Sarah Cottrell: Hi, and welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Cottrell. On this show, I interview former lawyers to hear their inspiring stories about how they left law behind to find careers and lives that they love. Let's get right to the show.

Hello everyone. I'm excited for you to hear today's episode. This episode is a conversation with Jen Berson who is a former lawyer who is now a PR agency owner and she also runs an Agency Accelerator for other people who are interested in starting their own agencies to teach them how to build the kind of business that she has built.

We're going to get right to that episode in just a second, but I just wanted to speak briefly to all of you unhappy lawyers out there who want to leave the law but you're not sure where to start. I've been there, I know what it's like getting an email in your inbox that you just really don't want to get, feeling sick every time you see a new email in your inbox, stressed out because you're billing too much or you're not billing enough, you're not even sure how to get the mental energy to figure out what you want to do next. I know what it's like.

I created a free guide, First Steps to Leaving the Law which takes the guesswork out of the very first steps that you need to take to start your journey out of the law. Don't let another day go by, start on the path to getting out today, go to formerlawyer.com/guide to grab that guide. Okay, on to the episode.

Hi, Jen. Welcome to the podcast.

Jen Berson: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Sarah Cottrell: Well, why don't we start off with you introducing yourself to the listeners and talking a little bit about what made you decide to go to law school in the first place?

Jen Berson: Yeah. I am Jen Berson. I live in Los Angeles and I am currently running a PR and social media marketing agency called Jeneration PR, and we support brands. I represent beauty, baby, and health and wellness brands and I have loved this transition so much.

I know we'll talk about going from law to this other business which is not so new anymore. It's been about 14 years but I love it so much. I decided that I wanted to share this business model with others so that they can have the kind of business that gives them the flexibility, freedom, and all of the great things that have come from me running an agency. I want to teach them how. I have a program and a mastermind called The Agency Accelerator and I teach others how to launch, grow, and scale their own profitable PR agencies.

Sarah Cottrell: That is so cool. You said you've been doing that for 14 years, and I know you were a lawyer before that, so how long did you practice law before you made the decision to make that move?

Jen Berson: I was a civil litigator and I practiced for almost four years before I left. I know you were asking about what was the reason behind going to law school in the first place. I went to college up in Santa Barbara at UCSB and I was like a mega dork and got really good grades, I don't know, just basically rode my bike to class every day and just regurgitated what the professors told me in lectures, and somehow, that's the secret to getting good grades. Who knew?

I really wanted to stay in Santa Barbara over the summer and my parents were trying to get me to come back to LA and I said, “No, no. I'm going to study for the LSAT,” and I just ended up a series of tripping into law school. But I studied for the LSAT and then applied to law school. I always knew I wanted to go to graduate school and didn't really know what I ultimately wanted to do with my career.

My cousin was a lawyer and I thought, “That's a good education and let's see what happens.” I thought I would go into entertainment law which I'm from LA so there are a lot of firms around here that offer that and I thought it would be an exciting way to get into the entertainment industry. I went to USC Law School and graduated in 2001. The summer between second and third year, I got my internship, what do they call them now, clerkship, internship?

Sarah Cottrell: Oh, summer associate.

Jen Berson: Summer associate, yeah. I had my summer associate position, on campus interviews, was so competitive, and then you get swept up into that whole process. I'm saying my whole career with law was just going through the motions, getting swept into what others were doing, interviewed for on-campus interviews, and got a summer associate position at a really great firm that did have an entertainment side of it.

Between 2000, I guess the summer of 2000, the economy was booming and all of the tech companies were hiring the young good attorneys to tech startups and offering equity. All the firms were losing their talent and they had to bump up our salaries and give us wine and dine us more. The summer clerkship was in 2000, this incredible period of excess of just “Here's more money. Let's go to concerts and let's dine out every night.” I knew law wasn't that but it was very enticing to accept an offer when they made an offer after my summer associate position.

Then I was about passing the bar and well then I bought a house by myself. I wasn't married at the time and I had a mortgage payment and then it was like, “Okay, well now I'm an attorney and I have a mortgage and responsibility. This is what I do now.” I went through all of that without even really stopping to think “Is this what I want in my life? Is this really what I want to be doing with my life?”

