My back hurts, my neck hurts and my shoulder hurts. I'm busting my butt at work and realizing that no matter how much i work, i have a cap at how much I can earn in a 12 hour work day and tomorrow i'm going to see my pain doctor which sets me back two hours of billing.
This brings me back to what i learned in the "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind" book:
"Wealth File # 15: Rich people have their money work hard for them. Poor People work hard for their money."
... and I think GOD DAMNIT!!!!!! am i "Poor People"? shit... gotta start somewhere right? Can't have money work hard for me when i don't have a ton of it YET... but YES there is some truth to this so called "Wealth File #15".
When i first started my law practice, i was frugal with advertising my business so I started with small quarter page ads and i had a crappy web page that i designed myself. Guess what kind of clients i got with these small low cost ads? BINGO - not as many clients and not very good clients (although i can't complain about how many clients I got because i was fortunate enough to have a good start). When I spent more money and switched to full page ads, front page ads, even multiple ads in each newspapers and a nicer webpage, i got better paying clients and lots more of them!
When i started out, i also started off in a small office space in an executive office with shared conference room space. I had decent clients but not what you would consider great paying clients... I slowly expanded to two rooms, but boy was the office crappy (with small windows - felt like i was in a prison cell in some tower on some isolated island overlooking southcenter mall)!!! not something i was super proud of, but when i started accumulating enough money to expand to a much larger office, i didn't because i was too frugal and didn't think i could afford the higher overhead... i held off on expanding to the larger office... in the mean time i LOST pretty good potential clients who were willing to spend mega bucks but weren't too impressed by my little shindig (they probably went to the lawyer in the nicer building down the street). I still pinch myself til this day for losing some of those clients because i was too cheap to switch offices when just one of those clients would have been sufficient to pay off an entire year of rent at my current office. When i finally got the courage to expand with my husband to a much larger and nicer office, guess what? BINGO - i got better paying clients and lots more of them. AND the added bonus of having a nicer office is no one really questioned my lawyering ability because of how young i look... they now just assume i'm doing something right because my office looks decent.
Around the same time, i had a discussion with an attorney (who has very successful med mal firm on the waterfronts of tacoma- you may know who he is)...he said "YOU'VE GOT TO SPEND MONEY TO MAKE MONEY"... this is so true and so in line with "Wealth File #15". I embraced this advice and went even bigger on my ads, got customized logo cups,binders, presentation folders, post cards, thank you cards, christmas cards,PENS!....basically just spent a grip load of money investing in my business INCLUDING the biggest blessing EVER - hiring my new awesome legal assistant who i was afraid to hire because i wasn't sure i could afford the new overhead. Turns out my legal assistant is great. She frees up my time so i can focus on making money where i wouldn't have had time to before and she makes enough money for the firm to where she pays for herself and she is starting to be profitable for the office! With my new legal assistant, I'm now able to take on bigger case loads and make more money too.
so what is the moral of this story? SPEND AND INVEST MONEY SO THAT YOUR MONEY WORK HARD FOR YOU.
For me, i need to continue investing in my business - next investment will be another legal assistant or paralegal in our office....once i reach a certain level of financial stability... i'm going to start spreading out my investments on things outside of business (i.e., retirement funds - which i already started when i started work, rental properties with passive income, etc). If i rely on getting rich solely off of my income as a lawyer, i'm never going to be as rich as I want to be. I have to find ways to make my money work hard for me. I will discuss different ways of having your money work hard for you in my next blog.
I'm a step closer to becoming a Multi-Millionaire. =)
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