How a Defense Attorney and Productivity Coach Balances Two Careers with Coach Lee

Jen: I love to start every interview by saying, how do you normally answer the question? What do you do?

Coach Lee: Criminal defense attorney by day, productivity and accountability coach throughout. But I guess it would depend on what setting. But purposes, that will be by normal.

Jen: What does your court to-do list look like versus a coaching to-do list?

Coach Lee: They’re similar in the sense that I like to write, so I put both on there the sense that home, because business is from home, I work, write my personal stuff and my coaching stuff like on the same list. But then at work I have my work list. So they’re both essentially about what am I non-negotiables and what is my focus for the day. So in life and in coaching, that might look like one thing and at work is probably gonna involve court clients and things like that. But are similar. I structure them similarly, just in two different settings, two different planners.

Jen: Would you ever want to do this full time and give up your law career? Or do you wanna do both forever?

Coach Lee: In my opinion, in my head, I wanna do both forever. I love law. I love being in a courtroom. I love arguing. I remember when I first kind of started coaching, somebody asked me like law versus coaching, like they seem so differently. And I’m like, well, I’m a defense attorney, so I don’t choose my clients. I don’t choose my cases. And so I look at coaching similarly in the sense that yes, I have some say on a client in the sense of if you come to me, I can say, no, I don’t think I can help you. Or, yes, I can, but I can’t make you sign up to work with me just like I can’t make you choose what your problem is. And so I look at coaching and law in a similar way. Like I’m given these lemons of problems, cases, or clients, whatever you wanna call ’em, and I have to make the best form of lemonade. So what’s the best solution we can come up with out of this? And so to me, they’re similar, I guess, in that sense. And so ideally I would do both for as long as I can. I don’t have an intention of stopping law. The plan is to do both.

Jen: That’s awesome. I’m happy to hear that you love both so much. How has productivity coaching changed how you approach your legal workload?

Coach Lee: Honestly, it’s because of that and the way I live life that I got into coaching. So for me, coaching came about because other people were like, how do you do all these things? Like how do you have this like work life balance? How do you have all this structure? And I’m like, everybody doesn’t do this. And so for years people were telling me, you know, you should be a coach. And I was like, I don’t have time for that full-time attorney. No time to add anything else on my plate until the pandemic happened.

Jen: And then, but then you’ve kept it going. So you’re still full-time attorney and you’re running a successful coaching business. What is your secret? How are you managing it?

Coach Lee: Structure, knowing I’m naturally a morning person, I’m gonna tell you what time I wake up and you’re probably, your eyes are probably gonna bug out, but I’m naturally a morning person, maybe not this early. I wake up at two 30 because of the fact that I’m a morning person.

Jen: Oh wow.

Coach Lee: So I work my business, work, workout and all those things before going to work. And then I use my lunch breaks at work, like I said, to work on my business. And then when I come home, I have an hour or so before bedtime ’cause I go to bed at eight 30. I guess to work for the business. So it’s being structured is being intentional. It’s knowing when I work best and I know that morning hours are best for me in terms of productivity, focus, energy, clarity, all of those things. So I try to structure and put those higher impact tasks that involve more in my brain power in that part of my day.

Jen: Very smart. What do you schedule things for? Balance, like the things to support you and keep you powered up to do all of these things, or do those things make it to the to-do list? Or do you just know, oh, I’m going to do these like five things to keep myself sane and balanced?

Coach Lee: Both, like if you look at my phone planner, like my calendar on my phone, they’re not on my phone calendar, but on my paper to-do list. Like I time black out my day every day and I always write like workout, do my morning routine. Even if I know that I’m gonna do them. Like today I worked from home for work, and when I work from home on a Friday, I always go ahead and do my meal prep. ’cause normally I would meal prep on a Saturday, so I still write down meal prep, wash dishes, even though I know I’m gonna do it. But it’s just my reminder to myself to make sure that I’m not also over planning for those things because I, if I don’t see it, I feel like there’s so much more time between this time and this time. So when I write it down, it kind of reminds me that, hey, you’re gonna need an hour, an hour and a half for this before you start thinking you have all this time.

