264 | Money, Life, & Law with Heather Moulder

What do you do when you realize that you don’t want to practice law anymore? Or that you want to change practice areas? These are both situations that Heather Moulder found herself in.

Heather is a lawyer-turned-business coach who built a career and life on her own terms and teaches other lawyers how to do the same.

In this episode, Heather and I discuss the personal and professional challenges she’s overcome and how she now helps her clients design fulfilling practices that fit their lives.

• • Heather’s initial experience in Biglaw
  • the turning point that made her change how she approached her practice
  • what happened when she set boundaries at work and prioritized herself
  • Heather’s thoughts on making trade-offs
  • the financial decisions that allowed her to pivot in her career
  • how Heather used her values to guide her career
  • the health diagnosis that changed everything
  • Heather’s journey into coaching
  • the steps to take if you want to course correct and create a practice you love

• Heather’s LinkedIn

• Heather’s podcast

• Heather’s coaching website

You’re listening to Personal Finance for Lawyers. I’m Rho Thomas, and as a busy wife, mom, and former Biglaw associate, I know all too well the tension between the culture of the legal profession and pretty much everything else you want to do in life. That’s why each week, I’m bringing you the information and tools you need to improve your money mindset and manage your money to create true wealth. Because ultimately, it’s not about the money. It’s about the freedom and flexibility the money affords.

Hey friend. Welcome back. Today, I have an interview with my friend, Heather Moulder.

Heather is a business coach for lawyers and the host of the Life & Law podcast, and I love the way she thinks about fitting your practice into your life, rather than the other way around. She has an incredible story, both personally and professionally, and we get into all of it in our conversation.

We talk about some of the challenges she’s overcome in her personal life, how she and her husband manage their finances, which allowed her to pivot multiple times in her career, and her views on practicing law in a balanced way. I can’t wait for you to hear it, so I am going to read her bio, and then we’ll get right into the interview.

Heather Moulder is a former Big Law partner turned anti-burnout business coach for lawyers and host of the Life & Law Podcast. She helps lawyers grow 7-figure practices without sacrificing their wellbeing, using her signature Rewire–Reconnect–Realign framework. Known for her no-fluff approach, Heather blends mindset with strategy to create real, lasting success—on your terms.

With that, please enjoy my interview with Heather Moulder.

****

[Rho] Welcome to the podcast, Heather. Thank you so much for being here.

[Heather] I’m super excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

[Rho] Yes. So I have had the pleasure of being on your amazing podcast, the Life and Law Podcast, and so now I’m so happy to have you here on mine. I suspect that some of my audience will know who you are, but for those who don’t, will you take a second and just tell them a little about yourself?

[Heather] Sure. So I am a former Big Law partner turned leadership and business coach to lawyers who would like to build a values-based practice that actually works for them as opposed to the typical, you know, practice takes over your life and you’re just kind of sort of trying to fill life in around your practice.

I did not do it that way and I try to help my clients to actually build a practice they want, will enjoy, that will thrive, and something that they can say, ok, I actually love practicing law. This is why I do this.

[Rho] I love that. Cause there are so many people within the legal profession who aren’t happy. And I know having been in Big Law, I know you were in Big Law. It can be very demanding.

So can you talk a little bit about how your experience was in Big Law initially and how you transitioned to that practice that you love?

[Heather] Oh, wow. How much time do we have? Right? So I’ll try to give you the the Cliff Notes version as best I can.

So I you know I started out at a firm that I call Big Law lite and it was a Texas firm back in the day. When I started, Texas had, really nobody was in the Texas market except for Texas based firms, but they all acted like Big Law firms at the time. And they were pretty big for Texas regional firms.

And I loved… I loved the practice. I loved the people, but I did what most lawyers do, and I said yes to everything, thinking that’s what it meant to succeed, that I had to do everything the way everybody else wanted me to do it.

And I wanted to please people like most lawyers. I also can be a people pleaser and a perfectionist. So all of those traits led me into a really bad state of burnout a couple of years in.

And I had a particular year where I was working 80 to 90 hour weeks pretty much on average. I could count the number of days I had not worked that year on one hand, and that does include weekends and holidays.

