Laura Racky, business founder and commercial lawyer at LL Gold, talks starting and building successful businesses

@lauraracky is a #commerciallawyer in her own firm @LLGold. But her being her knows that's not really enough. She likes to have lots of things going. Her portfolio of interests includes;

• #cofounder @AllFounders - a business which is more focused on #leadershiptraining and #businessstrategy but has expanded into #podcasting #tickertv
• #founder @LGlowBeauty - because she just loves all things beauty and skincare
• multiple board and advisory roles (past & current) in #nfps and #communityorganisations including @channel31 @hibgrouphug #mazzeifoundation

For Laura these #newbusinesses are a kind of hobby and an outstanding source of constant learning which feeds back into her core role as #commerciallawyer and  #businessowner. She #loveslearning, #newchallenges and #newbusiness. In our discussion we cover;

• the #businesschallenges thrown up by #covid19
• #takingstock 
• how #businessowners are adapting and reinventing
• the boring but important things to do in the #first100days of a new business 
• a love of learning new things and being challenged 
• becoming a better #businessadviser
• how she chooses to do what she does and time management 
• learning that not everything is urgent or important 
• #givingback
• getting involved with #nfps 
• #ecommerce

www.kerrcapital.com.au

A full transcript is below.

Michael Kerr: Hi, it's Michael Kerr here, presenting Small Business Banter. A healthy micro and small business sector means a successful economy and a more vibrant society. Small Business Banter is about helping regional business owners better prepare for current challenges but also for the next stage of business success. I'm Michael Kerr, founder of Kerr Capital, advisors to business owners.

Each week, I interview a fellow small business owner or an expert and they share their stories, their lived experiences, the wins and the losses, and their best advice to help you, the listener, get the most you can from your own business. Small Business Banter is brought to you from the studios of 104.7 Gippsland FM and is heard across Australia on the Community Radio Network. And thanks also to Kerr Capital supporters of the show.

Okay, so welcome to another edition of Small Business Banter radio. Laura Racky from LL Gold. Laura is in, chatting to us today. Laura's got a really diverse background, and what we're going to focus on today is her experiences as a commercial lawyer but also, as a founder and a business operator, how she manages to fit all that in, and some of the tips and advice she would give to prospective business owners.

So Laura, a principal at LL Gold, founder of LGlow Beauty, also a director of All Founders, a host on All Founders Show, you can tell us about that in a minute, Laura. And look, you've got a host of other advisory or board roles that span sort of tech companies, small new businesses, as well as, you had a strong involvement with Channel 31. So firstly, welcome in, Laura.

Laura Racky: Thanks, Michael. Great to be here.

Michael: Yes. It's really great to have you in. Do you want to just expand a little bit on the sort of major things that you're involved with and why you do that, firstly?

Laura: Absolutely. So I suppose my sort of number one career baby is my law firm, LL Gold. And she's nearly 5 years old now. That's probably, I suppose, where my main bread and butter comes from. But me being me, that's not really enough. I like to have lots of things going on. So we've also recently started up the All Founders business. So that's more focused on leadership training and strategy. This year, we kicked off LGlow Beauty. I just love all things beauty and skincare, so I thought why not give it a go. So that's been really fun, getting into e-commerce.

Michael: Classic lawyer stuff.

Laura: And then, yeah, I'm very lucky and grateful to be working with some excellent not-for-profits at the moment, Big Group Hug and the Mazzei Foundation. So lots of things going on keeps me interested, I guess.

Micahel: For sure. Let's start with how you choose what to do and how you manage your time with that extensive portfolio of things.

Laura: Yes. I suppose when you do run your own business as your main line of work, so the law firm, that does give me some flexibility in terms of where I spend my time. And I always joke about when you run your own business, you choose which 20 hours a day to work. So really, I've got a funny little timetable.

I actually don't start and sit down at the desk until about 10:30. The majority of the working day is on the law firm, and then it's really the evenings that the extracurricular sort of interests and board roles or advisory roles get looking. So it's a bit of a mixed bag, but it just means that my days are very diverse and there are lots of jumping around, which for some reason, just works for my brain.

