In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Noel Andrews discuss:
- Prioritizing others to drive long-term success
- Delegation as a lever for higher-value work
- Hiring and managing support effectively
- Shifting from doing to thinking as a leader
Key Takeaways:
- Sustainable business growth comes from helping team members, clients, and referral partners achieve their goals first. Celebrate client milestones, develop your team, and make introductions without expecting immediate returns. Focusing outward builds trust, loyalty, and lasting relationships that compound over time.
- Lawyers often get stuck handling admin, marketing, and operations alongside legal tasks. Listing tasks to delegate frees you to focus on work only you can do and grow the firm strategically. Delegation transforms busywork into leverage and career impact.
- Start with clarity: define tasks first, then map them to a role, location, and level of support. Remote talent in regions like Eastern Europe or South Africa can provide high-quality work at a lower cost. Clear KPIs, meaningful projects, and trust are more effective than micromanaging hours.
- Resist the urge to control every detail; hire capable assistants to own outcomes. Delegating at a high level frees time for strategic thinking and future planning. Leaders must balance action with observation to maximize impact and firm growth.
“Every single time I’ve ever done the next stage for me, or the next step in really investing in supporting my team, particularly in their personal lives, the results are just huge.” — Noel Andrews
“Profit is what happens when you get everything else right.” — Yvon Chouinard, Founder of Patagonia
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About Noel Andrews: Noel Andrews is the CEO of JobRack, a global recruitment company that helps entrepreneurs and business owners hire high-quality remote talent, primarily from Eastern Europe and South Africa. With a background in online business and operations, Noel specializes in building systems that allow founders to delegate effectively, scale sustainably, and reclaim time for higher-level thinking.
Through JobRack, he has helped hundreds of companies move beyond founder overload by hiring experienced, proactive team members who can truly own outcomes. Noel is known for his practical, clarity-first approach to hiring, leadership, and remote team management, emphasizing trust, accountability, and long-term leverage over micromanagement.
Connect with Noel Andrews:
Website: https://jobrack.eu/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noelandrews/
Ashley Robinson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyrobinsongcm/
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
Noel Andrews [00:00]
The key to any successful business is what I call like real team members. When people really focus and help, you know, team members get what they want, whether that’s career progression, whether that’s learning and development, whether that’s to earn more money, whether that’s to, you know, have a bit of freedom in terms of time, flexibility to spend more time with their kids. The ROI on it is more than people could almost ever imagine
Narrator [00:26]
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 everybody.
Steve Fretzin [00:48]
Steve Fretzin, here and welcome to the be that lawyer podcast. We are here for your listening pleasure to help you be that lawyer, confident, organized, skilled Rainmaker, twice a week. We’ve been doing this for about six years, 570 something episodes, and guess what? No, you may not know this, we’re in the top 2.5% of all podcasts globally. So we’re rocking and rolling and staying really consistent. And I think one of the reasons we’re doing so well is because of that consistency and obviously creating great content. But if you’re listening right now, don’t be shy and give us a kind review and help share the love, spread the love with this show to other lawyers that you know and care about, and let’s help them to be that lawyer too. No, how you doing? Man, good to see you. I’m really good. Steve, really good to be here. Good. How are things across the pond?
Noel Andrews [01:32]
Pretty chilly, blue skies and sunny with a little bit of snow, yep. But yeah, things are very good, right? It’s an exciting time
Steve Fretzin [01:37]
of the year for me. Yeah, my wife and I were talking about a summer trip, and England came up, and maybe Scotland. So, like, we’re interested in hitting over and seeing what you guys have cooking over there. Yeah, so very, very cool. So it’s interesting. There’s a lot of quotes that I get to review as the host of the show and I, and there’s many that are new to me, and some that are just like, blow my mind. And the one that you provided from Zig Ziglar, who I’m a big fan of, is maybe my favorite quote, or most used quote that I say about myself, but I, and I don’t know that I heard it from him, but let’s say I did. And so I’ll give you that quote. I want to hear what your thoughts are so you can get anything you want in life, if you just help other people get what they want first. So welcome to the show and tell us why that quote.
