#227 - Does success look like this?
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The other night, I found myself sitting in my living room asking a simple question: Does success look like this? And for the first time in a long time, the answer came back clearly. Yes. It does.
Twelve years ago, I would have given you a completely different answer. Back then, success looked like urgency. It looked like rushing to court, taking late-night client calls, working under pressure, and wearing the chaos of litigation like a badge of honour. I was ambitious, driven, and completely immersed in my career. At the time, I thought that was what success was supposed to look like. I had associated success with productivity. Running on adrenaline, being rushed off of my feet, barely having any time to breathe but that’s not success, that's crossing the line of burnout.
The Cost of That Version of Success
When I look back now, I can see the cost of that version of success. It was all-consuming. It demanded constant energy, constant attention, and constant output. There was very little space to pause and actually enjoy the life I was working so hard to build. I was achieving, yes. But I was also running.
The Moment Everything Shifted
The shift came quietly. My son turned 12, and I had one of those moments that stops you in your tracks. I realised how lucky I was to have been present for his life in a way I would not have been if I had stayed on the same path. That was the moment it clicked. Success was not just about professional achievement. It was also about presence. It was about being there. Fully there, not just for him but also for me. If i had kept running the way i was i would have missed all of the small moments that make the big milestone so precious.
Ask Yourself Better Questions
If I am honest, I did not get this perspective because I had some grand master plan. I got here by asking better questions. Years ago, I never stopped to challenge my definition of success. I never asked whether the version I was chasing was actually one I wanted. I just assumed it was. If I could go back and speak to my younger self, I would tell her to pause sooner. To reflect sooner. To ask, Does success really look like this?
What Success Looks Like Now
These days, my definition of success is broader. It still includes meaningful work, growth, and ambition. But it also includes peace, presence, fulfilment, and the quiet joy of being available for the people who matter most. It is less about constant hustle and more about building a life and business that actually feel good to live in. It is about sustainability. It’s about constantly reflecting on where I am, not just in my business life but also in my personal life. It is about looking at things more holistically and seeing how both lives can support one another.
A Question Worth Asking Yourself
So let me leave you with the same question. Look at where you are right now and ask yourself: does success look like this for you? Take a moment to really pause and reflect because sometimes the most powerful shifts do not come from doing more. They come from being honest enough to admit that your definition of success might need to change.
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[00:00:00]
Tracey: Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast. In today's episode, I want to talk to you about success, success in business and [00:01:00] success in life. And the reason I wanna talk about this is because my son turns 12 earlier in the month, and it was a really reflective time for me.
I found not the least of which because I appreciate that in 12 months he'll be a teenager and I just don't feel like I'm ready for that. And I know that I speak to a lot of parents and everyone says it creeps up, but I really feel like this time is flying and it's really creeping up, which is probably why I found myself in a really reflective state lately, which is always really valuable and I enjoy those moments, and I wanted to talk about that here with you today in the context of success, the background to this being the ethos that underpins my business and why I set my business up the way that I did when I did. And for long time listeners, you'll know that. I set the business up in the way that I did seven years ago now because at the time, both of my little ones were about to be in full-time school.
I was teaching law at a NU and I was then [00:02:00] reflecting on whether I wanted to be the founder of a new business to do law in a way that was really different in a way that aligned with. The life that I wanted to build, but in a way that I knew would be able to provide quality services in a really accessible way to business owners all across the country.
So there were a few key principles underpinning my decision to launch the business and I have found that the seven new marks have been a really nice time to reflect on the business as a whole and the life that it's allowed me to lead In doing that, the first question that I asked myself was, does success look like this? And that's what I wanna ask you and talk about in this episode.
So when I sat down a couple of weeks ago and I was thinking about all the things that have happened over the last 12 years and what we've achieved and how we've grown personally and professionally, I asked myself, does success look like this? And I felt really blessed and privileged in that moment to be able to say, yes it does, because my son's turned 12.
And I was there for it. I wasn't rushing off to court. I [00:03:00] wasn't stressed about having to return phone calls to clients really late at night because that's litigation practice. I wasn't dealing with the intensity of. Timeframes and deadlines set by the court and clients who were really in stressed situations because they were experiencing real destruction in their businesses, being caught up in litigation and court work.
That was my previous life. That was my back in the early years of my career life, and back then devoting my entire existence to my work. That was success for me back then because I didn't know any better. And I also didn't know the power of asking the question back then. So if I look back to my younger self, what I would love to say to her is pause and ask yourself, does success look like this?
