Tips For Spouse Business Partners

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Daily Rhythms For a Healthy Relationship

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File type:            Video to Text
Time:                   32:32 minutes
File Name:         Daily Rhythms for Relationship with Online Business

Barbara Boss here. Let’s get started. Yeah, so Barbara Boss here with girlcreated.com. I am a mom of 8 kids, and an online businesswoman. My daughters and I started solvelearningdisabilities.com, and it was able to make enough money that I was able to quit my day job. And I just want to help other women do the same thing that I’ve done. We’ve been doing it for over 12 years now. And we’ve learned a lot that can save you some time. And also some help in running the household and your relationships and things while you’re building your online business.

So today, we’re going to talk about daily rhythms that will keep your relationship alive, especially if you’re a mompreneur. And I wanted to go through this because I made some mistakes when I was building mine, and my husband and I went through a really hard time. And I wanted to share with you some of the things that we have learned that helps keep your relationship alive while you’re building your online business.

But first of all, why is this important? Ladies, this is so important, they are your partner for life. And, in my estimation, even beyond when I crossed the bill, you bet he’s going to be the first person I look for. So this is important, put some effort and time into this and make it fun. Another reason is because you love them, right? You married them, you love them. And so go ahead and put the effort and the time and be intentional about spending time with them, even when you’re passionate about building your company. And these are great tips, even for you moms out there, who are not building a company right now.

Another reason is because you’ve got to have their support. You need that backup, you need him to say, Hey, I know you wanted to finish that blog post, why don’t I take the kids outside to play while you get that finished, you need that support and backup, you don’t want them resenting what you’re working on. You want them to love it and to see the dream too, that you see as an entrepreneur.

Like I mentioned, entrepreneurs often make the mistake of putting their marriage last. So you think, okay, I want to put all the time I can into my business today and get it going, you got to put a lot of time in upfront. And then you got to get the house done and get to meet all the children’s needs and make sure everyone’s taken care of. And how much time does that leave you for your marriage until like really connect with them on an intellectual level? That is one mistake entrepreneurs make, I caught myself doing it and learned quickly not to do that. And like I mentioned, to me, relationships are forever. And online businesses aren’t. They’re a wonderful tool and vehicle to help you have a better life and a more prosperous life while sharing with people and helping to lift them up to but it is not something that will cross the veil.

I highly recommend putting a lot of work into your relationship and a lot of love and compassion. And it’s easy to plan on giving more later. So going through the season of your life that you’re in, I’ve gone through several I have like my youngest is now seven. But when I started this I had babies, nursing babies, and it’s easy to say, oh well, I have a nursing baby right now. And my business is just budding. I will put more time into my relationship a little later. But no, you need to intentionally put some in every single day.

Another reason for energy. Ladies, it is such a daily energy suck, if you are having problems in your relationship, or even if it’s just not thriving, like even if you’re not fighting, but you’re not thriving, and they’re for each other. It is a daily energy suck, it takes away from your energy. And it brings this negativity into your home, it’s really important to keep the energy between the two of you high and positive and fruitful. Another reason is for human connection.

There’s all kinds of studies out there that show that human connection can improve your health, your sense of well-being, it reduces levels of stress, and cortisol, it helps you live longer, it can improve your immune system, give you higher self-esteem, like these are all of the results of these studies, all of the things you’re going to need to be a successful business owner and entrepreneur and to live long and happy. And then another reason is we rise by lifting others up. If there’s something that you can encourage them, they had a bad day and you say, hey, this is going to get better or you’re a great person. I love how you handled that. Take the time to do that because we will rise by lifting others.

And so let’s talk a little bit about our rhythms that work or the reason the rhythms that work for me like on a daily basis. I use the word rhythm because I don’t like the word schedule. I don’t stick to schedules, but I kind of have a routine of things that I go through each day. And here’s some of them that are to do with my relationship. So first of all, kiss them when they leave. And when they get home, and not just like a mindless, more high, happier home, like go ahead and put a little effort into it a little time into it, and enjoy being just together with them for or a sweet kiss when they get home, I actually don’t kiss my husband before he leaves because he gets up at five in the morning to leave. And I don’t know, I’m not that kind of girl. Here’s one thing that we do, make sure that you have time to connect for a quiet moment each day. If your kids are younger, well, I’ll talk about that in a minute.

