Consistency: Reflecting on 300 Episodes (And What's Next!)

I’m Melissa Shanahan, and this is The Law Firm Owner Podcast Episode #300. 

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What's up, everybody? Hello, and welcome to the 300th episode of The Law Firm Owner Podcast. Nuts. Totally nuts. I have some reflections I'll share with you because this is a milestone. For those of you who have listened for a long time, Episode #200, we did a series to celebrate that. And it was all centered around consistency. It was a four-part series.

And I was prepping for this episode, and I decided to log in and have a look at the most downloaded episodes or most listened to is hard to tell, but downloads you can see. And so what was the most downloaded episodes? And what made me smile when I logged in to look at it is one of them is an episode about consistency that we did in that series. And just funny, I logged to check and see what were the favorites. And what was one of the favorites was the milestone for 200, which is pretty cool.

So now we're at 300, a whole new milestone. And I do have some thoughts I want to share with you. I do have some plans I'm going to share with you about this podcast and otherwise, and tie in this theme of consistency again, because consistency is so powerful. It plays such an important role in progress. It is the lever that you can pull in order to make progress and get to where you want to go. You have to show up consistently.

And I do think what I've learned over time is it solidifies even more the things that we work on with Law Firm Owners, the focus that we have. Because as many of you have been around, the three pillars, the three-legged stool of every interaction I have with clients and the work that we do is you have to know what you're aiming for and have clarity about that. You have to have a plan, a well-thought-out plan, and then you have to honor that plan. And that's the execution phase.

And that three-legged stool, if one of those legs is missing, you will feel more friction on the way to wherever it is you say you want to go. You will spin your wheels. You will have inefficiencies. Everything moves as quickly as it can if all three legs of that stool are taken care of. And that's not easy to do.

You know, it's nice to have someone to help you check the boxes on those three things. What I can say for sure is that the consistency in showing up for the objective that I had, which was to do a weekly podcast and for real do it. Don't fall off, create trust with listeners, help them see the way that we think over here at Velocity Work so that they get a sense of if we a good fit or not, which opens the gateway to be able to work with some pretty incredible people who are a match for us. That was the whole thing.

Back when I started this podcast, I had nothing. I had a handful of clients, but I had a ton of experience under my belt. It was just a new business. I was lifting this business off the ground. And I knew how to do that. When it's your own stuff, it's always a little bit messier, but I knew how to do that. I had helped hundreds of private practices across US and Canada do that. And so now, I had created a company and I was going to help law firm owners do that.

So when I started this podcast, it was really as any business who's lifting off the ground. I was in a phase of making sure that I could provide value to the world. That if I provide value ahead of time, people will understand me. They will understand how I work. They will understand how I will help them. And so it's my job to do this.

Now, as many of you can probably relate, I have started projects in the past and I end up dropping them for whatever reason. And there's reasons we could go into here. This is not the forum for that. Whether it's my attention span, whether it is the fact that I am heavy quick start within Colby, but I'm also equal fact finder. Whether it's because I'm not getting the validation that I was looking for or the results that I was looking for, there's a number of reasons why we tend to flake out on the things that we set out to do.

And man, when I think about even for myself, just the missed potential because I didn't follow through, I didn't show up consistently, and the cost of that in many respects. And we are all on our own journeys. We are all going to have our own struggles. And it's different from one person to the next.

There's certain things that for some reason you look at someone you admire and they've just got it so dialed with their health or their fitness and you don't. But then you do have it dialed with something over here and they don't, right? Everybody has a different thing, a different relationship to consistency across different categories of their world.

And I will tell you, I was in such a place of understanding of how important it was that I start this podcast and that I keep this podcast going, and how it wasn't going to pay off for a very long time, maybe not even two years. But if I don't stick with it weekly, it will never pay off. So if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. And I'm not going to flake out on myself with this. I'm not going to flake out on the listeners, with very little listeners I had at the very beginning. I am going all in on this because I believe it makes the most sense when playing the long game.

It's not gonna be a quick hit. I'm not gonna have an influx of clients right away. I'm not gonna have people knocking on my door for consults right away. I didn't expect any of that back then, and it didn't happen back then. But I will tell you, about two years in is when I started consistently hearing on consults that were scheduled with me, “I've been listening for a while, and I just decided to reach out.”

