business

When you communicate to attorneys, whether by speaking or writing, you can choose the response you want. That’s not a typo – I don’t mean your response, I mean the response from the attorney with whom you’re communicating. You can guide the response you’ll get by the words you choose.

For example, if you want to instantly get the attorney’s full attention, use signal words such as, “here’s how to,” “the opposing attorney will probably argue” or “this will almost certainly be an issue in the case.” Phrases like these alert the attorney that important information is about to follow.

Because your goal is to maintain an associative relationship with your attorney-clients, you will also want to use collegial phrases. For example saying, “let me share something I learned” is more collegial than “let me tell you about this.” Hearing these words, the attorney expects to benefit from, and possibly be enriched by what you are about to say, versus feeling they’re about to receive a lecture.

When explaining a medically complex situation, preface with, “this is how I would explain it to a jury” or “if I were explaining this to a jury, I would tell them….” This allows you to get down to the attorney’s level without insulting the attorney’s intelligence.

In addition to “sharing,” you can also use words that stimulate thought, inspire creativity and transform passivity into action. Think about famous persuaders such as Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. How did these orators persuade us to their way of thinking?

First of all, great persuaders sprinkle their speech liberally with “fat” words – freedom, love, success, judgment, loyalty, privilege, honor, generosity and together. Try putting any of those words in your CLNC^® tote bag. You can’t see them or touch them, but they sure feel good when you hear them. “Fat” words are empty of content but full of meaning. Take the word pride. You can’t hold pride in your hands. You can’t see it, hear it or taste it, yet it has exquisite meaning. Tell someone “I’m proud of you” and notice their immediate response. Think about these phrases:

“I value your judgment.”

“It’s a privilege to be here.”

“Working together we can…”

When Lincoln said, “Truth is generally the best vindication against slander,” he used three fat words in a total of eight. Look for opportunities to use fat words to inspire or persuade friends, family and associates, then turn your efforts to your attorney-prospects and clients. Notice the difference between “thanks for your time” and “I’m honored you took the time.” Even though both phrases work; they impact differently.

Great persuaders also use presuppositions such as fortunately, unfortunately and luckily. Such words, at the start of a statement, presuppose the next part of the statement to be factual. “Fortunately, you have the stronger position in this case” “Unfortunately, this fact hurts the case.” Another form of presupposition includes such words as odd, aware, know and realize. They presuppose a situation while at the same time embedding a suggestion.

“Are you aware that the medical expert missed an important issue?”

When talking with a prospective attorney-client always say “when” instead of “if,” “When I take a case for you I’ll be sure to…” or “When we’re working together….” Be positive and assume they’re already in a relationship with you and your legal nurse consulting business.

Another powerful use of words is the use of “linking words,” such as and, but, while and even. Linking words suggest cause and effect. Great persuaders use linking words to link verifiable experience with suggestion, making their ideas more believable, more readily accepted.

Most of us use linking words in a negative context. The two most commonly used linking words are and and but. By merely changing your unconscious use of those two words to a more conscious application, you’ll gain persuasion power. When you tell a subcontractor, “I love your work, but I don’t like how you go into too much detail,” the negative message is what is retained. “I don’t like how you go into too much detail” is what comes through loud and clear. “I love your work” goes unnoticed. It gets cancelled by the linking word but. When you change your language to use the linking word and instead of but, you send a different message – one more appropriate, “I love your work and I prefer that next time you avoid so much detail.” Your communication is less damaging and it still sends a constructive message.

Even more effective is linking two verifiable bits of information to a suggestion. This powerful technique takes more thought but is very effective. Here’s an example – “Fuji apples are red” – that’s verifiable, you can see it. “They crunch when you bite them” that’s verifiable too – you can hear them crunch. “And they taste wonderful.” In sales terms this is called a “yes set.” The first two yeses invite the third. Here’s another example – “It’s a beautiful sunny day outside” – verifiable, “that’s a great photo of your family” – verifiable “and as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant I can save you time and money on your medical-related cases.” Try this technique with an attorney-prospect and see how many more clients you get.

