In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Daniel Scola discuss:
- Developing business skills as a lawyer
- Balancing legal expertise with emotional intelligence
- Transitioning from in-house counsel to a law firm partner
- Competing with larger firms for corporate clients
Key Takeaways:
- Building strong relationships with general counsel often involves using emotional intelligence to understand their concerns and tailor communication effectively.
- Transitioning from in-house to a law firm typically requires learning business development skills, relying on initiative and building relationships to attract clients.
- To compete with larger firms, smaller firms can emphasize personal attention from experienced attorneys, offering more direct and hands-on service.
- Understanding the internal pressures on general counsel, such as how they communicate up the chain, helps lawyers offer tailored solutions that ease their stress.
“If you just say, ‘I can do it for a cheaper price,’ it’s not going to work… You have to emphasize that an experienced person will do the work… not a first-year associate with three others reviewing it.” — Daniel Scola
Join Steve on November 15th for an exclusive 60-minute session focused on actionable strategies for business growth. Register now—seats are limited to the first 20 attorneys! Sign up here: https://fretzin.com/blog/category/events/
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Episode References:
About Daniel Scola: Daniel A. Scola, Jr. is the managing partner of Hoffmann & Baron, LLP, overseeing the chemical, pharmaceutical/biochemical, and medical device practice in the New Jersey office. With extensive experience in polymers, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, he specializes in building IP portfolios and strategies to protect company value. Scola practices in Post Grant Proceedings at the USPTO and has argued at the appellate level before the CAFC. He held roles at Warner-Lambert Co. and Loctite Corporation, and before law, he was a chemist at United Technologies with expertise in material science, polymers, and adhesives.
Connect with Daniel Scola:
Website: https://www.hbiplaw.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielscola/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/hbiplaw
Twitter: https://x.com/hbiplaw
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hbiplaw
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
[00:00:00] Steve Fretzin: Hey, my Be That Lawyer fans. Are you struggling with the same uphill battle? Growing new business without losing your sanity? It might be time management, a lack of a structured plan, or outdated business development strategies that are keeping you from reaching your full potential. But what if I told you there’s a better way?
[00:00:16] Steve Fretzin: In this exclusive, no presentation, no PowerPoint, interactive 60 minute session, you’ll work directly with me on your specific challenges. This event is a no brainer. Please join me on November 15th from 1 to 2 p. m. Central to level up your BD game. Seating is limited to only the first 20 attorneys who register, so get to it now.
[00:00:35] Steve Fretzin: Go to my website, Fretzin. com slash events to sign up today and hope to see you there.
[00:00:44] Narrator: 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.
[00:01:06] Steve Fretzin: Well, hey everybody, welcome back to the Be That Lawyer with Fretzin podcast. I hope you’re having a lovely day. We are here to rock and roll and helping you to be that lawyer confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker. You know, I could, you know, jump in with some, you know, banter and all that, but I think I just want to get to the meat and potatoes of what you’re here for today, which is to hear from an amazing guest, which I have for you and Dan, Dan, how you doing today?
[00:01:28] Daniel Scola: I’m doing great, Steve. Thanks for having me on.
[00:01:30] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, my pleasure. And we love to start off with the quote of the show and I always love when it’s one that I haven’t heard before. I mean, there’s a bunch that I’ve, at this point, I’ve been asking this question for like, let’s say 200 plus episodes. So, I’m starting to like see repetitive quotes, but this is a new one, and I loved it as soon as I read it.
[00:01:46] Steve Fretzin: Learn everything you can about your instruments, and then forget it all and just play. The famous John Coltrane there. So, welcome to the show, and tell us why you submitted that quote, and what that sort of means to you.
[00:01:58] Daniel Scola: Well, it’s almost You know, the idea is you have to have a core confidence, you have a competence, and you have to know, you know, your subject matter well.
[00:02:05] Daniel Scola: But sometimes, it’s almost like hitting a golf ball, you know, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong. If you’re thinking too much about each step along the way, you really can’t integrate it in that one second of swinging. So I think it’s the same thing, you know, with any profession. Know it well, have it sort of, you know, deep embedded into your brain and your psyche.
[00:02:28] Daniel Scola: And then just be yourself and it’ll come out. Yeah. That’s how I view it. Anyway.
