This is Day One of New Solo Week here at Divorce Discourse. I’m focusing on attorneys that have, over the course of the past year, started a family law practice. Some are straight out of school, some have left larger firms and some have left other jobs. I’ve been thinking about you and I’m talking to you this week. I’d appreciate your thoughts and feedback in the comments below. And away we go….

I’m talking to this lawyer the other day. She’s been in solo practice for five months. She’s “SOOOOO busy” – that’s what she tells me.

“SOOOOOO busy” gets my attention so I actually decide to start listening. I really tune in to the conversation at that point and am baffled as to how someone who just started her practice can possibly be that busy. It takes time to build a practice and she hasn’t had time. Has she figured out some magical technique for practice development that I somehow missed?

As I listen carefully and probe a bit, it becomes clear that she’s staying really busy helping people with no money do something that really doesn’t require a lawyer. She’s barely getting paid and she’s getting calls like crazy from other penniless people wanting help with this same pseudo-legal problem. She’s taking them all on and doing their work for practically nothing.

So really she’s “SOOOOO busy” doing nothing much that matters to her bottom line. In fact, she’s “SOOOOO busy” doing something that’s actually distracting her from her primary business objective – building a healthy, profitable practice.

Sadly, she’s not alone. I constantly have the conversation that goes like this -

“Lee, I’d really like to talk to you about marketing, I want to grow my practice.” “Sure, lets talk about things like referral source meetings, article writing, social media, I’ve got some great ideas for you.” “No, no, no, I can’t do that stuff – I’m already SOOOOO busy. I just don’t have the time to do that stuff.”

Please, please, please STFU with the “SOOOOO busy.” If you’re not doing profitable work then just stop doing the stuff you’re doing that isn’t making you money. You need to use your time doing profitable work. If you have left over time then use it for marketing. Don’t get caught up in doing busy work that isn’t worth doing.

If you’re happy with your current income then, by all means, keep doing what you’re doing. If you’re not happy, then you’ve got to stop doing whatever it is that’s making you so busy that you don’t have time for more profitable work. Then go out and generate the business. Use that new business to replace your less profitable work and maintain some free time to keep marketing and keep elevating the overall level of your practice. Never let yourself get in a position that prevents you from marketing. You’ve got to keep marketing, marketing, marketing.

Am I right? Wrong? What do you think?

Article from: Divorce Discourse

I’m SOOOOO Busy. No You’re FREAKING Not (New Solo Week – Day One)

I’m in agony over the iPad. I want one, I don’t want one, I want one. At least, with the help of Doritos, I can laugh.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: Doritos Tablet

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I also include a picture I like.

The End Of Big Website Builds – the world is changing and websites are becoming less important.

How Content Drives Law Firm Marketing - the game is changing (have I mentioned that before) and you’ve got to adapt.

Is Google Local Search For Sale? – this is a game changer if you’re advertising.

The Only Response That Ever Matters – all about shaping your marketing message.

Transitioning From One Job To Another – good advice for emloyees and employers.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Websites, Content, Local, Heart and Transitions

You’re looking at Google Analytics and checking the stats for your website and your blog. The numbers are small. You start to worry. You know that some blogs have hundreds of thousands of visitors and subscribers. Some websites get millions of visitors. Your numbers feel pretty small by comparison.

Here’s the thing – you’re not ever going to get huge numbers coming to a website or blog about divorce. It’s not interesting to most people and when it is interesting it’s only interesting for a short time. Getting big numbers isn’t important.

Big traffic just doesn’t matter. What is, however, important is reaching the people who need your services. Reaching 100 people who need your services is far more valuable to you than reaching 10,000 people who don’t need your services. Those 100 people will get to know you through your site. They’ll start to like you and trust you. Soon they’ll come in and meet with you and get started on their divorce.

As you write copy for your site, as you create audio and video, think about your relationship with those 100 people. Think about the impression you make with your words. Think about them as human beings that are experiencing and crisis and tell them the things they want and need to hear. Don’t create content for everybody. Create it for that one person you need to touch. That small audience will make you successful.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Why Size Doesn’t Matter

We’re always looking for the magic bullet. We want some new marketing technique that will solve all our problems. We’d love something that brings new business every day without any input or effort on our part.

We love the idea of something like Google AdWords. Something that we can set and forget. We’d like a well-oiled marketing machine that spews out cash.

I’m  constantly being asked about the next big thing. The questions cover everything from Twitter to podcasting to blogging to media relations. I wish I could say that one of these tactics would be the solution to all of our marketing problems. Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet.

The solution to our marketing problem is to accept that we can never stop marketing. We’ve got to keep going and going like the Energizer bunny. We’ve got to keep doing the old stuff while adding new approaches to the mix. Occasionally, we can remove something from the program and replace it with something better but, we can never stop.

I know the idea of marketing forever is distasteful for some. But, reality and the sooner you accept it the better. You’ve got to keep plugging away or you’re going to be economically vulnerable. You can’t rely on others, you can’t focus on other business, you’ve simply got to keep marketing every single day.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Never Stop Marketing

Should you publish articles on the web? Should you have a blog? Does it make sense to invest the time it takes to crank out new content on a daily or weekly basis?

There are lots of opinions about the value of blogging and different “experts” come down on different sides of the issue.

Here’s one way to put a value on blogging. Calculate the number of visitors you’ll generate each month and determine what it would have cost to generate that traffic via a pay-per-click campaign on Google.

If you generate 1,000 visitors to your blog and the cost of generating traffic in your market is $6.00 per click (which it is in my market), the blogging is worth $6,000 per month. Of course, it’s up to you to take that traffic and convert those visitors in to clients.

Google provides a tool that will help you estimate the volume of traffic on each search term and the cost to have your ad on the first page of the search results returned for those terms. You can get some solid numbers to determine the monthly value of your blogging time.

The reality is that traffic coming to your blog is worth far more than PPC traffic. These visitors are more connected to you and impressed by you than visitors coming from advertising. They’ll know you’re an expert and that you’re experienced and credible because you’ve become their teacher. Blog traffic has a higher conversion rate than PPC traffic.

These numbers might not add up in every market and there are lots of other ways to measure the return on investment for blogging. The value of traffic varies widely and there’s more than one way to put a value on it. Try my approach, do the math and then decide if blogging makes sense for your practice.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Is Blogging Worth Your Time?

Excellent marketing requires excellent metrics. That’s why it’s important to identify the source of every initial consultation. You’ve got to ask them how they found you. You can track everything if you try hard enough.

There are some great tools for measuring your marketing. Google Analytics, for example, is a great tool for measuring the effectiveness of your website.

But what about lunch? How do you measure the effectiveness of your referral source meetings? How do you know if you’re doing a good job helping other professionals make referrals to you?

You’ve got to carefully track your relationships with your referral sources. You need a record of every relationship and you need to track the clients generated by that relationship. You can do it with a simple spreadsheet or you can implement a relationship management system like Highrise or BatchBook.

Dig in to the stats as you gain data. Figure out where you’re winning and losing. Are you great at getting the referral source to send you business and weak at converting consults to clients? Are you wonderful at getting the referral sources to introduce you to other referral sources and poor at getting the referral sources to actually refer? You’ve got to dig in to find out where you’re succeeding and failing.

You can’t win the game if you don’t know the score. You need information in order to modify your strategy and tactics. Lunch, just like most other marketing activities, is measurable.

Take the data and use it to improve your weaknesses and capitalize on your strengths. Think of lunch as a game and keep improving. Set goals and work to meet them. The greater your understanding of the metrics the faster you’ll see improvement in your performance.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How To Measure Your Marketing Lunches

I know one personally. She’s a terrible lawyer. She can’t read and understand a court opinion. She misreads statutes. She’s an embarrassment in court. Her pleadings are poorly drafted. Her correspondence is filled with errors. She says things in chambers that make her look like an idiot. Her objections are overruled. Her court appearances are dominated by illogical arguments.

She’s a really crappy lawyer.

Her clients, however, love her. They refer business to her like crazy. She spends nearly nothing  on marketing and is making a freaking fortune. She can’t see a new client for weeks because she is solidly booked.

How is it that she is such a bad lawyer yet is so successful?

Here’s the deal. She does things that make it clear that she cares about her clients. She rants and raves in court, like a maniac, on behalf of her clients. She crosses over every line and gets personally involved with her clients. She laughs with her clients, she cries with her clients. She returns calls, she calls at night, she stays on the phone forever. She loves her clients and it shows. She knows it and her clients know it. She’d do anything to help them. They are her friends.

Her clients love her. They love her when she wins, they love her when she loses. They know she’s committed to their cause. They know she did her best, even when her best isn’t good enough.

It all makes me wonder whether she’s really a crappy lawyer or whether I have ideas about what’s important that might be irrelevant. Who sets the standard for crappy? Lawyers or clients? Maybe my idea of crappy doesn’t really matter?

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Why Do Some Crappy Lawyers Have Happy Clients?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: News You Can’t Use

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I also include a picture I like.

By the way, I’m going to be at ABA Techshow in Chicago and would love to chat with you if you’ll be there. I’ll also be, very briefly, at the ABA Family Law Section meeting in New Orleans. Let me know if I might see you at one of these events.

Dining Etiquette: Don’t Spit Food on Your Prospective Client and Other Basic Rules – another of my articles for SmallLaw on Technolawyer.

The Choice between Yes and Yes: A Psychological Revelation – old stuff that you should never forget.

How to Give Yourself a First-Class Online Business Education – great stuff.

Google’s Click-to-Call Advertising Goes National – folks keep telling me I’m wrong about the importance of mobile to our practices. I really think I’m right, but what do I know?

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Web 2.0: Top 25 Applications to Grow Your Business – great list of products that will help you get away from your dependence on the I.T. guys.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Etiquette, Yes and Yes, Education, Mobile and Web 2.0 – Yes, It’s Saturday!

“My name is Lee and I’m addicted to gadgets.” I admit it. Everyone who knows me, knows it. My wife has started pricing the gadgets on Amazon so she’ll know what I’m spending. You’ve probably known about my addiction for as long as you’ve been visiting this site.

I end up with piles of stuff lying around. Last week I checked and between the home pile and the office pile I had 2 rack mounted servers, 2 laptops, 1 desktop, 30 landline phones, 2 cell phones, a video camera, a tripod, 1 camera, 15 earbuds, 3 other headsets, a server rack and a bunch of other stuff. This is not the good stuff. This is the junk that I needed to get rid of. This is the useless garbage pile.

I’m sure you’ve got some stuff that needs to be sold, recycled or trashed. It’s tough to get rid of this stuff because it feels like there should be some value to it and doesn’t feel right to throw it away. In fact, some of these gadgets are dangerous to throw away as they have components that contaminate the landfill.

So what do you do with them? I’ve tried eBay. Sometimes it works, often it doesn’t. I’ve sold a bunch of stuff there but, when all is said and done, it’s frequently more trouble than it’s worth. The prices are low, the customers complain about the stuff and the shipping is a pain. I’ve given up on that route.

I recently tried Gazelle.com. They offer cash for your old gadgets. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing and they make it really easy. You go to their site and enter your item and it’s condition. They immediately make you an offer. If you accept, they send you packing material and handle the postage. You send in the item and they send you payment. It worked perfectly for me.

I’ve also tried craigslist. It works and it, usually, involves local buyers so you don’t have to deal with the shipping issue. You do, however, have to deal with the logistics of meeting the seller. Another option is FreeCycle. They provide an email list to enable you to offer your items for free. Some city and county governments provide free, or cheap, recycling. That’s another possibility.

Finally, and this is what I did with most of the computers last week, is to find a charity that needs the stuff. We found a local charity, Purple Elephant, that recycles computers and gives them to kids.. They clean things up and get the machines to kids that need them.

Whatever route you choose, be sure to wipe your data from the device before it moves on to its new life.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How To Get Rid Of Your Gadgets

You’ve got a system for everything, right? If not, then you’re currently building systems for everything, right?

I’ve seen some great procedures manuals assembled by law firms. They’re the core of your practice. It’s critical that you have things written down.

But, what happens when you don’t have a system for dealing with something that comes up? What do you do?

You need a system for dealing with the lack of a system. That’s the ticket.

This should be one of the first systems you develop if you’re early on in building your systems. If you’ve already got your practices written down and don’t have a system for the missing system then now’s is the time to add this to your system. Did that make any sense at all?

So lets talk about what a system for dealing with the lack of a system should look like.

How about this?

Missing System System (what to do when we haven’t yet addressed the situation you’re facing).

1. Deal with the situation as you see fit. Do whatever you need to do, using your best judgment, to resolve the issue. You are authorized to spend up to $250 to resolve the issue without requesting approval.

2. Add the issue to the Missing System Log and forward it to your supervisor. Please provide as much detail and documentation as possible so that we can develop a system for addressing this issue.

3. Supervisor shall draft a system for handling the issue and circulate the draft to the management team.

4. Supervisor shall place the issue on the next management team agenda where it shall be considered. The management team shall either adopt the proposed draft or request changes and direct that the issue be placed on the next management team agenda.

5. Once the new system is adopted it shall be disseminated to the entire team and added to the systems documentation.

You’ll need to tweak the system for your practice. Once you’ve worked it out, inform everyone and get them to join you in the hunt for missing systems. The missing system system is an important step in moving your systems documentation process toward completion.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Do You Have a System for Not Having a System?

I’m often asked which websites and software I use. I’m providing a list of my primary products. Some of these might be right for you. All of them are worth a look. While I’m using all of these today, I might not be using them tomorrow – I’m fickle.

WordPress – my blogging software. I use it for this site as well as Rosen.com and StayHappilyMarried.com.
OmniFocus – my task manager on the Mac.
Hootsuite – my Twitter client for use on my Mac.
Google Reader – my RSS reader (for reading blogs)
Google Wave – for collaboration with our managing partner and marketing director and for collaborative writing projects.
Writeroom – my text editor/word processor on my Mac.
Quickbooks – we moved it from our server to a hosted account and I’m in and out of it all day.
Sharepoint – our case management system is a custom application in Sharepoint.
Firefox – my browser.
Skype – my instant messenger.
Mail.app and iCal – my Mac mail and calendar.
Evernote – my notetaking and note storage app for the Mac and the iPhone.
iTunes – my podcast catcher.
Mindjet MindManager – my mind mapping application.
ScreenFlow – my screen recorder.
Mog – my music service.
Keynote – the Mac version of Powerpoint.
Google Analytics – stats for my websites.
Picasa – my photo hosting service.
Read it Later – my bookmarking service for sharing links between my Mac and iPhone.
YouTube – my video hosting service.

What are you using? What do you like?

Article from: Divorce Discourse

A Quick and Inconclusive List of Software I Like

My dad was a lawyer in Miami. I used to visit his office and hang around. It was interesting.

I remember sitting in his office one day when his secretary, Thelma, came in and asked him about a note he had written to her. She was trying read it and couldn’t make out the handwriting. He studied it for a moment and couldn’t figure it out either. It was his own handwriting and it was so illegible that even he couldn’t read it.

Apparently, I learned handwriting from my dad. My handwriting is terrible. Most of the time I can read it myself but it’s getting worse as I get older.

My approach is to type things on the computer. More often that not, when talking to a client, I take notes using the computer keyboard as the client talks. My notes are legible, I can read them later and we’re good to go.

Unfortunately, however, that practice creates a small issue. My keyboard makes noise. The keys click. Clients can hear the clicking.

I’ve learned over the years that some clients, maybe just the insecure ones, worry that I’m doing unrelated things on the computer rather than listening to what they’re saying (which is probably true sometimes). They worry that I’m not paying attention.

My practice has become to tell them that I’m taking notes while they’re talking. I tell them that I’m using the keyboard and that they may hear some clicking. I try to remind them of my practice  every time we talk. It’s become a routine part of my conversations.

I’ve had more than a few clients acknowledge their concern about the clicking. They usually say something humorous, but it’s clear that I’m addressing something they were thinking. Sometimes they sound relieved to know that I really am listening.

Telling clients what you’re doing – explaining things – is always a good practice. You never know what they’re thinking. They’re under stress and they have vivid imaginations. Put yourself in their place and try to think about  how your behavior might be impacting them. The typing is a small example, but it has the impact of making the client feel unimportant. That’s the last thing you want to have happen, especially if you’re truly taking the time time to listen.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Is Your Computer Alienating Your Clients?

That’s not a math problem. It’s a formula for success in your practice. The more time you spend fostering your relationship with your client, the less time you’re going to have to spend when something goes wrong.

Things will, inevitably, go wrong. It’s the nature of the game. A judge will rule against you on a motion. You’ll miss a scheduled phone call due to a meeting going long. You’ll accidentally send an email to Sally Jones instead of to Susie Jones. Things happen.

The question is – how will the client react? Will the client melt down requiring you to spend hours talking them off the ledge? Or will the client roll with the punches, adapt and move forward?

That’s where the formula comes in. The better the relationship with the client, the less likely it is that the client will experience an emotional upset over the problem. The client will know that you’re on their side, that you’re someone they can trust and count on, and someone who, like them, will make a mistake from time to time. If the relationship isn’t well established the client is far more likely to assume you’re being disrespectful, that you didn’t do all you could or that you’re not focused on their case.

I’ve done the math and the investment of time, up-front, pays off in the long run. Keeping the client on track by making them feel special, before the upset, is the smart way to go. You can do little things that build the relationship. Things like -

1. Calling them to make sure they’re doing okay. Don’t let every call to the client be a response to the client’s call. Be proactive about communicating.

2. Thank the client for allowing you to be of service. Send a handwritten note early in the representation.

3. Call the client each time a document comes in or goes out. Let them know what the document means and how it will impact the progress of the case.

4. Talk to the client for free. Explain that you’re not billing for a particular call or meeting.

5. Tell the client a story about your life. Be human – laugh with the client, joke with the client, worry – out loud – about the client.

