#516: Flexing Your Discipline Muscle to Stay Motivated, with Sara Muender

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer: 

Welcome to The Lawyerist Podcast, a series of discussions with entrepreneurs and innovators about building a successful law practice in today’s challenging and constantly changing legal market. Lawyerist supports attorneys, building client-centered, and future-oriented small law firms through community, content, and coaching both online and through the Lawyerist Lab. And now from the team that brought you The Small Firm Roadmap and your podcast hosts 

 

 

Zack Glaser (00:35): 

Hi, I’m Zack Glazer. 

  

Stephanie Everett (00:36): 

And I’m Stephanie Everett. And this is episode 516 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, Zack’s talking with one of our Lawyerist lab coaches, SaraMuender, about setting goals and maintaining your motivation in your life and law firm. 

  

Zack Glaser (00:54): 

Today’s podcast is brought to you by TimeSolv. Stick around and you’ll hear the sponsored conversation with Joyce Brafford here shortly. 

  

Stephanie Everett (01:02): 

So Zack, it’s August 1st, and believe it or not, my kid’s going back to school. 

  

Zack Glaser (01:07): 

Oh man. 

  

Stephanie Everett (01:08): 

First day of school on Monday. 

  

Zack Glaser (01:10): 

That really, I bet that really affects your life for your patterns, your rhythms. 

  

Stephanie Everett (01:17): 

Yeah, and we’re back in all the things, training practices, afterschool activities. I mean, I’ve been calendaring away, but also I miss the deadline. They do this cool thing now where you can just pay them money and they ship all the school supplies on the list to the teacher, 

  

Zack Glaser (01:32): 

Which, oh man. 

  

Stephanie Everett (01:33): 

Yeah, I mean, it is convenient, but it kind of takes away the fun of back to school shopping, 

  

Zack Glaser (01:39): 

Right? Yes. I have to admit, I always loved the back to school shopping and getting the new trinkets and the new binder, the things that were particular to me that you got to walk into school with. And you’ve got the new three ring binder, the one that clips nicer, 

  

Stephanie Everett (01:58): 

And you had to check ’em all out, like your trapper keeper with all the pockets, and then you had to have the folders or what lunchbox, did you get a new lunchbox every year? 

  

Zack Glaser (02:08): 

Yes, yes. And I was always extremely organized for about three days. 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:14): 

Yes, 

  

Zack Glaser (02:15): 

I had delusions of how organized I was going to be. When you’re sitting in the office supplies aisle, you’re like, oh yeah, I absolutely need this giant file folder, because me as a sixth grader, I’m definitely going to keep meticulous notes on geography and all the math that I do. 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:35): 

I have a suspicion that a lot of lawyers listening, let’s just be honest, we’re kind of all nerds and office supplies remain near and dear to our heart, even in our law firms. 

  

Zack Glaser (02:48): 

Oh man, absolutely. I used to go buy an antique. Well, the store was antique. The supplies weren’t necessarily antique. When I would go to a particular county in Tennessee and go into this and essentially ale the interesting office supplies, I think lawyers many other people, but lawyers were probably in that little Venn diagram of people who kind of obsessive about their supplies with pens to use. 

  

Stephanie Everett (03:15): 

Oh, yes. There used to be special pens. We had an order for different attorneys and all the things, and I mean, fun fact. So also tip for those listening, I mean, office supplies get expensive, red wells and binder clips, those things add up. And so usually about once a quarter, definitely in November when I was trying to save money to make my end of the year budget numbers, I always would have what I called office supply Amnesty day, which basically meant that anyone in the office, you could bring any office supplies that found their way to your house or your car or wherever they were. You can bring them back and put ’em in the conference room. Nobody would ask and we’d put ’em on the conference room table. Nobody would ask any questions that you weren’t in trouble. But we would try to see how big of a pile could we create. 

  

Zack Glaser (04:10): 

Oh, 

  

Stephanie Everett (04:10): 

Yeah. And then we’d restock the office supplies room because 

  

Zack Glaser (04:14): 

Oh man, that is fantastic. Because I mean that at least pens are walking their way out of your office because as lawyers, we’re very particular about pens and we tended to have very nice pens at our office. And so those walk out pretty quickly. And the good three ring binders or the good red wells 

  

Stephanie Everett (04:36): 

Or even legal pads, there were certain law firms, you would go into their conference room and they’d have the nice, and you’d be like, oh, I’m definitely want to take this one because it’s, it’s 

  

Zack Glaser (04:48): 

Nice. Oh, this one’s canary not yellow. It’s that nice canary with the really thin blue. Yeah. Yes. I would like to know, are there listeners out there that have a particular office supply tick? What’s their thing? Their supply they can’t do without, they’ll order it immediately when they run out of that thing, 

  

Stephanie Everett (05:12): 

And we’ll post ours. We’ll start go to LinkedIn, press probably, I don’t know if that’s where people go, LinkedIn or Facebook, wherever you go to socialize on the internet 

  

Zack Glaser (05:23): 

While you’re not looking at your office supplies. Yeah, 

  

Stephanie Everett (05:25): 

When this episode drops and drop in your favorite office supply item. And Zack and I will put ours in there too. 

  

Zack Glaser (05:33): 

Yep. Alright, well now here is my conversation with our sponsor guest and then we’ll head into my conversation with Sara. 

