In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Colleen Joyce discuss:
- Failing fast while managing risk
- Building a competitive legal practice intentionally
- Treating sales as listening and diagnosis
- Leading and adapting for the future of law
Key Takeaways:
- Test ideas quickly and learn from small, recoverable failures. Avoid high-stakes decisions that can jeopardize the entire business. Fast iteration builds resilience in a rapid attention and news cycle.
- Strong branding is essential in a crowded legal market. Lawyers must understand marketing and business, not just legal skills. Personal brand and visibility increasingly determine growth and opportunity.
- Effective sales begins with asking questions and listening deeply. Clients commit when they feel understood, not when they are pitched. A clear diagnosis must come before proposing solutions or pricing.
- Know your strengths and hire to cover gaps. Transparency and honesty strengthen leadership and team trust. Investing in technology, efficiency, and learning is required to stay competitive.
“I know lawyers don’t like to hear this, but they are salespeople, just like every other job.” — Colleen Joyce
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About Colleen Joyce: Colleen Joyce is the Chief Executive Officer of Lawyer.com, the leading U.S. legal directory and lawyer-matching service that connects consumers with qualified local attorneys. She has spent over a decade building and scaling Lawyer.com’s offerings, from foundational directory services to expanded products, marketing education (including CLE courses), and industry events focused on lawyer growth and digital strategy. Joyce previously served as President and Senior Vice President of Lawyer Services, developing deep expertise in management, online legal marketing, and business development before becoming CEO in 2024. Under her leadership, Lawyer.com has experienced significant growth and expanded its role in helping lawyers with client acquisition, thought leadership, and industry engagement. Joyce also brings a background in marketing and publicity from earlier roles, including directing marketing and public relations at PopStar.com, and holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois, graduating magna cum laude in liberal arts and sciences.
Connect with Colleen Joyce:
Website: http://www.lawyer.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colleenjoyce/
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]
Alert. Everybody alert. If learning, growth and coaching feels like chores, this episode may cause unexpected enthusiasm. What follows might give you confidence, direction and real momentum. All right, enough of me and enough joking around. Enjoy the show. Everybody have some fun.
Narrator [00:21]
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 [00:43]
Hey everybody. Steve Fretzin, here and welcome to the be that lawyer podcast. We are here for your listening and in some cases, viewing pleasure twice a week. You know, don’t go too far ahead until you go back. We’ve got 570 episodes of pure lawyer enjoyment for you so you can go back and you want to learn about marketing or time management or business development leadership, you can actually go to my website and just search for those things in on my website blog, and you could find that or just go through your local podcast channel. But that’s enough about that. Colleen is in the wings. How you doing good to see you. Hey, nice to see you. Excited to be here. Yeah, we met, and it was like, there’s sometimes when you meet somebody new and just like, light bulbs go off and like fireworks go off, and like flashing lights, and like, this is your new friend. Like, this is someone that you’re going to know forever and that you’re going to have a great time with. And I don’t know if you felt, maybe you’re going to tell me that you didn’t feel that way at all, but I did.
Colleen Joyce [01:37]
I love the the excitement and the chaos and who knows where it’s gonna go. Yeah, those are my favorite kind of conversations.
Steve Fretzin [01:45]
I was gonna say, Just don’t hurt my feelings. So yeah, normally I would feel that way, Steve, but not less so with you in that initial meeting. Now, Thanks for nothing. Colleen, well, listen, we’re gonna have some fun today. Yeah, it was lovely. It was lovely. Okay, that’s fair. I’ll take it. So no flashing lights and firework you know. All right, okay, all right, we’ll go with it. Hey, everybody, listen. We’ve got a great show for you today. I want to obviously jump into our quote of the show. This is a Mark Zuckerberg, whether you’re a fan or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s a good one in a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks. Awesome. Colleen, welcome to the show and tell us about that quote and why that is your quote, your mantra. You love it.
