nurses

Exhibiting is a cost-effective way to get in front of a large number of attorneys in a very short time. I asked four Certified Legal Nurse Consultants to share the role that exhibiting plays in their marketing plans.

1. “I exhibit at the same legal conference year after year. One of my attorney-clients joins my exhibit and markets to new attorneys for me, telling them that they cannot afford not to use me! All I do is stand there, smile, collect their business cards and answer any questions they have about the CLNC^® services I offer. Having my attorney-client refer me in person really helps other attorneys see the benefit of hiring a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant.”

   Nikki Chuml, RNC, FMC, PRN, CLNC

2. “Recently a CLNC^® colleague exhibited at a legal conference and ended up with more cases than she knew what to do with, all cases coming from one attorney. Her recent email to me stated, “Be careful what you wish for; because it just may come true!” Exhibiting paid off handsomely for her.”

   Lawrence H. Frace, RN, CLNC

3. “I recommend exhibiting to promote your legal nurse consulting business whenever you can. The more often the better. Legal conferences for personal injury attorneys are my favorite. At one legal conference, I had five or six attorneys at a time at my table talking war stories. They are like nurses. When they get together, they like sharing war stories from their cases. I joined right in talking war stories of how I helped an attorney win a case and they loved it. I ended up with three attorney-clients from that one conference and we are still telling war stories today.”

   Nikki Chuml, RNC, FMC, PRN, CLNC

4. “In mapping out a new marketing plan for my CLNC^® business each year, I make sure to plan for three to four opportunities to exhibit at legal conferences or symposiums. I belong to a couple of organizations that offer exhibiting space at discounted rates for members. I’ve learned to think outside the box as to what may yield good revenue. I gained some good attorney-clients last year from exhibiting at a conference about class action suits. Many of those cases do not involve medical issues, but enough of them do. Many of the attorneys in attendance also handle medical-related cases, so those are the attorneys I focused on and it was a great opportunity to present my CLNC^® consulting services to them. Exhibiting can be a lot of fun and all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants should add it to their marketing plans.”

   Dale Barnes, RN, MSN, PHN, CLNC

Success Is Inside!

P.S.	Comment and share your successful exhibiting experiences at legal conferences.

We get a lot of email here at Vickie Milazzo Institute. I know Vickie’s blogged about the quality of the email. While most of the Institute’s email is legitimate and comes from Certified Legal Nurse Consultants seeking mentoring or from nurses seeking new careers as Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, some is from the good and most trusted friends we’ve never met asking us to help transfer a 3-million dollar inheritance out of some small African nation. We have a pretty strong spam filter but we still get a small portion of harmless “spam” promoting whatever someone thinks we need – machine tools from China, cheap pharmaceuticals or proposed business relationships. Whatever it contains, as with all email, we’ve got to slog through it, answering and deleting until the email box is empty (it never is).

One of the more dangerous bits of email we get comes from Internet fiends who, in an act of shameless self-promotion, will create an alarming email (sometimes about themselves) and link it to a “poisoned” website. Well-intentioned people with an unhealthy interest in gossip will actually fall for the trick, visit the site to read about the fiend, infect their computer JUST BY VIEWING THE PAGE and become a part of the fiend’s “zombie army.” If and when you get one of these emails, delete it immediately.

Even worse though than email from fiends in my opinion my CLNC^® amigos, is the occasional email we get from legal nurse consultants indicating that the sender’s computer has either become a “zombie” or has been infected with a self-replicating virus causing it to send out copies of itself to hopefully infect others. Sometimes the email simply indicates that a friend’s Gmail or Hot Mail account has been compromised and a spammer is happily spamming away with their account.

In past Tech Tips, I’ve blogged about dangers of “bots” and “botnets” and given legal nurse consultants (as well as civilians) tips on how to avoid becoming part of a botnet or catching a virus outside the hospital. But, until today, I’ve never tipped on proper etiquette for letting your friends know they’ve been infected.

Take a moment and think about it. Let’s say your computer has become a zombie and part of a botnet or your Gmail password has been hacked. While you work on making phone calls for your legal nurse consulting business, your computer is sitting there sending out email after email asking your friends, family or a generated email list “Is this really you in this hot video?” or simply sending an email with nothing but a web link in the body (hopefully pushing people to a poisoned website that when viewed will add the clickee to the botnet). People are getting your botnet email and deleting it because they know better than to click on the link or try to view the video (I’ve seen it – it’s not that hot and it’s not me). But, do they tell you? Probably not because they just deleted your spammy, botty email!

