Photo Credit: Jess Gomes

Jess Gomes is the co-founder of Simplawfy, an Australian independent legal marketplace transforming how people access and experience legal services through simplicity, transparency and increased accessibility. 

A visionary with a heart for the people, Jess is on a personal mission to:

●       Put the ‘human touch’ back in a human-centric industry (the heart)

●       Make the law simpler and more approachable for everyone (the tech)

●       Break down barriers and unite key stakeholders to deliver practical, real-world change (the law)

When she’s not busy innovating legal services, you’ll find Jess either exercising, listening to podcasts, sipping red wine, or spending time with her daughter and beagle. 

Can you tell our readers about your background?

I grew up in Adelaide, South Australia. I was quite an academic child, I enjoyed getting that hit of dopamine when I received good grades. However, I was most energised by real world projects. In my final year of school, we had to conduct a personal project – essentially choosing a topic of interest to investigate and apply our academic skills to. I chose to explore the psychology of the battered woman syndrome and how the legal system in Australia was addressing alleged instances of this across the states and territories. It was my first foray into the legal world. 

It was unsurprising then that when I graduated, I was accepted to the University of South Australia law school. I studied for a year there - during that time meeting some incredible legal researchers, judges and some now exceptional lawyers. However, whilst I thoroughly enjoyed the legal concepts – I honestly couldn’t see myself being a practicing lawyer forever.   

In the years that followed, I prioritised life experiences, including travel, to learn more about who I was in the adult world and what it was I wanted to do with my life. To be honest, there wasn’t any pinnacle moment – it was more an era of elimination. I became what I like to refer to as a career gypsy. At the time the people around me were all partaking in similar more conventional routes – going to university or obtaining an apprenticeship and then starting a single career track. They all thought I was a little mad because by the time they had finished their degrees, I had worked in floristry, hospitality, medical, real estate and lifting and rigging. They had arrived at a stable and well-respected job whilst ostensibly I was still at ground zero. 

Throughout that time, the niggling feeling of wanting to be involved in the legal system in some way never left. So, I jumped at the opportunity to partake in an unpaid tenancy advocating internship at a non-government organisation (NGO). I look back on that experience now as a sliding door moment. It was confronting, raw and difficult dealing with people who are so disadvantaged that their lives are a carousel of explosions. It is now that I would like to acknowledge all NGOs – but especially those who deal with individuals who are or have been incarcerated, those with drug or alcohol problems, those who suffer from trauma or mental illness. It is an incredibly important and massively difficult position. I’ll be honest, I was young at the time and still relatively inexperienced, so I struggled. I was a bleeding heart who saw a broken, complex system and I didn’t have the emotional resilience to continue helping people with band-aids when they needed medicine. 

Several years went by and I continued my career gypsy era. I also met my now husband, a former commercial lawyer. With his industry knowledge and my wealth of experience it was a fortunate set of circumstances that led to the ability to launch our business Simplawfy and start helping people going through the legal system. 

What inspired you to start your business?

The niggling feeling of wanting to work in some way with the legal industry never went away. But I always knew my desire was more than being a lawyer or judge or social worker could provide. 

It was only when I started Simplawfy that the ‘penny dropped’ so to speak. What all those occupations shared was my great passion for helping people. When I’m helping someone, whether it’s arranging a bouquet for someone to appreciate a loved one or connecting someone to the right lawyer for them – I’m energised. I feel completely aligned.

It’s no secret that law is a conversative industry and because of the responsibilities it holds it’s understandable. But unfortunately, like any large system, its slow progress is often at the expense of the experience of those within it – the lawyers, the clients, the victims, the social networks surrounding them. Law is a human-centric industry, yet people on all sides of the legal system continue to have poor experiences. 

When we reached the idea of developing a legal marketplace platform, the concept of a ‘lead generation software-as-a-service (SaaS)’ platform had been done before – Atlassian, AirTasker, AirBnb and so on. But no one had built a platform tailored only for the legal industry and with insider understanding of how lawyers run their law firms. And no one had built a technology business that focused first and foremost on providing a personalised human-centric service – leveraging technology to facilitate this – rather than the other way around. 

Where is your business based?