And I, it was Christmas time and I was driving home, listening to “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” and it really was not wonderful for me, and I burst into tears. And I remember I went into, you know, the house and my husband was there. And it was late at night and he kind of looked at me funny and I started complaining for the millionth time or so that year about all the wrong at my law firm, all the wrong in the legal profession. And he had this moment of looking at me and he was like, you know, Heather, you have a choice.

[Rho] Ooh. Yeahh.

[Heather] Yeah, I know. And we actually fought a little bit about that, went to bed angry. But I woke up the next morning and I guess it was the thing I needed to hear to give me the kick in the rear that I needed because, you know, I did have a choice. And it was it was the hard thing to admit my husband was right, when I woke up the next morning, but he was.

And so that kind of started my journey into, ok wait, how could I do this differently?
I do love the law. I do love the practice. Like the work itself I enjoyed.

It was all of that other stuff. The always in demand, high pressure, feeling like I had to be perfect. And I took about a year of really looking around at the the partners and paying attention to who’s happy and who’s not and what are the differences because there were happy lawyers that I could look at.

I mean, there are happy lawyers out there, I promise.

I started to notice they did things differently. They had real boundaries. They said no to clients. They said no to colleagues when they were asked to do things. Not all the time, but when they needed to.

And I started doing the same things. I started to create some boundaries. I started to prioritize my own health and self-care.

And a funny thing happened, Rho, when that started. Yes, people pushed back initially, but over time, about a six month period, my work got better. I showed up better. People started to want me even more because of that.

And so that gave me the confidence to really go out on a limb and go, ok, I could do things differently.

At that point, I realized I was in the wrong firm because of the practice, it wasn’t really the practice I wanted. It was primarily an energy based firm.

New firms were starting to come in. A Big Law firm had come in and was starting an office. They promised to be more entrepreneurial, which is what I was looking for because I knew I wanted to build a practice my own way.

And luckily, it worked out. I went into Big Law at that point as a senior associate and a couple years later was promoted to partner. So, that is ultimately where I remained for 12, 13, 14 years. I don’t remember exactly how long. I practiced for over 18 years before I left, but I built my law practice my way and it was in a Big Law environment at that point.

[Rho] Yes. Oh, I love that. And a couple of things that you said that really jumped out to me. First, the conversation with your husband where he kind of held that mirror up like, “hey, you have a choice here,” because I think so often we don’t recognize the choices that we have in our lives and in our careers.

So I love that, one, that he presented that to you, but, two, that you accepted it, even if it wasn’t, you know, immediate at first, right. You guys had the fight or whatever beforehand, but you slept on and it’s like, you know what? He’s right.

So I love that piece.

But then, two, the fact that you were able to set those boundaries and say no. And create this practice that you enjoyed even in Big Law, because we get those stories about Big Law being the demanding and always having the 80 hours and you know, sleeping at the firm and all of that kind of stuff.

And it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way.

And I like that you had those examples, even if they weren’t necessarily right in your face, right. You had to kind of take a step back and observe what was happening, but it’s like, “oh hey, there are some people who are doing this a little bit differently. Let me try what they’re doing.”

And I was exactly the same way, like setting boundaries and being able to say no and all of that.

Of course, we have our moments. Like I had moments where I was saying yes to everything and taking on all of the assignments and you know, it got to the point where it was too much and I recognized, like you did, that I could do things a little bit differently.

So I love that you said all of that.

And a big part of why I wanted to bring you on to the show is I love the way that you think about the practice of law because it’s the same way that I think about it, and it’s that underlying piece of all of the things that I’m talking about with personal finance.

Like I want people to have those kinds of options to create their practice and live their lives the way that they want to, not the way that they think that they have to.

And I know that money plays a big part of that for a lot of people. So, go ahead.

[Heather] Yeah. And I would say, you know, and I don’t know how this plays, I could see where this plays into what you do as well.

I think one of the biggest, fallacies, lies, I don’t know what you want to call it, that we fall prey to as a high achiever, like I think most high achievers fall prey to this, but I know lawyers especially do, is this idea that we shouldn’t have to make trade-offs.

This idea that we can have it all. We can do it all right?

It’s not true.