Now I'm listening to myself talk and it sounds very naive, but I guess at 25, I really felt like I was living my life to please my parents, to please others, or to do something that was prestigious I guess without even really realizing “Is that what I want to be doing with my life?”

Sarah Cottrell: Yes, completely. One of the things that you referenced, I've had multiple conversations about this idea already with other guests and also just other lawyers who I know from my previous life about this idea that you get into law school and you get on this path and it's just very much like, “Okay, well now you interview for a summer job, and now you accept that job, etc.,” and it's very easy to not really think about “Is this actually the direction that I want to go?” which, like you said, sounds incredibly naive or silly like, “What? How does that happen?” but I think that's an incredibly common story for a lot of lawyers.

Jen Berson: You go down this path and it all sounds great and making partner is the ultimate destination I guess, but I want to live my life enjoying the journey, not to be an Instagram meme, but I want to love what I'm doing and be lit up every day by the work I'm doing. The real realization for me was that my big firm, one day I just looked around and I was like, “Huh, there are really no women here that have the kind of life that I'm looking for.”

They don't seem like they have, I know balance is loaded, but a close enough resemblance to a life, family, being a mom, being a checked-in parent, being a present spouse, and being well respected in their career at the firm. I saw a lot of women that were my direct mentors, young women four, five, six years into their careers start to get married and have kids and I saw them slowly dropping like flies. Either they would have a baby and they would choose not to come back or they would have a baby and come back and try to make it work and the firm would systematically eliminate their caseload.

I would see these women that would be cut off and would be eliminated or they would be allowed to work part-time and then really it was just a way to phase them out. Then I looked at the women who were partners, and in my firm, this was 15 years ago, there was a woman who did not have children, there was a woman who had children and she had three kids. She drove an hour and 15 minutes every day from Orange County to this LA firm, never saw her kids. I would see her in the office on weekends and I just thought to myself, “How is this a life? How is this a choice that we're making to live a life like this?”

At that moment I realized, I think I was 27 or 28 years old, “This is my life. I'm in charge of the decisions I make to be on the best path or to do something that fires me up, lights me up, makes me feel fulfilled. I want to get married. I want to have kids and I want to be there for them. I still want to have a career and I want to make great money.”

I want to also have a positive impact because what I was noticing was working on big cases, a lot of pre-trial motions that would drag on for years, consolidating a bunch of big federal cases. It would take years and you're working your butt off and there's no result or no closure on the work you're doing.

I actually started to do PR on the side. It was just a weird thing that I was drawn to. I've been pretty open to signs, messages, or just my intuition, open to what is coming my way, what is it telling me that I need to pay attention to. I was pulled in this direction to reach out to a company that had a fragrance that I really loved and I thought I could help them. I had a clear vision on what I could do to help them and didn't even know that was a PR service. I just was like, “Let me promote your brand to celebrities and then get it in magazines.”

I was able to do that in a short period of time, three weeks with a physical tangible result in my hand that I could actually see had a positive impact on a business, something that I pitched to the time it converted was three weeks. It was a positive result for a company, that resulted in a lot of sales for them, immediate sales. I thought, “If I could do this as my career and actually build up businesses rather than tear them down through expensive litigation, this is the right fit for my personality, this is the right fit for me.”

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I completely resonate with the idea of having a tangible result because you're so right, especially if you're in litigation, maybe a little bit less so if you're doing deals but with litigation, so often, you're doing lots of motion practice, you're writing and there are depositions. But ultimately, it's rare even to end up going to trial, both things settle. I think it can fuel that feeling of just ends in what feels like nothingness, and of course, even settling a case can be a good result for a client, but personally, for you personally, it can feel like there's not an end goal or an end result to show for it necessarily.

Jen Berson: Yeah. Honestly at my stage in my career at four years, there wasn't even a lot of that, it was a lot of document review. Honestly, I was doing collections work for my Biglaw firm, what a junky type of case to work on, but I got really good at it. Now I get paid in my agency. That's one thing I know how to do is get paid. But I was working on these huge cases and you're doing this tiny little piece. I was working so many hours, filling so many hours.

I remember at one point, I bought my place and it was this great place and I loved it. I love decorating and homemaking. I just was wanting to be a little Martha Stewart, but I was never there to do any of that. I was never around to enjoy this great salary. I remember I got a cat so I was like, “Okay. I'm a grown-up now. I can have my own pet.” So I got this cat and I'm not kidding you, I came home one day and the cat died, not because of anything I did, I wasn't ever home. The cat had a health issue I wasn't able to treat.

