One of my favorite quotes by Shinichi Suzuki states: “What we’re doing here is so important, we’d better not take it too seriously!” I think CLNC^® consultants excel at this in part because of our background in nursing. As nurses, we deal in serious subjects: death, disease and dismemberment – just to name the fun parts of the job. Then there are the short staffing and floating issues, arrogant doctors and administrators who are out of touch.

In order to handle all the stress, nurses have to develop a sense of humor which outsiders might find strange to say the least. Nurses can find the humor in just about any situation. And nurses even have a sense of humor about their own health crises. Recently I rode an ambulance with a good friend (also a nurse) who was being transported. In the E.D. she said “Vickie, please don’t tag me on Facebook in that ambulance photo.” I promise I didn’t even take a photo, but her sense of humor reassured me that she was at least stable.

When we become Certified Legal Nurse Consultants and start working with attorneys, the game changes: or does it? Suddenly instead of seeing patients who recover, we see a higher percentage of catastrophic injuries and plaintiffs seeking redress and compensation, often with no hope of recovery. It can depress us if we let it. When this game changer occurs, do you change your game or do you approach your legal nurse consulting business with the same sense of humor as you did your nursing practice? I’d recommend keeping your sense of humor.

What we do as CLNC^® consultants is serious, but if you catch yourself taking yourself too seriously step back and remember what Suzuki said; “What you’re doing is so important you’d better not take it, or yourself, too seriously!” Take some time today to have a laugh with an attorney-client. It’s good for the relationship as well as your soul.

Success Is Inside!

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

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

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

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

Success Is Inside!

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!

On our vacation to Provence, I consciously left my iPhone^® at home. That sounds good and healthy, right? Well it did feel good and healthy right up until the time I stepped off the airplane in Paris and reached into my purse for my phone. Nothing there. Momentary tachycardia, like when you can’t find your wallet, car keys or wedding ring (Where was I last night?). I remembered the phone was at home, took a few deep breaths and headed to passport control.

Standing in line at passport control and later in customs there are big multilingual signs, “no cellphone use”. No problem, even though I don’t like to be told what I can and cannot do. It was a different story in the car ride to the hotel, in the Paris subways and on the TGV to Provence. When I sit in a car, I usually take advantage of that time to catch up with my office and Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. It was only natural that when every other Frenchwoman or man pulled out their cellphone to text, Facebook or check their make-up, I unconsciously and enviously reached for my own phone. It’s an involuntary reaction, much like breathing. When I have a bit of free time I grab the iPhone, check email, check Facebook and check email again (just in case).

It took a couple of days, but I soon calmed down and joined fully with the slow life of Provence. Walking from village to village, eating lunch outside in a small café or having an aperitif on the terrace before dinner, I forgot the iPhone. Even the urge to call family or friends left. I was free to enjoy my vacation, and enjoy I did! Although one day the combination of a French baguette, Époisses cheese and a healthy glass of great Bordeaux wine almost had me ready to tweet!

I heartily recommend that all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants take a temporary vacation from your phones. Your mental health might suffer at first, but then it will magically soar. Take a moment, put down the phone, pick up a baguette, some cheese and a glass of French red – you’ll thank me later.

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 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!

My staff at Vickie Milazzo Institute is strong, opinionated and sometimes even mouthy – just the way I like them. When we hire a new employee I sometimes notice that at first they’re reluctant to give an opinion that’s different from the majority of the outspoken staffers. They are often a little slow to speak up and when they do it’s obvious they’re just tagging onto the others. It’s like the new person is afraid to get off the fence and jump down onto either side until they know what side everybody else is on. Here in Texas, if you’re sitting on a fence in a pasture full of longhorn cattle that may be a good idea. But when you’re in my conference room, it’s not a tactic for success with me or with the rest of the staff.

Here’s what happens when someone is just sucking up to me or a manager or the group at large and not really speaking for themselves; they get zero credit for their input. Their light, if any, may as well be under a bushel. If I wanted to hear a parrot, I would have hired one. Instead, I hired them for their expertise and I want to hear their opinion – whether I agree with it or not.

