Uncovering Your Gifts & Sharing Your Message with Chad Aboud

Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Studying Law Around the World. Today I have the opportunity to interview Chad Abbott, and I'm so excited to talk with him. For those of you who follow me on LinkedIn might've noticed that I've interacted with him quite a bit there, and I'm just so excited to, you know, get to meet and learn about the experience of the Jedi of uncovering natural gifts. So Chad, thank you so much for joining today in the podcast. Oh, thanks for having me, Claudio. Really appreciate you inviting me. It's a beautiful thing that you're doing, trying to bring people around the world with different backgrounds and interests. You know, I can't claim credit for that nickname. I got it from Jessica Nguyen when I interviewed her and, and she gave me that name. So I loved it. So I ran with it, but I can't, I can't claim the creativity of coming up with it. Hey, I, I'm, from what I've seen so far, it sounds like it's, it's quite accurate. I really appreciate it. And you know what, I was, I was just remembering just a couple months ago when I moved to Canada for the first time, I talked with Brian Dixon. He's a nomad lawyer and actually he was the one who told me, hey, you should follow this guy and connect with him. So that was the first, the first time how I got to your page. Yeah, Brian's great. Brian Zari, you're just connected with everyone. You were telling me before we started recording that you interviewed Robert Hanna like 3 years ago. Rob's a legend, good friend. You're just making international connections. Good for you. It's coming full circle. That's for sure. And I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today. So, you know, as we talked before recording this too, but now speaking to our audience, you have a legal background, right? Could you tell us a little bit about How you got into law school and then afterwards we'll talk more about how you got out of the traditional path of what a lawyer usually does. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so as a kid, you know, I think the way that I learn and connect with people is through discussion and conversation. It's the way that I like to understand humans. It's the way that my brain works. Like it's very real time. I'm a Pisces. I think that makes know, leads to a very relational human. And so like, that's where I get a lot of energy is like meeting people, talking to them real time, figuring out how their brain works. Maybe that means I also like ask a lot of questions and I talk a lot. And I think if you ask a lot of questions and the way that you learn is like through oral discussion, I think a lot of folks just start saying you should be a lawyer because that's what they saw on TV. And I watched all these shows that aren't around anymore, but I would shows like Matlock and all these other shows that were, you know, these like ridiculous figmentations of what it was like to be a lawyer. And I just thought, oh, well, cool. Like the bad guy admits it on the stand and you get a hot dog and you win every time and cool. And so I think that I was just saying my entire life that I was going to be a lawyer and without really even knowing what it meant or if I wanted to do it. That's just what I said. And so it was kind of always the path. And but even in undergrad, like I was like looking into politics and like very like You know, things that have a close resonance with law and that's just where my brain naturally went. But it was funny though, you know, like when I went to law school, turns out I didn't even really like it. I don't know if you felt like that, but like for me, I showed up and I was like, this is not at all what I had hoped and wanted it to be. I totally see that. And that's so interesting that that's the experience you got out of it. And I'm sure you got to connect with a lot of friends in law school or in other ways, but that's awesome that you You know, like you were aware of that. That's kind of how you learned. Because I feel like a lot of my colleagues would say that they, they got to school, maybe to law school, like to an advanced degree to say, I finally learned how to learn, like, or here is where I learned how to learn. So did you, did you have that clarity that you got energy and you learned by talking to people later on in life and it just came naturally to you? Or did you actually, did you knew, did you know that that's how you, you know, learned and connected back then? Did you have this kind of awareness already? I think I knew I liked it. I think I knew I really liked asking people questions, learning how people think. I don't know if I pinpointed like other people don't prefer that. Like, I don't think I knew that much. I wasn't that aware. But I knew I preferred it. And then I think where I got really confused about law school was, you know, at least when I was in law school, was mostly 100% finals. And mostly you could get a summary. It was open book exams, 100% finals. You could get a summary from someone who had done the course 2 months earlier. And if it was a thoughtful summary and you just updated it for a couple tweaks the next semester, you could probably get a pretty good grade. To me, this seemed totally bogus. And I just thought like, this cannot be what the real world is like of being a lawyer. And so I actually became like very disinterested. in law school. 