Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Most firms survive. The best ones scale.
Welcome to the Managing Partners podcast, where law firm leaders learn to think bigger.
I'm Kevin. Daisy.
Let's jump in.
All right, we're recording. All right, Vanessa, why don't you kick us off and tell us a awesome story about our topic today.
Maybe in regards to one of your clients.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Yeah, the whole working harder isn't the pathway to profit. Right. So this is an elder law attorney. Her name is Susie. Amazing woman out of Colorado.
And she came to me a couple of years ago, very, very stressed out, close to tears with her own words, like, I'm burning out, I'm losing the plot. I heard you speak.
I really now, I now know I need your help. And so as you know, with those initial conversations, it's kind of like, okay, tell me what's going on. And typically somebody is ready to, at that point, kind of dump it all on the table because they've finally pulled the plug on, I'm going to get some help.
She was running a million dollar firm, right? Seven figure firm. So, you know, look, by all intents and purposes, doing great work. Looked like she had it all together.
She had a lot of part time team members, and I share that because that was actually one of the problems, but kind of a lot of fractional part time team members. She was spending most of her days babysitting team, trying to pull it all together, you know, not getting her own legal work done until pretty much, you know, five o' clock in the afternoon when everybody's gone home. And finally she's catching up. She's working weekends, evenings. When I said, you know, how many hours are you working a week? I was like, it sounds like you're doing at least 60 plus. And she laughed and she was like, if only I was doing 60, like that would be a really good thing. Okay, financials. She didn't have time to look at the financials. And then she also had a team member that was holding her hostage.
This is when I, you know, I use that term a lot with our clients where they're really holding the owner hostage. And it can be many things. Either they've got just a really bad attitude and they're kind of like upsetting other people. But they're typically a really good producer, so there's something there. You know, perhaps they're responsible for a whole book of business or a whole area of the practice. And so the owner gets held hostage even though there's a lot of negativity, a lot of having to clean up messes. There's often the money piece linked and she had that going on as well.
And this particular team member was on their way out the door, walking out with a big part of the business. So whole lot of things going on and it, you know, really Susie's words were at the time, and this is, I want to share this because I think it's the real warning signals. Like, it really is like, don't go down this path.
It starts with, if only I could work harder and get ahead of this, everything would be okay again. It's kind of like if only I could find the energy to kind of sit down on the weekend and work through this. I'll be on the other side. I can figure it out. If only.
And it always starts with that. And my words to Susie was a like, really warning flags here. My background was in stress management, emotional intelligence, but burnout. I'm like, you are on a very slippery slope.
So that's the one thing that you've got to stop right now. And secondly, this wishful thinking or delusional thinking that if you could only do something, it'll all fall back into place, doesn't work. Your firm actually needs a complete reset. We've got to kind of re establish like the foundation and the ground rules and the values and everything like reset so that you can put yourself onto a different path. Good news. I'm sure we'll jump into some of the how to's, but, you know, probably within a year and possibly even less than that. Frankly, Suzy heard the team member went, we did a little bit of, you know, cleaning up and mitigation risk around, you know, the business that also went out the door.
Susie's down to working four and a half day work weeks. The whole team is now they close their doors, I think at one o' clock on a Friday. So it's a team perk as well.
She actually added another 200,000 in revenue in that same year. Her profitability is now increasing. And I think the one thing that she would say is like her stress level, I mean, she just looks different. She shed actually about 50 pounds when all of this went on. So she's kind of getting her body back in check, her health back in check, and she just looks physically different.
And she's absolutely loving her firm now, but she's loving the new firm that she's running.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: That's amazing. That's. That's an awesome story.
Yeah. That employee you're talking about through some other things, I think maybe the book traction, some other areas that I've learned it, but it basically called out a terrorist. You know, they're high performer, but they're not a cultural fit.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: And they can cause all kinds of problems and cause other people to leave and, and damage the culture of the firm.
But it's easy to want to keep those people because of their performance or the, the book of business or whatever it is.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: And you gotta let them go. You gotta get them out of there.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: Totally. And it's a, it's hard. Right. It's something. Unfortunately we deal with a lot sometimes in firms it's been partners. I mean, this was more of an employee associate, so somewhat easier. But sometimes it's been partners. Right. They've formed it together and then there's one that's frankly become toxic.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: Not wanting to do what they do. But yes. That they're really. There typically is no way forward through this because somebody doesn't want to make the changes. And as you said, not a cultural fit.
But on the other side of it, the good news is, oh my God, it can. It gets so good on the other side of this.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Sometimes we make hard decisions, but they're the, the, the ones we gotta make so. Well, awesome story. Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna jump into more about that, but thank you for sharing that. And go Susie. Keep at it. So good to hear that. Well, I wanted to make sure everyone listening, tuning in on the show here, you get to know our guests and what we're gonna be talking about today. But Vanessa Shaw here is, she has the business growth academy and also I love this is the Get Rich without being a bitch podcast.
