The Anniversary Audit

For 31 years, I've been married to the same woman as of today. And for too many of those years, I confused paying the bills. With showing up. Welcome to the Real Jason Duncan Podcast. Every Monday I bring you a conversation with someone who believed a lie about business or money or success or life. And discovered the truth the hard way. Because the most dangerous lies don't look like lies. They look like golden cages. They look like success. They And you know, the most successful people are the most deceived because the lies that trap them look like achievements. And that's what this show is about. And on Wednesday mornings, just like today, I do something a little different. Every week, I write a blog on my website called What's Real. It's where I expose the lies that most people believe and reveal the truths they were never taught. And every Wednesday, I bring that post to you here in audio format so you can take it with you. wherever you are. If you want to go to the real jasonduncan. com slash articles, you could subscribe to what's real and read every post every single week, deliver right to your email. You can go to the real jasonduncan. com slash articles and the link is in the show notes. Now this week's post is called the Anniversary Audit. And by the time you hear this, I'm somewhere in the Florida Keys with my beautiful wife Christy, our new puppy Marcus, and probably a cigar, and today, may thirteenth, twenty twenty six, is our thirty first wedding anniversary. Now, of course, I wrote this and recorded this before we left because that's what exit without exiting actually looks like in practice. The work gets done, the systems keep running, and and I gotta be where I wanna be, right? But the topic, um, the topic has really been on my mind for several weeks because 31 years gives you a lot of material to audit. And one of the hardest things I've had to admit is that for a significant chunk of those years, I was physically present and mentally somewhere else. And if you're an entrepreneur who believes that paying the bills is the same thing as showing up for your marriage, I need you to hear this one Now nobody sat me down and told me that being a good provider was the same as being a good husband. It was a lot more subtle than that. It was in a way that culture talked about men who worked hard. It was the language around, quote, taking care of your family. It was in the unspoken math that said revenue equals love, security equals presence, and a nice house equals a good life. And I absorbed all of it. And because I was building something real, a business that was actually growing, actually generating the kind of income that let us do things most people couldn't do, I kept pointing to it as evidence. Hey, look what I built. Look at what we have. This is what love looks like. Except it isn't. That's what provision looks like. And provision, while it's important, isn't the same thing as presence And I confused the two for longer than I want to admit. This good provider myth is one of the most indivisible golden cages in an entrepreneurial man's life. It's built entirely out of things that look admirable, like hard work and sacrifice and building something and providing for your family. You know what? Every one of those things has real value. The cage isn't in the things themselves. It's in using them as a substitute for something you're not giving At some point, I started using financial provision as a transaction. And it wasn't conscious, you know, it wasn't deliberate. But looking back, the pattern's pretty obvious. I'd missed something. You know, I'd miss a dinner or a weekend or a conversation that Christy needed to have. And the and the unstated logic was that the business justified it. You know, we're building something here. This is temporary. It'll be worth it. And that's the deal that most entrepreneurial marriages are running on quietly. You provide the income, you earn the freedom to be absent. The bills get paid, the vacations get booked, and somewhere in that arrangement, the relationship gets starved of the thing it actually runs on. And you know what? Christy never signed that contract. I wrote it myself. I assumed that she'd agreed to the terms. The reach the the research on this is consistent and of course it's uncomfortable. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which is the longest-running study on human happiness that was ever conducted. Followed people for more than 80 years. And what they found was that the quality of close relationships, listen to this. The quality of close relationships is the single strongest predictor of well-being and longevity later in life. Not wealth. Not achievement, not the size of what you built or what you left behind. The men who fared worst weren't the ones who failed financially. They were the ones who let their most important relationships deteriorate. While they chased other stuff. The money doesn't offset that. And it never did. And what Christy has wanted for 31 years isn't complicated. She wants my eyes. She wants to be in conversation where I'm actually listening and not composing a response to something that happened at work three days ago. She wants me to remember what she said last Tuesday. She wants to take a trip where I'm actually on the trip. And that's not a high bar. It just requires being present. And presence is the one thing entrepreneurship trains you to be bad at, because entrepreneurship rewards you for always thinking about what's next. And the business pulls your attention forward constantly. And your marriage, your marriage needs it now. Money. As I've said a million times, money is a renewable resource. You can lose it, you can make it back, but time, hmm. Time isn't renewable. The years your kids are young happen once. The season of your marriage when you're both still healthy and mobile and have the capacity to build something together, that's that's not infinite. And every