Jen: That’s a very good tip because I definitely suffer from like time optimism. So I think just writing down the things, even though I know I’m gonna do ’em just to manage that mental scheduling is a very good tip. Do you get a lot more inquiries around January of people being like, oh, I’m a New Year’s resolution, like I’m gonna be productive and scheduled and all of that. If so, how do you deal with that energy knowing that it’s probably prone to dissipate after a couple weeks?

Coach Lee: I’m not a New Year’s resolutions person, and it’s funny because last year I realized about halfway through the year that I don’t think I’m setting yearly goals anymore because this doesn’t fit my life anymore. I used to set yearly goals, it’s not that I set no yearly goals this year, but I set them on things that I can for sure hit in the sense of like a running goal. I know what that looks like. To run this many miles every month to make sure that I’m on track for the year, like a financial goal to save or pay down this amount of debt. What does that look like each month? And so essentially what I found like halfway through last year was that I was setting goals for work, life and business. I started my business in the pandemic and we know like the first kind of two years, so up until like 2022, 2023 is kind of when, you know, we came back to normal. And so I was still kinda like easing into things. And so I was setting these goals and then I kept getting to the end of the year and I’m like, I’m not hitting them. And so what I kind of realized is that 12 week year, the book, the 12 week year, I kind of started focusing that way, like looking at the quarters because at work my court dates are typically getting set between 60 to 100 days out so I can touch and plan more about what’s gonna happen. And because of working full time, that affects my capacity in terms of business and life. So if I’m setting these goals on this perfect scale, which is I have all the time in the world, yes, I can hit them, but the reality is I’m dealing with two major areas. Three, if you also count life. So I kind of limited it down. And so I would say for people, or as we’re in this new year and we have these New Year’s resolutions that we’re setting, make sure you’re checking your capacity, but also checking your why.

Jen: Oh, that’s good. Checking your why. That needs to be said to people more often. Is there like a typical profile of somebody who comes to you for productivity coaching? Do you see a lot of similarities from client to client?

Coach Lee: Yes, like especially when it comes to like the corporate professionals, they’re often similar to me, like high achieving women, whether they call themselves high achieving or not. But essentially we’re the women who are doing all the things at work, the people who are dependable and we can be counted on at work. But outside of life, we’re trying to also show up and be that same thing outside of life, but we often put ourselves and our priorities outside of life, I mean, outside of work, excuse me, on the back burner. And so the common denominator that I found is that they focus more on work and showing up and being accountable, being efficient, getting things done, saying yes to all the things that work so that as a result life, whether that be family health, IE, wanting to work out, things of that nature suffer. They’re working late, they’re bringing work home, they don’t want that. They want to have work life balance.

Jen: I noticed on your website it’s really interesting that you talk about fitness being such a core component of your life belief system, your practices and what you bring to coaching. Could you talk a little bit about more why, why that’s so important for overall productivity?

Coach Lee: For me, that’s where it started. I was in these fitness and accountability groups and so every day we’re posting like our workouts, our meal prep, our food, and people are like, like, how did you meal prep for the week? And I’m like, who got time to cook every day? So to me the amount of time you gotta spend in the kitchen to make one meal, I just did that for the week it’s a no brainer to me. They were the ones who were like, you’re encouraging, you’re motivated. You should be a life coach. And I’m like, again, full-time attorney here. No, thank you. I don’t have time for this. For me, working out is a non-negotiable.

Jen: What kind of tools do you use to manage your to-do lists?

Coach Lee: So the digital one, the purple one is my business to do list essentially for the week. Like what am I doing for Coach Lee? What do I need to work on for business?

Jen: It’s very cute. Do you feel like making a to-do list that’s visually appealing is something that you recommend to people?

Coach Lee: This is really for me, it’s more for accountability. I post this on my stories every Sunday, on Saturday, I post the completed one to say what I did and didn’t get accomplished. So I made it pretty really because post it on social media, but my planner that’s like in front of me, it is handwritten, crossed out. Like once it’s accomplished, it’s crossed out. So you know, it’s not as pretty, I’m a mix. When I’m doing the brain dump to set up the todo list, a mess. It’s junk and lines and arrows everywhere. But to have structure to know what it really is that I’m focusing on, I do like it to be neat, pretty, and like digitally appealing is it’s just an added bonus.

Jen: Alright, let’s get into the to-do list that you sent me. So first thing you have is MSM messaging and storytelling call. Can you tell me what that is?