These word power techniques can help you communicate more effectively for your Certified Legal Nurse Consultant business. Now that you’re aware of how persuasive you can be by incorporating fat words, presuppositions and selective linking words into your vocabulary, you’ll want to put them into action for your CLNC^® business. These word power techniques do require practice, so you’ll need to think about what you want to say in advance so that you cannot only practice, but also think up the most persuasive way of saying what you want well before you sit down to talk with an attorney-prospect. It also helps to evaluate an interview afterward and think of ways you would handle it differently next time. Practice using these techniques in your introductions and elevator speeches. You can even incorporate them into your introductory letters and promotional copy.

Practice word power today to reap improved results for your CLNC^® business.

Success Is Inside!

Here at the CLNC^® Certification Program in Philadelphia one of the students asked me, “Where do you get the energy to teach six straight days? Do you just wake up like that?” I had to chuckle before I answered. That’s because I don’t pop out of bed like a piece of toast. Tom jokes that he has to “shuck the oyster” each morning (being from New Orleans I like the simile) to get me out from under the covers (I have been known to burrow with the best of them). But, once I’m up, I’m a woman on fire and I burn white-hot until the end of the day.

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!

I found myself standing in the gas chamber at Auschwitz contemplating how I arrived there. My father’s family is Sicilian – 100%. Picture a 13-year-old boy holding his uncle’s hand, gazing at the Statue of Liberty from the deck of a passenger liner in the early 1900s and that’s Papa Milazzo, my grandfather. My family name, Milazzo, comes from a village in Sicily. My grandparents knew each other as children before leaving Sicily and lucky, against all odds, managed to find each other and marry in the U.S.

My mother was 100% Louisiana. She grew up in Tickfaw and met my dad in New Orleans. Dad had just returned from fighting the Japanese at places like Angaur and Peleliu in the Pacific during World War II – fattened up by the Army to a wholesome 125 pounds. She immediately married him and soon here I was (along with my twin brother and older sister).

Tom’s family has a completely different background. His father’s parents are Polish, both coming from the Krakow area – about an hour north of Oscwiezm, the Polish name for Auschwitz. Tom and I both have vivid memories of our grandparents speaking in Polish or Italian when they didn’t want the grandkids to understand them. Tom’s mother’s side is a little more complicated – and the reason we were here. Tom’s maternal grandfather was Scottish (right down to the tartan). His grandmother was middle-European Jewish. In the 1930s when this zaftig woman married the Scotsman, out of her faith and against her family’s wishes, her family simply said a Kaddish (prayer for the dead) and started setting one less chair at the seder table on Passover. Sixty years later only two members of her family would speak to her. (Aren’t family grudges stupid?) One of those two was Tom’s Great-Aunt Fannie and his Great-Uncle Otto.

Tom remembers that Otto still had the tattooed numbers on his arm from Auschwitz. He’d been collected from his home, transported, numbered and then, luckily, transferred to a work camp. Fannie found Otto there and she managed to bribe his way out. Somehow the two worked their way through unfriendly, Nazi-occupied Europe and to the U.S. Many others from the family weren’t so lucky and never saw the outside of the iron-gate with the “Arbeit macht frei” (Work makes one free) motto outside Auschwitz again.

Main Gate to Auschwitz

So what does a gas chamber and the Holocaust have to do with legal nurse consulting? It may seem like a stretch, but it simply comes down to living with integrity. The other day I was mentoring a legal nurse consultant who faced a difficult choice. An attorney-client who gave her a substantial amount of business gave her an ultimatum: stop working with certain competing attorneys or risk losing his business. If she gave in to his demand, she would keep his business – but at the cost of losing her integrity. After all, if she gave into that demand, what would his next demand be?

Integrity-based decisions are not always easy. After standing in the gas chamber at Auschwitz and in the women’s barracks at the adjacent camp of Birkenau, I’ve seen what can happen when a person’s integrity is broken. If you think about it, all the things we treasure, our family, our possessions, our success, our dignity and our individuality can all be stripped from us. Standing in such a horrific place, I realized how easily we can lose everything – everything except our personal integrity.

If you’ve ever read Viktor Frankl or talked with a Holocaust survivor, you know that each day in the midst of unimaginable cruelty, the Holocaust victims had to decide how to treat others and handle themselves with integrity. Without integrity, even living through those conditions would not guarantee surviving the memories afterward. I couldn’t help wondering how my own integrity would hold out in that situation.

