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Michelle May O'Neil - Relationship & Wealth Expert | Why 50% of Marriages Fail and How to Beat the Odds · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  Why are we so reactive in today's day? We're so focused on being busy that we forget to stop
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  and plan. When you get married, you have a divorce plan, whether you know it or not, when you
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  get married, 50% first marriages in America end in divorce within seven years. She's not just a lawyer,
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  she's the attorney people call when everything's on the line. Michelle Mayo Neil is a powerhouse
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  in the world of high stakes family law known for navigating the emotional and legal storms of
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  divorce, custody battles, and complex asset disputes with unmatched clarity and strength.
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  Average length of marriage in the U.S. is seven years. If you make it past seven years,
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  you're beaten the odds, then you might need marriage insurance. Before you get married,
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  you've got to talk about the money part, because if you don't, then you've got a problem
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  from the very beginning of the marriage. She's the founding partner of O'Neil Wisaki and her
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  sharp strategy courtroom presence have made her a trusted voice for clients in the most critical
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  moments of their lives. When others hesitate, Michelle leans in and she's just getting started.
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  A lot of times you'll hear people say that money or finances is one of the biggest downfalls
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  of a marriage. I don't necessarily believe I think that's the result of a lack of communication.
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  All that we have, all that any of us have is time. How we spend our time is really our wealth.
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  Michelle, one of my favorite quotes that you've said, I think it speaks to your work both within
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  family law and divorce court, as well as some of the work that you do with entrepreneurs and
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  business owners that have to deal with these family law situations. I'm negotiating my divorce
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  before I ever got married and I love this quote because it speaks to the importance of being
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  proactive. So I think this is sort of just a small little sample of how you think through
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  life, business, success, complicated situations. When did you first realize how important it was
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  to be proactive in anything in life? Without really knowing that I was learning it, I learned from
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  my father. My father was an entrepreneur. I think what now we would call a serial entrepreneur.
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  He owned a lot of different small businesses. He owned record and tape stores back when we had
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  records, albums and cassette tapes. He went through all of the different versions of music
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  back in the 70s and 80s. He owned an underground utility construction company. Lots of different
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  small businesses, but whenever I was young, he would pose different business issues to me that he
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  was dealing with. At the time, I thought that he actually really wanted my input, and maybe he did,
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  now I know that he was probably educating me, testing me, teaching me how to think, and teaching
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  me how to think strategically. He didn't use the word strategy or strategic thinking, but he was
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  teaching me how to parse information, how to think through a problem, and think not just one move
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  in front of your face, but five moves down the board to analyze the ripple effects of what a
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  decision would be to how it would affect the business and how it would affect the employees or
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  the customers or whatever was going on in the business to the long-range decision, not just the
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  short-range decision. It was really a life lesson for me that he taught me from a very young age,
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  elementary school, junior high, and it was something that both of my parents being entrepreneurs
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  influenced me in decision-making from boyfriend decisions, little girl drama decisions,
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  to we have this problem in our business, and they would encourage me to participate in that
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  decision-making. I think that first of all, your dad's a smart guy for bringing you into the
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  business discussions early on, I appreciate that, but I think that most people, especially in
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  today's age, it seems like everybody's always reactive to everything, and your area of expertise
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  is so diverse, because I'm looking at your resume of family law, which has 175 apolic cases,
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  four Supreme Court arguments. You've been around the block, you've done a couple of things,
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  right? Even in that, you work with a whole bunch of business leaders and entrepreneurs,
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  high net worth, ultra high net worth, because these are the people that are trying to figure out
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  their lives and their relationships, and whether or not it's in relationships or business,
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  I feel like a fair amount of people, not everyone, some people map out moves,
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  but I think a fair amount of people are quite reactive, and they don't think five steps ahead,
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  and I think that that makes life just harder than it has to be, whether or not it's in the business,
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  whether or not it's in your home with your relationships. Why are we so reactive?
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  Why? Because when you say it, everyone's going to think, yeah, for sure, it does make sense to
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  plan the relationship. It does make sense to negotiate. I want to know where that line came from,
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  I negotiated my divorce before I got married. That's obviously a strategic mindset,
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  but why are we so reactive in today's day? You know, I think we're just so busy. I think we are
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  all so busy that we are focused on the next busy thing we're doing. We're reacting to the next
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  thing we're doing. We're so focused on being busy that we forget to stop and plan, and we don't
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  take the time to stop and plan. Whether it's your marriage, whether it's your divorce,
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  whether it's your year, your life, your business, your kids' lives, what do you want for your children,
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  long term, any of those topics. We don't take the time to stop and have what we would technically call
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  a strategic meeting, but we don't have to call it that. We're just so busy reacting to life
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  that we aren't being proactive. I think that my approach at least is that strategy is just a
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  topic we're not talking enough about. When you ask me about negotiating your divorce before
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  you get married, that comes from the concept of planning your premarital agreement. A lot of
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  people think that premarital agreements are just this taboo topic. They are somewhat superstitious
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  about premarital agreements that they are something that are very controversial. My reaction to
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  that is you have life insurance. You have health insurance. You have car insurance. I mean, it's
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  kind of like business insurance. It's kind of like marriage insurance. You hope you don't need it,
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  but you have, when you get married, you have a divorce plan, whether you know it or not,
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  when you get married. That is the law of whatever state if you get divorced. There is a plan for
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  your divorce. Explain that. What do you mean a divorce plan that's the law of the state? There
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  are laws that dictate how your divorce is going to work if you get divorced. All a premarital agreement
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  does is let you control how your divorce is going to work versus how the law tells you your divorce
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  is going to work. It gives you some amount of control over that and you can negotiate that in advance.
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  And if you want to have that kind of control, great. Good for you. If you don't and you want to just
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  let life happen to you, then that's your progative. You can be reactive to it or you can be proactive
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  to it. That's okay. I had a mentor one time that called that ostrich dancing. Do you know what
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  ostrich dancing is? I've never heard that term before. What's ostrich dancing? That's because you're
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  not from Texas. So ostrich dancing is when you stick your head in the sand, you have sand here in
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  Miami. So you stick your head in the sand and you wiggle your rear end and you call it dancing.
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  That's basically ignoring reality. So you can do the ostrich dance and ignore reality. And
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  reality is that in marriage, a first marriage 50% or so of first marriages in America end in divorce.
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  Within seven years. Wow. A second marriage. About 75% of those end in divorce. Is that because
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  people are already used to going through the first one? I mean, it's just the statistics.
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  And is that, is that, are those numbers going up or down? Statistics say now those numbers are
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  going down, but not for the reasons that you think. It's not because somehow people are more committed
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  to marriage. It's actually the opposite. It's because young people now are actually less committed
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  to marriage. They're actually just not getting married. That's not good either. No, no. They're
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  actually just more jaded about marriage and they're shacking up. They're not getting married.
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  Because they've seen what happens with if their parents got divorced or and I'm sure that you see
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  this because you deal with relationships. But I can't imagine at the current environment of social
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  media and I'm sure only fans and all these other, all these other things that make it seem like
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  the grass is greener on the other side. I'm sure none of that helps either. Well, it doesn't help.
