To dream (and achieve) the impossible dream

June 30, 2023 by
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Think bigger. Follow your dreams. Don’t play small. We’ve heard all this before (and probably said it a time or two) but do we do it? 

No. We’re lawyers. Logical, careful, traditional. We don’t like risk. At least when it comes to our business. 

So we take ten years to reach our goals, if we reach them at all, when we might reach those goals in one. That’s what authors like Tim Ferriss, Benjamin Hardy, Grant Cardone, and others tell us. 

“Impossible goals are easier to accomplish than “possible goals” they say. And they actually have a point. 

When you set reasonable goals and seek incremental growth, to increase your income by 10%, for example, you have too many options and strategies to choose from. These are the “trivial many” in 80/20 parlance. Small ideas, common strategies, that are likely to only reach small results. 

To grow by more than 10%, we should be looking at the “precious few”. 

To increase your income by 10%, you might look for a new marketing technique or improve an existing one. You’ll do what you’re already doing or something like it. With hard work and a little luck, you might achieve the goal. But because the goal is small and unexciting, you also might lose enthusiasm, get busy with other things, or bump heads with every other lawyer who is trying to do what you’re trying to do. 

Instead of walking, you need to run. Instead of playing it safe, you need to do things you’ve never done before. 

Not only are these likely to be more exciting and motivating, they are the only things that offer you a chance of achieving massive growth. 

The reason they do that is simple. Impossible goals force you to innovate and find things nobody else has thought of, let alone is doing. Find and focus on those precious few ideas, connections, or strategies, and you can grow much bigger and much faster.  

Impossibly big goals help us to “shape the process,” in part by making us ask better questions. If you ask, “What would I have to do to increase my income by 10% this year?” you get a long list of options. If you ask, “What would I have to do, or what would have to happen, to grow my income by 1000%?” you get a very small list of options to choose from, and you only need one.

The idea comes from “constraint theory” which is explained in the book, “The Goal”. Every goal, but especially a big goal, has a core restraint or bottleneck that is keeping the business from achieving it. Most people don’t focus on the bottleneck or constraint. They focus on the 80% that doesn’t matter. 

Growing by 10% is about doing more. Possibly a lot more and for a long time. Growing by 1000% and achieving your impossible dream is about doing something different. 

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Filed Under: Leverage, success Tagged With:

“There are always things to do. Most of them are pointless.”

May 9, 2023 by
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I didn’t catch the name of the book but someone I follow said she read this (actually, heard it on an audiobook), and it stopped her in her tracks. Pointless? Most things?

If that’s true, the world has some ‘splainin to do. 

Actually, I agree with the statement. I wouldn’t use the word ‘pointless’, but most of what we do is trivial, at least compared to the most important things we do. 

Or could do.

Signing up a new client, settling a big case, launching a newsletter or website—these are important. They put food on the table, pay our rent, and help us move forward towards achieving our goals. 

We can’t say that about most of the things we do.   

I’m not saying we shouldn’t do them. Some things just have to be done and we’re the ones who have to do them. So they’re not pointless. Just not our ‘most important tasks’. 

And we should, we must, prioritize our most important tasks, if we are to get where we want to go. 

Okay. You probably know your most important tasks. They’re already a priority for you. It’s everything else that’s not so clear. 

Writing that demand letter is a priority. Is editing it again (and again) a priority or is ‘good enough’ good enough? 

Unfortunately, we spend a lot of time in that gray area. And a lot of time doing things that aren’t worth doing. 

If we can identify these less valuable (pointless?) tasks, and eliminate them, do them less often, or do them more quickly, we could multiply our effectiveness. 

(Yes, this is the 80/20 Principle).

Here’s a thought about how to do that:

Assume that everything on your list is ‘pointless’. Unnecessary. Or not worth the time or energy it takes to do. And make every task ‘prove’ to you otherwise. 

Challenge everything and ruthlessly cut anything that doesn’t pass the test.

And, when you’re ready to add a new task (or step) to your list, make “no” or “not now” your default. 

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Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: ,

Murder your darlings

June 16, 2022 by
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Relax, it’s a literary metaphor, suggesting that when you edit your writing you cut out some of your best passages, your ‘darlings,‘ to leave room for the even better ones.

Make your writing lean by removing the fat.

That’s good advice for everything we do. A romantic version of the Pareto Principle (aka, The 80/20 Rule)—prioritizing the “precious few” over the “trivial many”.