So make sure you go check that out and check out her company as well. And at the end here we'll, you know, we'll share how you can best connect with, with her and, and of course, as always, if you want an introduction connection, I can make that by email, LinkedIn, whatever. So tell me a little bit more about your business and how you work with attorneys and just your, just your story, how you got started.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: Yes. So big quick backstory was I kind of just fell into attorneys like 18 years ago now. So it's a long time. It's a long time ago. In fact, I say 18. I think it's getting closer to 20. But you know how those years go by so quickly. And I was health coaching, actually the wife of a managing partner of a regional section of a billion dollar law firm in Europe, very well known.
And he heard me, kind of overheard me and said, hey, could you help me. I've got a lot of stress. I want to be like, really in peak performance and kind of love your energy and everything. I was like, I guess so, sure. So this was very much in a health coaching kind of lane as I was in at the time. Worked with him for six months. He was loving the results that he was getting. And then said, you know, hey, I don't know if you know, but I'm responsible for a lot of people in this firm. And we're growing and the partners have a lot of stress. They're burning out that we've had some health challenges. I'd like to bring you in and basically pitch a concept of a coaching program.
So I believe that my claim to fame is that I probably pioneered the very first ever virtual coaching program in a major law firm because this was in the day of Skype was too advanced for them. And of course, as we say this, you know, Skype is closing its doors, but yeah, right now, own coaching. Back then, Kevin, I never saw my clients, they never saw me. I pitched it as virtual because I had young kids at the time. And I was like, I don't want to be running all around Europe. I know it sounds glamorous, but I knew full well that it would get old very quickly. And so that was, you know, really helping the partners be at their best. And then the partners would, of course, would start with kind of health and well being and just what was going on. I was like, I was like that personal perk, if you like. It was like safe space to speak, person to speak to. But of course it would morphed into business after a while. They kind of like sought some things out. And then it was, God, I got this team member or we've got this, you know, we got this great opportunity. We've got a, you know, there's an opportunity to set up an office in China or Russia or all these places. So I ended up being their executive coach for quite a few years.
After that kind of, you know, ended, I was like, I don't want to do big law again. I was. Everybody said, you should go, you know, you should find another big law firm, launch this again.
And frankly, I didn't want to. I felt like a. I felt like I was a very small cog in a very big system.
And I was honestly a secret weapon for many of them as well. So they didn't want to tell. They don't want to refer me to other people.
Sometimes, Sometimes they'd even say, you can't come into the office. I want to meet you in another place. So it was, I don't know, there was an energy around it. It was fun. I was really well paid. Certainly had some golden handcuffs at one point because I knew my heart was kind of, kind of leaving it. But, you know, the money was really good. And so I went into, you know, coaching small business owners. And I actually went specifically women, because the women in the big law firm were the ones that I really bonded with the most. I felt like they had so many challenges and I was trying to avoid attorneys. It's really the truth. And then I think people just found me through connections and they kind of knew that I had this thing in the past.
And so women attorneys kept showing up and I, I've now had to take the advice that I give my own clients, which is really in specializing and niching down. And I'll be honest, I resisted it as well, you know, because I was like, no, but I love writing all the things that my clients say to me. I was using the same, you know, the same excuses. But we just discovered that, you know, we really know the law firm model. You know, 20 years is a lot of experience and expertise. And it's also bringing some of the, you know, the, some of the really good stuff, stuff from big law into small law firms. Women attorneys are a ton of fun to work with. They're sharp as heck. The women that we work with as well are really, and this is probably the edge where it's become so fun for me. They're wanting to disrupt and do things differently. They've been in the male dominated firms. They've. They've come from that space, they've gone into their own firms because as we were saying at the beginning, they want to create a different culture.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: They want to have the freedom, frankly, to take their kids to a ballet class or, you know, take off in the middle of the week, you know, and go skiing with their son or whatever it is.
So I'm loving that we're kind of building firms in very different ways and frankly, you know, really disrupting that pattern of you don't have to keep working so hard. You can actually turn a law firm into a business, which is really what we help with.
And so that the owners have a lot more freedom, lifestyle, profit, and they're frankly doing the work that only they should be doing.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: Okay. I love it. Yeah. So, yeah, a lot of my guests on the show and clients of mine, women have done some of the most unique things I've seen in the legal space and are some of the hardest charters I know. So but they, they tend to do things different and find a way to. To become again, completely different than the firms in their space. So that's interesting. What brought you. So you're now in Arizona in the US So you're from the uk. What happened there?
