“Outsource it all,” I proposed in a recent article.

The response was giddy. Lawyers approached me from around the globe with a gleeful look in their eyes (or in their emails). The conversation at my workshop in Las Vegas got particularly animated when the issue came up.

I do, in fact, believe you can outsource it all. That includes everything from finance to technology to marketing. It also includes the legal work. It’s all fair game if outsourcing is your approach to growing your business.

Most of the work can be handed off

The idea of outsourcing it all energizes some lawyers. Their questions reveal the electricity coursing through their veins as they fantasize about a life without employees or, possibly, direct contact with clients.

But the idea quickly leads to lots of questions. Which work should be outsourced? Which work should be retained? How do we find people whom we can trust to do the work properly? How do we monitor the work and the fulfillment of our promises to clients?

The starting point is to let go of a small piece of work. Find a marketplace like Upwork, draft the specifics for the tasks required, pick a vendor and give outsourcing a try. Your first experiment will be bumpy--that’s how you find the flaws in your system. That’s progress.

It’s pretty easy to identify the work that ought to be outsourced. When the assignments are rote and generic, they should go. When the work involves the delivery of a commodity, it should go too.

When you can document the system and use that information to consistently produce a particular outcome, then it’s clear that the work can be handed off to someone outside of the law firm and handled at a distance.

But some work is special, different, worth keeping

Some work is different, though. Some work defines you. It’s the thing people talk about; it’s the the reason they come to you instead of your competitor. Sure, you can hand it off, but you run the risk of sub-optimal results. You run the risk of losing that element that keeps people referring to you, coming back to you, or saying nice things about you.

Don’t outsource your secret sauce.

Abigail Ybarra worked for Fender guitars from 1956 to 2013. She hand-wound guitar pickups that found their way into instruments for people like Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix, among many others. Winding pickups is something that can be done, and often is done, entirely by machine.

But guitar players, like audiophiles and wine connoisseurs, are a picky bunch. They claim to be able to hear, taste, and smell things that others can't.

Are Abby's pickups better than the ones hand-wound by other people? Maybe, maybe not.

Are they better than pickups wound entirely by a machine? Maybe, maybe not.

But what's clear is that the pickups she has touched are coveted by guitarists around the globe. They get into bidding wars on eBay for sets of her pickups. They write articles in magazines and on blogs about making sure you don't get duped into buying fake sets that aren't really wound by "the queen of tone".

The most macho shredders go weak at the knees for the chance to own pickups wound by this diminutive grandmother from Southern California.

Whether you believe the hype or not, she has the secret sauce. And Gibson, Fender's biggest competitor, may have had all kinds of fancy and expensive equipment and techniques, but they didn't have Abigail Ybarra.

There are some special elements of your business that are tricky to define. They’re hard to explain. They’re the things which require some of the special--personal--art you and your team bring to the work you do for your clients.

What’s your secret sauce?

There are elements of your business that can’t be written down. These special things defy description--there’s some magic involved--and when you try to draft wr…

Your KPI (key performance indicator) is your North Star. It's the guiding light that helps you focus your energy, make decisions, and align your team. It’s the one number that matters more than the rest. I love to work the abbreviation "KPI" into conversations because it makes me sound like I know business stuff. Using KPI in a sentence makes me sound smarter than I am.

Sold the house, gave away the stuff, packed a carry-on bag and set off to see the…yada, yada, yada.

You’ve heard the digital nomad story from me and others, and most folks now have some hooks for understanding the lifestyle. We're three years in and this is my annual update. You can catch up at year one or year two. You can even see us in the digital nomad documentary One Way Ticket.

Feeling at home

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.

I'm in Luang Prabang, Laos and I feel at home sharing the table with a Chinese couple with whom I share no language. He's slurping his eggs up with his face down near the plate. I'm eating my toast with jam. He's drinking tea, I'm drinking coffee. We all smile and nod, not saying a word, and I'm perfectly content.

I'm in Dahab, Egypt and feel at home slapping high fives with the dozen tiny children who follow me for a block each night as I wander back from dinner.

I'm sitting outside, which is actually inside the home of a family in Ubud, Indonesia. We're sharing a dinner of rice and fish and vegetables. The children and the grandparents can only communicate with me and Lisa with gestures. The husband has great English and his wife has some. I feel at home even as Lisa inadvertently sits on the mat which turns out to be the dinner table.

I feel at home when the couple across from us stares so hard that I can feel their eyes on my skin. It's not the first time, it happens frequently, and I've grown accustomed to being the subject of curiosity. We smile and nod and we say goodbye to the staring couple when we leave.

