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Thank you and farewell!

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Let me start with the big news: this is the final post you’ll be receiving from me. I’ve been working with lawyers on business development for nearly 20 years, and it’s time for a new adventure. Next month, I’ll be moving to 40 acres just west of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and everything within me tells me it’s time for a new season. I’ll be raising chickens, planting vegetables, perhaps even raising some Highland cows or alpacas. I’ve also been reading up on restoring land, squeezing out weeds and encouraging growth of the native grasses without using pesticides, and I’d love to do that so we can leave the land better than we found it. This isn’t the life I envisioned when I graduated from law school thirty years ago, but it’s the life I’ve been working toward for many years.

Professionally, I’m shifting fully to writing creative nonfiction, working on a book about how midlife women can access the clarity and fierceness needed to make seemingly impossible changes and break the rules that don’t make sense for them. It’s based on what I’ve learned in the last decade or so as I made huge life changes that culminated in moving from the life I expected and planned in Atlanta to the life I most wanted in Wyoming. I’ll also be continuing to work with The Purple Sherpa, the nonprofit I founded to support people who are caring for family members living with dementia. A friend recently congratulated me on my retirement, but I see this change as a new movement in the symphony of life, not a coda.

Working with so many lawyers over the years has been deeply rewarding, and I’ve loved almost every minute of it. But my goals have changed, so the things I’m doing have to change as well.

The relationship between where we want to be in the future and what we do now to get there is at the foundation of a successful life—and successful business development. Let’s look at what that may mean for you.

What do you want from your practice? From your life? Although many business development recommendations skip these questions, I think they’re critical so that you can build a business development plan that will meet your objectives, not just one that will grow your practice. Let’s take a few examples so you see why I hold this position.

Every lawyer in private practice must focus on business development, and…

  • If you’re a law firm associate who wants to make partner at a large law firm, you’ll want to focus first on internal networking so that you’re building strong relationships with more senior lawyers. You’ll also work at business development because you know that BD success or potential is generally required for election to partnership. When you reach a stage to be bringing in your own business, internal networking will continue to be a key part of your BD plan. Of course, because partnership is rarely a foregone conclusion, you’ll also network with lawyers at other firms where you might want to be partner so that you have alternative and perhaps more attractive paths toward your goal.
  • If you’re an associate who wants to move to a smaller firm in the reasonably near future, you’ll want to emphasize networking with lawyers in smaller firms as well as with “bring in the business” work. When you land at your new firm, you’ll continue networking with other lawyers to some degree, but it will no longer be a primary part of your plans.Note that a similar principle applies if you’re a sole practitioner or working in a smaller firm and want to move to a larger firm. While you’ll spend the bulk of your time on business development activities, you’ll incorporate networking with lawyers in the kinds of firm you’d like to join.
  • If you’re an associate who wants to go solo, you’ll focus on business development work such as building your professional profile and networking with potential clients and referral sources as well as doing the work necessary to be a good citizen of your law firm (business development for the firm, internal networking, etc.) until it’s time for you to make your move.
  • If you have no desire to remain in private practice, you’ll do the “good firm citizen” work while you investigate your desired next position and meet people who can help you get there.


Knowing why you want to engage in business development is critical to make sure you reach your goals. Can you imagine being an associate who focused exclusively on internal networking, who decided that a boutique firm would be a better fit, who faced a difficult transition because for a lack of strong relationships with lawyers at boutique firms or portable business?  It happens, and it’s an ugly place to be. Recovery is possible, but thinking ahead would avoid that problem.

I’ll leave these questions with you:

  • What do you want from your practice? What kind of setting do you want to practice in? What role do you want to hold? What’s required to reach that objective?
  • What kind of attorney do you want to be? How do you want to focus your practice? What kinds of clients do you want? How do you want to work with them?
  • How do you want to spend your life? In practice, and if so, how? In some other kind of business, and if so, how (if at all) is it connected to your current practice? What do you need to do to get from here to there? If your goal is retirement, what financial security do you need to feel comfortable retiring, and how can you create that?
  • What’s your timeline? While the best time to get started on a goal is always right now, your timeline may dictate what steps you take.For example, if you’re in practice and you need to bring in business ASAP (you’re short on work and none will be assigned to you by other lawyers or you’re facing a partnership decision in a year or two), you need to be meeting with the people who are most likely to retain you or refer business to you. If you want to retire from practice in the next five years and withdraw from a firm or sell your practice, you need to think about a succession plan, which may shift how you work to bring in new business. If you want to shift to a new substantive focus for your practice, you’ll start by focusing most of your time on building your knowledge and platform in the new area plus building contacts relevant to that practice, and over time the balance of your time will shift toward building your network in that new area.
  • Based on your responses to these questions, what needs to change in your BD plan?

