RJon Robins

Theif misses the jewels

December 30, 2010 by RJon Robins

So my car was broken into yesterday. Someone broke my rear passenger side window & stole my GPS which I had (foolishly) left in plain sight mounted to my front windshield. It took me a few minutes to realize the GPS was missing becuase the first thing I looked for was a couple of audio programs on CD's that I'd been listening to in the car. Those are worth far more to me than the GPS. And not just in some “ephemeral” way either. I mean I invested way more to get those programs than I paid for the GPS. Like on a magnitude of 10:1.

Ironic don't you think? A person whose thinking runs along the lines of breaking into people's cars to steal electronics, looks right past an educational opportunity that could have taught him or her some things they could have put to use and turned their whole life around so they don't have to be breaking into people's cars.

Makes you stop & think about the opportunities that you are looking right past every day that could help you too. In fact that's exactly what the experience did for me and voila I spotted ANOTHER great opportunity we're going to roll out in 2011 that will make my life alot easier and more fun.

What's right under your nose that you're not noticing?

Don’t waste this holiday weekend

November 26, 2010 by RJon Robins

Don’t waste this holiday weekend

Most of us are spending Thanksgiving with close friends and family. I’ll be attending a funeral this evening.

You could waste this weekend talking about the same old stuff, and having another fat and lazy Thanksgiving that will be like the last ten Thanksgivings.

Or, you could make PRODUCTIVE use of that time.

You could go out on the skinny branches and talk about your REAL goals.

The improvements you want to make to your law firm, LIFE the new law firm LIFE you want to start, the changes you want to make to the way you run your business LIFE in 2011 so it’s even better than 2010!

You could even tell them why you plan to apply for one of the spots coming up in my Solo & Small Law Firm Management & Marketing Bootcamp program for owners of solo and already-successful small law firms who want to take their firms to the next level. Or even for my January 2011 How To Start A Successful Law Firm In 90 Days Or Less hands-on coaching program that will catapult you in the direction of your dreams.

It’s risky. Your friends and family might ridicule you for being a crazy dreamer. They might laugh at you. Scary stuff.

Don’t waste the opportunity of tomorrow. Get your friends and family behind you. You won’t inch closer to those big goals until you’re willing to open your mouth and say them out loud.

Whatever you do, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving weekend!

An unexpected Thanksgiving day wish:

November 25, 2010 by RJon Robins

An unexpected Thanksgiving day wish:

Happy Thanksgiving.

There, now that’s out of the way let me tell you what are my REAL well-wishes for you this Thanksgiving day. . .

I wish you the joy, the prosperity and the peace in your soul that comes from figuring out what your law practice is really all about.

If you have already seen this 3 minute video and it catapulted your thinking to a whole new level where your law firm now serves you on all three axis of sucess then I offer you my sincerest congratulations.

Even if you figured it out without my help I am no less happy and excited for you because this is a great way to go through life, isn’t it?!?!

But if you don’t quite yet know what your law firm is really all about…the “WHY” of it all…then I urge you to watch this short video and use some of the downtime today to give it a good think.

~ RJON

p.s. If you think your law firm is all about making money, or all about serving your clients then you are missing a big opportunity to enjoy more of both; plus be an even happier lawyer.

Why in the world would a multi-million dollar company ever want to hire a solo?

November 4, 2010 by RJon Robins

This week for our monthly Gold Call I interviewed the president of a $3mm company that manages over $30mm of its clients’ money. The question I posed to him was “Why in the world would a muti-million dollar company ever want to hire a solo lawyer?”

And then of course the group peppered him with a barrage of politically-incorrect, direct and some downright scary questions you’d love to know answers to but you’d probably never want to ask anyone would could be a potential client or referral source. Or probably anyone else who knows you!

Some of the highlights from his criteria:

It’s NOT about saving money. He acknowledges that he doesn’t necessarily save money by hiring a solo or a small law firm over a big firm.

It’s NOT about being able to pick up the phone and call a solo lawyer anytime he wants vs. scheduling a telephone appointment in the same way one would expect when calling a lawyer at a big firm.

It’s NOT about prestige of a big firm or a fancy office – he expressed no qualms about hiring a home office lawyer, if s/he’s the right lawyer.

It’s NOT about the allegedly “full service” offered by big firms.

It’s NOT all about legal advice.

It’s NOT about Bar Rules. In fact some advice he offered the group about how he’d like to be contacted by prospective new legal counsel was in direct violation of Bar Rules of every State I’ve studied. This was a surprisingly valuable bit of insight because it reminded the Group (and me too) that clients don’t know about, or care about Bar Rules. Here we had the President of a mult-million-dollar client who purchases nearly a hundred thousand dollars of legal services most years and influences the spend of more than $30mm of his clients’ money. And he said that what he’d REALLY like is if a lawyer would pick up the phone and call him to offer a free legal audit to demonstrate familiarity with his business and industry.

