Jay Fleischman of Legal Practice Pro is starting to remind me of Garrett Morris’ SNL character Chico Escuela – he’s being “berry berry good to me.”

Following up on July 13th’s “4 Outlook Hacks to De-Stress Your Law Practice” guest post, there’s another one coming down the pike: “4 Microsoft Word Tricks to Make Legal Work Easier.”  One of the tricks, making a Word template, is the subject of a recent tutorial on one of my other blogs, LegalOfficeGuru.com.

Thanks again, Jay!

(And if you’re a lawyer looking for some fresh ideas on how to market your law practice, head over to his Practice Pro Shop to learn about optimizing your firm’s website for search engines or starting a legal blog.  He’s got a special limited-time deal on membership in the Legal Practice Pro Community you’ll want to check out before July 31st, too.)

I put my LegalOfficeGuru.com hat on this week for a guest post at Jay Fleischman’s LegalPracticePro website.  His audience is made up of lawyers working either as sole practitioners or in small firms.  Jay’s blog provides resources to help these folks run and market their practices better.  And my post will (I hope) make managing email a little less frustrating for his readers.

Hat tip to Jay for being a cool blog host!  You can visit him on his blog at legalpracticepro.com and follow him on Twitter at @JayFleischman.

I’m one of these people who loves those little personality quizzes.  I found a new one to take: the True Colors test.

And the results were pretty predictable (to me, anyway):

Color Lingo Communication Quiz

GREEN The GREEN Approach – OBJECTIVE & STRATEGIC When communicating, Greens tend to think before they speak. They like to analyze what they have just heard, explore the many ways they could respond and choose the reply that most accurately and pertinently expresses their thoughts on the matter. Their goal is to obtain information so they can figure out, fix, improve, or invent something as a result. To learn more about the GREEN communication style go to: http://www.tinyurl.com/GreenStyle Have fun!

Fun quizzes, surveys & blog quizzes by

So I was sitting in a sushi place downtown one day, eating my usual Sesame Chicken with Tempura Vegetables, reading my USA Today, minding my own business.

And this caught my eye in the Money section:

Is Time Really Money? For These Millionaires, Yes.

And the more I read, the more intrigued I was.  So much so that I could hardly wait to get back to a computer and start a blog post.

Courtesy of Sylvia Browder, it’s now online.  Enjoy.

I’m a big fan of geeky “applied science” books.  You know the ones – Malcolm Gladwell, et al. – where they intersect some cultural or other phenomenon with scientific research for an “aha!” moment.

One of my long-term favorites is Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence. And when the incident I talk about in this guest post happened, his explanation of how Broca’s Area in the brain functions to ration our capacity for attention came immediately to mind.

A big thanks to my friend Sylvia Browder for allowing me to riff on this idea in her sandbox.

I encourage you to go to thirdtribemarketing.com and take a one-month test drive.  (I hate that you can’t get in at the discounted price of $27 a month I got, but, hey, better late than never, right?)

The forums are actually pretty cool – lots of people sharing resources for what works online: video delivery, blog plug-ins, etc.  It’s worth the money just for that, IMHO.

(Not a paid solicitation or affiliate relationship – just sharing something I think is cool.)

Update: The price went up again as of 6/1/2010, but there’s some confusion about it. Just for clarification, it’s $97 for the first month only – after that, it’s $47 per month.  Considering that there are over a dozen pre-recorded seminars plus a bunch of recorded Q&A calls available for immediate download, $97 for that alone is a steal.  But I like the forums best – you meet some great people who can help you out a lot.

Friend and colleague Sylvia Browder, the superwoman (Business Coach! SCORE Counselor! Mom to Five Kids!) who’s Project Director at the Women’s Business Center, Inc., has graciously added me as a Contributor on her blog (http://sylviabrowder.wordpress.com). Once my post goes live, check the comments below for a trackback.

If you own a small business (whether you’re a woman or not), you owe it to yourself to visit her blog regularly or, even better, add her RSS feed to your RSS reader (I use Google Reader) and get a steady stream of great advice from someone who knows her stuff.

(Oh, and I’m just going to say it out loud. I covet her house. Truly. Two words: Gaw. Jus.)

Update: Here’s a link to the post: http://sylviabrowder.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/tapping-the-power-of-story-in-your-marketing/

If a day goes by without me seeing someone misuse “it’s” for “its,” it’s [it is] a good day.

I know, I know, it’s [it is] not logical — every other possessive noun/pronoun has an apostrophe-s on the end.

But English isn’t a logical language.  The rules are specifically formulated to drive you completely freakin’ insane.  Do not let it.  Show English who’s boss.

The contraction “it’s” is short for “it is.” The word “its” is the possessive form of the pronoun “it.”

Got it? Thank you. You can go back to work now.

Once you have this mastered, you can work on these other 27.  That should keep you busy for a while.

… then you should:

http://www.problogger.net

I personally could spend an entire week’s vacation trolling through the archives of this site.  (Yes, my life is, in fact, that sad.)

Great information about becoming a professional blogger (NOT the “make $5,000 your first day on the Internet!” kind), updated constantly, and supplemented by an awesome book (for those who insist on the low-tech coffee house experience).

Yes, it’s an affiliate link. Hey, a girl’s gotta make a living.