EP56 Treat Your Relationship Like A Business

Mike shares how applying business principles and custom tools can enhance personal relationships, especially marriage, through structured weekly check-ins and goal tracking. He discusses practical methods to improve communication, alignment, and shared goals with his partner, using simple tech solutions.

keywords

relationship management, personal development, marriage, goal setting, productivity, AI tools, Claude, weekly check-in, communication, financial planning

key  topics

Applying business measurement principles to marriage
Building a custom app with Claude for relationship check-ins
Weekly relationship check-ins and their benefits
Aligning on goals, finances, and personal growth
Using AI tools for practical relationship management
The importance of continuous improvement in marriage
Reflecting on wins and challenges weekly
Supporting each other's goals and needs

"Marriage is a strategic decision, like a business."
"What gets measured, gets improved."
"A 50K run is just a stubborn five."

Chapters

00:00 The Importance of Life Partnerships
02:40 Applying Business Principles to Relationships
05:54 The Weekly Us Meeting Ritual
11:19 Financial Alignment and Shared Goals
17:24 Continuous Improvement in Relationships

Find out more about  working with me or about applying to join the ILN. 

mike@smbmastery.com.au
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeadamscott/
https://theintentionalleaders.com/

Transcript

Mike (00:01.816)
Good to be back, guys and girls. Just me today. Troy is not joining me today, and that's okay. So something I wanted to talk about today is, you know, Troy and I were chatting, and he said something to me a while ago, and it was along the lines of the most important strategic decision you can make is the person you marry, right? Like your life partner. And I've got to say I definitely agree with that. I am extremely lucky to have a really good one of those.

She is amazing, keeps me grounded, keeps me humble, keeps me on my toes in a good way, and just makes me want to be better. She is an amazing mother to my kids, our kids. she's an amazing runner, she's very smart, all of these things. But it doesn't mean that marriage is always easy or life partnership or relationships, whatever you, whatever your context is. And as crazy as this sounds, and I know some of you are gonna roll your eyes at this, but you know.

We've started or should I say I've started applying a bunch of like business meeting management measurement principles to our relationship, our marriage. And that sounds crazy. It sounds like I really like, geez, Mike, can you not just leave the coaching at home or at work and and bring bring the mic at home? But but the principles really do apply and they actually make things a lot better in my experience. So today I wanna sort of share with you and and do two things at once. One, I wanna sort of

Just talk about we'll do an episode soon on how we're using AI day to day in a very practical way. Not like what it could do, what it can do, what it might be able to do, but just like some stuff that we're actually using day to day, Troy and me and our various escapades in the world. And this this sort of is a is a bit of a a prequel to that because I want to talk about how my wife and I have our Sunday sort of ritual and what I've built through Claude to really help us with this. And if you're listening to this, I would

Strongly encourage you to consider doing something like this with your partner, right? It doesn't have to be the same as ours. The idea is that I just give you some ideas and you go to Claude and you open up co-work and you build an app the way we've built an app with zero technical capability. Because it makes it exciting, it makes it real. And I really do believe that these principles apply in marriage as much as business. What gets measured gets managed. That which you cannot measure, you cannot improve. Things need consistent hard work. We need to be

Mike (02:25.709)
Planning out to see what's coming down the pipe. We need to be making sure we're aligned on the same goals. We need to be working towards something together. We need to be actively looking at what needs to be cleared, what needs to be repaired, what needs to be progressed. We need to be talking about our kids and what they need from us. And this is all very transferable from business to life. Weirdly.

A lot of people resist this and they kind of use this phrase of like, it should just be a bit more mor organic or natural. But I I don't actually think that that's common. I think if you're in a marriage where all of these things organically come up and get improved and spoken about and aligned, awesome, that's amazing power to you. I'm envious. But for me, I can see how without this work, fast forwarding twenty, thirty years into the future, your relationship can be too far gone to repair.

