consulting business

I was speaking with a woman who wanted to start her own business. While Jean and I were talking I realized I couldn’t determine what was driving her, so being the direct person I am, I went straight for the jugular and asked her, “Why do you want to start a business?” She was equally blunt in her answer telling me, “I want money to buy nice things, a nice car, nice clothes and a nice house.” I believe in payoff, but this type of drive for starting one’s own business is, in my opinion, hardly a mission statement.

Contrast this with another young woman, Lauren, who I have mentored to start her own business. Her business model is actually more difficult, requiring investors, a large front-end capital outlay and a commercial lease, but I predict she is more likely to succeed. Why? Because, unlike the first woman who was money-driven, the second woman is driven not just by the passion of wanting to own her business, but also by the passion of the business itself. In other words, she fervently believes in what she is creating. Now that’s a formula for success.

In my 28 years of business, mentoring thousands of nurses to become successful legal nurse consultants, there’s only one common thread among the most successful ones. Successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultants are all different ages, different sizes, different nursing specialties and live in different parts of the country. They come from towns of less than 5,000 and from major metropolitan cities. So what do they have in common? Each and every one of them are passionate about the work they do and the money they earn is the byproduct of their passion.

Without the inner fire that only passion arouses, success, and I mean long term, authentic success, will elude you. Here’s the reality – money won’t get you out of bed in the morning. Of course, once you’re up it’s nice to have money, but money can never be the long-term driver for your CLNC^® business. Passion and purpose for the work need to be the fuel of your desire and your actions. You succeed at a business not because you want the monetary rewards, but because you need to succeed for your very soul.

Here’s an interesting fact, studies have shown that money does make people happier – but only up to a certain point. Once your basic needs, and a little bit more are met, your happiness is really up to you. Despite what you’ve seen on television, a Mercedes, a boat or a closet filled with Armani won’t make or keep you happy (Okay, maybe my own private jet would make me happier.). What will make you happy is having experiences full of passion and purpose. In fact, studies show that experiences produce longer lasting “highs” than does the act of buying stuff. By experiences, I’m not just talking about vacations and birthday parties, experiences also include the work you do.

That’s why I don’t believe in TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday). I believe in TGIT (Thank God It’s Today).

If you’re already a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, recommit to your purpose and your passion and watch your CLNC^® business soar. If you’re exploring legal nurse consulting, we are here to help you decide if legal nurse consulting can be your passion and purpose. But, if your only real goal is the same purposeless ones as the unfortunate woman I described above – nice things, a nice car, nice clothes and a nice house, do me and my CLNC^® peers a favor and join a network marketing program instead. Here’s to Lauren and all the passion, purpose and success she will enjoy during her lifetime. Here’s to all of us living a life and career filled with passion and purpose.

Live and work your passion and you’ll never “work” a day in your life.

Success Is Inside!

Marketing your CLNC^® business successfully to attorney-prospects and attorney-clients requires that you provide a safety net and build trust. Here are some strategies for achieving both:

1. Make a professional first impression. In doing so, you have begun to construct a safety net for the attorney-prospect, ensuring the attorney that he is making the right decision in hiring you for his medical-related cases.

2. Communicate. Listen carefully to the attorney-client’s needs and demonstrate your understanding of those needs as you proceed through the meeting. Ask questions to clarify specific points. Confirm the attorney-client’s expectations regarding the CLNC^® services you will provide and the schedule for its completion.

Stay in touch. Provide an easy way for the attorney to reach you and notify you of any changes in needs or the case. When you deliver your work product, make it clear that you are available to collaborate on any necessary additions or amendments.

3. Guarantee. This step may seem risky, but think about how much more secure you feel about purchasing when you know you can return a product that fails to meet your expectations. For example, if your report failed to meet your attorney-client’s expectations, wouldn’t you be eager to correct any problems? Then why not offer that guarantee up front, thus satisfying your client’s psychological need for security?

Guaranteeing satisfaction does not mean you would compromise the integrity of your opinion or work product by adding something you know is incorrect or misleading or by making inappropriate changes. Nor does it mean you guarantee your work product will win their case. It means you will make any corrections or additions needed to the research, wording or format to guarantee the client gets value for the dollars invested. You aren’t offering to revise your work product endlessly either. State a specific time period, say two weeks from the date of delivery, during which the guarantee is in effect.

4. Start Small. Before you get to those bigger projects and cases, you may have to build trust step-by-step. Customers generally are more comfortable starting a new relationship on a small scale. When a woman buys a new line of makeup, in addition to being sure the color is right for her, she wants to know if the makeup suits her skin type, contains sun protection and holds up during the day. Likewise, a new attorney-client wants to make sure your product will perform as expected. The attorney wants to know:
• Will your work product meet expectations?
• Will your report be supported by appropriate standards and research?
• How conscientiously will you meet deadlines?