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  You know, there, there is a, a movement away from religious beliefs, moral, moral beliefs,
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  those type of things. A lot of the concept of marriage is based in religious beliefs. The young
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  people aren't as committed to religious beliefs, so they don't believe in that. They don't necessarily
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  believe in the longevity of a relationship. So why get married if you're just going to get divorced?
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  You know, so, so if we accept the reality that the unfortunate chances, the statistics are
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  against you and the average length of marriage in the US is seven years. So if you make it past seven
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  years, you're, you're beating the odds. Then, then you might need marriage insurance. And that's
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  where the prenup. And that's where the prenup comes. And so, you know, if you have those, those
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  difficult conversations up front, then, then a divorce lawyer would tell you you're probably going
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  to have, you know, a better chance of success rate in the long run. And, and, and the way I look at it
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  is, you know, you can negotiate that premarital agreement. You can set out the rules that will
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  apply to you. Now, we're not talking about, you know, the kids, I've, you can read plenty of,
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  of, of silly articles about silly things that people put in their premarital agreements about,
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  you know, well, if you gain more than 50 pounds, then, you know, then I get custody of the children
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  or silly things like that. That's not what we're talking about. We're really talking about how to
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  handle property, how to handle, you know, separate property, property we gather together, you know,
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  Alamoni, if you're in a state that has that, those type of things, then we're handling money.
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  That's, that's really what we're talking about. And, and the idea is, let's talk about the money
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  in advance. And then, let's put it in a drawer and move on with our life and hopefully never need it.
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  But if we get to this place where we need it, we've already settled this. And then we hopefully
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  won't need the lawyers and we won't have to fight about it. We will have already had the discussion
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  about how we're going to split up the money, the property, the assets and the debts.
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  You know, I'm curious why people are so hesitant about prenops. I guess it feels like there's
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  not enough faith in the relationship. Is that generally what people say when their partner says,
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  I'd like to do a prenop? I think it, I think it just feels yucky whenever yucky's a lawyer word,
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  right? I think it just feels yucky. Whenever you're in love and you're getting married, I think you've
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  got hearts in your eyes and you're all in your feels or in your emotion. And, and, and, and, and
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  it's real easy to feel like marriage is all about the emotion. And I think people fail
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  in that moment to understand that marriage is not just an emotion, it is a business.
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  That, you know, marriage is great and the feelings are great and yes, it is an emotion and the emotion is
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  very important to a marriage, but marriage is also a business. And the business aspect of the
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  marriage, the partnership aspect of the marriage, it, it cannot be understated. The, the, the partnership
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  aspect, the business aspect, the running the business of the marriage that cannot be understated.
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  And, and that really is something that needs to be dealt with before you get married, you've got
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  to talk about the money part because if you don't and, you know, you, you get married and then all
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  of a sudden after you're married, you figure out that one spouse wants to live in the country and
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  and raise chickens and the other spouse wants to live in a high rise in Miami and build big
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  businesses and, and, and, and eventually own airplanes. I mean, that's two very different lives
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  and two very different monetary aspects, right? Then you've got a problem from the very beginning
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  of the marriage. So those are the type of things you've got to talk about in advance. And, you know,
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  and, and working out that business aspect and working out your primarital agreement, you know, that,
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  that leads to those conversations. I'm curious. You work with a whole bunch of high net worth,
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  ultra high net worth entrepreneurs. And entrepreneurs seem to be more strategic than the average individual
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  because if you aren't, I don't think you can be a successful entrepreneur. There's has to be some
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  point where you have to be at least a little bit strategic or your business isn't going to,
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  isn't going to last too long, but unless you're just lucky. But do you find that entrepreneurs put
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  more thought or care, the same amount of care they put into their business into their relationships
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  or is there no correlation at all? You know, I think everybody falls into the trap of, of approaching
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  relationships with their heart and not as much their head. So I, I do wish that everybody would
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  approach relationships a little bit more strategically, but I think across the board, whether it's
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  businesses or, or frankly litigation or relationships, I think, I think strategy is an area that we
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  all could use a little bit more of in our lives. But, but that's my approach to the world, not necessarily
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  everybody else's. I want to talk about how relationships can impact your business. I think it's
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  very important, but just in terms of just touching on this topic, there's a few, a few more
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  questions. What are some of the biggest financial mistakes that you see couples making when they enter
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  into a relationship or I guess marriage? I mean, I think not being on the same page with each other
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  about your financial goals is one of, one of the biggest mistakes. You know, you're always going
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  to have a partner who's a spender, a partner who's a saver, you know, and that's that's somewhat
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  natural. But I think you have to have an agreement on financial goals. You have to have an agreement
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  on where we're headed. And having those marriage meetings, having, you know, the, the, the, the
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  commonality of what, what our goals are, you know, if, you know, if, if we want to save to go on a
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  big trip or we want to save to buy a big house or, you know, what are the goals that we're trying to
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  achieve? You know, do we want our children to be in this private school or do we want a homeschool
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  or, you know, what are those goals and those, all of those type of goals have financial outcomes
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  that you have to plan for? And if you're not on the same page and, you know, one, one spouse,
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  you know, has a very large spending budget and the other spouse thinks we're saving to, you know,
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  achieve some financial goal, then that's going to spell disaster. And a lot of times you'll hear
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  people say that that money or finances is one of the biggest downfalls of a marriage, which
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  I don't necessarily believe. I think that's the, the result of a lack of communication. And the
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  communication is where that needs to start. What's your perspective on, on business partnerships
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  between spouses? Do you think that's a smart idea or not? You know, I think that it can be a beautiful
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  idea. I think that it can turn into a very successful business because who knows you better?
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  You eliminate the issue with trust. Abs, you should. Yes, healthy. If you don't, you've got bigger
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  problems. But yeah, no, I mean, I think that it can make for a very successful, very beautiful
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  business because right, I mean, who knows you better? Who knows your strengths? Who knows your
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  weaknesses? Who knows before you even open your mouth? But you also have to very cleanly define
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  the roles in the business and everybody goes, stay in their lane, right? You've got to, you've
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  got to know who's doing their, this job and who's doing that job. And then you also have to define
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  those roles at home. And so, you know, at, at the office, you know, one person may be in charge,
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  maybe the CEO and the other person may be in charge of some job duties and everybody's got to do
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  their jobs. And if, and if somebody's not doing their jobs, you've got to be able to openly
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  communicate about that without getting all in your fields. And then at home, somebody different
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  may be the CEO at home. And everybody's got to stay in their lane. But through, again,
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  communication is the key to that. It's always about communicating. It's always about communication
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  at the end of the day, business, life, relations, everything you can communicate. So you've had
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  a beautiful marriage yourself. So you had an 18 plus year marriage? We're going on 19. Okay,
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  so obviously you figured out some things that have worked out. You know, all of life is figuring
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  it out, but it's all about communication. It is all about communication. Now, I like understanding
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  a little bit more about your story. And obviously going on 19 years, you, again, figured out something
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  that's worked. You drafted your own prenup, but then you built in an expiration clause.
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  Explain that. What does that mean for somebody who's trying to figure out, just explain that first.
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  Yeah. So, yeah. So I drafted my own premarital agreement. And of course, he had his own lawyer and
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  you didn't represent him. No, I did not. I did not, but I did draft my own premarital agreement.