The happiest lawyers I have worked with have a clear objective for their professional and personal life and are working toward that. The most unhappy are those who are taking the next logical step based on what’s happening now without consciously deciding that they want to be where that step and the next and the next will take them. Circumstances and desires change, but if you don’t know what you want from your life, you can work hard and be productive toward an outcome you’d never choose. Don’t let that happen to you.

Finally, thank you for your years (many, many years for some of you!) of being on the BD journey with me. Earning a place in your inbox is a privilege I’ve never taken for granted. Please feel free to reach out if I can ever be of help. My email and website will remain active, and I’d love to hear from you.

Happy holidays, and here’s to a terrific new year!

You Should Be in Pictures!

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The tide of video viewership has been rising for years now, but it’s crested in 2023. Video ranks as the most popular type of online content, expected to amass nearly 83% of all web traffic this year. Many people find videos to be highly engaging and seek them out in preference to articles. When you share information via video, you create connection because viewers get a sense of who you are based on how you look, speak, and move. And it’s sometimes easier to understand complex concepts via video because of the multiple ways information is conveyed.

So, should you be in pictures? Yes, and…

Video is an important avenue for marketing, but especially if your practice is business-oriented, you should continue producing written material as well as part of your business development strategy. There’s no either/or here: when you offer the same information in video and in writing, you significantly increase the benefit to your recipient.

Let’s take a quick look at three types of video you might produce:

  • Professionally produced website videos: These high-production value videos are designed to be more formal and to convey information that doesn’t change rapidly, such as broad strokes about practice areas or discussions of representative matters.
  • Short, semi-off-the-cuff videos that will build connection and position you as the just-in-time source of key information: These are short, conversational videos that present relevant and timely information in a manner designed to speak to your ideal client. Quality matters, and it’s especially critical that your lighting and audio is crisp so that your video is easy to watch and hear, but you can shoot these with a webcam or smartphone. Done appropriately, these short videos can set you apart when you know your business development contacts are likely receiving updates from other lawyers and firms as well.
  • Video interviews: Like a podcast, you can use video interviews to offer conversations with relevant industry professionals. (You can even strip the audio and offer a podcast as well.) These videos require more planning but can be quite effective in positioning you as a well-connected, highly knowledgeable member of your field.

What do you need to understand to succeed with video as part of your business development strategy?

  1. Your clients’ demographics and psychographics. What interests them? How sophisticated is their knowledge about the topics you want to discuss? Fortunately, if you’ve created a business development plan, you already know this information, and it’s just a matter of shifting the way you use it. Before you create a video, ask who this video is for and why they’ll watch it, and keep those guidelines in mind throughout your production process.
  2. Your objective for the video. Do you want to convey information about your practice or your firm? Are you shooting a video to share information on a recent development or a legal concept that’s relevant to your practice? Know what you’d like the video to accomplish as part of your business development plan and be sure your objective lines up with the reasons a viewer take the time to watch your video.
  3. Your script. Your script forms the bridge between your viewer and your objective. Use your first few seconds to capture your viewers’ attention and establish why they should keep watching, and make your points clearly and concisely. A script or detailed outline that you can post near your camera will keep you on track. Practice before you press record.
  4. Bells and whistles. Add closed captioning to your videos so that a viewer can get the content without having to use audio. YouTube and several other platforms can automatically generate subtitles for your videos, and many third-party tools exist for adding closed captioning.
  5. Your distribution plan. As you build your business development video library, all videos you generate should reside on your website, and YouTube is the most obvious external option for distribution. Consider social media (LinkedIn most particularly, where video can make you stand out from the crowd) as well as your own newsletter distribution that might offer the same information in a video and in an article. You may even want to send the video directly to certain contacts. As always, you’ll want to pay attention to the results you get, in terms of viewing statistics (how many views overall, how many make timed stages, etc.) and direct response to you.

