Learn how to ask you clients for their budget. It avoids big misunderstandings later.
Also: Last Year’s Resolution
Resolutions for Lawyers Redux - Day 9
Resolve to buy a digital camera to leave in the office. You can use it two ways:
First, take a photo of every client you meet with. Keep the picture in the client’s file so everytime you pick up the file (or access it digitally) you are reminded of who you are working for. You can also keep a private “face book” to review from time to time in case you have a hard time “putting a name with a face.” This also helps avoid those embarassing moments you see a client in public in a different context, and can’t remember his/her name.
Second, take a picture of you and your happy client shaking hands after the representation ends (or when a favorable result is reached). Put the picture in a binder titled “Our Happy Clients” and leave it in your waiting room. Make sure to get each client’s permission first! (thanks to Michael Cage for this one, originally blogged about here).
Here’s last year’s resolution:
This one is easy, and should be on all of our "to do" lists everyday. Think about that one person who helps you the most to do what you do (for me, it is my secretary Janelle). Go to that person today and thank them.
Resolutions for Lawyers Redux - Day 8
Resolve to rethink your advertising and marketing strategy. Here’s my all-time favorite advertising idea (WARNING, may not be ethics-safe for lawyers).
Here is last year’s resolution:
One of my favorite ideas I've found since I've been blogging is the one I blogged about here called "Stop, Start, Continue." Divide your staff into three groups and identify a single problem or question you need to address in your practice (or your life).
Ask the first group to brainstorm and answer the question, "In order to _______, we need to stop doing _______." The second group does the same with the question, "In order to _______, we need to start doing _______." Finally the third group answers, "In order to _______, we need to continue doing _______."
After all three groups have come up with a number of answers to their question, have everyone rotate and repeat the process two more times. Get everyone together, review the answers, and then devise a plan to put the ideas into action.
Resolutions for Lawyers Redux - Day 7
Resolve to give each of your clients at least five minutes every month (off the clock) to check in and see what they are up to. For more, check out this post talking about Rosa Say’s “Daily Five Minutes.”
Here is last year’s resolution:
Review the look of your normal invoice. Then ask a seven year old to do the same. Are they readable and easy to understand? Do they have all of the information your client wants or needs? It also wouldn't hurt to call a few of your best clients (or the people in charge of paying those clients' bills) and ask them if there is anything you can do to make your bills easier to read and understand.
Resolutions for Lawyers Redux - Day 6
This is a bit of a plug for a new friend of mine, but if you are serious about changing your new year, check out Jim Canterucci’s book Personal Brilliance (if you order soon, he’s got a lot of goodies for you).
Resolutions for Lawyers Redux - Day 5
Continuing the theme from Day 4, don’t just ask for referrals, ask for testimonials. I have done this several times after LexThink! events (and even here at this blog) and the results have been fantastic.
Also: Last Year’s Resolution
Resolutions for Lawyers Redux - Day 4
Ask everyone for referrals. From this Michael Cage post:
Ask everyone for referrals. People who buy from you? Ask for referrals. People who don’t buy from you? Ask for referrals. Here’s a simple, no-cost way to increase your referrals: Before you deliver a solution, tell your client that you prefer getting new business by referral. Less money spent on advertising means better deals for clients like him/her, and you’d like to work with more people like him/her. Ask them, “after we’ve delivered this and you are thrilled with how things work, would you refer us to your friends/colleagues?” After you’ve delivered, make sure they are thrilled, and only then ask for a list of friends or colleagues who would want the same service and expertise.
Also: Last Year’s Resolution
Resolutions for Lawyers Redux - Day 2
Have a bunch of favorite business books you’ve read (or not) sitting on your shelf? Try this: Each week, set aside 60 minutes for uninterruped reading, and grab five books and read a random chapter in each. Make sure you have a notebook handy when you’re reading to capture any cool ideas you have.
