George McKenzie(00:00.046)

there's nothing fair about life. Fair is not a word to describe human being, it's just not. So when you look at a relationship, should it be meaningful and should you work to have a relationship in which both people feel appreciated and respected? Yeah. Does that mean it has to be a fair division of tasks? No.

It's same with like running a business. Would you say what a CEO does every day and all the facets with which a CEO is responsible for, is it fair that he oversees 50 things and the accountant only has to do the one thing? Is that fair? No, but it's the division of labor that works.

Welcome to Married to the Startup. I'm Alicia McKenzie, a wellness entrepreneur and digital creator. Alongside me is my amazing husband, George, the CEO who's always ready for a new challenge. We've been navigating marriage and running startups for over a decade, and we're here to share the real, unfiltered journey with you. Join us for insights and candid conversations about integrating love, family, and entrepreneurship. This is Married to the Startup, where every day is a new adventure.

Welcome to episode 58 of Married to the Startup. I'm your host, Alicia McKenzie.

I'm Ron Burgundy. I feel like I'm Ron Burgundy and we were just doing the Scotchy Scotch thing. I am Ron Burgundy today.

Alicia McKenzie (01:20.321)

You

Alicia McKenzie (01:24.494)

You are Ron Bergen. Today's episode. Yes. We're talking about money.

My favorite subject.

I love money. Green's my favorite color. Married to the startup. Our situation is a little unique in that George doesn't believe a marriage is 50-50.

That's not what I said.

I asked you, do you believe a marriage is 50-50 and you said no.

George McKenzie(01:59.278)

Yeah, I think you were referring to division of labor.

I was maybe. But most marriages, I feel like are based on assumption. Yes. Right. I assume that you're going to handle X, Y and Z. And then when that's not happening, I get bitter and resentful.

Correct. think that happens quite frequently.

It does. Yeah. But if everything feels good and everything's going well and everything's smooth, then it's great. If not, it's pure chaos. Correct. Yes. Yeah. And you've got silent resentment. You've got the mental load of everything weighing down on said person, whether it's the dad or the mom, the default parent. Our.

All right, where's this going?

Alicia McKenzie (02:55.168)

Marriage runs like a business.

Yeah. And I think that's what I, when you were saying those things, I was relating it to, you know, running a company. Yes. I think they're very similar. Yes. Right. So, you know, when you're just, uh, if you have like a vibe management style, so like a, like vibe, cause it's just a vibe management style where everything's just hunky dory and you do whatever it takes. And, and these are lessons, you know, in business that I learned the hard way, right. When you just have that

vibe, everyone's just gonna, we're a small business, we're entrepreneurs, we're scrappy, we're just gonna do everything. And everyone's just doing everything and balls drop constantly because everybody's working on the same thing or someone else has got the other thing. And I think that that parlays into marriage kind of similarly. I think that my wife is gonna handle X, Y, or Z, so I'm not gonna focus on that. And then she thinks, no.

or everybody assume.

George McKenzie(03:51.148)

my husband's gonna handle X, Y, and Z, I'm gonna focus on this. And next thing you know, a child gets left at volleyball practice. Not that that's ever happened. I'm just saying.

We didn't forget her. We didn't forget her. We just forgot the fact that there was no practice that day. Things fall through the...

Exactly. That's Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that it's an interesting parallel there. Right. So when you look at, you know, things that I recommend to founders and, you know, have been able to help me be successful, when we look at scaling up and it's doing those, you know, process accountabilities, the functional account, like functional accountability charts, or, you know, I think if you don't have one as a small business, you need to doing that kind of functional accountability chart.

has been successful for me.

So when you're talking about functional accountability chart, and I can see it in my head, right? It's who's in charge of revenue, who's in charge of brand management, who's in charge of operations.

George McKenzie(04:50.322)

So it's basically you just take the functions of a business. Like what are the top five functions to make this business?

That's like your head of company and your accountant.

