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The PodcastEPISODE #70
Dealing With Fear In Business: Dr. Rachna Jain of InLoveAndBiz.com We’re back with a listener favorite: Clinical psychologist Dr. Rachna Jain of InLoveAndBiz.com. Our conversations with her are among the most popular on CoupleCo. Today, she’s talking about one of our favorite subjects because it is such a motivator—but not always in the right way. Hello, FEAR. For a couple in business together, fear can run amok. It can prevent you from starting a business together. It can prevent you from taking necessary risks. But did you know that fear is informative? How do you tell the difference between basic nerves and real dread? Want to learn how deal with fear and get past it—or understand it and come to an agreement? And where does improv comedy fit in all this? CLICK HERE FOR A COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF PLACES TO HEAR THIS SHOW FOR ITUNES, CLICK HERE FOR SOUNDLCOUD, CLICK HERE DOWNLOAD THE MP3 BY RIGHT-CLICKING HERE AND SELECTING "SAVE AS" |
THE SHOW NOTES
Dr. Rachna Jain is back, and is talking about a powerful motivator. However, it’s not always a motivator in the right way. Fear impacts us all. It can prevent you from starting a business or taking risks that might be necessary. But fear can be informative. If you’re in business with your spouse, you’re navigating not only your own fear, but theirs too. Dr. Jain talks about some of the fears that can come up as a couple in business, how to explore fear with your spouse, and the value of playing the game of “What If…?”
Takeaways
The important conversations you need to have
Summary
Links
In Love and Biz
Lovin' IT: Amy & Elden Quesinberry of Layer 8 Consulting, Part 1
Viola Spolin
Dr. Rachna Jain is back, and is talking about a powerful motivator. However, it’s not always a motivator in the right way. Fear impacts us all. It can prevent you from starting a business or taking risks that might be necessary. But fear can be informative. If you’re in business with your spouse, you’re navigating not only your own fear, but theirs too. Dr. Jain talks about some of the fears that can come up as a couple in business, how to explore fear with your spouse, and the value of playing the game of “What If…?”
Takeaways
The important conversations you need to have
- Are your deal breakers really deal breakers?
- Relationships are about ongoing compromise
Summary
- Some of fears the that couples in business can face (04:34)
- When fear can be informative (06:20)
- Communicating about your fears (07:38)
- The fear of how much to invest in a business (08:14)
- Fears Honey and Blaine have had in their various businesses (09:33)
- Playing “What If…?” and finding the ultimate fear (12:27)
- When Honey played “What If…?” after moving to New York and losing her job (14:42)
- The intangible assets we all have (16:15)
- Blaine points out that Honey seems to have a lot more fear than he does (17:37)
- Knowing what your deal-breakers are and where you are flexible (18:08)
- Pushing or not pushing your partner out of their comfort zone (23:57)
- Finding the place of agreement (27:16)
Links
In Love and Biz
Lovin' IT: Amy & Elden Quesinberry of Layer 8 Consulting, Part 1
Viola Spolin
THE TRANSCRIPT
Honey: Okay.
Blaine: Yup. You gotta hold on a second. I am not prepared. I wasn't ready for this.
Honey: Is anyone ever ready for this?
Blaine: Does anyone really know what time it is?
Honey: Actually I do, but that goes against the song so.
Blaine: Still does anyone really care?
Honey: No.
Blaine: Okay. Welcome to CoupleCo, working with your spouse for fun and profit. I'm Blaine Parker.
Honey: Which makes me Honey Parker.
Blaine: And as a couple in business together we are coming to you from the couple coach, our compact Trans American land yachts.
Honey: Except for not really. We're coming to you from a car this time.
Blaine: Again, but hey, you know what? We're really close to the couple coaches. We're navigating the nation for standout couples in business together and we're bringing them to you so you can hear their inspiring stories of crushing it in business without crushing each other.
Honey: In this episode we've brought back one of our favorite guests.
Blaine: And judging from the download numbers, she's the one of your favorites too.
Honey: Her interviews are among the most popular shows we've done.
Blaine: And this week she's going to talk about one of our favorite subjects because it is such a motivator.
Honey: But not always in the right way.
Blaine: No. Do you know what I'm motivated for? Yeah, you got it. Smokin' Mary, Smokin' bloody Mary mix.
Honey: Smokin' Mary is one heck of a motivator, especially if you like fresh, whole juicy tomatoes that have been pummeled and [inaudible 00:01:17] into the richest, tastiest bloody Mary mix you've ever had. It is not like the commercial giants because Smokin' Mary is only made in small batches with no reconstituted tomato juice, only fresh whole pummeled tomatoes.
Blaine: Fresh whole pummeled tomatoes.
Honey: Yeah.
Blaine: And Smokin' Mary is a couple owned business which makes us like it even more. It's not just because we like a cocktail.
Honey: Which you know who are we kidding?
Blaine: Well, okay, we like it just for the endless supply of free cocktail mixers. Smokin' Mary's smoked bloody Mary mix. Hey, nice tomatoes. Online is smokinmary.com.
Honey: If you want to find out more about a CoupleCo, this couple owned business, and our 69 nudge nudge, wink, wink, previous episodes.
Blaine: Oh you did it.
Honey: I did. We are online at coupleco.com.
Blaine: So in this episode we are reuniting with our favorite clinical psychologist, Dr. Rachna Jain of inloveandbiz.com.
Honey: Episode number 26 our conversation on how to argue is always one of our top 10 and I absolutely know why because when we were having the conversation with her, I thought, wow, I just got free therapy. It was totally worth it.
Blaine: Well today we're going to be talking with Dr. Jain about possibly the single most motivating emotion in these psychological soup and that is fear.
Honey: Yeah and for a couple in business together, fear can just run a muck.
Blaine: Bum, bum, bum.
Honey: Gung, gung, gung.
Blaine: Well gung, gung, gung always sounds like law and order.
Honey: Oh no, that's bum, bum, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
Blaine: Gunk, gunk, you know.
Honey: Do we owe them money?
Blaine: Gunk, gunk. Probably.
Honey: Okay.
Blaine: Fear can inspire all kinds of things like preventing you from starting a business together.
Honey: It can prevent you from taking risks in your business that might be necessary.
Blaine: But did you know that fear is informative.
Honey: How do you tell the difference between basic nerves and real dread?
Blaine: Want to know how to deal with the fear and get past it or understand it and come to an agreement here now fear and the tools for dealing with it, featuring Dr. Rachna Jain of inloveandbiz.com. We're here with Dr. Rachna Jain, our favorite clinical psychologist.
Dr. Jain: Hi there.
Blaine: One of our top top episodes is how to argue.
Honey: It's ... I recommend it to everybody actually even my friends who are not in business together because they all get it.
Dr. Jain: Yeah. Well everyone needs I think, good skills to argue with.
Honey: Yeah.
Blaine: So since we are back in suburban Maryland and Dr. Jain lives in suburban Maryland, we took this opportunity to get some face time with Dr. Jain in suburban Maryland.
Dr. Jain: Yes. Hello.
Blaine: And you got to drive here through rush hour traffic for which we apologize.
Dr. Jain: I did.
Honey: And appreciate.
Dr. Jain: That's like dedication.
Blaine: Yes.
Honey: That is dedication.
Blaine: Boy the DC area traffic man.
Honey: Did you know that Maryland is one of our biggest states as far as followers?
Dr. Jain: No, I didn't know.
Blaine: Yes at the time this is being recorded in the previous week, despite having one sixth the population of California, it had 200% the downloads.
Dr. Jain: Wow.
Honey: I know right.
Dr. Jain: Maryland represent.
Blaine: Yeah. It is a potent state.
