In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Jeremy Streten discuss:
- The business lifecycle of every business.
- Building relationships with your clients.
- Thinking about what is in it for the other person.
- Multiway wins with cross marketing.
Key Takeaways:
- It is cheaper to get work from existing clients than from new clients.
- Even if it is not your area, you can serve your clients by building networks of trusted professionals to whom you can refer your clients with confidence.
- Cross marketing, especially at a full-service firm, is a way to best serve your clients, your firm, and to best serve your origination.
- Be the person that others can talk about their business to.
“Look for those opportunities, and try out these different approaches. Different approaches will work with different clients; test it out, and you’ll find you’ll get a good return.” — Jeremy Streten
Connect with Jeremy Streten:
Website: https://businesslegallifecycle.com/
Show: https://businesslegallifecycle.com/podcast/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremystreten/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremystreten
Book: https://businesslegallifecycle.com/book/
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Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
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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.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
lawyers, client, business, jeremy, people, legal, steve, helping, book, realizing, identify, life, problem, risk, big, law firm, questions, cyber, business owners, marketing
SPEAKERS
Stephanie Vaughn Jones, Jeremy Streten, Narrator, Steve Fretzin, Jordan Ostroff
Jeremy Streten [00:00]
look for those opportunities and try out these different approaches and different approaches will work with different clients test it out, and and you’ll find you’ll get a good return.
Narrator [00:14]
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 [00:36]
Hey, everybody, welcome to be that lawyer, I hope you’re having a wonderful day. Well, it is another another day, another dollar, we got a lot going on here with Fretzin Inc. We’ve got our business development, coaching and training, helping train assassins to get out there and lock up more business than they ever imagined. And that’s the light of my life is helping lawyers to, to do that and learn those skills. And obviously, we also have the peer advisory groups currently running five of those. If you’re already a great business developer, but you feel like you’re on an island and you’re looking to communicate and collaborate in a confidential environment with other lawyers. Let me know go to my website, check it out, and learn what that’s all about. And I’ve got Jeremy sitting here in the wings. Hey, Jeremy.
Jeremy Streten [01:21]
Hi, Steve.
Steve Fretzin [01:23]
Good to see you using the mute button effectively. Before I bring Jeremy on to the show, I want to thank our sponsors legalese marketing, and of course, money, Penny, helping me to grow my business through marketing and through online, live chat and of course, money Penny doing the virtual reception, my virtual reception, Jeremy was so kind to send me a really cool quote of the of the show, I’m going to say them, I’m going to ask him about it. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used creating them. And that’s Einstein. Jeremy, welcome to the show. And what the heck is up with that quote?
Jeremy Streten [02:00]
Thanks, Steven. Great. As I said before, great to be here. It’s really around just adjusting our mindset mindset. You know, what got you to the level that you are, no matter where you are in life, no matter where you’re in business, no matter where you are in the legal profession, you’re going to want to grow. And so the same thing that got you to that point just won’t get you to the next point. And so you really need to think through how do you change? And so when I’m talking to people about that, I often say you just got to flip the thinking, yeah, if you’re a great lawyer, and you’re really good with your clients, you’re an excellent technician doing the work, which most most lawyers always face. And Steve, yeah, if you want to then build your own business, you got to flip that to be a manager. And that’s a whole different thing that you’ve got to learn. And but that’s part of life about growing and becoming a bigger person and really doing stuff that’s more interesting. So that’s, that’s why I love that quote, because, yeah, what got you there won’t walk as you’re here won’t get you there.
Steve Fretzin [02:52]
It’s so interesting to me. And I’ll put it into context of business development, which my audience knows very well, that the way that I sold and the way that lawyers still sell is pitching, convincing, selling, free consulting Shaw, smart you are talk, talk talk. And they’re not realizing that buyers have changed, the world has changed. And the way that we want to do it today is through preparation, research, relationship, building, questioning, qualifying, listening, all of that. And that’s really what makes selling sales free is that we’re doing it differently. So if I was still selling the same way that I was in the 90s, I don’t know that too many people want to talk to me, because I was just out trying to sell the sizzle of the steak and lock up deals. In reality. That’s not how business is done, or should be done today. What do you think of that? Jeremy?
