In this episode, Steve Fretzin and K’Lee Terrazas discuss:
- The importance of lead generation for building and sustaining a business
- Common blind spots lawyers face in marketing and business development
- How intake processes affect client acquisition and law firm growth
- The role of coaching, auditing, and systems in scaling effectively
Key Takeaways:
- Many law firms fail because they do not track essential numbers like ROI, cost per acquisition, or client lifetime value, leaving them “flying blind.”
- A poor intake process—such as calls going unanswered, being handled unprofessionally, or staffed with undertrained employees—can turn high-quality leads into lost opportunities.
- Investing in skilled coaches and quality marketing services often yields exponential returns, whereas cutting corners in these areas leads to wasted money and lost clients.
- Scaling requires breaking through discomfort by improving systems and recognizing when existing strategies or staff can no longer take the firm to the next level.
“People have to feel like they are heard and that they’re cared about, or they’re going to go somewhere else.” — K’Lee Terrazas
Check out my new show, Be That Lawyer Coaches Corner, and get the strategies I use with my clients to win more business and love your career again.
Ready to go from good to GOAT in your legal marketing game? Don’t miss PIMCON—where the brightest minds in professional services gather to share what really works. Lock in your spot now: https://www.pimcon.org/
Thank you to our Sponsor!
Legalverse Media: https://legalversemedia.com/
Ready to grow your law practice without selling or chasing? Book your free 30-minute strategy session now—let’s make this your breakout year: https://fretzin.com/
Episode References:
- Oversubscribed by Daniel Priestley: https://www.amazon.com/Oversubscribed-How-People-Lining-Business/dp/0857088254
- Key Person of Influence by Daniel Priestley: https://www.amazon.com/Key-Person-Influence-Revised-Five-Step/dp/178133109X
- Fireproof by Mike Morse and with John Nachazel: https://www.amazon.com/Fireproof-Five-Step-Unpredictable-Wildly-Profitable/dp/1544508530
About K’Lee Terrazas: K’Lee Terrazas is the founder of Legal Lead Sharks and co-founder of Intake EQ, where she helps law firms turn more clicks into signed cases through smarter client acquisition and modern intake systems. With 15+ years in sales and marketing, she and her team specialize in Google Ads while focusing just as much on what happens after the lead—building end-to-end systems that eliminate bottlenecks and convert at a higher rate. Intake EQ uses AI Voice Agents that sound human, work around the clock in multiple languages, and handle overflow without adding intake staff. Alongside her husband Jason, K’Lee also launched PayLynx Global to support firms with backend automation in payroll, HR, and compliance.
Connect with K’Lee Terrazas:
Website: https://legalleadsharks.com/ & intake-eq.com
Legal Lead Sharks Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@LegalLeadSharksPodcast
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/k-lee-terrazas-9366b31b4/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/klee.terrazas & https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61578128520758
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/legalleadsharks/
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]
Everybody. If networking feels like a chore for you, you’re going to want to hear about my new podcast, be that lawyer Coach’s Corner. I’ll show you how to build real world relationships and drive business both online and in person. A few episodes are already live, so go listen to be that lawyer Coach’s Corner today. And by the way, enjoy the show today as well.
Narrator [00:21]
You’re listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin, hey
Steve Fretzin [00:43]
everybody, Steve Fretzin, here, and I hope you are well today we’ve got a great show planned, and want to make you aware that we have a second podcast now. It’s called Surprise, surprise be that lawyer. But this one’s called be that lawyer Coach’s Corner. So in the difference is that instead of interviewing great guests like K’Lee, who’s waiting in the wings. Hi, K’Lee. Hi, good to see you. I’m going to be just sharing my best hits. I’m going to be talking about how to plan and execute and sustain a successful law practice. I know one episode, I’m bringing in one of my clients to talk about their experiences working with me so far, and just make sure that you guys are getting, you know, the knowledge that I have to help you grow a successful law practice. So a little different vibe than this one, but I think they’re both going to be excellent to help you be that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled Rainmaker that was a lot. That was like one long run on sentence, right there, K’Lee. So we are going to jump in. K’Lee pulled up her website and just has the most wonderful quote. It’s so perfect for this show, and I’m going to read it, and I’m going to ask you about it and welcome you in. So it is, everything is downstream from lead generation. You can’t build a business if you cannot generate leads. Daniel Priestley, now, is that for the guy from 90120? Was it Jonathan priest maybe his brother? I don’t know. Maybe they’re cousins. Maybe they’re Yeah, well, welcome to the show and tell us a little bit about why that quote is so important to you that you put it up on your website front and center. Thanks.
