Kathy Rushing: Keeping Your Marriage Alive While Building a Business

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:00

I actually had a husband and wife team who came to me who said, we're about to just call everything quits, the business, the marriage, because it's all just too hard.

Kathy Rushing  00:07

Entrepreneurs, one of their strengths, I think, is the ability to focus and to strategize and to keep going and be resilient. But the flip side of that is also their dark side. They don't see their spouse, their kids, they can become so focused that they lose the integration of a whole life.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:34

Welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. I'm your host, Debra Chantry-Taylor, and I'm passionate about helping entrepreneurs lead their ideal lives by creating better businesses. I'm a certified EOS implementer and FBA accredited family business advisor and a business owner myself with several business interests. I work with established business owners and their leadership teams to help them live their ideal entrepreneurial life using EOS The Entrepreneurial Operating System. My guests come onto the show to authentically share the highs and lows of creating a successful business and how they turn things around. And today's guest is extra special because she is here as an expert and a trained therapist, but also an entrepreneur herself. She is a trained and formally licenced therapist who understands the limitations of relationship coaching, as well as the proud wife of a serial entrepreneur for 40 plus years, and she is all about bringing accountability and experience into your relationship. Today, she's going to share with you that business should not be about success at all costs. She's also going to share how you can get rid of the mistress in your life and gain enthusiastic agreement from your partner. Kathy rushing is the founder of lodestar relationship coaching. Welcome to the show.

Kathy Rushing  01:49

Kathy. Hi, Debra. I have been looking forward to this. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, so have

Debra Chantry-Taylor  01:55

I, to be honest, when we spoke a little while ago and first connected, I love the topic you're going to be talking about, so I'm very excited to be sharing that. And thank you for joining us. I know it's late in the evening for you over in Colorado, so I really appreciate it. For those who don't know who you are, why don't you give us a little bit of your your story, your history and how you got to where you are now, sure,

Kathy Rushing  02:16

well, my husband and I, Mark is a serial entrepreneur, and we've been married for over 40 years now, 45 to be exact. We just became grandparents again last week, little granddaughter, we are just thrilled with she was an unexpected miracle. We'll put it that way. And so I have a lot of history. I began as a marriage and family therapist. I spent about 30 years working in a couple of different settings, had a private practice for about 10 years, and then quite a few years ago, now, I thought I was done with that. I was a little bit bored with it honestly and wanted to try my hand at business coaching. And at the time, my husband was probably about 12 years into a business that he had started, and so I did some work with hiring and that sort of thing. We began our marriage as church planters in California, so a different type of entrepreneur. Nobody called it that at the time, but it really was kind of an entrepreneurial venture. We moved out to California, just he and I and our little boy, and got pregnant shortly thereafter with our second so we grew it by one. And we did that for a few years. Closed the church when some real key families moved, and it just felt like it was starting over, and we were kind of exhausted at that point, and he was part of another church that the pastor was very narcissistic, and it did not end well. We ended up moving back to Texas, and that's when he went into nursing home administration. I was working now as a licenced counsellor, and in 1998 he started an assisted living business for people with Alzheimer's. And I mean, we look back and we say we should have had our heads examined, because he didn't have a business degree. He's a voracious learner, but he he didn't have any business starting a business, we would say. But one of the things that we learned so when I closed my practice and did this business coaching, I got certified in the DISC profile. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  04:55

I love it. It's one of those, my favourite sort of tools, disc and Kolbe, are really helpful to understand. And more about how people work.

