Episode 269
Title: Run Your Family Like A Boss
Host: Dr. Nicole Rivera
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Transcription:
What is up? My friends? I am. Not thrilled about my background right now, but hey, I live in an Airbnb for about three more weeks and, uh, off to finally having a house. But today we're diving into an expansion of some of our recent content and our recent. Challenge, which was all about determining your values so that you can make better decisions, more inspired decisions as you navigate 2025.
And this brought me to really think about the step beyond your own personal values, which is your family values. And for those of you that don't have a family yet, this applies to your extended family. This applies to your parents, your siblings, and then of course it plays a role in eventually starting your own family.
And so take it as a crash course in human behavior, human communication and human connection. And so what's kind of interesting is that over the years. I have always been so amazed with it. The principles that I learned about business and how they very, very much apply to running a household, running a family, creating better communication, creating better connections, and decreasing chaos.
And in the work that I do, at least, I hear a lot of similarities that nobody can get on the same page. I. Communication is lacking. You know, relationships feel like two partners are becoming more and more distant. They are, quote unquote, growing apart. Uh, kids are not being understood. They're being rebellious.
Parents are not always understanding why kids are behaving a certain way or making certain decisions, and the list goes on. And when I think about my earlier journey as an entrepreneur, the same thing happened in business. Why did I find myself getting so triggered or upset in certain situations or being so triggered by certain behaviors?
Individuals on my team. Why did I feel like no one was on the same page? Why did I feel like communication was so difficult? Why did I feel like we were just kind of going round and round and round on a merry-go-round or a hamster wheel? And why did it feel like there was chaos and constant fire to be put out?
So a lot of synergism, um, synergy when it comes to. What I hear from people running a household, in addition to what it felt like being an unenlightened entrepreneur, and when I decided to actually embark on more business training and formal education, I embarked on getting a certification called Scaling Up, which was created by Verne Harnish.
And essentially what I really liked about it is that there was a lot of focus on the people aspect of business. This was not about marketing techniques and schemes and you know, running paid advertisements and how to get more followers and how to increase your revenue. This was about the foundational things that create visionary companies.
They create companies that you and I both know of because they have. Such a big name, but these are also companies that have persevered for the past a hundred years. So they have, they've persevered past the original founder. And the only way a company can persevere and, and persist past its original founder is if it has a really, really, really strong foundation.
And that foundation is really rooted in its people, in its values and in its mission. And the value part is so significant. And so I got introduced to this concept, uh, because the people part of business was my pain point at the time, and I got introduced to this idea that it's because no one had a playbook.
No one had a set of foundational rules of how to show up and how to not show up, and I was like, Hmm, okay, tell me more. And because I was very stuck in that moment and I was having a really hard time with the exercises and the questions. My mentor at the time reverse engineered it for me to meet me where I was at.
And uh, and I love this tool so much 'cause I use it regularly now. And he goes, okay, what are the top things that piss you off in your business? I was like, oh, well that's easy. Let's talk about it. And I'll just give you one because it was probably the most foundational one. It was when people would not take accountability for, uh, solutions, they would go into this, you know, figurative fetal position of, I don't know how to do this and I need someone to help me and I don't know what to do, and oh my gosh, everything is falling apart.
And you know, like, send help, send help. And. That was something that really bothered me. A secondary thing that really bothered me, which usually ended up going hand in hand, was when people would cut corners because of whatever reason they had, they would cut corners and they wouldn't, they wouldn't give that project or that customer or that simple task.
They wouldn't give it a hundred. They would, they would give it a. 50 or less. And that really, really bothered me because my motto was, how you do anything is how you do everything. If you are gonna cut corners here, then you must be cutting corners in a lot of other places. And this was somewhat rooted in my experience as a waitress.
Um, first of all, one of my values is experience. So this, I didn't know at the time, but this is a personal value, not a company value or a family value. Experience is one of my personal values. So when I was a waitress. Again, I didn't know this, but I was fully embracing that value. And the reason being is because it didn't matter if I was having a good day, a bad day, if I felt like crap, I gave a hundred, and that is because I wanted to make sure that the people sitting at the table were having an amazing experience because at the end of the day, you don't know the story.
You don't know if these people go out to dinner every single day and it's just an average day for them. You don't know if maybe there's a couple sitting in front of you and they are on their last leg about to get a divorce and they are out trying to rekindle their romance in order to stay together.
You don't know if these people are dirt poor and they saved up for an entire year to come out to that dinner. You don't know. So how dare I, as the experienced curator, bring my bad day to the table, bring my stomach ache to the table, and ruin their experience? That's not fair. That's not okay. And that's just that, that is just a value that I, I stand behind.
