Ryan Pineda says your marriage will make or break your business. In fact, he believes it’s the number one factor that determines whether you’ll be successful or not. He and his wife, Mindy, just celebrated their eight year anniversary. They started dating a couple years before that. They got married really young. Mindy had just turned twenty-one; Ryan was twenty-four. At the time, she was going to school to become an English teacher, while Ryan was playing minor league baseball.
As a minor leaguer, Ryan was making a modest twelve hundred bucks a month. Mindy wasn’t working while she was going to school, so she wasn’t making anything. Needless to say, they were dead broke as newlyweds. But that didn’t stop them from enjoying their time together. Looking back on the past eight years, Ryan has some big takeaways. The first is that no amount of business success matters if things are bad at home. Too many entrepreneurs and investors put money over family.
You already know how that story ends: in divorce. “And so for me this is something I’ve been extremely cautious of, especially as my own businesses and social media following have grown,” Ryan says. “My wife and I actually sat together and created rules for me to follow in order to guard our family. One of those rules is that I am not going to work weekends. Now this is very counterintuitive to most businesspeople because they feel like that’s the time to get ahead.”
“But for me,” he continues, “I’ve made the commitment that I’m not even gonna have my office open on weekends. None of my employees come in. I don’t come in. I want everyone spending time with their families and valuing those relationships. And I’ll tell you, I believe it’s made me even more successful by doing this. Not only do I get to enjoy my time with my family, I also get to recharge and get ready for the coming week. And because of that I’m able to perform at a much higher level during those weekdays.”
Another limit that Ryan sets is that he always leaves the office by five o’clock. This way he’s home for dinner every night with his wife and kids. If he finds himself not ready to leave at five, he knows he’s either slacking or not doing a good job of delegating. What else? Every Friday is date night. “It’s our time to get together, just husband and wife, no kids, no friends, just us,” Ryan says. “And thankfully, we live in Las Vegas, which is one of the best places for food in the entire world. And we enjoy going on The Strip and eating at some of the best restaurants that it has to offer.”
“And it’s our time to reconnect and focus on each other,” he adds, “while putting away all the other things and problems that we might have. And I would encourage you to put these types of limits and things in your schedule so that you are making time for your spouse. Since our relationship is really good, it’s allowed me to succeed in business because I’m not worried about all the problems that we’re having in our own marriage. You see, when people have these marriage issues, it affects their business big time.”
“They’re not able to go out full force, with a clear mind and a positive attitude. They’ve got all this worry because of marriage problems. So the way to avoid that? Is to work on your marriage. If your marriage is good, your business is going to be better as well.” The other thing Ryan’s learned is that you have to earn your spouse’s trust. Not just in terms of being faithful, but, as it pertains to business, in being able to take risk (such as running up credit cards to flip your first house) in hopes of a bigger payoff down the road. You need your partner’s blessing, and it has to be earned.