Kathy Rushing  05:02

Yes, and disc is so helpful for communication, kind of knowing how you're wired. And what we realised when Mark took that is that he's a very high D, D, I, but for him, it was, it was truly an aha moment. He was like, Wow, I'm there's nothing wrong with me, because for the longest time, he thought there was something wrong with him that he couldn't just hold a job and keep a job. Keep in mind, he was 45 at this point, we didn't know anyone else who had started a business. All of our friends, all of our acquaintances, all of our family members, were very traditional roles of one sort of another. So yes, it it at times, was a very lonely journey, and we hit a really low point in our marriage. We're very committed to our marriage. I come from a divorce family, and so part of much of the work that I did was working with couples, but sometimes it's hard to apply it to yourself, and you don't see what's happening, and what happened for us was the years of growing that business, Mark used the analogy of he said he felt like it was trying to roll this huge ball and get it to go one rotation and get some momentum. But because we were opening different communities, it was like a startup every time. So it was like one startup after another. We could hardly catch our breath, and we found ourselves, this was about 2012 and we were both running on empty. We had gotten some very bad tax news that we owed $85,000 in taxes. You know, I'm not a CPA, and I don't understand all of the deferred maintenance and everything. So we had gotten that news. My mother was beginning to show signs of Alzheimer's herself, and had had a fire in her home. And all of this happened within the span of a couple of weeks, and there was an incident that I looked at mark in the kitchen one day, and I just said, you know, I think maybe we need to take a break from each other. And I didn't hate him. I wasn't, you know, it was just I was empty, and he was empty, and he had become a different person, just not the warm and loving person that he had always been. He was very stressed and short. And anyway, when I said that, he just, he just melted on the floor. And, you know, I'm not a hard heart. I went around the I was standing on one side of the island, and I went around and just wrapped my arms around him, and we just sat there and cried, you know, if somebody had walked in, they might think somebody had died, you know, and then, in some ways, part of our marriage had died, but we didn't realise it. And so that that moment really was very instrumental in, you know, we became very intentional again, about investing in our marriage, kind of applying tools that I taught all the time to other couples. And because we had a good, solid foundation, it didn't take us long, really, to get back on our feet. But I began to realise that nobody was talking about this. Nobody was talking about the fact that our marriage could be good. But there was this third entity. I've heard people refer to the business as the mistress. I don't know if you've ever come across somebody that's used that term, but I kind of felt that way. Sometimes, you know, like the business gets the attention, the business gets the energy, the business gets all the good stuff, really. So I began to write a blog, and I launched a podcast, and it was mostly a passion project. In 2020 we were set to have our best year ever. We were 22 years in the business at that point, and then the damn demic I coined that term.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  09:48

We remember that all so fondly.

Kathy Rushing  09:49

Oh my gosh. Well, it just our business. Didn't survive. And, you know, we were shut down for months. Could not admit Reza. Residents, we couldn't get people to come off of unemployment. So those factors that just went on and into 2021 and we ended up basically selling off the business. But it was not for any profit, really. And we had moved to Colorado. We were in Texas. We had been there, raised our kids there, really, and we moved to Colorado to be closer to the couple. Well, we've always wanted to live in Colorado, for one thing, but also the only one of our three children who wanted children lived here in Fort Collins, and so we moved here in the hopes that, you know, they might finally have a child. They had struggled with infertility for a number of years. So we moved here in 2020 and that was kind of it was in that next year that the business was really, you know, we just finally took it off of life support, and that was our retirement. So the last couple years have been, they've been very challenging, trying to rebuild. About two years ago, then I launched lodestar relationship coaching with the intention of working with couples, and especially entrepreneur couples, because, you know, this is the life that we've lived. And I'm just very passionate about creating tools and resources now to help couples stay connected while they're building a business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  11:39

Yeah, because it's, I mean, I've built several businesses myself, and had a couple of very good successes and a couple of terrible failures as well. And I think we talked about before you came on the show, there is this whole hustle culture in entrepreneurship that sort of says that you need to put everything into it in order to build it, which means it can become, I think perhaps even sometimes worse than a mistress, because it's taking all of your time, all of your energy, all of your your love, and I guess that that have has a massive impact on the relationship outside of that.

