Episode #184 – Why the H2H Method May Not Be Working for You

Have you recently purchased the brand new H2H FUNdamentals masterclass or tried something you read in the book or heard on the podcast?

How did it go?

If it didn’t go the way you hoped, there’s a reason for that.

Seven reasons, in fact.

I discuss them all in this podcast episode.

❤️ Sari

“H2H isn’t a gimmick or formula. It doesn’t work immediately or solve all of your problems. It’s an entirely new way of practicing law that takes practice, community and patience.”

sari de la motte

EPISODE 184 TRANSCRIPTION

Welcome to another episode of From Hostage to Hero. Sari de la Motte here with you today, and we're talking about why the H2H method may not be working for you.

Before we do that, I'm going to read from an email, I've been reading from a bunch of emails lately. I love hearing from y'all. This one says, "Thanks for your energy. I've told many of my friends about your work and how it has connected with me. I've always been a positive person, and it took decades of bumps, blows, and losses for me to begin to fear juries and doubt myself. You helped me find my true self and I'm sincerely grateful." Well, I love that, and I love that you found your true self, and I hope that that's also happening for those of you who are listening today. Well, if you don't know, we just released in the last couple months the H2H Fundamentals course. It's actually a masterclass, 40 videos, workbook, samples, all the things that you can have to help you use the H2H method.

I wanted to talk today to those of you who've maybe purchased that class or maybe you've been in the crew, read the book, or even listened to the podcast and are wondering why it isn't working the way that you maybe had hoped that it would work.

There are seven things I'm going to talk about today about why it may not be working for you, if it in fact is not working.

I think this is really important to understand because as you are on the search, on the lookout, if you have listened to my podcast two podcast episodes ago where I talked about stop going to CLEs and reading all the books, I know that you're on the search for the thing that is going to solve your problem. I want to be really careful that you're not approaching H2H in the same way that you may have approached other things that you have attempted to learn, which is, you buy it, you read it, or you watch it, or you attend it, and then you go and you try it and it doesn't work, and so then you're on to the new thing.

Hopefully, what I'm going to share with you today will not only help you with acclimating to the H2H method and/or anything else that you bought, but that will help you reframe how to learn anything and more importantly, how to really master something.

Now, before we go there, let's talk about what the H2H method actually is. There's really four main areas, and then there's content with each one of those areas. We start with the hostage and we end with the hero, but in between those, we climb a ladder, so to speak.

So the first one is we have to create some safety with our jurors. We know that their brains are under attack. That's why they're hostile. That's why they don't want to talk to you, and so that first step is safety. In that step, the main content piece that we teach you in the method is the designed alliance.

How do you design with jurors so that we can calm their brains down and get them ready to engage with us, which is the next step. We're going to have that engagement step where the jurors learn about us, learn about the case, give us the principles, all of the things that we're trying to do in voir dire. Of course, in that step is our issue-oriented voir dire, which includes the very popular funnel method.

Excuse me, still getting over my sickness that I don't think was COVID, but I lost my sense of taste and who knows? All right.

The third step in the method after safety and engagement is commitment. This is where we get jurors to commit to us in our case, and we do that through our opening statement. That's the content that we're teaching in that piece.

Then finally, we have jurors take action when they go into the verdict room, and that's where we have our closing piece.

So those four pieces of content, the designed alliance, the issue-oriented voir dire, the closing template and the brand new, sorry, opening template and the brand new closing template are all included in the H2H fundamentals course.

However, when we're looking at this, there are seven things that I have found that are going to affect whether or not this is actually going to work for you. So let's go into those in depth.

The first one is that you haven't shifted your mindset. Everything we do in the H2H method revolves around one very specific mindset shift. There are many mindset shifts, but this one has to happen along with the others, but this is the one that starts it all. That is, jurors are not your enemy. In fact, jurors are the solution to all of your problems.

You've heard me talk about how we are in this to change the fucking world, and we're going to do that with the jurors, not in spite of them. They are the key to everything, and that is how the H2H method is different in that we don't focus on you, we don't even focus on your client.

Everything we do is focused on the jury.

How can we give to them? How can we empower them? How can we make their jobs easier? How can we clarify our case so it's simple?