Honey: Best flag in the Union.
Blaine: No, I suppose that's debatable.
Honey: No, it's actually, it's a fact.
Blaine: It's a fact.
Honey: It is a fact. You can look it up. Google it.
Blaine: That's an inside joke we will get into later. Anyway, Dr. Jain.
Dr. Jain: Yes.
Blaine: We're going to talk about ...
Honey: Dun, dun, dun.
Dr. Jain: Fear.
Blaine: Fear.
Dr. Jain: Fear.
Blaine: Here it comes.
Honey: That's the fear music. Dun, dun, dun.
Dr. Jain: And we all look afraid even though you can't see it.
Honey: So fear in relation to being in business with your spouse.
Blaine: Yes a biggie.
Dr. Jain: It does. It's ... there's actually quite a lot of fear. There's fear of starting businesses together, starting a business together. There's fear of running the business and not letting it overtake the relationship. There's fears of balancing, you know, all your other responsibilities as a couple your family, your children, all those things, you know, and then I think there's also the fear of what do you do if one of you continues to want the business and the other one doesn't. So there's a lot of places where fear can show up.
Blaine: But fear is your friend.
Dr. Jain: Well I think fear can be your friend. The problem is is most people get frozen, you know, when they get really afraid and so you've heard about the fight or flight response, you know, it's something that you see that couples typically tend to balance each other out. So one is gonna be more likely to fight and one is going to be more likely to freeze but the tricky part is that it's not consistent. You know, there'll be some areas where the fighting member of the couple will freeze and the other member of the couple won't expect it cause they'll say, well you're, you know, you're always out there, you're the first one fighting, you're the first one saying, how do we turn this around? And so I think there's a lot of place and a lot of reason to actually discuss fear. How you both respond to fear. What are your cues to each other that you know, I'm frozen now or I'm feeling like I really need to go out there and fight and you know, and then in terms of it like how to work through it and what to do, what to do with it so that you can move forward.
Blaine: Yeah. I was joking when I said fear is your friend, but really fear is, you know, it's something that kept us alive back in the day.
Dr. Jain: It absolutely is and in that way it's informative. You know, it definitely informs us that oh we're about to do something risky or scary or something that you know is going to pull us out of our comfort zone.
Blaine: And just by the way, if you hear a car drive by us, because we are in the couple coach.
Dr. Jain: That's right.
Blaine: And hadn't anticipated that and we're just going to leave it in cause I think it was fun.
Honey: So how do you know, how do you identify when fear is informing you? Like, hey, red flag, we need to rethink this or I'm just nervous move forward anyway.
Dr. Jain: Well I think that ... I think the way you can tell or a way you can tell is by the severity of it or the intensity of it. You know, that sometimes you have fear and it's mixed with excitement where you feel kind of afraid and excited and that's a very different place than, you know, when one person is saying, let's mortgage our whole house, let's mortgage our house and go all in on the business.
Blaine: Okay that would scare me.
Dr. Jain: Yeah and the other person is saying, I think we need a place to live. I don't want to do this. And so I think you can tell by the intensity of how it is and whether there's any excitement mixed in or whether it's more like dread or anguish or, you know, overwhelm.
Honey: And then what do you do if one person says, mine's mixed with excitement and the other one is like, mine's mixed with dread.
Dr. Jain: Yes, absolutely and so that's really where, again, this whole concept of having a chance to talk about things before decisions are made, you know, as much as possible and agreeing that you'll come to some agreement that you both can live with, you know, or you won't move ahead because, you know, you can never go faster in a relationship than the slowest person in it.
Blaine: See are we talking about the fear that prevents a couple from actually taking the leap and starting a business?
Dr. Jain: I think it could be any kind of fear. I think it's actually probably not that fear. It's probably more along the lines of a fear of how much do we invest in it, either of ourselves, of our finances. You know, I'm sure that you both, you know, have heard and maybe even have experienced this sense of, you know, oh we need to grow our business and so do we do that by leveraging our assets. You know, do we take a home equity loan or do we take on another mortgage on our house if we want to build an office? Like what do we do? Where do we get the money from when we're kind of getting started or bootstrapping and maybe there's not a lot of extra cash, you know? And one person has vision of, you know, I can see a huge gym and I can see hundreds of people coming here every day. And the other person is like, okay, but what if we get the warehouse for the gym and nobody comes? You know?
And so it's those kinds of things where I think it's about growth, like how the business grows more sometimes than maybe starting the business or not. Because I think if couples have thought about going into business together, they kind of feel at least excited enough at the prospect of that, that that's not as large a fear as you know, the discrepancy between somebody wanting to go all in, in this really notable way and the other person saying maybe we could take it a little bit more slowly.
Honey: Well, that's definitely, I think what we came across both with slow burn marketing and with CoupleCo, you know, and right now we're talking about creating an event, live event. So, of course I'm thinking, what if no one shows up? They're coming. They're coming.
Blaine: It's a real fear.
Dr. Jain: Yes.
Honey: But it's definitely a fear.
Dr. Jain: It is.
Honey: And you know, and I don't even know, it's kinda crazy, but I don't even know if my fear was that, oh, we paid this money and no one came. It was just ... it's just like throwing a party and no one comes like that's really ...
Dr. Jain: Yes absolutely.
Honey: Really uncomfortable for me.
Blaine: You know by the same token, I don't think there was a lot of fear when we started slow burn marketing at all.
Honey: No, we didn't. I don't, you know ...
Blaine: It was like spontaneous.
Honey: I mean spontaneous ... we've both been in advertising for a long time. We had kind of talked about it, but when we decided to do it, it was just the right moment and it was right for both of us and we just moved forward. But then small things for the business, like farming different workout and paying for that, you know, like, well why can we pay for them? We can do it ourselves. And you know, that's where we would have fear and that's where things wouldn't move forward on the smaller things.
Blaine: The fear was probably less about the cash outlay and more about are we going to be able to hire somebody who can get this done or are we going to spend all this money and find out we've got to do it again ourselves or hire someone else to do and spend even more money. So it's a different kind of fear and it, you know, it sounds small, but I, you know, in some ways it can be incapacitating.
Dr. Jain: It absolutely can because when a couple has similar ideas about things, you know, and so they either can perpetuate each other's fear and make it worse or make it more, you know, or they can soothe each other's fear. And so the challenges are these, that sometimes the couples who are most alike, they are most similar so they have the best kind of relationship. But then the challenge becomes that they both can get equally stuck in a similar kind of fear, you know? So if one of the ... a couple of feels afraid of not having enough money and the other one mirrors them in that, you know, that can create like an incredible amount of stuckness, which is different than what you see if one member of the couple is afraid, you know, of not having enough money and the other is like, oh, it always works out. No problem.
Honey: Right.
Blaine: Yeah.
Dr. Jain: You know, it's a different ... I mean that creates some tension and difficulty, but it maybe allows for more range of movement and less frozenness.
Blaine: Stuckness.
Dr. Jain: Stuckness.
Blaine: Is a word they taught you when you were getting your doc?
Dr. Jain: Yes, exactly. Yeah. That was like one of the first things we learned. So but you know, but it's that sense of, I mean everyone I think can understand though that feeling stuck or feeling frozen and feeling like, do we do this or do we do that? I don't know. What do you think? I don't know. Do we do this or do we do that? And even when you try to talk, you know, if you both are coming at it from that same level of fear, you can't take the conversation further than the level of fear that you're at.
Honey: So what do you do?
Dr. Jain: Yeah. So what do you do? My ... one of my favorite ...
Blaine: She's starting to laugh.