Kathy Rushing  12:10

Yeah and especially if, if the other partner is not aligned or fully on board, I heard a term many years ago one of the marriage books I have. I don't remember which one it was in, but the author talks about enthusiastic agreement, not just a oh yeah, I guess it's okay, but enthusiastic agreement meaning I'm fully on board. And so it's amazing to me how many couples, I think there's an assumption that the other person is on board. There's a difference in the way I remember reading a study years ago. There's a difference in the way that men and women start a business. Okay? Men tend to just go, you know, they don't ask permission. They don't Yeah, pass go. Women will tend to look or ask for input, and because we're a little more wired to recognise all the pieces that are in play, especially if there are kids involved. And so I thought that was a fascinating study that that that women would look for input or ask for input from their spouse, whereas men just they have the idea and they go, maybe there's a brief conversation. I know my husband and I have had things sometimes where he'll say, Well, we talked about it. I was like, we talked about it. That wasn't agreement. So very helpful to have some clear understanding about where we're going. What is the part that each person plays. And you know, there's different types of entrepreneurial couples. There are the couples who work together in the business. That might be one of the hardest I know you do a lot with family business, so yes, that would certainly husbands and wives too.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  14:16

I've got a couple of clients that were husband and wife. In fact, I actually had a husband and wife team who came to me who said, we're about to just call everything quits the business, the marriage, because it's all just too hard. And what we realised was that they hadn't been able to separate the two, and weren't sure about the roles they played in the business, yet alone outside of the business. Therefore there was this, this horrid sort of, yeah, what do you call it? There was a lot of aggression towards each other, but it wasn't about the person. It was about the role, and no clear definition around who played what and who the agreement, the enthusiastic agreement about this is what you do. This is what I do. This is how we work together.

Kathy Rushing  14:52

Yes, and clarifying those roles by what your strengths are. You know, I see a lot of couples. Where a spouse, the wife, usually gets involved out of necessity. There's not money yet to hire a bookkeeper, maybe, or, I don't know, some other role, and so she steps in, but it's it's not her strong suit, or she doesn't want to be spoken to like an employee, and that's another, you know, kind of sensitive area for couples is like you talk to your employees one way, but you don't speak to your spouse your children that way, you know. So, yeah, boundaries are a huge issue for especially for couples who work together in the business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  15:41

And this was actually quite a large business as well, so it wasn't even that she was stepping in because there was a role that wasn't being fulfilled. She had some amazing skills, but we talk about the visionary and the integrator roles and and the husband, in this case, was definitely the visionary. Let's jump off the cliff. We'll build the plane on the way down. Everything will be okay. And then the wife was very much an integrator. Was like, before we jump off the cliff, maybe we should make sure the engine has actually been put together properly, and that we've actually made sure everything's working and done all the checks. And so that natural kind of tension which should exist in a business relationship hadn't really been clearly defined. And so as a consequence, you'd be like, Oh, he's doing it again. He's jumping off the cliff. And he'd be like, Oh, she's holding me back again. And so it was trying to understand those roles in the business. Now, I do nothing in the personal life. I'm not very good at marriages, so I don't go anywhere near that. We help to clarify those boundaries and those roles in the business. It just made such a huge difference for them. Yeah, for sure, but I'm interested because you talked about enthusiastic agreement. I love that terminology. I think, I think I've been guilty of it in the past with my with my previous partners around I'm an extrovert, which means not in terms of being in a room full of people. I'm not I don't really enjoy that, but I I speak out loud. So the way that I process things is by speaking out loud. And so when I'm talking about something, doesn't mean that I'm saying this will happen. I'm just exploring the opportunities out loud. And then eventually I get to an agreement, which I think I put an agreement, but maybe I haven't, from the other other partner, or they take it the other way, and they actually gonna go, oh, well, you said that, therefore it's gonna happen. It's like, No, I was just discussing all different options. So an entrepreneurial kind of mind, versus somebody who's not working in the business, who's not an entrepreneur, what sort of challenges do you see happening there?

