Jonathan Hawkins: [00:00:00] The cool thing about those sorts of assets that you build and those sorts of businesses that you know, as you said, it was slow, slow at first, but part of it is you’re building the library, so the value proposition just isn’t there in the early days usually. But over, you know, five years of adding videos and training and new this you know, all the stuff, now all of a sudden this thing is a, you know, a compelling thing that you can offer.

What’s it like, I guess, marketing and selling it now, does it, is it easier now? Does it sort of sell itself? Is it still the sort of thing you gotta convince these people? They need it.

Theresa Sidebotham: Yeah. There’s still some convincing you, you know it, I mean, nobody likes HR training. So convincing people that they really need it first and that yours is a good value. And again, marketing to the tip is one way we do it. You know, marketing, I speak at conferences and workshops and stuff a lot.

Welcome to the Founding Partner Podcast. [00:01:00] Join your host, Jonathan Hawkins, as we explore the fascinating stories of successful law firm founders. We’ll uncover their beginnings, triumph over challenges, and practice growth. Whether you aspire to launch your own firm, have an entrepreneurial spirit, or are just curious about the legal business, you’re in the right place.

Let’s dive in.

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. This podcast where we get to interview founding attorneys that are doing cool and interesting and different things in the law. And today’s guest is Theresa Sidebotham. She’s an attorney based in Colorado and she’s got an interesting niche practice that I gotta be honest, I really didn’t even know was a practice.

And so when we met, I don’t know, a couple months ago, I thought it was very interesting. So I said, Theresa, you gotta come on and talk about this. [00:02:00] So Theresa, why don’t you introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your firm, your practice and anything else you think we should know before we dive in.

Theresa Sidebotham: Well, thanks for bringing me on, Jonathan. You said my name, Theresa Sidebotham. The law firm is Telios Law. And our practice areas. We work with a lot of ministries and nonprofits. We work with faith-based business owners, and we work also, you know, with secular nonprofits and regular businesses. But our vision for law is around creating a culture of life and healing. So, of course it helps if our clients are interested in that to some degree. We tend to handle people’s problems. So everything from child safeguarding, workplace misconduct, discrimination, harassment, and that’s along a spectrum of training and prevention, you know, talking through issues, like maybe employee termination [00:03:00] or doing a full blown workplace investigation.

We do a lot of those. So it’s a very interesting practice. It’s a bit dark sometimes, unless you’re thinking about it, redemptively, which we try to do.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So it sounds like there, there are elements of, I guess, traditional employment type law, sort of, but,

Theresa Sidebotham: right,

Jonathan Hawkins: but you come at is sort of a different angle it sounds like.

Theresa Sidebotham: right. Well, you know, yes. A lot of it is employment law and of course we wanna meet all the legal standards and compliance and give the best legal advice. But I would say we’re adding a holistic approach of thinking about culture and spiritual and emotional factors and, you know, just generally how is our advice going to work well for the business or ministry and in financial factors too, for that matter.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So, so the name tell me about the name of the [00:04:00] firm. So what does it mean? How did you pick it? You know, people who listen to this and firm, you said it before. I, I love good trade, name type names for law firms as opposed to, you know, Smith. Smith and Smith. So tell us about that.

Theresa Sidebotham: Yeah, well, well this will will make you laugh. I’ve been married for 42 years to my husband Bruce Sidebotham, and it was actually his inspiration both starting the law firm and picking the name. So he said, you really need to start a law firm. There’s ministries all over this country and internationally that need your help.

And and he said, you don’t wanna call it Sidebotham it’s an awful name for a law firm. Well, he’s got a point there, right? So he said, call it Telios. So, so Telios is a Greek word out of the New Testament. And if you see the straight translation might be perfect. You know, when Jesus is talking about be perfect is my father in heaven is [00:05:00] perfect, but it doesn’t mean perfect like perfectionist or never make a mistake, it means whole or complete or mature. So it’s getting back to this idea of how do we do legal work, help clients in a way that will make their lives whole, that will make their organizations and cultures more whole. You know, what’s mature, what’s looking at things in a complete way from all the angles. So it helps us stay focused on what our goal is and it avoids that very odd last name Sidebotham.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well let, Let’s dive in a little bit into your practice. Like I said, it’s, you know, from my perspective it I just really didn’t even imagine. I mean, it makes sense now that I know about it, but before I just hadn’t even thought about it. And so, you know, obviously you, I mean you represent some, you know, regular businesses, but a lot of [00:06:00] churches and religious organizations.

So what kind of stuff do you do for them?

Theresa Sidebotham: So one whole huge areas, child safeguarding, you know, if you’re talking about a church, youth camp, schools, whatever, anywhere you’ve got kids involved. So first you wanna figure out how to keep them safe. And then you also wanna figure out if there is some kind of an allegation, how are you gonna respond? You know, how are you going to keep predators out? How are you going to get predators out? So there’s this whole and sometimes there’s not an adult predator often, you know, children with children are involved in some stuff. So that’s one whole area that’s really complicated. But then if you think in the employment space and any business owner, you know, in these days, ever since hashtag me too, has to think about, okay, well what about sexual harassment?

What about other forms of discrimination? You know, so we’re talking here about what you [00:07:00] might call abuse in the workplace, whether that’s power abuse, emotional abuse, sexual harassment, and you know, decent business owners don’t want that in their workplace ministries even less because it goes against the faith values. But how do you keep that out? What do you do to train and prevent, how do you respond? How do you deal with toxic people? And you know, these are complicated emotional problems, but they’re complicated legal problems. There’s huge legal liability. They’re complicated financial problems because, you know, the PR alone can do enormous damage to a ministry or business in this space. So we’re not looking at it as. Just how to help the victim or just how to prevent it or just how to deal with the financial or legal ramifications. But it’s a both and what’s the holistic approach? Because we think it helps the business or [00:08:00] the ministry to make it a better place to be. And we’re caring for the people and we’re making it a place where other people would like to come, you know? So that’s a, a win-win approach to it.