'Cause I was like, this does not feel like real-world training. And I think that's why my mind got more interested in the business side of it. Because I thought to myself, like, well, I must, it must be that if you're a lawyer, you're gonna have to like be a part of teams, lead teams, communicate effectively, solve in real time, solve in groups. And I was like, law school's not teaching barely any of that for the way that I learned at least. And so then. I learned that the business school had a joint program where you could do like a JD MBA if you just added on a year or something. They have different permutations of it now, but at the time it was like add on a year. And I thought to myself, like, business school seems way more that speed. Like it's all okay. Here's a case study from something happened 2 years ago and get into a group and you got to present on it and solve your version of it. And that just seems so much more fun to me. And so I joined the joint program. And then what I realized was, okay, law school wasn't what I hoped, but I did respect the amount of intellectual rigor it required to absorb that amount of content and then to feed it back. And so then I was like, okay, well, if I can combine that intellectual kind of pressure testing with a bit more of like the social learning and communication that the business school provided, this seems to be the combination. that I was hoping for. So it ended up being that collection of things that made me interested in continuing to be a lawyer after law school. Oh, that's incredible. You know, I feel like at least half of the people I spoke with, they do have some, you know, somewhat of a criticism regarding law school and how it, how it happened back in the day and, and maybe some suggestions of how it could get better, even for people who are currently in the law school scenario, something that I feel like it's somewhat undeniable that people will say is that the law degree is a very versatile degree. So I love that you just mentioned this idea that, you know, a lot of intellectual rigor, but also I feel like there's this virtue of it. And I don't know if it's just because of the title or if it's actually what you learn in law school, but it seems like, you know, it does open somewhat of a broad array of things you could do. In a way for policy, for You know, these maybe social science related things and analysis and all of that beyond this traditional law. I think where I get annoyed is that it doesn't end. People don't feel like when they get a law degree that they can or should do other things. That's what annoys me is that I think you're right, which is like, I tell people all the time who get a law degree who don't want to be lawyers anymore. What if the title was critical thinking degree? Instead of law degree, you'd probably be pretty open to being like, well, I can leverage the money and time and energy I spent into that degree. I can leverage it in lots of ways. And you would, you'd go into policy, you'd go into politics, you'd go into business, you'd go into entrepreneurship. You do lots of things. You'd be like, well, I was trained very rigorously how to think critically. I should be able to deploy that lots of ways. But folks don't do that. They think that it's going to open all these doors when they first get in, which actually can be true. But what happens is they tell themselves, I got a law degree, so I should be a lawyer. And I've told everyone I'm going to be a lawyer. And then they've told everyone that this person is going to be a lawyer. And so now I got to be a lawyer forever. And in these very traditional ways in a law firm or full-time within a company. And so like all of this, like door opening discussion of versatile education that is true that we talk about at the outset, I feel like for so many people, It feels dead to them by the time they get out of law school, especially in a country like Canada where you still have to article in order to become a lawyer. Is that like, it pushes you into the stream right away. Otherwise you can't become a lawyer if you don't do this thing called articling for 9 or 10 months where it's like, you're basically a lawyer. They just want to pay you 2/3 of your pay. And so that part really frustrates me because I think if we called it critical reasoning degree, for which most people end up using it as being a lawyer, if that was like the long form name. A lot of people would be like, okay, well, I want to use it for something else and cool. And they would actually do all of these things that we say you can do with a lot of great shit, but we don't. And that really, I feel it's like, it's a sad reality. Yeah, that's such an