I had to get this cat medicine all the time. I was just working so much that I didn't even know that I was around to notice that this little kitten had this serious health issue. I came home and the cat was dead. It was a wake-up call. I'm like, “This sucks. I can't even keep a cat alive.” That sounds so terrible, but I've never even told anybody that. But that was what law was to me, it was neglecting myself and neglecting the things that I'm interested in. I eliminated all of my interests. It's just about working hours, billing hours, and proving myself. That wasn't the right career path for me ultimately.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think that's so common. I know that when I was working in Biglaw, I would say to people basically, “I'm a lawyer and that's pretty much all that I am.” Because people will say, “Oh, what do you do for hobbies or for fun?” I'm like, “I try to catch up on sleep.” For me, it sounds like it was similar where it just got to the point where I was like, “I don't want to just be a lawyer.” It seems like working this type of job, that's really the only way to continue in this job, that's what it's going to be like for me.

You said also looking at the people who are in the positions to which you're supposed to aspire, and almost exactly what you were talking about, I was looking around and I realized I am working towards this goal and I'm being told this is what I should want, but when I actually look behind the title, behind the paycheck, at the actual everyday lives of the people who are in the positions that I'm supposed to be trying to get to, I don't want those lives.

I think often, like we were talking about earlier, that whole conveyor belt thing, often lawyers are caught in that like, “Oh, I want to make partner,” or whatever, and they don't actually, I'm saying this because for me in the beginning, I didn't think about it, like do you actually want to be a partner? Do you want the title? Do you want the money? That's one thing but that's not all that it is.

Jen Berson: We all have the same experience and for me, it was that huge realization that there was so much more to life and to a career and that I'm actually in the driver's seat. Even in building the business that I wanted to have, I had that realization that this is my life. I get to choose who I want to work with. I want to build a business that I love working in every single day and I can confidently say that almost 15 years later, that's the kind of business that I built and I can be intentional.

I felt like up until that point, the conveyor belt is such a good analogy, it's like you are just on this path that's happening to you, life is happening to you. I realize that I can make my life happen for me. That was a huge mental shift. Now I live my life by that mindset and I'm intentional with the things that I do in my life and that I allow to come into my life, the choices I make, and even down to who I want to work with in my agency, what services I want to offer confidently, this is my life and I get to choose and I'm going to make life happen for me.

Sarah Cottrell: I love that. How soon, after you started at the firm, did you have this realization and then from that point, how long was it until you ended up leaving?

Jen Berson: Oh, god. There was so much choppiness honestly. Talk about listening to signs. But I had a situation of a partner mistreating me pretty early on and it was the hiring partner and the head of litigation. I tried to ignore it as long as possible and it really ate away at me. It eroded my confidence and when I finally opened up about it and shockingly, this is before the MeToo Movement, it was against the better judgment, the better advice that I got from a mentor, a female mentor who said, “Ignore it, zip your lip, don't say a word because you're committing career suicide.”

I thought, “How is this okay?” If I open up and say what happened to me, what this person said to me, and all of the horrible things they said, then I was the one that was going to lose my career. I was young and I had a mortgage payment and responsibility so I was scared.

When I finally opened up about it, I could see that I was a problem and they were trying to eliminate me and so I decided to get another job at another firm and left and got hit with something, I had to sign and keep my mouth shut and got to another firm. It was miserable. The people there were so miserable every single day and they would almost start drama with each other just for the sake of having a reality TV show play out in their offices.

I was not there very long but I thought these people are just really unhappy in their lives and the energy there was just an energy vortex and it just sucked the life out of me. Then I went to a small firm and I was brought in to do a damages piece of a large case and then ultimately, that work went away. I was unsupervised and the partners were golfing, wine tasting, and traveling and were not really that involved.

About four years into it, I had a little bit of time and I would do that PR work unpaid on the side while I was still practicing. When I realized what the service was that I was actually doing, and mind you, I'm not getting paid to do this and I thought if I could do this and actually get paid and earn a living providing the service, someone would actually pay me to do what I'm doing for free, I think that I would really enjoy that career.

