In this episode, Steve Fretzin and John Kormanik discuss:
- Mastering time and prioritization for lawyers
- Transitioning from law practice to impactful coaching
- Embracing work-life blend over balance
- The value of coaching for professional growth
Key Takeaways:
- Lawyers should identify and focus on high-level tasks only they can perform, saying no to distractions and delegating effectively to reclaim control of their schedules.
- Creating space to recharge, such as leaving your phone behind during walks or taking intentional downtime, is crucial to maintaining focus and high performance.
- Begin each day with proactive work aligned with your goals, avoiding the trap of reactive email responses, which often represent others’ priorities rather than your own.
- Instead of chasing an impossible balance, embrace the idea of blending professional demands and personal goals based on the current season of your life and work.
“You do hard things every day—you just don’t realize it because, by the time you’re done, you’ve already done them.” — John Kormanik
Got a challenge growing your law practice? Email me at [email protected] with your toughest question, and I’ll answer it live on the show—anonymously, just using your first name!
Thank you to our Sponsors!
Rankings.io: https://rankings.io/
Rainmakers Roundtable: https://fretzin.com/lawyer-coaching-and-training/peer-advisory-groups/
Episode References:
The Rich Roll Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rich-roll-podcast/id582272991
About John Kormanik: John R. Kormanik is a Professional Certified Coach, known worldwide as the lawyer who coaches lawyers. His passion for human potential, combined with his coaching and legal training, along with a successful twenty-four-year career as a law firm owner and attorney, enables him to challenge his clients to achieve more than they believe possible.
Connect with John Kormanik:
Website: https://www.johnrkormanik.com/
Email: [email protected]
Book: Break the Law: A Story of a Reimagined Legal Career and a Reclaimed Life: https://www.breakthelawbook.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrkormanik
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 there, we’re heading into a new year and I’d like to change up how I open the show. Each episode I’ll be sharing a quick question and answer on your greatest challenges in growing a successful law practice. Additionally, I’d like to hear what you’re struggling with and answer your questions directly on the show.
[00:00:15] Steve Fretzin: Please email me at steve at Fretzin dot com with something you’ve been struggling with and I’ll answer it directly on the show only using your first name. Let’s try this out and see how it goes. Thanks and enjoy the show. Hey everybody, before we get to the show, I want to just do our be that lawyer tip of the week.
[00:00:31] Steve Fretzin: This is coming from Josh from my hometown of Highland Park, Illinois, and he asks, I hate the idea of selling my services. How can I build business without feeling salesy? Wow. Well, that’s right up my alley since I am the sales free selling coach and I’ve been teaching this model called sales free selling for over 20 years.
[00:00:49] Steve Fretzin: The idea here is we’re not going to go out and pitch. We’re not going to go out and convince. We’re not going to go out and try to put a square peg in a round hole. We’re going to go out and evaluate prospective clients, obviously get the meetings with decision makers. Then we’re going to walk them through a buying decision through a series of steps that involves relationship building and trust.
[00:01:09] Steve Fretzin: It involves setting up a game plan so you can control the meeting, asking questions, qualifying, finding their pain, finding their, their motivation to change, making sure they’re qualified as the decision maker, the financial, that they have the financials to work with you. And all of this is about them.
[00:01:24] Steve Fretzin: It’s not about you. So that makes it not salesy because if someone’s talking the whole time, they don’t ever feel sold. They feel like you’re really listening and understanding and empathizing. So pick up a copy of Sales Free Selling on Amazon. Also, keep listening to the podcast and feel free to check me out.
[00:01:40] Steve Fretzin: But that’s, that’s really what I want everyone to figure out is how to walk people through a buying decision without feeling salesy. It’s the greatest, greatest thing since sliced bread for how to run these meetings. So hopefully that helps everybody. Please send in your questions for me to answer on the show.
