Sarah Cottrell: Hi, and welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Cottrell. On this show, I interview former lawyers to hear their inspiring stories about how they left law behind to find careers and lives that they love. Let's get right to the show.

Hello, everyone. This week on the podcast, I'm sharing my conversation with Adam Kol. Adam practiced tax law before leaving to become a couple's financial counselor. Before we get to the conversation, I wanted to let you know that based on conversations with some of you, I'm building an application-only membership community for high-achieving women lawyers in their first decade-ish of practice who don't love their current jobs and want to figure out what to do next in the company of like-minded women.

There will be a completely confidential private forum, not on Facebook, bi-weekly workshops on topics like resume rewriting, career coaching, budgeting, Q&As with podcast guests, and more. If you're interested, get on the waitlist to get first access and an opportunity to join as soon as it goes live later this month. Founding members will get to shape exactly what the community offers as an additional thank you for jumping in early and will receive a special founding member rate. If this sounds like a fit for you, go to formerlawyer.com/waitlist to sign up and be the first to know when the doors open. Now, on to my conversation with Adam.

Hey, Adam. Welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast.

Adam Kol: Hey, thanks so much for having me, Sarah.

Sarah Cottrell: I am really excited to have this conversation. Let's start out with you introducing yourself to the listeners.

Adam Kol: Absolutely. Well, thanks again for having me be a part of The Former Lawyer Podcast. My name is Adam Kol and I am a former lawyer. I used to do tax law and now I run my own business. I'm a couple's financial counselor which is essentially a term that I made up but I help couples who love each other make sure that money doesn't get in the way, that the money conversation doesn't get in the way.

I've had a whole wild last decade, I'm not sure exactly what you want me to share, but I've lived up and down the East Coast, I've lived out on the West Coast for five years, most recently returned home, and I am an uncle for the first time as of a few weeks before this recording. Life's pretty wonderful, especially when you look at that little guy.

Sarah Cottrell: That is so fun. A couple's financial coach, there are definitely a lot of people out there who need that. I want to talk about what you're doing with that work but first, let's go all the way back, as we do on this podcast, and talk about what drew you to law school in the first place and were you always thinking that you would do tax law?

Adam Kol: Yeah. What drew me to law school in the first place, it's interesting years later went back and my mom was looking through all the old papers she had from our elementary school times and stuff. There was some personality and career assessment thing I did. I guess it could have been during middle school, either middle school or elementary, and I grew up with parents who always wanted me to be a doctor, especially once I started doing well in school. But that was never really what I wanted, to the extent I tried it I was trying it for them and it was really funny to look back at his career assessment and far and away my number one choice was legal and legal services.

From a young age, that personality type, whatever that is, I don't know exactly what they were measuring but that was always there for me. I honestly think it was a combination of in my family it was like, “Well, if you're not going to be a doctor, then you should at least be a lawyer,” that was one part of it. I always enjoyed analyzing things. I always had a love for rigor, intellectual rigor, logic, analysis, and I think that drew me to the law. Fairness always really mattered a lot to me. Then I also enjoyed the types of courses that were considered not prerequisites but relevant to law school.

I loved my philosophy classes in undergrad. I ended up minoring in that. I took a course in symbolic logic and that was one of, if not the only, A pluses I got in undergrad. Also, just this overwhelming sense that I needed to go get a graduate degree to be a successful professional, have a respectable career. I always thought the law was interesting plus I shadowed a couple people and found what they were doing really fascinating. There I was, it was like, “Okay, let's do it.”

Sarah Cottrell: I'm interested to know because this idea that you just talked about of like, “Oh, well, if I want to be a successful professional, I should get a graduate degree,” I think that's a very common belief amongst people who choose to go to law school. I'm wondering if you can pinpoint where that came from for you in terms of that message or if it was just something that you absorbed from your environment.

Adam Kol: Yeah, definitely from my family in particular. I guess my dad has a graduate degree as a pharmacist, my mom is a teacher or was a teacher, so she has a bachelor's, it was just always expected of I think all of us kids. But for me individually, because I really excelled in school and showed a lot of academic promise from a young age, then it was I think particularly expected. Then when I was 18 years old, I met someone who I would end up being with for almost eight years. We ended up getting married. We're no longer together but she also wanted to become a dentist.