I feel at home when the waitress shakes her head "no, no" after I randomly pick something off the menu since I have no idea what the Korean menu actually says. She points and gesticulates me into a different order and I have a great meal thanks to her concern.

I feel especially at home on the 19th day of buying a croissant from the same Croatian woman at 7 AM each morning when she finally lets her stern demeanor down and, for the very first time, smiles like she remembers me.

I feel at home when I stumble and fall on the street in Mumbai, cutting my face as my glasses smash into the concrete, and Indian men rush over, scoop me up, dust me off, and help me get moving again toward my hotel.

I feel at home as the young woman stops to help us buy subway tickets and explains the machine. I feel at home as the young man stops to translate the "closed for remodeling sign" on the restaurant door and then walks us three blocks to a place he likes that definitely has something vegetarian for my wife.

I feel at home when the Vietnamese soldier with the big machine gun waves at me to move back, to go the other way, and gives me a forceful look.

I feel at home confronting the Turkish taxi driver who's ripping us off and who concedes and gives us back our money. I feel at home assaulting the other tourists with conversation in the rooftop bar who thought they were going to have a quiet drink at the manager's happy hour.

I feel at home talking to anyone and posing for pictures with locals, other tourists,

Some lawyers lie to me. It happens like this: “My marketing isn’t working,” they say. “I’m doing the networking thing. I’m meeting other lawyers, doing lunches and coffee. And I even joined a Business Network International group.”

(The BNI thing always annoys me. I’ve never encouraged anyone to join a BNI group. “Why did you join a BNI?” I ask them. “Because it’s in your networking course,” they say. “No it isn’t,” I tell them, then try to get back to the important part of the conversation. But at that point I’m agitated. Why do people join those freaking BNI groups?)

It’s raining here in New York City. I’m only in town for a couple of days and it didn’t occur to me to bring an umbrella.

As I was about to leave the hotel, the front desk alerted me that my DUFL suitcase had arrived. I picked it up and wheeled it upstairs to hang up my suit, annoyed with myself for failing to check the weather before I got here.

That’s when I found the umbrella, packed in with the delivery.

DUFL is a dry cleaning/packing/shipping company in Arizona and Tokyo. I’ve used them for a couple of years. They have a service involving an app which allows me to select clothes from my virtual closet, have them shipped quickly to the location of a business meeting, and then picked up and dry cleaned when the meeting is over. It’s pretty awesome.

DUFL checked the weather in advance of shipping my bag and knew that rain was in the forecast. That’s why they included a nice loaner umbrella in the bag.

After receiving the umbrella I spent two days saying nice things about DUFL and showing off their umbrella. I was dry, happy, and bragging about their great service to everyone I met, including the 16 lawyers sitting in my workshop.

It really is the little things that count. Have you thought about doing something little?

Be thoughtful

In the early days of paying for Amazon Prime membership I got some free stuff from Amazon. I enjoyed getting a free coffee mug and a few other items, but it was pretty clear that the gifts were sent to many customers and weren’t customized to my needs.

I’m not complaining, I like a free coffee mug, but it’s no umbrella in the middle of a downpour.

I’m sure most of us would like to do something for our clients that would have the same impact as the DUFL umbrella. We care about these folks. We appreciate that they picked us. Many of our clients are experiencing a rainy day. We’d like to help.

But finding the right small 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.

For the small thing to hit home, it has to be the right thing, at the right time, in the right place. This is tricky.

Years ago we gave our clients a box of chocolates at the end of their initial consultation. It was nice, but it wasn’t exactly right. We gave them a nice leather binder in which to store their papers as the case progressed. Again, it was nice but not perfect.

The umbrella on a rainy day is perfect.

This isn’t going to be easy if you’re going to get it right.

Amazon certainly knows a great deal about me based on my purchases. They’ve got a fair amount of insight into my life. One might imagine they could create an algorithm capable of finding the perfect little thing if they applied themselves. In retrospect, I see now that a mug is pretty weak. They’ve got all that data--they should do better.

We’ve got very little data in our practices, but we’ve got big brains. And we’ve got a great deal of caring and concern for our clients. Instead of using a super-computer we’ll have to rely on our super brains--we’re pretty good at hearing and understanding the story of our clients. We know what they’re feeling. We’ve got a good shot at making this work.

Surprise someone

There’s more to getting this right than being thoughtful--as if that wasn’t already hard enough.

