Break Free from Limiting Mindsets Unlocking Your Full Potential as an Attorney - Tips from Blaine Oelkers
Here on Your Practice Mastered, your hosts, myself, MPS and Richard James, We are thrilled to have attorney coach, Blaine OElkers, America’s ONLY Chief Results Officer®. His path from corporate leadership to being a present father was truly compelling. Blaine provided tactical tips for achieving results through clarity, habits, and accountability. He stressed the importance of focus and education. Don’t miss this week.
Transcript
Richard James: I'm Richard James and today, MPS, we've got a special guest. This gentleman is a longtime friend of mine. We were friends long before we worked in business together. He beat me at squash regularly, on a weekly basis. Embarrassed me. Almost, I would say I did my best to keep up. I think he might have let me win one match in the entire years we played together.
And then we realized as we took the journey together, He had just a tremendous amount of value to add into small business owners and how they can get the most out of themselves and the business from a concept of results. So we're going to be on the call today with our chief results officer, Blaine OElkers, right?
MPS: Yeah, we sure are and Blaine, first and foremost, welcome on. Super excited to have you here.
se, look out, he's very good [:I've been working with attorneys in this area of getting results for many years now, and hopefully you can share some things that the listeners as well. Can put together, put in use right away. I'm a practical tactical kind of a guy, not a theory guy. So I'm looking forward to today
Richard James: Nice. We're
MPS: Yeah,
Richard James: there, right? Michael.
MPS: Super excited and and one of the things I could say Blaine and Rich, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Blaine has been name dropped and just about every single podcast we've done, people love you, Blaine, and so I think this is going to be a heavily anticipated podcast episode because you just deliver so much value and results to everyone that It's never a dull moment when people are hearing about you.
losing Room or anything like [:Right? And so they don't say anything about us. But they always say something about Blaine, which is great because they just, he's made such an impact on so many lives. And so I can't wait to unpack some of the gems that he's uncovered through his journey and things that he's given to attorneys that we know and hopefully give a couple of writer downers today.
MPS: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Blaine, to kick things off for people that don't know you what's something that maybe not everyone knows about you?
Blaine Oelkers: Well, I would say, I had two kind of moments of dawning comprehension that led me to this whole chief results officer thing. But the first one I got lucky in college. So maybe like you listeners out there I've always been kind of a seeker, like, how can I do better? How can I get better?
d. where you could send away [:So Earl Nightingale's reading about Think and Grow Rich. So I listen to that tape, I get the book, and that dramatically changes my life. And in that, in the reading of that book, Think and Grow Rich, I realized that what you think about you bring about and that kind of led me on this course to be able to, you know, I met my wife in college.
We're still married to 31 years now. You know, and a lot of things lined up for me when I took control of my thinking and realize, you know, what I think about, I bring about and kind of took control of my thoughts and really so that was don't dawning comprehension moment one. And then the second one.
king a regular corporate job [:And I'm like, Oh, Beth is Bo sick. Is there something wrong here? And she goes, no, you were gone so long. He kind of forgot who you were. And I'm like, wait, what? So that night I realized when I was a kid, I came home and nobody was home. Typically both my parents worked. I realized, and I made what I call a clarifying decision.
It's interesting to watch attorneys make a clarifying decision, which really focuses all your efforts on one thing. I made a clarifying decision that night, I said, no matter what, I'm going to be a work from home dad. Like this is what I'm going to do. And it took me a year. I started a couple of businesses.
people take control of their [:Something I call self fluence and so that's the company I started in 2009 and I've been working you know, really almost since then with Rich on that. So there's a couple of things, a couple of moments that kind of got me to where I am and made a big difference for me.
