Can You Dress for Success?

This is a two part question that actually got me thinking after I read two separate blog posts (although to be specific it was one blog post that referenced another). The post was by the author of Simple Justice, a blog I think is fantastic (to translate fully, I'm suggesting you go take a look). It's a criminal defense blog, but it's more than that. Scott Greenfield, the author, discusses topics ranging from criminal defense to marketing to practicing law generally to a select group of individuals he describes as the "slackoise," which I might actually be a part of.

But I digress. The post I saw today was entitled "The Easy Answer: Change Clothes." Here's a quick recap before I give my two cents. Scott read a blog post by Susan Cartier Liebel, who runs Solo Marketing University (that, by the way, is not an endorsement - I don't anything about the business, how it's run, or if it's good). The gist of her post was that people are always judging you so it's better to be well dressed and presentable at all times - "Better they make a snap positive assessment" than a negative one.

That's all well and good, and the first point I'll talk about below. But Scott, as he is wont to do, takes the post a step further and discusses the story from a lawyering standpoint. His lesson from this story, which is the second point I'll talk about, only I'll bring it back to a starting a law firm perspective, is that we are communicators and persuaders. If you want to persuade you've got to know your audience and frame your presentation in a way that makes them understand what you are saying. His point is that it doesn't matter what you are wearing if you are just going to talk at someone or talk over them. If you aren't effectively communicating you have no chance of success.

Now that you have the background, here are my two cents to answer the question, "Can You Dress for Success?"

You Don't Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression

This saying used to be a commercial for some type of beauty care product - soap, deodorant, or something like that. The idea behind the commercial was if you stink, people aren't going to like you. And that makes sense.

The same goes with being a lawyer. People have in their heads an idea of what an attorney is supposed to look like, what one is supposed to sound like, and how one is supposed to act. Going against those assumptions for the simple sake of being different, isn't going to help you get more clients. It's going to make people that meet you and are considering hiring you uncomfortable. You want to exceed client expectations not fail them.

Whether we want to believe it or not, we are being evaluated at all times on many different levels. Our looks are definitely one of those evaluation criteria. So why not control something you have complete control over and look your best? If I can instill an added sense of trust and competency with opposing counsel and the judge because I look nice, why wouldn't I do that? That's advocacy, whether you want to believe it or not.

My only point of disagreement with Susan's ideas relate to dressing well all the time. And I think Scott agrees with me a least a little because he tells a story about a guy that used to mow his lawn with a tie on. It's true that everyone out there may be a potential client for you - but it's also true that you are more than just a lawyer. You may be a rock climber or a golfer, a swimmer or a Harry Potter fanatic. Whatever it is, you may not always be able to wear a suit. And that's okay.

When people are meeting you as an attorney, they need to "see" you as an attorney. If I met someone at the grocery store on a Saturday and they were wearing a suit, unless they were coming from a funeral or worked at a hotel I'd think it was kind of weird. No one thinks you should be wearing a suit all the time. So don't.

The Art of Persuasion

If Susan's post was the frosting, Scott's is the cake. He delves a little bit deeper into the art of persuasion (which is our business and the business of running a law firm). Scott's post, however, feels like his viewpoint is not that of a marketer, but of a legal professional. And he's right and wrong.

His point is that being a lawyer is about sending and receiving (communication, in other words). If you are sending, but it's not being received correctly, then that's a you problem, not a them problem. You haven't tailored your message to sway the person you are talking to to adopt your point of view (or hire you).

While this is a critical skill as a lawyer when you are practicing law, it's also a critical skill when you are running a law firm. If you have an idea for the kind of message you want to present to the world about what your law firm stands for, then you need to make sure the signals you are sending are being received in a convincing manner.

What does that mean? In short, it means taking a step back, thinking about who your client really is, and then putting yourself in their shoes and finding out what it is they are looking from from a service provider like yourself. When you think you know what that is, assuming it's something you can provide, figure out how to demonstrate that your law firm has that ability and then go do that.

