Ep #14: How to Define Your Brand in 5 Simple Steps

You’re listening to The Joyful Practice for Women Lawyers Podcast episode number 14.

Welcome to The Joyful Practice for Women Lawyers Podcast. I’m your host Paula Price, lawyer turned certified executive coach. This podcast was created to empower women lawyers just like you to create a life and practice you love. Join me every week for a break from the hustle so we can focus on you, what you truly want, and how you can create it.

If you’re over the overwhelm, done with putting out fires, and ready to create a life and practice that brings you more joy, you’re in the right place. Ready for today’s episode? Let’s dive in.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the podcast. I’m excited to be reconnecting with all of you. For those of you who are joining for the first time, welcome. I’m delighted to have you here. My name is Paula Price. I’m a lawyer turned certified executive coach and the host of this podcast. Today’s episode is all about defining your brand. It’s a topic that I think is really important and one that I think we may all benefit from revisiting from time to time.

For myself, I tend to revisit the question in august. For me this is a little bit of a time of renewal. My children are about to go back to school. It’s typically when I refocus on what my goals are for the year, even though it’s not the typical calendar year. It is a time where I set one year goals, three year goals, five year goals. I revisit how it is that I’m showing up in my business and what my personal brand is.

I also work with clients on their personal brand. It sometimes comes up as a focus in our work together. Sometimes it comes up in more subtle ways. It’s more of a question of how they want to show up in a particular situation. Maybe it’s the process of going through a job interview, looking for a new position. Maybe it’s showing up with more intention in the role that they already have.

Maybe it’s that they are being promoted. They’re moving from associate to partner or from income partner to equity partner. They’re looking to really focus in on how they’re showing up, how they want to present themselves, and really being intentional in those relationships. So when we do that work, we’re really focusing in on that person and how they want to show up within their professional context.

So in today’s episode, I’m going to offer you five tools that you can use today or whenever you need a refresher in terms of going back to your branding. As we go through the exercises, I would invite you to consider not only the role that you play professionally but also the roles that you play in other areas of your life.

So whether it’s parenting, whether it’s your role as a friend, as a spouse, as a daughter. Whatever it is that you’re showing up, I’d invite you to really think how it is that you want to present yourself in these situations. As we go through these exercises, I think you’ll be able to see what I mean by that. Right now it might seem a little bit abstract.

So I wanted to start out with some of the problems that I see in terms of branding. The main problem that I see is that so many of us go through our professional careers without really thinking about how it is that we choose to present ourselves. When you are practicing as a lawyer, I know it was like this for me. There’s no shortage of external influences and others who are suggesting or telling you what their expectations are about how you should show up.

You may have had this experience with clients. I know I have. There are clients who are reinforcing the beliefs in terms of how you would like to show up in a very positive way. There are clients who may offer you some insights that aren’t necessarily in line with what you would choose for yourself.

So for example, I remember one of the first clients I ever interacted with. This is when I think I was a summer student, and I was helping a retired judge with closing up a file that this individual had. The first words that came out of this person’s mouth were, “How old are you? You look like your 15. Can you please give me a real lawyer?” It didn’t actually bother me very much, but it did signal to me that whatever it was that a lawyer or a law student was supposed to be like, I certainly didn’t fit into this person’s concept of it.

I had even more recently one of the last clients that I worked with before moving away from practicing law was an elderly woman who upon meeting me told me that I was very much like Dakota Fanning, who I had to look up on the internet. I didn’t even know who she was. I was flattered. She’s a lot younger than me. Again, it’s this assessment that in somebody else’s eyes, I am not aligning necessarily with who and what a lawyer should be.

That same client, now I’m speaking about the one who was a more recent interaction. Was also describing to me what she wanted out of a lawyer. Some of the words that she described were bulldog and aggressive. These are not words that I would necessarily use to describe myself or the style that I had when I was practicing law.

So there are going to be situations, and I would invite you to think about. You’re probably already thinking about situations that you’ve had where you’ve interacted with clients or other lawyers. Maybe they’re lawyers that you report to, maybe they’re colleagues, maybe they’re opposing counsel. Where something that they said to you may have you calling into question whether or not you’re showing up as a, and I put it in quotation marks, “lawyer” in the way that they expect you to show up. So the purpose of today’s podcast is to really ask yourself how you want to show up, and then figure out how you’re going to do that.

