Success & Setbacks with Sandra - Divorce & Matrimonial Attorney!

In this episode, Nikolay & Yuliya (Julia) are joined by Sandra Radna, Esq. Sandra has built a very successful law practice, working in the areas of divorce/matrimonial law, personal injury law, and residential real estate law.  Listen to learn how she has built her business and achieved success in her industry (hint - a strong company culture is key!) and the challenges she has overcome along the way!

Additionally, Sandra has written a book - You're Getting Divorced...Now What?  - Be the first to email us at info@nyglobalgroup.com , and you will receive your own signed copy of Sandra's book!

To learn more about Sandra:
Webpage: https://radnalaw.com/
Instagram: @sandraradna.law

You can purchase Sandra's book here!
https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Getting-Divorced-Now-What/dp/1922372528/

To learn more about Nikolay & Yuliya:
Webpage: http://nyglobalgroup.com/
Instagram (Nikolay): @Nikolay.NYC
Instagram (Yuliya): @Julia.Afanasyev

As always, DM or email us at info@nyglobalgroup.com if you have a story to share!

Transcript

Unknown Speaker  0:00  
This is Success and Setbacks in NYC podcast with your hosts, Julia and Nikolay, coming to you from New York City with some of the most amazing life stories of how various people turn their challenges around! Tune in to get inspired, learn more or simply enjoy.

Unknown Speaker  0:22  
In this episode of success and setbacks in New York City, we have a wonderful guest who also happens to be our friend, and a wonderful matrimonial and personal injury attorney. Her name is Sandra Radna. Also, in this podcast, you will learn that she wrote a book in regards to divorce, how to handle it, what to expect and much, much more. It's a great book. And if you listen carefully, you will be able to learn what the exact name of the book is, once you hear it, and if you'd like a copy of it, we highly encourage you to email us at info@NYglobalgroup.com. Because the first person to email us will get a free copy, signed by Sandra, and it will be mailed to you guys at no cost. We hope you enjoy this wonderful podcast because we sure did enjoy interviewing Sandra. Hello, everyone. Hello, our dear listeners. Today we have a very special guest, someone who Julia and I both have known for a number of years already. And we're very pleased to welcome Sandra Radna. She is an amazing person and she's amazing divorce matrimonial attorney as well as medical malpractice attorney. And she does some real estate practice on Long Island as well as New York City. So we're super excited to have you not just as an attorney, but I know that you run a very successful practice with many employees, and that you create great culture and that you're very successful. And we know that you had some setbacks that we're going to dig in as well a little bit into. And, you know, without further ado, if you can just give us a little bit of an overview in addition to what I said,

Unknown Speaker  2:09  
well, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here with both of you today and to talk about all of these different issues that you just gave a little bit of an outline of. So I'm an attorney. I've been practicing for over 25 years in New York. And I practice, like you said mostly in the areas of divorce as my primary area of practice divorce and family law. But I also handle medical malpractice, personal injury and residential real estate closings. And I have my own firm and right now I have 14 staff of 14, but that's including me, 14 of us all together.

Unknown Speaker  2:45  
And how long have you been an attorney for?

Unknown Speaker  2:49  
I've been an attorney for 28 years.

Unknown Speaker  2:52  
When did you start as 15?

Unknown Speaker  2:53  
I started when I

Unknown Speaker  2:58  
have you always did this area of practice? Or has it been something else when you kind of like found your footing for what exactly you will do?

Unknown Speaker  3:06  
Well, my I think my story is interesting. I wanted to be a doctor. So I actually was pre med in college. I then had trouble with organic chemistry because I later found out that I was slightly dyslexic but didn't know it at the time. And then I went to nursing school, loved it until I got into the hospital did not like the way it smelled. So so that that eliminated me from that. So I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And one of my friends said to me, why don't you take the LSAT and go to law school and it was just like that. I went to law school, I found every class so interesting. I felt like it was entertainment. You know, it was interesting to me how every single part of your life touches the law in some way. And everything that I learned in pre med in nursing school, I had worked in the hospital for a while all that was able to be used when I got my first job in a large medical malpractice defense firm. And did that for a while until I realized that all of my friends would come to me and say, Hey, I'm buying a house. Can you help? No, I don't know how to do that. And somebody knows that a car accident. Can you help? No, I don't know how to do that. My friend's parents are getting divorced. Can you help? No, I don't know how to do that either. But I really just wanted to start saying yes, I wanted to be on the side of the people at the large firm. I was really on the side of the insurance companies. So we really never saw the people. So I started working for a sole practitioner and learn how to do basically everything from him. He handled almost everything that walks in the door except for criminal cases. So that's why I learned to do these other practice areas and one of these areas was divorce. So after working with him, I formed a partnership with my friend that told me to take the LSAT. I knew him from college, and we were a partnership for 17 years and then in 2012 We broke up the partnership and I started all over again. Wow My current firm,