And when I first heard that, my heart was so happy. That was the intent. The intent was to provide enough value and to give people enough out there, the listeners, that they could trust, the right people that were a match for us. They had a sense that they should work with us. They had a sense that we could help. And it's because they had been listening long enough that they felt like they understood what to expect out of me and out of my team.

So, just so grateful that I had the conviction about this as something that Velocity Work should do and not expecting a thing from it for years. Show up, put in the reps, don't miss a week. I was four or five months pregnant when I started this podcast and I did the work to pre-record a bunch of episodes before I went out on maternity leave.

I only took two months of maternity leave that year, it was 2020, it was COVID. But I had all eight or nine episodes lined up, so I was ready to go. And I just figured I'll start recording again when it's time to come back to work.

And even that, looking back, the conviction I had that this was the thing that needed to happen for this company, period. And I was unwilling to do anything else. I was unwilling to flake out and put my attention somewhere else to build trust with people. No, this was the path I chose. I was so clear about it.

And I think to how often even me, I teach these things, right? I work with people on these things, but there are certainly times where I say I want something, but I cannot articulate with clarity exactly with specificity what I want. And I did that with this. It was very clear.

There was either going to be a, you make it or you don't make it because I either show up every week, or I don't. A weekly freaking episode. It was going to happen. So I'm using the word conviction, but it was my commitment to this. I was committed.

And the reason it made it easier to commit is because it was so specific. A weekly episode, I was not going to miss. I was always going to have an episode published every single week. There is no room for interpretation there. You cannot get around it. So that clarity made it easier to know exactly what I was committing to.

And so that commitment I kept acting on and I kept showing up. And I'm not a robot, I don't do this with every area of my life. This is a very unique thing that I have committed to every single week for almost six years. I am so proud of that.

I know that most people who start a podcast fall off. They don't hold their commitment to it. And there's a bunch of reasons for it. It is not easy. So there are barriers that come up and people aren't ready to handle those barriers. Their commitment level wasn't as deep. It sounded like a good idea, but they weren't fully committed to it.

And when you're fully committed to something, you will do whatever it freaking takes to honor your commitment. And for some reason, I had that kind of relationship with this podcast and with my commitment to this podcast.

So tying it back to consistency, I think I have learned, yes, 200 episodes, I talked about consistency. I did a ton of research to make those episodes hopefully as useful as possible. I've gone back to listen to them since they've aired. It is helpful information for any human who's trying to do something and trying to create progress. What I shared there through my research and my experience is timeless wisdom that is never going to not be true.

And so this now 100 episodes later, 100 weeks later, I am thinking back and reflecting on what have I learned since then even about consistency. And I just continue to be floored by the results of this commitment to this thing. It has given me a path to meet the most incredible law firm owners. And I really think that is to do with the weekly podcast episodes and people, they know if they're gonna like me or not. They know if I make sense to them or not.

I recently had some friends who are colleagues and they have the same audience with their business, law firm owners, but they offer adjacent services. Recently they brought up something about how tough it has been with their client base and the struggle that they have experienced. And so I am just thinking as they're talking about it, I do not have that problem.

I'm telling you for real, like 98% of people that have a consult with me, they are my kind of people. We just think in the same ways. We're both open. There's an aspect of willingness to learn and to grow. Those are the kinds of people that reach out to me. I rarely get someone on the phone who is a know-it-all, who is closed off, who acts like a jerk.

But they don't have that experience. They have jerks all the time on consults, according to them. There's some talk about how sick they were working with law firm owners or lawyers in general. I'm like, oh my gosh, I do not have that. And they were shocked. And I said, you guys, I think it's because of my podcast. I think it's because the people that resonate with me and the things that I say, they are my kind of people. And they would not reach out after listening to me, episode over episode, they would not reach out if it didn't feel like a fit. So I don't have that problem.

It helps, it's like a qualifier for people. And because of that, we have a really high conversion rate because people don't typically reach out if they haven't heard the podcast. They're reaching out because they've been listening to the podcast. So I'm just really grateful for that because yes, I am in a phase where our business feels that. We feel a sense of hitting our stride and momentum because it's been so long with this podcast.

But greater than that, what's more meaningful to me and to my team is that the kind of people we get to work with are awesome. They are awesome humans to work with. I love working with them to geek out with them about their businesses and help them get clear and help them make great plans and help them with being able to honor their plans and get out of their own way. And that just would not be possible. I would have more of a mix of type of people that may not be such a great fit if we didn't have this podcast.

