In this episode, Steve Fretzin discusses:
Key Takeaways:
"Business development has become a bigger part of what determines success as a lawyer.." — Steve Fretzin
Connect with Jeremy Baker:
Website: OperationPalmtree.com
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: The Ambitious Attorney: Your Guide to Doubling or Even Tripling Your Book of Business and more!
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Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
Steve Fretzin 0:00
Hey, everybody just wanted to share a webinar I did back in late May. And I thought you might get a bunch of takeaways out of it called let's go solo. Really for people that are either going solo or solo or just want to learn more about business development for the inevitable that may or may not ever happen. Enjoy.
Narrator 0:22
You're listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach Steve Fretzin will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here's your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin 0:45
So I want to welcome everybody to the program today. This is called let's go solo. And it's really focused on either starting a solo practice taking your existing solo practice to next level, or if you have nothing to do with being a solo practitioner at all, there's still some really good information, if you want to go down the road or just to build your practice. I'm giving some, you know, strategic and tactical advice in this program that I give to my clients. And hopefully, it'll be a value to you. Ah, let me get the screen going here. For everybody watching. And again, if you have any questions, you can use the chat feature or if you want to unmute yourself and just ask the question directly, I don't mind taking a break in the middle of the presentation to you know, to answer a question. So how to effectively start and grow your solo law practice is the program today. As I mentioned, I'm Steve fredersen. I'm a business development coach for attorneys nationally do a ton of work here locally in Chicago, but obviously with the Coronavirus era, everything is being done virtually and I'm my life hasn't been turned upside down too badly because of that, because I was already doing about 60% of my practice and business was doing virtual coaching anyway. And I've written three books, if you haven't picked one up there on Amazon, you can support my son's 529. Today by ordering a book sales, free selling, which is really kind of speaking to lawyers hating sales. And quite frankly, I'm a sales background. I hate sales, and I hate being sold to. So the idea that there's a better methodology of how to walk buyers through buying decisions. That's what that books about the attorneys networking Handbook, which is best practices on networking to build your practice through leveraging relationships. And then most recently, the ambitious attorney, which is actually a grouping of articles from my writing with the Chicago daily level attend, which I've been doing for about four or five years. And it's about three years of my best content that I plugged into that book. So good to check that out. As I mentioned, I'm a monthly columnist for The Daily level attend. And then most recently, in the last three months started to be that lawyer podcast. So that's a little bit about that. So let's move on to what the agenda is you guys are looking to learn, you're looking to understand what it takes to go solo and be successful. And again, there might be some gaps in your game. And my job is to help fill those gaps and educate chance and best practices. First, we're going to talk a little bit about getting your ducks in a row, whether you're looking to go solo or you currently are solo, want to give you some strategic advice about that, identifying your sweet spot in the marketplace. I was talking with David a few minutes ago on the call. And he's, you know, he's doing this and he's doing that, and he's helping out here and helping out there. And again, that might be you know, that might be helpful to the family and friends. But again, we also want to look at it being very targeted in our approach. Part of that can be done through writing a marketing plan, most attorneys and if I had to put a number on it, I'd say 95% don't have a marketing plan. And that's really problematic, because what ends up happening is you end up just kind of winging it from day to day, instead of having a targeted strategic approach. And knowing what you're doing every day to build your client base, which as you guys all know, determines wealth and determines sustainability and independence. creating unique infomercial. This is something I've been teaching for many years, there's 1000s of ways to write one I've got one in particular that I have been teaching and working with that seems to be working pretty well. I heard someone do an infomercial, the other day lawyer who does IP, just the greatest guy, he's got amazing stories. He's got a 30 year background, but he went through a list of literally everything he does. And after we got to a thing I was done like I was checked out. So we really want to have an infomercial that sucks people in makes them want to either ask questions or just be engaged with what you're talking about as you relate to yourself and in your practice. Growing your brand and networking on LinkedIn, I think it's an underutilized tool, either misunderstood or just not utilized properly. And so we want to talk about some best practices there. And then lastly, just using some of the networking methodologies that I've been teaching to help you get better results with your networking. So we'll go from there. Starting off with really just getting your ducks in a row. As a solo practitioner, you've got to, you know, make sure that you're really organized. And, you know, you're looking for this balance between family and work and, and just and also making sure that you're not overspending on certain technology, software's office space, etc. So I'll go through a few of these. And then I'm gonna bring my buddy Jeremy into the conversation to just talk about some of the things he advises people on, he's got a company called Operation palm tree. And if you guys can figure out what that means, you know, it's just living a better life and getting to that palm tree. Right. So he's going to talk a little bit about how to get there. So number one that I kind of advise on is you got to have a contact list. And you might have people in LinkedIn, and people in Outlook and people in Gmail, on your phone, you really need to have a centralized list of all your key relationships. Because when it comes to scheduling meetings, and getting in touch with people and sending out emails, and newsletters and things that you all should be doing, if you don't have a really good list, I think it can really hinder your ability to be effective in how you're going to reach out and connect and reconnect with people develop a business plan and a budget, I think Jeremy is going to talk a little bit about that. organizing