In this episode, Steve Fretzin, Tim Semelroth, Casey Grabenstein, and Neil Dishman discuss:
- Treating business development as essential
- Using systems and empowering teams
- Building a culture of growth
- Learning through resilience and honesty
Key Takeaways:
- Integrating business development into daily routines and tracking it like billable work ensures steady growth. Making it non-negotiable builds consistency and prevents unpredictable cycles.
- Leveraging CRM tools, spreadsheets, and point systems keeps outreach organized and accountable. Involving junior lawyers in relationships and strategy builds future rainmakers.
- Firms that reward, support, and normalize business development create sustainable success. Encouragement at every level strengthens engagement and results.
- Focusing on process over outcome turns setbacks into lessons and maintains momentum. Honest communication and reflection foster better relationships and continuous improvement.
“For me, making myself feel satisfied that I’ve put in enough in that week to get good results, and then not worrying about whether the results come in… Try to stop worrying about the results and focus on the process is the best that I can do.” — Casey Grabenstein
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About Tim Semelroth: Tim Semelroth is Iowa’s only board-certified truck accident attorney and a partner at RSH Legal. With over 25 years of experience, he provides trusted expertise in trucking litigation and collaborates with attorneys statewide and beyond. Known for his strategic approach and commitment to fairness, Tim offers consultation to help chart the best course for complex truck accident cases.
Connect with Tim Semelroth:
Website: https://www.timsemelroth.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsemelroth/
About Casey Grabenstein: Casey Grabenstein is a litigation partner at Saul Ewing LLP, handling complex commercial disputes and class actions involving securities, consumer fraud, and ERISA. He also advises clients in the cannabis and litigation funding industries, serving as both due diligence and primary counsel. A frequent writer and speaker, Casey brings deep insight into emerging issues in litigation finance and commercial law.
Connect with Casey Grabenstein:
Website: https://www.saul.com/professionals/casey-grabenstein
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-grabenstein-a375094/
About Neil H. Dishman: Neil H. Dishman is a principal at Jackson Lewis P.C. in Chicago, where he helps employers prevent and resolve workplace disputes. His practice spans discrimination, retaliation, and wage-hour compliance, with extensive experience across multiple industries. A sought-after speaker and published author, Neil is known for his practical guidance on employment law and risk management.
Connect with Neil H. Dishman:
Website: https://www.jacksonlewis.com/people/neil-h-dishman
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsemelroth/
Email: [email protected]
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Instagram: @fretzinsteve
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: [email protected]
Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Steve Fretzin [00:00]
Hey everybody. Steve Fretzin here, and if you’re ready to take things the next level, you’re going to want to check out my new show, future rainmakers. This is where I’m sharing quick, powerful tips to grow your law practice faster and smarter. Check it out today. Listen. Give us a kind review. But for now, enjoy the show.
Narrator [00:20]
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 [00:42]
Hey everybody. Welcome back. Steve Fretzin and the be that lawyer podcast. We are here twice a week to make sure that you are that lawyer, confident, organized in a skilled Rainmaker. This is another episode of Be that lawyer live, three amazing attorneys that are just rocked it. If you didn’t hear the last episode, you’re going to want to go back and check that out from a couple days ago. But we’ve got Tim Semelroth. He’s grabbing Dean Stein, haha, gotcha. And Neil Dishman here with us today. Let’s just take a couple seconds just to go back and remind everybody where you’re located, what you’re up to, what makes you so wonderful, Tim.
Tim Semelroth [01:14]
My name is Tim Semelroth. I’m a personal injury lawyer from Iowa. My firm, RSH legal, is the largest Injury and Disability firm in the state.
Steve Fretzin [01:24]
Fantastic. Casey.
Casey Grabenstein [01:25]
Hey, I’m Casey Grabenstein. I am a partner at Saul Ewing, a firm of about 400 attorneys. I’m based in Chicago. I focus on commercial litigation.
Steve Fretzin [01:36]
Fantastic. And Neil.
Neil Dishman [01:37]
Hi everyone. Neil Dishman, with Jackson Lewis, our business here is helping employers handle disputes with their employees. So I defend employers from all sorts of employee legal claims and lawsuits. Also give advice, typically, to HR professionals proactively on employee relations issues, hopefully avoid those lawsuits in the first place. Our firms nationwide are one of the biggest firms in the country that specializes just in Labor and Employment Law. I sit in our Chicago office.
