Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / What’s Your Blind Spot?
Transcript
- Unknown Speaker 0:04 Hi, it's Davina Frederick, and I'd like to welcome you to the wealthy woman lawyer podcast. If you've been a fan for a while now, thank you, we so appreciate you. If you are new to the wealthy woman lawyer podcast Welcome. I'm so glad you're here. The wealth woman lawyer podcast is sponsored by wealthy woman lawyer, a company that helps women law firm owners scale their law firm businesses to and through a million dollars in gross annual revenue with total ease, so they can fully fund and yet still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of their dreams. If that sounds like something you'd like to do, they come hang out with us on our Facebook community, wealthy woman lawyer or follow us on Instagram at wealthy woman lawyer. Today's topic was inspired by a recent conversation with a woman law firm owner who has successfully created a six figure income generating law practice as a true solo and she's maintained it for several years. In our discussion recently, she referred to her solo practice as an asset. That is a thing that is valuable in and of itself. And she was shocked when I said that while her solo practice is valuable to her because he creates a six figure income, it is not an asset, because it cannot be sold on the open market. For her law firm to be a saleable asset, an asset in which others can invest and expect returns, she would need to be a less integral part of her business. In other words, her business would need to be able to be separated from her as an individual and still maintain its value to an inspector of to an investor or a purchaser. So while she may be able to sell her book of business, it's likely that that book of business would click quickly diminish in value, because her clients would, some of them at least would be disgruntled, that she had, in essence sold them and she was no longer their attorney. And at least some of them, we quickly leave her firm to seek out other Counsel of their choosing. And this, of course, would leave the buyer of her book of business, very unhappy. So for a business to be an asset, it needs to really be an entity not dependent on the day to day involvement of the owner, to keep it valuable. That doesn't mean that you don't have an asset, if you have all the other elements of an asset, but you also work in your business as an attorney, you may very well, but a law firm that an asset has systems, usually multiple attorneys, staff, maybe a building, though not always, and it can be operated independent of the owner. In other words, if it is sold, then it still maintains its value without the owner, the previous owner being involved in it. Also, it needs to have some sort of track record of profitability, right? So you need to be able to demonstrate that others can take it over, and it will still be profitable for them. So for this attorney, and many others, like her, she has a blind spot, a corner that she cannot see around because she didn't know what she didn't know. And so what I want to talk about today is of blind spots. And I just started with this example. So you can see what a blind spot might look like. When I asked you what's your blind spot? It's a little bit of a trick question. Because if you knew what your blind spot was, well, it would not be a blind spot, right? The only way to identify blind spots in your business is to be open from feedback from others, like coaches, business advisors, and other experts, you may sometimes be able to identify your own blind spot. If you listen to podcast or you read books, and you have an open mind and you may have an epiphany or an aha moment, and a realization that oh, that's what I've been doing wrong or that's what I'm missing out. Right. But generally, we bite we can't see our own blind spots, right? It's like trying to lick your own elbow. It's, you know, it's almost impossible to do. And so I know all of you now we're trying to lick your elbow to see if you can actually do it. Unknown Speaker 4:42 One of the most challenging blind spots for us to identify and address in our business is how we view ourselves as leaders and managers of our law firm law firm business. It is quite common for women law firm owners to tell me they are free straited with their staff because they're not doing their jobs correctly. But when I asked them how they are managing the projects in our law firm and their team, they often say something to the effect. Well, I don't want to be a micromanager. So they tend to kind of blame the employee for low performance, when really the issue may be a management issue. And that may be a blind spot that they don't see. So their blind spot is that in their efforts to not over manage, many are not managing at all. Instead, they are taking what's called a hands off management style or approach. And that can be as bad as micromanaging, it's like swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction, because the team doesn't have all the guidance and the training they need to perform at an optimal level. See, oftentimes, as attorneys, as business owners, who, you know, have been doing something for years, we tend to forget that other people do not have our training and experience. And, and we don't understand why they can't read our minds. And this really is a blind spot on our part, because we have expectations that we haven't expressed clearly to others and given them the training they need to perform. So the reason so many of us have this blind spot most likely, is that when we started our law firms, and then we began hiring, we don't really have any management, training or experience. And it never occurs to us. And perhaps the problem with our team is that we're not good managers. The authors have Extreme Ownership, say in their book, which is a guide to good management, say in their book, that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders. And so if there's an issue going on with your team, I encourage you to to take a look at yourself as a manager and say, Do I need some additional training or insight here. Another common blind spot for law firm owners can be mastery over the business's finances. Sadly, I've had so many conversations with women law firm owners who have so poorly managed their finances, that they owe years of back taxes. If they've even filed taxes at all, I'm surprised at how many conversations I've had with women law firm owners who do that, and they think they're making money. But you know, or another blind spot could be maybe you're not, you know, don't owe back taxes or anything as drastic as that. But you may think that you're making money, because you're able to pay your bills. But you don't