a marketing plan, which I'm going to get into in a few minutes. But again, you want to invest your time and your money wisely, you still have to consider even as a solo, that you are billable, right. And that your time is literally money. And so every bad meeting, you take every for, you know, consultation that you take that's not qualified, and it ends up being a three or five hour, you know, string along nightmare, you want to do better at it really making sure that you're focused in target and how you spend your time as it relates to networking and prospecting. Okay. And then you got to just be prepared for all the different aspects of the business. And there's a bunch of points I'll get into, and then I think Jeremy will probably get into more detail on so what type of business that you have, what's going to be the best way to go from a tax perspective? insurance, obviously, you have to have a good choice on on the type of insurance you choose. And again, I think what one thing that I know Jeremy did really well, is he spent the time to really organize all the different options and evaluate them so that he could advise lawyers on what's the best route so as opposed to you having to go through that that time and effort that it's going to take to choose the right insurance you know, group for you or or policy whatnot, he's he's kind of cut to the chase on that staffing, can you go through this with no staff, some staff, I've got a sort of a general rule of thumb, I call the $30. an hour rule of thumb, if you're billable at 250 to 500 an hour. And you're spending, you know, if you add up the hours on administrative marketing and other efforts, and you're spending, you know, 10 hours a week or whatever, 20 hours a week, and you're doing your own books, and all these things, think about that. And that could be time that you spend getting in front of people or billing hours, you really you know, may want to consider getting a virtual assistant or a couple different assistants doing different things. Personally, I have a bookkeeper that I've been working with for years, I don't want to deal with that. I don't want to deal in details and I don't want to have to deal with you know, collections and all that stuff. It just comes off so much better from having that outsourced and the amount of time that I not only the time that I would spend on that, but the the distaste and dislike I have for dealing with the books. And that doesn't mean that I don't look at monthly reports or that I just ignore it. I don't want anyone taking advantage of me. But I also know that I've got someone I can trust in a variety of categories, where staffing and then again, you might want to bring someone in full time if you're in real estate and you've got you know, 150 to 200 transactions a year. You know, yeah, you're going to want a paralegal, you know, you're going to want to staff up. So looking at that client intake, how are you taking in calls? How are you taking in emails? How are you managing that? And how are you staying in touch with your client base to determine you know, that, that they're going to stay loyalty long term? Obviously marketing, looking at your logo, your website, your social media? What's the plan for that? Who are you using to put together your site? Is it something you throw up in 30 minutes yourself? Or is it something that is actually going to drive business and traction and build your brand. And again, there's things you can do on the cheap, and there's things that you probably need to invest in, especially if you're looking to drive traffic to your website. My website is my hub for everything. So my newsletter drives traffic, my social media drives traffic, if I don't have a solid website that is built for conversion, for people that call and email me for it to drive, branding and name recognition, that's a real problem. So you want to consider those things and in going solo. And again, it doesn't have to cost a million dollars, but it might be something that you need to budget for. And then of course, technology, you know, how are you, you know, focusing your database management, your CRM, email platforms and billing etc. And then of course, I'm gonna, you know, not a self promotion, but the point is, you got to be an expert in business development. If you're going out on your own, and you haven't taken the time to read books, listen to podcasts. Try it out. Pick up ideas and best practices from people that have done it longer than you. And you've been kind of a service based attorney for many years. Or even if you've been doing business development, but maybe not as efficiently as you could think about it, if I mentioned earlier time is money and you're not being efficient with your time and business development. And instead of taking 10 hours to do something, it takes you 20 or 30, you can see where this is going to go over time. So a quick story I have is a guy that I interviewed a while ago, we just did a networking exchange, this guy was promoted as like an amazing networker. And when I met him, I immediately said, holy crap, this guy is energy. He's energy, he's polished, he's this guy is just amazing. Like I was just blown away by him. And I just was curious, I had to ask, I asked him, I said, on a scale of one to 1010, being like, the most exceptional networker that you would see on the street, and a one being a total disaster, where would you say you fall? And he was pretty confident. He said, I don't know, Steve, I'm probably a nine or a 10. And then I asked him, I said, All right, I've got one more question. And please don't take this the wrong way. On a scale of one to 1010 being that you have more business than you can handle better results than you ever expected. And a one is you barely have, you're getting any value out of networking, as far as direct business, where would you say you fall? And he was being honest with me, and I could see his whole, you know, kind of body, you know, kind of melt in front of me, but he said he was like a two or three. And I was like, okay, so I see what's going on, the guy can glad hand and the guy can get out there and be energized and have energy and meet lots of people and build his brand from just just putting time and effort. But if you're not getting the value, if you're not getting the actual business out of the exchange, then that's a problem. You know, that's again, that's that's lost time and years that he could be could be doing things much more efficiently. So again, it's important to make sure that you're doing business development, marketing that you're doing it right or bringing in the right people to help you do it, right.Oh, I'm sorry, before I move on, alright, so I'm going to stay on this page. I'm gonna bring in Jeremy Jeremy's the master solo guy. So Jeremy, if you would take 510 minutes and just kind of add on to what I've built here to kind of give some really good advice and tips to the group as relates to going solo, that'd be terrific.
Jeremy Weisz 12:10
Sure thing, Steve, can you hear me? Okay?
