hey good Friday morning and welcome back to another solo episode of time. Freedom for lawyers. Uh, listen, I, I recognize it might be Friday. It might be some other day of the week. You might be listening to this a little bit later, but on these solo episodes I'd like to discuss and dissect my own successes, weaknesses failures.
And all the things that I've learned in my last 15 years as a trial lawyer and law firm owner in hopes that this gets you to where I am and beyond like just a little bit faster. And so today's episode is about the mindset that you have to adopt in order to escape, victim mentality, and to move forward with your life. And control in your business. Let's dive in. It's all your fault. That's the mentality you have to adopt. In order to escape, victim mentality.
And in order to truly take control of your life. And it's not actually, it's all your fault. It's all my fault. Not Brian's fault. But internally, everything that happens to you in your business, in your career. Is at the end of the day, the result of the decisions that you made in the positions that you put yourself in. And until you internalize that and put into practice. Reflection. And study of your own actions and how you got to where you are. You're never going to escape.
The idea that you don't have control of your world. Over the course of my career. I developed a certain. List of people who I won't represent. And every once in a while, I let people off of this list. Into my client portfolio. And every single time that I do that. One of those clients reminds me of why I have these rules in the first place. And one of those rules is that I will not represent other lawyers. And recently I violated that rule and I'm again, learning a lesson.
So I have that rule in place for a couple of reasons. They say that doctors make bad patients, lawyers make terrible clients. And. I was just going over some discovery responses with this. Client and he sent me back. Just like red lined everything. Like every single answer had a word choice, edit in it. And. W in his mind, the things that are important really, like they aren't that important. And he doesn't know that because he's never practiced personal injury law.
And in fact, In his four decades of being a lawyer, never negotiated a case. It is not a subject matter expert, but that doesn't stop us as lawyers from doing what we're trained to do as lawyers, which is find the problems with other people's work. Take the things that we think we know to be true about the law and apply the things that we think we know to be true about a set of facts. To that law and that's what lawyers do, the problem is that as a client, you have your own subjective.
Observation of what you've been through and you don't have the ability that we do as a lawyer to look at cases objectively apply. What's actually in medical records to what's actually. In the law and this creates a tremendous mismatch of what I think is true based on my knowledge of the medical records and my knowledge of personal injury law, and what he thinks is true based on his subjective experience of what the doctors told him, what he remembers the doctors telling him from 18 months ago.
What he thinks the law is about, even though he was never a practicing Virginia personal injury lawyer. So maybe he remembers something from torts about 40 years ago. But it's probably not Virginia specific. And so we have this mismatch of his expectations for what should be happening in the case, based on what he thinks. His higher level of knowledge is about the law and about his case. And my expectation for what ought to be happening in the case.
And as lawyers, we have a hard time checking our ego at the door and taking advice from somebody else. And again, it's not his fault. He's just acting like a lawyer. It's an old Chris rock line, right? The tiger. Didn't go crazy. The tiger went tiger. Lawyer is an insane, the lawyer is doing what a lawyer has been trained to do is my fault for letting him in the door and for telling him that I could help him on this case. When I know.
Based on my experience with dealing with five or six or 10 other lawyers during the course of my career is clients that this was not going to be a pleasant experience for me. So the end of the day, I don't blame him at all for doing what he's doing. I blame myself for. Knowing at the time that I signed him up, the lawyers tend to be problem clients. Accepting him as a client anyway.
And then, probably not setting proper expectations in the initial consultation for you gotta, let me be the lawyer. You got to check your profession and your lack of expertise. In this subject matter at the door or else we can't go forward with this relationship and that's my fault And the reason that it's so important. To internalize that it's my fault. Is that now I take ownership of that decision.
And the next time that a lawyer comes along and wants to be a client, I don't expect that the result is going to be any different, I now have a set of rules based on my experience with the world. Where I have to be the one who makes a decision about whether or not to let the lawyer in the door. And what's liberating about that is that I'm not coming into any of these relationships with the expectation that, that the other guy is going to do anything.
Whether the other guy is going to act differently than any of my other lawyer clients ever have in the past. I'm coming in with the expectation that I can make a decision based on what I think the probable outcome is going to be with this client. About whether or not I want to get involved. And then if I'm involved, I need to be committed. All the way through the case.
I can't be five months into the relationship and decide, what, this isn't working out for me, because I knew from the beginning that this was going to happen. And when you take ownership of that and you stop blaming external, you stop blaming vendors. You stop blaming clients. You stop blaming employees. Then it really becomes liberating because you can look back and say, I should have made that decision differently. And I know that in the future, I can make that decision differently.
Because you really only have control over what you have control over. And I tell this story kind of a lot. So apologize if you've heard this before, either on this podcast or in some of my writings. But I was coaching my son's machine pitch team a couple of years ago. And we're losing I don't know, 16 to three or 13. We were getting drubbed and it's the fifth inning and I'm standing in left field. Coaching kids on what to do when the ball gets hit to them.
