Building Genuine Relationships and Increasing Referrals For Lawyers

Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 68: How Lawyers Can Crush It in Business Development and Networking with Steve Fretzin

Narrator: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Law Firm Growth podcast, where we share the latest tips, tactics, and strategies for scaling your practice from the top experts in the world of growing law firms. Are you ready to take your practice to the next level? Let's get started.

Jan Roos: Hey, everybody, welcome back to The Law Firm Growth podcast. I'm your host, as always, Jan Roos, and I am here with a guest that I'm very excited for, who is Steve Fretzen. So Steve is the President and founder of frets and ink at three time author and a guy that I cannot believe I didn't find out about until recently because he talks about one of my favorite subjects Which is how lawyers can get more business through intake sales business development We're going to get into the distinction a little bit, but thanks for coming on the show steve.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah Thanks for having me happy to be here

Jan Roos: All right. Awesome. So I wanted to ask one thing and I noticed that there's a lot of, it seems like there's some intentionality behind this, but you're very focused on the term [00:01:00] business development. So I wanted to just start off with a definition. How do you separate business development from, what some people would call intake and I would say only the bravest in the legal space referred to as sales.

Steve Fretzin: It's tricky. The word sales and business development are the same. The lawyers, generally speaking, don't want to call it sales. It's a bad word. It's a four letter word, if you will. So they came up with the term business development, and that is even so scary that they call it marketing and it's absolutely not marketing.

Steve Fretzin: So it's interesting how, the gentle egos have to twist the word so that they can get comfortable. And I get why, because I've talked to enough lawyers that the idea that in a very noble profession, okay, and to think of themselves as salespeople is absolutely against every grain and everything that they've been working for their whole career.

Steve Fretzin: And so the idea that they have to go out and get clients and that we call it marketing or business development or intake. Now that's what we have to fall back on [00:02:00] because of the of the scary word sales.

Jan Roos: Okay, gotcha. And then as far as in some of the things I don't know, I try to follow a lot of different sources from different things.

Jan Roos: I've seen the distinction made some people refer to business development as the thing that leads to the conversation. Like in a lot of situations with a SAS company, some people refer to like the sales development rep as a business development role, as opposed to the account executive was in a sales role.

Jan Roos: Would you make that same distinction? Do you think it's a different process the way that you look at it?

Steve Fretzin: There's, you ask a hundred people, you're going to get a hundred different answers. I think my answer in being in legal business development for. The last 15 plus years is business development is the personal actions that someone needs to take to bring in new business.

Steve Fretzin: So whatever that involves prospecting, networking, getting in front of a new prospective client, locking up that business through having a good process of walking a buyer through a buying decision, following through maintaining those relationships. That's all business development. And the question I generally get, Jan, [00:03:00] is, The difference between business development and marketing is the other piece of it, where it's the website, it's the messaging, it's the branding, it's the newsletter.

Steve Fretzin: It's all the things that support the business development efforts. And sometimes they overlap, but that's my feeling about business development. And I really work on all of those skills with my clients and even drip into marketing and branding. But that's how I see business development.

Jan Roos: Okay.

Jan Roos: Awesome. And if I could go so far as to clarify, it's like business development is the personal actions you're taking. And then the stuff that's a little bit different would like the marketing would be an umbrella that wouldn't count the stuff at scale and that kind of stuff.

Steve Fretzin: Some people have described a business development is more one to one and marketing more like one to many.

Steve Fretzin: Okay. So that's an easier way to break it down. So if I'm networking with you to figure out how we can help each other and refer each other, that's going to be more of a business development activity. However, if I put up an, a billboard on the highway, that's going to be more of a marketing activity.

Jan Roos: Okay. Gotcha. All right. And sorry for being a [00:04:00] super nitpicky at the beginning. I just wanted to get the, no,

Steve Fretzin: I, it's a good question. And I don't think that there's any kind of, I wish I had a more direct, this is the answer that everyone must use. It's not quite so formal.

Jan Roos: It's so funny too, because I think it's like a lot of stuff in this realm too.

Jan Roos: It's whenever you put an ad up for somebody who's Oh yeah, we need to hire a marketer. Like you'll get resumes from people like, Oh yeah. Here's my Etsy shop. I do all these designs and they'll have people like, yeah, I've been doing extremely technical SEO for the last 10 years or whatever.

Jan Roos: It's just one of these kind of nebulous terms. But I think as far as like the personal accountability that's tied into the business development, I think that's a really important factor. So I wanted to actually switch. And zoom in a little bit, actually, because one of the things you mentioned, I was really interested to talk to you about is networking.

Jan Roos: And I think it's something that everyone can relate to because I think every attorney essentially starts there the day they end up hanging their shingle. So what separates people that ultimately end up becoming rainmakers and making money? What are they doing differently than the people that end up in the same place 10 years from now?

