Law Firm Growth Playbook

Speaker 1: [Music] hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the she builted experience with Melanie you're here because you want to experience the life and business that you crave join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it a career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from Having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let's dive in thank you so much for joining us today Allison thank you so much for

Speaker 2: having me Melanie I'm really excited to

Speaker 1: talk to you tell us about who you are and about your early career experiences leading to becoming the founder of

Speaker 2: Williams Law Group and Law Firm Mentor I am Allison Williams I own the Williams Law Group in Short Hills New Jersey full service matrimonial law firm and I have been a matrimonial and family law attorney for my entire 18-year career as a lawyer and fell into practicing family law and ultimately fell in love with it and in particular the segment that probably is the most neglected area of family law which is child protective services and helping parents that are involved in that area of the law so I built a big career doing that kind of pounded the pavement developed a Statewide reputation and at some point the law firm where I was was just not they treated me well and I I I still love the managing partner of the of the Family Law Department he and I are still very close but they just didn't have the same vision that I had they didn't have the same support and infrastructure that I would need to take the practice as big as I wanted it to grow so ultimately I started my own law firm and I figured hey I'm a good lawyer I can just do this whole business thing and you know lick aty split and that was really stupid learning how a lawyer does not make you qualified to be a business owner at all in fact there are some very characterological traits of lawyers that are antithetical to being good in business and I ran smack dab into myself and started working harder to get more done and at some point I worked myself into exhaustion yeah so that was the aha moment where I said okay working harder is not working ultimately I happened upon business coaching and worked with a series of different business coaches the area that probably helped me the most was really shifting my mindset so adding strategy to mindset work and really just helped me to to Sky rocket I took the company from zero dollar into a multi-million dollar business in three and a half years and then I became a business coach and now I've created a business coaching company that I took from zero dollars into a multi-million dollar company in three years and once you learn how to make money making money is not challenging at all it really is creating the life that you desire around your financial success and I teach my

Speaker 1: lawyers my lawyer clients and people that listen to my podcast and people that follow me on social media that it's not a trade-off you don't have to have time with your family or money in the bank you can have both you just have to be very strategic about how you create

Speaker 2: that that's great that you listened to yourself and trusted your instincts to know that you could do more and that you learn from multiple coaches different pieces of advice from a number of different people and I have talked to so many different lawyers who say law school teaches you to be a good lawyer but they don't necessarily teach you how to run a business so what you're doing is so needed for many most lawyers I Know Myself included say law school doesn't prepare you to do anything other than right legal Brees it doesn't teach you how to deal with clients it doesn't teach you how to deal with adversarial process it doesn't teach you how to be a competent aggressive Advocate while also still being civil and professional to the other side there's just there's so much that comes with actually lawyering that is beyond law school but business is never mentioned in law school you're

Speaker 1: absolutely right there in fact there's almost in the bar an a a somewhat an antim money anti- business mindset it's almost like if you are pursuing something for your own interest that is inherently counter to the interest of your client and that really isn't true in fact I tell my lawyers all the time if you have a desire to be the best lawyer that you can because you want to effectively get a result for a client you want to counsel them to have peace of mind you want to achieve a goal for them the best way that you can do that is by making the most of yourself because when you are stressed tired overwhelmed that is when you are most likely to take it out on your client to be resentful to not show up as your best self to not be the one who wants to wake up early and stay late to fight the good fight because you're so overwhelmed by the basic pragmatics of living in the world we live in that requires money so helping yourself get to a place of financial profit actually benefits everyone that comes in contact with you your employees your clients your adversaries just everyone that's that's