Dr. Jain: One of my favorite exercises always in situations like this is to actually play the what if and what if is the worst case scenario and you keep actually, you know, you can do it separately and then share with each other or you can just talk about it and kind of make it, you know, as worse as you can and it almost becomes comical if you take it far enough.
Honey: Right.
Dr. Jain: You know, I'm afraid that no one will come to our live event. Okay, well what would be so bad about that? Well, it would mean that we spent all this money and you know, we're wasting the money. Okay. What would be so bad about that? I don't know. I don't know. And you keep going and you go down about five or six questions, ask somebody five or six times, what would be so bad about that and then you actually get to what the real fear is. And then whatever the real fear is, like, let's say that the ultimate fear in some situation is that we'll become a bag people and we'll be homeless, you know, and we have to live on the street.
Blaine: I have that fear every morning when I wake up.
Dr. Jain: Yeah. You know, you have to live on the street. So if you really say, well, what would be so bad about that? You know, what you'll find underneath is very often it'll be something like, well, I'll feel like a complete and utter failure and then there'll be a big sigh and that's how you know you've gotten to kind of the core of whatever it is. So then once you've gotten to that point, you can start to look at cognitively or emotionally or both ideally, what could be safeguards or what could be fail safes against getting to that point of, you know, complete ruin or you know, perceived ruin, you know, and kind of talk about it that way. Because the thing is, is that in many things, especially, you know, how much money to save in the bank and things like that, people have kind of a vague notion and they never actually articulate specifically, you know would I feel secure if I had $10,000 in the bank or would I feel secure if I had three or I had five or I had 100,000 or whatever it would take.
And so the more that you can as a couple talk about it together, it can deepen your relationship and help you both understand like what is the, you know, what's the stopping point or what's the end point? And we'll go this far, but we won't go any further. We'll go all in except we won't mortgage our house or ...
Honey: Something like that.
Dr. Jain: Yeah you know something like that.
Honey: Yeah. It's interesting you say that what's the worst that can happen? So many years ago when I first moved to New York and I had my first job in advertising and it ended, and I was talking to my dad, my dad was my business touchstone and I was really scared. And he said, honey, what's the worst thing that could happen? And I said, well, I won't be able to get another job. And he said, okay, well then what's the worst thing that could happen? I'm like, oh, I run out of my money. He said, okay, what's the worst thing that could happen? I said, I'd have to move back in with you guys. And he said, okay, so for you, the worst thing that could happen is you move in with people who love you and feed you. He's like, that is your bottom.
Dr. Jain: Yes.
Honey: And it was so empowering.
Dr. Jain: It is.
Honey: Because I thought feed me. Okay.
Dr. Jain: Okay. Yeah and it's actually the same thing. Your Dad actually did that same technique, like, you know what, what's so bad about that or what's the worst about that? And that takes you to a place then where, you know, once you kind of discharge or get rid of all of that surface top level stuff and then you say like, well, you know, the worst isn't really that bad or you become certain that you'll never let that happen. You know that I mean what we forget sometimes in that space of fears, we forget that wherever ... whatever happens next, we kind of take ourselves and we take our experience, we take our contacts, we take our wisdom, we take all the things we know and all the things we've learned. And so, you know, I think as we get older we feel like we have more to lose because certainly, you know, maybe losing your job at 25 it would be very, very different than if something like that happened now.
Honey: At not 25.
Dr. Jain: Not 25 but ...
Honey: Thank you.
Dr. Jain: Yes, I'm not 25 either so you know, I know.
Blaine: No you don't look a day over 25.
Dr. Jain: So, but I think though that we feel like we have more to lose, but the reality is also that we have a lot more, what should I say? Like a lot more treasure or we have a lot more in the bank of ourselves. Life experiences, contacts.
Blaine: I like that we have a lot more treasures.
Dr. Jain: Yeah.
Blaine: Well I've got a lot of treasure. I don't have a lot of money, but I've got a lot of treasure.
Dr. Jain: You know, because if you look at it, I mean really, if you look at it like I think for myself, if one day I woke up and everything had changed for me, you know, I look at all the people I know, I look at all the people that maybe I've impacted in some way, who might be willing to put in a good word for me or offer me an opportunity or you know, recommend me for something. And I didn't have that when I was 25 you know, I just didn't know enough people. I had not lived long enough and so I think that it's also really important to understand that whatever the measure of ourselves that we look at in terms of being a failure or being a success, we have a lot of things that are intangible that could contribute, you know, that could keep us from that utter ruin than I was talking about better ruin.
Honey: So there's another point I wanted to talk to you about it was something you had mentioned before we started rolling and that is ...
Blaine: Obviously Honey has a lot more questions about fear than I do. I haven't asked a single question.
Dr. Jain: But do you see that mirrored in your relationship?
Blaine: Yes.
Dr. Jain: Yes. Cause I mean, I know that you both for some time now.
Honey: Yeah.
Blaine: It's been a while.
Dr. Jain: And I can see that. I can see that.
Blaine: Over 15 years.
Dr. Jain: Yep, exactly. It has been and so I can see that it wouldn't be surprising to me that that would be sort of a bit of a microcosm or a mirror of your relationship.
Honey: Oh yeah and we definitely have different areas where we're more comfortable. So you had mentioned something about as a couple discussing where your flex points are, what are you flexible about?
Dr. Jain: Yeah, absolutely and so that's part of that discussion. I think it's a deepening conversation to have with each other so that you can learn more about each other. And you know, there's certain things that we all have that are non negotiable, you know, they just ... they would be like deal-breakers no matter.
Blaine: Or non-negotiables.
Dr. Jain: Who did them, no matter what the situation just they would be deal breakers. But for most people, those deal breakers aren't as many as they think. And so then if they don't have that many deal breakers, then there's these places where they're willing to flex a little bit. So if you're let's say trying to set your work schedule, you know, you might go in saying, no, I just want nine to five. I don't want to work anything different than that because of whatever your story is, why you want to do that. But you may find that you might be willing to do nine to six or eight to seven or something, you know, some days or something like that, two days late and the rest of the days early.
And so the flex points are really a way of helping a couple kind of loosen that stuckness related to fear related to a big decision that seems like they can't get any movement on. It's a way of saying, okay well you know, this would be my ultimate thing that I would like to have happened, but what am I willing to be flexible on? You know, am I willing to adjust how much we work? Am I willing to ... some people will say, I'm not willing to take any time away from the kids or I'm not willing to sacrifice our family vacations or our extra resources to this. And somebody else may have different, you know, flex points on that.
So just being able to talk about them and it's not really negotiating cause you're not really trying to get to a particular answer. You're just trying to understand, you know, like where might we have some movement here because it's impossible that a situation has no movement points whatsoever. It just takes some time sometimes to have conversations to find where the movement could be.
Blaine: That's interesting. I, you know, cause so often you will know people who absolutely will not do x. Well sometimes just isn't that hard.
Dr. Jain: It absolutely and I think in those cases, you know, I would just have them look at kind of how committed they are to the relationship. Because if somebody, and I don't mean that in a judgemental way, I just mean it's a way of exploring. It's a way ...
Blaine: It crossed my mind.
Dr. Jain: Yeah, no, it's just ... yeah, but I don't mean to say like I'm questioning people's, you know, a commitment to their own relationships.
Blaine: Should you really be in this relationship?
Dr. Jain: Exactly.
Blaine: That's our next interview.