At that point, all the more reason, there's that pride that matters a lot to me and I think matters a lot to men. It's like, “Okay, well, she's going to grad school, I better go also.” If there was anything that was going to solidify it even further, it was that being with someone who was also an academic superstar and very ambitious.

Sarah Cottrell: When you got to law school, what did you think of it? Because I know for the most part, there seem to be two camps of people, either people who are like, “Oh, I loved my law school experience,” even if they ultimately ended up not liking the practice of law, and then people who are like, “Wow, it was terrible but I made it through,” and just thought that working as a lawyer would be better. Did you fall into one of those camps or something else?

Adam Kol: Yeah. I feel like kind of a mix. On the social and personal side, I made some friends. Unfortunately now looking back, none of them were really deep-lasting friendships, but on my own I was content mostly to hang out with my wife outside of school so I regretted that I didn't take advantage of some of those opportunities to build other relationships during law school. As far as school itself, I enjoyed most of the content. I also studied economics as an undergrad and taking contracts and property law. I found that stuff fascinating and I really enjoyed the analytical piece.

I might have worn down at some point doing it so many hours a day. As you and I were talking about, Sarah, before we got on air, just one of the challenges for me was focusing and being able to read more than half a page or a page of those giant textbooks at a time, something which I only understood a handful of years later was more likely a symptom of generalized anxiety disorder which I deal with. At the time, I attributed it to a personal failure. It was a mixed bag. It was a lot of work after my ex-wife now would go to a bed, I would stay up at 12:00, 1:00, 2:00 in the morning reading and not just during final season, even in general.

There was definitely plenty of stress but I also enjoyed the intellectual part of it. It's a mixed bag and I would say that was the same three years, two and three, but as I went along, I started doing pretty well in some tax classes and I enjoyed it. I always liked numbers and quantitative reasoning. At the end of law school, I really didn't know what kind of jobs I wanted so I applied haphazardly and didn't get really what any jobs at the level that I was looking for.

So I decided to go for a master's in tax law and end up going to NYU for that and that was going to give me another crack of the job market. I think that was your prior question but I went back and answered it now.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. That's interesting. It's in my experience that tax lawyers are a little bit of a special breed, and I mean this only in that I have found in my experience that many tax lawyers love being tax lawyers or are just very into that. So tell me a little bit about what happened when you graduated from the LLM and were working in tax law and whether that was your experience.

Adam Kol: Yeah. The year of the LLM was probably the most chaotic year of my life. For law school, I was at Duke and my then wife was at UNC and then our plan was, “Okay, we'll be apart for a year,” because dental school is a fourth year, which of course law school's only three, and then we'd reconnect in New York City, that was what our plan was after that and we lived there together. But during that year, our relationship ended up ending and we got a divorce and so that was, of course, the main source of it being a chaotic year.

Thankfully, it happened early enough in the scholastic year that I was able to look and say, “You know what, let me apply for jobs not just to New York but let me pick another city,” and I picked the Bay Area. I have always been in love with the San Francisco Bay Area ever since I had visited a handful of years before and I ended up getting a job out there. I took it at Deloitte, one of the big four accounting firms in downtown San Francisco. For the most part, I enjoyed the work.

I think what you're saying tends to be true about tax attorneys. They are a particular subspecies of the lawyer species. Because a lot of lawyers are like, “Hey, I got into this because I'm a really good writer. I don't want anything to do with numbers, or I want as little as possible to do with numbers.” Of course, tax law is very code and regulations heavy so I spent a lot of time immersed in that. But those are the very things that I liked about it.

It felt very much like trying to put together complex puzzles and you get to do some of that as a junior associate, or in this case, I guess I was considered tax consultant too was my starting title at Deloitte but of course, you could do some of that and more as you rise up the ranks. But yeah, I did find that stuff interesting for sure. A lot of other tax lawyers, I think they do like it because the hours tend to be a little bit more reasonable and they're getting to do something that's intellectually interesting to them. I would say for the most part I think I would agree with your assessment.

Sarah Cottrell: I know what the big four life is like for non-lawyers. How does working as a lawyer at a firm like that compared to general law firm life in terms of just work-life balance and that sort of thing?

Adam Kol: Yeah, it'll be a little bit of speculation because I never worked at a Biglaw law firm. I worked at a big four at a non-profit before starting my own business. But it depends. The conventional wisdom is that big four work-life balance is a little bit better than Biglaw. It's a comfortable job. You have a nice office and the coffee and bagels once a week and that kind of thing. The team I worked on was mostly lovely people. They were nice. They were smart.

