In this episode, Steve Fretzin and David Schnurman discuss:
- Building a resilient mindset through optimism, reflection, and habit formation
- Lessons from career pivots and entrepreneurial problem-solving in the legal space
- Cultivating emotional regulation through gratitude, compassion, and non-judgment
- Embracing technology and AI to repurpose content and increase professional impact
Key Takeaways:
- Journaling and identifying recurring mindset blocks can help lawyers recognize patterns of imposter syndrome and emotional burnout, giving them the self-awareness and clarity needed to shift their thinking and take purposeful steps toward resilience.
- When faced with the sudden loss or burnout of a critical team member, initiating an honest, values-based conversation centered on purpose, mutual respect, and long-term impact can be the difference between salvaging a project or watching it collapse.
- Implementing a simple but consistent daily practice of writing down three gratitudes, avoiding all outward complaints for 21 days, and giving five genuine compliments can rewire your stress response and gradually create a more positive, grounded internal state.
- Delaying your instinct to judge setbacks as inherently negative by using the mantra “good thing, bad thing, who knows” allows you to stay emotionally balanced, maintain perspective, and remain open to positive outcomes that may not be immediately visible.
“If you compliment somebody else, and it’s authentic, it helps you get through the stress of the wave.” — David Schnurman
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Rankings.io: https://rankings.io/
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Episode References:
How Full Is Your Bucket? by Tom Rath & Don Clifton: https://www.amazon.com/How-Full-Your-Bucket-Rath/dp/1595620036
A Complaint Free World by Will Bowen: https://www.amazon.com/Complaint-Free-World-Complaining-Enjoying/dp/0770436390
About David Schnurman: David Schnurman is a seasoned entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, and author of The Fast Forward Mindset: How to Be Fearless & Focused to Accelerate Your Success. As the CEO of Lawline, a leading online education platform for attorneys, David scaled the company from startup to industry leader while developing a powerful framework for personal and professional growth. Through his work and writing, David empowers others to break out of their comfort zones, manage fear, and focus their energy on making a meaningful impact. He’s also a past president of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) New York Chapter and a passionate advocate for fearless leadership.
Connect with David Schnurman:
Website: https://www.lawline.com/
Book: The Fast Forward Mindset: https://www.ffwdmindset.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidschnurman/
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 there. It’s Steve Fretzin, and I’ve got something big for you. If you’re a lawyer who’s serious about building your book of business, I’m most going to be that lawyer live on July 24 it’s a virtual event where the legal industry’s top rainmakers will be there to share real world secrets to their success. Sign up now at fretzin.com/events, and lock in your spot. Today. Seats are limited, so don’t wait.
Narrator [00:28]
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, Hey
Steve Fretzin [00:50]
everybody, welcome back to the be that lawyer podcast. I am Steve Fretzin. Your host, doing this over five years over, I don’t know, 520 episodes or something like that. And you know, this show is really all about you the lawyer, and living your best lawyer life. And just make How do you make it? And you know, be successful. Have a great mindset. Get the free time. You know, build a business. Whether you’re at solo or small firm or big firm, doesn’t matter. You know, it’s all you Inc. You know you need to do for you and take care of your clients and all the people around you, and this show covers a lot of that ground. And if you want to get it all in one place, you can also go to Amazon, grab the book on Amazon. I’ve got over 55 star reviews. I know you’ll love it. And again, if you love this show, you’re going to love the book. All right. Oh, exhaust. I’m exhausted already. David, we haven’t even started. Welcome buddy. Good to see you again.
David Schnurman [01:40]
Good to see you. You earned the break. That was a really good intro.
Steve Fretzin [01:44]
I was so happy to be on your show and and then, of course, we had to do the pod swap. You can’t, I don’t ever feel right doing someone’s show and then not, you know, offering to have them on it, by the way, like I’m It was super excited to have you on, and I am. So I know we’re gonna have a great time. We’re gonna help a lot of people today. So thanks for
David Schnurman [02:01]
being here. It’s so funny. I just learned the term pod swap because we were talking, I was out with Matthew curvis, yeah, I was gonna be on your podcast. It’s like, Oh, you guys are doing a pod swap. I’m like, What’s that? He’s like, going in his podcast. I’m like, oh, okay, yeah, that’s what we’re doing. So I will continue to try to do more pots.