Video is a strategy that allows you to build a connection with viewers before you ever meet. Using video can help you to extend your professional platform and your reach. Take a few minutes during your next business development planning session to see how you might add video into your toolkit.

Freshen Up for Successful Business Development in 2023

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Happy New Year! You probably spent some of the last days of 2022 or the first of 2023 working on your business development plan, right? If not, hop to it! A current plan will coordinate your BD actions so that everything you do is working in a cohesive way toward a strategy you’ve defined. It’ll keep you on track and avoid wasting time on efforts that aren’t aligned with your objectives. (Not sure where to start? Check out these free Rainmaker resources.)

But did you do your New Year’s freshening up for your business development strategy? The beginning of the year (along with the beginning of the school year, in the fall) is a natural time to look at work you’ve done previously to make sure it’s current. Some suggestions:

  1. Update your LinkedIn profile. This LinkedIn for Lawyers article has a good list of items to consider. Also, be sure that you’ve updated your credentials including professional history, publications, certifications, etc. Ask yourself what a client seeking a lawyer in your practice area would find important and use that answer to guide the information you highlight in your summary as well as other parts of your profile. Start with identifying what you do, not solely your role within your firm, as your headline.
  2. Review your firm bio sketch. How well does its content mirror what you’ve shared on LinkedIn, and vice-versa? While the two profiles should not be copies of one another, the information and the tone should be consistent. This is also a good time to make sure that your sketch is indeed up to date.
  3. Review and update your contact list. Ideally, you’ve been maintaining your contact list throughout the year, but check it now. The list should include up-to-date contact information, an indication of each person’s relevance for business development purposes (A list, B list, or C list), and perhaps personal information that will help you build a deeper professional relationship.
  4. Schedule the conferences you plan to attend this year. Successful conference attendance requires advance preparation; knowing which conference(s) you plan to attend is step one. Schedule the conferences that fit your Business Development strategy and make a note three months before each conference to make a final decision on attendance and to begin preparations. You may be able to get some mileage even from conferences you don’t attend: see items 3 and 4 on the article linked above for pre-conference tips that you can adapt.

Completing these steps will ensure that your Business Development foundation is solid as you prepare for a successful year of growing your profile, your platform, and your book of business.

 

Your Decisions Determine Your Business Development Success.

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Making and executing decisions is a key part of practicing law. Litigators decide what strategy to follow on a case; negotiators decide where to stand firm and where to compromise; partners decide which associates are right for an assignment and advancement; patent lawyers decide which features of an invention to claim… And so on.

In fact, decision-making is one of the first practice skills we learn in law school. Did you ever witness the disaster that often followed when a student didn’t stick with an argument about whether and why a case was correctly decided? The professor would show that changing lanes repeatedly often leads to flaccid, half-baked arguments that fall apart. The student under questioning would discover just how accurate the phrase “hot seat” can feel, ending up exhausted and embarrassed. Sure, sometimes we make a mistake and have to correct it, but making and remaking a decision burns time and energy and rarely ends well.

Decision-making plays an important role in business development in two essential ways:

  1. Deciding to focus on BD and grow a book of business
  2. Deciding on a course of BD action and following through

Let’s look at each of these decisions and how they may fall by the wayside, undoing potential success along the way.

Deciding to focus on BD and grow a book of business

Most of us didn’t enter practice thinking, I can’t wait to do business development! Instead, something happens that prompts us to turn our attention from billable work to the process of bringing in that work. And we decide to focus on BD and growing a book of business… or do we?

The word decide comes from the Latin decidere, which is a combination of two words that mean to cut off. (See the brief discussion about the meaning of the word decide.) In other words, to decide on a course of action is to cut off other options.