[00:02:33] Steve Fretzin: I definitely get that in golf. Like I’m, I remember you got to swing out, you got to have, don’t move your hands. Like all these different things that I have to think in my head and then it never goes well. It’s like when I just, I think that’s why they, they people like to drink on the golf course.
[00:02:47] Steve Fretzin: I just melt all those thoughts away and just let your, let your muscle memory take over.
[00:02:51] Daniel Scola: I have a different approach on the golf course. What I do is I play music and, and I actually think people like hearing, I don’t, I don’t blare it. You know, it’s not something, you know, so you call somebody. I can’t concentrate, but it’s kind of nice to have something in the background.
[00:03:05] Daniel Scola: It’s a little bit of white noise and relax. I like that too.
[00:03:10] Steve Fretzin: So alcohol, music, golf, you guys are getting some tips before we even talk about business development, which is always nice. Well, listen, man, thanks for coming on. Dan Skoll, everybody, is the managing partner of Hoffman Barron. Give us a little bit of your Reader’s Digest version, short version of your background.
[00:03:26] Daniel Scola: Yeah, well, I started, you know, to be an IP attorney and particularly be able to do a patent law, you have to have a science background because you’ve got to take a separate patent bar and lots of people do know this, but for those of you who don’t, you pass the patent bar in addition to the state bar, so okay.
[00:03:41] Daniel Scola: So, I did that early on largely because I was inspired by two things. One was my dad was a scientist that came up with an amazing sets of inventions early on, one of which he lost when he went to peddle it to a company, and all of a sudden his notebook records were stolen. I was at a stage then saying, well, you know, you really should do something about that.
[00:04:04] Daniel Scola: And they came out, this company, with products that were based on those. And my father really didn’t have the wherewithal or the money to go after them. But there’s got to be a way of doing this, and my mother said, well, there is a way. So she was the one that’s, you should go into patent law. And I had no indication that patent law was on my radar at all.
[00:04:22] Daniel Scola: But I thought to myself, well, it could be interesting, but it’s probably just very boring. And the truth of the matter is, it’s one of the more creative areas I could have gone into, because my background is sort of. Some science and some creative stuff. I was very creative and, you know, as a musician and so forth.
[00:04:40] Daniel Scola: And so when I was younger, wanted to go to music school, my dad said, no you know, you don’t make enough money going to music school, going to science and do that as an advocation. I said, okay, let me try that. So that’s how I got to be in the field. And then I got corporate jobs that paid for my education early on.
[00:04:57] Daniel Scola: ’cause I could work, you know, sort of in between the lay liaison between the science people and the legal people. And I did an unusual thing. I went from being an in house counsel with 13 years of experience with two large major companies to going outside. And that’s not usually what happens because usually you get your training, you know, as an associate in an outside firm, you know, at outside counsel.
[00:05:23] Daniel Scola: And then you say, you know, I don’t know how to develop business or I don’t want to work for the set of partners. And I’m not on a partnership track. Let me go inside. You know, sometimes that’s, that’s the route. So you go inside and then you know how to do the work. And usually you don’t get hired inside unless you know how to do the work, because they don’t like to train.
[00:05:45] Daniel Scola: I happened to be very lucky where they had a training program. They designed it for me, which was very unusual. And then when I was, after 13 years, I decided to take the outside route. It was an offer by the firm I’m currently with. So And I said, well, you know, it’s a great offer, but I know nothing about developing business.
[00:06:07] Daniel Scola: I can do the work. I’m not, you know, well equipped to do that. What do you, what does it take to get clients? I have never done that. And my my, my out, my mentor, you know, he said to me. And he’s, he was the fire managing partner of the firm. He said to me, you’ll figure it out. And I said, okay. So here I am sitting in my house.
[00:06:29] Daniel Scola: Single best,
[00:06:29] Steve Fretzin: single best answer I’ve ever heard.
[00:06:30] Daniel Scola: Yeah. You’ll figure it out. I’m sitting in, you know, this is a Monday morning. I had just turned down two corporate offers. One to be a head of a pharmaceutical group at J and J. The other was to be a head of a group at what was then called Sandoz. It’s of course changed its name now, but I had those jobs in my pocket and I called up J& J and said, you know, I decided this is based on one lunch two days before with Hoffman and Barron’s managing partner Ron Barron.
