In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Gavin Sharpe discuss:
- The role of emotional intelligence and mindset in personal and professional growth
- Challenges and misconceptions around business development for lawyers
- The importance of authenticity and strategic networking in rainmaking
- Personal evolution through coaching, self-awareness, and internal firm collaboration
Key Takeaways:
- Many lawyers struggle to grow their book of business, not due to a lack of talent but because of internalized fears, self-imposed pressure to conform to extroverted norms, and a misunderstanding of what rainmaking truly requires.
- Introverted lawyers can excel at business development when they lean into structured systems, authentic communication, and consistent habits that align with their personality rather than trying to emulate traditional sales-driven approaches.
- By breaking down ambitious goals into small, specific, and manageable actions—such as reaching out to just five contacts instead of a daunting hundred—lawyers are far more likely to follow through and build lasting momentum.
- Significant untapped business opportunities often exist within a lawyer’s firm, where cross-disciplinary collaboration and internal networking are overlooked despite their potential to unlock valuable client relationships and referrals.
“The traits that most lawyers share is that instinctively… we’re low in empathy… we’re thin-skinned… we’re not that resilient.” — Gavin Sharpe
Unlock the secrets of the industry’s top rainmakers with Be That Lawyer: 101 Top Rainmakers’ Secrets to Growing a Successful Law Practice. Grab your ultimate guide to building a thriving law firm now on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F78HXJHT
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About Gavin Sharpe: Gavin Sharpe is a seasoned advisor with nearly 30 years of experience working with global law firms, corporations, and senior leaders. He began his career as a lawyer with Allen & Overy before founding SSQ, a leading international legal search firm. He played a pivotal role in launching the London offices of several U.S. law firms and led some of the most prominent partner and team moves of the decade. After selling his shares in 2010, Gavin retrained as an executive, team, and group coach, as well as a psychotherapist. He specializes in collaborating with international law firms looking to maximize their talent potential. He resides in the French Riviera, in Monaco.
Connect with Gavin Sharpe:
Website: https://www.rivierawellbeing.com/
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gavinsharpe/
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, lawyers, Ever wonder what the top 1% of you guys are doing differently on July 24 I’ll be moderating be that lawyer live with a panel of true rainmakers who are opening their playbooks on their most effective strategies. This is an event you do not want to miss. Sign up now at fretson.com/events, before the seats fill up.
Narrator [00:25]
You’re listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin [00:47]
Hey everybody, welcome back. It’s Steve Fretzin, and you are on the be that lawyer podcast. We’re well over 500 episodes at this point. We are continuing to bring you the most impressive, amazing, incredible guests. No pressure, Gavin, no push. I just kind of threw that out to see the expression on your face. You’re like, what is he talking about me? I think, yes, of course, I’m talking about you, man, but we’re gonna have some fun today. We’re gonna help you be that lawyer, confident, organized in a skilled Rainmaker. If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, congratulations. My hope is that every single episode, you’re getting multiple takeaways and ideas and things to help you grow your law practice. If you’re new to the show, don’t be shy. Go back and listen to past episodes, pick and choose the ones that maybe make the most sense for you and where you are in this world. All right. Gavin, are you ready to get going and talk about your quote of the show?
Gavin Sharpe [01:36]
Let’s do it.
Steve Fretzin [01:37]
All right. So here we go. Between stimulus and response. There is space in that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom. And that’s a Viktor Frankl, so welcome to the show, and tell us a little bit about that quote.
Gavin Sharpe [01:50]
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I love that quote. Viktor Frankl, as you probably know, was a Holocaust survivor, went on to invent something called logotherapy. I love the quote he I think I’m right in saying, and now you’re going to have all your listeners correct me. But I think part of it came from he was in one of the concentration camps, and he realized that, you know, the Nazis could take everything from him, but this his freedom to choose how to respond. And he walking through the crack, I think, in like, the ceiling of the cabin where they were kept in the Holocaust. I think it may have been Auschwitz, and he could see a tiny piece of blue sky. And he said, I’m going to choose to focus on that and the relevance today for us, like, what relevance does this have for our clients, for lawyers, because we are obviously not comparable to what he experienced. But we spend our life on all the time. We’re on, we’re full on, we’re stressed. We don’t have time, at least we imagine. We don’t to slow down. And the whole emotional intelligence piece is, how can I actually choose? Can I respond instead of react? So that’s why I picked that quote, because to me, it just underpins the whole EQ piece.
