Flipping the Script: Actively Hunt for Disconfirming Evidence

I’m Melissa Shanahan, and this is The Law Firm Owner Podcast Episode #308. 

Welcome to The Law Firm Owner Podcast, powered by Velocity Work, for owners who want to grow a firm that gives them the life they want. Get crystal clear on where you're going, take planning seriously, and honor your plan like a pro. This is the work that creates Velocity.

Hi everyone. Welcome to this week's episode. Can you believe it's May? I cannot. I am just floored that we are hitting month five of the year. That is just wild to me. But here we are.

I wanted to mention to you guys, you know, Episode #300, I shared that we are going to be doing video podcasting. We're very close to that being done. We had a video production specialist come to our space, help us think through the room, the setup, the lighting, the cameras, the lenses, the backdrop, all the things. And we have a good plan, so equipment is being ordered and the room is being transformed. And so pretty soon we'll be ready to actually record in our new studio in our workspace.

It'll be six years in August, of this podcast. Weekly episodes for six years. I am blown away by that. Now, I don't know about you all, but I'm ready for a fresh chapter of this podcast. And video is definitely a new chapter. It's a lot more than I thought, but I'm very supported by DFP, which is my production company. And so I have partners in it. They're helping me every step of the way, but it's no joke to really get this up and running and do it well. You know, I care about the sound, I care about the shots. I don't want it to be low quality. I don't like to watch low-quality things. I don't like to listen to low-quality things. I'll turn away from it. And I can imagine that many of the listeners are the same way. So it matters to me that the quality is high and making sure we have all of our ducks in a row so that's possible has been quite the journey.

The studio will be ready on May 9th. I think is the day that they're going to finish putting it all together. And then at some point, we need to look at our calendars and get some recording dates down. Then once that's done, I'll feel ready to have some guests be booked on the podcast. But this is definitely a new fresh journey, and I can tell that it's the direction I should be moving because it feels like it's stretching me in ways that is uncomfortable. And I haven't been uncomfortable in a while with my business or with decisions in the business. But there's a lot of responsibility that comes with video podcasting every week. I mean, there's a lot of responsibility that comes with audio podcasting every week, but we've nailed that.

Now, it's time to stretch further. And I am excited about this and about what it can open up for us in terms of opportunity to meet different guests and to have them, to sit across the table with them and have a conversation as often as I can. It's a lot to take on between booking the guests and making sure all the details are coordinated for them to actually come to our space. What does that look like? Are we going to batch them? Are we not going to batch them? Do I even have time? I've kind of made my bed with my calendar for the next couple of months. So I don't think there's a day I can truly batch, so we're going to have to figure that out. And it's just a whole new adventure, a whole new set of logistics, and such a great opportunity for us to grow and expand our capacity for handling all kinds of different things inside of Velocity Work.

Now, I will say, I mentioned grow. I mean us, like us grow our capacity, stretch ourselves, stretch our skill sets, all of that. In terms of growth, this is the long game. Any kind of podcast is the long game. I have zero expectations of a bump in growth this year or, you know, I think we grow pretty well organically anyway, and just through the audience and the listenership. I'm really grateful for that. The goal of this is not to experience a quick bump. The goal of this is to take what we do well here, which is the handling this podcast and getting it put out regularly, and making great content that people can actually sink their teeth into and do something with. And just take that to the next level. We pride ourselves on this, and so it's time for us to level up, and everybody wins when we do that.

So I have butterflies about this for sure, but it's going to be great. So keep your eyes open and your ears open on the podcast for announcements on when it's actually going to begin, where to find us. We'll share all the details.

All right. With that, let's get into today's episode. Today, I am going to be talking about how important it is to actively hunt for disconfirming evidence for the way that you see things when it's not serving you. I'll give some specific examples, but today is all about flipping the script so that you can get unstuck in ways that you currently are.

