In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Scott Becker discuss:
Key Takeaways:
"You have to be great at something. Once you're great at something, you understand what it takes to be great in other things. And so there's obviously a cost to specialization, but it's very hard to attract business, and serious business, without being great at something." — Scott Becker
Connect with Scott Becker:
Website: McGuireWoods.com & BeckersHealthCare.com
Email: sbecker@mcguirewoods.com or sbecker@beckershealthcare.com
Podcasts: beckershospitalreview.com/podcasts.html
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/scottbeckermw/
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!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
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.
Scott Becker 0:00
But I'm a believer, you have to be great at something that once you've written something gonna say what it takes to be great and other things. And so there's obviously a cost to specialization. But it's very hard to attract business and serious business without being great at something.
Narrator 0:19
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, we'll 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 0:41
Hey, everybody, welcome to be that lawyer. My name is Steve Fretzin. I am the author of three books on legal business development. One is called sales free selling. The second is the networking handbook for attorneys. And lastly, the ambitious attorney. I'm also a nationally known coach for lawyers. Most lawyers don't learn business development in law school or have any real structured processes that they learn even at the law firm level in some cases. So I put them through a crash course to help them double or triple their books of business and have just had a tremendous amount of fun with it. That's a little bit about what I'm up to. But more importantly, is that I've got an amazing guest today. He's a podcaster. He's a writer. He's a publisher. He's a partner at Mcguirewoods. His name is Scott Becker. How's it going, Scott?
Scott Becker 1:25
Great. Steven, thank you so much having me on today. Looking forward to visiting with you. Thank you.
Steve Fretzin 1:30
Awesome, awesome. And as my listeners know, I do a terrible job of giving a real good bio. So if you would mind just giving a little background on yourself your practice. How do you help people?
Scott Becker 1:40
Sure, so I'll give sort of three or four quick bullets on my background. First, partner mcguirewoods. I served on the board of directors at Mcguirewoods. For nearly a decade, I ran the national health care practice for about 15 years, I've had a great great grip Mcguirewoods. Side by side, going back about 25, 30 years ago, I started a small media firm called Becker's healthcare and was really intended originally to be part of my effort of building a practice. It itself ended up turning into a serious media concern, media business in the health care sector. There's a sort of sort of two core things that I've done. I'm still the publisher of Becker's healthcare. I'm a partner at Mcguirewoods. And we'll talk about building businesses and things that work and things that don't harvard law school, graduate by background, my most famous thing is I was a teaching assistant in a class that President Obama was in. And the clarity of that was President Obama was a billion times smarter than myself, but fascinating class and helping weed the class when I was supposed to be leading the class, pretty brilliant, brilliant person to visit with.
Steve Fretzin 2:46
Nice, nice. And so you mentioned that, you know, rainmaking or building business was something that you had talked to me about, and was there a point or experience your life where that sort of directed where you went, personally or in business to grow that out?
Scott Becker 3:00
Certainly, so I was motivated at a relatively young age to build a practice. And I do think one of the key lessons is starting young as it takes you a while to figure it out. So the sooner you start, the better and started hopes lots of you start later. But the sooner you start, the better. And I was very motivated from my very first for my work that the magnificent firm, but it was really divided into a world of people that had control or business and people that did not. And the people that did not, were treated so poorly, that I just never wanted to be that person. I never wanted to be not to be dependent on other people for my autonomy, my ability to control my life. I never wanted to treat anybody else poorly. And believe I've never we tried never to, but didn't want to be vulnerable in a position where I didn't have control of my life. So that was sort of Steve, what I would say is very clarifying and motivating. For me, the idea of building a practice. That was sort of the really made it very clear to me, if you were going to be in this was far better to build a business or not.
Steve Fretzin 4:00
Is that is that sort of also a culture shift that's happened in the last 20, 30 years?
Scott Becker 4:07
I think it shifted back and forth. I mean, no, obviously, there's a lot of ways to be highly successful in a law firm, large or small. You could be a business generator, but even the business generates, they have to work as well. You could be so great at something that you're indispensable. You're so important something or you could be a great manager of people and have teams. And so you know, personally I could manage teams handle complex litigation or big transactions. You know, all these things have great value today. The it's actually shifted sort of backwards, just being a Rainmaker. It's really a combination that the big firms have the big firms have so much talent, and so many motivated people, that you're sowing the brand together with the firm Andrew. But there's there's multiple different ways to be highly effective. At the time 2030 years ago, it was really a doggy dog world in a way was Rainmaker. Boston's some ways that these firms now there's multiple different ways to be highly valuable big firms.
