Insider Fix emails have been providing thousands of my readers with three problem-solving fixes for a couple of months now and allowing them to harvest the benefits of my 1 + 1 + 1 = 10x formula. I hope by sending you this newsletter I can help shift your focus from reactive to proactive and ultimately help you grow both personally and professionally. Enjoy.
How to Fail Like a Pro
“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” – Reid Hoffman
The best entrepreneurs I’ve ever met live in a constant state of social and emotional uncertainty. They generally don’t admit it, but Imposter Syndrome runs rampant among us.
It’s simple: to be a successful entrepreneur you have to take risks. Big risks. Sometimes they’re calculated risks, but they’re still risks, and the bigger the risk, the more likely you’re going to fall on your face in a very public way at some point. You do that enough, your self-esteem takes a beating. You think about hanging it up. If you’re a true entrepreneur, you don’t, but how to deal with people laughing at you, that’s the big question.
Here are my absolute favorite reads on this subject, and indeed, the ones I’ve turned to every one of the countless times I’ve fallen on my face:
- How To Stop Taking Things Personally (This is my go-to when the No’s are coming fast and furious)
- Elon Musk’s Resume of Failures (This one just came out and I already love it)
- Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think (Long read but really fantastic)
Proactive is Not Expensive. Reactive is Astronomical.
“Lawyers are like nuclear warheads. They have theirs, so I have mine. Once you use them, they *!@#& everything up.” – Lawrence Garfield (played perfectly by Danny DeVito), Other People’s Money
One of my clients once told me that litigation is like a casino where you’re always getting a losing hand and you can’t leave the table. Another one compared it to getting into a taxi in a foreign country and having no clue whether you’re going around the block or to the other side of town. You’re just there along for the ride.
I think that’s true. Even when we knock it out of the park, our clients are still at the mercy of the other party, their attorneys, a judge or a jury. In most cases, they’re paying someone, win or lose.
Here’s the thing. After twenty years of business litigation, I’ve come to realize that most lawsuits I’ve handled were totally preventable.
Don’t get overwhelmed. Start with the basic foundation – there are generally only six groups of plaintiffs who can sue a business – customers, suppliers, employees, owners, competitors, and the government.
If you know that, then you know how to start a conversation with your attorney: “what should I do to protect myself from each of these groups?”
Then create a list of steps you’ll need to take. Stronger contract provisions. Better employee handbooks. Good dispute-resolution language in every legal document. Etc. aceEtc. It’s that easy. The list itself shouldn’t cost much. Plowing through that list is the next step, but follow an 80/20 process and it becomes manageable: “What are the 20% of solutions I can implement that will minimize or eliminate 80% of my exposure?”
Everything is manageable. Just don’t wait until after you get sued. Proactive is cheaper than reactive. Every time…
*Pro-tip – for the holidays, my firm is providing clients with a customized CoverMySix® legal compliance checklist at the deeply discounted rate of $450 (instead of $2,500). The checklist will follow an interview and a review of any three legal documents of the client’s choice (e.g., customer contract, employee handbook, partnership agreement, etc.), and will result in a series of detailed recommendations to assist the client in protecting itself from liability in the above six relationships that get companies sued or investigated. The firm will also issue a 100% credit of the fee to any work that the firm performs for the client based on those recommendations. For more information, go to www.covermysix.com, and to request a customized checklist, e-mail the firm at [email protected].
How to Stop Talking to Robots and Get to Humans Faster
If you haven’t gotten a virtual assistant yet like I told you to back in September and you’re still making your own calls to customer service, then you’ve spent a long time waiting on hold for people. You’ve been dutifully following instructions on which number to push for which selection, as you’ve slowly gotten more and more frustrated and impatient while looking for the nearest wall to punch a hole in.
Here’s a hack: Start with GetHuman and dial the number they give you to go straight to a human on the other line. There’s even a feature with some companies that gets them to call you when it’s your turn in line. Pretty crafty. I can’t promise their customer service will be any good (for that, listen to my two podcast episodes with customer service ninja John DiJulius here and here), but at least you’ll get some answer from a human being much faster.