Colleen Joyce [02:30]
So we drill it down to two words, fast failure, right? You have to try. You have to fail, so that know how to succeed. So [email protected] and again, this is I use this in business and life everywhere. Try something. Don’t be afraid to take risk. Obviously you need to be cautious in what risks you’re taking, but you need to get out there. And you can’t be afraid to fail. And the faster you do it, the faster you learn. We live in a world where everything is absolutely immediate, so it’s a little bit more forgiving. You can fail and then rebound and then, well, you know what? People forget about that last failure because you’re on to the next. So I do think that there’s pluses and minuses, but you just got to get out there.
Steve Fretzin [03:16]
Being careful around the bet the farm company life. You know, failures, but most of most people’s failures are small. They’re trying out a new infomercial, and it doesn’t take right? Or they’re trying a new provider for a particular service, and they didn’t do what they said they were going to do, and you’re upset about it. Okay? What did you learn about how to evaluate providers? What did you learn about you know, what you’re really looking for in a provider? I mean, whatever it is we’ve got to that’s the only way we get better. So I really appreciate that quote. May as much as you do. That’s fantastic, everybody. We’ve got Colleen Joyce. She’s the CEO of lawyer.com and would love to have you share your background. And I was impressed with you right away, because you don’t see people very often like starting, I don’t say at the bottom, but like starting somewhere and like working their way up in an organization anymore, you see more people like popping around from here to there to sort of elevate but a different company. So give us that story. I’d love to hear it.
Colleen Joyce [04:16]
Yeah, this is my quick elevator pitch. I actually started working for our parent company as an intern 18 years ago, started two days a week. I knew nothing. I was right out of college, and it was like, Okay, I need a real job that’s gonna pay for my life. And I learned about the domain business, right? What is a landing page? What’s PPC? What are all these words? What do they mean? I then, I love pop culture always and forever. And our parent company had the domain pop star.com so as I’m going through the list, I’m like, I’d like to build a business around that. I love to go. So I I went to Movie Awards red carpet premieres. I was interviewing Leonardo DiCaprio. But at the end of the day, what we learned is that in content. But you’re not driving money. You’re driving tons of viewerships, but you’re not generating any money, maybe $1 an article. So very quickly it was realized that maybe that’s not the best business plan going forward. And right around that time, we threw up a [email protected] right? We thought the internet wanted to be free. I was happy gallivanting around New York at movie premieres, and very quickly, what we learned was that lawyers started calling us, consumers started calling us. So very naturally, I had a wake up call that said, Hey, listen, I think that this is the future. So I had to put down my recorder and jump head first into legal, and it was myself and the co founder at that time, and we just figured it out, right? Like, what do you do when a lawyer calls? I don’t know, let’s figure it out. That’s kind of how we’ve evolved into that, kind of going back to the fast failures, right? We try something, we pick a product, okay, well, that didn’t work. Try something different, and all the iterations has kind of led us to where we are right now, yeah.
Steve Fretzin [06:04]
And I think, you know, you got pulled into something without knowing much about it. And I think that’s, you know, what we talk about in the show a lot, is how lawyers are pulled into the business side of this world, where they just assumed that they were going to learn the law be a great lawyer solve the world’s problems, right? Noble profession and every and they get paid a lot of money, and that’s life. And you retire at 65 or whatever, like my father did now in you know, not now, but like in the past and up to today, there’s all these things being thrown at them, business development, marketing, entrepreneurship, operations, leadership, and so you know, what do you think you know is going on in the minds of these lawyers who were sold one bill of goods and now they’re sort of given another?
Colleen Joyce [06:48]
Yeah, I think that the ones who are able to adapt, you’re seeing them being very successful as a result. I know you’re big into talking about brands and how lawyers have to become their own brand, and a lot of that is what’s happening right now in law school, there was never a business, 101, marketing, branding, but the competition right now in legal is intense, right? It is intense, and the only way that you’re going to stand out, unfortunately, is by what you’re putting out there, and that’s your brand. Does that necessarily mean that you’re the best lawyer? No, you’re just the best at getting yourselves out there right. You’re able to differentiate yourself more so than your competition, yeah.
