In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Frank Rekas discuss:
- Effectively managing and growing a law practice
- Common challenges in professional practice operations
- The role of delegation in business efficiency
- Building connections for business development
Key Takeaways:
- Lawyers often struggle with financial management because they aren’t taught business skills in law school, leading them to handle finances disorganized, resulting in missed opportunities and inefficiencies.
- Many law firm owners wear too many hats, such as managing finances, marketing, and administrative tasks, distracting from legal work and hindering productivity and success.
- Successful law firms should delegate by hiring specialists, like fractional CFOs for oversight and marketers for development, ensuring each business aspect is managed by experts, letting lawyers focus on their best work.
- Building a strong network, particularly through social media and direct engagement with potential clients or partners, can greatly enhance a lawyer’s ability to grow their practice and establish themselves as experts.
“You need to be organized, and by getting organized, that means you need to have a financial plan.” — Frank Rekas
Read more from Steve at Above the Law: AboveTheLaw.com/tag/Steve-Fretzin/
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Episode References:
The Power Of Zero Show: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-power-of-zero-show/id1441026169
About Frank Rekas: Frank Rekas is a seasoned financial professional with over 30 years of experience in financial services. Based in South Florida, Frank has been with Equitable Advisors since 2014, focusing on helping attorneys, business owners, and individuals navigate complex financial planning, particularly through divorce. He holds multiple FINRA registrations and is actively involved in his community as a board member of the American Hellenic Education Philanthropic Association (AHEPA). Frank is known for his personalized approach, building strong, lifelong relationships with his clients.
Connect with Frank Rekas:
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankrekas/
Phone: 954-253-5508 (Mobile) and 561-961-9312 (Office)
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 everybody, before we get to the show, I just want to share that I’m now writing for Above the Law. If you enjoy this podcast, you might also enjoy my monthly columns. You can go to Above the Law and type my name into the magnifying glass in the top right corner to read my latest articles. Thanks and enjoy the show.
[00:00:21] 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.
[00:00:43] Steve Fretzin: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Be That Lawyer podcast. Assuming that you’re coming back and not a first time listener. If you’re a first time listener, welcome. And again, if you’ve been listening for a while, two things I would ask. One is to let other lawyers know about the show. Don’t be shy and, and, you know, be, don’t be greedy.
[00:00:58] Steve Fretzin: Share the, share the, you know, share the, the information. And also if you get a, you know, an opportunity to give us a five star review or give us a thumbs up or comment on you know, an Apple, anywhere you can to help us promote the show. All so appreciated. We want to keep the sucker going, helping you to be that lawyer, confident, organized, and a skilled Rainmaker.
[00:01:16] Steve Fretzin: And boy, we got a, we got a fun show for you today. I got Frank waiting in the wings. How you doing Frank?
[00:01:21] Frank Rekas: I’m good, Steve. How are you? Good. Chicago.
[00:01:24] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Things are good in Chicago, you know, getting our storms, getting our winter, summer weather, whatever, but all good. What what I want to ask you, I think we met through you being like super complimentary to my social media posters.
[00:01:37] Steve Fretzin: Is that how we met?
[00:01:37] Frank Rekas: I think that’s how we met, but I think someone also may have introduced us that is a member of provisors. And I know we’ve seen each other in a couple of meetings that either I’ve guessed it on or, or you’ve guessed it on. That’s how we kind of got to know each other a little bit more.
[00:01:51] Steve Fretzin: Got it. Got it. But I just want to make a comment that in, you know, one way you can develop a relationship with someone new, whether that’s a GC, a CEO, another lawyer at a bigger firm, whatever it might be. Is to really identify, you know, that they’re posting on LinkedIn and if they’re posting good stuff, be complimentary.
[00:02:10] Steve Fretzin: I’m not saying we all need our ego stroke, but you know, you start to get on their radar and you start to build a little bit of a relationship, a little bit of a friendship and then eventually leads to a meeting or a podcast like this or something like that. So I’m just putting it out there. Like there’s more than a couple of ways to skin a cat.