Steve Fretzin [01:59]
Fantastic, and we’ve got a live panel here, live folks here listening. If you’ve got a Q and A question you want to ask, feel free to chime in and ask any question to this wonderful panel. Otherwise, guess what, I’ve got a bunch of great questions planned, so let’s start off and jump right in and get going. So all right, the big challenge is, you guys are busy lawyers. All right, you’ve got you know matters, and you’ve got employees and you’ve got all this stuff going, and by the way, you also have families and things to do. So how do you balance the client work with all the consistent with being consistent in business development, especially when time is tight, and we’re going to start with Neil.
Neil Dishman [02:34]
So one of the things that’s really helpful for me, both in terms of a mindset and a tool for this, is to plan out and put your business development activities on the same par with your billable work. So make plans, set deadlines for yourself. I’ll give you just one example. So one thing I do as part of my business development plan every year is I try once a month to get back in touch with someone I haven’t heard from in a long time. Okay, might be a client I did work for three years ago and haven’t heard from. Might be a potential client that I pitched business to a year ago and didn’t get it. But I want to check in and see how things are going and if there’s a new opportunity there, whatever. Right? So I think this is like a dormant contact once a month. I want to pick one and just get in touch with that person and see if they’re willing to have a conversation. So what I do is I pick a specific day every month. I don’t remember what it is. Let’s call it the second Thursday of every month, and I put that in the same system that I use to track all of my litigation deadlines, right? So on the second Tuesday, whatever of every month, first thing in the morning, when I pop open My Computer and see what do I have to do today, I’m going to see, oh, okay, this brief is due today. Oh, we got to get back to this client about the documents they didn’t get to us. And today is the day every month that I need to pick out a dormant client and contact that person. If you make business development a well, I’ll do it when I have time, right? Or let me get all my billable work done first, and then I’ll do it. You’ll never do it, right? So you got to put them on par with each other, yeah,
Steve Fretzin [04:00]
it’s like exercise, right? We need to make time for it. It just doesn’t happen. There’s other things that I’d rather do than go to Pilates, right? And you’d rather do than go for a run. And, you know, running for some people feels great. For me, it would be torture. So we have to make the time. Tim, how about on your end?
Tim Semelroth [04:14]
Well, I think that the you have to have different stages in terms of how you balance it. So for example, when you’re a younger lawyer, obviously you’re developing your skills, and so maybe or you’re working on cases to get that experience. But then as you advancing your career, I think you need to set aside more and more time for client development, because hopefully you’re building a firm that has other great lawyers at it. And so when I represent somebody in a case, I can help one person, but when I spend time on client development or marketing for my firm, I can potentially help 10 people, because I have 10 lawyers back at the office who can do the work. And so it’s been an evolution for me. And so if you look at. How much time I was spending when I was 10 years out, versus now 27 years out, a lot more of it is on client development. Awesome.
Casey Grabenstein [05:08]
Casey, yeah, I think you got to make it non negotiable. And even if you’ve got a long day, you’ve got to find an hour, you’ve got to find 30 minutes, to make this an important part of your job, on par with other things. As Neil said, I really think this, to me, is the danger zone. Just based on talking with others, with Mentees and other folks within my firm, it seems that, you know, people have good intentions, but when they’re faced with a bunch of depositions hearings, they say, I’ll deal with that. When that fire is put out, and then you blink, and four weeks later, nothing has happened. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. And you I think you have to fight against that inclination to put things off. That’s what I’ve seen, yeah.
Steve Fretzin [05:54]
And I think what ends up resulting is this roller coaster of busy, slow, busy, slow, from a business development perspective, right? You have lots of things going on, and then you got nothing going on. You’re like, back to zero again, and you got to keep so I think it’s if you’re going 80 miles an hour down the highway, don’t stop, right? Just maybe slow down to 30 for a couple of weeks. Get through the trial, get through something, and then maybe you’re back up to speed. It’s hard to do this stuff, too, without systems or without tools to keep you organized and accountable for follow up and outreach. And, you know, Neil’s point about reaching out to one person a month. Tim, what’s your take on how you keep organized and accountable to do business development and get results from it?
