10 Principles 10 Years of Marriage Helped Me Put into Practice for Entrepreneurial Success

Surprisingly, I have no jet-lag after traveling back from the Island of Sal in Cape Verde, West Africa through Lisbon, Portugal before landing in Newark, NJ and catching our flight back to Detroit, MI.

I've been home less than 24 hours since I started writing this piece to share because these principles are fresh on my mind. Dominique and I have spent the last week to ourselves, in deep reflection on the decade journey we've had married --- a total of 14 years together -- and the future we are committed to creating.

You see, our 10 Year Wedding Anniversary was July 20-21, 2023! We celebrate two days because we had a Ghanaian Traditional Wedding ceremony before the Church ceremony the next day. Culturally in Ghana, the church ceremony should not happen without the Ghanaian Traditional - where the dowry and other exchanges are made between both families.

Today, with a deep fresh of breath air, I can say, "we made it by God’s grace and at our pace!"

This is not a milestone for us, but for our entire family and legacy. It’s for the future we’re creating beyond generations we’ll ever know or see.

This covenant, our marriage, is shaken up the old and bringing forth a new.

What a journey we’ve been on. From meeting him at a business conference (go figure right?) in Los Angeles at 19, courting for four years and getting married within two weeks at the ages of 23 and 27, moving from the East coast to the midwest within the first 2 years of marriage, leaving everything behind...

..We only know today why the ushering to get married gave us peace even in the chaos of the unknown back then.

We don’t have it perfect but we have purpose.

This divine purpose has been a guiding light on our journey together. But, if I may, there are 10 distinct principles that we practice daily that has not only gotten us to this milestone so far, but we use in our entrepreneurial journey. I am sharing them with you today as a part of our celebration. I am not a marriage expert and I don't claim to be, but I think I can lend my voice to this in relation to 10 years of marriage and 10 years in business.

We've gotten so many questions over the years like:

"Why did you get married so young?"

"You guys still like each other after going into business together?"

I haven't always had the language to articulate all that we've experienced over the years and how we've been able to navigate life young and married. But, I think these principles will shed some light into our consciousness.

Note, these principles are in no particular order. Also note, different seasons required different emphasis on one as opposed to the other, but collectively these 10 principles put into practice has helped us move deeper into purpose personally and professionally.

1. Labor with the vision. In other words, exercise delayed gratification. For example, believe it or not, our ten year anniversary trip to Portugal and Cape Verde, is the first trip Dominique and I have planned for ourselves. While we've celebrated in different ways over the years, all of our earnings have gone into our children's education, self-development and transformational programs, real estate investents, and building businesses, etc. We've mastered the notion of laboring with a vision. And while the next decade will include more trips because we've been able to achieve certain goals, we know that there is always something that is going to require us to labor. The journey is never clear, but the vision is. If you can learn to labor or dance with the vision, you won't give up so easily when the journey gets blurry -- hard. For Naomi and I, we're in our 8th year of business at The VGC Group. The vision has evolved in so many ways, requiring at times, more sacrifice than benefits. There was a time in year 2 or 3 when Naomi told me that if we didn't hit a certain goal in revenue to generate personal income, that she would really have to consider getting a job elsewhere. I encouraged her that we could do it within a year and we did -- and haven't looked back.
2. The man is the head and the woman is the neck. Like in any relationship, everyone has their part to play. This principle has always been the posture of our engagement as husband and wife -- and it works very well for us. My mother-in-love, Elise, told me this early on in our marriage and its wisdom I have held very close to. As the man of our home, he (Dom) is the head. But as the woman of the home, I know that the head cannot move without the neck. -- me. I've taken this to mean for me that it is my duty to support the head of our household literally. It is my duty to hold him up, help direct him in his blindspots, be a resting place and so much more. And vice versa, Dom ensures that as the head is covering his body, his family, leading us in the way we should go and more. What I love so much about this principle is the way in which Dom respects me as the neck of the relationship. He respects highly my institution, my spirit and how it leads my mindset and the choices that I make and so much more. I use this analogy amongst different departments within my companies. It's important to know that one cannot do their job well without the other. That's the point. The whole body is connected and it's important that you do your part to function at 100% so that someone else can also function at 100%
3. Same team mentality. Very similar concept to above, we have a same team mentality that we got from one of our closest friends. You see, any time we are in a conversation that seems to pull us out of alignment, one of us will say the phrase: "same team" and it immediately breaks state so that we can realign. In both my companies, I use this phrase to engage various team members.
4. Break state. If you are around me enough, you will hear this phrase often. However way it needs to be done, identify something that you can do or say that will completely help you to reset. I mentioned the phrase same team above as an example. Breaking state for my husband and I also means going for walks, listening to gospel music around the house, taking the children to the park or if we can sneak a getaway, we do that too. Life gets heavy. Running businesses gets heavy. Meeting payroll for team members month after month, year after year gets heavy. When we notice team members are becoming stressed, loosing excitement in their voice and posture on team calls, we put them on an immediate sabbatical so that they can break state. They always come back refreshed and grateful.
5. Be careful of "un communicated expectations". This is a big one and one of my favorites. I can't go into it all in this post. But, simply said, I have found it more useful to over communicate than to not communicate at all. Most arguments are caused because of un communicated expectations your partner is totally un aware of no matter how long or how well you think you know the person. I am personally very big at writing out tasks in our project management system to our team members. And my tasks include video screen recordings (I use Vimeo to do this) because I leave no room for you to attempt to guess what I am communicating to you. I am going to write it out and visually show you to limit the chance of error or opportunity not to meet my expectations. This is also because our team is global. From the US to countries in Africa and beyond, our team members speak different languages and operate in different timezones. We need to lessen the chances of a breakdown because of un communicated expectations.

...Ok, so I really didn't intend for this piece to be this long. Honestly, my hands are getting tired. Maybe it's the jet-lag I told you I didn't have earlier. I think I am starting to feel it now. Eh.

I'll share the last 5 with you in a subsequent post in a few days. Let me know how you find these first few principles with a comment below.

In the meantime....

To our tribe that has prayed for and with us, this celebration is for you.

Deeply grateful for the journey. Our prayer is that our example can bring hope and light to your own walk. Understand that God’s grace is sufficient for His will for your life.

Blessed anniversary to the man who made theeee one and only W.E. Da’Cruz, the hinge to my door and more.

I love you. I love us. Cheers to many more decades of God’s perfect will. May our assignment be a blessing unto your life as we share our journey.

Until my next piece, I would be remiss not to share that we're working on increasing our sales at The Mushroom Angel Company. We have to rebuild the momentum after having to take a step back and do an overhaul on branding and packaging. We've made it to that milestone, but we have yet another >>> share the good gospel of mushrooms with the world.

Please share our link with family and friends. Use this code FRIEND15 to get 15% OFF any order over $75. We thank you so much and are taking note of everyone supporting us on this journey. We appreciate you.

If you love all the design and development work on The Mushroom Angel Company, inquire with us at The VGC Group about our work in tech.

For more on me and my work, visit my personal website.