Five Years!

Well, that was fast.
When I think back to the start of my practice, I am immediately brought back to the very beginning of the pandemic. Lockdown. Empty Shelves. Zoom everything. Zoom. Everything.

I had gone from being a lawyer toa lawyer who was now alsoa business owner. This meant I was also bookkeeper, client on-boarder, legal assistant, IT supervisor, office manager, and trouble-shooter of all things.
In addition to launching a firm, I was also adapting to a brand-newway of practicing law on my own as a solo. And I was no spring chicken. I had been practicing nearly twenty years.You could say I was “set in my ways.”
Over the past five years, people have told me that at the time I went out on my own they thought I was slightly crazy. If they were being kind, they said I was “bold” or “courageous.”

What it came down to was one thing. I bet on myself.
Since launching, my practiceevolved from primarily divorce litigation to a focus on helping families resolve their disputes outside of court either through attorney-assisted mediation or collaborative law. I also launched my mediation practice where I now mediate divorce disputes as a neutral. And while it has not always been roses and sunshine, at the end of these five years, I can confidently answer:

Was it worth it? Absolutely.
Was it easy? Absolutely not.
Would I do it again. 100%.

The lessons I have learned over the past five years are too many to write about each one here.(And trust me, I’m still learning every day!) I’ve put together a collection of the most meaningful ones. They also happen to be the most universal lessons which transcend law and apply to anyone who provides a service to clients.

Launching a business is the most accelerated personal growth exercise you could ever embark on.

I am a perfectionist. I am meticulous and like to gather every fact, analyze each one, and develop a comprehensive strategy taking into account all possible outcomes. These are all great attributes for a practicing lawyer. They are terrible when trying to make low leverage decisions for a new business. I learned very quickly that if I approached every decision in my new business with the thoughtfulness and deliberation I gave to my clients’ cases, I would never get anything going, much less done.

Every single one of your personal strengths and weaknesses ismagnified when you run your own business.And you mustconfront them head-on them because there is no one or no place to hide behind. If you are organized or unorganized, so goes your business.If your relationships are messy, that will be your Achilles heel.But if they are strong, they will be your pot of gold.The way you make decisions, your vision, and how you operate on a daily basis are now within your own control. While that can be liberating and give you a sense of freedom, you now will be accountable for every single one of your own decisions, actions, or inactions.

You will fail. And it will be okay.
There is too much on your plate for you to not fail in some area. As in law school, you have a bad final, you get yourself up and take the next one the next day. You have a bad hearing, you figure out how to do better next time. You make a bad decision, you learn, and you move on. One failure does not mean the world has ended, although at the time it may seem that way.

There is a phrase that I heard all of the time: “Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.” While it was great advice, I always was thinking “Am I comfortable with being uncomfortable now? Is this what that feels like? Maybe this is what it is? Do I need to get uncomfortable with my failures?”

You can’t really assess this while you are “in it.” The only way you can assess your growth is in retrospect. At first, it is about being scared about the launch. Will the phone ring? Will anyone hire me? How will I pay my bills?Then it becomes about the sands constantly shifting, and wondering if it is possible to ever just reach steady ground. And then gradually you look back and realize that you are more comfortable with being uncomfortable because what you thought was a failure one day ended up being something totally different in retrospect.

You can’t be everything to everyone. But you are.
I remember taking a virtual training with aQuickBooks trainer trying to learn the program about three weeks into being open. I was also getting ready for a custody trial and had to prepare deposition outlines for number of critical witnesses. I found myself saying to the trainder, “This is just not going to happen.” I knew this was a horrible use of my time when I needed to be working on the case. My first outsourced hire was a bookkeeper, and to this day I believe that was the best business decision I made out of the gate. I had absolutely no interest in learning the nuances of bookkeeping, and all I could think of when sitting there were all of the other things I should have been doing.

I’m not going to lie, paying those first few bookkeeping bills was not without trepidation. But the immediate impact was obvious and as I built this expense into my budget, I experienced how having financial reports each month assisted me in making future decisions with greater clarity.

Celebrate your victories.
The hard truth is that the lows are really low when you venture out on your own, which makes celebrating your wins more important than ever.Your business is your baby, and you feel the lows in a way which is much different than when you are employee because the stakes are biggerand the emotional toll is greater. At the risk of being a bit “woo,” my best advice isthat you just have to sit with the lows for a bit and let yourself feel what you need to feel. And then when you are done, you need to put it behind you, move on to learning from the experience,and takere-aligned action.

On the other end, you must celebrate your highs. Admittedly, I am terrible at this. I am always on to the next thing and usually when a milestone comes around to celebrate, I have moved on to something else because there is always something else to do. Well, the truth is that there is ALWAYS something else to do. Always. If you don’t stop and celebrate the victories, you are depriving yourself hard-earned joy.

Your business has its own message and voice.
Any branding expert or marketing company will tell you that your brand is: (1) Who you are (2) What you do and (3) How you do it.However, who you are is not your job title or occupation, nor is it what you do.My occupation is that I am a lawyer and a mediator. But what I really do is help families resolve their legal problems with integrity and dignitythrough thoughtful strategy and by being a voice of reason during the most difficult of circumstances.
Getting clarity on who you are, what you do, and how you do it, forms the foundation of your greater “why” and becomes the code through which you run all of your decisions through. This is the ballgame. I am constantly amazed at business owners who don’t understand this or think that this is something they will get around to doing “one day.”
Your business has its own message and voice whether you like it or not. But it might not be the voice you want if you are not intentional about it.

If you are thinking of starting your own practice, firm, or business, or reinventing yourself altogether and you are struggling to take the leap, I hope this read helped you. We are all more capable than we know and taking that leap can be scary.

But betting on yourself? It is the best bet you can ever make.