To dream (and achieve) the impossible dream

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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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Build family to build your practice

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Your clients and former clients, your professional contacts, everyone who knows your name and would take your call—that’s your family.

One of the simplest and best ways to grow your practice is to grow your family. 

That means (a) increasing their number, and (b) increasing the strength and depth of your relationships

And you do that by going out of your way to serve them and help them, not just with legal matters but with other areas of their business or personal life.

Make them feel good about themselves for hiring you or referring people to you

You also increase their number by looking for opportunities to meet the people they know—their employees, partners, friends and colleagues. People they can introduce to you and who can become a part of your ever-growing professional family. 

As your family grows, look for ways to get to know these people better and help them. Give them referrals, advice, and introductions. Give them helpful information and stay in touch with them.

In other words, by networking with the people you know and the people they know., your family will grow and so will your practice. 

What does it take to do this successfully? 

You need to be willing to talk to people who aren’t necessarily in need of an attorney, and be genuinely interested in them and not just what they can do for you. You need to be a good listener, because that’s how you show them you are interested in them and how you learn what they need or want so you can help them get it.  

And you only need to find a few.  

Yes, you need to talk to more than a few to find that few. But just long enough to learn what they do to see if they might be a good match for you.  

Find a few of the right people and they can lead you to more.  

To start, commit to getting to know your clients better than you do now. Call or email them off the clock, say hello and ask how they’re doing. Don’t be surprised when they’re glad you called and ask you about a new legal matter or tell you about someone they know who might need your help.  

If that happens, enjoy the win. But don’t contact them solely for that purpose. Contact them to say hello. 

Heres a step-by-step plan for growing your professional family

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Run

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Building a business or law practice, especially from scratch, is best done quickly.

If you want to build yours, run, don’t walk. Sprint, don’t jog.

Here’s why:

  • Building fast gives you less time to think and more time to do. Once you have some sound marketing strategies in place, spend most of your time executing those strategies, not refining your plans or making new ones.
  • Building quickly means you’ll talk to more people, create more content, get more subscribers, do more presentations, and so on. You’ll have more opportunities to find things that work and get better at doing them.
  • Building quickly allows you to compress time, that is, to do in minutes what might otherwise take hours, by finding ways to do things faster and by productively using the spaces between activities that are often wasted.
  • Moving quickly forces you to adopt routines and simple daily activities, which are the building blocks for success.
  • Whether you are new or seasoned, the faster you move, the sooner you find bigger cases and/or better clients and referral sources (and employees), which lead to compound growth as first time clients become repeat clients and referrals lead to more referrals.
  • Moving quickly allows you to create personal momentum. You get faster (and better) at what you do, delivering more outcomes to more clients and bringing in more revenue and more success stories, which leads to more of the same.
  • Moving quickly allows you to discover flaws and eliminate them, make mistakes and fix them, and get better at what you do.
  • Fast is exciting, and excitement is contagious. You’ll be perceived in the marketplace as someone who is going places and doing things and attract people who recognize your pace and energy and want to work with you.

Don’t confuse “fast” with “busy”. They aren’t the same thing. Being busy doesn’t necessarily mean being productive.

You can build quickly even if you aren’t particularly busy. But only if when you work, you run.

How to build your practice bigger, faster

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How to get 4 articles out of one idea

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Leverage is my name. Content my game. If you want to play this game, behold a simple way to turn one idea for an article or blog post, video or podcast, into 4.

Choose a subject. It doesn’t matter what it is—anything you know something about. It can be as simple as “torts” or “trusts” or “the rule against perpetuities” (JK).

If you’re not sure, choose something at random.

Once you’ve got a subject, write down ways you could write about that subject based on these 4 categories:

  1. Actionable (How to Do X, How I Do X)
  2. Inspirational (You Can Do X, You Can Get X)
  3. Analytical (How X Works, The Details, The Steps)
  4. Explanatory (Why it Works This Way, How Things Used to Be, What I’d Like to See Changed About X)

Let’s say you decide to write about “negligence”. Your 4 articles might be:

  1. Actionable: How to Represent Yourself in Small Claims Court, 3 Things I Always Do Before I File a Lawsuit, How to Maximize the Value of Your Case
  2. Inspirational: You May be Entitled to A and B and C, How I won a ‘Lost’ Case, What Happened When My Client Tripped and Fell and Thought it Was His Fault
  3. Analytical: How Damages are Calculated, What You Need to Prove to Win Your Case, What is The Reasonable Person Standard?
  4. Explanatory: How Our System Developed (and Why), How to Improve Our System, Why Legal Expenses Are So High

Hold on. We’re not done.

I promised you 4 articles out of one idea, but you can use these categories to dig deeper into your subject and come up with even more ideas.

For example, if you plan to write about why legal expenses and lawyers’ fees are so high, you might come up with 4 (more) articles:

  1. Actionable: Five Ways to Reduce Your Legal Fees
  2. Inspirational: How My Client Built an 8-Figure Business Without Spending a Fortune on Lawyers
  3. Analytical: What I Spend Each Month Just to Keep My Doors Open
  4. Explanatory: Why Hiring a ‘Low Cost’ Lawyer Costs You More, Not Less

And thus, one idea may lead to dozens.

