SPEAKER_02 0:03

Welcome to the Success Architect, where we don't just build homes, we build legacies. I'm your host, Jake Lewendahl, custom home builder and coach. Each week, I sit down with builders and entrepreneurs who are ready to 10x their business, their health, and their mindset. This is where blueprints become breakthroughs. Let's get to work. What's up, guys? Jake Lewendahl with The Success Architect, back here with my lovely wife Mackenzie. Like I promised, she is coming back for part two. And we discussed a lot about uh our family business, the breakup, how it affected her, and also how she grew from her early, early childhood expectations into the woman she is today and the business that she had, and kind of how she came to be here today. And overall, we've had a lot of successes and failures and cycles in our life. And that has all led us to where we are today, which is unifying our path. And essentially, instead of grinding separately, on our own separate paths, grinding together on a unified path, because we have found that that's going to lead us to more success than the alternative. So today we want to talk about how we went from shifting from surviving to intentional partnership, which is what I would call the unifying path. And the fun thing that I want to talk about today is I would say it started with an income competition. And at first this started as like a kind of an unspoken thing. But this is when McKenzie was working in real estate and I was working in building. And I don't like to admit this, but there was a point after the business breakup that I was so stressed out. I was sick of building. I wanted to just throw it all away and call it quits. And I had told McKenzie that I was going to be a stay-at-home dad. I was going to write a book and uh stay at home with our child.

SPEAKER_06 2:15

Who wasn't born yet?

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Who was not born yet. This was all like conceptual, but I was going to be a stay-at-home dad and be done with home building because it was really difficult. And apparently I couldn't handle it at the time. So I'm going to hand it off to her. But there was a specific day where we had this specific conversation, and uh this was the turning point, which I will expand upon here in a moment. But I was talking about staying home, being a stay-at-home dad, writing a book, and doing my thing at home. And I thought it was a fantastic idea. So uh, Mackenzie, can you tell the listeners where we were? I'm pretty sure you even know you what you were wearing that day. And um, and then we can talk about how that kind of shaped our path to today.

SPEAKER_06 3:11

How did the income competition start?

SPEAKER_02 3:14

It just started when you started making a shit ton of money. And I was like, oh shit, like this is getting real. Because I was traditionally, ever since we met, I had made more money. Um, and this year, that year, we had gotten to a point. She's probably laughing because there's a time when I stay, I said that comment, and she left me on the side of the road like miles from our house in a blizzard. So yeah. Um that is I don't know if I need to expand upon that, but yeah, she left me on the side of a road in a blizzard because I said I made more money in the middle of a fight. Fucking horrific idea. Don't do that. But at this point, sh I I had made more money than her throughout the years. And at this point, I think during this specific moment, she had surpassed me in this moment.

SPEAKER_06 4:09

Yeah, you were definitely in a transition period of not knowing what you wanted to do. Had thrown out there that you wanted to become a stay-at-home dad, write a book. Just take some time to just hang out.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Find myself.

SPEAKER_06 4:26

Find yourself. And I remember feeling honestly, I felt very unattracted to you in the moment because I was just like, this is I don't really know what I signed up for, but like this is not it. And I remember feeling, okay, we went through all of the like family stuff, all of that, and now you want to be a stay-at-home dad.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

And she stuck by me through all the family stuff and like fought for me, bought with me.

SPEAKER_06 4:54

Yes, and write a book, and you don't have anything to write about at the time. I was like, what are you what are you gonna write about? I think you have we neither of us have any idea what it's like to be a stay-at-home parent. We don't even have a child at this point. You wanna find yourself. I just remember feeling like I felt very defeated in the moment. But then the fiery side of me came out, and I was like, okay, do that. I remember you were sitting in the office in our past house. I don't even know what you were doing. You were sitting on the floor.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

That means this was only like five years ago.

SPEAKER_06 5:30

Five years ago.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

Five years ago, yeah, five years ago before we had kids.

SPEAKER_06 5:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

Yeah, roughly five years ago.