Coach Lee: I joined the Mastermind and this was our first week kickoff, like, so the calls were on Tuesday, and so we had our call on Tuesday night at seven, which was our first, it was about messaging and storytelling.

Jen: And then you have Q1 launch planning. I assume that’s for, So is this all for your coaching business or is anything from, oh, okay. Then you have determine 12 week year tasks. Tell me about that. That one’s interesting.

Coach Lee: So I’m doing the 12 week year, like I was saying earlier. And so with the 12 week year, essentially it’s about looking at your, looking at each quarter as a year. And so, because when I was realizing last year that whole phenomenon, and the funny thing is I had read this book like five plus years ago and I didn’t like it the first time that I read it, in all honesty. But then I was thinking about this framework and wasn’t even thinking of the book. And then a friend was posting on her story talking about the book 12 week year, and I’m like, wait a minute. That is kind of what I’m talking about. I forgot about that book. Let me go back and reread it. So essentially it’s me deciding what task and what I kind of want each week’s theme to be throughout the course of this quarter. So I was kind of defining it, outlining what is the end goal that I wanna achieve by the end of this quarter? So what do I need to be like touch? What touch points do I need to have each week so that as I’m planning out my task, I know kind of like that non-negotiable task that needs to be in each week in addition to the regular life stuff that might happen to fall on there.

Jen: So is everything that you’re doing or learning for yourself, then something that you carry on to recommend to coaching clients?

Coach Lee: No, because I advocate for finding what works for you. It’s not one size fits all. And even when it comes to, like, when you’re saying like, what do you think about a planner? Like I’m a mix of them all, but I wanna necessarily suggest that my clients do a mix of them all. ’cause for them, that might be overwhelming, but I’m at the point to where I have these different, like having this one here visually works for me. Having this one that I carry around with me, make sure that I’m good on the go. And so as I’ve evolved, I’ve adapted different things, but I’ve also let go of some things. And so, yes, everything that I learned is a learning moment for me and for me to share, for me to help figure out what is going to work best for my clients. Because if I’m like, Hey, you’re a digital person. I tried this method. It didn’t work for me for these reasons, but here’s why I think it might work good for you.

Jen: Nice. That’s awesome. Yeah. Launching this podcast, I did a lot of research and wrote like a little ebook about all of the different productivity archetypes basically. And now having interviewed several people and seeing like, oh wow, there really are types and just like personality types and it’s really interesting to realize that there is no one size fits all solution. It’s all like you, you have to work with kind of your natural archetype in order to actually get to productivity.

Coach Lee: Exactly.

Jen: You have a lot of, going between kind of creative brainstorming and then like admin stuff. How do you budget your energy and do you block them off when you have, you know, you have both of those kind of different brain tasks on your list?

Coach Lee: So it kind of, yes, kind of by the day. So typically weekends is more the admin stuff. So like business credit card isn’t checked off yet because it’s not the weekend, that’s what I’m gonna finalize. I need to finalize the tax year and stuff. So I didn’t put that on there because I wasn’t sure if I was gonna finish that. But get my business credit card paid because I need to do that in order to be able to finalize the year to start getting stuff ready for tax season. So I kind of do it based off of the day, what’s going on, like typically weekends it’s, yes. More of that admin content, time planning ahead. I use my lunch breaks at work, like I said, to work on my business. But sometimes it depends on kind of what the task is or even what the day looks like, because today’s a work from home day I feel like I get so much more work done for work on a work from home day, but less on my personal side because of the fact that I’m outside of my normal structure, even though I’m within a structure. So it kind of looks differently. But I kind of decided by the day and every night before I go to bed, I make my to do lists for the next day. So I kind of pull from that list and to say, what is the focus for tomorrow?

Jen: Makes sense. I know for me, I’m definitely a person who can get caught up in, like productivity procrastination, making systems, reading about things, really planning and, and like catching myself two hours in being like, oh my God, I haven’t like actually done anything yet. I’m just planning. So, yeah. I’m sure you get some clients like that. What is your advice and techniques for not getting caught up in making systems?

Coach Lee: I’m my own worst client on that one because I love to plan and so sometimes I get caught in planning and I’m like, but when are you gonna do the thing that you were planning? And I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m planning. I’m planning on when I’m gonna start that, but I find for me that typically the execution part of the planning, I don’t do it when it’s something hard or something like unfamiliar or new. If it’s something that I’m excited about, I’ll plan it and go execute. But sometimes if it’s something new or hard or uncomfortable or I’m not sure if I can do this, that’s when I procrastinate by planning. That’s what I like to call it. Procrastiplanning.