Jeremy Streten [03:42]
Yeah, I agree. And I think that, um, yeah, the legal professional, and I’m sure you see the speaker, I know, it’s in Australia, where I am, and I’m over to the US and around the world. lawyers get bored, and they want to go and do something else is there’s this great feeling, and at least in the circles that I am of, I want to go and do something else. And I think that’s one of the reasons one of the really strong reasons why that happens, Steve is that they get bored just doing the same old thing. And what we don’t realize is that we can adapt that we can change the way that we’re doing things. And one, as you say, clients love that. And two, it makes it more interesting for us. And we actually want to get out of bed bed and go to work during the day. So I think that’s, it’s a great message and it’s such an advantage for us in doing that.
Steve Fretzin [04:18]
Yeah. Jeremy Stretton is the co founder of business legal life cycle, which I called lifestyle and he corrected me it’s life cycle. But I think it’s fun or it’s more fun with lifestyle. I think it’s kind of groovy and very 80s. But it’s life cycle. It’s a separate book, you’re gonna have to write a separate book.
Jeremy Streten [04:37]
It’s the new it’s the one I’ll start working on now.
Steve Fretzin [04:41]
He’s got a book, international best seller, the biz legal life cycle. And that book is interesting, because it’s not just in case you’re from New Jersey, right? Yeah, New Jersey. I can tell the accent I’m sure.
Jeremy Streten [04:55]
Also known as Brisbane, Australia,
Steve Fretzin [04:57]
ah, there we go. Okay. And but you wrote the book and then had it set up and did your research to set it up in multiple countries. What countries does the book is a book published for? Yeah,
Jeremy Streten [05:07]
so the original book was Australia, I’ve then expanded it to the UK because it’s like the basis of most laws around the world, and the US as well. So what I did just very quickly was I partnered with a lawyer in each country, to help me understand what the differences were within with the books, I got them to give me all the research about why the law was different, where it was different. And then I rewrote the book and got them to help me to make sure that the way that I was writing up was was correct for each entity. So currently, the published ones, as at the time of recording this in mid 2022, is in Australia, UK and the US, I was going to do the final work on the South African draft in and I was going over to meet my co author lawyer in March 2020. And we all know what happened then. So my goal is in the next year or two to get over there to just finalize that I like to meet them in person and just finalize everything there. And we’ll get into that in probably 2023.
Steve Fretzin [06:02]
Can you get a little Safari out of it too, right?
Jeremy Streten [06:05]
I mean, that was part of the reason you gotta
Steve Fretzin [06:06]
do it. Right? You gotta go see some life isn’t the same after you’ve seen some cheetahs take down a gazelle.
Jeremy Streten [06:13]
There’s all sorts of perks in what we do. Right?
Steve Fretzin [06:16]
Right. Right. So Jeremy, you know, interesting background, please kind of catch my my audience up on on what led you to not only running this business, but also writing this book and putting it out to help people in other countries.
Jeremy Streten [06:31]
I think the first step was when I was working for a big city law firm here in Brisbane, Australia. And if anyone doesn’t know where Brisbane is, just in 10 years time, that 2032 Olympics, that’s in Brisbane, that’s where we’ll be okay, that’s what we’ll be. Back to your question. I was working for a big a big city law firm, and my now business partner and I, we decided that we knew how to do things better than our bosses, and how hard could it be to run our own business. So we left about 12 years ago now, knowing that in our minds, when we started our own business, it probably took us about six months to realize that we were way in over our heads. And so at the time, and I still work with this gentleman, in fact, I actually worked with him in his business, a business coach, and really got him to help us see things differently, and really helped shift our mindset around what we needed to do. And he said to me, when we first started working together, he said, Jeremy, one day you’re going to write a book. And I laughed at him, Steve, and I said, See what Lloyd, his name is David. David, what lawyer writes a book that isn’t a textbook that people actually going to read. And he just looked at me and just went, it will come to you one day anyway. I had a couple of matters where I was acting for some clients, one way, a client