Steve Fretzin [03:10]
Well, it’s almost like, you know, cup is half full and looking at the blue sky. But then I think it’s so much about not what happens to us in life, because I’ve had tragedy, and you have and everyone has had some form of tragedy. And it’s, again, it’s how we respond that sort of defines who we become and how we, you know, how we we choose a path. And it could be negative and depressing and going into a deep, dark hole, or it can be something where maybe we learn a lesson, or we go, okay, so this is how I responded. You know, it made things worse or made things better. But think that’s a lot of lawyers lives too. Is like, there’s, you know, there’s a fire hose in their face, and it’s like, how do we respond to the fire hose, and how do we handle do we duck? Do we open our mouth wider? Like, what are we gonna do to, you know, to kind of, you know, live the life we wanna live. And that’s, it’s great for this show. That’s really what this is all about. Is lawyers living their best possible lives. Well, I want to thank you for that. I want to just briefly introduce you. Gavin Sharpe, everybody is the CEO of Riviera, well being T and you’re in Monte Carlo. I mean, you’re such an interesting, you know, person and place in everything you’re doing. Share your background and give us a sort of a an idea of where you come from and what you’re up to these days.
Gavin Sharpe [04:20]
Absolutely. Thank you. So like many of the guests you’ve had on the show, former attorney, I started life at Allen overy, so now ano Sherman, and then had a stint at another law firm that’s now CMS, I realized law wasn’t for me. Did it to make the parents happy. So, you know, tick box, and then as a junior litigators like, what am I going to do with my life? Because the skills are not as transferable as mom and dad told me they were going to be. So I went into legal search, and I spent the next 15 years after working for another company, setting up a legal search business in the UK. We scaled the business. I mean, I started it with my business partner in. Back of a Starbucks in Fleet Street. And then we grew it and we scaled it, and our timing, you know, timing is everything. Our timing was great because it was when all of the US law firms were coming into Europe. They wanted to, as they still are, still from the great magic circle firms and others, and open their offices. And we were there to do it for them. So did that for about 15 years, and then realized, what’s the next chapter in my life? Where do I go from here? I feel like I’ve done this. I was working very long hours. I wouldn’t say I was burned out, but I was on the track to being burned out, something which all of you and I work with clients all the time who either are on that track or they’ve got there. So long story short, my partners bought me out the business, and then about 15 years ago, became a coach. I did a master’s in psychotherapy, which was probably the best training. I had to be a coach, but that’s a different story. And now spend most of my time coaching lawyers from the top law firms, coaching groups, coaching teams. My tagline on LinkedIn is turning potential into performance. Because probably like you, I just love this idea that all of us have got this untapped resource talent. How can we be You just said it. How can we be the best version of ourselves? And I believe all of us have this ability, capacity to evolve, to grow to be better, to grow our books of businesses, to grow as team leaders, and that’s the stuff that gets me out of bed in the morning.
Steve Fretzin [06:31]
Yeah, that’s amazing. And there’s nothing that sort of bothers me and also excites me more than when I evaluate a lawyer’s potential and recognize that there’s a massive gap in skills, or a massive gap in mindset that will get them to a level they never realized they could get to. And it’s like, I’m dealing with a guy right now who’s a former military and the guy can follow orders. The guy’s been successful his whole career, you know, he’s at a, you know, a half a million dollars, and he should be at three to $5 million a year without question. But what’s missing is, you know, those gaps is the difference between where he is and where he will be. That Nothing excites me more than that potential in a person and a lawyer.
