Introducing Pivot Growth Partners

This quote by Gail Sheehy perfectly fits advice offered by a mentor…that in life, career, or business, change is necessary for growth (and vice versa). Without it, we wither and die. We must constantly evaluate, dream, and reach so that we may achieve our potential, and more!

regina-olbinsky-pivot-growth-partners-white-backgroundAfter 11 years owning and growing The Career Group, LLC – a company I started to focus primarily on career coaching – I felt deeply that a big change was needed. I just didn’t know what that change would be, or how and when it would occur.

I spend my days coaching my clients on all facets of business – from strategy to leadership; communication to conflict; from hiring the best people, to firing the toxic ones when necessary. The more I thought about my business, the more I realized that I had turned into the proverbial shoe cobbler – crafting beautiful shoes that all my clients could wear, while my children went barefoot.

This revelation, while painful, led me to apply to the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business program. The intensive, 13-week program helps entrepreneurs like me create jobs and economic opportunity by providing greater access to education, capital, and business support services. It gave me the boost I needed to change what had become comfortable.

During and after the Goldman Sachs program, I began strategizing with my business and marketing advisors, and through this process, Pivot Growth Partners emerged. A name and a company that was more comprehensive, more focused, and more descriptive of the work that we actually do. Let me tell you more about the name.

The noun ‘PIVOT’ is defined as “a pin, point, or short shaft on the end of which something rests and turns, or upon and about which something rotates or oscillates.” The verb ‘pivot’ is defined as “to turn on or as on a pivot.”

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Founder Regina Olbinsky Makes a Guest Appearance on the Women STaRs Podcast

I had a wonderful time explaining my story as a professional woman with the Women STaRs Podcast

regina podcast

“On this week’s episode of Women STaRs, we’re speaking with entrepreneur Regina Olbinsky. Regina O. has had a remarkable career, from getting her MBA at Case Western Reserve University all the way to graduating from the prestigious and intensive Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program in 2015. With all this experience under her belt, as well as being a loving mom and an immigrant who came to the US as a child, Regina is no stranger to overcoming hardship and achieving her goals at full steam ahead.

In our chat with her, Regina shares her thoughts on knowing what you want and working hard for it. For Regina, “complacency” is not in her vocabulary—if your dreams involve aiming higher, then you should never settle for anything less.”

Join us for more insightful advice and listen to the episode here: https://bit.ly/olbinsky

—via WomensSTARSPodcast

Gabriela Cueller-Councell Joins Pivot Growth Partners

Gabriela has joined the team as a Project Manager – Training & Development.

gabriela cueller councell

Gabriela brings more than 10 years of organizational and talent development experience to Pivot Growth Partners. She is a dedicated and highly engaging professional with multi-industry experience, specializing in consulting services, project management, competency oversight, employee engagement, development cultures, HR enabling systems, performance management, succession planning, change management, and adult learning. Gabriela received her Masters in Organizational Leadership from Vanderbilt University and has worked within Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies throughout her career.

“With the impact of COVID on organizational culture and team development, it became clear that serving our clients in these challenging times requires another person.  This individual needed to be someone with experience in, and a passion for, developing individuals, teams, and organizations. This need led me to find Gabriela Cueller-Councell, an individual that has supported organizations to grow - even in challenging times. Gabriela’s proven track record for success, passion for people development, and unique approach will be an ideal fit for Pivot Growth Partners and our clients.”

Regina Olbinsky, PHR, SHRM-CP, Managing Partner

In addition to her depth of knowledge in organizational and talent development, Gabriela has years of experience project managing the implementation of Human Capital Management Systems (HCMS), company integrations and organizational process improvement initiatives. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) through the Project Management Institute. Gabriela focuses on using hybrid or agile approaches for her projects.

Read more about Gabriela and meet the entire team.

Non-attorney job market rolling with changes in technology

by Douglas J. Guth via crains.com


Pandemic-wrought shutdowns have had a dramatic effect on the legal services industry, with law firms nationwide cutting costs through layoffs, pay cuts, furloughs and shortened seasonal programs.

Earlier this year, technology company Clio reported a 56% decrease in requests for legal assistance among surveyed respondents.

Despite the downturn, firms are embracing non-lawyer talent strategies fueled by innovation and a renewed emphasis on client value. Paralegals and administrative staff — the backbone of any modern law office — are being supplemented by highly skilled workers capable of developing and supporting new technologies.

Larger firms, which today operate like businesses as much as they do legal practices, are employing multiple non-attorney executives at the highest organizational levels. Remote work and the rising “gig economy” are having their own impact, placing temporary, contract and freelance workers in projects that can last years.

Cleveland-based Benesch has 143 local attorneys — complemented by 125 legal secretaries, paralegals, file-room clerks, IT workers, accountants, marketing team members and others — working out of its Cleveland office. Benesch partner and general counsel Joe Gross said ramped-up activity has resulted in the return of not only some furloughed attorneys, but their support staff as well.

“We had to back off on hiring plans for new lawyers, but we’re still actively recruiting at law schools,” Gross said. “New lawyers are going to need legal assistants — that goes hand in hand.”

Adapting

Pivot Growth Partners managing partner Regina Olbinsky has not seen a significant staffing downturn among the smaller family law and estate planning firms she consults. Thanks, in part, to COVID-sparked upticks in those two areas of law, every firm in Olbinsky’s portfolio increased their employment rolls in 2020.

