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The Everyday Millionaire and Mindset Matters Podcast
Mindset Matters - Episode #228 - The Hidden Cost of Business and Relationship Entanglements
00:32:02
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to this episode of the Everyday Millionaire Mindset Matters podcast where I'm joined by my wife, Olympic mental performance coach Stephanie Hanlon. Francie. In these episodes, Stephanie and I have a conversation about the different aspects of what we refer to as mindset matters because we believe that for those who are awake, we are living in and through the most impactful time in history. Your view of the world is the filter for how you will experience the evolution and changing dynamics of it. Our intention is to provide you with ideas, nutritious food for thought, and some tools that you can use to help you in being your greatest self and living your best life. Listen in, enjoy. Hey there and welcome to the Everyday Millionaire Mindset Matters podcast. Stephanie.
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B
Hey, honey.
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A
Okay, so topic today is entanglements.
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B
Great word.
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A
I know we've all been in entanglements. We're talking about relational entanglements, business entanglements, entanglements. What are they? How the heck do we get out of them? And I wanted to set a context for entanglements because people I've discovered over the years, myself included, many years ago when I realized I was in entanglement, like this was, gosh, 15 years ago at least. And I sat down with my coach and he, business coach at the time, Michael, and he said, you're in an entanglement and you've got to get it unentangled, untangled. Yeah. But then after he gave me that kind of languaging, that insight, you realize just how often people find themselves in entanglements and how hard they are to get out of. And those entanglements can be, you know, in the world of real estate, joint venture partnerships, business partnerships doesn't have to be real estate related, of course, but just in business and in life. So I kind of riffed off a bit of a metaphor, if you will, to give listeners a context for this conversation. So I'll go forward with that. You good with that?
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B
Awesome. Let's do it.
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A
Okay. This is about, you know, putting a net in the water. If you're a fisherman, you, you know, we go fishing, we're fishermen, we're going to go put a net in the water and we simply just take one line, we tie it to the dock. It's simple, clean, it's really easy to manage. Then we get pretty good at fishing that way, and we add another line and you know, that, that one we connect to a buoy and at the end of the day we can catch more fish that way. And then we have another line that we connect to another Boat, because now there's somebody with a cool boat that, oh, gosh, if we tied a line to his boat, we can really stretch this net out a long ways. And so as we go through this process of, you know, wanting to catch a lot of fish and expand our net, each addition line that we add, each additional thing that we add to this net actually complicates it as we go through it. And then the next thing you know, all of a sudden, fishing is not so good. The tide starts to shift, and so the one line is being pulled by a boat that's going one direction. You know, a line that is tied to the dock isn't going to move at all. Another one's tied to a buoy, and it's drifting off, and another boat is moving a totally other direction. And now all of the fishermen that are part of that fishing expedition, their legs are tied, entangled, their lines are tied up, they're pulling against each other.
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B
And.
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A
And what was really just at first, a very simple net in the water has got all sorts of ropes and knots and different tension. And if you pull one rope, it impacts the other three, and if you pull another, it impacts another two. So at the end of the day, you go, okay, we got to quit fishing here. We got to get this whole mess untangled. And at some point, all of the fishermen realize that the net can't be fixed from the outside. The only way to deal with it is climb into the water and start cutting and untying all the knots one knot at a time, one rope at a time. It's expensive. It gets cold. It gets hard. So when we look at relational entanglements or business entanglements, they're kind of the same way. They start with really good intentions, and then you get momentum. And the next thing you know, you start. You know, you're helping someone, and you start partnering with somebody. Then you start sharing responsibility, and all of a sudden, you're helping your friends, your family. You got finances coming together, and all of it started with a handshake deal. It all makes sense at the moment, right? And then the tide changed. Circumstances, people change. Money, more money gets involved. Expectations kind of drift off into a different direction, and the next thing you know, you've got a lot of resentment growing, and everybody starts operating on top of the fact that there's a lot of resentment, but there's no way easily to get this undone. So we are dealing with emotional strain and stress, mental strain and stress, financial ties. That's all pretty complicated. And that's what an entanglement is. And of course, in all of that, as you will point out, I'm sure there is what unstated assumptions and expectations. Yes, all unstated.
