What do You REALLY Want?

Welcome to LegalBiz Cafe! Digitally remastered with AI, in this podcast series, Attorney Shaune B. Arnold gives to frustrated professionals like YOU the tools and resources you need to make the LEAP to entrepreneurship so you can start, build or fix a business you will absolutely LOVE. 

 In this soul-stirring episode, Shaune challenges you to ask the ultimate question: What do you really want? Through personal stories of discovery, passion, and grit, she inspires entrepreneurs to align purpose with profession—and to rise like champions, no matter the canvas they’re knocked onto. 

Transcript

Hello everyone! And welcome to this week's episode of legal biz cafe. I am your host, attorney Shaune B Arnold, and boy, you know, I'm going to get right into it tonight.

You have heard me say, I'm reminding you to maximize your competence, to get the confidence you need to really succeed in your life. So, what does that mean?

Well, I want you to ask yourself the following question this evening, …What do you want? Seriously, ask yourself, what do you really want for your personal and professional lives?

Now, this is a business show, and so I'm talking to you as an entrepreneur, one entrepreneur to another, but you know our business choices have ramifications across our personal lives. Let that soak in and ask yourself again, what do you really want?

You know, we often ask, what's the meaning of life? Why are we here? Why are we going through all of this? What is this nonsense about? Why are we fighting so hard? What is the meaning of life?

But, there's another, more important, question, and that is, what is the meaning of YOUR life? What is the meaning of your life as a professional?

I remember when I first discovered that I wanted to be a transaction attorney. You know, I had already finished law school. I went to law school in San Francisco at Hastings Law School, and I loved it. 

I absolutely discovered law school by accident, literally on challenge of a stranger. I went to a party, and everyone there was from my hometown when I was a kid, and they pulled out a yearbook of the high school I would have gone to, except that I left at the end of the sixth grade. I looked through the year book. I was the only one who left. Everyone else from my sixth grade class was in the book (except the one kid that had gotten on drugs and didn’t graduate). Being an Air Force brat, I had traveled through my entire childhood, and these folks all stayed in the same place.

So, it was kind of magical to me to see this year book and see all of those faces that I remembered from elementary school still together at the end of high school. I had moved through so many different iterations of life and existence between the sixth grade and that summer after my first year at UCLA. It was magical to be at that party that night, and to see that book.

Those folks said to me, You know, you should be an attorney. I took that evening to heart. I took the LSAT, and I did really well. I applied to five of the best law schools in the country …that were located in warm climes …and I got into three of them. I couldn't believe it.

So, I went to law school. What else was I going to do? I went to UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. They have since changed the name of the school to University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. I didn’t go there. I went to Hastings.

When I was a kid, traveling all the time, I always went to the library first when I went to a new city, and I always chose a novel, and I always chose a novel based in San Francisco. And so it was again, magical to me that I should choose San Francisco for law school and that I should attend Hastings Again, I loved it. Getting out was tough. And getting back to Los Angeles, which is really my home, was even tougher.

I took two jobs. I was working a daytime job, and then in the evening, I took a job at a company that was a printing house for prospectuses, and this was back in the day when before desktop publishing was really huge. My job was to take care of the attorneys that came in to do the private placements and the public offerings, most specifically they did all the prospectuses and the 10Ks and the annual reports and all the sexy documents that go to the SEC and ensure shareholders and would be shareholders, that it's a safe investment.

And seeing this for the first time, my goodness, watching those attorneys coming in wearing their $5,000 suits and sitting around a $100,000 green marble table and pounding the heck out of a document all night long. That night, I discovered transaction law. This is not the stuff of hour-long TV dramas; that’s courtroom madness. Business transactions are completely different.

I was a Hastings grad at this point, I had just taken the bar exam and was waiting for my results. I was working the second job to make the money to move back to Los Angeles. One evening, while as I was serving dinner, one of the attorneys said to me snidely and said, Aren't you embarrassed to be serving us?” I said, “Oh, my, No! Isn't that what we're all doing here? Serving?” She scoffed audibly. The table laughed at me.