And back then, if I had have known that it could have been different, more, my answer would've been no. But I didn't know. Fast forward, here I am. So I've built a business now where I can. [00:04:00] Really live my values and really live in my truth. And one of my success metrics now is slow mornings. And I've shared that openly on here and over on Instagram and social media where we're really active.
Slow mornings being present and doing work that I love, so that I don't have that sinking stomach feeling knowing that we've got impending court deadlines or court appearances. Are we prepared? There's so much at stake. The stress and intensity that went with that season of, of life and of my career is not a success metric for me now. In fact, it's the opposite. Making sure that I don't have that sinking stomach feeling and that intensity in those stress levels and those really high cortisol levels, and living in 98% masculine energy.
Not having that is a success metric, if you like. So there's power in asking the question, does success look like this? And for me now it does. That's not to say it always will. It changes and that's [00:05:00] okay. This is a conversation I have with most of my new clients when they reach out because what we do here in this business is develop contracts and legal documents for clients that work to set them up for success, to set them up for long-term sustainable success.
So because that's what I do, I need to ask the question, well, what does success look like for you? Often it just comes out in my new calls with clients anyway, so I can tell very quickly. What it is that this client wants to achieve, what success looks like, and typically, if it's a business that's earlier on in the journey, it is growth.
It is client engagement, retention, revenue. That's where the focus tends to be on the newer businesses. Once those businesses get more established, and I'm talking to more established business owners, the metrics of success or the drivers for success tend to focus around. Some balance, some space. Working with clients.
They love doing work that lights them up, having reliable [00:06:00] cash flow. That seems to be the focus because they've been through that new business phase, but the power of pausing and asking the question. Does success look like? This really can unpack quite a lot, and it does tend to do that in the conversations I have with clients.
And I'd love to ask the question of you now, so where you are now in your business and how that integrates with your personal life. Let me ask you, does success look like this? And if your immediate instinct is hell yes to that, I wanna say congratulations. That's amazing to be in that position. That's what we all aspire to, to achieve that at some point, like I said, not saying that's never going to change.
Because we're in a season of life, right? So we're in a season of life. We're in a season of business. Things change and evolve and grow. Of course, it won't always be so beautifully harmonious where we say, yes, this is what success looks like. It's something we have to work at. We have to keep tweaking something we have to be conscious of.
We can't just leave it and think, oh, [00:07:00] well, I'm here now. Great. Because life keeps happening and things keep happening. Such that we need to keep revisiting it so we can tweak things. Otherwise, things fall off kilter. In my experience, if though, when I ask you the question, does success look like this? If you say, oh gosh, no, this is not what success looks like, I'd like to go to the next step then and ask you, well, what does success look like?
Because if you are in a position right now where you are saying, no. Great. At least we know. But what does success look like because only then can you start working out the steps that you need to take or the process you need to adopt to work towards achieving that success metric or your vision of what success looks like for you.
What I really love about these conversations that I have with my clients is that from these conversations come so much gold for me in developing the documents. In developing the contracts, the client service agreement, or the employment agreements, the contractor agreements, whatever it might be. So much gold comes of this because [00:08:00] in this, when a client's saying to me, well, no, this is not what success looks like, but I'd like to get to a point where I've got reliable cash flow where I'm not having to have really awkward conversations with clients because their expectations were misaligned and they're not happy and they want me to do more, but that wasn't in scope or they thought I'd be engaging that third party, but I'm not.
Those sorts of things are absolute gold for someone like me, because from that, I can pull out the pain points that I need to address in the documents we are developing to set the business owner up for success, to set them on their way to achieving that success. So this question has got many, many layers to it.
Each That can be really valuable. Similarly, if a client's saying to me, gosh, I'm really not enjoying managing my team. Or, gosh, I'm really overwhelmed. I've got no time. I can't go to the school assemblies because I'm under the pump with work. I don't have flexibility. Talk to me about what a contractor looks like.
[00:09:00] Tracy. Talk to me about that. Those are the types of conversations we can have then in relation to the team. Is an employee right for you or is a contractor right for you? Let's have this conversation. Let's loop the accountant in. Let's have that conversation. We can get so much clarity by thinking through the process around what does success look like for me and my business right now?
We can then unpack and put a plan in place and develop the steps. That we need to go through to work towards achieving that business owner's vision of success. I've posted on LinkedIn this week around my reflection of my son's birthday and how grateful I am to have achieved this, and I've had some really lovely engagement from people talking about their versions of success and what success means to them.
And it is different for every business owner. Like I said, it's different depending on what season of life we're in and what season of business we're in. I work with a business strategist, [00:10:00] Michelle Broadband, and you've probably heard me talk about Michelle on the podcast before, and in fact, Michelle has been a guest on the podcast.
