In this transformative episode of the NewLaw Podcast for Entrepreneurial Lawyers with Ali Katz, we dive into a powerful strategy that can shape your future and your legal practice over the next three years.
Ali challenges you to ask, "Who and what are you becoming?" and to envision where you want to be in 3 years. Do you aspire to build a million-dollar practice? Work only three days a week? Send your kids to private school or support your aging parents?
While this call is from 2023, the information shared remains evergreen and highly relevant today.
You can literally create anything you want in the next three years—the key is to claim it now. Ali guides you through a process of making decisions from the perspective of your future self, anchoring in the vision of who you are becoming, and staying focused despite the inevitable challenges ahead.
Claim your clarity today and listen to this episode as many times as needed to embed this mindset. The choices you make now will shape the life and practice you’ll have in 3 years. And remember, the secret to achieving your goals is to practice, practice, practice!
Key Takeaways:
Envision Your Future Self: Learn how to make decisions based on who you are becoming and the life you want to create in 3 years.
The Power of Clarity: Discover the importance of claiming your vision now to direct your time, energy, attention, and money towards your goals.
Three-Year Planning Strategy: Understand how breaking down your big goals into three-year chunks can help you achieve significant milestones in your law practice and personal life.
Staying Focused Amidst Distractions: Prepare for the challenges ahead by anchoring in your vision, ensuring you don't get derailed by external factors.
Step-by-Step Execution: Ali shares how to reverse-engineer your goals from 2025 back to the present, creating a clear roadmap for your success.
This episode is essential for lawyers ready to take control of their future and turn their dreams into reality over the next three years.
Time Stamps
02:48: Ali emphasizes making choices from the perspective of who you want to become in 2025, rather than from your current or past self, urging listeners to consider their future selves in decision-making.
05:38: Ali invites listeners to claim their clarity and focus for the next three years, drawing attention to the importance of being intentional about where to direct time, energy, attention, and money.
07:20: Ali shares specific examples of listeners' three-year goals for their law practices, emphasizing the importance of defining clear visions and objectives, such as growing teams and client bases.
08:37: Ali advises on translating broad visions into specific, measurable goals, such as number of clients, team structure, and financial benchmarks, to ensure tangible progress.
09:46: Ali discusses the significance of understanding your "why" behind the goals set for the next three years, translating the higher-level visions into actionable, purpose-driven steps.
Transcript
Ali Katz: If I look back over the course of my life, everything has been created in three year chunks. You can literally create anything over the next three years. The key will be to claim it right now so that you can spend the next three years focusing your time, energy, attention and money in the right place. Because I'm going to be honest with you, the next three years are going to be a pretty wild ride out there. Fortunately, you're in here. But out there in the media, on the news, in the economy, it's going to be a wild ride. And the people who aren't prepared, they're going to get sucked up in the drama of all of it and not be able to stay focused and not be able to use their time, energy, attention and money in service to creating what they want. They're going to get caught up.
Ali Katz: Hello and welcome to the NewLaw podcast where we guide entrepreneurial lawyers to build law practices into businesses they love. I'm Ali Katz. In this episode, which is a solo just me, not coaching anyone, just talking with my Personal Family Lawyer Firm leaders and giving them the single best piece of guidance, strategy, support that I ever received about how to create exactly what you want over the next three years. How to create exactly what you want over the next three years. And if you can listen to this episode and take action, then a year from today, whenever you're hearing this, a year from today, your entire life will be different. And it'll be different in a way that is aligned with exactly what you desire. And if you don't take action, if you don't listen and you don't take action a year from today, your life will either look exactly the same as it is now or worse than it is now. Because life actually wants you to have exactly what you desire and is always trying to get you there. It's always trying to get you there.
Ali Katz: And it's either going to get you there by force or choice. This episode is sharing with you the pathway of choice. How to take full responsibility to create the future that you want, rather than needing to get to a place of so much pain that you're motivated through force, that you're motivated through the pain. So listen in and I'll see you on the other side.