Michael: Yeah. So why get involved in this range of things? Is that your role or purpose to be fully and fully again occupied? Is it because opportunities come your way? Or is it because you just see yourself driven to achieve? I'm really interested in the underpinning motivation for you.

Laura: It's funny you ask that because I think many people during, well, this COVID time, it's been the first time in my life I've actually taken stock and ask some of those questions. It's just always been this internal driver for me to load up and be completely sort of overwhelmed, I suppose. But I think the more that I step back and look at it, I really like learning new things. I like being challenged.

And as much as being a commercial lawyer throws up new challenges every day because I don't know everything and all of my clients have all different types of businesses, I think that doing this just gives me a great opportunity to work with all different types of people in all different types of capacities. And every day, something different comes up that I have an aha moment or I can learn something from. And it's actually very interesting and rewarding.

And obviously, on the not-for-profit side of things, in my view, when you're a professional and you get to a certain stage in your career, it's really important to find ways to give back to the community. And I've got special skills, so that seems to be the most appropriate way to give back.

Michael: Yeah. And some people want to give back and others. I think about it and probably, maybe, don't see the benefit of it because it is giving back. But does all that experience make you a better commercial lawyer in the end?

Laura: Absolutely. I mean, when you're sitting on not-for-profit boards or advisory boards, especially as a professional consultant, all of a sudden, you're actually involved in a business from that director-level where you can have a real oversight on all of the working parts rather than when you're an advisor, people come to you often with a very sort of small problem or issue and that might be all that you'll see about their business.

Whereas, when you get to work as an advisor or a director on a not-for-profit, you see everything. You're involved in operations, partnerships, employment, leasing, the full gamut. And it actually, I think, makes you a much better advisor because you're actually, all of a sudden, exposed to the wide range of things that a not-for-profit or a business face every day rather than this little pocket of problems, I suppose.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah, I think as a specialist advisor, often, you can be busy, but the clients already framed their problem. And it's like if I knew this or that, I could have helped you more broadly. So that's kind of what you're saying. You see those same business challenges from a different perspective and you can bring up other advice or other solutions.

Laura: Exactly.

Michael: Yeah. And look, I do a lot of work with SME owners and a lot busy doing the day-to-day stuff. And it's kind of hard to have the conversation that you need to take time out of the business. And you can learn away from the business and bring things back. But I understand why people just sometimes say, "I'm too busy." But the roles you have with not-for-profits and other organizations, as I say, can be really rich in learning. How do you go from the law to beauty? Like this is in e-commerce and social media and all that goes with that business.

Laura: I will admit, it has been a real personal challenge for me. So in my legal career, I have often worked in insolvency, restructuring, and litigation. That sort of work is very, very urgent [corsstalk] and heavy and considered, I think, important.

Michael: Heavy.

Laura: And so I have this general expectation because my clients are very responsive and they moved quickly and I am the same, that I felt that in this new endeavor, that anything that I wanted to complete or get done or buy would move in the same way and be as easy to navigate. Boy. I know this sounds crazy, but really simple things like ordering stickers for packaging, for someone who's just used to things just going through in a very linear fashion and it being really quick and easy, it's just like, you might send an email to a prospective supplier, and you might get a response like 6 days later. And to someone like me, who's used to things just getting done, it just [inaudible].

Michael: How hard is it?

Laura: Yes. But again, it's made me realize not everything is urgent or important, and different types of things have different ways that people work in them. So I think just from a personal perspective on patience and navigating a different industry and world, that's been really challenging and interesting. But yeah, just, I think e-commerce, obviously, it's not going away, it's only going to grow. And I feel that being an advisor in this day and age and not really getting into this world and understanding how it works would be a miss. I'll be missing out to try and do it myself.