Tim Semelroth [06:32]
Well, I feel like we keep going back to, you know, time blocking so that you’re spending time on it every week, every month, keeping track of your numbers, you know, so making sure that you know where your cases are coming from, what the value of your cases are, so you can budget time accordingly. But the thing that I think has been really helpful for me are just simple tactics that just combine the two. So for example, at our firm, we pay referral fees for several types of personal injury cases, and so a policy that we implemented this past year is we want to hand out as many of those checks in person as possible. So when the check is cut, the bookkeeper notifies the lawyer who is working on the case and says, Okay, when are you going to schedule your time to go hand deliver this check, and that really helps us to consistently. You know when you’re taking the time to schedule that it gets done because you know they want their check, and so you’re going to make time, even if it’s after work or first thing in the morning, to stop by and give it to them.
Steve Fretzin [07:37]
It’s almost like it’s more than just systems for you, it’s like policies, like you’ve got policies about how you’re going to do things and get everybody bought into it, which I think is missing from a lot of firms that understand what true client services and impact input policies in place to ensure that those kinds of things happen. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Casey, how about on your end? Yeah.
Casey Grabenstein [07:59]
I think I talked about this on the last episode, so I’ll try not to repeat too much of it. But I have an outreach program where I sort of score myself using points, and it’s a weekly system, so if kind of going back to the last topic. So if there’s something pressing going on a deposition early in the week that takes me away from business development, I will spend the latter part of the week really focused on it and trying to get to that, you know, that threshold that makes me feel like I’ve given everything I can to business development this week. And so that system has worked really well for me, for avoiding kind of the danger zone that we’re talking about with the last question.
Steve Fretzin [08:35]
But there’s another system that you didn’t mention that I believe you have. And unless you tell me I’m wrong, you have like lists of people too. You have like lists of tar of like potential clients. You have lists of your relationships, like you’re not working, like standing in front of your computer. Oh, yeah, no, I call today like you’ve got it really laid out. Yeah.
Casey Grabenstein [08:53]
I have a running list. It’s actually open on my computer right now. And pull
Steve Fretzin [08:58]
it up so we can all see it.
Casey Grabenstein [09:01]
I keep it open all day long, and I am constantly updating it and writing myself little notes. It’s numbered. It’s, you know, I won’t tell you the methodology for the numbering, but it’s, it helps me focus on who’s who haven’t I not reached out to in a while, and I’m always writing ideas and thoughts into this document and trying to keep those relationships, you know, front front of mine,
Steve Fretzin [09:21]
I have a software called lawmatics that you know, many lawyers know about. And I have all of my a clients in a list. I have all my B clients in a list, all my C clients in a list. I’m not going to tell you what each of those represent. You can maybe do the math and figure it out, but you know what it does. It allows me to outreach them as a group. If there’s, you know, 101 group and 50 in another. 50 in another, lawmatics allows me to automate outreach, outreach to them separately and just but the idea that you have either some kind of pipeline management, some kind of, you know, Excel spreadsheet, I don’t really care. It’s just it without having lists in front of us of the people that are important to us, I think it’s hard to keep up, and it makes. Sure that we, Steve, that keep that outreach consistent. So Neil, how about you?
Neil Dishman [10:05]
Let me seize on a word you just used there. Steve, pipeline, I keep a document that I call my sales and business development pipeline, which is, it’s a very rudimentary Excel spreadsheet that just lists. I refresh it every kind of redo it every year, but for the year potential clients that I’m working on, bringing in right now. Here’s ones I already closed this year. Here’s ones that I pursued but didn’t get and it’s come to a close. These are ones that I drove to know, as you would say, right? So, and it’s something that I just look at every week or two. So, I mean, I also keep a list of all the matters that I’m working on, like billable cases, and once every week or two, I spend, you know, 30 minutes just going down the list, making sure I’m not missing anything on each one of those cases. And when I do that, I do the same thing with my pipeline. So it’s never going to be more than, you know, a week or two, three weeks, if I’m super busy, where I spend a minute thinking about each one of my prospects and making sure I’m advancing it.