The choices we make determine whether we live a free life or a life imprisoned, and I’m not talking about a physical jail cell. No one would voluntarily imprison herself and be her own warden, yet every time we breach integrity we sentence ourselves to a mental jail. This all came to mind while speaking with this nurse who, to me, had a much simpler and easier choice than anyone ever faced in a concentration camp.

Ironically, the very thought that “work makes one free” was what was troubling this legal nurse consultant. She simply needed to make a choice to keep or break her integrity. I couldn’t make her decision for her, but did encourage her to honor her integrity. When I hung up the phone she was still undecided and still troubled.

About a month later I received a call from her. She made the choice to be true to herself and to what she wanted for her CLNC^® business. She was now happier, relaxed and successful on her own terms.

Temptations abound in not only the business world, but also in our personal lives. No matter how complex a decision appears on the surface, when stripped down to basics, I tell people it’s simple: do what’s right, not what’s easy or most appealing. Remember, no matter what choices you make in your life – they should all be integrity-based. Integrity has the final say in whether we will rise or decline, be whole or broken. When uncompromising integrity is our guide, then our personal and CLNC^® success is authentic.

Here’s to your authentic CLNC^® success.

Success Is Inside!

This morning I looked into my closet and couldn’t figure out what to wear to work. (We have a pretty casual dress code in my office so I could have tossed on my flip-flops and a track suit but I’d worn that yesterday.) I confess, I like to have nice clothes and a decent closet.

You see, when I was young my mom always sewed my clothes while I coveted store-bought dresses. If it wasn’t hand-made, it was handed-down from my older sister. To add insult to injury, my twin brother got the store-bought clothes for obvious reasons – no son of an Italian father could wear his sister’s clothes (no matter how butch she was). I always envied him for that privilege. Wearing “vintage” clothing from my older sister drove the desire to create the abundant, but not ostentatious, closet I have today.

After all, I tell my legal nurse consulting students they need to dress professionally to make the right impression. So should I.

So standing there in front of my closet, why wasn’t I seeing one thing to wear? Easy! It’s because I was looking at it in the same way I’d looked at it every day leading up to this morning. I was looking at the same clothes from the same point of view.

Suddenly it hit me, instead of having nothing to wear, I was standing in front of a cornucopia of clothing (all neatly cleaned, pressed and hung). Instead of putting on one outfit, I simply needed to change the blouse, switch the skirt for pants, pull different earrings, shoes and purse and I had a whole new outfit! There were infinite possibilities with my imagination (and mis-matching plaids) as the only limitations.

Do you look at your legal nurse consulting business each day with new or the same eyes? Are you so used to looking at it one way that you can’t see the limitless possibilities and opportunities waiting for you?

I recently challenged my executive team to look at a situation in a new way. The results were surprising. Each came back with a new, surprising and different solution – much better than I had even hoped for. That’s because they applied new eyes to an old situation.

Are you still looking at the same old CLNC^® business closet and not seeing anything new? Are you still looking in that closet and not seeing the opportunities?

Is there a CLNC^® service you haven’t offered yet? One that’s in your scope of ability, but that might just require you to flex your agility (or get off the couch)? Have you contacted your attorney-clients to see if there’s something new you can do for them beyond what you offer today?

It’s time to throw open the door to your CLNC^® closet and start looking at your business with new eyes.  I can’t wait to hear what stunning new outfits you come up with.

I’ll be mixin’ and matchin’.

Success Is Inside!

P.S. Comment and share how you look at your legal nurse consulting business with new eyes.

Two nights ago, Tom and I had dinner in a fairly chi-chi restaurant here in Chicago. It’s known for celebrity sightings, great food and décor. Tom and I tend to eat fairly early (I’m up at 4:00am and usually have two meals before most people eat lunch). We’re not so early that we get caught in the walker stampede as the 2-for-1 early birds make their exits, but we do sometimes bump into the last of the hobbling stragglers.

We went for dinner after a day of teaching at the CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Program. We were seated at our table and the waiter finally showed up and asked us what we wanted to drink. We had reviewed the menu (posted in the window) while waiting in line, and since we were short on time, we ordered our appetizers before he’d even brought the menus.

