Take the Stage for Legendary CLNC^® Success. That’s right – take it. Don’t just wait for legendary success to happen to you.

You’re probably wondering: “Okay Vickie, how does someone just take what they want? Especially legendary success?” Easy. To have legendary success, you just have to be legendary. Likewise, to be legendary, you have to act legendary. So how do you act legendary?

First, ask yourself what would a CLNC^® legend look like?

How would they walk?
How would they talk to attorneys?
What would their marketing consist of?
What would their work product be?

And most importantly – what would you look like if you were a CLNC^® legend?
Even if to start, you’re only a legend in your own mind. Johnny Cash knew he was a legend long before anyone else knew.

Once you convince yourself that you’re a legend, and really believe it, you’ll find it easy to convince your attorney-prospects that you are indeed legendary. When you go to the attorney’s office, you’ll carry yourself with legendary confidence. You’ll stand apart from the crowd. Soon you’ll be walking out with more cases than you ever imagined.

People associate legendary with successful and so once attorneys perceive you as legendary, they assume you are successful and want you on their team. The more success you have, the more success you will have. That sounds unfair, but it’s true. Attorneys want to win so they want to hang with winners.

Once you’ve landed the attorney as a client, how do you prove that you are authentic – that you are indeed legendary? By being better today than you were yesterday. By being stronger and swifter each day. The same static behaviors day after day and year after year won’t cut it. Remember the definition of insanity? Doing the same behavior over and over again and expecting different results? To get different results, you need to change your behavior. In fact, just to get the same results year after year, you have to change your behavior.

That’s why I love what Geoff Colvin says in his book Talent Is Overrated.
His position is that high achievers are not just talented (i.e. have an inborn ability) – they might not be talented at all.

So what trumps talent? What separates highly successful entrepreneurs from the rest of the pack? Repetitive, focused and deliberate practice designed to specifically improve performance.

Now, if that sounds like hard work – it is. If you’ve ever watched American Idol or Dancing with the Stars you know it’s not always the most talented who advance. It’s the one who puts on the best show who wins. And to put on the best show requires repetitive, focused and deliberate practice.

Another distinction of people who are legendary – they are able to assess for themselves how they’re doing. They don’t need someone to watch over them or push them. You can only improve performance if you know what needs improving. That’s why honest and competent self-analysis is so important. You must act as though you’re on the outside looking in. You’re an active observer of your own actions.

We all know it’s easier to analyze someone else (like our spouse) than to analyze ourself. To analyze yourself objectively is truly a legendary quality. For example: if you’re about to interview with an attorney, you don’t just show up, you apply repetitive, focused and deliberate practice to make that interview the best one yet. Once in the interview, you need to be able to recognize if you’re off target and pull your act together swiftly. You must be able to self-analyze at the very moment something is going wrong, so you can rescue the situation. If you can’t competently self-analyze the situation, not only will you fail in that interview with that attorney, you’ll keep making the same mistakes over and over again in future interviews with other attorneys.

It’s no surprise that people who fail, fail often. And people who succeed, succeed often.

Practicing the answers to interview questions over and over is an important step to mastering your self-analysis skills. But, that only works if you’re practicing the correct responses. Repetitive, focused and deliberate practice is worthless if it’s the wrong practice. Practicing the same bad tennis swing over and over just produces more of a bad tennis swing. At first you need a tennis coach to straighten out your swing. And then you’ll be able to tell for yourself when your swing is off.

As Vince Lombardi said – “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.” That’s why you must choose your mentors and advisors carefully. An inept coach doesn’t just fail to help you, they actually help you to fail.

I recently invested 8 months mentoring a woman at the Institute through repetitive, focused and deliberate practice on a job function I wanted her to master. I required her to do the job herself first. Then I gave her feedback so each time she was doing it more and more correctly. Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know. That’s why the correct mentors are so important to the process of learning how to analyze yourself competently. And I didn’t just give her feedback. At first, I would ask her to tell me what she needed to do differently the next time. I wanted her to analyze herself, before I mentored her. My goal was – she would become me. In other words, it would be like Vickie was standing over her shoulder guiding her every step of the way. I wanted her to be able to assess herself in the same way I would assess her if I were standing there.

