In this episode, Alay Yajnik and Sarah Tetlow, owner of Firm Focus, discuss:
• Why productivity is critical to business development success
• The five D’s of task management: Do, Delete, Delay, Diminish, Delegate
• The value of being intentional and creating a business development plan
Alay Yajnik: Welcome to Lawyer Business Advantage, your source for biz dev tips, wisdom and inspiration. I’m your host, Alay Yajnik. We’re unleashing your inner rainmaker in three, two, one….
Alay Yajnik: It’s my pleasure to welcome to the program, Sarah Tetlow, owner of Firm Focus. Sarah, welcome to Lawyer Business Advantage.
Sarah Tetlow: Thanks for having me. It’s nice to talk to you.
Alay Yajnik: It’s great to talk to you again as well. You and I have chatted quite a few times through providers and you have a couple of mutual clients together. So tell the audience a little bit about yourself and the AHA moments along the way that led you into this role that you do now.
Sarah Tetlow: Sure. So my company is called Firm Focus and I do legal productivity coaching, consulting and speaking engagements, and I created this company because I had a desire to help lawyers and legal professionals with time management, task management, attention management, organization and overall trying to reduce burnout and overwhelm.
Sarah Tetlow: I was a litigation paralegal most of my career. I spent about 15 years doing that, and it was during that time that I landed on wanting to help lawyers with time management.
Sarah Tetlow: It was something that I always felt and heard back from the attorneys I worked with that I was very good at, the last minute rush without the overwhelmed. So that’s what landed me starting Firm Focus and wanting to give back to the industry that helped me grow to who I am.
Alay Yajnik: Absolutely, Sarah, and you know, this is a show about business development and inspiring attorneys, so we’d love to hear your perspective on the connection between time management and business development.
Sarah Tetlow: Yeah, so obviously, it’s a huge component of a lawyer’s practice and I would almost break it down into they obviously have the work that they need to do, so servicing the existing clients. Then they always have some administrative stuff to do, some some managerial tasks that they deal with. And then business development and marketing is a huge component to what they need to invest time into to grow their practice and succeed in their business. And as you probably know, Alay, when you’re working with clients, one of the biggest push backs or excuses that you get from lawyers about anything related to business development is that they just didn’t find the time to do it. Time management is a huge part of a lawyer’s practice and being able to increase their productivity and their priorities and ensure that they can carve out time for the important part of business development in their practice.
Alay Yajnik: So when you hear that, when a lawyer tells you, you know, “Sarah, I’m sorry, I just don’t have – I just didn’t make the time for business development.” What goes through your head when someone says that to you?
Sarah Tetlow: It’s not a priority, that’s what it really boils down to, is that they just haven’t found time to make it a priority. And some tips around that are:
Sarah Tetlow: One, and this is where you would come in and be able to help, is to first just be crystal clear on where you need to develop business, who’s your target market, where are your clients, where are they hanging out? And that way you can ensure that when you are conducting business development that you’re doing so in the right area. And therefore it doesn’t feel as time consuming because it likely isn’t as time consuming. And then the last thing around that, too, is to not overthink business development. If you’re A. Paying attention to the right market and B.