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  And he had his own lawyer to talk about it with him. But I felt like for us, what was right for us
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  was that after it was a 10 year expression, but after 10 years, I felt like that was long enough
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  for us to know that we'd beaten the odds. And, and that for me, at that point, you know,
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  the concept that what was mine was mine was his and all that, you know, we ought to have been past
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  that so that we were going to have kind of a, everything is ours idea, you know. So, um,
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  and, and, and, and really once we kind of got past that 10 years, we couldn't even remember
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  where the premarital agreement was. Well, that's the thing. Things change so much over a marriage.
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  And I'm curious, that can be good and bad because you can set up a, a pre-nuptial agreement
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  and then fast forward 10, 15, 20 years situations have changed. And it may not be,
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  I think that actually I won't, I won't bring up people into this podcast or aren't part of it.
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  It doesn't matter. I, I know celebrity couples where the pre-nupt that was signed at the beginning
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  wasn't really reflective of the situation that was the reality whatever years later.
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  Right. And, and that, and that can be one of the, one of the problems with the pre-nupt is that,
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  you know, you can have these assets that you're identifying as separate property or, you know,
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  that I exist at the time of the marriage. And then life happens and things kind of roll forward.
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  And then nothing looks the same after a while. And, um, and so either you have to, you have to update it,
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  which then can create stress in the marriage or resentments. Um, or you just have to kind of roll
• 23:24
  with it and figure it out later, which doesn't really help anything, you know. Um, so yeah, I mean,
• 23:32
  so for me personally, that's, that's kind of what, what it looked like was that, you know, as things
• 23:37
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  if you're hiring indeed is all you need. And then what is the what is the issue with not having
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  anything and a divorce happens and both people have been contributing and they've both purchased.
• 25:49
  This is when lawyers get involved and this is when it gets expensive and ugly. So what's the
• 25:53
  outcome when there's all of these shared resources and there's no plan in place? Well, I mean,
• 25:58
  just the reality is everybody has a premarital agreement, whether you know you do or not.
• 26:06
  Because if you don't have a premarital agreement, you have the existing law of the state that you
• 26:11
  end up getting divorced. Because the law has some plan for your divorce. You just don't know what
• 26:17
  the law is. So when you get divorced, the law says how your assets are going to be divided.
• 26:26
  The problem is that then you can fight over how the law is going to apply to your assets
• 26:34
  and how the law is going to divide it all. And sometimes the law can be a little complex as to
• 26:40
  what that means. And are we going to divide this asset or how much is that worth or am I
• 26:51
  entitled to some reimbursement claims? And different states have different laws as to how that
• 26:58
  applies. And some states have alimony. We're sitting in Florida. Florida has a hefty
• 27:04
  alimony clause. Texas does not have alimony hardly very, very small alimony statute that very rarely
• 27:12
  comes into play. To arguing where you get divorced is actually a part of the strategy.
• 27:19
  Yes. I get many calls from men who live in Florida who have very hefty alimony
• 27:24
  obligations that really want to move to Texas and try to get out from under them. And I have to
• 27:29
  tell them like, I'm sorry, you lived in Florida. When you got divorced, there's no getting out from
• 27:36
  that, you know. So, you know, that again, maybe is a strategy discussion that maybe we should have
• 27:42
  had earlier negotiating before you get married. Texas is a pretty good place to live if you have
• 27:50
  certain situations. That's funny. That's so funny. And then the other thing that you deal with,
• 27:57
  and I'm sure that you hear a lot, this man is the plan fallacy. Like where women don't think that
• 28:04
  they have to get a prenup because they just assume that they're, what does that mean exactly?
• 28:09
  Well, what I tell women is the man can't be the plan. The man ain't the plan. What I tell women
• 28:16
  is that they need to, you know, have their own strategy for making money and not marry for money
• 28:23
  because if the average marriage is seven years, then what's going to happen is if you marry for
• 28:29
  money, the man with the money is eventually going to leave you and marry somebody younger,
• 28:34
  cuter, sweeter, prettier because us women, we eventually age. We don't get to push a pause button
• 28:40
  and stay young forever. So, I try to tell women, young women, especially who some of them think that
• 28:48
  they're just going to be pretty and skinny and fit and find them a wealthy husband
• 28:59
  that that may not be a very good long-range strategy. So, I encourage the young women to get
• 29:07
  an education and have a backup plan to that because the man ain't the plan.
• 29:15
  Also, I mean, I'm assuming that if they just think they're going to get married and get a payout,
• 29:20
  is that, is it as simple as that? Like, if a woman marries a man and like, you know, a year later,
• 29:26
  he wants to divorce, he doesn't give her half of everything he's ever made.
• 29:30
  No, because anything that, I mean, in any state, doesn't matter which state, any of the states,
• 29:37
  everything that he had before the marriage belonged to him. So, at best,
• 29:44
  whatever happened during the marriage, she might be entitled to a portion of, but that's it.
• 29:51
  And, yeah, I mean, you know, there are some women who have had some sort of windfall happen
• 29:58
  from a short-term marriage, for marrying a wealthy man, but that's rare. So, yeah, that, I mean,
• 30:06
  that's just not a good plan. Not everyone is going to be a Mackenzie Bezos.
• 30:09
  Right. Right. And, you know, more often, those wealthy men are going to have very smart lawyers
• 30:18
  who are going to tell them to get good pre-naps. And so, the lifestyle, while married, may be very good,
• 30:27
  but whenever, you know, something happens and the marriage goes south, you know, the end result
• 30:34
  is going to be that unfortunately, the women are going to find themselves with a very different
• 30:41
  lifestyle after the divorce is over. Tell me a story of one of the more ridiculous cases without
• 30:47
  naming names or dropping any particulars, just something that would highlight the importance
• 30:52
  of everything that you're talking about. If you don't do it, this is what could happen.
• 30:56
  Yeah, I, you know, I've seen cases where, you know, probably the more egregious type of
• 31:03
  hidden asset cases are the, you know, super high net worth cases where there are offshore assets
• 31:12
  because they're, you know, now the government is getting smarter, but there are ways to hide assets
• 31:18
  offshore where, where it is difficult to trace. And what I tell especially women who are like,
• 31:26
  I know he's hiding assets. Well, if he's hiding them from the tax return and the IRS,
• 31:32
  I have no greater power than the IRS, you know, I am not a better sleuth than the IRS.
• 31:41
  So, you know, if he's not reporting it on his taxes, I'm probably not going to be able to find it
• 31:46
  either, you know. So, you know, unless you've got a lot of resources to pay me to, you know, go to,
• 31:53
  you know, licked in stone or the Bahamas or something like that to go and poke around, I mean,
• 31:59
  I'm not going to be able to find it either, you know, back, back 10, 20 years ago,
• 32:04
  there were some things you could do on the internet to find assets, but, you know, since 9-11,
• 32:11
  a lot of those got shut down. So, now it's harder to, with all the technology we have,
• 32:17
  it's harder to find hidden assets in 2020. That sounds backwards. Yeah, it is harder. It actually
• 32:24
  is. There used to be a little bit more sleuthing you could do on the internet before,
• 32:28
  but with a lot of the internet security now that it is actually harder to find things.