Then you do what we do, you go into fact-finding, asking questions, and figuring out what resources are available. Do I want to go get a job at a PR firm? No. I want to start my own. That doesn't sound crazy at all. Then at the time, my husband, we were dating, he had started his MBA at USC and he was taking a marketing class and an entrepreneurship class and he said to me, “These things that I'm learning seem to come second nature to you. I really think that you would love having your own thing and you would be really great at it.”

Then I thought long and hard, “What does this look like and can I give myself six months of a runway to make this happen?” Then I gave my notice and honestly, I gave notice 15 years ago last weekend and I realized that because it's when my husband started his MBA, he had just transitioned and I had my friend's wedding. I remember that I told everyone at the wedding I just quit my job and it popped up on Facebook and I was like, “Oh, my god. That was exactly 15 years ago.”

It took a little while to learn and get going and then I founded my agency in March the following year but I was supporting somebody in the meantime and getting experience and learning the ropes. That's what I did for about eight months before that. But I just thought to myself, “Leap and the net will appear,” and that's what I did. I just took the leap and figured it out on the way down. I've always just tested things. For me, it's about figuring out what feels right, doing the things that I love. If I don't enjoy it, finding someone else to do it.

I do that in my business now too. I don't do a lot of the day-to-day execution. I have a team that does all of the outreach and supports me in that way. I get to just grow the business and bring a new business, come up with strategies, and then teach other people how to effectively implement the agency model in their businesses.

Sarah Cottrell: That's so awesome. You said you went to this wedding and basically were telling people “I just quit my lawyer job.” Did people in your life already know that you weren't happy working as a lawyer and were thinking about leaving or was this a situation where maybe a few close people knew, but other than that, not, so it was a surprise, and how did people react?

Jen Berson: Well, I think the hardest was telling my parents. That was the hardest. It didn't go over very well. There was a lot of yelling and screaming. Now I realize at this point now that I have kids, that my mom is really smart and sits and listens and just takes that information. I believe she was really just trying to absorb what I was saying and she processes.

But my dad was I think scared. I think that he was really afraid of what that meant for me. I had responsibilities. I had that mortgage payment, law school is expensive. I was walking away from a really nice salary at a Biglaw firm. I think for him it was that fear of “What does this mean?” I knew that I was just betting on myself. I will take that bet any day because I know I'm going to put in the work and I trust my instincts.

But I think that even to answer your question and come back from my long tangent, I think that I didn't even realize at the time how much I disliked my career in law until I wasn't in it anymore. I just thought it's the only job I ever had. I was a bank teller and I worked in retail and all of that but I just figured for a career this is just what it is and I didn't realize that there's a better way that you can have it all, you can have a career that lights you up. You can make great money, you can have flexibility.

My definition of success changed. I don't think that I had a solid definition of success before that because I think that I would have thought that I was successful. But then when I realized that my definition of success includes, at the top of the list, flexibility, controlling my time, and all of that, now I realized, “Oh, I really didn't enjoy that now that I wasn't in it.”

I think that I had been really vocal about telling people that I was promoting this brand. I was so passionate about it. I was getting great results. It was really fun for me. When I decided to make that pivot full time, I think people looked at me sideways a little bit like, “You're crazy but you seem really passionate about it, so okay we'll see what happens” thing. But I think really it was my folks who were just mostly scared of what that meant for me.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think that's a pretty common experience. I also think that often, it can be difficult because the people in our lives see the positives but not necessarily all of the negatives, especially if they're people who you aren't particularly close to. I think there's this, “Well, why wouldn't you keep this high-paying job?”

Jen Berson: “And you worked so hard to get here and law school is so expensive,” and all of those.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think, like you said, people don't necessarily, especially if they're not lawyers, they just don't necessarily understand how truly miserable someone can be if it's not the job that they're supposed to be in. I know there are a lot of people out there who are thinking about leaving the law and one of their concerns is “How will my parents react?” or “How will my friends react?” I think, like you said, even though you wouldn't necessarily say that your parents reacted well, it was also from a place of them wanting the best for you.

Jen Berson: Yeah. Love and concern. The older I get, the more I realize that this is my life. I'm not living it for other people. Aside from your family who genuinely love you, care about you, and think about you, nobody else thinks about you. You can't win everyone over. We're not here to be liked and to have everybody understand the decisions that we make.

