Using Imposter Syndrome To Your Advantage with Alexis Austin 496

This post may contain affiliate links, which means that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase using these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Feeling some days like an imposter? We get it! And feel it too. In today’s episode, taken from MaxLawCon 2022, our guest Alexis Austin is teaching us all about using that feeling of imposter syndrome and working with it to make your law firm a better business. 

Not only does Alexis go over HOW you can embrace this feeling that most of us don’t want to feel but she also goes over why it’s a good thing and what we can look for when we feel this way. Hint: it’s a red flag to investigate and improve an area on your business on what she call “the 3 Pillars.” Listen in!

Episode Highlights:

02:44 Flip the script on your imposter feeling syndrome and trade your resource for this … 

04:17 The three pillars of your business and how to hone in …

05:40 The first p – Product as legal services 

07:51 The 2nd pillar – People and what they care about; flexibility, workspace and non-attorney to name a few …

11:16 The 3rd pillar – the Process … let’s make it easier! 

Links Mentioned: 

• UpWork 
• Fivver
• Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business Paperback by Gino Wickman
• The E-Myth by Michael Gerber
• QR Code Generator 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube. 

Connect with Alexis:

• Google
• Website 
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Linkedin
• Twitter
• Youtube

Resources:

• Join the Guild Membership
• Meet us in Austin, TX! The ZAPATHON Automation Workshop featuring Kelsey Bratcher! Become a member to purchase your ticket.
• Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
• Follow us on Instagram
• Join the Facebook Group
• Follow the Facebook Page
• Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcript: Using Imposter Syndrome To Your Advantage with Alexis Austin

Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2022. To keep listening to hear Alexis Austin as we share her talk, using imposter syndrome to your advantage in the three P’s of business. You can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Speaker 2
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Alexis Austin
Hi, good morning, everyone. I think it’s a little ironic that they will put me up as the first breakout when I’m talking about impostor syndrome way to feed into it, Jim, thank you so much for that. I’m here to talk to you all about making sure that you are using your imposter syndrome as your secret weapon rather than your dirty little secret. And disclaimer, this is for people who want to run a business that happens to provide legal services. So if you’re wanting to learn anything about the law, don’t talk to me go somewhere else. Alright, let’s dive right in. Show hands who here has felt like an imposter before? If anyone is not raising their hand? I’m calling you out because you’re in posturing right now. Everyone, at some point in their life has always felt more felt like an imposter in some way. You know, when I first came to max law con three years ago, I thought that I was the dumbest person in the room, people were throwing around these acronyms like KPIs and ROIs and MPT, I’m like, I don’t know what this is. It’s like the military. So when I was sitting in there, and I was listening to all this, one of the things that most impressed me, even though I didn’t know a whole lot, was how vulnerable people were being and just kind of opening up about their law practice. So in keeping in that, I want to be very vulnerable with you guys and let you know, I feel like an impostor right now. I’m shaking all over. I’m very nervous. So if I fall on my face, please just laugh it off. It’s part of the show. While the while we’re going through this, I do want to also open up and tell you, it’s okay to be an impostor. Embrace it. This is our secret weapon. So I’m gonna embrace it hardcore. And tell you some of the stories I was telling myself while I was preparing these slides. It’s gonna be real vulnerable. This is what I think someone who talks at max law con looks like if you guys don’t know, this is Olivia Pope. She is my spirit animal. She’s a powerhouse. She’s got a white hat, her matching outfit, she’s exuding confidence. And then while I was building these slides, this is what I feel like I am. But we’re gonna talk about how we deal with these feelings of impostor syndrome. So even if we look like at with a fancy hat on, we can still have a uber successful law firm practice. So one of my favorite quotes comes from the law man, Bill Romanski. He tells us to flip it like a pancake. When you’re dealing with something, you just flip the script and that’s what I want to do today is we’re gonna flip the script on your impostor feelings syndromes. Our goal as legal entrepreneurs is not to be the jack of all trades. Rather, our goal is to trade our resources for the jacks or the Benjamins. So one of the things that I’ve noticed is when people are talking about impostor syndrome, I’m so glad that Elise talked right before I did, because she was bringing out these feelings of impostor syndrome that we all deal with. But I’ve noticed people kind of talk about it in hushed tones. It’s like in The Guild, you’re talking to someone Oh, yeah, I also have some imposter syndrome. But it’s kind of kept hush hush. And we treat it like our dirty little secret. But what if, instead of it being your dirty little secret, it was actually your secret weapon. My favorite TV show in the whole world. Michael Scott, who is a sage, when it comes to business advice, says that your weaknesses are actually your strengths. Now, there’s a famous quote, it’s been attributed to a lot of people. The idea is that if you are the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. So I guarantee you, I’m in the right room right now. But once we are looking at that, from a perspective of how we grow our firm, the idea is, if you admit what you don’t know, that’s the first step to exponentially growing your law firm. So our job as legal entrepreneurs is not to know everything about our firm or know everything there is to know our job is to accumulate a wealth of knowledge to make sure our firm is operating at its highest and best level. So let’s talk about how using this imposter syndrome works in the three pillars of a business. Now, you may be familiar with this, if not, this has talked about extensively in that TV show the profit but the pillars of a business generally can be thought of as three categories, your product, your people and your process. So if your goal is to build a thriving law practice that runs as a business, you have to be the business owner before you even feel ready to do that, know that you’re not the smartest person in the room and that is completely fine. Once you learn how to really zero in and hone in on your imposter syndrome thoughts. Then you have the target for how you improve and the next area of growth. So what we’re going to do is over the next few minutes here, we’re going to look at how we use the imposter syndrome to our advantage and the three P’s of business for us. We’re looking at the product as legal services that people are our attorneys, our legal staff, and In the process of this system and processes, and it’s me, I’ve got to throw in a little bit of woowoo. Because the whoo is my favorite thing. All it takes to run a successful law firm is acknowledging your vulnerability, and then using that vulnerability to find creative solutions to fill the gaps in your own knowledge. So let’s look at how we do this. Here’s some impostor syndrome thoughts that you may have. Now, most people who open a law firm, generally they’re pretty solid on the product, because they think, Oh, well, I’m an excellent person in criminal law, I can go run a business, no problem. So I’m not gonna spend too much time on this. But just for a couple of people, if you’re just starting out, or if you’re opening a new practice area, let’s analyze some of these imposter syndromes and see how we can target them in to actually fill in the holes in our business. So if your thought is, well, I don’t have the legal expertise. Number one, most likely you do because you went to law school, that’s all you really need to know. And if you’re Kim Kardashian, you don’t even need that. You can fill in this hole with things like CLAS, which is the traditional route, or you could do things I’m going to use criminal law as an example because that’s what I know. If you say, Well, I don’t know all of criminal law, but I know DUIs niche down, just focus in on that one thing that you can do really well. The other thing is, there are a number of resources, especially in this group, in particular for how you build a practice, a couple of books come to mind. Dustin coons wrote a fantastic book on how to practice criminal law and do your processes and procedures and what to expect. John Fisher wrote a great book on building a PII practice, read these books, gain this information and knowledge for yourself, because plagiarism is encouraged in legal world. The other thing is you can team up with more experienced attorneys to learn if you’re having an impostor thought like you don’t have the time to do all the legal research. First of all, as a legal entrepreneur, time should never be your issue. That’s just a lie that you’re telling yourself. If you’re looking for different things, you can always use law clerk dot legal, there’s a lot of good resources on there. You can use contract attorneys, for example, when I first opened my firm, I had nothing. So I brought in some attorneys who were looking for work and said, Look, I can’t pay you a W two, but I can give you a contract where you get 2530 33% of the cases you work, I’ll pay you 299 You go do this work, let’s make it happen. There are always creative solutions to building out these problems. You can also do things hiring law students, law students are gold. They are so desperate to learn. They’re so desperate to work hard, and they come up with some really creative things

Becca Eberhart
is apathy on his back if you’re new around here, this app Athan is the OG automation workshop at this next exclusive guild event, we’re partnering up with maximum lawyers good friend Kelsey Bratcher. To bring you a day and a half automation workshop. The idea of automation is simple, right? Identify a repeatable pattern of tasks and then use technology. So that business process can happen without you. But setting up that technology can be daunting, time consuming, and even have a steep learning curve. Join us in person and you’ll create automations on site that will start working for you before you even leave Austin, join the guild today and grab your ticket at max law events.com.

