I have the one. The only, Mr. Dawson.
I'm so excited to be on the Workwoman podcast.
It has been a while. It's been, I think, almost three months since you've been on the podcast, and on the last episode, you were so excited to be with me on these podcasts. I love it. Why does it take so long to get you back? Because we're.
Busy. We're all over. We're in seven cities in ten days. What you need to do is you need to learn to do these on the airplane where we can have it. Be quiet. Because that's where usually where you and I are spending our time talking because airplanes.
Have no background noise. Yeah, exactly. They're super, super quiet. All right, so for today's topic, I think this is a juicy one because I know people are curious about just wedding stuff in general. I was just telling Brandon that when you type in Natalie Workman on Google, the third search is wedding. And I'm not even married. I've never had a wedding, but it's just a very popular thing that people like, want to know about and want to.
I want to know about it.
Have an understanding. Yeah. I'm. This is also my update to Brandon as to what's happening with the wedding.
This is an opportunity for all of us to hear the update. We were supposed to get married last year, and I watched you put all the preparation, and we were so excited about it. And then all of a sudden, we had to call it off because of Covid, because of Covid, and we lost our destination and people were not allowed to get in the country and stuff. I watched you handle that like an absolute, like solid like like she she just said, you know what? There's a
reason for this. We're just going to push it off a year and we're going to deal with it in a year. You didn't let it destroy all the good stuff, because we had such a great business year last year, and you just were like, I'm not going to let it ruin the good stuff that we have going.
This really has been wedding planning from hell, and I keep telling Brandon that I feel very lucky that it's me as a bride who is going through this, because I honestly think that most, most brides that I know and most people in a similar position, uh.
Yeah, they'd be freaking out. Trust me.
Just like. yeah, really upset or emotional. And I think I'm, I feel very fortunate to not be so tied up. And that's taken a lot of I mean, you.
Literally went and got fitted for your dress with your girlfriends when you took off from New York last year.
Yeah, I was, so I just went to get fitting with the guys are so much to talk about, but I just went to do some dress fittings, my first round of dress fittings last week, and they told me that I was the last weekend of fittings in New York for wedding dresses, after or before the pandemic.
Well, you landed and then everything got shut down.
Everything New York shut down two days later. So yeah, this wedding and what we want to talk about is a giving you guys an update, because this really has been like the wedding from hell. Um, the wedding planning from hell. The wedding will be beautiful. Don't you worry. The wedding will be beautiful. But the planning really has been stressful. And so how do you manage that stress? I want to give you some of the tips that
I have learned through this process. And how do you continue to focus on making it the right thing, which is it has nothing to do with the party and has everything to do with ensuring that the relationship that you're in, like I know that I'm demonstrating to him through every single decision that's being made, the type of partner that I'm going to be, and if I'm stressed out and worried about it and frantic like that ruins our dynamic and the whole thing, the whole freaking thing
is for us to be together and make this decision for the rest of our.
100%, and to be around people we love and we care about. We were supposed to get married October of last year, and so things changed even in our personal lives. Like somebody that was in the wedding, that is one of my best friends. We don't have much of a relationship in the last year. All of a sudden we're getting up closer to the wedding and I'm like, I don't necessarily want that person in my wedding because they're not supporting us. They're not involved with us. They're not
interested in us even though we're interested in them. This is somebody I love near and dear for 15 years, and they've chose not to have any communication or any involvement in our life, won't respond as to why. And so I told Natalie I was like, look, as much as I love everything that person stands for, I don't want them in my wedding party. I don't want a drainer, or I don't want to have someone that's not contributing to our life. And so it was a hard conversation
to say, hey, I'm doing a player change. Yeah.
And I think that that would be the first tip that I would have is invite the people that you actually want there, even if it's an uncomfortable conversation. Right now, I feel very little stress about the event in general because I'm not trying to impress anybody. I'm not trying to make it about anybody besides us and the people that we're actually making it about, which really is our family. But none of our friends or people like we just our true friends, as many, our true.
Friends are going to be there. Yeah.
And they're going to have a blast.
And our our true friends that can't be there. There's a reason they can't be there. We're not going to hold it against them either. But one thing is for certain, the people that are there, we are going to have a remarkable time. It's going to be a great experience.
Yes. So the tip.
Celebrating.
I know it's been a while since you've done a podcast, but we share our experience and then we share a tip like something that they can use. That's not about us that they can apply to their lives.
Oh, perfect. That's why this is your podcast.