lost a million dollars of other people’s money on a property development deal. And another one where a client almost lost $2 million of their own money, because they’re gonna go bankrupt, without realizing the actual consequences of that. And I got really frustrated with those timeouts I happen at the same time. And I was it was during my head, and I was saved. I was just thinking to myself, why, and I was talking to him, why didn’t you get advice before you did what you did. And it was always, lawyers are expensive. I don’t like talking to lawyers, they talked down to me they that they’re not personable, yeah. And these people have come to me after the after the fact. And it was really frustrating. And at the time, I was learning about life cycles of business. And I realized that there was a business legal lifecycle, there was a lifecycle that businesses went through. So I studied the businesses that I worked with, over that time, it was up 5000 businesses that I’d worked for over the years, and I mapped out a plan of when they should do things, what they should do, to really build themselves up so that these things don’t happen to them. And then we started rolling that out for our business and using that with our clients. And, and at that time, I skipped every step. I rang my business coach when I had the 13 phases, and I said, I’ve got this 13 phases, there’s a booking that
Steve Fretzin [08:54]
there you go, and he was like told you told you,
Jeremy Streten [08:58]
to his credit. He never said I told you, man, I would have I would have been all
Steve Fretzin [09:02]
over that tells you now. But it’s but it’s interesting. So So essentially, every so I have a business, other people have businesses, and we go through a business lifecycle of of planning for the business, getting into the business, starting the business, the startup, right, then where do we go from there? How does it develop all the way through selling it and moving on? Right? So there’s all these phases that a business goes through? So what’s the relationship between that and lawyers? And how do we segue to that?
Jeremy Streten [09:33]
Yeah, sure. Well, just just to finish the story quickly, after we use that for our own business, we won an award here in Queensland for that for that. And then I realized that the law was very similar in other countries, and we’ve sort of expanded to the UK in the US because we realized that we could do that. The way that lawyers can use it, they said and the way that lawyers do use it is we’ve developed on the back of the book, we developed a test and assessment where business owners can go through and they answer only questions about their business takes about 10 minutes and identifies their legal blind spots really, so what what are the things that they’re missing in their business. And so what lawyers use that for is actually they do that, that test with their clients, because people are busy. And people don’t do that, they say that they’re going to do it, and they look at it, and they go, Yeah, I’m gonna do that. And then they never actually take action, because they get so busy in all the stuff that they need to do. And so the way that lawyers can use that is it actually helps them to identify the work that they need to do for their clients, and, and confined that the blind spots that the client hasn’t seen. And so that way, we can help the lawyers to help their clients to fill those gaps. And I don’t want to build a big international law firm. Yeah, I don’t have the bandwidth to do that with everything else that I’m doing in my life. So we partner with lawyers to do that with their clients.
Steve Fretzin [10:48]
Okay. But I think it’s set up to help lawyers develop more business, right? I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s clear. And in talking with a coach that I’m friends with in the UK, we had a really open Dias, she was on the show a couple weeks ago, Claire Pfanner, shout out to Claire. And a big part of that conversation was the lack of cross marketing, questioning that needs to happen, because what we ultimately discussed and agreed on was that you’re actually doing your clients a disservice by not asking them questions and identifying risks and identifying things. So the stories that you had earlier about these clients, that million dollars, and $2 million, and all of that in a bad direction. You know, these are the kinds of things that can be avoided if lawyers step up and actually ask proactive questions, whether they can handle it or not doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that they’re bringing it out, and then being able to either handle it or hand it off. But is that kind of a big part of what of what this is all about?
