In this Best of Series episode, we replay a chat we had in 2019 with Rob Patterson, Managing Director of Parkins Lane, on humility, relationships and scaling fast.

Rob is a CEO and COO with extensive experience in leading the significant growth of national professional service firms.

He is the former COO of HWL Ebsworth, where he played a key role overseeing the metamorphosis of a small Melbourne-based legal practice (40 employees, turnover $3m) into a national commercial law firm of over 600 people and turnover in excess of $150m, now Australia’s largest firm by partner numbers.

Rob then joined Macpherson Kelley as COO and led a similar transformation there, followed by an MD stint at Rankin Business Lawyers. For the past 2 years, Rob was GM of FCW Lawyers but has returned to Parkins Lane Consulting Group as the Managing Director once again. The firm focuses on creating and executing on strategy, growth and marketing for professional services firms.

Outside of work he is a keen surfer and he also grows Sangiovese vines.

In this episode we talk about:

✅ How he grew their business from $3M to $150M

✅ The importance of relationships and being a known quantity when going for roles, especially useful when you hit a career crossroads

✅ Humility and self-regulation, and

✅ How to grow your personal brand and business

Connecting with Rob Patterson

You can reach Rob on LinkedIn and on X.

Books and Resources

• Built to Last by Jim Collins
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• Starts with Why by Simon Sinek

Similar Episodes on scaling fast

• Vince LeBon, CEO of Rollie Nation, on Streamlining systems, scaling up and business rhythm
• Ben Lipschitz, Co-Founder and CEO of FoodByUs, on Being data-driven, starting and exiting a business, and successfully securing funding
• Celebrity Apprentice Mentor, Nick Bell, on the threat of AI on addressing productivity gaps, looking after his A-players and living to 150 years old

“If you spend too much time worrying about the outcome and not about the process, then you just create anxiety and a lack of focus.”

On the importance of a succinct vision

• We all get lost in our day to day. Even I'm guilty of that on occasions. But sometimes you've just got to lift yourself above and go, “Okay, what are the key things we're trying to achieve, and where are we at with them?”
• I think I was a bit of a vision sceptic before I joined HWL. Maybe because I'd seen a lot of consultants contrive wordy and lengthy vision statements that no-one could remember, or they hung them up on the wall and no-one ever really subscribed to. But what I think I learnt at HWL is that if you nail it and it's very succinct and you believe in it, then that can drive everything.
• If you don't know what you're looking for in business, then sometimes you miss great opportunities, but if you're really tightly honed in on what you're trying to achieve, then you do see opportunities everywhere.
• So, at HWL we resolved that we were simply going to become a commercial law firm. Up until that point in time, the firm had been doing everything, and nothing particularly well. So, the first turning point was just to decide what it was we were going to do, which was to be a commercial law firm.
• Having decided that, we started to attract people who had a similar vision. It's a powerful thing when you can say to somebody what vision you're trying to achieve, they subscribe to it, join, and it is what you say it is.
• ‘m not a fan of long-winded vision mission statements. Let's get down to the core of what you're trying to achieve as an organisation, nail that and then look at the key things that will help you achieve that.

On having difficult conversations

• If you've got a serious or a tough meeting to have, you call it right up front.
• When the person walks in the room, sits down, you don't try and have clever repartee or make some jokes. You say, “This is a serious meeting and these are the things we need to discuss.”
• Through my career to that point, I'd had some pretty tough discussions, but I might have tried to make some light discussion at the start, but it worked so more effectively, because everyone in the room knows what's going on.
• The other thing I learnt was that if two people are having an argument, get them both in the room with you, don't deal with them separately. It's amazing how people's version of events changes when the person they're talking about is sitting opposite them.
• So, I learnt that that was an important part of leadership. It's never gratuitous, it's never vindictive, but it's just honest. Even when you have to let someone go, you're doing them a disfavour every minute that you leave them in your organisation, because they could be being hugely successful somewhere else.

On the toughest feedback he had

• This was from my partner at Deloitte, Mike Wansley. I had decided that I was going to leave insolvency. I was the director of Deloitte and I was on the path to partnership, but it became clear in my mind that insolvency wasn't the right place for me. I sat down with Mike and I explained that to him, and so he turned to me and he says, “So, you just don't have the stomach for it.” Geez, that hurt, because I've never thought of myself as someone lacking in courage. But when I went away and I reflected on it, I don't think he was so much questioning my courage as he was questioning whether I’m well-suited to the role. And that’s something we should all question.
• I think when I reflected on it, he was right. It was the reason that I was leaving insolvency, was because I wasn't suited to it. I love building things, I love having a vision, but insolvency is actually reverse. It's about dismantling things, realising their value, and very often making hundreds of people redundant, which I could do, but I didn't really enjoy.
• I once read a really good book on transitions and making sure that you actually complete the circle, and I think that's part of it, is reflecting on that sort of criticism instead of just repressing it or moving on without resolving it in your own mind.

On his 2 superpowers

• The first is relationships. I really enjoy having strong and intimate relationships with people. Throughout my career, the management team that has worked underneath me, I've had a great relationship with. Not a relationship where you can't have tough conversations, you've got to do that, but maybe that's part of relationships. If you have respect and trust, you've got the space to have those conversations. I love people, I love relationships, I actually love seeing people succeed. I can't remember who, there was a poet that once said, “Every time they see someone succeed, a little part of me dies.” I'm the reverse of that. I actually like seeing people succeed and doing really well. I think the ability to have relationships and long lasting and deep relationships is a superpower.
• The other one, at a more technical level, is something I really enjoy doing and that is integrating things. At HWR when we were merging with firms, one of the things I really enjoyed doing was a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. How do we integrate this new organisation that's joined us into the current one? What does that look like? How do you do it? What do you do before they even join you? One of my key learnings was make all the tough calls before they merge. So, if there's some people who aren't going to make the journey across, do it before you merge, because the last thing you want to be doing in a newly formed organisation is then culling people, because it sends totally the wrong message.

