Register for this free goal setting webinar and achieve your goals in 2011

January 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

“Most people fail to achieve the goals they set,” my mentor and personal coach David Byrd told a group of 2000 entrepreneurs over the weekend. You probably already knew that. But do you know why?

The first part of the answer is that they don’t know how to set goals in the first place.

Should you choose goals that are so easy you know you will accomplish them? Well, if you do that, you’ll feel good about accomplishing a lot of goals but you won’t see much growth. So how about choosing huge, lofty goals you will probably never accomplish? Is that the answer?

I used to think so. For years, I set goals I never came close to achieving. Year after year I would set the same goals and year after year, fail to accomplish them. It was discouraging and eventually, I lost interest in goal setting.

Now, things are different. I know how to set goals that are both inspiring and achievable and I am achieving them. But not just because I know how to set them properly. You also need a system for goal achievement.

On Wednesday, January 19, I’m hosting a webinar featuring David Byrd who will teach you how to set goals and achieve goals. You’ll learn a system he has used for more than thirty years working with professionals, executives, and business owners, as an executive leadership coach.

The webinar is 100% free and I promise you will learn a lot that you can use to achieve more in 2011.

Click here for details and to register.

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Filed Under: Goal Setting, Mentors & Coaches, Personal development, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The cure for the overworked and overwhelmed attorney–part two

January 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

So it’s a new year and you’re ready to get back to work. If you’re like most attorneys, you’re excited about all of the plans you’ve made for the future but feeling overwhelmed with everything you have to do. You’ve got “too many”.

  • Too many articles and blog posts to read (not to mention the books piled up on your shelf (or floor) and in your Kindle or iPad
  • Too many people to call, letters to write, lunches to attend
  • Too many projects you’ve been putting off but promised yourself (spouse, partner) you will (finally) do
  • Too many continuing education seminars you don’t have time for but must do because your compliance group is “due” (guilty)
  • Too many commitments you’ve made that you know you can’t possibly keep

And let’s not forget your legal work. You know, the stuff that actually gets you paid.

In a previous post, I wrote about how I dramatically cut my work hours (and stress) by delegating. If you’ve ever emptied a closet or a desk drawer, all that empty space feels good but you know it won’t last. It’s only a matter of time before that closet or drawer is once again filled to overflowing. Once you get good at delegating as much as possible and have more time available, it’s the same thing: you find more and more things to fill your time and before you know it, once again, you’re overwhelmed.

I’ve still got “too many”. I have a backlog of hundreds of articles I need to read and I’ve bookmarked so many web sites to visit my head is spinning. I glance at the updates in my Twitter stream and wonder how I could possibly read even a fraction of the tweets that go past me, let alone follow up on the relevant ones, let alone connect with the people who sent them.

I think it’s safe to say we all have “too many”. So how do we avoid being overwhelmed?

First, take a deep breath. Exhale. Once more. Now, repeat after me, “I can’t do it all, I will never get everything done, and that’s okay.”

None of us will ever get it all done. We’ll never read all those articles or complete all those projects. There’s too much and there will always be more and the first thing we need to do is acknowledge that we’ll never get it all done AND THAT’S OKAY.

So relax.

The key to success and a well-lived life  isn’t doing everything, it’s doing the most important things. It is the 80/20 principle: a few things matter, most everything else doesn’t; the ones that matter are the ones that produce most of your results. Focus on doing a few important things, and don’t worry about the rest.

Success comes from achievement, not from being busy.

About a year ago, I started working with David Byrd, an executive coach, who helped me get clear about what I wanted to accomplish. He taught me the value of being driven by vision–my vision of the future I want to create–instead of being driven by circumstances. The idea is to start with the end in mind and then set goals that are consistent with that vision. In doing so, we cut through the clutter of “too many” possibilities and focus on the most important ones. The system gives me a place to come back to whenever I find myself wandering. WhenI feel overwhelmed or losing clarity about what to do next, I revisit my vision and my goals and I’m back on track.

