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You do have responsibilities in a marriage, in a partnership, and you have responsibilities within your business. All right. And. You got to own it. You got to own it. Welcome to Coach Magic, the show for the woman who is all in on creating a life, business and family that's beyond her wildest dreams. I'm Jenny Fenig and I am so excited to help you get confident, focused and paid. Let's rewrite the rules and get moving in the direction of your deepest desires.

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Ready, set. Go. Hey, hey, hey, everyone, I'm so excited to be with you today, I am broadcasting this episode of Coach Magic Live and oh my goodness, the time has come. I'm going to check this to make sure everything looks good on my end and then we will get started. It does. Hurray. OK, all right. So here we go. The theme for this conversation today is all in what marriage has taught me about business.

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I wanted to do this live because it just felt very celebratory and very exciting and very fresh. And that's one of the things that marriage has taught me about business, one of the many things. So here's the here's the the vibe. So Stephen and I are celebrating. Sixteen years of marriage today. Hurray, yay. We met in two thousand three. We got engaged in two thousand four. We got married in two thousand five. Honestly, it feels like the time has flown.

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When we met, I was working at a public relations agency in New York City. I was flying around the world for a press tour with the celebrity athlete on behalf of a pharmaceutical company. It actually sounds a lot cooler than it was. I soon realized the life I wanted with Stephen wasn't conducive to the life I was living as a public relations executive. So eventually I changed jobs to something that offered me better hours and better money. We got married.

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Life was good. As we contemplated having children, I knew another career change was in order. This change would have me leaving the corporate world behind and choosing the life of a business owner and coach with a lot more control over my schedule. Projects and income that changed happened in twenty seven when I quit my six figure job and embarked on a new path, one that I am still on today. It was scary yet liberating like a lot of change is.

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Do you have that in your life when you go through change, when you realize it can feel terrifying, but on the other side of that fear is liberation. It's absolutely freedom. Stephen has been a huge support during my career evolution. He's never been threatened by my ambition or my ability to earn well or my desire to earn well. He listens to me vent when things are hard and trust me, things do get hard. He is an excellent sounding board and our marriage has helped me be a stronger business woman and my business has helped me grow in my marriage.

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The key has been being all in being. All in, all in, all in. And since I'm passionate about helping you have a life, business and family that's beyond your wildest dreams, I am sharing six lessons. Marriage has taught me about business and I'm going to go through them one by one with you. And we are going to do this thing. We're going to do this thing OK. And it was really interesting as I was deciding, like how I wanted to commemorate this this moment, because it is a moment and I'm proud of it.

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This this message came through. I saw the links between marriage and business. And I thought, well, this is an interesting way to serve. This is an interesting way to put something out there for you that will be helpful. And so here we go. The first lesson and lesson number one, and there are many there are many, many, many lessons. But I'm going to distill the lessons that I feel most relevant right now into six.

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So the first one today is respect the partnership and make it your own. So marriage is absolutely a partnership and business, even if you're not put in an official partnership with someone else. Right. I feel that I am in a partnership with my business. And so I see this as a really strong lesson. So within the marriage context, this is absolutely a partnership. And when I look to see how Steven and I do things, we very much are partners.

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And what I've learned, this was not something that I necessarily knew going in. And I had a really interesting road with with marriage. My parents got divorced when I was very young. I was very nervous about being married. I didn't know if I was going to be good at it. I, I was just scared. I was scared that I would mess it up and all the things. And over time, you know, I've just I've just learned.

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I've learned I've learned by by just showing up as all of myself and I've really seen the power of a partnership. And within the context of my marriage, Steven and I just really respect the partnership. And there's some times that hygiene is awesome to have you here. Yeah. So there are some times when one person is maybe like taking more of the load in one area because life and there's other times when when someone else takes over in this other piece, I'm going to talk more about that in a moment, but really respect this as a partnership.

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There's so much respect that needs to go into this into this institution, into your decision, into your commitment, because you've made a commitment and it's beautiful to be able to commit to something and watch what happens when you do. And when I say make it your own, it doesn't have to look like so and so's marriage or so and so's business. If you had to do that, it's just not going to feel good. There's that whole saying compar don't you know, when you compare, you often move into despair.

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So don't compare and despair. I don't base my marriage on anyone else's marriage. I certainly am inspired by certain people's marriages like my in-laws who are actually visiting right now because today is my mother in law's birthday. We got married on my mother in law's birthday. Happy birthday to Doris. But they inspired me very much with their marriage. They've been married for more than 60 years, which is just mind blowing to me. It's so cool and I just adore them.