Some lawyers tell me they don’t have time to invest in their relationships with clients. They’re too busy doing the work to spend time on the soft stuff. I’d suggest to you that doing the soft stuff is “the work.” That’s where the game is really played as far as most clients are concerned.

Some lawyers tell me that can’t afford to do things that aren’t billable. They can’t skip the billing for a call or do other things without being paid. I’d suggest that you won’t be billing for the time calming the client upset at your mistake. The investment of time now, rather than later, will be cheaper and will leave you in a place where you’re far more likely to have a satisfied client and a good referral source.

Some lawyers tell me they don’t want to connect with their clients in a more human-personal way. I’d suggest that maybe family law isn’t for you. Maybe you should be a commercial real estate lawyer or an intellectual property specialist. Family law is, for better or worse, all about connecting with people.

More time in relationship equals less time in recovery is an important formula to remember. Too much time in recovery will cost you in more ways than you can count.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

More Time in Relationship = Less Time in Recovery.

I’ve watched this video many times over the year. It never fails to make me laugh, think and cry. You’ve seen it before. It’s worth watching again.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: Laugh, Think, Cry

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

HOW TO: Build a Facebook Landing Page for Your Business

SEO for Startups: Top 7 Lessons + A Trip to YCombinator

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Weekly Links: Facebook and SEO

When you’re gone, what will they remember? What will you have brought to the field of family law? Will you have made a difference? Will you be remembered across your country? Or across your county?

Will you be the lawyer they credit for changing the way lawyers deliver their services? Or charge for their services? Or market their services?

Will you be the lawyer they credit for changing the way people think about divorce? Or changing the way people feel about divorce? Or the way children are impacted by divorce?

Will you be the lawyer that lowered the divorce rate? Or increased it? Will you be the one that closed down the courtrooms with your innovative approach? Will you be the one that brought families together or tore them apart with your novel ideas?

Will you be the lawyer that was so loved that you could settle a case with your smile?

Will you be the lawyer that turned every idea about family law upside down. Will you be the lawyer that stood up for all of us? Will you be the lawyer that convinced us to see the light?

When you’re gone, what will they remember?

Article from: Divorce Discourse

What Will Be Your Family Law Legacy?

“It’s going to be terrible.” “You’re going to be miserable.” “You’ll be lucky to be left with a pot to piss in.” These are lines you can deliver during an initial consultation that will lower expectations. Are they truthful? That’s a matter of perspective. If Bill Gates were left with “Oprah money” after a divorce, he might be suicidal, right? That’s an old Chris Rock line.

If you deliver these lines, or your personal equivalent, you are going to make that client happy if you deliver any results at all. They are positioned to expect a terrible result. If you deliver anything, you’re a hero.

My point is that perceptions are the whole game in our business. The actual result is less important that the promise made and the performance on that promise.

So, in an initial consultation you should under promise. As you represent the client, you should over deliver. That way the client expects less and you deliver more. The client’s perception will be that you did a good job. Make sense?

Now you’re thinking “that’s great, but if I deliver those lines I’ll never get hired by a client.” Why would they hire me if I can’t deliver much of anything for them? Legitimate concern. Getting hired is important. Lets talk about that.

I’m not suggesting that you tell the client there’s nothing you can do to help them. In fact, I’d suggest that you make generous promises about helping the client through the process, helping them understand what’s happening, helping them make educated/informed decisions and helping them feel certain that they did all they could and should have done. Those are promises you can make and keep. It’s the other kind of promises I’d avoid – promises like “you’re going to get the house, plenty of cash and exclusive custody of the children.” You can’t be certain about those things, so I’d be very careful to under promise.

How will the client react? I’ve been consistently surprised by the response I’ve received to my dire predictions. Usually, prospective clients tell me they appreciate my honesty. They like that I’m not sugar coating the possibilities. They appreciate an assessment of the risks and the possible scenarios. I’ve not encountered resistance to getting the client to hire us.

Most importantly, every time we under promise and over deliver, we have a happy client. That’s important and it feels good too.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Under Promise, Over Deliver

You routinely ask a bunch of standard questions at your initial consultations. I’d like you to add one.

Ask this -

When this is all finished, when the dust has settled and everything is over and done, lets say six months from now, what important things will have happened? What will be essential to you to have accomplished. Take a minute and think about it – 6 months from now is August, it will be hot, your kids will be out of school. What three things would you like to know happened so that you’ll feel good about the way things worked out?

She’ll ponder her answer for a minute. She’ll respond by telling you that she wants to be sure the kids have settled down and are doing okay, that she’s not worried about money, that she’s still in the house. Maybe her husband would say the same things or maybe he’ll say that he wants to be able to manage his obligations, see his kids and have some peace. The answer itself isn’t important. Every client will answer the question differently.

What’s important is that you listen, write down the answers and then respond.

When you respond, let the client know you heard what they said. Do that by repeating the answers back. Let the client know you’re going to do everything in your power to make those things happen, if possible (you’ll find the answers, usually, surprisingly realistic). Make it clear that you’ve heard and understand the client’s priorities. Let them know that you’re going to work like crazy to make sure their priorities are recognized.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Ask This Question At Every Initial Consultation

In the old days clients hired lawyers to handle their divorces because everybody needed a lawyer to get a divorce. That used to be an automatic assumption.

Few people considered doing the divorce by themselves, especially not people of means. Everyone knew they’d be better off with an attorney handling the paperwork and dealing with the bureaucracy.

That assumption has changed. Now people, especially people of means, are anxious to avoid hiring an attorney. They’d like to use a non-lawyer mediator, or a paralegal, or an online document drafting service. They feel smart and capable enough to manage the process on their own. They worry that a lawyer will make things worse not better.

They’ll hire a lawyer if things really get ugly.

Unfortunately, most family law attorneys are still selling their services like we’re living in the old days. The attorney sits in the consultation expecting the result of the meeting to be an engagement by the client.

Sometimes that happens. Client hires lawyer, lawyer does work. All is good. But, increasingly, the client leaves without hiring the lawyer. The client decided to go in a different direction because they left without feeling there would be any significant advantage in hiring the lawyer.

Your mission, during that initial meeting and in your marketing materials, is to make the case for hiring counsel. You’ve got to communicate to the client that there are advantages to paying for representation.

These are the five things clients really want to buy -

1. More money. You’ve got to show them how hiring you will allow them to end up with more money.

2. More time. Show them how you’re going to save them time and free it up for other important activities. Demonstrate how your systems and experience will accelerate the process and let them get on with the enjoyable parts of their life.

3. Less frustration. Explain how your work will keep them from being forced to do things they don’t like. Show them how you’ll help them avoid document editing, financial analysis, data input, financial organization, etc. and the associated hassles.

4. Avoid loss. They worry about losing it all. They don’t want to lose their money. They don’t want to lose the connection with their children. They don’t want to suffer a significant lifestyle change. You’ve got to show them how you spot opportunities to save them money and preserve their portion of the estate. Show them how you’ll help maintain the physical and emotional connection to the children. Show them how you’re going to protect them.

5. Feeling good. Help the client understand how hiring you will make them feel better. They’ll know things are being handled and that they can relax. They’ll feel less anxious. Some will even feel better about themselves when they tell others they’ve got a high powered, high status divorce lawyer on their side. They’ll feel good.

These are the real client concerns. Stay focused on them. Don’t allow yourself to get distracted by explaining the law and saying the same old things. These five issues will vary from client to client. Generally only one or two will be important to a particular client. As you listen to the client, think about which concern is foremost in the client’s mind and engage with the client over that issue.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

5 Things Prospective Clients Really Want to Buy

What are the odds this is going to work out? Well, Apple sales are up, Apple stock is up, and the iPad will be out soon. Good things come from the Apple Store. Maybe this was a good idea.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: Apple Store Wedding Video

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

10 Tips for Turning Continuing Legal Education Into New Clients – I’ve been writing some columns for Technolawyer. This is one of them.

How to Arrange Speaking Opportunities That Grow Your Practice – This is another Technolawyer column. I’ll provide a link as new articles are published.

Is Engagement More Important – Thinking about your goals for Twitter.

Google, Gmail, and Google Apps Accounts Explained – This is valuable especially if you’re a Google Apps customer.

The 7 Harsh Realities of SEO – These are not the things the SEO salespeople will tell you.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Articles by Me, Google Accounts, SEO and Engagement

“You’re arrogant.” “You’re annoying.” “You won’t stop talking and listen.” “You’re self-centered and selfish.” “Your self-absorbed.” “You’re mean and you make people feel insignificant.”

Do you need some of that in your life? Would you like some honest feedback?

failin.gs is a site that enables you to get honest, anonymous feedback. You can hear from your employees, clients, friends, family members or anyone else you’d like to solicit. You set up and account and invite others to comment and you’re up and running. You can make your profile and feedback public, if you wish, or you can lock it down and make it private.

Once you set up your account you can send a link via email, Twitter or Facebook inviting feedback. If you make your profile public you can respond to the feedback and your friends can agree or disagree with what others have written.

This is really a great service. It’s scary, but it’s valuable to learn from others. I’ve participated in a 360 degree feedback process. It was powerful, disturbing and, ultimately, very helpful. If you think I’m a pain in the ass now you can’t imagine what I was like before that session.

You’ve got to submit your email address to get an invite to join the site. It seems like it took a week or two for a response. I’ve got a handful of invites. Shoot me an email if you need one.

I’d encourage you to give failin.gs a try. If you’re not happy with how it’s going you can, with one click, delete your account and all the feedback.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

You’re Going to Hate This – Getting Feedback About Yourself

You can’t swing a dead cat without hearing about the damaging evidence being found on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. The problem is that it’s sometimes a pain to dig around on each network until you find something useful.

Flowtown gives you a headstart. You submit an email address to Flowtown and it spits out a report of every social network it can find with a member using that email address. It’s fast and it’s free.

I entered my address and Flowtown immediately found my accounts on StumbleUpon, Flickr, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo, Classmates, Amazon, YouTube and some other sites. They listed a total of 19 sites I’m on.

Flowtown isn’t really designed for divorce lawyers checking out spouses. It’s really a social media marketing site intended to help marketers figure out where their customers are spending time. You can certainly use it as intended to enhance your marketing program by learning more about your clients and referral sources. Flowtown offers a paid plan if you’re going to be submitting more than 250 email addresses per month.

Flowtown is worth checking out. Sign up for a free account, submit your address and your employee’s addresses and see what you find. It might be interesting, it might be disturbing, it will certainly be enlightening.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How To Find The Opposing Party on Facebook

You’ve got questions. Maybe they’re questions about how to handle a case. Maybe you’ve got questions about marketing or management. Maybe you’re wondering whether to take a particular case. The questions never stop. Every answer leads to more questions. Every case is the source of many questions. That’s the nature of the game.

Sometimes you’re going to do the research and find the answers. That’s great. But, sometimes you’re going to run into a brick wall. You’re going to need an answer so that you can move forward and you’re not always going to find it in a book. You need to ask someone who knows.

Over the years I’ve observed many lawyers that reach the point of needing to find someone to ask and I’ve watched as they selected and approached someone for help. More often that not, they call someone of equal or lesser experience. I suppose they don’t want to let more experienced attorneys know that they don’t know something. I guess they don’t want to be embarrassed.

That’s a shame. Most experienced attorneys would be happy to help. We love to be asked. We love to answer questions. Remember when you were a 2L? Remember when the 1Ls asked for your advice? You went on and on with answers. You loved it. It felt good to be asked.

We’re all still 2Ls at heart. We still love to be asked. We won’t think you’re stupid. We’ll be too busy feeling good about ourselves to think about you and what you don’t know. Seriously. The other thing is that you’re going to, in many instances, get a better answer from someone who has more experience than you. Seems logical, right?

So should you call David Boise with your litigation question? Maybe so. I’m sure he’s busy, but I wonder if he wouldn’t take a minute out of his day to help you out. If you’re not quite ready for Mr. Boise then go ahead and call some experienced family law attorneys in your area. Get to know them. I’m confident that many of them are going to become valuable resources to you as you learn and grow.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Ask a Successful Divorce Lawyer

I’m a big believer in vacations. Family law attorneys need a good vacation more than some other kinds of lawyers. In fact, my wife and I are headed for the Caribbean on Saturday for a trip without our kids. This will be our longest kid free trip since they were born. I’m giddy.

My advice to you is to always have a vacation scheduled. I’ve said that here before.

Yesterday I was chatting about vacations with my friend Erik Mazzone. He mentioned an idea I hadn’t previously considered. He suggested using YouTube as resource for planning a vacation.

I spend considerable time reviewing vacation planning sites. I read the reviews on TripAdvisor and other sites. There are lots of great reviews, but it’s tough to judge the reliability of differing opinions online since I don’t really know the people writing the reviews. One person, having never stayed in anything nicer than a Motel 6 might be thrilled with a Hampton Inn. The next person, having spent their life staying in the Four Seasons Hotel might think the Hampton Inn is a dump. It’s very difficult to know what’s what when sorting through the differing opinions.

YouTube, on the other hand, provides objective information. Searching on a destination frequently provides results showing you exactly what you want to see. I did some searching last night and found video of restaurants, hotels and beaches that I’m considering visiting. The videos are all user submitted and aren’t biased like commercials. These are real people doing their thing on vacation. I can’t think of a better way to gather objective information.

YouTube is good for more than picking the hotel and restaurants. It’s also great for previewing the sites available at your vacation spot. You can spend a few minutes figuring out whether you want to invest the time to go visit a park, a volcano, an art gallery or whatever is of interest to you. With the help of YouTube you can be sure to get the most out of your trip.

Thanks to Erik I’m suddenly seeing YouTube in a whole new way.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How To Get Honest Reviews Of Vacation Destinations

Lots of lawyers operate under the assumption that they’re doing well when they have a client and the client has a legal problem. They’re busy, they’re getting to apply the knowledge and skills they’ve acquired, and they feel like they’re firing on all cylinders. But they’re not. They’re headed for trouble if that’s all they’ve got.

Those lawyers have work to do and the skills to do it. But, they don’t, necessarily, have a plan for getting paid for doing the work. Until you’ve got that part of the equation figured out, you’re not doing well. In fact, until you’ve got that part figured out, your not only not doing well, you’re actually headed in the wrong direction. Your using up your resources without a plan for compensation. Bad idea.

When you do work without payment in advance you’re extending credit. You’ve become a banker and your client is your borrower. The problem is that you’re likely not a very good banker. You probably haven’t done a credit check, required a financial statement or secured your loan. You may even have made your loan on a handshake with zero documentation.

If you’re like most of us, being  lawyer is tough enough. Being a banker is way more than we can simultaneously handle. It’s not going to work.

So what’s the solution? Don’t be a banker. Don’t lend money. Get paid in advance.

One way to handle the situation is to collect fixed fees, in advance. That’s the way I do it. Our clients pay for our services when they hire us and, in some cases, at designated times as the case progresses. Another way to handle the situation, and probably the most common solution, is to have the client place a deposit in the attorney trust account. Billing then takes place on a periodic basis, and the bill is paid from the trust account.

Either system is effective if the firm keeps up with the accounting. It’s important to collect every fee immediately upon it becoming due. Don’t let a fixed fee that comes due slip by. Don’t let a client fail to replenish the trust account as the balance diminishes. You may need to check your accounts more often than monthly. It’s critical that you never transition from being the lawyer to being the banker. Do not let the client get in the hole.

If you get to a point where you’ve screwed up and suddenly you’re owed money then it’s time to get out. Ask for payment, give a very short deadline (remember this wasn’t supposed to happen), and withdraw (if permitted) immediately if payment is not forthcoming. Don’t hang on to the client in hopes of getting the balance brought current. Get out now, while you still can and before the balance grows. You’re a lawyer, not a banker. Don’t forget it.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Don’t Be Your Client’s Banker

Happy Valentine’s Day. I always feel a little out of sorts on this holiday.

Moving right along (and sort of related to the topic of love), did you see the Google commercial on the Super Bowl?

I’ve embedded it below. I’ve also embedded the parody. It’s dark humor (isn’t most of the humor I post pretty darn dark?). Maybe that’s a requirement for a divorce lawyer?

The Commercial

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Parody

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: Parisian Love – The Commercial, The Parody

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

The No. 1 reason customers stay or leave

5 Questions You Should Ask Every Customer

When To Take It Private*

Why Brands are Becoming Media

The Long Tail Of Video Sites Capture Half Of All Viewing Minutes

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Leaving, Questions, Private, Tail, Media

I bet you’ve got a client handbook of some sort that you give to all new clients. It might be fancy or it might just be a page or two of basic firm information. You likely provide instructions for calling and emailing you. You probably indicate how bills will be sent and how you expect to be paid. Maybe you provide information on how quickly you’ll call or email back to the client.

Make Some Promises

Step 1 – Spend a few minutes looking at the booklet and determine what expectations you’re setting. What sort of promises are you making? Go ahead and make a list.

Then start thinking about other promises you could make in the handbook that you haven’t yet made.

Here are some ideas for promises -

We’ll call you back in 2 hours.
I’ll call you personally if I can, otherwise you’ll be called by my paralegal.
When you need a meeting, I’ll make sure it happens within 72 hours.
When you send an email, I’ll respond within 4 hours.
When you ask for a copy of a document, we’ll email it to you within 24 hours.

Make Them Real

Step 2 – Now that you have a list, it’s time to get serious about managing expectations. Go ahead and make the promises realistic. If you can’t call back in 2 hours then change it to something you can do. Once you’ve got something you can really manage, go ahead and give yourself even more room for error. For instance, if you’re going to promise to return calls in 2 hours, change it to 4 hours or 8 hours or even more. Set it way beyond what you know you will actually do.

You’ve just set expectations that are easily reached. In fact, you’ve left yourself plenty of room for error. That’s terrific and if you deliver on those expectations your going to have satisfied clients. That’s good, but not great.

