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 📍 To make it official, the fucking end. Well, except for the penis on the next page.

Uh, you can't see it No ... but there's a, there's a penis in the, in the book. You can't see it? Well, take my word for it.

Oh

my God, , that's a small penis

I mean, it's not to scale.

  You've built the business, you're crushing it in your career, you've scaled your impact. But are you winning at home?

Welcome to the 200% Marriage podcast. We're Meredith and Craig, and we're here to help you kill that domestic drag and turn your partner into your most elite teammate.

From Russian taxi mishaps, to hailstorms on the summit, we're sharing the raw and real stories and tactical drills you need to move out of roommate-ville and into your 200% life.

So grab your gear, it's time to build an unstoppable team. Let's dive in.

  Welcome back to another episode of the 200% Marriage podcast with Meredith and Craig. We've been reading our book, The 200% Marriage: Your Winning Playbook to Be an Unstoppable Team. We've been reading the chapter that we each wrote, and, uh, chapter 33. We're at the, we're at the end of this journey. Um-

Sad.

I've enjoyed this journey

It's been fun, but we're at chapter 33. I happened to, to write chapter 33, so I will read it, and it's aptly titled The Beginning. Chapter 33: The Beginning. Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there, Will Rogers. Here we are at the beginning. Sure, this is technically the last chapter of this book, but reading a book doesn't make you an expert.

Writing one does. Just kidding. #NotSoHumbleBrag. What I'm saying is, even though you've read the book, you're still at the beginning of this new relationship path, and in the beginning, you're a beginner. Just like when you were learning to walk, you stumbled, you fell, you cried, you got back up, and eventually, you were into all sorts of shit, and your parents had to start putting up gates and plugging sockets to keep you alive.

You learned to walk, but you didn't always know how. You didn't beat yourself up for falling. You simply got up and tried again This is no different. You're learning new skills. You're learning how to walk in your relationship. So have the same level of grace for yourself as you did then when you were getting your wobbly-ass legs under you, because you're basically doing it again.

And have the same grace for your teammate. Allow yourselves to be beginners and learn together. Support each other on this journey. That starts with the five commitments. If you can make and keep the five commitments in your marriage, everything changes. We're going to quickly, we're going to quickly recap them here because if you're anything like us, sometimes you forget.

I need to be reminded of something at least 145 times before it really lands. Ask Mer. The first commitment is to the 200% marriage mindset. Everything in your life is your responsibility. That includes your marriage. That's empowering. Own it. Take total responsibility for the state of your marriage, all of it.

The good, do more of it. The not so good, quit that shit immediately. Be the leader. Go first. Watch your teammate come along on the journey and begin taking 100% responsibility too. When you have two committed kick-ass humans acting with a 200% marriage mindset, you have the foundation for a thriving, unstoppable, kick-ass marriage.

And since you're one half of that kick-ass marriage, you're a pretty important piece of the puzzle. The second commitment is the commitment to yourself. You cannot give or receive love more deeply than you love yourself. You can't pour from an empty cup. Remember your traumas and all the bad shit you've gone through aren't necessarily your fault.

Well, maybe some of it is. I know I've made some pretty bad decisions and didn't always do myself any favors, but most of it isn't. Whether it is or it isn't though, it's your responsibility to become aware of your own shit and deal with it. When you have two people doing that work, healing, awakening, and bringing their best selves to the marriage, you're ready for the third commitment.

And commitment three is the commitment to your team and your teammate. You are now part of something bigger. It's not just about you anymore. That can be a tough pill to swallow. I know because I fought it, hard. But then I finally realized it's about the team, the team, the team But when I finally realized it's about the team, the team, the team, everything shifted.

I went from playing a one-person selfish game to a two-person collaborative one, and the game got easier. When you both show up for the team, the team wins, and when the team wins, you both win You win together and you lose together. And let's be real, winning is way more fun. And what a coincidence, commitment four happens to be the commitment to fun and adventure.

