“Manifesting Like a Motherf**ker”

Today is our 100th podcast episode! I am so excited about this milestone and I wanted to mark this occasion by talking about manifestation.

 

Unfortunately for so many people, what stops them from making real strides and scalable growth in a law firm is the fact that they are often mired down in decisions. 

 

There’s so many things coming at you, so when your energy, your time, your attention, your focus is stratified over a lot of different activities, it is really challenging to not fall prey to decision fatigue.

 

Recently, I talked about how to be decisive. I wanted to share with you a prime example of what being decisive means, and how critically important and valuable this life-changing skill is. 

 

Thank you to all our listeners for being with us on this amazing journey. I hope you enjoy this 100th episode!

 

In this episode we discuss:

  • How amazing your life can be when you learn the skill of being decisive.
  • Creating what you desire when you have a thought that continues to come to your mind.
  • Allowing yourself to feel and think what you desire without judgment. 
  • Giving yourself permission to speak your desire out loud.
  • Recognizing that you can recover from a bad decision.
  • Solidifying in your mind that you are creating something by writing it down.
  • Getting the right team assembled to assist and advise in the process of materializing your desires.
  • Trusting your instincts and your inner voice.

Allison Williams: [00:00:12] Hi, everybody, it’s Allison Williams here, your Law Firm Mentor. Law Firm Mentor is a business coaching service for solo and small law firm attorneys. We help you grow your revenues, crush chaos in business and make more money.

 

Allison Williams: [00:00:25] Hi, everybody, it’s Allison Williams here, your Law Firm Mentor, and welcome to another episode of the Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. And today we are going to talk about my manifestation. So you’re probably wondering what does your manifestation have to do with me and my law firm? And I’m going to tell you that right now. So, you know, we have talked a lot on this podcast about decision and how important it is as a business owner to get to a place where you can quickly make decisions very certain and sure in the knowledge that if your decision is not the perfect decision, it is a learning opportunity that is just as valuable as if you had made the quote-unquote right decision. And for so many people, what stops them from making real strides and real growth and scalable growth in a law firm is the fact that they are often mired down in decisions, right? There’s so many things coming at you, you are advising clients, you are hiring team, you’re overseeing team, you’re strategizing, you’re consulting with marketing professionals, you are reviewing leases, you are selling to new prospects, you are doing a lot of different things. And when your energy, your time, your attention, your focus is stratified over a lot of different activities, it is really challenging to not fall prey to decision fatigue.

 

Allison Williams: [00:01:47] And one of the ways that when you have to make a really important decision that you can move quickly through that decision is that you create a framework for how to be decisive. Now we have recently talked about how to be decisive, I’m not going to revisit that episode, We’ll, we’ll link to it in the show notes if you haven’t listened to it already, you can check it out. But I wanted to share with you a prime example of what this means, and I wanted to show you how critically important and how valuable and how amazing your life can be when you learn the skill and master the art of being decisive. So I’m going to show you through a very recent life experience of mine that I’m going to share with you here on this podcast.

 

Allison Williams: [00:02:32] Now, I should note that at the time I’m recording this podcast, I am in the lovely town of Charlotte, North Carolina, and I have come to Charlotte any number of times over the years, really starting in about 2015. I found a business coach who is exceptional and he really is beyond a business coach, he’s a mindset coach. And so I really needed a lot of help personally with my mindset, not just for the benefit of my business, but really for the benefit of my personal life. I really became a much better person and a much more emotionally sound and well-intentioned person when I got help with some of the things that were weighing me down, some of the family history, I had some of the story I had about myself. I started to really work on my self-esteem as a person and really just come to life when I started working with this coach and he happens to be based in North Carolina. So I was coming here a lot and I have family that’s here, so I started to spend a lot of time here and I really fell in love with Charlotte, North Carolina, but I never really said anything to anyone about it because, you know, Hey, I live in New Jersey and you know, that is what it is, and I fully expect that I will continue to be a resident of North Carolina, pardon me, New Jersey, while I am spending my time in North Carolina. But what’s really freaky about this, is that as I started spending more time here, my heart started to be pulled here and I couldn’t quite tell you why. But at some point, it occurred to me that for all the times that I travel here, for my friends, for my family, for my opportunities, I really was living like a nomad when I’d come here. I’d camp out in hotels, Yeah, they were nice hotels, but nice hotels are not your bed, right? It’s not with your things, it’s not, it’s not with your property. And even though for the benefit of my life, I have certainly developed a love of travel.

