I’m writing this at the CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Seminar in Atlanta after I just came off one of the most hectic weeks of my life. First I had the official launch of my new book Wicked Success Is Inside Every Woman. If you haven’t been following me on Facebook or Twitter, Wicked Success was #10 on the New York Times Monthly Business Bestseller list Sunday, October 2nd and my publisher just told me Wicked Success will be #6 on the New York Times Hardcover Advice & Misc. bestseller list on Sunday, October 9th! Wicked Success hit #1 on Amazon.com, #3 on the USA Today business bestseller list and it was not only #3 on the Wall Street Journal’s bestselling business book list but also #8 on the WSJ’s bestselling nonfiction book list in the same week! Thank you all for supporting the book and sharing it with all the women you love. Being a New York Times bestselling author is every writer’s dream and you helped to make that dream come true.

If the book launch and hoopla wasn’t enough, that same week also had site visits, rehearsals, event planning, preparation, and all the last-minute details leading up to the events with Stedman Graham – our Friday night Women Embracing Leadership (WEL) reception and event at Unity Church and the all-day Saturday WEL workshop. Forget rest! Thursday night was a late night taping our TV appearance on After the Headlines and a late dinner at a favorite restaurant of mine – Brasserie 19. Friday morning we started very early with a live TV appearance on Great Day Houston and continued with a live radio appearance that afternoon. You would not believe how much hurry up and wait time surrounds TV and radio shows!

So, my staff and I were hopping like toads every day and well into the night on Friday. In fact, when I say well into the night, I mean it. Friday night we had so much fun at the Unity Women Embracing Leadership event that Stedman and I were still signing books until 11:30pm! If you know me, you know I’m a morning person and have usually enjoyed a couple of REM cycles before midnight. But I was still wide awake when we got home and was so excited about Saturday’s WEL workshop that I had trouble going to sleep at 1:00am (really!).

Saturday’s 4:00am alarm came way too soon but I somehow managed to get out of bed and Tom (I love you man!) found some Starbucks before he went off to manage the AV setup for the WEL workshop. That Women Embracing Leadership workshop went flawlessly and everyone who attended walked away with a new direction, ready to achieve their next audacious goal. It was so interesting working with such a diverse group of professional women, all with different issues, goals and dreams. I’m already planning the next event! Afterwards, I took Stedman to a second favorite restaurant, Da Marco, then invited my best friends from New Orleans, who had come in for the weekend, to a private “after party.”

Sunday we all got to spend the day kicking back over a late breakfast and a later lunch. In between, we did a post-mortem on the weekend, bonded over those deep and personal conversations about sex and relationships that only women have and had lots of laughs and cutting up. Our ages range from 26 to 80 which made for a rich experience and even more laughter and cutting up when our 80-year-old friend shared that she’s just as enthusiastic about sex as ever. Tom conveniently discovered that he needed to run some errands, so we got some quality girl-talk time while he escaped the overwhelming surge of oxytocin.

I shared with my friends how inspired I was by a workshop attendee who had just retired from a successful career but was finding that retirement was bringing her no joy. She had been looking forward to retirement, and certainly had no money issues, but just wasn’t finding retirement to be “What I worked 30 years to do.” I advised her that it didn’t matter to me whether she went back to work, started a business or stayed retired. What did matter was that she find joy in her life because we all deserve to have that.

At the workshop, Stedman and I both worked with her to help her not only discover her passion but to create a plan to turn that passion into a business. She left Saturday not only with a plan, but with a new spark in her eye, a spring in her step and a fire burning inside.

As tired as I was after that week, on Monday I was still thinking about that woman and her search for passion. I’m lucky. I love the play side of my life, (I grew up in New Orleans after all) but I also love working and I love being busy. I also love that I can work my passions – teaching nurses to become Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, writing books and helping women to discover their own passions. My crazy busy week was just part of my crazy busy life and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Without passion our lives are empty and we feel purposeless. We can discover and create a passion for any part of our lives if we take time to go inside and really listen. The woman at the workshop is about to get really busy and I am ecstatic for her. You can call me crazy, but we have just one life so why not live it with passion – even if it means being crazy busy living that passionate life.