When did that transition happen?
[00:12:26] Speaker A: No, I know, because it's probably the number one question I get asked how, why? So actually going back to my days with the big law firm, and I'm telling you, I was really getting into coaching around some really big, meaty topics. Like, yeah, we're going to open up a new region. One of the guys I loved working with him, he was one of the partners. One of the younger partners wanted to.
It was actually out in the Far east and he did do this, but he had young kids. He wanted to take his wife and his young kids out to the Far east and really live this sort of expat lifestyle, like, and setting up a whole new part of the business.
And so I find myself coaching these guys. And again, on the whole, it was, you know, my practice was 90% men at the time, guys to do these big things. And I honestly had to look at myself and kind of go, you know, a couple of years in, like, wow, I'm coaching them to do big things and pursue their dreams. What am I doing? Like, I was all of a sudden starting to feel out of integrity.
And it really sparked something in me. I'd been coming to the States as I was skilling up myself and going down many different paths with, like, my coaching skills and credentials and everything. I found myself coming to California, which of course is always kind of, you know, always out there and like on the cutting edge of things and especially personal development.
And my husband is also American, so that helped. But he was. Had a big career in back in Geneva, Switzerland. And I started to get the bug to come to the States.
So, you know, I was like sitting with this for about two years saying, there's no way, like, there's no way I can get my kids out of schools in Switzerland. My husband had, you know, big career. He'd actually told me never to. The one thing he said, don't ever ask me, is to leave Switzerland or Europe because he loved it there. That was his dream. And here I am kind of going, no, this is really. I felt such a calling to come to the States.
So long story short, I did get him on board.
Present.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Don't ever ask me.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: And you're like, well, yeah, I had to present like the business case and why it made sense. And it was going to be a three year plan, plan for us to move and move the family. And it was going to coincide with the end of his career in the UN and I ended up making it all happen within 11 months.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Less than a year.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: It was less than a year. Now he actually did stay behind in Europe, so he had to stay behind. He kind of commuted Switzerland to Phoenix for nearly two years.
And I came over here in 23rd, 2012.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: Awesome. Yeah, that's great. Okay, cool, cool story. And you saw something you wanted and you, you made it happen. Whether he was on board or not, it's like.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: Well, he was on board, thankfully. You know, Listen, we're celebrating 30 years of marriage next month, so in June, whenever this goes live. So yeah, we, we made it through there. And it's part of the, you know, fun story of I think life together and, and frankly just doing things differently that time. Then we think we can't do something yet we feel such a pull towards doing it. Right. I'm, I'm a firm believer in. And frankly, that's a lot of where our coaching starts. That desire and that pull from within is what we need to heed, particularly when it starts to get louder and it's, it's just not going away.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And you need to be in a position to, to act on that. Right. If you're working 80 hours a week and running around like crazy and your firm owns you, you know, you're just gonna be hard to, to have those moments and to, to act on em. Right. So. Yeah.
Well, cool story. I'm glad you're here. I wanted to. We're gonna dive a little bit deeper into, you know, the topic about, you know, by working harder is not the path to more profit. And I can be a testament to that as well.
But I had some fun kind of quick fire questions my team threw over my desk. So we're going to get rolling. We're going to have a little fun.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: We're going to mix it up a little bit.
I'm interested to see the answers. I mean, it'll be fun. And everyone listening. Vanessa does have, has no clue what I'm going to ask her.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: I don't.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: And these are softball. These are softball fun questions. But this is a good one. This is actually in line with like kind of our topic a little bit. If you had one extra hour every day, how would you spend it?
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[00:18:00] Speaker A: That is an interesting question because I actually have a lot of free time.
So it really is an, you know, an interesting question.
I mean, my love is tennis.
So that would probably be like, you know, working with a tennis pro or something. Like real like. I mean, I play a lot of tennis.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Like if that had the hour and I could like work with a pro.
Yeah, that would be cool. Every single day. I like that.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's cool. I've never been good at golf and I've always wanted to get better and I don't really have time usually to go play because it's like an all day thing. But I did a pro lesson this past week in Palm beach and it was very eye opening.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: And helped me, helped me a lot. But that's just like one lesson for one hour, you know, so it was, it was pretty cool. So.
Yeah, I like that. All right, awesome. All right. What's your go to coffee order?
[00:18:52] Speaker A: I'm very boring with coffee because I'm not a big coffee drinker. I'm a tea drinker because I'm a Brit, you know, of course. But my go to really boring Starbucks is a tool. Almond milk latte.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: Nothing straightforward.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: I'm black coffee.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I have admiration. I kind of admire people. I've always thought people that sit down and drink a black coffee is actually really cool. And particularly like in Europe, you know, you see them like with these little, like really little espressos and it's like the Italians and they put it together and it's just that little couple of sips I've looked at that, and I'd admire it from afar, but the thought of me drinking that is like, no, it's not happening.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: It's funny because when I order a coffee anywhere, they're like, okay, room for cream?