Steve Fretzin 5:04
Gotcha, gotcha. And was there any type of barriers that you had to overcome to start building that book of business to make it rain?
Scott Becker 5:13
Yeah, no. So that's a great question. So when you're a young lawyer doing it, you deal with a couple different barriers, you deal with barriers externally, to great questions, you deal with barriers externally, where people like, does he or she really know what they're doing? Or they're really a leader in their area? Why would I hire them? Now you deal with barriers? internally, internally, you get a lot of pushback from people saying, you know, it's almost like the kid is trying too hard in school, why are you working so hard to build a business, you just be working on our clients, you just be doing this in sort of, you know, one of my colleagues at one point said, there's an old Japanese thing, that the nail that sticks ups gets hit down. And you feel that internally for a period of time to externally, you know, externally, I used to do this thing called a mailing list letter we'd send out to my mailing list. And one of my friends would say to me, whenever I get your letter, I throw it in the garbage. And there was these external internal blocks to building a business that you felt, you know, emotionally and otherwise. So no, a great question.
Steve Fretzin 6:11
Gotcha, gotcha. And then Was there some element of it that you enjoyed about building your own practice about going out and getting business? Was there some excitement in that?
Scott Becker 6:21
Well, certainly, I loved it. And what happens is, it's a thing that takes a couple years to really start to see the momentum on it. It's you have to like build passes, I see this to our young warriors. It's a great question. So like the friend that used to say to me, I throw your letter out when I get it. Of course, that friend, you know, whatever. Regardless, what happens is when you once people view it as a lark, they make fun of it. Once you do the same thing, eight to 10 times or more, people start to look at you differently, they start to look at you as Oh, obviously, you're serious professional trying to build something, and the whole mind shift changes and how the exponent internal views you if you have a little bit of success, made after you stick with it. So people move from like, What's he doing? Oh, he's got a serious purpose in what he's doing. Now, it was a real mind shift externally, internally.
Steve Fretzin 7:09
Gotcha. Gotcha. And I mean, were there also some some areas like moments of vulnerability, when you second guessed yourself on doing it, where either you're getting pushback internally, or just like, like, this is so hard, you know, to build all these hours, and at the same time trying to build a book, it's, it's overwhelming.
Scott Becker 7:27
Yeah, it was, you know, I want to say there was ever doubt. And one of the challenges that you have to have is, if you're going to push forward with it, like people will take advice. And they have to almost take this faith that if they keep on doing these things, and they keep their eyes on and they keep watching it, it will start to happen. But I remember distinctly the first year you have to remember even at the time, it was at a relatively good size from a deadtime is 120 lawyer firm, not a huge room, of course. But the first year they set to seriously build a business. I think I brought in $7,000 in business. And even though that's 20 years ago, that's a small or 30 years ago, it's a small amount of business. And to your point, it would have been easy to get discouraged. But it was very clear to me that it was moving in the right direction. So the first year I 7,000 is a second year, like 50,000 business third year 200,000 a business. By the fifth year, I had about a million dollars of business, the million dollars in business was about the amount of business you needed to be to sort of be independent to be like, no one could tell you to get lost, because we told you get lost. You guys take your book of business elsewhere. But it was, it would have been easy to get discouraged, I guess. But I never really did. So by that point in time I was after it was very clear that this is what I was planning to do.
Steve Fretzin 8:38
And is this something that you were like legitimately did on your own? Or did you have help not in the sense of people handing you business but in the sense of a mentor, a coach, someone that was able to kind of give you some guidance on this? Or was this just flat out? Just going after it?
Scott Becker 8:55
No, no, no, there was clearly role models and guidance, there was a chairman of the group at the time that I worked with think Bob Pressdave, and Bob had built this terrific practice in a niche area in healthcare in the dialysis industry. So what really happened is I had a clear sort of role model is the how you build a practice, then it was up to me to do a lot of things that he had done. And at some point, institutionalize it at a different level. I mean, you almost have to look at and there's different models of building a business. I followed Bob's model, and was was very successful at it. There were other people in my firm, in our firm, that did this magnificent job need different way of building a practice and have been crazily successful at it. They fall different models, but they worked. But I think your point is, it's very, almost impossible. Nothing gets done by an individual. Nothing gets done without teams. And nothing gets always sort of without some coach or mentoring or role model or something that you can sort of look and say, This is what I'm going to do. And so I think the question is a great question.