You don't have to hold yourself back with certain opportunities. I mean, running a firm, it requires more than just what you're doing in terms of legal work. It demands strong self-awareness, goes a long way, and a sharp grasp of psychology. The way that you think, your biases, your motivation, it shapes every decision that you make for this firm. And having self-awareness around some of that is really important, even if you don't know what to do about it. Awareness is very important so that you can see, oh, wait a minute. I am not thinking about this correctly. Or I am going about this wrong. I don't know the right way, but there is a better way to do this.

And so today we're going to talk about how important it is to have that self-awareness. And when you do have self-awareness around certain instances where you're feeling pretty frustrated or negative about something you're facing, learning how to flip the script and don't just do it by affirmations or positive thinking. Sure, those have their place. But it's more about actively hunting for evidence that proves you wrong. And then you can decide what to do once you've hunted it down. It doesn't mean just by going out and hunting it, you have to do what it is that you find. You don't have to abide by the evidence that you're digging up. It just means you're getting a full picture and not just the side of things that your brain is serving up to you.

What this really boils down to is that your brain clings to evidence that confirms your frustrations unless you train it to hunt for proof that you're wrong. Where I probably hear this the most is around hiring. When it's time to hire, they have stories and they will just keep confirming them true. They have stories of how it's just a terrible market out there. There's no one great to be hired. This is the wrong time. That's the way it is in my city. It's so negative. There's no upside to taking that stance. But that's normal. There's nothing wrong with you if you tend to take that stance, whether it's around hiring or something different. There's nothing wrong with you. It's just the way your brain works, and you have to learn how to train your brain to open up to other perspectives so that then you feel like you have a choice and you're not just locked into this story or this narrative that your brain is serving up.

Our brains love to say, “Yeah, but.” And I hear this all the time, whether it's in a retreat, a private client retreat, whether it's on a group call. You'll hear them have a straight-up complaint. It's a problem for them, an issue that they are discussing, they're bringing to the table. And when you offer a different perspective to look at it, it's like they listen. You can see their eyes change. There's a look that people will have. It's almost like a focus with their eyes as I'm talking through and sharing sort of a different way to look at it. They will be focusing on it. And then there's a second that there's a pause and they'll say, “yeah, but…” and then they'll go off into why it won't work for them.

Now, I'm not saying that what I am suggesting is the perfect solution. But it's less about saying, oh, Melissa, that's the perfect idea. It's more about more what I'm looking for and more what would be healthier for you all as just when you're thinking of yourselves and running this firm, what would be healthier is if you say, huh, I'm going to look more into that. That's an appropriate response to someone who's trying to give you another perspective other than your crappy one.

So it's almost like you've fallen into a trance to believe what your brain has told you because there's been a couple things that have happened and it makes your brain believe it, which we're going to get into in a minute. But that's what's got to change. So I'm hoping that there's some education in this episode that will help those moments for your brain to have less of a grip on how you decide to operate.

So our brains, let's get back to this. They love the “yeah, but” stories. And there's two reasons why it's so easy for your brain to go down that path. “Yeah, but,” you know, when you hear an idea that could be a solution, it could be something to look into.

One is confirmation bias. That is the tendency to either notice or search or scan or give extra weight to info that confirms what you already believe. And when you're doing that, here's the other part. It's not just that. It's also confirming what you already believe while dismissing contradictory data. And that's what I was just telling you about with the eyes. I can see what the brain is doing because of how the eyes are moving. I understand what's happening there. And that's just confirmation bias. It's so easy for your brain. And remember, your brain will always take the path of least resistance. Confirmation bias is one of the byproducts of taking the path of least resistance. So you can learn more about that if you want to. I know you all know what confirmation bias is, but sometimes we don't take it seriously enough. We don't actually examine if that's what's happening for us.

The second thing that lends itself to our brains being really good at saying “yeah, but” is negative convenience. What I mean by that is you're believing an external limitation. The market is awful. The clients won't pay that. It absolves you of the discomfort of change or of just experimentation. But basically, it absolves you of any action. It's like an excuse just to sit still and not try these new things because it's very convenient. It's again, the path of least resistance to just stay put. Stay safe. It's actually maybe a little less painful to complain about your situation or to have that negative perspective instead of doing what it takes to get outside of that and to show yourself that what you're believing does not have to be true.