A woman at the makeup counter might start out with a smaller container or trial size of a new product. Similarly, an attorney might suggest beginning with a brief report and ask for a quick turnaround. Recognize this as an important step in building a long-term relationship.

5. Deliver. Actions sell and quality counts. Your attorney-clients often deal with people who talk a good game but who don’t deliver on promises. By turning in a quality product on time, or even ahead of deadline, you reinforce that the attorney has made a wise buying decision and can depend on you for bigger and bigger projects and more medical-related cases.

When you provide a safety net and build trust, hard-sell is never necessary.

• Every time you present yourself with professionalism, you sell.
• Every time you listen intently and affirm the attorney-client’s expectations, you sell.
• Every time you deliver a quality product, you sell.

Every step of the way, you build into your attorney-client relationship a sense of trust and dependability – a safety net.

Beginning with that initial interview and that first small project, you can create a mutually satisfying, long-term business relationship. And a few loyal, lifetime attorney-clients will make your legal nurse consulting business prosper. You won’t need dozens. Soon you will find attorney-clients relying on you, recognizing your CLNC^® and nursing expertise and your ability to make them look good. They will begin to trust that without your help and expertise they could miss significant issues and even lose cases.

Success Is Inside!

I’d like to share a conversation I had with Brian Horn, a social media expert, on the importance of participating in social media as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. One important point Brian makes is that you can participate in social media in a meaningful way without taking too much time away from your legal nurse consulting business. Enjoy the video.

Success Is Inside!

The other day, an Institute staff member came into my office and complained that her computer was running slowly. I asked her if it was slower than normal and she looked at me sort of funny, then said yes. We went back to her desk to assess things. She had her usual 30 programs running with more open windows than a New Orleans nunnery in the summer.

I then asked when she had last turned off her computer. This was a trick question because policy at the Institute is to let computers run overnight (to download updates, etc. that our techies shove out) and then restart them every Friday at the end of the day. That way when staff members log in on Monday, the installation process is either complete or it goes pretty quickly. She told me it had been two to three weeks since the last shut-down. Hearing that, I immediately told her that both she and her computer had memory leaks and she needed to shut the computer down for at least two minutes, then restart it.

Next, I went back to my office to sit on my laurels and wait for her call. A few minutes later she called to let me know it was running as fast as it used to with no hint of residual slowness. My memory-leak diagnosis was right.

One of the issues that legal nurse consultants will run into are memory leaks (both with themselves and their computers). The brief and overly simple explanation is that the longer a computer runs without being restarted and also the more programs you have open at the same time, the better the chance that some program, driver or piece of hardware won’t let go of its allocated memory when you’re done with it. You will not be aware this is happening, but your available memory can be eaten up by programs or devices that technically aren’t in use, causing your computer to run more slowly.

The way that a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant cures this leak is to first, make sure to have the most current versions of all software and second, to restart your computer on a regular basis. Whether you have a desktop or laptop for your legal nurse consulting business, my advice remains the same. Shut it down at least once a week or whenever it starts to run slower than a teenager mowing the lawn. I know a lot of laptop users who simply put their computer into sleep mode or hibernation. That won’t solve the memory leak issue. You need to shut it down and let everything clear out of the system.

If your computer is still slow, follow the steps in my earlier Tech Tip on cleaning up your computer system. In fact, this should be one of the first things you do in this new year (even before you get around to breaking your resolutions).

Keep on techin’,

Tom

It’s a New Year, the time and opportunity to start new, think new and be new. Time to create new realities for ourselves.

Many of you have contemplated becoming a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, and may be wondering if, as a nurse, you’re cut out to be an entrepreneur and own your own business. After all, none of us were born entrepreneurs. It’s not like when we were born our moms asked, “Is it a boy or a girl? And the doctor said, “No… it’s a little entrepreneur.”

We often look to outside experts and when I started my legal nurse consulting business in 1982, I wished that nursing school had trained me better for managing a business. Nursing school didn’t offer classes such as marketing, accounting or business management. I wasn’t confident that my nursing education and nursing experience had in any way prepared me to own my own business. However, I soon recognized that nursing gave me most of the answers for successfully starting my own business. I also quickly discovered that I was better trained as an RN than most MBAs are for the world of entrepreneurship. Here are 10 things nursing taught me well about owning a business.

Success Lesson 1 – You Have the Power to Take Control of Your Nursing Career

We all know that patients heal faster when they take control of their health and practice healthy habits. Even the smallest positive action can give a patient a sense of control and empower the healing process. Placebos are proof that if a patient believes he can be healed, his body does the necessary work for him.

You too have the power to practice the healthy habits essential for taking control of your career destiny. Educate yourself about the necessary steps to achieve career health, including new career options like legal nurse consulting. Then take control of your career destiny by taking action on those steps.