  

(05:44): 

Hey y’all, it’s Zack again, the legal tech advisor here at Lawyerist, and once again, I have Joyce Brafford with me from TimeSolv, ProfitSolv, Rocket Matter, CosomoLex, all those ProfitSolv family of products. Joyce, thanks for being with me again. I appreciate it. 

  

Joyce Brafford (06:00): 

Always, Zack. Love it. 

  

Zack Glaser (06:02): 

So Joyce, one of the nice things about having you on this podcast with me is that I get to ask you random and moderately different questions. So I’m just going to tee one up. ai, we’re not going to get out of talking about ai, but what’s going on? What can I do? How can I deal with this? Why do I have to keep reading every single blog out there about artificial intelligence and how do I set myself up as an attorney for taking advantage of artificial intelligence as it’s coming up right now? 

  

Joyce Brafford (06:30): 

Well, number one, great question. Two, I’m glad I can be here to field these types of questions and be part of this conversation with you, Zack. Okay, so here’s why I think you need to keep reading those articles. One is I’ve seen us call the AI generation and there is no way to get away from this. It is affecting what our tools are utilizing, what our engineers behind those tools are creating. It’s affecting the way we draft, it’s affecting the way we communicate with our clients. It is going to, within the next 10 years, be in my humble opinion and quote me on this is going to be the most radical game changing shift in technology that we’ve seen in legal tech easily, easily in a hundred years. It’s going to help us research, it’s going to help us write, it’s going to help us attract new clients. So what do we need to do to set ourselves apart? I would say you don’t need to be an expert in ai, strangely enough, I don’t think that that’s the answer. I think instead, you need to understand what AI can do for you and how it can be used with your current systems. And that takes us to a broader questions act. And that is what the heck are you using today? 

  

Zack Glaser (07:45): 

Right? So I’m afraid I’m going to get passed up if I’m not using artificial intelligence, but I don’t necessarily know how is it going to affect what I’m using today? I’m not going to use, well, a first thing, I should probably stop saying a, when we’re talking about ai, first thing, we’re using AI all the time because we have, our phones have it, but how am I going to keep from becoming one of the have nots in this new kind of world where I’m just, I got passed by 

  

Joyce Brafford (08:19): 

AI haves and AI have nots. Okay, so it is crucial to understand what you want to be able to do with ai. For us right now, there are things we should not do and that is rely on AI as a single source of truth or the arbiter of truth. It’s kind of just a dumb intern. You can ask it to be a lot, but it requires a tremendous amount of oversight. Ask it anything you want, but make sure you’re going back and checking. You’re verifying, right? But do you want it to help you attract new clients? Do you want it to help you improve your writing? Do you want it to help you think around an argument, which is a really interesting way to do this? Give me the counterpoint of this position, and you can have some really great generative conversations that way. Once you figure out your current weak point where you’d like to start your focus with ai, I would say, how can I integrate that into my systems today? 

  

(09:13): 

Okay, yeah. I would say, what do I want to do and then how do I get there? And how you get there is relying on the systems that you have. Are you capturing time? Do you need a system that’s going to say, Hey, review my calendar and to look at everything that looks like a client meeting. Did you know can do that? Because you can. I need you to take a look at the metadata on my phone and see how far I’ve traveled so I can bill for mileage to a client if that’s part of my fee agreement. There are lots of things that you can do to capture the pieces that you need. So if you’re specifically looking at capturing client meetings, specifically looking at capturing time and billing, if you’re capturing your client meetings, if you’re capturing what you’re doing, your budgets, your timelines, your upcoming tasks, AI can help you do that. But you really need a system that has that core strength to back it up. So I just gave you 16 examples of things that are all reliant on just your time and billing system. In this case, I’d say TimeSolv because you have to have a system that works really well that you can feed information from into whatever generative model you’re using. 

  

Zack Glaser (10:22): 

That’s a good point. A system that works really well. I think I’ve said a couple of times that artificial intelligence a lot of times in our office is just going to exacerbate what we do. Do we have good systems? And the way that you’re talking about it there is what do I need done and can AI do it? Not what can I do with artificial intelligence? So it then just kind of enhances our processes, we candid enhance our processes, and if our processes are crap, we’re enhancing crap. And so exactly. You need a good time in billing software if you’re going to use artificial intelligence or if you’re going to use something that makes it faster and kind of goes a little bit into the intuitiveness. One of the things we really want out of artificial intelligence right now is for it to intuit a little bit, and it needs solid foundation in order to do that. 

  

Joyce Brafford (11:12): 

It does. It does. And I just want to go back to a couple of points here. Number one, you don’t need to get AI to do everything in order to catch the wave to catch the boat on this. You don’t just start, put your toe in the water. The more you become familiar with this, the easier it will be to take the next step. But no one is asking you to know everything today, but find a gap in your system and fill that hole and to just, I want to say it again, Zack. If you enhance a crummy process, it’s still crummy, right? So I just want to go back to what you said earlier. That’s a crucial point. 

  

Zack Glaser (11:48): 

Yeah, absolutely. Well, speaking of enhancing great processes, and we’ll go the opposite way. How do people get connected with TimeSolv? 