 

Allison Williams: [00:04:29] Most of my energy is really homebody energy, right? I’m not like a run in the streets type of girl. I like to be in the home, I like to be in the comfort of my environment and whenever I come here or anywhere else, really, I don’t really enjoy having to live out of a suitcase and pack up all my personal things and then pack them and repack them and unpack them and repack them that really irks me. So at some point, I started to get the idea that maybe I should get an apartment here in Charlotte, because if I add up the dollars and cents I’m spending on hotels and the additional cost of having to eat out every day instead of having food that I can heat up and the additional, the additional expense associated with, you know, tipping the valet and, and gratuities for bellman and for restaurant servers. And all of the things that were slowly starting to add up, I certainly had the resources to afford it, but I said if I’m not having a great experience, I want to create another experience. And so if money is not an impediment to that, why not create a different experience? So my initial thought was, Hey, let’s get an apartment in Charlotte and I’ll look at that. Then at some point, I started to think about that a little bit more, and when I moved out of my townhouse and ultimately bought the home that I purchased ironically during the pandemic, or actually it was, it was physically built during the pandemic. I found the new construction site and decided what I wanted and then commissioned it right before the pandemic happened and then it was built during the pandemic. During that experience, it occurred to me that I had, I had really turned a corner and said, I’m not going to make financially foolish decisions anymore.

 

Allison Williams: [00:06:18] Now, to be candid, there’s a whole lot of story wrapped up in the fact of I chose not to have a house like long before, long after I could afford to buy a house. I elected not to buy a house, and part of it was, well, I’m not quite sure where I want to be, and maybe I want to look at different places. But if I’m truly honest with you, this is not something I talk about a whole lot. But you know, you guys are a few thousand of my closest friends, so I will share this with you that I really didn’t feel I should have a home because I didn’t have a spouse. And I very much felt like, you know, a home is associated with a family and I don’t have a family. Now, that’s not true. Obviously, I have an extended family, that’s not my, my family of choice, it’s my family of origin and I very much consider the life that I’ve created around myself to be my family.

 

Allison Williams: [00:07:09] But because I didn’t have society’s definition of a family, I didn’t feel entitled to a house. So honestly, I was kind of waiting for me to just magically arrive at a family and there’s a whole host of reasons why that’s not happening, either, which we’re not going to talk about today. But I said, finally, you know, I can’t delay making the best financial decision for myself because I don’t have the appearance of the family that society says I’m supposed to have in order to buy my house. So I just went out and said, Yeah, now’s the time, and I decided what I wanted and I ultimately bought a house. But when I started to think about the idea of buying an apartment or renting an apartment in Charlotte, it really just took me back to the idea that that would not be a financially sound decision because, you know, rent is, you know, just money you flush down the drain, like, you know, you spend it every month and it doesn’t accumulate, it just goes away. Just like writing a check for a few thousand dollars to whomever, for whatever reason, you’re not going to get that money back.

 

Allison Williams: [00:08:11] So I started to think about the possibility of buying a house, and I never really shared that idea with anyone, it was one of these things where I, I kind of had the thought and then I thought, Well, that’s kind of silly. Like, you know, I live in New Jersey, like, am I going to have a house in a whole different state? Like, Yes, I know people do that, I know people have vacation homes, some people will have a home in the north and their summer home in a southern state like Florida. But it didn’t occur to me that that would be something for me because I am one individual and I’m one individual who loves my work and I love my office. So not only did I build a custom home from scratch, but when I moved my office from the place where we were into a much larger, much more elegant, regal, beautiful new building back in 2016, when my law firm really exploded in growth, I had, you know, again created the atmosphere of my choice. I created a beautiful, clean, pristine, stylish black and white with pops of red, happy place for myself and I love being there like even when I can work from home, I’ve outfitted my home to work from home. I still love physically going into my office and as any of you know that follow this podcast, you know, my birds live in my office, so I didn’t think it really feasible to have a house somewhere else. But then the more I thought about it, the more I said, Yeah, I’m going to be in Charlotte a whole lot more.

 

Allison Williams: [00:09:43] I have an amazing new marketing director, shout out to Hannah Weinreich, our Marketing Director here at Law Firm Mentor. She lives in this area. One of our business coaches, we have six business coaches at Law Firm Mentor. One of my business coaches lives in Asheville, North Carolina, I have cousins here and the older I get, the, the closer I get to my cousins and watching their kids grow up and being able to come to all of the special occasions spending family time here in Charlotte. Then I thought about all of the different ways that my business connections continue to draw me here. So for coaching, and then I have clients that are in this area, so there’s just lots of things that pull me here. And if I’m going to physically be here and have the beauty and the pleasure of coming here for business and pleasure, why not make it into a financially wise decision? So as with all financial decisions that have any impact on my business, I reached out to my accountant, shout out to Dave Kubovzak, he’s a partner in Stefano Slack, which is our accounting firm. And Dave and I had a conversation about what makes the most sense in terms of what can be deducted if I were to buy a house and ultimately lease it to my business so that I could function as a business person in my home, as a location for my business, and I won’t bore you with all the details of that. But ultimately we ran the numbers and it is a very, very smart financial decision to have a residence where I can ultimately be able to use it as a headquarters for my business and be able to deduct certain expenses. And it’s going to cost me less net effect than it would if I had an apartment and overall likely less than what I spend on hotels when I come here. So this was a no-brainer decision in terms of how to make this happen. And so I decided.