One thing that we do is we go to our backyard, and we just sit in the lawn chairs and tell our kids, hey, this is our quiet time hanging out, you know, we grab a drink and just go sit outside, neither one of us are big on alcohol. I drink sparkling water, he drinks coconut juice. And we sit in the backyard and we just talk about our day, talk about things we look forward to things like that. Just that few minutes helps a ton. And then physical touch every day. We might hold hands while we do that, or I put my hand on his arm or maybe rub his shoulders or something because physical touch is proven to bring you closer together.

And another thing I like to do is do something for them only, or only for them every single day. We make dinner for the whole family, right? We do laundry for the whole family. And spouses just kind of get tend to get on the back burner. One thing I like to do is I’d like to make him a little packet of pills for the next day that has his vitamins and minerals that help him have energy to get through the day, and a little protein drink and get that in the fridge ready for him. That’s something I do just for him. And he feels the love that I’m doing something just for him.

Another thing I do is, so when we were going to go on a cruise to Alaska, he was packing his bag and it was kind of full and packed. And I was like here, let me fold that step for you. I grabbed it and my dad traveled like the whole time I was growing up. And so my mom would fold his clothes super neat and pressed, he was a businessman. I knew how to fold a shirt to make it just like the ones stacked nice and neat in the clothing stores. So I folded them all like that and put them in the bag. And he was like, whoa, I didn’t know you could do that. And at this point, we’ve been married for probably 10 years, I had just folded shirts normal kind of the way you do when you’re in a hurry and you sell them and get them in the drawer. But after that, I thought you know what, I’m going to intentionally fold his shirts like that, I still fall my normal the kids is whatever but his I take the time to fold the arms behind and fold them. So the creases in the front and all of that. And it’s not like a 1950s servitude kind of thing. It’s just you serve each other, you do something for each other every single day. And that’s kind of goes into this one is Be sure that you serve each other. And you might say yeah, but like I give and I give and I swear he doesn’t give back. So just be intentional about doing things for him and letting him know I’m doing this for you.

Because I want us to serve each other and take care of each other. And then they will turn around and they will start to reciprocate. So don’t give up on that it does happen. But when you’re together, like put some background music on, be humorous, be fun, don’t be so serious all the time. Like I said, drink a beverage or have a snack just like make it a chill fun time. And give the kiddos boundaries about your time. Like I said, we’re gonna go outside and sit we’re gonna have some quiet time. And we let them. That’s when they get to chill and have some screen time or you know, watch a movie, whatever. And we just go on have some quiet time.

After that, we haven’t come out we actually have a cute little white bunny. And so we come out and say, hey, you know, take the money out of the cage and let it run around until they come out and get some energy, some exercise too. But it actually gives both of us energy to have a few quiet moments after dinner before we hook back up with the kids. And of course, if you have a really young baby, you could still bring the baby out with you and put it in a playpen or something. But like I mentioned, our kiddos are seven and above now so we can just kind of be like, hey, go ahead and watch your movie for a minute while we chill in the backyard. Don’t come out unless the house is on fire until we tell you we’re done with our quiet time and get them to respect that.

Quiet time increases energy and focus. Some people gain energy. I have some friends that actually gain energy from going into a crowd and talking and interacting. I’m the opposite. I can do that. I’m not an introvert. But after I’m done doing that it actually kind of wears me out and gives me more energy to go sit by myself and have a really quiet moment. Same with working with the kids, they’re loud, they have needs and their plan or fighting or whatever, it just really rejuvenates me to go have some quiet time.

I spend that quiet time with him. And listen like you want to. Ladies, I know that sometimes hearing about their day is not what you want to do, especially if it’s like they had a bad day, right? You’re like, you know, I would just love to sit here and hear about how much you love and adore me and appreciate me for all that I do. But sometimes more usual, you talk about your day, and they might tell about a frustration. And don’t just kind of doze off or pick up your phone and start looking at it, like be intentional, to leave your phone down during this quiet time. Listen to them, like you want to hear what they’re saying.

