With all due respect to Susan Powter (who you ask?? keep reading), I’m asking you to “stop the insanity.”
In the heyday of really annoying 1990s infomercials, a spiky-haired blonde lady would invade our t.v. sets almost hourly telling us that the diet industry is broken and selling us on her plan to lose weight. Susan Powter and her catchphrase: “Stop the Insanity” became a viral meme before there were viral memes.
But in this instance, I am speaking of the insanity of how you are stopping your business development progress.
Prior to working with them, many of the attorneys whom I coach have experienced the Feast or Famine Cycle.
You work hard on marketing and business development for your practice; you’re networking and meeting new people; you’re establishing your go-to-authority on social media and the clients start hiring you. However, because you are now busy with billable work, you stop doing the activities that brought in new clients and matters and concentrate solely on the client matters.
Suddenly the matter ends and you have a lot of extra time on your hands, so you scramble to get new clients once again but without the momentum you once had, the new clients trickle in more slowly.
And you start your business development activities again, only to abandon them when you get busy with billable work once more. And this cycle repeats over and over and over and….
STOP THE INSANITY!
What I explain to my clients is very simple: you must do some sort of marketing or business development activity every single day! Some of the activities take 15 minutes, some take a few hours, but you must commit to creating a business development habit daily.
Business development requires constant momentum.
Way back in 2013, I provided mathematical proof that you potentially have 35 hours a week (without even counting weekends), after billable hour requirements and sleep and a workout, to do anything you want. That’s 7 hours per weekday to use in any manner you please.
Before you get on my case that it takes more than 8 hours of work to bill 8 hours to clients, I know (and that’s for a different discussion about why THAT is happening), but there are still 35 hours per week for you to use in any way you want – even if you use some of that as more billable time.
I have said this repeatedly – business development is simple, but not easy. You have to make the commitment that you are going to take the time – even if you can only spare 15 minutes – to execute the activities necessary to keep the business development momentum going.
Speak Your Mind