Are you feeling the pressure of the calendar as the year-end approaches? It’s easy to get caught up in the holiday spirit, but for entrepreneurs, these remaining Fridays represent a valuable opportunity to review, refocus, and finish the year strong. Let’s explore how to make the most of the 14 Fridays left in the year without succumbing to panic.
1. Reflect on 2023: Start by dedicating 90 minutes of your time to reflect on the year with a trusted employee or business coach. Take a deep dive into your schedule, comparing the hours you scheduled for various activities with the hours you committed to. Rate your performance on a scale of 1-10 in key areas such as future growth, Level 10 Stakeholders, production, process improvement, employee growth, and marketing KPIs.
2. Year-End Sprint: Initiate a year-end sprint by scheduling a weekly one-hour meeting with your team, preferably on Mondays or Fridays. Prior to these meetings, have a one-on-one session with a key team member or coach to understand what obstacles have hindered your law firm’s growth progress. Once you’ve identified the roadblocks, clarify your goals for the year-end sprint. This newfound clarity will make it easier to engage, empower, and excite your team in the process.
3. Success Requires Discipline: Remember, success hinges on discipline, accountability, and intentionality. Luck and accidents are not dependable strategies. By planning your work and diligently executing your plan, you can achieve your goals.
4. Avoid Last-Minute Panic: It’s all too common for entrepreneurs to find themselves in a crisis, desperately needing to generate revenue within a tight timeframe. The key to avoiding this panic is to commit to a proactive approach. As an example, we recently helped a client who needed $51,000 on August 11th to cover expenses and payroll by August 25th. We gamified how we were going to get there with the team. There was a team-centric bonus in it for them if they met the goal by the due date. Lo and behold, on August 23rd, the TEAM had exceeded that target with $62,978 in revenue. Their commitment to disciplined planning, execution, and daily huddles with accountability transformed their approach to how to treat the law firm as a business. And the attorney was DELIGHTED to pay a bonus.
5. The 14 Fridays Advantage: You still have time! With 14 weeks left, you can course-correct and achieve EVERYTHING you initially set out to do or set new goals for yourself as the visionary, your law firm growth, your client engagement and employee empowerment.
Take a moment now to look at the next 13 Fridays and schedule weekly 90-minute growth and future-focused sessions with your team. Give them permission to take ownership and lead the path and plan. Let them drive the daily huddles, weekly high performance productivity sprints, and KPI scorecards. Dedicate these Fridays to working on key projects to ensure your firm reaches your year-end goals. Yes, including revenue and profit.
Don’t let the calendar overwhelm you. Embrace the idea that you have 14 Fridays left in the year to drive successfully. Even if you didn’t set specific goals earlier in the year, it’s not too late for a year-end sprint. Give me your team and let me train them on how to approach the Year End Sprint with the same urgency as a two-minute warning in a game – the game of consistent law firm growth with joy and ease. And if you need assistance kick-starting this process, enroll your team in the Law Firm Admin Bootcamp + Academy, and let’s get your kickoff Strategy Session scheduled today.
