0:00:05.0 Jean: Hello and welcome to ARAG's webinar series. Today, we welcome Dina Eisenberg to Face the Reality: Reclaim your Time by Outsourcing. Very valuable tool. And to share a little bit about Dina's background, Dina is a lawyer on a mission to create high-functioning, emotionally intelligent workplaces in the private equity and law space. Dina is the CEO and Principal Ombuds at Your Ombuddy, a consulting and design firm that provides outsourced Ombuds services. Dina is also a law firm leader, and emotional intelligence coach who teaches owners to use empathy-driven leadership to help employees stay engaged and productive. Dina was formerly the Senior Vice President, Corporate Ombuds, for the Bank of America, and the Inaugural Ombuds for Berkeley College of Music. Raman-obsessed, Dina recently moved from Oakland back to her hometown of New York with her fur interns, Rodney and Cooper, to be near her adult children and eat more bowls. I also have a Cooper, and I love to introduce my friend, Dina, who I met along the way and have grown to love and cherish her wealth of knowledge. And so, Dina, thank you for presenting and sharing your time with us and our audience today. And with that, I'll pass it off to you.
0:01:27.6 Dina Eisenberg: Thank you, Jean. I'm so excited to be here. We have been friends, and I've appreciated your company and support for years, so thank you. It's a delight to be here with you and share one of my favorite topics. Now that might make me a little weird, but I really love talking about outsourcing and delegation, so I want to bring all of the listeners a little sample of why outsourcing is so important for them, so that's what we're gonna do today.
0:01:58.5 Jean: Fantastic.
0:01:58.5 DE: Good, I'm gonna turn off my... Move the slide. Can we have next, please. Great. So I'm gonna just talk a little bit about what we're doing here today. We are gonna be talking about the difference between outsourcing and delegation, because even though we use those words interchangeably, they're not the same thing. We're gonna talk about the five steps to delegating effectively so that you're not wasting time and you're not wasting money, and that you don't leave with this horrible misconception that delegation doesn't work. We're gonna talk about what to delegate so that you know what you can take off your plate right away, and then I'm gonna share with you some of my favorite outsourcing resources. Next.
0:02:54.2 DE: So how do you add 15 days to your year? Let's just think about that. What would you be doing if you had two whole weeks extra in your law practice? That'd be pretty fabulous, wouldn't it? Well... Next... Outsourcing is how you get that done. Did you know that if you spend or take off your plate 20 minutes a day... That's just 20 minutes, so if you just think of right now about something that takes you 20 minutes to do every day... If you delegate that, you get back 15 work days in a year, and that's a lot. Really, it makes a big difference, and it's a huge chunk of time that you could use in a variety of ways. Maybe you're gonna spend the time inside your practice, maybe you're gonna spend that time with your family, like everyone else is doing right now. Next.
0:03:58.0 DE: So what is the difference between outsourcing and delegation? They truly, truly are not the same things, even though I hear people saying outsourcing when they really, really mean delegation. So I just wanna cover this a little bit because delegation and outsourcing are the one-two punch. Outsourcing is asking somebody outside your business, your law practice, or inside if you have help, to help you achieve a goal. So I'll just say that again. Outsourcing is asking somebody either inside or outside of your law practice to help you achieve a goal. So right now you are outsourcing at home like nobody's business. We are all doing it because we are getting takeout. So every time you get takeout from your favorite restaurant and you support your local restaurant... Good for you... You are actually outsourcing. You're outsourcing the food preparation so that you are not doing it. You get the benefit of having the food without having to spend the time to do the grocery shopping, prepare the meal, cook the meal, and then eat. You're outsourcing when you, if you live in New York like I do, when you don't have laundry in the building and you have to hire a laundry service to come pick up your laundry, take it out, clean it and bring it back to you. That's outsourcing at home too.
0:05:24.4 DE: And so very often I find that people have lots of things that they outsource at home. Somebody even said they outsource their gift buying, which I thought was pretty cool. Lots of times we're doing it at home, but we just don't think about making the transition to doing it in our work life. And that's really what I'm trying to encourage you to do is really think about "How can I outsource some of my work life? Where are the tasks or projects that need to get done that I can borrow the expertise of somebody else, so that I don't have to do it myself?" Delegation is the very next step in outsourcing. So if you think of it this way, sort of like an umbrella, outsourcing is the umbrella, and delegation is the stock, the part that you hold in your hand. It's where you have the most control and can move the umbrella around.