I do a lot of Facebook lives in my business and if I cared what I thought other people were thinking of me, I would never have the confidence to turn on my camera, talk like an idiot, and go live. But I think about who I'm serving and how I'm helping them. It allows me to overcome that. But I've realized that first of all, people aren't really paying a lot of attention to what other people are doing. They're too busy worrying about what other people are thinking of them. The reality is people aren't really thinking anything. If anything, I've heard more than anything that it's inspiring.

I haven't heard people say, “Wow, I inspired my husband. My husband left his corporate job. You've got to get out of this job.” “But they paid him extremely well. They paid for his MBA, the commute wasn't terrible, everything was all going for him except that he was miserable in it because it was just not fulfilling.” I said, “There is a better way and I know that you will be successful because you're just betting on yourself and you have an amazing network. You're willing to work hard and you'll figure it out. You have a ton of skills, you will find the thing that is the right fit for you.”

He left his job five years ago. He just had his best year ever in his whole career. He just landed a huge client that he's going to be helping sell their business. My husband is a business broker and helps companies get ready for sale and find their buyer and then conducts the transaction. He loves it and he is so good at it. He's so lit up. That's the message that I'm getting.

I don't care what other people think, if they think I'm crazy. It's how can I help people? How can my story inspire others to see that there's a way that your career, some people completely separate their lives and their careers and that's okay. But I see that they can be intertwined and that your life can benefit what you're doing in your career. Your career can set you up to have freedom and flexibility to have time with your family and interests, time with your friends, be a room mom, and all of that. It can all serve you.

I definitely didn't want to disappoint my parents but I'm not here to make them feel one way or the other. I can be a good person and that they'll appreciate but I can't not live my life so that my dad can be on the golf course and tell his golf buddies that his daughter is a lawyer.

Sarah Cottrell: If you're listening to this episode the day that it releases, that's October 7th, 2019, that means that you have less than 48 hours to grab my mini course for Steps to Leaving the Law Jumpstart for the discounted pre-order price of $47. When it releases on Wednesday, October 9th, it will be $97. I would really love for you to take advantage of this if this is something that is going to be helpful to you.

You might be thinking, “Okay, but what is this course? What's included?” I just wanted to give you a little bit of a description about that. It's three modules. They correspond to the three steps from my First Steps to Leaving the Law Guide and each of the modules has multiple brief text and video lessons to accelerate your progress through the steps.

The lessons are not onerous because I know that you do not have time for lengthy and unnecessary things because I've been there. There you go. There are also specific concrete exercises and actions that you will take that will move you through your first steps as quickly as possible. There are also a few questions in each module that you will answer. The responses will come directly to me. That means it's accountability for you in moving through the course as well as an opportunity for me to see how else I might be able to help you.

If you're interested, please don't delay the pre-order prices going away on Wednesday. Go to formerlawyer.com/jumpstart and pre-order for $47. Now if you're listening to this after October 9th, you can still go to formerlawyer.com/jumpstart and grab the course. I know that it's going to be helpful to a lot of people and I'm really excited about it.

For sure. I think too, if there are people thinking about leaving the law and what's holding them back is, “Well, what will my colleagues at the law firm think or what will the random people who I introduced myself to at whatever events think when I tell them whatever I end up being that's not a lawyer?” I think sometimes it's important to flip the script and think, “Okay, but if what other people think about what you're doing or whether leaving the law is crazy, if that is what's holding you back, are you really going to keep working in a career that you don't like for 20, 30, 40, 50 years because some random person who you might meet at a cocktail party might not be sufficiently impressed by whatever job it is that you end up doing that's not lawyer?”

I know that's a bit hyperbolic but truly, yeah, most people at your law firm probably will think, “What is this person doing? Because they're making a different choice.”

Jen Berson: Well, they're jealous, you're like, “Ugh, they found a way out.”

Sarah Cottrell: I think framing it in that perspective can be really helpful, if you realize I'm literally making or not making a decision to make a move basically because I think someone might think something bad about it and so you're going to continue in that career for decades, I think when you think of it in those terms, you realize, “Hey, maybe this isn't the best decision for me.”

