One strategy to help you with this goal is to ditch perfectionism. As nurses, perfectionism is not only rewarded, it’s expected. You make a mistake and someone can die. I’m sure those kind of mistakes don’t go over well with your boss either (not to mention the patient). But do your internal documents for your legal nurse consulting business have to be so perfect? Misguided perfectionism can keep you from stepping out and going for the big things for your CLNC^® business or it can rob you of enjoying your business and your life.

I am surrounded by perfectionists (lots of Virgos) at Vickie Milazzo Institute and I often suffer from the perfectionism obsession myself. Ten drafts of a document is not uncommon. Over the years, we’ve had to acknowledge that perfectionism is important for the big things that count (like a report for your attorney-client) but can actually detract us from the big important things when we apply it to the small insignificant tasks that we all have to do. The advent of computers has made this problem worse than ever. In the old days of typewriters, it was difficult to revise and reprint a document and people were very careful about making revisions. Today, we can move a comma or a line of type and reprint it to our heart’s content without even questioning the gain.

Growing up in New Orleans, Louis Armstrong was an icon. I often think if he had been a perfectionist, we would never have heard him sing “What a Wonderful World.” The great Satchmo came close to perfection as a trumpet player, but his voice, his unique, gravelly voice was certainly untraditional – sometimes not hitting any recognizable notes, sometimes incomprehensible, but ALL THE TIME – his own unique expression of his interpretation of the music.  And it wouldn’t BE such a wonderful world without THAT song.

If you think about it, when you’re demanding perfection on the wrong stuff as a legal nurse consultant, you too miss notes, high and low. Then, instead of moving on, you’re sidelined by rejection or imperfection. Now, instead of looking at your attorney-prospect list, you’re looking in the refrigerator. And guess what? Unless you work in the morgue, there are no attorneys in the refrigerator!

Think back to the first attorney who said no to you. Is that so important today? Can you even remember that attorney’s name?

Ditch perfectionism! Lighten up when you pick up the phone for that next attorney call or write that next report. If you don’t get that perfect case, or your perfect attorney-client doesn’t give you those perfect glowing reviews, don’t give up… That’s nothing more than a perfect experience to learn from.

Only you can properly assess where it’s okay to ditch perfectionism in your CLNC^® business, but do make it a goal. When you ditch perfectionism, you free yourself to spend time on the important and BIG things that will propel your legal nurse consulting business to the next level and keep those attorney-clients coming your way.

Success Is Inside!

This year’s theme is “Ditch Unnecessary Complexities.” Complexity in and of itself is not negative. In fact, because what we do at the Institute is complex, copycats cannot replicate the quality of what we offer to Certified Legal Nurse Consultants and CLNC^® students.

As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant when you write a report and analysis for a medical-malpractice case, you expect your report to have a level of complexity that cannot be replicated by a nurse who has not been trained as a CLNC^® consultant.

But in both your business and mine, this is a good year to eliminate unnecessary complexities that creep into our CLNC^® businesses and are accepted without question or thought.

At a recent Vickie Milazzo Institute staff brainstorm, I asked the staff to help identify unnecessary complexities with the focus on being more efficient, cutting costs and eliminating a process or procedure that is no longer needed. Together they identified 48 of them for 2010. Of course we triaged the most important ones to tackle first, but many required very little effort.

You can do this for your CLNC^® business by raising your consciousness and asking yourself the following questions:

1. “Am I doing something that I no longer need to be doing?”
2. “Why exactly are we doing it this way? Is it simply because that’s the way we’ve always done it?”
3. “Am I doing something that gives me little or no payoff?”
4. “Can I simplify this process?”
5. “Does technology exist to automate or simplify this process?”
6. “Is there not just an easier way, but a better and faster way to accomplish this goal?”

In 2010, let’s commit to focus on the core purpose of our CLNC^® businesses – i.e. servicing our clients and producing the best quality product by freeing ourselves from unnecessary complexities. The time we save can be used to improve other processes or, just to improve our lives outside of our legal nurse consulting businesses. Once you’ve completed this process for your CLNC^® business, consider trying it in your home – just don’t let your family in on “let it go!”