0:06:19.6 DE: Delegation is telling that person, whoever your helpmate is, whether it's a paralegal or an associate or outside talent, it's telling that person specifically how to help you achieve the goal, and if I'm gonna be perfectly honest with you, and I am, delegation is the place where most lawyers are... Need improvement. Let's say it that way, need improvement. It's not our best thing. We're used to and trained to do things ourselves, it feels unnatural to ask somebody else to do the work. In fact, one client told me she said she felt like it was cheating if she delegated things to somebody else. The truth of the matter is, that's not true, right? Delegation actually helps you increase your capacity, you're able to do more and help more people, when you're not doing everything yourself. Effective delegation requires you to one, know what success looks like. So we always say... And I hear people say this all the time, maybe you do, too. "Hey, I want someone who can do a good job." But we don't usually articulate, "What does a good job look like," right? That's when we get into trouble where your talent has provided you with the outcome and you're like, "That's not right." Well, it's because you had a different idea about what a good job would look like, and you didn't explain it to the other person, so you need to know what success looks like.
0:07:49.9 DE: You also need to understand what skills and traits are necessary to do the task that you want to outsource or delegate to somebody else, right? So if you wanna have a bookkeeper take over your bookkeeping, and we're going to talk more about that later, you wanna find somebody who is good at that, who is taking accounting courses, who is organized, who is detailed and focused. You know those are the kinds of skills and traits that you need in the person to be able to delegate the bookkeeping to them. So you need to understand what personal skills and personal traits do I need in the person to help me so that I will get the outcome that I want, obviously successful outcome. Then you have to be crystal clear in communicating. No offense, but lawyers are really good at communicating in one particular way, but not necessarily some in other ways, so it really is helpful to break down what it is that you want to communicate, what the goal is, how you want things done, the rationale, and why you're doing it that way, and we're going to talk about a method of doing that a little bit later in the call.
0:09:07.7 DE: Also, to really get effective delegation you have to coach, not micromanage. Now I know that's hard, because as lawyers, we really thrive on doing a great job, and we are terrorized by the fact that something might be wrong, and that causes us to want to be in control of everything. But the problem with that is you can never be in control of everything, that's a fallacy, it's an illusion in that, if you're worried about somebody else making a mistake, you make mistakes. So there's really not much difference in that. And when you're micromanaging, what you're actually saying to other people and to yourself, frankly, is that, "I don't trust myself to pick the right person, or give you the right directions, and so I have to micromanage." So those are the things that you need to really do if you wanna be effective at delegating, you need to know what the outcome is, you need to understand the skills the person needs to give you the outcome you want, you need to be crystal clear in communicating every aspect of the delegation task, and then you need to have some faith in yourself and the other person that you picked the right person, and they can do it, and you can coach them.
0:10:23.4 DE: It's not to say that you're going to walk away from the process and never interact with this person or be leaning over their shoulder 24/7 directing every move. What you wanna be able to be is available but not involved. You want to be there to answer their questions, you wanna be there to give direction, but honestly the reason you're delegating is so you could be doing something else, right? So those are things that I wanna... The distinctions I wanna make between outsourcing and delegation, so we're going to talk about delegation going forward, although I'm going to talk a little bit about the benefits of outsourcing as well. Next.
0:11:02.8 DE: Now this is the thing, often we are challenged with the idea that you could outsource to somebody and get a good outcome. So I wanna ask you, have you ever thought when it came to delegation, "If I don't do it myself, it just won't be done right. It takes too long to explain, it's just so much faster if I do it myself. I have to do it because I know what I want. Why in the world would I pay money to somebody else to do something that I can easily do myself and I don't want to manage anybody, or give feedback. It just doesn't feel comfortable to me."
