#awinewith Tracey Mylecharane: the contracts your business actually needs to grow and get paid
✨ Thank you to IP Australia for supporting the SPARK podcast and women in business ✨
Tracey Mylecharane spent 12 years as a litigation lawyer watching businesses get destroyed by problems that proper contracts would have prevented. Then she built TM Legal Atelier, a virtual law practice that works at the front end instead, helping service-based business owners across Australia turn their legal documents into their most powerful business tool. In this episode she covers why templates, borrowed contracts and ChatGPT won't protect you, how good legals win you bigger clients, and why her biggest success metric is a slow morning.
Why should you care about contracts before something goes wrong?
Because Tracey has seen the other end. In her litigation days she watched a grown man burst into tears across her desk: "Now I have to go home and tell my wife I've lost the family home." Most of what she saw in court came down to business owners not knowing what they didn't know, and not having the right documents in place. Her reframe: "If they're done properly, and if they're used well, they can be the most powerful tool the business has." Contracts aren't boring compliance, they're the foundations, and you wouldn't ask your builder to take a shortcut on those.
Do templates, borrowed contracts and ChatGPT actually protect you?
Short answer, no. "When templates are developed, they're developed for everyone, specific to no one." A friend's agreement won't fit your business because no two businesses are the same, and an AI-drafted contract won't cover consumer law compliance, dispute resolution or your industry's pain points, and clients can spot one a mile away, which is its own brand damage. Her line says it all: "DIY is for Bunnings, not for your legals." Because when push comes to shove, "if they don't protect you, you may as well have nothing."
Good legals win you bigger clients
Here's the bit nobody tells you: proper documents make you money. "I can't tell you the number of times business owners have said to me, I've lost work because I've used a template or cobbled something together, and the client was asking me questions around intellectual property ownership, and I couldn't answer it. I lost the job. 30K, 40K, 50K." On-brand, easy-to-read contracts build trust and credibility at every touchpoint, and they're the moment a client says, hell yes, I want to work with you. They're also assets that grow with you, through hiring, collaborations and even selling up one day.
The business built around slow mornings
Tracey's litigation life was 5am starts and all-consuming intensity. After her son was born, she rang her business partner and said she was never coming back, and meant it. Five years teaching law showed her there was a different way to do life, and when she launched TM Legal Atelier in March 2019, she designed it around new success metrics. "My biggest success metric was, and still is, slow mornings." Launching eight months before COVID turned out to be dumb luck: when the world went virtual, her accessible, Zoom-based practice was exactly what pivoting businesses needed.
Tracey's one piece of advice for women in business
"Look around, and find people who are doing what you want to do, or have done what it is that you want to do, and surround yourself with them. We can learn so much from watching other people and having conversations with other people. I didn't do that for a very long time, and I wish I had done it sooner: being really intentional around who I wanted to connect with, who I wanted to follow, who I found inspiring. We don't have to pigeonhole ourselves and stay in our little corner with our blinkers on. Take the time to think about what's my vision, what's my end in mind, and who else has done it?"
Meet Tracey, Founder of TM Legal Atelier
Tracey Mylecharane is the Founder of TM Legal Atelier, a virtual commercial law practice helping service-based business owners and SMEs across Australia build legal foundations that support growth, reduce risk and actually sound like their brand. A former litigation lawyer with more than a decade in the courtroom, Tracey now works at the front end through her signature Legals By Design® approach, and hosts the Rise Up In Business podcast. She grew up in a small rural town in NSW, which is why accessibility is baked into everything she does.
You can find her here:
Full transcript
Danielle: Amazing! Tracey, welcome to Spark TV! I'm so excited to have you here!
Tracey: Thanks, Danielle. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be having this conversation.
Danielle: So good. Now let's just get straight into it and tell everyone who you are and what you do.
Tracey: Let's. So, my name's Tracey Mylecharane, I'm a business lawyer. My business is TM Legal Atelier. As soon as I say business lawyer, people go, ugh, you know.
Danielle: That's right!
Tracey: Oh my gosh! But I do things differently, given my background. I have a love for contracts, and I completely respect and have no offence taken when other people don't, but I have a love for contracts, so I specialise in helping service-based business owners set themselves up for success by having the right legal documents in place. That, in a nutshell, is what I do.
