Dan Martell - 5 Tips To Build an Epic Marriage And Avoid Divorce

00:00:00.000 Hey there, I'm Dan Martell,

00:00:01.140 serial entrepreneur, investor, creator of SaaS Academy.

00:00:03.320 In this episode, I'm gonna talk to you

00:00:05.060 about something super personal,

00:00:06.540 which is how to have an epic marriage and avoid divorce,

00:00:11.000 which you may be asking yourself,

00:00:12.760 why are you even qualified to talk to me about this stuff?

00:00:15.740 I'm gonna get into it, but be sure to stay at the end,

00:00:18.240 where I'm gonna share with you a micro documentary

00:00:20.320 that I created with a friend called The Integrated Life

00:00:23.820 that's really gonna dive in deeper

00:00:25.480 into some of the areas I talk about

00:00:27.080 and give you an inside view into my life

00:00:29.640 from a few years ago to explain to you

00:00:31.820 kind of some deeper ideas of how I think

00:00:33.640 about family, et cetera.

00:00:35.080 But this is specifically about marriage

00:00:37.940 and how to have an epic one.

00:00:40.020 Let's get into it.

00:00:53.280 So I wanna share something pretty personal for me.

00:00:56.360 A lot of you guys probably don't know this,

00:00:58.000 But before my marriage to Renee, my wife, I was actually engaged before to another woman.

00:01:04.400 I was in my mid-20s and I was a workaholic and the whole thing fell apart.

00:01:11.160 Literally, probably two months before the wedding, came home one day, she dropped the

00:01:16.220 ring on the table, said she couldn't do it anymore and left. 1.00

00:01:19.340 And like, you know, the person I was there to today, I mean, I'm not even the same person.

00:01:23.500 I used to be incredibly selfish, incredibly work-focused, incredibly driven on, you know, success, and really didn't put my partner at the time, you know, as a priority in any way, shape, or form.

00:01:38.520 And I 100% own it, admit to it, and had to go on a totally different journey.

00:01:45.120 and that set me down a path of studying

00:01:49.200 because I was confused.

00:01:50.260 I was like, how am I so good at business

00:01:51.860 but so bad at relationships?

00:01:54.080 So I just kind of started thinking about like,

00:01:56.600 what are the books I need to study?

00:01:58.060 Who are the mentors I need to get?

00:01:59.600 Who are the role models I need to surround myself with?

00:02:02.180 What are the seminars I need to attend?

00:02:04.360 How do I invest in myself

00:02:05.540 around this specific area of my life?

00:02:08.060 And that was a three or four year journey

00:02:10.440 until one day I met this incredibly beautiful

00:02:14.020 and talented and smart woman named Renee Warren.

00:02:18.340 And we've been happily together now for almost a decade.

00:02:22.980 We ended up doing the babies first before the marriage,

00:02:25.880 not because it was unplanned, but it was just sequencing.

00:02:29.340 And it's been literally the most epic ride.

00:02:32.680 I mean, today, we both have our own businesses.

00:02:37.160 I make her breakfast every morning.

00:02:39.700 We do date nights every week.

00:02:41.280 We do quarterly retreats.

00:02:42.700 I mean, you know, a lot of people from outside,

00:02:45.100 you know, they think like, oh, couples goals.

00:02:47.140 But I'm gonna share with you in this video,

00:02:49.400 the specific strategies that we have to implement

00:02:53.060 to have an epic relationship,

00:02:55.120 an epic marriage for each other.

00:02:57.460 Because this, it's one of those things

00:02:59.140 where it just doesn't happen by chance.

00:03:00.740 You just don't happen to meet somebody

00:03:02.280 that you're compatible with

00:03:03.520 and have this, you know, happy ever after story.

00:03:06.860 So let's dive into these specific things that you can do

00:03:10.440 to create an incredible relationship in your life.

00:03:14.140 Number one, put your marriage first.

00:03:16.400 Now this might sound crazy.

00:03:17.860 I know for a lot of the women out there, 1.00

00:03:19.420 Renee had a hard time with this, but we have kids, okay?

00:03:22.540 We have two incredible little boys.

00:03:24.640 And my rule is we need to be good first

00:03:28.500 before we can be great parents to them.

00:03:30.560 And it's too easy to just say like,

00:03:32.480 our kids need us and we're second and whatever, whatever.

00:03:35.820 Trust me, your kids want one thing.