Speaker 2: tied to you do you think sometimes

Speaker 1: lawyers are taught to think so much about what could go wrong or what could go right that that holds them back from making certain leaps in Life or in business we are a very risk adverse group statistically right and for a reason probably to help protect your clients yeah I mean if you think about it what our what our aim is is we're either fixing something that went wrong or we're trying to prevent something from going wrong so we're always looking at worst case scenario worst case scenario comes up when you're trying to figure out the settlement to accept or not accept worst case scenario comes up when you try to figure out should we settle or go to trial worst case scenario comes up when you say accept this transaction or the other side may walk away and all of that that teaches us how to be good at the job of operating as an advocate in an adversarial system is antithetical to what you have to do in business right you have to step in the direction of what's unclear and uncertain you have to take risks you have to trust people you have to be able to orchestrate ideas from a place of I want the outcome not not every single little task that you want to hold on to and give to someone so that you suck the life out of them and make them dependent upon you and your advice in order to get their jobs done all of those things that we have to do and that we do very well to control the narrative and control the activity so that we can have what we want for our clients very much hurts us in terms of growing a business so interesting and

Speaker 2: another reason why what you're doing is so needed what is one thing that building a successful business has taught you and how does that help you in running your business today so if I were

Speaker 1: to say what R what creating a successful business has taught me I'd probably say you know it's taught me that the only way for me to have true success is for me to be who I am and that may sound a little hokey so I'm going to put some frame around it one of the things that I did when I became a lawyer is I got very good at acting I showed up to interviews in my nice navy suit with my pressed white blouse and my pearls and my very concer ative pumps and I made sure to wear my hair in a way that covered up the fact that I had seven earrings and made sure that I didn't add too much boisterousness to whatever I had to say that I spoke in a in a calm demeanor and I was really good at getting job offers and then I took a job and I put on my my navy suit and I showed up to work and I went to court and asked an advocated with the very same very buttoned up eloquent Pros that was expected for female I stayed in my lane and I tried not to be too aggressive and that extra layer of frustration is added to the fact that I'm African-American so that adds the other layer of certainly you're not allowed to get mad because then you're GNA be the angry black woman so we don't want to do that right so I played my role and I was good at it until one day I just got so tired I ultimately developed a very severe depression over spending my life in a persistent state of micromanaging everything I said everything I did every place I walked every every moment moment of my life was a packaged deal and one day I remember what actually happened I had gotten to a place where I was really frustrated in my career but I was having a lot of Career Success and I was trying a very uh complicated case involved abusive head trauma formerly known as shaken baby syndrome but I dressed for court and slipped on some ice and fell and I ripped the so the entire side of my skirt all the way up to my to my pelvis and my stockings and like and and even my shoe I twisted the ankle and twisted the the back off my shoe it was just awful right so I'm I'm half naked wobbling to the car from this little quick check mark I went into and thank God I actually had just come back from a trip so I had clothes in the car but I didn't have court worthy clothes in the car so I put on the most Court appropriate thing that I could which was a shorter than I would have liked sweater dress and I said all right I always wear this with this very big bangally you know necklace and so I can't really wear it without the necklace and I didn't have any shoes except the shoes that I had worn to a formal so I was either GNA wear that or tennis shoes so I ended up wearing like four and a half inch stiletto sandals with my with my dress and you know I walked in and I turned a lot of heads I remember like I just I killed it in court that day and you know at some point in time it was really funny I'm very friendly with the judge that was over that case but he pulled me at some point he called me up to the the bench he said Miss Williams can I see you for a moment and then my adversary started to walk up he said no this isn't a sidebar I just need Miss Williams so I was like oh crap what did I do I was like he's gonna he's gonna rip me about the fact that I'm dressed completely inappropriate for court and I said you know yes your honor and he said you know what you're doing today I was like yeah he's like do more of that I was like okay and and like and I'm kind of stunned so I'm thinking what does that mean does does that mean I'm supposed to like do more cross-examination like this he was like if means like you know she's a pretty

Speaker 2: kickass I love it isn't it such a beautiful thing when you step into your authentic self and I'm sure you've seen more success because of it and the judge clearly saw more of who you truly are

