So Jamie flew all the way to Australia to visit me last week. We've been having an absolute blast - sailing, hitting up some amazing restaurants, and just generally enjoying life as it should be lived.
The other night, we're at this fancy French steakhouse, drinking wine and having one of those deep conversations that only seem to happen when you're halfway across the world from home. I'm being my usual self - engaging with our surroundings, enjoying the moment. Jamie notices me glancing over at a couple of girls a few tables away.
"What are you looking at?" he asks me, and I just laugh, "Sorry Jamie, just being distracted."
By the end of the night, the server comes over with a note - one of the girls had written that she found me cute, was enjoying overhearing our conversation, and thought we should go out. She'd even left a lipstick kiss on the paper. Jamie just shakes his head, laughing.
Later that night, Jamie brings up something that's been bothering him. He tells me about these friends of his - smart, ambitious entrepreneurs who've been dumping their girlfriends to "focus on the grind." The whole "monk mode" mentality. He's curious why I seem to have no problem balancing business success with an active dating life. This conversation hit me because I've seen this pattern repeating everywhere in entrepreneurial circles. Guys thinking they need to choose between love and success. It's such bullshit, and here's why.
The whole premise makes an insane assumption - that you can just turn off your social life, go into hibernation mode, build your empire, and then magically flip the switch back on when you're "ready" for a relationship. That's not how human connection works, man.
When you go all-in on your business and cut women out, your social muscles atrophy. You become that weird, slightly awkward guy who can talk for hours about conversion rates but can't hold a normal conversation with a woman. You become slightly "autistic" (for lack of a better word) because you've been focused solely on numbers and metrics for so long.
Jamie and I talked a lot about trade-offs during this trip. Everything in life is a trade-off, not an either/or proposition. Men tend to be extremists - "I gotta completely drop this to focus on that." But nature abhors extremes. Just like crash diets inevitably lead to binges, cutting off your social life completely will result in a painful correction down the road. Sustainable success comes from finding balance, not from pendulum swings between obsessions.
I remember going through periods of just doing business and not talking to anyone. It took me a long time to get back and almost integrate back into society. You become this robotic, unemotional person who doesn't even know how to speak to anybody else. Your emotional intelligence and social skills wither through disuse. What these guys don't realize is that those are the very skills that make the difference between good and great in business.
The skills you develop in dating and relationships are the EXACT SAME skills you need to succeed in business. Think about it - leadership, emotional intelligence, communication, conflict resolution, reading social cues, compromise. When you run a serious business, what are you doing other than leadership and people management?
I told Jamie, "Foregoing people management in your personal life inevitably bleeds into your professional life. It's all connected."
What does good leadership in the sheets and the streets look like? If you're struggling to balance a relationship and your business, the solution isn't to break up - it's to have an honest conversation. A good woman who loves you will understand when you need to prioritize your business temporarily. You can literally just sit her down and say, "This is going to take some priority away from us, but here's how I hope to make a compromise." If she can't handle that conversation, then maybe she's not the right person. But to blindly break up without giving her the chance to work with you? That's just poor relationship management, and it's going to show up in how you manage your team eventually.
This is where another important dynamic comes in - your girlfriend can be an incredible barometer for how you're doing as a man. If you're a good man, your woman will love being around you. If you're constantly fighting or jumping from relationship to relationship, that's a direct reflection of something you need to work on. Our intimate relationships often reflect our true character in ways our professional lives can mask. This desire to chase the flashy thing, to work really hard on your business - women get a sense when you're just chasing external validation. They can tell when you're after the next "Hot Wheels car" versus building something meaningful. They have this sixth sense that men often lack. I noticed this with my own parents. When I was in the States and something successful happened at work, I'd call up my dad and tell him everything that happened - closed a big deal, made this money. And my dad would be super supportive, like, "Yes! Fuck yeah!" Then I'd tell my mum the same thing and she'd be like, "Oh, that's nice. Are you still eating your vegetables?" That perfectly encapsulates the feminine energy. This complementary dynamic between masculine and feminine energy creates something greater than the sum of its parts. You could make all the money in the world, but the feminine will always bring you back to the important things, the foundational things that make life great. That's why it's important to have women around - they're reminders not to fly too close to the sun. The masculine drive to achieve needs the feminine wisdom to make that achievement meaningful. Without it, you're just accumulating without purpose.