Steve Fretzin [07:32]
And what I love is when you get a really good lawyer who is, you know, kind of the bomb, and then they brand right and market right and do a lot of the things that these other players are doing that aren’t as talented, and then watch what happens. I mean, then it’s like success through the roof.
Colleen Joyce [07:48]
Well I mean, you see that we’ve got a lot of amazing and you said it earlier, it’s a very noble profession. These lawyers are amazing humans that are out there helping, but the ones that are doing it the best are putting money behind branding. Yeah?
Steve Fretzin [08:04]
So there’s a lot of, you know, kind of flashy words that we’re throwing out about, you know, business development, marketing, etc, but yeah, what do you think more lawyers need to know about growing their businesses? What are kind of the fundamentals?
Colleen Joyce [08:17]
I think step one is just understanding what you have, right? So every business you’ve got the top of the funnel all the way down, what does that look like to you? Right? Do you have somebody running your marketing? Do you have product development, right? Or systems management? I think it’s very important to understand what you have so that you can grow on your baseline. We love low lying fruit around here, because that’s the easiest ways to make impacts. And I think what a lot of lawyers need to do is just understand what their current playbook looks like, and then find the little, small wins. Don’t tackle the big initiative right off the bat. I’m sure you’ve seen that many times yourself.
Steve Fretzin [09:00]
Yeah, it’s, you know, the solos, you know, need to get organized with the systems in the sooner they can do it, the better, right? Who’s doing your books? What’s your case management? Yep, you know, how are you bringing in business? What’s your business development plan, your marketing plan? Who’s helping you with your website? I mean, there’s all these things, but there’s also people that are in lawyers, I should say that are in mid market and large firms. They don’t need to get all that together again. It’s kind of done for them. Yet they’re still in business for themselves. They may not realize it, but they are under the umbrella of this bigger firm.
Colleen Joyce [09:36]
Sure. Well, you got to be the Rainmaker, right? You got to bring in the clients. And a lot of that goes back again to branding, right? You’ve got to be able to sell yourself, sell the firm, and get the client to make sure that they’re happy throughout the whole process. I mean, I know lawyers don’t like to hear this, but you know their sales people, just like every other job, it’s our job to I’m selling you. You’re selling. May, that’s just how it works, well.
Steve Fretzin [10:02]
And I tried my best to, you know, with my book sales, free selling, and with what I mean, I just got done with a class, you know, half an hour ago. I’m teaching lawyers from around the world this stuff. And, you know, it really is about, how can we get lawyers to follow a system that doesn’t feel like sales? I think that the big hiccup they have is that they don’t want to sell, they don’t want to convince they don’t want to pitch. They in. They do love talking about themselves, but we’ve also found that that’s really not the most effective way to build business. So we’re really trying to flip the script about how we develop relationships, how we target certain types of people, how we develop relationships, and how we walk a buyer through a buying decision, so that it never feels like a sale. It feels like two friends coming to a decision that they want to work together. And that’s really a much better play.
Colleen Joyce [10:50]
Much better. Sales has got a bad rap, right? It doesn’t have to be this hardcore buy, buy, buy, no, it’s really you have to look at sales is just more relationship building, and not sales. And when you take that different perspective, it becomes a lot easier. It’s no, hey, don’t go sell John. Go build a relationship with John, because that’s going to have longevity.
Steve Fretzin [11:15]
Yeah, no. And I think a lot of it has to do with listening, asking questions, listening, understanding, repeating back what people say, so they feel understood. And I think also it’s about trying to find, I don’t want to say their pain, because that’s sort of an overused thing, but try to find, like, the depth of their problems, so that they feel understood. And the thing that people don’t recognize with business development, sales, whatever we want to call it, is that when I’m telling you all my problems and you’re asking more and more questions and getting to the depth of it, that I feel understood, but I also, in a weird way, believe that you are the person to solve it, not because of the flashy presentation, all the great information you shared and your rates and all of that, but just the fact that you sat in the mud with Me and you asked all the right questions. You clearly must be the, be the person that can help me with this. So there’s a level of belief that buyers should have when they when they’re run through a properly run sort of business development meeting.