Unknown Speaker  5:01  
that's that's incredible. I mean, 17 years of partnership is quite a long time.

Unknown Speaker  5:06  
And then starting starting from scratch and starting from scratch,

Unknown Speaker  5:09  
did you become a solo practitioner when you parted ways? Or did you like have some employees and stuff like that?

Unknown Speaker  5:17  
I started all by myself in my basement, just me. We always had an office. So I had an office to meet clients. And but I was primarily working from my basement. I had one intern that was leftover from the partnership, and she came with me to the new firm. She's still working. Yep, she graduated college, and I hired her. And she's been with me now for 10 years and actually just went to law school graduated, and waiting for her bar results. Wow, she's been with me since day one. And came to work. She started with me when she was 19. So now everybody knows her age still super young just turned 30. So um, yeah, she's, she's amazing. And she's grown with the firm, and knows all my practice areas. And right now specializes in the personal entry and matrimonial.

Unknown Speaker  6:04  
That's amazing. Based on her story, and what you mentioned earlier about your company and your employees. It sounds like you have really great culture within your company. And we'll touch on that later again, and get your ideas and your advice on how to maintain it that way. But before we do, we'd love to hear about your how you build up your business. Was it hard? What were your thoughts? Did you have doubts? I'm sure it was not easy, because I

Unknown Speaker  6:29  
know also that you read probably about the book or day. So

Unknown Speaker  6:33  
well, that's interesting. I didn't do that when I was my partnership. So by partnership, we, we really just did everything by trial and error, which is I think how a lot of people start businesses, like we just would, you know, if we had to purchase pay court fees, we each just chipped in 50%. Yeah, like we, we really didn't have a plan. And during that partnership, I started business development due networking, which i i enjoyed, I really liked that. So there's something I wanted to do. And we did get a lot of business that way. But again, there was really no plan on how to do it. So our income was not predictable. We it was always feast or famine, you know, sometimes and I would always say, Well, being a lawyer, it's not predictable, there's no way to know when a case is going to settle or when a new case is going to come in. So when I started the new firm, I had to rebrand myself, as just Law Offices of Sandra and branded a PC instead of my old firm. That was the partnership. So I started networking again. But this time I read every single business book there was out there. Well not every Of course, there's always more. But I read a lot of business books. And I really what you what you see when you read business books is that there's a similar theme, you have to know your numbers, you have to know what areas of business you want to practice in, you have to know how many cases you need in order to make the number that you need to make. And all of a sudden, when I started paying attention to the numbers, all my unpredictable, income became predictable, like shocking, very shocking, but uh, but I did read a lot of books. You, Nicholai, we've talked about so many of the books, but one of the first ones that I read that I thought was the best book to, for a small company to put processes in place is called the E Myth. E stands for entrepreneur. And I can't remember the name of the author. But it's a very popular book. It's actually called the E Myth revisited. And that book was all about how to give the client the same experience every time.

Unknown Speaker  8:33  
Michael Gerber looks like excuse me, I just looked it up Michael Gerber,

Unknown Speaker  8:36  
Michael Gerber. That's right. Yes, it's an excellent book. And I recommend it to everybody. You can read it in a weekend. It reads like a novel. But it's life changing for business.

Unknown Speaker  8:47  
While we're in the book subject, I want to pivot a little bit. There's one part that I really missed out on when introducing you. You're also a book right there. That's right. I wrote a book. Yes.

