Marriage Planning, Collaborative Vision And The New Power Couple With Jocelyn And Aaron Freeman

Wedding pros often see how wedding planning and finances strain relationships. The lack of a shared collaborative vision can often cause couples to grow apart. Jocelyn and Aaron Freeman join Jamie Wolfer and Heather Loree Fier today to share guidance and wisdom that will help couples grow and strengthen their relationship during this challenging era. Jocelyn and Aaron are authors, speakers, and sought after relationship coaches who help motivated couples become a true team. They believe that couples should have a shared vision so that they can fully collaborate as they enter a new chapter in their lives. Whether you are listening with your own partner in mind or listening with hopes of better serving your engaged clients, this episode is a goodie.

—

Listen to the podcast here:

Important Links:

About Jocelyn Freeman

Jocelyn & Aaron Freeman are authors of The New Power Couple, speakers, and sought after relationship coaches. With much excitement, they founded and launched the Empowered Couples University: an online university hosting higher education & personal development for motivated couples to learn the relationship skills to be a true team.

They have shared the stage with Tony Robbins and “Golden Gavel” Hall-of-Fame speakers, were nominated as Arizona’s 40 Under 40 Influencers, and have been featured in national media for teaching couples modern, practical skills and tools to work together through any life challenge- reaching over 540,000 people around the world.

They have led over 42 live events for couples in Arizona and host one of the top relationship podcasts on iTunes.

They are passionate about training and leading future relationship coaches and have an accredited coaching certification program.

Jocelyn & Aaron Freeman are ordained, writing their second book, and their vision is to make ‘relationship development’ the new ‘personal development’ and to lower the divorce rate in their lifetime.

Marriage Planning, Collaborative Vision And The New Power Couple With Jocelyn And Aaron Freeman

Heather: We have Jocelyn and Aaron Freeman. What a powerhouse couple. We are excited to be bringing them here to share a little bit of their knowledge on how couples can navigate these times and how we can have a vision, a lighthouse in the storm, so to speak. We hope you enjoy.

—

Heather: The Freemans are here. We are excited. These two are a power couple because they are the power couple who wrote about being a power couple and host a podcast that’s all about couples doing amazing things. Thank you for being here.

Aaron: We’re glad to be here.

Heather: You have developed such an amazing company. I have been wowed following you on Instagram, checking out your book, all of these different things you have going on. I’m excited to introduce you to the wedding industry so more people can learn about how to support their couples who are in this moment in time, needing a little extra support to have that grounding in their relationship.

Jocelyn: I love that and you’re doing amazing things. Everyone in the wedding industry, we’re glad to be here.

Aaron: That makes you a much better vendor when you’re focused on your client and doing the best for them, so that’s great.

Heather: That’s the point we want to drive home. You guys have helped hundreds of thousands of couples grow stronger in their relationship. Can you give us a little bit of background about how you started and then how you grew into what you are doing?

Jocelyn: It’s interesting, even our life looks different than it did years ago and honestly, this all got started from us not doing relationship things their right way. Even before meeting Aaron, there was so much in relationships that I was doing that was repeating the past. I grew up. I didn’t learn the best things for my parents. I love them, but they had an intense divorce and they went from being two people who loved each other so much. People would say, “I envy their relationship.” I remember being a kid going, “How can two people who loved each other so much, had this gorgeous wedding and two amazing kids that love them, end up having an intense divorce that it could have been a movie?” It was intense. I know that planted a seed in my mind, but it also planted a lot of patterns.

The New Power Couple: Designing An Abundant Life And Relationship That Lasts Forever

I started to repeat a lot of their toxic patterns into my dating experiences in my teens and my twenties. I then dove into personal development. I looked at like, “Why do I do these things? Where did this come from?” I’m sure a lot of the people reading love the self-development books, the seminars, the workshops, and I went into that and finally worked through a lot of it. I met Aaron. I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t going to settle, I wasn’t going to do any of the unhealthy relationship things. Aaron wasn’t quite there yet and tried to break up with me early on and he’ll share his part of it. We’ll tell them how it turned into us creating a business.