Who's in charge of sales? Who's in charge of marketing? Who's in charge of accounting? Who's in charge of hiring? Like all these key functions of a business. It's like in a household. You have nutrition. Like who's accountable for nutrition? That includes buying the groceries, figuring out the meals. Whose function is it to pay the bills? Whose function is it to make sure the kids

School routine is set whose function is it to make sure that the after-school activities are set whose function is it to take care of? Laundry whose function is it like all those things make a household work and I'm just saying if you don't have and then you align the function to the person and then eventually you have in a business you would have you know performance metrics and you know lead and lag indicators of how do you know that that function is performing as expected

Sounds like a lot of my job.

Alicia McKenzie (05:59.564)

So at what point is a marriage too much like a business? Because I think for us it works because both of our brains work that way.

Yeah, and I'm not sure. mean, what I just described is very on the business side. But I think from, yeah, most people probably do that intuitively. You just don't have it documented. Or you don't have it kind of set in stone and it's not agreed upon. I think that's where a lot of the issues come in where, you know, both of us think we know it, but neither of us have talked about and agreed to it. And you just assume. And that's where the resentment and all that stuff comes in. And at certain points, you got to just say, hey, let's talk.

talk it through, who's doing what. And then yeah, you don't want it to be too much like a business. You don't wanna lose all the romanticism and everything that is in a marriage, right? The things that drew you to each other and the reason why you wanna stay married to that person is not so you can run a successful family. It's right. At least for me it's not. Yeah. But saying hey, instead of going, you're in charge of nutrition,

Are you sure?

George McKenzie(07:06.37)

but then you expect me to go buy the groceries. Like that's a tight mismatch. I'd be like saying, you know, in a business you're in charge of accounting, but you know, I want to run the bank account. Like that, you can't do both.

So how early on in a company should you set your roles, right? Because like you said, in the beginning, you're scrappy and everybody is doing everything because it has to be done.

Yeah, I think from the very beginning you should. Because you fall into traps and there's too many balls going on, too many things you have to do. And it's mostly the shitty stuff that nobody wants to do. when it comes to, hey, sales. Sales can be exciting when you're growing a company and when you have a lot of leads and people are coming to you. So everyone wants a facet of the sales cycle. But when it comes to, hey, we won the deal. And let's say in a services based business, we won the deal and now we got to hire 10 people.

Like that's not sexy, know, opening a job wreck, weeding through resumes, scheduling interviews, you know, all of that shit. No one really wants to do that. just, you know, and then eventually if no one's in charge of it, it kind of just falters. And then the same with like, you know, making sure you keep your business registered in the state in which you're doing business, keeping the SEC filings going, keeping the...

Insurance up like all that stuff is mundane and nobody really wants to do it and if no one's accountable for it then Everyone just assumes well, that's not good work on someone else will do that. Mm-hmm And then same with the family like when it comes to like doctors appointments if you just assume someone else is gonna do it and they assume the other person's gonna do it you just Kids never go to the doctors

Alicia McKenzie (08:47.328)

I mean, I assume I'm going to do it. You assume.

Exactly. Because it's an, it's, an unspoken kind of a functional accountability chart we've done. Yeah. Yeah. So I think having those honest conversations and getting the functions defined in a business and in a marriage are important, but you don't want to go too far where it's, you know, a business where, know, cause you know, one of the articles I was reading was talking about, doing the functional accountability and then having weekly tag ups or biweekly. And I think that's, that's a bit much, but you know,

A business or for a marriage? For a marriage.

Really? Yeah. But even when I talk to my therapist, they were always saying, hey, you should do monthly check-ins with your spouse. OK. Right? And that I agree with, like doing a monthly check-in of, how's everything going? Are we on the same page? If not, why? And then if your emotional needs aren't being met or whatever is not being met, you talk about it, not in an accusatory fashion, but you kind of just check in to how things are going and...

I know it's been a stressful month for you, so this has happened, blah, and maybe using that opportunity to check in of, is everything still correct with our functional accountability? And it's like a business too, that you want to assign the functions to the person who's capable of doing it. So it's like in a business, you wouldn't say this guy who's the CEO and he's the sales leader, he's an amazing salesperson and go, okay.