Success Is Inside!

You know that thing you have always wanted to do? I confess I am often perplexed by a person who can never for the life of them achieve a goal they’ve set for themselves. They set the goal, they want the benefits of achieving that goal and then that’s the end of it.

For example, a nurse wants to start a legal nurse consulting business to earn more money and have more free time for family. Great goal, but then the reality check: reaching that goal is going to require work, like working before it’s time to report to that full-time job at the hospital, plus working again after getting home from that hospital job and, oh yeah, working on that coveted weekend off. And did I mention work?

I spend a lot of time with nurses all over the U.S. Some of them have a difficult time relating to my success until I remind them I started out just like they are going to have to – with a full-time job at the hospital. Plus, I had to work overtime just to pay my mortgage. To launch my legal nurse consulting business, I was going to have to work. That was okay. After all, nurses aren’t afraid to work. When this mouthy, opinionated, Italian girl faced the choice of working really hard for the rest of my life at a dead-end job, or to get to work on me, you know what I chose.

If you want to succeed as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, today I only have three words of advice: Get to work!!!

Success Is Inside!

It’s important to avoid a bulletproof mentality in the decisions you make for your legal nurse consulting business as well as in the cases you’re working on for your attorney-clients. I like to shoot holes in my own decisions. This doesn’t mean I don’t move forward with the decision, but it does mean I’ll be more prepared if things go south. Then, when things don’t go perfectly or as planned, we’re not a perfect target for perfect failure and destruction.

At the Institute, before we implement a business idea or decision, I’ll sometimes ask my executive team to brainstorm and discuss the upside and the downside. This forces even the most fervent supporter or opponent of an idea to challenge their own viewpoint. Sometimes it’s the person who introduced the idea who withdraws it. And sometimes it’s the opponent of an idea who ends up fervently embracing it. More often than not, we usually execute an improved version of the original idea.

Any business idea worth pursuing is worth shooting holes into it first. Smart Certified Legal Nurse Consultants know it’s better to shoot those holes themselves than to let someone else beat them to the trigger.

Success Is Inside!

Everyone has a favorite restaurant and I’m lucky enough to have several, depending upon which city I’m in when I get hungry. Here in Houston, it’s an Italian pizzeria enoteca called Dolce Vita in an old house near downtown. Sunday afternoons, if we’re in town, you can frequently find Tom and me on their shaded patio indulging in the outdoors with a glass of healthy red wine and scrumptious, real Italian food. This is a very casual, feel-good, comfy restaurant completely void of pretensions. But Dolce Vita’s standards are far from casual.

From the moment you pull into the parking lot, the valet welcomes you back and parks your car without giving you a ticket. (Side note: Visitors to Houston are always surprised that most restaurants have a valet to park your car 20 feet from the restaurant’s front door, but once you’ve experienced a Houston summer you instantly know why). Somehow when you go to leave, he clairvoyantly has your car waiting, air-conditioner running.

When you first walk in, the staff greats you effusively and escorts you to your table like you’re an old friend. The food is fresh and inventive. One of my favorites is the unique Truffle Egg Toast which is a thick piece of country bread with an egg inside, covered with parmigiano-reggiano cheese and toasted to perfection under a high-temperature broiler until it’s crispy and brown outside. Then it’s covered with sliced black truffles, drizzled with truffle oil and served on a plate so hot I’m surprised the servers can even carry it to the table. When you first cut into it, the egg yolk runs out onto the plate, mixes with more crispy cheese and begs to be mopped up with the bread. (I’m making myself hungry).

But the real magic of this restaurant is one of the servers, Isabel. There are a couple of servers that recognize us and always stop by to chat, but Isabel is different. She takes total ownership of us from the moment she sees us – whether it’s in the doorway, at our table or waiting at the bar for a table.

