Ep. 214 – Delegation Without Drama: Building a Business That Doesn’t Depend on You

In this episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, Ben talks with Katie Santoro, founder and CEO of Lyft Business Resources, a fractional administrative support and executive assistant staffing firm.

Katie shares her entrepreneurial journey—from litigation paralegal to insurance claims examiner to yoga studio owner to building a business that helps overwhelmed founders finally get things off their plates.

Ben and Katie dig into the real reasons delegation is so hard, especially for lawyers and founder-led businesses. They talk about ego, fear, communication, process, and why most business owners know they need help long before they know how to use it well.

They also cover:

•  The difference between an admin assistant and a true executive assistant 
•  Why delegation fails when the founder is already too overwhelmed 
•  How Katie matches clients with the right assistant 
•  Why process and emotional intelligence matter just as much as skill 
•  The hidden cost of trying to do everything yourself 
•  What founder-led businesses can gain when they stop being the bottleneck 

This is a practical conversation for lawyers, business owners, and anyone who knows they should delegate more—but hasn’t quite gotten out of their own way.

🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com

What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?

In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers. 

One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.

There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.

Transcript

When Help Arrives Too Late

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If they are so busy that they can't wrap their head around delegating, if they've gotten so far past the point of help, us coming in trying to help them is going to frustrate them. They're not going to be able to hand things off to their assistant, and they're going to become resentful that they're paying someone who isn't actually getting anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show that challenges the way lawyers and professionals think about life, business, and success. Hosted by Ben Glass, attorney, entrepreneur, coach, and father of nine, this show is about more than just practice. For over 40 years, Ben has built out lawyers create practices to make good money. Lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, thinkers, and builders. These are people creating full careers and meaningful lives without burning out or selling out. If you're ready to stop playing small and start thinking like a renegade, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Hey everyone, this is Ben. Welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where most episodes I'm interviewing someone really interesting, either inside or outside of legal. Today I've got a great guest with a foot really in sort of both sides, uh, Katie Santoro. I've met Katie through Provisors, which is a high-level professional networking group. Katie's the CEO and the founder of a company called Lift Business Resources. It's a fractional administrative support and virtual assistant staffing firm, but it's a lot, it's actually a lot more than that. Katie and I have had a couple of conversations in meetings on Provisors. And so, Katie, like we are huge advocates of delegation, of you know, our audience is a sole-owned small firm, law firm typically. And, you know, our mission is to help warriors do what they were born to do, which is make strategic decisions with their clients and to like get rid of everything else that isn't that pretty much. So welcome to the program today.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

Very cool. So tell me a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey yourself, because this is a show about entrepreneurship. I think you come from the corporate world. Talk to us a little bit about how you birthed your company.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Yeah, by accident, if you will. I think a lot of entrepreneurs kind of do it by accident. So I started my career in the legal field as a litigation paralegal. And then I moved into the insurance side, which is being insurance claims examiner is not easy on the soul and the spirit.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Nobody ever goes to their insurance company with some good news. You feel the same, I'm sure, on the legal side. And while I really, really enjoyed it, I burnt out. And I left in 2019 and I owned my first business, which was a small yoga studio, and I was running the yoga studio. And I went down to Costa Rica in the beginning of March of 2020 to get my 500-hour certification. And I made it all two weeks before they closed the school and sent us all home because the borders were closing. And I came back and now with no job, I left corporate America. I had a yoga studio that wasn't really making any money, just enough to almost pay the rent and the teachers. And I was going to go back to work. I went to my husband. I was like, I like, I've got to go back to work. I can't run this studio. We can't be in person anymore. And he said, no. He said, you were a monster. Figure something else out. And he was absolutely right. Um you've ever been through any stages of burnout, you're not a kind person. So I started just freelancing as an executive assistant virtually. It was a good time to do it. It was the beginning of COVID. And I found that business owners needed reliable and consistent assistance, like somebody who would show up and show up on a regular basis. And that's definitely something you learn in learn in corporate America, right? Like you show up every morning at eight and you stay until five. And I just kept on showing up. I got busier and busier. And as I got busier, I saw an opportunity to bring in other women that wanted to be in the workforce in a part-time way so that they could take care of other things in life. So for me, it's taking care of my mother. For a lot of people, it's taking care of their children or also their children and their parents. I'm also a dog mow and very passionate about training my dogs and spending time with them and making sure they get everything they need. So I started recruiting people and training them. I have some very specific ways that I think administrative work needs to be done. I'm very process-oriented. I learned that in the legal field, right? When you're driven by deadlines and court statutes and you have to do things specifically, you really build a strong foundation. So I started training my team on that. And that that was the foundation of how the business began. In 2021, my best friends called me. She also was a litigation paralegal. We had worked together for years and we've known each other our entire lives. And she said, I can't do this anymore. Like I can't keep going into the office every day and raising four kids, and schools are closing left and right for COVID. And I said, come work with me. Like, let's do this. So between her and I, we've built this build business since we've been working together since 2022. She came on with me. So the past four years, we've really been working as a team to grow.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