  

Joyce Brafford (11:57): 

Yeah, lots of ways. The easiest way is to go to timesolv.com. That’s TimeSolv. There’s no e on the end of that time solv.com. You can request a free trial, you can request a demo. We have an amazing team that’s willing to chat with you right there on the website if you’ve got questions. And we’ve got lots of webinars and podcasts that we sponsor that we’d love for you to participate in if they’re live. And just come back and listen to us anytime you’d like. 

  

Zack Glaser (12:20): 

Sounds great. Sounds great. Well, and to be more specific, there’s one E-T-I-M-E-S-O-L v.com. We’re dropping the last E, not all of ’em. 

  

Joyce Brafford (12:31): 

There you go. There you go. 

  

Zack Glaser (12:32): 

Thanks again for being with me, Joyce. I always enjoy talking with you. 

  

Joyce Brafford (12:35): 

Thanks, Zack. 

  

Sara Muender (12:40): 

Hi, I am Sara Muender. I am a business coach here in the Lawyerist Lab program, and I have three children. I live in Atlanta, Georgia, and my purpose is to set up the next generation for success, and I am living that purpose out through helping law firm owners create the best, healthiest businesses that they can for their life and their clients. 

  

Zack Glaser (13:09): 

I love it. I love it. My purpose. That’s fantastic. Well, Sara, thank you and welcome to the show. I know you’ve been a host on this, but you’re on the other side of the desk today. It’s 

  

Sara Muender (13:20): 

Such an honor. I’ve been looking forward to this. I honestly thought to myself, Zack, I want to make this the most impactful, helpful, powerful episode that Lawyerist has ever published. And I don’t know if it’s going to end up being that way, but I’m going to tell you what, I’m going to give my all in this conversation because I’ve learned so much along the way. This is year three at Lawyerist. And before I worked here, I coached in my own practice, and then way before that, I ran a business that, a legal alternative business that I helped build and sell. And so my experience bringing it into Lawyerist, helping law firm owners, it all kind of collided and came together. And now that I’ve been a business coach for law firms for going on three years, there’s just so much that I’ve seen and I want people to know. I want people to know who are listening so that they can apply it. 

  

Zack Glaser (14:23): 

Well, let’s see what we can do. Also, let’s talk about that, what we’ve learned here as we talk to more lawyers, more attorneys, more people in law offices. I think you and I both pick up on a lot of things I know I do as a coach, but let’s also connect that to what you said your purpose is kind of success for lawyers. What does that mean? How would we start if Sara was to start her firm right now, what are the things you think about? 

  

Sara Muender (14:56): 

And keep in mind that things are always evolving and they’re evolving really, really fast right now with AI coming into the scene. And so I am not going to touch on the latest hacks and tricks. That’s your world, Zack. You’re here to keep us up to date on all the tech tricks that people want to know and want to have fun with and want to implement. So today I’m going to talk about things that are important and relevant and absolutely required no matter what decade you’re living in, but they’re required for individual success, which transfers over into business success because at the end of the day, yes, I coach lawyers who own businesses, but I coach human beings. And this is so personal to me, and I have to practice what I preach. So in my role as a business coach in lab, I have to be clear on my personal purpose so that I can get up every day and really bring my all into my role because I’ll be honest with you, Zack, I didn’t grow up thinking I wanted to coach lawyers and law firm owners when I grew up. 

  

(16:11): 

And so from time to time, I stop and think about my career path and is this what I really want? And I want everyone listening to do the same. Is this ultimately what I want? And if they don’t feel connected to what they’re doing right now and what they’re building and what they’re working on, it doesn’t necessarily mean they have to abandon the ship and go do something else and blow up their life. But they can find purpose and meaning in their current role and what they’re doing, and they can incorporate more meaningful things in their business for themselves and their team. Because at the end of the day, it is the most amazing feeling for me as a business coach when I’m coaching a law firm owner and I help them spend more time with their kids because they’ve set things up in their business to allow them to do that, and they’re also making money while they sleep. 

  

(17:05): 

That to me, gives me chills. And when people, or when my clients tell me, I hear this all the time. I went on a two week vacation and my business didn’t fall apart When I came back, I’m like, dude, that is such a win. Do you realize we’re doing it? You win. You won the game here. But it’s amazing how many people come in a lab and they’re like, they can never imagine walking away from the business because they’ve really built it dependent on them being there. So I guess I have like, okay, I’ll be honest. I wrote 25 or 26 points that I wanted to share today, and I might not go over them all, but the very first one that I wrote down was as a key to success, if you will, is to define your personal purpose, your mission for your life. I’m not talking about 

  

Zack Glaser (17:59): 

Not your business purpose. 

  

Sara Muender (18:01): 

And that’s exactly what we have everybody do when they come in a lab as part of our foundational, we have foundation courses in the lab portal that they get. And the very first one is your personal vision because at the end of the day, business owners start their business to serve the world, serve their clients, whatever, but at the end of the day, it’s to serve their life. I would hope so, because not everybody can be an entrepreneur, a business owner. It’s really, really challenging. It’s not for everybody. And I found that out myself. As I was running my own coaching business. I realized, you know what? This isn’t for me right now. I love running a business and I am going to eventually launch my own sort of side business and will kind of apply the things I’ve learned along the way. But I wanted a coach. 