 

Allison Williams: [00:11:44] OK, now I’m going to take you through the eight steps that went into the decision for me to create this opportunity and ultimately to manifest the home of my dreams here in Charlotte, North Carolina. So the very first step, step one was that I had a thought of something that came to mind and when it continued to come to my mind, I didn’t push it away. So this is important for you when you’re thinking about desire and how important it is to create what you desire if you have a thought that continues to come to your mind. And I don’t mean a doubt, I don’t mean a worry, I don’t mean something that is a pervasive, well-worn path. But I mean, like something just kind of like kind of goes into the ether dances or dances across your mind and then at some point you say, Huh, that’s odd. I’m having this thought multiple times.

 

Allison Williams: [00:12:42] Just observe it, allow it to be there, don’t judge it, don’t try to push it away don’t evaluate it, just let the thought come and go. In the course of our day, thousands, hundreds of thousands of thoughts will cross our mind that will be completely inconsequential, right? Oh, look at that Blue Jay, huh? I forgot I have to pick up groceries on the way home, Oh goodness, I haven’t had a manicure in a long time, Oh, I got to remember to call my doctor and make an appointment. Oh, you know, speaking of doctors, I saw Dr. So-and-so, my new neighbor, and I remember I need to go over and have a conversation with him about some, some damage to my lawn recently. Oh, speaking of damage, I forgot I need to get that tire repaired before the, you know, our son goes out and drives the car right? Like random thoughts. They just kind of connect in the mind and oftentimes they are so rapid that we don’t even recognize them. But when something interesting, something different, something that isn’t necessarily in your line of sight comes across your mind, allow it to be there and allow yourself to contemplate it. So I started having the thoughts of, hmm, maybe I could get a residence here in Charlotte and when those thoughts came up, I just let them be there, right? I didn’t. I didn’t say, Oh, I can’t do that, or I wonder if I can afford that. I literally just allowed it to sit there.

 

Allison Williams: [00:14:06] And then at some point when I realized that, that thought having not been suppressed or pushed away was coming back repeatedly, then I started to contemplate it, right? Like what if? What if it’s possible, right? We had an episode on the podcast, so what if it’s possible? I want you to think about that, and if you haven’t listened to that show, go back and check it out, right? What if it’s possible that I could do this? What if I could actually build or buy a home in Charlotte? And then I just sat in the contemplation without the negative judgments, right? So in other words, I didn’t commit myself to this is what I’m going to do and I didn’t say, Oh, I can’t possibly do that. I just said, What if? So that was step one.

 

Allison Williams: [00:14:52] Ok. Step two was that I spoke out loud, that I’m going to buy a house in Charlotte now, I had had that thought as I’m ruminating, as I’m contemplating, as my mind is sitting in the evaluation of possibility, right? Not evaluating the house, right? We’re not getting to the house yet. We’re just getting to the do I truly desire this? And if I’m truly desiring it because it keeps coming up over and over again in my mind, what if it’s possible, then becomes, I want this. And when I allowed myself to feel I want this, I then spoke it out loud and I said, I’m going to buy a home in Charlotte.

 

Allison Williams: [00:15:35] Now, that was about something very critical, which for a lot of us, we still struggle with, which is giving myself permission to want this, giving myself permission to say I desire this and I will have it because I want it. Ok, now having it because I wanted wasn’t about, I’ve got to talk to a friend or a family member, or I’ve got to get permission from my accountant, or I’ve got to make sure I’ve got the funds in the bank, or I’ve got to make sure that it’s the right location, like all of that stuff doesn’t enter into the equation yet. What enters into the equation after I have had the thought? It’s repeated itself, It’s continued to come back to me. I’ve contemplated it was that I spoke out loud that I desired something and by virtue of speaking out loud that I desire something, I authorized myself to go get it. And for so many of us, we struggle with allowing ourselves to have permission, we, we stop at the place of saying I want something, because I want historically had always been followed by, but you can’t have right. I want you to think back to your childhood where you might have said, Hey, I want a new toy and mom or dad may have said, you can’t have that right now, Christmas is around the corner or you can’t have that right now. This is something that, this is something that you haven’t earned or you can’t have this right now. This is something that’s not within our budget, right? Whatever the reason is, you got the, the message of saying you want something does not entitle you to it versus having the message that just by virtue of wanting something, it is perfectly within your purview to ask for it, to demand it, to require it, to expect it and to go after it. So step number two was speaking it out loud and therefore giving yourself permission.

 

Allison Williams: [00:17:32] Now, step number three in the manifestation process was to decide. And once I decided OK, decision is not the same as speaking it out loud and giving yourself permission, right? Because once you decide that you want something and you say, Yeah, I’m allowed to have it, the next thing you have to do is make up your mind to actually take action, right? And the decision process we covered in our show about how to be decisive. So again, I strongly urge you to check that out if you have not already listened to that because there’s a step-by-step process as to how to become a decisive person. But I made that decision right? I’m well rehearsed in being decisive. I make right decisions and wrong decisions all the time because I know if it’s a wrong decision, I will recover from whatever it is and if it’s the right decision, I will advance my life.

