Episode 256 – Three Things That Will Improve Your Law Practice Immediately (Actually…It’s Six Things) (SPECIAL GUEST: COACH K)

Look, your job is tough as hell. Here's some shit to make it a bit EASIER.

DELEGATE, dammit. 

Stop trying to do everything…

Delegate like a boss. 

Lean on your team and focus on what you do best.

WRITE SHIT DOWN, dammit.

Clear processes are GOLD. 

When your team is knowledgeable on the process, shit gets done RIGHT and FAST.

Less screw-ups, more WINS.

These tips are just the start... 

Check out the full episode for more JUICY details. 

Xo,

Sari

P.S. Get ready for our badass new program: Mindset Mastery. It’s a 9-month journey to transform your life. More details coming soon!

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“This is an intentional piece to doing something for yourself—breathing and checking in with your body. Your time blocking is something that's incorporated with actually giving yourself the time, so you can do transitions. The breathing and checking in with your body is essential so you can do the transition AND bring yourself to that transition.”

coach k

Episode 256 Transcription

Sari de la Motte:

Well, welcome everyone. Today I have another guest. Coach K is here. If you don't know who Coach K is, he is my husband and our lead mindset coach, and you get to decide which one of those jobs is more difficult. Don't tell them. They can guess. Let me ask you, what is the most difficult thing, or dangerous thing, I should say, that you did today?

Coach K:

Just being in your presence. Yeah, it was pretty dangerous. She's dangerous.

Sari de la Motte:

That sounds about right. My, thanks for asking, most dangerous thing is eating Indian for lunch while wearing this white shirt.

Coach K:

At least you're not wearing white pants.

Sari de la Motte:

But I do have white pants, which you always were like, "Why would anyone have white anyway?" Especially with my history, as we found out several podcasts ago.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah, okay. Anyway, I was asking Kevin for some tips on what to podcast on, and he said, how about the top three ways to make your law firm law practice better? I can't remember the title that we actually came up with, but basically I was like, "Ooh, that's awesome. What are the three things?" And then he shared his three things. I'm like, "No, those are not the three things. These are the three things." So then we decided that we were not going to fight about it, and we just shared with you six things, three things from Kevin and three things from me. And they're both awesome. So what is your first one?

Coach K:

My first one is breathing. And that's the first one for you. You bring it up all the time. Breathing.

Sari de la Motte:

It's not the first one, though. I have three different ones.

Coach K:

Okay.

Sari de la Motte:

But yes, it's very important.

Coach K:

No, no, no. I'm saying you bring it up a lot.

Sari de la Motte:

Yes.

Coach K:

You bring it up a lot.

Sari de la Motte:

Yes.

Coach K:

Breathing mindset. These are very important things. Well, breathing is so important and we forget about it, of course. But the big thing to remember is to be intentional about it.

And when I say intentional about it, I don't mean this long practice where you're up on a hill wearing linen cloaks and you're doing it for an hour. Nothing like that. It's something that's more doable for you. Now, there might be people out there that can do that. I can't. So I have found-

Sari de la Motte:

Who has time for that shit?

Coach K:

Exactly.

Sari de la Motte:

... I don't even know where to get the white robes and all that.

Coach K:

No, no, I didn't. We're busy people.

Sari de la Motte:

Apparently I wear white, as we know. But when you say... Why is this important? How is this going to change your law practice?

Coach K:

So if you're not breathing well, then you can't think, so you're just going to be in default mode. You're going to go into autopilot. And so many of us are in that place. You're going to just run into the same habits and patterns over and over and over again, and you're not going to ever change the things that you really want to change. The reason why you come to H2H and come to me, it's because you're like, "I have these things that I want to stop doing and I can't stop doing them. How do I stop doing them?"

Sari de la Motte:

So it's like what we were talking about, or what I was talking about, which you helped me with, thank you, in the last couple of podcasts... I don't remember where it was, but the one on how to calm your nervous system down, like they are consistently in fight or flight and they don't even know it most of the time. So how would they know if they're breathing well or not?

Coach K:

Well, I mean, you have to give yourself a chance to slow down and check in with your body first. If you don't do that, then you won't be paying attention. So maybe that's where I should start first, is I have reminders throughout my day that give me a little buzz on my watch that say, "Breathe" or "Stop for a second".

