Almost exactly twenty years ago, I arrived in San Francisco to start working at my first startup, Flycast Communications. Flycast was led by Rick Thompson and Larry Braitman, two gentlemen from whom I learned a lot, and this morning, I’m thinking about something Rick said way back then. We were a small startup with zero…
22017Mar
By Peter Darling
In Business development,
Mindset,
Thinking Out Loud,
Uncategorized
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Everything Hurts: Fitness and Business Development
Let’s take inventory. What hurts? Quadriceps. Hamstrings. Butt. Chest. Shoulders. Hips. Basically, everything between my knees and my head hurts somehow. The worst is the quads. If I have to move something on the floor, I try to do it with one of my feet, only bending down if I absolutely have to. I’ve been…
52017Feb
By Peter Darling
In Business development,
Networking,
Relationships,
Sales,
Sales and Selling
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Connections: Both Priceless and Free
One of the best ways to add extra value to your clients as a legal marketing consultant is to be the son of a small-town doctor. Obvious, right? I grew up in the small town pictured above. Corning, New York — Population: 12,000. Looking back at it from middle age, I now realize it was…
Why Webinars Work — By the Numbers
Webinars are now one of the basic building blocks of marketing. Along with all the issues involved in actual content and strategy, there are also frequently a lot of questions about the details: what day of the week is best? What time of the day? How should we promote it? How long should it be?…
To Bring In Business, Start Paying Attention
The single best way to improve your business development expertise is not to read articles like this. It’s to pay close attention to what the best business developers around you do, then steal from them. Right down my street, in Santa Cruz, California, is a little joint called Charlie Hong Kong, or CHK as it’s…
Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.
I I have three beautiful, talented, game daughters. See? A week ago, I traveled to Grinnell, Iowa, to see one of them in her first college play. Which got me thinking about repetition. The play was called Constellations, and it’s by Nick Payne, a British playwright. The play is about a couple going through what couples…
Build Client Relationships By Writing Together
One of the most challenging things about business development is overcoming the “Us vs. Them” mentality that inevitably arises. To put it kind of crudely, the other person, the prospective client, often instinctively puts you in the position of the Person Who is Trying to Separate Him From His Money. You end up, therefore, with…
The Moment You’ve All Been Waiting For
I was sitting at a restaurant a few nights ago, having dinner with a friend of mine. Said friend is an accounting/finance/bookkeeping type, and she was talking about giving advice to someone about which payroll service to use. Gesturing as she spoke, she told me what she’d said: if you used Paychex (or someone) for…
This Is Why I Have A Business
Here’s an excerpt from an article in Above the Law today: Faced with client pressure to keep down costs and industry competition to achieve the highest profits, law firms now frequently assess which lawyers are worthy enough for the top rungs of partnership. Those who don’t bill enough hours or bring in enough business are quietly…
Great Branding — How to Make People Care A Lot About Little Pieces of Yellow Paper
It being Olympic season and all, I’ve been watching a lot of sports on television, and one of the most interesting ones is gymnastics, particularly women’s. I have the sense that all the prancing, posing and dance in a floor routine is only there to disguise truly terrifying brute strength. I’m also fascinated by the…