So we talked about clients having expectations, other lawyers having expectations. Another way that external expectations might also influence how you show up as a lawyer are some of the less obvious cultural influences that you may feel.

Now if you work at a law firm, for example, often a firm will have a culture. You may align with that culture in its entirety. You may align with most of it but not all of it. I would invite you to think about how the external influences, the cultural influences are shaping how you show up as a lawyer. I know from experience that when I worked at different law firms, my personality has sometimes shifted a little bit in relation to who I am surrounded by. Sometimes it’s interesting to see speech patterns that may develop based on who you’re working with or certain values that you may hold because those values are being reinforced by the individuals that you work with.

One example that comes to mind, not a law example, but what I really find sometimes quite amusing is when you see groups of friends walking down the street. The friends will all be wearing a really similar outfit. Maybe they’re all wearing trendy jogging pants or they’re all wearing the same style of jeans, or they all have their hair put up in the same style of bun. They’re all wearing a backpack that looks the same. It’s very easy to see in other people sometimes when they have all adopted a type of uniform, and it’s a lot harder to see it in ourselves.

So I would just invite you to think about how you may be picking up other people’s habits or values or ways of expressing themselves. How that may be showing up for you, and how that might be influencing your branding. So that’s another area where you may be adopting other people’s brands.

Now sometimes we do this a bit more consciously, and it often comes from a good place. So it may be that there are these external influences, and we try to adopt those as our own because we think that is what other people want to see from us. So in the example of a client who maybe sets the expectation of being very aggressive, maybe we take on a more aggressive stance because we’re trying to please that client.

Maybe it’s seeking approval and validation. If we work in an environment and there’s a certain culture, maybe it’s that everybody in your group or department is very aggressive. So you decide I’m not naturally that aggressive, but I want to fit in. I want them to approve of me. So you may try to fit that mold.

So there are a number of reasons why you might try to adopt or put on this type of behavior that you see as being reinforced in your environment or by the desires of people that you’re working with. It may be that that fits really well with you. It may be that it doesn’t.

There is a bit of a problem that can happen here, which is that if you’re looking outside of yourself for how it is that you want to define your brand then you may end up having a bit of an awkward fit, right? If you’re basing your branding on what other people want then you’re kind of in that trap where you’re not really going to please everybody. I’ve talked about this in previous podcasts.

When you’re trying to create something within you to please other people, you’re never going to be able to do that because everybody is going to have their own expectations in terms of what they want, what resonates with them. That can create a situation that is very difficult for you to try to live up to. You may feel like there’s a really big disconnect between what it is that is important to you and what it is that is important with them. You may find that you are getting upset with yourself because you’re not measuring up to the exceptions that you’re now trying to adopt.

Another problem with this is that people may not be really getting the chance to get to know you because what they’re getting to know is the version of you that is trying to meet their expectations, that is trying to please other people. It isn’t necessarily exactly who you are. So they miss out on that opportunity.

Here I just like to pause and note that in some of the research that I’ve come across where it talks about… I think in a particular article that I read about feedback and excellence. The idea of excellence being unique to the individual based on their particular strengths and their interests.

So your own version of excellence is unique to you, and it is based on who you are and what your strengths are. So if you’re out there in the world trying to morph yourself into some version of yourself that would meet someone’s expectations or a definition of what a lawyer should be like then you’re diluting your capacity to show up with the excellence that only you are capable of producing. So that’s one of the drawbacks that happen when we are not intentional, when you are not intentional with showing up in a way that is in integrity with who you are, which is a brand that you choose for yourself.

Now when we go about presenting ourselves in a way where we haven’t been intentional about our branding, it can create confusion. It creates confusion for you. It can create confusion for others. It can become a source of anxiety because, again, we’re constantly looking outside of ourselves to try to figure out how it is that we should be showing up in a particular situation. So that might create anxiety. There may be a lack of consistency in terms of how you’re showing up. You may start to feel a disconnect in terms with the integrity that you have with yourself.