Also: Last Year’s Resolution
Resolutions for Lawyers Redux - Day 1
I’ll start the 2005 Resolutions with the number one favorite tip I’ve gotten in 2005. Resolve to make Five “Unreasonable Requests” each week. From my original post:
I had the pleasure of a long telephone conversation with Lisa Haneberg yesterday. Lisa gave me some great tips I’m sure to implement in my Innovation Coaching Program, but one thing she told me really got my attention. Each week, she resolves to make at least five “unreasonable requests” to people she has no business asking for favors. She reasons that if just one request is granted, she’s gotten a bit of a bonus that week. Doing a quick google search, I realize I’m not the only one impressed by Lisa’s approach.
I’ve been doing this religiously over the last two months and the results have been astounding. If there is only one thing you will resolve to do in 2006, make it this.\
Also: Last Year’s Resolution
Resolutions for Lawyers - 2005 Edition
One year ago, I posted this:
Because we all want to become better lawyers, make more money, work less, spend more time with our families, and generally retire rich, happy, and healthy, the dawn of every new year is the time we finally decide, "Well, now I'm going to do X,Y, and Z to improve my _______, stop doing ________, and be a better ________." And even though we never have any problem filling in those blanks, I'm going to complicate matters by starting a new, limited-run series titled, "Resolutions for Lawyers."
Until January 1, I'll be posting a number of Resolutions. Basically, it will be a collection of quick ideas and simple suggestions for things we all can do in the next year to become better lawyers and run our businesses better.
Well, now I’m going to do it again. Between now and December 31, I’ll post 31 all new resolutions and repost a few of my favorites from last year. E-mail me at Matt@LexThink.com if you’ve got any you’d like me to add.
Set Your Billing Rate to $10,000 per Hour.
Steve Pavlina has an interesting take on hourly billing:
The big problem is that when you tell yourself your time is worth $50/hour, you’re simultaneously telling yourself that it isn’t worth $75/hour or $200/hour or $10,000/hour. You’re programming your subconscious mind to limit the range of opportunities you will notice. Because you won’t be on the lookout for $10,000/hour ideas, you’ll overlook them completely. If you tell yourself you earn $50/hour, you’ll think in terms of $50/hour opportunities.
Thinking in terms of an hourly rate may help limit your downside, but it also severely limits your upside. And that’s a really bad trade-off, bad enough that it requires me to dismiss this whole paradigm as utterly stupid. There’s no way the upside of turning some $20 hours into $50 hours can compensate for missing those $10,000 hours. That’s penny-wise, pound-foolish.
One $10,000 hour is worth 200 $50 hours. That’s more than a month of full-time work! You don’t need too many of those huge payoff hours to pick up the slack of some of those less productive $0-20 hours, but if you miss out on even one of those $10,000 hours, it’s a crippling blow that overwhelms all other thoughts about financial productivity.
In the long run, your greatest financial risk isn’t whether you made the mistake of succumbing to doing $20/hour work when you could have done $50/hour work. Your greatest risk is missing those $10,000 hours. And most people miss out on them completely. It’s ironic that people think of being a salaried employee as being low-risk and being an entrepreneur as high-risk. The reality is just the opposite. One of the reasons I chose the entrepreneurial path is that it’s just way too damn risky to be an employee. I’m not kidding. It’s easy to hit a good number of those $10,000 hours as an entrepreneur, but it’s a lot harder to do so as an employee.
How many $10,000 hours did you enjoy this year?
Go ahead and read the whole post. Really thought provoking.
Now, Here are the 7 Habits!
I love this “revised” list: Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.
What is Your Power Button?
Ed Bott wrote a post titled Get to Know Your Power Button. The post talks about how to configure your PC’s power button. What I liked the most was Ed’s title. So what is your power button? Is it work? Passion? Money? Family?
Trying Steve Pavlina's 30 Days Formula
I ran across Steve Pavlina’s blog post titled 30 Days to Success just over a month ago. In it, he outlines a fairly simple way to make dramatic changes to your life. First, Steve’s explanation:
A powerful personal growth tool is the 30-day trial. This is a concept I borrowed from the shareware industry, where you can download a trial version of a piece of software and try it out risk-free for 30 days before you’re required to buy the full version. It’s also a great way to develop new habits, and best of all, it’s brain-dead simple.
Let’s say you want to start a new habit like an exercise program or quit a bad habit like sucking on cancer sticks. We all know that getting started and sticking with the new habit for a few weeks is the hard part. Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much easier to keep going.
