A long overdue update!
So much for a weekly newsletter
Apparently, it's been 11 months since I last wrote an article on Substack, which is a real shame because I actually really enjoy long-form writing!
I planned on writing an article every week, and I kept hitting snooze. The reason is really simple: I haven't had time.
The Last Ten-Plus Months Have Been Chaos
They started with our second kid, who was born at the start of August 2025. As anyone who's had a kid knows, those days are busy. Not to mention, we had a three-year-old to contend with as well.
On top of that, I've been working crazy hours and billing big hours despite working at a smaller firm, which was never the plan.
The reality is that this is part of what being a founder or entrepreneur is like: you take a bunch of hits for the team and for various reasons to keep things afloat. That meant that I needed to do a lot of work
It also meant I needed to give up some of my resources (the people who were helping me the most with files) to help other parts of our team.
While that was great for the firm, in that it helped solve a bunch of problems, it also was not so great for me because it meant I was putting myself last, which, as I have learned, I am prone to do.
I'm done with putting myself last. It is time to put myself, if not first, at least closer to the forefront again.
That means getting back to doing the things that bring me joy and that, at least in my mind, can add value to the world. Many people, of course, will disagree at least with that last point.
Since May of last year at Renno & Co, we've hired about 25 people, which is wild.
The level of transition, intentionality, and time has been a lot. The smaller you are, the harder it is. I am one of the only lawyers out there who works with scaleups who gets their reality. I get what it's like to be in their shoes because … I live that too (in addition to my day job as a full-time lawyer, which a lot of people don't realize)!
Every single person we hired, I hired. They went through the application process that I built. I was involved in every single thing.
They were onboarded. I oversaw that. They got integrated into the team. I oversaw that too.
I’ve had to do all that while also doing all the client work and running a million other things.
Thankfully, we put a great team together, and it's great to see things really coming into shape.
Having the right people in the right roles has made a really big difference
But to say it has been easy… it has not. It has certainly been time-consuming and intense and draining and exciting and all of those standard things at the same time.
I think anyone who's ever started a business and especially grown or tried to grow a business from the startup to scale-up phase and through that scale-up phase knows exactly what I'm talking about.
You have days where everything is going amazingly, and you have days where you're like, "What the fuck am I doing here? Why do I keep doing this? Am I insane?"
I have my wife on one hand, being like, "Shouldn't you be leaving and starting your own firm? It would be so much easier!" and I'm on the other hand saying, "No, trust me, I can see the plan. We're going to make it work. We just need to do this and this and this and iterate and pivot as we go."
But that's how startups work.
I always laugh when I see the rosy depictions on social media of people running growing businesses.
This shit is hard.
It's also why I like doing consulting and coaching and working with other people who are running scale-ups, because I get it and I've also done it.
When I do work with other law firms and they're dealing with issues, I often find myself saying, "There is no issue at your law firm that I literally have not already dealt with and likely already solved."
That's what happens when you rebuild a law firm on the fly, grow it, do the work at the same time, and also have to figure out:
Hey, what the fuck are we doing on this AI thing?
Hey, how are we going to handle the fact that we now have all these people in different countries?
Hey, how are we going to handle this?
How are we going to handle that?
Yeah, I've literally had to think through pretty much every single issue you could have in a law firm.
It’s been interesting, for sure. But that was never my plan!
When I left Big Law five years ago in 2021 (it is hard to believe it’s been 5 years!), I planned to be a part-time entrepreneur on the training side and a part-time lawyer.
Never in a million years was my plan to run a law firm, grow a law firm, and do all that.
At the end of the day, I planned to be an entrepreneur. It just happened that I have spent most of my time over the last few years on building, sustaining, and then growing a law firm.
I aim to get back to weekly posts
On exactly what topics? I'm not sure. Let me know what you're interested in hearing about.
I have a million ideas, and in classic ADHD fashion, I will probably go deep on some and then move on to others, but I want to talk a lot more about what we've been doing at our firm, what we've been seeing, and what I'm hearing from people I talk to in the industry in general as we navigate these strange, confusing times in the world of law.
One thing I can promise, however, in all my upcoming articles is no AI slop bullshit.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who is sick of obviously AI-generated content literally everywhere, lacking in authenticity and full of gibberish.
There'll be none of that here. That much I can promise!