I love self-help books and videos. I’m a total sucker for a Tony Robbins video. It’s kind of weird and pathetic.

Let’s not worry about me today. I’m probably beyond saving.

The question for you is, are you a self-help junkie? Do you find yourself reading endless business books, signing up for seminars, and joining online and real-world mastermind groups?

It’s all good if it’s getting you somewhere. If you go to a course, read a book, listen to a podcast, or watch a video and come back to work and execute, then it’s working for you.

If you can track a steady increase in your income, even as you consume all this stuff, then you’re in good shape.

However, if you consume self-help material and all that happens is that you come back totally motivated to buy some more self-help material, then we’ve got a problem.

The answer to our problems is rarely information. The answer is usually action (or the lack thereof). We need to execute, not think. We need to act.

If you get jazzed to build your practice and it doesn’t translate into immediate, efficient action, then the motivation you’ve obtained is a waste of your time.

Sometimes walking across hot coals teaches you that you can walk across hot coals. It doesn’t always help you take people to lunch to generate referrals. Feeling better about yourself isn’t always the answer. Sometimes the answer is doing the work.

I had a conversation with a woman the other day about blogging. I told her how my blogging had resulted in a significant increase in referrals from attorneys across the country. I suggested that she try the same approach by writing about divorce taxation. She explained that she would love to do that, but she didn’t have the time.

As we continued talking, she told me about her attendance at monthly attorney webinars on marketing as part of a subscription she bought for $1,000 per year. She then told me about her mentor and how they talk about marketing weekly and meet once a month. Then she mentioned that she’d just returned from a big seminar on law practice management.

How are her revenues? Awful. Are they growing rapidly? Nope. Is all her education about marketing working out for her? Nope.

Why? Because she’s learning and not acting. Acting, doing, executing is the answer. She’d have time to do if she’d stop learning.

Sometimes we know everything we need to know. Now we need to use it.