So did you close down the yoga studio?

SPEAKER_00 5:16

I did. I ran it virtually, but I did not find the same like connection virtually.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

That'd be hard. Yeah. And I guess you were lucky to get out of Puerto Rico.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Yeah, Costa Rica.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

Costa Rica, when the world was closing down, you could have been um virtual traveler.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Yeah. And I got the opportunity to go back. So I did go back and finish that certification the following year. So I got to go back. I got to finish. And then I went back the following year after that, that's where I got engaged. So very close place in my heart, but I'm glad that I was not stuck there.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Um, so so good for you. Like a lot of times life sends us things that we don't have any control over, like worldwide pandemic, weather, you know, people that disappoint you, sort of things that we don't have any control over, but we do have control over our response. And you responded probably not the way you first imagined, right? Because your first instinct was I gotta go back to work for somebody else in a space that I kind of hated for for at least part of that. So then were you did you yourself act as a fractional executive assistant when you started your own journey back?

SPEAKER_00 6:26

I did. That's where I started. Um I just kind of went on to upwork. I don't know if you're familiar with it.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

100%. So our members are yes, our members are familiar with upwork.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Yeah.

Ego Fear And The Delegation Workflow

SPEAKER_02 6:37

That's okay, that's cool. So let's excuse me, let's talk a little bit about um I I want to talk about ego first because it's particularly in the lawyer space. Like we are huge advocates at Great Legal Marketing, Brian and I, about delegating, about building your team and letting other people uh you know use their gifts to the fullest. Again, freeing up the lawyer to make strategic decisions. Like that's what we're paid to do, I believe. That's what we're born to do. But for a lot of lawyers, um and and I struggle with this too in a in a part, which is like, yeah, but nobody could do this as good as I could. Like even if it's stuff that's not strategic decision making with the client, like nobody's gonna do it as good as I could. So I'm curious as you talk to future clients, is this an issue with most, or do most folks who are coming to you now go, Katie, I need you, solve my problem. And they have a very clear vision of what that problem is and and how somebody, uh, an executive assistant, can help solve the problem?

SPEAKER_00 7:46

I'd say it's about 50-50. We see a lot of people come to us and say they know they need us, but they don't know how to delegate. There is a huge ego part of it. There's an ego part and then there's a fear. So one of the things that we do is is we work on that delegation. We have a delegation workflow. We talk through it in like our kickoff call. There's ways to set up delegation to take away some of the fear, making sure that there's plenty of prep ahead of time so that you're comfortable giving things away. And then the last part of delegation through that flow is talking about it, like debriefing after something happened. What could we have done better this next time? What did it work? What can we get rid of? So delegation is a lot about communication. It's not just handing something to somebody and saying, good luck, because that's really scary. It's about handing something to them, preparing them for it, and then coming back and talking about how it went. Yeah. You're the ego part's really interesting. It's hard to overcome, especially as a business owner. But what I say again and again is just because like this person that you're delegating this to is never going to do the do it the way that you do it. But the way you do it might not be the best way to do it. I know you think it might be, but there might be better ways to do it. And it's great to allow someone to use their natural skills, usually for us organization and process management, to let them, to let them do it so that you can step back and do what you need to do.

