#243: The Time-Money Mindset Link

The Time-Money Mindset Link

How we think about time inevitably influences how much money we make.

What we think activate chemicals in our body that determines how we feel. How we feel drives how we behave.

Every behavior — every action — we take or don’t take, creates the results we get in our life.

What I see time and again with lawyers is that their thoughts about time determine how much money they’re capable of making. They top out unless they change how they think about time.

In this episode, you’ll learn the Time Mindset Blocks negatively impacting how much money you make, and learn how you can begin changing your time mindset, so you can expand your ability to make money.

Before we start changing your time mindset, I want to let you know about a new Money Mindset Masterclass I’m doing next week.

You can sign up at https://dinacataldo.com/moneymasterclass

How you think about money can either positively or negatively impact how much money you can make.

I see this all the time with my clients no matter their income levels and no matter whether they work for themselves or work for a firm. In this Masterclass, you’ll learn the shifts those lawyers needed to make, so they could expand how much they make in their practices without working harder or working longer hours.

Our society tells us if we work harder we’ll make more money. It’s instilled in a lot of us by our parents. Working HARD – not just working – is put on a pedestal, as if we’re better human beings if we’re always working. Society reinforces this message.

Look at who this message serves. It doesn’t necessarily serve you if you’re killing yourself at the expense of enjoying your human life.

We need to change our relationship with money, and when we do, we’ll create more calm in our life and law practice. That’s what I’m going to help you do in this Masterclass.

You can save your spot at https://dinacataldo.com/moneymasterclass

I’ve designed this Money Masterclass to help you see what thoughts are repelling money from your practice and how to reframe your thoughts to begin making more of it without increasing your workload or overwhelm.

You’ll learn how to change the relationship with have with money, and bring in more.

This Masterclass is happening next Thursday January 26th, 2023. You can sign up and get all the details at dinacataldo.com/moneymasterclass

If you can’t make it, that’s okay. I’ll make a replay available for people who sign up at the link.

Go to dinacataldo.com/moneymasterclass to sign up.

Alright, now lets talk about the time-money mindset link.

This episode was inspired by work I’m doing with several clients and seeing how their thoughts about time have capped their growth.

Here’s how people generally think about time and billing.

And when I say “billing” in this episode, I mean

• logging time, or
• sending out bills
• billing time

Generally, people think billing should have been done in the past.

That they don’t have time to do it in the present.

And then they tell themselves they’ll do it later — in the future.

But then, the future catches up with them, and it’s the present. And that quickly turns into the past.

So they go back into the cycle of thinking it should have been done in the past and they don’t have time to do it right now in the present.

It’s an unforgiving loop that repeats itself.

This pattern repeats itself because your brain is used to thinking it.

Nothing has gone wrong.

If you’ve ever watched a TV show or movie over and over, it’s the same thing.

When we choose an old show, it’s because we have certainty about what will happen. We know we like it. We know what to expect. It’s a safe choice.

Same thing when we repeat this thought loop about time and billing. The brain has certainty. It’s the safe choice.

It’s only by recognizing the pattern and choosing discomfort instead of safety that we can get out of this loop.

We hear “lack mentality” used a lot when we talk about money, but money and time share a lot in common.

They’re both currencies that can give us more of what we want if we use them well.

If you feel scarcity around time, you’ll likely also feel scarcity around money.

Not always, but a lot of the time.

I’ve done podcasts about abundance and money in the past, so I’ll link to those in the show notes at dinacataldo.com/243

Instead of thinking about how much time you do or don’t have, think about priorities.

What are your priorities?

Not the “in the moment” priorities of getting work done or putting out a fire.

What are your over-arching priorities for your law practice?

This applies to you whether you have your own practice or you’re working for a firm.

If you have your own practice, think about your business as a baby.

If you’re working for a firm, think about your boss as your best client.

In both cases, you want to think about their priority.

Priority 1 is survival.

Priority 2 is growth.

Survival is usually pretty simple.

Keep doing what you’re doing. That’s why our brain gets in the types of cycles I mentioned earlier. What it’s doing now is maintaining survival. If you do nothing differently, you’ll stay alive even if you feel overwhelmed or stressed out.

Growth is a different matter.

Growth is a different kind of discomfort that your brain is unfamiliar with. It requires a different level of thinking. A different level of thinking requires using your brain differently than it’s used to. Our brains don’t like doing things differently. It wants things to stay the same for survival purposes.

That’s where time mindset can either cap or expand healthy business growth.

Growth could be ensuring the expansion of your practice by giving your baby what it needs to grow: money.

Growth could also mean making yourself more valuable to the firm by giving your best client what it needs to grow: money.

If you want to create sustainable growth — growth that doesn’t require you staying later and later at the office and working like a crazy person — it requires a clean mindset around time. A more objective mindset.

We’re going to be talking more about sustainable growth in the Money mindset Masterclass, so be sure you’re signed up for that. Sign up at https://dinacataldo.com/moneymasterclass

The first step of changing our mindset is knowing the problem, so let’s start there.

3 Common Problems I see when lawyers have scarcity around time

Problem #1: They lose money because they put off billing to do other work.

They do this because they think they don’t have time.