And I just check in with my body. I take a breath and I see how my shoulders are, how tight they are, my neck, my eyes, muscles are tight. Whatever. You check in with your body that way.

Sari de la Motte:

I want to check in with your body.

Coach K:

I know you do. I want to check in with you. We shouldn't do that here. So if you do this, you practice this, you will just as you do it, you need to remind yourself to breathe at least three times. In and out, a deep breath, and in, and out. Four square breathing where it's four seconds in, four seconds out. Do that three times. And while you're doing that, check in and see what's going on inside here.

Sari de la Motte:

You know what I love about this is I talk about how really how to become a better breather is just become more aware. But what I also love about this is you're bringing body awareness into it. And as we know, lawyers just think their bodies are a way to carry their heads around. And so this is really having them check in, and really do a lot of the things that we were talking about in the podcast about calming down your nervous system.

Coach K:

Yeah, no. And really, it's the starting point so that you can actually do that. Because if we don't take the time to check in with our bodies, we won't know how we're breathing. And the only time, well, maybe we'll try some kind of meditation practice and it doesn't work. So we stop where, that's what leads me to a practice that is doable, attainable, achievable.

Sari de la Motte:

Just stop and check in.

Coach K:

Stop and check in. And remind yourself to do this throughout your day. It can be peppered throughout your day. You can have it in the morning and the midday and the evening to start, and you start... That's your new practice, that's your new habit that you're building. And you can build upon that.

But you can start with just three times a day, some kind of a reminder, breathe three times, four seconds in and out, and check in with your body and then go back to your work. It'll neutralize your nervous system. It'll get you centered. It's like a zeroing out, almost a reboot of sorts.

Sari de la Motte:

Oh, I love that. Reboot.

Coach K:

Yeah.

Sari de la Motte:

Okay. So really the thing that they should do is just stop and check in.

Coach K:

Yep. Stop, check in with your body, and breathe.

Sari de la Motte:

Great. All right. So my first one is to delegate. Often you are so stressed in your life and in your practice, because you are trying to do too much. I think this is a big one, especially for women, as if I had you write down all the things that you wanted to get done this week... And this is true for men too. And then I said, "Okay, just give me the lowest amount of time you think that that would take," the lowest amount of time, and you added up that, and it actually probably takes longer in many of the cases, it would be way more time than you had available. I've had people do this and they've come back within 2, 3, 400 hours. And what happens is because we don't recognize that we're doing that much, we then make ourselves wrong when we don't get it all done and we're not actually doing the math. It's literally impossible for me to get all of these things done.

I know this is true in my case, and I do this all the time now. I'm like, "Here's the things I want to get done. Here's the time it's going to take." And even then, with a realistic schedule, there are still things that come in that I can't get done. So delegating is huge, and I'm learning this now. It was just me and an assistant for years, as you know. And now that I have a staff, it's really practicing saying, "Let me give you these things so that you can do them and I don't have to do them." And I think if you start to delegate, that is going to make a huge difference in your law practice.

Coach K:

Well, and it's so calm, and especially when you're solo practitioners, where you're used to licking the stamps, you're used to doing everything, and then all of a sudden you have a team now, and you're still doing everything.

Sari de la Motte:

Is that like a saying, because you said that three times in the last couple of days.

Coach K:

Licking the stamps?

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah.

Coach K:

Yeah. People used to say that to me regularly. And the word "data".

Sari de la Motte:

I kind of like it and it's kind of weird, but...

Coach K:

It's the basic, most-

Sari de la Motte:

It's the very most basic thing, right?

Coach K:

... Menial tasks, you're doing those, and you're doing this high-level strategy. You're doing everything.

Sari de la Motte:

You know you can get the adhesive ones.

Coach K:

I know, okay, God. But basically you're doing everything. And what Sari's talking about is that's a practice in itself, learning how to delegate doing that, learning how to give it over to somebody else is a big step.

Sari de la Motte:

Well, there are a bunch of control freaks for one.

Coach K:

Yeah. Well, aren't we all?

Sari de la Motte:

Which brings me to my number two, so I'm going to bypass you for just a minute, because they're so connected. Right there is, people always say, "Well, I can't delegate because why don't people just read my mind? If they just read my mind, then they would know how to do this thing." And so I said, "It is possible for people to read your mind." And they're like, "It is?", thinking I'm going to show them some secret thing. And I said, "Yeah, write it the fuck down. Write down what you need them to do."

