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Uncommon Freedom
Where Passion Meets Purpose with Kyle and Ariel Tresch
Are you ready to transform your life and work through the power of daily breakthroughs as a couple? In this episode, Kevin and Bekah sit down with Kyle and Ariel Tresch, the dynamic duo behind Couplepreneurs, to explore practical strategies for cultivating a breakthrough mindset for couples in business.
Drawing from their extensive coaching experience, Kyle and Ariel share their innovative approach to personal and professional growth for couples, including:
- The concept of energy styles and how to leverage them in your business
- The power of couple competence in creating a magnetic power couple
- Strategies for maintaining passion and intimacy while managing a business
- The importance of clear boundaries and communication in couple entrepreneurship
We discuss the misconception that working together will automatically improve your relationship and how to start recognizing and leveraging breakthrough opportunities in your daily life as a couple. Kyle and Ariel also share insights on overcoming limiting beliefs, the power of self-worth, and how to structure your life for consistent growth as a couple in business.
Whether you're an entrepreneur couple, a leader, or someone looking to unlock your full potential with your partner, this episode offers valuable insights on how to make breakthroughs a regular part of your personal and professional journey. Join us to learn how to cultivate a mindset that turns everyday moments into opportunities for significant growth and achievement as a couple!
Connect with the couplepreneur community through @couplepreneurs on Instagram or the "Successful Couples in Business" Facebook group. Uncover new techniques for keeping the romance alive, such as transitioning from work mode to romance mode with creative activities like a "treasure hunt." Join us for an episode filled with humor, honesty, and actionable tips to help entrepreneurial couples thrive together.
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Okay, welcome back to the Uncommon Freedom Podcast. Today, we're thrilled to have Kyle and Ariel Tresh with us. This is the dynamic duo behind Couplepreneurs, and they have not only skilled businesses to incredible heights, but also navigated the complexities of maintaining a thriving marriage. Kyle and Ariel, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having us guys. We're excited to be here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you so much, and we're very excited to share a lot of new discoveries that we've personally experienced and seen ourselves in the world of couplepreneurship, and I just think that, in a world based on everything that is happening right now, the conversation we're about to have is going to unify a lot of marriages and potentially even build some businesses as well.
Speaker 4:Awesome, I love it. So real quick, tell us how long have you been married and how did the two of you meet.
Speaker 2:So I'll start with um. We've been married for four years now five years, five years, goodness she.
Speaker 3:She forgot it was so good. She was like man. It's faster than I even thought.
Speaker 2:We were together for a long time. We were together for a long time before we got married, so we've been together for almost 12 years now.
Speaker 3:That's right, and how we kind of knew each other is we got together in middle school, believe it or not. So we dated for a couple of months, believe it or not. She actually broke up with me and I know, isn't that crazy.
Speaker 2:In middle school.
Speaker 3:But you know, when you go through that like 14 year old Once or twice, or yeah, you get it. You get what I'm saying. Yeah, but what actually brought us back together later on in life is the shared entrepreneur dreams that we both had. We were both separate entrepreneurs, we both grew separate businesses, and that led to a lot of what we did today, after having to navigate so many complex challenges in the process.
Speaker 4:And you're currently in South Florida. Is that where you both grew up, or where'd you grow up?
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we both kind of came from pretty humble beginnings. We grew up in a very small town in Ohio, kind of surrounded by cornfields, and we actually dated for again a while before we actually ended up getting married. And we actually dated for again a while before we actually ended up getting married. But by the blessing of our entrepreneurial journeys, we were able to not only self-fund a dream wedding in the Bahamas which was amazing but with that said, we also both were entrepreneurial. We both experienced some pretty intense challenges at that stage of our life.
Speaker 2:So, I'm sure we'll get into it as we talk in the online.
Speaker 3:But now we live in beautiful Jupiter Florida and I got to tell you we're not going back to the snowy cold, frigid air of.
Speaker 4:Ohio, I promise. So Beck and I we met in Ohio. I was born and raised in the suburbs of Cleveland, so also from Ohio as well. What city were you guys from?
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness, we're probably like very close neighbors. So we grew up in medina oh my gosh, no way, that's where my parents live.
Speaker 4:That's where we met. So what a crazy small world. Yeah, I knew you guys were cool, so the real question is are you buckeye fans?
Speaker 3:oh for sure, I think everybody's ohio is a buckeyeye.
Speaker 1:O-H.
Speaker 3:I-O.