As far as work-life balance specifically, for me I would leave at a decent hour most nights, but reflecting, I have to be honest, I don't know how much of that was the expectations of the job or how I was handling it because, at the time, I moved out to the Bay Area, it was just this period of intellectual and emotional, spiritual, ethical awakening for me. Everything was shifting in my life. I got my first exposure to personal development work and that was really life-changing, right away had me questioning whether I wanted to stay in law or not.

I got much more immersed in social activism. I was doing a lot of community organizing. I made a lot of new friends through that and so I wanted to get out of the office as quickly as possible and go be with my other friends, go be with my activist community. Whereas this gentleman who started the same time I did was 100% focused on the job and so he would stay really late a lot of nights and I wouldn't. He ended up getting the promotion, not me.

Work-life balance, as intended, it's probably still a little bit better than my friends' experiences at Biglaw, what I heard from them. But again, for me, I was not really making the job my number one priority. I would leave even earlier and I still found plenty of time and energy to do stuff like activism, although eventually, I did get burnt out, but that wasn't until a few years later.

Sarah Cottrell: Okay. Just for context, what year was it that you started Deloitte?

Adam Kol: Deloitte was August 2014.

Sarah Cottrell: Okay. This is something I think would be interesting for a lot of our listeners who are unhappy lawyers who are wanting to make a change. You mentioned doing some personal development work which led you to basically realize that you might not want to be a lawyer. I have a twofold question. One, can you just explain a little bit about what that term means, the personal development work? Because not everyone may be aware of what that is. Then can you talk a little bit about whether or not you already had been thinking, “Hey, maybe this law thing isn't for me,” or was that the first time that you started to think that? Talk to me a little bit about that realization.

Adam Kol: Yeah. I don't know if I remember exactly when. Well, let me talk about personal development first. It's a broad-based term that encompasses a lot of different things and of course, everybody wants to improve themselves. But I went and did a weekend course at this organization called Landmark which has a lot of great offerings. It's also got offices all around the world. That was really a transformative weekend that was really focused on chasing whatever actually gives your life meaning for you, living in the present, and not living a life based on excuses, really being unreasonable and going for what matters.

It wasn't the first time. I had already questioned what I wanted to do but that really accelerated the timeline and emotions in my mind. I've been a musician all my life and even before I went to law school, I would think about could I make music? At this point, I was thinking about making music related to different social issues, could that be a way to spread my message?

While I had a lot of law school debt, especially after doing that weekend course at Landmark, I was like, “Yeah, I'm not really worried that much. I'll figure out the money stuff. We'll deal with that whenever and however we have to deal with that.” But living out purposefully started to become a lot more important and I was like, “Okay, no more excuses.”

Sarah Cottrell: Got it. I know you mentioned that after Deloitte, you were at a non-profit, is that what led you to make that change or was it something else?

Adam Kol: Well, I'll take it through a fun story. I'll say a shorter version of it but basically, it was September when I did The Landmark Forum it's called. I ended up getting really involved in a lot of their programs and that's really where I cut my teeth as a coach for the coaching business I now have. But October was when I got sworn into the bar in New York and so I flew across the country and my parents flew up from Florida supposedly to be there with me to celebrate but it was because they were panicked that I was going to be quitting Deloitte in a couple of months, to try and talk me out of it.

By that point, I already decided that I was going to stay for at least a year and so they didn't have as much to worry about. I'm pretty sure they were still pretty worried about me. I was planning it all along and trying to figure out how to make it work. Then after a year in Deloitte, I actually took about a year off of a formal job and I was really committed to this activist group I was a part of. It was an animal activist group and I was a full-time activist for a year and out of my own pocket.

Thankfully, I've always been a good saver. I saved a lot of what I earned at Deloitte in that year and paid my own way for I think it was about 13 months. Then it was after that that I was like, “I want to do something closer to my heart.” That was when I found the non-profit and worked there for a spell.

Sarah Cottrell: Got it. Well, first, were you doing legal work for the non-profit? Then talk to me about how you went from there to where you are now.

Adam Kol: Yeah. The non-profit, I was doing legal work it was pretty much all attorneys on staff. We were doing work around housing and homelessness and helping cities and counties apply for funds and helping them negotiate the political processes and apply best practices in their communities to reduce and ideally eliminate homelessness and adverse effects. That work was definitely closer to my heart but at the end of the day, it was still me in front of a computer and reading and writing all day.