Oh, you want sugar in there? No, like, they're like, confused, like, what, there's anything else in there.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: Easy.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: It took me a while. I used to do cream and all this stuff and sugar, and I was so used to it. And then one day it just.
I was just like, I don't. I don't taste. I don't want all this stuff in there. And I just kind of switched to black coffee. So, I don't know. Weird, but that's me. Okay, here's another cool one. And then we'll. We'll get back to our normal talk.
If you got a billboard in your town, so Phoenix or where in Arizona, what would it say? A billboard for yourself for 24 hours?
[00:20:12] Speaker A: Oh, that's a really good question.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: I know, right?
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Gosh.
[00:20:17] Speaker B: I don't know what I would say either.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: Yeah, and this is a really good question. I'd probably want it to be quite provocative. My mind's going into lots of different things. I think it comes back to. I. I wouldn't want it, like, necessarily for me, but it could be representing, like, the, you know, business growth Academy, for example. But I think it would probably say something like, women's financial empowerment is the next level of freedom. Something like that. Because that's really the core of what I think that's comes down to the core of why we do what we do. Because I deeply, deeply believe that when women are empowered financially and have more financial resources, the world generally will be a better place.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: I love it. Awesome. Good answer.
All right, cool. Well, let's. Let's kind of dive in a little bit more to. And when I was talking to Vanessa before, has always meet with my guests prior, and she speaks on lots of topics, and she's got her podcast and, you know, again, go check her out and her website for the Business Growth Academy. But one of the topics she. She sent over to me was, you know, why working harder doesn't lead to more profit. And so I was like, well, that's. I like that one. That's an interesting one, because we're all wired to.
Well, actually, I had this conversation today with my president here, and sometimes outworking people could be a way to get ahead, but I like the fact that it was like, doesn't lead to more profit, and at some point you can't work harder, you're going to burn yourself out. And if you're not putting things in place and delegating, you're not going to just see more profit of it. Eventually you're just, you're gonna run out of time. So I was just interested to kind of know the nature of kind of that topic. Unless I just wanted to kind of dive into how you use that. And when you're talking with your women clients, you know, what does that look like for you?
[00:22:06] Speaker A: Totally. And there's lots of aspects to it. Right. But I want to give like some really good practical takeaways. I think, Kevin, you just touched on it, right? We are so programmed that, you know, working busy is like a badge of honor. The busier you are, kind of the better you are, the more successful you're deemed to be. And like that's something, it's very prevalent. That's probably one of the big, big differences I've seen moving to the States, that is very, very prevalent in America. Europeans definitely have a different relationship to work and free time and leisure time and lifestyle. Whereas Americans definitely are banging that drum of the work harder now and again. I love like effort and yes, putting in the hours. And when you've really got to put your head down, there's a time and place. What often happens though is it tips the balance. And as you said, there's a point where you can't work any harder, you can't put any more hours in. And for me, I look at this, you know, through the lens of energy, right. It's like really, how are you spending your energy? We've only got so much of it.
If we're spending a lot of that time in energy draining tasks, which is one of the places I kind of start with my women, it's like you just haven't got the good quality energy for the good stuff, right. If you're like. And get practically, if you are chasing payments, doing admin, you know, this constant babysitting perhaps of team members, right? The stuff that is really not the best and highest use of your time that your energy is drained. Which means we don't have the energy for the strategic visionary, the dreaming, like you even mentioned it, right. You get so busy, you don't even have the moments to tap into what do I want.
And of course outside of business, I'm a firm believer that especially in why are we doing this anyway in small business and being, being a business owner, I mean, it's pretty risky. There's a lot involved in it, it's not. It's certainly not the easiest thing to be doing. So why are we doing it? Well, most people will say that they're doing it for. For their loved ones, for the freedom to do things on their own terms, that their kids, they want to set an example, like all of these good things. And yet those are typically the very things that are suffering. Right? Because they're going home and like, kids and spouses are certainly not getting the best parts of them. We won't even talk about friends because that's often a. Heck, Vanessa, if I had time for friends, I don't even have time, you know, So I think that's where we kind of start with it. We've got to start to rethink this about, like, tap back into why did you go into business in the first place? And now let's reconnect with that. Probably changed and evolved and start to re engineer, kind of reverse engineer what you're doing. So one of my favorite questions in this kind of like the work harder is, and I always say this to my business owners, you won't get what you want. You get what you tolerate.