• 32:35
  Yeah, I mean, you know, public records are more available now, but you can't find, you know,
• 32:42
  a lot of personal information that isn't actually public record. So, yeah, so it's a little bit
• 32:49
  harder now. It makes sense. And tell me, so, so if you, if you end up leaving somebody
• 32:57
  before the entrepreneurs, if they are co-owners in a business, are there things that they should be
• 33:02
  thinking about in regards to their business, because wouldn't their spouse get part of a business,
• 33:08
  and now they're sitting on the cap table of a business? If they, if the business is owned before
• 33:12
  the marriage, generally, no. But a lot of times what we see is, for example, if the business is
• 33:19
  owned before the marriage, then there's a marriage. And then maybe there's some
• 33:26
  change in tax law. And, and the CPA says, because of this change in tax law, I recommend that you
• 33:35
  change your entity structure from this type of entity to this type of entity. Okay. And they
• 33:40
  change the entity type during the marriage. So this could be if you go from like an LLC to a,
• 33:45
  to a C Corp, something like that. Okay. That changes the characterization from the separate
• 33:52
  property to community property. So then all of a sudden it's partly hers. That's wild. Uh-huh.
• 34:01
  And, and I, I mean, literally, I see this all the time. And the CPA doesn't understand marital
• 34:09
  property law. And the CPA has now basically created a situation where the wife that has an
• 34:17
  entitlement to the business that the guy started 20 years ago. And then now his partners are now
• 34:24
  partners with the wife. She has shares in the business. She can vote. Right. Right. And so, you
• 34:31
  know, what I, what I wish at that point was that somebody had called me along the way and said,
• 34:36
  Hey, Michelle, what do you think of this? Talk to me about some of the things that, um, people
• 34:44
  don't do well in terms of strategizing around their business, their growth. Um,
• 34:52
  give me a rundown of when somebody comes to you and you start to look, you know, behind the,
• 34:58
  the veil and you start to see all the things that are going on. Um, what are some things that you
• 35:02
  wish more of your clients, more of your entrepreneurial clients would pay attention to?
• 35:06
  Yeah, you know, I think just just the first thing that comes to mind is that is that people tend
• 35:12
  to just be reactive, you know, in any time that you're in business, you're always moving fast.
• 35:21
  I mean, at least you hope you are because you have a lot of business and, you know, you're hopefully
• 35:25
  being successful or trying to be successful and you're moving very fast and you're being reactive.
• 35:32
  And that just creates a situation where you're not able to be, you know, planning or
• 35:39
  proactive. Yeah. And so, you know, what, what I encourage people to do is just take that breath
• 35:48
  and think five moves ahead, you know, I call it fifth move thinking, you know, think about,
• 35:54
  take that breath and I call it practice the pause and I tell that to my lawyers, I tell it to my
• 36:00
  clients who are emotional in their divorces, I tell it to my business owners, you know, just take
• 36:06
  a breath, practice the pause, you know, don't react out of emotion, practice the pause,
• 36:13
  get your thoughts about you and react out of logic. And then the fifth move thinking, you know,
• 36:20
  the next move, right, and then think about the ripple effect, think about what the counter attack
• 36:26
  is going to be and then think about what the long range effect is going to be and then think about
• 36:35
  are we going to win the war, not the battle, right? What's the ultimate goal not winning the battle?
• 36:43
  And so that's a that's a litigation strategy, that's a boardroom strategy, that's a living room
• 36:48
  strategy, you know, what's your ultimate goal, not what's the the short term goal? And so that,
• 36:56
  like in my mind, I call that, that the fifth move strategy. I love it. I was going to say, I think
• 37:02
  that I think that most people think they're more strategic than they actually are because the
• 37:09
  second you get an email that pisses you off, you're like immediate, I got to fix this right now,
• 37:16
  you know, you get an employee that screwed something up, you get anything that happens, it happens
• 37:23
  all the time and you just jump into the solution and that serves nobody. And I think our I think our
• 37:29
  cell phones have made that problem, I don't want to say worse, worse than the right word, I think our
• 37:34
  cell phones have made us more reactive because we can get an email at nine o'clock at night that can
• 37:41
  piss us off. And I know as a lawyer that happens to me, I can get an email back from a lawyer
• 37:48
  on the other side of the case and it can piss me off at nine o'clock at night and man my thumbs
• 37:53
  start working, right? You got to be careful. And I have to remind myself, you know, put the
• 37:57
  thumb down, walk away, practice the pause, think about the strategic response, not the reactive
• 38:05
  response, you know. The strategy applies to everything, there's not a single thing you do in
• 38:08
  business that you cannot pause and reflect on and think five moves ahead. Some of the things that
• 38:14
  I'm curious that I think entrepreneurs just from my personal experience miss the most. I think they're
• 38:19
  not strategic about where they where they want to build their business, what kind of exit they want
• 38:24
  to have, what kind of milestones revenue milestones, how big they want to build this thing. I think that
• 38:30
  they are not strategic about financial structure legal and exit. I think that they just jump into
• 38:39
  sales and marketing and everything else is like, well, I'll figure it out eventually. So do you see,
• 38:45
  do you feel that more or less? Yeah, I think I think in general it's that they don't know what their
• 38:51
  goal is. They don't know what their target is. They don't know what they don't know where they're
• 38:55
  going. If you don't know where you're going, how do you know when you get there?
• 39:01
  And right, you just jump into sales or marketing. We could always debate whether sales or marketing
• 39:08
  is more important. But whether sales or marketing is more important, what I would tell you is
• 39:20
  that knowing your goal and having a strategy of how to get there is more important.
• 39:26
  And right, I mean, I think when entrepreneurs are in the thick of it, they're just being reactive
• 39:33
  instead of having a plan. And having a plan for the marketing, having a plan for the strategy,
• 39:44
  and having, I mean, you can call it the exit plan. Maybe it's not an exit. I mean, maybe it's a
• 39:51
  lifestyle. Maybe you pass on to your kids. Right, right. I mean, maybe their end goal is,
• 39:57
  right now, maybe their target is having enough money to buy a plane. So they don't have to
• 40:02
  sit next to some kid with a cold. That sounds actually amazing. I know, right? Yeah, that does sound
• 40:12
  amazing. I get it. When you think about setting sort of like your North Star as an entrepreneur,
• 40:19
  or even just like a North Star in life, because there's so many similarities between all the
• 40:26
  lessons for entrepreneurship, all the lessons for relationship, all the lessons for like health
• 40:32
  goals and wellness goals, they're all kind of the same. If there's not that much difference,
• 40:37
  there really aren't. I mean, you know, that's, it's all relationships, right? I mean, business,
• 40:42
  I mean, we can say business is different than marriage. I mean, but it's okay. I mean, maybe,
• 40:51
  but really, it's all about building relationships. Yeah. And, you know, nurturing those relationships.
• 40:58
  I mean, it's, you know, whether it's business to business or are personal to personal,
• 41:04
  you know, it's really all about, you know, building the relationship and having the trust.
• 41:10
  And, and there's just, there's not that much difference. And, and you mentioned the health goals.