Steve Fretzin 9:57
I appreciate that. Thank you. Um, I try to come up with some good questions. Here's another one. What I've observed about you, maybe more than other attorneys is not just Business Development at acumen, but also a level of branding, meaning that you're, you're not just getting exposure from being out there networking or getting out there and trying to lock up business, you're also getting your name built out. Can you talk to how those two pieces work together?
Scott Becker 10:25
Sure, well, one of the things that I always looked at was, you know, there were two things I was drove myself around with niche centric and customer centric. So niche centric was I started building a practice seriously at 20 years old. And you couldn't build a general litigation or general corporate practice, because who would take you seriously, but what you could do was build a practice in a niche. So I ended up building a practice in a niche, a specific niche within healthcare net ended up being very successful. And so I ended up really focusing on that, building that niche in healthcare in a specific niche in it, and really built a brand around being in that area, versus being everything or being general corporate general litigation, and so forth.
Steve Fretzin 11:11
And what were the kind of the tools that you use to build the brand. So like, for example, now you're doing podcasting, and you're doing things that are relevant now. But even you know, 20 years ago, were there things that you were doing to, to continue to drive your name up as the expert in the field?
Scott Becker 11:27
Sure. So back in the day, and this was back in the day is so embarrassing to say, as a person has now grown to be my age. But we did a number of different things. So when I got started, I started this small little newsletter, that was called the Becker's ambulatory surgery center report, because within healthcare is building a name as a lawyer within the surgery center sector. In addition to that, I started hosting relatively small conferences, in the surgery center sector in the healthcare sector. So people sort of knew me as someone that part of this area revolved around in healthcare. We also had website before websites were a thing. So we also readily sent out a mailing list letter to people I knew to my contacts, and you know, that would sort of talk about different things that we saw in the business, they weren't none of these, whether the newsletter, the conferences, the websites, or the letters were direct, were sales pitches, where they were information about things going on in the area, to brand myself as leader and experts in the area. So that was sort of, you know, simply some of the things we did to try and develop that.
Steve Fretzin 12:34
And did you find that was helpful to get not only more business in that niche, but also in getting appointments with with decision makers that could that could use you?
Scott Becker 12:43
What really happened is there's a number of things that happened, is it some point, people started to reach out to me to say, you're the person who knows this area? Can you help us? And then, over time that grew into small chains, but highly respected chains in the healthcare business of the surgery center business reaching out to me and saying, Can you can you help us and then once I developed a handful of surgery center chains, as clients, and health systems as clients, while really coming out of this initial niche effort, hardcore niche efforts, it just became easier and easier to build a team and build a practice and so forth. So you know, all those things, we viewed it as air support freshly talking to people. But we were able at one point to build such a brand in the area, that people knew that I was highly connected. And this is what I did. And then a couple other points in a second is, one is that the branding is all nice. Well, if you don't deliver behind it great legal services, where you're really tied into your client's needs and take your clients, you're no good because the branding gets ahead of and we've seen this a lot of times in law, in business where the brand gets ahead of delivery. So we always had to be great at service delivery. And it was nothing more important than that. And the second is we had to be great at developing teams voyeurs because you can't deliver great services and be marketing and be selling and growing, without a magnificent team of lawyers. So it all like revolve back to this, this circle, a very synergistic circle of great branding, together with great legal services delivery, there's a big difference in good versus great versus bad legal service delivery, and great team of lawyers to develop and deliver those services.
Steve Fretzin 14:31
Alright, I've got one more question around what you're talking about. So there are lawyers and I get where they're coming from that have, you know, fear associated with specialization with with, you know, you're going into, you know, some very specific area of law with it. It's like a subset of a subset of a subset. And a lot of lawyers are concerned about doing that because they're afraid they're going to then, you know, be they're pigeon holed or that they're going to be giving up or missing other business because there are, going after a specific niche, can you talk to that?