Man, I'm grateful. And I'm proud of what we've done over here. Yes, I do have the discipline and I have exercised the discipline to produce an episode every single week. But there's a team behind me. I have the production company, DFP, Digital Freedom Productions. They are amazing. I have someone who works on our captions and making sure it's posted on social and getting it out there and updating the website. And there's a lot of people involved in making sure that this goes off without a hitch.

And I'm just grateful for all of it. I'm grateful for the experience of it. I'm grateful for the listeners. I'm grateful for the team that surrounds me that allows this to be possible. And I am grateful for the relationships that it has allowed for me and for my company to have with some of the most incredible humans that I know.

So here we are. It's been a long journey. It's been an amazing ride. And now as we look forward, I thought I would share with you some updates about what's coming. What are we changing? Because we are going to change a few things about the podcast this year.

As about six months ago, we secured our own space to be able to host clients. We'd been doing it in coworking spaces before and renting the conference room. So when clients would fly in, we would meet in a decent conference room.

I wouldn't bring anybody somewhere shabby, but it became increasingly difficult as our business grew, we were competing to get the conference room. So the conference room that we preferred, for example, there'd be a company in the co-working space that would rent it for an hour meeting at lunch. And so we couldn't have the room for the day. And it was getting annoying.

So we looked around at different things, different options, and landed on our own space. It is beautiful. And it was one of the best decisions, behind starting the podcast. It was one of the best decisions we have ever made inside of Velocity Work. And we were at a place where we could make that decision. And that was a huge milestone getting there.

Now, this space is in a beautifully designed new building. Tons of natural light, floor to ceiling windows. Maybe you've seen it on social, sort of stories when we share when clients come to town or whatever. It has been such a gift to have a space that is ours where we don't have to tear up and set down every time like we used to have to do.

All of our stuff is there. All of our markers and big post-its and easel, and the TV that we want to use that doesn't have problems and that we can connect to and show people look at their data with them, look at slides, and it's comfortable. We have control of the temperature. We have a beautiful table and comfortable chairs to sit in. We have alternative seating arrangements for people who just don't, they want to get up and move freely and not sit down at a table.

We have a breakout room where people can get work done and close the door while we keep going with certain things. And we have an office that's separate in the space that we've been using to take calls, or if a client needs to take a call, step away and take a call during their retreat.

It has a full kitchen, so we're able to have all the snacks that we want there for people, all the drinks there that we want for people. It's just been awesome. And one thing that we're going to do now because we have the office that's there to use, we are going to convert into a studio. And in that studio, we are going to video record these podcasts. This will probably start in May. That's what we're thinking.

I'm working out the logistics right now. And so we have our DFP is going to come out. They're going to fly out to Denver. They're going to help us get the studio set and placed and the equipment hooked up and all of that. And then we're going to have someone probably local on a consistent basis just come in when we're scheduled for a bunch of interviews and for a bunch of episodes to be recorded, they'll come in and basically produce behind the scenes.

And we are pretty pumped about this. This is definitely a level up for the podcast. This is doubling down on the podcast. And one thing you'll notice this year is that we're going to have more guests, which I'm very excited about. I love having conversations with people doing amazing things, whether it's in service of law firm owners, whether it's a law firm owner themselves, or whether they're an entirely different industry, but what they have to share is probably going to benefit you all as listeners.

I'm thrilled to be having more of those conversations and they'll be recorded. Of course, you can just listen to the sound. Of course, we'll put it into this feed, but it's there on video. If people want to watch the interviews, then they can. That is something to look forward to in the coming months.

We'll probably, as I said, start recording these in May and we'll get everything set up between now and then. If any of you have recommendations on a guest that you think would be great to hear a conversation between the two of us, or if there's a couple of them, that's fine. We can do probably up to three or four when we're doing these recorded sessions, three or four guests.

But here's what I'll tell you. I do not want to have someone on the show that their job is to pitch what they do. I want to have someone on the show that may have something that you can purchase from them or something you participate with them. I want to have a conversation with that human. I want to understand how their brain works. I want to be able to have the kind of conversation that allows you as a listener to pull something deep and meaningful out of the episode. I'm not interested in just having someone on and do run of the mill, tell us what your company does.