Steve Fretzin [10:58]
Yeah, and I think, you know you all as rainmakers. You’re looking out for yourselves, in a way, because you know that you’re under this umbrella of the firm. And Tim, in your case, you’re kind of running the show. But there are people, and I know Neil, you know, like Allison is a great example. Like that. Have worked with you and alongside you. How are you empowering people that are up and comers? This is a question from Sheldon, you know, empowering, you know, junior lawyers to start developing their own law practices, their own books of business, because I think they stay they’re the ones that have the work pushed down on them in many cases, and it’s very challenging to kind of get out of that and get out and do the things that you three have been very successful doing. Tim, how about you want to start us off
Tim Semelroth [11:41]
on this? Well, actually, we started a new initiative this in q4 we called them Tim talks, and so every lawyer in the firm has to book an hour with me once a month, and we go over cases that they settled, and you know whether or not those clients or clients that we want to get testimonials from, or attorneys that they’ve interacted with, who either have referred us a case or maybe will refer us a case. And then should they be moved up to? Should they be on our newsletter? Should they be on our mavens list? And but then what we try to do is one of the hardest things, I think, when you’re a busy younger lawyer, is create content for, you know, print content or video content. And so we just click Record. These are virtual meetings. And I say, tell me something that you’ve had to tell more than one client this month and or tell me something that the insurance industry did that, you know, you thought was mistreating your client this month. And so we try to identify, like, three different things that we get video of, and then we sit down with our marketing team and figure out, Is this a good LinkedIn post? Is it a good YouTube clip? What can we do with this so that, so that we’re extracting this information out of them as painlessly as possible, but at the same time, it’s them, right? We’re promoting them. It’s not me talking, it’s all these lawyers talking based upon their experiences. Yeah, man,
Steve Fretzin [13:13]
I’ve interviewed a lot of people, Tim, including you, and I’ve not heard of anyone really doing that before, so I want to give you some credit. That’s a fantastic idea, and what a great way to lift them up, but also to get content right, have them put out content and things they never would have done on their own, and you’re bringing it to the forefront. So really, really amazing. Casey, how about you? You’ve got people under you that are looking up to you, going, Wow, I wish I was that guy.
Casey Grabenstein [13:35]
Yeah, it’s such a great question and such an interesting topic. I really try to bring the people that I want to mentor and I care about, I try to bring them into the relationships that I have, and bring them into the conversations, bring them in to get to know them. And you know, honestly, it’s it helps me as much as it helps them, because now you have another person that really cares about this relationship, that’s really cares about the client, that’s willing to answer the phone, maybe late at night, when they wouldn’t do that if they weren’t brought into the fold. And so it’s something really important to me. I don’t know if this applies to everyone, you know, listening in or every law firm is structured differently, but we have a, you know, a credit system in our firm. And so something I like to do with people that I’m trying to bring along and into these relationships is that I will start to share credit for that relationship. And again, it helps me, because that person will take ownership of the relationship, and they will, they’ll do a great job. And I think that’s a way to have someone have ownership that’s a little bit younger and feel like they, you know, it’s their client, too. And so that’s paid dividends for me, and I think it’s helped people along the way. So I I’m a big fan of trying to do stuff like that well, and
Steve Fretzin [14:47]
they get to watch how you operate. I think there’s a lot of mentors on the legal side, but not as many mentors on the business development and relationship side, and people that can just watch you operate. Can you. Pick up a lot and understand like this is, you know, I’m not Casey. I’ve got to do it my own way, but I’m watching what this guy’s doing and how effective it is, and I need to start being more like Casey. So Neil,
Neil Dishman [15:11]
I’m totally aligned with Casey on this, and I want to amplify his point a little bit for younger lawyers out there, a couple of really important things to think about in terms of what firm you work at and want to work at is, number one, does your firm encourage, not just allow, but encourage associates to work on business development? And number two, does it have the credit and origination and so forth system set up in such a way that incentivizes and rewards it? So like Casey’s firm, I’m very fortunate. So I spent my entire career at Jackson Lewis. I started here as a summer associate, actually, and I’m very fortunate that from day one, not only has the firm encouraged young lawyers, back when I was young, to develop business, but we have a credit system set up in the right way for that. So like Casey, I try to have a sidekick for every one of my clients of any significance. Sometimes they come in later. Sometimes they’re right there with me on the pitch when we’re trying to get the client in the door in the first place. But our firm is set up in such a way that there’s a particular kind of credit for that that I can give them that will help them develop their career, will help them make partner, right? It’s one of the key metrics for them to make partner. I’m amazed at how many lateral Associates we hire that come from firms that are the opposite of this, like we hire sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, year associates that have never spent a minute trying to develop business before, because the firm they came from either didn’t encourage it or actively discouraged it in some cases, or it was pointless, because the way the firm was set up, you know, if you worked with a partner like The partner just got all the credit, right? So think hard about the firm that you’re at and whether it’s best for your long term development. Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [16:47]
I mean, if the culture is good and the comp is fair, and they’ve got an open system right, where everybody kind of can see the future and where they’re going, then it really is up to the junior lawyer to have the motivation and the interest to develop business, and one of the reasons I don’t work with law firms anymore is because they give me 10 or 12 or 15 people to work with. Three of them were highly motivated, and 10 weren’t, and so I’m teaching them, and they all had a great experience, and I’m thrilled about that, but I also care about results, and if you don’t have people motivated to learn and motivated to step up and ask tough questions and figure out how to get out there the right way, develop a plan. And if you go to Neil and you say, hey, Neil, I want to get out there, can you help me develop a plan? I don’t think there’s a bone in Neil’s body that would say, No, Go screw yourself or anything, right? He’s going to be like, I’m so glad that you asked. And how can I I think Neil, at some point you were like, doing associate training, right, with, like, a huge group,
Neil Dishman [17:43]
yeah, I did. I’ve done, I’m in the middle now of doing my second project at our firm of a national business development training, okay, just for associates, but in particular for associates, yeah?
