#121 Getting Personal: What REALLY drives me in my business
In today’s episode, I’m getting personal. I wanted to share with you more about my own career journey, in hopes of inspiring anyone looking to uplevel or take that next step forward. I encourage you to join me as I run through what got me started and what really drives me in my business.
When I first started out in my law career, my main driver was wanting to enrich and change people’s lives. However, after a time of working in both criminal and litigation law, I quickly began to lose sight of who I was and what was really important to me.
Today I share how realigning with my core values set me on the path to a fulfilling career that honours who I am and what I want my life to be.
Identifying what truly motivates you is vital for every business owner, and I discuss the three pillars that personally drive me in the work I do. Prioritising time, space and connection has allowed me to be the business leader and mother I strive to be. I talk about the ways in which I make room for these three objectives and invite you to get clear on how you can honour your own values.
Running a business is not for the faint-hearted. It’s often hard, and there are many challenges we face along the way. However, once you know what you stand for and learn to stay true to your convictions, everything else becomes much easier.
If you’re feeling lost or lacking in confidence in how to progress your business further, this episode is for you. I hope you take some valuable insight from my learnings and are inspired to embark on your business journey in the most authentic and soul-led way possible.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Rise Up in Business podcast. If you are new and this is your first time, thank you for joining us. Welcome, and if you're a longtime listener, welcome back and thanks so much for joining me for another episode. Today's episode is going to be a little different in that I'm diving in today and sharing a little more on the personal side, which is not something I do all that often here. I do tend to focus the podcast on adding as much value and sharing as much value as I can for my listeners. And in today's episode, I'm going to put a slight slant on that And share a little more about my journey on [00:01:00] my business, what got me started and what really drives me in the hope that this just might inspire some of my listeners to uplevel or take that next step in their business or to get started or to help in other ways. So let's dive in.
On the podcast, in earlier episodes, I've shared a little about my journey. I've shared about how I've built the business and what was the catalyst in getting started. But I haven't shared personally for a while to share with you what really drives me and. There's three things that really drive me in my business, and they are crystal clear to me. It's a no-brainer to me. I don't even have to think about it. Those three things are time, space and connection. They are the pillars of what drives me personally in my business, and it'll come as no surprise that there's a massive overlap between those drivers in my business and in my life outside of my business. And you'll notice that what's not there is money. I'm not [00:02:00] driven by money. I love money. I think with money, you can do amazing, incredible things. Money is not a dirty word, but I'm not driven by it. And that's the difference I think, between business owners that are in business solely, for the purpose of making money, and those that aren't.
So to me, money is a fabulous byproduct of what I do in my business. I have aspirations to grow my business and make more money because with more money we can do more things. My business is a soul led business, not a money driven business.
And there's a distinction, and I'm sure this is resonating with many of you already. There's nothing wrong with being in business only for the money. That's what some people do. That works for some people. It doesn't work for me, and that's okay. When I talk about what got me started in business, it was the desire to enrich lives and to be perfectly honest, that desire is what drove me to get [00:03:00] started in my very first job. My very first job, way back in 2001, was in a criminal law practice. So when I was at uni, I hadn't really thought about what sort of practice area I wanted to specialise in, and it occurred to me one night, I wanna change lives. I wanna enrich lives.
I'll do that in the practice area of criminal law. So I got a job in a criminal law firm and I thought, this is fantastic. This is how I'm gonna change the world. It didn't take very long for me to realise the harsh reality of legal practice and criminal law is not where I was going to make my impact. I then transitioned into a commercial litigation practice, and that was the beginning of my career.
Commercial litigation, acting for business owners who were being sued or who were suing. They were in a dispute. Most of it was to do with money, and that's where I spent the next 12 years of my career practising in commercial litigation. Litigation and dispute resolution. That was very satisfying because I was able to enrich lives.
But I [00:04:00] realised along that journey that I was becoming desensitised to my really core values. I was really losing grip and sight of who I was. Things that would've once bothered me morally and ethically had no place anymore. it was all about being on that journey to success, which I had become programmed and conditioned to mean being partner at a law firm and making more money. So I lost sight and I'm the first one to say it and I own it. I lost sight along the way of what was really important and who I was. It wasn't until I had my little boy, my son, who's now nine, and that was a tough journey in itself. So I didn't think that that was gonna happen naturally.
It took a very long time and sheer, dumb luck. It did happen naturally in the end, just when we'd given up thinking that it would, and it did, and that was a really tumultuous time for me because of the overwhelming delight and gratitude that I had around being able to fall pregnant but then [00:05:00] having to leave or being required to leave, or wanting to leave, the law practice career that I had worked so hard to establish. And so I spoke to my business partner, said I'll be on three months maternity leave and then I'll be back. Um, he didn't even make arrangements for my maternity leave. I was receiving phone calls when I was in labour, I kid you not, um, thinking I would be back really quickly.