So the thing that you would apply in that situation is like, seriously, only invite the people that you actually want to celebrate you guys. And if you haven't seen them in a while, and even if it's been a while, but if you don't really have a strong relationship with the person, don't invite them. And if you invite those people,
that's what's actually going to create the anxiousness. Like, I don't feel anxious about everything that we're about to talk about, because I know that it's just the people that freaking love us and support us and are only there for the two of us. If I would have invited and made some different decisions for other people that I felt like, oh, I feel obligated, or I need to make sure that they're well taken care of. I would feel pressure right now as shit falls apart, which it will and it does.
And it has. Trust me, we get a new text every few days of the shit falling apart.
So from a shit falling apart. Let's let's cancelling.
Last year's wedding. Cancelling, resetting this year's wedding.
Yes. Resetting this year's wedding for the date, and then all of a sudden. Hold on. You can't say too much about this because we have certain things that we can and can't say because of legal requirements. We were notified that we no longer have a venue for our welcome party, and that the hotel that we were going to have said welcome party at is no longer operating for the moment. So our room bloc got cancelled. The venue. We have to.
And the city happens to be unlike any normal time. The whole city happens to be completely full, sold out. We picked a period of time where normally people aren't there yet and everything is sold out.
Everything is sold out. So the day has now changed because on the original day on the ninth, we had a plan that it was going to be the welcome party and then the wedding on the 10th. The next day, the ninth. There is not a single venue that we can use, so we've moved it to the eighth. Now the rehearsal dinner will have to happen on the ninth. And we still at this moment, just like just for
some context, so people really understand. It's August 16th, the wedding wedding's in less than two months in October, and we don't.
Have a venue and.
We don't have a venue.
For. We lost our.
Beach. So now let's talk about the actual wedding. You'd think like, oh, not having a welcome party venue. That's not the worst. Like, that's not wedding planning from hell. Uh, this past week, we decided to go, uh, to New York because I, like the genius I am, decided to pick out the dresses for the wedding in New York. And I didn't think through the fact that the fittings have to happen in New York. And so we flew
to New York. There was a couple other things that we were doing for business, so it actually worked out perfectly. But I am just like, finally in what I would, I guess, describe as like bridal bliss.
She was. So can I tell you? She was like, you know what? When we were landing, she's like, I'm actually I had disengaged because you had such a great time with your friends and your bridesmaids last year, but because everything got pushed off. So we were laying and you're like, it's just hitting me. It's just hitting me. I'm getting so excited again because we've been so busy and we land. I don't even think we were on the ground.
No, I had just gone through the fitting, so I had just finally like. And the dress. I was a little nervous as the dress. Still, what I'm going to like is it going to fit? And I finally I was by myself. I did these fittings and like I made this comment and I was like, I feel like such an adult. Like this is something that an adult does. And I know I'm clearly an adult. But anyway, it was just like this moment, this moment.
You had allowed yourself to really get excited because of all pushing it off.
I've had to create some distance because it's by nature an emotional thing. And so I finally feel like, wow, this is all coming together, and isn't this going to be fun? And we're finally having these conversations, and I get.
Together with her and we're you're explaining to me all this experience and how exciting it is and how exciting it was. And your phone goes ding ding. And you looked at it and you go, no freaking way.
Yeah. So we no longer still to this day, have a venue for the wedding.
There was a storm and it destroyed the beach and sucked it off of the cliff line, so there's no freaking beach.
Of beach has been removed because where.
We were doing our actual wedding.
We have a lot of connections to this place, which is why we scheduled the wedding anyway. So again, as of today, we we don't have a venue for either events for this wedding that is supposed to be happening in two months. And granted, we honestly have the most incredible planners. I would highly recommend them. Countdown events have been remarkable throughout this whole process, but at the moment we're still like calling hotels and trying to figure out we have.
Friends calling us, saying our room blocks have been canceled. We can't get other rooms, where are we staying? Where are we staying happening? Is it going to happen? Is it not going to happen? We have family calling every day and texting. Is this really going to happen? Is it not going to happen? What do we tell our friends?
It's chaos. I've been able to send out invites because on the invites that has we just changed.
The dates and the.
Venues changed the venue. So long story Longer. It has been a bit of a clusterfuck kind of clusterfuck, but we're still getting married and this is the decision. At some point, you just have to make the decision like what matters to you. And in that moment, I felt like a little bit of a gut punch because I finally felt excited and then was back to, oh my God, here we go again. However, when you have these moments, you have to prioritize what is actually important. So for me,
is it important? Is being on this beach? The most important thing or is getting married to him this October the most important thing? Like that's really the decision. And in an instant I can make that decision. It's us getting married this October. We do not want to continue to push this off. We don't want to create uncertainty with our family and our friends. We're making the commitment to get married.
