Letting My Freak Flag Fly

Since I started my solo law practice a little over four years ago, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I want to serve my clients. To be honest, being an entertainment lawyer can be very frustrating because you see a lot of good projects and a lot of good people struggle, and sometimes fail. I wanted to be the kind of lawyer who would go above and beyond to help my clients succeed.That frustration, and that desire, has motivated me over the past few years to acquire new skills. I’ve become a trained and court certified mediator, and mediation skills have proven invaluable to me when my clients have trouble resolving conflicts with their creative collaborators. I’ve become a professional certified coach, which allows me to talk to clients who don’t understand why they are stuck, why their careers or their projects can’t gain momentum.To be honest, I’ve been having trouble finding a way to combine all of these skill sets into one, cohesive business model. I am pursuing establishing a stand-alone law practice, a stand-alone mediation business and a stand-alone coaching practice. Every time I worked on one business, I felt like I was ignoring the other two. I had no idea how to make all of the separate pieces of my business and training work together.And then Saturday I had an epiphany. Two good friends of mine, who are life partners, opened a meditation (mot mediation, meditation) studio. They had been talking about the idea for a while, a location right around the corner from their house became available, and they just took the leap. Saturday was the open house, and I went over to show my support and to sit in on a class on chanting.I was blown away that my friends just took the leap. I see so many clients stuck, unable to move forward; I see myself struggling to find the right way to describe and present my practice, and these two just jumped right in. They have faith that everything will work out – but only if they put themselves out there.So I’m sitting and I’m chanting and I get this understanding. My friends probably need legal agreements done. I bet they need a partnership agreement, and maybe they need to set up a corporation. And my friends are going to need help learning to make business decisions together, and how to keep business decisions separate from life decisions. And they are going to need coaching to better understand how they undermine themselves, and to better build an environment of success by including the right people in their support network.And I can help them do all of that.Suddenly, it didn’t matter whether I called myself (i) a lawyer trained as a mediator and a coach; or (ii) a lawyer who is also a mediator who is also a coach; or (iii) a consultant trained as a lawyer, mediator and coach. I can try for a hundred years to come up with the best explanation of how I help people, if that’s how I choose to spend my time. But I’m not doing that anymore. I need to spend less time trying to put a label on what I do and more time just doing it. So, I’m leaping in, I’m letting my freak flag fly and being me, a professional who does not fit into a neat description. Because the only thing that matters is that I be of service wherever I can, whenever I can and to the best of my abilities.So, if you think I can help you, visit my website (www.esg-esq.com) or send me a note (egoldman@esg-esq.com).