Every entrepreneur has brutal days - deals fall through, employees quit, lawsuits happen. On those days, what do you really need? Sometimes it's not advice or solutions - it's just having someone who cares about you. Having someone to look forward to is incredibly valuable because there's this compounding effect of little frictions or little comforts in daily life. If you can reduce friction in those daily moments and ensure they're done right, your life becomes infinitely easier and more fulfilling. A house that feels like a home, a meal that's prepared with care, a space where you can just exhale and be yourself - these things create a foundation that actually allows you to take bigger risks and be more creative in your professional life. True innovation requires both chaos and order, and that balance often comes from having different energies in your life - masculine and feminine. After a long, stressful day, imagine coming home to a messy house with no one there. All that stuff stacks up mentally. But having someone waiting for you, someone who cares about your day? That gives you something to look forward to, and that mental boost is invaluable. I don't even want to hear "you're doing great" from my girlfriend after a shit day. I just want to put my head in her lap and have her scratch my head and caress me.
And that's not being weak or "bitchy" - it's allowing yourself to be nurtured by feminine energy. People take masculinity too far when they think vulnerability with a woman is weakness. That's completely missing the point of what a partnership is supposed to be. You're supposed to be caressed and nurtured by the feminine spirit. You don't have to tell her all your problems, but sometimes just being in her presence is exactly what you need to reset and to not be ashamed of that process.
A lot of this stigma behind not sharing our vulnerabilities, our concerns, our truths – comes down to this sense of shame. And shame is nothing but a feeling that we are fundamentally flawed or unworthy. Love on the other hand is about accepting imperfection and appreciating the imperfection. Seeing beauty in the imperfection. Respect and love are the same thing. The Latin root of respect, "respicere," means to look at. When you respect someone, you see them as they are, not as you want them to be. And when you love someone, you love every single part of them. True respect, true love, is about dropping our projections and genuinely seeing the other person. It's not about molding them into what we want or need, but appreciating them for who they actually are - imperfections and all. Self-love, is really at the core of everything. Our ability to be loved by others is deeply connected to our relationship with ourselves. When we respect ourselves, when we see ourselves in all of our imperfect beauty, we respect others – and we don't act from a disingenuous place. A lot of guys throw themselves into entrepreneurship as a way to avoid dealing with deeper self-worth issues. They think external success will fix internal emptiness. It never does.
A woman who respects you will see you as imperfect and still love you because of it. You should be able to share your vulnerabilities with someone and have them hold space for you. If those vulnerabilities get weaponised or they're quickly dismissed in favour of their vulnerabilities, it's probably a sign that there is no respect and it's not the right relationship to be in. You shouldn't have to hide yourself from a partner.
So if you love the girl you're with (and she loves you back equally), don't throw away that relationship because some online guru told you to "focus on business." Stay on your mission, but recognise that she's an important piece of your life. As I told Jamie that night, it's a skill issue. Learn to manage both your relationship and your business simultaneously, because you'll always need to balance multiple priorities in life - might as well get good at it now.
Jamie got it. By the end of his trip here, he was reevaluating some of his own approaches. That's what good conversations between men should do - challenge us to be better versions of ourselves. Not just better businessmen, but better humans.
Because at the end of the day, what are we really chasing? Success? Money? Recognition? Beneath it all, we're just looking for love and respect. Us men, we love to be loved. We like to feel cared for, to know there's a woman who gives a shit about us.
Sometimes a simple caress is all we need. After all the hustle and grind, that's what makes it all worthwhile.