Running a law firm means hard days, long nights, and unexpected bursts of adrenalin and cortisol. Sleep is often elusive.

It’s a mix of ups, downs, and lots of sideways. Vacation time is rare.

When I started my law firm in 1990, my free time was sporadic. Some of it happened accidentally when I failed to wake up after working through the night. I would sleep right through the alarm.

These goofs were as close as I got to vacation days.

We took our first big vacation after the practice turned four years old. Prior to that, our trips had all been work-related and typically involved networking at an American Bar Association meeting.

Those meetings were held at nice resorts, but they weren’t relaxing.

My vacation moved me from in to on the business

We spent a month on Grand Cayman in 1994.

Looking back, that was a pivotal moment.

That’s when I switched my focus to working on the business instead of in it.

At that point, I’d been a lawyer for seven years. It was hard to imagine a happy ending. My father (a lawyer) had died of a heart attack on a client trip.

Our month on Grand Cayman was good. Time away gives one time to reflect.

You need to reflect if you want to change your relationship with your practice. You need clarity of vision if you seek change.

So here we are in January. I’m supposed to pump you up so you get focused, energized, and head into the New Year with a head of steam.

Instead, I’m going in the opposite direction, as I often do. (Some call it “oppositional defiance disorder.” I like to call it “thinking differently.”)

Instead of encouraging you to do more, I’m going to slow you down and encourage you to do less.

You look like you need a vacation too

I suggest you take a few minutes today to schedule a vacation. Make a plan, discuss it with the decision maker, and book it. There is no time like the present for some downtime.

Go. Leave the office. Take a holiday.

Why should you go away?

Because…

You deserve it. You work hard.

It killed my father (well, stress coupled with smoking, eating ribs, and genetics). Being a lawyer is a hard job. We lift the problems off the shoulders of others and drop them firmly onto our own. That’s tough.

Plus, you need it.

The stress eats at you. Anyone who tells you they’re great at stress management is probably being eaten alive. Downtime lets you hit the reset button and start fresh. You need to clear your field of vision and come back with a new perspective.

You’ll think on instead of in

It’s difficult – impossible, really – to look at your business systematically when you’re taking client calls and answering emails.

Even locking yourself in the conference room for “thinking time” doesn’t separate you from the chaos. You need to get to a quiet place in order to reimagine your practice.

Work is not the only part of your life that will benefit, either. You’ll also renew your relationships.

If you don’t spend time with your spouse and children, you’ll eventually lose them. Less family time may be good for your revenue, but it's not good for your life.

Time away from work lets you focus on family and reinforce those connections.

Furthermore, time away makes you twice as productive when you return. We have these weird bursts of productivity right before we leave, and we think far more clearly after we return.

In terms of productivity, I’d argue that vacation time costs you little (if anything). You come back fired up and ready to go, more efficient because of the good ideas and rest you had while you were away.

I rest my case

At this point, I hope you’re booking your trip. Do it today, because you already know that procrastinating will just result in more procrastinating.

If you book it now, the rest of your calendar and commitments will shift. Booking a trip is like dropping a big rock in a…

I meet a shocking number of guys who believe they aren’t going to live past 40 (or some other arbitrary age). We fail to invest in long-term planning since we figure we won’t be around. We focus on the present and leave the future to take care of itself. That type of short-term thinking isn’t just ill-advised. It’s dangerous.

2017 was an exceptionally good year for me.

It started on January 1st when I made a decision. One quick and easy decision made the difference.

You can do the same for 2018 right now.

The beginning of the year feels like a fresh start. We focus on what’s to come instead of our lingering concerns about the year gone by. It’s a time when we hit the reset button and see fresh possibilities, opportunities, and a path toward a better tomorrow.

“It's a new dawn

It's a new day

It's a new life

For me

And I'm feeling good

I'm feeling good.”

— Michael Buble - “Feeling Good”

I’m excited about 2018. 2017 was good, but there’s always potential in a new year. It’s an exciting moment.

But how will 2018 turn out for you? Will this be a good year? Or, better yet, a great year?

Today it’s time to make a decision. It’s time to determine where your practice is going in 2018.