Success Lesson 2 – Don’t Give in to Fear

As a nurse, you often treat different patients who have the same progressive disease, yet they experience dramatically different outcomes. We all have known patients who lived years after their predicted demise and other patients who should have lived but didn’t because they gave up. The fact that so many elderly patients die within months of losing a spouse is a sound example of the mind-body connection. In almost every case, the patients who died too soon had given in to their fear.

As Frank Herbert said in Dune “Fear is the mind-killer.” Fear can paralyze you and keep you from making decisions. There’s also a mind-business connection that will influence the health of your business. When I give in to fear, I become the biggest obstacle to my success. Practice mind control and exercise your mind daily for positive thinking. Shake off any lack of confidence and negative thinking. Don’t let fear be the reason you don’t live your career dreams. Always remember the mindset of the patients who live and the patients who die. The good news is that in business as opposed to nursing, bad results usually aren’t fatal.

Success Lesson 3 – Nurses Can Do Anything

If you can make life and death decisions in the middle of the night, heal sick patients and handle life-threatening emergencies as easily as you make your bed in the morning, you really can do anything – especially something as straightforward as starting a legal nurse consulting business. Whenever I face a business crisis, I remind myself, “I’m a nurse and nurses can do anything.” I’ve repeated this same message to myself for every obstacle I’ve had to overcome in my business.

Success Lesson 4 – The Nursing Process Is Your Friend

When I left hospital nursing to pursue my legal nurse consulting business full-time, I thought I could set aside the “nursing process” forever. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Business requires that same process of assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation. Every case you get involved in requires you to assess the possibilities and needs, diagnose the problems, plan how to achieve the goals, implement the plan and evaluate the results.

Your nursing jobs have prepared you well. You can apply the nursing process to any business situation and challenge. You will thank your nursing instructors for this one. Every time you review a medical-related case, interview with an attorney or face a challenge, you will rely on the process they taught you. Today, thanks to the analysis powers I gained from the nursing process, I handle things easily and successfully that would have seemed impossible 28 years ago. Aside from drawing blood, almost none of your nursing experience will be wasted in business.

Success Lesson 5 – Act Quickly and Decisively

As an RN you know that seconds make a difference in patient outcomes. You rarely have lots of time to ponder or brood over a clinical decision. Act as quickly and decisively in your CLNC^® business as you do as a hospital nurse and you will seize the opportunities that slower peers miss out on.

Will you always be correct? No. Will you make mistakes? Yes. But one thing for sure, you’ll never be paralyzed into inaction. Don’t miss your chance to succeed. Act quickly and decisively to grow your CLNC^® business.

Success Lesson 6 – What You Focus on Is Where You Yield Results

Nurses are often overwhelmed by short staffing, heavy caseloads and lack of support from hospital administration. Even the general public knows that working conditions for RNs are worse than ever. We quickly learn to triage and focus on what we need to do to heal patients in this less-than-ideal environment. Nursing taught me that where I focus my time is where I yield results.

That skill comes in handy for legal nurse consultants. It’s as important to triage and prioritize your actions in your CLNC^® business as it is when working with patients. Every day I’m confronted with dozens of challenges, five things that must be done at once, and 20 new creative ideas for my business, but I rarely panic. The organizational and multitasking skills I learned as a nurse have served me well. When you start your CLNC^® business, you will not receive any extra hours in the day. In fact, the days will feel shorter because you’ll be enjoying your newfound freedom. Your ability to focus on what’s really important is the perfect training for your successful CLNC^® business.

Success Lesson 7 – This Is Just Business, It’s Not Cancer

Ministering to patients and family members helps nurses put life, with all its problems and challenges, into perspective. Today when I overreact to a problem or feel I’m in crisis, I think of sick and dying patients. I think, “Now fighting for your life is a REAL problem.”

In business I’ve had lots of ups and downs. When the down moments come, I remind myself, “This is business – not cancer.” This helps me focus positively on solving the problem rather than embarking on a pity party. I’ve thrown plenty of those “parties,” and not only did they not make me feel any better, they never helped me solve a single business problem. As you grow your CLNC^® business, it helps to ask, “So what if that one attorney says no?” or “So what if my favorite attorney-client retires?” and to remember it’s just business, not cancer.

Success Lesson 8 – Illness Can Wake You Up

All nurses have treated some patients who only began to live after they almost died. We’ve all had patients who said they are glad they got sick, because while they were well, they weren’t living the life they wanted. The health crisis forced them to wake up, reassess their lives, decide what was truly important to them and go for it.

If your career is facing a health crisis, this is your opportunity to wake up and change things for the better. Today at work, ask yourself whether your nursing career is healthy and whether your nursing career is affecting your health and well-being. Wake up and remember that there’s always time to make a change for the better – but it’s better to do it now while you can still enjoy the change!