K’Lee Terrazas [02:09]
Yeah, I’m happy to be here. So I actually got into marketing back in 2016 before that, I was in sales my entire career, from college all the way up until 2016 so B to B and B to C sales, I felt like I really knew that side of it. And a lot of times we think marketing and sales overlap, which I would say now they’re starting to with the evolution of the Internet and social media and social selling and all the stuff. But back in 2016 that was just kind of hitting its peak. So yeah, Daniel Priestley is one of my favorite marketers, mentors, if you will. He wrote the book over subscribe, and a lot of other key person of influence is another great one. Has a lot of really good books, but very simply put, when I was in sales for years, you can’t I like those who have their lead generation on point, make them look like they’re all star sales, and then those who don’t are the ones that are constantly swimming upstream.
Steve Fretzin [03:04]
So yeah, and lawyers, if you listen to you know, our be that lawyer live segments a few weeks ago, John shakota was very clear about the importance of lead generation, and nothing happens until, you know, no firm has business until a lead is generated. So I know you didn’t get into and go to law school and become a lawyer because you wanted to get involved in lead generation for yourself and for the law firm. But that’s where the action starts. You can’t sort of avoid that, that idea that the business of law is around lead generation, and we’re going to take a pretty deep dive today into that. But everybody, Keely Terrazas is the founder and CEO of legal lead sharks, and do us a solid and give us a little bit of your background, obviously, sales, and I want to maybe we could take a few minutes after you talk about because I had kind of an interesting young life sales thing too. We might compare notes, but give us your How did you get into this whole thing and working with lawyers?
K’Lee Terrazas [03:56]
Yeah, so I’ve had a digital marketing company since 2016 and legal lead sharks was birthed out of that. About two and a half years ago. I got my first attorney, and I loved it. I used to like most marketing companies, jack of all trades, websites, SEO, Google, business profiles, everything you know, paid ads. But when I got my first attorney, I really narrowed down on lead generation, client acquisition. So all things Google, Google ads, LSA ads and the Google Map Pack, basically getting them to the top of direct search was my game, and I loved it. I love working with attorneys. I started reading books on how to scale your law firm to try to uncover more of what’s going on under the hood, if you will. I think that’s where a lot of agencies really missed the boat in marketing is they have no idea what happens after the click. So I really wanted to know the entire life cycle of the click to the signed case so that I could help attorneys grow with client acquisition.
Steve Fretzin [04:53]
Yeah, absolutely wonderful. And, you know, the, you know, marketing, sales, I talk about it, this quite a bit that I feel like. Right? A lawyer that’s going to be successful today needs to climb two sides of the mountain at the same time, the business development side and relationships and lead gen, and then the marketing side of building that personal brand. And obviously, for some lawyers in personal injury in other areas, they might have a big, much bigger spend and how they utilize their money and their time. And then for other folks, you know, it might just be putting themselves out there and investing their time and networking and other activities, speaking and writing and things like that. But where do you see the big challenge for lawyers as it relates to lead generation, marketing, business development, the whole kit and caboodle?
