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9/25/24 - 2061: Make Your Marriage and Business Work

Jim: You've tuned into iWork4Him the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: We are your host Jim and Martha Brangenberg and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: Did you know that business owners and pastors are pretty much the best at destroying their marriages? Married to their work or their work is their mistress is what some exclaim. What is true is that no marriage can handle constant neglect whether that neglect is in the name of a church ministry or the family business.

So why is this happening? Why are pastors and business owners working so hard to provide for those they love but neglecting them with the love they need by working so hard? Seems like an impossible programming loop stuck in the inevitability of a downward spiral. Those are pretty good words, by the way, but wait, there is an answer.

No marriage needs to end in divorce because of overworking. God has the perfect plan for working through the issues, strong and challenging issues as they are, and preserving and uplifting the marriages of those who serve us so well in the pulpit. and behind the counter. Robert and Kay Lee Fukui are here today to share from their personal experience growing up as a pastor's kid and a business owner's kid and how they're here to work with you who call yourselves a Christian business owner. Their book Tandem just came out on audiobook and it's a must read for anyone running their own business. Robert and Kay Lee, welcome back to iWork4Him.

Robert Fukui: Thank you so much. Great introduction. And we'll give, and we'll hopefully we'll give some grace to the business owners and pastors, right? Because it's not just them.

Jim: No, but we've been doing this marriage mentoring stuff too, like you guys, a little different scale for a lot of years. And it does seem that there, they seem to be some of the best at destroying their marriages because of neglect. And I think that I don't want to overfocus. Obviously the other people are pretty good at destroying their marriages, but it's always neglect that starts some of that stuff.

All right. So let's before we get into this, some people get re introduced to you guys. Your love story is a phenomenal love story. Just answer this question, because I didn't tell you I would ask this question, but Why do you guys, why are you so interested in marriage? Why are you so interested in connecting and helping people in their marriages?

Robert Fukui: I think Kay Lee is going to answer this one because I still have no idea why for me.

Kay Lee Fukui: I think mine started with my childhood because as you said earlier, I'm a third generation entrepreneur and the business became the mistress. And so my dad was working six days a week. To this day, I don't think he made it to my high school graduation.

And it caused a lot of conflict on our family at home and our family ended up separating and I just have a heart for small business. I see how we can go in and change communities. We can raise leaders. There's just so many benefits. Small business is the backbone of our country.

Jim: Right. Absolutely.

Robert Fukui: Yeah. I was joking earlier because I was like, I didn't know how I got into this, the marriage part, cause business has always been my life. Think when we went to counseling, before we even got married, I think kickstarted things about how, oh, we can do relationship better, because growing up in a pastor's home they didn't have the closest relationship as husband and wife.

They were, at certain periods, they were almost just like roommates. And so I didn't really have a good, healthy model of relationship and how to do conflict and how to resolve issues. And so I think that's what started that, kickstarted that journey of being interested in marriage, the health of a marriage and how you can do it better.

And then just through observation. As we started our consulting business, most entrepreneurs are married and as you build relationships, they stop talking about their home life and the issues, the lack of balance and the issues that are coming up. And this was, and for me, as a marketer, I was, I'm always big on market research and observation.

And I'm like, Hey, there's an issue here. And I'm like, Oh, is this pretty common? And then I'm a natural problem solver. So I just said, Hey, let's fix this thing. So it wasn't so much that I was so interested in helping marriages. It was just seeing what's in front of us, friends and family and clients and going, Hey, there's a problem we need to fix. Nobody's addressing this.

Martha: I want to, I was getting stuck in my head on the very first thing you said, though, Robert. You said, I don't know how I got into this marriage thing. A girl and a boy fell in love.

Jim: On a pier.

Martha: This is how that whole thing started.

Jim: And she played hard to get and she says I'll think about it. I don't know. Okay.

Martha: So I just had to throw that in there because those words, they really matter. So let's start with some basis for this conversation. So we're talking about your book and now released on audiobook called Tandem, the Married Entrepreneur's Guide for Greater Work Life Balance.

So how long have you guys been married and how long have you actually been in business together?

Kay Lee Fukui: So we've been married for 18 years. And what's it six years we've been in business together now, honey?

Robert Fukui: Eight years full time. That's when I left my corporate job but then because I started the consulting business on the side before I left my corporate job and so you know all together I guess you can probably say about 10 years.