We need to add the element of surprise. That’s especially true if you’re going to do this more than once and want to incorporate a small thing into your approach to elevating the client experience.

Repeating some kind of small extra quickly shifts the gift from being something pl...

It’s raining here in New York City. I’m only in town for a couple of days and it didn’t occur to me to bring an umbrella.

As I was about to leave the hotel, the front desk alerted me that my DUFL suitcase had arrived. I picked it up and wheeled it upstairs to hang up my suit, annoyed with myself for failing to check the weather before I got here.

That’s when I found the umbrella, packed in with the delivery.

DUFL is a dry cleaning/packing/shipping company in Arizona and Tokyo. I’ve used them for a couple of years. They have a service involving an app which allows me to select clothes from my virtual closet, have them shipped quickly to the location of a business meeting, and then picked up and dry cleaned when the meeting is over. It’s pretty awesome.

DUFL checked the weather in advance of shipping my bag and knew that rain was in the forecast. That’s why they included a nice loaner umbrella in the bag.

After receiving the umbrella I spent two days saying nice things about DUFL and showing off their umbrella. I was dry, happy, and bragging about their great service to everyone I met, including the 16 lawyers sitting in my workshop.

It really is the little things that count. Have you thought about doing something little?

Be thoughtful

In the early days of paying for Amazon Prime membership I got some free stuff from Amazon. I enjoyed getting a free coffee mug and a few other items, but it was pretty clear that the gifts were sent to many customers and weren’t customized to my needs.

I’m not complaining, I like a free coffee mug, but it’s no umbrella in the middle of a downpour.

I’m sure most of us would like to do something for our clients that would have the same impact as the DUFL umbrella. We care about these folks. We appreciate that they picked us. Many of our clients are experiencing a rainy day. We’d like to help.

But finding the right small 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.

For the small thing to hit home, it has to be the right thing, at the right time, in the right place. This is tricky.

Years ago we gave our clients a box of chocolates at the end of their initial consultation. It was nice, but it wasn’t exactly right. We gave them a nice leather binder in which to store their papers as the case progressed. Again, it was nice but not perfect.

The umbrella on a rainy day is perfect.

This isn’t going to be easy if you’re going to get it right.

Amazon certainly knows a great deal about me based on my purchases. They’ve got a fair amount of insight into my life. One might imagine they could create an algorithm capable of finding the perfect little thing if they applied themselves. In retrospect, I see now that a mug is pretty weak. They’ve got all that data--they should do better.

We’ve got very little data in our practices, but we’ve got big brains. And we’ve got a great deal of caring and concern for our clients. Instead of using a super-computer we’ll have to rely on our super brains--we’re pretty good at hearing and understanding the story of our clients. We know what they’re feeling. We’ve got a good shot at making this work.

Surprise someone

There’s more to getting this right than being thoughtful--as if that wasn’t already hard enough.

We need to add the element of surprise. That’s especially true if you’re going to do this more than once and want to incorporate a small thing into your approach to elevating the client experience.

Repeating some kind of small extra quickly shifts the gift from being something pleasantly special into an expectation. The first time the auto dealership washed my car as part of my routine service, I was exci…

Sometimes it’s the little things that wreak havoc with our carefully manufactured image. We spend a lot of energy playing the part. We get a nice haircut, we make ourselves smell nice, and we dress up in a fancy suit. Even our office space plays a role in our quest to make the right impression.

We hang diplomas on the wall next to our law license, opposite the perfect piece of art. The furniture is solid and brightly polished. Some of us lay out fancy $100 pens. We hide the piles of unfinished work in a lower drawer.

But it can all unravel in an instant. Sometimes it’s the smallest thing that undermines our credibility. Sometimes we don’t notice when it happens or understand why. We don’t see what others see.

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.

When I read the article about losing weight by eating healthy food, I went to the grocery store to buy a bunch of vegetables. It felt like I was shedding pounds.

When I bought my new phone, downloaded the apps from my old phone, and called a few people to test it out, it felt like I’d done some serious work.

My personal favorite thing to buy is a new task management app so I can move my old tasks into the new app. That makes me feel really good about getting things done. My brain gets more joy from moving things around on the list than it does from doing the actual work

It’s sad that buying doesn’t equal doing

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?

Maybe the desire to buy things is a function of the lawyer-culture. Maybe we equate having something cool to describe with success. Maybe we show off the size of our rented office, or our brand new website, or our super-slick software, and think that makes us more like the lawyer we dream of being. Maybe it’s the fault of the other lawyers?

