Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / 202: Everything You Want is on the Other Side of One Decision

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202: Everything You Want is on the Other Side of One Decision · Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love

• 0:00
  Davina: Growth is more important than comfort. What do you think about that? Can you relate to that? Where do you think you may be choosing psychological safety over actual safety in your business? Where are you holding yourself back from growth because you're too comfortable?
• 0:17
  Perhaps you're an excellent attorney, but you don't know squat about leading and managing a team of professionals in your law firm business, and your fear of looking foolish is holding you back. Remember though, when you were a baby, you didn't know squat. And the last hobby you tried when you started out, you didn't know squat. And when you were a baby lawyer, you didn't know squat. Beginnings feel hard sometimes because we are not masters, and we don't like to look like we don't know what we're doing.
• 0:45
  But without beginnings, we can never get to mastery.
• 0:49
  Intro: Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers, ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more? Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Devina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love. Devina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the life lifestyle of your dreams.
• 1:36
  Now here's Devina.
• 1:40
  Davina: Hi. This is Devina. And before we jump into today's show, I'd like first to introduce you to some of our sponsors. Over the last four years, Noble Marketing has tracked more than two fifty law firms and discovered 60 to 80% of new client calls were generated through Google My Business and Google Ads. Basically, you need to be on Google, noble marketing can help.
• 2:05
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• 2:39
  When prospective clients are looking for an attorney, they usually turn to Google first. Optimize My Firm helps law firms grow their practices and attract more right fit clients through on page and back end search engine optimization. Optimize My Firm can help your firm rank higher on Google so that clients can find you before they find your competition. They serve personal injury, family law, workers' comp, immigration, and other types of law firms. Optimize My Firm does SEO the right way, delivering meaningful results with geographic exclusivity and no contracts.
• 3:16
  Contact them today at optimizemyfirm.com or click the link in the show notes. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Davina Frederick, and I'm so happy you've decided to join me today because I think you're really going to like today's topic. This week, I met with a woman law firm owner who is making high 6 figures in her law firm. She's gotten there through a lot of hard work and diligence and frankly micromanagement of details.
• 3:45
  She's an excellent attorney and has zero trouble getting new clients. Her reputation in her practice area is stellar, and both clients and colleagues refer to her all the time. The issue though that she's facing now is she's feeling like she's getting too much work. And if it keeps up at this pace, she's worried about that one of two things will happen. Number one is something important will slip through the cracks and it'll be detrimental, maybe even irreparable for a client or maybe clients.
• 4:14
  Or and or number two, she'll be so burned out that she'll just wanna walk away from it all. So she has taken action over the years to set up some systems and to hire full time staff. She now has three paralegals and a legal admin. But as her law firm has grown, she feels her systems have not grown with her and her team. And even though she desperately needs to start hiring lawyers if she wants to achieve her revenue goals without burning out completely, she wants everything to be perfect before she does that.
• 4:47
  Can you relate? Like many women law firm owners with whom I've spoken over the last years, there are essentially seven reasons I would say that she's struggling so hard to hire lawyers, not hire lawyers actually, and not just staff members. So see if any of these reasons resonate with you. Number one, she's worried about meeting their salary expectations because she can't believe how much associates are getting paid now. It was not that way when she graduated from law school years ago and got her first job.
• 5:23
  Number two, she doesn't want to bring in other lawyers who may judge her quote, unquote mess. This is a belief that a new lawyer will tell everyone that she doesn't have her systems act fully together. Number three, she's worried about managing people she considers to be her peers and coming up short. She's only managed lower level staff members up until now. Number four, she's afraid she'll invest money in training an attorney, and they will leave her even though she does not have this fear with her staff.
• 5:56
  And she's worried that if they leave her, it'll be money wasted. Worse, they'll leave and go start a competing law firm across the town, across the street. She's worried she might hire the wrong person, and they will harm her hard earned reputation by making mistakes. Remember, she loves to be in control of all the details, so she doesn't like it when mistakes happen. And it's bad enough if she makes a mistake, but she doesn't have a lot of tolerance for other people making mistakes.
