“Unicorn”: A Transformative Success Measure
You may have noticed that unicorns started gaining traction in pop culture a couple years ago and have sustained their popularity. The term unicorn first popped up in finance slang in 2013 after Aileen Lee, a venture capitalist, used it to describe a privately held startup companies valued over $1 billion. Now entrepreneurs want to achieve “unicorn entrepreneur” status by emulating the strategies and characteristics of those who have gone before them.
As a lawyer, achieving “unicorn” success is probably very appealing to you, but you may not necessarily want to tout yourself as a “unicorn” lawyer” (brings to mind a very funny image). Reaching the level of success “unicorn” symbolizes can seem out of reach. Yet, it only seems out of reach if your success measure is in the form of dollar signs. Most entrepreneurs don’t set out to make billions, they set out to fix a niche problem. This changes the success measure.
For us at Client Care Academy, we see “unicorn” as synonymous with stepping outside the box, evolving tradition, rewriting the rules, and transforming practices. Transformation is our “unicorn” metric of success. Our niche is estate planning law firm culture. We want to transform this transactional culture by assisting firms in successfully evolving their practice to a relational model.
After seeing unicorn thrown around in many articles and reading about unicorn entrepreneurs, there are five traits/strategies we have found to be the most crucial in attaining our “unicorn” success measure that CCA will help you to adopt:
Innovate in What You Know. When clients come to you, they tell you what their needs are, and you tell them how you will meet them. Yet, you know that there is more to your clients’ needs than they are asking for. To innovate, you need to transform your practice, so you can open your clients’ eyes to their true need: to make sure their family is taken care of when they die. Establishing a client care program will enable you to move your firm beyond the traditional transactional estate planning approach to an innovative relational approach that takes care of families.
Be Passionate. Passion for taking care of people is the driving force behind any firm or business that wants to do more for clients/customers that take their money. Yet our passion can become buried in the “good enough mindset” and the focus on bringing in more clients. CCA gives you the space to rediscover your passion so you can get back to being the lawyer that takes care of clients and their families.
Disregard Risk. This doesn’t mean start throwing money around and totally disregard the risk in turning your firm’s processes upside down, but you can’t let risk be a road block. Taking the leap to implement an ongoing client care program means you are risking money for fulfillment. CCA will help you bring fulfilment back into your practice, and the risk of transition will bring about the reward of consistent and recurring revenue.
Seek Opportunity. At Client Care Academy, we help you become an opportunity seeker, change creates opportunity and opportunity opens the door for growth. We don’t just work with you and your team to come up with a plan to change your practice that you will be able to institute immediately upon return to work, but we help you change your mindset. Your ongoing program is not only ongoing for your clients, but it will be ongoing for you because it takes your firm from stagnant and stuck in processes to adaptable and always improving.
Do. Part of innovating is testing out a prototype and being prepared for success and learning from failure. You can’t innovate without implement. We want to help you wholly transform your practice and have the confidence to make and execute change.
Innovating, being passionate, taking risks, seeking opportunity, and doing all lay the groundwork for transformation. Adopting these traits and strategies and acting on them will see your firm transformed from transactional to relational. You will become the trusted advisor who actually takes care of families. Relationships have a more reliable ROI than single transactions.
Sign up for our Fall Foundations Workshop today, so together we can help you transform from ordinary to extraordinary.
By shifting your “unicorn” success measure from dollars to transformation, you can take care of families, generate consistent and recurring revenue, and rewrite the rules of estate planning law firm culture.