• 41:15
  I mean, you know, another one of the lessons, you know, that I teach whether it's my entrepreneur
• 41:21
  clients, whether it's my, my divorce clients or whether it's the young lawyers that I mentor,
• 41:27
  you know, another one of the, the lessons that I teach is, you know, set your big goal and then
• 41:34
  focus on the small stuff. And the example that I use about that is I've never been an athlete in
• 41:39
  my whole life, ever. But there was this point in life where I decided that I was going to be an
• 41:46
  athlete, made a decision, I am going to change my life and I'm going to be an athlete. And I set a
• 41:52
  goal for myself to run a half marathon. And, you know, you don't run a half marathon by taking a
• 41:59
  big leap from the start line to the finish line. It's not one giant leap, right? So, so, right. So,
• 42:06
  so it's a whole bunch of small steps. And some of those steps, you, you get your runners high and
• 42:13
  you're like, they're easy and you feel like you're running on the wind. And then you get to about
• 42:17
  mile seven and it's painful. It hurts, you know, and the the marathon, half marathon I did was on
• 42:26
  dirt. And it was dusty and you feel like you've got like sand in your mouth. And then I got to
• 42:33
  mile 10 and I quit. I was, there was a bench. I sat down and I was like, I quit. Like, I hurt my
• 42:40
  feet hurt. I'm tired. It's hot. It was Texas. Like, it sounds like a miserable day. I was miserable.
• 42:48
  I was thirsty. I was hungry. There was, I'm like, what in the world was I thinking? Like, I was,
• 42:55
  I'm not an athlete. I don't know what I was like, there was nothing about this that was fun. And I
• 43:01
  quit. And then along came my coach. She was behind me and she said, well, what are you doing? What are
• 43:06
  you doing sitting down? I quit. And she's like, well, okay. But you know your car is up there by
• 43:14
  the finish line. So you're eventually going to have Uber is not going to pick you up down here.
• 43:20
  You can't call an Uber. You're going to have to eventually get up. She's like, so all you got to
• 43:24
  do is get up and all you got to do right this minute is put one foot in front and then another
• 43:30
  foot in front like. And so, you know, so I eventually got up and put one foot in front of the
• 43:36
  other and took one small step and then another small step and eventually got to the finish line.
• 43:41
  And I wasn't last, you know. And so, you know, you don't, you don't accomplish the big goal in one
• 43:48
  leap. You accomplish it in small steps and those small steps like some of them are painful and
• 43:54
  some of them are great and some of them are numb, you know. But, but they're all small steps and
• 44:00
  they don't feel good and, you know, they're all different steps. But that's the thing. So you
• 44:04
  have your North Star, you have your end goal. You have your strategy to get there because you can't
• 44:09
  have a strategy if you don't have your end goal. It's impossible because you don't even know where you're
• 44:13
  heading. And then you take all those different versions of steps. I love that analogy, but that's
• 44:18
  my point. It's the same in business, the same in a relationship, the same in the fitness goals,
• 44:23
  it's the same in anything. That's right. Right. Some of the steps in the relationship are not going
• 44:27
  to be fun. That's right. Marriage is not all like it's not all hearts in your eyes that are all
• 44:33
  popping out like, you know, tiny moon phase. Yeah, it's not after a period of time. No, I mean,
• 44:38
  a marriage is the same thing as that marathon. Like, there's going to be times in your marriage
• 44:43
  that you're going to sit down and say, I quit. Like, I am done with you. I am sick of you. I am sick
• 44:49
  of your shit. Like, I am sick. Like, I'm done. I don't want to hear one more word out of you.
• 44:56
  You know, but then you, you get up and you put one foot in front of the other. You communicate.
• 45:02
  You talk about it. You remember why you're together. You remember your goals. You remember you
• 45:07
  got kids like whatever it is. And you keep going forward, you know, and same thing about your
• 45:15
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• 45:36
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  iDigress. This is one of the most useful business podcasts. Trust me, go do yourself a favor and
• 46:52
  listen to iDigress wherever you get your podcasts. How do you choose that North Star? How do you choose
• 46:59
  that goal? How do you know if it's a right goal? Because I think people always want to set goals,
• 47:03
  but it's like a buzz word and people don't even... You can say, I have a goal. I want to make money.
• 47:08
  That's why I started a business. I want to be married to a beautiful woman. That's why I want to get
• 47:16
  married. I want to have a family and be with somebody who I love. I want to build a business and
• 47:21
  I want to achieve so many million dollars in revenue. But I don't think those are concrete enough
• 47:29
  goals. I think those are just... Their goals that someone else has told us that we should go after,
• 47:37
  but they're not even our own personal goals. And I think that not enough people do enough self-work
• 47:41
  to figure out what their own goals are. So before the strategy, we already agreed that you have to
• 47:46
  figure out that goal or that North Star that you're heading towards, what's your advice for somebody
• 47:51
  to figure out what their true personal goals are in anything, business, life, marriage, whatever.
• 47:57
  I think you have to do a lot of introspection and a lot of work on yourself to know what it is
• 48:03
  that you ultimately want, right? Because that's not... You can't set a goal based on what your parents told
• 48:09
  you that you wanted or based on what society tells you you want. Your goal may be that you want to
• 48:17
  have a farm with 50 dogs. That may be your goal. And that's a perfectly okay goal. Are your goal
• 48:24
  may be that you want to have a high-rise penthouse in Miami with a personal... With a private jet,
• 48:29
  like... And that's a perfectly acceptable goal too, but you have to look inside yourself and know what
• 48:35
  your personal things are, what's important to you. And only you can decide that for you.
• 48:45
  For you, it may be having a situation where you can have the freedom and flexibility to have
• 48:50
  your kids homeschooled. Or it may be that you want to have the flexibility to travel internationally
• 48:56
  to world school your children. Different... Everybody has the things that are important to them and
• 49:03
  they're going to look different for everybody. So you have to be emotionally astute enough to look
• 49:09
  introspectively to know what's important to you and not be setting those goals based on what everybody
• 49:15
  else thinks is important. And those goals can change, you know, based on different times in your life.
• 49:24
  You know, right now the goal may be this one thing, you know, when you're young, hopefully it's
• 49:29
  to travel and see the world and be exposed to a lot of different things because you're young and
• 49:33
  you can. But then, you know, when you get to be 50 or 60, maybe the goals are different, you know.
• 49:40
  And so those goals can change over time. You know, my advice to anybody is, you know, set big goals,
• 49:48
  big goals. Like don't, don't play small with your life. Even I think I have played too small with
• 49:54
  my life. You know, I look, oh yeah, I look back at my life and I think, you know, man, I should have
• 50:00
  set goals that were way bigger for myself. Even as much as I know that I have achieved. Your career,
• 50:07
  you're not done yet. I know. I know. I know I'm not done. I'm setting big goals for myself right now.
• 50:13
  But, you know, but I still, I look back and I think, you know, I still could have played bigger.
• 50:20
  And I, you know, so even whenever I'm mentor young, young women lawyers, you know, I try to
• 50:29
  encourage them that if their goal isn't punching them in the stomach, then it's not big enough.
• 50:35
  If it's not scaring you to like, if when you set that goal, if you're not absolutely in the
• 50:42
  bathroom vomiting on yourself, like it is not a big enough goal.
• 50:48
  What's your advice for somebody whose goals keep expanding and maybe their business partner
• 50:54
  or the romantic partner? They're not expanding with you. How do you navigate that?