Gavin Sharpe [07:14]
Completely agree. So we get excited by the same, I’ll say professional stuff, because I don’t know what excites you personally. We’ll stay on the professional. We get excited. But, you know, the example, when I do keynotes, I often start, it’s a bit of an overused one, but, but I start with the, you know, Roger Banister running the mile in whatever is less than they believe. You couldn’t run it in your in certain period of time. And until that point in time, everybody said, there is no way that you can run it in whatever it was. I think it’s, now, I’ve forgotten it is, I could look at less than four minutes. I think it is, yeah, and, I mean, for me, it’s like four hours they came up. You know, science said, basically, it can only be done under certain conditions, if the wind is a certain direction, if the temperature is a certain so he goes and does it on a wet, windy day, and the first time he does it, and then six weeks later, someone else does it. Two weeks later, someone else does it. Because what’s changed? Nothing’s changed other than, Oh, you can run a mile in less than four minutes. Oh, I’ll do that then. And that for you know, you use the word mindset, which is what made me think about it. It’s just about the mindset, how that can unlock our potential. And that, for me, that’s the stuff that I love.
Steve Fretzin [08:24]
Well, let’s go back to your training in psychotherapy. What would you say is the one thing that you pulled out of that training that has helped you to work more effectively with lawyers?
Gavin Sharpe [08:33]
I think it’s probably, it’s a great question, and I’d say it’s just a global it’s understanding, which is going to take us into all sorts of topics, into rainmaking, development, it’s understanding the mindset. I think it’s understanding that we’re all looking for the same thing. We’re looking for connection. We’re looking to be seen. We’re looking to be validated. I need that in my personal relationship. I need it in my work. My clients are looking for it. And so when I’m coaching someone, I have a human being in front of me who wants exactly the same as I’ve wanted out of life and when. So what that does is just enables me to laser focus very quickly on what’s really going on here, what are the issues. And then, you know, I have a supervisor, and she says, the difference between coaching and therapy. What we’re doing in therapy is we’re helping someone process the trauma, make sense of it, and come to terms with it. We’re not doing that in coaching. What we’re doing, and this is where the therapy training helps. We’re helping someone make the link to break the link. Where did this show up in your past? Okay, so dad drove you very hard. We now get why you’re super competitive. Take that to therapy. But how is that showing up in the workplace? How is that affecting you, building up the type of Bucha business that you want? So that’s, I think, the best thing that the training gave me, just being. Able to have that laser focus on the person in front of me?
Steve Fretzin [10:04]
Yeah, I want to give you a funny story. I was my father passed over a year ago. He’s he was a 40 year practicing lawyer, and I was coaching my son’s soccer team, which I did for like, eight years, and I think it was the second or third year, and I’m running around on the sidelines shouting to the kids what to do and giving orders, and apparently I was blocking my father’s view of the game, and so I remember him saying, Get out of my way. Get out of my way. And I went, Dad, I’m coaching the kids here. And he goes, you ain’t coaching nothing. And I was like, Okay, there’s my childhood, right? Should I start breaking down and crying? Gavin, what do you think I should do? Yeah, but like, it was like getting a compliment out of my dad, or it just, it was an endless, you know, criticism of what he believed was right and wrong. And guy was the most amazing man in the world, but from a from a number of perspectives, I you know, and I hope that I, you know, more encouraging my kid than he was with me in some instances, but it’s amazing. But like our past, and we just would ignore that is we move into rainmaking, we ignore our past and what’s happened and our trauma and our, you know, the way that we, you know, came up and expect to just, you know, automatically flip a switch and become, you know, a different person.
