Maximum Lawyer

Things don’t always go our way...

In this episode, Jim and Tyson are talking about how to stay motivated, focused, how to keep going; how to get past all the negativity.

As lawyers we will have those moments when we are down, when we are bummed out, when a case goes against us; clients won’t stop calling and they are mad at us.  The headaches of collecting money, paying bills… STAY OPTIMISTIC. STAY POSITIVE.

If you have people in your lives who bring you down or complain all the time and they’re constantly bringing their negativity to you, just don’t spend time with them, cut them loose, they will bring you down! If you spend any amount of time with them, you are gonna spend all your attention focusing on them and not on bettering yourself, not improving your firm, not improving your results for your clients. Surround yourself with people who are motivated.    What do you do to keep on task? To stay motivated?   

Hacking’s Hack: A podcast from Seth Godin. www.buildingnewlaw.ca/about/. It’s on iTunes. Tyson’s Tip: An app; Spoil. You can send gifts the same day. Check it out! 

https://www.spoil.co/. The Simplest Way to Give Beautiful gifts, delivered same-day, anywhere in the US.   

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Are your accounting books in order? As we always say: let the experts do their expertise.

In this episode, Jim and Tyson have Jill Ulett: The Accounting Girl as a guest and discuss about the importance of having tidy accounting books!

As a lawyer you will have to keep your books tidy: the IOLTA accounts are tricky and should be set straight. Get a system in place, get somebody who understands how to move the money back and forth and can help you figure out these processes.

In accounting and law practice you have to have your clients best interest at heart, you have to view them as a whole person. Sometimes you are dealing with damaged people, injured people, and life frustrations. Invest in your client. Feel and root for them. Support.

Relationships. Partnership. “We are going to meet each other halfway to make your life or business a little bit better.

LAWYERS! Get your IOLTA accounts in order and get your retainer reports in order. Know what is a billable cost and what not, and make sure that the ones which are billable are tied to clients. Operating costs, get everything categorized properly. When you are able to give your CPA proper financials that flow correctly, it makes their job easier and keeps your costs down.

Accounting Girl is your personal part-time accountant and virtual CFO, rescuing your company as if in the next phone booth, er… office. Accounting Girl senses when she’s needed (usually by receiving a signal via phone or email) and is at the ready! Her virtual CFO signals are so strong, she picks up your accounting distress from anywhere in the continental U.S., from her St. Louis-based accounting radar.

http://www.accounting-girl.com/   The Accounting Girl uses https://quickbooks.intuit.com/online/: QuickBooks makes online accounting easy.   

Jill’s Hack: Set up your expenses to be predictable. You can set up most of your utilities on budget billing, and anything that you can get to be the same amount every month and set up those plans can really help predict expenses and keep things static for you.

http://www.accounting-girl.com/   Tyson’s Tip: https://www.libsyn.com/ Libsyn provides everything your podcast needs: publishing tools, media hosting and delivery, RSS for iTunes, a Web Site, Stats, Advertising Programs, Premium Content , Apps for Apple, Android & Windows devices.   Hacking’s Hack: http://mastermindexperience.com/. The Mastermind Experience is a private event capped at 15 lawyers, so you’ll focus on working only with those who want to grow. You’ll have multiple opportunities during the day to meet everyone at the Mastermind Experience and focus on how you can help them, and how they can help you.   

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1. You answer your own phone.

• It telegraphs to potential clients that you’re really not that busy.
• It telegraphs that you don’t have enough business going on to be able to support someone answering your phone.  
• It demonstrates you are sort of desperate for the call.
• It keeps you from doing good work. It distracts you.
• It is a lack of time management.
• Clients are expecting a receptionist. It’s more professional.

1. You have a non professional email account.

• You need to look professional. Be professional.

1. You meet with potential clients at Starbucks or Panera.

• It telegraphs you are small potatoes, and that you don’t make enough money to spend money on an office, or you don’t care enough.
• You need an office. Because of what it represents, because of the privacy.

