The Case Against Adding a New Practice Area

The practice is going well. You’ve got criminal law figured out (or family law or employment law or whatever). You’re humming along with some associates, an additional office, and a smoothly operating firm.

You’re ambitious. You want to keep growing. You’d like to make even more money.

You decide to expand into another practice area. In addition to criminal law, you’ll take on family law or personal injury (or, again, whatever).

What’s Better Than More?

Slow down and read Not Even One Note from Seth Godin. It’s a great article in which he uses the story of his clarinet playing to illustrate the point that “Better is better than more.”

Adding another practice area is, as Seth says, “like making the menu longer rather than figuring out how to make one dish that’s worth traveling across town for.”

Why not stick to what you’re doing and go deeper? Why not be the best in the world at your thing? Isn’t that a better option than spreading yourself, and your business, thin?

Go deep. Create an offering worth being talked about. Be the guru, the master, the expert. Be the one that they’ll not only drive across town for, but also the one they’ll fly across the country for. That could be you.

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