interesting point of view. I can totally like understand where that comes from, you know, and taking that into consideration and the work you do nowadays, maybe can we just kind of go back a little bit and learn a little bit more about your career and how you started after law school? Yeah, for sure. So I'm doing this joint degree, which, you know, if you're in a big urban center like Toronto, and if you have to article in order to become a lawyer, then for most folks that were in the joint program, they are telling themselves, okay, well, I'm going to at least article because I want to be able to say that I'm a lawyer, not just say I went to law school. And so you do this big recruitment process, but the benefit is if you want to work at one of these big corporate firms, which if you went into the joint MBA program, you know, seems like a likely thing, then it's really helpful in that recruitment process because you're saying to these big firms like, hey, I don't just want to be a lawyer. I want to bring the business acumen. That's like the typical conversation. And you're proving that by investing in yourself by going to do the MBA program. And so that's what I did. Like I went to one of the national law firms in Canada. I worked in, you know, the, the group that supports private companies that want to go public, public companies that are buying and selling each other, raising money, doing their continuous disclosure. And that was like the first, you know, that was my summer articling and the first like 5 years of my career was doing that. And I, and I, you know, I at least I chose that firm because I thought back on my life about when I had been most successful. And I was thinking to myself, like, okay, like I was playing soccer in, in US college or, you know, what my friend groups were. And I thought to myself, like, it seems to be a middle-ish size and, you know, stature of environment where you've got this opportunity to like the exposure of like super high-end complex things, but you also don't have the bureaucracy because What I think I came to in time is like, I'm a big agency discovery guy. I don't like to be managed. I don't like to be told what my future is going to be. I really like discovery. I really like having pretty much as much rope as I can get. I just love that. And, you know, this firm at Castle Sprock, like, that was the mode, at least, you know, at that time it was like, hey, if we can get Quality talent that wants responsibility and is going to own it, go nuts. And, you know, like, we'll, we'll make sure we give you the support and the infrastructure, but it wasn't a, we're going to baby you environment because I hate that. And Soapy was a great fit for me. Met so many humans that are very, very close to me in my life still today, really wonderful humans. And so it was stylistically from a personal perspective, the way that I thought I was going to be trained, the way that I thought certain folks were going to care about my career, the type of autonomy and agency I was going to get. Like I did that work. I thought about it. I passed up on firms that, you know, from a purely objective perspective, have like a higher stature. You passed on those opportunities because I was like, no, like I'm just, I feel like I'm going to be too much of a cog here. Maybe that's right. Maybe that would have been wrong. I don't know. But that was my feeling that I had to value these filters that I really cared about. which is agency and discovery. And I wasn't sure I was going to get it because the more I felt like I moved up the kind of stature profile, then the more kind of management I was going to get because there's even more brand protection around it. And like, I would trade a bit of like brand stature for autonomy every day of the week. And so that was like the first kind of 5 years of my career was like doing reflection, making that choice. And to be fair, like it totally played out that way. Like everything that I hoped for from Castles and being in the security group, securities group from like all of those elements. Totally. I'll always be grateful for that, you know, rigorous training that I got in that experience. That's amazing. That's amazing. And, and I guess that just makes us all very curious. And then what happened next? So you spent 5 years at the law firm and then— So what happened along that time, at least in, you know, Canada and the US, you know, you're kind of pushed to think about like, is this my career? Because if it is, then you really need to think about like, am I gonna like have a chance to build a real book here? Or am I gonna become a specialist? Or am I gonna support somebody who's building a book? Like, you gotta make a decision. And if those things aren't of interest to you, just showing up for the paycheck for the next few years, it works for some people. But what I saw was I'm not massively motivated by money. Like, yeah, okay. Toronto's a reasonably expensive place to live, but I'm not massively motivated by money. And so for me, it wasn't, I want to stay for 3 