But when it comes to focusing on business development, many lawyers reverse course when they get busy with billable work and deadlines. Far from having cut off the option of not focusing on BD, these lawyers justify why they have to step away from BD “for now” until they get past a busy period. Sometimes they never resume BD focus, and sometimes they repeatedly dip in and out of focus. In either case, they never come close to reaching momentum.

Deciding that things are just too busy to focus on business development feels like a valid decision, perhaps even a necessary one. After all, you can’t slack on billable work to chase new work, and meeting deadlines is crucial. This can feel like an inescapable Catch-22, but there is a solution.

Decide on small, discrete steps you can take to keep your business development work going even when you’re busy, and then do them. These steps may feel too small to matter, but they’ll keep your BD work alive until you can resume focusing on it. Read more about how to use Teeny Tiny containers to accomplish your BD goals even when you’re too busy to do as much as you’d like.

When you carve out a “no matter what happens” block of time for business development, even if it’s just a few minutes, you’re affirming that BD is a top priority for you. You’re executing the decision you made to focus on BD and grow your book.

Deciding on a course of BD action and following through

When you began focusing on business development, you probably created a BD plan to execute an underlying strategy. (If that isn’t how you began, we should talk so you can set yourself up for success in 2023.) Your plan likely includes several buckets of activities, such as networking to meet potential clients and referral sources, following up with key contacts so that you remain top-of-mind, writing and speaking to build your professional profile, and so on. You started executing your plan, but something happened…

Perhaps you didn’t see the results you were expecting or perhaps you had a new idea that seemed like a better approach. Maybe a colleague mentioned something that led to new business, or you read an article with some fresh ideas, and you think you should shift your plan to incorporate those ideas. After all, you don’t want to waste time on something that isn’t working when there’s something better to try, right? Well, yes and no.

Landing new business takes time. How long this takes depends on a wide variety of factors, but most lawyers find that establishing a flow of new business takes longer than they’d dreamed it might.

Business development success lies in having a solid strategy and consistently executing actions to affect the strategy. It takes time to see the results of your actions, but it also takes time to put in the effort necessary to even hope to see results. Frustrating but true.

I recommend my clients work on their business development plan for three months and then evaluate what results they’re seeing. Sometimes that’s measured in new business, but especially for more high value/low volume practices, that’s measured in a wider network, in more conversations about business and how to get in line to pitch a new matter. The three-month evaluation is about whether you’re seeing results, not whether you’re getting new business. If there are no results, then we have to evaluate whether it’s the plan/execution that’s faulty and a change is required, whether skills development is needed, or whether there’s something else going on. If there are some results, I counsel my clients to keep going.

The second evaluation period comes at six months. Are you seeing measurable results that indicate that you’re on the right track? Have you been invited to pitch or join a potential client’s panel of law firms? Have you built inroads in a group of potential clients and begun to develop strong relationships? Are you speaking on a bigger stage (which might be literally speaking at larger gatherings or possibly in smaller groups of carefully targeted contacts)? Have your relationships with your A-list deepened?

After engaging in this analysis, the next question is whether the results are strong enough to indicate that you should stay the course. It’s a more quantitative time in vs. results out inquiry.  Finally, you look at the list you’ve been keeping of other ideas and determine whether you should stop something you’re doing and try one of them instead.

If you try a new idea before giving your old plans a fair trial, and especially if you do that over and over, you won’t hit momentum and you will undercut any potential of harnessing the power of consistent execution. Instead, you’ll jump from one plan to another then to another, expending lots of energy and investing lots of time and getting few results.

The Bottom Line regarding your BD plan

Take consistent action with your business development plan. Decide to engage in BD with consistency, and you’ll see results. But if you keep changing plans midstream and discover that your results are lacking, question the strength of your decision first.

 

On Strategic Planning

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When I begin working with a new client, someone who wants to build a book of business (or a bigger book), the first thing we do is to build a strategy. I’ve written extensively in the past on the process of developing a strategy for business development. (See, for example, Chapter 3 of The Reluctant Rainmaker and the blog posts How Do You Choose Biz Dev Strategy and What’s Your Strategy?) And yet, what every client wants, quite understandably, is a plan of action items that they can do to build the practice. In fact, we talk about a business development plan more than strategy, and it’s a BD plan, not strategy, that I urge lawyers to revisit on a regular basis. What gives?
 