Speaker 1: and the funny thing is is that this is a very conservative very white man so the fact that he's telling me that my kastos is what I should do more of was actually quite the compliment and you're right it is there is something to be said about stepping into your authentic self but also realizing that you can't you know you can fake it to a certain degree but you really can't fake it without turning off the people that are meant for you and turning on the people that are not meant for you right because the reality is when you are advocating whether you are advocating in the form of negotiation or in the form of client advisement or the form of litigating you're always in a state of asking questions of giving information and pursuing things from your perspective your perspective is a part of who you are and it's going to come out whether you want it to or not and the harder you have to work to have it not come out the less of yourself you're going to bring to what you're doing which means the less effective you're ultimately going to be so you're not doing yourself or your clients a service by trying to dim your light by trying to dumb it down by trying to fit in a box and it took me a

Speaker 2: lot of years of therapy and Overcoming Depression to actually realize that and then once I finally said I'm not doing that anymore right if I'm in the mood to wear some 5 inch Stilettos to to court that's what's showing up and if I am in the wear in the mood to wear bright red and like speak with my hands and have my hands go all over the place and I have a big voice and that big voice will show up you're gonna have to live with that if you can't live with that you're not my

Speaker 1: person that's all that means that's so beautiful I love it it's such great advice because ultimately you are going to be more successful if you're true to who you are and you're going to gain more clients because they're going to

Speaker 2: see that absolutely and you know here's the thing what's what's interesting that I've also found about this since you asked the question about what I've learned from from being successful is that people are drawn to more success everyone wants more for themselves you know it's kind of like the universal law of life is more life we're always seeking something that we don't have it's the human nature to desire and when a person believes that they can associate with you and that you're going to be able to connect them with whatever it is that they desire right if they're a client and they want a successful outcome and they see you at the top of the Mount of the mountain being whatever and whoever you are they're going to see that and desire that simply because it is successful and when you become successful it becomes easier to create more success that's why the first business was created on the back of 90h hour work weeks and a lot of tears and a lot of panic attacks and a lot of frustration fear about money the second business by the time I had worked all those things out was created in front of the computer having a very conversation with people about what I thought I could do to help them and miraculously millions of dollars started to show up and it didn't have any push or any an angst or any frustration I haven't had to do a lot of hiring and firing in this job I've added people most of those people are still with me I love the people that I work with I love my clients if I don't love you when I have a sales call you're Uninvited from our community you know it it's a very easy process and it grows rapidly because I am growing rapidly right the more of myself that I seek The More I Seek to optimize who I am and The More I Seek to create benefit for other people through Who I Am the more people see that and are drawn to that and want it so it becomes easy for you to get clients it becomes easy for you to make money and it becomes easy for you to attract the people who are going to help you to get to where you want to go without you having to put in all that frustrating work of let me teach you and tell you every single thing you need I mean 90% of the things that happen in my company I become aware of after the somebody says we have a problem let's solve it and then they tell me about it here's

Speaker 1: the problem we solved it that's so great you put in the work to become the the business person and the lawyer that you are but you also did the inner work oh the inner work is everything right because all of the strategies the tips and tricks the how the marketing the the sales I definitely teach those things because you do need them but it took the getting over the fear of being judged by others the internal voice that said I'm not good enough or I'm not worthy or people aren't going to like me I mean I had this whole story when I when I decided to start the coaching business you know I kind of looked out there because I knew a lot of coaches because I had been a client of a coaching company of multiple coaching companies before I decided to do this and so I started looking at what are their marketing you know what does their marketing copy look like and I was like oh my God every picture is a thin woman in a field with daisies and flowers and talking about and I was like that's not who I am I'm never going to be the girl in the daisies right I passed the weight limit for girl in the daisies a good 50 pounds ago so I was like all right if I'm not going to be that I need to be something else and then the other version of it was the guy who was pounding his chest and talking about how he's Rich standing in front of his private jet and I was like I'm not gonna be the private Jor either like that's not me either I love money because I love Louis Vuitton I don't love private jet so I was like I don't want to sell a false dream to people so the only thing I can really do is sell myself so I just started doing that all right guys here I am you know I suck my thumb until I was 10 so my lips were crooked and you know I I have a very big voice and a very big mouth and a lot of personality and I have a lot of opinions but when I don't know what I don't know I will tell you that and a lot of people won't but I'll be honest with you and people started saying wow there's some truth there this person's not selling us a bill of goods this person knows what she's talking about this person can help me and then I started adding other people could help my people and it took off but it was really easy when I just started this is me and here's here's who I am and you