How do I know that’s what they’ve done? It’s because that’s what I do – or did. Yesterday, just after I finished going through the Institute’s email boxes and triaging messages, I told Vickie I’d deleted a huge string of messages (I sort by subject for massive deletes and was inordinately proud of myself) from people who’ve been infected.” Vick asked me whether or not I’d emailed them to let them know and I said, “No. I just delete them.” In response she asked, “Wouldn’t you want to know if you’d been infected with a virus or lost your mailbox?” and I told her… well, I didn’t say anything because she was right. I would want to know and I’d want someone to tell me.

That’s the point and purpose of this blog. If you get one of these emails from a friend, family member or Certified Legal Nurse Consultant colleague, let them know! Simply hit reply, cut the text out of the email (so they don’t click on the link) and tell them that you received this from them and you think that either their email account has been compromised or that their computer is infected. It’s just common courtesy. Now, they may get lots of these notices but think about it, as a nurse – wouldn’t you rather get the diagnosis of an infection as soon as possible so that you can take corrective measures and save the patient’s life (or legal nurse consulting business’s data)? I would and I hope you would too. With your timely warning, your CLNC^® colleague can take proper actions like changing their email account’s password or updating their antivirus software or anti-spyware software and cleaning their machine. One day, they may return the favor (but I’m hoping that they’ll never have to).

Keep on techin’ and practicing safe surfing!

Tom

I’ve been working with and around Certified Legal Nurse Consultants for a long time and one of the things I’ve learned is that nurses are generally germ-o-phobics. Vickie tells me nurses don’t sit on toilets – they squat. I’ve seen nurses walk out of restrooms with their hands mummy-wrapped in paper towels so that they don’t have to touch the door handle. All CLNC^® consultants know that there are a lot of scary germs out there and they do their best to avoid the obvious ones.

But, here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know. According to a study by Dr. Charles Gerba from the University of Arizona, there are more germs on your cell phone than on a toilet seat. Healthcare workers’ cell phones carry more germs than those that belong to us mere tech-types. (We have our own issues with dirty keyboards and mice.) Now, not too many of you will walk or drive around town talking to your attorney-clients with a toilet seat pressed to your ear but you’re doing much worse when you talk to them using your cell phone. I suppose a wireless headset might keep the germs at a distance but you’re still transmitting them back and forth every time you handle your phone. The good news is that as long as you only use your own phone, whether it’s for your legal nurse consulting business or anything else, you’re probably not at too much risk (unless you’re in healthcare).

For the real germ-o-phobes, instead of wiping down your phone every time you unholster it, consider purchasing a “skin” for your phone from iSkin. They make a variety of products for iPhones^®, BlackBerries^® and more that contain Microban^® antimicrobial protection. This won’t be a fail-safe, but at least it will make your cell phone a little safer (unless you drop it into the toilet). Check them out for yourself!

Keep on techin’ (germ-free),

Tom

After I became a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, I worked for a corporation doing internal auditing. After two years, a CLNC^® friend told me about an opportunity to have an exclusive Certified Legal Nurse Consultant contract with an attorney. At first I wasn’t sure I wanted an exclusive contract with any attorney because I did not know if he would have enough work for me. I was wrong. I ended up signing a contract with this attorney-client for $150,000 annually for 40 hours a week. This year I will make about $175,000.

Technology has been a big plus for my CLNC^® business. My husband retired and we moved to Tennessee. My attorney-client lives in California. Technology allows me to work full time at home out of an office that used to be part of our barn as I watch over llamas grazing outside. My attorney-client, who has a protected server that allows her to download documents, copies everything to a disk. One of the best things I’ve adopted from one of Tom’s Tech Tips was dual monitors. I review the files from my attorney-client on one screen while I write my report using the second screen. I also take my work on the road when I travel. My husband races cars so I can just pack up my bag with my laptop and go with him. It’s great because my legal nurse consulting business is completely portable.

