When I was in high school, a friend told me he was going to “work” at a corporate picnic, directing cars to and from the parking lot, in return for free food and some fun. He asked if I wanted to join him.
Free food? Fun? What time do we go?
I don’t remember much about that picnic but I do remember watching a pie eating contest.
Contestants lined up at picnic tables in front of a row of pies. They wore lobster bibs because pies are messy.
And then they explained the rules. They were simple. Whoever eats the most pie, wins. If you finish your pie before time is up, another will be placed in front of you.
Oh yeah, one more rule: no hands. You have to keep them behind your back.
And with that, the whistle blew and the contest began.
Everyone took a bite, chewed quickly, and went back for another bite. Everyone except one guy who had a different approach. He smashed his face down into the pie and devoured it.
Bites? Chewing? That’s for amateurs. He went swimming in the pie and sucked it down. He was almost finished with his second pie when time was called and it was obvious who had won. Nobody else was close.
He was covered in boysenberry pie. His face looked like he’d been shot. He had pie in his hair and in his eyes, down his shirt and on his pants. Bib? What bib?
He won because he was all in. No fear, no hesitation, total commitment. He knew what he had to do and he did it.
But how did he know?
I later learned that he’d won the contest the previous year, too. He had seen that most people do what everyone else does—take bites, chew, and try to stay relatively clean. He knew the way to win was to do what everyone else wasn’t willing to do.
A great metaphor for building a law practice.
Build your practice with the formula