By total ownership, I mean exactly that. Even if we’re not seated in her section, she treats us like we’re old friends. Once we’re seated, she’ll stop by to chat and supplements the attentions of the assigned server so we receive double the service.  She anticipates every want and need and sometimes I believe she can read our minds. Isabel always has the inside track on what’s good or new on the menu. Best of all, she’s never pushy. If we drop in for a glass of wine and an appetizer, she’s just as happy and attentive as if we bring a bunch of friends and spend a long evening chowing down encouraging each other to “mangia, mangia.”

On our last visit, Tom noticed mussels were part of one of the specials and asked Isabel about his favorite appetizer, mussels in a marina sauce with oven-roasted bread, which wasn’t on the menu. Before we knew it, she’d arranged for the kitchen to prepare that dish for us and delivered it to the table.

In all of the years she’s owned us, Isabel has consistently delivered amazing service. I love the restaurant even when she’s not there, but when she’s working the restaurant feels more like home. In fact when we travel back to Houston, whether it’s from a CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Seminar, business trip, visit with family or vacation, we immediately dump our luggage and head straight to Dolce Vita.

Could you be more like Isabel in your legal nurse consulting business? Do you take total ownership of your attorney-clients as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant? Do you provide the type of service that they’ll rave about to other attorneys? When you’re reviewing a case, do you make recommendations for additional CLNC^® services based on the attorney’s expressed likes and needs or do you simply provide the same size bowl of spaghetti and meatballs or worse yet wait for the attorney to tell you what to do and when?

The next time you’re getting ready to talk with one of your attorney-clients, take a moment to think of Isabel and take total ownership. They’ll love it and you’ll most likely be creating a relationship for life.

Success Is Inside!

Everybody, including me, loves a bargain. While I don’t like to actually bargain, I do like to feel that I’ve received value for my money. If I get that value during a sale or find something I want at a heavily discounted price, I’m happy. But one thing I won’t do is buy cheap at the expense of quality. While cheap may feel like a bargain at the time, it often ends up costing more in replacement costs, repairs or in a state of dissatisfaction.

Ellen Ruppel Shell’s book, Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, explores how much a discount culture really costs society. Extrapolating from her writing, you could determine that discounts and cheap goods are actually lowering our standard of living. Instead of buying higher quality, longer lasting goods such as clothing, home furnishing or even food, people are generally turning to lower-cost and much lower-quality replacements. You can find cheap just about anywhere you look, whether it’s cheap toys that break, cheap big-screen TVs that fail all too quickly or cheap farmed tilapia that has no taste and minimal Omega 3s.

What about your legal nurse consulting business? Are you letting cheap get in the way of your CLNC^® success? There are many ways it can. The first is being intimidated by legal nurse consultants who charge less than you do. Certified Legal Nurse Consultants frequently tell me that their attorney-clients have tried someone who charges less only to find that the low-end work product of the cheaper and inadequately trained legal nurse consultant was useless.

I can’t tell you how often a CLNC^® student will approach me and reluctantly confess that before coming to my program, they’d spent their money on a cheaper program only to find out that as a result they were ill-prepared to enter the field of legal nurse consulting. Depending upon their sense of humor about their loss, I sometimes respond that we’re the Harvard of legal nurse consulting and they picked Jonestown Community College the first time, but no worries – they are now on the path to CLNC^® success.

Other legal nurse consultants will tell me that exhibiting at legal conferences is too expensive. I’ll agree that exhibiting seems expensive, but what’s even more expensive is sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring without actively marketing your legal nurse consulting business. When you consider that a single attorney-client can represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in your lifetime, I believe it’s expensive not to incorporate exhibiting into your marketing strategy.

We frequently review marketing materials for new Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, and I and all of the CLNC^® Mentors instantly detect when someone has designed and printed their own materials in an attempt to cut costs. How many attorney-prospects passed up a consultant because the first impression was cheap?