Jonathan Hawkins: I imagine. It could be very complicated sort of figuring out who you represent. So you’ve got, perhaps, I’m just gonna throw a hypothetical out there. Let’s say you have a a lead minister that maybe is accused of something, and then you’ve got the governing structure. Then you have like a victim and then you’ve got the congregation or whatever, you know, how do you approach, you know, how do you figure out, you know, you just go where it goes or, you know, take me through the process.

That just seems really complicated to me. How do you maneuver through it?

Theresa Sidebotham: Yeah, that’s a great question. And I know legal ethics is one of your specialties. I don’t often get that question that exact way. And you’re right, it is complicated and you could make a real mess up if you didn’t navigate that, right. So for [00:09:00] me, most of the time, 99% of the time. The organization’s going to be my client. If it’s a really senior leader, like CEO level, it may be the board itself directly that I’m working with. If it’s, you know, less so, it may be senior leaders that I’m working with. So, so that’s who the client is. I am pretty insistent that any individual who’s accused has got to be recused out of any decision making, you know, reporting that kind of thing.

And if they’re not willing to do that, then you know, they’re not working with me on it. One of the goals of the organization, you know, as I mentioned, is caring for people. So as I’m talking to the client, let’s just say it’s a ministry, it would be similar with a business, but a slightly different conversation. Say, you know, as a Christian ministry. God is calling you to care. Well, for people to show love, to show the character of Christ. So in [00:10:00] addition to thinking about legal liability, compliance, good workplace practices, we’re gonna be thinking about that, which means if there’s a victim, if healing is needed, the work that we’re doing will go to that end.

If the idea in the end is reconciliation, restoration, not necessarily putting somebody back in the same position, but healing, maybe even organizational apologies. So they know from the outset we wanna find out the truth and we wanna do the right thing with the truth. So that’s, if you will, the scope.

If I’m doing an investigation, it’s to do a neutral, independent investigation to bring them the truth. If I’m acting as counsel advising on the matter, I’ll help them walk through steps to find out the truth and respond well. So. If they wanted to be the kind of organization that’s just like, figure out some way to cover this up and make this go away. I wouldn’t be that [00:11:00] attorney. But I think really most attorneys, that’s not their desire either. Most attorneys would like, you know, let’s get things out, figure it out, help it go well. The person who’s bringing allegations and the person who’s accused are often suffering quite a bit of emotional trauma through this. So a lot of times I’ll say, give them a pastoral support person that helps them walk through this, but don’t let that person be a decision maker. Be involved in evaluating the legal work that we’re doing. So we try to break up, okay, who needs support? Who needs someone advocating for them? Who’s that going to be?

So that it doesn’t conflict with my representation? In some cases, I never talk to the people who may be victims. If I’m doing an investigation, I’ll often be talking to them, but it’s always clear I’m not your legal counsel. You know, we may, we may connect [00:12:00] them with other resources that will help them walk through that, you know, the, the organization might do that. Does that make sense?

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Okay. So, you know, I haven’t personally involved in these, but I read about them in the paper. So you’ve got, you know, some allegation of, you know, abuse and it may result in an actual lawsuit against maybe the organization, maybe the perpetrator or alleged perpetrator. Are you involved in those at all or is that sort of, there’s some sort of insurance counsel that’s appointed that may defend that.

What’s your relationship to those type of actions?

Theresa Sidebotham: Yeah, I’m very rarely involved in those, most of my clients, whether it’s ministry or business or in the stage of, you know, workplace allegation and response and not litigation, it’s pre-litigation. And what you hope is if you do it well, you never go to litigation, which is true in 90% of the cases. Now, every once in a [00:13:00] while litigation might get filed. And of course if I’ve been doing an investigation, I’m ethically barred from being defense counsel anyway. But defense counsel in litigation isn’t a role that I’m really looking for because there’s insurance defense, they’re usually doing it. There’s so many competent attorneys, you know, you know a bunch of them.

I know a bunch of them who are great at that work. And so I prefer, you know, I think my highest and best use is this prevention and response work where, you know, I’ve got some skills and approaches that are maybe a little bit more unique.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, that makes sense. So. How did you get into this area? Again, it’s like I’ve been, I’ve been around for, I don’t know, 20 plus years at this point until I lose count. But I’ve never met an attorney that’s in this space till I met you. So how did you find it?

Theresa Sidebotham: It was an interesting [00:14:00] journey. So, you know, I, I may have mentioned to you when we talked before, I was a missionary kid, grew up in Indonesia. My husband wound up, you know, well we spent some time over there as a family. He was an Army reserve chaplain. So, so I grew up in this ministry space and, you know, me as a business owner is, kind of a, a new evolution in our family and a little bit of a different thing. Then I wound up, I clerked for a while. Well, so I should say I’m one of the second career attorneys, right? We have four kids. I was raising them, doing some homeschooling, you know, they get up around middle school, early high school age. So I go back to law school. I graduate 20 years ago, clerked for a while at the Court of Appeals. Then I wound up with a, a large-ish outfit that had a religious institution’s practice and was doing some of the Catholic sex abuse defense work. So they actually were doing,

you know, the litigation defense and doing a good job of [00:15:00] it. But getting into that world, you know, it started to connect some of the things I’d seen as a child, some of the, and I’m like the evangelical organizations have these same problems.

You know, they’re sort of over there feeling a bit superior and not, so anybody who’s been working with kids for a long time has those problems. So, when I ended up leaving that firm, starting Telios law I would say the child safeguarding was kind of the path in. And then you realize, well, I. But if you’ve got an atmosphere that allows problems with keeping kids safe there’s employee problems too, right?