I spent a whole podcast episode talking about integrity. That’s episode number nine. I would encourage you to go back and revisit that podcast episode. Because, again, it’s really coming into alignment with who you are in your values. We’re going to be talking about that as well in today’s podcast episode, but integrity is so central to showing up in a way that is true to you. It’s such an integral component to branding, at least as far as I’m concerned.

When we are looking to others to create our personal brand, it becomes harder than it really needs to be. Again because you’re trying to do things in a way that you think other people are going to like, to identify with. It really is challenging for us because now we’re constantly guessing, we’re constantly trying to please others. That in itself is exhausting.

Probably the biggest drawback is that if you’re looking to others to shape your personal brand, to shape who you are as a professional, you’re really depriving yourself of defining your brand for itself. That in itself is such a wonderful and powerful exercise, and that is what we’re going to turn to now. I’m going to offer you five tools, five suggestions that you can use to create your own personal brand.

Going through these exercises, I really would invite you to think about how you can show up in your most powerful way. In a way that is in integrity with your values, who you are, and who you want to be in relation to others in your professional roles.

So to start out with, I’m basically covering five steps, five questions that you can ask yourself. The first question is to get in touch with your values, and identify what it is that you value most. There are a number of ways that you can do that. Number one is to look at where you are spending your time. That often is an indicator of what you value. Where you spend your energy.

What gets you really excited? So is there something about your work or something that gets you really motivated? I worked with a client who had taken on a number of roles within their organization that were related to diversity and inclusion. That was an area that was of very much interest to this particular lawyer. Maybe you are really interested in helping people connect within your organization. That might be something that is a driving force for you.

Maybe there’s a sense of fairness that really is in your bones, right. There’s a certain area that you just want to see other people succeed. One of the clients that I’m working with really wants to create a pathway to help promote other women in her organization. So what is it that really inspires you, that brings you joy? Watch for those because those are clues about some of the values that you might have.

Another area that you might look for is what makes you really angry. Some of our values are triggered when we see them being trampled on or overlooked. So if, for example, you see that somebody is being treated unfairly whether it’s within your organization potentially, ideally not. But if you see an opportunity there to help out for example, there’s something that isn’t quite sitting right with you. Maybe it’s something that’s happening within the profession or that’s happening to a group within society.

I mean there’s lots of places where you might look and see where is it that I’m getting particularly angry, or I just don’t feel right about something. Because that is also a clue as to what it is that you value.

So I would recommend identifying about three to five values. Chances are you have more than that. Narrowing it down will help you with your branding because it allows you to focus a little bit more clearly. In preparation for today’s podcast, I looked around at some values. I found on a website some of Netflix’s values. Those are integrity, excellence, respect, inclusion, and collaboration.

I know some of the values that I hold and that clients of mine hold are integrity, growth, service, inspiration, fairness, redefining what is possible, innovation. So think about what values resonate with you and make a list of those. Like I said, three to five values that you hold in a place of importance. So that’s the first step.

The second step is to ask yourself what kind of an impact you want to make through your work. Again this really goes back to figuring out what motivates you. There are a number of ways that you can do this. You can brainstorm some of the impact ideas that you want to make.

Another thing that you can do is to create a mission statement. You’ll probably be familiar with mission statements. It may be that you work for a law firm or a governmental organization or some other organization that has a very clear mission statement. You do not have to be an organization to have a mission statement. Each of us can have our very own mission statement. I would invite you to think about what that might be and to write one out for yourself.

To give you an idea of a couple of mission statements, I again found some online. One is Google’s mission statement. That is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. So you might think about what kind of a mission statement might I have in my practice? Who is it that you’re trying to serve? What are you trying to do for them? What is it that you want your legacy to be? What do you want to be known for? Another mission statement is Nike. To bring inspiration to every athlete in the world where they define athlete as basically any person who has a body.

So get creative with this exercise. Have fun with it. Think about what your mission statement is and write it out. I would really encourage you to go through that exercise of writing because you’ll be surprised at what you come up with.

Another way of really articulating the impact that you want to make in the world through your work is to define yourself as a professional. So think about if you wanted to summarize who you are as a lawyer in two to three sentences. What does that look like? You get to decide. We’ll talk a little bit more about expressing yourself in the next suggestion, but I would invite you to think about that. How do you define yourself as a professional? What words are you choosing? How do you describe your role? What is the experience you want others to have when they work with you?

