Being the best at what you do isn’t good enough

June 3, 2016 by
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Being good at what you do isn’t good enough. Even being “the best” isn’t good enough, according to the late Jerry Garcia who once said, “You don’t merely want to be considered the best at what you do. You want to be perceived as the only one who does what you do”.

The only one who does what you do. That’s your mission.

Tough assignment? Not really. The key word is “perceived”. It’s how the world sees you, not necessarily how you really are. It’s marketing, plain and simple. Packaging. Positioning.

On the other hand, maybe it’s not so difficult to literally be “the only one who does what you do”. You are a unique human being, after all. Others may have a similar set of skills. They may offer the same services and deliver the same benefits.

But they aren’t you.

Your task, then, is to take what you do and express it through the prism of your persona. Incorporate the unique essence of who you are into what you do.

Remember, clients buy “you” before they buy your services. Show them who you are and you will have no competition because there is no one like you.

The formula for creating your “unique selling proposition”

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Filed Under: Image, Marketing legal services

Is that the best you can do?

June 2, 2016 by
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Does it ever seem like there’s an invisible ceiling over your head that limits your ability to earn more income? Do you ever wonder if you’ve hit a plateau in your career?

Wonder no more, my friend. If you believe you’ve reached your peak, you have, because your beliefs determine your reality.

Your limitations are all in your head. They’ve probably been there a long time. Parental messages probably had something to do with it, and a whole bunch of other things. But what’s important isn’t how you developed your current beliefs but how you can change them.

Because if you don’t change your beliefs about yourself and about what’s possible, those beliefs are going to continue to hold you back.

How do you do it? How do you change your deep-seated, long-held beliefs?

Hypnosis? Therapy? Visiting a sweat lodge? Can you read your way to a new self-image? Take courses? Hire a coach?

To some extent, all of the above have some value because doing them, even thinking about doing them, signals your self-conscious mind that you want to change.

But I have another option for you: get some new friends.

Yep, one of the best things you can do to change your life is to spend time with different people. People who have done what you want to do and people who have what you want to have.

While you’re at it, spend less time with, or completely disassociate from, people who don’t.

The so-called “law of association” says that we become like the people we associate with most. If you hang out with people of one political persuasion, for example, the odds are you are on the same side. If they work hard, you probably do, too. If they exercise and eat well, you are more likely to do the same.

If your friends and business associates read a lot, you’re more likely to do that, and more likely to read what they’re reading. If they invest their money wisely, you are more likely to think twice before buying into the latest fad.

When we associate with people, we tend to adopt their way of looking at the world. We learn their “language”. We adopt their habits. We share many of the same beliefs. Those beliefs influence our attitude towards what we do and don’t do, and those activities determine our results.

And let’s not forget that the people we know can introduce us to other people like themselves, and open doors to new opportunities. If you want new opportunities, you need to know some new people.

Think about the people you spend the most time with right now. Your closest friends. Your colleagues. Your professional contacts. The odds are that your income and lifestyle are on a par with theirs. If you’re happy about that, great. If not, if you want to achieve more, you should probably find some new friends.

Here’s how to find and meet new professionals who can send you referrals

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Filed Under: Increase your income, Personal development, success Tagged With:

Too much on your plate? Get a smaller plate

June 1, 2016 by
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Nirvana. That’s what we all want, isn’t it? Maybe that’s why I was attracted to an app by that name several years ago when it was in beta.

Nirvana is built for GTD, with Next Actions, Waiting, Someday, and other “Getting Things Done” features. I liked it, but the developer was taking too long to get it out of beta and I eventually moved onto to other things.

The other day I heard that Nirvana had been updated and I decided to take another look. I played around with it, entering tasks and projects, adding tags, and taking the app for a test drive.

I’m using the free Basic version which limits you to 3 “Areas of Focus” (e.g., Work, Personal, etc.) and 5 Projects. I have more than one business, however, and could use more than 3 Areas of Focus. I also have many projects, both active and inactive, and could use a lot more than 5.

But here’s the thing.

As I struggled to shoehorn my busy life into the Basic version, I realized that while I may have 50 projects I could be working on, I can only work on a one or two at a time. I found myself thinking about what was important to me right now, and used these for my 5 projects. Any other projects (or standalone tasks) I can tag “Someday,” or schedule for a future date, which is what I did with a project I’m planning to work on next month.