Steve Fretzin [02:15]
Yes, I do a great pot. And then also the other one that I didn’t come up with this, but I’ll take credit for it is a Blogcast. What’s a Blogcast? What’s the truncated version of it’s the transcript brought into and created into an article. And so that’s a sort of a made up term for a blog that’s a podcast, Blogcast. So there’s another one for you. You got two today.
David Schnurman [02:34]
I’ll share one with you at the end. Yes, at the end, I share something
Steve Fretzin [02:38]
with you guys. You got to stay with us to the end so you can hear what David’s gonna share with me. All right, so let’s talk about your quote of the show. I’m very optimistic. People sometimes think I’m too optimistic and annoyingly So, but that’s but I am also a curmudgeon. I don’t know that’s how that plays in so I’m like an optimistic curmudgeon is a term I’ve used for myself. That’s my old Jewish self, I guess, in some way. All right, here we go. Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. So thanks for being here and tell us a little bit about that quote.
David Schnurman [03:07]
So that quote is from Helen Keller and my now,
Steve Fretzin [03:12]
wait a second. You need to tell say who Helen Keller is, because anyone under 30 may not even know Fair enough.
David Schnurman [03:17]
Helen Keller was blind and deaf, yeah, and accomplished so much in her life. And that is a quote that represents how she was able to accomplish so much being both blind and deaf throughout her life. Yeah, great point. I just assume everybody knows who she is at this point. And I’m going to be honest, that quote is something actually my dad was one of his three quotes. And when somebody says it so much, it actually seeps in into your into what you do. And I gotta tell you, he would say that throughout, you know, when I was in college and in law school, he would say it all the time, and I would hear it and go one in one ear and out the other. It wasn’t until I was in entrepreneurship and I was building law line, and we’d go through challenge after challenge, roadblock after roadblock. I actually listened to it and looked at it and dissected it, because one of the reasons is I’m not very religious, right? I’m it’s not something there. And optimism is a faith that leads to achievement. Faith like when people say, Does God exist? There is no Yes or No. There’s only a faith that God exists. And so it hit me when I was dealing with, like, the most challenging one, I can pick a dozen challenging situations, but in one situation where we had to fire somebody, I wasn’t sure if we should do it. I was like, Well, I don’t know if this is right or wrong. I’m like, Oh, I don’t know. It’s faith. And if I have faith in what I’m going to do, I have to be as faithful and being optimistic as somebody believes in God. And that, to me, was like, holy smokes. Now I get it. And then with, you know, without hope and confidence, nothing gets accomplished. And I’m telling you, I heard that for five years before I actually heard it. So I hope somebody in this. Listening to this doesn’t have to go five years of hearing it all the time and actually understanding how
Steve Fretzin [05:04]
it applies. Yeah. I mean, like, the greatest accomplishment in my life so far has been when I hear my son say something that I’ve said to him that many times, and that it actually did seep through, because mostly it just seems like in the ear out the other and I was the same way, right? I mean, my father was all about, you know, accomplishment and doing. He grew up in the projects. They had nothing. They had to play softball because nobody could afford a mitt. That’s how poor they were. And when you achieve from that type and level of poverty and accomplish like my father did, I mean, there’s a lot of lessons that, you know, you want your teenage son to take in. And so anyway, I’m not joking about my greatest accomplishment, but it is something that I I do adopt. I do a double take when he says something that I’ve said to him, and I go, Oh, shit, he was listening.
David Schnurman [05:46]
Well, I’ll tell you this so much with I have 16 year old and 11 year old boys and a 16 year old girl, and I don’t think they’re listening to anything I say. And then every so often they’ll say something I’m like, Oh, they are listening.