Asana Without Overwhelming Clients

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Yeah. So I mean, our experience and our teaching is you need to just you need to get some at bats. If this is an issue for you as the executive who's looking for help, you just need to get up to the plate and face the 100 mile an hour fastball a couple of times and get used to it. And then for us anyway, you you become addicted to it when you when you learn to delegate to a new fractional executive assistant. And you you and I'm sure, and we'll talk about this, like I'm sure there's a process for beginning that relationship, right? But then you start to see things coming off your plate being done, and again, freeing up your time, either to do things outside of your business, because that's fair, to be more present for your clients, that's great. Then you start to get confidence and you start to our experiences again to give more and more away. So I'm curious in in for your company then are your executive assistants then working off any specific sort of process management or business management platform, the asanas, the notions of the world? Um, does that like come with the package, or is there some other way that the fractional EA and the executive are communicating?

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Um so we love Asana, but we don't require it. Um when we start with a new client, especially if it's someone who, you know, they come to us in a lot of pain, right? They've got a lot of things to get off their plate. The last thing I'm gonna do is say, you need to learn this new project management software. Right. Not the kindest thing to do to someone. So what we do is we set it up on the back end. Um, we use Asana mostly because it's what we're most comfortable with and what we run our business on. If the client is already using something, we'll incorporate that. And we work with the assistant through our mentorship and training program to set up a pro um some sort of task management and project management that the client doesn't have to touch. Um, you once you have a good assistant relationship set up, you should never really have to tell your assistant what to do. Your assistant should be telling you what to do. And that's where those project management things start to come in. They can show up to the meeting on Monday and say, hey, Ben, you've got these three things on your calendar this week. I prioritize them for you. Here's the things I see that you need. What else are we missing here? What else can I do for you? Um, and that's how you use those task managements. So we use them, but we don't require our clients to use them because we don't overwhelm. They're already overwhelmed.

What Founders Need Help With

SPEAKER_02 11:43

Do you find, yeah, so let's talk about overwhelmed. Do you find any sort of consistency in the complaints of pain that you are hearing from your future client who reaches out to you? Like what are the things that are driving them to finally make the decision to call you or call somebody like you?

SPEAKER_00 12:07

There's a couple of things. One could be either changes in their business or changes in their life, right? Like they've brought on a new contractor or associate and they need time to train that person or they're planning on doing that. So they need some things off their plate so they have more time. It can be life changes, right? Like mom had a stroke and I cannot work these hours all day, every day anymore, and I need assistance with that. It can be overwhelm. I know I have too much on my plate. What we see a lot of is just there's so much on my plate that there's these two and three things that are very important to my business that I don't get to. I hate doing them. I don't get to them myself. I need someone else to do them. The things we procrastinate on.

Executive Assistant Versus Task Taker

SPEAKER_02 12:47

Yeah. And and can you put a framework or a box around the term executive assistant? So, in other words, are the folks that you're helping uh that you're matching up with executives, are they doing purely work work? Or are they becoming the EA for the life, for the person, for the living, for personal, for work stuff, and everything in between?

SPEAKER_00 13:16

So when you own your own business, they can be that personal, right? They can do personal, they can do work, they can do all of it. If you're if you don't own the business, sometimes that's a little, we'll muddy the waters a little bit. But we're we're always happy to help with personal things because if your life is going awry, your business is is gonna follow. Really, the the framework of an executive assistant, and I said it earlier, is you don't tell them what to do, they tell you what to do. So your admin assistant, your is kind of more of a task manager, your executive assistant is that executive function, right? That like project management, the follow-through, making things get done, making sure things get done in work and in personal life. My executive assistant helps me with personal things all the time. And sometimes it's something as simple as like, I need a chiropractor and don't even know where to start to find one.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Me too, which is some version of make me a hero to my wife by making sure that the repair or whatever that we need done and she has delegated to me actually gets done and the people show up and all of that. So for sure, we are doing that. Now, are most of the EA relationships that you are developing now? Are they fractional? In other words, is most of your EAs working for more than one executive or are they exclusive?

SPEAKER_00 14:38

It is usually more than one. So we find the sweet spot in the the founder operator is they need about 10 to 20 hours of support. Our assistants re we require them to work about 20 hours a week because that's you know makes sense for our numbers and stuff. So sometimes they'll work with two, sometimes they'll just work with one. We'll go up to 30 hours. So sometimes they'll just work with one client for 30 hours, but it's generally one assistant has about two clients. Sometimes we have one client with multiple assistants because they need that much work and kind of different skill sets. Um, but we're very specific in like that time is time blocked. So you're not working two clients at once. You're you know, 10 to 20 with one client and 230 to 4 with the next client. It's very separate. It should be very separate worlds.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

And I think all of your executive assistants are based here in the United States. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 15:34

They are, they're all US-based and we employ them. So we have a little bit more control over you know, requiring them to show up on time and work specific hours and go to trainings and do all that.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

So you are you are taking care of, you're employing them, taking care of taxes, insurance, all of that sort of stuff. And then the customer or the client of your company pays you some fee per month or basically what what what is that structure? Is it paying hourly or are they buying the 10 hours a week for X?

