The Communication Playbook: Strengthening Your Business and Marriage

Effective communication is the cornerstone of success in both business and marriage. But when you're building a company with your spouse, mastering this skill becomes even more crucial. How do you navigate the unique challenges of being both business partners and life partners?

In today's episode, Kevin and Bekah dive deep into the art of communication for couplepreneurs. Drawing from their own journey and insights from successful entrepreneurial couples, they share practical strategies for fostering open dialogue, resolving conflicts, and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

The Tinters discuss the importance of clearly expressing wants, needs, and expectations, as well as techniques for navigating disagreements without damaging your relationship. They also offer valuable tips on keeping work conversations from overtaking your marriage and how to give critical feedback to your spouse in a constructive way.

Whether you're just starting out in business with your partner or looking to strengthen your existing partnership, this episode provides essential tools for effective communication. Join Kevin and Bekah to learn how to build a thriving business and a bulletproof marriage through the power of clear, honest, and empathetic communication!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hey Uncommon Freedom Fighters, Kevin Tinter here with my incredible wife and co-host, becca Tinter.

Speaker 2: 0:13

Hey everybody, in today's episode we are exploring the secret sauce that keeps both businesses and marriages thriving, which is effective communication, whether you're running, a company, with your spouse or collaborating with colleagues, mastering the art of communication is absolutely crucial.

Speaker 1: 0:31

So today we're going to unpack a couple of things. We're going to talk about some key principles for open, honest dialogue. We're going to talk about strategies to navigate conflicts and find win-win solutions. It's probably just us None of you have conflicts but we're going to share with you how we resolve those and how to balance work and love as a couple in business. We're also going to talk about communication tips from successful entrepreneurial duos.

Speaker 2: 1:01

All right, okay, so we are going to dive into insights from our own journey as couplepreneurs and share some practical tools to level up your communication game. If you're ready to build stronger relationships in boardrooms and bedrooms, keep listening. You've 26 years, you still can't make that noise of the tongue or the role of the art, or the role of the tongue, or the roll of the R or the roll of the tongue. Yes, yes, either one.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:29

So we're going to talk about some concepts from your book, some key principles from Chapter 7 on marriage and the seven disciplines of uncommon freedom. Grab yours today on Amazon.

Speaker 1: 1:40

Yep.

Speaker 2: 1:40

It is an incredible book and hopefully, if you have not gotten yours yet, you'll grab it, read it and then leave a five-star review. And if you like to do things on Audible, it is there as well. Read by Kevin's sexy wife, yours truly.

Speaker 1: 1:54

And more important than any of those things is to apply the principles in the book Absolutely yeah, so chapter seven is build a bulletproof marriage. So chapter seven is build a bulletproof marriage. And so what we're going to talk about today is or one of the things we're going to talk about is communicating wants, needs and preferences, as well as expectations, clearly, instead of assuming your partner should know, man, if we could go back and talk to ourselves as 21-year-olds who are getting married.

Speaker 2: 2:26

Someone should have given us a counseling session on the E-word yes, expectations right, absolutely, and the reality is expectations.

Speaker 1: 2:35

Although especially destructive in marriages, they're really destructive in every single relationship.

Speaker 2: 2:42

I guess we should say unmet expectations, well, unmet and uncommunicated expectations.

Speaker 1: 2:47

I think that's the key, because expectations, unfulfilled expectations, lead to disappointment and frustration. Yet many times, the expectations we put on others are unreasonable or we haven't even like. Sometimes, when I've heard an expectation that you have of me, or you've heard an expectation that you have of me, or you've heard an expectation that I have of you like it's not even on a radar no I mean literally, especially when you're talking about men and women. Like our brains, it's so obvious.

Speaker 2: 3:17

You hadn't explained to me that you wanted to have sex every night of the week, I don't think I would understand your expectations like that kind of an example, exactly like, and if I had explained to you that my expectation was that that was not going to happen but that we could have it often yeah Kind of making a joke here, but it's true in marriage.

Speaker 1: 3:38

Because the reality is every guy, I can assure you the vast majority, are like yeah, that sounds pretty good.

Speaker 2: 3:44

And women do not hate sex. For the record, I want to be very clear If you're in a great relationship, they probably love it, but it is just more complicated because of the way our brains are created.

Speaker 1: 3:53

Yep, and you just don't need it as much apparently.

Speaker 2: 3:57

Yeah, I do say. Like you know, Men want to eat every day.

Speaker 1: 4:01

Women want to eat every few days, right.

