“Do good work, and the business will come.”

I’ve heard that statement made about 1,673,271 times.

It’s true. Doing good work will bring you business. Yep.

The problem is this:

Doing good work will not bring the business as fast as some lawyers want/need it to come.

If you want/need to grow the business faster, then you need to do more than good work.

If you want/need the business to grow faster than it does by word of mouth (which can be very slow in some practice areas)—“My lawyer was so good that I’m now free to rape and pillage another village” said no one ever—then you’ve got to amplify the impact of your good work. You’ve got to make sure you and others are spreading the word.

So far, so good? Right? We’re all on the same page.

Be Careful About What You Want vs. Need

Now, we can argue about “want/need,” and I get that. Some lawyers think other lawyers want more than they should want. Okay. But, “want/need” is a lot like “should we have children?”

There aren’t always right answers. “Want/need” is about you. Of course, it’s a problem if what you want is more than what you can get. That’s when lawyers start fudging their credentials or telling prospective clients things that aren’t true. Things get murky when we want more than we get. Been there, done that, and paid the price. Wanting can get you into trouble, cause you stress, and make you miserable.

Watch out for the want. And be especially careful when you start telling yourself that it’s not just want but that it’s need. We’re quick to turn one into the other. Very quick.

As we descend down the rabbit hole, it’s easy to forget where we started. We get so fascinated/busy/distracted by websites, pay-per-click ads, networking, and cool things that pop up and ask visitors to set appointments that we forget the fundamental point.

It’s easy to forget where we started: “Do good work, and the business will come.”

Of course, I am not anti-marketing. I’m not anti-shiny object. I’m not anti-experiment.

I couldn’t be more of an advocate for trying big, maybe crazy, dramatic ideas. Skywriter? Yep. Blimp? Of course. Free forehead tattoos for your staff? Well, that’s kind of last year, but go for it.

But if we don’t do good work, it’s all for naught. Bad news spreads faster than the messages scrolling on the side of the blimp. People love to tell others you’re terrible. They love posting those hate notes on the Internet. They love telling the story of how their problems were caused by you instead of by themselves.

So, do good work, and the business will come. Stay focused on the client in front of you. Make her happy. Help her feel good about the outcome. Be sure she remembers how scared she was and how you held her close and guided her to safety. Be sure she is, in fact, safe.

I can’t stand to type it because it’s so old, so tired, and so worn out. It is, however, true. Do good work, and the business will come. Yep, it will come.