Aaron: There’s a whole backstory for me growing up. I had few girlfriends and even the ones that I had through high school and even into college and graduating college, I was on the side of being broken up with. I was cheated on a few times. Relationships were always something that it seemed like I was going to end up being the one that got hurt. As I was getting to know Jocelyn and we were starting to date, a lot of those past hurts and feelings came up like, “This is going to be the same.” Without thinking about it, it’s like, “I’m going to tell her that this isn’t working. We should be friends.” That was a phone call in my home office and then hanging up the phone and then she called me back. Within fifteen seconds, I see her name come back on the screen, so I answer it and she immediately says, “That doesn’t work for me.” What I realized in a moment without having to think about it, I said, “I’m back in.” Reflecting back on that, the reason that I had to break up was subconscious of here we go again. I didn’t know this, but all I needed to hear was that someone was going to have my back, was going to support me, and wanted to go on this journey with me. As soon as she said that, I knew that I was in.

Jocelyn: Believe me, that took something. I know that once he was in, we dove into personal development together at that point. This is where it could get into a whole other conversation. It was like we remembered our purpose. Once we were both committed, honestly it was like people started to come to us for relationship questions. We had started a different business at the time, but people would be like, “Can you help me with my relationship instead? Scratch the reason I reached out to you.” We started to realize even from our own marriage prep that there wasn’t something that resonated with us. Something that wasn’t necessarily counseling-based or even not that we’re by any means anti going to church for marriage prep, but something that’s more skills-based, more focused on the tools, the principles. As if someone wanted to become a better athlete, having the skills to be a better partner and we said, “We can’t find it.” People were coming to us, we felt it was our purpose and created it.

Aaron: That was the main thing that resonates with a lot of the vendor’s clients because they’re probably more preparing for the wedding phase as differentiated from preparing for marriage. Either way, I realized I don’t have the skills for what a marriage is going to take. It’s like I have this whole past history of being broken up with. We did the preparing for marriage and that’s what caused me to know with certainty that Jocelyn was the one and I was grateful for that. Given that we were pursuing personal development, leadership, speaking, and all the things how to be a better individual, we looked at each other and said, “There’s a gap here.” Where is the personal development for couples to get skills to get better as a couple ongoingly? It wasn’t there. It was preparing for marriage, it was counseling, there was nothing. We said, “Let’s bring it ourselves.” That’s what brings us here.

Jocelyn: Fast forward to this is what we do full-time. We’re having a great time impacting couples.

Jamie: How fascinating that you guys were able to see a tangible pain point for people coming to you for relationship advice and then you took a look at the market as you guys were going through your own personal development and went, “There’s a hole. There’s a gap that quite easily,” maybe not quite easily. We all know building a business is tough, but that we could fill if we worked a little bit at it and that it has brought you to where you guys are. That’s incredible.

Aaron: One thing we realized too, even in the counseling and therapy space, which there is a time where that is needed, but those are mostly single people. It’s like a single person coaching and counseling a couple and that was another position. I said, “Jocelyn, if we do this together,” which is what we want to do with our life, to build something together, “We’re going to be the only couple doing this together basically.” It makes much more sense because we can talk to the masculine and feminine dynamic with a couple of two-on-two. That makes much more sense than even an individual person trying to relate to two people at the same time or someone that’s not even married trying to coach and counsel someone that is married. We felt like, “This is what we’re going to give our life to.”

Jamie: What would you guys say is your definition of a power couple? It’s a term that’s tossed around a whole lot. How would you define that? Why should our readers aim for this and their relationship?

Collaborative Vision: It makes much more sense for a couple to do counseling with another couple as opposed to an individual trying to relate to two people at the same time.

Jocelyn: We signed a book deal for our second book coming out. We haven’t even told that many people. Your readers are some of the first to read it. The first book we titled, The New Power Couple. The reason it is called that is that we wanted to redefine it. People think of power couple as what they see on Instagram, looking cute, happy, success, money, the smiles, the success and all the fronts. What we said, “What is behind closed doors is how they handle the challenges.” For us, the new power couple is a couple that is aligned on a vision together. They’re willing to have a vision that inspires them and they’re willing to work through the challenges together. It’s not about the outward success, fame, celebrity, looking cute and outfits things, which those are all bonuses. Don’t get me wrong, we love a good matching pink jacket that we do with our Instagram photos. We love all the matching outfits and shoes that we do. We’re also sharing about the challenges. For us, the power couple is that, an unstoppable vision, willing to work through any challenges together and be authentic about the challenges that get confronted.

Heather: There is so much power in that vision of how a relationship can be and how far you can take things towards your dreams. You two working together on this vision you come together on, it sets your life on fire. Who wouldn’t want that? I’m excited that you guys are sharing this, supporting couples, and reaching for that. As far as planning a wedding, let’s focus on that. It is an exciting time, but it a stressful time and 2020 has made it extra stressful for couples planning. What guidance do you have for couples who are feeling totally overwhelmed?