When things get hard and the responsibilities stack up, fun is usually the first to go. But fun isn't optional. So many people treat it as a nice to have, but they're flat out wrong. Fun and adventure are must-haves. They deepen your bond, spark joy, and create a positive-- and create positive-- and create a positive momentum avalanche for your future

This leads to the fifth commitment, the commitment to the future. What's this all for? To build your big kickass life together. When you're both building toward What's this all for? To build your big badass life together. When you're both building toward that shared vision, everything gets easier. Dream work makes the team work.

The little day-to-day annoyances don't derail you anymore. You both know what you're building toward. You start giving each other the benefit of the doubt. You get more empathetic. You trust that both of you are doing the best you can to create the dream life you've designed together. Before you know it, you'll look up and hardly recognize the incredible life you've built.

You'll be overflowing with love and gratitude, and nothing attracts more love and good energy than gratitude. The more you love and are grateful for the good things in your life, the more good things you get. Doesn't that sound cool? And it all starts with your marriage. That's why we do what we do. We want you to have the marriage of your dreams because we know how extraordinary life becomes when your marriage is the engine driving you toward all your goals.

When your marriage is thriving, you've got energy available to do all the things you want in this life. If it's struggling, even putting on pants can feel like a chore. Whether you're thriving or struggling right now, here's what we've learned. You are exactly where you're supposed to be. That means you're meant to be here.

All the stuff you've lived through made you who you are and got you here. Those experiences were necessary. You wouldn't have been dealt that hand if you weren't capable of playing and winning with it. If your marriage doesn't look or feel how you want right now, that doesn't have to be forever. It starts with a decision, a decision that today is the day everything changes.

Today is the day you stop settling for less than you deserve. Today is the day you decide to become the next better version of you. Today is the day you decide to be the leader you've been waiting for to transform your relationship Getting clear on what you want in a relationship is step one. Then ask yourself, "Who is the kind of person that has the marriage I want?

What qualities do they have? What do they do? Who are they?" Then ask yourself, "Am I that person?" If not, decide to become them. When you become that person, you'll naturally do what that kind of person does. And when you do that long enough, voila, you'll have that dream relationship. It's that simple. But simple doesn't mean easy.

Please don't confuse the two. It's a simple concept, but implementing it is not easy. It takes work. Anyone who tells you it's easy is trying to sell you their five easy steps to get everything you've ever dreamed of. It doesn't work like that. It is going to take effort, but if you're ready to step into the next best version of yourself and do the work, you will have the marriage you want.

And when you have that thriving marriage where you feel loved, supported, respected, and valued, you gain a new level of energy. That energy becomes fuel for energy... That energy becomes fuel for every other dream in your life. You'll stop feeling exhausted from fighting battles at home and just trying to survive in your marriage.

You'll have the power, time, and energy to build your career, your health, your wealth, whatever you want. Will it take work? You're damn right it will. A lot of it. Will it be uncomfortable? Also, yes, if you're doing it right. But the moments of short-term discomfort pale in comparison to a lifetime of long-term dysfunction.

Most people trade short-term discomfort for long-term dysfunction, sometimes without even consciously realizing it. They let fear win. They tell themselves the dysfunction is tolerable, but it never works. Ignoring problems doesn't make them disappear. Wishing them away doesn't work either. Trust me, I've tried.

It didn't work. Don't be like old me or most people. Most people don't have the relationship or the life you want. If you want something different, you have to do something different, and doing something different is always easier with support. If you knew what to do, you would have done it by now. It's critical to find the right person who has what you're looking for, someone you can go to to ask questions and who can help you avoid the potholes on your road of life.

When Mer and I left our nine-to-five job to pursue our passion, we didn't know what we didn't know, but we did know we needed help. Entrepreneurship is hard, and quite frankly, we didn't have a clue what we were doing. We'd both always been coaches or had coaches, so we looked for someone who had already walked the path we wanted to walk.

The first couple of tries didn't go so well. In fact, they set us back. We lost a lot of money and learned some painful lessons. We worked with people who weren't who they claimed to be. Those hard lessons were both costly and valuable. We didn't give up. Eventually, we found the right person, our friend Greg.

You met him in the forward. He'd taken the same path, done the same work, and shared our values. Working with him turned everything around. It saved us years of trial and error. Coaching turns decades into days. Coaching turns decades into days. Unstoppable teams know this, and the fact that you're reading this book means you already know it too.

