Get into flow and get more done by grouping your activities

October 16, 2012 by
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A friend of mine was making follow-up sales calls to prospective clients he’d spoken to previously. He commented that the mindset for making follow-up calls is different from the mindset of first calls and the two activities should be done at different times.

I agree. Don’t edit when you write and don’t write when you edit. Two different activities, two different mindsets.

My friend cold calls. When he makes a first call, he is prospecting. He moves quickly through large lists. He is sorting, looking for someone who will take his call and agree to look at some information. His focus is on the mechanical act of dialing rather than the quality of any one conversation. He knows that if he makes a certain number of dials, he will get a certain number of leads.

Follow-up calls are different. When he calls someone who agreed to look at some information, my friend is in sales mode. He engages the prospect. He asks questions to find out their hot buttons. When he knows what they want, he can show them how his service can help them get it. My friend answers questions and responds to objections. He moves the prospect forward to the next step, using finesse and skill.

It is important to my friend that he separates first calls from follow-ups because the mindset, energy, and rhythm are so different. When he’s prospecting and banging out calls, the last thing he wants to do is slow down and change gears into sales mode. It’s better to keep dialing and racking up leads and make follow-up calls later, after a break.

This is good advice for any activity. Do your work in bunches. Finish one bunch before moving onto another.

See new clients during a two hour block of time rather than spaced out throughout the day. Make all your calls to adjusters back to back. Review three files in a row.

When you get into the rhythm and feel of an activity, stay in it as long as you can. When you’re in a groove, you’ll get more done. Time will pass more quickly. You’ll get better results.

Psychologists refer to this as “flow“. One of the hallmarks of being in a state of flow is joy. It comes from being fully immersed in an activity and focusing on that and nothing else.

Joy is the catalyst to growth. The more my friend is on the phone, the better he gets at what he does (he just reported going seven for seven on first calls), and the joy he feels makes him want to do more.

When you find the joy in what you’re doing, success is imminent. You don’t need a psychologist to explain it:

The more you do of something, the better you get. The better you get, the better your results. The better your results, the more you enjoy it. The more you enjoy it, the more you want to do it. And the more you do it, the better you get.

Get better at marketing. Get The Attorney Marketing Formula.

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Law office management, Leverage, Marketing legal services, Personal development, Productivity

What do you like best about practicing law?

October 12, 2012 by
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“What do you like best about practice law?” I was asked that 1,000 times when I was practicing and I’m still asked that today. I’m sure you are, too. My standard reply is that I liked helping people and I liked making money, and that’s the truth. That’s why I went to law school, after all.

Do I like the title or the prestige of being a professional? Actually, it’s not important to me. When I’m introduced to people and they find out what I do [did], something changes in the dynamic and while sometimes it’s a good change, just as often it’s not. I can’t put my finger on it but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. They look at you like you’re not a regular person. They become guarded, as if you’re going to ask them some tough questions and find out their secrets.

What about the work itself? There were some things I really enjoyed and some things I despised. Most of what I did I found boring.

But that’s me. How about you? What do you like best about what you do?

Make a list of all of things you do as a lawyer, and all of the things that being a lawyer means to you. Write down the big things and the little things, about the work, the people, the challenges and the rewards. Look at your calendar, look at the files on your desk or in your computer, look at how you spend your time.

Write down everything and when you’re done, look at your list and put a star next to the things you like best about what you do. And then, focus on those things.

Do more of what you like. The rest–the things you don’t like or the things you are bored by–don’t matter. Eliminate them, delegate them, or just do them, but focus on the things that you do like.

In my case, I focused on the people. My clients. Much of the work may have been routine and boring, but the people never were. They were unique. Every one of them. I enjoyed meeting them and finding out about their lives. I enjoyed explaining how things were going to get better for them and then helping make that happen. I enjoyed delivering the results and watching them smile and say thank you. And I enjoyed getting calls from their friends who had heard about me and wanted me to help them, too.

That’s what I enjoyed and that’s what I focused on. It made everything else, all of the things I didn’t like, relatively unimportant. It’s also what made my practice grow.

Whatever we focus on grows. By focusing on what you like about your practice, you will create more of it. Focus on your problems and you’ll have more of them. Focus on what frustrates you and you’ll have more to be frustrated about it. Focus on what you love, what gives you meaning, and you will create the life that you want because you will be doing more of what you want.

