The experts and gurus tell you you’re not doing nearly enough to market your legal services. They provide you with a laundry list of tasks you need to do and you had better do them, they say, or you will be left behind by your competition.

Screw ’em.

You don’t have to do everything. I certainly don’t. Not even close.

I write a daily blog post, I occasionally do some guest posts, and I spend about five minutes a day on social media. Okay, you got me, I also do a lot of reading. But I am not consumed with doing everything others say I must do. I don’t worry about what anyone else is doing, and you shouldn’t either.

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are,” Teddy Roosevelt said. He was replying to a request for more guns and soldiers during the Spanish American War. His generals wanted more. He told them they were fine with what they had. You are, too.

Yes, there are other things I’m working on. Because I want to, not because I have to. I’ve got the basics covered.

You may be different. You may have more time than I do. Okay, let me re-phrase that–you may want to spend more time on marketing than I do. You may love posting and pinning and tweeting and commenting and sharing and instagramming. You may be a video stud or a mobile maven.

And that’s fine. It’s great, in fact. God bless you. You’re doing what you enjoy and it’s working for you. That’s the way marketing should be.

Because if it’s not, if marketing is something you loathe in all it’s forms and iterations, you shouldn’t do it. Why make yourself miserable? Partner up with someone who likes marketing. Or get a job.

Because marketing must be done.

If you want to do more, do more. Not because you see other lawyers doing more and you think you must keep up with them. Do it because it makes sense to you and you want to do it.

Start by learning about what’s possible. This blog is a good place to start. My course, The Attorney Marketing Formula, provides a system for marketing legal services and includes a simple marketing plan for lawyers. My other course, Make the Phone Ring, shows you how to do marketing on the Internet.

I mentioned Teddy’s quote in a previous post where I also quoted Mark Zuckerberg. He said we often start projects with the hard parts, figuring we can always do the easy bits. He says that instead, we should start with what’s easy. This way, we will have started and starting is the most important part.

If you start, you can get better, maybe even learn to like it. If you never start, that can’t happen.

Starting is easy. Starting includes things like reading and thinking and making notes.

So don’t worry about what anyone else is doing, or what anyone says you must do. You can market your services any way you want. Find out what’s possible, do something and see how it goes. And start with easy.