“The secret to success is to start from scratch and keep on scratching.”
Dennis Green
To no one’s surprise, the core of my business development approach is adopting a written business plan that includes a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) and a set of goals and undertakings the planner is committed to achieving over the year. Those goals must be attainable and measurable as well as amended as the year progresses to make the plan a “living” document.
During a mentoring session with a young lawyer, I was once asked what I was doing when I was 28 (his age). It was an interesting question that I hadn’t really thought about. When I was 28, I was one year post my L.L.M. in Trade Regulation from N.Y.U. and a new associate at what was then Hall Dickler Lawler Kent & Howley. (It eventually became Hall Dicker Kent Friedman & Wood.) I was the 20th or so lawyer to join the firm and among the few non-Ivy hires. I had no business, no prospects of business, no connections, and no experience. Needless to say, I was completely intimidated. Indeed, they only hired me because I’d studied the then-new Copyright Act at N.Y.U., and they needed someone to explain it! So, to say I was a low man on the totem pole was an understatement.
It was then that I got the bug to read business books. I’d had my fill of law books and was already knee-deep in pocket parts (I doubt many readers even know what a pocket part is – or was). It’s from reading those books that I found my dedication to writing business plans, and I wrote my first over 40 years ago. Why am I blogging about this? It’s not to impress you with the success I’ve enjoyed. It’s to impress upon you that anyone can do it with a dedication to planning. And that plan must be written and followed religiously. Nor can you do it alone. You can also depend on luck, inheritance, or winning the lottery. Your choice.