Steve Fretzin: I would say one of the biggest things that good networkers do is they [00:05:00] learn. And if there's an old saying in sales and I'll use the bad S word again. There's a guy with 10 years of sales experience. And the question that I would ask is, do you have 10 years of sales experience or do you have one year sales experience 10 times?

Steve Fretzin: And I think networking is very much the same. There's people that just get out there. Hey, you got to get out there. You got to be out there. You got to be visible and that's fine. Except lawyers are billable and billable hours are money. So time is literally money. And if you're just blowing it by attending things and showing up and glad handing and passing out cards and just doing whatever you think you should do, that's going to be a real time suck.

Steve Fretzin: And you're not going to get the kinds of results you're looking for. So it's separating good networkers from bad networkers. Is a good networkers generally have a process. They generally have figured either figured things out through learning or figured things out through hard knocks, whatever the case, they're not doing the same things they were doing year one.

Steve Fretzin: And the other thing that I would say is it separates is there's three kinds. I talk about [00:06:00] in my second book, the networking handbook, there's three kinds of networkers. There's takers. Who are the people that just want to sell you stuff. They just want to try to, sap your network of its value for them.

Steve Fretzin: That's what they care about. That's why they're there. There's also givers, true givers. These are the people that go out and their intentions is to help everybody develop the relationships, develop the karma, develop that brand that everybody is attracted to. Then there's the middle group, but I call these people a parent givers.

Steve Fretzin: These are the people that talk a big game, but don't actually follow through. They don't actually have the organizational skills or the follow through skills to make it happen. And they're not bad people. I think generally they just don't get it. Like they don't understand that, that if you make a commitment and you don't follow through, you're missing the whole idea about what makes someone a good networker.

Steve Fretzin: So that's how I put it into categories. So when I teach people, networking. They can't look in the mirror and say, they look and say, Hey, I'm that apparent giver. Wait a second. I need to change some of the things I'm doing.

Jan Roos: Yeah. That takes a lot of self insight to be able to make that. I think [00:07:00] a lot of people think themselves as givers at the end of the day, but no, that actually really made me think of something interesting just as far as that apparent giver too, because for one thing, it's obviously a bad look.

Jan Roos: Cause it's like the integrity that you're showing somebody that you network with is the integrity. You're going to ultimately show any business that they send your way. But I was thinking about this. I forget who I was talking to. This was off the podcast. It's in my personal life. It was just like, yeah, I think about.

Jan Roos: The big referral relationships that we've had as an agency, there's been two. And I could probably say for every conversation that ended up turning into something that actually was closed business, I probably had 10 that ended on exactly as positive as a note, but ended up not materializing anyways. And now I'm starting to wonder if these guys were a parent givers, right?

Steve Fretzin: And then the thing is that I teach my clients is that not all apparent givers, throw the fish back. It's too small or throw the fish back. It smells funny. It's sometimes about being a good coach. So I consider myself a true giver. I've been doing this for 17 years. I've got a long history of networking and have figured out all the, Kind of the [00:08:00] place to make it effective and efficient.

Steve Fretzin: That's why I'm good at what I do teaching attorneys because they need the process that they were never taught at law school or at the law firm level. But the point of me of this is I sometimes will identify someone who has a great network. They're great at what they do. Everything lines up, the stars line up, everything's great.

Steve Fretzin: They just don't have the organizational skills or they don't have the follow up skills or something is missing. I didn't do a very good job of coaching them to the specific person or people or type that I want to meet. So what I'm doing now is teaching my clients to take the apparent giver and at least be a good coach.

Steve Fretzin: And if that turns an apparent giver into a real giver for you, that might be worth something. Okay. If you do all that coaching and it still goes foul on you then that you can move on to the next person that this person isn't going to be someone that you're going to move upward.

Jan Roos: And that's interesting too, because it's almost like a due diligence process it's Schrodinger's a parent giver until you can, their quality until proven otherwise.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. A big part of networking from my perspective is [00:09:00] testing and that sounds a bit aggressive or it sounds a bit off putting to some people.

Steve Fretzin: However, when you realize how much time you can invest. In networking with the wrong people or doing things inefficiently or ineffectively, et cetera, it adds up. There are people doing two, three, 400 hours a year in business development, quote unquote, business development efforts, networking, they're in all these groups and everything, and they're not really getting the squeeze out of the fruit.

Steve Fretzin: So the idea that we could train someone, test someone, see how they play, And if they're great, keep it going. And if they're terrible, throw them back. And that's okay. That doesn't mean you can't stay friends. It doesn't mean you can't keep them on your LinkedIn that they're not bad people necessarily, but not everybody's going to be a fit a little bit.

Steve Fretzin: If here's the best analogy I can give you is I'm a baseball scout. And I've got to scout all the right places to find the best talent. And in doing so, I test the talent and bring the talent up to eventually make it to my major league club. Okay. However, is that mean out of a hundred people that, [00:10:00] that five or 10 come up?

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. It doesn't mean a hundred. I can't have a hundred people on my team. How would I even follow through with all those people? And most of those people are terrible anyway.

