We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Myrecia Donaldson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Myrecia below.

Myrecia, appreciate you joining us today. How do you think about vacations as a business owner? Do you take them and if so, how? If you don’t, why not?

Absolutely! I generally take a vacation every 3-4 months. I believe it is necessary to step away from the business and take time for yourself. Especially in my field, where I am constantly dealing with other people’s problems. My advice to entrepreneurs who feel like they can’t step away from the business is to understand that you can’t provide your best if you aren’t at your best. Having things in place such as automations, or scheduling to accommodate an upcoming vacation (such as limiting appointments, providing updates before taking the vacation, having an on call service in place) are all things that have worked for me.

Myrecia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Myrecia Donaldson, Esq and I am a criminal and personal injury attorney based out of Houston. I attended Stephen F. Austin University for undergrad and majored in Criminal Justice- Law Enforcement and later obtained my Juris Doctor from TSU- Thurgood Marshall School of Law. I have always had an interest in the criminal justice system, so I have always known that I would be involved, I just didn’t know how.

After graduating from law school in 2019 and doing some contract work, I took a leap of faith in 2020 and started my own firm. We are 50% criminal defense and 50% personal injury. We usually navigate complex legal issues for our criminal clients and advocate for our personal injury clients to make sure that they are fairly compensated. I am most proud of the growth the firm has made from 2020 until now, because it has definitely been a process.

We greatly appreciate and value our clients and our supporters. We do our best to provide top-notch service to each one of our clients and we know that our clients is what keeps our firm going, so we never take the support for granted.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Managing a team and maintaining high morale is probably the most difficult part of the business in my opinion. There are so many different things that go into building the team, managing the team, and keeping them happy to lower turn over rates, while still maintaining the structure that is needed to make sure the business goals are being met.

What I noticed has worked for me is making sure that I am connected to my staff. We have weekly staff meetings in which we check in with our staff to see if they are overworked, underworked, unclear about something, or need additional support in anything. We try to keep an open door policy, because we want our staff to feel included, know that we are a team and that we understand and value their opinions. When you are good to them, they are good to you.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

So far I have only almost missed payroll once. It was a super busy week because I was in trial. Payroll is usually due by 6pm on Wednesdays, but I had completely forgot and did not run payroll until 8:32pm. I remember very vividly because I could not believe I had dropped the ball. As a result of that late payroll, my staff weren’t going to be paid until the following Monday instead of that Friday.

I try to be proactive in addressing issues, so I sent a message and explained to them that I had missed payroll and that it would be 3 days late. I asked if they were fine with waiting the 3 days or if they would like for me to issue a paper check. Of course they all opted for the paper check, but they respected the fact that I not only communicated with them, but also provided a solution.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.houston-criminaldefense.com
• Instagram: Allthingslaw (Criminal) & Prettytoughlawyers (Personal Injury)
• Facebook: MD Legal Group, PLLC
• Linkedin: Myrecia Donaldson