Jen Berson: Yeah. It is really hard when you work so hard towards something, and law school is challenging, passing the bar is really challenging, and when you pass, it just feels amazing and getting a great job at a really solid law firm or pursuing something in law that you envisioned for yourself and then finally getting there makes it that much harder to stomach the fact that, at least for me, it's not fulfilling, it's not gratifying.

You feel a little bit like it's almost when you leave, there's that component of letting people down, if it's your family, disappointing others, or they just look at you like you're crazy or what are other people going to think, but there's also a little bit of shame, either you can't hack it in this industry or in this job. You just aren't cut out for it. There's a little bit of that feeling of shame but also admitting to someone that you made the wrong choice.

I think there's some of that but I look at everything in my career and in my life, it all leads to the next thing. It's the juxtaposition of seeing what you don't love so that you can recognize, really understand, and pursue what you do love and what will light you up. Maybe you wouldn't even know about it or be open to it if you didn't have the other experience first to know what it is that you actually do want to do.

I think there's a little bit of, it feels like, you're almost admitting defeat. People say, “Well, you wasted that education, you wasted the money. Why did you go through all that?” I know a lot of people who go to law school and take the bar and either they don't pass or they do pass and they decide they don't ever want to practice and that's fine too. The education is still in my brain. I am still a member of the bar. I still have all of that experience. Aside from the actual practical information, experience that I learned in law school in my career, I have the experience of knowing what I want out of my career because I experience so much of what I don't want.

Sarah Cottrell: Yes, totally. It's so interesting that you mentioned the shame piece because I was just having a conversation yesterday with another guest on the podcast about this idea that, for whatever reason in law, there seems to be this idea that if you go on to do something other than being a lawyer, it's some failure or it demonstrates some personal deficiency as opposed to, in most jobs, people leave jobs all the time and change careers.

It's not a statement on your worth as a person but for some reason, particularly in the legal field—and I don't know if it's because we're all trained to be so risk-averse or in some cases because people are really unhappy in their job, but they're going to continue and they need to feel validated in that or I'm sure there are a host of reasons—but there is this strange, “Oh, if you leave, that is a sign that you've done something wrong.” I think once you get outside of that environment, you realize this is totally normal, it is totally normal to just go do something else that works better for you.

Jen Berson: Yeah, absolutely. You wouldn't recognize what that is if you didn't have the other experience to guide that. You don't know until you've done it. It's the outside world looking in. “My parents never practiced law, how can they tell me how I'm supposed to feel about it when I'm there in that job?”

Sarah Cottrell: I think sometimes, and I say it just because I know this was true for me, you have this feeling of, “Well, I need to prove that I made the right decision in going to law school. The way I'm going to prove that is by staying in this job,” which is a very convoluted way of thinking about it. But I think it's super common. I've seen it in a lot of different people and a lot of the guests that I've talked to already on the podcast have talked about having to get past that mindset issue in order to move on.

You decided you wanted to leave, you left, talk a little bit about what the business looked like from there and how you built it.

Jen Berson: Oh, this is my favorite subject, building the business. When I first started out, like I said, the very first eight months, I was just learning from somebody else. I was supporting them, learning how to actually provide the service of PR. What did it entail? Just the tactical how do you pitch? How do you build media lists? I really just loved it. I loved it so much.

For a number of reasons I decided that I was going to, it wasn't like I had a job at a PR firm, I was really helping somebody build a business and then I realized that I was building her dream and not my dream. About eight months into it, that's when I went off on my own and I just came up with the name Jeneration. It's interesting because it's the thing that people comment on the most. I think it sounds very familiar to them, especially at the beginning, they were like, “Oh, yeah. I've heard of that.” I'm like, “No, you haven't,” which was great.

Then I worried that they might say, “Well, it's just you, it's just Jen,” but it's bigger than me and it always has been even when it was just me, I always approached it from an agency perspective. We can support you, we can help you. Then I actually was lucky enough, my husband got a meeting for me with the head of the entrepreneurship program at the USC Business School really early on in my agency. He gave me a lot of really good advice.

I actually found the notebook where I took my little copious notes like a little nerdy student, and remember him giving me early on advice to hire a team before I thought I was ready, and building out my business in terms of finders, minders, and grinders so that I could elevate my role to the finder role, the visionary role, and have other people doing the day-to-day execution so that I wasn't working all the time in the business, I can actually work on the business. I got that advice really early on and that was the period when I experienced my first moment of quantum growth in my business.

