You want more control, more autonomy and a greater sense of feeling over your career. So far, the path to get there has been hazy at best. People become partners and still stumble their way around. Go to coffees and lunches, it sort of works sometimes, and so you hunker down and just do your work...until you feel the heat and decide to go to some conference. You get some traction...until you're back in a pit again. The feast and famine cycle continues. If you have work, there's not enough...

In 2022, get short, fun, and new actionable missions every month to grow your book of practice, presence, and brand. Starting at just $19/month. Are you ready to get off the roller coaster 🎢 and on to the rocket 🚀? Learn more at buildyourbook.org/12in12. Open to lawyers and other service professionals from everywhere in the world. ------ Dear listener, In this final episode of the year, we reflect back on what it takes to learn and grow your practice today. And what it takes to learn these...

Every other industry has been disrupted by this paradigm. It's time for forward looking lawyers and law firms to think boldly about the future. Roy Bendor Cohen shows us how. Roy exists to provide answers to business problems using data, behavioral science and human thought. He encapsulates this mode of thinking at his firm Q Behavioural Thinking out of Tel Aviv. This is one of those rich episodes filled with threads that touch into psychology, economics, business, design, technology, and...

If you're looking to invest more time and effort on LinkedIn, and thinking about your content, you will want to catch this episode with Robyn Addis. Robyn is a digital transformation architect at LISI. That is to say, she helps lawyers tell stories, produce content on LinkedIn, and get their digital strategy right. In this practical episode on branding, we get down the rabbit hole of ideas, tactics, and strategies that lawyers can start using to produce better content and spruce up their...

Eric is a practitioner and also a professor of sales at the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario. Each year he teaches hundreds of entrepreneurs, consultants, engineers, and new grads how to sell. Not long ago he was in the trenches (sometimes literally) closing deals with the best music festivals in the world, logging 100,000+ air miles a year, and managing a global sales team. He did eventually figure out how to sell the right way, but it was a long and winding road...

Josh Calderon is running his law practice differently. He confronts the myths of being a solo-practitioner. He shares his revenue numbers publicly on LinkedIn. He gives us a playbook on how to do business development effectively even when you don't have the family connections to open door for you. Josh represents a new era of lawyers who practice with radical transparency.  In this episode we get into all the nitty gritty details such as: How to stand out from the competition... Why...

Sam is a LinkedIn influencer. She's one of the most sought after trainers & consultants in the world of sales and marketing.  Sam started helping people with their sales challenges not too long ago and quickly built it into a leading organization. She's since then worked with lawyers at 95 of the AmLaw 100 firms. She's here on our show today to share us how lawyers can do LinkedIn right. This isn't just about LinkedIn of course. It's about the psychology of your clients, the LinkedIn...

Steven Werner went to law school for his JD, but ended up with a  sales career instead. Not for just legal tech companies, but directly  for law firms and attorneys. He started helping attorneys book meetings with general counsels.  Through his unique insights, sheer perseverance, and an ever expanding  network, he soon started opening the doors for AmLaw 200 law firms into  the offices of general counsels at leading companies across the US. In this episode, we reflect back on his career...

This week, we're joined by Giles Thompson from across the pond in London, UK. He's a former city lawyer turned Head of Growth at Avvoka, where they're doing incredible things in the world of document automation. We get into his story of the things he had to learn, unlearn, and is in the process of learning. These ideas include: using agile methodology to create change in incremental and systematic ways... the lessons to be learned and adapted about how the tech world works and how that...

How do you write great blog posts, LinkedIn posts, and other content that connects with your audience? Heidi Turner tells us how! Heidi has been helping lawyers and attorneys create great content for almost 2 decades! She also teaches writing at Simon Fraser University, and has worked with firms small and big, to create compelling content strategies and execute on them. The result has been increasingly more business. In this practical episode, we get into topics such as: How to think...

The heart of sales is solving problems. Yet, attorneys hold themselves back because they often think it is about being pushy and manipulative. When it comes to asking for referrals and sales, there's a goldmine you might be missing on.  In this conversation with Agnes Lan, we get into how marketing funnels and referrals can start bringing in clients your way without active effort. All it takes is making a low risk ask and providing value to your audience. Agnes leads sales at Change Connect...

What's the future of how law will be practiced? How will it affect you? Are you missing the silent by tectonic change happening underneath your feet? How can you prepare yourself for this change? Mitch gives us an answer. He's the author of The Great Legal Reformation, host of the Legal Innovators Roundtable, General Counsel for Aoyuan International (one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world), and has spoken all over the world. Mitch gives us a perspective from both being...