Most of us will have a good year

The year will likely end up either…

1. Lots of good work done, tasks accomplished, and checklists checked. Clients are happy, employees are satisfied (mostly), and the accountant smiles when he presents the balance sheet. That’s a good year.

Or…

2. All of the above, plus something big. That might be a jump in revenue, a new depth of expertise, a significant bump in take-home pay, a dramatically stronger team, a phone that won’t stop ringing, financial security, or whatever it is that you think of as your dream.

Many of us will settle for the first outcome. We’ll take it. Pretty good is good enough for lots of us and that’s especially true if last year was a struggle. We’re willing to take what we can get.

But some of us want more

Some of us want the second outcome for 2018.

We want bigger results. We want to leap forward. We want our lives to change in positive ways. We’re excited about taking on something bigger than we’ve taken on before.

How do we get the “something big” outcome? How do we end up with something more than a pretty good year? How do we get to great?

It’s shockingly simple. You can do something today that will make the difference between a good year and a great year.

Here’s the deal:

If you want a great year, you need to make a decision. You need to decide what you’ll focus on over the next 365 days.

Yep, that’s it. You need a goal, an objective, a focal point. You simply need to decide what you’re going to achieve this year. Making that decision is the key to victory.

Failing to choose may result in failure.

I implore you to pick a single point of focus for this year. It will dramatically increase the chance of getting what you want in 2018.

You can still get a good outcome for the year without setting a goal. That’s what most of us will do. We’ll focus on the clients, the team, the technology, the money, and the marketing. That’s how we’ll keep the practice moving forward and get to good. The scattershot approach will get you somewhere; it just might not be where you wanted to go.

But what about great? How do you get to great?

You make a decision today.

When you start thinking about choosing one specific thing to focus on, you’ll probably generate a long list of things that require your attention. They all seem critical, right?

But that long list is part of the problem.

Our inability (or unwillingness) to focus on one thing leaves us at the end of the year with a long list of unfinished priorities. It’s the same list we started with!

Choosing one thing to focus on is the difference between getting nothing done and getting something done.

Making the decision is incredibly hard

Yes, choosing one thing means you will forgo other things.

Yes, picking one thing is hard, because many things are appealing.

Yes, focusing on a single priority means that other priorities are left for another year.

So yes, picking one of many options is har…

My biggest problems have always been rooted in the way my team reacts to me. When things go badly, they spiral downward in a vicious cycle. It's easy to be subtly destructive. When we’re under pressure and feel stressed, we tend to feed our team negativity. Systems can solve this problem. People systems eliminate many of the mistakes managers like me make on daily basis. They create a positive culture and eliminate the friction that impedes our progress.

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It’s hard to remember that I don’t need to worry about revenue.

It’s hard to remember that I don’t need to worry about angry clients.

It’s hard to remember that I don’t need to worry about negative Google reviews.

It’s hard to remember that I don’t need to worry about associates making mistakes.

It’s hard to remember that I don’t need to worry about losing a key employee.

Why don’t I need to worry about those things?

On October 31, I sold my law firm

I haven’t fully adjusted to the new reality of my life. I still worry, but the feeling is generalized now - I can’t pinpoint any specific cause.

Maybe it’s like the phantom pain someone experiences after losing a limb. It hurts even though it’s gone. This adjustment will take me a while.

Now that I’m on the outside, I have a renewed respect for law firm leaders. They keep people employed, provide security when they might not have it themselves, and carry the worry so others (employees and clients) can move forward with their lives.

Now that I’m out from under the responsibility, I see how challenging it is to carry the load. I was the frog in the boiling pot. The heat snuck up on me.

Selling a law firm is weird

After 27 years of law firm ownership, I can’t remember life before carrying that load.

I feel the relief now, but it came slowly as the sense of obligation seeped out of me, little by little.

Selling a law firm is weird. It’s like walking out the front door without pants. Something is missing.

Which is probably why not every lawyer wants to sell their practice. Most like having something to do. Fortunately I have Rosen Institute to keep me busy.

I don’t know that I would have sold the business, at age 56, without something exciting to do with my time. I’m so passionate about Rosen Institute that it was easy to make the switch.

But selling a business isn’t easy. It’s challenging from an emotional and a financial perspective.