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Yep. So it's flat rate packages, so it would be the 10 hours a week. Um, and then with that, it's dedicated time directly to the client. So we expect the client to fill those hours. If they don't fill the hours, you know, the assistant has blocked that time out of their day. It's essentially basically sitting at work twiddling your thumbs, right? Like you would have that in an office job. Um, but we really we want them to be as efficient as they can within those time blocks. So on the back end, we we look at status reports, we look at things and say, was this, you know, does this make sense that it took them that long? Can we help them build any efficiencies? So we we really want to use that time block as much as we possibly can so the client is getting their money's worth.

Mentorship Training And Team Knowledge Sharing

SPEAKER_02 16:51

And then are you or your team meeting at all with your say your batch of executive assistants to do periodic additional training or get them together and say, hey, who's found a hack that's cool or who learned a new skill that you could share? You're nodding your head. So I think the answer is yes. Tell me a little bit about that process.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Um, so we use a couple different ways. Um I'm gonna say the women on our team because it is all women, um, because we focus on parents and caretakers. They're busy, right? So we don't normally ask everybody like get together for one meeting. We do like a casual coffee once a month, and sometimes people show up, sometimes they don't. What we do is we start off in the very beginning. They start off with three months of mentorship. That is a little bit of indoctrination into how we work, but it's also to help them build the foundation for working with their client. Every time they start with a new client, they go back into that mentorship. So they'll go back for a month to kind of build out that foundation, learn new skills that they may need to know because every client's going to be on a different system, right? They might have a different word, like a WordPress versus a Squarespace or something. And then internally, we have some Google chats that everybody uses, and we're encouraged to go in and ask questions. So the other day there was a question about some program, I forget what it was, and somebody said, Have you ever used this before? And somebody else on the team says, Yeah, I've used it, let's get together. And then we pay them to get together and train each other on their time. So it's a very open communication. We know that we need to learn from each other. We have so much knowledge on our team and they they train each other.

Hiring Unicorns And Filtering Applicants

SPEAKER_02 18:26

How are you finding, and you don't have to dispose any secrets, but how are you finding your team of caretakers and moms who have the skill set to be fractional executive assistants?

SPEAKER_00 18:39

My business partner, Megan, who does the hiring, she's always like, I'm out here looking for literal unicorns. Yes, yes, you are. Um, we use an applicant tracking system that you know puts out our job application. I will tell you, I did this the numbers the other day. In the last quarter of 2025, we hired 0.25% of the people who actually applied. So we got over 800. I have the numbers written down somewhere because so 871 applications, we got it down to two people that we hired. So there's a culling process. It is, do they want this part-time work? That's really important. They can't be, you know, looking for full-time because we don't offer that right now. Skill set, tech ability, ability to work from home, ability to work within those hours that we need. Um, and then there's a little bit of a vibe check. We want them to be very emotionally intelligent. We want them to be kind and willing to do the work. You have to have that kind of service mindset. So it's it's a whole culling process. So we finally get down to the the couple of people we hire, but they are unicorns.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

Yeah, that's a huge number of applicants uh versus actual hires. To to what maybe haven't got any thought about this, to what do you attribute that? Like, is it the economy? And there's a lot of people who don't want to go to an office and work 40 hours a week. They are caring for another human being. Or is it autoresponders on LinkedIn or something that fill out applications every time you post a job offer?

SPEAKER_00 20:13

It's probably a little bit of both, especially when unemployment rates go up. Um they're pretty high when we first started and they're going back up again. People have to apply to a certain number. So we uh some of the applicants, I would say maybe 10%, are not even in the same field. They're just trying to get out there and apply and hit the requirements that they have to hit. And then, yeah, some of it is autoresponders, and that is we have our own AI to kind of sort through things and pull some of that out, but also all of those applicants have to at least, we have to at least have eyes on them in case we're missing something.