Richard James: So, you know, obviously a couple of things there. I don't know. Everybody knows that you were a computer science major. That's your degree is. So that's kind of cool. But also you were you were like, work from home many moons before work from home was cool before it was accepted before there was software and hardware to support it in a way that there is today. There was no zoom When you were stay not to date you but there was no zoom when you were stay at home. So it wasn't as easy then as it is now, right?
nd of make it happen. Right. [:So it was tough and it was funny. My, my wife Beth is, Beth was like, well. You can quit your regular job because now we have a second child is on the way, Caitlin. She says, you can quit your job when you make more money at your side hustle, your work from home stuff. When you make more money than your regular job, then you can leave.
So that's what kind of took me a year to get to that point. But but we got
Richard James: So you made a living from nine to five and a fortune from five to nine
Blaine Oelkers: Yes. Yes. Yes, I did.
eneurial path. Why don't you [:Cause I know you, you kind of gave some highlights of the big moments that made defining moments, but why don't you share the journey itself a little bit?
Blaine Oelkers: Yeah. I started working on the corporate side. Right. So I was working at Hewlett Packard when I first came out of college and and I always did have. I had this entrepreneurial, you know, desire. Right? And so I worked a job but I didn't really like where I work.
So I changed job three times in the first year, not recommended but it gave me a lot of experience and exposure. And I started making more money as, as I moved around which some, you know, attorneys do initially in their career. And then I saved up enough money to actually, but go into my own business, but I wanted to go into franchising.
aking a high hourly wages, a [:So anyway, I bought a store and I started running that store and that was one of my first experiences of running a business. Now, there's a lot of moving parts, right? And you've got ovens that could that break down and you got people that break down and don't show up. And so I really got a sense of how to run a business and how committed you have to be to run a business. It's not always easy. But when you get good people and when you get good systems, like rich and you teach you know, it makes it a lot easier and so I think there's a lot of tools and we could talk about some of those great tools that are available today that weren't even available back then.
n event. And so one night at [:And we're like, the money's in that time delayed safe. You know, the combinations on the safe doesn't open for 15 minutes. There's about a hundred bucks in the till. So he took that and he ran away and they never caught him or anything. But anyway, that was another kind of moment of dawning comprehension that wasn't the right business for me.
And so I sold it to my manager, at the time and I went back to software development , programming computers you know, and so that was a very humbling moment because now I was a good worker. So one of the principles I live by, which hopefully the listeners are living by is going the extra mile, right?
five years, but I went back [:But when I went back. You know, then it's like in the hallways. Hey, pizza boy didn't make it. Huh? I mean, it was very humbling. But anyway, I got back on my feet you know, and then I got a job in the same field and that company actually ended up moving me out into Arizona.
And then I went on to where I got to that point where I talked about with my son. So, I've learned a lot from those different businesses. Now I started a business. called Quality Research Personnel, which is like a placement firm for computer engineers like what I was. So a friend of mine and I, we did that.
tarted Richard, Hey, I would [:And that's what I loved. I love helping people take control of their lives by taking control of themselves, this self fluence. So anyway, I think that was a match made in heaven. I don't know, Rich, how long ago, How many years ago was that? Was that 2014?
Richard James::And some of them worked as in the certain practice area, let's say family law, and they decided they didn't want to be a family law lawyer. And so then they chose something else, whether it was personal injury or estate planning or bankruptcy or criminal or whatever. And it seems like sometimes they have a defining moment in the practice [00:12:00] area they're in that goes, I just don't want to be there for this reason, not right or wrong.
They have a defining moment because they themselves went through a particular personal life experience and they needed the help or somebody in their family needed the help of an attorney in a specific practice area and that influenced them to have a passion to want to be in that particular area of law.
So those clarifying moments happen in both directions. Would you agree?
Blaine Oelkers: Yeah. And it's interesting that the clarifying moment sometimes changes their identity. When you see that shift in who they are, like I love, this happens a lot in Partners Club is that the attorney goes from, we do this thing, I am, and they fill in the blank, right? And they go from filling in, I am an attorney to I am a business owner.
u can develop. But when that [:And that's almost sometimes like a light switch. And they really start going, you know, positively in that new direction.