I'm very much a person who loves people and enjoys being around them. I think in doing the coaching work that I was doing in some of the self-development programs I had been a part of, that was where I discovered I really had this passion and knack for coaching that I was really good at it. I started having conversations with friends like, “Oh my God. I haven't even told my parents or my best friends this.” You know with one friend, it transforms her whole relationship with her boyfriend and with another person it shifted her whole relationship with school and her ex and moving forward in her life and starting a business. Just having one or two conversations were impacting people's lives really profoundly.

This was bubbling up that I enjoyed and was good at coaching. At the non-profit, I think there was a mix of two things that happened. Number one was where they were in their evolution, they were growing quickly and so they didn't have as much time for mentorship as they had in the past. Number two was that I didn't really learn the lessons from my prior experience which was that I was super focused, not on my job as a first priority but really as a third priority after my activism that I was doing at the time and also the coaching at Landmark.

In the moment, I was doing about 20 hours a week of coaching and so that's all emotionally intense work and I was doing about 20 hours a week of activism and community organizing, much of which was around conflict resolution and mediation because the group I was a part of tended to have a lot of conflict and I was the global lead for conflict resolution which was something I really had no clue what I was doing but I just started it up because we desperately needed a new infrastructure and mechanism for resolving conflicts.

I put my job third and so that didn't really work out. It was February of that year when everything personally and professionally just came to a head and I was experiencing massive burnout. I will never forget one morning, my girlfriend at the time she was talking to me and she has one of those sweet high-pitched angelic type voices and yet when she spoke, I felt physically like I was going to throw up because it was the physical manifestations of such intense burnout had finally come to a head. I had to be like, “Hey, can you just leave me in silence for a few minutes?”

It got really severe in there and then the next month, they let me go from the non-profit. It was definitely surprising and stunning and not fun but at the same time it allowed me to recover in a way that was just so sorely needed because I was really deep within the burnout at that point. It was around that March or April when I realized some things have to change in my life if I'm going to be able to have a successful career and a successful relationship.

I need to change some things around my approach and my habits, my living situation, etc. Inside of that journey is when I ended up moving towards starting my business. I know that was your original question but I wanted to pause in case you had anything you wanted to say before I jump into that.

Sarah Cottrell: Well, I was going to say you said you realized you needed to change some things in your life. How did you figure out what those things were?

Adam Kol: Yeah. Well, it's very much an evolutionary process. I was living at the time with essentially commune-style living with a bunch of the other lead organizers of the group. It was just such an intense heavy environment. People all the time were doing activism and most of them were on fellowship from the group. They could do that all day and I was trying to work a 45-hour-a-week job plus do coaching volunteer, plus do activism, and basically being held to very similar expectations, or at least I was holding myself to some of our expectations of productivity so I knew I needed to get out of that house, it was the first step.

Then it was only maybe six months later that I started experimenting with meditation and that became an important part of the work I was doing. Healthy eating is another important pillar that I ebb and flow with but that was something that I focused on as well. That came pretty easily but I just knew that the environment I was in was not conducive for me. Over time, I think also just by continuing to put one foot in front of the other, I realized that I was saying yes to way too many things, that I was trying to be all things to all people as my mom once put it, and prioritizing so many other things outside of myself rather than taking care of me and putting myself first and my needs first and making sure that I feel settled and taken care of.

That's been a journey that has taken multiple years and continues even to this day both within and without my business, is trying to figure out how to balance those things, what habits are helpful, and when to take an afternoon off or when not to. One thing I've realized is, “Whoa, if my body demands this much space and rests, just how distorted are average corporate workplace, let alone law firm, has gotten. It's so completely dissociated from the natural ebbs and flows of the human cycle that it's absolutely incredible.”

Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Even the idea that “Oh, we are human people and therefore that means we have limitations.” I don't mean that as a bad thing, I just mean, like you were saying, that means we need rest, water, food, and all of these things. We’re not just machines I guess is what I'm trying to say. Some of the ways that our workplaces are structured, it doesn't necessarily recognize that. But anyway, I digress.

Adam Kol: I know right? But it almost feels the dehumanization is part of the plan even more than just from an effectiveness or getting more work done perspective. It's almost the intention is to break you.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, there are some deeply problematic things that are normalized and I know we've been talking about that quite a bit lately on the podcast.