Speaker 4:Let's go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I went to Highland High School, so I'm probably older than you guys. But, yes, grew up in Hinkley and went to Highland High School and so, yeah, we met in college but we've been married for 25 years, so almost 26.
Speaker 3:That is crazy. Normally when we say we're from Ohio, we don't even clarify. You know, a mix between a suburb and some country town where, like the Medina County fair was like a holiday. But it's so cool to hear that you guys come from a similar background and, just like us, you guys move to a warmer climate and you know, I'm sure entrepreneurship is a huge part of that right.
Speaker 4:Well, absolutely, and we tell people Cleveland or Ohio is a great place to be from and a great place to visit. Granted, if we had to, we could live there, but we love having the freedom that entrepreneurship offers us to be in a sunny and warm climate. So cool, very cool. Well, hey, I know we'll have to talk more about that kind of stuff online. I'm sure we have some shared spheres of influences and things like that will be fun to connect about. But share just a little bit about your journey to entrepreneurship. What really inspired you guys to create and become couplepreneurs, and how has your personal experience shaped the mission of your company?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I can start with. So again, we were both entrepreneurs when we were dating in the very early years. And I remember when we got married we thought because we were both entrepreneurial and, like you said, we had the freedom, we had the all these amazing things that entrepreneurship brings that when we got married things would only get better from there. Right, we thought, you know, we're both entrepreneurial, we're both driven, things are going to be great. But in fact that's actually right after we got married. That's where we experienced some of the biggest hardship in our relationship and in our businesses, because there was a pretty big tension point where there was so much chaos happening in our life. You know, we got married, we didn't really have a honeymoon, we jumped right back into our businesses and because of that we were so busy that we reached this tension point where Kyle sort of thought the solution to the chaos that we were experiencing was for me to just be his assistant.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that didn't quite work out the way that I thought it would. And you know, as you guys can tell, probably by everyone yeah, that's exactly, and you know what we were experiencing at the time. We call it the anti-h, the anti honeymoon stage, because instead of a honeymoon stage, we experienced the hardest time of our entire relationship and at the time we didn't know that so many other entrepreneur couples go through these same things. We had to navigate, figuring out okay, if we're both running businesses or we're both involved in growing a business, who's going to be responsible for the household tasks, who's going to be responsible for the errands, the chores, whose time is more valuable or AKA, less valuable, to then dedicate towards other things?
Speaker 3:In addition to that, we also had to navigate not only the complexities of business, but talking about business 24 seven, as I'm sure so many of your listeners would know, will actually create a lot of relationship tension. Why? Because we're not just business partners, we're also romantic and married partners as well. But what would happen is is that our schedule would fill up and as our schedule filled up, our intimacy went down. And as our intimacy went down, our income from our business was completely capped.
Speaker 1:So we're sitting there looking around, going what?
Speaker 3:did we just get ourselves into? Oh my gosh. And yes, like Ariel said, I thought the solution was to just have Ariel come alongside me in my business. I had a digital marketing consulting business. We were working behind the scenes, helping companies grow and scale by tens of millions of dollars. So I was like Ariel instead of you having an organic marketing coaching business like you have, why don't you just come alongside me? You can be my assistant and like we're just going to do amazing things.
Speaker 3:But what would happen is is that every time I tried to kind of force her into that, she only had more resistance towards it, and I didn't realize it at the time. But I was kind of taking the wrong path. And I remember the day that changed everything for us was a day where I just got in a guest room of our house, literally on my hands and knees, praying out to God, just asking him for an answer. Because at this point, like so many other entrepreneur couples, I felt like we were at a fork in the road and there were two sucky options Either sucky.
Speaker 3:Option number one we sacrifice our business dreams for our marriage. But that wasn't going to work. We were both fall to entrepreneurship, so I didn't want to do that. And then option number two like so many successful entrepreneurs, they will sometimes choose to sacrifice their marriage for their business, and we knew without a shadow of a doubt that that was not going to be our choice. So what do you do then? So I remember just praying out to God, and I got out for my prayer and I did what absolutely nobody should do when they're looking for answers, and that is I got on social media and on social media.
Speaker 3:What happened was this I saw a live video that area was doing coaching other women that she was coaching in her business, and in that live video there were comments from women all over the world telling her thank you, thank you so much for showing up and sharing the information that God gave you. And I remember that day. It was like the scales fell from my eyes because I ran out of the bedroom. I found her after she was done with her video and I said hey, I am so sorry for trying to put you into a box that you're not designed for. I recognize that you're an entrepreneur, I'm an entrepreneur.
