Solo Flight, Lesson #4 – Facing the Fear

This is lesson #4 in our ongoing Solo Flight course – a self-directed coaching program designed to help lawyers decide whether launching their own solo practice is the next step in their careers. If you’re interested in starting this program, you can proceed on your own pace (recommended: one lesson a week) by starting here with lesson #1, part 1; here for part 2; here for lesson #2; and here for #3. You’ll need a journal and a pen, and some quiet time. Be sure to drop me a line after you’re done and give me some feedback on the course, to improve it for future readers. After this round, it will be revised and uploaded as an e-book to this site.

A Moment’s Pause

Let’s take a moment to look back at how far we’ve come. Over the past month, we’ve:

• Performed a pretty thorough self analysis and discovered what we don’t want
• Turned those “no”s around, using them to figure out what we do want
• Used those “yes”s to create affirmations – short, positive statements designed to help us get a firm grasp on what we’re really after in our careers
• Laid the groundwork for a series of informational interviews that will help us answer our questions and learn “what it’s really like” out there as a solo, as the “type” of person you are (in terms of demographics and situation), as the type of lawyer you are (practice area) and in your geographic area over time
• Begun to explore our fears about going solo, and to examine our deepest motivations for pursuing these dreams

Take a moment’s pause and congratulate yourselves. You’re over the halfway mark, and you’ve created a much deeper level of self-awareness as a result of doing this work. (And it is “work” – make no mistake – despite the hope that it was fun work!)

Now, we’ve got to finish the journey.

Here’s where we’re going in the weeks ahead:

• First, we’re going to work more with that list of fears we started last week. By exploring those in more depth, we’ll learn what’s rational and what’s attributable to a lack of confidence. We’ll also lay the foundation for a plan to meet and master the real challenges. That’s what today’s session is about.
• Then, we’ll move on to the number one concern of almost everyone who looks at the possibility of launching a solo practice of any kind – money! We’ll examine the practicalities in depth; look at places you can trim expenses and create additional revenue streams; calculate how much you’ll really need to get started; and figure out your own comfort level, fiscally speaking, with the concept of being self-employed. We’ll also look at some options that you might not have considered – part-time soloing, anyone? This will be the longest session by far out of the entire series. So eat your Wheaties and bring your calculators for week five!
• Finally, we’re going to look at the results of our AIR interviews, and we’re going to put it all together – all our work over the past month and a half. At the end of week six, if you don’t have a firm answer yet, don’t feel discouraged – you may need some additional time to consider the results. But you will have everything you need to make that decision, and that’s a comforting feeling.

With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, let’s get started with week four: Exploring Your Fears.

The Nature of Fear

What is fear?

It’s not an academic question. You really need to understand fear, if you want to work with it effectively – if, that is, you want to let fear serve its proper purpose. Here’s a hint: that purpose? Is not to keep you from doing something, necessarily! It’s to help you do that thing successfully and well.

Biologically speaking, we could talk about the amygdala – that structure in the brain’s medial temporal lobe, part of the limbic system, which researchers believe plays a significant part in the human emotional life. But what I think is most important for our purposes is understanding the message we’re looking for in our fears.

In my experience, fear is trying to tell us one of three things:

1. You are insufficiently prepared or “armed.”
2. You haven’t identified the problem fully enough to surmount it successfully.
3. You perceive one of those two things to be true (although it isn’t true, rationally speaking).

Let’s look at an example – the classic fear scenario, in fact: walking alone, at night, in a questionable part of town. What is the fear telling you in this situation? It could be telling you that you aren’t fit enough or well-trained enough in self-defense to meet the challenge of the gang member looking for a fight. It could be telling you that you weren’t thinking when you chose this route – that you ignored the possible dangerous consequences. Or it could be telling you that you perceive one or both of these things to be true – even though they’re not (say, you do know how to defend yourself, and you consciously chose this route for articulable reasons).

It’s much the same with starting or contemplating any new project such as opening your own law practice. Your fears may be telling you the truth, or they may be pointing the way to adjustments you’re going to need to make in your thinking. How do you tell the difference? With great difficulty sometimes! Our fears have a way of making themselves seem ever so logical and real, no matter how far removed they are from the real truth.

I’m reminded of an example from my own story. When I was planning to launch my practice, I was beset by fears, mostly of the “I can’t really do this! I’m no good at this!” variety. By digging a little deeper I was able to see that what I really thought was that I was unprepared and too inexperienced to run my own practice. Now, a portion of this fear reflected an honest concern – I had not been in private practice before and so I’d need a little extra work on those aspects of the business related to being in private practice (billing and invoicing, keeping track of time, marketing, etc.). But a significant portion was actually just my perception of being ill-prepared. The truth was I’d been practicing law for ten years, and that meant something (though it took me awhile to begin to accept that it meant something).

So the first step here will have to be …

Acknowledging Your Fears

It’s another writing exercise! Take out your notebook and pen, and get comfy. Take a moment to close your eyes and allow your thoughts to drift to the idea of starting your firm. But this time, instead of affirming success, we’re going to cross over to “the dark side” and examine our fears. Take a moment to remind yourself mentally that it’s OK to explore these fears – that you won’t be consumed by them – by affirming quietly “I am safe. It is safe for me to explore my fears.” Or simply take a few deep breaths, if that’s too “whoo-whoo New Agey” for you.

Now, look back over the list of fears that you started in this lesson. Do any of them no longer ring true? Mark those off. Is the list still complete? Or have you thought of new fears (concerns, obstacles, whatever you want to call them)? Write down any new issues that occur to you. Once you’re satisfied that the list fairly represents the entirety of the negative considerations you hold regarding solo practice, get ready to move on.

