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Remaining ‘engaged’ and ‘passionate’ while running a firm
By looking after herself and her staff, this principal solicitor has found that her long-term succession planning has been made easier.
Lauren Croft
Kymberlei Goodacre is the principal solicitor of Coffs Law Co based in Coffs Harbour and practising primarily in family law.
Speaking on a recent episode of the Boutique Lawyer Show, she discussed maintaining momentum after running her own practice for a decade, how to keep that passion alive, motivating her staff, and how other practitioners and boutique firm owners can do the same.
Maintaining a personal drive and motivation to keep going with a business is “vital”, according to Goodacre, who said she tries to avoid simply showing up and ticking the boxes.
“You want to be engaged, you want to be passionate, you want to see those positive outcomes for your clients. You want to see those positive outcomes for your staff. And there are times, particularly in family law and care and protection, where it’s just incredibly hard. You’ve got clients that are wanting you at all hours, wanting the answers. And again, trying to keep the boundaries in place, that you’re in a professional role, that you’re wanting to help them, but there is a limit to what that help is,” she said.
“So really having that passion to keep you motivated and moving forward and wanting that positive outcome [is] very important, in my opinion. I do close down every Christmas for a minimum of three weeks. I joke with my staff in that I say the first week is your wind down, your second week is where you can relax, and then your third week is you winding up again to start. But I find if you don’t have that quite consolidated break, it’s very hard to maintain passion.”
Goodacre also gives her staff three-day weekends when she can, in order for everyone to properly take a break and maintain work/life balance and, in turn, passion for their work.
“You can put all your drive into your business, but if you’re not looking after yourself to back that up, it, in my opinion, is open to failure. So, I ensure that my health is looked after, ensure I’m doing exercise every day, that I’m having time out on weekends. I use meditation and sound healing yoga, because that helps me to decompress. And by looking after myself, I’m being able to provide that leadership and passion to keep going, because if you’re not looking after yourself as well, you will burn out, particularly in family law,” she said.
“It’s just such a hard, cold-faced law to practise. You really need to be engaged with that. My staff also have a netball team that they play in on a Thursday night. I’ve got bad knees, but I’m very supportive as a cheer squad. But also having those team building things that just happen quite naturally are really good for being able to debrief and have a laugh and be able to be yourselves outside the seriousness of work.”
Without that underlying health and wellbeing, a business is more likely to not be able to bring in revenue, which further impacts the staff in the long term.
“I focus so much on revenue as a firm. I know I should. Lots of people tell me that I should, but I’ve never had a year where we haven’t done well. And so, it’s really about, are you getting the results for your client that you need to do in an efficient way? So that’s more what we’re focusing on,” Goodacre said.
“Rather than billables, we’ll look at each month, what are you bringing in? Some months are good, some months are bad, but there’s never been a month where I’ve gone, wow, I’m really concerned about this. If people are feeling passionate and wanting to help the clients, it comes out in what we’re turning over anyway. So, at the end of the day, that’s already looked after. It might not be the high-end metrics, but it supports six families here, so that means more to me.”
In terms of how she’s planning on keeping this passion alive further down the track, Goodacre said inspiring the same level of passion in her staff will help with her long-term succession planning.
“I’m getting to the pointy end in my career where I am probably looking at maybe 10-15 years tops until I retire. I want to be a nana to my grandkids; that’s important. So, for me, looking at my staff really starting now to look at succession planning and trying to inspire the same passion I have in leadership in my staff, that succession planning can just happen or evolve quite organically,” she added.
“That’s really my next challenge, sort of the next five to 10 years. You want to inspire people to do well, and that’s what succession planning should be all about. It should be the reward at the end of the day for doing that.”