And so this concept of abuse and harm really spreads out through the organization and gradually got more and more into what we’d probably think of as the employment loss side of it. So that’s, it just evolved.

Jonathan Hawkins: It is. Yeah. It’s funny how that happens. You know, I look back at my practice and, you know, [00:16:00] it’s changed a lot, but I, I can sort of pinpoint the seeds and the beginnings of it. So I, I want to talk about forming your own firm before we do that. You mentioned sort of growing up overseas, Indonesia and all that.

And you know, I was looking at your bio and, and you’ve lived a lot of places, done a lot of cool stuff, and I wanna sort of, you know, dive into that a little bit. So you have four sons, but I think three of them were born on different continents, or they were born on three different continents. That’s pretty cool.

So maybe take me through, you know, sort of where were you, what were you doing? You said this is your, your sort of second career, but what, what was up before?

Theresa Sidebotham: so I’d mentioned I was a missionary kid, you know, came back to the states, went to college, met my husband there, and so missionary kids. There’s a whole group of people called Third Culture Kids. They can be missionary kids, embassy kids, oil kids, military kids who’ve lived overseas. It’s really anybody who’s been taken by their [00:17:00] parents to another country that’s not their country, and had to live there for a while. And the upshot generally is you’re comfortable with a lot of cultures and you’re not really completely belonging to any one culture. To some extent there’s some real comparisons with the immigrant experience, even minority experiences within this country that there’s, you know, shifting cultures. So, met my husband who was a Navy brat and had, you know, some of the same third culture background. We got married, oh gosh, we were so young. I was 20, he was 22. He was a lieutenant in the army. So we spent three years in Panama. That, that was back in, you know, kind of the, the Cold War days, the time of the Contras and, and so forth.

So he was off doing engineer stuff all the time. We did spend enough time together to get pregnant and have our first son there. So, so he was born in Panama. Then he got out, we wanted to [00:18:00] go back and do some Christian work and missions work in Indonesia. So he went back to grad school. Second. Well, no, he was still in the Army. Yeah, that’s right. Second son was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Then we got out and the third son was born in California. We were sort of on our way en route to Indonesia at that point. We were really poor at the time. I remember we had a special where if you could get in and out of the hospital in under 24 hours, it was a thousand dollars to have a baby. This is a while ago. Right. And then we head over and live in Padang West Sumatra for about seven years. And the youngest was actually born in a hospital there. He is the youngest of four boys. And when he’d get fed up with the family, he’d try to tell us, well, no, I I was adopted really. And we’d be like, Joe, you were the only white baby within a thousand miles there.

There’s no way they mixed you up. Or he’d say, I got mixed up in [00:19:00] the hospital and And there’s no way they mixed you up in the hospital. There were no other white babies to mix you up with, so you’re stuck with his family. So he actually has an Indonesian birth certificate, which he got. So he had his American passport. That’s right. They gave Indonesian birth certificate. So I showed up at the American Embassy and said, I’ve got this baby. He’s my baby, but I can’t prove it. And he doesn’t have a passport and we wouldn’t be able to get out if we had to. Well, who knew? It turns out they have a special emergency provision to issue US birth certificates and passports to these foreign born babies.

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow. So do you or did you know other languages growing up and do your kids

Theresa Sidebotham: So only the youngest was any good at language and he did for a while and he doesn’t really know ’cause we came back to the States when he was five. I grew up speaking Indonesian. I learned Minangkabau while we [00:20:00] were over the second time. I can still speak some Indonesian, but not Minangkabau was pretty good at French in high school and college.

I can read it a little bit now, but can’t really talk it anymore. Studied Greek for a couple years in college. Done some Spanish, but I’m not one of these people who’s like fluent in multiple languages. It’s bits and pieces.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so now all your, your sons are all stayin. Are they staying in the US or are they, are they jet setting off to other countries now?

Theresa Sidebotham: Well, they sort of stay in the US they live here in Colorado, but the oldest is a founding partner of a software company and they sell a lot overseas. So he’s always racing off to Europe or India or places like that. And then the third son is also military reserve. So, he spent a year in Kuwait and sometimes goes overseas, but yeah.

But that’s just kind of [00:21:00] normal travel, right? That’s

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah. Well, the other thing I saw, there’s some story about an active volcano and I wanted to hear that, ’cause I want to hear the backstory on this thing.

Theresa Sidebotham: Oh my gosh. So, so go way back. So we have four, four little boys. Youngest is a toddler. We’re living in Padang and we have some young visitors, like college students come over and my husband says, well, let’s climb Mount Marapi, which is the the most important mountain in the province and also is an active volcano, but it doesn’t usually do much.

You know, it maybe belches a little bit, but it doesn’t usually do much. And it’s all covered with Jungle and so forth. And I’m like, well, I’m staying with the kids ’cause they don’t need both parents to go off and get killed on some wild adventure. And I said, be careful up there. You know, there’s tigers in the Sumatran rainforest. He’s like, oh, there’s no tigers up there. Well, actually, there was a tiger [00:22:00] up there that night on the other side of the mountain, but they didn’t meet the tiger. They climb all night, they get to the top of the mountain at sunrise, you, and they spend a little time up there just kind of being together, praying a bit.

And then just as they’re getting ready to head back down, the volcano erupts and really erupts for like the first time in 20 or 30 years. So they hear this, they’re right at the top. I mean, they’re like a hundred yards from the hole top. And they hear this boom in the ground and they, they start running right. And he said, rocks the size of coffee tables going like up hundreds of feet into the air and, and everything coming back down.

