When I first embarked on writing my first book, The Game Changing Attorney, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I wasn’t sure what went into writing a book, or even if I had enough content to fill it.
Nevertheless, my journey began with interviewing hundreds of successful law firm owners. I began pulling their insights, lessons, and everything else I’d learned over the years. I closely examined each of these law firms from a marketing standpoint, brand standpoint, positioning and standpoint. I compiled all that information and worked to weave it into an organized playbook full of stories, strategies, and actionable ways to stand out from the crowd.
But that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t given myself a hard deadline.
My goal was to launch my book at Crisp’s first big conference, the inaugural Game Changers Summit, in 2018. In order to make that happen, I had to have deadlines for every aspect of the book. The cover design, the research, the sources, and the manuscript itself all had a different timeline.
That leads me to giving you some vital advice: if you want to get anything done, put a deadline on it. The tighter the deadline, the higher the likelihood that you’ll actually finish your task.
But sometimes it doesn’t stop there; often there’s more work to be done. My editor and I kept working to slim the book down even further, and by the time the final deadline came around, I barely even knew what the book was about anymore.
What I did know, however, was that I’d put my entire heart and soul into it and couldn’t wait for the legal industry to read it firsthand — and I can’t wait to do it all again.