 

Allison Williams: [00:18:21] But either way, I’m going to be OK, right? So making decisions is not a triggering or challenging move for me anymore. Now this decision process, once I got to the point of saying, Yeah, I’m going to now go buy myself a house in Charlotte and ask myself, What do I want? And what are the criteria for me to decide what I want? Now, this again goes to being decisive. So if you haven’t mastered the art of being decisive, you really have to get there before the decision can be something that’s fast, easy and moving you forward immediately. But once I decided it was as quick and easy as saying, Yeah, I’ve spoken it out loud, I’m giving myself permission, I want a house in Charlotte, I’m deciding to go buy myself a house in Charlotte. And then asking myself, What kind of house, right? What kind of house do I want? Do I want a ranch? Do I want a tutor? Or do I want multiple levels? Do I want one level? Do I want it in the suburbs? Do I want it in the city? Right? Lots of options available and that allowed me to be excited, right? Not overwhelmed because once I have made the decision that I’m going to get what I want, the next thing is to ask myself, What do I want? Right? And that process of allowing all the opportunities to kind of flood over me and just feel what it is that I want, right? See opportunities, see options.

 

Allison Williams: [00:19:47] And of course, seeing options in this instance means going on Zillow and just kind of going mad, right, checking out the inventory. There’s a whole lot of inventory out there. And by the way, as soon as I spoke out loud that I’m going to buy a home in Charlotte, let me just tell you how quickly this process unfolded. Ok. The very first thing that happened, I mean, literally the next day, I spoke out loud on a Tuesday that I’m going to buy a house in Charlotte. And on Wednesday, it happened to be that a former guest of this podcast, Jack Tompkins, he’s a financial advisor and he actually is an implant to Charlotte, which I didn’t learn until the day after I spoke out loud that I wanted a house here because I happened to be on LinkedIn. I follow Jack on LinkedIn, and it turns out he has a new podcast shout out to his podcast, it’s called Four Transplants and a Microphone, and it’s about, Ding Ding Ding, four guys from four different parts of the country who move themselves to Charlotte, North Carolina. And I was like, Oh my god, there’s a podcast created for exactly what I want to do. So of course, I immediately binged all the content like starting on Wednesday through I think Friday of that week I literally got through every single episode they had recorded.

 

Allison Williams: [00:21:05] And it was a wonderful foray of information about things that I’d need to consider in order to be here. But here’s the thing. The podcast didn’t make the decision. The podcast was a sign. It was a sign that once I had spoken out loud and given myself permission, the ways and means for me to have exactly what I want, showed up. It was, it was this crystal clear sign, as if I had asked for directions and gotten a road map, and as soon as I’ve spoken out loud, that opportunity arose. And the very next day I heard from my recruiters for the coaching business. So shout out to Calculated Hire and Sonny Creech and Hayes Donahue, my recruiters. They do an amazing job getting us top talent here at Law Firm Mentor. And when I had the occasion to speak with them, I mentioned, Hey, I am going to be buying a house in Charlotte. Literally, I made the decision by virtue of speaking it out loud and saying, What do I want and how am I going to decide? And of course, I knew that in order to decide I had to have a vision, I had to start taking action. And the very first way in which I took action was to talk to people who had the ability to help me. Because ironically, Sunny and Hayes are both located here in Charlotte, North Carolina. So I had the pleasure of reaching out, and they ultimately were able to make some recommendations to me and start the juices flowing right. But all of that came from making the decision, right? As soon as I’ve spoken out loud, I gave myself permission, then resources started flooding me in order for me to have what I wanted. Now that is step number three, decision.

 

Allison Williams: [00:22:53] Step number four in this manifestation process was to write down exactly what I wanted. Now I’ll tell you this. There were about three days that I allowed myself to be in mental chaos, right? Before I crushed the chaos in my own mind. The mental chaos came because oftentimes those of us that go into mental chaos, we create from chaos, right? So a lot of times people will experience that, OK, I just got my life in order, and now it’s falling apart again. Well, part of that is because of how we instinctually create, in the way that I instinctually create is a whole lot of ideas come to my mind and I start taking action on those ideas. That’s how I create rapidly. I start to get ideas, I get visions and then I get aggressive in pursuing whatever is coming to my mind because I know it’s there for a purpose and I know that it’s there to bring out my greater purpose in the world. So when I have those flooded ideas, sometimes I just randomly spurt out all over the place. My team loves when that happens!

 

Allison Williams: [00:23:54] But sometimes it actually comes to me and I start to immediately organize it by systematizing the thoughts in my mind. So the thoughts this time around came around Where am I going to live and what? You know, what town, what, what area of the, of the area do I want to be in? There’s lots of different neighborhoods. Do I want to be in the city? Do I want to be around rampant expansion? Do I want to be around a lot of people? Do I want a more remote area like all of those thoughts are coming out? And I also needed to see the house. So I’m somebody who’s very visual, and when I want to create something, I have to see it. It needs to feel real to me. And no matter how much people describe what their process is for creating, whether it’s in business or in their personal life, everyone has a slightly different process, right? So for me, I’ve come to learn that my process really is that I have to visualize what it is that I want to create. And for me, visualizing starts with getting clear on what it is I want and writing it down right? Writing it down is a process that solidifies in your mind that you are creating something, it is almost like the words on paper. That kinesthetic process is a process of learning. It’s a process of solidifying what it is that you are owning that is going to be yours.