Jeremy Streten [11:46]
Absolutely, state. So you’re absolutely right. There’s a there’s an old study from Bain consultant back in the 80s, that it’s six times cheaper to get repeat work from an existing client than to go out and get a new client. And there’s been lots of studies since then, that it varies in different industries, but it’s around, it’s around six times cheaper. And so that’s one part that it actually benefits. It’s like, you’ve got a client, they already know like, and trust you. And here we go. Here, it identifies what you do. But the the building the relationship part is so crucial. So one of the things that I recommend that lawyers do is actually sit down with their client and complete the test with their client. And in the age of COVID, and all the rest of that everyone’s got used to using everything online. So you can do it online. And we actually encourage people to sit down, because what it does is it creates the conversation that you’re talking about, you know, what is a trademark? Why do I need to have this? Why do I need to have it the report, at the end of the day, our legal assessment report that you get, does spell out why you need to do things. But the relationship that the lawyer builds by having the conversation with the client, as they’re doing it is really where the value is, and really, everyone in all professions should be doing, and especially lawyers, is looking at building that lifelong relationship with their client. Because, because once it’s more fun, because you get to work with people that you like, and they like you, too, it’s cheaper. And three, you actually get to help people, which is why most lawyers get into it in the first place. So
Steve Fretzin [13:12]
yeah, I just don’t I just don’t think Jeremy that lawyers maybe understand because they’re talking their clients about the same old stuff all the time, right. That’s the matters they’re working on, or it’s the practice area that they’re focused on and trademark or whatever it might be. They’re not really recognizing how businesses are evolving, how they’re changing how they’re shifting, the kinds of risks that they’re in now, or different, or the costs are have changed. So just as an example, like cyber insurance, and cyber in general, protecting is so much more now in the sense of protection and risk and in how a business needs to take care of that than ever before. But that’s not being talked about because I’m an IP attorney or because I’m an estate planning attorney. So then my claim I get into trouble with cyber and well, that’s not my problem. But that’s, that’s a, that is a problem. From my perspective, I want to be I want to be talked to in a robust way in a well rounded way so that I’m not, and I’ll give you a quick example, too, because this just happened. I used to do websites a few years ago, I put my put my toe in the water on websites. And by the way, the worst thing I ever did, best thing I ever did, as far as realizing I never wanted to do it again. Okay. Because dealing with lawyers and tell in helping them on business development is fun, and it’s like a partnership and we can do it together. Websites is like just put a gun to my head and pull the trigger. It was horrible. Okay. But the point is, is that my cyber because now I’m in the technology space now I’m working on websites, and there’s more things at risk. Well, I forgot to tell my insurance person that and thank God, he came back to me and said, Are you still doing this? And I go, No, I’m not. He goes, Oh, well, then your cyber is very different. Your costs are gonna go down, your risks is down. I was like, Oh my God, thank you so much for identifying that I totally He forgot to tell him about that. So what are we doing to really help our clients? But also it helps us as business developers, right?
Jeremy Streten [15:09]
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s what it’s all about at the end of the day. So I think you do get stuck in the niche, as I said earlier, all the lawyers in the world a great technicians of what they do, and there’s been this big push to specialize, which I get the business case for doing that. I understand what what it is, but then, at the end of the day, it does actually hurt the client long term, because they can’t get that kind of advice. So that’s why this tool and what we’ve built and why we’re build what we’ve built, because we want to say, Okay, I’m an IP lawyer, I might not understand contracts or bringing on employees or outs or any of that stuff, but I can help my client by by providing this this assessment. And then we can work out whether you’re in a bigger law firm, is there someone else in the team that can that can do the work? If you’re not Who is it in your network that can actually help out because people want that trusted advisor. Now, as you said, Now, more than ever, as life gets more complicated, they want that trusted advisor who can really understand them, and guide them through the process.
Jordan Ostroff [16:10]
legalese marketing is not your traditional marketing vendor. Instead, we’re a true fractional cmo that helps you save time and spend your money the right way to build a practice of your dreams. We help through the entire process, from customizing your intake system to driving leads, and even getting more reviews afterwards, schedule your free call at legalese marketing.com.
Steve Fretzin [16:33]
Stuff tell everyone what money Penny does for law firms
Stephanie Vaughn Jones [16:37]
where the call handling and life to experts and Moneypenny receptionist can ensure that your calls are directed to the right person seamlessly saving you time and money. Steve, did you know that 69% of people don’t like to leave a voicemail?
Steve Fretzin [16:50]
I did not know that. That’s a lot of business going away right there. Let’s cut to the chase. What are you prepared to do for my listeners?
Stephanie Vaughn Jones [16:57]
We’re offering an exclusive two week free trial. If you’re interested in hearing more, you can call me directly on 470-534-8846. I mentioned that you’ve heard this ad on Steve’s podcast.