The third step is to ask yourself how you want to express yourself as a professional. Here there are a number of ways that you are expressing yourself. You may be doing this with intention, you may not. So the first is in the way that you speak.

So as lawyers, you are constantly using language for various purposes. Whether you’re a litigator and you’re speaking in court, whether you’re a solicitor and you’re drafting a contract. We all know the significance of language and the impact that words have in terms of the legal meaning and consequences that flow from that. I would invite you to apply that same discipline to how you would describe the way that you show up as a professional.

When I was creating this podcast, some of my earlier legwork that I did was to create an editorial style guide for myself. Now, I can’t say that I adhere 100% to my style guide, but nevertheless I think it was a very useful exercise for me to go through. Because I brainstormed in terms of the language that I love, words that are powerful and meaningful to me. Words that are inspiring. Words that, to me, evoke possibility and growth and inspire and motivate others to achieve big goals for themselves.

So I have a whole section of words that I love that I want to use more of. I also created a category of words that I want to move away from. Words that I find are not empowering. Words that I find are sapping of energy and motivation. Those are words that I want to use judiciously. If I use them at all, I want to make sure that I’m using them in a way that is contrasting perhaps what you could have versus what you could create. So I would invite you to think about what kind of language that you are using.

An easy example for me is busy is not a word that I find particularly empowering. So I invite you if it’s a word that you’re using to think of other ways that you might express what busy means to you in a way that’s more empowering. So language is certainly one way of thinking about how you want to shape your brand.

This goes, I mentioned earlier that this exercise that we’re going through, these prompts, these suggestions can be used in your personal life as well as in your professional life. So if you’re thinking about it from the perspective maybe as a spouse, as a parent, what is the language that you’re choosing to use with others? Is it a reflection of who you want to show up as?

So this is such a powerful tool. I think if there’s one takeaway from today’s podcast episode, it really is to be deliberate in the language that you choose. Because as lawyers I’m guessing, and I’m pretty confident, this is an area that you spend a lot of time thinking about in relation to your professional work. I would invite you to think about that in relation to your branding.

Another way that you express yourself is through your body language. I think probably the most insightful resource that I have for that is Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk. There will be a link to that in the show notes. She did a talk all about body language and how your psychology—the way that you position your body—influences your psychology. It is absolutely fascinating. She offers a number of power poses that you can use, and talks about using those power poses before important meetings and interviews.

So as you think about how you’re using body language to express yourself, I would invite you to think about how that plays into your personal branding. When you enter a room, when you show up on a Zoom call, how are you using your body to express your brand? Are you looking people in the eye? Are your shoulders back? Are you showing up with confidence?

Are you positioning yourself in a corner of a room? I imagine post-pandemic you’re in a room with other humans. How are you holding your body? How are you showing up with others? Are you looking them in the eye? So really be intentional about how it is that you want to show up and present yourself. That too is part of your personal brand.

The next thing that you may consider in terms of how you express yourself is how you engage with other people. This is so impactful. There’s an expression that goes something like this. People won’t necessarily remember exactly what it is that you said to them, but they will remember how you made them feel.

So when you are engaging with others, really focus on how it is that you are making them feel. Are you focused on them? Are you listening to them? Are you speaking to them in a tone that you would like to be spoken to?   These are all ways of engaging with others and connecting with others. I would ask yourself how it is that you want to show up when you are communicating and engaging with others.

Finally when it comes to expressing yourself, the element of style. This, I think, is a topic that can polarize some individuals. There are mixed views in terms of the role that style plays or should play in one’s professional life. I would invite you to think about how you might use your own style to empower yourself in your interactions with others. This isn’t to say that I think you need to dress a certain way.

Rather I would invite you to think about what makes you feel good when you are presenting yourself in a professional context. Are there certain colors that make you feel more powerful than others? From some of the research that I’ve done in terms of style, certain colors for example are considered to be more powerful than others. Maybe it’s the structure of your clothing. Maybe it’s the way that you put yourself together.

