Amanda reflects on past VLOGs and her desires for more within her immigration law firm.
Establishing a timeline or vision board is something that a lot of individuals and companies do to stay focused on the path in front of them. But there are other avenues that can present themselves and help keep you focused.
In this week’s #FollowAttorneyAmanda, Amanda is using her past VLOGs to hold her accountable and motivate her to reach goals for her firm.
Video Transcript
Hi, I’m attorney Amanda Shaffer. Welcome to #FollowAttorneyAmanda, where you follow me on my journey through social media to get more likes and ultimately more business. I just got finished watching episode 13 life updates of #FollowAttorneyAmanda. I filmed that in May right before I went on my honeymoon and I talked about a lot of things I had in the pipeline that I planned to do with marketing. And it was really interesting. Now it’s September 3rd, so that’s four months since I filmed that and it was interesting to watch and think about do I regard where I am now as a successor of failure?
So just to give you a brief overview. The summers are usually quiet time, but it definitely was a lot busier than in the past, obviously, last year was COVID year. I was strictly working from – at this time last year, I was strict — Oh no, I was back in the office for a few days a week, but we were still in the midst of all of the formal lock lockdown rules and stuff. So I’m not comparing it to last year, but I know for other years, the ebbs and flows, you definitely see things slow up in the summer. We didn’t really have that happen this year. I got back from my honeymoon and we just kind of took off. I definitely think the marketing still helped. So in the one sense, I look at it as a success because we’re doing great. I’m making more money than I ever have. And I used to get — I pick up some business and then things would get a little quiet and I get anxious, but I’m not going through that up and down. Lately, it’s definitely been more of like a steady flow if not an increase which is fantastic. And the reason I’m even questioning if it’s been a success or failure is because of the fact that in this video, I talk about all of these different things I plan to do with marketing and I have not done – pretty much not done one of it.
I continue to do what I previously have done at least. But I have all these things – I have things created that I haven’t put out there yet. I mentioned before my #PositivelyImmigration campaign where I look at – I wanted to focus on athletes and then expand to other famous people who were able to immigrate to the US-based on extraordinary ability visas. I ended up doing something very similar for the Olympics at the last minute I was like, let me do the – this is something people are into right now, let me try to hop on board. And that went well. I don’t know how much business I really got, but it definitely got seen. But I had to do that without launching the sports one, and the only thing frustrating is that the numbers change, because my sports things are the percentage of baseball players, for example, who wasn’t born in the US. So, I hate doing work and then not using it. It’s not efficient, but it’s still relevant. It’s just little tweaks.
I talked about another series that I wanted to do about asylum for focusing on different countries or types of claims. I’ve not done any of that and I still think it’s a great idea. It’s still something – actually, honestly, I haven’t even thought about that in a while. I’m glad I watched the video. And then another one on anti-sex trafficking that was especially in May, it was in my mind because it was all over the news with Jeffrey Epstein and that cult upstate New York or whatever. And I think it would be great if I could do it with an anti-trafficking group, but I’ve not gotten that far.
So it’s the predicament I continuously find myself in here, right? We’re doing great business-wise. And if I continue doing what I’m doing, I see no reason that this won’t continue the way on the same path. But I want more. I want to be able to afford to hire somebody else so that I don’t have problems. Like if I go away, I can’t enjoy my vacation for example, because I’ve realized how important it is to take time off for yourself. Since my honeymoon, I’ve not gone anywhere. I’ve been in the office every day, and I’m starting to fatigue for sure. So in that regard, I’m kind of back to where I always end up circling back to, how do I continue to do what I’m doing and with my legal work and then include the marketing stuff if I don’t have – how many hours in a day do I have? I don’t have an answer yet. I know I have – I need to come up with an answer because I keep – for years I haven’t had an answer and I’m so – that’s why I’m frustrated with myself. That’s why as much as I want to say it’s been a success this summer, there were things I thought I’d get accomplished this summer that I didn’t, partly because again, I didn’t have the time because we’ve been really busy, which is good. But at the same time, I’m sure a couple of hours here or there would’ve made a difference, and I kind of kicked myself. I’m always – I’ve always been, always will be my own worst enemy. But to take out the positives to end, I should say with the positives, because I think that’s better than ending negatively. Business is up without me having to expend additional efforts. I’ve even had to scale back a little bit, which I do think one, you have your presence online, scaling back and again, I could be wrong, but scaling back isn’t the worst, just because you’re still plenty out there; you’re not falling behind too much.
But yes, I got to – I don’t know. I need to figure this out because I don’t – I hate when this happens. We’re going to bottleneck and then I’m going to have to stop marketing and then we’re going to slow down and I don’t want that. I just want us to continue the steady flow that’s steadily driving upwards. Looks like I’m going to have to start looking at the finances so I can see realistically how much we need to make in order to hire like a full-time employee or a real marketing agency. So that’s going to be all the works hopefully sooner rather than later, but I’m starting to slowly figure some of these things out and hopefully, the next time I have this – of life update number three, hopefully, I’ll be saying it’s no question a success and I’ve done everything I said I was going to do. Fingers crossed. Well, that is all today for #FollowAttorneyAmanda. Thanks for joining me and I’ll see you next time.