And I think the biggest piece for me was just admitting that first to myself so that then I could start making real choices because most people who get caught up in the, “I have to,” “no it’s this way,” “this is the only way,” have fallen prey to that.

And I’m not saying you won’t make trade-offs. You will.

It’s important to understand. Ok, so then let’s step back and see what’s truly important to me. What are my priorities? What are my values? And build your practice in that way so that you can make intentional trade-offs because even if you’re not admitting that you’re making them, you’re making them.

And the biggest problem, and this is how we so many of us lawyers, I think, end up so unhappy when we choose this profession for a real reason. Is because we get on this treadmill and we just start going and we don’t question and we don’t step back and remind ourselves, OK, what did I want out of this? And how do I get there?

[Rho] Yes.

[Heather] And it doesn’t mean you don’t work a lot. It doesn’t mean you never have 90 hour weeks. I’m not saying that. So if you have time for an example, I’ll give you an example of kind of what I’m talking about.

[Rho] Absolutely.

[Heather] So this was later in my practice. I was already a partner. I had over a $2,000,000 book of business at this point.

And I had some amazing clients that I really loved. And there was this moment where they called me and said, “Heather, I have a big potential deal. We want you to be the one that does it. It’s a DIP facility,” and DIP means debtor in possession.

Basically it, I was a finance attorney. It meant that the borrower was in bankruptcy. They were going to be one of the lenders and we were going to negotiate and put together most of the documentation for this facility.

And just so for anybody who doesn’t know this, DIP facilities are insane. It’s like being in litigation and it’s a very truncated time period.

So I knew if I took this on I would be working crazy hours. It would not be fun from an hours perspective for a good 4 to 8 weeks, depending on how long it lasted. But I also knew it was short term and we were busy as a group already, right?

So I had to step back and say, ok, does this make sense for me now?

At the time, DIP facilities are not very common. They used to be more common. They’re not as common. And they are kind of fun. Kind of like how litigators say they get an adrenaline rush. They’re, they’re like that and you get to do things that you don’t normally do. So I said OK, I’ll take it, but I’m going to have boundaries around this.

And I took it. I set some very clear boundaries.

My boundaries were Friday nights I left by a certain time. I think it was 6:00. Saturdays and Sundays. Saturdays, I think I never worked before 9 or 10 in the morning. Sundays, I never worked before noon. I was going to spend that morning with my family and go to church.

I had very clear boundaries.

Friday nights were the family, Sunday mornings were the family. I could work any other hours and I would deal with whatever we did, we needed to do during that DIP facility, but it was also a very, you know, small period.

And then after that, I turned some deals down that came in because I needed some breather space.

So that’s what I’m talking about when, yes, you make trade-offs. I made trade-offs to say yes to this work by not being home for a while and my kids were pretty young at the time.

And but I also set boundaries around it and had trade-offs there. And then I said no to things after the fact to give myself that breathing space. And I knew I would need to do that. So that was the trade off there.

So it’s really about being very intentional, but you have to understand, ok, what is it that I want? What do I want my practice to look like? What are my real priorities? And you’ve got to revisit that because circumstances change. Seasons of life change, and that sometimes changes what’s a priority and what’s not. And that that’s kind of the key and that’s what I help my clients with, right, figuring that out.

This may have been what you thought you wanted or what you really did want 8, 10 years ago. What do you really want now given where you are, given what you’ve learned, given your current season and let’s build towards that.

And then understanding you got to check in every so often to ensure that’s really where you want to go because that vision that you want is always going to be changing.

[Rho] Yes, listeners can’t see. I’ve been nodding my head vigorously as Heather’s talking like, yes, all of this.

No. And I love that you talk about trade-offs with respect to the practice of law, because I often talk about trade-offs with respect to our finances. Like you said, we are always making trade-offs. It’s just a matter of if we’re making them intentionally or not.

[Heather] Yep.

[Rho] And I know so I don’t think that you’ve talked about this because typically you’re talking about all of the wisdom around making your practice the way that you want it. But I know from other conversations that we’ve had that you have also been very intentional with your finances and part of that has allowed you to have the practice that you wanted and then ultimately to leave the law.

So do you want to dive a little into how you and your husband set up your finances that gave you kind of that flexibility?