Think about how you can use style to reflect who you are personally and professionally in a way that is unique to you. So, again, in certain environments, you may feel a lot of pressure to conform to the expectations of others. What I’m asking you to do here is to simply rethink that and to ask yourself how you feel most confident when you show up.

So the fourth area I would invite you to consider when defining your own brand is to look at your boundaries. When we’re thinking about our branding, I think we often think about how it is that we’re showing up and how we are serving. I would also ask you to think about where those limits are. It may be that you are setting boundaries on time. You may think about some of your favorite stores, for example.

One of them actually comes to mind for me. I haven’t been there in a little while, but there’s a bakery here in Vancouver called Thomas Haas. I love going into that store because it is so beautifully done. The owner, Thomas Haas, is a pastry chef. He’s German. He’s this lovely man. He creates these beautiful desserts and pastries and chocolates. When you go to his store, it is truly an experience. You can tell that every detail has been thought through.

Typically his store is closed on Sundays and Mondays. He has regular business hours the other days of the week. What I admire about this is that it sets an expectation that yes, you are going to be able to go to his store on the days that he is open. He has these beautiful products, and you can enjoy the experience. You can buy them. Then there are days that are allocated to rest.

I would invite you to think about in your own professional world whether you are in private practice, whether you are in government, whether you are in some other types of organization, what it is in terms of your time where you may need to be setting some boundaries. A lot of lawyers struggle with time management. A big part of that is our willingness to want to please others and to show up and to help everybody. That may come at a cost.

If I go to the Thomas Haas example, what I love about that, what that signals to me is that by taking some time away from you’re actually allowing yourself to recharge. You’re allowing yourself to have more inspiration. You’re allowing yourself to rest. I would invite you to think about how it is that you are setting boundaries for yourself so that you are able to do those things as well.

You know from experience, I know from experience that when I overextend myself, I’m no longer delivering at my highest capacity. So by setting boundaries in terms of the hours that you are available for professional work, you allow yourself to potentially be much more effective in the hours that you are there. So time is an area where you may need to set boundaries in terms of establishing your brand.

Another area where you may need to establish some boundaries is in terms of ethics. I hope that you don’t find yourself in this type of situation. I know when I was practicing law, I did end up in some situations where I had to be firm in others in terms of what I was doing and what I was not doing. That is not always an easy conversation to have.

I know from other lawyers that they too have also had these experiences where maybe it’s because the person that they’re speaking with doesn’t know. They may innocently ask them to do something that falls offside the lawyer’s comfort in terms of what is ethical. It may be that sometimes you’re in a situation where the other party does know that what they’re asking you to do is not truly ethical. So I would invite you to think about what your boundaries are in terms of ethics, and to be firm in those boundaries.

Another area is in how you treat other people. So it may be that you have certain standards for yourself in terms of how you are going to engage with others. So think about that. How do you want to treat people? I’m guessing that some of the things that you might want to hold as your brand are that you treat other people with respect, that you are treating them the way that they want to be treated. Maybe you are going beyond that and treating them the way that they would like to be treated based on how they are. That might be an area where you might want to set boundaries for yourself.

You may not want to allow yourself to be in situations, for example, where you’re angry with other people. Maybe if you feel yourself getting angry then you find a way to remove yourself from a situation so that you have time to process that anger and to revisit a conversation when you’re feeling more calm. There are a number of areas here where treating others involves for you setting boundaries around how you want to show up.

It may also be setting boundaries on how you want to be treated. So you may have that experience of working with other lawyers, working with clients where you do not like the way that you are being treated. If that happens then you may need to be intentional, and you may need to take positive steps to establish boundaries around the way that you’re being treated.

So that’s another option for you. It helps if you are able to define ahead of time when you are going through this branding process to decide what those boundaries are. So that when you find yourself in a position where somebody is overstepping one of those boundaries, you recognize it and you’re able to take steps in the moment.

I know for me that has always been a challenge in terms of recognizing where my boundary may be violated and where I want to take positive steps towards correcting that. It’s a lot easier to do that if, from my experience, when I know ahead of time of where I’m setting my boundaries and how I’m going to respond in the moment. Verses when I’m caught completely off guard and unable to really respond to the moment because I haven’t thought it through.