SPEAKER_06 5:36

And I remember getting ready in the morning. I had knee high black boots on. For some reason, I had to like step over you to get out of the house. And I remember stepping over you, and as I stepped over you, I was like, sit in your shit as long as you need to sit in your shit. But I'm gonna do me. And the competition has now been set. I will make more than you by the end of the year while you find yourself. And I remember leaving and being like disgusted, defeated, and then also just like I felt so confused as to what was going on, and that kind of started the competition between us. But I think that's when like the grinding in our own lanes really, really got accentuated because it was like we were both so strongly in this well, I was in masculine energy, you might have been in feminine energy. I don't really know why. It really like sparked this competition between us. And while it did you did figure stuff out quickly, it almost divided us more than anything because we were like we were not unified at all for that next six months for sure.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Yeah, no, and like I I hope that this can make the point that unification takes time. And before I dive into the details of it, it's it's something that it's something I've always wanted to help people understand. Is that I have always been like a now now person, like fast, I'm constantly thinking about the future. Not anymore because I'm actually present, but even recently in the past couple years, I was I'm always a future thinker, which is great. Visionary, big ideas, super cool things, business, like go to the moon. But that also takes away from the present. And that was always a problem. So I guess unification takes time and it takes presence.

SPEAKER_06 7:42

And sometimes it takes years.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

It can take years. So for anyone who's in a process of trying to work through a unification with a spouse or a finding yourself situation, it takes time and everyone's gonna go at their own pace. For us, it was probably about six months just to get to the point of like unification, but it was probably four years, like you talked about, that kind of muddy uh middle ground, especially with kids in the mix, of like really coming together and like working as one. I would say that we could easily say that took four years, if not five. And uh, so this situation with her stepping over me and being disgusted with me was definitely my oh shit moment. And um, it created a total shift for me. And it was like, Jesus, like I'm not being the fucking man of the house. And it was embarrassing, number one. Most women, especially you, have a way of like setting a tone with your words, and I was like legitimately embarrassed and knew that I had to make a change in that moment. And um instantly, like that day, I got up, went to work, and I don't remember typical man, I don't remember that specific day. But over the next six months, both of us uh round, grinded, dumbbell the word, but we were in our own lanes pushing very hard. And um and a lot of good came out of it. Both of us made a lot of money after that time. It was really fun. Um, it we we had made a lot relative to where we were, and we grew substantially in both of our businesses. Um, I stepped up and it was this was kind of the moment where we started to understand the difference between feminine and masculine energy. And I'm gonna get a little woo-woo here, but like when a man steps into his masculine energy, that is the shift that allows a woman to actually embrace her feminine energy. And I want to make sure it's really clear that it's not like a higher lower deal. It's a unified power. And when you talk about masculine and feminine energy, the masculine is like the driving and the pushing and creating the safety and security. And then safety and security allows a woman to live in her feminine energy because she knows she's safe, she knows she's secure and she's being cared for. And when each of the two can step into their energy and and bind together in a unified path, is when all the success of the world like opens up. And this moment was the time that I was like, oh shit, I need to step up. And the masculine energy started to build up. It took me, arguably, four years, various counseling, coaching, like my own self-identity, path, all of that stuff. Um, kids also has a way of setting your path and really making you step into the energy that's necessary for that time. So for us to find our way together into unified path, we each had to step into our respective masculine and feminine energy and grow to the absolute like pinnacle of those to unify together. So um we can talk about kind of the the existential, like fun woo-woo ideas of that, but a lot of people are probably excited about the the how. Like, how do we work together? Now that we are on this unified path of working together, momentum, um, our construction business, we have an AI tech business that is prepped to launch in early 2026. And uh, we have a couple other um event-based businesses that'll be 2026-2027, and they're gonna be things that we're gonna do together. And so, how do we do these things together? The way that I look at it to kind of start off, I'd love your opinion more than anything. But like, I'm a visionary, I have big ideas, I have a lot of dreams, and I live at like 30,000 feet, which is why I have trouble with presence, and that's something that we'll talk about, something that I work on. Um, but Mackenzie's definitely more like uh a details gal, and she's really good at sitting at 10,000 feet and help but helping manage the details that are at 1,000 feet and delegate appropriately. She's also really good at listening to my ideas, listening to them fully and letting me get them out, which is very impressive by the way, um, and appreciated, but then in a very positive way, nitpicking the details to see what is actually gonna stick for our future together.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

So, can you talk a little bit about that process and how we work together to move mountains together?