How you know you’re doing this is that you feel overwhelmed and tell people you’re “really busy” when they ask how you’re doing, you judge yourself for not getting more done, when you put off billing you tell yourself you should know better or that you’re going to get fired or that you’re unprofessional, you don’t have a set time of the month to send off bills to clients.

If this is you, the reason this is happening is because you think you’re too busy to bill.

The solution here is to notice when you feel overwhelmed and are about to skip billing, and remind yourself to prioritize the overall objective – feeding the business. Make time on your schedule just like you’d make with a client or a friend. Remind yourself that the priority is billing.

I want to link this with checking emails or social media throughout the day.

When I see myself compulsively checking email or social media, I notice I get anxious. Then I ask myself what I’m avoiding. It’s inevitably some sort of work I had on my calendar. I stop myself, and I feel uncomfortable. Pausing when you notice you’re skipping billing or telling yourself you’ll “do it later” will feel uncomfortable.

Do it anyway. Then remind yourself of the priority. The priority to continue to sustainably grow your practice. Billing is how you take action to create that result.

Problem #2: You lose money because you think you took too long to do your billing

Lawyers do this because they’re judging themselves for NOT sending the bill in a specific time frame. Usually it’s an arbitrary time frame.

You know you’re doing this if you don’t have a specific time of the month on your calendar you send out bills, if you don’t have time on your calendar at the end of the day and the end of the week to look at your hours, you have bills sitting around that you keep telling yourself you’ll “get to,” your assistant has reviewed the bills and all you have to do is sign off on them but you still haven’t, clients are asking you for bills, you ruminate and think about how you should be billing, you beat yourself up, and you feel this anxious tension in your body.

If this is you, the reason this is happening is because you’re afraid of what someone else will think about how long you take to bill. You’re making not sending the bill or logging your hours mean something about you like you’re unprofessional, you’re not a good attorney, or that you’re disorganized. You feel embarrassment or shame, which of course doesn’t motivate you to take action. It just prolongs the suffering.

The solution here is to notice if you recognize yourself here, and then learn to feel discomfort.

For example, when you notice yourself ruminating on bills, take a breath, and drop into your body. How do you feel? Anxious? Sit with it. It will not feel pleasant, but this feeling is going to be key to helping you. Remind yourself that it’s okay. You can put time on your calendar to send out the bills or do billing. Put it on your calendar. Then stick to that time. Make it a priority.

You’re going to see a theme here, which is making money a priority in your practice.

We get so many messages from society and people around us that money is bad, and if we take that messaging at face value, we’re not going to prioritize it. Remind yourself of all the good that can be done with money. All the ways you want to use it to better yourself, your family, your community. Money is a good thing.

Problem #3: You lose money because you think billing is a waste of your time.

Lawyers do this because they think they went to law school to be a lawyer and do only things involved in the law. They don’t realize they went to law school to learn a valuable skill, so they could do work that was of value to others, so they could receive value in return. That value they receive in return is money. It could also be the satisfaction for a job well done, but ask yourself if that’s why you really went to law school. I highly doubt it. You wanted to make sure you had a marketable skill.

You know this is you if you don’t contemporaneously bill, put off billing, or feel annoyed when you bill. I notice this especially with .1 email billing. That really tends to be something lawyers have thoughts about that aren’t helping them make more money.

If this is you, the reason this is happening is because instead of embracing the fact you have a valuable skill and people want to pay you money for it, you fight it. You tell yourself “billing is a waste of time,” “I don’t have time for this,” “I’ll do it later,” or “this is so tedious.”

Of course you’re not going to bill if you tell yourself these things. These thoughts are rejecting money and hours.

The solution here is to improve your relationship with time and billing.

We have a relationship with money and time. Relationships are made up of our thoughts.

If you start a relationship with a person, and when you go out you think, “this is a waste of time,” “I don’t have time for this,” “this is so tedious,” how long do you think that relationship is going to last?

Imagine if you told those thoughts to your best friend? They probably wouldn’t want to hang out with you anymore.

What we focus on expands. Focusing on all the thoughts that create the feeling of annoyance will just create more of it.

Focusing on all the thoughts that help you prioritize what’s important will help you focus more on what’s important to you. It may not feel amazing like butterflies and daisies, but it will feel neutral and grounded. And you’ll feel accomplished when it’s done.

Recognize the thought you’re having, and how it’s impacting your billing. Then take a moment to pause. Remind yourself that your skills are important and valuable. Billing is one way to reflect the value of your skills. It’s important to contemporaneously bill and/or review your time at the end of the day to collect that value.

Let’s do a quick rundown on what we went over today.

First, thinking you’re busy is one of the reasons you may not be billing. It seems like we’re simply stating the facts, but it mis-focuses our mind. It’s a focus error that prevents us from making time for the priority: growing your practice sustainably.

Second, there’s no billing police. If you’re sending a bill later than you’d like, that’s okay. Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable sending the bill, and do it anyway.

Third, billing is your friend. It’s not a waste of time. It’s a measure of the value you’ve created in the world. And it’s how you collect on that value.

If you want more on this topic and to go even further on money mindset, I invite you to join me next week for my Money Mindset Masterclass.

You can sign up at https://dinacataldo.com/moneymasterclass

It’s going to take everything you learned here and take it up another level.

All right, my friend. I hope you have a wonderful week, and I’ll talk to you again soon.

Bye