Aaron: The first thing it makes me think of, and when we paused to do our wedding, there was dynamic at play, which was what friends or more so family wanted the wedding to be. I can imagine a lot of the readers can resonate with that. A lot of times that takes precedence over what you wanted. A lot of couples don’t even think about what they want aside from what their family wants for them. That’s the first place to look is a pause and say, “We were headed down one path before the wedding. We had a venue, an idea of who we wanted to come, and is that what we want for us? This is our wedding and our day. What experience do we want to have?” Set your intentions around that because you might discover, “We were moving fast towards a lot of vendors and a lot of plans weren’t aligned for us, so it’s a perfect time to say let’s redefine what our plans are going to be and our focus on our intention so that we fulfill on the experience that we want to have as a couple.” That’s the first place.

Jocelyn: What I also love about what you’re doing, even from the little bit that I know, is that you’re showing people that they don’t have to spend their life savings plus even savings they don’t have, on a wedding. It’s an opportunity, in addition to what Aaron shared, to go besides the wedding, “What do we want in life? What’s important?” What this quarantine is doing besides a lot of stress, is a lot of uncertainty. There’s a lot of both positive and negative to this time, but what a lot of people are pausing and doing and going is like, “What did we spend our time in? What are our priorities? What matters to us now that we can pause from all the distractions?”

It’s an opportunity to reevaluate and by learning from you guys about how to do a wedding differently and all the vendors who are reading who are helping them do that and not have to spend all of their savings. What else would we want to do? Once we’re married, what’s important to us? Is it important to us that one or both of us is able to work completely from home? Do we want to focus on building a business or a career where we can be home with the kids? Is it important for us to invest in our health? Re-evaluating what’s important to you in that first year of marriage is a big opportunity.

Jamie: That’s such a brilliant perspective to have because you’re right, many couples see the wedding as the end goal. We are going to spend this next 9 to 12 twelve months hyper-focused, laser-focused on this one big event. Afterward, oftentimes we’ll see some sort of emotional crash where because they’ve been going hard or financially they feel tapped out they’re like, “How are we going to be able to afford groceries next week?” They tend to view a wedding as the be all end all. What do you want the first month of marriage to look like? In the first 6 to 12 months, what are your goals after that? Maintaining that perspective while planning a wedding, it has got to be a little bit more eye-opening, and then ideally, we’ll adjust some of that perspective. It isn’t that hyper-focus on one day, one event, and spending all your money on that. Rather this is the beginning of the rest of our lives together. What do we want that to look like? You guys advocate for having a collaborative vision, which I’m a huge fan of. How can couples create this collaborative vision of their wedding and their future during this whole time of uncertainty?

Jocelyn: I’ll answer it a couple of different ways. For those of you who are reading, and I know a lot of your readers are the vendors and some being the couples themselves planning the wedding, there are two different readers here. Why a vision? Whether you’re the vendor helping the couple or you’re the couple, you all need a vision. Why? Without a vision, you can grow apart. We see couples all day long. We work with couples both in preparing for the marriage stage all the way to married three decades. What we can see is that even if they love each other a lot, they have all the things in common. They like the same movies, the walks on the beach, and they have the same career goals. They can still grow apart if they don’t have an aligned vision. Your vision is how you end up making decisions. In the marriage, a lot of times it gets to this point where you’re making some a big decision and if you don’t have the vision to guide that, it starts to come down to my opinion versus yours or uncertainty.

Aaron: Who’s going to win? It’s like, “Are we going to do it my way or your way?” The only two options are one of us is going to be the winner and one is going to be the loser.

There is a huge difference between preparing for a wedding and preparing for a marriage. Click To Tweet

Jocelyn: Even the uncertainty. For example, when we were early on in our relationship, we know we were thinking about our finances. Do we want to invest in this? Do we want to invest in that? Should we start a business? All of that was through uncertainty and fear. It would keep you up at night. How do you make the right decision?

Aaron: There are many options, many opportunities for living in America. You could put your money in a million different places, but it would be spread out.

Jocelyn: Also, do you have kids? How many kids? When do you have kids?

Aaron: I’ll put away for college. Should I do that now? Should I put more on the mortgage of the house? Should I invest in real estate? Should I be in stocks? It’s overwhelming.