Danielle: I love it, but tell me why I should care. So, if I'm a business owner, what would be the challenge, pitfall, uh-oh, if I don't have these things in place for my business?
Tracey: Business destruction. So, to put it really bluntly, my background, before I started this business almost 7 years ago, was a litigation lawyer. So, I was in court all day, every day, acting for businesses who were either suing or being sued. And it's not sexy, like TV and Suits and all of those shows, it's not that cool. Back when I was doing it, I was a lot younger, and I had no life, and no kids, and no husband, so spending all of your time on these cases in court was really great. It was great for the lawyers, but not for the businesses. So what I saw then was business destruction, livelihood destruction, and most of what I saw came about because business owners didn't know what they didn't know, didn't have the right advice, and they didn't have either documentation in place, or the right documentation in place. So, fast forward, two kids later, married, fur baby, all the things. Seven years ago, I thought, I'm going to set up a business where accessibility isn't an issue. I grew up in a small rural town in New South Wales, and accessibility was an issue for everything. I want to set up a business where accessibility isn't an issue, so I act for clients all across the country, virtually, on Zoom, we do all the things, but I want to help business owners avoid being one of those litigation clients that I acted for. And I do that by working at the front end. So not waiting until something's gone wrong, but working at the front end. And so what it means is, when we talk contracts, in terms of service, client service agreements, website, all the things, well, there's a few things about that as to why business owners should care. I've never had a business owner say to me, I don't want more clients. I've never had a business owner say, I don't want smooth cash flow. So they're the two big things.
Danielle: Yes, we will all put our hands up for that, please.
Tracey: So the way that I develop contracts and the way I collaborate with my clients is that the legal documents that we create, if they're done properly, and if they're used well, they can be the most powerful tool the business has to achieve the things they want to achieve. Growth, client retention, getting paid, repeat work. We want to avoid refund requests, claims for damages, complaints to regulatory bodies. We want to avoid those business owners ending up in litigation, ending up reaching out to me to say, hey, I've got a client who's just asked me to refund this money, plus they've said they had to redo some things, and now I owe them X. That's what we don't want to do. So, I can talk about the really boring stuff, but I won't. So, legal compliance, consumer law, all the really boring reasons why business owners need to have proper contracts in place, but that's not really sexy. What is sexy, though, is money, growth and client retention. So that's where I tend to focus with my clients.
Danielle: Well, and I think it's really interesting, because I don't think it's where we normally do focus when it comes to anything legal or contract-related. It is usually put to that, oh my god, I've got to do this, compliance, have to, have to, expensive, expensive, not interested, I'll do it when I absolutely have to. We don't actually think about it as empowering and exciting, and setting our business up for success, setting our business up for scale, maybe even setting ourselves up for exit, depending on what our pathway is. So I love that you're reframing it.
Tracey: And look, I completely get why people don't find this stuff as appealing as what it can be, because the eyes glaze over. You say, oh, legal compliance, Australian consumer law lawyer, and people's eyes glaze over. That used to be me. I was a litigation lawyer, and my eyes would glaze over when I had to sit down with some lawyers and think, oh, I'd rather be anywhere but here. But it doesn't have to be like that. So, you know, we think about the traditional law firm, and we think, oh, I've got to pay a fortune to go into this fancy office and find parking and see this lawyer who's going to talk down to me, and they're going to give me a 60-page document that I can't understand, and I'm never going to use, and I'm going to pay through the nose for the privilege. I get that. I have reframed it, because it doesn't have to be like that. And I figured, when my daughter was about to start full-time, 5-day preschool, I've got two children, my youngest, my daughter, was about to start, and I thought, gosh, I really want to give this a crack, and see whether there is a need for what I have in my mind. I have this vision of what I can offer, and how I can help, and how I can empower business owners to set themselves up for success. So let's give it a crack and see if this is what business owners want. And that was 7 years ago.
Danielle: So this is...
Tracey: This is what business owners want.
Danielle: I love it. We love it! I want it!
Tracey: Very quickly. So, documents and contracts shouldn't be written like some boring lawyer from the 60s has written them. They should be on brand, they should be succinct and easy to read, and they should sound like the business. They're a continuity of touchpoints for a business. So, we want to make sure the contracts are making it really easy for people to convert and say, hell yes, I want to work with you. You're a professional, I can understand this, I can see what I'm getting, this process looks amazing. That's what we want to create. That's what it is that I create, not the boring lawyer version from the 60s.