Client Fit Red Flags And Delegation Homework

SPEAKER_02 20:46

Now, not every executive, I'm sure, who reaches out to you is a perfect future client for you. So, what are the sort of traits, and you use the word emotional intelligence on the EA side, but probably applies on the E side as well. Like what are you what are the traits that suggest to you that you will be able to help build a great relationship between the fractional executive assistant and this professional, usually, I guess, who is looking for an EA?

SPEAKER_00 21:21

So the ability to accept help. And usually by the time they get to us, like they're they're ready to accept help in some way or another. They do have to be kind. They have to be a nice person. That is a requirement. We don't do toxic relationships, we don't do micromanaging. Um, I would say to kind of flip it the other way, our biggest red flag, like the thing that we see in discovery calls where I say we're not going to be able to make this work, is if they are so busy that they can't wrap their head around delegating, if they've gotten so far past the point of help, us coming in trying to help them is going to frustrate them. They're not Going to be able to hand things off to their assistant and they're going to become resentful that they're paying someone who isn't actually getting anywhere. So they do have to be where they have the time to delegate, do a weekly meeting with their assistant. There's a learning curve. Even if they come in with 30 years of experience as an EA, they still have to learn your business. They still have to learn you. There's still going to be a learning curve. So we do need people who have the time and the ability to help their assistant get through that learning curve.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

What does the conversation sound like when you're getting the vibe that this isn't going to be great? Like you are way too busy and you've already, you're, you're beyond salvation with a fractional EA at least. What does that sound like on your end?

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Well, you have to be very like diplomatic about it. There have been times where I've said, I'm I'm not sure that now is the right time to help you. And I give them some homework to go back with. So sometimes it's figuring out where they really truly need help. So bucketing their time and being able to say, these are the things I can hand off. Or maybe sometimes everything lives in their head. And we might say, why don't you, you know, work on creating a stronger process around this so that somebody can come and pick it up? Because right now, we're never going to be able to get this out of your head. And at that point, when we kind of assign the homework, they'll kind of they they self-select, to say it nicely. We do want to help everyone that we can help, but I don't want to take your money if we truly can't help you. That's not fair, especially as a small business. Like resources can be tight sometimes.

Custom Onboarding And A Success Story

SPEAKER_02 23:33

So in uh let's just talk about the sort of the uh solo and small firm attorney market for a moment. Somebody comes to you new that sounds like you have an interesting conversation with them. Are you guiding the, hey, we're gonna fix you know these first three workflows first, or are you listening more to where they perceive their point points are? And I ask this question because people will come to us for marketing and ask to solve this question over here. But when you have a conversation with them, you find out that's not really the thing that needs to be solved. In fact, that's probably not even the actual problem. Problems over here. So I'm curious if you kind of have a set sort of onboarding to, hey, we're gonna fix A, B, and C. We're gonna control your calendar, take over your email, and uh, I don't know what the third one will be. Help your PowerPoint uh production slide, you know, if they're using PowerPoints. What is it for y'all?

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Yeah, so that usually comes out in the discovery call. There's in my head, there's like kind of different buckets of clients, and then we try and match them with the assistant with the best skill set. So some of them come to us and they are that calendar email management. That's all they need is calendar and email management. They're drowning. Then we get people who are like, I really need help with my content management. So we don't create content, we don't do strategy, but we'll help you manage it. Managing content is a huge piece. And there are people that come to us and they say, I don't, I don't know what I need. Like they'll say, I know that I need help with my billing. And I'll say, okay, cool, let's talk through like what your day looks like, what's going on. And then we start to build out the actual things that they need. There is no way to approach what we do and the variety of clients that we work with in a set framework. I really think it has to be, it has to be curated to each client.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