Selling a business on decent terms is only possible if you can demonstrate a track record of success. The business needs a steady stream of revenue. It must be profitable.

When I started the law firm, I didn’t realize I was building a business to sell.

In retrospect, I see why it had market value. I have a better understanding of what it takes to create value for the buyer.

You can do it too

Even though I'm excited about being on the other side of law firm ownership, I don’t encourage every lawyer to build a practice with the intent to sell.

There are lots of options when it comes to creating a practice, and each of them brings different pleasures, rewards, stresses, and burdens. There are as many approaches as there are lawyers.

You should do it your way (not that you needed me to tell you that).

But some lawyers want to sell their practices.

A sale is part of their master plan. It’s why they keep their clients happy and maintain the firm’s reputation. They work to maximize the firm’s value because a sale is part of their financial security.

Since I’ve taken this path, I’ll pass along some of my insights. I’m sure I’ll learn other lessons as I gain distance and perspective, but here’s what I’ve learned so far.

These are some of the key principles to build a practice ready for sale.

1. Visualize your business

It all starts with a vision of where you’ll go.

Sadly, I didn’t have that clarity of vision when I started out, all those years ago.

I knew only that I wanted freedom from my former employer. They wanted me to do things I didn’t want to do. After three years, I had an out-of-body-moment, and saw myself resigning.

I wandered aimlessly, building the business in a haphazard fashion, until I bega…

Knowing why you want something is what drives you to work for it. Your 'why' energizes you, sustains you, and pushes you forward when things are awful. There might be a lot of positive reasons to want whatever you want from your business. Your 'why' will be fuel in the tough moments when you need to reignite your engine.

At first, you're thrilled - the phone is ringing, the clients are retaining, and you're working like crazy. After a while, you realize that despite putting in more hours than you want, despite all the clients, and despite the frenzy at the office - you're not making any money. Staying busy can easily become a death sentence for your practice if you can't bring in enough revenue to keep the lights on. How do you escape the cycle of being busy and broke?

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The hearing starts in 30 minutes and the color pictures of the bruises weren’t printed.

You’re already at the courthouse and there isn’t time to have them printed and couriered downtown.

It’s too late to rush down the block to the copy shop.

You’re screwed.

And worse, the client heard you freaking out at your paralegal on the phone.

There's no way to spin this with your client. You're unprepared. No amount of "client management" is going to fix this error.

The moment you fail to offer the photos of evidence, things will get ugly. Your client came prepared. She’s ready to say what you told her to say to get the photos admitted into evidence.

These photos aren't essential. You can win on testimony alone. But if the ruling goes sideways, the client will blame the missing photos.

Silently, you repeat your mantra of profanity over and over in your head, while planning the murder your paralegal (and hoping the prosecutor won't be able to get photos either).

The worst part is that you specifically asked the paralegal to print the pictures. He said he’d do it. On the phone, he admitted he dropped the ball.

“F*@k the ball,” you mutter. You’re irate. You were already keyed up before the hearing. Now your head is spinning as you frantically search for a solution.

This is your fault

I hate to say this. I hate it because I’ve said it to myself.

You blew it.

You are responsible.

You should have known about this problem. You should have given yourself time to fix it.

You screwed up.

The screw-up wasn’t failing to check the photos earlier in the day or even yesterday. (I could do a long article on the need to prepare in advance, but I'll procrastinate on that for a bit).

The screw-up happened long before the hearing. This problem could have been prevented.

You see, this is a classic problem that plagues most firms. And it’s not a one-time thing.

It's part of your system

For many of us, screw-ups are part of our management philosophy. We delegate and never follow up. We hand things off and hope for the best.

We’ve read articles imploring us to let go of tasks. “Delegate and stay out of it,” they teach us. The experts tell us to stop micromanaging and grant autonomy. They instruct us to step back so our team members can learn, grow, and own their projects.

So we create systems where we hand off lots of tasks, make ourselves available for questions (as much as we can), and then hope for the best.

Good approach for everyone, right?

We don't waste our time micromanaging and the employees feels empowered. It’s win/win.

Then disaster strikes

At least it's win/win when the work actually gets done.