Danielle: I love it. I remember, so my previous business was a marketing agency, and when I started that business, I had no idea what I was doing, you know, just playing business. But I remember the first time we landed a big client, like a News Corp-level client, it was their expectation that we had this documentation. So I think that's the other thing that people don't realise, is that this is an expectation of doing business. This is not a, you know, when I get to a certain stage, or this is boring and for the big guys. This is actually just baseline expectation of doing business. And depending on what kind of clients you want to serve, for you to actually look professional, and for you to actually win that business, you're going to need to have some of this stuff.
Tracey: Not only are you bang on, Danielle, and you need it, it builds trust and credibility. You're telling a new client why they should work with you. You are setting the stage, you're setting the scene. I'm professional, I know what I'm doing, you can trust me, I back myself. This is how I'm going to deliver. This is how we're going to work together. I'm going to do this. I'm not going to do that. And if we need flexibility, variation, scope creep, whatever it might be, it all gets dealt with. The trust and credibility piece is when the client says, hell yes, I want to work with you. And I can't tell you the number of times business owners have said to me, I've lost work because either I've used a template, or I've cobbled something together online, and the client was asking me questions around intellectual property ownership, and I couldn't answer it. I lost the job. 30K, 40K, 50K. That's the sort of jobs that we're talking people lose. I've got other clients who are much smaller and say, look, my dream client is a $6,000 job. Great. We don't need 60 pages. You still need to build trust and credibility. You still need to instil that confidence and give the absolute, unwavering impression that you know what you're doing. And you don't do that just by saying it. You do it by what it is that you're demonstrating and your touchpoints in your business. So yeah, we need this stuff for those reasons.
Danielle: And you said something very interesting then. You said templates, cobbling something together, and dare I say, AI, in the world we live in now. So, and look, I'm going to admit freely to everybody that in the very beginning, I might have stolen my first contract. But I'm super keen on discussing this, so why is it a bad idea to use somebody else's, use a friend's, or ask AI to generate something for us?
Tracey: Okay, let's park AI for a second, I'm going to come back to that, because that's absolutely something that is juicy, and we'll definitely talk about that. First of all, we don't know what we don't know. And as business owners, and new business owners, we're wearing all the hats, and doing all the things, and we're doing our best, and oh my goodness, where do I start? So we don't know what we don't know, and you're not expected to. But no two businesses are the same. So, if your mentor or your friend or someone gives you their version of their agreement, hand on heart, bless, thank you, you don't know if it does all the things. And you also don't know the intricacies of how they run their business, but I can guarantee you, you won't run yours the same, because no two businesses are ever the same. It's the little nuances. So that's the first thing. But the second thing around why not to be using templates or cobbling something together is because when templates are developed, they're developed for everyone, specific to no one. So, how do you know that you're going to be operating in accordance with what that template says? I hear myself say it all the time, DIY is for Bunnings, not for your legals.
Danielle: I hope that's on your website somewhere, because that's brilliant.
Tracey: I say it all the time, and it just hit me one day, many years ago, and it was just the best and clearest way to get the message across. And don't get me wrong, there's a place for template documents, of course there is, in your spreadsheets, or your backend, or your planners, or whatever it is. Just not your contracts, because you don't know if they're going to work, and in my experience, it's a really high probability that they're not, when push comes to shove, and you need to rely on them. If they don't protect you, you may as well have nothing. That's the key to take away from that. And let's look at it this way. When you're building a house, you're building your dream house, and you've got absolute stars in your eyes, you can't wait to live in this dream house. And so you say to your fabulous builder, can you just take a shortcut on the foundations? Don't worry about those foundations, I don't want to spend too much money there. I just really want to get to the windows so I can see the window coverings. Your builder is gonna sack you, as he should, because he knows this house is going to have nothing but problems. It's going to be a nightmare, and it's going to end up as a disaster. Your legal documents are exactly the same. They are your business's foundational documents. They are the most important tool you have. And when they're done properly, they can be the most powerful tool you have. So, that's what I say about that when clients say this to me. Oh, I've been doing this for so long, I've never had a problem, I think I'm fine. And to that I say, excellent. Go you!
Danielle: That gives me chills.