[00:06:58] Daniel Scola: I said to J& J, I decided I think I’m going to turn the job down. They go, what do you mean? You’re reporting, you’re reporting to us in the morning. I said, you know, here’s what happened, transpired over the weekend and he said, you’re crazy. He said, that’s insane. Well, fast forward the first two weeks. That I was on my own.
[00:07:17] Daniel Scola: I had only a phone and I had FedEx. That’s it. Because computers were not, you know, even around then. This was the early 90s. And I would write things out, FedEx, go travel, you know, several times a week to the office to get the whole business going and so forth. And then I said, you know what, I need a road trip.
[00:07:39] Daniel Scola: I took a road trip for two weeks and I brought in two of the largest clients in the firm within the first two weeks. Because I knew them, they were on the other side of things I had done with corporation work, inside council work, and I, you know, I knew these people well enough, and I went to the GC, and the GC then would walk me down.
[00:07:59] Daniel Scola: To the patent department. Now, when the GC walks you down to the head of the patent department and suggests, here is a really good attorney that I’d like you to meet. It’s hard for that, for that IP head to say, yeah, I don’t really want to use it. I’m busy right now. It’s just a little bit of, it’s the right tone of pressure, you know, the right amount of pressure.
[00:08:25] Daniel Scola: And so, but, but we got along otherwise. So much of this I have found in trying to develop business is about having a high enough EQ, I know that’s an overused term, but being able to read, you know, the tea leaves, read the people. And sometimes their needs are, are not as apparent if you can’t read them well, but if you read them well, oftentimes you can sense what’s behind what they’re saying and them as a person and some of their concerns.
[00:08:57] Daniel Scola: And usually, well, this person’s. A very aggressive person, a very reticent person. And then you integrate that into what you did, the research you did about the business. Like that’s what I did that day with that IP guy. He, he’s, he was very, you know, he’s a cut and dry kind of guy, but he has a sense of humor if you get to a certain point.
[00:09:16] Daniel Scola: And I knew what his concerns were. So I just asked him the right question.
[00:09:21] Steve Fretzin: But I want to stop you on that point though, Dan, because what I think lawyers, you know, believe needs to happen is a pitch, a sales job. This is why our firm’s so great. This is why I’m so great. This is what we do. And I think what you’re getting to is at the heart of it, which is in my philosophy as well, which is it’s really about understanding people.
[00:09:41] Steve Fretzin: And asking questions and not just surface questions. Here’s our problem. It’s going deeper than that, right? So can you elaborate on that a little bit?
[00:09:49] Daniel Scola: Yeah, sure. I’ve got actually a specific example very recently just happened with an associate of mine. So, you know, somebody can say. The same words, and you can get a different meaning from that, like when you’re listening to them, and it’s very funny, it can be very, very different, like diametrically opposed, right, meaning.
[00:10:09] Daniel Scola: So, you know, the personalities of people, and knowing where they fit in the organization, and having, spending some time with them, you find out a lot. You find out that you know, maybe they have certain stresses in their lives, and that does affect them. How they view other things. You don’t have to pry to get that information.
[00:10:27] Daniel Scola: They’ll tell you if they trust you enough. So, the relationship, and it’s hard to do it unless you’re in person. There’s something about, and everybody says, yeah, that’s always the best way. But do they do it? Do they actually take the time and sit with someone for a lunch? Early on, I used to just say, I’m, look, I’m going to be in the area.
[00:10:48] Daniel Scola: You know, can I come by and just, you know, five minutes of your time or whatever, just say hello, I wanted to have, you know, drop something off with you that I thought you’d be interested in. Just to be able to shake a hand is good, and then you can, you know, gradually get there, but I would say, you know, I have two other meetings in, in that area, and I, you know, I’d love to find some time if we could just to, you know, I would call people cold if I had to.
[00:11:12] Daniel Scola: Yeah. And just tell them now. It’s hard to get through now.
[00:11:15] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. I mean, I, I think the cold outreach, it still works. There’s people that would agree with that a hundred percent. My philosophy is really about leveraging existing relationships, inside connections, things that are gonna, like when you walk, like when the GC walked you in to meet the IP, like Yeah.
[00:11:31] Steve Fretzin: It’s like inherently set up that this is going to be accepted versus it being a cold call. I mean,
[00:11:36] Daniel Scola: you’re already past, you know, a level of, of scrutiny. If someone at the very top says, Hey, you know, this is a really good person, why don’t you guys get to know each other? So this specific instance recently that happened was one of my associates was in a panic.
