Show Notes:

One-way and two-way doors. “Jeff Bezos has this concept where he talks about one-way doors and two-way doors. Most decisions are two-way doors, meaning that if you make a decision, it’s not the end-all, be-all. It’s not going to wipe you out, and even if you’re wrong, it’s okay because you can go back, make a different decision, change courses, and be okay. The one-way doors are the very rare decisions when there’s no going back. These decisions require you to be very intentional and think things through. That being said, 99 percent of the decisions you make are two-way doors. Make decisions based on the information that you have at the time and exercise your best judgment.”

Progress beats perfection. “Don’t put so much pressure on yourself to be perfect. Let’s say you’re making the best decision with the information that you have and want to hire the perfect person. You can have a great hiring process. You can vet them appropriately. You can do test assignments. You can check references. You can do everything you can to increase the probability of having the right fit person. However, at the end of the day, these are people and you can’t control if something happens in this person’s life that affects their performance at your law firm, so make the best decision at the time that you’re making that decision. You build confidence by being decisive. It’s important to understand that you don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be decisive and be willing to iterate and course correct.”

Only the paranoid survive. “If you look at some of the best coaches on the planet — in the NFL, in college football, and really in all sports — they constantly feel like they and their teams aren’t good enough. They come in and they constantly see everything that is wrong and all the things that need to be fixed. People will say to them, ‘What are you talking about? You just won a world championship!’ But how do you think they won that? By not settling. What you should be worried about is going into your office one day and thinking everything is perfectly fine and you’ve got it all figured out — because you’ve got a sledgehammer coming right around the corner and you don’t even know it. There’s a blind spot that you don’t see. Regardless of how successful you are, you always have something to work on. There’s always something to improve.”

Level up your network. “A lot of entrepreneurial loneliness stems from people not having the right peer group or support system. When I hear people say, ‘I want to spend more time with my friends,’ and then they do, they often find that they don’t have anything in common with their friends anymore. Their heads are all up in the business and they’re thinking about strategy, culture, and leadership, but their friends (usually the ones you went to high school or college with) are more interested in how many beers they can drink at Taco Mac or Buffalo Wild Wings. The best thing you can do as an entrepreneur, especially one that runs a law firm, is to surround yourself with other growth-minded firm owners. They’re not going to give you a hard time when something comes up in your business and you can’t hang out or go grab lunch. They understand what you’re going through because they’re going through it too. They’re going to be much more supportive.”

Make time for your advocates. “If you want to feel less lonely, surround yourself with advocates and people who want to see you win and succeed, and similarly, people you want to see win and succeed. If it’s really important to you to be one of these extroverted people who thrives off of being around other human beings, then schedule a dinner or lunch and dedicate the time. You’re not doing open-heart surgery. You can absolutely make time for dinner once a month. People say it’s lonely at the top. I think those people are going about it the wrong way. You’re only lonely if you’re trying to do everything on your own.”