Steve Fretzin / Louis Goodman Transcript

Steve Fretzin / Louis Goodman – Transcript

Link to episode:

https://www.lovethylawyer.com/steve-fretzin-acba-be-that-lawyer/

[00:00:03] Louis Goodman: Welcome to the Alameda County Bar Association and the Love Thy Lawyer podcast. I’m your host Louis Goodman. Today we welcome Steve Fretzin back to the podcast. Steve is not a lawyer, but he comes from a family of lawyers and he works with attorneys on the business aspects of their practices. You can find Steve’s work at www dot Fretzin, F-R-E-T-Z-I-N, his last name, www.Fretzin.com. He is a coach and a trainer and of great interest to me, he also hosts a fantastic podcast called Be That Lawyer. It’s really worth listening to. I listen to it all the time and I highly recommend it. I’ve interviewed Steve for this podcast before, back in 2022, and you can find that complete episode in season three, episode 119 of Love Thy Lawyer. Steve Fretzin, welcome back to The Love Thy Lawyer podcast, and welcome to the Alameda County Bar Association.

[00:01:12] Steve Fretzin: Well, thank you for having me back and I’m happy to be here and, uh, hope I can, you know, add some value to what you’re doing.

[00:01:19] Louis Goodman: Well, you can add value, I think, to any practice.

When I listen to you and your guests on your podcast, I always learn something and I always have something that I can bring back my practice and my business each and every week. Steve, can you explain to us what sort of a business, what sort of a practice that you have?

[00:01:43] Steve Fretzin: Sure. Appreciate that. So I, as you mentioned, I’m not a lawyer, but what I found in, uh, 2008 when the recession hit was that lawyers really are in need of help on the business side of the law.

They get the law part, but it’s the business side, and in this case, the business development side that I truly have a passion for and didn’t realize at the time how little lawyers were trained and coached and taught in this area. So in within about, I don’t know, year and a half to two years, my practice went from working in over 50 industries to being super focused in only legal.

And I decided after enough time and work with lawyers that not only did I find them smart, fun, energetic, and passionate and coachable, that there was a great opportunity for me to specialize. And so I kind of pushed my chips into the middle of the table, said I’m all in on lawyers, the legal industry.

My late great Larry, the lawyer father, will be so proud. And he was. And it’s been an absolute wonderful marriage for the last, I dunno, 17 years or so.

[00:02:48] Louis Goodman: Where are you speaking to us from right now?

[00:02:50] Steve Fretzin: I am just north of Chicago, in a town called Highwood. In a part of Highwood, there’s an old military base from the 18 hundreds called Fort Sheridan that was originally put together, a little history lesson, by the wealthy people in Chicago land that wanted to protect their interests in the city in the late 18 hundreds.

So they built a military base here, right on the lake. So in 2006, they converted it to residential, most of it, and there’s still a little bit of a reserve center right out my window. I can see it, but I’m living in an 18 hundreds horse stable that was converted over and it’s absolutely lovely.

[00:03:27] Louis Goodman: How long have you been doing this type of business?

[00:03:31] Steve Fretzin: So I, yeah. I started my business in 2004 as a sales coach and a sales trainer working primarily with entrepreneurs and sales teams. I came up with a philosophy called sales free selling, after working with a coach myself and really researching the best methodologies for how to sell without selling, how to develop business without ever feeling salesy, without ever having to convince anybody of anything.

And it really resonated with the local North Shore of Chicago folks and then eventually the lawyers. And now I’m working actually internationally. I’ve got clients in Saudi Arabia, Brazil. I’m about to sign an Israeli lawyer and Canada, and then I’m working in every kind of corner of the US. I work only with individual attorneys that are highly motivated to grow.

But it started as a company, very salesy, sort of like Sales Results Inc. And then, you know, realized later on that that name didn’t really resonate with lawyers. So I just decided since I’m the business to call it Fretzin Inc. And, and kind of be that lawyer. And that’s sort of how it all kind of came to be.

[00:04:38] Louis Goodman: Can you very briefly go through your educational background, kind of bring us up to speed on that. When I interviewed you the first time, we spent kind of some time on that, and if someone’s really interested, they’re welcome to go back and listen to that podcast. But can you just kind of briefly just kind of go through your educational background?

[00:04:55] Steve Fretzin: I will be brief because my educational background is incredibly brief. I was happy to graduate from high school and I ended up getting a BS from Illinois State University. I started right into sales. I went in, I started selling everything from Yellow Pages to high tech pagers and eventually ended up in the franchising space.

And that was a very different and very interesting twist for me because I went really from being a sales guy, selling a thing, a service, a product, to selling a business and really being a business broker as well as someone who then had to oversee 50 businesses in the Midwest and help them to build and grow and develop and in some cases fail and sell.

And then I was responsible for helping to find a new owner. So it really kind of converted me from a, from a sales guy into a business guy. And that was a big, that if we’re talking about education Louis, that’s really the greatest education I had in, in my career, was working in franchising and, and also by the way.

Made me really think hard about what kind of business I was gonna run. I knew I was gonna run a business someday, but was that gonna be a Dairy Queen? Was that gonna be a laundromat? Was that gonna be whatever it was gonna be? And I never really thought that sales coaching and business development coaching was an actual business.

