What is Your Power Button?

Ed Bott wrote a post titled Get to Know Your Power Button.  The post talks about how to configure your PC’s power button.  What I liked the most was Ed’s title.  So what is your power button?  Is it work?  Passion?  Money?  Family?

An Idea for BIG Client Problems

There is no reason a law firm (or other professional services business) can't adopt this idea for a great client with a big problem:

A group of Lodge members gathers at some predetermined time and place, usually with computers in tow. After everyone gets set up, the group comes up with a basic game idea. This process is usually limited to a fixed amount of time. The group then sets out to create said game as fast as possible. This can involve code, sound, art, map design, game design, even limited tools development, depending on the makeup of the participants. It requires a fair amount of expertise on the part of each individual, a lot of caffeine, and a huge effort towards teamwork, coordination, and communication.

After a predetermined amount of time has passed (8 hours, 24 hours, even 48 hours) and a large amount of Chinese food has been consumed, game production finally comes to a stop and the group steps back to see what it is they've created -- or failed to create, in some cases.

Think about how amazing it would be to tell your client, “We are going to bring the entire resources of this firm to bear upon your issue for one day.”  Since lawyers are in Saturdays a lot anyway, how about setting aside one Saturday per month for this kind of focused problem-solving?  I’ll bet your client would appreciate it — and be willing to pay you extra as well.

Carnival of the Leftovers

Since my Idea Garage Sale, I’ve accumulated a bunch more stuff I’d like to get rid of.  In a nod to my ReThinking friends, I’m hosting my first (and maybe only) Carnival of the Leftovers.  In no particular order, here are the things on my mind and in my ‘to blog’ folder:

As I work on my site’s redesign, I need to keep in mind this info from A Day in the Life of a Persuasion Architect:

If you are truly focused on persuading folks on your site put the time and effort you are tempted to put into navigation and focus it on the 'active window'. Navigation is important, just not as important as everyone seems to think. The shortest distance between your customers and conversion is not the navigation, it's the embedded links in the active window.

The Anonymous Lawyer’s Firm Marketing Message:

We can charge what we charge because we're better than the guys in the yellow pages. But that means we're not generalists. We're specialists. We have people who spend every day of their lives executing the same deal, over and over again, for different companies. He's the guy you want executing that deal, because he will do a better job than virtually anyone else on the planet. But you don't really want him telling you how to optimize the way you put your sprockets together on the assembly line, because that's not where his expertise is. And we as a firm don't want him spending time learning all about your sprockets, because that's not where the best use of his hours is. We want him to do your deal, and then do six more deals this quarter, make 7 happy customers instead of just one, and have people lining up to get us to help them do that same deal too. 

If they’d have had a Masters in Business Imagination when I was deciding on graduate school, I wouldn’t be a lawyer today. 

Granting importance to others is a matter of paramount importance to your own future happiness.

Do you love your customers or who you want your customers to be?

Sean D’Souza suggests to niche your niche:

Your brain refuses to focus when it doesn't have specifics.  So when you say: You help small business owners, you aim at all kinds of business owners. All kinds of business owners have all kinds of problems.  But let's for a moment suspend the thought that you want 'everyone' as your target audience. Let's, just for an instant, believe you want to target business owners who've been in business for five years or more.

Punishing Children with Praise?

Recently, I found myself at a crafts activity sponsored by a local library in which children were invited to create snowflakes out of pipe cleaners and beads.  A boy of about four or five sitting near me showed his mother what he had done, and immediately she gushed about how wonderful it was.  Then, since I was the only other adult at the table, he held his snowflake out so I, too, could see it clearly.  Instead of offering an evaluation, I asked him whether he liked it.  "Not so much," he admitted.  I asked why, and he began to explain, his tone suggesting genuine interest in figuring out other possible ways he might have used the materials.  This is exactly the sort of elaboration and reflection that are stifled when we slather our kids with praise.  They tend to stop thinking and talking about what they've done as soon as we pass judgment on it.

