Becoming a Rainmaker One Rep at a Time

By Mitchell Schuckman, PCC | Founder, The Schuckman Group

A few months ago I was coaching a tax lawyer named Elena. Ten years into her career, graduate of a top law school, one of the best M&A specialists in her practice. The partners loved her work. Clients asked for her by name. She had just been told she was on track for partner within the next 12 to 24 months, and she asked me what else she needed to do.

I told her the work itself would not be enough anymore. I said the associates who become partners now are the ones who read a client's business before the client says a word, who turn what they know into value the client can immediately see, and who treat every relationship as something they are actively building instead of something that grows on its own because the work is good. She looked at me like I had changed the subject.

The Floor Moved, Nobody Told Her

For most of her career, technical excellence was the scoreboard. Spot the issue nobody else caught, structure the deal cleanly, get the analysis right and get it done fast. Keep the clients and the partners happy. That used to be the formula. It is not anymore, and it is not because clients got harder to please. It is because AI now does a serious first pass on almost all of it, the drafting, the research, the issue-spotting, and a good lawyer who directs AI well can hand over clean, sound work in a fraction of the time it used to take. Technical excellence is not even the price of admission now. It is beneath the floor.

I told Elena what separates the partners who take off from the ones who stall is not sharper technical judgment anymore. It is whether she notices what her client is worried about this quarter, not just this deal, and says something about it before anyone asks her to. It is whether she turns one matter into a deeper relationship, making it more difficult for competitors to get in. It is whether she can treat client development as a discipline she practices every day instead of something she performs only at conferences and when responding to RFPs.

Elena did not disagree with any of this. She already knew rainmakers did better than pure technicians. What she did not have was a way to turn that into an actual behavior change. Conceptually, becoming a rainmaker has always mattered. The difference now is that almost everyone coming up needs to become one, and no one seems to have handed anybody the playbook for how.

What I Learned From My Dumbbells

For years I tried to get healthier the way I approached everything else, with a formal plan. An hour in the gym, three or four times a week, with a disciplined plan. It worked for about three weeks at a stretch. Then life got in the way, I missed a few days, the plan fell apart, and I started over.

What changed me was not more willpower. It was accepting that the small version counts, not as a placeholder until I get back to the big one, but as its own thing. Some days I still put in an hour or more, when I have the drive for it. Other days I do not feel it at all, and on those days I go to my basement, pick up some dumbbells, and run one circuit, one set per body part, ten reps each, under ten minutes total.

That circuit does two jobs. When I am starting from nothing, it gets me moving without requiring a mood I cannot manufacture on command. It is that small habit that keeps my fitness progressing on the days the full workout is not happening. A little bit beats nothing and helps me maintain a good habit.

What Builders Actually Do

The professionals who become true Builders in the years ahead are not doing ten minutes of anything and calling it a career. They run an actual practice. They keep a standing cadence of client contact that does not wait for a specific reason. They work their network on purpose instead of once a year during the holidays. They turn what they know into a point of view and put it in front of people. They treat the clients they want to have like clients they already have, and they treat the clients they have like clients they want to keep forever.

When I laid that out for Elena, she said what most people say. That sounds like a lot. She did not have time to become that person overnight.

She was right that she could not become that person overnight. But she did not have to. She picked one thing. Every Friday, she sends one client a short note built from something she noticed that week about their business, not just a piece of technical insight. Some weeks it takes her ten minutes. Some weeks, when she has the pull for it, she picks up the phone instead. Six months in, two of those clients have started asking her opinion on things that have nothing to do with the deal in front of them.

What Is Your Friday Note?

If you are the one being told you are on the partner track, ask yourself what your client development habit looks like. Was there one client you noticed something about and said nothing? One insight you kept private instead of sending it? Pick one thing. Send it this week.

Elena did not need a bigger plan. She needed one rep, repeated, until it stopped feeling like an assignment and started feeling like who she is.

Mitchell Schuckman is the Founder and CEO of The Schuckman Group LLC. He is a Professional Certified Coach credentialed by the International Coaching Federation and the author of I'll Tell You a Great Story. theschuckmangroup.com

Note on privacy: Names and identifying details have been changed. The experiences described are drawn from multiple client engagements and do not represent any single individual.