This weekend I am privileged to be presenting the Women Embracing Leadership events with Stedman Graham. I confess that when I was a young nurse, “leadership” was a word that didn’t get my juices going. It was too traditional and boring for this renegade nurse who didn’t fit in an institutional hospital environment.

Since then, I have learned that leadership is one of the most provocative and exciting words in the dictionary because it applies to how we show up in every situation every second of the day. For some of us, leadership does involve managing others and being in charge of a situation, but leadership first and foremost is about leading ourselves.

Success or failure is the result of thousands of decisions, actions and reactions. Almost every time I mentor a student who is struggling, that student has failed to be a leader in one or more of those decisions, actions and reactions.

Our leadership is tested and challenged not only when things go our way, but also when they don’t. Commit to lead yourself in the most consistent and congruent way each and every day. When you do, you open yourself up to opportunities beyond your imagination.

Lead yourself and CLNC^® success will be yours.

Success Is Inside!

We all know the person whose life would be totally different and of course much better if only “Y” had happened instead of “X.” The mantra never changes. “If Y had happened, then I could have done X” or “If only W had done Z, then my life would be different” or “If Q was different, I’d be different” and, my personal favorite, “If only Y had happened, I’d be happy or successful or married,” or whatever.

What successful people, especially successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, do is live in the world of “what next”, not in the world of “what if”. If an attorney-prospect says “I’m interested, let’s stay in touch”, the CLNC^® consultant knows what’s next and does just that. The CLNC^® consultant doesn’t go into the space of “If the attorney had just given me the case today, I’d be on my way to quitting my job at the hospital.”

The first attorney-prospect I connected with asked me to call him two weeks later because he was preparing for trial. I waited two weeks and called, but he never returned my call. I called again; he still didn’t return my call. I called a fourth time and on that day he took the call. The rest is my legal nurse consulting history. It wasn’t easy during those waiting periods, but I stayed out of the “what if” space and just continued to move in the “what’s next” space. I didn’t allow “If he didn’t have that trial then…” or “If he’d just returned my phone call then…”; if I had, I predict I never would have made the fourth call and I wouldn’t be where I am today.

The only “what ifs” in your life and your legal nurse consulting business should be the “what if” questions you ask yourself about what you should be doing at this very moment.

• What if I make five sales calls right now?
• What if I practice my interview questions before I meet with that attorney-prospect?
• What if I call that attorney-client back right now?
• What if I turn off that TV and turn on my commitment to taking action on my legal nurse consulting business?

Now it’s my turn to ask you a “what if” question. What if you did all these things you know you’re supposed to do? Answer: Hmmm.

Success Is Inside!

When I’m at home, I love being home. There’s nothing better than sleeping in my own bed and enjoying a cup of healthy green tea with my bamboo clicking away outside.

I’m on the road for 9-10 weeks a year for business, and I try to find something to enjoy in each city I visit. Sometimes it’s going back to a favored restaurant or discovering a new “favorite,” visiting with a friend or just taking a walk in a botanical garden after working inside all day at one of our CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Seminars.

When I’m on the East Coast, my business day ends later because my office is an hour behind. Instead of focusing on the late night I’m going to have, I focus on enjoying the extra hour of quiet I’ll get in the morning before my office comes alive, my iPhone starts ringing off the table and the email starts flooding in.

When I’m on the West Coast, my business day starts earlier. Instead of focusing on the fact that my office will start looking for me at 6:00am, I focus on the quiet time I will get at the end of my business day when the office has been long closed. With everyone gone for the day and offline, I have uninterrupted time to go out with speakers and friends, to enjoy dinner, laughter and a healthy glass of red wine together.

I have a love/hate relationship with air travel, an industry that just keeps getting worse. Don’t get me started on airline service, airport food or the TSA pat-downs – I don’t have space in this blog. But when I’m finally in the air where no one can disturb me, I put on my Bose^® headset, play some music on my iPod^®, pop open my laptop and get deep into the rare and cherished uninterrupted work time.

Certified Legal Nurse Consultants who look for the good in every situation, look past any perceived difficulties and look for the silver lining are not only the happiest, they’re also the most successful. Sure, you can focus on the five outstanding, urgent voicemails waiting for you while deadlines loom large, or you can take an optimistic view and see where that takes you. Building tolerance for less than optimal situations builds upon your strength of endurance.