Right, like you can drift apart. And for me, this is about keeping the main thing the main thing. This is about continuous improvement into our personal lives using the tools that we know work in our business lives. So without further ado, let me let me get into that. So you you can't see what I can see on my little app, but that's that that's not a problem. Like you you I'll talk you through the process and absolutely you'll be able to figure this out for yourself. So

We call this the weekly us meeting. And to get really specific, we do this on a Sunday night while we are making meals for the week. So it's a really cool time. It's one of the times we'll put the TV on for the kids. They'll go watch a movie on a on a Sunday in the TV room. We're in the kitchen. We put in some nice music. And it's kind of a funny sight. It's like we're both in the kitchen. One of us is sitting on a chair in the kitchen with a laptop. The other one is cooking and we're swapping rolls. And it's it's it's pretty cool. So

We start off with this little app that I've built. I've programmed it in to just say, hey, give us a an icebreaker question, throw in a bit of a bit of humor. but I've really I've I've trained it to do the things that we want. So I'll I'll use ours as an example, but absolutely, you know, the idea here is that it sparks some some thinking and that you get into it yourself. So this was done in Claude. it's a it's an artifact. So I went into cowork, I gave it a couple of prompts and it built this out for me. It really didn't require any technical capability at all. And it's it's pr it's pretty damn cool. So

Mike (04:43.777)
We start off with a check in and it the first little line that it's giving me here it says date night is officially a line item, romance survives. And today's question it's asking us if I like for if I lie for a sitcom, what's this week's episode called? Right. And I that's that's actually quite cool. Because you know, you can have a little chuckle and you share that, you break the ice, you get into the container. Then we do one thing Mike's grateful for, one thing George is grateful for. Cool, done. Awesome, okay.

Anything to note, we make a note on that and we click to the next page. Now we've got our for those of you who know kind of like a life wheel, we've got our sort of life wheel together. So the categories that that we've got, which are which are quite standard, are connection and quality time, communication, appreciation and affection, intimacy, teamwork and parenting, shared vision and direction, money and finances. You of course can use whatever you want here, but the idea here is that Mike rates it out of seven and my wife rates it out of sorry.

Mike rates it out of 10, I'm looking at seven, and and my wife rates it out of ten. And it's really just about this little app that I've built shows you when you're in sync. It shows you when if you're more than two away from each other, there's a gap and there's a prompt that that that makes us talk about it. So if I'm giving a a five and she's giving a nine, it prompts to say, hey, there's a plus three gap here. Talk about this. And it's it's pretty cool. You're scoring your week very subjectively, but you're also seeing where you're aligned and where you're unaligned. And this can be really cool because

I might think that, hey, we really nailed teamwork and parenting this week, but she might feel like I really dropped her and let her down and I don't even know about that. And this will be exposed in this segment, which is really, really cool. So we're rating through this, we're going pretty quickly. We just go, hey, how do you feel? I go first, then she goes first, then I go first, then she goes first. And so we go through these one, two, three, four, five, six, seven different areas. So just to share again, it's money and finances, shared vision and direction, teamwork and parenting, intimacy.

Appreciation and affection, communication, connection and quality time. Okay, so that's that next segment. We move on to the next one. Now there's the money picture. So this is pretty cool. I've got a Google spreadsheet that shows our complete net worth. It shows all of our assets, all of our liabilities, it shows our monthly budget, which has taken me a hell of a long time to get right, but it it is really serving us the way we're managing our money month to month.

Mike (07:06.045)
and then it shows us our goal. Like we have a very particular financial goal. It's very specific for us. And this pulls from the Google Sheet and it it then calculates on the current trajectory exactly the date that we will hit that goal. So on the current situation right now, it's September 2033, right? And we can play with those numbers. I won't go into too much detail what that is, but we can play with those numbers to to to talk about it, right? So we've got

There's there's this beautiful dashboard that's pulling from a Google Sheet. It's got net worth and how it's moved since we met last week, up or down. So luckily it's moved up this week. It's got our very specific financial goal and when we're gonna hit that as of today. And then it's got a savings rate. So for me, it matters there's there's a risk that this derails into a financial planning podcast, but it won't. But for me, there's there's a massive number that I think about a lot. And and it's the it's the delta between.

How much we are earning as a as a family and how much we're spending as a family. And for me, I want to keep that really high. So because that's really how, you know, it's the ratio of of income to expenses. So for me, I I like to keep that at least at 30%. and it shows us our our that that rate. I'll just call it the savings rate, even though it's actually like an investment rate. It's the savings rate. So the headline is like, what's our net worth? Has it moved up or down?

When do we hit this huge, really awesome, life-changing financial goal that we're going for? In our case, it's exactly seven years and three months. And what is our current investment rate? Is it above or below our target? In this case, it's above, which is great. And then it tracks it over a graph. This is incredibly easy to do now. Like if you have this in a spreadsheet, you can just point Claude code to it and it'll, or Claude Cowork, and it'll it'll pull up this beautiful, beautiful dashboard. Then it gives a little bit of a interpretation because that's what Claude's so good at, just saying, like, you know.