If I had the unlimited Pro account, ( per year) and put every project on the project list, both active and inactive, I can see how things might get out of hand. Using the Basic version of Nirvana, or any app that limits you to a handful of “front and center” options, forces you to prioritize.

I can’t have too much on my plate because my “plate” only holds so much.

Of course an artificial limit of 5 projects is just that–artificial. I can still put “everything” in this or other apps and find them when I want to re-fill my list of 5.

I think I’ll play around with the limited version of Nirvana a bit longer. There’s something liberating about looking at a spartan interface with just a few things in front of me, seeing how close I am to being “Done”.

Check out Nirvana and see what you think

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Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: , , ,

How to bring out the champion inside you

May 31, 2016 by
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Last night, The Warriors clinched a spot in the NBA finals by beating OKC. After being down three games to one, watching them come from behind to win the series was a beautiful thing to behold.

The message? Never give up. No matter how bad things look, champions never give up. That’s what makes them champions.

But there is another message.

After The Warriors won game six and evened the series, Charles Barkley said, “Your flaws show up under pressure”. That’s true. But what he might have also said is that it’s the pressure that makes you into a champion.

Whether it’s professional basketball, building a law practice, or doing anything else that requires skills and determination and hard work, it’s the struggle that allows us to reach our potential. If it was easy, there would be no growth and no greatness.

Don’t fear your problems, embrace them. Don’t lament your mistakes, learn from them.

Do you want more income and greater success? Solve bigger problems. Take bigger risks. Fight bigger battles.

Your flaws show up under pressure and show you where you need to improve. Every battle, every loss, every adversity you overcome makes you stronger and better.

Don’t hide from pressure, go look for more of it. It turns a lump of coal into a diamond and a rookie into a champion.

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Filed Under: Personal development, success

Grow your law practice incrementally

May 27, 2016 by
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A journey of a thousand miles may begin with a single step but you can’t stop after just one. Whatever you’re doing now to market your practice, no matter how successful it is, you should always be looking for what’s next.

You don’t need to find The Holy Grail of marketing. Little things can bring in new business and if you do those little things regularly, those little things can add up to big results.

So here’s the plan:

Once a week, find one small way to extend your existing marketing.

Find one new business contact who can tell his clients about you.

Find one new place to run your existing ad.

Find one new keyword to optimize your online content.

Find one new website where you can submit a guest post.

Find one new social media platform where you can post your existing content.

But don’t stop there. Once a month, find one new marketing technique that you’re not doing and start doing it.

If you don’t do public speaking or webinars, for example, maybe it’s time to start. If you don’t have a blog, start working on one. If you have a website, consider setting up another. If you don’t advertise, look at how you might.

To sum up: Once a week, take what’s working and find one new way to extend and expand it. Once a month, find a new way to get your marketing message heard.

Once a year? Take a vacation, bub. You deserve it and now you can afford a nice one.

Do you know the formula for marketing legal services?

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Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan

What would it take for your clients to say bye-bye?

May 26, 2016 by
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What would it take for your current crop of clients to leave you? What would make them say “enough” and hire another attorney?

Ponder on this for a bit. How might you offend them? What promises would you have to break? To what level would your standard of care have to fall?

It’s good to know these things so you don’t do them. And so you can work on strengthening what you do in each of those areas.

One area to consider are your fees. If you’re doing things right, fees aren’t the most important consideration for most clients. In surveys I’ve seen it’s number four on the list of factors for hiring an attorney, after things like “keeping them informed/availability” and other service-related issues.

If fees aren’t the number one factor, you have to ask yourself how much more you could charge before clients start to leave.

Could you safely raise your fees by 20% without losing clients? How about 30%? Could you double your fees, or triple them?

If you increased your fees and lost some clients, what percentage would be tolerable? Consider the added income you would bring in from the clients who didn’t leave and from new clients who signed up at the higher level?

When it comes to fees, surely even the most loyal client has a breaking point, right?

Maybe not.

I mentioned in a prior post a conversation I had with an attorney who was spending thousands of dollars a year on auto insurance for the family’s three cars. I asked her if they had shopped other carriers to see how much they might save. She immediately told me that she would never do that.

They like their agent and have been with him for years. He provides them with good service and they would never consider going anywhere else.