Simplawfy is currently headquartered in Perth, Western Australia. However, our business provides services Australia-wide. 

How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?

I had just had our first child and was not working when we decided to start developing the Simplawfy platform. To some it will seem like the worst time to start a business – and yes, it’s true it was a difficult time, I was recovering from a complicated birth, was incredibly sleep deprived, was learning the intricacies of looking after my newborn and facing challenges with the change of dynamic from a family of two to three. But it was also the first time in my life where I wasn’t working for someone else, we had worked hard and saved to give ourselves a financial buffer before our child was born and we lived well below our means. So, to us, it was the only time to start the business. 

Despite my career gypsy era, I never learnt any technical skills like coding and neither did my co-founder, my husband. As non-technical founders, we turned to a service-based marketplace to find an overseas developer to help us build our legal marketplace – it's ironic really. 

Like many tech entrepreneurs, we went through several iterations of developers over the two years of development of our minimal viable product (MVP). Throughout those years, we underwent a massive learning curve and as we learned, we readjusted. And like any entrepreneur, there were many late nights and weekends spent working on the design, structure and testing of the platform, our branding, marketing and operations prior to our launch mid last year. And all this time we were ‘bootstrapping’. For those not familiar with the term (as I was until last year), it’s when someone builds a business from scratch without using external capital – basically, we paid our own money for every single thing we did for the business. This can be a blessing and a curse – on one hand, it means you only have finite financial resources, which can be frustrating when you’re an impatient visionary like myself who wants to do everything – but on the other hand, it makes you more accountable for where you put your money to building and growing your business.   

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?

As a startup, we’ve tried as many things as we can at least once. Hands down, the most effective way of raising awareness has been Google Ads. There are a couple of caveats to this though. The first is that it isn’t as simple as ‘set and forget’ – you must be willing to work on it. Identifying the most effective keywords for your target audience, analysing the statistics daily and adjusting your settings and making the most of the Google Ads expert consultations are all part of it. The second is that it is a ‘two-pronged approach’ – none of the lead generation from Google Ads matters if you don’t deliver what that user is seeking. Each user that makes the effort to engage with your business is valuable because they will leave the interaction with an impression, regardless of whether they use your services, and it is human nature to share positive and negative experiences with others to help others benefit or avoid experiences. The question becomes what do you want that person to be saying about your business?

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

I am a female entrepreneur who also happens to be a mother. Mothers will understand raising a child is a full-time job in itself – what used to be delegated amongst a village or tribe has now fallen to two people – the parents and more often, the mother. Working mothers will understand how achieving all of what is expected us as a mother and performing in a professional setting often seems an impossible task. There have been many times throughout my entrepreneurial journey where there physically weren’t enough hours in a day to achieve everything and it left me feeling inadequate in all areas. ‘Mum guilt’ is a real thing and, at least in my experience, even more so when you ‘choose’ to run a business rather than work out of ‘necessity’. 

It can be difficult to explain the internal conflict with others. On the one hand, I have my friends who are mothers but don’t have their own business – they understand the rollercoaster ride of parenthood but perhaps question why I don’t implement more balance, I am my own boss after all. And on the other hand, I have friends who have their own tech businesses – they understand the rollercoaster ride of building a tech business, the highs of making revenue for the first time to the lows of something not working or disappointing a customer. However, they are often men who don’t have children, so they perhaps question why I’m not doing X, Y, Z like they have done. And if the lack of a congenial community was not enough of a challenge, I chose, for better or worse, to embark on building a legal tech business without either a formal legal or technical background. 

Fortunately, my experience as a career gypsy prepared me for being a misunderstood Simplawfy-blue sheep. I realised that whilst coaching has become incredibly popular, I already had a coach in my thoughts every moment of every single day. I started to look at myself as a business asset and invested in myself. I started surrounded myself with men and women who had overcome similar challenges who were achieving similar feats that I aspire to achieve as a way of ‘time-hacking' my brain to learn from their mistakes. 