K’Lee Terrazas [05:37]
Yeah, that is a fantastic that’s the right question. Oftentimes we’re asking the wrong questions when we meet with somebody, that’s 100% the right question. So the first area that I there’s two I’m going to hit. They’re directly related to each other. First area is they don’t know their numbers, whether it’s in marketing or in operations, they simply are flying blind. I can ask very simple marketing questions about where they’re spending their budget, how much is allocated, where? What’s their ROI what’s their cost per acquisition? And every answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know, even if I’m speaking to their marketing person at their firm. So my mentor and coach for Google ads, when I learned Google Ads back in the day, he’s launched and scaled to seven figure ads agency, he really specializes in E commerce, but he told me, the people who win are simply that, like you can put it in one sentence if you know your numbers, so Google can be a money printing machine or a money burning pit. That’s the number one place that I see law firms struggling. And you know, like, if you didn’t, you went to school to be a lawyer, you didn’t go to school to be an HR professional, a marketer, like all the other hats you have to wear. So that’s why having a coach like you or a marketer like me that specializes in our zone, we can see blind spots that they can’t, and it’s just because that’s our area.
Steve Fretzin [06:54]
Let me add on to that, K’Lee, because I think if we talk about marketing, newsletters, websites, Google, clicks, all that stuff. The data is there. There are programs and software that just give you the data, and if you don’t look at it, analyze it and improve it, you aren’t throwing a lot of that money away. However, I also want to mention in business development, there are numbers too, and I can tell you, marketing gets more attention than sales when it comes to numbers, for example, a lawyer goes on 10 meetings, okay, doesn’t know how many they’re getting, why they’re converting, why they’re not converting, how the email follow up is working. There’s all these other moving parts to business development that might have started with marketing numbers, but then it gets into the sales and the business development numbers, and they’re totally clueless on that. One of the reasons I have my clients fill out a journal that tracks their day the numbers and the activity details, so that I can see that, in fact, they’re meeting with 10 prospective clients. They’re only getting two, and they should be getting eight. And then we can start working backwards to break it down. How does that work in marketing when you realize the numbers are off and there needs to be some major adjustments,
K’Lee Terrazas [08:05]
very similar to how it would be for you with coaching on the back end. And that’s another number that we need to know is, what is your close rate, you know? And I’ll ask, I’ll ask a lawyer, for example, what’s your lifetime value of a client? And like, we could say criminal, personal injury or family law. Now hopefully all of those are one off clients. So I get that they’re like, that’s not applicable to me and I but it absolutely is, because if we took drunk driving cases, so DUIs, or if you’re in pi we took commercial motor vehicle or in family, we took divorce versus custody cases, all we need to do is add up your total and divide it by the year, and then we know how much that client is worth to you. We need to know that in order to know what your marketing spin green line is, right. Like, where are we going to hit the ROI positive and then at that point scale? Yeah. But to your point, if I don’t know how many of those you’re closing, if we got you 18 cases, and then you didn’t you went, you only won like five. That uncovers another blind spot. And that’s why coaches are invaluable. I read the book fireproof by Mike Morris, and I will tell you the turning point in that book is when he hired a coach that told him his blind spot is he doesn’t know his numbers. It’s like going to a basketball game with no scoreboard. Yeah, after he hired his coach, the coach said, We need a COO. Somebody’s got to be in charge of all this other stuff that’s bottlenecking you from scaling and then literally, and I know the book is like 20 years, like, you know, in a short time, which is so much fun to read. But that was the turning point from a small, multi million dollar firm to a billion dollar, you know, whale in his industry. So you’ve got to have somebody that can see blind spots.
Steve Fretzin [09:46]
And here’s the sickest thing I’ll share about that. So an attorney that is, you know, losing business because they don’t have a good process for closing, for example, or getting walk. I call it walking a buyer through a buying process to get. To the end and they’re not closing. Each one of those is worth, you know, 5000 or 10,000 or 100,000 and then you do the math of how long that’s been going on, where they haven’t been effective at closing or getting that client, and it’s been going on for years. And you start doing the math, and then if nothing changes for the next couple of years, how much they’re going to lose, we’re into millions and millions of dollars. And then you start putting in the time they’re billable at 500 an hour, 750 an hour, and that is all wasted time with prospects that are moving forward. And you start doing the math on that, and the numbers get astronomical very fast. So I don’t always bring that up to lawyers, but when I do it sure makes my fee go down real quick, because they realize, you know, it’s pennies compared to what they’re actually losing because of inefficiencies and lack of process and systems and tracking, to your point of looking at the numbers. And so it’s really, it’s mind blowing, quite frankly, right?