So it was really almost miraculous that they just didn’t all get killed. They took some shelter behind a rock. They did all four get burns, these third degree burns and the kind of the rock would [00:23:00] hit and burn through layers of clothes and give you a third degree burn just like that.

Jonathan Hawkins: Oh my gosh.

Theresa Sidebotham: Couple of them had broken limbs, but not like snapped, like I think one fractured, maybe a fractured wrist and fractured ribs. I can’t remember exactly. So there’s no EMS there, right? So they spend the next six or eight hours hiking down off the mountain despite their state of, you know, being injured. And so the first I hear is the call from the town where they are and my husband doesn’t even tell me much. He’s like, well, there’s been a bit of an accident, so we’re driving home and, and you know, can you meet us at the hospital? So I meet him at the hospital and you know those war movies where everybody’s like all black with smoke and stuff and thing tied around their head? Yeah. It was that. So they get off and they look like they’ve been, well of course they have. They’ve been through a huge fire. They’re just [00:24:00] coated with this black stuff. And two of them stayed overnight at the hospital. My husband and the other one went home ’cause they were quite as seriously injured. And then the next morning I flew with two of them to Jakarta and met somebody else who flew ’em out to Singapore to get medical care. And they had, you know, burn graft and the whole thing. I mean, it was a pretty big deal. My husband has scars to this day and what he will tell you, he says third degree burns kill the nerves. So they don’t actually hurt for a couple of weeks and then they start to heal and then it kicks in and starts to hurt. So, yeah, he had, you know, burns like this big on his back and

Jonathan Hawkins: Oh my gosh. Well, tell me that was the last time he hiked up that mountain.

Theresa Sidebotham: that was the last time he hiked up that mountain. And, And you know, for guys, I think there’s a point in life where they realized for the first time that they’re not [00:25:00] invincible and immortal and you can actually die. He’s still very brave and adventurous. But after that, if I said things like, don’t swim in those shark infested waters, he’d be like, oh, all right.

Jonathan Hawkins: Oh man, that is crazy. Crazy story. Yeah. So I wanted to hear about that, but, so yeah. So let’s switch back to the law firm. So what, leading up to you starting your own firm, I mean, you were at a firm what gave you the push to go do it? Why not just stay at the firm?

Theresa Sidebotham: Yeah, so so it was a great firm and a great apprenticeship, but it ended up not being a good fit. You know, there’s probably still some glass ceiling issues for women in the law, and you know how the bigger firms are, if there’s one partner who doesn’t just love you there’s, there’s not really much of a future for you. I think the way my husband put it is.[00:26:00]

He is like, Theresa, you’ll do great at a firm for six months or a year, and then you’ll start having ideas again. So, So I, you know, it could have gone somewhere else, but you know, there was that problem that I do tend to think of ideas and people don’t always want their lowly associates thinking of ideas.

So my husband’s point was, go start your own firm and then you can have all the ideas you want. And, you know, I think he was probably right,

Jonathan Hawkins: So what was it like on the early days?

Theresa Sidebotham: so, so you gotta remember my background, right? I’ve never even seen QuickBooks. I mean, I know how to balance a checkbook with the, you know, writing the stuff in. And then my husband complaining ’cause my numbers weren’t all lined up nicely. So, so I had to learn everything. So I just started taking in as much as I could about. How do you run a business generally? How [00:27:00] do you run a law firm? You know, listening to CLEs, podcasts, whatever was out there, we were checking out books and reading them in the beginning. I mean, it was really insane. We, We had hardly any money, you know, we’d been putting our kids through college expensive, private Christian colleges.

So all the money had gone into their future, not our future. And we just said, okay, God, if this is something that you want us to do, you know, we need help. There’s no money. There’s one kid left in college. We’ve never done this before. So the VA changed the rules on the GI bill that year. So my husband was able to assign his GI bill to get the last kid through his last year of college. And, you know, a little bit of work came in here, a little bit of work came in there. My husband’s in ministry, so he’s not making hardly anything. Right. But it [00:28:00] worked and, you know, through so much of our lives, God has just provided what we needed. So, so we kind of watched that play out. I’m working out of my house, you know, so I got my little desk, my laptop and, and it, and it started to grow.

You and I are both involved with Atticus and I used to listen to their stuff and read their stuff, and then about five or six years ago, started working with them. But I always really wanted to figure out, okay, how do you do the business of law? Well, I had gotten a pretty good attorney training at, you know, the appellate court and the firm, but the business side.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, you know, that’s it’s, it’s a challenge, but I enjoy it. How have you liked it?

Theresa Sidebotham: You know, I really, I do like it. And I like running the business. The people say, oh, you know, managing people, it’s difficult. And, And yeah, it is. And yeah, I’ve made some mistakes but it’s also a great way to bless people. And [00:29:00] it’s interesting and, you know, I actually even kind of enjoy my sessions with QuickBooks, so.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I won’t go that far from me. But I very quickly after, I don’t know, three months, I was like, yeah, I’m get, I’m getting, I’m outsourcing this part. I’m not doing that anymore. Just but

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Jonathan Hawkins: so yeah. So, when you started it, did you have clients? Were you able to bring clients with you or did you start from scratch?

Theresa Sidebotham: It was pretty much from scratch. I mean there were, you know, there were one or two clients that did eventually come over and give some work, but I didn’t have an active book of business ’cause I was still an associate. So it was, you know, it was pretty much a wish and a prayer and.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So did you know when you started it, did you [00:30:00] know that your practice was gonna be sort of what it is now? Did you have an idea, a vision, what it was gonna be so then you knew at least what types of clients you wanted and maybe where to go fish for those clients? Or did it just sort of organically happen?