Websites are another example of cheap that can ultimately be expensive to your legal nurse consulting practice. Tom likes to say that anyone with $3.99/month can create and have a website. I agree and when they do, the website often looks like it cost $3.99. If your website is your billboard on the information superhighway, you want it to be attractive and represent your brand in a professional way. If it doesn’t, you may not even know how many attorneys rejected you outright because you opted for cheap.

Finally, two tips on technology. First when you’re buying equipment for your CLNC^® business, don’t skimp. For example, it’s costly and time-consuming to set up a computer. If it crashes and takes all your legal nurse consulting work-product with it, you’ll quickly learn why people buy from Dell, Apple or other recognized brands. Second, saving money by not subscribing to an online back-up service will save you $60/year – but how much is your legal nurse consulting data stored on your computer worth to you?

Cheap is not always a bargain. Be smart about when and how you choose to be cheap.

Success Is Inside!

I’ll be the first to admit I have a bad sense of direction. If I’m traveling with Tom and we come to an intersection he’ll ask me which way I think we should turn. Invariably he’ll go the opposite way and he’s usually – annoyingly – right.

We just got home from Paris and Provence. Paris was a stop on one of my first European trips. I’d volunteered to be a nurse through Europe for a class of high school seniors. The nursing part of the trip was uneventful, other than an emergency surgery with my Swiss Army knife. Just kidding, an Austrian doctor did the surgery after I convinced him that the surgery really was necessary. And no he didn’t thank me later, but the parents of the student whose life I saved did.

I had a day off in Paris and took advantage of it to explore the City of Light. Armed with a pocket full of change for the subway and a small map I set out early in the morning to experience everything French I could cram into a day. Fresh French bread, stinky French cheese, rich French coffee in a small cafe, people in berets, I enjoyed it all.

Near the end of the day, when it was time to come home, I experienced something typically French that I didn’t expect: a subway strike. A cab was too expensive and out of the question, so my only option was to walk back to my hotel.

With my bad sense of direction, I used my map to make my way across Paris on foot. Four hours later (after a lot of fun and numerous, intentional detours, like a small café looking onto the Eiffel Tower and some great French table wine), I proudly walked into the hotel shortly after dark. Tom still has trouble believing I found my way back all by myself, but this is a true Hollywood, or Parisian, story.

My map was invaluable and not only did I use it, I focused on it. Normally if someone else is driving, I don’t even pay attention to the route we take. Being alone and not knowing the city, I checked street signs at intersections, park names, directions and monuments all along the way to make sure that I was staying on the right track. I didn’t always take the direct route, but still used my map to allow me to explore, always returning to my map to get back on course.

Do you ever feel lost in your legal nurse consulting business, questioning if you’ll ever arrive at your audacious goal? If you’re feeling lost or off-track, when was the last time you focused on your business plan, otherwise known as the map to keep you and your business on track? I refer to mine often and at the Institute, my executive team and I spend an entire day each quarter focusing on ours.

I encourage all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants to take some time today to sit down and find yourself on your map. If you’re on course, congratulations. If you’re off your map, figure out what it will take to get your CLNC^® business back on the route to the CLNC^® success you aspire to. If you don’t have a map or business plan, schedule time to make one and find your way out of the wilderness (but that’s a different true Hollywood story).

Success Is Inside!

My favorite vacations include hiking. The more remote the trail, the more I enjoy the experience. While I don’t mind seeing people, I much prefer to share the trail with wildlife than “wild life.” Being in the woods recalibrates all of my senses and rebalances me.

I’m not the fastest hiker and I’m probably not the slowest either. But a common question I get when I share a hiking experience is “How many miles did you hike each day?” as though my answer could give them any insight into the experience. Like most sports, the time or distance alone tells an incomplete story. The experience is also about the intensity which is influenced by high altitude, elevation gains, trail conditions and even the weather.

