Lawyer Mind vs. Business Mind: Breaking the Cycle of Perfectionism with Gary Mitchell

Welcome to studying law Around the world. I'm Claudio Claus. In each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students, and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life. We talk about the hard parts, the surprises and the decisions. That shaped their paths. Whether you're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world, this podcast. Is for you. Today I have the opportunity to interview Gary Mitchell, who is the founder of On Track Coach. He has an impressive career spanning 30 years in the business world. He has become a beacon for lawyers and law firms seeking the rapid achievement of their goals. Thank you so much for making the time to be here today, Gary. My pleasure, Claudio. It's it's great to be with you today. I appreciate it and she started us off. I I'd love to ask you to introduce yourself and share a little bit about, you know, your career and and how you first found your way into coaching. Lawyers. OK, I'm gonna try and make this brief uncharacteristically, because it's a very it's a very unique story. So looking back even as back as far as high school, I was always fascinated with your own history, sociology, politics, basically everything around people, right. Theatre and music were my first passion. I started my first business in Toronto and built a national event. I started the business at 25 no experience, got my hands dirty, made a lot of mistakes. That's how most officers learn, right? And I found myself out in Vancouver as a result. And then I got involved in politics. Fast forward, I ran for Parliament in 2004 and I always say thankfully I lost and I can't imagine anyway. So the following election, I was approached by a lawyer to run his nomination campaign in the same writing that I just don't accounted. So I dropped everything 10 days Sprint to the nomination, oversaw the building of a website, hosted an event, sent out a Mailer, wrote his speech, coached him on that and he won the nomination and he was determined to have me as his campaign manager. And I was like no way. I didn't want to go anywhere near that. Anyway. I ended up being his campaign manager. So Coach Tim and it was an extended campaign that went over 2526. Paul Martin was the Prime Minister was a minority. So we weren't sure, you know, when we were things were gonna go. So it was a very challenging experience, but it was also the most fulfilling experience I'd had up to that time in my career. I had always been the guy. OK. So now I have the opportunity to be the the guy or the person behind the person. And it was phenomenal, Claudio, to see the transformation of another person as a result of some of the advice and guidance I was giving him. And it was like he was like a sponge. He he went from zero and I mean zero. And he'd be first to admit it, blank slate, no experience whatsoever to beating 2 veteran politicians on a live television debate just days before the election. Like it was amazing. Now during this process, his best friend, a former lawyer, said, Gary, you've I've seen what you've been doing with the candidate. I won't mention his name. And it's remarkable. Like you've got an app to work with highly intellectual people and help them understand and break down the simple practical steps of business and marketing people skills. And he said the legal industry needs this. They need marketing support of business development support, all the same skills, soft skills other politician may use, right Speaking, networking, building relationships. So after I picked my jaw up off the floor of thinking, what, like the legal industry has been around forever. They don't know how to, they haven't figured this out yet. So I've been involved in politics, as I said, for many years. So I knew a lot of lawyers. So that was my first step as I reached out to them and I asked them for their feedback and some of them gave me honest feedback and some of them didn't holding their cards close to the chest. But they made many introductions to legal marketers in Vancouver. I went out and I, I did research in person. I also went online. And at that point, back in 2006, I literally was one of the first business coaches in the legal industry, definitely the first in Canada and one of the early ones, early pioneers in North America. It was really brand spanking new. Even today, some people don't even know it exists, right? And there's tons now, there's tons of competitors, which I find is a great thing because back then it was the only person shouting from the mountain top. And now there's like, you know, a whole stream of it's an industry, a business coaching in the legal industry. Firms have a roster of coaches. I mean, it's come a long way in 20 years. So that's how I fell into this. I really fell into it. And it was very serendipitous. I just have to say one thing. My 4th book is coming out and it's a publisher in Toronto. And the Co publisher literally is the brother, also a lawyer of the lawyer, the best friend of the candidate that gave me the idea to coach lawyers in the first like talk about the serendipity, right? Full circle. I can hardly wait. The books coming out in June. And I, when I found that out, I, I just was like, whoa, that is like, you can't write that, you know? Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. Definitely can't claim for something like that to happen and especially with the no 20 years of of a history on that. But that's such an incredible story. I'm I'm curious here. You just mentioned, you know, that you got this suggestion, you notice that the legal industry had all those, those gaps, those needs. So I'm curious to say, to, to hear what you say. Actually, I I read on your website that you say that lawyers are great thinkers, but those same traits can also hold them back. I devote a whole chapter to this because it's really the the lawyer mind is 1 of analytical critical risk averse. I mean, This is why we hire lawyers, right? They're going to find the problem or prevent the problem or do what they can to alleviate the problem or make it go away. They're problem solvers, but in that they're always looking on the negative side of things. They're looking for what's wrong with things, right? The business mind, an entrepreneurial mind is always looking for opportunities, always looking for where, where can this go? It's a complete, it's completely competing. What makes a great lawyer holds them back as a business person and vice versa. And I've heard this from them as well. Like I'm not the only one to say this. So basically that. And it's basically left brain functions, right, analytical, critical, all of that. And what I teach them is I teach them how to exercise more of their right brain functions, like the the creative, the innovative. Now with that comes a lot of challenges in their world. Lawyers like to have control. They don't like surprises. They're perfectionists. I mean, there's a whole string of personality traits. I always say, like all humans have these personality traits. But a lawyer is like a regular human times 100 when it comes to some of these. And again, it's not a criticism. It's an observation of working with them for 20 years. And it's purely what we want when we hire them, right? We hire them for that kind of critical analytical thinking. So that's the challenge is helping them understand that it's a different way of thinking, right? It's a different way of thinking in business. And the only, there's no one in business that can honestly say they haven't made a ton of mistakes. Whereas I don't find, you won't find many lawyers that will admit they made a ton of mistakes, right? Usually they don't make many because they can't, but in business, you can't move forward unless you're making mistakes. So this is how we, I mean, I know I've made a ton of them and that's how I've learned, right? That's how entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs. I'm not afraid of making a mistake. There's another, another challenge. Lawyers are, are like scared beyond belief of making mistake. And so this holds them back again in the business side because they're going to make mistakes, right? People make mistakes. And so it's a really, it's, it's an interesting challenge. I enjoy it because usually by the time a client comes to me, they know they need help. They passed that Rubicon, so to speak, right? They know they need help. Now they're trying to figure out where or who, how, how are they going to get the help? But they have to actually pass over that bridge of they need help to get to the next level, whatever that is in their career, right? Like recently, last year, I made the decision earlier in the year after 19 1/2 years. I'm strictly working with law firm owners now. Like I may work with some of their staff, but my lead client is the law firm owner looking to grow their small law firms. So it's entrepreneur, entrepreneur, and I truly love it. I saw something along the lines of part of your work is helping lawyers to build a firm around their life and not the other way around. I'd love to hear a little more about what does that look like in practice, you know, for a busier homeowner. OK, well first of all, the title of the book, it's called the end approach, Growing a successful law firm and gaining more freedom because that's where it all starts with it and mindset. So instead of I'm going to do this or that, I can, I'll show them, you know what's possible. You can have a successful business and a life. You don't have to be chained to the desk or change the office working 80 hours a week. I've had a few clients actually out of strong. You're in Toronto right now. We record this who spend the winters in Costa Rica. They figured a way out how to do it. We're recording this. I'm in Mexico, I spend my winters in Mexico working from here. Now, litigators obviously have a little bit more of a challenge with the freedom side because they have to be in physically in court, but they're not in court every week. They're not in court every month, right? So they can move around. They can, they can flexible. The challenge though, is to here's the challenge. In order to gain the freedom, they have to let go of some of their control and that's where they need the help. Lawyers love to have control because they're perfectionists, right? And so I, I move them a little bit along. I never pushed my clients out of their, their comfort zone. I kind of move the goal posts a little bit at a time, gently teasing them, expanding the the comfort zone so they understand that to grow and create the life that they want, it has to go beyond themselves. They need to build a team. So that's basically that in a nutshell. If I were to say one way how to get the freedom, it's you need a team around you. None of us can do all this on our own. Very, very interesting. And