• 6:23
  She's worried that the clients won't want to work with her new attorney or attorneys because they want to hire her, quote unquote, her. Number seven, she's afraid of losing control of all the details of every case that comes through her office, which will surely happen if she doubles her firm's caseload. So does that resonate with you? Can you relate to any of those reasons? If you haven't hired a lawyer yet, have you had any of those thoughts?
• 6:48
  Of course, until we talked it through, it was really hard for her to tease out all of these reasons because they basically are all just intertwined into like one big yarn ball of fear and stress. That's the way it is with most obstacles that we struggle to overcome when we're trying to grow our law firm business. Often, can't even begin to overcome them because we don't take the time to sort them out to really tease through and sort them out into separate thoughts that we're thinking. Instead, we just ruminate and we overthink sometimes for years even. And then we wonder why we are so exhausted all the time.
• 7:25
  The exhaustion you're feeling may not be about the day in and day out work. It may be this mental and emotional rumination that you're doing because you are making a decision and moving forward. Logically, she knows she needs to hire lawyers if she ever wants to be able to leave her law firm for a day, a week, a month, or months at a time without worry that everything will fall apart in her absence. But her limiting beliefs are keeping her rooted in the spot she's comfortably in. It's a spot that makes her feel like she's in control of all the details and therefore safe.
• 8:01
  But the truth is while she may psychologically feel safe at the moment with her non decision and her non action. Ultimately, she's endangering everything because what if she or someone in her family becomes really sick and she's unable to work? Who will cover for her? What if she needs a break before she loses it? Right?
• 8:25
  What if she's got so much on her plate to continue juggling without some of those plates falling and breaking? Like, maybe something slipping through the cracks and missing something and causing a malpractice issue or a bar agreements. In other words, her psychological safety net is not a real safety net, not as much as building out redundancy in her law firm business would be. Right now, she has just enough staff, just enough clients, and just enough revenue to be comfortable, but not enough to truly free up her time and the resources to live her best life, like more international travel, more time with her young children and her spouse, and more time with her aging parents, all of which she says are her highest priority. The thing is she's like a horse tethered to a lawn chair.
• 9:13
  Have you all seen that meme of the horse tethered to the lawn chair? Nothing else is keeping her stuck where she is today. And one decision could set her free. So what is that one decision? That one decision is deciding that growth is more important to her than comfort.
• 9:30
  Let me repeat that. Growth is more important than comfort. What do you think about that? Can you relate to that? Where do you think you may be choosing psychological safety over actual safety in your business?
• 9:44
  Where are you holding yourself back from growth because you're too comfortable? Perhaps you're an excellent attorney, but you don't know squat about leading and managing a team of professionals in your law firm business. And your fear of looking foolish is holding you back. Remember, though, when you were a baby, you didn't know squat. And the last hobby you tried when you started out, you didn't know squat.
• 10:07
  And when you were a baby lawyer, you didn't know squat. Beginnings feel hard sometimes because we are not masters and we don't like to look like we don't know what we're doing. But without beginnings, we can never get to mastery. If what I'm sharing resonates with you, I'm gonna extend an invitation right now to join me and other women law firm owners in the Wealthy Woman Lawyer League. The Wealthy Woman Lawyer League is a membership community for women law firm owners who are struggling with some of these issues like hiring lawyers, setting up systems, managing and leading people as they climb the 6 figure ladder of their law firm business.
• 10:48
  And they want to learn the fastest and easiest way to scale. So for six months, if you join the Wealthy Woman Lawyer League, you and I will work together to help you scale your law firm business so you can achieve your business and personal financial goals without working yourself to death in the process. Because let's be real. What good is earning a lot of money if you never have time to enjoy it? I remember I have been in that situation where I was making a lot of money.
• 11:15
  I didn't have time to enjoy it because I was working all the time to keep that hamster wheel going. And when I took time off, I felt like I didn't have the money because I wasn't working and making the money and it was costing me too much. At the end of our first thirty days together, if you join the Wealthy Woman Lawyer League, you will have discovered how to begin cultivating a wealthy woman lawyer mindset, a way of thinking about how you run your business and make money that doesn't require you to micromanage all the details and work harder and be in constant emotional distress. And you'll increase your awareness of some of the limiting beliefs that you may be harboring that you didn't even realize you were and how to shed them so they no longer hold you back from achieving your biggest, most audacious goals. Also, at the end of thirty days, you will have learned what it takes to attract better clients that you will love to serve and who will pay you upfront and on time.
