From Frustration to Founder: My Journey to Rediscovering Purpose and Passion
I remember my last day as a partner at my prior law firm with clarity. I left so that I could do… well… anything else.
Being a managing partner and, for all intents and purposes, on a traditional track to whatever success is supposed to be was a surefire way to surrender myself to the machine. No more.
I learned a lot while being at my prior firm. To quote the 1966 film, there was The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly.
The Good
In the process of leading teams, running accounts, and leaving the firm, I learned a great deal about myself, who I aspire to be, and what I want my one life on this planet to look like.
For many years, I told my family and closest friends, "If I die while at my firm, they better not put 'She was a hard worker' on my gravestone. I swear, my ghost will vomit pea soup all over everyone in attendance at my funeral if that happens."
I wanted to be more than a hard-working attorney. I had more than that to offer, and it was the work that I did for my prior firm that helped me to develop additional skills that I enjoyed.
The Bad
I also learned how people should not be managed, how partners should not be spun to by other partners, and how money should not be spent.
I've learned that you'll never please 100% of employees, clients, or partners 100% of the time.
I've learned that some law partners are lousy business partners with no sense of what it takes to be successful or what is required to move a business collectively in a positive direction. The smartest, most business-savvy partner that I knew was at the bottom of the barrel in terms of clout and pay. It was a real shame, not to mention a missed opportunity for the firm to listen to him and learn from him.
Speaking of which, listening—truly listening—is crucial. Caring matters. Transparency and communication should be cornerstones.
The Ugly
It took the world of my career nearly crumbling in all directions to finally realize, "Hmmm. Maybe I should get out of this rat race."
So, much to the surprise of my fellow partners and beloved employees, I tendered my resignation in 2018. Afterward, I was still an attorney, but the first step of leaving the firm was a big one.
I decided that my hard work should not go into an abyss of effort that would heavily fund some of the least competent and most self-absorbed people I've ever met.
I remember being on the line in a telephonic management meeting, and there were talks of layoffs. I was disgusted and essentially shamed the specific partners who were pushing the idea; I called for there to be creative solutions to our financial problems that were caused by the people making the fattest salaries.
It was fundamentally unfair to lay off the employees—especially the administrative staff—who worked their butts off. Many of them commuted far distances via buses.
Luckily, layoffs didn’t happen, but it was a close call.
Saved by Jim Carrey
Being on the career track that I was on led me to an emptiness that I cannot adequately describe. I could not see outside of my circumstances.
Constantly haunted by the cloud of student loans, I believed that there was no way out. The "smartest" thing I could do was to stick it out until everything was paid off; then I could leave. Then I could have freedom.
Well, screw that.
We are not guaranteed anything in this life. Even as I type this, I am not guaranteed that I will reach the next word or that I will live to press the "publish" button.
The veils of what I lovingly call The BS Narrative of Success were lifted when I ran across a particular YouTube video. Jim Carrey—in, perhaps the greatest commencement speech of all time—was right. "You can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love."
I made partner at my firm faster than anyone in its 75-year history, and I didn't do any of the things that the Career Services office at my law school said that I'd have to do in order to succeed. I’ve been scrappy my whole life, including in shaping my career and my current business.
Although I had grown to detest many aspects of what my role at the firm had become, I genuinely loved the employees. The staff and the associate attorneys had my heart.
When I left, I was dedicated to alleviating the plight of employees. I wanted to help fight for them and to give them a voice, but I wasn’t sure how that was going to come together.
Cheers
During a toast that was given in my honor at my going-away party, a highly influential partner in the firm raised a glass and praised me for never having uttered the words "work-life balance." I was horrified.
While understanding that this was meant to be a compliment, the look on the young associates' faces was awful. The words "work-life balance" should not be treated as a phrase so off-putting, as though a pervert just flashed your grandmother.
Should workers be ashamed for wanting balance between work and life? No! To this, I wanted to proclaim, "Do not be like me! Demand balance, and don't wait until you've reached the point where you don't care whether you live or die. Save yourself!"
Building the “Impossible”: twrk
Regardless of the mountains of BS that I faced at my prior firm, I owe a lot to that experience, and twrk wouldn’t exist without what I went through.
It was at my prior firm where I took on a role that was effectively equivalent to a COO. I ran operations and drove projects. I spearheaded a $5.2 million IT overhaul to help the employees deliver ideal service to our clients efficiently and effectively. These are experiences that most attorneys don’t get to have, and I am extremely grateful for having had the opportunity to develop interesting, non-attorney, transferrable skills.
Fast-forward to 2022 when I first had the idea for a mobile app that would act as if Tinder and Indeed had a baby. This is the essence of twrk. But limiting beliefs that I had no connections prevented me from moving forward with it.
Finally, in 2024, I’d had it. Fed up and exhausted, I needed to get out of lawyering. I tried all of the things that I know job seekers everywhere have tried: namely, inputting keywords and applying filters through various job-search websites until I was blue in the face. Although I tried to pivot out of lawyering, the “job-matching gods” kept suggesting attorney positions or entry-level jobs, like a pizza chef (not exaggerating; this was a real suggestion that I received on a job-match site).
I complained through tears to my life partner. “Why hasn’t somebody come up with my job-match app idea already!?”
He challenged me, “Why don’t you do it yourself?”
“I can’t. I don’t have the contacts. I’m not well connected.”
He called foul on my excuses and pointed out numerous people who could potentially help. I came up with the name, put together a pitch deck, and got 16 investors in fewer than 90 days. It was incredible.
Along the way, I received “NOs” from potential investors who didn’t believe that the technology could be built. But everything that we see in our world didn’t exist at some point… until it did.
We are building twrk and have a killer CTO who specializes in AI, machine learning, and quantum computing. Our proof of concept is done. Our MVP is close to being finished, and we’re amassing Beta testers who are chomping at the bit for a better solution than keywords and filters.
A New Toast
So, the real pivot for me was:
to harness the energy of my job-search frustrations,
to leverage my prior “COO” skills,
to reach out to friends & family,
to put together a strong executive team,
and to build twrk, a mobile app where jobs find you.
My toast to you and to employees everywhere is, “Here’s to the employees and to the job seekers of the world. Here’s to leveling the playing field for you. Here’s to taking your customized, automated application process from 2 hours to 2 seconds. Here’s to you.”
Join us to get job seekers just like you swiping instead of stressing. We’d love to have you on board!