0:11:57.2 DE: If you've thought any of those, you are in very good company. Why, because that's what lots of lawyers and small business owners... And by the way if you don't know, if you own a law practice, you are in fact a small business owner, and should think of yourself that way. Many business owners don't think of delegation is something they can do, because their livelihood is very dear and maybe you feel the same thing, your practice is very dear to you, and you don't want anything to happen and so you feel like you have to have your fingers in every pie, but let me just walk you through this a little bit. So if you're saying, "I have to do it because I know what I want." What you're really saying is that, "I need to control this," but you can create a mini you. So a mini Jean or a mini Kathleen, because if you know how you want something done, and why it needs to be done that way, you can create standards for somebody else and criteria for them, so they can take over that project and do it for you, and you can give it to them resting comfortably in the knowledge that they are gonna become a mini you.
0:13:21.8 DE: They know how you think about this topic, they know the way that you want it done, and they know that they can come back to you with questions if it needs to happen. So if you're thinking, "I have to do it myself, 'cause I know what I want," then you can release that thought. Typically, lawyers say that when we're talking about booking consults for new clients, where we're like, "I have to do the intake calls because I know what I want. I know the kind of cases I can win." Well, great. Write that down and provide that to the helpmate, so that they know what kind of cases that you can win. And it's not an absolute. So if there's ever a moment where the person is like, "I don't know," they can always contact you. So that's one just myth I want to get rid of.
0:14:09.5 DE: One of the other ones I wanted to get rid of is, "It takes too long to explain. It's faster to do it myself." No, it seems faster to do it yourself, and often I find that when I'm working with people around this particular myth or excuse, part of the challenge is because they're so low and you generally do everything yourself, and then after we've done something 10 or 20 times it becomes automatic, and so you might not know how you do that task on a daily basis. Sort of like sometimes, have you ever been driving and then you're home, and you don't know how you got there, you're just home? Well, same thing. Your brain kinda kicks in and gets into automatic, and it does the task without you really having to mind it. And that can be a little scary if now you have to explain it to somebody else.
0:15:05.9 DE: But the truth is, taking the time to create what we're gonna call a project lens, which is going through the steps of that task, actually this'll do things for you. One, it increases your efficiency. So now you have a record of how you do that. God forbid something happens and you're not gonna be there. It also allows you to revise. We start doing things and you get busy, and then you don't remember to go back and look at that task and see, "Wow, is there a better way to do that? Is there software available I can be using? How can I maximize my time around this task?" You just don't get back to doing that. So if you decide to delegate a task, one of the benefits really is that you can refine and create a record for yourself, so it may feel like it takes too long to explain, but you really just have to do it once, then you have a tool that will serve you forever.
0:16:08.9 DE: Now, when folks say, "Why should I pay the money?" I get a little giggle of just like now, because you are already paying the money one way or the other. If you're a solo practitioner, or you just have one or two paralegals, you are already paying the money. And why is that? Because all the things that you're doing that are not in your zone of genius take longer for you to do and my example for that is camera. Ugh, I hate camera. Camera is such a time suck, but folks who are using social media and don't wanna pay for a social media manager, often do their own thing on camera. Camera is evil because it makes it seem so simple. Now, I'll ask if this has ever happened to you. You go on to camera to create something, you find the design you want, but then you wanna change the font, then you wanna change the color, then you wanna move it around a little bit. Before you know it, two hours are gone, and then you don't use it because you don't like how you've changed the graphic, and it just doesn't look professional. Has that ever happened to you? That two hours is expensive.
0:17:25.5 DE: If your hourly rate is 250, that's $500 spent on a graphic that you are not going to use. The time is gone, you can't get it back, so you can't be doing something that's income generating. It's just gone. So in some ways of thinking about it, you actually lost the money twice. You've lost the opportunity to generate cash, and you spent your time on something that doesn't add any value to you. So in lots of ways, it may seem virtuous to do things yourself, 'cause if we don't have the amount of cash coming in that you want in terms of revenue, it seems very prudent not to spend any money and do it yourself. I totally get that. And when you do do it yourself, the quality of work isn't as good and it takes longer, so in that way, you are already spending the cash. Why not just reach out to an expert, somebody who has the expertise and knowledge to do a good job, no matter what the task is that you're delegating, and you can focus on your zone of genius, which is practicing law? So if you're thinking about "I can't afford the money," you really can't afford not to do it. It just makes more sense.