Blow Those Promises Away

Step 3 – This is where you take it up a notch. This is where to you go from good to great. We just set very low expectations, right? You can more than meet them. So don’t meet them – beat them. Return the calls much faster than the client expects. Do everything you promised even faster and better than you promised. The key here is not to suddenly do more for every client. The key is to lower the expectations so you can be sure to beat them. That will cause a client to rave about your wonderful service.

Take these three steps and you’re clients will be telling their friends and family members how great you are. Setting expectations and then beating them makes clients happy every time.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

3 Steps to Very Happy Clients

Did your grandmother ever say “They don’t care what you know until they know that you care”? I’m not sure that mine ever said that. The grandmother I spent the most time with was pretty busy playing bridge, smoking and trying to get me to eat carrots (because they were good for my eyes). But, maybe your grandmother said stuff like that.

I hope she said it to you, because it’s true. You’ve got to build credibility with a client before they’ll listen to you. Knowing that you care is really code for “credibility.” Client’s don’t automatically accept what we say simply because we’re the lawyer and they aren’t. In fact, for some clients, our authoritative role merely makes us seem less trustworthy and more arrogant.

So, you’ve got to show that you care if you’re going to be successful at convincing your client to take your advice. You’ve got to let them know you’re on their side. You’ve got to show that you understand where they’re coming from and how they feel.

Here are three steps for showing them that you care -

First, listen to what they’re saying and acknowledge it. You don’t have to agree with them, but you’ve got to let them know you heard it. For instance, she says “I’m really bothered that judges give fathers custody sometimes.” You respond by saying “You really don’t like that judges give custody to the father sometimes. You don’t agree with that.” This is acknowledgment of the thing she believes.

Second, pay attention to what they’re saying. You put away the cell phone, you turn away from the computer and you focus solely on the client. The client is the only thing that matters in a meeting with the client.

Third, affirm what your client says. The client says “I’m scared that he’s going to get the children and leave and I’ll never find him and I’ll never see the children again.” You affirm it by saying “It sounds like your very frightened that you’ll lose your children. That scares you to death.” This is affirmation of the feelings they are having.

Notice, and this is important, that you’re not required to agree with the client. You need to listen with your full attention, acknowledge what is being said and affirm their feelings.

Work your way through these three steps as often as possible. Do it in every conversation. Each time you acknowledge, pay attention and affirm you’re building your credibility. Each time, you’re increasing the likelihood that your client will care what you have to say because they’ll know that you care. If you really want to help your client, and I know you do, then you’ve got to work on building your credibility with them at every opportunity so they’ll listen to you and follow your advice.

Shockingly your grandmother was on the right track. Follow her advice and your client will take your advice, do what you suggest and accomplish the goals they set out to accomplish.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Your Grandmother Was Right: Three Steps to Credibility

It’s February 10. Summer will be here in 4 months. Have you planned your summer vacation? If so, you can stop reading. If not, then you are exactly who I’m talking to.

This is the time to get moving on your vacation. It’s so much easier to clear a week or two on your calendar now than it will be in June or July. In fact, if you wait until June to plan a summer vacation there’s a very good chance that you won’t end up going.

Here’s what I’d like you to do -

1. Pick a week, or even better, two weeks. Consult the calendars of everyone in your home that needs to come along with you. Make sure you’ve got a workable week. Put it on your calendar.

2. Decide on a destination. Don’t get overwhelmed by the options. Give yourself a deadline and pick a spot. This isn’t rocket science.

3. Book the air. If you were thinking about driving, don’t. Fly somewhere. The best spots require a plane ride. Pay for the airfare now, that helps to psychologically lock you in.

4. Book the accommodations. I’m fascinated by AirBNB. Check it out as a hotel alternative. Usually, you won’t have to pay for the hotel until you check out. Worst case, you’ll make a deposit now. This helps with cash flow.

5. If you’re a solo practitioner go ahead and make arrangements for another lawyer to cover your emergencies. It’s easier to get someone to agree to do this for you now than it will be two weeks before the trip. People will easily agree to something months away that they won’t do at the last-minute. Go ahead and send this lawyer a gift, now, and say thanks to really seal the deal. If you’re in a firm, go ahead and alert the appropriate people that you’ll be gone.

6. Take whatever steps are required, if possible, to prevent opposing counsel from scheduling court dates during your vacation. In our jurisdiction, we have a court policy allowing us to designate periods as “protected leave.”

7. Start the process of preparing a notice to clients that you’ll be out-of-town and unreachable. Go ahead and have a letter and an email list underway so you can send it about 4 weeks before you go.

You’re good to go. You’ll likely notice a spring in your step as you get excited about the upcoming trip. You’ll also have something pleasant to think about as you listen to a whining client on the phone.

Now is the time to book the trip. Do it, do it, do it. You can thank me when you get back.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

7 Steps to a Fantastic Summer Vacation

Would you be willing to let clients self-schedule meetings with you or your staff? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could skip the phone call or emails required to schedule the meeting? What if you clients could access your calendar online and pick a meeting time that’s convenient for them and for you?

What about prospective clients? Would you be willing to allow them to schedule their own appointments?

I’m not sure if I’m ready to open my calendar up to anyone, anytime. I feel a need to decide whether a meeting is warranted, at least with potential, as distinguished from existing, clients. I suppose having an existing client schedule a meeting wouldn’t be a problem. It might even make my life easier if they picked a time from a list of my available slots.

bookingbug is a hosted service that makes self-scheduling possible. They offer a free plan and a number of more fully featured pay plans starting at $10 per month. There’s no software to install or maintain. You embed a widget on your website to give clients the ability schedule meetings. You can even have them make payment for the meeting through bookingbug. You can embed the widget on your public site or behind a wall on your client portal. You can even put the widget on social media sites like Facebook. Your calendar can be customized to match the look and feel of your website and your clients won’t leave your website while booking their meeting.

This is an interesting service. I’m not sure exactly how I’ll put it to work in my practice, but I’m thinking pretty hard about it. Giving our clients a sense of control over their cases is a formula for happiness. The happier they are the happier we are. It’s win-win and bookingbug may end up playing a part in that formula.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Let Your Clients Schedule Their Own Appointments

We’ve got a lawyer who has dropped his Blackberry in the “sink” (uh huh, sure, I suspect it was the toilet) twice. One time we replaced the phone with a new one. The next time we were able to dry it out and it started working after a few days.

There are lots of ideas about how to dry out a phone. They usually involve rice, silica gel, or hair dryers. It’s hard to know what really works. You really want the phone dried out and working because buying a new smartphone, without the benefit of a contract subsidy, can run more than $500.

Dry-All is a “Molecular Dehumidifier” designed for drying out cell phones. It sells for $20 a bottle plus $5 shipping. You put your phone in a sealed container filled with Dry-All and about 48 hours later your phone is, hopefully, dry and working. There aren’t any guarantees, but it’s a more reliable approach than much of what I’ve read about elsewhere. I’ve got a bottle on the shelf waiting for the next dip in the toilet.

Dry-All is not a one shot deal. You can use it over and over. You’ve got to reactivate it after use by drying it out in the oven. It takes 15 minutes and sounds pretty easy.

Dry-All protects against more than just toilets. It also works on moisture from pools, rivers, lakes, oceans, snow, rain and other sources of water. I suggest you go ahead and order a jar of the stuff. It will be too late to buy it when you really need it.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How To Rescue Your Cell Phone from the Toilet

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: Just Try Not To Laugh

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

5min Rules The How-To Video Space

Toggl: Time Tracking Made Easy

Video, Screencasts and Still Images – Using the Right Tool at the Right Time

What Husbands and Wives Search for on Google

Smartphones Are Selling Like Crazy

Photo credit: Diego Goldberg

Article from: Divorce Discourse

5min, Time, Tools, Searches and Selling Like Crazy

A simple greeting card can make a huge difference. Whether it’s a birthday card, a congratulatory message or a thank you card, it demonstrates that you care and that your thoughts are with the recipient. They are an inexpensive and powerful tool in your marketing arsenal.

But, going to the Hallmark store every time you need a card is a pain. Many times we get distracted by other business and the card never gets sent.

enGreet comes to the rescue and helps you get your card mailed. With enGreet you pick a card, customize it and they mail it for you. It easy and convenient. They’ve got cards for every occasion and their web interface makes it simple to customize the card for your purposes. I’m using it mostly for thank you notes, but it’s coming in handy for birthday cards also. I’m gearing up to send out a bunch of graduation cards in a few months.

Greeting cards are terrific for referral sources as a way to remind them that you exist. They are a wonderful way to tell employees that you care. They also come in handy with your spouse and kids. enGreet allows you to store your contacts on their system so you won’t have to re-enter the recipients mailing info for each new occasion.

Most of the personalized cards cost about $3.00. enGreet offers 2nd day expedited shipping if you fail to plan. Normal, first class mail, shipping runs $2.00 per card. They offer international shipping as well. For $5.00 you’ve got a nice card, delivered, with your personal message.

Valentine’s Day is approaching quickly. You might want to give enGreet a try.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Greeting Cards Made Easy

I love the idea of virtual assistants. They usually work from home (saving on real estate costs, computer expenses and furniture). They aren’t employees, they’re independent contractors (no benefits). They usually result in your costs being variable and not fixed.

Most importantly, they are, usually, the Chief Executive Officer of their own business. They see you as a customer, not a boss. They are their own boss. That makes a huge difference in performance.

But, life is not a bed of roses with a virtual assistant. It’s a complex relationship requiring different skills than are required to manage an on-site employee. You’ve got to be good at delegating, at explaining what you need and at managing at a distance.

I’ve used a virtual assistant with great success. It works. When I was doing it initially, I thought of virtual assistants as an interim step to fill the gap before being able to keep a full-time employee busy. But, I don’t see it that way anymore. I think an entire practice can be managed by and with virtual employees. It’s an option to consider.

Lots of people have put loads of time into thinking about how to manage virtual assistants. They’ve come up with systems and procedures that will help get you started and keep you going with your virtual staff. The most helpful material I’ve found is by Jeff Widman. His post Virtual Assistant Needed: How to Hire And Work With a Virtual Assistant is fantastic. He will get you thinking and you may find that you can simply cut and paste most his materials to create your own system.

Think about the things you might delegate to a virtual assistant. Find someone and give it a try. You can always change your mind and walk away if it’s not working. More likely, however, is that you’ll quickly become dependent on your new help. You’ll free up time enabling you to do more valuable and lucrative work. It’s an idea worth exploring.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How To Work with a Virtual Assistant

I love having a great case management system. On top of that, I really love our flat fee system. We’ve got a great way to keep up with the work we’ve done and we don’t need to keep time records. It’s magic.

But, I recognize that not everyone is going to invest in a case management system with a built-in time and billing system. I also know, having talked to so many of you by phone and email, that you’re not necessarily ready to move to a flat fee system. I get it.

That doesn’t, however, mean you can run your practice on the back of a napkin. You need a really solid time and billing system. You want it to be simple. You don’t want to spend a bunch of money on it and you especially don’t want to get bogged down in technology issues when  the server crashes and the backup fails. You’d rather not track time by hand, but you will if it’s less of a hassle than managing a computerized system.

I’ve checked out a bunch of systems and one product keeps coming up – FreshBooks. I’ve read multiple reviews from a variety of professionals with hands-on experience with the product.  Everyone loves it and highly recommends it. My experience with the product is limited to their free “Moped” account. I’ve spent some time playing with their user interface and I’m impressed. FreshBooks is absolutely worth the time it will take you to check it out and see if it meets your needs. It’s a hosted product meaning there’s no software for you to install, no data to backup and no server to maintain.

Their pricing is good and it varies depending on the number of clients you need to bill. They have a variety of add-ons including iPhone and Android apps and desktop time keeping. They offer a free trial and a money back guarantee. If you’re doing this by hand, or if your current system keeps you awake at night with worry about a system crash, then it’s time to give FreshBooks a try.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

The Best Time and Billing System

Storytelling is a critical skill for the successful family law practitioner. I spent most of 2008 focused on learning to be a better storyteller.  I read a dozen books, watched a ton of videos, attended several storytelling festivals, practiced at Toastmasters and had a terrific time learning. I’m not sure how much my storytelling improved.

I love the Ira Glass videos I’ve embedded below. I’m sure you’re a fan of This American Life. It’s fantastic. Watch as Ira Glass provides a terrific overview of storytelling.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How To Tell A Great Story

Surveys reveal that 1 of every 3 employees would leave their jobs if they could. That’s in well-run companies. It’s a normal part of work life today. Accept it and don’t worry about it.

Your goal is to focus on the other two-thirds of your employees. Many businesses can’t keep the other employees happy. Those businesses are headed for trouble. You’ve got to be certain what you’re doing is working for at least 2 out of 3.

Focus on the people who are engaged, happy, positive and productive. They play a tremendous role in keeping the ambivalent employees moving along in the right direction. Don’t allow the unhappy 1/3 to suck away your time and energy. Don’t get distracted by the whining and complaining of the 1/3. They aren’t going to be happy no matter where they work.

Focusing on the engaged, energized, employees means doing several things. You’ve got to communicate with them frequently. Help them understand where you’re headed. Meet with them each week. Take the time to show interest in their lives. Mentor them, train them, listen to them and understand their goals and priorities. Put energy into being sure they’re getting what they need to fulfill their dreams. These are the people who are going to help you achieve your goals. Investing in them is key to your success

Article from: Divorce Discourse

One Third of Your Employees Want to Quit

Seriously, I’m not quite sure how this will fit in to my life, but it’s shiny and sleek and I’ve got to have one. Hopefully, I’ll talk myself out of it before it’s released.

Anyway, here’s an amusing video of what was happening outside while Steve Jobs was inside announcing the new gadget.

And here’s another one.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: The iPad – Not Sure Why But I Want One

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

No More Websites. Only Publishers. – Great post that supports my contention that Web sites are becoming less important. I love when smart people agree with me. Of course, he has never heard of me, but I try not to think about that.

Could Your Blog be Ruining Your Business? – Yep, it could. But for most of you, it’s not. You’re just not that into your blog.

The false solace of vilification – I really can’t let a week go by without mentioning Seth Godin. This great post is oddly related to family law, I think.

Be Your Account’s Historian – Valuable tip in this post for Google adwords users. These guys do a great job of keeping me alerted to the latest stuff on PPC advertising. They offer terrific webinars as well. Definitely worth adding to your reader.

Follow changes to any website – You can set up a feed in Google Reader to monitor changes on any Web site. Great way to keep an eye on the competition.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

No More Websites, Blogs or Villains – Plus Two Tech Tips

You had an initial consultation with the prospective client last week. He called a few minutes ago and he’s ready to get started. You need him to sign a client agreement and make a payment. It would be nice if you could get the client signed up while he’s ready to go. The more time you wait, the more likely it is that something will slow him down.

He can’t come by the office today to sign the agreement and leave the check. Unfortunately, he’s tied up in a meeting and needs to be at the airport at 6 AM for a three-day business trip. How can you get him started now?

Go ahead and draft the client agreement. Get it just right and send it to him using RightSignature or EchoSign. These services allow you to email the document to the client and he can sign it from his computer. He can even sign using his iPhone with RightSignature. It’s all done on the computer screen with no need to do the usual print, sign and fax back routine. It’s quick and painless and doesn’t involve any office equipment other than the computer.

Both services have trial offers so you can test the service and EchoSign even has a free account option. I’ve been using RightSignature for months and it’s solid. It’s simple and it works. We’ve signed up quite a few clients using their service and I can recommend it without reservation. I haven’t tried EchoSign yet and would appreciate your feedback if you give it a trial run. Give one of them a try and within minutes you’ll have the client agreement signed, sealed and delivered.

Next up – getting the payment taken care of.

One option is to have the client provide you with his credit card information over the phone or by email. Another option is to have the client provide you with his checking account number and routing number. If you go the checking account route, use software like that provided by CheckMan to create a check on your printer that you can deposit just like any other. You can take that check to the bank even though it isn’t signed. Another option, and the one we’re currently using, is a virtual terminal provided by your credit card processor. They allow us to type the check info straight into the software they provide and the check is instantly credited to our account.

Now you’re good to go. With an executed client agreement plus payment you can get started on the client’s case.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How To Make Hiring You Frictionless

Every so often you’re going to get interviewed by a newspaper reporter or TV news crew. That’s a good thing. Getting your name out will help you grow your practice. If you’re a good source of helpful commentary and information you’ll get quoted with frequency.

But, you can screw that up. You can do something that will keep you from getting those calls from the media.

When you get interviewed you need to keep your mouth shut about the interview. Don’t mention your interview on Facebook or Twitter or anywhere else until after the interview gets published or televised. Keep it to yourself.

Why? Because reporters are serious about beating their competition. They don’t want anyone to know the stories they’re working on until after it’s too late for the competition to respond.

It used to be that no one really had to worry about you spoiling the story. That was before social media. In the not very distant past you didn’t have the ability to tell the world what your local paper or TV station was working on. Now you do and you need to understand the need to exercise discretion about releasing the information.

This is not a hypothetical situation. I’ve watched a number of lawyers let the cat out of the bag before the story reached the public. I understand the desire to tell the world that you were picked for the interview. That’s fine and I encourage you promote yourself and the attention you’ve received from the media. You must, however, wait until the release of the story. Once it’s out, go wild, tweet it, Facebook it, blog it, and mention it on your website. Just don’t jump the gun.

If you’re not sure if it’s okay to tell the world about the interview then ask the reporter. If you’re not clear on what to do then don’t mention the interview. It’s important for the reporter to have a chance to scoop the competition. The fastest way to never get a call from another reporter is to expose the story idea before it gets published.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How To Keep From Being Quoted By The Media

We just finished up with a round of interviewing and hired a bright, young associate. She’s impressive and we’re fortunate to have found her.