Steve Fretzin 12:12
Yeah, you sound clears about,
Jeremy Weisz 12:14
You know, for me, after I sorted out all the logistics, by way of background I've been practicing in Illinois for 18 years, up until nine months ago, they were all with 100 or 200. law firms for the last 14 years before I went solo, I was with shift harden it where I was a partner on the construction Law Group for the last seven years. So I was taking a bit of a leap of faith here to launch my solo from about nine months ago, particularly because number one, I've got four young kids under the age of 10. And number two, I'm not somebody that had, you know, a book of business, you know, many times in excess of what I would expect to make in salary. I think that a lot of people who saw me leap, were sort of surprised. And I just sort of had the confidence that I could do it. And it was because I spent three years or so listening to podcasts and doing research and trying to figure out what are all the things that I need to know. And I'm going to get into some of the specifics that Steve has here on his slide in a second. But probably the most important thing that I realized in the course of this and I think some of you might already be there, because you're on this presentation, is if you really take all of the hours that you spend away from your family away from home away from the things you like to do for fun, take all the hours billable non billable hours that you're on the Metra hours that you're doing business development, and then divide those by what do you really take home, you're gonna find that you're making an hourly rate, currently, and you're in your you know, in your law firm jobs, I assume, you know, that is much lower than you think. So that's really what you have to ask yourself is, can you get over that, that level on your own. And, you know, when I did the math, it became apparent to me that I could cut my rate almost in half. And as long as I build two and a half hours a day, I could probably, you know, cover cover my monthly nut with the family and the office space that I have here. And so, you know, once I did that math, it was just a question of exactly how I was going to go back on solo, not you know whether I was going to do it. And I think a few things that Steve mentioned are really important. And I was laughing because he, he talked about having a good contact list. And I've had you on mute. And I've literally been working away right now to take all of the new email traffic that I've had this month, and put it into my Contacts database. Because the last business day of the month, which is today is the day that my e newsletter goes out, where I've got links to video and articles that I've written. And 1000 or so people are going to get that today at 3:45pm. It's time strategically in the day, it's time to get a strategic point in the month because it's the day before I do my invoicing the first the next business day, the next month. And so I've literally been trying to figure out who are the 20 or 30 new people that I met this But I want to try to make sure that I reach out to you. And so having that contact list is extremely important, particularly in these COVID-19 days, I don't know when we're all going to be back together, again. But I have felt that over the last couple months, you know, as I've been chatting with my wife, I've had a an advantage over a lot of lawyers who are, you know, in their, their early to mid 40s, like me, because I am top of mind, I have hired out to Steve's point, a lot of social media. And I'm trying to do it as well as Steve does. But you know, I've got a YouTube channel with some videos, I've got regular social media posts that have specific content, geared for specific days, you know, I've got this E newsletter, and it all revolves around, you know, who are you targeting and who's on your list. And I really feel like I haven't missed a beat in Coronavirus, because I was already trying to reach out to people that are in my world digitally beforehand. So having that contact list of all your key relationships, you know, is very important. You know, social media is key, you know, I was a late comer, to the idea of social media. And I was probably the last guy in the world to jump on Facebook. But I find LinkedIn in particular, to be an invaluable resource for me to reach out to people. And I am getting business through some of these digital marketing efforts, you know, and before you can really put yourself out there and that way, you've got to do what Steve did. And what I hoped I did a good job of doing, which is branding, you got to have a professional logo, you've got to have a color scheme, you've got to do some of the things that make it seem like, you know, you're for real, my LinkedIn profile has a picture I think most people do. But when I see one without a picture, I think Who is this person, I think it's sort of the same thing. When you launch a business, you know, next to your business on social media, there is a great box, because no logo, you know, that you can fit in to brand your company. That's, that's not good. But if you look at Steve's webpage, right next to his company's name, you can see there's a little logo. So I think having that brand, you know, is important. And, you know, I mentioned my newsletter, I for years wrote article after article that was published in, you know, in print media, and you know, nobody ever read any of them. But this week, bang, got three articles throw up on my website, they're going out in my social media. And one of the most exciting things that I've seen this month, because of the investment that I'm making, in my website, to Steve's point is that now that people that are coming to my website, organically just searching, construction law related terms on Google, that is now surpassing in terms of numbers, the number of people that are clicking on that link with my email, auto signature. So I'm very excited that, you know, this writing that I'm doing now, rather than putting it in a in a periodical that no one's gonna read, I am doing it digitally in a way that is driving traffic to my site. And you know, one of the things that I think sort of sits atop everything that Steve is talking about, and I can't agree with his points more is, you know, thinking about where you are right now, and where you need to be. And if you're like me, you've got these financial obligations, I don't have an MBA, I've never launched a business, not that great at numbers. You know, although I've got some Excel skills, which helped a lot. You know, one of the things that I needed to figure out after I decided that the numbers compel me to go solo, is realistically Am I going to be able to survive what comes in the first few months. And so I did, you know, create a, you know, 12 month practice, you know, cash flow spreadsheet, where, you know, across the vertical axis, I've got all the months, January, February, and then on the, on the vertical axis, I've got all the different things I thought that I would need to spend. And then I made some assumptions about cash flow, where my savings were, and I was able to kind of figure out, if this is a worst case scenario, how long do I have before I run out of money. And, you know, in addition to, you know, comforting myself, by having that analysis, which told me that I had six months or so runway before I would really need to start thinking about liquidating 401, K's and that sort of thing, is when you look at the expenses that you're expecting, it's a great exercise in figuring out how you're going to practice. You know, if you can figure out what do you need to buy? And you can ask yourself, why do I need to buy it? You know, you can really start to put together a business plan for how you're going to run things. You know, of course, there's the registrations in the air DC and your bar license and all that stuff. But are you going to have office space, like I decided to, you know, what kind of practice management software are you going to use? Are you going to add a CRM app on to that? Are you going to have a Westlaw subscription? Are you going to use something else, you know, when you think through all the different things that you need to buy, and you put them on the spreadsheet in that vertical axis in order to make the numbers work out? You can really kind of figure out you know, I don't need This I do need that I've got to cut costs, what can go, you know what's absolutely necessary. And without even realizing it as I was trying to put together numbers around the idea of going solo, not just in terms of I think I can generate this revenue, but on the cost side of things and the operation side of things, how's it going to work, putting together that that spreadsheet, you know, proved invaluable to me. And you know, what this all did, and it was a three year process that actually was not designed initially, to have me go solo, my wife's been a solo lawyer for 10 years, and I've been trying to find ways to use technology to make her more efficient. One of the things that I did without really realizing it, which is become invaluable to me is create systems around me so that I can try to really just practice law, you know, like, Steve, I don't get into QuickBooks, you know, I've got a remote bookkeeper that can can securely go into the back door of my practice management software, and tell me whether, you know, the iolta balances that I have there match up with, you know, what they're seeing at my bank accounts. And you know, they can look at my accounts receivable, accounts payable, provide me every month with, you know, reporting that I need, and my CPA watches over them to make sure that we're doing things right for tax reasons. But also, because, you know, you want to have a couple layers of security there. I've built these systems. And if you are working at law firms, one of the things that might scare you a little bit is, you know, when you walk in the door there, you know how to turn on your computer, you know, what comes next with your assistant, you know how to put your time and you know, how the bills are done, you know, how conflicts are tracked, you know, how engagement letters are done all this stuff, I needed to recreate that for myself. And by preparing the spreadsheet of all my costs, I was able to kind of think about what I need, how I'm going to use it. And now one of the most comforting things that I've I've come to appreciate my practice is that no matter where I am, whether I'm you know, early in the sales funnel, trying to convert people getting calls to my, you know, office who's handling contacts, through my website, accounting, you know, all of these different things, I have a system, I've got software. And so coming into work these days is not all that different than going into work in the big firm, when I get inputs in my direction, if they're interesting and something I want to do with them, I have a place to go in the systems.
