The most important thing you should do this week

January 4, 2016 by
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You’re at your desk with another cup of coffee. Your desk is (relatively) clean because you made it so before you left for the long new year’s weekend.

Now what?

What’s first? What documents do you need to draft? Who do you need to call? What files do you need to review?

Good news. You already decided most of that before you closed up shop last week. You planned out your week and you’re ready to hit the ground running.

I’m right, aren’t I? You are looking more organized this week than most weeks? You took the time to plan and you don’t need to do that this morning.

Dig in and get to work and go home at a decent hour.

It’s like this whenever you go on vacation, isn’t it? In the days leading up to leaving, you go into crunch mode, clean up your backlog, review open loops, write lists, and plan what you will do when you return.

Like a boss.

Now, you’re relaxed. Rested. Focused. And feeling pretty good about your week. In fact, you’re so well organized, you can see spaces on your calendar you could fill with marketing activity. You actually have time to write something or call someone and make some of that rain you’ve heard about.

Life is good.

So here’s the thing. If you’re able to do this before you go out of town or shut down for the holidays, why couldn’t you do it every week?

You could. And you should. Because life is supposed to be good every week.

So the most important thing you should do this week is prepare for next week. Before you go home on Friday, your desk should be (relatively) clean, you should be caught up on your backlog, and you should have lists of what you will do next week.

Two hours on Friday should do it. Put this on your calendar. Make it a “recurring appointment” with yourself.

Because life is supposed to be good every week.

Start or re-start your marketing with this

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Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity, Time Management

My New Year’s wish for you

December 31, 2015 by
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As the wheel turns and we enter a new year, my wish for you is the habit of focusing on the positive in every situation.

I believe in the Law of Attraction. I believe we get what we focus on, good or bad, and that our thoughts create our reality.

Think about what you want, not what you don’t want. Think about what you have, not what you lack.

If you think about problems you get more of them. If you think about making progress, finding solutions, and achieving success, you’re on your way towards a better future.

Don’t bury your head in the sand. When you notice something you don’t want, when something bad happens, acknowledge it, but don’t dwell on it. Instead, shift your thoughts towards the positive aspects of your situation.

Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses. Focus on what you can do, not on what you can’t do. Count your blessings, tally up your accomplishments, and remind yourself of the resources at your disposal.

Think thoughts that feel good when you think them. Because we get what we think about.

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Filed Under: Inspiration, Personal development Tagged With:

Sorry, I can’t finish your case, I have lawyer’s block

December 29, 2015 by
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You think you have writer’s block. You don’t. It’s an excuse for something else:

You don’t know what to write about. You don’t think you’re good enough. You don’t know enough about the subject.

The solution? Write anyway. Anything. Badly. Just get something on paper for now and fix it later.

Write quickly, without stopping to think. Get it all out of your head, no matter how cringe-worthy it might sound.

You can re-write it, as many times as you want. You can do more research. You can take a terrible page and make it better.

But you can’t edit a blank page.

There have many times in my career when I have had issues completing a writing project. I’ve had issues with starting, too. The solution has always been to do it anyway, promising myself that I didn’t have to show it anyone until I was happy with it.

When I gave myself permission to write badly and get a first draft done, I almost always found that I had more to say than I thought I did and I had actually done a pretty good job of saying it.

Writer’s block is no more a thing than lawyer’s block. You may not like your client or their case. You may not know the best tactics. You may think you’re in over your head. But you move forward anyway and you figure it out.

Get help if you need it. Confer with another attorney or hire an editor. But move forward, because you must, and because there’s no such thing as writer’s block.

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Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity, Writing Tagged With:

Getting things done by giving yourself less time to do them

December 18, 2015 by
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In an interview, author Jodi Picoult was asked about her approach to writing. She said:

“I don’t believe in writer’s block. Think about it — when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn’t it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer’s block is having too much time on your hands. If you have a limited amount of time to write, you just sit down and do it. You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

Yep. That just about sums up my thoughts about writer’s block. It’s also a good metaphor for other things on our plate, especially things we’ve been putting off or have struggled to complete.

What project would you like to do but have told yourself you don’t have the time? The truth is, you might not be doing it because you have too much time.

I’ve found this to be a bigger issue for me since I stopped seeing clients and started working from home. Not having appointments and deadlines and due dates has resulted in my continually “not having enough time” to do things, and the things I have done have taken much longer than they should.

There’s one project I’ve had on the back burner for an eternity. I wasn’t close to starting, let along finishing. But about a week ago, I gave myself a deadline to finish it before the end of the month. With that due date looming, in one day I was able to make enormous progress and I am certain I will finish on time.

Parkinson’s Law says, “Work expands to fill the time allotted for it’s completion,” or something like that. The trick, then, is to allot less time. Perhaps a lot less.

Pretend you’re back in school and everything has a due date and serious consequences for missing it. Choose something on your list that you think might require a week or a month to complete and commit to doing it this weekend.