Being involved in the interviews got me thinking about my favorite interview questions. I’m not sure if they tell me as much about a candidate as I’d like, but I enjoy asking them and hearing the answers.

Here they are -

1. What are you most proud of in your life?

2. How much money do you want to make?

3. What would you do if you won the lottery?

4. Sell me this pencil.

5. If you could represent anyone in history, who would it be and why?

6. Do you wear a watch? Read a newspaper? Vote?

7. How many friends to do you have on Facebook?

8. What has been your greatest failure and what did you learn form it?

9. Do you hold a grudge? Against whom? Why?

10. What do you love most about your life?

Article from: Divorce Discourse

My 10 Favorite Interview Questions

WooRank is a new, free tool that provides a quick and easy analysis of your website and it’s conformance to search engine optimization best practices. It analyzes your site for 50 different criteria and provides instant results.

WooRank identifies problems and allows you to compare your results to your competitors. I’m finding myself running analysis after analysis. It’s kind of addictive.

WooRank is in beta and is free for now. It appears that a premium, paid version will be coming down the road. Get your free analysis now while you can still do it for free.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How Search Engine Friendly is Your Website?

Initial consultations are a make or break meeting. If you’re good at these meetings you’re going to grow your practice. If you struggle to sign clients up for further representation you’re going to struggle financially.

Here are the top five mistakes -

1. Not listening. Sometimes lawyers get so absorbed by making a good impression that they spend most of the meeting thinking about what they’re going to say and then saying it. They aren’t listening well and it’s apparent. The prospective client is far more interested in talking than listening. They may tell you they’re visiting with you to learn about their rights, but the fact is they’ve usually come to you to tell their story. Your mission is to hear their story and keep your mouth shut. The more you listen, the more likely you are to turn your prospect in to a client.

2. Thinking that people make decisions based on facts. They don’t. They decide based on emotions. They need to like you and trust you. Once they feel good about you they’re going to rationalize their decision to hire you with the facts. The more you explain the rational reasons for hiring you the less likely you are to get the result you seek. Do what you need to do to be liked. Let the prospect know you care, you’re interested, you’re excited about helping them. The prospective client won’t have any trouble rationalizing the decision to hire you after they make the emotional decision that you’re the right lawyer for them.

3. Acting phony. Sure, you’re a lawyer. I’m impressed with you. You’re impressed with you. But please, please, don’t act like a lawyer. Act like a person. The prospective client wants a real person that happens to have a law license. Be real, be human, that’s how you connect. Don’t be overly formal, don’t play the part of lawyer. Instead, play the part of human. Don’t be afraid to tell the client when you don’t know the answer. Let the client know something about your life especially the parts that don’t always work out the way you’d like. Smile, laugh, cry, be authentic.

4. Failing to prepare. Don’t go into an initial consultation without knowing the law related to the issues that are going to be discussed. Make sure you have a working familiarity with the process and procedures that relate to the issues the client is coming to discuss. Be certain that your call screening process alerts you to those issues. Be confident that you can discuss the issues and that you can answer most of the questions.

5. Preparing too much. Being prepared is important. It allows you to answer questions and inspire confidence. However, being well prepared leads to talking more than you should. It’s good to know the law surrounding the issues you’re discussing. It’s a mistake when you feel compelled to share all of your preparation with the client. They’ll know you know things because you’ll feel well prepared, it will come across in your demeanor. Remember, you need to let them talk while you keep your mouth shut.

These are all avoidable mistakes. Take corrective action and you’ll have more clients hiring you and your practice will continue to grow.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

The 5 Worst Initial Consultation Mistakes

I’m a big fan of Google Maps and especially enjoy playing with the street view feature. I thought this video was especially amusing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: Google Maps Humor

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

Too much data leads to not enough belief – A great Seth Godin post that applies to initial consultations.

Please stop saying social media marketing is free – it’s not free, it’s time consuming and many of us sell time.

Perform a Landing Page Analysis on your Blog – worthwhile activity for you.

7 Lessons for Better Networking with Social Media

Have a great weekend.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Data, Marketing, Landing and Networking

Earlier today I had a phone conversation with a great young lawyer who’s been practicing for a couple of years in a big city on the east coast of the U.S. We talked on the phone because I got an email from him yesterday and felt that I had to call.

His email asked if my law firm website generated any business.

Huh? How could he possibly wonder if our website, or any family law website, generated new clients and revenues?

I couldn’t really understand why someone would ask that question. I wanted to clarify and find out what he really wanted to know. Certainly he wasn’t asking what I thought he was asking.

We chatted for about half an hour during which it became clear that a few family law practitioners told him that websites don’t attract quality clients and they don’t work. He was told that you couldn’t get decent clients that could afford to pay reasonable fees from a website. He had become perplexed when he tried to reconcile the things I’ve said here with the things he’s being told by other lawyers.

Basically, the lawyers he talked to advocate building a referral based practice by doing good work and getting to know other lawyers. That’s good advice. You can’t go wrong with good work and getting to know other lawyers.

But, you’re leaving revenues, huge revenues, on the table if you’re failing to promote your practice on the web. Our site receives tons of traffic resulting in many, many consultations. It works.

And it’s not clients in dire economic circumstances. It’s middle-income people, upper-income people and super-duper income people. Everybody is searching for help on the web. Aren’t you?

I’m still a bit shaken that I’m feeling compelled to remind you that websites work. I thought we’d agreed on that long ago (my site went up in 1996). Yes, websites work. They generate clients, lots of clients. I’m hopeful, and fairly certain, that most of you already know the truthfulness of what I’m saying. But, I wanted to be sure.

If you don’t have a website, build one.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Will a Website Generate Business for You?

My wife walked in to my home office yesterday and took note of one of my gadgets. She liked it. That’s usually a sign of an amazingly useful and simple device that’s going to be wildly successful.

This time she was merely pleased that the gadget is pink. It’s called the PogoPlug.

The PogoPlug is a device that takes a simple hard drive and transforms it into a platform for multimedia Web sharing. It’s shockingly easy to use and costs only $129.

You plug your hard drive (it accommodates up to four drives) into the PogoPlug, hook up a network cable and plug in the power cord and everything on your drive is instantly accessible over the Web. You can access your content from your PC, Mac or even your iPhone.

This device could not be easier to set up.

You can do more than access your files. You can stream your audio and video over the web, you can share your files with friends and you can share your pictures and more on Facebook and Twitter.

Basically, the PogoPlug gives you a storage space on the web without paying anything other than the cost of the hardware. It’s great to upload files to the PogoPlug while you’re at the office and access them from home. It’s terrific to store huge folders full of data and have access to them wherever you are.

There are no monthly fees and it’s pink. What’s not to love?

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Create Your Own Cloud with PogoPlug

Most family law attorneys I know take credit cards. That’s a good thing. Anything you can do to make it easier for your client to pay is a good thing.

Getting set up to take credit cards is a bit of a hassle. You have to get approved for a merchant account, you’ve got set up hardware or software for processing the card and you’ve got to have an internet or phone connection. None of these requirements are overly burdensome but they might prove difficult in some circumstances.

Lawyers approaching their practices with some out of the box thinking might find the typical credit card/bank arrangements less than convenient. For instance, lawyers doing house calls would like to process a charge while visiting with the client. It would be great to process the payment while you’re chatting about trial preparation with your client at Starbucks, wouldn’t it?

Maybe you’d like to settle a client’s account at the courthouse while the client is still thrilled with the result you just obtained. That might be the perfect time to get your bill paid.

Square will soon offer an iPhone app that allows you to process the payment over the phone. You’ll plug a little square gizmo into your iPhone, swipe the card and have the client sign on the iPhone. The funds will quickly appear in your account and you’ll be charged a small fee for processing.

Here’s a short video of Kevin Rose demonstrating the app.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How To Take a Credit Card On a House Call

Do you love practicing family law? Are you passionate about it. Do you find yourself reading litigation tactics books on vacation? Are you studying collaborative law articles while in the bathroom? Do you pore over every edition of Family Advocate?

If you don’t then you should get out. You should move on. You should find the thing you’re truly passionate about and go do it.

Family law is way to hard to do if you don’t have it in your bones. You can’t stand up to the client abuse, the judicial abuse, the peer abuse if you aren’t totally getting off on what you’re doing.

Far to many family law practitioners sit around the courthouse whining about the clients, the judges, the difficulties of managing associates, the challenges of collecting fees. They seem to hate what they’re doing. They seem to find little joy in helping a client, in performing in court, in pulling the rabbit out of the hat in a mediation.

Here’s the deal – if you’re not happy, you’re never going to do well. You’re not going to make money, you’re not going to find satisfaction in your work, your not going to find contentment. You’re screwed. Be miserable or get out – pick one.

I’d suggest you get out. Run, don’t walk, toward something else. There are lots of other possibilities. Maybe one of them is your thing. Maybe one of them will get you firing on all cylinders. Maybe one of them will keep you up at night with excitement about the next day. Seriously.

Some people love what they do. They’re always going to succeed in some form or fashion. If you hate it – you’re going to fail. Life’s too short.

If you’re that person complaining, think about what it means. Think about whether you hate family law or just love to complain. If it’s the former then pack it in, move on and find the place where you belong.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

You Won’t Succeed If You Don’t Love Family Law

Click here to view the embedded video.

Prescient words. He was killed less than 24 hours later.

He was an amazing, some say the best, speaker. We get the opportunity to speak on behalf of others with great frequency. Sometimes we advocate on behalf of an important cause. Do you ever let your inner Martin Luther King come out?

Article from: Divorce Discourse

A Moment from MLK’s Last Speech

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: Streetwalking Lawyers Of Aurora Avenue

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

80 Ways To Use Twitter As A SMB Owner – Just in case you haven’t figured it out yet.

The 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration

5 Flickr Legal Marketing Tactics – This guy’s stuff is consistently good and practical. He’s constantly spewing out good ideas.

How to Cover a Conference Using Twitter - I’m increasingly using Twitter at conferences. We need more lawyers using Twitter at continuing education programs so we can get a thriving back-channel discussion going.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Twitter, Twitter, Flickr

We’re hiring. We’ve been interviewing this week and we’re narrowing down the field. It’s going pretty well.

We have one candidate that bothers me. She’s an associate in another local family law firm. She’s qualified for the position.

We’ve never hired an attorney from another local family law firm. We haven’t been particularly happy when other firms have come after our associates and we’ve avoided doing it ourselves.

This prospective associate says she doesn’t really feel needed at her firm. She’s worried that they’re in an overcapacity situation. She’s worried about the long term.

She hasn’t told her firm she’s interviewing.

She’s a pretty appealing candidate, but I don’t want to make an enemy of her current employer. We’ve been dealing with that firm for years and we’ll be dealing with them for years to come.

I’m not really sure what to do. I might be doing them a favor by taking her off their hands. I might be aggravating the crap out of them by hiring her. I’m considering telling her that she’ll need to talk to the managing attorney in her firm, inform that person of what’s up and have them call us. Maybe I’ll give that person veto authority over our request.

Of course, there are other fish in the sea. We could just pick someone else.

What would you do?

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Should You Hire Your Competitor’s Associates?

The time is rapidly approaching when a website won’t make much difference to your practice. That’s hard to imagine. But, you only have to think back to when websites didn’t matter to see how how quickly things change.

My firm built a website 14 years ago. It didn’t do much for us back then. Why? Because websites didn’t matter. Nobody was on the web.

Things changed, in a big way, in the intervening years. The web became our home away from home.

Now, things are changing again. And the speed of change today is much, much faster than it has been in the past. Websites won’t matter much sooner than 14 years from now. What took 14 years before might take 14 months now.

So what will matter?

We’re quickly moving to a world where everything that matters, with respect to commerce anyway, is all about mobile and local.

Everyone will do their purchasing research on a mobile device – maybe an iPhone, a Droid, or an Apple tablet. Which devices will prove popular is yet to be determined. Very few consumers will be interested in doing their research in front of a big screen at home. Many folks won’t even have a traditional desktop or laptop computer.

The device they’re using will be location aware and know where the user is at the moment. They’ll seek a divorce lawyer on their device and they’ll quickly see names and addresses of nearby attorneys. Each attorney will be ranked and rated by former clients. Reviews will be easily accessible. The client will want the best and the device will instantly identify that lawyer.

The prospective client will push a button and dial the attorney’s office.

How do I know? Because this isn’t science fiction. It’s reality today. That’s how users are picking restaurants, coffee shops, dentists and doctors. This isn’t some futuristic vision.

It’s happening very quickly. 11% of Americans used smartphones in 2008. That went up to 17% in 2009. These users represent the most desirable clients for most family law practitioners.

So what do you do about it? Focus on local listings for now. Make sure you’re registered with the local business centers for Google, Bing and Yahoo. Be sure your happy clients are writing reviews on directory sites. Worry more about these activities than you do about your website or blog. Be sure you have these basics covered so that you’re ahead of the crowd as this shift occurs.

Now is the time to prepare for the change.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

What’s Going to Matter When Websites Don’t Matter Anymore

I’ve been flattered when someone has decided that I’m someone they ought to meet in an effort to grow their business. They’ve called. I’ve invited them over and we’ve talked about the things I’ve done and the ideas I have. On occasion, they’ve flown across the country to meet and I’ve loved the attention. I hope they gained something from our time together.

I’ve done the same thing to others. I identified someone as a person from whom I’d like to learn something. I’ve called. They’ve invited me to come visit and I’ve never been disappointed with what I’ve learned. I’ve never had anyone turn me down.

Who should you be talking to? Who is a leader in our field that you’d like to meet? What about leaders in other industries that might have something to share?

I’d suggest that you look around and identify the people that you think might have valuable information to share. It might be a bar association leader, it might be a prominent trial lawyer, it might be a local business person that takes a leadership role in a charitable cause, or maybe a person that has started and grown a successful company. The possibilities are limitless.

Pick someone. Call them. Explain that you practice family law and you’re building a practice. Tell them that you’d like to meet them and learn more about how they’ve done what they’ve done. Offer to come by their office for a few minutes. Start with someone local. Don’t fly anywhere for this first effort.

Go at the designated time. Bring a pad and pen. Ask some general questions – “How’d you get started? What advice do you offer for someone who’s at the beginning of building their business? What accomplishment are you most proud of?” Ask for a tour. Ask about family and hobbies.

My guess is that the meeting will run much longer than planned and that you’ll learn more than you ever imagined.

Please try this once, no matter what stage of practice you’re in. Just do it and please report back here as to how it went. My guess is that it’ll go so well that you’ll become a regular visitor to lots of people you respect.

And that you’ll learn things you never knew you didn’t know.

And that good things will come that you never expected.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Who Should You Meet To Grow Your Business?

Did you know that your website might look one way in Internet Explorer and another way in Firefox? It can look different in Safari than it does in Chrome. It might have a whole different look in Opera. Did you even know there were so many web browsers? And I haven’t mentioned more than a handful – there are many, many others.

Two Sites, Browsera and Browsershots both allow you to compare the way your site looks in each browser without having to install each browser on your computer. You type in the URL of your site, select the browsers you wish to check and the sites bring up a view of your site within each browser. You’ll immediately note the defects in your site.

In my tests a surprising number of sites have errors in some browsers and not in others. You should definitely test your site and see what you find.

Browsera offers a 30 day free trial and paid plans after the trial expires. Browsershots is free, but you can pay for priority processing. Unless you’re making lots of changes to your site, you should be able to run the test for free under one of these plans.

Run your site through one of these sites and make sure everything looks the way it’s supposed to look. A broken site makes a terrible first impression. Don’t let a technical glitch result in the loss of a potential client.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How To Test Your Website

I’ve loved my Verizon MiFi portable WiFi device. But now Sprint is going to give Verizon a run for it’s money. They’re offering the first 4G network. It’s advertised as being much faster than the the Verizon 3G network. My review compares the MiFi on 3G to the Overdrive on 4G.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sites mentioned – Speed Test, Verizon Mifi and Sprint Overdrive.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Portable WiFi – Sprint Overdrive vs. Verizon MiFi

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: Weather Channel Wedding Proposal

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

The Checklist — Effective, Cheap Health Care – This review is written by my cousin and is applicable to our work. Really important idea that is easy to implement. If it’s good enough for pilots and doctors, maybe it’s good enough for us?

Six New Business Books For 2010 – There’s terrific stuff coming this year.

A Daily Resolution – If you can’t handle a resolution for a full year, how about just for one day?

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Checklists, Resolutions and Books

This is, arguably, unrelated to the practice of family law. But, that won’t stop me. It hasn’t stopped me before. Plus, I’ve got an argument for why it’s related.

When I visit the courthouse and look around I see a bunch of husky family law attorneys (“husky” is what they called the blue jeans I wore as a kid).

We spend lots of time sitting, we don’t always eat healthy food and we often don’t make time to exercise.

Thus, some of us are “husky.”

I’ve got some tips for weight loss. Pretty simple – eat less and exercise more. I’ve found that this combination works for me.

But more importantly, I’ve found this cool new scale for keeping up with your weight.

It’s the Withings Internet Connected Body Scale. I bought mine from Amazon (affiliate link).

You hook it up to your home WiFi network and when you weigh yourself it posts your numbers to a private website you can access from your computer or iPhone. It keeps a nice graph and shows your body fat in addition to your weight.

On top of that, you can have it send your weight to Twitter. I’ve seriously been thinking about doing that. On the one hand, I don’t want everybody to know when my weight is up. On the other hand, I’d bet I’d feel a fair amount of pressure to get my weight down. I’ve got a bunch of people receiving my Twitter updates. I wouldn’t want them to know that I couldn’t control myself and my eating. Maybe I’d think about that before ordering dessert or eating that second helping.

I have, for years, been recording my weight in a notebook each morning. I told my wife about this new scale and explained that now I wouldn’t have to walk across the bathroom to write down my weight. She called me “lazy.” Isn’t that grounds for divorce, or something?