I don’t know about you, but I find it surprising when somebody really oversteps a boundary. I’m usually surprised more than anything. So to be able to respond to the moment, I really need to be prepared ahead of time. Not necessarily anticipating that I will need to take positive action in that particular moment. But knowing ahead of time where my boundaries are allows me to gauge when this is happening more easily.

So, again, that may be something that you want to think about when you’re thinking about your boundaries. So, again, just going back to a brief review of some of the boundaries that you might think about. Boundaries on your time, boundaries on your ethics, boundaries on how you treat others, and boundaries on how you will allow others to treat you.

Finally the fifth step that I would offer to you, and this is a really fun exercise, is to write yourself a letter from the future that describes the experience of working with you. You can describe this experience as maybe something that comes from you. So you can write the letter in the first person as in here is who I am a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. This is how others experience working with me.

You can also create that experience by writing from the perspective of a third person, and describe that experience that they had of working with you. While I was preparing for today’s podcast, I found a letter that I had actually written to myself back in August of 2018. So this was right around the time that I had finished my coach training, and I had not yet launched my private coaching practice.

What I had done was I wrote a letter and I postdated it three years from that day, which interestingly is around now. This podcast will come out not on the exact day but very close to the day that I had set in this imaginary letter where I was describing the experience one of my clients would have working with me.

Some of the things that I described were the way that I listened to that particular client. How that client and I had created a six month plan together for building up to some of the goals that this client had had. We had talked about a step by step process where we built on small steps. Where we made small steps of progress and then built on those. Where the setbacks that this particular person had became lessons for future growth. How the process left this person ahead of where they had anticipated to be.

Finally this whole experience allowed that person to find clarity in terms of the goals that they were going after, clarity in terms of how they would process situations ahead of them. The interesting thing is that although this letter was written three years ago before I coached most of my clients. As I read through this letter, I read through it last night. I thought this is so incredible and so impactful because I have now had these experiences with the clients that I’ve worked with in my coaching practice.

So all these things that I have written down in this letter to myself, me writing as a third person to myself three years into the future. I had now created those experiences for others. I know that I created those experiences because often I was told that I was creating those experiences. And I also knew from the results that my clients have achieved that I have helped them achieve the very things that I was writing about in that letter.

So when it comes to you and establishing your brand, I would invite you to write a letter from the experience of somebody who will work with you. Or characteristics or traits that you want to have for yourself, and be really specific and granular. Write them from some point in the future. Maybe it’s one year. Maybe it’s three years. Whatever it is, pick that then really get granular about that. You may be surprised about how you may come back to that letter in the future, and realize that you accomplished all that it was that you set out to do. That you showed up professionally in the way that you want to show up.

So the reason that these strategies will work, and I’ll recap them in a moment, is that they come from you. You’re no longer looking to your outside circumstances to determine how it is that you should show up as a professional, how you should show up as a lawyer, how you should be interacting with your clients, your colleagues. You are now making those decisions based on your own values, what’s important to you.

You now have reinforced with certainty who you are and who you want to be as a professional, and you now have a framework for how it is that you’re going to make decisions. If you contrast that with what we talked about earlier, right, where you’re trying to live into other people’s expectations about what a lawyer should be. One day it’s you should be aggressive. The next day you should be more studious. The next day you should be holding your head up high. The next day you should be doing something else.

I mean instead of looking to others to define you, you get to do that for yourself. It’s so much more powerful when it comes from within. You’re no longer trying to fit yourself into somebody else’s mold of the idea of what it is to be a lawyer. You’re now deciding that for yourself and then living into that. That is so much more empowering. There is so much less confusion.

You are spending so much less energy trying to be something to somebody else. You’re now able to give life to that form of excellence that is yours to create. Only you can create that definition of excellence, and you are not positioned to do that. You are now creating your own excellence, your own brand of excellence.

The skills that you need to do this for yourself are creativity to simply sit down and go through these questions to create this ideal for yourself. Courage to then go out into the world and experiment. If you’re not already showing up in alignment with this brand that you want to have for yourself, it will take courage because you’re going to have to start taking steps. You’re going to have to show up in a different way. Finally discipline. The discipline of consistently showing up the way that you want to show up, and to modifying and adapting if you find that you need to.