[00:01:55] Steve Fretzin: I just go to steve at Fretzin. com, email me and shoot me a question that you’d like me to bring up on the show. And I will, that’s all I have to say. Enjoy the show. Everybody
[00:02:06] 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 Branson will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice. in less time with greater results. Now, here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
[00:02:29] Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, welcome to the Be That Lawyer with Fretzin. I’m so happy that you’re here twice a week, every week to get you to be that lawyer, someone confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker. If you’re hearing about Fretzin for the first time, we are here to provide video and audio and written material, anything we can do to help you be that lawyer.
[00:02:49] Steve Fretzin: And also if you want some coaching, we can talk about that too. But mostly I want to just help the legal industry be its best version and help you and all individual lawyers be their best selves and live their best lawyer life. In order to do that, I need to find the best guests. I need to find the people that are going to give you the most tips and takeaways so that every 30 minutes you spend with us is valuable and that you’re getting takeaways from every show.
[00:03:10] Steve Fretzin: Bye. Today is absolutely a winner and a promise that you will walk away with actionable things that you can do because I’ve got my buddy John Kormanek here. How’s it going John? Hey Steve, I’m awesome. How are you? I’m so so happy that you’re here. We’ve known each other for a few years now through the Provisors Connection and You’re just one of my favorite people, and I just love talking shop with you and hearing about your travel exploits and things that I wish I was doing, but I don’t.
[00:03:34] Steve Fretzin: But I’m thrilled that you’re here. Let’s start off with our quote of the show, then we’re going to take a deep dive into helping these lawyers live their best lives. So here we go. This is a Steve Jobs quote. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on, but that’s not what it means at all.
[00:03:48] Steve Fretzin: It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that are there. So I don’t think people realize the importance of saying the word no, but welcome to the show and take a moment on that, on that quote and explain what your take is on it.
[00:04:00] John Kormanik: Yeah, Steve, thanks. And you know, Steve jobs, you can love him.
[00:04:03] John Kormanik: He was a brilliant man. You can hate him. Because now we’re all tied to our devices, and our devices created the thing that Steve is warning against, right? This is a world of opportunity, and it’s all there for us. And that opportunity, all that, the multitude of opportunity gets in the way of us being able to focus on the thing that is most important, that will move us forward in this moment.
[00:04:32] John Kormanik: And so, I think the world is wonderful, I think opportunity is great, and I also know that it creates a struggle for us all in that we are distracted.
[00:04:45] Steve Fretzin: It’s really crazy. I mean, I, sometimes I’m driving my car and I’m listening to some tunes or something and I just like touch my phone and I go, what, what frick was that?
[00:04:55] Steve Fretzin: Why did I just like, I’m not going to look at it. Okay. I’m cool with that. Like, I’m not going to like, look at my phone when I’m driving, but like, why did my hand just touch? Like, we are so conditioned at this point. I’d like y’all to kind of. Take a moment and just think about how many times a day you look at your phone, like even when you’re watching another screen, like you’re looking at your computer monitor or your TV or something and you’re looking at your screen.
[00:05:15] Steve Fretzin: Sometimes I look over at my wife and she’s on her screen in front of a screen and I am too and I’m like, what, what, what, what is going on right now? But I think the other part of it is that we want to say yes to things because we’re opportunistic and we, we see pot potential value and benefit there. But at what cost, what are we, what’s the cost we’re paying to take on that additional matter or to take on a board position or to join another group or to do something at the risk of losing focus on what we really should be doing or, you know, how we should be spending our time.
[00:05:49] John Kormanik: That’s exactly right, and lawyers are service based individuals, so when we have an opportunity to serve, our immediate gut reaction is to say yes. We don’t slow down and think, if I say yes to this, what is the impact? What is the impact on my time, on my ability to perform at my best, or other things? So, it’s that reaction, and like you said, right, we’re programmed.
[00:06:20] John Kormanik: I will tell you, I am very proud of a habit I’ve developed. I will walk my dog multiple times a day, of course, but one of those walks for 30 minutes, my phone stays home. I don’t even take it with me, so I can’t be distracted by it.