Speaker 3:So, instead of us trying to conform to what each other wants, what would happen if we took our individual passions and pointed them towards a unified purpose? And that question literally changed our entire life, because, even though there wasn't a roadmap at the time, we decided to test out some new systems, new strategies, new approaches to life, to prioritizing our intimacy and working better together so that way we can actually grow businesses. And here's the crazy thing that happened as soon as we started doing. That didn't happen overnight, but over time. The more we prioritize each other and the more that we prioritize growing well together and creating a vision that doesn't require sacrifice or compromise between us. Our revenue levels actually just completely skyrocketed. We've made more money in our businesses than ever before, while going on more date nights than ever before, and you guys know how like if you go on a date night and you don't post about it on social media. It didn't really happen.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3:It's kind of like. It's kind of like pole plunging or going to the gym you always know who does it because they're going to post about it. You know what I'm saying. So this is what we started doing. We just started going on date nights and doing fun things and posting it, posting about it on social media. And what happened was that, over the years, people started reaching out to us saying Kyle and Ariel, how in the world do you guys grow businesses without wanting to kill each other, without wanting to like, like, just end it all and like. We got some crazy responses and what we did is we said okay, maybe this is a calling here.
Speaker 3:Maybe there's an opportunity here for us to take our combined skill set with over a decade of marketing experience, combine that with figuring out how to navigate our working dynamic and put it together to create a coaching program that helps entrepreneur couples.
Speaker 3:And since that decision, we launched that company in 2022, and it was almost a instant success. So fast forward to today. During the time of this recording, we have since built what we believe is the fastest growing and largest community of entrepreneur couples on the planet, and inside of our coaching community, we have helped couples apply what works with how they work as a couple and, as a result, we've seen some insane results. We've seen couples that are starting brand new businesses, quitting full-time jobs, couples that have done anywhere from $50,000 a month to $100,000 a month to $300,000 a month, all the way up to $2 million a month all from the strategists that we teach. And as we're doing this, we're seeing the fruit in our lives to confirm that this was the calling that God had for us all along. We just didn't know it, because it showed up and it looked like a lot of chaos to start.
Speaker 1:That's really beautiful. And then, obviously, the sense of peace that comes when you realize you're rowing the same direction, not trying to divide and conquer your dreams. You can divide and conquer your tasks, but you really can't divide and conquer your dreams. And when people are functioning outside of their giftings to your point when you were talking to Ariel about pivoting like we know that, there just wouldn't be a sense of fulfillment.
Speaker 1:And you can do things like that for seasons I mean, we've all had jobs we did not love but when you're at the place in your life where you're ready for the passion and you've had it, pivoting outside of that definitely creates, I would think, like a cognitive dissonance. And so it sounds like you guys really came up with a pretty amazing solution, or God came up with it for you, which is amazing. So you mentioned pioneering a new way to divide up your roles in your business and your life as an entrepreneurial couple. Can you elaborate a little bit on the approach and some of the practical things for couples that are struggling with finding balance? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think one of the first things that was the most helpful for us is really like Beck, I think you said earlier getting clear on what the vision was that we both wanted. So that was the first piece. But once we got clear on like the vision, we were like we did what we call a vision date. Right when we sat down we determined what is it that we want one of out of our life, what do we want it to look like from a business perspective, from a lifestyle perspective, and then what type of revenue is actually required to fuel the dreams that we have? So we kind of started with, okay, what's the mission that we have? How can we both make it a reality?
Speaker 2:But once we got to that point, that's where we started to realize, okay, we have to figure out who's doing what, because a lot of our attention came back to, if we're both in business together but we also run a life together, there's a lot of different responsibilities that are being balanced in that, and so we had a lot of people from a business perspective tell us okay, if you're going to divvy up roles, just divvy up by strengths, right, just look at what Kyle's good at, what Ariel's good at, and let's just divide up that way and it makes sense to a degree.
Speaker 2:But what we actually found was that it wasn't really the whole picture and what happens when you overlap in roles or strengths and what happens when there's gaps in your strengths and what do you do from there. So we actually had an interesting experience where Kyle actually went up to Ohio. He left our house in Florida and went up to visit family in Ohio, and at this time I just decided to stay home in Florida and went up to visit family in Ohio, and for at this time I just decided to stay home in Florida and when he was gone I got so much more done than when he was home.
