Lessons from Training for a Triathlon
I want to share with you the lessons I have learned while training for a triathlon that can be applied to the growth of your firm.
These lessons came from the actual training plan itself and from my own experiences of preparing for this race.
Lessons From the Training Plan
- The first few weeks of training start off very light and build up as you go along. This way you don’t overdo yourself and get hurt. Once you build up your strength, there’s a few weeks of hardcore workouts. In the last few weeks leading up to the race, the training starts to get lighter and lighter.
Takeaway: when you start a project or implement a new system, you can’t just jump into it. You have to take things slowly. The middle of this project is when you’ll do the bulk of the work. As you approach your goal, you should be doing less work and putting in less effort since you already did most of the work. - A triathlon is made up of swimming, biking and running. The plan has you do...
The Power of Infographics in Your Marketing Efforts with Brian Wallace
Building a well thought out and strategic marketing strategy is essential to bringing in business. But, it doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive.
Building a Personal Brand
- Build a good personal brand. It’s important to tell people what makes your firm unique because that will be a deciding factor in which firm they choose to use.
- By becoming well known, you won’t need to spend much money on advertising. People will be familiar with you from your online presence and will come to you on their own.
- You need a level of transparency. People want to see you in order to connect. As the firm owner you have to put yourself and your firm’s mission out there for people to see and relate to. With that people are going to come to you.
Content
- Consistency. Be consistent about putting out great content.
- Quality. You have to put content out there that is quality work and will be useful whenever someone comes across it.
Marketing
- Use a...
Why Choosing a Niche Will Skyrocket Your Firm
What does choosing a niche mean?
It does not mean choosing a practice area. It’s narrowing it down even further and choosing one aspect of the practice area you chose.
The Power of Niching Down
- You’ll push away the wrong people and only get the ones you need.
- People who need your specific service will find you more easily.
- There are a number of internal and external benefits.
Internal Benefits
- Marketing
By niching down you create one target customer. With one target customer you can get very specific with your marketing strategy. - Sales
You can create a system for your sales process. Now the leads coming to you are coming for one specific service, so you don’t need completely new proposals and prices for each client.
When you’re clear on what you’re offering and to who, you can hire a salesperson to make the sale with a client instead of the attorney. - Operations
You can create a standard process around new client intake because the only...
Using a Freelance Writer for Your Law Firm Blog with Laura Pennington Briggs
7 Tips on How to be Successful Through Blog Posts
1. Why You Should Hire a Writer
A lot goes into a blog post, like:
- Coming up with the title/topic
- Researching the material
- Writing the article
- Adding outbound and inbound links
- Adding pictures with alt tags
- Adding meta descriptions
As a law firm owner, you don’t have the time to learn and do all these steps. By hiring a writer, they can take care of all your content (blog posts and website content) with just a little bit of guidance from you.
Some writers will also help you in other areas to improve the impact of your blog. Those writers will guide you through those processes or will offer suggestions and referrals to other people that can help you. They’ll give you a few choices of ideas so you can pick one more easily. They’ll hook you up with the people you need or speak to someone who is already helping you.
2) Your Firm Website Needs to be Up to Date and Running Properly
Your website needs:
- ...
The Anatomy of Flat Fee Pricing
Now that you want to give flat fee billing a shot, how do you go about putting it into place in your firm and determining the prices?
Here’s a few pointers before we get into the details:
- Flat fee doesn’t mean you need a set price for the entire process. You can set a price for each step of the process. You can also do a mix of flat fee and hourly billing if that’s necessary for your area of practice.
- If it’s a task that you are unsure how many hours it will take, like court appearances, then you can take the average of how long they usually take and make that the flat fee.
- Whether you choose hourly or flat fee, you have to decide in the beginning and then stick with that for the rest of the case.
Pricing
In the beginning, it’s good to compare your price to your hourly rate and how long everything is taking. Now take that number and increase it by 25%.
You want some breathing room because your data may be based off of bills where you cut...
The Death of The Billable Hour
Hourly Billing vs Flat Fee Billing
Hourly Billing Pros and Cons
Pros:
- There’s a direct correlation to the firm’s costs.