Speaker 2: 4:04

Some women I don't want to put every woman in a box. So many women carry so many other things around that it's like amazing every couple days. And then you know just be grateful. You know that it's every couple days.

Speaker 1: 4:15

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 4:16

I think is where I'm going with that, so anyway but the bottom line being uncommunicated and unmet expectations are, I would say, extremely common in relationships of any kind, I mean with your kids, with business partners, and it's where we get in the most trouble, I think.

Speaker 1: 4:30

So let's talk about wants versus needs.

Speaker 2: 4:33

Oh man, we did this when I was a first grade teacher, so you first, no, I want to take you back to your first grade teaching days.

Speaker 1: 4:40

See if you can remember. Oh, my goodness, yeah, see if that master's degree was grade teaching days. See if you can remember, oh my goodness.

Speaker 2: 4:45

Yeah, I think most of us, most of us, uh, probably don't separate those out in our head very well. So, you know, we often think of our wants as our needs, yeah, and I think, um, there's a balance between being able to communicate, that you need a certain amount of emotional connection or communication, versus you want something done a certain way. So I think, in relationship, if you're at a healthy place in your mindset, the first thing in some of these like almost like pre-conflict resolutions or ways to swim upstream, would be to even say to yourself is this a want or a need that I have? And then make sure you're communicating it like, hey, this is a preference I would love to have. Or this is going back to some of our lessons on, um, pink and blue air hoses and how we communicate and, like, literally receive love and respect from each other. I would say that falls into a need category of. You know, I need to know that I'm cherished by you. That would be a need, not just a desire for me. That's deep within my core.

Speaker 1: 5:45

And then I think preferences are important to communicate. Uh, because once again, we, we all kind of look at everything from our perspective and we assume that the way that we do things is the right way to do things. Yeah, um, and there's a lot of things in life, in business, like, if you have people that work for you, it's very fair to communicate your preferences. I remember, you know, darren Hardy was talking about his wife hiring a housekeeper and she was all frustrated, you know, and she doesn't do it the way I want it. He's like well, did you explain how you want it done? She's like no. He's like well, you have to explain your preferences and how you want it done. She's like no, well, you have to explain your preferences and how you want it done and then you can hold them to that standard. And it's totally fair.

Speaker 1: 6:31

When you're paying someone, you get to have them. You know, fold your clothes the way you want or things like that, within reason. But you also have to communicate that. And certainly, you know, in marriage, you know, we talked about this recently where communicating your preferences for Mother's Day and me communicating my preferences for Father's Day If we did not communicate those preferences, I would fall short on, you know, delivering a spectacular Mother's Day for you, and you would fall short on delivering a spectacular Father's Day for me. This is really important in you know, when it comes to holidays and things like that is just communicating preferences, but also just you know figuring out what matters to one spouse versus the other, and and man, I really like it.

Speaker 1: 7:19

You know if we load the dishwasher this way or you know we we, I mean like you have a preference for how the table gets set and things like that, and it's communicating that is important, and then actually delivering on that preference is a way to just show that you actually care about that other person.

Speaker 2: 7:35

Yeah, and I think, when it comes to business, some of the examples that we would use is you know, when you're working with a team and for us again we we have employees and but only a few. Us again we we have employees and but only a few. And then we have a lot of independent contractors that don't technically work for us. So, as we're trying to lead and communicate with people that don't have to work for us, it's even more challenging, honestly, to communicate desires, needs, wants when it comes to certain ways of doing things. Plus, you want to give people freedom to kind of use their own creativity with things. But there are some things that I would say when it comes to training and stuff that will just set the table for them, so to speak, as far as what we think is the most successful, and we've found that it's a lot easier to do it on the front end than to have to clean it up on the back end.

Speaker 2: 8:17

Again, thinking about if you have a downstream issue, the goal is to eventually figure out what the issue is and go upstream and fix it. So it might be like, hey, when we do trainings together, this is the time we want to show up on Zoom. This is the background we want to have. This is the time we're going to ask you to keep. Hey, if by chance you don't keep to that time, you're going to notice. I gently interrupt you. I don't know how to get it back. So that's a small thing in business. But just again, communication is clear, as kind is what we like to say, and the communication is the results that we tend to get. So if we're not getting the results we want, we take extreme ownership and we go upstream yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:04

So let's talk next about those rare opportunities or occasions when we have conflict. One of the key things that we've learned to do is to first of all take a deep breath and then even run through this mantra the facts, facts are. And list out those facts, either mentally or verbally. And the story I'm telling myself is you know. So the facts are X, the story I'm telling myself is Y. This is honestly. It's something that we use probably in our life, every single day, our life or business, whether it's people we work with, drawing conclusions about things, whether it's us drawing conclusions, our life, our business, whether it's people we work with, drawing conclusions about things, whether it's us drawing conclusions, you know, if you're late to something, or if I'm late to something, you know it's easy to say okay, the story I'm telling myself is Kevin doesn't care, when the fact is, you know, especially like I felt like this is actually something that would have been very helpful when I was a police officer, because one of the frequent points of conflict we had was we had something planned.