Ali Katz: I'm going to make my choices from who I'm becoming, not who I am right now, who I'm becoming. That's where I'm making my choices from. I'm making my choices from what I'm creating. I'm making my choices from 2025 me. Not from 2019 me. 2025 me. Not even from 2022 me. I'm making my choices from who I am becoming. And you can all tap into that right now. Where do you want to be three years from now when we're on this call together on December 1, 2025, and we're looking down the barrel at 2026? Who's there?
Ali Katz: Who's there? Who's there with me on that call? Which version of you? What's true for you? Claim it right now. Go into the questions box and let me hear. Let me hear. Speak your commitment. Share your commitment. Who and what are you becoming? Who and what are you becoming? What is different for you in your life, in your law practice on December 1, 2025? You've had all of 2023 to grow. You've had all of 2024 to grow. You've had all of '25 to grow.
Ali Katz: Who's there then? Maybe. Maybe you say, I'm not even on this call then, I don't need coaching anymore. Maybe that's true. I don't think so. I don't think you don't need coaching. I think you will be in a different place. You will be looking at different questions. But to think that you won't need coaching then, well, that's silly.
Ali Katz: I still need coaching, myself. Of course. We all do. I anticipate continuing to lean into inspiration and my next level until I'm ready to go. Until I'm ready to go, man. I don't think any of us are going to be ready to go three years from now. So I invite you into the claim of it right now. Right now.
Ali Katz: Everything I have created has been created in three year chunks. If I look back over the course of my life, everything has been created in three year chunks. You can literally create anything over the next three years. The key will be to claim it right now so that you can spend the next three years focusing your time, energy, attention and money in the right place. Because I'm going to be honest with you, the next three years is going to be a pretty wild ride out there. Fortunately, you're in here. But out there in the media, on the news and the economy, it's going to be a wild ride. And the people who aren't prepared, they're going to get sucked up in the drama of all of it and not be able to stay focused and not be able to use their time, energy, attention and money in service to creating what they want.
Ali Katz: They're going to get caught up. And so the invitation to you right here and right now, and if you're listening to this on the podcast afterwards is to claim your clarity of exactly what you are staying focused on and creating for the next three years. If you just want to write it down on your own piece of paper, do that. Write it down on your own piece of paper. But don't let this moment go by without being consideration of what's true for you when we are sitting here together on December 1, 2025.
Ali Katz: Would you love direct support to help you grow your law practice into a business you love? Go to newlawbusinessmodel.com/show and sign up for a call with one of our trusted law business advisors. Each of our advisors has been trained directly by me over the past five years plus to help you chart your path from wherever you are now to where you want to go as efficiently and effectively as possible. You're ready to grow. We are here to help.
Ali Katz: I'll tell you what I am going to do is, gosh, I don't know what the number is and I recognize that I need to get that from our team, but I'm going to have the exact number of members that we will have in 2025. It's most likely in, at least 1,000. We will have LIFTed advisors living in the world doing their work in the world. So it's not just you lawyers out there serving your clients, but you're doing it alongside the insurance, financial and tax professionals that are aligned as LIFTed advisors serving alongside with you so that you can be building teams on behalf of your clients. So, that's our three years from now. Amazing. Beautiful goals, y'all. Beautiful goals. I love these.
Ali Katz: John, you've got 40 clients a month, three lawyers and the largest estate planning firm in the DC area. I will call you the largest Life and Legacy Planning Personal Family Firm in the DC area. December 1, 2025. Yes, John. Daniel. Yes, Daniel. Seven figure practice with staff attorneys reporting to you, with your role being primarily sales and business management, you are so well on your way, Daniel. And Brett, you will be supporting your family, working part time in your boutique law firm and you will no longer have to work in healthcare. Yes, Brett, yes.