At the time, I was drinking 3–5 Diet Mountain Dews each day. I figured I’d take Steve’s advice, and resolve to stop drinking soda for “only” 30 days. Days 1–3 sucked, but I slowly replaced my morning Dews with one cup of Green Tea and drank water the rest of the day. Gotta tell you, it worked. The thirty days was an easy amount of time to measure, and though I fell off the wagon a couple of times, it was pretty easy to get back on. I don’t miss the soda at all.
Now I’m looking for another 30 day challenge. For you lawyers out there, how about resolving to return every phone call within 24 hours just for the next 30 days. I dare you!
Stop Trying on New Technology!
As an avid user of new technology, this post from 43 Folders hit a bit too close to home:
No tool can save you from your own crap behavior, so as you approach these great new apps—and I hope you’ll at least check them out if you haven’t—please try to do it with a bit of perspective about how or why the old tools were not working for you. Consider the patterns that you can observe about how you do your best work and which tasks have benefited from a certain tool or approach in the past.
And, finally, as you start to choose one new, dedicated tool to improve your productivity, be circumspect about the amount of pure “dicking around” time that you spend. Yes: learn the tool well and understand its functions and limitations, but avoid the temptation to blow a week moving “your system” into the Next Shiny Product until you really understand how you’ll be better off having used it. Don’t fiddle endlessly, just because it’s fun. That’s not running; that’s just playing with your shoes.
I’ve been working on my personal productivity solution for several weeks now, and I think I’ve gotten it down enough to share it with you (in a post later this week) — so long as I quit looking at amazing apps like Backpack, Sproutliner, Tasktoy, GTDTiddliWiki, etc. The tools I have now are enough. And I’m making the resolution now (a la this great advice from Steve Pavlina) to stick with what I’ve got for the next 30 days to make sure it works, before looking for the next best thing.
Small Firm Lawyers Tsunami Fund!
Denise Howell posts about how big firms are contributing large sums of money to aid tsunami victims. What about the small firm lawyers? The small firm lawyers I know are among the most generous and giving people on this planet. I’d wager that most lawyers in small communities give a far greater percentage of their income (and time) to community and charitable organizations then do their big firm counterparts, although the big firms get all the press.
Today, I am issuing the Small Firm Tsunami Relief Fund challenge: I want to raise at least $100,000 for tsunami relief in the next three months — to be given to Save the Children — on behalf of small-firm lawyers everywhere.
As I often do, I’m posting this idea without thinking through all of the details. I’ll work on those this weekend, but here are some possibilities:
1. Get a company that serves solo and small firm lawyers to match all donations up to a certain level.
2. Call upon the solo and small firm sections of various national, state, and local bar associations to get the news out to their members.
3. Set up some sort of mechanism to accept the pledges and forward them on to Save the Children as a lump sum.
4. Partner with all of the blawggers out there who write for a small firm audience.
I know there are a lot of details to work out, and I welcome your comments and suggestions. I’d even suggest a conference call next week if anyone is serious about helping me with this. E-mail me at smallfirmlawyer@gmail.com and let’s make this happen!
What will you say "no" to?
Sam Decker has this absolutely amazing list of things he resolves to say “no” to:
1. What strategies, initiatives and activities will you say no to?
2. What measurements will you not pay attention to?
3. What customers will you not target?
4. What people will you not keep?
5. What competitors will you not follow?
6. What will you remove from your web site?
7. What money will you not spend?
8. What meetings will you decline?
9. What trips will you not make?
10. What slides will you not create?
11. What will you not say?
12. What thoughts will you not entertain?
Read Sam’s entire post — especially the comments under each “resolution” — and resolve to not do some things yourself this year.
Resolutions for Lawyers, Day 28
Keep track of the nice things people say about you, and of the people who are exceptionally happy with your work. When you are having a hard time at the office (or want to use some testimonials in your marketing materials) you have a list handy for a quick pick-me-up.
And in case you think it is a bit conceited to keep track of the people who love you, remember that you will build a far more successful business by marketing to your happiest customers than your unhappy ones.
Thanks to my friend, Steve Nipper, for the tip.