April 2010

Part of every Private NACLNC^® Apprenticeship includes making calls to attorneys in your home market. Initially Sheryl did not want to make the calls, but she went all in, made the calls and got her first and now steady attorney-client. Congratulations Sheryl.

Success Is Inside!

There I was nearly nine years ago, suffering from what I now refer to as “professional bradycardia.” I signed up for Vickie Milazzo Institute’s CLNC^® Certification Seminar and had my breath taken away! That 6-day seminar in 2000 was about to change my life forever and ever. However, at the time I only knew it was The Best program I had ever attended as a nurse, bar none!

It would be one and a half years later that I would have to wait for another positive breathless moment. It came after my first attorney-client gave me my first three cases, one right after the other, and then stated to me after paying his third retainer, “Larry, I just want to let you know that that you are not charging enough for these reports.” That was the icing on the cake. It made me realize that I could do this type of work and do it well, but thinking at the same time…well duh…I was trained by The Best! Based on that attorney’s advice and knowing that I was trained by the best, I substantially increased my hourly fee, never looked back and now never blink, shudder or stutter when I quote my fee to attorneys.

I was so excited that I picked up the phone and called Vickie Milazzo Institute in Houston. I asked if I could thank Vickie in person at the next CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Seminar in Philadelphia (my CLNC^® training ground). The answer came back, “yes,” and I found myself driving to Philadelphia in September 2002. I gave my little thank-you story with a microphone in front of me and I found myself breathless again, both from the fright of public speaking and from the reaction I received from the 300 nurses in attendance. I remember pinching myself and smiling from ear to ear on my drive home that day from Philadelphia.

I once again became breathless in March 2003 as I received the National Alliance of Certified Legal Nurse Consultants CLNC^® Success Story Award at the annual NACLNC^® Conference. Imagine, this old-as-dirt nurse, with average nursing skills, up on that huge stage with Vickie Milazzo in Orlando, Florida receiving such an award! It DID take my breath away and It DID FEEL GOOD!

One final breathless moment I would like to share, came very recently as I expanded my CLNC^® business to include nine subcontractors, all of whom are Certified Legal Nurse Consultants! I refer to my initiative as Peas in a Pod with the POD being my company who will act as the Point Of Distribution for casework to the Peas who are the CLNC^® subcontractors. We have bi-weekly group phone conferences and also stay connected by Pea Pod Ponderings, a weekly email sent by Larry Pea to the other Peas. All the Peas, each with their specific area of nursing expertise, makes the POD strong and unique, however what takes my breath away is the fact all the Peas are very, very special to me and as a POD, we are able to offer my attorney-clients over 225 years of nursing experience, guiding them as we journey through the medical records! Another breathtaking moment indeed will also be when the Peas collectively meet at the next NACLNC^® Conference!

Thank you Vickie for making me one SOB (Short Of Breath) Certified Legal Nurse Consultant!

Lawrence H. Frace, RN, CLNC

I’m a keyboard guy. Mice are great but every time you take your hands off your keyboard to reach for your mouse, you lose precious seconds (and those build up into billable hours over the course of a year). I’d much rather make use of keyboard shortcuts than roll that mouse to delete something. The less time I spend with my hand on the mouse, the more time I have to spend typing tech tips, if you know what I mean.

But, everyone, even me, walks away from their computer at least once a day. It may be to make that annual nursing restroom run, to go to the vending machine for a cold can of healthy green tea or just to make a phone call to one of your CLNC^® colleagues. When you do, you leave your computer’s display open to any villain who happens to be nearby. This could be a colleague, spouse, child or some nosey medical librarian at the medical library where you’re doing research for your legal nurse consulting cases. So, before you go, remember to press and hold the Windows key (the one with the little flag on it) and then hit the “L” key to blank your screen and lock your computer. This way only someone with your unique and hardened password can open your computer and see how high your “Mafia Games” score is or what legal nurse consulting case report you’re working on.

Along the same lines, there will be the rare occasion when someone pops into your office or workstation unexpectedly. Rather than scrolling your mouse up to the top right corner and closing all your Windows windows or trying to find the “Show Desktop” button in your task bar, you can simply hold down that Windows key and hit the “D” key. This will show your desktop but won’t close any windows – it’ll simply minimize them. Repeating the process will bring up all your windows so you can get back to work once the miscreant leaves the vicinity.

There are a lot of Windows shortcuts like Control-c to copy material you’ve highlighted with Control-Shift-Arrow (in any direction) and Control-v (go figure) to paste (or Control-x to cut) what you’ve highlighted.

Take a moment and share your favorite Windows keyboard shortcut with your Certified Legal Nurse Consulting peers. We’ll be sure to thank you for it!

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Nurses have the strength of endurance. How else would you get through those 12-hour shifts? You work on your feet, you eat on your feet, you think on your feet. Sure – you get to sit down at least once a shift – when you go to the bathroom. Wait a minute – nurses don’t sit, right? We squat – we ain’t touching nothing. But how do you fuel your endurance when the doctor wants it yesterday, your kids want it today and…your spouse wants it tonight?

