For a step by step USP workshop that will help you understand the power of the USP, illustrate the use of USPs in the marketplace using examples you’ll know and create your very own USP, download this special report written by my marketing mentor, Dave Dee.

After working through this very workshop, I determined the Personal Family Lawyer USP, which you can not only read in the special report, but you can also watch step by step as it develops through the workshop process.

I find that it’s so much easier to do something after I’ve seen someone else do it, so I’m certain that watching the progression will make the whole process of developing your USP as easy as possible for you.

I guess a part of me had this idea that I’d be a true solo, seeing a few clients here and there, drafting estate planning documents and that’d be it.

Ha!  That’s a joke.

There was so much more to do than I could have ever anticipated.  So very quickly, I hired a part-time assistant to relieve some of the burden.  Part-time assistant turned into Client Services Director, then Plan Coordinator, then Funding Coordinator and so on and so on and suddenly I ended up with a staff of 7 when my firm was at its biggest.

I struggled mightily with two things:

1. Training each new team member when they came in – where to start, what to tell the new hire and how to get them up to speed and

2. I constantly wondered if I was getting maximum effectiveness out of all my employees or were they just doing the bare minimum needed to get by.

These questions tormented me and I frequently wanted to fire everyone and start over because of my own incompetent management and training.  I didn’t have any experience in managing and training a team of employees and it showed!

Fast forward a couple of years and after much pain, I learned what’s necessary to build a team that I can rely on that works at maximum efficiency with happiness – accountability and direction.

Here’s how you can do it too.

1. Define each job in your office by breaking each role into no more than 3 or 4 major responsibilities;

2. Establish benchmarks for each responsibility with minimum standards and establish bonuses for exceeding those standards;

3. Conduct reviews at least monthly with each team member and include personal goals as part of the review process

When you’ve got this in place, your office will hum along like a smooth operating bee hive with each team member contributing their max to the overall operation of the honey factory.

© 2008 Alexis Martin Neely

1. A system for managing your numbers.

You should be getting daily, weekly and monthly reports that tell you within a tenth of a percentage point whether you are on track to meet your goals.

Once you know how to set this up, its super easy. Stay tuned for a future teleconference I’m putting together that will get you what you need to do get these reports in place.

2. A system for attracting clients.

Bringing in new clients an and should be something that happens without you having to go to lunch after lunch with insurance agents and financial advisors hoping for someone to throw you a bone.

When you have a system in place that routinely brings in plenty of new clients without your constant input, you’ll feel a deep sense of security and peace.

3. A system for engaging clients.

When you master this, everything else falls into place because you can limit the number of new client appointments you have each month to just that many new clients you want to take on. It makes projections and planning possible and reliable. You’ll be in control and have the freedom you’ve been craving.

4. A system for servicing clients.

There’s nothing worse than bringing in new clients only to stress about getting the work done.

With a streamlined system in place for taking care of your clients, you’ll have raving fans who send all their friends and family and you’ll say goodbye to stress and worry.

5. A system for retaining clients for life.

The key driver of the value of a business is recurring revenue. When you can provide ongoing value to your clients year after year, you can build a business that is sustainable and that you can one day sell and retire from. And, the best part is you get to make a real difference in your client’s lives.

6. A system for holding your team accountable.

None of these systems will work without a team behind you.  If it’s just you doing everything, all you’ve got is a job you can’t leave.

When you’ve got a team in place and systems of accountability you’ve got the golden ticket.

With these 6 systems in place, you will be in control of your life, your business and your income and realize the freedom of the dream you had when you hung your shingle.

When you are just starting out in your practice, you can’t afford to lose time on things that are not going to be a good return on your investment.

And, yes, your time is worth way more than your money. You can always make more money, but you can’t make anymore time.

After your practice is hugely successful and you’re spending as much time as you want with your family and exercising and making all the money you want to be making, then you can fritter time away on social networking sites with no increase to your bottom line.

Until then, I’d recommend you focus on just two – Facebook and LinkedIn with maybe a little Twitter thrown in for good measure. But, only a little.

