My leap of faith - two years on

This past week marked two years since I took the leap of faith to set up Tenet. When I started, I really did not know if going solo (as it was then) would have lasted 6 months let alone two years! Well, here I am, thanks to many others. I decided to write a short blog of 5 things that spring to mind from the perspective of being entrepreneurial two years on. These 5 things are:

1.     Without your team and your family/friends your journey will not last long.

 2.    There is nowhere to hide as the owner of a business – learning to embrace this is vital.

3.     You get to see more daylight in the winter.

4.     Self-belief. Trust in your creative self and your vision. We can all be different and disrupt the norm.

5.     Keep yourself alive – this has two parts (1) health (2) profile

This year starts with our team being busy and full of optimism on what we can achieve…if anyone reading this is dreaming of making a leap of faith and wants to just know what it is like (warts and all), just ask me. I was lucky to have people offer me advice and that I will never forget.

Thanks for reading.

Without your team and your family/friends your journey will not last long

I was lucky that a few work opportunities seemed to flow in early on when I set up. After three months, I realised that I could not do everything and recognised that in the long term having people to share the load with me would keep me sane. We are now a team of 5. Each and every one of them are the reason we are here. As a team we trust in each other, share the load, work together and my team genuinely care for our clients.

I have been lucky with the team. Steve Jobs once said something along the lines of, you do not hire smart people to tell them what to do, you hire smart people to bring new ideas and have them tell you what you can do better or differently. That is very much our ethos. By fostering that spirit to speak, share and trust, this venture has grown far quicker than I ever imagined. 

The other part of course is family and friends. When you leave an environment where you have fellow partners, you do not have as many people to talk to about the key issues for your business.

My wife, even my kids (help on presentations on power point!) and many friends never cease to amaze me with their patience, time and advice. Remember, a perspective from people not in your industry is vital, after all I am typically selling our services to non-lawyers.

You learn how great those around you are when you fall down. I had a family situation in the middle of last year where I had to drop out of work, save for very late night working for 2-3 weeks. It was incredibly hard and draining, but work for clients does not stop because my life had a large wobble. Without thought, my team stepped up and doubled their efforts, figured out how to cover more work and we were okay. They were incredible. Without them I honestly do not know what would have happened apart from many complaints.

So, do not be afraid to ask for help, invest in having a team and sacrificing (be it money, time or emotion) for them – when you need them in a time of crisis (and you will) – they are priceless.

There is nowhere to hide as the owner of a business – learning to embrace this is vital

It has taken me time to get this. I originally thought I would be able to take an afternoon off here and there and kind of have an easy-going work life balance, do my post grad I signed up for and ease into this project.

The problem comes when you tell people why you took the plunge to go out on your own and then support comes. That support is the form of trust to refer work to you or ask you to act for them.

At that stage (and even now) I struggled to turn down work not because it led to money but due to fear of rejecting somebody who has trust in you over another firm and in consequence shutting off that relationship. What that creates is a perfect storm and I am still trying to figure this out.

You have the team help on the work but you still need to approve the work, know the case inside out, make sure the work is correct and ensure the client is happy. You end up copied in on most emails, you are the point of call on all key decisions and you are at the coalface of various cases as well. You then throw in admin, business development (which is so hard to make time for), making sure your team are looked after and generally running a business – well then you cannot switch off. There is nowhere to hide.

I now know this is fine. You just have to expect it and embrace it. When you expect it to come with the territory, you can plan and that again is where the team come in. Also, if others can do a job better than you, a recent example being GDPR implementation, ask them. Pay external people who are good at what they do to help you, you cannot be a jack of all trades.

You get to see more daylight in the winter

Today the clocks went forward. I think we would all agree, it seemed like a long winter. However, one great change in starting my own firm for me, has been agility. I mean true agility on where I work. 

I am around my kids so much more. I may be working, but I can hear their personalities in the background chattering away and it is great when they just pop in and out of my study. Granted, I spend as much time at the actual office for the firm, but long gone are those winter days when I would leave for work in the dark and come back in the dark through the winter.

I often start my days working at home, see or take the kids off to school, miss the traffic and then head into the office. I get home when I prefer (meetings permitting) and whilst I do not deny the past two years have been very intense and really hard work, I simply do not resent it. I see daylight more. As I type this, I do wonder if I am speaking metaphorically as well as literally!

Self-belief. Trust in your creative self and your vision. We can all be different and disrupt the norm

Many people leave a large organisation and want to do things differently. Then they start, grab all work they can and lose their way from why they set up and what their intentions were. I am guilty of this to an extent as we have been lucky to have had a decent influx of work.

However, I have not forgotten what I want to achieve. Wrongly or rightly, I have spent more time and focus on getting how I want my team to feel and work over external marketing. Those who have read my posts know I am a big fan of Simon Sinek who focuses on people buying why you do something more than what you do. He also talks about how leaders eat last (the title of one of his books). He sums up how I want Tenet to work.

I am crystal clear in my vision here and trust and believe in it. For my team, they have no targets (financial or chargeable hourly targets). As a firm we do not have a financial target. Yes, I know what we must earn to pay our overheads etc. So that, in a sense is a target but I do not focus on profit, I focus on how we deliver work. I genuinely feel (and now know) profit will follow as a result.

I want people to want to come to work (be that coming to work meaning working from home or at the office). That means recognising what is important to them, be it when they work, where they work or how much they want to work to balance their life. Agile working is a key part of that. Trust is the other. I may not see when my team start work, stop work, get to the office or leave. However, the measure is the work being done. I do not question them and in exchange, I have a team that is simply brilliant as they are free to work somewhat uninhibited.

As to the external side, this next year is probably the true start of me looking to develop and build our brand. We are a niche law firm dealing with fraud prevention, investigation and litigation. We will stay niche as it is easier to tell our story.

The key fact remains is that I wanted us to be the space between the large firms with an offering in our area of expertise and the smaller firms that may deal with a fraud case occasionally. In being that space between, we can be expert, niche but more accessible because we charge less than the large firms. We are all ex-national law firm lawyers and believe in this vision.  I just need to get our new website up and running and I can start to share more.

So, trust in yourself and your vision, if it is right, people and work will follow.

Keep yourself alive – this has two parts (1) health (2) profile

Working for yourself can be hard. Take care of yourself.

Firstly, I do not exercise as much as I wish I could (I am certainly not out there running at 6am!) I do however try to watch what I eat and exercise when I can. This has been important when looking back.

Secondly, if you cannot get out and meet people to tell the world what you do as often as you would like, or like me, struggle to find time to get your external website or profile right, try and stay alive out there when you can. Linked In has been perfect for me as it is not time consuming and an easy way to say what the team are up to and share my views on work stuff.

So here is to year 3. I just hope it is as rewarding and fun as the last two years.