and something else that I saw is that you talk a lot about the the mindset shifts. So I wanted to hear a little more about your experience. What are some of the hardest changes that lawyers need to make when they start thinking like a business owner? You just talked about the control. Yeah, Well, that's, it's like, I'll repeat, yes, I'll repeat myself, because it really is about control and perfectionism. They have to drop those. They have to let them go. And to build a team, obviously I show them how to build the best possible team so that it's easier to let go of control because there's trust, right. We're going to work. We're going to, we're going to hire smart. We're going to hire the right people. We're going to get them in the right rules and we're going to give them the right support to grow and learn. So it's not just, you know, and oh, yeah, we're going to have a team and it's all going to be, you know, hunky Dory. No, there's a lot of work behind this, but when it's done right, that's when the freedom occurs. But they have to like it's again, it's that it's a it's a high wire act, Claudio. It's not. I don't move them from from lawyer mine to entrepreneur mind overnight. It takes time and depending on where they are in their journey, right, how many years they've been in. I mean, I love to have somebody who's been in at least five years and and and level got into some level of success already, because then they've had some failures as well. They've had some stumbling blocks. So they know what they know and they know what they don't know. Well, they actually don't know what they don't know, but they know they don't don't know everything. So that's when they that's when they look for help. But you know what I've always maintained and it's proven every single day, attitude is everything. Attitude is everything. And I, that's one of my strategies when I'm helping them hire is before the CV, before the law school mark, before the firms they worked at, if they're, if they're, you know, experience, how do we measure their attitude? Are they a go getter? Are they gonna figure it out? Or are they gonna be like stuck in the solution or sorry, stuck in the problem being part of the problem rather than the solution, right. And so there's a lot of, I mean, to me, this stuff just comes naturally. I don't know why I can't say how, but I guess when I look back at my life, like I said, everything I was interested in has always been around people, the study of people. And so I guess I'm a pretty good judge of, of people in the professional realm. Again, I'm not perfect, no, and my systems are not, you know, perfect, but they're pretty, pretty darn good. And I've helped, I've helped people build some amazing teams. And I look back at some of my clients now that I work with like 12 years ago, 13 years ago. Even one in Toronto started with him 2018, worked through 2020 and he's already won the fastest growing law firm in Toronto twice from the Globe and Mail. And he's grown beyond that. He will, he wrote the forward for the book and he will be hosting the launch of the book on his face in his Bay St. office in June. I can't wait. But he's one of many stories that, you know, I had the opportunity of working with him. There's a great example. Here's a young now this is a great for some of your listeners too, for junior lawyers. So the story is he articled right. He graduated in article and he wasn't hired back from the firm. He couldn't get a job. So he went out and he started his own law firm. Fast forward five years later, it's got 5 lawyers working under him. This is when he reached out to me because he wanted to help create a plan about the partnership for the well, that was 2018 when you reached out last year, I saw the announcements on LinkedIn. They've all made partner. They've all stuck with them. They made partner. I worked with a number of them, coach them. It's amazing to see that like there's an example, he had already achieved quite a level of success, right? Like young, I think it was like 31 or 32 or something, has A5 lawyer firm. Well, five lawyers under him plus him. And I mean, I'd say that's success, right? But he knew, he knew he couldn't get to the next level without help. So we worked together for a couple of years and I mean, it's just amazing to see the clients grow. Another one in Vancouver, she had left a firm. I think she was about four years and four year. She left the firm to start her own firm. That was, I'm gonna say 20. It was either 2012 or 2013 cause that was actually in Toronto for the summer when she reached, reached out to me. So back then, 2012, let's say it's 2012, she was her and her legal assistant. Now she has a team of 25 lawyers. She branched out to a second practice area and is just, she has a, she's created a four day work week for all her staff. Like she is bleeding edge, like just took off one of the most brilliant auctorial lawyers I know in Canada. There's another one in in Calgary. She's a business immigration lawyer and she just keeps winning accolades and accolades and accolades over and over and over again. It's amazing to see when you look back and I had a bit of it, I had a small part in it. I'm not going to take credit for all of that, right? But I had some part in it. And that is awesome that that just makes me to see them grow and then move and go to a whole new level. It's almost like I'm a proud parent. Right, that's fantastic. Well, thank you so much