Divorce Without Drama: Protecting Families from Financial and Emotional Devastation with Ravit Rose | 015

Hello. Our guest today is Ravit Rose, founder of iruz and creator of the Irooze method, a groundbreaking approach to helping parents navigate divorce with dignity, clarity and compassion. Ravitea mission is to help families avoid the financial and emotional devastation so common in divorce by replacing drama and confusion with Mindset, Strategy and tailor made solutions. Through her work, she empowers parents to protect their children, safeguard their finances and rebuild a hopeful new life. Ruvit, welcome to leading with purpose. Thank you so much. Mark, happy to be here. I'm so glad that you are here, and this the conversation is very near and dear to my heart. As I was reading that introduction, I was thinking about going through divorce when I was six years old, and all of the things that come after that, and that's really what you're here to help. I'm curious, you know, I know why it's important to me. Why? Why is irus important to you in this whole project that you've been working on?

So I got divorced about 15 years ago. Thought it was going to be really easy. You go your way, I go my way. Everybody lives on. I still have these style. Life is great, but it wasn't that at all. It was destructive. It was, you know, a war zone, and it went literally from totally peaceful, we just don't get along, to totally crazy. So I learned through my own experiences what divorce really is, and I was shocked I was taken advantage of. I became victim my own my own reasoning and my own faulting as well. And I started to realize that there's a lot of commonalities in divorce, and this is like 15 years ago where there weren't as many resources then. So that's when I published my book. There unwanted, nasty divorces. And this was really an interview of sorts of me speaking to other parents and realizing, hold on, I'm not the only one. I'm not the only one who's going through this chaos. It's actually the same patterns, just different stories for every person. So spend over $100,000 in legal fees to go around in circles and circles to finally understand that this game has a particular methodology that we don't understand. And so I made it my mission, without even knowing or realizing it, that I'm going to debunk and figure out this, this myth, debunk the myth, and figure out the solution.

I love it, and again, I know it's your own personal journey, and a lot of people talk about what it takes to make a successful marriage. I know that that's a part of your your platform is to help people who can make it work. But for some it just, it just can't work, and it's not best option for a lot of people. And you say that success of a divorce starts and ends with a person going through it. How do mindset and personal responsibility shift the entire process?

So it's actually interesting. The typical mindset is divorce is kids, money in law. As long as I worry about these three things, I'm good, right? Get myself a badass lawyer, protect myself, do all of that. But in reality, it's actually not about that. Those are pieces and components that have to be taken care of, but the main component is how you show up and what you do. And it's really about, do you realize that you may be a reason why there is an issue in the marriage. Do you realize that maybe the issue is between you and your spouse? And you could figure that out, most people will not do that. They want to have that inner reflection. They're going to point the finger at the other person. You didn't take out the garbage, you didn't do this. You go out at night, you you know, and they figure out, they find the reasons why it's not working, but it's actually not the reasons why. So it's all about us, and as I'm doing my own self development journey, I'm realizing how I brought on so much upon myself, without even realizing where I thought, you know, I was questioning everything I when I was going through the worst times of my life. I mean, I had three day trials every year, back to back. It was It was chaotic, and I kept thinking that he's crazy and his lawyer's crazy. Now, his lawyer's not a peach, okay, she's not the nicest person, and she knows what she's doing. But what I realized is that it's really about how I was showing up, and I was actually making things worse for myself without even realizing and I created patterns and I created subconscious blocks over those years that led me to the stuckness, more stuckness, more stuckness and more blockages.

And like you said, even if somebody is the way that they are, we have to deal with them. So we need to figure out mechanisms on how we're going to do it, but I love that you're talking about doing the inner work, and that, again, you're modeling that for yourself, but you also include this as part of the resource package that you do with iruz. And I'm curious to hear a little bit more about that iruz method and how that works. But before that, I saw on your. Your website, iruz, I R, O, O, Z, e.com, that you have the definition. There's several different definitions, but there's one in particular, obviously, that's most relevant.