The waiter seemed put off by this. He came back with our drinks (Shirley Temple – with a cherry for Tom, healthy green tea – iced, unsweetened for me) and proceeded to tell us about the menu. “Chef Brutus recommends…shared appetizers for the table, followed by distressed green salads, overly large entrees, coffee, desserts to share and mignardes just when you think you’ve had enough.” He had his script down and launched into it as if he’d never seen us before. It seemed he’d forgotten that we’d already ordered appetizers!

I politely interrupted him to remind him that we’d already ordered appetizers and I wanted to learn the daily specials (instead of how Chef Brutus recommended we maximize our dining experience as well as our check). That seemed to jog his memory somewhat, but he skipped over the specials, a little disconcerted by our preempting him, and told us he’d be right back with our starters.

As in most restaurants, the tables were close enough that you could eat off the plate of the person next to you and I heard the woman next to me say she “would have loved the fried soft-shell crabs, but fried foods are sooo bad for you.” My ears were on it and I was all in. Being from New Orleans, the idea of sentencing a soft-shell crab or two to a quick, cornmeal-battered, deep-fat-fried death doesn’t bother me.

I wondered why our waiter hadn’t mentioned the crab, or any specials, and then I realized – it was because he couldn’t handle the script change. It had disconcerted him so much that he launched straight into let-me-get-your-starters mode forgetting to tell us about the specials. I asked the waiter about the soft-shell crab special when he returned to the table and he denied that they were offering such a dish. My guess was that he’d already put in our dinner order and was unwilling to retract it from the computer (plus I’m sure Chef Brutus was already personally mashing my potatoes).

Throughout dinner, this waiter’s service was less than stellar. Have you ever wanted to say to a waiter/waitress – “If you were in my ICU, ED, etc., and I gave you the same service you’re giving me, you’d end up in the perpetual care unit (a.k.a., “MetalSlab Ice Cold”), giving me the cold-stare, not the cold-face.” Well that’s exactly how I felt.

Needless to say when the bill came around, I was not into tipping-you-for-a-bad-job-at-dinner mode, but against my better judgment I left a slightly larger tip than I wanted to for the sake of the busboy who’d delivered great service.

In contrast, we dined last night in another Chicago restaurant and the waiter was all over us. I asked him if they had unsweetened tea and he said, “No ma’am. But I’ll make you some, if you’d like.” Wow – withering cross examination on the ripeness of the heirloom tomatoes. Simple requests for additional salad dressing were met with equal grace and he continued to score points throughout the meal. By the time the bill came I was pumping rounds into the tip gun.

As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant are you sticking to your script instead of listening to, or anticipating your attorney-client’s needs? Still reciting your list of 30-plus CLNC^® services or focusing on the one or two that put a sparkle in the attorney’s eyes? Are you reactive or proactive with your attorney-clients? Do you wait for them to ask for an additional CLNC^® service or do you volunteer ways you can improve your work product? Ask yourself, if you were the attorney-client, how much would you tip yourself as a legal nurse consultant? Does your service rate a 10%, 15% or 25+% tip? What level of service do you provide, or at the least, look like you want to provide? If you were a restaurant, would you be 5-Star or 1-Rotten Tomato?

Legal nurse consultants practice in a service-oriented industry. If you’re not providing 5-star service (even to a 1-star attorney-client) you’re letting yourself, your CLNC^® business and the legal nurse consulting profession down. It’s our duty to give the best – in everything that we do. Next time you reach out to your attorney-clients – think about your most fantastic dining experience and try to provide a level of service that the attorney will remember and tell other attorneys about.

Success Is Inside!

We all know there’s no one magic formula for prosperity and happiness, but there’s one common denominator I’ve found among successful nurses: they have a passionate drive to do what they do. They are on fire. Some inner spark in the mind, spirit and soul burns intensely, driving them over seemingly insurmountable barriers. Kind of like the passion we feel for a newborn baby. I just got back from my great niece’s christening in San Diego.

I was there the night she was born (March 29, 2009) and it was love at first sight. There’s nothing like the love we feel for a new baby, but wouldn’t it be nice if the love you feel for your work could be almost as strong as the love you feel for a baby?