  

(18:52): 

I realized that specific thing was going to help me fulfill my personal purpose or mission. And I want to talk about motivation a lot in this conversation because, well, so I used to host the podcast Motivation for Moms. I coached moms in my private coaching practice. They were my people, they’re my specialty. And so I hosted Motivation for Moms, and I am obsessed with learning what motivates people and how to find motivation, how to create motivation, and what is the difference in the people that are massively successful and those that just kind of float along in life. And a lot of it is drive and motivation. And I think that the listeners probably want to know, how do I feel motivated again? Or how do I do the things I want to do? How do I reach my goals when I’m not feeling motivated? So if it’s okay, I want to talk about that too. 

  

Zack Glaser (19:48): 

Yeah, no, I like that because that answers a lot of the questions that I think young attorneys, that new attorneys, the attorneys who are saying, do I want to strike out on my own right now? Do I want to do this? Now, that answers the question of when and the why gives you the when is like, well, why do you want to do it? Why are you practicing? Why are you doing what you’re doing? I love that. 

  

Sara Muender (20:16): 

I think that everything we go after should reflect our personal purpose and vision for our personal life. For me, I know my purpose and I know that I am meant to be right where I’m at in my career path right now. So I’m able to connect to that purpose and vision every single day when I show up for work. And I know what the best version of Sara looks like, and I’m always working on getting closer to that. I’m not anywhere near where I want to be on a personal development level, but I know what it looks like and I stay connected to that by writing in my journal. How do I want to show up today and who needs me today? And what can I do to prepare myself to show up the best I possibly can as a mom, as a fiance, as a business coach, as a person in the community and in my church and all those things. And so it’s clarity. So that’s the first one is defining your personal purpose and what the best version of you as a human looks like. Because at the end of the day, businesses are run by humans. And so for now we have to start, right? 

  

(21:36): 

Well, that’s a different topic. 

  

Zack Glaser (21:38): 

It’s a different podcast. 

  

Sara Muender (21:40): 

Hopefully there will always be humans on earth. So it starts with you and you have to realize that you’re a leader. I think that a lot of people don’t take that leadership title on, if you will, or they don’t think of themselves. They don’t see themselves as a leader, like a natural leader. But the reality is everybody listening, you are a leader whether you think of yourself as leader or not. And so if you want to be a business owner, you’ve got to own that. And I think that we are all leaders. We all have an opportunity to impact the people around us and everything we do and how we portray ourselves and how we put ourselves out in the world, it has a ripple effect. And that is also going to help you stay connected to your personal vision for your life is realizing that ripple effect, that everything that you do, even the small things in business has an impact. 

  

Zack Glaser (22:32): 

So I hate to say this, Sara, that’s super overwhelming. 

  

Sara Muender (22:37): 

That’s interesting because I’m so passionate about this. Tell me why. 

  

Zack Glaser (22:40): 

Yeah, so I love it, but I know at different points in my life, I’ve sat there and thought, well, I have no idea what I want to do. I have no idea what my purpose is. So I’d be curious to know how you’ve gone about or how you continue to find who is the best, Sara, to be honest, I don’t know that I know what the best Zack looks like. Obviously he’s dashing and amazing with words. Is this 

  

Sara Muender (23:09): 

Aspirational Zack, or is? 

  

Zack Glaser (23:12): 

Well, I think that’s a good question. Is, is the best version of Sara aspirational? Is it? Who’s there? Is it? How did you go about finding or discovering who the best version of Sara is? And so therefore, how could our listeners go about finding who the best version of Jamie attorney is? 

  

Sara Muender (23:32): 

If it’s overwhelming, you’re overthinking it. 

  

Zack Glaser (23:35): 

Oh, yeah. I’ve been accused of that once or twice. Okay. 

  

Sara Muender (23:41): 

So just try to take a step back. And if the listener is feeling to just realize, I do not believe we find ourselves or we discover ourself or our purpose, I believe that we create ourselves and we create our purpose. We get to decide we have free will. And so it starts with knowing what’s important to you. It starts with clarifying your core values in life. And that’s another thing that we have our law firms do in lab is define their firm’s core values. But it starts with your individual values, and that then transfers into your family values. If you have a family, if you have a partner, if you have kids, you better sit down with your family with a whiteboard or something and have a little meeting about what are our family values. I did this with my kids one time, and it was so beautiful. 

  

(24:35): 

It was amazing what they came up with and what they thought that we valued as a family and what they valued individually. I never would’ve thought that they would’ve said certain things, and I was just blown away. Wow. And some of it was eyeopening. I didn’t realize that they thought that I valued that in our family. And so it kind of allowed me to realign how we’re going about living our lives and me raising these kids. So it starts with values. Figure out what’s important to you, and then think about who do you want to be, not who you are, not who you’ve been. Who do you want to be? This is future focused. And yes, it’s aspirational. And I think that’s, for me personally, that’s really exciting, 

  

Zack Glaser (25:23): 

But it’s also filled with FOMO and opportunity cost. If I want to be one thing inherent in that is that I can’t be the other thing. And I personally have a problem with wanting to be all the things and not being able to sit down and say, okay, well this is the one I have a problem choosing my values, my purpose, my goals, 

  

Sara Muender (25:50): 

And that’s okay. Because here’s the thing, I believe you can be every version of Zack that you want to be. You can do everything that you want to do in life, just not all at the same time. So how about just this next year, right now as of we’re recording this, its we’re halfway through 2024. And so no matter what point of year you’re listening to this, how do you want to show up in the world the rest of this year? And it doesn’t have to be these big things. I’m not talking about necessarily who you want to be in terms of your title and your job. 

