My Wife Doesn’t Support My New Purpose & Mission

What you should do when your wife or girlfriend doesn’t support your career change, new purpose or mission.

In this video coaching newsletter, I discuss an email from a viewer who has been following my work for several years after he divorced his unfaithful ex-wife. He has since found the love of his life and has two young daughters with her. He hates his job and wants to sell their house and use the equity to start a new business.

She wants to keep the house and stability they have, but he is determined to have his way and is convinced his new business will work out amazingly. He asks my opinion. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

This really brings up a good issue, especially for guys in long-term relationships. Whether you’re living together, or in this case, he’s married and they’ve got two young kids, you’ve got obligations. It’s not just you. In his case, there’s three other people depending on him. She’s supportive of him wanting to do it, but as I learned from a strategic planner many years ago, there’s no such thing as a bad idea, only bad plans. In other words, you might have a good idea, but your plans to execute and make that idea a reality suck.

I’ve been through this. If you’ve read Mastering Yourself, I’ve been a lifelong entrepreneur, and so I wrote about all of my ups and downs and the mistakes I’ve made in my life. When you’re young, you may not have tons of experience in this area but you believe in yourself. You can tell he’s very confident in himself and his ability to make this work.

The other thing to consider is the number one reason why divorces happen is because of financial stress. It’s understandable his wife’s got concerns here, so what does a guy do? He’s like, “I really want to do this. It doesn’t feel like she supports me, but I’m going to do it anyway and she can stick around or not. I’ve got to do this.” That’s kind of his attitude, which is the wrong attitude to have in this case.

But me being 52 and having gone through this a number of times, having changed in a lot of jobs and different careers and businesses over the course of my life, you’ve always got to know what your downside risk in every deal is. What happens if your best ideas and your best plans don’t go according to plan? Then what do you do? What’s your Plan B?

It’s easy to say, “I’ll burn the boats. I’ll just go and do it. I’ll figure it out.” It’s possible, you may do that, but is it worth ruining your relationship with your significant other because of the financial and emotional stress that it puts you through? There’s a way he can do this, build his new business and keep his wife feeling safe and comfortable, and not risk the nest egg they’ve already got in their home.

Viewer’s Email:

Coach Corey,

Let me begin by encouraging your viewers to stick to the plan and stay the course, because your advice just works. You’re not always right obviously, but hey, you’re also never wrong!

I know. It’s tough being me.

I picked up your book after divorcing an unfaithful ex and finding myself in an awful spot in terms of my purpose and self-worth. After immersing myself in your content and getting back on solid ground, I had a great run hanging out with beautiful women, having fun, and winning the game. There is always life on the other side of the mess life throws at us, and we just have to keep the ship pointed in the right direction, even when we can’t see an inch in front of our face.

So, one thing to consider is, as Confucius said, “real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” And because you haven’t been through this before, there are some things that you’re just simply ignorant about when it comes to being an entrepreneur. And my hope is that I can enlighten you and make things easy for you, because I’ve suffered a lot to learn these lessons I’m about to share with you.

You’re doing important work, and I am grateful for you. Five years ago, I married the woman of my dreams. I can’t believe how time flies when you’re with someone you are crazy about.

Time flies when you’re having fun, as they say.

She gave me two beautiful daughters of our own, and I have enjoyed “knock your socks off” romance even as other couples were falling apart during the pandemic.

Well, here’s something else to keep in mind. In California. There was an article that came out in the last few months. It said 40% of all California’s small businesses closed permanently during the pandemic. Now, you think about those millions of businesses, all of those families, all of the financial stress that it put them through and how many divorces are happening as a result of the incompetence and the policies of the people running California and our federal government. There’s a lot of divorces and broken families that are happening because of this absolute train wreck that has happened in the last few years, and the lockdowns, and the government response to the virus.

What we have is real, and it is strong, and I never would have found it if I had not learned to stay on my center. Now, there are fresh challenges and I need a qualified coach to help me stay the course. I have spent the last 12 years in the insurance consulting business. I’m considered an expert in my field, but I don’t have any love or passion for it. I have stayed the course because it was necessary.

Well, as Jim Carrey said, “sometimes you have to do what you hate in order to do what you love.” And I wrote about this extensively in “Mastering Yourself.” I suffered a lot to do what I’m doing now. It looks easy and effortless to most people, but nobody saw all of the hard work that went into it. And then, new people come along, they learn my stuff, they read my book – because I give away my business model in there, and they go and copy it – and the thanks I get is they don’t even give me credit for the fact that they learned from me.

And on top of that, they make clout chasing videos when they’re first starting out, and all they do is talk shit about me, or have a headline talking shit about me, because they have a large following and people will just tune in to see what they say. Then people realize, “Oh, this dude is teaching the same thing as Corey.” So, those things work, unfortunately.

