Today’s episode is a quick tip from Jim Hacking about the trap that is thinking you’re the only one who can do a task and how this can often lead to burnout. You don’t have to be the best at everything to run a successful firm. Knowing your weaknesses and delegating is the key to success.
Watch the episode here.
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Transcript: Box of Burnout with Jim Hacking
Unknown Speaker
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.
Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. But I’m the only one who can do that job. Hi, I’m Jim hacking of maximum lawyer.com and the maximum lawyer Podcast. Today we’re talking about situations where law firm owners believe that they’re the only ones who can do a task. They think that no one can do it as well as I can they have a problem of what we call terminal uniqueness. They think that they and they alone can do every single task in the office. And where’s this coming from? Jim? Well, the last week, I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations one with one of our member maximum lawyers who owns a law firm, and believes that they are the only one who can do almost every single job I spent about a half hour on the phone with them, listening to all the things that they were doing. And unsurprisingly, they are suffering from burnout. And when we talk about burnout, that is something that many lawyers both in and outside the maximum lawyer community suffer from. And one of the reasons is because we don’t let things go and I offered many suggestions on how to get phone help, how to get paralegal help, how to get law student help, how to get law clerk help, and how to get help with billing. And every single time I talked to this person, they came back to me with a excuse, or a reason why that wouldn’t work. And if you stopped to listen to the overall answers that I was getting, every one of them was pushed back, and people build this box for themselves, they build this box of burnout, and they do it to themselves. And they do it by choice, they might think they don’t have a choice, they might think they’re not making enough money. But the great thing is, we have these things up here. They’re called brains. And they let us think up hacks or tips, or ways to do things better, to let things go. And it’s a real trap to think that only you can do things. I can’t tell you how many times lawyers in our group have said to me, Jim, I need to clone myself. And I’m sure that if you go back in old episodes of the podcast, that I myself talked about wanting to clone myself, and that is the great trap for entrepreneurial lawyers, lawyers and maximum lawyer who think that they can do the job better than anyone else. And maybe the question to ask yourself is maybe 85% is good enough, maybe I don’t need to be doing everything. Maybe if I find someone to do my bookkeeping, that’s going to free me up to do more marketing, and then I’m going to be able to afford to pay for that bookkeeping. And as we talked about on a recent episode of the podcast, that’s a real opportunity that that’s real leverage, that’s when you can get other people doing work for you. And for you up to do the things, one that you like to do the most, and to that make you the most money. And so when I had this conversation with this lawyer, and then again, with my friend, when we went out to lunch, he owns a tax preparation and bookkeeping service. Again, there was all this pushback and all this negativity and all this, No, that’ll never work, that won’t work. For me, I’m different. I’m unique. Only I can do that. And it’s a real trap. And it’s a real problem within our community. And I think that you really need to spend some time learning about the resources that are out there. There’s so many great online services where you can work virtually with people, that it really makes no sense for you to put yourself in that box. And so when I have these conversations with people, my job is to try to get them out of the box to give them a little bit of maneuverability to give them some space. And so just getting one little when one little assignment to law clerk or finding a law student to work for them, or just having someone else come in and sort the mail. These are the kinds of things that there’s no reason why someone with a law degree who’s running a law firm needs to be doing these things. So ask yourself today, what can I let go of what can I do differently? What can I stop doing, and I think it’ll really help improve your outlook and hopefully give you some of that space to get out of the box, that of burnout that you’ve created for yourself. So if you like this video, please be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. We’re going to be adding more content here on a regular basis. And then of course, join us in our Facebook group where there’s an ongoing discussion with hundreds and hundreds of members. It’s sort of taken on a life of its own and we’d love to have you in there with us. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