[Heather] Absolutely. So ok, it starts early and not to tell anybody if you didn’t start early, you can’t start now. The best time is to start now. FYI. So don’t beat up on yourself. That’s like the worst thing you can do.

We all know this. Yet, we do it anyway. Don’t do it.

Like, get away from that temptation. Step back and go, ok, I’m going to start now.

But what we did was both my husband and I grew up in families that struggled with money, and so we were really wanting to ensure we got financially stable as early as we possibly could.

Yet we both also had a lot of debt. He had debt from college, I had debt from law school and we knew we wanted to pay it down, but we also understood that if we put everything towards paying down our debt, it would deprive us of a future. And that there was a lot of benefit to investing in our retirement early.

So I think my biggest piece of advice and anybody ever asked me is put a really reasonable plan together that includes, one, paying down the debt in a reasonable way, two, ensuring you have a nest egg, something like savings wise, not just for your future, you know retirement, but in case something happens.

People lose jobs. People get sick. A pandemic hits that closes everything down. I mean, things happen, right? So you want that too.

And I’ll let you decide you know how much you should have. I think everybody has different amounts and and recommends different amounts, but make sure you have something there that gives you at least a couple of months if you need it.

And then three, invest towards that retirement. Don’t forget that piece. We started that really, really early and I’ve got to say. You know, people tell you that, financial planners tell you how important that is because the investment is in, like, insanely triples, quadruples. I don’t know what it is, but it it goes gangbusters for you if you start earlier.

I can attest to that because we quit doing that at a certain point later in life when we had kids and we had more expenses and we had to send them to schools and yet we still have enough for our retirement.

And doing that so early enabled me, one, to jump ship into a new firm that was new in Texas and frankly at the time a lot of people thought, I don’t know if that firm’s going to work out here. Non-Texas firms don’t do well.

Well, guess what? It’s it did fine and it they were the ones who broke the ice and allowed a whole host of other firms to come in.

So, but at the time, we didn’t know that and it was a little iffy, but we felt financially secure enough for me to go try that. And it’s also what gave me the confidence to try things out, figure out how I wanted.

You know, I played around a little bit when it came to building my practice. You don’t know all the answers. Things are uncertain, and it gave me the confidence to do that and to say yes to certain things.

And then sometimes to fire clients. You do have to fire clients sometimes if they’re not the right fit clients for you.

And so having that kind of in the background and knowing I was financially secure enough enabled me to build the practice I wanted because it gave me that security and it’s also what enabled me… so I was a finance attorney. Anybody out there who knows anything about the year 2008 hopefully knows that anybody in the finance sector would have had a really, really bad year. By the way, that’s the year I made partner.

And I was one of those associates who had a little book of business of her own. I was so proud to be able to make partner.

It was all gone mid 2008.

Early 2009, I remember sitting down looking at my originations which were zero, my billables, which were dismally bad and looking forward and going, I don’t even know that I can get that this year.

And I had to pivot my finance practice into a new area and build from scratch all on my own. And that was really, really scary. And there was this moment where I sat down. I was like, ok, so what if the firm fires me if I, if this doesn’t work?

I remember thinking that very clearly and again my finances were kind of the…we’ll be ok. Like it won’t be fun. I’ll have to figure something out, but we’ll be ok.

I’ll be fine. So that’s kind of the power that it gives you when you have a plan, work the plan and just keep going.

But it, the plan needs to be reasonable. You don’t want to deprive yourself. You don’t you know, because you won’t stick to the plan then. So, and I know you’re big on that, which I love about how you teach people how to have a plan and all the different areas and like sticking to it, but doing it in a way where you can actually, you know, take that vacation and splurge every so often and do things for yourself as well. I wholeheartedly agree with that.

And so for the same reason that we had all of that going, that’s also what enabled me to leave when I decided, ok…

So I now just say I loved practicing. I’m not one of those attorneys who hated it and left all like, you know, I’m I don’t like practicing and I want out of the law. I left because I had a cancer experience that changed me over time and changed one of, how I defined one of my values that ultimately convinced me it was time for me to leave the law and do something a little bit different.

And when I, when I did that, I remember sitting down with my husband and saying I think I don’t want to practice anymore. And I could see his eyes kind of bug out a little bit like Oh my gosh, what? You know, but we sat down and we had a conversation and we planned it out.