Theresa Sidebotham: Well for the ministry clients, ’cause I had been working with them at the firm. I knew they were the ones that I was best equipped to help with my background and the work I had been doing. So yeah, I went to conferences that were focused around those issues. Whether, I mean, there’s a big missions conference and I do represent a lot of the missions organizations. There’s Child Safety Protection Network. So starting with some of those problems that I had a really good background. ’cause even then I’d already been doing some speaking and writing and some of those topics. So that formed the core and then it grew from there.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, because you know, most lawyers, you know, they do some, what [00:31:00] I’ll just call sort of traditional practice area, you know, family law, civil litigation, personal injury, criminal, where there’s lots of clients everywhere. They’re just everywhere. And then you can meet other lawyers and get referrals.

So it’s a, it just is a little bit easier where it seems like your practice area it’s, I mean, it’s hyper niche and you know, meeting with other lawyers is not really gonna get you clients in your practice area. I wouldn’t think. Maybe every now and then, but for the most part you gotta go fish where the clients are.

So, was that the conference route or the just, I don’t know. You tell me.

Theresa Sidebotham: The conference route for sure. And, And I, you know, I would offer to do presentations, that kind of thing. Pretty early into it, we started doing a, a monthly Telios tip. We’ve got one now for ministries and one for businesses. And you know, as we got people on the mailing list, we’d send this monthly update, you [00:32:00] know, legal updates, HR stuff, child safety, you know, whatever.

And we’ve done that for a number of years and that’s helped us keep in touch with people. The one Attorney Referral Network. So we’re involved with Christian Legal Society and I will say that’s, there’s been some referrals there from the attorney side, either attorneys that are also working in this ministry, nonprofit sector who need help with investigations or whatever, or just, you know, most of these attorneys are involved with a ministry or two and, and they might send them our way. There’s actually a lot of ministries out there, you know, churches and all kinds of ministries. If you looked in any average size city, there’s. You know, there’s probably hundreds. Even the trick with ministries is convincing them that they need legal counsel. Most of them consider that to be highly optional.

I mean, I’ve I’ve talked to organizations that are 50 million a [00:33:00] year revenue that don’t have in-house counsel, and they think five hours a year of legal work is really about a sweet spot. And

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s crazy.

Theresa Sidebotham: It’s crazy. Well, and it’s not good for them, right? Because there’s a lot of stuff that, that isn’t done right, and they’re getting themselves in trouble.

They’re underinsured, they’re so, they need us, but convincing them that they need us is sometimes a problem.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so yeah. So part of your job is to educate them why they need you. So this Telios tip is that a physical mailer or like an email or both?

Theresa Sidebotham: Yeah, that’s an email one. We, I’ve heard the physical ones are good. I haven’t really gotten in that direction. But we do that and then we have a whole training affiliate that’s called Telios Studios and or TeliosTeaches.com is actually the website, and that’s HR training and [00:34:00] child safeguarding training that’s there’s two versions.

There’s a specifically biblically based version, and then there’s more of a values-based version of it, and that’s to help ministries and businesses think through some of these issues with how do you handle complaints and responses, harassment, but more from the perspective that we want to do this well because humans have value.

You know, from the Christian perspective, they’re made in the image of God.

But even from a secular perspective, we want to value humans for who they are. And you know, really embrace being part of the same family in Christ, or being part of the brotherhood of man if you’re being secular, be the brotherhood and the sisterhood, right? But that sense of humans, as humans. So not that our interests are competing, but that we treat each other with honor and [00:35:00] dignity and that’s the perspective that the training takes along with the legal compliance. So I think the training in itself is also a bit of a marketing piece. I don’t know if the law firm’s marketing for the training or vice versa, but all in there together.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so yeah, let’s talk about the training. I wanted to talk about that. So is it, so it’s a separate business outside the law firm, and is it in person? Is it, Is it videos, is it both?

Theresa Sidebotham: We occasionally do in-person trainings, but that would be more for organizations that can pay your rates to prepare and come and deliver it. And you know, that’s pricey. So mostly it’s a learning management system and because it’s training and not legal services per se, ethically, it’s split off from the law firm.

And, And you know, we, attorneys always like to divide the liability by having different LLCs, so you

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, it’s, it’s smart. If [00:36:00] you hadn’t done it, I would’ve recommended you do.

Theresa Sidebotham: Yeah. So that’s an, that’s the training LMS do some of the teaching. Actually, one of our sons, David’s the creative director, he’s doing some of the teaching. So the teaching is informed by, you know, what we’re doing on the law firm side, obviously, but it’s not legal services per se.

Jonathan Hawkins: And you know, I talk to lawyers all the time about these sorts of things and you know, I’m a big proponent of it. If you can figure out sort of the adjacent service that’s non-legal perhaps, that you can sort of build and sell and all these things, you know, go for it. It makes a lot of sense. How far along into sort of the life of your law firm did you spin off or did you create the training?

When did you realize, hey, that we need to do this?

Theresa Sidebotham: yeah. We started dabbling in it about five years ago, and it’s grown. Very slowly businesses that are [00:37:00] it’s sort of like software as a service, although it’s not exactly software, but this type of business in this model tends to grow really slowly unless you have venture capital and you know, just huge cash infusion so you can hire people. So I wish it had grown a little faster, but I also understand that it’s pretty normal in the cycle. But it’s robust now. We’ve got a lot of great training in the suite and you know, the word starting to get out,

Jonathan Hawkins: Is,

Theresa Sidebotham: the first idea was probably five or six years ago.

Jonathan Hawkins: And how do you, what’s the pricing model? Is it subscription? Is it a, a la carte per video? Is it, you know, they buy like a course, all the above.

