In Your Profession 20 Years & Not Making 20X More Than When You Started? Here’s Why.

I prefer to run the 50 yard dash with a 49 yard head start over my competitors.

I have been a legal recruiting and M&A advisor for over thirty years, and I still study every single day. That part alone surprises people, but studying is only the entry fee. The real work starts afterward. I spend just as much time thinking and imagining what the future will hold, as I do studying. Probably more. Then I ask one simple question over and over: what can I actually do with this information and foresight? Knowledge and insight without action is as useful as political debate on social media.

Figuring out “What do I do, now that I know this?” is how foresight turns into cash. I do not just observe trends. I map them forward, imagine how they will impact the profession and my current and future clients, and decide where to place bets before First Market Advantage is over and the Mass Market means I’m running a race against a thousand contenders. I have always preferred to run the 50 yard dash with a 49 yard head start over my competitors! Then I act! Sometimes that action works immediately. Sometimes it takes years to produce fruit. Often I’m wrong and that action costs me time and effort for naught. Guess what? I continue to observe, predict and act again. I take risks, I fail, I adjust, and I try again. That loop is where real experience is created. Not in theory, but in consequence. And guess what? You only have to be right once, to increase your success dramatically!

This is why virtual law firms never felt heretical to me. Years before COVID, I had already signed contracts with multiple virtual firms. When the world shut down and everyone else started “discovering” remote legal practice, I was not scrambling. I was an established and published expert who had clients scrambling to get a contract with me – instead of the rest of the pack who were scrambling to get contracts with them. As is so often the case, what looked like "Overnight Success" was years of unseen prediction, planning, preparation and action - which happened to meet an unexpected accelerant.

The same pattern is playing out right now with Legal MSOs. While much of the profession is still debating whether they are legitimate, dangerous, or “a passing fad,” I am already a widely published Thought Leader and established advisor in the space. I am working with firms, investors, and operators who understand what is actually happening beneath the surface. This isn't a new movie, it's a remake of the medical MSO industry which will become a billion dollar industry this year (American Lawyer Article).

Here is where most professionals fall short. Somewhere between year three and year five, they confuse knowledge with completion. They learn the basics, collect a few wins, and decide they have arrived. At that point, studying slows, thinking becomes shallow, and action turns reactive. They stop experimenting. They stop risking embarrassment. They stop failing in useful ways. Time keeps passing, but experience stops accumulating.

I have met countless recruiters, attorneys, consultants, executives, and especially salespeople who claim decades of experience. In reality, they have somewhere between three and five years of experience repeated again and again. Same assumptions. Same playbooks. Same explanations for why new models “will never work.” They are not gaining wisdom. They are preserving comfort. They are the definition of the Dunning Kruger Effect.

It is not early ignorance, but mid-career certainty that kills long-term success. Knowing enough to sound authoritative, but not enough to see what is coming next. It feels safe. It feels earned. It is also where growth quietly dies. These are the people who are doing thigs basically the same way they did when Eminem and Beyonce were bursting onto the charts.

Real experience is earned through study, precognition and action. Through failed attempts that teach you something new. Through decisions made before there is universal agreement. Through the willingness to be laughed at in the Early Stage (which I have been often) in exchange for what looks like “easy success” later on, to those who live forever in their professional comfort zone.

I have been in business for thirty years and am proud to say I probably have somewhere close to 25 years of experience.

Frederick Shelton is the CEO of Shelton & Steele, a national legal recruiting and consulting firm that advises clients on Law Firm M&A, Legal MSO's and Legal Business Consulting. He can be reached at fs@sheltonsteele.com