George McKenzie(10:16.888)

you're in charge of accounting. And Johnny, who's a CFO, he's gonna do sales. Like, no, it's gotta be aligned to skill set, because you wanna be in the position, especially in a family, you wanna succeed at all costs. So you wanna make sure that things are lined up to the person that's more apt to do it.

Okay, so like quarterly offsites.

And I think I thought that was an amazing recommendation of and we kind of do it all the time and once a quarter you and I will go on yeah Mommy daddy trip as they say

Yeah, but like, I hate that fucking-

Yes, well they go on like I think it's just a George and Alicia

Alicia McKenzie (10:49.997)

Yes.

But once a year, like we go on a big trip.

Yeah, but we'll go smaller ones like at least once a quarter. yeah, even if it's a night or two just to be you and me and yeah Yeah, nothing you're not parents. You're not your husband and wife

away from our children.

Alicia McKenzie (11:08.302)

It's fun. And nobody has to cook and nobody has to clean. But I think we've also done a good job at outsourcing what we don't do.

Exactly.

George McKenzie(11:15.438)

Same with like a business the same thing when you go through that functional accountability chart there could be some functions that are best suited to be outsourced so like if you're a very small business and Your CEO is a rock star salesperson and your CRO or COO is amazing at service delivery or delivery or managing the team and You don't have that CFO type. Yeah, someone's got to do that accounting function and maybe it's more conducive to outsource that than to

try to assign it to someone that already exists in the company.

Yeah, similarly, like if you suck at painting, you outsource it. Yeah. And I only bring this up because we just painted two bedrooms this weekend. did. And it was not fun.

You out.

George McKenzie(11:58.862)

But there was parts of it that were fun. I loved being able to see the fruit of your labor immediately. Like you do something and then four hours later, the room is painted and you're like, wow, we did that. Versus I punched a keyboard for eight hours, six months a year, and then you go, wow, I did it. What'd you do? I don't know.

George McKenzie(12:27.63)

Yeah, and there's other things like even in a you know, depending on your financial your budget, right? You got to set your budget and the same thing in a business and in a household if you go hey Laundry is the bane of our existence, right? It's hard for us to do this and maybe it makes financial sense to say hey once a week We're gonna outsource laundry. Yeah, right We're gonna have a laundry pickup service or a fluff and fold and we're gonna do that once a week on a Friday and it's gonna be the bulk of

Somebody's like the kids clothes. Maybe he's too frequent. You got to do that every day, but maybe the adult clothing We're gonna outsource that function once a week

Which, okay, we've done this a few times. We did it for a while before we actually hired somebody to come in house. But it's not as expensive as one would think, right? It was like $2 a pound or something.

I am.

George McKenzie(13:17.23)

Yeah, and it becomes, I mean, it could be that little bit to free up time that you can add and allocate that time to being husband and wife. Yeah. And not overstressing your relationship because you're too busy every hour of the day is devoted to some function. Yeah, and the same said for mowing the grass. I used to love mowing the grass, but it became to a certain point where the time trade-off, you're like, hey, it takes three, four hours on a Saturday.

So had eight acres.

Yeah, it takes X amount of hours to mow the grass and you got kid commitments and all these there's just not time. Yeah, so outsourcing it, you know made the most sense. Mm-hmm. And there's a I don't know what you call it's not philosophy, but it's a framework. It's a it's kind of maybe a framework for like life goals. Like at a certain point you want to be able to mow your grass, mow your own grass. Yeah. And then you get to a point where like I want to outsource that. Yeah. And then later life you go back to have my own grass again.

because you hit this wealth, you're like, I'm too poor, I can't afford to pay anybody to mow my grass, I mow my grass myself. Hey, I can afford this, I'm gonna get joy out of outsourcing that function. And then you get later in life, like, no, no, my joy is doing that function. That's kinda crazy.

Yeah, yeah, which is I mean when you look at the household work and the things that we do like like you said We got some joy out of painting the bedroom Yeah, right and like as crazy as it sounds like I get some joy out of like doing my own fucking dishes Mm-hmm like they're thinking

George McKenzie(14:45.198)

You have to fight your mom for that. Your mom, if we were doing a functional accountability chart, she owns the kitchen. Like she, that is her zen. Like for the day, how do I calm down for the day? It's she puts on her Rover gloves and she does dishes and cleans the kitchen. That's her zone time. That's when you and I are in full bath mode. Like, all right.

my god.