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B
And we still don't get any fish.
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A
And we still don't get any fish. And it's a mess. And rather than untie all the knots, you blow it up and throw it away and everybody has to start again. But that's not what we want to do. So what's your thoughts on entanglements? We've seen them, we've been ourselves, it's happened to us, and none of it is easy. I think this many years later, we're pretty unentangled for the most part. But what's your thoughts on this? Because we see it in business, we see it in your world working with athletes. So I'll be quiet now. Give me your profound thoughts.
- [06:16]
B
Oh, thanks. No pressure. I think with entanglements, you know, for your fishing line analogies really makes a lot of sense because everything starts out when it comes to business or relationship with good intentions. I don't think people go into opportunities or try to align with others with, you know, dark, negative intentions. I think everything starts out with a good intention on some level. If everybody's really transparent. The part that gets entangled is when things start speeding up and you start seeing the pace increase and you start looking at where, for example, you're operating on top of incompletions, for example, or things are not getting done the way to your standards, or they're not. Things aren't happening as fast as you would like them to happen. Then we start operating on unexpressed expectations. And those expectations come from the inability to actually become transparent or say what you need to say at the beginning of a. Of a relationship or a business deal because you don't want to make it go south or hurt the person's feelings or whatever. Then we just load it out and just pass on. And next thing you know, you've operated on top of something else and added another fishing line or another business partner or another complicated conversation. So recognizing that a relationship or a deal is no longer truly equal or a relationship that benefits both parties is when you start to notice that you're in an entanglement. And unwinding entanglements is harder than even unwinding relationships or breaking up a relationship or undoing a business deal. Because those entanglements, and as you know, the harder you pull on those lines, the tighter the knot gets. So it gets even harder and harder to untie it.
- [08:06]
A
Well, you know, it's interesting around when we think about relationships. You know, let's just. Because a long time ago, we learned from one of the coaches we worked with, with Anurag, for example, or Alan, I don't remember who was that really brought us back. They used to say, what was the originating intent?
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B
Yeah, exactly.
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A
Because we start with this originating intent and then ideas grow from there. And the next thing you know, we have a lot of other people involved or a lot of different deals kind of working. You know, here's a. Here's a common entanglement. I just had this conversation with somebody quite a successful investor in the world of real estate. And they had a number of partners and it was all good for. Actually for several years. But those partners put in capital into different ventures, different real estate deals. Some of those real estate deals started to kind of go off the rails because of poor cash flow, bad tenants insurability. And it got really confusing. And they go, well, no problem, let's just sell the deal. Well, some of those individuals are going, no, if we sell this deal, I'm going to take a loss. I'm not prepared to take a loss. I don't want out. And so, which would all make sense if you had that joint venture agreement. But then in their joint venture agreement, it was never really. It was kind of a chat GPT kind of thing, you know what I'm saying? So there's a lot of details missing. So the point of it is that entanglements never start out with the intention of let's get entangled. What happens is that we innocently build on top of things because we got momentum. Somebody comes up with a better idea, oh, and we can do this and we can do that. So the first part of it is in the awareness, especially in business, of how entanglements can get created and maybe stepping back every so often saying, okay, our originating intent was this. It's now expanded to that. We've got three more people involved that weren't part of the original group. Are we paying attention to that? And I think in the world of relationship. So, for example, you look at our life. I mean, we've been together 35 years, and so our life got actually quite complicated with different businesses, different real estate deals, different business. Like we operate different businesses. So it got really complicated. And at this point in our life, we're trying to simplify, but we're not in an entanglement that we're trying to get out of. So imagine that same scenario if Somebody says, oh, I want a divorce. Imagine trying to unwind those things. And that's one scenario. But what about business partners that create these entanglements? The relationship starts to break down because of all the reasons it breaks down. It could be just bad communication or a business partner who has their own life event, whether it be a divorce or a death or something goes on. So it's all to say that entanglements are pretty common, but they could be avoided a lot more if people stopped. And I think that would be the intention for me of this particular episode. This podcast is to remind people to slow down and look at what you have going on. That would be the first part. You want to comment on that?
