https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TydwZMX8wM

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 my wife and i have built six
multi-eight-figure companies in the last five years our current
portfolio does about 85 million a year and i have nothing to sell you my
name's alex mozi uh we run acquisition.com and i was interviewed
recently for a segment on a two-hour long podcast and the segment that i
want to show you is a really cool clip that we just talked about what it
was like to literally build these companies together being married and
the balance between work life and marriage all right so um like i said
enjoy and i'll see you guys on the other side i mean a lot of people
used to get on me about like you need more work-life balance like blah
blah blah and it's just like i just like you have one life and they are
your terms and no one else's terms and we optimize typically for the
things that we enjoy doing and like if you have more stimulus from
working than you do from not working then like work and then if you feel
like at some point you have traded off something that you don't want to
trade off for then you can adjust that's why i've always felt i enjoy
working like what was it my mom so we have like a wedding to go to on
the day after my birthday yeah so we were talking about you know we have
to fly up on my birthday she's like oh we could do this on your birthday
this time

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 like no i just want to work she's like
no but it's your birthday you shouldn't have to work and i was like i
want to work that's all i want to do i just want to work even uh santa
monica my birthday i was like the only thing i want to do today is work
that was it just wanted to work i mean everybody wants to they're like
man do something do do something you love and you'll never work another
day in your life but like it's just because everyone has this really
poor definition of work but like if if you have accomplished that which
obviously you have you're just living yeah and like what you do in life
so i'll i'll rewind something really quickly which is like 2021 i did
nothing i owned all the companies pounded out a lot of cash flow and i
did nothing and it was a very miserable year for me because i tried to
spend the money that i was making and i couldn't like it was just not
even really a possibility and so like i got into a place of like why why
am i even doing this like what's the point like i'll never even be able
to spend this money that i have like why have i been doing all this
stuff and in starting acquisition.com or at least making that the sole
focus now again and being able to build all the

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 infrastructure you know hire the teams
and all the stuff that we're doing on that side of the business like i
have so much joy getting back into the game because i feel like i've
been kind of like in a super high leverage position for like an extended
period of time that i exited the business because i thought that was
what the next natural step was supposed to be which is like you go from
ceo to owning it as shareholder or board of directors whatever and that
is very much what happened but i realized that for me at least it's like
i work to create options not to not work and so a lot of people like
they work really hard to not have to work later it's like no no it's
like i work to have the option to work and so i can choose to work and
that choice is the freedom that i have and so like if i'm choosing with
the optionality that i have to work then that is exactly what i want to
do just being on the other side of it of like going to the like there's
literally no way i can spend this money for the rest of my life
mountaintop like the only thing that i wanted to do was the thing that
got me here which is like i love working and so it's the thing that i
find meaningful and i think that maybe you shift direction in terms of
like maybe some of the stuff that you create like maybe there's some
things that you create that are for youtube versus like for gram and i
just think that it just

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 slowly optimizes to only doing things
for gram which a lot of times still ends up being that but like you get
there backwards it's like if you made it purely for you then you might
be able to make a video after that that's like i walked 300 miles and i
didn't film anything and this is what i learned like that would probably
be a really valuable video because you probably would have some
interesting insights like i didn't film either of the grant cardone
videos and then just made videos about the calls of like my takeaways
and they were still really great videos interesting okay so my only
thought to that is like you are in a very unique position because you
run this business with your wife and and stuff like that and i think
that marriage plays a big part in my life yeah and i think marriage is a
compromise and so my my wife doesn't like it when i work as much and her
i guess her her like love language is what quality time or whatever and
i think graham his girlfriend macy is similar and i think that there's a
compromise there where yes graham if all he wants

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 to do is work that's great and he can
work and work and work but i think that marriage a successful marriage
is truly a compromise and if if it turns out that you know like like
you're really good i have like so many thoughts right now yeah it's
stimulating conversation and i think yeah and i think everybody's in a
unique position because you know definitely like there's you you could
say well you know i'm gonna grind away now so that you know i don't have
to work in the future and we could spend time together or you can kind
of balance and live in the now and live in the future but i think
everybody's kind of in a unique position but i think that that part of
your life is is is always going to be a compromise to some sort of
extent so i think it's a belief that you choose to define it that way
yeah i'm okay yeah i'm okay compromise is a belief statement like that's
not a statement of fact that is a belief and so like i don't believe
that marriage is compromised tell us your experience with that because i
have a because i'm sure we all have different experiences mine in the
beginning was that i did find that there was a compromise because macy
came from the mindset like you know five or six pm comes around uh
you're