That is a value that is very, very, very important to me. And I want the same in return, which of course can piss you off when you don't get the same in return. So when I created my business, I wanted the same thing for my customers. I wanted them to have the best experience possible and. It like, because especially it was my name on the line, it was absolutely fucking enraging If someone was going to cut corners and not give them that experience they deserve because they're having a bad day or they had a fight with their partner.
Like, you don't bring that to the table. And that was, that was a rule, an unspoken rule that I had in my business. And what I mean about unspoken is that. I didn't necessarily say, here is one of the values of our company, and if you violate this one, it's gonna create a lot of problems. And two, your, your grounds for termination because you're not a fit for this culture.
If. So when you think about this, some of this is happening in your house already in your family, like your kids know, like, don't do that in front of mom. Don't say that in front of mom. But they don't know why. They don't understand the deeper meaning, the deeper understanding behind it. You might not even know the deeper meaning or deeper understanding behind it.
You know that when your kids do this or your husband does this, or your wife does that, or your mom does this, that it really ticks you off, but you don't necessarily know why. And that's the beauty and value is that you start to understand why certain things are a hard no for you. Why certain things are a heck yes.
Why certain things are gonna piss you off, and why certain things are gonna light you up and give you energy. It gives you that you have all the feedback in your current life, in your current environment. It's just reverse engineering and understanding it. Then the beauty of it is when you're able to understand your own personal values, also your partner, understanding their values, and then coming together to create family values, which really at the end of the day is just an alignment.
Parenting technique and also an aligned communication and working together technique as partners. Because if you understand how both of you think, you understand how both of you operate. Then you're able to come together with a customized way of doing things, a customized way of communicating, a customized way of structuring your day, your week, your month, your year.
I. You have a better idea of what vacation will serve. Everyone is opposed to it, I wanna do this. No, I wanna do this. You have a better idea of what type of cur, extracurricular activities your kids should be in, what type of school you're gonna choose, what type of food you're going to feed your family. Like it.
It takes the questions out of everything. It takes the fighting out of everything. When you have this level of clarity. Also, let's be real. We all have heard the term good, good cop, bad cop in a parenting situation. And that's because kids will prey on the cracks because you and your partner, chances are you have a different set of values, but you've never actually brought the values together to see where the overlap is and to see how that formulates a parenting, uh, structure or methodology.
So now your kids will see. Where mom says yes and where dad says no and vice versa, and they're going to then prey on that and they're going to leverage it, and then they're gonna leverage it to the point that you guys are, are the turmoil is between the two of you ass. It's not, it's not between the kids.
Why did you allow them to do this, and why did you allow them to do that? And why did you say yes? Why'd you say no? It's because you've never actually had the ability to understand each other's values and to come together as to how that plays a role in how you communicate and align with your kids.
I feel very fortunate that I did a lot of this stuff prior to having Q because now that I work with so many families, I see the, the ripple effect, and it doesn't, it's not once the kid is born and older and, and has a, you know, has a voice and an opinion like this starts, like the, the, the conflict starts in the pregnancy.
Oh, I wanna do a home birth. No, no, no. What are you crazy about? We need to be in a hospital in case something bad happens and like, you know, oh, breastfeed bottle feed. Who's gonna stay home? Who's not gonna stay home? You know, nanny daycare, mom and dad, grandparents come over like, watch the kids. It's like.
Literally, once you have the kid or the pregnancy, that's when you really see the alignment or misalignment between two individuals because when it's just the two of you, you know, we can, we could sugarcoat things a little bit. We can spend more time apart. Um. You know, we have more of that time and freedom.
You could sweep some things under the rug, like no big deal. You know, I'm just gonna let that, let that be and I gotta go to work. But it's when the kid is in the mix. You see all the cracks in the communication, you see all the misalignment in your values, and so it's just a feedback mechanism. It's not to say, oh, this person is bad for me, or anything like that.
It's an opportunity. Every challenge is an opportunity, and so that's really the beauty of it, is if you can understand your own values, you can radically change how you show up in all of your relationships, especially your romantic relationship. And then if you're able to leverage the understanding of your own values in order to then curate what does it look like inside of our family, then you're gonna not only have a, uh, a lot better of communication with your children as well as your partner, but you're also going to be able to have a lot less chaos because decisions.