[00:06:36] Steve Fretzin: Nice. Nice. I love that. I occasionally do that. The other thing I do is I do, you know, what I guess is now being called micro learning where, you know, I’ll put on something educational or some news or something that, that improves my, my brain or education.
[00:06:50] Steve Fretzin: But the other thing is just walking the dog and listening to the birds and like just paying attention to the surroundings. There’s so much value in that. I’m going to make an effort moving forward to do more. I’m moving to an area right near Lake Michigan. That’s just absolutely beautiful. In the next couple of weeks, or actually by the time this airs, I’ll probably be there already.
[00:07:07] Steve Fretzin: And I’m going to really make an effort to just listen to the, to the leaves blowing in the, in the trees and all that, but everybody you’ve got to, you’re going to just love my guest today. John Kormanik founder of John Kormanik coaching. He’s the author of the new book, break the law, which by the way, is all about how to be a criminal.
[00:07:23] Steve Fretzin: No, no. No, no, no. Okay. All right. All right, man. I totally misread that book. Okay. But no, but let’s, let’s hear your background and leading into into this new book that you’ve got out and then we’ll, we’ll take a deep dive into, into the coachings and teachings that you provide.
[00:07:39] John Kormanik: You bet. I practiced law for 25 years.
[00:07:42] John Kormanik: I owned and led a successful law firm for 16. I did not leave the law and become a coach because I was burnt out or stressed out. I love being a lawyer I was a criminal defense lawyer. I was in court. I loved it I left because I wanted to have a greater impact in the world. I’m going to pull another steve jobs Idea, we’re all put on the planet to make a dent in the universe I didn’t think my dent was big enough as a criminal defense attorney.
[00:08:11] John Kormanik: And so now I coach people all over the world, lawyers all over the globe.
[00:08:18] Steve Fretzin: And the impact that we’re trying to make is, is that Lawyers, highly educated. Many of them are amazing, very smart people. And there’s a, there’s a hole in their lives in the sense that the billable hour, the billable hour hamster wheel, I call it sometimes, right?
[00:08:35] Steve Fretzin: They’re just running on that billable hour hamster wheel. And at the end of the day, there’s no one on their deathbed saying, geez, if I had just billed that not another hour, if I just brought in, you know, worked on that matter a little differently, that’s not how it goes. So we’ve got to figure out a way to, to have a great career as a lawyer and also have a great life.
[00:08:54] Steve Fretzin: That’s really what the show’s all about. And that’s what I want to talk to you about today. So let’s start off with talking about coaching though. And, and I, the reason I want to bring this up is because I think you and I have unique stories, but I think we were both converted to having better lives through coaches that we engage.
[00:09:10] Steve Fretzin: Do you want to just share? Yeah. The coach story that you have 100.
[00:09:13] John Kormanik: Yes. I was working with a coach as a lawyer to improve my Practice. I didn’t know you at the time. I probably would have hired you my friend Because you do outstanding work but I was working with this coach and the coach actually went to law school with me.
[00:09:29] John Kormanik: His name is mike linstrom And we went to law school together and he didn’t practice law. He went right into personal development and we hooked up and we were talking and he helped me build my practice and and get it solidified and and be able to unplug and walk away and then he had me do a 20 year vision of what I wanted and that’s where the greater impact came from.
[00:09:54] John Kormanik: It wasn’t just a thought. It was doing the work of stopping. and thinking and looking outside of myself and stepping off that hamster wheel that you described. And when I did that, impact really came to the front. And so I could have created a national practice and had a greater impact as a lawyer, but I wanted to impact the people who impact others lives because the ripples would be bigger.
[00:10:27] John Kormanik: And that’s how I came to be a coach.
[00:10:30] Steve Fretzin: Sometimes it takes. an outside set of eyes. It takes someone that has a different perspective to help get you through, you know, the woods and, and really see clearly. My story is similar. I hired a coach, you know, before I started working in my own business. In fact, he inspired me.