Like, you will get what you know, where your standards are and what you tolerate. So we can all say, you know, yeah, I want to. I want to have a, you know, a shredded, ripped body. But if I'm tolerating drinking soda and eating fast food all day long, right, we can see that there's just going to be a mismatch.
So one of the first places that we suggest starting is just doing literally a list, a brain dump. It's not a very glamorous term. Of all the tolerations, because starting there, and it is not uncommon that my women are like, like, how long have you got, Vanessa? How many am I supposed to find? You know, I found 70. I'm like, great. Because now you understand why energetically you're feeling so burned out and burdened and some of those things, you know, again, we've got a lot of stories attached to them.
We tolerate things because we think we have to. We tolerate things because this is the way it's always been done. You know, we tolerate things because we've never even stopped to question it. But I'm all around like, let's raise standards. And you've got to be now the business leader, not the attorney anymore. We're going to shift into being like the business leader and the visionary that is no longer tolerating certain things. Right. So again, like, raising standards, we're raising, you Know, improving like discipline and consistency.
And it means that, you know, if my clients go through that process, just that one thing alone every quarter, like, they're constantly up, leveling.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: I can see that. Yeah. I mean, a lot of things you said in the beginning there too. It's like, yeah, you're doing it for this or that or money or family or, you know, it's almost like those are future promised things. Right?
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: In your mind, you're like, I'm doing this because I get to do all this. And when you start a company, I started moment I was 23, things definitely don't go the way you expected. And now you're. You're on this journey and you're stuck in this journey, if you will, of trying to be profitable and then pay for bills, and then now you got to deal with clients and then you gotta. And then you're just 10 years go by or 20 years go by. Right. And those things are no longer or they're neglected. They're not on out things that you're focused on and you're just now stuck in the work.
I see a lot of interest like that.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: And that is. That stuckness there. That's the grind. That's the piece that is really the. That's the piece that often leads to burnout. Right. It's just doing the same old, same old. Not being able to really shift. Your role doesn't evolve. I mean, you know, the people, let's face it, that you and I working with, they're really smart people.
Really smart. And you spent a lot of money, a lot of time going to law school and keeping up with, you know, continuing education and everything. That's what I would say is like, you're evolving. You've evolved a lot since going to law school. But like your business and your practice. Well, typically, it's more of a practice when they come to us. It's not a business. Right, which is a good point. It's like it hasn't evolved. You're still taking on all the. Every client that walks through the door because you think you have to, because you don't have a system or you don't have a sales process.
You, you know, you're aspiring to. Every single woman that I speak to is aspiring to better clients, better clients, better cases. And they're, they're, you know, they're confident about the work that they do. They've got a lot of experience, and they're like, yeah, I. I want meatier things. Right. You don't want to be Doing this stuff that is just. You could do blindfolded, like, where's, where's the challenge? Right. And the intellectual stimulation in that.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: So spot on.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Right. So it's like, you, business has got to evolve. You know, your client work has got to evolve. Oftentimes it's also back to. And this is back to the not working harder. Right. It's the smarter piece when that, when you give yourself permission for that to evolve and like, start to embrace that. Guess what? You can be working with far less clients and earning far more money.
Right. So now all of a sudden, we've freed up some time. You can, you know, or we can be charging, like, charging the fees that you actually want to be charging, but you haven't dared to right up until this point. You know, we can quickly run the math on that, and it's not uncommon that, you know, even if it shaves off 10 hours a week, I mean, 10 hours a week, I find it easy for me to find 10 hours a week in a law firm. Like, it's easy, like, where it's just being spent in the wrong place. But it's like, that's 40 hours a month. And, you know, think how that can be put back into Frankie. Family, kids, free time, strategic time, business development. I mean, there's, there's so many things. But that for me is the. Yeah, let's. Let's work really smarter and not harder. Bragging about having 100 cases sitting on your desk is not the badge of honor for, you know, that it needs to be, but that if you've got 30, what we call kind of champagne clients that are really paying you well, that respect your work expertise and refer you to other clients, now you're working a lot smarter and life becomes fun again.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Plus, you know, sorry, if you grow focused on the business side of things. And I know a lot of lawyers that they barely, they don't even practice law. They. They decided to be a business owner more than. And they enjoy that more. But if you put the right people in place and you grow the right way and you focus on things, you know, you can scale and have lots of cases, but maybe you cherry pick a few that you want to work on, you know, you grow a team that to handle the workload, you know. So I think that's another kind of, like, decision point that I see often is, you know, do they want to be a better lawyer, or do they want to, like, be more of a business owner and maybe be a lawyer when they want to be a lawyer? And I got some that are just like, I'm not a lawyer at all anymore. You know, I just keep my license and I'm a CEO. So I think, you know, making that, that decision I think is, is an important one too.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: Hey. Yeah. And I would say the majority of our women, they fall into that category, right? They're like, as you said, the cherry picked. I'd like to do, you know, a handful.