Success Is Inside!

Believe it or not, in the ‘60s the BBC restricted the types of music the British could hear over the radio. In response, these rollicking and swinging bands of pirate entrepreneurs took it upon themselves to fill a gap in the radio market. The featured ship experienced smooth sailing until it hit a business “iceberg” and the ship sunk.

While the Pirate Radio ship did not sink from an iceberg, it did sink. This movie got Tom and me talking about the traveling Titanic artifact exhibition we have seen and the timeless and valuable business lessons Certified Legal Nurse Consultants can learn from the tragic events of the Titanic 90 years ago (besides the value of being onboard with Leonardo DiCaprio).

Your Business Is a Treasure

You enter the Titanic exhibit through a dimly lit room and walk past a large model of the ship as it sits today, broken and rusting on the bottom of the North Atlantic surrounded by treasures that have come to rest on the bed of the ocean. Here, on the museum floor, sit two rows of dishes half buried in sand – the wooden crate they were stored in long ago eaten away by the ocean. Over there is a crushed light fixture from the ceiling of a stateroom and here sits a ceramic sink, all recovered from the debris field surrounding the great ship. A hidden speaker system plays submarine sounds, adding to the chilling undersea effect and setting the mood for the exhibit to come.

Business Lesson #1 – One day you will retire. How will you remember your CLNC^® business – as a failure or as a success story? Will your mistakes become Titanic-size failures or will you learn from them and make corrections? Will something good come from the business treasures revealed by lessons learned? Amazing lessons lead to a new and higher levels of success for your legal nurse consulting business.

You Bear the Captain’s Burden of Trust

In the next exhibit room you see photographs of the passengers and crew. The black and white photos show stern looking men and women, sweet, well-dressed children, proud sailors and crew members. None had any idea of the tragedy ahead of them. They believed the ship was unsinkable and trusted in the White Star Line and their captain. In fact, the captain’s reputation was so strong that several of the passengers refused to sail with anyone else, booking passage only on ships under his command.

Business Lesson #2 – Your job is to steer your CLNC^® business ship wisely and to lead wisely. Outstanding leadership and knowledge will give you a ship full of loyal, trusting attorney-clients not to mention CLNC^® subcontractors and employees. Never betray their trust. One betrayal of trust can sink the business relationship. It may not be the Titanic, but when you consider that a single attorney-client can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to you, that’s a lot of gold left at the bottom of the ocean. Your subcontractors are needed to help keep your ship on course and making “all possible speed.”

Technology Doesn’t Guarantee Success

Next you see a large photo of the room where the Titanic was designed, along with shots of the ship under construction. It took 3½ years to build this engineering marvel, the largest ship of its day. Revolutionary advances in ship and engine design were developed to make the Titanic unsinkable.

Business Lesson #3 – You can create a modern, state-of-the-art business enterprise using every technology available, but as much as I love technology, it is only an aid. Attorneys need strong analysis to keep their cases from sinking. All the computers, software, smartphones, etc. are tools to be used, not substitutes for critical thinking and communication.

Glitz and Glamour Are Only Skin Deep

The exhibit recreates the level of comfort first-class passengers enjoyed:

1. Full-size staterooms, the largest, most comfortable rooms ever built on a ship, complete with running water and electric lights, a rarity in 1912.
2. A Parisian café, along with gourmet menus and manifests showing the diverse array of fresh and exotic foodstuffs stocked on board.
3. The grand wooden staircase with ballroom music playing in the background and a rescued cherub bearing witness to the ship’s former glory.

In today’s dollars, a first-class ticket would have cost as much as $78,000. The passengers truly sailed in luxury never before seen on a ship, yet, the Titanic was rushed into service and not all its systems and services had been tested. The opulence belied hidden problems.

Business Lesson #4 – The first impression is so powerful that you want every aspect of your legal nurse consulting business to look good. To an outsider your business may look solid and even glamorous. But as the captain of your ship, only you know where your weaknesses lie. For example, are your medical-related case reports filled with substance or just appear glitzy? As long as you can identify weaknesses and remedy them, you can still maintain the glitz and glamour. Ask for feedback from your clients and do some self-analysis of your work – nothing is perfect (just ask your spouse) and everything can be improved upon.

