No matter what kind of professional you are, the odds are good that your practice is, to put it nicely, under pressure. Markets are extremely volatile. Clients, for the most part, are not stressing over their investment portfolios—yet. They are not inclined to take action at this time. There are more important matters they have to deal with, like making sure their families are safe.
Evidently, it’s not just the wealth management industry that is feeling the pressure. The business of law has been upended, too: People might be thinking about estate planning, but they aren’t doing anything about it right now. Accountants might be doing better since tax season now seems to last all year. But a lot of the higher-margin work accountants do is being sidelined.
That means most professional practices are going to be hit hard by the economic impact of Covid-19. Now that we’re in a recession, you might be asking some questions: How severe will it be? How long will it last? How are we going to get through these tough times?
I, for one, have no answers for the first two questions. However, I do have an answer for the third. The world has changed. When the worst of this crisis is behind us (when, not if), we’ll be living in the “new normal.”
Maybe N95 masks will become pervasive fashion statements. Maybe videoconferencing will become the norm and secluded lunch meetings the exception. Maybe the very notion of leadership will change. There are a lot of maybes, and we’ll just have to see how everything pans out. But life is not going to just reset to what it was before the crisis.
What To Do In The New Normal?
If your personal life is secure (in other words, if you’re “comfortably” sheltering in place), you’re probably now concerned about your practice. It’s one thing to cope with the market downturn. It’s another thing to worry about your own business survival. To address this, you may be reaching out to clients, possibly with literature or market materials. You may, like most professionals, be thinking about how you’re going to keep doing business during the crisis.
But I suggest you think about the success of your business differently right now. Relatively few clients are now engaging with professionals, so it’s probably wrong to think your efforts are going to produce significant revenues. But you can still supercharge your practice for the recovery when it begins.
Ask yourself: What is your plan? What actions are you going to take to exponentially grow as the recovery starts and clients decide to take action?
I’m finding that most professionals are not thinking at all about the recovery. They’re just trying to cope with what’s happening today. Only a small percentage are considering what happens when the crisis wanes and people want to do something such as restructure their portfolios or redo some of their wealth planning.
Today, you must think about building for you and your expertise. You could build on your current relationships to anticipate the growth that you’ll see when things settle down. Taking actions now can prepare you for that stellar growth.