And I think you all gather that the guests I've had on in the past, that's not the vibe. I'm really interested in the person. I'm interested in the way they think. I'm interested in going deep. I don't like superficial, small talk and surface-level information to listeners. That's not the name of the game over here. So you can expect that. And if you have a guest recommendation, you should expect that if they come on our show, this is going to be a digging into them as the human and what makes them tick and what's behind their products. Why do they develop those products? Just digging in with them and geeking out with them about what they care about. That is the kind of show this will be.

And so everyone listening who cold emails me to pitching guests for the show, most of you do a terrible job of selling it. You do not understand my podcast. I do not want your person on so they can talk about their business and solutions for lawyers. We will get there, but the way that it should be pitched is a deeper, more meaningful conversation between the two of us. And that is what listeners will benefit from.

I've never talked about that before. How many pitches I get for guests to be on our show? And I ignore all of them. I actually have an auto that goes out to them and says, we're not accepting guests at this time. In many cases, that's not true, but I am only willing to have guests on that I have vetted, that I have a sense for, I love the way they think, I love their products or how they help people, the value they provide to the world. There's gotta be something there or else, absolutely not. I do not, I'm not gonna have somebody on just because they have a business that serves law firm owners. Yeah, they want in front of this audience, but I really do feel like it's my job to preserve the quality of the show for the listeners, for you. I take that seriously and that's not gonna change.

So yeah, we need guests. We have a lot of work to do to find the right fits. But if you have an idea of someone that you think would be great for me to sit down and have a conversation with, please pass them our way. You can email me at melissa@velocitywork.com.

I would be happy to receive recommendations from listeners. I'm not happy to receive recommendations from cold emails. It's just hard to sift through to actually get the quality. But if you're a listener and you have a suggestion, I'm all ears. I am officially on the hunt for guests that you all will get a lot of value out of listening to the conversation.

Another note, I don't think I said this already, but we are going to do these in person as much as possible. I realized that not everybody's going to be able to fly to us, but we are going to have some reserved dates where it's going to be two or three logged in a day. And I'm going to line up the people who are traveling in to make that happen. And there will still be some solo episodes when I feel like there's something important to share in terms of a concept. I'm sure there'll be episodes with my team when it fits and when it makes sense to do that. So I'm excited to bring it all to you guys. I think this is going to be a really fun, fruitful move for everyone involved, listeners and our team alike.

The final thing I think I need to let you know is that also for Mastery Group. applications are open. We are accepting them. We just started accepting applications on a rolling basis. So as we look at them, we will start to get people integrated and they can have their orientation call. There is a start date. It's almost like school. There's a start date for this stuff, and when we really get rolling. But there is orientation that needs to happen before the start date. And there is stuff that you'll want to dig into before we begin. And we're going to give you space to do that.

So if you are interested in being a part of Mastery Group, which is between $250,000 a year and a million, if you are in that space, come on in, have a conversation with us if it feels like it could be a good fit to get support around the aim, plan, honor. Just like we talked about before, it is important. It's a three-legged stool.

And we are set up to help people make sure that they are covering their bases with that, which will ensure more progress than maybe you'd have on your own because you're still developing. You haven't developed yourself enough yet to have that well-rounded three-legged stool where you are super clear about exactly what you're aiming for. You do have a really well thought out plan and that you are actually executing and following through on.

So that's our jam. We have helped a lot of people grow their firms and do it on their terms. And we'd love to help you too, if it's something you're interested in. So if you are, head over to https://www.velocitywork.com and you will see a work with us tab and you will be able to fill out a short form. It's not long, but it's a qualifying form to let us know if you could be a right fit. And if so, of course, we have an opportunity to talk after that form is completed. And we could see if it's a right fit.

Start date for the next cohort and Mastery Group is March 31. You need to be enrolled before then and have your orientation call and we'll get you all squared away and set up and ready to rock and roll on the 31st of March.

All right, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. It is such a joy to do this. And I'm even more amped to continue doing it when we hit milestones like this. It just feels really good.

All right, everybody. I'll see you here next Tuesday.

Hey, you may not know this, but there's a free guide for a process I teach called Monday Map/Friday Wrap. If you go to VelocityWork.com, it's all yours. It's about how to plan your time and honor your plans. So, that week over week, more work that moves the needle is getting done in less time. Go to VelocityWork.com to get your free copy.

Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Owner Podcast. If you're ready to get clearer on your vision, data, and mindset, then head over to VelocityWork.com where you can plug in to quarterly Strategic Planning, with accountability and coaching in between. This is the work that creates Velocity.