Steve Fretzin [17:10]
Very cool. Thanks. Well, there’s two points I want to make to add on to this Jeremy. And I think we can take our conversation from there fairly easily. Number one is that when you identify areas of legal work that you don’t do, and you don’t need, let’s say you’re a solo, or let’s say you’re at a, you know, a small firm that only handles a certain type of work. You have all these other lawyers that you can farm that work out to and refer them and get the credit meaning meaning you’re doing them a solid, you’re getting them work. And obviously you want to qualify the junk out of them to make sure that they’re good, and they’re gonna make you look good. But then when it comes to the next referral that they need to pass out, it’s going to come your way. And lawyers aren’t thinking strategically about the future. But that’s a great way to do it feed out in that gets fed back. That’s number one. The second is are you a lawyer, are you a counselor now in the States, a lawyer is someone that handles the legal work a counselor for mine, this is maybe just my definition, I don’t have it pulled up on the screen is someone that acts as the business advisor for that company, even if you’re only handling one area. But if you they think of you as their counselor, my father was that way, right? Everyone thought of Larry as the counselor, because he was the consistently Arey of the of the mafia. Now, he was a kind of, you know, he was the he was the main guy, they called for everything that they needed. And if he couldn’t do it, he would find someone to do it. But they always call Larry first. So I think that that is something that can deck can separate a lawyer from the other lawyers if they’re in a position to not only feed out more business, but also, you know, asking more questions to identify how to be more well rounded as it relates to how they service their clients.
Jeremy Streten [18:50]
I think that’s that’s an excellent point, Steve. And I think that the lawyers Yeah, I know from building my own law practice and the hundreds of lawyers that I’ve dealt with over the years, that they that most work comes from referrals, that comes from the relationships that you build, whether it be real estate, you know, real estate lawyers, real estate agents, or accountants or whatever. So lawyers are another source of that we do that. So my law firm, I’m not really involved anymore in it, and with my business partner is pivoted to property law. So he’s gone to like family lawyers, he’s gone to personal injury lawyers, he’s gone to law firms that specialize in another niche. And so if you’ve got that work, send it our way, and we’ll send you the work that way. And it’s a great way of doing it because of the specialization. There is so much opportunity that is missed by not realizing that the lawyers have the clients because how many times and I know that a lot of lawyers listen to this podcast, just think about this. How many times have someone come to you with a problem that you can’t answer? And that you felt I wish I could answer that government or worse, you’ve tried to answer it. And then you’ve thought about that again? Oh, I should. I shouldn’t. Yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing.
Steve Fretzin [20:00]
But you know,
Jeremy Streten [20:01]
yeah. Because and that’s not a problem, because you’re just trying to help the person. Yeah, right. But you can help them in a better way. As you said before, if you can say, Steve doesn’t know, I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m talking about. But Steve knows what he’s talking about. So go and talk to go and talk to Steve. So building those relationships, not only helps your clients, but as you said, it then helps build that relationship with the other lawyer who will then refer work back to you. And it’s a huge gap in our legal market, I think that people need to
Steve Fretzin [20:33]
feel. So let me I’ve got, I’ve got an answer to the question, but I’m gonna get your answer first, if you’re if you’re open to it, and maybe maybe you’ve already given it, but if a lawyer is dealing with a client, and that client has a business that has a lot of moving parts, so you’ve got real estate, finance, tax, IP, it’s got labor and employment, I mean, there’s all practice areas are covered for a business, that’s 10 20 Million and above, what’s the approach to do cross marketing? Because I think a lot of lawyers are, in fact, I know, a lot of lawyers are uncomfortable with approaching their clients, with, Hey, I know you give me this. And we talk about, you know, particular area all the time. But I want to ask you about everything else. And that’s just not a comfortable approach, which I get, because it’s sort of out of nowhere, do you have an approach that that you recommend, or something that would help to kind of bring that out?