Speaker 2: know take it or leave it yeah it's so important to be your authentic self and you bring up sales and marketing you talk about how important niching your business brand is to create scalability can you tell us about that so I think a

Speaker 1: lot of lawyers especially when they first start a business they are afraid of picking a lane so they could become the master of doorlock you know anything that walks through the door is who I can help today I help people that need Wills tomorrow I help people that are accused of crimes the next day I help people get divorced the next day I help people avoid deportation and they just become the dabbler and even when they choose maybe two or three areas because I think now there is a level of customization in the practice that most lawyers understand you can't do everything so they will start to Market two or three or even four things right but it's very generic it's like here at John do Law Firm we care about our clients and we help our clients fight the good fight to get the best result possible and everyone says that right and there's nothing about that that resonates from one person's website to another it's just a copy and paste bearing iterations of the same generic Pros but when you start to speak about whatever it is that you do from a place of why you do it why becomes a super super powerful message that really cuts through because your why is very unique to you but also when you decide that you're going to focus on something within your focus so you're not just going to do family law you're going to do custody in highly contested cases involving two or more children if that's what you're known for it becomes a lot easier for your people to find you it also becomes a lot easier for you to repel the people you don't want to work with and most importantly it gives you marketability that actually is scalable so instead of someone saying this is a lawyer that can help me with family law which means you're just like everybody else and I now I have to interview you and I have to choose whether I like you and I have to decide whether or not you have the right price and I'm comparing you like we compare watermelons at one grocery store to the farmers market instead we look at this as what is it that is your unique gift what is it that is your special zone of genius and then when you talk that zone of genius and that's all you're about anyone who needs your service then says that is the inevitable choice so instead of I'm trying to sell anything to everyone you start selling a very specific thing to a very small pool of people most of whom will come to you and most of whom will then refer their friends and family and neighbors to you because you are the choice that's so true and people know why they should refer someone to you because you've picked such a specific Niche right and for a lot of lawyers the the fear becomes if I Niche down too small there won't be enough business that is almost always just a Fabrication in the mind but for the people that truly believe it I always say look starting too small and expanding out is a lot easier than starting too broad and narrowing down so I'll give you an example and I always like to use myself as a test dumming because I always give myself Universal permission to use myself as an example so I own a practice that is dedicated to family law but what I'm most known for in our state is child abuse and neglect parental representation and when I started that practice and I and I started handling those cases I've never handled those cases through the public defender's office I've always been paid my hourly rat so when I started the work it was 315 an hour and now it's $600 an hour and every single time that somebody started to hear about oh that's all you're doing or you're going to focus on that the Fear Factor came up well do you

