Uncommon Sense: And Pumpkin Spice Syrup
Thomas Cox
Multifaceted Business Owner and Investor Catering, Rental Property, PML, Personal Brand; We cater for groups of 10 - 5,000
A bi-weekly note that shares ideas and thoughts around family, finances, and food that your parents should have taught you.
Family
3 things you have to plan weekly...
In order to make the roller coaster of life not seem so fast, you have to be dogmatic about a few things. Some are simple...notice I didn't say easy. But if you do them life and marriage will be better.
1. Weekly Planning: Sit down after church on Sunday and plan out the week with your spouse. Plan out every day of the week.
We have to make sure we have someone to watch our 7 and 11 year old if one of us is not at the house longer than 30 minutes. Who has practice? How are they getting there? Who is working late? What time will you be home?
Schedules can get crazy, especially if both of you are working. Make time to create a plan and you will know where you are going.
2. Date Night: Gotta get it on the calendar. This is crucial.
The best thing to do when you get home from the date is to have the babysitter pull out their calendar and plan the next one. This ensures that the next one will happen and everyone is on the same page.
With business, practice and kids. Intentional time together is vital. Gotta make it happen.
3. Schedule SEX: In the early days of our marriage when we had 2 toddlers and we were both working and coaching full time (me 70 hours a week her 50 hours a week) time was a premium.
When time is not there, SEX tends to get put on the back burner. So, we would schedule sex twice a week.
At the time, Monday and Thursday were our sex days. This was an expectation, regardless of the mood we made it happen, and we never regretted it.
Intimacy is vital to marriages. Make sure that connection continues.
THE WORST THING THAT CAN HAPPEN in family and marriage is unmet expectations. Making sure you are both seeing the same things and know what rhythm the other is in is paramount to thriving families and marriages.
Finances
Things I learned while coaching college football...
Never in a million years did I think that coaching college football would prepare me for the business world. Come to find out...I was completely wrong.
There are so many things that I had to do and learn how to do that prepared me for the business world I am in today.
1. Addressing a room: For years, I engaged in public speaking. I would speak daily to a group of college kids that looked to me for direction.
Some of the advice was technical, some was motivational, some was instructional. Bottom line is, I had to do it all.
After doing that for multiple years, I learned that I can walk into a room and speak to a group and not break out into a cold sweat...and do it pretty well.
2. Building relationships: I had to walk into a school and get a coach who has never met me before and get him to like me in the first 30 seconds. Then, I had to transition to get the 17 year old kid to do the same.
This taught me how to build rapport, ask questions, and find common ground. Once I found that common ground, I was able to speak to it and build that relationship.
Meeting total strangers and making them feel like you have known them for their whole life is an art and skill that is essential in the business world.
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3. Communication: I had to learn the art of speaking to different people from all walks of life. Here are the wide range of people I would find myself in conversation with regularly...
Most all of these conversations would happen before a 3:00 pm practice.
Learning how to transform in the room and have the ability to speak to anyone would not have been learned had I not been in college coaching for 10 years.
NOW GO BACK and read all the things that are in bold...I’ll wait...
All the learned skills above are skills I use every day in the business world.
Just last week, my catering company was doing an event for a board of an organization. The planner asked me to explain the menu to everyone in the room.
Had I not spent thousands of hours addressing a room full of people, that would have been difficult. But for me, it was no big deal.
Food
Pumpkin Spice Syrup
Cook time: 10 min Ingredients:
Instructions: Add all ingredients except cinnamon sticks to a pot over medium high heat. Whisk the mixture until smooth, and bring to a simmer. Once simmering, add the cinnamon sticks. Keep simmering until the mixture is thickened, then remove from heat. Remove the cinnamon sticks and pour into a container. Use in coffee or on ice cream. Store for up to two weeks.
Quote Of The Day: "Two things that impact everything in this world. Health and money." - Morgan Housel
Interested in learning more? Come hang out on our podcast Owners Table where I have conversations with successful owners from the boardroom to the dinner table. You can find it wherever you stream:
Be blessed,
TC