Ep 2 - Four Essential Questions to Answer When Starting Your Practice

I don't have a coaching program , i don't do sponsorships , i don't have a mastermind . My purpose is to document what's working and what's not working in our practice , with hopes that you can take that , recontextualize that for your practice and shorten your success curve .

And in today's show we're going to be discussing the four fundamental strategic bedrock questions that every single business and firm must answer as they start . And my name is Jeff Hughes and I'm your host and let's get after it .

You know , to illustrate these questions , i think it's best that I share our story of how we screwed this up in the very beginning , but came to these questions a little bit into our journey and we're able to turn things around . So we started our practice back in 2014 , about mid part of the year , june And we could get clients .

That was not a problem , and so we thought , because we could get clients , let's get as many as we can in as many diverse practice areas as we can , and we'll find the attorneys that were able to serve them .

And so that was our plan , and off we went And the plan started to work and over the first 18 months we grew to eight attorneys , many , many clients and many practice areas everything from family , criminal , personal injury , business cases , stay planning you name it . we were doing that And it was very unsatisfying , and you know what ? We were usually sucked .

We weren't very good at just about any part of that . We were kind of good at family law , but outside of that we were not good And we did not like where we were going , and I could not envision spinning my career wallowing in mediocrity and trying to eke out a successful and respected law practice .

And so we decided in the late part of 2015 , we were going to completely rip the mandate off , blow up our business model and pivot into something that made sense and something we could be proud of and be exceptional at over our career .

So we stumbled on these four questions and we wrestled with them and we forced ourselves to candidly answer them , even if we didn't like the answer , and especially if we didn't like the answer , and so the first question is What business or what is the very best service that I can offer ?

In our context , i explained that we were in a bunch of different practice areas , but the one thing we did well and that we had the most talent congregated around was family law .

So we decided we're going to be exceptional within family law , and not only exceptional just within family law , but we're going to be narrowly defined within family law to do just divorce , post-judgment and paternity cases , and so that's what we decided to do .

So we focused very tightly on just those couple services , and that was tough because we had to essentially refund and let go about half of our staff and about half of our clients And so , but that was the thing that we knew that we could do well and we could see ourselves being extraordinary at that one thing .

So we got real disciplined about doing that , and I know that so many of us struggle with , like you know , what exactly do I do ? well , what should that one thing be ? Because I kind of like this , i kind of like that , i'm kind of good over here , i've got money coming in from these different angles .

Well , there's a couple of ways that I've gone about trying to decipher that question and answer that is what do you enjoy doing ? That's build like a Venn diagram . And what do you enjoy doing ? Where do you add the most value to your clients ? Where do you add the most value to society ? What are others saying that you're good at ?

You know , where are you getting positive reviews ? What are clients telling you Hey , you know , that was great , that was you . Help me there . What are people paying you for ? You know you've got to make this into an economic model . So what are and where do you make the most money ? What do you have the most margin ?

What is maybe you can deliver the best and you can deliver the quickest and most efficiently . That would be a real strong indicator of where you have a something of high value to offer . That's probably the best service , the best product that you can offer to the marketplace . Plan to stick with that and that . Make that your one and only thing .

And for as long as you can possibly stand it And for many of us that's a long time Now we're nine years in , or 70 and a half years away from that pivot And that's still all we do . And all along the way , every single month . We have had to turn down opportunities to do other things .

We get about about a hundred and something legitimate calls a day for someone needing a lawyer and we only can serve about 45 of them . So we have to refer the other ones out . Because we are so focused and it is paid off for us to be just dialed in on this one service And we're going to stick to that and be exceptional at that one thing .

All right , that's question one . Question one is what is the very best service that I can offer ? Question two why should a client choose me or my firm or my business or my practice over all the other tons of options ? Like what makes me special ? Why do I stick out white ?

What reason do I give clients and customers a reason to choose me over another option ? Marketing calls this your USP , your unique selling proposition . That's the thing that's unique to you , that characterizes you , that sets you apart from the crowd .

It gives reason to a client to identify you among a group of others and say you know what I want , what that has to offer . I want that client or that firm or that attorney or that professional or whatever . So ideally , in my way of thinking . Your unique selling proposition should answer three things .

There should be three things that you do that , taken together , no one else or no other firm can claim . So in our world , at Sterling Law , our three uniques , our three things that we believe and , to our knowledge , no other firm can claim that's this One is that we are exclusively focused on family law , meaning we don't do anything else .

We don't take one single case that comes in the door for anything but those three things divorce , post-judgment and paternity . It's it , nothing else . Okay , so that puts us in a pretty small crowd , because a lot of family law firms will do something else on the site .

Even if it's a small percentage of their work , they'll still do something for a client that needs it or something . We always refer that up . Number two is we offer fee certainty . I mean , we don't bill by the hour . We give clients when they come in to see us right away . Here's what your entire case could cost .