Alicia McKenzie (15:05.698)

Got kids all over the place.

Two boys got a shower.

But we need a new hot water heater.

We need a hot water solution. We need a hot water heater. We just need to figure out a solution. it tankless? it?

I don't know, but when you have like six people bathing at

George McKenzie(15:20.534)

or once and a dishwasher and washing machines going it's it's a lot.

That's a lot. Our little water heater can't keep up.

Yeah, but I think it's an edge.

You work that into your project plan for this year.

It wasn't on the list, but it's probably something we probably need to work in because it's a need. But it's interesting to think about, like, I think the article that I forwarded, we were talking about it, is like looking at your relationship more like a business. In fact, how do you want your family life to be successful? Okay, how do we do that? And then what are the functions that make a successful family life? And then even to that point of...

Alicia McKenzie (15:39.192)

Yes. Anyways.

George McKenzie(16:00.814)

You know, we need time for each other and you got to balance that into to say, okay, that quarterly off sites like let's have a quarterly and if you you know, if your budget constraint the quarter the off site could be a Day on Saturday. We're gonna have a babysitter and Saturday once a quarter. We're gonna drive somewhere Yeah, and go for a hike together. We're gonna

like there are things that we did as as like before we had money. Yeah. Right. Like what's what was the the glamping? It was great. Like I would do it tomorrow. Yeah. But it wasn't it was inexpensive. It was close. What the heck was the name of it? was getaway. The getaway house. The getaway house. So if you look up getaway house and this isn't a sponsored ad, but if you look them up, they have little

Yeah, we did. That was great.

George McKenzie(16:36.461)

Next.

Alicia McKenzie (16:50.508)

I would say tiny houses situated in woodsy areas outside of metropolitan areas, right? So it's like Shenandoah Valley, which is maybe 90 minutes from Washington, DC. There's a few in New York, like 90 minutes outside of the city. There's these little tiny houses that are all wood and have huge windows and they're

It's just like a one, it's it's a tiny, it's really one.

Yeah, but there's no wi-fi. There's no television. Like you and I, played strip poker. We did all sorts of just-

and you have a fire pit and you're just like chilling. had a couple bottles of wine, it was great.

Couple bottles of wine?

George McKenzie(17:32.59)

We were there for more than one night. It wasn't one night. We were there for a couple nights. We for hikes during the day and we went to like the Blue Lagoon like swimming. It was awesome. Yeah, relatively inexpensive and you bring your own food. There's like...

She's excessive.

Yeah, but no, and I think it was.

Alicia McKenzie (17:44.363)

It was great.

Alicia McKenzie (17:49.032)

But like, here's the thing, like we say relatively inexpensive. How many people are buying a new iPhone every year? Yes. A lot of people. So it's like, prioritize what's important to you. Like, is having that iPhone 17 more important or is putting away $1,500 for you to go travel for the year to little places like this? OK, let's chat. Fair play.

Agreed.

Alicia McKenzie (18:14.062)

So there was a book called Fair Play, and I think it came out in like 2019, 2020, and it really started to gain traction because of this unspoken, invisible labor, right? All of the things that we do in the house that isn't tied to any real job, right? It's like picking up the toys at the end of the night. It's making sure that the...

The trash is taken out like just random stuff.

Chuck E. Cheese reset. That's what I call it. Basically. gotta put everything back to where it was.

But it was like a cultural reference point because a lot of women were feeling overworked and underappreciated and underpaid. And this happened right around, like, I would say it really gained traction during COVID, like 2020, 2021. And let's be honest, we were all really fucking stressed out during that time. So it's hard to say that what came first, The Chicken or the Egg, like where women are always stressed out and this book just amplified it or so on and so forth.

It's interesting, because...

Alicia McKenzie (19:19.827)

But you are vehemently against all of the principles within Fair Play.