SPEAKER_06 13:21

I'd love to say here's what I do every day, here's what Jake does every day, and this is how it works. But it's honestly different every single day. It I will say I think one of my strengths that I've had to really step into, I guess two things, is learning to identify what I felt were my strengths when I was in real estate and learning to apply those now just in a different fashion. And then I would say I think one thing about our relationship is learning to I think we're pretty good at home and at work. Being able to like cue into each other and know, okay, like Jake's at 100 a day, like it's okay if like I'm not today. Like he's like full bore, like things are just like clicking for him today. So he's at a hundred. Like, if I need to like I'm just not there today, I can take a step back for bedtime. He can take it on. Let him take things on with dishes before bed or big things that are happening at work and the other way around too. But I think one thing that we've always been good about at home too in our relationship is I've talked to friends before, and I think it's also because when we came into our marriage, we both came in with literally nothing. Like we had to learn teamwork from the beginning because we got married so young, like there was nothing, but it's never been like a I take out the trash and Jake does the dishes, and if the dishes aren't done, like it's always been we've been able to really like look at each other and be like, okay, Jake's like strapped, like he's like working his hardest on work stuff today. So I'm gonna step in and like I'm gonna do the dishes. And I think it's been trying to see the intention is there in both of us. Being present enough to like look at the other person and see that and see the bigger picture, appreciate that, and be able to look and say, we've started going, of course, we have our fights of like me versus you constantly, not constantly, but enough. But in the bigger things, being able to be like, okay, this isn't us versus the issue type of thing, and try to stay unified when one of us is already feeling beat down instead of nitpicking in that moment. And then I would say communication. And I mean, that's still something we work on constantly. Of when Jake's and his big like visionary ideas are rolling out of his mouth as we're trying to fall asleep at night. Me learning to listen to myself and be able to just say working on constantly, like not always in a smart ass way, but just communicate that, like, hey, I can't fall asleep when you are blowing up my brain with a million ideas. Like, write them down in your phone and save them for another day. But it's been me learning to communicate that with you instead of like stuffing it to the point of building resentment.

unknown 16:30

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

And talking about it in a moment instead of letting it build, like you just said.

SPEAKER_06 16:34

And I will say another thing you have been good at, and I think that that was strongly you learned a lot of that at Warrior, and I know you're going to talk about that eventually. Is when you came back from Warrior, you led our household in a completely different fashion. And it took me a while to trust it. Like I would always say to you, like, time will tell, actions speak louder than words.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

I hated that statement when I was younger because I couldn't live up to it.

SPEAKER_06 17:02

You started leading with just your actions and consistency, and there was no expectations of me tied to it. And I think that has carried into work for us a lot as well. It's just the like showing up and doing things for each other, for our goals, for our vision, for our team, for the company without expectations attached to it. But as far as like what we do every single day, it varies. But I will say you do set the tone. You set the tone in the household and you set the tone. And I know that sounds very traditional, probably to some. I feel like we have fallen way more into traditional roles. Yeah, we kind of have than we used to, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