Steve Fretzin [17:52]
So talk about, you know, drinking the lemonade and then, you know, sharing it with everybody in the firm, right? So there’s a lot of ways to empower, but I’m going to come back to say, you know, do your best to open up the doors and then see if they walk through or not. That’s really up to them. To, you know, want to make that move. Hey, everybody, as you know, one of the biggest challenges that law firms and lawyers face is hiring many attorneys. Know they need help, a virtual assistant, paralegal, legal secretary, but just don’t have the time to find and vet the right person. Well, that’s where hirearelegals.com comes in. They do all the heavy lifting, pre vetting top candidates who are in your time zone and ready to work. Firms save hundreds of hours every year and can hire for as little as 2000 per month. And for be that lawyer listeners like you, you’re going to get 500 off your first hire when you visit hire paralegals.com and use the promo code Steve with proven SEO and digital marketing strategies that drive actual clients to your firm. Rankings.io. Prides itself on proof, not promises, mentality. The best firms hire rankings.io. When they want rankings, traffic and cases, other law firm marketing agencies can’t deliver. Get more rankings, get cases and schedule a free [email protected] today. Hey everybody. It’s Steve Fretzin as the you know, I’m the host of the be that lawyer podcast, and if you’re serious about growing your law practice, let’s talk. I’ve coached hundreds of attorneys to build bigger books of business without selling chasing or wasting time. This isn’t a sales pitch. It’s a real 30 minute strategy session to explore what’s possible for you in your practice. Just head over to fretzin.com and grab a time that works for you, and let’s make this your breakout year. Look, there’s a big difference between lawyers who bring in business and those who don’t from a career perspective, right? And I think this is a great sort of add on to the whole Junior Senior Partner conversation we just had. What’s the difference in your minds about the career trajectory of a service partner? And I don’t mean this to be obvious, but maybe you can give a little color around it about, you know, someone that’s a service. Service Partner versus someone who’s actively pursuing business Casey, what are you seeing out there, and what’s the point to be made for someone to be a rainmaker?
Casey Grabenstein [20:09]
Yeah, I mean, I’ll talk about it a little bit. I think maybe from the firm, larger firm perspective. I mean, I think one thing that I realized at a certain point was that, you know, if I have my own book of business, I have control of my career, and I can choose to leave a firm and join another firm. I haven’t done that. All I’ve only done at once, but I realized that if I’m not doing that, I’m kind of beholden to the Rainmaker or, you know, staying and if he goes or she goes, then I’m out of luck. So I think control is the biggest thing. Control of your own destiny, control of your own careers. Maybe that’s an obvious point, but that’s the biggest difference
Steve Fretzin [20:47]
for me. Yeah. How about you? Tim,
Tim Semelroth [20:49]
so in the personal injury space, you’re going to handle a number of cases, probably more cases than you would as a commercial litigator. And so the thing is, is that if you don’t start rain making bring in cases, then you’re always going to do the cases that the other people in your firm don’t want to do. So from a standpoint of the, I guess, of satisfaction and enjoyment of your career, the more that you can attract cases, the better pick of cases you’re going to get, and you’ll probably be happier and be more successful.
Steve Fretzin [21:25]
Well, isn’t there also something in the compensation model for people bringing in business?
