In this solo One Question Friday episode, Sam answers a listener question about keeping his marriage healthy while working long hours as an entrepreneur. He describes how he approached both his marriage and his business co-founder relationship the same way: getting the hard, specific conversations out of the way early, aligning on goals and deal-breakers upfront, and doing structured weekly check-ins using OKRs for life categories like finances, fitness, adventure, and relationships.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host)
One Question Friday: Marriage as a Business [00:00:00]
Sam: My name is Rob. How do I keep my marriage and other relationships healthy when I work long hours?
All right, it’s One Question Friday. Somebody asked a question about marriage. I’ve been married for a few years, I’ve been with my wife in a relationship for 10-plus years, and it’s a pretty great relationship. Someone was asking me for advice on it, and I’m going to reference something that I used to do.
Getting Alignment with a Co-Founder (The Framework) [00:00:30]
Sam: So basically I’ve talked about this thing on this podcast before. I’ve got this new thing I’m working on, and my co-founder and I did something interesting. It seems pretty obvious to me, but when I mentioned it on the podcast it surprised some people.
Basically, we both had an idea that we wanted to work on. We were like, cool, this is something I would like to work on — would you like to work on it? And he said yeah. So we got a little bit of traction, and we were like, all right, we know this thing can work, but let’s pump the brakes, stop right now, and I want to have a conversation with you.
I sent him a set of questions, and we each went and answered them on our own. Here’s how the categories broke down.
Sam: The first was: what do I want? Financially, I said what I want my personal net worth to be. I said I want freedom — I want the ability to fly private, I want to live in different cities throughout the year, I want to be present in my future children’s and current wife’s life. I want to own a bunch of different real estate. I want fun and adventure. I want to work hard, but I want to work like a lion — meaning I’m willing to grind hard for many weeks, but then I want to take three or four, maybe five weeks off a year and travel the world comfortably. I also said I care about influence. I want to sit at the big boys’ table and for people to think I’m really good at my job.
So I just listed out here’s what I want in life.
Sam: Then we each answered a second question: ways we’re willing — and not willing — to get to where we want to go. I said I’m willing to do this, I’m willing to do this, and I’m not willing to hire 10,000 employees — I don’t want that. I’m not willing to have recurring meetings. I am willing to work 80 hours a week. I am willing to put this first above every other project I have. Things like that.
Sam: And then finally we said here’s what we want out of this business. I want to aggressively scale it. I want to hit $100 million in revenue in X number of years. Really specific.
Then he answered his questions on his own, and we came back together and said, all right, let’s see where we aligned and where we don’t, because I want to figure out right away if there are any deal-breakers.
Getting Hard Conversations Out of the Way Early [00:03:00]
Sam: This is actually what I did when I sold my company too. HubSpot sent me a cold email saying they wanted to talk about a “partnership,” and I go, I don’t know what partnership means — does that mean you want to buy us? Just tell me right away. They said yeah, we want to buy you. I said, cool — here’s a Google doc. I listed out all the reasons why you don’t want to buy us and where we stink. If that list is okay with you, talk to me again. They said yeah, none of it’s that bad, let’s keep talking.
My point is, I’ve learned throughout the years — particularly in marriages and business relationships — you want to get the difficult conversations out of the way early, because that will literally save you a decade of heartache.
Applying the Framework to Marriage [00:04:00]
Sam: With my marriage, I did the same thing. I know it sounds kind of lame, because I don’t want it to seem like my business life permutates into my marriage, but in a way it kind of does.
Basically, two or three months into dating — maybe six months — I was like, hey, just so you know, I see us going places and being together for a very long time, and potentially marriage. Is that what you see? And she was like yeah. I was like, awesome, we’re on the same page.
Then we got really specific. When people say they want a nice house with kids and all this stuff, I was like, all right, let’s get specific. Tell me how many kids you think you want. You don’t need to say exactly three, but give me a ballpark on where your intentions are now — I know they might change. Okay, great. How much money do you want to make each year? Where do you want to live? Oh, you want to live there? Let’s go on Zillow right now — oh, that house is $8 million, so let’s work backwards on how we’re going to afford that.
And then: what are we willing to sacrifice in order to get there? I said, look, for my 20s, business is going to come before relationships — meaning there are going to be a lot of times I’m not around when you need me, but that’s because I’m going to be dedicating a lot of time to get to a goal that we’re both going to benefit from in our 30s.
Sam: So we outlined very specifically where we wanted to be in 10, 20, and 30 years. We did it exactly like a business. Here’s how much money we want, how many kids we want, the type of lifestyle we want, the type of family we want in our life, whether we wanted to raise them religious or not religious. And of course we knew it would change as we got more information, but the point was to get the hard stuff out of the way.
OKRs for Life: The Weekly Check-In [00:06:30]
Sam: Another thing we do — which is kind of lame, but — you know how a company has OKRs? Objectives and key results. You set them quarterly, and annually you have a big annual target with quarterly benchmarks. We do that for our life.
We have an adventure one, a relationship one, a financial one, and a physical fitness one. Here’s what we want to do for our health. Here are the trips we want to take. Here’s where we want to be financially. Here are the ways we want to give back to our family and spend time with them.
Sam: And we do check-ins once a week. I use this journal — my friend Kat started it, it’s called the BestSelf relationship journal — and for the longest time we would meet on Fridays and document where we are according to our goals. We still do it. It’s pretty successful.
Wrapping Up: Why It Works [00:07:30]
Sam: So anyway, that’s how I look at my marriage. Two things that are kind of odd but I think work: we operate it a little like a business.
I remember when we were getting married you have to meet with the priest ahead of time, and he asked, do you guys love each other? And we were like, yeah, obviously. So I want to acknowledge that — this sounds really regimented, but all the love and the important stuff is totally there. That’s the most important thing. But logistically, we do a really good job of outlining what we want to achieve together as a family for the next quarter, the next year, the next 10 years. And then we do a really good job of checking in weekly and monthly to discuss: are we happy with how things are going? What do we need to change?
I think it works really well. Learning to have these conversations was actually kind of hard, but I think it works. So that’s my tips for a successful marriage.
Sam: Honestly, I’ve got a lot of relationships that follow this same pattern. Shaan and I — the less popular co-host of this podcast — him and I have had a relationship for 10-plus years now, and it’s very harmonious. A bunch of my co-workers I’ve worked with for six, seven, eight, nine, ten years. It mostly works pretty well. These types of check-ins and conversations are why. So anyway, that’s my small amount of tips for having a good marriage.