Steve Fretzin 22:17
Hey, Jeremy, I know that in addition to practicing law is it shows up on your screen operation palm tree is a business that you know side business you've set up to essentially help people that are going solo or that are currently solo, to help them get organized and get effective and efficient with their time and money and everything. So that could be something for someone on this call or on this presentation or whatever to reach out to you Do you want to just take maybe 30 seconds and share what that is and also how they get in touch with you. And then we're going to get back to the to the nuts and bolts.
Jeremy Weisz 22:49
Yeah, this is decidedly a side gig. And I'm not you know, screaming from the rooftops about it, because I don't want my clients to think otherwise. But yeah, my wife and I launched this business called Operation palm tree. That was the codename used for my mission, my secret mission of going solo, you can find me at www dot operation palm tree calm. And the idea is just that I spent three years figuring out how to do this. And it's not rocket science. But you know, a lot of effort went into it. And I wanted a way to kind of share that with other people. And the last thing I'll say about that, Steve is that it took me three years to launch my first web site, my first business took me about three weeks to launch my second, because I already figured out all of the different things I needed to do. So that's what recently happened in the last two months with the operation puncture.
Steve Fretzin 23:31
So people can go to that website. And that's a way to get Jeremy's information and email if you want to reach out to him directly. Again, if you're looking to get those efficiencies, that's stuff that I I tend to not spend as much time on, I'm working on business plans and marketing plans and things like that. But when it gets into the nuts and bolts of what type of business structure, what type of insurance, what type of CRM, what type of marketing, you know, stuff, website and logo, you know, he may be a better fit to advise you on that type of stuff than me. So I definitely would encourage anyone interested to reach out to Jeremy directly. Okay, we're gonna move on, we got about just under 30 minutes left, I'm probably only going to need 25 to get through what we have left. This is really again going to be real, more marketing and business development focused, moving forward. And so something that I work on with my clients on a fairly regular basis is trying to figure out where their sweet spot is in the marketplace and what they do best. And you may have heard of this SWOT analysis before it's a very old marketing technique to essentially look at what are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and the strengths and weaknesses are internal to you. So my strength is my contact list. My strength is my depth of expertise. Okay, and we can you list out our strengths, weaknesses. I'm too I'm too on time. I'm too organized. I'm just kidding. That's what you say in a job interview. But weakness could be Oh, I hate big networking events. Or, you know, I need to be more of an expert at, you know, running my firm or I'm terrible with organization and time management, it's good to write those things down, because they might be areas that you might either avoid, or things that you can actually fix. So for example, if you said, I'm a terrible networker, well, that's a fixable thing, because that's a learned skill. It's not something people are born with or not born with. So it's good as an exercise to just write down what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, those are internal to you that could be beneficial to how you brand yourself, how you approach the marketplace, you know, leveraging the strength of being a very social person to get value out of the boards you're on or the networking groups, you're in better than maybe you have in the past. And then opportunities and threats are more external in the marketplace. So what are the opportunities that exist in the marketplace? Right now? You know, David mentioned earlier, he's being asked to do estate plans, well, let's say that you become better at estate plans, and you actually enjoy doing them. You may say, you know what, this is something I see as an opportunity, right? Now, everybody needs an estate plan, because 100,000 people just died and who knows how many more, and people need to get their affairs in order, quite frankly, okay. And if you don't have an estate plan, and you've got kids, not gonna shame you, but you know, kind of shame on you. Like, that's pretty important. That's like not having health insurance right now. That's just insane. Okay, so what are the opportunities in the marketplace? And then what are the threats, you know, obviously, there's a lot of threats in the marketplace, businesses closing down, people not being able to pay, the list goes on and on. So that's an exercise you can do on your own that I think would be helpful. leading into some things, we're about to get into another effective thing to find your sweet spot, research your competition, think about what they're doing. And maybe there's something you can emulate or maybe it's something that you want to do different than what they're doing. Okay, a great way to identify what maybe your differentiator is, or your unique business proposition might be to speak with some of your clients, they may give you some direct feedback that could be really important to how you go about your business. I'll give a quick example. There's a firm in the city that a few years ago, interview, their clients identified that responsiveness was the most important thing to their client base. And therefore, they changed their entire marketing structure to focus on being the most responsive labor and employment firm that there is. And if I say the name of the firm, some of you are going to nod because you'll know who I'm talking about, it's laner mutant, okay. And they put up a two hour return call guarantee policy up on their website, business cards, it was their full blown marketing effort, and it paid off huge dividends for them. And it was because they learn from their clients what they do better, faster, stronger than anyone else. And again, whenever possible, do what you do best, if you're the best litigator that you know, are top, you know, 10, that, you know, you know, you're going to want to really target and focus on making that brand higher and better and stronger than it currently may be. Those are going to be things that are going to be important to your growth and to your long term sustainability. Part of that branding could also be in developing a marketing plan. And as I mentioned earlier, right at the beginning that most attorneys do not have a marketing or business plan that they're following. And that's like taking a road trip, blindfolded, you know, without any type of, you know, compass or GPS, that's not the way we travel, if we're going to take a trip, we want a GPS, we want it mapped out, we want to know where the best resort is where the best restaurants are where the best, you know, I want to see the largest ball of twine in the world, whatever it is that you're you know, that you're thinking you want to, you know, see and do on your trip, the more organized you are, typically the better the trip is going to be. And not everybody works like that. But I think people that are looking to kind of see the road ahead of them. I know I'm a planner. So for example, if I take a trip to Spain or Italy, I'm not just going to just show up with a, you know, a stick in a bag and like, you know, like, like a, what's it called a, like a carpet bag or something like that I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm gonna plan that thing out. So that's really what we're talking about. And I'm going to help you sort of give you the steps for writing a plan. And I'm going to make this deal with everybody on the call right now. If you take the time, and it may be as little as two hours to