  

Zack Glaser (26:28): 

Okay. We’re not talking about Zack the astronaut. We’re talking about Zack, something a little bit smaller, a little bit more personal than that. 

  

Sara Muender (26:36): 

Yeah. Start with where you’re at now and who do I want to be in the role I’m at now? How about that? 

  

Zack Glaser (26:41): 

Okay. No, I can imagine that. I can imagine that. But sometimes I still have a little bit of trouble figuring out those values. So do you have any tips or tricks or ways that you go about bringing the Labster? And I want to take a quick second. We’ve said Labster a couple times. I’ve usually assume that people listening to the Lawyerist podcast know that Labster are the people that are in our lab program, our Lawyerist lab program, which is our coaching program, which Sara is one of the major fantastic coaches of. So when you’re working with some of the Labster, are there ways that you suggest that they might go about finding these values? 

  

Sara Muender (27:23): 

Yeah, we have tools. I mean, we have a whole course on it in lab and we have worksheets and stuff to help brainstorm those possible values. I think it’s important to step away from the normal day to day, even just going on a walk, you can reflect on what’s important to you. At the end of the day, everyone knows what matters to them. And again, don’t overcomplicate it. Your values change over time too. So what matters to you in this stage of your life? Because you’re going to prioritize different things like after you have kids, for example, and you’re going to prioritize different things when you start a business. So what matters to you at this stage in your life? And realize also that when you’re trying to define the best version of yourself, I think that in this kind of gets into my next point that I want to touch on when people come in a lab, I have to help them first and foremost, take on this mentality that you are not your business. 

  

(28:27): 

And that’s really difficult for lawyers to do because especially if they’re solos, because of course, yeah, they go out on their own and their name of their law firm is their name, and they think of they build the business around themselves. And that’s kind of the old model of running law firms. And obviously here at Lawyerist, we’re very future focused. And so I start with they have to buy into this idea that you are not your business because what you are is you’re serving a function of a business. Your business is a living, breathing entity that is separate from you, and you are serving a function in building and growing that business that’s going to create something of value. Your business is something of value that’s going to give you options. One day you could sell your business, you could bring someone in to take over your business. 

  

(29:24): 

So the business is there to serve clients and the community at large. And again, it ultimately is here to serve your life as well. And so it is very personal. And so how do you stay connected to that vision in terms of how you want your business to serve your life, while also kind of separating yourself from the structure of the business in terms of like, and here’s why I want law firm owners to be able to step away from their business and go on a trip for two weeks without the business falling apart. And so we think about ways to help them do that. But the other big benefit of thinking of your business as its own living, breathing entity is that it allows you to approach things, decisions from the perspective of what is best for the business, not what is best for, let’s say you own a law firm, not what is best for Zack, but what is best for the business. 

  

(30:22): 

And that includes its team members, including the owner, and it includes the clients, but it’s also going to allow you to make decisions that are not reactive or emotionally driven and instead make decisions that make sense for the business because we bring ourselves and all of our complex emotions into what we do. And you can’t avoid that. And I think that there’s benefits to that, but it allows you to not take things personally. It allows you to have hard conversations with clients, with team members, and again, make decisions in the best interest of the business in a way that aligns with the values and the vision that you have defined for that business, if that makes sense. 

  

Zack Glaser (31:07): 

But let me unpack that a little bit because I want to hang on to that one for a second because I think my firm was the glazer firm, and the only reason it was the glazer firm was because there were two of us prior to that, it was Stephen f Glaser, pc, and my uncle’s firm is named after him. And as you rightfully stated, many of these firms are named after ourselves because of rules. But some of those rules have gone away now. But alright, I’ve got my vision of me of who I want to be and my values, my personal values or my family values or my family values. And then I have stacked upon that, my vision of the company and its values and what we want to get out of that. And then separating that company from myself saying, this isn’t me. It is a place that I work. It is a thing that I’m building. How do I kind of negotiate that? What seems like it could be easily like a web of values, I could easily sink back into, okay, well this firm needs to mirror my personal values. 

  

Sara Muender (32:23): 

If you have to negotiate something is off. If you are running a business with values that do not align and work in sync with your individual values, there’s going to be some problems. And I’ve seen people leave law firms and partnerships where their values, they clash and so they left and started their own firm. And it’s never too late to define values or redefine values. I think that you should redefine your values every year. That’s what our leadership team does because it does evolve over time, but it should absolutely reflect your individual values. 

  

Zack Glaser (33:06): 

So my individual values then kind of build upon that to firm values. But this firm is separate from who I am because it is, it’s a separate entity, it’s a separate thing. And we’re building something that is beyond ourselves. 

