November 2009

Nurses often say, “You must have known quite a few attorneys when you started,” suggesting that the adage, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is the guaranteed path to launching a successful business as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant.

Actually, I didn’t know any attorneys when I got started! I didn’t live in their neighborhoods or get invited to their parties. When I decided to become a legal nurse consultant I didn’t even think I knew anyone who knew an attorney. That false-ism, “It’s not what you know it’s who you know,” is a leftover from the 1980s, when “networking” was the buzzword among out-of-work professionals vying for consulting or other business. They gathered at events to eat, drink, pass out business cards and ask for referrals. Sometimes it resulted in new business and sometimes it was just an excuse to drink.

While referral and word-of-mouth promotion are still the strongest and the most cost-effective ways of building an attorney-client base, networking only works for you when you are selective. Unless you’re selective, networking events become nothing more than a waste of your time, i.e. networking is NOT working.

As Dale Barnes, a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, shared, “The worst advice I followed had to do with a networking group. I think networking groups are wonderful and can be effective, but it has to be the right one. I had a friend who belonged to a group and received a lot of business because of this group, so I joined too. I found that there were manicurists, massage therapists, hairdressers, network marketing people, construction company owners, electricians, etc. in this group. There were no attorneys and no one seemed to know any attorneys. I stuck with it for a year. I was able to find some good resources for my own personal use, but it never helped grow my CLNC^® business and was a waste of time and money. I later joined a high-powered business networking group for attorneys, CPAs, bankers, upper management and administrative people. My CLNC^® business did grow due to this connection. I wish I had not wasted that first year. It pays to really check out the makeup of a group and its main focus prior to joining.”

That one year Dale spent in the wrong networking group is an example of where networking was not working – at least as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. She wisely sought out and found the appropriate group to network with.

Networking is often overrated. I’ve seen people spend countless hours in meaningless conversation with people they really don’t want to spend time with while trying to build a business. The best way to find attorneys through networking is to spend time with potential attorney-prospects or people closely related to them. Your prospects are attorneys, so if you want to hang somewhere, hang out at the courthouse. Target your networking to where it will make the most impact.

Be cautious also with established networking groups, such as associations, and with how much power you give them over your success. Sometimes when you’re within a network, and your ideas don’t align with that network, people can try to persuade you to their side and it can often be the “dark side.” I often wonder what people expect when they join a closed-minded organization. Do they expect members to share business (Sure, I’ve been working with Bob Smith but you can cut me out)? Or even worse, the network will try to eliminate you or blackball you in your industry because of your ideas or stance.

Your own ideas, your own career plan, your own business model have to be strong enough to stand alone, without network support. That’s the entrepreneurial secret that has helped to build this country and that I’ve used to build my business.

After pioneering the industry of legal nurse consulting, I took a grand departure from what others believed our industry needed. I believed we needed a standardized certification program. They disagreed. So what did I do? I ticked some people off by creating what became the first and most widely recognized certification for legal nurse consultants and the largest association for legal nurse consultants – the National Alliance for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants (NACLNC^®).

In short, the less approval is important to you, the freer you are to succeed. Don’t let association groupthink dictate what is acceptable or appropriate for your future. Taking a grand departure from conventional wisdom can take you places no other has dared to go before. Something else to remember is that when someone’s status quo is threatened they’ll react with fear and do what they can to discourage you and put down your ideas. This especially includes new group members who want their own piece of the pie.

Networks are often an incestuous “go along” type of situation and when it comes to career building, striving to “go along to get along” is not necessarily a formula for success. Did Madonna “go along” to skyrocket her career? Does Donald Trump “go along” with anybody? Is Richard Branson “going along” as he promotes one crazy, successful venture after another?

As I started to achieve success, I began to realize that my position would be stronger if I didn’t rely on an outside network to advance my company but instead built a strong company of free thinkers. I believe in inviting my staff to disagree with me and they are quite vocal and quite comfortable (sometimes too comfortable) doing so. My ideas often get shot down. We are a stronger company for that.

You have to be willing to take a stand. Audaciously successful people often stand contrary to what the world believes is right and proper, and they don’t care if their ideas upset people. Of course your goal is not to upset people but to express your ideas and opinions, uncensored, in your truest voice.

Neutrality is a death sentence. You’ll never please everybody, so don’t kill your nursing career – and your earning potential – by trying. As we say in Texas, “There’s nothing in the middle of the road except yellow stripes and dead armadillos.” You don’t want to be either.

Dramatic success comes from taking a stance, even if it’s contrary to the experts or to the self-proclaimed experts. It’s your nursing career and to make the most of it, you need to be willing to stir things up, stand out and maybe tick off a few people. Let other nurses “go along” and have their middle-of-the-road successes. But, don’t let one of those “other” nurses be you.

Success Is Inside!

Any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant using a computer has run into issues when trying to receive large files from an attorney-client or transferring large files from one computer to another. If you’re attached to a network, moving files is pretty easy. You just drag your file from one computer onto a shared drive and then go to the other computer and drag it off. But if you don’t have a network or shared drives, what can you do? In the good old days of AOL and unlimited file sizes on email attachments, you could just email your file and pick it up on any other computer. Today, corporate email servers have put limits on attachment file sizes in their email “gateways” to restrict the transfer of large attachments (and often the type of file also).

You could use Drop.io, as Vickie recommended last month, but let’s explore some other alternatives for the savvy Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. First, Windows^® XP ships with a built-in, but basic, utility that allows you to create smaller, compressed “.zip” files out of large uncompressed files. This works great with Word documents, photos and PDF files (but not with all files), depending upon the amount of data stored within the file.

Try this at home (safely): Use Windows Explorer to locate the Word file on your computer that you want to use (don’t open it) and right click it. When the little menu pops up, left click on Send To, then left click on Compressed (zipped) Folder. You may get a warning but click Yes. You’ll have then created a file with the same name but with a .zip extension instead of .doc or .docx extension (TechTip.zip instead of TechTip.docx). This is the “compressed” version of your file. Think of the file as having all the air squeezed out of it, the spaces taken out between the letters and the pixels pinched. If you right click on the original file and, when the little menu pops up, left click Properties, you’ll see the file size. Write it down so you won’t forget it, then do the same to the zipped file. You should notice about a 10-20% decrease in file size. In a big document, this can be significant. Zipping a file works great with any text-based file such as word processing documents and spreadsheets. It doesn’t work that well with files that are already zipped (you can’t zip a zipped file) or files that are already compressed such as some photos. One cool feature is that you can highlight a group of files and zip them all into one zip archive file.

Once you’ve zipped a file, you can then send the zip file to any Windows user via email. When they receive it, they simply save it, then right click on the file, left click Open With then left click Compressed (zipped) Folders. This will open a new Window showing the recipient what files are compressed into the zip file. The user simply clicks Extract all Files and a folder containing the unzipped files is created on the user’s computer. Even Mac users can unzip and use the files but they may need an add-in program.

Legal nurse consultants who want to step it up a notch can purchase a program called WinZip^® that gives the added flexibility to password protect your zip files (great for paranoids and others with privacy concerns). It also opens a variety of different “archive” files which makes it pretty handy. Windows XP and Vista users can get a free trial of WinZip by clicking here.

If you’ve ever received a .sit file from an attorney-client or other legal nurse consultant, you’re seeing another alternative file type. This is one that’s really useful for people who work in a combined Mac and Windows world. The .sit file type is created by a program called “StuffIt” (Mac Version or Windows Version). It does the same thing as WinZip but creates .sit or .sitx files. Free trials (Windows or Mac) are available at the StuffIt website but you have to fish around a bit to find them. There’s even a free unstuffer for the occasional user (kind of like the free unzip utility).

Whichever program you choose, they’re both good for cramming large files into small spaces and can help speed (or enable) email delivery of humongous attachments for your legal nurse consulting business. I lean to zip files because I’m a Windows user but if you interact with the occasional Mac-type you may consider StuffIt. Once you’ve got either one installed you’re free to tell your attorney-clients to zip-it or StuffIt, if you dare. Here’s to living dangerously!

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Mistakes and failures are great for teaching Certified Legal Nurse Consultants what not to do – they help us to grow and learn. However, mistakes don’t always help us discover what works. You could move from one mistake to the next and never identify the success formula to make your business prosper or overcome a specific issue or challenge. After 27 years in business, I’ve learned to study my successes at least as closely as I study my failures. Success promotes success. The more you succeed, the more you will succeed.

Apply this formula for becoming a student of your own successes to easily launch or grow your business as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant.

1. Identify an achievement or success, either business or personal. Draw inspiration from a situation in which you feared failure but didn’t let fear stop you and you embraced courage instead. Whenever I tackle a challenging project, I remind myself of my past successes to help me step up to the new challenge with confidence. For example, once I had stepped out of an airplane at 14,000 feet, stepping into an interview with a prospect wasn’t nearly so scary.
2. Break down the elements of that past success and examine the courage that motivated you to succeed. Focus on what you did and the steps you took that made the difference. Capture your state of mind at each step. I’ve hiked along the rim of active volcanoes and Himalayan mountain switchbacks. Keeping track of the correct steps and keeping focused on the steps I’m taking makes all the difference in the world. It focuses you on getting to the final goal.
3. Identify the best practices from that previous success that might help you launch or grow your legal nurse consulting business. Just because you are venturing into your new CLNC^® career doesn’t mean you should forget all you learned in the past. Remember the nursing education process in which we learn, then demonstrate. Re-demonstrate the successes you’ve learned in the past.
4. Identify a specific business challenge that can benefit from these best practices. It can be as simple as making a phone call to an attorney-prospect or practicing questions and responses for an upcoming interview with an attorney-prospect.
5. Apply the best practices to the relevant legal nurse consulting challenge or objective. You’ve done it before. You can do it again!
6. Continue doing what you do well as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant to create bigger and better successes. Soon success will become second nature.
7. To accelerate your growth exponentially, surround yourself with successful people and learn from their successes. Hang with the biggest winners, not the biggest losers. You’ll have more fun and learn and achieve more too!
8. Keep a Success Journal and write down one success daily. Review your journal weekly to remind yourself of your ability to succeed. Reliving past success will help gear you up for future success.
9. Celebrate and reward yourself for your successes. Have a celebratory goal, whether it’s a good (or cheap) wine, a new iPhone or a weekend vacation. Use rewards as goals to spur you to even more success.

As an RN you have countless successes. You handle emergencies as easily as making the bed in the morning. You make split second decisions that are the difference between life and death for your patient. You can catheterize, defibrillate or ventilate an attorney without a second thought. If you can do all of these things, you can do something as straightforward as launch or grow your legal nurse consulting business.

Any time you are challenged to grow or succeed, give your past successes an encore. Relive the applause. Every time you encore a small success, the applause sets you on fire and your next success becomes easier. Remember, We Are Nurses and We Can Do Anything!^®

Success Is Inside!

P.S. Comment and share one of your successes that deserves an encore.