A BD plan is only as good as the strategy that underlies it. Without strategy, a plan is just an uncoordinated task list of actions that you think will bring in more business, but the actions don’t function together or reinforce one another, nor are they pointed to a specific outcome other than more business.

Succeeding in business development requires strategic planning; creating a plan that flows from your strategy comes next. Strategic planning can be difficult (usually is, if it’s done well), and it’s easy to slip into developing a task list instead of a strategy because that creates the illusion of being more productive.

So how do you know when you’re truly engaging in strategic planning?

I ran across this terrific video from the Harvard Business Review called A Plan Is Not a Strategy. In the video, Roger Martin, former dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, distinguishes strategy from routine planning and highlights the fallacy of what we usually call “strategic planning.”


Martin defines strategy as an “integrative set of choices that positions you on a playing field of your choice in a way that you win.” (Emphasis added.) A strategy is coherent and doable, but it’s also built on a theory about why this is the best playing field for you and why you’re better than anyone else on this playing field. That theory can’t be proven in advance, so it’s a calculated risk that must be tested.
 
A plan, on the other hand, is composed of discrete, concrete action steps that you can complete. The outcome of those actions must be projected, but it is not guaranteed, and unless the individual steps are tied specifically to a strategy (do this to accomplish this aspect of the strategy), the plan lacks an internal coherence. It’s a task list that defines how to use the resources at your disposal, including your time and budget.
 
And so it follows that strategic planning is the process of defining a strategy and then building a plan to implement that strategy.
 
An example of strategic planning: Beginning at 4:05 in the video, Martin discusses how, years ago, almost all airline carriers were building plans like one another to grow their market share. More routes, better customer service, steps designed to improve on what was already existing. These carriers had a plan designed to further a long-ago defined strategy.
 
But Southwest was an upstart that defined a new playing field (point-to-point flights, rather than hub-and-spoke, for one example) that would allow it to reach a desired type of customer (the group of fliers who essentially wanted a more convenient mode of travel than Greyhound without dramatically increasing the cost). In other words, Southwest built a strategy, whereas other airlines simply continued to implement their growth plans. Changing the curtains, if you will, as opposed to placing the window in a new location.
 
A key criticism of law firms and lawyers is that they tend to follow one another, building a better version of a fairly uniform concept of how to build a practice. Although the planning is often described as strategic planning, it’s usually planning for an old strategy or creating a BD plan that isn’t closely tied to any strategy at all. When did you (or your firm) last take on a review and, if necessary, an overhaul of the strategy underlying your business development plans? Do you know what the current strategy is, beyond seeking clients who need X kind of work and can pay Y kind of dollars?
 
One line makes this a must-watch video: “While you’re planning, at least one competitor is working on strategy.” Query which camp you (or your firm) belongs to and what result that’s likely to achieve.
 
Note that I’m not saying you necessarily need to abandon your current strategy and adopt a new one. It may be that you’ve been through the hard work at least somewhat recently and have a strategy that allows you to distinguish yourself from other lawyers and law firms—to win on the playing field of your choice, to use Martin’s words. If that’s the case, check your BD plan to be sure that it’s designed to meet your strategy.
 
But if you haven’t recently revisited your strategy to determine whether it’s on point—or if you can’t clearly articulate the strategy underlying your BD plan—take this as your sign that it’s time to enter a true strategic planning process. Check out the video for a primer on how to develop a strategy that makes sense for you.

Biz dev is a marathon.

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A friend recently ran her first marathon. She didn’t know how it would feel to run 26 miles, and she was concerned about giving up partway through if she started to feel too tired. She even used a marker to write on the inside of her arm, “Your mind will give up before your body. Don’t stop.” She not only finished: she finished almost 15 minutes faster than she’d imagined she might.

Her tip? Don’t let the mind run the show when it’s tired, stressed, and worried. Make a commitment to action and keep going even when it gets hard.

That approach works for literal and metaphorical marathons. And that’s another reason why it matters so much that you have a business development plan with clear interim and ultimate goals: you’re less tempted to stop even when it gets hard if you can look to your interim goals to mark progress and focus on your ultimate goals to provide continues motivation. (Your ultimate goal means not originating and/or serving $X of business, but doing that so that you can make partner or pay cash for your kids’ college tuition or stay at the Four Seasons on your next vacation.)

