Awaken the Giant: Reclaim Your Highest and Best Use

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. 

After a mind-bending weekend with marketing legend Jay Abraham, Shaune challenges you to rethink your identity as an entrepreneur. Are you undervaluing your brilliance? This episode reveals how passion and past experience can unlock business breakthroughs—and why your greatest value may be hidden in plain sight. 

Transcript

Welcome, my friends, …welcome to legal biz cafe. I am so excited to be with you today because I had a really mind blowing experience last weekend that I want to share with you. I have been a little constrained in my thinking and was not aware of it.

I want to talk to you about opening your mind and seeing business more expansively. That is what happened to me. I really did have a mind-blowing weekend.

Let me ask you, are you a worker bee? Would you consider yourself a salt of the earth type and a really hard worker kind of head down, elbows out. That is how I would describe myself. And I do consider that to be noble, especially for those that have a family.

I was born into the Air Force. I had a mom and dad, and a sister. We were all very hard working worker bees. My mother started working as soon as I started kindergarten, and my father was in the US Air Force.

So, that's what I saw when I was coming up. I saw them get up and go to work every single day. That's what I knew and understood life to be all about. That was the persona I took on in the first half of my working life. 

Now, I run my own business and take what I learned in 30 years of practicing law and 40 years of business consulting and applying it to business to help entrepreneurs successfully run their business. It was a very hard transition to make, from being an employee to being an employer. These are two completely different mindsets.

Let me ask you about being a worker bee. Does that make you happy? Are you fulfilled by it? Are you living your dream? It's just a question, but I think it's an important question that we all need to consider. You've heard me ask you before, what's your passion? And is your business your passion? If not, why not?

Why do I keep asking you this question over and over again? Well, my friend, it’s because I believe that your passion is your highest and best use. I learned this lesson in spades last weekend.

Dennis Diderot, who started the famous Alaskan sled dog race, once said that only passions, great passions, can move a man to do great things. I really discovered that last weekend. I also discovered my future this weekend.

What is your highest and best use? Are you operating in that capacity? If you have a job, are you operating in that capacity? If you have your own business, are you operating well in that capacity? If you're unemployed and you're looking to either start your own business or you're looking for a job, are you undercutting yourself? Are you low balling yourself, or are you looking to operate in your highest and best use? Let me tell you what I mean by that.

Last weekend, I attended a three day workshop that brought in a gentleman named Jay Abraham. Jay Abraham was described to me as a marketing genius, and he is indeed a marketing genius, but over time, he developed into much more than that. Jay Abraham developed into an arbitrage genius. Arbitrage. That's kind of a scary word, right? Let's, let's talk about that for a minute.

My understanding of arbitrage has always been the hostile takeover, where someone will come into a business and basically spin off resources into new businesses or sell assets and equipment, fire people, and consolidate jobs and departments so as to eliminate repetitive business.

Some of this is good because efficiencies are created. Some of this is bad because a number of people will lose their jobs as a result of the arbitrage. People will be hurting because of hostile takeover arbitrage situations. 

But what I learned from Jay was something that I already knew; that I can actually add value to a business and be in an arbitrage situation; I can help a business to find resources that they lack and be in an arbitrage situation. 

I had an opportunity to meet Jay Abraham and shied away. This is where I failed. I wasn't thinking about my highest and best use, my mergers and acquisitions background, my commercial and residential real estate development experience. I wasn't thinking about my energy practice, or the fact that I have had to take my passport to work on several occasions over the years, making me an international attorney. I wasn't thinking about my ability to open international offices on several continents, globally. I wasn't thinking about any of the things that I have done in the last 30 years of practicing law. I forgot all of these things. 

So, when I started having those conversations as a new entrepreneur, I began to undercut myself. I was not thinking about my highest and best use, or the value that I bring to the marketplace. That made starting my business enormously painful for me. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?

When you price your goods and services, and when you approach prospects, I encourage you to really consider everything that you are and everything that you know that you bring to the table. I encourage you to take a few steps back and really look at the marketplace and see how you can add value to the marketplace. THAT is your highest and best use. That is your path forward. That is your path to making the leap to entrepreneurship.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for joining me this week on legal biz cafe. I encourage you to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter X. In each of those places, my moniker is Shaune dot Arnold.

I'm attorney Shaune Arnold, reminding you to MAXIMIZE your COMPETENCE, to get the CONFIDENCE YOU NEED … to succeed. 

I'll see you right here next week, on LegalBiz Cafe. Bye-bye, friends!