I broke up with perfectionism – I started focusing on outcomes and perfect execution rather than perfect, perpetual planning – “the place where dreams go to die” according to Dr Price Prichett. I started looking at my time as a commodity and spent it on actions that energised me and contributed to my goals, both professionally and personally. I delegated the remaining necessary actions to supporting other businesses like myself or automation because I recognised that, especially as a startup founder, it can be a trap to prioritise trying to do everything yourself because your time is ‘free’, and your funds are limited. If you would spend significant time on an action for a mediocre result and at the expense of not making progress on the strengths only you can bring to the business that will generate revenue, then you not only cost yourself your time as a commodity but the revenue you could have generated had you spent your time on your strengths. I want to be clear; this doesn’t mean you should pay and delegate everything either – it's about recognising that as an entrepreneur you are 100% of your business so what you spend your time on will translate to the outputs and the progress you make. Therefore, there may be instances where it is more cost-effective and efficient overall to delegate.  

I banished ‘multitasking’ – science has well and truly debunked that one, yet we still seem to believe we can do more than is cognitively or physiologically possible (see reference). I have found focusing on one discreet task at a time has made it easier to be more productive. With that said, I take a flexible approach to it because like any business things that need urgent attention tend to ‘pop up’ when you least expect it, especially in the legal industry. 

How do you stay focused?

I’m a very goal-orientated person so I love a vision, or action-board as coined by Dr Tara Swart Bieber. I use them as a barometer of how on or off track I am towards my goals on a daily basis. I am human though and I don’t want to perpetuate this glorified idea that all entrepreneurs are machines that wake up every day and give their 100% because it’s just not true. There are days where I struggle to stay focused and, on those days, I still do what is absolutely critical for the business. However, I recognise that business is a marathon not a sprint and the only person you’re competing with is yourself. So, on those days, I simply meet myself where I am because I recognise it as a sign that something needs to be altered. I know that if I do that then I show up better much quicker than if I try to just ‘push through’, which benefits our users and the business most. That brings me to what keeps focused most – our users. It is absolutely, without a doubt, my favourite part of being an entrepreneur. I love connecting with them, laughing with them, crying with them but ultimately providing them with the support they need when they need it. From our users whom we’ve helped so far to the idea there are many, many more people throughout the world who can be helped by what Simplawfy is doing is what gets me up each day – it sounds cliche but it’s true.    

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

Aside from being a marketplace tailored only for the legal industry and a focus on providing a personalised human-centric service over technology, there are several unique selling propositions including but not limited to:

●       All our services being entirely free for clients – people looking for a lawyer

●       Our transparency in not sub-contracting a panel of lawyers and facilitating all the different ways lawyers may choose to charge a client and

●       Being a cost-effective alternative for law firm marketing

But above all, our greatest differentiation is the heart and soul we provide each and every user who engages our platform. What we lack that a big multinational corporation has – big teams, big budgets, we make up for in providing personalised service tailored to each user. Because we’re more than just another marketplace. 

Most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?

Aside from using Google Ads, which as I’ve mentioned has worked for us, it would be to consider ways you can advertise your business and easily create an additional revenue stream. Advertising can become very expensive, very quickly. However, if you can identify an offer, not your core offer, that you can produce for free or relatively cheap then you have the potential to raise brand awareness and generate additional revenue that you can funnel into your core offer. Now I’m not saying go all out on the corporate merchandise – it needs to be an offer that your target audience either needs or would enjoy, another stubby holder won’t cut it. 

What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

It is so difficult to share just one piece of advice because there is so much I know now that I wish I knew when I started my entrepreneurial journey. However, overall, I suppose the most important one would be – do it. Whether you’re sitting on the fence about starting your own business or you’ve started last week and you’re still doubting yourself – just do it. Honestly, the worst that will happen is you’ll work out that business is not for you or being an entrepreneur is not for you and the best that could happen is you surprise yourself. However, if you don’t do it the best that can happen is where you are currently at. As Nelson Mandela said ‘I never lose. I either win or learn.’ When you look at it like that, there’s no downside because even if you learn – that experience and those skills you’ve learned you can take with you anywhere. 

And learning is important as an entrepreneur, you need to be willing to learn because it's about progress not perfection. Being an entrepreneur is not being ‘an overnight success’, it’s more like the ecstatic joy of lighting a fire after rubbing two twigs together for hours only to panic when a breeze comes in and realise that startups are fragile – they need attention, they need resources, they need tweaking in order to become a robust fire you can roast a marshmallow in. 