Scott Becker 15:03
Sure. So we viewed it is when I really started getting going, I was testing and working and trying to develop marketing in three different related niches, three niches within healthcare. And I ended up really doubling down and tripling down on one of those three niches, that really generated business and that I was getting traction. And so that's just how I looked at it. It wasn't I selected one niche, they tested three different niches, one of them drove business, and they double down on that. So your point is all I had knew I had arrived in my niche, when where's it we're competing with me to other firms would start to say about me, when we were competing for business with a major health system or major company? Oh, yes, Scott is great. But he's just that he's just a surgery center guy, just he just understand surgeries aren't changed. He's not a health system guy. He's not at this kind of company guy. And I knew a developed, you know, a serious traction, when they started to use that against me, the fact that I had a niche and specialty, my own response would be, is that to have a foot in the door, have a reason for being and then you have to be great at what you do. It's not needing great expertise being great, you have to be great at something. And once you're great at something, and for me, it was the specific niche, once I really was the person who really knew more about that niche, and almost anyone else in the country for a period of time, I knew what it took to actually be great and no one niche. And so most people, and I've seen this countless times we've got word from it's built this magnificent labor practice, run a mix of branding, and just really hard garage building, people that have built magnificent practices and niches and private equity the same way. But I'm a believer, you have to be great at something that once you've written something gonna say what it takes to be great and other things. And so there's obviously a cost to specialization, but it's very hard to attract business in serious business without being great at something.
Steve Fretzin 16:54
Yeah, and I talked to lawyers, and obviously, on a pretty regular basis about specialization, and, you know, I like to be aggressive, but at the same time, I like to try to help them, you know, ferret out the opportunity, and like you said, tested, and even even myself not to be a hypocrite, you know, I worked in law for an amount of lawyer, right. So I worked with lawyers for a few years, saw the traction, saw the need, saw the opportunity, proved it out, and then pushed my chips. And so it wasn't like I just decided one day to work with lawyers. I mean, that's not something I would have the guts to do, I had to sort of prove it out by, you know, by working with a lot of different industries, seeing that there was one that really, that really needed help. And that really was going to fit well with me and with the systems that I teach. And so I think that resonates with exactly what you're saying that, you know, you don't have to push all your chips in on something day one, you can work on it for a while and make it happen over time.
Scott Becker 17:48
You can also think of it as a major and a minor. So you're really strongly buff to one niche, but you're working a little bit on another niche to till you see where the where the traction is useful in your business.
Steve Fretzin 17:58
Yeah, exactly. So, so let's see if there are a couple other points that that you could make that would help out, you know, people listening in via coach for a moment, and if you have to say, look, there's two or three things that I, you know, teach my attorneys at my firm and that I used, you know, to to grow, and to make sure that I was able to originate business, what would be those kind of two or three tips that you would share? If you would?
Scott Becker 18:24
Sure. So we always came back to the concept of niche centric and, and, and client centric and meaning. Once you have a client, you take care of the client so well that they become very close to you very indispensable view and vice versa, and valuable, and so forth. And you always have to be building a great team. So we always think in terms of nit centric, customer centric, and great teams. Now in terms of building a business, the reality is, most people don't realize the amount of effort and conductivity it takes, particularly in today's information, polluted, overloaded world to become known. You know, there's, there's a great, you know, old marketing study that says, when you run a commercial once, nobody really knows that you run it five times they start to see it and about 15, 20 times it starts to resonate with somebody, and people have to sort of like, be in touch with you, in a two way kind of straight, that they known here that you're really trying to do something in an area that you're really gonna be known for something, they just have to be connected with you and hear it enough. And then the concept that I've always taken is, I'm never selling, but by being out there, people know that I'm open for business. And there's sort of two different things. It's like, I'm never really ever, quote unquote, asking for business. But I'm open for business and people know that I'm open for business cuz that's why I'm in front of them all the time and so forth. And so and then it's that constant connectivity really connecting with people, whereas love salespeople in the media business that I'm involved in, and if the sales people are just reaching out, not even two way communication, it's really irrelevant. It's got to be constant two way connection, two way communication. There are a number of other core tips, I think about the cuff, my partners have been so magnificent at putting together with going to visit potential targets, or one partner of mine used to make a list of 25 core contacts that he's trying to cultivate. And he would make it his business to call those contacts every single week to stay in touch, thank God, I talked about their business and so forth. So there's a number of different things that work for me, it was really focusing on a niche, customer centric, niche centric. Now building great teams was those three things I viewed is so important.
Steve Fretzin 20:37
Yeah, and I think that those are some excellent points, I also would like to add that, you know, everybody's got a different way that they can do it, there's not a one size fits all, you know, one guy is going to, you know, build a brand on LinkedIn, another person's going to, you know, develop 25 contacts and stick with them, you as a lawyer have to be nimble to try to figure out like, what works within your either time constraints or within your personality or within your comfort zone. But you have to do something, right. I mean, I think that's, that's the bottom line.
