By Abigail Stanley

I got a text yesterday from an attorney wanting my assistance on a new project worth thousands of dollars.

Before you go thinking I’m bragging, I promise you I’m not because the truth is this project took me SIX YEARS to land. More on this in a bit…

I have been asked a TON of questions over the years from my fellow nurse peers. By far the number one question I am asked is, “How do I get a case?”

My answer = CHANGE YOUR MINDSET.

You must first STOP the scarcity mindset. Seriously, KILL this mindset. This mindset does NOT serve you. It comes from a belief that you have limited resources and it cannot be farther from the truth. There are a zillion attorneys out there with a zillion cases involving medical.

And YOU have the knowledge needed on these cases!

When I first started my business I lived in the “I need a case” mindset, and I will tell you, this way of thinking got me very few cases. It wasn’t until I changed my mindset when cases started to flow in.

You must replace, “I NEED a case,” with “I need to EARN a case.” Your job as a marketer is NOT to sell your services to get a case. Your job as a marketer is to build a client relationship in order to win their trust and EARN a case.

I have had many people in my life I consider mentors; people that have given me such sage advice that my thinking was never the same after meeting them. Here’s some wisdom from one of my many mentors who also happens to be one of my attorney clients I’ve worked with on over 3,000+ cases together since 2018.

This man is unbelievably talented at networking. So I asked him one day to give me his best advice on marketing. He thought for a moment and said, “You must remember, marketing is farming not fishing.” This means in every marketing effort, you are simply planting seeds for future work not catching a fish (aka a case) immediately.

It takes time to earn trust in order to earn cases.

Now let’s chat about the seed I planted over six years ago that got me a text yesterday about a project worth thousands of dollars.

If we stick to the planting seeds metaphor, I planted this seed when I met her in the Spring of 2017.

We live in totally different parts of the country, but see each other on average about three times a year at conferences we both attend. In these six years we have gone to dinners together (some big dinners with 40+ people and some more intimate dinners with less than 8), we’ve had probably 10 sit down 1-on-1 meetings, and we’ve even gone out dancing with a group after one of our dinners in Vegas…we exchanged cell numbers…and yet until yesterday she had given me ZERO CASES.

I tried many times to convince her to use nurses on her cases. No luck. She was content with her our outsourced India med reviews. She said they weren’t great, but got thejob done for cheap.

She thought nurses were too expensive.

Keeping a positive mindset is the most important aspect to marketing. If you are brave enough to go out there and try to convince attorneys they need you on their cases, you will hear the word no…a lot! And you have to let the "no’s" fall off of you like nothing ever happened.

With this attorney, despite zero cases, I always viewed her as one of my clients. She just didn’t know she was my client LOL I keep a spreadsheet with a list of my current attorney client prospects I jokingly titled “My Hit List”. On this spreadsheet I track my marketing efforts and put the attorneys into different categories. I do NOT have a ‘no’ category. If an attorney tells me no like she did for six years straight, I mark them as ‘not yet convinced’.

Again, keeping a positive mindset is MOST important!

So you want some cases? Easy. You must first build genuine relationships with your potential attorney clients. And what is the easiest way to do this? Attorney conferences! I have attended, exhibited, or sponsored over 40+ conferences since 2011. That’s where MOST of my 25,000+ cases have come from. Attorney conferences are by far the easiest way to build a successful legal nursing business. You cannot deny the opportunity of getting real face-to-face time with a large number of attorneys at once.

Check out one of my previous blogs “What Happens In Vegas…” for my top 5 tips for in-person marketing at attorney conferences.

I hope this advice helps you on your journey as a new or established LNC!