Stay on the Lookout for Icebergs

In the next starkly lit room, you step out onto the deck and feel the chill of the night air. A 30-foot-long mountain of ice dominates your view. You can press your hand into the side to feel the chill of the ice and start thinking about the coldness of the waters. The recovered ship’s bell hanging nearby rings suddenly, loud and clear, and you hear a lookout shout, “Iceberg!” You learn that in the rush to prepare the ship for sailing, neither lookout could find his binoculars, a fatal error.

Business Lesson #5 – No matter how many times you cruise the seas – even while tending to your attorney-clients’ every need – you must always be on the lookout. Don’t get lost in the details of running your CLNC^® business or creating the glitz and glitter. You can easily lose sight of what’s ahead and forget to watch where you are going or what icebergs may await you. To stay on alert you need to keep one eye on the future, one eye on the past and one on the present.

You Don’t Have to Hit the Iceberg Head-On

The Titanic’s collision with the iceberg wasn’t head-on. Instead the berg glanced along the side, tearing a gash no wider than three inches in six watertight compartments. The ship was designed to float with as many as four of these compartments flooded. But six flooded almost simultaneously, dooming the ship. With a harder collision, even a head-on blow, or a crash tearing one large hole across two compartments, the ship would have survived.

Business Lesson #6 – Don’t underestimate the small problems. Even a small amount of damage can have catastrophic effects. You may plan for a major catastrophe, but the cumulative effect of smaller injuries can sink your business as surely as a giant iceberg.

There Are Icebergs Everywhere

The Titanic sailed for only two days before striking the iceberg. After 3½ years in design and construction, it took less than 3½ hours for the ship to go down.

Business Lesson #7 – No matter how long you spend building your business, it is important to be alert at all times. Icebergs are plentiful.

Have Your Lifeboat Ready at All Times

Leaving the iceberg, you move to the next room and you are quickly sobered by the personalization of this tragedy with the lists of names, photographs and artifacts from the passengers. In the haste, some lifeboats were launched nearly empty. Some were over-full. There were far too few lifeboat seats for the number of passengers and crew. People who fell into the ocean lived less than 10 minutes due to the extreme cold. At least one lifeboat tipped over, saving only those lucky enough and strong enough to climb out of the freezing water and cling to the capsized boat.

Business Lesson #8 – You must always have enough lifeboats and be prepared with an alternative if you run out. Today’s lifeboats are self-righting – but you still need to be strong enough to climb out of the water. In business terms, this means you need not only a viable emergency or contingency plan that you can easily activate, but also the ability to survive for the duration of the emergency.

Rescue Your Best Attorney-Clients First

In most cases men chivalrously stood aside as women and children were put into the boats. The highest percentage of survivors were from the first-class section. Proportionately fewer second- and third-class passengers survived. Passenger class was determined by the cost of the ticket, and hence by the passenger’s wealth. (Incidentally, two rich passengers traveled in third class to hide their wealth, and both were lost.)

Business Lesson #9 – Take care of your best attorney-clients first, but don’t forget your occasional attorney-client. Your best clients are the ones you’ll need most and a show of loyalty here can take you far. But all attorneys, big and small add value to your company so make sure that your level and quality of service is constant across all your attorney-clients.

Icebergs Lead to Improvements

The sinking of the Titanic triggered a congressional inquiry (even back in 1912). A lot of fingers were pointed, and the rules of shipbuilding were changed forever. None of this helped those who went down with the ship although future passengers enjoyed a higher level of safety.

Business Lesson #10 – Rules can and will be changed after mistakes are made from hitting icebergs. If you’re not out there making mistakes, you’re not making any progress. Each mistake is a learning opportunity that will make your business better – if you take the time to learn from your mistakes and not just shrug them off as “experience.”

It’s Okay to Hit Icebergs

The last business lesson is the most dramatic of all. The Titanic wouldn’t have sunk if it hadn’t sailed. If you never leave the dock, you’ll never hit an iceberg – but you’ll also miss the thrills of the voyage.