[00:02:25] Steve Fretzin: By the way, do you know where that saying comes from, skin a cat?
[00:02:28] Frank Rekas: No,
[00:02:29] Steve Fretzin: I should, but no. All right, so we’re not actually talking about cats, right? Because that would be weird. And why are we skinning actual cats? It actually has to do with catfish. There are a lot of different ways to take the skin. They don’t have, you know, they don’t have like scales.
[00:02:42] Steve Fretzin: They have skin to take skin off a catfish to eat the catfish. And that’s where that saying comes from. So, hey everybody, if nothing else, you learned nothing today from Frank and I. That’s not going to happen. But if it hasn’t, you learned where that stupid saying comes from about skinning a cat.
[00:02:57] Frank Rekas: That will be my claim to fame today.
[00:02:59] Steve Fretzin: That’s actually my claim. I said, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll share that. We’ll share the claim. Now, another thing that I love is, I love Michael Jordan and Walter Payton. Those are my two favorite Chicago icons. And we’re just going to start off with a quote of the show, and it is from Walter Payton. And thank you for submitting this.
[00:03:16] Steve Fretzin: Really great. When you’re good, you’ll tell everyone. When you’re great, they’ll tell you. And I just fricking love that quote. So first of all, Frank, welcome to the show. And second of all, tell us a little bit about why you love that quote so much.
[00:03:30] Frank Rekas: Thank you. Thanks for having me. I’m really honored to be here.
[00:03:33] Frank Rekas: Steve. I really, really appreciate it. I always loved Walter Payton. I loved watching him run. I loved hearing about how he worked out in the summer to prepare for the season. And when I saw that quote, I The very first time it just rang to me that, you know what, everybody says he’s great. He knows exactly what he’s talking about and he let his work show it.
[00:03:57] Frank Rekas: I mean, he was dedicated. He was a from what I can have remembered, he was a true gentleman. Everybody just loved him, but he was great. And it just resonates with me that, you know, when you do a good job, We’re going to tell you about it.
[00:04:14] Steve Fretzin: You know, I think there, I try to either know if this is my memory or something that I just heard, but there’s a, a, a toboggan Hill right by where I grew up.
[00:04:21] Steve Fretzin: Cause the North shore of Chicago is where a lot of the bulls and the bears and, you know, a lot of the athletes live and he would run up and down this Hill with a log on his back or something like that. And that was like a big thing that happened in my childhood growing up with Walter Payton. But yeah, probably the most fun running back to watch in my life.
[00:04:40] Steve Fretzin: When he.
[00:04:41] Frank Rekas: When he got his legs going, that’s when he was just, you know, the high, the high kicks. Yeah, that was the high
[00:04:47] Steve Fretzin: kicks, but also like put his shoulder down and like, not take the hit, but actually make the hit or make the block for the quarterback to stop a sack. I mean, just incredible, incredible talent.
[00:04:56] Steve Fretzin: Frank Ricas, you are senior advisor at financial advisor at Ludus financial partners. I want to welcome you to the show and would, would love to have you share your background. How did you get into working? In financial services and also working with lawyers
[00:05:10] Frank Rekas: So working with financial or getting into financial services was pure accident I was managing an ace hardware store.
[00:05:17] Frank Rekas: I did that for 10 years in chicago, which is where I was born and raised And I just needed to get out and one day I came home. I had a letter from an insurance company. I opened it up. I read it. I didn’t think too much of it and I tossed it in the trash can. My wife came home from work, opened up the trash can to throw something away, saw the letter face up, pulled it out and said, are you going on this interview?
[00:05:40] Frank Rekas: I go, no, it’s in the trash can. I think you better go. And from there,
[00:05:45] Steve Fretzin: that’s all it was. That is the craziest thing I’ve ever still have it.
[00:05:50] Frank Rekas: I still, Oh my God.
[00:05:51] Steve Fretzin: That’s so great.
[00:05:54] Frank Rekas: Back in night, I think it was 1991. Oh my God. I started in June of or July of 1991. Wow. So, yeah, I got my feet wet with an insurance company, been to two, you know, I’ve been in insurance based companies, you know, my career.
