Ten ways to earn an extra $1,000 per month

May 4, 2015 by
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How would you like to earn an extra $1,000 per month within the next 90 days?

I chose $1,000 because that seems to be big enough to whet your whistle, but not so big that it’s out of reach. Feel free to pick a bigger number if you want to.

Now, time for some brainstorming.

Let your mind run wild and throw some ideas on paper, on a white board, or on your screen. Shoot for a minimum of ten ideas, ten different ways you could earn $1,000 a month, or more, within 90 days.

The best way to come up with ten viable ideas is to start with twenty or thirty. So keep writing as many ideas as you can.

Don’t edit or judge anything. Just write it down. Nothing is silly or impossible when you are brainstorming.

Your ideas could be related to

  • Marketing your services–a new strategy, a new market, or a new way of doing what you already do
  • Managing your firm–eliminating unnecessary expenses, lowering costs
  • Creating a new service–a new profit center, a new “front end” service that creates more clients
  • Fees, billing, and collection–charge more, get paid faster, eliminate unpaid accounts
  • Creating a new offer–a free service, a discounted service for first time clients, bonus services, service package(s)
  • Finding new referral sources and/or joint venture partners
  • Offering your clients a product or service from a joint venture partner, or as an affiliate
  • Creating a new product (ebook, course, resource guide, etc.) to use as a marketing tool and new revenue source
  • Starting a new business
  • Contacting former clients, to stimulate repeat business and referrals
  • Setting up a new website, improving your existing website
  • Getting bigger clients/cases–bigger fees, bigger retainers, clients with ongoing legal needs
  • Getting more traffic, more subscribers, more prospect inquiries
  • Closing more prospects–better sales process, overcoming objections
  • And so on

With multiple ideas, you’re more likely to find one that you’re willing to do. Or you might find two or three ideas you can do that bring in an aggregate of $1,000 a month.

90 days is a long time. Maybe too long. You might be better off looking for ideas that could start producing in the next 30 days. A shorter deadline means there’s no time to think (or procrastinate), you have to start doing.

What could you do this week that could bring you an extra $1,000 a month?

Want to get paid faster? Collect unpaid invoices? Here’s how 

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Filed Under: Law office management, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan

Marketing legal services is like driving in the dark without headlights

March 5, 2015 by
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The hard part of marketing legal services isn’t the work. The work is easy, and you can do it in as little as 15 minutes a day.

No, the hard part is not knowing if what you are doing will actually bring in business.

If you knew that making the calls, writing the emails and articles, and networking with prospective clients and referrals sources, for example, would eventually pay off, you’d keep doing them, wouldn’t you?

Sure. But you don’t know. You’re driving blind.

Marketing legal services is like driving in the dark without headlights. You can’t see where you are and you can’t see where you’re going. You have to trust that you’re on the right road and that you will eventually get to your destination.

How do you keep going for six months or a year without meaningful results? How do you trust that what you’re doing will actually work?

You start by doing your homework.

You don’t merely jump on the marketing idea of the day and hope for the best. You find successful lawyers in your field and model them. You read their blogs or books or courses, or you spend time with them, and learn all you can about what they did to build their practice.

If it worked for another lawyer in your field or market, it can work for you.  It might not work as well for you. It may take you longer. But you know that if you do what they did, you will eventually get to the promised land.

Continue studying other lawyers, and also other professionals and business owners. Continue to read marketing books. Immerse yourself in knowledge. Jim Rohn said, “If you want to be successful, study success.”

Be prepared to tweak and refine your activities. But don’t stop what you’re doing because you don’t see any results or you think you’ve found something better. The odds are that the people you study achieved their success by mastering the basics. Follow their lead. Master the mundane. You can add new ideas later.

One more analogy?

Marketing legal services is like making popcorn. You add the kernels to the oil and put it on the stove, but nothing happens right away. You leave it alone and eventually hear the pop of the first kernel. Then, more popping, faster and faster, and before you know it, the pot is overflowing.

The same thing happens with marketing. Nothing, nothing, nothing, then something, and eventually, boom!

Once you have a plan, keep at it. Work your plan every day. Don’t stop and start.

You won’t get a big bowl of popcorn if you take the pot off the stove every other minute. You won’t get a big bowl of clients, either.

For a simple marketing plan that really works, get this

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Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan Tagged With:

Work smarter by working backwards

March 4, 2015 by
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Yesterday, I talked about networking and used it as a paradigm for creating a simple marketing plan. You plan, you do, you review.

Today, I return to the subject of networking and ask the question that may be on your mind: “How do I find the best networking groups for me?”

There are lots of ways to find them but the simplest, and arguably the best path to discovery, is to find out where your existing clients and contacts network and go there.

If you represent business clients, find out where they go to meet other people in their industry. If they don’t network (much), ask them to introduce you to professionals they know and ask them where they network.