To get started on Facebook, just go to www.Facebook.com and create a profile for yourself. Make sure to include a flattering photo, preferably a professional quality headshot, before which, you had your hair and makeup done by a professional. Yes, even if you are a man!

Once you’ve done that, “friend” me and I’ll accept right away. Here’s my profile:

http://profile.to/AlexisNeely

Then, you might want to set up a page for your business, join some special interest groups or import your blog as another distribution channel.

Then, get signed up on LinkedIn by going to www.LinkedIn.com. Once there, create a profile and search for your clients, friends and other colleagues.

If you have clients on LinkedIn, ask for a recommendation.

One tip on asking for recommendations on colleagues is give before you get. If you have worked with someone before, give them a great recommendation unsolicited. Then, ask if they’d give you one in return. Whatever you do, don’t give the recommendation with the expectation of getting one back; give it because you believe it. If you get one back, great! If not, that’s okay too.

And then, if you’d like to use LinkedIn to build your business, you can start answering questions. I haven’t started that yet, but might get into it soon.

As for the rest of the social networking sites, I wouldn’t waste the time on them unless you’ve got plenty of excess on your hands. Start with these two and you’ll be doing great.

Tis a truth that took me a long time to grasp.

I was afraid of the numbers, frankly.  And, I didn’t know what questions to ask.  Or who to ask them of.

I knew I should be getting reports on a regular basis, but didn’t know what reports I should be getting.

Law school didn’t teach me a thing about business and there was none of my lawyer mentors seemed to know anything about it either.

Because I don’t want you to have to go through the same pain I did, here’s the reports you should be receiving on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis.

If you aren’t, you are almost definitely leaking tons of cash that could be going into your pocket.

Daily reports:
* Flash report
* Sales Production reports

Weekly reports:
* A/R aging
* A/P aging
* Sales reports
* Production report
* Outstanding plans
* Check register
* Cash flow analysis

Monthly:
* Profit and Loss Statement
* Balance Sheet
* Sales Summary
* Bank Account Reconciliation
* Budget variance reports

Annual
* Profit and Loss Statement
* Balance Sheet
* Statement of Changes
* Tax returns

If you are not getting this kind of reporting now, you can’t be managing by the numbers and you are burying your head in the sand about the reality of your business.

By facing the reality of your business, you will be able to focus on getting the results you want and grow your business year after year.

And, when you are ready to sell the business, you’ll have a track record of success that will increase the value of your business substantially for any potential buyer.

I was business savvy from the start and quickly realized that the bigger the check was, the bigger my tip would be.

And after a bit of experimenting, I discovered that the best way to increase the size of the check was to offer more.

That meant that if someone ordered pancakes, I’d always make sure to offer bacon or sausage to go with it.

I didn’t push the meat, just made the offer.

About half the time, the customer would say yes.  The ones who didn’t never minded the offer.  This is a secret that the best companies in the world teach their employees - have you ever been to McDonalds and heard them ask “Do you want fries with that?”

I always ended the night with bigger tips than anyone else.

Tonight at dinner, our waitress asked us what we wanted to drink.  And, when I said water, she said “tap is fine, right?” and I said yes.  Had she said “would you like flat or sparkling instead?”, there’s a fair chance I would have ordered the bottled water, the bill would have been increased by $10 and her tip would have reflected it.

It occurred to me that many business owners make the same mistake.  So, the next time you are planning with a client, make sure to offer other services that your client may have a need or desire for and you’ll find out that a lot of the times they’ll say yes.

So long as you are only offering things that your client actually might need or want, you’ve got nothing to lose by making the offer and everything to gain.

© 2008 Alexis Martin Neely

Alexis Martin Neely built the boutique estate planning law firm of Martin Neely & Associates from nothing into a million dollar law business in just 3.5 years. You can learn all of her “Law Business Secrets” and build your own scaleable, saleable law practice that will allow you to work far less, keep more profits, and turn clients into raving fans at www.LawBusinessSecrets.com.

But, it’s also one of the most critical.

And, it’s something I overlooked for the first 3 years of my business.