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B
Well, that takes a lot of emotional maturity and sometimes some business experience or savvy to say, okay, I think we're heading down the wrong path here. Can we take five, take a pause, have a quick meeting, and then be able to be transparent enough to say, you know, this was not aligned with our originating intent? I've actually heard that a couple of times in different conversations I've had with lawyers recently. Is that to come back to always come back to the originating intent, because that is actually not just a very good business practice, but it's a legal term. And the originating intent of something can help you unwind the entanglement, even in a relationship. So think about it. We're going in. We both said we wanted to, you know, build a life together, yada, yada, yada, and then. But one of them backs off and says, you know what? I just really wanted to date and fool around or whatever. So it's where. Where do you go off the rails when it comes to being honest and transparent in where you are at or are you fully expressed around what it is that you need or what's in your way of being able to fulfill on some promises that you made. So there's some shame involved in entanglements. There's guilt involved in entanglements. There's holy shit involved in entanglements. So it's. How do you recognize. That'd be my question. How do you recognize you're in an entanglement or you're actually truly in a relationship?
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A
Okay, well, that's. There's, you know, so it's a good segue into what you just shared. But there's also the feeling often in these things is a betrayal, you know, when, you know, when somebody tries to create separation or clarity. So in other words, somebody that the entanglement is working for, it's not working for the other person. That's often the case. Correct. And so, you know, you try and create some kind of separation or clarity and then the other person experiences it as either rejection or you're trying to screw me over or what the hell. That's not what we talked about. What's really, what's really happening? And so there is that part of it. So how do you know you're in an entanglement? Is first off, how are you feeling about the relationship? Are you feeling like it's imbalanced? This isn't what I started doing and now I'm doing it. This is not where we started. That's not what I agreed to. You know, three years later, all of a sudden I'm working 80 hours a week instead of 40 hours a week. All of a sudden it's costing me money as opposed to making me money. And so how, you know, you know, you're in entanglement, that if you had to end it now for whatever reason, you wouldn't even know where to start.
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B
Yeah, exactly.
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A
Good indication.
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B
The other part of that is when you identify that you might be in an entanglement and you want to enter the conversation and is, do you and the other person have a. The emotional quotient or the adversity quotient to be able to go through some of the headwinds that it's going to take to unwind? Because I think about when you're just operating and doing the best you can and shit, sitting the fan and you know, think about the last five, six, seven years that's going on. People were just in survival. And I believe everybody, the first presupposition of everything, especially in performance coaching, is everybody's doing the absolute best they can. Then we take it into, well, that's not what we agreed to. Well, in my memory, it was what we agreed to. And then you try to go back and find the paperwork and you can't because you've changed computers three times or whatever, you lost the files or something happened. Because memories are designed for self preservation. So as you begin to disentangle something and you try to get to the originating intent, what will get in the way is each other's memories of what the originating intent was. And if it's not in writing, if it's not laid down, even in, you know, things like prenup agreements or, you know, mous, those types of things are really important in terms of getting and capturing, you know, an originating intent on something. Because again, I don't want to at this age be relying on my memory of something that I decided to discuss 30 years ago, 25 years ago, even five years ago. So I want to be able to.
