My biggest shortcut to success

September 24, 2015 by
Share

Think about someone you know, or know about, who has accomplished something you would like to accomplish. A lawyer, perhaps, who has the kind of practice you would like to build.

It might be someone you know, someone you met, or someone you’ve read about. It could even be an historical figure.

Find out all you can about them. Read what they have written and what has been written about them. Talk to people who know them or who have studied them. Immerse yourself in information about them–how they got started, their daily habits, the tools and resources they used, their philosophies, their priorities, and how they spend their time.

If you could talk to them and explain your situation and your goals, what advice do you imagine they would give you? If you know them or can meet them, ask them this yourself.

Study them and then reverse-engineer their accomplishments. Identify the steps they took to achieve their success. Then, use those steps to create a plan of action for yourself.

You may not do as well as they did. Talent, timing, and a host of other factors might see to that. But you might do better than you would if you didn’t follow their path, for one simple reason. They’ve shown you what’s possible.

When I wrote my first marketing course I knew about marketing and building a law practice but I didn’t know how to package and sell that knowledge. I’d never written a course before. How big should it be? What should it look like? How much should I charge?

I was fortunate to find a course that someone else was marketing to financial professionals and I used that as a model for my own.

I studied how he packaged his information, how he priced his course, and how he marketed it. I conscripted many of his ideas and my course finally began to take shape.

More than anything, what helped me get it done and (finally) up for sale, after three years of work, was being able to hold his course in my hands and know that I could create something like it, or, as it turned out, something better.

Without that course to model, who knows what I would have come up with. Who knows if I would have had the courage to come up with anything.

My biggest shortcut to success? Find people who have done what you want to do and model them. Let them show you the path, and let them show you what’s possible.

Need a marketing plan? Want to earn more without working more? Go here

Share
Filed Under: Leverage, Personal development, success

You can do more than you think, in less time than you think

September 23, 2015 by
Share

This is embarrassing. When I was in college I had a class that I never attended. Oh, maybe I went a few times, but I didn’t crack open the textbook. The semester came to a close and it was time for the exam.

I wasn’t ready. How could I be? I hadn’t gone to class or read the textbook. But that’s not the embarrassing part.

With only a couple of days left until the exam, I realized that if I didn’t do something, I would fail the class. So I did what many misguided college students do, I prepared a set of cheat notes.

I went through the textbook and took detailed notes. I had to skim the book, but the bullet points at the end of each chapter told me what was important. I wrote many pages of notes, referring back to the text to fill in the blanks. I then re-wrote my notes several times, each time condensing them.

The night before the exam, I had reduced an entire semester to two pages of notes.

I folded those two pages and put them in my shirt pocket for easy access. I hoped they would at least keep me from flunking.

The exam was in it an auditorium which seated hundreds of test-takers. I purposely chose a middle seat in a middle row so the proctors would have a harder time seeing me using my notes. They passed out the exam, I took a deep breath, and began.

When it was over, I felt pretty good about what I had written. I felt even better because I never did look at my notes.

I didn’t have to. I knew the material. I learned it in two days. What I thought would be a cheat sheet turned out to be a study guide and it helped me to get a B.

I was proud of myself, because I didn’t cheat and because I discovered that I was capable of doing some pretty amazing things. If I could learn an entire semester’s worth of material in two days, what else could I do?

(Don’t bust my chops; I realize I cheated myself by not going to class. I’m making a point here, Mom.)

Having a deadline helped. So did the looming potential of a failing grade. But when the chips were down, I found that I could more than I thought, in less time than I thought.

Oh yeah, I got something else out of the experience.

Years later, when I was studying for the Bar exam, even though I had gone to class and done the homework and taken mid-terms and gotten good grades, even though I was well-prepared for the Bar exam, I used my “cheat sheet” idea to create study guides for each subject. I took my all of my notes, and all of the bar review manuals, and everything else I had, and distilled them down to a few pages per subject, and finally, to a single page per subject.

I still wasn’t done. I took those seven or eight pages and reduced them to one. Three years of law school on a one page study guide.

Call me crazy, but there was no way I was going to take the Bar exam again. I didn’t have to, but decades later, I still have dreams about the damn thing.

