My Own Kind Of Independence Day
This week marks a year since I handed in my resignation letter and prepared to walk away from my fifteen year legal career. It was finally time to start doing this full time with no safety net and a lot of optimism that, looking back, was either brave or slightly unhinged.
Probably both.
I'm marking it officially with a fabulous party on the 4th of July with my nearest and dearest. Independence Day, which I find quietly funny, because in its own small way that is what this year has been. My own independence day from the institutions that gave me structure but also limits.
I wanted to write this one down rather than just say it. A year is worth marking properly and these are the 3 more things I’ve learnt recently.
The build
A year ago, Counsel Media was mostly an idea and a single podcast I made in my spare time. Today, it's a podcast in its sixth season with listeners in twenty seven countries, a run of Big Sis Briefings, a national law school tour I have loved more than almost anything, coaching, workshops, many digital products and, somehow, merchandise. I am also a person who sells caps and stickers too!
Oh, and CounselCon 2027 is almost a go!
I'm not listing that to read you my new CV. I'm listing it because almost none of it existed in this form twelve months ago. It got built one slightly terrifying decision at a time and most of those decisions did not feel strategic when I made them. They just felt like the next true thing for me. Until recently, I have only been following the breadcrumbs.
There's one moment that still gets me in particular and it got me again last week at the LawNinjas NextGen GC Conference in Sydney. I look down at my lanyard at an event and there it is, “Founder - Counsel Media”, printed under my name.
Wow.
This is real.
That buzz has not worn off and I hope it never does.
The side quest
I did not plan this next part at all.
I was watching Brittney Saunders’s Instagram Reel asking for some small businesses she could support by showcasing them on her next overseas holiday. The comments underneath were extraordinary. Thousands of small business owners putting their hand up, saying here I am, here's what I make. My brain did the thing it always does. Somebody should organise this. Followed almost immediately by, oh no, the somebody is me.
So I built it. The Pink Pages.
A directory and marketplace for small businesses that grew from a comments section into more than twelve hundred listings and close to three hundred people who directly submitted and trusted me to do something useful with it.
My mum, Kerry, took on the verification and the spreadsheet maintenance from up on the Sunshine Coast, because there is a particular kind of love in a mother who, when her daughter says I've accidentally started a directory, simply replies, send me the login details.
The lawyer in me wanted to scope it, risk assess it and build the perfect version before launching anything.
The founder in me said build the next true thing and see if anyone wants it. They do.
August
In a few weeks, I'm taking my first proper holiday as a self-employed person. Most of August, in Europe, for a very good friend's wedding. I've planned for it, it's fine, and it still feels deeply strange.
Because for most of August I won't be earning the way I earn when I'm here. In corporate life you have annual leave. You switch on the out of office, you come back and your salary did not notice you were gone. That is a luxury you do not appreciate until it's gone.
Nobody puts the seasonality in the “new business” brochure. I'm learning the rhythm of this business in real time. February, if last year is anything to go by, is a rush. August, for me, is going to be quiet by design. The work of this next stage is not doing more. It's building things that tick along and create value when I step away from them.
What the year taught me:
Follow the spark before you've scoped it. The Pink Pages should not have worked. I had a full plate already and no business reason to build it. I built it anyway because I couldn't not and it became one of the unexpected things I made all year. The polished strategy is not always the highest value move. Sometimes it's the messy, curious, eldest daughter energy of looking at chaos and quietly starting a spreadsheet.
Build things that outlast your effort. Early on you survive by doing. The maturity stage is asking the better question. How do I build something that keeps working when I'm not in the room. I'm not all the way there. I can see it now and seeing it is the start of creating it.
Let rest have a price tag and pay it anyway. I could stay home in August and keep the money flowing. I'm not going to. The wedding matters, the friend matters and a life that only works when you never step away from it is not a life you've built. It's a job you gave yourself.
A year ago I took a big leap.
This year I'm still learning to land, to rest and to build the kind of thing that holds steady while I'm somewhere in Europe with my phone deliberately face down.
Here's to the second year. I cannot wait to show you what it looks like.
Onwards!
Mel