Noel Andrews [02:18]
Thanks, Steve. I think for me, I mean, obviously I’m all about team and hiring, right? And I talk to a lot of people that have hired that have got team members that, or particularly when they’re thinking about outsourcing offshore and that they’re like, I just want to do the job, right? Do the task. And for me, the key to any successful business is what I call, like, real team members, right? The people that are invested in you and like you get their shower thoughts. Doesn’t matter where in the world they are, whether they’re down the road or, you know, in another continent. And for me, when people really focus and help, you know, team members or friends or there’s lots of other ways this works, but particularly with team members, you help them get what they want, right, whether that’s, you know, career progression, whether that’s learning and development, whether that’s to earn more money, whether that’s to, you know, have a bit of freedom in terms of time, flexibility to spend more time with their kids, then what you get back is like the ROI on it is more than people could almost ever imagine. Yeah, and so every single time I’ve ever done the next stage for me, or the next step in really investing and supporting my team, particularly in their personal lives, like, the results are just huge. And so that’s why I spend a lot of my time encouraging, you know, business owners all over the world and the clients that we work with to do that same thing, to lean into like, team and culture and actually having a real team, rather than a you know, collection of people. Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [03:35]
I mean, probably the most rewarding part of running a business is watching or training your team, working with your team, developing culture, and watching people thrive, right? And even the attitude of, if somebody like law firm leaders are very upset when, like, they’re like, mentee or someone that they’ve worked with for five years leaves the best leaders are like, great. Good for you. Like, you know, you have advanced, and now you’ve moved on to something else based on the work they, you know, they take pleasure in that versus like, you know, the frustration anger that they lost a good person. The other spin on this, and this is how I use it, is, you know, as a coach. You know, I can, you know, network, and I can close new clients for my business, and I can do all these things and marketing and feel a lot of reward from that. Nothing generates more positive energy and enthusiasm and excitement for me in my career than one of my clients calling me saying, Hey, I you know, used what we learned, and I just locked up my first new client, or I just hit a million dollars, or I just hit some other milestone. I just made equity partner. I’m the youngest equity partner now in my firm, and that’s to me, like helping people get what they want, and how that comes back to me, that’s what I’m all about. I love that. And that’s kind of like what gets me up every day. So whether it’s internally or externally, I think, right? That quote is absolute brilliance. Yeah, so much.
Noel Andrews [04:54]
And it’s particularly, probably one of my biggest pleasures in life is when I get to make introductions, right? And. It’s like, Hey, John, you should meet Steve. I think there’s a great conversation you to have. And then, you know, you hear back later that says, Oh, they were able to help each other out, or whatever happened that. But bringing people together, and that’s not in the sometimes kind of slightly cringy networky kind of way, but in that really genuine, I’m not looking for anything. I just want to help people, you know, help people out and that, yeah, it’s that’s
Steve Fretzin [05:20]
really rewarding. Yeah, Agreed. Agreed. Well, everybody, you’re in for a treat today. We’ve got Noel Andrews, the CEO of job rack, with us today. And you know, a lot of the struggles that lawyers have is with delegating and, you know, training people and bringing up and finding good talent and all that stuff. So we’re going to take a deep dive, but give us a little background, Noel, on how you came to be in running this business kind of like as the end result, yeah,
Noel Andrews [05:42]
I’d spent where about 15 years in the corporate world, in senior tech roles, leading the hiring firing, large teams, you know, including, you know, hundreds of people, kind of offshore South Africa, India, etc. And I always wanted to do my own thing. I did some kind of recruitment consulting work, and then ended up actually buying job rack, which was a tiny little job board focused on Eastern Europe. This is way back in 2018 and from that kind of started building it out. Realized that actually, you know, job boards need either digital marketing skills or money to scale them. And at the time that wasn’t, I didn’t have either. And I’m also a people person. And so as people were asking me for help to hire, I was very resistant initially, because I’m like, I don’t want to be a recruiter, right? There’s a, it’s an interesting industry, right? Very low bar, you know, some shady practices. And then I realized that actually, what if we did it differently, right? What if we set, set out to kind of WoW clients and candidates and just really care about what we did? And that’s been the last, kind of, like, six, seven years of the journey, really, um, building and growing job bracket as a really high touch recruitment service, helping clients in all kinds of industries, from, you know, lots of law firms and law professionals, through to marketing agencies, software businesses, e COMM And then some other interesting ones. We’ve got breweries. We’ve got optometrists, dentists, basically forward thinking people that, you know, 10 years ago would have had someone in an office next to them paying local rates and all the local challenges of hiring now, thinking, hey, actually they can do everything on their laptop. Doesn’t matter where in the world I can get, you know, better quality talent at lower rates, and therefore grow my business, grow my practice. So, yeah, that’s a little bit of background.