Share
Filed Under: Leverage, Personal development Tagged With:

When was the last time you were scared?

September 22, 2015 by
Share

I was pretty cocky about starting law school. But I was also scared.

It was new, it was different, and it was intimidating. I didn’t know if I was embarking on a great adventure or I had made a big mistake.

I can say the same thing about opening my practice and about many other milestones in my life. I’m sure you can, too.

It’s not the fear of failure so much as the fear of not knowing what’s next. H.P. Lovecraft said, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

But the flip side of fear is excitement. Not knowing what’s about to happen can be thrilling. So can the notion that you might be about to accomplish something great.

And so I ask you, when was the last time you were scared?

Because if you’re not scared from time to time, if your career or your life are boring and routine, it means you’re not taking enough risks, or big enough risks, and you’re not growing.

Former CEO of Evernote, Phil Libin, said recently that one of the reasons he stepped down from the company was that he was bored. He’s now with a venture capital firm and thrives on not knowing what’s next. “It wouldn’t be the best time if it wasn’t scary. When we started Evernote, it was terrifying,” Libin said. “I don’t think I’ve ever embarked on anything great without being scared.”

Of course too much fear can be paralyzing, so you have to find balance. You have to find things to do that challenge you and frighten you but also excite you and pull you forward.

What might that be for you career-wise?

Take on a partner? Go out on your own? Start a new practice area? Revamp your marketing?

Or are you ready for a new career?

Helen Keller said, “Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing.” Do something that scares you. Find your next daring adventure.

If you’re ready to revamp your marketing, start here

Share
Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Inspiration, Personal development, success

Are you excited about practicing law?

September 17, 2015 by
Share

Are you excited about practicing law? I was, when I started. But it didn’t take long before the thrill was gone.

I liked helping people and I liked the challenge of building something from scratch. But I didn’t love what I was doing.

Is that all there is? Is that all there is? If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing.

I kept going because I had invested so much into my career, how could I walk away?

How could I not? How could I wait twenty years before finally giving myself permission to do something else.

Successful people are passionate about what they do. Monday morning can’t come soon enough. They can’t imagine doing anything else.

Successful people don’t need to push themselves, they do what they do because they love doing it. Steve Jobs said, “If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.”

That’s what I want for you.

I’m not saying you need to leave the law, although that may be the right thing for you at some point. I’m saying you need to find a way to get excited about your work.

How?

In The One Thing You Need to Know, Marcus Buckingham distilled years of research about personal success down to one thing: “Find out what you don’t like doing and stop doing it.”

Get rid of the things you don’t love about your practice so you can do more of what you are good at and enjoy.

It sounds simplistic but imagine if the things you don’t like about your work were gone. Handled. Not something you need to think about.

It would be liberating, wouldn’t it?

Is this possible? Could you delegate or outsource all of the things that cause you stress? Probably not. When you’re in charge, there are always burdens on your shoulders. But if you could get rid of 80% of the things you don’t like, you might smile a lot more.

Share
Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Dealing with stress, Law office management, Personal development, success

Who says there are no shortcuts?

September 10, 2015 by
Share

Some say there are no shortcuts. You must do the work and put in the time. There are no shortcuts in life.

Balderdash.

Of course there are shortcuts. Untold numbers of shortcuts. Everywhere we look and everything we do there are shortcuts.

Law school is a shortcut. Imagine having to prepare yourself to practice law without it. A bar preparation course is a shortcut. In fact, every class, course, or book, is a (potential) shortcut. You learn what others know and what they did, so you can avoid their mistakes and follow their path to success.

A franchise is a shortcut. So is a network marketing business.

Do you (or did you) have another lawyer mentor you? That’s a shortcut.

Form books, checklists email templates, are shortcuts.

I dictated this post with dictation software. Yep, a shortcut.

The 80/20 principle says that in just about everything we do, a small percentage of our activities or effort produce a disproportionate percentage of our results. Do more of those activities (and less of the others) and you will have a shortcut to achieving more.

So if someone tells you there are no shortcuts, don’t listen to them. Shortcuts are everywhere and we use them all the time. Do you want a shortcut to success? Go find more shortcuts.