Cause that's what you do when the kids are seven or eight years old. And this grandfather in the middle of the inning, wanders out into the field to tell me, Hey, coach. The other team they're cheating because they're leading off. Before the ball crosses the plate and I looked at him dead in the eye and say, I don't care. This is how I just wanted you to know coach. I think it's important. And I'm like, dude.
We are not losing by 13 runs because some seven year old is taking an advanced lead before the ball crosses the plate we're losing because we can't hit. And we practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Here's the time. Here's the place. If you want to come out and help the team get better at hitting you are welcome to come to practice. If you want to complain about what the other team is doing, sit down or shut up. Because next week we're going to be planted for different team.
We're still not going to be able to hit. And me policing the kids staying on second base until the ball crosses the plate. Is not going to change the outcome. One bit in this case, but you showing up at practice. And you helping with your great knowledge of the game or not whatever, but you get the point like you're showing up a practice. I might help some of these kids hit and might help us produce some runs. Next game. So the game is a little bit closer.
What I find is that most people would rather sit on the sideline and complain about what the other guy is or isn't doing. Then take any action to improve their own lives. I'll tell you another story. I was listening to a guy speak at a conference. A couple of years ago. And he was talking about the process with which he'd purchased a new website. And he was going through. All of the things that he had wanted out of the website and what he thought he should pay for it.
And then he went off on this kind of tangent where he said, and then I delegated to an employee. And he actually been named the employee, which I like whatever, but. It turns out that he delegated. The actual purchasing of the website and the employee did something entirely different. Found a cheaper website that he thought was better. It didn't actually meet any of our criteria.
And so now we're having to go back and purchase another website and the lesson to him was that we've paid more money to have it done twice than we would have paid to have it done correctly the first time. And that's one of the lessons. But to me, the better lesson is no dummy. You did a shitty job of managing your employee. Because you did one of three things like either you didn't actually set the success metrics that you think that you set right.
Or you didn't make sure that they were followed. Or when you found out they weren't being followed, you didn't do anything to correct it. And so at the end of the day, like all your fault, not employee's fault for finding what he thought was a better deal. And that deal going south you as the business leader, you're the one in charge. Everything is your fault. And that can cause you to have one of two reactions. Either. You think? No. It's not all my fault. I had a bad employee.
Or you go, oh yeah, it is. And if your reaction is the first one and you think that it's the employee's fault. You're always going to have bad employees. Unless you, you have a way of speaking to the lowest common denominator for every set of instructions that you give out. It's very hard to get employees to act exactly the way that you would want them to act. And so your job is to set the success metrics, to tell them how to perform the job. And then to let them go and perform the job.
But if you haven't properly set the success metrics and you aren't managing people to those expectations. Then of course you get a result. That's a bad result. And if that's you probably shouldn't be a business owner. You probably shouldn't even be a manager. If everything else is somebody else's fault, then you can't take accountability for it. When things go wrong. Even if it like in reality, wasn't your fault. The you're not a leader. And that's okay. Not everybody is a leader.
Not. The world needs followers too. But until we've arrived at a place mentally where. Everything that happens in our business and in our lives is our fault. You are seeding control to the other people. To the other things into the atmosphere, pressure into the world's events. And you're never going to have a hundred percent control. Over your life and over your decision-making, but when you decide in your mind and you make that change. That everything bad that's happened to you thus far.
Is your fault and you have control over every decision that you make going forward into the future. Then you never going to be as successful as you want to be. And some people will say no, but I don't have control because my business is different or my law firm is different or my family circumstances or this. But if there's ever anybody that's looked like you that's come from your background, that's been successful. Then they made a certain set of choices that got them to where they are.
And why can't you make the same choices? There's an old, I think it's a Dan Kennedy saying. Then every town has these big fucking green signs that tell you how to get out of them. And the question is, are you willing to pay the price? Are you willing to pay the toll? Emotional. Physical financial. To do the hard work to get to where you want to be. And if you're not, then that's okay. But stop complaining about what the other team is doing to you. If you're not willing to put in the work.
To get where you need to be. All right. So this one turned like maybe a little bit. Darker than I envisioned it, but I get fired up about this like keyboard warrior. Complaint or people just annoy the shit out of me. So if that's you, this is probably just on the podcast for you. If everything that I said resonates. Then make sure you hit subscribe. Make sure you check out some of the earlier episodes. I almost got this to a thousand downloads a month and the month of may.
And again, at the end of the day, like my fault should have pushed harder on may 30 and 31. But we are growing at a about 15% month over month. Clip it grows. This show grows because people like you are sharing it with people, with whom, this will resonate. And with people who will get great value out of this show. And so I appreciate you doing that. If this resonates with you.
Do me a favor leave me a rating Leave me a review share this with just one person who's in a similar life circumstance with you and until next time be good to each other Peace out