Colleen Joyce [12:13]
Yeah, no. I mean, if only, I mean that, if only I could do that, and we all can learn from that. We can all take a refresher on that for sure.
Steve Fretzin [12:22]
Yeah, well, that’s why I’m teaching it. I mean, I think there’s, you know, there’s steps. It’s like, if you have a steps of a staircase and you touch each one, you get to the top, you know, sort of unscathed. If you’re just kind of popping around, jumping from the first stair to the fifth back to the third, and you’re kind of all over the place, no system, no process, no language I can understand how you know it’s going to end up being about you pitching, or it’s going to be about the prospective client asking you all the questions, and one of them is going to be, what are your rates and how much you charge? And give me free advice, and now, all of a sudden, who’s in control of that meeting, right? And how is that system helping to get a win, win outcome? It’s not right.
Colleen Joyce [12:59]
And I think that there’s a lot of improvement also can be made with the payment conversations, at least on the consumer side of things, because again, we’re talking to hundreds of consumers a day. They don’t know anything, and they’re calling their lawyer on their worst day, right? They need to be like you said, step through the whole process, and again, the what things are going to cost and how it works, should have structure around it, and it shouldn’t be, hey, this is my retainer. That’s it. This is why this is this cost, and I think that that part is missing in a lot of conversion conversations.
Steve Fretzin [13:38]
Yeah, 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. The mantra that I teach and have been talking about for many, many years, I don’t really bring it up on this show that much. Maybe folks that are listening have heard it, but I say this in my class all the time with the lawyers I work with, is prescription before diagnosis is malpractice. So the idea that a buyer is going to get your free consulting, your rates, all the information about your firm, and you have done no diagnosis about their needs, about their problems, about their issues, about their financial situation. Who’s the decision maker? There’s all these things that as sellers of legal services, we need to do to understand and qualify who’s a good fit. And then only after then should we present a solution or start talking about next steps and rates also, then it brings up the value, the perceived value, of your services, so that when you do talk rates, it’s not coming out of nowhere. Like, if you’re talking to someone who’s never worked with a lawyer, and they and you say, $1,000 an hour, like they’re gonna freak out, like $1,000 an hour. Oh, my God, they may not realize that $1,000 an hour might only take two hours, but they’re going to get the best representation for $2,000 that might take them 20,000 if someone’s at a half of that so.
Colleen Joyce [15:31]
And I would happily, if I understood, I would happily pay right now, if I had to hire a lawyer, I’d be like, I don’t have any money, right? I don’t want to pay for it. I’d rather go on a trip, or, you know, go shopping, or, I don’t know, do something, but at the end of the day, if you need a lawyer, you’ve got to pay for the lawyer. But you want to understand what you’re paying for what you’re getting. Yeah, yeah. What’s your theory on the lawyer being that person that steps through, or somebody else in the office, kind of walking through the payment value.
Steve Fretzin [16:01]
It is so funny that you just asked me that I run the class, but I also run these peer advisory roundtables, and one of the things that we do is called the spotlight. And one of my clients, who’s killing it at business development, had a question for the group. He’s going to run it by the group, and you’re kind of going to answer it. Maybe I’ll lead him to this interview, but you know, it’s he’s the one doing all the business development. That’s great, except now he has this big pipeline of people who want to talk with him, and it’s personal injury. And as we know, a lot of personal injury folks have streamline their pipeline and their case management to salespeople, into intake teams, into even AI. So I would love to hear what you have to say about does it have to be the lawyer in just as an example, in the PI space that handles that intake, or can it be someone else? And why?