Endurance is about having the stamina to do what it takes to succeed. When you are launching and growing your business as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, you need endurance. I love working and I don’t mind working long, hard hours full of the challenges inevitable in my legal nurse consulting business. Those hours are easier to endure because I love what I do and also because I reward myself by taking off 12 weeks throughout the year to pursue my passion for hiking and traveling. That’s my payoff and the further I get away from the business to places like Bhutan, the Galapagos, Patagonia and the Arctic Circle, the bigger the payoff.

When I’m off, I’m off. I stay disconnected. My office knows they can reach me if the office is on fire, but they also know I’m not calling in unless I need a ride from the airport. When I return home, the fire for my CLNC^® business blazes just like it did 28 years ago. Fuel your endurance with incremental payoffs as you focus on your big dreams for your legal nurse consulting business. Don’t wait for the big win. Celebrate the small steps and reward yourself all along the way.

It’s not just the final payoff but also the amazing small payoffs you receive along the way that will help you endure the journey to success. Reward yourself, and your family, for the small accomplishments; don’t wait for the big win.

At my company we celebrate more than birthdays and work anniversaries. We’ll stop and celebrate a milestone on a project – such as the completion of a website design or the promotional materials for a new product. We don’t wait until the product hits the market or until we see whether it’s successful. We celebrated the proposal for my book, Inside Every Woman: Using the 10 Strengths You Didn’t Know You Had to Get the Career and Life You Want Now when we submitted it to the publisher. We didn’t know if it would be accepted, but we knew we had put a lot of hard work into that proposal and we were proud of our final work product and a job well done. Sometimes the success is in the middle. I like to celebrate stepping out and going for it. When we define success as going for what we want (regardless of the outcome), we can succeed and celebrate every day. Celebrate the hard work that you’ve done and then celebrate again whether or not things work out the way you wanted.

If your endurance is tested and you’re tempted to give up, remember this: whether you’re building a legal nurse consulting business or working toward a promotion, the ultimate reward goes to those who endure even when the big reward is far in the distance.

Success Is Inside!

Congratulations to Tracy McClelland who shared with me that her income as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant exceeded her hospital salary in her first year. Now she has exceeded $250,000! I’m confident she’ll reach the high goal she set for herself in the video. Here’s wishing her even further CLNC^® success in advance – you go Tracy!

Success Is Inside!

Here’s a great example of a CLNC^® consultant who didn’t underprice herself. She stood tough with attorneys who tried to negotiate her into a set fee on a case instead of her regular hourly rate. She didn’t bite that hook and now projects that she’ll bill $20,000 on the case. Congratulations for standing firm Denise, and earning what you are truly worth!

Success Is Inside!

This week’s tip is a quickie and deals with one thing and one thing only. That pesky critter we all know as a “mouse” or in geek speak “pointing device.” Mice aren’t new and aren’t an Apple^® invention as some people believe, they date back to 1981. However, some legal nurse consultants are stuck back in the ‘80s (and I don’t mean with your hair or taste in music). Are you someone still using a standard mouse? Possibly an old “mechanical mouse?” One with a rubber ball in the bottom that needs a tactile surface like a mouse pad to work efficiently.

I know some Certified Legal Nurse Consultants have pulled themselves into the ‘90s by upgrading to a mouse with a scroll-wheel or an optical mouse that uses a tiny laser diode to mark its spot and which needs a no-reflective surface or laser mouse-pad to work correctly. Nice, but we’re a decade past the ‘90s!

Today’s smart Certified Legal Nurse Consultant uses a trackball mouse, such as Logitech’s Trackman Marble Mouse which not only helps guide the mouse more accurately (and is ambidextrous) but also helps reduce or eliminate carpal tunnel syndrome (from mouse use). I’ve replaced all the mice on the desktop computers at Vickie Milazzo Institute with trackballs. Once you get used to using one of these, they’re wonderful – no more lifting the mouse up when you track to the top of a page or moving it back to the base of the mouse pad. You simply roll that trackball like it’s going out of style! They are especially handy if you have dual monitors. Trackballs are also easier to clean and maintain and don’t require a special pad or non-reflective surface like a laser mouse. (As a side-note, I travel with a laser mouse because I don’t like the touchpad or pointing stick on the laptop but I do have to scramble for a piece of non-glossy paper to put under the mouse when I’m working on a glass or highly polished surface.)

Consider a trackball – your wrist will love it and once you get used to it, you will too.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Alissa tells us in her video how her Certified Legal Nurse Consultant Certification made her stand out from hundreds of other candidates during the interviewing process and was a determining factor in getting her new job with a major insurance company. Congratulations Alissa!

Success Is Inside!

Many of you know I like to start each day with a cup of healthy green tea. I especially like to enjoy that first healthy cup of green tea while comfortably ensconced in the recliner in my bedroom, drinking tea and looking out to the silhouettes of the giant timber bamboo that surrounds our home reaching heights of easily 60 ft.