Speaker 2: think you're going to have enough cases

Speaker 1: and that came from the fact that 98% of the cases in our state that are brought against a parent or alleged child abuse or neglect in Superior Court are handled by the public defender's office that means 2% of the human beings that are in the pool are eligible to have a private attorney or must have a private attorney if they have anyone so I said all right well I'm gonna go out and get that 2% I can't represent the entire 2% if you add up all the bodies that are accused defendants in in our state in this practice area I couldn't represent them all if I wanted to so I got 2% of those people and then within that 2% there's certain places that I'm going to certain counties I'll be in certain issues I'll handle and next thing you know my roster was full and then when I started adding additional lawyers I thought okay at some point we're going to tap this out so how do we make it grow well the issue is child abuse and neglect the issue can be handled in Family Court the issue can be handled in Criminal Court the issue can be handled in in emerging appeals the issue can be handled in administrated process the issue can be handled when someone is not yet in court when they're just being accused and they're being investigated so I started to see little tributaries of how I could take something very small and expand it out into something that was rationally related so you can do this in anything right you can take criminal defense and say I'm only going to handle drug cases that are involving marijuana all right not enough marijuana I'm gonna include marijuana and cocaine not enough marijuana and cocaine okay we're going to do marijuana cocaine and heroin or we're going to do crimes involving firsttime offenders that have marijuana or cocaine or we're going to have firsttime offenders who are over a certain age right there's lots of different ways that you can start to expand your Niche but you have to start small enough that you can become the expert at that thing and um and for most of us the real challenge is sitting still in the discomfort of not having an immediate overwhelm of people that you can serve because you don't see every human being as a client you see a very small number of people and you have to get in front of those people and stay in front of those people and pound the pavement there so that you create enough opportunity and enough money that you can then Market yourself in those other areas and start to expand the pie is so great that you didn't focus on the scarcity you focused on the

Speaker 2: abundance yeah yeah and I will say this

Speaker 1: you know I tell people very candidly about what my trajectory was so a lot of my clients started their law firms either fresh out of law school or you know two or three years out and then their struggle was okay I got to find clients right I gota I got to somehow I got to get clients I would I very candidly did not have the courage to start a law firm in that scenario in fact I never wanted to start a law firm the desire for me to start a law firm didn't really happen until I had gone through a series of Metamorphoses including overcoming depression including becoming a recovering alcoholic and then once I had gotten over that hurdle in my life I looked at myself and started to see myself the way that other people saw me because people would give me compliments all the time oh my God you're so amazing at blah blah blah and I just never believed it I would say thank you because it was the atory statement but I honestly did not believe it I had a lot of self-hatred and I could have easily ended my life and think that I was doing a service to the world so at that time in my life I had gotten to a place where I was emotionally healed and I had gotten my demons out of my way and then I had this wonderful life inead of me and I said wow if I'm if if I'm going to now be in this world right and at some point in time I believe God saved my life because I was on the verge of taking my life I said if I'm G to have this life I have to do something with it going to work collecting a check going home and being with my friends and and doing things socially on the weekends it is not fulfilling to me I feel that I'm meant for something more I had a really strong calling on my heart to believe I was meant for something more so when I got to that place then it was all right if I'm going to have something more I'm gonna have to create it for myself because it doesn't exist we were the the first law firm in New Jersey that had the the overwhelming majority of our cases were child abuse neglect cases in the private priv sector where we were paid our full hourly rate for that work and there was no model for that so I had to create everything from scratch not just ask other people how you do this there was no one else to ask once I created that it then became a matter of it's in a it's in a law firm I worked for someone else at the time then I said okay now I can just go and put it into my own LLC and create that but the creation process was a lot it took a lot out of me it took a lot of time a lot of energy it was a labor of love and it was one of the best things I ever did for myself and frankly that I ever did for society if I'm if I'm candid but that process took me deciding that I had a purpose that my purpose had value because it was within me and now I'm going to share with other people and that had to be the highest priority and that priority then fueled me to go forward so I could stay up those late nights and work those weekends and and do everything that I was required to do

Speaker 2: thank you for sharing that lesson because you were doing so much to help people and to help children and for you to have those feelings when someone said you're doing wonderful work I mean look at how far you've come with the inner and the outer work really truly an inspiration and you know the inner work is is not always fun no it's scary and it's hard and a lot of it is about when you get past the scary and hard it then becomes

