At some point in the past year (I have no idea when it happened) I started feeling at home anywhere in the world. It's odd because I'm not generally someone who's comfortable anywhere. To find myself comfortable everywhere was totally unexpected. It snuck up on me. I was just sitting in a coffee shop one day, expecting to feel like I always feel—a bit out of my element—and it struck me that I felt like I belonged. It happened in all sorts of places. It happened when I least expected it.

We like the “I can’t keep up” story when we’re feeling inadequate about our marketing. We see change everywhere we look and we feel a sense of overwhelm. But that’s just the story we tell ourselves when we’re stressed about revenues. The fact is that very little has changed. Grounding ourselves in that reality makes it easier to “keep up.”

I got interested in lawyer marketing in the early 70s. I was eleven years old.

My father practiced law in North Miami Beach. He was a networker: that’s how he built his practice.

Here's how he did it:

He had breakfast with a group of local business people every weekday at Corky’s. His group of buddies gathered at the same big table each morning when they could make it. Of course, if my dad had to be in court in downtown Miami he’d eat downtown. He had some lawyers he’d sit with in a grungy cafe tucked in a downtown corner.

He served as President of the North Dade Bar Association for a term. The process of moving up through the ranks involved getting to know everyone in the group. That, of course, generated some referrals over the years.

He joined a networking group. I remember they required him to do business with two members a month. We used the dry cleaner from the group so that satisfied one requirement. We were always hunting for someone else from the group. Thankfully, the owner of a great Italian grocery store was a member. They had cannoli for take-away. Score!

He spent a term as a municipal night court judge. That role was passed around to local lawyers and viewed as a public service. But it was also a chance to meet many more lawyers and community members. I went along a number of times to watch as my dad ruled on minor criminal matters.

He ran for County Court Judge once. He didn’t win, but he spent six months visiting picnics, parties, and campaign events, meeting more people. He had billboards and brochures and his name became ever more known.

He volunteered with the local chapter of the ACLU and got involved in high profile cases. He eventually took on the city of Hialeah (Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah), tried his case, and watched as it went on to the US Supreme Court. That got him more media attention than he had time to manage.

He made friends. He got invited to things: we spent days on boats with his friends who had boats, we went to sporting events with his friends who had tickets, we went to dinner with his friends who had food. He had friends everywhere we went. Wandering around town never went quickly because we had to stop to chat so often.

He wrote the occasional article. One of his best friends was the editor of the local twice-weekly newspaper--The North Dade Journal. My dad penned an occasional piece. From time to time he wrote a letter to the Miami Herald editor. He had articles placed in the local bar association newsletter as well. Writing wasn’t something he set out to do, but it happened when issues arose.

He did more--much more, getting involved in lots of local causes, cases, and organizations. He took seats on boards, attended events, met more people, made more friends, and kept a steady stream of clients calling.

Time passed. I was watching my dad market his practice more than forty-six years ago. One would think that lots has changed with respect to lawyer marketing over that period of time. But one would be wrong.

Nearly nothing has changed over the years. Everything is pretty much the same. One thing has changed--that’s it.

Something changed in 1977

Well, one thing did change, in 1977. That’s the year of the US Supreme Court decision in Bates v. Arizona. That case upheld the right of lawyers to advertise their services. That’s the case that opened the floodgates for daytime TV ads for personal injury lawyers. That’s …

It was raining. I went to the hotel lobby to pick up the suit I’d had delivered, cursing myself for forgetting an umbrella, as I would now end up getting the suit all wet. That’s when I found the umbrella packed in with the delivery. It really is the little things that count, but finding the right little thing is hard. It requires empathy. Getting it right requires spending time getting into your client's head. It requires you to figure out what they might need and how you might be helpful. It’s tougher than it sounds.

I didn’t see it early on. I’m only just beginning to see it now. It took me decades. I hope your pattern recognition skills are better than mine.

I used to think each day was different. Each day felt like the first time climbing Mount Everest.

I’d encounter a different client each day.

Each case would be different from the others.

One day would start with client work and end with marketing tasks. Another day would start with administrative issues and end with a court appearance. Every day felt different.