00:03:39.880 They literally want one thing.

00:03:41.400 They want mom and dad to be happy.

00:03:43.200 It sounds crazy, but I grew up, you know,

00:03:45.260 in a family where my parents got divorced at 13.

00:03:48.760 And trust me, at that point,

00:03:50.900 all I wanted from my parents is for them to be happy,

00:03:54.120 for them to be connected, for them to love each other.

00:03:56.700 And it's one of those things

00:03:58.180 where if you don't put it first,

00:04:00.060 it's too easy for you to drift apart.

00:04:02.040 It's too easy for you to sacrifice

00:04:04.760 in the name of some other thing

00:04:06.940 and then just get to the point

00:04:08.960 where it's just too hard to make it work again.

00:04:11.340 So my suggestion and my challenge to you

00:04:15.460 is put your marriage first amongst everything else

00:04:18.920 because somebody said, well, that sounds,

00:04:21.140 what if I have this big business opportunity

00:04:22.760 and I miss the opportunity to execute this?

00:04:24.820 You know what's really expensive is divorce, okay?

00:04:27.840 So people are like, oh, I can miss this opportunity

00:04:29.760 or I gotta do this or I gotta go, you know, whatever, whatever.

00:04:32.220 It's like your divorce is gonna cost you way more

00:04:34.580 than some missed business opportunity.

00:04:37.440 So that's number one.

00:04:38.060 Number two, always be dating, okay?

00:04:41.240 So one of the things I continuous,

00:04:42.880 and I'm not great at this,

00:04:44.480 but I literally tell myself all the time,

00:04:46.400 date your wife, date your wife, date your wife, 1.00

00:04:48.100 date your wife, date your wife. 1.00

00:04:49.060 I literally just remind myself when I come home,

00:04:51.380 be sure you're dating your wife, you're dating your wife.

00:04:52.880 What does that mean?

00:04:53.720 It means take care of yourself.

00:04:55.640 It means look good for your wife. 0.93

00:04:57.500 It means go on dates.

00:04:58.940 It means ask questions.

00:05:00.500 Like, this is what's funny.

00:05:02.740 You know, especially when I talk to like teenage boys,

00:05:04.780 I do a lot of work with at-risk youth.

00:05:06.920 And I always tell them, I was like,

00:05:09.040 the amount of energy and focus you put into trying to like,

00:05:12.360 you know, be with a girl that you have a crush on,

00:05:15.300 if you took that same obsession around the girls,

00:05:18.660 these young teenage boys,

00:05:19.720 and they know what I'm talking about,

00:05:21.000 and you applied that to success,

00:05:23.600 you would be wildly successful.

00:05:25.620 Like I've seen people walk four hours to meet a girl.

00:05:28.500 I've seen people stick around all day by their phone

00:05:30.980 to talk to a boy, et cetera, et cetera.

00:05:32.920 So what I remind myself is the mental state

00:05:36.820 I was in in regards to what was I leaning into?

00:05:41.000 When I was dating, what questions would I ask?

00:05:44.020 What things would I be interested?

00:05:45.340 Did I send text messages?

00:05:47.000 Would I tell them I love them?

00:05:48.220 Would I think of them, buy them something?

00:05:50.540 So always be dating to me is just a reminder

00:05:55.100 to make deposits into the bank account of your marriage

00:05:59.980 so that when you have to get a withdrawal,

00:06:02.320 if you don't put any deposits, there's nothing there.

00:06:05.500 And to me, that's just a mindset

00:06:07.320 and a belief system that I've created.

00:06:09.180 And again, I'm not perfect and I'm working on it,

00:06:11.100 but I wanna continuously date my wife 1.00

00:06:13.480 for the rest of my life.

00:06:15.240 Number three, weekly family meetings.

00:06:17.700 Now, this is something when we share

00:06:18.860 with other couple friends of ours

00:06:20.180 that they're always intrigued about.

00:06:21.580 My wife actually put this together.

00:06:23.240 If you search Family Academy

00:06:25.160 and it's the weekly family meeting agenda,

00:06:28.440 you'll probably find a download

00:06:29.640 because she had to put this together

00:06:30.740 because people would ask us all the time.