for sharing those, those really tangible examples as well of those experiences that Gary and I saw here. You've you've worked with everyone from full solo practitioners to to partners at large firms. You did mention you have a little bit more of a focus now on, on people who own their own firm. But I wanted to to to ask you if throughout these years, if there were a few mistakes that you saw being repeated across firm sizes when it comes to grow for leadership, regardless of it being, you know, a smaller firm or a big firm? Yeah, well, you know, I'm glad y'all. So I questioned because I always tell when I was like, say I was working with a partner at a large firm, I always told him, I said think of your practice as a franchise. This is your business. And if you think treat it like that, then you might as well be running your own firm. So the challenges are the same, the building, the team, letting go. I'll give you an example. I worked with this fairly senior partner out in Halifax and he'd been coming off of, he came back from a medical leave and the firm hired me directly to help him get back on track. Right. We, we worked together for all over a year. And I remember near the end he was, we were on a call and he said, Gary, I just can't believe it. I'm only doing the work I love. And I laughed and I said, because you built A-Team and you're delegating. And he did. He got a reputation in the firm where you know all the associates would be talking and they'd be like, I wanna go work with that partner because he takes, he takes his associates to the client events. You're involved with the client relationship. He mentors them, he builds them up. It's the same that mistakes made are the same no matter if it's solo practice or senior partner at an international law firm. It's being rigid, not not letting go of control, not building a team around you. Like senior partners at the big firms. They need to build a team. They can't do it all on on their own. They can't build $1,000,000 on their own. They can say they, they're, their book is 1,000,000, but they've got, they've got a roster of lawyers and paralegals and legal assistants helping them. So it really no matter what side, if you're solo, you still need a team, whether on contract or they're virtual or part time or whatever, you need to build a team. You can't do this on your own. No one can but lawyers really it's, it goes back to the inherent traits, the perfectionism and the the very difficult challenge of letting go of control. And I understand it. Again, I'm not criticizing them, understanding them right? And I get it. But there are some good people out there. I know I've been in this 20 years. There are some good juniors. There are some good paralegals. There are some serious people that you can build an amazing team with. And here's the other thing, Claudio, I always say this, especially the the small law firm owners, there's a lot of unhappy lawyers out there working at the bigger firms. If you can create a culture that inspires innovation, inspires creativity, inspires teamwork where people are fulfilled, you're going to be able to attract the best of the best of the talent. Very, very interesting. Something that I also wanted to to ask you, I, I believe that working in this business in this area for over 20 years, you've surely seen many, many changes in how firms are run and how processes changed over time with more technology and as that's implemented. And I'm curious if there is anything you know regarding the business model of law firms you know as time passed and as you look ahead to the future? Are there ways where you know, this business model needs to change to stay, you know, healthy, profitable and and human for this next decade? It's interesting, I was on a webinar this morning and it was a coach from the UK and he was taught it was for coaches and he was talking about how having AI help us be more human, right? Not get away from human, but embrace more human. So law firm model, Yes, well, it's already in Australia and the UK and it's where non lawyers have ownership in the law firm. So you have people buy into the law firm professional management, right? Like a CMO or CEO. And now they've got a stake in in the ownership of the firm and they're part of the professional management. So I see that's been happening for guess well over 10 years, maybe 15, you know, have time flies. I'm always like pre COVID, post COVID, like COVID was like, but it's been going on in the UK and Australia for at least well over 10, probably well over 15 years where the law societies, wherever there, their governing bodies are over there have allowed. And I believe there's some talk about actually happening in the United States. We're a little bit behind in Canada, but I think that's, you know, to be a great lawyer is a really difficult, challenging profession. It's an art and to be both a great lawyer and a great business person, it's very, very rare. It's very rare I've I've seen it, but it's very rare. And I'll give you 2 diametrically opposed examples of recent owners that I've worked with. So one guy in Toronto, very entrepreneurial, OK, he could leave the lawyering to everyone else and he could be very, very happy during the business side and growing the firm for the rest of his career. The opposite of that is that client in Vancouver who loves to play lawyer, loves to be the advocate in the courtroom for his clients. He has no interest in