Colleen Joyce [16:48]
Yeah, interesting. So at least for me as a consumer, I don’t know if I necessarily care who’s having the conversation with me, as long as someone’s having the honest conversation with me. I want to know that the lawyer is invested in my case and is going to do the best. I am also a little biased, because I realize how busy lawyers are and how unrealistic it is for me to think that the lawyer is going to take first to end, right? So I’m okay saying that. I’m okay hearing that, as long as it’s upfront. Hey, this is what’s going to happen. The attorney is focusing on the case. I’m your client account manager. My job is to make sure that you’re happy, you’re informed, and you know, absolutely everything. You call me when you need something. I think that’s better, yeah, because I know I’m not going to get the attorney on the phone, nor should I.
Steve Fretzin [17:41]
Well but if we’re talking about, like, initial meeting, right? Yeah, like, I need a lawyer. I’ve never met with anyone from this firm. I reached out to three lawyers, and I’m talking with someone who has can take 15 minutes to make me feel understood and empathized with. I had a big accident. I need to talk with someone. They’re listening. They’re taking that intake and doing it, and it turns out, it’s not a good case, right? And I’m like, it’s not something I would waste the lawyer’s time with. I can still be like, This sounds difficult. This is, you know, maybe this, here’s an idea of what you need to do, or whatever. It just saved 15 minutes of the lawyer’s time. Now, the other side of it is, this is a big case, and this is a real opportunity. And what I’m going to do is I’m gonna set up an appointment with you for this lawyer, and let’s go through this together. I’ll brief him on the conversation, but you’re gonna want to talk to get the strategy from this player, whatever like, but maybe one or two out of 10 go there, versus 10 out of 10, which takes all the large time.
Colleen Joyce [18:37]
Agreed. As long as you don’t kick that appointment out too long. Because, you know, as well as I do, the consumers not talking to a lawyer, they’re just going to keep crawling around. Yeah, I do agree.
Steve Fretzin [18:47]
This happens all the time. I mean, I’m on the on a I’m looking to possibly remodel a bathroom. So you reach out to three or four people, one gets back to you, three don’t and you’re like, are they running a business? Are they like, this is not a small job, like, what’s going on in their minds of their lack of basic business etiquette?
Colleen Joyce [19:08]
Yeah, well, that’s why we, you know, we joke that we’re the matching service, because not every lawyer you call you’re not going to end up hiring them. It may not work. You may not they may be busy, you may not have a connection, right? So it’s the challenge for sure.
Steve Fretzin [19:22]
Right? So let’s you know, part of making decisions as a lawyer is hiring people. Maybe you’ve already got people. You’re running a firm. What do you think more people could learn about leadership and being a better leader that they may not already know? Because it’s no there’s no leadership classes in law, right?
Colleen Joyce [19:40]
No, there’s definitely not. I’m a big fan, and always have been, of breeding, right? I want to see what everybody else is doing. I think there’s multi like multi levels. One, you’ve got to know what’s out there. Two is, you have to be true to yourself, right? You have to know this is what I can do. This is who I am. I can’t be somebody I’m. Not and I need to build my leadership skills around that. And if I don’t have those skills, I need to look to find somebody that can plug those gaps, that can help take that on. Because if you know I’m the cheerleader in the room, it’s just who I am. I love it. But there are areas where I’m not strong, and what I do is I put strong people in those positions so I don’t have to do it.
Steve Fretzin [20:21]
Yes, I’m not good. Now, I agree with that, and I’ve got I’m not. I’m a great I think I’m a very effective coach. I don’t really enjoy managing people, which is one of the reasons that I never really scaled this thing out, like I’m a one man show and I’ve got a full time VA and, you know, shout out to Ian out there, but I’ve had many opportunities to scale this up and bring out other coaches and go through that whole rigmarole. The thing is, I just don’t enjoy it. I don’t enjoy whether it’s babysitting, micromanaging, you know, developing people under me. So you know what you’re saying, I think is, don’t do that, Steve, but if I hired someone who did enjoy that to work alongside me. That could be their role. I keep doing what I’m doing, and they do that, and that would be the play.
Colleen Joyce [21:07]
Right? And you still get to do what you love. And as long you know, I think a big part of having a strong leadership thing, you got to like the people you work with, right? That’s the big, a big part of it, you have to get along with each other. We always joke, I’m the worst at hiring. I’ve, like, I’ve made so many mistakes, but I’m at the point now where it’s like, I’d rather just take you to lunch, and if we could have a normal lunch interaction, and you’re hired, right? Everything else.