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A
Five days ago, I would be. Five days ago. Yeah, for sure. Maybe five minutes ago. So. But you make it really. I don't want to step over what you just said. Right. Our memory is designed for self preservation, and I think that is something we don't necessarily realize. You know, I'm currently working with on a particular deal that we've been moving forward over the past several months. And I, like, literally today I said, hey, listen, we. Why don't we just check in, let's add to the letter of intent, let's expand on it so that we don't have to remember this. You know, a lot of what I, when I'm making those suggestions of getting it in writing, it's not because I don't trust somebody. Right. I don't trust my memory, and I'm certainly not going to trust somebody else's memory on my behalf. So in other words, let's write it down, let's keep notes going so that we can stay current to what some of the conversations are having. And that just comes from experience of knowing that nobody's intending for this thing to go off the rails. It just that it will if we don't pay attention to what we're committing to and the agreements that we're making along the way. Because in any business, it evolves, it. It shifts. You know, things change, circumstances change. The idea that you had was a great idea, but now it needs nuances and we need to expand on it in some way. So capturing those notes and staying on top of it is really important. There's one other thing that I don't want to step over in this conversation, which is, you know, how it goes back. I think the more important part of this conversation is what do people do if they find themselves in an entanglement? You know, the first is acknowledging and realizing you're in an entanglement. I'll go back to what I said before. It often looks like disagreements, not aligning with decisions that are being made, feeling like there's an imbalance to the relationship or the deal. And if you can't define or describe how you would unwind things, that's a good indicator. So in other words, these people or this person is pissing me off. I'm in this relationship, I'm in this deal. I don't know how to get out of it. There's an indication Right there, that you're in an entanglement. You know, that would be the first one of the first ones. The second is that if, you know, you're in an entanglement. And I've had this experience where I couldn't wrap my mind around getting out of it, how to get out of it. And so I did nothing but back to the fisherman's net. By doing nothing, the knots only get tighter, the lines only get more tangled. It does not get easier by procrastinating and putting it off to another day. It only gets more complicated and generally more expensive. Any thoughts on that?
- [18:33]
B
So true. I mean, putting something off, indecision is a decision, you know, And I think, what's the short term pain versus the long term pain? Because it's gonna be painful. All relationships are. We're humans, and, you know, unless we're, you know, living on planet whatever, nobody's perfect and coming in with a originating intent that is clear and is powerful. And as much as I think I'm a great communicator, there's things that have happened in my life, in my business, where I go, I never would have ever said that. And I've had people say, oh, yeah, you did. And that's how I interpreted it. So when it's funny, you know, whenever I open a presentation or a conversation with a group of people, I will say, you know, give yourself a little bit of room, take a breath, because we're now in a conversation and we want to align on the outcome. Keep in mind, you're never really gonna hear exactly what it is that I'm saying. What you're going to hear is you're repeating back to yourself what you think I said in your language, in your words, through your filters, your values, your experience, your politics, your opinions of, you know, the lady in the black sweater and the ponytail. You're going to have all of these things going on in your head, so you're not really hearing what I'm saying. So let's agree right now that we're gonna stop, put a pin in it, and then do a quick read, review or recap of the things that we do as we go along the conversation. Now think about if we'd done that, if we do that in business, or if we do that in relationships. I mean, I love that people do that sometimes at New Year's, they'll do their list, what worked, what didn't work, that kind of thing. But to do it regularly in business and check in and make sure you're still on the same page. I think that's just so incredibly important.
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A
You know, where all of you said, all of what you said, I 100% agree with. You know, I think there's a. What's happening right now, and I think where it's showing up more is that as the economy continues to kind of soften and get slower, you know, when economies are great, you know, and I say this often, you know, in boom cycles, everybody's a genius. And in boom cycles, everything works. It's only in slump cycles that we pay for the mistakes we made during boom cycles when there was so much room for error. And so the point of it is that when these things start to unwind, sometimes pulling off the band aid or cutting off the limb, I go back to, I was thinking about, well, do you remember the guy years ago, he was rock climbing and he got his arm, right?