Attorneys come in all shapes and sizes, so it’s only natural that you’ll have favorites and not-so-favorites. When I mentor a CLNC^® consultant who is complaining about an attorney, I’ll counsel that CLNC^® consultant to enjoy the challenge or to find something positive about the attorney and to focus on that trait instead. Sometimes it may be more difficult to find that positive trait than other times, but in the end it will be worth it for your mental health and your Certified Legal Nurse Consulting business. I’m sure you know the saying “Wherever you go, there you are.” You may as well be happy both along the way and when you get to your final destination.

Success Is Inside!

Many of you know I share my birthday with my twin brother Vince. (No, we’re not identical, he’s my brother.) When we were teenagers, our parents took us to the local roller-skating rink for our birthday party. All of our friends came and we were soon skating clockwise around the rink, all at different speeds and at different levels of skill.

As you can imagine, Vince and his friends were flying around the rink like the teenage boys they were, trailing testosterone and intentionally zooming in and out among my teenage girlfriends, trying to frighten us, impress us or both.

That is, all the boys but one. Changing the names to protect the relatively innocent, the star athlete, Danny, couldn’t skate. He’d apparently never been on skates before, but to his credit, was gamely shuffling around the outside of the rink with one hand hovering near the safety of the handrail. The girls were all laughing as we zoomed past him!

Then about a half hour into the party, Danny took a fall and to his horror, split his pants from front to back. Now, you’d think that a macho football player would call it quits right there and then. Instead, he stood up, took off his sweater, tied it around his waist to cover the split and got right back to shuffling around the rink. He stayed for the rest of the party and you’d never have guessed from the fun he was having that anything had happened.

To this day I recall with fond memories how much heart Danny showed, not just by taking on something he wasn’t very good at, roller-skating, in front of all his friends who celebrated his athletic prowess, but especially the heart he showed in staying in the game after splitting his pants.

What about you? How much heart do you put into your CLNC^® business even when you split your pants right in front of your attorney-clients? Do you get back up on your CLNC^® skates and get back on the rink or do you sit on the sidelines?

Like a roller rink, legal nurse consulting isn’t always smooth skating. Some days you’ll fly around the rink with your attorney-client’s praise, others you’ll be shuffling along with that difficult case you’re working on and you may even take a fall. But if it starts to get rough, think of Danny shuffling around that rink with his split pants; show some heart and get back on the legal nurse consulting rink. Before you know it you’ll be at the party with your CLNC^® peers.

Here’s the funniest part of this story – Danny went on to become a professional football player with our hometown Saints. But as far as I know he never went skating again.

Success Is Inside!

A study from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Yale School of Management titled “The Importance of Being an Optimist: Evidence from Labor Markets” found that optimists are more successful than pessimists in their careers.

Let’s take a simple test to find out whether you’re an optimist bound for glory as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant or a pessimist bound for a longer road to success:

Question #1: An attorney tells you that she already uses a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. You:

1. Conclude that the market is saturated.
2. Go after one of the other 1,203,097 attorneys practicing in the U.S.

Question #2: An attorney says “no” to your best marketing pitch. You:

1. Conclude that there is no market for CLNC^® consultants.
2. Refine your pitch and move on to the next attorney-prospect.

Question #3: An attorney asks you to provide one of the 32 CLNC^® services that you have not done before. You:

1. Tell her that it’s not part of your CLNC^® business and leave dejected.
2. Respond “I’d be happy to help you with that,” request CLNC^® mentoring and get on with it.

If you answered “b” to any of the above questions, you’re an optimist. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I consider myself an optimist, and while pessimists have criticized my positive outlook, I’ve happily ignored them for 29 years and reaped all the benefits of hanging with other optimists.

Why is optimism important? First, the study found that optimists succeed not because they’re more skilled than their peers, but because “optimists are more likely to actively engage problems, positively reframe situations, plan their course of action, and rely on social support.” These are very important characteristics of successful CLNC^® consultants. They don’t expect issues to resolve themselves; they attack them with true grit, learning positive lessons all the while.

Another conclusion was that “optimists may be more motivated to work hard to achieve goals since they believe their additional effort will be rewarded.” I always call myself a working CEO and know that my hard work pays off. Successful CLNC^® consultants enjoy the work as much as the benefits of owning their own businesses. A successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultant told me that one of her subcontractors admitted she didn’t want to work as hard as was necessary to achieve the results the attorney wanted. Obviously she no longer subcontracts for the successful CLNC^® consultant. Optimists understand that success doesn’t fall into their laps and even when a CLNC^® consultant meets an attorney “accidentally,” what happens next is anything but.