Now, it is not producing the same great income due to industry changes. I am using this opportunity as a jumping-off point to start a private tea label. The problem is that my wife does not support the idea. She doesn’t want me to do something I hate, but simultaneously she does not want to sell our home, which I believe to be extremely overvalued right now, to pull out the equity and put it to work.

So, here’s the reality; now the Federal Reserve is raising the interest rates. Because I follow the market really closely, and every day I’m looking at the rentals and I’m looking at the sales of property listings in my area. And up until about two weeks ago, things would go on the market and they would be under contract, (the nice houses, anyway), in a matter of days or a week or two, with multiple offers. The same thing with the rental market. But the rental market, about a month and a half or two months ago, I started seeing price reductions. And about two weeks ago, I started seeing price reductions for sale listings. They’re still selling fast, but the interest rate increases are starting to slow the market. And the Fed has already said they’re going to do 1-2 more half a percent interest increases.

So when you look at a year or so ago, your 30-year mortgage, you’re getting 3-3.5%, and now it’s like around 5-5.5%. So another half a percentage or a full percentage increase in the interest rates can eventually push that up to 7-8%. And the reality is, when you’re paying 3.5% interest versus doubling that to 6.5-7%, you’ve now doubled the cost of the monthly payment. And so, a lot of the reason why their values have inflated, this is the same thing we saw in 2007, 2008.

That’s another thing that’s interesting is you don’t know stuff when you’re young, because you haven’t been through it. But when you’ve been through the boom and bust cycles so many times, and the real estate market goes up and down, the money supply is contracting, and the cost to borrow money is increasing, what you’re going to see is a decline in home values. So, if you have a house, I mean, we’re at the tippy top, basically, and you could sell the house and get the maximum amount of equity out of it. But more than likely, the value’s based on what the Fed’s policies are.

Again, that’s something else I wrote about in “Mastering Yourself.” So, you could understand how this works is you’re probably going to start seeing, I mean, we’re already seeing it with the price reductions, is you’re going to see house values that people are buying today and a year or two from now because of the changes in the market, supply and demand. So, you buy something today, it’s going to be probably worth less in a year or two. And so, that’s reality.

Now, if you’re planning on staying in your house for ten or 15 years, it’s not a big deal. Because it will come back eventually. When you look at the home values falling and all the short sales and all the things that happened in 2007, 2008, it took a decade for the market to recover. My dad just sold one of his properties he bought back in 2003, and he’d been underwater in that thing up until the last year and a half, two years, because it had decreased in value so much. But he was able to sell it at $20-30,000 over what he had bought it at and was able to dispose of this particular property. And so, that worked out well for him. And he stayed in it. He had many different renters over the years, but the point being is that’s typically what’s going to happen.

If you want to stay in your home, you can always do a home equity line of credit through your local bank, but you’re going to increase your your debt service to do that. And since the interest rates are going up, it doesn’t make sense to refinance now. I just saw an article a couple of months ago, as well. I think it was at Wells Fargo, somebody laid off a bunch of loan processors. Well, the reason they’re doing that is because now that the rates have gone up, people don’t refinance their houses unless they can save at least 1% or more. Like when I was in real estate, we’d tell people it’s not worth it when you consider closing costs and stuff and how much you’re going to save. You have to save at least a percentage point or more in your interest payment to make the expenses of refinancing worth it. So, all of these different banks are laying people off that were processing these loans.

So, that’s just kind of the start of things. The point being is that now we’re at the top, and the real estate market is going to start to come back down to earth a little bit. I have seen property values where I live in the last two years literally have doubled. Houses that I was looking at for $4-5 million, now those things are $8 million. And now with the rates going back the other way, I get to watch it go back down. And then, you’ll probably have some people short selling again. I don’t think it’ll be nearly as bad as it was 2007-2008. We had a lot of banks failing. There probably will be some, because somebody always gets stuck in a trade or something and they can unwind. And you’ll see a bank blow up or some big financial corporation will have a trade they just can’t get out of and they go bankrupt. It always happens in these cycles.

So, considering that, you’ve got to think, how long do you guys plan on staying in your home? Because women want a stable home. They want to be able to raise their babies, and provide a safe home, and have the kids go out and play with the neighborhood kids. And so, it’s understandable. But if under normal circumstances you’d only keep the house for a few years then move somewhere else, then I would put the house on the market and sell it now and get your equity. And then when the market goes down in 2 to 3 years, you can buy another house for cheaper, and you’ve got your equity.

Now, I would not recommend that you just up and quit your job and start this tea business. Because this is the harsh reality of being an entrepreneur; you’ve always got to know your downside risk, and it always takes way longer than you think it’s going to take to make your business a success. It always takes 2 to 3 times the amount of money that you think it’s going to take to make it a success.

