Imagine going to University for say, about seven years. Imagine studying hard for more than 40 hours a week. Imagine trying to hold down a job while you do that just to make ends meet at the end of the month. Imagine fitting in friends, a social life family… You work hard, get exhausted, study long, crunch for exams and push to reach your goals.
It’s tough. You have to want it pretty bad.
Then the day finally comes. You walk out of the classroom for the last time. You’re on your own now. You take a deep breath of fresh, clean air and think, “I did it. I made it.”
You’re ready to open your doors and start building your business of dreams – and you don’t know a damned thing about how to do that.
Welcome to the world of lawyers.
These people (and other highly skilled professionals) go to school for many years and invest a great deal of their life (and their debt ratio!) into learning. Unfortunately, they often find themselves leaving school with a diploma, debt, and very little skills on how to build and manage a successful business.
They don’t know how to hire staff. They don’t know how to market their services. They don’t know much about customer service, let alone creating a client experience. They don’t know anything about accounting, or administration, or all the good stuff that goes with being a solo practitioner.
They have two options: Give it a shot and hope it works, or go work for someone else who already has a successful practice.
Both options have their downfalls. Who wants to learn on the fly and scrape their nose trying? Who wants to fail miserably and find themselves facing bankruptcy? Who wants to sign their dreams over to someone else and boost their success?
Now, these professionals don’t have to – because they’re waking up.
Around the world, change is happening. People are beginning to understand that business isn’t just for businesspeople. It’s for everyone. Gone are the days where we all depended on big firms, factories and companies for our future.
Today, we write our own future. We build our own companies and firms. We create our own destinies.
I believe that. This is why I said yes to be a member of faculty at Solo Practice University, a unique online university (and definitely one of its kind) empowering professionals with the vital business education their schools never taught them.
That’s right. As of today, Professor Chartrand it is. (Please, call me James.) I’ll be teaching branding and copywriting techniques at Solo Practice University to help legal professionals achieve better success.
I’ll be teaching alongside other distinguished faculty members like Brett Trout, author of Cyber Law: A Legal Arsenal for Online Business, and I’m very honored to have been asked to be part of such an amazing online University.
I’ll admit I’ve had moments when I think, “But I’m just James. I don’t have a fancy degree. I don’t belong here!” Then I realize that I may not have a University degree (yet), but I have many degrees’ worth of valuable skills, knowledge, and experience that I can share to create change.
And that’s the take-away message I want you to walk away with today. Not that I’m going to be a Professor or that I’m full of skills (and myself), but that all it takes to change someone’s world is the desire to learn and the willingness to share.
