Starting a Law Firm | Influencer: The Power to Change Anything | A Review

I was flying back from Kansas yesterday after visiting some family and I was reading a book that I thought would be relevant to discuss here. As the title of the post suggests, the name of the book was "Influencer: The Power to Change Anything." It is written by Kerry Patterson, among others, and was really quite an amazing book. Here's a review of it, and I hope you go out and buy it. (It's sad we have to put this here in today's world, but I'm not getting any payment for this - I didn't even get the book for free!).



Throughout our daily lives there are things going on that we'd like to influence the outcome of. We want our wife to let us go play golf (don't read anything into this honey!). We want our companies to be more efficient. We want to lose weight. We want to stop eating the things we know we should not be eating. But exerting this kind of influence over ourselves and others is difficult, and in some ways can seem to be impossible.



Well, it is possible, and this book, Influencer, gives you the tools to do just that. What the book does is break down influence into six different categories:

(1) Personal motivation (making the undesirable desirable);



(2) Personal ability (surpass your limits);



(3) Social motivation (harness peer pressure);



(4) Social Ability (find strength in numbers);



(5) Structural motivation (design rewards and demand accountability); and



(6) Structural ability (change the environment).

Then, step by step, the authors walk you through how you can use these categories to change the things you want to change (for the worse or for the better).



It's a great book because not only is it filled with a lot of theoretical information, it also provides a lot of great real world examples. The examples include changing corporate culture, losing weight, stopping debilitating diseases, harnessing the power of employees, and many others. It can be a great insight and provide great direction into improving any challenges you are currently facing in life and opening new doors that you thought might be closed to you.



It should be pretty clear to you how this book is relevant to starting a law firm. But just in case it isn't, I'll tell you personally how it's going to help me.



First, there are things that I have to do all the time that I don't necessarily like to do. It's not that they are bad things, I just don't personally find them enjoyable. What this book has allowed me to do is take a step back and reframe the way I look at things, in order to derive the satisfaction I should out of completing those tasks.



Second, there are personal goals that I want to reach that I know I am holding myself back from. This book has provided me with the tools to change bad habits into good, to make myself more productive, and enjoy every single bit of it.



Third, and finally, the book has provided a lot of insight from a managerial and entrepreneurial standpoint. There are ways to handle specific situations that are much better than others. There are specific steps to take in a specific order to garner the best results. And there are important things related to my business that I need to keep top of mind if I want it to continue going in the direction it is going.



Starting a law firm should be the best experience of your life. You should enjoy it. So take the time to think about why you are doing it, what it really means to you, and then get out there and do it. Oh, and read the book. I guarantee you'll get something from it.