More than anything else. The one thing that you should start doing today, if you haven’t already been doing it, regardless of what sort of a law practice you envision for yourself, is to begin to build up your contacts list. Now, the smartest thing that I ever did over the course of the last 15 years was to connect on LinkedIn with just about everybody who I came into contact with professionally. Now, of course there are exceptions, you know, judges and opposing counsel that you’re fighting with in difficult litigation. But generally, if I came in contact with somebody professionally over the last 15 years, I connected with them on LinkedIn and I started to build up my contacts list. I didn’t understand exactly why this was important, but I just had a sense that it would be important. And now that I have a little bit of more of a mature view on it, you know, particularly in 2023, I’ve come to realize that connections are currency in the digital age. Particularly if your sales strategy like mine involves content creation. You know, my experience creating videos like this one and putting ’em out on my website and on LinkedIn has been awesome, and it’s absolutely not something that I would’ve been able to do when I was working for other people in a large law practice. And this idea of marketing at scale was entirely new. You know, the way that I was marketing when I was working at the big law firm is the traditional way I was taking lunches and thinking about golf outings and trying to write articles for publications that people don’t really read anymore. And I still really do like the personal contact. I still take the lunches. I still like to, you know, press the flesh with professional contacts. I do it all the time. But if I had my choice from the standpoint of business development to go golfing with somebody for four hours and hope that I get work from them, versus take that same block of time and make a bunch of videos that will be evergreen and seen repeatedly by potential clients for years to come, I’m going to prefer the latter. If I’m interested in, you know, what’s the most effective way to try to, you know, bring in new clients to my firm? And I’ve talked a little already about the brilliant Seth Godin and his two books, the Dip and the Icarus Deception, which were really very foundational for me. They, they’ve really set me on the path that I’m on and, and, and got me thinking along the lines that have allowed a law firm to flourish. And it’s because of his ideas and those books and others, you know, combined with this contacts list that I think that you should be building for yourself right now. I mean, like, start today. ’cause this is a long lead time item. If this is not something that you’ve done before, you know, they’ve really allowed me to move ahead successfully. And I’m going to attribute almost everything I’m going to say for the rest of this video to the brilliant Seth Godin. You know, there’s a lot of paraphrasing with some quotes in here as well, and I’ve talked about his concept of, you know, the connection economy, which replaces this in industrial economy of the last, you know, 150 years, right? And, and it’s a very different world we’re in right now, the c the industrial economy, you know, at prized, you know, assembly line style compliance. And you know, I think that the age of compliance is, is dead right now, right? The ais will edit your work for you. They’ll find typos for you, help pack the ais will even write the content for you. So, like, it used to be when I started my practice that there was this focus on quality on making things to specification, you know, pumping out law briefs the way that an assembly line might turn out an automobile. And I think that that’s, you know, as Seth Godin, I think correctly points out is sort of a vestige of an era that we’re not in anymore, you know, modern education, Seth Godin argues, you know, you, you can trace it back to 150 years ago when what we needed was people who could build something to spec. They could be on an assembly line and they could get the right answer again and again. And if you think about the way that we’ve learned in classrooms, it’s very similar, right? We’re taught to here’s something and repeat the right answers back at the teachers, sort of like the manufacturing assembly line of the past industrial age, Godin argues at at least my interpretation, that the way that we’ve been taught in the past, you know, in school and otherwise was in service of a world that doesn’t really exist anymore. And now, as Godin says, quality is assumed. You know, he makes the point that the connection economy, you know, the how easy it is for people to connect with each other through social networks has made competence and this sort of like assembly line making something to spec not particularly valuable, right? And in this new connection economy where people have attention, that’s not unlimited, right? People are going to choose the content that they’re going to take in. You know, what is more important now is, you know, the recognition that the people who we might be trying to sell to have this insatiable desire for things that are new and real. And, and one of the things that’s worked for me in my practice is reaching my potential clients with something that is new and real and important. And it often, it comes in the form of videos like these, it’s a key to my practice. I’m going to talk about it much, you know, more deeply in the future. But you know, as Seth Godin says, the internet is a connection machine, right? It allows everyone to be connected to everyone else. It’s changed the way people get jobs, it’s changed the way they get clients, you know, and now it’s the bridges that people build between themselves that generate value. As Godin says, the connection economy enables endless choice. And there’s endless shelf