“What if you could save $2000 a year?” I asked her, and pointed out that this was entirely possible.

“No,” she said, they wouldn’t switch. They’d had other agents before and were disappointed with them, so they really appreciate (and are loyal to) their current one.

It didn’t matter that they might be grossly over-paying for something they might never use. It didn’t matter that if they did file a claim, the agent has little or nothing to do with whether or not that claim is paid, or how much.

Most people, myself included, look at auto insurance as a commodity. There are lots of places you can buy it. A few phone calls or online applications might allow you to save as much as two-thirds for the same coverage.

But this didn’t matter to her.

Granted, auto insurance isn’t purely a commodity. There is a service aspect to it. But how much is that worth?

Apparently, more than some people think.

Now, if this is true for auto insurance might it also be true of legal services? Something that isn’t a commodity (or shouldn’t be)?

I say yes. Which means that if you do a good job for your clients, you might be able to safely charge significantly more than you do now.

Especially if your clients have had other attorneys and were disappointed with them.

Fees, billing, and collection made simple

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Filed Under: Client loyalty, Fees and Billing

Have you done an expense audit lately?

May 25, 2016 by
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When was the last time you looked at the expense side of your bookkeeping ledger, looking for ways to reduce the cost of doing business?

Every dollar you don’t spend on overhead is a dollar in your pocket. Cutting expenses by just $100 a month increases the value of your practice by $12,000 (assuming a 10% cap rate).

Once or twice a year, schedule time to examine your expenses and ruthlessly cut the fat.

Ask yourself, “Do I really need __________?” and get rid of anything you can live without. Once you’ve done that, go back through the list and ask, “How can I reduce this expense?”

What could you eliminate? What could you negotiate? What could you replace with something that costs less?

Ask your bank what you can do to cut or eliminate fees. Look at what other banks charge and use that as leverage to negotiate with your bank or switch your accounts to the bank with lower fees.

Look at your library costs. Do you really need everything on the list or could you make do with less?

Look at your insurance expenses. Can you increase your deductibles, eliminate coverage, or take advantage of discounts? Get quotes from other carriers. You may be shocked at how much you can save by switching.

Examine your equipment costs (copier, fax machine, scanner, computers, etc.) Would it be cheaper to buy instead of lease? Would it pay to replace some equipment with something that uses lower-cost consumables?

Look at everything–couriers, interpreters, stenographers, medical records reproduction, shredding, storage, investigators. Look at the cost of apps and online services, memberships, and service contracts. Look at your office rent and utilities. Look at your advertising, websites, and other Internet expenses.

Office supplies: do you really need the most expensive legal pads?

Meals and entertainment: are you getting business out of those lunches with prospective clients and referral sources? Could you find another restaurant that doesn’t charge as much? Could you meet for coffee instead of lunch?

How might you reduce expenses for employees, virtual assistants, and freelancers?

Examine the checks you’ve written and the purchases on your credit cards. Ask your accountant to look at your expenses and tell you where you are spending more than other lawyers or professionals. Reward your employees who find viable ways to reduce overhead.

Don’t obsess over expenses but don’t ignore them either. Look at everything, so you know how much you’re spending, and on what. And when you’re done, grab your personal ledgers and have a go at them.

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Filed Under: Increase your income, Law office management

Do you keep a reading list?

May 24, 2016 by
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I download Kindle books nearly every day. Some for research, some for fun, and some on subjects I later ask myself, “What were you thinking?”

What can I tell you, I like books.

Most of these books were free but I also buy a fair number. Right now, there are 4663 books in my account, and that doesn’t include the ones I’ve read and deleted.

Is that a library in your pocket or are you happy to see me?

Sometimes I go to read a book only to discover I’ve already read it. Many of these are books that offered no value and I tell myself I need to delete them. But that requires logging into my account and finding the book through the search mechanism and doing that one at a time is not a good use of my time.

So, I’ve started keeping a text file on my desktop: “Kindle books to delete”. When the list has five or ten titles on it, I log in and do the deed. I hope that one day Amazon gives us another way to delete a book (not just remove it from the device we’re using to read it). Until then, my system will have to do.

Now, what about books we’d like to read? A reading list of books we’ve heard good things about but haven’t had time to buy or look into?