So a lot of people ask me, What does rose mean? And I wanted to pick a name with intention, something that is powerful to the way we choose and what we decide to do. I feel that divorce is not a, you know, standard, one stop way of doing things like that fits and molds into everyone. It really is unique. And the most important part of getting divorced, what I call the right way, is that you choose your solutions with intention. So ruse is a British term that stands for flattering yourself, being proud of yourself, praising yourself for how you did something. And so I Rus means stands for I choose. I choose to do things differently. I choose not to follow the stories of Jack and Jill and all our horror stories and become like them. I choose not to destroy my children. I choose not to destroy my my ex spouse, because it's to know con it's to the negative consequence of the children, to myself, to our finances and all of that. So when you choose with intention, everything that you do and you walk into this divorce completely changes. Your mindset is positive. You're really looking at your future. You're looking at all the great things, and more importantly, you're thinking about the divorce legacy you're gonna leave behind to your children. What do you want your kids to say one day? Do you want them to say, Yeah? Mom and Dad were crazy. It was chaotic. It was nuts. I'm I'm traumatized. I you know, I'm gonna go to therapy for the rest of my life because that or do you want to say, yeah? It was bad. They had a hard time at the beginning. They figured it out, and life is great now. Everyone has their own lives. Everybody's doing their own thing. That's what divorce is supposed to be. But it's not because it's about ego, power and money and this constant battle of you versus me. Oh, so inspiring.

I think so many people can relate to that. Whether you're a man or a woman. They can feel that. And you talk about getting the irus method and having the intentionality. Can you walk us through the four steps of the iruz method and share a story of how it's transformed a family's experience? Absolutely.

So first thing we do is discernment, should I stay or should I go? We're not pro marriage, we're not pro divorce. We're pro helping them divorce the right way, if that's what they choose to do? But the first thing we'll do is, let's look at your Couplehood. Let's look at you as an individual. If there's a way to save the marriage, let's do it. If not and you wanted to separate, you want to go into divorce, great, we'll walk into that. So the first thing is, we do an assessment. There's a self assessment on our website. They can take that for free. Once they do that, they have a free strategy call with a divorce specialist. Right now, that's with me, and this where I take a high level look at where they're at what's going on, and I create them an action plan, and that action plan is explaining what their options are. A lot of people think, as I mentioned before, that their only option is therapist and badass lawyer, but it's not. There are so many professionals out there who could help, who are more qualified to answer questions than the lawyer, who can help you in better and more effective ways, and it'll be less expensive than going and battling out with a lawyer or in front of a judge. So what I do is I help them understand who are those professionals available in their state, in their province, because we cover Canada as well. And what can they do? And where do they go from here? Once they have an action plan, I refer them to professionals who are vetted from our divorce community. They can go take a look at them. They could read articles. They can watch videos. Resonate with the person. Hear them, see how it sounds. Does it resonate? Do I feel like I could work with you? Do I feel like you'll understand me? Do we have something in common? And when they do in that clip, then they connect and they work together? So our purpose is to create a team, because divorce is not a one man show, and anybody wires, just a lawyer, thinking, Yeah, my lawyer

is going to take care of it. Is the one who is going to be the most disappointed, with the most regret, spend the most amount of money and be in the worst spot at the end of the divorce, and not just when they sign the agreement years after, they're still going to be in the worst place. So our method is to help them step by step and understand there are other options. If you want to reduce the legal fees, if you want to cut your emotional stress, follow our system because we know it works. Well.

Knowing that it works leads me right into the next question about avoiding some of the costly pitfalls. And we know that divorce can drain people, not only emotionally but financially. What are some of the most common mistakes they help clients to avoid, and how do those changes impact the outcome?