Unknown Speaker  8:57  
Thank you. And Nikolai was very instrumental in me actually writing the book, because I met nickoli when I was thinking about writing the book. And he said, you have to write that. You have to write that book. And he gave me a really and I said, I really wanted to tell my client stories in the book. So it was relatable because what I was writing sounded like a textbook. It was too technical. And Nicola said to me, Well, what you should do is interview your clients and just videotape the interviews. And you'll just have a little short videotapes and you can use that and that really was the the thing that changed everything because I did that. I asked them all the same questions to the videos and their stories became part of my book, and that's why Nikola is one of the people that I acknowledged in my

Unknown Speaker  9:44  
book. We actually have it like at

Unknown Speaker  9:47  
home on our thank you for sending or books are very visible. So

Unknown Speaker  9:52  
for anyone who is interested, Sandra I was trying to remember the difference how to correctly it's called getting divorced. Now what you're getting divorced, you're divorced now what? Yes. And it could be found on Amazon, right? It can be found

Unknown Speaker  10:08  
on Amazon or you can go to the website for the book, which is you're getting divorced now what calm, spell your y o u r e, getting divorced with an easy at the end. Now what calm?

Unknown Speaker  10:22  
Would you say the book would be good for someone who's going through divorce or

Unknown Speaker  10:26  
even thinking,

Unknown Speaker  10:27  
someone who's thinking about divorce, I actually had a new client that just came to me yesterday, who was thinking of his thinking about divorce, but she read the whole book, and I have 12 copyrighted forms that go along with the book. And one of them is choosing an attorney. Another book, his first form is actually called the get your mind right form, because it's very emotional, when you're going through a divorce. And you can't think clearly when you're blind with rage, or you have millions of tears or whatever. And the form just helps you to identify what your emotion is why you have it, and then set it aside so you can plan. And anyway, she came in with all of her forms filled out. And it was funny, she contacted me in July. She came in yesterday. And she said is because she interviewed all the other attorneys first using my checklist. And then she came to us, but it was great, because she was so organized. She had everything there we were able to talk about her issues. And so the book is to help people understand what happens in litigate litigated divorce, one that you get to go to court, and how to prepare if your spouse is abusive, if there's mental illness, if there's substance abuse, if you have children with special needs, how do you present your case in court, and it's meant to be used with an attorney. But if you give your attorney the right information, they could be a stronger advocate for you. Yeah, it's written for the whole country. It's not just for New York. that's specific to thank you.

Unknown Speaker  11:55  
And then once we discussed an idea, and I'm not sure if you thought it was a good idea or not, would it be uncomfortable as well, by any chance or not?

Unknown Speaker  12:04  
You're not on Orval? Yes, I haven't done that yet. I'll have Nicholai read the book. They don't want to hear my voice. But yes, I will do that eventually. I have not done that

Unknown Speaker  12:19  
yet. The reason why I said is I've read several books, or I guess heard several books on audible. That's better said, and I think it has a special touch when the person who wrote it is actually reading the book. And I read some business books, some athlete books and stuff like that. And it's been it's been pretty great, actually. So I would say you probably are going to reach like a new number of people as well, with just audible alone in addition to paper.

Unknown Speaker  12:49  
That's a good idea. I'll have to do that. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, because I have listened to a few books on audible. And it is very convenient. You know, if you're driving or you're just getting ready for work, or whatever, you can listen to the book. And I actually started when I really started listening to more and more business books, I listened to a number of business books that way. So that is a really great idea. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker  13:14  
I'm sorry to give you more work every time.

Unknown Speaker  13:18  
I'm seeing unicorns. But yes, thank you ideas. Yeah, I certainly is. And thank you for bringing up the book and mentioning and describing the book because whoever is listening to this podcast, whoever may be going through divorce or thinking about one of the most difficult things to go is yes, and this is, yeah, and this can certainly become one of the steps that will help someone to get through it.

Unknown Speaker  13:41  
Absolutely does the client stories, which is what nickoli inspired me to do. In the book, I call them your fellow divorce warriors. Because they give you that community. Most people go through a divorce alone, it's a private thing. They're embarrassed, they don't want people to know, they don't want their friends to know. And because of the stories and the books with people telling you what their experience was going through these different types of situations. It makes them feel like they have a community they have somebody other people that are going through this that understand what it's like for them. And so the people that are fretted have really found that very helpful and comforting in the middle of something that's very

Unknown Speaker  14:18  
uncomfortable. Yes, absolutely. I can't imagine. Also, going back to your business, since your own practice is about 10 years old, Greg, once you separated with the previous business part and you had one intern who stayed with you and became will become an attorney, hopefully, how long did it take for you to go from that point of just working out of your home to actually having 1413 people on your team?

