#127 What is peace of mind in business?
If you've been tuning in for a while, you would have heard me talk about peace of mind over and over again. But peace of mind isn’t just a phrase, it's a powerful principle that underpins everything I do for my clients.
In this episode, I want to share with you what peace of mind truly means to me and why it matters so much in business. I've been in the law for two decades and my path has taken me from the stressful and intense world of commercial litigation to now doing everything I can to educate and empower business owners to avoid the heartache I’ve seen so many people experience.
I've seen firsthand the havoc legal disputes wreak on lives, families, and businesses. Throughout the years working in disputes and litigation, I witnessed people losing their homes, and families in turmoil, all because they lacked the knowledge and support they needed. That's why I'm all about proactive guidance. Prevention truly is better than cure.
Peace of mind is about avoiding that sinking feeling when things go awry. With the right legal foundation, you'll be able to face those challenges head-on, armed with confidence that you and your business are protected. It's not about dodging obstacles because things will inevitably go wrong. It's about being proactive to think holistically and strategically about what your business needs to weather any storm.
Empowerment is the core of my mission. And when your documents are in order, your systems are solid, and you have a team by your side to support your business through every season, you're not just surviving; you're thriving. I hope you find some great takeaways from this episode and that it encourages you to take the necessary steps to create peace of mind in your life and business.
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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 this episode. If you're a long time listener, you will have heard me say over and over again It's all about peace of mind, peace of mind, so important. This is what you should be doing with your legal documents so that you've got peace of mind.
[00:00:39] I talk about confidence. I talk about peace of mind. And if you're a new listener, welcome. Welcome to the podcast. You will hear me talk about this a lot, and in today's episode, I'm gonna share with you my take on what it is that I'm talking about when I say peace of mind, what it means to me. But to start, I want to give you some context and some background so you understand why this is important to me, why I focus on it, and why I talk about this so often, because I know it's a game changer. I know it's a game changer for business owners. I know that is so damn important, and I'm gonna explain why and share some context with you.
[00:01:21] For those of you who don't know me, I've been in the law now for two decades, so 20 years. Yes. I know that that makes me sound old. I won't say I feel old. I feel seasoned. When I started my legal career, I started in a really busy and thriving commercial litigation practice.
[00:01:43] So I was acting for business owners who. Were involved in a dispute. They were either suing or being sued. There were legal proceedings that they were involved in, or there were legal proceedings being threatened, or they were in really tricky situations with another party to do with most of the time, money.
[00:02:01] And that was great for me as a junior lawyer, I didn't really give that much thought to. How it felt from a client perspective way back then, because I was just new to the law, keen to learn, keen to prove myself, keen to succeed, keen to be bloody good at what I was doing. And so I threw myself into that practice area And for 12 years, that was my area of practice. Disputes and litigation and court and mediation and arbitration and all things stressful and intense, and there were some serious consequences for the clients on the other end of these legal cases. But for us lawyers, it was all about. Right. Being combative and being aggressive and being sharp and on the ball and coming up with the strategy and doing everything you possibly could to help your client, but also to win.
[00:02:50] There's a lot of ego wrapped up in the A litigation practice. It is traditionally very male dominated. It's a very masculine energy, but there's a lot of ego wrapped up in it. Needless to say, I chose to leave that practice area when I had my son, who is now nine, and there were several reasons for that and I'll talk about that another time.
[00:03:13] But the point is, in those 12 years, I saw so much loss and harm and destruction, and I saw people. At breaking point, the level of stress and intensity and what it did to their health, to their marriages, to their business relationships. I saw people lose their homes when things didn't go well. I've shared this story on here before.
[00:03:39] Where a grown man was sitting in front of me in my office and burst into tears because he had to go home and tell his wife that he had just lost the family home. So when it comes to what can go wrong in business, I hand on heart say that there's nothing that I haven't seen. And by extension, there is not much that I haven't seen in terms of the toll that it takes on the individuals and the clients and the business owners. Sadly, most of what I saw back then in that part of my career could have been avoided. And I say that a lot in my messaging on this podcast and on the website, but most of what I saw could have been avoided if the business owners had have known what they didn't know.