When the work is ignored, delayed, forgotten or otherwise left undone, it's a nightmare.

That's how you end up outside a courtroom missing key exhibits and spewing profanity at your paralegal.

Unfortunately, it's incredibly predictable. Even the best teams make mistakes, forget things, or run into delays.

If they get 99 out of 100 things done correctly and on time, that still leaves one thing that doesn’t get done right. And we don’t work in a world where 99 out of 100 is good enough. The photos have to be printed and in your hand before you leave for the hearing.

It's all-or-nothing when the trial is about to start.

But with the delegate-it-and-don’t-micromanage approach, mistakes will happen. They’re inevitable.

Obviously, giving people space is important. Your team can only grow if they're given responsibility and opportunities to figure things out. They need room to experiment, take risks, and try different solutions. Their growth is good for them, good for you, and good for the client.

You can't afford to micromanage. You can't afford the time or energy to involve yourself in every step of every process. That approach to delegation is counter-productive.

…

Office space characterizes your brand, impacts trust and influences profit. Finding the ideal location could mean the difference between breaking even and doubling your fees.

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“I won’t live past 40” is something I said before I was 40.

I meet a shocking number of guys who believe they aren’t going to live past 40 (or some other arbitrary age). I don’t know if this line of thinking is common with young women too, but for some reason men bring it up all the time.

I used to think the same. I rarely worried about life after 40. It seemed too far in the future to worry. Even at 39, it seemed 40 wasn’t likely to happen.

My fear was more rational than most guys (though don’t we all believe we’re the rational one?). After all, I had a heart attack and quintuple bypass surgery at 37.

I was already pushing the envelope.

40 would never happen.

That may not be the way you think, or you may not realize you think it. But if you aren't planning for the future--well, that's a plan in and of itself.

You're not going to die

Good news/bad news:

Odds are you’re not going to die.

I’ve looked up the statistics. If you survive your first year of life, you’ll most likely make it past 40.

Thinking you’re going to die soon results in some crazy behavior.

We fail to invest in long-term planning since we figure we won’t be around. We focus on the present and leave the future to take care of itself.

But that type of short-term thinking creates problems when we stumble past our target death date and we’re still kicking.

When I survived past 40, I was perplexed. I felt like a disappointed cult follower when the world doesn’t end on the prophesied date. What’s next? I hadn’t prepared for the next phase.

I regrouped, accepted the situation, and came up with a new target death date for my demise (also like the end-of-the-world fanatics).

That was easy for me. My father died when he was 56. Certainly that would be the end of me as well.

Time passed… And here we are again.

Now, I’m 56. Things are going well. My health is good. But I’m only half-way through the year. Anything could happen.

My wife is convinced a rickshaw will run me over here in New Delhi. She may be right, but at best it’ll break my legs.

Regardless, that type of short-term thinking isn’t just ill-advised. It’s dangerous.

Here are some things we skimp on when we harbor the belief that we won’t be around.

1. Vision

Your vision guides your day-to-day decision making. If you can see it, you can build it.

If your vision only encompasses a few years (like until age 40), it’s not much help.

The “dead at 40” crowd simply don’t bother with vision. All they expect is a life doing the same thing others lawyers do, and a quick death at their desk at the predetermined time.

Inspiring vision? I think not.

Your vision is bigger than you. You need it for more than decision-making.

Your vision inspires your team. They need to know where they’re going and why they follow you.

Your “imminent” death is an insufficient excuse for failing to exercise the primary responsibility of the business leader. Spend some time formulating a vision.

2. Team building

Who needs a team if you’re checking out soon?

Yeah, you need a team. Investing in humans is important.

Gallup surveys reveal that friendship at work is critical. Having a friend at work is one of the most important factors that determines whether your people will stick around and stay engaged. You need a strong connection to your people.

Team building is more than ropes courses or Myers-Briggs tests. It’s about knowing your people, caring about them, understanding them, and coming through when they need you.

It’s about setting expectations and then exceeding them. It’s about building and maintaining trust by being consistent, predictable, and kind.

Your team will only stick around if you invest in them like you’re building something permanent and lasting. A big part of that, especially in the early years, is you.

Lead people so they have som…