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Okay, so you had been coaching part-time and then you started your current business. Tell me how you decided to start the business that you are running now, what it is, and when that actually started.

Adam Kol: Yeah. I wish I could say it was part of some beautiful grand plan, but like I said, they let me go at the other non-profit. That was inside of a time of serious burnout for me and so I was like, “Okay, well what's next?” I took a couple of months and just figuring out what were my next moves. Then I went and traveled for about six weeks. This was the summer of 2017. Then I came back to the Bay Area and I was thinking, “Well, what kind of jobs might be a fit here?”

Along the way, I also went and got certified in mediation because I discovered I had a knack for conflict resolution stuff and I wanted to deepen my experience there and actually get some real training. I also quite like that so I thought maybe I'd want to be a mediator. I explored different options. What I was settling on is at least if I was going to go work for somebody else was to be a program director at some non-profit or community organization because the idea was that would be close to my heart and it would also be people facing.

As a program director, you're out there building connections with other organizations and individuals in the community and promoting your programs. I was applying for some of those jobs and I'd get some interviews here and there. A real turning point was I got an interview for a job at the United Way of the Bay Area to run their program that does free income tax preparation for lower-income families. I went to the interview and I remember walking out being like, “That was as good an interview as I could have done. I crushed that relatively speaking. If I get this or I don't, at least I know that I gave it 100%. I was as good as I could.”

Then it took a few weeks and then I hear back and I get form email rejection that spelled my last name wrong and had typos in it. I was just like, “Ah, just really I had enough of this.” I had already launched my coaching business at this time but I was thinking it would most likely be a side business. It was October of 2017 that I've put out an email to everybody I knew in the Bay Area and was like, “Here's my coaching business. Here's what I'm offering and here's the kind of coaching I'm doing,” which was very different at the time than what I do now.

I was in leadership coaching and communication coaching. I don't remember if I got my first client already by the time I got dinged from that job with United Way. I just remember being like, “Number one, if I can't get this particular job, I'm not sure I'm qualified for these program director jobs because I had to do a reality check, one doing tax stuff, that's got to be the one I'm going to be best suited for. If I can't get that one, especially when I think I did really well at the interview, then maybe I have to reevaluate. Plus I'm not so psyched about having someone tell me I'm not good enough for their job anymore, whether in the interview process or during the job. And I'm just enjoying this coaching thing so I think I'm just going to go for it.”

It was around February of 2018 that I just said, “You know what, I'm not going to apply for any more jobs. I'm going to try this coaching thing full-time.“ Thankfully, again my good saving had allowed me to save a decent chunk of money from the time that I was at the non-profit and I just went for it. It was a lot of fun and a unique challenge from the beginning. Then there was a phone call one day I had that really changed things. It started with Facebook post in a group I was a part of for someone offering to other members of the group a free tax consultation, I guess you'd call it. It was like, “I'll teach you about the new 2018 tax code changes.” I noticed it but I was like, “I don't need that. I'm a former tax lawyer,” whatever.

Then my coach, she was in the same group and she said, “Hey, did you see this post?” and I was like, “Yeah, I saw it, but I'm a tax lawyer.” She's like, “Oh, I forgot you were specifically a tax lawyer. Okay, never mind then.” But it was in my head and I was like, “You know what, I don't really want to read hundreds of pages of the new tax code so if this guy can streamline it for me, why don't I just have a chat with him?” So I jumped on a call and we barely talked tax but I told him what I was doing in my business. At the time I said, “I'm helping people with their finances, their relationships, and communication.” He goes, “Well, what about financial communication that's the top cause of divorce?” I was like, “Hi, that's really interesting. I never either knew that or really thought about it.”

When I got off the call, I decided to go start, I was like, “Well, there must be tons of people who work on this because it really is the top cause of divorce.” So I Googled and I was like, “I'm not finding anybody. Well, there must be a ton of books about communicating about money in relationships.” So I went on Amazon and I typed every keyword I could think of. I found about eight books and I was like, “What's going on here? This is a country with an almost 50% divorce rate and this is one of the top causes of those divorces. Where is all the content? Where are all the people? Nobody's working on this.”

Over the coming weeks, I realized that there was a huge opportunity to work in that arena. Just for a little bit of background on me, I grew up a finance geek so I've always known a lot about personal finance. But I studied economics in undergrad. Then before law school, I worked a bit from Northwestern Mutual doing insurance sales and learned a lot about retirement, planning, and just different things along that axis, stuff like investments as well and I really loved working in Northwestern Mutual and helping families secure and prepare for their financial futures. I took that with me even to law school where I studied tax law.