more years to make more money because I didn't think I cared enough about doing that work. I thought it was good training, but I didn't find the work that interesting to me for what I like. And so I was like, well, I just don't see myself being able to do this the rest of my career. For me, it wasn't my thing. So then I was like, well, I'm going to leave eventually. And so yeah, I could hang around and make more money for a few years, but what I could do instead is like, something totally different that like speaks more to what I want. And so, you know, I had some inklings that going inside a business would be interesting to me. I'm a pretty curious cat. I'd like to figure out like what's the marketing team up to, what's the product team up to, like all these things. I didn't really know a lot about it. I wasn't exactly sure yet exactly where I wanted to go. And so what I said to myself is maybe taking myself out of the stream will give me the best chance to create some clarity on it. And so my partner and I, she was also at the firm at the time. We actually resigned from the firm. She was 4 months away from becoming a partner. We resigned from the firm to travel around the world for 6 months. And so about 10 years ago, so 10 years ago, August 15th, so a little over 10 years ago or 9 years ago, we left, we packed up everything, our condo put in a storage locker. We didn't have our daughter at the time. We didn't have a mortgage. We We had liquid assets, put everything in a storage locker and we got on a plane to Barcelona. And for 6 months, Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, across Canada, we just spent the time to like recover from like a very big life effort we had just put in, but also like create some forced clarity. Like if you don't have the safety net, you have to start thinking. And so that was the goal is to like be very intentional on what the next phase would be. Wow. That's so incredible. I love how, you know, it sounds like every single step you took was, had this intention you were talking about, and that's just incredible and so admirable to see, you know, actually playing, playing out in somebody's life. We feel like we go to lectures, we, you know, see TED Talks even about, you know, having an intentional life and all of that. But yeah, just hearing somebody who, you know, lived it first, first person, it really brings a lot of inspiration. So you have that experience and then coming back to Toronto, or what was it like after your experience exploring the world? Yeah, every city we went to that we liked, we'd ask each other like, could you live and work here? And so we'd go through like the filters of like language and culture and style and type of work and whatever. And there were a couple of cities where we were like, ooh, this could be interesting. Like even Auckland, it was like, we, we looked into it and We thought about it and we even talked to a recruiter and we had some opportunities. But there's a couple of reasons why we ended up coming back to Toronto. One is, you know, we saw probably 40, 50 cities around the world. I wouldn't say Toronto is the best of any individual criteria, but I do think Toronto has a really nice mix of things that matter to us. And you know, one of the things is it's known as a very cosmopolitan city, but I think the next level down is there's a lot of cohesion around the immigration. There's a lot of cities around the world with a lot of immigration. I think of places like Sydney and Berlin and, you know, lots of places have lots of immigrants. Beautiful. But what I think is amazing about Toronto is by fortune of a lot of nice circumstances, not always intentional, but because it's not a coastal city, so it gets the benefit of time, you know, as waves of immigration have come in. Is that it's pretty cool to be from somewhere else while you're in Toronto. And I'm not sure that's always the case everywhere. Like when we started talking beforehand, I was like, oh yeah, so where are you coming from? You come from Brazil? Oh, cool. Immediately in my mind, I'm like thinking about like, oh, 2 of my best friends are from Brazil. And like, you know, I think in general, it's cool to be from somewhere when you're in Toronto and people love that. You walk down the streets of Toronto, you're going to hear like 50 different languages and You know, my partner, you know, ethnically Chinese and, you know, family moved to Taiwan and then they came here. And, you know, so our daughter, you know, is like, she's going to be, she's part Chinese. And, you know, my background is like, you know, part British and part Lebanese. And so we've got this mix in our life and it's very important for us to see that reflected where we live. She had a great job opportunity as well that brought her back to Toronto. But like, I think the biggest thing why we didn't move to Auckland, not that Auckland actually has this issue, Auckland's like a mini Toronto. But I think the reason why we chose Toronto is because that's a pretty cool thing to find in the city. Have you found