The benefits of being a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant are endless. I work out every morning, have coffee with friends, then I go to work. The more I work, the more money I make. I can work 50 hours one week and take a day off the next whenever I choose. In my prior job, I only slept in my own bed about eight nights a month because I had to travel so much. Now as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, I enjoy staying at home.

When I worked at a full-time job, I could count my friends on one hand. Now, I am more involved in my community and I’m active in the charities that are important to me.

I was going to semi-retire, do a little CLNC^® work but not really do much. However, I have stayed busy and have had numerous offers for additional legal nurse consulting work. When this happens, I contact my network of CLNC^® peers. The NACLNC^® Directory has a wealth of CLNC^® consultants who I can refer business to or recommend as experts.

My advice to nurses is to stop waiting – do it now. Become a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant today. Stop procrastinating!

Guest Blogger Profile

Sheila Silvus Chesanow, RN, MS, CLNC is owner of Chesanow & Associates in Tennessee. She has been a nurse for 30+ years and has been clinically active as a nurse practitioner. Sheila’s CLNC^® practice specializes in acute care, long term care and geriatric medicine.

When I first started my legal nurse consulting business in 1982, I was nervous about contacting attorneys and marketing to them. The single most important thing that helped me overcome my fear, was remembering who I was – an RN. You know my mantra, “We Are Nurses and We Can Do Anything!^®” If we can make split second decisions that are the difference between life and death, we can do something as easy as talk to an attorney. We learned early on as nurses that doctors are not to be feared and we learned to talk (back) to them. Well, attorneys are the same. They put their super-suits on just like everyone else, one leg at a time. Talk with them; they’re fun. They have great senses of humor and they love life. Some of the most fun people I’ve met in my life are attorneys.

As I grew my legal nurse consulting business I focused on my strengths and successes, not my weaknesses and mistakes. I could write the book on just the mistakes I’ve personally made. Maybe you can too. Now though, there’s hard evidence that it’s our successes that have the most impact on the brain. If you do something the right way, the brain remembers how you did it.

In fact, the study suggests that failure has no impact on helping us to succeed. That’s because if you do something wrong, the brain doesn’t know how to process and store it. Since we absorb more from success than failure, this might explain why successful people learn more from their experiences and continue to succeed often while people who fail learn less from experience and continue to fail often. Think about the people around you. We all know someone who keeps making the same mistakes, in love, at work or in business – it’s because they’re not learning from their failures (unless there is a strong negative association with it such as pain, embarrassment or electrical shock). They fail to learn like they would from a success.

Keep succeeding and stay focused on your past successes. I’ve always said that reliving your past successes will fuel your future success and now research has proven me right.

If your brain doesn’t know how to process your failures, why should you bother? I say you shouldn’t.

Success Is Inside – and it’s repeatable!

Nurses have the strength of enterprise. Think about all the creative, enterprising ways you’ve worked around administration, the doctors, the insurance companies – all on behalf of your patients. To satisfy everybody you have to be enterprising. But being enterprising isn’t just about satisfying patients, doctors and administration. It’s about being enterprising in the pursuit of your career and professional advancement. You must be as enterprising as the CEO of a successful business.

One way CEOs are more enterprising is they expect a payoff for every venture, large or small. After I got my masters degree, my hospital failed to acknowledge it. I didn’t even get a 25¢/hour pay raise. I thought this venture deserved a payoff, so I gave myself a pay raise by announcing my resignation and getting a job at a hospital that recognized my new level of knowledge.

A few years after I started my legal nurse consulting business I attended law school at night. At the time, I thought I would be interested in practicing law, but later decided I preferred the payoff of the freedom and flexibility that my legal nurse consulting business afforded me.

After I graduated, one of the law firms I consulted with offered me a position as an associate attorney. I didn’t have to think hard about the offer. Not only was I already doing what I loved, I was also earning more money as a legal nurse consultant than any of the associate attorneys just out of law school. Saying no was easy.

Then, a year after I politely turned down the associate position, they upped the ante and offered me a partnership at the law firm. Now, the stakes were much higher. These were some of the best medical-malpractice attorneys in Texas! Between working with these attorneys and thinking about the partner bonuses, that offer was more lucrative than I thought my legal nurse consulting and education businesses could ever be.

