The One Thing You Probably WON'T Do Before 2025... That You Should

to be your dream job . If it's your first time here , welcome to the show . On Tuesdays , I release episodes where I interview sometimes lawyers and other times successful entrepreneurs really from all walks of life about what made them successful , trying to find unifying principles of success that I can share with you . On Fridays , I put out solo episodes .

They tend to be shorter and they tend to be me teaching on some point or talking about just whatever's been interesting in my life that week . I'm glad you're here .

During the last couple of episodes I'm falling into this year end and year beginning trap , which is to say , like almost everything has been about how do you plan to kickstart your 2025 and have a great year and your best year ever , and this is going to be a similar episode .

But the thing that I think you need to do before you jump into 2025 planning is , take some time to reflect back on 2024 and go even further back than that .

Because what happens as lawyers is that we get so used to the high achievement cycle , which is set goal , achieve goal , set new goal , you know , with the goalpost 10 or 15 or 25% further down the line , and we don't take very much time to reflect back on where we've been .

And so , before you do any planning for 2025 , take a day and reflect on where you were at the beginning of this year and how far you've come , and go back further than that and think about the version of you in 2021 or 2020 even , and imagine how happy that version of you would be with all that you've achieved .

And really , this episode and this podcast is my effort to talk to the version of myself from three to ten years in the past . So if that's you , if you're a lawyer in your early 30s , this labor of love that I produce every week really is for you , okay . So how do you reflect on where you've come in the beginning ?

This is why I think that keeping a journal and keeping a list of your accomplishments is so incredibly important , because without it , it's easy to forget where we've come from .

But with it , you can look back at you know , the ambitions that you had in 2021 , 2022 , and the big problems at the time that you were solving , and you might look and say , well shit , those problems don't seem all that big anymore , and that gives you a perspective looking forward , as you look at your 2025 problems , which seem really big and hairy , and

audacious to know that at some point in the future you will look at those goals and they will be small and they will be not the biggest problem in your world anymore and you will have solved them and overcome that obstacle . And so that's the benefit of reflecting back on where we've been before we begin to plan for where we're going .

And if you've listened to more than a handful of episodes number one , thank you , but number two , you know that I'm really big on planning for where we're going , and I think there's another step in between the reflection and the setting goals for 2025 that most people miss , and I think , even after I explain it to you , there's a high likelihood that you miss

it .

Also , and here's what it is it's without setting another goal , without saying 25% more next year , clearly identifying for yourself what 10 out of 10 looks and feels like in all aspects of your life , not just your business in your fitness , in your health , in your relationship with your spouse , your relationship with your kids , your charitable giving , your community

service , your spirituality , and then , of course , in your business , both in how are you spending your time and is it productive and like . Do you like doing it ? Because , at the end of the day , that's what's really important is your love for the work , and I just went through I don't know seven , eight , nine , ten categories .

You may have other categories that are important to you .

You may have categories that I listed that are entirely unimportant to you , like you might not have kids , you might not be spiritual , whatever , but you have your own gardens of life , your categories of things that are important , and so , before you plan anything for 2025 , I suggest that you itemize what all of those categories of your life are and that you

write down in three to seven bullet points what a 10 out of 10 would look and feel like in 2025 . Now I want you to itemize your 10 out of 10 12 to 18 months from now . I don't want you to think about this idealistic if you don't have any money , like having 17 million dollars , is 10 out of 10 .

If you have , if you're 200 pounds overweight than qualifying for the Boston Marathon is not your 10 out of 10 , at least not in the next 12 to 18 months .

So there's a little bit of where am I now and a little bit of what would be amazing Looking back , like if I'm doing this reflection exercise next year , what would be an amazing result , and write that down . And the third piece is give yourself a score between one and 10 in each of those categories , and I don't like to use the number seven .

I think seven is safe , right , and so if I'm rating something one through 10 , I won't use seven , I'll use six or eight , and that gives you either a failing grade or a pretty good grade . But seven is like we kind of default there because we don't want to hurt our own feelings by saying , no , I'm actually a six in that area of my life .

And so now that you've gotten all of that written out and you've graded yourself , now it's time to set some goals .

But actually I don't think most people will do that exercise , because most people will listen to a podcast like this and you'll be running or you'll be in your car or you'll be on a walk and by the time you actually sit down and get around to do it , there will be resistance to writing out what is your perfect 10 .