Steve Fretzin [21:36]
I want to interview with you. Holy mackerel, that’s lovely.
Colleen Joyce [21:40]
Some cocktails, no. But I think a big part of creating your organization is creating that team that you want to kind of move forward with.
Steve Fretzin [21:48]
Yeah, yeah. So what do lawyers need to think about? I mean, we’re dealing with, you mentioned super competitive space. We’re talking about AI coming in, possibly messing up the whole billable hour routine, not to mention the fact that, you know, a lot of the routine work will be done eventually by robots. Yeah, what do lawyers need to be thinking about for the future? Because things seem good right now. I mean, every lawyer that I’m working with is having their best year, and I would love for that to be the case forever. However, I’m concerned about what’s going on around us.
Colleen Joyce [22:22]
I mean, I said, what’s coming? What’s coming? Yeah, I think 2026 I think is going to be a very pivotal year. It’s kind of like this suddenly solo back in the day where all these lawyers ended up going solo. I think you’re going to see a big shift in the next year or two. I think lawyers have to get out of the weeds, like we were saying, find what it is that you’re good at, build your team around that, because if you’re doing what you love, then it’s not work, right? And you enjoy doing it. I think that the people who are going to be good at doing that are going to rise to the top, and we’re already seeing that right now. I think you know, we’ve gotten a preview of it this year, for sure.
Steve Fretzin [23:03]
Yeah, maybe it’s thinking more about like what you can automate and how efficient you can be, and do you have the ability to, maybe not, 100% but with some of the stuff you do, get away from the billable hour, because I’m fine buying a $5,000 you know, package of legal services to get something like a contract done, or get something across the finish line, or, you know, maybe pre litigation, or whatever has to happen when it’s a little more, you know, clear about what is going to be involved, and to put together some packages like that, versus just making everything billable. Because if things are 100 hours that can be done in one or two, that’s going to really mess up that model real fast.
Colleen Joyce [23:42]
100% agree. I think the billable hours is archaic and needs to be taken a look at. Yeah, I would rather. I mean, I know, when we talk to lawyers, I’d rather pay an upfront fee and then a bonus, right? If you can get the outcome that we want. Hell, we’ll pay three times, because we all win, and there’s alignment right now with billables. And again, I say this, I’m not at a lawyer, so it’s fun sitting up high judging. There’s no alignment between the consumer and the lawyer, right? It’s okay. I could go bill this time. The consumer has no idea that you’re doing all that work, yeah. And then they’re just left being like, what am I paying for that leads to bad reviews or complaints, all the things well.
Steve Fretzin [24:25]
And I think some of that comes back to again, you know, business development acumen and process. Because if you have a good system for how you walk a buyer through a buying decision, where you build up, not only what a solution might look like and what why the solution is so important. But what’s what happens if this solution doesn’t happen, like, what? What are the consequences of not having the right attorney for a divorce, or not having the right attorney for a litigation matter, or an M and A deal going south because it wasn’t managed properly, right? I mean, you have everything riding on it, so people can start building up. That’s where. A million dollars to me there, it’s worth $100,000 to me. That’s worth whatever. And that way, when your fees come in, you know, it still might be shocking, but maybe it’s going to be more in line with what a consumer’s like image of that might be. It’s tricky, but that’s but I think it’s important to get people on the same page.
Colleen Joyce [25:15]
Yeah, eight 100% it’d be nice to see a change in that.
Steve Fretzin [25:18]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so like moving forward, what are some things that you would say lawyers need to really be doing to get themselves in a better position, from a branding perspective, business perspective, leadership perspective, to be competitive and to deal with the inbound pending AI, you know, world disaster or whatever is going to happen.
Colleen Joyce [25:41]
I think education is key. Figure out what’s going on out there, right? If that’s attending webinars, talking to coaches, going to seminars, attending conferences, get out there and find out what’s happening. Because if you’re not, your competitors are, and you’re you’re behind.