Steve Fretzin [05:56]
Yeah, it’s happening. It’s like a squirrel in the back of their head, rattling around or something. Well, listen, everybody. David Schnurman is my newest friend. We’ve known each other a number of years, but I think, you know, we’ve really, kind of come into really getting to know each other through the pot swap and all that. And you’re the CEO of law line. You’re the author of Fast Forward mindset. And give everybody a little bit of an opening as to how you came to be and accomplishing so much,
David Schnurman [06:21]
I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur. It’s been my aspiration since I was in high school. I would, or even in middle school, I would go into the staples, and I would take a cart, and I would put, like, a safe, a notepad, all these different things. I would pretend like I had my own business. I would put him in a cart, and then I would just walked out, and that was, like, it was like a It was so weird, but like, I felt so good doing that. And then I would read Entrepreneur Magazine in college, you know, the one the magazine. And in the back of Entrepreneur Magazine, it was all, like, the franchises you can buy and all different business ideas. And then I moved on to business book and self improvement books, and I just became, I call myself a SHA, a self help addict, yeah. And as a Shah, I just kept going and going. And so I ended up thinking I was going to graduate college and make a million dollars for entrepreneurship, and my first job was $27,000 as a sales assistant. Five years later, I was still doing sales, and moved up to sales. They’re my third company, I realized. And then maybe it was like, I don’t know four companies. I’m like, Oh man, I start talking to people who are like, 15 years past me and there was their 10th sales job. My dad was a attorney. Came from nothing. He always wanted me to attorney. I never wanted to do it. As a result, I realized at that time maybe entrepreneurship wasn’t for me, and being attorney for the next 20 years of my life made more sense than 20 years of sales roles. So that’s why I went to law school. In law school, I actually started a public access TV show my second year, interviewing entrepreneurs. And my dad earlier in 1999 had started law line as when CLE became mandatory, but had stopped it two years later because of the.com crash, and just he was ahead of his time, and I just had this aha moment my third year law school, instead of interviewing entrepreneurs, why don’t I interview attorneys? Why don’t I take the name law line, turn those into CLE courses and start selling on demand CLE courses my third year law school. Amazing. Since that time we’ve served, it was 17 years ago. We just had our 10 million force completed on our website.
Steve Fretzin [08:29]
That’s insane. That is so great. It’s, you know, it’s so funny. Our backgrounds are so similar. And I don’t know what it is about having a lawyer father, but I mean, and then the one, like both of them came from nothing. And you know, I think for me, it was appreciating that, you know, money, and just, you know, I know. Remember, like asking my dad, Larry, the lawyer, for money, I might as well just want to poke my eyes out with a scissors. It was to that point he just saw money so differently than anyone else. So I was like, Well, if I mowed the lawn, can you pay me? He’s like, Yeah, if you mow the lawn, I’ll give you $4 or I’ll give you $3 I’m like, great. I’m like, Great, I’ll take me an hour and a half, and then, you know, it’s just like, what else could I do to make money? So I never have to go back to this guy and say, I need, you know, I want money for McDonald’s, or I want money for a new pair. I mean, even, like, shoes, like, I had to buy my I was buying my own shoes, because the shoes that he would get me would be, you know, $2 and I wanted $20 shoes. Or, Pumas or whatever they were at the time, is that your experience
David Schnurman [09:23]
or different? Similar, but a little different, okay, similar in that. In my dad’s eyes, my being spoiled was the worst thing in the world. And he, you know, when I was growing up, he had some success, but his life history was you have to have nothing in order to understand what it is to be successful. And so it was always the joke where my friends I wouldn’t even have, like, enough allowance, or things like the joke that, like, Why does Dave not have enough to do any of this stuff? Yeah, yeah. And so it really did teach so I never asked for anything. Never expect anything. However, there is one big difference, and I’m super thankful and grateful for. It while when it came to my and I got a job at the gap, you know, I was working at the gap. I was working at all these different like account, all these different things, just to pay my own way. To your point, I worked at the Department of Corrections. I worked at different places as part time employee. The one area where they did invest in me, and I’m super grateful for it, is in my education.