Unknown Speaker  14:48  
So I think that it grew very quickly. So I started off because I the first thing I did was I really went out there and I started networking I did things like Whenever there was a golf outing, for example, because I knew name recognition was very important, I would buy the T Barker's, you know, the it wasn't that expensive to buy them. But I just wanted people to keep seeing the name of my firm. So anything that anybody was doing any type of fundraiser. And in the beginning, I didn't spend money take out big ads, I just sent out like little small ads, I did a lot of golf outings, I'm trying to think of all the different things I did, but I was just always putting my name out there, I joined a number of networking groups, I was just I met with a lot of people one on one. So because of that, just getting my name out there. And people already knew me as the other firm, it really brought a lot of new energy. So we started growing pretty quickly. So I worked out in my basement, for it was a year and a half. But in that year and a half. I think by the time we left, there was four, I had three and three other interns that were considered four of us. But they were a pain in turn, call them interns because he was still in school. And then I think by the time he moved to do office, I had two full time employees and two interns. And then after that we outgrew the first space that we were in, I think within I think it was within three months, it was something crazy well, and so we moved to the next space where we were there for three years. And then we moved to the space that we're in now that we've been at for four years. So incredible.

Unknown Speaker  16:24  
And I only know your place by photos, but it looks very nice. Because I see occasionally on Instagram as a follow your account. Had a question actually, on top of my mind. I was wondering how like, how were you able to retain all of this people? Because I mean, having somebody with you from day one, and from the days of basement to have several offices and everything like, how do you retain all those people? Because just like we discussed before we turned on the mic. So many people have a huge turnover and struggling to keep people in?

Unknown Speaker  17:02  
Well, it's very interesting. And you learn something from every single person you meet, but there was somebody in one of my networking groups. His name was Jeff Levy. So Jeff Murphy listening, giving you a shout out. And he goes into companies and he changes the company culture. And at the time, I just had Kim, who is the the one that I told you just took the bar exam. And she was working with me in my basement, and she just really liked working with me. And I was telling her and she was the only employee. So he said I was telling him how great she is. And he said, Well, what you should do is you should go to her and ask her. Why does she like working with you? Like one of the things that she liked? He said you learn a lot. So I did that. I came in asked her and she was like very, you know, she wasn't ready for the question. But what she said really changed the culture of my own firm. My whole firm, she said, she'd like that she was appreciated. She liked it. She was always learning something new. She liked that she was included in everything that was going on. Because I would tell her, here's what we're going to do now. She liked that I listened to her ideas. And she liked there was always the opportunity to be doing something new every day. So that I've carried through throughout my throughout all of the years. My whole company always knows everything that's going on. If we're going to be hiring more people they know about it, if we're going to be expanding they know about it. If we just settled the big case, they know about it, like everything, they know what's going on. And they enjoy it. They like going there. They celebrate the victories of our clients know when something comes in, and we tell them oh my gosh, this terrible thing just came in for this poor client and we go to court, and we've got everything we wanted, the whole place is cheering like, we're so happy, because they love our clients. We had a case once where one of my divorce clients was in my office, we're getting ready for a deposition. And all of a sudden, he just started looking strange, like he was having trouble making marks. And I thought he was having a stroke, you know, in the office and came out and I said I, you know, say his name was John. And I said, I think John's having a stroke, and I'm taking over to the hospital and took them to the hospital. And thank God, it wasn't a stroke, but he was having a medical event and I stayed with him. And we had to cancel a deposition and then believe us but whatever. But what happened was the whole staff was worried about him. Everybody was worried about him. Everybody wanted to know how he was joy. And when we found out it was fine. Everybody was happy for him. That's me. So that's the thing that you culture you can build, if everybody knows what's going on, like everybody knows who our clients are and what's happening. So I took that lesson from very early on and I tried to carry it through and I think that the basic thing is if you recognize the humanity and people, if you recognize that everybody has a life outside of their job, and then you You encourage them talking about it. Oh my gosh, who do you ask about? How was your weekend that they don't light up and tell you what's going on. So that's just going into that company culture thing. We do something we have weekly staff meetings and a weekly staff meetings, we do something called a segway. And this is through something called the Entrepreneurial Operating System, that we go around the room, we ask everybody to say one positive personal thing and one positive business thing. It's a second, you know, positive personal thing, say my son just came to visit this weekend, I had the greatest time positive business thing I've finally finished that big project, we working on the case clients, so happy next person, we found that so many things, people have announced their engagement during it, because they want to wait for the weekly meeting to tell everybody, you know, people have told us that they found out that you know, a child is pregnant, that they're gonna have a grandchild or who got into whatever college or who had a birthday party celebration, whatever it is. And it's these little pieces of people's lives that you would never have known during the day because you don't have time. And because of that, we can follow up and say, Hey, how was it my son came to visit because they said that they were looking forward to their, you know, their son coming to visit them, whatever. And it really cements the company culture. The other thing I've done, like when we've been moving offices, I had everybody involved in decorating it, you know, because we got to the office and built all the opposite. Everybody was involved in what carpet what paint had, we want the kitchen to look one we want the counter loaded by. So everybody was part of it. So when we moved in, like everybody was part of it. I read something. David Brooks wrote an editorial in the New York Times, a long time ago, and he talked about how to build a Sikh community. And they said, I think community is like when people are really all in for each other. And they said, it's going to experience this together. Good and bad,

