Recently, I did an experiment and offered an online webinar to lawyers. The program went well, and everyone was happy. It was just an experiment, so you may not have been informed about it as I only e-mailed a small number of people. I learned a bunch of things by promoting the program, and one of them was particularly interesting to me.
After sending out the initial solicitation and getting some sign-ups for the program, I sent an additional e-mail asking the people who didn’t sign up why they hadn’t signed up. I was curious to determine whether the issue was price, time, schedule, etc.
Individuals listed a variety of reasons for not signing up. One of the explanations that was mentioned a number of times was that “the information is available for free on the Internet.” These attorneys felt that they could save the fee I charged for the webinar by digging around on Google and pulling together the information themselves.
What’s the Best Use of Your Time?
I’m here to argue that “it’s on the Internet” is a dumb way to make a decision about education.
EVERYTHING is on the Internet. It’s all out there. There are no secrets. You don’t need anyone to teach you anything.
- You can find it on Wikipedia
- You can find it demonstrated on YouTube
- You can find it discussed on blogs.
- You can find it analyzed on podcasts.
- You can probably find it illustrated in cartoon form and available for purchase on a tee shirt.
“It’s on the Internet” isn’t a good reason not to buy education on a topic of importance to you and your practice.
Why? Because you’ll save yourself time and make yourself money if you let someone else find it, organize it, package it, and present it for you.
You’ve got work to do, clients to bill, and networking that isn’t getting done. You’ve got activities that are far more valuable to you than doing your own research on an unfamiliar topic and then sorting through the available resources to figure out what you should do and how you should do it.
Yes, you can find it on the Internet. You can also pick up your own take-out lunch and courier documents back and forth. You should do all those things if you have nothing more valuable to do.
However, if you have clients who will pay for your time at a rate that exceeds what you pay the lunch delivery person, the courier, or the Internet researcher, then you should do the work and pay someone else to do the less valuable work for you.
Let it go. Don’t worry that you could find it on the Internet. It’s called leverage, and we get too few opportunities to put it to work in our practices. Leverage your time, and let others do the work they can do for you.