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So I take cues from their marriage. I take cues from other people's marriages, but I don't compare my marriage to theirs. I may be inspired by some things that they do or how they talk to each other, treat each other, just some of the things that they do. But Stephen and I have made this our own and the same has gone from my business. I make it my own. I honestly don't care what other coaches are doing out there.

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I don't care if this person is doing this or this person is doing that. Maybe I'm inspired by what they're doing, but I'm not trying to be them. I'm not trying to make my business the way that their business is because mine needs to be the way that mine is. It's a direct reflection of how I am meant to serve, how I'm meant to show up in this life. And so that is lesson number one, respect the partnership, make it your own.

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Lesson number two is on your responsibilities and strengths, own your responsibilities and strengths. So you do have responsibilities in a marriage, in a partnership, and you have responsibilities within your business. All right. And. You got to own it. You got to own it. This has been a big lesson where Steve and I have seen where I might thrive in a particular area like this is my strength zone and this other areas, his strike zone. And so we just let each other operate in our strength zones.

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All right. He I am very clear that I, I don't like taking out the garbage, OK? I'm just using that as an example. Like, I'm not the one who taking it up to the street. That is all him. And we've had to really work. I'm using that as an example. If you like doing garbage. Awesome. But I it's not my thing. That's not my thing. I want him to own that and own that and own that.

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And I own lots of other areas. But that's going to be his thing. That is his responsibility. He needs you remember when it goes out into the street because the garbage is his pickup day. And that's not my responsibility to remember that for him and it's not my responsibility to do it. I have other things that I'm responsible for and those really operate in our strike zones. And I love the fact I'm like, you're the garbage guy. Like, that is totally your thing.

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And so to really, like, build him up around that and to know, like, he's going to own that, I'm going to own other things. This is so true in your business. You've got to own whatever you're responsible for and have that tied into what your strengths are, what your zone of genius is. OK, and it's not like one thing is better than another is more important than another. It just means that there's a lot of things that need to happen within a marriage.

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There's a lot of things that need to happen within your business. And you need to ensure that everyone's clear on who's responsible for what. And as much as you can operate in your zone of genius, the better you feel good about it. You feel like you are helping to contribute to the health of the entity, right. Whether it be your marriage or whether it be your business. And you just keep owning those responsibilities and celebrating what they are and make them as fun as you can make them as you as you can make them as interesting as you can.

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This is also a great lesson for those of you who have children like we do. We have three kids that you're going to own their responsibilities and you're really going to celebrate with those strengths are OK. And I see how much this helps within my business. And I know that I'm planting seeds. We are planting seeds for our children as they journey forward in their lives that they are going to be responsible for what they're responsible for and that we celebrate that we're not here to shirk off all responsibility like that.

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That's not how life works. OK, third lesson, be willing to make change, be willing to make change. So, I mean, Steve and I are we're still the same people. You know, when we got married all those years ago, again, we got married in two five. Like, he's still the man I married and I'm still the woman he married. But we have evolved a lot and we've evolved in terms of where we live geographically.

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We used to live in New York City. That's where we met. We now live in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. Our lives are very different, very, very different. I was working a corporate life and we met. I'm now an entrepreneur. I work from home for myself. I coached incredible people in my programs and create content. You know, I love what I do. He's evolved quite a bit in his work and now we have kids.

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That was that. We didn't even know that we were going to have kids when we first got together. You know, we just thought we'll figure it out. We really enjoyed each other and we knew that we would just figure out each step, you know, each phase. And we've been willing to make those changes as they've come up. As you see, we need to make a pivot here. We need to make a shift. We will do that.

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And I'm not going to say that it's been the easiest decision that we know immediately and we change the next day. It's simply about knowing that change is part of life and changes part of your business as well. You're going to realize that the way you used to do it, you don't want to do it like that anymore, that this old this program that you've been running for a long time, it's complete or that you've been saying this one thing for so long and you don't want to say that anymore.

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You're ready to do it over here. You're ready to change your business model or you're ready to change the place that you're doing business. Maybe you had been set up in this one city and you realize you don't want to live in a city anymore. You want to live over here. That's honestly something that happened for me when we were still living in New York. We had just had Sean. He was a year old and we knew we were ready for.

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I knew very much we were ready for a change. He knew, too, we had to get there together. And I knew that my business, it just it wasn't meant to to grow in New York City. A lot of people would be the perfect spot for them. But for me, I. Was complete there, and I couldn't really grow in the corner of my bedroom that I was working and we needed to have more space. I wanted to be more connected to nature.