And no matter where we do it at and no matter how we do it, you don't get to cry. You almost cried a minute ago. I know.
But you don't get to cry. I'm not crying, okay?
But I can get you to cry if I just. Well, if my eyes welled up a little bit. So. So here's the thing, though. I promise that no matter what happens, we're going to get married and we're going to enjoy whoever happens to be with us, no matter where we happen to be, no matter what we happen to be doing, and no matter how we happen to be doing it. Because right now we don't have a fucking clue where anything is happening. And we're and we're and we're we're seven weeks out.
I guess my second tip on this would be, I want to give permission to people to go through this logical process, but also feel emotional, like it is okay to be upset and to be frustrated. However, if you really can think about, okay, who do I want to be in this process? Do I want to be the person that's so freaked out over this one weekend of my lifetime? No, I don't want to be that person. I could work myself to be that person. But is that really who I want to be in this next
chapter of my life? Absolutely not. I'm just going to roll with things. If you're going through something similar, if it's a wedding or anything else that is important to you while shit is falling apart everywhere, how can you consciously say, I'm not going to be reactionary. I'm not going to send a text message that sends things sideways.
I'm not going to engage in a way that isn't beneficial to set the example for the people around you, but also to define how you respond to stressful situations.
I think that's the resilience. What I love about you the most is your resilience.
Well thank you. Yeah.
I need you to stop talking or else you're gonna make me cry.
Well, because. Because I want you to cry. I want to I mean, I love it when you cry.
I'm not going to do it.
I'll cry. Look at my eyes. I look like I'm crying. Because the truth is, is that I just want to marry her. Like I could give a shit. Like. Like, let's. Let's just get married. I want to get married. I love her right now. Right now. Here's my bottle of Pellegrino. Keep it forever. We have so much and so many great things going on in our life that this is a celebration.
And this is something that Elena also talks about in her book, Build an Empire, where if you're so wrapped up in this wedding and I think this is more of a female thing than a.
Male thing.
I'm going to get into this in just a second here. But if you're so caught up in the wedding, what you're actually not thinking about is how to make a future plan with this person. And if this moment is so important to you, and you're starting to feel all of this stress and anxiousness around it because you're making it so important. Yes, it's important. But then how do you figure out on the back end, like what's going to pull you forward and create the marriage that you
want to have with this person? For us, we have a ten x 360 like our our honeymoon.
We're going for.
Days. We're doing our honeymoon. So so this is no bullshit because all these changes and everything, we're pushing dates around. And the next question we asked each other is, look, we're taking a couple weeks off for ourselves. We've been working every single week, every single weekend now for almost 40 months or whatever. We were like, okay, we're going to take that time and do our honeymoon. We're so excited about it. And then we both were sitting there going,
how long is our honeymoon? We're like, oh, we're going to do four days, and we're like, where are we going to be at? Oh, we're going to be in this part of Mexico. We're like, let's put a ten x360 on the end of it. We're going.
To put our mastermind.
On the end of it, and then we're like, well, wait, because of the wedding weekend, we need a 360 in Miami.
And so so we.
Literally are.
Going to come honeymoon short.
So we could come here because you know what? We really do love. We love building business together and we love being together. And we love working hard together. And as much as we want to go on that honeymoon and be able to, we literally said, how many days are we going to be able to relax before we start getting nervous? We need to go back to work.
Well, and it's.
Not even just that. It's the impact that we're creating in the life that we're building together. And this would be I'm not married yet, but my future self marital advice is okay. These business owners that we get the opportunity to work with and that we get the opportunity to create events around like they actually need us. They
need us to show up to this. They need us to help them with their people, challenges and family dynamics because the business is broken, or they need us to understand from a financial standpoint what the plan looks like so that they can exit the family member that they've been trying to work through. And so for us this ten x 360, we're like, this is going to pull us forward after the wedding. But it's also what fulfills
our life together. And so if you're in the middle of wedding planning or if you're just in a rut with your significant other, how can you put something on the calendar that pulls you forward through the thing that you're excited about, that is in alignment with how you're building your life and your priorities together?
Because we spend so much time with so many business owners that are struggling at different points in their business, it could be struggling professionally, could be struggling personally, it could be struggling financially, it could be family things. It could be kids working in the business with parents. We get pulled into everyone's struggle because that's where our expertise is. And I think you and I started having a conversation
about if we can't handle our shit in adversity. How do we have the confidence to help others when they're in adversity? And so we made a conscious choice of we're going to be the best version of ourselves, despite what's thrown at us, because we want to be the example to the people that we're helping be the best version of themselves. And that's where we're sitting there going, okay, so we're going to go have a remarkable week getting married.