Jocelyn: The vision for couples becomes that filter through what is in alignment with our vision. Whether it’s the vendor reading or the couple themselves, it’s important both ways. As far as how to create, there’s a whole process that we’d need. We have that in our book. It’s a five-step process for creating a specific vision. Some people go, “We have a vision. Our vision is a house, two kids, all the vacations.” That’s not a vision. Those are certain milestones, but a vision is different. That’d be a longer process.

Aaron: The vision is a statement you can remember and say to people. We’ll give you a brief insight. It talks about the experience you want to have in your life together, what your marriage is going to represent, who you’re going to impact, and the activities that lead to that. It’s a succinct statement that you can repeat. You could say it to people and you can live in it. Mostly, people were like, “We have a vision,” but what is it? All of a sudden, it’s quiet or it’s super vague. This is an actual statement that guides your decision-making.

Heather: Like you, Aaron, we’re listing off those options of ways to invest and where to put your money, it literally made me stressed. The emotions that are triggered by this whole financial time and trying to nail down a vision plan and when you’re working with your emotions, someone else’s emotions all packed together. It’s supposed to be the best day of your life. This is a snowball rolling down a hill fast and building. What I’d love to know from you guys is how can professionals, wedding pros, working with a couple who’s emotionally on edge from all this stuff going on. How can we support those couples? We’re not you guys. We don’t know all the things you guys know. What would be your little bits of wisdom or places that they can direct these couples to give them a little support?

Aaron: I was going to answer it a different way, but as far as directing them, we have in our book, which we give away for free. It seemed like a good enough time to mention, if you go to MeetTheFreemans.com or TheNewPowerCouple.com, it takes you to the same page. You can get our book for free. You pay for shipping and then you can create the vision statement from the back of the book. That would be one way for a resource. To answer your question on what they could do without that, it makes me think of coming up with multiple ideas. Too often, it’s 1 or 2 ideas, but if you have your couple, your client sits down and writes out ten different ideas together and you don’t have to judge them. It can be extreme. There could be things that you would never think you would do, but it gets you into this creative, resourceful, fun, playful process where all of a sudden then you go back out of these ten and say, “Number four? We never even thought of that before. Let’s try that one.”

Collaborative Vision: The new power couple is aligned on a shared vision. They have a vision that inspires them and are willing to work through the challenges together.

The one other thing I wanted to say is you were talking about many opportunities that you can feel overwhelmed. To me, that feeling comes from opportunity cost, the loss. What if I don’t do that? That’s a lot of the time ways people feel in finances. When you’re writing down those ten different ways and you find that new one, also knows, you don’t have to throw the rest of those away. “Let’s try this one and maybe number six, we can come back to that one later. Let’s earmark this one for three months from now.” A lot of the challenges people feel it’s like, “We can only do one thing. What if we miss out? What if we don’t do that? Should we have done it that way?” You try something and then you say, “We can try that next one sometime later.” It simplifies and also gives you the opportunity to come up with new creative ideas.

Jocelyn: I love it too because I love how Aaron’s answers are always systemized and help me be logical than masculine. I’ll come in with a little bit of the feminine here. This is why we love couples to have worked with us because we can cover the masculine-feminine. From a feminine perspective, whether you’re the professionals supporting them and you’re experiencing overwhelm as well as the couple is, that’s why we’re huge advocates for you need to have an outlet. It seems like it can be simple, but we are talking to people all the time, both coaches as well as couples. They aren’t having an emotional release or an emotional outlet. During these times, it’s critical. Exercise is great. We love to exercise, but something else like are you journaling? Are you meditating? If you feel sad, do you let yourself cry? Do you talk about if you’re feeling mad?

Aaron and I go on two walks a day in the morning and the evening. What a lot of people do in their time is they talk about their to-do list or, “How did your meeting go?” “It went good.” “What do you want for dinner?” The mundane check-in thing, which don’t get me wrong, those are needed as well. Talk about how you’re feeling. You’ve got to open up to someone. This is getting bigger, but there are a lot of mental health challenges out there and people need to talk about their feelings more often. I’d say that no matter if you’re the professional or the couple reading, you’ve got to have an outlet or resource to let it out.

Heather: We’re all going through a challenging time. We’re all in the same storm, so to speak, but we’re not in the same boat. Everybody has different ways this whole pandemic has impacted their life. Keeping a tab on your mental health, the ones around you, who you love is important because it can certainly go down a dark path quickly. I am glad you guys brought that up. I hope everyone takes a moment to check in and keep checking in with those around you.