Kathy Rushing  17:22

Probably one of the biggest challenges, I think, is the appetite for risk. Entrepreneurs are willing to take some risks. Now, my husband would say, you know, most entrepreneurs, it's a calculated risk, but it's still a risk. You know what we've been through the last couple of years. I'm not sure most couples could survive. Quite honestly, I mean, it really has been gruelling, but because we are committed to each other, and you know, nobody could see this pandemic coming, we could not have ever imagined that our business wouldn't survive long after we did. And so I think that the sense of risk, I think when one or both people are not well differentiated about who they are as a person, not their job, not their role, but who am I as a person? Because if we can connect first, I mean, that's what a marriage is. We're connecting as people, as lovers, as partners, and then we grow into these different roles and careers. But if a person, let's say a wife, marries someone who is a big visionary, they're big people. They're big idea people, they're charismatic, they're they draw people to them. So I have seen, you know, in my work and just friends acquaintances, where maybe the woman is, she's happy to just come alongside and kind of can kind of lose herself in the process, like she becomes so wrapped up in doing everything for him, doing everything for the family, even if she has a job, a career of her own, it tends to get overshadowed because that that visionary is so big, so that can be A problem. And I think the other thing is knowing creating a vision together. So I created a framework. It's a five pillar framework called crave. Crave. Yep, crave is communication and. Rhythms that connect appreciation, affirmation, vision and energy. Because I feel like these five pillars provide kind of like guardrails, if you will, that if couples kind of touch base with these on a regular basis, it will be a big step in keeping their marriage growing. So vision is one of those, and I find a lot of couples. I look back at our journey, we didn't have a real clear vision about where are we going with this, are we building it to sell? Are we building it for the kids to inherit at some point? Are we, you know, what are we doing? It was just we were definitely building the plane. It was in the air. And so much of what I am passionate about now is out of our own ignorance, if you will. So I think having a clear vision is what will keep couples aligned when it gets hard.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  21:14

And you and I both, yeah, it's different to the and I certainly know the hard times. That's for sure. There's different of the vision for the business, because the vision for the business, because the vision for the business is internal to help motivate the team which want with the work that we do. But this is the bigger picture vision, as in, what do you as a family, as a couple, as a whatever? What do you want from that business, which might well be that you may want to sell it at some point. So you're not going to have that in your vision for the business, for your internal people, but you certainly have to have that in the back of your mind and some enthusiastic agreement on that for what you know, you get to a point where one of you wants to sell it, and the other one understands and is on board with it.

Kathy Rushing  21:49

Yeah, yeah. We have some dear friends who are on he's an entrepreneur, and she's very passionate about travel. She was born in South Korea, and so part of their vision is assimilating these two very different Not, not that they're different. He also loves travelling. But when you're building a business, it's, you know, it's hard to take off and travel for months or weeks at a time, but they've, they've found a way to do that. So I admire their ability to create that vision that incorporates much more than the business, because entrepreneurs can be very I mean, one of their strengths, I think, is the ability to focus and to strategize and to keep going and be resilient. But the flip side of that is also their dark side, they can get so focused, it's like they have blinders on, and they don't see their spouse, their kids. I mean, of course, they see their kids, but they can become so focused that they lose the integration of a whole life, you know, not just a work.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  23:00

And I'm sitting here smiling to myself, because I am a visionary, and I have started many, many businesses, and I've often had partners who, I think have possibly, in the beginning, found it quite exciting, and kind of, you know, almost come on the tail coats. And we're very persuasive as visionaries as well, right? We can, we can make people get excited by our vision and get them involved. But I think at times I have lost, I wouldn't say balance, because I hate the word balance. Balance, to me, feels like it should be equal, but it's understanding that there are two parts to your world, and that you, if you put everything into one part, the other part is going to suffer, right? Yeah, I was going to go back and so say, You, you, you said that, that that moment in the kitchen, which almost had me in tears, if I'm honest, because that was that the breaking point. If you look back now in hindsight, can you see some warning signs that you could potentially pick up on now, as if it was to happen again, would you better go, Oh, we're heading into the danger zone.