Steve Fretzin [07:16]
Okay, much appreciated. There’s a lawyer listening right now. I’m not going to say his name or her name, because I don’t know who it is, but let’s just say there is. And they’re saying, Look, I am doing too much. I am overwhelmed. I’m handling, you know, wearing a dozen hats. This isn’t working. What’s the first step that someone should take to evaluate a that they should hire and be like, how to begin the process? Will you take us through that?
Noel Andrews [07:44]
Yeah, absolutely. The most important thing the first step right is to start writing a list of the things that you’d like someone else to be doing. Right? Just start running this list. Keep it in a post it note, or ideally, a bigger sheet of paper than that on your desk. And it might take you a few minutes, might take a few hours, might take you weeks, right? And you just start building out this list. What would you like to get off your plate? There’s lots of frameworks that you can use to help you with this. You know, what are the things that give you energy? What are the things that take your energy? What are the things that are holding you back? Right? So, if you think about what’s going to help you grow, you know, in your role, in your practice, what’s going to make the biggest difference? Sometimes it’s that you need to get lower level work off your plate, so that you can focus on the higher value, high available rate. Sometimes there’s things that you can’t do right? So maybe it’s marketing your practice right, or maybe it’s, you know, something else that you just don’t have the skill. And that’s the bottleneck and the thing that’s in the way, in which case, maybe it’s that that you hire for. But the fundamental for me is like, start with the list. Don’t jump into hiring. Don’t jump into chat GPT and start writing a job post for a role that you think is the right role. Start with the list of tasks. Don’t worry about job titles. Then you can, you know, use the llms or then you can chat to someone like me to say, Hey, these are the things I want someone to do. Can I combine this into a role? Who do I need to find? But it all starts with being really, really clear on what are the jobs to be done, the things that you want to get done.
Steve Fretzin [09:07]
Okay, so I have this list, and it leads me to, I need a personal assistant. I need an admin, okay, someone that can handle all the day to day get the stressful things off my plate. Great. All right, so do I then have to write like a job description, or is that something that it gets outsourced? How does it work from a standpoint of next steps?
Noel Andrews [09:25]
Yeah, so a lot of that then comes into, well, you know, how are you going to hire right? Are you going to do it yourself? Are you going to get some help from someone like me and my team? Okay, your decision on that, some of that comes down to, where in the world do you want them to be, right? Do you need or want them to be, you know, sat next to you in the desk in your office. Or do you actually, are you having to be remote, but you need them to have full time zone overlap with you? Or actually, is it like a lot of roles and a lot of work these days does like, five or six hours a day of crossover? Is that plenty? Now, the reason I mentioned that is because if it is, then you open up some other interest. Opportunities, right? If you need someone, or want someone to be sat, you know, in physical proximity to you multiple days a week, then you can only hire from within a sensible commuting range, from where you are, right? That’s your pool. And if you’re in the US, right, that’s probably quite an expensive pool. And maybe they, some people want to work for you, but maybe some people don’t, right? You then come into saying, Well, how can I find the absolute top talent for a sensible rate, and for a rate that you can afford to really get the most and if you can kind of open things up to be able to hire from lower cost regions of the world, you know, often you’re talking about, like, savings around 50% versus hiring locally for equal or better quality that kind of starts getting pretty exciting, right? You can really grow practices fast. You can get a lot of things off your plate, and you can do it earlier than if you’re having to, you know, put aside kind of us rates with all the benefits that go that you have to put on top of that as well. So I think it’s thinking through, right? These are the things I want to get done. Then it’s like, well, what is that going to need? Do they need to be next to me? Do they need to be, you know, what do I need in terms of time zones, skills? Do I need someone that’s got paralegal experience, right? Do I need someone that’s got legal experience, or, actually, is it just a really smart, incredibly talented, like executive assistant, just to take, you know, all of the, all of the other things that aren’t, don’t need a lawyer. Get them off your plate,
Steve Fretzin [11:18]
