My husband Seth runs a marketing mastermind group once a month. If you have a business, this is the group for you. He helps people with their businesses and has fabulous topics every month. I really need to make the effort to go every month and learn from him. He asked me to join him this Friday. He asked me to discuss Universal which I already shared with all of you. He also asked me to help him to present on marketing to your marriage. Marriage is probably my very favorite topic.
Pay attention to how you treat strangers. Pay attention to how you treat your clients. It’s amazing that I will smile and be polite to a total stranger. My clients would call me and yell at me and hang up on me and I would still call them back and be polite to them (example of one of my Borderline Personality clients). There was even a way to be firm with my clients while still being nice to them. I tend to be on my best behavior when I leave the house. Why do I let my hair down at home? Why do I think I can yell at my husband and my children? Think about how you present yourself to clients every day. You are marketing yourself to your clients and making them want to work with you. If people like you, they are more likely to want to do business with you. Shouldn’t we want our spouse to like us every day? Aren’t we trying to stay married? If I presented myself to my husband as I would to a client, we would have a lot fewer arguments. I like to pretend there is a video camera in my house. Would you want the world to see how you are acting? Would you want your boss to see? Let’s give our spouse the very best side of ourselves. If our clients deserve it, doesn’t our spouse?
Have you ever gotten upset with your spouse for doing something completely different then how you would have handled it? I will get so frustrated with Seth for how he rinses the dishes (leaving food on them). I will get so frustrated with Seth for being so firm with our children (which they need). I get upset with Seth for having his head in a book (which gives him down time and is usually him learning something that benefits his businesses and thusbenefits our family). Why doesn’t he do the dishes like me? Why doesn’t he parent like me? Why can’t he put the book down? Guess what? You want your spouse to be different from you! You need your spouse to be different from you. I need Seth to be more laid back with cleaning. I need Seth to be firmer with our kids then I am. I was attracted to him because he is different then I am. I don’t want him to be like me. You think every day about who you want to market to. You want to market to overwhelmed moms. You want to market to people with children who are close to college age. Whoever you are trying to appeal to, you know, and you learn how to target your marketing to them. What about your spouse? You marketed to them and you attracted them. You are the neat one and he is the relaxed less neat one. You are the soft easy parent and he is the strong firm parent. You attracted your spouse because of who you are. Appreciate your differences and spend more time appreciating the qualities that you attracted.
We all have meetings with our clients. We spend time with our clients going over what they are looking for from us and how we will get the best results. Once we begin working for anyone, we tend to have regular meetings to evaluate how things are going. Why don’t we do this with our marriage? How about a weekly meeting that the two of you set aside to evaluate how things are going? What is working well? What would you like to see change? Setting aside 30 minutes with your partner once a week is not a lot of time to invest in making your marriage better. How about a monthly marital goal? Your clients will tell you what to change for them and you will jump to do this for them. Your partner deserves the same commitment. Family meetings works well with kids too. What is going well for your family and what could be better? Family goals are a great thing too! Don’t forget to celebrate successes!
When your client is very upset and leaves you a nasty message do you call them back and yell at them? If they send you a nasty email do you respond back in a mean way? I would guess that most of us would take time to really think through how we want to respond to an upset client. I know that when my husband upsets me, I tend to react in anger. If only I would take some time to think before I respond. I have learned that walking away without saying anything upsets him. I need to communicate and say that I am in an unresourceful state and will come back to talk after I think and calm down. If we treat our spouse with the same respect that we treat our clients, then our marriages will improve. They deserve the best of us.
I noticed that my husband tends to find out what his client’s interests are. Do they like to read? Do they have a hobby? What restaurants do his clients like to eat at? Sometimes Seth will send his clients a gift from him. People love getting thoughtful gifts. It can be for a holiday or just a random thank you for your business gift. Every year Seth sends clients girl scout cookies as a thank you for their business. Think about the thoughtful things that you do for your clients and do the exact same thing for your spouse. What are his interests? What does she like to read? How about a random thoughtful gift to your spouse! How about a random date to their favorite restaurant?
Pay attention to how you communicate when you leave the house and are among strangers, friends or clients. I am going to guess that you are very clear and direct in your communication. I am thinking that you look people in the eye and smile when you are talking to them. You want to hang up the phone with your client having them happy with how the phone call went. You want them to leave your office thinking that you are doing a great job. How do you communicate when you go home? Do you give your spouse eye contact or are you on your phone? What is your verbal and nonverbal communication like at home? Are you being clear, direct and engaging with your partner? Do they feel heard and loved? Communication skills is a topic itself. When I go on too long, I can see Seth start to zone out. He appreciates when I am clear, direct and concise. He will even tell me to get to the point. It doesn’t hurt to even talk about what communication works best for your marriage. I know Seth wants me to get to the point. I know Seth wants me to put my phone down and look at him. Go ask your spouse what you can do to communicate better. They will eat it up!
You don’t want to just let your hair down when you get married. The goal is to make your spouse want to be married to you every day! When Seth and I got married we wrote our own vows. I will never forget telling him that my hope was that in fifty years from now he would still want to be married to me. How am I selling myself to him every day? Am I making Seth be thankful that he picked me every day? Maybe not every day but that is the goal! We are never going to be perfect all day every day. I think each day about what I did right and what I did wrong. I liked that I kissed Seth goodbye today. Sometimes we are rushing and frustrated and don’t even kiss goodbye. I love my husband very much and am motivated to be a good wife every day. I realize that I get cranky and am not always patient. I also realize that I want to give him the best of me. He deserves that.