[00:06:10] Frank Rekas: That’s not all we do, of course but it’s really the foundation of what we do. And as far as working with attorneys, I tell this to everybody who asks, it just happened.
[00:06:20] Steve Fretzin: Mm hmm.
[00:06:21] Frank Rekas: I, at, at one of the companies that I worked at, we have what are called orphans. You have an account, but your advisor left. So I was given an account of an attorney.
[00:06:32] Frank Rekas: And I think if she was a family law attorney I went out to see her and, you know, I always say the same thing. She was a little rough around the edges and I was kind of a little rough around the edges back and like, well, I got nothing to lose here. So, you know, I don’t want to be a pushover. It was, it was in a nice bantering type way.
[00:06:50] Frank Rekas: I was able to help her. She referred me to another attorney. One of my colleagues at the office said, Hey, I hear you did a couple of things with some attorneys. I know an attorney. Do you want to come with me on a, on a, on an appointment? Sure. And then it just kind of developed. And before I knew it, 60 ish percent of my clients are attorneys and it just, it happened organically.
[00:07:13] Frank Rekas: And I enjoy working with them. We have similar business things that we. have to deal with similar mindsets from running a business, gaining clients, networking. And it, for me, it’s just, it’s very natural. And some of them are my best friends.
[00:07:31] Steve Fretzin: I found very much the same thing with me, which was never thought I would work with lawyers and got, you know, pulled into it with the recession of 2008 and nine.
[00:07:39] Steve Fretzin: And When something clicks, like when lawyers find out that there’s someone that specializes and has a percentage of their business working with lawyers, I think, you know, they’re a special group that, you know, they are and they want to feel like the person that they’re working with knows them and their industry enough that they’re, that they’re not just, you know, working in, you know, everywhere.
[00:07:59] Steve Fretzin: They’re, they’re, they’re specialized, like they’re specialized. And so I think that’s where a lot of it gels.
[00:08:05] Frank Rekas: Yeah, and you know, I, a lot of people work with, a lot of advisors work with doctors. I don’t work with, I don’t have one doctor in my book of business, as it’s called. It’s attorneys and, you know, small business owners that I really enjoy working with.
[00:08:21] Steve Fretzin: So I mean, I, I do deal with lawyers that are struggling financially. They’re, they’re making great money and they’re not, Able to, you know, make investments in their business development. They’re not able to make investments in marketing. They’re not hiring that associate and it’s it’s the business that may have difficulty with finances and then also their personal finances.
[00:08:46] Steve Fretzin: And I think there should be classes in high school and college for sure. You know, basic finance and understanding personal finance. And of course there isn’t or aren’t right. So why, why do you feel like law firms? Owners are challenged by The financial side of the business is it is it just lack of knowledge or is it that they they’re just you know I don’t know just a different different type.
[00:09:09] Steve Fretzin: They’re not really business people in many cases They have to kind of learn that
[00:09:13] Frank Rekas: well not to be demeaning in any way shape or form But I think as we know they don’t teach a lawyer how to run a business in college You
[00:09:22] Steve Fretzin: Right. Or law
[00:09:22] Frank Rekas: school. Oh, yeah. Or law school. And somebody even said they barely teach you how to be an attorney, so I can’t comment on that, but I think they get so wrapped up in the running of their business, the running of their firm, working with their clients, getting new clients, being involved in associations.
[00:09:42] Frank Rekas: And then trying to have somewhat of a life and a family that it just kind of goes by the wayside and becomes an afterthought and they do a lot of their financial planning piecemeal. I’ll buy my insurance from Steve. I’ll buy my investment from Frank. I’ll do this with Johnny. I’ll do that with Susie.
[00:10:01] Frank Rekas: There’s no coordination. And that’s what I seem to see a lot, or they’ll be working at a, at a larger firm. They’ll figure out that I can do this on my own and then they go on their own, but then they don’t know where to start. Not only from the personal financial side, but also the business financial side.