when the big argument in the past had been, you know, there’s someone that needs a job locally. And what are you doing offshoring this, and it’s taking away American jobs, for example, or something. I think that’s completely shifted. I think people are saying, you know, look, unless I need someone sitting next to me, to your point, because there’s hands on files, type of a role that you know, going offshore not only makes a lot of financial sense, but you may end up getting someone that’s more highly qualified than the person sitting in your office, who, you know, is just, you know, twice or three times as much, and really not getting the job done anyway. So there’s a lot. And again, I’ve been, I’ve been using VAs for, you know, probably 10 years. I mean, before it became a thing, and, well, it’s always been a thing, but like before, it became, you know, kind of the hot thing, right now, it’s definitely the hot thing. So, but, you know, the other part of it is lawyers. If we just want to hit those folks up, because that’s who’s listening, really struggle with handing things off. They really are control freaks. And I mean that in the nicest way everybody, you know, you want things done right? So do I. And so the idea that I’ve got to, you know, find somebody and then take the time to train them, and it’s just easier to do it myself, is something been said too often. So how do people get over that mental and emotional connection to doing everything themselves? Because then they know what’s happening and they know it’s quality. Yeah, I
Noel Andrews [12:41]
think normally, what happens, in my experience, is someone has this initial thought, I should get some things off my plate, right? But then, like you said, they procrastinate. They delay because of that control freak. And we’re all the same, right? We’re all running our businesses, you know? We’re all running our practices. It’s difficult. Normally, the thing that moves the needle is two things. One is you have a conversation with someone else who’s already done it, and either the conversation is about how much they’ve grown their business, because they’re not spending 1015, 20 hours a week doing 10 $15 an hour admin work, right? Or, you see, just actually they get time to focus on thinking about their business, right? They look calmer. They actually spend time with their family, whatever it might be. But you get there’s this little glimmer of, like, inspiration and then, and particularly if it’s from someone that looks a bit like you or is doing the same kind of role, you’re like, Oh, well, hang on, maybe I could do that. The second thing is about the caliber of who you hire, right? If you hire someone that’s super low level that needs training right now, that you’re always gonna have to train them in you, right? What your vibe is, what your business is about, right? But if you go out and get an experience hire, who knows what it’s like to basically wrestle things out of your hands and your arms, that’s actually the other key. So it’s not your job to give them work. It’s their job to take things off you and give you confidence that they can do it, right? So a lot of it’s about the caliber, you know, there’s lots of, you know, people hear the term VA, and to some people, a virtual assistant, or VA is a low level role. To other people, it’s very senior role. So we often use terms like executive assistants and like, you know, in this kind of role, it’s a pretty senior role, right? We want someone that knows how to really like high level, engage with clients. High level, be and speak as you, whether that’s, you know, literally as you, or whether that’s with their name. But the point is, they’ve got that kind of gravitas, that kind of caliber, that gives you confidence, right? It’s much easier to, you know, pass things off. It’s like same as your clients trust you, right? They How can you build that confidence? How can you get someone that actually instills that confidence in you from the very start, and then every day they’re saying, Hey Steve, what can I take off your plate today? Or, Hey Steve, what could I have done for you?
Steve Fretzin [14:51]
I tell you what I struggle with that so that one of the first things I tell my new VA when I bring someone on is I don’t want to manage you. I want you to manage me. And they look at me funny, and that’s when I know I’m in trouble. But that’s sort of like what I’ve been dealing with, is I, you know, I don’t want to have to say, did you get this out, or did you do this or have because it’s generally marketing, right? And it always gets done, like things get done, but I don’t want to have to oversight and have to deal with it, and I have yet to figure that out. Is, can you maybe coach me a little bit on how I need to present this to my and Ian, if you’re listening, Sorry brother. But like, how do I present this to my VA, because I find I’m the one who has to, like, hold them accountable, and I have to do and again, that may just be the way it is when you have an employee and there’s no way around that. But I’m trying to get out of the babysitting business, and I’m not sure how to how to accomplish that? Yeah.
Noel Andrews [15:41]
So I will help you in a second, but the the real answer goes back probably a few years, right? So when you went out to look for your new VA, you set the expectation right up front. This is what the job entails. This isn’t doing the tasks. This is managing me, right?
