This is Small Business Week and I’m going to share with you some inspiring talks by business visionaries in this week’s blog posts.
The first is one of the most famous commencement speeches ever given — the 2005 Stanford commencement address by Steve Jobs. One of my favorite lessons from Jobs’ talk is “Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.”
The most successful lawyers I know have followed the less-traveled road to success. They have freed themselves from conventional thinking within the legal profession. They have marketed when others have not. They were among the first to adopt alternative fee structures while others lost clients to the hidebound billable hour. They have recruited Superstars for their firms while others were happy just to fill office chairs.
Our success in helping more than 18,000 lawyers grow their firms has always been rooted in contrarian thinking. When firms have believed that the best path to fill their coffers was to be everything to everyone, we have demonstrated the profitable power of specialization. When firms have clung to traditional advertising, we have shown lawyers that the road to better ROI lies in isolating a target market and reaching out to them one-on-one for a more engaging experience. When the legal professional scoffed at Internet marketing and social media, we proved how having a strong online presence led to more leads.
Steve Jobs was a contrarian his whole life. Listen to Jobs speak about seeing opportunities in setbacks — even his own death, which was much closer than he knew at that time:
