“The training is nothing.  Will is everything.  The will to act.”

I had the honor last week of presenting with some great speakers and marketing gurus for attorneys in the country.  It was sponsored by the Massachusetts Bar Association and LOMAP and is available for free On-Demand if you are a MBA member.

My talk was towards the end of the program, where many a wiser speakers in marketing already came before me and spoke.  They talked about social media, referral marketing, SEO and the like.  I didn’t feel the need to repeat what they said but I did spend about 5 minutes telling the room everything that I do marketing my firm.

Why give away all my secrets?

Well, it’s because it’s not really a secret.  Knowledge is no longer as powerful as it once was before the age of the Internet and Google.   Almost everything that you need to know about the topics that the speakers were there to talk about, you can find more information about online.  It is not a secret.

So why were they there?  More importantly, why isn’t every lawyer marketing to their fullest potential and why are there lawyers in practice still struggling after many years?  It’s simple – The will to act.

The ideas for marketing yourself and your law firm are surprisingly simple.  The execution is hard work.  It is not that we don’t know what to do, or at least where to find out the ideas.  We drop the ball because we’re either too lazy to do the hard work or we’re too discouraged.

Laziness is easy to cure.  You just need to get off your butt and do it.  Being too discouraged is a bit harder to remedy.  How do you tell yourself to do better; motivate yourself; inspire yourself?

The problem often is in your attitude.  If you pay attention to people who fail, it usually starts with their attitude, which leads to their thoughts and words, which leads to their action (or inaction).  Those who fail can usually find any excuse to fail.  Once you believe you will fail, it is not hard to make it happen.  It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  But if you believe that you can succeed, you are no longer wasting your time thinking about excuses for why you cannot, but instead open your mind to the possibility of how you can.

So the next time you start to catch yourself thinking or saying “I can’t because…”, instead think or ask yourself, “How can I…?”