This sucking up temptation also applies to you as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. When you’re in an attorney’s office discussing a case, that attorney doesn’t want you to be a “yes” person.

Attorneys are used to thinking for themselves and they expect the same of their CLNC^® consultants. They are used to intelligent disagreement and are trained to see both sides of an issue. They don’t need you to suck up; they need you to give them your professional opinion which should include both the strengths and weaknesses of the case (what I call “the good, the bad and the ugly”). That will help them cover all the issues and give them the ability to make their own intelligent decisions and judgments about the case. Knowing the strengths of the case is of little value if the attorney is blindsided by the “bad” side of the case at trial or in settlement conference.

When your attorney-clients get to trial, they’ll thank you for being your own person, even if that means sometimes giving opinions they clearly did not want to hear.

At Vickie Milazzo Institute I encourage people to speak up. New attorney-clients might not be as kind in helping you to develop your confidence. Don’t keep your light under a bushel – speak up and speak out.

Success Is Inside!

I was on a hiking trip with a guide, Colin. The trail varied between rock and brush. Colin’s dog, Uzuri, came with us, sometimes running ahead of us, sometimes following behind, but almost never on the trail. Well into the hike we encountered a section of trail infested with burrs. Soon Uzuri came up next to me. She was limping along on three legs, obviously having picked up a burr.

The nurse in me immediately kicked in. I called the dog over and looked at her troubled paw. When Colin came up behind me, I asked him the best way to remove the burrs. He replied, “Oh, I don’t do that. I let her sort it out. Otherwise, I’ll spend all my time out here picking burrs off her.” I put her paw down and, sure enough, moments later she was running along next to us again on all fours, the burr gone and forgotten.

As we hiked, I thought about Colin’s words and actions. He lives a lifestyle where self-reliance is a necessity, not a luxury. In a land as brutal and harsh as the wilderness, people and animals must be strong and learn to depend on themselves. Without independence, no living thing lasts long in the wilderness.

Principles That Work in the Wild Also Work For Your CLNC^® Business

This principle also applies in our world of business and legal nurse consulting. Sometimes when faced with a business challenge, we must figure it out on our own. If we come up with our own solutions, we grow stronger. Excessive reliance on others for our success merely weakens us. Soon even the simplest task becomes difficult. Challenges we once conquered with relish and ease become nearly impossible.

Nietzsche said, “That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” His words, while a bit overly dramatic, ring true for all entrepreneurs. You don’t usually die in business. You may suffer some injuries – to your pride, your reputation, your pocketbook or your dreams. But if you don’t learn to be independent, your dreams may die, and they’ll certainly always be in someone else’s hands, not your own.

My sympathy for Uzuri caused me to almost intervene to her detriment. If I had helped her, I would have had a friend for life. Instead, Colin encouraged me to let her be independent. The next time she picks up a burr, she’ll handle it like a pro. She won’t limp back to the main house looking for Colin or me.

CLNC^® Mentors Help You Become Your Own Burr-Removing Expert

The Institute’s CLNC^® Mentors play a similar role for you. They will guide you and teach you to remove your own burrs. But the CLNC^® Mentors won’t protect you from every burr. They know that removing burrs for you keeps you from experimenting and learning the vital skill of independence. They appreciate the wisdom of the old saying: Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day – teach him to fish, and you feed him forever.

This doesn’t mean you should never ask for help in removing a burr. Some burrs are too big or too thorny to pull out by yourself. The successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultant knows when to ask for help and when to “just do it!” They also know that the taste of victory is never so sweet as when it comes from your own efforts.

Use your mentoring wisely. It’s intended to be a teaching tool – not a crutch. My job is to help you achieve CLNC^® success. Your job is to be successful. To live your own dreams, start removing your own burrs today.

May you never have a dream you can’t attain or a burr too big to pick out. Got to go! I’ve got a big burr to remove!

Success Is Inside!