Gavin Sharpe [11:11]
Yeah, I will always do a, I mean, it’s not that uncommon for coaches, a discovery session, free starting the coaching work. I mean, it’s not free, because it’s all part of the work. I do want to understand a little bit about what was life like growing up, because that story that you just gave that’s going to inform some of our work together. Now I have to be careful. I don’t see everything through that lens. Ah, he had a commanding father, so I need to be careful. I don’t you know over attribute everything to it, but those snippets, those stories, are going to help us in our work together. They’re going to help you see how some of your team relate to you, how some of your clients might relate to you, and if we know that, we can unblock it. So, great story.
Steve Fretzin [11:56]
Ah, thank you. 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 pimcon 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 again, I do talk about my father on the show the late great Larry Fretzin, quite a bit. And you know his mindset, and I mean, he did something incredible in his lifetime and helped a lot of people. One thing that we did talk about was our two if you guys want to check it out, it’s our episode number 200 my father was 87 at the time, and I interviewed him, and he never really considered himself a rainmaker, and he never really considered himself out marketing or business developing. And we uncovered in that interview that he was it just wasn’t called that then, because you practice in 80s and 90s, it was sort of looked down upon. So how does a lawyer really know that they’re either a rainmaker that they have great potential to be a rainmaker is there, are there things that that are behind the scenes that they should be, maybe traits that they have, or things that are just signs that they should be focused on that area?
Gavin Sharpe [13:50]
I think every lawyer has the potential to be a rainmaker. And now we kind of get a bit legalistic, because we get, well, what’s the definition of a rainmaker? And this, in itself, is also part of, I think, the problem that we have this perception. Lawyers have this perception that the Rainmaker is this extroverted personality who’s the life and soul of the party. They go to the cocktail party. They’re giving out the business cards. They’re winning the clients, in my experience, they’re few and far between. Of course, they exist, and some of those people also having spent years in search. I mean, they were gold dust to me because they also, you know, they would bounce around every three years. I knew they’d be back in my office three years later, because they come with a lot of baggage. They fall out with their teams, etc, so, but it seems to be the benchmark of, that’s what a rainmaker is. And for me, and I have to remember what your question was now, but I think anyone has the potential to be a rainmaker, we have to find our tribe, who are the clients who I’m drawn to and who are going to be drawn to me if I stop trying to be that extroverted person that can walk into the party. Because if that’s not me, why am I trying to be that person? I. So I think the traits that most lawyers share is that, instinctively, you know, Dr Larry Rich has done some great research on this, lawyers are low in sociability compared to the general population. And I’m going to say we, because I was a lawyer, are low in empathy. We’re thin skinned. We are quite you know, we’re not that resilient. These are the attributes that sometimes make us quite risk averse. They make us fantastic lawyers, because that’s great. You want your attorney to be risk averse. You don’t want him to be, you know, all gung ho and so what that means is I have to recognize that some of those things get in the way of me being the Rainmaker, but everyone’s got the potential if we just actually start to focus on, where’s my tribe, what’s my authentic where’s my authentic place in this market? Because the client, one of the best partners I worked with recently, happens to be one of the most introverted people I’ve ever met, and what he realized was he just needs to find the clients that like that, because they’re out there, that like his style, that will trust him that, because he’s obviously a very good lawyer as well. And when he realized part of his greatest skill was actually just being himself, then he was writing articles and bringing clients to him that was suitable for him and not for the partner next door, but for him. Does that?
Steve Fretzin [16:23]
Yeah, no, that did. Resonates very well with me, and I’ll add that introverts, in some ways, have an advantage if we want to take it down that path. And the advantage is when given steps and skills and language that they can follow that makes business development and rainmaking predictable, and they then identify that there’s proof and evidence that a system works for them, that, you know, we all have systems for everything we do, but introverts thrive in systems, and when they get that down, then it’s like unleashing this inner excitement about, hey, if I just do These steps and follow these rules and do these things in a certain way, I’m going to get an end result. And they can stick with it and make it a regimen and make it a habit. They can be incredibly successful where it might seem terribly scary and confusing, because most introverts don’t want to wing it. They don’t want to put themselves out there in an uncomfortable way without a plan, without a process. So I think there’s that can then alter the mindset. So I think there’s a number of things working in the introverts favor, if they want to step into it the right way.
