh, you met with John today. How was that? She's like, oh, this is what this happened. I was like, oh, and you met with that vendor who's doing this thing.

7:25She's like, yeah, and this is what we negotiate. What do you think about this? And you know, like blah blah blah and then and then I go through my calendar. And like literally, we still to this day do that is that at the end of the day, we go for a walk, 45 minutes, I take out my phone, she takes out her phone, we go through our calendars and we just literally download. Like how was your day? How was my day? Like what are what are the what are the things that we're you know, working on and moving forward. And that's how we kind of like re-sync up and then after that we just we're we're kind of husband and wife the rest of the day. Real quick, if you are a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it.

8:07And so we broke it in these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources and finance. And so no matter what you're struggling with someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page you can just book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help and if we can we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.