I have recently finished reading Andre Agassi’s book and I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised. I do not read a great deal of sports books because they are all normally too ‘ego-driven’. Agassi’s book certainly is not that. There is a great deal of humility in the book. Agassi shares his feelings about tennis, life and the many challenges that he faced (and he faced huge ones).
Now on my recollection, Agassi was a supreme natural talent that could do anything that he wanted to on a tennis court. When you read the book, you find out that the talent came from a father that drilled so much tennis into Agassi from an early age that he largely hated the game for most of the time that he was playing professionally.
What I really took from the book was a one liner Agassi used several times which really struck home:
If you are not moving forwards, you are moving backwards!
Simple, yet true. If we are not constantly challenging ourselves and our business we are not really fulfilling our potential. If you are doing the same things that you do every day, you are not going to get more and more out of every day, for yourself or for your business. Comfortable, in my experience, and clearly Agassi’s, happens just before you fall off a perch and drop down nastily. Always testing and questioning yourself and considering what else you should be doing to improve your business is vital to stay ahead of the chasing pack. We know in the legal profession that the chasing pack is getting bigger and is also chasing harder.
If you are not moving forwards, you are moving backwards!
Please keep moving forwards, and I thoroughly recommend that you read the Agassi book:
CLICK TO VIEW the Andre Agassi book on Amazon
Sign Up For Blog Alerts – you will be notified each time a new blog is posted
Tags: andre agassi, law firm marketing
Spot on as usual Nick. My own analogy of law firms is quite similar to yours. Given the huge changes that affect the legal profession in the next few years, running a law firm is akin to riding a bike uphill — you have two choices. Either pedal like mad and get to the top puffed out but satisfied or you stop peddling, and career downhill totally out of control and end up in a bloody heap. Sadly the last option looks most likely for many thousands of high street firms up and down the country who have still not got the message.