End of the Year To-Dos

Believe it or not, it's the end of the year again. Christmas is only four short weeks away, and I honestly can't believe it. The time has flown by, and as I look back I can see a lot of opportunities seized and a lot of opportunities missed. And it's important to recognize and understand both, so as not to lose one and to be on the lookout for the other.

As the name of this post implies, we've got some end of the year starting a law firm to-do's. There are two that I am thinking of, neither one of which I've done yet, but both of which I'll be doing very soon. They are goal setting and reviewing and revising the business plan. Let's talk a little bit about both.

Goal Setting

At the end of the year last year I set some law firm goals. And, sadly, but truthfully, I hadn't really looked at them when I set them until now. What's the point of setting goals if you aren't going to check them and work toward them, right? Here's a recap of my goals for this year:

1. Gross $100,000. I actually have reached this goal I think (though I don't know for sure - something that will be fixed in 2011).

2. Pay down half of my current debt. I wish I could say I'd done that, but I'm not even close. That's a personal goal rather than a professional goal, but still, not reached.

3. Travel with my wife. Again, more personal than professional, and I again, not really met. We went to Cabo for a wedding, but that's about it. I could do much much better in this department.

4. Play some golf. I played a fair amount of golf this year. I'd love to play much more. Nuff said about that I think.

5. Begin saving money to buy a house. Not done at all. Don't have any excuses except the money just isn't there for this. I'm pouring most of it into paying down debt. When that's gone, the house saving gets much easier (and grows much faster).

6. Strictly adhere to my internet marketing plan. I don't remember what the plan was exactly, but I'd say I did it. I'm number one for several of my targeted keywords, and continue to work on that every day. That is one of the things that's contributed to my success.

7. Give one talk a month to people about how to deal with cops. I think I gave three of these this year, and not month to month. We'll talk about this when we talk about my goals for 2011.

8. Track and tweak my marketing efforts to get the best ROI. Can't say that I've done this very well. For quite some time I got caught up in the day to day of the firm - that means a lot of busy work and not much else.

9. Work every day to become the best DUI attorney there is, which includes 5 trials. I'm not going to reach my goal of 5 trials. I'm not even going to get close. But that isn't for lack of trying. Each time I thought a case was going to go to trial something happened and it ended up resolving. I know I'll have at least two trials in January though, so that should get me off to a good start.

10. Set up a tracking system to make sure I'm tracking these goals. I've already confessed to not doing this.

As you can see, I met some, and I didn't meet others. But I think all in all I'm moving in the right direction, and that's the point, right?

Actually, that isn't the point at all. The point isn't to set goals so you might meet them. To "try hard" but not lose any sleep if you fall short. The point is to meet or exceed your goals. I need to do better.

I'm not going to tell you my goals for next year yet. Honestly, I haven't come up with them. But I can tell you that my goals are going to look dramatically different than they do here in this post. Part of what makes goals so hard to attain is often you only describe the big picture, end result. For example, I want to lose 40 pounds. Okay, great. That sounds wonderful to say, and is a great goal. But just saying it isn't enough. You need to have more details if you want to succeed. Maybe you break it down like one hour in the gym a day and no McDonald's french fries. Whatever it is, unless you break it down you have little hope of achieving success. So I'm going to break it down for me.

Revising the Business Plan

When I started my firm almost exactly a year and a half ago I wrote a business plan, and I think it was one of the best things I did. Not only did it make me think about what I was going to do before I did it, but it helped give me direction and make choices when they needed to be made. And I haven't done anything with it since.

So, I need to revise it. I guess now it would be more aptly described as a strategic plan or something like that, but at the heart of it it's a business plan for a business that's already up and running. This will help me with the goal setting described above, because it's natural design will force me to map out where the business goes in the future. But it will also make me plan long term, something we should all do.

Don't worry, I'll let you know what I've done with that too. But remember, all this stuff about me won't always apply to you. I just tell you what I'm doing so you can see an example of how it's been done. Hopefully you take away from it what you like, leave the rest behind, and avoid some of the same mistakes I've made.

Hope you all had a happy turkey day, and I'll talk to you again on Friday. I think we're going to talk about my laziness and affinity for television - in other words, how to deal with the things that steal our time.