MPS: I think that's great. Blaine, I'm curious because, I want to lean in a little bit from the experience you've had working with attorneys, right? Because that's who we're speaking with here. So from a perspective of you just get in, you meet with a new attorney, what would you say from a mindset perspective is something that you see off the bat, you notice that this is a flip of a switch.
If they just change this. Things will start to get more clear for them. Did you ever notice that?
s point B, your destination, [:That are very practical and very tactical and very like self evident, there's all kinds of science that I could talk to the attorney about but really it's so self evident that they'll just do a few things. They begin moving in that direction. So over the years, I've developed a lot of frameworks and now maybe I oversee maybe 20, 000 weekly check ins a year. Many of those are attorneys. When I first meet with an attorney, getting them, it's the clarity or the lack of clarity that happens that, that's, what's holding them back is they don't know what they really want.
And that's like, the main thing is, What do you really want? What do you want most? So what's interesting is like in that book, Thinking Grow Rich, the original one, the very first page says, what do you want most? And Napoleon Hill says, don't read this book until you figure that part out.
o go and you got to get real [:I talk about this idea of the importance ladder, right? Because someone will say, well, I want to be home for dinner. I want to be able to be there for my family, but I also want to double my business this year. It's like, okay, these can be competing priorities.
So you have to decide at this time, maybe for the next 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, you need to put the family. On high priority, or maybe it's the opposite that you can put the business on the high priority. But I think the number one thing is clarity that's what comes first. Where do you want to go?
And if you just get that, if you just get that and you know what you think about you bring about and you focus your thoughts on that, things will begin to appear. Now we get into the science of why those things appear and the reticular activating system and how the brain works. But if you focus on that stuff, opportunities will appear for you to move in that direction.
mentioned the A, the B, the [:Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting that, maybe 60 percent like if I ask him what's the most important, about 60 percent say the B like they understand that. And then maybe 20 percent will say A where I am today. No, 10 percent is the A and then the 20 percent is the journey.
So there are some people that really want to enjoy the journey and that's what life can be about. Now, once you know where you want to go, that point B, then the journey and moving towards the point B becomes the most important. But yeah, I think sometimes it's a little bit of a paradigm shift to get people to realize They've got to pick that end point, that journey first and then begin to move towards it.
you are physically wired for [:You're going to have the energy to do what you want and you're going to move towards that. Now. You don't always move at the pace you want. Your brain can kind of go, goes faster than reality, typically. But when you get locked in on where you want to be you're going to find that your motivation goes up your, and when someone, when an attorney is struggling, I'll say, well, where are you going?
Where do you want to be? Right? And if they can't articulate that they're just stuck and maybe they're just stuck in the mud almost right. They're just spinning their tires. You know, and some of that is very hard to deal with because many times the business model is wrong. That it's kind of gut wrenching when you see an attorney and let's say they're working in the bankruptcy field and they just can't make it work.
ch you guys teach very well, [:They're never going to be happy. So anyway, there's a lot involved there, but I think it's gaining that clarity on where you want to be. And then moving towards that is, is the main thing that I try to get them to do
Richard James: So, okay, so let's talk about that B for a second as a 2nd, my secondary question the B where they want to be, what they want to have. This can be just about anything. Correct? But they just need to be really crystal clear. So not. I just want to be successful. So like your clarifying B was, I want to be a work from home dad.
rtain dollar amount in gross [:They may derive their success for some reason, strange as it may be from number of employees on their team. It may be number of clients served. It may be free days that they have. But my point is it does need to be specific. Is that right, Blaine?
Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, it's much more powerful, right? And the more specific it is, right? It's almost like the lantern going into the laser, right? So the more defined it can be, the better your mind can give you the right stuff, to make it happen. And we often talk about, you hear people say it needs to be a smart goal.
We actually like to say it needs to be a smarter goal, that means specific, measurable, achievable, realistic for you, have a timetable. Right. Be energizing and be recorded, you know, or written down. And the energizing is so key. Like someone can tell me their point B and if they're not excited about it, like it doesn't have enough power.
is not your God given point [:And that comes down to kind of bees and the priorities or importance or value of those bees.