That is all to give the jury a gift. So if you do not have this mindset shift and you come to H2H thinking this is just another thing to try and you're going to go it and you're going to try the design and you're going to do the issue-oriented voir dire and you're going to try the opening template and then a new closing template, it's not going to work.

You cannot divorce the content that I teach from the mindset shift you have to have, because all of the content is centered around this very fundamental idea that the jurors are there to help you, not hurt you, so that's the first thing.

If you cannot have or are not willing to at least consider that the jurors are not your enemy, then you won't be able to use any of the things that I'm teaching you. Luckily for you, if you have the fundamentals course or if you're going to the website right now and purchasing the fundamentals course, the very first module is all about how to learn to love your jury because that's so central to this method.

The second reason why the H2H method may not be working or may not work for you in the future is if you're viewing it as some sort of gimmick or the new formula or the answer to all of your problems.

Now, in many ways, I believe that H2H is the answer to all of your problems because it is the one method out there that is saying there is no answer to all of your problems, that you are the answer that you've been looking for all along, it's been right under your nose this whole time, and that there's nothing outside of you that is more important than who you are as an attorney.

But if you are looking at H2H method as the new formula, the new plug-and-play system, it's not designed to work that way. Listen, we have the designed alliance. We have the issue-oriented voir dire. We teach you the funnel method. We've got the opening template with the nine parts and the closing template with the four parts.

That's all designed to give you the steps so that you can put your own spin on it and have a starting place, a template to play with. But if you are not willing to look at the deeper things here, your view on juries, your mindset going into this, how you're feeling, what you are doing, if you have not done, I guess I would say, your personal work, then the content, the method, the things that I'm teaching you are not going to work.

It's not just about the mindset shift that you have to have, it's about really changing your view of how this whole thing works.

It's not about there's one method out there that's going to help. It's not about how the greats are teaching styles, I talked about in a couple podcasts episodes ago.

It's all about finding your own truth and standing in your power and using the tools of H2H or any other method to communicate with and for the jurors.

That's the second shift you have to make is that this is not the newest, greatest formula or gimmick. It's neither of those things.

It's a brand new way of looking at basically everything; yourself, the jurors, the trial process at large.

If you're thinking that it's a gimmick or formula, that is another reason why it's not going to work for you.

The third reason why H2H may not be working for you or may not work for you in the future is if you're coming to it from a fear-based place. If you are here in my world because you have a case coming up, you have a trial coming up and you're scared out of your fucking mind,

A- I'm glad you're here because we all get scared, and that's a totally normal thing to be feeling; and

B- I'm glad you're here because we're not going to use your fear as fuel. Meaning, if you are here and you want to continue to hold onto your fear, you are in the wrong place.

Now, if you continue to feel fear, that's human, natural, and normal, and we're going to help you with that.

But if you believe, as so many trial attorneys have told me, as fucked up as this is, that they believe that their fear is what motivates them, that they believe that their fear is what continues to have them go to trial and do good work, first of all, I call bullshit on that. I don't think that's actually what happens. But even if that is what is happening, that is the wrong fucking fuel, you're going to burn out and you can burn out fast. So you definitely are in the right place if you are fearful, but if you believe that your fear is useful, if you believe that your fear is what is going to help you be successful and if you're not willing, this is really the important part, to let go of your fear, to put it down, to trust yourself, the jury and the process, then H2H is not going to work for you. Right?

I get that this is a fearful profession and that what you're doing can be scary, but what we're trying to teach you here at H2H is that you can be scared and do it anyway, and you can work at reducing your fear because so much of your fear is self-created.

But if you think this is a formula or gimmick, if you think the juries are your enemy, if you go in with fear, you can know my designed alliance, you can know the issue-oriented voir dire, the opening and the closing, none of that is going to make any difference for you.

You've got to change your fuel from fear to love.

Now, I know that sounds crazy, but if you've been here long enough, you know that that's what I'm preaching all the time.

We're going to love ourselves to better lives.

You're going to love the jury true verdict, you're going to love yourself to becoming a better trial attorney. It's all about love. Those are really the only two major emotions and motivators in the world.

You're either coming from love or you're coming from fear. It makes it real simple, choice A or choice B. When you're in this world, it's all about love. If you're not willing to at least try to love yourself, to try and love the jury, to try and love the process and have some fun with it, you're not going to get very far in this method. It really is a love-based method and fear has no place here. Again, you will feel fear, that's normal. But if you're using it to fuel you or if you're not willing to let go of it because it's an armor that you wear, which is what I see with so many trial attorneys, the method will not work for you. All right?