Dr. Jain: But the thing is, is that if something is really important to someone I love whether or not I understand it or under, you know, agree with it, I do want to really understand why it's so important and one way to understand that is to see, you know, if they can't tell me directly why it's so important, it's to look at where they'd be willing to flex and where they wouldn't. So if they say, I'm absolutely not willing to flex on this thing, then I understand that that's one end ... it's a boundary in the, you know, it's like a book end of the range. It's one ending point and then we say, okay, so if we don't do that thing, like if we don't, you know, go to that extreme, are you willing to meet me anywhere along the continuum? And in most relationships, if you approach it that way and both people want to be there and they're not just trying to win or they're not trying to, you know, just kind of ...
Blaine: Like Honey and I.
Dr. Jain: You know, but even, but even then, even though you guys do that sometimes, you know, you do kind of come back and try to reconnect or re-approach.
Blaine: I was joking. We rarely are each trying to win. Are we?
Dr. Jain: Honey's looking really confused with it.
Blaine: Obviously I ....
Dr. Jain: So all I'm saying is that if you can start talking about these flex points, it gives you a sense of where the book ends are in that conversation. You know, so I'm not willing to do this on one end and I absolutely would not be willing to do this on the other end and then everything else in the middle is where you can start talking about what could happen then.
Blaine: Well, it's, you know, and one of the things that people forget, I think especially when they're talking about going into business with a spouse or they're in business with a spouse, is that we do nothing but compromise in a relationship. It's constant.
Honey: Yeah.
Blaine: But I think a couple that has been together long enough, doesn't really think about that.
Honey: No.
Blaine: Until all of a sudden there's a business and then somehow that magnifies things 10 times.
Dr. Jain: It absolutely does because you have then the issue of recognition, the issue of finances, you have a lot of issues tied in to work and working.
Honey: Well I think when you add finances to it from a business level, especially for couples that are all in this is what they do, it's this one business and that sustains them. Your finances, let's you know your freedom, you know, what are you and what are you not going to be able to do with your life? So there are bigger ramifications.
Dr. Jain: There absolutely are and I think also it dictates sort of what becomes possible in the future as well. Because let's just say that you're considering an expansion to the business and it's going to require, you know, building a new building or something like that. Then that literally may be your children's summer camp or it may be their, you know, private school or something like that, you know, whatever the trade off would be. And so you really do have to weigh the, you know, kind of the pros and cons of that and if one person in the couple feels very strongly about private school, that's going to be very unique to that couple where in another couple, if neither person feels that strongly about it and they're willing to say like, okay, well we'll just switch gears, we'll send them to public school. No problem. It's just a different flavor of that.
Honey: Yeah and different things that could come up, you know, public speaking. Oh some people are so afraid.
Blaine: Most people are.
Honey: Of speaking in public, I mean it's not something that Blaine or I have to deal with.
Blaine: There was actually a Jerry Seinfeld episode where he was talking about how the single greatest fear in the world, or at least in the country is speaking in front of an audience and that is greater than the fear of death. Which means if you're at a funeral, everybody there would rather be the guy in the coffin than the guy giving the eulogy.
Honey: Which just blows me away but when I pick like a topic like that, so let's say a couple has been invited to speak, they know a lot about this category and one of them says, wow, that sounds great, let's do that. It might drive more business and the other person says so out of my comfort zone, big whole lot of fear, I am not doing it.
Blaine: The ultimate compromise there though would be easy. Just one person does the speaking and you know, I mean is there any ...
Honey: Yeah you don't force the other person.
Blaine: Yeah and that actually is one of the things that I find really interesting. We interviewed a couple who actually is right up the road here, Elden and Amy Quisenberry of layer eight. It's an it consulting business and she absolutely did not want to do anything in the business related to sales, which I understand cause I, you know, I was a salesman for years and frankly I do not want to ever do it again. But he tried to kind of nudge her into it. He figured, you know, he could coax her and she'd come along and life would be great. And I don't know if it was fear, I shouldn't be making that kind of assumption, but let's assume it was hypothetically somebody feels this way, has this fear of doing something. You don't want to push them into it. It's ugly.
Dr. Jain: Yeah, I totally ... I agree. I don't think that you ever want to push because it's like anything, it's like any other event or any other situation in your life as a couple, you know, if somebody really doesn't want to spend time with your aunt Mildred, like should you really force that? You know there comes a point where, and they ... I know poor Mildred, there has to be some sense of, you know, respecting your partner's desires or wishes and maybe there's some conversations to have like, you know, I think you'd be great at public speaking or maybe you'd feel more comfortable in smaller groups or breakout sessions. Like to see if there's any, again, any flex point.
Blaine: Well that's an interesting, you know, I wouldn't have thought of that.
Dr. Jain: Yeah. Any kind of flex point with it. You know it's really about like the way that I approach it is that there's always an answer and ...
Blaine: There's always an answer.
Dr. Jain: And the answer is really found by asking a series of questions and so your first questions are just kind of broad and trying to get, you know, the whole range like to get the broadest range you can and then as you find places where it's worth going deeper, the questions become more specific. So it may be that you say, you know, in this case it's your partner who doesn't really want to speak at all. You know, is it something that you will never consider ever or is it that you might consider it in certain situations and not others?
Blaine: You know, it's interesting. I'm just suddenly thinking here that this is a little bit like Improv comedy because there is a dictum in Improv from Viola Spolin who is considered the godmother of Improv. Go for the agreement.
Dr. Jain: Yes.
Blaine: And I'm thinking of something that Honey's dad does, which is when he's getting stonewalled by somebody in a service, like somebody at the rental car counter. We actually ... that experience, we were at a service counter in the airport and we were told absolutely no and Honey channeled her father and just kept saying ...
Honey: He's got one phrase.
Blaine: Yeah. The phrase is ...
Honey: But there must be some way.
Dr. Jain: Yes.
Honey: And the person will no, oh my gosh, it's just not going to work. I'm so sorry. And he'll nod at them knowingly and say, but there must be some way, you know, he's ...
Blaine: Every different inflection possible.
Honey: And finally at some point the other person will say, well, and then you're in. It's pretty much how I got into college. Story for another time but it is actually dead true.
Dr. Jain: Yes.
Blaine: I guess if maybe I'm Min furring too much here, but is it like that you're getting people to play the game of going for the agreement unwittingly?
Dr. Jain: You actually ... I mean you absolutely are because basically I think of it ... I mean Improv is a great example. I think of it as almost like almost like a baton, like handing off of baton in a relay race. You know that like or like a hot potato. Like I'm going to toss it to you and you're gonna toss it to Honey and she's going to toss it back to me and we're gonna do that in a way that is it kind of in the service of getting to an agreement. So the thing is I always believe that there is some answer to something.
Blaine: The old hot potato metaphor.
Dr. Jain: Yeah exactly there ya go. Yeah I learned that in graduate school too. That was my second week. But the thing is is I do see it as like a dance, you know, and I think in relationships that are healthy, there's room for that kind of exploration, you know? And like one of my favorite phrases that I use a lot is, you know, Honey, I'm not trying to change your mind. I just really want to understand. You know I just want to understand like why you don't want to speak at this group. I mean, I personally feel like you would be amazing at it and I just want to understand.
Blaine: Getting under the fear.
Dr. Jain: You know exactly.
Blaine: Figuring out what it is.
Dr. Jain: Yeah exactly.
Blaine: Interesting. Did you do more homework, Honey?
Honey: No, those were my things. Recognizing where your point of fear were, talking about your flex points and talking about worst case scenario.
Dr. Jain: And I think also going for the agreement, you know, believing that there is an agreement that exists and it's just up to you to find it.
Honey: Finding the x, y axis.
Dr. Jain: That's right.
Blaine: Finding the x, y ... boy we're walking away with all kinds of great stuff here that they teach in school when you're getting a Dr. Jainate in psychology.
Dr. Jain: That's right but the hot potato was the best.