I've always been involved in the realm of finance and numbers and always really like that. Then during the last five, six years of my life doing a lot of community organizing and coaching, talking to thousands and thousands of people, coaching tons of people realizing I have a knack for that whole realm and they're getting certified in mediation really gave me the confidence to feel like I could work with couples. I was like, “Wow, there's a huge need here,” and apparently, very few people either have the skill set or are willing to do the work at the intersection of money and communication, money and relationships, money and emotions, and so I saw a really great opportunity there.

I started promoting this as the main piece of my services. Then I believe it was in April, I had my first client who was a couple and in the consultation, I asked this question to the wife, I said, “How's this going to go if nothing changes?” because they were fighting about money pretty seriously and she goes, “Honestly, if nothing changes in a few years when the kids are older, I'm probably going to walk out.” It was the very first time she had said that and she said it right in front of her husband who was literally sitting next to her for the consultation. God bless my mediation training because it gave me the ability to stay grounded in that moment and hold space for them to work through what came up around that.

Then by the time they were finished working with me, I'll never forget the phone call where she called me, the wife, and said, “Oh, my God, Adam, I was talking to one of my girlfriends and I just referred to my husband Mike as my best friend. I haven't called him that in years, it just came out.” It was such a remarkable shift for them from virgin divorce back to being best friends. They also paid off $26,000 in debt while working with me and she was able to restart her business. He got an extra bonus at his job and so it was just remarkable. From then on, I was like, “I don't really care what it takes. I am committed to this business because I saw the difference it could make with people who were even in such a serious space where they were fighting so intensely that it was jeopardizing their marriage.”

Since then I've worked with people whose marriage was wonderful and amazing. They just don't know how to talk about money and then other people who were on the verge of divorce and everywhere in between on the spectrum. What I've seen is just not only is money a topic where you can learn how to avoid fighting or learn how to not, let's say get into more debt or make unhealthy choices but I've actually seen it through my work with couples be an area where you can develop more intimacy, have more peace, more partnership, more love, and of course, more cash.

Sarah Cottrell: I love that. You mentioned that all the way back when you were at Deloitte, your parents were coming up to New York when you were being sworn into the bar and they were partially coming to tell you, “Don't quit your lawyer job.”

Adam Kol: Rescue me.

Sarah Cottrell: Right? I know this is something we talk about a lot on the podcast but we talk about it a lot on the podcast because this comes up all the time with people that I talk with about them wanting to leave their lawyer job and that is what other people will think, especially what family or other loved ones will think. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you have navigated that and if you have any advice for people who are trying to think about how they should work through those issues?

Adam Kol: Yeah, great question. The advice that I have is just to keep on moving forward even if there are small steps, even if it's sending one email to have an informational interview with somebody, even if you can't see the full path forward to the next stage of your life that might be post law, for example. Just continue taking steps and you will see eventually the ways in which you need to grow, embrace them, and step into them. But there's a lot to it.

There are definitely family members who were confused about it. One family member who has struggled to find regular work in the area that he went to school for and he's like, “What? Are you kidding me? You're going to quit a job as a lawyer to go do this or that? How could you do that?” It almost personally offended him it felt like, not that he was mad at me per se, but just in that way and there was a time, a handful of months ago where I was talking with my mom and I've always had a ton of money saved, that's me historically, but in running and trying to grow a business, it's really in the way a lot of my savings and all that.

I remember I was sharing with a client to be vulnerable of people in her life about her finances. I was like, “Let me go practice that here.” The conversation with my mom just deteriorated and I remember she was like, “Duke Law School and you're walking dogs?” Because to help bring in extra money, for a time I was doing rover watching and walking dogs. I did my best to manage that conversation and I tried to listen and understand where she was coming from. It didn't seem to calm her down to listen empathetically. I just had to draw a boundary and say, “You know, mom, this conversation is making me feel worse. If you want to have a constructive one, then I'm happy to do it. But if not, maybe we just shouldn't talk about this right now.”