Tracey: But is that our strategy? Is that our strategy going forward? You must have a very healthy appetite for risk. So that's what I say about that. And, you know, I've seen it on the other end, which is why I do this. The real low point from what I saw was when a grown man was sitting across my desk, when I was back in litigation days, and he burst into tears, and he said, now I have to go home and tell my wife I've lost the family home.
Danielle: Wow.
Tracey: And that's because of the documentation. It was a partnership issue. And most of what I saw back then could have been avoided. That's the thing, which was one of the drivers for this business. So that's how important they are, and as I say, they can actually be really cool. In terms of branding and language, the way you issue them, and the professionalism, you're meant to feel good, you're meant to feel proud. If you don't, you haven't got the right documents in place.
Danielle: I love that. It's funny, as you talk, I'm like, wow, you're such a legal nerd. This is so fabulous, but I'm like, you should get excited about everything in your business. I feel like you should work with somebody that cares enough to say you should be excited about the stuff in your business. So, I love it. It's incredible.
Tracey: It's so true, and I'm glad that you've said that. People say to me often, how do I find the right lawyer? Well, it's like marriage, or it's like dating. It's got to be the right fit, and if it doesn't feel right, what do you do if you have a dud date? You don't go again. You say, no thanks, and you move on, or you come up with an excuse, or something like that. The same deal goes with your professionals, and I genuinely think that your accountant, your lawyer, and your bookkeeper are game changers for your professionals in your business, but if you don't gel, if it's not the right vibe, well, you're spoiled for choice. There's so many. Find someone else that actually feels good. And I say this to people often, I'm not the lawyer for everybody. I get that. I'm very direct, straight down the line, and I'm really collaborative. So I need clients to engage with me. And we have our sessions, and we talk about all the things. Not everyone wants to talk to their lawyer. I don't want to do a Zoom with you, just give me the document. That's fine. I'm not for you, but there will be people out there that are. But it's got to feel good, so that you do have that relationship. Let's talk AI.
Danielle: Hit me.
Tracey: I can't tell you the number of times over the last 6 months, a new business owner, so not an existing client of mine, but a new business owner, has reached out to me and said, oh, I've drafted my contract with ChatGPT, can you just look at it and fix it up so it's legally binding? And I say, sure. And within 3 seconds, 4 seconds of looking at it, I can tell you it's rubbish. ChatGPT is excellent for some things, of course. AI is going nowhere, let's be honest. But when it comes to drafting legal documents, it is awful. It's not supposed to be good. It's not supposed to be giving you factual information, current information. We all know now it's designed to hallucinate, so it comes up with some crazy things, and when you don't know what you're looking for, you don't know if it does all the things. I can tell you now it won't. Absolutely it won't. It'll be a good starting point if you want to get an idea of what sort of things would a contract for my business look like. But it's not going to give you compliance with consumer law. It's not going to cover off your dispute resolution process. It's not going to be specific to your industry. It's not going to give you advice on pain points that are common. It's not going to give you strategic advice. So, if you want to use ChatGPT in your business for brainstorming, or socials, or content creation, or bouncing ideas with, all the power to you. Go for it. Don't do yourself the disservice, though, of using it for contracts and thinking that you're then okay, and that those contracts are good. The other thing to say about that, because it's been around for a while now, AI: don't fool yourself by thinking people don't know that you've got an AI-drafted contract. That sends a message in itself. There's real brand damage there, and you have to stop and ask yourself, what message am I sending? At every touchpoint with clients, from discovery calls, socials, websites, proposal, quote, whatever it is, they're your touchpoints. This is your professionalism and your reputation. So, how comfortable are you going to be sending AI-drafted contracts out into the world, which most people are going to identify really quickly it's been drafted by AI? How comfortable are you with that? And I would say not so much.
Danielle: The other thing I had someone tell me once as well is also, recourse. So if something bad does happen, you can't go to ChatGPT and say, excuse me, you led me up the garden path.
Tracey: Absolutely!
Danielle: It's an AI, it's a machine, and there's no recourse there, and there's no one to sit down with and say, oh my god, I've come unstuck, I'm in this problem, what do we do from here? Good or bad. So, that's the other thing as well, like, there's no one on the other end of that line that can actually help you if something does go wrong.