Are being made that are aligned and you know why they're aligned. It's not, it's not the idea anymore that someone is, uh, and sacrificing is not the right word. It's not that someone is, is having to bend or someone is, is having to, um. What is the right word that I'm looking for right now? You guys know what I'm saying though, it's a matter of, you know, you guys are making decisions that are aligned and it's, no one feels defeated.
No, not one person feels like I'm just gonna do it your way, which, you know, we call a demand relationship, which that shit gets real old, real quick. The moral of the story is, is that there is actually, for those of you that are entrepreneurs, for tho those of you that have been in corporate models, you can actually take a lot of wisdom away from what you've observed and what you've experienced in those models, you know, in corporate models and, and properly run entrepreneurial businesses is.
There's a lot of meetings. There's a lot of meetings with very specific frameworks and very specific structures in order to get everybody on the same page, for everyone to know what they're responsible for, for everyone to know what they own. And then of course, there is someone directing the whole thing that's making sure that everybody's accountable and everyone's producing.
Imagine running a household like that. Imagine running a household where everybody knows exactly what they own. And they know that they're accountable to that and they're required to actually show that they have produced results, they've produced outcomes with the thing that they own. You know how many times I hear it and I see it, do the dishes, do some chores, do this, do that.
This could be to your partner, this could be to your kids, and um, I'll just do it. But what if you like, you don't do that at work. You tell somebody to do something and then you're like, I'll just do it. I'll do, I'll do everybody's job because they don't wanna do it. You don't do that. You, you literally will give them feedback and say, you better do this, or This is your consequence.
But of course when we're doing things in a strategic way, this isn't about threats, especially, you're not like kicking your kid out of the house, per se. Um, but this is about strategically approaching it so they understand why this is something that needs to be done. And it, at the end of the day, you know, there are consequences.
So if you don't wanna do anything and mom and dad have to do all of these extra chores, guess what the weekends look like. If they don't look that fun, 'cause mom and dad have to do all these things that you're not willing to help with. So you're gonna be the one who's not gonna go out and have fun and do X, Y, and Z because mom and dad are too busy doing this.
So there's a lot of ways that you can, um, you can go about this so that your child is more willing to be accountable to it, opposed to just saying, oh, we're gonna kick you outta the house if you don't do this. So again. Look at the things that you feel like have really, that you've really valued inside of, of, of a work environment, or you've really seen move the needle and, you know, in your entrepreneurial business.
And obviously if, if you're like, no, my entrepreneur entrepreneurial business is a shit show, then you know, you should, we should work on that. But if really at the end of the day, it starts with understanding your own values first. Because if you can understand your values inside and out, you can have more strategic conversations with your partner on how to align your values, and it makes sense.
Again, it doesn't feel like one person has to compromise that both of you can come together and say, you know, I operate this way for this reason. I spend money in this way for this reason. I, I like to spend time doing this for this reason. And you know, you bring it together, you are able to align and then you cascade that.
Remember too, if you ever had a boss that came to you really unprepared, really flustered, confused, unprepared, you're like, mm, okay. Good talk, man. And you don't take it seriously and you definitely don't necessarily act on it. And there's no, there's probably no positive outcomes that come. So for you to constantly have conversations with either your partner or your kids that are out of frustration or um, unstructured.
You don't have your exact bullet points to make your point. You don't have the, the bullet points of this is what's going on. This is what I need you to do, call to action and this is how you're gonna be accountable to it. Okay? Yeah. Mm-hmm. See you later. When you approach it from that perspective, they're like.
She ain't messing around. He ain't messing around like, all right, like, I, I better, I better listen. This conversation was a lot different than in the past when, oh, I can't believe you didn't have, do the dishwasher again. And so you can be very, very strategic in how you communicate that you get taken more seriously.
And not to say that you don't get taken seriously, it's just your tone, your confidence. Your presentation makes a difference. This is why people spend years and a lot of money to become great public speakers because you don't, you don't just wing it. It's a practice. It's an art in order to speak in a way that people listen, to speak in a way that people take action.
It's an art. Really as parents, we should be mastering that art. We shouldn't just be winging it. And, and that's, and that's one of the biggest lies I think that is out there, is that you just wing it. As a parent, you know, it's, it's funny because. You know, people love to share when you're pregnant or having a kid, they love to share all of the, oh, just wait for this.
And oh my gosh, this and this age, and oh my gosh. And, I just took everything with a grain of salt. I'm like, okay, and I don't find any of it to be true, my truth. And, and I, and I tried to think about it like, why are we that different? Are we that weird? And I think it really comes down to the fact that I'm running my family, like I run a business.
