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

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been sharing with you some ways to add multiple streams of revenue to your core business.

The first two ways focused around providing enhanced services to your existing law firm clients.

This third way is totally unique and has nothing to do with your existing clients.

The third way to add multiple streams of revenue to your business is to package the knowledge, expertise, systems, tools and other resources you’ve created as you’ve built your law firm into programs for other lawyers who would love to pay you to learn your shortcuts.

This is a model you’ve seen at least from the outside from anyone you are currently learning from about how to run your practice more effectively.

You might wonder why I’d mention this to you because it could put you in direct competition with me.

I just don’t view the world that way.

In fact, I help many of the lawyers I’m coaching cultivate there own unique talents and gifts by leveraging their expertise.

Kevin Roy, the probate genius. Evan Farr with his TrustPlus system. Kirsten Izatt with Special Needs Planning. Nancy Cavey with Social Securty Disability Planning. Rjon Robins in law firm management. And more …

Each of these lawyers is coaching with me to learn how to leverage their specialized knowledge into at least one additional stream of revenue for their law firm.

It’s my pleasure to guide them to their highest potential.

If you love to teach and you have specialized knowledge you’ve gained over the years of running your business, don’t be afraid to share it.

Package it, put a pricetag on it and offer it to the world. It could change your life!

Oh and speaking of guiding lawyers to pursue their passion, one of my Personal Family Lawyers Kimberley Fonner has decided to leave the law to pursue her passion. She wrote the email below to her colleagues at Wealth Counsel and I thought I’d share it here with you because it was just so kind:

Dear WealthCounsel Friends,

This was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make but my heart told me I had to do it and so I am: I’m closing my practice and getting out of the legal field, effective this month.

As much as I’ve enjoyed being a lawyer for the past 12 years, my passion really lies elsewhere and so, I am leaving the law to pursue the career of my dreams: working everyday with and in support of animals.

I’d like to thank Wealth Counsel and all of you wonderful WC members for your generous mentoring, support and advice over the last 2 years. You all have been quite wonderful and have contributed greatly to my ability to serve estate planning clients in very high-quality ways.

I would also like to publicly thank former Wealth Counsel Member, Alexis Martin Neely because I think she has been misunderstood by many other lawyers within our community.

She’s given me so much this past year and I want to pay that forward by expressing my review of her practice offerings.

I myself joined her Personal Family Lawyer Program at one of the worst times of my life – right after the sudden, unexpected death of my father.

Knowing of my personal loss and struggles with it, Alexis truly cared about me. She was always sensitive and supportive in our interactions, and also offered me a living example of how to make the practice of law more human, way more fun and therefore a lot more meaningful.

Alexis taught me to think outside the box and energized and inspired me. She has been a wonderful role model for me, and I can attest to the fact that she really does practice what she preaches.

What I have also appreciated a TON about the PFL program is it’s plug-and-play nature. That was perfect for me who was starting out as a true solo after more than a decade in the big -firm world. IMHO, it’s optimal for people who either want to re energize their existing practice, or for lawyers who are new to the estate planning field and want a blueprint to structure their practice the right way from the beginning.

All of the systems I received as a Personal Family Lawyer, from done-for-you marketing, to client engagement, to client retention to office management, were simply outstanding, I mean REALLY fantastic and value-adding stuff for my office.

Here is the bottom line from my experience as a PFL: Alexis Martin Neely and her PFL program deliver on all of her promises and then some. She is the real deal. And she really does care.

In fact, Alexis has actually encouraged me to follow my heart and live my passion…even though that meant leaving the law and her program in the process.

If your passion is being an estate planning attorney, Alexis’ PFL program will transform your practice (and therefore your life), and I can recommend it enthusiastically. Thank you all again so much, WC community, for all the support you’ve given me over the past years! It’s meant more than I can really say.

My very best wishes to all of you,
Kimberley.

About the Law Business Revolution

The Law Business Revolution is a legal marketing and training organization focused on helping attorneys attract quality clients, start and manage productive law firms, systematize their businesses and ultimately help lawyers attain more time and greater resources than ever before.