Like I said you can go through this exercise now. If you do, bravo. Please come back and revisit this podcast episode in six months, in a year. Make sure that you’re still on track in terms of the brand that you want to create for yourself because my guess is that that’s going to evolve over time as you and your practice evolve. The result that you’re going to create with this is you’re now going to have a consistent and clear message about who you are and how you show up in your professional work. You will have a brand that is true to who you are.

So to recap when it comes to creating your brand. Again, we talked about this in terms of your professional brand, but it can apply to your brand in the personal context as well. How you show up as a parent, a friend, a spouse. I want you to focus on these five steps. Number one, start by getting clear on your values. So we talked about how you might revisit what those values are, and to create a short list, three to five values.

Your values might be different depending on the role that you’re talking about. So if you’re looking at your professional work, for example, your top five values might be different from your top five values that you want to uphold as a parent or a friend.

The second is to get clear on the impact that you want to make. So this is where you might create a mission statement. This is where you want to define how you show up as a professional. The third is to be intentional about how you express yourself. These are the words that you choose to use in conversation with others and as you define your own brand. This is the way that you use body language to express yourself. It is the way that you engage with others around you. It’s your personal style. It’s how you choose to show up in a way that is most empowering and in integrity with who you are.

The fourth step is to set your boundaries. Those may be around time. It may be around ethics. It may be around how you treat others, and it may be around how you allow others to treat you.

Finally the fifth step is to write yourself a letter from the future where you are describing exactly how it is you want to show up. In this exercise, as I mentioned, you can write it from your own perspective. You can write it from the perspective of somebody who works with you. Get granular. Give yourself lots of details because those are our details you’re going to want to revisit at some point in the future. I promise you. You will be delighted to see how many of those characteristics you ultimately embody.

So that is what I have to share with you in today’s podcast episode. I’m so excited to have all of you join me today. I hope that you have found these questions and exercises to be helpful. I would love to hear how you apply these in your practice and the results that you create for yourself. So please feel free to contact me.

If you are interested in coaching, I am doing one to one coaching with lawyers. I would be delighted to hear from you. If that’s something that you’re interested in, I would recommend setting up a call with me. Send me an email. Reach out to me on my contact page.

We can have a call together where we can really dive into what it is that you would like to get out of coaching, whether it’s creating your personal brand, forecasting out a few years and creating a plan for yourself for your career. If you are looking to switch positions or change jobs, firms, organizations. Whether it is simply that you’re stuck, and you want to find a way to reframe and reorganize yourself so that you’re getting more joy out of the position that you’re in right now.

There are so many reasons that you may want to work with a coach. If you would like to work with me, I would be honored to work with you. So I would invite you if this is something that resonates with you to reach out to me. I will be taking on new clients in the fall, and I would love for you to be one of them.

Before I sign off, I would invite you and encourage you to please rate and review this podcast. It is a way for other people to find me. I would love it. I just popped onto my Apple feed just to check something before recording this podcast, and I saw that there were a number of reviews that have gone up. It’s amazing to me. It really is. It’s gratifying. It’s really fulfilling. It really warms my heart to know that I am speaking in a way that resonates with you.

So if this is impactful to you, please rate and review the podcast. It will really help me to find people, just like you, who will benefit from this work and allow us to really create more of what it is that we’re trying to create with this podcast. I talk about creating a joyful practice, and it is that. It’s so much more than that. It’s the impact that you’re creating in your work. It’s the experience that you’re having of your life and of your practice. So I would really love your help in sharing the word. So that’s all I got for you this week my friends. It has been a pleasure, and I look forward to reconnecting with you again next week. Bye for now.

If you enjoyed today’s show and don’t want to miss an episode, subscribe, and follow the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you haven’t already, please leave a rating and review. Your feedback will help me create a podcast that’s tailored to your needs and goes straight to the heart of what matters to you. For instructions on how to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast, visit www.thejoyfulpractice.com/podcastlaunch. See you next time.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Joyful Practice for Women Lawyers podcast. If you want more information, visit www.thejoyfulpractice.com. See you next week.