Speaker 3:Talk about a little bit of an ego check there. Huh yeah, so.
Speaker 2:Kyle came back from Ohio and he's like you, you did all these things. This is amazing. Why? Why were you able to get so much more done? And we were actually at Olive Garden at this time, and I'll let you kind of yeah, because you know when you come back after not seeing your spouse.
Speaker 3:The most romantic place to go in the world is Olive Garden.
Speaker 3:We all know this right. So as we're sitting there just eating some breadsticks, I was talking to Ariel about this and what we recognized in that moment, it was like a light when Ariel was allowed and able to, just completely free to work in the way that her natural energy allows her to work. We were able to get so much more done than even when we were trying to accomplish tasks together. And the light bulb went off in my mind while the breadsticks were in my mouth and I recognized in that moment wait a second, what if we didn't divide up tasks by departments or strengths? What if we divided them up by energy styles and we've since kind of coined this term and an energy style is simply the working dynamic that you, as an individual, work best in.
Speaker 3:So, for example, anybody listening, think about your partner right now. Think about are they a morning person or a night person? Are they extroverted or are they introverted? Do they like to accomplish very quick hit tasks or do they prefer the tasks where you could focus on one thing for maybe a week or even a month, and based on what types of tasks give them the most energy? Then you can actually divide up tasks by that. So now what we started to do is we started to have a few different tasks across all of the different departments even with some of the team that we have and we started dividing up tasks by energy style and it unlocked so much more productivity, not just for us, but for so many couples that we've taught this to. So that's kind of like a little secret and something that everybody listening can apply right away If you can think about what gives you the most energy and what gives your significant other the most energy.
Speaker 3:you divide up tasks by that way. Just watch what happens, yeah.
Speaker 2:The last thing I'll say, too, is we also hired out things within the household. To give us back time and not only the business, but also time. You know presence and capacity for each other as a couple as well.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we love that concept of delegating, especially things you don't enjoy.
Speaker 1:So and that's why when you stay up super late, you know getting emails done. I mean, I'm an early to bed, early morning person and sometimes I'll be like where were you last night? And he'll be like oh man, I was working until one or two in the morning and he gets through tons of emails, gets lots of things done and you're just really a lot more productive that time of night.
Speaker 4:If I didn't have kids, I could go to bed at 2 am every day, but unfortunately Do you guys have kids?
Speaker 1:We do not, no.
Speaker 3:We do not, but pretty much every single one of our clients do, and what they love is that because we have such an extensive business background, we're able to take what works for CEOs that manage the complexities of like 40 plus teams and a lot of times, a manage the complexities of like 40 plus teams, and a lot of times, a lot of that can translate to parenting as well, even though, of course, we're not parents.
Speaker 4:we can't necessarily say but at least that's what clients are doing, absolutely Great. Well, you kind of touched on this, but obviously many couples face challenges when they have different personalities or working styles. We've experienced this in our own marriage. How have you managed to work together efficiently despite these differences and you kind of touched on it. But maybe go into a little more detail and what advice would you give to other couples in similar situations, like how do they identify their energy styles and how would you? What's the next step for people?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I think it all starts with a little bit of a paradigm shift that has been helpful for us and so many other entrepreneur couples we've talked to, and that paradigm shift is this a lot of times, the same things that will drive us the most crazy about our spouse are actually the same qualities and characteristics and strengths that are blessings to have in business and actually just blessings to have in general. So a lot of times where there's relationship tension, especially with coupleurs, it's when they don't first recognize the fact that Ariel is more, let's say, organized, diligent, left-brained, very, very persistent and a more right-brained, creative, fast-moving, quick. That can create some relationship tension. Or those could be the key ingredients that you combine to make the best of these most effective business decisions that you could ever come to. So really, for us, that's where it starts. It starts with receiving the gift that it actually is and opening the gifts and having gratitude for the gift. That is your partner's perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one thing I'll add to that too is I read this term a long time ago and I wish I could give credit to the person because I don't remember, but it's this term of ecosystems and it's like how everything works together as a whole, and so, for example, some of the things that may drive me the most crazy about Kyle are also simultaneously the things that I love the most.