Your savings rate is really strong. It gives the actual dollar amount. Then it's talks about the cash buffer, talks about that a little bit, talks about our financial goal and what levers we might pull. And then it does something quite cool for those of you that run businesses. It also pulls in a little bit about the business and the business's cash flow and the business's forecast cash flow and the business's profitability. Because in our case, and you'll know this if you are a family that is that primary income comes from being a business owner.

Mike (09:24.695)
The relationship and the connection between your personal finances and your business finances is almost always like inextricably linked. So this is just a view on like, okay, family finances are looking good, but how our business finances look, are they also looking good? And at the moment they are, and I'm very grateful for that. And we really love that. And that actually last week sort of precipitated a really cool conversation around how far we've come together. You know, we moved to Australia and took a massive step backwards and you know, where we've gotten to since we've been here. And there was a really, really cool

Really cool moment. Then we get into a little bit of reflection. So we each have an opportunity to talk about what went well with money this week, what didn't go so well with money this week. so just literally what went well, what was a challenge. We talk about this. And then we have, you know, over the next three months, what expenses do we need to provision for? So in our case, we've got a child's birthday coming up. I've got a bunch of travel for business, which means there's a bit of extra costs at home. we're bringing over a family member from South Africa, which will be really cool. So there's some costs there.

There'll be some entertainment while she's here. we we're busy doing a renovation at home with a beautiful new pool. So there's some stuff that comes around that. So it's really just getting very clear on like, okay, what's the budget for the birthday? What's the budget for birthday expenses? What's the budget for entertainment while our family members here that we want to have fun with? And it really just gets it out into the open. So then you've sort of gone through the money stuff and that's that's really cool. so then we move on. And in our case, we have a shared goal.

So my wife and I have committed to running the UTA 50 kilometer in the Blue Mountains next year. So this is pretty cool. This is obviously very specific to us. But this next section is really about we have this goal, right? And and just to be clear, like I literally just told Claude Cowork, like, hey, we're doing UTA fifty together. That's all I said. And it built this out for me. So it starts off and it goes, Hey guys, okay, there's a funny little

Funny little chirp that it gives us. A 50 kilometer is just a five kilometer that you were too stubborn to stop. Onward, guys. Then it gives us, in this case, it's 332 days to go. So Saturday, the 15th of May 2027, we've got 47 weeks left of training. Then it's built out last commitment. Did we do it? So did Mike do his commitment? Did Georgia do her commitment? You've got three options. Smashed it mostly there or missed it, right? This is just about accountability. Then we talk about the running that we did. How many total kilometers did we do? And what was the longest run?

Mike (11:46.136)
For both of us. And then we talk about how did training feel? Energy, niggles, wins. And again, like this is a shared thing that we're doing, which is really cool. You know, we're getting a bit competitive. We went into the same run on Sunday at different times because of the kids, and I wanted to beat her. So like I went harder here, and then she did longer. And there's some cool, really, you know, fun, competitive stuff there. And then we get to the next week's commitment here. So we say, cool, next week Mike will run this many, George will run that many. And then we ask, How is one way we'll support each other this week? And immediately it was like.

You know, she had said to me, Look, it really helps me if you tire the kids out and get them exercised when I'm running on Sunday, so that when I get back after a long run, I'm I'm not absolutely, you know, I'm buggered. And then at least the kids will be exercised and had some nice stimulation outside and and life is a bit easier. So that's the opportunity to say, like, how can we support each other? in my case, George has been absolutely amazing and she's making me these amazing overnight oats for breakfast every morning, which really helps me in a lot of a lot of ways.

So that's our very specific thing. I'm sure you'll have things in your world. Then we just talk it all through. So we talk about what were our wins this week, you know, all the things, money, family, business, just what were the wins, right? And then then we st then we shift into what is something that I appreciate about you. And you know, everyone's relationship is different, but we we don't do this enough. Like life is busy, life is intense, and it's a teamwork, it's a team effort raising a a family, especially if you're a if you're a business owner, right?