Ask yourself if you’re passionate about the work you do as an RN. If the answer is no, it’s nothing more than a nursing job. Don’t say you go to work every day because of the family and bills. We’ve all got those. While we can’t all quit our jobs and just play in our garden or hold precious babies all day, we can set up our lives to enjoy our work. Just because we have to make a living doesn’t mean that we have to feel like we’re not living to make it.

When I started my legal nurse consulting business in 1982, I felt like I was birthing a baby. I had to work overtime at the hospital to pay my mortgage. Because my passion for starting my business was so strong, I was willing to give up TV, a social life and every spare minute I had to go for what I wanted. Was it easy? No. Was it worth it? YES! What do women say they remember most from the deliveries – the pain, or the unconditional love they felt? That’s how I remember my business start-up days. I was in love with the business I was creating, launching and growing.

Because I am passionate about my business and the work that goes with it, I am not really working at all. Does that sound strange or counter-intuitive? It shouldn’t. If you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work. If you do what you love, you’ll never work another day in your life. Will you go to a job? Sure, probably five days a week. Will some days be harder than others? Sure. When Debra from our accounting department is distributing the paychecks, Tom will sometimes be heard to shout, “This is great! I can’t believe I get paid to work here! Woo-hoo!”

Do you have a “Woo-Hoo!” moment when you get your paycheck or do you have a “Ho-Humm” sigh? Without the fire that only passion arouses, success eludes us. If you’re not passionate about an idea, you won’t do what it takes to carry it out, because pursuing that idea would be way too hard without passion. Would a mom be able to go sleep deprived for years and do all that she does to care for her child without love?

To live passionately is to act. If you’re true to yourself, you’ll put energy behind your passions and take the necessary actions to bring them to fulfillment.

Passions are lived out in as many expressions as there are people. Yours are inside you, and they will reveal themselves with ease if you listen carefully. Take some time today and listen for your passion. It might surprise you and you may end up never working a day for the rest of your life.

Passionately yours,

Success Is Inside!

My husband Tom has a great sense of direction. You can plop him down in a city he hasn’t been in for 15 years and he’ll lead you to the nearest movie theatre or McDonalds through all sorts of detours without a pause. He’s even gotten us out of the woods (literally) with just a topographical map and a cheap compass (probably from a “kid’s meal”) after we misplaced a trail in a wilderness reserve.

My sense of direction, on the other hand, is terrible. I don’t try to hide it. If Neiman Marcus wasn’t in the Galleria (which is outside the 610 Loop in Houston) I’d never go there at all. Ever. I can find my way to the shoe department at Neiman’s, but when I’m in a big hotel, like our NACLNC^® Conference hotel, I’m particularly challenged. Tom will often use the ring of my cell phone as a sonar signal or beacon when he’s searching for me.

Business consultants (often the ones who have never managed a business themselves) will tell you: have a plan; have a plan; have a plan. I may not have been blessed with a sense of direction but I have been blessed with the ability to plan. I wake up each day with a plan. But I also know that we’re probably going to bust that plan before it’s even 9:00am. The Institute’s Strategic Plan is 5,000,000 pages (really 63 pages), but even that can’t define the whole direction the Institute is traveling in. We head off following our plan towards one destination and often end at another. For example, we’ll start a meeting on one project and before we know it we’re all fired up, brainstorming a new resource for legal nurse consultants.

Mapquest is great for getting you from Point A to Point B with clean, convenient restroom stops in between, but it has one severe limitation – if you hit a detour – you’re stuck. What kind of sense of direction do you have for your legal nurse consulting business? What kind of plan are you using in your life? Are you using something limited like Mapquest or a more flexible GPS?

My car has a talking GPS. Unlike a spouse, it politely tells me when I’ve made a wrong turn or detour (“Please, please turn left at the stop sign, please.”) and points me on the best route to my destination. The most successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultants have a little GPS voice in the back of their heads that tells them when to detour from their plan and when to get back on it. When opportunities arise they’re able to detour from their plan and are primed to seize opportunities as they present themselves.

You need to develop a GPS-like sensibility for your CLNC^® business. This will help you cope with the detours, expected or unexpected that show up. Walk into an attorney’s office for an interview and there are five attorneys, not just the one you expected, and your GPS will route you into the correct mode to address them all.