The fourth reason that I see H2H not working for some people is that you're not practicing. You can read my book, you can listen to the podcast, you can buy the H2H fundamentals. You could even be in the crew, which is the most on-your-feet training that we've got.

But if you're not actually signing up for the hot seats in the crew, if you're not actually standing up and trying this in your office, if you're not actually getting a group of friends together and having a resonant conversation to practice that skill as one of the skills we teach you then it's definitely not going to work, right?

This is buying a book on how to paint, reading the book, going and trying to paint, and then your painting is shit, and you're like, "Well, it's probably the book's fault," and so you go buy another painting book. If you're not consistently practicing how to paint and more so getting the support that you need as you're painting, having a master help you paint, having other painters alongside with you, learning more about painting, trying different techniques and painting, being willing to fail at painting, the book isn't going to help you. The book is a starting point. We talk about how there are four things to master anything that everybody needs.

The first one is training, so you're getting that in the book. You're getting that here in the podcast. You're getting that in the H2H Fundamentals course. You're getting that in the crew.

But the second piece is you have to have a place to practice. Y'all have a craft that you're working on, and that craft is not in your brains. It's not, "How much more information can I shove into my brain? Let me see if I can shove Sari's information into my brain." The craft that you're working on is connecting with other human beings. The craft that you're working on is simplifying concepts. The craft that you're working on is how to ask great questions. The craft that you're working on is how to tell a great story. Those things involve practice, but y'all just sit behind your desk, and you read things and you type things.

That's why in the H2H Fundamentals course, we talk about how you need to stand up and try things out while as you create your content, not sit behind a laptop and type it out.

If you just bought the book or you bought the course and you just watch the videos and that's it, and you're like, "This doesn't work for me," well, because you're not practicing it. You've got to be practicing it. If you're thinking, "This isn't working," go back and look at these four things so far we've talked about.

Practice is a huge one, a huge, huge, huge one. With that is that whole piece of you're doing it alone.

H2H isn't going to work for you if you're isolated, if you're not asking for help, if you're not with fellow-minded trial attorneys. That one's really important because again, so much out there is fear-based. So much out there is a dick measuring contest. By that I mean verdict-measuring contest. It's all about your recent win or have you won or how big was your win. It's all about competitiveness. It's all about who can outdo the other person. It's all about talking the war stories. That's what it's all about. When you're in that world, it's hella isolating.

I can't tell you how many people have come into H2H, the crew particularly, and were like, "Oh, my God. I'm not alone. There are other people that think and feel the very things I think and feel," and not just other people but well-known lawyers who are willing to share that kind of thing. Yep.

See, when you're out there and you're trying this and you're not getting the results that you want, it'll be so easy to say, "Well, it's the method, it's me, it's all the things," but when you're with like-minded individuals and you shared, "This isn't working," they can go, "Ah, that happened to me too and here's what I tried," or, "You're doing great, it's just you have this hard thing happen," or, "Sometimes we lose," or whatever it may be. We just were talking about in the crew about how amazing it is that we're constantly sharing our losses and our wins and we're counting the losses as wins because we're always learning.

If you're doing it alone, that is also going to be one reason why this may not work for you because H2H was designed to work in tandem with each other. It survives and does so well because we're all working at it together. We're creating things together. We're helping each other, and that's not a small thing. That's a big deal, and that really is going to help this work in your case.

So many of our attorneys are trying cases together now. If they're not, they're actually posting and they're saying, "Is there an H2Her who can help me over here?" Because they want somebody who's like-minded, because one of the things that we are finding is that you're going to trial with maybe somebody in your office and they're not an H2Her and there's a big mismatch there because it's a completely different way of looking at things, so that might be another reason because you're trying to do it alone.

Here is a big one, a big one, which I think is number six if I'm looking at this right, which is, you expect it to work right away. This one is huge.

Y'all want immediate results. You all want to have something that is going to work immediately, and if it doesn't work immediately, then you're onto the next thing.