Kathy Rushing  23:56

I think definitely, because the last, gosh, especially the last two years have it's, it's like we've been in a vice grip, like there's just been so much stress. And I do recognise now what I didn't recognise then he tends to go in when he's under stress, and I feel kind of distant from him. So we have created some ways to stay connected on a daily basis, like he recently started. He'll just send me a text in the middle of the day, how's your day going, just to check in, because he's up and out sometimes before I'm up looking back, you know, we were, we were going through the motions of, you know, thought we were connected. We had date nights. We were actually empty nesters at that point. I think our, yeah, our daughter was in college, and we had dinner every night. We would have date nights. And. But a lot of it was talking about business, and we just we had lost the fun side of ourselves to some degree, and so I have been better able to pick up on when we're slipping into a disconnect. Because the thing about marriage is marriage, there is no neutral. You're either growing towards each other or you're drifting apart, and that drift can be very, very slow, I think about like a boat that doesn't get tied up properly to the dock and just, you know, the the waves of the other boats on the pond or lake, or whatever, gradually carry it away. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't make a beeline to the middle of the lake, but all of a sudden you look up and the boat, oh, my goodness. How did it get out there in the middle of the lake? That's a little bit about what can happen in marriage. And so I look at where we were at that point, I know that I think we were both irritable, very irritable, because we were just running on empty, and that is never a good place to be. What were some of the other signs, that's what comes to mind, I think, is just the irritability, the shortness with each other and that, you know, that's and it was finances. Like I said, we had gotten that $85,000 tax bill. Was like, Oh my gosh, how are we ever going to pay that? And we did, you know, came up with a plan and got that paid off. But, you know, there was, there was some resentment on my part too, like, how, how did this happen? We had a CPA, how does this happen, you know? And there wasn't really a great explanation that I could understand. So we had to work through some forgiveness and rebuilding. One of the things that really made a difference was Mark had already signed up to go to a C 12. C 12 is a it's a Christian based peer board, similar to Vistage or yo or something like that. And he had planned to visit a board the next day. And he thought about cancelling, but he went, and when he came back, I remember feeling like I just saw like a load lifted. He had been carrying so much for so long, and I had tried to help, you know, listen process, but I couldn't carry the load for him. But for the first time, he felt like he had peers who understood this incredible load he'd been carrying. And he was very honest with them, and he told them, you know, kind of where we were at. And every person in that room was compassionate and kind and like, Yep, we've been there. We've been there. You're not alone. And you know, so it was very helpful in terms of giving him a place to finally process some of these big, yeah, offload and process a lot of the big things he was holding at the time.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:30

It's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about having peer groups. I was part of an entrepreneur's organisation for a number of years over in New Zealand, and it was, it was really great, because the your partner often, if they're not entrepreneurial, they have no concept of what you're actually going through. And it, even though they want to support and they want to help, because they're coming from a different lens, it's hard for them to do that, whereas other peers, when you start sharing things and kind of go, Is this normal? You know? Am I Normal? Am I doing this right? And they're like, Oh yeah, they can share their experiences. And it makes you, if nothing else, it just makes you go, Oh, phew. I'm not the only one. This has happened too.

Kathy Rushing  29:04

Exactly, exactly. And, you know, he became good friends with several of the men on that board. His board happened to be all men, but there were others that had women, but yeah, so grateful for that time and and it began to, you know, kind of build up our relationship too. You know, I remember coming in one day and there's a message on my bathroom mirror written in lipstick. Hello, beautiful. Hell. And I was like, Who are you and what have you done with my husband?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:37

My husband? Oh, that's lovely. I was actually the opposite way around. I was the only female in a team of eight. So there was seven, seven men in my peer group, and it was like having seven brothers, which was actually quite nice, but those seven brothers who, you know, we were still experiencing the same things, which was great. Okay, so there's some, some signs that you can see when you could say, when people start to get irritable, shortness, sharp financial. Financial has a lot to do with it, right? When. When you're under financial pressure. I think that has such an impact on us that we don't even really recognise. But it's, it's tough when you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, trying to work through things, and no matter how much resilience you've got it, I think it's one of the biggest stresses you can have. So you develop this framework, and you talk about, you know, reconnecting, realigning and renewing your marriage, and you've got this crave framework. We've talked a little bit about the vision, which I think is really I think is really important, because if you don't know where you're going anywhere, will get you there. But let's talk about the other components as well. So let's start with the C's that communication.