David Byrd also taught me a system for achieving my goals. I plan each month so that my activities (projects, actions, etc.) move me forward towards my goals. I also plan each day. As a result, I always know what I need to do.

In short, the system helps me put one foot in front of the other and continually move forward towards my destination. I don’t get distracted by all of the side roads or billboards.

So, as we begin a new year, have you chosen your most important goals? Have you put them on paper? And do you have a plan for achieving them?

If you are driven by vision, have goals that support that vision and a plan for achieving them, you’ll have clarity about what to do and what you can let go of. You’ll be empowered, not overwhelmed. And you’ll be excited because you know where you’re going and you have a map that will get you there.

—

On January 19, Mr. Byrd will be conducting a free goal-setting webinar for my subscribers. Please join us. Register here for this free webinar and make 2011 your best year ever.

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Dealing with stress, Increase your income, Law office management, Mentors & Coaches, Productivity Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What do SEO and client relations for lawyers have in common?

December 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

“I’m a busy lawyer. I don’t have a lot of time to write a newsletter or blog.”

Good. If you have time to write a lot, your clients and prospects might not read what you send them.

While frequency of contact is important, quality is far more important. Instead of writing low-quality weekly messages, you’ll do far more to strengthen your relationships and build your reputation by sending a high-quality missive once a month.

I am subscribed to hundreds of blogs and email newsletters. My email inbox and RSS feed reader are inundated. Several times a day I peruse these offerings. I spend most of that time skimming the headlines and deleting or archiving nearly every article. I may scroll through ten or twenty percent but I probably read no more than two percent. The ones I read (and, often save) are where the real value for me lies.

I stay subscribed to this multitude of newsletters and blogs because they give me a sense of what’s trending in my areas of interest. I also find articles I can share with my Twitter and Facebook companions. And, I do find articles worth reading. If I don’t have time to read them on the spot, I save them to read later. Many of the publications I follow publish several times per week; some of the bigger publications publish twenty or thirty articles per day.

I filter through a large quantity of articles looking for the few of high quality. Sometimes they come from the multitude. More often, they come from the handful of sources that consistently provide high quality material. They may not post frequently and not everything they post is golden, but the most useful material (for me) usually comes from the same sources. Those are the ones I look forward to and make sure I read.

So, if you write a newsletter or blog, you don’t have to write every day or three times a week or even weekly. Write when you can but make it worth reading. Your clients and prospects will appreciate it.

Apparently, uncle Google agrees. Carolyn Elefant writes that while in the past, quantity of keywords and links to a web site determined primacy in search engine ranking, Google has modified its algorithm to better reflect the quality of those keywords and links. You don’t need everyone linking to your site, so long as you have the right ones.

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Filed Under: Blogging, Client relations, Communication, Email, Productivity, Relationship marketing, Social media, Social media marketing, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Lawyers: How to write emails that get results

December 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

In my previous post I talked about email mistakes to avoid. Today, I want to share some basic but nevertheless vital ideas for writing emails that get opened, get read, and get results.

WRITE AN EFFECTIVE SUBJECT LINE

Your email may be powerful and persuasive but if people don’t open it, they won’t read it. The key to getting your emails opened is your subject. It is the “headline” for your email message. It has to stop the reader who is skimming his email in box and get them to click. The more effective your subject, the more often this will occur. Also, an effective subject “pre-sells” the message contained in the body of your email, making it that much more likely that the recipient will respond to your request.

  • Be specific. Effective subjects are clear and precise. They tell the reader what your message is about.
  • Include a benefit. What will the reader gain (or avoid) by reading your email? Why should they read your message?
  • Use their name. Although using the recipient’s name in the subject is overdone in some circles, it is still an effective way to get their attention. It can also convey urgency, e.g., “John, please call me as soon as you read this”.
  • Include key words. Specific nouns and active verbs communicate. Project-specific key words will also get attention.
  • Include due dates. If you have a time-oriented offer or request, consider putting the date in the subject.
  • Front load. Most email programs cut off the end of lengthy subjects so put the most important parts up front.