Business Lesson #11 – You have to sail before you can fail. If you hit an iceberg while you’re working, at least you’ll have the chance to keep your business afloat. If you never leave the dock, you’ll never have a legal nurse consulting business to keep afloat.

Some businesses sink on the drafting board because they never get built. The owners spend more time getting ready than they spend on marketing. One CLNC^® consultant kept her business in the planning stages for four months because she wasn’t happy with the company name she had selected – and she finally went with the original name she had chosen. She might have missed a lot of icebergs in four months, but she also didn’t win any attorney-clients. As hockey legend Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

No business is unsinkable – but there are steps you can take to watch out for icebergs. Personally, I’d much rather try and fail than never try at all. I’ve made my share of mistakes and I’ve hit my own large iceberg. My business didn’t sink and I stayed afloat, thankfully I had the necessary lifeboats and contingency plans in place and acted quickly on them. The iceberg knocked me off course and led me on a journey that would change my business and the nursing profession forever. In fact, if I had missed the iceberg, I probably would have kept going in my original direction. Then you wouldn’t be reading this blog, and thousands of RNs who are now successful CLNC^® consultants would instead be battling healthcare facility icebergs daily.

Full steam ahead, lookouts to the crow’s nest!

What’s the point of this camp? It’s to get people to do their jobs, without complaining and to act like adults while they do their jobs. I’m sure you all know a couple of candidates for Camp Buck-Up (I can think of several already) and to tell you the truth, I need the occasional visit to Camp Buck-Up myself.

At Camp Buck-Up, we’ll start the day with healthy green tea followed by PE drills such as shouldering and carrying a heavy load of responsibilities, pulling your own weight in meetings, running an obstacle course of objections when completing a project and walking a tightrope of responsibility, all without complaining. Easy activities like fire-walking are for those feel-good camps – not Camp Buck-Up. At Camp Buck-Up, everyone will spend one week without complaining about anything or anybody. It’s easier to complain, or to moan and groan than it is to put our noses to the grindstone but we’ll straighten that out. If someone is heard complaining, they’ll get a second week at Camp Buck-Up at no additional charge.

At Camp Buck-Up, there won’t be any gossip about any issues other than why there’s no gossip. There won’t be any second guessing or criticism without offering an alternative and we won’t talk about someone if they’re not there to defend themselves.

At Camp Buck-Up, we’ll learn that the best way to eat a whale is one bite at a time. We’ll learn to plan projects, set goals and timetables and stick to them. Sometimes getting started is the hardest part of a project so we’ll all practice taking that first step. Our legal nurse consulting businesses will never be the same after Camp Buck-Up.

At mealtime at Camp Buck-Up, you won’t find any processed or fast foods. We’ll learn to eat cruciferous vegetables and plenty of Omega-3s and how to make the healthy choice over the fun choice (Goodbye fried oyster po-boys, hello salmon and broccoli!). We’ll each do a tour of KP (kitchen patrol) so we can practice prepping and cooking fast, healthy meals that create leftovers we can take to work the next day.

At Camp Buck-Up, all nurses will eat meals sitting down and be forced to take a 30-minute lunch break. They’ll also be forced to give up their catheters and go to the bathroom on a regular basis. We’ll drink 8 or more glasses of water daily to help this process.

At Camp Buck-Up, everyone will be forced to have at least one good belly laugh each day and it won’t be from schadenfreude, it’ll be from the genuine pleasure of people having fun working and laughing together. Don’t ask about the thread count on the sheets, just be happy we won’t have bunk beds!

At the end of every day at Camp Buck-Up, we’ll have a sundowner of healthy red wine and thank our lucky stars we’re at Camp Buck-Up before we drink it.

At Vickie Milazzo Institute we haven’t started mandatory Camp Buck-Up yet, but I’m thinking about it. I’ve already filled the guest list for my first Camp Buck-Up with people I think need it most (and no, Tom’s not on that list). If you want to sign up for Camp Buck-Up, I’ll be happy to put you on the waiting list, just let me know! See you at Camp!

Success Is Inside!

