Escape the Burnout Treadmill: Focus on Resource Allocation, Not Just Growth

I’m Melissa Shanahan, and this is The Law Firm Owner Podcast Episode #297.

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Hey, everyone, welcome to this week's episode. This week, we are going to talk about something that could be put under the category of mindset. We're going to talk about your job as a law firm owner is not growth, it's resource allocation and responsible resource allocation.

Growth typically tends to follow that when you are allocating your resources responsibly, but we're going to dig into this because working harder won't grow your law firm, at least not sustainably so. And in fact, it might be the very thing that's holding you back.

The best clients I've worked with and the best business owners I know, and I follow this practice as well, is to not focus on growth, but to focus on resource allocation. And that that will actually give you the firm that you want, that you're looking for. But it is a discipline and we're going to dig into this today.

Have you ever felt like no matter how much effort you put in, your firm still isn't growing the way you want it to? You're hiring, you're taking on more cases, You're working insane hours, but your revenue and profit, more importantly, aren't keeping up. It doesn't feel like it's paying off.

This is wholly frustrating and it leads to burnout. It leads to burnout because it feels like you're running on a treadmill. You're not really getting anywhere when it comes to profit and revenue, just margin space in the business. You aren't getting there. You're stretched too thin across too many tasks. Your team is busy, but That busyness is not progressing into business health. You invest in marketing, hiring, but you don't see the clear returns.

And again, this problem is not that you need to work harder. The problem is that your firm is not making the most of its three most valuable resources: time, attention, and capital. Money and assets is what I'm considering capital.

It's so clear to me when I am working with a firm, especially in private situations, because I have so much more insight into what is going on, what they're thinking, what is happening in the firm and behind the scenes. And what I notice is that they put themselves on a different trajectory when they really start acting in alignment with focusing on resource allocation.

So the clients that I have that are the best at deciding where to put their time, attention and money and not just their own, the firm's time, attention and money. And if you can learn to think forward with this front of mind, you'll be able to scale your firm without burning out. You'll be able to grow and do it more profitably. So use this episode today to shift your mindset from working harder to allocating smarter. Which means that you'll be focusing on what truly moves the needle for your firm. And you'll avoid spreading yourself too thin and your team too thin.

Earlier in my career, and this wasn't just with Velocity Work, this is with the consulting firm I worked at prior as well, I would work with owners who had great businesses on paper, but they were completely stuck. They kept hiring, they were launching new marketing initiatives, sometimes expanding, having new core service offerings, expanding their practice areas, but their profit margins weren't growing and their teams were overwhelmed. It's like everything was getting maxed out.

And for firms that do this, The common theme is, what is going on here? I'm trying so hard. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do. I'm learning from all these experts that are telling me to do these things and I'm doing all of the things and I'm still finding that, yes, while technically on paper my firm looks like it's growing in terms of revenue, my profit is going down. My margins are getting slimmer and this isn't feeling less stressful and like there's more freedom. It's kind of feeling like the firm is sucking the life out of me.

So this is not uncommon. If this is you or if you've been there, you know what I'm talking about, but if this is you just know that this is super normal and it doesn't take much to put yourself in a different path. And what I'm talking about today on this episode is not tactical. It is first principles. It is mindset. It is how you think about the issues that you're experiencing.

You know, I had one client in particular that comes to mind as I'm recording this episode, and they were adding associates. And actually, they were adding two associates.

But because the turnover was high and because there were issues with onboarding and because it was not the right fits, which sometimes will happen, but there weren't protective measures put into place to try to knock it out of the park with the hires, right? So they were having to hire more than two people to fill two roles because they would hire and then someone wouldn't work out in the first few months and then they'd have to hire again. It was like this revolving thing that they really believe they should have been doing. And this is right before I met them. They were in the middle of this drama right when I met them.

They were spending thousands on ads, but they just didn't feel like they were breaking through to the next level, which is one of the reasons that they reached out. They were spinning their wheels and they were tired of it. And it was an investment to work with us. And they, in my opinion, made a fantastic choice by working with us because they could start to right-size their business and they could start to focus on the right things.

