September 2009

I’ve previously blogged about the fact that potential employers are searching social media to discover what people have posted prior to hiring them (and in some cases after they’re on the payroll). Tom has discussed the fact that photos posted on the Internet may contain metadata that includes date, time and even a GPS location of where the photos were taken. We’ve also explained how Certified Legal Nurse Consultants can use deep-web search engines to locate information about an expert or party who is not generally available on the Internet. I’ve also talked about whether legal nurse consultants (or parties involved in a lawsuit) should be blogging or texting about legal cases. Even your cashless toll-pay tag and the information from the computer that runs your car’s motor can provide relevant information. Now it’s time to tie it all together and discuss the potential discoverability of all those postings a plaintiff or defendant has made to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other similar sites.

In a lawsuit, almost all communications concerning the suit or its subject matter made by a party to anyone other than their attorney (and in some cases their spouse) are potentially discoverable. These social media communications may be used as a statement against interest, evidence of wrongdoing or character evidence. In the old days, paper records in the custody of a party were the primary source of discovery, but today discovery extends to all sorts of electronic communication.

In any case where the information may be relevant to a plaintiff or defendant, the social media communications of the parties may be discoverable and as Joe Friday used to say, “can and will be used against them.” There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in information generally available to the public. There may be such an expectation for information posted to a “protected” group on Facebook or Twitter where only “Friends” or “Followers” may see the info – but this hasn’t been fully hashed out by the courts. Two famous cases used photos posted on Facebook and MySpace to aid in sentencing of defendants.

The savvy Certified Legal Nurse Consultant should recommend to all attorney-clients that communications or other information relevant to the suit (or likely to lead to the discovery of relevant information) be requested from relevant parties (plaintiff or defense) through interrogatories, requests for production and requests for admission. This would include:

• The email addresses of all email accounts (business and personal) used by a party before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit;

• The domain names of any websites (business and personal) owned or operated by a party before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit;

• The user names and account information for any social networking sites that a party belonged to or interacted with (such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit;

• The domain names or address of any blogs owned, operated or contributed to by a party before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit regarding the subject matter of the lawsuit;

• The domain names of any blogs posted to, or comments posted to any blog or similar website(s), before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit;

• Whether or not any information posted by a party was posted to a “password protected,” “by invitation only” or otherwise restricted website or portion thereof before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit;

• The account names and telephone numbers of any cell phone or other telecommunications account used or belonging to a party before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit;

• Names of any web browsers used or belonging to a party before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit;

• Names and addresses for any Internet service provider (ISP) used by a party, before, during and after the period relevant to the lawsuit.

An attorney may have to request copies of some of this data pulled from back-ups of the relevant computer systems and may need to request access to the computers of a party to obtain this information.

Finally, think about how you personally use social media. Anything and everything you post online, whether it’s a review of a product, a critique of someone or something, pictures of you, an email you send, a blog you comment on, etc., all are likely to be discoverable and may end up being used as evidence in cases where they are relevant.

If you use your social media wisely it shouldn’t be an issue – but as illustrated by the cases above, not everyone is likely to think before they post.

Success Is Inside!

Any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who uses Microsoft Outlook^® for email has probably looked at her inbox and wondered if there is any way to separate the important messages from the rest of them. If you’re not using the “junk mail” filter and have not created filtering rules, the answer is a resounding “No.” One thing I’ve learned though, is that you can designate different display colors for the people who email you. This allows you to scan your inbox and quickly identify the emails you have coming in by the person or category you’ve assigned to them.

Let me give you an example. Any email I receive from Vickie, I consider important (even if it isn’t). I also know her favorite color is turquoise – but since turquoise is not a choice, I simply open Outlook, click on an email from Vickie in my inbox. Then I click Tools, Organize and in the window that pops open, I click Using Colors. The default selection is red so I click the drop down menu and change email from Vickie to “teal” (yeah, I know it’s not the same as turquoise). Next I click the Apply Color button and then close the box with the “X” in the top right corner. Now all email I get from Vickie will be in bold teal until I’ve read it and it changes to normal teal.