Steve Fretzin [25:58]
Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, let’s get into something fun too, called Colleen’s Big mistake.
Colleen Joyce [26:03]
Okay, this is fun. There’s many. You gotta pick one. You only got one failure, okay? Biggest mistake, like any business, you hit hard times, right? And you have to pivot. And when you pivot, that means that you have to make changes, whether that’s staffing changes, vendor changes. So a couple of years ago, we had to make some very difficult changes in the team, and I did not handle it properly. It still haunts me. I was not upfront and transparent to the degree I should have been, I think, and I learned a lot through that whole transaction, yeah, I learned a lot about myself and the leader I want to be, and kind of how I can get there still haunts me to this day, but in business, that’s what happens. You know, unfortunately you make you have to make tough decisions, and sometimes they’re bad decisions, but you got to learn from it well.
Steve Fretzin [27:03]
And I get it, it haunts you. I think we all have those. But I think it’s important as, you know, as human beings, to let go. Yeah, agreed. You know, you learned what you learned. You made the mistake. You can’t go back and fix it, but we’re not going to make it again, right? And we’re going to take care of people and all that. So, but this is, this is like business, you know, 201, maybe just, you know, how do we continue? How do we come out the other side, better, smarter, faster than we were, you know, when we started. We even the the top business people, right? They all make mistakes. They like, going back to your quote, like they’re taking risks and they’re trying things. And you can’t be perfect. When you’re trying new things, it’s impossible.
Colleen Joyce [27:41]
Right? Agreed. Well, thank you.
Steve Fretzin [27:44]
Yeah, yeah, I’m giving you permission to let it go.
Colleen Joyce [27:48]
I like that. Namaste. Therapeutic
Steve Fretzin [27:52]
and fun being that lawyer is a therapy as a therapy for people. Well, Colleen, fantastic. Let’s take a moment. Thank our wonderful sponsors, of course, rankings, io, killing it for PI firms out there and helping them with their marketing. Of course, the law her podcast with Sonia and guys, check out the rainmakers roundtable. It’s the newest podcast. It’s me talking, sharing my wisdom all kinds of great topics, occasionally bringing on a client to kind of share their perspective of working with me and just like what they’re doing as a rainmaker to make it happen. So really good. Colleen, tell us for just a minute about lawyer.com people are going there, what’s the key focus there? And and then putting out your digits?
Colleen Joyce [28:30]
Yeah, sure, totally. So we’re double sided market. We help consumers find lawyers, we then match them with lawyers in their area. So for lawyers, we help them do directory listing. We help them find new consumers. We do call, answering and intake. We started to put on our own legal conference, so we really try to take a thought leadership position in the industry. Find me on LinkedIn. I would love to chat, and I’d love to chat more with Steve, so I’m excited.
Steve Fretzin [28:58]
We’ll have a quick chat once we get off the call, but I just want to tell you how much I’ve not only enjoyed meeting you, but enjoyed this conversation. And I think there’s just a lot that lawyers have to work on and get comfortable with outside of the practice of law, and that’s what the show is really about. I had a lawyer that wanted to come on, and we had a great chat, and he kept going back to the law and like, trying to, like, teach them. I go, you’re this, that’s not this show. There’s other shows you can get on to talk about, you know, the law and how to run a trial. I go, this is the soft skills. This is the business side of things we need to learn and and talk through. And we figured it out, and he was really excited that we were able to work out what his topic was, and he’ll be on in the next couple of weeks. But thank you so much.
Colleen Joyce [29:40]
Appreciate you. It was a pleasure. Thank you for having us.
Steve Fretzin [29:43]
Yeah, yeah. And thank you everybody for hanging out with Colleen and I for last 30 a number of really important takeaways around business development, leadership, the future of law, getting yourself really organized and orchestrated to be that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled Rainmaker. Take care. Everybody. Be safe. Safe and well, we will talk again soon.
Narrator [30:06]
Thanks for listening to be that loyal, 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.