[00:04:20] You know, we all hear that you don't know what you don't know, of course. But if they had known how to do things differently, if they hadn't, if they hadn't known how to position themselves, if they had had the right team around them, if they had had a business lawyer on their side, or if they had have had someone they could call on regularly who knew their business and who knew how to guide them.
[00:04:35] If they had had that, then I don't think that most of the cases that I acted on would've ended up where they did. So when I talk now about peace of mind, what I mean is avoiding all of that, so the peace of mind so that you are protected, peace of mind, that you are supported, and peace of mind, that you have got solid foundations in your business and that you are not a house of cards, And that you won't be rattled each and every time something goes awry or something unexpected comes up in your business. That's what I mean by peace of mind. You know that sinking stomach feeling you get when you think, oh, I've just agreed to this, or I've just done that, or, I'm really worried about this.
[00:05:19] Have I done the right thing? Ugh. Or this has just happened wholly, duly. This, I feel blindsided by this situation. I've just got this email. It's a complaint. It's nasty. It's a refund request. It's a refusal to pay something like that where you feel blindsided. Sometimes you can feel the blood drain from your face all the way down to your feet.
[00:05:39] You've got that gut wrenching feeling of not knowing what to do next or where to turn. that feeling right there is the feeling I work with clients to avoid. And by avoiding that is what I say, gives you the peace of mind. So rather than being in a situation where you are overwhelmed, confused, feeling vulnerable and exposed, and not knowing what to do, I like to flip that script and work with clients to position them to feel confident, secure.
[00:06:10] Knowing they've got the right team around them, knowing they've ticked all the boxes, knowing they've got everything in place that they need in their business to protect them going forward so they don't have to have those stomach turning gut wrenching feelings that so many of my clients had in that earlier part of my career, not knowing if this case is going to go well and are they going to get paid?
[00:06:33] Not knowing. If they've got a solid defense here, or is their family home exposed, not knowing if they're going to be able to pay the wages bill next week? I wanna do away with all that. My mission in my business is an empower ethos and I work with business owners to empower them so that they've got peace of mind and confidence.
[00:06:51] Moving forward so that when you get an email from a client and it's TSE or you feel blindsided because something unexpected has come up, and let's face it, that's always gonna happen. There'll always be something unexpected on our business journey. That's just the way it's, but being positioned so you are confident and you've gotta plan and a strategy in place on what you're going to do when that unexpected thing happens.
[00:07:13] That my friend is peace of mind. So we can't control what other people do. We can't control external events, but we can most certainly control how we react or respond to them. That is peace of mind doing away with that doubt and stomach churning feeling when you're not sure about something doing away with it.
[00:07:34] That's peace of mind. So you can see why I'm so passionate about delivering peace of mind. And confidence to business owners because you don't have to feel like that. And like I said earlier in my career, most of what I saw could have been avoided. The clients didn't have to feel like that. So now my mission and my purpose is to reach as many small business owners as I can to share with them the knowledge that they need and to support them and work with them to set themselves up.
[00:08:10] On a solid framework for long-term sustainable success so that when that unexpected thing happens, you reach out, you've got a plan. When you feel blindsided, you don't need to feel the blood rush from your head to your toes because you don't know what to do because you will know what to do because you know foundational documents are solid, your systems and your processes.
[00:08:33] A solid and you can respond rather than react. We all wanna respond. You can respond in a considered intentional, non-emotional way and deal with it and continue to focus on your business, growing the business revenue generation, all the things that move the needle, and that you're not thrown and you're not rattled.
[00:08:53] When something happens, which can unfortunately bring business owners unstuck really easily. So that's what I mean when I say peace of mind. That is why I do what I do. I've seen it. I know it. I know what it is. I know that it's possible and I see the outcome. I see the outcome of what I do I see the benefit. And I see the outcome. So I know. What confidence and peace of mind can deliver for business owners, and I know what it can do in terms of longevity and sustainable success. So that's what I mean. I hope you've enjoyed that. I would love to know whether this resonates with you or indeed if you've got other elements that you think are just as vital and just as important in this concept of peace of mind.
[00:09:35] I always love receiving your glorious feedback. I really appreciate you taking the time to reach out to me to share with me feedback on the podcast. So please feel free to reach out and let me know. Is there anything else that's really important to you that is just as important as what I've outlined?
[00:09:50] When it comes to peace of mind, I'd love to hear from you. As always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next week.
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