Training through the Law Business Revolution includes (but is not limited to), private and group coaching led by professionals that surpassed the 7-figure mark in their own firms and businesses, client engagement strategies, client attraction strategies, educational, relationship-based marketing techniques designed to get results, lead generation training, campaigns for consumers, referrals and prospects and systematizing a firm to run on autopilot.

Licensed attorneys are welcome to download over $22,500 of free practice building resources courtesy of the Law Business Revolution at http://www.lawbusinessrevolution.com .

Welcome to all of our new subscribers who attended my Kids Protection Planning training session last week.

It was incredibly gratifying to train hundreds of you who want to serve parents!

In today’s Law Business Secrets newsletter, I want to address an issue today that I hear frequently and never more frequently than now when so many people are experiencing financial fear.

Q:  How did you grow your law firm into a million dollar business in such a short time? I don’t have the budget to do more marketing or invest in coaching. How did you do it?

Let me address this first by saying this:

I didn’t have any financial resources other than the income I generated from my law firm. At least not at first. (More on that in a minute).

My husband was a stay at home dad, meaning no income from him.  My family was not wealthy, meaning no investment from them.

No savings to speak of and all the expenses that come with two little children.

It was all me.

The first 12-18 months, I scraped together all the money I needed with no outside help.

But, I was stalled.

All of the revenue coming in was being used to support the current overhead needs and there was none left over to invest in coaching, consulting or most importantly marketing.

I had just become aware of the idea that if I wanted to grow a business that wouldn’t depend on me constantly and that I could sell one day or retire from I had to start thinking of my business differently.

If I continued to think of myself as a sole practitioner, the business would always depend on me.

I had to start thinking of my business as a company. Only then would it have the possibility of being able to exist without my daily input (or my minute by minute input).

So, I began to ask myself what Mark Cuban would do, what Ray Kroc would do, what Michael Gerber would do.  What would the business owner version of myself do?

And, I started making decisions from that place.  From the place I wanted to be, not where I was.

I decided to grow my business so I could take vacations, spend more time with my children, and sell my firm and retire one day.

I began to understand that my business would only grow if I invested in it for growth.  To do that, would mean investing more money than I had coming in every month.

That was scary!  Terrifying in fact.  Financial fear was always my biggest fear.

And yet, as soon as I stepped into this bigger vision and started making decisions from where I wanted to be instead of where I was, the resources showed up.

I wrote a financial business plan that showed if I invested money in my marketing, I’d get more clients.

I took that financial business plan to my banker and he gave me a line of credit.

I was actually embarrassed to apply for the financing.  It felt as if I had failed in some weird way.  And, I only asked for $50,000.

Looking back, I now know that I should have asked for at least $100,000.

But, I was embarrassed.

But, you know what? That was keeping me small.  I now see that as a huge turning point in my business.

Which of your successful clients built a business without investing?

None of them!

It takes investment.  Investment of time, money, and your emotional resources.

But, what is a better investment than you?

Nothing.

Your business is your best investment. Especially now.

So, how did I grow my business so quickly?

I invested in it.  I invested a lot of money.  I invested a lot of time.

I busted my butt.

And it all paid off.  In 2006, my business hit a million dollars of revenue.

In 2007, I did it again.  But, that year, the business only needed me in the office 2 days/week.

Was it scary? Yes.  Was it worth it?  Yes, it was.

Can you do it?  You sure can.

What does it take? You making a decision that you want something bigger.

That’s it.

Everything else will show up.

PS – Join me on January 15 for a teleconference that will give you all the details about my elite Personal Family Lawyer program and how you can be 1 of only 15 lawyers to get my help on growing your business.

Register here

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About the Law Business Revolution

The Law Business Revolution is a law firm marketing and training organization focused on helping attorneys attract quality clients, start and grow productive law firms, systematize their businesses and ultimately help lawyers attain more time and greater resources than ever before.

Training through the Law Business Revolution includes (but is not limited to), private and group coaching led by professionals that surpassed the 7-figure mark in their own firms and businesses, client engagement strategies, client attraction strategies, educational, relationship-based marketing techniques designed to get results, lead generation training, campaigns for consumers, referrals and prospects and systematizing a firm to run on autopilot.

Licensed attorneys are welcome to download over $22,500 of free practice building resources courtesy of the Law Business Revolution at http://www.lawbusinessrevolution.com .