#148 3 Mindset Shifts I Made To Build a Multi 6 Figure Business
Today, I want to talk about a topic that is on the minds of many business owners during this time of year: growth. As we assess our metrics and year-end goals, it's important to adopt the right mindset to build a thriving business. In this episode, I'll share with you three mindset shifts that played a pivotal role in my journey to building a multi-six-figure business.
Mindset Shift #1: Breaking Free from Tradition
When I started this business, the first mindset shift I needed to make was realising that I didn't have to follow the traditional path that had been laid out for me. Coming from a background in traditional legal practices, I was very familiar with the expectations in the field. However, I knew in my heart and soul that I wanted to create something different, something that aligned with my values and the needs of my clients.
It wasn't easy to challenge the norms and face resistance from colleagues who believed that my business model wouldn't be sustainable. But I had to overcome that negativity and trust my intuition. I wanted to break free from the limitations of traditional practice and truly deliver value to my clients in a way that resonated with them. This mindset shift gave me the confidence and boost I needed to launch my business.
Mindset Shift #2: Embracing Numbers Without Being Driven by Them
In my previous legal practice, the focus was solely on numbers: billable hours, recoveries, and performance based on spreadsheets. I had a block around numbers because I didn't want my business to resemble the traditional practices that solely valued monetary metrics.
However, I soon realised the importance of understanding and knowing my numbers to ensure a profitable and sustainable business. It took time and work to find a balance between knowing my metrics and not being driven solely by them. I wanted to utilise numbers as a tool to measure success without compromising my integrity and authenticity in serving my clients. Now, I've found that balance, and it has allowed me to increase my reach and impact more business owners.
Mindset Shift #3: Investing in Myself and My Business
Early on in my journey, I had reservations about investing in myself and my business. With uncertainty about where clients would come from and what revenue would look like, spending money felt risky. However, I soon realised that investing in myself and my business was crucial for growth and taking my business to the next level.
In traditional legal practice, investing in yourself or the business was often frowned upon. Quality and long-term sustainability were often overlooked. But in this new way of thinking, I recognised the value of building an authentic brand and presence. I invested in learning digital marketing, building an online presence, and creating a brand that aligned with my principles. By investing in myself, I was able to achieve significant growth in a short amount of time and continue to grow organically.
Reflecting on these mindset shifts, I recognise that each one required letting go of the stories and limitations imposed by traditional practice and societal views of success. It was about challenging the programming I had been subject to early in my career and shifting my perspective. Once I embraced these mindset shifts, everything changed. I gained confidence, found alignment, and experienced the liberating and empowering impact of running a business that reflects my true values.
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[00:00:00] Tracey: Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Rise Up in Business podcast. Thank you for joining me for another episode of the podcast. I'd like to just take a moment to ask a small favour.. If you are listening to the podcast and you're really enjoying the content I'm sharing, it would mean so much to me
[00:00:38] if you would consider leaving a review on Apple podcasts. That's how we get the podcast into the ease of even more business owners. And I really am on a mission this year to broaden our reach of the podcast to help as many people as we possibly can. So thank you. Diving into today's episode, this time of year is really focused on growth.
[00:00:59] And many business owners are assessing their metrics. They're assessing their end in mind year goals and growth is something that comes up a lot. So in today's episode, I wanted to share with you three mindset shifts I made to build a multi six figure business. I've written about this topic over on the resources page on our website.
[00:01:20] There's a ton of content that I write and share on the website. If you haven't checked it out, please do. I wrote about this a while ago because I built a multi six figure business in less than two years. That was no easy feat. It was challenging. But I did it and I was able to take what I'd learnt in a previous law firm that I had run and adapt that into this business, which was very different and very unique.
[00:01:51] It took a lot of inner work to be able to do that. There really was more inner work than anything else, to be honest. Running a business is not rocket [00:02:00] science in terms of the metrics, the formula, the ABCs. That part's not new. It's not innovative. We're not Robinson Crusoe here, but building it to the level I did so quickly and continuing to grow and build consistently in an authentic way.