[00:10:47] Steve Fretzin: I was paying him a ton of money and I said, how do I do what you do? And he says, well, you pay me a lot more money and I’ll show you. It’s like, oh, great. Which happened that happened. I kind of went under his wing for about a year and, and but, but what he did initially, cause I was making great money in sales.
[00:11:00] Steve Fretzin: Like I thought I was kind of the shit and all that, but what he did was he sat down and he just dissected everything that I was doing and how I was really, what I hadn’t really kind of considered it was. I was successful. So I didn’t really see the gaps. I didn’t really understand the time I was wasting in the kind of things I was missing and just to have another again, set of eyes do that.
[00:11:23] Steve Fretzin: And then when he then explained to me, Oh, there’s a process that solves that. Oh, okay. And so he really inspired me to take a different look at what I was doing and that, you know, I doubled my sales in about six months and I was like, holy crap, yeah. I want to do this. So I did that, worked on him for a little bit, kind of recognize we had some differences and I had to then create, you know, my own systems and everything else and, and build it out.
[00:11:47] Steve Fretzin: But ultimately I think it’s just important, even if you don’t hire a coach to meet with the coach and evaluate the coach, but also have them evaluate you and see what you can learn. Like, so if somebody meets with us and they don’t end up not working with us, okay. But they walk away with clarity of what they might.
[00:12:05] Steve Fretzin: Do that. They should be doing better or things that maybe, maybe they’re saying yes to too many things, whatever it might be having that outside set of eyes. It doesn’t cost you anything to just take 30 minutes to meet with someone, especially if they’re validated. Well, you know what I mean? Like, it’s not like I’m reaching out and soliciting people, right?
[00:12:21] Steve Fretzin: And you’re not either. If somebody tells you about a coach or if you’re following someone and you can see they’re absolutely credible, What’s the harm in meeting with them?
[00:12:29] John Kormanik: Yeah, there’s zero harm. And I’m gonna, you said something I’m gonna push back on. Okay. You said sometimes it takes someone else.
[00:12:39] John Kormanik: Always takes someone else. We, you cannot read the ingredients of the cereal box from the inside. We all think that we’re capable of doing it and we’re lying to ourselves. There’s a reason that Olympic and professional athletes have coaches. There is a reason they are world class and they know that having someone else’s eyes on their, not only their physical performance, but on their mental story is critical to reaching their full potential.
[00:13:19] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. So that’s just, you know, again, a little bit of us. Yeah. You know, talk and shop, but really encouraging you as a listener to consider whether it’s operational help, it’s scaling, it’s business development, marketing, it’s just personal life stuff to talk with someone and just get that second opinion.
[00:13:36] Steve Fretzin: 100%. The other thing is there’s so many lawyers right now that are busier than they’ve ever been. I mean, just flooded and the ability to get help and delegate work has been challenging. Yet, there’s still ways that we need to try to figure out how to find gaps of time and continue to, you know, not ignore our families or whatever it might be.
[00:13:56] Steve Fretzin: So what are some of the things that I would call like time management hacks or things that you are kind of picking out to try to help your clients to improve and focus on BD or focus on just being healthy or working out or whatever when they’re feeling under the gun at the office?
[00:14:12] John Kormanik: You bet. Couple things.
[00:14:14] John Kormanik: I despise the term time management. Because there is no pause button on the clock. It does not care about you. You cannot stop it. It keeps moving. Let’s talk about time mastery. And Time Mastery, we’re gonna go back to Steve Jobs and the quote that you started with. It’s saying, no, it’s I, you have to identify the things that only you can do at a high level and then do those.
[00:14:48] John Kormanik: Is it easy? No, it’s not easy. Yeah, can you do it today? Is it a light switch? No, it’s not a light switch, but it all begins with identifying that. That’s the first thing. What are the things that only I can do? And you gotta be honest with yourself. I push back. I have people as you said, right? People will call me for a 30 minute discovery call and we talk and I ask them about, that question, and they’ll list a whole bunch of things, and many of them are not only things that they can do.