Unknown Speaker  21:59  
you could not be more good than bad,

Unknown Speaker  22:01  
because it will never be just good or just bad. I mean, it's life, there are good and bad things happen in and I feel like sometimes you get to learn the real character of people have team members of leaders. And during the difficult moments, you really get to learn people.

Unknown Speaker  22:18  
Yeah, the thing that I do is I never criticize an employee in front of another employee. That's tonight, I always talk to them in private. And I always give them the benefit of the doubt. So somebody who was usually doing a really good job is kind of making mistakes. I never say what did you do? You messed up the whole thing. I'll call him and say Is everything okay? And you know what, sometimes everything's done, okay? Sometimes there's there is something going on. Personally, that's that's causing them to not be able to concentrate the same way. But people always appreciate the interest. Assume that they they're perfect. No one's purposely doing a bad job. You know, like, there's something going on, you know, people want their jobs. So, all of those little things recognizing the humanity and people. That's really what builds your company culture.

Unknown Speaker  23:06  
No, I want to go work for

Unknown Speaker  23:08  
you. Take me. Now, Sandra, thank you. Thank you for all of this information, because we do have a menorah wisdom, so they have a lot of entrepreneurs who are starting businesses have businesses, struggling maybe with businesses, and it's always helpful to get advice from someone as successful and experienced as you few tricks that we learn from you constantly and your constant inspiration for us. Always think about it. You're always so busy yet you mentioned there's so many things and you have a successful business, and you always give it by so thank you for that. And thank you for sharing everything with our listeners as well.

Unknown Speaker  23:47  
I have a question. Since you do a lot of things and you run a successful team of attorneys. How many hours a day do you work person?

Unknown Speaker  23:55  
Oh, that's a very good question. That's not a good example. I work a lot of hours. I I probably I work more than 12 hours a day. Well, probably. But I really, really like what I do. And we are what I tried to do is I'm trying to change that. So we have just hired more people. So hopefully it's going to be last but I don't think I would ever work less than 10 hours a day. I do like starting early in the morning because I like being in the office before the phone start to get there. Or earlier. I generally I get up earlier. asleep I get up at least at four o'clock but I don't go to sleep at 11 You know I go to sleep I'm usually in bed sleeping by 10. So I don't think that's crazy. I do get up at four. I do like to do things in the morning before I you know, I like to have like an exercise routine. I like to take my time getting ready. And you know so it's a long project and you know I'm not a natural beauty so I have to do hair and makeup every day. So

Unknown Speaker  25:02  
but you look amazing. You are, but you do look amazing.

