Welcome to 'How to make partner'. We're Jo Larbie & Heather Townsend and we've been helping professionals successfully take the step up to partner for the last 20 years. This is where our team release insights and tips, to help you take control of your career and achieve your potential, whilst still having a life.About Us→
Recent posts
5 ways to truly present like the pros
I recently attended the Professional Speaking Association’s spring convention Creativity Live. What a day! I came away with many new ideas and ways of improving my professional speaking. In this blog post I am going to share with you some of the key points and learnings which I got from the top professionals. Slides We [...]
Business Development Clinic: How do I qualify a lead?
Today’s business development clinic has come to us via a conversation with an aspiring partner who was finding that he was spending too much time chasing potential clients which didn’t go anywhere. We asked him, did he qualify his leads at any stage in the business development process. He looked at us blankly… This is [...]
Why have I asked my coach to inflict pain on me?
I’ve just done something very stupid. Yes, incredibly stupid. I have asked my coach to inflict pain on me on a daily basis over the next 14 days. Seriously. The problem is, (deep breath for confession time) I have let myself get disorganised. I’ve had the luxury of not having a boss for the last [...]
The 4 different routes to partnership
This article first appeared in top-consultant.com If you currently work in a professional services firm, or have ambitions to move into this field, ‘making partner’ is often the holy grail of the career-minded individual. Heather Townsend and Jo Larbie, authors of ‘How to make partner and still have a life’ explain the four different routes [...]
Business Development Clinic: Your 5 a day
In today’s business development clinic, Jon Baker, discusses the 5 networking activities you should do daily. As Jon explains here, successful business networking is about taking small steps, every day. Growing a great network takes time, but then you can harvest the results. This article is about 5 steps that you can take every day [...]
Life is not a dress rehearsal
Over the last few months cancer has robbed me of two friends. I’m also watching and seeing a very good friend battling (and hopefully beating) this dreadful disease. That’s tough. It’s also the way of the world. It would be very tempting to get angry with the world and ask why did my two friends [...]
20 Tips for Courteous Office Behaviour
Today’s guest post is by Katherine Everitt-Newton, a resilience coach. A chance encounter in the office, triggered her post on Courteous Office Behaviour. Being liked and respected by your peers and colleagues, goes a long way to helping you get to partner. Courteous behaviour is just one way to help you seem more approachable and [...]
Business Development Clinic: How to win my first client?
I’ve recently been asked this question twice in the last few days. Both times the professionals asking the question (a lawyer and an accountant) were newly qualified and keen to bring in their own clients. However, they were finding that their inexperience was counting against them. It’s the million dollar question facing many keen, but [...]
9 things to do if you’re feeling overwhelmed and get back in control
Jon Baker explores in this blog post, what it feels like to be overwhelmed, and 9 things you can do to reduce your stress levels and get back under control. Are you feeling overwhelmed, slightly out of control and worrying that you’re getting less done than you should? What is overwhelmed? Overwhelmed can feel like [...]
What are you being offered? Salaried partner? Fixed-share partner? Equity partner?
In today’s blog post, we look at the differences between a fixed share equity partner, (or as it is sometimes called fixed-share partner), a full equity partner or a salaried partner. There is a big difference in these three different types of partners. This is an extract taken from ‘How to make partner and still [...]