Can you, you know, without disclosing any particulars, but tell us any stories across maybe different businesses of folks where you feel like you really have made a change in their lives. They came in totally dysfunctional in A. You found the perfect EA to help them become functional in A. And now they're just zooming forward.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Yeah, it it's happened many times. I will, I will uh give you one example. We have a client who started out as one of my very first clients, and he brought me on for a very specific reason and a very specific skill set that I had. As I moved out of client work, I found him another assistant. I said, I'm moving out of client work. I you need more than I can give you right now. I can't give 20 hours a week because I'm building this business, but I got someone who's going to be great for you. There's just something about these two. The way that their relationship just like she came on to help him with some personal stuff. Now she has moved into really helping him manage his business. It's one of those life management things, right? Like she could tell you all about all of his kids and all of their sports and everything they do, and also every single property that he owns within his business. Like she has just become so incorporated and they it's a beautiful relationship. They get along really well. They communicate really well. And it's yeah, it's just something we love to see. I don't think we can separate them from each other.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Right. Now that's cool. Give me some idea of the different types of businesses that your EAs are helping now.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Yeah. So we're all across the board. We really say the founder-led businesses. So the founder that's still doing, you know, some of the day-to-day management, a lot of times it is founders that have their own professional skills. So, like a lawyer or coaches, they need to be doing their own practice without doing all the all the admin work of it.

How Katie Learns And Builds Leadership

SPEAKER_02 27:16

Let me ask you a little bit about your um entrepreneurial journey. So, one of the things I've observed over the years is that when you grow a company, by definition, when you grow, you begin to play in a place that you've never played before. And it's it can be challenging because you've reach issues that you just haven't dealt with before, right? And I assume that's true for you. Like, what are you doing sort of personally to either be coached or to continue to learn? Or when you, Katie, have like I've never faced this issue before. I gotta find a team to help me solve it. Like, I'm curious of your sort of modus operandi for your own personal entrepreneurial growth.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

So education is really important, continue education. I did the 10,000 Small Businesses program with Goldman Sachs, an amazing program, really set me up in a great, just a great like structure for how I do a lot of things in my business. Through that, I got a lot of just relationships. So having a really good support system, having people that you can call to say, like, hey, help me work through this program, whether that's informal, whether it's formal, a lot of mine is informal. Just someone I know I can call and be like, hey, what did you read this month? What are we learning here? You know, I do the business development and sales side of it, and I'm an introvert. So talking to people, other people don't we all. You know. I mean how? Yeah. Here we are though. So yeah, having a really good support system, reading books, listening to books. I walk a lot. So I'll listen to some books on tape while I'm walking. And making the time to sit down and strategize for your own business is really, really important. That's where you start to draw out, you know, what's wrong and what needs to be fixed or what's going right and what you need to do more of.

SPEAKER_02 29:06

You really do need to carve out, I found that that thinking time where distraction-free, I'm just gonna sit down, me with a notebook or a journal, and not allow myself to go and do do any quote work. But this is the ult ultimate work, actually, is sort of figuring out your own business. All right. So you mentioned your sounded like a business partner. I don't know if she's a partner. Is this would you call her a partner? So it's today as we're recording this actually on St. Patrick's Day in 2026. Is it quote unquote just the two of you now? And you you do you have your own uh executive assistants as well?

SPEAKER_00 29:51

We do. It's funny because we function really well together, but really well separately. She's actually in Disney World today. We are very excited. She took a vacation, she doesn't need to do anything, we've got it all handled. She's got an executive assistant who's handling a lot of her stuff while she's gone. I've got my executive assistant who handles a lot of my stuff all the time. My executive assistant is also our lead mentor. So she mentors all new incoming assistants. And actually, this week we had we do leadership meetings once a month. And we kind of rough really roughly use the EOS system for how we uh structure things. And um, we are figuring out a way for me to use Megan's assistant skills more and Megan to use my assistant skills more because they both have really unique sets. So we're really trying to figure out a way where we can we can rely on the entire leadership team so that we can all take a vacation every once in a while.

Messaging Content And Referral Growth

SPEAKER_02 30:47

And then as we're coming close to the end of the first quarter, um curious if you'll share like what are the either the challenges or the opportunities for the rest of 26 that you are noodling over?

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Yeah. So well, we we have a really good strategic plan this year. We kind of just uh got that got that written and in place. And and the challenge, the challenge always, always, always, um, is our content development, making sure that we're explaining to people what we do and how we do it. It's such a weird place because I'm like, oh, we're executive assistants. That's what we do. That's not what we do. There's so much more to it, and it's it can be really complex to explain it. So really working on making sure that our messaging is clear, our content is clear, making sure that we're consistently producing content because I am the bottleneck. So relying on my team, we put some really good like foundations. Huh?