So they thought they had a growth problem, but they really had a resource allocation problem. Their time was scattered. Their attention was scattered, and their money was being spent without a clear strategy and without expectations on ROI.

So when we stepped back and focused on the highest leverage area, which we decided together in a retreat, fixing their intake and conversion process instead of just adding more leads. Okay, suddenly, their firm started making more money and with the same number of clients that they were serving. So they weren't working harder, they were just making better decisions about where to focus their time, where to focus their attention, and where to focus their money.

And all this, by the way, is made easier with data. You can make better decisions, clear-eyed, when you have data in front of you, when you understand what's under the hood of your business, when you see the evaluation of certain areas of your practice. When you have access to that kind of data, it makes it so easy to facilitate a conversation around what needs to happen next.

So when we took a step back, we focused on what's the lead domino, if you listen to last week's episode. What's the lead domino here? What is the thing that if we fix this, then it's going to create a healthier scenario inside of the firm.

And by healthy, I mean increasing your profit and decreasing the amount of time it takes to be able to have that level of profit. So there's two kinds of profitability that I'm thinking of here. One is financial profitability, so the profit margin, But there's also the profit margin on your time. And both increase when you take this kind of approach where you constrain down to this highest leverage area that you're going to choose and you're going to fix it. You're going to work on it. You're going to put your attention on it. Maybe you put some money into it. You're going to give your resources to this thing so that you can shift it for good, creating a foundation that then you can build on, which creates strength inside of your firm. It creates a sense of stability within that thing that you worked on. Like from that angle, your business is more sustainable, it is healthier. And the bottom line will feel that either directly or indirectly depending on the area that you're focused on.

So you have three levers of resource allocation. One is time. Number two is attention. And number three is money. And here's the thing. You don't need more time, attention, or money. You need to use what you already have better. That's the thing. That's the key. And it's okay if maybe you're looking at or assessing your current situation and saying, man, I haven't been using my time, attention, or money in the best ways. I am on a treadmill. That is telling me I'm not using my time, attention, and money in the best ways.

So now I'm going to go back to the drawing board and I'm going to think about my situation and I'm going to stop focusing on growth and I'm going to start focusing on the resources that I'm allocating. And when you start to think in those ways, it's so clear where you're going wrong, what's going wrong. Where you are spending time on the very thing that you should be delegating, but you don't have time to delegate, but if you don't delegate it, you're gonna keep end up doing it until when, right? Like when is somebody gonna finally give you the space to delegate your administrative tasks? If you don't take it, if you don't take the reins with this, you're going to stay on the treadmill.

And the way to take the reins is to decide how you are going to intentionally allocate your time, your attention and your money for the health of the business. That is it. And when you do that, you will experience growth.

So it's almost like people have growth in mind. They wanna grow their firms, not at all costs. I don't know anybody that wants to grow at all costs. They want to grow and it's conditional. They want space. They want to be able to take home more money. They want profit margin, freedom. They want all the same things that everybody on this planet wants, every business owner wants. But the path that they've been looking at is growth because in their minds, growth means more revenue. But that does not mean better business health.

So you can get yourself into a sticky situation pretty quickly if you aren't focused on where you are spending your time, energy, and money for the health of the business. If your business is healthy, you will grow. If your business is not healthy, you can still grow, but there is a cost that you don't want to pay. Because you make it so much harder to unwind all that when you finally wake up and realize, oh, wait a minute, I've been focused so hard on growth, but not focusing on the right vehicle to get there.

You know, this makes me think about, I used to say this a lot to clients. The metaphor to me is when you are riding your bike and you're riding faster and faster and faster and faster and faster, and when you stop to do the work that we talk about on this podcast, when you stop and you pause long enough and you spend time, you allocate your time and your attention and your money in ways that are really going to move the needle for the firm and for the health of the firm. When you do that, it's like getting off the bike and getting into a car.