Steve Fretzin [10:19]
Yeah, yeah, because they saw value in that, right? They didn’t see value in the BS that we were trying to buy to keep up with our friends, but they saw value in education.
David Schnurman [10:28]
Like when I say, my dad had nothing he, like his dad, died when he was seven. He was the first one to go to college. He when He went to law school, he barely made it, and he drove a taxi throughout law school. So it’s education transformed his life I am. It’s interesting when I think about my kids in the future generations, how educational institutions, what kind of value they have for our kids compared to what they did for us. And it is changing that yeah, and the cost is insane. I’ll paste inflation significantly so it’s Yeah,
Steve Fretzin [10:58]
and I’ve got, I’ve got my my son’s I got him set up for the 529 and everything, and he’s all set to go to Colorado State in the fall and all that. Fantastic. My big now, the concern I have of like, is he going to do well and be successful in all this? And what major like now it’s all like, what jobs are going to be around in four years? Like, now that my whole mind is flipped around like, so great. He becomes a lawyer, or he becomes, you know someone a consultant, or he gets into accounting and like those jobs. Are they around in four years like that’s now this new concern that I have where, you know, I think plumbers and electricians and now they sort of have a far better hand potentially to be dealt because they’re using their hands and their brains at the same time.
David Schnurman [11:38]
Well, there’s no question. There’s more, in my opinion, for most of the population, trade school is more valuable, especially farmers and electricians like you can’t AI, at least today, cannot recreate that. Yeah, I struggle with the value of a four year liberal arts degree, or, you know, in a private school that cost, you know, before scholarships or anything like that. Yeah, all in $90,000 yeah, so, yeah, that’s crazy.
Steve Fretzin [12:05]
Well, all right, we could spend the rest of our time having this conversation, but I would be remiss if I didn’t hit you up on getting some understanding about mindset and lawyers mindsets. And when you you know, you interview, you meet, you CLE and you know, there’s a challenge with lawyers having an optimistic and positive mindset. And I’m curious if you have any insights as to why that is it’s not.
David Schnurman [12:28]
And where do you want to start? Like, yeah, no, I was gonna say it is definitely not. There’s no difference between mindset and lawyers and mindset and, okay, okay, well, this show is for lawyers. I was trying to but I just want look, there’s a lot of pressure. I mean, there’s, I’ll say this, first look. Yes, lawyers are people first and so I just wanted to set that tone, because I think it is important. I think what’s interesting about lawyers, they have self selected. Them have gone through at least four years additional education, at least past the bar, and so the level of dedication and commitment they’ve made, there is a higher stress level of being successful and so and many large amount of loans and larger amount of stress to do that. So certainly you don’t want to fail. And the reason I hate to go this route, because the cliche is like lawyers are taught that you have to be careful and you can’t take risks and all that stuff that might be that is true. But I would just say, as somebody who has gone to law school, the fear of failure is so real once you graduate for so many different reasons. And for me, I end imposter syndrome and all that, like 97% of people I’ve ever spoken from, I said, Do you have imposter syndrome? They raised their hand almost 100%
Steve Fretzin [13:47]
and so there were imposters.