Narrator: So

Steve Fretzin: you really are trying to pick the best people to move up that, that are synergistic with you, that makes sense for you, that are givers and all the things aligned, those are the people you want to bring up and then you have to maintain once you've figured it out.

Jan Roos: Yeah. It's really interesting, Steve, because I've always thought about networking as like a nebulous thing. And it's funny. I have to say, I can't really put into words what actually makes people good networkers. I've always considered it more of a a harder to measure thing.

Jan Roos: But like you've added this layer of analytics and testing and process on it, which is super, super interesting. And it reminds me of some of the stuff you hear this in a lot of domains too. It's we do tests when we're running ads for kind of stuff. Like I have a situation where we're doing a high, a higher for our ISA team right now.

Jan Roos: Our first test is I'm having every single one of them record a voicemail. And if they sound like they're disengaged or I don't know, they have some crazy accent or they're too breathy or something like that. That's a test. But to get to the nitty gritty, like I hope this isn't [00:11:00] too much secret sauce, but what's an example of a kind of test that you'd recommend running for somebody that you're considering to bring on the team?

Steve Fretzin: So here's something that I do in. So let's say that you and I are networking together for the first time and we're back having a coffee, okay. Or on zoom, it doesn't matter. And we build a little rapport and then I say, Hey, would it be okay? Just to make the best use of our time to set an agenda or a meeting for a game plan for the rest of our time together.

Steve Fretzin: You say, sure, that makes sense. So now I'm setting an agenda and one of the agenda items that I'm going to include is. Jan, at the end of the meeting, if we feel like there's some synergy and we want to just take a baby step forward to just test the waters a bit, maybe we come up with some small way to help each other at the end of the meeting and we'll just see how that goes.

Steve Fretzin: Are you open to that? You say yes, because why are you meeting with me?

Jan Roos: Yeah.

Steve Fretzin: You're meeting with me for something. You're not meeting with me for your health, right? You're a lawyer in criminal. I'm a lawyer in family. And the reality is that we probably run into some things that we can refer each other from [00:12:00] time to time.

Steve Fretzin: Correct?

Jan Roos: Yeah. Of course.

Steve Fretzin: However, we're not going to do that. What we're going to do generally is we're going to say, this was great. Great meeting you. We'll keep our eyes open and I'm never going to see you again. I'm never going to hear from you again. You're a distant memory in five minutes. That's what most networking is.

Steve Fretzin: What I'm suggesting is that at the end of the meeting, we take 10 minutes and I'm listening to you talk about the kinds of people that you want to meet and I'm taking notes. And then at the end of the meeting, I can say, Jan. In hearing what you do, I think I've got some context that could be really interesting for you.

Steve Fretzin: Do you mind if we take a moment to go through them? And then we do. And then I say, in just hearing what I do in my family practice, are there people that you think I should be meeting? And that I mentioned, I like to network with financial planners. I like to meet with CPAs. I like to meet with other lawyers and you give me one or two.

Steve Fretzin: Now we have something to do for each other. Now that's not where it ends. That's where it starts. Now, I say to you, why don't we put something in the calendar a week from now and let's follow up and see how we do for each [00:13:00] other. We'll certainly talk in between them, but let's make an introduction or two, see how it goes.

Steve Fretzin: You not only blow me off on the call that we have scheduled, but when I reply to you and say, Hey, I wanted to touch base, you don't even respond to that. You didn't follow through on getting me the introduction that you had mentioned. What's my test identifying?

Jan Roos: Not yet. You're

Steve Fretzin: what? Are you a taker, a giver, a real giver, or an apparent giver?

Jan Roos: Apparent giver, I would say.

Steve Fretzin: That's it. You've been labeled. Okay. Now I coached you. We talked it through and now you've proven yourself unreliable, untrustworthy, commitment broken. So I either give you a second chance because I'm desperate, or I've got so many people that I just move on for me. I'm moving on for other people that might give you the benefit of the doubt.

Steve Fretzin: Maybe you were in some terrible car accident. I don't know. Okay. These days we have to at least ask, but that's the kind of stuff that I'm doing in teaching and networking so that there is a process, there is a way to test and it's not some complicated algorithm. It's pretty simple. You either follow through.

Steve Fretzin: You don't, I'm not telling you to give me your top client. It's give me something [00:14:00] small. Give me something small to do for you. I'm going to give you something small to do for me. Let's see if you can actually commit to something It's like that Seinfeld. Are you Seinfeld fan or no?

Jan Roos: A little bit. A little bit.

Jan Roos: Okay. There's a sign.

Steve Fretzin: There's a Seinfeld where he gets a reservation at a car rental and they say, we don't have a car for you. And he goes he's trying to understand this. He goes, but you can take the reservation. You just don't understand. You have to hold the reservation. And that's the most important part, right?

Steve Fretzin: And so he's goofing on in front of his friend this agent who doesn't have a car for him and should. So that's the kind of stuff that we want to just test people out on.

Jan Roos: I gotta say what I find super brilliant about that is you see the the bloat that a lot of networking ends up taking on and speaking to some personal experience back in the day.

Jan Roos: I actually started out at BNI, which was an interesting experience to say the least, but you saw these guys that were just there every single week, spinning their wheels, trying to be the, the best boy scout for the group, and you have attorneys that are meeting with massage therapists and, uh, Doulas and all this kind of stuff.

Jan Roos: And they're racking up all the coffee meetings, but like the [00:15:00] bloat really isn't the followup. It's the same thing as a traditional sales process. If you can get a yes or a no, that's infinitely better for you than some indefinite, maybe that you're going to be committing to a coffee meeting every six weeks until the sun burns out.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. I take that to the highest extent in teaching lawyers that know is the second best outcome they can ever get to, and they feel like challenging for them because we're all. Hungry for business and anxious for business, and we don't want to let anything go. And once they realize that by letting go of somebody that you've tested out and that has failed, it's absolute release of free time and energy and negative energy and hope.

Steve Fretzin: And hope is a terrible thing. Now that is not the case in Shawshank Redemption. Andy Dufresne hope is everything to him, right? But in, in business development, hope is a killer because we sit and we wait and we wonder, and we hope, and we think it's going to happen. And it just sits in our stomach like a knot and I hate it.

Steve Fretzin: I want to understand what's going on. I want to understand what's next. [00:16:00] What did somebody commit to? Did they follow through? If not, why not? Like I need to know. And if it means that I can move them to a note quickly and get my time back. Then I win. If I get the business, get the referral, get the next step, then I win.

Steve Fretzin: And that's what I'm looking for. It's I'm looking for the truth. I'm looking for what's real and everything else that's BS and that's just mumbo jumbo. How fast can I get rid of it? No one has time for that.

Jan Roos: Yeah, I agree. And it's interesting because I feel like a lot of the norms that for whatever reason kind of cropped up in business culture, but this is something I found really funny.

Jan Roos: So I actually had a professor back in college and he was actually a banker in Switzerland for a while. And he said, basically the way that they do business over there is, they're You don't end up asking, like you just really just shoot the breeze for the entire dinner and you don't talk about it until the checks already been settled.

Jan Roos: And it's just there's norms like this all over the place where just to play devil's advocate, it's like some people would say, okay, I'm setting an agenda. I don't want to be a jerk. I don't want to be icky. But at the end of the day, the icky situation is what ends up. Spawning from that fruitless [00:17:00] meeting chasing ghosts around for the last six months, right?

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And again, agendas aren't for every single scenario. If I'm meeting with someone for the strict purpose of building relationship, period. There is no agenda. The agenda is nothing. I just want to, Do my research. I want to talk about things that are interesting to them. I want to ask a lot of questions and I want to build that relationship so that when we leave that meeting, not only do we have a little bit of a love fest, but they want to meet again because now we can talk business.

Steve Fretzin: But if I'm meeting with a stranger from a networking group or from a zoom networking meeting, And I'm calling stranger danger. I'm going to set that agenda because I don't want to be on that call for more than 30 minutes. I want to see what the traction is. I want to test the waters and I want to know what's going on.

Steve Fretzin: And if I set the agenda like this, in order to make the best use of our time, Yon, would it be all right just to set a quick game plan for our meeting? If you don't agree to that, you're out of your mind. And I want out because what I said was to make [00:18:00] the best use of our time. Okay. If somebody's not interested in making the best use of our time, then why do I want to spend any more time with that lunatic?

Steve Fretzin: I'm out the door. Yeah. Okay. That's the first test. They don't agree to that. Get out. And then the other tests are a little easier or a little more challenging. I should say down the road anyway.

Jan Roos: Yeah.

Jan Roos: You're making a, this is reminding me of some other stuff too.

Jan Roos: So I think one of the challenges that I see a lot of people having with networking in general, that I'm seeing hints of how the process can fix this, is that basically think about the person who's holding, a weekly or a monthly or a quarterly quota. There's a dilemma with how people are able to predict how these things play out, but does this kind of process of building up these relationships lead to any more predictability and kind of the process in your mind?

Steve Fretzin: Yeah, at least to a lot more predictability. And the main reason is that when you're not just building relationships. And as I mentioned, you're trying to find people that you can move upward and inward into your. Network people that are going to be good referral sources a question. This is the best [00:19:00] question I'll give you this is worth every minute that I'm on the show for the people listening Okay, I ask this question and teach my clients to ask this question on a regular basis.

Steve Fretzin: So let's say again You're a criminal attorney I'm a family attorney. We're networking because there may be ways to help each other. If I asked you in an average year, Jan, how often are you coming across family matters where a divorce is eminent, or they need a prenup, or they need something to deal with the family thing in an average year, how often is that coming up for you?

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. I'd

Jan Roos: say 20.

Steve Fretzin: 20. So you say 20. Maybe I want to find out what you do with those people. How are you handling them today? You might say, Steve, I've got 10 family lawyers I've known for 20 years that I would feed that to. And you're on the bottom of the list. That's very different than I just throw the, I don't, I just tell them I don't do that.

Steve Fretzin: That's 20 new clients that I could potentially have every single year if I keep in the loop with you. So we're qualifying people. [00:20:00] In this testing process, it's also about qualifying, which is a very important word. And one of the top qualifiers is, does the person have the ability to refer? And I haven't, just today I spoke to, I got an email from a client.

Steve Fretzin: He met with someone, they're both in the MNA space. Okay. And he met with the guy and the guy told him, he's got 20 or 30 attorney, MNA attorneys that feed him business. So this lawyer's going then how am I going to ever get a referral from you? If you already have 20, 30 attorneys that are already feeding you a bunch of work, wouldn't that MNA consultant be in his best interest to feed back the people that are feeding him already?

Steve Fretzin: The answer is, of course, so he's not fishing in the right pond. He's got to disqualify and move on. And that's what I'm going to advise him to do. Even though I made the introduction, by the way, I did a poor job of qualifying enough for him, but I just, they're both in the same space. I thought there could be something there and there could have been turns out there isn't and move on.

Steve Fretzin: That's [00:21:00] okay. This guy needs to save some time anyway.

Jan Roos: So I actually it's interesting. So obviously this isn't a process. There's a lot of people follow because you see a lot of really dumb fruitless, like relationships that are persisting for a super long time. I want to transition a little bit to mindset.

Jan Roos: How much do you think the result is today with people not doing this because they don't know the process and how much do you think is because people don't want to ask that question and find out that their golden referral source is really a, a dog at the end of the day.

Steve Fretzin: Are we talking about mindset to do business development?

Steve Fretzin: To go out and do it and get it and be that lawyer, that type of thing. Yeah. Okay. I would say it's 50%. They know what to do, but they just don't do it because they're busy and they're happy and they're comfortable. They know that it's important. And then the other 50 percent are just lost. They. Don't know the first thing.

Steve Fretzin: They don't have a plan. They don't have the relationships or even if they do, they're uncomfortable asking for anything. They think that it's again, sales is a dirty word. So why would I want to do any [00:22:00] of that? And so they're basically just handcuffed because at the end of the day, what makes a lawyer successful?

Steve Fretzin: And this is sad. It used to be a Harvard degree and it used to be how many wins you have in court. And today it's what's your book. If any lawyer goes to a recruiter and says, I want to leave my big firm and I want to go to another firm. First question, what's your book? And if it isn't a half a million or more.

Steve Fretzin: You're probably not going to be moving. You're going to stay where you are in most cases unless there's an opening or a need. So this is an important thing, but it's not for everybody. There's always going to be people that just want to crank out work and do everyone else's work with everyone else's clients.

Steve Fretzin: That's fine. That's why I really only work Jan with the top 5%. of what I would consider ambitious attorneys. So it's not about intelligence. It's not about pedigree. It's not about what firm they're with. They could be a solo. They could be at a big firm. They could have a 10 million book or no book at all.

Steve Fretzin: I don't care. It's their mindset. And you hit on it right away. It's what's their attitude. What's their mindset. Are they open to learning? [00:23:00] Are they open to taking coaching? Are they ambitious? That's what matters to me. And those are the people I work with. If they don't fit in that category, they're out.

Steve Fretzin: I've no interest. I have no time. I'm a one man show and I've got to be very careful and critical about who I bring in into my space, into my programs that are going to be successful and get results. Cause that reflects on me.

Jan Roos: Yeah, of course. That's actually really interesting to hear too.

Jan Roos: Cause it's it's not about where you're at. It's about where you're going to be, but more importantly, what you're willing to pay to, to get there. And it's in terms of help. It's in terms of the emotional awareness to see where you're really at and face those scary things. But you also bridge something I want to dig into a little bit more.

Jan Roos: It's just like people that are just complacent. So I know you're dealing mostly with the top 5%, but as far as the situation with like, why do you think people don't? Why do you think there's so many complacent lawyers out there? Do you think they don't know that they can do it? Or do you think they're not aware of it?

Steve Fretzin: Again, either they're busy and they're just stuck. You're stuck doing everyone's work. You're making good money. You're bringing home the bacon to the [00:24:00] family. And you're not concerned about the future and having your own clients. Because look, we just had, this nasty pandemic and a potential recession.

Steve Fretzin: I think we're in a recession. Although most lawyers I talked to are having their best years ever. So what are we all worried about? There's nothing to worry about is what people think. And that's just a bad idea. It's like saying, Hey, I'm not worried about getting hurt. So I shouldn't have insurance. I don't need insurance.

Jan Roos: I don't know that

Steve Fretzin: That's the way to go. So I think it's either, again, they don't know. They're either stuck in the situation where business development. Isn't that important to them and they're just working through whatever the day is from day to day. Or again, they're just, it's so scary to ask for help or to show weakness or to feel in what they don't understand is that the strong hire the coach.

Steve Fretzin: It's not the weak that hires the coach. It's the strong. Think about all the best ceos the best athletes they all have coaches. Why it's because they're weak No, of course, it's not because they're weak. It's because they're the strongest in the business They [00:25:00] don't want to stop learning.

Steve Fretzin: They don't want to stop getting better They understand and what I do is I sit down with an attorney in 30 minutes. I understand just about everything I'm, like somebody just called me the lawyer whisper. I didn't call myself that my estate planning client Who's wonderful nina did? But it's because what I do is I can, I've been in the trenches so long, I can ask enough questions and hear exactly what that lawyer is doing, not doing, should be doing, strong, weak, and I can essentially see like a pile of money like forming in front of us that they're just walking around every day.

Steve Fretzin: They're not going after and a lot of it's because they just don't know how they just don't have the comfort confidence or the actual process to do it. So there's a lot of there's a big gap here that you're I think observing as we're talking through this and unfortunately it's not taught in law school and it's not really taught at the law firm level.

Steve Fretzin: So lawyers have this education gap between where they are and where they need to be. Related to marketing and business development and running a business quite [00:26:00] frankly. And that's where, I don't come in on all those sections, but I come in on one of them to help make sure people are not only providing for their family today, but that can provide for the rest of their career.

Jan Roos: Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting you bring that up. It's like the people don't look for help if they'd think that it's not something that's possible. And I think like overall, there's a situation where to like, to reach out to the coach, to, to even. Google how to get more business from my law practice.

Jan Roos: Like it takes a moment of vulnerability. And I think a lot of people let me know if you agree with this. It's just they're more comfortable with feeling smart in the moment than temporarily feeling dumb to actually have the success that they tell themselves that they want.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. It's funny.

Steve Fretzin: So the most recent article that I wrote for, I write for the Chicago daily law bulletin here in Chicago, and I've been doing that for five years ever a monthly column and the most recent article it's being published tomorrow, or I guess, I don't know when this is going to, when this is going to post, but in, in March of 2021, and it's the five traits or characteristics of people that should never hire a coach.

Steve Fretzin: And so I go through the actual [00:27:00] five points of what someone, if someone's reading that and they go, that's me. I'm a narcissist. I only, this, that, and the other I'm, I'm shortsighted or I'm this or I'm that then a coach is not for me and it's a little tongue in cheek, but it hits the point that coaching isn't for everyone.

Steve Fretzin: You really have to be a little vulnerable and be open and be, coachable to want to improve something. I don't care if that's becoming a better musician, a better cook or a better lawyer. Think about the lawyers. Could you be a good lawyer without a mentor, without somebody taking you into court and helping you get through 10 trials?

Steve Fretzin: Hell no.

Narrator: No

Steve Fretzin: one's doing that. Business development's no different. You need help. You can't do it on your own or you're going to spin through a lot of hours, which again. It has worked for some people.

Jan Roos: Yeah, for sure. Okay. So I want to move towards imagining somebody who hits zero of those five filters.

Jan Roos: So somebody who's good, they're ready to rock there. They're good to go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about goal setting for a second. Cause I know it's we haven't spoken about your specific coaching process, Steve, but I'm sure that goal setting is part of it. So let's take through, like, how do [00:28:00] you end up figuring out, you're talking about visualizing the pile of money.

Jan Roos: How are you a. what somebody's potential is and how hard do you encourage people to lean into those goals? Like how big is too big?

Steve Fretzin: So it's what I call realistic, but hybrid realistic. So what we do is we look at, so let's say there's an attorney who has a million dollar book and wants to grow it from there.

Steve Fretzin: And we identify it, the full service firm that he or she is not cross marketing at all, meaning bringing in no business for anyone else other than. Him or herself. Okay. That could be one pile of money. Then also this same lawyer has 30 or 40 clients that believe that she walks on water. A most amazing lawyer compliments flying every single month.

Steve Fretzin: Okay. And has never leveraged those clients for quality introductions to get into to meet other general counsels, other CEOs. That's another pile of money we just identified. Okay. And the list goes on and on. We can keep going until we figure out like what are the best two or three things that [00:29:00] lawyer should be doing.

Steve Fretzin: And based on execution on those two or three things, what does the growth look like? And also how much time does that lawyer have? If the lawyer's billing 60 hours a week, they're not going to spend another 20 a week doing business development really. So

Jan Roos: we

Steve Fretzin: have to also look at. Or can we figure out how to delegate?

Steve Fretzin: That's another thing I help lawyers with is they're doing way too much and they're not delegating to associates. They're not delegating to paralegals. They're not outsourcing marketing. They're not outsourcing things, administrative burden. And so it's all about efficiency. So how do I clear the clear out the space so that the lawyer has an opportunity to really hit it hard and go after the things that we agree make sense.

Steve Fretzin: So it's about writing. It's about having a written plan. And within that plan, we established what the numbers are and the goals are, and then we break it down into actionable tactical things that need to happen every single day. And if they do, the result is that type of dramatic growth. If they commit to things and then blow it off or commit to things and don't [00:30:00] execute then again we're leaving it out in the wind and whatever happens, I try to disqualify again, working with the top 5%.

Steve Fretzin: It disqualifies a lot of people that aren't going to follow through. Between the time they invest with me. The money they invest in me and the commitment that I'm asking them to make, I make a lot less mistakes than I used to as far as bringing in the wrong people who promise the world and then don't follow through.

Steve Fretzin: And that doesn't mean emergencies don't happen. Babies happen, right? I think I've heard you've heard that babies happen.

Steve Fretzin: Courts used to happen. There's things that stand in the way between lawyers and business development and putting their foot down on the pedal. We have to work through them. We have to always work through them and we just, it just never stops.

Steve Fretzin: We just have to keep pushing forward. That's what anyone would do. Wants to change and grow and evolve. You can't just say, Oh, what was me?

Jan Roos: Yeah. Gotcha. This might be a softball, but you mentioned daily activity, right? Why not monthly activities? Do you, why not weekly activity?

Steve Fretzin: It could be daily, could be weekly, could be monthly.

Steve Fretzin: It's really up. Yeah. I'm sorry. It really depends on what, how much activity the [00:31:00] lawyer needs. And so let's say for example, that we agree that you want to get in front of, three, three new people a week. You could take 15 minutes on a Monday morning and send out five emails and three of them come back as appointments.

Steve Fretzin: There you go. So that, that 15 minutes led to three 30 or 45 minute meetings. And so there's your weekly activity. And that'll add up for the month. If somebody wants to do less, they can do less. It really depends on what goal they're looking for and how quickly they want to get there.

Jan Roos: Okay. Gotcha.

Jan Roos: And then as far as how people are keeping track on progress, it's do you recommend any sort of like tools or I dunno, like tracking systems, CRM, that kind of stuff for keeping track of all this,

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. So I'm friends with, the folks over at Lawmatics and I'm friends with one or two other folks that do CRMs for lawyers.

Steve Fretzin: And that's fine. If I can get someone on a CRM, that's always the best way to go. The reality is that 95 percent of the attorneys that I come in contact with and work with, they don't want another piece of software. And that's [00:32:00] unfortunate because they really would really help them with efficiency. They just don't want it.

Steve Fretzin: So we ended up putting together a, what I call a success journal. And this is where they track their daily activity, weekly activity, and we were able to review it together. And for me as a coach, it's amazing because I'm getting their daily, weekly, monthly stats. And so again, can a baseball batting coach help someone without seeing them swing and without knowing their stats?

Steve Fretzin: Probably not. So I need that same kind of information from my clients. And then I'm able to really pinpoint where the mistakes are happening, where their conversion issues are happening. And that way we're able to make better decisions about how to make improvements.

Jan Roos: Yeah, that's really interesting.

Jan Roos: And I think this is something I've spoken about on I think I did this on a webinar not too long ago, but basically, yeah, it's I feel like a lot of people look at. The whole process of getting new business is like such a binary. It's did we hit our target or do we not? And it's it doesn't matter how many emails did you send out?

Jan Roos: How many meetings did you have? How many consultations did you have? There's always like more granular [00:33:00] levels that somebody can look into to see what, what, where the really the red dot to focus on is and whatever's happening in the process. But another thing I wanted to reach out to, which I think is really interesting.

Jan Roos: I don't think enough people talk about is this whole thing of client referrals. Why spend time trying to, get in front of the person who has 30 other lawyers that are referring to him when you have these people who know probably the most high resolution view of what exactly you can do as an attorney, I think it's uncommon.

Jan Roos: And I'll actually just speak to something that I've always thought about a lot. When do you ask for the referral for a client? I think there's always a feeling of closure. And I always find our ourselves and honestly, like I have tough times recommending this for the people who are client success managers in my business, because there's a sense of closure after the services have been rendered, but you always tell yourself you're going to ask for the referral later.

Jan Roos: So when do you ask people to to go ahead and ask for the referrals?

Steve Fretzin: Yeah, that's a great question. And the answer is, it depends. If you're doing a real estate closing, you might have to do it at the end of the real estate closing because if once they're gone, they might be gone for a while.

Steve Fretzin: If it's one of these institutional clients or relationships [00:34:00] that's ongoing that makes it a little easier, but I would say it happens. It happens when you've earned it from being a great lawyer. You've earned it from being responsive. You've gone above and beyond the call of duty, if you will.

Steve Fretzin: And once you've earned it, you can ask. And then the question lawyers have, and this is what drives them nuts, is they're terrified of making the ask. That's like the number one, if we're playing family feud, like number one on the board would be fear of the ask. And that's what I teach lawyers is how to make the ask.

Steve Fretzin: There are very soft and very nurturing, consultative, however you want to View it ways of doing it that take a lot of the salesiness out of it. And actually that's my MO. I think maybe above everything is I try to take the salesiness out of business development. My first book is called sales free selling.

Steve Fretzin: And it's called that for a reason because selling sucks, being sold to sucks. Nobody likes it. It's no fun. And and that's not an appropriate way to behave anyway, what people would really have appreciate is relationships, consultation, great [00:35:00] questions, walk a buyer through a buying decision. Once you've developed the relationship you've won for the client, you just need to make sure you have a really good soft approach.

Steve Fretzin: And I can give you an example if that'd be helpful. Yeah, that'd

Jan Roos: be fantastic.

Steve Fretzin: So this is one that I call okay, not okay. And my clients are, if they're listening to this, they're going to roll their eyes because they know I like this one. If you're uncomfortable asking for an introduction from a client that, would give you one, if you ask, because they think you're the best, admit that you're not okay with it, admit that you're not comfortable with it, especially if you're an introvert, you're definitely going to get away with it.

Steve Fretzin: I think it has to be done with integrity. I don't think you do it just to do it, but to say to a client, look, there's something I've been meaning to ask you. And if I'm being honest, I'm very uncomfortable with it. Because it's goes against the grain for me. It's not something I've ever done and whatever, but I know that you've been happy with the services that I provided over the last number of years, there's probably other companies that you have relationships with, CFOs and CEOs.

Steve Fretzin: That I could be [00:36:00] working with and helping the same way I'm helping you, Jan. But I don't know them and it would be so much easier for me if you could make an introduction, but I don't want to overstep any boundaries. Is that something you'd be open to talking about? What the heck is that client going to say?

Steve Fretzin: No, get out of my office. You're fired. Hell no. An A level client. You've built a relationship. You've built a trust. You walk on water, all that kind of stuff. They're going to fall all over you to help you. Okay. And then there's a bunch of other steps that have to happen too, so that it doesn't go into the ether.

Steve Fretzin: I don't need to get into that. The idea is that type of an approach softens things up so much. And the reason it's called, Oh, okay. Not okay. Is because if you're not okay, someone that likes you will help you feel okay. That's common, psychology. It doesn't, it's not fancy, but it's the real, the reality.

Steve Fretzin: If I'm not feeling well, my wife will say you don't seem like you're not feeling well. Can I get you a Tylenol? That's just what she's going to say, right? Because she cares about me. If somebody doesn't care about you, then they're going to go, Hey, that sucks to be you.

Jan Roos: [00:37:00] But your

Steve Fretzin: A list clients, your top 10 A list clients, If you have that kind of an approach and you've earned it, they're going to fall all over you.

Steve Fretzin: And that's a proactive way to get business in the door versus sitting around waiting. And it's not that they don't want to refer you. It's that they just don't know how they're not thinking about it. They're busy. You have to help them help you. And that's really what's missing is attorneys aren't realizing that this is something that has to be done proactively now more than ever 20 years ago, maybe not.

Steve Fretzin: 20 years ago, I think the phone just started. My father's a retired attorney. I talk about him all the time on my podcast. He never had to make a call. He never had to attend a networking event. He just was awesome. That's all that mattered. And today there's too much awesome and not enough of intentional business development to get what you need to get.

Steve Fretzin: In order to stay, sustainable and relevant moving forward.

Jan Roos: Steve, I want to be respectful of your time, but we could go on to this for hours, man. I've had a great time. Yeah. I want to say, what's the best [00:38:00] place for for people to find you if they're liking what they're hearing.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. The thing that's easiest is to go to my website. It's fretsin.com. It's F as in Frank R E T Z I N. com. I've got my podcast there. Be that lawyer. Which again, I've got about 75 episodes, all just yeah. And all these experts talking about business development, marketing, efficiency, you don't have to listen to them all, but you could go through and pick out the ones that are best for you.

Steve Fretzin: I've got a blog. I've got videos where I do some instruction. You can watch. Watch a sample video of me working with my clients in a class on my YouTube channel, which is just Steve Fretzin on YouTube. And that's really, and you can email me at stevefretzin.com if you want to have a initial consultation.

Steve Fretzin: Again, if you're in that top 5 percent of ambitious, interested attorneys that want to grow I may be the guy.

Jan Roos: Awesome. And thanks dude. I'll definitely coast out on the podcast too. I subscribe to it really interesting guest lineups and people that if you've been making the legal marketing circuit, it's people that you don't see on the other [00:39:00] podcasts too.

Jan Roos: So super recommend. That's what I look forward to every week. But Steve, thanks again so much, brother. I really appreciate having you on the podcast and for everybody else. We'll see you next Tuesday at 8 AM Eastern on The Law Firm Growth podcast.

Narrator: Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Growth podcast.

Narrator: For show notes, free resources and more, head on over to casefuel.com/podcast Looking forward to catching up on the next episode.