For consumer clients, ask your existing referral sources where they network.

Keep in mind that some people don’t think of what they do as networking per se. They belong to groups–charity, hobby (e.g., golf club), social, community, etc.–and spend time at those groups’ functions, where they regularly meet new people. These non-business groups can also be a fruitful source of new business for you.

You can also turn to your clients and contacts for help with other kinds of marketing. If you want to know where to submit articles or guest posts, or a good place to advertise, ask your clients and contacts what they read or listen to.

Questions like these should be a fixture on your new client intake sheet. Find out who your new clients know, what they read, who influences them, and where they spend their time. Ask the same kinds of questions (eventually) of your new professionals contacts.

Want more clients like your best clients? Talk to them. Work smarter by working backwards.

Lawyers are complicated. Marketing is simple. More here. . .

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Filed Under: Leverage, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan, Networking

Plan. Do. Review.

March 3, 2015 by
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I want to bring in more business.

Okay, what’s you’re plan?

I’m thinking of joining a networking group and meeting some prospective clients and/or referral sources.

Sounds good; which one(s) will you join?

I’ve narrowed down my choices to three groups. I’m going to visit all three before I make up my mind.

Makes sense. What else?

I’m looking at their websites to see what goes on at their meetings and what kinds of people attend. I’m learning as much as I can about their leaders and process, and writing down questions.

Nice. Doing your homework. Then what?

When I go to the first meeting, I’ll introduce myself to the leaders and ask my questions. Then I’ll try to meet other members, find out what they do, and see what they can tell me about the group. I’ll be looking for people who might be a good match for me, both in terms of practice area or business and personality.

Very good plan, my friend. Once you decide which group to join, what then?

Then I’ll start going to meetings and introducing myself to more people. I’ll exchange contact information and ask lots of questions about what they do, what kinds of clients or customers they target, and how I might be able to help them. I’ll take notes and see if I have any clients I can refer. I’ll look for other ways to help them, such as introducing them to other people in my network, offering advice, or recommending resources.

I’ll spend time with the people I meet and start building relationships. I’ll connect with them on social media, share their content and promote their causes. I’ll subscribe to their newsletters and blogs and go through their websites to learn more about them and what they do.

At some point, they will ask me about what I do. I’ll tell them about the problems I solve, the services I offer, my target market, and my ideal client.

I’ll also be on the lookout for people who are open to a joint venture. They may want to share my report with their clients and subscribers. They may have something I can share with mine. If they write a blog, I’ll suggest that we can do guest posts for each other.

That’s all I have in mind for now. I’m sure I’ll have more ideas after I meet some people and get to know them.

I know networking takes time and I’m prepared to invest that time. I might start out with ten new contacts and eventually narrow that down to one or two good ones. One or two good contacts could lead me to a lot of new business.

Sounds like a plan. A good one. Simple, flexible, a place to start. Which is all a plan needs to do.

Plan. Do. Review.

For a simple plan that really works, get The Formula.

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Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan, Networking

Getting things done in burst mode

February 23, 2015 by
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I read an article recently about the work habits of a novelist. He said that he works best when he doesn’t write every day, as conventional wisdom suggests. Rather, he gets more done in “burst mode” (my term) where he will write up to 8,000 or 10,000 words in a day.

His job (full time as I recall) and family obligations make it difficult to carve out sufficient blocks of writing time during the week. He found that an hour a day wasn’t long enough to find his writing mojo and get up to speed. Give him eight or ten hours on Saturday, however, and he could knock out an entire book in record time.

The point is that each of us works differently and we need to honor what works best for us.

As you know, I advocate setting aside time each work day for marketing your practice. You can get a lot done in as little as 15 minutes a day, if you do it consistently. But I acknowledge the value of working in bigger blocks of time, especially on bigger projects. In fact, I do it myself.

In my practice, I would often show up at the office on a Saturday and plow through a pile of files. In a few hours of undisturbed time, I would do more work than I might do in an entire week.

In school, instead of studying every night, I often crammed for tests the night before and wrote entire term papers in a weekend. That’s how I liked to work and I got good grades. In fact, I’ve read that we often do our best creative work when we do it quickly.

All hail burst mode!

In school, we have deadlines and due dates. The same goes for most legal work. But that’s not true with marketing. So, if you want to do marketing in burst mode, you need to schedule the time in advance and stick to that schedule.

You might schedule one Saturday each month for marketing. In a few hours of undisturbed time, you could create a new seminar or produce a month’s worth of articles, blog posts, emails, or social media content.

Getting things done in burst mode doesn’t necessarily mean doing nothing throughout the week, however. The above mentioned author uses snippets of time throughout the week to take care of administrative and less demanding tasks related to his writing. You can, too.

