Nov 15, 2020
In this episode, I interview Mellissa Larkin, the Founder, and CEO of Peripheral Blue, a company that has been disrupting the way companies receive legal and consulting services by giving clients access to top tier, responsive legal and advisory services in a flexible and affordable way. Peripheral Blue provides legal advice and business advisory services to clients of all sizes including SMEs and ASX 200 companies across a broad range of industries including health, energy, IT, construction, rail, hospitality, food, and manufacturing.
Mellissa is responsible for recruiting and managing PB Lawyers, Law Clerks, PB Consultants, and support staff. As well as developing and refining the strategic growth plans for the business. She was the 2020 Telstra Business Women’s Awards Winner, a 2019 Telstra Business Awards Finalist, and a finalist in the Women in Law Awards in two categories: Innovator of the Year (Individual) and Wellness Advocate of the Year. After 20 years in corporate law in 2016 aged 38 and with three young kids, she started a new type of law firm to disrupt the market.
Questioning what value juniors gave to clients when they were being charged to clients to effectively learn on the job, the company only has highly efficient and experienced lawyers with 20+ years in the game. Mellissa started as the one full-time employee and they’re now up to nine, and sales have grown 267% year on year over the four years. The business has been funded entirely from profits. They are obsessive about culture and changed theirs to a collaborative one, not competitive amongst colleagues for billable work, putting value for clients front and center.
Mellissa felt they had succeeded when they won their first big piece of work then won a large old client. She feels the hardest thing about growing a small business is accepting the risks and making it happen. The one thing she says she would tell herself on day one of starting out in business is, “You can do this” Please join me in welcoming Mellissa Larkin from Peripheral Blue in beautiful Adelaide, Australia.
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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/