Comfort Zones – Often Not So Comforting
Is time for you to move on from your current job and seek a new path?
Why would a law firm that had one single client accounting for more than 50% of its business not do anything about it? Why would a lawyer who has over 75% of her business coming from one client not do anything about it? Why would a lawyer who is doing work that is pretty simple and a candidate for future price compression or replacement by artificial intelligence not do anything about it? Why would a lawyer with expertise in one area of the law not think ahead to gain expertise in other areas of the law before the first area of the law becomes obsolete? Why would a young lawyer getting poor training at her law firm, but getting a decent paycheck, not do something about it before she becomes obsolete? Why would a lawyer who knows the chance of making partner at her firm is about 3% stick around to see if it happens?
The answer to all of these questions is the same as the story about the frog in boiling water. You have heard, I am sure, that if you put the frog in cold water and slowly heat the water to a boil, then the frog will not perceive that the water is getting hotter and will stay there too long until it is boiled to death.
(I just looked this up on Google – actually Wikipedia – and learned that this is indeed a myth. Apparently a German physiologist demonstrated that only a frog “that had its brain removed” would sit in the boiling water until it was too late.)
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I actually love this metaphor because in my view sitting too long in a comfort zone seems to be equivalent to having your brain removed. It is just so ultimately dumb. I suspect for the neuroscientists of the world, it is similar to the reasoning (or lack of it) of someone trying to quit smoking who knows, full well, that “one more cigarette won’t make a difference.” In the same way, waiting another day to look for another client, another line of work, or another job will not make a difference either. And there we sit in our comfort zones.
Comfort zones are of course “comforting,” but they are similar to the guy who fell out of the plane and five minutes later said, “Well, this isn’t so bad after all.” But like the guy said in the movie Avatar, “Sooner or later you’ve got to wake up.” And that is when you find out that “reality bites,” to quote another movie.
My favorite story here is my own. When we started our firm we were dependent on one – super – client for quite a few years. My brilliant marketing program consisted of picking up the phone when they called with legal work and saying “okay boss” or words to that effect. Somehow, despite this managerial idiocy on my part, I had convinced close to thirty lawyers to follow me in making their jobs at my law firm. It really is hard to know what on Earth we were all thinking.
But it made a lot of sense. We were doing cool and interesting work. We were immune from ups and downs in the market as this client kept growing. And we were making a lot of money. Life was good…… until it wasn’t.
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During the global financial crisis, I remember getting a call from the senior fellow at the client. He said, “Bruce, we’re going to make a lot of money next year. But we’re going to sit things out for a while.”
I remember thinking – as the ground rushed up to meet me – “Well, what are we doing to do?”
That was when I – and my colleagues – woke up to the “bite” of “reality” and the realization of how utterly stupid we had been sitting in a comfort zone for too long.
Why, I wondered, hadn’t I made some efforts to diversify and find new clients during all those years of plenty? I mean, I am not a moron, am I? I am pretty smart. Ask my wife. And my colleagues are smart too. But sometimes smart people do stupid things. And the stupidest thing that smart people do is linger too long in a comfort zone.
It took me years – and some real panic and suffering for both myself and my team – before we were able to right the Duval & Stachenfeld ship from the mess I had made. I blame no one but myself for the situation we were in. I was the managing partner, after all. And I vowed never again to let something like this happen – not on my watch.
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To conclude, I don’t want to sound too much like Tony Robbins – for whom I have a ton of respect, by the way – but I do urge you: if you are sitting in a comfort zone (perhaps like one of the ones I outlined above), get out – today – don’t delay – before reality bites you in the …. Or you are making decisions comparable to the de-brained frog in the boiling water. Surely you – we – are more intelligent than that poor frog.
Bruce Stachenfeld
Bruce Stachenfeld is the managing partner of Duval & Stachenfeld LLP, an approximately 70-lawyer law firm based in midtown Manhattan. The firm is known as “The Pure Play in Real Estate Law” because all of its practice areas are focused around real estate. With more than 50 full-time real estate lawyers, the firm is one of the largest real estate law practices in New York City. You can contact Bruce by email at [email protected]. Bruce also writes The Real Estate Philosopher™, which contains applications of Bruce’s eclectic, insightful, and outside-the-box thinking to the real estate world. If you would like to read previous articles or subscribe, please click here.