Aaron: It was great that you said we’re all experiencing the same storm, which is true, but we’re in different boats. It reminds me of the importance of the vision statement we talked about. The vision statement is like the lighthouse. If you’re in your own boat, you won’t be able to paddle or turn the rudder to go towards the lighthouse. For those couples that are in their own boat and don’t have any vision statement, you might be paddling around in circles or you may get hit by a wave and have no idea where you’re at. That’s the analogy for all the emotions that come up. You get lost. If you have a vision statement, no matter if the wave crashes on you, you can look up and say, “There is a lighthouse. Let’s turn the boat around. We’re still in the direction we want to go.”

Jamie: That is a powerful word image really and truly because many of us are floundering at sea. We’re like, “We don’t know what we’re doing. We know what tomorrow, next week or next month brings.” Both us as wedding professionals being like, “I don’t know when is the next time I’m going to work in an event.” I don’t know the next time I’m going to be able to party at a wedding with some of my favorite people and to be able to go, “We have this vision to either stare longingly at from afar or cling onto if we find ourselves a lot closer to it because it is crazy. At least having something to look at, it gives you a point of focus.

Aaron: You started the analogy, so that snowballed.

Jamie: We’ve touched on this several times already. It is known that finances are correlated directly with relationship success. With the changes in the economic climate, many couples both engaged and wedding professionals are experiencing a tighter budget than ever before. I know that’s us for sure. What steps can couples experiencing lean financial times do to keep their relationships strong?

Couples can grow apart if they don’t have an aligned vision. Click To Tweet

Jocelyn: I know as you were reading it, I was thinking many different directions we could take this. That’s when the vision for sure comes into play. What is going to be in alignment with our vision because we believe that your vision is always funded, but most people are trying to make money to survive, get by, or get whatever they’re comfortable with?

Aaron: You’re allocating funds to too many different things rather than if you brought it towards your vision moving forward, all of a sudden you have a bigger influx of capital to put into it. You’re basically diversifying it into too many places that aren’t moving the vision forward.

Jocelyn: in addition to the vision and what Aaron shared, to get a little bit more granular but also some mindset pieces. It’s focusing on instead of cutting expenses, many people in these down economies go, “How can we decrease all the spending?” We’re big advocates of slash the things that don’t matter, that don’t align with your vision, but also from a mindset perspective focus on making more. What have you put more of your attention instead of cutting and we got to get by and let’s hunker down? Focus on how you can earn more, whether that is with your job. We had an event and had the guest on. We talked about find ways to add more value to your employer. If you are an employee, how can you double down on the value you add so you get a raise or a promotion? If you own your own business, how can you add even more value so that you bring them more clients and make more money? You can put your attention in one of those two places. Why not focus on making more?

Aaron: From a vendor perspective, rather than saying, “I have to cut my prices,” keep your prices the same and add more value. Who can you collaborate within the space to basically create a bundle or different offerings where all of a sudden, you’re offering something that’s more valuable and you don’t have to cut your prices? I love that Jocelyn says that all too often in the business space, we think there’s one pie, everyone gets a slice, and then it’s gone. When you collaborate, create relationships, create new value, new offerings, you have a bigger mold. You create more pie. It’s not that there’s a limited supply, it’s that you have to think differently, collaborate and you create more opportunities.

Jamie: What you guys are saying though, inadvertently, that has been something that Heather and I have had the conversation about for quite some time. How can you diversify? How can you expand and get creative? We’ve talked about affiliate links and collaboration. Inadvertently, what you’re saying is a great thing to focus on during this time is figuring out different pies and getting into different spaces. Thanks for shouting out a lot of what we’ve wanted to share with vendors on how you can diversify at this time and even at any point in time.

Heather: We’re all in the collaboration camp here. I want to make sure people know where to find you guys because we know you’re busy people. I want to make sure people can get in touch with you guys, get your book and start diving a little deeper into what you all are talking about with the vision and whatnot.

Jocelyn: TheNewPowerCouple.com is where people can get a free hard copy of our book. They cover shipping. We’re super social on Instagram, so we’re @Meet_TheFreemans and that’s the best place. We respond to every DM. We add a lot of great content and resources on there if couples are reading. If vendors are reading looking for a partnership, we have many different ways that couples can start with a course or coaching. We have affiliate bonuses. There are amazing ways that we can support both the couples and the vendors reading, online courses, private work, but the book is a great place to start.

Heather: I love that you guys are open to partnering up with people in this industry. It’s powerful to have a resource like you guys to turn to for the couples who need it that are working with us. Thank you for your time and for being such amazing people who are helping couples everywhere. I love it.