But eventually I realized, yeah, I hired a coach and eventually I said, Hey, this is amazing. What can, can I do what you do? And he said, sure, you pay me a lot more money and I’ll teach you. So that’s kind of that, how that went down. Well worth it. You know, that investment’s paid back in spades for, you know, 20 years.

[00:06:27] Louis Goodman: Earlier you mentioned kind of a, a non-sales approach to sales, and I know you’ve written a lot about this.

I’ve read, you know, things that you’ve written about this and I’m wondering if you could explain what you mean by that.

[00:06:42] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. So what’s happened over the last 20, maybe even 30 years, has been a critical twist in the way that sellers sell and the way that buyers buy. Sellers are there to convince you that they have the service or the product that you should buy.

And lawyers have a term for this. It’s called going on a pitch meeting. They pitch the firm, they pitch their services, okay? Buyers, the general counsels, the CEOs, other people. You and I, we’re all buyers of services and products, and we have created a way to protect ourselves from the big bad salespeople who are trying to stuff a round peg in a square hole.

The easiest example of that, Louis, is to say, when I go to a mall, which there’s still malls, I go to a mall to buy my wife a gift. A person approaches me and says, may I help you, sir? And I put up my hands and I go, just looking. Now, why do I do that? Why don’t I say, yes, I need a gift from my wife. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

Please help me. We do that because that’s our auto response to dealing with sales and salespeople. That’s how we’ve been conditioned because we’ve all been taken for a ride. We’ve all been burnt, and so we protect ourselves. So buyers now have all the information and all the control in the, in the meetings because everything’s online and we can talk to, you know, many, many vendors.

So I wanna meet with three lawyers to sell my business. I meet with 3 M&A lawyers that were referred to me. I’m not gonna work with all three. I’m gonna meet with three. I’m gonna eat up all their time. I’m gonna get all their free advice. I’m gonna get all of their pricing, and then I’m gonna make a decision on which one, or maybe I make no decision and I just gonna leave them all hanging.

They’re all gonna be waiting for this big deal that’s coming through, and none of them are gonna hear from me ever again. That’s the buyer model that we’ve created to avoid conflict and to avoid salespeople. Okay? Yeah. We get everything we want as buyers. So this combines to a competitive and an uncollaborative sort of process what sales free selling does, and that was the whole big setup there, Louis.

What sales free selling does is it says, Hey, I’m the seller, you’re the buyer. We need to work together to figure out if this is a fit. We need to figure out, are we really gonna work well as partners to get you across the finish line and solve your problems and work together with a trust and relationship and likability and caring.

That isn’t done in the original model that I shared with you a moment ago. So what we’re really talking about is how do we walk a buyer through a buying process to make sure that it’s good for me as the seller, it’s good for them as the buyer. And how do we feel more like it’s a partnership than something that’s me against you?

[00:09:18] Louis Goodman: So I’m a criminal defense attorney. I have a small firm and I have people find me on Google, Yelp, my website and they come and talk to me. How can I present myself and my practice as someone to collaborate with in terms of getting the best results as opposed to me trying to sell them my services as a lawyer?

[00:09:46] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, great question. So at the heart of what I am teaching is a model where we have a series of steps that we follow. The goal is to get from the bottom of the staircase to the top of the staircase by touching each step, and by doing so, we end up safely at the top. And at the top, there’s two outcomes.

One outcome is that we find that this is a fit for both parties. We proceed forward to a yes and to moving forward you now have a new client. Congratulations. On the other hand, we can ask enough questions and identify this isn’t a fit. This is someone who’s not being honest with me. This is someone who isn’t the decision maker.

This is someone who has no capacity or ability or interest in paying me. There are disqualifiers that we can find through asking questions that we can’t get through pitching. So we build some rapport, build some likability and trust. We establish a game plan that allows us to walk through the sales free selling model that I put together for us, or that you would then put together with this new potential client.

We’re gonna spend a lot of time asking questions. What happened? How’d it go? Why it, you know, why did you do it, not do it? Whatever it is that you need to find out. What are your greatest concerns, frustrations, challenges with this particular issue? Of course, they’re gonna have many. Ultimately, are they committed to making an investment to save their time, their life, whatever it might be?

Are they the decision maker? Do they have the finances and are, is this something where they believe that there’s a good fit because you are the one who asked the questions? And the easiest example of this would be if I walked into a therapist’s office, okay? The therapist asked me a lot of questions, and 15, 20 minutes in, I’m got the tissue box, I’m crying.

My father never loved me, whatever it is that I was dealing with at the time. At the end of that hour, am I gonna say, I feel so much better that I shared all this with you. Next week I’m gonna go find someone else. Mm, right? Yeah. Probably not. So it’s, it’s, it’s peace, love, and understanding. And it’s the, it’s the lawyer who gets that trust built through understanding and demonstrates expertise, not through pitching, but through the quality of the questions that are asked that will actually get the business.

And we understand, again, that they’re qualified to work with us. So everything is working in our favor to get the client and all, everything is working in our favor to understand if they’re unqualified, that we should not invest more time with this person. So from my perspective, there’s no way to lose if you’re understanding everything, the pros and the cons, and how to move someone forward or out if they’re not a fit, and be a friend and make a friend and be nice to everybody.