write a plan along the lines of what I'm going to share with you right now. And you email it to me, I will take the time to review it, give you feedback, and hopefully you may have a Polish plan that you can use for the rest of the year. So that's it. That's a deal on making. There's no charges, no fee. I'm doing this as a courtesy to help you get organized with how you're going to do your marketing and your business development. The first thing you want to start with is what's your objective, okay? Is that you want to pick up five new clients is that you want to get from 200,000 to 400,000 origination. Determine what you want to achieve in the next six to 12 months. Make that your objective. It's one sentence I will and write it out. I will hit 300 50,000 by, you know, June 2021, that's all it needs to be. It can be as it's one sentence, there's no detail where the detail comes in is next, in determining what your strategies are, how are you going to achieve that objective. And my thought is always about going after low hanging fruit. So for example, should you join five networking groups where you're going to be essentially meeting a bunch of strangers, when you have 150 clients already in your network, you already have developed a tremendous network of friends and family and colleagues and clients that you could tap into. So look at the different options I've put up on the board here and determine where you should be spending your time. And I spend my time just to give you my story is getting referrals from happy clients, number one, number two is I've developed strategic partners that also have large lists of lawyers that we share with each other. So I've got a list, they've got a list, we try to get each other into each other's contacts. Josh Lerner, just as an example, does that with me on a fairly regular basis, we sit down and we try to figure out, how can I help him improve the lives of my clients and people I know, and quite frankly, you know, he works with a lot of attorneys that are looking to go from associate to partner partner to equity, and they need my attention to help get them to the next level. So he refers me on that level. And then the third thing is this speaking, if I can educate people on what I do, and what I teach, again, you can either use that in good health. Or you might say, you know what, I think I need a little more attention than that. And I might want to talk with Steve separately. And that's an option for you. And then we can we can work as partners to help grow, grow your book. But you can see here on on the list that there's things from speaking and writing to online, lead generation and everything else. So you're going to want to write down 1234 of those strategies and consider that those are the best ways for you to get business. Now, still not a lot of detail there. Where we get into the detail is really looking at the tactics, tactics are the actionable things that you're doing every day, every week and every month to achieve that strategy. So if the strategy is leveraging the low hanging fruit as it relates to friends, family clients, your network, okay, then you're going to want to write a list of tactics that basically speak to how do you plan? How do you execute? And how do you follow through to accomplish those things? Okay, so almost think of it like you're telling a story, there's always a beginning that sets up the story, there's a middle that kind of sets up all the plots and people and backgrounds, and then there's an end that kind of wraps it up, or a twist that kind of Oh, wow, what a great ending. Okay, that's how you want to think about your plan. And if you miss any one of those three parts, that's going to be problematic, because that's like watching a great movie, and then stopping 30 minutes to the end and saying, I don't even know how it ends. Who does that? Nobody, right, you want to see the ending. So you want to make sure you've got all three of those covered in as specific as you can be. Okay. Now, obviously, I want to give a little bit of a sample, this is a very short sample I can send you and Woods would send you if you email me, Steve at frets and calm, a more specific longer, full page sample of what I'm talking about what this outline could look like for you. But to give you an idea of what I'm talking about it starting off with the strategy at the top leveraging my existing database, friends, family clients to obtain quality introductions, again, your Uncle Bill who owns company and knows lots and lots of vendors and people and he's just well connected at the golf club or whatever. He probably could refer you business, but you've never talked to him about it. You've never asked him about it, you've never had that conversation. Okay, meanwhile, your favorite nephew? Well, you know, what's holding you back? Well, it could be that you don't have an approach, you don't have proper language, you're not comfortable with that? Well, that's got to be a part of your plan. Okay, so determining your contact list and rating them A, B or C based on specific definitions, that could be something that you find value in, it could be that you're going to set a goal to reach out to a certain number of them. And maybe you need to create some scripts to do that, which I just mentioned. You need to track your progress. How did you hit your numbers? And how many people do reach out what happened? What's next? How do you follow through, right? And then are you going to complete the list in any kind of given timeframe. I mean, if you say that you're going to complete a list, and you don't set some time aside or set a deadline to do it, or give yourself a nice treat or reward. If you do it. Probably it's not going to get done. And what happens if you don't have a list, you don't have scripts, you don't have things in front of you that help to kind of get the story started, then you're not going to execute and you're not going to follow through. You're just going to let month after month after month go by and it's like it's never going to happen. So you need to get some some some deadlines set for yourself to make sure that you're progressing through this. Okay. All right. So that's really the plan. So again, if you send me an email and you want a larger sample or you write up your plan, and you want me to Review and, and give you some feedback all on the table for anyone on this call, the fact that you're taking your morning for an hour to spend with me, leads me to believe that you're interested in learning some things or improving what you currently know. And again, I'm happy to be a part of that in any way, shape or form I can. So let's also look at what's changed in the legal marketplace. You know, clearly Coronavirus has a massive, you know, determinant or, or, or benefits depending on how you look at it. And of course, we want to, you know, be solemn about what's going on out there with the death and, and with, with all the people getting it. But it's changed the legal marketplace significantly and virtual being a main thing. So we want to look at what's changed, Internet's changed, you know, how we market ourselves social media, AI is continues to get better and better, that's going to be an impact competition, more attorneys than ever before. It's a fact. So you're, you've got to do things to compete. You know, when I got into this in 2008, because of the recession, and I'm not a lawyer, but I and I never worked with lawyers, it was because the competition was so fierce. And because the market determined that people were getting knocked out of jobs and getting their comp caught and other reasons, that business development became a bigger part of what determines success as a lawyer. And so we really have to think about how we're going to compete and how we're going to get our share of the pie. Because there's only so much business and there's so many people competing, you've got to do more than the other guy, you've got to do more than other people. specialization, obviously a lot more benefits than negatives these days, I