 

Allison Williams: [00:25:15] And for any of my clients, you guys know that I give you that assignment all the time, right? Whatever’s going on, write it down, right? Get it out of your mind, get it down on paper. There is something symbiotic about that creative process, even of just forming the letters on the sheet of paper and by the way, it is not the same when you type it. So even when your fingers are manically going from place to place to get the words on screen, that is not the same as having a physical experience of the words being formed on paper. So I wrote down what I wanted, I wrote down how many bedrooms, I wrote down how many bathrooms, I wrote down generally how much space, right? I wasn’t committed to, it has to be exactly X amount of space, but I knew I wanted five bedrooms, I knew that I wanted to have a lot of space, I knew that I wanted to have an open floor plan between my living room and my kitchen, I knew that I wanted to have a center island and that I wanted it to be big and a place where people could gather. I also wanted new appliances and I wanted a certain esthetic in the house. I wanted to feel large and open. I also knew what I wanted outside, I knew I did not want to have a huge backyard. I’m fine paying a landscaper, but I didn’t want to have all of that to maintain right. I didn’t want to have that additional project, and I knew that I wanted to have something beautiful outside, so I allowed myself to kind of leave that open, right? I needed clarity on generally something beautiful in my backyard. I didn’t necessarily know that it was going to be what I ultimately acquired, which is a home with a fireplace outside. So the home has a fireplace inside and it has a fireplace outside. But the fireplace outside could have easily been a fountain, right? Or it could have been a beautiful statue. I just knew that I wanted to be surrounded with beauty, and I wanted something that would excite my senses when I would see it.

 

Allison Williams: [00:27:08] And then ultimately, I was clear on the fact that I wanted this to be a three-storey house. I can’t tell you why I wanted a three-storey house, maybe the fact that my home in New Jersey is three stories. It may be that I just love being up high and looking out. It could have been a number of things, but that fell in that it kind of it came to me as I was just going through the process of brain dumping and allowing myself to say, what’s in my mind about this house that I want to get down and allow that vision to formulate? So I wrote down what I wanted, and then I ultimately decided that the next thing I had to do was allow it to come to me.

 

Allison Williams: [00:27:53] Now, allowing is not pushing, it’s not forcing, it’s not requiring, it’s not demanding, it’s not exacting, it is just allowing. In other words, once I had put it down on paper, I had to say to myself, it is so. Right? This is what I want, this is what will come. And there was a direct link between writing down what I wanted and believing that it is there, believing that with all the houses in Charlotte, all the inventory and by the way, inventory is being, is being swapped up here like a biscuit kind of appropriate that I’m talking about swapping something out with a biscuit now that I’m in the south, right? Inventory is just being sucked up, like overnight. I mean, like, literally, I went on Zillow and just kind of threw out a couple of saves just to, you know, generally this is the size of home, this is the like of home. Before I allowed myself the exercise of getting clear about it, and within twenty-four hours, the homes were gone. OK? Twenty-four hours. But this particular home, I once I wrote down what I wanted it to be, I didn’t go looking for it, I just allowed it to come to me. I had faith that what I wanted existed and that it would be mine. So putting that to the, to the side for the moment, literally, I just put that faith practice on paper and just let it be there and then step five was I consulted the right advisors.

 

Allison Williams: [00:29:20] Now here is where a lot of us get, you know, stuck up or strung up, right? We decide we need advice, so we start asking everybody and their mother, Right? OK, let me, it’s time for me to go hire a marketing person. Let me go into a Facebook group and say, who has a good marketing person? Or it’s time for me to choose a new, a new practice management software, who likes their practice management software, right? We all do it to some level. But I knew that when I was looking for elite, high quality, high service providers that I needed to go to people who had already achieved high-quality, elite, high service providers. In other words, I knew that I had to go where the, where the benefit is, right? Where the thing is that I’m looking for is, in other words, everyone can’t give me advice, right? Even though everyone might be well-intentioned, everyone might have good ideas, everyone might want to help me, everyone can’t give me good advice. And it’s not because they don’t have the desire to give good advice, it’s that they haven’t been where I am going, so I needed to go to the people who I could trust would have the best knowledge, the best help, the best ideas, the best guidance, the best recommendations. And I ultimately chose a select few people. I spoke to my life coach and I spoke to one of my dearest friends.