It actually ends up being rewarding if you really sit there and engage with each other. Even though it’s hard sometimes. Here’s some other things to do. They’re not daily things. But here’s some other things that you can kind of intentionally do not so often, that will help build your relationship and give you a deeper connection. So my husband and I love to get into a Netflix series and watch one or two of them together. And it’s really fun. For a while, he kind of had his things he watched I had my things that I watched mine were super chick flick type of stuff, and his were boring dude stuff. But we found some that we like watching together like some farm ones, Clarkson Farm, and some other Netflix series that we kind of can tolerate each other’s a little bit.

And so we actually look forward to like, oh, let’s go watch that next episode tonight. It just kind of gives us something to do after we’ve come back in and gone through the long drawn-out process of getting our kids to bed. And I say that because it’s darn hard to get my kids to go to sleep. But that’s something we like to do, and then get into something that they are into. Into, into that should be one word right? To my proofer, I don’t know. Anyway, get into something that they’re into.

This does not mean that if they’re into basketball with their buddies, you have to dress up in your little bleaker shorts and high ponytail and show up and high socks and be like, oh, I’m gonna play basketball with you. Because we’re so close and so connected, that I can’t let you go play basketball with your buddies.

So no, obviously, that’s not what I mean, find something that you can that they get into and you do to like my husband was into hunting. And so I didn’t really go hunting with him. But I kind of got into the hole. Oh, this is cool. And elk and deer and going to Cabela’s and stuff like that. Doing that with them, helping them, get the food ready for their camping trip. We also both love the mountains and the outdoors. And so that was something he was way into.

When we first got married. Like I said, he did the hunting thing. And so we kind of got into that. Now when we go on our anniversary, somehow we always end up choosing a beautiful mountain location, like a little cabin, or a lodge. And it’s just things that we do together. Give them space to do their own thing. But some things that you can get into with them do it. It just gives you a deeper connection. Text through the day, a little I know girls that are like, oh my gosh, sounds so just pooped her pants. And oh, I just had to clean up flour all over my kitchen floor. I have done all of those things.

I get it and you want to tell someone immediately because you’re frustrated. But texting them your problems throughout the entire day is not the way to do it. Just like share a Tik Tok, something fun, they’ll start to reciprocate and kind of make it light and jovial. If they’re asking you how your day is going, then you can be like, oh, yeah, a little rough, had to change her underwear and wash him out in the toilet. But like you don’t have to hide things, but just try to keep things on a lighter, more positive vibe. And then your day will go more positive. You can start counting all of the things that are going wrong in a day. And then it seems like it just compounds or you can start seeing all of the things that are going right in the day.

Have some fun laugh at some Tik Toks or something on instance, share that with each other a little bit and take a nap on the couch together. This might sound obvious but believe it or not, when I was going through building my business, so we had my husband was in the mortgage industry. And we had seven children. I was nursing my seventh at the time. I have eight now. But my husband and I had both decided we wanted a big family we had both come just from kind of larger families and we wanted to do that for ourselves. And we love you know how many people there are Christmas time and how much fun it is on holidays and having sibs running through the house. Saw the time, we loved it.

We wanted to do the same thing. And we were doing great. He was doing good in mortgages. But then the mortgage crash of 2008 came, and we were both exhausted working jobs. That’s when I decided, hey, I can’t just keep working all of the time and having to get more hours every time we need a little more money. Any time with my kids, I’ve got to find a passive income, I’ve got to find something that will make money when I’m away from my desk, too.

During that time, it was like we were both so exhausted, that if we were going to get some sleep, it was going to be like power sleep at night, like in the six or five hours that we had, or if there was like a Sunday that we could take a nap, we had a lot of little young ones and things that was like a power nap 15 minutes.

This might sound obvious, but it wasn’t, we didn’t just lay on the couch and cuddle and like fall asleep or not, but just kind of lay there. And then when we started doing that, I realized it’s really brings you closer together. So take a nap on the couch together, whether you sleep or not just kind of sit there and chill while your kids watch a movie together. And go on a walk with or without the kids, this is a great thing to do in the evening. This actually does not go on between my husband and I, he hates going on walks through the neighborhood.

