If you’re a geek like me, you’ve probably played Settlers Of Cataan.

For the benefit of those who got dates in highschool, the game involves trading resources to build cities on the game board. What makes it interesting though, is that the amount of resources are determined at random by both the board configuration and what rolls of the dice end up coming up.

In one game, there might be an abundance of wood and no clay. In another, clay might be as common as the dirt it is, and the person who controls wood might control the economy.

It’s a great illustration of the principles of supply and demand. You need to work with what you have an abundance of.

You have resources like this in your law practice too. And they also change with your circumstances.

When you’re starting out, it’s likely that you have more time than money. You aren’t booked up with cases, managing junior associates and all of the rigmarole of running a big practice. When you end up having to do all of that stuff, you are most likely going to have more money than time.

Sometimes you have neither (we’ll get into this later). But we’re going to assume that you have one or the other if you’re reading this article, which will help you decide what to invest in if you want to build your practice.

More time than money

I remember starting out here when I built my first business in the nutrition space. We had won a grant from a business plan competition, raised some money and had to promptly spend it all on our first lot of inventory. We had close to half a ton of product sitting on a garage and nothing but time to move it with.

Thankfully, I was pretty well acquainted with a number of marketing channels at the time that had time as their major input. Here are some of the things I worked on before we ended up getting

• Writing 5 articles per week for a blog that ended up getting to a pagerank of 2, back when that meant something (Content marketing/SEO)
• Building up an instagram channel to several thousand followers (Social Media)
• Getting PR placements in some of the top outdoors blogs (PR)
• Direct selling to major retailers that could have covered our product (Sales)
• Partnership outreach to every triathlon coach in the US (Networking)

Needless to say I was a pretty busy guy! I was generally waking up at 5AM most days, taking breaks only to eat and go to the gym, and wrapping up around 7PM. I wasn’t pulling that long of a schedule on the weekend but I wasn’t relaxing either.

This is the life you have to live when you have more time than money. If there is any time that motivational quotes make sense, it’s this stage.

Things are slightly different for the small law practice but the general principle is the same. First, you’re limited in your channels. The focus of most small practices has to be on networking, content marketing and the associated downstream stuff like SEO and PR. Second, you are actually WORSE off because success means even more demand on your time!

Choosing your channels

As someone with time, you’re limited in the channels you can work with. I highly recommend law firms (and all small businesses for that matter) focus on exponential channels when they are in this phase.

Take it from someone who has made the mistake before – you can’t make $100 of ad budget perform like $1000 by working 10X as hard. You’re going to go crazy and probably lose it all. Data is the name of the game when it comes to linear channels like PPC and you’re going to be reading tea leaves if you don’t have enough.

Back to what you CAN do though.

Attorneys with time need to network. Groups like BNI and resources like meetup.com make it possible for anyone outside of the sticks to go to a different event every night. Your partner might hate you but it’s what you have to do when you’re getting started out.

The good thing about networking is that the sales cycle is really short when you get a warm referral. It can potentially turn into money very soon.

If you’re not a fan of handshakes and business cards, or want to do something when it’s not happy hour, content is the gateway for the channels you’ll have an advantage in.

These days, content is the grist that powers pretty much every organic channel from social media to SEO to PR. Publishing articles for google to show in search has been around since the beginning of time and has actually become more popular since black hat tactics like link building have become more challenging to implement.

PR requires something to promote, and if you’re writing enough you can have plenty and/or high enough quality stuff to submit to journals, calls for experts like HARO.com and industry blogs. This can either be client facing or serve the same purpose of networking – being the expert in the eyes of other attorneys.

Finally, if your wit is sharper than your attention span, you can make a go at social media. There is a certain amount of distraction you need to allow into your life to be responsive on social media, but things like linkedin groups can be a great way to syndicate your content and get distribution if you can find the right ones.

Escaping the tyranny of the clock

The trouble with any service business is that success is actually worse for your time. If your case flow is dependent on you being out in the world/writing articles/endorsing people on linkedin, you’re going to suffer when you’re actually doing, y’know, what you got your JD to do.

Sometimes people focus on client work at the expense of their pipeline and have to start hustling again from a dead start once the work is complete. Sometimes people end up working themselves to the bone, losing sleep and aging years at a time. Neither is good.

This is the tyranny of the clock. You’ll never have more than 24 hours to give to time dependent channels.

Thankfully, if you do happen to be booked up it should mean that you are now in camp 2.

More money than time

When we finally had enough money to pursue paid efforts, we did. The winning channels ended up being facebook lead generation and email marketing on one side, and investing into building up our organic ranking on amazon. In a few months, we were making double what we had done in our best month of hustling on less than 5 hours a week.

You can do two things with money. Invest it directly into linear channels, or convert it into time through hiring people and investing it into exponential channels. Your choice on which one to pursue depends on your choice of payoffs.

The important thing is to do it soon so that you can escape the tyranny of the clock. Time will never turn into more time, but money can turn into more money.

Look, you can totally ignore this advice and keep on hustling at networking events and writing articles. You might have the fortitude to book yourself up once before starting again or five times. Or if you’re a tough guy you can keep doing it for the rest of your life (which probably won’t be long because of the stress).

Your committing yourself to low level work. The salespeople you’re shaking hands with at those networking events are probably making around $15-20 per hour adjusted, as are the content marketers that could be writing your articles.

Since you became a lawyer, your time has been worth hundreds of dollars. And with a bigger pipeline, you can raise your prices (no joke).

So the question is, when are you going to get off the treadmill?

If you’re smart about it, there are companies that can get your results for under $5000. We happen to be one of them but don’t feel obligated to work with us.

The important thing is that you avoid suffering for suffering’s sake. There is a promised land out there, and you can get to it.