When a young business owner asked Amazon founder Jeff Bezos what the secret to building a successful business was, his advice was curt:
“Focus on the things that don’t change.”
Think about how Bezos’ advice might apply to you.
For starters, consider…
If you want to streamline your law practice and make it easier to manage you need to make things as simple as possible.
But this is often harder than you’d expect.
I’m guessing you understand how hard it is…because the legal system is inherently complicated.
So is technology.
Honestly, these days everything seems to gravitate towards complexity. Which means you have to work extra hard to create simplicity in your practice.
Less Change = Easier Life
Bezos advises focusing on things that don’t change in your business to keep it from becoming unwieldy or overly complex.
And maybe it goes without saying…but Bezos would probably say the things you focus on must matter a lot. They shouldn’t be trivial.
Obviously.
So what things in your business matter a lot and don’t change?
Well how about the kind of clients you most want to work with? That focus shouldn’t change week to week or year to year.
(If it does you’ll make your life harder)
Or maybe a non-changing thing should be how you onboard new clients.
And that should be something you systematize. Then it shouldn’t change, unless you need to optimize the process.
Any system that you fully refine should not change. Or not change much, nor that often.
Successful business owners obsess about efficiency, but especially efficiency that improves a vital part of the business.
Systematizing leads to efficiency and it eliminates chaos and random undesirable change.
That’s why I repeatedly exhort solo and small firm lawyers to work on creating systems.
Systems are the vital key to simplifying and streamlining your practice.
Does it take effort to create and refine systems? Yes, it does.
But what’s the alternative?
Before you answer that, think about this quote from Henry David Thoreau: “Our life is frittered away by detail…simplify, simplify.”
If that resonates with you…
Maybe you should print it out and put it by your computer. That might really help you improve your business.
Use technology to radically improve your law practice by focusing on the few core elements that have the biggest impact.