Walking in my home town of Houston poses little challenge and because it’s so flat I can’t even call a 6-mile walk a hike. That makes it easy to walk but presents challenges when I’m trying to train for a real hiking trip. Over the years I’ve hiked in all sorts of conditions. The coldest hike (snow-shoeing really) was in sub-zero temperatures in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park and the hottest hike was across a lava field in Hawaii’s Volcano National Park. The worst conditions I’ve encountered were in the Torres del Paine mountains of Patagonia, crossing a long section of loose scree along a precipice during a cold and driving rainstorm and the scariest were in a grizzly bear-filled section of thick forest in Alaska (I let Tom carry the food pack on that hike). I enjoyed every one of these trips – especially after I was back at the lodge with a healthy glass of red wine in my hand.

The toughest and most intense hiking I’ve done was in Nepal. There, in the beautiful Himalayan mountains, I encountered not only long distances (one day I hiked 12 hours, not counting breaks), but also large altitude changes (I live at sea level) and thousands of stone steps. I couldn’t even tell you the distance I covered – I don’t remember, only the intensity of the experience remains.

When hiking, the intensity presents itself to you if you let it. The more intense the conditions, the stronger your body becomes. Over time you’re not only able to cope with the intensity but you miss it when it’s not there for you, like I do when I’m back home in Houston.

Intensity is easy to find when we’re in the woods or mountains. But what about when you’re in your office working on your CLNC^® business?

When you’re analyzing a medical-related case you have to create the intensity and the challenge. You have to consciously go deeper and faster, challenge your own assumptions and produce a work product that is richer than the last. The next time you sit down to work on a case, don’t ask yourself how many hours you worked, ask how intensely you worked. Your output is directly influenced by the answer you’ll be able to give to that question. I’ve often wished I could bill by the intensity, not the hour. What about you?

Success Is Inside!

There’s a small restaurant in our neighborhood that specializes in burgers. We often walk past it when we’re out cruising our hood and it’s always busy. So when we decided to try it, I had high expectations. My mouth was watering in anticipation but my reality couldn’t have been any further from my expectation. The burgers were pretty bad and even Tom, who is not that picky about hamburgers, didn’t finish his. What made the hamburger bad was the meat itself had no quality.

Last night I cooked a pork roast for dinner and Tom was raving about it, practically doing a song and dance routine. He wanted to know how I did it and I probably could have made something up or told him it was a secret, but that roast had nothing to do with me. I started with the kind of quality meat that can make anyone look like a terrific chef.

As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, what you can accomplish with any case is dependent on the quality of the case itself. If the case is strong, you can’t help but produce a great work product. If the case is weak, all of the manipulations in the world won’t help it or you. Just like Michelangelo believed that his sculpting merely revealed what was already inside the marble, I believe our CLNC^® work product reveals what’s already inside the case.

That’s why you want to give candid and objective opinions early on. A strong case will get stronger as it unfolds and a weak case gets weaker. For plaintiff attorneys that might mean advising the attorney the case has no merit. For defense attorneys that might mean advising the attorney that this is the worst negligence you’ve seen in your nursing practice.

If you want to serve a good burger to your attorney-clients watch the quality of the beef you’re working with. All of the techniques of the greatest chefs in the world won’t help you if you start with bad ingredients.

Success Is Inside!

You read the first 11 strategies yesterday; here’s 15 more to keep your CLNC^® business busier than ever.

Eliminate Distractions and Focus on Your Priorities

1. Develop a routine just as you would in nursing. Triage cases and keep a priority list. Focus on important deadlines.
2. Focus on the task at hand. Screen your calls during business hours. Be available for your attorney-clients, but use caller ID to prevent marketers, family and friends from taking up your valuable time. Turn off the TV. Keep the office door shut.
3. Save personal matters for lunch time, after work or the weekend. Let friends and relatives know that just because you work from home does not mean you are available to play or chat during business hours. You have to set boundaries just as you would if you worked in someone else’s office, so you want to treat your home office with the same respect.
4. Call a family meeting. Communicate positively to your significant other and children the importance of your CLNC^® business and how their support during your work hours is essential to having more family time together. Working at home is a privilege that you and your family will want to continue.
5. Enforce rules about interruptions. This can be tough, but generally everyone respects the rules. When the office door is shut, that means work is in progress.
6. To maintain focus during intense case work, play soft classical music or sounds of nature.