GET TO THE POINT

The purpose of the subject (headline) is to get readers to open the email. The purpose of the first sentence is to get them to read the second sentence. And so on. You’ve got their attention but it is oh so easy to lose it, so say what you have to say–immediately.

Put the most important things up front: due dates, requests for information, requests for action. If you bury these, they may never been seen (or seen too late). Telegraph your message so the reader cannot possibly miss it.

How long should an email be? Long enough to get the job done and no longer. Make it as short as possible but don’t worry if your message is lengthy. In a particularly lengthy message, you can always link to additional information (or offer to send it).

CLOSE FOR ACTION

  • Summarize. There’s a communication formula that works in writing and speaking. (1) Tell them what you’re going to tell them. (2) Tell them. (3) tell them what you told them. This may not be necessary in a short email but it can prove helpful to you and your reader in a longer message.
  • Tell them what to do. Repeat your request (or offer) at the end of the message and tell them what to do. Do you want them to call? Email? Go? Be specific; you’ll get more people doing what you want them to do when you tell them precisely what to do.
  • Tell them why. Studies show that when you give a person a reason they are more likely to comply with a request. This should obviously be a part of the body of your email but it’s a good idea to repeat it in your close.
  • Give them ways to contact you. Don’t assume they know your phone number or even your email address. (You might want a reply to a different email.) Provide full contact information in your signature to make it easy for them to contact you or otherwise connect with you through a web site or social media.

Writing effective emails will save you time and get you better results. Your recipients will also save time and be more inclined to not only read your messages but act on them.

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Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Email, Law office management, Productivity, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The cure for the overworked and overwhelmed attorney

November 23, 2010 By 1 Comment

I don’t know a single attorney who wants to work more. Oh they want more work, they just don’t want to work longer hours.

Unfortunately, we have been trained to believe in an absolute correlation between our income and the amount of work we do, but that correlation simply does not exist.

As a young lawyer starting my career, I had very little work and an income to match. When I finally learned marketing and starting bringing in more clients, naturally, my income and work hours increased. Eventually, I had lots of clients and incredibly long hours, obviously proving there is a correlation, right? Well, that depends.

I realized that I wasn’t happy working so much but I wasn’t willing to cut back my schedule if it meant cutting back my income. I struggled with this for a long time and, thankfully, I figured out how to do it. I was able to significantly reduce my work week without reducing my income. In fact, when I got things fully underway, my income took a dramatic leap.

There were a few things I did to make that happen. One of those was to get comfortable with delegating.

Attorneys are famously bad at delegating. There are a number of reasons, ranging from fear that the person to whom the work is delegated will screw up, to ego, the notion that, “nobody can do it as well as I can.” I had a little bit of both going on in my head; it took some effort to come to terms with these beliefs, but I did.

On the “screw up” issue, I realized that I would still be supervising my employees, I was the failsafe. I also realized that happiness (or a successful law practice) doesn’t require the complete absence of risk. Risk can be managed. That’s why God created “E & O” policies, after all.

As for the idea that I was the best one for the job, I simply had to accept the premise that if I was ever going to have relief from eighty hour weeks, “good enough” would have to be good enough.

Once I crossed the threshold of acceptance,  I began to see that there were many functions in our office I could let go of and, in fact, there were many functions where I really wasn’t the best person for the job. Once I started the process of handing over responsibilities to others and saw that the sky did not fall and, in fact, good things were happening, I embarked on a quest to delegate as much as possible. Eventually, my philosophy was to only do that which only I could do, and this was a major turning point in my career.

If you are overworked because of reluctance to delegate (or delegate as much as possible), I urge you to do as I did. Change your philosophy and learn some techniques. Your kids will be glad you did.

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Dealing with stress, Increase your income, Law office management, Productivity Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A marketing plan for lawyers–part two

June 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment
In a previous post, we examined the four steps to creating a marketing plan. You learned that a marketing plan should be simple, and that it is an ongoing process, with most of the planning taking place on a monthly and weekly basis.