Sorry if this Post Sucks

I'm not proofreading this post and I'm not changing it, even though I feel like it's really disjointed. I'm just too lazy. Hopefully you can cut through my bad writing to see that there are two really good points in there: (1) that you need to dress nicely (not extravagantly, but your suit should fit you); and (2) that ultimately you are trying to be persuasive in many different ways - a nice suit won't make you persuasive, it takes really getting to know your audience and then crafting your message so they can allow themselves to believe you are right - and this is a marketing and practical lesson.

Have a great weekend! And, as always, if you have comments or questions, please let me know.

My Trip to Paris

In 2001 I went to Paris. I spent a mere two nights/three days there on the way to London, but I’m so happy I have actually been to Paris. I travelled with a female friend who was running the London marathon. She had planned on going by herself and was talking about the trip.

Someone then said ‘why don’t you go too Fiona?’ I was recently single after my first husband deserting me. I had just started a new job and was living in a new, much bigger city (by my choice, I didn’t want to be single in the small-ish town I grew up in). I shared a house with my sister and two other flatmates.

I had the money, I just didn’t know if I could get a month off work. Normally you have to work there for over a year to accrue three weeks, and I had only been there less than ten months. I’d never been to Europe though, and decided that if my boss would let me have the time off, I’d go.

He agreed! Somehow we worked out the extra days, maybe some were unpaid, or he carried them over to the next year.

Paris was our first stopover on the way to London, but funnily enough we flew into London and then onto Paris. From New Zealand it’s a long trip. It was almost a full 24 hours later than we arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

My travel companion is much more gung-ho, can-do and gutsy than I am, so rather than pay for a taxi, we hopped onto the train. Amazingly we got to our hotel alright, near the Paris Opera. We stayed in a gorgeous French decor hotel (Millennium Opera), with a tiny lift that the metal cage doors rattled shut.

Our hotel was on Boulevard Haussmann and very central, which meant that Galaries Lafayette, the famed department store was a mere stroll down the road. My travel companion wore knit track-pants, a sweatshirt, running shoes and a bumbag. Oh dear. We weren’t very close friends - my sister had rented a room in her house and that’s how I knew her. In Paris I dressed up more than on any other stop on my trip.

On the first day I suggested we sightsee separately, saying to her that she would be bored with all the shopping I planned to do (she wasn’t a very girly girl and shopping was low on her agenda). Even though I love nice things, I didn’t plan to do much shopping at all, but I did plan to soak up the Paris atmosphere.

I wore a black knit just-below-the-knee skirt, a dark charcoal fine merino round neck long-sleeve top, maxi-net tights (like a large fishnet) or perhaps it was stockings, I don’t remember. High heels, a grey faux-fur scarf, a camel-coloured leather shoulder bag and my blonde hair dried straight and pulled back into a low ponytail completed my Paris look.

I loved just strolling through the shops and up the back streets pretending I lived there and was out for an afternoon’s shopping. Sabine was alive and well ten years ago, in fact I think I’ve always been a day-dreamer.

How to Start a Law Firm | Two Marketing Ideas Shot Down

I can't help it. I think it's just in my blood now. But I am constantly thinking of ways to increase my conversion rate for potential clients (i.e. calls from the website) and thinking of ways to get more people to want to choose me over the other options out there. It might be obvious, but it comes down to being different from everyone else, in a good way, and also giving people what they are looking for.

I'm rolling out a new website in the next week or so, (and, by the way, you can see it here, and I'd love to hear comments from the perspective of a potential client - you have about 48 hours before it's set in stone) and that got me to thinking about things that I could add to the site to make my firm more appealing. And I came up with two ideas, which I'll share with you now.

But before I get to the ideas, I wanted to let you know I've been reading a lot about persuasion and marketing lately (two more books in addition to the two that I reviewed the last time - if you want to hear about them I'll review them, they are fascinating). The idea for this reading is twofold. First, I want to market my firm better from a general standpoint - I want to drill down what the identity of the firm is so I can make business decisions in the future based on that defined perspective.

And second, I want to make it easier to sign up potential clients. If you've just started working on opening your own law firm or are in the thinking stages I can tell you there is no better feeling than someone that walks into your office and just wants to sign up. They already know a lot about you and just want to take care of the formality of signing the paperwork.