Jim: If you're watching the youtube video out there, you watch Kay Lee just do a shameless plug of their book Tandem, as she held up her coffee cup and made sure that the words Tandem were hitting the camera.

Martha: Great marketing.

Jim: She only just missed the little Pinky thing. She missed the pinky opportunity there. All right, so your biznistry called Power Couples by Design - Are you still using that name? Because when we first met you, that's what you're going by. But I know your website is married entrepreneur. co and if you want to buy the book Forward slash iWork4Him but Power Couples by Design. I love that name. What is your daily focus today?

Robert Fukui: So when you talk about daily focus, you mean just as like with our clients or with our daily habits? Yeah, it's exactly what you're sharing is helping married entrepreneurs have better work life balance, how to win in marriage and business at the same time. As we alluded to in the introduction, our focus gets so much on our accomplishments, our achievements and what we do, that inevitably our family, our marriage and family takes a back seat. And talking about how pastors and business owners can be so good at destroying marriages.

A lot of it, and I, don't want to, I don't fault them, is because the weight of the world is on their shoulders. The business, the employees, paying for stuff. Everything falls on them. As pastors, salvation and just the health of their flock falls on them. Or if they take that on and I think they take it on too much, that's why their focus is all on that. So we help them how to do both the marriage and the business better.

Martha: So then let's talk about that. Is that how you got this content and said, Hey, we see what's happening. Let's put it into a book.

Robert Fukui: Yeah, it was. I think it was because when we first started noticing there's one client after another sharing the same story. They're working so hard in the business that their family life was taking a backseat. And as we started working with them one on one, Kay Lee and I were talking about, okay, how do we scale this?

Not from just a business perspective, but the message. We can only help so many people one on one, right? We only have so much time. And even if we do groups, there's only so many people we can help. So we thought the book, and even though people asked us about the book earlier on, and I thought it's too much work. I don't want to do it, right? But I think the reality of no one's really addressing this. And I said, I think we have to write the book and let's at least get the message out. So at least they have something to get started with helping them do marriage and business.

Kay Lee Fukui: We also wanted to have a legacy too, as well, just to leave something behind after we're gone to help people.

Jim: So what's that legacy that you want to leave? What do you really, if there's one thing you could leave as a legacy that, Hey, you remember the Fukuis lived in Southern California. This is the legacy that he left for the nation of the United States. What was that? What's that legacy?

Robert Fukui: I think generations of married entrepreneurs that are really doing it well and the family line stays intact. Not just stays intact, but prospers because when you look at even generationally from business owners, only 30 percent of first generation businesses actually can transition to the second. And only about 4 percent actually go to the fourth generation.

So as generations go on, even the business itself suffers and it dies off. And a lot of, with that goes relationships and they go hand in hand. And so I think legacy wise is have a legacy of these generational businesses and families that are really thriving.

Jim: You talk about striving. So many of us are striving in our businesses to protect all of our data and protect all of our everywhere we go on the internet. We did one thing at iWork4Him and Robert and Kay Lee, you guys should consider this too. We grabbed safer net, which is a VPN service, internet controls and website filters.

And we put it on all of our computers. And we literally can use the public Wi Fi wherever we go because SaferNet keeps us safe, and we totally recommend that everybody check it out online, SaferNet. com. It's really been a game changer for us as we travel. SaferNet. com.

Martha: Okay. Your whole book is about work and life balance and how to make sure that the business doesn't destroy your most important relationships. Is there really such a thing as work life balance?

Kay Lee Fukui: It's more about quality time than it is about quantity. It's not like you're going to have a 50, 50. Oh, I'm going to spend 50 percent of my time on marriage, 50 percent of my time on work. It's finding out what's important to you as a couple.

And just in the way we start our day out in prayer every morning and that's important to us. And so we do that. We have our weekly meetings where we talk about our business stuff.

Robert Fukui: Yeah. I think everybody knows when things get out of whack. There's too much on one side and it's usually like business and the stress of it.

And when we talk about quality of time and how to make sure you spend quality time in the marriage, we first start out with, regardless of how busy life can get and business gets, because there's ebbs and flows in the business. So when we talk about work life balance, we're not trying to establish groundhog day, right?

It's the same thing over and over again that life and business is always the same and we have everything in control. It's not about that. But we do start with when life gets really busy what is the bare minimum thing that you and your spouse can do to make sure you're still connected?