Unknown Speaker  25:05  
And one thing that I want to point out, since listeners cannot see on podcast, but often enough, when we speak to people who work a lot of hours, it doesn't feel like they're necessarily present in the conversation with you. It feels like you're very present. And actually, on one more episode that we haven't released yet, maybe it will be released already. By the time people listen to this podcast, we made another artist actually. And she was very present. And I feel like I always pay attention to people if they're present with us, or if in their mind, they're somewhere else. So I think it's a very nice feature. And I'm sure it also helps you in the business because subconsciously, people, I think they like one we talk one to another, we want to make sure that like we're just talking and nothing else is happening.

Unknown Speaker  25:52  
Well, it's funny, that's a lesson that you learned, because I don't think I was always like that. But my father when he who's passed away, but when he was very sick towards the end, everybody who came to visit he appreciated it like everybody like he was just so present at all times. And I was reading this book, of course called a new earth by Eckhart Tolle A. And it's, it's all about just what you're talking about being present, like everybody, you miss the moments, he said, the people that are at the end of their life are so aware of how precious every moment is that they really present. My father, everybody who came to visit, thank you so much for visiting, and he was so interested in what they said. And ever since then, he's been gone now for 11 years, it'll be 11 years in January. So that's what changed. For me. That's how I started being present all the time. Because I realized that how special he made everybody feel, but actually paying attention to what they were saying. Because everybody's in a rush, everybody interrupts or they already know what you're gonna say. So they answered a question before you finished answering it, asking it and when you're present when you you're telling somebody that you're important. So it is like, you're listening to someone you just said, you're important. When you don't listen, you're saying you're not important. And once you make that realization, and how are you not present? You know, but it does, it does make a difference. Thank you for noticing. Now. I feel like it's automatic. In the beginning. It was hard. I'm sure I can it is hard.

Unknown Speaker  27:22  
Yeah, I, I can't imagine because we go through it as well. And I think a lot of people we know are like that, and probably the curse of our generation. I go

Unknown Speaker  27:33  
personally for phases of even like deleting social media, for example, from my phone, just just not to have it just when I realized that like, Okay, I don't think I'm even being enough present with myself. So that's when I realized I think the head is getting a little bit cluttered and to kind of just, like, get rid of all of the distractions. And then I think you get some of very nice and good thoughts and just when you spend time even by yourself or just a quiet time with my wife, Julia.

Unknown Speaker  28:02  
Yeah, well, there's a lot the trending topic a lot. People are talking about self care. And it sounds like just the thing that everybody's saying, but it is true. Like when you do take that time to clear your mind. It does. recenter you refocus you and you're you're able to do more. With me you're asking i i think there's nothing wrong with saying to somebody do you mind if I just look at my phone for a second? Because I'm, I'm waiting for something people understand that. But if someone's talking and you're looking at your phone, oh my gosh, that's like the height of rudeness.

Unknown Speaker  28:35  
thing, like once maybe, like the person's like, consistently.

Unknown Speaker  28:39  
Yeah. You could say the beginning of the meeting, say I'm so sorry. I'm gonna have to look at my phone because something's going on that I'm expecting. And then if you look at your phone, people are okay with it. But if you don't say that, and the whole time we're looking at your phone. It's like, Well, why don't you take the meeting? You know, so yeah, I think that is really good to point out that being present is benefits not just the other person but it benefits you as well because you're getting you're learning from some you learn from everybody.

Unknown Speaker  29:04  
Absolutely. Do you have any other advice? Do you do anything else to declutter your hesitate or

Unknown Speaker  29:10  
anything like I don't meditate? Okay, but you know what I do? What if I feel like I'm have low energy, I'm not in good vibration. I'm starting today. I listen to music that I like, you know, and every day it might be different kinds of music, you know, sometimes you want your different things, but music my mother in law has to say music is another planet, you know, because you listen to music and it completely changes your vibration, right? It really gets you into a different place. So whenever I feel like if I'm low energy is something I put on music I like and I told you, I get to the office early before anybody's there I have my music blasting, and you know, listening to what I might be dancing around, you know, whatever, I'm in the mood for that day. That's gonna make me feel good and it works every time and it just takes a song three minutes long, three minutes,

Unknown Speaker  29:55  
to reset your mind to make you

Unknown Speaker  29:57  
feel better, right? Even if you're tired. Putting on music that you like gives you energy. So that's, that's my secret sauce music

Unknown Speaker  30:05  
person because I feel like you're very present. And also I was either looking or reading or watching something about Tom Brady. And he was saying that he doesn't meditate. But for him the workout is his meditation. So I figure like, there are other alternative ways for people to kind of recenter themselves.