think if you're not specialized, you want to consider that being known for something specific is better than not being known for everything. So you can figure out over time how to specialize or you can just make a determination upfront based on what you do best, where your client base is where you see the opportunity that that's where you want to go. But I can tell you that I did not determine that I was going to work with attorneys. When the recession hit in 2008, and push all my chips in. It really took me about three years of working with attorneys and a lot of other businesses I've probably worked in over 50 Industries from I mean, crazy stuff, things you wouldn't even know our businesses, I worked with a Caribbean medical school, I mean, teaching them how to do intake, and how to, you know, turn people from, you know, the tire kickers to real buyers. And they're dealing with, you know, very large investments to the Chicago Tribune Canon and working with the J f. So, specialization happens either over time based on the market or based where you're determining, you want to spend your time. But my determination working exclusively with lawyers was I wanted to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond than being kind of a small fish, nobody in a very large pond. And so once I realized that I worked well with attorneys and saw that about 80 to 85% of my total business was coming from lawyers and law firms, it made a fairly easy decision. But then, of course, I had to change everything to change my logo, my website, my all my marketing is now focused on helping people to be that lawyer and do that. And, of course, adjustments in marketing and advertising and ardc rules changing and how you can market your business differently than 10 2030 years ago. And of course, your book size determines success, freedom and sustainability. My dad's a retired attorney now 1517 years, but you know, you couldn't really, you know, he didn't have to make calls. He didn't have to go to networking events. He was just a kick ass attorney. And he knew he was a generalist, he did everything really well. And the things that he didn't do he refer out and get paid a fee on it. But, you know, today, it's a very different story. I mean, there's so many attorneys and his again as a certain amount of pie. So you're going to want to, you know, look at the book being your maybe the second most important thing next to being a great lawyer. Okay, so how to effectively compete, knows your pros and cons in your space. Do your research, what's your competition doing? What is their branding look like? Who's the best and brightest? If you're an aviation, you know, personal injury and competing against Bob Clifford, you might want to look at what he's doing. You might want to look at his social media posts, you know, be be an observer of other professionals not so that you can copy them, but that maybe you could mere their best practices and take your own spin on it. reading up on industry trends and thought leadership, when Jeremy talks about writing, and when I think about writing, I think about what's going on, I think about what's relevant, how can I add value in the current environment? And that's really important for you to figure out what you're going to, you know, write about and post about in video, you know, create video, talk to your clients, as I mentioned earlier, to understand the trends and how they see it, how are their needs changed? Leave your desk, get out and meet people. Now, obviously, that's changed. But, you know, again, I think it's things open up coffee meetings and having lunches outside, at least in the North Shore that's opening up today. In the city. I think it's going to take a little longer, but that's something that's certainly possible now in some areas, okay. And of course, building your personal brand and looking at differentiating yourself. Really important. Bob Clifford, you know, key story there, I was actually in a plane crash, if you can believe that in 1996, and I broke both of my arms. So if you can imagine not having arms absolutely sucks, you definitely want at least one arm to be able to scratch your face or eat or do other things I won't mention, but not bathroom stuff. Anyway. The point is, is that my dad shoved the phone into my ear when I was laying in bed. He said, Steve talked to Bob, he's your attorney. And I was sure enough, it was Bob Clifford. So there's my Bob Clifford story. But, you know, he represented me his firm and this plane crash situation, I won't get into details, great story over a beer, by the way, quite tragic and horrible. And I probably need a couple gulps alcohol to tell the full thing, but survived it. And I'm grateful every day for it. But Bob Clifford is no not only for personal injury, but he has really figured out the whole aviation thing and become an expert at it. I don't know too much about Geoffrey loving, I've heard mixed things. But you know, he's someone that has built that brand around father's rights. And then I also want to mention Dahlia cepr, who's a friend of mine, and she's an IP, but focusing on really cool stuff like entertainment and sports and things like that, where she's known, you know, very well in her space. And so keeping in mind business development, to learn skill, here's some things that I'm going to kind of teach you and give you a couple of skills to take away from today, specifically on business development. Number one is thinking about not only your differentiator, but also your infomercial and how to create a differentiator, as I mentioned, speaking to clients, they might be some group that gives you an idea about that. But think about what you do better than anyone else, or what you do as good as anyone else. Okay. And if you say, Steve, I don't do much, well, well fix that, you know, you're not going to you're not going to be, you know, well known by your clients and by people in your industry, if you're not doing things really, really well. So hone your craft, sort of number one, and then number two is, you know, build it from there. And you can create a differentiator around that. What is no one else saying, you know, I mentioned earlier laner mutant? Well, no one else has the key honies to say that they are going to return calls within two hours. Well, they figured out a way to do it. And they marketed the junk out of it, and it worked really well for them. So when you think about a differentiator, I'm going to ask you to put it through two litmus tests. Number one is, is it something that no one else is saying? And number two, is it something people care about? So a two hour return call policy? No one else is saying it. Is it something people care about? Well, yeah, they surveyed their clients responsiveness was number one on the list. So if you can figure out what you can say that no one else is saying and figure out that it matters. That's going to be something that's a differentiator. So my differentiator is I work exclusively with lawyers and law firms. Okay. Is that something no one else is saying? I would say it's not it's it's there are people saying that, but it's, it's more limited than than just being a sales coach? And the second thing, is that not something that lawyers care about? The question is, absolutely, they would rather work with a specialist who's worked with 1000s of attorneys than someone who is working in 50 different industries, like I used to, okay, there's a book called Blue Ocean don't have to read it. And I apologize to the author. But basically, it says the sea is bloodied red with competition go where the blue ocean is. That's essentially it. And that's what you want to look for, what are you doing and saying, that's unique, that is going to separate you from the pack. Okay, and, you know, lawyers in every industry, every practice area that have done that, and you want to consider doing that as well. And then of course, try to test it and see if it's real, see if it works, see if it's, if it's catchy, catching on, you know, catching on that type of