Hey guys , welcome back to another Friday's solo episode of Time Freedom for Lawyers . Hope you had a great 4th of July and hope you're ready to roll into the second half of the year .
here I'm going to take today and talk about the importance of knowing where you are in your career path especially with regards to , like certain inflection points that come up for intrapreneurs , so people who are operating really is the number two inside of an entrepreneurial organization and who are working on building their own brand , building their own book of
business inside of that organization and don't want to leave . So I've been in that space in almost every career that I've had .
I work at places that I like working with people who I like working for , and I've never gone out and started my own thing on my own and I don't think there's anything wrong with that , but it is a self-awareness thing , and so that's what we're going to be talking about today .
Welcome to Time Freedom for Lawyers , where the goal is to become less busy , make more money and spend more time doing what you want instead of what you have to Bringing together guests from all walks of life who are living a life of their own design and sharing actionable tips for how you , too , can live the life of your dreams .
Now here's your host , brian Glass .
So there's definitely a transition and an evolution that takes place on your career journey from the time that you just out of school and just beginning your career to where I am , which is about midpoint in my career I don't know , maybe a third of the way through my career , depending on how long I enjoy doing what I'm doing .
There's a shift definitely in the things that you do , the tasks that you take care of , the way that you carry yourself and the way that you operate and run the office , and so I was thinking this morning on my run about a couple of things that I noticed that change in people as they go along this path .
Number one when you're just starting out , you should almost never say that isn't my job , right ? If I had a new employee within the first year or two with me who told me that something was outside of their job description , that is a major red flag .
But there definitely comes a time where , if you've been operating in the space for long enough , if you continue to try to do everything and if you are picking up all of the slack everywhere , then the organization is going to grow no larger than you are , and so there's a transition from that isn't my job because that's below me to .
That isn't my job because that's a $10 an hour task and I need to be focused on $100 an hour tasks so that the organization can get to the next level .
And I think that's subtle , but it's a huge difference between feeling like something is below you and understanding the power of leverage , that if you spend an hour focusing on the smaller task , you can't spend an hour focusing on the larger task . And that's a transition that happens later in employees and in entrepreneurs journeys .
And you can tell very early on if you have somebody who thinks that something is below them , that they think it's below them And it's not that they think that they have something else that they should be focused on because that would be a higher time value to the organization .
It's because they don't want to do it , because they just don't want to do it because they think it's below them . As an employer , that's easy to see .
The other transition that happens in the law space and I'm confident that it happens in other spaces is almost the same leverage understanding where you go from a point from feeling like you have to accept every client that walks in the door or otherwise you won't be able to make rent , you won't be able to make payroll at the end of the month , to this thinking
where you go , like that case is a little bit outside of my wheelhouse and there's probably a better lawyer out there for that person . Maybe there's a referral connection that I can make for them .
And , by the way , if I take that case and I spend some time going outside of my wheelhouse and learning something that I don't really have an interest in , i'm not going to , number one , execute on that case as well , as somebody who is an expert on that case is going to execute on it .
But , number two , that's going to suck up my bandwidth from working on cases where I really am adding value in an area that I already know , to clients that I already have . And that is a fear-based transition , as the fear lifts that if I don't take this phone call or if I don't take this client , the phone is never going to ring again to .
I have plenty of clients . It's almost an abundance mentality , right , like I'm really good . The cases are going to come And if I pass over this client because they're not a great fit for my office culture or they're not a great fit for my staff or it's outside of my wheelhouse or the things that I really like doing . Like the phone is going to ring again .
There are other people who are going to come and want to hire me because I'm good at what I'm doing .
And again , if you spend time working on things that are outside of your wheelhouse , that aren't the highest and best use of your hour , then you're just taking away time either from other cases or from your family or from your hobbies outside of the office or from sleep .
And there is a place for I've got to take every client and I've got to go and learn how to do all of these little things And I've got to see what I like and see what I don't like , because that's how you learn . You can't . Nobody exits law school and just knows the kind of law that they want to practice And they never touch anything else .
Like we learn really more by defining the exclusion cases like I never want to work on that kind of case again . I never want to work with that client again . Then we do by learning the things that we really like , and so there's a place for that .
But there's definitely a transition between , like I have to work with every client to I have to not work with every client .
And then the last one that I was thinking about this morning ironically , as I was on a run , or maybe not ironically is this transition from I got to be the first one in last one out , because I have to show my boss first , and then my employees , that I care more about the business than anybody else here .
And I have to put in all this FaceTime to you know what ? like I never stopped thinking about the business anyway .
