One of the things that my clients have to working is learning to say “no” and to really focus on what will bring them the best return on investment for their time and dollars, both of which are extremely limited for most professionals. C.J. Hayden has just published an excellent article on this topic that I highly recommend. You can find it at http://www.getclientsnow.com/just-say-no.htm.
Posts Tagged ‘personal development’
Just Say “No”
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010“Effective Strategies to Improve Your Law Firm’s Bottom Line” Seminar a Success
Thursday, February 4th, 2010I emcee’d the “Effective Strategies to Improve Your Law Firm’s Bottom Line” seminar at Automation Alley on January 28, 2010. The seminar was a resounding success, with great attendance, great speakers and a good location.
Although the seminar focused on attorneys, most of the content could just as easily apply to CPA’s, financial advisors, coaches and consultants. I highly recommend checking out the individual speakers and presentations. I’ve included links below for your convenience.
Speakers and EmCee for "Effective Strategies to Improve Your Firm's Bottom Line" Seminar
The speakers were (from left to right) David Benjamin, Lori Williams, Jason Ryan and Timothy Flynn.
Lori Williams, of Your Legal Resource, spoke on creating effective referral partners and strategic partners for your practice. Jason Ryan, of Vision Fuel Media, spoke on how to improve your firm’s website so that it gets you more business. David Benjamin spoke on how to use social media. You will find his presentation about 2/3 of the way down the page on his website, entitled “My presentation at Automation Alley: 5 Social Media Tools your Law Firm Can’t Ignore.“ Timothy Flynn, of Clarkson Legal, presented a lawyer’s perspective on electronic marketing and social media for the law firm. You can find these presentations on Ustream as well.
Check it out. It’s worth the time.
Easy One Page Business Plan
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010Here’s a quick and easy one page business plan format that you can use to set or update your company direction, focus and goals for 2010. This is a great plan for small companies who don’t typically have time or money to do detailed planning. It also works well for individual career planning.
Mission:
What is your purpose? Why are you in business? Why do you do what you do? 2 – 3 Sentences
Vision:
How does your purpose translate into concrete terms? Paint a picture. 2 – 3 Sentences.
Objectives:
What by when? What do you need to do this year to move your vision forward?
Strategies:
What overall approaches will you take to reach your objectives this year?
Plans:
The actual steps that you will take to reach your objectives. Note that these may often be project that require plans in and of themselves.
Go ahead, schedule an hour and see what you come up with. Keep refining your business plan until it meets your needs. Then prepare to update it quarterly. Business plans are useless unless they are looked at and measured.
Post what you come up with, and see what others have done. If you get stuck, call me. I am offering a free coaching session to everyone for January.
Next week we’ll talk about how to measure performance against your plans.
Are You Ready for 2010?
Monday, January 4th, 2010Have you reviewed and completed 2009 yet? Or have you just let the year end without checking in on how you’ve done? Here are some great questions to ask yourself about 2009:
1. What did you accomplish in 2009?
2. What did you learn in 2009?
3. What is finished?
4. What is left to be done?
5. What will you take with you into 2010?
Once you complete this review, you will be in great shape to start 2010. You can think about what you want to do and create some solid goals and plans for achieving them.
Next week, we’ll talk about business planning for 2010. Once you review 2009, be thinking about where you want to be at the end of 2010.
Happy New Year!!
Time Management 101
Thursday, November 5th, 2009Here’s a good starting point on time management:
1) Know what you’re goals are. It’s very difficult to prioritize your time when you don’t know what you want.
2) Make a list of everything you want to get done. This is your master to-do list
3) On a daily basis, identify 4 – 6 things that you can do either in the morning or the night before to move you towards your goals. Do or schedule those things first, before doing anything else in your day. Don’t try and do more than 6 things in a day. That will just set you up for failure and frustration. We all have a limited amount of time. The key is to be as effective as you can with the time you do have.
4) Review your master list on a regular basis (weekly or monthly). Delegate anything you can to others and dump tasks you don’t really need to do. Add any new tasks that came up during the week or month.
5) Learn to say no to things that won’t move you ahead in your goals.
Commitments – An exercise
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009Here’s a good exercise to help you focus on aligning your life with your goals and aspirations.
- List your top 5 commitments in life. An example would be 1 – self-care, 2 – spouse, 3 – work, 4 – family, 5 – friends.
- Now track where you spend your time for a full week?
- Does your time reflect your commitments? If someone else looked at how you spend your time, what would they say you were committed to?
For most of us it won’t. For example when I look at actual time spent over the last week, it would look like I was committed to eating lots of carbohydrates, or being exhausted and fussy.
Now here’s the big step – 4. What actions will you take on in the next week to align your life with your commitments?
Respond here and let us know.
I won’t be eating bread for the next week. Pretty cool that it’s Passover anyway.