You know, I want to keep my hand in sometimes that's the initial, you know, and that could be a stepping stone. Some of them are just like, get me out of this. Yeah, I want to be the CEO.
Like, I'm going to be the CEO of my law firm. Like, okay, let's go.
But interestingly enough, you know, women are a lot more hesitant to hire than men are.
So statistically, I don't know exactly why that is. I can hazard a guess.
I do think women against kind of societally, we've been programmed to do it all, you know, again, kind of rewarded for that in an unhealthy way. Look after your aging page at patient pat patients, parents, you know, kids, like, you kind of do it all. You do the work things. So there is something that women tend to be hesitant about hiring. And yet we also know that women make really good leaders. They got some just natural skill sets where they can build really great teams. So that's, that's something else that we see as well, that once our women kind of go over that, no, I don't want to be doing this all myself. I want to be building a team. And again, it kind of typically comes back to culture. I had a she's actually a new prospect yesterday and it was like, I'm excited to have our follow up conversation because I was like, oh, gosh, you're definitely in our sweet spot. And you know, when you speak to those people. But she was speaking, she was speaking about culture. She's grown very quickly. She wants to be less lawyering, a few strategic cases. And she's like, but I want to build a team.
I want it very women focused. I want to build a team that's happy. I want a different law firm. Right? And then she's saying, what I really want to do, what I'm passionate about is, you know, coaching and mentoring. That's what I want to be doing. I'm like, yeah, we have to. This, this is like, yeah, and you totally can do that.
Right? But as you said, you now got to work out and make sure you've got good systems in place. For what is that culture that you want to build? Right? Who is the right fit? Who is the next hire? And make sure that you've got some pretty robust practices in place for hiring, screening, and good onboarding.
Good people are out there. Everybody is always saying, oh, there's nobody. I'm like, most of the firm sizes that we're speaking with, you're not looking to hire a hundred people.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, as the leader, you know, you need to put those things in place. And you don't want to accidentally kind of build a firm with an accidental culture.
You need to put out your vision, what you stand for, your core values. And the thing is, once you build a good firm and you have some great people and you have a good culture, you attract way more a players and the right people for your firm versus having to go find people or do job boards and listings and stuff like that. You know, for me now at this point, you know, I go to my. We go to our team. Who else do you know that's like you? And they're like, oh, I got like, three people that would love to work here because they talk about it all the time, talk about us and our teams. And so it's very easy to find people. If you have a good culture and.
And you've built a good business, you know, put yourself out there. And if you're leading your firm, whether it's just you by yourself or you have a few folks, like, start to lay that groundwork and get with your team and say, hey, here's where we're going.
And the folks that want to go that direction will continue and support you. And the ones that don't will, you know, self select themselves out the door.
[00:34:37] Speaker A: Totally. You just use exactly the term that I use. It's like they'll self select out. And that's a good thing. It's actually a good thing.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: The bad employee, the bad apple, right? They're going to not feel comfortable to be around, and they'll find something else to do. And so I think nothing, a good culture, nothing beats it, because the people that are there protect it more than you do. And because they've found a place that they want to be at and grow. And so if someone's not doing something right, they'll. They'll come to you right away and say, hey, this isn't. Something's not right here. Or, I wasn't happy about what happened over here.
So, you know, your team will protect the whole company as a unit. You know, if you got A good culture going. So that's super important. That's interesting about the one prospect you have there. It's. I. I had a young lady on the show recently, and she was like 10 months into starting her new firm and she wasn't paying herself anything. She kind of saved up, left the firm, already had a bunch of clients coming in the door, already made her first hire, was working on a second hire, was already documenting processes, as, you know, awesome website, was doing some marketing, was on videos on, like, TikTok and Instagram. And like, I was like, how long you been in business? And just like 10 months. And I was like, blown away. Just blown away.
And then she joined a mastermind group and she joined, like a local networking group and, like, just doing all the things that usually takes people years to kind of like, yeah, it does, you.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: Know, have to take the long time, a long time. And I think, you know, one of the things that you've said there as well, like, she joined a mastermind group, right?
And it's like, that's the piece. If you want to. If you want to, you know, really cut through some things and get there faster.
That the path, the fastest path is never alone, guaranteed. You know, whether that's masterminding, coaching, you know, peer networks. I mean, peer networks, people that are. That are in that growth mindset, because you learn so much that way and you can apply it and as you say, you can, like, really take things to the next level rapidly.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: To me, that's the only shortcut because, you know, you read books, then they'll have some answers, but then you have to go figure out how to do it and apply it, and it's foreign to you in a lot of cases, so. Or if you go to a conference, you learn a ton. It's like a fire hose. And then you gotta come back and then you have to execute. And I think a lot of people fail to do that.