“I set ‘working hours’ for myself each day and during that time do not allow myself to be distracted. The television is off, the landline phone ringer is off and I do not check personal email, social media or surf the web. No catching up with my girlfriends or mom on the telephone and absolutely no household chores! These ‘working hours’ may vary from day to day, but they are hours devoted specifically to my CLNC^® business and my attorney-clients.”

Julie Somen-Becker, RN, BSN, CLNC

Manage Your Work Space and Your Paperwork for Maximum Productivity

1. Create an organized, functional work space dedicated to your CLNC^® business and use it only for business. This makes it easier to walk away from your business at the end of the day. Also keep the office your office and not part of a shared family meeting spot if at all possible. This practice allows for fewer distractions, less background noise and promotes information security.
2. Make sure the layout of your office supports your productivity. For example, are the phone and office supplies within easy reach? Do you have enough room to work? Can you find things easily? Because you’ll spend a great deal of time in your office, make sure you enjoy the environment. Invest in file cabinets to avoid things stacking up on your desk.
3. Before you end your day, organize your priorities and work space for the next day. This ensures your important case will be front and center for your review when you return to work.
4. Take advantage of the latest home-office technology products to maximize your efficiency, decrease stress and save time. Purchase the best computer and word processing software that fit your business needs and budget.

Know When to Quit and Take Care of You

1. If you’re going to work at home, you need strong boundaries between home and office. Make sure your office is just for work. When you leave work, it should be like leaving an outside office and going home. If you choose to work late hours or on weekends, that’s fine. But when you walk out of that office, close the door and GO HOME! Sometimes you have to turn your back on the cases piling up. This makes your work day more productive and your home life more pleasant.
2. Be realistic. Don’t plan eight billable hours per day and get discouraged because you only worked six. When scheduling your work, include fun, family and quiet personal time. Allow for taking the kids to school, helping with homework, preparing meals, taking breaks and unscheduled interruptions. Use your time wisely. Always maintain good communication with your attorney-clients to avoid rush jobs.

“Your biggest challenge will be to not work 16 hours a day. Achieving balance when the work is in front of you 24/7 takes effort and commitment. Set a time each day to turn the computer off and get away from the office. Stay connected to your family and friends. No matter how long you work from home, this will always be a challenge. Even after seven years of being home based, my husband will come into my office space in the middle of the afternoon, and I’m still in my PJs, haven’t had breakfast or even washed my face. But I’ve gotten a lot of work done!”

Anne Koepsell, RN BSN, MHA, CLNC

1. Make a commitment to own the business and not allow it to own you. Don’t allow work to flow over into family time. Walking away from a project can be difficult, but keeping on schedule allows you the freedom to do this. Develop a business plan and follow it, stay organized and allow yourself plenty of time to play.
2. Have an office door you can close at the end of the business day. The ceremonial opening and closing of the door is important. Otherwise you’ll become addicted to the space and find some reason to be in there at all hours, including the weekend.

“I installed a glass door in my office. This enables me to treat ‘my space’ like a real office. I can close the door at night (and not feel too guilty) and open it in the morning when I want to start my work day. It also helps having glass because I can see what is going on in the rest of the house when the door is closed.”

Dorene Goldstein RNC, CLNC

1. This is your business; no one is going to set your boundaries for you. Use rituals to differentiate between work and personal time. Work out, change clothes or leave to run an errand to transition from work to play. Take days off, enjoy the weekend and take vacations. Put them in your calendar at the beginning of the year and stick with this. Schedule a family day. Above all, have fun!

“Working from home has also allowed me to take better care of myself. I start my day with a walk with my dog, then I retreat to the basement to do my workout. After my shower, I am refreshed and ready to start working. Granted this usually isn’t until about 10:00am sometimes, but that’s the fun of working at home. If I had to go to an office or the hospital, I’m not sure if I would get a workout in.”