 

Allison Williams: [00:30:59] And ultimately, because they live here in Charlotte and because I trusted their judgment in the things that I was speaking to them about, I could say this is what I desire. And they know me well enough and they know what I was asking them about well enough, including the real estate market, including people that sell homes in the price bracket that I’m looking to purchase, including people who sell in certain neighborhoods or the areas generally that I wanted to look in, and I knew that they would be able to guide me to the right resources. So then after that, step five, I completed getting my right advisors. Then step six, I assembled the team right. I knew that to purchase real estate, I did need a Realtor, I knew I would need a mortgage lender, I knew that I would need to have service providers for the real estate. In other words, people to do my home inspection, people to clear title, all of the activity, all of the minutia that goes into buying a house, right? And as a matrimonial attorney, I’m blessed in that I had already learned that process over the years, many years before I bought even my first home. By virtue of my clients and their experiences. So I had an idea of who that team were, who those team members were going to be. But ultimately, you get the right Realtor, they’re connected to the right people. So ultimately getting the right Realtor was kind of activity number one. And by the way, I will tell you that I didn’t get that perfect right away, so I was referred to a Realtor, perfectly wonderful person, wonderful woman. She started to assemble neighborhoods for me, we made plans for me to come here and have her drive me around. But ultimately, I trusted my gut that there was someone who knew me better than the person who referred me to my first Realtor. A person who knew me intuitively, knew my likes, knew my style, knew how I like to be handled as a client, how I would want to create a working relationship, how that relationship would drive over time. And I trusted my gut and said even though I have someone that’s really good, it’s not feeling like it’s the right choice for me. And so I allowed myself to move in the direction of my very good friend. Shout out to Tony Reed, my very good friend, and the Realtor that she referred me to. So I then had my dream team, right? My dream team started with my Realtor and had branched off from there, my mortgage lender and so forth.

 

Allison Williams: [00:33:25] Now, step seven after I got my dream team was to allow my desires to materialize, right? I talk a little bit about this earlier letting it happen, but allowing and letting it happen are not exactly the same thing, right? So first, letting it happen means believing that it’s going to happen and not stressing about it, not worrying about it, not researching, not doing the work, just saying it will happen right. So I had to take some action right. I had to get the right people who could show me what I needed, who could start to guide me in that right direction. But then I had to allow and let me tell you what I mean by that. So two days after I made the decision, OK, and all of this, by the way, is happening very quickly from, from the time I made the decision and spoke out loud, I’m going to buy a home in Charlotte. Two weeks later, I had made an offer and I had a signed contract. Ok, so a relatively short period of time in the land of buying homes, but I had made that decision and spoken out loud, decided, wrote down exactly what I wanted, started to consult my advisors, assemble the team, got the right people on board and then I had to allow. And this is what I mean by that. So my cousin and I are going to share this home together and my cousin, because I had already told her what I was looking for and generally involved her in the process of kind of dreaming out loud with me.

 

Allison Williams: [00:34:50] You know, she started looking just like I started looking, so we both became fans of Zillow as well as one home, and we started to kind of think about, OK, what’s the best option here? And she sent me a listing. And she sent me this listing, and I remember thinking, Oh, wow! That is beautiful. And, you know, I’m a very visual person, so when I first saw it, you know, all of my, all of our, our primary data comes in through our eyes. But of course, we have other senses as well, so there had to be more than just what it looks like. But I started to read the listing and literally tears came to my eyes and I haven’t shared this, by the way, with my cousin or my Realtor or even my friend, so you guys are really the first ones that are getting the story in full, but tears came to my eyes because I was like, That’s it. That’s my house. That is my house. And I knew that because in reading the listing, it had five bedrooms just like I wanted, it had a media room, like, there’s a theater in my house. It’s now my house, so I can refer to it as my house, which I intellectually never said I wanted. But I wanted something spectacular by the house, right? I wanted there to be something that would draw this to be my oasis outside of just living in the home and working in the home when I came to Charlotte.

 

Allison Williams: [00:36:20] I wanted something to be kind of a special array of giving to myself by virtue of having the house. It has a fireplace outside that special something that’s sexy, something that I always said I wanted, right? I wanted to have something beautiful and intriguing and exciting about the outdoors of my home, and I didn’t want to have a large lawn outside in the back. So all of that was there, and I read the description and there was all of this space, you know, over 4000 square feet of space and there’s plenty of space for my office and the, the architecturally beautiful design. In fact, anyone that’s been around me, I’ve said this to a multitude of coaches over the years that I’ve worked with, that I want to own an architecturally beautiful home. I didn’t want to have just a big square with a triangle on top right. I wanted to have something exciting, I wanted to have those half hexagons at the top of the house, I wanted to have beautiful lighting fixtures, I wanted to have a structurally magnificent, beautiful location and that’s what this home was from the outside of it to the look of it, to the description of it, to the lot and block everything about it was just divine. So I had to sit with it as soon as my cousin sent me this and those tears came to my eyes.

 

Allison Williams: [00:37:35] It was almost like I had a moment of not trusting myself. So I want you to, to consider that in particular, because for a lot of us, we have an immediate impact that, oh yes, that’s it. And then we say, Oh, but wait, I should really do more research, I should entertain more options, I should go look at more properties, I should, I should contact more people, right? And I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had a conversation with a lawyer who wants to transform their law firm. And they’ve been following me for months, if not years, and they are bought in on what I say and they know that I can help them. And they say this has been an amazing call, but I’m a lawyer, I do due diligence, I really have to go talk to other people if I’m going to really say I’m doing the right thing, right? It’s like you can’t trust that the knowledge and the expertise and the value of what you have experienced is sufficient if there’s always that. But wait, there’s more, right? And sometimes there is more. But here’s the thing if your intuition is strong and you have decided in advance, you have pre-framed the information that you’re going to need before you make that decision, then when you get to a decision, you have to trust yourself that you are being guided to a decision for a reason.