0:18:49.1 DE: There you're saying, "I don't wanna manage anyone." Well, guess what? You're already managing yourself and your client, so it's not like you don't have the skills. It might make you uncomfortable to do that, and if that's true for you, my thought is that you might wanna spend some time doing some training around communication or emotional intelligence, because statistics say that people who have higher EQ, that's emotional intelligence, actually make more money. And so adding those skills to your basket of skills is gonna be good, not only for delegating, but for your practice overall.
0:19:30.8 DE: And I came to delegation really not because I thought it was such a great thing to do, but because I had a life experience about what happens when you don't delegate. So let me just take a minute to share that story. Now, I've had my own business, my own consulting practice for over 20 years, and my husband was relatively new in business, but he was killing it. And so very quickly I had a six-figure business and he had a million dollar business, and we were enjoying all of the things that you would enjoy. Your entrepreneurial life was just going gangbusters. We enjoyed eating out a lot. We took a lot of vacations. When my daughter went off to do her study abroad in Madrid, we went for a couple of weeks to hang out with her. Epic trip of my life, I'm never gonna forget that. We had all of the things that we wanted to have, because we worked hard to get them, just like you. Because I've been in corporate America, and I was used to having teams, staff around me that supported me so that I could focus on being the best Ombud as possible, I was always used to having folks around me and delegating. And I tried to convince my husband to do the same, to hire an assistant, to use some automation tools, but he would always say no. And these are some of the excuses he would give me. And I said thought, "Okay, you know what, every entrepreneur on to their own. Do what's best for your business, I'll be doing what's best for mine."
0:21:07.2 DE: One night, he sneezed. And he held in the sneeze. And because he held in the sneeze, he ruptured two discs in his back, horrendous pain. We got him to the emergency room, and the doctor said, "If we don't operate in the next 90 minutes, he's gonna be paralyzed for life. Now, at that moment, neither one of us was thinking about business. We were just thinking about getting him well. He went into surgery. Thank God, came out well, the surgery went well. And then the doctor says, "You're very lucky, and it's gonna be a two-year recovery period to learn how to walk again, to learn how to use the bathroom, to learn how to cook so it facilitates that process, to learn to how to go up and down stairs. You're gonna be in recovery for two full years." Well, all my energy went to helping him recover. And because I had a team, I could check in, I did the part of the work that I needed to do personally, but anything else other than seeing clients, I didn't need to do, 'cause I had other folks doing those things for me. But my husband didn't.
0:22:26.0 DE: He didn't have a single person in his business except him. So when clients called and looked for their work, I had to sheepishly say, "I don't know what to tell you, but that I'm not in this business. I don't know when you're gonna get all your documents, or all the consulting work." And every single corporate client he had dropped him, because he was unreliable in their eyes. And that made me feel like I wanted to be on a mission to talk to some of the lawyers and say, "Don't let that be you." Because life is unpredictable. COVID taught us that, right? You never know what's gonna happen. So if you fail to delegate, you're really failing to safeguard your income and failing to safeguard your family. So I don't know any better reason to start delegating than that one, 'cause we all wanna protect our families. Next. Here are the benefits of outsourcing for you.
0:23:31.4 DE: One, you're gonna just avoid the burn out. Right now, things are so uncertain, everybody's working from home, which actually is just exciting it causes us to work longer hours, because you take time during the day and then our brain says, "You need to work a couple of hours tonight," and so you end up doing 10, 14, 16-hour days and not really realizing it, 'cause you've had so many breaks during the day. So the likelihood of getting burn out is even higher now during COVID. You can increase your productivity, so you're gonna get more done if you have the benefit of a team. Your efficiency is gonna increase, because again, you can't do everything. I know you're super people, but you can't do everything. So having someone who can do something better than you and faster that you is a good thing. You're gonna be able to increase the number of cases that you can handle, because you have that extra capacity of people helping you, and they're gonna be able to focus on your client not the admin that goes into running a law business, because you're gonna have that team around you, which means that your revenues are gonna go up, and you're gonna be able to pivot.