And I will say I didn’t jump ship immediately. It was a two year process after that. So we had the money if I wanted to, but we wanted to do it smartly, plan more appropriately, save even more because we figured, ok, you’re going to be building something completely new, totally from scratch.

We want to assume it’s going to take two years to make any money and so that was kind of the plan that we went with, which is why it took me two years because I had a gangbusters business.

It was like, all right, we need to rejigger a little bit of our finances and how we spend money and what we do and don’t do so that we can save for this. And have enough savings to keep the lifestyle we want, a little bit revised, moving forward if that makes sense.

[Rho] Yes, that makes perfect sense and the thread through all of that was the planning. Like so much intention behind how you and your husband managed your finances from the beginning of, ok, we’re going to create this plan to pay off the debt, but we still want to make sure that we can have a life, that we can save for our future, that we’ve got something set aside for emergencies.

That’s something I talk about a lot where people come out and they are so focused, so consumed with paying off debt that they miss that piece of let me just have a little bit of savings in case something happens because something will inevitably happen. So you’ve got to have that money set aside.

I also loved where you talked about how you were saving for retirement, but then you all stopped because you realize that that retirement would continue to grow and it would continue to earn that interest and grow to the amount that you needed for retirement.

That is one of those things where we are always taught you’ve got to save for retirement, you’ve got to save for retirement. And I always tell people to question like, does that make sense for me? Don’t just take the blanket advice, but look at what works for you and your family.

So the way that you all kind of front loaded your retirement savings allowed you to stop when you had some other responsibilities come up that you needed that money for. So I love that.

And then the final piece is where you were talking about values. I think that is so important. I talk about values with respect to your finances, looking at what are the things that you value and how does that compare to how you’re using your money right now?

Because a lot of times we are spending a whole lot of money on stuff that we don’t even care about and then there are other things that we do care about that we’re not using our money on.

So can you talk more about the values piece with respect to your career and how that has shown up in the way that you built your practice and deciding to leave the law and in what you teach your clients now?

[Heather] Yes.

So I, for me, values have always been really big and I will say pre coach Heather didn’t understand they were values. They were just the things that were important to me. So it doesn’t really matter what you call them. Principles, values, those things that are most important everybody has these.

And so for me, it’s always really been about service, family, God relating with God, and connection, and then freedom. Those are like my top five values.

And most of them were developed, all of them really were developed throughout my childhood and young adulthood based on experiences. And so we all have these.

And there’s no right or wrong values. They’re basically based on your life and what you think is most important. And so when I was creating my practice for me, I wanted a practice that was big enough to provide for my family, but not so big that it took over.

So I watched a lot of Big Law partners, right, that become “rain makers” have these huge practices where they also hardly ever practice law. It becomes more managing others, managing clients, client development, and all of that part I like, but I also like practicing law.

So I didn’t want a big enough practice where that part took over my life and I didn’t get to practice because part of service for me is actually relating to my clients and serving them as a lawyer, or it was, as a lawyer. And so, and I didn’t want it to take over either because when you get too big, you do kind of give your life over.

So again, this is where trade-offs come in. And this is where like the values help you the most. They help you figure out what trade-offs are right for me now and what boundaries do I need to create to enforce the trade-offs that I’m not willing to make. Right?

So I was trying to build a big enough practice to save for the future, to invest in my future, to also make sure I had the clients that I wanted to serve enough of them and make an impact in that way, yet not so big that it took over and I didn’t get to do the things I wanted to do both within my practice and with my kids.

So that’s how values for me… So for me, I kind of settled on under 3,000,000. I realized I could have a really robust 2 1/2 ish million practice that paid well and got me what I wanted and allowed me to have a small but mighty team that was pretty flexible and without it taking over my life. And I would still be able to practice law. And yes, sometimes I would be very busy, but over the course of the year it would be manageable and fun for me.

So that is how I kind of used my values within my practice.

Now, when they changed a little bit… so I was diagnosed at the age of 38 with very aggressive breast cancer, and I will tell you that that is something that changes you in a lot of ways. And it doesn’t change you overnight. It’s kind of this process through the whole journey that changed me and it’s not even it wasn’t apparent immediately how it changed me.