Speaker 2:So, for example, you know, kyle does this thing and I joke all the time but he leaves his cabinets open in the kitchen, like he'll open the cabinet and then just leave it open, and it used to drive me so nuts until I realized that the reason he left that cabinet open is because he probably got an inspired idea that he had to go take action on, and just that create creative brain just led him somewhere else, and that's part of the reason that I fell in love with him to begin with. So when I can see that like creative, like fast moving part of him yes, sometimes leaves a little chaos, but is also simultaneously the thing that I love most and the thing that allows us to work so well together, I have so much more of an appreciation for it Now with that foundation laid let's assume everybody just has so much appreciation for their spouse and how different they are.
Speaker 3:With that foundation laid, like you asked, the next best step is to identify what your unique energy styles are, and we did touch on it a little bit and of course, there's a very extensive kind of assessment that we do for our clients that goes into this in depth. But I can give you a couple more questions that anybody listening can just ask yourself to start really moving forward towards identifying what your energy style is. We covered a couple of them. When do you like to work? When do you have the most energy throughout the day? Is it the morning, is it the afternoon or is it night? And if you can set up a schedule that allows you to flourish in that time period, that's just a natural advantage. You have right out of the gate who is more extroverted and who is more introverted, and that's really helpful, because business requires both extroverted tasks as well as introverted tasks. Who loves long range projects and who loves short range projects? I'll give you a perfect example of this.
Speaker 3:So when we did this, we figured out that Ariel is the type of person my wife who can work on one thing for an entire month without shifting, and that would be her happy place. To me, that would be absolutely terrible. I would hate that so much to just focus on one thing. So here's what we did. When we look at our to-do list every single day, we determine the tasks that will move the business forward. We assign a timeline to those tasks and, based on who prefers long-range projects versus short-range tasks, we divide up things that way. So my to-do list for the day might look like 30 tasks long and Ariel might look like two, but collectively we were able to accomplish more than the average solopreneur, because we are covering so much ground in the ways that God gave us and the gifts that he gave us to naturally be wired to accomplish such tasks.
Speaker 2:So, to give an example, a long range project that I typically handle may look like planning an event, because that's a big thing that's not going to be done in a day. But Kyle may handle, like you know, meeting with a team member or doing something that's more of a quick hit sort of task.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'll manage all of our team members and the agencies that work with us. On Slack I'll answer most of the client questions. I will create a lot of the outlines and create a lot of the trainings. While I'm doing all of those things, ariel is usually forecasting for the future, planning events and planning very bigger project oriented things. So I think that those are just a few things that anybody can apply right away to start working in your preferred energy styles.
Speaker 1:I love that. And what I heard you guys saying at the beginning too, when you kind of set this up, was you know you're going into it with a growth mindset or you're shifting to a growth mindset. So many couples have fixed mindsets, and what we talk about two things when it comes to marriage is we talk about, you know, intent versus perception, and so when you can shift to that, you see things differently for your spouse, which is also your coworker in many cases here. And the other thing is you know there's the facts and then the story that we tell ourselves. And so often when we have conflict in business or marriage or relationships, it's because you know there is a fact but we tell ourselves a story about it.
Speaker 1:And what I heard you guys saying is you went back to kind of processing it factually to solve the problem, and then you didn't just solve the problem downstream, but you really went upstream to figure out okay, now how do we work in our genius, versus just fixing the problem every time it comes back up again. So I think that creates a lot of peace in a working environment and it definitely gives you a chance to have a more enjoyable and impactful business, which is really cool. Do you guys work with couples who have the same business? They're working the same business together. They each have a separate business or both.
Speaker 2:Typically both. We see a lot of couples that are in business together. Kyle and I own separate businesses for many years and we've also been in business together. So we do a little bit of both because we think there are some minor differences. But there's also so much overlap. When you're both entrepreneurial, you're both driven, you're both sometimes strong personalities. There's a lot of overlap in how those dynamics show up. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And even if anybody was going to look at our website or check out some of the success stories for our clients. There are examples of some that work together in one business, some that own separate businesses and some that actually got together to offer a brand new business to the world and we're able to scale that to over six figures in just a few months. So we we've kind of just been able to combine the marketing experience and the business growth experience that we've been so blessed to have with the couple.
Speaker 3:Dynamic and really that combination, at least for what we've seen, has been kind of the secret sauce Cause, as you guys know, I'm sure, and everybody listening if you can combine what works with how you work as a couple, that's like that unlocks a superpower as couplepreneurs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good, and I mean we've talked from the opposite side that you know working together in business can make a good marriage and you have a saying for that.