This step makes it so easy to quickly scan your Outlook inbox and see what’s coming in from which attorney-clients. Think about the exciting possibilities for your legal nurse consulting business (and amusement)! Your most prolific client could be colored green for money, your favorite client purple for royalty and your CLNC^® subcontractors with teal (because they’ve been trained by Vickie Milazzo). One nice feature is that you can change colors at any time. You are limited to the colors that are available and some are a little too bright, but this makes it easy to quickly organize your Outlook inbox.

Another quick organizational tip for your inbox is to use what Microsoft calls “Rules.” An example of a rule is that all ezines or newsletters you receive might be automatically routed to a subfolder in your inbox titled “Newsletters.” If you receive Lolcats from your mom (despite telling her to send them to your personal email address), you could create a subfolder called Mom-Spam and direct her email directly there. That way as the email arrives, Outlook steers it into the Mom-Spam folder and your inbox stays clear for important email (like announcements from Vickie Milazzo Institute).

Before you create any rules, you first have to create your subfolders. Left click on your inbox then go to the top left corner of your Outlook and click on File, New, Folder and name your subfolder. Next create rules using the Tools, Rules and Alerts selection. Click New Rule and work your way through the “rules wizard.” Select a folder into which Outlook will automatically send any email received from a particular sender. They can run automatically or manually and are another terrific way to organize your Outlook inbox.

Here’s the deal though, you have to be diligent, and I do mean diligent, about checking your subfolders for new mail. Outlook nicely shows the number of unread email messages next to each subfolder, but I like to keep email I have to act on as “unread” and then once I’ve read it, if I need to keep it, I’ll mark it as “read” and move it into a subfolder. This tells me I have X number of emails in my inbox that require action on my part. Subfolders for active email don’t work for me (I use them as a filing system) but might work for you. If they do, color me green with envy. Good luck with the rules – Microsoft’s help function is pretty thorough, but rules can be problematic (that’s why I just use colors).

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Referral is my favorite marketing strategy, not just because it’s free, but because it works more effectively than any other marketing strategy I’ve ever used.

When I started my legal nurse consulting business in 1982, my hospital salary was $28,000 and I had a mortgage to pay, so with only $100 in my bank account, I didn’t have a lot of marketing dollars.

Networking led me to my first attorney-client, and referral business from that attorney and subsequent attorney-clients was the marketing strategy I used to grow a multi-million dollar business. Referral, however, is not a gift. Referral business is something you have to earn.

It is the result of providing excellent work product and excellent service. It is the most powerful and most inexpensive marketing strategy you can implement. Attorneys trust the opinions of other attorneys.

Put these referral strategies into action:

• Ask every attorney-client for referrals. Be specific and ask for the names of attorneys they know who handle medical-related cases.
• Request letters of recommendation from your attorney-clients to include in your promotional package. The attorney might even request that you write the letter for his signature, or you can suggest this possibility if you know the attorney is extremely busy. If you do write the letter of recommendation, interview the attorney to capture his glowing comments and have the attorney sign an original document so you can produce copies.
• Take your attorney-clients to lunch and ask for referrals.
• Invite an attorney-client and three to five of his peers to an event.

Ask for referrals when the timing is right, i.e., when the attorney is raving about your work product. Assure your attorney-client of your commitment to future cases. Request names, not just future referrals. Express appreciation for referrals through thank-you cards, lunch or a free case screening.

Follow through on the names provided and contact each referred attorney. When you follow up, mention specifically what the referring attorney suggested you could help the attorney-prospect with – defending or prosecuting a products liability case, for example. Invoke the referring attorney’s name every opportunity you get. Use information learned about the attorney-prospect in all communications.

Focus on setting up an interview with the attorney to educate him about the benefits you offer. Always try to get your foot in the door. The odds of going home with a case in hand are much stronger if you see the attorney-prospect in person. Never try to sell yourself over the telephone – an interview is your goal.