Employees would make mistakes, I’d make mistakes, a new employee would start, an old employee would leave. One employee would come to me with a personal problem, another with a health issue, another with a money concern.

I truly believed each day was different. In fact, I thought the variety was the reason I enjoyed my work. I used to tell people that it was never boring. Life felt like a grand adventure.

Then a lightbulb came on over my head. POP!!! I could see it. I was living in Groundhog Day. The same day didn’t repeat quite as precisely the next day, but my work did repeat over and over. Sometimes it happened in the same day, sometimes the repetitions were separated by weeks, or months. Sometimes it took a year for the repeat. But eventually it did--everything repeats, with only minor variations on the theme.

Seeing the pattern changes everything

At some point the patterns start to emerge.

You realize that you wake up, roll out of bed, shower, eat breakfast, drive to the office, park, walk to the entrance, scan your card, push the elevator button, unlock the door, grab the coffee, say good morning, and make your way to your desk.

Call it what you will: it’s a routine, a system, a sequence of recurring tasks. It’s do, repeat, do again, repeat again, over, and over, and over.

Then you see even more patterns. You realize that you have the same conversations with your clients each day. You repeat the same words, with the same kinds of people, worried about the same things.

You draft the same documents, you have the same meetings, you make the same calls, you send the same texts.

Repeat,

repeat,

repeat.

The lawyers who see it early are able to document the system, see the opportunities for efficiencies, and scale the business upward.

They realize they can expand the marketing, the technology, the management, and the financial systems into something bigger, and that can grow the revenues and the profits.

Some lawyers don’t see the patterns as quickly. They think of each day as new. Maybe they’re happier and having more fun. For them, life is an adventure of discovery. They’re not living in Groundhog Day, repeating the same patterns over and over at an ever increasing scale.

That’s when you build momentum

Seeing that it’s all recurring tasks after having seen each piece separately and individually for thirty years isn’t particularly helpful to me now. I could be much more efficient at running a law firm, except that I no longer have a law firm to run.

But this could be a breakthrough moment for you. You can benefit from the tragedy of my recurring days, months, and years.

What if you treat everything as a list of recurring tasks right now?

What if you start systematically tackling your life and your work?

What if you see what you’re doing for the first time as something you’ll do five more times, fifty more times, or even five hundred more times? Would that knowledge encourage you to make observations, take notes, create forms and systems, treat this as a different kind of opportunity?

Even the weirdest, most awful, challenging, upsetting, disturbing, unique situations tend to repeat. It’s all going to come back again if you’re still doing the work. Sure the crazy old guy might be a crazy old woman next time. Her money buried in th…

Buying something makes my brain feel like I’m doing something. Does that happen to you? When I bought my gym membership, had my photo taken, got my fancy card, and went home, it felt like I’d exercised. Maybe the tendency to buy instead of do isn’t entirely our fault. The folks who sell things are pretty good at using marketing to convince us that buying things is progress. Maybe it’s their fault?

There’s a particular marketing mindset which makes each expenditure of marketing dollars exponentially more valuable.

Making a switch in the way you think dramatically increases your effectiveness. The funny thing is that it’s not hard to do. It’s a quick fix that changes everything.

Marketing a law firm is challenging. We need to (1) find the right people and (2) say the right thing.

We’re not selling body wash.

Body wash is something everyone needs (been on a bus lately?), and it's inexpensive. It's a mass-market product.

Legal services, by contrast, are needed only by a very limited number of folks and only in certain circumstances. Legal services are also, at least according to most clients, definitely NOT inexpensive.

This is the way most of us market our practices

Most law firms lack subtlety in their two-step marketing approach. We:

1. Seek out the troubled

Different firms do it differently. Some scour the business news. Some publish lots of great articles. Some garner good press so the troubled will come to them. Some harvest auto crash data. Some use marketing pixels to track website searchers who are looking for help solving a particular legal problem. Every firm takes a different approach, but they all want the attention of someone with a legal problem.

2. Scream the law firm name--LOUDLY

Once the law firm has identified someone with a legal problem the typical approach to reeling them in is to scream the law firm name over and over in one form or another. Some do it by stalking the target with online advertising. Some do it with automated email sequences. Some do it by calling and pitching their services. Some do it with a website that features--mostly--the name of the law firm wrapped up with adjectives like “professional, excellent, and affordable.”