1. You lower your fee when pressured by a potential client.

• Set a fee which is fair to you and fair to your client.
• You don’t wanna be dealing with client who are looking for the lowest cost denominator.
• It telegraphs to clients that we as lawyers will fold to others when dealing with another attorney or the government.
• It sets the tone for the relationship. Clients could end up bossing you around.
• People are smart, they are gonna try to get the best deal possible.

1. You offer many practice areas in your website.

• This telegraphs that you will do anything.
• It shows you don’t have the systems nor the expertise built out to handle a particular matter.
• How can you target with so many practice areas!?

  
Hacking’s Hack: Don’t work at home, work in the office. Stop looking at your phone, emails, to-dos, etc once you get out of the office. This will give you time to be with yourself and your family. Read books. Spend quality time with your kids.
   
Tyson’s Tip: The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies. By Chet Holmes. Portfolio; Reprint edition (May 27, 2008). The best book on how to run your business.
   The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

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Why in the hell did I do this?!

Sometimes in your career you have to face difficult situations. Situations that will make you doubt of yourself and what your doing. Be strong, move forward. You’ll learn a lot from those bad experiences.

There’s always something to learn and to improve.

Hacking’s Hack: Given the fact that both of the examples in the show touched on the issue of race and African - American defendants. A book. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson. Spiegel & Grau; Reprint edition (August 18, 2015).

Tyson’s Tip: Be a go getter. If you wanna do something, go do it. Jump in, take risks.

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

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What are you doing to become the best?

In today's episode, Jim and Tyson discuss about becoming the best lawyer and acting like it.

Lawyers have the ethical and moral obligation to be the best in their practice areas. You have got to be striving constantly to improve your practice, your knowledge base and your systems. If you are not doing this, you might be having a problem, but if you are, it's perfectly ok for you to use that in your marketing. If you are striving to be the best, you have a moral obligation to PROTECT your clients from those other attorneys who are not.

If you don’t feel like you are delivering the best client experience and the best representation to your clients, then that’s going to impact your mindset when you are meeting with clients. It’s gonna telegraph that you feel shaky about what it is what you do. Be confident on your skills. Use your reputation as your favor. Don’t seem desperate. Don’t lower your fees.

Hacking’s Hack: A Chrome extension for Google Mail. It allows you to compose while hiding all your inbox. Protect your focus. https://inboxwhenready.org/

Tyson’s Tip: Hy Fy. Also, a Chrome extension. It’s free and it records your chrome tab and your voice. http://www.hyfy.io/

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Can you ever have too many clients?

In this episode, Jim and Tyson talk about the conflict of bringing in new clients and working on the ones you already have.

The tactician and the entrepreneur. The two sides of the business. One gets the clients, and the other works on the clients. In other words, both faces depend on each other. You should never focus on only one of them. Bring in the clients you want and need, but make sure to be able to work on them. Bringing in clients is very important, but If you can’t be efficient with the clients you already have then you have a problem. It’s time to grow.

Organize yourself. Eliminate, automate, and delegate. Maximize your time.

When you are building and starting out you are less busy. It’s a good idea to use the time you have to build the systems to keep track of your clients and provide them a good service, so when the time comes you are already systematized.  

Tyson’s Tip and Hacking’s Hack: Infusionsoft. https://www.infusionsoft.com/. Sales and marketing automation software built exclusively for small business success.

Learn the ins and outs of Infusionsoft: http://www.monkeypodmarketing.com/

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In this episode, Tyson and Jim talk about the advantages of internalizing concepts from other industries to make your own practice better.

When you see something in another industry, instead of having a closed mindset,look at it, play around with it and see how you can internalize it and make it something you can use in your own practice.

Learn from other industries, look for ideas to make you practice grow. There are many ways of doing it. Mastermind, Podcasts, Magazines.

Take advantage from actual technologies, social networks, events, webinars, seminars. Improvise, try new things. There’s just an unlimited list of ideas you can get from other industries, and all you have to do is think about how you can apply it to your practice area. If you can, use it. If you can’t, then don’t use it. Simple.