Blaine: Hot potato was the best. X, y axis is a surprising one. I didn't see that coming at all. Dr Rachna Jain of inloveandbiz.com.
Honey: Dot com.
Blaine: God, we love that. We're sorry we didn't think that first. We want it. Can we buy it from you?
Dr. Jain: You can. You can share it with me.
Blaine: Thank you for playing.
Dr. Jain: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Honey: Thanks for coming back.
Blaine: This has been fear ...
Honey: Dun, dun, dun.
Blaine: With Dr Rachna Jain of inloveandbix.com. You can find her online if you can believe it at inloveandbiz.com
Honey: Where was that?
Blaine: Inloveandbiz.com.
Honey: And if you've enjoyed this podcast and we hope you did and you're not afraid anymore, you can go to iTunes and leave a star rating and a review to help people like you who are also unafraid find it.
Blaine: And join us next time as we bring you a different kind of unafraid CoupleCo.
Honey: This might even be an Uber CoupleCo.
Blaine: Chris and Jim Howard have been working together almost their entire married life.
Honey: There was that one year where they didn't work together.
Blaine: They hated it.
Honey: That was the funniest thing they said. Yup. There was one year we didn't work together. We hated it. And their story of working together is one that comes with every emotion from exhaustion to exultation.
Blaine: Jim and Chris Howard of live life revolution and renegade author. Next time here on CoupleCo, working with your spouse for fun and profit.
Honey: Copyright 2019 all rights reserved.
Blaine: Love you baby.
Honey: Love you too.
Blaine: CoupleCo out.
Honey: Okay.
Blaine: Yup. You gotta hold on a second. I am not prepared. I wasn't ready for this.
Honey: Is anyone ever ready for this?
Blaine: Does anyone really know what time it is?
Honey: Actually I do, but that goes against the song so.
Blaine: Still does anyone really care?
Honey: No.
Blaine: Okay. Welcome to CoupleCo, working with your spouse for fun and profit. I'm Blaine Parker.
Honey: Which makes me Honey Parker.
Blaine: And as a couple in business together we are coming to you from the couple coach, our compact Trans American land yachts.
Honey: Except for not really. We're coming to you from a car this time.
Blaine: Again, but hey, you know what? We're really close to the couple coaches. We're navigating the nation for standout couples in business together and we're bringing them to you so you can hear their inspiring stories of crushing it in business without crushing each other.
Honey: In this episode we've brought back one of our favorite guests.
Blaine: And judging from the download numbers, she's the one of your favorites too.
Honey: Her interviews are among the most popular shows we've done.
Blaine: And this week she's going to talk about one of our favorite subjects because it is such a motivator.
Honey: But not always in the right way.
Blaine: No. Do you know what I'm motivated for? Yeah, you got it. Smokin' Mary, Smokin' bloody Mary mix.
Honey: Smokin' Mary is one heck of a motivator, especially if you like fresh, whole juicy tomatoes that have been pummeled and [inaudible 00:01:17] into the richest, tastiest bloody Mary mix you've ever had. It is not like the commercial giants because Smokin' Mary is only made in small batches with no reconstituted tomato juice, only fresh whole pummeled tomatoes.
Blaine: Fresh whole pummeled tomatoes.
Honey: Yeah.
Blaine: And Smokin' Mary is a couple owned business which makes us like it even more. It's not just because we like a cocktail.
Honey: Which you know who are we kidding?
Blaine: Well, okay, we like it just for the endless supply of free cocktail mixers. Smokin' Mary's smoked bloody Mary mix. Hey, nice tomatoes. Online is smokinmary.com.
Honey: If you want to find out more about a CoupleCo, this couple owned business, and our 69 nudge nudge, wink, wink, previous episodes.
Blaine: Oh you did it.
Honey: I did. We are online at coupleco.com.
Blaine: So in this episode we are reuniting with our favorite clinical psychologist, Dr. Rachna Jain of inloveandbiz.com.
Honey: Episode number 26 our conversation on how to argue is always one of our top 10 and I absolutely know why because when we were having the conversation with her, I thought, wow, I just got free therapy. It was totally worth it.
Blaine: Well today we're going to be talking with Dr. Jain about possibly the single most motivating emotion in these psychological soup and that is fear.
Honey: Yeah and for a couple in business together, fear can just run a muck.
Blaine: Bum, bum, bum.
Honey: Gung, gung, gung.
Blaine: Well gung, gung, gung always sounds like law and order.
Honey: Oh no, that's bum, bum, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
Blaine: Gunk, gunk, you know.
Honey: Do we owe them money?
Blaine: Gunk, gunk. Probably.
Honey: Okay.
Blaine: Fear can inspire all kinds of things like preventing you from starting a business together.
Honey: It can prevent you from taking risks in your business that might be necessary.
Blaine: But did you know that fear is informative.
Honey: How do you tell the difference between basic nerves and real dread?
Blaine: Want to know how to deal with the fear and get past it or understand it and come to an agreement here now fear and the tools for dealing with it, featuring Dr. Rachna Jain of inloveandbiz.com. We're here with Dr. Rachna Jain, our favorite clinical psychologist.
Dr. Jain: Hi there.
Blaine: One of our top top episodes is how to argue.
Honey: It's ... I recommend it to everybody actually even my friends who are not in business together because they all get it.
Dr. Jain: Yeah. Well everyone needs I think, good skills to argue with.
Honey: Yeah.
Blaine: So since we are back in suburban Maryland and Dr. Jain lives in suburban Maryland, we took this opportunity to get some face time with Dr. Jain in suburban Maryland.
Dr. Jain: Yes. Hello.
Blaine: And you got to drive here through rush hour traffic for which we apologize.
Dr. Jain: I did.
Honey: And appreciate.
Dr. Jain: That's like dedication.
Blaine: Yes.
Honey: That is dedication.
Blaine: Boy the DC area traffic man.
Honey: Did you know that Maryland is one of our biggest states as far as followers?
Dr. Jain: No, I didn't know.
Blaine: Yes at the time this is being recorded in the previous week, despite having one sixth the population of California, it had 200% the downloads.
Dr. Jain: Wow.
Honey: I know right.
Dr. Jain: Maryland represent.
Blaine: Yeah. It is a potent state.
Honey: Best flag in the Union.
Blaine: No, I suppose that's debatable.
Honey: No, it's actually, it's a fact.
Blaine: It's a fact.
Honey: It is a fact. You can look it up. Google it.
Blaine: That's an inside joke we will get into later. Anyway, Dr. Jain.
Dr. Jain: Yes.
Blaine: We're going to talk about ...
Honey: Dun, dun, dun.
Dr. Jain: Fear.
Blaine: Fear.
Dr. Jain: Fear.
Blaine: Here it comes.
Honey: That's the fear music. Dun, dun, dun.
Dr. Jain: And we all look afraid even though you can't see it.
Honey: So fear in relation to being in business with your spouse.
Blaine: Yes a biggie.
Dr. Jain: It does. It's ... there's actually quite a lot of fear. There's fear of starting businesses together, starting a business together. There's fear of running the business and not letting it overtake the relationship. There's fears of balancing, you know, all your other responsibilities as a couple your family, your children, all those things, you know, and then I think there's also the fear of what do you do if one of you continues to want the business and the other one doesn't. So there's a lot of places where fear can show up.
Blaine: But fear is your friend.