K’Lee Terrazas [10:52]
And I agree with you the there are some areas we all want to, you know, budget. We all want to cut expenses. I would say, like my husband does payroll and HR, great. That’s a $10 an hour task. You can do that for a couple 100 a month. It’s off your plate. You know you shouldn’t be wasting time. Where I would say you don’t want to try to budget is in a coach that has a lot of value, versus someone who, like graduated business school last year and doesn’t know the school of hard knocks. They’ve never been in the real world marketing, another area, you don’t want to cut corners and get the cheaper person, because you’re going to see that in your results, because they don’t know what’s going on. So I agree with you.
Steve Fretzin [11:29]
The last thing a lawyer should say to me is, you know, I’m going to take a break from working with you because things have been down. What? Yeah, I think it’s the saying that everyone knows in marketing is you invest when things are down to ensure that they get back up. Not I’m gonna keep my money tight, because, you know, things are down and then what? Then everything continues to go down. I don’t it doesn’t compute with me.
Steve Fretzin [11:56]
Hey, pi attorneys, if you’re serious about scaling your firm, there’s one event you can’t afford to miss, Pim con, 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 go 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 b 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, be that lawyer friends. If you’re looking for smarter ways to grow your law practice and want to stay ahead of the curve in legal, tech, business and strategy, then it’s time to check out legal verse media, the go to hub for lawyers who want more. This international platform connects you with global thought leaders through articles, podcasts, webinars and interactive forums that are shaping the future of law. Explore everything with a free 14 day trial, including early access to tools peer discussions and a chance to build your brand as a thought leader. Don’t wait. Visit legalverse media.com, and register for membership today. 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 fretzen.com and grab a time that works for you. And let’s make this your breakout year. I want to transition to intake, because one of the things that we talked about was sharing some of your hacks to effective intake. And we have to keep this somewhat broad, because in some instances it’s intake from Google leads and pay per click ads and SEO and things that are taking people to a website where they fill out a form. In other instances, there are lawyers who are just getting phone calls or emails because their names been passed around, whatever the case, if you screw up on the intake or don’t even realize you’re screwing up on the intake, because things aren’t right. So let’s so what are some of the things that you would recommend to ensure that lawyers are successful in the intake process?
K’Lee Terrazas [14:18]
Yeah, so this piggybacks back to your original question. I said there’s two areas. First is, know your numbers, right? Yep. Second is intake. So one thing that I didn’t realize until I started working with an attorney and running big ad budgets was, and again, big or small, irrelevant. This is a bottleneck I have seen across the board now, and I work with a lot of people who work with law firms, whether it’s wealth management or CFOs or whatever fractional CFOs, they’ll all tell you the same thing. I just listened to a podcast yesterday by Jennifer gore. She’s a powerhouse female attorney out of Georgia pi attorney, and she said the first thing she asks when she’s coaching other lawyers is, how’s your intake? And they’ll say, Oh, it’s great. And she said, Great. Let’s. Call it, and then she goes, you can almost see beads of sweating it run down their face, because they know it’s not great.
Steve Fretzin [15:05]
Oh, wait, this is, this is actually happening, yes, yeah.