Jen: Oh, procrastiplanning. I like that. Yeah. But it’s a, it can feel so good, like, ’cause you can feel so smart and productive doing all this planning. So it’s a, it’s a very vicious cycle.

Coach Lee: Right. Exactly. Exactly. And so yeah, with coaching clients, it’s things that I tell myself that, who’s there to kick me, where my clients ask me to kick them. Okay, not literally I don’t hit my clients, but like kick them in the butt and be like, Hey. You said you wanted to do this and remind yourself of this. So I do a lot of self coaching. Sometimes it works, sometimes not as much, but also reason I joined the Mastermind to make sure that I have someone who’s gonna kick my butt and make sure that I’m staying on top of what I’m supposed to be doing.

Jen: Very smart. Yeah, good to set up those systems of accountability for yourself.

Coach Lee: Last year, I was like, I need accountability. Like I used to have these like accountability partners in like different areas, but then I found that I was holding them accountable. But if I didn’t reach out and check in to see, Hey, how are you doing on this thing? They weren’t doing it for me. So I was accountability for them, but who was helping me when I struggled? So I started realizing that. And then the mastermind, it came up outta nowhere for me, and all I kept hearing was accountability, accountability, accountability, and I’m like, well, you’ve been saying you wanted accountability and here it is on a silver platter. Are you gonna take it?

Jen: So how are you now budgeting and rearranging other things in your schedule in order to accommodate that?

Coach Lee: When it comes to budgeting, the time, it’s me being intentional about what days I’m gonna say yes to things and what days I’m gonna say no to things like Tuesday’s Mastermind day. So don’t ask me to do anything like podcast recording interviews, like anything like that. So that as I’m kind of planning out the week, knowing that, so right now my thought is like, I need to have two to three hours to work on the Mastermind each week.

Jen: When you have clients that might have a similar thing, how do you recommend people keep a block of time available for redistributing when things come up?

Coach Lee: Understanding like what’s important. ‘Cause maybe you might be in a season where whatever that thing is, might not be important. And what does this look like? When you have any adjustment in the schedule, I often like to look at and think about it. Like, is this a permanent shift, meaning for the foreseeable future, like there’s no end date of when this is gonna be the change, or is this just for this week, this month, this quarter? Oh, I’m in trial this week, so everything kind of has to shift to be able to look at that. And so understanding the timeframe makes it easier to then build out a schedule or build out a solution to it if it’s a temporary one-off thing. What I like to do is have them create like their perfect schedule. Like this is my typical week and then here’s my flex week, so to speak. When things kinda get thrown up in the air, here are the non-negotiables, or here are the things that are gonna stay the same no matter what. And then these are the pieces that move around. ’cause maybe you have a call that you don’t do every week, but you do it every two weeks, once a month. So you know that you have to plan for those things. And either you use the time when that thing isn’t happening to your advantage for something that you wanna do for you, or you pivot and adjust in some other way. So I kind of start with asking like, what’s the duration? Like, how long is this change gonna be for, and what other things does it impact? And then we kind of build down and reverse engineer from there.

Jen: Nice. That makes sense. When you’re helping somebody build a schedule, is it based on their priorities, which thing you protect first between like deep work, rest, family time, et cetera, or is it, do you always have one that you advise? This should be the first thing that you protect.

Coach Lee: No, it’s a hundred percent based off them. ‘Cause I can’t tell you what’s important. ‘Cause if I build a schedule for you, you might not like it. I let them lead with what their why is and what’s important. But we also have to crosscheck that to say like what your why is and what you say is important is that actually, and factually what’s actually important. Because sometimes you say, this is important. I wanna work out. And then I’m like, okay, what if you do it here and it’s always but or some other form of an excuse. Then it’s like, that actually isn’t really important and that’s okay. So my priorities are never at the forefront. Always focus on the client because I feel that when it comes to planning or even productivity, that that’s often where people struggle. They try to follow these gurus and they try to do what they say to do, but without adapting it to their lifestyle. Like guess what works, but you have to tweak it. Like even me doing the 12 week year, the way that they say do it. I’m not fully doing it that way, but I’m doing the concept. I’m focusing on the next 12 weeks. I’m focusing on Q1 and what that looks like. I’m probably not following it every crossing, every I dot and every T like the book says, but I’m doing it in a way that works for me, and I think that’s what’s important. So what do they say? Like take the meat, spit out the bones, like take the part that works for you.