Dorene Goldstein RNC, CLNC

Use these 26 strategies for working effectively and efficiently from home, and you might outgrow your home office like Larry Frace.

“I love my 800 sq. ft. man-cave basement office which has served me well over the past 10 years. However, it is starting to get a bit cramped in the cave these days, so now I have my eye on a 3,200 sq. ft. cave right next door (through the woods and across an open field). Working from home has been great, but most great things seem to evolve into yet greater opportunities. Being a nurse is great, but becoming a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant evolved this caveman down a path of unlimited opportunities!”

Lawrence H. Frace, RN, CLNC

What a fun problem to have. Congratulations, Larry! Here’s wishing all CLNC^® consultants a successful home office and a problem like Larry’s.

Special thanks to the CLNC^® Pros Suzanne Arragg, RN, BSN, CDONA/LTC, CLNC; Dale Barnes, RN, MSN, PhN, CLNC; Joanne Fox Boschi,RN, MSN, CPNP, CLNC; Nikki J. Chuml, RNC, CCE, FMC, CLNC; Larry Frace, RN, CLNC; Margaret Gallagher, RN, BSN, MSN, CLNC; Dorene Goldstein, RNC, CLNC; Debra Good-Zeiner, RN, BSN, CLNC; Sandra Higelin, RN, MSN, CS, CWCN, CLNC; Jane Hurst, RN, CLNC; Annmarie Johnson, RN, BSN, CLNC; Camille Joyner, RN, CCM, CLNC; Anne Koepsell, RN, BSN, MHA, CLNC; Mildred Mannion, RN, BSN, CNOR, CLNC; Julie-Somen-Becker, RN, BSN, CLNC and Linda Turner, RN, MSN, NNP-BC, CLNC who have shared the strategies they use to work more effectively from home.

Success Is Inside!

Read Part 2.

As Anne Koepsell, Certified Legal Nurse Consultant says “the phrase ‘working from home’ creates images of total freedom from structure and time commitments. And that is the challenge – there is no structure, no office hours, no peers to watch what you are doing and how you spend your time. Those of us who have worked at home rarely want to trade it for a structured job or office setting. But successfully working from home requires the right attention and intention.” I asked 16 CLNC^® Pros to share their best practices for working from home, guaranteed to deliver the attention, intention and effectiveness to succeed.

Set Regular Office Hours and Stick to Your Schedule

1. Whether it’s laundry or lunch out, there is potential for distractions, so it’s in your best interest to establish regular business hours. Your schedule may vary from day to day and week to week, but have a written goal for start and end times and how many billable hours you want to achieve each week.

“I do as much as possible between 9:00am-3:00pm while my husband is at work and my children are at school. No interruptions, no questions, no needs. This is the best time for me to work. If I have to work at night, I make time for my family and for dinner. Once I’ve taken care of them I can do what I need to do in my office with a clear head.”

Nikki Chuml, RN, C, CCE, FMC, CLNC

2. Include regular lunch hours and days off in your schedule.
3. Communicate your office hours to your family. This reminds them that you are not available every second of the day.

“On a weekly basis I make certain that my household is aware of what commitments and expectations I have involving my CLNC^® business. I accomplish this with a few simple steps including a calendar posted in my home office, an Outlook^® calendar that is shared with my husband’s email accounts, and syncing my calendar on my smart phone with my husband’s phone using our MobileMe account. When my spouse is aware of my work load and commitments in advance, he can work with me to successfully keep my CLNC^® business and my family and home environment in balance! This also allows me to stay organized and use my time wisely.”

Julie Somen-Becker, RN, BSN, CLNC

“When I left the hospital and was no longer sleeping during the day, my family thought they hit the jackpot – I was home all the time (not sleeping) and I had so much free time. I needed time to adjust to this new lifestyle. There were a lot of potential distractions, especially with three kids and a husband. In the beginning, I found that creating a calendar for myself and scheduling office time worked for all of us. I posted a big calendar on the refrigerator and wrote in everyone’s appointments and schedules including my own. When I did this, they all knew that from 1:00-4:00pm on Tuesdays I was working and not available for any errands, homework or laundry. This tactic helped make me accountable and it worked.”

