Sonja Cilliers & Maryke Groenewald are the co-founders of The Professional Mind Resilience Institute, a brand that empowers legal practitioners to attain unparalleled excellence, find balance in their personal lives, and transcend the boundaries of traditional legal practice in South Africa.
The business is on a mission to enhance cognitive abilities, personal resilience, and professional expertise through comprehensive courses and workshops tailored specifically for legal professionals.
Sonja Cilliers has been in practice, as attorney and advocate for an aggregate of 24 years, including the three vocational training years, and obtained extensive experience in litigation in various fields of the law; including contractual law, banking law and litigation, corporate law, family law, insurance law and personal injury law.
Maryke Groenewald is an accomplished professional with a passion for facilitating transformation within her clients. She holds several qualifications including her Honours in Psychology, BCom Behavioural Sciences, and certifications in Master Transformation Coaching, NLP Practitioner and Neuro-Coaching.
Sonja Cilliers & Maryke Groenewald shared with Today Africa about their entrepreneurial journey.
How did you people meet?
Sonja: I’m a lawyer and I actually had a chat with Maryke and I was just talking about the legal profession and some of the challenges legal professionals face. And I said to her, I think there’s a lack of training and there’s so many things that can be addressed and that can change.
I see so many of my colleagues suffering and I myself struggled with so many things in the years I’ve been in the profession. And I think if we just had proper training, it would be different.
Maryke, she’s a neuro coach and a life coach, and she was explaining to me the type of training that we could actually have had. And I think Maryke will elaborate on that, but it was a joint conversation based on the actual problems in the legal industry.
Maryke: I think we both have the same passion, that’s to make a difference, to help other people. We did some research and we just found out that in South Africa now specifically, that there’s not really those types of resources in terms of mindset development, personal development, not specifically within the legal fraternity.
In general, yes. So yeah, I just brought in a different perspective on what one can do to help them to maybe think differently, be more, become even more resilient, manage stress and their time, and just find a balance, and well-being also.
We had a passionate conversation when we met because we realized that we are excited about the same things and we wanted to make a difference. And that’s how PMRI started.
Sonja: The legal industry is such a cornerstone of every country. It is really something if you’ve got strong lawyers and you’ve got strong courts, your country has guaranteed stability.
The lawyers are the guys that fight for equality, and the lawyers are the guys that fight against discriminatory acts. And we need strong lawyers. So in a world we are now that it’s so fast-paced, and there’s so much pressure, the stronger we keep our lawyers, the stronger our society will be.
Because then they can actually give that value to their clients. But they’re also human beings. They also have families. They also need to function at their optimal. So when we initially started, we said, we just want to create a ripple.
If we can change five lawyers or if we can affect five lawyers, they will affect another five lawyers and another five lawyers. And that’s what we’re seeing happening. It’s a movement and a mindset change that started and we’re actually seeing it grow.
We’ve even had people contact us from across Africa to actually start seeing that there could be solutions to some of the problems that we’ve that legal professionals face.
What inspired the both of you to come together to start up this movement or this brand?
Maryke: Interesting question, because we didn’t even know ourselves. We literally had a conversation, and somehow we just thought of this will be a brilliant name, and this will be a brilliant idea, and we can put together this type of course.
And we just started. It’s funny. Even after we started and registered the business, we had to ask each other, like, how did we start this? We even asked ourselves this question. It was about two years ago, Sonja?
Yes, it’s about two years now. And although we are still in the development phase, there is quite a lot happening in the legal industry at the moment. So we started two years ago, and are excited about things that’s still to come.
Sonja: I think it was very much that we saw a gap in the market, but we also have quite a passion that we can actually make a difference. And I think the moment a business is driven by a passion or, I always want to say, a pulling or an urge that you realise we have found something that could be an incredible solution, and we want to place it out there to assist people.
Then it’s sort of like it starts drawing you in further and further. Because it’s not just that we saw a gap and we can launch a business. It’s a real passion that we have to actually affect change within the industry.
What do you see in each other that convinced the both of you to come together?
Maryke: We met at a networking event, and we just started talking and chatting. And Sonja is a lawyer, advocates as practice. We just started talking about challenges that she personally faced in her life, trying to balance being a mother, being a wife, and having to practice.
I was talking about the coaching practice that I do and those types of ideas just started to merge and we realized as we had that conversation. Like Sonja said, our passion drove us to literally just start something.