Jeremy Streten [21:23]
I think the first thing I’d say there’s many ways to be right. And, you know, there’s many different circumstances that you need to think through, and really the reaction to the client, but the way that I think of it is it’s, you’ve always got to think about what’s in it for them. So in any in anything that you do, in any interaction that you have with your client, or anything, any interaction that you have with, with the other lawyers or whoever, you always got to think about what’s in it for them. Because by human nature, we don’t do things unless we see what’s in it for us. As much as people think even if you’re doing things from a purely altruistic, altruistic point of view, you’re doing that because you want to get the good feeling out of that. So really thinking through what’s in it for the client in doing that, why, what’s the benefit? And the main benefit is reducing their legal risk. Because there are lots of unknown unknowns out there in the world. There’s lots of things that they don’t know, and you don’t know that they don’t know. And so really understanding and explaining to them that there are these unknown unknowns, that as as a business owner, you’re not going to know what they are as your lawyer. I don’t know what you don’t know. And I can’t make an assumption that you know, everything. So let’s sit down and work out. What is it that we need to do that? And where are your legal risks, because that way you prevent problems from occurring in the future. Right, that’s a general way that I don’t as I said, there’s many ways to be right, though, depending on the circumstances, and
Steve Fretzin [22:48]
I’ll give you the best way to be right now. I’m just getting ready chair. So again, I’m teaching you know, cross marketing, I would say more than just about anything, is like a pile of money sitting on a table. And lawyers are walking around it all day. And mainly, it’s because they don’t have the right approach, especially lawyers at a full service firm. You know, almost I want to say For shame, but I’m not going to because I’m a nice guy. But it’s like you’re not helping your client, you’re not helping your firm and you’re not helping your own originations. Because you you’re not getting up the gumption or, or taking the right angle or attitude to get it done. So here’s what I try to say, is use a third party story or example. So if I’m talking to you, Jeremy, you’re my client. And you know, you’re a $30 million manufacturer, I’m a lawyer, and I handle let’s say, your labor and employment, okay. And I could say, you know, we’re talking about whatever I go, you know, Jeremy, I just want to bring this up to bring it to your attention. I’ve had a lot of clients recently come to me, similar business to yours that are identifying a bunch of different areas have risks that they don’t even know or, you know, they’re either coming to me, or I’m identifying them. And I’m not able to necessarily handle them all with Mike, but I’d love to ask you some questions, and just make sure you’re properly protected. Is that okay? I want to make you know, you and I are friends. At this point, I want to make sure you’re alright. You say sure. And then I’m gonna pick the three areas around Labor and Employment that are most closely aligned, which is people, mainly people problems, right. So then that could be real estate. That could be maybe estate planning could be partnership agreements, it could be, you know, ar, whatever it is, you know, collections, whatever. I think that manufacturers main issues might be outside of the traditional labor and employment that we talk about. And so that’s an easy way to get that approach. And to get that conversation going without it being maybe as uncomfortable as just starting to ask them random questions or having them to even if they’re going to take your test, which I think is phenomenal. There needs to be some approach or setup that’s going to get the client comfortable with what’s actually going on.
Jeremy Streten [24:53]
Oh, absolutely. And every lawyer will have a bunch of examples of where clients didn’t do this stuff. And it’s cause them huge problems. I’ve done speaking engagements all over Australia, in the UK, over the US. And every time I talk about those stories that I mentioned earlier about the million dollars, and the $2 million lawyers come up to me, they feel like it’s a big secret. And they come up to me and they say, Jeremy, Jeremy, I had that too. And I’m like, That I know. And I And yeah, and it’s just amazing, is just see that this is a, an endemic problem, because people don’t want to get it get advice. And so I think that’s a, that’s a great approach. And I think anyone listening to this, you know, look for those opportunities, and try out these different approaches. And different approaches will work with different clients test it out, and and you’ll find you’ll get a good return on I mean,
Steve Fretzin [25:44]
I’m gonna I’m gonna throw one more just because I’m feeling I’m feeling like a giver today. Ask about their business, ask about what next year looks like for them, what’s the growth look like? And they say, Oh, we’re going to expand into three more locations, while you’re handling labor and employment, three more locations, more people, right? More problems, more real estate, right? More, maybe there’s tax, maybe there’s land, maybe there’s all kinds of stuff. So what’s going on in your business? What’s next year look like? What kind of challenges are you having that maybe we don’t normally talk about, I’d love to hear kind of what’s going on in your world. And again, it opens up doors, and it’s a potential three way win a win for you on the origination a win for your client on avoiding risk and getting maybe better representation, and a win for other partners that your firm or your referral partners that are gonna be getting the business to actually handle those, those matters. So I’m exhausted Jeremy.
