Book Review Friday | The Dip | It's Not About the Money

Something amazing happened to me last night. I was looking around on my local library's website and I found out that they have a ton of books in PDF format that you can download instantly to your computer! As I am apt to do whenever I discover a resource for books, I took advantage of it. Last night I went through two books, both related to business, and I thought I'd write about them today. Here we go.

The Dip | Seth Godin

I'm not sure if you know who Seth Godin is. Though I don't know him personally, I do know he's written more than a few books about marketing and business. This is just one of them. "The Dip" is about how to work through that time that every business faces, when the going gets tough, there's a lull in business (or it's flat) and you need to decide the direction you are going to go.

The idea of the book is simple. If you want to have a successful business, you need to be the best in the world at it. And when I say best, I mean best for your client, right now, based on what they believe and know, and when I say world, I mean the client's world, what they have access to. This "best is subjective" in the sense that your clients get to decide what is best. And an important factor on clients thinking you're the best is you've got to think it yourself.

What The Dip is is that time between when you first start out and when you are the best in the world. It is that tough time, the time when you've got to slug it out, to "pay your dues" and rise above everyone else. Many people don't survive the dip, or at least get out of it. It is "the long slog between starting and mastery."

And I am officially in the dip right now. At two years into my business, the newness is over. I'm still excited to come to work and to do the work that I'm doing, but the freshness of being out on my own, of being able to do what I want, has worn off. Now I'm focusing on success. I'm thinking and acting in ways that are related less to survival and more to becoming the best DUI attorney that's out there.

But the road is not easy. There is a lot of work to do. Mastery of your craft, being the best, is a long and arduous road. You've got to be dedicated to making it there or you'll find yourself trying to walk up a down escalator. At best you'll be doing everything you can just to stay where you are at.

There are two main points to the book. First, when you hit the dip, you've got to decide if this is something you can be successful at. If not, it's time to get out. Quitting for success is I think the way he describes it. And second, assuming you decide that what you're doing can be successful, is to fight through hard part to get to the end. DON'T QUIT WHEN IT HURTS.

My two choices for facing this dip are to quit or to become exceptional. I think you all know where I'm headed on this one. And for me, exceptional means two things. First, it means becoming a true master of my craft. I've been practicing for five years, but I know I've still got a lot of learning left to do. Second, it means continually thinking about ways to let people who need my services know I'm available and let them know why I am right for them.

I'd highly recommend this book. It's only 80 pages long, it's filled with a lot of anecdotes, and it's a great motivator to get you working hard to be successful.

It's Not About the Money

This book is a complete 180 in a lot of ways from the Dip. This book is about personal growth. It is about finding out what your relationship is to money so you can do two things: (1) enjoy more of what is happening right now; and (2) avoid some of the classic pitfalls that are associated with your financial archetype.

The premise of "It's Not About the Money" is this: we all have our own experiences with money and we are all hardwired, biologically, to always want more. This underlying foundation of "not enough," however, undermines our life right now. It keeps us from enjoying the experiences we are a part of now, and if not acknowledged can cause us to make bad decisions.

One important aspect of taking control over your subconscious desire to want more is to understand what your core story is when it comes to money. Typically this core story is formed at a very early age by your life experiences. For example, in the book, the author tells a story about a guy who's family was very poor. They had some cousins who were comfortable financially and it was a visit to their house that cemented his core story - that he would do whatever it took to not be in the situation he and his family were in. The result was, when he was older, that he was great at saving and spending his money wisely, but he was always anxious that at some point it could all be lost.

I'm not necessarily going to tell you about my core story, but I'll tell you this about me - I'm part guardian and part empire builder when it comes to my financial archetype. The book describes the pitfalls of a guardian archetype as worry and anxiety and the gifts of alertness and prudence. The pitfalls of the empire builder are greed and domination and the gifts are innovation and decisiveness. I must say I can see those things in my actions. Here's just one example.

I've told you a lot about my talks with RJon and I actually discussed this exact interaction with him in an earlier post. We met in person when he was in Seattle and we did a mastermind session. The exercise we did at the meeting was to write down our three biggest problems with our business. One of mine was wasting too much time doing administrative tasks.

As we discussed what I was feeling RJon just said "why don't you just hire someone to help you?" At that moment a palpable set of anxiety ran through me. My immediate thought was "what if I hire someone and then the phone stops ringing and I can't pay for them?" Any rational observer of the situation would point out that the money had been coming in pretty steadily and the chances of it drying up completely are almost zero. But getting over that hurdle for me was hard because of the inner guardian.

This is important information to know and understand as you are starting a law firm for a couple of reasons. First, there are good things and bad things with whatever archetype you determine you carry (and you can have parts of many). The important part is being introspective enough to recognize when something you are thinking or feeling may be based more on your "core story" than in reality. My example demonstrates this exactly. And, by the way, I immediately hired an assistant and it has completely transformed my practice, in a good way - and people are still calling!

Second, if you know what your strengths and weaknesses are you can take steps to accentuate the positive and diminish the negative. Part of being a Guardian is being prudent and alert. If I can use that to keep myself informed as to the actual financial state of my firm, I can reduce the anxiety and worry I fear when it's time to make a financial decision.

If you've got some free time I'd definitely take a look at this book, and I'd recommend doing the exercises within. They may feel a bit cheesy, and I'll warn you there is a lot of Eastern religious practice intertwined throughout (that is part of the idea of finding the freedom from wanting), but there is a lot of good information that you can use to help you as you venture out and start your own law firm.

Questions, Comments, Suggestions? And Disclaimer

Have any of you read either of these books? What did you think?

Just to be completely forthcoming here, these are true book reviews. I'm not making any money on these, no one asked me to write these reviews, and if you check them out and buy them I don't make any money. I just thought they were helpful. Enjoy!

And, as always, questions and comments are welcome.