Dear Friends:
Our professional world has really exploded these last few months. A law firm merger, a new building purchased, an M&A spin-off, new partners, new hires. We’ve been growing at a pretty nice clip.
Yesterday, we completed our annual, two-day leadership planning meeting. Our future client-service plans dwarf our previous greatest hits. Bottom line: when our clients have a problem, we’ll have a solution; when they have a business need, we’ll fill it, either directly or through a partner. Stay tuned for more great client service deliverables.
As we continue to develop our entrepreneur-focused service organization, our own personnel needs grow with us. Lawyers, paralegals, M&A professionals, recruiters and others. Here’s a list of our current open positions. Help us help you! Please send us your best if you know them.
Enjoy this week’s FIX, and thanks for reading.
-Alex
If there was just one more of ME . . .
I recently gave a presentation to a business group called, “How to Virtually Clone Yourself – 10x Your Impact On Your Business, Your Family And The World.” In it, I went through my top eight productivity hacks, and thought I’d share them here with you, my loyal readers:
- Set goals by organizing them around five categories: your purpose, finances, time, relationships and health. Start with life-long goals and work backward in ten-year increments until you get to ten years from now, and then go down to 3-year, 1-year, and quarterly goals. Use the SMART acronym (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timed). Break them down into weekly and daily targets that you review daily, weekly and quarterly. Rinse and repeat annually.
- On a quarterly basis, perform an “activity inventory” of your professional tasks and then delegate, automate or eliminate anything that doesn’t score high in three areas: it gives you joy, makes you money and you’re great at it.
- Get a coach. LeBron James has one. Millions of successful entrepreneurs do, too. What makes you think you don’t need one?
- Get a virtual assistant. No-brainer on this one. See No. 2 above. How much joy, money and expertise does getting contractor bids and calling the plumber give you? Time adds up.
- Create and cultivate your Top 40 List (Top 20 and Farm Club, in Dan Sullivan terms) – these are the 20 people most likely to affect your revenue in the next 90 days, and the 20 “Farm Club” people who are farther out than 90 days. Keep them top of mind; keep them happy; solve their problems.
- Cultivate and practice these critical daily habits – Mindfulness, Gratitude, Exercise, Reading, Journal-writing.
- Measure everything that matters. I’ve been using the Oura ring lately and it’s freaking awesome; lists and spreadsheets work, too.
- Iterate rapid growth through failure. Conduct formal “lessons learned” sessions for every major mistake or growth opportunity. Ask and discuss four questions – What was supposed to happen? What actually happened? What did we learn? What are we doing next time?
Holler if you want some guidance on these. I think each is a game-changing way to live your best life and grow your business quickly and exponentially.
Changes to Ohio’s LLC Act . . .
In January 2021, Ohio enacted a comprehensive revision of the Ohio Limited Liability Company Act, which goes into full effect on January 1, 2022. The new LLC Act offers an excellent opportunity to review the procedures for starting a business in Ohio, as well as the documents necessary for daily business operation, not just for LLC’s, but for other business entities as well. Learn more about it in this week’s Legal Fix.
A trip back in time . . .
If you’re a fan of history and geopolitics, Al Jazeera has a really great series called “Start Here”, in which the host provides a 5-10 minute primer on all the world’s hot spots, with great maps and great video. (No commentary from me here on Al Jazeera’s pros and cons and controversies over the years.) Titles include “Saudi Arabia & Iran’s cold war”, “What led to Brexit?” and “What’s going on in Kashmir?”.
If you want to go even farther back, like to ancient Rome and Carthage and Persia and Sparta, or more get more military content, check out Invicta, which provides great mini-docs in cartoon and CGI in 10-20 minutes. The greatest hits here include “The Siege of Masada”, “A Roman Soldier Prepares Dinner”, and “Rise of the Aztec Empire”.
Speaking of history, if you’ve never been to Savannah, Georgia, I highly recommend it. We traveled there last week and found it to be pretty magical. General Sherman didn’t burn it down like he did Atlanta during his March to the Sea (the local government surrendered the city to preserve it), so there are 130 years of pre-Civil War history preserved back to the 1730’s. It’s a really cool town with modern bars and restaurants sitting next to Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century brick roads and plantation homes. And, then there was this – a tree tunnel filled with Southern Live Oaks on both sides for a mile and a half. Stunning and surreal.