00:06:32.540 The weekly family meeting for us

00:06:34.380 is a 30 minute meeting that happens for us again every Friday right before lunch we get together

00:06:39.320 my wife and I and we go through an agenda now there's a bunch of different things we go through

00:06:43.500 but it's it's it's all the stuff that you would imagine in regards to like planning weekends

00:06:47.920 reviewing your goals reviewing your values reviewing um the things but the most important

00:06:52.960 for me is getting feedback okay I think feedback is the it's the the the juice of life if I don't

00:06:59.560 have anybody giving me feedback I don't know how I can get better so one question we answer for

00:07:04.240 each other is on a scale of one to 10, how have I been as a husband for you? Open broad question,

00:07:09.840 one to 10. Now I might get nine and a half. I might get a six. I might get a four. They happen

00:07:15.380 very rare, but they have happened and they hurt. But the cool part is because we're doing this

00:07:19.560 every week, I've got 52 opportunities every year to be a 10. I got 52 opportunities to get feedback

00:07:27.380 so that I know what I can be better. Now, some of you are saying, I already know what my wife 0.62

00:07:31.420 from my husband wants from me. I don't need to hear it from them again. That's crazy. You may

00:07:37.280 not know. You may not realize there's something that they need from you that is very simple,

00:07:42.580 very easy for you to change and would take no time whatsoever. Okay. So I'm going to highly

00:07:47.380 recommend, and it's not an opportunity to just unload on somebody. I actually, when we give

00:07:52.640 ourselves each other's score, the other person has to ask, like, do you want to know the reason

00:07:57.100 behind that score? It's like, yes, tell me. It's like, oh, this happened and this happened. Okay,

00:08:00.820 cool. I can see how that would work. Let me work on that. That's a commitment I make. I get it.

00:08:05.880 I understand it. Now, if I don't feel like working on it, you don't have to make a commitment, but at

00:08:10.240 least now, you know, but the family meeting, the weekly family meeting, 30 minutes dedicated and

00:08:15.680 focused between you and your partner to get on the same page, to make sure that you don't get

00:08:20.540 drifted too far apart for too long. Cause that's what happens. People are like, we are so not the

00:08:25.760 same person because they just drifted too far apart. It's like living with a roommate and you

00:08:30.360 need to make sure that you're aligned, you're focused, and you have the opportunity to get that

00:08:33.260 feedback. Number four, accept repair attempts. So repair attempt, what is it? Well, I read about it,

00:08:39.980 I think it was in the seven dysfunctions of highly dysfunctional marriages, some book like that.

00:08:45.000 Again, I did the homework. I read the books, Men Are From Mars, We're From Venus, etc. The Way

00:08:49.860 of the Superior Man. I wanted to study what does it mean to be a great partner? And in one of the

00:08:57.020 books, this idea of a repair attempt, I realize that you need, whenever you're fighting, okay,

00:09:03.000 and every couple fights, 100%. If you say couples don't fight, it's not true. Every couple fights.

00:09:08.540 What's different between the ones that have an epic relationship and a successful marriage

00:09:12.280 is they know how to say sorry and repair the fight situation faster. So repair attempt is verbal,

00:09:19.920 nonverbal. It can be something they do. But if your partner, you guys are fighting and they

00:09:24.980 come to you and they attempt to make a repair of the situation, I want you to put your ego

00:09:31.260 aside. It doesn't mean that you're agreeing with what happened. It doesn't mean that you're

00:09:35.520 accepting the behavior. It doesn't mean anything other than you say, all right, I'm willing to

00:09:41.800 engage in this repair attempt. And I just think of all the times, fights that we've had that went

00:09:46.680 on way too long, days sometimes that didn't have to because one of us actually made an attempt

00:09:52.920 to fix it, and the other person pushed them off.

00:09:56.160 Why?

00:09:56.640 There's a whole lot of reasons.

00:09:57.720 I'm not here to do psychoanalysis on anybody,

00:10:00.100 but there's a lot of reasons.

00:10:01.840 And all I'm gonna say is that

00:10:02.760 if somebody extends this repair attempt,

00:10:05.000 and this is one of the things they found

00:10:06.300 about successful marriages,

00:10:07.760 they were quick to accept it.

00:10:09.240 People that don't,

00:10:10.440 they're the ones that get on a track of divorce. 1.00

00:10:13.020 Number five, you do you.

00:10:15.860 Oh, I'm saying it.

00:10:17.480 You do you.

00:10:18.640 Here's what I mean by that,

00:10:19.940 is some of you are using your partners

00:10:22.420 as an excuse to fail.