During the week I’m up at 4:00am and I love that the bamboo is one of the first things to greet me (second to Tom of course) as I sip my tea and before I’m off to the gym. I love to watch the gentle ballet of the bamboo as it sways in the wind. Even the slightest breeze will set it moving gracefully, dancing in the dawn light. A strong wind makes it look and sound like giant wind chimes and I love hearing the clacking of the stalks through the stillness.

This morning, I watched the swaying stalks and I started thinking about how much Certified Legal Nurse Consultants can learn from bamboo. Bamboo is unnaturally strong – just the way your CLNC^® business should be. It’s also flexible and will bend and flex a long way before breaking – just like your attorney-clients expect you to perform.

If its base grows weak and it begins to lean, it will rest against other bamboo and continue to grow, rather than become uprooted. A stand of bamboo supports each other just as CLNC^® consultants do when networking and subcontracting through the National Alliance of Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. There’s also safety in numbers as a forest of bamboo exhibits as it blocks the wildest wind. Rather than break in the face of a strong force, it bends and twists, reactively dealing with changes in weather and wind direction. After Hurricane Ike, Houston was covered with downed trees and broken tree limbs but almost no bamboo stalks lay in our yard. When was the last time you networked, collaborated and masterminded with three to five Certified Legal Nurse Consultants?

Though strong, bamboo is also thin and lightweight. It reminds us to keep our CLNC^® businesses fast and agile – not becoming lumbering dinosaurs or institutionalized like hospitals. Bamboo thrives by co-existing with other plants just like your CLNC^® business can thrive as you co-exist with other CLNC^® consultants in the National Alliance of Certified Legal Nurse Consultants Association. In my backyard, some stalks of my bamboo have grown taller than my house and do so by growing through a 50-year-old oak tree that separates my home from my neighbor’s. I like to think that each are helping support the other, like we all do in our legal nurse consulting businesses but I also remember that like businesses, are in competition. The bamboo is in competition with the oak for the water and nutrient resources in the ground. After more than 15 years, both seem to be doing quite well together.

Bamboo can also be used for many things. Once hollowed out, I’ve seen it used in the place of pipe. Its shoots can be eaten. An enterprising bird has created a nest at a location where four stalks come together high in the air (it seems a bit precarious to me). In Asia, I’ve seen bamboo used as construction scaffolding. How many other plants or trees can you use for that? In Hawaii, I’ve hiked through a bamboo forest that was so thick I almost needed a flashlight in mid-day to find my way along the trail. In Japan, bamboo is sometimes treated with reverence and there are entire parks dedicated to its beauty.

This morning, there was an unnatural stillness outside my windows. There was not even the slightest trace of a breeze and the bamboo looked like a still-life or black and white photo in the early light. I can’t wait to see what it looks like this evening.

Success Is Inside!

Vickie asked me to share a few experiences as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant that have taken my breath away. I have been fortunate to have experienced quite a few “breathless” moments in my CLNC^® business.

When I started my CLNC^® career, I worked very hard to give my attorney-clients what they needed, and more. One particular client, a big medical-malpractice attorney, wasn’t in the habit of doling out compliments. I knew that my work was up to par because he never complained about anything, however, he never came out and told me how indispensable or valuable I was to him (leftover insecurities from being a nurse).

One day I was in his office and his paralegal brought him his mail. As we were talking, he was looking through his mail. He pulled out an envelope and sliced it open with his opener. He paused for a few seconds to look over the contents and called his paralegal to come to his office. He said (and I’ll never forget it), “When we get anything from other legal nurses, ignore them, and if they call here tell them we have our own nurse consultant who we use.” Wow! That was a real moment for me. It was like getting a bolus of confidence; the maximum dosage of pride; and a booster of determination to get out there and sell myself to more attorneys.

I have been fortunate enough to have uncovered crucial information contained in medical records that have had a huge impact on more than one case. Every time I begin to review a set of medical records, I secretly hope I find something that will either be extremely helpful for the client, or have an impact on the financial outcome. Nothing endears you more to your client than handing them a box of ammunition they didn’t know they had. In plaintiff cases I have found information that clearly involves hospital employees, thus involving the “deep pockets” of the hospital facility. In defense cases, I have uncovered evidence that the plaintiffs’ injuries were pre-existing conditions, thus reducing the value of the cases. I have detected tampering of the medical records in plaintiff cases that have completely altered the value of the cases, and have added much desired juror empathy for the plaintiffs.

I experience breathless moments at the beginning of every day as a CLNC^® consultant. To wake up without having to hurry to get cleaned up and dressed for work. I don’t have to worry about driving to and from work. If I need to schedule a doctor’s appointment, I don’t have to jump through hoops to get the time off work. If I want to go shopping, I just go. I can work any time I want. I can wear anything I want when I work (well, I can right now, but since videoconferencing is in my future, I’ll have to make adjustments).

I just become breathless when I think about how I have changed my life with Vickie’s help and encouragement.

Jane Hurst, RN, CLNC