“I work with small firms, so it’s not about replacing a lawyer one-to-one, or on any other level within the firm,” Olbinsky said. “Some are for looking for attorneys, but also need talent like paralegals and on the administrative side. Or we’re getting them to outsource administrative work to keep up their productivity and profitability. That’s where I’ve seen the biggest change — offloading the administrative stuff and making sure it’s done well.”

Common administrative tasks — from running QuickBooks to depositing checks — are mostly done in-house rather than on a freelance basis. Among the $10 million-and-below firms that comprise Olbinsky’s clientele, keeping this work close is a simple trust issue. As law firms move client-facing and back-office functions to the cloud, virtual assistants and remote employees are becoming more common. Familiarity with client-management software prepared legal offices for the transition into remote work, Olbinsky said.

“Nobody used this technology five years ago — now they all do,” she said. “That positioned firms well for the pandemic. Most had voice-over-internet phones, or just picked up their handsets and took them home. This allowed my clients to work incredibly efficiently.”

The legal industry is also harnessing artificial intelligence to boost productivity and spend less time on monotonous tasks. Proponents say AI can flag specific documents, with machine-learning algorithms tracking down other materials relevant to a case. Additionally, AI simplifies contract revision by highlighting standard clauses for different applications. The technology can even predict legal outcomes, sifting through years of data to inform practitioners their chances of winning a case.

“AI is in lawyers’ minds,” said Gross of Benesch. “It may not be all about productivity, but rather helping them draft briefs and documents or do research.”

Like a business

Meanwhile, corporate legal departments are expanding to support new business activity and address complex data privacy laws such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act.

Larger offices like Benesch are also hiring or promoting non-lawyer talent at the executive level, aligning with trends percolating within the industry for decades. President and CEO Kevin Fitzpatrick came to Benesch 35 years ago with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, establishing the ¬ rm as a go-to construction management consultant for the city of Chicago. Benesch’s Cleveland location installed former manufacturing exec John Banks as chief operating officer, highlighting the expanded business focus evident across the industry.

“Every large firm is doing things the way a business school would teach a business to operate,” Gross said. “In past years, lawyers would run their own practices, but business aspects are now being done by people with those skills.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for legal occupations was $81,820 in May 2019, with associate-level positions, including paralegals and legal assistants, accruing over $51,000 annually. While Cleveland-Marshall College of Law dean Lee Fisher expects firms to remain conservative on hiring until the pandemic recedes, the next wave of non-lawyer jobs won’t necessarily require a juris doctorate to obtain.

“Students could be doing document review as opposed to jobs where a JD is required,” Fisher said. “They don’t need to have a degree, but they do need those organizational, project and technical skills.”

Freelancers are supplementing the existing workforce, allowing workers to operate from home and employers to quickly scale up or down. Benesch contracts out electronic discovery and research on large cases, and hires consultants for other projects.

“There’s no guarantee a project will last for more than a few years,” Fisher said. “Work ebbs and flows, so it makes more sense to hire based upon temporary client needs.”

When hiring resumes in earnest post-COVID, organizations seeking skilled workers will fall back on fit and culture, said Olbinsky of Pivot Growth Partners.

“It’s the notion of being in a crisis and what kind of hard decisions you have to make,” she said. “The coronavirus has highlighted that. ‘These are our values, we have to do this.’ “

Regina Olbinsky Profiled on Cleveland Business Connects

“Regina Olbinsky’s parents worried that their daughter would not be able to develop her potential in the former Soviet Union, so in 1978 they made the risky decision to immigrate to the United States. Then only 9 years old, Olbinsky longed to fit in with her American peers and achieve the academic and career success her parents desired for her.” – By Nina Polien Light 

Read the full article at cbcmagazine.com ›

Bringing Priorities Into Focus

View your work and your life through a strategic lens, make smart decisions based on your insight and your intelligence, and implement those decisions.

Let’s first consider some common myths about business roles:

[extracted from E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber]

  • The Entrepreneur works on the business; devising and implementing functions that include marketing, planning, building, and reviewing revenue and profit. He/she is the dreamer, lives in the future, thrives on change, and craves control.
  • The Manager focuses on hiring, training, mentoring, and growing talent. He/she is the thinker, tends to live in the past, clings to the status quo, and craves order.
  • The Technician works in the business. He/she is the doer, loves to tinker, and lives in the present.

In reality, as an owner or principal of an organization, particularly an entrepreneurial one, it is imperative that you work at the best and highest use of your time, typically in the role of the entrepreneur and manager more than the technician. The problem is that most of us start our businesses and prefer to work in the technician role. That’s the fatal flaw.

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How Not to Launch a New Website

Disaster… maybe not in the Hurricane Katrina sort of way, but for me – a business owner launching a new company name, brand, and website – well, for me, that disaster came in the form of a broken email link … on the day of the launch. So all of you who immediately sent notes of congratulations received a response saying there was a fatal permanent error in my new email address.

Yes. Just like that, my euphoria over the launch and everything that it stood for dissipated in a matter of seconds. But I have to tell you that unlike in years past, my panicked reaction to this disaster lasted only minutes, instead of days. I said a silent prayer that you all would understand that sometimes, no matter how many times technology is tested (and believe me, we tested it A LOT), *&it happens!

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