David Schnurman [13:50]
No, but seriously, it’s when I was growing the business. And even today, I was dealing with so much challenges, going from zero revenue to, you know, to growing the business. And I was just like, why is this so hard? Why can’t I do this? And I was like, stuck in what I did and what I realized what I started doing. Luckily, I journal every day and I started, and one day, I printed out 1000 pages of journals, and this is before AI, and I went through every journal to find the themes of what I was doing. And I took all my out of a stack of, like, 50 self help books, all my journals, and I have three coaches, and I’m like, what is the themes of what’s going on here? And that’s where I started realizing the same things that I was feeling, lawyers feel, everyone feels. And you know, it’s the it’s this, the most talked about thing is how to be more fearless and focused, to get out of your comfort zone and stay out of there longer. And there’s books that are 1000 pages. There’s books that 500 pages. Everyone talks about it. I wanted to share it in a simplified way so that others can follow it. And by the way, the first public speaking event I did was in front of 500 Attorneys. Attorneys at the Clio conference, and afterwards, I’d say at least 30 to 40 of them came up to me and said that was the most impactful thing that they had at the conference, because they want to use it in their practice. Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [15:17]
Hey, pi attorneys, if you’re serious about scaling your firm. There’s one event you can’t afford to miss, pimcon, 2025 happening October 5 through the eighth at the Phoenician resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. Pimcon isn’t your average legal conference. It’s an experience. Learn how to take your firm from good to goat with some of the biggest trailblazers in the PI space, including yours truly, as we share our elite marketing and brand building strategies. Tickets on sale [email protected] that’s p i m, c o n.org, or just hit the link in the show notes. Your climb to the top starts at PIM con 2025 let’s go from good to go. 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. And I don’t know that we can be successful or accomplish things or grow a book of business, or grow a business or live a great life without having that sort of Fast Forward mindset or having a mindset of success and abundance. And how do people transition from being negative or having fear or just like worrying all the time and feeling stressed out to that open place of what the future could be.
David Schnurman [16:51]
There’s so many different techniques we’ll give, like two or three, so I’m going to share five things that I do. So the most important thing you need to do is take action to get out of your comfort zone. Let’s assume, and there’s 10 things you can do there, but I’m not going to go there right now. Okay, let’s assume you’ve taken action, you’ve got out of your comfort zone, because we all can do that to some degree without planning. We get there, but once we’re out, we’re like, oh my God, what do I do? And so there’s five things that I do that is backed up by research and so many things. And these are all probably cliches that you’ve heard before, but they’re cliches because they’re true. So one of the first things that I started doing was, you know, okay, I’m stressed out right now. How do I believe this stress? Okay, so first there’s the basics. Is you write three things you’re grateful for. I started 10 years ago a group on Facebook called 90 days to gratitude. It was a challenge to be gratitude for 90 days in a row. You had 5000 people join it. 10 years later, there’s still people doing their gratitude every single day. Yeah, it’s hard to be grateful and stress at the same time. You can’t smile and frown at the same time. Second thing this is, is a little bit harder, but, like, don’t complain. There’s another book called A point free world. Have you heard of it? No, okay, they had a challenge doing 21 days Complaint Free. Wow. You can’t complain for 20 days. You can stay in your head. You can you just can’t do it outward. Okay, I tried it. What are
Steve Fretzin [18:11]
my wife and I going to talk about? Well, you
David Schnurman [18:15]
don’t realize until you start doing it, the weather or the traffic, whatever. As soon as you complain, the challenge starts all over. Usually it takes somebody seven months. You have to start over. I only got through two months. That’s amazing. Maybe it wasn’t even but I could tell you, even getting through a week, people look at you differently. When you complain less and you feel differently about yourself. Just getting that far, like seven days or whatever was over the two months, I completely transform my thinking. And then the last thing I’ll share, because there’s not enough time to share them all. And this is a good one. Have you ever heard of the book? How full is your bucket? No, how full is your bucket? Okay, it’s such a good book. It was meant as a children’s book, but then they adopted it for adults. And let me ask you, when i What do you think is the best way to fill your bucket?
Steve Fretzin [19:03]
What is the best way to fill my bucket? Is this referencing, like, the rocks and the pebbles in the sand and the water? Is that where we’re going with this? Like, take care of the big things first. That’s a different analogy. This is like, you know how to go my bucket? I mean, that’s kind of giving some energy positive, okay? It’s going to be, you know, love, putting love out there, time with family, health and wellness, like taking care of my clients, like making sure other people are successful. How do I help others?
