The Takeover with Tim and Cindy

Making Decisions in Business as a Couple (Finding Common Ground)

• Tim and Cindy Dodd • Episode 60

Share episode

Planning on running a business with your partner?

Learn how to keep things smooth sailing with our top 5 tips on making decisions in business as a couple. Discover the secrets that will help you and your partner make decisions more effectively, stay aligned, and build a thriving business together.

Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:

  • Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points, this Free E-book will give you the tools you need for predictability and scalability in your marketing and sales efforts. Disclaimer: Only download if you want more customers!

Join The Takeover Community:

  • Sign up for The Takeover newsletter and get the latest marketing tips, sales strategies, and business insights delivered straight to your inbox. Join a community of entrepreneurs & high-performers dominating all areas of Sales & Marketing. Sign up for the newsletter.

About The Hosts:

  • Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy: Instagram

About PEMA.io:

  • PEMA.io is a Inc 5000 Outbound Marketing Agency specializing in Enterprise Sales & Appointment Setting. With over 7-years and 1,000+ clients served in the industry, PEMA is the leading agency for cold outreach appointments & systems. Learn more about PEMA.io here: www.pema.io/discover
Tim:

The way in which you make decisions as a couple in business will be the number one factor in whether you are successful with your business or whether you struggle. If you look at any of the most successful millionaires, billionaires, anyone that's a high performer in their field. It is the way that they make decisions is precise, it's calculated and we've done a ton of research on the highest performing people. With what way do they make decisions? And today we're going to walk you through exactly what we found for the formula to make sure you're making great decisions in business.

Cindy:

So here are the five steps that you can use to make decisions and find common ground as a couple in business. Step number one is to make sure you have a common vision and common goals. The best way to have direction when you are making decisions in business is you have to have common vision and goals. Without a common goal or common vision, you and your significant other or your partner are going to be out of alignment, and the way in which you get into alignment is by having a common goal or common vision. For example, if you're making a decision on what marketing channel to go after or whether or not to hire or fire an employee, you know what decision to make based on if that is going to bring you closer or further away from the goal.

Tim:

So the number one and most important step is to make sure you have goals and your vision very clearly laid out as step one Step number two is have rules on the way that you make decisions so that you're not trying to figure out how you're gonna make a decision every single time.

Tim:

If you create a process, hey, we don't make decisions after 4 pm, for instance, because by that time we're up at five. By that time our brain is fried. So we made a rule don't have any significant decisions made after 4 pm. You could have other rules, such as like hey, we're not going to invest in certain type of channels for marketing or for business if we don't have the liquid cash. Now, we're pretty big believers in taking investments on to grow cash flow things, but you have to make that decision on your own. So what are all the rules in which you're going to make sure you're making the right decisions every single time, so that you're not trying to come up with the rules every time you got to make a decision? Make sure it's well thought out, it's agreed upon, so that you both are in alignment, versus arguing about how you should make the decisions in the moment.

Cindy:

Yes, adding rules to how you make decisions makes it very objective versus subjective, because, let's be honest, business gets emotional when you are in the heat of the moment trying to make a really strong decision. It can get tough, so you want to make sure that you keep it objective by setting rules. Step number three is to revisit past experiences to avoid making the same mistakes. The great thing about learning and growing in business is that you make mistakes and you learn from them. So when you're making decisions in business, use this as an opportunity to go back and revisit those past mistakes and lessons learned, but you're not repeating the same mistakes over and over. There's a lot of knowledge and wisdom to be gained by going back on your previous experiences and reflecting on them to pull out the lessons learned.

Tim:

One of the biggest mistakes people make is where they're revisiting past mistakes as they're bringing them up in the heat of an emotional moment versus, hey, let's look at the past mistakes, let's find the solutions, let's figure out why they went wrong and change your course of action versus bringing things up as a way to hold things against each other. The other part of the framework is that you don't want to be repeating the same mistakes over and over and over. You want to make sure new mistakes are going to happen. As you're going into new business ventures and new growth, like you're going to have a lot of challenges and struggles. The biggest point in this is you don't want to repeat the same problems over and over again, and so this is why it's such a powerful thing to revisit them and say what went wrong, how could we have done it better and how are we going to do it better, moving forward.

Cindy:

And a tip here for married couples this is not an opportunity to bring up past mistakes that your partner did. Keep this very objective and focused on the business.

Tim:

And you kind of got to stay away from that. You always do Stay away from you always. That's a really bad way to start a sentence.

Cindy:

Step number four One person has the final say. In your business, you should have very clearly defined roles. For example, in our business I run operations and Tim focuses on marketing and sales. In operations, I have the final decision making power on any of the decisions that we make around operations. Of course, tim puts in his advice, his feedback and support, but because I am head of that role, I make the final decision and vice versa when it comes to Tim and marketing and sales. So the key here is number one have clearly defined roles. And number two don't bypass your partner when they are making a decision that pertains to their role.

Tim:

I would even say on this, it's be very clear about who has what decision making power. And then trust them and don't hold it against them when the decision they make doesn't work out, because that's part of businesses. You're going to make some decisions that work and some that don't work out. When you have very clear hey, you know, I'm focused on the marketing and the sales and we, we go back and forth, but at the end of the day, I make the decision and operations. Uh, cindy does the same thing, and when we have that clear distinction, it removes the ambiguity of like fighting over the decision and it allows us to work together and really focus in. You know, as a light and a broad spectrum is not going to hurt you. You put that into a laser. It's very focused, it could cut through still, and that's where we're looking at is to have very focused roles where we can put our focused attention on one thing and trust the other person to make the right decisions and not hold it against them when the decision was wrong, remember, go back to the other step where we say why was that wrong? How can we do it different in the future?

Tim:

Step number five is fight and unite. And when we're talking about fighting, this is not some emotional. You always do this and you always do all the no, this is a fight. We can have our data-driven hard stance on an opinion of where we think the business should go or some projects should go, and we can be very hard in our stances as long as we're open to talking. But at the end of the day, once we've made a decision, that's the fight. Once we've made a decision, it's got to be unite. Okay, we've made this decision as a team, as business partners, as a couple, we are both going to be aligned and pushing. Made this decision as a team, as business partners, as a couple, we are both going to be aligned and pushing for this decision. And if it messes up, we're not going to be. Well, you know, I always wanted to do it the other way. No, it's fight and unite so that once you've made that decision, you both are 100% on board with that decision and in alignment.

Cindy:

And when we say fight, what that means is you bring all the facts to the table, bring data, bring stats, make sure you are strong on your stance, on why you believe that direction is the best decision to make and, as to mentioned, you support the heck out of your partner when you make a certain decision and trust. So fight and then unite. So that was the five steps on how to successfully make decisions as a couple in business. We hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you are not yet subscribed, make sure to click that subscribe button, comment any questions that you have right below this video and we'll see you really soon. Bye for now.