Not to say that that means I'm stringent and I'm the CEO of my house. It's just I'm using, I'm using strategy, I'm using tools, I'm using structure. And to some people, when you say that on a high level, it could sound really strange, but. We just have regular rhythms in our house. We have rhythms of, Nick and I have a meeting.
We don't, you know, Q's still really little, but it's like if he was older, we're not gonna have a meeting with a child until we meet. So then we're on the same page. There's no cracks in it. That they could take advantage of, and then you cascade that message down. It's the same thing that would happen in a management, you know, director and, and, and, uh, superior.
They're having a conversation, getting on the same page before anything is cascaded down to any of their employees. It's about that alignment. And so, you know, we're making sure that communication is key. We're making sure that we are understanding our values. We're also making sure that we're not just subscribing to what is normal, because we make every decision based on our own personal values and our family's values, and we also decide how we are going to spend our money and invest our money based off of.
Our values. So, you know, things that we spend money on, other families can look at us and think we're fucking crazy. But I can also look at other people that spend money on toys and things and, you know, um, that I think is crazy. Like, you know, our experience as mentioned is, is important for me, but.
Adventure is really important to Nick. So we realize that adventurous experiences coming together are very valuable for our family. So if we're gonna go on a vacation or a weekend trip, we wanna make sure that there's that beautiful balance. There's gonna be adventure. So something with nature, if it's gonna be a beach, if there's gonna be hiking, if there's gonna be a, a mountain skiing, snowboarding, whatever.
But then there's also the experience that I can go have a fancy meal if I want to. I can go do a little shopping if I want to. You know, we, we find places that have that beautiful blend, like how cool is that when you could be so hyper specific on how you curate a vacation, how you curate a weekend getaway, that both people are being served, and then in turn the kids are being served because you're essentially curating and cultivating their values.
So. The moral of the story is, understand your personal values, and it's me it's, it's a work in progress always. You don't, you could always question your values. You could always feel like your values evolve. That's totally normal, but you should be able to remember them and you should be able to remember your values.
Because they are you. They are who you are at your core. So people I feel like do these exercises and then I'm like, what are your values? And I do it on purpose. Uh, uh, uh, oh, hold on. Let me get my paper. No, no, no. You shouldn't have to get your paper. You should know at least your top value. Otherwise, keep doing it until it's like a no-brainer, because you know exactly what your values are because they're you, they're your essence.
Start to understand your own. And then be able to get to know your partners and then come together. What does this look like? What does the fusion of these look like? What are the things that are gonna be the most important for us as we raise a family? You know? And if there's two values that are, um, completely unmatched, you do have to figure out what the middle ground is.
You know, for a person who's like. I really value health, wellness, nutrition, and I wanna spend money and time and effort on that. And another person who's just like. I could care less what I eat. You know, that could create some significant stress. And so it's a matter of like, you know, how do we meet in the middle with this?
And let me get to know a little bit more. What is your idea of health and wellness? Here's my idea of health and wellness. What's your idea of health and wellness? And that person might be like, oh, well. I think it's all about exercise. I think it's all about physical activity. Okay, great. So definitely want to make sure that we're incorporating that, but then also you're only gonna be able to maximize your physical activity if you're eating foods that nourish your body and fuel your metabolism and also fuel your, you know, muscle recovery.
So, you know, are you okay with creating that balance? Are you okay with, you know, making sure that we're. Going to be bringing things into the house that are creating that benefit so that we can get the most out of our physical activity. And it's like, oh, okay, that makes sense. I never thought about it that way.
So opposed to being like my way or the highway, you know, you're able to have an open dialogue to really understand, 'cause some people say like, I don't care about this, and like, that's a stupid way to spend money, but it's because maybe someone has never really opened their eyes to. The value of it or, or that like there are a lot of people that grew up, um, eating complete shit food, but then when you really talk to them, they feel like shit.
They have headaches all the time. Their gut is a mess. Like they feel like they're, quote unquote getting old, but they're like 30. You know, their joints are a mess and this and that, and they're like, I had no idea food would cause these problems. I thought this is just genetic, or this is old age, so.
You know, sometimes there is an opportunity to grow together, um, because both people have completely different sets of wisdom and knowledge. Alright, guys, a lot to digest. I hope this is of extreme value to you. Start with your values, get into your family values, and don't forget that having structure inside of your family and inside of your household.
It's not that you're, you know, a super stringent type of person. This is actually the key to having a family that has a lot more fun and a lot more freedom because their time and energy is not getting sucked up by chaos and fires and issues that need to be dealt with. So there is a lot of magic in creating this structure and understanding your family.