Dr. Jain: Well I think fear can be your friend. The problem is is most people get frozen, you know, when they get really afraid and so you've heard about the fight or flight response, you know, it's something that you see that couples typically tend to balance each other out. So one is gonna be more likely to fight and one is going to be more likely to freeze but the tricky part is that it's not consistent. You know, there'll be some areas where the fighting member of the couple will freeze and the other member of the couple won't expect it cause they'll say, well you're, you know, you're always out there, you're the first one fighting, you're the first one saying, how do we turn this around? And so I think there's a lot of place and a lot of reason to actually discuss fear. How you both respond to fear. What are your cues to each other that you know, I'm frozen now or I'm feeling like I really need to go out there and fight and you know, and then in terms of it like how to work through it and what to do, what to do with it so that you can move forward.
Blaine: Yeah. I was joking when I said fear is your friend, but really fear is, you know, it's something that kept us alive back in the day.
Dr. Jain: It absolutely is and in that way it's informative. You know, it definitely informs us that oh we're about to do something risky or scary or something that you know is going to pull us out of our comfort zone.
Blaine: And just by the way, if you hear a car drive by us, because we are in the couple coach.
Dr. Jain: That's right.
Blaine: And hadn't anticipated that and we're just going to leave it in cause I think it was fun.
Honey: So how do you know, how do you identify when fear is informing you? Like, hey, red flag, we need to rethink this or I'm just nervous move forward anyway.
Dr. Jain: Well I think that ... I think the way you can tell or a way you can tell is by the severity of it or the intensity of it. You know, that sometimes you have fear and it's mixed with excitement where you feel kind of afraid and excited and that's a very different place than, you know, when one person is saying, let's mortgage our whole house, let's mortgage our house and go all in on the business.
Blaine: Okay that would scare me.
Dr. Jain: Yeah and the other person is saying, I think we need a place to live. I don't want to do this. And so I think you can tell by the intensity of how it is and whether there's any excitement mixed in or whether it's more like dread or anguish or, you know, overwhelm.
Honey: And then what do you do if one person says, mine's mixed with excitement and the other one is like, mine's mixed with dread.
Dr. Jain: Yes, absolutely and so that's really where, again, this whole concept of having a chance to talk about things before decisions are made, you know, as much as possible and agreeing that you'll come to some agreement that you both can live with, you know, or you won't move ahead because, you know, you can never go faster in a relationship than the slowest person in it.
Blaine: See are we talking about the fear that prevents a couple from actually taking the leap and starting a business?
Dr. Jain: I think it could be any kind of fear. I think it's actually probably not that fear. It's probably more along the lines of a fear of how much do we invest in it, either of ourselves, of our finances. You know, I'm sure that you both, you know, have heard and maybe even have experienced this sense of, you know, oh we need to grow our business and so do we do that by leveraging our assets. You know, do we take a home equity loan or do we take on another mortgage on our house if we want to build an office? Like what do we do? Where do we get the money from when we're kind of getting started or bootstrapping and maybe there's not a lot of extra cash, you know? And one person has vision of, you know, I can see a huge gym and I can see hundreds of people coming here every day. And the other person is like, okay, but what if we get the warehouse for the gym and nobody comes? You know?
And so it's those kinds of things where I think it's about growth, like how the business grows more sometimes than maybe starting the business or not. Because I think if couples have thought about going into business together, they kind of feel at least excited enough at the prospect of that, that that's not as large a fear as you know, the discrepancy between somebody wanting to go all in, in this really notable way and the other person saying maybe we could take it a little bit more slowly.
Honey: Well, that's definitely, I think what we came across both with slow burn marketing and with CoupleCo, you know, and right now we're talking about creating an event, live event. So, of course I'm thinking, what if no one shows up? They're coming. They're coming.
Blaine: It's a real fear.
Dr. Jain: Yes.
Honey: But it's definitely a fear.
Dr. Jain: It is.
Honey: And you know, and I don't even know, it's kinda crazy, but I don't even know if my fear was that, oh, we paid this money and no one came. It was just ... it's just like throwing a party and no one comes like that's really ...
Dr. Jain: Yes absolutely.
Honey: Really uncomfortable for me.
Blaine: You know by the same token, I don't think there was a lot of fear when we started slow burn marketing at all.
Honey: No, we didn't. I don't, you know ...
Blaine: It was like spontaneous.
Honey: I mean spontaneous ... we've both been in advertising for a long time. We had kind of talked about it, but when we decided to do it, it was just the right moment and it was right for both of us and we just moved forward. But then small things for the business, like farming different workout and paying for that, you know, like, well why can we pay for them? We can do it ourselves. And you know, that's where we would have fear and that's where things wouldn't move forward on the smaller things.
Blaine: The fear was probably less about the cash outlay and more about are we going to be able to hire somebody who can get this done or are we going to spend all this money and find out we've got to do it again ourselves or hire someone else to do and spend even more money. So it's a different kind of fear and it, you know, it sounds small, but I, you know, in some ways it can be incapacitating.
Dr. Jain: It absolutely can because when a couple has similar ideas about things, you know, and so they either can perpetuate each other's fear and make it worse or make it more, you know, or they can soothe each other's fear. And so the challenges are these, that sometimes the couples who are most alike, they are most similar so they have the best kind of relationship. But then the challenge becomes that they both can get equally stuck in a similar kind of fear, you know? So if one of the ... a couple of feels afraid of not having enough money and the other one mirrors them in that, you know, that can create like an incredible amount of stuckness, which is different than what you see if one member of the couple is afraid, you know, of not having enough money and the other is like, oh, it always works out. No problem.
Honey: Right.
Blaine: Yeah.
Dr. Jain: You know, it's a different ... I mean that creates some tension and difficulty, but it maybe allows for more range of movement and less frozenness.
Blaine: Stuckness.
Dr. Jain: Stuckness.
Blaine: Is a word they taught you when you were getting your doc?
Dr. Jain: Yes, exactly. Yeah. That was like one of the first things we learned. So but you know, but it's that sense of, I mean everyone I think can understand though that feeling stuck or feeling frozen and feeling like, do we do this or do we do that? I don't know. What do you think? I don't know. Do we do this or do we do that? And even when you try to talk, you know, if you both are coming at it from that same level of fear, you can't take the conversation further than the level of fear that you're at.
Honey: So what do you do?
Dr. Jain: Yeah. So what do you do? My ... one of my favorite ...
Blaine: She's starting to laugh.
Dr. Jain: One of my favorite exercises always in situations like this is to actually play the what if and what if is the worst case scenario and you keep actually, you know, you can do it separately and then share with each other or you can just talk about it and kind of make it, you know, as worse as you can and it almost becomes comical if you take it far enough.
Honey: Right.
Dr. Jain: You know, I'm afraid that no one will come to our live event. Okay, well what would be so bad about that? Well, it would mean that we spent all this money and you know, we're wasting the money. Okay. What would be so bad about that? I don't know. I don't know. And you keep going and you go down about five or six questions, ask somebody five or six times, what would be so bad about that and then you actually get to what the real fear is. And then whatever the real fear is, like, let's say that the ultimate fear in some situation is that we'll become a bag people and we'll be homeless, you know, and we have to live on the street.
Blaine: I have that fear every morning when I wake up.
Dr. Jain: Yeah. You know, you have to live on the street. So if you really say, well, what would be so bad about that? You know, what you'll find underneath is very often it'll be something like, well, I'll feel like a complete and utter failure and then there'll be a big sigh and that's how you know you've gotten to kind of the core of whatever it is. So then once you've gotten to that point, you can start to look at cognitively or emotionally or both ideally, what could be safeguards or what could be fail safes against getting to that point of, you know, complete ruin or you know, perceived ruin, you know, and kind of talk about it that way. Because the thing is, is that in many things, especially, you know, how much money to save in the bank and things like that, people have kind of a vague notion and they never actually articulate specifically, you know would I feel secure if I had $10,000 in the bank or would I feel secure if I had three or I had five or I had 100,000 or whatever it would take.