It wasn’t even planned. It’s odd because we didn’t see a gap and then decided, oh, let’s fill the gap. We had a conversation. We realized that this is actually something that we can use to help others.
Sonja: I agree completely. And I think to answer what it is for the two of us to be in a partnership with each other is often we’ve seen that people would do some form of coaching for lawyers, let’s say in America or in the UK, it would be one person.
So it would either be a lawyer that had some personal struggle, they maybe went through burnout themselves, they started training themselves in coaching principles and then they start companies.
Or you would have someone who’s typically a life coach or a psychologist, and they then do the coaching for lawyers. But what we felt is there should be two minds here because as a lawyer, I very much am in the lawyer mindset.
I think like a lawyer, I don’t want to do training to become a coach or a psychologist, but I need all my record expertise and the same is true for Maryke. For her to really understand the industry, she will have to spend 30 years in the industry before she can really understand what the difficulties are.
So I think with the two of us from completely different worlds, we’ve been able to create products and resources that really bring in the raw reality of legal practice with all the solutions of someone who’s already got 20 years experience in coaching and those principles.
The two of us complement each other perfectly. I don’t try to be in Maryke’s shoes. Maryke doesn’t try to be in my shoes. And together, we’ve been able to create solutions without me trying to be something else or her trying to be something else.
And I think that is, that’s probably one of the reasons for our success is it’s not one person training into being something else. We both do what we’re good at.
What services or packages are you people offering to the legal practitioners?
Maryke: The Professional Mind Resilience Institute, firstly, if we look at our name, we want to create resources to assist, professionals, specifically in the legal industry, to develop their mind, mindset, wellness, and so forth.
So we started off by creating a few courses specifically for lawyers. Because we did some research, like I said earlier. And we’ve noticed that there’s a lot of cookie-cutter types of personal development courses out there, time management, stress management, burnout, and the like.
But there was never something that is specifically developed specifically in the legal fraternity with the specific challenges and the way that they work and think hasn’t been developed up to the point that we met.
So we started off by creating courses specifically for lawyers that will assist them to enhance their mindset, their cognitive abilities, help them to have a more balanced approach, and also their wellness.
And we are actually launching at the end of this month a membership portal, which is going to be easily accessible for lawyers to have the resources at their fingertips where they can do the courses, online training videos, practical activities, everything in their own time.
Because a lawyer doesn’t have the time to go and look for this type of resources online or to book themselves or for even one day training course in this type of skill. So we are busy developing that as well for them. We want to be the one-stop shop where lawyers can get any type of personal and also professional development courses.
What were the challenges that you faced in the beginning and how did you overcome them?
Sonja: That people thought of what we do as mental health and it’s not mental health, it is enhancement. So it is for instance leadership training, it is how to manage your time. It is how to analyse a case and to find a solution. So it’s really not a mental health organisation.
The first thing was to address the mindset of the people out there, to get them to understand what we’re doing and to not have a resistance to any new ideas, because a lot of the other professions do all this training.
Your accountants have specific training on client relationships, how to have a consultation with your clients, how to ask questions that’s not leading, and all of that business training you don’t get as a lawyer, you just do law and then you start working, but you’re actually running a business.
You still have to have client relationships. So you still have to be in a leadership position and your finances, which is also something we assist with. You’ve got branding and you need to sell yourself. So you need to do all of these extra things that you don’t get in your five or seven years of training.
You never do because you do law. And then a lot of people get sent out into the legal profession. And they’re actually entrepreneurs. They actually have their own business or even if they go into a firm, they are placed in a position where they are a junior, then a manager, then a senior manager but they’re not trying to deal with all of these different facets.
They just trained on the law. So that’s all part of what PMRI does. But initially just to change the mindset that although we’ve got all the legal training, we’ve got a lot of extra training that we can do to really make you a much better lawyer was probably one of the first hurdles. And I think Maryke will take you to some of our other ones we struggled with.
Maryke: I think latching onto that is most of the lawyers have gotten so comfortable in their comfort zone how they’ve been running their practices also. So technology is another thing that is a bit of a challenge.
Because these days, there’s a lot of new resources available in terms of automating financial aspects of the business and so forth and communication methods. And I think to just break out of that mold a bit and embrace technology, I think that’s another hurdle.
And it’s still a process. We are still in that process to just embrace this, even the AI. You know, it’s scary, it’s new, and we’re used to the way that we’ve been doing things. So that’s another challenge. But slowly but surely and overcoming those hurdles.