The difference in the journey, the ease at which you will feel towards growth is completely different. But people don't really understand this and so they're focused on growth and some of you listening to this, you may not even use the word growth. You just think you have to work harder. And so you pedal harder, you pedal faster. And there's a point in which you can't do that. You can't pedal any faster. So the trick is, if you want to get off the bike and get into a car, you have to learn how to be very intentional with how you allocate your resources, how you allocate your time, your attention and your money.

Okay, so your three levers, time, So how you and your team spend the hours in your day. Evaluate that. Look at that. And you don't have to do this perfect time audit of everybody in your firm. You could have a one-on-one with people and ask them about what it's like to move through their day. What do they spend their time on? If you don't know, some of you, your people already track their time, so that's easy. But how you and your team spend the hours of your day.

Number two is attention. What you focus on and what you prioritize. Where is your attention going?

And number three, capital. Where you invest money for the highest return.

So again, I just want to reiterate, you don't need more time, you don't need more attention, you don't need more money. You need to use what you have in a better way.

Okay, I'm going to go over a few mindset myths, so to speak, beliefs that you may have that are not serving you. And you may not consciously think these things, but it's driving how you operate. So it's worth having a look.

The first thought that people have a lot is, I just need to work harder. Eventually, I'm going to break through. We have talked about this time and time on this podcast before that you cannot work your way to your next level of success. You have been able to for maybe most of your life.

But if you're listening to this podcast, you own a law firm. Uh-uh. That is not how this works anymore. You're in totally different territory and you're going to have to scrap that winning strategy. You're going to have to get a new winning strategy. So it's just not enough. Hard work isn't enough. If effort alone determines success, every law firm owner putting in 60-hour weeks would be thriving. The key is knowing where to apply your effort.

Another thing that people think often or that drives their behavior, a belief, a thought, is that if they hire more people, their firm will grow. Hiring more people doesn't solve inefficiencies.

It can actually amplify them. And if your systems aren't strong, throwing more bodies at the problem creates more complexity and more waste. And complexity is something that you want to avoid. As you grow, your business will become more complex, but simplicity is the name of the game.

Another belief that people commonly have, and they may not say it out loud, but it shows up in everything they do. I need to be involved in everything for this to work. The owners that really win, they don't do everything. They decide what deserves their time and they delegate the rest.

This really falls right in line with Buy Back Your Time, which is Dan Martell's book. It's easy to forget these principles. These are the principles that are talked about in that book. You buy back your time. You don't hire for big roles that your firm is not quite ready for yet. You hire to buy back your time.

So what you're spending your time on needs to constantly be shifting up. Meaning you hire to get time back with the things that can be delegated. And the more that you do that, then you need to fill the time with more and more high-value tasks. And in many cases, that is not legal work. It is ‘on the business’ kind of work.

Even if you don't know exactly what to focus on, you take that one quarter at a time. Every quarter, you will decide, just like I talked about earlier, you decide how your attention and time is best allocated for the firm, for the health of the firm. Not so your firm can just keep running, not so that you stay on the treadmill.

No, no, every quarter you will evaluate this and you ask yourself, what deserves my time and attention? You make sure that you delegate in a way that allows you to focus on that. This can be tough. It's not easy, but it is simple.

So as tough as it might be, you can do tough things. And it's going to require that you do hard things. You're in uncharted territory for yourself. You have to figure this stuff out, but you have to do so intentionally. And it may not be graceful. It may not be pretty, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that you're intentional and that you show up in the best ways you know how.

What I know for sure is that showing up with this front of mind, with this as a driver, you will be more intentional and you will create more sustainability and health in your firm. And that will allow you to grow and scale if you choose to, which I'll do a whole podcast on the difference between growth and scaling at some point. But it will allow you to create a healthy, thriving firm. On your terms, you get to decide what you want to shape it into. Everybody's different. Everybody has a different vision for that. But you will create a healthy, thriving firm if you make it your job to allocate resources in the smartest, best ways.

Not only will growth follow, but so will higher profit margins. And so will a fulfilled team who also uses their resources properly because it's guided from the top. It's guided from you. That's a firm you want.

