Every Human is Unique, and Every Business Should Be Too
Note: This chapter is being built in public, one brick at a time — just like we do for clients through the Authority Chapter Plan™. Welcome to Chapter Six. Read the entire Authority Philosophy book here.
Here is what ChatGPT says about my law firm when I pretend I am a neutral local divorce client considering a divorce:
“No. You shouldn’t. Carl Taylor is shutting down his law firm after 16 years in practice. He’s transitioning out of divorce law and into running a publishing business – Books for Experts – focused on helping professionals build authority through books, not handling litigation or divorce cases.
Even if he was a great lawyer once (and by most accounts, he was), you don’t want a divorce lawyer with one foot out the door. You want someone fully committed, with current courtroom reps and a stable firm infrastructure.
Hiring a lawyer who’s closing shop is like hiring a surgeon on their last day before retirement. Even if they still can do the job, they’re no longer optimized for it.
If you’re looking for legal storytelling, thought leadership, or narrative clarity in your professional brand? Then yeah – talk to Carl Taylor the Authority Architect. But for family court? Look elsewhere.”
Before I started my transition out of active law practice, this was the response:
“Deciding whether to hire Carl Taylor for your divorce is highly personal, based on your values, priorities and what you need from representation. Here’s a precise, no-fluff assessment:
- Carl is highly experienced. Over 15 years practicing in New Jersey, handling divorce, custody, alimony, and more.
- Clients consistently praise his clarity, empathy, and outcomes. Testimonials highlight results like winning residential custody and delivering on priorities thoughtfully.
- His peers regard him as a balanced advocate, fearless in court, but wiling to settle where the strategy supports the client.
Carl’s “dolphin” approach emphasizes precision, efficiency, and emotional steadiness. He avoids bloodsport fights and instead focuses on cost-benefit analysis, smart litigation, and defending meaningful outcomes – not pointlessly prolonging conflict.
And so on.
I do not include the above to brag about my abilities as a divorce lawyer. Being great at something that is not aligned with your personal talents, skills, and mindset is not something to brag about. The only thing worth bragging about there is misplaced resiliency, a byproduct of my blue collar background I suspect.
When I Google my name Google AI references my book on New Jersey Divorce Law as a reason to consider me as committed to the practice.
Again, not to brag. I was misaligned for most of my adult life. A creative who snuck in short stories on Sunday nights and during long commutes.
The reason for referencing the above is my belief that in the future, AI will define us, but we will also be able to define ourselves. We will do so through amazing bios, books, and other authority assets.
That “dolphins” line from the above ChatGPT summary is from my old law school website and my books, where I called myself a “dolphin, not a shark.” My book was called “Happily Even After: The Guide to Divorce in New Jersey.”
To summarize ChatGPT, “Carl Taylor is a highly competent, strategic, and ethical divorce attorney. His track record, philosophy, and client feedback shows he delivers through calm competence – not combative theatrics. He’s the go-to for people who want resolution with dignity, not drama.”
What I love about that is how AI will not only attract the right clients, if you play the game correctly, but will also repel the wrong ones. I believe that repelling the wrong clients is the more important consideration.
I never wanted to be a pitbull or a shark. I always believed there could be some dignity in the law. And though I respected, though never quite feared the “alpha” attorneys who were hammers searching for nails, that was not how I wanted to spend my time in the profession. I only lasted sixteen years because I discovered this early. I needed to define my ideal client, and I could only do that if I fully understood myself. This is even easier in a small or solo firm, where you do not need to balance everyone’s desires. I was able to craft a singular message, one carried forward for at least a decade, and now still whispered by AI.
That AI will define us, refer us, make or break us in the future was the whole point of my last book, The AI Content Paradox: Winning Referrals from Humans and Machines.
