Steve Jobs' Biography and Starting a Law Firm | SEO Spot Available | Overcoming Fear

As you can tell by the title of this post, this might turn out to be a long one. I've decided to go from two posts per week down to one, so the one per week could turn out to be longer than usual, if I have something to write about (which I do this week). If you don't like it, too bad. Just read the post slower to stretch it out over a week.

I'll give you a brief overview of what I'm going to write about in case you want to skip something or jump around. First, I just finished reading Steve Jobs' biography and I'm going to tell you what I thought about it and what lessons, if any, I plan on trying to take with me moving forward. Second, a spot has opened up for SEO services if anyone wants them. One of the people I was helping, though they'd just gotten on the first page of the search results for their term, decided they didn't have the funds to move forward. Bad for them, good for you. And finally, I'm going to talk about overcoming fear and getting out of the loop that we all find ourselves in from time to time. Here we go!

Starting a Law Firm and Steve Jobs | What You Can Learn

First things first, I'm not going to keep you in suspense - I thought the book was fantastic. As I'm sure you know this book is a full run through of Jobs' life, from start to finish, with everything in between. Although I don't know Steve Jobs, I believe the book is a good recitation of his life, and did a good job capturing who he was as a person and as a businessman. The author was instructed to include all the good and the bad that make Steve Jobs who he is, and that comes through. And included in that life story are a bunch of great lessons we can use to help our business moving forward.

This Book Shows You the Hard Work that Success Requires

One thing I love about this book is its refusal to gloss over the early years, the hard work, the late nights, and the sacrifice that are required to have a successful business. Too often authors decide to glamorize a company as some instant success, some sure thing, when in reality it's anything but that. Okay, now on to some things I thought were cool and interesting.

Differentiate Yourself with User Experience

As you begin to work on your practice and think about ways to get clients (you will spend a lot of time thinking of ways to get clients when you are starting your law firm and when you are growing your law firm) you'll soon come to realize that if you could just show other people what makes you so special then you'd be half of the way there.

One way to do that is to create the best experience out there for your clients from start to finish. And the best thing about this is that it's possible - you can control their experience from the moment they find you or are referred to you for the rest of their interaction with you. It just takes some thought, some planning, some attention to detail, and a commitment to stick to it. If you want, you can create an experience that makes it nearly impossible for a potential client to say no to your services.

Great Expectations Get Great Results

Throughout the book many different people talk about Jobs's "reality distortion field," or his ability to will project to succeed in ways people didn't think were possible. The way he would do it is, for the most part, tell the people working with him that the way he wanted it was the way it had to be, so if it was impossible right now, find a way to make it possible - and most of the time they did.

That lesson carries over to the practice of law in several ways, but for purposes of this blog it's the idea that it's okay to expect success - see the the outcome you want and then go work at it until you make it happen. If you give up before you even try you've already failed.

If You're Standing Still You're Moving Backward

Toward the end of the book Jobs mentions a couple of times reading a book called "The Innovator's Dilemma" which discusses successful company's tendency to languish in their success and miss what should be an obvious shift in the dynamics of their business (see Borders and Blockbuster for concrete examples). He never wanted that to happen to Apple so he was constantly looking for ways to innovate, to stay ahead of the curve. Those lessons can be applied to law firms as well.

No, I know we're not working against the newest technology, trying to find the next big thing, but there are changes to society, to the way we live, to the way we think, to the way we consume information, and to the way we look for lawyers that are dramatically different than they were ten years ago. If you aren't constantly looking around and adjusting your business plan to take advantage of these changes and adapt to these changes, you're going to find yourself at the back of the pack.

It's Important to have "A" Players on Your Team

On of Jobs's core beliefs was that "A" players get you "A" results and everybody else gets you crap. In Jobs's eyes, if you weren't an "A" player, you might as well be an "F" player. He got rid of several people because he just didn't think they were up for the job.

This lesson is maybe the most important lesson of all. The people who work for you, the people you work with, if they aren't the best, they're bringing your work product down. And, likewise, if you aren't bringing your best, you might as well be giving nothing.

Go read the book. You won't be disappointed.

SEO Spot Available

If you remember a while back I let all of you know that I was going to start doing some SEO work for law firms and lawyers that needed or wanted my help. I've had some great success with my own law firm and I wanted to pass the opportunity to get the exposure to potential clients that comes with organic search results on to other people.

I decided to take on two clients, because that's all I had time for. And I did. That was a few months ago. Today, one of them decided they couldn't afford my help anymore. This person, by the way, was already on the first page of Google for his desired keywords (it had been about 10 weeks, which is pretty darn fast). I don't think he had all of his ducks in a row and needed to take care of some other, more basic things first.

His loss is your gain. If you are interested, please email me and we'll chat. I will tell you though, the right person for this has at least one thing in place - a website. It doesn't have to be the best website, but it needs to be up, it needs to be functional, and you need to be willing to make a few minor tweaks to really make it pop. As I said, it can take a couple of months to take effect (and depending on the keywords it can take a little bit longer than that), but once you're up on the top of Google you've got priceless real estate, and that's going to be reflected in your bank account.

Email me if you're interested. If I don't hear any responses I'll ask some other colleagues I know that would be interested in the service.

UPDATE: Spot is filled. Thinking about expanding to add a couple more people - this service is just too important if you're starting out. I'll keep you posted

Starting a Law Firm and Overcoming Fear

If you read this blog at all then you know by now, two and half years into this gig, I consider myself to have moved out of the starting phase of law firm growth and into the growing stage of law firm growth. What that means for me is that if I wanted to tread water, if I wanted to just stand still, I probably could for a while, and I probably have been for a few months. Once you get to that point you have to start doing new things, start branching out, start spreading your wings - but that's scary.

Now, I'm not talking about going into a new practice area or anything like that. I'm a DUI lawyer, and that's what I'm always going to be. What I'm talking about is taking advantage of the marketing systems I already have set up and building additional layers on that to open up my services to more clients. These new layers, though, they're not just new, they're unfamiliar. They're scary.

But you've got to overcome that. That's the fun part of this entire experience - doing things that you probably never thought you'd do. And I'm doing that in three ways:

1. Recognize that the fear isn't rational, that it's made up in my mind.

2. Know that the worst that can happen is you fail - then you just go try it again.

3. Set up real deadlines with real consequences just in case you have a harder time with number 1 and number 2 than you anticipate.

So that's what I did. I had a meeting with my business coach today and we set a hard date to do a couple of things I know I should be doing. And if I don't make that date I'm going to take a $100 bill and burn it up.

The way I see it, I'm letting a lot more money leave my office every month than $100. That's a small price to pay, if necessary, to motivate me to do what I need to do to make my law firm better.

What should you be doing that you're afraid of? Get over it and get started.