David Schnurman [19:28]
You’re a pro. Steve, okay, and I’m gonna You’re a pro. Most people, the first thing they start thinking about is like, Okay, I have to be positive for myself, and I have to take action, and I have to not be I have to be fearless, and have to do all these things. And the best way to fill your bucket you’re absolutely 100% right, is to fill somebody else’s bucket. Because if what, for example, like you’re a great podcaster, Steve, like you’re great, you understand it the two seconds, the half a second before I complimented you, in my mind, I felt good because I. Knew you were going to feel good, and so it’s the simplest thing when you compliment somebody else, and it’s authentic, it helps you get through the stress of the wave. When you do those three things, when you’re stressful, you will feel better afterwards. Here’s a really good exercise. You can take five pennies, put them in your left side of your pocket. By the end of the day, you have to do five compliments, and then you got to put them in your right side of the pocket. You know, when you’re complimenting that person, you’re doing it just for the exercise, and you see how good they feel. You feel amazing by Yeah, the stress that you’re feeling from getting out of your comfort zone is a little bit less.
Steve Fretzin [20:34]
And I’ll say this no joke. And we’re back to the dads again. Getting a compliment out of Larry the lawyer. It was like pulling teeth. It was always criticism, it was never compliment. And so I kind of have that in me, and so I have to really, I had to really work, like, in, think about it, in, like, how do I, you know, I need to compliment my wife on, you know, every dinner she makes, I compliment her, you know. And I’m being, I’m not, you know, both bull crapping or shitting, or whatever we want to say, but like, I’m, you know, this was a delicious dinner, and thank you, and this was, you’re amazing. And that’s not natural for me. I have, I had to work on myself to do that. I love the five pennies. That’s fantastic.
David Schnurman [21:12]
Yeah. I just, you know, read it in a book, right?
Steve Fretzin [21:14]
But sharing it and
David Schnurman [21:18]
getting it out there, yeah? And I got to give my dad credit, as you can see from that quote, he wasn’t. He is an optimist. He’s turning 80 next month, and he always gave positive reinforcement to me and my sister, and there’s nothing, as you know, because you didn’t get it as much. There’s nothing better than your parents believing in you, giving you compliments, having your back, regardless of what you do, and to some degree when, because he was his dad died when he was seven. It was a broken home. It was just him and his mom. His older siblings had left. She called him. His name is Alan. She called him my Allen because she would talk with him so much. My Allen this. My Allen that. And she he always said he became who he was because she had such confidence in him. And so I’m constantly trying to reinforce that, even though my, you know, I’m a parent of teenagers now who, like, you know, sometimes they push back too hard. You know, it’s I, I’m so proud of them. They’re all three, and in my 11 year, I’m so proud of what they do, and I try to help as much as possible.
Steve Fretzin [22:19]
Yeah, my son is playing Summerfest, which is, like, the biggest Wisconsin Music Festival in, you know, whatever, in the year. And he’s going to be up on stage playing electric guitar in front of, you know, hundreds, maybe 1000s of people, whatever. And I’m over there. I’m can’t wait to get out there and see him on stage and just, you know, rocking, and he’s got the long hair, and he’s playing up the role, and he’s on stage with a presence. And man, just nothing makes me prouder. I mean, I we all have those, you know, proud papa moments, but watching him progress and thrive in with music, which is something I’ve always loved since I was a kid, you know, and the fact that he loves the music that I made him listen to, like, you know, 80s rock journey, foreigner, you know, and getting into Metallica and all that really cool rock stuff, and that’s what he loves to play. It just fills me.
David Schnurman [23:06]
Fills me up. Awesome. Yeah, really good.
Steve Fretzin [23:09]
So what? Let’s give one more tip before we wrap up the show. What’s one of the thing that really helps attorneys who are maybe struggling with either bad things or just a bad thing that happened? How do they kind of get past it?