So as you know, in our business, this whole year, we're taking a whole year to create a process for every last thing in the business, so there is no question on how it should be done and who's in charge of what. Before trial lab, I don't want any pens down here that are out of ink. It's going to drive me crazy. So I'm going to write that down, right? I'm going to write that down. But it's true, right? We get irritated with those things. Why don't people know that? Well, because I have written it down.

And so I think when you're delegating, you have to have processes in place or else it just feels like, "Well, I'm going to tell them to do it." They go do it wrong. And then you come back to us and you're like, "See?" Well, you have to have processes.

Coach K:

Well, okay, so you're talking about processes and you're talking about delegation, and I think it really dovetails nicely to time blocking.

Sari de la Motte:

Which is your number two.

Coach K:

That is my number two. Time blocking. What you're really doing is you're containerizing things on your schedule so that you can actually do something for a bit and then move on to something else and you can block it out.

This is my creative time. This is my time to do more litigation stuff. This is my time that I need-

Sari de la Motte:

Name the stuff.

Coach K:

... Yeah, name the stuff. And what this does is it builds in transitions, which are next. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but you have to be able to stop one thing and move on to another thing instead of just careening through your day, careening through your schedule. Because this, in itself, too, will help you stop, slow down, you'll breathe, you can check in with your body, and then you think to yourself... You talk about this all the time. When are your best energy cycles? You're best in the morning, right?

Sari de la Motte:

Mm-hmm.

Coach K:

Is creative time best in the morning? What is it again?

Sari de la Motte:

It's everything. I just like... Mornings are my time, but it's weird. It's in the morning. I'm just totally raring to go. And then I get a second wind at four o'clock.

Coach K:

Yeah.

Sari de la Motte:

Then I can go from four to seven, but that's family time. So I haven't found a way around that second one, but yes, different people are different ways. They're like, "I'm not even awake until 11." I mean, they're at work, but my brain's not online until 11. So maybe you have meetings in the morning at 9:00, or instead of trying to do your litigation stuff.

Coach K:

Yeah, so that's another thing, too.

If you're checking your body regularly, you'll know how you are in the afternoons in the morning, when the best times to do the best things are, and you start putting them in blocks.

And I recommend 90-minute blocks. I really think that that's as much the brain can do. And you need some kind of a break or a shift or a move. You breathe, maybe you go get a drink of water, a cup of coffee, whatever it is, and then you go into the next time block. But the thing about time blocks too, is that you have to complete whatever you're doing or commit that you're going to stop whatever you're doing.

Sari de la Motte:

I was going to say.

Coach K:

And that's the hard part.

Sari de la Motte:

Well, and I think that's what's so important about it. The podcast I had a while back about time is going to expand into whatever you allow it. So if you're like, "Well, I'm just going to keep working on this until it's done," it's like the same thing with "When I feel a hundred percent prepared." There's no measurement for that. Whereas if you say, "I'm blocking out..." Let's say your whole thing is 90-minute blocks. "Okay, I'm going to give two 90 minute blocks to prepare for this depo." That's it. And you load up your schedule with the other things you have to do. I know if I don't do this thing, there's no other place I can do it, because I have other things planned at other times. So that's what time blocking is so great at. It's like, "Okay, I got this time. I got to focus and get this done. It makes you so much more efficient than, "Oh, I can work in the evenings. Oh, I can work at night." It's like, "Nope, I've got my kids' thing tonight. Tomorrow morning, I've got a meeting with staff. There's no other place to put this. I got to get it done now." And I give myself three hours and that's all I'm going to spend on it.

Coach K:

And it's a great way to start practicing boundaries, enforcing boundaries, creating healthy boundaries in your life, instead of everything just running into the next, you're actually, "No, I'm done."

When I'm actually in creative time, my staff knows that they don't come into my office. This is when I'm doing creative work. They know that. And this is my time block. So you'll have to design, as we talk about in coaching, designing around these time blocks so that your staff doesn't just blast into your office.

Sari de la Motte:

Well, and see, the other thing too is that when you've got your week planned out and you've blocked things out, and then somebody's like, "Hey, can you meet Tuesday morning at 10:00?" Then you're like, "If I get rid of that, then everything gets..." So it makes it much easier and clearer to say no, because you're going to have to rearrange your whole schedule to accommodate that. Now, sometimes you will have to do that, but it just makes it so much more clear when you're looking at your schedule of what your priorities are when you've blocked out time for certain things, which is hilarious that you said "Designing", because that's my third one.