Want a shortcut to getting more clients and increasing your income? click here

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

How many hours a week do you work?

September 3, 2015 by
Share

If you’re like me, and you are, when someone asks you, “How many hours a week do you work?” you usually say, “It depends”. We say that because we’re lawyers and everything depends.

How many hours we work depends on how one defines “work”. Do we count being at our workplace as working?

Do we count thinking time? Reading time? What about driving time?

I’m guessing that most people who put in a “full” day spend only 25% of that time actually working. Show up for eight hours, you do about two hours of work. (Actually, I recall reading that the average person only works 90 minutes a day, but we’re not average, are we?)

And don’t get me started on billable hours.

So when I read about the notion that working more than 40 hours a week makes us less productive, I have to wonder what they mean by work. And while we’re on the subject, what do they mean by “less productive”?

We might get more done in less time working 40 hours a week, but so what? If we’re getting things done after 40 hours, we’re still getting things done.

And maybe we like what we do. Maybe it doesn’t feel like work. Maybe we don’t have hobbies or other things to occupy our time and, given the choice, we would prefer to keep working instead of resting or playing.

When someone tells us we’re working too hard, we should smile and nod and tell them they’re right, even if we disagree. Hard work never killed anyone, right? Yes, but what do we say when they tell us we’re not working hard enough?

Share
Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity, Time Management

If you’re not growing, you’re dying

August 3, 2015 by
Share

James Clear had an interesting post about something called The Repeated Bout Effect. In simple terms, it means, “the more you repeat a behavior, the less it impacts you because you become accustomed to it.”

He quotes Marshall Goldsmith, author of “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There,” who says, “Doing the same thing over and over again, even if it worked for a long time, will eventually lead to a plateau.”

Clear uses examples from weight training, but the principle applies to other aspects of life, including marketing and managing your practice. If you continue doing the same things you’ve always done, or you do them the same way you’ve always done them, you limit or retard your growth.

And if you’re not growing, you’re dying.

Clear suggests deliberately practicing new skills that you can master quickly, i.e., “in one to three practice sessions”. This will stimulate growth and help you reach new levels of achievement.

Identify skills that could prove helpful to you in marketing and managing your practice. Once a week or so, choose a skill to focus on for the next few days.

For ideas, read blogs and articles and books on those subjects. Talk to your colleagues and business contacts and see what they do to build or manage their business or practice.

Regularly add new skills to your bag of tricks and encourage your staff to do the same.

But don’t stop there.

I think it’s also wise to periodically examine your current skills and activities and seek ways to improve them.

Over the next few days, take note of everything you do–small tasks and big tasks, highly skilled tasks and rudimentary or routine tasks. Include everything: writing, speaking, presenting, signing up new clients, meeting with employees, interviewing job applicants, dictating a motion, prepping for trial, reviewing a new client intake, touch typing, and everything else.

Then, look at each task and ask yourself, “How can I do this better?”

Can you change the order of the steps? Add in an extra step? Use a different tool?

Can you do it faster, perhaps by leaving out a step or two?

Can you get better results by practicing the underlying skills or delegating some of the tasks (or the entire task) to someone else?

Acquiring new skills, combined with an ongoing effort to improve your current skills, is a powerful recipe for growth. And if you’re not growing, you’re dying.

Share
Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity Tagged With:

Marketing like a drug user

July 9, 2015 by
Share

Why do people get started taking drugs? Peer pressure is a big reason. They see their friends doing it and they don’t want to be uncool. They don’t want their friends pointing and laughing at them, or worse, ignoring them.

When your friends take drugs, supply them to you, and show you what to do, drug use becomes normal for a lot of people.

If you hang around nine drug users, there’s a good chance you’ll become the tenth.

I’ve never taken drugs. One reason, I’m sure, is that my friends didn’t take drugs, at least as far as I knew. If I went to a party and someone was sniffing or popping or lighting up, I left.

I didn’t associate with people who took drugs and never got started. I think I was afraid I might like it and I didn’t want to take that chance.