If you find yourself unable to come up a subject to write about, instead of racing around wildly searching for ideas, take something you deal with every day and know well, extrapolate concepts related to it (based on these 4 categories) and come up with 4 (or more) ideas, not one.

Love means never having to say you’re sorry; leverage means never having to say “I don’t know what to write about”.

More ways to get ideas to write about

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Clone your best. Forget the rest.

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No doubt you have a favorite referral source or two. You know who I’m talking about. The ones who regularly send you good clients and cases. The ones who introduce you to people you need to know and do other things to help your practice grow.

They’re low maintenance, highly profitable, and you wish you had more like them.

Seek and ye shall find.

Instead of trying to meet “anyone” who can refer business, set your sites on cloning your best referral sources. It’s better to have a few studs than dozens of people who might try but can’t deliver.

The most effective way to increase referrals is to focus on your existing referral sources.

Get to know them better. Learn about their niche. Meet the people they know and work with. They’ll lead you to more referral sources and opportunities.

This will require time and energy, which is why you should focus on a handful of people who have already proven themselves rather than the many who haven’t.

Invest 80% of your “networking” and relationship-building time with your best sources.

You may not be able to reciprocate with referrals, but there are other ways you help them. You might have information they want or need, do other things for them or their clients or family, or introduce them to people who can.

Help them prosper and they’ll do (more of) the same for you.

How to get more referrals from lawyers and business contacts

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You only need a few

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Clients come and go. They pay us for our services and we may never hear from them again, even if they’re thrilled with our work.

They may return, they may refer, but as a whole, they are an unreliable asset. Treat them well, be there when they need you, stay in touch with them, but don’t count on them to do anything more than pay your bill.

Unless they show themselves to be among the precious few clients (and professional contacts) who can truly be described as a fan.

A fan is someone who promotes you, your services, your content, and your events. Someone who is not only willing to send you business but goes out of their way to do that, because they like you and appreciate you and want to help you.

They join your list and read everything you write. They share your content and send traffic to your blog. They praise you publicly, through reviews and testimonials, and privately, by telling people all about you.

When you recognize a fan, pay attention. Remember their name, take their calls, find out all about them and their business, and go out of your way to help them, and not just with legal services. Find out what they want or need in their business or personal life and help them get it.

Give your fans more attention than regular clients and contacts. Invite them into your inner circle and stay close to them.

Because they are your future. They can help your practice not just grow but multiply.

Fans will attract more fans, lead you to opportunities and opportunities to you. They are also a reminder that what you do is important.

Clients come and go. Fans are rare. But you only need a few.

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Big shots focus on the big picture

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You are a leader. Even if you are a one-person band, you are the guiding force in your practice or career.

You should do what leaders do.

You should spend most of your time and energy focused on big picture strategies that help you achieve your goals.

Most lawyers don’t. Most lawyers spend their days doing client work and mundane tasks, not building for the future.

Leaders lead. They choose the destination, the tactics and tools, and create an atmosphere that attracts and supports others who accompany them.

Leaders focus on

  • Strategic planning
  • Casting vision
  • Creating culture
  • Building relationships
  • Improving reputation
  • Professional development
  • Personal growth

The leader understands that the firm delivers professional services, but is also a business and must be profitable. The leader continually seeks ways to increase revenue and decrease expenses, to ensure the firm’s viability and future growth.

The leader prefers to grow the business by hiring new people, creating new marketing alliances, and expanding into new markets rather than putting in more hours.

Yes, someone has to see the clients, draft the documents, and win the cases. Sometimes the leader does that. Sometimes the leader delegates much of that to their team. Sometimes the leader delegates all of that to their team while they focus on the big picture.

As you look at this list, think about how you spend your time and ask yourself how much of it you spend doing what leaders do.

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Marketing leverage

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When it comes to marketing your practice, if you’re not growing as quickly as you would like to, you might stop and ask yourself if you’re making things harder than they need to be.

You can use your back and legs to lift a boulder, straining and struggling, huffing and puffing, or you can use a lever to make the bolder easier to lift.

You can use a lever in your marketing, too.

Instead of trying to find clients one at a time, doesn’t it make sense to find a few influential people who have the phone numbers of those clients on speed dial? Why not direct (some of) your marketing efforts towards the people who sell to, advise, or otherwise work with the kinds of people and businesses you would like to have as clients?

You already know this works. You know professionals, business executives, consultants, entrepreneurs, and others who are influential in your target market. Some of them have sent you referrals. Some have introduced you to people who have asked you to speak or asked to interview you for their podcast or have asked you to write for their blog.

You want to know more people like this.

Because they can help you achieve your marketing goals in a fraction of the time than you could on your own.

It might take time to develop those relationships, but they can bear fruit for decades to come. They can also expedite your growth as they introduce you to other centers of influence in your target market.

Where do you start?