It was time consuming, and sometimes painful for both of us, but this investment has paid off in tens of thousands of dollars each year. She still occasionally looks over her shoulder to see if I’m there. And sometimes I am! But not to correct her, just to ask her how her day is going.

I challenge you to apply repetitive, focused and deliberate practice to key parts of your CLNC^® business (such as marketing, report writing or anything significant of your choosing). When you do, you’ll never be the same Certified Legal Nurse Consultant again. Hey! You might even become legendary. Any of you can, because after all, talent IS overrated.

Remember – We Are Nurses and We Can Do Anything^®!
Especially something easy like becoming legendary.

Success Is Inside!

Here at the Institute we frequently mentor a new Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who is about to go on their first attorney interview. As an example, one CLNC^® consultant emailed us, “I have an appointment next Tuesday with one of the most prominent medical malpractice firms in the state. It’s with their lead attorney and he wants to speak with me about a case but he hasn’t actually given it to me yet. I have a few questions regarding this interview and I have to admit I am very nervous.”

I love mentoring Vickie Milazzo Institute’s graduates and students. In addition to encouraging them to apply the interview strategies they learned in the CLNC^® Certification Program, I offer them what I think is the most important advice – RELAX and throw out your script once you know it inside and out.

In 28 years of working my legal nurse consulting business, whether I’ve interviewed with attorneys or done TV, radio and print interviews, I’ve always gotten my best results when I’m most relaxed. I learned the hard way there is no room for tension in SUCCESS. I often relate one of my own formative experiences to new legal nurse consultants to help them avoid a BIG mistake I made.

Years ago I was scheduled for an exciting interview with Laura Sydell for National Public Radio’s (NPR) All Things Considered program. When I first learned about it, I was ecstatic! It was to be my first national radio show. I’d done only one local radio program and one local TV program and here I was in the big time! Soon I began to worry and then to prepare. I figured I’d only get one chance to be on NPR and I wanted to have every base covered. I thought out questions, typed out and revised my revised talking points, practiced and rehearsed until I thought I was ready.

Of all days for an interview, it was the rainiest day we’d had in months. A cold front dropped temps and rain across the city. I took Tom and Evie Baron-Hernandez, one of our Customer Service supervisors with me for support. After a wet, slow drive to University of Houston which houses our local NPR affiliate station KUHF, we sat outside the Melhem building – editing my speaking points yet again. Finally, the rain seemed to be getting heavier so we pulled out our umbrellas and readied for our dash from the parking lot. My new umbrella was covered in hearts of all colors. As I pulled it out and snapped it open I commented, “How can you have a bad day when you have a polka dot umbrella?” I didn’t get an answer but Evie told me later, “I was so nervous I couldn’t believe you were talking about your umbrella! And it wasn’t polka dots. It was hearts! Why weren’t you concentrating?” She didn’t realize I was venting my own nervousness and wasn’t at all relaxed. I was placing myself deeper and deeper into a state of tension.

We sat in the lobby, relentlessly practicing and editing my perfect script – my speaking points. (These were the same points we’d edited just 2 hours before at the office and then again in the car.) Little did I know Laura would see through them in a minute. I entered the sound-proof radio studio through a door that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an airlock on the space station. A large microphone was suspended in front of me looking like a spider on a web of anti-vibration cables. Even though I was very prepared, I was also tense, and more than slightly off my guard. I was told to sit in a chair by a technician who told me not to move my hands (I might thump the microphone), or get more than four inches from the microphone for sound quality purposes. I’m Italian. Asking me not to move around or gesture with my hands while I talk is like gagging me.