It took a couple of years post cancer for me to even figure that out and get to a place where I was like, I don’t know that I want to practice anymore.

But what I finally realized was that service value that I’d always had was still very much there, but there was this…people came out of the woodwork to help me and my family when I had cancer. People we barely knew or I didn’t know at all. People from our kids’ school, but we kind of knew their name, but we only said hi here and there, but we didn’t know, know them who would bring meals all the time.

Some of them would reach out and say, hey, I want to get your kids after school and take them to get ice cream or on a play date or, you know, they were just very, very helpful.

There were people from my husband’s work that came out of the woodwork to help us in other ways, and I did not know them at all at that point. So it’s, it made an impact on me. And over time, it made me realize that that value of service had changed.

So pre-cancer Heather was, service meant doing the best I could for my clients, for my family, for whomever I was dealing with, being present, doing my best, that kind of, you know, definition.

Post-cancer Heather realized I actually want to make a bigger impact on individuals’ lives because I can see how impactful that can really be and the ripple effect it has on others. And that is what eventually led me to realize, I don’t think being a lawyer is going to do that for me anymore. I want to help people more individually.

And as I was going through that kind of back and forth, what does this mean? And I looked at a lot of different potential like jobs or careers, non-lawyer.. like a nutritionist because we got variants, nutrition post cancer for a lot of obvious reasons and all these other things.

And somebody said to me, you know Heather, you’d be really good at coaching. And I didn’t really know that much about coaching. And so I started looking into it and it was interesting to me. And so I decided, you know, I’ll pay for coaching school to see what this thing is about. And that’s kind of how I got hooked. And then eventually said to my husband, ok, I’m leaving.

And we started to make the plan and then eventually I did leave and I started my coaching practice.

But funny enough, I started as a work life balance coach to women. And it didn’t do it for me. And over the course of a couple of years, more and more lawyers started coming to me and finding out what you were really successful in building a book. Can you help me do that? And that’s when I realized, oh, this is what I’m meant to do.

So I would also say to anybody out there who is thinking I need to change whether law firms or my type of practice because I did change practices over time too, or I just don’t know if I want to be a lawyer anymore. You are not going to find the answers immediately or within your head.

You kind of have to try things out and eventually you get, you kind of like hone in on what really works for you.

[Rho] Oh, I love all of that. And your story of transitioning from the law into coaching really resonates with me because it was similar where I really liked the work that I did. I was a trademark and copyright lawyer. I had some very interesting matters, and you’d be surprised the logos of U.S. companies that are on restaurants in random places and you know things like that.

It was interesting work. I love the people that I worked with, but I had had this journey with my husband of getting our finances in order and at the the time that I started helping others, we were still in the middle of it, but we had made a lot of progress.

And so I started helping people, you know, on Zoom, helping people create their plans and all of that. And it just really lit me up, and I was seeing the impact that I was making more immediately, right.

I’m seeing this impact on this individual and then they’re telling me about how they help their fiance do blah, blah, blah, or they help their mom, you know, so like you said, that ripple effect. And I was like, man, this is really cool. And so I did both for a while, where I was practicing and coaching on the side. And then I was like, well, let me try it. I would love to, you know, see what this is like. And so I did.

And like you said. You can’t figure it out in your head. Like you got to take action. You got to take a step. You’re never going to figure out the exact plan, and it’s not going to go the way that you think it’s going to go in your head.

Like you take a step and it’s like, ok, this happened. Let me try this next. Let me try that next. So all of that really resonated with me and hopefully it’s helpful for someone who is considering some sort of change, whether it’s leaving the law or changing practice areas or going to a different employment setting or whatever it is. Like, you’re not going to figure out the exact right plan in your head. You’ve just got to take a step and then you figure out what your next step is after you take that first one.

[Heather] And I would just say, you know, yes, you want to plan and this is and this is really scary for most lawyers, we do not like uncertainty.

We want to know what’s going to happen and we want to be able to think that well, we control, we can control that which you can’t. I’m sorry to say.

It’s ok if that next step isn’t the right step, and in fact it often isn’t because I like to lean into look what what drew me to the law.

A challenge. A challenge was fun. I liked that aspect of it, so I try to lean into that.

