- Do you sometimes feel stuck, overwhelmed and miserable?
- Are you fully taking advantage of the opportunities available to you and your law firm?
I wrote my first Painted Picture for my law firm a few years ago. Before writing it I felt overwhelmed and uninspired. I had a number of business opportunities available to me, but I wasn’t pursuing any of them with my usual crazy focus and determination. The main reason for my lack of focus was I didn’t know which opportunities to prioritise, and I was too “busy” to think it through.
I was already doing well selling online legal solutions with Legal Beagle, but I was still doing traditional legal work where I was trading hours for dollars. I knew I wanted total freedom from the billable hour and to leverage my firm’s valuable intellectual property – I wanted to scale my law firm so that we were only selling online legal solutions and products with no hourly billing. I had the vision but lacked the energy to work towards achieving it. So I wrote a Painted Picture and it kicked me into action.
If I hadn’t written a Painted Picture at this point in my life, I probably wouldn’t have got Automio off the ground. You can read my Painted Picture for my law firm here from a few years ago (obviously a lot has changed since then!!).
What is a Painted Picture?
A Painted Picture is a clear vision of where you want your business and/or life to be 3 years from now.
I took this concept from a book called Double Double by Cameron Herold. The book teaches how to create a Painted Picture and Cameron provides a Painted Picture for his business and life as a template to inspire his readers.
How do you write a Painted Picture?
Get out of the office to somewhere with an inspiring view, like the beach, mountains or bush. Or even a hammock in your backyard.
Pretend you go into a time machine and can vividly see every aspect of your business, career and life three years out. Write down exactly what you see. Write in the present tense, as if your life, career and business are already that way. It doesn’t matter that you have no idea how it all happens to turn out this way yet. The main point is that you’re totally clear about what the future looks like.
What do you do with your Painted Picture?
You share your Painted Picture with your team so that everyone is clear on what the future looks like. Then you and your team can start putting plans in place to make it come true. You’ll need to talk about your Painted Picture regularly. Put it as an agenda item for your monthly or quarterly planning meetings. This will help your team focus on what they should be working on, and say no to things that are not aligned with your vision.
If you publicly share your Painted Picture, it makes you even more accountable to achieving your business vision. So why not share it with your clients and other business associates. Share it with potential employees. Put it on your website. The thought of this probably makes you uncomfortable. This is an even better reason to do it I say.
In the spirit of sharing, you can read my Painted Picture for Automio here. Now you can keep me accountable.
If your Painted Picture includes getting freedom from the billable hour and selling online legal solutions, please join our new Savvy Lawyers Facebook group. This group is for ambitious lawyers who want to earn revenue on the weekends – even though they take the weekends off. Join now.