Ali Katz: And yes, Betsy, you will be the authority in estate planning. I will say in Life and Legacy Planning in the hispanic community. And Betsy, I can even see that perhaps. Yeah, perhaps we will see you with a really popular YouTube channel in Spanish, educating the Spanish community about Life and Legacy Planning. Marielba, twelve clients a month with full awareness and focus of what's going on in your practice and in your family life. And Pam, Joe and you are bringing home more take home more than ever. Hey, Pam, I want you to translate that to the specifics. Translate it to the specifics. I love the big vision. Bring it home. How many clients is that? What is the team? December 1, 2025. Who's on the team? How many clients are you engaging each month? Kelly, you've got twelve a month, fully aligned with service and support, skillful vulnerability, nonviolent communication. Yes, Kelly, you can absolutely do that. Who's on your team? Who's on your team? In order for you to have that, great. You dug in a little more and you've got two staff members. You take home 250 a year. You're never working more than 30 hours a week, and you can pay your mortgage, send your kids to private school and help support your aging parents. Yes, those are beautiful whys. It's the why. It's the why.
Ali Katz: Why is she going to have that? Two staff members, and I'm going to say it's probably two and a half to three for that, taking home 250 a year, because you're going to be doing about 650, 700 a year of revenue. And if you only want to work 30 hours a week, you're probably going to need at least two and a half, if not three team members. You're paying a mortgage, obviously, sending your kids to private school and helping to support your aging parents.
Ali Katz: Those are great whys. And that's what you all get to start thinking about next. Why? Why do I want to spend '23, '24 and '25 creating this? You want to think through it. I hope that you all think through it. I hope that you all think through it. Because the next step, once you are clear on that three year, once you are clear on that three year is okay, then where are you going to be December 1, 2023? In order to hit that 2025, where are you going to be December 1, 2023? To hit that 2025? That's your next step. Okay. Yes, Daniel, your specifics.
Ali Katz: 18 clients a month, average fee of $5,000. Just, you know, doing the math on that. That's your million dollar practice. You've got a private office, you've got three staff, your CSD, your paralegal, your marketing director, and one associate, or perhaps of counsel attorney. Right. We're going to talk more about that in 2023. This whole, like, should I hire an associate or should I bring on of counsel attorneys? Because more of you are growing into that and it's a beautiful model, Daniel, and you can absolutely be there.
Ali Katz: And so then we look at, okay, great. Where do I need to be the end of 2023 in order to hit that 2025? And then you're going to work that back to your next 90 days. You're going to work that back to your next 90 days. And what we are going to start to do with the shift of our own model here is that we are going to start to support you to do this analysis every quarter.
Ali Katz: If you listen to this episode and you feel really ready to choose your next steps and have the support so you don't have to go it alone, let us walk by your side. Go to newlaw.co/show and book a call with a law business advisor. That's just easy action that you can take right now to get on the path to what you want to create. That's newlaw.co/show. And if you are not scheduling because maybe you aren't sure you want to do estate planning, maybe you're not a lawyer, maybe you're just listening to this podcast because you are a really smart entrepreneurial person and you can learn so much even though you're not a lawyer. We do have other pathways for you through the Eyes Wide Open collective, and I don't have an easy URL for you to go to in order to discover those pathways.
Ali Katz: So what I want you to do in that case, if you want to engage with my tools and you're not a lawyer or you don't want to do estate planning, send me an email at support@eyeswideopenlife.com and let me know. Because if there's enough demand, I will create an alternate pathway. I'll create an alternate pathway. Right now. I've been creating very clear pathways for lawyers, entrepreneurial lawyers who want to offer Life and Legacy Planning on the path to Personal Family Lawyer. And I'm getting the sense that it is time for alternate pathways for those of you that are not lawyers. And yet you want to create practical magic in your life. Because what I shared with you today is a tool of practical magic. Very practical tool for creating magic.
Ali Katz: And so send me an email, support@eyeswideopenlife.com and if I get enough demand, I will create a very clear pathway for you. But if you are a lawyer and you either already offer estate planning or you want to, and you want to build a business around it, and three years from now have the business of your dreams, and one year from now have your life be in a completely different place where you don't worry about time or money, go to newlaw.co/show and I'll see you on the inside.