I’m not sure if it’s because he’s just like, you know, I’m a dude, I’m not a people person. He doesn’t like walk in and leaving. At every buddy as he goes by. I don’t know what it is. But he does not like going on walks like Hill, do a trail into the mountains but just not walks around the neighborhood. Not crazy about it. But this is something that couples do like to do. I thought I would add it in because it works for some people. And then other ways of touch, you can give each other a backrub once in a while. That extra the physical touch and just talking and connecting while you do that is awesome, you can put on a few candles doesn’t even have to be sexual.

Here’s another thing, sometimes we don’t have time to go out on a date. We just need a little break from the young ones. And so we’ll actually just hop in the car, have the older kids watch the younger kids. And if you only have younger kids, you can throw them in the backseat in their cedars and get them a little something there usually sit there quietly while you go. But go grab a coffee and a pastry together and just kind of talk come visit on your way there and back. It’s just like this little mini-retreat.

Another fun thing is to cook together. So this never would have happened in the past my husband, he would cook if like if I was down with a birth or needed him to. It was like macaroni and cheese or he’s really good barbecue chicken and greatest steak. But it wasn’t ever like cooking this meal that required a lot of ingredients and especially not together with me until we got a trigger. And everything changed. Like we’re both looking at trigger recipes of oh, what can we smoke this weekend? And, oh, I’m gonna throw beets and carrots on and you throw the brisket on and we just kind of cook together and like make the seasoning rubs together. And it’s totally fun. I love it. Get a trader.

And then okay, this one’s super cliché dream together. But dreaming together is really something that can help you build your future. Because dreams can become reality, even if they seem out of touch. Just sit around and be like, hey, what would be cool is if, and then you both add something in there. You know if we could do this, or if we could do that, and just dream together. And then some of those dreams might actually you might start going, Hey, yeah, let’s really work towards that. That sounds awesome. Like right now my husband and I have a dream to move to this charming little town that we love that’s nearby. We want a hobby farm.

Right now our kids are loving the schools they’re in and everything. So we’re sticking here for now. But we are going to as soon as we can move and have a cute little Hobby Farm and give each other space. This is just as important as physical touch and connecting and talking. Sometimes you’re just exhausted. You don’t want to sit there and have a conversation with someone let’s say like I just got home from running to Costco and running kids here and there and to lessons and all of that. Or, you know, my husband comes home, he’s tired. Something like that. But you need to give each other space when you can tell that other person is just exhausted. Some sit down and do their thing.

Maybe they need a little food, some time to unwind in front of the TV or something and then they’ll usually once they feel a little rejuvenated they’ll come and seek you out and be like hey, how was your day? Or he’ll come seek me out and be like, so what are you doing tonight? And so be sure to give each other space Don’t be that kind of person that has to talk to them the minute they walk in and has to tell them all about your day and Usually this is a problem that girls do not guys. Because, you know, dudes, they just they’re not as chatty. So they usually tend to come home and be quiet. But they also kind of like that quiet time. And then more things that aren’t daily.

Date night. Now, this can work depends on what season of your life you’re in, you can still make it work. But it’ll depend like some people do it weekly. My husband and I, we just do it monthly, we’re happy with doing it monthly, we don’t want to do it so often that it becomes mundane. But I have a few episodes about date night and some fun cards. I have a 50 pack card of questions you can ask each other that helps like draw out what they love about you. And so it kind of is good conversation starter and fun to do at the beginning of a date or a couple in the evening.

So you can I don’t remember what episode it is. But if you go to my blog, then I have links to all of the episodes and you can download those for free. But date night is super important. And on date night, okay, so sometimes we get so busy, we want to get as much done as we can clear till five o’clock, then hurry and make dinner, then run, get showered then know if date nights, once a month, make this day different. Just make it more relaxed, more chill, like paint your nails.

Crockpot dinner started in the morning so that you don’t have to make dinner at five o’clock at night right before you’re running out the door. And then you run out with the smell of hot dogs in your hair. So just kind of chill, do your nails, get yourself a drink throughout the day and just kind of play music and just kind of get into a more chill mood, don’t run, run, run, run, run, run, run through the day and then wonder why am I so stressed out and have all this cortisol and I can’t just relax and have a good time with my husband.