Alexis Austin
Looking now at the pillar of people, these are some impostor syndrome thoughts that people may have. So let’s just hit these again, I’m going to try to talk as fast as I can, because I’ve got a lot of slides. And I like to say a lot. But if you’re talking about money, we were talking just about that earlier, if your issue is money. First of all, it’s never money, time and money are never the issue. The issue is you’re not thinking creatively enough to figure out how to fill this imposter syndrome hole. So in today’s market, a lot of people when I was just talking with Elise about this a few minutes ago, people don’t care as much about salaries as they do flexibility, appreciation of their time, different environments. You don’t have to limit yourself either to just your geographic area. Now with COVID opening things up, you can do all kinds of work with other people from across the country. I also really encourage people when you’re looking at the people that are non attorney, people in your firm look for non traditional hires, you do not have to use a paralegal with 25 years experience. Go to Chili’s, get a server who knows how to deal with the customers after she spills a whole bunch of lemonade on them and can still make them super happy. And that person is going to be a rockstar paralegal for you. Once you train her on your systems and processes and cost maybe a third as much, she’s also going to one it a lot more and work a lot harder. The other way to do it super easy. Increase your prices, I guarantee most of you are not charging enough for the services that you offer. Test it out, say hey, this is what our price is just see what people say. If you are exuding that confidence that you know you have and if you’re not fake it till you make it because imposter syndrome is going to be used for your secret weapon in that way too. You can increase your prices and then you’ve got the revenue to bring on more people. Now, if your thought is, I’m not a good manager, I’m not a good manager. I’m just gonna tell you guys that right now. There are a couple of things you can do. Number one, you can learn, which is always a great idea. A lot of people in our group here like to follow the Eos, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, it’s from the book traction. The partner book to that is rocket fuel, pick it up great read, it’s really helpful. If you’re like me, and you say, No, I really don’t want to manage then you just get your fiance to join you in the law firm and then he can run it for you super easy. But really what you can do is you can bring in promote from within you can say okay, I have this paralegal who’s doing a fantastic job she has experienced managing. I’ll have her managing the staff. Another thing you can do is bringing in outside help. So things like fractional C suite members are really helpful. I utilize a fractional CMO. Shout out to my man out there. I also have a fractional CFO that way you can bring in the C suite bringing the knowledge of other people have experts in that area. So you don’t have to know everything about the finances. Speaking of finances, if you’re saying I have no idea how to balance the books, or how to market, you don’t have to, one of the best things that you can do is look for people who are specialists in that area. Encourage them to come into your firm, find creative ways to bring these people in, and then you’re going to have the experts in the field working in your firm. Again, maximum lawyer is a great place to find these people to put in a big group ask for help. That’s how I found all my people. You can also look at different companies. There are a whole bunch of different companies out there that offer fractional services for marketing, you can look at technology to do this. Some of my favorite marketing technologies are HootSuite and buffer. You just put it in there, schedule it out. And then your social media is scheduled out for the next week or a month you don’t have to think about it. I was super easy tip. If you’re looking for marketing, get a millennial who’s in school who loves social media, who knows what they’re doing, just give him a couple dollars a day and say hey, run with this, they’re gonna love it needed up. And then you’ve got great marketing that speaks to a key demographic, the millennials who no one understands even if you are one. If you’re concerned about processes, the systems the woowoo, those kinds of imposter thoughts. Let’s knock through these really quickly. If your imposter thought is saying, Okay, I don’t know how to use technology, you don’t have to. All you have to do is either have access to YouTube because you can learn all kinds of information on YouTube. You can work with someone who understands systems. Kelsey Bratcher is one of the guys that I really think is excellent at this. He’s going to be talking later on at the conference. But you can also do your own kind of integration. Zapier is my favorite product out there ever. It connects everything to everything is pretty easy. Even for a lawyer to understand you can connect all these systems together. You can also hire contractors, these are some great websites Upwork and Fiverr. You can go on and hire people to do one offs to build out a system I had someone on Upwork build me out a KPI dashboard once I learned what that acronym meant. And it’s really really helpful just for one offs. There are ways to do it. Even if you don’t have a full time system manager. If your impostor thought is why don’t believe I’m going to have the success that other people are having. This is a gem. Woo, woo moment. Follow Jim, follow everything he talks about in the podcast, listen to podcasts all the time. The biggest hindrance