Unknown Speaker  30:24  
That's right. For me music is meditation, I say affirmations every day. I think that I know that you do also, I think, right? Yeah, affirmations and knowing what you want to do, like, visualizing what you want is, I'm like the key, I can manifest just about anything right now. And I really am. So I've become so much better at it, which it's hard in the beginning. And then it's like almost like a joke of like, oh, manifest is manifest that. But it's just that if you really visualize and I start every day, like I know what I want to happen for my day. And I'll start off by saying I'm so happy and grateful that we got the clear to close on that real estate deals today, you know, or whatever it is. So I don't do something that's impossible. But I do something that's within reach, maybe it's taken a long time. And it works like all the time. It's just it's so amazing. I was I was telling my husband yesterday that I was on my way to this networking meeting, it was raining out, I didn't have an umbrella. So I said I'm so happy and grateful. Now the weather was great. By the time the park four seconds before I posted a parking spot, it starts raining, I walked to my meeting, I came back out, I still didn't have an umbrella. So it was raining out a little bit. So I was like so happy and grateful now that I washed my car and the weather was fine. And it was like the back of my car started raining again, I say this all the time. So it's fun to do. But I think affirmations, but it does it makes you really think about what is it that you want. You know, I'm so happy and grateful now that I have a happy, happy marriage and happy children. You know, that could be one,

Unknown Speaker  31:59  
which was one of the biggest things I think in life as well. Like, that's one of the key things.

Unknown Speaker  32:04  
So it's just you could put I saw a thing about Jennifer Lopez saying all the things that she says that she's you know, her affirmations, and it's just like everybody else. So happy and grateful now that my family's healthy. Yeah, that my children are happy. You know that I love where I live, you know, whatever it is that you want. I love

Unknown Speaker  32:21  
where she lives to.

Unknown Speaker  32:29  
Do you ever write down your affirmations? I have more than done in my phone? Do you use an app? Or do you just use

Unknown Speaker  32:34  
No, it just put it in the notes, you know, it changes. But I have some that I have some that I say every day, okay. And I've I've checked off a lot of them off my list over the years, I've been probably doing the affirmations for about four years now. And and they change every year. I have goals for the year. And and sometimes it's funny to look back say, Oh, wow, I forgot that. I didn't have that.

Unknown Speaker  33:00  
Talking about that, actually, I think a lot of things have changed for us. And we can relate like our company is smaller than yours. We don't have 14 employees. But we're a team of five now. And we're still small, but the mindset really changed when you start actually employing people, we realize that it's not just about us anymore. I think it also helps how you process the burnout as well. Because it's not just about you like there are other people involved, not just clients, but it's like people who actually rely on you, which is quite interesting. And it's it's been mind changing. And in addition to the books and stuff that we do, we've also invested and we did our due diligence in regards to a coach. So I think that has also changed our mindset, how we see business and the things that we have been implementing. First, we're like, Oh, my God, this is so expensive. How are we ever going to do that? But then we're like, well, it's fine. I think it was like one of the greatest investments that we've done. I worked

Unknown Speaker  33:58  
with a business coach in the beginning, also, not in the very beginning. But after I got to that second office, they're very expensive. Very expensive. But they and I thought that I was already organized. And I already knew things. And they did. He did give me a lot of insight that I still use today. One of them was What's your highest and best use, you know, is this something that you as an attorney should be doing? Or should somebody else be doing it and I still say to my employees and and from that I I've actually written out, this is an attorney job. This is a paralegal job. That's a legal assistant job so that people aren't doing things that they shouldn't it's not their highest and best use because when everybody's doing what's their highest and best use you become more efficient, which is what we all want, right? And because I used to say for years, we have all of these people here like how are we how are we putting out fires, how come we're being reactive instead of proactive? Now we're proactive, which is such a more comfortable way to be reactive? Yep. So so

Unknown Speaker  34:59  
that's where predict

Unknown Speaker  35:00  
a coach helps with that. Absolutely. Because they're, they're not in your business, they're able to have a different perspective and tell you here's, here's this thing that you're once they tell you like, Oh my gosh.