So if I was to summarize, if if there's someone who is, uh, I want to look at multiple facets because I like talking about holistic lifestyle, right? So if we have someone come to us and say, how do you guys work together in the business? Like you said, like it's not the same every single day. But the answer is that, okay, number one, you figure out what each of you are good at, right? So I'm not a big idea visionary. She's really good at details. We divvy up our roles and and we help each other and give and take and take and give back and forth to try to hit our uh the things that we are good at, right? And but what's interesting is I'm constantly talking about, especially with men, I think this works for everyone, but I mostly only like to focus on training men, is that when you focus on, say, your health, your home life, uh, the way you show up as a husband, the way you show up as a father, when you focus on having intention, routine, um, key performance indicators, like all these specific details about these different holistic pieces of life and raising those, all of a sudden everything in business starts to work and your money starts to work. Which is mind-blowing how it happens. And the same thing happens in a partnership like ours. Really, I would say the way we work in business, the tone is set at home. And when we are in an active part, like the way to do it is active partnership versus silent expectations. Yeah. I would say silent expectations would be like, well, he's supposed to take out the trash and he's supposed to do it dishes, and she's supposed to vacuum and whatever it is. But when you can get to a point of instead of having specific expectations and having active partnership where you see your partner and you appreciate your partner in this very moment on how they feel and how they are able to show up in this specific moment, when you can be present enough to actually look and see that, then you don't have to have chores because you know, like, or I know it's you know what, hey, I'm just going to jump in and take care of the dishes, take care of the trash, take care of this, clean the house, get ready for bed, and then hey, let's go to bed together, hon. And and then vice versa, if I'm pushing hard on something.

SPEAKER_06 20:17

How do you recommend men get into that mindset?

SPEAKER_02 20:21

Oh, this is a super fun one. And it's super shitty. Um I just call it no expectations. So theoretically, if I was speaking just to a man and there's no women around, I would ask, hey, do you trust your wife? And I would hope they say yes, otherwise, probably shouldn't be married. If you trust your wife, then what I'm going to recommend is that you go home and you do everything in the household with zero expectations of anything in return. And that's basically anything that is not done at the household. Hopefully, like maybe she's helping, she's vacuuming, she's doing whatever, but you see something that needs to be done, jump in, do the dishes, do the laundry, put the kids to bed, like change diapers, like all the stuff that I hope you were doing before, but maybe you weren't. Jump in and just do, do, do, do, do, and have zero expectation of anything in return. Again, if you trust your wife, my guess is that within possibly even just a couple days, you might have to go a couple weeks. I've had a couple friends who claim they said this didn't work, but they did it for like four weeks. I think for some people it might take two months. You go do this and you just like work, work, work with zero expectation of something in return. All of a sudden, your wife's gonna turn to you one day and like look at you differently. And all of a sudden, she's gonna feel differently about you. And and all of a sudden you're gonna be like, Oh shit, like something's changing. And the energy shifts. And when the energy shifts, that's where all of this active partnership can happen. But it takes time and it takes work. And like I said, for some people, like it can take a week. But like I tell this story, I had a friend. I was walking on the beach in Florida. It was like midnight one night. We had just gone to dinner and I had drank a little too much. So I was feeling quite sprightly. And uh, and I was like, I was kind of yelling at him because he was having trouble with his wife. And he kept telling me how he had done this no expectations thing. Um, and I asked him how long. I was like, Oh sweet, like, how long have you been like doing the dishes and like taking your kid to school and doing all this shit? And he was like, dude, I've been doing it for like a solid three weeks. Like, I'm exhausted. And I like looked at him and I laughed and I almost kicked him because I was like, I said, How long were you a piece of shit in your marriage? And he looked at me like I had just kicked him. And and I asked him again, I was like, How long have you been a piece of shit in your marriage, man?

SPEAKER_05 23:10

Like, level with me. And he was like, 18 months.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

And I was like, Am I the only one doing the math here? Like, you think three weeks makes up for 18 months?

SPEAKER_02 23:25

Thank God, specifically women and humans are really resilient. Most men don't have to put in 18 months worth of this, no expectations work to all of a sudden start to see the results. It's mind-blowing. A lot of the times it works in a couple weeks or a couple months. But that's a very long answer to how do you create this energy exchange and this change of energy in your household to all of a sudden start rising, raising your entire life together. So um that that's my my main recommendation and the long version of the how-to for men and women, specifically wives and husbands, to work together is to not figure out how to work together, it's figure out how to live together and the work together will happen automatically.

SPEAKER_05 24:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 24:28

So that's I remember when you started doing that. I was like, what is going on? Right? What's the catch?