The puzzles, you know, trying to put together puzzle pieces, strategy, a lot of us lawyers love that. So instead of focusing on the uncertainty, which is uncomfortable regardless of how like, yes, you have to get “comfortable” with the discomfort, but it’s still uncomfortable. That’s ok.

Focus in on the challenge and what you like about it and what you can learn from what you’re doing and know that that next step is probably not the end all be all, but it’s not supposed to be, is it? Because we’re supposed to learn and challenge ourselves and keep growing and moving forward.

And the only way for us to do that is to continue to push push ourselves into the uncomfortable.

And so I it is still scary for me as I do new things because I’m constantly trying to do new things within my business, but I’ve just gotten ok with it. Ok enough, I guess to do it anyway.

So I would say that have a plan, but understand the plan is not perfect and it’s not going to work perfectly, but you’re smart. You can figure things out. You’ll be fine.

[Rho] 100% yes. Now a question that I have for you, Heather. As people are thinking about, you know, creating that practice that they love, the you know, fitting the practice around their lives rather than their lives around their practices.

What are maybe 3 steps that you would tell someone to take who wants to start course correcting, where they find themselves, you know, where you were back at the beginning of your career and you had that kind of come to Jesus moment with your husband. What are, you know, the three steps that you think someone should take to start getting that practice in line with how they want it to?

[Heather] So the first step is the the step that I think is the hardest, and it’s the one most lawyers don’t want to hear, but it’s true.

You got to deal with your own mind first and foremost. It’s not a step that you take like, that’s where you have a specific plan or a tactical practical strategy. It’s getting real about the fact that there are trade-offs, that perfectionism is not possible, that you can’t have it all and do it all. And getting to the point where you’re willing to let go a little bit of that perfect high achiever that you think you know you’ve always been.
Because as long as you hang on to that person, you will not take the steps you need to take to create that practice because the fact is you’re going to have to make trade-offs. You’re going to have to let go of stuff. Sometimes you’re going to not make as much money because you said no to things and you got to be ok with that.

But understand that there is a flip side to that, that we often don’t look at. We look at the negative without looking at the positive, so get really good at reframing. I would say reframing is a huge technique that has helped me throughout my entire career.

Really, at the point around that time when my husband had that “Heather, come on” where I started to realize, ok, it’s not all bad. There are things I’m learning from this. What do I want to learn? What do I take from this and how do I how do I move forward with it?

And so start with your mind, work on your mindset. If that means reaching out to a coach to help you with that, then so be it. That’s the other thing. You gotta be ok with help because we’re not all meant to do this alone.

And it doesn’t mean you have to hire a coach, but at least talk to people. Ask for advice from mentors who you, A, trust and also have the lives, the type of lives that you think you would like. So that’s the starting point is your mindset.

The second thing is get really clear on your values and your priorities like what are they really? And why? You need to be able to like explain why because if you can’t, they’re probably somebody else’s, or society’s definition of success.

[Rho] Oh, that’s so good.

[Heather] You’ve got to be able to clearly define what success means for you. And why?

And then the third thing is work backwards. So you’ll have this vision that you want that feels like unattainable because it’s so far away.

Well start to go backwards and say, ok, well, what’s one or two steps I could start taking right now that would just get me a little closer. And it doesn’t have to be a huge leap, by the way. We tend to stop ourselves because we think, well, that’s just unattainable, that’s like 8 years away.

It’s probably not as far away as you think by the way, but it is farther. It is at least a couple probably right, but you can get closer now. So what can you start doing now?

And you know, again, get help if you need it. There are so many people out there who can help you come up with the right next steps that will get you there faster.

So do not be afraid. And this goes to the mindset again to get help. I think the saddest thing I hear and I don’t hear this as much as I used to because my marketing is really honed in to speaking to the people who are ready to work with me as opposed to people who would love the results but aren’t ready mentally to work with me from a mindset perspective. But the saddest thing that I hear is when people say I want that, and I they have this perfect vision, but then they say things like, but how would I explain this to my husband? But, what if my colleagues don’t, you know, respect me because and then they talk themselves because of those buts out of doing it. I’m just not, I’m not ready yet.