I am pretty much. just, I'm not sure that's the right way to look at it. Fair is a friend of ours. Like fair is the one word, just the one F word that his kids aren't allowed to say in the house. Which I agree with. There's nothing fair about life. It's not fair is not a word to describe human being. It's just not. So when you look at a relationship, should it be meaningful? And should you work to have a relationship in which both people feel

appreciated and respected. Yeah. Does that mean it has to be a fair division of tasks? No. No. It's the same with like running a business. Would you say what a CEO does every day and all the facets with which a CEO is responsible for, is it fair that he oversees 50 things and the accountant only has to do the one thing? Is that fair? No, but it's the division of labor that works.

What about compensation? How does that play into it? Right? A CEO is compensated more than your

But that's the one thing I I I which I like that it's in general terms it is in a publicly traded or a large business that's true in the vast majority of small businesses the CEO is probably one of the lowest paid people right there banking on the equity that's their pay that's their like I used to tell people DPS um didn't I had a very small portion of you know I only did the three percent to the 401k and one of my other partners like why do you want you max out the 401k what you know

Alicia McKenzie (20:40.248)

Probably.

George McKenzie(20:55.182)

for your retirement, I'm like, no, this fucking company is my retirement plan. Like, all my effort is here, all my money is here. I'm trying to make this work. So if I'm gonna invest 5 % of my salary, it's gonna go back into the company to grow this fucking company, not to invest in stocks. And I think that that's the mentality of most CEOs. Like, my salary, I wanna make enough to get by, but it's, I'm banking on the exit.

The company, the company is my patient. Exactly. Yeah. I think the problem with Fair Play and like the it's not really a problem. It's just it's not my cup of tea. Like it might work for some family. But it's like the I think there's a game that came out where you have cards and each card is it has a job listed on it. And then you separate out who is normally responsible. And then if you look at the piles of cards.

Alright, for some people it might work.

George McKenzie(21:46.958)

piles.

They should be about equal. And if one side is weighed down versus the other side, that there's a big indivision of labor. Yeah.

I guess if you were to say, you know, our household budget is X, right? And we need X amount of revenue coming into the family. Yes. Like how is that separated division? Do we stack it the same with cards and be like, oh, she's the wife is accountable for this much. The husband is accountable for this much. And they each have one card or one has 10 cards. One has one card like this. So there's a lot of other things that make a family work besides just the operational tasks. Yeah.

Okay.

George McKenzie(22:33.408)

And the stress, who's stressing about retirement? Who's stressing about college? Who's college payments?

I'm saying, but other people do, right? And a lot of times, one person in the relationship bears that stress. Sometimes it's the woman that's like, I've got to, cause there's some relationships in with the male as the spender and the female as the saver. And she's the one stressing about how in the hell am going to pay for college? How are we ever going to retire? You constantly buy bass boats and buy all these other things. How am I going to retire? And then in other relationships, the guy going, how am I going to afford to send these, my kids to college? How can I?

I just meant that.

George McKenzie(23:09.612)

retire one day. stressing, I mean, there's a reason more men die of heart attacks and stress related diseases than women.

Why is that though? Because we stress. But why?

Because a lot of that's and you would, you know, it's I guess a trait of the maybe it's built into our DNA and not like hunter gatherer. Like I'm I go out and hunt. That's my thing.

It's an evolutionary like learn.

Yeah, I have to, I'm the protector. I have to protect my family. I'm stressing about, you know, making sure that my family has everything they need to succeed and, you know, making sure that, you know, when I'm dead, my wife will still be able to be okay. Like all these things that you think about as a man that you're like, okay, I have to take care of my family. I have to take care of all these things.

Alicia McKenzie (23:55.234)

You know, the Taylor Swift song is in my head.

I don't know that song.

My God, you're the worst. You're the worst. Anyways, sorry.

Yeah, but I mean, so I don't know. It's hard. That's why I think like invisible tasks or whatever that I mean, if you just break it down by task, maybe, but there's hundreds of tasks that, you know, have to be done, but not every task is weighted the same. Yeah.

highly

Alicia McKenzie (24:23.384)

Phil's Transaction.

does, because then it'll be like, I did five things, you did 10 things. You should do seven, I should do seven. Even though, yeah.

We should try it for a week and see how long we last.