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B
Yeah. He got caught on the limb.
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A
He got caught, like he literally had to cut off his own arm to save the rest of him, his life and the rest of his body.
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B
So incredible story.
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A
It's an incredible story, but it's kind of like that. I think there's a bit of a metaphor there or analogy there which is, you know, you may. It's painful, you know, and sometimes we. Hang on, goes back to that age old question. Well, the cost of my saving my life is cutting off my arm, you know, but what's the cost of not cutting off your arm?
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B
Yeah, it could be death.
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A
You're losing your life. So these are tough decisions. They're mentally, emotionally, sometimes financially devastating. But the cost of staying in these relationships is far more mentally, emotionally, and often financially more extreme, more expensive. So I think that's where we have to look at it and actually point out is, first off, are you in an entanglement? And the reason I asked that question, you think everybody knows. And I can say from my own personal experience years ago and over the years and in speaking with many, many investor and business clients is they don't realize they're in an entanglement until they do.
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B
And then by then it could be too late.
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A
Yeah, I think of a partner or a client that I touch base with occasionally. And I want to say there's seven individuals in the business that he's in and they don't align, they don't always align in how they're going to manage and operate the business. And it gets very, very complicated now. They're working through it. But that is the epitome of an entanglement where you've Got that many people, all have just grown together and they, they've crushed it business wise, but they're now growing beyond their scope of who's doing what. And all of a sudden the roles and responsibilities change. And that's not what I signed up for. I don't know how to do that. Like, what do we do? And I don't want to hire somebody and pay that much money. And there's so. So it becomes this entanglement in business that is so costly to unwind, and it's also costly to stay in it. Right? But at some point, you got to start pulling on the ropes, trying to undo knots, see what lines you got to cut. You follow what I'm saying? So it gets really complicated. And I think again, it's. People can find themselves in those situations without realizing that's what they've created unintentionally.
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B
Well, it can even be as simple as, you know, a relationship, a marriage or a dating relationship where you've been generous at the start and you've been giving, and next thing you know, you think it's even and it gets imbalanced. You know, it could be as simple as that. It's just an imbalanced relationship that can turn into an entanglement where one person then feels taken advantage of, taken for granted, betrayed, et cetera. So those types of feelings, when those feelings come up, then it's about for me, if that's me, I need to check in with myself, right. Because there's one of my step isms I pulled the other day. The cards that we made for all the kind of the things that I say over the years to my clients was being over generous to. A fault is a fault, right. And it's being aware and taking responsibility for what my role is in the entanglement. And if I have to pull my own ropes or if I have to work around, make sure that I'm taking and releasing and letting go of the things that I'm responsible for. And I think that's the downside of when you recognize you're in an entanglement. If you don't take responsibility for your rope or for your line in the, in the water and go, let me just follow that line and see if I can come backwards and then start to unwind it myself. And if each person did that in the entanglement, at least I think it would loosen the. The charge or the, or the damage or the drama at the time.
- [25:13]
A
Well, I think. Yeah, and I think what you just said hits it. You Know, entanglements don't happen because people are careless. Certainly not careless intentionally. They're not intending to be careless. Entanglements happen because people are trusting. That's how they go. Like you go down this path, you're in it together, you're doing stuff. And then over time it gets more complicated and nobody's stopping to reassess. Back to where we kind of started this conversation is unexpressed assumptions and unexpressed expectations. And we know that just those two things alone are enough to cause troubles, let alone getting down the path a few years or a few months or whatever it might be without some alignment on. Okay, this is where this is going. Are we still on the same page? You're going to do this, I'm going to do that, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. Dollars and cents are this way or that way. You know, this is how we're putting in the correction and growing like it really is time to check in and making sure. Here's one that is common with partners is, and I see it often in the real estate side of things particularly, but in any situation where you have two people, they're all aligned, all of a sudden somebody of that part partnership meets somebody else and they wow, these would be a great contribution. We are going to add them to the things that we're doing. And I say to you, I go, hey, well, listen, you know, Joe is awesome. He could do this and this and this. The next thing you know, we have Joe. Now we got a line to Joe. And then Joe is doing something over here that's his responsibility. And we're not necessarily keeping up with it over time. That then goes on and the next thing you know, we have more complication, more entanglement that we weren't even aware of because we were trusting. We didn't ask the right questions or we didn't have time or we didn't know what questions to ask. We were too shy, too shamed, too embarrassed, too didn't want to feel stupid. So you, whatever the reasons are that you went ahead in spite of maybe even a gut feeling about it or not understanding it completely. And that's where we see often people getting into trouble.