So a lot of learning. We're still growing, changing. I'm still trying to work out what the brand's voice is, what we're about, our mission, all of these things. But I'm now at the point where I say, "You know what, you ran headlong into this. You didn't know what you were doing. You're making it up as you're going along. You don't have to. This is not a Sprint. It can be a marathon." So I really realized I don't have to be turning over a million dollars. Let's just actually use this as this tool taught for learning. So it just so happens it coincides with something I really enjoy, the beauty and skincare industry. And so I'm trying to treat it as something fun.

And actually, you talked about business owners feeling like they don't have time. To me, I think you can view all these extra things, if you love business, if you love having autonomy and doing things that interest you, you can actually start seeing all of these things as fun. I know that sounds really lame, maybe, to a lot of people, but I think there's a lot of us who actually get a lot of pleasure out of all this learning and interest. And it so happens that our hobbies and our fun are running businesses and learning things.

Michael: Yeah, you're not playing golf.

Laura: Yeah.

Michael: Not there's anything wrong with those things, but you've got a different interest.

Laura: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah.

Laura: So I stay tuned, LGlow Beauty. I'm going to take over the world, but just not straight away. And that's okay.

Michael: I have wondered whether there was any reference to LL Cool J in that.

Laura: I actually can't even remember where. I mean, L, my name is Laura, but I don't even know where, when I came up with LL Gold, came from. I didn't want it to be my name. I didn't want the firm to be my name, but yeah, no.

Michael: It's a pretty contemporary brand. It's great. But it suits with the energy and the interest you bring to it. With your clients, just to come back to some of the stuff you're dealing with us today, I'm keen to understand what you're seeing your business clients, what are the big challenges they've got at the moment.

Laura: It's been a bit cyclical. There was, obviously, March onwards for the first few months, a lot of issues with leases. And they were the clients who literally were shutting their doors, work-from-home wasn't a possibility. So we're talking about hospitality, entertainment. So that was sort of a huge focus at that time, a lot of negotiating with landlords, also employment issues. But now, as we're sort of, I don't know, coming out of it or learning to live with this new normal, yes, there are still leasing issues, but a lot of people are trying to get out of leases, moving to new premises, change the way they work.

And also, I think this has been an opportunity for a lot of businesses to take stock and look at the way they interact with their clients, what their employment agreements say. When things are good, we just put our contracts in a drawer and we hope to never look at them. But I think over this last 12 months, this has been the first time maybe a lot of businesses have had to look at employment agreements, have had to look at their leases or their employments with their customers or their clients.

Michael: And even, by the sounds of it, their core business model.

Laura: Yes.

Michael: Why we're in business? How do we do it differently? Can we do it without a lease on a property?

Laura: Exactly, exactly. So there are lots of strategic questions. And part of that is flushing out, "Well, where do we sit in our contractual landscape? What leeway do we actually have to make these changes?" I mean, if you're stuck in a 5-year lease, it's pretty hard to get out of it. So these sorts of questions, I think, have been interesting. But then, more from a strategical leadership perspective, a lot of clients have are facing heaps of issues with their employees.

And I think this is not new, no one's surprised about this, but people's expectations have changed, people's wants and desires have changed. Things they thought were important 12 Months ago, they don't think are important anymore. Getting people back into the office is tricky. So it's a weird time, a really weird time.

Michael: Yeah, it sure is. I want to continue that, but on today's episode of Small Business Banter, we're talking with Laura Rocky from LL Gold. Laura, yeah, this complete rethink, some owners might see that as an opportunity, and maybe not right now but later on. They've kind of been able to completely remodel or being forced to remodel the way they do business. Are you seeing, with your clients, an outflow of people? Getting to the point where they go, "The lease is too challenging. I'm going to reinvent. I'm going to do e-commerce."

Laura: Look, a lot of clients who are coming towards the end of their leases and now looking at different spaces, I think co-working spaces, I think, had a very, very difficult time over COVID, but I think they'll find that there'll be a resurgence because a lot of businesses are going to look for more nimble and agile spaces for their staff. I think that physical spaces are still going to be really important. We are human beings and it doesn't matter how comfy it is to work in your UGG boots, we like to be around one another sometimes and to have that choice. But look, a lot of things have changed.