that since you've been here? Like, have you noticed that? Yeah, honestly, I, I've, I haven't had, I could say that I've visited a lot of cities, but maybe I didn't have the maturity to look at them or I didn't have that intention to look at them to see specifically how did people feel about immigrants or, and also the whole idea of like, could I live here? But I do think that this is my experience here. I could say that, that people really have a genuine, genuine interest to know where you're from, how did you get here? What's your story? It feels like more than anywhere else. And maybe it's because of the, you know, the social bubble I ended up inserting myself in, but it really seems like it's a place where stories matter and people are, you know, for the most part, interested in knowing who you are, how, how did it work for you to come here? Because there's so much of this going on and it's generally appreciated and it's generally, you know, as you said, it's cool to be from somewhere else. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's just a lot of fortune. I don't know if it's Toronto was a genius on this. I think just a lot of fortunate circumstances and it's not a coastal city. Coastal cities get waves of immigration that Toronto doesn't. It's so, it's more like it happened in time. I think there's lots of reasons why it's just fortunate that way, but I think it's a beautiful thing. And, you know, fairly liberal city. So, you know, what was very important to us was that like, you know, for us and for our daughter that she would get to see like people across every spectrum, mixed friend groups, mixed couples, mixed everything. And like, we don't even want it to be like, oh, that's cool. We want it to be like totally normal that like she doesn't even think that that's like a thing. We want her to be like, that's how it's like, that's how it is. And so, you know, that really drew us back here. But like once we got back here, you know, my, my partner, like, She's such a legend. She's not like a big talker like me. She just like lets the work like stand for itself. And so even when we were traveling, one of like the biggest clients that she worked on when we were at the firm was asking her like, hey, are you coming back from your trip yet? Like, would you just want to come work for us? Like, what's your plan going to be? And so she had a job straight away as soon as she got back. So she had this amazing job and this amazing career that was like unfolded because of the quality of her work. For me, like, you know, I'm a bit different, like You know, I do think that I would provide quality work, but like for me is a bit of a like I wanted to go out and discover what was going to be the next thing. And so I knew that I didn't want to go back into a law firm. That would have been like the plug and play answer. But I was like, you know what? I would rather go into a company. And so this was like work from office time 2016. I wanted to be in Toronto in the core. I wanted to be a brand that I cared about. I really wanted to like feel the impact of something that was like doing something that I felt was positive. And I wanted to be like a pretty decent sized company so that I had a broad broad array of things that I could learn because I'd only been doing like securities financings and M&A, and I wanted to do a variety of things, but I also wanted to be a really small legal team because I wanted to have the agency. So it was kind of a lot, and I wanted to be like some minimum financial component. So like there's a lot of variables here. And I got really fortunate that Indigo, which, you know, if you're not from Canada, is kind of one of the biggest, most lovable brands in Canada that is like 50% books and 50% homework. And it's, it's such a lovely brand. And fortunately they were looking, everyone loves them. And so thank God at that time they did not post it, the application, they used a recruiter. And so it wasn't like 1,000 people got to, got to apply. And the recruiter was like, listen, it's not your background. It would have been like general contract negotiation, IP, you know, these types of things, marketing that I hadn't done. But he was like, the fit stylistically is there. So it was really on me to be like, hey, not only do I want to do this stuff, like I can learn it for sure. And I want to learn it. And that was the biggest barrier to get over. But because they were looking at this guy who had been doing like M&A at a big law firm for public companies, why the heck would you want to do this? You know? But for me, it was exactly what I wanted to do. So thank goodness it worked out. Like shout out to Kathleen Flynn and Sherry Ozaki and Damian Little, who all bet on me and gave me my first in-house opportunity. And I learned everything from them and from that company, how you support business teams the way they want to be supported. A lot of law firms, a lot of the training or the implied training is like, you do the work the way you think you should do the work. People talk about