Be kind and warm and gentle. That doesn’t mean you have to, you know, meet with someone five times to get to a no that maybe should have happened in 30 minutes.

[00:12:31] Louis Goodman: Sometimes I think of business coaching, the kind of work that you do almost as business therapy and I’m wondering if you just kind of comment on that.

[00:12:41] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, so you know, as you know, lawyers go through a tremendous amount of stress via billable hours, difficult clients, fires. Other partners, management, I mean, all the politicking in the office, whatever. There’s all this stuff going on. They’re spinning a dozen plates and then there’s business development on top of all that, and it can be highly stressful.

So I spend quite a bit of time wearing different hats to try to address that fact that if a, if a lawyer doesn’t have their mind positive, if they don’t have their mind in the right place to develop business, the right approaches, and they’re, and they’re not getting, you know, getting traction with it, that I’ve gotta step in and really.

You know, sit them down and say, look, we need to review what’s been going on. Because, you know, for example, you haven’t, you know, made calls, you haven’t emailed, you haven’t done the work that we agreed you were gonna do in, in about a month. And how are we gonna get where we wanna, well, Steve, I’m going through all this stuff with a divorce.

I’m going through all this stuff with a, you know, well, let’s talk about that. How are we gonna work through that? Because this is important to you and this is what’s keeping you from it. And I’m not, I’m not a therapist. I’ve never gone through any training. There’s something about being a coach for 23 years where you’ve seen it all, heard it all, and you just pick up the cadence of listening and understanding and just being there to support and to say, Hey, I’m here for you. You’re not alone. I’ve been through things too. We can, we can get through this together. You have someone in your corner that cares about you, that’s gonna, you know, work, work through this to help you. And that’s something that I don’t know that a lot of lawyers have in general, unless they have a therapist, they typically, you know, just suffer silently and just deal with it internally, which is maybe not the best situation.

[00:14:24] Louis Goodman: Yeah. And I also think that being a lawyer and having a client, that those kinds of skills are important to deal with a client because. When clients come in, they really feel lost and alone and as if they’re dealing with something that’s extremely difficult, potentially dangerous.

[00:14:44] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. In your space may be more than any other, that it’s not just money on the line, it’s literally their life and their time on the line and being put into a very bad situation.

So the idea that they’re gonna, you know, need, need to feel understood and need to feel that, that there’s someone that’s gonna get them out of this situation or lessen the blow. If they don’t feel that about you, I would suggest they go somewhere else. They have to feel that about you in their bones.

Otherwise, you know, it, it, their confidence to, you know, to get through this unscathed or with minimal damage is, is, you know, it’s not, it’s not gonna, it’s not gonna be the same.

[00:15:19] Louis Goodman: I wanna just look at the mirror image of this for a minute, because I think from the lawyer perspective, it’s oftentimes really important to know what client not to take.

[00:15:30] Steve Fretzin: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:31] Louis Goodman: And, and I’ve certainly turned down clients, turned down potential business. When I see certain things going on that I think are going to be a problem in the future, and I’m wondering if you could address that aspect of it.

[00:15:45] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Well, again, that’s the beauty of having a system to follow because if you identify, and I know that there’s crazy in divorce and there’s crazy litigation, there’s crazy in criminal, you can’t always stay away from crazy.

But there’s crazy that you can work with and there’s crazy that it’s gonna change your life. Like you’re not, they’re gonna be calling you day and night. They’re not gonna listen to what you say. There’s all these things that can happen that you then regret because you, you didn’t pick up on it early.

It’s like making a bad hire. Geez. I just wish I had picked up on the fact that this person was blowing smoke up my rear, you know, before I made that hire and paid them all this money. Now I find out that, that, you know, they’re, they’re terrible. So we need to have a system that allows us to walk them through a buying decision.

Allows us to identify lies, identify reasons why they would be great for us, or why they wouldn’t be great for us. And that’s what a good process should do. And again, if you’re just there pitching and selling, where does it happen where you identify that they don’t have any money, or where did you go, where you identify that they have plenty of money, they’re just not gonna pay you, or that they’re crazy or whatever it might be?

I think we wanna make sure we’re asking enough questions that we put on our radar and detector to understand is this person, you know, who we think they are and you know, where do they come from and how are we gonna get through this and make good decisions about it. And by the way, if they’re someone that you think is going to be difficult and it’s gonna take up a lot of time, and you identify that, but you still want to take ’em on, well charge ’em a whole lot more than you charge everyone else because that’s gonna be, you know, that’s gonna be the saving grace when you realize that they’re calling you too often and they’ve got anxiety that goes beyond what normally you encounter.

[00:17:23] Louis Goodman: What is it that you really like about working with lawyers? Everything can be sold. Every sort of service, every sort of product can be sold, and you have certain understanding and skills about how to get a customer and a seller together. But what is it about the lawyer space that you like?