Counter-Branding How To:

1. List the attributes of the master brand. In the case of 7-Up, the master brand was "Cola: sweet, rich, brown." Everything else was either a fruit flavor or root beer and all of those put together were relatively insignificant. "Cola" overwhelming dominated the mental category "soft drinks."
2. Create a brand with precisely the opposite attributes. To accomplish this, 7-Up lost their lemon-lime description and became "The Uncola: tart, crisp, clear."
3. Without using the brand name of your competitor, refer to yourself as the direct opposite of the master brand. 7-Up didn't become UnCoke or UnPepsi as that would have been illegal, a violation of the Lanham Act. But when you're up against an overwhelming competitor, you don't need to name them. Everyone knows who they are.

Let’s Hear David Allen Answer this One: 

If you only have X amount of time, is it better to perform at an average or below-average level across the board or be real good at a few things while sucking at the rest (which, by the way, has the parallel discomfort of inevitably having some people ticked off at you)? Which would you choose?

Maybe, He’d Suggest a Checklist.

Or He’d Park those Tasks on a Downhill Slope.

Is this why legal jobs get outsourced to India?

“America does well in industries that advance quickly, in which research and development -- and not manual labor -- are the key factors of success. In this way, cotton is a bit like software and jet engines -- constantly innovating. The United States is losing out to developing countries in a different set of industries: the ones that don't change that quickly and succeed best with plenty of low-wage workers.”

Instead of billing 2400 hours per year because your firm requires it, do it because it makes you feel good.

But you may get canned anyway.

When communication is effective and cheap, two things happen.  One is that the top doesn't need to have the middle to be able to talk to each other.  the second is that talented people can co-operate and find each other more easily.  So dumb retards that you would have had to put up with before are now people that you can bypass and go and talk to someone interesting instead.   

I wish I’d known this before joining that blog network:

I think anyone who tries to make money DIRECTLY through blogging is statistically JUST BEGGING to have his ass kicked by the market. A few bright sparks may get away with it ocasionally, just like a pretty waitress in Los Angeles occasionally gets discovered in a restaurant and is starring in a movie a year later. Nice when it happens, certainly, but I wouldn't place a bet on horse with those odds.

"Indirectly", however, is another story...

Stop bragging about your firm, brag about your clients:

Your users don't care about how fabulous you are. How fast your product is. How many awards you've won. If we want to inspire our users, we have to care about how fabulous they are. How fast they are. How many awards they might win as a result of using our products or services.

That's what sociologists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists tell us. It's what biologists and anthropologists tell us. Self-interest is hard-wired into the brain. That doesn't mean people aren't capable of thinking of others...but let's face it--when your user makes a list of the people he cares most about, you're not in the top ten.

And then reward them at unexpected times:

Intermittent, unexpected treats are more powerful than regularly scheduled expected treats.

Can we steal this for the LexThink instruction guide?

I hope you aren’t overwhelmed or frightened by any of the ideas. You can’t address all of them right away, some ideas will be thrown out, and some will be altered and enhanced. However, I hope that you never discard an idea because you want to play it safe. You haven’t accomplished your current success by playing it safe. Espousing the methods that got you to where you are, i.e. being bold, new, fresh, exciting and remarkable will help you grow even more. Safe is actually risky because safe is invisible, easy to catch, easy to beat and the path failure. In a competitive market, safe is death. Take some bold moves. Do things others won’t. Champion a cause, help as many people as you can in your pursuit of that cause, invite others to participate and your bottom line will take care of itself.

Or this?

But every bit of knowledge we acquire, whether from the butt-crack idiot savant who maintains the computer network or the woman who sorts the mail in the mail-room is something that can add immediate perspective or be something we can draw on later as part of an overall tack. And by opening yourself up to these kinds of non-traditional information, you have a chance to find out something about yourself and the intellectual or emotional baggage you limit yourself with, that is, the Third Base skill set.

Even if the phone isn’t ringing, you still have five appointments this week.

Speaking of Fives, here are five rules of creativity, things to do if you’ve only got five minutes and implementing the daily five minutes.

Here’s a Personal Lie Remembering Service, and some tips for remembering (and recapturing) lost clients.

Larry Bodine suggests we Market as Hospitals Do.

And ‘Stan Stankowski’ has some great rules for new associates.  Here are just a few:

4) Associates who are in their seventh and eighth years are not your friends.  They are not anyone's friend. They are mean and devious. This is a result of being too expensive and old to lateral and a constant fear that they will not make partner, coupled with the pressure of a wife and three kids and a mortgage. It isn't their fault. Really.