I remember Jerry Seinfeld saying in an interview, which I thought was awesome. It was an interview with Tim Ferriss, and he was talking about making your brain do hard things. And what he said was, your mind is a stupid little dog that has to be trained. And there is more to it, but that was part of what he was saying. I thought, oh my gosh, that's so true. It is the way that our brain works. Our brain just spins in circles until we yank it out of that. And that's not easy. It really does require that you use a part of your brain, the executive functioning part of your brain to snap out of default mode with our brain.

When I'm thinking of circular and just looping, there are times where I'll be working with someone. This again, this happens all the time. It happens with me too, where your brain will ask questions. They're kind of vague questions, like, well, what if that happens? Or what if she quits? Or it's like your brain has these warnings in the form of questions, but we don't ever stop to answer the questions. So it's a loop. It's this worry loop that happens, or anxiety loop that happens. And if we actually stop to answer the questions, what happens if she quits? Like if that's a worry and it's looping in your brain, and you're never answering it. It's just looping. You can see why that's anxiety-producing.

But if you stop, you stop and you, like for me, I pick up a pen and paper and I write down my answers to the questions. And you realize, well, okay, if she quit, I would immediately delegate these things. I would put pause on these things. I would put an ad out right away. You know what you would do if they quit. It's not the end of the world. But somehow your brain just loops and loops on things that are unhelpful. It could be something that you're frustrated by, it could be something that you're worried about, it could be anything. Anything that's unhelpful and keeping you in this small space when really, as an owner, it's your job to keep expanding, keep stepping forward, keep saying yes to the right things.

Don't play small. That's not the way that's not what we're meant to do here. And so if you find yourself doing that, maybe you can lighten it up a little bit by just saying my mind is just a stupid little dog that has to be trained. And that's that it makes me laugh because it does feel so ridiculous that your brain just loops and loops and loops, and it's causing problems. And we just don't ever answer the questions that it gives. The questions that are creating this fear, worry, doubt, shame, whatever the negative emotion might be. We don't stop to answer it. So the state that we're in and the way that we're thinking is just perpetuated.

Okay, let's talk about some common narratives, limiting narratives. The first one we're going to use is the one I mentioned earlier: There's no good people to hire. Usually, in my experience, the evidence that people have for this is either one failed attempt at getting a new hire. One failed Indeed ad, for example, or LinkedIn ad. And also, maybe some Facebook group chatter. You know, people who are talking about how hard it is right now, and you're seeing that conversation happen. That's what I notice. It's little things like that, and people just come to the conclusion there's no good people to hire. And that is ridiculous. Every time I try to help people see, oh my gosh, you are totally cutting yourself off at the knees with this way of thinking. Yes, there are people out there.

And the truth is, like this is the insight, if you can go out into the world and find evidence that you are wrong about that, you will find it. You will find it all over the place if you're looking for it. What you'll likely find is that the talent exists. It is your funnel, your hiring funnel, that's broken. But people don't look out in the world. They don't hunt for evidence that would confirm the opposite of what they believe to be true.

Before I get into the other examples that I have listed here, I will say there is a payoff for people who do challenge their default beliefs or the beliefs that they currently have. When you seek out diverse perspectives, often disconfirming perspectives, you will choose the better option. And you'll get better results. But when you stay in your own paradigm and your own way of thinking about it without seeking out other perspectives on purpose, trying to prove yourself wrong, there's no downside to that. And it's so funny that we all have a hard time doing that, but it's the way to go because then you have the full array of options in front of you in terms of how you're going to think about this and the modes of action that could lead to better results. But when you're just stuck in your own paradigm, you don't see any of this.

Okay, let's talk about another one: Clients won't pay higher fees. This is an opinion, not a fact, almost all of the time when I'm talking to people. And you can hang on to your opinion. I do not care. I'm very detached from what you decide. But this could have been just because there's one single potential client that balked at your price. Maybe there were two. But that doesn't mean that clients won't pay higher fees. In many instances, that's an overgeneralization.