Step One: Identify them

That’s easy. They look a lot like your existing referral sources and business contacts. Start by identifying categories, by profession or business, industry or niche, and by other factors.

Once you have a list of categories, identify individual candidates. Talk to the people you know and ask them who they know who fit that description. Or hit up your favorite search engine and find their websites.

Step Two: Contact them

Also easy. Ask your existing contacts to introduce you, or pick up the phone and introduce yourself. Most have their phone number on their website.

Step Three: Build a relationship with them

This is where the rubber meets the road. This is what takes time and effort.

But not as much as you might think.

We’re talking about a business relationship, not courtship and marriage.

You talk to them, find out more about what they do, and tell them a bit about yourself. And you explore ways you can help each other (and each other’s clients or customers).

You find out if there is any synergy, and chemistry. And you see where it goes. Which is no doubt what you did when you built relationships with your current business contacts.

The key is to be willing to help others without the expectation of getting something in return.

When you do that, when you approach this with an open mind and heart, you build trust and open doors to new opportunities.

Where will it lead? Maybe nowhere. But if just a few of these new contacts want to work with you, it could be the start of a new and exciting chapter in the story of your career.

How to identify, approach, and build relationships with influential people—step-by-step

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You can change your name, but not your stripes

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Jimmy, the protagonist in Better Call Saul, couldn’t do it. Changing his name didn’t change who he was.

That’s true for all of us. How we think, what we do, who we are.

Our beliefs about ourselves and the world are the core of our “operating system”. And while we can change our beliefs, we can’t do it by changing our name.

Our beliefs determine our attitudes towards the choices we make, the things we do and how we do them. Our activities determine the results we get. And our results determine our success and lifestyle.

Look at how this works in the context of marketing and managing a law practice.

(1) Our beliefs determine our attitudes

If you believe that that nothing is achieved in life without hard work, that there are no shortcuts, no such thing as “working smarter,” you will no doubt be skeptical about strategies that suggest otherwise.

You would be reluctant to try these strategies because they are inconsistent with your core beliefs.

If you did try any of these strategies, you might do so with an attitude that says, “Those things never work” and you may seek to prove you’re right.

On the other hand, if you believe that some “working smarter” strategies can work, you’ll be open to learning more and giving some strategies an honest try

(2) Our attitudes affect our activities

If you believe working smarter is possible, that you can increase your income without working more hours (and even by working fewer hours), you’ll be willing and perhaps eager to explore strategies that promise that outcome.

Your attitude will be “let’s see” instead of “no way.” And if you try those strategies, you’ll look for ways to make them work instead of trying to prove they won’t.

You may have always used hourly billing in your practice, for example, but you may be willing to try flat fee billing. If you’ve tried it before, you may be willing to try it again.

You’ll at least be open to getting more information about ways to do it effectively and to see how other lawyers are doing it.

(3) Our activity determines our results

Your activities—what you do, how you do it, how much you do and for how long, determine the results you get.

Do more marketing activities, do them better, and you’ll bring in more clients. Try different billing methods and if you find one that allows you to earn more from the same work, you’ll increase your income without putting in more hours.

Maybe even by working fewer hours.

(4) Our results determine our success and lifestyle

If you are able to increase your income by working smarter instead of working harder, in the case of our example, by successfully implementing flat fee billing, you will earn more without working more.

You’ll be able to do that because you believed it was possible.

Our beliefs guide our attitudes, our attitudes affect our activities, our activities determine our results, and our results are how we measure success.

How does this explain the success of people who lie, cheat, and steal their way through life? Who believe that the way to succeed is to do whatever it takes, even if it’s wrong?

They may get away with it, but only for so long. Eventually, their nature catches up with them.

And changing their name, or the name of their company, won’t stop that.

Get the Check: Stress-Free Legal Billing and Collection

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The key to earning more and working less

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If you want to earn more without working more, or earn more and work less, the simplest way to do that is to find ways to use leverage in your work.

Leverage means getting more with less. Less time, less capital, less effort.

When you hire an employee, you’re using leverage. When you create a checklist that allows you to get your work done faster or better or with fewer errors, you’re using leverage. When you conduct a seminar and deliver your message to 100 people at the same time, you’re using leverage.

Leverage also means using what you’ve got to get more of what you want. It can help your practice achieve compound growth.

When you win a big case or land a big client, your income grows. Featuring that win in your marketing can bring you new clients who choose you as their lawyer because you win big cases or represent big clients.

That’s leverage.

Use what you have to get more of what you want.

You have a base a clients. You can leverage that base to stimulate more referrals.

You have knowledge and experience. You can leverage this to improve your services, your marketing, and your productivity.

You have business contacts. You can use these relationships to meet new contacts and discover new opportunities.

Why work hard when you can work smart? Why spend a fortune in time and capital when you can get bigger results with less?

Leverage allowed me to quadruple the income in my practice while simultaneously reducing the number of hours I spent in the office.

If you want to grow your practice quickly, leverage what you have to get more of what you want.

This system shows you how to do that.

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