Systemize the referral process and soon you’ll be begging your attorney-clients to keep your name to themselves.

Success Is Inside!

I like to joke with Tom that, “Sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit.” Right now I’ve just finished sitting at my desk, not thinking but gazing at a gift that my nephews gave to me for Christmas a couple of years ago.

It’s a gift that has rapidly become one of my favorites – a digital photo frame. Normally I’m not a fan of digital gifts (especially if I’m getting them) because they represent two learning curves – first, Tom has to learn how to use it (and he gets noisy about stuff like that), and second, learning how to use it myself (and suffering through Tom’s rapid-fire training).

This time though I absolutely fell in love with this gift from the minute I opened it. I love photos and, if you’re like me, you have lots of digital photos of your trips, your family, your friends, your pets (or plants) and anything else that passes in front of your camera. And, if you’re really like me, these photos stay in your camera or sit on your computer’s hard drive, never to be viewed by anyone (until Tom comes and moves them off my hard drive to create more space for my music). With this simple gift to yourself you’ve got the opportunity to turn those pixels into fun and instant renewal as you relive your favorite memories.

Vickie and Tom in Bhutan

First thing you do is create a directory or file folder on your computer called “My Photo Frame” or something similar. Then spend about 15 minutes a day pouring through your old photos from vacations long-past. Use the preview feature in Windows^® to view the photos. You can copy the photos you like directly into the new “My Photo Frame” folder. Once you’ve gone through all of your photos, it’s time to pull out your old albums (or storage boxes) to see if there are any printed photos you want to scan and add to your growing collection.

Next, open the photos with Microsoft Office Picture Manager or any other photo editing software you have and edit, crop and save the photos in a lower resolution. This isn’t hard to learn and if you mess one up you can always copy another over it and try again.

Once your photos are saved to the “My Photo Frame” folder, it’s time to toss out the memory chip that came with the frame. It’ll be the cheapest memory chip with the smallest amount of memory the manufacturer could find. Next go to Amazon.com and buy a 1 to 8 GB memory chip (or larger) that’s compatible with your frame. Memory chips are so cheap you can buy two. Your computer should have a slot for the chip, if not you can buy a cheap USB adapter that’ll hold the chip so you can load your photos onto it.

Now plug the chip into your computer and drag your photos onto the chip. You may have to consult the dreaded documentation to see if there’s a special naming convention for the photo display folder or directory. I like to copy the photos to the chip, not move them so that if something happens, I can reload them over and over again. After you’ve loaded the photos, pop the chip into the frame, plug in the electrical adapter and turn it on.

Often there are all sorts of settings, like how long to display a photo, whether to display them in random order, automatic on-off, etc. All those are up to you. What matters is that you’ve just created a constantly changing stream of memories. Each time we take photos, I select some favorites to drop into my frame’s file. I’ve even converted at least some of those boxed-up photos into an assortment of fun.

This is the perfect gift for a parent, grandparent, sister or even a great attorney-client. You may even want to buy one for yourself and capture your CLNC^® business with photos of your favorite attorney-clients and anyone else who has helped you grow your CLNC^® business.

Success Is Inside!

Here in Houston and the Gulf Coast region we just passed the first anniversary of Hurricane Ike. Tom, some of our staff and I were in Philadelphia teaching a CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Program, not only during the storm’s strike but also during the aftermath. For days (or weeks in some cases) people were without electricity, businesses and offices were closed, traffic lights were not working and Houstonians were scattered throughout various evacuation points.

We’d left for Philly earlier than normal because of the storm. We caught one of the last available flights from Houston and then the airport closed until well after the storm. Good thing we’d thought to get out when we did. Before we left Houston, we prepared not only the office but our home. Despite the short time period between preparation and evacuation, we were able not only to pack for the seminar but also to do a staged shutdown of the office, put our emergency plans into effect and also prepare the house.