Now, you may decide not to raise your fees. So I'm not saying that you have to do that. But what you could do is go seek out and talk to other people who have raised their fees. What did it look like? What was their market like? Really dig in. How did they make it work? What kind of rollout could they do to make it so that it's not so big of a jump right away? Like, there's ways to do this, right? And if it would make a big difference in the health of your firm, if you would raise your fees, you need to get out of your own way.

You need to try to find evidence to disprove the way that you're currently thinking so that you can make a decision from a more objective place and not from being couched in this paradigm. Price resistance from some does not mean that you have hit a ceiling in your market. So just make sure that you go seek out on purpose the opposite opinions to hear what they have to say and to hear their experiences.

Okay, another common one: Remote staff aren't accountable. I hear this. And it's so funny because some of my most successful clients that we work with, they have remote staff and they are accountable. So you in your world, if this is something that you think, that is because you are in your world, and that's the way that you think. And maybe it's been confirmed by others who think that. But have you ever tried to go talk to the people that it works beautifully for? Where remote staff, they are accountable? What you'll probably learn by going out and seeking evidence that will disprove the way that you're currently thinking or disconfirm the way that you're thinking is that systems win over geography. It's less about where people are and it's more about the systems.

Now, listen, I totally understand wanting to have someone in person. And if you just prefer to have someone in person, that's fine. But don't say that remote staff aren't accountable. That is not taking responsibility at all for the fact that accountability isn't existing in your firm. Systems win over geography. So that perspective is something for you to explore. And even when you explore it, doesn't mean you have to decide to hire remote staff.

But you might because of what you learn through the people you've talked to who had a lot of success. I would rather talk to people who've had success with things and learn about that than people who haven't had success with things. Because both are important, but the people who have had success, they overcame something that someone else did not. What is that? How did that go for them? What did they learn? Why is it working? That is worth being curious about.

Another one closely related to this is overseas VAs shouldn't be trusted or can't be trusted. It's so funny talking to certain people, and it's just again, I don't have any judgment on it. It's a default way of thinking. They have this opinion or perspective about hiring overseas VAs, and that somehow, you know, they shouldn't give them access to sensitive information of any kind. And you know, with this, this is a really easy example to see that's your brain just looping. Just thinking something over and over and over without checking. And probably in many instances, finding evidence to prove yourself right. But if you seek out the people who've had great success and there's a lot of freedom in their firms because of their teams that are overseas, you will see a different side, hear a different side, hear different perspectives, and that will allow you to make a decision from a much stronger place.

Okay, now let's talk through some steps that you can use to disconfirm evidence. Okay, the first is to get it out of your head and onto paper. So what is the current narrative that's not serving you? And you want to write this exactly as it pops into your head. There's no good talent out there. Just the statement that's in your mind, the sentence that's in your mind, that you could find lots of evidence for. In your mind, that's true anyway. When you write down the statements, it makes it visible, and so then you can work with it. Then you can test it. When it lives in your head, you don't get that opportunity. It's a lot harder to do that. So you get it out of your head and onto paper.

Then, next to it, you're going to list all the proof that you have that this is true. So, a few ideas. You can label it opinion or evidence. So I want you to, in your statement, circle the words that are just opinions in disguise, you know, always, never, nobody, everybody, impossible. Like that's not facts. So circle the words that are opinions so they stand out to you, and it helps you realize this isn't based on much. This is an opinion. Then the next thing is to get really specific. Force yourself to get specific. So, look at what you wrote and for every circled claim, list the actual names, dates, metrics, documents that back up what you circled.

The next thing to do with this, this is part of listing your proof, is to run the Everybody Nobody test. So if you can name only one or two examples that led you to believe the way you believed, you are likely in the grip of availability heuristic. This is a term I learned from Martha Beck, who's a double PhD from Harvard. She's has a life coach certification training I took way back in 2008, and she talked about this.