thing. Okay, so let's talk about how we then can take that differentiator that you create tomorrow, where you create over six months of, of kind of figuring it out and put it into an elevator pitch, you know, infomercial, if you will, here are the steps that I teach. And I'm kind of cooking through this because I know we've only got about seven minutes left. Number one is explain who you are and what you do. Okay, we're begin with a short story. So is this something where you only have 25 seconds, like you're in an elevator, or if you're at a networking group, that only gives you a limited amount of time to do your infomercial, you're going to cut to the chase pretty quick and give your highlights, or in some instances, like I run a networking group for lawyers where everybody gets about three minutes to talk. And you can really give your elevator pitch and give a short story or give some examples of what makes you better, faster, stronger. And those are great things that I think people really care about, use some pain points to pull in the listener. And so pain points are different than features and benefits. So like a CPA that says we do tax, we do audit, we do this, we do that. They just go on. Like I mentioned that lawyer the other day, just listing off all the things that he does. And I was just like five numbers like eight I can't believe I lasted to that. But I was like checked out. So we want to use pain points, and I'll explain what that is to pull in the listener. We want to use our differentiator to kind of explain why we're different or unique. And then we want to, again, maybe there's a call to action that you might need or use, especially if you're speaking to a group to kind of remind them of your name or say here's what's next if you're interested. Okay. If you know somebody, so it's not one size fits all you've got individual people, you're talking to groups that you're talking to things you might say at the beginning of a presentation, etc. But here's an example. Here's mine that I, you know, I continually improve and update. But I'm asking a question, what are your primary concern? What are the primary concerns attorneys have with networking and business development, it gobbles up billable hours, it's a wild goose chase. They feel salesy and unprofessional doing it. And it doesn't lead to anything. So what's the point? So if those are pain points that you're feeling right, or have one or even one of those four, then that's going to draw you into saying, hey, maybe this guy has some answers for me. Then I talked about, you know, lack of planning and things you never learned in law school. And then I talk a little bit about what makes me unique, working with attorneys putting together what I consider to be a crash course instead of a crash course. And then it's saying, Hey, if you're serious, no more messing around, maybe it's something that you want to talk to me about. I only work with the most committed interested coachable attorneys, I don't want to work with anyone who's kind of kicking tires, or that's just sort of just going to do things halfway. That's like, you know, picking someone to be on your team. And that guy just wants to kind of, you know, kick the dust on the on the baseball field, that's not a great player for your team, I'm looking to coach strong players. And so that's what I'm doing is, in some cases, trying to turn people away from working with me if they're not really serious, but maybe they know someone who is. So this is my example. And again, it's tweaked up and down based on what I'm trying to accomplish. Okay, a couple of thoughts on networking, on LinkedIn, in particular, do your research first, mainly thinking about who you're targeting to meet, you should really have three targets, okay, anyone outside of these three targets, you may want to consider not connecting with or not meeting with, for, you know, extended period of time, prospective clients, absolutely. Perspective strategic partner, so other people that can refer you business, other lawyers, other CPAs, consultants, etc. And then centers of influence people that know everybody, the mayor of a town, the wealth manager, who's just just, you know, he's running, you know, networking groups, like the person knows everybody, those are really good people to connect with. Okay. And so you're gonna want to do that. And then when you're connecting with those targets, you want to use your existing network as leverage, look for those inside connections on LinkedIn. So again, if I pull up Jeremy's connections, and I see that he knows a few lawyers that I'd like to meet, I can email Jeremy and say, Hey, Jeremy, I see, you know, these two or three attorneys, how well do you know them? And do you think that any of them would be interested in talking with me about what I do? They're, they're ambitious, they're interested, that type of thing. And he picks one out of the three and says, Yes, and I'll talk about how to make the introduction in a moment and try to leverage the best relationships. Another thing that I do is I try to comment and share other people's posts. So when Jeremy puts out a post that I think is really good or insightful, I want to either share it, or I want to comment on it. And what that does is it gets a little more energy around his post. And I actually asked my clients and my strategic partners, including Jeremy and Josh, and some other people to comment and share in like my posts, and one that I did recently, when I hit 1000 downloads on my podcast, I definitely got, instead of like three or 400 views, I got like 20 503,000 views, 12 comments, 27 likes on cat, you know, in in applause, or whatever there is acknowledgments. And that was really helpful to get and build my brand. So we want to use LinkedIn as an inside connection tool, but also is a great way to build our brands. Okay. And if you've got people that you want to meet on LinkedIn, be sure to ask for the quality introduction. One thing that I teach, that's really critical, and I find helpful is how to qualify the people that you're speaking with, or that you want to speak to. So it used to be that I would just meet with anyone for any reason. And what I have found that that's a tremendous amount of wasted time, not because I don't want to be friendly to everybody and build my brand and go out and but your time is money. And when you think about where you need to spend your time, if you recall, it's going to be with prospective clients, qualified strategic partners, and people that are connectors, people that are inside connectors, that acronym talent is what I'd like you to use moving forward to qualify the people that you're talking to, to understand if they're worth spending more time with. And if you can figure this out in a five or 10 minute phone call or an email exchange, it's going to make you more efficient with how you do your business development and networking efforts. The first thing I try to figure out is is this person trustworthy. So if somebody says they're going to meet with me on a certain date, or connect with me on a certain date, and then they blow it off, or they reschedule multiple times, I'm already getting a feeling that this is someone that that can commit and then that breaks the commitments they've made. And that's not a great sign and I get it that it happens and people get busy and sometimes it's a court appearance or something that pops up. But overall if I see that it's It's not being treated like my time isn't valued, like they value their time that I feel like there's a break and trust, it may not be a good long term fit for me is that person in authority, if you're talking to someone that's an absolute authority in their space, that's going to be much more helpful because not only do you feel comfortable with them that they know what they're talking about, but think if you're going to refer somebody, and they're not an authority that could really backfire on you. And I can tell you some really interesting stories about times that it backfired on me, because I didn't