[00:15:22] John Kormanik: They’re things that they’re comfortable with, they’re things that they like doing, but they’re not only things that they can do. So that’s number one. Number two, always, always, always, always remember, you are the center of the hub. You as the lawyer. Without you, none of it happens. Your clients aren’t served.
[00:15:43] John Kormanik: Your family isn’t taken care of. Your community isn’t enriched. And so, when it comes time to you, remember that. Without you, none of it happens. It’s like put the oxygen mask on first, on an airplane. Yes, 100%.
[00:16:03] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, I have a client when we started working together, she was complaining about how overwhelmed she was and we literally went through a list of all the things that she has coming up and there was one that was going to take up a lot of time for preparation.
[00:16:14] Steve Fretzin: It was a presentation she had committed to. And I said, how far away is this and how deep are you? And he said, let’s create an email and let’s send it to this person that’s in charge and just apologize and say, look, you’re beyond capacity. You’re not going to be able to put everything into it. Okay. And when she got out of it and the person’s like, oh my god, don’t worry about it.
[00:16:31] Steve Fretzin: It’s no problem And she came back to me. She’s like, are you freaking kidding me? Like that would have taken me like 50 hours or something insane of my time that I don’t have So really make a list of all the things that you’re obligated to or that you believe you are And really start to cut away and chip away at the things that aren’t being beneficial.
[00:16:49] Steve Fretzin: So you have some gaps of time that you can use. What other time, not time management, but time mastery hacks, I almost said it now you got me freaking out about saying time management. Thanks a lot. What’s another one that you would recommend that really helps lawyers when they’re feeling stressed out and they’ve got, especially when they have like what would seem to be urgent things coming at them that sort of hijack their day.
[00:17:11] John Kormanik: Yeah. As I said, you know, I practice criminal defense, right? It was a very volatile, uncertain, complicated, and ambiguous day that I would have. VUCA days, right? And so the one thing that, a second thing that you can do, right? First is identify. The second thing that you can do is, you know, eat the frog. Do the thing that you’ve been avoiding.
[00:17:39] John Kormanik: Because once you get that thing done and off your plate, number one, you’re done. Psychologically, it has a huge impact on you because it’s not weighing you down anymore. Number two, you’ve moved it along. Number three, you can reward yourself. And we don’t do that enough. I celebrate with my clients all the time.
[00:17:57] John Kormanik: Every single coaching session starts with me asking them, tell me about a win because high achievers like our clients, like your audience, like you and I don’t take the time to celebrate enough. We’re often just onto the next thing. So eat the frog. Get the thing done. That’s another time mastery hack because otherwise it’s just weighing you down
[00:18:23] Steve Fretzin: Yeah and the other thing that I hear all the time is work life balance and people that are like separating work and life and Is that real?
[00:18:31] Steve Fretzin: Is that a misnomer? Oh
[00:18:32] John Kormanik: my gosh. It’s a multi billion dollar industry That doesn’t make any sense, right? I’m gonna unpack it number one The person who came up with work life balance was in the industry. They put work first, the words matter. And so that’s number one. Number two, we are not separate people.
[00:18:55] John Kormanik: We are one individual. And so. There’s no such thing as that work life separation. Number two, balance. I talk about this all the time. Think about when you were growing up. When I was growing up, there was this thing in the playground called a teeter totter, or a seesaw, right? It’s a board with a fulcrum in the middle and you sit on both ends.
[00:19:16] John Kormanik: Think about when you were a kid, having your best friend on the other side and trying to balance it perfectly. It is so hard! You can’t do it, really. And so the whole concept of work life balance sets us up to fail. We think we’re failing at something that is impossible to achieve. And so I talk with people all the time about blend.
[00:19:41] John Kormanik: And here’s an example I’ll give. You’re in Chicago. Are you going to be sitting outside in Chicago in August on the hottest, muggiest day of the year? eating a steaming bowl of chili. No, you’re not going to do that. You’re going to have something cool and refreshing. That’s the season you’re in. So you do that.