Kathy Rushing  30:31

Yes, so communication, when I work with couples, I cover a really important skill called the speaker listener technique. I teach that to all the couples that I work with. If anyone is interested, I have it as a tool, or they can just email me. I'm happy to share it. So having a way to talk through issues and the speaker listener is it's a form of active listening. It's can be used in business. It's not, you know, just for marriage. And I am really big on tools. I'm also a believer Debra that most couples. You might find this surprising, because I was a therapist for 30 years. Most couples, I don't think, need therapy as much as they need tools, tools and a blueprint. And so that's kind of how I, you know, have created some of these resources. So when we look at communication, you you have, you need some tools, and how do we handle conflict? How do we take a timeout? I call it an adult timeout. You know, when emotions are escalating and we're not going to be productive being able to signal to the other that we're going to take a time out with the understanding that we're coming back, but we need to settle our nervous system. You know, we know so much now about our nervous system and how to calm our nervous system. I think it's incredibly important for entrepreneurs to be aware of these resources. And so it's, it's very important as we're especially when there's conflict, and it's, you know, the majority of things that couples argue about are not ever going to be resolved. Yeah, that's what Dr Gottman tells us. I'm a big fan of Gottman. Yeah, Gottman is so great. I mean, it's just he has, he's, yeah, he has so many great tools, but yeah, so much of what we argue about we're not going to resolve. It's, it's a function of our personality, our our background, our our wiring. But we can have tools and we can have respectful conversation, and we can know how to negotiate. So having some of those tools as a in a toolkit, if you will, is communication. I find that it's helpful depending on the season that a couple is in. I someone shared with me one time a process that they had where they would have a date night every week, and there was no business talk, and then they would have another scheduled time during the week where it was to focus on questions about the business. So I think having regular times to address certain challenges, or just inform your partner when you asked earlier about some of the challenges between partners, married partners, sometimes the entrepreneur is hesitant to share very much for fear of worrying their spouse and or or the other person doesn't want to know. And that's a hard place to be one of the one of the men on Mark's board every week or every month. When they would meet, he would share about how what a hard time he and his wife were having because she did not want to know anything about the business. Just show me the money. Just put the money in the bank. That's all I care about. And they they eventually divorced, and that, you know, was unfortunate, but he he definitely felt very alone in that process. She didn't want to know. So tough kind of hammering out, how much do you want to know, how often do we need to update? And certainly, when there's a business involved in. I would say that, you know, during seasons of instability or growth or like, you know right now, tariffs are such a big question, a lot of businesses are in turmoil because they just don't know where this is going to land and it impacts the business. So a couple might need to talk more often about, okay, here's what's going on in the business and here's what to expect. So that's C.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:33

Was crossing it into rhythm as well, I guess, isn't it as well? Because the rhythm is about what's going on and what is appropriate. And I probably not gonna think about going to go into a huge depth, but I think that I always say that, you know, running a business is like playing a game. We need to be really clear what the rules are. We need to know how to win. We need to know what the boundaries are. We need to keep keep score throughout it. And if you don't have these frameworks to do that, then you are just running blind in the game. So I'm guessing marriage is probably a little bit like that too. If you can understand the rules, the boundaries, what each person wants and needs, that would help, right?

Kathy Rushing  36:12

Yeah, absolutely. And it evolves over time. You know, it evolves from the beginning of your business to the middle part, or if you're at the point of selling or exiting, all of those are different stages. And then you have your different life stages, personally, your children, you know, launching children. So there are all these factors. It's it's just never a marriage is not set it and forget it. You know, it's yes, we're evolving as people. And so by virtue of that, our relationships are evolving as well. And so having these tools to come back to and to keep talking about, where are we now? You know, what are the rhythms? You know, having daily, weekly rhythms are the because that gets back to the small things. I'm a big believer that small things done over time or done regularly, make a huge impact overall.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  37:22

You know, I think a lot of couples compounding effect, isn't it absolutely compounding?