Speaker 1: mindset yeah and the mindset work is something that I still work on I tell people this all the time I believe in coaching so much it's not just something that I do it's not just something that I embody not just something I sell but I have a coach for both of my businesses for my law firm and for my coaching business and I have a life coach because there are still things that come up where I think okay this is the way I'm thinking about this is that serving me is the way that I'm seeing this really beneficial for me is it going to help someone else for me to see it this way or do I need to evolve my thinking and a lot of times I can self coach myself out of ative thought patterns but I don't always see the bigger picture think about it this way you know your eyes look outward they don't look inward you can hold up a mirror but the mirror is only going to show you so much it can't show you every ankle it's not the same as someone walking around you and seeing you from all sides so

Speaker 2: true what gave you the courage to launch

Speaker 1: Williams Law Group and then ultimately the law firm Mentor what was that moment where you said I'm going to make this leap and make this happen so I would love to tell you there were some altruistic reason why I started Williams Law Group I was about one year sober at that time I was starting to come out of the haze of thinking very lowly of myself and I was I was still in therapy I had actually approached my boss and said I'm ready to be a partner and I I called the question very definitively because at that time my boss was in his late 60s and he had hired me to really help to relieve him so he could start working less absolutely his right he had an amazing career and he wanted to start slowing down but I came in and I was so zealous and so aggressively pursuing my own career that pretty soon I had my own clients and I didn't really have time to help him much but I adored him so I would help him when I could but I really couldn't be enough I said to him we need someone else and he said I agree so I said all right well here's the thing we already know that you want to work less you're not going to be training this person I'm G to be training this person I'm going to be in their tail when they get something wrong I'm going to be taking them the court with me and showing them the ropes I'm going to be reading work and ripping it up and reading it again and ripping it up until they get it right and that's going to take time and effort and if I'm going to do that on behalf of Your Business Without additional compensation I need at minimum to be your partner and he said you're right you have been a dedicated uh you know member of the team now for three and a half years and I said to him you know is my alcohol history an impediment to this he said no absolutely not thankfully I never did anything that committed malpractice and I never harmed the interest of the firm in my impairment so I said well if that's not an issue what is it he said well I have to go talk to the guys he had two other partners I affectionately

Speaker 2: refer to them as Larry Mo and Curley uh

Speaker 1: so Larry goes and has the conversation with Mo and Curley behind closed doors and he comes back to me and says well you know we need to move slowly with this and I said what exactly do you need to move slowly well you know it's it it there a lot of considerations and he wasn't really giving me an answer he was just kind of saying things because I think whatever it was that that he didn't want to say he he wasn't he wasn't prepared to to answer any questions and I said to him you know not for nothing but there's a half a million dollars that comes into this Law Firm from me not me advertising not me paying somebody to build a website I had nothing other than a homemade blog on WordPress that still had the name of the company. wordpress.com at the end of it and people were finding me and hundreds of thousands of dollars were coming in to find me so I said you know not for nothing but I'm generating more work for your business than your partners are and you don't have to pay for it with me so tell me what exactly it is that's causing you to pause here and perhaps I can address that if you tell me it's a non-starter it's never going to happen I'd appreciate you saying that no no no I'm not saying it it can't happen I just have to I have to keep talking to them and and then it occurred to me like I went home after that conversation and I said you know if these people don't see my value I am not going to try to convince them at this point after all that I've given if the ifo facto is not there if you don't see my value by virtue of what you've gotten so far the answer is simply you don't deserve my value so very clearly I made the decision I told my boss you know listen I understand you have a position you told me that you're still working on it you work on it and I had just gotten into the American Academy of matrimonial lawyers which is a very prestigious National Organization that allows only the most Elite in matrimonial and family law into the organization and I'd gotten in very young and I was the first African-American in our state to get in so I said to him you know here's the thing at some point I'm G to have to introduce myself at the opening ceremony when I go to this National Organization event and I don't intend to address myself as someone's associate because people don't get into this organization when they're someone's associate people get into this organization when they're making new law and changing the world so I will attend that event and then he said okay well you know give me time give me time so anyway Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey and we were out out for three weeks or so without power and all of that and I was about to leave and he said you know well the conference is coming up you know do you have everything you need I said yeah you know I took care of it I'm I'm all signed up I'm ready to go he said all right well what's going to happen when you get there I said what do you mean he said well you know you you said you don't want to refer to yourself a certain way and you know I still have to talk to them and you we had Hurricane Sandy I said I told you what I told you and I meant it then and I mean it now I don't intend to call myself someone's