Tell the babysitter, put the kids to bed before we get home maybe catch a late movie so that they are so you don’t get bombarded the minute you walk in the door and get that stress level back up. And date night can be a ton of fun. I know some women that kind of dread it like oh, it’s just another thing on my to-do list and my checklist.

But I’m telling you if you do that, sometimes I’ll do whitening strips, things that make you feel beautiful, put on some perfume, go buy a new shirt or some new undies, whatever, it makes a huge difference to make date night way more enjoy enjoyable, and you actually really start looking forward to it monthly. I recommend that sometimes for date night, we don’t go out we stay in, we get takeout we eat under our outdoor lights. For like a date.

Sometimes we have these cool lights that we’ve put up. We have a two-level home where it’s a deck above and then a patio underneath. On the deck above, we put these pretty Bistro lights, hung some beautiful hanging plants, and just kind of made it a cozy space that we love to sit under in the evening. And sometimes we’ll just get takeout and say, hey guys, you can watch a movie, we’re gonna go downstairs and have a date night together, don’t come out unless the house is on fire my favorite phrase. And that’s when they know, hey, don’t come out unless there’s a serious problem or something for like the next 30 minutes and get them to respect that and have boundaries there. Unless there’s a serious need.

Another thing we’ll do, sometimes we’ll just go grab a good bacon cheeseburger and sit in the car and eat and talk because we don’t feel like dressing up and going out. And we just want to grab a burger. And so that’s another thing that can kind of be fun to do. I love going to outdoor concerts because usually, it’s in the evening where it’s kind of getting cool. You have to bring a blanket and lay it on the grass. There’s music involved, there’s people standing up and dancing.

That’s just really fun. My husband doesn’t dance here. He does. He just doesn’t like to. But it’s just like a really kind of romantic atmosphere and fun laying there on a blanket together listening to the music. And so I love outdoor concerts. We don’t do them often enough. I need to find some tickets to one right now. Now that we’re talking, the minute I’m done here I’m finding some outdoor concert tickets. Or just grab a movie, something fun like that. But I do love the concerts. Intimacy is important. Not a lot, especially Christian couples, they might not put enough emphasis on this.

But intimacy is important. And not just like it can be intimate talk just where you really connect. But physical intimacy to it is important. Women have to like connect on an emotional level before they want intimacy. And guys are a little bit opposite. They usually don’t feel connected until they’ve had intimacy. So it’s kind of like this fun trick that’s being played on us that makes it hard to actually realize how important that is to both of you. It’s just important in a different way. But our brains actually form long-term attachment when you’re being intimate.

So it’s important for long-term relationships to have that long-term attachment. Go places with a reason to dress up. We like to go to the symphony once a year, there’s a bit like fancy restaurants, functions that you’re invited to like, go ahead and go to those places where you have to dress up. My husband’s kind of like, do we have to go to that? I don’t really want to go to that when it’s a fancy dinner or something like that. But I’m like, yeah, let’s do it. Let’s dress up, we’ll put on our Cologne and perfume, and just go have fun. And so I love reasons to dress up. One of them is weddings. I love weddings. To me, they’re romantic and cute. And everyone’s dressed up and happy. So I encourage that whenever there’s a wedding invitation, I’m like, hey, yeah, let’s go to that. But like I mentioned about our outdoor space.

Also, our bedroom makes spaces that feel good, and they’re comfortable just to relax and chill. We’ve put a lot of intention into our bedroom, we have comfortable pillows and bedding, we have a cute little chair in there, we have candles that you can turn on with a remote. We keep it uncluttered. We have some nice lamps. It’s not full of like laundry baskets and half-done projects and piles of crap that we haven’t made a decision on yet. That is not the space that your bedroom is not the space for those things.

We try and make, make sure we keep our room clean have that kind of clutter so that when we go into there, it’s like our little retreat or like our Oasis, after our long day of meeting everyone’s needs and building companies and answering to bosses, my husband, he’s a machinist, and he actually loves it. And so he’s still machining and he enjoys doing that. And it provides us with health insurance, dental insurance, life insurance, 401k, it’s putting money into a 401k. So he does that. And so at the end of the day, it’s really end of the day, it’s really important for us to have a little retreat or a little oasis. And a lot of couples overlook this, do the kiddos come in? Yeah, we let them come in and climb right on the bed with us give us hugs and snuggles. But it’s just a place where we can relax and enjoy and watch our Netflix series, right.