SPEAKER_02 24:34

What's the catch? Exactly. And I was super lucky. Um I'd probably been a piece of shit for a couple years in different ways. Um, luckily it wasn't terrible. I didn't have a lot to come back from. I can say that I specifically remember noticing a difference. I want to say on week, like the beginning of week four. Like three weeks, I just thought it was like do do do do do. Like if I didn't sleep, didn't matter. Like, which that wasn't the case. But it was like, just do do do, zero expectation, do this. And there was an energy shift on week four. And it was like, you looked at me differently, and I was like, oh shit, it's working. I was like, what happened? It's working, like this is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

And uh, and that was definitely kind of a turning point, and you have to continue, but luckily it gets easier because now you start to work together.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

Um so I would say active partnership versus silent expectations is probably the biggest thing that couples can do in the how-to of building a business. Um, a couple other ways to do things like this is regular check-ins. Specifically, Kenzie and I like to do walk-in talks. Sure as hell hasn't happened um in the past month, but we try to do two walk-in talks per week and we go through cycles. Like there'll be months where we knock it out eight weeks in a row, and then there'll be eight weeks where we don't do it. But these are super powerful for us. It's a great time. You're getting exercise, you're getting your steps. And uh during these check-ins, one other thing that is really positive and great for couples to do is celebrate celebrating each other's wins. And this is something that uh personally I would say I was really terrible at. Um, and I think men probably are terrible at because celebrating each other's wins means seeing the other person.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

And that means being present enough to see the other person.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

And I was terrible at that, and I'm still working on it. But that is one thing that men can work on very hard because literally if a man just sees his wife and appreciates her, not only who she is, the energy she brings, but also the things that she does. Because most of the time, I think I heard recently uh it best explained that women and wives do all of the invisible things that are never appreciated until they're not done. And then all of a sudden it becomes a big problem. And uh this is where seeing a man seeing his wife and showing appreciation for it, i.e., celebrating it, is probably one of the most powerful things I've ever seen in a relationship. So um Do you have anything to add on how people, anybody, spouses, couples, um, business partners, anything that they can do to work better together, to grow together before we call it a day.

SPEAKER_06 28:08

I think just being a unified front, you we've had moments where we've gotten like screaming matches in the office before when we were very young.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Yeah, we did.

SPEAKER_06 28:19

Um But I think being that unified front and knowing that you're going to feel more comfortable saying things to your spouse because they're your comfort, they're your safe space. But keeping that level of respect to each other in public settings, I think is number one.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Yeah. Um praise in public. Yeah. Coach in private.

SPEAKER_06 28:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 28:46

That um couples counseling, I think, has been just a very big thing in our relationship. Having that strong foundation, having somebody to help pull us out of the weeds of an argument or out of the weeds of something, and really look at what are you actually arguing about? What's truly going on here? Is it a lot of times it's not what you're actually arguing about. It's something like so much bigger than that. And having somebody to help pull you out of that has been huge for us. And then date night.

SPEAKER_03 29:14

I mean, we've done date night every Thursday for years.

SPEAKER_06 29:19

And I think the fun and spark and romantic part of your relationship is like a muscle, and you have to, you have to strengthen it, you have to keep focusing on it, you have to keep working on it, or it does fizzle out, especially once you have kids. You have to be intentional about it. And for us, that's date night. Just time to go have dinner, sit and talk to each other. A lot of times we talk about work, but I mean we love that.

unknown 29:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 29:45

So it's fun for us, but it's that time to step back into the relationship part of our relationship and be as present as possible for that. So those would be my three things.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

Well, to sum it all up, one mission, one path together is a way to success. Thank you so much for joining today. I really appreciate it. And uh look forward to the next one. We will see you guys soon later. Thanks for tuning in to the Success Architect. If today's episode helped you lay a stronger foundation for your business or your life, subscribe and share it with someone ready to do the same with theirs. You can follow me, Jake Lewendah, on social for daily tips on health, wealth, and building success that lasts. Until next time, keep designing, keep building, and keep leveling.