And actually, a little pattern that I have noticed in the last couple of months with clients is there is a lot of discussions that clients are having with potential partners or potential sales of their business. There's a lot of movement, a lot of exploratory movement because I don't think people know what's going to happen in the next little while, but there is a lot of, I wouldn't say M&A activity, but just lots of discussions about what if we move into this space or what if we join forces with this partner. And a lot of these discussions are happening because I think, for the first time, like I said, people are facing a shift and the revenue isn't just flowing in without thought anymore.

Michael: Yeah.

Laura: A lot of businesses have had to stop and think about how they make money.

Michael: Yeah, yeah. Look, you said you need to pull out those contracts, employment contracts, lease agreements, others. But underpinning that is just, "How am I going to continue to do business?" And so on that front, alliances and joint ventures and I think you do work with bringing in employees to businesses as well so it's diversifying and collaborating. It's all those kind of nice words, but it's maybe forcing a complete rethink of how we're going to survive. But not just survive, prosper but by maybe getting closer to other businesses and bringing in key employees.

Laura: Yes. Yeah, I think when things are good, it's easy not to navel-gaze. But when things start getting tricky, yeah, we've got to be creative and inventive. And that's why this time is actually very, very interesting.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah, and look, at the hub of all of that is personal relationships, whether it's with suppliers, partners, customers, employees. And the value of those personal relationships, even in a business context, is so important. You got to put time into them. And entering into business with someone, I mean, you and I have talked about this in the past, you got to have an exit plan from all those sorts of things.

Laura: Yeah.

Michael: You've got to think through the good and the bad, unfortunately, because sometimes, they don't work.

Laura: Absolutely. And I talk about this a lot with clients, especially when we're starting new businesses or entering into new organizations where we've got a group of shareholders. It's always very nice at the start. And everyone's all really excited and everyone puts on their best behavior. And when everyone's making money, everybody gets along great and we never have to look at a shareholder agreement. But when things turn or people's life circumstances change, this is the stuff, this is when the rubber hits the road. So if people have not been thinking about these things early on, it can cause a bit of drama later.

Michael: It sure can, yeah. So you launched All Founders.

Laura: Yes.

Michael: So this is kind of like a further progression of your portfolio, but also a logical extension of running your own business and experiencing just those day-to-day operational things around stickers. So is that the impetus for...?

Laura: Well, All Founders came early last year, so this was before COVID and before LGlow Beauty, everything.

Michael: Oh, okay.

Laura: So Christian Cunningham and I are at the head of All Founders. And where it came from is, I run a legal business, he runs a recruiting M&A business. But what we both realized is that over our careers, we actually had learned so much from the people we work with and from advising that we needed a new brand to offer those types of services. It's very hard to pick up the phone and say to your lawyer, "Can you give me some leadership training?" I just think intellectually, people want to see it in a different bundle. And obviously, the same for him. From a recruitment and acquisition specialist, no one's expecting strategy and leadership training from him.

So we bought that all together under the All Founders brand. We set up the All Founders Show, a podcast that then ended up a TV show on Ticker. And that's been really interesting and fun to go and work with clients in a totally different way than as a lawyer or a recruiter because I think, for me, when I walk into the room as a lawyer, people do bristle and they respond differently and they get a bit nervous. And it's good to just sort of come in and say "Yes, I'm that but today, we're going to-"

Michael: Switch hats.

Laura: Although I do get wheeled out often by Christian to give the governance training, but anyway, that's for another day.

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

Laura: It's very important. So that's been really fun, to actually work with clients in a different way, to talk about their succession planning, their short and long-term strategy, building up managers. And I think, again, when we talk from the COVID perspective, there's going to be a huge gap in our managers and our leaders who are not being managed and led through COVID because we're all remote.

Michael: Right. You see a really big hole getting bigger.