0:24:41.6 DE: One of the things, I think everybody learned from 2020 is that you better have a plan B. You better be able to pivot to something else if anything is not working. And so having the resources to reach out to somebody who's an expert in a different practice area and say, "Hey, I'm a family lawyer, but I wanna add some estate planning into my practice right now," is a great thing, because you don't have to stop now and then learn how to do estate planning, which would take you months.
0:25:11.5 DE: You can just find an estate planner and bring that talent into your practice by outsourcing to that person. And we'll talk about some resources for that in a little bit. And then lastly, the benefit of outsourcing is less stress for you. You're not waking up at 3:00 AM wondering, "How am I gonna get everything done?" You already know how it's gonna happen, because you have people that you rely on to help you do things in your practice. So all in all, outsourcing is a huge benefit to you as a solo or a smaller firm, because it just extends your reach. And most lawyers I talk to say that the reason they became a lawyer was to impact something in the world. So if you wanna make a bigger impact, outsourcing is the way to do that. Next.
0:26:00.6 DE: Five steps to effective delegation. Yay. Alright, so here's the meat. Yeah, you remember that Burger King commercial? "Where's the beef?" Here's the beef. Five easy steps. Now I'll say they were easy, but not... They're hard, but not easy. That's what I want to say. They're hard, but not easy. Maybe not. I always get that expression wrong, but what I mean to say is they're simple steps, but if you don't know exactly what each one means, you might not get the result you want.
0:26:38.4 DE: So first step is pick a project. The thought here is don't pick something huge. Pick something that, A, you don't like to do, and, B, it's somewhat low risk, because at the beginning of your delegation journey, you're just not gonna be good at it. It'll take a few rounds of delegating before you get your style in place, before you're offering the right information, before you're really monitoring the person in the right way, so pick something small to start with. Baby steps. And we'll talk a little bit about what to delegate in a minute. Write a project legend. What the heck is that? Well, I came from corporate life, and there is such a thing as a standard operating procedure. Doesn't that sound dull and uninspiring? Would you like to read SOPs on a Saturday evening? Probably not. So I decided to change it into something that is a little bit more exciting. Human beings are hard wired to enjoy and learn by story, and so what you're really writing when you write a project legend is the story of that task.
0:27:50.4 DE: Like, "Why are we doing this task?" How does it fit into the workflow of your law practice? "How to do this task." Here are the exact steps that you need to do in the order that you need to do them to accomplish this task. "Why do we do it this particular way? We do it this way because X, Y, and Z. What is the consequence if we fail to do it in the right order? These things happen. When you're doing this task, there's some things that you will be prohibited from doing, and here they are." And then, "Here are all the credentials and information and tools that you need to successfully do that task." All of that is put into a written document called the project legend, and by doing that, again, you make yourself more efficient because you see where there are flaws or gaps or changes that you hadn't realized in how you're doing that task. When you write it down, you're creating a de facto operations manual, 'cause you're gonna gather them all together with this, digitally online or hard copy in real life. So now you have something you can hand to somebody every time you wanna delegate that task and say how you get it done, but most importantly, you're creating a mini me. Somebody who's gonna take that task from you, your talent, is now gonna know exactly how you think about things, so you don't have to worry about, "Are they gonna get it right?" You've told them exactly how you want them to do it.
0:29:22.9 DE: So it's already all in that project legend, and the first ones will be a little bit challenging to write, 'cause likely you'll write too much, and then eventually you'll just get down to creating a form where you're just filling in the form for that new task, and you'll be like, "There you go."
0:29:39.7 DE: Next is the pre-go, and this the part where I think my lawyer colleagues and clients really love this part. If you are concerned with control, and who isn't, then you love the pre-go because the pre-go is the last chance you have to control the outcome. This is where you're gathering everything, all the information, all the tools, everything else this person needs to be able to do a good job for you. So if you've delegated before and it hasn't gone the way you wanted it to, really, you should think back like, "How well did I do the pre-go? Did I have everything prepared and ready to go?" Oftentimes, I find that people skip on that part 'cause it doesn't seem so important, but it's critical to getting the outcome that you want.