- It’s easy to tell if the billers are earning their worth.
Cons:
- You lose clients -
- They find someone cheaper.
- Open ended price tag - people are risk averse.
- You’re putting the value on your time rather than the service. With flat fee billing you are placing the value on the end result.
- It creates friction between your firm and the client. It’s hard to confront your client for more money. When you prepare the bill, you may take off some of the hours spent on different things because you’re worried about your client questioning it.
- Causes accounts receivable problems. Many firms aren’t good at replenishing their retainers and don’t have a system in place for doing so. You also have to spend time chasing after your clients until they pay you. This also will cause friction with your client.
- Increases...
Generating Referrals Without Asking with Stacey Brown Randall
Defining Referrals
A true referral is when a prospective client comes to you with two things other prospects don’t have:
- Personal connection. Somebody they trust (a referral source) makes the connection to you for them.
- Identified need. They already know their need, so they’re coming to you already in buying mentality.
Referral Sources
There are four types of referral sources:
- Clients. Clients are a great source, but depending on the area of practice you’re in, that may not be an option.
- Centers of influence. They can be other lawyers in your practice area. If you for example, are a criminal attorney and then decide to only handle sexual assault cases, then other criminal attorneys can refer those cases to you since you’re the expert in that field. Centers of influence can also be professionals related to your practice area. For example, if you’re a tax attorney, then you can have accountants refer their clients to you.
- Friends...
Imagine Your Future Self
What is it that You want?
Picture your life down the road in 10-20 years from now. Where do you see yourself in life? Where do you see your firm? What do you want to have accomplished by then?
Without knowing where you’re going, you’ll have a tough time making decisions and you’ll end up making ones that contradict each other. When you know where you’re heading, that vision will make your decisions clearer.
Take the time to clear your head and really envision where you want to end up in life.
Do you want:
- To be a public figure?
- To be behind the scenes?
- To change the world with your time or money?
- To spend time with your kids?
- To just sit back, relax and reap the benefits of your work?
When you do this exercise for your firm, you can take it one step further.
- Take a sheet of paper
- Draw a line across the top and another across the bottom to create a header and footer
- Envision your firm in the future and decide what you want your annual revenue...
Being a Parent and a Law Firm Owner
Are there really enough hours in the day to do what we have to do?
Between work, household chores, family (especially kids), grocery shopping and so on, there just never seems to be enough time.
The truth is there is enough time, it’s just a matter of what we can do to maximize that time.
The key to that is outsourcing in your home and firm.
Outsourcing in Your Firm
- First and foremost, don’t forget to DAD all the processes in your firm.
Can you delete it, automate it or delegate it? - If you insist on doing everything or most things, you end up being the bottleneck in your firm.
Utilize all the resources out there, starting from the cheapest to the more expensive. You should only be doing the work that you can’t DAD. - Position yourself on the outside of your firm. This way you can oversee everything that’s going on and be there to guide your employees.
Outsourcing in Your Home
- You can hire a cleaning lady to take care of the household chores.
- You...
You Can't Hit A Target Without One
Setting goals is one of the most powerful tools that when used properly will get your firm moving in the right direction.
Goal Setting
The best way to set goals is to do quarterly ones. You can do yearly goals as well to get a bigger picture, but a lot can happen in a year. So, it’s best to have a seperate goal for each quarter and at the end of each one you can adjust the next quarterly goal.
S.M.A.R.T. Goals
Specific - It needs to be clear what you’re trying to achieve.
Measurable - You need to have a metric that you can use to see when you’ve achieved your goal.
Attainable - It has to be possible to achieve. Don’t choose a goal that will set you up for failure.
Relevant - It needs to be a goal that makes sense with what you’re trying to achieve.
Timely - There needs to be an end point that will motivate you to reach your goal.
Point of a Goal
The purpose of a goal is not to hit it, but to aim for it. That will give you...
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Author
Moshe Amsel
Author
Moshe Amsel the host of the Profit with Law podcast is not an attorney. As the owner of a successful accounting firm DreamBuilder Financial and Law Firm Growth coaching organization Profit with Law, Moshe has proven that there are better and different ways for a law firm to do business and be successful.