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Tracking Your Weight Online (If You’re a Husky Divorce Lawyer)

Can your employees answer this question? Do they have any objective reference point for determining if this was a good week?

If not, then how should they feel about how they’re doing? Do you leave it up to their imagination? Do you leave it up to the random compliment delivered by you?

If that’s the case then you’re going to have a problem with that employee.

Everybody needs to know if this was a good week.

We all need some objective measure of how we’re doing. It’s only with that input that we can figure out how to improve. It’s the only way we can feel a sense of accomplishment. It’s the only way we can feel good about our role, our position, our job.

Lets say you’re the receptionist. Your week is filled with answering the phone, dealing with visitors, sorting and processing mail, taking payments, keeping the lobby clean, etc. Weeks come, weeks go. How do you know if you did a good job this week?

It’s a tough question to answer. You’ll know if you did a poor job. You’ll know if things went off the rails and clients complained about the greeting, the cleanliness of the lobby or their mishandled phone calls. But, how will you know if things went well?

That’s what you, the employer, have to figure out. You’ve got to define success.

What you need to do is come up some things to measure and ask your employee to help maintain the performance measuring data. Ideally, you’ll get the employee to help you come up with the measurements.

You’ll be helping the receptionist identify the things that are important and you’ll be helping your employee work toward improvement in those areas.

What should you measure?

How about measuring the number of compliments from clients regarding the receptionist. Each time something nice is said, you report it to the receptionist who adds it to a chart. Maybe you measure the number or letters properly addressed and mailed the same day. How about measuring the number of rings it takes to answer each call and come up with the weekly average? How about the measuring number of clients that are greeted by name? Maybe you could measure the number of visitors that walk in to a staffed front desk and don’t have to wait for the receptionist to return from the back or the bathroom.

Take a guess at setting a target for each measurement. Refine the targets as you see how each week turns out. Now you’re giving your employee a tool for feeling good.

You’ve got to be creative. Think about the job. Think about the things you’d like to improve. That’s the way to create the measurements.

What’s going to happen?

Suddenly your receptionist gets it. The game is clear. A good week is now defined. You can bet that your receptionist would rather have a good week than a bad week and it’s clear how to have a good one.

You win, the receptionist wins, and your clients win when you come up with solid measurements.

Now your receptionist has some control over the job and can be proud of this weeks accomplishments. Now the receptionist can answer the question.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Did You Do a Good Job This Week?

I was on vacation. I was thinking about our law firm and I was, as usual, reading a business book.

The book started me thinking about shifting some personnel around to new positions. I got excited. I had a great idea about moving several people to new roles in which they had no experience.

It seemed like a great idea as I sat on my towel, under a palm tree, listening to the waves crash.

I don’t think I need to tell you how that decision turned out.

Fast forward to right now. It’s January. We’ve only had two work days. But what a two days it’s been. The new clients are lined up – they’re throwing money at us. It’s crazy and it’s only been 48 hours since we got back to work.

I suspect the rest of the month will be good (not as good as Monday and Tuesday), but good.

Here’s what happens to me. I get excited. My brain sees the revenues pouring in. I make new projections based on short term income and I decide to hire more people to handle the work. I add personnel when we’re booming and then we’re overstaffed when things slow down. I’ve done it before. The fallout is horrible. I’ve got to stop.

Why do I do it? Because I’m giddy, I’m optimistic. Are these good decisions? Of course not. These can be seriously bad payroll decisions. Payroll decisions are our biggest decisions. Making a bad call on payroll impacts everything and it can ruin your year.

Hiring needlessly is a big mistake. I’m writing this article in hopes that I’ll remind myself not to repeat my mistakes (and maybe help you along the way).

I need to repeat to myself, over and over, the following words -

Don’t hire the people. Don’t hire the people.

That’s what I need to remember.

We need to stretch out the work and work a little harder for the next few months without dramatically expanding our payroll.

When I hire people based on my giddy January projections we end up killing our profitability when the work slows down.

And for us, the impact of a slowdown is sudden since we only bill with fixed fees. Those of you that still bill hourly (and there are fewer and fewer of you) are able to mask the impact of the seasonality of our work. But it’s no less of a problem, it just isn’t always as obvious.

So, bottom line,  don’t make decisions, especially big decisions while you’re on vacation or during January. Wait until things calm down and you aren’t excited.

As an aside, in an effort to head off a confrontation with my wife, let me say that our decision to get married, twenty years ago, while on vacation in Hawaii, was a good decision and I was obviously thinking clearly that day.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Don’t Make Major Decisions on Vacation (or in January)

Maybe your New Year’s Resolution is to branch out into blogging. Maybe you’re doing the research right now.

What should you write about? How will you generate business from the blog? What will be your strategy?

Most family law bloggers write about recent developments in family law along with general advice about coping with a divorce. They’re usually writing for an audience of prospective clients in their local area. They frequently comment on national or international issues and attempt to tie in a local angle.

That’s not what I’d do.

Here’s what I’d do – I’d write for a national audience of attorneys. My objective would be to generate referrals from that audience when they needed help for a client in my local area (which, by the way, is Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary and Charlotte, North Carolina).

I’d focus on my writing on something family law attorneys want and need to know. I might write on family law tax or retirement plan issues. I might focus on electronic evidence or discovery. Maybe I’d zoom in on international child abductions or family law trial techniques. I might write about business valuations or the division of a certain type of asset – like veterinary practices.

Basically, I’d do all I could to become “that guy” – the expert on “X” – that was known to every family law attorney in the country. Over time I’d establish myself as someone they could count on for help via my blog and someone they could count on when they needed to make a referral in my local area.

My guess is that I’d get calls from the media, giving me national exposure. I’d also expect calls from attorneys asking questions, giving me the opportunity to pay it forward for those referrals that will come down the road. Most importantly, I’d get excited about my area of expertise. I’d really dig in and learn something. I’d enjoy the learning, the sharing and the attention. It’s a win-win-win.

That’s what I’d do.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

What Should You Blog About?

When I was a kid I dated a girl during high school who lived in South Miami.  I, of course, lived in North Miami and that aggravated the crap out of my dad who got really tired of me borrowing his car to drive 65 miles, round trip, to go visit this girl.

Basically my dad was of the opinion that I should be able to find a girl a lot closer to our home. Dad kept telling me there were plenty of girls on our side of town. “There are plenty of fish in the sea” he would say.

Picking a geographic area for your practice is a lot like picking the location of the person you’re going to date.

Usually you can find plenty of clients in close proximity to your office. Of course, it’s going to be difficult to find many clients if you practice in a very narrow specialty (men only, collaborative only, etc.).  But if you have a general family law practice you should be able to find plenty of clients relatively close to your office.

Proximity to your clients becomes important when you’re visiting the homes and workplaces of client’s and witnesses preparing for trial. It matters when you’re driving back and forth to the courthouse to which their case is assigned. It matters when you’re driving to opposing counsel’s office for depositions and settlement conferences. And it matters when prospective clients are considering whether to call you or a competitor with an office closer to their home or office.

In an ideal world you’ll find all your fish in the pond closest to your home. That’s what you should be striving toward – limiting the geographic range of your practice.

Of course, you might start out with a large geographic area and be willing to take a case from just about anyone that calls – no matter where they live. But, over time, you should work to narrow that area. You want to find nearby clients that meet your criteria. Only go as far as required to stay fully booked with your ideal client. As soon as you reach capacity, start cutting back on the geographic area. Keep repeating the cycle, over and over, as you refine your clientele.

If you keep narrowing the geographic area, and staying fully booked with the ideal client, you’ll increase your profit margin over time. You’ll make more money and spend less time doing it. That works for you, doesn’t it?

If business slows down, widen the range a bit, but, close it back down as soon as the business picks up again.

It’s just like dating, right? My dad was happy when, eventually, I found a girlfriend who lived closer and the driving stopped.

Now it’s my turn. “Payback is a bitch” they say. Now, I’ve got a sixteen year old, borrowing my car and dating a girl way out on the other side of town.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Dating Someone Nearby or How to Increase Your Profit by Limiting Your Market

When I got married it was “funny” to tie tin cans to the back of the car we drove away in. Wild and crazy weddings involved filling the car with balloons or, maybe, disconnecting the alternator so the car wouldn’t start.

Then along came Twitter.

Now we’ve got a tech savvy best man who figured out a way to wire the marital bed to twitter. He used a contraption involving a pressure sensitive pad.

When the couple climbs in and things heat up, the bed tweets. It’s been tweeting since December 9th and it lets you know when the newlyweds are “on the job” and “off the job.” You can stay on top of the action by following the bed here. In addition to the start and end times, the sensor tweets a “frenzy index” rating the intensity of each session.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: A Bed That Tweets

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

Six New Business Books For 2010 – I’ve already ordered some of these and can’t wait to read them. I’m a total business book junkie.

Google Is About To Get Caffeinated With A Faster Search Index – We’ve talked about this before, remember? Well, now it’s days away.

How Do You Do Local SEO? – SEO is increasingly about local and increasingly about mobile.

How To Choose The Right Colour For Your Brand – Good stuff. This guy has consistently, excellent material. I get asked this question all the time.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Get Your New Books, Caffeine and Local SEO, In the Right Color

I hope you’ve made your resolutions and you’re well on your way to getting started.

But, if not, then maybe you check out the New Year’s Resolution Generator.

Have a great 2010.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Have You Made Your New Year’s Resolution Yet?

I’m taking my shot at making some predictions for the coming year. Will I be right? Will I be wrong? You’ll only know if you stick around for the next 365 days.

Here we go -

1. Prices will drop. The fees charged to family law clients will begin a fairly steep downward descent. It will be tough to tell that it’s happening because most practices are so small and there isn’t much of anything being done to collect data. The increased competition from unemployed and new lawyers opening solo practices and competing on price will drive the trend.

Additionally, clients will hesitate to pay reasonable fees as they continue to be squeezed by a tight economy and limited credit. They’ll be especially hesitant to pay decent fees in light of their new perceptions of what’s expensive after experiencing an “economic reset” during the recession.

2. Document preparation services (cheap, non-lawyer) will grow dramatically. Services like legalzoom will continue to thrive and their market will expand. They already do well in a middle and upper-middle income market. Clients will increasingly see family law attorneys as a necessary evil that only need to be hired if things get “really ugly.” These document services will be the beneficiaries most of the pent up demand resulting from the recession.

3. Some family law practices will cease to exist. Of course, this happens every year, but this year it will happen more than usual. These practitioners will find alternative careers. They won’t continue to practice law. You’ll know it’s happening when they move to executive suites or “virtual offices.” When you hear “working from home” – think “not really working.” Many of these lawyers, once they quit, will experience a shocking level of happiness.

4. Accountants, mental health professionals and non-lawyer mediators will handle an increasing number of family law cases. Clients will be attracted to these professionals as an alternative to lawyers. Clients will be thrilled with a lower conflict alternative. Some lawyers will put up a fight over the unauthorized practice of law issue. They’ll lose. Many of these accountants, mental health professionals and mediators, after they take on this work, will experience a shocking level of unhappiness.

5. Websites and blogs will decline in importance as legal marketing tools. Nearly every family law practice has a web presence now and the impact of any single site becomes increasingly insignificant. Search engine optimization will continue to matter but it’s importance will decline. Increasingly, prospective clients will turn to social media outlets to make purchasing decisions regarding professional services.

6. Pay per click advertising (like search engine optimization) will decline in importance. Again, this is the result of the overwhelming number of competitors in the space. The return on investment will continue to decline.

7. Attorney review websites will become far more important as prospective clients turn to their peers for recommendations. Some lawyers will game the system. They’ll be called out by social media participants and will suffer as a result. They will seriously damage their reputations. They’ll garner negative attention in the mainstream media, as well, given the novelty of their activities and their social status.

8. Virtual family law practices (basically online service delivery systems) will grow in popularity among attorneys. Lawyers will love the idea because they’ll buy the argument that they’ll get new clients online without having to engage in sales activities. They will be quickly disappointed when the expected revenues fail to materialize. Sadly, prospective clients won’t want what they’re selling. They’ll be buying from the non-lawyer document preparation services mentioned earlier.

9. Social media will play a vital role in practice development. Marketing via connecting with other professionals, curators of resources, and influencers will be critical. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, most lawyers won’t participate and will lose out their competitors that work hard with these audiences.

1o. Most family law practices will move some of their data to the cloud. Most likely they’ll move their email. Some will move their accounting. Some will move their practice management systems. We’ll pay less money to our IT support people and more money to the providers of hosted services.

11. Voluntary bar associations will begin to crumble. Groups like the ABA and the AAML will suffer. They’ll be replaced by networking options like LinkedIn, online continuing education providers, for-profit associations, email list groups, etc.

12. Lawyers will be barraged with warning about the dangers of Facebook, Twitter and cloud computing. They’ll perk up when they hear the frightening things that might happen if they make changes or do new things and they’ll quickly determine that they’re so busy that they can’t do these things anyway.

That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. I’ll monitor the situation and report back at the end of next year.

Many of my predictions aren’t very upbeat, huh? I think there are numerous things every practitioner can do to buck these trends. I’ll be writing about them, daily, for the next 365 days. The question is – will you act to make your 2010 a great year? Or will you be the frog in the pot, sitting still as the temperature rises, and you slowly boil to death, without ever realizing what’s happening? Don’t let that happen.

Don’t be the frog.

What do you think? Am I right? Am I wrong? My crystal ball might be fuzzy. Agree? Disagree? Have some predictions of your own? Please add your input in the comments below.

Have a great New Year. I’ll talk to you in 2010.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

12 Predictions for Family Law in 2010

I’ve discovered something (again). At this point in my life I don’t actually discover new things. I just re-discover the things I’ve forgotten. I’m guessing I’ve learned this lesson quite a few times in the past 48 years.

I’ve discovered that the things I plan – get done. When I don’t have a plan – not much gets done.

My New Year’s Resolution?

To make a plan (again).

I drift in and out of having good plans. For example, I had a really good plan for the past six weeks and, not surprisingly, things turned out exactly as planned. Amazing.

So I’m making sure I’ve got a really good plan for 2010. Whenever I have a plan, I get, more or less, the results I expect.

There are a couple of things that are key to making a plan work. First, you need buy-in. You’ve got to get everyone that will be involved in making the plan work, involved in making the plan. That might not be true in every business, but it sure is true in a family law practice.

Second, you’ve got to communicate, over-communicate, the plan to everyone involved. You need to explain the plan, report on progress, explain some more and then do it all again.

If you do those two things, you’ll likely see your plan come to fruition.

I’ve only got a few days now to finalize the details of my plan for 2010. Better get back to work.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

My New Year’s Resolution

Are you just like the other family law lawyers?

Do you practice in the same way? Do you wear the same clothes? Do you say the same things in court?

Do you use the same practice management systems? Do you buy your office supplies from the same place they do? Do you do the same thing they do for bookkeeping? Trust accounting?

Do you do the same marketing they do? Same website? Same ads? Same everything?

Do you act like your competition? Do you imitate them? Do you go so far as to ask them how they do it so you can do it that way also?

Maybe that’s your goal, maybe that’s what you’ve been working toward. Maybe your highest aspiration is to be just like them.

Is that who you are?

If it is, if that’s who you are, then your results are mediocre. You’re another clone doing the same old thing, in the same old way, getting the same old results.

Why do I say your results are mediocre? Because I know what’s happening out there among the clones. It’s mediocre. Clients aren’t happy. Judges aren’t happy and the clones aren’t happy either. The money isn’t good enough. The work/life balance is out of whack. The job satisfaction is lacking.

If you want different results, better results (and maybe you don’t) then you’ve got to be different. You’ve can’t be a clone and expect things to be different for you. You’ve got to break out of the mold.

You’ve got to try different approaches to management, to marketing, to technology. You can’t do what they’re doing and expect a different outcome.

It’s scary to be different. It’s more comfortable to conform to the norm. But, if your going to conform then you’ve got to get used to the idea that your results are going to conform as well.

If you want a non-conforming outcome, you’ve got to be willing to break from the pack and do your own thing.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Are You A Clone of Your Competition?

Your website has been down for a week. Everyone clicking on your link on Google goes to an error message. Potential clients that bookmarked your site last month knowing they’d come back this month are getting an error. Other lawyers trying to pull up your site to get your mailing address get zip – nothing.

You have no idea the site’s down. No one is telling you. You’re just sitting there wondering why the phone stopped ringing.

How did it happen?

Maybe you made some changes to the site and killed it (I did that to this site yesterday). Maybe you failed to pay your hosting bill and the host took it down. Maybe you failed to renew your domain name registration causing the site to disappear. Maybe your host had a power failure and after power returned, your site didn’t. Maybe someone hacked your site. The possibilities for failure are endless.

When, and it truly is “when” not “if”, this happens you need to know about it fast.

What can you do?

There are a number of services that will provide you with notice that your site is down. Each of these services has a variety of features. Some check your site every few minutes, others check every hour. Some will send you an email when the site goes down, others will text you. Some will notify you not only when the site is down, but also when the site slows down.

And they’ll do all that for free (at least for a while).

A couple of the services I’ve used are Pingdom (has a 30 day free trial) and Are My Sites Up? (has a free account). They’ve both worked well for me.

I’d suggest you spend a minute and set up an account. Alerts will be forthcoming.

You’ll get some false alarms where the site will be back up by the time you check on it. Little things like power outages sometimes cause the site to go down for a few minutes and return without a problem (we had that recently with our host – Rackspace).

The false alarms are well worth dealing with so that you’ll know when a serious problem crops up. Sign up today and you’ll know that all is well on your website.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Is Your Website Down?

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Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: Tea Partay

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

Rite of Passage – my 16 year old got his driver’s license last week. My wife reacts.