Why were we able to do this so easily? Back in 2005, Houston had a major scare facing Hurricane Rita. Coming just one year after Katrina, a category 5 storm roaring towards Houston drove the majority of Houston’s and Galveston’s populations onto the freeways (remember the photos?) reducing them to parking lots. Tom and I evacuated for Rita to Austin at the last minute, missing all the traffic issues. But Rita was such a fizzle for Houston (luckily), we were home the next day before the FEMA helicopters were even lifting off from their emergency staging areas at the Astrodome.

As part of our preparation for Rita, I had the Vickie Milazzo Institute staff develop a shut down plan for the office, set up telephone call chains for staff, determined what we needed for backups and issued laptops, cell phones, etc. to key personnel to ensure business continuity (as best we could). Much of this was not developed from scratch because we had met after Katrina and did our best to prepare for such events. It turned out that we’d done a fair-to-middling job. Any nurse will tell you that working in a theoretical world you don’t always fully prepare for real world disasters. Since Rita was a bit of a fire-drill we didn’t have to face the realities of the shortcomings in our plan.

Getting ready for Ike and in Ike’s aftermath, we learned there were things we hadn’t thought of or corrected after Rita that turned into issues (such as our telephone service provider’s staff evacuating for five days leaving us no way to transfer phone service to an active line or FEMA taking over the Blackberry bandwidth for emergency personnel and blocking out businesses). But at least we had a plan to start from and work with. We did our best and were back in the office, functioning, as soon as the building had electrical power two days after the storm.

After things were back to normal, we sat down and did a plus/delta analysis of our performance. We discussed what we did well, what we did poorly and what we needed to do differently next time. We also determined what changes we needed to make to our plans and operations. And, we began planning for the next unforeseen emergency.

This brings me around to the point of this blog. Are you prepared for an emergency in your office? I don’t care if you run your legal nurse consulting business from home. When Tom and I were first married, a serious fire in the condo building next to ours came within a few minutes of jumping buildings. We were the only family in our building actively moving our business and personal items (computers, clothing, records, etc.) to our cars in case they evacuated our building or the fire jumped buildings. If you work from an office there are probably sprinklers, etc. but all they’ll do is soak your work and make some of it unusable (computers, files, etc.).

When we were in New York City in 2003 for the Northeast Blackout, we learned firsthand to carry a prepaid phone card because cell towers and their backup batteries started failing after about four hours without power. I’ve been in areas affected by forest and wildfires and have seen the effects of forced evacuations on unprepared populations. Having grown up in New Orleans, I know to keep water, canned foods and batteries around (and change those batteries out) in hurricane season. We can all learn from our experiences and put that learning into place.

Every Certified Legal Nurse Consultant should have a business continuity plan that covers unforeseen emergencies to prevent damage to, or loss of, your home or office. This should cover everything from telephone continuity, computer and data backup, client file and other records storage and clothing (your business suits). You should also have a plan for your family. The Texas State Bar Association offers a basic plan for business continuation that can be adapted to any legal nurse consulting business. Download it and review it for yourself. It’s a thought provoking document for any legal nurse consultant – whether you live in a hurricane threatened area or not.

We’re all nurses, we can write care plans, we can write policies and procedures and we can put them into place. Plan on doing just that for your legal nurse consulting business. Once you create a plan, don’t just file it in a cabinet or drawer, test it and revise it. Review it annually and make changes as necessary. Make sure all your staff and/or family are aware of their duties under the plan. Make sure you know your priorities. Panic is the result of lack of training and preparation. Be prepared to move decisively and you’ll be one step ahead of any crisis and one of the first back in business afterwards.

Success Is Inside – when you’re prepared!

In last Tuesday’s Tech Tip I discussed the need for strong or “hardened” passwords. As I’ve said before, and will say again today, too many people use the same too simple password for too many website logins too many times. In short, a lot of legal nurse consultants are using the same password for PayPal^®, eBay^® and First Crushing Debt Bank online banking sites as you use for your gmail. It’s time for this to end – today.