I trusted that other people were taking care of it, when they really weren’t. Balls were dropped. Payroll taxes got missed. Estimated taxes weren’t paid.

I got my first heads-up that things were bad when Drew Hunt, the forensic accountant valuing my business during my divorce, looked at me and said “Alexis, your books are messed up!”

I didn’t do anything about it.

The next wake-up call came when I found out we’d missed a month of payroll taxes and I owed a big penalty. I still didn’t do anything about it.

The last straw was when I ended up with an unanticipated 6-figure tax bill last year. Sure, it means business was good, but I was not prepared to pay the taxes. I finally decided I was going to do something about it.

I fired my CPA and hired a new CPA, Mark Pribble, who understood that he was going to have to takeover and do it all for me. He was not going to expect me to do anything financial record keeping related other than sign the checks. He installed a bookkeeper, Jan, in my office and started to get it all under control.

And thank God he did because a few months later I got another huge wakeup call – an audit notice from the IRS. Worst of all? They were auditing 2005, the year of my divorce. The year that the forensic accountant told me my books were messed up. Oh no!?! Oh, yes.

I nearly lost it. Taxes are the next worst thing to death, right? What was I going to do?

Luckily, I figured it out.

Today, I am overjoyed to report that after a nearly year-long audit, I got a no change letter in the mail. What’s that mean? It means that I don’t owe a dime. It’s truly unbelievable, but I think I know the secrets to why that happened and what you should do if you get the dreaded letter in the mail. Here they are:

1. Stay calm and accept the reality of the situation

My first inclination when I got the news was to run screaming through my house yelling “Why me, oh why me?” Truth be told, I did cry. I was scared to death. I knew how messed up my books were and couldn’t imagine how we’d ever be able to prove all the expenses. But within a few hours, I had calmed down. I accepted the situation, called my CPA who also helped calm me down and made the decision to handle the audit using all of the spiritual muscle I had developed over the prior 3 years.

2. Turn it over

You’ve heard the saying that “He who represents himself has a fool for a client and an idiot for a lawyer”, well, it’s the same for representing yourself before the IRS. This is not something you should do yourself. The stress is not worth it. Stress causes more disease than eating poorly, smoking, drinking or not exercising ever did.

I can’t imagine anything more stressful than handling your own audit. It’s just not worth it.

I resigned myself to paying Mark’s big bills each month and asked him to take over and keep me out of it to the largest extent possible. Fortunately for me, he did just that.

I gave him unrestricted access to my assistant Corey and gave Corey unrestricted access to my whole life. Between the two of them and Mark’s awesome colleague Elizabeth, they responded to every single document production request.
Thank you Elizabeth, Corey and Mark! I didn’t just turn it over to Mark though.

I turned it over to God. I trusted that the whole thing would turn out exactly as it was supposed to and each time I started to panic, I reminded myself that I was doing everything I could (hired a professional to handle it), it was already done (I couldn’t do anything to change the situation), and it would be all good (regardless of the outcome, I’d handle it and be okay).
Trust me, in the beginning, I thought about it all the time and it was not always easy to remember these things; I had to do a lot of reminding. But, eventually, I stopped worrying about it altogether.

3. Don’t talk about it a lot, but also don’t keep secrets either

When something “bad” is happening in our lives, we have a natural inclination to talk about it with everyone we know.

I resisted that inclination, though it came up a lot. I wanted to commiserate with everyone I knew.

But, I knew if I focused energy on it, it would grow and that, I did not want. So, I minimized the energy I gave it instead.

I only talked about it when I absolutely had to because I was asked a direct question or had to give some guidance to Corey, Mark or Elizabeth.

I also didn’t keep anything a secret. I was totally candid with the team working on my behalf. That’s the only way they could help me. And, they were totally candid with the IRS.

4. Take responsibility, but don’t take it personally or blame yourself

Getting audited brings up so many emotions.

You may be tempted to blame yourself. I did this a little bit – cursing myself for not keeping my records better and paying attention to my financials. In my worst moments, I convinced myself I could have done something to change the situation, if only I had … or if only I was … you fill in the blanks.

