"To aspiring women entrepreneurs, I say "back yourself"
Tracey Mylecharane is an entrepreneur in the legal industry, having founded her own business, a virtual law practice, just under 3 years ago. Tracey has been in the law for just over 18 years, & when it comes to what can go wrong in business there is nothing she hasn’t seen. She’s a confidently unconventional lawyer, with a no BS attitude, which can be refreshing in an industry that can be perceived as being dull, complex, and difficult to navigate.
Tracey’s business is centered around supporting women to work remotely and flexibly; supporting access to quality legal services for clients who no longer want to take hours out of their day to travel to sit across the table from their lawyer, and fostering a flexible lifestyle that allows her to balance her family life and her career. She prides herself on being a different type of business lawyer. After a career in traditional law firms focussing on billable hours and the corporate ladder; running a mid-size law practice, and viewing exhaustion and fatigue as a sign of success, she chose to step away and do things differently. Now, she does things her way in her own business.
Tracey has a tonne of experience in both the law and in business, & has seen it all when it comes to time-poor business owners and what can go wrong. She founded her business with a mission to empower every business owner she meets to back themselves – legally. Tracey and her business promote a ‘prevention is better than cure in business’ approach to business, and that means Tracey and her team work with business owners to navigate legal obligations in their field, to help set them up to avoid the pitfalls so often encountered by time-poor business owners.
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Table of Contents
Thank you for joining us, please introduce yourself to our readers.
Tracey Mylecharane: Hi, I’m Tracey. I’m an entrepreneur, a business owner and founder, a wife, and a mum to 2 young children.
Can you tell our readers in what ways you are disrupting your industry?
Tracey Mylecharane: I am disrupting the legal industry in Australia by boldly being a different type of business lawyer operating a flexible and innovative law practice. After a career in traditional law firms focussing on billable hours and the corporate ladder; running a mid-size law practice, and viewing exhaustion and fatigue as a sign of success, l chose to step away and do things differently. The business I own and operate is not centered around billable hours and budgets but is grounded on adding value to our clients; client satisfaction levels and flexibility (for both the clients and for the business).
We are confidently unconventional in our approach to supporting clients, which is refreshing in an industry that can be perceived as being dull, complex, and difficult to navigate. Our mission is to add value to the business owners we act for, and we do that by working collaboratively with our clients, flexibly to suit both clients and the business, and by taking an outcomes-based approach with our work, with a fixed fee billing system in place. I believe law firms need to get on board with a client-focused, value-add approach, rather than the archaic practice of billable hours and output-driven business models.
Our client satisfaction levels are consistently high. My team reviews are not based on budgets and billable hours but are focused on value-add results and client satisfaction levels.
Did you become a disruptor by choice or by necessity? Tell us more about the journey.
Tracey Mylecharane: Both.
I loved practicing law in the traditional law firm model for the first 12 years of my career. However, as a woman in business, the expectations placed on us are brutal. I willingly accepted that for what it was, because I didn’t see another option. After I had my son in 2014, for the first time in my career I realised that I had a choice to make that choice was between furthering my legal career or giving everything I had to my new (and most important) of being a new parent. The decision was easy and I chose my family.
I left legal practice at this time and I focused on my young family, and the following year our family grew to a family of four. During this time I had accepted a teaching role in the College of Law at the Australian National University. I was content in this role whilst balancing my parenting and raising our young family and I spent five years in this space. It was in early 2019 when my youngest was going to be at school full time the following year that I started thinking about my next career chapter. This was the pivotal period where I seriously contemplated a move back to legal practice, but not the traditional practice that I had left in 2014.
When considering my next chapter, it became necessary to be willing to disrupt the traditional practice of law because I was not prepared to sacrifice the flexibility and balance that I had come to enjoy and value so much whilst raising my family. I had become clear on my personal values again (something that was slightly skewed during my earlier years in legal practice) and that clarity provided me with a vision for the way forward with a law practice that could serve my needs and the needs of my family, whilst listening to what clients ultimately wanted – which was a new way of accessing quality legal services. That new way involved a collaborative relationship with their lawyer; transparency and fixed fee billing structures; a value-add approach to the legal services that they needed to feel empowered to move forward with their own businesses.
Now for the main focus of this interview: Many readers may wonder what are the biggest challenges women entrepreneurs must overcome to be successful?