Speaker 4:Being in business together is a good marriage and you have a saying for that. Being in business together is like having kids. You don't have kids If you've got a bad marriage. Having kids to make your marriage better is a horrible idea. Kids make a strong marriage stronger and a poor marriage or a weak marriage weaker. And in our experience, business does the same thing. If you've got a strong marriage, you're going to have some challenges to fight through, but ultimately it's going to create a lot of intimacy and it's going to make strong marriage stronger. But if you have a weak marriage, going into business together is just going to reveal all of the cracks in that relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it sounds like you guys really help people through that. So that's amazing because, again, we don't want to see marriages go by the wayside for the sake of business, but when people work together they can make a massive impact. So, in the hustle of growing multiple businesses, how do you ensure you free up quality time for each other, family and personal wellbeing, and are there specific strategies or routines that have been particularly effective for you guys?
Speaker 2:So I would say, in terms of how we are able to free up time, a lot of it just comes down to having clear boundaries around what our schedule looks like and around our touch points together. So, to give a couple of specific strategies, we have two different touch points that we teach a lot of our clients. So the first is what we call strategy meeting, and this weekly strategy meeting allows us to essentially look at the week ahead and determine what's happening throughout the week. What am I needed for? What is Kyle needed for? When do we need to come together those types of things and when we have that, it allows us to not be taken by surprise when a day comes and suddenly it's like, hey, we had a meeting at this time. You need to stop what you're doing and come join this meeting. So it allows us to kind of plan for the week ahead. So that's a weekly strategy meeting.
Speaker 2:Now we also do daily check-in meetings, and these daily check-in meetings are much shorter meetings where we're able to take what we talked about on our weekly strategy meeting and just look at the day and go okay, this is what we planned for today, this is what we expect to be happening. Is this still accurate? Did anything else come up? Is there anything that we need to account for? It allows us to just get on the same page every day, because what we find is the biggest issues with couples in general, but I would also say couples in business is when there's unmet expectations and when it feels like life is happening to them versus them happening to their life and planning their life in advance, planning their life in advance. So, for us, what allows us to just really create time as a couple is create those containers and those boundaries for it, but then have the structure of the weekly meeting and the daily check-in meetings to make sure that those things actually happen and actually stay in place.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and for anybody listening, one of the best questions that Ariel and I applied to our life, to really separate work life and time for us to be present as a romantic couple, is this simple question when does work start and when does work stop? Yes, after thousands and thousands of conversations with entrepreneur couples, if we can answer that one question and we can agree on it as a couple, what that does is that sets the groundwork and the foundation for us to know this is when we're working and this is when we're not working. So what this allows us to do is when we're working, we can be fully present and maximizing the gifts that God gave us in our work. But when it's time to not be working, we can be fully present and maximize the time that we're blessed to have together without feeling like I should have responded to more emails, I should have done more work in the business, I should have replied to the Slack messages and vice versa. There are so many people that kind of operate the gray zone when, while they're working, they think, man, I wish I was spending more time with family and while they're with family, they're like man, I wish I was working. And really the answer to that question will solve all of that, at least to start, which is again when does work start and when does work stop? And then when work stops?
Speaker 3:We've also applied some techniques to transition from work mode into romance mode, one of them being when you're with your spouse and you are on a date night or you're trying to be present, you can make it your mission to go on what we call a treasure hunt, and that treasure hunt is basically your job, should you choose to accept. It is to ask your spouse questions to find out information about them that you've never heard before, and what that does, especially for entrepreneurs. You're using the creative capacity of your brain to focus on digging out treasure from your significant other. And I promise you, after being with Ariel for over 11 years, at this point, every single week when we go on our date night Ariel for over 11 years, at this point, every single week when we go on our date night, I find out something new about her. So that alone can immediately shift anybody's mind from work mode into romance mode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's one thing to obviously have the schedule, it's another thing to actually make sure that you're present in the different containers in which you've set up.
Speaker 1:Exactly that's good, excellent, you guys All right.
Speaker 4:So you guys talk about becoming a magnetic power couple. It sounds awesome. What does that mean to you, and how can other entrepreneurial couples cultivate that type of dynamic in their professional and personal lives? Sounds like an awesome term. Let's make it a reality.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love it. I love it. So, for anybody listening, think of a couple that walks into a room and they immediately get everybody else's attention. I'm sure we've all noticed a couple that walks into a room and they immediately get everybody else's attention. I'm sure we've all noticed a couple that does that. And then ask yourself why is that the case? What is it about that couple that usually draws attention with some of today's most successful and influential power couples in business is that of the top, most successful and most impactful business owners that run businesses as a couple.