Jim: I think that's a powerful statement because when you say that things were gonna get are getting out of control, things will unravel at some point in time. It's knowing how to get them back under control and this balance thing, people when they think balance they think of a scale, you know. The things are equally weighted and it's sometimes businesses take and but at other times the whole idea being a business that I can also give to your family and I think it's that reaction when you realize things have gotten out of control, how to respond to that.

Do you really get them back in control? And part of that's listening to your spouse because your spouse is going hey I noticed that your pillow didn't even get used last night or hey I noticed that you know, you came in at two and you're left at six, you know. Oh, there's gonna be warning signs where the spouse is shooting off a warning gun going Hey! Not a real gun, but like one of those warning guns.

Martha: That's good.

Robert Fukui: Some do. You're in Missouri so.

Martha: Get their attention.

Jim: Don't conceal . and carry That's right. I'm talking like a flare gun, warning sign. In Missouri, it's open carry. No license needed. That's right. That's fine. Come here. Commit crimes. Sorry.

Martha: I dare you.

Kay Lee Fukui: He's open borders there. He's letting them come.

Martha: Okay. You're a little off task there, Jim.

Jim: That was not my fault. Robert sent me there. All right. But it's that being able to recognize, how do you recognize when things got out of control?

Robert Fukui: You alluded to the spouse number one, but what we try to do is we establish weekly meetings, number one. And so every Monday afternoon at 3: 30 is we just, like yesterday is our check in where we talk business and personal and life and just checking in what's going on and what's coming down the pipe. So we can get ahead because you can feel right, especially in business, you can feel, hey, we're coming to the busy stretch, right?

You can anticipate a lot of stuff. And you can plan for that. And then in that, in that busy stretch, we can say, okay, in the midst of this, we got to make sure we carve out X amount of time. We got to still have our date night. Maybe we can't do a regular one but maybe we just at least get to the coffee shop or something like that. Get out of the house and connect. And so and then at the end of the stretch, how do we celebrate that?

 Instead of going from one thing to another, so a lot of it just, a little bit of pre planning. And a lot of it is, how do we deal with this? Things get out of control. How do we deal with it? How do we stay connected? And then we have our morning meetings, too.

Kay Lee Fukui: Yeah, and we give each other an encouraging word. And I love that because that goes a long ways. And that can carry you sometimes through the week. And then, like Robert said, we'll go over our calendar so we know what the expectations are. If he's going to be gone traveling for two weeks, I don't want to be caught off guard like, Oh my gosh, I didn't know you were going to be gone. We talk about that ahead of time, and then we plan in a date night or a day of doing something fun when he gets back from the trip.

Robert Fukui: Yeah, and then our morning prayers, that's our, just our regular check in. After prayer, then our quick check in for the day. I think that helps keeps things, number one, organized. Keep you on the same page and also keeps you emotionally, mentally, and spiritually connected when you start with prayer.

Kay Lee Fukui: because there's nothing like having your spouse pray for you.

Robert Fukui: Yeah, cuz even pastors, I think it's only about 20 percent of pastors couples actually pray daily together. Like my parents, I never saw them pray together and besides you know at the dinner table. And so the one thing as Christians, the one solution we have for a marriage that can strengthen our marriage and bring balance and order into our life, we don't even do that. And how much time does that really take? It doesn't take a lot of time to have balance in our life and to have a really healthy marriage and business.

But we just don't do some of the right things that doesn't take a lot of time, but makes, can make all the difference in the world.

Kay Lee Fukui: It's pretty hard to pray for your spouse when you're mad at them. Okay, I got to put that off to the side or let that go, forgive them because you just can't do both.

Martha: So I wanna camp here just another minute because

Jim: I wanna camp here the rest of the show.

 (laughter)

Martha: Yeah, that would be fine with me too, because we are a hundred percent in agreement with you guys on this and often tell couples like, this is the secret sauce. That shouldn't be a secret in marriage. If your relationship with the Lord is really a priority and you really are a Christ follower, then why would you not go to the throne of the Father together?

And so I want to take a moment here for you to talk to the listeners directly. Encourage them. If they have never even considered doing this before, or maybe they've done it and they've let it slide, how can they today make a difference in their marriage by approaching this subject with their spouse and taking some action?

Kay Lee Fukui: I just want to say that the big common thing that we hear is we don't have time. So it doesn't have to be a lot of time and you don't have to pray for an hour or two days, just sit down together and say Hey, can I speak blessing over you? And even if your spouse doesn't want to pray back, you can just pray for him together, sit together, hold their hands, wish them a great day, great health, the Lord is with them. Pray over your kids as well. And then I think eventually they'll want to reciprocate that.