So in a bit of a recap, there's three levers that you have, time, attention, and capital. And the way that you allocate these will determine your firm's trajectory, period. If you put two law firm owners who have very similar firms, like same setup, and one of them is focused on growth, that's the thing. That's the thing that's forefront in that owner's mind. And the other owner, what's forefront in that owner's mind is how they are going to allocate their time, attention, and money.

Who do you think, and so now I'm hoping you can see this, I would put my money every single time on the owner who is approaching the development of the firm and approaching their day-to-day from a position of allocating resources intentionally. The word growth isn't in their head. It's not driving the train. Resource allocation is. Focus is. That person's going to win. That person is going to have better outcomes.

That person is going to have higher profit margins. That person is going to have more freedom from their business. That person is going to have higher retention with their team. And it's because they're focused on the right things.

It's first principle stuff. And if you don't do that, if you just focus on growth, then that owner is probably looking around and seeing other successful firms that are doing these marketing campaigns and that are working with this marketing company and are doing this with their intake department. And it's like they're looking outside of themselves because they've seen other firms that have grown and they go try to do what those firms have done and try to implement it. This also happens too with law firm owners that have created their success in a very specific way and they work with other owners to try to replicate the success they had and the way that they know to do that is because they did it one way so then they're going to try to have you do it one way.

But the problem with that is there's too many variables. What is true for one firm may not be true for another. There's no blueprint for this. Which is why I would put my money every single time on the owner who is focused on making sure that they are spending their time, they are spending their attention, and they are spending their money in the ways that will create the best, firm health, stability, sustainability, a strong foundation from which to build on.

So I encourage all of you, I have to do this too, consistently. This matters deeply. And because of that, I do a lot of work to keep this forefront on my mind. And if you can ask yourself consistently, where is my time, attention, and money going and does that line up with what it makes the most sense for the health of this firm? Where is my time, attention and money going? And does that make sense for the health of this firm? For the stability, the longevity of this firm.

Another question you can ask that sometimes will cut through a little bit easier. What needs attention in my firm? There are answers. If every single listener out there asks themselves this question, there is an answer. There is an answer for every single business on this planet. There is an answer to that question. What is it for you?

If you had to pick one, I would just say one just for the practicing constraint. This idea of constraining down to focus on one thing and get it right is so important, it's so valuable. But somehow when we get focused on growth, we spread ourselves too thin across too many things, we're watered down, and we don't actually experience a sense of completion with anything.

This is not the path. This is not the path. Stop trying to solve every problem at once. Focus on the highest leverage constraint in your firm. Pick one.

If you apply what we've talked about today, if you keep top of mind, reminders are so important. If you set up a reminder for yourself, it could be a sticky note on your computer screen. It could be an alarm that goes off on your phone. There's a bunch of different ways that you can find in your world to make sure that you are reminded of the truth, that what matters the most is how you are allocating your time, how you are allocating your attention, and how you are allocating your money.

If you focus on those three things, and that's the approach that you take when it comes to developing your firm and your approach to the day-to-day, you will have a serious shift. Even if you're pretty good at this, but everybody can get off track now and then, right? Even if you're pretty good at this, bringing this again to the forefront of your mind and approaching everything from this, you will feel a boost.

You can't implement this and not feel momentum. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen. And it doesn't need to happen overnight, because we're playing the long game. We're not playing the short game.

Alright, everybody, I hope you have a wonderful week. I'll see you here next Tuesday.

Hey, you may not know this, but there's a free guide for a process I teach called Monday Map/Friday Wrap. If you go to VelocityWork.com, it's all yours. It's about how to plan your time and honor your plans. So, that week over week, more work that moves the needle is getting done in less time. Go to VelocityWork.com to get your free copy.

Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Owner Podcast. If you're ready to get clearer on your vision, data, and mindset, then head over to VelocityWork.com where you can plug in to quarterly Strategic Planning, with accountability and coaching in between. This is the work that creates Velocity.