After leaving a litigation role in London and feeling a bit disconnected from the world, Philip Evangelou signed up to a Nomad MBA, where he spent three months studying digital marketing in South Africa. Fast forward to 2020, and he then found himself at the end of an employment contract and at the beginning of a COVID lockdown. While many of us would panic, Phil saw this as an opportunity to launch his new firm OpenLegal.
Phil credits his success in part to those newly found digital marketing skills as well as to his experience with founding two other start-up businesses. Those experiences, he says, have helped him to successfully create a platform to not only build a client base but to also nurture those clients and build lasting relationships.
We talk about:
- some of the more modern processes OpenLegal have adopted, such as their fixed-price subscription-based service which aims to remove the traditional barriers of accessing legal services;
- the benefits of building customised law practice software; and
- what the future holds for this type of new law.
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About Philip Evangelou
Philip is a qualified lawyer with over 14 years’ experience. Philip has worked in both private practice and as an in-house counsel in Sydney and London at various law firms, national insurers and fast growing multinational companies.
Using his legal expertise and experience of starting multiple businesses, Philip aims to help other entrepreneurs start, scale and grow their businesses by solving all their legal problems and helping to mitigate or manage risks that arise in various industries.
Philip is also a philanthropist and Founder of a social enterprise called Kupendo Kids which employs women in Cape Town and supports orphanages in third world countries.
Find out more at Open Legal, LinkedIn and Kupendo Kids.
Philip Evangelou quotes
- “It’s been a journey in terms of learning on the job, this is the first business I’ve had where I’ve employed full-time staff, so it’s not just about the marketing but people management, building cultures, managing cash-flows and finance… It’s probably the best way to learn how to run a business rather than doing an MBA. Just dive in and do it.”
- “I felt a bit disconnected from the world, I really felt like I wanted to go overseas and do some good so I signed up for a program called Nomad MBA. I travelled to Southern Africa for 3 months with 30 other international student and we studied a particular new skill… my skill I learnt was digital marketing”
- “I found this toy making shop in Cape Town which is run by indigenous women… I took them my logo of Kupendo Kids, which is the name of my social enterprise and said I want to create children’s’ toys so they created a prototype for me and I thought I’m going to use my digital marketing skills to launch this and for every toy we sell we donate one to an orphanage in South Africa”
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