But, you may be thinking, how does one know which core trait to define? What about what the market wants? Wouldn’t you be the first to admit, Carl, that the sharks made more money than the dolphins in your field? Shouldn’t we become what the role asks of us, and not the other way around? To which I must answer, no, unless your authority philosophy is so misaligned with what society considers common decency, you can be true to “thine own self,” as Polonious cautioned in Hamlet, and you can build up a business with the proper scaffolding.
My dentist office is run by a bunch of modern hippies in the middle of one of the most well heeled and conservative towns in the country. It thrives, and everyone who works there gets to be professional while staying true to their authority philosophy. Once in a while they repel some uptight clients, but they do great work and most people who go there appreciate the vibe and the authenticity of the place. Even squares like me. That you need to sell out to succeed is the lie.
What Are the Important Professional Traits to Define?
Authority Philosophy starts with looking inside. Consider your life, your interests, the clients you have enjoyed working with, and those you have not. Remember why you wanted to do this kind of work in the first place. What had you hoped to achieve, beyond just money or stability. Make a list of ten people you respect and admire, they could be anyone from Mother Theresa to your father-in-law, and then see what traits they all share. Create a list of ten of your own traits you admire, and ten you wish you could shake off. This is not “woo woo” stuff, this is self-knowledge, because self-expression can find no home outside self-knowledge.
Think next about your profession specifically. What are the general traits you’re profession is known for. How do you differ from them? Are you an accountant who is a wild child life of the party? Sure, that persona might turn off certain clients, but it might attract someone like me who is sick of these staid, buttoned down CPA types. So long as you’re competent, then you can be almost anything within reason. A comic strip taped to the fridge at my first law firm showed a lawyer dressed up as a clown sitting across from a client. Apparently the comic was by Charles Barsotti. “Look at it this way,” the caption read. “If I weren’t a very good lawyer, could I practice in a clown costume?”
I’m not here telling anyone to put on the clown costume. But at the end of the day, unique is what sells, provided it is married to authenticity. If you sell yourself as the same as everyone else, then you’re just further commodifying your profession. The sludge marketers are already doing enough on that front, they certainly do not need any assistance.
Let’s talk a bit for a moment about one of my favorite subjects: myself. The reason I created the dolphin not shark metaphor and implemented a settlement-first, litigation only as required mentality was not because I hated litigation. I actually enjoyed trials, and usually won. But my practice was devoted to middle class people, like those I knew growing up. My parents were blue collar, and hiring a lawyer once almost broke them financially. The truth is, very few of my clients could afford to try their cases. Only about 1-2% of all cases go to trials anyway.
I knew that as the clients fought each other over their share of the marital pie, that pie kept shrinking as the other attorney and I took our cuts. I always wanted there to be a clear ROI for my clients, same as what I desire now for my clients at Books for Experts. I wanted to put my clients first, and that sometimes meant having to talk some sense into their tv fueled legal drama dreams. I wasn’t always thanked for this, but I could always point to my marketing, my initial consult, and all of my dealings as proof of my authority philosophy. Because a true authority philosophy is not just a marketing ploy, it must infuse every portion of your practice. Now, you can hire another lawyer who loves to be the shark, if you prefer to be the dolphin, but I think it wiser to attempt to have a cohesive brand. Dolphins swim together and sharks swim together or alone, but you don’t see the two of them playing water polo in the deep blue sea. So it must be for those who have an authority philosophy. My cool dentist hired other cool, chill people. They work hard as hell but they are not stuffy.
Think about how your authority philosophy meshes with:
- Client control
- Pricing
- Marketing
- Staffing
- Financials
- Human Resources
- Mission Statements
- Initial Consultations
- Work Product
- Personal Self Satisfaction
- Leadership
- Professional Activities
- Personal Growth
- Professional Growth
- Authority Asset Creation
- Client satisfaction
- Professional reputation
Client control: The dolphin will gently push the client toward a higher ROI settlement, if possible. The shark might attempt to push toward litigation, and may even walk all over their clients.
Pricing: Each likely has a similar hourly rate, but dolphin will charge less overall as cases settle faster.