You may be tempted to take it personally and lash out against the agent auditing you. Remember that the IRS agent is a human being doing his or her job. They are not out to get you. They are there to do their job and that’s it. If you are a jerk, your outcome will not be favorable. If instead, you remain aware that you are an adult and that one “cost” of living and working in the United States is that you are subject to tax audit, it’ll go much more smoothly.

If you get audited, just remember that all you have to do is respond to the requests for information by providing records where you have them, explanations where you don’t, and keep the truth in mind that it’s all going to work out fine. No matter what.

Take a deep breath.

Wow, what a relief!

Many people responded and one in particular said, and I quote “Give my lawyer a call, he’s really nice and good, even though he’s a lawyer.”

I can’t stand hearing things like this because I know the truth about lawyers.  And I know you do too.

We’ve got to do something about this!  You and I both know we went to law school to help people and make a difference in their lives.  But, the American public doesn’t know that.

They think we are heartless, money-grubbing, egotistical and make everything more difficult than it has to be.  That’s the reality.

I know it’s not true and so do you and now we need to work together to show the rest of the World it’s not true either.

Sure, we could do it one client at a time, but we can do it much faster and better together.  This is part of what I’ll be talking about on tomorrow’s call.  Hope you can make it.

You see, I figured that the shortest path to success was to model other successful people. So I studied them to see what they knew and what they did. And then I did that.

One of the most difficult things, I found, was finding out what the secrets were. As soon as I found out, I did it.   I didn’t ask why it was this way. I didn’t try to change it. I just did it.

So, here they are – 3 of the secrets I’ve seen come up again and again and again among every person I know who is truly successful and among those who are diligently pursuing success, for real. I also know a lot of people who *say* they want success, but aren’t exhibiting a single one of these traits. They won’t get too far.

If you want to look back 3 or 5 years from now and think wow, I made a huge amount of progress in that time, here’s what you need to do:

1. Get as big a vision as is possible and every day take some action towards it. Keep chipping away and never, ever, for any possible reason give up. Persistence pays most of the time, but never when you give up.

2. Dare to be ugly. Make your vision so worthwhile that you are willing to put it out there no matter what. Think about if Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had waited until it was perfect to release it. Innovation must be experienced and then responded to and improved. If Gates waited to get it right, we’d all still be running DOS.

3. Be willing to try it on and take it off – fast. The most successful people are willing to try something on, see if it fits and then take it off if it doesn’t. They don’t get stuck in a pattern of doing things they don’t like it, because it’s comfortable. Step outside your comfort zone and try something new every day; if you like it, keep it. If you don’t, drop it and try something else. EVERYday – something new.

If you are ready to get on the path of huge success in 2008, get on my call on January 18, 2008 at 12p PT/3p ET and discover what it means to be a true Personal Family Lawyer and whether you qualify for my elite and totally unique program.

© 2008 Alexis Martin Neely

Alexis Martin Neely built the boutique estate planning law firm of Martin Neely & Associates from nothing into a million dollar law business in just 3.5 years. You can learn all of her “Law Business Secrets” and build your own scaleable, saleable law practice that will allow you to work far less, keep more profits, and turn clients into raving fans at www.LawBusinessSecrets.com.

And, I want to make it far more fun and entertaining.  For me and for you.  Frankly, the weekly e-newsletter is just a bit too boring and one of my major goals for 2008 is to have way more fun.

The only challenge is that I haven’t figured out quite how to do that yet.

I’d love your help!

Let me know how I can make business of the practice of law as entertaining as Gary Vaynerchuk has made wine tasting.

Here are a couple ideas I’m tossing around.

1.  A weekly or monthly call-in radio show where I answer your law business questions live.

2.  A daily or weekly video blog where I spout off live and uncensored about law business and what you can do to make yours
more personally and financially rewarding.

If you like either of them or have any of your own, head over to my blog and let me know by leaving me a comment.

I’ll let you know what I’ve chosen in a couple of weeks when I debut the new format.