[00:10:20] Frank Rekas: And that’s why I like to also collaborate with what we’ll call fractional CFOs. Where they’ll look at the business aspect of the law firm’s business and I’ll look at the personal side of the law firm owner and then we kind of do that together to get them on the right track.
[00:10:38] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, and you know, it’s, it’s again, how many hats can someone wear, right?
[00:10:43] Steve Fretzin: They’re wearing the bookkeeper hat, they’re wearing the administrator hat, the marketing hat, the business hat. And, and are there things that you’re seeing? What are, what are some of the things you’ve seen? Let’s just maybe go back and hit some stories or things that you’ve seen that you just like shake your head and go, wow, I can’t believe this has been going on.
[00:11:00] Frank Rekas: I’ve seen where firms where one of the firms partners is paying the bills, you know, back in the, back in the day when you would write checks, right? Even if it’s automated, who cares? You shouldn’t be doing that. And I get it. It might be a trust factor. You don’t want certain people to have access to your accounts.
[00:11:20] Frank Rekas: I get it. But that’s not really the kind of work that you, you should be doing. I think that’s the thing that is glaring that I’ve seen quite a bit. They do their own marketing. You should have somebody not necessarily doing your own social media, but Somebody doing your marketing for you. You should have somebody maybe doing some networking on your behalf.
[00:11:43] Frank Rekas: I’ve seen a few law firm owners down here that hire people to go out and meet people and talk about their firm so that they’re top of mind when a particular situation happens. So I believe that they should try to stick to doing what they do best. And I think it takes a little bit of time to figure that out.
[00:12:05] Frank Rekas: And also it takes money. You got to have the money to hire these people, but if you can get yourself to that spot, then I think it’s exponential growth. From that point.
[00:12:15] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, it’s, it’s, you know, we always go back to the importance of delegation and, you know, finding what your true passion and, and superpower is.
[00:12:25] Steve Fretzin: And if it’s doing the law, then, then that’s where you should really be investing your time. If it’s managing people, then do that. If it’s business development, do that. But. You know, when you’re just trying to pay bills and you’re doing the bookkeeping and saying, and you’re, you know, taking in, you know, invoices and taking in checks and, you know, you’re spending your whole, you know, half a day, you know, doing that kind of stuff.
[00:12:47] Steve Fretzin: I think those are the kind of the big missteps. And there’s so many good options now for delegating. You don’t need to do that. Oh yeah.
[00:12:53] Frank Rekas: Right. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there’s people everywhere that’ll do it for, you know, a relatively low amount. It just, Depends on how well you’re connected in your community or how well you might be connected with other law firm owners or other attorneys who may know somebody.
[00:13:08] Frank Rekas: And there’s so much information out there and I, you know, as you probably have seen, I follow a lot of attorneys because a lot of their ideas are actually even good for me. That I can relate to a business. So that’s another reason why I think we gel very well together.
[00:13:24] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. So what’s, so then what are you seeing?
[00:13:27] Steve Fretzin: There’s the, there’s the business finance side of how you run a business and the KPIs and the investments and, and the cashflow and cash is King and all that. And I want to talk about that and then I want to leak it into the personal finance side because there’s two sides to this coin and you know, one usually impacts the other, but there might be people who are running a real tight ship at the office, but still don’t have any money at the end of the day by name, you know, personally, because of a number of reasons I’m sure we’ll get into.
[00:13:56] Steve Fretzin: So let’s talk about the about the business side first. What are, what should, what should law firm be owners be doing to run an efficient, effective law firm?
[00:14:07] Frank Rekas: A budget in place, and I know budget or paying attention to cash flow sounds like we’re going to put handcuffs on you and that’s not the case.
[00:14:16] Frank Rekas: Whether I’m working with someone personally, or regarding their business, you know, we like to use a cash flow. Strategy, we need to see what’s coming in and we need to see what’s going out and that will determine. And she’s Frank, I don’t have any money at the end of the month. Why is that? Well, your Excel spreadsheet that we completed together shows that you’re spending way too much over here and you’re not saving anything over there.