You don’t have to know how it works, just know that it does work, and do it.

If you want to earn more than you ever thought possible, download The Attorney Marketing Formula

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Client relations, Increase your income, Inspiration, Referrals Tagged With: , ,

How self-employed attorneys can avoid burn out and increase their income

October 2, 2012 by
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One of my Facebook friends posted today: “Totally. Burned. Out. In desperate need of a day off, but then the work won’t get done. Ugh.”

He’s an attorney and works for a firm. I assume he is salaried. I assume he cannot give the work to someone else to do. He has to do it because the work is assigned to him or nobody else is capable of doing it.

Either way, he’s stuck. That’s the way it is with most jobs.

But most self-employed people say the same thing. They either don’t have any employees or partners to whom they can give the work or nobody else is capable of doing it.

Either way, they’re stuck, too.

The employee understands the trade off. They exchange their time for dollars and don’t have to deal with the administrative and marketing demands of being self-employed. They give up some of their freedom in exchange for “security” (or so they think; there are no secure jobs). The self-employed person values freedom above all and is willing to take on the additional responsibilities and longer hours, in order to “be their own boss.”

For most of my career, I have been self-employed. I worked for my father for a year out of law school and I didn’t like it. I wanted to “do my own thing” (that’s how we described it in the ’70’s). I was willing to take on the additional responsibilities and long hours and give up the “security” of a job to get it.

But only to a point.

After a few years, I got Totally. Burned. Out. I wanted to take time off, but the work wouldn’t get done. I was stuck, and that’s when I made a decision to change what I was doing.

I realized that “if the work won’t get done unless I do it,” I didn’t own a business (practice), it owned me. I worked hard but if freedom was my goal, and it was, and I couldn’t take a day off when I wanted to, or six months when I wanted to, I might as well get a job.

I decided that I would hire more people and delegate to them as much of the work as possible. I supervised them and did the legal work that nobody else could do. I soon found out that there wasn’t much legal work that nobody else could do and while that may not have been good for my ego, it was very good for my well-being and my bank account. It meant I could concentrate on marketing and building the practice, and that’s what I did.

And then, I was able to take lots of time off because I owned a business (practice) and it no longer owned me.

If you are self-employed and “the work won’t get done unless you do it,” you should consider making similar changes. Hire more people, outsource, associate with other attorneys. Do what you have to do to lesson the need for you to do the work.

Not only will you avoid burn out and increase your income, you will have more time to post on Facebook.

Your time is precious. Learn how to leverage it to earn more and work less in The Attorney Marketing Formula.

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Dealing with stress, Law office management, Leverage, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The three stages of lawyer marketing (where are you?)

September 17, 2012 by
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The other day I wrote down an idea for a blog post: “The day I decided to get serious about marketing.” I was going to talk about how I came to realize that a law practice is a business and that if I wanted to be successful, I needed to put marketing first.

The truth is, that day never occurred.

I don’t remember waking up, slapping my forehead, and saying, “of course!” No light bulb appeared over my head. The realization that marketing must come first didn’t occur at any particular moment, it was a process, over time.

At first, I didn’t want to believe that marketing was important. I was young and idealistic and I wanted to believe that if I did great work, I would be noticed and rewarded. I knew other attorneys who didn’t seem to do any marketing and they were doing just fine. Why not me?

What I didn’t realize is that the attorneys who seemed to be completely disengaged from marketing, were actually very good at marketing, so good in fact, you couldn’t tell by looking at them.

And it’s true. If marketing is defined as, “everything you do to get and keep clients,” (and it is), then marketing must include all of the little things we do for our clients to keep them happy and sticking with us and sending us referrals. The little things that maintain loyalty and create positive word of mouth aren’t readily apparent to the outside world.

Most marketing, certainly the most valuable marketing, isn’t public, it’s private. It’s done through letters and phone calls and newsletters to our clients. It occurs one-on-one, networking with key people. It’s done by leveraging the relationships you already have with clients and professional contacts, to meet the people they know and show them why they should hire you instead of anyone else.

Advertising, public relations, public speaking, blogging, and other public marketing activities are important when you’re starting out and need to build momentum, or when you are already successful and want to generate additional income. But they are never more important than what you do privately.