Jen: Yeah, I really like that, and that’s awesome it sounds very clear that your whole coaching philosophy is all around being realistic and reasonable, which is amazing.

Coach Lee: Yeah, very much like I’ve joined coaching programs in the past where, you know, the coaches are saying, do this, and I’m like, right, you, you’re a full-time coach and I’m not knocking that I work full-time and then have this business. So what you’re saying to do like I don’t know how you practically want me to do that. ‘Cause the time, like I literally can’t. Because of being that person on that end and knowing how it feels and how it felt, especially when I’m actually paying my money to hear this, I wanna make sure that I’m not that person for other people, but I’m the person who actually listens and help them find literally what works for you.

Jen: Yeah, and I’m sure that means that they are a lot more capable of actually sticking to the plans that you come up with when it’s catered to what’s possible.

Coach Lee: Exactly. The goal is once we finish working together, for you not to come back, and I know that’s probably a bad business model, ’cause then I don’t have repeat clients, but that means it works. Like maybe you come back a year or two from now because you’ve had this big transition in life, but you don’t have to. The goal isn’t for like after six weeks, you’re fully capable of doing it on your own.

Jen: That’s awesome. I think that’s an incredible business motto, and to be about actually wanting to help people more so than wanting to get as much money as possible is very admirable, and I think makes you a legitimately great coach. All right, let’s get back to your to-do list. So the next thing you have is another mastermind call thought leader.

Jen: And then you have PD content in a year. What’s that?

Coach Lee: PD means personal development. So every week I try to make sure that I’m doing some form of personal development. Yes, the Mastermind is personal development, but outside of that, whether that’s watching a replay call, watching some call that I’ve been meaning to look at. Some other program that I’m in so that my personal development for the week was, there was this video about creating a year of content in a week. And so I wanted to go watch that video to figure out is this something that I can do for me that I wanna do? Because it was in a group that I was in and people were talking about it and commenting and one girl had like taken notes and like made a document for it. So like I wanted to review all that information to figure out is this something that I’d wanna try or how would this look like? What would this look like for me?

Jen: You’re very active on Instagram and I don’t really see marketing on your to-do list. So is that something you’re gonna do? It doesn’t make the to-do list, or do you have it on other to-do lists, making content, doing marketing for your business?

Coach Lee: I’m trying to get better at it the sense that I have all these ideas and I write down the idea for set content. And then it ends up in my Asana board for content ideas. Quite often don’t get posted, so I’m trying to be much better. And like my word and my phrase for this, for this month, for the month of January, is about action and implementation. So working on taking action quicker instead of that constant planning mode of like, let me just write this down and do it. And finding the balance between thing I can take action on now versus let me write it down, think about it, sleep on it, and come back to it tomorrow. Like, no, I don’t. Everything I think of, I don’t just go do it immediately, but I’m like, okay, you need to do a post tonight already. Your coach gave you this idea. Why don’t you try it tonight instead of waiting for tomorrow or waiting for next week’s content to try it.

Jen: Nice. That’s, that’s great. Wait, so you have like a word of theme of each month. Tell me about that.

Coach Lee: I have one for the month, I have one for the quarter, and I have one for the year. So my word or phrase for the month is about accountability, action and alignment. Showing up without negotiation and kind of locking in my rhythm. Because I wanna take action quicker. I can’t negotiate, like I’ve started implementing like three non-negotiables a day. And so that’s what it means, show up without negotiation. If I wrote the three things down and said I was doing them today, you’re doing them today. So the first half of this year is about building and stabilizing in order to compound. It’s about creating structure before trying to scale. So like, make sure I have a solid foundation, build a machine with consistency over intensity. If you can’t tell, I’m very anti hustle and grind, but I’m not anti hard work. And so that kind of goes into the theme. And then my word for January, I guess it’s not really a word I was writing down ABCs. ‘Cause I had come up with action, balanced, and committed. Then when I wrote them, determined, efficient, and faith came to me as well. So instead of the ABCs, it’s the A, B, C, D, E, F.