And this is a very important part to just say, hey, there's this thing that I really appreciate you, even if it's really small. And I I don't say it enough. And and I I just want to say, like, I I appreciate this about you. Right. So this is a this is a cool moment. and then we then we have this opportunity to in our language we say, is there anything we need to repair or do differently? Did we have an argument that we need to repair? Do we need to repair with one of the kids? Do we need to repair with somebody else? Or or what do we need to do differently? And I won't share exactly what came up because it's a bit personal last.

last weekend. But but there's a thing where this this gave my wife an opportunity to ask something of me that I don't think she had I don't know. I I don't think she felt she could. But then this allowed her to do it. And it was a really big shift because I had no problem let's say giving it to her, the thing she was asking for or doing it with her. And it it was a big deal. So it allowed this shift, which has now precipitated something that will do much better for our for our kids. So then we moved to the next part.

Mike (14:13.057)
And it's just sort of what's coming down in the next thirty, sixty, ninety days. So this isn't necessarily bills. We've kind of been through that already. This is like what's happening in school holidays, or I don't know, do we have a h travel coming up? Or is there whatever, like birthdays, just just anything. Like look ahead on the calendar, see what's there. You've almost always forget forgotten stuff. And this helps us to not have surprises. then we ask ourselves this question like, is there anything that we're not already doing that can move us towards our very, very singular financial goal?

Is there a lever we can pull? And we just add one concrete move. Then we do a little bit of Napoleon Hill style sort of visualization. So we sort of talk about, you know, it's a Monday morning, this financial goal has been hit, the kids are happy, we're exactly where we want to be. What does that day feel like? Who are you being for each other? And we just kind of reflect on that a little bit. It feels a bit awkward at first, but it's pretty cool. and then we just land with a word or two. so, like, you know, how do we feel about that that picture?

Then we agree on the to-dos. So we say, Mike, my one action is. Georgia, my one action is. And is there a shared action that we need to do? And then we sort of almost wrap up now and we just say, like, how am I feeling scale of one to ten? One being very calm, ten being very tense. And then we we sort of click the the conclude button and it gives us a really nice score. It averages, we can save it, all sorts of stuff. And then up at the top, there's a scorecard that tracks everything we've spoken about. There's a money tab that trends everything over time.

There's training tab that turns over time. And then there's just a history of our stress and our check-ins over time. This is just so cool for me. Like it's so cool, right? And and just to be clear, like that took me about 20 minutes to build with cloud cowork with zero technical knowledge, like no technical capability at all. It was just, hey, we're checking in every week. This is the purpose of the check-in. These are the things we want to check in on. And then you start to iterate on it. And

You know, Claude is the tool, cowork is the tool, but it really allowed my wife and I to spend an hour together and get a lot from it. Like we felt very connected afterwards. We felt very aligned. there were some challenging conversations, which were awesome because it allowed clarity and clearing. And that's what I think a healthy marriage looks like. Is it's it's work, right? It it's it you gotta put in the work. And the work is the boring stuff, the work is the mundane stuff, the work is

Mike (16:37.299)
How do we learn about person a line on personal finances? How do we bring in our our our our past and our futures and our different ways of thinking of the world into this, into this financial situation, this household inform situation, this parenting situation? And, you know, my wife is very different to me. She she's not like I could see in the beginning, she was like, geez, Mike, like don't coach me. Don't don't don't bring a framework in. Let's just talk, you know? And she loved this. She was like, that was really good. That was really, really good. So I really encourage you to

Think about the most important relationship in your in your life, right? Which is probably your your your partner, your your spouse. And think about it as as a multiplying opportunity. Think about the fact that if you're happy at home, if you're strong at home, that is a massive lever on your capacity to perform better as the operator. And as we always say, your business will never outperform the operator. And if you're anything like me, which I think in this case, everyone's always the same, if your home life is happy.

stable, predictable, healthy and and high high high energy, it's going to come into your business performance, your capability, your relationships everywhere else. So I really hope that this was helpful. this is not difficult to do. You know, I I read those things out not so that you can try and remember everything that I said. I mean you're welcome to, but more to kind of inspire you to take action and build something like this to help you

lean into the most important relationship in your world, the most strategically anti-advantageous or disadvantageous relationship in the world. Because I mean maybe you're one of the lucky people that just doesn't have to work on these things, but these relationships require hard work and as they should, they justify it. They they demand it in a good way. And this is a way that has really helped me to keep the cadence, to keep investing in each other, to keep the improvements happening, and to be stronger and stronger through the whole process. So

I hope it was valuable and and I really do hope that you take inspiration from this and go and go and build the thing to make a thing a better thing.