H2H is not designed like that. It is not something that you can take into trial and attempt it and get it right the first time. In fact, somebody emailed me the other day and they're like, "I'm going to trial next week, and I'm totally fucking scared because I'm totally going to fuck this up." I emailed them back and I said, "You're totally going to fuck this up, so go in there and fuck it up." You might be like, "What? I can't do that to my clients." What's the other option? This is how we learn. You're going to fuck it up anyway if you're using some of that other shit I've seen out there, not all the shit. There's great stuff out there. Do not get me wrong, do not misquote me. But if you're going in there scared anyway, why not try something new and see what you get out of it?

But if you're expecting it to work right off the bat and then you're done with it, let me ask you, where else in the world does that happen where you try something the first time and you get it perfectly right?

Nowhere, but y'all don't have the patience to actually do what it takes to make this work. Part of the practice I just talked about happens in trial. That's where the real practice happens.

I remember when I was teaching as a piano teacher and I always tell my students there's three types of practice. There's the practice that you do by yourself, the practice you think about, then there's the practice you do or the performance, I should say, you do. So you perform for yourself, you perform for me in lessons. Then there's the ultimate performance, which is the recital, so it's the same thing here.

You may be trying it out in your office, creating it, standing up, using your flip charts, and then you might get a group together and try it out on them in your office. But where the rubber really meets the road is at trial, and you've got to be willing to experiment and risk there to learn this method. There is no way around that. I'm sorry, there isn't. So if you're expecting this to work perfectly, the very first time you try it, you're going to be sorely, sorely disappointed. That's not how it works.

We have actual attorneys that are on H2H faculty that are still playing with this and still learning it because it takes that, it may take your whole lifetime.

This is why, by the way, we believe that H2H is also the way to have fun, because if you're learning and you're not getting it all right, you might as well be having fun during the process, so that's why we design it that way too.

Finally, the big reason, not the only reason, not the biggest reason, but another big reason why this may not be working for you is because you haven't let go of your need to win. If you're only in this because you believe that winning is your job, you believe that winning is the only acceptable outcome, you believe that winning tells you or tells everybody else what a good or bad lawyer you are, then this isn't going to work, because you won't risk. You won't experiment. You won't have a community. You won't share your losses. You won't practice. You won't let go of your fear. All of the things. You won't have the mindset shift because for you, it's all about winning.

Here at H2H, winning is a side effect. Winning is a cool little thing that happens once we've done our job.

Here at H2H we focus on what our job is, which is to fight. Now whether we win that fight or not is not in our hands. Somebody else goes and finishes it in another room without us. So we know as H2Hers that that part cannot be part of how we evaluate ourself. That cannot be how we view this job, that we have to believe that winning is something that's more likely to happen when we stop focusing on it and focus on what we can control. So if you are so totally wrapped up in winning, again, we're glad you're here because we're going to work that out of your system and focus on what you can control.

But if you're not willing to let that go, if you want to stay stuck in the mindset that winning is your job, then H2H isn't going to work for you because that is automatically going to prevent you from doing the very things that H2H is suggesting you do, which is to risk and to trust, which seems polar opposites.

But those are two major ingredients of the H2H method; risking and trusting, trusting yourself, trusting the jury, trusting the process.

I believe a situation can work for everybody, but you've got to make these shifts.

You've got to be practicing. You got to have that community. You got to let go of your fear.

You got to let go of this being a gimmick. You have to let go of winning, and that's a lot to do. It's not easy.

It's not a one stop and you're done. We believe that the H2H method is also a lifestyle and something you'll practice for the rest of your life.

We invite you to be part of that. So if you haven't already bought the H2H Fundamentals course, you can do that at sariswears.com/fun, and we'll be reopening the crew in January. So make sure you get on the wait list when you're at the website. It's called the H2H Playground.

If you're looking for the crew, you may not see that in big letters. It's H2H Playground, that's where we play because we believe in play, but I hope to see you in one of those two places. If not, just here on the podcast, I love talking with you.

Hope that helps, talk soon.

While you wait for next week's episode, how would you like instant access to exclusive trial skills training on my H2H funnel method for voir dire? Grab a pen and paper so you can jot down the website address for a 16-minute video that will help you win more cases. The free training is called Let the Jury Solve Your Problems in Three Easy Steps, and I'm even going to send you a workbook to go with it now. Are you ready for the address? Visit sariswears.com/training. You'll see me there. Enjoy.