The fact that I was a woman and the fact that I was going through a life-changing, beautiful experience and about to embark on the next chapter of my life, which was parenting, was irrelevant and not acknowledged and not recognised, and I just thought that was the norm. I didn't know any better. It was after my son was born within the next 21 days, so it was in that three week period where it hit me like a light bulb. This is not for me. Continuing to be a working parent in this environment, in this career, in this space was not for me. So I made a decision [00:06:00] just like that, click of a finger, bang, picked up the phone.
I'm not coming back, and I had no clue what I was going to do, but I knew then that I'd lost my way and that I needed to prioritise myself and my now young family so that I could reevaluate what it really looked like for me, what the next chapter looked like for me and who I wanted to be because I wasn't proud of who I had become at that point.
So I left with no clue whatsoever. I had a newborn. I had no job, I had no direction, and I was so content and my heart was full, and I trusted fully that what was meant to be would be. And I leaned into that. I didn't realise at the time that I was leaning into something so spiritual. I've certainly become more and more spiritual over the years, but I had faith and I left. As it happened, I was offered a role as a lecturer at the [00:07:00] ANU College of Law.
It was all virtual and remote. I gratefully accepted that this is perfect. My very dear friend was my supervisor, which I thought could be interesting, but it was fabulous. And the amount of respect and kindness and love that I was shown in my earlier days in that role really helped me reconnect with myself and to value myself, not only as a person, but as a woman and a new parent, and not as a lawyer.
Because prior to that, you were a lawyer, you were expected to do these things, and if you're a human or a woman is irrelevant, you just achieve these things at all costs. And that was really the space that I'd spent establishing my career. Fast forward five years. I had my two beautiful children and I was spending my time teaching law students how to prepare themselves to become lawyers once they were admitted and [00:08:00] they were about to start their new graduate positions.
And it dawned on me one day sitting in my bedroom in early 2019, both children are going to be in school in some capacity or another next year. What do I wanna do? Do I wanna stay in academia or do I want to go back to where I'm feeling pulled, which is legal practice and helping people?
And it's at that point, it became really clear to me that I didn't wanna stay in academia anymore, but that I wanted to practice law in a way that was consistent with me and the person that I had reconnected with. And I wanted to enrich lives in that space. I didn't wanna go back to traditional legal practice.
I most certainly was not open to going back to a law firm. I wanted to make sure that I could do drop off and pick up and not be stressed, that I didn't have competing obligations, that I didn't have to put my children into afterschool care and be really stressed and rushed to try and get there in time, which was the reality of so many of my colleagues over the years that I'd witnessed.
I [00:09:00] just didn't wanna do that for me. So I took another leap of faith. I launched this business in a very soft way and thought, we'll give it a crack and see what happens. And the driver here was the time that I would have the space that I had created for myself to allow myself to parent my children in the way that I wanted to and the connection because I wanted to connect with clients again to help them on their journeys.
And what I really wanted to do was wrap up all of my years in legal practice, in litigation and dispute resolution and package those skills up somehow and utilise them in a way that could help my clients position themselves to avoid getting into that position. So I wanted to help business owners avoid ending up in disputes.
And having to call a lawyer like what I used to be to help them out in terms of litigation and legal proceedings. That's what I ultimately wanted to do, and it became clear to me that my drivers to enrich lives were time, space and connection. And they haven't [00:10:00] changed. So much has changed on this journey. This has been an amazing journey and it still is, and I hope that that never changes, but those core drivers haven't changed. Not for a second. It's been hard. There's been one time in the last four and a half years where I have said to my husband, is this really worth it? Is this what I want to be doing?
Because it's not for the faint-hearted. Running a business, as you all know, is not for the faint-hearted, and it's challenging and it can be isolating and you can doubt yourself and you can second guess and all of those things. But I kept coming back and I still keep coming back to my drivers. Time, space, connection, and I get those in this business. So the way I run my business allows me the time and space in my calendar to be true to me. So I'm very, very aware that in my earlier career I did lose sight of myself and I did become desensitised to what was really important. I did. So, I [00:11:00] make sure I've got time to honour me and to honour what's important to me in this business.
And what that means for me is acting for clients who are aligned. I don't want to act for clients who want to rip people off, who want to do the wrong thing, and trust me, they're out there and I've acted for them previously. I don't wanna act for clients who don't value the expertise and skills of other business owners.
