Balancing Your Life by Attending to Your Body

Carolyn Rosenblatt, RN, attorney, consultant and founder of AgingParents.com

by Melissa Grau

In today’s society, success is often measured by how well you do in your career. The sad reality is that work-related achievements almost always outweigh your health. Given that lawyers have the highest substance abuse, depression, and suicide rates of all other professions, it is important that you find a comfortable work-life balance to help lower these statistics.

In this episode of Esquire Coaching Radio, Carolyn Rosenblatt, RN, attorney, and consultant, joined us to talk about ways that attorneys can balance their lives by focusing on their personal health.

When asked how she made the commitment to a healthier lifestyle, Carolyn responded by saying she has always been interested in health. As a nurse and consultant on aging issues for families and employees working with elders, she felt she couldn’t give advice about health while ignoring her own health.

How were clients supposed to take her guidance seriously if she couldn’t even follow her own advice?

Although Carolyn describes herself as “never having been an athlete,” she always made an effort to be active. Currently, at the age of 66 she is training for a triathlon. She elaborated more by saying, “It just felt incredible to do things I have never done before and to feel more fit, stronger and have better endurance than [I had] when I was 30. And I’m still doing it!”

According to Carolyn, the biggest obstacle attorneys encounter while trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle is stress. It’s not easy to strike a balance between work and your personal life, but it is a necessary in order to live a healthier life. Attorneys claim they don’t have time to work out. Carolyn’s philosophy is that if you’re serious about being healthy, you will be able to find the time. Whatever your lifestyle is, there is a way to somehow fit exercise within it. Maybe it’s going for a brisk walk during your lunch break or using an at-home fitness bike while watching the news; whatever it is, there is a way to incorporate exercise into your life.

As the baby boomers grow closer to retirement, it is a priority now more than ever to start living a healthy life. Most often lawyers define themselves by their career. Once you retire, you lose that sense of who you are. Living a healthy lifestyle can become a new outlet, a new adventure to embark on during retirement. Retirement is a chance to really focus on your health, turning over a new leaf to become a healthier you. Carolyn goes on to add that experimenting with new things keeps you young, helping to create a new life and identity for yourself after retirement.

Lawyers working today, however, don’t yet have the luxury of enjoying the unlimited amount of free time that retirement brings. Carolyn suggests that in order to get that time to yourself, you need to demand it. Instead of putting in long hours and picking up all the extra work shoveled onto your desk, you need to take the initiative and find a way to get back to focusing on yourself.

In closing, Carolyn left us with the following advice:

“Remember that we as lawyers are more than our brains and legal acumen. We are people. We have hearts and minds and bodies. We have to take care of all of those in order to live a happy life.”

For more from Carolyn, visit her website at www.carolynrosenblatt.com or read her Forbes blog at www.forbes.com/sites/carolynrosenblatt. She is also available by phone at (415) 459-0413 or email at clrosenblatt@gmail.com.

Share with us your stories of how you balance your life. We’d also love to hear your plans for when you retire. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Visit our website at www.esquirecoaching.com to sign up for our newsletter, Elevate!

To listen to the full interview, click here.

Tips for Lawyers 101: How to Become the Trusted Adviser & Make an Impression that Lasts

Deborah Asseraf, Founder & CEO of Popcorn Productions

by Melissa Grau

In this episode of Esquire Coaching Radio, Deborah Asseraf joined us to discuss how lawyers can become trusted advisers while making an impression that lasts.

Deborah Asseraf is the Founder and CEO of Popcorn Productions, an experiential marketing company helping lawyers and financial advisers break through the noise and claim their spotlight through strong, fun, and innovative marketing strategies.

In today’s message-saturated world, how can you hold the attention of potential clients?

Lawyers spend thousands of dollars on SEO, social media, and website design, but neglect to consider a crucial component to gaining clients: the client experience. At Popcorn Productions, the focus is on ways you can influence and create different experiences with potential clients, generating a positive reaction in hopes of forming a connection. This atypical approach to marketing doesn’t focus on points of contact, but focuses on the customers’ needs. If you are able to meet every single one of a client’s needs, they feel validated, automatically building the trust necessary to making a lasting impression.

Oftentimes, lawyers offer a flat fee for a contract. The potential client’s knee jerk reaction is to shop around for the lowest price, meaning the lowest bidder wins. In order to avoid losing a client to the lowest price, offer an experience in addition to the deliverable. Maybe it’s a follow-up or a video… whatever it is, use it as leverage to create an experience for the client, not just a contract, and keep them choosing you over your competitors.