• 51:01
  I would say that the answer is a little bit different depending on business partner versus
• 51:05
  romantic partner. And, you know, business partners are a lot easier to kind of move in and out of.
• 51:12
  Sure. I've always thought that a business partner is like a marriage.
• 51:16
  You know, I've heard that saying before and I feel like it is. I don't know.
• 51:20
  You know, at least for me, I think business partners are made out of, out of earthly relationships.
• 51:29
  My personal viewpoint is marriage partners are maybe a little bit more spiritual.
• 51:35
  So, to me, in my belief system, I think business partners are a little bit easier to divorce.
• 51:43
  Marriage partners, I think for me at least in my belief system are a little bit more of a long term
• 51:48
  thing that are that involve maybe God a little bit more. Yeah, of course, yeah.
• 51:53
  So, you know, so I think that the romantic partner may be a little bit more of a complex question.
• 52:02
  Okay, but still in both cases, how do you bring them along for the ride? Or when do you know when
• 52:07
  you can no longer bring them along for the ride? And under the assumption that you're going to be
• 52:13
  putting a lot more work into the marriage than into a bad business partner. That's fine.
• 52:17
  I mean, I think it comes back to communication. I think when you've outgrown a business partner,
• 52:21
  you just communicate about it and say, you know, I think we're moving into different directions.
• 52:26
  And, you know, I've been called to go this other direction. And, you know, I think that we're
• 52:33
  just going to two places. I always laugh when people say they can't balance a relationship with
• 52:38
  their business. When you have somebody who built one of the biggest companies in the world who
• 52:43
  did it just fine and who's still happily married and speaks about the importance of his wife and
• 52:47
  his relationship and his success. So, that's one strategy. Always be dating, always setting time
• 52:53
  aside. What are some other ideas as you grow as a person, as your goals grow, as you change?
• 53:02
  Assuming you're not changing for the worse, you're changing for the better. What do you see works
• 53:09
  in terms of keeping couples together as you go through this sort of journey?
• 53:14
  Yeah, look, it's all about prioritization. I mean, that's the bottom line. It's all about
• 53:18
  prioritization. And, you know, life balance is such a topic right now for people, especially
• 53:25
  women. How do you balance it all? How do you have life balance? And, you know, life balance is
• 53:30
  kind of like a stock portfolio, you know, when you're at work, be 100% at work, when you're at
• 53:39
  home, be 100% at home, and you just have to put life in buckets. You know, in your stock
• 53:48
  portfolio, you're not going to have all 100% high-risk stocks. You're going to have some of this
• 53:54
  and some of that and some of this and some of that. And so, you know, that's how your life should
• 53:59
  be. You can't be at work 100% of every day. You're not going to be there 24-7. I mean, now,
• 54:07
  are there going to be sometimes where you've got, you know, some big board meeting coming up or
• 54:12
  some big M&A thing or some big something where you've got to be there and you've got to be 100%
• 54:18
  there and it's going to take a lot of your time. Yes. Then you're going to have the thing at home
• 54:23
  or the, you know, the kids' choir concert that takes priority or the Tuesday night, date night,
• 54:29
  that's priority. And you've just got to put your boundaries up around that, you know. And that
• 54:35
  deserves every bit of the same importance as the big deadline at work. And you've just got to
• 54:42
  treat it that way. And if you don't treat it that way, then eventually that relationship will
• 54:48
  fail or the relationship with your children will fail. You know, if you don't put boundaries
• 54:53
  around what is it that's important to your child, you know, their, their soccer game, you know,
• 54:59
  whatever that thing is, you've got to put the same importance and the same boundaries around
• 55:04
  that thing as you do around that very important thing at work. And if you don't, then that
• 55:11
  relationship will fail. And, you know, and that's just, that's how it has to be. And it has to
• 55:19
  be the buckets, you know. And it just has to be a priority for you. And, you know, all that we
• 55:28
  have, all that any of us have is time. You know, we can, we can say that we have money.
• 55:36
  Money is just the barometer that we, you know, that we
• 55:41
  place here on earth with the importance. But what we really have is time. And, and we, you know,
• 55:50
  how we spend our time is really our wealth. You know, that's how our children judge our wealth.
• 55:57
  That's how our spouse's judge our wealth is based on our time. So, you know, we all are given
• 56:02
  the same amount of time. That's the, that's the great equalization is our time. So, you know,
• 56:08
  the, the guy that owns Netflix, you know, the homeless guy on the corner, you know, we all,
• 56:15
  that's the great equalization. You know, we all have the same amount of wealth because we have
• 56:20
  the same amount of time. Beyonce has the same 24 hours in the day. As you do, as I do, like, we all
• 56:28
  are the same with the same 24 hours. And, and that's the equalizing factor. So, um, you know,
• 56:36
  so it's how you spend that time in your day. So, so equalize that. And that's how, that's how
• 56:45
  you to say what's important to you. And so, it's such good advice. I think that
• 56:51
  this is why I like when people take risk early on in their, in their life, when they're young,
• 56:56
  because then they can afford to, they can, they can afford to not have as much balance. They can
• 57:01
  say, well, I'm not dating. I'm not married yet. I don't have kids. I can put 95% of myself into my
• 57:08
  business or my career. But the issue is when that mindset doesn't just exist for a season of your
• 57:15
  life, but it exists in perpetuity. And that's when you get in the trouble. And that's when people
• 57:20
  end up going to see you because they've maintained this imbalance for 30 years. And people, people,
• 57:28
  the sad thing about divorce and relationships that break is most people put so much energy and
• 57:34
  effort into trying to fix it for years before it ends up getting to the point where it's actually
• 57:39
  divorced. And those are painful years. They're very, very painful years. So, I think you're just
• 57:43
  being cognizant of where your priorities lie, where your time, everything you just said is so,
• 57:47
  so important. You know, I think that I think that a lot of people spend a lot more time,
• 57:53
  you know, in the in the catch. They spend so much time and energy trying to catch it
• 57:59
  than to keep it. Why is that? Why is that? Yeah. Do you know? You have an idea? I think the chase is
• 58:06
  more fun. Once you've got it, you know, it's not as much fun to try to keep it. That's one of
• 58:12
  the most important. And that, right, that's, I mean, that is when it's more important, but
• 58:18
  but it's also not as much of a challenge or as much fun, but I think that's also maybe societal,
• 58:26
  you know, maybe we don't place as much importance or, you know, as much prioritization on the keeping.
• 58:33
  I think we should, I think that, I think that, you know, maybe there's a little bit of moral
• 58:40
  and ethical decay in society. I mean, you see it, you see the numbers and the data. I don't think
• 58:46
  it's healthy. And I think that outside, you know, you can make an argument about why people get married
• 58:51
  or don't get married. But I think that by people not getting married and by not having families,
• 59:00
  I don't think that people are more fulfilled being single. I think that there's a lot of anxiety
• 59:04
  and depression about dating, about finances, about cost of living, about what is my life going to
• 59:10
  look like? So I don't, you know, people push back against religion and people are more secular and
• 59:15
  people sort of, in some, you know, parts of the world they push back against is sort of the nuclear
• 59:20
  family. But I don't see the mental health of people that push back against that being any better
• 59:26
  at all. Well, about a year ago, the surgeon general came out with a study that said that
• 59:31
  that post pandemic that we are, we are the loneliest in America that we have ever been.