Dorene Goldstein RNC, CLNC

4. You might have to walk past the dirty laundry to get your office. Just imagine you are working in someone else’s office until you develop the discipline needed to ignore that laundry. Would you report to the office late to do laundry? Would you watch TV, play Farmville, shop or run errands in the middle of the day? Do whatever it takes to get into “work mode.” Close your office door, don’t answer your home phone and designate a time to handle personal tasks.

“Just as my multiple professional duties and many personal interests create an exciting and ever-changing lifestyle, they can often conflict. In a home-based office setting, home ownership and family responsibilities can infringe on your CLNC^® business unless a clear delineation is established. For me, it is imperative to do whatever it takes to simulate ‘going to work’ in a home office. On days when I work in my home office, I get dressed for ‘work,’ put a do not disturb sign on my door and answer only my office phone. I resist the urge to do household chores but allow myself the luxury of slippers. Through trial and error I have found what works for me.”

Debra Good-Zeiner, RN, BSN, CLNC

“Drawbacks to working at home include that the neighbors tend to forget you are ‘at work’ when they see your car in the driveway and bang on the door or call (because they just know you are in there)! For awhile, my brother-in-law had a habit of dialing every separate phone line we have until I finally gave in and answered one. This happened pretty much any time he had a medical question that demanded (in his opinion), an immediate answer. The fact that I was ‘at work’ didn’t seem to be as important to him as his problem. We had a neighbor on sabbatical who kept knocking on our front door to chat or borrow things during my CLNC^® business hours. We had a house guest for a few weeks. She would tap on my office door several times each day and say, ‘Sorry to bother you, but…’ Another drawback was my initial urge to work in my bathrobe or in sloppy clothes. I took more breaks when I did that and got less done.

Because of those and other experiences, I learned to do certain things differently. Whenever I was busy, I’d tape a laminated note to the door for the house guest, that said, ‘At work. Please do not disturb unless house is on fire.’ For my brother-in-law, I finally asked him to leave one message and I would call back after business hours, but not before. I put another sign on the front door that said, ‘At work. Please come back after 5:00pm.’ Our neighbor on sabbatical has our house key for emergencies (we also have theirs for the same reason). I asked him to just use his house key to borrow whatever he needed and lock up behind himself whenever he saw the sign on the door. The only people who have ever been given my office phone number are my clients, my accountant and my husband. With respect to dressing for work, I have learned to wear nice casual clothes to the office, and of course do my hair and make-up, so I am always ready to drop in on one of my clients. Of course, for our administrative law judge hearings, I step it up to the clothes suitable for a courtroom.”

Camy Joyner, RN, CCM, CLNC

Manage Your Time to Save Money and Your Sanity

5. Create a weekly schedule based on your business plan. Allow flexibility for unforeseen changes. Keep your plan visible at all times. Schedule time for working on strategic goals.
6. Power out for 50 minute increments to enhance your productivity. Evaluate your use of time often to see where you can gain efficiencies if you are not meeting your billable hours goal.
7. Reviewing medical records, researching and writing detailed reports require intense concentration. Take a 10-minute break every hour to walk away from the project and watch your productivity soar.
8. Structure your routine to take advantage of your peak performance times. You can finish big projects and those that require intense focus in half the time when you do them during your most creative and productive time.
9. Save administrative tasks such as correspondence, returning phone calls, checking email and easy projects that don’t require your full attention for your non-peak times and break periods.
10. Keep a running shopping list of office and marketing supplies so you can easily see when supplies are low. You never want to run out of paper.
11. Plan your out-of-office time. In the beginning it’s easy to take a quick trip to the post office or office supply store on a whim. As you become busier, these trips will zap your focus and take time away from productive (billable) activities. Shop online when possible and group errands and appointments for efficiency.

Success Is Inside!