I like, it's like, go to a conference, come back and do one thing, you know, that'd be worth it.
But yeah, the Mastermind, this is a good time to plug myself. So I have the Managing Partners podcast, which you're listening to. I had the managing partners, Mastermind, which is starting here in June, coming up, and I already have like a dozen phenomenal attorneys owners that are signed up to be in the group. So the power of Mastermind is just. It's helped me, without a doubt. We've been in Masterminds for quite a lot of years at this point, and different ones, you know, Some are, some are people that don't do anything. I do. You learn a lot. Some are people that only do what I do and you learn a lot. So when I have a mastermind group of attorneys, I'm going to learn a lot and it's going to be my group. But, but everyone. I'll send out more stuff about that but that's coming soon and I'm excited about that. So.
But yeah, so spot on. Yeah. Join a mastermind. That's just your shortcut.
[00:37:58] Speaker A: It is.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: It doesn't have to be mine. It could be.
There's. For the lawyers out there, there's like a eight figure firm. There's law firm alchemy, how to manage a small law firm, fireproof. I mean there's so many groups out there and I recommend a ton of them. You got Ben Glass, Brian Glass with their great legal marketing group and of course you have Vanessa or their, her growth academy for women. So I would say, you know, take a look at what's out there and there's so much information. People that are, well, the one piece.
[00:38:30] Speaker A: I would say because there are, you know, there's again lots of different things, different stages is coming back to culture. Anybody that is thinking about that, it's like check out the culture. Because every mastermind does have a culture. Right. Some of them are, you know, we call it in the women's world a little broish, you know, and it might be.
Right. Some of them might be too masculine. Right. Or like the bro ish for you. But you know, frankly some of the other ones might be just too light and you know, have too much of an air of I know, spirituality or whatever it is. Right. They, they can run the gamut. But it's really important to just tap into kind of the culture of those masterminds because you are going to spend a lot of time with people I've certainly known. I've. I mean I invest heavily in myself and I've been in places where I've. Let's all in the wrong room or I'm, I'm, I'm the, I'm the furthest along in the room which is also not good. Right.
And equally so, you know, don't, don't always be the furthest behind by a long place. There are some masterminds that you kind of hand over your credit card and you get in but there's no qualifier.
I'm not a fan of that for those people that are more advanced or some things that make sense. So I think there's there's again, there's such a variety. And coming back to what you said earlier, Kevin, I think looking into just culture of these things, because there's. There is definitely something for everybody that's.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: Awesome, you know, point. I appreciate that. I never thought about it like that. Yeah. Because I just mentioned a ton of groups this in the legal space and they're all so different. And now that I'm thinking about, like, okay, yeah, that one's like this. And so, yeah, I think that's a great point. Like, if you're talking about, you know, mastermind or coaching or whatever, it's like, what is it like? What's the culture like? Because the, you know, kind of what Vanessa teaches and helps law firm owners, women owners with, you know, stress and time and all that stuff, you could join a mastermind that's full of go hard, work hard folks. And there's, there's plenty of those law firm owners that I know that just no matter what, you're not going to talk them out of just working 80 hours a week and just. That's their deal. And there's masterminds that are like, you know, full of people like that.
So I think really taking that consideration. I never thought about that that way before. I've been on quite a few masterminds and, you know, how do you pick the right one and which one's gonna work for you? I've always been like, one's better than nothing. Get in a group with people. But yeah, then find your way. You know, it might not be the perfect group.
[00:41:03] Speaker A: You know, Kevin, I'm tempted to coach you now because. Just a thought, right? But this is kind of like. And it comes back to really that, you know, the, the topic of our conversation. But it's even for you, right. You're launching this, which is super exciting, and you've already got in, you know, a good bunch of interest.
But now for you to think about. Yeah. How is yours different? Right.
[00:41:24] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. 100.
[00:41:26] Speaker A: We all have to think about that in business. It's like, as you said, like, what are those angles, right, where what we're doing is different, what we stand for is different, what we stand against.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: Hey, I mean, you gotta think, you know, about the content and, like, how you're gonna do it and what's gonna be different about the, the structure and the meetings and stuff like that. But, you know, not really thinking about. Yeah. What's. What's the culture of my, of my group? Who would want to be in my group? Who's not A good fit for my group. Yeah, you know, maybe more lean into that. Who's. Who's not a good fit. Might be a good way to figure out, you know what. And I know a lot of lawyers right now. I got a client of mine, he's starting his own mastermind. He's a lawyer, very respected, very successful and his is kind of niched in, you know, technology because he's big into like cyber and tech and AI and is he's going to really focus down on lawyers that really want to get geek out and, and you know, kind of grow their firms with technology. So it's a unique kind of little niche he has there. But that's a phenomenal question to ask yourself if you're joining one or if you're starting one. What's the culture of the group?
