For Lawyers Looking To Make It Rain: Discipline Eats Motivation For Breakfast!

I’d like to start out by asking you to think about the last major accomplishment you had, either personally or professionally. Was it passing the bar exam or making partner at your firm? Or maybe it was losing 20 pounds or running that 10K race? Whatever the situation, I want to talk about discipline and how it’s directly related to having a highly successful career in law.

So, I’m not 100% sure if it was Mike Crittenden, Jocko Willink, or David Goggins who said this, but it really scratches the itch that I’m having today. Discipline eats motivation for breakfast. I love this statement because it encapsulates what I work on with lawyers every day so they can achieve their business development goals. We’re all motivated to accomplish things, make positive changes in our lives and ultimately get what we want out of this crazy thing called life. The real question is, how many of us feel motivated and then actually follow through on those feelings?

As you know very well, motivation comes and goes in waves. Have you ever said any of these:

• I’ve got to lose 10 pounds.
• I really need to start running again.
• I’m going to grow my law practice this year.

At the end of the day, we can talk in our heads or even say it out loud to others, but that doesn’t get it done most of the time. It’s the discipline to start and then keep up with something that wins the day. Here are a few strategies that may help take that motivation and turn it into the discipline to accomplish your goals and dreams like never before.

1. Hire a coach, trainer, or advisor to help keep you accountable so that you can develop positive habits that will stay with you. When you work to accomplish goals on your own, it’s often very easy to give up when things get hard. By bringing in an expert to help you along and hold you accountable, everything changes. The simplest example is hiring a personal trainer to get in shape. The likelihood of success goes up exponentially with a trainer than without. For my lawyer clients, they have a class to attend (mandatory), one-on-ones with me, and accountability buddies to get biz-dev done each and every week. This is a thousand times easier than going at it alone. Additionally, it’s just more fun to learn and experience wins with a coach, mentor, or advisor. This leads to suggestion No. 2.

2. This past week, I spoke to my wife about intermittent fasting. I had been hearing about this for years, but now have a bunch of friends sharing their success doing it. I thought to myself, OK, I’m in! This is the perfect example of motivation, but the discipline to stick with it on my own could be problematic. As we’ve all been led to believe, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, right? The best bet for me was to bring my wife into the mix. This week we started fasting between 7 p.m. and 11 a.m. So far, so good — meaning, I haven’t taken a bite out of the kitchen table yet. Trying something new that takes effort and discipline is just easier with a significant other, friend, or group. The concept is simple: find someone who shares your similar values, ideals, and goals and secure them as an accountability buddy so you can hold each other accountable.

3. The last tip I’m going to give you is super critical, so stay focused here. When you set your mind to accomplish something monumental, it’s very difficult to see it through. The nature of “giving up” is all around us so we need to focus our attention to the smaller tasks and efforts that will be easier to attain. For example, working to obtain a million dollars in originations when you’re currently at a hundred thousand is likely positioning yourself for failure. For most lawyers, this can seem like an impossible feat. It’s very likely that when your business development efforts (and unbillable hours) aren’t getting you the immediate results you’re hoping for, you’ll simply say, “I’ll try this again next year.” Falling back on the stuff you know well is the most common reason people don’t achieve their dreams. It’s no joke, I work with lawyers, now in their 50s and 60s, who continually said “next year” — but for 20 to 30 years straight!

My suggestion for attaining the larger goals you want in life is to break them down into bite-sized pieces. In addition to those being easier to obtain, you won’t feel the pressure of a huge and lofty goal that seems overwhelming. Think about it this way, no one runs a marathon without first running a mile. Give yourself a real chance to develop positive habits that make the notion of discipline more realistic to achieve. For business development, it might be posting on LinkedIn once a week or taking 15 minutes each week to email three clients for lunch or drinks. Once you get comfortable with doing the little things, you’ll find they add up to the big things. (Tip: when you get seemingly overwhelmed with the big things, go back and look at the little things you’ve accomplished and say, “ah-h-h-h.” Use it as a touchstone to remind yourself that you can do it.) Looping back to the beginning of this article, remember that it’s the discipline to take action in small ways while staying consistent that will win the race for you in the end.

So, does Discipline Eat Motivation for Breakfast? I think that’s been made pretty clear. Use my three tips of finding a mentor or coach, leveraging an accountability buddy, or breaking things down into smaller pieces to develop the discipline that will get you to the next level. Try this for personal and business accomplishments and email me to share your experiences. I’ve been coaching lawyers for 17 years who’ve struggled with getting results on the biz-dev front, and they were all in your shoes at one point. As a plane crash survivor, I know better than anyone that you typically get one shot at this thing called life, so you better make it count. I am confident you have it in you.

Steve Fretzin is a bestselling author, host of the BE THAT LAWYER Podcast, and business development coach exclusively for attorneys. Steve has committed his career to helping lawyers learn key growth skills not currently taught in law school. His clients soon become top rainmakers and credit Steve’s program and coaching for their success. He can be reached directly by email at [email protected]. Or you can easily find him on his website at www.fretzin.com or LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevefretzin/.