Face Time, or, Working That Room!

Networking events were not part of my life when I was employed in Big Law – or at least I didn’t perceive what I was doing to be “networking.”  I rubbed shoulders with other paralegals and legal support professionals at MCLEs and other seminars, and of course met people in other industries at MeetUps and other gatherings.  I made friends where I could, noted interesting information I came across, but didn’t consider such events essential for my livelihood.
 

Now that I’m a business owner, events where I can meet fellow entrepreneurs and other legal professionals have become hugely important.  I seek out such gatherings wherever I can, and I make it a priority to show up.  Of course my direct mail, email and internet marketing are all worthwhile, but there’s something irreplaceable about meeting someone face to face.  I remember the people I meet, and what I’ve learned about what they do and what they need.  And I hope they remember me!
 

I attend county Bar Association events, paralegal association meetings, e-discovery seminars, as well as local business networking events whenever I can.  I still try to make friends.  I still note interesting information I come across.  If I meet someone who could benefit from my contract paralegal services someday, of course I make a special effort to learn about her firm and practice.  However, I find that people in other industries are great connections to make as well.  I never know when I might have a need for the expertise of someone I meet outside the legal profession, or whether I will meet someone I can refer to them.

Last week I attended an event hosted by the Napa Chamber of Commerce at the beautiful Artesa Winery.  It was a gorgeous setting and a beautiful mild summer evening.  I met interesting people in the wine industry, video and internet marketing fields, direct mail and network marketing areas, and yes, the legal industry too.  The wines and the food items from local restaurants were excellent, and it all made for a lovely and beneficial evening.
 

Yes, I still experience some initial reticence to striking up conversations with strangers, but once I get going I do love to chat with people I meet, learn about how they’re operating their businesses, and compare notes on marketing strategies and the economy, etc.  I try to focus on making friends rather than doing a hard-sell about my services, and I try to follow up with emails to everyone I meet that I want to stay in touch with.
 

Will I get business directly from such networking events?  I certainly hope so, but it isn’t solely about that.  Rather, it’s about making connections in my local community, establishing friendships with people I can help and who can perhaps help me one day.  It’s about Whuffie.
 

For another take on networking events, I highly recommend these:  Chere Estrin’s wonderful post, You Call This Networking?? – boy, can I relate to this anxiety!  Also, an inspiring post from Women Grow Business called,  Want to Grow Your Business? Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone. 
 

So what about you – do you network?  Feel free to share your stories in the comments!

Building My Business or Spinning My Wheels?

When I first started my own business, I floundered trying to figure out how to be productive.  After all, I had spent much of my work life having my activities dictated by supervisors.  Obviously, one of the appeals of entrepreneurship is that I do in fact now set my own schedule and determine my own work activities!  But instead of being happy about that, I was frustrated at all the distractions hurtling my way that I wasn’t managing well, and anxious that I wasn’t getting enough done, or wasn’t getting the right things done.

After all, there are many things I need to fit into my schedule in order to keep my business running, and part of my learning curve as a new entrepreneur has been figuring out what those things are.  I devised ever longer lists of activities I hoped would grow my business.  Yet, even with to do lists, I still wasn’t content with my progress, and felt that important tasks were slipping through the cracks due to distractions, or poor time management, or perhaps just through poor prioritization.  Or perhaps because I just didn’t know what the heck I was doing!

Mostly I felt I was spinning my wheels.
 

Finally the messages of the business books and blogs I was reading sunk in, and I stepped back and thought about strategy.  I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating.  Mitch Joel talks about tactics - in my case my to-do list - being useless without a strategy.  I needed to ask myself why I would do any of the tasks on my to-do list, and which piece of my overall strategy each item supported.  So I sat down and thought about my business strategy, and prioritized broad business goals.  Then I listed categories of tasks under each goal, and I made sure that every task I dreamed up to do fit somewhere into that strategy and supported at least one of those goals.
 