Speaker 2: associate well well what does that mean

Speaker 1: I was like that means exactly what I told you I don't intend to call myself your associate and he said well are you leaving I said I'm not leaving in this moment I'm going to the conference I'll come back I'm not quitting my job and he said okay and then I came back and a few months later I quit my job but you know

Speaker 2: this is it it's good for you because you trusted your instincts but it's also interesting how the universe or God is going to push us in that right direction if there is something more that we're meant for and we're not making the leap

Speaker 1: at that moment well that's very true I mean this time I actually did make the choice you know two other times I did not belong somewhere I got fire so the universe made the choice for me I mean seriously I look at that as the same thing you're meant for something different if that happens something different something better that was Williams Law Group law for a mentor was a little bit different so I had gone through the journey of building the law firm and i' gotten the law firm to a place where it really did not require me at all so I tell people now I operate a multi-million dollar company that requires about five hours of my week the reality is five hours is a stretch and that's averaged Over The Surge of time that will be oh my God we have a leadership issue or oh my God someone doesn't know how to manage something and I have to step in to give some guidance but for the most part I am not necessary to the functioning of this business I get hit by a bus tomorrow clients come in through my sales person clients are serviced by my attorneys my partner is the manager of my attorneys my office administrator is the manager of my staff money is taken care of by my finance department right I am unnecessary to anything other than being very well compensated to be the leader in the face of this company and once I had that I was bored like I can't like only have five hours of work to do each week I'm like going crazy I love this because my next

Speaker 2: question was what's your strategy for management but I you just beautifully laid it out for us I teach lawyers how to do is I'm very much a proponent of having a system for everything but not a system whereby you just brain dump step by step by step there's a lot more to it that goes into the process of systematizing a business and creating a systems culture and once you have a systems culture you can hire people import them into that culture and they start running the business pursuant to a system so it reduces risk and creates opportunity for growth just inherent in the way that you're being every day you don't have to work to figure out where people's next step is you don't have to work to get things done things are being done automatically and so once you learn

Speaker 1: how to create that the leader of the company the CEO does have to lead the leaders but leading the leaders becomes a matter of let's check in on what your reports say let's make sure you have the resources you need do you have the coaching necessary for you what are the questions in in development areas that you're working on how are you going to solve the problems that are coming up in day today and if you don't know how to solve those problems let's have a coaching conversation so I can help you to solve those problems but I'm not going to snatch it back and solve it for you that's not my job your job is to solve your problems my job is to support you and be here as you do and to applaud you when you ultimately come up with the answer that I hired you to come up with because I know that you're capable of that and so that becomes a matter of I'm at the top so and I have a layer of people who are right below me and then we have team members on under each of those different department department heads to keep things actually getting the work done and that's why Law Firm Mentor is so needed so that you can teach all of these things to other people leading their law firms I learned from a lot of different people this is one thing I did not learn I learned how to do things myself I learned how to delegate to people but the missing link was always taking it Beyond delegation to self- automatic automaticity so that people have their own role and they see it as their responsibility and yes you build in checks and balances because we are a law firm you have a a responsibility ethically to manage people you don't take your hands off the wheel but you create the the the mechanism in a way that people are always growing and developing and every person is looking for their Lane and staying in their Lane so that everything beautifully works together and that's where you get the ease and Grace that comes with having an office full of people that love each other I mean the saddest part of quarantine for my office was that everybody hated the idea of not seeing each other so we had to build in how do we create our culture and make sure that our culture stays Strong by adding things like slack channels and you know periodic check-in meetings but like it really just became like all right guys we're gonna have you know a bi-weekly you know happy hour and you can be happy with your cocktail or you can be happy with your soda or you can be happy with your kids but you're GNA be happy and we're going to be happy together for just two hours because we like each other and like you know it it was really important to me to have a workplace of people that I liked and that my people liked me and that I'm genuinely concerned about them when we have floods and God forbid someone's basement gets flooded I'm genuinely happy to hear that somebody's having a baby or that somebody's puppy is walking and or or that somebody is is traveling to a new place for the first time so those things get to fill my heart Joy which makes it