Most law firms use the seeking/screaming approach. They spend their marketing dollars buying websites, search engine optimization, canned content, online and offline advertising, slick collateral materials, direct mail, etc.

Here’s why our marketing fails

The seeking/screaming approach works in a limited way. Some folks respond to screaming. Screaming puts you ahead of those who aren’t as loud. But the marketing investment would work much better if it incorporated empathy. We end up screaming louder and louder to be heard over the other law firms who speak more softly, but saying the right thing would be far more effective.

Seeking out prospective clients is, of course, an essential marketing behavior. If you’re going to sell something, then you need to know to whom to sell it.

But screaming? Is that the most valuable use of your marketing dollars? It’s the screaming-your-law-firm-name part that misses the boat. That’s where empathy would make a difference--a powerful difference.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another

When we incorporate empathy into our marketing we have an exponential impact. Empathy is the turbocharger. Empathy, aimed at the right target, delivers a thermonuclear reaction called a retainer.

Unfortunately most of us let ego get in the way of empathy when it comes to marketing. Our egos are the biggest barrier to maximizing the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.

“No offense” is the way one of my kids prefaces any attack on me. “No offense Dad, but....”

I’m nevertheless offended. Who raised these kids?

Anyway--no offense, but when you let your ego take over, you do stupid things with your marketing money, and then you’re upset when it’s not particularly effective. Unsurprisingly, your prospective client sees your marketing, assumes you’re a big-headed egomaniac, and doesn’t like you. Some of them hire you anyway, because your competition isn’t screaming as loudly or has an even more annoying ego.

Here’s how we put our…

If the results you get aren’t the results you want, you need to change the system. Some people say they don't have a system, but that's not true. We all have a system. If the system is bad, the results are bad. The system works perfectly to deliver bad results because the system is designed that way. Most of us have systems that deliver bad results repeatedly. However, we can change the system. We can alter the input to get new output.

The departure of a key employee is a critical juncture. It can cause us to question our path. It’s a time when we shouldconsider doubling down, but we might consider abandoning ship.

The employee knows what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and what we’re trying to achieve. The employee bought into our vision, joined us on the journey, and appeared committed to reaching our destination. We're a team, right? We’re all in it together.

But this key employee is jumping off. She knows the what and the why and still she decided it was time to leap in a different direction. Does she see something we’re missing? Does she know something we don’t? Is she sensing a shift in the momentum? Is she jumping off because she feels the uncertainty? It makes us question the rightness of our path.

The departure feels like rejection

One of my lawyer friends lost a key employee last week. He felt abandoned. He wondered if he’d been doing it all wrong. He felt uncertain, disoriented, confused. Why would anyone want to leave our juggernaut? If he’s right, she must be wrong. But what if she’s right?

Our law firms are nothing but a collection of people wrapping themselves around an idea. When any of those people question the vision, express their doubt, act inconsistently with the beliefs we thought we shared, it’s distressing. It feels, for a moment, as if the whole structure is unraveling.

An employee departure can be difficult. It reeks of rejection. It feels like a kick in the stomach. Even when it’s a terrible employee who’s leaving and we have wished daily that they’d leave on their own so we don’t have to fire them, it’s still hard to see them go.

Expect it, be strong, it’s coming

Realistically, though, they're all leaving. Everyone is a volunteer. Even if you manage to keep them forever, forever isn’t forever. We are all volunteers. We are all temporary help.

There’s value in having a realistic understanding of the tenure of your team members. They truly are all leaving, eventually, but you should strive to keep them forever. It’s that striving that is the way to build your vision so that it’s stronger, so that it’s lasting, so that it sustains you and everyone with you for a long, long time.

Yes, you should behave in a manner that works to keep every employee. There is tremendous value in retaining your team. Experience matters. Camaraderie matters. Comfort matters.

Sometimes it’s better if they go

But there are limits.

You should strive to retain every employee, but:

Don’t compromise the system to keep one person, unless the system is wrong.

Don’t compromise your values.

Don’t make others miserable.