• 59:40
  That's sad.
• 59:41
  Post pandemic, like coming out, like we are, we are not in the pandemic anymore.
• 59:46
  Now we're lonelier.
• 59:47
  And we are lonelier than we have ever been. And, and we can go out and socialize and, you know,
• 59:55
  being restaurants and everything still, but we are lonelier than we've ever been.
• 1:00:00
  And because we don't somehow, we are missing connection even after we can go out and,
• 1:00:07
  and we connect with each other. And, and to me that, that study that came out really kind of
• 1:00:15
  emphasize that point, that somehow we are missing something about how to actually connect with
• 1:00:25
  each other. And, and that, that says so much just about friendships, about marriages, about,
• 1:00:32
  you know, like we said, businesses or relationships. I mean, just, just about how to just connect.
• 1:00:37
  I want to, I want to ask a couple more questions about entrepreneurship, money, relationships,
• 1:00:43
  because I think you have a front row view to a lot of this because you work in all these,
• 1:00:48
  you're like the perfect blend of person that deals with all this stuff at the same time. So,
• 1:00:52
  I, I'm curious if you see, and the entrepreneurs you work with,
• 1:00:58
  are they more successful when they're with a spouse or a partner, or are they more successful
• 1:01:02
  when they're single? Do you find there's any, there's any trend between those two?
• 1:01:08
  I think it just depends on the quality of the relationship. You know, if you're in a relationship
• 1:01:15
  that is bringing you down, then I don't think that that suits your success in the business world.
• 1:01:23
  I think that if you're in a relationship that is uplifting you, and, and good for you as a
• 1:01:29
  foundation, then that helps you rise, you know, in your business. So, you know, to me,
• 1:01:39
  it just so depends. I think that if your relationship at home is, is bringing you down,
• 1:01:47
  then you might be better off without that. You know, your business world might be better off
• 1:01:53
  if you didn't have that bringing you down. So, I see a lot of my business clients, you know,
• 1:01:59
  they may be more successful after their divorce because they're not having this weight,
• 1:02:08
  bring them down at home, that's then keeping them kind of weighted down at work. And then post
• 1:02:15
  divorce, they, they then are kind of set for, for rising after, after they get divorced.
• 1:02:22
  You know, and then I have other of my business clients after they get divorced,
• 1:02:27
  they may have, you know, a new, a new marriage that is very good for them and sets them up to rise,
• 1:02:35
  have one client in mind, who got remarried after his divorce. And the new marriage just is, is,
• 1:02:43
  got wind in his sale. And he's just risen incredibly in his new marriage and has, has been very
• 1:02:51
  successful in his business after his new marriage. Well, I think about just in my life, like,
• 1:02:56
  when I get stressed out having like a, I mean, Gina's an incredible, you know, better half to me
• 1:03:01
  and whenever I get stressed out, she's always the one who helps me realize that the problem is,
• 1:03:05
  isn't as big of a problem as it really is. And she helps me sort of take my mind off of work.
• 1:03:10
  And she forces me to shut off sometimes. And I can only imagine, because I overthink everything,
• 1:03:15
  I always, I overthink everything. And if I didn't have that person and I've got her in my life,
• 1:03:19
  I would probably be less effective. I would probably be like this, you know, this anxiety,
• 1:03:26
  stressed out mess. So she's amazing. But I think that if I had somebody in my life who was not
• 1:03:33
  as amazing and was arguing, gas lighting, whatever the bad behavior is, obviously performance will go
• 1:03:44
  way down. I wouldn't be able to function either because then your home is just full of trauma.
• 1:03:48
  So yeah, to your point, like, it can be a blessing or a curse, it can be the best thing in the
• 1:03:53
  world for helping your success or it can destroy your entire business if you're not careful.
• 1:03:58
  That's why picking the right person is so, so, so key. It's really, really key.
• 1:04:04
  When you think about sort of financial structures, so for entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs are building
• 1:04:11
  a business, they're making some money, say they're making more money than their spouse. I'm assuming
• 1:04:16
  that it's not like usually a 50-50 where both people are making the same amount. One person
• 1:04:21
  making a lot more money than the other person, what are some good financial best practices? Should
• 1:04:26
  they have a joint bank account? Should they not? Like what are you and they're in the marriage?
• 1:04:31
  They're not planning on divorcing yet, hopefully never. But what are just some best things that
• 1:04:36
  have worked really well for people that maybe don't divorce? So I think my recommendation is that
• 1:04:43
  that you always have joint funds. I think that's good for a marriage to always have the joint funds.
• 1:04:52
  I think that when the couples that I've seen that have everything separated, I think that just
• 1:04:59
  creates a mindset of separateness that isn't good for the the the togetherness. So I always
• 1:05:07
  recommend that you that you have joint funds. But I also always recommend that each spouse have
• 1:05:14
  their own account that you can call it a fun money or whatever you want to call it. But
• 1:05:24
  their own fun money account that they can kind of have to spend on themselves. That they can
• 1:05:33
  do their own thing with that they have their own right to spend on. For women, whenever I counsel
• 1:05:44
  with my women clients, I call it their their dress money account or whatever. If they want to go buy
• 1:05:50
  a new dress, they can go buy a new dress without asking permission. And you could call it golf
• 1:05:57
  fund or something for the man or whatever. But I think that it's important to have both. So
• 1:06:04
  to have the account that is the marriage account that you have marriage meetings about that you
• 1:06:11
  that you jointly decide. This is this is the budget. This is how much housing we're going to spend
• 1:06:19
  on. This is whatever. And then we each have our discretionary spending account. And you might even
• 1:06:26
  have more accounts than that. Maybe you have your travel account. We're going to put this much
• 1:06:32
  money aside for travel. Maybe you have the kids private school account. We're going to have this
• 1:06:38
  much for private schooling. And in the budgeting, there's a book called Profit First I think is
• 1:06:48
  the name of the book. And that's kind of applied to a business sense. But you can apply that to a
• 1:06:55
  marriage, you know, where you have different buckets for different things. And apply that to
• 1:07:00
  the marriage. But I think the most important thing is that you have a bucket that is the bucket
• 1:07:05
  or multiple buckets that we decide together how we're going to spend. But I think it's important
• 1:07:11
  that each spouse has kind of their own little bucket that they themselves by themselves can
• 1:07:18
  decide how they're going to spend their bucket. And I think that even though they have their own
• 1:07:24
  buckets and they have all these different accounts, the goal is to have conversations about all the
• 1:07:28
  financial goals and how much money is going to go where. And I'm assuming the best practice is
• 1:07:32
  always full transparency. Always. Yeah. And even even in, you know, when things aren't going well
• 1:07:38
  in business, I'm assuming that you also advocate for you're telling your spouse right away.
• 1:07:44
  Always. Yes. Okay. I figured I figured you don't because, you know, we always talk about, okay,
• 1:07:50
  what if there's something that's bad in the marriage, you should address it right away.
• 1:07:54
  But I feel like there's an entrepreneur who's not succeeding in business. There's a little bit of
• 1:07:58
  shame. So I feel like they would maybe hide that from their spouse if they're nervous about saying
• 1:08:04
  because they don't want to seem like a failure, right? So say the business isn't going as well
• 1:08:10
  or there's a lawsuit or whatever. Million different bad things can happen in business.