Tracey: That's absolutely right, and part of it goes back to what I said a moment ago about building a relationship with a lawyer that's the right fit for you, and the right vibe that you feel really comfortable with. Because if you work with the right lawyer, the process should be collaborative, and this is where templates miss, as well. There's many ways that templates miss, but one of the ways is there's nothing collaborative. There's no one to sit down and explain it to you, and talk you through, and talk to you about the nuances you need for your business and your industry. And that means that when you start using it, it's really like flying blind and hoping for the best, and I'm not sure that any of your listeners are going to think, oh, that's a great business strategy. Just hope for the best. That's not really a strategy. So, building the relationship with a lawyer who's actually going to craft these things for you, and who actually enjoys it, means that you've got someone to explain it, and hold your hand, and step you through it, so you've got this document, and you think, fantastic, I've got it, I feel really great. But it's not a memory test. You're not expected to memorise it all, so that in 6 months, if a client reaches out and says, hey, I'm really happy to work with you, I just want to talk to you about your indemnity clause, or your disclaimers, and you go, ugh, I don't know, can I change that? You've got someone you can pick up the phone to, or send an email to, and say, hey, can you help me answer this? Can I do this? Absolutely. And then when a client comes back to you and says, look, I've got an issue with you, and things go sideways, you're absolutely right. You've got someone to pick up the phone and say, I really need some time with you, because I need to talk through this issue I've had, because you need to be able to use your documents to support you in those situations. And if you can't quite remember how, you've got someone there on the end of the line to explain it, and to give you the support that you need. So it's very holistic, the approach that should be taken with these things when you're thinking long-term as a business owner. It is holistic, absolutely.
Danielle: Yeah, and it just really, I guess, hammers home the point as well, like, what is your plan for your business? If your plan is to grow, if your plan is to scale, to get any clients, bigger clients, and perhaps to exit, or just, you know, stay out of trouble. These are all foundational things that we just need to have.
Tracey: They are, and if they're done well, they'll grow and evolve with you as your trajectory grows and evolves. At the beginning, most people will say, no, no, I want it to be just me, and I don't want to sell it. I just want this to be a thing that gives me the creative outlet, or the flexibility, or, you know, I love what I do, and I just want this many clients. Great! All the power to you. Let's set you up with that. And then, you get a little bit further down the track.
Danielle: Hire someone.
Tracey: That's right, I need a contractor, I need an employee, I want to engage someone for this purpose. Great, let's talk about that. Let's do that. So they're building blocks. And then you might say, oh my gosh, I've got this amazing person. I actually want them to have skin in the game. How much flexibility do I have to give them shares in the company, or in the business? Okay. Good. Or I'm going to now enter into these collaboration agreements with other people, to build the profile. Yeah, fantastic. And then, you know what, I'm moving to Italy, I want to sell.
Danielle: And all of the documents you have in place are assets. They're worth something.
Tracey: So you're building value as well, when you go and live happily ever after in Italy, or wherever it might be. You can tell that's one of my happily ever afters.
Danielle: Yeah, I'm like, I'll have that happily ever after as well, thank you!
Tracey: They're all there, and they serve a purpose, so they're assets that you're building. They really are.
Danielle: That is incredible, I love it. So let's talk about your business, because you talked about the, I guess, life changes, where at one stage you were young and a litigator, spending all of your countless hours in the courtroom, and then perhaps life changed, we had some kids, we are still very young, obviously, however life looks a little bit different. You built a business around your life.
Tracey: That's such a beautiful question. Dumb luck was a big part of it, I'll be really honest. When I was sort of hitting that 12-year mark in my litigation career, I had met my husband, who wasn't my husband yet, and I really struggled to fall pregnant. It was a journey, and when we were lucky enough that that happened, I, hand on heart, telling the truth, stepped away thinking, I'll take 3 months maternity leave, and I'll be back. Litigation practice, masculine energy, male-dominated, success metrics are all completely skewed, and I've bucked all of them now. It's 3 months maternity leave, and I'll be back. And after my little boy was born, three weeks later, I realised, in an instant, I can't do both. I can't do litigation and be a parent. Something's gonna give. Probably shouldn't take a punt on the parenting.
Danielle: Interesting choice, yes. Love it.
