How to Win Client Business When You Don't Know Where to Start

CHAPTER 26A High Road with a Long View : Parting Words as You Begin Your Rainmaker Journey

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

—Marcel Proust, French writer, In Search of Lost Time

I was listening to a How I Built This podcast episode recently where the host, Guy Raz, interviewed the Soul Cycle co‐founders, Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler. During the interview, the co‐founders shared a business mantra that guides their daily decision making: High road, long view. I rewound it a few times to hear it again. Their philosophy struck me as profound. And I have adopted it as a guiding principle in my own rainmaker journey.

When you're taking the high road with a long view, you need patience and persistence.

On Patience

There is a strong sense of urgency in American culture. Everything from Nike's Just Do It campaign to a George S. Patton's advice to his troops during WWII: “A good plan…executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”

This is not inherently bad advice; it nudges us to action when we're caught up in indecision. Having a healthy bias for action is good, to the extent that we don't lose sight of the fact that our rainmaker journey will be long.

In an era of YouTube millionaires, it's easy to fall into the trap that success happens overnight – or at least ...