One of the single most important things you can learn how to do as a business owner is how to bounce back from failures.

How you handle failure is the key to whether you will succeed. Here’s how some of the most successful people of all time have handled what would have stopped most of us dead in our tracks.

* Thomas Edison failed 10,000(!) times before finally inventing the light bulb

* Henry Ford started many businesses and ended up completely broke FIVE times before he founded Ford Motor Company

* Harland Sanders and his famous Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe was rejected 1,009 times before he finally heard a yes.

* Oprah Winfrey was fired and rejected as a TV reporter.  Her bosses called her “unfit for TV.”

* R.H. Macy started SEVEN failed businesses before his department store Macy’s became a huge global success.

Maybe you too are experiencing failure at this very moment.  Maybe you’re drowning in a sea of debt and can’t fathom how you and your firm can possibly come out alive.

Maybe you feel like a failure as a parent…or a husband or a wife because your law firm steals all of your time and forces you to neglect the things or people you love the most.

Perhaps you’ve lost a string of cases that’s shattered your self-confidence and you’re now questioning your ability in the legal field all together.

To you I say: Don’t give up!

Each of these failures is a stepping stone to your ultimate success.  Instead, see them as tests to see how serious you really are about succeeding in business and life.

Here are the things that help me bounce back and get back on the horse each time I fall off:

1. Find the lesson. Every failure is merely an opportunity to learn how to do better next time.  When you see failure that way, you discover that not only is failure not something to be afraid of, but something to embrace because it brings you one step closer to what you need to learn to get where you want to go.

2.  Don’t blame. Blame blocks your lesson.  Instead, if you take 100% personal responsibility for your part of every failure, you can learn the lessons you need to turn the failure into a huge success.

3.  Move out of why and into what. Many of us spend our time WHYning constantly.  Oh why me, why did this happen. Why, why, why, why, why????  Why doesn’t matter.  All that matters is what.  Accept the reality of whatever did happen and now ask yourself WHAT you are going to do to turn it around into the greatest opportunity of your life.

4.  Ask for help. Sometimes it’s hard to see the lessons in our own failures.  Emotion can get in the way.  So ask for help from someone who cares about you and is not emotionally invested in your outcome.  Even if you are a solo lawyer, that doesn’t mean you have to do it all alone.

If you want the support of an amazing group of lawyers who will help you turn every failure into the greatest opportunity for success, consider becoming a PFL.  I held a no-charge call on February 16th where I gave all the details of the program and opened the doors for our open enrollment happening this week. If you missed the call, you can download the replay here and still get your application in before tomorrow’s deadline.

The PFL program isn’t for everyone.  If what we offer doesn’t fit with your practice area or simply isn’t a business model you’d like to implement, keep searching until you find the one that is.  You really can have a life and business that you love being a lawyer and serving your clients in  a way that really matters.

Image courtesy of Flickr

Every now and then, I like to move away from teaching about the legal marketing/ law practice aspects of running a small or solo law firm and dive into something that’s rarely talked about in the legal field…which is your mindset.

Because here’s the truth, I can give you all the legal marketing and practice management tips in the world, but if your head isn’t in the right place, you’ll find a way to sabotage your efforts.

Conversely, you can be the worst marketer or business person, but if you have the right mindset, you’ll eventually find success.

Today, I want to talk about DRIVE and how it relates to the success of your life/business right now.

Take a moment and consider the following:

1. What drives me?

2. What is my purpose for being a lawyer?

3. What is my purpose in life?

4. Am I happy?

5. Why did I go to law school?

6. Am I making a difference in the world?

These can be hard questions to look at….especially in times of economic hardship. You may feel driven on pure survival. And you may find yourself enduring gruesome hours and complete misery all in the name of making money.

You may even be compromising your time and sanity by taking legal work that you don’t WANT or LIKE to do-just to get by.

Ultimately though, these actions don’t lead to more money. They lead to burnout, bitterness, depression, addictions and in extreme cases, suicide (which is sadly on the rise for lawyers these days).

There comes a point at which if you’re going to succeed in the business of law….and in the business of life, you need to get very clear on what drives you, why you wanted to practice law in the first place and whether you are really living the life you want.

I recently had a call with Dan Pink, the New York Times best-selling author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, where we discussed this issue as it relates specifically to lawyers and the legal field.

What you may not know about Dan is that he’s got a JD from Yale. But, he never used his law degree to practice because he realized early on that his “drive” and motivation was not to be a lawyer.