We're going to go have a remarkable honeymoon with some very special friends that we're bringing along with us, because we want to spend time with them, and then we're going to go right back to work, and we're going to go and create a life, the life we choose to create. And we spend most of our time in chaos helping other people through chaos. So if we can't manage our own chaos, how the hell can we help somebody manage theirs?
We're chaos managers.
We're co chaos managers. Um, with that. So I think this is like the stuff people want to know about the behind the scenes of planning a wedding. I think one thing people ask other people often and I wish.
I would.
Have known is around the involvement that he has in the wedding planning process, and I would just like to be very clear that, uh, he you think you just have, like, these romantic ideas of the person being, like, so interested and you both are trying things and picking out the flowers. Brandon, I don't think you have. You sat through one wedding meeting at this point. Not that I have a bunch of them, but I don't think you've been to one.
Well, I here's what I know from a man's perspective. You're going to pick what you want. You're going to pick how you want it to be. You're going to pick the colors. You're going to pick the flowers. You're going to pick the location.
But like as a.
Woman, you think that the person is going to be really interested, even though I'm going to pick it, of course I'm going to pick.
It. Yeah, so I don't. So I know better than to get in your way of having an opinion, but.
You think that.
You'd be more interested. And I just want to be clear. It's not like you're that interested in the wedding.
I'm really interested. I can't wait for it.
But I'm not going to get interested. But I'm not.
Going to get between your decisions and my opinions, because I'm a smart enough man to know that that doesn't.
Work either.
Right now to say that.
Yeah, just.
I'm trying to.
Help. I'm trying to help your interest. And there's not a lot of interest.
There is interest. Can I tell you I'm going to help your female listeners? I'm going to give them a secret. I'm going to give them a secret.
Can you give it to me, too?
I'm so curious.
I'm going to give it to.
You, and I'm going to give it to them. Any smart man does not throw their opinions between the desires and wants of the person they love. While they're planning the wedding, all that's going to do is add stress resistance, friction, anxiety into the equation. And this is one time I don't need to be right. I want her to be right. I want her to be happy, and I want her to be okay with me taking a back seat, because normally I drive decisions. But, but and because, you know,
I'm the man in the relationship. I tell you what to do. This is all bullshit. But the truth is, I'm not putting myself between whatever she wants for the wedding and my opinion, because that isn't going to create.
Clearly, you feel a little defensive right now.
Yeah, because.
You're putting me on the spot on a.
Podcast.
I'm defending every man who allows and takes a back seat so that the woman can get exactly what she wants.
Great.
Well, all the ladies understand exactly what just happened here. And could he be. Could he show 25% more interest? Yes. Is it okay that he doesn't? Yes, because he is very busy doing other things. And I am thankful that he is busy doing those other things.
Can we be.
Fair, though? I'm spending a lot of energy being interested in financing a big part of it.
Well, yeah, which is what.
I was going to talk about. So budgeting. But I think the second biggest question that people have is like, well, how does the dynamic work when it comes to making spending decisions around the wedding?
And I think, how does that work? Well.
The way that it's worked for us is we set a budget, and I've gone significantly over budget because of all of these changes that keep taking place. And what is great about you, however not necessary. Like I go, I waffle in between, like canceling the whole thing because I think the whole, the whole expense is ridiculous. And in going and on the other hand, creating this amazing, remarkable event that.
You don't know that anybody's going to show up to, or we're going to have a beach to go to or anything else. So it's.
Kind of like.
I really have like logically worked my way out of like needing to have this, like outrageous wedding.
However, it's going to be outrageous, it'll be.
Beautiful and it'll be spectacular. But from a budgeting standpoint, I think if I was giving somebody tips around this, it would be to figure out what you want to spend and what you're willing, like the percentage of how much you're willing to go over, because it's kind of like a house, like you will end up going over.
And you might as well.
Acknowledge that on the front end. So you're not adding stress and complaining or bitching. Set your budget. Give yourself a 20%, 25% wiggle room. All I'm going to say is there's just no value in creating stress. And that's one thing that I like. I try not to say, oh, well, what about this or that? Because I want it to be perfect. I set the budget with you and you're doing the best job you can to work within the budget.
But I don't want to have conflict leading up to the wedding, and I don't want to have conflict afterwards. And for some of you, you might say, well, that's easy for you to do because you guys have a lot of money or you make a lot of money. You got to be responsible for setting the bar. You know, like my kids got married on my property. They still had a budget and they operated within the budget. So what I would say to people is pick your lane, stay in your lane and don't don't use that stress.