Post a comment below & let me know what you think about that!

p.s. The Microsoft-sponsored “National Solo & Small Law Firm Success Tour” is picking-up speed with tour dates in Atlanta, St Louis & Minneapolis happening in November and two webinars for Canadian Bars in December, so I suppose we’ll have to change the name to “International” next year when we hit Boston, Houston, NYC, LA, San Fran, Hawaii, Chicago, New Orleans and about 20 other cities I don’t have the list of right now!

If you’re in any of these cities I hope we’ll get a chance to meet in person soon.

The argument against free

October 6, 2010 by RJon Robins

Background: This is part of an exchange between a software developer and me about the pros & cons of offering “free for life” law office management software. Do not read farther into it than in this context. There is still a valid argument to be made for free samples which is perfectly consistent with the position I express below:

Hi Paul,

It's perfectly OK if your comparison results in
“Exactly the same”. There is a
HUGE market that's not yet in the clouds.
So the challenge isn't to lure them away from any other cloud based
service. Just to lure them away from
non-cloud, to cloud and be able to stand toe-to-toe with the cloud-based
competition.

I respectfully could not disagree with you more about the
issue of money. Money cuts through the
bullshit to get & keep people focused on being productive. I have tried to help many people for free in
the past. I found I am generally doing them and
myself both a disservice.

As soon as I
tell a lawyer he or she must pay to join my coaching program it forces them to
make a decision. For some it's a tough
decision. Maybe even an embarrassing
one. But the decision serves their lives
because it forces the person to commit to achieve their goal or admit that
they're not committed to the goal so they can then move on with their lives and
focus on some other goal(s) in their life that they are more desirous of. Remember everything I do comes with 100% guarantee so the investment I ask a lawyer to make in him/herself is financially risk-free.

You offer me a free law firm management software program and
you're going to have to work pretty hard to convince me that I should take
it.

Why?

Because “free” is not the deciding factor for the program I'm
depending on to run my whole life.
Reliable, responsive, rock-solid, bullet-proof, safe & convenient are
the deciding factors. I'm sure there are
plenty of lawyers who will take “free”.

But for the most part I doubt those will be
the kinds of people I want to be doing business with. Because if free (or even “cheap”)
is their deciding factor when it comes to something as important as their law
office management software then I know from ten years experience they're going
to be making questionable decisions in other parts of their practice too.

There are MUCH better ways to address value than free
when it comes to law office management software. Better for you, better for the lawyers who
you're asking them to depend on you and of course better for me too if I'm the
one being asked to make the introduction regardless of if I get a penny out of
it.

I hope you'll give serious consideration to what I've
said here. I'll look forward to speaking
with you soon,

RJON

What Seth Godin Thinks About The Small Law Firm Management & Marketing Coaching Program

September 22, 2010 by RJon Robins

Video Below

Disclaimer: I don’t know Seth Godin. I’ve read most of his books, more than once. I exchanged a personal email with him two years ago. And a client/friend of mine spent five full days in a private meeting with Mr. Godin in his New York office talking about some very exciting and very “BIG” ideas that two months later we’re still debriefing her about to extract every morsel of information & insight because he’s Just So Damn Insightful!

We’re about to close down enrollment for two different coaching programs. One is for lawyers who are thinking about it or have recently started a law firm. And it’s dawned on you that there’s something “Broken” about the modern legal education curricula in most law schools.

This program is called “How To Start A Successful Law Firm In 90 Days Or Less” and our first group meeting is the first week in October so I have to close down enrollment Friday September 24, 2010 to allow my team to do what they do to run the program for us.

The second program is for lawyers who are ALREADY RUNNING your own successful law firm and so you know all too well that there is indeed something Broken about our legal industry. Because running your own law firm should be fun. And profitable. And it should make you happy. Because happy lawyers really DO make more money.

One of the things that’s “Broken” in our industry, by the way, is too-many-lawyers operating with the Broken Belief that profits in a law firm are the result of hard work.

That’s a pretty unhappy way to go through a career. Clients and our families hate it too.

Instead, profit comes from creating value. And value is not a function of how many hours you sacrifice to the business.

The second program is my “Small Law Firm Management & Marketing Bootcamp” that you can learn more about by following that link. In order to give everyone plenty of my personal attention I have to close down enrollment in this one too this Friday September 24th.

“Sometimes the best thing to do is to break it on purpose for the people
you don’t care about, so that it makes more sense for the people you do.”

That’s a quote from Mr. Godin’s video below. I share it with you here because I want to let you know that my coaching programs are Broken.

But they’re Broken on purpose.

And I offer a 100% Guarantee to protect you and to protect me, in case you decide to enroll and discover the program you enrolled in isn’t Broken in just the right way for YOU.

Either way, part of the reason I have to close down enrollment is because I can only “on-board” 12 at a time into either program.

And the other part of the reason is that the “on-boarding” process involves you & me having a private one-on-one talk.

That way we can both be sure the program you select is perfectly Broken in all the right ways for who you are, how you like to learn, where you’re at today with your law practice and where you want it to take you.

OK, so enjoy the video. It’s GREAT!

Seth Godin at Gel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

p.s. If you DON’T agree this video is great, I’d still encourage you to take advantage of some of the free resources sprinkled throughout my various websites. But there’s a good chance you’re just going to think my programs are just plain “broken”.

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