Travel together a few times a year. Some people will do this monthly, we are not in this season of our life to do this monthly. That’s not even a possibility for us right now, we have a lot of teenagers, we got to keep an eye on them. But our adult children will come and watch the kids while we go away for anniversary, usually sometime in the spring, and then I usually end up, we usually end up having to go somewhere, at least one more time a year, even if it’s just like to go visit the parents or help mom out or go pick something up. We try to tap travel together a few times a year so that we just have a couple days alone, it’s really nice to get up and go to breakfast, instead of get up and make breakfast for everyone. And to have the dishes done. Instead of having to make breakfast, do the dishes, get everyone dressed, it’s just like totally a nice break.

Learn their personality type. There’s lots of different theories and things on different personality types. You’ve got the enneagram, the five love languages. There’s so many different ways that you can look at different personality types and what that feels to them. And it just helps you understand them better. I’ve read a couple of those books. And it really does help me understand my husband better. Because it talks about so they do little weird, quirky things and you’re like, well, how was jerky?

And then you learn about their personality type in your own oh, that wasn’t jerky that was like a basic need. So learn their personality type, and then do a little bit of relationship growth. Learn a little bit more about each other on a deeper, deeper level. Like I said, I have like 50 question cards that you can ask each other that are kind of fun, and draw good answers out of each other and they’re really positive. So check that out. And then the other thing is gratitude for what they do this is big. Just show them a lot of gratitude for what they have done for you and what they do. Like I mentioned, my husband provides insurance and 401k and he’s always checking the air in my tires and like checking the oil in my car.

Even if your husband doesn’t do those things, I’m sure there’s something he can do that you can point out and show gratefulness for it and believe it or not, they start showing more gratitude to you and they also start doing more things that you can be grateful for because they like how it makes them feel when you’re showing gratitude for what they do. And we take lots, you know a lot of the time us ladies. We’re like, you know, we’re running the kids, we’re making dinner, we’re doing laundry. So when they do stuff like that they mow the lawn, we’re like, well, yeah, that’s their job, they got to do that.

But hey, wouldn’t it feel nice for someone to come in and say, thanks so much for making dinner tonight, this is really delicious. Well, that’s kind of how it feels for them to do their everyday thing to have somebody show a little appreciation for what they do. So put some time into that. And like, if you’re having a bad attitude toward them, or you’re kind of not getting long, your relationships a little bit strained, just go do like a five-minute meditation, where you just sit there and think of all of the things that you are grateful for in life, and especially with them that they are doing, the things they are contributing.

Daily Rhythms For a Better Relationship With Your Spouse

It really just turns your feelings about them around really quickly. So I think that people should spend time doing that at least once a week. I know a lot of people meditate daily, that’s cool. I actually tried to meditate in the mornings, but it doesn’t always happen. But definitely do like some gratitude meditation, there’s even gratitude journals, all kinds of things like that out there. By the way, all of these tips, I’ll link to them in the show notes below, you can actually, I made this into a PDF, where all of them are just on two pages so that you can print them and use them like a checklist if you want. That will be in the show notes. And then also, I want moms to be able to do what I do, and stay home with my kids now and work for myself.

Check out my Brainstorming Your Online Business episode. It’s a free resource. It’s a video and a download that kind of takes you through a questionnaire to help you decide what is your superpower? What is your passion? How can you share that win with the world and make that into an online income? And if you’re already there, and you’re already working on that, but you want to level up your business a little bit, then I have a free prerecorded webinar, you can check out on girl created calm, I think it’s in the Courses tab. But it’s called creating prosperity like a boss because my name is Barbara Boss.

I just show the exact pattern that me and my family used to actually go from just having a blog to having a blog that actually made an income for us, and the exact pattern and what kinds of pins and posts and things like that that we do that draw people in the right kind of people that would benefit from our service, and we kind of show you how to figure that out and pinpoint it for your own business. So go check those two things out and have a wonderful day. See you later.