Even that wasn’t enough.  It doesn’t do to merely write up a strategy; I must implement it.  So I have devised a daily schedule for myself.  I have even set up reminders.  And I am trying to stick to my schedule.  I may make daily decisions about flexing parts of the schedule here or there depending on my client commitments or appointments, but I am finding it tremendously useful to have thought through a plan for my day which is based upon my business strategy, rather than the whim du jour.  Here’s how it works.
 

Obviously work for my clients takes priority, and having lots of client work is the point of the whole exercise.  So when I have client work to do, I devote large chunks of time to it, and fit other tasks in as I may.  That said, these are the tasks I make sure I work into my schedule.

Social Media

 

I set aside some time each day for LinkedIn, Twitter and my RSS feed.  I check in on LinkedIn, see if there are any group discussions I want to contribute to.  I skim through my various Twitter feeds, click on interesting links, and retweet things I find useful.  I skim through the blogs in my RSS feed, and comment on or tweet blogs posts, as seems appropriate.  The business strategy here is three-fold.  First, it’s educational for me; it helps me keep abreast of the trends in my industry.  Next, I am building on-line relationships with people in my field from whom I can learn and whom I can perhaps assist.  And finally, I am developing my “brand” as a skilled paralegal who is an expert in her field.  However, I could spend all day on these things, so I set a time limit to it – I try to keep it to an hour (90 non-consecutive minutes max).
 

Writing

 

I set aside time for writing projects.  I am always working on articles related to the legal industry and/or paralegal work.  I make them available for download on my website, and I plan to pursue publication avenues for some of them in the future.  The business strategy behind this is twofold:  I want to continue to learn and keep my skills sharp, and the research required by writing articles accomplishes this.  And second, writing articles helps me in that above-mentioned “brand development.”

Marketing

 

Do you remember that line from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, “Always Be Closing”?  The business strategy here is “Always Be Marketing.”  I can’t afford to take a break from this.  I need to find ways to reach new markets, and to stay on the radar of potential clients.  I always have a few marketing projects going, whether it’s tweaking my website, developing new marketing materials, executing a direct mail campaign, building my marketing database, in person networking with former colleagues or potential clients, or studying marketing books.  I need to be relentless in my marketing efforts in order to keep business coming in the door.

The Rest of It

 

Recently I have begun scheduling regular time for writing posts for my two blogs, because I’ve realized that was the only way I would fit it in.  It is my hope that this will help me post a bit more consistently in the future.  I also set aside time most days for a little work-out, and this happens whether I have client work or not.  No one is going to keep me healthy but me!
 

Add in errands, meal preparation, and reading my various business books and magazines, plus some cooking magazines and the occasional novel (this usually happens in the evenings when my brain is too weary to “work” any more), and my days are very full!  That’s a good thing!
 

But the best thing of all is that when I regularly review my strategy for growing my business and the activities needed to support that strategy, and then stick to a schedule for chipping away at these activities, I accomplish more, and I hope the things I accomplish are actually pushing my business strategy forward! 

 

What are your time management strategies?  Feel free to share them in the comments.

Blog Current: Wading Through an Endless Flow of Ideas

Why do I subscribe to blogs and news feeds?  Because subscribing is such a huge time saver, as shown in this cool little video!
 
But the prior question would be why do I read blogs at all?  Because I want to keep abreast of law practice trends.  Because I never owned a business before, and I barely know what I’m doing.  Because some days I’m scared to death!  Oh, and because it’s fun!
 
The blogs in my RSS reader fluctuate.  Being self-employed, time management is something I constantly wrestle with.  Mindful that I need to spend time on the most important things, I regularly review my subscriptions and remove blogs that I’m either – let’s face it, just not reading – or else not benefiting from any more.  But what benefits me?

Those benefits fluctuate too, as I move through different phases of my entrepreneurial pursuits, but generally, my blog subscriptions fall into three categories: law and paralegal blogs; marketing and business blogs; and what I think of as “entrepreneurial inspiration” blogs.  (There are also food/wine blogs, but that’s a topic for Sonoma Sip.)  