Gavin Sharpe [17:30]
I agree, but it’s, isn’t it interesting how we don’t see it, how the average lawyer just doesn’t see that? Yeah, and I need to be out there. It’s, you know, it’s like when I grew up and I was going into the law, I remember my father saying to me, you know, there’s two types of lawyers, and this was probably true back in the 1980s there’s the partner who will win clients because he’s on the golf course. He’s constantly out there networking. And then there’s the other lawyer, that’s the technical genius, and that’s probably not you Gavin, so go be the golf course person. And he was right up to a point, because I think in the day, whatever that day was, that type of partner exist existed. But I don’t know if you agree with beastie. It doesn’t really, in my eyes, it doesn’t exist anymore. You have to be both. You need to be a good technical lawyer, and you need to know how to be a strategic advisor and add value to your clients. You have to do both. But the perception lingers that I’ve got to be on the golf course and entertaining and and of course, there’s a place for it, but it’s not for me what rainmaking is solely about.
Steve Fretzin [18:30]
But it’s changed. I mean, I think that the golf course there, for some people, that’s going to be their play, but there’s so many people that are making it rain by starting a podcast by speaking prolifically around the world, by networking and developing relationships that just pay back dividends after dividends after dividend, and you don’t have to be the glad handing lampshade on the head party animal of days past. And I think lawyers, that misconception, I think keeps a lot of lawyers back from making the effort to grow a book and to take control of their career. Because I think you and I will both agree that in today’s sort of challenging environment and competitiveness and economic turmoil, that having your own book of business could be the single most important thing next to being a great lawyer and having, you know, sort of a great reputation of skill.
Gavin Sharpe [19:21]
Yes, I see that. And I I also think that when we all tell ourselves this, these stories, you know that this is the kind of the psychology bit, the what do you want to call it? Blind Spots are limiting assumptions. And again, I worked with someone recently who was so living in fear he wanted to think about writing an article. And was a private wealth lawyer, wanted to write an article and but was so fearful. Firstly, what would his peers and other firms think? Because there would be nothing new that he could write in that article. What if he made a mistake? Now we’re getting into, like, the lawyer mindset, and so we just kind of. Unpack that because it’s so common. And I I said to I want you to do something for me. I don’t know very much about what you do. I want you to write an article for me as if I’m reading it, because that’s who you’re appealing to. You’re not writing for your lawyers in other law firms, and you’re absolutely right. If what you write is there’s no use to the reader, they’re going to skip past but I promise you, there will be someone out there who wants to read what you’re writing and write it for them, and then within a few hours, he’d written an article. He sent it to me. It was great, and he published it just the fear the stories that we tell ourselves. And it’s like, you know, I used to have a I used to have a radio show here. I just stopped doing it in the south of France, and I fell into this trap that I would I was so harsh in judging myself and the person I’m comparing myself to is like, well, if Sigmund Freud was listening to my show, he’d be thinking, that idiot Gavin Sharpe, what’s he talking about? But firstly, Sigmund Freud is dead. And secondly, that’s not the people I’m talking to. And when we get that again, we’re just back to my point about we’re unlocking our potential, and then we set ourselves free to go build our books, to do our stuff. I’ve gone off, sorry if I do this alone.
Steve Fretzin [21:11]
That there’s, there’s no tangent here. It’s, this is all valuable for people listening, because they’re, they’re all weighing out the time and the effort and the potential, you know, risk of being a business developer or taking it to another level. And maybe that’s where we go from here. And sort of wrap up on this one subject, which is, we’ve talked about, you know, the mindset. We’ve talked about, you know, the importance of business development. What are some things that you’re seeing that help people to go to the next level, like we can, all, you know, get out there and network. We can all write articles, and we can do things to help get things moving in the right direction. People that want to build a really big book, multi million dollar book, what are the things or attributes that either you’re seeing or what are you working with them on to help them get to that sort of next elevated spot?