 

Allison Williams: [00:38:52] And a lot of us don’t do that right. We, we put intuition into this little category of like the redheaded stepchild of logic. And part of that is because we live in a world that hyper values the, the masculine tendency of logic over the feminine tendency of emotion. Even though a well-balanced person, male or female, needs both logic and intuition in order to make the best out of their lives, right? But there’s a devaluation of intuition in a world that we live in, so we put that to the side. And so even when we have a very strong intuition and our logic is even telling us something is the right choice we look for, wait, wait, wait. I didn’t get that right, right? I got. I got to keep looking, that’s not the right thing for me.

 

Allison Williams: [00:39:38] So ultimately, I had to allow this to be there, and I still have to work on trusting my instinct. My instinct told me that was the right house for me from the moment I saw it, from the moment those tears to my eyes, but I allowed myself to be indecisive for just a moment, right? Two days passed, I continued to look on Zillow, I continued to go back to that house. I looked at that house every day, every day, every morning, every afternoon, every evening, I got up in the morning before I turned on my phone to go on Facebook. I looked at the listing every night before I close my eyes at night, I looked at the listing and I was just in love with it, and there was really no getting away from it.

 

Allison Williams: [00:40:21] And here’s the thing. It was nowhere near the top of the price point that I was willing to go because I’d already started listening to the podcast, as I told you before, Four Transplants and a Microphone and I’m listening to the transplants talk about the fact that the housing market is booming and inventory goes off in less than twenty-four hours. And here’s the crazy thing. So because I’m hearing about how amazing the market is right now or how it’s exploding rather and people are paying $100,000 above asking price just to get the house that they want, I’m hearing about that and then I’m thinking, OK, how long is this property been on the market? And I saw that there had been a price cut and I started doing some research through my Realtor as to why that was and why this house wasn’t moving. And ultimately, I got a logical answer as to why the House wasn’t moving, but I still had an instinct that said, Hey, wait a minute, right? Distrusting instinct, we’ll call it. That said, well, if the house isn’t moving, it must not, there must be something wrong with it, right? Because every house is moving, every house on every market anywhere is moving, right? And the Realtor told me about some things that she considered to be downsides and those are things that are legitimate downsides for most people, but they’re not for me.

 

Allison Williams: [00:41:32] So I said, OK, so I see why this house isn’t moving. But really, this home has sat now for a long enough time, I’ve seen it for almost a week and it’s not gone yet. What does that tell me, right? When I think about all the things that lined up, all of the things that lined up for me, writing down on paper what I wanted to a home being shown to me, a listing being said to me by my cousin that mirrored every single thing I said I wanted. And having trusted and having faith that what I wanted was going to appear, it appeared. And then I allowed myself, to visualize myself in that house. But I stopped. And I didn’t step into it, and I said, well, maybe there’s something else. But here’s the thing my energy, my, my pull, my desire kept drawing me back to that house. It kept drawing me back to the house, and every time I would look at the listing, I would, just before I got on to the web page, I would be a little hesitant saying, Oh my god, what if I’m there? What if I open it up and it says under contract or contract pending? Oh my god, what if my house is gone? And I started to think about it as my house? Like, I started to claim it as my house.

 

Allison Williams: [00:42:53] And then I moved on to step number eight, which is I trusted my instincts. And I said, OK, I’m going to open up this website one more time, and if the home is still on the market, I’m going to claim that house. The home was on the market, so I contacted my Realtor. The very next day, we arranged a virtual walkthrough, so she took her phone and did a face time walk through and showed me everything from the stucco on the walls to the large oval archways to the lighting fixtures to each room in great detail and the beautiful fireplace outside and the beautiful fireplace in my living room and I fell in love. I was like, it is everything that the pictures say that it is. And then I said, you know, just for that extra piece of verification, let’s have a real person go over. So I had my cousin go over and actually physically look at the house and she confirmed it is everything that I saw visually on the pictures and everything that I saw in the floorplan and everything that I saw from the virtual walk through. And I knew, just in that moment, I knew. So there was a price on the house and even though right now people are paying well in excess of asking price for the home, I ultimately put in an offer for slightly less than the property value and slightly less than what was asking price.