If you go a little over a little under to distract from the whole reason you're you're going to marry in the first place. We want to live the rest of our life together. Yeah. And and.
And create confidence.
In each other.
And create confidence in each other as.
To what we're spending more on versus less on. The things that are important to me are like the experiences that are.
Created, the.
Party.
Yeah. So like I want a photographer there for the guests to be able to take photos so that we can have these photos for a very long time.
How about forever?
Forever and.
For my. Ever.
My ever is not very long. Your ever is a long time.
So stuff like this. Forever.
Ever. Another thing that we're spending on is like a house. To be able to have people in and be able to spend time like that was a that's a big expense in the P and L of our wedding. However, the balance sheet of our wedding, however, like that's really important to us, is to be able to be around the people that we are inviting there. As it's a destination wedding, we don't want to be going off into
separate places. So it's just stuff like that where I'm cutting things out that don't add value to the experience that's actually taking place. All right. What was else on my list? Is he interested? Venues. The last name okay. We've gone round and round about the last name.
No, she has, I haven't.
Well, I tried to convince him to change his last name.
Yeah, we knew that.
Wasn't going to work after the first.
Day?
I just here's my thing, guys. I love my last name. It has nothing.
I love her last name too.
It's not even like a I'm not trying to be like a woman and, like, keep my last name. It's just because I love the last name Workman. And I think it's a strong last name. My podcast, the show is called Work Woman because of my last name. And I've launching a book coming up. It has the word work in it because of my last name, and so that's been difficult for me. But I am going to become a Dawson. Did you know this? Have we talked about this?
No. We're finding this is this is this is like a breaking news, like I because here's the thing I don't have I think there's nothing wrong with you having Natalie Workman Dawson or like, I didn't.
Think.
I didn't even think there was anything wrong with with you keeping your your name. I like it because everyone calls me Mr. Workman. I mean, we check every restaurant.
This is used to. Not like this.
No, no, but I love it now because I'm, like, incognito. Whenever we walk up to a restaurant, they're like, Mr. Workman. Mrs. Workman will show you because she makes all the reservations. So everything is under workman. So we come.
In, really piss.
Him off.
I mean, like workman.
I mean, can't you use.
My open table account to book the reservation.
Which I never even had an open table account. I have no technology that has my name on it. She loads everything for me. Six years or seven years, however long I've been called Mr. Workman everywhere I go. And so the running joke in the Workman family is we're all workman's.
I like that. Well, so should I take my decision back?
No, because I'm not gonna. I'm not changing my last name. But you could be, should I?
You could.
I was just about to say I was gonna do Dawson, like.
Natalie Dawson's.
A gorgeous.
Name, but then.
I drop, so I drop work for.
Work. Well, why don't.
You, Natalie? Work?
I think it's Dawson. I'll keep you guys posted.
Like you'll know very shortly what the decision is, but I think it's confusing for other people. This has been. The deliberation is I could hyphenate the last name, but then, like, why not just, like, go all in on the relationship, like, I'm not hedging.
Well, I don't think.
The last name. I don't think not having the. Maybe this is a poll you should do with your audience. I personally don't feel attacked if you hyphenated your name. If you if it was Natalie, because you have a brand, you have a brand that you're building around work woman maybe you just keep the work woman brand in in. When people ask you where did you come up with that? You explain it to them, but I wouldn't be offended.
Okay, well, I'll keep you guys posted on this with that. This has been quite the. Well, thank.
You for having me on your show again. And and I hope that everyone that's listening to this realizes that shit happens, and it's how you choose to react to it that defines you as a person.
We would also love to see you at a ten x 360 event at the first, of course, ten x 360 event as a married couple.
And for those that were seeing at the wedding, we cannot wait to see you.
It is happening the weekend after the weekend of the 10th. So that is October.
17th, 18th.
17th and 18th. We're having a ten x 360 in Miami as the official.
And trust me.
Trust me, there will be a party there too.
Oh, there will for.
Sure be a party. How will you introduce me? My.
I don't know yet. You have to decide.
My wife, Mrs. Dawson. Yeah, crazy. If you're interested in that event, which you should be very interested. If you're a business owner, go to Cardone Ventures. Dot com forward slash ten x 360. And we would love to get you signed up.
And for all of those that we'll be seeing at our wedding, thank you for loving us. Oh.
Wow. Okay. Well we appreciate you guys. Thank you for listening. If you haven't already shared this episode, please do. And I can hardly wait to see you guys next week.
Thanks for having me on the work Woman show.
Hey. You're welcome.