How To Create Measurable Objectives

Startup Therapy: Ten questions to ask yourself every month

10 Top New Web Services of 2009 (From My Perspective)

Social media dictates having your law blog outside your law firm website

Photo credit: Olga Khludneva

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Scary Drivers, Measurable Objectives, Startups, Web Services and Where to Put Your Blog

I’m taking a break for a few days. I hope you have a great holiday.

Thanks for being a reader. Thanks for your comments. Thanks for all your kind words.

I’ll talk to you soon.

Lee

Article from: Divorce Discourse

It’s Holiday Break Time

Yesterday I wrote about questions you can use for keeping the conversation going. If you follow my advice, your referral source meetings will be filled with the other person doing most of the talking. You won’t get much of a chance to get a word in.

Some of you will be deeply bothered by that thought. You want to talk. You want your chance to shine. You’re probably an extrovert.

Shining, however, might not be the best thing you can do if you want referrals.

I heard a great line at a marketing conference a few years ago that I think is one of the great truths of marketing.

“An interested introvert can build better relationships than an interesting extrovert.”

And building relationships is what it’s all about. Good relationships generate a steady stream of referrals.

Sadly it can be tough to get an introvert to take action to meet people so they can  build those relationships. The hardest part of the process, for introverts, is taking the first step. If they can get themselves going, they’re often surprised to find that they generate more referrals than their extroverted counterparts.

Why? Because people like interested people more than interesting people. We love people that express interest in us. We feel special. We feel loved.

My hope is that more introverts will pick up the phone and schedule a coffee or lunch with an old law school classmate or someone they met in the bar review course. Maybe they’ll call someone they met at a recent continuing education course or at a bar association meeting.

And you extroverts should take a lesson from the introverts. Be interested. Get over your need to be a big part of the conversation. Let your guest talk. That’s the shortest path to generating the referrals you need to grow your practice.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Can An Introvert Get Referrals?

You already know that I think you should be taking people to coffee and lunch as a a primary mechanism for generating referrals.

Among the best people for you to get to know are other attorneys. They should be the principal target of your referral generation activities.

Once you get to lunch, how do you keep the conversation going? This comes easily for some folks. It’s tough for others. If you find it challenging, then memorize this list of questions and you’ll find the time passes easily as you pop out one question after another.

Here’s the list -

1. How did you get started in your practice?
2. What do you like best about your practice area?
3. What advice would you give to someone just starting in your area of practice?
4. What significant changes have you seen since you started practicing in your field?
5. What do you see as the coming trends in your area of practice?
6. What ways have you found most effective in building your practice?
7. What’s the funniest/strangest thing you’ve ever seen in your practice?
8. What separates your practice from others practicing the same kind of law?
9. How can I know if someone I’m speaking to is a good prospect for your practice?
10. What one sentence would you like someone to use in describing your practice to a prospective referral?

As I sit here looking at the list it strikes me as a bit of an inquisition. The reality, however, feels different than you might imagine.

The reality if that you’re going to ask your coffee partner to talk about themselves for 30 minutes. They’re going to love it. Your going to listen carefully and ask followup questions and they’re going to know that you’re interested in them. Most people love talking about themselves and you’re going to be an appreciative audience.

The more the other person talks, the more they like you, the smarter they think you are and the more likely they are to refer business to you. Get them talking, keep them talking and you’ll grow your practice.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Making Conversation at a Referal Source Meeting

The holidays are upon us. It’s time to find out how you’re celebrating and how much time you’re taking off.

Lets study the week of Christmas and New Years.

Are you going to ease off and take some time away from the office? Or are you such a serious workaholic that you’ll be in the office every single day of the next two weeks?

Lets find out. Answer the survey below.

Here’s the deal. It’s Monday (the 21st) and you’re probably working if you’re reading this. If you’re off and just browsing – great.

I’m guessing your office is closed Friday (Christmas Day). You’re probably closed next Friday for New Years Day, right?

If that’s all your taking off then indicate that you’re taking two days off in the survey.

If you’re also taking off this Thursday as well as next Thursday, then indicate that you’re taking off four days.

If you’re already gone and not coming back until 2010 then indicate that your’re taking off ten days.

Got it?

I’m assuming you’re taking off both weekends. If not, then let us know in the comments (you’ll really make me feel lazy).

Lets find out what’s happening out there in your world. You can view the results by clicking on the link.

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Article from: Divorce Discourse

How Many Days Are You Taking Off? Take The Survey

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Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: A Law School Carol

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

Google Wave’s Massive Potential for Business Users – I’m increasingly using Google Wave and finding it more and more useful. It’s truly beta software but it’s coming along fast. It’s worth checking out because you’re going to end up using it eventually.

How To Amplify Your Branding With A Signature Story – You’ve got to be special to be remembered. You can’t be just another lawyer or you’re a commodity and all you have in your toolbox is price. What’s your story?

9 Tips for Enriching Your Presentations With Social Media – I can’t wait to start using these tips. I love the idea of involving the audience in the presentation. This could turn traditional CLE programs into something interesting and useful. That would be something to see, huh?

Relationships Aren’t Universal

The hyperlocal lawyer – Jordan Furlong is consistently brilliant. Read this and read all of his other stuff while your at it.

Photo credit: Keith Watson

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Wave, Story, Relationships, Social Media and HyperLocal Lawyers

I’d like to grow my practice, but I can’t find the time.

I can’t find the time to take referral sources to lunch.

I can’t find the time to write articles for my blog, website, local business publication, family law section newsletter, etc.

I can’t find the time to figure out what to do about my listings on family law directories.

I can’t find the time to get involved with Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

But I’d really like to grow my practice.

STOP, STOP, STOP…Don’t say any more. Don’t tell me you want to grow your practice if you don’t have the time. If you’re already busy, then you shouldn’t want more work. Right? If you’re busy, then you should be busy with paying clients. You shouldn’t need any more marketing.

But unfortunately, when I meet lawyers who are too busy to market, they’re usually too busy doing things that don’t pay well. They’re busy doing things that aren’t helping them earn more money. What they’re really saying, when they say they want to grow their practice, is that they want to grow their income.

To grow your income, you’ve got to stop being too busy. That probably involves changing your pricing. You’re likely not charging as much as you should.

When you raise your rates, stop extending credit, stop compromising receivables, and start billing for all of your time and services, you’re going to see one of two things happen. Either (1) you’re going to suddenly make more money from the same clients or (2) you’ll have fewer clients.

If the former happens then my work here is done.

If the latter happens, then we’ve found the time to do the marketing.

So before you claim to be so busy that you can’t find the time for marketing, please do some evaluation of your situation. Are you busy with uncompensated or poorly compensated work? If that’s the case, it’s time to correct that situation and move on to the marketing you haven’t had time for in the past.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

I’m Too Busy To Market

Technology can be amazing. I bumped into amazing yesterday at the North Carolina Bar Association Start-Up Boot Camp.

Just for fun, the course planner, Erik Mazzone, and I decided to live stream the session on USTREAM. Basically, on a whim, we decided to televise the program. Mostly we just wanted to see how it would work.

We took my iPhone and installed the new USTREAM app. We set up the iPhone on a small tripod. We plugged the phone in to a power outlet and viola - live TV.

I tweeted about the program several times during the day and we had between 2 and 13 viewers most of the time.

I was really impressed by how easy it was to set up. Plus it was free (if you have an iPhone). I suspect we would have had many more viewers if we had promoted the stream in advance of the program.

So why do you care?

I think you could easily use this technology for a bunch of things.

If you’re teaching a seminar you can televise it for clients, prospective clients and others. You could do a Q&A show for prospective clients. You can embed it on your website and USTREAM even provides a chat room so viewers can ask questions. The only real limit on what you can do with an iPhone and USTREAM is your imagination.

Of course you can do all of this with your laptop, a webcam and an internet connection. The iPhone just makes it so easy and it’s such a small package.

There’s lots of potential here. For a very small investment you have a very powerful tool. Sometimes technology can be amazing.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

You’ve Got a TV Station in Your Pocket

Each year, at our firm holiday party, we present the highest honor our firm has to offer – the Rosie Award.

This year the award went to James Sanderson. James has been with the firm for more than a decade and has served in nearly every capacity.

He’s an extraordinary member of our team.

But he’s more than that.

He is someone who embodies our firm’s purpose.

He works to enhance the quality of our client’s lives. He strives to help us become known for changing divorce from a damaging process to a healing transformation.

James works to help clients heal each and every day.

I couldn’t be more proud of the Rosie recipient for 2009.

Let me tell you more about the award and how something like this can work for you.

The Rosie is a sculpture made by a local artist. She handcrafts a new piece each year. They are all of the same design.

The award comes along with a check for $1,000. More importantly, it also comes with a second check for #1,000 to be given to the charity of the recipients choice.

The nomination process is open to everyone in the firm. The nominator is recognized at the award ceremony with a check for $250.

Nominations are collected in October and considered by a committee in November. The committee is composed of prior winners and the management team. Several meetings are held during which a fairly vigorous discussion takes place. Consensus emerges and we have our honoree.

The benefits of the award are multi-faceted. Obviously, it makes someone happy and proud to be the recipient. Beyond that, the award promotes the behaviors you seek to achieve the firm’s purpose. Positive recognition is the most effective means of generating more of a desired behavior.

Most importantly, the award reminds everyone of what you’re all about, why you exist and what you’re trying to achieve. It’s hard to remember those big picture ideas when you’re fighting in the trenches. It’s important for people to be reminded of the fundamentals.

You don’t have to create a sculpture or award a bunch of money for this to be effective. It truly is the thought that counts on this sort of thing.

The anticipation surrounding the award and the actual ceremony are a terrific high note for ending the year. It’s the perfect thing to have people thinking about as they wrap up their work and head in to the holidays. It’s all positive and you can’t go wrong implementing a program like this in your firm.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Our Highest Honor and How It Might Help You

I stumbled across a pile of attorney advertisements yesterday and my head nearly exploded.

These ads agitated me in just about every way possible.

They had a big picture of the attorney and/or his child. They had stupid headlines that had little if anything to do with the prospective client’s problem. The biggest thing in the ad (other than the photo) was the name of the firm.

They were an advertising “FAIL” in pretty much every way possible. They were all about making the attorney feel good and had nothing to do with attracting clients.

The thing that really pushed my buttons was the failure of the advertisements to say what the attorney would do for the client.

The ads used the phrase “Family Law.” That was the only phrase used to explain what the attorney does for his clients. There was no reference to divorce, child custody, property division, nothing but “family law.”

That just makes me want to scream. Why? Because people don’t know what “family law” is.

Have you ever heard a real person say “I really need a family law attorney”, have you? Of course not. They say they need a “divorce lawyer.”

Watch TV, watch a movie, eavesdrop on conversation at a restaurant – they all say “divorce lawyer.”

That’s what you’ve got to call yourself if you want them to understand what you do.

They think, to the extent that they think about it, that a “family lawyer” is like a “family doctor.” A “family doctor” is, I suppose, a general practice doctor. That’s someone that handles a bit of this and a bit of that. They don’t specialize.

So if you practice “family law” then they think you do wills, traffic tickets, adoptions, divorce, house closings, etc.

So if you say “family law” then every penny you spend on running those ads is wasted. It’s like burning money. It makes zero sense.

I understand that other lawyers know what “family law” is and I think it’s fine for you to use that phrase with those people. It’s fine if you’re advertising to other lawyers. But it’s terrible if you’re hoping your ads will be viewed and acted upon by real people.

Don’t use “family law” with lay people. Don’t use it in your ads. Please, please don’t use it – or my head might explode.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

What Not To Do In a Family Law Advertisement

It’s time, past time, to plan your 2010. We’ve been talking about that here and I hope you’ve been listening.

By now, you should have some goals outlined and some plans coming together so that your goals are realized.

StickK is a website aimed at helping you meet your goals.
With StickK you (1) select your goal, (2) set the stakes, (3) get a referee, and (4) add friends for support. Basically, you set your goal and “put a contract out on yourself.”

StickK was founded by three Yale economists and it’s growing by leaps and bounds. It’s growing because it works.

Imagine setting your goal, telling your friends and family, putting some money on the line and really committing yourself. It’s a formula for success.

And you can’t go wrong because you’re going to achieve the goals you set for yourself.

Why bother with stickK? Why not just commit to yourself and go for it? Because research reveals that commitment contracts, like those offered by stickK, can more than triple your chance of success. That’s a pretty solid reason.

What have you got to lose? If you’re serious about your goals then make a commitment and deliver. If you’re not willing to use stickK you’re not serious about making your dreams come true.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How to Stick to Your New Year’s Resolutions

Funny picture, but you’ve got to read the caption. Click here to read it. Hysterical.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: The Greatest Christmas Decoration Ever!

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

Cisco: ‘Why vlogging is better than blogging”

State bar associations stymying lawyers’ use of blogs and social media

Mashable’s Social Media Guide for Small Businesses – great links to serious “How-To” on social media.

Florida to Judges: Don’t Facebook Friend Lawyers

Lead with your glass jaw – More good advice you likely won’t take from Seth Godin.

Photo credit: MrClean1982

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Vlogging, Social Media Guide and Restrictions, Friending Lawyers and Your Glass Jaw

If you’re a gadget geek, and I am, then you need this. It’s only $7.77 and it protects you and your clients.

Of course, if you don’t have a Mac and an iPhone then it really costs more like $1,507.77.

I have a Mac and and an iPhone as all good gadget geeks should. So I’ve been playing with this software and it really works.

It’s called Airlock. It’s an easy install on your Mac and your iPhone.

Once it’s set up, which takes 2 minutes, it locks down your Mac everytime you walk away from it. It’s keyed to your iPhone so it really locks up your Mac when your iPhone walks away from the Mac.

When you come back it immediately opens the Mac back up. No need to type in a password. It uses bluetooth technology to keep track of where the iPhone is. You can even instruct Airlock to run certain programs while you’re away (like backup).

You can set the range if you wish and you can set it up to use your system password in the event that you don’t have your iPhone with you.

The software really works. It’s terrific for locking down your machine when you’re away from your desk. It’s fantastic for use at home when annoying teenagers want to use your laptop for a quick does of YouTube. As the Airlock designers say “It’s Magic. Really”.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Mindless Computer Security

We’ve got 21 days until 2010 starts.

2010 is going to be a very big year for family law professionals. It’s going to be especially busy at the beginning of the year.

The economic news is starting to improve. People are beginning to spend a bit more. They’re acting on pent up wants and needs.

Divorce is one of those wants, one of those needs.

The beginning of the year is usually a busy time, but 2010 is going to be especially busy.

How do I know?

Well, I’ve been doing this for 22 years and this isn’t my first recession. On top of that, we’ve developed some pretty good leading indicator tools that tell us what’s coming. Those indicators are looking very, very positive for a big first quarter.

The question is – will those clients show up at your door or will they be visiting with your competitors?

It all depends on what you’re doing right now to remind your referral sources of your availability. It’s critical that you remind them, right now, of your name and number.

Don’t assume that they have your name at the tip of their tongue. They don’t unless you’re Raoul Felder and even then they don’t always remember the name.

What to do?

Call them, write them, send a holiday card, drop off a gift (if permitted in your jurisdiction), stop by their office and visit. Drop of bagels for their staff. Send flowers.

Do whatever you’ve got to do so that your name is floating around in their head when the call comes on January 2, 2010. Make sure they remember your name. Reach out and touch somebody now. You’ve only got 21 days.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

If You Don’t Make This Touch, Now, All Is Lost

I get this question constantly. Everyone wants to know what they should be spending on marketing. They want a dollar figure or, at a minimum, a percentage of revenue as a guide.

What’s the answer?

The answer is, ideally, zero.

In an ideal world, you’d be spending nothing on marketing and 100% of your revenues would come from the positive word of mouth circulating about you in your community.

Everyone would know that you’re the go-to lawyer for family law matters. No one would need to be reminded that you exist because your name would be on the tip of every tongue. Your stellar reputation would be well known by everyone.

Is that possible? It certainly is. I’ve reviewed P&Ls for many lawyers that are generating substantial revenues and spending next to nothing on marketing. You can do it also.

It’s a slow process. It takes time. You’ve got to do excellent work. You’ve got to stay visible in your community through speaking, volunteering, being engaged in civic groups, etc.

I would suggest to you that this approach to marketing is the dominant approach of the majority of successful family law practitioners.

If you’re not willing to wait, if you’re not willing to put in the time in your community, if you need to make some money right now then you’re going to have take a more aggressive approach.

So what should you spend? There really isn’t a right or wrong answer. It’s easy to spend less than you should to achieve the results you seek. It’s hard to evaluate the results of spending a great deal.

My experience is that family law practices spend between zero (as I already mentioned) and twenty percent of revenue. If you spend at the high end of the range it’s tough to find smart places to put your money. It’s easy to experience diminishing returns as you spend more and more.

Where to start? If you’re going to be aggressive, start about about 5 percent of revenues. Do some testing. See what happens to your revenues and your profits. If it’s working and you want to keep growing then add to the spend slowly and keep measuring. Keep moving the number up until you start to see a drop in the rate of return.

As you increase the spending, keep careful records. Become a data driven decision maker. Keep spending, but only if there’s solid evidence of a very favorable rate of return.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How Much Should You Spend on Marketing?

You know what your revenues were last year. That’s a number that sticks in your mind.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that your revenues for 2008 were $600,000.

As the months have passed this year you’ve likely been thinking about how your year might end up. You’ve wondered if it would be up or down compared to last year.

As each month passed you tried to extrapolate to an annual figure to determine if you were on track. You’ve looked at the total, year to date, and then estimate what would happen before the year ended.

If, at the halfway point, you were at $300,000 then you assumed you were on track to equal last year. Unfortunately, that method of projecting doesn’t usually work. It fails to account for seasonality and other factors that might impact your annual total.

Fast forward to December…

Now you’re figuring out if you’re going to best last year. Suddenly the numbers make sense. At least they make sense for the moment. January 1 we’ll start over and then we go back to estimating and extrapolating.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the numbers made sense all year long?