So one of the common, traditional things that people do is they go to their lawyer to deal, to deal with the financial part of things. The lawyer is not well versed in math and numbers. They know basics, but they don't know how to analyze it. There are divorce trained financial professionals who actually die. Dive into your assets, your liabilities, your 401 Ks, your quadros and all of that, and actually put together a whole scenario, an evaluation of your businesses and all of that, in order to do the math and run the numbers. The numbers way, not the legal way. So a lot of lawyers say, Yeah, you could do this, not split like this and split like that, but at the end of the day, they forgot and neglected to tell you that, hey, guess what? You're going to be slapped with a $10,000 tax bill as soon as you sign this, or you're not going to qualify for a mortgage now, because the way you wrote out your divorce agreement doesn't help you, because you can't qualify Cash in Bank as an income. So there are certain tricks and things that you need to know and do with the right professionals. And then you tell your lawyer, okay, this is what we want to do. This is how we want to do it. She's going to be okay, he's going to be okay. Kids are going to be okay. Because we actually did the math, and we ran it by the right people, and those are the people that will save time, save money, save stress, not regret decisions, and we'll be able to go on, move forward and have a beautiful life 2.0 because no one is coming back and circling through a tornado and saying, Oh, I so remorseful what I did, and I feel bad that I entered this and I did that, and whatever you don't want that you don't want people to come back to the negotiation table and say, Ah, I shouldn't have done the X, Y and Z. I wish I knew. I wish someone told me and it was different. So we're cutting out all that future possible regret and remorse, and we're dealing with everything in a full,

transparent manner.

Well, I love that too, because it brings up a very important question. We've been really focused on, how you serve families, how you serve the parents, how you serve the children, but you actually serve the people who serve them as well, yes. And so you've talked about some of the different types of people, even the different types, because different people respond differently to the trauma that the kids might go through. And so you have a very wide range of resources. Tell us a little bit about somebody who feels like they might be a good resource for you. What types of vendors do you look for? And, yeah, what does that look like on the providers side?

So the first thing to know is that we cover like the legal process stuff. So the lawyers mediators, we have judges who work privately. There's legal coaches, we have financial advisors, or any kind of financial we have also anyone related to house and home, then what we do is we look at the individual holistically. Because, like I said, divorce is not just about kids money in the law, it's about you as a whole. So everyone has a different process. Everyone goes through a different emotional roller coaster, through their divorce, even if they're the instigator, even if they're the initiator, even though they were, you know, blindsided, everyone will still go through some sort of trauma, issues, challenges and all of that. We have different coaches, for example, who specialize in different areas. There's grief, there's loneliness, there's anger elimination, there's groups for men, groups for women. We have someone who specifically works with physicians across the US and Canada, because their challenges are far different from anybody else's. So we have those. We have parenting, and we've also added spiritual and energetic and the reason is because I fully believe that, and I see it with people, that they're open to something different than just talk therapy. They're opening and they understand there's something different and something I don't know what it is, and I feel kind of stuck, and I can't put my finger on it, and I don't want to talk it through. I just want to get rid of it. So a lot of people are actually open to that. So we're open to any kind of professional serves any one of these areas, and they don't have to be divorce trained if they're if they're sort of a part of the holistic team, like helping the individual. They just need to understand what someone goes through in their separation and divorce process. What are the typical traumas, the feelings, the emotions, so that when they have that conversation, they can relate to it?

Well, I love that you said being able to relate to it and being in the thick of it. So for someone who might be in the thick of that process right now, whether it's it's been building up or it's gotten to the breaking point, somebody's already filed for divorce, what words of encouragement or practical advice would you give to help them envision and start creating a thriving life after divorce,

always think about your end goal. Where do you want to take your life? What do you want it to do? Where do you want to be? What do you want it to feel like, just like you would do in everyday life. Whether you had goals when you were married, you have business goals and all of that. Treat your divorce like a business. Try not to attach yourself too much to the emotions. Try to focus more on the logistics and taking care of like the you know, the legal matters, the financial matters, but spend more of your time always focusing on the future, always focusing on what's going to be and what you're going to have. Because if you sit and repeat the stories over and over again. Then basically what you're doing is you're reliving it every single time you tell it. So even though you think it's good for you to go and share it with you know, mom, dad, cousin, neighbor, friends, another friend, another friend, another friend, and you get all this pity and empathy, you're not getting any good advice, because it's it's keeping you looping around in that story, and you're not getting out of it. Instead, get yourself a coach, get yourself a professional. Be far less expensive in your divorce, I guarantee it, to have someone by your side and then focus on your future and keep focusing on your end goal. I promise you, you'll get there with the right resources in the right way. You'll get there.