Tracey: So I rang my business partner and said, I'm not coming back, and he said, no, no, I know that, you'll be back in a few months. I went, no, no. Ever. I'm not coming back, ever. And I had no clue what I was going to do. I just knew so deeply that it wasn't litigation and intensity, that's not the life I wanted. I had no clue. I was a new parent, with no idea what I was going to do, but I knew it wasn't that. And the penny started to drop in terms of the challenges we had getting pregnant, in relation to living in masculine energy 98% of the time for the last 12 years, and cortisol levels, and stress, and hormones, and all the things. The pennies started dropping. So, a few weeks after that, I'm sitting there thinking, I don't know what I'm gonna do now, but doesn't this feel great? Which was not my personality, I very much was a control freak. And a friend of mine rang me, she was the director at the practical legal component of the College of Law at the ANU, and she said, you'd be amazing, come and teach for us.
Danielle: Wow.
Tracey: So, okay, so I did. When I got there, it was flexible working arrangements, a lot of working from home, lectures were online. And I was treated and respected as a human.
Danielle: Mind-blowing.
Tracey: It was, it was, and I realised...
Danielle: There's a different way to do life.
Tracey: So I stayed there for 5 years, and because there was a different way to do life, and stress levels were down, and cortisol was down, we got pregnant in 30 seconds with my daughter. They're very close in age. And then I realised, this is the way life should be, in terms of slow mornings, peacefulness, it's a different pace. And I loved it. But then, the following year, when my daughter was getting ready to start preschool at 5 days, I thought, oh, do I want to stay in academia forever? I don't love it. I love the lifestyle, and I'm so grateful for all the things that it's been, and the way I've been able to contribute to my students. Doesn't light me up, though. And in that moment, in that day, in March 2019, sitting in my bedroom, I thought, oh, just give it a crack and just see if I can set this business up the way that I want to. But I want to do it in a way that I know will enrich lives, and in a way that gives me flexibility. Because my success metrics had changed. My biggest success metric was, and still is, slow mornings.
Danielle: Mmm, I love that.
Tracey: And in litigation days, I used to be up at 5am, in the office by 6. Like, it was intense. Slow mornings, and I really wanted to preserve that, and I just didn't want to let that go. So, I got really clear. I did it backwards, I got really clear on what I didn't want, and any manifesting person will say to you, don't do that, don't focus on what you don't want.
Danielle: Yeah.
Tracey: That's just the way it happened, and the dumb luck part came in, because I launched this business probably about 8 months before COVID.
Danielle: Wow.
Tracey: That period converted everybody to doing things differently, and working remotely, and virtually. So, because of that, it took off, and there were so many businesses pivoting, or changing, or launching who needed help. And it just worked. I don't know whether there was magnetism, or the universe, or I don't know, but I was clear on my why, I was clear on what was important to me, and I loved the work so much, it's just organically grown to where it is today. So that's the true journey, that's the true version of how I actually got here.
Danielle: I love it, and I mean, I do love a good COVID story as well. So, in those early days then, and I mean, there does sound like a bit of divine timing, but how did you get those first early clients?
Tracey: That's such an interesting question. I had no clue how I was going to do this. I had some clients who would touch base with me, still, after 5 years of leaving practice, and say to me, hey, don't suppose you could do this for me. And for year after year, I'd say, no, I can't. And there's just something unique about relationships that I'd always had with my previous clients, and just the really, I think it must be because of a country upbringing, I don't know, but a down-to-earth, no BS type approach, which is just how I do life, that I just kept relationships with some of them. So a couple of them had happened to reach out and touch base after I was wanting to launch this business. So I was like, yeah, I can actually do that now. And they're like, oh, cool. But I knew enough, I had enough self-awareness to know that I had no clue what I was doing. And when we were in the litigation days, it was all bricks and mortar, so there was no such thing as marketing or social media or anything like that. We just didn't need to. The work just came. This was different, and I knew I was needing to raise a profile and build a brand somehow. So I did some research and reached out to a business coach for online businesses, because I knew I needed some help to work out how to do this. And she developed my first website and my first brand, and she was an amazing person. And she said to me in our first call, you need an Instagram account, that's where you'll get a lot of your work. No word of a lie, I had to go and Google how to Instagram. I did not know what it was, how to do it, not a clue.
Danielle: I love it!
Tracey: So, I got an account, and just cobbled my way through some videos and bits and pieces, and I had one person reach out to me saying, you're talking on your videos like you're in the courtroom, it's really serious. So I had to relearn how to show up. I didn't know, because you need to work out who you want to attract, and talk to that person. That was a foreign concept. I just did that, and slowly, the clients came. So, slowly, people would see it and go, this is different. This is someone doing something different. I just had faith, and I backed myself, but I knew enough to know that I needed help. So I reached out to people to help me.