Finally, one of my favorite conclusions was that “optimists are more willing to disengage from unrealistic courses of action, and re-engage in new ones.” This indicates their adaptability, another important characteristic successful CLNC^® consultants share. If something is not working, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate it. We’ve all engaged in what I call “hallucinations,” i.e., bad ideas. I’ve doggedly pursued a project only to realize that it wasn’t working out, regrouped and turned it into something even more successful than originally planned.

Optimists are also more fun to be around. Wouldn’t you rather hang with positive, happy people than someone who knows the sky is about to fall? Is it truly a surprise that optimists are more successful? Not to me.

The study was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research and can be found at http://www.nber.org/papers/w16328 – it only reinforces what I’ve believed for a long time – as long as you believe life and business are meant to be good, they will be good to you and for you.

Success Is Inside!

How a Working Mom Can Squeeze Out the Time to Pursue Her Personal Passions

What is it about Mother’s Day that you love so much? Do you love the fact that your husband and child join forces to prepare breakfast in bed for you? Or is it that your husband acknowledges what a great mom you are? Or simply that this day is not like every other when you collapse into bed as limp as an overused sponge and wonder, “How long can I keep up this mad pace?”

Today’s mom is so busy doing it all that she rarely has the time to enjoy life’s greatest gift, her family.

The reality today is that even as women are achieving the incredible they’re still battling the stereotype of traditional wife and mother.

A clever mom can do anything, but you should not do everything. Follow these simple strategies and enjoy the benefits of Mother’s Day year-round:

1. Realize the power and freedom of NO. There are only 24 hours in a day and if you want more time to yourself, whether it be at work, at home or for leisure activities, you have to learn to say NO to everybody else’s expectations. It takes practice, but learn to say NO to every other cause that comes along that distracts you from your career or personal goals. The YES is for your priorities and puts you in the driver’s seat of your own destiny.
2. Draw your man in. Find a way to communicate without distraction (e.g. take a walk together). Express how much you appreciate him. Then explain you’re feeling overloaded. Just show him the long pre-prepared list of all your responsibilities. Then decide together on joint responsibilities and all the ways to handle them – dinnertime: cook, eat out, eat prepared food, etc. Find the best solution and get through your list while inviting your husband to offer some solutions. Be open to his ideas.
3. Delegate, delegate, delegate. Women spend 2½ hours per day more than men on household chores. If you want a career and a happy family life you’re going to have to learn to delegate. You need to let your family know: “I cannot handle all the laundry, all the housework and all the carpools.” Your husband and children will have to chip in and help. Start with small things and slowly increase their responsibilities. Make sure to offer encouragement along the way but train them exactly the way you want it done. For small errands and housework it may be worth hiring help.
4. Stoke the fire. Apply your newly reclaimed time to what you passionately love doing. Is it travel? Pursuing a new career path? Exploring a talent such as writing or music? Go for it.

Here’s the bonus: when Mom feels energetic about life, the whole family benefits. And your renewal enhances your business life. So stoke up the passion and Happy Mother’s Day.
Success Is Inside!

I recently saw Cirque du Soleil’s show Ovo. They do everything so well – costumes, acrobatics, acts, clowns and music. I always come away awed at their creativity. In Ovo the aerial acrobatics surpassed anything I’ve ever seen.

The act is the biggest of its kind that Cirque du Soleil has ever done and the distances the performers cover are some of the most difficult in the world. It opens with three very muscular, costumed men standing on a center platform suspended high in the air near the middle top of their “Grand Chapiteau” tent. On opposite sides of the middle platform, and equally high, there were more platforms, each of which held three additional men for a total of nine. Hanging beneath each of the side platforms was a metal swing onto which one of the very muscular men quickly climbed down and began swinging back and forth.

All of this is taking place much higher in the air than I’d ever willingly climb. In fact, to get to these platforms the men had to go up small rope ladders that twisted and turned as they climbed. That climb alone would have scared me half to death!

The act quickly continued with the men on the swings being joined by another, slightly smaller but still muscular (I notice these things) man. The bigger man started swinging harder and harder to the point that it seemed the swing was about to go all the way around. At the apogee of the frontward movement, the smaller man suddenly leapt into the air, sailing toward the men on the center platform. He twisted in the air like a high diver completing at least one twisting somersault, landing feet-first in a basket formed by the interlinked hands of two of the men waiting there for him.