Add value to your practice.

Hacking’s Hack: A website: https://ifttt.com/. You can set up rules and things that happen after certain events. Automate.

Tyson’s Tip: The Ultimate Sales Letter: Attract New Customers. Boost Your Sales. by Dan S. Kennedy (Adams Media; 3 edition (February 20, 2006)). Basics of how to write a sales letter. You can do it as an email and as an actual letter. Marketing.

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Hernán Cortés was a Spanish conqueror. He was trying to conquer Mexico with only 600 men, and when he got there and saw how huge the enemy was he realized that the only way they were going to do such thing was if his army knew that there was no way back, no turning back. So he burnt the boats. He is the first person to conquer Mexico.

Commitment. Commit to your firm. Running and building your own law firm is hard, so if you’re going to be half in, in the long run you’ll do yourself and your client a disservice. If you are not committed to building a well oiled machine that functions properly and that all the things that a healthy law firm needs to do, you can’t double in this, you can’t be half in.

If you don’t have work to do, you need to be generating work. It is not OK to stay at home half of the day because you don’t have any work.  Work hard, get clients. Hussle.

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” (Jim Rohn)

Be in a law environment. Be around succes, around inspiration and motivation.  

Hacking’s Hack: A podcast and a blog: http://www.lessdoing.com/podcasts/, dedicated to outsourcing and finding people to do tasks for you and to make your life more automated. More optimized.  

Tyson’s Tip: Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials), by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras. (Harper Collins Publ. USA, July 1st 2004)

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In this episode Jim and Tyson talk about how they get people to raise their hands and let us know that they’re interested in our legal services.

The before unit: before you get the client.

The during unit: your representation of the client.

The after unit: after you handled the case.

There are lots of people walking around who may need your services. Your job is to identify those people and find where they gather.

Nich down (we already talked about this in a previous episode). Narrow down the nich. Pick the target.

Clients need their problem solved. So if you advertise with a lot of practices, the ones that the client don’t need will act as noise and will distract. Your message needs to be clear. From a practical standpoint, if you do the things you can do and are good at, your clients will be happy and will go out and tell other people about you.  Create an effective add, a compellent offer.  

Hacking’s Hack: New podcast: “More Cheese, Less Whiskers”:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/more-cheese-less-whiskers/id1135262567?mt=2

Tyson’s Tip: https://www.purechat.com/

$20 a month to manage your web chats, web questions, etc. You can link it with Infusionsoft.  

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

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In this episode, Jim and Tyson discuss the benefits of building a good and strategic referral network.

Usually the best cases, the most qualified leads, come through a referral. Connect with people. That will lead to referrals down the road.

http://www.bni.com/: Network with people, build connections, get referral partners and build trust.

Virginia Muzquiz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/virginiamuzquiz: BNI connected. The Referral Institute. It will help you build connections.

If you give referrals you will end up gaining. Refer clients you can’t handle to other lawyers and make efforts to have them call somebody else that you know does that practice. And make sure that attorney knows that client comes from you, so they’ll know they’re getting something from you. This is very valuable. When you give a referral, explain why you are connecting them.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B. Cialdini. Harper Business; Revised edition (December 26, 2006)

“People give referrals to show that they’re connected”

When you refer - or, before you refer-, you are pre qualifying the person before they even contact the lawyer, and you are helping the lawyer and the client. Be that guy that everyone goes to: Be “The Hub”, so you can start dishing up the cases and definitely grow your network.

Hacking’s Hack: https://overcast.fm/. Free app. Pretty interface, but more importantly, the player will delete the spaces between when people are talking. This feature will shorten up the podcast if you are short of time. Another thing, it will boost the audio of the speaker.

Tyson’s Tip: https://hootsuite.com/. An app that allows you to schedule up all of your social media network posts.Very easy to use and it saves a lot of time.

Be careful of how many posts you schedule and when you do it. A lot of scheduled posts loose the “original and live” feel of a content. There are some kind of posts that work great with an auto schedule, others don’t.  

The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.

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