really know how to create a profitable business, you don't really understand business math, and and how it works beyond kind of rudimentary figures, if you're looking looking at that at all. While they may vaguely have an idea of what issue Unknown Speaker 8:05 of an issue when they're looking at their numbers, they have a blind spot and how detrimental not knowing your numbers can be. And oftentimes this will show up in things like when I have conversations with people. And I asked them very basic questions about their business of finances. And they say, Well, I don't know my bookkeeper hasn't given me that or my CPA hasn't answered that question yet, or something like that. Look, what they're doing is deflecting. And kind of trying to put the ownership of the issue onto the people who are doing just the gathering of the data. And, you know, the reporting, instead of taking ownership and say, Okay, this is an area where I don't have a level of competency that I need to have to really grow my business and scale it successfully. And so this can be a really powerful blind spot. If you have any of these blind spots or others, let me just reassure you that I am not passing judgment, okay. We all have blind spots. And certainly at various points in our business growth, we're going to have mind spot blind spots, because we just don't know what we can't know. Right? It takes education and it takes other people sometimes waving a flag in front of our faces. So I'm sure you if you're trying to wrap your mind around this, I want you think about you in your capacity as a lawyer. And you've probably seen this with your own clients that you may not have called it that these are when clients are doing things are not doing things that are harming them. And it's because they can't see them. They don't have the knowledge they don't have the understanding. They have a knowledge gap. And so it's your job as their attorney to to inform them of what they're missing. Okay and given And the information they need to help them solve their legal problem, right. So I don't know where I would have been, through the years in in all of my career without all the wonderful people who have offered insightful advice to me, and helped me see my own blind spots, including, you know, money mindset coaches, business coaches, therapists, in some cases, mentors. Even as early as when I first started out my career as a professional in the marketing world, you know, sometimes your, your mentors can be people that you least expect to be your mentors. I remember my first professional job, it was the secretary of the company owner, who was able to point out of blind spots in me. And I grew from that and learned from that. So this is something that if you're, you know, a human being, going through life and living a journey, you are always going to be having those things that you can't see because it's around the corner, and it's hidden from your view. So that's why I really encourage you, as a business owner, it's really critical that you assemble a team of professional advisers to Unknown Speaker 11:24 help you see what and learn and know what you can't know. So here are some of the people I like to have on my team of advisers. And I advise my clients to have and that is a tax strategist, a business attorney, an employment law attorney, a law firm growth strategist for my clients, I obviously advise that that's what I do, and a business coach, a CPA and a wealth advisor. I have had many people like that on my team through the years Business, Growth advisors, attorneys, CPAs, business coaches, and financial advisors. Because those people can see things and know things that you may be missing. So it's important for you as a business owner of a law firm, to realize that having conversations with people like that can save you not only 1000s of dollars, but maybe even years of wasted time time that you might not be able to get back, I know there are certain points in my career, I wish I had had someone who had been able to point something out to me earlier. Oftentimes, you know, we may be married to a person that can very well identify your blind spots, I know my husband, and I definitely can see those blind spots that the other can't see. But when it comes to spouses, and significant others and family members, often, although they can see our blind spots, they're in a delicate position in telling us what they see. Or they may not really understand what we're facing to really understand how it's affecting us. And also, we tend not to listen to them. If you've been married, I'm sure that you probably had a conversation with your spouse at some point where somebody has said something to you. And your spouse has said you, I've been telling you that for years, and you just have this aha moment because a stranger told you something, or maybe you've told your spouse something and they've been ignoring you and and somebody else tells them and then they're like, you know, you're saying oh, I've been telling you that for years. And it's it can be frustrating. So mind spot spotting is usually not the best left to the hands of people close to us like family members and best friends and spouses because, you know, they love us. And there's a lot at stake and on the line when they start offering those kinds of that kind of feedback. And especially when it comes to your business, in your business, if you want your business to truly be an asset and be something that you is more than a lifestyle business for you, then you really need to think about a sibling, that team of advisors and saying, you know, who can I have here that will help me see what I may be missing and help me know what I can't know right on my own. I do hope you've enjoyed today's episode about blind spots and then it gets you thinking about what you may be missing out. If if you have enjoyed this podcast and I really invite you to share it with others is super easy to do. It won't cost you a cent and they'll appreciate it you thought share and if you want to learn more about wealthy woman lawyer and how we work with our women, law firm owner clients to help them develop the the CEO level skills and thinking that they need so they can scale their businesses to $1,000,000.02 million dollars $5 million or beyond whatever size it is that they want to do, then please reach out to us. You can email us at support at wealthy woman lawyer or follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook. Connect with us there. And or visit our website at WWW dot wealthy woman lawyer.com. So look forward to supporting you in your journey as a law firm owner. And thanks again for being here and being part of the wealthy woman lawyer community. We'll see you next week. Transcribed by https://otter.ai