[00:11:50] Daniel Scola: Oh my gosh, you know, we do an international practice in IP, so we deal with lots of attorneys around the world, and in this one country, Libya, it’s got an unstable government, right? So, lots of things are unstable, including all the IP areas of law, the patent offices there are unstable, sometimes the law firms you’re dealing with are not that stable, they don’t, you know, they don’t communicate well.
[00:12:14] Daniel Scola: But we had something that looked like it could be a disaster, so the associate said to me, Oh my god, the associate didn’t do what we asked him to do, and the client’s gonna be really mad, and this is a really important client. I said, Okay, well, what makes you think that the client’s gonna be so bad? I mean, you did everything you, you know, you were asked to do, you did it well, and you didn’t get the right result on the other end, but that is really not All your fault.
[00:12:41] Daniel Scola: Maybe they’ll say it’s some of ours because we chose that firm, but it’s not your fault. But she said, oh, no, no, listen to this voicemail. Now, I wasn’t even around. I was at the time on a, at a wedding. It was morning of a wedding. So I happened to be up in Maine and I took the call because it’s important.
[00:13:01] Daniel Scola: So I said, okay, show me the voicemail. I listened to the voicemail and she said, It’s like no other voicemail I ever heard from this guy before. I think he’s really upset and I, I’m, I’m worried about losing the client. I said to, I said to the associate, I said, I didn’t get that at all out of that voicemail.
[00:13:20] Daniel Scola: What I got is the concern that he has about how is he going to communicate this to his people at the top, the, the people, the marketing people the, the general counsel, the people that have asked him to do this. How does he communicate that effectively?
[00:13:38] Steve Fretzin: Mm
[00:13:38] Daniel Scola: hmm. That’s what you have to do. He’s not, he’s not upset at you.
[00:13:42] Daniel Scola: He’s stressed about how he communicates it up the chain. Right. Yeah. That’s all it was. It wasn’t like, Oh, you’re going to get fired. So we called him up. The first thing I said to him is, and I knew this guy not extremely well, but I said you know, I’m calling, I’m, I’m at a wedding because I wanted him to know, The importance of the call that I was called.
[00:14:05] Daniel Scola: I was taking that time. It’s an amazing day out here. Blah blah. He goes, Oh, it’s great where I am. Wow. Are you in New Jersey? He’s he said, No, I’m in North Carolina. So he goes, it’s when did you move there? He goes, Oh, you know, just a few weeks ago. That’s a great place. Really beautiful. You know, so we started a little bit of the, you know, small talk.
[00:14:26] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. A little relationship building
[00:14:28] Daniel Scola: relationship building. And then, and then instead of saying, you know, look. I’m sorry about, you know, this whole instance, because if I were inside council, think about what you want to, you would hear, you’d want to hear. How would you take something like that? So I said this, Libya is such a crazy place.
[00:14:51] Daniel Scola: How unstable is everything there? Can you believe what’s happening there? And he goes, I know, right? So already we’re on the same page about, you know, country has. You know, some stability issues and who knows what could happen. Okay. So he’s feeling comfortable that we are on the same page there and he’s now he gets, you know, Yeah, I, I, what do you think we can do?
[00:15:17] Daniel Scola: And I said, well, there’s a way we can, we can get out of this, you know, and it’s not, you know, it’s all legitimate. There’s just another route. And he goes, ah, I could sell that and see, see, that’s exactly what he wanted.
[00:15:28] Steve Fretzin: Yeah.
[00:15:29] Daniel Scola: But the associate didn’t pick it up. Now it could be from experience. She was not as experienced, but you got to be able to read it.
[00:15:38] Daniel Scola: And, and that was a phone call. Voice, voicemail that you read
[00:15:43] Steve Fretzin: so it sounds like it sounds like you’ve picked up, you know, even though he said, figure it out and I let we laughed about that, but it seems like you did. I mean, did you go any through any coaching training or did you literally figure this out on your own how to develop business and build a book?
[00:15:56] Daniel Scola: You know, no training at all I just sort of figured it out. So he wasn’t wrong.
[00:16:01] Steve Fretzin: We laughed about it a minute ago, but he wasn’t wrong. Actually, I never,
[00:16:05] Daniel Scola: I never, I never actually said dim. You know, you were correct. But my partners used to kid me because I used to travel a fair amount less now, but quite a bit.
