Importance of Taking Swift Action & Making Deliberate Decisions With Scott Levin & Lara Brunstrom

Hey everybody, this is Scott Levin, Chief Peacekeeper, and I am back with my first video of 2022, and I'm with Laura Brunstrom. How are you?

I am so good. How are you?

I'm doing awesome. So, um, Laura, if you're not familiar, is, uh, is the proprietor of Sterling Coaching. She is a divorce, uh, uh, and life coach. And she has such a tremendous reputation. We've done other videos in the past, so you can check that out in the vault there. But today we wanted to start off 2022 with our first video, and we thought that a really good topic for January for a fresh start would be, you know, swift action and deliberate decision-making. So when you're approaching a divorce, Those are really important things to get started, to feel like you're moving forward, to make progress. And I just wanted to get kind of Laura's thoughts and opinions about, you know, the importance of swift decision-making at the outset of, you know, once someone's made a decision with their spouse, or one party's made a decision and the other might, may or may not be on board, you know, moving forward. How important do you find that with your clients?

I find it very important. We share a client and we were just discussing before we started videotaping this, that it's really for this particular couple, swift action was huge. There's getting into this before there's a lot of noise happening, a lot of friends telling you, imparting guilt and shame on you, or you're involving other attorneys and one attorney, one firm escalates and escalates and escalates, and the other attorney attorney doesn't quite do that. So then all of a sudden there's this compounding effect of stress. Um, there's also the stories that we could make up in our head. The longer the time goes on, the more stories you start to tell yourself, and we can get really messed up in here. And if we're making— if we're working toward swift action and deliberate decisions where you feel like you're making good decisions, With somebody like you who's mediating, who's got control of the situation, where you can kind of manage the people— they have their opinions, but you can steer them in the right direction and really listen to them. That's really important. I think another component to it really is if there's kids involved. If you're dragging this out— I have a client right now who literally said on a 3-way call, her, me, the attorney, Can we drag this out as long as possible? And I was like, holy cow, that's not only— that's going to cost you a lot of money and a lot of heartache. And there's, there's some kids at home still. So what's the benefit there? I mean, it's maybe it's that one person, like you said, isn't quite ready. However, when you're hit with the reality that this is what's happening, there really doesn't seem to be a lot of upside to delay. And you can— I mean, also, like, something that can happen that I hear all the time is, you know, what if somebody starts dating and that girlfriend or boyfriend shows up at a soccer game and now feelings are hurt and now people feel crappy and it's like, oh, that's not good either. So the longer it goes on, the more space there is for error.

Yeah, no, I completely agree. I mean, one of the things that we talk about in mediation Towards the end of the mediation, once we've really figured— we've really figured out the asset and debt division and parenting plan, one of the things I bring up at that last meeting or 2 is, you know, how do we deal with new potential partners? Obviously, 2 people, you know, you're going to meet— there's going to be new people in your lives at some point. You know, and then when you have, you know, young kids or even, you know, teenage kids, Or even adult children, to be honest with you.

Oh, adult children are almost as bad.

I'm— my mom has been dating someone for a long time, and it's still a little strange.

It stings no matter what age.

Yeah. But, you know, how do you— how do you introduce those people to your children? Do you— does the date— the dating spouse, like, initiate, like, a heads up? Hey, I'm dating someone. And I'm gonna introduce them to our, you know, our kids this weekend, because what happens when the kids just get introduced to that new person and you haven't made swift action yet? So like you haven't had a chance to get into litigation or mediation to make those arrangements. All of a sudden their kids are meeting that person and they're going home and telling parent 2, well, I met Susie, or I met John.

Mm-hmm.

He or she are a really nice person. They gave me this, they took me out to dinner. Or, you know, they took me to a movie and all of a sudden your feelings get hurt, you know, and you're— and you feel like you're somehow attacked just by the fact that there wasn't like an, you know, advance notice. And that's just a great example, Laura, of just one way that that can play out.

Absolutely. And if we back it up time-wise, even to just deciding how to handle— like, okay, so you're at this point, you are at the point of divorce, you know it's happening. What do you do? And this is where, if you can still— if you've been keeping it, you know, de-escalated, like not, not really intense yet, you can talk to your spouse about what the best options are.

Mm-hmm.

You're an amazing option for so many people. And what happens is if I go and hire an attorney, I'm triggering my, my soon-to-be ex, my spouse, To like, oh, well, she has an attorney now. I need an attorney. And if we can back that up to is are you at a point where you can have a conversation? Know your options. And that's one of the one of the spaces that I love getting involved with clients is when they don't know yet, and I can help them get educated. Okay, here's here's the the ways that you can approach this. And I've had clients where I've only talked to them. or 5 times and you've helped them get the process all the way done. There wasn't lawyer, lawyer, mediator. That in and of itself is a $20,000 buy-in.

Yeah. You have to be super careful at that stage. Once you hire— God forbid they play the game of serving the spouse with paperwork at work. I mean, now you're headed for war and you didn't even intend to.

Exactly. So, like, in one of the cases of somebody, one of our clients that we share, the person that I sent didn't know what mediation was. So even before all of this, like, how do you make swift action? I would say even preceding that is get educated.

Empower yourself.

And it's so fun. Like, when I get clients really early in the process before it's escalated and before people are filing motions and fighting over kids, it's like, where are you at? What do you have? How old are the kids? What kind of assets do you have? How amicable are you? How amicable would you like to stay? Because then I can be like, Scott's your guy, you know, you can do this. They can actually still talk at the end of it. They're not $150,000 into the process, and it's not a year later.