I say that quantum growth because it wasn't linear growth. It wasn't just, “Oh, 20% year over year,” or even a hockey stick, it was just exponential growth beyond what I could have thought was possible from one year to the next. Then I did it again another time. My very first client was a baby brand. I worked with them for 11 years. I'll get into how I started working with them but when I stopped working with them, I think that held me back a little bit.

When I stopped, I reassessed my value that I provided in the market and I brought my rate up to match really where our expertise was the results we were getting. Because when you work with a client for so long, I started with them below market and said, “Give me a chance. Let me just prove to you what I can do and if you like our work, let's continue and we'll grow together.” You grow a little bit over time but someone coming in off the street, they're going to have to pay for the value that you provide in the current market.

Literally overnight when I stopped working with my very first client that I supported for 11 years, I tripled our monthly retainers, really thinking about where's the market, what do we do, what are the results we get. The next day, my dream client came knocking on our door. The timing was just insane. It was literally when one door closes, another one opens. But when I gave our proposal and told them our new rates, they just said, “Send us a contract. Sounds great.”

It's when you get to a certain level, there's no negotiating, it's like they just want the best service and they're happy to pay for it. That was my second moment of quantum growth in the business was really realizing the value and where we are in the market. But how I first got my start is, like I said, with this one first paying client, I just said, “Take a chance on me. I'm going to hustle. I'm going to work really hard. If we get results, we'll keep going. If we don't, it's three months, no sweat off your back.”

That ended up being an 11-year relationship, which in the PR world is unheard of. People bounce around a lot. They're always looking for more or something different. They think the grass is greener, and that happens, we get a lot of companies coming to us saying they were with big agencies and not getting great results and they were farmed out to junior associates or whatever they're called. I don't even know, junior publicists. Now we're back in the law world.

A lot of the clients that are coming our way these days are companies that are disenchanted with large agencies and they're paying a ton of money and they can see their accounts getting farmed out to these junior publicists with really no experience. Then they're getting trained on the client's dime and they're not getting results. We've just, in the last month, secured two clients who have the exact same story. It's been a really great shift for us. We're seeing these large clients wanting great service, wanting a nimble agency that's fast.

They get great results but they just want good service and they don't care if you work from home, they don't care what that looks like. They just want the results. That's what we're aiming for in the business. That's what I teach in my Agency Accelerator is really how to carve out an expertise, carve out your niche, become known as the go-to in your industry, having your dream clients come to you because you are establishing yourself in that niche as the person that gives the best service. I was able to establish a niche in the baby and kids space, a lot of expertise with that very first client. We were able to roll that into bigger clients, bigger opportunities, and it's how I was able to build the business.

Sarah Cottrell: That's really interesting. For people who don't know a lot about the PR industry, what are the services that you provide to your clients for people who maybe are thinking, “Oh, this sounds interesting but I don't know that much about the nuts and bolts of what is actually done day-to-day”?

Jen Berson: Yeah. Well, day-to-day we're all sitting in front of our computers, answering emails but it looks the same as the lawyer, just different subject. So PR is essentially getting, it could be an expert or a brand with physical products, books, whatever, it could be a charity, whatever the subject of the pitch is, it's getting the media to talk about a product in an editorial way.

We all know advertising, that's paid placement. Advertising is the client pays, they get a specific amount of space in a magazine, they get a certain number of mentions on a website, they control the content. PR is looking for editorial features. You're pitching an idea, you're pitching your client in a unique way, and reaching out to various types of media, places, hopefully, that the ideal customer would be reading, that they would see it, and be interested in those products or services, and trying to gain exposure through media attention.

That has shifted more in digital. All of the online, either online versions of print magazines or websites they have, they're looking for a lot of content. There's actually a lot of editorial opportunities contrary to popular belief, there are a ton of opportunities, it's just changing, agencies that can offer more digital services. We also offer social media services, which includes taking over our clients' strategies for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter depending on where they want to engage.

Most clients are on Facebook and Instagram. Our agency creates content. We have a photo studio and we have a social media strategist that's coming up with the strategies and writing the content. That's a separate side for us as a separate team. With our social media services, we're providing actual content, we're creating in a studio, we have a photo studio, we have a graphic designer, somebody that's coming up with strategy and actually executing on that. Then in between the two, we have influencers.