hour I traded for revenue was an hour I spent from an account that doesn't refill. Presence compounds the same way money does. Have you ever thought about that? I mean the couple that is genuinely present with each other over thirty years has built something that no amount of financial provision can replicate or replace. And and the couple That deferred that presence that said we'll do it later, always planning to be more available after the next deal, the next quarter, the next milestone. They end up at the 30-year mark with money. And distance and not a lot else. Later never comes. And that's not a metaphor. It's a pattern I've watched play out in the lives of people that I care about, unfortunately. So what does this anniversary audit actually look like? Well, an anniversary audit isn't a uh it's not a conversation you just have once. It's a discipline you build into the way that you live. And here are the questions that I've started asking myself, and not just annually, but more often than that. Am I present when I'm home or just physically located there? You know, there's a difference between being in the room and being in the room. If your family has learned to expect your distractions, you've already answered that question. Another question is, what has she asked for that I I've consistently not delivered? And I'm not talking about material things. I'm talking about time, attention, conversation, the things that don't cost money, but do cost presence. Another question is if she audited the la audited the last 12 months, what would that report say? Not what you you know what you think she'd say. What she'd actually say. And those aren't always the same answer. And then finally, what are you telling yourself justifies the absence? You know, whatever it is, whether it's revenue, growth, responsibility, providing, ask whether she'd agree if it's worth the trade. The golden cage of the good provider isn't built out of bad intentions. I mean, most entrepreneurial men I know love their families deeply. The cage is built out of a script that they inherited, a culture that rewarded them for work and a business that trained their attention to stay perpetually focused on what's next. Awareness, that's the key to recovery. And the first awareness is this: being a good provider is the floor, not the ceiling. It's the minimum, it's not the measure Your wife doesn't want your evida. She wants your eyes There's a proverb I want to leave you with before we get to our sponsor for this week and finish out the show. It's Proverb 1822. It says, a man who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. Most entrepreneurial men probably know this verse, probably heard it. Few have sat with what it actually demands. Finding a wife isn't a transaction that ends at the altar. It's an ongoing act of recognition. Seeing her, choosing her, showing up for her. Because the favor isn't in the finding, it's in the tending. I mean, 31 years in, wow. I can't believe I've been married 31 years. And that's still the lesson. Now, if you want to read this full post rather than listening to it, you can go to the real jasonduncan. com slash articles, and the link is in the show notes Now everything I've just talked about comes down to one thing. Presence. Being actually there in your life. for the people and the work that matter most. And one of the biggest thieves of presence in business communication Is communication that doesn't connect. I mean, you send a message, it gets ignored. You follow up, nothing. You spend more time chasing responses than doing the actual work, which brings me. To this week's sponsor of the Real Jason Duncan Podcast. Here's something most entrepreneurs don't think about. The way you communicate with your clients, your prospects, and your team. is either building relationships or it's burning time. And for most of us, the default, which is a plain text email, a generic follow-up message, or another meeting request that looks like every other meeting request. th is a presence problem dressed up as a productivity problem, and dub fixes that Dub, that's spelled DUBB, is a video first sales and marketing platform that lets you record a personal video, attach a branded call to action. and send it directly to whoever needs to see it and track exactly who watched it and when. I mean think about what that means. Instead of sending another text message that gets buried in someone's inbox, you send a video that feels like a real conversation. Instead of wondering whether your follow-up landed, you actually know because dub tells you who opened it, who watched it, and whether they clicked your call to action. For entrepreneurs who are building toward the exit lifestyle, who are working on being the owner-investor rather than the person who has to personally chase every lead and manage every relationship, dub gives you your communication Gives your communication the same personal touch you've always delivered without requiring you to be personally present every single time. And that's not just a time saver. That's a difference between a business that depends on you and a business that scales without you. Head on over to the real jasonduncan. com/slash dub, again that's spelled D-U-B-B, to learn more and to get started. And that link will allow you to try dub for free and get 50% off your first two months. That's the real jasonduncan. com slash dub, and the link is in the show notes. Stop sending messages that get ignored. Start sending video that actually connects. Well, that's a wrap on this Wednesday's special edition. If you've if you saw a bar on your cage that you hadn't noticed before, if you recognize the good provider myth in yourself. the transaction you've been running without naming it, the presence you've been deferring until later, send this episode to someone who needs to hear it before later runs out. The gold is the lie. As always, I am your host, the real Jason Duncan, and Jesus is King.