8) It is impossible to overestimate the value that a wide variety of free beverages brings to your firm. Do not work at a place that makes you buy them.

10) You know that really keen causal dress policy? The one that was implemented because our "clients dress that way, and we want them to feel comfortable"? Here is a clue. For the first few years, your client is the partner you work for; if he or she wears a suit every day, do you really think it is wise to wear jeans on Friday?

Dealing with the Stress of Infinite Opportunity.

Here’s why you can overbill those corporate clients.  They are used to it because they do it to themselves:

There are many studies about the dismal rate of success for projects.  One that I use a lot comes from the Standish Group which tracks information technology projects.  The findings are that 23% of the projects were outright failures, 49% were over budget or didn’t meet the deliverables and 28% were deemed successes.  94% of all projects are restarted and average $2.22 spent for every dollar budgeted.

But don’t forget to charge the clients for those copies:

When I asked him why the hotel charges a per-minute rate for using the business center, he said his hands were tied: it was corporate policy. What a terrific way to disappoint one's best customers. How could smart and well-paid executives possibly think that $.69 per-minute charges to use a PC ($1.99 per minute to use a printer) would do anything but create a poor word-of-mouth experience? Is this level of nickel-and-diming worth the ire of countless customers?

Want more female customers?

Moral of the story: The women’s market is an investment.  If you want to more effectively sell to them, and get them to invest in your business in return, you have to be in it for the long haul and serve their information-gathering, buying ways.  By developing into a comprehensive and relevant local information source and coming up with creative ways to reflect the people in and around your store/brand (as per those images and testimonials you are now displaying), you'll stand out in a woman's relationship-driven mind.

Don’t be Debbie Downer, Esq.

Well, that’s it for now.  I may host another edition of the Carnival next month.  Thanks for reading.

Waiting in Line

Howard Mann (at Dig Tank) writes about Waiting in Line and asks:

How much effort does it really take to focus on that most important moment when your customers are about to pay you? Why would anything else come first?

Are there any times when your customers are waiting in line to use your product or service? If there is, the most important big idea/innovation for you to execute this year would be to fix it.

Generalissimo Francisco Franco is Still Dead.

And so is Technorati.  Now, instead of piling on, I'm going to point you to a new service that keeps on getting better and better:  Talk Digger.  Put in your URL and it will run parallel searches in Bloglines, Blogpulse, Feedster, Technorati, IceRocket, BlogDigger, PubSub, MSN and Google.  Today, I just noticed the ability to preview a linking blog in the Talk Digger window.  Very Cool!

Deductible Business Expenses

Leah Maclean, writer of the wonderful Working Solo blog, asked me to contribute (along with several other writers) to her series on the importance of a healthy lifestyle to business success.  My contribution is here.  The other contributions are great, and I encourage you to read them all.

One thing that's kept me thinking was this line from my post:

Poorhealth and strained family relations are both "business expenses" I'm unwillingto pay.

I've been traveling a lot lately and it seems that everytime I return home -- if even from a three day trip -- my daughter's face has changed and she sounds different.  At least to me.  Because Grace is a growing two year old, I'm quite certain she may actually be changing "right before my eyes."  But I wonder, is this an experience that will continue to happen as she grows older?  Right now, travel is  both difficult and exciting -- because while I hate to miss a moment of her growing up, it is really cool to meet a different person when I return.

While I'm on the parenthood riff, here are some other random observations.  It used to be that kissing any hurt, no matter how big or small, made it all better.  Just this week, my daughter sadly says, "It still hurts, daddy" after I gave her the traditional healing kiss on her most recent boo-boo.  Are my miraculous healing powers gone forever?  And is this a sadder moment for me or her?

Every night, when my daughter sees her first star, she makes a wish.  When we ask her what she wishes for, she proudly (and loudly) proclaims, "CANDY!"  My wish is to have such simple wants and needs.  Think about how cool it would be to have a wish that could be satisfied so easily.   The children in Louisiana and Mississippi right now don't have the luxury of wishing for candy.   Please do what you can to help. 

Thanks for listening.  Go hug and kiss your children.    And pray for all of the children without a home.

