June 2010

When I first started my legal nurse consulting business in 1982, I was nervous about contacting attorneys and marketing to them. The single most important thing that helped me overcome my fear, was remembering who I was – an RN. You know my mantra, “We Are Nurses and We Can Do Anything!^®” If we can make split second decisions that are the difference between life and death, we can do something as easy as talk to an attorney. We learned early on as nurses that doctors are not to be feared and we learned to talk (back) to them. Well, attorneys are the same. They put their super-suits on just like everyone else, one leg at a time. Talk with them; they’re fun. They have great senses of humor and they love life. Some of the most fun people I’ve met in my life are attorneys.

As I grew my legal nurse consulting business I focused on my strengths and successes, not my weaknesses and mistakes. I could write the book on just the mistakes I’ve personally made. Maybe you can too. Now though, there’s hard evidence that it’s our successes that have the most impact on the brain. If you do something the right way, the brain remembers how you did it.

In fact, the study suggests that failure has no impact on helping us to succeed. That’s because if you do something wrong, the brain doesn’t know how to process and store it. Since we absorb more from success than failure, this might explain why successful people learn more from their experiences and continue to succeed often while people who fail learn less from experience and continue to fail often. Think about the people around you. We all know someone who keeps making the same mistakes, in love, at work or in business – it’s because they’re not learning from their failures (unless there is a strong negative association with it such as pain, embarrassment or electrical shock). They fail to learn like they would from a success.

Keep succeeding and stay focused on your past successes. I’ve always said that reliving your past successes will fuel your future success and now research has proven me right.

If your brain doesn’t know how to process your failures, why should you bother? I say you shouldn’t.

Success Is Inside – and it’s repeatable!

Many of you will recognize that phrase from Vickie’s Wall Street Journal Bestseller Inside Every Woman. As a CLNC^® consultant you need to be agile. The same need extends to your computer accessories. Here’s something new. It’s the Targus 4-port USB Bend-a-Hub.

If you regularly charge your smart phone from a USB port on your computer, you know that those ports on your legal nurse consulting business’s laptop or desktop get used up pretty quickly. This octopus-looking device plugs into any available USB port on your laptop or desktop computer and has one standard-boxy USB port at its base and 3 tentacled USB ports on flexible wires, one of which can double as a mini-USB port for your camera, BlackBerry^® or other mini-USB device. The tentacles make it cool because, as you well know, USB connections, like nurses at a buffet, quickly get in each others’ way and cause congestion. The tentacles allow you to move them about for maximum connectivity and flexibility. Every CLNC^® consultant should have one of these small, handy devices in their bag of tricks.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Purchasing any service or product is an emotional event. A customer buys not primarily to own the item or have the service, but to meet emotional needs: to seek comfort, reduce stress, fulfill social needs, achieve something significant, change status or lifestyle or even invest in the future.

Your attorney-prospects are no different from any other retail shopper. For example, a woman shopping for lipstick at a makeup counter is satisfying the emotional need to feel good, look pretty or just indulge herself after a hard week at her job. When attorneys purchase your CLNC^® services, they are satisfying emotional needs that are high-stake such as:

• Properly representing their client,
• Winning the case,
• Attaining partnership status,
• Garnering referral business from other attorneys,
• Maintaining their comfortable lifestyle, and
• Fulfilling a deep desire to be a winner, not a loser.

They need to believe and validate that they are making a wise choice when they hire you. Your attorney-prospect is shopping and shopping is legal.

Understanding that successful attorneys use emotion in buying decisions just like the rest of us gives you an edge in marketing to them. Credentials and qualifications are nice, but that’s not why attorneys buy. What does sell is getting the attorney-prospect to connect emotionally with how your nursing experience and credentials will make a difference in his medical-related cases.

So how do you get the attorney to shop ’til he drops on your next interview? By tapping into the five senses.

1. Sight. First impressions are everything. As much as 55% of a decision is made before either person says a word. Fair or not, people size you up and form an impression of you within seconds of meeting you. We all do this. Remember that blind date you had years ago? You knew instantly, and before words were exchanged, whether you would have a good time or even go out again.

Are you neat or sloppy? Do you stand tall or slouch? Are you carrying an organizer or a handful of loose papers?

Before you go on any interview, take the time to check out your physical appearance. Dress professionally and conservatively. Pay attention to details – trim your nails, polish your shoes, and buy one powerful business outfit. Then stand tall and walk with confidence.