If you’re like me, things often take longer than they need to. Projects that might be completed in a weekend are still in the planning stages weeks or months down the road.

Sometimes, it is our inner perfectionist bedeviling us. Yeah, we should murder him, too.

But it might simply be we have too much on our plate.

The simple solution—do less.

When doing research, focus on the key cases and arguments. Give yourself two hours to distill the essentials, not two weeks to categorize the entire library.

With tasks and projects, choose a few (at a time) and put the rest on the back burner.

Use fewer tools or systems to do the job and don’t get seduced by productivity porn.

When we have fewer options, fewer things going on in our life, we can focus on the precious few and do them well.

We can accomplish more and have plenty of time to attend our darlings’ funeral.

If you only use one marketing strategy, make it this

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Filed Under: Productivity, Writing Tagged With: ,

Decisions, decisions

May 5, 2020 by
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In running a practice or business, building a career and a life, we are continually called on to make decisions. 

Some decisions we make on autopilot. We’ve already worked out what we’ll do if X happens, so when it happens, we don’t think, we execute.

Other decisions come at us as first impressions. They may require research, the counsel of others, and copious amounts of ‘sleeping on it’. 

Ultimately, the direction and altitude of your career may come down to a handful of key decisions, and no more. Because most decisions, like most variables, don’t make a big difference.

In 80/20 parlance, they are the ‘trivial many’, as opposed to the ‘precious few’. 

The precious few are game changers. The ones that can quadruple your income, which is what happened to me early in my career when I decided to specialize and learn everything I could about marketing. 

The precious few can make a big difference in your revenue, your success and happiness. 

The rest will be forgotten by next quarter. 

One entrepreneur says that when he has a decision to make, the first question he asks himself is, “Is this big enough to matter?”

If the answer is no, make a quick decision (or no decision) and let it go. Spend your time focusing on big decisions. 

But remember, everything is relative.

For some of us, hiring a new employee, changing billing software, or moving to a new office are big decisions. For others, not so much. 

And yet, seemingly small changes can lead to big results. If done right, adding a call-to-action to your emails can be a game changer, for example. 

Making decisions is one of the most important aspects of building a successful life; it’s also one of the most difficult. 

My advice? Do yourself a favor and don’t make so many. Save your brainpower for decisions that are big enough to matter.

Get more referrals from other lawyers

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Filed Under: success Tagged With: ,

What are your three things?

November 16, 2018 by
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“Perhaps the most important personal productivity tool ever discovered is what we call the “Law of Three.” This law says that 90% of all of your results and eventually, your income, come from only three of your daily activities.”

So says Brian Tracy in a post on his blog.

In 80/20 parlance, those three activities are your “vital few”–20% activities that deliver 80% of your results.

And they’re different for everyone.

Tracy used sales managers as an example. He says their three things are recruiting, training and managing.

So, what are your three things?

Of all the things you do in your practice, what three activities create the most value?

Focus on those three things. Do more of them, get better at them, and you should be able to increase your income at an accelerated rate.

You may also find that you can let go of a lot of things that aren’t your top three. This will give you more time (and energy) for your top three activities, allowing you to compound your results.

But don’t stop there.

Once you’ve done this exercise and found your three activities, do the same exercise for each of those three.

If one of your 20% activities is litigation, for example, identify the top three activities that make you better or more successful at it.

If one of your top three activities is marketing (and if it’s not, what’s up wit dat?), make a list of all of the marketing activities you do and from that list, choose your top three.

Which marketing activity brings in the most clients? Which produces your best clients? Which activity do you do best and want to do more?

Focus your marketing on those three things and consider letting go of or doing less of everything else.

You’ll thank me later.

One of my top three: client referrals

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Filed Under: Law office management, Marketing legal services, Productivity Tagged With: ,

Can you really earn more by working less?

November 16, 2016 by
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We’ve all been taught that more is better so how is it that some people earn more and achieve more by working less?

They do it by choosing the right things to do.

The most successful among us focus on doing things that allow them to take giant leaps instead of incremental steps. The kinds of things that let them leverage their resources and get “eighty percent results with twenty percent effort”.

It’s not that they ignore the little things. It’s that at any given moment, they’re able to zero in on the one thing they can do that will give them the most bang for their buck.

Real estate entrepreneur, Gary Keller, made this the theme of his bestselling book, The ONE Thing. He says that we can become much more successful by finding and doing the one thing (activity, task, decision, etc.) that can allow us to achieve extraordinary results.

