Step 1 - Becoming a Rainmaker: Each Professional is a Business

One of the most significant changes that a young professional must go through in order to begin to become a rainmaker is growing from follower to leader. For most of one's career, the professional does what the firm's rainmakers and senior professionals ask him or her to do. The professional's career is guided less by what one loves to do and more by what the "higher ups" need from him or her. To become a rainmaker, one must break from this mindset and begin to think like the owner of one's own business and career.

In choosing your career, bear two things in mind:

No Service that requires the power of the mind can ever become a commodity.
No excuses.

Clients hire experts for their important work.
They cannot afford not to.
Clients will seek them out and pay them more.
You have to prove you are an expert.

Think like a business owner. Business owners are concerned with how to drive gross revenues (top line growth), control costs, maximize effectiveness and produce efficiently, so that those gross revenues result in high profitability. Finally, a major leap for young professionals is the concern with collections. Clients not only have to generate billings that will create a profit, but their clients have to be sufficiently credit worthy so that collection of those fees is likely. Cash is ultimately king.

Think like a leader. No one will build your business for you. Find your own clients. Build strong relationships with them. Think in terms of leading the opportunities you bring in. Think in terms of building and leading your team. Think in terms of delighting the client.

Bottom line, work on reducing your reliance on others and take personal responsibility for YOUR career.

Good to Great by Jim Collins: My favorite book on how to create a great company is this one. Professor Collins and his team did tons of research and found and then analyzed pairs of companies. Each had 15 years of good and comparable performance. There was a transition point. The comparison company remained good for 15 years. The Great Company outperformed the market by at least 3 times over 15 years and one change in CEO.

Why did this happen? What made these companies different? What made them GREAT?
More important, how does this apply to YOU?

The team found in essence that a strong and special sort of leader (referred to as a Level 5 leader) took over. Rather than designing a strategy and bringing people on board to fit it, they brought on high level people and then worked together to devise the best strategy for the company. As a young professional, you will find your own passion and become best in the world, but the lesson is that generally you cannot do that alone. Find the best like minded professionals around you, explore your passions and figure out where you want to drive your business.

A Level 5 leader has many attributes beyond the scope of this entry (read the book) but one is humility. Take all the blame and defelct all of the credit. As President Harry Truman once said:
“You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit.”
A pretty refreshing comment from a politician.

Discipline becomes the key to becoming great, to becoming a rainmaker. As the leader, be rigorous, not ruthless. Take your time and gather the “right” people around you. Remove those who do not fit quickly, but respectfully. Start a “Stop Doing” List and stop doing those things. Finally, put your Best People on your Biggest Opportunities, not your Biggest Problems.

Face the "Brutal Facts" and encourage your team to bring them up as early as possible. Nothing builds client relationships faster than quick communication of errors, taking responsibility for them, and recovering in a way that makes the client look great in front of the people most important to them.

Hedgehog Concept: Each of the companies, in their ways, went through an interesting and unique analysis which Dr. Collins refers to as the Hedgehog. The intersection of three critical considerations drove the decisions of the companies that became great:
About what are you deeply passionate?
At what can you be best in the world?
What drives your economic engine?

Discipline Over Time: This is not an overnight process. As Sam Walton said about Wal-Mart:
“Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart was just this great idea that turned into an overnight success. But it was an outgrowth of everything we’d been doing since 1945 … And like most overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making”

The process must continue to be a positive one. Come up with ideas consisent with the Hedgehog. Try them. Evaluate those honestly. If they worked, build on them and build momentum. If not, conduct an autopsy without blaming anyone, to see what went wrong and how to make it better. Then, staying committed to your passion, your efforts to become best in the world and your understanding as to how that will drive your economic engine, adjust the strategy and build on what you learned. Move forward.

Failures arise when leaders blame others, constantly change courses and lose site of the Hedgehog.

Your Hedgehog: Find your DEEPEST PASSION. Determine at what, focusing on that passion, you CAN become Best in the World. Define YOUR World. Start with Best in your company. Then your City, Region, State, Country and finally the World! You can make it bigger over time - “twenty years in the making.”

Use your passion and your expertise to drive your economic engine. Adhere fanatically to your Hedgehog. Take charge and make it happen. Become a Rainmaker.