The man on the swing would build his momentum again, this time hanging upside down from the swing by his ankles and, just before he reached the closest point in his arc to the platform, the flying man would leap (with a boost from the “catchers”) out into space and catch the hands of the man on the swing. I held my breath with each leap of faith.

Soon, four flying men were taking turns launching themselves into space and landing on that tiny center platform. The audience would hold their breath while the men were in the air and after each accomplishment we’d cheer and clap at their daring.

The acrobats seemed to take this as a stimulus to challenge each other to attempt more and more daring feats of twisting, turning aerial acrobatics. The combination of strength, physical ability, control over their bodies, derring-do and apparent lack of fear was mind boggling and I was clapping and cheering just a loudly as everyone else.

Suddenly, one of the acrobats mistimed his jump and missed the outstretched hands of the man on the swing by what must have been only inches. We all gasped as he fell into the safety net far below. He landed, leaped up (just like a guy) and was climbing back up the rope ladder as quickly as he could.

As he climbed, the audience erupted into louder shouts and cheers, not just for the audacity of what he attempted, but for the fact that he went right back up to do it again.

In your legal nurse consulting business, are you celebrating or cheering only your successes? Or, do you take the time to celebrate going for what you want, regardless of the outcome? In business, sports and acrobatics there is no 100% success rate, no guarantee that each time you’ll meet with perfect results.

I’m always one for celebrating and remembering encores of past successes. Likewise, it’s important to reward yourself for trying something daring like speaking at a legal conference, or even less than daring like making cold-calls to attorney-prospects or offering a new CLNC^® service to an existing attorney-client.

If you only celebrate success, you’ll certainly have plenty of rewards, but remember to also acknowledge your failures because without attempts you’ll never have successes. Get out today and take your best shot. If you step out to fly and instead tumble to the ground, celebrate anyway!

The more you celebrate the unsuccessful attempts, the more you are wired for stepping out without reservation. You have to step out before you can fly high as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. Celebrate stepping out today and every day.

Success Is Inside!

I love the comforts of my home and my cozy neighborhood. Being home is like experiencing a steaming cup of green tea – it just feels right. I also love traveling to new places and have hiked and biked all over the world.

And then there’s the business travel I do for nine or 10 weeks a year. The hotels I stay in don’t come close to the comforts of home nor do they rival the remote and adventurous places I’ve been. Wherever I go though, I have to deal with one of the most deteriorating, surviving industries in the U.S. – the airline industry. But this blog is not a rant about airlines. I’ve done that one already.

Today’s blog is about happiness. I’m not one to advocate “Barbie-Dolling” it (don’t you just hate that?), but one thing I’ve learned is that the happier I am, the happier I am. Happiness is not only contagious to others, it’s contagious to ourselves. My grandmother had multiple sclerosis, yet she was one of the happiest people I’ve known. She taught me that happiness is not a condition – happiness is a choice.

I don’t always wake up happy, but wherever I am, I try to focus on the part of the experience that is good. For example, I might not like the bed in my hotel room but I am passionate about teaching and mentoring nurses in person. The CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Seminars and my speaking engagements require the occasional uncomfortable bed.

Gratitude is an antidote to unhappiness. Life will always throw us curveballs, fastballs and, just when you think you know what’s coming next, the occasional change-up. Being happy to the core helps us to hit them back – no matter how fast they are or how many come our way.

Attorneys are like you and me. They enjoy being around happy people. I recently mentored a legal nurse consulting student who refused to move out of the drama of a negative experience. For two weeks she dwelled on something that was easily solved in three minutes. My advice to her was: “Move on and choose happiness. You’ll be happier and your attorney-clients will be happier.”

That is what I wish for you too – whatever challenge you face today, choose happiness first. You’ll find it’s contagious and suddenly you’ll knock that fastball out of the park!

Success Is Inside!

Today is such an exciting day! I received four copies of the Korean translation of my book Inside Every Woman: Using the 10 Strengths You Didn’t Know You Had to Get the Career and Life You Want Now. The cover is so different from any of the other translations of the book and seeing a new cover is one of the most fun things about the foreign translations.

This means that over 24,000,000 women (not just legal nurse consultants) in South Korea alone can access the power of Inside Every Woman. The South and North share a common language and an unheard-of literacy rate in excess of 96%. If my book makes it across the 38^th Parallel, 11,000,000 North Korean women could read it and maybe shake things up some!

