Client Development Coaching Making Time

Developing the Next Generation of Rainmakers Client Development Coaching: Making Time Recently I gave a presentation to lawyers on Time Management. I included ideas from this video clip. I looked back at a blog I wrote in 2012 and decided to share it with you again. You are certainly making time for your billable work and I hope you are making time for your family, but are you making time for client development? If you are a regular reader, you may have read my blog: Cordell’s Top 15 Time Management Tips for Client Development. It was one of my most read posts that year. I frequently do presentations for law firms and lawyers on making time and I thought I would share the approach I used practicing law with you here visually. As you will see above, my approach is really pretty simple. I began years ago by asking myself, what do I want to accomplish in my career, and why is it important to me. Once I figured out the “what” and the “why,” I wrote down actions I needed to take to accomplish my major definite purpose. That was the “how” I would accomplish it. Then, I thought about how I wanted to live my life and puruse my career. Those were my core values. That was too big so I needed to start breaking things down to more manageable pieces. Then I decided what I wanted to accomplish each year. That was still too big, so I broke it down further to 90 days and ultimately to what I planned to do next week. In a previous post, What Stephen Covey Taught Me, I wrote about Stephen Covey’s big rocks story. I learned from that story that I could not do everything and I had to prioritize my activities so the big rocks were done first. My friend and colleague Cindy Pladziewicz gave me the idea of the matrix on return and investment. Lawyers I coach have found it very helpful to put their proposed actions into that matrix. Next, I figured out both the best days of the week and the best time during those days to write articles and prepare presentations. For me that was Saturday morning and Sunday morning from 6AM to 9AM. For you it will likely be different days and different times, but you should figure out what is best for you. Finally, I found ways to repurpose what I was creating. My billable work became an article. My article became a presentation. A collection of articles became a guide. A presentation later in my career became a webinar and so forth. I practiced law for 37 years developing a national construction law practice representing some of the top highway and transportation construction contractors in the US.