[00:16:14] Daniel Scola: And they would say, You should go on a trip, and I would say just, just get on a plane and go somewhere. It doesn’t matter where you go, because you always seem to bring back a client every time you go somewhere.
[00:16:26] Steve Fretzin: Yeah.
[00:16:26] Daniel Scola: And I was like, that’s not what I, intentional. I just, you know, I meet people, I talk to people and you know, they tell me lots of things and I suggest some things.
[00:16:35] Daniel Scola: The other thing I think is good for business development is giving something away. You know,
[00:16:40] Steve Fretzin: I think that’s a missing piece, Dan. I think a lot of people go out and try to develop business, try to develop networks and they don’t recognize the importance of giving first and helping out first and developing a relationship through that.
[00:16:54] Steve Fretzin: Those means and they wonder where like, why is this? Why am I not getting business? I’m having all these lunches or I’m doing all these meetings. They didn’t put the two and two together on that.
[00:17:03] Daniel Scola: Yeah, it’s it is I think an important factor, you know, doing a little research finding out what their needs are and then asking them questions where you can give them examples of how you figured out the same same issue with another client that was successful.
[00:17:20] Daniel Scola: That those are big things you could and you can integrate that or you say to them. Hey is you know It’s such and such important to you guys I have a client that that seems to be all they focus on these days Yeah, it is as a matter of fact, and here’s how that plays out and then you say yeah, it’s kind of interesting You know what?
[00:17:37] Daniel Scola: I tried with this client that worked really well is boom and you tell them and it’s It’s just telling stories about what you did and how it is sometimes you say You You know what we learned from that that that approach doesn’t work as well as this approach and and and I often say to them, you know, you’ve you should tell your attorneys to check out this and that’s that’s actually you’re you’re giving sort of giving them direction without and that’s a giveaway.
[00:18:05] Daniel Scola: So they’ll say to their attorneys. Hey, you know, if their attorneys now are you know, sort of defensive about it. The client’s going to read that and if the attorney say, oh, that’s a really good idea. Then the client is like, how come my attorneys didn’t think of that? They think it’s a good idea, but they didn’t think.
[00:18:22] Daniel Scola: So it’s a no lose as far as I could see.
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[00:19:03] Steve Fretzin: Our program is unique as every member has a significant book of business and is motivated to grow it year after year. Where else does this exist? If you’re a managing partner who’s looking to get off your lonely island and talk shop with America’s top rainmakers, please go to my website Fretzin.com and apply for membership today.
[00:19:23] Steve Fretzin: I’ve got a question for you. I had a great attorney on a few weeks ago who we hit this up. I wanna hit you up and get your take so. There’s a lot of attorneys at the small firm, mid market level that feel that they can’t go after the bigger companies because they want to have the name, the big name firm attached to them.
[00:19:43] Steve Fretzin: They’re paying way over what they should pay for certain services because the name is, you know, that no one ever got fired for hiring. XYZ. Right? I want you to dispel that or maybe talk a little bit about how lawyers should be thinking about approaching GCs and bigger companies that are working with the big name firms.
[00:20:03] Daniel Scola: Yeah. I mean, I have that situation a lot as well. We all do. Right. So one thing you can say is who’s doing the work in the big name for you. Usually it’s pushed down to a low level, even when it’s a great account. I have a situation right now. I was working on this morning and had a discussions with this, was introduced to this person this company on Friday.
[00:20:29] Daniel Scola: That’s Friday. I’m trying to get a package out to him that he asked for. And it’s a bit, it was a big firm that that was doing the work and he’s not getting anywhere. So I tried to figure out and I did ultimately figure out where I could go to find out the firm that did the work and the actual work because it was work for patent office.
[00:20:49] Daniel Scola: So what I did is, and that’s a big firm you can hire, you know, hide behind. Look, I, they, when I was inside counsel, I had big firms working with me too, but I also had small firms because I think the service, you’ve got to sell your service point. Comp core competency has to be there. But you, if you just say, I can do it for a cheaper price.
[00:21:10] Daniel Scola: Not going to work always it’s just it’s not enough.
[00:21:14] Steve Fretzin: Yeah,
[00:21:14] Daniel Scola: you got to emphasize. We’re going to have an experienced person That’s part of the service to it Not someone that’s you know down to the very bottom first year and then three other people are going to look at it You’re going to look you’re going to work with an experienced person And they’re going to do the work and it’s going to be at a, at a quality that is the same, but most likely better than the large firm because they’re not using the, it’s too expensive to use the top partners, even the bottom guys or the lower, you know, associates with experience, even their expense.
[00:21:47] Daniel Scola: So I think, you know, they’ll hide behind it because inside counsel doesn’t want to make a mistake.
[00:21:53] Steve Fretzin: Right.
[00:21:53] Daniel Scola: It’s work for them to give you work.
[00:21:57] Steve Fretzin: But a lot of that has to do with when you get in the door to have that conversation. I think that one of the bigger challenges might be how to actually get an appointment with a GC that is working with a big firm and you’re in, you want to have a shot at that business.
[00:22:12] Steve Fretzin: Do you have a thought about how to do that? Yeah.
[00:22:14] Daniel Scola: Yeah. I mean, well for me, I’m in the process of trying to do that in a couple of stages right now. One client was And, you know, that business now is the big company’s business. So that gives me, you know, at least an opportunity to say, listen, I’ve done the work before.
[00:22:34] Daniel Scola: If you haven’t done the work before, it’s much more difficult because you need to have a contact to get in. If, without somebody in the contact, that’s why you go to meetings and you try to meet people the best you can, that’s why if you’re in the area, you know, connect with someone in the department who could, it doesn’t, even if somebody is a family friend that knows somebody, you know, if there’s a connection somewhere you can draw, just because there’s some, you know, the referral chain, you know, I know it weakens as it gets down the line, It’s better than nothing.
[00:23:10] Daniel Scola: So any type of connection, use it. That’s how I, that’s
[00:23:14] Steve Fretzin: how I, here’s one that most lawyers are afraid of. It’s the client connection. So I have a client, I’m a lawyer, I have a client that is a GC at a sizable company. Does that GC know other GCs at other companies that they’ve worked under or under over the last five years that they still have a relationship with?
[00:23:33] Steve Fretzin: And if you’re doing great work, And you have that conversation and they think you’re great. Would they be willing and open to forwarding, you know, that introduction and saying, look, I know you’re with, you know, ABC firm or you’re with me. I’m sure you’re already, you know, got law firms surrounding you, but like to your point, this is an exceptional lawyer, an exceptional firm.
[00:23:55] Steve Fretzin: I think you’d be remiss not to, to spend a few minutes with them.
[00:23:58] Daniel Scola: You’d want to have the sperm on your side rather than against you.
[00:24:02] Steve Fretzin: Hmm.
[00:24:03] Daniel Scola: That, that’s a really good.
[00:24:04] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Write that down, everybody. That was a good one. Say that one more time.
[00:24:08] Daniel Scola: Yeah. You’d rather have this sperm on your side than against
[00:24:11] Steve Fretzin: you. I love that.
[00:24:12] Steve Fretzin: Wow. Really good. Well, that’s so helpful because I think there’s a lot of fear that lawyers have about Going after bigger organizations and going after GCs and it’s because they don’t have a strategy or they don’t have a contact or they’re not leveraging the relationships they’ve developed the way that I think you’re doing.
[00:24:33] Daniel Scola: And service is the key for them too because you know, I just looked at something today that this other firm had done and it’s not that they were incompetent. It’s not. It was a competent job. But the approach wasn’t aggressive enough. And why wasn’t it aggressive enough? Because they had someone who was too far down in the chain that was not going to take that risk.
[00:24:58] Daniel Scola: And so there’s a, you know, you’ve got to be willing to take a risk, can’t oversell yourself on what you can do. But I find the, the approach of trying to say, Oh, I can do this X, Y, and Z. So I’m really great at doing this. That’s too salesy, and everybody takes that approach. I don’t do that at all. I just don’t find it’s in fact, if anything, I sort of soft pedal the credential area, and I let the people ask questions, and then I answer them in a way, which tells them, There’s competency behind it.
[00:25:32] Steve Fretzin: You know, the thing that I want to pull out too, is you have experience on both sides. You have experience on the private side and you have an experience in house side. And sometimes it’s good to think about it from the inside lawyer’s perspective. So you’re in house and you’re getting hit up by lawyers that want your business.
