Why A Collaborative Approach Helps Grow Your Law Firm

by Guy Remond, with Dave Zumpano

Creating the right business collaboration can help you maximize your impact on the world and boost your bottom line.

Without strong relationships and partnerships, you and your business will likely become stuck in your comfort zone and fail to progress.

The best collaborations are based on:

Shared values
A growth mindset.

When it comes to business development, many business owners consider success to be growing their bottom line by up to 10% in a year. Some entrepreneurs adopt the mindset that they want to grow their business tenfold, but the right collaborations can help you uplevel your thinking to the point that you can consider growing your business to 100 times its current size (or even more).

Dave and I have been discussing the power of collaboration in The Legal Community Podcast.

The Power of Collaboration

Dave shared a fantastic example of collaboration.

Dave: “My wife always says that when you get married, your spouse is your greatest asset or your worst liability. Marriage is the quintessential collaboration. How many marriages fail because they’re not set up on a strong foundational concept of what makes them work?

My mother always said, ‘Be careful when you take on a business partner because you’re taking on their spouses, their kids, and all their problems.’ If the spouse is a big spender, they’ll have a different perspective on how best to spend company profits.”

It’s important that you and whoever you choose to collaborate with have shared values, so that you are both focused and driven on maximizing impact.

Let’s look at the relevance of shared values.

Shared Values

Dave: “Your core values cannot be based solely on money. They must be based on impact. What impact do you want to have on the world? Money alone cannot be the driving force. People don’t wake up in the morning focused on money; yes they need it, but your collaboration needs to be about something bigger, such as creating a positive impact. When you create a positive impact, money will follow.”

From experience, money is merely a byproduct of providing something to the world that is of significant value and can change people’s lives for the better. The money comes when you stop thinking only about business growth and focus on increasing value.
The right people will be aligned to your values, your mindset, and the fact that you need to generate value in the world before you focus on generating money.

It was a collaborative approach that enabled me and Dave to create Guidr, the online legal platform that puts lawyers at the center of its services (instead of excluding them). It supports its users to access valuable legal documents when they want them, and in a way that they want them.

Mindset

You might have to kiss a few frogs before you find the perfect collaboration, but it’s crucial to partner with entrepreneurs who have a growth mindset and a similar outlook to you.

Dave shared his insights on mindset.

Dave: “I’ve worked in dozens of collaborations and I’ve learned to work with people who don’t think they know everything! One of our core values is ‘curious’. We ask questions of others. We seek information and ways to improve beyond our current knowledge.

You don’t want people who dictate and get everyone around them to agree. A true collaboration will start with an idea and then seek to find out what the rest of the world thinks. It’s critical in any collaboration to see information within and outside of itself. It’s useful to ask, ‘What am I not thinking that other people might be thinking?’

It’s beneficial to find people who are smarter than you – don’t be intimidated by that because it will help your business grow.”

Dave raised some key issues, and it’s safe to say there will be more change in the next 10 years than in the last 50 years. If you want to be successful, avoid the status quo, because what got you here won’t get you or your business where you want to go.

You need to keep moving forward. You need to find new, innovative ways to advance your offering and meet the needs of your clients, and in turn, this will grow your business.

Where to Find Potential Collaborators

Dave and I are both members of powerful business communities that help satisfy our quest to continually improve and expand beyond our comfort zones. When you are a committed member of a community such as Strategic Coach® or Abundance 360, it helps accelerate trust in a business relationship; you already know you’re of a similar outlook and share values.

Dave raised a really valid point.

Dave: “Pay attention to your energy meter. If you are in conversations with people who make you agitated or anxious, you are in the wrong conversation with the wrong community of people. Surround yourself with people who inspire you and challenge you to become better. You don’t need ‘yes’ men or women who just agree with everything you say. You need people and partnerships that challenge you to think differently.”

Collaborations help you to create a bigger vision and keep moving towards it. It’s a disservice to stop diversifying and increasing the value your business offers to the world. To be successful you must keep reinventing your services or products in a way that meets the needs of your target audience.

Look Forward

For example, Madonna is a singer, songwriter, actress, and entrepreneur. She’s been in the music industry for more than 40 years because of her ability to change with the times. She regularly reinvents herself.

To grow your law firm, you have to look forward; wishing that things were as they used to be will not generate success. It’s time to evolve, and for the law industry a revolution is required.

Technology and the Legal Sector

Technology is playing an even bigger role in people’s lives. Clients no longer want to be confined to 9–5 working hours or to drive through daytime traffic for a face-to-face appointment. They want easy access to legal information whenever they need it, and to have the support of a professional lawyer available if they want it.

If you’d like to discuss a collaborative approach to diversifying and increasing the range of services your clients want (and attracting new clients), contact Dave at dzumpano@guidr.legal or me, Guy Remond, at gremond@guidr.legal.