 

Allison Williams: [00:44:25] And in less than 24 hours, I had a signed contract. And the House is mine, and I can’t tell you what it means to me that I went through this process, but I’ll tell you what, what it means for you, right? Because even though I’m talking a lot about myself and my process and this wonderful new chapter in my life where I’m going to own a home both in New Jersey and in North Carolina, the beautiful thing about this is not the fact that I was able to be decisive, right? I love being decisive. I love that I can think what I want, right? What I want, get clear and then ultimately bring it into my existence. But I ultimately manifested like a motherf**ker. And I want you to be able to do the same things, I want you to think about all the ways that you have these little thoughts that come to your mind that you either push away or debate away, or evaluate away that you would go into the series of overthinking where we allow ourselves to get bogged down in the logic and we don’t allow the feelings to settle. And this was both a logical decision, right? I obviously consulted advisers, I got the right team on board, I was able to quickly get things settled, I was able to reach out to my accountant, I was able to make a tax planning strategy around this. Like, there are a lot of things that went into it, but the decision had to be mine, right?

 

Allison Williams: [00:45:46] And the fervency with which I could assemble the resources had to come from the strength of my desire. So first, I had to allow the desire to germinate. I had to say, What is it that I want? And once I decided what I want, once I spoke it out loud and gave myself permission and decided what I wanted, I then got crystal clear by writing it down. In other words, I put it down to solidify that this is truly what I want, and then I put it to the side. I didn’t overthink it, I didn’t over debate it. I didn’t say, Well, what about this? What about this? What about this? I asked questions of my mortgage broker, I asked questions of my realtor. But I had faith that what I put on paper that would be mine would be mine. And that’s exactly what happened. And that’s what happens when we allow ourselves to speak our desires to give ourselves permission to pursue it and to believe and have faith that it is coming into being. OK? It is not just making a plan, right. A lot of times our logical mind goes to, well, if I want something, let me evaluate 15 thousand pieces of information to determine whether or not I can have it and then if I can, based on my plan, have it, I’ll then start making some plans associated with it and hope that those plans work out and if everything works out perfectly, I’ll say yes. No, the things will work out the way that they work out, but the things will work out when you decide that you’re going to do something and when you allow yourself to pursue it. And ultimately allow whatever is going to come to you, to come to you and trust your instincts that if it’s here, it’s here for a reason and it’s here for your greater good. All right, everyone, I’m Allison Williams, your Law Firm Mentor. You’ve been listening to another episode of The Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. I will see you on our next episode.

 

Allison Williams: [00:48:02] Thank you for tuning in to the Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. To learn more about today’s guests and take advantage of the resources mentioned, check out our show notes. And if you own a solo or small law firm and are looking for guidance, advice or simply support on your journey to create a law firm that runs without you, join us in the Law Firm Mentor Movement Free Facebook group. There you can access our free trainings on improving collections in law firms, meeting billable hours, enjoying the movement of thousands of law firm owners across the country who want to crush chaos in their law firms and make more money. I’m Allison Williams, your Law Firm Mentor. Have a great day!

.

Allison Bio:

 

Allison C. Williams, Esq., is Founder and Owner of the Williams Law Group, LLC, with offices in Short Hills and Freehold, New Jersey. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, is Certified by the Supreme Court of New Jersey as a Matrimonial Law Attorney and is the first attorney in New Jersey to become Board-Certified by the National Board of Trial Advocacy in the field of Family Law. 

 

Ms. Williams is an accomplished businesswoman. In 2017, the Williams Law Group won the LawFirm500 award, ranking 14th of the fastest growing law firms in the nation, as Ms. Williams grew the firm 581% in three years. Ms. Williams won the Silver Stevie Award for Female Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017.  In 2018, Ms. Williams was voted as NJBIZ’s Top 50 Women in Business and was designated one of the Top 25 Leading Women Entrepreneurs and Business Owners. In 2019, Ms. Williams won the Seminole 100 Award for founding one of the fastest growing companies among graduates of Florida State University.

 

In 2018, Ms. Williams created Law Firm Mentor, a business coaching service for lawyers.  She helps solo and small law firm attorneys grow their business revenues, crush chaos in business and make more money.  Through multi-day intensive business retreats, group and one-to-one coaching, and strategic planning sessions, Ms. Williams advises lawyers on all aspects of creating, sustaining and scaling a law firm business – and specifically, she teaches them the core foundational principles of marketing, sales, personnel management, communications and money management in law firms. 

Contact Info:

 

What If It’s Possible? Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor Podcast

https://lawfirmmentor.net/2021/06/25/what-if-its-possible/

 

How To Be Decisive? Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor Podcast

https://lawfirmmentor.net/2021/08/20/how-to-be-decisive/

 

Four Transplants and a Microphone Podcast

https://player.fm/series/4-transplants-and-a-microphone

 

Contact Law Firm Mentor:

Scheduler: https://meetme.so/LawFirmMentor  

 

Snippets

 

00:07:09 (33 Seconds) 

But because I didn’t have society’s definition of a family, I didn’t feel entitled to a house. So honestly, I was kind of waiting for me to just magically arrive at a family and there’s a whole host of reasons why that’s not happening, either, which we’re not going to talk about today. But I said, finally, you know, I can’t delay making the best financial decision for myself because I don’t have the appearance of the family that society says I’m supposed to have in order to buy my house. So I just went out and said, Yeah, now’s the time, and I decided what I wanted and I ultimately bought a house.