Jim: We're talking about the absolute secret sauce for every Christian marriage. And let me just, men listening today, you want to know the sexiest thing you can ever do for your wife? Pray with her. It is the sexiest thing a Christian man can do for his marriage.

Martha: Based on feedback.

Robert Fukui: Or in our house, it's me taking out the trash.

Kay Lee Fukui: Oh, yeah, that's like the second.

Martha: Let's pray together and then I'll take out the trash. Without being asked. Okay, so I'm just gonna say this right here. Listeners, if you have maybe never prayed with your spouse before, other than over a meal, I just want to encourage you to take that step.

I don't know why Satan makes us feel so timid about this and Satan gives us so much doubt because this is, I think that's why. Because it's so powerful. So when we hear of things that are powerful satan doesn't want them to happen. So wake up at this moment and see that's why it's maybe been something you've wanted but never approached with your spouse.

This can open the doors. And, I would even say people that have prayed together, taking it to another level and saying, let's, when we're frustrated in the middle of our workday, there is nothing better than stopping and praying. Because again your plans can get derailed, people can disappoint you, whatever it might be.

And It can wreak havoc on all areas of your life, but stopping and praying should be the very natural thing. But yet we've made it so unnatural.

Robert Fukui: So I'll speak and I'll speak to the men to like Jim did. And I said, You want more sex?(laughter)

Come on, because because here's the thing. It's not just prayer. When you have a spiritual connection with your wife, and your wife wants to feel love and appreciated, right? And prayer absolutely does that. And it's spiritual, but then it gets emotional and then it gets mental and then it gets physical.

And so I'm serious. If you want more sex, to feel more love, more respected, all the things men want. Pray first, and then you're just going to see your wife just blossom, and also what you'll find is a lot of the arguments start to either go away, or they just don't become big deals anymore, because, when you bring Christ in the center of that, and when you're connected as husband and wife, we, a lot of times in marriages as years go on, the arguments get more frequent and more intense, and a lot of it because we're not feeling loved and connected, and so emotionally, we're going to do something.

Any emotion is good emotion in relationships, and if you're not getting good ones, you're going to fill it with bad ones. And so start with prayer, and it's so easy. And for those of you guys that feel self conscious about prayer, because I think I was in that camp, and I know a lot of guys are, and I think that's one of the reasons, too, is a lot of guys feel self conscious about prayer.

They go, Oh, I don't pray. She's a good prayer. She prays good, and they feel self conscious about it. And I said, Don't worry about it. All your wife wants to know is hear the words. God, I love you. We have the best for us. I love my wife. Bless my wife. She's the best thing that's ever happened to me. Just speak from the heart. And everything takes care of itself.

Kay Lee Fukui: And put time aside, like we do ours in the morning. And when people say they don't have time, get up five minutes earlier, or I'm sure you can find five or 10, 15 minutes somewhere in your day and just get into the routine of doing it.

Jim: And you don't need fifteen minutes. Ten minutes, literally, I don't even know, I never saw it demonstrated in my own parents marriage, my parents, anyway. Martha's parents did pray together, but we just started praying together on our first date, and ended every day in prayer, after we got married, and then we were on a short retreat with some friends, Bob and Christine Hartland, we'll give him a shout out right here and iWork4Him, in Tampa Bay and they started their day in prayer and doing devotions together Oh, wow, double whammy.

And then we came up with this thing when we started experiencing conflict during the day, just stopping the stupid, stopping the whole love and respect spiral thing we learned about back in the late two thousands. And just started praying. And stopping right there and praying - just game changers.

People were like, Jim, Martha, what's different about your marriage? We want to be around your marriage. We're like, we pray together. That's the secret. We pray together. And really I want everybody to know that in Tandem, the book that Robert and Kay Lee wrote, There's so many of this great advice About how to have a phenomenal marriage and then how to have a phenomenal business and how to have all those things play together nicely. Really you guys wrote a book That puts everything together in one place, a marriage book and a business book for entrepreneurs. What's the one thing, if somebody picks up your book Tandem, and i'm gonna show it right here on the screen, Tandem. You guys have no done no shameless plugins so i'll do a picture. If you're on youtube, look at it. Otherwise you can get the book Tandem the married entrepreneur's guide for greater work life balance. And what was the website, robert, again?