You also learned the importance of having a long-term vision statement and annual goals.

Before we move on to discuss monthly planning and daily activities, let’s delve a little deeper into the goal setting process.

There are six major areas of life–Career/Financial, Physical/Health, Family/Home, Mental/Educational, Spiritual, and Social/Cultural. For most people, happiness comes from having a well-balanced life, with success in all six areas.

This doesn’t mean you need to set annual goals in all six ares. Some areas may be going well for you right now, or there may be one or two areas that are more important to you this year. Throughout your life, your priorities will change and so will your goals. So, right now, if you want to focus on just one or two areas of your life, that’s fine.

For each area of focus, you should have no more than three annual goals. One is even better.

Sometimes, people confuse “benefits” with “goals”. For example, in the area of Career/Financial, you may have a goal to earn a certain amount of money, another goal to buy a new house, and a third goal to pay off your credit card balances. But the second two are really benefits to be obtained from the first goal, so, in reality, you have just one goal.

Right now, I have just one area of my life I’m focused on and I have one goal in that area. There are many benefits to be derived from achieving that goal and there also many sub-goals I need to hit before I will achieve it. This works for me and you should do what works for you. (You can always change your goals.)

For each annual goal, follow these five steps and you will be well on your way to achieving them:

STEP ONE

Make sure your goal is S.M.A.R.T.–Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Tangible. Write your goal in the present tense, as though already obtained, make it specific, and attach a date. Since we’re focused on marketing, here’s an example of a S.M.A.R.T. financial goal: “I’m excited that I am now earning a net income of $15,000 per month, or more, in my law practice, by or before December 31, 2010.”

STEP TWO

List (a) the benefits to be obtained and (b) the losses to be avoided by achieving this goal. It’s important that you understand the value and importance of your goals and have some emotional investment in them.

Benefits to be achieved

  • Pride, feeling of accomplishment
  • Pay off debts
  • Increase savings, build for the future
  • Hire another paralegal, gain more free time
  • Reduce stress

Losses to be avoided

  • Cancelling next year’s vacation
  • Moving to a smaller office

STEP THREE

List (a) “Possible obstacles” to obtaining the goal and, for each obstacle, (b) “Possible Solutions”.

One of your obstacles is “you”. No doubt there are things you need to learn, things you need to do more of or get better at, or things you need to stop doing. What are they? What obstacles have prevented you from achieving your goal in the past? And what are some possible solutions? (Your goal is not S.M.A.R.T. unless you list possible solutions because without solutions, you can’t move forward.)

Possible obstacles/Solutions [Examples]

  • Obstacle: Me–my lack of patience. Solutions: Read Dale Carnegie, other books, find a mentor who has overcome that obstacle
  • Obstacle: Not enough clients. Solutions: Study marketing, set up a blog, join networking group.
  • Obstacle: Not enough time: Solutions: Find a “time management” system; hire another paralegal.

This will help you identity actions you need to take on the way to achieving your goals and help you identity sub-goals and projects you need to tackle.

STEP FOUR

List specific action steps you need to do to move you forward towards achieving the goal. Schedule target dates for each of these steps and put these dates on your monthly calendar.

These four steps will help ensure that you have meaningful goals, specific action steps and target dates for their achievement.

STEP FIVE

This goal setting process should be reviewed and re-written each month, at your monthly planning session. Ideally, this will take place a day or two before the end of the previous month. “Always plan next month before next month begins.”

Each month, as you make progress towards your goals, circumstances will change and your plan will change. As you move forward, you will conduct a weekly review of your monthly plans and make adjustments to your daily activities. We’ll talk about that in our next post on this subject.

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Goal Setting, Marketing legal services, Personal development, Productivity Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A marketing plan for lawyers–a lot simpler than you think

May 27, 2010 By 1 Comment
Do you have a marketing plan for your law practice? I’ll bet you don’t. Most attorneys tell me they haven’t had the time to write one and they don’t know where to begin.