Unknown Speaker  35:12  
Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  35:13  
that sounds familiar to me that.

Unknown Speaker  35:15  
Yeah. So coaches hiring culture. I mean, looking back at the last 910 years, since you started the business on your own, what would you say? What were three most important things or most important steps you took that that got you from working out of your basement to having a company 14 people?

Unknown Speaker  35:34  
Well, first thing is you have to know what your business development processes because we all need to have business coming in. So I read this book called the goal and the goal of every business and then taken off exactly the same, it's actually a book that my son had to leave read for business school. So it gets a little textbook eight, but so I'm gonna just sum it up for you, you don't have to read that book, because that one's like too much. But it's the whole book at a point a book is the goal of every business is the same is to make money. That's the goal of every business, like no matter what your business is. So you have to first have a pipeline. And in order to have the pipeline of business coming in, you have to know what your business development is. And for me, it's networking or relationship building. And that is very important. And the most important about networking is what I just said, relationship building, don't look at it as I need to meet volumes of people. You need to build relationships with the right people, and not look for direct business instantly. But look, look to build a relationship with people you like that are in businesses that are complementary in the business will come. I never meet with someone and say, What business are they going to send me I always meet with someone that I like them, that I find them interesting to our, you know, our mindset of the way we are approaching the world align. So that's number one. Number two, is once you have employees, remember how you want to be treated and treat the employees that way, recognize what they do, let them know they're appreciated, give them raises when you can but just give them bonuses if you can afford raises. Sometimes just doing something really nice, like I used to have in the early days, I always have Starbucks cards, cards, gift cards in my draw, Dunkin Donuts gift cards in my drawer, which I don't even eat Dunkin Donuts by no other people like it, you know. And I would have all these different gift cards in my drawer whenever somebody did something nice or just come into my office and I'd give that to them. It could have been a $15 gift card and people be like, oh my goodness, they will recognize it just thought it was just that they were recognized. You

Unknown Speaker  37:36  
will be surprised like we recently, you know how we do a little trivia in the newsletter. Julia had a client who she never met in person respond. He won't he was the first one he gets stuck. Right we sent him was a $25 gift card for a coffee shop on Upper East Side. And next thing you know, he actually introduced Julia to a friend of his from his home country, they ended up closing on like a $900,000. Home. Just I mean, we didn't even think I mean, there was never an intention to be like, Hey, here's $25 Gift Card send us a client. No, it was never like that.

Unknown Speaker  38:15  
People are touched by something like that, that you're doing something nice for someone for no good reason. It's fun. And people like being acknowledged. Yeah. So I would say that, acknowledging your employees in some way recognizing the work that they're doing thanking them a lot. Somebody said to me, I never got thanks so much. In any other job, you know, they just like being thanked that they're working hard. And I would say, the third thing is to recognize, have every employee recognize that they're all part of the bigger process. So in my firm, we're attorneys and support staff, I tell everybody, I've said it. Almost every meeting, that the there's nobody's job, who's more important than somebody else's, everybody's job is just as important because the receptionist who might not be the same as an attorney, if she gets one number wrong on that phone number, we're not going to get that client, right, the legal assistant, she doesn't make the copies the right way. And we need that document, but one page is missing. And that's going to be a problem too. And of course, the attorneys doing the other things that the attorney does, but everybody has to recognize it. Everybody's just important, just as important, which is why they're all included in what's going on in the farm. And the role made part of it because everybody when everybody feels that their job is important to you, they're going to do a better job. And if they I say to people is fine, like on your role. This is what your job is on it and to just help people on it daily to come up with ideas. They're going to be creative, they're going to figure out the best way to do it and and you know, our receptionist like oh my gosh, we all love her. You know she's because she takes her job seriously. And she's she's the front desk or somebody comes in, and they, you know, try to walk past a certain point, she like stands up and says, Excuse me, I'll let you know when Ms. Ratana can see that it was pretty great. So but she's owning her role, and she takes it seriously. So everybody there knows what their role is like, what their position is in the company. And they know they're an important part of what they're doing. And they're recognized for it. And that's really the company culture, why people want to stay and people are happy. And and I think it's, it's kind of a simple formula. Just be just be nice to your staff, and recognize that you were there once to no one's better than anyone else. That's true. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai