Feel that wobble?
Ever ridden a bike with a wobbly wheel?
The whole thing still rolls. It doesn’t fall apart. But it rides rough, pulls a little to one side, and you feel every bump in your teeth.
Here’s the thing about a wheel. It isn’t held together by one strong piece. It’s held together by a bunch of thin spokes, each one pulling its own small amount of tension. No single spoke does the job. They hold the wheel round together.
And when a couple of those spokes go loose, the wheel doesn’t snap. It just starts to wobble.
Your firm’s visibility works the exact same way.
Your spokes are your channels. The monthly email newsletter. The print newsletter that lands on the kitchen table. Your social posts. Your blogs. Your video. The quarterly campaigns. Your workshops and webinars. Your community involvement. The referral relationships you nurture with strategic partners.
Every one of those is a spoke. Each one pulls a little tension. Together they keep you steady and round and rolling smooth.
But here’s what I see with most firms.
They’ve got one or two spokes cranked down tight. Maybe you send that newsletter like clockwork. Maybe your workshops are packed. Good. That spoke is doing its job.
And then there are three or four spokes sitting loose. The blog nobody’s touched since spring. The video you keep meaning to start. The past clients you haven’t mailed anything to in a year.
The firm doesn’t fall apart. It just wobbles.
Some months the referrals pour in. Some months it’s crickets. Estate planning leads show up in bunches and then go quiet. It rides rough, and you feel every bump.
Now here’s the mistake almost everyone makes.
When the wheel wobbles, the instinct is to crank the tight spoke even tighter. Do more of the one thing that’s already working. Send more emails. Add another workshop.
But you can’t true a wheel by tightening the spokes that are already tight. All that does is pull the rim further out of round. The wobble gets worse, not better.
You fix a wobble by finding the loose spokes and bringing them back to tension.
That’s it. That’s the whole lesson.
You don’t need a brand new wheel. You don’t need to reinvent your marketing. You need to walk around your own wheel, honestly, and find the spokes you’ve let go slack. Then bring them back, one at a time, until the tension is even all the way around.
That’s when the ride smooths out. That’s when the leads stop coming in bunches and start coming steady.
So this week, go find your loose spoke. You already know which one it is.
Keeping your wheel true,
Laura Lee