• 12:13
  But how great would that be? Think of your most ideal client right now. The client that you are so happy when they call you and they said they wanted to hire you. Now imagine having twenty, thirty, 40 more clients just like that. By sixty days, you will have learned all about leverage and how to put leverage to work in your law firm business, including how to leverage time, how to leverage team, and how to leverage systems and technology to create a systems driven law firm business operated by a high performing team.
• 12:48
  In the next ten years, 90% of legal services will be delivered online. Gavel is the software lawyers are using to streamline internal document automation and build online legal products like landlord legal or hello divorce. With Gavel, you can easily build client intake that generates document sets through powerful logic based document automation. Gavel, formerly known as document can be used internally or you can make it client facing. It also integrates with nearly everything.
• 13:22
  Clio even rated Gavel their best integration tool. Visit www.gavel.io and mention the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast for a free fourteen day trial, or just click on the link in the show notes. If one of your goals is to be able to leave by ninety days in this program, you will understand not only how to talk about your numbers, what they mean to the management of your law firm business. And you'll never have to feel that way again if you don't want to. You'll also learn exactly what the key performance indicators are that you should be tracking and the ones you don't even need to worry about.
• 13:58
  This is something people often hear people talk about key performance indicators, and they get so bogged down and caught up in this idea that they need to be tracking everything in their business. And while you definitely need to be looking at your metrics and tracking some things, there are other things that really aren't gonna move the needle much as you're scaling your business. So we are going to discuss that, and you are going to learn that. And by the end of ninety days, that's just twelve weeks, you will have a much better grasp on business finances. And this works even for people who hate math because I was always the person who hated math.
• 14:34
  That's why I became a lawyer just like everybody else. Every other lawyer I talked to says that. But you have to understand if you have your own business, you have to understand business math. And so I'm gonna help you through this program to get that comfort level and be able to understand and talk about your business as a business owner. For the full six months, you will have ongoing coaching with me through weekly intimate group calls with other women law firm owners on a similar journey.
• 15:01
  League members tell me that this is one of their favorite parts of the program because they not only have to get their questions answered, but they can also get access to a network of like minded colleagues. So it's not just me offering up coaching and support and resources, but you're also going to have encouragement and support and new ideas, fresh ideas from like minded colleagues. They might be in different practice areas. They might be in similar practice areas. But when it comes to running a law firm business, good ideas can come from all kinds of practice areas and all kinds of places.
• 15:38
  Our curriculum includes the million dollar law firm roadmap training and the law firm system solution training. This is the first time that I have included law firm systems solution training as a part of the curriculum and not as an additional bonus. The million dollar law firm growth training is the critical foundation material you need to understand if you want to transform from being a solo lawyer to the CEO of a profitable, sustainable, wealth generating law firm business. So these are the key core components of what you need to scale your law firm businesses to multiple 6 figures and into 7 figures. Law firm system solution is a companion course that I created to go with my book, The Wealthy Woman Lawyer's Guide to Building a Systems Driven Law Firm Business.
• 16:24
  So it takes you much deeper than where the book takes you and shows you actually how to set up systems in your law firm business. Did you know that there are seven essential systems that every law firm business needs to operate effectively? And we cover all of these, including cheat sheets, templates, guides, and all sorts of resources for you, including my 2023 tech guide to help you set up systems and automate in your law firm business. So all of this, the six month of coaching by me, the million dollar law firm growth roadmap, the law firm system solution training, the private community with other women law firm owners, copies of both of my books on law firm marketing management, and my 2023 tech guide to automate your small firm. All of this together is more than enough to allow you to make a quantum leap in your law firm businesses growth and your personal growth in the next six months.
• 17:18
  And this structured comprehensive training program with direct access to me weekly is available to you for less than the cost of one typical law firm's initial retainer fee. Less. However, for those of you who choose to invest in yourself and your law firm business at this particular time, I wanted to reward you for taking action. So I've created something brand new and truly special for you. One of the places I see women law firm owners get bogged down when they're trying to scale is around their transformation into a leader and manager of their law firm business.