And one of the really powerful things that Michelle taught me earlier on is that it's okay for success to change. Regularly for you. It can even be week to week. Michelle talks about her framework for the winning week. She introduced me to that and I love that.
And she said to me earlier on, don't be rigid with this, Tracy. It's okay for it to change. Revisit it regularly, particularly when the school holidays come, because your winning week is going to look very different in the school holidays to what it does during the school term, and she's right. That was a real permission slip that Michelle had given me because I knew then that I can lean in to really focus and nuance what success looks like for me at the moment during the term. And then take the pressure off. Take the.
Pedal off the gas over the school holidays. That's okay. That's permission to do that. Just rework the framework for your winning [00:11:00] week over the school holidays and then tweak it again when the school holidays finish. Having that flexibility was really powerful for me, and it wasn't something that came easily because my background's in litigation, so it's very rigid, very structured.
There's not much room to move there. Running my own business and choosing who I surround myself with and choosing who I work with. Michelle, being a key person really is quite different, and it was a different mindset and it took me a little while to develop that and to really lean into the comfort and being relaxed about being flexible with that winning week.
So success on a week to week, month to month basis, or on a quarter to quarter basis is one thing. And then success more holistically in terms of how the business integrates with your personal life can be another. It doesn't have to be, but can be. And that's okay. The reason I'm sharing that little backstory with you is because that was really pivotal for me, that mindset shift and having the support from someone like Michelle to be able to really broaden my thinking [00:12:00] and capture all of the different moving parts of my life, and to bring them all together in a coherent but flexible way.
So that I could then get a really good snapshot of what success looks like at any given point in time. And from there, I've been able to develop over the years to where I am now, which is, yes, this is what success looks like when asked the question. But that winning week framework really has been instrumental in getting here like most business owners, when I started, it was a vision.
I don't wanna be the stressed parent at drop off and pick up. I want to be able to be present and go to assemblies and sports days, but I also want time for myself. But I want to be accessible to business owners Australia wide. ' cause I know how important accessibility is. Growing up in a small rural community, accessibility is so important.
I wanna be able to achieve that and I want to work with aligned clients doing work that I love. To really enrich their lives. That's [00:13:00] the big overarching picture. Years in breaking it down bit by bit, I've been able to work towards achieving. That hasn't always been smooth, let me be very honest about that.
It absolutely hasn't always been smooth, and there have been times where I've thought, my goodness, this is really not why I set this business up to be working this way, or to be in the trenches or to be so overwhelmed or whatever it is, but with the right people around. I was able to reflect on the question, is this what success looks like?
No, it is not. Why not? What do we need to change? And that has been one of the most important instrumental questions that I could have ever asked to get to here. So I wanna ask you. That's why I'm sharing on this episode. It's a short and sharp episode. I'm hoping you get some value out of it, but the way you are set up today, the way you are operating business and how that's integrating into your personal life, is that what success looks like?
Does success look like this? If not, let's have a conversation, because I suspect, like most of my clients, there's a whole ton of things we can [00:14:00] address in your documentation, your client service agreement, your proposal process, your processes and systems, whether you've got the right contractors or whether you've got the right agreements in place with your team to manage expectations.
There really is a lot of fundamentally important work we can do in relation to. Addressing pain points, getting the right documentation in place, integrating that into processes and systems to set you on a path be working sustainably, working towards that metric of success. And I cannot.
Stress enough. The importance of who you surround yourself with in business really matters. Write down to your team members, your strategist, your bookkeeper, your lawyer, your accountant. It really, really matters. when we're telling ourself later, I'll get to it later, I'll get to it later, get to it later. In my experience, that means we're unlikely to ever get to it later, I find is a really dangerous word. We don't wanna be doing that. That's not gonna help set us up for success, and that's not going to [00:15:00] help us get to the point where we're saying, does success look like this?
Yes, it does. That's the answer we wanna get to, but we also wanna be supported so we can be flexible. So we can change and adapt and grow and evolve as we need to throughout the different seasons in business and life. But the only way we can do that, in my view, is by being really clear on what success looks like in any particular season, and having the right people around us to give us the support we need to be able to get there.
If any of this resonates, please feel free to reach out. I would love to have a conversation to see whether we'd be a good fit to work together and whether I can support you on this journey, and if I can make recommendations to my people or to contacts that I have to help you on that journey, I would be only too happy to do that.
As always, thank you for joining me. I'll catch you next time.
[00:16:00]
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