Jen: Nice. Those are great, great words. All right, back to the to-do list next. You have planner update, check-in. What’s that?

Coach Lee: The planner I’m using and that I use, I made it. But I need to get it finalized so I can get it uploaded to Amazon, and I had a person who was making it fillable for people who wanted to use it digitally, so I needed to check in with her to see where we are in that process of getting that, like finished updates and all of that.

Jen: And then what’s the workbook updates? Check-in.

Coach Lee: I wrote a book, Lee’s Laws of Productivity. My friend read it and he was doing a project for somebody else and he was talking about making workbooks. And I’m like, Hey, you think I could turn my book into a workbook? And he’s like, yeah. So he gave me like a rough outline of what a workbook would be like for my book. So I need to check in on that.

Jen: Nice. That’s really cool. And then the last thing on your list is pay biz credit card. That one’s pretty self-explanatory.

Coach Lee: Yeah, so we need to make sure we pay that. This reminder, pay the bills before they’re due.

Jen: Good reminder. Do you have a general tip for anybody who wants to have more productivity in their life, like one tip that people could start with?

Coach Lee: A brain dump. Get it outta your head. We have too many thoughts, too many ideas, too many things are in our head, it makes it hard to take action because you’re thinking about the next thing. We need to get it out of our head and get it onto, I say paper get it out of your head and get it written down in whatever form that looks like. Get it out messy, don’t make it perfect. And then from there you can kind of create structure around it.

Jen: And do you have advice on how to prioritize? Because I think that’s something that’s really hard for people, like they feel like everything in their life is equally important. So how do you start to actually figure that out?

Coach Lee: So when you look at your week or you look at your task, the three ways I suggest you categorize it is what must be done, what needs to be done, and what do you want to do? Must is life, death. It has a deadline, like if this was next week, pay my business credit card would be a must do because it’s due on, I think it’s the 17th, so it’s due next week. So right now it’s a need to do because before next, by next week, it’s gonna be must do. So, must do is non-negotiable, has to get done. There’s a deadline. Maybe it’s life or death, whatever the case may be. Need to do is you do need to do it. It might not be urgent this week. It might be convenient to do it this week. If you don’t do it soon, it’s gonna become a must do and then want to do. Are those things that literally you want to do? Maybe it’s something fun. Maybe this is like, if I have extra time, I’ll do this. Like, oh, I wanna declutter my room. Maybe it’s not a must or a need right now. It’s something that you wanna do. Because I’m off this weekend and so I know I’m gonna have extra time and be around the house. Or maybe I don’t feel good, so I’m not going anywhere. So while I’m in the house, I wanna like clean up or tidy up. So the want to do things like just literally that things that you want to do, they may become priorities of needs and wants, or needs and must, excuse me, down the line. Or they might just be those, whenever I get time I’m gonna work on this thing. And so that’s how I think about to-do lists and tasks. Like when you’re planning things out, ask yourself or look at ’em from that lens. And that’s how you can determine what the priority is.

Jen: Very good advice. Final question. If you could see any person’s to-do list, whether that be a real person or just a job title, whose to-do list would you most like to see?

Coach Lee: Beyonce, Rihanna, someone like that. Like, are you doing the things day to day, like pick up kids, go to the dry cleaner, go record a song like I know Rihanna has, you know, she does have corporation that has businesses, so maybe somebody more like that, like an actress or singers to-do list who does both, what I want to see. Somebody who does both like full-time job, but also I have this passion project that is a full-time job outside of it.

Jen: Yeah, those are great. I would love to see Rihanna and Beyonce’s to-do list. I can’t imagine what’s on their to-do list and I am very curious. Is there anything else that you would like to share?

Coach Lee: Start. If you’re thinking about it, start, if it’s in your head, get it out. Just start.

Jen: Very good advice. Thank you so much for doing this. I learned a lot. You are very inspiring and especially because you’re so realistic. Like it’s inspiring because it feels possible rather than this far off, unattainable, dreamy thing. Like yeah, you’re very grounded.

Coach Lee: Thank you.

Jen: Thank you for sharing your wisdom. I will tag you in all of the content and everything and put all of your information on the website. So go check out Coach Lee, everybody. Thank you. Have a great night.