do my due diligence, making sure that someone's an authority in their area. Another one is likability, there are people that they're just bad people, they're crazy with their ego. They think they know everything, they talk over you, they're a one up, they went up you everything you say, they're just not likable. And while they might know a lot of people that could be referable to you, I weigh that out to having to deal with them. And I generally choose on the ladder, not dealing with people that I don't like. So it's really something important that if you're going to refer someone, but you don't like them, makes it very tough to do. So I really, really like Josh Lerner, then that helps me not only refer him because he's good, but referred because I like him. And I know he's going to take care of people and come across like it comes across with me. The next one is network, it's better to get in involved with someone who has a very large network or a moveable network than someone who knows no one, if you're thinking about a referral partner, a strategic partner that's going to refer you business back and forth. It helps if they know people. So that's just another point. Again, if you want to start with someone at the very beginning of their career, because you see in five years, it's going to pay out, certainly you can do that. But for your time and for your efforts. If you can find people that already have an existing network with lots of clients, if you're looking to meet CEOs and GCS, and you're dealing with a lawyer that has a whole stable of those clients, that's better than someone who doesn't know anybody or works under someone else's umbrella and doesn't have access to those clients. And then lastly, is it helps to also work with someone who's a top player. So that could be the owner of the company, it could be a sales leader in the company, it could be a consultant with many years of experience. But I want someone who, who is anxious and actively looking to help me and have me help them. And I'm going to wrap this up on a point that's really interesting. I compare it to the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And I apologize if you haven't seen that. But here's a spoiler alert. At the end of the movie, Indiana Jones has to go through a bunch of challenges to get to the Holy Grail, which gives him you know, life forever. Okay. And in doing so there's all these challenges he has to go through. And I consider networking to be very similar for you to go from. And I'm gonna pick on Jeremy because he's easy target. For me to say to Jeremy, let's get together a network. And the idea being that he's got a couple lawyers that he could refer to me and I can help him in some way. That's a great idea. We should all be doing that. However, the problem is, is that there's so many pitfalls that can happen between me coming up with the idea to talk to Jeremy and Jeremy actually executing effectively, on getting me in front of a decision maker. There's a bunch of gaps in between what I want to do and where it actually goes. So when I mentioned that networker earlier in the in the presentation about he was a nine out of 10 as far as like being active networking, but only a two or three is it related to results. It's primarily because he was missing the methodology. I'm about to share with you the steps that I'm teaching people to hit that most people don't think about, or they do, but maybe they miss one or two. And sometimes that's all it takes to die on the vine as it relates to getting results. So the first thing I talk about is especially meeting somebody new, you're gonna want to set up a game plan or agenda with them. That includes setting the time, the purpose, the expectations and the outcome. Most networking exchanges are just two people getting together talking over each other saying this sounds great, you sound great, I sound great. Let's keep our eyes open for each other. And that's the end of it. Right? And you move on and they move on and nothing really happens. So I'm not doing that. What I'm trying to do is i'm not only trying to get something of value out of that meeting, for them and for me, but I'm also trying to qualify using the talent is this someone that I really want to get engaged with? Is this someone I want to start recruiting onto my team. That's an important step. So this agenda sets up so that we're not just talking over each other, and just making this a big mess. So what I'm doing by setting that agenda is controlling the meeting in a friendly way. I'm also trying at the end of the meeting to coach Jeremy to come up with a name or two of people that he believes would be good to engage with for me, okay. Now, one of the ways that he's going to do that is if I can come up with one or two names for him. So as he's talking and telling me about operation palm tree, I'm thinking about the solos, I'm thinking about the people I know and how I could add value for him. Once I've done that, then it's going to be natural for Jeremy to say alright, Steven, how can I help you? Then what I need to do is help coach him to a name or two Because the reality is that most people need a little prodding, a little help a little assistance, coming up with specifically who they can introduce you to, and getting names on the table is the best way to do that, at the time that you're meeting, not a year from now. Okay, then once I have a name, I want to also coach him to make a quality introduction. That's what QA stands for, when I say referrals suck. And I believe that if somebody gives you a name a number and says, Call this person, and you do it, it might be a wild goose chase. So what I would rather say is, I appreciate that, would you mind doing me one more favor? And they say, Sure, see what you have in mind? Would you mind calling this person or emailing this person talking me up letting them know what my value is seeing if they're open to speaking with me? And then if they say yes, then do an email introduction so that I can then take it from there. And of course, the benefit or value is getting someone to boost you up and put you on a pedestal much better than me calling someone blind out of nowhere, because Jeremy says, this is a good guy, you should talk to him. So I'm not saying those are, those are people you should, you know, say no to, but you want to try to take it a little further and get your friend you know, your new networking buddy, to help execute for you. Okay, and then of course, have a step forward. So I could say, Jeremy, here's what I'm going to do for you. Here's what you said you're going to do for me, today's Friday, why don't we catch back up for a five minute check in call next week on Friday, let's make sure that we've done what we said we're going to do. And again, we're not just doing this to get something accomplished for each other. But keep in mind, I'm testing Jeremy. Jeremy blows off the call Jeremy reschedules, the call twice. Jeremy didn't make the introductions that he had promised. This is giving me information that Jeremy may not actually be a great strategic partner for me. He's committing and then breaking commitments. This is not necessarily a great fit long term. Of course, that's not what Jeremy would do. He follows through. Okay, so recapping, we want to get our ducks in a row we want identify sweet spots, get that marketing plan, send it to me, I'll help you improve it, get that infomercial together, you know, create that that unique differentiator, grow your brand through LinkedIn, and of course using some of my methodologies to start being more effective and efficient as it relates to networking. Okay, with that, I'm going to say thank you again, and I appreciate you taking some time this morning. Thanks, everybody. Be safe. Take care.
Narrator 57:22
Thanks for listening to be that lawyer. Life Changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve's website fretzin.com. For additional information, and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today's episode, check out today's show notes.