The good news is it’s a lot simpler than you think and you can get the most important part done in about an hour.

Most people think a marketing plan is a detailed, step-by-step blueprint for building their business or practice. Yes, plans like this are written every day, but a complex plan is neither necessary nor effective.

You can’t accurately predict what will happen six months or a year from now. There are too many variables. Effective marketing plans are written on the battle field, in real time. As circumstances change, the plan changes, and the plan you start with is almost never the plan that you end with.

Don’t get me wrong, a well planned life is a successful life, but most of the planning is done on a shorter time line–month to month and week to week. The planning process has the following elements:
  1. Long term vision
  2. Annual goals
  3. Monthly plans (and weekly reviews)
  4. Daily actions
You can do the first two in about an hour.

Start by writing a vision statement for the next five years (or ten). Where do you want to be? What do you want for your practice and personal life?

With respect to your practice, how much do you want to be earning? What do you want to be doing, in terms of practice areas, niche markets, and types of clients? Do you want a big, busy practice or something smaller but equally remunerative (e.g., fewer clients, less overhead)? Do you want partners or do you want to work for a firm? Maybe you’d like to be retired from practicing and doing something else. Or practicing part time so you have more time for travel and for your family or anything else. What do you want?

Think big! Turn on your dream machine and don’t limit yourself in any way. In five years, you can accomplish just about anything, so don’t hold back. You are the architect of your life, so make it a good one.

Take about thirty to forty-five minutes and start writing. A few paragraphs to one page is all you need. Write in the present tense, as though you are already living your vision. Some people like to describe their birthday, five years in the future: what they are doing that day, who they are with, what they have accomplished, what they are looking forward to.

Remember, there are no restrictions. Short of defying the laws of physics or being completely unrealistic, you can be, do, or have whatever you want. Don’t be logical about this. No, “yeah, buts. . .”, this is your dream for the future and you should make it as exciting and delicious as you want.

Once you have your vision statement, you know where you want to go. Everything you do hereafter will be designed to move you forward towards that vision.

The next step is annual goals. You can have goals for different aspects of your life–professional, spiritual, physical, and so forth, but within each category, one goal is usually best (and no more than three).

Read your vision statement and choose an annual goal that will move you forward towards that vision in a meaningful way. Write down that goal.

In about an hour, you will accomplished something that perhaps you have never done before. The most important part of any plan is to know the destination, and now you know!

Get out your calendar and find another hour some time before the end of this month. With your vision statement and annual goal(s) in hand, you’ll be able to effectively plan next month. I usually do this on a Sunday morning when it’s quiet.

I’ll talk about the monthly plans and daily actions in another post, but I want to leave you with a key to effective planning. If you do nothing else but embrace this concept, you will be incredibly effective in your growth and levels of achievement. What is the key? It’s this: “Always plan tomorrow before tomorrow begins. And always plan next month before next month begins.”

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Goal Setting, Marketing legal services, Personal development, Productivity Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How full is your bucket?

May 27, 2008 By Leave a Comment

"How Full Is Your Bucket?" by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton is a little book filled with big wisdom. Here’s why you should read this immediately: 

  • It reveals simple but powerful strategies that can dramatically improve your relationships with clients, employees, friends, family, and others. These strategies can increase your income, improve your productivity, and even improve your health and extend your lifespan.
  • It is based on 50 years of research, not guesswork. The authors PROVE their premises.
  • You can read the book in an hour and begin using the principles immediately. In my opinion, you’ll see results in days, if not hours.

The book is based on the relatively new field of "Positive Psychology," which focuses on what is right with people rather than what is wrong.

The book and accompanying web site show you how to replace negativity and criticism with positive strategies to obtain desired results.

Good reading!

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Is blogging a “massive mistake”?

April 28, 2008 By Leave a Comment

(Originally sent to my ezine list, The Prosperous Lawyer.)

You haven’t heard from me in a few weeks–because I haven’t written much lately. I’ve posted several articles on the blog , but I haven’t kept pace with my original "posting" schedule.