Gavin Sharpe [21:57]
Well, it’s gonna may sound over simplistic, the first thing I’d say to him is lower the bar, because someone sits there and let’s say they have a 5 million book of business and they want it to be 10. It feels like such a gulf. And I’ll say to them, okay, so what is the you know? What is the smallest step that you can take that might get you one step closer? And they may say something like, Well, I know what. I’m going to contact 100 LinkedIn contacts. And I’ll say, okay, but you’re not going to because we both know when you go back to your desk, you’re going to do exactly what you were doing before. So what would make this feel like this was achievable? And then we’ll get somewhere where they’ll say, Well, I think I’m going to contact five. And I’ll say, Great. By when, who are you going to be accountable to? It’d be someone else. And I’ll usually finish by saying, How motivated are you on a scale of naught to 10? And they’ll say, Well, seven. I’ll say, Great, that it’s not a six. Well done. How come not a six? But how do we get you to an eight or a nine? Because otherwise it’s not going to happen. And I think if we just get to see that we can do this in bite sized chunks, then each time you’re getting one step closer. And then it feeds itself, as it always does success, feeds itself and it’s helping people sometimes see and you’ve had so much beautiful stuff on your guests on your podcast, this is not about don’t see it as sales. See it as building relationships. And, you know, go out and get listen to your client. I give an example of go to a restaurant and you can spot the couple who are dating on a first date or early dating, because you’ll see this couple hanging on each other’s every word. They are listening intently because they don’t want to miss something. Yeah, that’s how we need to be with our clients. Go and develop that curiosity. Now you can see the couples who’ve been married 1015, years, because they’re on the phones and they’re not even looking at each other, go and be like the couple early dating. So for me, it’s about lowering the bar. It’s about really deepening the relationships. And it’s, you know, look at those contacts you have. What problems do I think they have? Because I, if I can solve them, then I’ll solve them. So it’s getting strategic. It’s not just finding out the LinkedIn stuff. It’s getting strategic. And for me, having small actual, oh, I can do that, yeah. If you, if you give me 100 people to contact, I won’t do it. Give me five Yeah, I can do that.
Steve Fretzin [24:21]
And I just published an article in June about how to be successful without all the stress in rain making. And one of the things was, yeah, get rid of the big, nasty, hairy goal of 5 million to 10 million or 500,000 to 2 million. You know, those types of things are scary. So what can we do? Well, we can look at, to your point, developing regular habits accountability to get things done. Maybe it’s a matter of changing and being more authentic and getting out on more media. And then the last thing I was gonna say is also people don’t realize you might be just dealing and going after the wrong targets. You know, if you’re dealing with, if you’re in, let’s just make, I’ll say divorce. And you’re getting mom and Pa divorces at 10,015 1000, that’s great. You want to do the 50 to $100,000 divorces? Well, you need to go and deal with people who can, who are engaging with the billionaires and the millionaires that have the bigger assets and opportunities. So same thing with litigation and M and A and all that you’re just you got to go to the bigger fish and leverage the network you’ve created to get those meetings and take business away from maybe the big firms, if you’re not at the big firms.
Gavin Sharpe [25:31]
Yeah, I think you have to be strategic absolutely about the what, where you’re aiming. And sometimes I also think the internal market in your own firm is because I don’t like coaching in groups, and it never ceases to amaze me that I can have a group of and I’ll cook, usually eight to 10. I don’t go above 10 partners from a law firm and in that group, and I will always want to mix the disciplines the banking partner may never have met the private wealth partner. And or do they don’t really know what they do and, or do you act for that client? That I could come to one of those meetings? Maybe you could, we could will, and I’m like, How could you get to this point and not realize the potential of sat in front of you? And then I love to see them doing joint pitches and the cross selling and just so it’s the low hanging fruit.
