sSara (00:00)

Welcome to the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. I’m Sara Khaki with the Atlanta Divorce Law Group, joined by our very own managing partner, Shawna Woods. Shawna, believe you have prepared a little bit of a Q &A for me regarding how I run my household.

sShawna (00:32)

Well, I find it interesting how you describe running your household, which is running it like a business. Okay. Which kind of sounds like a cartel or a child labor camp. So what is it you mean when you say we run our family like a business?

sSara (00:38)

Yes ma’am.

Well,

Well, you’re right. It does sound very Tony Soprano like which I’m not that cool No, it’s actually meant in a very nerdy way. So I love all the credit I got to be that cool, but I’m not we Run it like a business which means think about the basic things of business needs A business has Some sort of a mission statement. It has some sort of a core values it has a budget for

What’s, what are the amount of money coming in and what is money going out? And it has a, businesses do, ours does, ours does here at Atlanta Divorce Law Group, a calendar of 12 to 18 months forward looking calendar of here are things that are going to happen or be accomplished within the next 12 to 18 months. So the quick answer is our household runs off of these things.

sShawna (01:51)

Very curious. Who’s the CEO?

sSara (01:54)

That’s a great question. So what is a CEO? We’ve actually thought this during our family is how nerdy we get. CEO is a visionaire. It’s the one that says, we are going to head to the moon. In this amount of time, our mission is to head to the moon. The COO is the one that makes sure it executes the daily operations to make sure that happens. In our household, Hisham’s always been the big visionaire, and I’ve been the COO.

So Hisham’s the one that said, you know, we want to be a family that can travel this much, or we want to be a family that experiences these adventures, or we want to be a family that gives this kind of value back to the community. He’s sort of the vision setter for our family. I am the COO that kind of supports and has his back.

And finds out, what do I need to do to support and make sure that our on a day to day basis, the house is running, the household’s operating, the family’s operating to achieve these goals. Now, what is sort of unique about deciding in your household who should be the CEO, who should be the COO, that works out well for us is Hisham is the bigger thinker. He’s a much bigger, bigger thinker than I am.

sShawna (03:15)

What do you mean by that?

sSara (03:16)

He can think big. He can think a big vision such as, you know, last summer we lived in Italy for six weeks. Next summer we want to do something similar to that. And he’s the one that can establish this vision of five years ago he made this vision that that’s what our family should do. And I was like, my God, that makes me so excited. Let’s do that.

I wouldn’t have five years ago been able to create that vision. He can think that far ahead. Okay. Right. He can think and put a focus on something that far ahead. What I uniquely am able to bring to the table is when he, let’s say says five years from now, this is what I want for this family. And I’m like, okay, I’m on that boat with you. I’m able to make it a really fun experience for the family from years one, two, three, four, and five.

Because Hashem’s MO is basically, this is our single focus. Everything is around this five year goal to get there, whereas I’m able to say, okay, why can’t we have some fun on the way? Why can’t we, you know, on that journey, how much fun can we have to hit the goal? And that I think what makes us such a good pair as the household CEO, COOs, it sounds…

It’s starting to sound really funny and like a cartel, but I hope it brings some sort of an example for people to kind of get a framework of what we’re talking about.

sShawna (04:46)

Why did you decide this? Mean, what made you say, is how we should be running our family. Let’s put it, as you say, in your nerdy way, let’s put this into a business model and make it that way. What was that pinnacle?

sSara (05:02)

So we never had quite in our family said, like there was never a decision point where we’re like, okay, we’re gonna have a household budget, which we do. And it’s in a regular QuickBooks format, like a business budget is, and we review it and review the variance reports and all of that. And we never even said like, we’re gonna have a personalized family calendar. These things kind of happened because we, as we were…

Growing the Atlanta Divorce Law Group or Hacham was growing his own company, Happy Gig, we watched how effective it was with getting a team to move in and row in the same direction. And then we’re like, Why couldn’t you do this at home? And so it really started with just the household calendaring of we’re gonna have a household calendar that’s 12 to 18 months forward looking, and not just the cute stuff like, okay, here’s Christmas and here’s little Johnny’s birthday party, but by this point,

This will have been accomplished. Like for instance, by this point, if we want to renovate a guest room, this room will have been accomplished. By this point, we will have traveled with family members. By this point, we will have visited certain people that we want to make sure we see. Those kinds of goals as well, not just like specific events. And the other part was, you know, there was a point for Hashem and I, I think it was like in 2017 when

We watched ourselves having achieved a lot of goals that we had set up for ourselves when we had first met as teenagers, pretty much. Was 18, he was 20, and we were very young, but we pretty much incidentally built a 10-year vision for ourselves of, we’re gonna get married, I’ll go to law school, you’ll finish Georgia Tech, and then…

One of us will become an entrepreneur at some point and then the other person will become an entrepreneur when the other person can replace that salary. And we kind of created this unintentional vision statement pretty much. And then by 2017, we kind of watched ourselves. Okay, We’re both now have our own companies and what’s next, right? There was this sort of like kind of a dark place. Cause when you don’t have a forward looking vision,

It can leave you in a dark place. I actually think this is really important for a lot of people out there are struggling in their marriages because this can cause struggle in a marriage. And I’ve heard it so much with our consoles where you hear this couple and in the South getting married really young, having kids really young, getting through college, finishing all these checklists of life and then getting to a point where like, man, the kids are off to college.