Theresa Sidebotham: Yeah, we tried a la carte and that was just an administrative nightmare. So now it’s an organizational subscription. So, you know, let’s imagine that you had, say you had a law firm with 10 employees. So that would [00:38:00] probably be on the lowest level of the subscription, and it would be a band. So it’s not each X amount, it’s you’re in the, you’re in the one to 25 band, you’re in the 25 to a hundred band.

You’re in the thousand plus employee band, and it’s priced by the band. And you know, you’re not nickel and dimming people and you’re not changing it unless there’s some kind of significant growth or shrinkage. And then it’s an annual subscription. So the idea is it just rolls over every year, and there’s enough in there that you could say, well, this year we’re all gonna do the sexual harassment training, and next year we’re gonna do the racial discrimination.

And I’m, oh yeah, I’m gonna have my managers. Do you know, complaints, investigation response. So that’s how the client’s got a lot of freedom to select who’s going to take what when,

Jonathan Hawkins: The cool thing about those sorts of assets that you build and those sorts of businesses that you know, as you said, it was [00:39:00] slow at first, but part of it is you’re building the library, so the value proposition just isn’t there in the early days usually. But over, you know, five years of adding videos and training and new this you know, all the stuff, now all of a sudden this thing is a, you know, a, a compelling thing that you can offer.

What’s it like, I guess, marketing and selling it now, is it easier now? Does it sort of sell itself? Is it still the sort of thing you gotta convince these people? They, They need it.

Theresa Sidebotham: Yeah. There’s still some convincing you, you know, it, I mean, nobody likes HR training. So convincing people that they really need it first and that yours is a good value. And again, marketing to the tip is one way we do it. You know, marketing, I speak at conferences and workshops and stuff a lot.

And so putting an out there, we will probably start, we’re just on the edge of starting to use Google Ads, but we haven’t fully pulled that [00:40:00] trigger. We’re actually doing some website work and in the meantime we’re actually working, we’re actually trying some work with the company that Atticus mentioned in their AI training that the rival flow AI people.

So we’re updating and upgrading website pages now before we look at doing the Google ads. And then one thing we’re doing, so I mentioned my son David. He’s very creative and funny. I don’t know that attorneys are allowed to be all that funny and snarky, but he is not an attorney. He is a millennial with a wacky sense of humor. So he does a vlog series called Stupid Things People Do and What We Can Learn from them and he’ll pick some case or even a topic like who knew Insurance could be funny and he’ll riff on it with these wild visuals. Somehow he’s trained AI to do art that looks like [00:41:00] his work. I don’t know how he did that, but those are funny and lighthearted and we know we put those in the tip.

So the idea is if you take the training, sure. You get some of me giving, you know, the standard lecture, but then we break it up with graphics and visuals and quizzes and David being. Extremely amusing and the stupid things log. So yeah, that’s building the library.

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s cool. So, as between the law firm and the training. You know, looking down the road maybe now and looking down the road, what do you think is probably gonna grow faster? Is there one that you’re focusing on over the other or are they really sort of symbiotic?

Theresa Sidebotham: Well, they’re symbiotic right now. The law firm’s still supporting the training as we’re building it, but if you think about scale, the training could scale. The training could really scale in a big way, in a way that it’s very hard for the law firm to do. So, if I sell $10,000 worth of legal services, [00:42:00] somebody’s gotta put in 10,000 hours of billable work.

Whether it’s me or another attorney. You know, that’s our, we can leverage, but we can only leverage the extent that we can get good people who are still doing billable work.

But I could sell $10,000 of, you know, the tele as teachers training material. And the additional overhead would be quite minimal because it’s all there and it’s all software.

So maybe just a little bit of customer support, but we’re talking minutes or hours, we’re not talking major amounts of work. So the rational business approach would be,

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

Theresa Sidebotham: let’s see if we can get that to scale.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, Yeah. Well, I, you know, and I’ve heard of others that have done it. I mean, I mean, there are examples out there and I think that’s really cool and I don’t know if there’s much competition in your space for [00:43:00] that. So maybe you have a head start over others that, you know. So, so, yeah. So yeah, so shifting back to the legal work, there was another thing that when we spoke before, you had mentioned to me something about a client assessment that you, I don’t know if it’s a self-assessment or if it’s something you guys do.

How does that sort of fit into and maybe it’s the sort of the educating process of why they probably need you. I’m curious how you develop that and what role it plays in your business development or maybe just your service delivery.

Theresa Sidebotham: Yeah, so, so a bit of both. We were thinking about this problem that many of our clients have no idea where their weak spots are, and so we started brainstorming and we came up with about, I think on the business side it’s a dozen, and on the ministry side there’s a couple more where there’s organizational areas.

You should be thinking about everything from your employee handbook to [00:44:00] cybersecurity, to how to terminate somebody to whatever. I can’t remember all of them. So we developed a self-audit survey for each one of those where you go through all these different areas do you do this, do you do that? And then David took all that and created an automated survey where depending on what your responses are, it also spits out recommendations. This. So, you know, you did great except for these three things. Or Jonathan, nothing in your employee handbook works. You need to complete. I had, I had one client reach out and say, well, I took this and there’s six pages of recommendations and I think we need to hire to do our employee handbook. I’m like, yay. So there’s this whole, yeah, it works. So there’s this whole suite and we have what we call basic, which is like a free subscription. You can go in and get three of them. Actually, I’d be glad to send you a link to put in your show notes if you’d like that.

And then, then there’s a, an in [00:45:00] between where I think you get half a dozen of them for 500 bucks.

You can get all 12 of ’em for a thousand bucks. So it’s both. It’s both being used as a bit of a marketing tool that, you know, one of them will go out with a Telios tip or somebody who’s serious about really going through their business or their ministry can, you know, buy the whole suite and figure out, you know, not all of it. I mean not a hundred percent of it’s even in our practice area, but we know where to send. Like if you wind up with a bunch of finance and tax issues, you know, we can, we know people to send you to, but we want organizations at least to be able to go through it and think about it. And if we were to come in and do a full audit, I mean that would be a pretty expensive legal project.