For that, Amazon gives us an easy solution: wish lists. We can use them to identify products we’re interested in, including books. I use a wish list as my reading list.

But that’s too simple for many people. This morning I saw an article about the many ways people keep their reading lists. Some use a text file, some use a spreadsheet, and some use apps like Trello or Evernote. And there are many other options.

The article describes how some people organize their lists, update them, and add notes and other meta data. Too complicated, if you ask me. How much time do these folks spend organizing their lists?

I feel the same way about to-do lists.

Some people spend more time making and organizing lists than they do getting things done (or read).

When I hear about a book I want to read, I either buy it or put it on my Amazon wishlist to consider at a later time.

As Sgt. Rick Hunter (Fred Dryer) on the 80’s detective show “Hunter” used to say, “Works for me”.

How I use Evernote to organize my work

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Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: , , ,

Why taking breaks may be killing your productivity

May 23, 2016 by
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Everyone takes breaks. You can’t work non-stop for hours on end, you need to clear your mind and renew your energy every so often, don’t you?

Maybe not.

If you’re doing something you don’t want to do, something you have to force yourself to do, taking a break is a viable way to get through the task. That’s the idea behind the “take a break every 20 to 45 minutes” concept. It’s why we use mechanisms like the Pomodoro Technique (setting a timer and working for 25 minutes, for example, followed by a five-minute break) before going back at it.

These techniques and recommendations came about after studies showed that most people lose their ability to focus on a task after 30 minutes. But these studies were based on assigned tasks where the subjects were asked to do something they didn’t particularly want to do.

It’s different when you’re doing something you love.

When you enjoy what you’re doing, you tend to get lost in it and time passes quickly. You get into a state of flow and are able to reach incredible levels of productivity and creativity.

When you’re in a state of flow, why destroy it by taking a break?

It can take as much as 20 minutes to regain focus after a five-minute break. If you take breaks at regular intervals, you may be killing your productivity.

You might think you need breaks to renew your energy but the flow state provides its own energy. When you’re in that state, you might work for several hours without stopping and not feel the least bit fatigued. Gamers often go all day in front of their computers and sometimes have to be pulled away from it by a concerned loved one.

So here’s the thing. If you’re doing something you really don’t want to do you probably won’t get into a flow state and taking scheduled breaks can help you get you through the work. But if you enjoy the work at hand, don’t stop doing it because you’ve been at it for a set period of time. Keep going until you are no longer in flow or the task (segment) is done.

Knowing this means you should probably build some flexibility into your work schedule and allow uninterrupted time for tasks and projects you look forward to doing. Work, not games, okay?

Here’s how to get more referrals from lawyers and other professionals

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Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With:

Most of your lawyer friends don’t want to hear this

May 20, 2016 by
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Would you be willing to ignore thousands of prospective clients in exchange for an audience of hundreds of prospective “ideal” clients?

Yes? Good. You understand marketing.

You know that in a vast, undifferentiated mass market, you need to focus.

You know it’s foolish and expensive to try to appeal to everyone. And it’s smart and profitable to craft a finely-tailored message to a select group of prospective clients whom you have identified as ideal for you and your practice.

You know that “law” is not a specialty. You know that your ideal client prefers (and will seek out and pay more for) the lawyer who specializes. You also know that they favor the lawyer who specializes in their niche, industry, or demographic group.

You know they want to work with a lawyer who understands them and has experience with clients like them. Your ideal client doesn’t want a lawyer who does everything, for anyone. They want you.

Of course you also know that marketing is much easier when you focus on niche markets. You know your expenses are less, your results are bigger and come sooner, your clients pay more and argue less, and you get lots of word of mouth referrals.

That’s what makes ideal clients ideal.

But your lawyer friends don’t want to hear this. They’re afraid that if they focus, they’ll lose business. So they pretend it’s not true and continue to waive a giant flag that says “call us, we’re lawyers” and wonder why they can’t compete with lawyers who focus.

No, your lawyer friends don’t get this, but that’s okay. You do. And you can get rich while they stubbornly compete with thousands of new lawyers who enter their market each year and fight with them for clients who are anything but ideal.

Do them a solid. Tell them what I’ve told you and taught you. Send them to me and let me enlighten them. Most won’t listen. But hey, you can still be friends.

Here’s how to focus so you can earn more and work less

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Filed Under: Marketing legal services
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