Since you launched, what strategy are you using in attracting and retaining your customers?
Sonja: At this time, we have different platforms. So initially we just addressed the big problems in the legal profession, which is time management and burnout and stress management. But it’s just a very small part of it.
The thing we thought is if you first give attention to that, you can start giving attention to a lot of other things. Because if someone’s tired and they’re overwhelmed and they’re overworked, you can talk to them about business development. But they don’t have space in their lives to start giving attention to all the other things. So that’s the first thing we did.
We’ve got two flagship courses that we spent a lot of time on. It’s available online. And so that is our first revenue creating venture that we had. We did these two courses and they’re very comprehensive, especially time management. It is a proper course you can do and I promise you if you do it, you will save so much time in your life..
Then we also have workshops at the firms that we attend. So we can go to a firm and we actually do a specific workshop for them or for their team. And then what Maryke mentioned, what we are now launching and we write at the point is a membership lounge because we’ve actually got enormous resources.
And even though we can put it on social media we decided there should be a platform where you can access everything. For instance, you wanna read about nutrition, the other guy wants to read about sleep and the other guy wants to read about leadership or analytical thinking and how he should work on his thought processes.
Another lawyer just wants to find out about branding and his website and how he should develop that. And we’ve actually built the membership lounge or portal where we’ve got all these different categories. So a member could go in and they could access anything that they’re interested in.
And there’s a lot of resources under all these different headings. So that’s something we’re very excited about, that people on their own time, whatever they feel they’re interested in, they can go and access, which is all the resources to help lawyers, I wanna say attorneys and advocates, to help them and assist them in their day-to-day lives.
On the portal, they can ask a quick question like; what should I do if I am very emotional after a case, or I’m very upset, or I’m very upset by the photographs I saw in the matter I was dealing with? How do I deal with that stress? And they can just probably get to a short thing.
They can give them some tools, how to just unload it for the day, and they can go on. So that’s what we’re aiming for. And then Maryke with some assistance from me, wrote a very nice coaching program and is also part of the membership which she can tell you a bit more about.
Maryke: Part of that membership is to kind of feel like you have a coach with you all the way. So every week you know there’s different focus areas for that specific week, there’s easily to follow practical activities because we want them to start applying what they are learning.
Because everybody says knowledge is power, but there’s a quote that actually says knowledge is not power applied knowledge is power. So to make sure that those principles are applied in small daily steps, we have a coaching program that they follow every single week to ensure that the change starts happening.
I think it was the guy who wrote Atomic Habits, James Clear. He said if you change 1% every day, then you can change your entire life in only one year. So that will be part of that as well.
Will the membership portal be a paid or free one?
Maryke: It’s a paid membership because we are going to add a lot of resources there. And the coaching is also for them there every week. So it’s going to be very interactive. There will be master classes as well.t
There’s a lot of time and development that Sonja and myself put in there to have monthly master classes for them to have a question and answer type of platform for them as well to share. And they also then as a benefit can access the courses at a discounted rate. So there’s a lot of benefits for them in becoming a member.
Will the resources or courses be self-paced?
Maryke: It’s all self-paced. The master classes are held once a month. So then it’s optional for them to join that, because we want to give an opportunity for them to ask questions and so that we can converse. We had quite a few webinars last year, and that kind of opened the floor and we realized that there’s a bigger need than we thought.
Because people were really hungry for information, and they really loved the knowledge that we shared. And they realized that it’s something that was missing for such a long time. So I think those webinars that we started having last year really opened up the platform for conversations. We also launched our own podcast program last year called The Resilient Lawyer.
That also gives an opportunity for lawyers to share their real stories. So for that authenticity to come through, and this builds our network, and it creates almost a safe environment these days to realize, but hey, we are all in the same boat, and we’re going through the same challenges.
How can we support each other, and let’s just be real? So I must say that is quite also something that we are proud of, and yeah, that creates the important conversations.
Tell me more about the Resilient Lawyer podcast and how will it help your brand?
Maryke: For us, it’s to use that as awareness, specifically in the legal industry. I think one of the very good conversations we had was with someone, a lawyer that had gone through breast cancer. And the way that she had to balance her practice with being ill and how important mindset was for her during that time.
Because your mindset is everything. So the moment that other lawyers start hearing these stories, they realize that they are not alone when they have to balance these types of challenges. And you have to keep your practice afloat. So that was a great conversation we had.