Speaker 1: 10:02

My shift ended at 4 o'clock I think, and it seemed like the gates of hell always broke loose at 3.30. And I had absolutely no control. The other shift was sitting and briefing, wasting time. They weren't ready to hit the road until an hour later, so we would get stuck on. You know many times these stupid calls that would take hours and I would have to. You know, sometimes I had the time to call you, many times I didn't, and it felt frequently like you were saying Kevin doesn't care, he took this call voluntarily.

Speaker 2: 10:32

Really, that's your memory, huh. That is that is yeah, I mean I dealt with a lot of.

Speaker 1: 10:38

I came home to a lot of disappointment from coming home late, from calls that I had absolutely no control over, and I hated it more than anyone, probably.

Speaker 2: 10:49

the fact is, I was a little burnt out on my end of parenting three little boys. Absolutely and desperate for some relief and was counting down the minutes.

Speaker 1: 10:57

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 10:57

But you are probably correct. I do not remember that. I remember myself being much more charming.

Speaker 1: 11:04

I'm sure you were absolutely charming.

Speaker 2: 11:06

Like of course, babe, I get it. You're on a call.

Speaker 1: 11:08

The bottom line is the facts versus story.

Speaker 2: 11:11

I guess we've grown up a little bit.

Speaker 1: 11:12

It's such a good question to ask yourself. We use it with our children all the time and it's so helpful because when you and we actually when we're resolving conflict, we'll frequently say the story I'm telling myself is why, um, and that lets like if you were, if you were to share that with me, that lets me know what you're thinking and then I can talk about wow, this is where intent comes in. Or I can point out some additional facts that maybe you're not considering, or just even the story that I'm telling myself about how you might be responding to something.

Speaker 1: 11:53

So, but to realize that the story we tell ourself frequently is it's seen through a lens. Seen through our own perspective, we're taking the facts and running them through a filter that really changes the color of things.

Speaker 2: 12:06

Another mentor said you know, we're each living on our own planet, so to speak, and everything in my planet is through. You know my viewpoint.

Speaker 2: 12:13

And so when I look at you on your planet, I don't understand the ways of working and so it often seems very foreign and we make assumptions about that and it causes conflict. So if you reach an impasse, obviously seeking an outside perspective, quality mentorship, counseling or something like that, because conflict isn't unhealthy if it gets resolved. So I think the biggest thing is people say like, oh, we never fight or we shouldn't have conflict. We don't believe that's true. We think conflict is inevitable. It's leaving it unresolved. That is dangerous.

Speaker 1: 12:44

Yeah, and a great analogy to this is like when you think about exercise, right, when you're lifting weights, when you're doing some type of exercise, you're creating conflict within your muscles and that conflict breaks things down, but then they build back stronger, and so I think you cannot get through this life without some type of conflict, and so the benefit of learning how to navigate it, especially when it's smaller, right, the goal is to have those micro tears from exercise versus major tears, macro tears from overuse, you know when you're way out of shape, and that's what learning how to resolve conflict does for you in a relationship, especially when it's healthy.

Speaker 2: 13:23

You're right, and isolation and lack of community can make marriages grow apart. We have seen this in others. We've had experiences in our own 25 years of this, so it's really important that we actually grow together by sharing our dreams and literally cheering each other on, and I think this is where, when you can work through conflict and get it resolved, then hopefully the majority of the time you're spending as couplepreneurs, working together, doing life together, that you are each other's best cheerleaders and advocates and you see each other's best intentions, and when you do that, I think the conflict is less often.

Speaker 1: 13:57

Yeah, all right, so we're going to talk about some potential questions that I'm sure many listeners would have, especially if they happen to fall into that couplepreneur category. And this first one is one of the most probably challenging but is how can we keep work conversations from overtaking every marriage? You know, all of our conversation in marriage we have. This is something that we still have not mastered. It's very difficult to not have all of our conversations, or many of our conversations, ultimately lead to business type conversations, and I think one of the things we learned is we need to put some boundaries in place. Even if you're going to go out on a date, you're probably going to have some business conversations, but at some point you have to say, okay, we're done talking business, the rest of the night is other stuff, it's relationships and we're done talking about business, and the same thing can happen with kids.