Are you afraid to stand out as a lawyer? Are you afraid to share your edges? Can you truly succeed in this business "being yourself"? Perhaps you've felt you have to push this part of your life down. Well, you don't.  Vivek shows us how. Vivek started Jayaram Law at the height of the global recession in 2008/9. Over time, he's built it into the premier intellectual property law firm for creatives across North America.  Today, he's sharing the principles he used to grow his practice, and so...

Have you ever found yourself trying to upgrade your "sales" skills by learning how to close? Lawyers & attorneys routinely believe that is the magic skill they're missing to get better at getting clients to sign the dotted line. Well, it turns out that the paradigm is upside down! Opening is the new "closing". Liz Wendling tells us how.  Liz combines a rock-solid sales background with a passion for coaching. She believes it's all about HOW you sell that matters. When you start...

Do you help your client gets deal done or do you break them up? Lawyers often become deal breakers, not deal makers. Why does this happen and what can you do about it? Barry Wolfe tells us that lawyers often miss the full picture of the deal. They overvalue what's in front of them, and become blind to everything else. To succeed in this profession requires you to turn off the "lawyer" mode sometimes and start thinking about opportunity from the client's perspective. Barry did just that. He...

What biases exist for women in law today? How can they stand out? What is something that men need to understand about women in law? What about senior leadership? What's the balance look like for being authentic vs. putting on a facade and is that even the right gradient? In this episode, we speak with Robin Arnold. She's a partner at Blue Williams, mom of 6 kids, and wife of Nick Arnold (our podcast guest from the previous week's episode). We get into Robin's story of how she ended up in...

Nick Arnold has 15,000+ followers on LinkedIn. He's a partner at Blue Williams. He's a father of 6 kids. He's married to his high school sweetheart who's also a partner at the firm. He has an ever-growing book of business. How does Nick Arnold do it all? In this episode of the podcast, we're getting into a great discussion with Nick Arnold about what it takes to succeed, maintain balance & time and grow in this profession. We talk about: Where to get great content ideas from. How to...

You have great ideas to grow your practice, but it just doesn't feel authentic enough. Has that ever happened to you? You want to be authentic, but you also feel this pull to use systems, plans, templates and everything else that feels "fake". You end up subtly sabotaging your own efforts. What do you do? How do you deal with the dichotomy of being authentic and being deliberate? In this summer mini-episode, we talk about just this topic! Let us know what you think. Listen to the...

Your time is short and you've got more to do than ever before. You know business development is important, but you just can't make yourself do it given all the fires you're fighting. Time is the cause of stress, anxiety, distraction fueled addictions, and sleepless nights.  Right now, time is how you get compensated. It's all about the input. This way of thinking about time limits you from freeing yourself from your work. It prevents you from building your business. It stops you from being...

Why do your business development initiatives fail? Why do you feel burned out from these efforts? Why is branding a lot like starting a workout plan? What's the common link between a day at the spa and selling? These are some of the questions we examine on this episode. We go over the key lessons we have learned from a year of coaching lawyers and accountants from across the world to get better at business development. The surprising lesson: teaching and working through strategies and...

Laura Frederick left her job as in-house counsel at Tesla right before the pandemic to start her own firm in her 50s. As a single mom of 4 kids, she had to make this whole thing work. In this episode of the Build Your Book podcast, we learn about the lessons she learned along the way to not only survive, but thrive in this new paradigm. Along the way, she built a thriving LinkedIn following of 17,000+ lawyers, an online academy, wrote a book. Her secret is simple: start with generosity....

Norman Bacal is a legend in Canadian law. Norm built & led one of Canada’s most prestigious law firms. He was also one of the most successful film finance lawyers in the country. He sat on the board of directors of a Hollywood studio and represented companies like Warner Bros, MGM, Sony, and Lionsgate.  Then, the firm collapsed and he re-invented himself as a bestselling author of Breakdown, speaker, and mentor to young lawyers (or just young professionals starting out). In this...

Nick Cegelski gets what it takes to sell. Sales is not a dirty word to him. The heart of sales is a conversation, it is about questions. In this episode, we break down the entire client sales meeting where you as a lawyer have to sit down and convince the client to retain you. But as you'll soon discover, there is no convincing required if you run the meeting in the right away. In this practically grounded episode, we learn from Nick all the ways that lawyers get in their own way in running...

He's a food entrepreneur, a tech consultant, a lawyer, and just someone who thinks differently. Sukhi is an entrepreneur first who decided to choose himself and skip the line that other lawyers force themselves into. The fact is, anyone can learn to be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are not born, they're made. And despite what you might think, there is less risk than ever before. In this talk, we learn about Sukhi's story, and we get into solid tactics and strategies to help you get started...