We had someone from the UK about two weeks ago talking about business development for lawyers. And it’s something quite new, even in the UK. And it’s new in South Africa to bring awareness that if you have your own practice, you’re also an entrepreneur, which means you have to build your business.
You have to find clients. It’s no longer like in the old days where business came to you. It doesn’t work like that. So we use it as a platform to create awareness of real stories, but also bring information on.
Another one we had was on automation, to automate financial processes. And that’s also something new and quite daunting for most lawyers. So we want to bring that awareness in terms of what’s available, what’s possible.
How did you raise funds or capital for your business?
Sonja: We have been busy for quite some time, we have initially, obviously, it was just our minds that we applied, so we didn’t really have capital to put out. But we have obviously built up our cash flow on the sale of our courses. Then those resources we obviously now put into our portal and the development of our portal. So there’s a constant cash flow, but it’s mainly because of our online courses that’s available.
Maryke: Like we said, we are only launching our membership at the end of this month. So obviously, that’s going to be some new revenue stream. But to start the business, because we are giving resources, it’s more from our personal development and research.
Initially, we didn’t have to put in a lot of capital because we don’t need to have office premises and all of those types of general expenses. Our biggest expenses are marketing and development, especially the online space, the website, the online portals and things like that. So, yeah, and that’s what our courses serve for that.
How do you balance your roles as entrepreneurs, moms, and wives?
Sonja: I will go first because Maryke had to teach me. So I will go first. I’m a mother, my husband’s also a lawyer, so it’s a very busy life. And then we brought in PMRI and I was working very late into the night to do both of that. At some stage Maryke said to me, we can not teach something to other people if we don’t implement it in our own life.
For me personally, one of the things that has worked the best is to have habits. So the more I have a habit of staying in a routine, following through, so my whole life is structured and a lot of it is also because we so intensively study time management.
I can now do the amount of work in three hours that I usually would have done in eight hours. Because I understand why I’m procrastinating and I understand why I’ve wasted so much time. So I’ve become very efficient with the training that we’ve done to develop the resources to actually fit in quite a lot of different things.
And then another thing that Maryke taught me very strongly is boundaries. So when you have to stop working and attend to being a mother, you have to stop, you have to have that boundary in your life.
I remember one weekend I didn’t answer my phone and Maryke was like, what’s wrong? And I said, no, I listened. So I actually put off my phone for an entire Saturday. And she was so shocked because I’m always busy.
And the more I’ve started incorporating that into my life, it’s had an incredible effect because I’ve got so much more calmness and clarity. So when I do anything, either as a mom, as a wife, as a lawyer, or with PMRI, I feel I can make better decisions. I feel that I can give more of myself, because everything is not scattered and crazy.
I think that’s probably one of the best things that I personally have taken from PMRI and that we want to give to other people, is that you can actually bring calm and sense into your life if you follow principles. So for me personally, that’s how I juggle it, is with the training that I receive.
Maryke: I think the most important thing is whatever we learn and teach, we apply. For me, congruence is very important. And as we also teach lawyers, is to avoid that cognitive overload. And the way that you do that is more to have a mental barrier. Like when Sonja said to stop working at a certain time.
Yes, you can work over time, but not every day, perhaps. So for me, it’s about being present. I also have a routine that I follow. I get up at the same time every morning, I read, I exercise, and I look at my goals. So I balance both businesses, but it’s structured. There’s a plan.
And we also apply the principles, like Sonja said, to be focused not to allow distractions. So we are very much more focused and single-mindedly focused on things. We are very effective in that. But it took time to do that, to make sure that, okay, I’m gonna focus on this one thing, turn off any distractions.
The world won’t end. If my phone is off, do not disturb for an hour or two, it’s fine. So we have that structure that we’ve built in our day. And that’s how one can be balanced. So you can be successful and be a good parent and wife and husband partner of ours.
How can someone, a lawyer, build structure?
Sonja: I think one of the things at least, law is very structured. So most people that study law are people who follow rules and regulations. So we operate in an environment that there’s hierarchies and there’s rules and timeframes for everything.
Our minds are very much geared to being within certain time periods and our diaries are planned out ahead. But what inevitably happens, especially in the beginning of your practice, in those first five years, where you have to make your name and you need to get out there is you take in everything, you take in all the work that you can.