[00:20:02] John Kormanik: The analogy to work is, for a litigator, I’ve got trial coming up, I’m in trial prep, I need to do this stuff, or an M& A lawyer, we’re coming in, you know, December’s big time for M& A, folks. I have a deal, we need to close the deals, right? You’re in that season. Just be okay with it. Just be okay with it. And then when the season ends, Pick up those other balls that you had to do.
[00:20:26] Steve Fretzin: I’m on the BD front. Never. I’m telling people never go 80 and then to zero. I get that it’s going to happen, but I would rather see someone go 80 down to 15 and then back up to 80 or whatever they got to do. But. Just, you know, do 30 minutes a week or something. Just keep it just so you don’t lose the muscle memory of business development for months because you stop to work.
[00:20:48] Steve Fretzin: And also when you come out up for air, you still have something going on, right? It’s not completely dead stop. Yeah. But the, the blend is a great word. I’ve also heard like integration. So like, for example, I tell my clients, they can call me day or night, weekends, anytime I only take on 20 lawyers a year for my main program.
[00:21:06] Steve Fretzin: So I have that for them. Now. I’m on a boat with my son fishing. I’m not picking up the phone and they know I’ll just call them back. So it’s integrated in the sense, like if I’m doing nothing, I’m doom scrolling on my phone and it’s just, I’m just kind of butts in around for half an hour. And I get a call like my buddy, Keith Allen called me the day.
[00:21:24] Steve Fretzin: Absolutely. I want to talk to you, man. I love you. You’re my, one of my favorite people. And so like, it’s, I think that integration is more realistic today than work life balance, which I think we’re agreeing can happen. And that doesn’t mean, again, you can’t shut down and go away for a week to Europe or whatever.
[00:21:40] Steve Fretzin: You just have to make sure that your support system is set up, but that’s. You know, even when I went away to Europe, I still was kind of bored for like an hour in the morning and like I would just kind of roll through emails. No one was expecting to hear from me, but hey, you know, I just kind of like was wanted to look through my emails.
[00:21:55] Steve Fretzin: It was okay, but that’s, you know, that’s how we’ve become a little bit too. I didn’t feel like a bad. I didn’t try to be feel guilty about it
[00:22:02] John Kormanik: and I would say you it’s you have to step away. You have to create the environment where you can step away. Whether it’s for some of our clients, it’s for a weekend, right?
[00:22:13] John Kormanik: It’s for a Saturday and Sunday because they’re so used to doing things and having to do things even on just a weekend. So, you have to step away to recharge, right? You must get off the hamster wheel. You must. Otherwise, you’re You cannot perform at your very best
[00:22:32] Steve Fretzin: with proven SEO and digital marketing strategies that drive actual clients to your firm, rankings.io prides itself on proof, not promises mentality.
[00:22:41] Steve Fretzin: The best firms hire rankings.io when they want rankings, traffic, and cases, other law firm marketing agencies. Can’t deliver. Get more rankings, get cases, and schedule a free consultation at rankings. io today. Hey everybody, Steve Fretzin here. Man, I thought I was a good marketer, but maybe not. Lawyers have been approaching me asking, what’s the Rainmakers Roundtable?
[00:23:03] Steve Fretzin: Well, I tell them this is a special place created exclusively for rainmaking lawyers to continue their journey of prosperity. Our program is unique as every member has a significant book of business and is motivated to grow it year after year. Where else does this exist? If you’re a managing partner who’s looking to get off your lonely island and talk shop with America’s top rainmakers, please go to my website, Fretzin.
[00:23:25] Steve Fretzin: com and apply for membership today. You know, curious if you have any, and I know, you know, we got getting things done and atomic habits and there’s a lot of time management mastery folks out there. One that’s been coming up lately and I have, you know, I’ve got my take on it, but any thoughts on email jail?
