Interview with Darren Hooker, partner at Capsticks.
In this series, we speak to junior partners about the reality of making the step up. Darren Hooker, partner at Capsticks, talks to Gemma about what it was like to build a new practice from scratch, how becoming a partner changed the way he approaches BD, and why success starts with being clear about your ambition – and backing it with action.
Gemma: So what would you say was the biggest shift, generally, when you moved to partnership?
Darren: That’s a good question. I suppose I’m in a relatively unique position in that I joined as a new partner, and I joined a firm that did social housing work in a broader sense, but not the specific niche area that I do. I was brought in to effectively start that team. I’d come from an established practice, and work would just come in. You could sit at your desk, and it would land on your lap. So, the biggest change started with the basics, such as building marketing lists.
More generally, it’s the switch from being a fee earner to doing more marketing. I’ve always enjoyed marketing, but as a senior associate, your pressure is to bill six hours a day and make X amount per year. As a partner, you realise you shouldn’t be billing that much – you should be giving work to juniors and spending time on profile raising, meeting people, and other intangibles.
Gemma: Did you have much training in BD or marketing as you progressed up the ranks?
Darren: Yes and no. I’ve had training, but if I’m honest, none of it was particularly comprehensive. I don’t think you really understand what marketing is all about until you’re in the position I’ve been in this last year, where you really understand what you’re trying to achieve with it.
For a lot of fee earners, what they consider to be marketing is that they’ll write an article every three months or so. Whereas when you’re thrust into the position of building a practice from zero, you have to think much more strategically about what you are actually trying to achieve with the marketing effort that you’re putting in.
So yes, I’ve had bits of training, but being thrown in the deep end and having to figure it out myself has been the biggest help. When you’ve actually got a specific target to work towards, for example ‘I need to build a practice that’s worth X’, then you can backwards engineer it and realise that I need to be speaking to these people, I need to be approaching them, which gives you a much more targeted approach. I think for a lot of people, it can be the other way around, in that they’re not really thinking about what they’re getting out of marketing or what they intend to get out of it. They just write an article.
Gemma: It can still be useful to go through that process because you start to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t when you’re still practicing and honing your craft. Do you agree?
Darren: I agree. It’s good habit creation. And when I was in more junior roles, people would talk a lot about profile raising. I keep going back to this idea of writing articles because I think it’s almost a bit of a cop out in terms of marketing, as unless you’re getting it to the right people, it can be meaningless. I’ve written hundreds of articles over my career, but I look back on a lot of them now and the firms I’ve previously been at, where there was no data analytics – for example, who is opening this, who is clicking through on it, who is it being sent to.
As I say, I think people just mistake writing an article for marketing, although it can be successful. However, I don’t feel like there’s often enough conscious thought around why am I doing it, who am I trying to reach, and what are the successful outputs from this?
I think particularly when you’re junior, it seesaws between the two. On the one hand, you have people giving very high-level nebulous outputs like ‘build a profile’. On the other hand, you’re also expected to hit specific targets. As an example, when I started out, you’d go to conferences with business cards, and you were under pressure as a very junior person to make five contacts and give out five business cards or whatever it was.
I don’t think either target is particularly helpful because one is so vague and the other is probably unrealistic for a lot of junior people who walk into a room of unknowns where they don’t have any gravitas. I suppose it’s just coming up with more realistic outputs in terms of what you’re going to achieve.
Gemma: Are there any tactics that specifically work for you that you’re fully committed to?
Darren: I’ve actually drawn up my own marketing plan. My approach breaks down into categories: learning the law (obviously), building reach, developing contacts, positioning myself as a thought leader, identifying targets, maintaining relationships, and then ultimately, selling.
Everything I do has to fit into one of those categories. A webinar or article, for example, helps build reach and profile – but it doesn’t sell. That’s fine, but you need to do all of it: webinars, articles, and face-to-face meetings. And I do believe there’s no substitute for face-to-face, because it’s only once you’ve made that personal connection with someone that they will then give you work.
People don’t read your article and say, “I’ll instruct him because he wrote a nice article or did a nice LinkedIn post”. Obviously, that is important. It builds the profile; it puts you in their mind. But then you have to actually meet them – ideally face to face, but at least virtually – so that you can then develop the relationship and then actually sell something to them.
Gemma: Is there something you wish you’d worked on sooner?
Darren: I feel like I could have learned a lot of this earlier, but then I wouldn’t be in the same position because you’re not going to sell to someone unless they know you. So I think the only thing that I could maybe have worked on earlier is profile raising. I feel I’m okay with LinkedIn now, but earlier in my career, I didn’t use it. Everyone said I should, but I didn’t really understand where it fit into my strategy. I think a lot of people just put out a post and think that’s marketing.
Also, maintaining personal relationships. As a junior, I just did the work and moved on. A lot of messaging around marketing is getting new clients, and there’s probably not enough understanding, particularly at junior levels, that most of your work is going to come from repeat clients and that you’re keeping the people you already know warm and friendly to you, etc. That’s going to be what really drives work in the future.
Gemma: If you could give one piece of advice to a senior associate thinking about partnership, what would it be?
Darren Hooker: It’s hard to pick one. I spent a long time debating whether I even wanted to go down the partnership route. I’m glad I did, but it requires greater ownership and accountability.
You need to think about your business case – what are you bringing to the table? I don’t think juniors always understand that. They think, “I’ll just keep getting promoted until I make partner,” but it has to make business sense for the firm. You have to show that you’re going to bring in money. You might get lucky – maybe a partner retires, and the firm needs to fill the gap – but unless that’s your scenario, you need to build a strong business case.
I think being a senior associate is a really difficult place to be in because you are, on the one hand, under incredible pressure to bill lots of money, but equally, you’ve got to find the time to do additional work to try and position yourself as a partner. Once you’ve got to partner, you don’t. You’re not under as much pressure to bill. You have different pressures instead.
Darren Hooker is a Partner in the Social Housing Governance team at Capsticks. He specialises in advising RPs, public sector bodies and charities on corporate governance and regulatory issues.