  

Sara Muender (33:20): 

And then another thing that a lot of people say, my business is my baby, and that’s sweet and all. But here’s the thing, babies require 24 hour care. And so I like to tell people, think of your business as more of a teenager if you would. So my fiance has a 14-year-old, and so I’m just getting into those teenage years. So I’m not the expert in raising teenagers by any means, 

  

Zack Glaser (33:44): 

Is anyone 

  

Sara Muender (33:47): 

Good point. But here’s the thing, raising a teenager, they don’t require 24 hour care that have built some self autonomy and empowerment. They can make decisions for themselves, but we’re there to support them along the way. We’re there to help them make those decisions. And we’re there with them, but we aren’t holding them all the time. And if you think of your business as a baby, then you’re always going to be tied to your business and then you kind of start to see yourself as the business. And so I really encourage creating some separation, for example, one way to do that is I like to create some separation between intake and the attorney, especially if the attorney is the business owner. In other words, train your clients to know that you’re not available all the time. I mean, unless you want to be, but I don’t know that anyone listening wants to be at the beck and call of their clients all the time or their team members all the time. And I know it’s possible. I know it’s possible because I’ve seen firm owners make those small changes that just gave them a little breathing room and the business still functioned and grew, make money in your sleep sort of thing. So it’s possible. 

  

Zack Glaser (35:04): 

Yeah. Okay. So that makes sense to me is if I’m looking at my company as Zack Glazer attorney at law, then I’ve got to answer everything. I’ve got to do everything. I’ve got to be on call. I can easily envision a scenario where I’m at the beach and I’m taking meetings upstairs and in the hotel or the condo or whatever. But if it’s not Zack’s returning at law, let’s just say it’s ZTG law, it would be easier to release some of that control 

  

Sara Muender (35:39): 

Possibly just forget the name point though, because it is kind of irrelevant. You can have a law firm that is named after your name and still think of the business as its own living, breathing entity. So I think the name is a little bit irrelevant. Don’t overthink that part. 

  

Zack Glaser (35:56): 

Okay, yeah, I’m with you. 

  

Sara Muender (35:58): 

The next point I kind of wanted to talk about is you mentioned a lot of this felt overwhelming in the beginning of this conversation. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so I think that you should get clear on your purpose. I think you should get clear on your goals and really define those targets that you want to go after. But the other thing that is really challenging for every single firm owner that I’ve worked with is the idea of time and productivity management. There just doesn’t feel like there’s enough time for everything, especially if you think of yourself as the business. And so I wanted to touch on this because everything at the end of the day comes back to spending time. The time in our life is going to pass anyway. So what are we doing with that time? And when we’re not intentional, the business really takes over our life and we go into our work week in reactive mode. 

  

(36:53): 

And I dunno why it’s so challenging for people to not do that. It takes a lot of practice and discipline, but it doesn’t have to be so hard. At the end of the day, your success is dependent on how well prepared you are for the week, whether or not you made a plan, because that’s all being intentional. You have to be intentional if you want the time that’s going to pass to be spent on things that are going to get you closer to your goals. So it’s so simple, but just having what I call bookends for the week, the first hour of the work week and the last hour of the work week, make that a non-negotiable time block where you are on Monday for example, or maybe Sunday, but you’re not going and you’re not looking at emails, you’re not taking messages, you’re looking at your week, you’re looking at your goals for your business and for your personal life, and you’re going, what am I going to do this week to get me closer to that? What are the steps that I can take? And then when am I going to do that? What hours of this week can I block time for that? And be specific because you block time on your calendar and it’s just a time block of focus or whatever the truth is, you’re going to see that and go, I have other things to do, whatever. So be specific. 

  

Zack Glaser (38:14): 

I don’t want to focus right now. 

  

Sara Muender (38:17): 

It’s so stupid simple, but it’s amazing how that changes, changes everything. And this isn’t an episode about time management, but I do want to touch on also this idea of working backwards and this helps with the overwhelm. It’s like where do I start? If you’re listening and you’re like, I’m not anywhere near where I want to be personally or in my business, and it’s just there’s so much on my plate right now. I don’t even know where I would fit in time to work on my goals, whatever, I don’t even know where I would fit in time to go out and go and walk and define my purpose, work backwards. So start put it out of your mind somewhere on a whiteboard or a piece of paper, identify what you want and you’re not married to it. You can always change it. Just put something out there and then work backwards to go, okay, what would have to happen in order for that to be achieved? 

  

(39:09): 

And do not think about the impossibility of it because our brain is so wired to look for why it won’t work and how I can’t do that. We focus on the how. Don’t focus on how anything that you do in your life in business focus first on the what and the why. So you’re clear how will reveal itself, the how can be worked out. There’s lots of different ways to get to where you want to go, but if you start with the what and the why and then work backwards, it’s really not that hard to define the steps that you’d have to take. We call it scoping it out, and this is what we have our Labster do in planning their quarter out, is we have them identify the big project or priority for the quarter, and then we have them scope it out, work backwards, break it down into steps, and then take those steps and put ’em in their calendar. And then you just take the steps if you think too hard about how you won’t take action. And so that’s another big point is I want to make is just start. Just start. 

  

Zack Glaser (40:21): 

Okay, well, so what I’ve kind sussing out of that is when you first started talking about book into your week, my first thought was like, okay, productivity hack sort of thing, but you’re not talking about scheduling what you’re doing that week or how you’re getting things done in your office necessarily. It’s not what cases am I going to work on or things like that. You’re talking about scheduling, what are the things that I’m going to do to get my business to the place I want it to be? 