K’Lee Terrazas [15:09]
So I have a good story. I started working with the law firm running a high budget of Google ads, and then after about, it was about four to six weeks, he called me and said, these leads suck. And I’m like, I can see what they’re Googling when they you know, and some of them, yeah, when you’re running a big budget, you’re going to catch a lot of stuff. But for the most part, these were really good leads. So I took it upon myself to blind test their intake. And he raved about their intake, which I hope that anybody would you know. I hope you think you have a good intake process. So I did my very first test was on the weekends, notoriously bad, right? And then I did overflow calls, and then I did their, you know, during office hours. Now, the caveat here is their phone rings from the Google Ad number, saying this is a Google Ad lead, right? So they know this is a lead. So my first call was on a Saturday. He had one of his in house intake taking overflow calls on the weekend, which is a mistake. You’re overworking your team. But anyway, so it rang for two minutes, and I was starting, I was just about to hang up when I heard Hello. And I paused and looked at my phone and thought, did I dial the wrong number? And I said, Is this XYZ law firm? And he said, Yeah. And I was just shocked first of all, and I thought, Oh, okay. And then he’s like, Can I help you? And I recorded these calls and then sent them to the lawyer and said, let me know what you think about these five calls. That was it.
Steve Fretzin [16:32]
And heads rolled from there, yes, yes.
K’Lee Terrazas [16:35]
I didn’t need to point fingers back at him. I just needed to make him aware that there was a blind spot. So after two years of working with my law firms, and some of them, to your point, some of them just need admin. They just need calls that are coming in from organic, you know, referrals, whatever. And then others of them are running really huge marketing spend, and there is an influx of irrelevant calls. Their intake team is just overwhelmed. Yeah, after two years of doing in house training, more white glove service in house training, and then also call center, finding them the right. Call Center is really expensive, I finally launched our newest baby intake EQ, which is a humans and it’s EQ because it’s got emotional intelligence. I would not take this live for any of my clients until it sounded like a real person. It sounded compassionate, empathetic. It was trained on their law firm. It was really important to me that this had to be right. I don’t want to waste a single dollar or a single lead. That could have been a multi million dollar case for this firm. Yeah, so they’re bilingual. They work 24/7, they sound like real people. There’s background typing noises, whether they’re doing just lead intake, which is qualifying the leads and doing a live transfer down to with some of my immigration and criminal law, they may be taking retainers over the phone, processing payments and booking them like right on the spot with their team. Yeah. So inbound calls, outbound calls, these guys do it all, and they sound like they work at the firm. They don’t sound like an out, outsourced call center in India that wants to jump out the window because this is the 50th call they’ve taken today. So yeah,
Steve Fretzin [18:09]
there’s a show of, if people are haven’t seen it, it’s, I don’t know how that’s possible, but the bear, it’s been nominated for in one awards and all that. But in the recent and this is not a spoiler alert, but there this guy, Richie, who kind of runs the front end of the of the restaurant said they’re waiting, you know, for a person that’s going to give them the Michelin star like this. Might come in anytime, but that doesn’t matter, because they’re his philosophy is, everyone is family. And what that means in relating to intake is, is it a multi million dollar case? Is it a $10,000 case? It doesn’t matter. You don’t know which one’s going to come in when and what it’s going to be worth, and don’t treat it differently. They’re 10,000 should be treated the same. You know, my father, Larry the lawyer, said that he had people that could barely pay him or didn’t pay him, and he said, I’m going to treat them as though they were multi millionaires. I don’t care, because it’s people. It’s humans. I want to care for them. But I think the point about intake is everyone has to be treated like it’s the most important case, and if you’re dropping the ball, Holy mackerel. So that’s really great. I love that. Intake EQ, everybody. Is there a website for that?