[00:14:41] Frank Rekas: So it’s, it’s watching the money. That comes in, are you overspending on your advertising? Are you overspending on other functions, marketing? Equipment rent other, you know, are you whining and dining anybody and everybody and you’re not receiving any ROI on that.
[00:15:02] Steve Fretzin: You
[00:15:02] Frank Rekas: need to kind of take a look at, you know, some of those things on on the personal side.
[00:15:08] Frank Rekas: It flows the same way. How much money is coming in? Are you paying yourself first? Have you established a retirement plan? And very importantly, what are you doing about tax? I don’t know anybody who likes paying them, number one. Number two, when you have to pay them, do you have the money to pay them? And, you know, taxes is not something that’s, you know, you give it to your CPA on October or April 10th and say, okay, you’ve got five days to give me my number.
[00:15:39] Frank Rekas: It’s really a year round thing. It’s really planning. All year long and looking at various strategies, I just had somebody today email me back. We had had a virtual meeting last week, and I made a couple suggestions about sharing some ideas and the comment was, that’d be great. What do you tell someone who does.
[00:16:00] Frank Rekas: A, B, C, and D. It’s hard for me to answer that because I don’t know enough about you. So I hate to use a lawyer answer and say, it depends, but it really depends. You need to sit down and talk to someone that you trust and you have confidence in.
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[00:18:18] Steve Fretzin: Budgeting on both ends. I, I know that most people don’t do that. I’ve been a little lack and just gotten, you know, recently, you know, my act together, I mean the business side, a hundred percent, but the personal side, you know, it’s been good. We’ve, you know, we’ve done the five 29, my son’s looking at schools now and we’ve got that funded.
[00:18:35] Steve Fretzin: And my wife and I have socked, you know, good amount of money away and all that. I’m hoarder in the sense of like, I don’t need expensive boats and second homes and all that. I just would rather sock it away. And And and let it work. But that being said, you know, are we still spending too much in certain areas?
[00:18:53] Steve Fretzin: And can we trim down on, on you know, our AT& T bill or on, you know, am I paying too much for my car? And when I get the next one, am I going to lease or buy? Like make all those, those important decisions. Getting more money from my wife because she’s got, she’s going into retirement in the next couple of years.
[00:19:08] Steve Fretzin: She’s getting bumps that are like significantly more than she was making for the next number of years. Well, you know, she’s helping to pay the bills. Like I want to get more, you know, make sure she, I get more, more of that, you know, on top of what, what I’m, you know, what she, how she’s helping normally. So
[00:19:23] Frank Rekas: I’m getting a raise
[00:19:24] Steve Fretzin: on my bill allowance.
[00:19:26] Steve Fretzin: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, all right. So I think, so are there, are there some, some tricks to how people can look at their finances on their own to sort of figure out what to do and how to make improvements?
[00:19:40] Frank Rekas: That’s really a difficult question to ask because you may not, you may not know what it is to look for.
[00:19:46] Steve Fretzin: Okay. Okay.
[00:19:47] Frank Rekas: I think that’s the biggest thing. But maybe start
[00:19:49] Steve Fretzin: with the business side. Like if you get a P& L, a balance sheet, ARB, maybe you’re not even getting the proper reports. And looking at the proper reports on the business side. I mean, is that, are most lawyers even looking at those reports? Or are they just kind of having a month and then another month and then another month?
[00:20:06] Frank Rekas: There’s a little of each, you know, some of them have their stuff together and they’re, they’re able to be on track. And then there’s others that are just, Hey, I had a great month. But I don’t have any money or it’s it’s the thought that I, I had that escapes me now, but you’re not profitable.
[00:20:23] Steve Fretzin: Yeah.
[00:20:23] Steve Fretzin: You
[00:20:24] Frank Rekas: got money coming in, but there’s so much going out at the end of the day, you’re barely keeping enough for yourself. Right. And it could be a lot of keeping up with the Joneses and the neighbors and your other colleagues. If somebody buys a new car, you feel like you need to get a new car. Somebody moves into a bigger house, you feel like you need to get into a bigger house.