[00:42:28] Speaker A: So can I share something that I'm up to?
[00:42:30] Speaker B: Sure. Oh yeah. So I want you to share that and how we can connect with you and everyone that's listening. So yeah, go share away.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: I know at the beginning I was like, oh hey Kevin, we've launched this thing since you and I spoke, which was only about 10 days ago. So it all happened very quickly.
We'll get you the link for the show notes as well. But back to community, which is really what we're talking about. Right. And places to learn and grow and all the rest of it. So we've launched the. Or launching because it's going live today, the Legal Collective.
And it's going to be a community for, you know, ambitious women owned law firms. It's a free community as well. This is not paid, so it's monthly. I love building community. I've done a ton of events as part of my business model.
This one's going to be virtual monthly where I'm going to be teaching for free core concepts around business growth and mindset, which is key.
And we're going to have opportunities as well for networking peer to peer to build like referral partners.
And it's going to be like a, you know, like a real power hour once a month. So the Legal Collective, it's going to be linked to our website as well and I'm just super excited about it. It was one of those moments of like, this is really what I want to do and I'm not going to think about all the reasons why not and everything else I've got going. So we just, we're just launching it with whatever fabulous women we launch it with.
[00:43:52] Speaker B: That's excellent. Awesome. All right, so it's called the legal collective.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: The legal Collective.
[00:43:57] Speaker B: Awesome. All right. All my women that are listening, lawyer owners, you know, definitely check this out. Connect with Vessa Vanessa and go to the website. Of course, we'll get a link too. We can drop it in the comments or whatever or always just reach out to me on LinkedIn or wherever you're watching this, leave a comment. You can tag Vanessa. Um, and we'll make sure you.
You get the right information to. To check it out. So. So once a month, this is going to be a certain day of the.
[00:44:23] Speaker A: Week, or looks like it's Mondays for now. That's kind of a Monday afternoon, my time. Of course, you know, it's like across the country, it'll be later in the day. You know, you know how that goes. But I figured Mondays because Mondays are typically the day that I always recommend to my clients that that should be their kind of CEO day or working on the firm, not in it.
[00:44:45] Speaker B: Versus waking up Monday and getting stuck in the grind and.
[00:44:48] Speaker A: Exactly. And then you don't get your head back up again until Friday afternoon. So Mondays at 2, that's 1pm Arizona time.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: And that's.
Is that Pacific?
[00:45:00] Speaker A: That's the same as Pacific right now. And it'll be PM right now Eastern time.
[00:45:05] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, that's.
Thank you for sharing. And she hasn't even mentioned it until this show.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: First time hearing about it, first time announcing it.
[00:45:16] Speaker B: Too bad we're not live right now. But it's all good. So. Well, thank you so much for sharing that and your. In your. Your story and you know, how you're helping women lawyers and. And lot of great tips here that I'm learning as. Which is the awesome part about having the podcast is I get to pick things up and learn on myself. And as I'm about to launch to my mastermind, I got some questions to answer. So I appreciate that. And what is the. What's the best way for folks other than the link will drop to connect with you?
[00:45:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Main podcast. Sorry, Main podcast. Main website is Business Growth Academy. It's business doesn't have a the in it Business Growth academy dot com. You'll be able to find the Legal collective on there as well. I'm also on LinkedIn. We've got newsletters going out on LinkedIn. Get rich without being a podcast.
I'm actually just about to record as well a series that's going to be specifically for long fun. But everything that's on the podcast already is relevant across the board, so. And again, same thing. I love it when people reach out and say, hey, I heard you on this podcast and so, yeah, reach out. We're real people and we love. I love connecting and love making new connections.
[00:46:29] Speaker B: Same here. I do too. Yeah. So yeah, a few reach out to her. Mention the Managing Partners podcast and I just appreciate everyone tuning in to listen to me. Hopefully not to me, but my guest. And so I thank everyone for. For being dedicated to the show and listening so. And to the show too. Something I never really mentioned before, but if you're listening to this on Spotify or Apple or whatever, if you would leave us a review, it'd be helpful for us to get some reviews. Never really asked for or pushed that before, but we'd appreciate that. So. All right, Vanessa, thank you. We'll say goodbye to everyone. Thank you so much. You stay on with me. Sometimes the the files take a second to upload, so we'll say but goodbye to everyone else. Have a great day. Check out Vanessa, connect with her and check out her new monthly group.
We'll see you soon.
Sa.