And some of those people do come back to me later a year or two, sometimes later. I wish I hired you then.

I’m like, no, you were not ready for this. Now you are. Now’s the time. And it can go faster than you believe. But then there’s those people who never do and who you find five years later, and you talk to you, and they’re still saying the same things because they haven’t dealt with the mindset stuff and they’re not ok with asking for help.

[Rho] Yes. Oh, I love all of those. And I think, to your point, even if it’s not hiring a coach as that immediate next step, I think sometimes just talking to another person, especially somebody who does have the life that you want or even somebody outside of the law, because sometimes we get in this echo chamber within the legal profession, where we all see things exactly the same way…but somebody who is outside of you who can just question the way that you’re thinking about this or question the way that you’re, you know, the thing that you believe is possible or is impossible. I think that is really helpful and sometimes that helps you to get to that next step of hiring a coach who can then help you get to that finish line that you want.

[Heather] I would say this: definitely have mentors within the legal profession, but also every lawyer needs mentors outside of the legal profession.

[Rho] Yes.

[Heather] Because we do have a warped sense of thinking in some ways, and we all tend to have this groupthink. And it is eye opening when you tell somebody who’s not in this life what you’re going through, what you’re dealing with and what you’re thinking and they can just wait, like, wait, whoa, what? Why? What’s going on here? And it opens your eyes to so much possibility that is a game changer when you open your eyes to it and go, oh wait, I don’t have to do it that way.

[Rho] Yeah, I remember as I started getting into coaching and meeting other people who were coming from different professions. And it’s like, oh, I’ve been, you know, like just a fish swimming in water and didn’t know that it was water because all of these other people just think about things completely differently.

And so that’s why I say somebody outside of the legal profession is going to be able to give you a perspective or help you question things in a way that somebody within the profession may not be able to if they’re not a professional like, Heather, who is, you know, on the other side of all of this kind of thinking.

[Heather] Yes. I would even say, you know, it’s funny because I wish I’d had somebody like me back when I was even doing this,

[Rho] Me too.

[Heather] because I have learned so much from people in other industries and the online industry in general around marketing and business development that is translatable into the legal profession. Yet the legal profession is way behind in a lot of those areas.

And it’s just interesting to me how kind of, yeah, we’re just all in our little bubble and we don’t realize it and how much business and marketing and sales and psychology and other concepts can be utilized by lawyers even in Big Law, when it comes to building their own book in their own way.

And how eye opening, that was super eye opening for me and now I’m able to utilize a lot of those concepts that I’ve been learning for others that apply to this business, into the legal field as well. And I wish I’d had that because frankly, it would have made it even easier.

[Rho] I completely agree. I say all the time. I wish that I had known about all of the rest of these you know these other industries, these other areas, these other concepts, when I was still practicing because it would have made a world of difference in my experience. But we’re here now, right? So everything happens the way it’s supposed to.

[Heather] Yes, yes, so good. Get out there. Get some mentors in other areas. Talk to them. You will. It’s amazing how eye opening that is in in a good way.

[Rho] Yes. So Heather, thank you so much for all of your time today. You have dropped so much wisdom, so many gems that I know are going to be so valuable for the listeners. Before we go, please take a second and let us know where we can find you once we leave this podcast.

[Heather] So I’m on LinkedIn when it comes to social media the most. That’s where we met, of course. And it’s Heather Moulder M-O-U-L-D-E-R.

I also have a podcast, The Life and Law podcast. You can find me at lifeandlawpodcast.com there and then my coaching website is separate. I kind of keep those two separate, and that is coursecorrectioncoaching.com.

[Rho] Love it. Thank you so much for being with us today. I appreciate it. And it has been a pleasure as always.

[Heather] Thank you so much. This was fun.

****

I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Heather. She is an amazing human, and hopefully you will have the opportunity to connect with her.

Please take a second to share this episode with someone who you think could use it. That is the best way to grow the podcast and to make sure that this information gets in the hands of as many lawyers as possible. Thank you in advance for your support.

As we close out, friend, I pray that you take the information you learn here, apply it in your life, and open up to the realization that wealth is available to you. As you do that consistently, week after week, you’ll continue to take steps to take back control of your time, build wealth, and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve. Talk to you later.