client-centric, whatever. And it's not that they don't mean to do it. It's just that they don't know. They're, they're surrounded by other law firm lawyers all day. You surround yourself with business people. who are 95% of the employees and you're 5 or less percent, you don't get to choose. You have to act in the way that they need you to act. And I really enjoyed that. And so that was the next 3 years of my career. You know, grew in responsibility, grew in autonomy, built relationships, learned how to do emails and emojis, like, you know, all this stuff that you got to learn when you're in-house. And, um, It was really formative, you know, I really loved it and it confirmed for me that I wanted to be in-house and not go back to a firm. That's incredible. That's incredible. And that's so cool. Thank you so much for sharing those details. And I think that, that, that's especially nice because we recently, I recently had an interview about going in-house and what does that look like? So I think it really complements that, those notions. And it seems like you really had a good experience there being in-house. And then, uh, you know, if you don't mind, uh, how did, you know, you get to where you are today with consulting and helping people with their, their careers and all of that? Well, I think, you know, what I saw after 3 years being at Endeavor was I kind of hit a different version of the same thing where I was like, okay, I think I've like hit my max impact here. I don't think this is the long-term place where I'm going to be again, because the agency and discovery piece I needed more of. So I was like, I think I need to like run a legal function, build it exactly the way that I would build it, bring in the legal technology I want to bring in, hire the way I want to hire. I just wanted to own that. I want to be part of a leadership team. So I went to this portfolio of technology companies called AudienceView, which again was great. I got to like build a legal function, bring in a CLM to do automated contracting, build all the relationships with the sales team, the account management team, product team. I got to hire my juniors. I got to bring in legal ops person, like all this stuff that was so cool. Um, it was amazing, you know, and I love that. I did that for 3 and a half years. We bought like a bunch of companies and integrated them and it was amazing. And so that was like another 3 and a half years. So that took us to like 2022. And, um, maybe a year before, so like in 2021, we're in the middle of COVID and, you know, it'd been like a big piece of work buying these companies, integrating them, implementing the CLM, getting that out into the business, going through COVID, like so much stuff. And I think I was feeling like all this stuff I'd been thinking about over my career about why lawyers aren't happy and how lawyers could be happier and how your happiness impacts your productivity and your retention. I'd always been thinking about this stuff. I'd been on the student committee helping hire at Castles Brock since like my second year of being a lawyer. I just loved this, like training and mentoring and engagement and productivity, not only from a human perspective, but from a business perspective, it just made sense to me. And so I didn't have an outlet for these thoughts. I don't have any social media other than LinkedIn. I'd never really used LinkedIn other than to have my profile up there. And so then I just thought to myself, like, well, there's no intermediary. It's available 24/7 and it's free. So, and I didn't know all these people that are like all these big, like Robert Hanau, these people who'd been posting for a year or two before me. I didn't know them. I didn't even know anyone was doing this. I just said like, I just needed an outlet for my thoughts. So I was going to do it there and no one can stop me. And they can't tell me how many characters it gets to be. They can't tell me what topic it gets to be. You can't tell me when it gets to go out. I just get to do it. And so from like April 2021, I would once every 3 weeks, I'd post something about like, hey, if you're a law firm and you want to work with a legal team on like a privacy assessment, here's the stuff that we are thinking about on the inside. It was a bit more like legally at the time. And it was every 3 weeks. And then there's this guy, Josh Calderon, who's a buddy of mine from Castles, and he has his own law firm now called Grit and Co. He's a good buddy of mine. He was posting a lot and he was like, you, you gotta post like every day. And I was like, once every 3 weeks is good for me. And he's like, no, every day. And so then I don't know how he convinced me, but I started really getting into it. And maybe like, I don't know, the summer or the fall, I was like getting into it more. And then I remember it was New Year's Eve, 2021. We were at this like little winter wonderland of like this small winery region in the snow near Toronto. And I went for a run in a blizzard. Oh yeah. And I see these folks and I remember my castles days, the