Analyzing Your Fears

If you want to go straight into the next part of the exercise, I suggest you take five minutes to get up, move around, and physically “change your state” (as a particular self-help guru, who shall remain nameless, is fond of saying). (If you’re doing this exercise at a later date, then simply get comfortable and refocus.)

Take out the list of fears, and group them or categorize them into the following categories:

1. Fears related to skill level
2. Fears related to business operation/management
3. Fears related to outcome (getting enough clients, winning cases, having enough money, etc.)
4. Fears related to knowledge (note: it’s easy to get confused between this one and #1 – think of this question to help you narrow it down: Could the fear be resolved by reading a book? If so, it belongs in #4. If not, put it under #1.)

You can safely disregard all the fears under #2 – there are plenty of business books and gurus out there who would be happy to help you learn the business ropes. (Note that when I say “disregard” I don’t mean ignore! I mean solely that for purposes of this exercise, these aren’t really fears but points to research.)

Likewise, you can disregard fears in the fourth category. Just put those in a separate list, together with the #2 fears, as “Things To Learn/Research.”

Now, between the remaining fears – fears about skills and fears about outcome – there lies some deep truth. Your job: to dig the truth out. Are you really too unskilled to contemplate a transition to solo practice? Is the outcome so uncertain that you simply can’t take that risk? The answers lie in the way you phrased the fears, and in an objective assessment of your past.

To get started, take a look at how you phrased the fears about skills. Is it more like “I’ve never drafted a will before” or is it more like “I can’t possibly figure out wills and trusts”? Do you see the difference there? The first is a factual statement – the speaker hasn’t had the experience of drafting a will before. Well, if the speaker is planning to go into estate planning, then she’s going to have to prepare harder for that practice area than someone who’s been drafting wills for three years, right? But if the speaker phrased the fear more like the second example – “I can’t possibly figure this out” – that’s a clue that what’s really going on isn’t so much a rational concern based in factual experience – but a deep-seated lack of confidence in oneself.

What difference does it make to your plans? It makes all the difference. First and foremost, if it’s merely a matter of lack of experience, that can be fixed pretty easily. You go find the experience! Or you work really hard to learn the ropes and you practice on your clients, maybe with the assistance of a mentor. But if it’s a self-confidence issue, then practice alone isn’t going to resolve the fear. You have to change the way you think about yourself. That’s a bit beyond the scope of this course, but I will offer the following thoughts:

• Running your own solo practice takes a lot of confidence. If that’s a problem for you, you would do well to spend a good bit of time and energy working on that issue with either a therapist or a good self-help book at the least, before you make a decision.
• Self-confidence is almost never about actual skill or competence. It’s usually about “programming” – the negative beliefs we hold and replay over and over in our minds, like a tape recording. But those beliefs are nothing more than thoughts, and thoughts can be changed with some continual focus and attention.

So, if it’s a self-confidence issue, then know that you’ll need to do some extra work on that aspect of yourself as you go along. Should you let the existence of low self-confidence deter you from pursuing solo practice? No, I don’t think so – at least, not necessarily. But it definitely is something that you need to put on the “Things To Learn/Research” list – just as much as the tax code or rules of evidence might be.

The second way we can analyze our fears, other than by looking at the phrasing, is by holding them up against the past. Take each fear and think about it in the context of past experience. Say the fear is “I’m no good at networking.” Think back to past social events. See if you can replay the memory like a mental tape. Watch yourself move through that event in time. Now, is it really true that you’re no good at networking? Did you carry on conversations at that event, meet new people, carry yourself well? Go through every such event you can think of – don’t rely on a single memory, ever, because everyone can have an “off night”! When you’ve recalled all the similar events you can think of, take a moment to reflect on what you learned, and then ask yourself, “Is this really true? Does it hold up against the light of my actual experience?” If yes, put a little check mark and move on. If not, scratch it off.

After you’ve processed your fears in this way, take a look at the list you have left. Is there anything remaining on the list – a still-present fear, in other words – that can’t be fixed, resolved, delegated, deferred, ignored, or learned? Take each fear and brainstorm ways either around or through the problem that it presents. If it’s a skill you lack, can you learn the skill? If you can’t learn it, can you hire someone else to do it for you? Is it even necessary to have this skill at all? Go through the list item by item this way. If there’s a solution, jot it down on a separate piece of paper and mark through the item on your list. If there isn’t one, just put another check mark by the item and move on.

At the end of that process, you’ll hopefully have a much shorter list to work with than when you started. Spend the rest of this week meditating on those fears that remain. What can you do with them? Do they have a lesson for you? If you could give that fear a voice, what would it be telling you? You might find it helpful to write about these things in the journal, or you may prefer to do your work mentally – either’s fine, as long as it works for you. Just spend the week living with and acknowledging the fears – living in between the spaces, as I call it (the space between knowing and not knowing). See what that sort of uncertainty feels like. You might be surprised to find it’s not nearly so terrifying as you might think.

AIR Interviews

Your other assignment this week is to finalize your interview arrangements. If you haven’t made a list of questions yet for each of your interviewees, do so now. Make sure you take into account the specific demographic the interviewees fill. In other words, ask the one in your practice area questions pertinent to the practice area, ask the one who’s most like you in terms of age, situation, etc., questions about how solo practice affects the rest of your life, etc.

That’s it! Next week – the mother of all lessons!