Yeah, well, because it wouldn't work because you know what it were I would do dishes and then you guys would just complain about no You didn't load the dishwasher right or that's not clean. That's you didn't put that back where it should be I'm just saying like that's the way it works or That's not how you fold the towel. You're like I got folded and it got put away. I've seen you take towels out and refold

to my mom thing.

Alicia McKenzie (24:53.826)

I would never say that.

That's because Jesse folded them wrong.

I have folded them and you've taken them out and refolded them.

When was the last time you folded a towel?

A couple weeks ago maybe? I do laundry every now and again. A load here and there when something's broken.

Alicia McKenzie (25:12.086)

Anyways, you're of shit. That's why your eyes are brown.

No, I yeah, that's just I don't know if that's the it becomes a tit-for-tat game and then I don't know if you can have a loving meaningful relationship That if you just play tit-for-tat all the time Yeah, and I think it's but it can be too far to write you're like you don't want to take advantage of your spouse and be like hey You do everything I'll sit on the couch and do nothing Right. I don't think that is an equitable exchange. Yeah, because if you respected your

partner and you want them to be happy as well. And if you see that they're always doing stuff, then you'd want to take some of that load off.

Okay, so where do we go from here?

I know. That was down a tangent I wasn't expecting to talk. I've never... Yeah, I don't know if I'd want to play that fair game thing.

Alicia McKenzie (26:03.98)

We should try it. We should we should try it just to see.

I think there'd be a bigger stack of outsourced.

You think? Probably. We've done a good job at outsourcing what we don't want to do.

Alicia McKenzie (26:17.218)

I feel like we've always been good at that.

Yeah, things that you're not best suited to do. What can someone else do? And we have the privilege too, there's three of us to divide the labor. Yeah, so, yeah, we got a lot of things going for us, which is nice.

Yeah, very much so.

Alicia McKenzie (26:30.752)

Okay, well, if your household is running on vibes alone, maybe steal an idea from this episode and test it out for 30 days.

Yeah, exactly. Or just think about it, even if you don't want to bring it up with your spouse immediately, look over what are the functions that make our lives, our families, operate? And then who's doing all those functions? No.

Could you imagine being a dink?

What would you do?

You'd have a lot more free time.

Alicia McKenzie (26:55.534)

Yes, we would. But then there was one weekend where you guys were gone with all the kids and I like Minnesota. Yeah, I texted my girlfriend. I was like, Hey, I'm going to come to so and so's basketball game. She's like, ma'am, this is the first weekend. You don't have to go to a basketball game. She's like, please go do something else. Okay. I'll just hang out with my friends. Kids, right? My kids were gone. I'm going to hang out with you.

Yeah, I think it makes life exciting, but I'm sure that there's other passions that other people have. sure.

I follow this one woman on Instagram and she is, she's older. I would say she's like maybe 47, 48. And her husband's older than she is. They chose not to have children, but she says that she's child-free and she's like the world's greatest auntie. I feel like if I didn't have kids, that would be me. I could say that. Or I'd have a million dogs.

Yeah.

yeah, long as you don't have cats. Just no cats. Well, I'd die for a ranch right now. I would love to have a ranch. No horses though. I'd do cows.

Alicia McKenzie (27:50.03)

in a round in a ranch.

with horses.

Alicia McKenzie (27:57.964)

I floated the idea of leaving DC to Michaela after she graduated. she was like, there's no way you guys are gonna do it. Why? Because she's like, she doesn't believe it. So he would never leave DC. Like what? It's like, think I've got your dad on board.

I think I could leave tomorrow.

I don't, I, okay. Anyways, anything left? Any closing words or anything weighing on your heart about fair play and division of labor? No? No. Speak now or forever hold your peace.

No.

George McKenzie(28:28.49)

No. No. But yeah. No, no, I'm good. I'm vibe, vibe living.

Alicia McKenzie (28:42.594)

Thank you for tuning in to Mary to the Startup. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please take a moment to like, rate, and subscribe to our podcast. Your support helps us reach more people and keeps the conversation going. If you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover, drop me a message. I love hearing from you guys. Until next time.

George out.