Pay equal attention to the appearance of your promotional package. A sloppy or amateur promotional package suggests that you are an amateur legal nurse consultant who will submit a poor quality work product. Use the promotional package developed by the Institute or hire a professional designer and copywriter. Your promotional package must look as good as you do.

2. Sound. Another 38% of a first impression comes from how we speak. When we’re nervous, we naturally tighten up and our voices turn squeaky. We talk too fast, stumble over our words or forget entirely what we intended to say.

Have a written checklist of points you want to make. Rehearse these main points well in advance of the interview. Read them again shortly before you enter the meeting. Then relax and concentrate on listening to the attorney. Taking your mind off yourself to pay attention to what the attorney is saying will help you relax. Focus on the attorney, not your state of discomfort and you will conduct a much stronger interview.

3. Taste. How do you respond when a prospect offers you coffee, tea or a soft drink? If the attorney is having something, I recommend you have something too. People associate positive feelings and emotions with their favorite drink, so go ahead and have the same drink unless it’s just not palatable to you. For example, a cup of hot tea symbolizes both relaxation and renewed energy to me. While accepting a drink may seem like you are imposing, it will not only relax you, but will also create an immediate bond between you and the attorney-prospect.

4. Smell. Avoid heavy perfumes and colognes. A scent you find delightful might turn another person’s stomach. Any heavily applied scent will be distracting. Usually, the best choice is to avoid perfume and cologne altogether.

5. Touch. Offer a firm handshake. Once you’ve finished with the introductions, confidently place your promotional package and sample work product in the attorney-prospect’s hands. Like trying on a lipstick color, sampling any product makes the buying decision easier. When the attorney touches your business card, introductory letter, brochure and sample work product, he sees and feels the professional quality you deliver.

One of the biggest mistakes I see beginning legal nurse consultants make is neglecting to put together hypothetical report samples. With your sample in the attorney’s hands, that attorney holds a report similar in size, weight, texture and content to the reports he needs and you can provide to help win cases.

The ability to give your attorney-prospect this hands-on, multi-sensory experience of your work product is the advantage of one-on-one selling. A smart CLNC^® consultant takes every opportunity to capitalize on this advantage to help the attorney-prospect make a positive decision.

Yes, shopping is legal, but make your next interview more than a shopping experience. Make it an emotional confirmation of the attorney’s need for your CLNC^® services and validate that you are an investment in the attorney’s legal practice. If you succeed in doing so, the attorney will shop ’til he drops with you and smile while he does so.

Shopping anyone?

Success Is Inside!

I don’t know about your husband (or wife), but mine is a creature of habits. Some good, some bad and some just…

For all his tech-tippyness, he even has a bad tech habit and I have his personal permission to share this one with Certified Legal Nurse Consultants (Tom, I owe you one!). Here goes: any time Tom starts searching, no matter where he is on the information superhighway at the time, he’ll go straight to either Google^® or Yahoo!^® to start his search. To get there he’ll open a new tab on whichever browser he’s got open and click “Home.” On Firefox^® it’s his customized Yahoo! homepage, on Internet Explorer^® 8 it’s his customized Google homepage and I have no idea what’s on his Safari^® page. Once the customized page has loaded, he starts getting ready to search.

Now, I’ve watched him do this. He doesn’t go straight to the search box and start typing, first he’ll scan that customized page of RSS news feeds, etc. for current updates, weather alerts, checks on how the Dow is doing and then when he’s satisfied that all is well with the world, he begins searching. By this time he’s lost at least two minutes and those minutes build up over a day, a week and a year. Every minute he’s assuring all is right with the world is one he could be spending on the ironing (Just kidding – it’s actually washing the dishes!). In all fairness, he does keep me updated on what’s going on in the world – but at a cost to his efficiency.

One of the things working in the ICU as an RN taught me is economy of movement. When you’re coding or resuscitating a patient you don’t want to be taking three steps to do something you can do in one or two. Seconds count when lives are in the balance. I try to apply economy of movement to my workday to keep me focused on the big things. I could end up needing to work all day every day if I’m inefficient, and that would interfere with my vacation plans!