[00:17:46] Steve Fretzin: I’m gonna give you two answers. Number one is we’re talking about, from my perspective, the smartest, nicest group of people that I would ever work with. And I’m not gonna say I’ve never worked with people as nice or as good or smart, but as a general, as a profession, as an industry, I’m dealing with, with really, really, I mean, people I wanna be friends with for the rest of my life. So that’s number one. The second, and that isn’t blowing smoke like that is how I absolutely feel. Now, I also get to pick my clients, Louis. So like, I’m not dealing with the egomaniacs, I’m not dealing with, with the, you know, BS artists and all those other people.

The people that engage me are highly committed to growth. They’re interested in it. They’re motivated to do it. And those, that’s what I need. I need players that can play because I’m the coach. I’m on the sidelines. I’m not in the game playing. So that’s number one. The other, and this is my favorite thing, my past and background has been working with entrepreneurs and salespeople.

Well, entrepreneurs and salespeople have been taught business development, sales, whatever we want call it for years and years and years. They’ve got books and they’ve got trainers, and they’ve got all kinds of programs they’ve been through. So when I get in there and I try to teach something like sales free selling, it’s like a whiteboard in front of me that it scribbles all over it from all the head trash and all the junk that’s been put in their heads for the last 20 years. And I have to try to erase that and then put up on the board what I want them to do and what I believe is best and have, you know, has proven out.

With lawyers, I’m starting generally from a whiteboard that is clear. So when I put something up on it, they’re like, woo, that I could see how that would work, or, woo, I can see. And so they start taking in a process. They’re just like, their eyes light up and then they try it and they get this amazing result.

I had a, just to give an example, I had a client, I teach a class every Tuesday morning and I had a client graduate from the class. And usually I give them like five minutes at the end of the last class that they’re in to share. I got it all recorded. I gotta put this thing up online. But this guy was hesitant to join my group.

He was hesitant to hire me. He was skeptical, risk averse. Sound familiar? Okay. And then after he went through the program and realized all the things he learned that he didn’t know all the efficiencies he has and how much business he actually closed and how fruitful it was for him to go through it. And this is a bright guy.

This guy runs a 10 person, you know, transactional startup firm in New York and he’s a brilliant guy, but now he’s like at a whole other level and he just shared that with all the other classmates about what his experiences were and I was just feeling like a million bucks. Because this is exactly what should happen when someone executes on a good process.

Whether that’s a process of how to run a litigation matter, a court trial, you know, a deposition. People with good processes that they know work, get success out of ’em and, and people who don’t. They’re just winging it, you know, less so.

[00:20:37] Louis Goodman: What sort of mistakes do you think lawyers make?

[00:20:40] Steve Fretzin: Well, how much time do you have? No, it’s, the nice answer is if we’re talking about growing a law practice, I think there’s a couple things. Number one is, they believe that because they’re smart, that they can just figure it out as figure it out over time. And I don’t disagree with that. I think anybody can figure out anything over time.

Unfortunately, the problem is, is that time is money. Literally it is money. And every hour they spend doing something inefficiently and without process and just winging it, and they’re spending 2, 3, 400 hours a year for how many years and getting less than appropriate or adequate results, that’s a big problem.

So I don’t say hire me, I say become a student of the game of business development, time management, read books, watch videos, listen to podcasts, start thinking about the business side of it and you know, eventually, yeah, you could hire a coach if you really want to accelerate things even further. I don’t think, I don’t think it’s, it’s easy to be successful growing business without understanding that, that there are systems, processes, methodologies that will help you.

And by the way, I’ve been doing this for my whole career. I’m still reading books, I’m still watching videos. I’m still trying to take in what I can take in and make changes and improvements. And so I’d say be a student of the game, especially if you care about You Inc. Whether you’re at a firm or whether you’re on your own.

It’s You Inc. And if you don’t have your own clients, it’s very possible that you’re either struggling to make ends meet or that you have, you know, five or 10 partners all telling you what to do and all the clients telling you what to do. And how many years do you really want to be like that? Having your own clients is a way to independence and freedom.

And the beauty is in sales, you can’t take your business with you and in the legal space, you absolutely can and have the right to. So it’s a big difference having your own clients in legal. And so I’m working day in and day out to try to help lawyers understand that and figure out that piece.

[00:22:40] Louis Goodman: Two things I wanna say here. One is, I don’t know whether, if someone’s not watching this on the video, right behind you, there’s a picture of a book that’s called Be That Lawyer. Is that your book?

[00:22:51] Steve Fretzin: It’s Be That Lawyer – Top Rainmakers Secrets To Building a Successful Law Practice. I’ve interviewed over 180 rainmakers on my podcast and I’m taking their interviews and condensed them down into chapters, and we’re gonna have somewhere between 60 and a hundred chapters of what the top rainmakers in the world tell lawyers they need to do to be successful.

[00:23:18] Louis Goodman: The other thing that I wanted to discuss is this notion of having one’s own book of business. And you just touched on that, and I don’t know whether that term, book of business, is something that I got from you or from some other podcast. I really don’t know.

But all I know is that that notion of having one’s own book of business is something that I’ve really thought about. Really resonates with me and I would like you to talk a little bit about why it’s so important no matter what sort of practice you have, other than you know, maybe being a deputy district attorney or you know, working for the the utility company, why it’s so important to have your own book of business.

[00:24:02] Steve Fretzin: Alright, so there was a time years ago where if you were a great lawyer and you charged a fair rate, you would get plenty of business every year, whether you worked at a firm or whether you’re on your own. You would just, every year would be a fine year. My father was a great example of that. Practiced in the sixties through the late nineties and made plenty of money and did fine.