Laura: Absolutely. And if you're not around your leader often to have those really quick chats to run things by them, I mean, you're not picking up your phone every 5 minutes to make that call to your manager to ask the question. I remember, even just as a young lawyer, always wanting to sit in the office or the spot outside the partners office because I loved hearing them on the phone. I loved hearing them in meetings with other partners because you learn so much just by listening. And we are losing this. So I think there is this big gap where a lot of these leaders are just going to need a little bit of outside mentorship to get them through, to get their skills up. I think they're a bit at sea at the moment.

Michael: Yeah. Look, and it's probably the same as it's always been for those small business owners who have always done it solo.

Laura: Yes.

Michael: I've always been their own counsel. They've always struggled to find somebody that is a trusted advisor. So yeah, I think it's kind of the same thing, but it's obviously removed from employees in a massive way in the last 12 to 18 months. And it goes to where we started, which is developing broader experience outside of whatever it is you do day-to-day. You sought out a partner to learn. And I mean, there are opportunities everywhere you look. I think there's an explosion of clubs and online networking business things, so the resources are out there.

But we've only got a little bit of time left, Laura. There are two things I want to cover. One is there's a lot of energy with businesses recreating or starting afresh. So in the first hundred days, what are the three or four things you're thinking about reinventing your business or starting? What are the three or four things you absolutely must address?

Laura: Yes. Look, the really boring thing, I think, is always structure. It always shocks me how many small business owners have no understanding, I guess, of how they exist in the legal space.

Michael: So this is in the sense of having a company versus a trust versus a partnership?

Laura: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah, okay. Yeah.

Laura: And what if it's really boring and it is very expensive, but if you're going to do it, I think you need to do it right.

Michael: Yup.

Laura: Because if you don't get that right, then the next thing, which is contracts with your customers and your suppliers, you're not going to get that right. So if you don't know who you are as a business from a structural perspective, you can't enter into contracts properly. So those two things go quite hand in hand. And then obviously, we've got things like your insurance and your work cover and your employment agreements.

Michael: It's very easy as I'm excited, which is going to work and we're going to get on with it, but don't fall for the trap.

Laura: Exactly.

Michael: Yeah.

Laura: I think lots of small business owners get super excited. And I get it, I've done it too, about logos and branding and websites and Instagram. But at the heart of all of that, you still need to have a functional structure in a business because here's hoping you're going to go gangbusters. And rewinding and fixing those structural issues later is very, very difficult.

Michael: Hey, Laura Racky, that's fantastic, really enjoyed the discussion with you. Thanks so much for sharing everything. I just wanted to close out, you had an involvement with Channel 31. We're on the Community Radio Network so there's some pretty good news. Just before the end of June, a renewal for 4 years?

Laura: Yeah. So I think it's 3.

Michael: Three?

Laura: Yes.

Michael: Yeah.

Laura: So really fantastic. I mean, the last couple of renewals have only been for a year, which is not a lot of time.

Michael: Yes.

Laura: I think the 3 years is a real recognition that one, the spectrum is not going anywhere so we may as well put it to good use.

Michael: Yeah.

Laura: And two, that these organizations need that time to transition properly. So I'm really thrilled. I think it's wonderful.

Michael: Yeah, it's a great result. Hey, Laura Racky from LL Gold, thank you very much for your time today.

Laura: Thanks, Michael.

Michael: So that is all for today's episode of Small Business Banter. I continue to be inspired, bringing you small business experts and other small business owners and hearing their stories.

If you want to listen to any past episode, jump onto your podcast platform of choice and search Small Business Banter. There, you will find a diverse and fascinating collection of small business owners and experts openly discussing and sharing their experiences.

For any of the links, resources, or information we've talked about on the show today or to contact me, please head over to smallbusinessbanter.com or you can find us on Facebook and Instagram. And it would be great to have you tuned in the same time next week for another episode of Small Business Banter.

[END]

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Reach out to Michael Kerr via the website if you need personal assistance or advice for your small business.

michael.kerr@kerrcapital.com.au

www.ownertoownerpodcast.com.au