As I came to realize these difference, and accept the importance of marketing in building my practice, I went through three stages:

Stage One: Indifference

At first, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I had an opinion about marketing and that was that. Many attorneys are at this stage, although fewer and fewer today, due to (a) the economy and increased competition, and (b) The Internet.

Obviously, if you are reading this post, you aren’t at this stage. You know that marketing is important. But there are attorneys who still don’t care about marketing. Generally, they fall into two categories:

  1. Successful, and don’t realize that they are engaged in marketing (the private kind) or how much more successful they could be if they paid attention to marketing, or
  2. Arrogant, stubborn, and destined to struggle.

I’m sure you know lawyers in both categories.

Stage Two: Acceptance

After months of struggle, I still didn’t get it. I did busy work and told myself things would change. Eventually, I realized that nothing would change unless I did. Necessity (paying rent, eating) became the mother of invention. Once I accepted that what I was doing wasn’t working, I opened the door to change.

Most attorneys in private practice today, at least those who aren’t newly minted, well- financed, or well-connected, understand why marketing is important, and most of them do something that could be called marketing. They want to do more and get better results, but don’t know how. There are two reasons:

  1. They dabble. They don’t do anything long enough to get meaningful results. Or they do things they think they’re supposed to do but their heart isn’t it so they do them poorly and get poor results, and/or
  2. The focus on “public” marketing and ignore “private” marketing. They bring clients in through the front door and lose them through the back door because they don’t take care of them.

Does this describe you? Do you feel like you are spinning your wheels and not getting great results? Are you getting clients on the front end but they don’t come back or you’re not getting enough referrals on the back end? The good news is that you can change your results by making a commitment to marketing.

Stage Three: Commitment.

Once I accepted the importance of marketing, I began studying it and trying different things. I didn’t get good results, however,because I was dabbling. It was a start and it allowed me to see which direction I might eventually go, but it wasn’t until I committed to marketing that things really began to change.

How did I make that commitment? I found something that worked and I got excited.

“More, please!”

I did more and worked harder and eventually, I fell in love with marketing and what it could do.

And that’s when my practice really took off.

I think a lot of attorneys are afraid to commit to marketing because they are afraid of what it means. Being committed to marketing doesn’t mean compromising your values or spending time or money doing things you don’t want to do.

Commitment to marketing means two things:

  1. Mindset. You must believe that a law practice is a business and that you (the professional) work for that business (practice), and that without clients, you are out of business. You must believe that marketing isn’t beneath you and that it is benevolent because the more successful you become, the more people you can help. You must believe in the primacy of “private” marketing and understand that if you can’t start there (because you don’t yet have enough clients), that this is where you can eventually go. And you need to get excited about marketing and what it can do.
  2. Consistency. You don’t have to spend a lot of time on marketing. You can make a lot of progress in just 15 minutes a day. The key is to do something every day. If you don’t, you are a dabbler. If you do, your efforts compound and your results accelerate.

So, what stage are you in? Are you a dabbler or are you committed to marketing? Do you have the right mindset and are you prepared to do something every day?

If you are committed to marketing, The Attorney Marketing Formula is required reading.

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Client loyalty, Client relations, Increase your income, Marketing legal services, Personal development Tagged With: ,

You are friggin amazing!

August 6, 2012 by
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When was the last time you patted yourself on the back? If it’s been awhile, you might want to take a few minutes to do that.

Think about what you have accomplished in your lifetime. No doubt it’s quite a list. Remembering those victories and achievements makes you feel good about yourself. It gives you confidence about the future.

If you can’t remember all your accomplishments, or even if you can, I suggest you create a “Book of Achievements” to collect those memories. Probe your mind, dig through those storage boxes, ask your spouse for help. Record your accomplishements on paper or digitally, so you can look at them from time to time.

If you’re blue, you need to remind yourself that the future is bright. If you feel good, reviewing your past accomplishments will help you feel even better.

You can decorate your book and add photos if you like. Make it fancy and detailed, like a scrap book, or keep it simple, a line or two about each accomplishment.

Have fun remembering what you have done. Go back to your chidhood. Remember that school play or the paper with the gold star.

Remember passing the bar exam. The awards, the big cases, the letters of thanks.

Most people will never do what you have done. Hell, most people will never try.

Your life is a series of accomplishments. You have done more than you realize. You have helped a lot of people. You have made the world a better place.

You are friggin amazing. I hope you remember that.