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 done with work yeah and you're free and
my mind works 24 7. uh i tried that and i woke up really early i'd wake
up at like 5 a.m so i could be done by 5 p.m and the night and i that
worked for actually quite a while because i actually found it was so
productive in those morning hours that i could be done by five and be
like oh wow this is great but over a long time trying to figure out like
a balance i found myself i wasn't myself like i i was really i felt
anxious i was just like uptight i was um like about what part like no
because because i couldn't work during the hours that i wanted to work
like sometimes you just have this there's days where it's just like no
no i'm so focused and i got it like you have that concentration you just
have to continue and so having that freedom for me if i don't have that
i just wasn't myself and i was miserable yeah what i'm going to say and
i i have very strong views um and they are not common um but i also
think that i don't want to live a common life and so that i cannot have
common views so just like as a as a big disclaimer to that

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 like i've only seen two dynamics that
work in relationships over like an extended period of time one is kind
of the like we're in it together and the other is like the you know
cheerleader and quarterback cheering you on but the thing is is like i
can tell i can speak a lot to the you know we're in the game together um
for me i know personally like i had two very long relationships that
were two leader dynamics and to me i could not imagine living life that
way having now lived what i live now because like there's a certain
amount of shared respect that you never get with somebody who does not
know what it's like to be in the battlefield or in the arena and if i'm
like i need to work for the next three days and like write five book
chapters like there's not a discussion it's like of course do your thing
there's no like there's no like i can't believe you're like into the
flip side in the cheerleader dynamic a cheerleader who's really rooting
for the team doesn't ask the quarterback to come out when the game's on
the line and so i think that a lot of people are running in what they
consider to be cheerleader dynamics but they are inverted dynamics
they're actually sabotaging the game i think that it's like in that
dynamic it's harder in my

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 opinion to do the cheerleader
quarterback because you have to have a very aligned mission and goals of
like the relationship it's easier to do that in the dynamic that you're
working together because it's so clearly stated with the mission the
goals of like this is where i want to go and this is how i want to get
there and like you want to come with me and then you're very much
operating on this shared sense of reality and it also becomes difficult
for entrepreneurs in my opinion now like i mean i'm sure you've seen
plenty of people get divorces that they get older and whatnot is that
like if you're like all right this will be interesting so typically when
people become attracted so esther perel if you've heard of her she's
really interesting like relationship person she's like one of the top
ted talks on it there's i think it's called mating captivity is her book
but in the beginning you have kind of this mystery because you don't
know each other and that's what creates like the excitement right and as
you get to know each other over time you swing like from uh mystery to
familiarity right you get a little bit more security get to know each
other better and it feels like more and more amazing and so what you do
is you just keep trying to do that right but when something happens that
you over correct and then you become siblings and then it's like ah well
that's not good and so there it's not a problem to be solved but a a
dichotomy to be managed

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 right in terms of like how much space
do you create versus how much familiarity what happens when people like
entrepreneurs specifically like have their business and they have the
wife they spend more time in the beginning and all of a sudden they
don't spend as much time together and then they grow apart because
they're also exposed to different stimuli right and so you adapt to the
stimuli that you have then you grow apart on the flip side if you're in
my scenario where we're like doing the same thing together the downside
of this one these couples make five times more money than any of the
other uh versions that i just said but the uh you can become too
familiar and then you just become siblings so for us we actually create
more space so it's like we try to work on separate sides of the house we
don't attend the same meetings so like at the end of the day we can sit
down at dinner like how was your day and you can tell me something
rather than me saying like oh i was there i know right yeah and so the
happiest couples are actually couples that have both have careers that
are not necessarily together so on average these couples are the ones
that because they have a shared goal in terms of this is what we want to
do they've shared values in terms of how they want to get there and they
respect one another and they respect each other's goals and then they
walk kind of in parallel so you've got

10 00:09:00.000 --\> 00:10:00.000 the like i'm working the entrepreneur
and you've got the stay-at-home wife there's many times everyone's seen
that one go wrong there's the like we're both working together in it
where you so these people have to uh correct for trying to create more
familiarity these ones have to create more space so you have the space
to be missed and then these ones tend to be in the middle already and so
they just kind of like have to keep walking and so for me it was
actually just interesting seeing the the different dynamics um and like
how we had to correct in the beginning like we were wait we spent all
day every day together and the business was small so it was like she was
there and i was here and we worked out together and we ate together and
we did that for like two years and i was like you know maybe i'll sit on
different meetings than you yeah but like seeing the level of like
commitment and loyalty that you get from that and i don't know so i want
a little bit of a tangent there but i i have strong beliefs around
around that and i think that you don't have to compromise anything if
you don't want to