So we didn't talk about it for that. She was like, “Okay, fine,” and then she walked away. Then a little bit later actually, I went in the other room to do some work and I got a text from her that said, “I'm sorry,” and it was really sweet and I came out and I was like, “What was that about?” She's like, “Well, I'm sorry I was being rude to you and you're the most important thing to me.” I said, “Well, I appreciate that.” If I were to distill that being able to draw boundaries at that phase has become really important in my life. Certain people are going to be able to have that conversation with you and you'll end up feeling good about it and some people, they're unwilling or unable to do that.

It's okay to circumscribe the interactions or the dialogues you have with certain people. It doesn't mean you're judging them. But what's been important for me is trying to come from a centered place of “Well, what's going to be good for me here?” I'm aware that being lambasted like, “Oh, you went to law school and now you're walking dogs,” that's not going to help me feel good and so let me thoughtfully extricate myself from situations where that's liable to be the conversation. There's nothing to be ashamed of to manage your surroundings in a way that's going to move you forward.

Even just from an effectiveness standpoint, the more empowered you are, the better you feel you're probably leaving the law to do something that you're passionate about that makes an impact. Otherwise, why wouldn't you just stay and take home the paycheck? So you have a mission that you're on, do what you got to do to pursue that. I don't mean to be insensitive about it. I said it as lovingly and strongly as I could to my mom like, “Look, I'm happy to have this conversation with you if it can be this way, but if not, then maybe we shouldn't talk.” It was just that, talk about this. It didn't have to affect the rest of our relationship but just this particular thing.

But you won't know about what obstacles you'll face or even get a chance to explore how to handle them unless and until you're taking those steps forward. That's truly the best advice I can give over and over again is just take another step today, take another step this week, take a little bit bigger step this month, or make that phone call. Whatever it is, just because you send one email or make one phone call doesn't mean you're fully committing to leaving the law and starting a different career right now. But if you take those steps, you'll continue to give yourself the opportunity, you'll cultivate the courage, and you'll start to believe in your ability to keep moving forward. Eventually, it'll just become like, “This is who I am.”

Sarah Cottrell: I think that's great advice. I'd be interested to hear what you think about this, Adam, but I think that often when we are afraid of what someone is going to think about some decision that we're making, part of that is caused by essentially wanting someone else to validate our decision. It really comes from some internal work that needs to be done in terms of if you are really confident that what you're doing is what you should be doing, you're not going to have the same level of fear around “Well, what if someone says something or thinks something about it that's negative?” I think often it's wanting to control how other people react when really it's about being more thoughtful about our own internal feelings about what we're doing.

Adam Kol: Right. I think that makes a lot of sense. Even with something that you could be very confident in, it's still entirely possible and even likely that you might still care about what other people think and look for validation. If you still feel that need for validation about some decision related to your career, I wouldn't necessarily take that as evidence that the choice you're considering is not a good one or not the right one for you, but rather just that you may not be fully ready to trust your own self and your own decision making.

That doesn't mean that let's say you're thinking about leaving the law, that doesn't mean that it's not the right choice for you but just all the conditioning and fear of judgment is very normal, especially from our parents, most people either desperately seek it or they're so afraid to seek it that they've turned themselves like, “I don't care about that at all.” You may find that neither one is the ideal expression of your relationship to your parents and a healthy level of autonomy for you, but it's only in taking some of those steps that you'll continue to see the areas, like you said, internally where there might be some exploration to do, where there may be opportunities for growth for you and in your relationships.

You know the old Whitney Houston song, “How will I know? (Don't trust your feelings)” there's some beauty in trusting your feelings but also they can be tricky. Getting to know yourself is definitely advised. I guess I'd done some of that before I chose my career path for sure and my meditation practice and also something that people call inner child work is, I don't want to get too into it here, but I found those things to be really valuable in cultivating a sense of connection with myself, trusting myself, and really being able to access some different areas of my subconscious to reflect on how I'm feeling about different situations including career-related has been really valuable.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think one of the things that we've talked about a couple of times on the podcast is somewhat related to what you just said which is this idea that just because you feel fear or you don't necessarily know what's going to happen doesn't mean you shouldn't do the thing that you're thinking about doing. For example, leaving the law, that you could have confidence in your decision and also feel, “I don't know what's going to happen and this is scary.”