You might not finish it but you will surely make a lot of progress. You also might surprise yourself and get it done.

Get more things done by getting better at delegating. This will help

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Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: , , ,

How much time do you spend on income producing activities?

December 15, 2015 by
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What percentage of your day is spent on income producing activities? Before you answer, I must point out that it’s not just work product or billable hours that produce income.

Income producing activities include time spent on personal development. Better skills, better habits, increased productivity, and the like, can do far more to increase your value to your clients than hard work or longer hours.

Take writing for example. Spending 30 minutes a day to improve your writing skills can make you a more effective advocate. It could bring you more victories, bigger settlements, and better deals.

Improved writing skills can also bring you more clients. Your articles, blog posts, newsletters, and other content can do a better job of demonstrating your knowledge, abilities, and experience. It can also give prospective clients and the people who refer them a better sense of who you are and what it would be like to work with you.

Becoming a better writer can also lead to more effective seminars, videos, and presentations. More people will be persuaded by your message and more people will become your client.

You’ll also get faster at writing and be able to produce more content. More content means more traffic to your website and more readers for your articles, reports and books.

Obviously, marketing is also an income producing activity. Get better at networking, for example, and you can bring in more clients and better clients, and open doors to other opportunities to build your practice.

Investing 30 minutes a day to improve your writing or marketing skills may “cost” you $150 per day that you might earn from client work but, over time, your return on that investment could be huge.

Chaw on this for awhile before you answer, “How much time do you spend on income producing activities?”

And remember, the highest paid attorneys work hard for their clients but they also work hard on themselves.

Marketing is easier when you have a plan

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Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Personal development, success, Writing

How to get good at marketing legal services

December 10, 2015 by
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Getting good at any skill, including marketing, is by and large a process of learning and doing. The more you learn, the more knowledge you can call upon. The more you do, the more your decisions will be informed by your experiences and the more agile you will be in performing the activities.

You’ll get faster, make fewer mistakes, achieve better results, and eventually earn your boy scout badge.

But it’s not a matter of learning it once and then doing it. Once you do the activities and observe the results, you go back to learning.

You re-read what you read before, but get more out of it because of the context of having done the activities. You read (watch, listen to, etc.) more advanced materials and pick up nuances that would previously been over your head. You talk to experts and learn new systems and methods you can incorporate into your mix.

And then you go back to doing.

Back and forth, learning and doing, learning and doing. Until you are good enough that others look to you as someone who knows what they’re doing.

And that’s where something else comes into play: teaching. When you are able to take your new skill and and help others develop that skill, that’s when you will learn the most.

And you can start doing that sooner than you think.

You may not know everything there is to know but you know more than others. If you want to get really good at marketing legal services, for example, find some lawyers and teach them what you know. Start a newsletter, blog, or Facebook group and invite them to join you.

Then, watch how much better you get at the skills you’re teaching, because the teacher always learns the most.

If you are go through one of my courses tonight to learn it so you can use it in your practice, you may miss things, at least the first time through. If you know you have to teach that course to other lawyers tomorrow, however, you’ll read more intently, take better notes, internalize the information, and be a step closer to mastery.

If you want to get good at any subject, learn it and do it and keep at it until you can teach it.

Start learning about marketing legal services with this

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Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Personal development

Marketing legal services when you don’t want to

December 8, 2015 by
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Real estate investor and business expert Barbara Corcoran said in an interview that chasing unfamiliar new markets is a fast track to failure.

“I’ve watched so many people much smarter than me loses much money as I’ve made. You know what they forgot? They forgot to invest in their own backyard-what they knew. They heard [another] market was phenomenal and off they went, and lost their shirts”.

When it comes to marketing and building your law practice, are you investing in your backyard? Are you doing what you know and understand? Or are you taking on initiatives you know nothing about?

Many attorneys are so inexperienced and timid about marketing that just about everything is unfamiliar. That’s how they get hoodwinked into writing big checks to companies that promise to deliver a steady stream of clients. That’s how they wind up getting poor results from marketing techniques they dabble with and abandon.

Most attorneys who are successful at marketing use only a handful of techniques to find and reach out to prospective clients and referral sources. Ultimately, you’ll probably find that this is true for you. But specific techniques, like getting a more effective website, networking, advertising, and the like, are less important than the strategies behind them, and this is what you have to get your head around first.

It does you little good to commission a new website if you haven’t first bought into the strategy of creating valuable content for people who are searching for it. Networking with other lawyers who might send you referrals is a waste of time if you aren’t committed to helping them.

When I consult with an attorney, I ask about what they are doing presently to market their practice. I want to know which techniques they are using but I’m really listening to find out if they embrace the strategies behind them. If they don’t, I know we have a lot of work to do.

To my dismay, I often find that the attorneys I’m speaking to haven’t accepted the need to do any marketing.

Yeah, that’s a problem.