[00:02:17] That's the challenging part. And that's different. So when I started this business, the very first mindset shift I had to overcome when starting and growing this business is that I didn't have to do things the way they'd always been done.
[00:02:32] Traditional law practice has a long history. It's a long history of all the things that we think a law practice is supposed to do, look like, and feel like, and the metrics of success are embedded very well in that traditional practice. Those very frameworks, though, were the reason I left traditional practice in the first place.
[00:02:54] And if you're new here, you'll know that I left traditional practice not long after having my first child, my son, who turns 10 this year. And I was invited to teach law at ANU and I did that and I did that for five years and I had my daughter and I raised my children and I really had a chance to pause and reflect on where it was that I wanted to go with my career and what it was that I wanted to build in terms of a life for us.
[00:03:21] And that was where the concept and idea for this business was born and it was in that space that I launched this business. But I remember the day that I decided to launch this business and I started thinking about what would it look like? And I knew in my heart and my soul, I wanted it to look different to all the other law practices.
[00:03:42] We're a virtual practice. We're client centric. We have confidence in terms of our pricing. We back ourselves in terms of our pricing for clients. I know what it is that clients want and what they need and what they don't want. And much of what clients don't particularly want is captured [00:04:00] and delivered in the traditional legal practice.
[00:04:02] And so I knew I wanted to move away from that, but the mindset shift I needed to make was that I could. Because I didn't have to do things the way they'd always been done. And this was challenging because I was met with resistance and negativity by colleagues in the profession, telling me that this business model was not sustainable, that my approach of wanting to add value to clients was not sustainable.
[00:04:24] I was told that by practitioners operating in traditional legal practice, because I think it was mind boggling that I wasn't going to adopt a let's bill in six minute increments and let's have billable hours as a target. I was doing away with all of that and it was new and it was foreign to the way a lot of them thought.
[00:04:45] But I needed to overcome all of that negativity and all of that resistance that I was getting from traditional practice to back myself to do something differently because I knew in my heart and my soul that this would work. Knowing that I didn't have to do things the way they were always done was the boost that I need to launch the business.
[00:05:03] So that's the first mindset shift I had to make. The second mindset shift I had to make was around my numbers. I needed to know my numbers. I didn't want to know my numbers and I know that sounds counterintuitive and perhaps a little foolish and it was foolish but I didn't want to know my numbers because I'd come from a background of legal practice where it was all about the numbers.
[00:05:27] Time costing, six minute increments, how many hours are you billing a day, how much have you billed this month, how much have you recovered. I had a performance review earlier in my career from one of my supervising partners and I remember it so vividly in my mind like it was yesterday. And he was reviewing my performance for the year, but the performance was purely on the spreadsheet of billables and recoveries.
[00:05:52] And in that performance review, I'd said to him, have you spoken to any of my clients? Every single one of my clients is happy. And [00:06:00] he said to me, and I quote, I don't much care about that. Oh, that was a really heavy moment for me. I don't much care about that. And that wasn't unique to him or that firm. So I already had a block around numbers because I wanted to be sure that there was nothing about me or my business that resembled traditional practice.
[00:06:21] And that was focused on the numbers only. But of course, I needed to make sure the numbers worked. Otherwise, I don't have a sustainable, profitable business, and then I can't serve anybody. It took me a long time to work out what knowing my numbers meant to me, and it took me a long time to work out how to harness the power of my numbers in my business without being driven by them.
[00:06:42] So that it compromised my integrity and my authenticity to deliver for clients in the way I wanted to in this business. I'm very pleased to say that now almost five years on, I've landed in a really lovely space, which is harmonious to running a business, knowing my numbers, being profitable, knowing the metrics, not being driven by it, but utilising it
[00:07:03] as a lovely by product of what I do so that I can sustain this business going forward so that I can serve more and more business owners, just like you. So it was big, it was a big mindset shift. It took a lot of work and it took a long time, but I've landed somewhere now that's so aligned and it feels so right on a soul level.