But then I remembered that payoff isn’t always about money. Practicing law wouldn’t provide the emotional payoff I was receiving from helping nurses start their own legal nurse consulting businesses. My passion was teaching, not lawyering. My enterprising spirit (and intuitive vision) told me something grander lay ahead. So I stayed with what I loved and passed on what certainly seemed to be a firm financial future. Eventually, as our intuitive decisions often do, my decision paid off, both financially and emotionally.

When you take on a new venture, make a career decision or simply choose how to spend your time, you should ask, what’s the payoff? Is it monetary, is it good for your spirit, is it good for your career, is it good for your life? If you say no to this opportunity, is there a bigger payoff available to you? You may have to look hard and be imaginative. The profit may not always be in cash but there needs to be a payoff. Passion for your life and work is the best profit of all. But you still don’t want to underprice yourself. So reach for the stars – you deserve them, whether it’s in business or simply personal.

Success Is Inside!

Happy International Nurses Day! And, happy birthday to Florence Nightingale – today, May 12, is her birthday. She laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world. The annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.

It is fitting that on this day we express our gratitude to our friends at Gannett Healthcare Group, publishers of Nursing Spectrum, NurseWeek and Nurse.com. We are honored that they joined us at our 2010 National Alliance for Legal Nurse Consultants (NACLNC^®) Conference to share some original letters written by Florence Nightingale. These original letters, written in 1861, are truly national treasures and were on display during the NACLNC^® Conference. It was truly fitting as 2010 is the centennial of her death and the International Year of the Nurse.

Photos taken at the Conference are shown here – it was an exceptional exhibit.

Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy to English parents and lived from 1820-1910, 90 years. She set the stage for us “to bring into the field a higher class of persons.” Follow this link to read more about this caring, strong-willed founder of modern nursing.

The exhibit melded well with our NACLNC^® Conference theme: Take the Stage for Legendary CLNC^® Success. The nurses in attendance were impressed, and also touched as they were reminded of the legendary example Florence Nightingale set for all of us.

Thanks again to our friends from Gannett Healthcare Group (Nursing Spectrum, NurseWeek and Nurse.com) for their generous sharing of this exhibit with all the Certified Legal Nurse Consultants at the 2010 NACLNC^® Conference.

Nursing has such a rich history and this is one of those wonderful reminders of just how rich our history is. Happy Birthday, Florence!

Success Is Inside!

Nurses have the strength of endurance. How else would you get through those 12-hour shifts? You work on your feet, you eat on your feet, you think on your feet. Sure – you get to sit down at least once a shift – when you go to the bathroom. Wait a minute – nurses don’t sit, right? We squat – we ain’t touching nothing. But how do you fuel your endurance when the doctor wants it yesterday, your kids want it today and…your spouse wants it tonight?

Endurance is about having the stamina to do what it takes to succeed. When you are launching and growing your business as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, you need endurance. I love working and I don’t mind working long, hard hours full of the challenges inevitable in my legal nurse consulting business. Those hours are easier to endure because I love what I do and also because I reward myself by taking off 12 weeks throughout the year to pursue my passion for hiking and traveling. That’s my payoff and the further I get away from the business to places like Bhutan, the Galapagos, Patagonia and the Arctic Circle, the bigger the payoff.

When I’m off, I’m off. I stay disconnected. My office knows they can reach me if the office is on fire, but they also know I’m not calling in unless I need a ride from the airport. When I return home, the fire for my CLNC^® business blazes just like it did 28 years ago. Fuel your endurance with incremental payoffs as you focus on your big dreams for your legal nurse consulting business. Don’t wait for the big win. Celebrate the small steps and reward yourself all along the way.

It’s not just the final payoff but also the amazing small payoffs you receive along the way that will help you endure the journey to success. Reward yourself, and your family, for the small accomplishments; don’t wait for the big win.

At my company we celebrate more than birthdays and work anniversaries. We’ll stop and celebrate a milestone on a project – such as the completion of a website design or the promotional materials for a new product. We don’t wait until the product hits the market or until we see whether it’s successful. We celebrated the proposal for my book, Inside Every Woman: Using the 10 Strengths You Didn’t Know You Had to Get the Career and Life You Want Now when we submitted it to the publisher. We didn’t know if it would be accepted, but we knew we had put a lot of hard work into that proposal and we were proud of our final work product and a job well done. Sometimes the success is in the middle. I like to celebrate stepping out and going for it. When we define success as going for what we want (regardless of the outcome), we can succeed and celebrate every day. Celebrate the hard work that you’ve done and then celebrate again whether or not things work out the way you wanted.