There’s a simple reason for that: I’ve been busy. Okay, that’s not completely true. I haven’t written much lately mainly because I didn’t feel like it.

Of course professionals have to do things we don’t feel like doing. We have responsibilities. People depend on us. And if we want to keep the income flowing, we have to work. But that’s not my job description anymore.

Nope. I started my other business because I wanted passive income and "time freedom," the ability to do what I want, when I want, and work only if I want to. I’ve accomplished that, and don’t rely on my blog for income (nor do I practice law any more), but I have been recommending to my readers that they set up a blog because of the many advantages they offer.

But my quasi-hiatus did get me thinking about the idea behind blogging, that is, even though there isn’t a lot of work to keeping a blog going, you really can’t stop. Not if you depend on it for your business or practice.

Then I got an email from someone for whom I have a lot of respect, Ken Evoy, a former physician turned online entrepreneur. He is extremely successful and well-regarded. Ken’s company specializes in helping people with little or no experience get a website and, more importantly, get free traffic from search engines, and they do it extraordinarily well. I was one of his original customers when he launched his SBI program years ago, and I have nothing but good things to say about Ken and SBI.

But his email troubled me. Probably because it touched on what I was already thinking.

Ken said that for most people (people like you and me) blogging is not the way to go. He says it’s a mistake, a "time-sapping strategic error." One reason (but not the only one) is that because of the way Google valuates the timeliness of posts, taking a break from blogging will cause your relevancy to drop, and the result is a drop in traffic. And search engine traffic is one of the key advantages of blogging.

Another reason is that because of the way blogs archive information, most visitors never see most of it. They read the most current post or two and never dig deeper.

I didn’t want to hear this. Although I don’t depend on my blog, I’ve posted a lot of content and I’d like to think people are reading it and benefiting from it. Wouldn’t you?

Ken’s going to ruffle a lot of feathers, especially considering the respect he has in the online community. But I read his email and the web page he’s posted explaining it, and I have to admit he does make a compelling case. He shows why a static web site, properly organized and optimized, will bring you more search engine traffic than a blog. What’s more, if you take a break from writing for two months, you won’t be penalized.

Ken says his service, SBI (SiteBuildIt) is a better choice than blogging because it is

  • Easier to set up
  • Easier to maintain
  • Less work (a lot less)
  • Less expensive
  • More effective at getting (and keeping) free
    search engine traffic

I am not an expert on the subject; not even close. No doubt many experts will weigh in. I’ll see what they say, and
suggest you do, too.

There’s no question Ken is biased. After all, he does sell SBI (and I am an enthusiastic affiliate), but based on what I know
about him, I think he believes every word he says. Read Ken’s argument and see what you think.

I’ve used SBI and recommended it for years. There’s no question that it has monumental benefits, especially for busy lawyers who can’t spend a lot of time on their web site. And SBI has blogging capability built it, for those who want the best of both worlds. So take a look and tell me what you think. I’ll post this on my blog and you can post your comments there.

P.S. Quick links:

 

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Filed Under: Blogging, Online Marketing, Productivity, Wealth

When you don’t know what to do, do something.

April 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment

There is a true story about a troup of young Hungarian soliders lost in the Alps during training. In abysmal weather, with no food or supplies, they were cut off from their colleagues. After two days of snow and sleet, they were frozen and weak from hunger. They had no idea how to get back to base. They lost the will to live.

Then a miracle happened. Searching for a cigarette in the lining of his tunic, one of the soldiers suddenly found an old map. The soldiers confidently used the map to march through the mountains back to safety.

It was only when they were warm and fed at base camp that they discovered it was a map of the Pyrenees, some 2,000 kilometers away.

This story has two valuable lessons:

  • It is better to act constructively than to have the right answer and not act.
  • Each of us has to find our own answer, or adapt someone else’s answer to our own circumstances. The soliders got home safely because they made sense of the map for themselves and related it to their immediate surroundings.

(From, "Living the 80/20 Way," by Richard Koch.)

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