BlawgThink 2005

LexThink's BlawgThink 2005.  November 11-12 in Chicago at Catalyst Ranch.  Two days of blawgging how-to, small group discussions and collaborative brainstorming.  More details to follow after the holiday, but if you are interested in an invitation, e-mail me here with the word "invite" in the subject line.

Now That's a BIG Ad!

And I thought the Law.com ad I used to have on this site was a big ad. Check this out.

Forgive the Design Mess

I'm playing around with my templates, so to spare you the constant changes, I've switched for a few days to one of Typepad's new designs.  I'll bring you back to a newer and better blog design next week.  I'm also going to be consolidating some of my RSS feeds, so forgive me if things are a bit out of whack. Thanks for your patience. 

The Cat Poking his Head Out of the Bag

LexThink Legal Blogging Summit.  November 2005.  Chicago.  More soon.

Blog Subscribers

I have just moved my e-mail subscription service from Bloglet to FeedBlitz.  If you subscribed before, you’ll get two e-mails, one from each service, for the next few days as I make sure FeedBlitz works well.  If everything goes as planned, I’ll discontinue the Bloglet service on Monday.  Thanks.

Did Skype just die tonight?

Google Talk.  Integrated with Gmail address book.  Free voice calls to other Google Talk users.  Archived and searchable chats.  Can’t tell if it’s any better than Skype (which I love, by the way), but it looks pretty close.

WiFi Waiting Rooms, Continued

I received a comment from Jay Ruane to my post WiFi While Your Customers Wait.  I liked it so much, I thought I’d share:

We have been promoting the wifi access for a year. Better than giving away television to watch, develop a powerpoint presentation that can play on a loop in your waiting area and allow that to serve as an additional way for people to learn about your services, silently "sell" you and then use those same language in your client meeting, to reinforce the message.

Take a look at Jay’s Firm Web Site.  Not only does he promote his office’s available WiFi, but the site uses a blog to post updates.  Well done!

Idea x Execution = Value

Derek Sivers does some “entrepreneurial” math:

AWFUL IDEA = -1
WEAK IDEA = 1
SO-SO IDEA = 5
GOOD IDEA = 10
GREAT IDEA = 15
BRILLIANT IDEA = 20

NO EXECUTION = $1
WEAK EXECUTION = $1000
SO-SO- EXECUTION = $10,000
GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000
GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000
BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000

To make a business, you need to multiply the two.

Marketing 101 - There are Five Benefits, Pick One

I’ve been meaning to link to a post by Skip Lineberg titled The Five Benefits.  In it, Skip recalls an important lesson he learned from a PR consultant:

… it does not matter what the product is or what industry one inhabits, you have to present your case so that you tell your audience within the first ten seconds of your message which one of the five possible benefits you are offering.  There are five, period. F-I-V-E.

Are you ready for them?  Here goes:

1. Make me wealthy
2. Improve my appearance
3. Help me to be more well-liked by my family or friends
4. Make me live longer
5. Get me laid more often

Money, looks, popularity, health and sex. That's it.

So, what benefits do lawyers offer?

Comments in Ads?

I love Autoblog, and it is one of my first reads every day.  One thing Autoblog does is serve up a lot of ads, including one at the top of the page.  Today I noticed a “Comment on this Advertiser” link directly under the Suzuki ad.  Sure enough, clicking on the link brought me to a comments page asking me to “Please add [my] comments to inform others and help this advertiser improve their offering.”  

Way cool!   A great way for an advertiser (Suzuki) to get blog-like feedback without actually doing a blog itself.

Ban Laptops for Better Conferences?

I wrote about how I feel too much technology use by attendees can harm the conference experience in my Blogher Brain Dump. Now, D. Keith Robinson at To-Done gives another reason to leave laptop at home:

Over the last year or so, when I attend conferences (or meetings, or anything I want to make sure I remember something) I leave my laptop either in it’s bag during sessions, or I don’t bring it at all. This has worked out great, and just how I thought it would. I get much more out of sessions (etc.) when I’m taking notes by hand.

I think the main reason is that when I’ve got my laptop open, I’ve also opened a whole world of distraction. When you’ve only got a pad of paper and a pen or pencil, you can better concentrate on the world around you. I’ve also found that my notebook is a great place to capture ideas. Sometimes I get really great ideas when I’m at a conference. What I’ll do is open my notebook so that I’ve got two pages showing. On the right, I’ll take notes. On the left, I’ll jot down any ideas that come to mind.