Jeremy Streten [26:38]
No, one of the great bands, isn’t most business owners don’t get to talk about their business. And because most most business owners in their network and their family and their friends don’t have other business owners, and I love talking about business. And so if you’d be that person that they can talk to about business, that that trust factor, that we talk about the trusted advisor and building that that know like and trust, just skyrockets if you have that conversation, and a lot of times lawyers, especially when they charge on time, they don’t see the big aha, that’s taking away my time from doing other things, is just building the trust and the relationship with that client that’s going to pay you back in spades if you do it properly, and do it often enough.
Steve Fretzin [27:19]
Awesome, Jeremy, so let me ask you, if people want to get your book, people want to engage you or they want to give that test that you created to their clients that might identify areas of cross marketing areas of risk. What are the kind of the digits? What are the best ways for them to find all that?
Jeremy Streten [27:37]
Yeah, great. And so as a thank you for having me on the show, we’ve put together a page. So if the listeners go to business, legal lifecycle.com/be, that lawyer, they will, they will have the OCR page, or they can get a 50% discount on the test. So it’s about $50, a little bit less than that. And they’ll get they’ll be able to take the test, they’ll be able to see the benefits that it has, I recommend for lawyers that are listening, if you want to take it that you do it for one of your big clients, what you think the answer is, might be to really see the benefits of what you do. Because if you do it for yourself, you’ve probably got most of the things already sorted out. We used to tell them to do i Sorry, I said we help. We hope Yeah, I used to tell tell the lawyers to do it for themselves. But I found that they get more benefit out of doing it for for their client. Or
Steve Fretzin [28:24]
maybe maybe maybe maybe pick a client that you’re like really close with and say, Hey, I got this test, I thought it was really interesting, I want to do it with you just to see what happens. And just like do it with a friend client, that’s your body. And then that’s an easy way to test it out. And if you like it, it might be something that you do with on a more regular basis with your other clients. So we’ll put that in the show notes, Jeremy as well. So people have that ready to go if they want to give that a shot.
Jeremy Streten [28:47]
Yeah, and there’s lots of other resources on our website. You can reach out to us if you if you’re interested in knowing more. If people are interested in following me. I’m very active on LinkedIn, I can search for my name on LinkedIn, Jeremy threatened the way that I spell it s t r e t, and I’m the only one that I’ve found on the internet so far, that has that has that name. So you’ll find me pretty easily on LinkedIn as well.
Steve Fretzin [29:08]
Awesome, man, and the game changing book that you gave me just kind of wrapping things up is Good to Great by Jim Collins, which is just an oldie but a goodie. Yeah, from what 20 years ago probably right?
Jeremy Streten [29:19]
Yes. I think it’s about 20 years ago, all his all his stuff is great. Yeah. When you asked that question, I was like thinking through all the books at the end of the day. That’s a that’s probably his, I think his most seminal work that really helps you build a great company. There’s another one beyond entrepreneurship 2.0, which he just recently re released. That is, I would say very close second to that night.
Steve Fretzin [29:42]
Well, thanks again for being on the show and sharing your wisdom and helping us kind of talk this out together. I think what you’re doing is very important. I think it’s noble. I think you’re trying to help a community, not only the business owners to identify you know where their issues might be in the life cycle. but also the lawyers that service them and I think it’s a great, great fit for everybody on that on that on that
Jeremy Streten [30:05]
end. Thank you so much. And that way they can build a great lifestyle at the same time.
Steve Fretzin [30:09]
There we go. And that’s the next book Jeremy is going to be running everybody is about the legal lifestyle. I just see disco balls and 80s music I’m not sure why I’m just a creature of the 80s But thanks again Jeremy.
Jeremy Streten [30:22]
Thanks so much, Dave.
Steve Fretzin [30:23]
Hey everybody, thank you for spending some time with us today on be that lawyer lucky you know another opportunity to learn and continue to improve your law practice. Hopefully you got a couple of good takeaways ideas and certainly take Jeremy up on his kind offer to get a free a free test or assessment. Just check out the show notes. And it’s all about being that lawyer someone who’s competent organized a skilled Rainmaker. Take care everybody be safe be well, we’ll talk again soon.
Narrator [30:52]
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 notice