And so the more that you can as a couple talk about it together, it can deepen your relationship and help you both understand like what is the, you know, what's the stopping point or what's the end point? And we'll go this far, but we won't go any further. We'll go all in except we won't mortgage our house or ...
Honey: Something like that.
Dr. Jain: Yeah you know something like that.
Honey: Yeah. It's interesting you say that what's the worst that can happen? So many years ago when I first moved to New York and I had my first job in advertising and it ended, and I was talking to my dad, my dad was my business touchstone and I was really scared. And he said, honey, what's the worst thing that could happen? And I said, well, I won't be able to get another job. And he said, okay, well then what's the worst thing that could happen? I'm like, oh, I run out of my money. He said, okay, what's the worst thing that could happen? I said, I'd have to move back in with you guys. And he said, okay, so for you, the worst thing that could happen is you move in with people who love you and feed you. He's like, that is your bottom.
Dr. Jain: Yes.
Honey: And it was so empowering.
Dr. Jain: It is.
Honey: Because I thought feed me. Okay.
Dr. Jain: Okay. Yeah and it's actually the same thing. Your Dad actually did that same technique, like, you know what, what's so bad about that or what's the worst about that? And that takes you to a place then where, you know, once you kind of discharge or get rid of all of that surface top level stuff and then you say like, well, you know, the worst isn't really that bad or you become certain that you'll never let that happen. You know that I mean what we forget sometimes in that space of fears, we forget that wherever ... whatever happens next, we kind of take ourselves and we take our experience, we take our contacts, we take our wisdom, we take all the things we know and all the things we've learned. And so, you know, I think as we get older we feel like we have more to lose because certainly, you know, maybe losing your job at 25 it would be very, very different than if something like that happened now.
Honey: At not 25.
Dr. Jain: Not 25 but ...
Honey: Thank you.
Dr. Jain: Yes, I'm not 25 either so you know, I know.
Blaine: No you don't look a day over 25.
Dr. Jain: So, but I think though that we feel like we have more to lose, but the reality is also that we have a lot more, what should I say? Like a lot more treasure or we have a lot more in the bank of ourselves. Life experiences, contacts.
Blaine: I like that we have a lot more treasures.
Dr. Jain: Yeah.
Blaine: Well I've got a lot of treasure. I don't have a lot of money, but I've got a lot of treasure.
Dr. Jain: You know, because if you look at it, I mean really, if you look at it like I think for myself, if one day I woke up and everything had changed for me, you know, I look at all the people I know, I look at all the people that maybe I've impacted in some way, who might be willing to put in a good word for me or offer me an opportunity or you know, recommend me for something. And I didn't have that when I was 25 you know, I just didn't know enough people. I had not lived long enough and so I think that it's also really important to understand that whatever the measure of ourselves that we look at in terms of being a failure or being a success, we have a lot of things that are intangible that could contribute, you know, that could keep us from that utter ruin than I was talking about better ruin.
Honey: So there's another point I wanted to talk to you about it was something you had mentioned before we started rolling and that is ...
Blaine: Obviously Honey has a lot more questions about fear than I do. I haven't asked a single question.
Dr. Jain: But do you see that mirrored in your relationship?
Blaine: Yes.
Dr. Jain: Yes. Cause I mean, I know that you both for some time now.
Honey: Yeah.
Blaine: It's been a while.
Dr. Jain: And I can see that. I can see that.
Blaine: Over 15 years.
Dr. Jain: Yep, exactly. It has been and so I can see that it wouldn't be surprising to me that that would be sort of a bit of a microcosm or a mirror of your relationship.
Honey: Oh yeah and we definitely have different areas where we're more comfortable. So you had mentioned something about as a couple discussing where your flex points are, what are you flexible about?
Dr. Jain: Yeah, absolutely and so that's part of that discussion. I think it's a deepening conversation to have with each other so that you can learn more about each other. And you know, there's certain things that we all have that are non negotiable, you know, they just ... they would be like deal-breakers no matter.
Blaine: Or non-negotiables.
Dr. Jain: Who did them, no matter what the situation just they would be deal breakers. But for most people, those deal breakers aren't as many as they think. And so then if they don't have that many deal breakers, then there's these places where they're willing to flex a little bit. So if you're let's say trying to set your work schedule, you know, you might go in saying, no, I just want nine to five. I don't want to work anything different than that because of whatever your story is, why you want to do that. But you may find that you might be willing to do nine to six or eight to seven or something, you know, some days or something like that, two days late and the rest of the days early.
And so the flex points are really a way of helping a couple kind of loosen that stuckness related to fear related to a big decision that seems like they can't get any movement on. It's a way of saying, okay well you know, this would be my ultimate thing that I would like to have happened, but what am I willing to be flexible on? You know, am I willing to adjust how much we work? Am I willing to ... some people will say, I'm not willing to take any time away from the kids or I'm not willing to sacrifice our family vacations or our extra resources to this. And somebody else may have different, you know, flex points on that.
So just being able to talk about them and it's not really negotiating cause you're not really trying to get to a particular answer. You're just trying to understand, you know, like where might we have some movement here because it's impossible that a situation has no movement points whatsoever. It just takes some time sometimes to have conversations to find where the movement could be.
Blaine: That's interesting. I, you know, cause so often you will know people who absolutely will not do x. Well sometimes just isn't that hard.
Dr. Jain: It absolutely and I think in those cases, you know, I would just have them look at kind of how committed they are to the relationship. Because if somebody, and I don't mean that in a judgemental way, I just mean it's a way of exploring. It's a way ...
Blaine: It crossed my mind.
Dr. Jain: Yeah, no, it's just ... yeah, but I don't mean to say like I'm questioning people's, you know, a commitment to their own relationships.
Blaine: Should you really be in this relationship?
Dr. Jain: Exactly.
Blaine: That's our next interview.
Dr. Jain: But the thing is, is that if something is really important to someone I love whether or not I understand it or under, you know, agree with it, I do want to really understand why it's so important and one way to understand that is to see, you know, if they can't tell me directly why it's so important, it's to look at where they'd be willing to flex and where they wouldn't. So if they say, I'm absolutely not willing to flex on this thing, then I understand that that's one end ... it's a boundary in the, you know, it's like a book end of the range. It's one ending point and then we say, okay, so if we don't do that thing, like if we don't, you know, go to that extreme, are you willing to meet me anywhere along the continuum? And in most relationships, if you approach it that way and both people want to be there and they're not just trying to win or they're not trying to, you know, just kind of ...
Blaine: Like Honey and I.
Dr. Jain: You know, but even, but even then, even though you guys do that sometimes, you know, you do kind of come back and try to reconnect or re-approach.
Blaine: I was joking. We rarely are each trying to win. Are we?
Dr. Jain: Honey's looking really confused with it.
Blaine: Obviously I ....
Dr. Jain: So all I'm saying is that if you can start talking about these flex points, it gives you a sense of where the book ends are in that conversation. You know, so I'm not willing to do this on one end and I absolutely would not be willing to do this on the other end and then everything else in the middle is where you can start talking about what could happen then.
Blaine: Well, it's, you know, and one of the things that people forget, I think especially when they're talking about going into business with a spouse or they're in business with a spouse, is that we do nothing but compromise in a relationship. It's constant.
Honey: Yeah.
Blaine: But I think a couple that has been together long enough, doesn't really think about that.
Honey: No.
Blaine: Until all of a sudden there's a business and then somehow that magnifies things 10 times.
Dr. Jain: It absolutely does because you have then the issue of recognition, the issue of finances, you have a lot of issues tied in to work and working.