space, right? There’s no limit to how many videos can be, you know, on YouTube, right? What it the new economy puts a premium on is attention and trust, right? And those things are not endless. Attention and trust are not endless, and they must be earned, right? Which is the challenge of the times that we’re in right now, capturing people’s attention and trust are key, right? And I’ve talked about the safety zone and the comfort zone. You know, Seth Godin ideas, and I’ve talked about how they’re not the same, but back when I started my law practice, you know, I was comfortable and safe, you know, knowing that being a lawyer was being part of an exclusive kind of a guild where, you know, the right answers were locked away. And law libraries where you couldn’t even get in physically through the door unless you had a law license, because there were law librarians and other gatekeepers that would keep you away. You know, in this day and age, most cases, most reported cases can be found online. You know, Wikipedia and Google have answers from many legal questions that our clients might be asking, right? I mean, we’re not going to take what we find in Google or Wikipedia without a grain of salt. But now if I want to figure something out, whether it’s, you know, how to, you know, unclog my plumbing or how to, you know, replace a roof, I’m going to YouTube and our potential clients are doing the same thing, okay? So, you know, I think it’s worth pausing to consider whether we’re in an era whether lawyers are going to be re rewarded by clients for simply knowing the law, right? And, and I think Seth Gar Godin would argue that the answer is no. And certainly I think that, that, that’s my opinion. I think that as Godin says that the new safety zone is not making the widget faster, you know, and cheaper in a race to the bottom. It’s not, you know, how can I write a brief with fewer typos, you know? But the new safety zone where, you know, I think lawyers need to get to is the work of connecting and entertaining, you know, people with, you know, amazing things, you know, with our most vivid dreams. You know, these are godin’s thoughts and, and Godin’s words, but, you know, he argues that with talent or passion. And I would say that if you’re a practicing lawyer, then you have talent and passion, you know, certainly for some things that relate to your, their, your practice. But anybody with, you know, some talent or passion can leverage these social networks created by this new connected economy to increase impact, right? And creating ideas that spread and connecting the disconnected are the two pillars of our new society, according to Godin, right? This, the new scarcity he argues is this emotional labor of creation. You know, he, he calls what people create art, you know, and he argues that art is a word that shouldn’t have an overly narrow definition. You know, I certainly think that, you know, creating videos like this and creating content, talking about legal concepts in ways that can make our potential clients’ lives easier, you know, answering questions for them in an ethical way that doesn’t cross the line into giving legal advice. Like, I think that, like that is how we can leverage our connections to increase impact, right? And so, you know, the risk involved in digging deep to connect and surprise, you know, and the patience required to build trust, you know, and the gut’s necessary to say, you know, I made this video for you. It’s not legal advice, right? And it’s not the whole story, but if you are looking for answers online, I’m going to meet you where you are. You know, this is, you know, that that’s scarce and valuable and it’s something that scales okay? And it’s something that has been an important part of my practice. And so I take to heart what Seth Godin says is that doing these kinds of things, you know, creating and shipping art in his language, doing them regularly and with abandon is where the new safety zone lies, right? And maintaining the status quo and, you know, fighting to fit in a world that doesn’t exist anymore. You know, because our economy and our culture have changed, you know, these are the things to be thinking about, right? And the safety zone now is not as comfortable as the last one that we were in, right? It was much more comfortable for me to sit, you know, on the 72nd floor of the C Tower in my corner office and bury my head in a legal brief and to try to figure out how to punctuate things properly. But that is not what our potential clients, I think, are going to necessarily reward us for in the future. People’s attention is not unlimited. They’re going to choose who they want to hear from or what they want to hear. And I think being somebody that can market at scale and can make connections with many people is going to be an important part of the way law practice goes, you know, for the next few decades. And so, if you only remember one thing from these videos, the one thing that you should be doing today, no matter what your law practice looks like, no matter whether you’re going to continue working for somebody else or start your own law firm, what you need to do, and you need to start doing today, is to build up your contacts list now, okay? Because it’s a long lead time tasks, it takes a lot of time and a lot of attention to make sure that you’ve captured the, you know, contact information of the people who are likely to be important to you professionally in the future. I think LinkedIn has been a, been a very nifty way for me personally to do it. But you know, my contact list is something that I’ve built over the last 10 or 15 years. So whether you stop watching these videos after this one, or whether you continue on to the rest, I would urge you to build your contacts list. Now, in this new connected economy that we live in, you know, connections are currency.