Steve Fretzin [15:59]
First thing, I said, Perfect, great, right? Then that doesn’t, that doesn’t necessarily. Way to resolve always translate, right? Then you got to
Noel Andrews [16:06]
reinforce it, because people don’t believe you, right? The term that someone came to me last year and said, I want you to hire me a mumsy techie executive assistant, right? They need to Mother me. Sometimes they need to tell me off. Sometimes they need to be kind to me and support me, right? Okay, but it was that, and then you get, ah, I get that energy. So I think it’s making sure that, first of all, they really understand that you want that, second of all, giving them really clear and concrete examples of what that looks like, right? So each time they don’t do it, be like, Hey, I’m going to give you feedback each time, right? This is what I’d like you to have done differently, right? And and then make sure they’ve got the skills to do it right. So, for example, like, it’s really common that very supportive roles, like, you know, executive assistants or VAs the characteristic of assertiveness may not be one of their big strengths, yeah, however, that is something that can be developed actually, pretty easily. There’s some great online courses. There’s loads of great YouTube videos on it that actually thinking with them about what skills do they need to develop that are going to help them challenge you, because it is kind of tough to challenge your boss when your salary and your paycheck is also dependent on them still liking you. Yeah. And so there’s almost having, like, almost rules of engagement and ways of working, but there’s a level of just like reinforcement, and also telling them why you want that, right? So, big fan of the aid model of feedback, which stands for action impact. Do so when you’re giving feedback, you tell them what they did, but then tell them what the impact of it was. Rather than just saying, Hey, you showed up late, I want you to show up on time, which is a classic cliche example. Be like you showed up late to that meeting. The impact of that was the team kind of felt that you didn’t value their time. I’d really love it if you did whatever it took to be on time, right? Yeah, same thing here, right? The app. The impact of them, not, you know, taking this full ownership, not managing you, is that it’s taking you away from the things you really want to do, and it’s holding them back from their development. So if you can also link it back to their opportunity, and you can say, hey, when you’re operating, operating at this level, there’s a pay rise, there’s a development opportunity, whatever it might be, but really making them believe that this is really, really important to
Steve Fretzin [18:13]
you well, and it is important to me, and I’ve shared that on dozens of occasions in you know, I think Part of it is, you know, somebody’s, you know, Coach ability and taking something that’s said and then executing and staying consistent after something’s been agreed, right? And that failure to stay consistent after the agreement. The other is, you know, and I’m not saying this for me, I’m just saying this generally, there’s a concern about work ethic, because when you’re remote, it’s like when the mice away, the cattle play, or the cats away, the mice will play, I think is what it is. And so the concern I think people have with remote when you’re not in an office seeing something, by the way, I’ve had people sitting in an office next to mine and they were sleeping like they weren’t working. They’re not doing their job neck in an office next to me. So I don’t know how much that matters, but I mean, since I’ve got you coaching me and working with the people out listening. How do you with remote work? How do you know you’re getting the hours? How do you know you’re getting the full availability of that individual?
Noel Andrews [19:10]
Yeah, it’s all about trust for me. So I want to start off. I want to build trust through the hiring process and really make sure I’ve got that from the start. I want to pay well, and then I want to expect a lot, right? So we don’t use time tracking. I’m not a fan of it. You don’t use it if you if you’re in an office. Why would you do it remotely? You know, get them communicate really openly, right? And make sure they’ve got plenty of really good stuff to be getting stuck into, right? If they finish the things that you’ve got for them to do, make sure there’s some other projects. I don’t like to think of it as, like, filler projects or, like, busy work. It should be genuine things, but really smart, switched on assistants or team members. There’s all kinds of things that they can be doing that, you know, pushes you forward. You know. Could they be learning Zapier or n 8n these like automation platforms and looking at ways to automate and make things better? Could they be doing more marketing for you? Could they be doing more research, tons of things. And what we find is that the vast. Vast majority of people, and especially the top talent, they want to work hard, right? They want to be challenged, and they want KPIs, right? They want KPIs and metrics that you can kind of score them against, and as a way of much more from a carrot perspective than a stick perspective, right? So it’s a common fear. And yeah, we get people asking all the time, should we use time tracking, etc? People say the same thing about culture. Oh, how do I build a good team culture if they’re in remote I’ve worked in a fair few toxic offices, right? Just being in the office is not the condition that guarantees a great culture. So I think it’s setting clear expectations, making sure they’ve got plenty to get stuck into, and just good and open conversation and communication.
Steve Fretzin [20:40]
Okay, well, then, I mean, that’s just a lot of really important information for people who are struggling with it or are concerned about it, and you’re laying out some real good foundation of what needs to happen to be successful with remote work or even someone locally, right with proven SEO and digital marketing strategies that drive actual clients to your firm. Rankings.io. Prides itself on proof, not promises. Mentality. 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 [email protected] 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. So then, what’s the sales pitch then? Or what’s the driver for someone to start thinking about? They’ve got this list of marketing and admin and all these other tasks, paralegal, maybe even a lawyer, associate level lawyer work, and then they’re calling you up. What it’s that experience like? What are they doing when they call call up, you know, job rack, and speak with you or one of your folks about hiring. What does that process look like?