Robert Fukui: marriedentrepreneur.co/iWork4Him

Jim: That's right. And for those of you old people, that's forward slash iWork4Him.

Martha: And what are they going to find on that page?

Jim: Yeah. What are they going to find on the page? We don't know.

Robert Fukui: So there's a free guide. You can get a download for better work life balance, is actually a free guide of it. And then there's obviously a connection to our book. And then if you actually want to talk to us just to say, hi, you can actually schedule on our calendar and it goes right to us. We can have a little zoom chat and see how we can help you.

Jim: And maybe you're listening, and you have a generational business. Maybe you're the mom and dad and you want your kids to get involved in your business. I thought this was probably your biggest takeaways I took away from your book was most businesses don't pass on to the next generations because why? Kay Lee. Kay Lee, why?

Kay Lee Fukui: Because they're not prepared.

Jim: And? And?

Robert Fukui: Go on, honey, because you lived it.

Kay Lee Fukui: I lived it because we, in my household, my dad thought he was going to work forever. He was never going to retire. And he waited to the last minute till his health just didn't hold up anymore. And he was forced to make a decision of having to get out.

Jim: But also your point that you brought up in your book, your phenomenal book Tandem, is that you talked that the kids are so frustrated because they saw how the business was a mistress and how it did, and it really hurt their family. Why would I want to be a part of something like that?

Because I don't want to hurt my own family the way it hurt me when I was growing up. That's why a lot of Kids who are pastors kids and missionaries kids stay out of the church because they were so hurt by their pastor, their dad pastor, or mom and dad missionaries who just neglected them in the name of Jesus. And your book really drives that home well.

Robert Fukui: Yeah. So it's that I don't want part of what was negatively impacting our own family. The other part is they're just not proactive in starting to establish the transition and succession. And the founder has a hard time letting go. And so we were just talking to one of our clients in Alaska and they were saying Hey, remember Jeff? We met at the business conference up there that we spoke at in Alaska last year. And there's Jeff and his son that work together and the son is supposed to be the successor. He just left the company and a lot of it is because we know we had a little chat and we could tell that there's a little tension, a little control issue.

And the son ends up leaving because The founder just couldn't let go and really allow the son to implement some new stuff, some new ideas that would really be helpful to move forward, but they just couldn't get there.

Kay Lee Fukui: I can relate to that. Because I was supposed to take over the family business. My dad said it for years, but just could never let it go. And so I'm just like, I ended up leaving.

Jim: If they would have only taught our parents generation that song.

Martha: Let it go?

Jim: Let it go. It would have been very good. Here we go. Something good out of Disney. The let it go song. We all know it. It's in our heads and we can't get it out.

Yeah. Robert and Kay Lee, we're so grateful for your book Tandem. If you are a married entrepreneur, this is a must read. You've got to get a copy.

Martha: Or must listen now out on audio.

Jim: And you can listen to Robert and Kay Lee read it themselves.

Martha: Yes. We love that. The personal touch in your own voices.

Jim: In their master bedroom closet, where they recorded it.

Robert Fukui: and stuff that you'll hear in the audio book, you won't get in the book. There's like little bonus content at the end of the chapter. Little backstory, little backstories.

Jim: Oh, we went off script is what you're saying.

Martha: Yeah. No, it's bonus content. That's awesome. I love that.

Jim: Is it bonus content or off script? That's what I want to know, Kay Lee.

Kay Lee Fukui: Both. Both, yes. And Robert's telling all kinds of stories about me, so I don't know.

Robert Fukui: Oh. She tells, oh yeah.

Jim: This could go on for a long time, but we're so grateful that you guys joined us on iWork4Him today and shared your great book. I really enjoyed reading it. Tandem, the married entrepreneurs guide for greater work life balance, but understand there's no such thing as a perfect balance, but it's understanding how you need the give and take to protect both the business and the marriage and your family and your kids and your grandkids.

Martha: Awesome.

Jim: Robert and Kay Lee, thank you for being here today.

Kay Lee Fukui: Thank you so much.

Robert Fukui: Always a pleasure.

Jim: Make sure you check us out on our website and all the great sponsors that keep us on the air, like Patriot Mobile, one of them, and ePaymints, but also go to Robert and Kay Lee's website, marriedentrepreneur. co forward slash iWork4Him, and you can get the audio or the printed copy. Tandem get a copy of it.

You've been listening. iWork4Him with your host Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace. It's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.