Availability heuristic is judging frequency by what's easy to recall and making a hasty generalization and it's from a tiny sample. So the availability heuristic is it's on the surface for your brain. It's the things that come first in your brain. And so it's available. It's readily available in your brain more so than some other possibilities or examples or proof. And so it just runs with it and it just assumes everybody or nobody or it always happens or it never happens.

There's usually extreme language when there's really just a couple of examples that you have. Nobody's going to pay those rates. Why do you think nobody will? And if you think of a couple of examples, what your brain is doing is making a hasty generalization from a very tiny sample set. So, and this is just what happens. This is what our brains do. But you got to start to be onto yourself with this stuff because if you don't, you'll hold yourself back and you'll keep yourself locked in these mental paradigms that cap you from what is really possible for you and your firm.

All right, all right. So, you've gotten it out of your head and onto paper. Then you're going to work with it. You're going to circle the words that are not facts. It's actually opinions. It's just disguising themselves as a fact. And then you're going to make yourself get really specific. What do you have to back that up? What people? What dates? What metrics? What documents, etc.? And then you're going to run the Everybody Nobody test so that you can see if you're making generalizations, over-generalizations.

And then once you've done with that, your next step is to collect contrary data deliberately, right? So there's a few ways to do this. One is peer sampling. You can go out and ask people for an experience that's on the other side than what you have known to be true so far. So ask three owners, you know, outside of your bubble for real world experiences when they've had success with X that you don't believe you can have success with.

You know, I'm thinking even your geographical area. If you're trying to hire someone and you feel like in your market, there's just no good talent, then go out into the Facebook groups and to other business owners and say, “Hey, in the Denver area,” I'm using my city as an example. “In the Denver area, who here has had wild success with hiring? I want to know about your experience.” And you will see people come out of the woodwork.

Normally, I will tell you this, in Facebook groups or other groups that you're a part of, or any communities that you're a part of, you will see more of the time what's not working in those groups versus what is. Because for people that stuff is working for, they don't need to go be posting in a Facebook group. For people that they're miserable and they're having trouble with something, then you'll see them post because they're soliciting help. Now, you are looking for people who've had success with the thing that you are not currently believing is possible. So you have to call on those people. You have to draw them out of their lives when they're successful lives and their successful experiences to offer up and to raise their hand to say, “Oh, I'm one. I've had amazing hiring experience.” And you could say, “Great, I'd love to have coffee with you.” And then do that with three, four, five different people, you will change your mind about your situation. That alone will change your mind.

Now, the other thing you can do is run really small experiments. So instead of committing to the long game with raising your fees, for example, or going about hiring a certain way, test it out. So run an experiment, raise the consult fee on five calls, for example, and just see what happens. Tiny experiments will help to prove to you a different belief set than you currently hold for that thing that you're dealing with.

And then the other is to pull data. Whatever data would help you really see facts, not feelings. And I will tell you, the work that we do with people, this is one of my favorite parts of getting to work with law firm owners is because, you know, you all are busy and you're not always as on top of your data as you want to be when some of you are on top of your data, but not with every piece, and you don't look through the same lens as what I might look through, right? So when people come and they think that they don't have the ability financially to do something or actually, the flip side happens too. They think that they have more cushion than what they have to make that hire, and you know, when you start pulling data, the data tells a story. The data helps you make decisions based on facts, not just feelings. And having data for yourself within the thing that you are having trouble believing something that might be helpful to you, pulling data can be useful.

So I don't know what that looks like for you and for your situation, but it's worth it to have a look at metrics and numbers around the topic that you're dealing with. And using AI for this can be super helpful. So ask AI for data on certain things that you are curious about and that you are trying to collect deliberately contrary data to what you currently believe and see what it produces and ask it for sources as well.

Okay, so once you've done that work, then you can decide whether to keep or kill the story that you're currently telling yourself or that you have been telling yourself. But I'm telling you, most people that actually would go through some form of what I've just talked about here, they don't stay stuck in their story. They have seen the light. They have talked to people who've had success. They've gained some new insights, some new perspectives, some new evidence, some new proof that, oh, I just need to tweak what I'm doing. I need to try this instead of this. Like your whole world will open up to how to help yourself here and not just stay stuck on this narrative that has been existing in your mind.