They can.

What you need to do is keep up with your revenues on a rolling twelve month basis. Create a report that shows you what’s happened for the past 12 months. Do it each month.

At the end of January, for instance, you’ll look at a total running from February 1, 2009 through January 31, 2010. That will show your annual revenues rolling along as you go through the year. If your shooting to do better than $600,ooo for the year, you’ll know where you stand every month.

You can use this rolling twelve month total (some call it a trailing twelve month or TTM) for numbers other than revenues. You can use it for expenses, profits, consultations, new clients, closed files, etc. You can even graph the monthly numbers so you’ll be able to visually recognize trends.

Trailing twelve month graphs give you a quick feel for your business and you can figure out how you’re doing every month of the year.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Is December The Only Month When Your Financial Data Makes Sense?

Is Twitter worth the time and effort required? Will it help me build my family law practice? How will I know if it’s working?

I get asked these questions every time Twitter comes up in a discussion with a family law practitioner.

Then, of course, we have the obligatory discussion about how the questioner’s life isn’t sufficiently interesting for Twitter. And I point out how my life isn’t interesting either and yet I still find something to tweet.

Here are the answers to those three questions (plus the secret to making it work) -

Is Twitter worth the time and effort required. Yes, if you need new clients.

Will it help me build my family law practice? Yes, see above.

How will I know if it’s working? You should have clients and referral sources telling you they came to you from Twitter. Simple,

I get direct messages on Twitter from other attorneys asking if I’m available for a referral. These attorneys are frequently people I only know from Twitter.

I get messages from prospective clients on Twitter asking to arrange a consult.

I get calls from referral source and prospective clients asking to arrange a meeting. They identify themselves as having learned of me via Twitter.

This happens every week. It represents real dollars.

If your not using Twitter as a part of your marketing arsenal, give it some thought if it fits within your overall marketing strategy. If you’re using it now and you’re not generating referrals, then change the way you’re using it or move on to a different tactic.

I did a podcast on Twitter and how to use it some time ago. Give it a listen.

If you start on Twitter today, you should see referrals within a few months. It will work for you if you use it as a tool to get to know people, allow them to like you and earn their trust. Be careful not to leave out the “like” part. That’s the secret.

People won’t refer to you, they won’t come to you, if they don’t like you. Common sense, right?

I see lots of lawyers tweeting newsy links or updates about their practices. Many of them aren’t letting people know them in a way that makes them likable. They are broadcasting, not conversing. So tweet and lets get to know one another. I might have a case to send to you.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Is Twitter Worth Your While for Marketing Your Practice?

Dana Hanna updated his Facebook and Twitter while still on the alter. I love the video.

I know that some of you would like social media to go away so you won’t have to adapt to it. Sorry, Facebook just hit 350 million users. It’s going to have to be part of your plan. Cope. And enjoy the video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: Bliss on Facebook

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

Resolve to Stop Being a Sheep

The obsolescence audit

Feeding Your System

Legal Marketing Tip: Improve Your Client’s Experience

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Are You Obsolete? Are you a Sheep? And more!

Odds are you’re extending credit to some clients that won’t ever pay their bill. Everybody does it so you probably do as well.

You’d like to collect and you may even believe you’re going to.

Some might. Many won’t. That will be completely normal as well.

But, that’s not acceptable. You’re good. Your work is valuable. You deserve to get paid.

You need to stop doing work for clients that aren’t going to pay their bill – in full.

How do you know who’s not going to pay?

In our world the people that aren’t going to pay are the people who haven’t paid in advance or who don’t have money in your trust account.

If you’re extending credit, the odds are overwhelming that you’re not going to collect those receivables in full.

You need to stop working for those people. Obviously, you can continue if they decide to put money in trust. Otherwise, get yourself out of the case.

Then, use the time you just opened up to market your practice. Go to lunch with some other attorneys. Let them get to know you. They’re going to like you. They’re going to trust you and they’re going to refer business to you.

When these new clients knock on your door be sure to have them pay in advance or put money in trust. Be sure you don’t end up working for free again.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How Cutting Off Deadbeats Will Increase Your Revenues

I was listening to an interview of a guy that studies the behavior of grocery store customers. He explained how he helps store management market their products and increase profitability.

During the discussion he mentioned the placement of the milk. The interviewer asked why it was always in the back of the store. The milk is in the back because it’s delivered frequently and it’s heavy. The back of the store is closer to the loading dock and by putting it in the back there’s less work to be done in getting it on the shelves. It’s done for the convenience of the business.

It also happens to work out pretty well for the store. Lots of people buy milk so they have to walk through the store to get a gallon. As they walk, they frequently pick up other things and add them to their cart.

Why do you do the things you do in your office? Is it for your convenience, your client’s convenience or to increase sales?

I hope you’re thinking about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Is it for you? Is it for the client? Is it to increase your profit?

Everything you do should be considered. You should strike a balance between these factors that works for you.

Most importantly, you should be conscious of your thinking and decision making process. Don’t put the milk in the back without a good reason.

Think about your practice. Why, for instance, do you have clients fill out an intake form? What do you gain? What do you lose? Is there a better alternative for achieving your objective?

Why do you have the client meet you at the courthouse rather than ride with you? Do you sit with the client at the courthouse or with the other attorneys?

Why do you schedule settlement conferences and court dates without first checking with the client? Why do you print your client handbook in 12 point type? Why do you offer coffee and tea instead of wine and beer? Do you accept payment by credit card? Do you send a thank you note when a client hires your firm?

Think, think, think, about everything you do. Consider the costs and benefits of every decision. Don’t just put the milk in the back because it’s the first place you can put it down.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Are You Doing It for You or Your Client?

The past week or two has featured several reports of declining filings for divorce over the past year. One can surmise that revenues are decreasing along with filings.

Does that mean your revenues must go down because there are fewer filings?

No. As filings go down, your revenues can go up if you take on a greater share of your market.

You can’t let the general malaise about the economic climate drag you down. There may be less business overall, but that doesn’t have to mean there’s less business for you.

Clearly, things are challenging right now. I’m seeing lawyers lowering their fees and, in recent weeks, I’ve seen a few small family law practices close.

That simply means it’s time to double down on your efforts to grow your business. Let someone else suffer the slowdown. It doesn’t have to be you.

Be careful not to be impacted by Parkinson’s Law – “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”

It’s awfully easy to find reasons to skip out on the marketing activities even as your business slows down. If you find yourself skipping referral source lunches, or even avoiding calling people for lunch, as your revenues decline you’ll know what’s happening.

If you won’t make the calls then you’ll only have one person to blame as you take fewer and fewer dollars home with you.

Now is the time to amp it up. Pick up the phone and schedule a lunch, then schedule another one. Remind people that you exist.

While you’re at it check on your website. Make sure it’s up to date. Maybe it’s time to meet with someone about updating the look and feel.

What about starting a blog? If you have more time than money (and some writing talent) then go ahead and jump in.

How about writing an article for a legal publication? Maybe you can use it on your blog and website as well?

Are you involved in any civic groups? This would be a great time to join a Rotary club or some other group and get your name out.

This is not a good time to do what everybody else is doing. Don’t just sit back and watch your revenues go down. Take some action and see your revenues go up.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Are You Going to Grow in 2010?

“Getting the First Client – Using Guerrilla Strategies” is my topic at the Start-Up Boot Camp being offered by the North Carolina Bar Association on December 16. I’ve got 20 minutes to present and 10 minutes for Q&A.

I find the allotted time somewhat daunting. That’s not much time.

I’m half of the marketing portion of the day (the other 30 minutes is about referral sources). I’m struggling with how to help the attendees (100+ registered on the first day) in such a limited amount of time. Of course, I think of the marketing part of the program as the most important segment so I want to really deliver some value.

The program is open to anyone so it’s not family law specific.

The course planner wants me to focus on cheap, quick, effective tactics that will get clients immediately. The clients don’t have to be the best clients ever, just paying clients that will help keep a new lawyer alive long enough to do more down the road.

I’ve got some ideas, but I’d really like your help. Please post a comment below or give me a call (my direct number is 919-787-6667) or shoot me an email at rosen@rosen.com

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How Did You Get Your First Client?

2010 is coming up fast. It’ll be here in 31 days.

Are you getting ready?

For some family law practitioners 2010 will bring lots of new developments and changes. They’ll have new marketing programs, updated technology, and more progressive management.

For others, 2010 will bring a repeat of 2009 (and 2008 and 2007 and 2006) and will bring the same old problems along with the same old complaints.

Will you be whining about your revenues, receivables, time management and clients? Or will you be energized by the steps you’re taking and the results you’re seeing?

Are you planning to expand your social media presence, your web presence, and your referral source network? Are you planning to shift from a service based business to a product based business? Are you going to offer new services? Will you bring new types of professionals in to your practice? Will you discover services your clients would like and start delivering them?

What about technology? Will you move to a practice management system? Will you incorporate document assembly? Will you move your practice to the cloud? Will you adopt a modern phone system? Will you put the latest technology in the hands of all your users and train them to use it?

What about management? Will you create new positions you’ve never had before? Will you have a director of social media? Will you have someone helping clients find creative ways to pay for your services? Will you revamp your compensation system? What about benefits? Will you make your firm an amazing place to work?

Fundamentally, my question is – Are you going to have a new year in 2010 or are you going to do the same old thing?

Maybe you’re okay with a repeat of last year. But, I know if you aren’t moving forwards, you’re moving backwards.

That’s a fact. Your competition will keep moving. You can’t stand still. Especially not in the competitive environment we’re in now.

31 days until 2010. Use those days to build your plan. The clock is ticking.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Will 2010 Be a New Year for You or a Repeat of 2009?

These are apparently TV commercials. I’m not sure what the product is. I’ve seen the look in these videos on the faces of family law practitioners and I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like this happen at some point.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: Stress in the Office?

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

Beyond Billing -Are you still debating fixed fees vs. hourly billing. That discussion is irrelevant at this point.

11 Competitive Intelligence Tools for SMBs

Divide grows between lawyers with and without digital influence

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Billing, Spying and the Digital Divide

How many visitors come to your website each day? It’s pretty easy to find out using the statistics package provided by your webhost. You may even be using a service like Google Analytics to keep up with your site data.

A few weeks back I told you about the benchmarking function built into Google Analytics. It’s great, but it only tells you how you’re doing compared to similar sites generally. It can’t, however, compare your site – head to head – with the site of your competitor.

In order to compare the number of visitors you have coming to your site to the number coming to your competitor’s site you’d need access to their statistics, right?

Nope, you can use one of several services that will estimate the traffic for your competitor’s site. All you have to do it type in their URL.

One of the most user friendly of these comparison sites is StatBrain.com. Type in the URL you want to evaluate and within seconds the site shows you the number of daily visitors.

It’s important to know where you stand. You want to know how you compare and how much potential there is in your market. Then you can develop a plan to take them on and beat them to a bloody pulp.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How To Spy On Your Competitor’s Website

Happy Thanksgiving. I’m sure you’re enjoying time with your family and not spending the day playing on the internet. But, if they’re driving you crazy and you’re holed up somewhere avoiding them, then enjoy this short video.

Lets hope the marriage goes better than the wedding.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Thanksgiving Funny: Pole Dancing at the Wedding

You’re contemplating opening a solo practice. You’re being smart. You’re talking to other lawyers in your community. You’re learning from their experiences. You’re consulting with the lawyer turned Practice Management Advisor at your local bar association. You’re even reading business advice from some of the leading solo practitioners that blog regularly.

You should be good to go, right? Just take all that advice and act on it, right?

Yep, you’re good to go, as long as your objective is to build a mediocre business. You’ll have it all – mediocre marketing, mediocre revenues, mediocre technology. You’ll fit right in with most of your advisors.

Why? Because you haven’t sought out the best of breed for advice. You haven’t gone to the most successful practitioners for input. You’ve likely gone to the most approachable lawyers you can find. And you haven’t screened these advisors for success. You’ve talked to pretty much anybody that will talk to you.

In fact, you’ve likely avoided the amazingly successful attorneys in your area. You may not have even identified these people, but if you have, you’ve decided, for a variety of reasons, that you can’t talk to them.

So you’re going to do the things your mediocre advisors suggest and you’re going to struggle.

So what should you be doing?

You should be looking at lawyers that have started a practice in the past 10 years and have become wildly successful. You want to find people who are generating a ton of profit (I know, I know, money isn’t everything. Can we please have that conversation AFTER you have some money?). These practitioners are doing something to generate substantial revenues and they’re getting the work done. They don’t have outstanding receivables and they’re known by nearly everyone.

They’re out there. They’re in your area. They’re the people to call. They know what they’re doing. These people are superstars.

And, shockingly, they’re remarkably approachable. In fact, they’re wondering why you haven’t called. They will be thrilled to sit down with you and explain their system for success.

How do I know?

Because I’ve called them. I’ve asked them to meet. They’ve always said “yes.”

They are absolutely fascinating. They’re totally unlike the other people you’ve been talking to.

They will explain superstar systems, ideas, practices and approaches. They may even go further. They might, since they’ve been waiting for your call, take you under their wing and introduce you around. They might invite you to join them at a Chamber event or a Bar Association lunch. Always do what they ask. Do what you’re told by them. Follow their advice. Execute.

Stop taking crappy advice from crappy lawyers. If they aren’t doing amazing things the reason is usually that they can’t do amazing things. Don’t buy their excuses. Don’t do what they’re doing. Stop talking to them. Stop hanging around with them. Find the superstars.

One last thing – don’t rely on the advice of lawyers writing blogs about practice management – like me. Go read the superstars. Superstars were mostly smart enough not to go to law school and if they went they were smart enough to do something other than practice law. Get your advice from people that have started businesses and, again, been wildly successful. Start with Neil Patel. Read his post The 7 Harsh Realities of Starting a Business. He’s a superstar. Listen to him, not me.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

The Worst Source of Business Advice? Lawyers

We don’t have offices in our firm. We have an open floor plan with everyone sitting in a big room with several glass divider walls that help manage the noise. We sit within a few feet of the next person.

It looks like the city room of a newspaper might look.

It works really well for us. It allows us to hear one another which is a great way to share information without requiring a rigid, formal system.

It helps train new lawyers. They can, literally, ask a question during a phone call.

It keeps highly social attorneys happy since they can spin around in the chair and talk to a colleague anytime they want.

Most importantly, it gives access to the firm’s leadership and experienced attorneys. Anyone can speak to anyone, and learn from anyone, all day long.

All and all, it breaks down the barriers that exist in some firms between partners and associates and between lawyers and others. The impact is better communication and relationships.

But, there’s a dark side to our big room.

It doesn’t come equipped with walls for hanging diplomas. It doesn’t come with a door to close to keep others out. It doesn’t come with the status of a view earned by years of service. It isn’t what attorneys have come to expect after years of law school.

One recent visitor, a judge, jokingly asked if we were telemarketing magazines.

That remark really didn’t help our egos.

We’ve had attorneys turn down our offer of a position in the past. They haven’t expressly blamed the open office, but I suspect it impacted a few situations.

Hiring attorneys has, at least until recently, required a fair amount of sensitivity to the ego. The current economic climate might have shifted that somewhat.

Our big room puts, front and center, the need to balance attorney ego against efficiency and effectiveness. We’ve come down on the side of being more productive.

Doing something unexpected and different creates challenges that aren’t always obvious. That’s a lesson worth passing along.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

The Ego Crushing Blow of an Open Office Design

Is it possible that music can increase your business? Can you use it to build your revenues?

Quick story -

Two weeks ago I spoke in Asheville, North Carolina to a group of nearly 300 lawyers.

I got to the room early to set up my computer for the presentation. Thankfully, the setup went smoothly. They had a great AV guy on the scene.

Suddenly, I had an extra hour to kill. I was sitting there chatting with my co-presenter.

While we were chatting, I put on some R&B music I had on the Mac. We were tapping our toes while we talked.

Then I had an idea. I decided to plug the audio cable into the Mac. Suddenly the ballroom was filled with Aretha Franklin. Fantastic.

People started to come in. I left the music on. The attendees were chatting with one another and we kept cranking up the volume.

The event organizer came in to the room right before it was time to start. She’d been out at the registration table. She was blown away by what she found.

The music was blaring. People were smiling and chatting. It was a party.

She pointed out how different the atmosphere was compared to the usual pre-CLE program atmosphere. She loved it.

After the program, a bunch of attendees came up to chat and ask questions. As I moved through the lobby everybody was in a great mood, thanking us for the program. This was a stark contrast to the program we had done a week earlier, without the music. Fascinating.

I’ll be using the music going forward. Of course, this isn’t really a radical idea. It’s what happens at most non-lawyer presentations, most of the time. But, for lawyers, it was really different.

This experience got me thinking about the impact of music on my practice.

We have music in our lobby. We get comments all the time about how peaceful it is out there. I suspect the music is a big part of that.

We’ve got music on hold on our phone system. I’ve had people ask me to put them back on hold so they can listen some more.

I’m thinking about how we can use music in other ways.

What about you? What are you doing with music that might make a difference in your practice? Any ideas? Leave your comments below so we can learn from one another.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How the Right Tune Will Increase Your Revenues

I’m not sure it’s funny. Well, I guess it’s amusing. Maybe it’s a really good idea?

Source (and a bigger image): I Believe in Adv

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: Divorce Lawyer Elevator Ad

Happy Saturday! Every Saturday I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across that might interest you. These are things that caught my attention this week. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if you’re curious. I’m also including a picture I like.

Finding the laws that govern us – Google makes legal research free and gears up to wipe out a bunch of providers.

QuickBooks 2010 Expends Beyond Accounting

Why Brand Names Mean Little – And Why Personality Matters More

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Google, Quickbooks and Why Your Personality Matters

Some of you’ve been doing the same thing for a long time. I certainly have. I’ve been practicing family law for 22 years.