0:30:30.4 DE: Then you're gonna select your help mate. Whether that's somebody inside your practice or somebody outside, you wanna make sure that they have the skills and the personal qualities that you need. So if you know you're somebody who is detail-oriented, and you want people to be particular about how they do your work, don't pick somebody who's laissez-faire and it's like, "However it happens, it happens." That's just gonna drive you crazy and frustrate them. Make sure you pick the right skills and the right qualities. So, often my clients will say, "Well, I want somebody who cares about doing this as much as I do." That's not gonna happen because it's not their business, but you can get somebody who cares a great deal about doing their own work and having personal success and integrity. That's the kind of person that you wanna hire. So spend some time thinking about who you do your best work with and what qualities they have, and then ask or look for those qualities in the talent that you bring to delegating so that you're gonna be happy and you can trust this person. And then last but not least, you want to share the project. You wanna delegate. And the key thing about this is letting go. Hard to let go, I totally understand that, but it's necessary to give that person the authority to complete the task without coming back to you every five seconds.
0:32:00.4 DE: So a quick story about this. I got married in a Victorian mansion, complete with ghost, and I sat down with my florist and we decided that we were gonna do a red roses theme, so we had 500 red roses scattered throughout the house, and I wanted to have it to be super romantic, and I wanted everybody to look good, so I was like, "Well, let's do candlelight, so we'll just cover the whole house in candles," and I said, "This is my vision," and I gave her the complete vision of what I wanted it to be like, the outcome that I wanted, and I sent her off, and we really didn't communicate all that much before the wedding, 'cause I trusted her to do a good job. I show up at 6 o'clock and the house is ablaze, even from the outside, you can see the beautiful soft glow. And I get inside the house and I'm shocked.
0:32:54.3 DE: Why? There's not a single candle in sight. Turns out you can't have an open flame in a building that's well over 100 years old. The fire department will not stand for it, but because I'd given my florist the authority and the vision that I wanted, she was able to find solution without having to come back to me. He bought those flickering, I guess electric candles or battery-operated candles, and they did exactly what I wanted without breaking any rules. So make sure when you're delegating to somebody, you help them see your vision, as well as giving them steps so that if something goes sideways and things generally do, they don't need to come back to you to complete the task. They know how to reach the solution. Next.
0:33:49.6 DE: What should you delegate? Well, I'm just gonna flat out say everything that is not practicing law, is a potential for being delegated. Certainly you wanna be able to delegate your drafting, your research. I would say, I don't think any solo or small firm should be doing their own bookkeeping or payroll, and one, it's not the right look, and two, it's not your expertise. You know the saying about lawyers "we're about words, not numbers." Right? And so it's important to give away that part 'cause it's very likely, you don't like doing it anyway, then you put it off, and the longer you put it off, the longer it takes for that money to come back into your account.
0:34:29.7 DE: I had a client who... We had this conversation for about a year, I would say, "Get a bookkeeper and get a clerk to help with the invoices, collecting invoices." She's like, "No, it's something I should be doing, I'm the lawyer." And she would just put off and she had like 40k outstanding in invoices, which is not a good thing. 'Cause after a while, people don't pay their invoices, so finally we convinced her, the first week that she got a bookkeeper, she got 10k back. Why? She had been paying for something that she wasn't actually using, and because she was not loving doing the bookkeeping, she did it very quickly and wasn't really attending to what she was paying, she was just paying it, and the bookkeeper was like, "You don't use this, let's stop paying for it." Boom! That's money back into her pocket.
0:35:21.4 DE: She used a law clerk to start following up on her overdue invoices and some people, because they were busy in their own life had just forgotten to pay. So she got revenue back in on steady basis and never had to ask herself, which was good, 'cause she just was awkward about doing it. She was able to outsource, or delegate, both those things and immediately see the result. So bookkeeping, payroll, chasing invoices, definitely things that you should delegate. Document review, intake for sure. Tire kickers are expensive. Even though you might feel like, "I need to be the one to talk to potential clients, so I can make sure they're a good fit," you... That might be true, but you will also be talking to people who will waste your time, right? Time is money, energy is money, and neither of those things should be wasted.