So whether this is around your current team or a team member, whether this is around what's possible for your firm and pricing and clients, whether it's about hiring, whether it's about whether you can afford an investment for your firm, all of it. If there's something that feels like it's locking you in or you feel at the effect of, you should absolutely check yourself. You should go collect disconfirming evidence and see what then you want your perspective to be. This puts you much more in the driver's seat of your experience, of your firm, and of your life.

So to summarize everything. Here's what I would do. Do an audit this week. Just take 15 minutes, or you can catch yourself as you go. Write down the loudest negative story you have this week. Then you can complete the first couple steps of the framework that I shared, which was to get it out of your head and onto paper. And then to write down all the proof you have. Then it's time to go out into the world and actually collect evidence contrary to what you currently believe. And that could be through entrepreneur groups, law firm owner groups, communities, anywhere, anywhere you want to put it out. It could be on Reddit for God's sake. But cast a wide net and ask people for their experiences of wild success with it.

Now, you may have people also pipe up in that thread, “Yeah, I can't wait to hear because I have had terrible experience with this,” or “I don't think that's possible.” Just ignore those people. They are also in a paradigm that you are stuck in. You don't need to mingle with those people. You need to just hear what the people who have had wild success have to say. Ask them questions. Try to tell them why you're thinking the way you're thinking, and then they'll tell you how they think about it instead. But reach out, talk to people who've had success or have had the opposite experience of you.

And/or run little experiments because that can provide proof to you that, oh, maybe I'm not right about this where you're not deciding to forever change your fees or you're just going to do it for a little bit or you're going to try a different way to recruit, you know, for 14 days and just see what comes of that. You know, just try experiments so that you can start to get new data. But always remembering that data that you get, one experiment should not inform how you think about this narrative for the future. You need bigger data sets. You need to see what works, what doesn't work, and not just fall flat when something doesn't work.

As we round this episode out, our core creed is aim, plan, honor. Know what you're aiming for, make a well-thought-out plan to get there, and honor your plan. You can't honor a plan built on half-truth assumptions. So I'm hoping that by doing this episode, it'll shine a light on where you might be doing this to yourself. So many people do this to yourself. If you're thinking right now, I don't do that with anything, you're probably wrong. That's it's human and normal to have these narratives and stories where our brain just gets to take the path of least resistance. It keeps us from having to exert a bunch of energy to try something new, to experiment with things. So with this episode, my intent is to hand you a mental flashlight. Expose the flimsy narratives and illuminate better options for you, and keep your firm moving on data, instead of this mental drama that exists.

The bottom line is because this is just part of being human. This is what's going to happen for us. Leaders who and owners who deliberately challenge their own beliefs make sharper decisions. They create healthier cultures. They enjoy more freedom. So if you want a firm and a life that thrives instead of one that just gets by and stays small and hits plateaus and feels like you're doggy paddling on the deep end, then you need to develop the skill because we all bump up against our own limiting stories that we tell ourselves and it's just so unnecessary.

So if hopefully this episode does help you shine a light on where you need to go out into the world and get contradictory evidence to what you currently believe, so that you can have your next breakthrough for yourself. And the truth is that breakthrough is hiding inside the fact that you're most afraid to find. So go hunt it down and then watch your firm expand. Watch things get easier.

All right everybody, have a wonderful week. I'll see you here next Tuesday.

Hey, you may not know this, but there's a free guide for a process I teach called Monday Map Friday Wrap. If you go to velocitywork.com, it's all yours. It's about how to plan your time and honor your plans so that week over week, more work that moves the needle is getting done in less time. Go to velocitywork.com to get your free copy.

Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Owner Podcast. If you're ready to get clearer on your vision, data, and mindset, then head over to VelocityWork.com where you can plug in to quarterly Strategic Planning, with accountability and coaching in between. This is the work that creates Velocity.