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!

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Success Is Inside – when you’re prepared!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Success Is Inside!

Dale Barnes, RN, MSN, PHN, CLNC

Nikki J. Chuml, RNC, CCE, FMC, CLNC

Lawrence H. Frace, RN, CLNC

Dorene Goldstein, RNC, CLNC

Jane A. Hurst, RN, CLNC

Camy Joyner, RN, CCM, CLNC

Comment and share the best advice you never took or to thank these CLNC^® Pros for their candid advice.

To receive your best advice, sign up now for the 2010 NACLNC^® Conference where you’ll Take the Stage for Legendary CLNC^® Success in Nashville, Tennessee.

I just got back from an 18-day trip to Svalbard Island, deep in the Arctic Circle and halfway between Norway and the North Pole. We started in Copenhagen and finished in Oslo. The best part of the trip was spent spotting polar bears and other Arctic wildlife at Svalbard Island.

Let’s get the facts out of the way. Even at 79° North, life abounds. The frigid waters surrounding the Svalbard archipelago contain Atlantic walruses, five different species of seals and 12 different types of whales as well as cod, plankton (for the whales) and other sea life. The air is host to 27 species of migrating, and one resident species of, birds numbering in excess of three million (who counts these?) during the short summer. The island, really islands, host reindeer and Arctic foxes and, one of the main reasons for my trip, about 1,500 polar bears.

I attribute a lot of my success with Vickie Milazzo Institute over the past 27 years to my morning and evening renewal rituals and to my sabbaticals. Just like you don’t expect a battery to keep going forever without recharging you can’t expect it of yourself as a legal nurse consultant. Revitalize your mind, body, emotions and spirit frequently, and you’ll find the energy abundantly available when you need it for your attorney-clients and your CLNC^® business. But there’s more to renewal than two cups of healthy green tea and a good soak in a candlelit tub (although that does work for the short-term).

I take 12 weeks off a year and at least 2-3 times a year those weeks are a true sabbatical from work, business, email, staff and all the associated stressors. This 18-day Arctic Circle trip was one of my sabbaticals – the kind of remote place where I can completely disconnect.

As you can imagine, getting off the grid is not always an easy thing to do (you don’t just hop onto the 5:15 train to Bhutan). I have to plan for renewing my energy in the same systematic way I plan to manage and grow my legal nurse consulting education company. I set my renewal goals and strategies and formulate action steps (can you tell I’m a Pisces?). I schedule my vacations and other Vickie-enhancing activities far in advance to guarantee that no one (including me) overbooks my calendar or schedules a last-minute emergency that will completely wreck all those hours of planning (although it has happened and when it does, I adapt).

My goal is to get far away, into something so different that it forces me out of my regular relaxation routine into one that helps stretch me in different ways. So, for 18 days I was completely disconnected from my normal, day-to-day life and I allowed myself to completely relax and renew. Nature and wildlife provide two of the most powerful tools for relaxation that I’ve ever found and the combination of Arctic ice packs, mountains, glaciers and sea water was incredibly renewing. Sea kayaking, hiking, riding a zodiac raft, seeing a blue whale and worrying about nothing more than getting too close to the business ends of large, hungry, white-furred mammals renewed me in ways that a massage just cannot. Studies show that being exposed to nature may improve your memory as well as your well-being. I know it makes me feel better all over.

I’m now back at my desk and I have the energy for whatever madness life and business throw at me. My mind is clear, I’m calm (relatively) but more important, renewed. My batteries are fully topped-off and I have the energy to accomplish my Big Things and juggle my daily demands yet feel centered, even in the unrest. Renewal lightens my load, and while the world around me may be (and often is) in chaos, I can remain solid in the midst of it.

You don’t have to travel 4,500 miles or 49 degrees of latitude to renew. Find what works best for you – it may be a three-day weekend, working in your garden or lying on a beach. Whatever it is, plan it and do it. You owe it to yourself, your family and your legal nurse consulting business. In the meantime, I’d like to share some small parts of my trip with you. (The one where the bear chases Tom is really funny.)

Rested, renewed and ready for anything.

Success Is Inside!