• 1:08:16
  When you don't tell your spouse that, I can only imagine that that's never a good outcome.
• 1:08:23
  Well, it's never a good outcome. But if you don't trust your spouse with that, you know,
• 1:08:28
  with that downturn, I mean, that's the exact place that you should be able to trust your spouse,
• 1:08:33
  you know, with that, you know, things are going badly and your spouse should be that safe harbor
• 1:08:41
  for you. Now, if you're getting sued at your business because you slept with your secretary and
• 1:08:47
  you're getting sued for, you know, sexual harassment at the office, that's a whole different set of
• 1:08:52
  problems. It's a big set of problems. It's a big O set of problems and you're going to have
• 1:08:56
  problems at home and at work. However, you know, assuming that it's a downturn in business because
• 1:09:02
  the economy's terrible and there's some tariffs coming up. I've got several clients, you know,
• 1:09:07
  that are having some downturns in business because tariffs and, you know, they import their
• 1:09:14
  their source materials and things like that, you know, that that should be where your safe harbor is,
• 1:09:21
  you know, that, that, you know, we're going to go through some tough times and we need to figure
• 1:09:25
  this out and, you know, conserve our resources and things like that, that should be your safe harbor.
• 1:09:32
  And that should be the place that you get that consolation, but you shouldn't feel the shame
• 1:09:38
  at your home. I mean, if you've got a good relationship. What happens if you want to take more risk
• 1:09:45
  and you haven't always been a risk taker? Say to people are married and they're both working W-29-5,
• 1:09:53
  somebody wants to go start a business. How do you, how do you manage that conversation with your
• 1:09:58
  spouse? You know, that happens pretty often. I have no doubt that happens and then the spouse is like,
• 1:10:03
  what are you talking about? Especially where you have one that wants to be more of a risk taker and
• 1:10:07
  the other is wanting to not be a risk taker, yeah. And that can be, you know, that can be difficult
• 1:10:15
  and that's, you know, that's one place where, you know, one spouse just has to take the lead in the
• 1:10:20
  marriage and say, you know, I want to make this decision for us. And if it, you know, if it goes
• 1:10:27
  badly, I'll take the blame for it, you know. And that's a place where you want to have, you know,
• 1:10:33
  your safety net, your financial safety net. We've got this nest egg, but, you know, I want to go
• 1:10:39
  forward with this idea. A lot of times that happens where a spouse wants to leave a paycheck job and
• 1:10:46
  go and be an entrepreneur. And that's, you know, that's risk and sometimes you've just got to go do it
• 1:10:52
  and you've got to trust each other. Yeah. And I think that the last sort of thought about
• 1:10:59
  entrepreneurship, money, relationships, what do you do with your kids? How do you set your kids up?
• 1:11:06
  Is there things that you should know about setting them up for success, trust, funds? I don't know,
• 1:11:13
  I don't have kids yet. That's something I've got to figure out. So I'm asking you for me, like if
• 1:11:17
  if I'm making money in my career and I'm happily married, we spoke about pre-naps, spoke about
• 1:11:23
  setting up the structure before we sort of say I do. But what about, you know, the family planning,
• 1:11:29
  the legacy planning component of it? Because you don't want kids to suffer because of a divorce.
• 1:11:36
  And I think the kids do suffer because of divorces. So what are the things that people should know?
• 1:11:40
  You know, I think that kids are resilient and they take the cues from the parents. I've seen
• 1:11:49
  kids that suffer from divorce. I've also seen kids that have resilience and do just fine.
• 1:11:56
  I think that they always are going to take their cues from the parents, the parents who fight
• 1:12:04
  and put their kids in the middle of their divorce. You know, they're the ones that are going to
• 1:12:09
  suffer. The kids whose parents say, you know, we can disagree as spouses, but we are still going
• 1:12:18
  to be co-parents. You know, those kids do just fine. They adjust and they keep going.
• 1:12:26
  You know, I've had clients who get divorced and live down the street from each other.
• 1:12:31
  I actually had had one set of folks who bought the house where the back alleys backed up to
• 1:12:40
  each other. So the kids could just go from gate to gate. And they shared custody and didn't fight
• 1:12:46
  over it. And the kids just went where they wanted to go. And they shared custody and it was just
• 1:12:52
  fine. You know, so the divorce itself is not the determining factor. People who understand
• 1:13:04
  that that ex spouse is still family. You know, those children and those children's family is
• 1:13:12
  still your family. You're going to be a family unit forever. And you're going to raise those
• 1:13:20
  children together. You know, those children's family is still your family. So the divorce does
• 1:13:26
  not have to be a reundition for your children. Is there financial safeguards? You should try and
• 1:13:32
  negotiate ahead of time for the kids or no. You know, I mean, there's the reality is that whoever,
• 1:13:39
  you're always going to be financially responsible for your children. You know, oh no, I meant, yeah,
• 1:13:46
  that was not that was not the question. You'll always be financially responsible. I meant
• 1:13:51
  in the pre-nut phases or things that you should say, hey, regardless of what happens or the
• 1:13:56
  division of assets, X amount should be allocated towards the children. Sure. I mean, you can set up
• 1:14:03
  in your premarital agreement. You can always set up trusts in advance for the children. If you
• 1:14:07
  have the financial means to do that in advance, always, always, always, always set up trusts for
• 1:14:12
  the children 529s. If you can, you know, I would always do that first because, you know, that
• 1:14:21
  pre-planning for the children is never going to go to waste. And, you know, pre-funding,
• 1:14:29
  college tuition, pre-funding, you know, anything that you can into trust for the children is always
• 1:14:36
  going to be better so that they're taking care of. So Michelle, you've gone through so much and I
• 1:14:41
  appreciate everything you've taught the audience. I want to give them the opportunity to connect with
• 1:14:47
  you to follow you to sort of consume more of yourself. I know that you're going to be putting
• 1:14:52
  it a lot more content, maybe doing more of your own podcast, who knows? Like, obviously, I'm very
• 1:14:57
  bullish on podcasts. I hope that you put out some more of your own episodes. But where can people
• 1:15:02
  go and connect with you if they want to learn more about what you're working on? Yeah, the best
• 1:15:06
  place is social media at the Michelle O'Neill on any social media platform. I'm mostly on Instagram,
• 1:15:13
  but on all the social medias, that's where you can find me. Amazing. And I always like to ask this
• 1:15:20
  last question. You've given a lot over to the audience, but say you had to take your years of
• 1:15:26
  wisdom and you had still all the things that you've learned down to one thing. And the lens is,
• 1:15:33
  you have to pass this one bit and piece of information on to your kids. What would that one lesson
• 1:15:39
  be? That one life lesson? Why is it so important? And what would you pass on to your children?
• 1:15:45
  I think the one life lesson that I would pass on to my children is the same lesson that my dad
• 1:15:50
  passed on to me, hopefully a little more artfully than how he passed it on to me. But that is to
• 1:15:59
  you know, just to think five moves ahead all the time and not be reactive to life, you know,
• 1:16:07
  to implement to implement death move thinking and think five moves ahead on the chess board,
• 1:16:15
  play chess not checkers.