Anyway, back to the subject. My two ideas were these: (1) limit the number of DUI cases a week that I take to two; and (2) provide a service based money back guarantee. I can feel all of you going bonkers right now telling the computer screen how stupid I am for dreaming up both of these ideas.

But you are in luck. Because the purpose of this blog is not to just tell you what I'm doing but to walk you through the thought process, I'm going to do that. You might still think I'm stupid, but at least you'll know it was reasoned stupidity.

Limiting the Number of Clients I Take - aka Scarcity

There are two schools of thought out there when it comes to the number of clients your firm will take on at a time. The first is to take on as many as possible and figure out the details later (I would describe this as almost every firm - the fear of the phone not ringing is a large motivating factor here). The second is to take on a reasonable number of clients, maybe at a bit of a higher price, and do exceptional work for them. Limiting the number of clients is obviously in line with the second school of thought.

I'm not finished yet, though. The idea isn't just to limit the number of clients to two per week, but to let all potential clients in the meeting know that this was the case. That means once one signed up all meeting for the rest of the week would be told that there is one spot left for this great service. If you call too late, we won't be able to take your case. It's a classic business device to help potential clients make sales.

I ran this idea by Kelsey, my assistant, because she's got a pretty good business sense, and she immediately didn't like the idea. I don't really remember why, but she didn't. So, like anyone that wants to have someone tell them their idea is good so they can run with it, I told someone else - RJon of starting a law firm fame (the big box on the right side of the page) - and he didn't really like it either. I remember his answer because I wrote it down, but it had something to do with the idea that my firm is already a boutique type firm - the exclusivity is inherent in its structure. There's no reason to ramp it up another notch.

Two nos is a sign, but this idea isn't completely off the shelf yet - it's just not going to be incorporated into the website.

The Service Based Money Back Guarantee

I can picture the horror on your faces at just reading this.

"Aren't people just going to say they aren't satisfied so they can get their money back?"

"What if you end up paying out a bunch of money and working for free?"

For me, the bottom line here is I know I already provide great customer service - that is actually one of the things that separates me from other firms. So I'm not as worried about people asking for their money back, even with a DUI practice where things can go haywire from time to time.

Ask anyone that provides a money back guarantee and they'll tell you there are many more people that are convinced by that guarantee to sign up than scammers that will go back on you when the job is done. RJon so much as admitted this to me (he's got a money back guarantee on his services).

No, that wasn't the hang up for me. The hang up was a different thing RJon mentioned that got me thinking (and, for the record, Kelsey was against this two - rarely am I wrong - I'm the owner, right? - and rarely am I wrong twice in one day - I think she relished that just a bit) about a potential problem with this idea.

RJon mentioned the fact that contingency cases aren't allowed in criminal cases. Duh. His concern was that others might not see my service based guarantee any different than a results guarantee. I disagree, but that got me thinking about something else that might cause more headaches than it's worth.

If I offer a money back guarantee, there is an argument there that I haven't actually earned the fee until the matter is over and the client tells me they are satisfied with the work. That begs the question, do all of those fees go into an IOLTA account until they are "earned" or are they still "earned upon receipt" and only subject to be returned if the contract clause comes to fruition. I have my ideas but decided at the end of the day it wasn't worth the headache.

I'm on a big time marketing kick right now, which is good for you and good for me. After all, a big part of having a successful law firm is having enough clients to allow you to eat. You get that down and you can figure out everything else, right?

Please take a look at my site and let me know what you think. Your opinion matters to me (though no stealing, okay?!). And, as always, if you have any other questions, let me know.

The Perfect Watch

Janet of The Gardeners Cottage has shown us her perfect accessory – the perfect black flat. Generously, Janet offered the rest of us to share ours. She asked us 'What is your perfect accessory?'

When asked a question one must always go with their first instinct.

What you see above is the answer for me - the Cartier Tank Francais watch, steel and gold, small size.

I’ve always loved a good watch, and seem to have mostly veered towards a rectangle or square. I never went looking for a non-round watch, but when I bought the Cartier, realised as well as this one, my previous two watches (inexpensive ones) had square/rectangle faces. After coveting the Cartier Tank Americaine for most of my 20s, when it came down to it I chose the Tank Francais for my own 30th birthday present.