Keller suggests that we look at our goals and for each one, ask, “What’s the ‘ONE Thing’ [I] can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

If your goal is to bring in ten new clients per month within 90 days, for example, out of all the things you MIGHT do, you should find and do the one thing that is likely to make it most likely that you will achieve that goal.

Start by brainstorming possibilities. You’ll probably think of hundreds of ideas, and if you don’t, read through my blog and courses. Put your list aside for a few days, come back to it and look for your ‘one thing’.

You may reason your way to a decision, but it is just as likely that your “gut” will tell you. If you’re not sure, go through your list slowly, think about each idea and see how you feel about it. If it feels good to think about it, if you find yourself getting excited about it, the odds are that’s what you should choose.

Your ‘one thing’ will likely be different than any other lawyer’s. You might decide that your one thing is to hire someone to create a new website for you. Another lawyer might decide that his or her one thing is to meet prospective new referral sources. Someone else may decide that advertising is the right thing for them.

All of these things, and others, might help you reach your goal, but you should consider them later. Right now,  you should find your one thing and do it.

Your website can bring you a lot of new clients

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Filed Under: Leverage, success Tagged With: , , ,

Working hard or hardly working?

September 15, 2016 by
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All our lives we’ve been told that hard work is essential to success. The person who works harder than other people generally achieves more than other people.

But is that always true? Does someone who earns a million dollars a year work ten times more than someone who earns $100k? What about people who work incredibly long hours every day but continually struggle?

We’ve also been told that there are no shortcuts to success. It doesn’t happen overnight. Okay, then how do you explain the many tech entrepreneurs who are billionaires before they’re 30?

I don’t purport to have all the answers but clearly, there isn’t an absolute causal connection between effort and results, hard work and success. There are other factors at play. That’s why I continually look for ways to work smarter.

Working smarter is about leverage. Getting bigger (or quicker) results with the same or less effort. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to do that.

You frequently hear me prattle on about the 80/20 principle. I do that because it is the quintessential illustration of leverage and I encourage you to continually look for ways to use it to increase your income and improve your life.

Where does most of your income come, for example? The odds are that a high percentage of it comes from a few things you’re doing, the so-called “20% activities that deliver 80% of your results”. Look at your practice area(s), target market(s), and marketing methods. You’re likely to see that most of your income comes from a “precious few” things, not from the “trivial many”.

When you find your precious few, do more of them. Get rid of other things to free up time and resources so that you can make that happen.

If 80% of your income now comes from one or two marketing activities, for example, doing more of those activities could increase your income by 160%. That’s because you’ll have two blocks of 20% activities instead of just one.

Back when I was a cub lawyer, struggling to figure things out, I made three changes to what I was doing and my income skyrocketed. In a matter of months. I also went from working six days a week to just three.

So nobody can tell me there aren’t any shortcuts. Now, if you will excuse me, it’s time for my nap.

How I learned to earn more and work less. Yep, it’s all here

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Filed Under: Leverage, Productivity, success Tagged With: ,

How long does it take to build a successful law practice?

August 31, 2016 by
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How long does it take to build a successful law practice? It takes as long as it takes. That’s my smug, lawyer-like answer, a variant on “it depends”.

In lay terms, I would say, “I don’t have a clue”. Because everyone is different.

What is your practice area? What’s your target market? How much experience do you have with marketing? And a slew of other questions that are a part of the equation.

Actually, there is one question that should be at the top of the list. In 80/20 parlance, it’s one of the “precious few,” a 20% factor that can determine 80% of your results.

How big is your list?

How many prospective clients do you know? How many prospective referral sources do you know? And, if you’re not starting from scratch, how many former clients and existing referral sources do you know?

Why is this more important than things like skills, experience, reputation, or work ethic? Because the shortest path to success is through other people. That’s true for any business, and even more so for a professional practice.

If you know lots of people who can hire you, for example, it only makes sense that the odds of your getting hired are better than the lawyer who knows very few. The same is true of referral sources.

You may not (yet) be very good at inspiring them to hire you or refer, but knowing more people (and staying in touch with them) can give you a big edge.

So, how big is your list?

Now, by list, I mean any kind of list–paper, digital, or even the list in your brain (note to self: write down the list in my brain so I don’t forget it).

In years gone by, we would talk about the size of your Rolodex. (Please, no selfies of your massive Rolodex.) Quality was important, but all things being equal, the bigger your Rolodex, the better.

Today, your list is predominantly digital. Quality is still important. And size still matters.