[00:25:50] Steve Fretzin: What approach would. Be comfortable for you to take a meeting. You don’t have to do business with that lawyer, but to take the meeting, that’s half the battle. Yeah. So how would you, how do you look at it from both sides or
[00:26:02] Daniel Scola: from the inside? You know, if I were inside counsel and I was at one time, one of my responses was these people actually have looked at some of the things that are important to us already.
[00:26:14] Daniel Scola: And they’re saying, you know, I see you’re doing this, why, and we have some approaches that, you know, we’d like you to consider. They’re a little bit different than the way you’ve been going. And, and that’s going to be my sale to this company that I’m looking to get that I just had a conversation with on Friday.
[00:26:29] Daniel Scola: I looked at what their attorney, it was competent work, but it’s not direct, I wouldn’t have gone. I would have been more aggressive. I wouldn’t have given up all this. They just had a very long protracted thing, which didn’t, you know, in my view, would mine have gone the same way? I don’t know for sure. I don’t think so.
[00:26:47] Daniel Scola: And so you try to say, look, I’ve looked at what people have done for you. If you can, because some of it’s confidential, sure. But that’s one approach. And then selling things that, you know, we work for other large companies like yours. And one of the things this company, these companies really liked was.
[00:27:04] Daniel Scola: They, when they call, I always pick up the phone. They’ll always get me. And you know, that’s really important to, I’m your main contact. You call me, and then it’s crazy because they call you. Watch
[00:27:19] Steve Fretzin: out what you wait, watch out what you hope for, right? Oh,
[00:27:22] Daniel Scola: absolutely. I mean, they’ll call you at any time at night.
[00:27:24] Daniel Scola: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:26] Steve Fretzin: But that’s part of the, that’s part of the business. Well, you know, we’ll kind of wrap things up with people say, you know, Hey, with that, if you do that, then where’s the work life balance? And I think I heard the term work life harmony because the balance may be something you may never have, but if you could have harmony between your work and your, and your life.
[00:27:45] Steve Fretzin: So I’m at, in the middle of a dinner and my phone goes off, I’m probably not going to pick it up. I’m just not, it’s the middle of a dinner with my family. Okay. But as soon as that dinner’s over. And I leave I’m in my car and I call that client back right away and say, Hey, sorry, I was at dinner. What’s up?
[00:28:04] Steve Fretzin: I that’s you know, we can we’re not doing heart surgery here. There’s nothing that’s you know, like that, you know an hour Can’t you know in many cases in some cases is like I get it There’s you know labor and employment and things where things you know, where it could be that momentary situation Well, you still want someone picking up the phone for you that But anyway, that’s kind of my thought is like just to have that harmony is where I think things are leading because the balance of I’m not working this week or this thing.
[00:28:28] Steve Fretzin: That’s for some people they can pull it off for others less so.
[00:28:32] Daniel Scola: Yeah, but it’s difficult to take that cut and dry approach now because of, you know, everything is on your phone. It’s a computer, it’s cut. So what you, oftentimes I will do, like if I’m at a Zoom meeting and somebody, Just calling me. I’ll text them back saying, add a Zoom, get back to you as soon as I get off, or very soon, they’re set.
[00:28:51] Daniel Scola: But also, people just want a hand holding.
[00:28:53] Steve Fretzin: Yeah.
[00:28:54] Daniel Scola: A lot of times that’s all it is. Do I really have a situation? Can you tell me whether, and you go, and it’s a two minute conversation. Yeah. But that’s, builds the relationship. Yeah,
[00:29:06] Steve Fretzin: listen, this, this is all great stuff. You guys are listening, you know, again, you know, we’re getting like, you know, tips from the Rainmakers at the top that are doing it every day.
[00:29:13] Steve Fretzin: Of course, we can’t we can’t keep talking forever, although I know we, I, we probably could. We got to wrap it up with our game changing book. This one I’ve never heard of, The Power of Bad. What’s The Power of Bad?
[00:29:23] Daniel Scola: Yeah, it’s, I found this book very interesting because it’s basically about the negativity bias that is almost inherent in everybody.
[00:29:33] Daniel Scola: If I say to you, Hey, you did a fantastic job on this, but the only thing you’re going to remember is the but.
[00:29:43] Steve Fretzin: Yeah.
[00:29:43] Daniel Scola: Because the negativity bias is so, I mean it, and it, by the way, it’s the only way you improve if you hear a but. So now you have to, and this is a balanced situation, so when you give something negative to someone, that you want them to impact them, and I mean negative, it’s just maybe here’s a point of improvement, you know, but you also don’t, you want to, you don’t want to leave on that note.