Wasn’t a great businessman by the way, but I wish I had met him back in the day to help him, but he did great and he retired at 65 and he let his money do the work for him and he ended up doing fine. And he passed in March of last year. And you know, I think he was very happy with how much he had amassed because he grew up in poverty and grew up in the slums of Chicago and didn’t have a pot to piss in.

So the idea that he could accumulate wealth, I think was very important to him and his legacy. He was interviewed on my 200th podcast, by the way, which is one of my favorite podcasts I did on Be That Lawyer. If you guys wanna check it out, it’s Larry Fretzin 200th episode. What it turns out though, is he did, you know, network, he was, you know, in an office with other lawyers.

He was at the courtroom making friends. He just didn’t call it that. And he, and back then also you couldn’t really market because of the rules of advertising and marketing. Anyway, moving forward. Today, I think you’re putting your life and your career at great risk by just keeping your head down and doing everyone else’s work, and hoping that the billable hour stays consistent.

If the firm gets bought, if the hours start to get cut, we don’t know what the new administration’s gonna do to, you know, more business, less business. We don’t really know what’s gonna happen. The future is uncertain in the US in particular, and you don’t have your own client base and things start to happen.

What are you gonna do? Because you’re gonna be the first on the chopping block if the firm has to cut costs because you’re not bringing anything to the table other than being a great lawyer, which by the way, there’s five to your left and five to your right. Okay. So I think there’s a point in time where a lawyer has to say, you know what?

I think Steve is right, and I think what I’m hearing from all these other lawyers are right that I have to start developing my own relationships, my own network and my own client base, so that no matter what happens in the marketplace, I have the ability to move laterally, go out on my own, you know, transition and that’s not gonna be what 80% of the lawyers can say that work at mid-market and big firms right now, they’re all just kind of cranking out hours and hoping that things continue and maybe they will.

And by the way, 2008 showed us that maybe they won’t. So I think that’s really what I talk about with, with originations and book of business and having your own clients. They all mean the same thing, that you have to take care of yourself and make business development and marketing and personal branding a part of your job.

And I know that’s not what any lawyer signed up for. I know it, but guess what? It is what it is. And there’s no way to turn back the clock or get the toothpaste back in the tube so you, so people need to start looking up instead of down.

[00:27:04] Louis Goodman: What do you mean when you say “be that lawyer”?

[00:27:08] Steve Fretzin: There’s someone you know, there’s someone we all know, maybe multiple people that we talk about as that lawyer.

It’s the lawyer that’s thought of when something happens in a particular area. I’ll give you a quick example. When I was 26 years old, I was involved in a small plane crash, which is crazy because there’s been more crashes in the last couple weeks than maybe in, in 10 or 20 years. And I survived this plane crash, although I broke both of my arms.

So I’m laying in bed, I have no arms, and my dad pushed a phone up to my ear and said, talk to Bob. He’s your lawyer, you know, for this, for this big accident. I didn’t know who Bob was. Well, in Chicago, people know the top aviation attorney and personal injury attorney in Chicago is Bob Clifford, and that’s who I was on the phone with at 26 years old, who’s a legend in the Chicagoland area, maybe even nationally in particular at aviation.

How did my dad come up with the idea that that I should talk to Bob Clifford? He didn’t call anyone else. He called Bob Clifford. Okay. He’s that lawyer. He’s the one who’s built the brand. He’s the one that people talk about at the water cooler. He’s the one with the big book of business, or she’s the one with the big book of business.

That’s what that lawyer’s all about and I’m helping people to be that lawyer and, and get their piece of the pie and keep it and sustain it through a career. And it’s been the greatest honor and privilege I could ever imagine having in a career.

[00:28:30] Louis Goodman: Steve, I have some more questions for you, but I’d like to go now to two of the people who are on the recording with us and I’d like to start with Jessica Takano. Jessica, can you unmute and join us?

[00:28:46] Jessica Takano: Yeah, absolutely. So really funny coincidence. I had a ProVisors Troika a couple of days ago, and one of the people in my Troika said, you’ve gotta watch Steve Fretzin’s podcast if you’re thinking about how to change your approach to business development as a lawyer.

And then the very next day, I got the invite to this, this program and I said, said, this is karma. This is the universe telling me I need to come here. What Steve has to say. But the issue that has been sort of dogging me a little bit lately is I feel like I’m a little bit of a victim of my own success in the sense of I’ve gotten very good at doing a particular type of case, and a lot of those cases come to me and that means I have a lot of sort of small to mid-size cases. I’m very good at handling them. I get great results from my clients and that a lot more of those come to me, but it’s not necessarily the work that I want to be doing.

I also try a lot of cases and I’d like to sort of rebrand myself to a certain extent as a trial lawyer who’s capable of taking really any size and type and subject matter of case to trial because I have that skillset that a lot of people kind of in today’s world as litigators don’t have. They litigate, but they don’t try cases.

So that’s something I’m struggling with a bit and interested in how you coach someone through that type of transition and how they brand themselves.

