Are You Doing What You Were Designed to Do?

Hello Guys!

I hope you all had a great weekend.  Mine was very productive – I’m setting so many wheels in motion that I can barely contain myself.  I’ll be making a major announcement next week so stay tuned!

I want to ask you something?  Are you doing what you are designed to do?

Have you really thought about that as you’re going along on this entrepreneurial journey?  I recently had a light bulb moment and it has made all the difference.  Before I get to that, let me back up for a bit.

As we’re nearing the end of February and the Passion to Profit series, I’ve been in the process of rediscovering my own passion for the law and providing affordable legal services.  You see, when I opened my law firm almost three years ago, I intended to use my rigorous corporate law training to provide affordable, high-quality legal services to individuals and small businesses.

After that, I made every single mistake possible.  Everything I talked about in the podcast episode:  Top Five Mistakes New Entrepreneurs Make – that was me.  Not getting things off to a good start was challenging and honestly, very discouraging.  I knew I was smart, provided a quality service, provided a service that people needed, and had a great network of referrals.  I even had my first two clients as soon as I launched my firm.  So I couldn’t understand why this wasn’t working.  I wanted to quit.

Eventually things started to turn around and I constantly had the “I wish I had known this” moments.  In addition to that, friends, family members, and clients began to turn to me for legal and entrepreneurial advice.  Because I had taken every wrong step, I knew exactly what to tell them NOT to do.  And that’s where the idea of the podcast came from.

But then, this past summer, a very close friend of mine suddenly passed away and it rocked me to my core.  Death has a way of taking off the blinders and forcing us to face those questions we all put on the back burner.  It forced me to see that I hated what I was doing.  I felt like I was offering my services piece-meal, I wasn’t really providing access.  Bringing in one client at a time and charging at least $1,000 for my most basic service wasn’t the way to provide accessible, affordable legal services.  I was doing all of this work and I wasn’t even fulfilling my mission.

Fast forward to January 2017, I’m back at American University, Washington College of Law (my alma mater) teaching Wills, Trusts, and Estates again.  I realized I love teaching!  And, I’m very good at it.  I asked my students why they chose my course and many of them took it because they had seen me speak or had taken my exam workshop two years ago! This wasn’t surprising to me, I know that I motivate people, I know I connect with people when I speak to them, I know I can keep people engaged.  And that’s when the lightbulb went off: I should be teaching small business owners!

Teaching (both orally and in written format) and speaking with small business owners is how I will be able to fulfill this mission.  In other words, for the first time in almost three years, I will be able to make my services scalable.  This way, I can serve hundreds of people and spend just about the same time it takes to serve one.

I was so relieved when I had that light bulb moment.  But it only came when I accepted my gift and agreed with God that I would do what He designed me to do.  It’s a liberating feeling, it makes you bold, it makes you go hard or go home.  It has re-ignited my passion for the law and for providing access to legal services.

So I ask you again, are you doing what you were designed to do?  Are you at the point where something you thought SHOULD have worked, isn’t working?  Are you doing the very best you can to make this work?  And if you’re not, is it because you don’t feel like doing your best?  I never did, I always knew what I needed to do to bring in more clients, but I was never motivated to do so.

My friend and sew sister, Anita Morris of Anita By Design always closes her posts with “when you live in your design, it is from there that you will shine.”

So very true, because I can already feel the glow.