David Schnurman [23:22]
One of the most important things you can do when something happens and this, this is goes back 1000s of years. It’s related to stoicism. That’s related to Buddhism, is not label a situation as good or bad after it happens, it’s too easy to think that you make like you said, like you’ve made a mistake. And maybe we’re going to talk about that at the end and say, oh my god, this is the worst thing in the world. And we label things, I think, 10 times more bad than we label it good. And as soon as you label it bad, you experience it as bad. And we all know the hero’s journey, the e2 Hollywood story, back in the days where it’s like great, then gets really bad, then gets even better. It’s not over until it’s over. And we have both, I’m sure, seen that so many times in our lives. Oh yeah, when you think something’s bad, it actually is the best thing that happened to you, and so that’s what I would just say, is do not there’s a phrase, good thing, bad thing, who knows. And I use that when something has happened out of my control. And I use that when I’m trying to make a tough decision and I don’t know if it’s the right decision or the wrong decision. I literally say good thing, bad thing. Who knows? And I use that to give me the confidence to either make the decision or to realize that, okay, that wasn’t the result I expected, but it doesn’t necessarily make it a bad result.
Steve Fretzin [24:52]
Well, one of the reasons that they tell us as parents not to, you know, bulldozer our kids, right? And just plow ahead for them and do everything for. For them is because they need the challenge and they need the difficulties into fail like we had. I had a life full of failure and hardship and difficulty, not as much as somebody you know in Africa is starving to death, but like you know, for someone who you know growing up in the North Shore Chicago, you know, bad grades or not, am I going to get into college? Am I going to, you know, how am I going to make this work, bad sales jobs, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I think we need to have those struggles, because otherwise, how do we know what like you have to have the villain otherwise, how do you know what’s good?
David Schnurman [25:32]
It gives you a good Tim Adams, who was one of my coaches, she said the bad things that happen, or the bad things that go give you contrast to when the good things happen. So if you don’t have that, you don’t have that contrast, right? And imagine your life was all good. Everything you did was perfect. It gets kind of boring. I’ll just one real thing on that is like, I can’t tell you how many successful entrepreneurs I know, and I was actually with one yesterday who sold their business, and this person sold their business for a significant amount of money. And after he sold his business and put his money in a fund, and they’re investing it, he is so depressed right now because he’s not sure what to do, yeah, do. And, you know, it’s just interesting. You know, you think you know what the end result is or where you want to end up, and now, like he’s trying to figure out what that next step is. So the journey, you know, the journey is, it’s just something important to realize there is the end of the rainbow where you’re thinking doesn’t always necessarily get to you where you want, yeah,
Steve Fretzin [26:31]
and it’s not always about money. I mean, I want to have money for a number of reasons, but I’m but I know a lot of people that are incredibly wealthy and depressed and unhappy and miserable and all of that. So, all right, let’s wrap it up with David’s big mistake. What’s What happened to you? And this is right? I mean, we just kind of set this up perfectly in the last couple minutes,
David Schnurman [26:50]
lots of mistakes, one that looked like it almost was going to tank the company. Was when I don’t know this is, I say 10 years ago, it’s probably longer. I keep thinking we’re like, whatever, but let’s say, over 10 years ago, we built our website originally on what we what was called back in the day, spaghetti code. And that means there was no frameworks. There’s no structure. It’s like I had one developer, they built this, that, and as we grew pretty quickly. But what happened was, every time we tried to update one part of the site, the other part of the site would create. Would crash. And we had to make a decision, either we were just going to keep fixing it on top of it, or we had to, like, build a whole new website. We decided. I got a presentation. We decided to build a whole new website. I was told it would take six months. It ended up taking almost a year and a half through that time, every single developer ended up quitting, including the person who was the head of the team and wanted to give me the proposal, because it was such a hard project and it was too much, yeah, yeah. And we already invested all his time in it. The site was doing terrible. And I just like thought, like, you know, you don’t have a website, you’re not in business. And he was leaving. We went for a walk around the block. I said to him, Look, you know, you leaving now, before that, you’ve completed this site, you’re missing a really key highlight to your career. And I was like, if you could stay three more months, which end up turning to six months, but if you could say three more months, it’s not a lot for you, but it means everything to law line, and it will then be a great thing for your career, because you’ll finish the job. And we made a deal, and he stayed, and it ended up being six months, and he did it, and then it worked out. But if he had left, when he said he was gonna leave, we were really in a tough pickle,
Steve Fretzin [28:33]
yeah, but I think that from what I’m getting from this, the takeaway is, you know, you have to have these tough conversations, and you have to try to, you know, whether it’s a partnership or whether it’s an employee, or whatever, it’s like you need to get to some conclusion and figure out how to move things forward. And it sounds like you did that. And without that conversation, he just says, See, and leaves you in the lurch. And then what you know this is you’re in a different situation.