[00:23:44] Steve Fretzin: I mean, lawyers that are two, three, four, 500 emails behind. And they’re feeling like they’re working out of their inbox all day and that dictating. So they’re not eating any frogs. And by the way, if you don’t know what that means, it means do the most difficult thing first, you know, just eat the bucket over with and shout out to Brian Tracy.
[00:24:00] Steve Fretzin: But it’s, how are you helping coach the lawyers that are just destroyed by email every day?
[00:24:06] John Kormanik: Yeah. Email. is everyone else’s priorities, period. You will not find your priorities in your email. And so, I, when I suggest things to lawyers to be in this time management, time mastery space, it is, do not open your email first thing in the morning.
[00:24:30] John Kormanik: You have been trained to do it. You, it is a Pavlovian response. It’s like we talked about before, just reaching for your phone, right? It is a Pavlovian thing. So don’t do it, right? You take care of your thing first, and that requires you to identify what that is to set your environment up so that it is inevitable that you do that thing.
[00:24:58] John Kormanik: Whether it’s having the paper file on your desk ready to go, whether it’s having a pad to make some notes ready to go, whether it’s having case law, whatever it is, whether it’s having. Your list of, of referral sources that you want to contact, whatever it is, identify that so that when you sit down at your desk, you do, you can’t help but do that first.
[00:25:21] John Kormanik: And then you can go to email jail if you want to. There are programs out there, there are people out there to help you with email. If you have questions about that kind of stuff, contact Steve, contact me, happy to talk with you about it. Get you the right places, but you can’t be spending your time in your email because you are just reactive then and you’re not strategic and responsive.
[00:25:44] Steve Fretzin: Hey, if you had to give one tip for lawyers to live their best lawyer life, right? I mean that the idea that they can have the cake, eat it too, and just like, you know, finish up a career, you know, like the best possible way. What’s your suggestion?
[00:25:59] John Kormanik: I think my suggestion is, I know my suggestion is, understand that you do hard things every day.
[00:26:11] John Kormanik: You do hard things every day. You don’t think they’re hard because what, by the time you’re done doing them, you’ve done them. So I was like, Oh, that wasn’t that bad. Understand you do hard things every day. And when, so when you think and you get nervous about not going into your email first, because you have to be responsive to clients immediately.
[00:26:30] John Kormanik: When you think about, I have to answer the phone right here, right now, even though it’s going to interrupt me from doing deep work, and it’s going to set me back 23 to 25 minutes to get back to that deep concentration space. You do hard things all the time. You can do this stuff as well.
[00:26:49] Steve Fretzin: Have the confidence to step outside of what you know well and do other things.
[00:26:55] Steve Fretzin: Yes. Business development, marketing. You know, developing SOPs and processes for your firm, all hard, but by the way, can all be made easier with help. It’s not, you know, you didn’t, you don’t become a lawyer without going to law school, right. And you don’t become a doctor without going to medical school yet.
[00:27:15] Steve Fretzin: You’re going to be this, you know, great rainmaker without any help at all, because you’re smart. If you’re smart, you get help. That’s what smart people do. So again, I’m not here to straight up blog what John and I do and all the other professionals. There’s a lot of. Bad actors out there too. You have to really know that you’re talking to the people that are referred and everything.
[00:27:36] Steve Fretzin: But I think you’re right. That it’s stepping out of your comfort zone and focusing on things that are important to you in your career. Whether that’s getting your act together on the time mastery side, or whether it’s realizing, Hey, I want to build out a firm. And in order to do that, there’s management and leadership and culture and things that I have never experienced, or I just, I’m not going to go there.
[00:27:59] Steve Fretzin: That’s not important to me. And I’m going to focus on just building something small and highly profitable. That’s what I did. Like I’ve had the employees in the offices and the overhead and all that, and you know, wanted to scale out. And what I realized in doing that is I hated it. I was miserable. And what I love about what I do is I get to just focus on things I enjoy every day.
[00:28:17] Steve Fretzin: And make great money and help a lot of people. So yeah, you figure things out sometimes through trial and error, but you know, it’s better to stay focused as we go back to the beginning of where we started.
