From Knowing to Doing :: The Hardest Shift in Business Development

By Jane Southren

There’s a moment that shows up in almost every coaching engagement I’ve ever been part of, and if you’ve worked with me, you’ll probably recognize it.

It usually happens early on. We’re a few sessions in. We’ve started talking about how business development actually works—not in theory, but in practice—and I’ll hear some version of this:

“I already know all this.”

And I always understand where that’s coming from.

You’re smart. You’re accomplished. You’ve built a career on your ability to absorb information, apply it, and get results. Of course what I’m saying sounds familiar. None of it is particularly exotic or inaccessible. In fact, most of it is deceptively simple.

But here’s what I can also see, very clearly:

You might recognize it. You might even agree with it. But you’re not actually doing it in a consistent, intentional way. And right alongside that, you’re often carrying a whole set of reasons—very logical, very well-articulated reasons—why it wouldn’t work for you anyway.

That combination is incredibly common. And it’s also incredibly important to understand, because it’s not a motivation problem. It’s not a discipline problem. It’s not even, strictly speaking, a knowledge problem.

It’s a learning curve problem.

Why It Feels So Uncomfortable at the Start

When you decide, really decide, to focus on business development, something shifts.

You move out of the part of your work where you are competent, confident, and in control, and into a space where the outcomes are less predictable and the feedback is slower. You’re no longer operating from mastery. You’re operating from effort.

For high-performing lawyers, that’s not a familiar or particularly comfortable place to be.

So your brain does what brains are designed to do. It tries to reduce that discomfort as quickly as possible. One of the easiest ways to do that is to convince you that you’re not actually in unfamiliar territory at all.

You tell yourself that you already know this. That you’ve heard it before. That it’s obvious. And then, almost in the same breath, you start to explain why it’s not realistic in your practice, with your clients, in your firm, at this stage of your career.

None of that is laziness or resistance in the way people usually think about it. It’s a very human response to stepping into something where you are, temporarily, not very good yet.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect, Playing Out in Real Time

What’s happening in that moment is something psychologists have studied for years: the Dunning-Kruger effect.

At the early stages of learning a new skill, you gain just enough knowledge to recognize the concepts and understand the language. That creates a sense of familiarity, and with it, a sense of confidence. But you don’t yet have the depth of experience required to apply those concepts effectively or consistently.

So there’s a gap between what feels like understanding and what actually shows up in your behaviour.

In business development, that gap is particularly tricky because the concepts themselves are not complicated. Stay in touch. Be helpful. Follow up. Build relationships over time. You’ve heard all of that before.

But hearing it and being able to operationalize it—to translate it into consistent, thoughtful, repeated action in the context of a busy legal practice—are two very different things.

That’s the part that only comes through doing.

The Shift That Comes Later

If you stay with it, and this is the part that matters most, something starts to change.

It doesn’t happen overnight, and it rarely happens in a straight line. But somewhere, often several months in, you begin to experiment a little more. You try things. You follow up when you might not have before. You reach out even when it feels slightly uncomfortable. You start to see small responses, small openings, small wins.

And then, at some point, I hear this:

“Oh. I get it now.”

What’s interesting is that the words are exactly the same as they were at the beginning. But the meaning is completely different.

Because now, you’re not just understanding the idea of business development. You’re starting to see how it works when you actually do it. You have your own evidence that it’s possible, that it’s effective, and that it can be done in a way that fits you.

That’s when things begin to unlock.

Where Real Change Actually Happens

At SGI, we talk about Know :: Be :: Do for a reason.

Most people spend a lot of time in Know. You read, you listen, you attend sessions, you gather information. And all of that has value. But on its own, it doesn’t change much.

The shift happens when you move into Be and Do. This is when you start to show up differently and take actions that align with what you say you want.

And that’s where the discomfort is, especially at the beginning. Because you are asking yourself to act before you feel fully confident, to repeat behaviours before you see immediate results, and to stay with something long enough for it to compound.

That’s not how most of your legal training has worked. You’re used to getting it right quickly, or at least knowing when you’re on the right track.

Business development doesn’t give you that kind of feedback. It asks for consistency instead. And, as we say often, it is consistency over time, not intensity in moments, that actually creates change.

If This Feels Familiar

If you can see yourself somewhere in this, especially in that early “I already know this” phase, there’s nothing wrong with you. In fact, it’s a very predictable place to be.

But it is also a moment of choice.

You can stay in knowing. You can continue to refine your understanding, collect more ideas, and reinforce the belief that the issue sits somewhere outside of you: your practice, your clients, your firm, your timing.

Or you can begin to shift your focus, even slightly, toward doing.

That doesn’t mean overhauling everything or getting it perfect. It just means starting somewhere. One follow-up you would normally avoid. One outreach you’ve been putting off. One small, intentional action that moves you from concept into practice—something that feels just uncomfortable enough to signal that you’re actually in new territory.

That is where confidence is built—not before you act, but as a result of your action. And over time, it is the action, and the confidence arising from it fueling the next action, that causes the results you want to take shape.