During your Saturday marketing session, you might plan out the people you want to call that month. With your plan in hand, you can take a few minutes each week day to make those calls.

You can also use your weekdays to make notes and outlines and collect research material in preparation for your Saturday session.

Being productive is simple. Figure out what you want to get done this week or this month. Look at your calendar and decide when you’re going to do it. Then, do it.

As long as you’re getting important things done, when you do them probably isn’t that important.

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Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: ,

Use your calendar to prioritize your work

February 11, 2015 by
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I did a consultation with an attorney yesterday. Like most attorneys, he’s a busy guy. In addition to his practice, he owns a small business which he hopes will allow him to transition out of practicing and into semi-retirement.

The first thing we talked about was his work schedule. To achieve his goals, he needs time each week for:

  1. Legal work
  2. Marketing the practice
  3. The business
  4. Marketing the business

I couldn’t tell him how much time to allocate to each function, only that he should allocate some time to each function. I told him to pick a number–an hour a day for this, two hours a day for that–but be prepared to change those numbers as experience and income dictate.

As the business grows, for example, he may allocate less time for marketing the practice. Or vice versa.

At least he has a place to start.

But will he? Will he do what he knows he needs to do each day? If experience is any indication, he’ll probably do the work, but let the marketing slide.

Unless. . . he blocks out time on his calendar for each function, in advance, and that’s what I told him to do.

When he looks at his calendar, he’ll see that it’s time to do 30 minutes of marketing for his practice. He’ll pull up his list of marketing activities and write something or make some calls. Since this has been blocked out in advance, he knows not to spend that time doing anything else.

Later in the day, during the legal work block of time, he’ll see that he’s got two client appointments. He also knows that he has to review a document and send some emails.

Now he’s cooking.

These blocks of time are appointments with himself. If a client calls during the “marketing the business” block, he doesn’t talk to them. He calls them back at another time.

You prioritize your work by scheduling blocks of time, in advance, based on what you know needs to get done.

This one concept could change everything for him, and for you if you don’t already do it. By deciding in advance how you will conduct your day, you stay focused on doing what is in keeping with your priorities and goals.

You are in charge. You make the rules. Decide how you want to spend your time and calendar it. Then, do what the calendar tells you to do and don’t do anything else.

Do you know The Formula to earn more and work less?

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Filed Under: Marketing Plan, Productivity, Time Management

If the IRS was in charge of your marketing

January 19, 2015 by
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In school, we had deadlines for finishing papers and projects and being ready for exams. If it weren’t for those deadlines, many of us would never have done the work.

Today, we have more deadlines. Statutes of limitations, court dates, appointments, CLE compliance due dates, bills to pay, tax returns to file, and many more. We also have deadlines tied to our promises to other people, e.g., when the work will be done or the papers will be delivered.

Sometimes we miss a deadline and suffer the consequences, but for the most part, the system works. It works not just because we are aware of the penalties for missing deadlines but because there is a specific date reminding us that something is due.

What about all of the other things we want to do, or need to do, that don’t have a deadline? Too often, we don’t get these done. They may relate to our most important goals but because there is no deadline, no due date, they get pushed aside.

Countless studies, which I am too lazy to look up, have shown that scheduling these “open” tasks dramatically increases the odds that we will do them.

Let’s say you set a goal to increase your income this year. Part of your plan is to bring in more clients by adding one blog post or article to your site each week. The weeks are flying by, however, and you haven’t written the first article, or you wrote one or two but aren’t keeping up.

Because there is no deadline, you’re not doing the work.

It’s not that you can’t do it. If you knew that you had to get the work done by a certain date or the IRS would seize your bank accounts, you would get the work done.

So, give yourself a deadline.

Decide when you will write those articles and schedule time on your calendar specifically for that purpose. Make an appointment with yourself and tell your staff not to schedule you for anything during that time.

When Thursday at 4PM rolls around and you see on your calendar that you have an appointment to write your weekly post, you’ll be more likely to write it.

Tell yourself that you can either write it or sit at your desk and stare at the wall for 60 minutes. Your “client” (you) has paid for that time. So no Facebook or reading or anything else.

You can also impose penalties for missing your deadlines. You might authorize your accountant to automatically send $1,000 to a politician you detest if you fail to send the accountant a copy of your completed post by the due date.

You can also reward yourself for making your deadlines. For each post your write, for example, you get to watch another episode of your favorite TV show.

But while penalties and rewards can help, just having a deadline will often be enough.

Try it. Choose something you need to do and put it on your calendar. Give yourself a deadline for getting it done. I’m betting you’ll do it, but just in case, I’ll tell the IRS to keep an eye on you.

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Filed Under: Marketing Plan, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: , ,

Don’t break the chain

January 9, 2015 by
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You know a lawyer whose practice is rocking. More business than she can handle, lots of money, busy as all hell. Three years ago, she had just opened her doors. No clients, tiny office, nothing happening.