Before we get to passwords, do one of these two things to remember them:

1. Purchase a password management program like Roboform, install it and get ready to start storing the passwords you’ll create later; or
2. Get out a yellow (or white) legal pad and start making a list of all the sites you visit and their new passwords (we’ll create new ones next). Here’s a helpful hint – when you make your list of passwords, don’t type it and keep it on any computer connected to the Internet. Instead, keep it in a folder in a file clearly marked so that when you pass onto that final National Alliance of Certified Legal Nurse Consultants Conference in the sky, your family will be able to find those passwords and clear out all your online banking accounts, take down your website and then cancel your SpaceBook, MyFace and online dating accounts, etc.

Okay, you’re all ready so let’s start. The key to any good password is that it can’t be so simple that it’s easy to guess. I know that’s not a real earth-shattering hint, but let me explain. Most people use simple passwords such as pet names, wedding/divorce dates or even (are you ready for this?) names spelled backwards. These are not hardened passwords.

Hardened passwords are a minimum of 8-characters long and include upper and lower case alphanumeric characters as well as special characters. Avoid using actual words or names. If you do, try and think like Prince and mix up numbers for letters as in LotusFlow3r. This is also known as leetspeak (many password cracking programs will try this).

A better way is to use a nonsense phrase that’s easy for you to remember and that also contains symbols, numbers and letters, for example: 98EC!#ab. Just don’t get lazy and only use the symbols and numbers that occupy the same key.

If you can remember long phrases and there’s no character limit in the password box, try using a password phrase and separate the words with characters such as lines: My_Mother_Drives_A_Passat (you’d never guess that one because she really drives a Rambler). You could even take a phrase from your favorite book (we*dont*rent*pigs), comic strip (Curse!You!Red!Baron) or graphic novel (Who+Watches+the+Watchmen).

Some Certified Legal Nurse Consultants will take a sentence and remember just the first letters from that sentence: “I must make a stronger password: today.” becomes “imMaSP:2D.” You can also combine words that are meaningful to you but not well known such as your high school mascot plus your nursing school: 606CATzA&m (Bobcats + A&M).

If you’re a legal nurse consultant working in an environment where you must change your passwords every couple of months (which is a really good idea) you can put a date in the password along with your nonsense word. SeptugenMom2009May becomes June2009SeptugenMom and keep changing it forward or backwards.

However you choose to create new passwords for your legal nurse consulting business-related websites, personal websites or even your computer login, don’t use simple variations (one letter or symbol change) on every website and never, ever tell anyone your password – especially when you’re using your cell-phone voice. If you do you’re just asking for trouble.

When you do hit an advanced age and begin forgetting your passwords, that legal pad really comes in handy (no master password to remember). You could also use a company that can help you unlock files that you’ve password protected and forgotten. (I’ve heard some are even trustworthy.)

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Here at the CLNC^® Certification Program in Philadelphia one of the students asked me, “Where do you get the energy to teach six straight days? Do you just wake up like that?” I had to chuckle before I answered. That’s because I don’t pop out of bed like a piece of toast. Tom jokes that he has to “shuck the oyster” each morning (being from New Orleans I like the simile) to get me out from under the covers (I have been known to burrow with the best of them). But, once I’m up, I’m a woman on fire and I burn white-hot until the end of the day.

I often say, “We are what we eat.” You can’t feed a thoroughbred horse potato chips and then ask him to win the Preakness. But there’s more to energy than food.

After two cups of healthy green tea interspersed with that bowl of Fage Greek yogurt mixed with ground flax seed, it’s off to the gym three times a week for a butt-kicking workout (usually it’s my butt that gets kicked) to lift some free weights (dumb bells and barbells) to build bone density as well as muscle mass. I mix in some aerobic exercise or a brisk walk to keep my heart healthy alternated with some yoga (to stretch myself literally and figuratively) and you’ve got my morning regimen. I know some of you are already tired after reading this, but this is a look into what I do, before I start my day. I know that I cover a lot of ground between 4:00am and 8:30am, and I have to. My workday starts early and it ends when it ends, whenever that may be. If I don’t work out at the beginning of the day, chances are I won’t get to at the end of the day.