[00:07:24] And I feel like the way that I treat my numbers and the respect I have for the numbers without being driven by them is beautifully aligned for me and it allows me to increase the reach that I have in my business. And the third mindset shift that I've had to make to build a multi six figure business is to learn the value of investing both in myself and in my business.
[00:07:50] So very early on. I didn't want to spend too much money because I didn't know where clients were going to come from. And I didn't know what next month's revenue would be like, [00:08:00] but I learned very early in the journey that investing in myself and investing in my business Was going to be what it took to take that business growth to the next level. And so I credit investing to the growth that I achieved in such a short time to build a multi six figure business in less than two years. And it's continued to grow. It's continued to grow organically and sustainably and investing has been a key part of that.
[00:08:24] So again, back in traditional legal practice, investing in oneself or in the business was not something that was common. It certainly was something that was frowned upon, particularly when it came to quality. We don't want to spend money on good quality headshots. We don't want to spend money on a website who cares.
[00:08:43] We don't want to spend too much on the business cards. But there was no consideration then to what was being built in terms of a brand. It just didn't matter because it was all about the money and the billable hours and the units. And so this, this new way of thinking that I was being exposed to in this business was all about building the brand in an authentic way, quality,
[00:09:03] long term sustainability, longevity, all of the things. And that meant that I needed to invest. So I needed to invest in myself to up level on what does digital marketing look like? I didn't even know what Instagram was when I started my business. And I bet you're laughing right now. And I laughed too, but I had to Google how to Instagram
[00:09:26] so I knew what it meant and how to build a digital online presence for myself, because I was backing myself in taking a chance here to launch an online virtual law practice. I needed to know how to have an online virtual presence and I didn't. So I had to invest in learning that, in doing that, in building that.
[00:09:46] And the brand for me was so important because I am my brand. And. I value quality. I deliver quality. I deliver high service and I value it in others. And I wanted to make sure that the presence I was [00:10:00] building and the brand I was building was reflective of that. And that took investment. And so for the first time I learned the value of investing and why investing in these things was okay.
[00:10:12] Not only was it okay, it was necessary. So that was a big mindset shift for me. And as you can see, each of these mindset shifts that I made to build a multi six figure business so quickly was centered around letting go of the stories I told myself based on traditional practice, based on society's version or view of what success looks like for a law practice and a lawyer, and based on the programming that I'd been subject to for so many years earlier in my career, but once I shifted How Those mindsets and those limiting beliefs, which is what they really were.
[00:10:49] But once they shifted, it was like the clouds lifted and I had a different set of lenses and I saw things so differently and so beautifully and so organically, and it was so aligned for me. And the confidence that came from that and continues to come knowing that there's long term viability and sustainability in my business.
[00:11:10] And knowing that the impact that I make from the clients that I serve has a ripple effect. It's liberating, it's inspiring, it's empowering, it's all the things that I would hope that it would be. I hope you found this episode useful, and I hope there's a little bit of inspiration in here for you. A little bit or a lot in terms of what blocks might you be dealing with or encountering with, or what blocks have you identified from listening to this episode that can help you grow your business and take things to the next level, if that's your trajectory, and if that's the season of business you're in right now.
[00:11:41] As always thank you so much for listening. I value your choice so much that you've chosen out of all the podcasts to listen to mine. I'd love to hear from you and to know what has resonated for you the most out of this episode.
[00:11:53] I always love receiving your feedback either via DM's on Instagram. If you don't follow me on Instagram, please do we're very [00:12:00] active there. The handle is at TM solicitor or reach out via email. The address is on the website. I always love hearing from you and engaging with you on the takeaways that you've enjoyed from the episode.
[00:12:11] Thanks again. I'll catch you next week.
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