Here’s the new Korean cover along with the Chinese, Polish (first and second editions), Vietnamese, Indonesian and American covers. Comment and tell me which is your favorite.

	Korean
Chinese	Polish, 1st Edition	Polish, 2nd Edition
Vietnamese	Indonesian	English/American

Success Is Inside!

Yesterday someone I met asked me: “Vickie, of the places you’ve been, what is your all-time favorite trip?” I’m not a fan of this question because every trip is a favorite in its own way. My response yesterday was the same as it’s been for 12 years: “If I can only pick one, it would have to be Nepal.” Nepal was my first expedition, so I felt daring, rugged and adventurous. I also fell in love with the incredible contrasts there.

The Himalayas were the most stunning mountains I’ve ever seen and I hiked on trails that were carved by generations of use and felt like sacred ground. The dramatic mountains and 14,500 feet of altitude took my breath away. With every step I took I simply marveled at what I saw. To this day I’ve seen nothing that rivals the beauty or the thrill of my first view of Mount Everest.

If there was a counterpoint to the beauty of the surroundings, it was the places we stayed. I’ve done the camping thing. It’s great; I love being in nature no matter the weather and I don’t mind getting really wet or dirty. But after a long day of hiking I enjoy a hot shower, a good meal and nice surroundings. There were few of those in Nepal. Some of the places we stayed were downright dirty. The communal toilet (if there even was one) was often overflowing and covered in a combination of excrement and urine. Luckily, my hospital experience with all sorts of bodily fluids helped me to cope and being a nurse I knew how to use a toilet without touching anything but I quickly started looking forward to using a hole in the ground instead of a Nepalese toilet.

Then, there were the uncomfortable beds made from 2x4s covered by mattresses stuffed with “local materials” shaved from a zopkio. They didn’t bring me joy. When Tom and I zipped into our sleeping bags at night, it was for protection from the mattress and whatever was living in it more than the elements. It almost made me wish we were camping outside, not tea-house trekking. Next there were the four minutes of luke-warm, sun-still-heated water per person. Tom and I made the most of that one. Don’t get excited though – any flames of romance were quickly extinguished when the water returned to freezing in the 9th minute.

Finally there was the food. Being an Italian gal from New Orleans I live to eat, so Tom was shocked to find that not only was I not eating, I had no appetite whatsoever. After three days he watched me practically have a foodgasm at the discovery of a dubious-looking jar of American peanut butter.

Despite the worst food and the worst accommodations of my life, Nepal was my favorite trip.

Sometimes the most rewarding and enjoyable things come with some discomfort. This applies to our legal nurse consulting businesses too. We can be working away in a business we love, on a case we’re interested in or a challenging project and then something happens and suddenly the day turns bad. What do we do – lose our momentum and quit? No, we have to push through it. When this happens at my office, I’ll joke with my staff and say “Hey, if this business was easy everyone would be doing it.” I think that’s what makes any business, especially legal nurse consulting, so rewarding.

We often think easy or soft is what we want, but what we really want is something that will challenge us and in the challenge we find a special reward. To be in Nepal, I needed to work to get there. Enjoying the Himalayas involved not only bad food and accommodations, it also included training for long and high-altitude hiking we’d be doing and traveling almost halfway around the world to get there. One day we walked for 12 hours to get to the next tea-house (breaks not included). At first I resisted the discomforts but on Day 4 of the trek I woke up very hungry for even bad food and on that day had the epiphany, “Without the discomforts I wouldn’t be having this wondrous experience.” Suddenly I was all in, truly alive and savoring each and every moment.

Embrace the discomforts of your own CLNC^® expedition, whether it’s a prospect call, writing a challenging report or simply emptying the trash can in your office. When you embrace the discomforts you’ll wake up to each and every moment and opportunity available to you for your legal nurse consulting business.

Also, vow to do something each day that makes you uncomfortable. It could be offering a new CLNC^® service to your attorney-clients, finally attacking and organizing that mountain of paperwork or simply making a call to retie the connection with an attorney-client you haven’t spoken to for some time. Pick something that you’ve been resistant to and see how it makes you feel when you’ve completed it. There just might be a greater payoff or reward than you expect. You may feel like you’re climbing Mount Everest but think of the view from the top!

Success Is Inside!