But today, there is another factor that can make a big difference.

If you’re doing it right, you have everyone’s email address and permission to use it. Which means you can increase the speed and frequency of communication. Which means you can achieve more results (i.e., bring in more clients) faster than you could if you only had their phone number and address.

No, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t call and talk to people. Talking (and meeting in person) allows you to build deeper relationships. Email will never supplant that. But with a couple of clicks, email allows you to tell hundreds of people or thousands of people about your upcoming seminar, updated web page, or special offer.

Can’t you do that on social media? Maybe. You don’t have any control over who sees what. It’s also less personal and thus, less effective.

Okay, you have a big list. I still can’t tell you how long it will take to build a big practice. But I can tell you that it will be quicker for you than for most other lawyers.

How to build an email list, and how to use it: go here

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Filed Under: Email, List building Tagged With:

Are you investing in yourself?

June 15, 2015 by
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Among other things, The 80/20 Principle, one of my favorite books on the subject, tells us to “pursue those few things where you are amazingly better than others and that you enjoy most.” Do them to the exclusion of other things you’re not as good at.

Another author puts it this way: “Do very few things, but be awesome at them.”

To do this, you must work on your strengths, not your weaknesses. Figure out what you do best and find ways to do it even better.

I do a lot of writing. It’s one of my strengths. I invest in getting better at it by reading books and blogs about writing, watching videos, listening to podcasts, and making sure I work at it every day.

I also invest in tools that help me write better and faster. I’ve mentioned Scrivener before and told you that I now do all my long-form writing in it.

I got a new chair recently that helps me sit longer. It helps me get more writing done because I don’t need to take as many breaks.

Yesterday, I went out and looked at mechanical keyboards. (They’re in the “gaming” section.) I’ve been reading about these for awhile and I’m about ready to order one. I’m told they help you type faster and with fewer typos. They also last longer than the rubber membrane keyboards found on most laptops and computer desktops. I like the tactile feel of these keyboards, and the clicky sound they make. (You can get ones that don’t make that sound, if you prefer.)

After that, I’ll probably look at external monitors. A bigger screen will allow me to look at two documents at one time, instead of having to switch back and forth. Maybe dual monitors is the thing.

For a long time now, I’ve been using the track pad on my laptop. I might start using a mouse again.

It’s all about getting that edge. Making a good thing even better.

How about you? What do you do best? How are you investing in yourself to get better?

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Filed Under: Productivity, success Tagged With: , , ,

If John Wooden managed your law practice

January 22, 2015 by
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Basketball coaching legend John Wooden was known as a perfectionist. He believed that planning and preparation and attention to detail were the keys to winning. He expected the best from his teams and usually got it.

In his long career, Wooden proved that his methods worked. He left a legacy unmatched in the field of sports and we can learn a lot by studying his methods and his life.

But how much of what he teaches can we use to build a law practice? Can we demand as much from ourselves and our staff as Wooden demanded from his teams?

Let’s think about that in the context of the first client interview.

I suspect that Wooden would have us regularly drill on the questions we ask and the things we say, continually improving how we sound, our body language, and our timing. He would have us study the client intake form to the point where we could recite it in our sleep. He would have us practice everything several times a day.

Every minute would be scripted, every detail drilled to perfection. He would evaluate us not just on whether or not the client signed up but on how many referrals we got before they left the office.

Is that the standard we should seek?

Not in my book.

I’m not saying we can’t learn by paying attention to detail. We can, and we can use what we learn to sign up more clients and get more referrals. But I don’t believe we need to work that hard to get every detail right.

According to the 80/20 rule or The Pareto Principle, in anything we do, only a few things make a difference; most things don’t. If we get the few things right, we don’t need to obsess over everything else.

Let’s say that body language is one of the few things that make a big difference. (I believe it is). If we make eye contact, smile appropriately, and otherwise show the client that we are listening to them and sincerely care about helping them, we’re more than half-way home.

But this doesn’t mean we need to drill on every word we say, where we place our hands, or how we time our gestures. If you truly care about the people in your office, none of that is necessary. If you don’t, none of that will help.

With most things we do, good enough is good enough. Get the important things right, the 20% that delivers 80% of your results, and you won’t need to sweat the small stuff.

Wooden would probably disagree . He said, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

Yes, but what if you don’t need to do it at all?

Want to sign up more clients? Get this

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Filed Under: Client relations, Law office management, Marketing legal services, Salesmanship Tagged With: , ,
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