Are you currently a solopreneur or contract out some work, but would really like to grow your team and your business? Are you afraid of what it would mean to change the role you play in your business from doer to leader?
In this podcast episode, I am speaking with Jennifer Reynolds, founder, lawyer and mediator of Fresh Legal in Ottawa, a team of family lawyers and child protection lawyers who focus on helping people with transitions, challenges and family life. We’re discussing how Jennifer has taken Fresh Legal from a solo operation to a legal firm that has multiple lawyers and the shifts that needed to happen as she stepped into being the leader of a bigger law firm.
The slow build
When Jennifer first went out on her own several years ago, it was just her for about 18 months. But, Jennifer is a social person and she likes having people around. She wanted a team and she wanted it to be a team of people her clients could trust.
And so, she started building slowly. She had one other lawyer join her. And then over the past five years, she has had various lawyers in and out, as well as students in and out. At one point, she had herself, three other lawyers, and an administrative person. She even got to the place where she had to move into a bigger space to accommodate the size of her team.
From lawyer to business owner
The biggest challenge for Jennifer was going from lawyer to business owner. All entrepreneurs go through this as their team grows. As a business owner, there comes a point where the thing that you're really good at and the thing that your business was founded on needs to be done by someone else and you need to step back and let them take on that role.
Jennifer found it hard because in her heart, she is always going to be a lawyer and a mediator. She is always going to want to help clients and work with clients. But at some point, she realized she had to step back. She still struggles with it sometimes. She had to make everything she did in her business a much more thoughtful, dedicated part of her work instead of just letting it happen when it happened. When she had one person on her team, she could go with the flow and mentor a little bit here and there. But as the team grew and their needs grew, she had to identify and carve out time to work on her business as a business owner and put that on her schedule.
Learning how to shift roles
Shifting roles in your business and learning to manage a team is a big pivot for many business owners, but you have two choices if you want to grow beyond a certain level. You can fill your schedule up and just be at capacity or if you want to grow beyond that, you decide you can be, using Jennifer’s case, the high profile lawyer whose prices just increase, increase, increase or you grow a team and have other people who can do more of what you do, and you support them in doing it. With a team, your role is also to help people know how to do their jobs and how to do it in the way that you've established for your business. That can be a big shift.
You can't just keep doing the same thing after a certain amount of time. You need to start being less of the doer and more of the leader. And that requires changing your thinking. And it requires changing your schedule.
Learning how to lead a team
When Jennifer first brought on other lawyers, they were working in silos and she was lawyering. And they were lawyering. They had a shared brand, but there wasn't a lot of crossover and interaction. She has worked hard to eliminate that feeling of ‘Well, I'm a lawyer, and I'm in my office, and I'm doing my lawyering, and you're a lawyer in your office and you're doing you're lawyering, and never the twain shall meet.” She did this by introducing team meetings that are focused and scheduled and bring people together. She also introduced one-to-ones with each team member to help them figure out what they want to do and what their goals are.
Many business owners struggle with feeling like when they have a team, they will come across too bossy. But if you don't actually give your team the systems and teach them the way things are going to work, then they don't know how to do things your way.
Many people actually want guidelines and you want your team to know what they should be doing. You’re being helpful and guiding your team – you’re not being bossy.
As Jennifer’s team has grown, they've shown her that she is doing pretty well. She has people who are happy to work on her team and who are following the values and the way that Fresh Legal works. She loves walking into her office and seeing this thing she has built. She has built somewhere that people can come and find success and build their own practices and be lawyers and be people. At the same time, she tried to create this space where, yes, you're a lawyer, but that doesn't mean what people might think it means in terms of how you work and when you work and where you work. She loves seeing other people succeed.
Getting stuck along the way is okay
Business owners looking to change or grow should expect to get stuck along the way. That is okay.
You’re going to have setbacks. That was a huge thing for Jennifer to learn. She would see lawyers that she admires, who have built these wonderful successful law firms, either family law or otherwise and wanted to be them.
She would wonder how do they have a staff of 10 and 12 lawyers and all these clients and all this business and this fantastic brand and wonder why she couldn’t just wake up tomorrow and be there? Why couldn’t she have that? She wanted to know their secret sauce!
But then hearing from some of those lawyers that they had setbacks too, was really valuable. She learned that she was not going to wake up one morning and have her business done and perfect. It’s a process. But to know that even in the low points that she still built something, and that she is still successful and working towards something bigger, keeps Jennifer going. She knew she was going to get to a successful point. She was also gentle and gracious with herself.
You’re never going to be done. Stop asking yourself if you’re there yet because it’s an ongoing process – building a business is not a final destination.
Jennifer believes working with a business coach is so important and powerful. She and I have had great success together! She suggests working with somebody outside of your industry, someone who can get you out of your own head. Jennifer didn't realize how much time she was going to need to dedicate to working in versus on her business. By working with me she learned to carve that time out and create systems and processes and a schedule for that.
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Podcast editing by Eric Wellman