[00:30:20] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. I mean, I feel like it’s, that’s would be a much larger conversation that we’d have to have offline, ’cause that there’s a lot to unpack there. The, the things that are percolating in my mind though, number one, is sometimes if we wanna go after something, we need to do two things.

Number one is we need to share that intention with others, right. So instead of saying what you normally say, you’ve gotta change what you’re saying and how you’re conveying the message to people in your networks, provisors and other groups and other lawyers that. Even the ones that refer you say, I’m so grateful for you sending me this.

What I’m really looking for now is, and you’ve gotta start to change the way that they’re perceiving and the way that they’re thinking of you to get out of them, what you are looking for that’s gonna help fulfill what you’re, the direction that you’re going. And then I think you’re marketing and your branding starts to come along with that. Meaning you’re updating your LinkedIn profile, your banner, your headline, your bio, the things that are that you have now that say, you know, the small and mid, mid-size, this, that, and the other. Now leaning into the trial work and a variety of areas, and this is what I’m really looking for, bigger stuff. And and start to slowly make that change over the next maybe six months, understanding that you’re still gonna take on other things. It’s not like you’re shutting off the valve, but you’re starting to, and that’s how I got into working with lawyers by the way. I didn’t like say day one, Hey, I just picked up one lawyer and now I’m gonna just turn off the 50 industries I’ve been working with.

I needed to do it over like a year and a half. It became around 85% of my business before I made a big decision to save the financial planner and the, the website guy and all that stuff to say, Hey, I appreciate that. I’m not doing that anymore, but let me give you somebody good and started, you know, sending them elsewhere.

And so I think that’s, that’s kind of my 2 cents. But as I mentioned, Jessica might be a longer conversation to unpack it, but I think that’s sort of the gist. Does that kind of resonate with you?

[00:32:19] Jessica Takano: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s sort of where I’m started to go with it, but it’s, it’s a big change. Mm-hmm. Uh, a little bit scary when you’re, you’ve been successful at what you are doing.

Yeah. To start thinking about, you know, trying to, to do it differently. So, yeah.

[00:32:34] Steve Fretzin: You know, baby, maybe it’s baby steps, right? Mm-hmm. It’s, it’s just starting to slowly turn the corner on what you’re looking to do and where you’re looking to go and letting people know, you know, this is what I’m, I’ve been doing and I’m, I love it.

Here’s where I really wanna go, and this is what I’m looking for. And just see what the, see how it, it converts over time.

[00:32:53] Louis Goodman: Jessica, if I could just ask you, where is your practice located?

[00:32:57] Jessica Takano: Our main office is in Oakland, California.

[00:33:00] Louis Goodman: And what sort of work do you do? Primarily?

[00:33:03] Jessica Takano: I do primarily real estate litigation, but I would say within that I do a lot of representing individual homeowners who’ve bought homes and discovered that they’re not as represented and they have a lot of defects and construction issues and that kind of thing.

[00:33:20] Louis Goodman: Great. Well, thank you Jessica, and thank you for joining us and being part of the Alameda County Bar Association.

[00:33:25] Jessica Takano: Yeah, thank you. This is great.

[00:33:27] Louis Goodman: Thomas Butzbach, can you unmute and join us?

[00:33:31] Thomas Butzbach: I think I can.

[00:33:33] Louis Goodman: There you are.

[00:33:33] Thomas Butzbach: Good afternoon, sir. I have many questions. I’m gonna start with this. Is your coaching personalized to the person that approaches you for coaching, or is it more of a rigid outline that you use?

[00:33:47] Steve Fretzin: That’s an excellent question. I have a class that I teach, and it’s a combination of a class with a syllabus where we go through content that’s relevant to plaintiff’s side, defense side, big firms, solo, and everybody in between.

With an understanding that everything that I’m teaching in this class needs to be customized to the practice area, to the personality, to the individual. I have introverted IP attorneys that are not going to take my material in the same way as the extroverted litigator who’s a, you know, lampshade on the head at the party.

So everything needs to be customized, but the steps and the content and the way that things are approached generally are not rigid. But I would say, you know, there’s a system to follow. Then I also incorporate that with one-on-one meetings so that we’re getting the system and the methodology on one side and the coaching and the personalization on the other, and that really helps ensure that everybody gets out of this program what they need and that it is customized to them.

Because I’m dealing with such a diverse group. Again, the way that a lawyer in Brazil is selling is quite different than the way they sell in Sacramento. So I’ve gotta be flexible and I’ve gotta make sure that everybody’s, that I’m learning as I go, in some cases when I’m dealing with a new, like a new, like a farm town versus a big city lawyer.

And at this point though, 17 years in, I’d be shocked if there was something truly new other than a new country, which I keep picking up. I pick up Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and soon Israel. So it’s, it’s then I’m dealing with different cultures and different ways of communication. I’ll give you a quick example.

In Japan people don’t say like, you know, when we wanna blow someone off in the US we just say, well, I’ll think about it. I’ll get back to you. Right. That’s the common blow off. We get it. We give as buyers. Yes, we agree. Yes. Okay. Yeah. And in Japan they say, that sounds difficult. So that’s a nuance that I had to learn, not ’cause I’m working with a lot of Japanese lawyers, but in having some Japanese friends that, that are in coaching, I learned from them and found that to be truly interesting. So that was kind of a long answer to your question, Thomas, but

[00:35:57] Thomas Butzbach: Yeah, but that’s a good answer. Japanese wife and she could never say go blow off in a million years.