As much as I love my Tablet PC, I’m doing most of my thinking these days in a Miquelrious Notebook (warning, Flash intensive site).  I feel more connected with my thinking when I’m using pen and paper.  I take my notebook with me everywhere I go and I jot down anything interesting that springs into my head.  As much of a geek as I can be, I really of like the randomness of what’s in my notebook when I look though its pages.  I consistently draw connections between new ideas and old in ways I don’t think I’d be able to using a pc– or web-based note taking system.  Just knowing I can’t search my notebook by tag, topic, category, or word is oddly comforting.

Next time you are going to a conference, leave the laptop behind.  Grab a nice journal and bring a good pen.  You may just be surprised how much the analog experience suits you.

WiFi While Your Customers Wait

Christopher Carfi pointed me to a great article from Noel Franus titled Building the Better Guest Experience.  Noel suggests four small things that could make a big difference for your customers:

• Provide a comfortable space. A couch or coffee table is the first step you can take in shifting the mood from annoyed to relaxed. (Relaxed customers usually shell out more money than annoyed ones.) Investment: $2,000 (furniture).
• Do you have any coffee? A little java goes a long way toward making customers feel like valued guests. Get a decent coffeemaker and good beans. Or outsource the opportunity to a local brandofcoffeebucks that people know and enjoy. Investment: $1,000 per year (coffeemaker and supply).
• Dish up the fishwrap. For less than a buck a day, you can give them something to read or watch while they pass the time. Newspapers and magazines can keep those rambunctious customers under control. Investment: $100 per year (daily news and magazines).
• Nothing but net. Most people are missing out on work while they're in the store. Give them wi-fi, give them access to information, give them back their productivity, give them back their time. Investment: $700 per year (wireless router and high-speed Internet).

Noel continues:

If you're responsible for your customers' happiness, chances are you have an opportunity to create your own best-imaginable, rich experiences that need not cost an arm and a leg.  Whatever you do, don't just sit there with limited-profit space, focused on today's numbers rather than tomorrow's viability. Providing memorable moments will help your brand become one that customers truly appreciate. With an investment this tiny, there's so little to lose.

I think Noel is right on.  How many doctor’s offices (and lawyers offices and accountants offices …) have you been stuck in for longer than you expected to be?   If you knew there was WiFi (or at least a desk to work on) the wait wouldn’t have been so memorable. 

Look at the Other Side of the Coin.

Zane Safrit, rememberingPeter Jennings:

I'm not writing an eulogy. I'm writing because of one thing he said aboutcovering the news. He compared it to looking at a coin. He always wanted to lookat the other side.

This may be the single bestexplanation of true intellectual curiosity I’ve heard.

Screen Real Estate for Sale.

Seethat huge freakin’ ad next to this post?  By Monday, it will be gone.Why?  Effective Monday, I’m no longer a member of the Law.com network.Long story short, my blog is “going in a different direction” than thenetwork (their words, not mine).  Like all but one Apprenticecontestant each season, I was fired. 

But this isn’t a rant against Law.com.  Instead, Iwant to thank them for their help in bringing my blog to more readers,and I want to offer some suggestions that I think will make the networkbetter (even in my absence).  I’d also like to solicit your feedback inhopes of helping all of the crew at Law.com grow the network andimprove upon it.

• First things first:  Lisa Stone is fantastic.  She “gets” blogging (as demonstrated by her phenomenal success with Blogher) and continues to do an excellent job with the Inside Opinions feature she writes twice a week.   
• Second, I’ve been privileged to get to know myfellow Law.com bloggers.  All of them are great bloggers and each oftheir blogs will continue to have a place in my aggregator.  I’ve evenhad the good fortune to meet several of them in person and I wish themthe best in the future.
• Third, Law.com deserves a tremendous amount ofrespect for being the first mainstream legal media outlet to recognizethe power of blogging and try to harness it.  (As an aside, I had theprivilege of meeting the American Lawyer Media CEO William Pollack atthe inaugural LexThink event and he struck me as a technologicallysavvy and ahead-of-the-curve chief exec.  ALM is in good hands.)
• Fourth, I want to apologize to everyone at Law.comif you ever thought my comments and criticisms (including the frequentjabs at the size of the honkin’ huge ad) were anything more than agenuine effort to improve the network of which I was a part (and adesire to reclaim some valuable screen real estate). 
• Fifth, if I’d known in what direction my blog wasgoing that diverged from Law.com’s intended path, I’d have made thechange.  If you wanted less LexThink, I’d have complied.  LessGrace?  Check.  More baseball?  Check.  If you didn’t want my blog toserve as a marketing vehicle for my projects, I’d have toned thatdown too.  (Though, isn’t that one of the purposes of blogs?)  If youwanted more hard-core law … well, I’d have to draw the line somewhere.That said, thanks for never telling me what to write, or how to writeit. 

