2017… It’s A Wrap! (Almost…)

It’s that time of year again, already! It’s time to pull out the goals you set before 2017 started. Hopefully you’ve had them visible all year long and tracked the progress as the year rolled by.

Check to make sure ALL the goals were home runs.

• Gross revenue… how close were you?
• Owner’s Compensation… did you pay yourself a salary that made you happy all year long… not a spotty draw… but a real salary for being an employee of the law firm? Is the projected amount left over at the end of the year?
• Revenue per person on the payroll… seeing this can zero in on whether you are properly staffed or not.
• How many hours per day, days per week did you work? How many weeks off did you have? Are you energized, focused and rested enough to kick butt in 2018?
• Did you set a goal for your health… how did that go?
• What about your community involvement?

Whatever you do — know this: You will NOT have hit every goal and if you did, those goals were too easy. 
And you have to remember this too: Don’t beat yourself up over the goals that didn’t work out. Sit still and ponder what got in the way of achieving them. Make SURE that when you write down those things that got in the way, they don’t resemble pointing any fingers at anything out of your control. We rarely miss our goals because of things “out of our control.”

For example, it might be easy to say, “I missed this goal because my associate attorney left.”

That sounds a lot like you weren’t running the show. If you have turnover, there’s one person on the payroll that needs to step things up in the leadership department and it’s the owner.

o if you had turnover that impacted your goals, you might say, “I had turnover in this area or that area because I didn’t notice soon enough that he/she wasn’t engaged.”

Once you go down every goal like that — finalizing your 2018 goals (they should already be written!) will be a lot easier. Your goals can now include efforts to handle the things that got in your way in 2017.

We have a Strategic Planning recording and worksheet that long-time Members and new Members fill out and turn in this time of year. It uncovers some of the most common culprits that get in the way of hitting goals.

• Knowing your fees, and sticking to them—this is HUGE.
• Setting realistic goals and laying out action that will stir up the activity needed to hit the goals.
• The process reviews being correctly staffed for the business you’re doing right now, not what you used to do, not what you wish you were doing.

If you’d like the recording and the worksheet for this so you can play with your plan over the holidays — email Questions@aaepa.com and just ask us, someone can send it your way! The recording is about an hour, and the worksheet is about 2 hours of quiet thinking.
Happy holidays!

Jennifer Price
Chief Operating Officer
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com