That’s why when I search the Internet, no matter what webpage I’m on, I go straight to the search box built into the top of my web browser. Tom converted me to Firefox and I love to search right from the browser. If I’m ready to leave the page I’m on, I’ll just type my search term in the built-in search box and “Google” away. If I want to stay on the page I’m on and am just doing some fact checking, I’ll simply click open a new blank tab (Ctrl + t) and search away still using that built-in box. Firefox allows me to select the search engine I want to use:

IE8 picks Bing^®/Live search as its default and I’d have to ask Tom how to change that so I’ve left it on Bing:

I do recommend that you customize your iGoogle^® homepage and Yahoo! homepage to add RSS feeds relevant to your legal nurse consulting business. I also recommend that you search from “inside the box” to stay efficient and free of distractions.

Keep on searching – efficiently.

Success Is Inside!

I have been asked whether CLNC^® consultants should encrypt the data on the computers they use for their legal nurse consulting businesses. My previous answer, if you remember, was an unequivocal “it depends.” It depends on your needs and on the sophistication of your computer skills. To that end, I suggested using some version of Microsoft^®’s “Bitlocker” program depending upon the operating system you may be running (Windows^® Vista Ultimate or Windows 7). If you were running XP or lesser versions of Vista, I suggested an add-on program called TrueCrypt, a free download, that will allow you to encrypt your entire hard drive or a portion thereof. These processes still work.

But recently, I discovered an easier-to-use program – AxCrypt. Beside being free, it has the advantage of letting you encrypt your legal nurse consulting data on a file-by-file basis. That’s right! You select the file you want to encrypt and you don’t have to worry about setting up encrypted partitions or parcrypted entitions or any other gobbly-gook, tech-speak. AxCrypt integrates itself right into Windows Explorer^® so all you have to do is right click on the file you want to encrypt, or decrypt, and make the proper selection. It even registers the file extension with Windows so an encrypted file will automatically be recognized and prompt you for its key when you wish to open it.

AxCrypt uses a pretty high standard of encryption (read about it here). My favorite benefit is that it keeps the original file name and, by allowing you to encrypt on a file-by-file basis gives you the ability to carry your encrypted files on a thumb drive or email them to your attorney-clients. It will even prompt you to print out a copy of your key for safekeeping.

I haven’t looked for an encryption program for Mac users but I’m sure one or more exist. Now any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant (running Windows) can add file encryption to the files you use for your legal nurse consulting business and you couldn’t find a simpler program to use. Try it today!

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Nurses have the strength of renewal. You’re a healer. You renew and re-energize the patients you care for, physically and emotionally, turning them out healthier than they were before. You give and you give and you give all your energy to renew everyone else. But do you turn that strength around and apply it to you?

Consider this, if you stepped back and looked at your daily routine objectively, as if it were happening to a good friend, what would be your advice? Slow down? Take a few breaths? Spend a few moments mindfully enjoying one day before another day crashes in with new demands?

You can’t keep giving what you don’t have. If you’re feeling like an overworked, underpaid nurse it’s time to reclaim your life energy through frequent renewal. Remember, our thoughts become our reality and renewal helps us change both our thoughts and our reality.

To have a healthy, exciting and fulfilling relationship with others, you must first have a healthy, exciting and fulfilling relationship with yourself. When you’re your own best friend this is easy, but too often our practices sabotage what we need and instead we act as our own worst enemy – repeating behaviors that we know are bad for us and not taking the renewal steps we need to restore ourselves. If we don’t renew on a regular basis, we’ll slip further and further into the state we’re seeking to escape. When you renew, you recharge your batteries to gain the energy for your big goals while still juggling the daily challenges of your career and life.

I recently mentored a CLNC^® student who shared that she had lost the connection to herself, to her vision and to what really mattered in life. After our visit she vowed to go home and get reacquainted with herself.

I’m just as challenged as you are. When I left my hospital job to start my own business, I fantasized about 4-hour work days and lying by the pool sipping margaritas. Boy was that a hallucination!

Knowing all the issues and the 21 employees waiting for me at the office, I wake up 30 minutes earlier than I have to, and well before any sane person, to make time for a cup of quiet renewal in the form of healthy green tea. When I get into the office I’m ready: “Come on, bring on the madness!” Taking time to charge my own batteries prepares me that much more for the challenges and opportunities each day brings.

It’s okay to take care of yourself. If you don’t, the odds are nobody else will. Carve out your own 30-minute renewal break daily, before everyone gets up or after everyone has gone to bed, and you’ll find energy abundantly available when you need it to grow your nursing career, your legal nurse consulting business and your life.

Success Is Inside!

Okay, that’s a question that a lot of new Certified Legal Nurse Consultants might not know how to answer. In the world of digital media and MP3s, we no longer have to deal with skips in the middle of a song like we did when we listened to CDs or LPs. I’m so glad the days are gone that I have to worry about washing the lotion off my hands before handling my Prince CDs, or having to carefully slide an album like Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” vinyl album into its sleeve and then into the album cover at just the right angle to keep it from catching and scratching one of the tracks.

Digital media and the iPod^® have not only changed how I listen to music, but also the way that I think of music. Since music has become ultra-portable, it’s changed air travel, working on the road and vacationing by giving me the ability to add a soundtrack to my life at any time that I want without disturbing other people. If this wasn’t the best invention in the world, I’m still waiting to see what it is going to be.

Most of us have our own soundtrack running in our heads and sometimes that soundtrack has a loop in it, causing us to hear the same information, right or wrong, over and over. Sometimes, that soundtrack has a skip in it and that skip causes us not to hear what the other person is saying over and over again. There’s a high potential for looping and skipping that can happen to legal nurse consultants too, and when it does, there’s a need to stop it.

As a CLNC^® consultant you’ve been trained to carefully listen to attorney-prospects when you’re in an interview, to relax and not to get so caught up in the soundtrack of your nervousness that the attorney becomes invisible to you.

If an attorney says “You’re hired,” you don’t respond “Thank you, but I have to finish explaining all 32 CLNC^® services I provide as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant” and then loop back into your script. You’ve got the job – stop, skip the script and start discussing the first case.

Likewise, have you ever fully and completely answered a question for a patient, friend, family member or other party but they didn’t listen to the answer and loop back to ask you the same question again? Or they make the same statement they just made and, no matter what response you make, they skip processing your response to loop and repeat the statement? They become so caught up with the looping in their heads that their soundtrack skips your answer.

In some situations, repetition can be entirely appropriate. I love listening to my twin brother Vince’s “True Hollywood stories” from our childhood in Louisiana. Each time he embellishes a little bit more and it’s fun calling him on those embellishments. One of my staff members has heard my “war stories” almost as many times as I have and to her credit she always laughs as if she’s hearing them for the first time.

But, there’s a big difference between repetition for its own sake and repetition due to lack of focus. I was mentoring a CLNC^® consultant over the telephone on some issues regarding her legal nurse consulting business. She kept trying to go back and rehash the issues we’d just discussed. I realized that if she was that unfocused with me, she would certainly be that way with any attorney-client or -prospect. I called her on it and challenged her to focus for our next telephone call by outlining her questions and checking them off after being answered and avoid the rehash. To her credit she did pretty well.

Recently at a live event I spent some time answering a woman’s questions. I went through all her concerns and questions and I thought she was satisified with my suggestions. To my surprise, the next day she asked me the same questions again. I politely told her that no matter how many times she asked me, my answers wouldn’t change. I later found out that after talking to me, she also approached Tom with the same questions. He politely told her to follow my advice. The internal loop of her soundtrack and story were causing skips in her listening and in her processing of the information she was receiving.

In your career as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, you’ll run into plenty of situations where repetition is necessary in education or the case review process. But in other situations, before you start repeating yourself, ask yourself why and if it’s really necessary. It may not be. I repeat, ask yourself why you’re about to repeat and see if it’s really necessary. It may not be.

You will have many opportunities to loop and skip. I challenge you to be like an MP3 in your business and personal relationships for the next three days and let me know the results.

Success Is Inside!

One of the first tools any CLNC^® consultant needs is an accurate way to keep track of billable hours and create invoices for attorney-clients.

In the history of billing practices, the paper system was replaced by computers that are supplemented by personal data assistants (PDAs) and PC-based electronic solutions. Most electronic solutions had to be installed directly on the users’ PCs. The different computer-based solutions include Timeslips, Peachtree Complete and QuickBooks Pro, all of which survive today. Timeslips is a proven product and the most expensive of the three. Quickbooks is the least expensive, easiest to use and can handle most of your legal nurse consulting business’s accounting and banking needs as well as your billing and invoicing.

Now, new software is being created that is entirely web-based. For example, MakeSomeTime is totally web-based and allows free access once you register. It gives you the ability to log in, track your time and then create invoices from those logs. Because it’s free, it’s the most economical solution for new Certified Legal Nurse Consultants looking to minimize office start-up expenses. You can pay to upgrade for additional services but I suggest you try it free first.

In short, whatever billing application you choose, whether a free web-based application or a more robust PC-based service, make sure it works for you and your legal nurse consulting business. Also make sure you select one that can grow as your CLNC^® business grows.

