Passion Shows

A big factor in how many of your clients choose Collaboration is how much passion you have for Collaborating, and how well you communicate that passion.

The message you put out to the public about your practice influences who calls you in the first place.  If the message that gets out is “I’m the meanest, dirtiest attorney out there”, then you’ll get calls from people looking for the meanest, dirtiest attorney.  If the message is “I’m a new age crystal wearing attorney”, then you’ll get more calls from people looking for a new age crystal wearing attorney.  And of course, if your message is about Collaboration, you’ll get more calls from people who want to Collaborate.

If you want more of your clients to be potential Collaborative clients, then you need to connect with people who share your values about non-adversarial dispute resolution.  Before you do that, ask yourself, is this an option you believe in strongly, or do you just see it as another option?

If you really have a passion for Collaboration – if you believe that Collaboration is the best tool in your toolkit, if you really believe that Collaboration is the best option for most of your clients, if you really believe that Collaboration helps families move forward in their lives in a healthier way, that passion and those beliefs are going to come across to your potential clients.

On the other hand, if you don’t have that passion and those beliefs, that ambivalence is what is going to come across to your potential clients.  If you don’t have great faith in the process, very few potential clients will choose to make a leap of faith on their own to choose something that is unfamiliar to them and which they don’t see their attorney having faith in either.

To stand out from the crowd, you need to define what it is that makes you different, and incorporate that into your message.  I am not suggesting you remake yourself, I am suggesting you discover yourself.  You cannot tell others what makes you special until you know what makes you special, and what makes you special is whatever is different about you and how you do what you do. One thing that makes you different, that sets you apart, is your personal set of passions.

To be able to communicate what makes you special in a way that will have the most impact, your message needs to communicate YOU.  If your message is not something you believe in strongly, you will have a hard time communicating it effectively to others.  On the other hand, if it is something you care about, are passionate about, that passion will carry through to the listener.  When you can make your passion part of your message, it will help you stand out, it will resonate better with potential clients, and it will attract clients who are a good fit for you.

The first thing we have to do, then, is to identify what your personal passions are.  Ask yourself:

• What do I really care about – what are my values?
• What attracted me to Collaboration?
• How does Collaboration fit in with my personal values?
• What part of my work gets me excited, gets me so fired up I have a hard time stopping?