At 20, I called Chick-fil-A's Support Center and asked to meet the founder, S. Truett Cathy.
I was a sophomore in college, starting my first business, and I didn't have one person in my life who'd built a successful business and still kept their marriage and family strong. No one I could look at and say, "I want my life to look like that."
My parents were both entrepreneurs. From the outside, you'd have thought they were the power couple. They read the same books, were both very health-conscious, and their skills complemented each other. My mom was great at sales and negotiation, and my dad was great at the admin side. You would've thought they were going to make it. But they got married, started a business, and got pregnant, all within six months. Their marriage just wasn't built to sustain that amount of pressure.
When I was eight, my dad told me, "Sayi, relationships are like flowers. If we don't water them, they'll eventually die." My dad was always sharing things with me from the books he was reading, so I thought it was just another lesson. A few months later, I came home from school to find his side of the closet empty. That's when reality hit me. My parents are getting divorced. Dad won't be at the table for dinner anymore. He won't be there to tuck me in at bedtime. And when I wake up scared in the middle of the night, he won't be there.
I spent years asking the same question: if their relationship was like a flower, why couldn't they just water it?
I wish I could tell you the divorce was the end of it. But it was really the start of a ripple effect, and it brought a lot of instability and pain through my childhood and teenage years. By the time I turned 18, I'd moved 17 times. And I watched my mom start so many projects. She'd get so excited, dream so big, and want to grow fast. Then it'd all come crashing down, and each time, she'd be left with even more debt. I learned pretty young that entrepreneurship can literally destroy you if you don't have the character, the skill set, and the right mentors around you.
So when God gave me the idea for You & Me Time, I was excited, and I was scared. The little girl in me was afraid I'd end up repeating my parents' story: build a business and watch it wear down my marriage. One of my favorite verses says, "Plans fail for lack of counsel." So I prayed, "God, is there someone out there I could seek wisdom from? Someone who kept their priorities in order: their faith, their marriage, their business, and their relationship with their kids. Who could that person be?"
And the name that came to me, like a whisper, was S. Truett Cathy.
That Monday morning at 9 a.m., I picked up the phone. (I'd have called right away, but it was the weekend, and Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays.)
"Truett read your letter."
A nice lady answered and transferred me to Martha Lawrence, Truett's Executive Assistant and right-hand woman. Martha believed in me from that very first call, and I always say if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have met Truett. She told me to write him a letter, and she'd make sure it got to his desk.
Three months and a lot of follow-up calls later, Martha told me she'd had my name on a sticky note on her desk, meaning to call me. "Truett read your letter," she said. "If you're willing to pay for your flight, he'd love to meet you." The tears just came rolling down my face.
I booked my flight to Atlanta right away, and a Chick-fil-A cow mobile picked me up at the airport. Martha had warned me that Truett's calendar was kind of optional at this stage of his life. If he wanted to spend the day at Walmart, he would. So I sat in her office thinking, what if I flew all the way here and he went to Walmart instead?
And then he walked in. I gave him a hug and thanked him for coming. He could've been anywhere that day. He could've been at Walmart. But he chose to show up for me.
There was a room in his office with a rocking chair and a cozy sofa. He settled into the rocking chair, I sat on the sofa next to him, and it felt like story time with the grandfather I wish I'd had. I told him everything: my parents, You & Me Time, and why it all mattered so much to me.
And he said, "Your business is not just a business. You're turning your pain into purpose, and your bitter experiences into better experiences for others." Then he talked to me about climbing with care and confidence. For Truett, that started on day one. Back in 1946, when he opened his first restaurant, a little diner called the Dwarf Grill, he was 25 and working 72-hour weeks. He needed every customer he could get. And he still closed on Sundays, from the very first week. It was his way of honoring God and making time for what mattered more than the business. He built margin in from the very beginning.
Before he said goodbye, he prayed for me and told me I was welcome to come back anytime. It felt like having a grandfather cheering me on as I went after my dreams, and knowing the door would always be open if I ever needed his wisdom or encouragement.
What stood out most was his life.
It's one thing to hear all that. It's another to see it lived. Here was a man who'd built a hugely successful business, and he still had a beautiful marriage and his family around him. Truett found a way to integrate every area of his life instead of trading one for the other. That's what I'd been looking for: proof that success at work doesn't have to cost you your marriage or your family. And somewhere in his life was the answer to the question I'd been asking since I was eight. I just couldn't see it yet.
And if you're here, I have a feeling you're carrying your own version of that question. You love your marriage, you love your kids, and you love your work. And you don't want to give one up for the other.
Truett showed me it was possible. But knowing something's possible is different from knowing how to do it. And I learned how at a local Chick-fil-A in South Florida, where I got to see the systems, the structure, and the strategies up close and put them to work in my marketing role.
What I learned working for Felix and Janet
Before I left Atlanta, Martha handed me a business card from a Chick-fil-A Operator named Felix Hodges. About a year later, Felix came to my university looking for a marketing director, and my sales and marketing professor, Dr. Riggs, introduced us. I couldn't believe it. I already had his card. I never asked Truett for anything but his wisdom, but that one phone call just kept opening doors.
For over two years, I was the Restaurant Marketing Director at Chick-fil-A Davie North. I planned community events like Daddy-Daughter Date Night and launched our social media pages. And yes, I even got to be the cow handler, standing on the street corner during breakfast next to the Cow. People asked me why I'd work at a fast-food restaurant with a business degree, but I knew God had me there for a reason.
Felix is one of the best Operators I've ever known, and I got a front-row seat to how he and his wife, Janet, ran that restaurant as a couple. Growing up, my parents' story taught me you shouldn't mix your marriage and your business. Felix and Janet showed me something different. They leaned on each other, they kept it light, and they had such high standards. And Janet was the heart and soul of the business.
You'd think a restaurant that busy would have all this office space. Nope. They ran the whole operation out of a tiny office in the back of house, where you could barely turn around. But Janet made sure everything had a home. Whether it was in the filing cabinet or a container, everything was labeled, so you could see exactly where things were. There was a checklist for everything, and the big decisions were already made before the day even started.
And she had a system for the people, too: a calendar for every team member's birthday, anniversary, and milestone. On every birthday, at my wedding, and when I became a mom the first time and the second time, there was always a handwritten note from Janet. She didn't keep all of that in her head. She had a system, and that's what let her care for people so consistently. What I didn't realize then was that those same simple systems could carry over into our homes, too.