Jan 13, 2021
In this episode, I interview Caralee Fontenele, the founder and director of Collective Family Law, a Gold Coast and Brisbane-based law firm specializing in family law. Caralee left school at age 16, went to uni in her late 20s, and in 2012 aged 34, graduated in law. She started working in her husband’s one-person law firm and he soon gave up leaving the business in $460,000 debt, which she worked hard and paid off in 3 years. She has grown the business from one full-time employee to 14, and $500,000 in year one to now over $2Million per annum.
She only works ten hours a week on the business, not doing any billables herself. The firm now focuses squarely on family law (Divorce and separation). 70% of people don’t retain a lawyer during separation and divorce, so in 2018, they launched an online product to target that market. They also launched the Scalable Business Society, which helps service-based businesses scale as she has done. Tracking metrics around billables and marketing allowed sales to jump from $1.2 Million to $2Million+ per annum, and half of their sales came from Google Adwords.
Caralee says she felt she has succeeded when finally there was money in the bank and believes that the hardest thing about growing a small business is getting out of your own way. The one thing she says she would tell herself on day one of starting out in business is, “Those goals you set yourself are just shit, and you need to rewrite them and stop putting limiting beliefs in your way” Ladies and gentlemen, help me in welcoming Caralee Fontanelle to the show.
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Music from https://filmmusic.io "Cold Funk" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com). License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/