What Will Your Story Be?

It's a new month. It almost feels like March was so long ago.

The prevailing theme that keeps coming up in conversation with entrepreneurs is the story that we are writing — either literally or figuratively — about this time.

How will their team, business and clients come out on the other side of this? Will the story be interesting, exciting, or depressing? Will it be a story of underdogs overcoming adversity?

Let’s say they put the country in a state of emergency, and local businesses, local government organizations, and courthouses all shut down. Everyone has to work from home. All teams are now working remotely. Clients can’t come in to visit you, and there is great uncertainty about the future.

People aren’t spending money in the same way because they don’t have new money coming in.

That is what we’re dealing with.

The only bright side of all this is that the difficulty has cranked up for everyone.

Business owners and the business leaders that are able to embrace this period of adversity, align their organizations, and pivot in some ways that they may need to will come out stronger.

How we spend this time is going to dictate how our businesses will look on the other side of this.

We have hung in there for several weeks, and believed there was light at the end of the tunnel.

Then we come to find out we’re going to be quarantined for at least another month.

It’s like you’re nearly done running the marathon and they say, “All right, you’re about to get to the finish line — but you have 20 more miles to go.”

I notice a lot of business owners getting discouraged over the last few days because there’s this wave of them going through grief and then acceptance. These stages don’t always go sequentially. Sometimes they go in various orders.

In speaking to our organization, I can say that we need to keep our foot on the gas — because this time can be instrumental in getting better and coming out better.

Now is the time to improve your organization, your processes, your culture, and your relationships within your team and with your clients.

One of our Crisp clients reached out and let us know that they have always wished they had more bandwidth to improve internal workflows, processes, auditing, and all these different things — and now they suddenly have the time for it. They’re getting caught up on all these items and hitting their quarterly rocks early.

All these different things that are now taking place allow their business to get better. And as a result of this, when this all passes, they will come out a stronger organization with a competitive edge.

This is the time where there’s a clear separation within the marketplace.

You see market leaders who used to be market leaders, but coming out of this they will have new challengers. We will see a big shift. If companies are strategic, they will get further ahead.

In our morning huddle today, we talked about the difference between being number one and number two. It’s very rare that you ever remember second place.

The reality is this: if you want to do things at a very high level, this is the time to really focus on making your business great.

This is the time to optimize. This is the time to be creative.

Businesses are tested. You get to determine how great your leadership team is. You get to determine how great and committed your team members are.

You get to discover all these different things in periods of adversity that you don’t see the same way in periods of prosperity. It can be enlightening and provide you with opportunities to make things better.

We’ve noticed holes in our process that we wouldn’t have otherwise noticed. We’ve leveraged new technology. We’re very grateful for these things now because we’ve had a chance to slow down, look around, gain clarity, develop a great plan, and make adjustments.

The team rallied together and has been making it happen, and we’re tremendously grateful for that.

In terms of improving your organization, I hear a lot of resistance: We can’t do this. We can’t do that. It’s unrealistic and unreasonable.

In my experience, we have absolutely no idea what we are capable of.

We index to a certain point of what we have achieved previously or what our expectations would be.

We’re hearing from firms that even in a time like this — with all the barriers and limitations — they are finding ways to make these some of their most successful months in spite of it all, regardless of practice area.

What if this month was your most successful month in the history of your law firm?

If that were the case, would that change your perspective of what is possible and what is not? This is something that we’ve challenged our own team with. What would we need to happen in order for this to be the most successful month and the most successful April in the history of the company?

Sometimes when you talk this way, people look at you and say, “Well that’s delusional. That’s unreasonable. That’s unrealistic.”

It may very well be — but it’s not unattainable. It is 100% doable.

When you accomplish things that you previously did not believe were possible, when you gain new capabilities to stress your organization, to grow to a new level…not only do you gain confidence, but now you raise the bar even further.

So whatever adversity you are experiencing, if you overcome that — and when you do — not only have you built confidence, but you’ve operated at a higher level that becomes the new normal. Then you raise the bar and further raise the bar.

To give you an example, we launched a brand new podcast today. And not just any podcast — the best podcast in the legal industry.

We believed that the messaging can be very beneficial just for firms across the nation, and we wanted to get out in front of people sooner. So we launched our podcast. We weren’t going to launch this for several more weeks, but we expedited the timeline and we’re very excited to announce The Game Changing Attorney Podcast.

This is a show where we interview phenomenal guests, making a point to highlight the insights of market leaders. The first podcast is with John Morgan.

We also have upcoming episodes coming up with Chris Voss, the FBI’s number one hostage negotiator, Cy Wakeman, Hal Elrod, and countless others.

The conversations we’ve been having over the last several weeks have been just absolutely transformational, and we can’t wait to share those insights.

If you’re interested in listening to the podcast, you can subscribe on iTunes or Spotify or you can also go to gamechangingattorney.com. I’d love your feedback on it whenever you get a chance to check it out.

But I will leave you with this:

This is a new month, and we’re all constantly writing our life story and our business story.

Imagine the amazing story that you can tell — not only when your business weathers the storm, but when you come out stronger on the other end.

It not only builds great confidence, but it also unites everybody.

Who knows what could be possible if you can succeed in spite of all these challenges and barriers?

I wish you all nothing but success and look forward to next time.

I’d love to hear about the story YOU are choosing to tell during this time. Shoot me a text at 404-531-7691.