K’Lee Terrazas [19:09]
Yeah, it’s intake dash. EQ, okay.com,
Steve Fretzin [19:12]
okay, got it? Check that out everybody. And that might be super helpful, because I think if you let a phone go to voicemail, if you let a phone go two minutes of ringing, or it’s handled by a company that isn’t really trained up properly, or whatever, a holy mackerel, what a big misstep that is in business development process. I mean, that’s the first line of like. That’s like a first impression. You walk into a restaurant, they go, What do you want? Like, I wanted to eat here, but now I want to leave. Are you kidding me? No restaurant would do that, right? It’s a smile, and it’s Hello, welcome to and you know, that’s what you need to do, and that’s just the first step of, you know, a dozen after so
K’Lee Terrazas [19:50]
what people, I think, don’t realize about intake is it’s a sales process, and you’re hiring people for, you know, $14 an hour that sound like they don’t care about. About their job, sound like they’re looking for another job, or hate their job. And to your point, like that is your first impression. So had I been a personal injury victim and I then the call was answered with Hello on a Saturday, I would have called another firm. Yeah, because we have expectations of the legal industry that are pretty high, you know, professional and I’ve got demo lines people can call, and they can hear how empathetic the person sounds. Like, I had a guy say I got into a car accident and I was going 400 miles an hour, and she’s like, oh my goodness, I hope everyone was okay. I mean, you know what? I mean, like, but they were trying to throw her off and give her these weird things, and she just handled it like a pro. But that has to be every call to your point, whether it’s a real call or a, you know, a demo call it, people have to feel like they are heard and that they’re cared about, or they’re going to go somewhere else.
Steve Fretzin [20:51]
Alright, so that all makes perfect sense. What’s another another intake hack that you can share that’s going to help people
K’Lee Terrazas [20:57]
make money knowing your numbers. A lot of people don’t audit their intake. The cool thing about intake EQ is It’s all recorded, and we audit it with the AI. So we’re constantly giving a feedback loop to me to say, if you’re an immigration attorney and you’re getting a lot of criminal cases, I need to go tweak your Google ads, or I need to go tweak your marketing messaging. So there’s a lot about intake beyond just like getting the call answered properly.
Steve Fretzin [21:20]
I’m going to stop you right there, because I think what you’re saying is universally important, and that is, if you don’t audit what is going on in your marketing and your business development and your networking and any activity, you’re speaking to a group, and you’re not getting the business from those speaking engagements, and you’re just doing them year after year After year, you’re not auditing yourself or having someone look at you to help you audit, and you end up so that the saying is, you know, do you have 10 years of experience doing this, or one year experience 10 times? And you might be doing that with intake. You might be doing that with networking and blowing through money and blowing through time and hours. So I think it’s really critical that we just take a moment to sort of respect the audit and the importance of reflection, reflecting back and making changes.
K’Lee Terrazas [22:05]
Yeah, a lot of times, like I just had on legal lead sharks, we have a podcast. I had Leah Miller on. She’s a fractional CFO and bookkeeper. And a lot of times when you have someone that zooms out, she can say, whoa, whoa, whoa. You are really payroll and overhead heavy, and you’re not spending enough on marketing. You have three years, Max at this rate, before you fold. If you don’t have a coach like Steve, you could be doing speaking events and just tweak a little thing at the end, like a call to action. What do you want from them? Ask them for something after you gave them value, and then all of a sudden, your hours speaking just turned into five new clients or five new referral partners. But, yeah, you can’t. I’ve got a coach like we all have blind spots, and if we could see them, they wouldn’t be our blind spots. We would fix them. So it’s really important that you have someone who can zoom out and see outside of you and say, oop, blind spot, blind spot, blind spot, and you course correct. And then things just scale easier, and you can sleep at night.
Steve Fretzin [23:02]
Yeah, absolutely spot on. And I’m speaking at a conference in Santa Fe in October, and I’m on the phone with the woman who was helping me get through it and set everything up. And I said, Hey, I’d love to see who’s going to be there to connect with them on LinkedIn and just introduce myself so they can kind of review me and like, if they want a book or anything they want before the event. You know, that way I can send them stuff and start getting them primed for me. I’m doing the keynote at the beginning of this big international thing. How many people would have thought to do that? I’m not saying I’m special. I’m saying like, it’s for me, it’s common sense for other people. They would just show up, do the presentation, leave and hope that things are going to work out. No, I’m setting it up to get to know the people. I’ve got some plans of what I’m going to do to execute when I’m there and I’m planning on being a part of the Cle survey. So when they complete the survey, a question would say, Do you want to talk with Steve about what he does for lawyers? And that way out, 50 people, you know, five or six say, Yeah, I definitely want to talk with Steve. I thought what he said was great, or whatever. Hopefully what that happens right then, you know, I’m covering all my bases in getting the most juice out of the squeeze. And I just don’t think people are doing that enough with their marketing, business development, etc.