But speaking of resources, you have free resources on your website, right? Irooze.com, I R, O, O, Z, E.com, for people, again, who are going through it all, they might get there and be overwhelmed. If you can guide us like, what is the first step when they go to iruze to get the process started, what they might want to do first?

So if they want to have an action plan and they want to just talk it out and say, I don't know where to go, I don't know what to do, I don't know where to start, who's available in my state, where do I how do I do this? How do I voice that? Take the self assessment. So that self assessment will lead you to my calendar to be able to schedule a strategy call. Let's go through that first, I will put everything into perspective and help you define a plan. Once you have that, you can go into our divorce blog, we have Hundreds 1000s of articles videos that are very well written. They're not just like simple little blogs, they're really content oriented and resource oriented. You could find answers to so many of your queries in those articles and videos. You could also start chatting with the author of that article underneath each each article, if there's something specific that you wanna know about, let's say loneliness, or how to deal with anger and all of that, you can chat with that author and some other parents who are also chatting anonymously. Then you could also go through our divorce directory, look around. It's broken down in a really easy to use manner. And if you have any questions, our strategy calls are free, so you could always come back to us and either SMS us or take the self assessment and have a real face to face call.

Well, you brought up another word in your community about the word anonymous, because for a lot of people, most people probably this is doing one of the most emotional, devastating and for a lot of people, shameful, embarrassing events of their lives, and so they don't want to talk about they don't want to share it, except for with their accountant and their lawyer. What do you say about that for somebody who's afraid to go look or or even afraid for their spouse finding out.

So we're not therapists, and we don't take on the role of therapy. So therapy and divorce coaching are two different things. A therapist will dive into your past and say, Why did you do that? What happened in your past, in your childhood, and all then keep looking behind as a divorce coach, we take you from where you are today and lead you forward. So the beauty is, you don't have to share those stories of your past. You don't have to go into that. I don't ask all those questions. My what I do is I help you focus on your on your end goal. What do you want to do? Where do you want to be, and who could I refer you to that will help you get to that point? And when you feel good and comfortable, you get to choose the specialist you want to work with, and when you feel comfortable that person share, if you want to share, don't share, if you don't want to share, you get to decide how you want it to be. So you get to choose how you want your solution to look like. So any other place that you go to is going to force therapy on you. Not everybody needs therapy, not everybody has all these issues, not everybody wants to talk about these issues. So that's where divorce coaching comes in. And our coaches are not meant to go and dive into your past. They're meant to help you find solutions today, right now, that are realistic and action oriented.

And again, they save the financial and emotional trauma of trying to do it alone.

Oh, you could save 1020, $30,000 by going our way. If you use the irus method, you definitely will save money. Because the people who spend $100,000 like me are people that don't know what to do and rely on the system, the justice system, the legal system, is not meant to protect you. It's not meant to help you. It's meant to feed certain professionals. You're not one of them. Your job is to pay them to keep the system going. What we're doing is opposite, saying you have the power to choose. You do things differently. You have all the resources. You have, all the solutions in front of you, if you choose to do this the right way, you can have a beautiful post divorce life. You could end up getting remarried or re dating again when you're ready, no rush again.

This is such a huge topic for so many people. You know all the stats better than I do for me. I. I love seeing you going through the process yourself, and then you being a role model. Tell me what is leading with purpose mean to you.