I know this because I suffer from resistance to writing out what is your perfect 10 . I know this because I suffer from resistance to writing out what is your perfect 10 . It's like if you put it into the universe , if you put pen to paper and get it down , it might actually happen .

Or you might have actually articulated a goal that's really hard to get and you're setting yourself up for I might fail at that and , good news , might fail at that . That's a good thing to happen . You should have things that you fail at in your life right .

You should have goals where you have a serious risk of failure and for that reason and that reason alone , most people will never do this exercise .

I have been running for the last three weeks a four-week long cohort of people taking them through the 2025 Build your Dream Law Firm Blueprint program , and I've called it a bunch of different things and I haven't entirely settled on a name , but I've taken the beta group three quarters of the way through this program and this 10 out of 10 exercise I have gotten

more positive feedback on than anything that I've taught to our great legal marketing members in the last year . People love this exercise because it forces you in your life to articulate what perfect is , and it's different for me , and it's different for you and it's going to be different for your spouse .

So you should talk about your perfect with your spouse once you've done the exercise . But there is such tremendous value in writing this down and then what we're doing in the group , sharing it with other people and you don't have to share everything .

But one of the homework exercises was write down each and every one of your categories and share three of them with the group , for two reasons . Number one it's going to inspire somebody because you will have set the bar higher for yourself than they will have for themselves in business , in faith , in charity , in relationship with your kids .

Right , somebody will look at something that's on your goal list and go , holy shit , I want that too , which is awesome . The other thing is that when people share things with you , you will look at something that's on their list and go , huh , I know how to do that and you'll teach them and that will teach you that you have something to offer .

The phrase that I hear all the time from lawyers is oh , I have imposter syndrome . I feel like I don't belong in the room . Well , bullshit . That's because we're looking at everybody's perfect fucking Instagram life and their LinkedIn amazing stories and they're not telling you about the things that are three , four , five on their scale .

Well , if they're forced to articulate what would be a 10 and they're currently hovering around the three and you're hitting it out of the park in that category you're going to be able to help them , which is amazing , and what you need to know is that you have something to offer every group of people in some category of life , and I think , especially for young

lawyers . That is a super important realization for you to come to . So this group that I'm running has been really fun . There's 10 lawyers in the group . We have a private WhatsApp channel . We talk once a week on Zoom . I teach a little bit , the group shares a little bit .

We have a homework assignment every week and then the way that the homework is completed is you take a picture or a screenshot of your homework , you post it into the WhatsApp channel . It's been really cool . I thought I was going to do one of these , but I think I'm going to do it again .

So this group the tuition was $1,400 , and I'm going to slash that price for the next group . So this group that's in it right now .

If you're listening , if you've done all the homework , you're going to get all your money back , because that was the deal , because I would teach this effectively for free if I thought I could get everybody to show up this time around .

I've heard that the price is a barrier to some people because they don't trust themselves to complete all four of the weeks of homework , and so they don't want to put $1,500 on the line , which , if that's you like , maybe let's look internally at our accountability , because that's an important thing to build up in your life .

But I want to lower the barrier to people who maybe are in tight times or whatever , and just need a little bit of help , and so I haven't 100% decided what the price on this is going to be .

But the deal that I'll make with you for being an early listener of this episode is that , if this is appealing to you , if you want a four-week program to itemize your amazing 2025 , you want to work directly with me for four weeks honing in on your goals , getting some feedback on your 10 out of 10 , getting some feedback on the actionable steps that you can

take to not kick the shit out of 2025 , then what I'm going to do is I will make the price $297 . For anybody that emails me , I went in on the January group . You don't have to get that exactly right , but say I went in on the January group . I'll send you a payment link for $297 . And that's going to be good only until this offer is

launched . I think the offer is going to be at $497 or $697 . And so either way , you'll get a ridiculous discount on this . But the only way to get it is to email me at brian at greatlegalmarketingcom and say something like I'm in on the next January program , like I'll know what you're talking about if you send me that email .

And this offer is only good until we make the registration page open to the general public . So what will happen is you'll email me , I'll send you a payment link and you'll be in . But as soon as this is open to the general public and it's offered at full price to the general public , the offer is off the table to do this for $297 .

So if this sounds amazing to you , if you need a little bit of structure and a little bit of accountability around your 2025 goals , send me an email . If you are doing amazing and knocking things out of the park without me , that's awesome . I'm super happy for you and I wish you the best as we finish up 2024 and go into 2025 .