When business is great at your law firm, do you ever stop to think about what you can improve? Or do you go with the flow and wait for problems to pop up before you take action? In our experience, most people wait for the problems. But if you act to improve when business is great, you’ll have budget and time (especially if you’re delegating properly) to devote to optimizing processes and building an even stronger business. Do you know where to start?

Welcome to Gimbal’s Tip of the Week, where you get practical, actionable advice you can use right away to start building a more productive and profitable legal practice.

In last week’s tip, we identified one of the 5 top mistakes lawyers make: not running their practice like a business, and we identified the 6 core elements of every successful business and invited you to set your baseline by taking this free assessment.

This week’s tip is to think of your firm like an airplane. Stick with me on this one, it'll become clearer as we go along!

Just as it takes more than being a good pilot to fly a plane, it takes more than good lawyering to be run a successful firm. Each of the 6 core elements corresponds to part of the plane, and they all need to be working properly to keep that plane (your business) in the air.

•  Leadership = the cockpit
•  Marketing = the right engine
•  Sales = the left engine
•  Products and services = the wings
•  Overhead = the body
•  Cash flow = the fuel tanks

By focusing on improving your practice across each of these elements in turn, starting with Leadership, you’ll build a much stronger practice and have more time for the people, the places and the things you love. That’s why, over the next 2 months, our weekly tips will take a closer look at each of the six elements.

Your action item this week is to get a head start by taking this free assessment powered by Business Made Simple. 

Whether you run a large or small firm, the detailed report you’ll receive will identify your strengths and weaknesses and suggest ways you can improve. The insights in your report will set you up to benefit even more from our upcoming series of tips.

Stay tuned for the rest of the series and sign up so you never miss a Tip of the Week.