Honey: Well I think when you add finances to it from a business level, especially for couples that are all in this is what they do, it's this one business and that sustains them. Your finances, let's you know your freedom, you know, what are you and what are you not going to be able to do with your life? So there are bigger ramifications.
Dr. Jain: There absolutely are and I think also it dictates sort of what becomes possible in the future as well. Because let's just say that you're considering an expansion to the business and it's going to require, you know, building a new building or something like that. Then that literally may be your children's summer camp or it may be their, you know, private school or something like that, you know, whatever the trade off would be. And so you really do have to weigh the, you know, kind of the pros and cons of that and if one person in the couple feels very strongly about private school, that's going to be very unique to that couple where in another couple, if neither person feels that strongly about it and they're willing to say like, okay, well we'll just switch gears, we'll send them to public school. No problem. It's just a different flavor of that.
Honey: Yeah and different things that could come up, you know, public speaking. Oh some people are so afraid.
Blaine: Most people are.
Honey: Of speaking in public, I mean it's not something that Blaine or I have to deal with.
Blaine: There was actually a Jerry Seinfeld episode where he was talking about how the single greatest fear in the world, or at least in the country is speaking in front of an audience and that is greater than the fear of death. Which means if you're at a funeral, everybody there would rather be the guy in the coffin than the guy giving the eulogy.
Honey: Which just blows me away but when I pick like a topic like that, so let's say a couple has been invited to speak, they know a lot about this category and one of them says, wow, that sounds great, let's do that. It might drive more business and the other person says so out of my comfort zone, big whole lot of fear, I am not doing it.
Blaine: The ultimate compromise there though would be easy. Just one person does the speaking and you know, I mean is there any ...
Honey: Yeah you don't force the other person.
Blaine: Yeah and that actually is one of the things that I find really interesting. We interviewed a couple who actually is right up the road here, Elden and Amy Quisenberry of layer eight. It's an it consulting business and she absolutely did not want to do anything in the business related to sales, which I understand cause I, you know, I was a salesman for years and frankly I do not want to ever do it again. But he tried to kind of nudge her into it. He figured, you know, he could coax her and she'd come along and life would be great. And I don't know if it was fear, I shouldn't be making that kind of assumption, but let's assume it was hypothetically somebody feels this way, has this fear of doing something. You don't want to push them into it. It's ugly.
Dr. Jain: Yeah, I totally ... I agree. I don't think that you ever want to push because it's like anything, it's like any other event or any other situation in your life as a couple, you know, if somebody really doesn't want to spend time with your aunt Mildred, like should you really force that? You know there comes a point where, and they ... I know poor Mildred, there has to be some sense of, you know, respecting your partner's desires or wishes and maybe there's some conversations to have like, you know, I think you'd be great at public speaking or maybe you'd feel more comfortable in smaller groups or breakout sessions. Like to see if there's any, again, any flex point.
Blaine: Well that's an interesting, you know, I wouldn't have thought of that.
Dr. Jain: Yeah. Any kind of flex point with it. You know it's really about like the way that I approach it is that there's always an answer and ...
Blaine: There's always an answer.
Dr. Jain: And the answer is really found by asking a series of questions and so your first questions are just kind of broad and trying to get, you know, the whole range like to get the broadest range you can and then as you find places where it's worth going deeper, the questions become more specific. So it may be that you say, you know, in this case it's your partner who doesn't really want to speak at all. You know, is it something that you will never consider ever or is it that you might consider it in certain situations and not others?
Blaine: You know, it's interesting. I'm just suddenly thinking here that this is a little bit like Improv comedy because there is a dictum in Improv from Viola Spolin who is considered the godmother of Improv. Go for the agreement.
Dr. Jain: Yes.
Blaine: And I'm thinking of something that Honey's dad does, which is when he's getting stonewalled by somebody in a service, like somebody at the rental car counter. We actually ... that experience, we were at a service counter in the airport and we were told absolutely no and Honey channeled her father and just kept saying ...
Honey: He's got one phrase.
Blaine: Yeah. The phrase is ...
Honey: But there must be some way.
Dr. Jain: Yes.
Honey: And the person will no, oh my gosh, it's just not going to work. I'm so sorry. And he'll nod at them knowingly and say, but there must be some way, you know, he's ...
Blaine: Every different inflection possible.
Honey: And finally at some point the other person will say, well, and then you're in. It's pretty much how I got into college. Story for another time but it is actually dead true.
Dr. Jain: Yes.
Blaine: I guess if maybe I'm Min furring too much here, but is it like that you're getting people to play the game of going for the agreement unwittingly?
Dr. Jain: You actually ... I mean you absolutely are because basically I think of it ... I mean Improv is a great example. I think of it as almost like almost like a baton, like handing off of baton in a relay race. You know that like or like a hot potato. Like I'm going to toss it to you and you're gonna toss it to Honey and she's going to toss it back to me and we're gonna do that in a way that is it kind of in the service of getting to an agreement. So the thing is I always believe that there is some answer to something.
Blaine: The old hot potato metaphor.
Dr. Jain: Yeah exactly there ya go. Yeah I learned that in graduate school too. That was my second week. But the thing is is I do see it as like a dance, you know, and I think in relationships that are healthy, there's room for that kind of exploration, you know? And like one of my favorite phrases that I use a lot is, you know, Honey, I'm not trying to change your mind. I just really want to understand. You know I just want to understand like why you don't want to speak at this group. I mean, I personally feel like you would be amazing at it and I just want to understand.
Blaine: Getting under the fear.
Dr. Jain: You know exactly.
Blaine: Figuring out what it is.
Dr. Jain: Yeah exactly.
Blaine: Interesting. Did you do more homework, Honey?
Honey: No, those were my things. Recognizing where your point of fear were, talking about your flex points and talking about worst case scenario.
Dr. Jain: And I think also going for the agreement, you know, believing that there is an agreement that exists and it's just up to you to find it.
Honey: Finding the x, y axis.
Dr. Jain: That's right.
Blaine: Finding the x, y ... boy we're walking away with all kinds of great stuff here that they teach in school when you're getting a Dr. Jainate in psychology.
Dr. Jain: That's right but the hot potato was the best.
Blaine: Hot potato was the best. X, y axis is a surprising one. I didn't see that coming at all. Dr Rachna Jain of inloveandbiz.com.
Honey: Dot com.
Blaine: God, we love that. We're sorry we didn't think that first. We want it. Can we buy it from you?
Dr. Jain: You can. You can share it with me.
Blaine: Thank you for playing.
Dr. Jain: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Honey: Thanks for coming back.
Blaine: This has been fear ...
Honey: Dun, dun, dun.
Blaine: With Dr Rachna Jain of inloveandbix.com. You can find her online if you can believe it at inloveandbiz.com
Honey: Where was that?
Blaine: Inloveandbiz.com.
Honey: And if you've enjoyed this podcast and we hope you did and you're not afraid anymore, you can go to iTunes and leave a star rating and a review to help people like you who are also unafraid find it.
Blaine: And join us next time as we bring you a different kind of unafraid CoupleCo.
Honey: This might even be an Uber CoupleCo.
Blaine: Chris and Jim Howard have been working together almost their entire married life.
Honey: There was that one year where they didn't work together.
Blaine: They hated it.
Honey: That was the funniest thing they said. Yup. There was one year we didn't work together. We hated it. And their story of working together is one that comes with every emotion from exhaustion to exultation.
Blaine: Jim and Chris Howard of live life revolution and renegade author. Next time here on CoupleCo, working with your spouse for fun and profit.
Honey: Copyright 2019 all rights reserved.
Blaine: Love you baby.
Honey: Love you too.
Blaine: CoupleCo out.