If marketing is unfamiliar territory for you, before you take the plunge and possibly lose your shirt, you must examine your beliefs about marketing. If you believe you can build a successful practice without it, if your ego makes you say things like, “I shouldn’t have to do any of this,” you’re not going to get very good results no matter which strategies or techniques you use.

On the other hand, if you believe that marketing is essential and you are open to learning what to do and getting better at doing it, your attitude will make all the difference.

You can conquer unfamiliar territory by becoming familiar with it. But you won’t do that unless you want to.

New to marketing legal services? Start here

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Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Personal development, success

Yes, you’re busy but are you getting things done?

December 4, 2015 by
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You keep a list of things you need to do each day, right? If you’re good at this list making thing, you highlight the two or three (or five) most important tasks of the day. Even better, you write your list the night before so you can hit the ground running the next morning.

Good stuff. You’re getting things done. Important, valuable things that create value for you and your clients and advance you towards your most important goals.

Or are you?

Some list-makers aren’t that good at deducing their most important tasks and spend too much time putting out fires and doing whatever else is put in front in front of them. Others are good at making lists of important tasks but not so good at getting them done.

If that describes you, even a little, I have a suggestion. At the end of the day, before you write your list for the morrow, write down what you did that day. A “done” list, that shows you what you actually did.

Actually, if you’re especially clever (and unafraid of the truth), instead of writing down what you did, write down what you accomplished. Because being busy isn’t worth squat.

At the end of the day, ask yourself, “What did I achieve today?” If you like the answer, great. You will be motivated to accomplish more the following day. If you don’t like the answer, if you realize that you’re keeping busy but you’re not accomplishing important things, you’ll either do something about that or you’ll stop writing a list of accomplishments and go back to just being busy.

Because success is a choice.

Building a successful law practice starts with having a plan

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Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity, success, Time Management Tagged With: ,

What you focus on grows

December 2, 2015 by
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What are you focused on right now? If you said, “doing client work,” or something similar, I understand. You have bills to pay so you draft documents, negotiate settlements, or attend hearings because, well, that’s what you do.

If you want more work like that, great. Keep thinking about that, because what you focus on grows.

But what if you want more? What if you want better clients or bigger cases? What if you want to dramatically grow your practice and income?

If you do, you have to stop focusing on your work and maintaining the status quo and start focusing on the future you’d like to create.

Because what you focus on grows.

Think about the kinds of clients and cases you want. Think about the bigger fees you’d like to charge. Think about getting referrals every day, and about what your practice will look like when it is running smoothly and efficiently and helping you create the lifestyle of your dreams.

When you change your focus from your current reality to the way you’d like things to be, your subconscious mind goes to work and helps you create that future. It causes you to notice things you have previously ignored. It helps you meet the right people and say just the right things, organize your thoughts and priorities, and re-distribute your energy.

Your thoughts create your reality.

So think about the reality you’d like to create. Pretend you have a magic wand and can make it come true with a simple flourish. What would your new reality look like? Write that down.

Then, think about it often. Read your description several times a day. Imagine your better future in all it’s glory. If those thoughts feel good when you think them, you’re on the right track. You will be guided towards the activities you need to start or modify or eliminate, and you will start moving towards your better future.

If you have doubts, if a “yes but” inserts itself into your thoughts, acknowledge it and then let it float away. Those are old tapes playing old messages and you should just let them go.

Think about what you want, not why you can’t have it, and you will attract what you want. Because what you focus on grows.

You need a marketing plan. You can get one here

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

What won’t you do today?

December 1, 2015 by
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Just because someone called doesn’t mean you have to call them back. You could have someone call them for you, you could send them a letter or email, or you could ignore them.

The choice is yours.

Just because people want to talk to you, meet with you, or have you look at something doesn’t mean you have to do it. You could say no.

Warren Buffett once said, “the difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say “no” to almost everything.”

What will you say no to today?

What meeting won’t you attend? What tasks won’t you do?

If you say “no” to almost everything, you’ll have more time, won’t you, to do the few things that matter most? You’ll be able to work on projects that advance you towards your most important goals, instead of simply getting things done.

Go through your lists of tasks and projects and ideas and choose a few that allow you to use your skills and create value for your clients. That’s what you should be doing, and that means saying no to just about everything else.

If you’re like most people, saying no to most things might free up several hours a day. What important projects could you complete if you had even an extra hour per day?

To be more productive and more successful you must first know your priorities. If you have 100 things on a list only a few will make the cut. What are those few? What are your top priorities?

Once you know, the next step is to prioritize your priorities. Every day ask yourself, “What are the two or three most important tasks to do today?” Do them, ideally early in the day, before you do anything else.

If you finish early, you can choose another important task and do that, you could do a few less important tasks, or you can go home.

Yes, go home.

If you do your most important tasks today, your day will be successful. Even if you don’t do anything else.

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Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity, success, Time Management
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