It’s easy to get into a rut. We keep up to date with developments in our field, but we don’t learn anything entirely new.

Years ago, back around 1995, I started taking flying lessons. I loved it. The flying was a blast, but learning all the new stuff was what really got me going. I even had to do some math in order to get my pilots license (which was seriously challenging for me) and I found myself enjoying it.

I think I went into the lessons with a kind of burned out perspective on learning after having been in school for 19 years of my life.

I rediscoverved my love of learning. Of course, I nearly killed myself (and my brother-in-law who flew with me some) on a number of occasions.

If you’d like to learn something new, and stay alive, maybe you’d like to learn a new language. It seems to me that lots of lawyers I know have a strong interest in languages.

I don’t really get the language thing. I think I demonstrate here, on a nearly daily basis, that I struggle with English. I don’t think I’ve got the bandwidth for a second language.

But, maybe you do.

Livemocha is a great place to learn a new language or bone up on one you learned in high school or college. Maybe you’ll even learn a language that will allow you to represent some new clients.

Livemocha offers 30 languages. They have more than three million members from 22 countries. They offer 160 hours of instruction for each language. The really cool thing about Livemocha is the way they use their site as a community in addition to it being a school. You can connect, online, with native speakers in the language you’re learning.

It’s a win-win deal. The folks speaking the other languages want to talk to you so they can practice your language and vice-versa. It’s an innovative and effective use of the internet. I love it.

Who knows, they even offer English, maybe I’ll sign up and the English on this site will improve.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Would You Like to Learn a New Language?

Earlier this week I did some consulting with an attorney seeking to build his practice. We talked about the usual stuff as I moved through an interview about the basics of managing and marketing a family law practice.

We were rolling along and I was getting a sense of how things are going for the practice. We did some Google searches together to size up the competition when something suddenly hit me. It wasn’t something I was prepared to inquire about and suddenly I realized that we were talking about building a practice in one city when the office is located in another city.

To illustrate my point using my city as an example, I have an office in Raleigh. I actually live in an adjoining city called Cary. My home is about 8 miles from my office. Raleigh and Cary are both in Wake County. Raleigh is substantially bigger than Cary.

While these two cities are effectively one place, they have separate identities. People in Raleigh aren’t, generally, going to hire a lawyer in Cary. People in Cary might hire a Raleigh lawyer since it’s the county seat and it’s the larger city.

Lawyers in Cary do quite well since it’s a fairly affluent city of more than 100,000. It would be very different for Cary lawyers if Cary were a small town and/or didn’t have an affluent population. If that were the case, it would probably be much easier for a Cary lawyer to build a practice by locating their office in Raleigh.

Of course, having more than one office would always be an option.

Back to my phone call, as we talked I realized that the location of the office is a huge impediment to growing the practice. Our plan will likely be to open an office in the larger city in an executive suite as an experiment and see what happens. Low risk, high potential for reward.

You’ve got to meet the expectations and needs of the client. It’s what goes on in the client’s head that matters when you’re doing your marketing. If the client thinks they need a local lawyer then they need a local lawyer. That’s true even if that lawyer is farther away from them than a better lawyer in a city that is, in fact, closer to them. It’s all client, all the time.

It’s important to put on your marketing hat and think of things from the client’s perspective. Until you put yourself in the client’s shoes you won’t understand how they make decisions and you won’t know what you should do to build a successful practice.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Is Your Office “Out of Town”?

Who’s going to do your tax return next year?

Now is the right time to answer that question because it makes sense to sit down with your CPA now and do a year end review of your situation. If you don’t meet before the end of the year, you might not have time to do some of the things your CPA recommends. I’m not going to run through a list of the things you could do before the end of the year to save yourself some money, but your CPA will and if you wait you’ll lose out on those opportunities.

But, who’s going to do the return? Will it be the same person as last year? Or are you ready for someone new?

I’d suggest that you do some shopping. CPAs are willing to deal and some of them are anxious for the business. We cut the price of our corporate return by 75% by shopping around and found an excellent accountant willing to do the work. This is the right time to conduct your search. Ask for referrals and start interviewing.

There’s one good reason to be careful about switching, even if it means a substantial reduction in cost. If your CPA is a good referral source then you should factor that in to your decision. When we switched our corporate return we were careful to be sure we left plenty of work behind with the old CPA (a good referral source). Several of our attorneys have his firm do their personal returns and they are maintaining a good relationship with him.

Think about all aspects of your relationship when you make a change. Don’t allow there to be any unforeseen consequences.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Don’t Lose Your Chance to Pick A CPA

For most family law practices things slow down a bit near the end of the year. Clients are busy with the holidays and don’t call quite as often. Potential clients are trying to get through the holidays without disrupting the children.

You’ve got a bit of free time coming that you might not have had before. How are you going to use it?

You could spend it with your family.

You could catch up on the work you’ve been unable to get to.

Or you could use it to build your practice.

I suggest option three – building your practice – you knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?

Here’s a quick idea for you. This is something you can easily do and still leave time for your family and your overdue work.

How about writing to all of your clients – right now – and advising them of the frequency of child related disputes over the holidays. Wish them the best and indicate that you’re hopeful that they won’t have such a problem. Let them know, however, that you’re available to help if things get off track for them, or more importantly, for a friend or relative.

Let them know that you closely monitor calls and emails during the holidays and that you have a team assembled for quick responses to holiday emergencies.

Your objective here is to remind these former clients that you exist. Your hope is to generate referrals of their friends. The timing is important because lots of people discuss family issues over the holidays. You should expect a bump in calls right after the first of the year, in part due to the time of year, and in part, as a result of these letters.

We all know that there’s nothing like time with the family to stimulate thinking about divorce.

Put together a list and get your letters out now.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How to Grow Your Practice Over the Holidays

Why are you number 25 and they are number 1 when someone types”Your City Divorce Lawyer” in the Google search box?

There could be lots of reasons including that they are spending anywhere from $100 to $15,000 per month to have an expert manage search engine optimization (SEO) for their site.

But more likely, given the low level of energy expended on marketing by many family law practitioners, is that you’re making some minor mistakes that they aren’t making.

For instance, it’s important to use “Your City Divorce Lawyer” in the title tag for your site. The title tag is usually visible when you bookmark a site (it’s what you see when you save the bookmark). You can also select “page source” in your browser menu and see the HTML code for your site (and their site). You’ll literally see the <title> tag and can see the words used in the title. The title is everything between <title> and </title>.

Lots of attorneys use their firm name in the title. That doesn’t really help you. Some use the term “family law.” That’s not particularly helpful either since most searchers don’t know that term.

Fixing your title should take a few seconds if you have the capability to edit your site. If you don’t, you should be able to shoot a quick email to your web person and have them do it.

Another thing that will cause a difference in your rankings is the number of links from other sites back to your site and theirs.

You can find out who’s linking to any site by visiting Yahoo Site Explorer. Type in the site name in the box at the top. Run the search and then click on “inlinks” and “except from this domain.”  You’ll see who’s linking back to the site.

The more links you have the better. Especially if they are from reputable family law sites with good amounts of traffic.

If your completion has more links than you it’s time to get more links. Use their list as a guide for places to get new links. It’s time to get in touch with the owners of those websites linking back to your customers. You many find lots of local sites that offer links ot local businesses. Often you merely need to request a link in order to get listed.

There a a multitude of tricks for improving your listings and they become especially important if your competition is working hard on SEO. Start making a few changes and see what happens, you’ll usually see a change in a couple of weeks. If you don’t see the changes you’d like then it might be worth bringing on an SEO expert to help. But, fixing a few simple mistakes might be all you need.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Why is Your Competition Outranking You On Google?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: For Twitter Fans Only

It’s Saturday and on this day of each week I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across over the past week that might be of interest to you. These are things that stimulated me in some way related my practice. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if they look interesting to you. Also, each week I’m including a picture I appreciate.

Why Facebook Is Re-writing Marketing Books

7 Ways To Make Your Site More Dynamic

Hammer time – from Seth Godin

Google Chrome OS To Launch Within A Week

Photo credit: TopTechWriter.US

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Facebook, Your Website, Hammer Time and Chrome

PocketSmith is a personal financial tool that can easily be adapted to a solo practice or small law firm. It allows you to predict and manage cash flow. It’s free.

PocketSmith is web-based, there’s no software to download. With a few minutes of data entry you can schedule all of your bills and get a clear picture of when you’re going to run out of cash.

The product is designed for individuals and takes a little (not much) creative thinking to apply to your business. Basically, you input your bills in to a calendar. Once the regular items are entered (rent, payroll, lease payments, etc.) the program can provide you with the cash flow forecasts you need.

They have an iPhone app you can use to stay up to date and always know where you stand. You can import bank account data and compare it to your forecasts. You can even set and track goals.

The free version limits the number of transactions you can enter. For $5 per month, you get unlimited entry of expenses. It won’t replace full featured accounting software, but if you’re running your practice on a tight budget, it’s worth a look.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Manage Your Cash Flow for Free

It’s closing in on the end of the year and, if you live in a mandatory CLE state like I do, you’re making sure you’ve accumulated all of your required hours. In North Carolina we’ve got a grace period that gives us through February to sit through the hours. It gets crowded in those hotel ballrooms in January and February.

My usual attempt at making the day in the classroom more productive is to bring my laptop and do some work between (and sometimes during) lectures (especially if the program is on a video player).

But, I’ve got a better idea for you. How about generating new business while you’re getting educated?

This is your chance to get to know some new people. If you’re going to a family law program you can meet people from outside of your area that have driven in and might need to make referrals to someone in your area. If you’re meeting your competitors, you can be available for referrals of conflicts or other situations requiring a referral out.

Ideally, you’ll pick a CLE that presents the opportunity for generating business. Maybe you should go to a CLE in another part of the state if that presents better opportunities for meeting people. Another option is to go to a program that has an audience that is broader than just family law practitioners. Think marketing – not just education – when you pick your class.

Here are my tips of making the most of the CLE as a business development opportunity.

1. Have business cards. Be sure to have a pile of them at the ready so you can give one to everyone you meet.

2. Be prepared with your elevator pitch and deliver it at every opportunity. You can assume you’re going to be asked what kind of law you practice by pretty much everyone you meet. Have a good, memorable answer. Make sure it includes your practice area, geographic area, etc. Practice it in advance.

3. Get to know the speakers if it’s a live presentation (and I’d suggest you only register for live presentations). It’s easier to connect with the speakers if you sit down front. You can ask questions and you can pop up and meet them when they finish. The speakers are usually movers and shakers and are well worth getting to know.

4. Meet the course planners. Like the speakers, they are usually well connected leaders. You want to know then and have them remember you. Connect with them, give them the elevator pitch and hand them a card. Maybe they’d like to have you speak at an upcoming session. It’s an important connection to make.

5. If lunch is provided, don’t sit with your friends. Meet some new people over lunch and get to know them.

6. If you’re attending a two day program, arrange to have dinner with a group. Don’t eat alone. Be the organizer. Make it happen even if it means making an announcement inviting everyone at the close of the first day’s session.

7. Followup. This is the most important thing you can do. Take the cards you’ve collected and followup with each person. Send a note, arrange a lunch or plan a coffee. The followup is the key. You will not get referrals from these people if you don’t followup. Followup is a mandatory part of this plan.

Continuing education can be a great learning opportunity. It can also be much more than that. If you’ve got to sit there anyway you might as well get the full benefit of the experience.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

7 Ways to Get More Clients at a CLE

Hourly billing is dying. We know that’s a fact. It’s widely discussed. A variety of alternative billing arrangements are being explored by lawyers and clients alike.

Jordan Furlong at Law21 says hourly billing “breeds inefficient, overworked lawyers and frustrated, resentful clients.” Furlong predicts the demise of lawyers and firms that can’t or won’t make the shift. He sees a great future for firms that adopt alternative billing arrangements, become more efficient and implement the technologies and tools that assist in making that happen.

Our firm has been doing fixed fee billing for as long as I can remember. Fixed fees encourage efficiency in ways that law firms aren’t usually focused on. Other industries have long been incentivized to become efficient and have developed excellent tools to assist them in completing profitable projects.

There are many products that will help you become more efficient. Many of them are overkill for small practices and are aimed at much larger entities.

Project Management tools, however, are well evolved and affordable. The single most important step you can take to increase efficiency is to plan your case from the beginning. For the same reason that we plan our route before embarking on a trip, planning a case before we start, makes it far more likely that we’ll end up at our chosen destination or achieve our desired outcome.

The old standby for project management is Project 2007. It’s part of some Microsoft Office packages You can download a 60 day trial if you don’t already have a copy. You can buy a copy for less than $200.

Another option, and I in the midst of trying this one out, is Tom’s Planner. It’s a hosted, online, project management package. You can create and share Gantt charts and plot out the course of your case. My limited experimentation has proven that Tom’s is much easier to use than the Microsoft product. Project 2007 has many more features, but I’m not sure I need them.

Tom’s has a free trial, for now, as they are in beta. This would be a great time to give project management a try without making an investment in software.

Ultimately, project management software will be an essential part of every case. There will be other tools employed to improve efficiency but these packages will be the foundation for changing the way we practice. You’ll see improvement right away. You win and your clients win as well.

Have you tried project management software in the past? If you try Tom’s or Project please post your experiences here. We’d all like to learn from your experiences.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Tools for Managing the Demise of Hourly Billing

Who do you trust?

Surveys say we trust “people like me.” That’s why we trust the waiter’s opinion about the fish more than an advertisement.

That’s why we trust the customer reviews on Amazon more than the reviews from Publisher’s Weekly.

Increasingly we trust our peers more than we trust authority.

This fact makes it important to think about who our prospective clients think of as “people like me.”

Are you, the attorney, “people like me?” Or is your paralegal more likely to be recognized as a peer? What about your firm administrator? Who do your clients relate to?

Obviously, that depends on your client. It’s important to determine who your prospective client thinks of as their peer as you decide who speaks for your firm.

As traditional media disintegrates and is replaced with communication directly from our businesses, usually in the form of emails, blogs and podcasts,  you’ve got to decide on the voices that represent your firm.

Is it you? Is it the paralegals? Is it the receptionist? Is it the marketing director?

How about everybody?

Jay Fleischman at Legal Practice Pro advocates for having everybody blog. I agree.

He points out that lawyers aren’t the only players in the game with good ideas. He notes that being a blogger reminds employees that they’re part of something larger than their job. He cites a number of other rationales in support of having everybody blog.

Make sense to me.

Most importantly, in my mind, is that having everybody blog increases the likelihood that your readers will be hearing from someone they connect with, someone they relate to, someone that is “people like me.”

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Who Should Be Blogging for Your Firm?

Video is quickly becoming an essential part of every legal website. You’re increasingly at a competitive disadvantage if you don’t have video all over your site.

Unfortunately, most lawyer video is seriously boring. It’s tough to watch. When you ask one lawyer what they think of another lawyer’s video they usually say “it’s too long.”

They make that criticism with good reason. A very short video, if boring, is way too long.

The key is to make good, interesting video.

Sadly, you’re not going to be able to look for examples on the websites of most other lawyers. You’re going to have to look elsewhere.

I’ve linked to two videos below that are great examples. I think they’re worthy of study as you figure out what to do with video on your site. One has very high production value and likely cost a small fortune to produce. The other is much simpler. Watch them both and search for lessons you can use in making your own video.

In both videos I found myself totally sucked in by the story and by the passion of the main characters.

Finally, I’ve linked to a one minute commercial. I’m really not sure what to make of it, but it’s totally worth 60 seconds of your life.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

How to Tell Your Law Firm’s Story on Video

VentNation is a site that lets you post “what’s bothering you today.” It’s simple. You vent, we rate. Perfect release for a divorce lawyer. You might want to send your clients here as well. I’m thinking about leaving it open in a browser window all day. Their tagline is “Relax, Relate, Release!” Works for me.

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Sunday Funny: VentNation

It’s Saturday and on this day of each week I publish links to some of the things I’ve come across over the past week that might be of interest to you. These are things that stimulated me in some way related my practice. I’m publishing these links without much comment so you’ll have to click on them if they look interesting to you. Also, each week I’m including a picture I appreciate.

Marketing Is More Important Than You Think

Free Software if You’re a Mac

Why law firms need to consider email as a communication strategy on their blogs

Article from: Divorce Discourse

Marketing, Free Stuff for Your Mac, and Email

This post is somewhat self-serving. I apologize in advance. But, I’m on target with this, so as my twelve year old daughter likes to say, “it needs to be said.”

You’re visiting this site. You come nearly every week. Sometimes you check daily. Many of you subscribe and have these articles delivered straight to your feed reader or email box.

There’s one thing I know about you. You’re going to have a very successful business. In fact, you likely already have a successful practice.

You’re a life long learner. That’s why you’re here and that’s why you’ll keep doing well. You never stop searching for new ideas and information to help you grow your revenues, manage your expenses, and become more efficient. I love people like you.

In fact, you’re the person I’m writing for. My passion is helping you in every way I can. The spark I see in your eyes gives me a spark in mine. You are the source of a huge amount of energy for me. Your passion energizes me. Thanks for that.

I love that you keep hunting for more ideas to keep growing and doing well. I absolutely love it. I wish we could spark that enthusiasm in others. But we probably can’t.

They tell me they don’t have time to adopt new approaches – they’re too busy. They don’t have time to try marketing techniques – they’re too busy. They don’t have time to innovate, to manage, to market, to adapt, to change, to expand – they’re too busy. Of course, they then start crying about how they’re not making enough money, how they’re working all the time, how they’re on overload, overwhelm, and are approaching burnout.

They’ve got no spark, no energy, no passion, no curiosity, no love of learning, no passion. They’re not you. Not even close.

Chicken, egg? I don’t know.

But I do know – and I know it with all of my heart – that you’re going to keep doing amazing things.

Thanks for spending some of your time here.