The man sitting at the end of that long table spoke up, saying, “Yes. That’s exactly right. We’re all here to serve.” The woman spun in his direction and caught the censure in his eyes – for her being a JERK to me. He looked at her as if to say, “Say one more word and I’ll throw your ass right out of this room.” She looked down at the plate I had just served her and said nothing else. All of those that had snickered at me said thank you instead as I came around the table.

I never, never, never forgot that lesson. I was so thankful to see my future as a transaction attorney. It gave me goosebumps. I spoke to God. I said, Papa, that's it. That's absolutely it! That's what I want. That's what I am!!

Of course, God patted me gently on the head and said, “Oh, you like that, my daughter? That’s nice.” God chuckled because the whole affair was designed just for me to discover my calling.

That’s what I mean by the question, what do you want? After finding what I really, really wanted, I spent the next few years telling anybody and everybody who would listen that I was a transaction attorney. I repeated myself until I finally got a job where they not only listened, but they expected me to be a transaction attorney. I had been peeking over the fence and swallowing as much information as I could get along the way so that I was ready when the opportunity presented itself. It wasn't blind luck; preparation meets opportunity equals good luck, every time.

So, what do you want in your life? What do you want for your business? What do you want for yourself, your family and your community?

What is the meaning of your life? What is the purpose? What is the passion? What is that thing that keeps waking you up at 3 am? What is the thing that you want to do that you're afraid of doing; that thing that you would do for free? That thing that you probably do for free right now, but that you want somebody to pay you for.

You know, I'm reminded of when I was a teenager. My ambition wasn't crystallized at all into any particularized path to success. Many things caught my eye along the way. I remember, in particular, I was a foster kid in group homes. In one particular home, they took us to see a performance of Alvin Ailey’s Dance Theater.

We went to the Met on a Sunday afternoon, and sat 10, maybe 12 rows back, dead center. The lights went down. When they came back up with the curtain, I watched the most extraordinary performance. It was the single most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. The music, oh my goodness, the colors and the movement and the FREEDOM in the dance was just extraordinary. It was magnificent. It went right through me and all around me. It completely enveloped me and infused in me a passion for the dance that exists right to this very day.

I think it was the following week that I took my first dance lesson, and for the next 15 years, I danced as though my life depended on it. I guess in some small measure it did. The dance gave me a place to put all of the grief, anger and the sadness of losing and being challenged to gain in the same breath, even though I was just 15.

You could be finding yourself in a similar space at this juncture in your life. You could be having to ask yourself, what do you want, what do you …really …want?

I assume we agree quitting is not an option, right? Right…?? Why…?? Because I was born into the United States Air Force. I struggled just like you, and that's what I came up with. And that's what you have to come up with. You have to go to your core and wherever you came from that got you to where you are today.

I mean, you didn't get here being a wimp, right? You didn't get here being a screw up.

You did some things right? You did some things right. You've got heart. You've got the heart of a champion.

You want to bring more meaning and power to your life. I'm reminded of a question that Howard Cosell asked the ultimate champion, Muhammad Ali. He asked him, after Muhammad Ali lost a fight and he jumped up after hitting the canvas, Howard Cosell asked him, Why did you get up so fast? Most people stay and clear their head, take their time, figure it out, get some breath, gather their wits. Why did you get up so fast? Muhammad Ali answered him without pause. He looked Cosell in the eye, and said, “I looked around and I saw where I was, and I thought to myself, that canvas is no place for a champ.”

Indeed, it's no place for a champion. I invite you to hearken back to your belief in yourself. And if your belief does not match what you want, then you need to work on your beliefs, not what you want.

Work on your beliefs. Get those straight. Do what's right for you in your life, your business life and your personal life.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for joining me on this week’s episode of LegalBiz Café. I am you host, attorney Shaune B. Arnold. I invite you to hit me up on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter X. In all of those places, you’ll find me as Sean dot Arnold. In the meantime, I’m attorney Shaune Arnold, reminding you, as always, to MAXIMIZE your COMPETENCE, to get the CONFIDENCE YOU NEED to succeed.

I look forward to seeing you right back here next week, on LegalBiz Café. Bye-bye, friends!