[00:20:45] Frank Rekas: You shouldn’t keep up with the Joneses. You got to do your plan and you have to create a plan. And that’s where I believe that working with a financial advisor is very important. If nothing else, to create a plan for you, which is going to be your roadmap of how you’re going to achieve the goals and dreams that you want, because it’s different for everybody.
[00:21:06] Frank Rekas: Maybe somebody wants to have a boat. Maybe somebody wants to do a lot of travel and what is really retirement? Is it really getting completely out of the practice of law? Or is it something where you’re going to cut back a little bit? So you still have an income and you still want to draw an income.
[00:21:24] Frank Rekas: So you have to figure out what it is that you’re looking for. And I think that’s a question that a lot of attorneys haven’t answered for themselves.
[00:21:33] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, that’s so important. The idea that you’re, you know, budgeting not only for your business this year, but also looking personally at how much do you have to put away to have enough money to, you know, fully retire or partially retire and in no, you know, know what levels you need to hit because if you’re not putting any money away and you, you are looking to retire and you got five years to go.
[00:21:57] Steve Fretzin: And you’ve got 75, 000 in your savings. I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re not being realistic about things.
[00:22:04] Frank Rekas: And the, the, the, the two biggest, I think, detriments to retirement are taxes, obviously. I mean, that’s the biggest bill that you’re going to pay over your lifetime anyway. But the other one that, and it’s a hard conversation for me to have sometimes with people because they just want to avoid it, but it’s planning for long term care.
[00:22:25] Frank Rekas: And I’ve seen it in my family with my mom and my aunt. My business partner has seen it. A couple of my best friends have. I’ve seen it recently. You can wipe out a chunk of your retirement savings if you don’t plan for it. And I hope it never happens to whoever I’m talking to. But at least if we have a plan, at least we know going in what’s going to happen.
[00:22:49] Frank Rekas: But, you know, you can look at spending 400, 000 easily. And when you have a married couple. The natural thing is, assuming it happens to the husband, the wife wants to take, take care of him, doesn’t want to spend any of that money to pay for care, and wants to provide the care herself, and you’re not really.
[00:23:12] Frank Rekas: trained or educated to do that. But the reason is, is that’s your nest egg. If he, if, and when he’s gone, I have to live off the rest of that money and I can’t sacrifice putting aside any of that because I’m going to need to live off of that. So it’s, it’s planning for that. That really I think has, you know, Needs to come to the forefront and I hope everyone’s advisor is talking to them about that because if not You need to be
[00:23:38] Steve Fretzin: let’s let’s take it one step further There’s there’s a secret out there that many people don’t know about which is there’s the ability to take your death benefit And turn it into via a rider into a long term care disability Fund right?
[00:23:54] Steve Fretzin: So i’ve got a million dollar policy And if I die, my wife gets a million dollars You But what happens if I get hurt or I’m, I’m incapable of, of working or I need that care, right? I’m in my seventies, eighties, whatever it might be. Can you tell you, you take just a minute or two and talk about that? Cause I think that, that tip alone may end up literally saving people’s lives and saving their, their fortunes because they’re able to use a death benefit for that instead of death.
[00:24:22] Steve Fretzin: I mean, if I die, just to put this out there, if I die tomorrow, okay, and let’s hope that doesn’t happen. But if I die tomorrow. My wife’s fine, you know, between the money we have saved selling our home, whatever, and, and she’s a teacher. So she’s getting this huge amount of money for the rest of her life, basically in retirement.
[00:24:39] Steve Fretzin: She’s great. Okay. Now, if I get in a position where I can’t work and I need full time care, that’s going to disrupt everything, but not now because we have that rider in place.
[00:24:51] Frank Rekas: Yeah. So they’re basically a hybrid life insurance policy. So you have your death benefit. And then there’s a rider on there that will pay a benefit per month to cover the cost of long term care.
[00:25:04] Frank Rekas: And essentially what that is, is it’s an advance of the death benefit in those situations. If you had a million dollars, The benefit might be up to 3 percent of that death benefit you could get on a monthly basis, which would be 30, 000. Last time I did my math, you may not need 30, 000. You might only need 10, you might need 12, but it’s available.