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Inspiration, Personal development Tagged With: , ,

Why you need to get rid of all of your clients and start over

July 23, 2012 by
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You need to get rid of all of your clients. No, not literally. Emotionally.

What I mean is that you need to detach from the need for your clients to be something they aren’t.

You can’t make your clients appreciate you if they don’t. Let them go. Mentally release them and your need to change them.

You can’t change the complainers, the price shoppers, and the trouble makers into model clients. Let them go.

You can’t change your clients. All you can do is. . . change your clients.

Let go of the wrong ones to make room for the right ones. The clients who value what you do for them, and tell you so. The clients who follow your advice, pay your bill, and re-tweet your brilliance. The clients who come back to you again and again and refer others, again and again.

You know the kinds of clients I’m talking about. The ones you’d like to clone.

Let go of all of your clients to make room for the right clients, the best clients, the clients that make everything you do worth doing.

They are out there and they will find you. But only if you make room.

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Client relations, Increase your income, Personal development Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Put your contact list on a diet

July 10, 2012 by
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I’ve written before about the value of creating a “Focus 30” list–a list of your most important clients, best referral sources, and other people to whom you want to give your time and attention.

Keeping that list in front of you will remind you to call, write, and engage with the people who contribute most to your success.

I didn’t say so then, but I should mention that you can include on your Focus 30 list people who are important to you outside of your professional life. Friends, spiritual leaders, and others you influence you in positive ways also deserve your attention.

If your Focus 30 list is the cream of the crop, the tip of the top, there are undoubtedly people in your life who are just the opposite.

You know the ones I mean.

  • People you don’t like
  • People who waste your time
  • People who are abusive to you and others
  • Takers/users

You get the idea.

Your relationship with these people does not serve you. You should take steps to either reduce the amount of time you spend with them or completely eliminate them from your life.

Of course some people (i.e., clients, close relatives) you may have to put up with to some extent. But this should be a conscious choice you make, not something you do merely out of habit or a sense of duty.

The easiest way to put your contact list on a diet is to go through the list, one name at a time, and rate each person. If you don’t recognize a name, or you don’t communicate with that person often enough to matter, you can skip them. For everyone else, assign a number based on how you feel about them:

1 = Positive
2 = Neutral
3 = Negative

That’s a lot quicker and eaiser than trying to figure out why you don’t like someone. Trust your gut.

If you’re not sure about someone, give them a 2.

Anyway, don’t agonize over anyone and don’t spend a lot of time on this.

When you’re done, go back through the list. 1’s and 2’s are okay. (You may see some 1’s you want to add to your Focus 30 list).

You need to do something about the 3’s.

Some you’ll stop seeing and taking their calls. Cross them off your list. Eliminate them completely from your life.

Others, you’ll reduce the amount of time you give them. If they are a client worth keeping, give the task of dealing with them to someone who works for you. Get away from them as much as possible. If that won’t work, you’ll need to decide if the negative feelings you get from being around these people are worth the money they pay you.

Or, look at it this way: How much more would you earn by getting rid of your negative, anxiety-causing, slow-paying, trouble-making, pain-in-the-ass clients?

Now, as for your relatives. . .

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Client loyalty, Client relations, Dealing with stress, Personal development, success Tagged With: ,

How to be more productive by killing time

July 6, 2012 by
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Being more productive helps us earn more and work less (or waste less time). That’s why I use and write about the systems (e.g., GTD) and tools (e.g., Evernote) that improve productivity.

But I will be the first to admit that being productive is not the number one objective. It’s being happy.

We want to be more productive because doing so makes us feel good. Not just the results of being more productive but the feeling we get in the process of doing so. It feels good knowing that we are being effective (getting the right things done) and efficient (getting things done right).

But sometimes, “too much of a good thing is not a good thing”.

Most productivity experts advise us to make the best use of our time, all the time. If we’re at the doctor’s office and we have 15 minutes before our appointment, we should use that time to review a file or write notes for something we’re working on. On our way to and from court or an appointment we should make calls or dictate a letter or memo.

Don’t waste this time, they tell us. 15 minutes here, ten minutes there, and we could gain an additional hour or two of work time every day.

I don’t disagree with this. I do these things myself. But, as Leo Babauta’s thoughtful post, “Why Killing Time Isn’t a Sin,” reminds us, “life is for living, not productivity”.