• 17:54
  It doesn't really occur to most people when they're starting to grow their law firm business that they may not have these skills and they need to develop them. Let's face it. None of us were born knowing how to lead and manage others, just as none of us were born knowing how to be great lawyers. We need to learn these skills and put them into practice to master them. So for this reason, I've developed a solution to help you.
• 18:16
  If you enroll in the Wealthy Woman Lawyer League before the end of the offer date, which is June 25, so it's coming up fast just three days from now, You will be invited to participate in this brand new training. It's called Leadership for Women Law Firm Owners workshop series, and it's everything you need to learn how to be an inspirational leader to others so that others will naturally want to follow you. And also I handle the day to day management of your team, your processes and your operations. I will be teaching this workshop series live so you will have direct access to me during the next six months to get your questions about leadership and management of your law firm answered. So this is going to be a really customized experience for the people who participate in this because I am teaching this live for the first time, and you are going to be able to really ask those burning questions that you have around leadership and management and get those answers.
• 19:17
  But that's not the only bonus I'm offering this June. Maybe it's because it's my birthday month, but I'm feeling all the love, and I really truly want you to succeed. So it's the reason I provide so much ongoing support in this program. I've given you all these trainings, cheat sheets, guides, course materials, but it's not enough. I've also provided the coaching that goes along with that.
• 19:40
  So you can get customized guidance as you're going through this and apply this to your firm because every law firm is unique and different. To that end, I've also included two more bonuses for June enrollees. And these two are brand new bonuses that I just created. One is called create time for what matters guidebook. The create time for what matters is a 25 page guidebook, and it's designed to help you stop spending your time on all the wrong activities.
• 20:08
  So if you really struggle to prioritize and manage your time effectively, you spend a lot of time working in your business and not enough working on your business, You'll really love and appreciate this create time for what matters guidebook. It is short and sweet, easy to read, and you'll be able to access this information very quickly and begin to apply it to your business immediately. You'll learn how to determine your highest priorities and then reallocate your time accordingly. When we begin to focus intentionally on the highest and best use of our time and we learn how to effectively and actually delegate and outsource necessary but lower priority tasks, it's life changing magic. This was a really hard lesson for me to learn, but once I mastered it, everything in my life and my business shifted for the better and it will for you too.
• 20:56
  The last bonus I have for you is the cash infusion formula. So for those of you who are feeling cash strapped or even those who wanna increase their cash flow into the business, maybe you're not cash strapped, but you just want to increase the amount of cash you're bringing in, then I'm sharing my cash infusion formula. This is the same method I've taught my clients for the past decade, and it still works today for increasing cash in your business ASAP. So apply what you learn from this one quick read and you will have more than covered the investment in this program. I want to be upfront with you, though.
• 21:30
  This program is not for everyone. It is only for women law firm owners who are fully committed to scaling their law firm businesses, increasing their gross annual revenue and their personal take home income, and escaping that work in the business grind within the next six months. If by the 2023, 2024, you want your law firm to be in a totally different place, If you wanna proudly lead a profitable, sustainable, wealth generating firm that makes you feel happy to go to work, then I can confidently say this program is for you. However, if you are happy with your law firm as it is now, if you don't want to grow your law firm, or if you've already got it all figured out by yourself, then this program is not from you. So you can just release this and move on to something else.
• 22:19
  This is only for women law firm owners who want to grow their law firm business and they want to grow their wealth and they're tired of the status quo and beyond ready to make a change. They're ready to create a profitable, sustainable wealth generating business that can operate without their day to day over management, micromanagement, if that is what they choose. And they can go to the beach more and spend more time with their family and friends and loved ones or just have more me time. If that sounds like you, I'm putting the link in the show notes for you to go to my page and get all the details. Get all the details.
• 22:59
  I've made it super easy for you to join us. Just click that link, go through to the sign up page, read all the information that you need, and enroll now. So that's all I have for you today. I hope you've enjoyed it, and I hope to see you in the league. Thank you.
• 23:13
  Intro: If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in your business and your life, then you'll want to visit us at wealthywomanlawyer.com to learn more about how we help our clients create wealth generating law firms with ease.