How did she get from a standing start to where she is today?

Many factors could have contributed to her growth, including talent, connections, hard work, and luck. But one factor may be more important than you might think.

Momentum.

When she started her practice, she did some things to bring in business, and then she kept doing them. She got better at them, and did them faster. She got progressively bigger results. Those results compounded and she continued to grow, until her practice reached the tipping point and became the juggernaut it is today.

Momentum is a critical factor in anything we do. Creating it is the hardest part of anything we do.

It’s like pushing a car from a dead stop. It takes a lot of effort to overcome inertia, but once the car starts rolling, it gets easier, and then easier still, until you have to do little more than lean on it to keep it going.

Alrighty then, how do we create momentum?

We do it with consistency.

Whatever it is you need to do, you do it regularly. You don’t “do” some marketing this week and pick it up again in six months. You do a little bit every day or every week.

You get better at it. It becomes easier. You do it faster and get better results.

Your results affect other areas of your life. If you build momentum with an exercise program, you get more energy to do other things. You might finally be able to read that book you’ve been wanting to read, or start that new website project.

When you write a blog post or newsletter article each week, you become a better writer, of course, but you may also become a better speaker. You may get better at networking, too, as you reach out to other professionals to invite them to do a guest post for you and as they do the same for you.

When Jerry Seinfeld was starting out, he promised himself that he would write one new joke every day. Every day he did it, he made a mark on his calendar. As the marks piled up, he kept going because he didn’t want to “break the chain”.

In any area you want to improve, find something you can do and do it. Walk for ten minutes three times a week. Write two paragraphs every morning. Invite one professional to lunch every week.

Get started and don’t break the chain. Consistency breeds momentum, and momentum breeds results.

If you need a marketing plan that really works, get this. 

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Filed Under: Increase your income, Law office management, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan, Personal development, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With:

Give it away, give it away, give it away (but not everything)

December 29, 2014 by
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You’re thinking about next year, aren’t you? If you’re not, just check your email. It’s undoubtedly filled with messages about goal setting, resolutions, organizing your work flow like a boss. . .

Oh, and don’t forget to register for the next goo-roo webinar that promises to reveal the secrets to profligate wealth. (Note to self: the free webinar is a sales pitch).

Not all free webinars are like that. Just most of them. You don’t learn that much. Or they tell you the “what” but not the “how”.

I know, they can’t give away everything for free. They’ve got a business to run. Just like you do. You don’t give away all of your wisdom and advice during a free consultation (nor should you), so you get that.

But you’ve got to give people something.

I’m not saying you can’t sell your services without “content”. You certainly can. Advertising still works. But if you’re asking people to invest an hour of their time with you at your seminar, watching your videos, or reading your blog, you’ve got to give them something in return.

And the more you give them, the more likely they are to see you as the solution to what ails them.

So, as you plan your next move, I suggest you add “content creation” to your list. If you already do this, ask yourself how you can do it more or make it better.

Put some articles on your website. Write a report or ebook. Make some screen capture videos. Teach people something about your area of expertise, so they can see that you know what you’re doing and get a sense of what it would be like to work with you.

People go online for information. Give them some.

The Attorney Marketing Formula comes with a simple marketing plan that really works. Go here.

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Filed Under: Goal Setting, Marketing Plan

How to make 2015 your best year ever

December 10, 2014 by
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Is next year going to be pretty much like this year? Or do you plan to do bigger things?

I’ll assume you plan on growing your practice next year.

More clients. Bigger income.

That’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it?

I’ll also assume you would like to do this as quickly as possible. You don’t want to stumble your way through the year, growing incrementally. You want to BLOW UP.

I’d like to help you do that.

A couple of years ago, I released The Quantum Leap Marketing System for Lawyers. It’s a video training series that shows you how to quickly bring in a lot of new business. Over ten hours of videos and a bunch of bonuses.

On the sales page, I make the ridiculous (but accurate) claim that the course can help you DOUBLE your practice in 90 days or less.

Yes, you will have to work your pants off to make that happen, but it is possible. If you don’t want to work that hard, would you be okay with doubling your practice in six months or a year?

Anyway, as you may know, I like to offer some kind of holiday special each year, and this year is no exception. I’m putting Quantum Leap back on the market for a few days and offering it to my subscribers (that’s you) at a huge discount.

See for yourself.

You’ll see that one of the bonuses is a personal coaching session with me. I consider this to be the most valuable part of the entire program.

In our coaching session, we’ll talk about your practice–where you’re at now, where you’d like to be next year–and I’ll tell you what you need to do to get there. You can ask me anything. You can even have me critique your website.

So, if you’re wondering what to do to make 2015 your best year ever, this is the answer.

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Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan
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