I haven’t always eaten healthy. New Orleans is known for fried foods, French bread, celebrating funerals with donuts and putting condensed milk and Hershey’s chocolate on our snowballs. In short, I’m lucky to have survived my childhood without being larger than a size 2 (just kidding). I had to learn to eat healthy on my own. It wasn’t something that was taught, much less encouraged.

So, I understand that for some of you it may be hard to figure out how to exercise, how to eat healthy and how to accomplish this as you juggle work, children, your spouse and other obligations. But here’s my point, you can make those excuses into a crutch that supports your bad habits or you can use them as a reason to turn your family into something better.

Trust me, having dietary issues can easily be compounded by family. My sister has two sons and a husband who won’t eat anything green (except Jello). One of my godchildren thinks a complete meal comes with a toy in the box. If my husband Tom planned the meals we’d be eating a whole lot more cheeseburgers than we do.

Someone has to be responsible for your nutrition and guess what – that’s you. If you want to have the energy to run your CLNC^® business, your family and your life, you’re going to have to make some changes. Start with the simple ones. Pack a lunch instead of eating from the cafeteria or meal machine at work (it’s all fat, salt and sugar). Snack on celery instead of those darn tasty potato chips.

Take a little time each evening to prepare a meal for dinner and prep some stuff for the next day while you’re at it. One of my friends involves her daughters in cleaning and bagging the veggies for snacks. Freeze your healthy leftovers for later in the week.

It’s not hard to make time to take care of yourself and your family once you get into the habit and it’ll only get easier. But like the journey of a thousand miles that begins with a single step, the healthy life begins with a single action. Make one healthy promise to yourself today and then keep it. Once you’ve mastered that, make and take the next one. Set some rewards for milestones to make it fun and before you know it you’ll have the energy and the inclination to seize your own day, and make time for all that marketing to attorneys you’ve been putting off. Enjoy watching your legal nurse consulting business soar.

Success Is Inside!

On a recent trip to Paris, I had the chance to meet up with a young friend, international artist and filmmaker Edward Silhol. We met at his new studio on a hilltop with one of the best-kept secret views of the city I’ve ever seen. He’d just moved in and was still getting it ready so I felt privileged to be one of his first visitors.

I met Edward in Burgundy a couple of years ago. Since then, I’ve walked and Metro’d over half of Paris to see his art in galleries and have cruised the far reaches of the Internet to see the private portions of his website (it’s so secret I can’t disclose it, although I would love to).

Edward’s talents and love of art are far more impressive to me because you can sit with Edward in a café and drink (too many) French coffees or bottles of wine (a personal record that still surprises not only me, but anyone who knows me) and never, ever run out of things to talk about. From FaceBook to the French Revolution, from Impressionists to Indian food or where to find the best darn baguette in Paris (it really was) you can sit and talk, or just be with Edward. Enlightening conversation is a trait that more Americans should take the time to embrace.

I’ve been privileged to meet many well-known artists, but what strikes me most about Edward is that he’s got an incredible understanding of what it takes to be an artist. And Edward’s sage insight is exactly what it takes to achieve legendary success as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. I want you to hear it from Edward himself so check out this video with Edward and me at his new studio in Paris. By the way, we did turn off the video at the café – yes, some things are meant to be private and don’t worry – Tom was right there by my side (red wine and all).

Success Is Inside!

Other than tech factotum and chief PITA, I play one other major role in our office. As network admin for Vickie Milazzo Institute, I can make or break passwords at will. A few clicks in Active Directory (AD) and your password is now one of my choosing.