[00:28:28] John Kormanik: 100%. And you know, that’s one of the five lies that lawyers tell themselves that they all high performers tell themselves asking for help is weakness.
[00:28:36] John Kormanik: Again, just look at any professional athlete, look at any C suite executive in a fortune 50 company. They all have a team of people to help them perform at their very best, to empower them to get to that place. So yeah. And, you know, anytime you think to yourself, well, this is what the world says I should be doing, right?
[00:28:58] John Kormanik: You mentioned it. Oh, we have to grow the firm. Well, why are you going to do that? You need to make sure that you want it. You need to be strategic about it. You need to think about it. Don’t just react as Viktor Frankl says, right? You got to create the space between the stimulus and response. And that space is Time and it’s clarity and it’s critical.
[00:29:26] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, really great. John, as always, thank you so much. Let’s wrap up with our game changing podcast. This is one I haven’t heard, but I think anytime you listen to podcasts and what did we call it? Microlearning, whatever we want to call it. People that have. A lot to share about how to live the best life and how to, you know, whether it’s health and wellness, whatever it might be.
[00:29:42] Steve Fretzin: And you were talking about rich role, the rich role podcast, and I had not heard of rich role. It’s cool name by the way, but what, what is a great
[00:29:49] John Kormanik: guy?
[00:29:49] Steve Fretzin: Who is he? And what is
[00:29:50] John Kormanik: the podcast about? Yeah, Rich Roll is an ultra endurance athlete. You know, I come from a triathlon background as an adult, and I was 40 in my 40s when I started exploring triathlon.
[00:30:03] John Kormanik: So Rich Roll comes from a, an extreme athlete perspective. He has a long form podcast where he interviews world class people. He just interviewed Oh gosh, who’s the music producer?
[00:30:19] Steve Fretzin: Oh, I know who you’re talking about with the beard. Yeah with the beard the beastie boys Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He’s god.
[00:30:25] Steve Fretzin: What’s his name? All right. Well Ruben ruben ruben, was
[00:30:29] John Kormanik: it rick ruben rick ruben? Yes, who’s a fascinating individual, but he has long form Interviews give it a listen. I think it’s totally worth the investment Of your time. Yeah. Awesome.
[00:30:44] Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody. So let’s wrap up. Thank our sponsors, of course, rankings IO, helping you on the marketing side and a law, her podcast, you know, really empowering women and talking about interviewing some of the, some of the best and brightest women in law and the legal profession.
[00:31:00] Steve Fretzin: And also John, if people want to get in touch with you, they want to hear more about your coaching. They want to pick up your book called break the law. What are the best ways for them to reach you?
[00:31:08] John Kormanik: So Break the Law is BreakTheLawBook. com. Get on there. There’s a complimentary download of the intro you can get for my coaching website.
[00:31:19] John Kormanik: It’s my name. It’s JohnRKormanek. com. Hop on there. There are links, there’s a blog, there are resources. If you’re worried about not maintaining your edge, there’s an edge index assessment, complimentary to you. Get on there, play around, look around. You are interested. You can reach me through the website.
[00:31:40] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, and all of that in the show notes. So we’re good to go. John, thanks so much, man. I, every time we get together, I’m just, I’m, I have an internal and external smile going on because it’s just, you’re just such a great guy. And and I know you and I both have the vision of making this industry better lawyer by lawyer.
[00:31:54] Steve Fretzin: So really appreciate you, man.
[00:31:56] John Kormanik: Thank you, Steve. I appreciate you, brother.
[00:31:58] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Thank you. And I apologize, everybody. I’ve got landscapers outside on how bad that is. I’m just dying inside. Cause it’s like, The timing is awful. But anyway, I want to thank you for hanging out with John and I today and join the, be that lawyer podcast with Fretzin here and take care, everybody be safe.
[00:32:13] Steve Fretzin: Be well, take heed on what we share today. You know, you got one shot at this thing, make it count. Take care. See everybody. Bye. Bye.
[00:32:25] 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.