So, to think you’re just going to sell your home, pull the equity out, downsize, and you’re going to be able to coast on the equity in your home for several years while you’re paying your normal bills, which is eating away at your capital, and then on top of that, whatever money you’re spending in your business to get to the point where hopefully it becomes profitable, that’s going to continue to suck up your nest egg. So, the smart way to do it, the way to continue to make sure your wife feels safe and comfortable and to protect your relationship, your job as a man is to provide the stable environment, not this up and down shit.

Up and quitting your job, and taking the equity out of your house, and winging it saying, “Hey, I’m smart” – and I wrote about this in “Mastering Yourself” – it’s great to be positive and optimistic. that “I’ll figure it out eventually,” but at some point your enthusiasm goes away. And then, when you’re several years into it, you’ve got hundreds of thousands of dollars into it, and you haven’t made a dime off of it yet, and everybody’s telling you what a stupid idea it is and how it’s not going to work, you’re going to be questioning yourself. And that’s not helpful for your mindset. It’s not helpful for your family or the environment you’re providing for your kids. And so, it’s just too much downside risk to up and quit that way. It’s just not a smart way to go about it.

The right way to start this business is to build it on the side. Keep working in the insurance business, make as much money as you can for as long as you can. If, because of changes in the industry, you’re not going to be able to afford to keep your house and the lifestyle, then my recommendation would be to put it on the market and sell it now, because it’s only going to get harder in the coming 12-24 months to sell that house, because we’re at the top of the market. And I’m already seeing where I live, price reduction is happening.

And price reductions weren’t happening. Everything was just continuing to go up because of the really low interest rates, where people could basically buy more house than they normally could afford with the super low interest rate. When the interest rate goes from 3% to 6%, basically your interest payment doubles. So, the amount of home that you can finance or afford to finance at the higher rate is going to be a lot less, so that’s going to reduce the demand, and then eventually you end up in an oversupply of houses, and then people are going to be dropping their prices. And so, if you’re already in position now, where you can’t really afford to stay in the house that you’re in and maintain the lifestyle, I would sell it, downsize to a smaller house or maybe an apartment or something like that. Keep the money and use that to help fund your business, but keep working.

The goal is to have the cash available, because in 3 to 5 years, guess what you’re going to want to do? There will be foreclosures. You want to get back into real estate and buy a house when it’s low and do the same thing all over again. Buy a house when the market is low, maybe you fix it up a little bit, and as the Fed, which they always do, will lower the rates to stimulate the economy, price values will increase again. And then you can do the same thing, sell your property at the top of the market. Buy low, sell high, that’s what you’re supposed to do.

And so, if that’s the case, that you’re your income’s taking a hit and you really can’t afford to stay in the house, then I would definitely sell it. Because it’s only going to get harder to unload that property as the Fed continues to tighten. You’re not going to have the same number of buyers in the market that can afford your house today. There will be a lot less of them in a few years, even in the next 12 to 24 months.

But if that’s not the case, if you can easily afford it, then I would stay in the house. But you’ve got to be realistic about that. Either way, I would keep working at what you’re doing and build this tea business in your spare bedroom. Build your website out, build your products out. You’re going to have to do it in your spare time. That’s the smart way to do it. It may take you five years to make it a success.

The business I’ve got now took me four years just to figure out my business model. And I went through hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because, like I said earlier, real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance, and there were things that worked in real estate for the product that I was advertising on television that wasn’t going to work for selling books and doing coaching. I had to basically unlearn everything I had learned and then learn the new way of marketing on the internet with blog posts and videos.

Again, I go into detail on all that stuff, my whole business model in “Mastering Yourself” and how I learned all these things. I learned it the hard way, and I spent millions of dollars to learn these lessons that I’m giving to you for free right now. And so, I would build it on the side, because it maybe takes ten years to make it a success. It has to be a product that you absolutely love and you’re passionate about and are excited about. Just thinking you’re going to start a new business and you’ll be a millionaire in a matter of months or a few years, that’s delusional thinking. That’s hopium, and that hopium doesn’t pay the bills.

And so, the best thing for you, for your family, and also so you can have a good entrepreneurial experience, if you can keep this job and then you grow your business, eventually you get to the point where your business is making enough money to where you can step away from or reduce the hours that you spend in insurance consulting. And as your business income ramps up, you slowly phase yourself out of the insurance consulting that you are doing. That would be the best way, the smartest way to go about it.

So, back to the email, here. He says,

“The problem is my wife does not support the idea. She doesn’t want me to do something I hate, but simultaneously she does not want to sell our home, which I believe to be extremely overvalued right now…”

It is.

“…to pull out equity and put it to work.”

But again, if you can’t really afford it because of the changes in the industry, then you definitely need to sell it. Because if you wait and you want to sell it a year or two from now, you’re just pissing away a lot of equity unnecessarily. You’re going to lose it, unless for some reason the Fed all of a sudden drops the rates down. Which I don’t see that happening, because obviously inflation is running away from them.