marketing, Absolutely 0 interest in HR. I know because I took that over for him. And so you got two different models. What's the approach? We still need to build a team around them, but the team will be different based on their strengths. So I always say to, and this can be for, you know, even though I'm focused on law firm owners, this advice goes for any lawyer, solo practice partner or working towards partnership with a big firm is you start with your strengths and then you build around that with complementary services. So instead of trying to pick up your socks and if you're, if you're terrible at marketing and you hate marketing, get some help. Don't try and figure it out. You can't do it all on your own or if there's a certain part of marketing that you're good at, focus on that. Get help with the other stuff, right? Don't be pushing the boulder up the hill. Build the team. Build the team around your strength and what you want, and that's how you're going to get freedom, right? I can't use the same model for those approaches, for those two very, very different lawyers with very different goals. They're completely opposite. One is truly entrepreneurial. The other one, yeah, sure, he wants to build a law firm because he can see the opportunities, but he doesn't want to build it himself. That's fine. I'm not. I'm not there to judge. I'm like, OK, this is unique. This will be fun. So in his case, we build partnership or professional management or a combination of both to run the law firm. He's still signs the check, he's still the authority, right? But he's not running with HJ with the other guy in Toronto. He's running it. He's building the team around him and he's hiring lawyers and delegating and doing very little legal. You'll always have his hand in the legal work a little bit obviously, right? But he's not doing the brunt of it day-to-day. So there's 2 examples of where it's completely opposite. They approach is the same. That's building the team. How we do it and how we build the team is different based on the, on the individual lawyer. And again, that formula, Claudio, for any lawyer, whether you're solo practice or you're building your little team at a firm at the same model, same, it's basically for all of them. I'm curious now as kind of to to wrap up today's episode. A lot of my audience right now is early career professionals. Professionals are starting up their careers as lawyers in Canada. And I'm curious to know, you know, for those who are just starting out, is there some kind of piece of advice that you wish you would tell people earlier on in their careers or maybe that they asked heard early on and would help in in the longer game? I probably have about a million things, but if I were to sum it up to one thing, I would, well, it's a two-part, it's a two-part piece of advice. First of all, be true to yourself. OK, So if you, if you're a brainiac who like really loves to get into the, the nitty gritty of the law and you know, you just like that's go for it. Go for it if you have no desire on the business side of it, be the best you can be at whatever you enjoy the most. So be true to yourself first. That's my first treated advice. Otherwise you're going to have a miserable career. I can guarantee it. I've seen it. But carnage is unbelievable. But that's only if you don't stay true to yourself. The second is never, never settle for less than what you want, OK? There's a lot of firms out there. There's a lot of different cultures and there's absolutely no reason why you can't have a fulfilling and enjoyable career in law. But you have to take the lead, OK? You cannot. What I see all the time, and you can see that you can look up the statistics audio in the industry where around the four, five to seven-year mark, that's where the lawyers leave the profession altogether. It's their heads been down. They haven't had a time to breathe. And all of a sudden they're looking up from their desk one day at WTF, what am I doing here? Right? And they're burnt out, they're unhappy. I could go on and on. I won't you can imagine what comes after burnt out and unhappy, not good stuff. And many of them leave the profession altogether. And so I, I've examined why, right? It's not just the firm they're at. You can't blame it on the all on the firm. So really be, be true to yourself, whatever that is. It's like I'm a coach. I'm not here to tell you what you should do in your career. I'm here to help you get to where we want to once you decide. But if you wanted to be a rock star lawyer and grow, grow your own firm, go for it. There's so much opportunity to do things differently. You know, this younger generation is already the next couple of generations already millennials and Gen. Z, they're doing things differently. You know, that example that I used of the young lawyer wasn't hired back after articling he's a millennial and then he was hiring millennials. So like, don't. Just because it's been done a certain way for all these years does not mean it. It's the best way to do it and it's the way you should do it. Find your own path, right? You put the time in, you put your blood, sweat, and tears on a lot of money to get to this point in your career. You deserve to go that extra mile. And that extra mile is being true to yourself and not settling for less. Really appreciate those thoughts. Really appreciate you all for taking the time to tuning into today's episode. Thanks again, Gary. Thank you, Claudio.