Success Lesson 9 – Business Is Personal

Even though technical skills are vital for nurses, the relationships with patients and their families are usually what matters most. Those relationships pay off. When I was a young nurse, I made a mistake on one of my patients and he knew it. To my surprise the patient requested that I continue to be his nurse despite my error. I attributed his continuing trust to the relationship we had established together.

Just like nursing, business is personal. I have all the technical skills to lead my seminars and run my business. In fact, at this stage I could hand off some of those responsibilities to others. But I still teach every CLNC^® 6-Day Live Certification Program we offer and speak to students daily because those relationships are what I thrive on. No one else could replicate my relationship with each and every nurse. As a result, most of our business comes from referrals by practicing CLNC^® consultants and graduates of Vickie Milazzo Institute.

Legal nurse consulting is a service business where you will apply the same relationship principles you learned in nursing to your attorney-clients and prospects. Provide quality service and excellent work product that no other legal nurse consultant can replicate, and soon you’ll feel like you’re in a short-staffing situation all over again.

Success Lesson 10 – Take a Deep Breath When Managing Your Employees

One more thing I learned, it’s easier to manage an ICU full of patients than a room full of employees! At least you can sedate your patients.

Every lesson I learned from nursing, I apply to my business today. You’ve already learned similar lessons yourself. Take a moment on this New Day of this New Year to revel in everything nursing has taught you. These lessons will help you manifest any dream you desire for 2010 including becoming a CLNC^® consultant.

Success Is Inside!

I just got back from four wonderfully luxurious days sitting on a beach in Mexico with nothing more on my mind than my stack of novels. You’d think that for a woman who grew up in New Orleans, in a home that didn’t have air conditioning, I’d only like warm weather places like beaches or jungles. Surprisingly it’s exactly the opposite! Many of my favorite travels have taken me to colder climates.

I’ve been snow-shoeing in the high Rockies, explored Iceland, the Antarctic, the Arctic (600 miles from the North Pole), trekked the Everest and Annapurna sides of Nepal and stood among prayer flags on a 13,000-foot high mountain pass looking across Bhutan’s Haa Valley and the Himalayas into Tibet. Standing in rushing water up to my waist while fly-fishing in a Canadian river in a cold drenching rain, I remarked to

Vickie at Chelela Pass in Bhutan

If you plan to go somewhere or start something big, whether it’s a vacation or a legal nurse consulting business, you need to be sure that you’ve completed all the necessary preparations. You need to dress yourself and your CLNC^® business appropriately if you want to enjoy success. Just like you can dress badly for an outdoor event, you can also dress your legal nurse consulting business badly with poorly designed marketing materials, an unprofessional-looking website and unclear communications with attorney-prospects.

As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, you need to always dress yourself and your business for success. Today, as you begin your day, I’d like to know what clothing you’re planning to wear for your legal nurse consulting business.

Success Is Inside (but the fun’s outside!)

All great athletes and performers practice every day. Even after they achieve a level of success, they continue to practice and take instruction from their coaches, learning new ways to reach higher levels. They are lifetime students.

Success breeds success. Becoming a legal nurse consulting success student for life is about practicing being successful. What’s hard today is easy tomorrow – with practice.

A woman who started her CLNC^® business after completing Vickie Milazzo Institute’s CLNC^® Certification Program told me, “I think I can do this.” A few weeks later, when the demands of the business world had her spinning in circles, she called and told me, “No way I can do this.” We talked through some of the strategies she had learned in class, and she kept taking action steps. When she accomplished her first big business goal, she called me again. This time she said, “I know I can do this.”

It is a myth to think you can launch a successful legal nurse consulting business or succeed in any life goal without learning. The most successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultants respect the complexity of consulting with attorneys on medical-related cases and become students for life.

I’ve owned my own legal nurse consulting business for almost three decades, and I still learn every day – from my CLNC^® students, staff members, favorite writers, speakers and business experts. No matter what the subject, there is always more to learn.

There are two ways you can learn:

• The hard way – through trial and error, making lots of mistakes. We’re going to do some of that anyway, but this is a slow, expensive path to success.

• The easier way – through the experience of others who have already successfully overcome the problems and discovered the answers. This is the quick and sure path to success. Just about any problem you will encounter, the right mentor has already successfully managed.

As a committed lifetime student, I choose to listen and learn from mentors who are far more successful than I am. I attribute much of my success to choosing my mentors wisely.

Commit now to being a legal nurse consulting success student for life and to learning not only from your own mistakes and accomplishments but also from successful mentors. When you do so, “I think I can” becomes “I know I can,” squelching any thoughts of “No way I can.”

Success Is Inside!

P.S. Comment and share how being a legal nurse consulting success student has helped you launch or grow your CLNC^® business.

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!