MPS: I think that importance ladder is so powerful, personally I think it's a very valuable concept and one that should be adopted, because I think it helps in decision making in you know, determining where items are on your scale. Blaine, I know you have a plethora of daily success habits.
at do you personally do on a [:Blaine Oelkers: Yeah good question. And yeah, so I am probably a consistency nut, so to speak. I'm really driven by consistency and so I just checked my number one consistent habit. Is 1974 days in a row. I checked it right before I got on here today and for me that's this a bible app.
study, you know now for over:Richard James: Now you're making me check mine, to see what mine is.
Blaine Oelkers: There you go But the key here is, i'll give you a couple things one is I do have this very simple framework called the 21 second habit.
ngs is habit linking, right? [:The second one, which is an insight into what an attorney could do is I wanted to take a mind shower. A lot of people take a physical shower, you wash your body or of it, or else it stinks, right? Well, the same thing with your mind. If you don't clear, clean your mind out, it's going to have a lot of head trash.
It's going to have a lot of trash. So what I did is I wanted to have it linked up to something. I said, what do I do every single day without fail every morning? Well, every morning I don't need any willpower to open up my phone. That happens every single morning. It's the first thing. Now, sometimes the alarm's going off there, but you know what?
y homepage on my phone and I [:And so what I said is when I wake up in the morning you know, I'm gonna open the phone and when I open it, there it is only those two apps. I have to do those apps before I'm allowed to touch anything else in the phone. So I did the habit linking, but then I also did what's called urge surfing. So I'm surfing the urge to want to go check all that stuff.
And I'm using that energy to get me to do the Bible app and the mind shower. Now the mind shower, I like a 10 minute mind shower, but if I only have two or three minutes, I'll just do a real quick one, right? But I'm not going to break the streak because psychologically I want to keep winning. I want to keep winning.
So one last tip. So, so that's the habit Lincoln, which you could do with anything. A lot of times next day planning is a very simple one. If you plan out the day, you're much more effective. I had an attorney and she wanted, she says, I'm not doing next day planning. And I said, Ann, yeah. What do you do first thing in the morning?
cy machine like my wife that [:Now, if the daily list is all done, By all means, enjoy the coffee, right? But that, you know, that habit linking again with the urge to want to drink the coffee makes that new habit basically happen immediately. 21 seconds and continue on. All right. Last tip is that this is the newer thing. Yeah, go
Richard James: to interrupt you, I got to tell you, like, the one, you've taught me so much, but the one thing that I use relentlessly is habit linking. It is, you know, everybody thinks, how long does it take to form a new habit? Well, there's answers all over the place, right?
ou need to start a new habit [:It is the best biohack I have ever heard, and you taught it to me, heck, whatever that is, 16 years ago now. So, yeah, anyway, it just is a shout out. It's a, I don't know, Michael, do you find yourself using it as well?
MPS: Oh yeah, I link it to a lot of things. I need to get better about linking it to Duolingo, but I was going to actually talk about streaks and how you just talked about streaks and psychologically you do not want to break that streak and an app like Duolingo with those streaks, I like, I cannot miss a day of doing that.
I physically just won't allow myself to miss a day doing it. So I think habit linking in addition to just psychologically wanting to keep up on a streak of something is super powerful.
Right? So I started Duolingo [:I go in word review, tell it that I cannot listen right now. And I can do that in 21 seconds, you know, that little exercise. So I do have it down You know, to a science. Now, I like to do it more than that, you know, obviously but anyway, you're so right on those streaks. It's and there's so many things you can have a link to getting up, getting dressed or driving to work, stopping at a stoplight, brushing your teeth.
I mean, there's so many, we are all habit masters and there's some things you do weekly, you know, or some things you do more than once a day. So there's lots of different ways to link to stuff for sure.
Richard James: Sorry, I interrupted you.
