We all know that feeling of being burned out, that sensation where we’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel relaxed and can’t seem to get back to balance.

Those of us who have been and are committed to building a business fully well know how this feels.

The other problem for law firm owners who correlate how hard they work to the level of profits they gain is that they are like the driver of a car trying to drive away yet while leaving the handbrake on.

In their mind, they are inspired to grow their firm, but subconsciously and often secretly, they avoid doing what it takes to take their firms and their profitability to the next level:

You are possibly doing this if:

• You are not arranging for your existing and past clients to be contacted to offer them more of your firm’s services.
• If you are not implementing procedures where your associates actively ask your clients for referrals.
• You are not researching or implementing marketing activities to gain new business.
• Are avoiding doing business development work such as networking or taking an ideal prospect to lunch.
• Are not making sure that your firm effectively converts every suitable inbound enquiry.

If you recognise yourself in any of these, then maybe you, too, have correlated how hard you work with how profitable you and your firm can be.

Of course, it may be that you don’t have the team members in place for your firm to handle greater volumes of work, but you can only know this if you are effectively tracking the total hours everyone is billing.

Either way, to grow your firm’s profitability, you need to primarily either win more work, recruit new team members, or both.

But if the thought of doing any of this still leaves you feeling worried that you’ll have to work even harder than you currently are and are already at capacity, then you need to start running your firm in a new way.

One solution is to delegate more of your workload, but as we know, this is often not easy.

Often several fears stop a law firm owner from delegating effectively, which include:

• A fear of not wanting to lose clients you’ve personally served for years.
• A fear that others won’t do your work as well as you.
• A fear that you can’t control your firm’s relationship with your clients.

All these are reasonable fears; however, they can all be solved and we know this because there are already many law firm owners out there who can choose the hours they work while enjoying great profits.

To start freeing yourself of these fears you will likely need motivation to study and find a solution to the cause of each of these fears.

To get this motivation, answer these questions:

• What will my future be like if I continue working at my current pace for another 3, 5 or 10 years?
• How much more profitable would my firm be if for each hour I had 5 or 10 extra team members complete a billable hour of work instead of me?
• What would become possible for my life if I could double my profits while halving my workload?

These might seem like ‘far-out’ questions; however, answering such questions is the key to getting the logical part of your brain to cooperate with you in taking new actions; otherwise, it's likely nothing will change.

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