An attorney calls you with a case outside your area of expertise. Your inner GPS tells you to surf to the NACLNC^® Directory website and locate a CLNC^® subcontractor. A CLNC^® colleague calls and asks you to testify on your specialty and you’ve never testified before. Does your inner GPS plot the quickest way out of town? No, it points you to research to start boning up on what you already know well and then to Nordstrom for a power suit (the one you’ve secretly been lusting after) to wear to your deposition.

Our inner GPS isn’t always right, it may sometimes be wrong, but it’s still our inner compass. It’s guided by what we’ve learned, what we want and what we need. It has our best interests in mind (but bears watching). Sometimes it’s a polite voice and sometimes it’s not so polite (screaming to get our attention). It’s 50% intuition, 50% training and sometimes 50% absolute total guesswork. It makes sure we return to our path but frees us to take advantage of the occasional detour without panic or fear (at least too much fear). Occasionally, like the one in my car, your inner GPS needs to be updated (or rebooted) to adjust to current conditions – but then it works like a champ again.

When was the last time you touched base with your inner GPS? Was it today, yesterday or when you enrolled in the CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Program?

What’s the last thing your inner GPS told you? Did you listen? I’d like to hear your inner GPS stories and so would your CLNC^® colleagues. So please comment here.

Success Is Inside!

Dear President Obama,

Congratulations on becoming the 44th president of the United States. Americans have hired you to manage our country and to fix the economic crisis you have inherited. To accomplish this, you need to act like an entrepreneur – not a politician. Entrepreneurs thrive on crisis, knowing that from the center of it huge opportunities arise for growth and profit.

Break the Succession of Bad Ideas

Entrepreneurs witness their executive managers clinging to their ideas – even bad ones. Once ideas are entrenched it is painful to shake free of them, no matter how harmful they may be to the business. I have had to compel executives to abandon projects in which we invested thousands of dollars and uncountable hours. It is a dirty deed, but it is my job to lead the company in the right direction. Your job, like mine, is to recognize and break the succession of bad ideas.

To right the economy, I recommend you start with the worst idea of all – the bloated, loophole-ridden Tax Code that is unintelligible to even the most expert tax preparers, the IRS itself and especially the small business owner. Just keeping up with my equipment depreciation schedule gives me a migraine. On top of that, thinking about the amount of tax I owe on inventory I haven’t sold, and on accrued income from installment payments I haven’t yet collected, plus the reporting and compliance requirements makes me wonder why I got into business in the first place. Entrepreneurship, like the presidency, is not for the faint of heart. Fortunately for the twenty-five people I employ and the Certified Legal Nurse Consultants I service, my entrepreneurial spirit forges on.

Business cannot thrive on outdated systems, nor can successful entrepreneurs afford to make business more complex than it needs to be. To repair the economy, apply the entrepreneurial art of simplicity by eradicating the Tax Code. Replace it with a simple national sales tax, and eliminate all other taxes, including corporate and individual income, payroll, capital gains and estate taxes. This would wipe out layers of bureaucracy and save taxpayers billions of dollars. Give refunds back to lower income families to keep them whole.

Don’t Stifle Ambition

Americans are greedy and that’s not all bad. Entrepreneurs are too. The desire for more and better drives us to innovate, making us the strongest country in the world. Give entrepreneurs their credit back so that they can focus on what they do best – create jobs, generate income and stimulate the economy.

Aspiring and active business owners who have great credit histories are being denied the credit they need to launch and grow businesses. This unavailability of credit is crippling innovation and productivity. America cannot afford to drive entrepreneurs out of business. Small businesses and the people they employ cannot wait six to twelve months for a trickle of credit.

Give some of that bailout money to the entities that are making loans and make sure that it is used towards affordable loans for entrepreneurs with strong business plans and good credit. Small business creates more jobs than any other sector of the economy. Americans will feel safe to go shopping, buy a new car or invest in a home when the companies they work for are flourishing again.

Stop the Stealing

Americans expect to pay taxes, but we are no longer willing to bankroll the government’s mismanagement and self-interest. It is time to stop the stealing – the excessive, irresponsible spending and ever-increasing federal budgets. Do not make a commodity of the American people who struggle to buy groceries and pump gas. Take the pork away from the pigs.