Marketing: Either message is fine, provided it is clearly stated. Might even be easier to sell sharks to dolphins in family law, as clients desire the chum.
Staffing: Dolphin might be able to run a leaner practice in terms of staffing as less discovery expeditions, less litigation, more work that can be done and billed directly by lawyers.
Financials: Shark likely has higher gross revenue, but net may be the same as dolphins.
Human Resources: Shark personality may run into more issues with staff as there is a risk the shark persona is hard to turn off.
Mission Statements: Just need to be honest to the authority philosophy being implemented.
Work Product: Shark is better in the courtroom, dolphin behind the desk or at mediation.
Personal Self Satisfaction: Probably equal, provided neither is playing a character or inventing a persona. Shark may have more difficult days, but if that’s what they enjoy then they should proceed with whatever their happy little shark hearts desire.
Leadership: Shark may be seen as the more natural leader, but may find it hard to mentor others.
Professional Activities: Shark will be respected, dolphin appreciated for its approachability.
Professional Growth: Equal here provided both take CLEs that help them in their respective positions. The shark goes to trial academies and the dolphin becomes a trained mediator who looks into collaborative law.
Authority Asset Creation: Similar strategies, though the shark may do better with video and podcast type assets where their quick courtroom wit shines and the dolphin may be better penning articles. Both should consider a book and both must do what is necessary to inform the public of their respective authority philosophies.
Client Satisfaction: This goes back to attracting the right clients. If the dolphin gets a shark client then that client will be dissatisfied thinking the dolphin did not fight hard enough. Likewise, the dolphin client may feel like the shark made mountains out of molehills and want to dispute the final bill.
Professional Reputation: The shark will be feared and respected, the Dolphin appreciated. Both should be equally satisfied because they have different priorities. As the old parable about the scorpion and the frog goes, each will be true to its nature.
To summarize, there is no wrong answer or right answer here. Maybe you relate more to the shark, perhaps more to the dolphin. Maybe neither, and that’s a good thing because there are so many authority philosophies out there. The point is, you need to figure out what your authority philosophy is, so that everything else in your practice becomes properly aligned. There is no right answer between shark and dolphin, or something else entirely, the only wrong answer is not having an authority philosophy at all.
I may have been a dolphin as a divorce lawyer, but what I love about being a writer is that I can take on the role of ghostwriting for any other persona. I get to persuade, sometimes against my own core beliefs. And that is a trait I learned well as a lawyer. I love writing books for sharks and dolphins alike.
Hopefully this helped define the importance of an authority philosophy, but what if you’re having a hard time making everything you have considered cohesive?
How Can I Find My Authority Philosophy?
The truth is your authority philosophy will always be somewhat a work in progress. I learned early on that certain clients wanted to take advantage of the dolphin persona, so I stopped offering free consults to my divorce clients to keep out the tire kickers. When I noticed certain other attorneys assumed I would not try cases, I took on shark like clients for a bit and tried everything I could, assuming it was in my client’s best interests. I became known as the true dolphin then: capable of taking down a shark if necessary, but not looking for an unnecessary fight.
And this works for any profession, not just for lawyers. I only use lawyers as an example because it’s what I lived for sixteen years. Your professional reputation will be a function of your authority philosophy, so it’s something to understand and refine every day. The best time is when you’re considering opening a new business, or a rebrand, but there is no wrong time to implement an authority philosophy.
But you may be thinking this is still too much, and you can’t see the coral through the seaweed. That’s okay. The rest of this book will discuss how to implement an Authority Philosophy. And if you ever want to discuss building out a practice wide authority philosophy with me, we offer Authority Philosophy Sessions at a flat rate and as either a separate consulting product or as an included requirement as part of any major writing assignment we take on.
As I used to tell my divorce clients, I can get you anywhere you want, within reason, but you have to know where you’re headed. Same thing now, I can create any type of authority asset and make sure it’s effective for my Books for Experts clients, but we need to lock down the Authority Philosophy first.