Hera Hub is excited to share Startup Stories from our members in honor of National Entrepreneurship Week. Each day this week we will interview incredible business women from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines. Our goal is to share our members’ wonderful stories with the public.

Melody Kramer is the founder of Legal Greenhouse. Legal Greenhouse is a think tank and developer of innovative legal solutions on an individual, business, and system-wide basis. Taking a multi-faceted approach, Legal Greenhouse works with:

  • Lawyers, changing the way they learn their craft, run their law firms, and interact within the profession and the community at large
  • Businesses, providing informative tools, education, and consulting services to optimize their use of legal services
  • Courts, creating, testing, and implementing procedural changes that will reduce courtroom congestion and optimize court resources
  • Individuals, providing high-quality, low-cost solutions for routine legal needs

Melody has been a Hera Hub member at our Sorrento Valley, California location for more than 4 years. Here is her Startup Story:

What was the inspiration behind your business?

I credit Malcolm Gladwell, author of the best-selling book “The Tipping Point,” for inspiring me to believe I can change the world by doing even little things, at the right time, in the right place, and become the spark for a widespread epidemic of change. I am on a quest to make lawyers useful again, and to make the judicial system in which we operate meaningful and fair for everyone.

Who are your clients and what do you do for them?

My clients are primarily businesses. Some want to take a proactive steps to protect themselves legally through creation of well-written, legalese-free, contracts for all of their business relationships. This process tends to also involve business operational consulting. Other clients find themselves in business disputes and need strategy consulting to deal with these disputes without getting unduly mired in endless, expensive litigation; having seen worst case scenarios as a trial lawyer for over 20 years, my expertise provides them with creative options with a high level of success. I also do public speaking and offer workshops on various business topics.

What are your business’ values? How do they align with your personal values?

Honesty with myself, allows me to be honest with my clients. Integrity is everything in business and I strive to maintain that. I also love the intellectual exercise of finding creative solutions to complicated problems. That makes me feel alive and happy and is of infinite benefit to clients, especially when they are in a place where they cannot see the big picture because of the stress they are feeling.

How/Why did you choose your business name?

For me, a greenhouse is symbolic of intentional creation of a space where things can grow. Ideas, especially ones for radical change, can be like young plants, needing a little protection from the harsh world outside at the initial stages of growth. I want Legal Greenhouse to be a protective place where innovative ideas can be “grown” to a point where they are ready to launch into the bigger world. My initial project, FreelanceLaw.com, already made this transformation, being acquired by Montage Legal in 2015. The second, my book “Why Lawyers Suck!,” was just published in January of this year. Many more projects are in the development stage.

What do you love most about your work?

I love helping businesses. I love being creative. And I love making a difference in the world, even if its one person at a time.

What is the biggest challenge in running your own business?

Learning how and what to delegate to others to do, be it accounting, marketing, social media, or something else. It is too easy to try to do everything myself instead of hiring other people to perform certain pieces of my business process. I may be smart and capable, but there are still only 24 hours in a day and I should be spending my working time doing the things that I do best, and delegating the other things to people for whom that work is their best.

What are your/your business’ goals for the future?

In the short term, I plan to publish another two books in the next two years. One book will be for inhouse counsel, educating them on how to deal with their outside litigation lawyers. The other will be for jurors, providing inside look at what happens leading up to a jury trial, and the background story on what happens at trial. I also plan to do more speaking engagements, and already have engagements in the works for at least two online educational platforms for whom I will be providing courses; formal announcements to be made in the near future. I also plan to develop a team of other like-minded professionals to head up various Legal Greenhouse projects.

What advice would you give to a new entrepreneur?

When bad things happen in the course of your business, first pat yourself on the back and realize that you have been inducted into the fraternity/sorority of entrepreneurs. Failures, even colossal ones, are part of the gig. Even single entrepreneur has had failures and you are not exempt. Now, step back, and look at the “failure” creatively. What opportunity has this “failure” opened up for you? Trust me, there always is a new door opened up that you might not have seen but for the “failure.” As my karate instructor used to say – “falldowngetup is one word.” As long as you continue to get up and keep moving, you will always be successful.