What it's like to go from working for yourself to co-founding a business

My first attempt at returning to the world of work was very much as a sole trader. She's Back was my own business and although my very good friend Deb Khan and I did manage to co-write a book (She's Back: Your Guide to Returning to Work - it's good, not too late to buy for Christmas), I was, essentially, freelance.

That changed when, earlier this year I threw myself into a new venture with two other women, Stephanie Dillon and Melinda Wallman. We set up the Reignite Academy, with the aim of helping female lawyers get their careers back on track. We had a shared vision and a common passion for making a difference to women's lives. Our skill set was complementary. We'd already run a successful pilot. How difficult could it be?

The good news is that we're still together and the business is going strong. At the same time, there have definitely been some learning points along the way. For anyone thinking of going into business with other people, here are some tips.

Founders have to have mutual trust and respect. In bucketloads. Sounds obvious but even with shared vision and passion, it's easy for conflicts to arise. Unless you have trust and respect, resolving those conflicts can be tricky. I took on the role of CEO and made the mistake of thinking this meant I needed to "lead" when in reality the three of us are all leaders. An honest conversation round my kitchen table helped me recognise where I was going wrong but without that trust and respect, we could easily have fallen out quite badly. I now think of us as a three legged stool - so much more stable together.

Did you know that a three legged stool will always be more sturdy than one with four legs? On an uneven floor, a four legged stool will always wobble but a three legged stool will remain stable.

Perhaps that's why the best things come in threes - the Holy Trinity; head, heart, hands; faith, hope and charity; the three kings, three musketeers ....

Flexible & remote working only goes so far. With no office and homes that are miles away from each other, we prided ourselves on running the pilot programme using Google hangouts, Google docs and the like. This helped us minimise costs. The danger, though, is that if everyone is remote all of the time, communication becomes tricky. You either miss things, or, in an attempt to keep everyone up to speed, spend your whole time emailing each other. It was mis-communication that led to my "leadership" mistake.

Our solution has been to agree a weekly pattern where we use co-working space on a Tuesday and Thursday, and a leadership call on a Friday afternoon. We set the agendas in advance and the rest of the time everyone works remotely.

Hiring people is a BIG THING. We hadn't been going long as a business when we recognised we need to recruit a couple of experienced career consultants into the team. It was a big thing for us because it was a serious financial commitment - paying monthly salaries, PAYE, pensions contributions. We were also conscious that it was a huge deal for the people joining us, who had to give up proper jobs to throw their lot in with our start up venture. Finding people who shared our vision and passion was crucial. (We think we got this one right).

You need to sweat the small stuff. Creating the vision is fun, bringing new clients on board brings a rush of adrenalin. Setting up a bank account? Less so. Registering for VAT, managing cash flow, designing email footers, standardising contracts, adhering to GDPR, paying suppliers, someone has to do it. And if you're a start up, that's you. And if there's three of you, everyone has to do their fair share. I ended up with bank accounts & VAT ....lucky me.

Communicate, communicate, communicate. When you're small and things are busy, it's easy to focus on the task in hand. As a sole trader, I was used to rolling my sleeves up to get things done. When you're in a team, it's a different story. Every hour spent clarifying roles, setting objectives, providing feedback, sharing the vision, answering questions, will pay back many times over. It took me a while to realise that this is just as much "work" as delivering a pitch to a client.

Know when you need help. Being conscious of managing costs, we decided to look after our own diaries and handle all office admin ourselves. Which might have worked when we were running a pilot with six firms. By September we had fifteen member firms, an increasing number of candidates and very busy diaries. Things began to fall through the tracks and we realised we needed a team co-ordinator. Funnily enough, we also realised we'd found a great freelancer who could help back in April. We'd just been too disorganised to figure out how to use her properly.

Everyone's a coach. Sharon knows a lot about recruiting lawyers; Melinda can tell you why the funds practice at firm A is totally different from that at firm B; Alice is the only one of us who has actually worked in a law firm recently and knows how technology has changed working practices; Tanja has trained as a coach; I know a bit about PR and brad. We are a small team but we can amplify what we do by teaching each other what we know. It's fun, it's less expensive than sending people on training courses and it works.

Cash is still king. I don't know who said it but this quote is as true for a business as it is for a sole trader:

Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is king.

You can have all the PR in the world, a great line up of clients, a great business idea, but if you don't have the cash to pay the bills and you don't fancy racking up a lot of debt, then cashflow is king.

The office parties are more fun.

If one of us is down, there is always someone else to pick us up. When a great candidate doesn’t get an offer, one of team will point out that there will be other chances, if something falls through the cracks, there is always a wise head to provide perspective.

So that was year one done. Here’s to many more.