I got the retirement account, I got the second vacation home. She can quit her job now if she wants to, but she’s so unhappy and I don’t know why. Well, it’s Because there was never a vision to replace this one. And now you’re finding yourself having worked so hard to achieve a goal. And then once you do, the next place is the darkest place you could actually be. If you guys have watched the documentary series, The Last Dance,

Michael Jordan and the Bulls 1993 game, they hinted this. They hinted this and Tim Grover, who’s the author of Relentless and also the book Winning, he also talks about this where the Darkest moments in people who have set themselves out to achieve a goal, the darkest moment is usually the minute right after that big goal has been achieved because it’s almost like chasing that goal.

Was a piece of your identity. And now that’s here. What’s next?

sShawna (08:49)

That is a excellent point. There’s a documentary also on Olympians who have this exact same thing right after this huge accomplishment. Hit a big depression. And going back to the family, if your goal is to raise your children, what happens when the children are then raised? What else is there for you in particular combining, you know, the goals of

sSara (08:55)

Right.

sShawna (09:17)

Okay, now we’ve gotten to retirement and we see these with what I call the gray divorces, the older divorces who’ve been married 20, 30 years and finally have nothing in common and no goals in common. You talked about Hisham being the visionary, the one with this amazing ability to go, hey, this is a great goal. I cannot imagine in your marriage that you are not also saying, here’s a goal of mine.

sSara (09:43)

Absolutely. So there is definitely personal goals we each have, right? And then there’s the family goal. The point is because we are a family unit and we have set out to achieve things and set goals and with that tie back to our values and our priorities, each of our individual goals has to feed the main goal. And I think that this marriage wouldn’t work.

If we had individual goals that didn’t feed the make bigger goal, right? Like my biggest goal in life is I want to have successfully minded children. Anything else that shows up, my accountability partner in life is Hisham. If all of a Hisham, I want to be the best tennis player that, you know, has ever been seen to achieve her, you know.

It’s a joke, but absolute joke. He would have to say, is that gonna mesh with the goal of having these successfully minded children for the amount of time you would have to put into that? That is what, be having this joint vision together. And then each of our individual goals, having to feed that main goal is part of it.

sShawna (11:07)

Going back to each individual, because you do have three other individuals in your family. Yes. How do you incorporate or how do you talk to the kids about their personal goals and how it is set into this family business?

sSara (11:24)

Yeah, so the Main thing we talk with the kids is teaching them goal setting. Mine are young at this point where they’re, know, Rami’s 10, Hannah’s 7, Amir’s 2. Amir, again, sweet boy, you just get to be listening on the conversation at this point. We can’t wait till you participate in a different way. But the older two, right now it’s more about teaching them goal setting.

And we’ve talked in previous episodes with values and how we’ve taught them value setting. And We hope and pray that when they come to set goals, they’re setting them against though that value system that we’ve all chosen as a family.

sShawna (12:09)

But similar to the cartel, there’s no getting out.

sSara (12:11)

There’s no getting out of this family. No. No, I think, I think honestly, whether we’re talking about building a vision, building a family budget or calendaring the 12 to 18 months plan for the family, the values of these things are not in the end product. It’s in the process and then the exercise of being intentional and purposeful with not only your day to day actions, but

Your three month plan, your six month plan, your seven month plan. And this probably to the listener sounds, wow, that’s a lot of structure. That’s a lot of discipline. Where’s the spontaneity on that? That word is funny to me. Where is, you guys ever do something you just feel like doing? I actually believe these things create more freedom. Because when you are focused on

What matters and I’m only going to invest my most precious commodity which is time and mental space to the things that I’ve actually chosen to matter then that creates a lot more freedom for your energy to go where it needs to go and you feel a lot lighter instead of unconsciously carrying burdens of events that don’t really mean that much to you but you’re just having this

Unconscious obligation to things or this pattern of, new shiny object I need to jump on, but three months later, I’m going to hate that shiny object because the next shiny object comes to it. And then a year goes by and I haven’t achieved anything I really wanted that I wanted to set my mind to. So this just creates actually more space because when it comes down to it and you really do go through these exercises with yourself or with somebody, you’ll realize there’s not

That many things in life that actually matter that much to you. There’s not that many things in life that you’re willing to sort of lay it on the line for. And that can be really, really freeing. And then when you put a budget to it, put dollars to it, then you have another wake up call of, it actually matter that much to me if it costs that much? Am I willing to work more to make that? Or am I comfortable with giving up?

That value for that. So then you get another level of clarity of how much does this thing actually matter to me? And then when you calendar it, map it out for the whole year and you’re like, whoa, if I’m going to achieve this goal, let’s say, you know, write a book, it’s going to take this much of my time. Then does it matter that much to me? And if it doesn’t let me be honest about it now, right?

Versus carrying that energy, carrying that feeling of lack of accomplishment. The key is understanding that the value is in the process of this and going through it, not necessarily saying, here’s my annual budget, here’s my family values, here’s my mission statement, blah, blah, blah. Saimans is in business. It’s the constant exercise of going back to these basics.

sShawna (15:30)

And not being as strict as to adhering to anything in particular, but to incorporate everybody’s vision for where they want that family to go.

sSara (15:39)

I mean, at the end of the day, why do we join a group? Whether it’s joining a business or wanting to stay within a family, even if the children are adults, it’s because you’re hoping that that infrastructure supports your own individual growth, your own individual development. So this structure is meant to nurture and support each individual’s personal growth and development.

I mean, otherwise this would be a cult, right? It’s meant to empower them.

sShawna (16:14)

Absolutely. Sara, this has been again a very enlightening insight into your own family structure that I think would really help our clients both stay married if that’s what they choose to or create a structure post divorce that says, what are our family’s new goals? Wonderful. Thank you for sharing today.

sSara (16:32)

Absolutely.

Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. If you’d to learn more, go to atlantadevorcelawgroup.com forward slash resources.