Marketing has a lot of facts. Different things you can do to bring in business and earn more on the business you bring in. You can grow your practice by leveraging your existing clients and contacts or you can reach out to prospective new clients and the people who can refer them.

Another way to look at it is, you can either

a) build a list, through various reaching out methods (advertising, networking, blogging, speaking, etc.), or

b) work with people you know, seeking their repeat business and referrals.

Your clients have a list–their friends, colleagues, neighbors, and so on. Your professional contacts have newsletters, email lists, client lists, and personal and professional contacts.

Leveraging your existing relationships is more immediate because your clients and contacts know, like and trust you. They’re willing to hire you (if they need you), and send you referrals and make introductions. But their ability to do these things is finite and may not be enough to sustain you.

On the other hand, building a list by reaching out to people you don’t know is more difficult and takes longer. You have to attract prospects who need you now, or build a list and stay in touch with them until they do. You have to build trust and show them what you can do. You need to do the same thing with prospective referral sources.

But the list of people you don’t know is virtually unlimited.

So, what do you do?

In the beginning of your practice, you’ll obviously do more reaching out and list building. Later, when you have an established client base and relationships with other professionals, you’ll probably find it more fruitful to leverage those relationships.

If you’re somewhere between the two–not quite new but not yet ready to rely completely on repeat business and referrals–you should probably do both. And if you’re not sure where you are, keep doing both, until you’re so rich and famous you can do whatever you want.

Here’s the plan

In my humble (but accurate) opinion, marketing is foundational to the growth of every professional practice. You have to do it. You may not like it. You may even hate it. But if you don’t do it, you’re not going to be around very long.

You could get a job. One that doesn’t require you to bring in business. If that works for you, great. Problem solved. You’re welcome.

On the other hand, if you don’t want to work for someone else, you’re going to have to do something to bring in new clients.

You could find a partner who likes marketing and let them do it. Or hire people (employees, consultants, advertising agencies, etc.) and pay them to do most of the marketing for you. You write checks, they make your phone ring.

But that’s not the entire answer. Clients may call but if you have zero people skills, they’re not going to sign up or stick around.

Where does that leave us? Here’s what I suggest.

Find something—one strategy, one idea, one way to identify and communicate with prospective clients and the people who can refer them, something that doesn’t make you want to slit your wrists, and do that. Just that one thing.

Start small. Get some results. Build from there.

You can do this. Actually, you might find, as many lawyers do, that you actually enjoy doing it. You’ll certainly enjoy the results it brings.

To get started, you might have to trick yourself. Pretend that what you’re doing isn’t “marketing,” it’s just doing some writing or speaking or meeting some people and being nice to them.

Yes, that’s marketing. Marketing is everything we do to get and keep good clients. But if you hate marketing that much and don’t want to admit to yourself that you’re doing it, I won’t tell anyone what you’re doing.

How to make marketing less painful. See this