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I needed a different place to plant myself and bloom. And so we made that shift. We moved to the country and I love it. And my business has evolved right along with me. And so if you're feeling that nudge right now to make some shifts, make some changes, give yourself space around that, give yourself grace around that, that's just what it is. That's what it is. And you're allowed. You're allowed. Absolutely. The key is to really be in that relationship, whether it's change within your relationship, your marriage or your partnership, whatever you're in right now or change within your business.

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I believe that this is something that we can have a conversation with. Like I really have a conversation with my work. I'm in communion with my work and I see this as a divine sacred partnership and that we get to do this together. OK, the fourth lesson is give the magic room to breathe. Give the magic room to breathe. All right. So. Steve and I give each other space to be who we are, we're not clingy, we're not jealous people, we don't give each other reasons to be like that.

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You know, we have a lot of trust built into our marriage. I'm very grateful for that. Again, I had to do a lot of work on this. I have gone through a tremendous amount of therapy. I need to be real with you. I did this when we were dating. I've continued on with just getting help from various healers and helpers so that I could really take care of my side of the street and know that I could really trust our relationship and trust myself in relationship.

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And as as a result, we are able to be who we are. And we give each other love around that. We give each other respect around that. And that has been a key to our success. We are able to really respect the institution of marriage and we respect that we are individuals. So we give that magic room to breathe. And I remember distinctly the year I was turning 40, which was in twenty seventeen, I knew that I had an opportunity to follow a dream and to go to India, which had been something that had been in my heart for ten years.

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And I needed to make a decision or give myself permission to do something that I know Steve would not decide to do. Like he wouldn't go away for two weeks from our family on if he didn't have to. If there was a work thing that came up and he needed to do that, he wouldn't want to. But he would do it because he really doesn't like being away from home or being away from us really ever like that. Just he loves being around.

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And that's just what he that's his that's his vibe. I love being around too. But I like to get out and travel and do some things that I know that I'll be back and it's all good. And that's a piece of my work and that's a piece of my journey and it's all good. And we have that that respect across the board. But for me, when that opportunity to come to go to India came through, it was really a two week commitment to go over there and and and learn about our Aruveda and go deeper into the culture of India and just follow my passion of yoga and go deeper into my training or my studies.

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And it was an incredible thing. It was like I manifested it exactly as it showed up with one of my dear friends and. Again, I knew that my husband, he would have zero desire to do that for himself, he wouldn't want to go with me because India is not on his list of places he desires to go. It was my dream and he supported me. He backed me and I went. And that was something that we just do.

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A really great job across the board is that we give each other space to breathe. We give our our relationship room to breathe, and that keeps the magic alive. And the same is true in your business. You need to give that magic room to breathe. Don't crushed your days with so many things that are scheduled. Don't, don't, don't doubt that magic. Don't doubt that if you take some time and that you don't have your days like back to back to back to back back schedule, which I see happens for some people, they are scared to have space in there, but the creativity happens within the spaciousness.

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All right. This is how your energy goes to a whole nother level. This is something that I've been playing with for a long time now, and it is incredible, incredible, incredible. So give that magic room to breathe. Trust that there's something else that wants to come through you. There's the next level of your expression. And you need to give that expression space and trust and room to present itself to you. And it's going to blow you away.

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It's really, really awesome. The fifth lesson here that marriage has taught me about business is to play the long game, play the long game. So. When you know you're all in when you know this is your thing and this is the thing, you don't get tripped up on all the, you know, the day to day that can very easily trip you up. I'm not saying that you don't concern yourself with what needs to happen each day and that you don't make intelligent moves to help get you in the position that you want to be in or keep you in that position.

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But what marriage has taught me about this long game concept is that Steve and I are all in and we've made this decision. We've made this commitment, and we don't think it's like a sure thing. We don't just take that for granted. We show up in the marriage and we really communicate our needs. And any time things get into, they get broken because they will is like we know how to repair, we know how to repair. We know how to talk things through.

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We know how to find our way back to each other, back on that path. And because we know we're playing this long game, we can make plans for decades ahead in terms of this is where we're heading, this is where we're heading as a family. This is where we're heading as a couple. This is where this is where we want to go. And so there's this feeling of peace. There's this feeling of comfort. There's this feeling of we've got this we have each other's backs.

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Let's not stress about stupid crap. You know, that that takes your eye off that prize, OK? We make moves that support us for the long haul. And this is something that you can play with in your business as well when it comes to tools that you need to invest in, trainings that you want to invest in, technology that is going to help move you into the next realm of your contribution and your income. The team that you need to support you.

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If you're only making decisions for like today, you're going to miss out on that on that that bigger scheme of things. And so play that long game, make those decisions that are going to take you to where you want to be. We do this in my business. Just recently, we've invested in a new technology and it's cost requires resources, time, money, team. And when I say this isn't like something that needs to be there in place next month, I know that we've got runway.