No way. Yeah. But uh, so the other question is, can you help a lawyer that will never be that lawyer? Because I’m never gonna be Clifford.

[00:36:13] Steve Fretzin: No. Okay, so listen, it’s, what does success mean to you? It might be different than what it means to another lawyer. There’s a lawyer who says, I want to build a 500 person firm.

They don’t have to be that lawyer to get to 500. I think for me it’s more about someone that is happy and satisfied and content and, and has security and, and is, is working as much or as little as they wanna work. If you’re working three days a week and you’re making a ton of money and you’re on the beach, half the year, you’re still that lawyer and you don’t have a 50 person firm.

I think every, it really means what it means to the individual that that is going through a program and that getting to where they’re just really happy and satisfied in their career. It’s not a job, it’s a career. Right. And for many lawyers, it’s a job. It’s a grind. And that’s not necessarily, like I love what I do every day. I don’t get up in the morning and say, I gotta do this today. I’m so happy that I get to do this today. And I think there’s a lot of lawyers, more than not, that feel like every day is a grind. And it’s painful. They’re not delegating, they’re not planning and executing.

They’re not really living out the vision and the mission that they set out to lead. And so that’s what I want the lawyer, that lawyer to be.

[00:37:26] Thomas Butzbach: That I don’t have a problem with because I enjoy every minute of this now. There you go. I do have a couple, a couple other questions. What, what age group comes to you?

Like do you get mainly early twenties, thirties, 40-year-old people? When does a person feel like they would want to increase their practice size, for example, to make it more successful for money?

[00:37:50] Steve Fretzin: I would say the majority of lawyers come to me between, let’s say 35 and 45, and the ones that come to me that are 50 and older, they always say the same thing.

I should have done this 20 years ago. And they’re kicking themselves because they’re 55, 60 years old, and I’m 54, by the way, so I’m no spring chicken. And they realize at 55 years old, they just don’t have that lawyer. They don’t have the practice of their dreams and their hours are cut.

They lost a big client that represented 40% of their business that they’ve had all these years. There’s a woman that I used to office with in the Lu Chicago, and she just called me up out of the blue, and for 20 years she never had to worry about a client if for 20 years she crushed it. And the biggest client, a big hospital system left and she’s down.

She had a fire like six people. She’s down to, you know, down to the, to the nuts and bolts, and she called me up, she says, I gotta build this thing back up. And I don’t know how.

[00:38:49] Thomas Butzbach: That’s my last question. How long does it take once I hire you to coach me, which I, I’m pretty coachable. Okay. How long does it take to, uh, show some success, make these inner feelings in my body feel like I’m really doing good?

[00:39:08] Steve Fretzin: I think it can happen pretty quickly because what we start with is we start with changing behaviors, and when we start changing behaviors from negative behaviors or no behaviors to positive behaviors, it’s like, that’s like saying how long is it gonna take for me to start feeling good if I start working out. For what I’m actually looking to do, Thomas is, I have a, a program that is developed to allow attorneys to internalize how to do business development, so they never need me again. It’s not something where I’m looking to hold on to clients in my training class and program, it really is about a year program and then the majority float into my round.

I run a peer advisory round tables for rainmakers and they typically say, Hey, I want to continue in the form of a lighter type of program where I’m surrounded by other successful lawyers in a confidential environment, cooperative, collaborative, all that. But the goal is, is that I, I like, I even have a, a lawyer that just tested out.

So what does that mean? It means that I said to the lawyer, I’m gonna role play being a potential M&A deal for you, and I want you to use the sales free selling, and I want you to walk me through a buying decision and I wanna see how you do it using the system. And he did it. And he just, every step, he nailed every step.

And I was like, you don’t need the class anymore. You’re doing great and he’s crushing you with all the business and all that great. I think you can feel good in 30 to 60 days. And I think results can start happening, you know, shortly after. It’s activity done intelligently with process will produce. And the idea that you don’t have to ever go back to worrying or wondering where business is gonna come from is for many attorneys, you know, an absolute relief.

[00:40:49] Thomas Butzbach: Last question because you made me ask one more question. Would it be feasible to come to you with our interview approach, how we interview our clients for a critique?

[00:41:01] Steve Fretzin: It’s certainly something I could critique and I do for many of my clients that are starting out and I want to hear how they are currently approaching it.

Yeah, that conversation.

[00:41:09] Thomas Butzbach: Thank you so much for coming today. I enjoyed your, you’re a real pistol. I like me.

[00:41:12] Steve Fretzin: Hey, I appreciate that. Thanks, Thomas.

[00:41:14] Louis Goodman: Steve, I have a couple of final questions for you.

[00:41:17] Steve Fretzin: Sure.

[00:41:18] Louis Goodman: What do you think is the best advice you’ve ever received and what advice would you give to a young attorney or a young business person just starting out? You could answer it one way or the other. One part of the question or the other, or both.

