How to Make Partner Podcast

An urgent piece of work lands on your desk and the client needs it today. You know you should delegate it, but by the time you’ve briefed someone you could have done it yourself. So you do it yourself, again. How do you find the time to plan and brief properly when the work can’t wait? That’s what this episode is all about. Urgent work is often means delegation goes out of the window. And every ur...

You've had the coffee, they said they'd keep you in mind, and months later not one introduction has come your way. Do they not rate you? How do you be the person who gets the referral That’s what this episode is all about. When an introducer spots an opportunity, they don’t sit down and weigh up everyone they know who could help. They make a snap decision, based on the box they’ve already put you...

So why didn't they tell you they were stuck? That's what this episode is all about. Psychological safety is a term everyone knows and very few of us create the conditions for. Your team won't tell you they're struggling until they believe it's safe to, and making it safe is your job as their leader. This is the first of a two-part episode. Part two, inside our Progress To Partner Academy, shows yo...

Your junior's coat is on at the dot of five, just as the client's comments land. You're left wondering whether you're stuck with a team who don't want to work as hard as you did, and how you get them to put in the extra hours when the client needs them. That's what this episode is all about. Many people on Partner Track have one management style, and expect their team to work the way they did at t...

You're on Partner Track in a small satellite or regional office. The partners who will decide your future sit together at HQ and see each other every day, whilst you’re one of the boxes at the bottom of the screen. There isn’t a lot of resource in your office, local clients push back on your firm’s rates, and there may only be room for one or two partners in what you do. So how do you make partner...

You've scoped the job, you know what the firm needs to charge, but you are afraid of charging what it really is going to cost? So what are you actually afraid of? That's what this episode is all about. You may not set your firm's rate card. You do decide what goes into the scope, whether you go back to a client when the job grows, whether you write time off at the end of the month rather than pick...

You keep seeing headlines about the billable hour dying, clients demanding fixed fees, consultancies setting the pace years ago, and you are still sending out invoices built on hours. The question is not whether you should start changing from charging by time, but how to move away from this billing model. Sorting out your own pricing habits, rather than waiting for your firm to change its model fo...

You are sitting across from a client who has just asked why you have not passed on the savings from using AI. It is an increasingly common question. So how do you answer it without either caving on your fee or getting defensive about it? That's what this episode is all about. Whilst the presenting problem is how to answer the question about price in the moment with your client, the bigger issue is...

You have been sat in front of the same client for years. The work is good, the relationship is good, and none of it has ever gone anywhere else in the firm. Then somebody asks what work you have found for the rest of the firm this year. How do you have that conversation with a client without feeling like a second hand car sales person? That's what this episode is all about. Most of the mid-tier, g...

And how can you stop this happening time and time again. That’s what this episode is all about. Getting excited about a prospect is not the same as a signed up client. And its your job as a sales person to find out early whether a prospect is going to be a great client for you and your firm. Your partners are looking at whether you can be trusted to hit your new business forecast and bring in the...

You had a great conversation. Got excited about the new business. It all seemed like it was going to happen. Then they ghosted you. So how do you get these leads going again without seeming like a second hand car sales person? When the lead goes quiet, we often take the silence to mean they’re not interested. Whereas what they’re really saying is not yet. Your challenge is how do you stay in touch...

Only 31% of professionals on the partnership track can articulate the narrative of their Business Case and explain why they should be admitted to the partnership this time around. Given that most firms cap how many partners they admit in a year, that is the question which separates two credible candidates competing for one slot. This episode covers the twelfth and final key indicator of partnershi...

Only 29% of professionals on the partnership track have been working on their Business Case for the last one to three years with the backing of key stakeholders. Which means most people arrive at the most important commercial conversation of their career with far less runway than they think they have. This episode covers the eleventh of the 12 key indicators of partnership readiness: Business Case...

Most are relying on their sponsoring partner and their mentor to carry a room they will never sit in. This episode covers the tenth of the 12 key indicators of partnership readiness: Member of the Club. This is the emotional part of your Personal Case, and it is the reason a candidate with a strong Business Case can still be turned down. It covers what your partners are really deciding, how trust...

Only 43% of professionals on the partnership track talk about having a practice or a business, rather than a client portfolio. It is a small change in language, and it tells your partners a great deal about whether you are ready to be one of them. This episode covers the ninth of the 12 key indicators of partnership readiness: Personal Case. This is where you demonstrate that you are already worki...

Only 20% of professionals on the partnership track do something every day to implement their Business Development Plan. This episode is about how to become one of them — not through willpower, but through habit. Using real examples from Poised for Partnership , this episode covers why business development gets deprioritised even by talented, motivated professionals, and what it actually takes to m...

Only 22% of professionals on the partnership track have a regular routine to keep their network warm. This episode is about closing that gap; not with more coffees that go nowhere, but with a deliberate strategy for building and maintaining the relationships that generate your own client work. Using the five-step Networking Strategy framework, this episode gets practical about how to stop wasting...

Only 50% of professionals on the partnership track say they are known as the Go-To Expert for a specialism, both inside and outside their firm. This episode is about what it takes to get into that half, and why this will help you progress to partner quicker. This episode walks through the three steps to Go-To Expert status: choosing and committing to a niche, researching and packaging your brand,...

Only 41% of professionals on the partnership track say they have a trusted group of people they regularly delegate to. This episode explores why that gap is so costly. And what to do about it. This episode explores what effective delegation actually looks like, where it typically breaks down, and how to build the team around you that makes it possible. In this episode you will learn: Why the inabi...

Six in ten professionals actively pursuing partnership are doing so without the active backing of the key people who could open doors for them. They are relying on their work to speak for itself. On partner track, that is rarely enough. This episode covers the fourth of the 12 key indicators of partnership readiness: Support Team. This episode explores who needs to be in your corner, why most peop...

Only 31% of professionals pursuing partnership have a career plan that is genuinely guiding their progression. Nearly seven in ten are navigating one of the most important career transitions of their lives on good intentions alone, and then wondering why six months have gone by and nothing has moved. This episode covers the third of the 12 key indicators of partnership readiness: Plan. It introduc...

Only 44% of professionals pursuing partnership have truly considered whether the partner role is right for them and made an informed decision about it. More than half are moving towards one of the biggest career commitments of their lives without ever properly asking: is this what I actually want? This episode covers the second of the 12 key indicators of partnership readiness: Direction. Using th...

The most technically brilliant professionals don't always make partner. This episode explores why, through the lens of the first, and most important, of the 12 key indicators of partnership readiness: Mindset. Using the real example of a lawyer with 98.5% utilisation who was asked to wait another year, this episode unpacks the fundamental difference that separates the people who make partner from...

Most lawyers on the partnership track have tried time blocking. You carve out the slots, and then a real deadline arrives and the block gets sacrificed. The problem isn't your discipline. It's that most people are time blocking the wrong things: treating their diary like a to-do list with timestamps rather than a deliberate design for the kind of partner they're trying to become. In a recent group...

Most of us land on "I'm bad at delegating" or "they weren't up to it" and then quietly decide to do it ourselves next time. But that pattern isn't a skills problem. It's an identity problem, and it's one of the main reasons professionals on the partnership track stay overloaded and under-strategic for far too long. Drawing on a recent group coaching session with lawyers on the partnership track, t...