Tim Semelroth [21:30]
Oh, sure, yeah, sure, there’s, yeah, you’re always if you you know, if you have your pick of the cases, then you’re going to be picking cases that make more money, and obviously that’s going to be mean more money to you too, but I just think, you know, I mean, some clients are hard to work with, and if, if you know that, you’ve got plenty of work to do, you don’t have to take those problem clients, you can pass those on down.
Steve Fretzin [21:55]
Yeah, and it’s, you know, I’m interviewing a lot of attorneys to work with me on a monthly basis, and I always ask, what’s their motivation, and why would you want to invest in yourself to be in a program? And number one answer on the board is always control. Second one is independence, and then maybe third is financial freedom, or financial side of it, it’s never, rarely first. So I think lawyers are starting to pick up on the idea that while being a service partner might be easier because business development is hard and it takes time and effort and energy. There’s also a downside. Neil, what’s your spin?
Neil Dishman [22:27]
I’m going to amplify Casey’s point a little bit here. Forgive me, one kind of scare story on this. We’ll talk about when this goes badly. So I know a guy who’s he’s in the same business as me. He’s a Labor and Employment defense side attorney. We’ve never worked at the same firm, but known him for years. He started his career at a small local boutique, made partner there, then the boutique got bought by a huge general practice firm. Couple years later, the rainmakers of this original group left and went to another firm and took him and their whole team with them. They all moved to another firm, and then a few years later, they moved again, but this time they didn’t have room for my buddy. For whatever reason, they couldn’t make the deal work out to bring him along, and so he got left behind at now this third firm that he’s ever worked for. He was probably 1215, years out of law school at that point, and I had a really difficult conversation with him over lunch one day where he said to me, like, I don’t know what to do. Like, I know I’m a good lawyer. I know my stuff. I can handle cases. I’m good with clients, but I don’t have any business, and the people that feed me all day just left, right. Look, it ended up okay. He landed on his feet, but that’s the kind of position that you expose yourself to if you don’t take the time to develop business if you kind of settle for being a service partner, that means you’re always dependent on someone else to feed you, and if that person can’t keep feeding you for some reason now, you’re in trouble.
Steve Fretzin [23:51]
Yeah, really, really. And I’ve got a friend similar who was in house for many years, and he and I have had some tough conversations. And I didn’t mention him, obviously, by name, but I did social media posts he got really mad at me, but it’s, it’s look, we know we need people making widgets. It’s just, that’s just the reality of it. However, if you stay in widget manufacturing, your whole life, your whole career, you know, I would question, you know, how good of a life and how good of a career, and that is having a job versus having a career, having a real entrepreneurial experience. So really good information and insights from the three of you. We got a couple more minutes. You know, there are times when things get slow. There are times where you might lose an opportunity, where you thought you were going to get it, it was going to make your year. How do you guys deal with whether we want to call it rejection, or whether we call it, you know, someone going a different direction, or whatever? Direction, or whatever we want to call it, it hurts, and I know it hurts the psyche of the business developer when those kinds of things don’t always come through the way we want them to. Casey, how do you handle it when things just don’t go your way?
Casey Grabenstein [24:54]
Yeah, it’s a great question. I struggle with this issue. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I think you. Especially difficult when you think you’re the perfect fit for something and it falls through for reasons that you don’t fully understand, or maybe just bad luck, you know. So for me, I think what works well is to fall back on process, you know, give myself 24 hours or so to think about or to to be sad about the issue, but then, you know, focusing on the input and all that you can control, that’s really all that you can do. So for me, getting back to the process, making my self feel satisfied that I’ve put in enough in that week to get good results, and then worrying, not worrying about whether the results come in. I guess, to answer your question, try to stop worrying about the results and focus on the process. Is the best that I can do. But it’s tough.
Steve Fretzin [25:40]
Yeah, it can hurt. I mean, one thing that I also look at is, you know, what’s my pipeline look like? You know, if I have one opportunity and I lose the one opportunity, it’s going to hurt a lot. If I have 10 opportunities, I lose one opportunity, it hurts a lot less. So I think part of it is process, and part of it is, you know, how we’re using the process to keep your pipeline filled with quality, and then it hurts a lot less when you lose one. And by the way, it also helps to know why you lost it. Like, if somebody you know doesn’t want to invest in me and themselves to work with me, and I know it’s because, you know, either they don’t want to, or because they don’t physically have the money. Like, I don’t feel bad, I’ll just be a resource and I’ll try to help them, but because I know why, it takes a lot of the sting out of it, right? Just having that information and having a honest conversation versus being ghosted or not knowing, which is, I think, where our heart goes to die in business development, some cases. Neil, how about you?