[00:41:33] Steve Fretzin: I mean, the best advice I ever received was from my father who said, if you ever have a chance to work for yourself, take it. And I know that entrepreneurship is not for everybody. My father had a deep belief, maybe again because of his upbringing and background, that you know, it’s better to build something of your own and not have a boss, and not have your life in someone else’s hands.

And so again, I, that’s why building business is so important, because whether you’re on your own or you’re with a firm, I still think it’s you, Inc. It’s still you are, you’re under someone else’s umbrella, great. It’s your client base, and if you get into trouble where the firm is not where you want it to be, you always have the ability to take it out and take it with you.

So that’s the best advice I’ve ever gotten in my life and career. What was the second question?

[00:42:20] Louis Goodman: Well, just what advice would you give to a young person just starting out?

[00:42:24] Steve Fretzin: Okay. I would say people kick themselves on a regular basis because they don’t keep track and maintain relationships. Undergrad, law school, law firm relationships that you just let go and you don’t follow up, you don’t check in, and then 10 years has passed and you’ve got people in general counsel roles, you’ve got CEOs, you’ve got people that are in venture capital and everything all over the place, and you’re calling them up to say, Hey, I know it’s been 10 years and I’ve ignored you, but I’d love to get together now that you’re successful.

That’s not gonna happen. They’re not gonna take that call, right. So when I go to talk to law school students, or when I’m talking with young up and coming attorneys, I always say, you’ve gotta control and, and maintain your relationships. And not everyone needs to be on that list. If you’re meeting a total doofus who you can’t stand. Let that person go and be, go away, that’s fine. And if they become successful, who cares? You don’t want to deal with them again. But then there’s all these people that are, that are smart and successful and have great potential and you’ve gotta keep in touch with them. And you know, it’s, when I got into my own business, I hadn’t done that.

And so I really was starting from nothing and it was very hard. And if I had just done a little bit of what I teach now, I think I would’ve gotten into been much more successful in a my sales career and also my business career.

[00:43:45] Louis Goodman: I always like to ask people this question, if you came into 3 or 4 billion dollars, what, if anything, would you do differently in your own life?

[00:43:52] Steve Fretzin: I’d never stop working. I may work differently. I may look to expand and help a wider group of an audience than just lawyers at that point. I think specialization is great, but if you have that kind of money and support behind you, I think there’s probably a lot more good I could do. I’m, I’m sure I would give a significant amount to charitable causes that would be meaningful to me or are meaningful to me.

And maybe we will talk about, like, how do we start setting up funds for law school students to start teaching them this stuff in law school? I’m not sure, but I just, I don’t think I’m one of these people that if I won the lottery, that I would change much about myself.

[00:44:28] Louis Goodman: Tell us one more time, if someone wants to get in touch with you, Steve Fretzin, in order to get some coaching, get some advice, have a conversation with you, what is the best way to contact you?

[00:44:41] Steve Fretzin: I’m all over LinkedIn. I’m posting multiple times a day. If you just type in Steve Fretzin, I can promise you I’m the only one that exists, and you also can just use my last name to go to my website. The beauty of my website is I’ve got blogs, I’ve got articles, I’ve got videos, I’ve got all kinds of podcasts, great content, and my goal is to work with about 20 lawyers a year, individually and in my class, and then for everyone else in improvisors and, and all over the, the world is to just try to help educate lawyers on the importance of business development and try to give away as much information as I can to help them be successful.

It’s why I’m constantly producing content for publications like Above the Law, Attorney of Law Magazine and, and all, you know, Raise the Bar, anywhere, anyone that’ll help publish my stuff, I try to give them my content so they can get it out to the masses.

[00:45:34] Louis Goodman: And that website address again is

[00:45:36] Steve Fretzin: frets in.com, F-R-E-T-Z-I-N.com.

[00:45:41] Louis Goodman: Steve, is there anything that you wanna talk about? Anything that you wanna say that we haven’t discussed? Any final comment?

[00:45:48] Steve Fretzin: If somebody needs operational help, process help, my network is significant around in the legal. If you ask me for introductions to CEOs or to SaaS companies, I’m probably not the right person.

But if you ask me, that you need a legal resource, I probably have three or four recruiters or legal tech companies or people that’ll help get you to your end goal faster. And so I just put it out there like if, you know, I wanna be that go-to person that lawyers and other folks think about when they have a need for something. And I’d, I’d love to be that resource.

[00:46:20] Louis Goodman: Steve Fretzin, thank you so much for joining us today on the Love Thy Lawyer podcast and being part of the Alameda County Bar Association. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you, and thank you so much for being here today.

[00:46:33] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you, Louis.

[00:46:37] Louis Goodman: That’s it for today’s edition of Love Thy Lawyer in collaboration with the Alameda County Bar Association. Please visit the lovethylawyer.com website where you can find links to all of our episodes. Also please visit the Alameda County Bar Association website at acbanet.org where you can find more information about our support of the legal profession, promoting excellence in the legal profession and facilitating equal access to justice.

Thanks to Joel Katz for music, Brian Matheson for technical support, Paul Robert for social media, and Tracy Harvey. I’m Louis Goodman.

[00:47:25] Steve Fretzin: And it’s all great and it’s producing business for me, but how is it all working together and am I missing something?

And so I, I don’t know, I’m not able to read the label from the inside of the bottle.