What do Taylor Swift, Iron Man, and the random lawyer who swears they’ll “start working on the business…after this one last fire” have in common?
It’s not that all three make great sourdough (although if you bake like Taylor Swift, I’d love to try it).
It’s that they look at the big picture before making decisions in the moment.
Taylor doesn’t wing it for a decade. She plans eras.
Iron Man didn’t build a suit by saying, “I’ll just vibe my way into advanced metallurgy.” (He tried that once. It was called anxiety.)
And that lawyer? That lawyer is me. Or at least a previous version of me who thought “strategy” meant “survive Monday.”
This week, I want to talk about an Atticus tool called My Great Decade, how it made my decision to join Atticus surprisingly easy, and why I think it can help you too.
But first…
The Lie We Tell Ourselves
The lie is:
“I’ll figure it out as I go.”
It sounds adventurous. Like a road trip movie.
In reality, it’s how you end up lost and cutting through someone’s backyard trying to get back to the trail during a hike.
And yes, that is a true story. Terrell Turner can vouch for my “leadership.”
Most law firm owners don’t lack ambition.
They lack a container for ambition.
So they set goals that are either:
Too vague: “Grow the firm.” Cool. Like… a chia pet? Too tactical: “Post on Instagram three times a week.” Great. But to what end? Too lonely: “I’ll hold myself accountable.” That’s adorable. And also not how humans work.
I fell into this trap too.
There was a point where I had a large firm, a team, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual revenue, yet I still felt like I was sprinting inside a hamster wheel powered by billable hours.
Then life did what life does.
I remember sitting at my breakfast bar eating dinner when my wife told me she was pregnant with our son.
After the initial happiness (and a brief visit from existential dread) it forced me to rethink what we were building and why.
It was one of those moments when you realize your business plan is missing a key detail:
Building a business that actually makes money without making you miserable.
I didn’t want a successful firm that cost me everything else.
So I started thinking in decades instead of quarters.
Originally, that idea came from the Vision/Traction Organizer in Gino Wickman’s Traction. It gave me a framework to address the problems in our lives and create a path toward something better.
What Actually Needs to Change
Here’s the mindset shift:
Quarterly goals are great.
But quarterly goals without a real vision are just busy work with better spreadsheets.
That’s why I love Vision/Traction Organizer-style thinking. It forces you to answer:
What do I actually want? What does success look like? What are the few things that matter most?
When it came time to decide whether to join Atticus, I was introduced to their My Great Decade exercise, which applies many of these same concepts to your life as a whole.
The question is simple:
If it’s June 2036, what needs to be true for you to feel proud of the last 10 years?
Not just revenue.
Your health. Your family. How your team experiences you. The kind of firm you built. What you stopped tolerating. Who you became. Because if you don’t choose a direction for the next decade, your calendar will choose one for you.
And your calendar is basically a raccoon.
It grabs whatever shiny thing is closest and drags it into the trash.