You've got the playbook in your hands. Now it's time for execution. If you've made it this far, you're ready to put everything you've learned into practice. Huge fist bump. Do you realize how rare that is? Most people buy books, read a chapter or two, let it collect dust, or prop a table with it. You, my friend, are built different.

You stuck with us through a few hundred pages of weird stories, confessions, poop jokes, and marriage hacks. That says something about you. You are our people. A little weird too, and we love that. Weird is good. Embrace the weird. It also means you're not like most people. You're willing to put the reps.

You're willing to put in the reps to do what most people won't, and that means you'll have, and that means you'll have what most people don't, a marriage that feels like lightning in your veins, not a slow march to roommate-ville. Nobody accidentally stumbles into a thriving marriage. It doesn't happen by luck.

Communication skills, bulletproof trust, mind-blowing intimacy, and endless fun can't just be magically downloaded into your relationship like the latest iPhone update. That's not how this works. If it did, we'd all be billionaires with abs. Thriving marriages happen because two people decide to be all in.

They decide they're worth it. They choose to get uncomfortable in the name of growth, and that's precisely what you've done. By reading this book and walking through the five commitments, you've already shifted your trajectory. You've built awareness, and once you have awareness, you can change anything.

Awareness is the spark. Consistency is the fire. Mentorship and community are the gasoline You don't have to do it alone. That's why we coach, why we host retreats, and why we share our weird stories with the world. Because when couples committed to fun, growth, and love come together, lives change, families change, legacies change.

If this book lit something up inside you, if you nodded along, laughed at our failures, or even ugly cried at times, then you're already part of our world. We've got room for you on this team. So here's your challenge. Just do one small thing in the next 24 hours. Send your teammate a flirty text. Ask them a check-in question at bedtime.

Hide a cardboard penis. 10 out of 10 recommend. Finally block that hour for your weekly marriage meeting. Commit to and actually do the 200% marriage challenge. It's the bonus in the next section of this book. One action starts momentum, then another, then another. When you're ready to dig...

When you're ready to dive deeper, build unstoppable momentum, and join a community of badass couples building big lives together, you know where to find us. No pressure, just an open invitation. Because we believe in you, we believe in relationships like yours, and we know you deserve every ounce of joy, love, connection, laughter, coitus, and adventure life has to offer.

You're not settling for fine, you're building fire together, and together you're fucking unstoppable. Now go celebrate because this is the beginning of the best chapter of your love story yet special bonus here. Bonus, 200% Mer's challenge. "Great things are done by a series of small things brought together," Vincent van Gogh If you're digging the books vibe, why not continue this wild adventure together for the next 33 days? We'll send you a daily anecdote and a challenge to deepen your connection Straight to your inbox.

It's based on small hinges swing big doors principle. In other words, the little things are the big things. The challenge will be quick, designed for busy people to do in like five minutes. In the spirit of full disclosure, one takes 33 minutes, but also one takes only six seconds, so suck it up. I mean, you just read an entire book, for fuck's sake.

Congratulations again, by the way. You can definitely do this. We'll share a bunch of stories and specific tactics that didn't make it into the book, so you get an idea of what you're signing up for, but at the same time, not really. Here are a few of the subject lines coitus ritual, red-headed stepchild, creepy little wingman, sore butt, slimy little orbs, moves like Jagger, the sun remains undefeated, nightmare fuel, get un-lost, confessions and quirks, doom scrolling on the toilet.

We'll continue to get a little vulnerable and have a lot of fun while creating the unshakable foundation for the kickass marriage you've always wanted. If you're down, go ahead and scan the QR code, or use the old-school URL below, and let's keep this tr- and let's keep this train rolling. Choo-choo.

www.the200percentmarriage.com/challenge. See you in there. Meredith and small hinges swing big doors, Craig

Acknowledgments. In the garden of relationships, recognition is the water that nourishes the roots of connection. Valerie Evergreen. On our road of life, there are so many people to thank and truly... On our road of life, there are so many people to thank, and it truly takes a village to make a dream a reality.