Deborah goes on to talk about how lawyers and small business owners often feel the pressure of having to do everything when it comes to marketing. She stresses that you don’t have to do it all. If you’re a small firm, it makes no sense to market yourself as a global firm. SEO and websites are a very important aspect of marketing, but that’s not where it stops. There is often no offline strategy for directing potential clients to become clients. There needs to be a system in which there is follow up from the website to actually booking them.

Think about the way you interact with clients:

Is it a conversation?

Are you listening?

From the first contact, how long do you wait to follow-up?

How seamless is the process?

Are you answering the phone when they call or do they reach an automatic voice message?

Are you inundating them with voicemails?

It is important to ask yourself these questions in order to devise a seamless strategy to enhancing your customer experience and establishing yourself as a trusted adviser. This isn’t just a one-time transaction. The more you are trusted, the more clients will refer you to the people they value within their life.

In terms of relating this to branding, Deborah says branding has everything and nothing to do with the way you present yourself. You need to know your messaging, core values, target audience, and whom you cater to in order to gauge what emotions you are trying to trigger within potential clients. From there, you can work with those feelings in order to build a trusting relationship between you and that individual. Deborah points out that people have lost their authenticity, what makes them unique to their field. Marketing with a focus on customer experience helps restore that authenticity, bringing passion into your work as a lawyer.

Contradicting to what most marketing gurus say, Deborah’s #1 marketing tip is that you don’t have to do it all. If you’re not an email person, don’t send out a newsletter. If you prefer phone calls, make phone calls.

“If your heart is not in something, no one else will enjoy it. That’s what is contagious – when there is excitement in what you’re doing,” Deborah noted. In short, you don’t have to do it all. You only have to do what you want.

For more from Deborah, email her at info@popcornprod.com or visit Popcorn Productions’ website at www.popcornprod.com to join their email list.

Tell us about how you enhance your clients’ experiences! Share with us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+. Visit our website at www.EsquireCoaching.com and sign up for our newsletter today!

Click here to listen to the full interview.

Interview with Esquire Coaching’s CEO

Ann Jenrette-Thomas, Founder & CEO of Esquire Coaching

by Melissa Grau

In celebration of Esquire Coaching’s one year anniversary, Ann Jenrette-Thomas, our Founder and CEO and the host of Esquire Coaching Radio, was put in the hot seat. Public Relations intern Melissa Grau interviewed Ann during this show, getting to the nitty gritty of what Esquire Coaching is all about.

In just one year, Esquire Coaching was able to impact thousands of lawyers across the country through speeches, social media, their blog, radio show, and of course their coaching programs. Esquire Coaching prides itself on “Empowering lawyers to happily succeed in the business of law,” driving home its initiative to help lawyers unapologetically claim the life and career they want.

Esquire Coaching has helped lawyers become rainmakers, honor who they are, and step into positions of leadership. In addition, Esquire Coaching has successfully chartered a new paradigm in coaching, employing a team of coaches to address each client holistically and with a customized approach.

Ann Jenrette-Thomas dared to say, “yes.” She has dared to say “yes” to finding a way to help lawyers build their practice while maintaining their peace of mind. A seemingly far-fetched and nearly impossible feat, this vision is nonetheless demonstrated day in and day out by Esquire Coaching clients happily succeeding in the business of law.

Ann developed this notion after working in a variety of areas of the law (government, small and large firms). She saw how excited people were to go to law school and how excited they were to help make the world a better place. She also saw people enter the practice of law, losing that enthusiasm they once had for the law. Ann wanted to find a better way to help lawyers grow their books of business without sacrificing their personal life or compromising the quality of their legal services. Ann was able to combine her knowledge of law and newfound coaching abilities and Esquire Coaching was born.

Committed to the personal empowerment of clients, Esquire Coaching strives to help clients empower themselves. Realizing that everything comes from within, Esquire Coaching promotes personal empowerment as an essential element of success. This coaching firm prides itself on helping clients achieve their goals and to be ambitious, but certainly not at the expense of their happiness, health, and relationships.

In addition to a strong commitment to ots mission, Esquire Coaching is founded upon the following five core values:

Service. Every member of the Coaching Team is dedicated to providing clients with the best and most beneficial service they have to offer.  As a personal practice, Ann sets the intention and even prays to be of the highest service to her clients before each coaching call.

Comprehensive Solutions. Esquire Coaching is all about finding holistic solutions to far-reaching dilemmas. It might not be the easiest to brainstorm, but this value is most definitely one of the game-changers in terms of Esquire Coaching’s services. They are first to offer customized solutions implementing a holistic approach to any given problem.

Evolution. Whether it is in terms of their company pursuing growth or working to push clients, Esquire Coaching welcomes innovation at all levels.