MPS: Yes. And I know, yeah, I was going to say, I know we took you off path a little bit there, but I think you were going to go into one additional point that
r called Kneecap to Kneecap. [:Overnight. And not only it changed the results, they were in a better mood. They got more done. They were better for their family. You know, and it just radically changed them. And it was pretty simple. And you may have heard this before, but I'm telling you the power. If you unleash this power in your own day, it will pay big dividends.
And what they did is they got into work. Two hours earlier than they normally would get it, right? So instead of going in like nine, I think they get in at seven or instead of eight, maybe it's six. And so what happens is just that now they're a little tired the first couple nights, but they said after they did it for a few nights, then they just started going to bed a little bit earlier.
en they get into work early, [:They by the time the world starts knocking at their door, They've gotten a couple of hours of work done and they feel great about it. Joe mentioned that he, you know, gets home for dinner, you know, he's able to go to the kids activities. He feels like a better father you know, just all these benefits psychologically and physically with getting the work done from just making that change.
Now it takes a little bit of a commitment and, you know, occasionally they fall off the wagon and they get back on. But that's something that just getting up a little bit earlier. And before the world attacks you, doing something for yourself, getting your stuff done, moving your needle will pay a big dividend.
That, try it for three days. I guarantee you'll put some form of it into your
obviously, I know who you're [:Once a physical challenge. 1 is this challenge about getting air a little bit early. And in both cases, the ones who. Make themselves accountable to this are the ones that seem to stick to it. Right. And so some accountability helps in this. Would you agree?
Blaine Oelkers: A hundred percent. It's probably studies are, you know, three to 400 times the results when there's some kind of accountability, especially if it's written, if it's to another person. And remember, it could be small. It could be just you write it to yourself. That's okay. Not that not super powerful, but having some other person.
ccountability meeting. And I [:I want to get healthier. I want to eat a piece of fruit every day and I want to have a salad every day. Not just fruit and salad, but I want to have one of those every day. And I know if I just did that myself, I may have some success. But if I start a challenge where I go out and on Facebook and I say, who wants to do this?
Right. And you know, maybe I'll give 1, 000 to someone who can do it longer than me. Okay. Now, not only do I have my, I'm on board, but my wife, Beth is on board because she doesn't want me to give up 1, 000. So I did that. Not this last January, the January before. And so we had 26 people. You know, a piece of fruit and a salad every day for about six weeks.
After six weeks, we were down to six. After a year, we were down to three and now we're at two, but we had someone else to kind of join us along the way. So there's three of us still doing it. But for the last year and a half, I've posted a picture of my fruit and my salad every single day on Facebook.
ust keep doing it. You know, [:MPS: Yeah, I always look forward to Blaine's fruit and salad post on Facebook. It's it's been a great streak, Blaine. Look, there's probably a myriad of things to have you fired up today, have you excited about, but for you, what is that? What's got you most fired up and excited today?
Blaine Oelkers: You know, I think it's just Feeling like, you know, God put me on the planet for a certain reason to help people take control of their lives or take control of themselves. And I'm doing it. I mean, that's the most exciting to me. So figuring out ways to do more of that, right? Ways to reach more people, right?
, Okay. Different pilot test [:I'm also I was certified by this guy, Dr. Robert Chialdini. Some attorneys may know him the power of influence. He wrote a very famous book. He's 1 of the world leading experts in social psychology, probably the Godfather of. And I got certified from him. I took a class from him directly, but he just came out with a new certification program and he invited me back into that.
So I'm kind of excited to, to get back into that a little bit more and use that on the personal side to help people use his principles, not just to influence people in business but to influence themselves. So those are probably the things I'm most excited about right
Richard James: I know the answer to this question. I'm curious if you have a different answer now, but so my question was going to be what book would you recommend if there's a reader out there or they want to listen to it but I. Happen to know the behind the scenes. You actually wrote, rewrote Think and Grow Rich in a workbook together because you know, that book literally changed your life.
ted to get it but aside from [:Blaine Oelkers: Well, I think, yeah. So, so, you know, the number one book you know, I have this book, Think, Grow Rich, the book study edition which is three books in one. But I found that people read the wrong version. So it changed. There's some missing instructional pages. So, so anyway, I wanted to kind of bring back the original, but also.