Going to law school was, for him, just the next logical step for a bright kid with a top-notch college degree and a lack of clarity about what else to do.

And there’s many lawyers out there who went to law school for the same reason and are now incredibly unhappy in the actual practice of law…..not because they aren’t smart….but they aren’t aligned with that which drives them. (This may even be you.)

Dan also acknowledged there’s another group of lawyers….lawyers like me who went to law school with the DRIVE and purpose to really help people. If that’s you, you’re driven by the idea of making a real difference in the world and using the power of your law degree to some chief and definite aim.

And there’s many of us in this group who have lost sight of that drive. We take jobs in law firms that keep us stuck in the transactional rut or we get so desperate running a small or solo law firm that we take clients and cases that leave us miserable in practice.

If that’s you-I completely understand. I was there. It’s exactly what motivated me to leave the safety of my six-figure paycheck and set out to build my own law firm. And it’s also what motivated me to master the skills and create the systems I now teach in the Personal Family Lawyer Program.

I wanted to make a real difference in my client’s lives and I knew the old, broken business model just didn’t leave enough room for that. Not if I wanted to also enjoy my personal life.

Yes it was scary…..yes there were moments when I questioned my own sanity leaving the big check and investing hundreds of thousands of dollars reinventing the business model….but I had to get aligned with what drives me or face years of unhappiness and little quality time with my kids.

What I can tell you is that when I made the decision to get aligned with what was really important to me in life and my practice, the money, freedom and success ultimately followed.

So take a moment today and think about what drives you.

Why did you go to law school and are you living that desire?  A great start is downloading the call I did with Dan Pink and force yourself to identify any disconnect in your own life. I’ll show you how to work through it in the weeks to come.

The new world of Web 2.0 has made things a bit like the Wild Wild West in terms of law firm marketing.  Everything’s new, there’s no guidelines and quite frankly, it can be a bit scary at times.  I understand.  I was once boggled by the myriad of opportunities too.

But, you must take the time to understand your options.

In today’s world, with more choices than ever, your law firm will never have a steady stream of prospects calling if you are not marketing.  And let’s be honest, marketing can be extremely time consuming, has a steep learning curve and typically requires a lot of expensive trial and error.

Fortunately, once you figure it out, business (and life) becomes much easier.  And when you have the one-two punch of attracting the right prospects and engaging over 80% of the ones that call your office, now you’ve got a real business. [ed note: if you aren't engaging over 80% of the prospects who call your office, you are wasting a whole lot of your time & most of the money you spend on your marketing.]

I can definitely understand the desire to outsource a substantial part of your lead flow.  Who wouldn’t want someone else to handle what is for many of you the most difficult part of your business – getting the phone to ring?

In response, companies have sprung up that claim they will get your phone to ring by leveraging the power of the internet. Not all companies are the same though.  Here’s what you should look for when you are engaging any outside legal marketing company to help with your marketing:
1.  Pay for results only.

Pay-for-results or (pay-per-performance) means you only pay if you get results.  But, not all results are the same.

Beware of the companies promising to get your website to the top of the google or other search engines. That’s not necessarily the results you want or care about.  Sure, they can get you to the top of google for certain keywords, but are those the keywords your prospects are searching for?  What about all the other searches?  And, what happens when people get to your website?  Is your website primed to convert looky-loos into your clients?  If your site is like most lawyer sites I’ve seen, no.

If you are not prepared to make the time and money investment in building a website that converts (we can cover that another day), you may want to look for a company that is going to deliver you qualified contacts.

2.  No long-term contracts.

Look for a provider that doesn’t require you to sign a long-term contract.  If it’s pay-for-results or pay-per-performance, why require a long-term contract?  Either you are getting the contacts or you aren’t.

3.  Screening that benefits you and not the provider.

I’ve heard a rumor that some pay-for-performance companies screen the inquiries and cherry pick the best cases for themselves or their buddies. I understand this is most common in the personal injury arena and can’t confirm it, but watch out for it if you are 1 of 5 or 6 attorneys getting contacts in a specific area.  Look for a company that delivers you ALL of the contacts that come in for your specified area without room for discretion about which of the contacts you get and which you don’t get.

If you use these guidelines before you choose a company to outsource your marketing to, you’ll have very little, if any, risk.

And, while you know I’m a big fan of outsourcing so you can be the lawyer you’ve always wanted to be, don’t rely on outsourced marketing as your only source of leads.  Make pay-per-performance online marketing part of your mix, but be sure you’ve got your own internal systems for becoming THE go to lawyer in your local community as well.