K’Lee Terrazas [24:12]
100% I agree with you. 100% Yeah, because lawyers went to law school, they didn’t go to business school, marketing, school sells, you know? I mean, it’s just you don’t know, like, what you don’t know, and that’s why it pays to have the right people in your corner. Just like, if I needed a lawyer, I want the best, you know. I want the best at their game, and I want people to have results. I want people who know what they’re doing. I’m not going to chat GPT it and watch Lincoln lawyers or suits and be like, Okay, I got this, you know, yeah, that sounds ludicrous, but that’s what a lot of people are doing with their businesses.
Steve Fretzin [24:46]
Yeah, I just watched Shark Tank. I know exactly what. How to build my business. You gotta impress Mr. Wonderful. Anyway, all right. Well, listen, let’s wrap up with a segment I love to call K’Lee’s big mistake. Tell us about something that happened in. Career that really blew your mind and but made you stronger. In the end,
K’Lee Terrazas [25:03]
that was what led me into marketing. So I launched an app years ago. This is back like 2013 2014 and it was for the deaf and hard of hearing. And this is just, it was a complete passion project, but I spent a lot of money on it. I really wanted to help. I went through the patenting process. I had three hits that came back with they were like, We need to change the verbiage, which would have just completely like, that was the whole purpose of my patent. So I was like, forget it. But I asked, Who are these three guys? It’s the same guy three times, like, Who is this? And they said, That’s Google, and it was the voice to text transcription. So I was creating an app to help deaf people who are out in public that you know, they need the voice to text to transcription so they know what’s going on at a doctor’s appointment, or teachers, you know, teachers meeting, or whatever. Long story short, I realized I know a lot about sales, and I didn’t know anything about how to market that online to a group of people that it wasn’t me, right? I’m not, I don’t fit into that group, and I needed to know their pain points, etc. So anyways, complete face flop. But I learned a ton, and I put myself out there. I, you know, I went all in and off the back of that, people started asking, Hey, can you build my website? Hey, can you do my SEO? Hey, can you help me with my Google business profile? And I thought, wow, this is a business that I just learned how to do, trying to help myself. So that’s
Steve Fretzin [26:23]
kind of marketing, yeah, wow, wow, yeah. It’s funny. People don’t know this, but a number of years ago, I met this amazing guy named Barry, and we started a marketing agency together. And boy, what a terrible mistake that was, you know, it’s like, you know, hey, I’ve got all these clients that need marketing. I’ll just do it myself, and then I had to, like, figure out how to do it all, and it just so far away from what I enjoy and what gives me pleasure and what how I can, you know, use my skills to benefit the legal community. And so, you know, it took about two years for me to realize, you know, this is not a passion project. This is painful. And I’m going to leave it up to the pros like you K’Lee, who really understand how to help lawyers get results and and I’ll stick in, I’ll stay in my lane, you know, but you know, you but I’d like that people try things, and hopefully you don’t lose your shirt on it. Hopefully you don’t get, you know, put every, you know, all your eggs in that basket. And I haven’t ever done that. I’ve always kept my main eggs in this basket. But no, sometimes it’s fun to try, but to realize quickly, the quicker you can figure out something isn’t right and get out of it, the better. In my case.
K’Lee Terrazas [27:25]
Yeah, I that was a valuable learning experience for me, and I wouldn’t take it back. It was an expensive one, but I much prefer learning through coaches, books and mentors than I do through the school of hard knocks.