Scott Becker 21:09
You know, 100% 100%, there's no clear absolute way to do it, the one thing you have to do is commit to whichever one you're going to do it enough to know if it's working or not. So what happens most people, you know, you would ask the question to me value encourage other young lawyers do is how do you talk to other young lawyers to do it. And so, obviously, hyper responded to anywhere that's interested in building a practice. And then all those sorts of economies build a practice. Most of them don't see results soon enough to stick with it. And you almost have to commit hard enough, because it takes a while we used to say, when I was building a practice, and it goes to your point about either resilience as a point about, you know, do you get discouraged, I used to tell lawyers, you have to build 10 ditches before they start digging themselves in what I meant by that was to make so many forward actions for building a practice, until you start to see rewards in it. And most people won't get to that 10, 15, 20 action to get to where they start to see results. And you have to be very committed to it.
Steve Fretzin 22:05
Yeah, that's a great point and a great, great metaphor. So let's wrap up our interview with with a segment I like to call they never taught me this in law school. Are there specific things that you wish they had taught you in law school that would have helped better prepare you for the real world that young lawyers coming out should should know?
Scott Becker 22:25
You know, I think what happens is I do know is this is two or three things. One is that when you start out as a warrior, you have to be you have to become great at whatever you do, you have to be great at whatever you're practicing arrogant is for a million different reasons. Confidence internally and externally. Compared to yourself, you have to actually be make yourself a great word work hard to be to be. So the other things I would talk about are and this is things we've all grown to understand as we've gotten older, is that the analytical skills, and the substance skills are very important, just as important are the speaking, writing and communication skills, what's happened in our world, as you develop as you grow, you will learn that the speaking and writing skills are so so important to success, the speaking writing connectivity, communication skills, and when you see highly successful lawyers, at big firms, small firms, any place, they usually can combine in with the great ability to do good work with analytical work with really good personal skills. You know, so it's intelligence, communication skills, and then, you know, you can't measure it, but you can see it is are they motivated or not? And so you look at this mix of intelligence, personal skills, and are they driven or not? You know, and then hopefully, they're good, good people versus just like, you know, driven people that aren't good people, but it's really this combination of skills. So if I was in law school, you know, I don't think most of understand how important the writing and speaking skills are. And they kind of tivity skills are to go with being a great lawyer.
Steve Fretzin 24:07
Yeah, I mean, again, if you're not able to articulate a message on LinkedIn, or you're not able to, you know, presented on a panel or or network effectively, I mean, these are all things that are just going to hinder your ability to be successful growing your book and being again, well known.
Scott Becker 24:26
Yes, I think it's just as a constant effort, and you need to constantly Connect. And we all know this when a client calls, there are two ways in which somebody responds, there was one way that responds. So they have all the time in the world and they're focusing on for that client. There was no other word that responds as though they do all the right things, but they give the feeling like they want to be off the phone as soon as possible, that they've got to get back to whatever else they're doing that they have to get back to, you know, whatever other quiet priorities is. It's a very clear distinction and how you respond to it. When a client calls and it's very intuitive and inherent, but maybe even being aware of how clear it is to people, when you answer the phone is helpful to people to understand. And I don't know that everybody understands that a clear the differences in the messaging when you immediately talk to a client or person.
Steve Fretzin 25:19
Yeah. Well, this is all incredible, you know, information. I think any attorney that's listening right now should be scrolling down notes to consider the things that you shared. And is there anything you'd like to promote? Or how do people get in touch with you?
Scott Becker 25:35
Sure, no, just free to reach me on LinkedIn at Scott Becker, or sbecker@McGuirewoods.com or aspect of Beckershealthcare.com. Nothing truly to promote love to help people if anybody's interested ever in talking to me about practice development, business development, anything. I know they've got a magnificent resource in you, Steve. It's amazing what you've built. And we're always happy to help. And just a pleasure to visit with you.
Steve Fretzin 26:01
Well, it's been my pleasure, trust me and I want to thank you for your time and for sharing some some real, insightful wisdom with my audience. I think that's really, really very generous of you.
Scott Becker 26:12
A tremendous pleasure. Thank you, sir.
Steve Fretzin 26:15
Sure, sure. Hey, everybody, listen, just want to thank you again for taking some time with Scott nigh this morning or this afternoon whenever you're listening to this. I hope you enjoyed today's show. And again, the goal is to get you one step closer to being that lawyer, someone who's confident organized in a skilled Rainmaker, take care of be safe.
Narrator 26:36
Thanks for listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for building 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.