[00:25:26] Frank Rekas: So yes, your death benefit is, is shrinking by the amount of money that you’re using for your long term care benefit, but you have the benefit of having those dollars available, which then protects. All your other assets. And I mean, that can make the difference between, you know, living a normal life and then scrambling around and end up spending down your assets that you, you know, you don’t want to,
[00:25:53] Steve Fretzin: again,
[00:25:53] Frank Rekas: I hope nobody ever has to use that portion of their life insurance policy, but I’d rather have that in place than wonder, you know, where the money is going to come from.
[00:26:03] Frank Rekas: Cause my question is always, it would be all right, Steve, if we don’t do this, then what asset are you going to sell first?
[00:26:09] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, so I would say whether you talk to frank or someone that is an insurance specialist to Just bring up say hey, I wanted to ask you about a long term Health care rider for my insurance my you know for my current life insurance policy And if they don’t know what you’re talking about, you probably have the wrong Person if they know exactly what you’re talking about and they can either do it themselves or they can get you the right person That’s you’re going to want to do that.
[00:26:35] Steve Fretzin: I mean it doesn’t cost you anything You and it ends up being, you know, something that could really be a game changer. So any final thoughts or, or, or things that people can do to, lawyers can do to really, you know, make sure they’re planned up for their future before you kind of wrap up and get to our game changing podcast.
[00:26:54] Frank Rekas: I would say the first thing is you need to be organized. And by getting organized, that means you need to have a financial plan. And I’ll work with people to do just a financial plan. We don’t have to manage your assets. We don’t have to provide you any products. But most people work with, like I said earlier, three or four different people.
[00:27:10] Frank Rekas: Nobody really communicates together. Get a financial plan. Develop a roadmap so you know where you’re going. Having said that, look to see, are you on track? Right. And what, what holes or what’s missing, or where do you need to actually beef up your plan to get you where you need to be and then monitor it, you know, on an annual or very regular basis.
[00:27:37] Frank Rekas: And the other thing too, and yesterday, because of what happened in the market, I’ll say this, don’t make knee jerk reactions. You have to stick with your plan and there’s going to be ups and downs in the market. Your money’s going to go up. It’s going to go down. But if you have a plan. Stick to your plan and follow the guidelines or the guidance of your advisor.
[00:27:59] Frank Rekas: He or she knows you. And if you have your, if you like them and you trust them, that’s one thing you got to have the confidence in them to make sure that they can get you where you need to go.
[00:28:10] Steve Fretzin: And is it important to last question for them to be a fiduciary?
[00:28:14] Frank Rekas: Absolutely. Because you want to have complete objectivity.
[00:28:19] Frank Rekas: Can you just take 30 seconds
[00:28:20] Steve Fretzin: and share what that is because there might be some people listening that they go, Steve just said something and I have no idea what the hell they’re talking about.
[00:28:26] Frank Rekas: To, to not get myself into too much of a compliant window is you really don’t want to be working with someone who’s pushing a product that’s more likely for their benefit than it is for yours.
[00:28:40] Frank Rekas: You want someone that’s taking an objective look they’re not tied into a specific company provider specifically that, you know, you have to have the, the world of the financial industry to be able to look at, but they’re taking an objective view for your situation. That’s probably the best answer I can give without going too deep into it.
[00:29:00] Frank Rekas: No, I mean, the simple
[00:29:02] Steve Fretzin: answer is they, they sort of legally have to be objective and take care of you. They can’t. You know, be the typical, you know, car salesman that’s just trying to push a product and squish you into whatever it is their deal is that day.
[00:29:15] Frank Rekas: So my,
[00:29:16] Steve Fretzin: yeah,
[00:29:16] Frank Rekas: my joke is, you know, the Platonic 3000 isn’t for everybody.
[00:29:20] Frank Rekas: There
[00:29:20] Steve Fretzin: you go. All right, man. Very good, Frank. So let’s talk about our game changing podcast. I mean, one that you did put in is this, this one called be that lawyer, but we’ll skip that for now. Let’s go to your second favorite, which is the power of zero. What is that all about?