00:10:24.780 You're using your partners as an excuse not to play big.

00:10:28.120 You're using your partners as a reason 0.92

00:10:30.160 that you can't succeed.

00:10:31.720 Guess what?

00:10:32.680 They are them and you are you.

00:10:35.660 And if you truly wanna win and have your own success,

00:10:40.840 you need to do you.

00:10:41.760 I think too often,

00:10:42.900 because I work with some high-performing entrepreneurs,

00:10:45.720 people that build very big companies,

00:10:48.600 and I often hear them say,

00:10:49.920 well, it's not fair

00:10:50.480 because my wife isn't into personal development 1.00

00:10:52.280 or my wife's got a fixed mindset 1.00

00:10:53.620 or my husband's got to, you know,

00:10:55.280 he doesn't believe in my vision

00:10:56.940 or he doesn't believe in my stuff.

00:10:58.060 Look, at the end of the day, you need to do you.

00:11:01.140 You need to, yes, put your marriage first,

00:11:03.700 date your partner, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

00:11:05.840 But you need to focus on the things you control,

00:11:09.300 which is the time you wake up,

00:11:11.060 the priorities of your projects,

00:11:13.200 how you manage your time, the planning,

00:11:14.980 the strategies, the people you surround yourself with,

00:11:17.220 your ability to overcome adversity.

00:11:18.900 Those are all things you can control.

00:11:21.680 And anytime we use our partners as a reason

00:11:25.320 to not move forward,

00:11:26.580 that's where resentfulness comes from.

00:11:28.380 And honestly, it's just not true.

00:11:30.140 So I don't care what situation you're in.

00:11:32.420 Well, you know, if you're in a traumatic,

00:11:34.260 you know, abusive relationship, obviously get help.

00:11:36.200 But if you're trying to build something

00:11:38.720 and your partner doesn't see it today, okay?

00:11:41.280 And it's not their fault.

00:11:42.620 Because the other thing is,

00:11:43.380 is that if you have a pattern of doing stuff

00:11:45.600 and not finishing them and doing them and not finishing it,

00:11:47.600 it's not their fault that they don't see that.

00:11:49.780 That being said, if you're doing it again,

00:11:51.820 you need to prove them wrong this time.

00:11:53.500 You need to stay consistent.

00:11:55.380 You need to push through when it gets hard.

00:11:57.080 You need to show them the result.

00:11:58.800 And look, if they don't get it and they don't support you

00:12:00.960 and it takes a while until they finally go,

00:12:02.840 I get it now, that's fine.

00:12:04.860 Just you, focus on you.

00:12:06.460 Take care of your health, take care of your business,

00:12:08.620 take care of your goals, your dreams, your aspirations.

00:12:11.720 And trust me, that energy will flow

00:12:13.960 throughout your partnership and marriage.

00:12:16.340 So quick recap of key strategies.

00:12:18.300 Number one, you have to put your marriage first

00:12:20.280 before your kids.

00:12:21.620 Number two, you always have to be dating.

00:12:23.960 Number three, weekly family meetings.

00:12:26.320 Number four, accept repair attempts.

00:12:28.320 And number five, you do you.

00:12:31.380 As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,

00:12:33.080 I wanna share an exclusive video that we produced.

00:12:35.700 It was called The Integrated Life.

00:12:37.200 You can click the link below to watch that micro documentary.

00:12:40.520 It's a couple minutes long

00:12:41.520 and it's really the beginning and a full day example

00:12:44.540 from a while ago of our life

00:12:46.420 when our kids were a little bit smaller,

00:12:48.880 but essentially that's the same way our life looks today.

00:12:52.780 So if you wanna see the behind the scenes

00:12:54.200 of how things work in our family, the integrated life,

00:12:56.580 you can click the link to watch the micro doc.

00:12:58.240 If you like this video, please share it with your partner,

00:13:01.460 get them on board with your ideas and vision

00:13:03.900 for what's possible in your life.

00:13:05.740 Share this video, click the subscribe button.

00:13:08.660 And as per usual, I wanna challenge you

00:13:10.320 to live a bigger life and a bigger business,

00:13:12.100 and I'll see you next Monday.

00:13:16.420 Thank you.

Dan Martell - January 25, 2021

5 Tips To Build an Epic Marriage And Avoid Divorce

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