Are you busy?
Is your practice growing?
Are you doing the work that you love?
Or, are you finding each and every day a s-t-r-u-g-g-l-e?
Given the number of solicitors now on the Roll, you would think that there was a burgeoning demand for legal services?
And then you add to the mix a liberalised market, and what do you get?
Trouble in abundance, and just round the corner.
“Pick me! Pick me!” will soon be your mantra.
You will be bugging the hell out of people.
Clients, consumers or customers (whatever you feel most comfortable with) will be so bloody confused with all this noise that they will simply dive for the bottom line. They can’t discern whether one offering is better than the next … better than the next and so they will make a decision on what seems obvious criteria:
“You are cheap.”
No time is good to look at reinvention. Even in a buoyant market you will not want to disturb the status quo.
But what of now?
Do you downsize?
Do you go niche?
Do you upskill?
Do you look to adopt a business franchise model (think Starbucks)?
Do you …
Do you ….
Do you ….?
There is no ready-made answer.
The trouble is that the model you have been conditioned to accept does not evince an answer. It worked fine when there was less competition but you are having to work harder and harder just to stand still.
[Imagine a long pause]
Do what you love, love what you do.
I am deadly serious.
The only way in which in you will keep your sanity and make sense of why you keeping doing it, doing it, doing it, is to follow your passion, over-deliver on your promises, and stop focusing on the top line.
If you don’t enjoy what you are doing then it will eventually lead your clients to believe that you are only it for what you can get out of it. They can smell that a mile off.
Of course you will tell me you love what you do, but do you? Take the money away and what’s left?
If you are not ready to jump ship (trust me it requires more than a leap of faith) then cut the … , go back to basics and turn up to work with a renewed passion for the work.
As the saying goes, you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
If you truly believe in what you are doing, then clients will seek you out.
They will know that you care.
And that’s all that counts.
Someone who puts the other person’s interest ahead of theirs each and every time.