So really saying I’m going to stop at five o’clock is almost impossible because you’ve taken in so much work and you want to build yourself up. And we’ve addressed that because that’s a difficult period and we’re not saying you shouldn’t do that, you should do that, but you can’t do it at the cost of everything else in your life.
I think what we continuously do is we try and bring back to say, yes we know there might be three months of the year that you are working 24-7. But at least then when you are on holiday with your family, you should be present.
You should really spend quality time with them. So Maryke always says this work-life balance, there’s no such thing because in your mind, it wants to say 50-50. It doesn’t happen, but there should at least be a barrier between your work life and your personal life.
And sometimes it could be the one’s going to be this small, the other one’s going to be that big. That’s the reality of legal practice. There’s lots and lots of hours, lots of work going into it. But where the danger comes in and where I’ve seen so many of my colleagues and experienced myself is when you don’t have that barrier anymore.
So your work is always your first priority. You could be at a family dinner. It could be the birth of your child. And you will take that call. And you will be a lawyer all the time and what we are trying to do in our training is to create a space where you can move away from work safely because you’ve done time management, you’ve done all your work, and you can be present in the rest of your life.
What are the feature plans you people have for PMRI?
Maryke: Like Sonja said, we have an underlying vision of that so the more that we can change lives and impact the lives of lawyers in the way that they do things, the way they approach situations, that will have a ripple effect through to every single client that they deal with. And that will also, in effect, affect families.
That will also affect the communities at large and South Africa, but also globally. So we see in the background the ripple effect of change and transformation and empowerment. And on the other end, we want to be that one-stop shop where everything is easily accessible, it’s easy to follow, it’s really easy to implement. So that is kind of our bigger vision.
Sonja: What we mean with the one stop shop is obviously we will have these facets, but in our larger vision, we would love to incorporate legal courses, legal training. So really for a lawyer to log on at night and you’ve got various different resources.
If you want to do a bit more training in contractual law, you’ll be able to do that. So one platform that is designed for lawyers and that can enhance them on every level of their practice from the law part through to the business, through to personal development, every facet of being a lawyer. So that’s where we are going.
Is your brand only for legal practitioners in South Africa, or is it open to other professionals or legal practitioners in other countries?
Maryke: Other legal professionals in other countries, yes. But we want to keep our focus for the legal professionals, not any other professionals, so that we keep the brand pure and we know that the resources are specifically designed with that background in mind.
Sonja: Lawyers across the world are exactly the same. They’ve got the same problems, they’ve got the same way of thinking. Every time we speak to one of the lawyers, be it in America or the UK or anywhere else in Africa, we all have the same mindset, we have the same struggles.
So very much PMRI is open to any lawyer anywhere in the world. The resources are also of such that it’s not a South African concept only, we are not focusing only on South African struggles or South African problems, we’re focusing on a lawyer as a human being in a certain profession.
What key lessons have you learned in your journey as entrepreneurs?
Sonja: I think probably the lesson that I know and that I’ve encountered in my personal life is that lawyers are very, very busy people and they don’t have a lot of time to spend on difficult apps or difficult technology.
So even though I felt it myself as we have prepared our products, we very much realize we have to keep it short, focused, and time efficient. So that’s one of the major lessons we learned.
Maryke: I think that’s just embracing the technological world, embracing that and overcoming mindsets, and it takes time. One needs to be patient because changing and thinking differently takes time. So that’s one of the big lessons as well. And that change is also possible.
What advice would you give to others, especially women, who want to start their business?
Sonja: I think for women, they must just do it. Because we’re probably more cautious than men, you guys drive around on motorbikes and you’re not scared, women are more cautious naturally. And I would say just do it. We’ve grown up in a world where we are always a bit scared. Women are amazing. We’ve got so much to give to the world as men do.
But we’ve got so much our voices need to be heard. Our ideas need to be heard. They must go for it and they must do it. Women are resourceful. They always find a way to fit everything in together. And they must just believe in themselves. But Maryke is very good with this mindset. So I’d love to hear what you have to say.
Maryke: I think my go-to saying is always, there’s no such thing as failure. There’s only feedback. So I don’t believe in failure. I get feedback maybe how to do it differently or how to change my planning a bit but there’s no failure. So like Sonja said, just do it, don’t wait for everything to be perfect and in line. Just know how to embrace it and see where life leads you and where the journey takes you.
Click here to read the part 2 of the interview with Sonja Cilliers & Maryke Groenewald.
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