Momentum Podcast: 108

The Metric For
Marriage Alignment

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

In order for us to feel momentum, we have to have a way to keep score. Something has to give us perspective to let us know that we are actually making progress and winning. For a lot of people the idea of measuring a marriage is surprising. I know I have this conversation all the time. I've also found that there is a consistent metric that will… Reduce or eliminate the number one argument that couples have. Create foundational stability in a relationship. Create new levels of alignment in your marriage. If you are married, this one is a game changer.

Full Audio Transcript

I'm Alex Charfen and this is the Momentum Podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers, and creators of all kinds, those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, and rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny. We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future and instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution and we always will be.

The metric for marriage alignment.

I'm crazy about measurement and metrics and understanding what is the simplest way to measure something. What is the minimum effective dose measurement we can get to so that we know whether something's working or not. You know, you've heard it probably in 25 different iterations, but what you can measure, you can manage, or what you can measure can be improved or what you can measure you can actually change.

There's so much said about measurement that it is crucial that we have measurements in our lives for the things that are important, that we track something to let us know if we are moving forward, to give us perspective. And in our marriage it can be near impossible to think of a metric, but I know one. I'll share with you the last time it came up, a really close friend of mine has been in his relationship for about six years, and has had this dynamic shift where he used to make less than his spouse and now he's making more than she is, and he asked me when he was leaving my house the other day, "Hey, this is going on. You know, it's come up a few times. What would you tell me to do? What should I do? Like, do you have any suggestions? Like how can I make her feel like it's our money? How can I make her feel comfortable because she's mentioned it enough. I know she's uncomfortable. I don't want her to feel that way," and I had an instant answer.

There's one metric that pulls spouses together around finances. There's one metric that eliminates the number one argument that couples have, which is finances, and there's one metric that will create foundational stability in a relationship, and if you follow it or if you track it, it will also create new levels of alignment in your marriage. It's simple. It's net worth. It's the number one most important metric for an entrepreneur to track anyway.

You know what? I'm a fanatic for metric, but I don't like dashboards with thousands of measurements. I don't need them. Most of the things in the world we over-complicate. You know I've built every business I've ever created with a pen and paper. Multi size paper is the only complication I have. I don't need absent programs and all that other stuff. I need to prove it out first. Build it first. I like to simplify, and net worth is a simple metric that will drive you as an entrepreneur to make the right decisions financially in your life. It will drive you to make your business responsible, to actually pay you and increase your net worth. And if you track it in your marriage and you discuss it with your spouse, it will drive the two of you to understand the decisions you're making and what effect it has on your financial stability. And if the two of you are willing to sit down and set a net worth goal and started tracking towards it, you now have some perspective that the joint decisions you are making in your relationship are moving you towards a target you both have.

This is one of the most powerful strategies I teach for marriages, is to track, understand, and follow your net worth. What you'll find is that you start having more intelligent discussions about finances. What you'll find is that you have a higher level of alignment with your spouse and you know this is important because your marriage is important, but I often share with entrepreneurs the most important thing for your business to grow to its full potential; I only have two rules.

The most important two rules are:
1. Your marriage is most important.
2. Transparency in your marriage should be absolute.

And we can't just expect transparency. We can't just think transparency is going to be there. We have to create proactive transparency. And this habit of tracking net worth together will cause that proactive transparency. It will create the conversation around money. You know, this is one of those conversations that most couples never have, or they have once a year around tax time or they have when there's a big expense or something that they need to buy, but if you want to align fundamentally with your spouse start tracking net worth. If you're a business owner and you and your spouse work together, then this is crucial because you both should be tracking it and making the business responsible to paying you. But if you're a business owner and your spouse doesn't work in the business track net worth with them and it will cause you to have the conversation around what's going on in the business. What's happening.

This is one of those metrics that if you're willing to pay attention to as a married couple, your marriage will find entirely new levels of alignment, and here's what I've seen happen in hundreds of cases, probably thousands at this point: with entrepreneurs when our marriages align, we find a whole new gear that we have in the world. We find this confidence that we didn't have before. Our marriage is clearly the most important relationship in the world to us, and when we can create alignment and an increase of energy and sharing and supporting each other in our marriage that makes everything our world easier.

There are so many of us who want to improve our marriage, who are desperate to improve our marriages, who want to do something better, but the information out there is so ambiguous and unclear. This is a keystone tactic for your marriage that if you're willing to put it in place you eliminate the number one argument and you can't help but create momentum.

Do yourself a favor. Admit that your spouse is the most important relationship in your world and commit the time to sitting down and adding some process to your marriage before you have to add process to your marriage.

Years ago, a consultant who I hired asked me a question, "What's most important in your world?" It was right in the middle of this one day thing we were doing together, and we were going through a 360 that had been done on my executive team and I'm in a hotel room and we had those posted note things posted all over the place, and we were kind of in the middle of what I was making this massive decision of what direction was I going to steer my organization? Was I going to pivot and do something I really wanted to do or was I going to keep going in the same direction and trying to build the company that I had where there was some momentum, and in the middle of all of it he looked at me and he said, "Alex, what's the most important thing in your world?"

And I was like, "What?" He said, "What's the most important thing in your world? Like if I asked you what's most important in your world right now, tell me." And I said, "Well, that's easy. It's my wife and my kids." He said, "Great. Grab your calendar. I want to look at the last 30 days, and grab your bank statement and I want to see if your time and money tell that story."

I was instantly frozen, because I knew if we did either of those two things it was going to show near zero. There wasn't a dedicated calendar time to my family. There was any ... There was very little spending. I can say that we went out to dinner and stuff, but I wasn't putting my time where I was indicating is most important in my world and it's difficult to spend a majority of your time working on your family or on your marriage because we all have lives and we all have work. We have to do. We all have to go out and create the outcomes that we have.

Most of us wouldn't want to spend all the time working on our marriage, but when we put some process in place and we set up some interactions with our spouse where we discuss the right things and we talk about what's going on you can eliminate most arguments and most challenges a marriage will have before they even start. About 99% of them are caused by communication, and the number one thing that couples miscommunicate about is money. So, track your net worth, sit down with your spouse. This will not only be an accelerator for your marriage, but it will also be an accelerator for your business.

If you're growing a business and you're ready to increase the speed with which that's happening and you're already hiring a team, you're at seven figures or about to get there, reach out to us. I'd love to talk to you about how we help companies just like yours grow and scale the team and infrastructure to help entrepreneurs call their shots and achieve the outcomes they want in the world with a lot less pain than most people have in going through it. So I'd love to talk to you and help you grow and scale the empire of your dreams.

Thank You For Listening!

I am truly grateful that you have chosen to spend your time listening to me and my podcast.

Please feel free to reach out if you have a question or feedback via our Contact Us page.

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With gratitude,

Alex

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