The American Bar Association’s e-zine, Law Practice Today was kind enough to post A Business Plan and Budget: The foundation of a successful and profitable practice, co-written with my award-winning colleague, Dan Pinnington. This article speaks to the essentials of setting up a business plan and budget, to set your practice up on the right footing. These two documents start the process of taking your practice from a historical position (i.e. how did we do last month?) to a visionary one (where is it that we want to go? What milestones do we wish to reach? How do we know if we are meeting our goals?). The sports coaches tell us that we have to visualize ourselves completing a successful maneuver prior to acting. In a similar manner, the process of drafting your business plan and putting numbers into your budget spreadsheet takes you into a visioning mindset – where you contemplate your future and your place in it. You take charge of the future that you wish to have. Many – successful – firms that I have visited don’t draft a budget and are comfortable taking in whatever comes in the door. This is fine – if you are content in ‘going with the flow’. However, if you desire a practice where you are in charge, seeking and receiving the clients and files that you desire, then you have to take a proactive stance and scope out your future. Your budget and business plan is the starting point. A law firm budget in Excel format can be found at:
http://www.lawsociety.bc.ca/practice_support/articles/docs/Budget.xls
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Budgeting, Leadership and Strategic Planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.One Response to “Business Plan…”
July 18th, 2007 at 9:30 am
It’s amazing how many small firms and solos “don’t have time” for budgeting, goal setting, and ironically, time management.
A clear vision makes certain decisions clear and vital.
When it comes to rainmaking, it’s important to translate these result goals into weekly action goals. Especially for small practices & solos, client work can easily overpower the necessity of marketing & branding.
~ Vik Rajan
PersonalBrandMarketing.com