Are You Making Rain Or Making Excuses?
Excuses! Excuses! What would people do without their excuses? Excuses are pesky, self-destructive things that help people to avoid responsibility. Today, the ability to focus on the task at hand is seriously underrated. Are you Rainmaking or making excuses?
How many times have you made an excuse? I don’t have time. I don’t know how. I’m too busy. I’m not good at that. I don’t have time to go to networking events. I’m too busy for marketing activities. Making excuses is common. Believing them is terminal.
It’s rare when people accept the challenge. People who have the rainmaking mindset say, Even though I’m busy, I will make time for marketing this week. I will work a few extra hours and network on LinkedIn. I will attend a bar association lunch meeting, even though my schedule is tight.
People would rather resort to making excuses. Sure, things happen, and at times you may get busy and get pulled off of your business-development plan, but making business development a priority is important to your success.
Tally Up The Cost
Making excuses costs you plenty! Serious dollars are at stake when you make excuses. Making excuses means that your money-making ability may come to a halt. Try putting a dollar amount on how much money you’re losing in your business when you make excuses.
Excuse-making is becoming the norm, and it’s a whopping reason why so many practices fail. Chronic excuse-making is a way to evade the necessity of doing the hard work. The only cure for this chronic condition is action. Sharp attorneys know that if debilitating excuse-making is not cured, their business may be crushed.
Ultimately, you are the only thing that you can control. Pay attention to how often you catch yourself making excuses. Excuses fuel failure. Remember that every time you rattle off an excuse, it’s like pressing down hard on the brakes of your practice.
It is time to enter the no-excuse zone! Stop making excuses and start making rain.
The life and the business that you make for yourself are shaped through your actions or your excuses. We become a mirror image of them. Your actions either catapult you forward or hurl you backward. When things are moving in the wrong direction, be mindful of this, and reverse the trend. Adjust your thinking and your actions to get back on track. If you’re marching in the right direction, you are moving closer to achieving your goals. If you’re trudging in the wrong direction, you are moving farther away from achievement.
The bottom line is that we make up excuses to justify why we’re not doing what we know we should do. Attorneys occasionally tell themselves white lies to avoid the pain of reality. However, refusing to face the facts may have real consequences.
You Can Build Your Practice While Billing Time
Many attorneys have shared with me the frustration of the cycle that plays out in their practice. Their efforts produce leads, which produce results in the form of business. Then they devote their time to client work. While they are focused on client work, they dial down their momentum only to find themselves finishing up with one client with no prospects on the horizon. The wild ride on the revenue roller coaster has begun. They have the daunting task of starting the process of making rain all over again.
I frequently hear I’m too busy to do any marketing right now. I can’t take the time for networking or sales. I need to focus on billing. The time that I spend selling is not billable time. This distasteful ritual may be averted.
Many professionals with whom I work come up with the same excuses. It does not matter the profession, you still need to keep up the pursuit and make time to keep your client pipeline full.
When you begin to command and demand more of yourself, triumph will follow. When you find the strength from within to take full responsibility for your life and your potential, your prominence is realized. You have the muscle to raise the bar on yourself and set higher standards.
PS… If you are struggling with closing business or you keep running into obstacles and issues in your practice, email or call to schedule a 30-minute complimentary call with me. You never know, it could change your lead conversion results and bottom line. This session is an opportunity for me to ask questions and learn where you are in your business, where you want to go, and what might be holding you back.
This is not a free coaching call. That would be irresponsible of me to offer you, as change doesn’t happen on one phone call. This is purely a chance for us to get to know each other. To do that, we need to have a frank conversation about your practice first.