Kathy Rushing  37:25

I love that, that analogy, rather than, you know, it's not the grand gesture, like I'm going to buy you a four carat diamond ring for Christmas, you know, and that's going to make up for the last year. No, that that really misses the just the joy and the, you know, connection that can come from just the daily leaning on each other.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  37:53

Okay, so let's have a quick talk about the A and the E. So we've got communication, we've got rhythm, we've got vision, but then there's the A and the E as well. So take us through the A and the E, yeah.

Kathy Rushing  38:04

So we have communication hospital, yep, rhythms that connect, yep. So the A is for affirmation and appreciation. Because I think at the point that we were at in the kitchen that day, I felt very unappreciated. I had been running my own business, managing the household. Had spent years being, you know, the one that kept up with the kids school and all the sports practices, making sure everybody got now, my husband participated, but I felt like all of that kind of fell on my shoulders. And there were times when I would try to do things in the business, like we would open a new community, and I would plan the open house and and so when it got to the point where, you know, if he was short with me about something, I was like, You know what, I don't have to do this. So I think appreciation and it goes both ways, you know, for for me to appreciate and acknowledge, affirm who he is, you know, I have heard wives that say, can't you just get a job like, you know, and I'm, I'll be honest, I've, I've been tempted sometimes to say, can't you just get a job? But that would not be affirming who he is and how he's wired. So appreciation is super important for both, both parties. The V, of course, is vision, and that has to do with your whole life. What do you want your marriage to look like? What do you want your family to look like? What do you want your legacy to look like? What do you want your business to look like? What are some personal goals you have because so much. Of what I teach is about helping couples stay connected so they don't lose themselves or each other. I see a lot of entrepreneurs that they become so wrapped up in this business defining who they are that they don't know who they are, apart from the business. So vision is a very important piece of that. And then E is energy. I mean, if we don't have energy, we have to protect it, be able to recognise when our energy is not good. You know, being able to recognise, for instance, when we're getting irritable, you know, and recognise it ourselves. Sometimes we see it in our partner, but we're accountable for ourselves, and so developing the self awareness to know, how am I doing physically? Am I getting exercise? How is my sleep? How is my diet? How am I eating? All of these things impact what we bring to our work and to our relationships. So those five areas provide touch points, if you will, that couples can come back to and say, How are we doing on this? How are we doing here?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  41:27

I love it because, as you know, I teach a framework for business, and we have the six key component that we focus on. And I think this is this speaks to my mind as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, as a visionary, there's a framework that you can actually follow. And I always get the comment that, you know, but it's cookie cutter. It's like, no, it's just a framework, and everything within that framework can be different for different businesses, just as it can be for different couples, different families, but at least it gives you something that ties you back together and you're working on it in together.

Kathy Rushing  41:58

Exactly. Yeah, it's going to look different. One couple is going to look different than another.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  42:05

And it really is just about being able to talk through those things and coming up, as I said, with the rules of the game, with the understanding of what each other needs us, I'm guessing. So I love Gottman. I also love the five love languages. I think all of those things give us insight into the fact that we are, we're different. Males and Females are, you know, distinctly different. But then every individual is very different as well. And when you use tools like disc or you use tools like Colby or the or the love languages, you start to get an appreciation of what may work for you can be, you know, will not work for your partner. And that's a really important thing. You can't, you can't change the person you're with. You need to work with what you can right? Yep. Okay, so, my goodness, I've written pages of notes here, and I have to say, I'm feeling a little bit sort of guilty at the moment, because, as I shared with you at the beginning of the podcast, unfortunately, I'm going through a marriage breakup right now, and it's been a bit distressing, because I think we kind of realised that we were very, very different, and I don't know that we committed to to working enough at it and using tools to actually help us. So I'm very grateful that I at least have some some extra tools to use. Should I ever get into another relationship again? But I think for those out there listening, I think it is important, because I understand, as a visionary, yes, your work can become everything, and since the relationship breakup, I've actually had to go back, and I'd forgotten who I was as well. And so I've been very careful to go, Hey, look, I love my business, and I'm working on that, but who am I, and what are the things that I'm I'm not being or not doing, because I'm, you know, busy with the business, and been really great to reconnect with some of the things that are really important to me, because sometimes we feel like we're juggling a million balls and we're not doing any of them particularly well.