[00:30:07] Daniel Scola: You want to go back to the positive thing again, so that, because the negative, you know, the book says for every one negative impact, it takes about four positive impacts of similar pressure
[00:30:21] Steve Fretzin: to
[00:30:22] Daniel Scola: equalize it out. So, you know, you give a review, you better say the positive at the very end again. But don’t forget the little bit negative, but don’t, you know, because it’s the biases.
[00:30:34] Daniel Scola: So, you know, you only focus on the, on the negative.
[00:30:37] Steve Fretzin: Well, but we go back to what you said at the beginning, which is, it’s more about how we say things than what we say, and you can remove the word, but you’re, you know, you’re doing a great job. Yeah. I also want to mention to you, and then you can put the, you know, the observation.
[00:30:54] Steve Fretzin: In that type of format and then but look, I think you’re great. You’re doing wonderful work. You know, things are going great. Just, you know, just tweak that one thing. It’s not so harsh.
[00:31:04] Daniel Scola: It’s not. Yeah. I mean, there’s harshness and then like I’ve noticed you’ve taken this approach. You begin to take this approach.
[00:31:10] Daniel Scola: That’s really perfectly where you need to go and that’s where you got to go that that’ll really work well for you So now you’re giving them a little positive and a little bit of negative like well, I’m glad I changed my approach I better continue doing that. Yeah Great
[00:31:24] Steve Fretzin: stuff. Hey everybody as we wrap up want to thank our sponsors rankings.
[00:31:27] Steve Fretzin: io Getting your website your lead gen all that stuff to your door I want to thank Sonya Palmer one of our sponsors for LawHer, continue to put out impactful episodes dedicated to growing women in business and law. And of course, I want to just mention sales free selling, the methodology that I’ve been teaching for 20 plus years.
[00:31:47] Steve Fretzin: If you’d like to audit a class and just come on a Tuesday morning to sit in and meet my clients and sit in on one of my classes, I’m now offering a one class free audit. There’s no obligation. It’s just an opportunity for you to come and see what I’m doing every day for my clients and talk it through.
[00:32:02] Steve Fretzin: And that’s kind of a, just email me at Steve at Fretzin. com to just say, Hey, I’d like to take you up on that and we’ll schedule some time. Dan, if people want to get in touch with you and they want to network with you, they want to throw all their work away from the big firms to you. What’s the, what are the best ways for them to reach you?
[00:32:18] Daniel Scola: Well, there’s an easy way. Just go to the website, which is H B as in baby H B I P. L A W law dot com. It stands for Hoffman and Barron Law dot com.
[00:32:32] Steve Fretzin: Fantastic.
[00:32:32] Daniel Scola: Yeah.
[00:32:33] Steve Fretzin: All right. You don’t mind not having your name on the door, huh?
[00:32:36] Daniel Scola: You know, there was such a good reputation, I decided to keep it. And I only became a managing partner about six, seven years ago, so.
[00:32:45] Daniel Scola: I’m fine with it. Yeah, you know,
[00:32:47] Steve Fretzin: that warms my heart when you, you know, when people can take the ego out of it and just say, look, this is the brand. It’s great. You know, I’m a part of this team. It’s, you know, just because my name’s, you know, johnson and I’m working at Nike doesn’t mean they got to change the name from Nike to johnson.
[00:33:00] Steve Fretzin: Right? So
[00:33:01] Daniel Scola: exactly. I mean, when they work with you, they’ll know what you’re about. That is, that’s how
[00:33:05] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Well, thanks so much for, for hanging out with me for half an hour and sharing your wisdom. I know everyone listening enjoyed it as much as I did. So but in you and I got to keep in touch. Okay.
[00:33:15] Daniel Scola: Yeah, that’d be great. Yeah. I’d like to do that. Cool.
[00:33:17] Steve Fretzin: And thank you. Hey, don’t leave yet. Thank you everybody for spending time with Dan and I today on the Be That Lawyer with Fretzin podcast. Every single week twice a week here to help you be that lawyer confident organized in a skilled rainmaker Take care everybody.
[00:33:30] Steve Fretzin: Be safe. Be well, we’ll talk again soon. Thanks
[00:33:36] Narrator: 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 developments Development and marketing trends for more information and important links about today’s episode check out today’s show notes