Anyway, the point of my sermon is that the people we spend the most time with influence us. We may not realize how powerful this influence is until one day, we realize we’re just like them.

It’s called the Law of Association. If most of your friends are big sports fans, for example, you probably are, too. If your friends are workaholics, there’s a good chance you work more than most.

Who are your best friends? Think about the five people with whom you spend the most time. What is their life like? Are they married? Have kids? Where do they live? How much do they earn?

If your five best friends earn an average of $150,000 a year, the odds are that you earn close to that. If they earn $500,000 a year, congratulations to you.

If you want to increase your income, one way to do that is to begin associating with people who earn more than you do. You’ll adopt their habits and their way of thinking. You’ll read what they read, talk about the things they talk about, and eventually, you’ll do what they do. In time, you’ll be like them.

Think about the lawyers you are close with. If they are “too busy” for marketing, or only give it lip service, the odds are that marketing isn’t a priority for you. If you want that to change, start spending time with lawyers who have a marketing “habit” and let them show you what to do.

Marketing, income, or drug use, it’s all the same. If you want to change your life, change your friends.

Do you know The Attorney Marketing Formula?

Share
Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Personal development Tagged With:

It gets better and so will you

June 22, 2015 by
Share

A bought a new desk chair recently. I spent more 90 minutes setting it up. I studied the instructions, identified all of the parts, and took my time assembling the chair, making sure I did it right.

I did do it right, and the chair worked fine, but after I started using it, I noticed there was a flaw in the material and I could see that the seat backing would eventually come undone. I took the chair back to the store and exchanged it.

Setting up the chair the second time was a piece of cake. I knew what all the parts were and where they went, and everything went smoothly and quickly. I was done in less than 30 minutes.

I was able to set up the chair in about a third of the time because I had done it before. I was confident about what I was doing. I didn’t have to study the instructions or take my time making sure I had the right screws for the right holes.

The first time we do something is usually the most difficult. Even if we have detailed instructions, we are unsure and unsteady. We may come away with bloody knuckles or a bruised ego.

The first time I opened an office I was not very good at negotiating my lease. Over time, I learned what I could ask for, I knew market rates, and I had more experience and more confidence.

It was the same the first time I hired someone, the first time I appeared in court, and the first time I handled a big case and wondered if I should have tried for more than policy limits.

Writing your first article or blog post can be intimidating, painful, and slow. It may take you three hours to write 150 words. Do it again and it will be easier. Eventually, you’ll spit out a post in 15 minutes.

You may be all thumbs when it comes to networking. You don’t know what to say or do. You may think, “this isn’t for me,” but give it a few months; you might find out you’re actually pretty good at it.

Whatever it is, it gets better. And easier. And faster. You learn how to use the tools and implement the techniques. You learn from your mistakes. You do it again and again and eventually it becomes second nature.

Remember, there was a time when you couldn’t tie your shoes.

Don’t let your fears or inexperience stop you. If someone else has done it, the odds are that you can do it, too.

I know you know this. But sometimes, especially when you’re going through a rough period, you need to be reminded that it gets better and so will you.

Share
Filed Under: Personal development

Are you busy? That’s a shame.

June 18, 2015 by
Share

Being busy isn’t necessarily something to brag about. It’s not a virtue. In fact, it may well be a failing if you’re busy doing things that aren’t important.

It’s better to be productive than busy.

Being productive means you’re producing. Creating value for yourself and others. It means you’re not simply in motion, you’ve got to something to show for your efforts.

What do you want to produce? What results do you want to achieve?

Not someday, now. You can have dreams and long term goals but life is lived in the present, so what do you want to do today?

What are your priorities?

You should be able to cite a few things that you are focused on, and only a few. Because if there are more than a few, it can’t be called “focus”. When everything is a priority, nothing is.

“If you have 3 priorities, you have priorities. If you have 25 priorities, you have a mess,” one writer said.

You may have heard it said that you can do anything you want in life, you just can’t do everything; there isn’t enough time. Fill your day producing things that are important to you, your family, and your clients. If you do that, you will have a productive and happy life, even if you’re not that busy.

Share
Filed Under: Inspiration, Personal development, Productivity, success
« Previous Page
Next Page »