On how to move past a stalled career

• Probably my most significant moment of doubt was when I first moved into law. Within a couple of months, I vividly remember sitting up at the level 44 of Noora House thinking, “What the hell have I done?”
• I try to find what my true North is. What is I'm trying to achieve, and in that example, what was it I was trying to do with that law firm? Then just for a while put your head down, put one foot in front of the other, and then look up after a while, and it's amazing how far you've progressed. I think if you spend too much time worrying about the outcome and not about the process, then you just create anxiety, lack of focus. So, work out where you're going and then put your head down and march towards it and then look up at appropriate junctures.
• I'm stalled, I'm not going anywhere. Best person to ask, assuming you've got a reasonable relationship, is your boss. Where am I at? What do I need to do more of? If you don't have a good relationship, maybe your bosses' boss.
• Hopefully your boss has got the confidence to give you honest feedback. Maybe it's up to you to create that environment.
• Then maybe a bit of self-reflection as well, as I've found with insolvency, it wasn't right for me. Maybe if you stalled, part of the journey is to ask whether you're really enjoying what you're doing and whether it's suited to your strengths. If it is, great, but if it isn't, maybe you do need to think about where next.
• What do I need to do to really, really succeed in this role and set about doing it? I think that's what drives me. At some level that's definitely perfection. I like to do things really well. It's probably the way I went about my sport as well, but it's certainly not how I go about my gardening. The dead plants are a testimony to that.

On routines that drive focus

• My daily routine is when I sit down to do some work, I just clean up the work area. I'm not filing, but I'm just cleaning it up and it's like uncluttering my mind, in a way, so just making sure that it's nice and clean and I'm ready to go. On a weekly basis, what I like to do is put my Outlook calendar into my manual paper diary, then I overlay my exercises for the week, what I'm planning to do, my family and friends, who I'm catching up with, what I'm going to do, and other bits and bobs, personal things, because then I can sit back and go, “That's not doable. Something's got to give,” or, “How can I rearrange it?”
• I think too often people's personal lives and work lives and family lives all collide, and they just seemed to be in a state of chaos. For me, it's a way of creating a bit of order, at least on Sunday. By Wednesday it might be a disaster, but on Sunday it's looking pretty good.
• It just gives me line of sight. It's amazing the sort of things it will sometimes throw up. The other thing that I do as part of that process is I'll then identify what the three or four big priorities are for the week.
• What do I have to do this week? I'll always go back to those daily. It's amazing when you do that. You'll get to the end of the week and you may not have achieved everything you wanted to, but you've nailed the top two or three things.
• It's almost magical. It sounds a bit strange, but if you keep on going back to it daily, you just do them because you can't escape them.
• If a more senior person was wanting me to do a major piece of work, I'd ask them what they wanted me to stop doing. I'd say, “These are my priorities, which of these do you want me to park while I deal with this other thing?” It's quite interesting. It then forces them to go, “Gosh, is this as big a priority as that?”

On his best advice from a mentor

• What I was so lucky about was that he took me to everything. He took me to all the meetings, he took me to the BD functions with the bankers, warts and all. He probably threw me a little bit in the deep end, but I just got such a good view of how the business was run and what it was and how to go about it. Not everyone is that lucky. 
• Paul was the anti micromanager; he would give you a few really broad bullet points and say, “Come back to me when you've dealt with it.”
• Working closely with Juan I learnt a lot about a lot of things that are tough in management. I think that's what he does particularly well, is that he's prepared to make hard calls. He's prepared to not be the nice guy all the time

On the power of having a strong network

• If you're going to succeed and grow your business, whether you're a lawyer, an accountant, engineer, whatever, 80 to 90% of all your new work will come from your network.
• The only job I've ever applied for was my first one.

On core skills leaders need to have

• I think the leaders that I struggle with most are the ones who have no humility. I think the best leaders have humility. They have self-confidence, but they have humility. I think that the leaders that don't appeal to me at all are the ones that have an absence of humility.
• Another leadership trait that's really important, the ability to self-reflect.
• I remember once a partner in an accounting firm asking me if it was okay to throw the phone against the wall. I said, “Mate, you're kidding me, aren't you?” He said, “Yeah, but when you get really angry …” I said, “Well, yeah, if you have the inability to self-regulate, don't be surprised when none of your staff actually have an honest conversation with you.”

On the toughest decision of his career

• The hardest decision I ever, ever had to make was to make a CFO of mine redundant. It came about because we were merging with another firm who had a really quite amazing CFO on the other side. It was going to be a detriment to the merged entity just to go forward with my whole team. I didn't go forward with the rest of my team, but this one role in particular, this person was a really good friend of mine, and it's the worst discussion I've ever had. It was tough, he didn't see it coming. It doesn't haunt me because it was the right call, but geez, my stomach tenses when I think about it.
• Making a poor call or making a mistake is not the end of the world. Reflect and learn from it.

Final message of wisdom and hope for future leaders 

• I think the most fundamental success tool for an executive is having a great team. So, I think what I would do is I would focus at least 50% of my time on creating, growing, and nourishing my team, because they're the ones that are going to get you there.

Stay epic,

Greg