Here are just a few of the blogs in each category that I read regularly.
 
Legal Profession
 
LTN Law Technology News – LTN is a news feed of articles from a variety of sources focused on technology in law practice.  As technological advances have always been of great interest, but also of great importance to me as a paralegal, I find this feed extremely useful.  It also has a focus on e-discovery, which is a big interest of mine.
 
Practical Paralegalism – Lynne DeVenny is a North Carolina paralegal who writes a highly engaging blog about and for fellow paralegals.  Her posts are a mix of education, paralegal news and funny or moving anecdotes, and I always enjoy it.  Check it out!
 
Georgetown Law’s E-Discovery Law Blog - As I mentioned, I'm quite interested in e-discovery, and consequently I subscribe to a number of e-discovery blogs.  Scholarly yet very clearly written, it covers an interesting array of e-discovery related topics.
 
Marketing & Business Advice
 
Six Pixels of Separation – a marketing blog written by Mitch Joel of TwistImage.com, author of the recent book by the same name.  I enjoyed the book, and I also subscribe to Mitch’s podcast.  If there is one significant message I’ve gleaned from Six Pixels, it is to continually ask myself why.  Why should clients hire me instead of someone else, why is anyone interested in anything I have to say, why am I choosing this marketing method over another?  My strategy has to dictate my tactics; otherwise everything I do is just a distraction.(fn)   Thought-provoking stuff!
 
IttyBiz: Marketing for Businesses Without Marketing Departments – a hilariously funny yet very insightful blog written by Naomi Dunford.  I need to remember not to sip coffee or wine or any other liquid while reading Naomi’s posts lest I spew it all over my computer when I burst out laughing, and the smiles would be reason enough to read it.  But the blog is also full of marketing insights geared straight toward my very small sort of business.
 
Entrepreneurial Inspiration
 
Buon Viaggio – a blog written by Barbara Winter of JoyfullyJobless.com fame.  As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, her book was highly influential in my decision to start my own contract paralegal business.  Her blog continues to inspire, and encourages me to revel in the fact that despite all its challenges, becoming self-employed was the best thing I could have done in this season of my life.
 
Seth’s Blog -  I realize it’s quite unoriginal to adore Seth’s blog – it might just be the most popular blog on the planet – but I don’t care.  Seth’s posts are endlessly honest, insightful, and arresting, and I rarely if ever fail to be challenged by them.  Perhaps the two most transformative messages for me have been the importance of generosity in my life, in my relationships, in my business, and the importance of what Seth calls “shipping.”  Do it.  Get it on the market.  Start the business.  Execute the plan – not the perfect plan, just the plan I have right now.  Act, move, get it done.  I need this kick in the pants every day!
 
I could talk about many more noteworthy blogs – and perhaps I will in a follow-up post.  These blogs might not be your cup of tea – what benefits me right now might be – probably is! – different from what benefits you.  Regardless, I wholeheartedly recommend that you spend a slot of time a day or a week feeding your mind with insights from others that might hone your skills, challenge your thinking, give you new ideas, or simply provide encouragement that you’re on the right track!
 
So what are you reading?  Feel free to share it in the comments!



fn:  Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone, by Mitch Joel, at 50-51. New York: Business Plus, 2009.

Sunday Six Word Memoir

(One of the many lovely things about Saturday and Sunday is that they both begin with the letter S.  Which means I can post a Six Word Memoir on either day.)

This week was characterized by a lot of thought given to fine-tuning a strategy for my business, and a resulting prioritization of the activities I spent time on.  I made a huge effort to spend the bulk of my time on activities I hope will make the most marketing sense, and tried to minimize activities which, however interesting, weren’t geared toward garnering me clients in the short term.  I think this was a beneficial focus for the week, and I was much more productive.
 

So here is the next in my series of Six Word Memoirs – a memoir to encapsulate my week:
 

Every activity targets visibility to clients.

Got your own Six Word Memoir?  Feel free to share it in the Comments!