to your success is believing this crap like Lisa was talking about earlier, her inner Eloise, you don’t have to listen to that you can say okay, this is where my imposter thought is leading me. I’m now pinpointing this and saying, Okay, this is my target for where I’m gonna grow. When I first up my business, and even now, every single morning, I do an hour of self development, I’m listening to books, podcasts, whatever, it takes me an hour from waking up, to getting out to my car to get ready. So I might as well use that time wisely. Even if you don’t retain it all it’s going to sink in and really start to settle on your brain. All right, if your thought is I have no idea where to start. Tada, you start here, you look and say, Where am I most uncomfortable? What is the thing that I have the most insecurity about, and that’s the thing you fix. The beauty with the imposter syndrome being used as your secret weapon is you don’t have to know everything. All you have to do is have enough vulnerability with yourself to say okay, I know that this is an issue instead of just dreading it, I’m going to jump in there and fix it. Also some helpful books, there are a number of helpful books that kind of get you started on this process. If you don’t know where to start, My favorites are traction and E Myth. Any of Michael Gerber’s books are great, but E Myth, not the E Myth. For attorneys. It’s not as good just regular old E Myth or E Myth revisited. Just get in dig in there and really embrace this, you’ve got to confront and own your imposter syndrome every single time you find an area where you feel uncomfortable, because that is your next area for growth. That is where you are subconsciously pointing yourself to really explode your business. Now, I want you to think about not being the keeper of all knowledge. Number one, my team is so tired of me saying this. But I always say well, what if I’m hit by a bus, you might get hit by a bus. It’s super morbid, but Jim did a great job being morbid this morning. So I’m going to keep that going. If you get hit by a bus, your law firm can still survive. You don’t want to be the keeper of the knowledge, you want to be the keeper of the people who have the knowledge. So if you give me pushback, and you say, Okay, that’s great, Alexis, way to go. But what if these people steal all my stuff? Who cares? You did it first, you did it better, you’re always gonna have a different take. The other thing is, if you’re doing this appropriately, and you’re pinpointing these areas, what I want you to do is I want you to concentrate on finding an expert in that area. So if you’re finding an expert in marketing, an expert in finance, an expert in bookkeeping, no single one of them on their own, can build the law firm, you were the one that owns all these experts. And I don’t mean owning them like the person but you’re owning the ideas that they’re developing. So you are the reason that they are all coming together. As long as you’re siloing out your experts, you’re going to have a successful law firm, and people aren’t gonna be able to just run off with your ideas because you’ve created a collection of experts in your firm. So here’s my challenge to you if you’re here at max law 2022. I’m assuming you want to be a successful business owner, not just a solo attorney who’s dragging In all the time never getting any kind of traction. You can spend years struggling to figure out everything that you need to know you can come to conference after conference, read everything in the world. Or you can realize that your imposter syndrome is actually your secret weapon for success. So do you want to be the smartest person in the room or the most successful? Here’s another point, I really want to point out. If you are going to take my advice, which I strongly suggest you do, and you hire all these smart people, don’t go micromanaging them. This is my favorite quote from Steve Jobs. If you’re going to hire all of these people, and you’re going to have them building this law firm of your dreams, don’t then go in and tell the smart people what to do. You hire smart people, because they’re smarter than you. Because you’re embracing the imposter syndrome. And you want to make sure that you have people who understand what’s going on much more than you. Our goal as law firm owners is to be the dumbest person in the room. So if you take one thing away from this talk, I want you to really think about anytime you’re feeling like an imposter, that’s a golden opportunity for you to find that expert to plug that hole. And it doesn’t have to be someone that you pay on a W two basis. There are a number of different ways that you can find people to plug the holes and make sure that you have your firm moving towards success without you having to know everything. I know this was really a quick and dirty kind of jumping and figuring out ideas. The key thing is to look at, here’s where I’m feeling, lack, here’s where I don’t feel comfortable. That then is the immediate area where you need to work. I’m always happy as well to give you any information help me figure anything out, like how to build this cool QR code. Because those are needs. It’s a QR code, you go to QR code or something like that. I have to look it up. You just look free QR code and input your information. This one is actually it’s called Hi Hello, you pay for it as an app, you can do an annual thing or you can do a free one. You get on your and your new information. If you want your cool face in it, you have to pay for it. If you want just a regular code, it’s free. Alrighty, thank you guys so much for your time.

Speaker 2
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com Have a great week and catch you next time.