Speaker 2: 14:51

I mean, you can end up talking about your kids a lot, because it's part of your everyday life if you're still in the parenting years. So one of our tricks is either keep a list of things that we want to talk about I know I often have a list of things, but usually they're more like to-dos instead of just like really intimate questions. So we have just come across other marriage resources or couple conversation cards, which are awesome, and if you take those a lot of times.

Speaker 2: 15:14

they just prompt enough conversation that you'll spend the evening talking about things that are much more intimate and that matter in your marriage relationship, and then, when we've done our year-end review, that gives us a lot of quality conversation. So you know, we did that last year, we've been doing it every year and we'll be talking about it again at the end of 2024.

Speaker 1: 15:33

Yeah, and then we've also talked about the fact that on our quarterly retreats we bring our previous year's year-end reflection worksheet with us so that we can kind of review how are we doing as far as our goals and how's the year going, and that leads to a lot of really good conversation.

Speaker 2: 15:49

And then the other thing is, if you feel like you don't have enough time to talk about work so it's like you're getting to it when you finally see each other then schedule a business meeting. And we have two kinds of business meetings that we joke about when you work from home the business meeting where you don't have to be dressed and Kevin can say he sleeps with the boss. It's business time Exactly. If you want to go, what is it? Flight of the Condors.

Speaker 1: 16:09

Something like that, yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:11

Kind of a nasty slash hilarious video, music video, but also regular business meetings where we literally plan time on the calendar to sit down and talk about metrics, training decisions and anything else regarding our business that we just don't get time to do on a day-by-day basis.

Speaker 1: 16:27

All right. Next one is what are some ways to give critical feedback to a spouse you work with without harming the relationship? And I should clarify when we mean critical, we mean important, not to criticize the other person, although frequently it might be perceived that way. Do you have any suggestions for this Becca?

Speaker 2: 16:48

I mean, my suggestion was to ask permission and I think again, it really depends on the level of trust that you have within your relationship. If sharing feedback with each other is a constant trigger, then you might need to do it with mentorship, you might need to do it with a counselor, you might need to again ask permission or just have a specific time that you guys discuss your conflicts or your questions or your corrections. For us we tend to just do it off the cuff and I would say sometimes it goes great and sometimes not. Sort of depends what our environment is like.

Speaker 1: 17:18

I think one of the biggest mistakes is doing it in the heat of the moment. Yeah Right, so save it, cool down, come back to it later that day, or maybe the following day is really important, when everyone's had a chance to take a deep breath, kind of just, you know, let the temperature in the rooms cool down a little bit. That is really important.

Speaker 2: 17:38

How easy is that for some of you? Because there's two different personalities represented at this table. You tend to want some time when we've had conflict. And I don't like open windows, I would say in my computer brain. I don't like unfinished things. So for me to not have closure in a conversation or conflict or a decision, it's very exhausting actually. So I I probably rush to decisions sometimes in things, but also the longer I have to ponder or wait for a conversation with you or come back to something, it takes discipline. For me it's not easy.

Speaker 1: 18:12

Another great question that might help you avoid conflict is to ask your spouse on a date or just in the evening when you're getting ready for bed, maybe, maybe not. You want to ask this question then.

Speaker 2: 18:26

But on a scale of one to ten how am I doing as your husband?

Speaker 1: 18:29

you know how am I doing as your wife. How am I doing meeting your needs? Um and uh, you could ask this because if you're working together, you could ask you know, how am I doing, how do you feel like I'm doing in my delegated role in the business? And to just get an answer. But once again, if you can ask this, get in the habit of asking this. You can make slow improvements, but also you can do it when it's not as emotional, when there's not a crisis.

Speaker 2: 18:57

That's really good. I actually I took our 15 and a half year old Austin on his debt deep emotional bonding time last night and I did actually ask him that question at the end. We had had a great discussion and I said hey, you know, what can I do better, as your mom you know, and luckily he did not roll out a long list of things that he wanted to go through. He just said one or two things and it was like okay, you know, and it was things that were actually really encouraging, not too critical in the moment. I think he would have critical things in different moments, but I just wanted him to know that, although he doesn't make all the rules in our relationship, that I do want it to be about relationship and I want to make improvements whenever needed.

Speaker 1: 19:36

All right. One other question that I'm sure some listeners have, if it's not just us, is how do you handle major disagreements about the direction of your shared business? We've never had this.

Speaker 2: 19:47

No, we haven't. We're pretty blessed, I would say.