So this is a little bit of a soft do some of the work yourself. And in our, you and I have talked a little bit [00:46:00] about the legal subscription idea, if you get our legal subscription access to these self-assessment audits as part of that, along with some of our templates.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yes. Let’s talk about the subscription the legal subscription offering. Have you launched that? And, you know, how’s it been? You know, My sense is from others that I’ve talked to it’s an iterative process. So I’m just curious what you’re, what you’ve learned and what you’re learning.

Theresa Sidebotham: I agree it’s iterative. We did send out an initial email about it to, you know, people that we already had contact with, you know, in Colorado and Texas. ’cause I’m licensed there too. And I think there’s been a little bit of interest in it. No one’s exactly rushed to sign up and say, I think they’ve gotta think about it for a while.

And I think people will want to sign up when they’ve, if they’re looking down the tunnel and saying, well, we’ve got a lot of legal projects this year. This might [00:47:00] be a good time. But I’ve started talking to clients about it on intake. And saying, you know, you can either retain us to go through your employee handbook or whatever it is that you want us to do. Or you could think about the subscription model, which would include your training, would include all these templates would have a discounted rate. And I’ve had some, oh yeah, please send us that information type of response. But I think it’s going to take a while to build that up to where, you know, legal services are tough that way because it’s not like buying ice cream where you’re like, yeah, I would definitely eat ice cream every week.

Well, I shouldn’t, but I definitely would. But legal services, you know, people are reluctant to say, yeah, we really need that.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. You know, the example I always give is, you know, nobody really wants a lawyer. I mean, if they’re coming to a lawyer, I mean, you know, maybe if you’re adopting a child [00:48:00] or something, maybe you’re like, yes, or you’re buying a business maybe, but you know, it’s not like you’re buying an iPhone and you get to open the box and play with it and all that. I mean, it’s just, you know, it’s a lot harder to sell, that’s for sure.

Theresa Sidebotham: We are really more like dentists. You know, we need them in our lives to keep us healthy and clean our teeth and give us a nice smile and not have pain. But who loves to go to the dentist? You’d have to be in love with your dentist to wanna go to the death. So we’re kind of the same.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yes. Oh, I’ve never even thought about, but yes, you’re right, we are. And if the, if your tooth is hurting or you got whatever, you gotta go and you’re not happy about it. Well, so, so I can’t remember, maybe you didn’t say it, but how many years ago now did you start your firm?

Theresa Sidebotham: 12 years.

Lemme make sure I’m getting my, with the beginning of 2012. So we’re in the 13th year,[00:49:00]

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. So, so looking back, you know, I guess all those ideas that you’ve had, we’ve talked about, you know, the subscriptions and the training you get to implement these ideas. But as you look back with sort of hindsight is there anything that you wish you hadn’t done or maybe that you had done but sooner?

Theresa Sidebotham: Hmm. Adding the ideas is good. I think with the ideas it’s important for them to be bullets rather than bombs, you know, you, you put a little bit of resources into something and see if it works before you bet the whole firm on it. Mostly I’ve done reasonably well at that. I’ve occasionally brought on people too soon before we really had quite enough cash flow to sustain them. And I’ve sometimes kept people a little longer than I should have. So I’ve learned to be really ruthless where I’ve gotta really be [00:50:00] watching in that first three months. And if you don’t have the chops for the job, you know, we need to bless you and send you on your way. So that’s been iterative for me.

And I, I know I’ve learned a lot, but I don’t wanna say that I’ve got that down because I think that is a skill that keeps being difficult. Yeah, so what have I learned good and bad? I think the cashflow principles are important. You know, the things that Atticus is teaching about handling your money well, making sure that you’ve got, you know, cash reserves built up because you got, you have good years and bad years and, you know, we’ve had some of both and it is in fact really important to have that money so you can, you know, keep payroll steady, keep bills paid mostly.

We’ve done well on that. Mostly we’ve doing really well on it until my parents wanted to come out here and we bought them a house. So now we’re kind of [00:51:00] building up the cash reserves again.

Jonathan Hawkins: Put him to work. Put ’em to work.

Theresa Sidebotham: Well, they left. So now the house is, now, the house is an Airbnb, so at least it’s generating a little bit of cash flow.

But seriously. The business principles are really important because if the business isn’t run well, nobody’s secure and happy, you know, there’s not a good foundation. I hired one of our amazing staff people and the first check that she got, she came in and said, well, is it okay if I cash it? And I’m like, why wouldn’t, what do you mean, why wouldn’t you cash it? And she said, well, do you need me to hang on to it for a few days? And I realized she’d been in this environment where like she wasn’t getting paid.

Jonathan Hawkins: Oh, wow.

Theresa Sidebotham: like, please cash the check. You’re gonna mess up my QuickBooks if you don’t.

Jonathan Hawkins: yeah. Well, you bring up a, you know, good points that I’ve experienced, I think any lawyer experienced, and it’s, you know, you know, [00:52:00] there’s this balance of not hiring soon enough versus hiring too soon, you know, where. You maybe have gotten in front of your skis a little too much. And it’s hard finding that balance.

It really is. It’s an art, not a science. May, maybe if you get to the point where you got a highly sophisticated CFO on the team, they can tell you exactly when to do it. But then you gotta pick the right person. You gotta get, you got the right person. So then you got, you know, the lesson that, that everybody learns is, you know, you lawyers, I think, and I’ve heard this from many, many lawyers over and over and over, they tend to just keep people on way too long.