Yeah, no, and you're— you are a fantastic person as well, like you just said. for education. So what, what swift action means doesn't mean like running to the courthouse. It means running to build a team and empowering yourself through knowledge. That's like the first step is totally building a team, finding, uh, finding someone like Laura, or Laura herself throughout the United States. She can work with people on Zoom, phone, in person. Um, but you know, there's someone That can explain to you your process options, get you in touch with really good professionals, and help you build your team and understand what your objectives and goals are. You know, for the vast majority of people, we have 2 401s, an IRA or 2, you know, a house and some cars. You know, Yep. That's all a Tuesday in a divorce mediator's life. So, you don't have— you know, running to court for a situation like that can be unnecessary. Of course, depending on lots of other things, but, you know, the vast majority of people in the, in the, in the scope of normalcy, that's— you should not be running to court with lawyers. But how do you know that? Will you build a team through someone like Laura, Laura, a financial expert that can like run your numbers beforehand to get a sense of what like a good outcome would be for you? of course, a consulting lawyer to like help you understand what your legal rights are, but not someone that you're just like, here, take my life over. And I trust you with everything because you're my divorce attorney now. That's where you get, you know, 1 out of every 4 people firing their attorneys.

Yeah.

Because you hand your life over and then nothing happens for a year, but you're just spending money and you're like, well, what have I done? And then you start to, you know, you get anxious and you get Upset and you get angry and it affects your life. It affects your kids. It affects your, your ex-spouse-to-be, everything.

Absolutely. And all that time creates so much space for friends getting into your head, the family guilting you over why are you doing this, or why are you doing it the way you are doing it, or how come you have— if that person's so bad, why this? Why that? It's more time for your kids to experience the drama, the trauma, everything. Kids are going to come out Fine. The best you can handle it, you know, and then when we say, like you said, swift action doesn't mean just blindly going in. That's where the deliberate decisions part comes in. That's where the rule of 10, 10, 10, 10. How does this decision feel 10 seconds from now, 10 days from now, 10 years from now? Because you can throw in the towel and go, screw it. I'm done. I'm out. Not probably your best. So pacing that, and that's something that I know both you and I work on with people, is pace your decision. It doesn't have to be today.

Yep.

But within a week, probably good, because if you're going to spend 4 months doing this, the chances are higher of you seeing that boyfriend or girlfriend on the soccer field, and people are going to move on, and now it's just dragging it out.

Yeah. And the question is, like, not everyone has to sit next to their ex-spouse with their new relationship. That's Taking it to the extreme, that'd be awesome if you could do it.

Yeah, ultimately it doesn't always mean that it works, but it's—

But it would be nice if you and your spouse could sit next to each other at the soccer game and give your kid one place to look. Yeah, not that— not put that anxiety on him or her to be like, absolutely, I'm gonna sit— where's dad gonna sit? I hope they don't see each other. I hope they don't stand next to each other. Yeah, I mean, do you really want to put that on your kids? No, of course not. But you— but if you— but if you make poor decisions that aren't deliberately thought out, and, and/or you don't make any decisions and you just kind of stall, those things are hard to accomplish.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it's— go ahead.

No, I was just gonna ask, Lauren, where are you based out of?

I currently am in I'm kind of near Portland, Oregon.

So I just—

I would say a third of my clients are here.

Um, and you work all over the United States?

Absolutely. Like, there's, there's nothing that stops me from working. I have a few kind of centralized where I've made connections and have networks of people. Um, Texas, California, Oregon, North and South Carolina, just random. Like, you know, somebody knew somebody who wanted me to be introduced to somebody to coach them. So then that becomes, you know, a whole network of people. So both Northern, Southern California. Um, I love working all over the country. People are super different. They are very different personalities all over California. People divorce very differently than North Carolina. Super different.

That's very interesting. I, I want to talk with you about that. But so where can people— so I know it's Sterling Fire Coaching. SterlingFireCoaching.com, right?

Yep.

Um, and, uh, so Laura, uh, is, uh, if you haven't seen our prior video, I encourage you to see it, but she has a great reputation throughout California. And I just mentioned, I asked her where she lived because, or where she's based out of, because I wanted to make sure everyone knew that, uh, I'm in California, but she's, she's worked with so many people that I know very successfully. We have, uh, we've worked on cases together. I cannot recommend her more forcefully. And what she is really talented at is getting people to understand what they want from this process, like what their goals and objectives are, and then she maps out a way for you to achieve them. And thinking about the whole pie, not just about yourself, not just about your money, not just about your debts, not just about your kids. It's a big picture. You have to put a full plan in place. And, and working with her and educating yourself and becoming knowledgeable and putting— and she's just one part of the team. Of course, there's the mediator, there's the consulting attorney, there's the financial expert. You know, those are all things that you can do. And if you were to hire each of those experts, you'll still pay a fraction of what you would if you just hand over your life. And head into litigation blindly and say, please solve this for me, attorney.

I tell people all the time, if you can start down here and allow it just to escalate as it's naturally going to do, you can't start up here and lower escalation. It's— if it's going to be high conflict and you're going in for high conflict, it will stay there. If you can start low conflict and just— it might inch up a little bit, But it doesn't need to hit that super high conflict.

Exactly.

It's just hard to backpedal from that.

It is very hard to backpedal. Usually only happens when parties are running out of money.

Right.

They both call each other and go, you know, we spent, you know, I've spent $40,000, you've spent $30,000. Maybe we should just try to like meet at Starbucks and talk this through.

Yeah, exactly. But it should start at Starbucks.

Yeah, I started Starbucks. Uh, well, thank you so much, Laura. Uh, it's great seeing you, and I'll see you soon on another one.

Perfect. Have a great day.

All right, guys, talk to you all soon.