Coach K:

Okay. Sorry, I didn't mean to... One thing, a story I wanted to tell about one of my clients when they started time blocking and they started getting really protective of their time, but it was so hard to communicate this to their staff, and they did design meetings, everything, and the staff kept coming in. Well, he created this flashing sign that said, "Do not enter" above his office, above the door frame. So when people would come up, they'd look at the flat, "Okay, now he's busy." And they wouldn't come in.

Sari de la Motte:

I love that.

Coach K:

It was like Pavlovian training them to not come in.

Sari de la Motte:

It's like training with kids. We never had to do this to Elena, but where it's like they wake up early... Because she never wakes up early. And it was like they have clocks where it's like, "Is the time red? Can't get up yet. Yellow? It's almost time. Green? Now you can get up and wake up mommy and daddy." So same thing.

So designing is huge, because if you're going to delegate and you are going to have processes, you have to design around that. Top-down rarely ever works. So there needs to be a design where you say, here's what I'm trying to accomplish. And so what I'd like to design with you is when so-and-so calls, that this is how you handle that. Or when I'm in this time, you direct people away from my office. Or what can I do to support you in that?

Coach K:

Yeah.

Sari de la Motte:

Because that person might say, "Well, but if I do that, they're going to get mad at me." And so you design around that. I just had a meeting with my masterminds yesterday, and they were talking about how one of the biggest takeaways from this nine-month program that they've been in with me, and we're not totally done, but just talking about it, was designing. They design now with everybody all the time, and they design with their co-counsel before they take a case to trial. Who's doing what, and how are we splitting the fee? And that's a whole design, because oftentimes people come out and say, "Well, this happened." And I'll say, "Well, what was the design?" And they'll be like, "Didn't have one." There's the problem. What did you design ahead of time? And we've done this before. We go to Disneyland, we design around what happens if we get the wrong room? What happens if the flight is delayed? How are we as a family going to handle this?

Coach K:

Even to Ellie now. So if you do throw a tantrum and they don't have the food that you want or whatever, what are you going to need? Or how are you going to be in this situation? Let's talk about it. Let's put it out in the open.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah, let's avoid the, if you do have a tantrum. To avoid a tantrum...

Coach K:

To avoid a tantrum...

Sari de la Motte:

Here's what we're...

Coach K:

But I'm saying, even our daughter's a part of the discussion. Design is essential in any relationship.

Sari de la Motte:

Every relationship.

Coach K:

All relationships.

Sari de la Motte:

Every relationship. So if you didn't do any of the other things I said, if you're not delegating and you're not having processes, fine, at least make sure you are designing every possible place that you can.

Coach K:

And they're so important to be able to design so you can do your time blocking, and it's going to take a lot of designing. But this brings me over into transitioning, which...

Sari de la Motte:

Is your third one.

Coach K:

Is my third one. Design is the biggest with my clients and transitioning when they can get to-

Sari de la Motte:

And yet, design was not on your list. It was on my list.

Coach K:

... That's right. That's weird. But the design is huge. It's massive. But transition, so when you wake up in the morning, let's start with your day. When you wake up, you wake up in the morning and let's say your alarm clock goes "EN-EN-EN", it shoots you out of bed. And even the night before you're thinking about all your case stuff and it was hard to sleep. You wake up and your brain is still thinking about that. You grab your coffee, you jump into your car, you go to work, you start your day jumping onto anything you can get done, phones ringing, emails coming in from opposing counsel. You do that all the way through your day, and then you jump in the car and you get home and you've got all your case facts and everything in your head, and then you're not present with your wife, you're not present with your kids, and you just want to sit in front of the TV and just fucking zone out with a glass of whiskey and do nothing because you're toast.

Whereas transitions, they create these little containers like the time blocking in your life so you can slow down and say, "Okay, I'm doing something different now, and this is how I want to be in this thing."

You start thinking about, at the end of your day, I get off work and maybe there's something that you can do. Rituals are big in transitions. Maybe there's something you can do when you're in the car. Listen to a podcast episode and not legal, something that's just light, fun, something, or listen to some music. Something that just stops the work as you go home and you're in the car and you're not bringing your work with you. And you come in and you see your wife and you can be present with your wife.