What’s your favourite app, blog, and book? Why?

My favourite App is ToDoIst. I use it every single day to track tasks both professionally and personally. I find it incredibly valuable to my productivity because it allows me to offload information, which I would otherwise have to either retain in my brain or write on a random note somewhere (too messy, slow and precarious). The best part is it’s all in one place, I can share it with my husband and it’s free – and no I’m not getting any kickbacks from them for this plug, I just really love the app (remember what I said before about sharing positive or negative experiences?)

I’m more of a podcast person than a blog as I find it a more effective way of gaining knowledge as I can listen on the go, usually in the car. My favourite podcast at the moment is The School of Greatness by Lewis Howes. The title is self-explanatory but essentially, he interviews experts in their fields about topics that assist listeners to improve in a particular aspect of their life. I thoroughly enjoy the crossover between spiritual, health and business that he brings to the podcast as it recognises that as entrepreneurs, we are multifaceted beings that don’t operate in a silo. 

It is so difficult to choose a favourite book, my shelf is full of books I have read more than once, and I love them for different reasons – reading fiction for creativity or true crime to understand more about humanity or ‘self-improvement’ to do just that. I suppose the one that jumped out at me immediately though was Buddhism for Mothers by Sarah Napthali. It was given to me by a family member when we had our child. At the time I had explore a little of what Buddhism had to offer but by no means was at the buying books on it stage. With that said, I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it incredibly helpful, not just for navigating the emotional rollercoaster of becoming a mother for the first time but for navigating any emotional rollercoaster in life – including running a business. I really loved the thoughtful way the author took principles from Buddhism, paired with her expertise and lived experience to deliver practical guidance.

What is your favourite business tool or resource? Why?

Without a doubt it would be Canva. I have used Canva for absolutely everything from developing social media ads, presentations, printing merchandise to pitch decks. I really admire the way Canva has made design more approachable and accessible for everyone, including startups, in the graphic design industry. Using Canva has saved me a significant amount of money and time.

Who is your business role model? Why?

I can honestly say I don’t have just one ‘role model’ who I look up to. There are so many incredible women who have paved the way so far for female entrepreneurs and I feel it would be remiss of me to only mention one. Take Melanie Perkins for example, the founder of Canva, who had an idea from Perth, Western Australia and grew it to an international platform that impacts millions of lives. Of course, she’s inspiring to me because she came from where I currently live and she too lacked a technical background, yet she’s shown me it is possible. Or Kayla Itsines from my hometown of Adelaide, South Australia and founder of Sweat, she paved the way for fitness programs delivered through an app – something now that everyone wants to try and do. And not just Australia – you have Kim Kardashian, founder of the incredibly successful Skims brand and who uses her personal brand to advocate for prison reform. Or Martha Stewart who built her business empire from cultivating a personal brand before social media even existed. I honestly consider every woman who takes the initiative to run a business a role model because it shows aspiring entrepreneurs and our daughters what is possible. 

How do you balance work and life?

Good question! It’s something I’m still working on, but I generally try to follow what I call the LARA method: learn, apply, reflect, adjust. I learn from those who have similar dynamics but are in a position that I aspire to. I apply what resonates with me to my own life. I reflect regularly on my progress with my goals and as part of that how I’m balancing all the aspects of my life. I then adjust based on what is working, what is not and what I’ve since learned. I don’t expect to ever stop learning though – life is a dynamic and so are we.  

What is your favourite way to decompress?

It depends on what I'm decompressing from. I’ve had a really hectic day or week, I find exercise such as jogging or yoga is the only way I can get out of my head. Normally, I like to enjoy a nice glass of South Australian red wine at the end of the day as a way of switching from working to downtime as I work from home. I also enjoy gardening when I get the time, I find connecting with the plants, the soil and fresh air really rejuvenating and cathartic. 

What do you have planned for the next six months?  

Over the next six months we have a lot of exciting initiatives but overall, my main focus will be to grow our business nationally – making law simple for more people, in more ways.

How can our readers connect with you?  

I love meeting new people! If you’d like to connect with me, you can do so through social media. Please see the links below. 

Links

Contact me on LinkedIn or through our website.

Reference to the science behind multitasking: here.