This is the cap , this is what you're looking at . That's fee certainty . We were able to give that to them . Third thing is that we have thousands right now I think it's over 6,400 online reviews client reviews that have reviewed us online .

And so our third is we have a ton of social proof out there to show you , to demonstrate where clients have gotten value from our services and what we've been able to do for them . So those three things taken together are Sterling's unique . Three uniques are unique selling proposition .

So that's the reason why clients should choose us over our competitors that we are able to give that to them . So that's the second question Why should a client choose me over all other options or all other lawyers ? Number three am I ? this is the hard one .

This is especially a hard one for you entrepreneurs and you idea people out there , because you want it all and you don't want just everything . You want everything next to you . So this is a hard one .

So that third question is this am I willing to say no to everything else so I can be exceptional at one thing , so I can dominate and be known for the best service provider in that one narrow , niched out area ? So , like I said earlier , one of our strengths as a firm is that we're able to tell our story online and attract the attention of clients .

We do that really , really well , and in the beginning that almost choked us to death because we could get clients , we thought it was wise to take clients and that is a not a wise thing to do .

Whenever we started to say no to everything else and focus on just those narrow service areas that we were gonna be exceptional at , it changed every single thing in our firm . Our website changed because now we're able to talk in a messaging way directly to those clients that had pain in areas that we could serve them in . So our website changed .

How we answered the phone , the training of the people that were on the phones receiving those clients on Entei , coming in and helping them start to unburn themselves and share their story . They were really focused and got really good at that skill . Then , from there , it went to an attorney .

That client went to an attorney who was focused on family and weren't doing other things . They weren't learning other areas of law and , distracted by that , they were focused on how can I become extraordinary at family law and be really , really , really good at just this one thing ? And then the back office support the finance team .

They learned how to talk better to folks that were going through divorce versus a whole myriad of clients that had different sets of needs and so forth .

Then you also had our systems behind the scenes that builds all of our technology and our client-relation management software , and all of that was geared toward family law and the case matter types that related to that , and they built technology that supported those things and tools that supported those things around document automation and so forth , from a leadership

standpoint and a recruiting standpoint and a hiring standpoint . It goes on and on and on . Everything began to fall in line and coalesce behind one service type and build a team that , from top to bottom , was built to be extraordinary at that one thing .

And over time there's a compounding effect that comes from that kind of focus And sure , all along the way you're gonna get lots of pressure to do different things and to wanna go into other areas . You're gonna think , well , i've mastered this , now it's time for that .

I haven't seen that yet in our firm and I felt like it's been the wisest thing for us to stick to our knitting and what we're really good at . I can say that for about six months we dabbled with guardianship , which is kind of right next door to family law , and you know what we found ? We're just not good at it .

Let's be awesome at this one thing and go as deep as we possibly can down this rabbit hole , all right . Third question Am I willing to say no to everything else So I can be exceptional at one thing ? Question four what is the one thing that I absolutely have to do well , no matter what , in order to win ?

I mean , this is the one performance area that we cannot take our eye off the ball . We have to be exceptional and amazing in this one area in order to win . That's the question . Now , to answer this question , this is different for every business And in our case , the thing that we had to do very well was we had to attract the attention of clients .

We had to get in front of them in a way that we offered messaging and were able to tell a story that resonated and connected with them . We did not have a brand . We were starting from absolute scratch . We didn't have a referral base . We didn't have any of that .

We had to go kind of hand-to-hand combat to attract the attention of clients , and so , from the beginning , we set our eyes on that one thing We can never let our eye off that ball . We have to be exceptional there . We can't let ourselves get behind in any area of marketing , especially online , and attracting the attention

of clients .

Now , for some businesses , it could be the operational side of things , it could be the speed of delivery , it could be maybe the low-cost provider or the high-margin provider , it could be a whole bunch of different things , but there are something in your business that is so important and so essential to your success that you can never let your eye off of that

ball . An example of the day I was talking with Paul Hannon . He's a headshot photographer here in the Milwaukee area . He's exceptional and easily the best guy in the area on this , and I asked him I said hey , paul , would you do weddings and baby shots and stuff like that ?

And he's like no , i get asked all the time But I consistently turn those things down because I want to be exceptional in this one area of delivering amazing headshots , and he does that . If you look at his work , you know what I mean .

And so he's number one in Milwaukee for that reason , because he focuses so tightly and he delivers so much on just that one experience that his reputation grows and continues to multiply from there . So those are the four questions that every law firm starting up , every business starting up needs to answer . Answer it candidly .

Force yourself to just look in the mirror and be aware , because that's the hardest part , because we can so easily fool ourselves in the thinking we can do so much more , but less is more . In answering this , focus in as tightly as you can , be exceptional at that And don't take your eye off that one thing . You need to deliver to win .

Thank you , and if there was any value that I was able to offer you today , i would love it . It would mean the world to me if you would subscribe and tell others about our podcast and what we're trying to do . Thank you so much .