The disembodied voice of Laura Sydell suddenly came out of a speaker near the ceiling like the voice of the great Oz. Rather than talk about something safe or impersonal like the subjects I had prepared (legal nurse consulting and entrepreneurship), it turned out that she actually wanted to talk about me. I was acting like I’m a subject I know nothing about, so after a few routine questions, she suddenly asked me, “Are you reading notes? Do you have notes?” “Yes.” I answered, holding onto those notes like a life-preserver from the Titanic.

“Put them away and relax. We’re just two people talking.” Yeah, I thought, just talking over 1,500 miles of high-speed Internet cable in a dark room with an air-tight door. I put my notes away, but still within arm’s reach, tensing up even more. Despite knowing the information in my notes and about myself inside and out, I did just okay. I never hit it out of the park because I never relaxed into the interview. I let the disembodied voice coming over the big speaker in the dark room get in my head. I allowed myself to fall back on my legal nurse consulting deposition rules. Answer only the questions. Usually yes or no is good enough. Don’t elaborate. When I was asked if I had a family, I answered “yes.” I didn’t say “Yes, I have a wonderful, supportive husband and many best friends.” She even asked me if I had any trips or vacations planned and I answered “yes.” She asked me to where and I said “New Zealand and Fiji.” Not, “I’m taking a bicycle trip across New Zealand and then going to Fiji to scuba dive with hammerhead sharks” or anything exciting and fun. Just “New Zealand and Fiji.” I think I sounded like Eeyore from the Winnie the Pooh cartoons.

When it was over, I can still remember the lack of enthusiasm in Laura’s voice when I asked her when she thought the interview would air. To her credit she didn’t say “not during my lifetime” or “never” but hedged and told me she’d have to judge after it had been edited. How much editing of “yes” and “no” would be required I wondered. I walked out of the studio with nothing left but a wet drive home and all the thoughts I hadn’t said. In retrospect, I blew it. The interview was never aired that I’ve heard of and frankly I’m glad.

I thought back to all those radio programs where I’d listened to Laura have conversations that sounded like two best friends chatting over a cup of healthy green tea and I realized my interview sounded more like I was being questioned on CSI for first degree murder (murder of my own chances of getting on NPR).

At 4:00pm on the following Friday, I learned I had a 2:00pm interview on Monday with a reporter for the Texas Bar Journal. At 11:00am on Monday, I finally learned the questions the reporter would ask. Luckily, through the power of the Internet, I was able to not only look her up, but also learn she was reporting on attorney-entrepreneurs. I could see a list of her latest stories and get a feeling for her voice and style. I still wasn’t sure what she wanted from me, but I knew a lot about her. It narrowed down where she was likely to go – more about me than the nursing shortage, healthcare or the malpractice crisis.

I picked myself up and prepared for another interview. I knew I had to do better and to let go of the previous day’s disappointment. And sure enough, by letting go of that disappointment, I had a tremendous interview. I was totally relaxed, in the zone. I was animated and waxed eloquent throughout. I used my wireless telephone headset and could move around the room with the bullet points that I wanted to cover and be Italian and wave my hands to my heart’s content.

It was the kind of interview you dream of; it went so well. The reporter kept saying, “Oh, this is good.” “Oh, this is interesting.” The only thing that had changed from the NPR interview was that I was completely relaxed. I was the same person with the same knowledge and experience, just more of “me” than I was the day before. That’s why I hit it out of the park.

Later, I got a second chance to do it right for NPR when they asked me to write an essay for This I Believe, another feature of NPR’s national news program All Things Considered. This time I nailed it so perfectly because I did for that essay what I’ve been telling Certified Legal Nurse Consultants to do with attorneys for years – relax. By then I had a number of national radio and TV interviews behind me and had seen behind the wizard’s throne. Dark studios and spider-like microphones no longer intimidated me.

I walked into that same radio studio with a different attitude. I stepped through the airlock and embraced that hanging microphone. After speaking with their recording engineer I stood in front of the mic and gave a terrific reading. You can still hear it to this day if you want. I was relaxed, I talked about my childhood and how those experiences shaped my attitude towards life. I hit it out of the park because this time, I was relaxed (no there were no drinks involved although Tom and Evie came along and offered to stop on the way to loosen me up). I didn’t need it, I was ready.