[00:29:33] Frank Rekas: So that’s a podcast by David McKnight.
[00:29:37] Frank Rekas: He’s wrote and written a number of books. Power of zero is one of them, and it’s really using different strategies to get you to the lowest tax bracket possible, which in many cases could be zero, but it’s just using very different strategies and making people aware of what those strategies are to minimize their taxes, not only today, but in the But especially in the future, and we don’t know what tax rates are going to be in the future.
[00:30:07] Frank Rekas: I would bet they’re probably going to increase. Do you want to pay them? I know I don’t. So there are strategies, legal strategies that you can use, and they don’t always fit everybody. But he talks a lot about the different methodologies of things that you can use and different strategies that you can use to lower your tax obligation.
[00:30:26] Frank Rekas: And I think it’s a, they’re not long. There may be 12 minutes at the most for the most part. But very knowledgeable and his books are quick reads. They’re very good. And I think anybody who’s looking to minimize taxes, that’s probably one place that you should want to look.
[00:30:41] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. You know just to all kind of wrap up with this to like i have a bookkeeper that does really good books and gives me reports every single month i know what my ar is i know what my pnl is i know all everything’s you know all that i have a great cpa and i have a great financial planner when you put all three of those together and they communicate and they work together.
[00:31:02] Steve Fretzin: You’re gonna have all this information that you just don’t have on your own trying to kind of figure it out as you go. So, so think about what you’re great at as a lawyer and think about the things that you don’t enjoy doing or things that are really not your expertise and delegate them out and pay the money because it’s worth it.
[00:31:18] Steve Fretzin: It’s gonna come back to you in spades because that extra time you can use for marketing, business development, management, whatever. Meanwhile, you know, you’re also, you know, it’s not really where your talent is. So I’m just putting that out there for everybody. Wrapping up with our sponsors. Of course, you want to check out if you’re a personal injury attorney or firm, you want to check out PymCon happening in September in Arizona.
[00:31:38] Steve Fretzin: We’ve got Lawmatics helping you automate your personal injury. Practice management to the next level for marketing and of course get staffed up so you can delegate your way to freedom. Frank, if people want to reach out to you, they want to talk to you about what you do, they want to work with you, communicate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach out?
[00:31:54] Frank Rekas: I’m on LinkedIn. I’m there every day, although I had a little bit of a burp today, which I’m trying to rectify.
[00:32:00] Steve Fretzin: Okay.
[00:32:01] Frank Rekas: But I’m on LinkedIn every day. All my contact information is in there, my phone number, my website. It’s all there in my profile. I’m happy to talk to anybody. You want to have a conversation, run a couple ideas past me, or have me share two or three ideas that I’ve been using for people.
[00:32:16] Frank Rekas: I’m more than happy, you know, to do that. You can schedule it on my calendar link and would love to talk to you.
[00:32:23] Steve Fretzin: And of course, we’ll have all that in the show notes as well. So we’ll, we’ll take good care of that, but just thanks so much for coming on the show. I’m a, I’m a fan. I’m happy that we’re able to.
[00:32:32] Steve Fretzin: To connect and shout out to our provisors, you know, family as well nationally. And just thanks, man. I appreciate it. This was great. I think very helpful for people, especially you know, ones that, that need to get organized and just currently aren’t,
[00:32:44] Frank Rekas: well, thank you for having me. I been looking forward to this for a while.
[00:32:47] Frank Rekas: I’m glad we were able to do it. And I’m honored that you asked me to be on. So thank you very much.
[00:32:52] Steve Fretzin: Yep. My pleasure is all on this side of the, of this, of the zoom. Thank you so much, Frank. And thank you everybody for spending time with Frank and I today on the Be That Lawyer with Fretzin podcast. Take care everybody.
[00:33:01] Steve Fretzin: Be safe. Be well. We’ll talk again soon.
[00:33:07] Narrator: Thanks for listening to Be That Lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, Fretzin. com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.