If you would enjoy reading the biking or travel magazine for 15 minutes in the doctor’s office, go ahead and do it. If doing some work would be even more enjoyable, you can do that instead.

The point is, you have a choice. You don’t have to work all the time. Do it because you want to, not because you believe you must. Do it because of the pleasure it gives you, not because it’s on your list.

Do you ever “call in sick” and spend the day at the beach or the movies? Just because you want to? You should. Yes, the work will be there when you get back and yes, you will be a day behind. But you’ll be a day ahead on life.

We aspire to be productive because it makes us feel good. Why not start with feeling good. You’ll wind up being more productive.

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Attorney Marketing: Do you have the right attitude to be successful?

July 3, 2012 by
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Do you do marketing because it’s something you have to do? Or do you do it because you love helping people and marketing is how you find them?

Do you send notes and thank you cards to your clients because it’s a smart thing to do or do you truly appreciate your clients and want them to know?

Do you love it when your clients call you when they need a referral to an insurance broker, car dealer, or building contractor? Or do you say to yourself, “Why are they asking me?”

Marketing has been defined as, “everything you do to get and keep clients”. More than what you do, however, marketing is what you are.

Marketing should be an extension of who you are and what you do. It should not be a department or a project. If you love what you do, if you truly appreciate your clients and the lifestyle they make possible for you, marketing shouldn’t feel like work.

That doesn’t mean you don’t have to make the calls or send the emails. It means that when you do, the words will flow easily and people will know you mean what you say.

If you love what you do and you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Communication, Marketing legal services, Personal development Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Marketing insights for sole practitioners

June 25, 2012 by
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My post on going solo brought emails from lawyers who appreciated that I didn’t varnish the truth about how hard it is.

If you are a solo or thinking of opening your own office, I recommend you read Philly attorney Jordan Rushie’s candid post about his experiences in staring his own practice. It’s interesting reading if you want to compare notes, required reading if you’re about to open that office and need to make a shopping list.

Rushie agrees that going solo is almost a crazy idea–a lot harder and more costly than some would have you believe, far more work and far less income than you can imagine. Although he acknowledges that it’s never the “right time” to go solo, if you have a choice, wait until you have the experience, money, and contacts to be able to do it right.

Rushie’s has some interesting comments about marketing for the new solo. Actually, his advice rings true for just about any attorney. He says you don’t need:

  • An expensive, fancy web site. I agree. You need a place to send people to get information about your practice and how to contact you. You can add more content and make things look nicer later on, after you’re making money.
  • A logo. Right again. Although you can get a decent one designed for a few dollars to a few hundred dollars, you’ll waste too much time deciding on the right look. You don’t need a logo, you need clients.
  • “SEO Optimization”. Rushie suggests that more traffic won’t necessarily bring you good clients but that it will certainly bring you tire kickers. You can set up mechanisms to screen and filter out the low-quality inquiries and, therefore, get some decent clients, but the time (and money) you will spend are probably better spent elsewhere. Put this on the list for later.
  • A marketing/PR firm. I agree with this, too. Even if you could afford the cost and could find a firm that really knows what they’re doing (many don’t), you’re better off building relationships. Rushie says, “take potential clients to a ball game,” family, friends, and other lawyers out to dinner. No question about it, you will get far more business by leveraging your existing relationships for business and referrals than you will get hiring a marketing firm. I’m not saying you don’t need marketing information and advice. You do. But you’re better off learning it yourself so you can do it yourself.
  • Social Media or a social media consultant. Rushie says he doesn’t rely on social media to build his practice. He gets about 5% of his work from Facebook friends, “but they are usually people I knew from high school who would have called me anyway.” I know there are exceptions, but I hear something similar from a lot of attorneys. Don’t ignore social media but don’t depend on it, either. Use it as an excuse to connect or re-connect with real people because the magic happens when you talk to people or meet with people in the real world.

Rushie says not having a plan on how to grow your practice is a big mistake and of course, I concur. The good news is that the plan is a lot easier, less technically challenging, and less costly than you might think. Build your practice by building relationships.

Unfortunately, unless you know a lot of (the right) people, building relationships may take up a lot of time. Fortunately, as a new solo without a lot of clients or work keeping you busy, you have time to go meet some new people. Unless you’re too busy learning how to practice law.

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Inspiration, Legal industry, Marketing legal services, Relationship marketing, Social media, Social media marketing Tagged With: , , , ,
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