It all starts with our parents. Thanks for meeting, playing hide the real penis, giving birth to us, and then keeping us alive until we could take the wheel. You did a great job. Greg Kimball, you fill many roles in our lives, mentor, business partner, and most importantly, dear friend. Thank you for seeing our greatness before we could.

This book and our impact do not exist without you. It's an honor to do life with you and to help you fulfill your lofty goal to put personal growth into the hands of everyone on Earth. Now get to the gym. Do you even lift, bro? We would not be who we are without our clients. You keep showing up vulnerably and doing the work.

We continue to learn so much from you every single day. Thank you for your trust. To our friends, family, and the Final Percent community who feel like family, there are so many, too many to name individually. Thank you for your continued love and support and for being the best community on planet Earth.

We love you more. Thanks to Jim Hetherington for inspiring us to get this ju-- thanks to Jim Hetherington for inspiring us to get this, to get this done finally and for helping us to see it's more possible and far closer than we realized. Laura Brown, thank you for reminding us, "Don't you dare settle for fine," when it came to the book cover.

It's better than we ever imagined. You're really good at bringing people's vision to life and drawing realistic penises. As fellow connoisseurs of penis art, you have a true gift. To Kip Brown, Laura Brown, Dale Coffin, Tiffany Connaughton, Jen Drummond, Leanne Gauley, Jim Hetherington, Dr. Hilary Manzouk, Jamie Montana, Rocco Montana, Lindsay Osborne, and Hugh Zaretsky, thank you for reviewing this masterpiece.

It's masterpiece-ier because of your feedback. Thank you to the universe for always having our backs and bringing us together. There's no greater gift than to embark on this journey with your best friend. Lastly, if you feel like we forgot you and that you should be mentioned here, thank you. With love and gratitude, Meredith and Craig.

Bibliography. "I think books are like people in the sense that they'll turn up in your life when you most need them." Emma Thompson. This is the bibliography we warned you not to look for, but here you are. This is the end of the book. Go read it again. You'll learn something you didn't the first time. It will be fun.

Make sure to get your bonus, the 200% marriage challenge. It's zany too. Or check out the work with us section so we can spend more time together. We love you more. Seriously, this is the end. To make it official, the fucking end. Well, except for the penis on the next page.

Uh, you can't see it No ... but there's a, there's a penis in the, in the book. You can see there's... I don't know. There's a penis there.

Yeah, you can't see

it. You can't see it? Well, take my word for it. Oh, oh. Wait, go back. Oh,

oh, oh. Oh

my God, that's a small penis

I mean, it's not to scale.

Yeah, you can't...

Oh.

Oh, wait, wait. Off to the s- uh, th- off to the side.

There it is.

Off to the s-

There it is. That's-

You can click ...

Craig's hand... Well.

I drew that.

Yes.

Uh- I drew that.

Craig hand-drew that.

Yeah.

I'm gonna say it's Craig's hand-drawn penis.

The creative adult is the... MacKay The creative adult is the child who survived.

You can cut it out, glue it to cardboard, voila, your very own cardboard penis. Happy hiding. And that is The 200% Marriage: Your Winning Playbook to Be an Unstoppable Team. I had a lot of fun writing it and reading it.

Yeah. I really enjoyed this little foray of reading it together on the podcast. I'm kinda sad it's over.

Yeah. I think we'll do a more official version on Audible- Mm-hmm ... at some point in the future. Uh, we'll add it to the list of projects that we're gonna- ... do at some point here. But it was fun to just kinda get it out of us and onto the, the podcast. So anyone who just wants to listen to the last 33 episodes in a row, that's the book.

I like how you ended it with the po- uh, the bibliography.

Yeah.

Well, with the cardboard penis at the end so everyone can do their own, but...

Well, we mentioned it. It's a running joke- Yeah ... throughout the book of, like, we're not gonna cite sources, no bibliography. This is a bibliography-free zone.

But then when you look at the table of contents, it says bibliography, so you're gonna go and be like, "What the fuck is in this bibliography that they told me didn't exist?"

Nothing.

Nothing. Just-

Contemplate it just being a blank page.

Yeah. Um, but yeah, it wa- it's, it's, it's a, uh... It was fun writing it. It was fun reading it.