Speaker 2: easier to want to be the best leader for them so that I'm always working on myself as a respons ability to my company but also for the people that I

Speaker 1: lead that is so great that you built that culture and I'm sure your employees are so appreciative of it yeah and you

Speaker 2: know the one thing I will say is that is one thing that I know that I did exceptionally well because every annual review we always ask what is it that you like about your job and what is it that you'd be upset if it had to change and people always say the people here every time we bring in a new person they're like you people are so helpful and I feel like I have like a place to go to ask questions and I don't feel stupid for asking questions and the door is always open and it's a very friendly place and everyone's so nice there's a genuine energy around that so much so that people are actually surprised when they come and they there's almost like a little PTSD when we take employees from other places and they're like you may not get to go on vacationing you're not going to be upset about that like no you practice family law please go on vacation or you're gonna be miserable to our clients go go go and that's something that a lot of people just don't recognize until they come here and this is like

Speaker 1: shanga magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what is one tip that you can leave with us today about how

Speaker 2: you find and live your joy wow so that's such a powerful question I find and live my Joy by seeing the development of the people that I work with it always gives me a certain level of satisfaction when I can say I created an Avenue for someone like they were whoever they were before they found me but they came to my environment they got to flourish they got to spread their wings they got to try new things and they get to contribute and you oftentimes underestimate the power of what you've created until you start hearing other people's perception of it and not because you don't value your own perception but of course you're jaded right because it's your baby but when people will say to me like oh this is the first time I've been able to take a project and Lead it from Soup To Nuts or in in the coaching business my new marketing director she's amazing and she said to me you know all right I'm I'm going to I'm going to screenshot my calendar every day and send it to you I said why are you going to do that she's like well I want you to know what I'm doing I was like I have access to your calendar if I want to know I'll look it up like why why are why are you policing yourself for me and then giving me more work to do to police you and she was like I want you to know that I'm doing my job because I'm working virtually I said if I don't see the copy come out the emails come out the social media I'll know you're not doing your job you just go be fabulous and if there's an issue there I'll get to you right and it's it's fun watching the breathing room that people start to experience and

Speaker 1: the happiness that they have when they get to show up and be themselves and I don't have to do anything other than benefit from all that they are and then share that benefit with them like it's just it's such a better way of living in life if seeing your employees and your clients happy is what brings you Joy it makes you an incredible leader you've built an incredible career and what you are building and offering with Law Firm Mentor is so needed and I'm sure it's appreciated by everyone in your community can you share with our listeners how and where they can find

Speaker 2: you yeah absolutely if you want to just learn about uh Law Firm mentor and how we help solo and small law law firm owners to grow their revenues Crush chaos in business and make more money you can find out about that on our website law firm mentor.net and if you're interested in creating systems and a systems culture which is what we've been talking about today we have a very special absolutely free Master Class it runs for about a week it's an hour a day for about a week where we go deep into how to create this systems culture and you can find out about that at lawr mentor.net slm masterclass if you are new to shilt it we'd love for you to join us we offer Community memberships masterminds Innovative virtual events and meaningful connections to entrepreneurs and corporate leaders please also check out our shiled shop curated products from women-owned businesses who put their heart and soul into their beautiful and Innovative products we offer she built it business Consulting and the Sheil tip

Speaker 1: blog thank you to everyone around the world who joined today thank you to my editor Rich stalino please download And subscribe wherever you get your podcast and until next time together let's let nothing stop us from experiencing the life that We crave [Music]