Sterling Hawkins joins us today to discuss his “No Matter What” approach to success. This mindset has helped him grow through some of the most challenging transitions in his life, and he is sharing this mindset with the PILMMA community as the keynote speaker.

Growth is uncomfortable, but it is an inevitable part of change. This is unavoidable if you want your law firm to grow. But how do you navigate the discomfort so that you can thrive in your firm and successfully achieve your goals?

In this episode, we discuss:

• Sterling’s “No Matter What” approaching that stems from unwavering commitment to goals


• Embracing and growing through discomfort


• The importance of external accountability

This episode and the next several will feature PILMMA speakers in our “Spotlight on PILMMA” podcast series.

Visit Sterling online here: https://www.sterlinghawkins.com/.

We’ll be at PILMMA Super Summit 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/pilmma-2025/.

See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/.

Transcript:

Welcome to the personal injury marketing minute where we quickly cover the hot.

Topics in the legal marketing world. I’m your host, Lindsey Busfield. As business owners, we didn’t just wake up one morning and go, I think I’ll be a lawyer, or I think I’ll run an SEO agency.

We had visions for success. We had inherent goals, even if they weren’t 100% hashed out. Maybe your goals have shifted over time, or maybe you’ve reached your initial goals and are building on the results.

Either way, you are listening to this podcast because you want more. Not only that, but you’re willing to take steps and time out of your day to learn how to get to your next level.

Continuing our Spotlight on Pilma series, Sterling Hawkins:, Pilma’s keynote speaker, joins us today to discuss his upcoming presentation on his no-matter-what approach to success.

STERLING HAWKINS:

Thank you so much for joining us today, Sterling. Lindsey, thanks for having me on. I’m looking forward to diving in together.

Lindsey:

Absolutely. Well, let’s get started with a bit about yourself and about your background.

STERLING HAWKINS:

Yeah, of course. Well, I… I grew up a fifth-generation retailer in my family’s supermarket. From there, I got into the entrepreneurial software tech world and got pretty lucky early on.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, we worked really hard as well, but the first company I founded became part of this Apple Pay before Apple Pay.

Lindsey:

Nice.

STERLING HAWKINS:

And we raised hundreds of millions of dollars. I thought it was only a matter of time until I’d crowned myself the next Steve Jobs.

But when the housing market collapsed, our investment dried up, and things went a totally different direction for me.

Lindsey:

Yeah, that will absolutely make a big shift, and unless you are able to pivot out of that, you can really get bogged down with that first big dip.

STERLING HAWKINS:

Totally. And I did get bogged down for a number of years, just sitting in my self-doubt and self-pity and everything else.

But what I started to realize is that that failure was an opportunity. We learned a lot of things as an organization, what to do in a culture, and then just for myself, what I need to do as an individual to grow.

And it was reflecting on some of those really hard, even dark times that kind of gave me the tool set first for myself, and then for organizations I worked with all over the world to help them grow, regardless of the circumstances.

In other words, no matter what.

Lindsey:

Well, nobody wants to listen to a motivational speaker, if you will, that hasn’t failed hard, because why would anybody who has just succeeded over time be able to speak to business owners and attorneys who are struggling, who are here because they don’t have all the answers?

So I think that that is a great credit to you, that you have that background experience of having the highs as well as having the lows.

So let’s dive in a little bit to that. What is No Matter What all about?

STERLING HAWKINS:

Yeah, well, it just started. There’s this personal mantra to, frankly, get myself out of bed in the morning, like, I’m going to get out of bed tomorrow no matter what.

I’m going to go to the gym no matter what. I’m going to call my creditors no matter what. And I started to realize that when I really made a commitment, like deep inside myself, and I told myself I’m going to do these things regardless of what happens, that I was making forward progress.

And that self-doubt that I still had in spades started to lessen its grip on me just a little bit.

That every time I honored one of those commitments. And so I started to share it. was first with my sister and then some four colleagues and then some entrepreneurs that I knew and then larger companies.

And I started to realize that this framework of committing, committing no matter what. And to be clear, I’m not saying compromise your integrity or values, but really commit with honor to do the things that you say you’re going to do is transformative.

And it became really the base. Basis of everything that we’re doing today to be able to grow regardless of the circumstances, whether there’s problems with regulation changes or staffing issues or global instability.

Those things don’t mean we can’t grow. It just means that we likely have to grow differently than we originally expected.

Lindsey:

And it’s commitments that give us the pathway to be able to do that. Yeah. And that’s a great point.

It’s these commitments. And it’s not necessarily even a commitment to the big picture, which it absolutely can be, but a commitment to each of the goals along the way.

As you said, committed to getting out of bed, going to the gym, calling the creditors, and whether it is making a phone call to somebody who is going to help you with your marketing or filling out a form to change your business name and get a DBA.

There are smaller goals along the way that you have to commit yourself to, no matter what, to continue along that path of growth.

STERLING HAWKINS:

Totally. There’s just plenty of excuses in the world. There just are. Now, maybe more than ever. And the thing is, those excuses are valid.

But what honoring our commitments does actually changes this mechanism in our brain called the reticular activating system, or RAS, R-A-S for short.

And before we commit, that RAS is auto-tuned for survival. It’s looking back into the past, telling us why we can’t, why we shouldn’t, why we’ll fail, why it’d be embarrassing, why we should never commit to anything to begin with.

But when we commit, and really commit in a way where we’re on the line, there’s no going back, it reframes that RAS to look for new openings for action that are literally invisible from where we sit prior.

And it’s when we honor those commitments that we start to see these opportunities for innovation, growth, and breakthrough results that literally are not available to us without those commitments from a biological, neurological standpoint.

Lindsey:

next That’s interesting. How fascinating, just that rewiring that takes place. Well, let’s kind of break this down into some practical terms for the attorneys that are listening here.

And it seems like part of this, you know, clearly is committing to the goals, but first you have to have a goal to commit to.

So what are some suggestions that you have for lawyers in terms of goal setting?

STERLING HAWKINS:

Yeah. Well, I think the biggest thing is that oftentimes discomfort, worry, self-doubt stands in the way of what we actually want to achieve.

And if we’re not paying attention to that, sometimes we make commitments inside of what we’re afraid of, not what we really want to accomplish.

And it ends up being things that we probably know we can already achieve and we take them, but they don’t really light us up inside.

It’s not ultimately what we really want. So I think the first step is understanding what’s in the way of what we really want to achieve.

Could be limited thinking. It could be self-doubt, but taking a moment to set some of those things aside and get present to what it is that I actually want to achieve for myself, my community, my clients, even the world.

And it’s from that place that you can start to see, well, what is it that I am ultimately committed to?

Not just from