  

Sara Muender (40:55): 

The reality is you’ve got to have time for all the things. If you are a practicing attorney in your law firm, like yeah, you’ve got to figure out what days and times is best for you to get the legal work done and to get back to clients and all that. So that needs to have its time too. But if you’re serving the owner function of the business and you’re serving this leadership role, yeah, that’s got to have its time. And you know what? Some people come in a lab and we start talking about their ideal role in the firm and they realize they didn’t realize how much was involved in running a business and it’s not their favorite. They’d rather just focus more on the legal work. And so then we work on a plan. You can bring someone into your firm to do the operations things, the visionary things, sort of like more of the owner things if that’s what you want. But again, it comes back to clarity of what’s your ideal role? 

  

Zack Glaser (41:46): 

That makes sense to me. So we’re playing the role of owner in that kind of scenario because you would need to, unless like you said, unless you have brought somebody else in to kind of do that or playing the role of organizer. And so as me, let’s say I’m in my firm that morning of Monday, I come in and for an hour I’m playing the role of the owner and I am doing the owner things, and then maybe I step into one of my roles at the firm is to be an attorney. And so then later I step into my role as the attorney and I can plan my day as attorney however I want to. But what it seems to me that you’re saying is you need to take that role of owner seriously and play that role as you go through and plan that role and give it the same amount of kind of attention that you would give yourself as an attorney. 

  

(42:40): 

Because that’s what I was hearing thinking while you were talking was like, I don’t have enough time in the day or as attorney, a lot of times my job is to respond to things. There’s an amount of time that I have to kind of build in that lets me kind of concertina out and allows me to just deal with things that come up. But then there is an amount of time that I can plan. But if I break it into, okay, well I’m thinking about the ownership of my company here and I’m thinking about the health of my company and how I’m going to move it forward in my role doing that, then that makes a lot more sense to me. 

  

Sara Muender (43:17): 

And you get to decide what percentage of your time you want to play owner and work on owner stuff and what percentage of time you want to deal with clients and get the work done and be in court and all that. That’s one of the first things that I talk about with my lobsters when I start working with someone new is tell me about your ideal role. What would be the ideal ratio for you? And let’s start doing things, putting pieces in place to get you closer to that. So that’s totally on an individual basis. I do not allow people to get away with saying, I don’t have time, Zack, it pisses me so much. I’m like, can we please be beyond this by now? That is such a easy non-negotiable, like those words are not allowed. I don’t have time. We all have the same amount of time, like 168 hours in the week, and you’re in charge of how you spend your time. 

  

(44:09): 

Yes, you’ve got people counting on you and work that needs to get done, but at the end of the day, you could choose to not do it. There’d be consequences, but you are in charge of your time. And so you’ve got to take that leadership ownership mindset of I own my time, I own my day, I own how I interact with people and what I work on, what I think on. And we have to talk about that. We have to think about how everything starts with a thought. Everything, all of our feelings start with a thought and a belief. So we have these beliefs and we bring these beliefs in our business, and eventually our businesses reflect what we believe in and what we’ve chosen to buy into and subscribe to in life. Obviously, our beliefs start very, very young age, and there’s a lot of factors that play into how our beliefs are formed, but at the end of the day, a belief is just a thought that was repeated and repeated and repeated. 

  

(45:04): 

And so it created that neuro pathway. And I know majorly jumping, but I had to fit this in because it’s one of the most important things that people need to understand is your brain. When you repeat those thoughts, when you choose to allow yourself to think and think and certain ways about things, it creates those neuro pathways just kind of like how a stream of water carves a pathway in the side of a mountain over time, that becomes the norm. But the thing is back to ownership, own your time, own your life. You can change that. So you can choose what you want to believe in about what’s possible and how you think things should be done in your business, in your life. And then you can choose thoughts are going to pop in your head all day long. That’s unavoidable. And that’s because of those neuro pathways. 

  

(45:59): 

So your brain just, it only knows how to go that way. When you start thinking about, I don’t have time, for example, I’m trying to tie this back to I don’t have time. If you keep repeating that, that’s what you’re going to believe. And so that’s then how you’re going to behave and your behaviors then produce outcomes in your life, and you’re going to never have time for the things you want to do. So first and foremost, please subscribe to the thought that you have time. Like I told you, Zack, you have time to do all the things you want to do in life, just not at the same time. And that comes back to being intentional. And then do you have any thoughts on that? Because otherwise I want to go right back into the next point about motivation before we have to wrap up. 

  

Zack Glaser (46:43): 

I was actually going to take that right into motivation, Sara, so we’re on the same page because it seems like sometimes when somebody says, I don’t have time to do that thing, it’s really, I’m not motivated to do that thing. I don’t really want to do that thing over this other thing. And so yeah, talk to me about motivation because yeah, as I define my values, as I define what I want to do, sometimes I still kind of get off the path. I can’t keep myself on that. Let’s keep focused on the goal that I’ve defined. 