And then they know they, they shouldn’t be there. They don’t wanna deal with it. They feel bad. They’re not, you know, it’s a nice person. All these things they tell themselves. But it’s like you said, it’s not good for the business. It’s not good for everybody else. And, you know, even if you’ve done it a few times it’s, it’s still a tough lesson to learn.

I Yeah.

Theresa Sidebotham: Yeah. And then doing it right, you know, not creating legal liability or [00:53:00] other problems. You know, I, my office manager goes to the, she’s pretty involved with the Association of Legal Administrators and some of the story she comes back with about how some attorneys behave to their staff.

So that’s the opposite right there.

There’s the sweet conflict, avoidant attorneys, and then there’s the attorneys. They’re busy creating legal liabilities by mistreating people. So, they need to be working with you or maybe with me on some of this stuff,

Jonathan Hawkins: Well that’s, say you’ve got the employment background, so you should be good at it. Right? Or at least you know what to do and what not to do. So,

Yeah.

Yeah. That’s good. So, so you’ve been at it 12 years you know, you got some good things cooking, got some good irons in the fire. As you look to the future, you know, where do you wanna see this thing going?

Whether it’s the training or the, or the law firm or both?

Theresa Sidebotham: Well, I am at that point where I’m identifying what do I really like to [00:54:00] do, and where do I think I add the most value? And I think where I add the most value is high level advising investigations, especially the complicated ones and the training. And there’s a lot of day-to-day drafting and writing and so forth that I would really prefer not to do. So I’m trying to hand off as much as I can of that and looking forward, you know, I would like to have other people doing that and I’m not, I’m old enough that, you know, I could be thinking about retiring. I’m really not interested in retiring. I come from a pretty long lived family and, you know, I feel great, but I don’t wanna be working many hours either.

So, I would say over the next few years, I’d like to scale back enough so that, you know, maybe I’m working 30 hours a week, maybe I’m working 25, but less of a grind. [00:55:00] And we’re coming now off of one of those tougher years. So starting to go in that direction, then it kind of backed itself up again. I’m trying to get back in that direction. But I enjoy what I’m doing if I’m not overwhelmed. So I don’t wanna stop doing it, but

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, it feels like, I don’t know if you said it, but my sense is that this is sort of a calling for you. So you know, it’s the and you’ve sort of birthed a baby in the firm and you wanna maybe make sure that someone can take it and run with it even when you’re pulling back. Right.

Theresa Sidebotham: Right. And I want other people who have the same sense of passion to help people do well and solve problems. And, you know, I’ve got a lot of other stuff I wanna be doing too. I’m blessed with the handful of grandkids I wanna be spending time with. We like to ski, we like to hike, we like to garden. So, so, yeah I, I don’t wanna be just [00:56:00] like grind, grind,

Jonathan Hawkins: yeah.

So what’s, what, ski, what’s the closest mountain that you go to? What, What’s your.

Theresa Sidebotham: Yeah. So we’re about, is it Breckenridge? That’s the closest. Depending on traffic and so forth we’re like two to three hours away from ski slope. So a lot of weekends we’ll go up ski, stay overnight, ski, come home again. It’s sort of our, and I don’t pay any attention to, we’ve got the epic pass, so it’s four resorts.

I let my husband pick the resort where we’re staying, the driving. ’cause then I don’t have to think about it. Right? So I’ve got this, I’ve got this outsourced.

Jonathan Hawkins: You are so lucky, so lucky. I many, many years ago, I spent a season out in Beaver Creek, so, and I, I’ve been out a couple times since, but not enough. Not enough.

Theresa Sidebotham: Well, hey, come visit, you can come stay with us and we can go up together. If you’re a mid-level skier, you can ski with me. If you’re advanced ski with my husband.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I do more of the snowboard [00:57:00] now, and it’s been so long that I would not call myself advanced at all. I don’t fall, but I’m not going on the, you know, the big time black diamonds or whatever. But, you know, I’ve been trying to get, I want to get my kids out there and that they’ve at least, well, my son at least expressed some interest.

But I just, we just haven’t been able to do it. So, but I gotta, boom, I just gotta do it. So,

Theresa Sidebotham: Well, it’s worthwhile. It’s really beautiful and and kids especially, they’ve got excellent ski lessons now. They’re pricey, but they’re really good. So you drop your kid in an all day ski lesson and you’ll come back and they’ll be going down the

Jonathan Hawkins: uh, That’s perfect. Yeah. Well, Theresa, this has been fun. I, I appreciate you coming on. I think you’re doing some cool things and you got an interesting practice. Again, I just, you’re the only person I know that. That does this. So, if anybody out there wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to find you?

Theresa Sidebotham: So Telioslaw.com, T-E-L-I-O-S [00:58:00] law.com. My email’s tls@telioslaw.com. The training is that the teliosteaches.com website.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, cool. Well, Theresa, again, thank you.

Theresa Sidebotham: Okay. Thank you. It’s been fun and I would love to meet in person sometimes. So you’ve got a standing invitation to come out and bring the family?

Jonathan Hawkins: I gotta go, we gotta make it happen.

Theresa Sidebotham: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: If you come to Atlanta, we’ll do the same thing, but there’s really not, I mean, other than stopping through the airport, you know, there may not be a reason to come. I don’t know. Not in the summer. It’s hot, so.

Yeah.

Theresa Sidebotham: Come, Come there and warm up in the middle of some winner maybe.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Well, cool. Well, awesome. Well, I appreciate it.

Theresa Sidebotham: Take care.

OutroUpdatedWebsite-1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the founding partner podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on the latest episodes. You can also connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn and [00:59:00] check out the show notes. With links to resources mentioned throughout our discussion by visiting www.lawfirmgc.com. We’ll see you next time for more origin stories and insights from successful law firm founders.