Speaker 3:They all have one key trait that leads to this magnetism, and that's something we call couple confidence, and what I mean by this is a lot of times, personal development will tout the importance of self-confidence, which essentially, if you break down that word, the word confide means to trust. So if you have self-confidence, that basically means that you can trust yourself to do what you say you're going to do. But how this applies towards couples is if I can trust Aria and she can trust me and we can trust each other's word. We have so much confidence and trust in each other that shows up as a magnetic influence for anybody that we walk or anybody that we have the opportunity to impact.
Speaker 3:So a lot of times in this particular case, when we use the term power couple, we're not talking about just like a flashy celebrity couple. What we're truly talking about is a couple that trusts each other, they have confidence in each other and they empower each other and others around them, and I believe that in today's day and age, if more power couples were couples that actually empowered each other and empowered others, then we would actually have a much greater world to live in.
Speaker 1:Wow, I love that because I agree that it makes being a couple so attractional and it does show something different than I think the world shows. So, way to like, figure out, figure out that gifting and also to figure out a term for it, because when you said magnetic, I definitely had other things going through my head, but once you described it I was like, absolutely, that's something that I would want to be known for and I would want to be drawn to those kinds of people, so I love that. Okay, so we're going to talk about passion and intimacy One of our favorite topics. But keeping passion and intimacy alive can be challenging, especially when business demands are high. So how do you guys maintain your connection and keep the romance alive while still managing your business? You obviously talked about weekly date nights, which are massively important, and most people put those aside. So, other than prioritizing, or maybe in addition to that, how do you keep the romance alive?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the biggest I don't want to call it faux pas, but one of the things that's very big in the industry right now, the online kind of digital industry space is this concept of masculine and feminine polarity. I don't know if you guys have you ever heard of that term. Okay, so, generally there's this concept. Actually, I may let you define it, because I think you're better at defining it. Yeah, so what we're going?
Speaker 3:to do is we're going to define a very, very popular phrase and very popular topic that is touted by the world, that every most people agree with but we actually disagree with. So there, there, there you go. There's the too long to breathe, and I'll tell you why. So masculine and feminine polarity goes as follows the concept is is that there's a masculine energy in the world which is a driving, protective go energy. Then you also have a feminine energy which is a nurturing receiving low energy Right.
Speaker 3:So you can kind of look at it like the duality of life there's yin and yang. Now, here's the thing. We're not here to say that there isn't a difference between a masculine presence or a feminine presence. That's not what we're debating. But what happens is is that in so many spaces online, what is touted as the secret to maintaining intimacy is to create as much polarity between a masculine energy person and a feminine energy person. So therefore, if Ariel is working all day and I'm working all day a lot of people will hyper over-label that as she's in her masculine and therefore the reason why we're not able to be attracted is because I'm in my masculine frame and Ariel's in her masculine frame and like two sides of a magnet, we repel instead of coming together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we see this with a lot of entrepreneur couples, specifically because you typically have to be driving and moving towards a goal and sometimes organized and all the things that are typically considered masculine Right. So we see this concept show up a lot for entrepreneur couples.
Speaker 3:And we thought at first, like many people like this, this makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 4:We should try this. This is awesome because like so many people.
Speaker 3:We were working like crazy, but we didn't have that spark alive. So we're like okay, Ariel, you should be more feminine, I should be more masculine, so what?
Speaker 3:ended up happening is Ariel would go into more of a caretaker mode and try to just kind of relax a little bit more.
Speaker 3:I would. I'm already a naturally very driven person, but I'm like let's see what happens if I go even more driven, let's go even more stoic, let's just stretch this polarity as far as it goes. And here's what we discovered after actually years of trying this out it only made things worse, not better. Now I know this is going to fly in the face of so many things that so many people have heard, so just listen to us, hear us out for a second. The reason why this did not work for us is because what ended up happening was is that both of us started to try to identify our own behavior under these labels of man-made bios and creation that being something that's masculine and feminine, when in reality, every single human being has almost like a, a blueprint in their mind of what they deem as attractive. And therefore, if you just hyper label something as as masculine or feminine and you think that that's the solution to curing intimacy, you can actually be doing the complete opposite.
Speaker 2:Not to mention, we both started to feel a little more resentful for towards each other, because we felt like we were trying to fit each other into a different box than we wanted to be in, and I felt like I had to be less entrepreneurial if I wanted to be quote unquote attractive to him.