Now that I’m out of the network, here are the thingsI’d do to improve it.  Law.com has heard some of these before, but toencourage debate among my readers and to get as much constructivefeedback as possible to Law.com, I’ll share them with you.

• I know this is beating a dead horse, but is a 300 x 600 pixel ad really necessary?  Perhaps on a blog like Monica Bay’s Common Scold,which has a tremendous amount of terrific extra stuff in the sidebars,a large ad is necessary to stand out, but when there is only one ad onthe whole site, is the huge size really non-negotiable?
• Now, go visit each of the law.com blogs and checkout the ad.  Reload the page (along with the ad). It seems that atleast 9/10 ad impressions are for American Lawyer Media properties —free advertising for ALM for which I don’t believe I was paid (Note, ifI’m wrong here, please correct me and I’ll print a retraction).If Law.com/ALM is having trouble selling ads to traditional advertisers(not hard to believe, given the relative newness of blogs) wouldn’t apartnership with a blog advertising service make more sense? (UPDATE:As I visit the sites now, the ALM ads have disappeared and all I seeare paying ads.  I would have really, really liked this to be the casefor the last six months).
• Help your bloggers help Law.com and ALM.  TheLaw.com bloggers are a really cool group of people.  I’ve met a bunch,and corresponded with the rest.  I can’t imagine a better group ofcutting-edge tech savvy lawyers to advise anyone on what blogging is,where it’s headed, and how lawyers can benefit.  The problem?  Ourbrains weren’t picked and our collective smarts underutilized.  Peopleare paying big bucks to have access to the kinds of talent ALMassembled in this network.  ALM had us for free (well, almost).  Thefirst thing I’d do to change this is institute a monthly conferencecall among the remaining Law.com bloggers to get their ideas forimproving the network (I’d even join in if they’d have me).  I’d alsoparade them around every ALM event where a blogger panel is appropriate— and identify them as part of the network.  Legal Tech NY and LA areobvious targets.  Blogs are hot.  ALM has a stable of amazingbloggers.  Show them off.  Use them. 
• When a Law.com blogger suggests another bloggerhe/she thinks should be part of the network, run (don’t walk) to signthat person up.
• Get into podcasting.  Now.  Bethe place for legal podcasters to host and syndicate their content.You’ve got the servers, give that space to lawyers doing podcasts.  Forfree.  Promote the podcasts in Lisa’s column and promote the best ofthe best on the Law.com front page.  Also, use podcasting technology tosupplement interviews in the print publications.
• Build content-similar blawg silos, and aggregate(and make searchable) the RSS feeds.  I’d love to have an aggregatedand searchable feed for all the IP blogs out there.  Same goes for themarketing blogs, and the trial tips blogs, and the ethics blogs, etc.Right now, the only common thread is that all the blogs are great, butthere are not many other common themes running through the network.However, now that I’m gone, that may be changing.
• Build a branded RSS reader, and make it dead simpleto use.  Lawyers don’t all get blogs, and those that do don’t allunderstand the power of RSS.  If you built them a super-easyBloglines-like RSS reader (or adopted an existing one) you’d control abunch of the content lawyers read and make it even easier for them toread your stuff.
• Dump the e-mail, embrace RSS.  Keep the e-maillists, but offer a feed for every one of your e-mail publications.Combined with the branded reader, you would have unbelievable contentto deliver to the desktops of your audience.
• Take blog content and repurpose it in regular columns in the ALM print publications.

And thanks for everything.

Oh, and if you still want to advertise all of thoseALM events and publications on my blog, come Monday, I’ll have somespace for sale.  ;-)