And if all of my best ideas come to me , like while I'm working out or while I'm on a run , or while I'm sitting watching the lake drinking coffee I don't know what it is , whatever it is for you If all your best ideas come there , then really your obligation is to spend as much time as you can in that space , and if that means spending less time putting
in FaceTime around the office , then that's what it means . But here's the thing with all of those transitions is like self awareness And timing is really critical to both of those And there's no way , there's no good way to teach self awareness or timing for either one of those things . And we've all seen it right .
We've all seen the number two or the number three in an organization that thinks that they're number one . They think that they're the prima donna and they skip the steps And they start saying things like that's not a me problem .
It's almost like an optics or social media or an office politics thing where they start acting in ways that they've seen other successful people act , almost believing like that that's the thing that brings success . Like almost fake it till you make it . It's the guy who calls himself the founder and the managing partner of his solo law firm that has no employees .
Or , before they've achieved a certain level of financial and business security , they start turning down cases where they could be expanding their horizons because it's just not something that they want to focus on .
It's like cousin Eddie from Christmas Vacation , unemployed for two years because he's holding out for position and middle management , and there's really no book that you can read or course that you can take that's going to teach you how to get that timing and how to get that self-awareness right .
For me , it's always been about having a group of people around me who will call me all my bullshit , and this group of people that you're cultivating at least some of them have to be more successful than you are , because they have to be willing to push you out of the nest when you're ready to be pushed out of the nest , and your job in this circle of
friends , when it comes to your turn to get advice , is to make sure that you're being vulnerable and transparent with them so that they have accurate data with which to give you advice .
If all you're telling them is all of the great things that's going on in your life and you're not telling them about the bad things , or the roadbombs or the obstacles or whatever you want to call it , then of course they're going to give you advice to jump out of the nest , because they don't see the whole picture .
But if they've got the whole picture and some of them have achieved that success themselves and other ones are still working on it then they can give you accurate advice on where you are on the journey and you can use that to make sure that you get the timing , because if you've ever seen somebody get the timing wrong , it can be ugly .
Consider this almost like your own personal board of directors , where , if you were running a corporation and you were the chairman , you would have a board who advises you on making decisions . You're still the one who's responsible for actually making the decision and actually executing on the decision , but the board has got all the data .
And again , you have to be vulnerable and you have to be transparent and you have to give them the good and the bad if they're going to help you make a great decision for your career and your life . How do you find these people ? If you're lucky , maybe you've already got them . Maybe you've already got a tight circle of friends that you see once a month .
And it's not just going out for beers . It's like serious discussions about whatever your industry is , whatever your career path is , around a lunch table . It's not on the golf course , it's not with alcohol . It's like a deliberately planned lunch event or dinner or something like that . If you don't have a group like this , go ahead and start one .
It's not that hard . You think of maybe 10 people who are in or around your level of success in or around your industry . Just send out an invitation .
Most of them would say no , but you might get four to six out of that 10 who will come on a consistent basis to your office or somewhere else , you're going to buy pizza the first couple of times and have some kind of an agenda like what's going well for you , what's not working for you and what can we help you with .
As this group picks up steam , you all will get to know each other's business better , each other's personal life , and you'll be able to give that advice on . Here's the next three moves that I think you should make . Of course , the other way is to just join an already established mastermind group .
We have two groups of lawyers coming in through the office next week to do exactly this .
We have three to four and a half minutes to spend 30 to 45 minutes each in the hot seat lawyers from all over the country talking about what's going great in their business and what they need help with , and opening up in a vulnerable way to all of the other lawyers in the room who are outside of their geographic region which I think is important at least
for what we're doing and who are outside of their industry , so that we can be truly vulnerable and truly transparent about the marketing things that are working , without worrying that somebody else is going to steal our ideas , the things that aren't working so that we can improve them . Here's the really important thing .
If you stand up in front of the room and you're talking about the same thing for the third meeting in a row , people are going to let you know . People are going to let you know that you're all talk and no action . If you ever get that feedback , you are damn sure going to take action before the next meeting . Anyway , i hope this is helpful to you .
I just want to drop one more time . I'm hosting a goal setting webinar Monday , july 10th , one o'clock Eastern . If you haven't already signed up , i'm going to put the link in this show description . It'll be free . It'll be a check-in on our 2023 goals , on your 2023 goals .
Where are you with regard to any goals that you set or didn't set at the beginning of this year and what can we do to help calibrate you , to help you have your best second half of the year ever in 2023 ? Peace , guys . No-transcript .