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I know that this is going to take us into where we're going next. And I don't need to worry that, oh, no, we incurred all these expenses this month. This is bad. It's like, no, this is this is what happens when you're playing the long game. This is what happens when you know how you want to serve your clients. This is what happens when you know you're all in. This is your thing. This is your thing.

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And you're doing it. You're doing it. You're doing it. And you're making smart decisions. And the sixth and final lesson, the sixth and final lesson I'll share with you today is to have as much fun as you can, OK? I have as much fun as you can. I mean, why not? Why not laugh a lot? And if you're in a partnership. Remember to laugh. And if you're not in a partnership, remember to laugh like laugh at yourself, laugh with each other, laugh, laugh, laugh, because laughter helps so much.

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It really does. You can laugh in your business. You can have as much fun as you can within your work. I certainly do. I mean, any time I'm creating something, I think about how can I make this as enjoyable as I can? What can I call this that I can really get behind? Like, if you know my work, you know that I'm really into naming things. I love working with words. And so anything that I'll name my programs in the name of a podcast episode, the name of this offering, that offering, whatever, I'm going to infuse fun into it.

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I'm going to infuse magic into it. I'm going to infuse myself into it, because that's the most amazing thing I can do. That's my highest contribution I can make is to bring myself into anything that I do. All right. So I bring myself into my family, into my marriage, into the relationship I have with myself. That's been an ongoing process for me is to become more of myself every single day. How can I become more of myself every single day?

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How can I be more of myself in in my marriage? And how can I really be my best self? You know, and that's not saying that we have to be perfect, are going to be perfect in a marriage and a friendship and a whatever kind of relationship in life is full of relationships. Like we can't go through this life or I don't think I would want to go through this life without quality relationships. I don't need mass quantities of relationships.

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I really learned that I'd rather have, you know, a smaller number of really, really amazing, deep, real relationships. But the key is, can you be yourself and can you look at some of those blind spots? Can you look at where you need to clean something up, where you can get strong in a particular area so that a relationship can thrive and that you can really move into that next room? And let me tell you, fun can absolutely be a piece of this.

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And fun will help your business grow. Fun will help you just have a lot more gas in the tank to be able to show up for what you're showing up for. What I see with a lot of my clients is that they've forgotten that they're allowed to have fun and that they might have had, you know, something hard happen or a disappointment that occurs. And then they just go into shutdown mode and they get frustrated and they think, oh, I'm not cut out for this.

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You might have said that in a relationship. I'm not cut out for this or in your business. I'm not cut out for this. And you totally are when you are willing to. Design it so that. It can be fun, it can be something that you want to do and that you look at this idea of you get to do this, you get to do this. This is a gift. This is a blessing. This is a privilege.

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This is an opportunity for you to be all that you came here to be. All right. So those are the six lessons that I have to share with you today. Again, I'll recap. Respect the partnership, make it your own own your responsibilities and strengths. That's number two. Number three, be willing to make change. Number four, give the magic room to breathe. The number five, play the long game. And number six, have as much fun as you can.

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I'm going to show you this is something that we did in one of my recent programs. I am actually going to hop off and go to call for them, my amazing clients and energy queen. This is one of my new programs. I'm having the best time lead it because what I do, I infused fun into this program. So we had these custom candles made from an awesome candle company called Salt and SAS Candle Company. You might not be able to see it on the side, but we had these.

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It's like our rally cry printed on this label around what it is to be an energy queen says here's to feeling good and doing good, to showing up and speaking up, to being confident, focused and paid, to putting on your crown and letting the world know who you are. So this is how we infused fun into the program, you know, and I have this candle burning right now. And every time I look at it, I'm like, yeah, you know, I just believe in making your life as enjoyable as you can, making your work as enjoyable as you can.

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There is going to be hard moments, plenty of hard moments. I don't want to gloss over that. There will be hard. There will be hard. But guess what? You can do hard things. You didn't come into this life because you thought everything was going to be easy. Right. And I think, you know, just on a marriage point before we go, sometimes you can have that delusion. That's an illusion. If you I remember growing up taking cues from like marriages I saw in movies or like celebrities and I've learned.

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Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You have got to find your own way with this. Figure out what is real for you. OK, love this this passage from Hafize. I'm going to share this and then we'll wrap today. Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth you owe me. Look what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky, so thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Coach Magic.

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I have really, really enjoyed sharing these lessons with you about what marriage has taught me about business. My name is Jenny Fenig. I send you all the best and we will see each other again soon. Bye.