Speaker 1: 19:50

I was being facetious.

Speaker 2: 19:53

I feel like we've had no conflicts ever. Okay, then you go.

Speaker 1: 19:57

Well, I mean just like as an example events Right, you're much more into events. I absolutely hate events. I'm open you events I absolutely hate events.

Speaker 2: 20:07

I'm open, you're closed. Yeah, I'm open-minded.

Speaker 1: 20:09

They traumatize me.

Speaker 2: 20:10

They stress me out um I what we call closed-minded yeah, I just I, I don't like them like well you like, actually, when they've gone well and you've been once they've gone, but the whole planning process the preparation is absolutely overwhelming for me.

Speaker 1: 20:25

So, um, but we've we've numerous, and we've had conversations about them, and we've had other disagreements about what's a strategy we should implement, what's maybe some new technology we should implement, and I guess we have conversations, lots of conversations. We'll talk about pros and cons, conversations, lots of conversations. We'll talk about pros and cons. We will gather testimonies from people who either it's working or it's not working. We tend to not be early adopters for things. We have learned and we've talked to some of our favorite associates and realized, as a general rule, it's kind of good. We talked about this on the last episode fire cannonballs, I'm sorry, fire musket balls instead of cannonballs, and so a lot of times, if you're thinking about making a major shift, it's to say, okay, what is a musket ball approach that we can make to this if it feels like a cannonball approach to the other spouse?

Speaker 2: 21:22

Yes, I like that, and then again, so that would be the testing phase, and then often we ask mentors, and then we pray, you know, and just ask for God's wisdom and discernment in some of those tough things.

Speaker 1: 21:32

But we have been. I would say that that is one thing that we always do. It's like a, it's a reflex for us is we seek out advice from others that we can trust that have been down that road or that just clearly have wisdom.

Speaker 2: 21:57

Exactly so, and often when we do that, you know if Kevin's mind might change about an event if someone other than me talks about it. But it is something for us to know each other's the things that we're more comfortable with and less comfortable with, and be patient through that, because it can bring a lot of conflict, depending on how your business is structured.

Speaker 1: 22:16

So we'll talk about the research insights.

Speaker 2: 22:18

Yeah. So we've gathered research from a Forbes magazine list of the United States most successful couplepreneurs and how they manage their marriages and their businesses, and here's some tips they had to offer. So first is open. Honest communication is the key. So aligning on goals and expectations.

Speaker 1: 22:36

All right. Another one is to do regular emotional check-ins. Be supportive of each other's needs.

Speaker 2: 22:43

Number three set clear boundaries between work and personal life. Define your roles based on your strengths.

Speaker 1: 22:47

We've talked about that a lot. Yeah, next one is to practice collaborative problem solving, seek input and have regular discussions.

Speaker 2: 22:56

And the last one is to celebrate successes and address failures together, be flexible and adapt to changing circumstances. That's so good.

Speaker 1: 23:05

So good, all right. So let's recap this. So we want to master communication for thriving businesses and marriages, and it's really important. In order to do that, it's important to be clear and direct, versus just assuming, and very general with things. We want to identify facts versus stories, especially when conflict arises and to seek outside perspective, if needed, and then resolve the conflict. Why don't you wrap up?

Speaker 2: 23:35

And then to cheer each other on Again. Our goal is to grow together, not apart, to align often, to do check-ins, set boundaries and collaborate.

Speaker 1: 23:44

Real quick on the alignment piece piece or to cheer each other on and grow together. We were talking about this a couple nights ago with some friends and we've talked about before. We feel like a business, being in business together, is a lot like having kids. If your marriage is on the rocks, that is not the time to go have kids and if your marriage is struggling, it's not the time to go into business together. We feel like children and a business will make a strong marriage stronger and a weak marriage weaker, and so if you're struggling in that area, we're not saying you know, hang up the shingles, quit, but go get some help work on that marriage, because a being in business together, just like parenting, has a great potential to bring in a ton of intimacy.

Speaker 2: 24:27

Yep. And then the last one is to access resources to communicate effectively as couples.

Speaker 1: 24:39

All right, friends.

Speaker 2: 24:39

Building a successful business and marriage is not easy, but communication is the glue that holds it all together Absolutely, so start putting these communication strategies into practice and if you found value in this episode, share it with an entrepreneurial couple in your life.

Speaker 1: 24:50

Yes, friends, please share post on social media, give us a subscribe and a like and a five-star review and then, until next time, keep having uncommon conversations on your journey to uncommon freedom together. We'll see you next time.