You're Not Bad at Business Development—You're Just Treating It Like a Performance Instead of a Practice

By Jane Southren In the early days of working with me, a surprising number of my clients say something like: "You're really good at spin."

And for a while, I never knew quite how to take that. Spin? I'm not a PR consultant. I'm not out here trying to make black look white.

But over time, I've learned what they actually mean: where they see one (maybe two) ways forward after a BD setback—and usually those interpretations are limiting or discouraging—I can show them three or four more perspectives they hadn't considered. Real, viable opportunities, coming out of the same set of circumstances, that were completely invisible to them. Perspectives that are more optimistic, showcase the agency they have, and are 100% true.

I'm not making anything up. I'm helping them see a more complete picture.

And eventually, they learn to see it too. That's when I get the messages that make my day: "You're going to be so proud of me! X happened, and I heard your voice in my head... and I did Y instead." Then they tell me about all the opportunities that emerged from what they initially saw as a failure.

But it's actually not my voice in their head. It's theirs. They've simply stepped out of the narrow confines of binary thinking and into a more expansive way of seeing their business development efforts.

"One and Done" Thinking

Here's what I see constantly with lawyers and BD.

• They send an email to someone they want to connect with: someone they just met; a former or current client that they want to deepen their relationship with; someone to whom they want to offer something they hope is of value. And they get no response. Common conclusions: "People don't want to hear from me." “They were just being polite when we met.” “I’m boring, why would they want to talk to me?”

• They follow up on something: an email exchange; a coffee they enjoyed; a proposal they sent; an outstanding invoice. Crickets. Common conclusions: “They are avoiding/ghosting me.” "I'm being a pest. I can’t call again." “They don’t value/respect me.” 

• They do their first solo speaking engagement and feel like they weren’t very good. Conclusion: "I'm an introvert, I’m not engaging.”  “I’m boring. No one wants to listen to me.” “Everyone already knows anything I would have to say.”. That was embarrassing. I’m never doing that again."

One attempt. One less-than-perfect outcome. One permanent verdict about their capabilities, their value and the judgments that they believe others are making of them.

"One and done" thinking. It's one of the most common things that keeps talented lawyers from building their practices into what they want them to be.

It's a combination of binary thinking ("I either nailed it or I failed completely") and what psychologists call Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria—an intense emotional response to perceived rejection or criticism that makes you want to never put yourself out there again.

And it's completely understandable. Lawyers are trained to be right, to have the answer, to perform flawlessly. And our culture doesn’t exactly cherish things that look like failure, or even imperfection. The idea of being a beginner at something, of doing it badly while you're learning—that feels intolerable.

But that mindset costs you the opportunity to develop a sustainable, fulfilling practice built around the work and clients you actually want.

The Shift: From Performance to Practice

Think about learning any other skill outside of law that you have picked up. Learning to play an instrument. Training for a marathon. Getting better at meditation. Improving your golf swing.

You don't expect to be brilliant the first time. You expect to be bad at first. Well, except at golf. Everyone is good at golf at first. It's only later that you start to suck and go back to beginner status. 

But in anything else that is new or not intuitive, you expect the trend to move toward improvement over time—not in a straight line, but directionally. You expect that consistency matters more than any single action. And you expect to have to keep trying - putting yourself out there.

Most importantly, you understand that the practice itself builds not just skill, but resilience. The ability to show up again after a rough day. The mental flexibility to try a different approach when something isn't working. The wisdom that comes from pattern recognition over time.

Business development is exactly the same.

It's not a performance you nail or fail. It's a practice you cultivate. And like any practice, you get better at three things simultaneously:

1. The technical execution (your emails get sharper, your conversations get more natural, your follow-up gets more authentic)

2. Your resilience (you become less derailed by non-responses, awkward moments, or perceived failures)

3. Your ability to see opportunities (you train your mind to spot multiple pathways forward from any situation, rather than one binary outcome)

That last one is what my clients initially mistake for "spin." It's not spin. It's pattern recognition developed through practice.