We do influencer marketing, and that's a whole complicated thing that's changing all the time. You definitely want an agency that knows what they're doing there because there's a lot of ways to spend a lot of money and get no results. But we try to offer all of that to our clients and try to get everyone in the same flow of what work we're doing for them. We want to get everyone in a great flow state. Those are the services that we're providing and those are the services that we became known for, people come to us for.

Sarah Cottrell: That's super interesting. It sounds like a really interesting job. It sounds like there would be a lot of different things, it wouldn't be the same thing all the time.

Jen Berson: No, it's not. It's also just really fun and creative. I look at pitching PR, getting our clients exposure, and telling their stories. It's sales but it's also like how litigation, how both sides have the same set of facts. They have to come up with the most compelling argument to support their side. PR is the same way. It's convincing the editor, it might be the judge, opposing counsel, or a jury, getting them to see your products, your story, and your client is interesting. That's what we're doing. For me, it's sales. Just getting somebody bought into the benefits of what I'm telling them about our clients' products.

Sarah Cottrell: I think that's really interesting because one of the themes that has come up in the conversations that I've been having with guests on the podcast is just the way that there are so many different skills that you develop as a lawyer, or even from what you learn in law school that can be applied in certain ways in lots of other careers. If you're thinking, “Well, I'm a lawyer and that's all I can ever be,” that's really not true.

Jen Berson: No, not true. We're smart and we can figure things out, and skills translate. If you know how to do collections and you want to run your own business, that's even better.

Sarah Cottrell: Good advice. Okay, well, as we're getting towards the end of our conversation, I just wanted to ask you, for people who are listening who either are lawyers and they know they want to leave or maybe they're just unhappy in their law job but they're not sure, what advice do you have for people who are thinking about leaving the law?

Jen Berson: Well, there is more for you outside of law. What can be very helpful, it's scary when you don't really know where you're going next or what to do. What helped me was thinking about people that I knew that had jobs that seemed interesting to me and trying to really figure out, like you said, what does the day-to-day look like, what is the actual job. It's not just with PR, it's not just samples in a press closet, and going to fashion shows. There's actual nitty-gritty you have to get into to be effective in this job.

I wanted to understand what that entailed so I looked around and thought about who I knew that had a job or a career that seemed interesting to me and also the life that I wanted to live and had similar values to me. What are their values? What is important to them? Can I fashion my career to look like that, do it with my own spin, but see that was a possibility for me by seeing who I knew that had a job or a career that looked interesting to me? And then asking a ton of questions.

Just look around. It might be scary to make the leap when you don't even know where you're going to go, so just asking around, asking the right questions, and when the time comes and you're ready to do it, first of all, it feels amazing and you will feel a hundred pounds lighter and you're floating on air when you realize that hard decision has been made and now you're on the next chapter.

Now more than ever, there are so many resources online to learn any skill, to learn anything. I have business mentors that have really helped me figure out how to fast track my results for various things I'm doing in my business. If you want to start your own company, learn a new skill, or do really anything, you can figure it out and really tap into all of these experts that are now offering training to get the results that they have had by tapping into their framework and fast tracking the results.

That's why I teach my Agency Accelerator Program and I have this whole Path to Profitability framework. You can shortcut results by investing. If you were willing to invest in law school education, you can invest in an online education and learn amazing skills from true experts. There's no better time than now. It feels amazing. It does not matter what anyone else thinks because number one, they're probably not even thinking of you. Number two, they're probably a little bit jealous that you have figured out a way to go outside of law.

The ultimate reality is this is your life. You have one life. You want to make the most of it while you're here on earth, and you spend so much time working, you might as well enjoy what you're doing and do something that lights you up every single day.

Sarah Cottrell: That is such good advice and so true. I think that'll be really helpful for a lot of people. Thank you so much, Jen, for coming on the podcast today.

Jen Berson: Thank you for having me.

Sarah Cottrell: Thanks so much for listening today. I absolutely love getting to share these stories with you. If you haven't yet, subscribe to the show, and come on over to formerlawyer.com and join our community to get even more support and resources in your journey out of the law. Until next time. Have a great week.