- [27:30]
B
Yeah, there's a lot there. I think the biggest thing for me is when you look at everybody a doing the best they can at the time and then as things go, you know, a little bit further down the road and the yogurt hits the fan and everybody's going to fall back and default to the weaknesses that they have. So the inconsistent structure that they have, for example, or the unclear policies or something, that's where the things start to break. And if everybody has that and under a certain amount of pressure on a certain amount of load, that's what shows up. And then you're not just dealing with the person and the originating intent and the expressed expectations and the et cetera. You're dealing with all the shit that comes through the gaps that nobody was expecting. And I think that emotional maturity and that emotional. That eq, that emotional quotient that I think in some ways has been really dampened over the last six years is that we're relying on outside resources or the news or people to tell us what to think and what to feel. And when that gets all messed around and meshes with your own current values, and then you have to rely on, you know, Joe showing up with all his values, then it feels super heavy. And that's how, for me, I know I'm in entanglement. So as I look around and I'm seeing the. The world as it is today, a lot of people I'm talking to are not even talking through the clarity of relationships and vision and values and all the things that we think are important when it comes to mind shui, or mindset matters. They're operating through their. Their filters and their survival mechanisms. So to me, that's a signal right away that, holy cow, we're going to have to enter a conversation about and at least define what an entanglement is for people so they don't feel like they're going crazy.
- [29:22]
A
There's a. There's another part of this that gets even. Part of what? And I. I don't want to step over it. Part of the challenge is that, you know, you may have. So you listen to this podcast and you go, you know something? You're right. I'm in a fricking entanglement. I'm tired of it. I got to get the hell out of it. Well, it's not. And you say, well, rip off the band aid. Well, that not likely to mean that you're going to pick up the phone or have a meeting the next day, go, I'm done. You may, but what happens generally gets in the way is life is going on. So you've got things you gotta get done. There's still commitments that you've made. You still gotta keep things moving along until things get unwound, until you get things untangled. And it's not like a job that you're doing eight hours a day or a few hours a day to untangle the mess. It takes time. And so as you're going through the untangling of the entanglement, life is happening. Life is. And again, it's a slow process. And so if you're in an entanglement today, you realize that you're in that entanglement. The first decision is, okay, how do I start to unwind this ball, this mess that I'm in? The picture of my mind is tangled, fish line or something. But anyways, the point of it is it is difficult. And I think that's why most people, or many people choose not to deal with it until they're absolutely forced to. That is more problematic. It's kind of like, pay me now, pay me a little now. And that can be financial, emotional, mental. Pay me a little now or pay me a lot later. Because the longer these things drag out, the more expensive they get energetically, mentally, emotionally, and often financially. So with that, I think we've given some food for thought today.
- [31:15]
B
I think so. And to disentangle this podcast. That was fun.
- [31:20]
A
That was fun. Thanks, Stephanie. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening. If you found value in the podcast, please take the time to rate and review and share with others. Share with your friends as it is more my goal to always improve and to provide the highest value for you, the listener. If you have any comments, suggestions or questions you'd like answered, please email me@ceoraincanada.com that's ceor.com I look forward to hearing from you. And until next time, Patrick O.