Maybe the problem is rooted in the larger culture? Maybe everyone we know buys things in an effort to solve problems, make things better, and get an emotional boost. Maybe the consumer culture traps us in a mindset that allows us to believe that buying things is the solution to any problem. Maybe it’s too big for us to resist because the buying habit encompasses all of us?

It truly is sad that buying things doesn’t equal doing things because buying things is much more fun than doing the work. Buying things makes us feel busy--we research, we compare prices, we talk to friends about the choices--and we’re able to make the purchase and check that task off the to-do list. Buying things definitely feels like it ought to help us put points on the scoreboard of life. Yep, it’s sad.

What do you really want?

If you want to own things, then buying things will get you there. It makes perfect sense to acquire things, because then you will own more things.

But if what you really want is:

* a better bottom line for your business, or

* a bigger business, or

* a business which makes a bigger difference in the life of its customers, or

* a business that’s more valuable to others

then buying things likely isn’t the best way to achieve your goal.

Doing things is the ticket if you're interested in making progress toward your goal of changing the business from what it is to what you dream it will become.

Getting what you want is more about doing than buying. SAD!

Doing things sometimes involves buying a thing or two--sure. But doing things is usually more about focusing and doing and less about spending and acquiring new things.

Doing things is about making change happen, and that usually involves writing things down or talking to people. It rarely relies upon the purchase of much of anything.

Better marketing usually involves meeting more people or writing more material so you can use it in all the places you can publish.

Better management usually involves more time focused on your team, executing a plan of systematic communication, and working with the key players to document systems comprehensively.

Better financial management usually involves more time optimizing the business plan, developing an understanding of your model and results, and drilling down into the financial details of your business.

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.

When I read the article about losing weight by eating healthy food, I went to the grocery store to buy a bunch of vegetables. It felt like I was shedding pounds.

When I bought my new phone, downloaded the apps from my old phone, and called a few people to test it out, it felt like I’d done some serious work.

My personal favorite thing to buy is a new task management app so I can move my old tasks into the new app. That makes me feel really good about getting things done. My brain gets more joy from moving things around on the list than it does from doing the actual work

It’s sad that buying doesn’t equal doing

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?

Maybe the desire to buy things is a function of the lawyer-culture. Maybe we equate having something cool to describe with success. Maybe we show off the size of our rented office, or our brand new website, or our super-slick software, and think that makes us more like the lawyer we dream of being. Maybe it’s the fault of the other lawyers?

Maybe the problem is rooted in the larger culture? Maybe everyone we know buys things in an effort to solve problems, make things better, and get an emotional boost. Maybe the consumer culture traps us in a mindset that allows us to believe that buying things is the solution to any problem. Maybe it’s too big for us to resist because the buying habit encompasses all of us?

It truly is sad that buying things doesn’t equal doing things because buying things is much more fun than doing the work. Buying things makes us feel busy--we research, we compare prices, we talk to friends about the choices--and we’re able to make the purchase and check that task off the to-do list. Buying things definitely feels like it ought to help us put points on the scoreboard of life. Yep, it’s sad.

What do you really want?

If you want to own things, then buying things will get you there. It makes perfect sense to acquire things, because then you will own more things.

But if what you really want is:

a better bottom line for your business, or

a bigger business, or

a business which makes a bigger difference in the life of its customers, or

a business that’s more valuable to others

then buying things likely isn’t the best way to achieve your goal.

Doing things is the ticket if you're interested in making progress toward your goal of changing the business from what it is to what you dream it will become.

Getting what you want is more about doing than buying. SAD!

Doing things sometimes involves buying a thing or two--sure. But doing things is usually more about focusing and doing and less about spending and acquiring new things.

Doing things is about making change happen, and that usually involves writing things down or talking to people. It rarely relies upon the purchase of much of anything.

Better marketing usually involves meeting more people or writing more material so you can use it in all the places you can publish.

Better management usually involves more time focused on your team, executing a plan of systematic communication, and working with the key players to document systems comprehensively.

Better financial management usually involves more time optimizing the business plan, developing an understanding of your model and results, and drilling down into the financial details of your business.

Better implementation of technology usually involves mastering the existing online products and training your te…

This is the time of the year many of us attend conferences. Attending events - any event - is a good thing. It’s good to get out of the office and talk to other humans. It’s good for business. It connects you with other people. It’s good to attend conferences, even if the only thing you accomplish is exchanging business cards with the woman in the Starbucks line in Macau. She might refer your next big case.