  

Sara Muender (47:20): 

Yeah, absolutely. You hit it right on the head, and you can think about fitness analogy. We’re all trying to be healthier version of ourselves and be in shape and all that and feel good and look good in our bodies, but New Year’s resolution, people set this goal. There’s a reason why gyms are super busy in the beginning of the year and then it drops off because people lose motivation. It’s not that what they want ultimately changes, but they’ve lost motivation, and that’s because they have allowed their decisions and their actions and how they spend their time to be dependent on how motivated they feel. And you’re absolutely right, Zack, what we spend our time on, a lot of it does actually reflect what’s motivating us that day, but the problem is we allow client needy clients to motivate us to the squeaky wheel gets the grease. 

  

(48:13): 

Exactly. Perfect. Perfect analogy. But here’s the thing, motivation and willpower kind of go hand in hand. You cannot rely on motivation or willpower alone to get to where you want to go. You won’t ever get to where you want to go. You won’t achieve your goals if you are, but what you can do is again, choose the beliefs that you want to subscribe to that are going to allow you to meet your goals, and instead of relying on or waiting till you feel motivated, you can manufacture motivation. What I mean by that is you can manufacture motivation and again, what you choose to focus on mentally, and that is going to require you to stay connected to your overall vision and your goals. When you think about something that excites you, like, wow, that’d be so cool if I could do that, it’d be so cool if I could bring an attorney in so I didn’t have to do litigation anymore. For example, your brain’s immediately going to go to the how and why it won’t work and why that’s so my business can’t afford it right now. Whatever. Yeah, 

  

Zack Glaser (49:25): 

That tracks with my brain. 

  

Sara Muender (49:27): 

Yeah. Again, don’t think about the how. Think about the what and the why, and then every single day you look at that goal, you write it down, there is research that proves that writing down our goals and writing down our vision is really, really powerful because when you stay connected to that thing that you want the thing that excites you, then it’s top of mind. And when things are top of mind, they tend to get more attention. But you have to take charge of what you put in your mind, and that’s why I say when you start your week, the biggest mistake people make is they look at their emails or they look at their emails before they even get out of bed in the morning. It’s like that is literally the worst thing you could do, and it’s the easiest thing to cut out, but it takes willpower, right? 

  

(50:17): 

It takes discipline. So discipline is like a muscle. Willpower is like a muscle, and we get maxed out if there’s thing called decision fatigue, and if we’re constantly having to make a million decisions all day long about the kid, what I’m going to eat for dinner, how do I do this thing? Lawyers have some really big decisions to make in how they go about their strategy and law. So realize you’re going to have decision fatigue, and so make it easier for yourself. Set yourself up for success. Put a little note on your phone, a sticky note that says no emails, and instead have a plan of what you’re going to do inside. You’re going to get up, you’re going to put something positive in your mind. You’re going to sit down with your planner, you’re going to look at your goals, and you’re going to get intentional for the day. 

  

(51:00): 

It’s all about being intentional and not reactive. Are you giving away your brain space to everybody else or are you reserving your brain space so that you can stay focused and clear on your goals and what you want? At the end of the day, it’s simple, but I don’t think that we realize that we can practice the discipline muscle and we can get that to be stronger over time. What’s actually happening on a neurobiological level is you’re creating those neuro pathways. So eventually I get to a point where, because I set that role for myself a long, long time ago, I never say I don’t have time. I don’t check my emails first thing in the morning. I didn’t even look at my phone first thing in the morning because I have decided that a long time ago. It doesn’t even occur to me now to do those things. 

  

Zack Glaser (51:52): 

I like that you can adjust your motivation, change your motivation, and have it go towards your values. That’s fantastic, Sara. Well, if people are motivated to hear more from you or to see more with you, they can certainly check out the Lawyerist Lab program and they can find you on LinkedIn. They can find you on Instagram and easily get you at the Lawyerist website. Sara, thank you for being with me and for talking about all this. I wish we had a lot more time on this subject. 

  

Sara Muender (52:23): 

I know we’ll have to do part two for sure. I know this was a lot, but for those that listen to the end, thank you for tuning in and for listening to the end. Thank you for working on yourself and being willing to have an open mind about how you can be a better person and a better business owner because the work that you do in the world is really, really important. And again, coming back to purpose, wrap up with this is realize how important you are and realize how amazing you are and really celebrate your achievements, your success. Celebrate what you do in the world and how you help people even in little ways, celebrate your wins along the way. And I’d love to talk to, if this conversation has resonated with you, if you’ve taken anything away from it, even just one small thing, shoot me an email. LinkedIn’s probably not the best way to get ahold of me, but shoot me an email. It’s just Sara, SARA, no H at Lawyerist dot com, and let’s set up a 15 minute call, and I want to meet more people who are listening that haven’t come into our community yet. How about that? 

  

Zack Glaser (53:31): 

Sounds great, Sara, once again, thanks for being with me. I really appreciate this conversation. 

  

Sara Muender (53:37): 

Thanks, Zack. 

  

Zack Glaser (53:40): 

The lawyer podcast is edit by Brittany. Felix, are you ready to implement the ideas we discussed here into your practice, wondering what to do next? Here are your first steps. First, if you haven’t read the Small Firm Roadmap yet, grab the initial chapter for free at Lawyerist dot com slash book, looking for help beyond the book. Let’s chat about whether our coaching communities are right for you at to Lawyerist dot com slash community slash lab for more information. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not endorsed by Legal Talk Network. Nothing said in this podcast is legal advice for you. 

 

 

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