My advice for every CLNC^® consultant about to interview with or just meet an attorney or someone who knows an attorney is to just relax and be yourself. I know it’s easier said than done (like having a photographer tell you to smile for the 477th time).

Most of all, remember that it’s just a conversation between two people – your life won’t depend upon the outcome. The more relaxed you are, the more relaxed the attorney will be and the more successful the interview.

The CLNC^® consultant I mentioned above emailed the Institute after the interview to share that she walked out with a case and a retainer from one of the most prestigious law firms in her state with 12 attorneys who handle medical malpractice cases. Her fabulous reward for going in relaxed.

Relax into your next interview to guarantee you walk out the door with a new attorney-client and a new case.

Success Is Inside!

Sometimes we get so caught up in marketing to prospective clients that we forget one of the most lucrative marketing sources – our existing clients. Focusing your marketing efforts on your existing and prior clients will often yield a much higher return on your efforts than prospecting for new clients.

It takes time and effort to create a business relationship with a stranger. Creating and mailing your marketing packets, making phone calls, scheduling and attending interviews and doing the follow-up can swallow precious time you could be devoting to working on cases.

New Certified Legal Nurse Consultants will have to market to new attorneys, but even experienced legal nurse consultants sometimes forget to go back to those existing clients to ask for new business. We’re in a relationship business and I like to think of relationships with attorney-clients as long term. Once you’ve invested the marketing time and money to create a relationship, it is nothing short of criminal to abandon it.

If you’re serious about your CLNC^® business, it’s time to sit down and mark out an action plan for creating new business from old attorney-clients. They already know you so you can easily glide past the gatekeeper. Assuming you provided the excellent work product attorneys expect from CLNC^® consultants, the attorney should be happy to take your call.

Set a time to get together with the attorney. If the attorney is too busy for lunch, try a morning meeting and bring coffee and bagels. When you meet, remember your positioning strategies and your interview techniques. Focus the meeting on the attorney-client. Ask what kind of cases they’ve been working, what’s coming up and what their needs are.

Remind them you have a wide range of CLNC^® skills and offer to help in any way you can. Mention the fact that you belong to an association of more than 6,000 Certified Legal Nurse Consultants whom you can call on to quickly answer any question they may have. Be flexible and think on your feet. Every attorney has different needs and you might be surprised at the niches you have yet to fill (and may not have even thought of).

If the attorney is too busy to meet with you, send a handwritten note and attach an article they may find interesting, something on standards of care, changes in hospital policies (not your own) or let them know about non-reimbursement for “never events.”

Remind yourself that you already know this attorney so you’re not asking a favor, you’re not trying to establish a new relationship – you’re just retying the connection and seeing how you can help. Time spent remarketing will be rewarding for the attorney-client as well as for you.

Off to climb the right CLNC^® tree!

Success is Inside!

Sometimes silence really is golden. Any negotiating coach will tell you that in a situation where one party to a negotiation makes an offer or statement and a period of silence sets in, the first party to talk or break that silence loses the point. Silence can be uncomfortable when you are talking to attorneys about your legal nurse consulting services, so how do you pull that off?

Let’s say you quote your legal nurse consulting fee and the attorney says “that’s expensive.” Pause, take a deep breath and visualize (without smiling) that attorney in the hospital wearing a hospital gown with his backside showing. For all you know he’s just thinking and processing out loud. 10 seconds, 20 seconds, a minute…your silence is a demonstration of your confidence in your status as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. Soon the attorney will get uncomfortable enough to break the silence and accept your fee (which is quite reasonable) or negotiate further.

Success Is Inside!

I’m in New York City for Easter and just got back from strolling down Fifth Avenue (Tom held my credit card) in one of the most fashionable cities in the world.