Danielle: Well, and it strikes me as well that, you know, this is kind of where our conversation started, right? So the legal side is such an important foundational piece in your business. You are not expected to be a lawyer. Go and find somebody that can help you. And that is like business. That is just it, isn't it? You often start a business because you have a passion, an interest, a skill, you want to solve a problem. But there are all of these jobs that you have to do as a business owner, so going out and finding somebody that can support you and help you shortcut that learning is just genius.
Tracey: It is, it really is, and I wish more business owners knew that they don't have to have it all together, that they don't have to know all the things, and they don't have to wear all the hats, because my gosh, the pressure we put on ourselves, especially as women. Oh, look at such and such, they must have it all together, and they do all the things, and I'm struggling here because I've got this going on in life, and I've got this, and I'm wearing these 13 hats, and I'm doing this, and oh my goodness. No. It's not supposed to be like that, and we're our own harshest critic. If we could just exercise some compassion, for the love of God, to ourselves, to take some pressure off, and to just know you're not actually expected to know everything. There are people for that.
Danielle: Oh, I love that. So, in the litigation career, you'd had a lot of dealings with businesses, so I guess you had some level of understanding as to how businesses operated. Was there anything that surprised you when you did it for yourself, or any kind of big challenge that came up that you weren't expecting when it was time to run the business for yourself?
Tracey: That's a really good question. I knew really well from those years how businesses operated. I knew, because I saw, well, again, doing it backwards, I saw how the really bad businesses operated and where they ended up. So I saw the things that went wrong. So, working with the barristers that I worked with, and some really fabulous teamwork that we did, and court work that we did, it became really clear to me early on what it took to be successful. And so I knew early on, there are things I don't know, I need to reach out and ask for help. But I suppose the confronting part came when I realised just how many hats there were. And then I got into that habit, again, personality trait, I'll be honest, where I thought, it's just easier if I do it myself, it's quicker if I do it myself. I don't want to have to outsource this, because then I just have to teach that person, and then I have to do this. And I had supervised and recruited junior staff as lawyers and all the things, and I did not enjoy that, I'll be frank, that was not the highlight of my career. So I had an aversion to bringing somebody else in, thinking, no, no, I just want to do this myself, that way I can do it the way I want to. That was a really restrictive way of thinking. It was very freeing when I got to the point where I realised how much power there was in outsourcing and getting the support. It put me more in my zone of genius, where I could do more of what I love. Get a VA, get a bookkeeper, you know, and build it and grow it that way. So there was a lot of confronting moments, but I realised very quickly that my own thinking was restrictive, and so I could start to see how the business owners that I'd worked for back in those litigation days, I could start to understand how they got where they got, because of that restrictive thinking.
Danielle: It's really interesting, it reminds me, often, great leaders will say that. They say, I learned early on what kind of leader I didn't want to be. And it was from that, I don't want that to happen to me, that sometimes we learn what to avoid to set ourselves up for success. So, I like that.
Tracey: So true. So true.
Danielle: Oh, I could literally talk to you all day, however, I always love to wrap up these podcasts on one last piece of advice. So, reflecting on your time in business, what would be a piece of advice that you would give to another woman on her business journey?
Tracey: Based on my experience, that advice would be: look around, and find people who are doing what you want to do, or have done what it is that you want to do, and surround yourself with them. Because I think we can learn so much from watching other people, having conversations with other people. I didn't do that for a very long time. And it was hard in the COVID time and all the things, but I wish I had done that sooner, really taking the time to be really intentional around who I wanted to connect with, who I wanted to follow, who I found inspiring. We can learn so much. We don't have to pigeonhole ourselves and, you know, stay in our little corner with our blinkers on, focusing on the day-to-day and the menial tasks. Taking the time to just think about what's my vision, what's my end in mind, who else has done it? That's my advice. That's what I would love to have said to my former self, and that's what I would love for new business owners to take away.
Danielle: Ugh, absolutely incredible. Tracey, thank you so much for your time, and sharing your journey, and your story, and your wisdom. That was absolutely incredible.
Tracey: Thank you, Danielle. I've loved that conversation so much. Thank you for the opportunity.