She is a stay at home mom and loves things just the way they are. The problem is that financial ruin is death-spiraling in our direction if I am complacent in my business endeavors if I ignore my purpose to placate her. She finds too much security in the lifestyle I have provided and finds the idea of big change daunting. She says she believes in my abilities and trusts me, but her actions tell a different story.

Well, at the end of the day, her Spidey sense is tingling, and the way you’re talking about doing this is taking on some big risks. And you should listen to her concerns and not just dismiss them outright.

I have told her that this is something I am doing, that failure just isn’t an option, and that I would love to have her by my side. However, she is free to be her own person.

Yeah, telling your wife to take it or leave it over this, that’s kind of stupid, dude. You shouldn’t do that. It’s not a good way to go.

She seems lost in all of this, and I blame myself for times where I have been lazy and not ensured my words matched my actions in some of the little things. I don’t think she trusts my core right now, but unfortunately, I can’t prioritize how she feels about my core over my obligation to produce for my family and live my purpose.

I agree with that, but you need to do it in a balanced and measured way. And the way you’re going about it, or talking about it, or thinking about doing it, I’ve done it this way and it’s reckless. And you’ve got three people, three women, that depend upon you. Just wait until your girls get a little older. Then you’re going to have three women all having their periods at the same time. Good luck with that, dude. Women want to feel safe and comfortable, and what you’re doing is not making her feel safe and comfortable.

But if you can’t afford to keep the house you’ve got now, you need to have a come to Jesus talk with her and let her know, “We can’t afford to keep it. We’ve got to downsize. We’ll keep the equity. We’ll put it aside, and we’ll wait for the market to come down in a few years. And then, we’ll buy another house, and we’ll do the same thing all over again.”

Maybe you invest some of the money in the market, but right now, me personally, I’m accumulating money, because the market is still going down. And then the market finally bottoms out, maybe over the next year or so. Usually some big financial institution blows up, and that usually signals the end of the decline. But it’d be good to be accumulating cash so you can invest it when it’s time. The idea is to buy low, sell high, not buy high and then sell low.

When we talk and I ask if she wants to be heard or if she wants my input, she tells me that she feels like this change is something being forced on her…

It is, obviously.

…and that she knows she can’t change my mind.

You’ve just got to have a better plan.

She’s just sad and is asking me to go to counseling with her and all of that.

Yeah, it’s like you’re creating problems. And you don’t want to learn the hard way. You don’t want to wreck your family and your home life, and ruin yourself financially, and then come to find out several years down the road that your wife was right all along. You don’t want to be that guy.

I’m grateful that I have a woman willing to invest in the relationship, even when we are having an off season, but I’m also stuck between a rock and a hard place. I’m out of ways to explain myself.

Well, like I said, your plan sucks.

And it seems like she is afraid to let go of the broken branch she is holding onto so that I can catch her on a better one. Any advice would be appreciated!

Bob

Well, you’re you’re a little delusional, because unless you’ve started and sold, or started and created, or closed down many businesses, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t have the experience or the background. So, like I said, if I were you, if you can’t really afford to keep the house as it is, you better sell it now, because it’s only going to go down in value and you’ll have that equity set aside. Don’t quit your job. That would be stupid and reckless.

I’d keep the job and build this business. Think of it in this way, and again, I talk about this in “Mastering Yourself,” you need to think of yourself as like a broke college student. You want to spend the minimum amount of money that is necessary to get your business off the ground. Because, if you’ve got a product, now you need people that want to buy your product. The goal is to find one customer. And between creating the product and finding the one customer, the idea is you want to make a profit off that one customer, and then you find a second customer, and then a third customer and then a fourth customer. You slowly ramp it up.

You don’t just take a ton of money and blow it, because your assumptions could be wrong, which 99% of the time they are wrong as an entrepreneur. Here’s the reality, most of your ideas, they don’t work. And it’s great to be adaptable and to constantly change your approach, but if you’re blowing a lot of money when you start out, and your idea and your premise is wrong, which it usually is, now you’re out of money, so that’d be stupid.

So, you want to think, “How would I start this business if I didn’t have all this capital? How could I do it on a shoestring budget? Maybe a few hundred bucks a month I can set aside, or maybe $1,000 a month I can set aside for this,” and that’s all you invest. And how much are you willing to invest and lose before you give up on this particular business? “Well, I’m never giving up.” Well, you’ve got to think about these things, you’ve got to have these discussions, and you’ve got to think rationally about it. And you want to do it in a measured way, where there’s minimal disruption to your lives and livelihood, and your family, most importantly.

So, if you’ve got a question or a challenge and you would like to get my help, go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the Products tab at the top of your screen and book a coaching session with yours truly.