David Schnurman [28:56]
And it came from trust and respect, yeah, close relationship. But he was, he was just physically and mentally burnt out. That’s he was at the end of the day. He was trying was trying to protect his own health, which I totally understood. All right, well, listen, man, you want me to share that one tip for you? Oh, yeah, give the tip, and then we’ll wrap up. This is a good tip for you, too. I started trying this out, and I’ll share the prompt with you, because I’ve done podcasts, and I’m like, How do I get more value out of the podcast? I went to Claude and I created a prompt that actually created a web page and created an interactive quiz from the transcript that gives a 10 question quiz. And I’ll do it for yours, and I’ll actually share it with you of the transcript of what you discussed and with Claude now it builds a website. I saw a code in front of me. Did the questions. You choose the right answer, it says yes, and it actually publishes the web page that, to me, was and took five minutes. Wow, that would in the past, you’d have to hire somebody, or you have to look through the whole transcript.
Steve Fretzin [29:51]
So it’s a quiz on, what on what happened? Like, did you what you get away? What did you get out of
David Schnurman [29:55]
the podcast? It was, like, the 10 key points of the podcast, but it’ll do as a quiz, not as you. Yeah, all right, we’ll do that. It’s a multiple choice. It’s gonna blow it’s a multiple choice quiz. Literally takes three minutes. Oh my god, I’m gonna send it to you after this, okay, and you can share it on social media. Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [30:09]
I want everybody quizzed on this. I want you to tell me, you know, answer a question about, you know, my father and how, even, how he saw money, or, anyway, random.
David Schnurman [30:17]
I’ll do your podcast with me. It was you said a lot of good things. So there we go. Any attorney can use that in helping them stuff learn and of course, on law line, we are always implementing new technologies. This is something we’re looking at. We also have an AI assistant and things like that.
Steve Fretzin [30:33]
Awesome. All right, man, but let’s take a moment thank our sponsors. I will be at pimcon in October, in Scottsdale, Arizona, at the Venetian check that [email protected] want to check out the law her podcast with Sonia Palmer. She’s crushing it and David. People want to they know about law line, but let’s give out the digits and tell people to get on it.
David Schnurman [30:51]
Yeah. So obviously lawline.com we have a year subscription for 20 now. I think there’s a 2100, hours of content. It’s only $299 for the year. We have everything you can need. We have 100 hours of just AI content right now. We have learning tracks and everything is silly, credited, approved in every state that it’s mandatory. And yeah, we’re just happy to help you in your journey of continuing legal education, but most importantly, and your career growth path.
Steve Fretzin [31:23]
Yeah, amazing. Well, thank you. Thanks for hanging out and having this. You know, we were kind of not all over the place, but we just covered a lot of ground and on a personal and a business level. And appreciate you doing the pod swap with me, and I just feel like there’s a lot more that we can do together, so I’m looking forward to the future. Me too. Thanks again. Awesome. Yeah, thank you. And thank you everybody for hanging out with Dave and I for about 30 minutes or so. You know, I’m not gonna go and recap everything we covered, but holy mackerel, a lot of great stuff there, especially about getting your mind in the right place to live your best lawyer’s life, which, as you know, is what this show is all about. All right, everybody, take care. Be safe, be well. We will talk again very soon.
Narrator [32:00]
You thanks for listening to be that loyal, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, fretson.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.