Sometimes it really is best if the employee leaves. It’s tempting to react to the announced departure by trying to convince the employee to stay. My experience is that convincing someone to stay is nearly always a mistake. It often results in compromises you will come to regret, and it usually ends up simply delaying the departure until a not-so-distant later date. When they want out, they want out--let them go.

Save your persuasive energy for the employees who are still on the team. They’re going to need a boost to feel good about staying when their teammate decides to depart. A departure causes the remaining team members to question their decision to stay. This is when you need to reinforce their decision to stay.

Here’s how to keep the best

I've lost lots of employees over the years, so here are some things I've learned about how to keep the good ones:

1. Share the vision

It all starts with your vision. Where are you going? What is it going to look like? What are you building? If you can’t yet see it, then this is where you need to start. Until the vision is so vivid that it feels to you like it has already happened, you’re not ready to star…

Once upon a time, I felt like I had to do everything by myself. Those days were chaotic, horrible, and stressful. It was especially bad when a deadline loomed—I seized control, kicked everyone out, and acted like I was the only person on the planet who could fix whatever problem I was dealing with. I had to do it all by myself because I was sure that was the only way to get it done. So I pushed everyone away, often with an obnoxious, alienating, mean-spirited outburst that would later come back to haunt me. My response to high-pressure circumstances was rarely elegant.

It’s no secret that having a clear vision for the future of your business gets you more clients, more revenue, more income, more free time, more satisfaction, and a happier life.

After all, if you don’t know where you’re going then how can you possibly get there? You can’t.

The need for a clear vision comes up, in one way or another, in every business book, every discussion with a management consultant, and in every analysis of every successful business or professional practice.

But lawyers I meet--knowing all of the above--fail to take the time to formulate a clear vision. Why?

Mostly it’s the busyness of the day that stops us dead in our tracks. You're ready to go. You have grand plans for the day: you're going to flesh out a comprehensive agenda for how the firm should function.

Then the phone vibrates, the first wave of emails rolls in, an unexpected client walks through the door, and you're off in a completely different direction.

Unfortunately the direction we’re heading is often the wrong direction.

It doesn’t help that working on the long-term future of the firm requires waiting for the long-term in order to see the results. Lots of us flush our long-term future in favor of short-term payoffs.

We want to avoid pain and we know that the short-term problem, left unresolved, will cause fallout soon, while the future seems far off and hazy. We put off creating the vision for another day, or week, or year--any time other than today. It’s easy to prioritize the quick fix instead of taking time to create a bright future.

If they built a Delayed Gratification ’R Us store, it wouldn’t have many lawyers shopping in it.

Freedom, wealth, and respect are waiting

Even after I show lawyers the magical power of a well-crafted vision, they get distracted by the right-now tasks popping up before them. They get sucked into the urgent things and can’t find the time to focus.

"Yeah, I get it, I just really need to get things wrapped up this week and then I'll have time."

What a shame.

We pay a price. A big price. We work for decades and we never get what we wanted. Disappointment becomes our default emotional setting, because we didn’t take the time to map out a compelling future, to create a plan, to see it in our mind's eye.

Creating a vivid, clear vision (call it goals, plan, objectives--call it whatever you need to call it to get yourself to do it) gets us what we want. But even knowing that, we still struggle to find the time and energy to do the thinking.

Creating a clear vision powerfully changes our future for the better

Yet, we put it off and off and further off until the future happens and we end up with less than we wanted.

What has to happen for you to invest in yourself? What has to happen for you to set aside time to plan? What has to happen to get you to take action?

Here’s a kick in the pants

Today, we’re talking about motivation. We’re talking about the pot of gold that is awaiting you at the end of the rainbow.

Right now I’m going to detail some of what happens when you clarify the vision. Here’s what happens to your life instead of:

Toiling away late into the night preparing for tomorrow's hearing

Waking up worried about the deadlines missed

Jumping out of bed at 5 AM in a panic about unpaid receivables

Stressing out about your bank account being overdrawn

Knowing the client is coming to pick up her file because she isn’t happy with how long it takes to get a return call

Disappointing your family because you’re distracted all the time and lack the time, money, and attention they deserve

Here’s what you get when you get the vision right. This is how it pays off. This is what happens to your life. This is the impact of taking some time now, and investing it in yourself instead of rushing around, trying to solve …