I had written a little guidebook, so I put that in the front, and then I did a book study. So every chapter, it's like, give you a powerful sentence you know, the key insights and maybe action steps from each chapter. So all three of those books are in are in, in, in one book. So that's that's what I have
Richard James: they get that on Amazon?
alled traction which is this [:I see a lot of attorneys. Again, shift their identity into being a business owner when they go through that book, you know, get a grip you know, so I think that would probably be my kind of my business book of choice at the moment.
Richard James: Yeah I obviously love get a grip. We studied that with the partners club members. And I agree with you when we, when they embrace that, they start to identify who they are not, and we've been talking about this a little bit, right? This framework of, attorney to put some icing on this cake. The attorneys fall into four basic categories, right?
They're the attorney who kind of does everything themselves. Maybe they have a single part time assistant or something, but they do kind of everything that themselves, we used to call it, keep it small, keep it all, but they wear every hat. They do the admin, they do the legal, they do the finance, they do the sales, they do everything.
a handful of employees. And [:And so there's somewhat of a manager, but they still carry the burden and the bit more the firm grows, the more they work. And then you have attorneys who graduate into the CEO role who actually. You know, progress into the position of being able to have the firm run by leadership and can leverage the different pipelines that are available to them.
And then finally you have this investor role and that's the attorney who no longer works in the law. They no longer work in the firm. They're just an investor standing outside of their firm, looking for the different leverage points and using strategy and the tactics put together for the right instances to really move their firm to the next level.
tactics you've given them on [:And they have this the change in mindset of they don't have to be stuck in this one quadrant if they like the opportunity that the other quadrant offers them. And so it's fun to watch that evolution happen. And I, man, you have been a huge conduit for bringing success to attorneys in our world.
And of course, business owners. All over the globe that you've worked with throughout the years. So I just appreciate you and not only coming on here and sharing your wisdom, but what you've done for us as a program, what you've done for our members. There's no doubt. There's a reason why they always mention you, you're the kindest soul I have ever met in my life.
n you. So, so you are just a [:Cause we just brushed over the surface of all of this stuff, but I appreciate you giving a nugget or two that they could sink their teeth into.
Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, I love it. And, you know, I will also say right, right back to you guys. I mean, this partner's called, I've seen more attorneys transformed, you know, through that program than any place else. And what I also like is I've watched those attorneys go through those quadrants you mentioned, but I've also watched you really help the attorney.
Yeah, you know, perfect the quadrant they want to be in because some of those people keep it small, keep it all. They just want to figure out how could I do this quadrant better, you know? And so those tools and resources are there and it's fun to watch those lives change. So you guys are doing a great job.
Keep up the good work.
ients it's fun to watch. And [:Awesome.
Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, I mean, the easiest thing is just go to Blaine Ted X dot com. So B. L. A. I. N. E. T. E. D. X dot com. That's I did a Ted talk where I talk about kind of a simple, elegant way to remind yourself of your goal. More than a hundred times a day. So that's kind of cool. But once you do that, you'll have my email.
You can reach out to me if I can help you in any way. I'd love to do it.
Richard James: Nice.
you're listening or watching [:This stuff is very applicable and helpful to a lot of different business owners. So if you want to share this with a colleague, it's always refreshing and recommended to do so. But again, Blaine, I appreciate you into the law firm owners. Appreciate you taking the time to listen or watch.
Blaine Oelkers: Yeah. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. The bad news is time flies. The good news. You're the pilot. So pilot. Well, my attorney friends pilot well.
Richard James: I love it. This is a good episode, Michael. Thanks for taking the reins and running with it.
MPS: Absolutely. Thank you guys.
Richard James: See you on the next pod!