0:36:20.2 DE: Marketing, right now because we are all on lockdown, we're not going to conferences, we're not seeing people for launch, we're not doing any of that stuff. So you need to find other ways to market, and typically that's gonna be social media these days. You should not be doing any of the social media stuff, you have tools that you can use to automate yourself like... I'm gonna have a blank... Co-schedule that will, it puts all your stuff on a loop and you never have to touch it again. You shouldn't be creating the content, which is the actual graphics and those things that go out, you can hire somebody from Etsy to do that for you, and they'll give you a brand and package, right? Those are things that are necessary, but it's not necessary for you to do them. And because we're on Zoom 24/7 now, you might decide that you wanna have a Zoom monitor or somebody who sets up the Zoom for you and can be there to... I don't know, make sure that things don't happen.
0:37:22.7 DE: The other day I was on a zoom call and literally the person just dropped off and I was like, "I don't know what to do." But thankfully the Zoom monitor was like, "Hold on, we'll figure this out." So these are all the things that you really should delegate, anything that you don't like doing is a candidate, anything that doesn't require your personal attention, I mean it has to be you, no one else can do it, or practicing law, that is a candidate for delegation and just start thinking about those things. Next time you're doing something, you're like, "Oh, I hate doing this," remind yourself, "Is this something that I could delegate?" And then make it so. Next.
0:38:05.3 DE: Outsourcing resources. Alright, so these are some of my favorite resources. Hire An Esquire. Really a fantastic place to get an associate or a paralegal. Same thing for law clerk legal. You can have folks provide... When I say folks, I mean lawyers and paralegals provide you with hours that you can use to do whatever. If you have a big case and you're just not gonna be able to handle everything yourself. It's great to be able to use a freelance lawyer to fill in. Hire My Mom is great for all the admin and marketing and social media stuff, these are actual moms who decided that they wanted to continue to work even though they had kids, and so it's not just low-level folks it's pretty senior folks as well, who decided, "I got a couple of hours every day and I still wanna keep my hand into my profession," then this is a way for them to do that and you to get that help in that area where you're likely not to have expertise, you know of all of different online marketing, market places for outsourcing.
0:39:17.4 DE: I don't recommend Fiverr anymore they're having a little blow up and so they're not as reliable as a platform as they were when they started, I guess 10 years ago. I highly recommend Upwork though, because screening processes that they use, you should use their filters when you're using that platform. And in fact, if you have questions about that, you're more than welcome to email me and ask me. But Upwork is great, I've used it for years and years and years. I think it started in 2015, I was an early adopter. Anything that you need to get done in the business, there's somebody on Upwork to do it, whether that's writing a white paper, writing your blog consistently, getting your terms and conditions written for your website, paralegals, all can be found on Upwork and then virtual paralegal services. So you might be wanting to test the waters about whether or not you're gonna hire somebody. Use a virtual paralegal for a while, see if you like managing somebody. And you might decide you don't need to spend that overhead to bring somebody into your office, you could use the virtual services.
0:40:28.0 DE: So those are the resources, and I would say, check them out. There's no harm, no foul, but if you like them and you decide you want to role them into your practice, you're gonna get a big benefit, both in reclaiming your time, but also in earning more without having to work more. Next. So stay in touch, you can always reach me at dinaoutsourceeasier.com, I'm happy to answer questions, if you wanna hop on a call and talk about whether or not you should outsource or what's the best resources, just... Let's do some virtual coffee and we'll get it done.
0:41:09.5 Jean: Fantastic! Thank you, Dina, and thank you for sharing your personal contact information and welcoming people to reach out to you, and especially thank you for all the wonderful content and providing some examples at the end for some resources that people can go to for different pieces of that outsourcing. Definitely very valuable as we all look at where can we be more efficient with our time and be in the most valuable piece of our practice and what's gonna most meaningfully affect our business, so thank you, thank you.
0:41:40.0 DE: And you're welcome! I hope y'all enjoyed it.
0:41:42.9 Jean: Yes! And I appreciate everyone who's attended the webinar today or stopped in to listen and look forward to seeing you on our future webinars. So thank you all and have a great day.