Here’s the bottom line:

How do you distinguish yourself?

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Do you ever feel that you’re just one lawyer in a large sea of clones?  Hundreds or thousands of other lawyers may occupy the same niche that you do, and you may wonder how to set yourself apart. The challenge lessens if you have specific expertise in a niche, but re-emerges for everyone at some point in business development.

Here’s the bigger problem: lawyers’ websites often read almost identically. Everyone has “years of experience” that will “create value” for their clients through “excellent client service.”  Important, necessary, but oh-so-very-dull, isn’t it?  In today’s economy, if that’s all you can say about yourself and your practice, you’re in trouble.

If you fail to differentiate yourself from other lawyers and law firms, you’ll fail to capture attention—or if you get attention, your audience may not be able to remember who you are. Of course, you must follow certain ethics rules, but looking like everyone else will do you no favors.

So… How can you differentiate yourself? While the options are potentially limitless, three examples may help you to create your own ideas.

  1. Narrow your niche. You can speak to a specific audience (same-sex parents for estate planning purposes), a specific legal need (helping closely held or family businesses navigate sale or purchase), or a specific part of practice (appellate litigation). When you go narrow in scope, you must go deep in focus so that you become the leading voice in your field. Going deep offers strong content marketing opportunities, and you can distinguish yourself by speaking with laser focus
  2. Create a unique experience for your clients. What can you offer clients that other lawyers can’t or don’t? The opportunities vary widely by practice area, but any value-added service is a good step toward differentiation.
    And remember: how you practice is just as important as what you do in practice. Be attentive to the habits that may set you apart from others. Opportunities to set yourself apart abound: quick responses to telephone calls and emails, regular case updates, and educational resources on topics such as how to prepare to give deposition/trial testimony or what to consider when getting ready to make estate plans, to give a few examples.
  3. Become active and visible in the community. Volunteering, serving on boards, or working with non-profits in other capacities is a good way to become known. It provides a context and opening for conversations that reluctant networkers may find more comfortable. Your pro bono work may even present you the opportunity to offer guidance and suggestions that serve as a taste of the service you offer clients. Moreover, you may have opportunities to speak or write through these channels, both of which will serve to raise your profile. Just a caveat: if you expect this community work to support you in building your practice, make sure there’s a logical nexus either by topic or overlapping audiences.

What’s not on this list? General descriptors that suggest you’re smarter or savvier than other lawyers without something specific to back it up. Your strategic insight may in fact differentiate you from others, but your target audience won’t believe you if you tell them. Demonstrate these qualities by sharing representative matters or an article that share your strategic approach.

Successful lawyers are clear about what makes them different from others, and they know how to communicate that persuasively. If you want to differentiate yourself from other practitioners, it’s imperative to connect with an internal compass that will point to what does indeed make you different. If you don’t know what that is, you won’t be able to convince anyone else. Get feedback from colleagues, clients, and/or an outside source.

Not the same year-end pablum again!

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We’re at the tail-end of the year, a busy time whether you’re celebrating with family or pushing to meet a year-end matter deadline. This time of year, the ‘net is awash in articles about evaluating last year and prepping for the new year that are just warmed-over from previous years. Ugh! Who has time? But…

Here are two articles worth making time to read this week because they’ll challenge your way of thinking:

  • Paying the Smart Phone Tax by Seth Godin. I essentially run my business from a smart phone, and I rely on it for critical news about a terminally ill family member. When I saw the title of this post, I immediately worried about a financial tax on my phone, but the post itself points out a much more significant price to pay from overusing it.
  • The Four Hardest Questions to Answer at the End of the Year by Michael Bungay Stanier. We all reflect on the closing year as a new one approaches, and our questions tend to scratch only the surface. As Stanier argues, asking only “what did you do” and “how did it go” allows you to avoid going deeper into what’s really going on. He recommends four alternate questions:
    • What do I need to kill off?
    • Where have I stayed stuck?
    • How did I let myself down?
    • Where are you really headed?