The, um, the beginning, it really is about, you know, you read a book, a lot of us read a book and-

If you even finish it.

Yeah, if y- and then but then it goes back on the shelf and nothing changes, and that's not the intent of a book. A book is meant for... well, this kind of book. There's books for entertainment, and that is, you know, when you're done with it, put it on the shelf and think nothing of it again.

But some of- some books are meant for changing your life, changing something about your life.

This is one of those books.

And this is one of those books, so but it doesn't happen unless you actually execute on the stuff that's in the book. And so this is the beginning of your journey post-200% marriage. W- what are you going to do to have the 200% marriage?

And so just take one thing and implement it, and then once you've got-

Like literally just send a flirty text right now. And

once- Pause

and do it right now ...

and once you've got that done, do something else. And then do some- And that's how you build the momentum.

And that's what the 33-day challenge is all about, actually.

Like, shameless- Yeah ... plug for that at the end of the book. Like-

It's free ... it- Like, it literally free. Like, just go do it. It's 33 days, and it's a blast. Uh, so if you enjoyed the vibe of the book, uh, it's the s- it's the same every day in your

inbox. Like one little thing every day, and it will change your relationship.

It creates the momentum that we've been talking about. Mm-hmm. 33 days in a row you're going to do something that is intentional to move your marriage forward, to become a 200% marriage. And when you do that 33 days in a row and you build that momentum- You're gonna s- it's, it's exponential growth. Before you know it, you're gonna look back and be like, "Fuck, 33 days, it's over already.

What do we do now?"

Start again.

Do it again.

Go back through the book and do all the things in every chapter.

Seriously, um-

I know it seems like a lot, but-

Just page by page.

Mm-hmm.

Chapter by chapter, just do the things. And we put it in the order that makes sense to do it. Um-

It was intentional.

Yep, a lot of intention behind this book.

The book.

A lot of intention. I mean, the bibliography, the penis at the back, the ch- the chapter titles, the quotes. Everything about this book is intentional. The, the cover, all the little hidden Easter eggs in the cover. It's a very intentional book. And, um-

Even the way, we didn't talk about this, in, in the table of contents, like, you acknowledge the bibliography, but Appendix Surprise, you called...

It's, it's the penis art at the end, but it's Appendix Surprise, and you've capitalized and bolded the A and P-E-N-I-S of Appendix Surprise, so-

It's

a penis ... a penis.

Yeah.

Like, there's just a lot of little things.

Yeah. Uh, but all this to say is d- do, do the, do the things in the book or nothing changes, you know?

So just take one thing today. What's one thing I can do that will move my marriage closer to where I want it? And do that thing. And then once you've done that thing-

Do another one ...

pick another one, and do that, too.

And if you're someone who needs to have your hand held doing that, well, w- we're the man We're

here.

We're, uh, we're here. We're a good time. We're fun. We, uh, you know, m- we like to have a laugh, and, uh, you know, we do the hard work.

While we change your life.

We do the hard work, but we do it in a way that, um, it's fun, it's engaging. You'll love it. Anyway, that's it from us on this one, I think. Yep. The, uh, acknowledgments.

Thanks to Mom and Dad for hiding the real penis. Having us and her.

Keeping us alive.

Keeping us alive so that we could find each other. Good times. What are we doing with the podcast now that we're done? S- stay tuned. It's a surprise for us, too.

We're gonna have more fun.

So the ne- that's, that's it for the book.

So the, the 200% Marriage podcast continues after the book. We're just gonna, you know-

We're gonna shoot the shit with you ...

regularly scheduled programming. Back to, back to the world and life and talking about stuff. And, uh, so join us on the adventure. It's gonna be fun.

See you next week.

Bye.

 Look, knowing the strategy is one thing. Executing it in the trenches of daily life is another. If you're ready to stop listening and start doing, we have a challenge for you. It's the 33 Day Unstoppable Team Challenge. 33 days of micro drills delivered right to your inbox for just 33 bucks. It's designed to snap you out of roommate-ville and get you back into alignment.

Go to the200percentmarriage.com/challenge and take the first step toward your 200% life. Your team is worth the investment