New Yorkers have it all together. They are serious about their business and they’re not afraid to prove it in the way they dress. No matter what they are wearing, they know how to package it into one congruent statement. And nobody knows how to dress up “basic black” like a New Yorker. They dress for “Success in the City” more often than “Sex in the City;” which is exactly what you have to do when you walk into an attorney’s office for a legal nurse consulting interview. I recommend that new Certified Legal Nurse Consultants hire an image consultant. New or experienced, I mean it, you need one, you’ll have to trust me on this one. So did I when I started my legal nurse consulting business 27 years ago (even though I didn’t know it at the time).

A typical nurse, I knew how to wear scrubs, but little else. One year for Christmas I asked my mom for a $50 painting I coveted so I’d have something to hang on the wall of my new one-bedroom condo. Her response was, “You need a dress, not a $50 painting.” But being the loving person she was, I got the painting and mom got a big hug. When I had my first attorney interview, I wasn’t ready to “dress for success,” but that painting sure looked great hanging on my living room wall. Fortunately for me, the attorney wasn’t (and still isn’t) the best dresser either. The dressiest things I owned were my “church clothes,” a purple sweater and grey skirt my mom had gotten me for my birthday (two months after that Christmas). Lucky for me the attorney saw what I could do for him, not what I was wearing, and hired me to work on my first medical malpractice case. I got started both on the case and on learning how to dress the part to maneuver through the attorney’s world.

I did manage to avoid the Minnie Mouse look popular at the time, but some of my suits were a little stiff and serious. Through a “friend of a friend” I met an image consultant who quickly set me straight and pulled me together (but not without a struggle). She taught me a valuable lesson. No matter how competent we are, what we wear and how we wear it speaks loudly about what people will expect from us. We may be able to deliver a high quality work product (or save a life), but if the purse doesn’t blend, the shoes are a little scuffy and if the hair’s ten years out of style – you can count on the attorney focusing on the lowest common denominator, not your 15 years of nursing experience and terrific communication skills. We nurses are pretty lenient and tend to judge other nurses first by how we’ve secured all our tools to our scrubs, then by our competencies. Attorneys hire people they perceive to already be successful. You have seconds to influence that first impression and those scrubs or purple sweater just won’t do it. Nordstrom’s and other stores offer free image consults. Take advantage of them, you’ll appreciate it later. Your best thinking got you here – their best thinking can get you out of those scrubs.

If you’ve still no clue what I’m talking about, take a trip to New York City, stroll Fifth Avenue and take a good look at what people are wearing. Just leave your credit card at home.

Success Is Inside!

P.S. Comment and share your 5th-Avenue-style tips for your CLNC^® business.

I just hung up from mentoring a new Certified Legal Nurse Consultant regarding a med-surg case. After listening to her ramble aimlessly about the case for three minutes, I politely stopped her and said, “I would really like to help you solve your issue, but would you please describe the issue?” After a few more attempts at rambling and a lot more nudging by me to keep her focused, she finally got to the heart of the matter, and we dealt with it easily and swiftly.

As we were about to wrap up, she confessed that she still found it uncomfortable and often unsuccessful to talk to attorneys about her legal nurse consulting role. I immediately realized the source of her problem. I had just lived it! It was her rambling method of communication.

Those of you who know me, know that I tell it like it is. I firmly but nicely shared that I had a direct insight into her communication challenge just from our brief conversation. Attorneys are crazy busy. They’re working for a living. They’re not like patients who lay around in bed with lots of time to spare waiting for the next visit from their favorite nurse, happy for any company other than a bad reality show.

When you are talking to an attorney, you have to focus, focus and focus some more. You cannot go into an interview or meeting with an attorney being unprepared or misdirected. Once you lose the attorney, you lose the opportunity. There’s no place like an attorney’s office to prove the truth of the old saying, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

The fastest way to lose the attorney is to appear unprepared. Practice your presentation before you give it. Try it on a spouse – if you can keep their attention, you’ll probably be able to keep an attorney’s.

Preparation and focus are the keys to successfully communicating and to feeling comfortable about any communication you are about to engage in.

And remember, if you can say it in five words/minutes, try doing it in three words/minutes instead.

Success Is Inside!