Entrepreneurs all over America are slashing their budgets by as much as 30% to stay profitable. At my company, if a project cannot justify its budget, it is gone. We budget for results – not for a bigger budget the next year. It is time to skip the buzzwords and feel-good phrases. Americans have heard the rhetoric, now we want results. Prove that you can run our government as lean and clean as a successful entrepreneurial business.

Today when you take office, implement a plan to assure the bailout is handled responsibly and with accountability. The kind of behavior that occurred in the lending industry would never have been tolerated or even possible in a small business. Make sure that individuals benefit from the bailout – not just the companies that created the problems. Use the money for what it was intended for and don’t dilute it with unintended uses and handouts to companies on the fringes of the issue.

Every Act Counts

You have brought hope and inspiration back to the people of the United States. You have four years until your first real performance evaluation. That is a luxury few entrepreneurs enjoy. Even so, you have a responsibility to act quickly and decisively. Make every act count. Then we’ll decide whether or not you get to keep your job as head of the most important business in the world.

Vickie L. Milazzo, RN, MSN, JD

About an hour after the photos below were taken, just a block from my home, the street was filled with runners from the Houston Marathon. Over 23,000 participants showed up to run. Some finished in just over two hours while others were still running (or had dropped out) when the six-hour time limit expired.

Before the marathon

Here’s a picture of the front runners at the half way point including the winner, Deriba Merga who collected $45,000 for finishing the marathon in a record time of 2:07:52 beating the previous men’s record of 2:10:04.

You may remember him from the 2008 Olympics marathon. Deriba entered the tunnel of the Bird’s Nest stadium in third place, 50 meters ahead of his Ethiopian teammate, Tsegaye Kebede.

Tom and I were at a friend’s house watching the race. As Deriba came into the stadium I said, “He’s not going to get the medal.” Tom asked “How do you know?” and I pointed out how Deriba was struggling. Sure enough in the last 400 meters, Tsegaye passed him and Deriba finished fourth. It was tragic to watch a world-class runner fade before your eyes and everyone else’s in the Bird’s Nest that day, and be overtaken with the finish line in view.

What does running a marathon have to do with being a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant? In marathons, like business, you have to pace yourself. If you shoot off the starting line too fast, you’ll lose steam and won’t have the energy to finish the race.

The big difference between marathons and legal nurse consulting (all that running for 26+ miles aside) is that in business, there is no finish line. You must keep your pace as long as you want to keep your business. This means that sometimes you run slowly, sometimes you sprint and sometimes you stop and catch your breath. The trick for each of us is to find our pace and keep it. Knowing my pace and sticking to it are two of the reasons I’ve stayed in the legal nurse consulting business since 1982 and the biggest reason I still love my business after 27 years.

I’ve seen legal nurse consultants who start their business full of fire. They market themselves at a sprinter’s pace and then suddenly get tired and quit. Others plug successfully away, day after day after day. Business can be like a Venti^® Peppermint Mocha Twist Frappucinno^® from Starbucks^®. Those 660 calories and 116 grams of carbs (not to mention the 55 mg of caffeine) fire you up and set you off at a sprint. Soon though, you’re in a carb-sag and need a nap. It’s hard to keep the fire burning on artificial stimulants.

For the first week of January our gym, where I’ve been a member for 20 years, is full of newcomers throwing weights around like Arnold and nearly flying off the treadmills and elliptical trainers. By the second week in January, the gym’s back to normal because those newcomers went at it a little too hard at first, got stiff and sore and lost their steam for the long term. I see this in yoga (stretched a little too vigorously the first day back) and in dieting (after a week of steamed broccoli and turkey, a hamburger sounds really good).

Your personal life and your business life are like marathons. The key is to manage the pace at which you run them. You need to pace yourself to maintain your energy level for the long run. For my business, sometimes I go fast, sometimes I go faster and sometimes I stop and smell the sneakers. I do take 12 weeks off each year for renewal time. But even on vacation I keep a certain pace – exercise, diet and sleep. That’s what gives me the energy to keep me in business. Are you running at a pace that will keep you successful in your CLNC^® business or will your pace put you out of business before the finish line?

See you at the CLNC^® finish line!