Steve Fretzin [27:36]
So man, if you can learn from someone else’s experience and get the suggestion, like, look, and, you know, there’s, there’s lawyers that want to do all kinds of things. I’m just going to start doing this area of practice, or I’m going to go join this firm, because they do this something or other. And I go, let’s, can we just, you know, I’m not trying to be devil’s advocate. That was my dad’s job. But like, let me at least, let’s at least break it down pros and cons. Because I don’t think, I think you’re just seeing shiny pennies and bright objects, you’re not really thinking about what you actually enjoy, what you’re really good at doing, and what’s most profitable. And those are the most important three things anybody’s going to take away. If you can get those three things, don’t do anything else, you know, unless you can find someone else to run it for you or something.
K’Lee Terrazas [28:17]
And a lot of times when people are they get that urge for the shiny object and to start. It’s always fun to start something new, right? That’s the most fun part for a lot of people, but it’s when you if you have your own firm it’s when things start getting tough that you’re about to hit the next level, like, if you’re looking at it like a game, you’re on level one, you’re about to hit level two, but you’ve got to keep doing those boring, redundant things, and then you also have to get around people, because the people often who take us to one level of the game, you know, some of them can scale with us, and some of them have that scaling in place for us, like coaches. There’s other times, like, I’m talking to a company, and they’re actually, they’re in the medical group, but they do personal injury medical, so it’s a vertical. I help too, but just because it directly correlates to what I’ve already done, and they open six offices, but they’re stuck and they can’t figure out why. And I was like, well, most likely what got you here is not going to get you there, and you’re continuing to do the same thing over and over, and it’s not going to get you the same results. You’ve got to level up to the next level. Yeah, every level has a new rule or new rule book. So instead of chasing the next thing, just realize you’re at that you’re probably at a at one of those level up times that if you just stuck with it and push through with the right people, you’d probably scale past that discomfort. You know that’s making you want to chase the next thing.
Steve Fretzin [29:37]
Yeah, well, amazing. Everything we’ve shared today, I think has been rock solid, and you’ve been amazing. And I appreciate you so much. Going to take a moment and just thank our sponsors. If you’re personal injury attorney and you have not signed up for pimcon, this might be your last chance. We’ll be out there in Scottsdale, Arizona, at the Phoenician. I think we got Nikki Glaser as a keynote. I mean, amazing comedian. We’ve got a lineup that’s unbelievable. I’m going to be talking about. Podcasts. So check that out, of course, the law her podcast with Sonia, and check out legal verse media, that’s a International website. I think you’ll get a lot of great content from it. He if people want to get in touch with you, what’s, what are the best digits to reach you?
K’Lee Terrazas [30:15]
Yeah. So you can info at legal lead sharks.com or you can message me on LinkedIn. Let’s connect on social and be friends. LinkedIn is probably where I’m most active, but yeah, just fill out a form on my website and book a discovery call. Let’s see where you’re at and where you want to go, and if I’m the right person to help you get
Steve Fretzin [30:33]
there, all the details in the show notes, folks. So again, I want to thank everybody for being here. Thank you, Keeley, this was wonderful, and I’m glad that we I know I I kind of put you off for a little bit to get because I’ve just been so busy, but I had to get my calendar opened up to get you on and we’re I’m so happy that I did this was absolutely delightful. Thanks. I loved it, too. Thanks for having me. Yeah, my pleasure. And thank you everybody for hanging out with Keely and I today for be that lawyer again. Don’t forget, we’ve got be that lawyer. The book 101 top Rainmaker, secrets to growing successful law practice, 55 star reviews, best selling book on Amazon. Check that out. We’ve got be that lawyer Coach’s Corner with Steve Fretzin on your phone. If you look it up, you’ll find it. And please give us some kind reviews. Tell people about it. Look this show is meant to help you, but it’s also meant to help the legal industry. So don’t be greedy. Share with everybody. And let’s you know, make sure everybody gets a fair shake at growing their law practice to be that lawyer, confident, organized in a skilled Rainmaker. Take care. Everybody. Be safe, be well. We will talk again.
Narrator [31:36]
Thanks for listening to be that loyal. Life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, fretson.com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends for more information and important links about today’s episode. Check out today’s show notes.