really nicest people, when they'd see you down the long hallway, they would wave and smile at you. And I remember as a kid going on running trails, people would wave and smile at you and always make you feel better, which is a nice thing to do. And I was like, I should do that. And so I'm in this blizzard and I'm not feeling great about my life, about my career. I was a new parent. Everything was hard. And I just waved and these people waved at me and they smiled. And I was like, that felt better. And it just took me back to like, it's not that hard. Like to create more energy and engagement and productivity and it's not that hard. We're just humans. We just need to connect as humans. And I went behind this tree in the snowstorm. I'd never used the app before. I'd only ever post it from the desktop. I pulled it out and I basically said like, when you wave and smile at people, you feel better. When you feel better, you're happier being somewhere. When you're happier being somewhere, you like do better work. So I don't care like what your starting point is. That's the outcome either way, whether it's a business perspective, human perspective, both perspectives. That's just true for most people. And that was the first time the light switch went off in my head where I was like, This is what I'm supposed to write about. I'm supposed to write about this intersection of like human dynamics and work. And that was like the beginning of, so then for a year I was kind of doing that and it was gaining steam and it was like, and it was like doing presentations at law firms and like people being like, hey, would you do this coaching thing? And like, blah, blah, blah. But I was still at GC at the time. And I did that for a year where I was like, I was like running like my full-time job and I was running like a second job at night where I was like doing all this LinkedIn stuff. And I was like, all right, there's something here. And so then in August 2022, that's when I like did the same thing I did at Castles. I was like, I don't know for sure what the next thing is, but I don't think it's being a lawyer. Walk away from all this cash. I'm going to walk away from this equity. I'm going to walk away from this GC title job. And I'm just going to figure it out and I'm going to force myself to figure it out. And so then I just resigned. I didn't do anything for 3 months. And I was like, just taking some inbounds and figuring out what I wanted to do. And, and it was January 1st, 2023, where I was like, okay, I'm going to launch my like advisory and coaching business because that's what I feel in my heart is what I'm meant to do in this phase of my life. Wow. That's incredible. That's quite the journey. And I love how it connected to your childhood. You know, as I was listening to you speaking, I could feel that emotion in a way, you know, Just the, the, the friendly hi and, and all of that. And just, yeah, it reminded me of hiking and so many other experiences. Yeah. You can, you know, in a way it, it's great. I, I love people's stories. Stories, you know, matter in so many ways, but yeah, just getting to, to hear your story is so, it's so meaningful and that's so nice how like LinkedIn was that platform. Just before we were, we started talking, I, I told you a little bit about the podcast, right? It started. 2020 pandemic, law school and all of that going on. And, you know, in a way I felt very much like this was the outlet. I, I was like, I want to have my own product to the world. I, I'm doing an internship here. I'm doing a full-time job hereafter, but I want to have something that is mine. I want to have, you know, the things I want to talk about, the people I want to host. So, and even when I approach people, I want to have kind of my own brand. So I love that you, that you mentioned that because I feel like in, in a way I've had that. It's beautiful that you did that. Like, we were both talking about Rob Hanna. Rob was one of the first people I saw posting on LinkedIn where I was like, wow, this guy's like, he's really writing about not just like legal things. He's writing about like who he is as a human. And I remember he posting this really like nice tribute to his grandfather. It really resonated with me and like lots of overlap there. And I just thought to myself, my whole mindset had changed where it was like, don't just be reactive to life and wait for something magical to drop in your inbox. Go pursue things that feel right. And I just wrote him a DM. I didn't know him. The guy probably already had like 20,000 followers at that time. And I was like, hey Rob, like, that's a beautiful thing. Like resonated with me for these reasons. And, you know, lots of overlap there. And like, the guy's a legend, wrote me back straight away. And like, we've been close ever since, as close as you can be across an ocean through LinkedIn. But like, you know, he's the type of person that you meet when you put yourself out there. And I've been on his podcast. He's been on mine. He's going to be a speaker at Good Lawyers Future of