Speaker 3:So all of this blew up one day when we're sitting in our kitchen and have you guys ever been in a position when you're talking to your spouse and, like you, just get word vomit, like you don't?
Speaker 3:mean to share everything that's that you're, that's boiling up, but you just you just go okay. Well, no, I'm sure right. So what happened was is all we've had all this pent-up resentment that was building because we still did not experience relationship intimacy. We were not enjoying that, and we figured out why because we were trying to do everything that everybody else was telling us to do. So.
Speaker 3:Eventually it just cracked one day and I told ariel hey, I'm sorry, this isn't working. And then she looked at me and she said why isn't this working? I've done everything you wanted me to do. I'm being more feminine, I'm being more nurturing and you're being more masculine. Like why is that still not working? Working. And I told her I'm like ariel, I don't think I want you to be more feminine, necessarily. I just miss the parts about you that I experienced earlier on in our relationship. And it turns out she did as well.
Speaker 3:So here's what we decided to do. We said, okay, forget this. But what if we just threw away every single label that was given to us by the world, or all of the seminars, or all the personal development, and we just asked ourselves a simple question what do you find attractive in me and what do I find attractive in you Sounds so simple because it is, but it's so powerful. So what we did in this conversation is Ariel, defined to me like hey, kyle I, I find you the most attractive when you are creative and you're driven and you're excited about life. Some of those qualities are considered quote unquote unquote feminine. Some of them are considered quote unquote masculine.
Speaker 3:I would say to Ariel hey, I love when you're confident, I love when you're expressive, I love when you are just doing the things that you love to do and I find that very attractive. And what we were identifying are not these labels that are put onto our relationship. We're identifying actual, real qualities about each other that already exist. They don't have to conform to anything that we just need to bring out more to the surface.
Speaker 2:That was the key Cause. Sometimes we got so locked down in entrepreneur mode, or what I call work mode, that we forgot that we were sometimes burying the natural tendencies and the natural things that we loved and the natural passions that we had um that we just needed to bring out more in order to showcase those same things that we fell in love with each other over.
Speaker 3:So for everybody listening honestly, you have two choices you can make. You can either A go down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out masculine and feminine polarity and become very, very confused because every website will say something different but that's an option.
Speaker 3:Or B. You can ask your partner what do you find attractive, and they can ask you what do you find attractive about your partner? And if you guys could figure out the answer to those things, you have a personalized and customized cheat code to integrate those aspects back into your life at will. So now Ariel and I know each other so well that when we are working and we want to go on a date night, we can instantly switch from work mode into romance mode by applying the things that we already know our partner finds attractive. So I don't know if that's going to work for us, but it for sure works for us.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I feel like there's so many couples out there that can benefit from that kind of process to go through, as well as the results that they get on the other side of it. So both going through it and talking to each other, but then also the discovery, because a lot of people again intent versus perception. You know, we get stuck in our concepts or paradigms and a lot of people don't know to do the work or won't won't do the work. But it's absolutely worth it if you can have a better partnership and a better marriage and a better business.
Speaker 4:So and when I think of the Proverbs 31 woman, like there's a lot of, you know, masculine character traits about you know she's actually she's kind of the perfect woman. I call my wife the Proverbs 31 woman as well, but like she's productive, she's driven, she's doing a lot but she's also taking care of her family. So you know the concept that oh, she's just got to be more feminine. I don't think is that accurate. And plus, you know every woman is different, every guy is different and the things that draw us together, you know every couple dynamics is very different. So that's really good, that's awesome. Love it Well. Hey guys, it's been awesome hearing about your journey, your insights. We've learned a ton, becca and I have as couplepreneurs ourselves. Where can our listeners find out more about couplepreneurs and connect with you online and in just with what you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's a couple of places. The first place is Instagram, so our handle is at couplepreneurs. We also have a Facebook community of over 4,500 couples at this point of this time. This recording that group is called Successful Couples in Business. Time of this recording, uh, that group is called successful couples in business and that's where, again, we brought together some amazing couples in business, whether they're in business together or separately, and it's just a really cool community where we never really had that community of entrepreneur couples, so we just decided to create it. So, um, so that's our Facebook group. And then we also have a podcast called the couple for North show nice and creative, and that's on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story and your wisdom. I know we learned a lot today. I believe there's great value in this, so hopefully everyone here will check it out, check out their handles and also the content that they offer, and we just wish you continued success and happiness and thank you so much for your time today Awesome Thanks for having us guys.