CHANGE IS THE PRICE OF SURVIVAL

Gary Player is a world champion golfer. At the age of 29 he became the third golfer in the world to win all four major titles. He did it before Tiger Woods was born and he did it before Jack Nicklaus, the golfer who still holds the record for most major title wins (18).  Gary Player was lifting weights and exercising and studying nutrition in the 1960's, when the rule of thumb for golfers was that weights and exercise would damage a career, and nutrition was for nuts. That is why at over 80 years of age Gary Player looks and acts like he is in his 50's, and starts his day with a thousand sit-ups and a hundred push-ups. 

On Gary Player's website he has a page called his Ten Commandments. The commandments are gems of philosophy integral to his success. The two I like most are #2: Everything in business is negotiable except quality, and #1: Change is the price of survival. 

In Miami, criminal defense lawyers for decades made a good living specializing in DUI defense. The police had economic incentives (lots of overtime) to make arrests, and the consequences of a DUI conviction made defense and litigation a valuable legal service people were willing to pay for. 

And then a few years ago the Miami State Attorneys Office instituted a pre-trial diversion program for DUIs called Back On Track. We have the details of the BOT program on our website at Woodward and Reizenstein. 

All of the sudden 90% of the DUI clients disappeared as there was no longer an economic incentive for most clients to pay for a quality DUI defense when a reduction of the charges could be guaranteed by enrolling in BOT. 

We in the criminal defense bar in Miami all had fair warning it was coming, but many lawyers did nothing to prepare. They didn't change their practice area or develop another area of the law to specialize in and market themselves to clients. Many small criminal defense law firms that depended on DUIs closed. The firms failed because they ignored or didn't know Gary Player's first commandment: Change is the price of survival. 

There are so many ways in  recognizing that change is the price of survival that would make a positive difference in our own personal lives. The Internet and the way business is done is one drastic change. Just ask Blockbuster video (if you can find one that is open)  about Netflix and  whether change is the price of survival. 
How about diets and nutrition. Remember the low fat craze of the 1990's? We now know that there are healthy fats that our bodies need and that sugar and carbohydrates are the main cause of many diseases. 

That change is the price of survival goes to the very heart of the problem of people saying "but that's how we always did it."  We always listened to music on records. Until CDs. And we always bought albums on CDs until ITunes. And we always listened to music on regular-terestial  radio until satellite commercial free radio came along.  

History is littered with the failure of people and projects who never recognized that change is the price of survival. 

In my law practice, in my business life, and in my personal life, I challenge myself each day to look at how I do things  and whether I am missing the change that is the  necessary price to my survival and success. It's a worthwhile and thoughtful endeavor. It's one of the reasons I decided to write this blog, after the internet SEO gurus told me no one would ever find me, my firm, or my website on the internet unless I started doing things like writing a blog. In other words, I had to change.