Law Summit that I'm hosting. And like, you know, to the extent that it's possible across the ocean, like we would do anything that we could to support the other person, but none of that would have happened without the space and putting your voice out in the space. And so, you know, you did that with your podcast. You did that reaching out to me, like, you know, you're, you're doing that for sure, 1,000% in your own way. And I think that's the point is that like for everyone that's listening, like if you want to like build community because it's fulfilling, because it's good for your life, good for your career, like, you are the person that has the most control over whether or not that happens. Most people are like looking for this like magical community of people that are like hanging out at this park and then you can just go and find them. No, it's not the way it works. Like, you have to create it by giving first. And whether that means you put together a podcast like you've done, whether that means you like share on LinkedIn, whether it means you go to events, like whatever your thing is, that is the fastest way to get in the middle of the ring is by like putting yourself out there. That's amazing. That's amazing. And I must say, super inspiring to listen to your story, to listen to how you got here. And, you know, I feel like maybe some other people now that get the opportunity. You know, I kind of think of what I do in like 3 different buckets. So one is like one-to-one coaching for individuals that are trying to grow in their career, or like they're not happy in their career and they want to do something else. And so There's that piece. The second piece is the advisory piece. And so either that's like one-off kind of workshops for legal teams and law firms, or, you know, it's a, it's a bigger kind of longer scope advisory strategic piece that I do like, like for someone like Good Lawyer in thinking about like go-to-market and marketing and market access and these types of things. Um, so that's the second piece. And then the third piece is like speaking and brand building, which In whatever way it resonates for you, I really think you got to hold space for this because if all you do are the actions, you feel like you're creating a lot of value, but it's very like one-to-one value that ends when you're done that work, when you negotiate that contract or you deliver that project. Like it doesn't have as much scale and as like public impact. And so what I try to do is I would try, I always try to hold space for a third thing. In different parts of my life. So like I've got my like What You're About podcast, which now Good Lawyer, it's a collab season with Good Lawyer this year, or I'm co-hosting this Good Lawyer Future of Law Summit coming up on November 21st, summit.goodlawyer.ca. We've got like 18 of the greatest speakers from around the world. This is a free event. It is virtual and you get 4 hours of CLE in Canada and in most US states. Very cool. We have a keynote from Guy Kawasaki, like the chief of, former chief evangelist of Apple, chief evangelist of Canva, and the massive names that you know and love from the LinkedIn legal space, like Rob Hanna. And so doing these things, I did a TEDx last year, doing these things where it's like you're sharing your message. That matters because these other actions that you do, that's like your work and your revenue streams. Those things only really grow to the extent you hold space to share what you care about. That is your beacon. That is how people find you. I think a lot of what lawyers are told is do good work. It'll work out. I understand. And I think doing good work, you know, that's 101. You have to do good work and the good work usually gives some good results. What I also love is holding space to pour gas on that fire, which is You're doing the good work and you're sharing the message around the good work. Because when you do that, you create scale to your message that brings opportunities to you that you would never find. We wouldn't be having this podcast if I hadn't shared my message on LinkedIn, because I've never met Brian, who you met and told you to meet with me because I was on Brian's podcast. Like none of this happens. You know what I mean? If you don't share your message. So that third part, I think, is something that lawyers are not told to do. Which is like, what is the soapbox you want to stand on? It could be in person with a few people. I don't know. But like, what is the version that makes sense for you where you want to share your message? I love that. I love that. Yeah. Thank you so much, Chad, for, for your time, for sharing this valuable reflection in a way with our, with our audience. And I hope you guys do join the Future of Law Summit and, you know, connect with Chad on LinkedIn. Thank you so much once again for your time and really for the value you're bringing in to this mini season we're doing about Canadian professionals in law. And thank you so much for tuning in, everybody, and we'll see you on the next episode. Thank you.