Kathy Rushing  43:47

Well, I'm sorry to hear about, you know, that trend, that's a big transition.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  43:50

And yeah, it is. I mean, it's, it's, it was sad. It was a bit of a shock to me, to be honest. And this, believe, for the first time, the listeners have heard about this. So yes, it was not something I was expecting. I think it's, it was particularly challenging around I am a planner. I do like to have a strategy. I had my business planned out. I have my life planned out, but all of a sudden everything comes crashing down. That plan is no longer valid. So it's a it's a good chance for reflection, but it doesn't feel so great in the beginning, right?

Kathy Rushing  44:18

Yeah, it's, it's a painful but I hope that you will come to a place of, yes, just some clarity, and, like you said, you know, reconnecting with the core of who you are.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  44:26

And being your best version of yourself, because that will help there. Okay, so we've got a lot of stuff here. I've written pages and pages of notes. I think what I would love to do is to finish up with a with my usual the three top tips or tools. I don't want people to listen to this podcast and go That was wonderful. But now, what can I do? So I'd love you to share three things that they can actually go away and do something with.

Kathy Rushing  44:49

Yeah. Well, one thing I would say is that if couples, maybe they have noticed that there's a little bit of drift, like we're just not as connected as we. To be don't overwhelm yourselves with like, a whole list of things. Start small. Now I know for entrepreneurs, that's not an easy thing, because entrepreneurs are big thinkers. Let's do it all. We're going to get therapy, and we're going to do this and go on a retreat, but pick one simple rhythm, like maybe a monthly date night that is non negotiable, these small steps to build connection without feeling overwhelmed. So that's one takeaway. The second thing I would say is to create rhythms of connection, whether it's something like a I've done some posts recently about the 20 a 22nd hug like there's actually scientific research about the receptors in our skin that when we when you are In a hug and embrace with someone, especially that you love and trust. It signals to your brain to release oxytocin, which is a relaxing it's a bonding hormone, and so something as simple as that, and my husband, I've been doing that a lot the last couple of months, we'll start the morning with just a 22nd hug, because we get so busy, it's like hug quick and then Bye. Have a good day, you know. But we linger a little bit, and we both just feel that settling. So start small, stay consistent, you know. Find a few rhythms, touch points that connect you, and then plan ahead. Think strategically about your marriage as you would your business. You wouldn't build a business without a plan. And yet, somehow we think that love just goes on autopilot, like we'll just, you know, because we loved each other at the beginning, it'll just always be that way. I use the analogy of maintaining a car. So imagine that you've bought a really like your dream car, and you're upset when you drive it 100,000 miles, but you have never changed the oil or rotated the tires or taken it in for maintenance. So I find that analogy sometimes is helpful for men who are sometimes, you know, women tend to think about relationships a little bit more than men.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  47:43

So sadly, due to technology, we seem to have lost Kathy. I can't get her back. I'm not quite sure what's happening. So we didn't get to finish her three top tips and tools. What I am going to do is she's given us an amazing link that I'm going to put into the notes here for this podcast that will give you access to a whole range of tools you can actually start using. And when I speak with Kathy, I will get hold of some of the the other links that she can actually share with you, and I'll post those in the podcast notes as well. So I just want to say thank you so much to Kathy for joining us. It was a really fascinating session. I really appreciate your time. Thank you, Kathy.