If your endurance is tested and you’re tempted to give up, remember this: whether you’re building a legal nurse consulting business or working toward a promotion, the ultimate reward goes to those who endure even when the big reward is far in the distance.

Success Is Inside!

Engagement is about committing to achieve big. Talk about a group who is willing to engage or commit. Nurses are tycoons of engagement. Nurses commit themselves to situations that make normal people faint. Every nurse I know is fully committed – or maybe ready to be committed. We’ve all worked that shift. Nurses know how to engage and get things done. In the middle of horrendous situations, you instinctively triage on the fly – you resuscitate, defibrillate and medicate and then you go to work. Total engagement.

You have the strength of engagement. But are you willing to engage all the way in resuscitating yourself and your nursing career? There won’t be a code team coming to rescue you or your career. It’s entirely up to you. Resuscitating your career requires the same level of commitment you would give to a patient who just arrested, but is even more long term.

When I decided to start my legal nurse consulting business in 1982, I knew a lot of smart nurses who had dreams and ideas, but they didn’t do anything with them. They didn’t engage, they didn’t take action. They had their dreams, but they were disappointed. Some were bitter and angry. I’ve always said that dreams can make a person miserable, if you don’t ever act on them. It’s the action behind your dream that makes you happy.

When I launched my legal nurse consulting business, I had a full-time nursing job; so to succeed in my new business, I committed to take action every day. I learned that in the beginning it didn’t matter so much what I did, but that I did something. I was developing the habits and the discipline to make my legal nurse consulting business dream a reality. Whatever your dream is, you need to engage big. Start with the first 30 days. Turn that into 60 then 90. Success is in the motion and in getting the motion moving. You can’t start a business without starting something.

The more action you take, the easier it is to step out the next time. Anything you’re going for: career advancement, starting a CLNC^® business, improving a professional relationship – do something. Once you’ve committed to take action every day, then it’s time to focus on and engage in the impactful actions that give you the result you want.

What you engage and focus on is where you will yield results. You’ll need to break the feel-good addictions, and there are so many of them – checking email, surfing the Internet, watching TV and keeping up with your friends on Facebook – all of which take us away from big and important things. If you’re spending more than eight hours a day at work, you need to be extra vigilant about cutting out any feel-good addictions in order to have the maximum energy and focus for your CLNC^® business. The wrong focus might make you feel good about how many points you’ve scored in Mobster Wars or Farm-gate but, at the end of the day if all you’ve done is clicked your mouse, how’s that working for you and your dreams?

Where and how we focus also includes our families and friends. Society is complex, with family, friends, career, spiritual and social obligations. Nurses can handle a lot, and if we’re not careful, we find ourselves doggedly committing our energy to every person or situation that demands our time. My motto is nurses CAN do anything – not nurses SHOULD do everything. Set your own expectations for what you want to accomplish, stop being a commitment queen (for male nurses that’s commitment king) and shed the guilt for not doing everything for everybody.

It’s okay to say no. Say no to all the laundry, all the housework and all the carpools and preserve some time for your own dreams. Delegate. Your spouse and kids will benefit from participating in family life and learning new skills like washing dishes or sorting socks.

Engagement starts with choice. Choose the goal for your engagement with your passions and vision in mind. Resolve to engage in something big today.

Success Is Inside!

To be happy in a million ways

No man must stand alone with out-stretched hand before him

Let your heart be light

Children laughing, people passing, meeting smile after smile

Snowing and blowing up bushels of fun

A swell time to go gliding in a one-horse open sleigh

Jingle bells all the way

A bag filled with toys

All is merry and bright

Laughing all the way

Gone away is the blue bird, here to stay is a new bird

Time to rock the night away

Snow and mistletoe and presents on the tree

Homemade pumpkin pie

Star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright

Let it snow

To be a child again

Making spirits bright

Angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold

Peace on earth, good will to men

Joy to the world

Love and peace this day

Although it’s been said many times many ways:

Merry Christmas to You!

Success Is Inside!