I’ve worn it for 10 years now, every single day, and it will hang on my wrist until the day I return to the earth. And it will be worth every cent. To me, a watch is not just useful, it can be a beautiful piece of jewellery too.

On the Cartier website they don’t call it a watch, it’s a timepiece. Of course.

Thanks Janet for a great idea. I look forward to reading others posts on their perfect accessory.

Weeding through the Mess: How to Make Sense of Your First Draft

A reader from New York has been working hard on her first draft of a novel for over a year.  First drafts aren't easy.  Initially they require sitting down and writing a lot.  Not necessarily from chapter 1 to The End, but a lot of scenes need to accumulate.  This is the benefit of writing classes, writing marathons, and writing practice.  This is why Nanowrimo is so popular.  You can accumulate pages toward this first draft.

But after all the pages are written, you don't really have a book yet.  To take the mess to first draft, you have to find a pathway through it.  Something a reader can make sense of. This is where the writer from New York was stuck.  

"I'm on the edge," she told me.  "There is almost a ream of paper with different chapters.  There are different beginnings.  There are different endings.  How do I weed through all this?"

How to Create a Map of Your Book

In my online classes, we're learning to create maps of our books.  We divide our weekly time between writing (accumulating those pages) and assessing where the pages might fit within a first draft.  To help this map-making process, I created a video of something called storyboarding.  Storyboarding is the easiest way I know to figure out the map through the mess.

Some writers don't like maps.  When I was younger and newer to book writing, I didn't either.  I didn't use maps for my travel, so why did I need them for my writing?  Wasn't it better just to let it flow? 

When I was exploring Europe one summer at nineteen, I only took along a good train schedule and my Eurail pass, a little bit of money, and my love of adventure.  Lucky I didn't know I was ignorantly hitchhiking in Greece during the anti-American protests.  Luckily, a German woman helped me out when I was trying to pass through East Germany without having the right stamp on my passport.  I was too innocent to know the danger I was narrowly avoiding, because my ideal was travel from a casual, unplanned perspective.  

I went to France a few summers ago and much of the adventure came in planning where to visit.  I found good maps.  I used them.  I had just as much--probably more--fun.

My early books were mapless too.  But when I began publishing back in the 1980s, my publisher assigned me an in-house editor.  He had a map, a good one.  

I use the W storyboard as my initial map when I am trying to make sense of reams of writing.  In a W there are five points, one for the beginning and ending and three at the end of the W's legs.  You first need to find these five points.  Once you discover them, you can build your map.  This week's exercise takes you through the steps.

Weeding your way to a good first draft takes time.  Set aside a storyboard retreat weekend, if you can.  You may come away with a map that will serve you well the rest of your book journey.    

Your Weekly Writing Exercise:  Map-Making

 1.  Watch the video from last week (scroll just below this post to see the link).

2.  Get a posterboard or large sheet of paper.  Draw a big W on it. 

3.  On a separate page, list all the key dramatic points in your story so far.  What has a real dramatic effect, with something happening outwardly?  What have you written about? 

4.  Read through these and see if you can choose the 5 most dramatic moments.  Place them on the 5 points of the W in logical order.  Review the video for the triggering event and ending event's requirements. 

5.  To see if you've chosen well, ask yourself if they follow the rising and falling action of their position on the W.  (See the video for more information on this.)  Begin to flow the other scenes you've written.  

6.  Place them between the 5 points on the W, using Post-It notes. 

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.

Hermes Sale

If you are a lover of the French Chic way of life as I am, you will likely have enjoyed reading Stephanie's former blogs Bonjour Madame and C'est Si Bon when they were around. Stephanie always had fun, chic and thought-provoking topics she posted on, and is an extremely inspirational declutterer. Such focus! And if you can remember the pictures of her petite home sparingly decorated with French style antique furniture... Le swoon.

Recently Stephanie wrote a fantastic guest post on My French Corner about the editing of her scarf collection. She talks about putting almost her entire scarf collection on eBay. But for a few weeks before that (as in now), she has started a temporary blog, Editing My Closet, to sell them to anyone in the US who is interested.

You simply must take a look, even if just to window-shop. Stephanie has many beautiful pieces. Enjoy!

Editing My Closet