Archives for May 2026

Being Just a Little Bit Better

Posted on: May 20, 2026, in:

Nobody wakes up and decides to be mediocre. But most people in business, whether they’re fresh out of school or twenty years into their career, settle into a comfortable groove and stop pushing. They meet the minimum. They do what’s asked. They clock in and clock out. And that’s fine, until it isn’t — until someone else who does just a little bit more starts getting the calls, the referrals, and the opportunities.

Avoid this happening to you by being slightly, consistently better than the version of yourself from yesterday. Start with something as simple as showing up early. Even ten or fifteen minutes changes everything. It gives you time to prepare, to settle in, to think before the day starts thinking for you. Over time, the value you realize from something that costs you almost nothing becomes invaluable. That same principle extends to everything you touch such as returning the call a little faster or sending the follow-up a little sooner. It signals something important about who you are.

What separates good professionals from great ones isn’t brilliance, it’s anticipation. When a client or a colleague tells you something, the average person responds to what was said. The exceptional person is already thinking about what comes next. If you can answer a question before it’s asked, you’ve changed the entire dynamic of the relationship. You become the person people trust, not just the person they hire. That kind of thinking isn’t magic but a habit you build, one interaction at a time, by staying one step ahead rather than one step behind.

The best part is that none of this requires perfection. Instead, the goal is consistent, incremental effort. It’s the attorney who follows up every single time, not just when it’s easy. It’s the professional who never coasts, even when nobody’s watching. Because the reality is that people are always watching, and more than you think. Do a little more, a little more often, and over time the compound interest on that effort will pay off in ways that are hard to predict and impossible to fake.

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AI is a Savior and a Devil at the Same Time

Posted on: May 13, 2026, in:

AI is extraordinary. As I wrote not long ago, professionals who refuse to integrate these tools are already falling behind. AI compresses hours of research into minutes, drafts documents that used to take half a day, and surfaces insights that would otherwise stay buried. For lawyers, business owners, and entrepreneurs alike, the efficiency gains are transformational. If you are using AI thoughtfully in your practice or business, you already know this. If you aren’t, the people competing against you do.

But the part that doesn’t get enough airtime, and which should terrify you a little is that when you type something into a public AI tool it’s like speaking in a town square. Most public large language models are trained on user inputs, stored on third-party servers, and subject to the privacy policies of companies whose interests are not the same as yours. That means the confidential business strategy you just asked AI to refine, the financial details you fed it for analysis, or the sensitive personnel matter you described — all of that may no longer be exclusively yours. Confidentiality is not a feature of public AI. It is, at best, an illusion.

For anyone in the legal world, the stakes get sharper still. Attorney-client privilege keeps communications between lawyers and clients out of the hands of adversaries. But that privilege can be waived when confidential information is voluntarily disclosed to a third party, and feeding privileged communications or attorney work product into a public AI platform does exactly that. It is not a theoretical risk. Courts are grappling with these questions, and the law is now working to catch up with the technology.

Beyond privilege, understand that your queries and the AI’s responses may themselves be discoverable in litigation. What you asked, how you framed it, and what the AI told you could end up in front of a judge or opposing counsel. Think about that the next time you’re tempted to paste a draft demand letter into a public chatbot for a quick polish.

None of this means abandon the tool — that would be the wrong lesson entirely. It means use it with the same discipline and judgment you bring to every other aspect of your professional life. Use AI platforms built for enterprise use with genuine data protection and confidentiality commitments. Keep privileged communications and sensitive client information out of any public model.

Understand that the output AI gives you is a starting point, not a finished product, and that your professional judgment — the thing no model can replicate — is what stands behind your work. AI is a powerful amplifier, and like every amplifier, it makes the good stuff better and the mistakes louder. The professionals who thrive with this technology will be the ones who embrace it with open eyes, not the ones who either ignore it entirely or hand it the keys without thinking twice.

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Say What You Mean: Don’t Presume Anyone Knows Your Intention

Posted on: May 07, 2026, in:

Never assume the person you’re speaking with already understands what you want from the conversation or relationship. Dropping a hint or sending a vague email is indirect and unlikely to help you get what you’re looking for. You need to understand that nobody is inside your head. The colleague you casually mentioned a referral opportunity to is not sitting at home thinking about how to help you. If you did not say clearly what you wanted, needed, or were offering, you might as well have said nothing at all.

This plays out constantly in business development and networking, two areas where professionals are most prone to being indirect. There is a fear of appearing too eager, too transactional, or too forward, so people dance around the point. Don’t be the person who has coffee with a contact and spends an hour talking generalities but never asks for the introduction you actually came for. Directness is not aggression — it is respect. It respects the other person’s time, it respects the relationship, and it gives the conversation a chance to be useful. Know that ambiguity is where opportunity goes to die.

These principles apply to every business context. When you make an ask, make it specific. When you set an expectation, name it. When you are interested in working with someone, say so directly. Professionals who master this are not perceived as pushy — they are perceived as someone who knows what they are doing, which is exactly the impression you want to leave.

The good news is that being direct is a skill you can build, and the returns on it are immediate. Start by getting clear in your own mind about what you actually want from any given interaction before you walk into the room. Then say it, plainly and without excessive hedging. People respond well to clarity. It cuts through the noise, it builds trust faster than almost anything else, and it dramatically increases the odds that the other person may actually help you — because they know what you need. You can’t presume they know. You have to tell them.

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