Success Is Inside!

The more you use your computer in your legal nurse consulting business, the higher the chance that one of your data types will become associated with a program other than the one you want to use to open it. What I mean by this is that your songs may start opening with Windows^® Media Player instead of your trusty iTunes^®. Your legal nurse consulting reports created in Word^® might start opening in Wordpad or your photos may open with some editor you downloaded from the Web instead of Photoshop^® Elements or Microsoft^® Office Picture Manager.

In other words, you either installed a program that took over the file association for that file type or you may have uninstalled a program that is still associated with that file type. Here’s another example, you choose to use Safari^® as your default web browser but Internet Explorer^® always opens up saved webpages or links within an email. Some programs are overly intrusive and by default may take over file association. This can make a person crazy.

Now, any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant can remedy this like a CLNC^® Pro! This is for Windows XP but can be done with other versions. Simply, minimize all your programs to your Windows Desktop. Next left click on Start then Settings then Control Panel. When the Control Panel opens, look for Folder Options and double-left click it (depending upon your Control Panel view it may be under Appearance and Themes). Select the File Types tab and it will eventually populate a list of File Types in alphabetical order by their file name extension (.wpd, .wpdx, .xls).

Now, scroll down that list to the file type that is opening with the wrong program. Select or highlight the file type and left click the Change button. Select the program you want to use to open that file type. Make sure the box next to Always use the selected program to open this kind of file is selected. Now click OK then Close and you’ve just corrected that annoying issue!

The Control Panel and File Associations can be dangerous places, but any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant with a modicum of confidence (and care) can fix this file issue with alacrity. Go for it – but just be careful in there!

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Certified Legal Nurse Consultant David Kuntz

During my career as an ICU nurse, I was always looking for ways to better myself. I took and passed the CCRN exam, but to my dismay I received no recognition from the hospital administrators for this accomplishment. I tried management and found that I was working more hours and getting paid less than the nurses on my unit. Then something happened that changed my career. I tore a ligament in my hand while restraining a patient. I could no longer lift anything over 25 pounds. I was devastated. My ICU nursing career was over. I spent one and half years on light duty and was told that I had to find a different job or the hospital would settle with me. After months of searching, I landed a job in IT as a clinical analyst.

At home after my surgery I had time on my hands, or in my case – hand, so I started to search for different ways to use my nursing knowledge. I came across legal nurse consulting on one of my searches. I spent hours researching legal nurse consulting. The spark was lit and grew with every bad day I had.

It took me five years until I finally decided to just go for it. I enrolled in the CLNC^® Certification Program in July 2009 and immediately started the home-study course. I finished it in a week and was certified the following weekend. I then worked on the NACLNC^® Apprenticeship Program. It took me a little over a week to finish and at that point, I started getting my promotional materials, sample work products and letters refined and ready to send to attorneys.

I started sending out material toward the end of August using all of the techniques I learned from Vickie. One goal that was foremost in my mind was to have a case before I attended the CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Program in October.

I was nervous before I made my first phone call to an attorney, but I kept remembering that they are people just like everyone else and that really calmed me down. In that first call, I introduced myself and gave a brief synopsis of the material I had already sent. I asked for an appointment and the attorney said, “Sure, come in at 4:00pm.”

Now I was really nervous. I looked over the sample interview questions in the online NACLNC^® Community and realized that I knew this information. I met with the attorney and the interview went so well, he is sending me a medical-malpractice case.

Two weeks later, I called another attorney to follow-up on my promotional material. He told me he didn’t receive it, so I presented a short version of how I could assist him. He asked me to set up a meeting with his secretary. The next day I went to his office and he walked into the conference room with a case in his hands and a check for $1,500.00. Inside I was doing cartwheels yet I remained composed until I got in my car and was heading home. The following day I talked with a different attorney and he wants to use me on two cases.

From the end of August to the first week in October, I was able to obtain three attorney-clients.

My first goal was met. I followed what Vickie taught and used her techniques. If everyone follows what they learn in the CLNC^® Certification Program, they will be successful in this business. Vickie and Vickie Milazzo Institute have already done the hard work; all a student has to do is apply what they learn from the CNLC^® Certification Program.

Guest Blogger Profile

David Kuntz, RN, BSN, CLNC has 17 years of nursing experience. He is the owner of David Kuntz and Associates in western New Mexico and specializes in medical malpractice.