I spent yesterday at a hotel on the beach in Costa Maya, Mexico (Hotel Maya Luna). It’s a beautiful place away from the crowds of the beaches down near the port. It has a few rooms, a great restaurant, and a very private, quiet setting.

This place is way down the road from the middle of nowhere. It’s out of the way like Venus is out of the way: it’s way out of the way.

I struck up a conversation with the owner (who is an amazing host), and we started talking about marketing the hotel. She explained that between the hurricane a few years ago, the bird flu, the economy, and the recent drug war, it has become pretty important to do a bit of marketing. It wasn’t necessary in the past because they’ve had such good word of mouth, but times have changed—boy, have they changed for Mexico (and we think marketing a family law practice is tough).

As I listened to her explain her situation, I had some ideas that might help. After listening, I shifted gears and gave her a few of my thoughts. They were fairly simple ideas that I thought might work: (1) flyers to cruise ship passengers visiting the hotel during their day on the island and (2) setting up an e-mail auto-responder to keep in touch with those people.

Incredibly (and in what felt like a deja vu flash), she responded by telling me how she really didn’t have time to market her business as well as she’d like. I sat, listening and wondering whether maybe she had been a lawyer in a prior life because that’s what I hear constantly from lawyers asking me about growing their practices.

Me: How can I help you?

You: Business is down. I’d like more business.

Me: Let’s talk about some marketing ideas that will bring you new clients.

You: Oh, I don’t have time for that.

Me: (Thinking to myself) What are you spending your time on if you don’t have enough clients?

I never know what to do with this conversation. It’s befuddling.

I understand anxiety about marketing: it’s different, and sometimes we feel like a fish out of water. Marketing isn’t what we’re trained to do, and it’s not something most of us signed up for when we went to law school. However, it is part of life practicing family law.

Telling yourself you don’t have time to market is an easy way out. It’s an excuse that works for us because it’s easy to let everything else on our plate expand to fill any available time.

However, if you don’t have the clients you want, then you’ve got to start telling yourself you don’t have time for something else. You’ve got to allocate time for marketing.

If you want more business or better business, and I know you do, then you’ve got to prioritize your marketing. You’ve got to put it high on your list of daily activities.

You’ve got to stop thinking about making time for marketing and start thinking about making time for clients and office management. Marketing has to come first.

Here’s the deal: if you wake up in the morning and prioritize your marketing, then you’ll get the marketing done and you’ll make time to do the client work and everything else. If you wake up in the morning with client work as a priority, you likely won’t make time for marketing. It’s just a fact of life. We do what we feel we need to get done and we put the rest off.

Start your day with one marketing activity: arrange a referral source lunch, write something for your website, or call a potential client to check on him or her. Then, after you’ve done the marketing work, get on with the rest of your day. You’ll find the time to get everything done, plus you’ll have moved forward on your marketing.

If you do as I suggest, you’ll also find that you can afford to take the time away from the office to put your body in the hammock on the beach at that Costa Maya, Mexico hotel. They’ll bring you a pina colada, and you’ll close your eyes for a nap, content in the knowledge that you’ve grown your practice and know what to do to keep it growing for years to come.