Adam Kol: 100%. In fact, that's one of the greatest skill sets I've cultivated is the ability to have fear and/or anxiety and move forward anyway. At the time of recording, just yesterday I put out my first social media post for a new program. I created a mastermind that at the moment is specifically for financial coaches around mastering working with couples in conflict and communication skills. I was super anxious about putting that up on Facebook and even drafting the posts and then I put it out there. That's just where cultivating your own courage and also having good supportive people and structures around you is really powerful.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I agree totally. Okay, Adam, as we're getting towards the end of our conversation, is there anything else that you would like to share that we just haven't had a chance to talk about yet?

Adam Kol: Yeah. Thanks for that. Because I'm fascinated by relationships, money, the intersections, and always thinking about it, if you're considering a shift, whether it's to a different job within the law, a job without the law, or starting a business, obviously, there may be financial ramifications which are important even if you're just single and then if you are partnered and you're in a serious relationship where you maybe live together and/or share finances in some way, let alone if you have a family with kids, I just want to encourage you to really include your partner in the decision making and explore some of that stuff.

Especially as a man, I know we can bring a lot of pride to the conversation like, “Oh, we need to know everything,” even if we have more progressive ideals consciously, subconsciously, that's still playing a role. So I really invite you, as you consider these shifts, to include your partner to try and inject some honesty, integrity, and realism about the different ways it might affect your lives including financially, and good, bad, or otherwise, and to explore different scenarios and how that might look. There may be ways, even if you take a pay cut, to shore up the gap or there might be ways to make sure you have enough in savings so that your partner feels secure while you go and take a couple of months off to try and figure out what your next steps are or whatever.

But the only way to figure out what the right tactical moves is to really start with conversations and that's the work I'm really passionate about helping people do. The work is around helping them have healthy money dialogues so that they can, not only just avoid tension and fighting but also use this to deepen their connection, get on the same page, and actually create a plan that makes sense that fulfills their own shared vision for financial prosperity. Because that's different for everybody. For me, having a mansion is far less important than having the freedom to choose what work I want to do and making that work impactful, purposeful work.

Each person is different and I've seen all kinds of different things with clients and couples. I encourage everybody listening again, especially if you're contemplating a career shift or change, to include your significant other in that. That will only make your relationship stronger. I know it might be a little scary or uncomfortable but it will make your relationship stronger. Of course, feel free to reach out to me if you have questions. I got a ton of resources I can send your way.

Sarah Cottrell: I think that's so important, of course, we're always talking around here about the money piece because the money piece is a big part of the thought process, decision-making process, and even what a lot of people would point to as what is keeping them stuck in a lawyer job that they don't enjoy. I think that's all just really good.

Okay, Adam. Where can people find you online if they want to connect with you or if they're like, “Hey, relationship coaching related to money, that's something that I could use”?

Adam Kol: Yeah, of course, and of course I work not just on the relationship piece but on the money piece as well. Given the audience, I would say LinkedIn's a great place to find me. It's Adam H. Kol. If you prefer Instagram, it's @ahkcoaching, my name is Adam Hubbell Kol, so my initials, and then my website is simply ahkcoaching.com.

One thing, just because it came into my head as you were talking before, Sarah, is just especially for men, as we feel this societal pressure to be breadwinners and we have to keep up a certain standard for our families, this might be helpful for someone listening, just be aware, see if you can explore and if that's a play for you because that thing can really put a lot of pressure and then help you feel like you can't shift when maybe you can, so just wanted to toss that out there.

Then as far as other places, I just recently launched a podcast about everything related to money and relationships. It's called The Equal Partners Podcast. You can find it on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, and all the major platforms. Then I will have another podcast coming out in the next few months called The Soft Skills Podcast which is going to be for a financial and legal professionals on the softer skills in their businesses, so things like effective communication with clients, dealing with conflict, dealing with the emotional side of money, building rapport and networking, and stuff like that. Equal Partners Podcast is already out no matter when you air this, Sarah. The Soft Skills Podcast may or may not be out but you can find them all by going to my website at ahkcoaching.com.

Sarah Cottrell: Cool. Thank you so much, and all of those links, listeners, will be in the show notes. If you want to check out any of those things, you can just go there and the links will be right there for you. Adam, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I really appreciate you sharing your story and talking about these issues that are really significant in people's lives.

Adam Kol: My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Sarah, and thanks for creating this platform because it's something many of us are thinking about. It's nice to have a place to go.

Sarah Cottrell: Thanks so much for listening today. I absolutely love getting to share these stories with you. If you haven't yet, subscribe to the show, and come on over to formerlawyer.com and join our community to get even more support and resources in your journey out of the law. Until next time. Have a great week.