Fairness. Esquire Coaching strives to empower diverse attorneys and lawyers, leveling the playing field in all respects to race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Leadership. Regardless of leadership experience or personality, Esquire Coaching aims to unleash the leader within clients, helping them to see their own leadership potential and embrace it.

Esquire Coaching’s values serve as a basis for its holistic coaching approach. To avoid blind spots in any given area of a client’s life, Team Members start by conducting a thorough intake of the client’s life. From clearly articulating goals, to identifying obstacles, to better assessing client characteristics, Esquire Coaching then pairs up clients with specialists in a specific field congruent to the client’s needs. For example, if a client’s marriage is failing, Esquire Coaching realizes he/she would not be able to fully implement business development strategies. Thus, the client would work with a relationship coach in addition to a business development coach. This unique approach of triaging a client’s needs and then assigning a specialist to each need leaves no stone unturned and no aspect of a client’s life ignored.

If you are interested in learning more about how you can experience this unique coaching process for yourself, email Esquire Coaching at info@esquirecoaching.com for a free consultation. Visit our website at www.esquirecoaching.com and sign up for our newsletter Elevate!

How has Esquire Coaching affected your life in the past year?

We want to hear from you! Find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ and share your comments below.

Creative Thinking for Lawyers

by Melissa Grau

We’ve all been there. You’re staring at the same case, reading and rereading sections and clauses, looking for a loophole. Or maybe you’re stuck looking at your computer screen, trying to find a solution to an ongoing problem. Any way you approach the problem, it’s not going away.

At these times, when you feel like you’ve hit that wall head on, you need to take a step back and look at all your options. Think creatively. Get out of your head and see the whole picture. When you think creatively and see the world through a new lens, you are able to approach the problem from a different angle.

1. Learn your mindset and its restrictions. In order to get out of your mind, you first have to learn how it works. Know whether you’re a big picture thinker or a small picture thinker. Do you need to make a flow chart to brainstorm or does jotting things down work better for you? Do you prefer thinking things through beginning to end? Try thinking from the end to the beginning. Whatever your norm, switch it. Expand your mind from thinking one way to thinking another. You’d be surprised the things you learn about yourself and your cases when you approach things with a different mindset.
2. Schedule creative time. Use this time to explore your creativity through a new outlet, whether it’s learning to play the piano or picking up a paintbrush. Whatever you choose, however, be sure to devote time to your new outlet and honor that commitment. Being in tune with your creative side when you’re off the clock will help you to summon that same creativity when you’re on the clock, working to break through your case’s current roadblock.
3. Take breaks. Staring at the same view from your desk day after day is mentally exhausting. Give yourself a break to get your creative juices flowing. Take a walk during your lunch or take a phone call outside. Whatever it may be, just switch up your scenery. When you come back and sit down at your desk, ready to take on that same case, you might have recharged your brain just enough to find a solution.
4. Revamp and reuse. Take a look at the systems and processes in place around you. What factors come into play? How do they fulfill their purpose? Apply these same principles to the problems facing you. Take a system and revamp it to meet your needs, finding a solution and moving forward. The trick to this tip, however, is being able to transfer the concept of one entity to a completely different entity. This forces your mind to think out of the box solving a problem in an abstract way. Try applying this approach to the latest problem within your firm. Maybe you need a new way to bring in clients. Review other industries’ systems. Maybe you need a stronger platform for your social media outlets. Look at how Apple markets their products. Whatever it may be, the solution to a problem is never far off and often right in front of you.
5. Brainstorm. The best ideas frequently come from a group setting. This way, each idea has been critiqued from every angle by a plethora of different minds. Dynamic groups are able to bounce ideas off one another, building and rebuilding until the perfect model is created. Use this tactic to your advantage. Form a group of colleagues to brainstorm solutions with you. Compile a list and then go through each proposed item and discuss the pros and cons, possible shortcomings, and the expected results. It’s amazing how the combined power of multiple minds can result in an extraordinary idea.

Any way you try and solve a problem, the end result ultimately depends on you. The outcome depends on how you approach a situation, the way you think about the situation, and even the way you interpret the situation. Keeping these three major components in mind will make your life notably easier when using creative thinking to problem solve. Always remember that the solution, more often than not, is right in front of you; however, it’s your mindset that is preventing you from seeing it. I wish you the best of luck in cultivating your creative thinking skills!

If you are interested in receiving one-on-one support, email us at info@esquirecoaching.com for a complimentary consultation. Don’t forget to share your progress on the Esquire Coaching Facebook page as well as LinkedIn. Tweet @EsquireCoaching your own personal tips on how you apply creative thinking to life as a lawyer! I look forward to hearing from you!