Read the article for further explanation of these questions, and then answer them honestly to gain deep insight leading into purposeful action. I particularly like Stanier’s suggestion that you answer the questions out loud to a trusted friend or colleague.

These two articles got me thinking in a fresh and challenging direction. I’ll be working on Stanier’s four questions next week. Will you join me?

Is It Time to Upgrade Your Work-from-Home Clothes?

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This week’s blog post is by Janet Valenza, Founder, President, and Designer of GOGOgracious™, the women’s clothing brand and direct selling company. 

Janet and I have had a couple of virtual “get acquainted” coffees recently, and I appreciated her suggestions for dressing in a way that’s both comfortable and professional while working from home. Your appearance is part of your brand, so getting this right really matters. Enjoy her article on a challenge many of us are facing during these Zoom-centric days.

And please remember to join my colleague Ivy Slater and me on December 17 for Implementing Your 2021 Vision for a Profitable Practice, the next webinar in our series Building a Profitable Practice in Uncertain Times. Learn more and register HERE.

 

Is It Time to Upgrade Your Work-from-Home Clothes? 

by Janet Valenza

A couple of my clients said to me lately “I don’t need to buy clothes anymore; I’m not going anywhere.”

For me, “not going anywhere” isn’t the issue.  I’ve learned that looking my best means feeling my best.  Getting dressed fully in the morning gets me jazzed for the happiest, most productive day.  This attitude was in place long before the pandemic, and it held true regardless of whether I was spending the day working at home or in the office, running errands, lounging, playing, going to dinner, or some combination of the above. And, of course, if you’re working with clients, being well-dressed for working from home is non-negotiable.

There’s scientific evidence to back this up.  A recent article for the Wall Street Journal cites a study by Dr. Adam Galinsky of Columbia University in which he concludes,  “An elevated cohesive casual look signals the brain for higher productivity.”  He goes on to elaborate that when we have dressed appropriately for the day’s work, we think at a higher, more creative level.

Yes, we all have a lot of Zoom calls right now.  And granted, looking good on Zoom is important, whether you’re meeting with clients or colleagues.  But as Dr. Galinsky discovered, it’s not just about how we appear to others on Zoom calls.  And it’s certainly not about dressing from the waist up.

The goal. I believe. is getting dressed every day for work so that we feel comfortable and also look like a leader, inside and outside the home, on and off Zoom.

Here are some simple suggestions to accomplish that goal, beginning with what’s likely already in your closet.

  1. Start with the first layer. For women, that means a comfortable sports bra and some leggings. For men, it’s a tapered stretchy activewear pant.
  2. Add a fitted (can be loose around the middle but not boxy or baggy) tank top, or racerback top. For men, choose a nice T-shirt.
  3. Take a look in your closet and pull out any shirts or tops with a collar.  Why a collar, you ask?  Because a collar highlights the face on Zoom calls and, more importantly, lends leadership presence.
  4. Evaluate each shirt to determine if it’s knit or woven. Wovens are often stiffer and more formal.  Think cotton shirt.  Knits are generally softer, stretchy, and more casual.
  5. Eliminate the wovens. They’re simply too formal for work-at-home wear.
  6. Layer the collared knit shirt over your initial layer.

Presto! You’re comfortable, Zoom ready, and proud to go outside! See the example below of client Sharon looking smart in the GOGOgracious™ black and white knit shirt.  She is comfortable, yet she looks like a leader. You can find even more examples in this widely-shared Facebook Live.

Janet Valenza is the President of the women’s clothing brand GOGOgracious™.  She helps dynamic women, who are frustrated with shopping, look great in less time.  Find more examples of how to dress well and comfortably (plus opportunities to ask questions) by following Janet’s Facebook page and find her on LinkedIn and Instagram or email her at janetv@gogogracious.com.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Whether you’re celebrating Thanksgiving or just going about an ordinary Thursday, please know how grateful I am for the opportunity to serve you through this blog.

P.S. The next installment of the webinar series:

Implementing Your 2021 Vision for a Profitable Practice
The webinar is scheduled for Thursday, December 17th at 1 PM ET/noon CT/10 AM PT.

Click here to register.