SPEAKER_02 31:42

True entrepreneur. I am the bottleneck.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

I am the bottleneck. But you know, I'm not, I'm not the only person who can do these things. I'm not the only person who can write our content. We have other people on our team who know what I'm talking about. It's just a matter of processing it so that they can do it for me. So that's that's the challenge this year is getting it out there more, cleaning up our messaging and and making other people do it for me so I don't have to do it all.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Absolutely. So where you said writing content. So where, what media are you creating content for?

SPEAKER_00 32:12

So blog posts turned into LinkedIn, maybe turned into Instagram. I know that we need a little bit of a presence there just because I do connect with people when I'm out and about. Um, and then have you heard of threads? Are you on threads? Apparently, this is the new thing. That'll be okay. That's our like our our like Q3. We'll look at it once we have this other system in place, but really starting with that blog form content of some like more thought leadership pieces and then breaking it down into smaller ones.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

I don't know. I was just schooled on Substack yesterday by one of my friends. And I'm like, I uh I don't know anything about it, and I'm not gonna learn anything about it. So good for you. You're making some money on Substack. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

You know what? We don't we don't have to be everywhere. We can't be.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

You can't be. No, you you can't be. We just did a seminar a few weeks ago on uh analog marketing, and we pointed out like how challenging it would be if you actually tried to be or tried to even understand all the different digital media that you have today. Okay, so somebody comes up at a provisors meeting or a different networking meeting and says, Katie, like tell me about your business. What do you do? Like, so now what is that honed message that makes them say, tell me more?

SPEAKER_00 33:28

So I usually start with we provide fractional administrative and operational support to founder lab businesses. Usually people are tipped off on the administrative and operational support part, like they know that there's they kind of know what that does. Um, and then we and then we take it from there. There's usually like a, but do you guys do billing? Yes. Yes, we do. Like there's usually something that this bothering them that they're gonna kind of equate with that.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

Are most of your folks coming to you through some referral? Either they've seen you, met you, heard about you, or know one of your clients, or Katie, do you find they're coming through cold, right? Because this content you're producing.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Yeah, so we don't have a lot of cold leads. We haven't traditionally. Everything has kind of come through referral. So there's, you know, the different like the different things that we're working on within the strategic plan, there's a referral strategy in place. And that is something that has to be focused on on a regular basis. That comes from networking, being out in public, other clients, like current clients referring people to us, and sometimes just people that I network with being like, oh, you should meet Katie because she might be able to help you. So that referral strategy is really, really important. Um, and that's how we get most of our business. So that's where the content piece is coming in, is like layering in something else because I am only one person and I can't physically be everywhere. And I don't want to be able to do that.

Revenue Goals How To Reach Katie Closing

SPEAKER_02 34:59

Yeah. Let's say you and I are having a conversation a year from now on uh St. Patrick's Day of 2027. Like, what would have had to happen between today and a year from now to make you go, holy cow, like that was a really cool year. Like I had a I had a great year. I'm having fun, the business is growing, and I'm really, really, really enjoying this journey even more than I was when I talked to Ben and St. Patrick's Day in 26. Like, what is that for you?

SPEAKER_00 35:26

For us, it'll be reaching that revenue goal. There's there's a very set revenue goal. It's in place for a very specific reason. I know that it'll get us into different rooms. And getting there to that revenue goal means that I get to do what I love best, which is meeting new clients, helping them build the foundational structure to work with their assistants and knowing that we're just we're helping people. I mean, that's what we do. And in essence, we're in service to other people, and that feels really good to be able to help other people.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

That's very cool. Thanks for spending time today. Now, someone who's listening to this wants to track you down, have a conversation. Where should they go?

SPEAKER_00 36:02

Uh, our website, Lift Business Resources, emailing me. I'm always connected to email Katie at liftbusinessresources.com. I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram. Maybe find me on threads in the third quarter, but not quite yet. But really, email is the best way to get in touch with me.

SPEAKER_02 36:18

That's awesome. Katie Santura, thanks for spending time with us today. Good luck to you.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

That's it for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where we're rewriting the rules of what it means to build a great law practice and a great life. If something sparked a new idea or gave you clarity, pass it on. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who's ready to think bigger. Want more tools, strategies, and stories from the trenches? Visit GreatLegalMarketing.com or connect with Fed Glass and the team of LinkedIn. Keep building boldly. We'll see you next time.