So it's interesting. I've been doing a deep dive into myself, and so just to backtrack a second, when I got divorced, it was horrendous. I mean, horror story from the movies. And I asked myself a lot, questioned, why me? What did I do wrong? How did I deserve this? I had a beautiful, cushy, Princess kind of life before, until I met this man. How on earth did I get here? And I thought it was me for so many years. I thought that I was the problem. Maybe I said something wrong. Maybe I did something wrong. And, you know, I even went to his parents and asked for an apology. So in the Jewish tradition, we have something once a year where you go and ask for forgiveness. So my grandmother was very religious, and she said, just go and do this. And I said, why? I didn't do anything wrong. She says, just go and do it. Ah, the shivers, and I resisted it. She says, Just trust me, I know what I'm talking about. And my grandmother was a very wise woman who had nine children and raised them on her own in times where you weren't a single mother. And so I did it. I bit the bullet. I did it. I felt like crap as I was doing it. And then I called my mother and I called my grandmother together. I said, Okay, fine, I did it. They barely wanted to forgive me, and my grandmother says, It doesn't matter. You got it out of your system. Now it's not your journey anymore. Now it's their problem. It's their issue. So I asked myself a million times, like, Why did I do it? What was the purpose, and all of that. And now, 15 years later, it makes so much sense. It wasn't about me, but I felt like it was about me. And one of my greatest journeys all this time was trying to figure out, how on earth did I land on this guy? Why did I land on such a terrible divorce? And then right after, I had a business, and then uncle stole it from me and emptied up my finances again, like, how come the repeated patterns? And recently, I've been doing some work on finding my sovereign

self. And it's I finally, finally found the answer that was looking for. I knew there was a missing piece. I knew there was something stuck, and I didn't know what it was all these years, and I finally figured it out it was me not respecting myself too much shame and the fear and all of that, and creating these horrible patterns along these years that led me to one problem after another after another. So I knew somewhere deep down inside I was doing that, but I didn't realize the impact it would have on my life for 15 years. Isn't that crazy, so I finally now see things from a different light, and I feel so relieved, and I feel so calm. And I went through all of it, I had major issues, like health issues in the hospital every year for a couple of years. I mean, my life went up and down, mind, body, soul was not connecting at all. I was in, you know, danger mode. I was in protection mode. I was in I felt threatened mode for many years, and that's what happens to everybody, and I don't want them to feel that way, because they don't have to. But I didn't have the guidance that I have now. Then I did it all on my own, and I tried to figure it out, just like everybody else does.

Hence, when you're in that situation, you had your grandmother, and you trusted her. She was very wise. Some people are listening to this for the very first time, and they're thinking, That son of a there's no way I'm gonna go and apologize to him. He does not deserve it.

Oh, believe me, I thought that a million times before I made that call, but I said, my grandmother is wise, and I'll do it because, you know, even though I'm not very religious myself, I knew that that was something that had to have some sort of impact, but I didn't know what. Because, when you're in the thick of chaos and you're feeling in danger, and your emotions are wild and negative. You don't think big and large. You think right now, you think ego. You think, why would I do something like that? And just to sort of in parentheses, they had they were a very wealthy family, and over the years, they dwindled and dwindled in one way or another. So now, if I look back 15 years later, they suffered, if I don't want to compare, but they suffered tremendously. So they thought they were doing the right thing, but they actually destroyed a lot of people along the way.

And for what I was hearing too, and you're sharing the story, reminded me one of the most important messages around forgiveness is that forgiveness isn't getting the other person off the hook. Forgiveness is getting the weight off of your shoulders. Forgiveness is about you letting go of it. It's not about saying, Okay, what you did is okay, or right or anything else. But that's the value and the importance of forgiveness that I heard,

And it's not something that we normally think. Think about because our our egos get so stuck in the ways that we don't look at ourselves, we're hyper focused on the other person. But what I'm saying is stop focusing on the other person and focus more on yourself, and you'll see that things will change within yourself, and your life is going to totally change. Your kids are going to be happier. It's going to be easier.

Well, I think almost everybody out there has somebody that they know that is in the process going through divorce, or has been through divorce, for somebody right now who is in that process themselves, or knows somebody else who just needs a hand for the last word. Any last suggestions before we say goodbye,

the power is within you. The success of your divorce will start and end off with you. It's how you react, how you show up and how you behave that will dictate your future.

I love it again that that is the definition of irus, and every time I hear it now I will hear I choose.

Yes, exactly. Good.

It worked well. Ruvi, again, I appreciate the mission that you're on, helping families and children. The ripple effect will be felt for generations, and I'm honored to have you on the show.

Thank you. True honor to be here, and thank you all for listening and watching.

Thank you. Ravi, thank you all for being here. Talk to you soon.