It’s a fact of admin life that you can often look around a user’s cubicle, office or toilet stall and guess their password within three tries. Sometimes it’s simple. I just look behind a photo of their spouse or pet or in a drawer for a hidden sticky note with the password that should have been memorized and not written down. That’s pretty embarrassing for the user (and even more so when I remind them that the cleaning krewe could do the same thing). If I can’t guess the password (and I’ll sometimes resort to a little social engineering while I search so it’s not that tough), I play a computer-admin joke. The joke’s set-up is to change the password in AD to a new one of my choice and then go bet the user (lunch at Chipotle maybe) that I can guess their password. Once the bet’s made, I have the user log off and then I log on with my new password. It usually shocks most users. I then force a password change so that they have to reselect a less “easy” password. They never realize that I really didn’t guess their password. My password game is almost as much fun as switching the user’s default font for one that’s upside down or backwards. (Yeah, I know – get a real life.)

My point here is that most users, and probably most legal nurse consultants (but not Certified Legal Nurse Consultants) have simple passwords and use the same password and variations of that password for almost all their log ins. This includes their gmail, Yahoo! mail and other webmail accounts, eBay, Facebook and probably Amazon.com (not to mention PayPal). Webmail accounts are one of the most lucrative sources for crooks. Why? Because once broken into, these accounts often contain email with embedded links to other financial and online banking information. If someone hacks your webmail, they can often hijack your financial data.

Knowing your email address and using well known deep-web search engines like Spokeo.com, I can track instances of your email address throughout the web. If, as part of your legal nurse consulting business or just your personal life, you write reviews on sites that use your email as the user id or login, or if you keep a public wish list, your accounts will be laid out like penny candy in a dime store. That means I can hack your shopping too, if you used that same simple password.

How do Certified Legal Nurse Consultants prevent this type of hacking? Of three possible methods, only one is easy. The hardest (the one that nobody, and I mean nobody, even admins don’t like) is to maintain hardened passwords. Hardened passwords contain at least eight characters that include upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. In a later blog, I’ll give some tips on creating hardened passwords. For now, don’t use anything simple like your birthday, pet’s name, social security, driver’s license number or combination of these or anything else that directly relates to you.

The next solution is the easiest and least secure. It should only be used by legal nurse consultants who have a computer dedicated to their business that does not travel. This means a homebound computer whose only risk of loss is burglary (or being tossed out when it acts up). If you’ve got one of these dedicated computers, you can use your Firefox or Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser to remember your passwords. Both browsers will prompt you to store passwords that you enter for any website. This free solution works pretty well. It’s when you forget a password that you run into trouble. Internet Explorer encrypts and stores the passwords in the Windows registry.

If you forget a password, you’ll need to purchase a program to allow you to recover the encrypted password(s). These programs vary depending upon which version of IE you’re running. I always worry about third-party programs so this is my least favorite method of password management. If you’re a Firefox user and forget a password you can easily view them by clicking Tools, Options, Security, Saved Passwords and finally Show Passwords, then Yes. This makes it a snap to find a password you can’t remember. Of course, if you can do this, so can anyone else accessing your computer.

The last solution is the best but requires some trust. It’s to use a password-storing program or service. If you’re a legal nurse consultant who is a PC user (Windows^® XP or Vista) there are inexpensive programs ($29.95) like Roboform. These programs encrypt and store your passwords, logins and sometimes credit card information. With the Roboform2Go upgrade you can load your information onto a USB stick and take it with you wherever you go (attorney’s offices, vacations, business travel, etc.). I’ve never been a fan of USB devices for passwords because I lose too many things (if anyone finds my Plantronics Bluetooth headset drop me an email) and I can just imagine the USB stick falling into evil hands. Mac users can use 1Password Password Manager, a $39.95 download for Macs that accomplishes many of the same functions as Roboform.

Before you buy, confirm that the programs are compatible with your most commonly used Web browser. Both offer a free, restricted version that has certain limitations but provide test drives for those of you who like to look before you leap.

For password management, any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant could do a whole lot worse than investigating and using a password manager like Roboform.