What This Looks Like at Different Stages of BD Skills Building

If you're avoiding BD altogether, you're likely waiting to feel "ready" or "confident" or "good at it" before you start. But that's like waiting to feel confident before your first guitar lesson. The confidence comes from doing it badly, learning from it, and doing it slightly better next time. Rinse and repeat.

If you're engaging in BD activity sporadically, you're probably perceiving each attempt as a high-stakes performance. One email that doesn't get answered feels like evidence that "it doesn't work for you." But a musician doesn't quit after one practice session that didn't produce a perfect song. Or one performance that was terrible. They show up again. That's the practice. 

I went to a Blue Rodeo concert recently and they talked about this very journey from where they were 41 years ago as musicians when they started touring, to where they are now. And all the terrible performances that they endured along that road only to keep getting back up and at it, and better and better.

If you're convinced you "already know all this," you might be experiencing what researchers call the Dunning-Kruger effect—overestimating your competence in an area where you're actually still building skill. I see this misapprehension most often somewhere around session 4-6 of a coaching program, when clients suddenly say: "Ohhh... I get it now. I get how this actually works." The language they were using to describe what they thought they knew before the lightbulb came on is the same language they use once they “get it”. But when the lightbulb comes on they are actually seeing how the doing of the thing looks. 

Understanding the words I am saying, and coming to the enlightened place where you can envision how you personally action those words in a way that works for you, and do it consistently enough to get results, are very, very different things.

The Freedom of Seeing More Than Two Options

When you shift from performance mindset to practice mindset, something remarkable happens: you start getting comfortable with experimentation, iteration, and choosing from among the multiple paths that you see going forward from any situation.

That client or contact who didn't respond to your email? 

In performance mindset, you were rejected and they never want you to get in touch with them again. 

In practice mindset, you have options:

• Just reach out again - and keep doing it until you have had no response at least 5 times, in fact! That number terrifies almost everyone, but that is the goal you are aiming at.

• Try a different communication channel - like pick up the phone.

• Try a different time of day/day of week etc.

• Reframe how you describe what you are reaching out for.

• Engage your empathy and curiosity and recognize that, like the rest of us, they are probably just dealing with a busy, challenging life, or some specific challenge that is totally unrelated to you. It really is almost never about you.

• See it as valuable information. If they don’t respond the first time, but do respond the 5th time, you know to expect that you will be of service to them in future relationship management if you continue to follow up. I am eternally grateful to people who follow up with me more than once.

None of these require you to be "good at BD" yet. They just require you to stay in the practice.

That speaking engagement that IYO fell flat? 

In performance mindset, you're embarrassed, worried about your reputation, and never want to speak publicly again. 

In practice mindset, you just got incredibly valuable information about what additional preparation you will do and where to focus during your next opportunity to practice your speaking skills—and yes, there will be a next one.

How to Make the Shift

The next time you catch yourself thinking in absolutes—"This always happens," "I never get it right," "I've blown it"—pause and ask yourself:

What else could be true here?

What part of this worked, even imperfectly?

What's one small next step I could take to stay in the practice?

These aren't just coaching questions (which we ask our clients all the time, btw). They're the questions that shift you from binary thinking (success/failure) to practice thinking (learning/growing/adapting).

And if it helps, imagine a voice in your head saying what my clients tell me they hear: "Do it again. Try it differently. There's more opportunity here than you are seeing at first instance."  And my favourite “This is awesome! Look how much you learned!”

Because there always is, and you always will have.

The lawyers I work with who build sustainable, fulfilling practices aren't the ones who came into law naturally gifted at BD. They're the ones who treat it like a practice. Who show up consistently, even when it feels awkward. Who get curious about what wasn't working instead of embarrassed. Who have learned to see multiple pathways forward when others see only dead ends.

The practice doesn't require you to be perfect. It just requires you to keep practicing.

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If you're realizing that you've been treating BD like a high-stakes performance instead of a skill you're building through practice, you're not alone. Most of the lawyers we work with come to us stuck in exactly this pattern—and they move through it by learning to see more options, build more resilience, and create more consistent momentum. That's what coaching does: it helps you develop the practice, not just collect more information about what you "should" be doing.

Want to talk about coaching?