I don't wanna act for clients who don't value my skills as a business lawyer. They're not aligned clients, they're driven by different things, and that's okay. There are other lawyers out there better suited to them. I'm very mindful and protective of my space, and I have very good boundaries now, but who I act for, and if things change along the way, as they inevitably do, and clients end up taking different paths and values and their drivers shift, and we are no longer aligned. That's okay. We part ways and I wish them well, but I'm very fierce and guarded around my boundaries and who I will act for. What that [00:12:00] also allows me to do is make sure that I can honour the time and space I need in my calendar for me to work on the business, to work on myself, to be present with my family and my children.
It's hard. It's one of those things I think that's a never ending challenge. It is not easy. I don't want to suggest that it's easy, once you know what you stand for, that the rest is easy. It is not. It is not easy. It's not for the faint-hearted, but it's something that I'm really excited about continuing to work on.
And as my business evolves and grows, I love to revisit the processes and systems that we have in place. My processes and systems personally. What my winning week looks like because I do work very hard, not always successfully, but I work at it to set myself up for a winning week in my calendar. And what does that look like in terms of white space, time for my team, time for me, time for my clients, meeting deadlines, showing up in my marketing, on my [00:13:00] social media, adding value, recording the podcast, publishing blogs on our website.
So there's a whole ton of things that are really important to me. And if I work really hard, I manage to be able to strike a place of harmony in there. It's not necessarily balance, but it's a place of harmony where everything that I want to achieve I can achieve in a week. And of course, that wouldn't be possible without the incredible team that I have supporting me in the business.
That's the time and the space. They seem to go hand in hand, but they're both equally as important, and I think that they're both worth mentioning. When it comes to connection. I thrive on connection with aligned clients. I'm an introvert. In human design I'm a projector, so the hustle culture doesn't suit me.
And oh my gosh, it has taken me so many years and I'm still working on it to decondition, and deprogram myself from that traditional working week expectation that society has [00:14:00] and certainly that the legal practice has. So what it means is hustle doesn't suit me. It suits some people. It doesn't suit me. It doesn't suit my business. It does me a disservice. It does my business a disservice. Being able to strike connection with my clients who are aligned clients means that I can truly hand on heart, enrich their lives and their business journey in an authentic, heartfelt, soul-led way. And some people might listen to that and think that's really wishy-washy and that's okay.
They're not my client. But being in a soul led business and being able to enrich lives and add the value that I can and that I do, that's what my purpose on this earth is. I saw an energy healer just as was about to launch this business and I won't go into the detail, but she had said to me in that session, she actually thought I was having another child.
Something's about to be birthed and once we, she'd never, we'd never met each other before. But [00:15:00] once we spent some time together and I shared with her that I was about to launch my business, she'd actually said to me, you were birthed on this earth for this reason. So for me, I feel really grateful that I had that session because I haven't ever had a moment of, was this the right decision?
I've always known launching this business was the right decision. I've had moments of this is too bloody hard and I don't wanna do it anymore. fleeting moments, but I've never doubted my decision to launch my business. And when I sit down and reflect, I feel so grateful that I have this business that I love so much where I have the time and the space to be true to me, to connect with my family, to connect with myself. And where I'm able to connect with beautiful, aligned clients every day and serve them in a way that I know is enriching for them both personally and on their business journey. And I know, I know that I'm setting them up for success because I'm helping them avoid those situations that [00:16:00] my clients from earlier in my career found themselves in.
Because I've said this so many times, and I'll say it again. Most of what I saw back then in those earlier years could have been avoided. And so now I'm in that space of helping people avoid it. So those are my drivers in my business. I'm getting personal and I'm sharing deep down what really drives me.
Time, space and connection. It's not easy, but it is by far one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life to launch this business. I have not once regretted it ever. I've not once looked back. So I feel grateful that clients are magnetised to me and that people trust me and that they refer their contacts and clients and friends to me, because that's how I'm building this soul-led business, driven by a heartfelt desire to enrich lives.
That's what drives me. That's my story in a nutshell. In a short and sharp podcast episode that I hope has resonated with you on [00:17:00] some level and has gone some way to inspiring you to helping you work through doubts that you might be experiencing to helping you make decisions, whether to launch a new product or offering or new business or whatever it might be.
That's it for me for this episode. Thank you as always for listening in. I value your time so much and I'm so grateful that you've chosen this podcast and this episode to having your ears at the moment. If you have enjoyed this episode, please do share with other business owners that you also think may enjoy the episode because with your help and you sharing the podcast, this is how I get the podcast into the ears of more business owners. And if you haven't left a review or a rating in iTunes, I would be ever so grateful if you would, because that helps the podcast reach even more business owners as well.
Thanks again. I'll catch you next time. [00:18:00]
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