In my next blog I’ll talk more about creating hardened passwords.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

On the way to Philadelphia to teach one of my CLNC^® Certification Programs, Tom and I went for our cross-airport trek to the Starbucks^® in Terminal E. When we got through the line, the young guy working at Starbucks looked (and sounded) like he hadn’t had his coffee yet. After repeating our order at least twice we received a semblance of our “black eyes,” a doppio expresso dumped into a vente Komodo blend. From there we stormed back to Terminal C and stopped for our standard pre-flight spicy breakfast (lunch really ‘cause we’ve been up since 4:00am) at Popeye’s Fried Chicken (nothing beats red beans and rice in the morning). The woman working the counter at Popeye’s was complaining in Spanish on her cell phone to a friend about having to be open at 6:00am and how unfair it was that she had to open the store three days a week.

When we got to our gate, three uniformed airline employees working there (including a “red coat” or supervisor) were complaining, somewhat loudly as only a group can do, about a systems problem with their airline, all within hearing distance of the customers. I was at least glad that I wasn’t overhearing a safety issue but the line of passengers waiting to board didn’t seem amused.

Even the waiter at the restaurant where we had dinner that evening got into the act, complaining about how the economy had reduced his tips (apparently his surly, complaining service had nothing to do with it).

I was trying to figure out if it was just my day to ride the complain train or if there was some other message, when it hit me. The people who had been complaining all day were doing it without regard for who was listening, or maybe they just didn’t care. Suddenly I started worrying about you and all of the Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. I worried that perhaps without thinking, you might be complaining about someone while in a public space, or even worse, using your cell phone voice and having a 72-decibel private conversation. Let’s face it, you never know who is listening to you. It could be the attorney-client you just marketed to sight unseen, it could be a supervisor or a family member of an injured party in a case you’re consulting on. The first danger is that you might harm a relationship, whether it’s with an attorney-client, with a client of the facility you work for or just a neighbor.

Negativity is damaging. Even more important, complaining by itself is counterproductive. It rarely has a purpose with an outcome in mind. The airline employees weren’t brainstorming the problem; they were just making sure each of them was as aggrieved as the other in dealing with it. What a waste of energy, not to mention brainpower. Although in my experiences most complainers don’t have much of either and can’t afford to lose the little bit they have.

I’m not advocating that we should shut our eyes to problems. We should be using our agility to recognize what’s not working and then work on getting it fixed. Someone recently told me my staff is perfect. I’m smart enough to know she’s way off base in her assessment but one reason for her positive experience is that when employees come to me with a complaint, I tell them, “Don’t criticize – strategize. Offer me an alternative, a solution or an idea I can work with.” I don’t expect the perfect solution, but I won’t indulge complaining.

Why do some people complain, even when they know better? Because complaining is easier than action, and it is much easier than personal responsibility.

There’s an apocryphal story about two dogs outside a butcher shop trying to get a pork chop from the butcher. The first dog, who’s entrepreneurial and genuinely excited about the bounty of meat in the shop, does tricks, barks and takes all sorts of action to get the attention of the butcher to earn a treat. The other dog lies on the pavement, whining and sniveling about the unfairness of all that food out of his reach and hoping that someone will take the action to feed him. Guess which dog gets the pork chop?

Twenty seven years ago I decided I would no longer stand around whining and complaining like many of my nurse colleagues about the bad state of hospital nursing. I wanted more for my career, more for me and more for my life. I decided that it was time to take action and start a legal nurse consulting business.

I stopped complaining and suddenly life’s opportunities started pouring my way. I was feeling better and stronger. People around me recognized the change. I recently severed a professional relationship with a complainer. Life is too short to be around one and a lot more fun without them. As Barbra Streisand said, please “don’t rain on my parade.”

I always say “Where you focus is where you’ll get your results.” What results are you focusing on and for what purpose? Where will you choose to put your time, energy and strengths in your legal nurse consulting business today? Choose wisely and you may change the course of your life.

Success Is Inside!