Tracey Mylecharane: The first is self-belief. It is too easy to play small, to play safe in industries that are traditionally male-dominated and conservative in their approach to what a successful business should look like. Self-doubt is too common amongst women and my view is this is one of the fundamental challenges women face.
The next challenge that I experienced, and I see so many female business owners experience, is the feeling that we need to be all things to all people in business. This is a significant challenge to overcome, and this can single-handedly prevent business growth altogether. Niching in business takes charity and courage, and is something I encourage all business owner to focus on in order to grow a sustainable business.
How did you overcome these obstacles? Who helped you during these difficult times and how did they?
Tracey Mylecharane: The work on self-belief was hard, and to be honest, still is. I still doubt myself at times. The key for me to overcome this so my business could grow was to be clear on my Why in business, and stay focused on that above all else. This is undoubtedly one of the main reasons why my business took off as quickly as it did – and saved me years of time, money, and energy getting this part right.
Niching was new to me. I initially felt I needed to say yes to every client, and assist in all areas of law, otherwise, I would be turning down work and turning down much-needed clash flow. To change this mindset was a challenge, and I worked with a business coach for 6 months to work through this. Some of the concepts we worked through were new to me because operating in an online environment was not something I had done before (let alone running my owner business in this space). Working with a business coach who was the right fit for me was a game-changer and provided the support I needed to take my business forward in a way that was consistent with my Why, and with my values.
How did these lessons shaped the way you conduct business today?
Tracey Mylecharane: Today I am clear on what I do in my business, and who my business serves. This makes decision-making streamlined and easy, and it allows for an efficient use of my time and the time of my team members.
Challenges still come up in business – they always will! However knowing how to handle self-doubt when it appears (which it does), and staying true to my Why, and the values of the business, mean the time I spend in uncertainty is minimal. This means I am able to focus the majority of my time and energy on revenue-generating work, and on growing the business so we can reach and work with more business owners, to help them feel empowered moving forward,
What advice you wished you had received when you started, that you’d like to share now with aspiring women entrepreneurs?
Tracey Mylecharane: To aspiring women entrepreneurs, I say “back yourself”.
Spend time getting clarity on your Why in your business. Take the time to dive deep to get clear on your business values, who you want to serve, and how, and then once you have this, back yourself completely. And remember, what others think of you is none of your business and you don’t need to please your critics. Take advice from those who you value and respect and who have been in the arena doing what you want to do.
Out of all of your proudest moments as an entrepreneur, is there a particular one that stands out the most?
Tracey Mylecharane: Without a doubt, this is the decision I took to launch my business in early 2019.
I left the judgment behind, and I had the confidence in myself to listen to my intuition and take a leap of faith with my new business model.
This was a life-defining moment for me and I have never looked back.
What do you plan on tackling during the 2022 year? Share your goals and battles you expect to face.
Tracey Mylecharane: There is still a lot that I want to do in my business and I am constantly coming up with new ideas.
I have achieved a lot over the past 3 years so I have decided that 2022 is going to be a year of consolidation and focus for my business. I have come to realise that it is important to slow down and take stock from time to time, and that time is now for me.
I am planning to consolidate what I have been working on over the past 3 years, to strengthen my offerings to clients and ultimately reach more business owners that we can collaborate with and empower.
I’m sure our readers will be very thankful for the insights you have shared. What is the best book you’ve gone through lately and please share some take away lessons from it.
Tracey Mylecharane: I have recently read The Big Leap written by Gay Hendricks. I recommend this book to every woman in business.
Women have a tendency to want to be all things to all people, and ultimately we spread ourselves too thin. This book worked through what can hold us back from achieving our true potential and discusses how to tackle various aspects of our lives with this in mind. Having an awareness of what our problem is (from time to time, in personal life and in business), and then breaking this down into ways to work through this to allow us to function in an area referred to as our zone of genius, has been a wonderful way for me to gain clarity about the next steps for my business, and what 2022 will look like.
Thank you so much for your time but before we finish things off, I do have one more question for you. When was the last time you did something for the first time and what was it?
Tracey Mylecharane: This is a great question!
This was last week when I let go of self-doubt and fear of rejection by reaching out to some women in business who I respect and admire, and pitched myself to them to appear as a guest on their podcasts. Some have said yes and some have said no. I have learned that we have to get comfortable with people saying no to us in order to get the yes answers. This feels like real growth and is incredibly empowering.
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Tracey Mylecharane for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Tracey Mylecharane or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin
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