Sari de la Motte:

Oh, they're bringing their work with them.

Coach K:

Yes.

Sari de la Motte:

But one of the things that I work with some of my clients on, is when they get home to put their briefcase in their office and shut the door. Maybe you're going to go back to it later that evening. I hope not. But knowing you, you will. And then go and change clothes. Sometimes people will take a shower, and just that physical transition in either clothing or shower, work is out of sight. It's not right by the door on the dining room table. And then you can, as you said, literally transition into being wife or husband or mom or dad in that moment.

Coach K:

Well, and on the note of the phone, too, I have clients that their thing is they get into the hotel room and they throw their phone in the safe, and if they're going to go anywhere, they leave it in the safe. They don't bring their phone with them, and they just enjoy their vacation.

Sari de la Motte:

Oh, you're talking about vacation.

Coach K:

Oh, sorry, vacation. Yeah. When they're on vacation, they put the phone in there, shut the safe, they go out and they have their phone with their family and do their vacation. They might come back and check it every once in a while later in the evening, but not when they're out on excursions and doing everything else.

Sari de la Motte:

There's a really cool thing on Apple phones... That's not what it's called... the iPhone that I found because I was finding that I was just addicted to scrolling. And so what you can do is set times where certain apps or even your whole phone is not available.

Coach K:

Okay.

Sari de la Motte:

And so I would set it, so it's five o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning. And that was family time. It wasn't available to me. And I started putting my iPad in the workout room so that I had to go in there in the morning, and just walking in that room is going to make me want to work out. That's the biggest thing to get me over there.

So yeah, there's transitions that you need to build in because I think we just drag that energy from one place to another. And I particularly love morning transitions, because it is a transition from work to home, and just taking a moment either before you take your shower and get dressed just to center yourself, look at your day, plan your priorities, have a cup of coffee, and then get into work. That, even if it's 30 minutes, makes a huge difference.

Coach K:

Well, and you just saying that touches on one of the big essential points of a transition to make it a really solid intentional transition is there has to be a lot of your transitions. There has to be something that's just for you so that you can just center yourself with something that's just for you. And the morning is a perfect example.

Sari de la Motte:

I love that. Just for you.

Coach K:

It's just for you. Because as attorneys, as I am, I'm a mindset coach. You're doing it for others all day long. It's time to do it for yourself. It's time to take some time for yourself.

Sari de la Motte:

Do you know how much time I take for myself? Of course you do. In the morning, but do you guys know how much time? Three hours. I get up early and it's not even that early... 6:30, so that I know I'll be at my desk at 9:30, and that three hours is for me. I do my morning pages, which takes about 30 minutes. Then I work out. That takes about an hour. So now we're at 90 minutes. I meditate and shower. We're now at two hours, and I get ready another 30 minutes, and then I have 30 minutes for coffee and plan my day, and I'm at my desk at 9:30. It takes three hours, y'all. I'm just asking you to start with 30 minutes yourself.

Coach K:

Mine's two and a half hours.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah.

Coach K:

Yeah. I get up in the morning, I get up at 6:30, as well. I take the dog on the trail, and then I come back home with the dog. I work out, I'll maybe do some breakfast things or whatever like that, and then I jump in the shower. But I have two and a half hours from 6:30 to 8:30. That is just me. It's not occupied by anything else, anybody else. I learned this from my therapist. She calls it a sacred start. And it has helped me so much, and it's such a great way to start your day.

The intentional piece and doing something for yourself, and also what I talked about earlier, breathing, checking in with your body.

These are the things that you do in these transitions as well. These are all incorporated. Your time blocking is something that's incorporated with your actual giving yourself the time so you can do transitions. The breathing and checking in with your body is essential so you can do the transition, bring yourself to that transition, but doing it so that you are intentional in each piece in your life instead of, like I said, instead of careening into your day.

Sari de la Motte:

And then doing everything yourself, having no processes, and not designing with anyone. So I think my three things work very beautifully with your three things, they're all connected, and we hope that these six things have helped you to have a better law practice, and as Kevin said, a better life. I didn't put that in the title, but that's what we really want for you.

Hope that helps. Thank you, Coach K, for being here today in our makeshift studio. We've got to have an actual real podcast studio for dual podcasting. We have a good setup for me, but for dual podcasting.

Coach K:

Yeah, true.

Sari de la Motte:

Thank you. All right, talk soon.

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