Neil Dishman [26:33]
So I read a sales book years ago that had a saying in it that has really stuck with me. The guy wrote, when you’re talking with a potential client. We are not seeking yes at all costs. What we are seeking is the truth. Yes. The truth might be yes, the truth might be No, the truth might be not now, but the goal here is to get to the truth as efficiently as you can. And that’s a freeing mindset, because, especially to your point, Steve, if you you should always have a few things in the pipeline. And so if you get to the truth, and the truth is no, well, first of all, you did your job, because you got to the truth, right? Number two, to Casey’s point, sure, let yourself be sad for a little bit. That’s perfectly normal and human, but then look at it as freeing. Right the time and energy and just kind of mental energy, emotional energy you had hung up on. I hope you get this deal. I hope I get this deal you can now put to something else in the pipeline. It’s freedom.
Steve Fretzin [27:34]
I get agreement with every new lawyer I meet with where I and you. You two know this very well that I say, look, at the end of our meeting, one of a couple things is going to happen. You know, we’re either going to decide that this is a great fit and we want to keep talking, or if it isn’t, let’s just be honest with each other and straight with each other, and we call it a day, and I’ll still be a friend and a resource. But are you open to just having, you know, just being very honest about this so we don’t have to play around and they go, that’s great. I really appreciate that. And then if I find them playing around later on, I can bring that back and say, Hey, remember, we agreed earlier we were going to just tell me what’s going on. Well, I don’t have any money. I’m, you know, 20,000 in debt. Okay, that’s great. Let me be a resource to you. Let’s try to figure out how to help you make more money, and maybe we’ll come back someday, and it just changes the entire sale. I’m a salesperson selling you something to hey, we’re going to try to figure this out together, but let’s be honest. And to your point, Neil, let’s get to the truth of it and be okay with it. And that’s just a much easier way to go into a business development relationship. So Tim, wrap us up on this point.
Tim Semelroth [28:40]
Well, I’ve always found that I learn more from my losses than I do for my wins. And so if you know if I if I don’t get a case, if I don’t get a referral, taking some time to learn about why and seeing if there’s something I could have done. But then I’ve always thought one of the blessings of being a trial lawyer is that any stinging defeat can soon be followed by a win, and so you just have to stay in the game.
Steve Fretzin [29:10]
Yeah, well, it almost sounds like that might fit into our segment of Tim’s big mistake is just learning from mistakes, especially when you don’t get a piece of business you think you should and trying to dissect it a little bit to figure out why, right? Absolutely, yeah. And again, I, I’ll always go back to, you know, having a process over winging it for just, you know, I have a process for how I dry myself when I get out of the shower. We all do. We don’t call it a process, right? Yeah, we don’t have a process for business development. It’s something that takes significant time and effort doesn’t make sense.
Neil Dishman [29:41]
Neil, I alluded to this a second ago, but no doesn’t always mean no. Sometimes no means not. Now, I talked earlier about the habit I have of every month I get in touch with a dormant contact, and like I said, sometimes that’s somebody whose business I pursued a year or two ago and didn’t get and I’ve been pleasantly surprised. At how often I can return to what was a missed opportunity at some point and all of a sudden find out that there’s an opportunity there, right? So no rarely means no forever. Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [30:12]
Amazing guys. Really appreciate it. Casey Grabenstein, Neil Dishman, Tim Semelroth, amazing job. Thank you guys so much for being on the panel sharing your wisdom today, be that lawyer. Take a moment. Thank our wonderful sponsors, rankings, io, law, her podcast, legal, verse, media, and, of course, hire paralegals. Why are you doing stuff on your own? Hire paralegal guys. So great. This is the kind of magic that should inspire people listening to you know, want to be that lawyer you guys represent in the epitome of what be that lawyer is all about, taking control, taking action, using systems, making it happen, knowing that even though you’re on the umbrella of something else, that you have to bring it every day. And so I want to thank the three of you. I want to thank our audience for listening and chiming in with some questions. We are going to stick around for just a few more minutes if you have any additional questions. But for those listening to the podcast, we are going to wrap up be that lawyer, everybody confident, organized in a skilled Rainmaker, take care, be safe, be well. We will talk again soon.
Narrator [31:13]
Thanks for listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, fredson.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.