Steve Fretzin [26:20]
Yeah, that’s it, and they’re not. Most firms are terrible with that, and the fact that they’re bringing you in on that and having those conversations is critical, because there’s so much business that’s being left, left out there to other firms where they’d rather have the lawyer that they really trust and love that handles one thing, bring them in and then manage the team of and have it all in one place, or just not at five firms, at one firm or two firms? Yeah, really great, Gavin. If let’s take a moment and wrap up with Gavin’s big mistake. What’s a mistake you’ve made, and how did you deal with it and resolve it?
Gavin Sharpe [26:51]
You didn’t give me much notice before. No, I sure didn’t know exactly well, I can give you a string of mistakes. I think the mistake I made in the first part of my career was maybe a little bit like the rainmaking. I think I didn’t show up authentically. And, you know, when I ran my own search business and whatever we had, you know, offices all over the world, I think it was a partly playing the part. And don’t get me wrong, the business was immensely successful. We were the most and it’s gone on to be successful, which is a sign, I hope, that we built a great business long after I left, but a very successful business. But I don’t think I knew, I don’t think I had the confidence that the greatest asset I had was probably just to be me. And that sounds so trite and overused, but it’s also so true, and I think what I’ve learned in the second part of my career is I will show up as me, and the clients that are supposed to work with me will work with me, and that also means I can lose pitches or I can turn them down because those aren’t my I used the word tribe earlier. It’s not my tribe, and I am also much happier finding that the clients who are drawn to me are meant to be and vice versa. And I will deliver most I will deliver an authentic coaching relationship, because it’s coming from that place, and I wish I’d known that 15 years ago.
Steve Fretzin [28:13]
Yeah, it’s a wonderful takeaway and a great way to wrap up the show. We need to, of course, thank our wonderful sponsors, the law her podcast with Sonia Palmer, putting out great content week after week for you know, the women in law who are looking for next level tips and ideas. And, of course, pimcom coming up with my friend Chris dryer, over at rankings IO, putting out a top notch platform conference for PI attorneys in all over the world that are going to come in for that into, I think Scottsdale, that’s right. Fantastic. Gavin, thanks so much. If people wanna get in touch with you, they wanna hear more about your coaching, they wanna engage you. What are the best ways for them to reach you?
Gavin Sharpe [28:50]
Thank you through my website, which is Riviera wellbeing.com or just email me, Gavin, at Riviera wellbeing.com and I would, yeah, love to hear any thoughts comments from people on the show, and I love to be challenged. So if people are listening and that doesn’t sound right, I, you know, post them either on your comments or email me directly, because I’m always interested.
Steve Fretzin [29:12]
Yeah, and you’re interesting. And I just can’t tell you how much I appreciate this conversation. We you know, believe it or not, I’ve paid your notes, as I usually do. But ultimately, you know, we’re covering a lot of ground in mindfulness and in in following systems and looking at mistakes and looking at opportunities to be authentic in all the different areas, you know, accountability. I mean, we covered a tremendous amount of ground in half an hour. And that’s really what this the heart and soul of this show. So I think you kind of nailed it, whether you know it or not, I’m telling you you nailed it, and this is going to be so helpful to my community. So thank you so much, man, and I want to keep the relationship between you and I going, because I think there’s people that we can help and there’s ways that we can continue to collaborate.
Gavin Sharpe [29:53]
I’d like it. I’d love this opportunity to take a dive into some of the issues we’ve touched upon, and I cannot go without saying I’m two thirds of the way through. Your book, it’s great, and it’s so easy to follow because the chapters are all short, the points are so succinct, so genuinely, because I’m remember now I’m authentic for the rainmakers listening, you need to get a copy of Steve’s book.
Steve Fretzin [30:15]
Everybody be that lawyer. 101 top Rainmaker secrets to growing a successful law practice. I appreciate you, Gavin, I appreciate you all for hanging out with us for 30 minutes, and really, you know, working on your business, and this is the show for that. So take care. Everybody. Be safe, be well. We will talk again soon.
Narrator [30:36]
Thanks for listening to be that loyal. Life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, frettezen.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.