Noel Andrews [22:07]
Yeah, all starts with clarity. So we call it hiring clarity, right? We cannot even begin to think about working with anyone if we and you haven’t got clarity about what you need. Now, the good news is we’re experts in helping elicit that from you. So it’s really, it’s a conversation all about you and what what it is that you need. We talk through that list of jobs. We think about what experience they might need, and we think about, crucially, who are they right? Because for someone to be successful working with you, they’ve got to have the skills and experience to do the job, but that’s only a portion of it. They’ve got to be the right kind of personality. They’ve got to have the right character traits that fit with you. So Steve, the right person to work for you might be someone quite, very different from the right person to work with Ian or to work with me, for instance, right? What’s your vibe? What’s the vibe of the team? So we really dig into that and get a good understanding of that first. Then if that’s a fit, then we can talk about right? Well, this is where we would focus the search. This is how we would go and find the very best people. The best people are not hanging out on job boards, even hours waiting for your job ad to appear. The best people are in jobs already right cracking on getting stuff done. So we do an awful lot of head hunting and active sourcing to find the best people and then tempt them to kind of your role. And so why should they want to work with Steve? So we bring that to life. So that’s really all starts with hiring clarity. We then very gently talk about, you know, how might we be able to help you? What are the results that you want, and how are we going to achieve that? So it’s not for us. It’s not about just finding someone and getting a bum on the seat. This is about what your long term goals, how do we help you hit them, because that’s what makes us successful, and that’s what leads to you saying to someone else, you know, hey, you should have a chat to Noel. Yeah, he really helped us out. And then naturally, you know, we have our, like, our niche is Eastern Europe and South Africa. And the reason for that, it dovetails with what you mentioned a moment ago about work ethic. So Eastern Europe and South Africa are like the sweet spot of remote hiring, right? It is, you know, they’ve got absolutely great English. I mean, South Africa, it’s one of their kind of first and kind of native languages. You’ve got great kind of cultural alignment. So, you know, there’s some regions of the world that are very hierarchical culture. So they, you know, you don’t challenge the boss. It’s very hard to find people to be proactive, because culturally, it’s not the dumb thing. Whereas Eastern Europe and South Africa great cultural alignment, very kind of proactive, take ownership. And crucially, there’s this incredible work ethic, and that’s the thing that keeps our clients coming back again and again. They have this like, kind of WoW, kind of moment, like, like, they’re just so much better than I expected them to be, yeah, and they are. That’s why we say, you know, we expect to find someone equal or better than you could hire locally if you could hire locally. This isn’t about offshore and US jobs like if you’ve tried to hire locally in the US, it is a nightmare right now, right crazy high salary expectations because of some pretty high costs. There’s not a great talent market. So that’s kind of where we kind of lead. In hard to just, you know, help people figure out if it’s the right thing for them, how to get through the legals and the, you know, the contracts and payments, and then just hold people’s hand to get get those results.
Steve Fretzin [25:09]
Yeah, and I will just share with everybody one of my most trusted partners in legal is Ashley Robinson, who, you know, introduced us Noel, and she absolutely raves about you, and she raves about the quality of the candidates, in particular, the work ethic, and that, I think, is what a lot of lawyers and law firm owners are frustrated with, in particular with some of the younger people coming up, and I don’t blame them. I mean, quality of life and enjoying your youth and all of that has become really important. But for people that are running businesses, they’re less concerned with someone’s, you know, balance of life and going to parties and not working. We want people that are going to help us accomplish our goals and help us, you know, fulfill our dreams, and they’re going to work with us and for us and to help that effort. So I think that that, just that, you know, says a lot about you. It says a lot about your company, to have that endorsement from someone that I care about and trust, like Ashley. So really, really happy that you’re able to come on the show and share that I would love to hear. Though, what’s Noel’s big mistake?
Noel Andrews [26:12]
Big mistake not spending enough time thinking, actually, okay, I have this like, if you’ve ever seen, is it the Duracell bunny just keeps on going, banging the drum like That’s me, right? I got this eternal energy source. Almost never get tired. But the problem is, is I just keep banging the drum and keep doing the things. And I think I recognize this a couple of years ago. It’s finally coming to fruition now, in terms of me going, Oh, hang on a minute. It’s the classic, what got me there, what got me here? Won’t get me there. I’ve got to spend more time actually, like considered thinking. So my new avatar, Duracell bunny, is gone. I’m now cheater in a tree, and so I’m trying to spend time in the tree, surveying the Savannah, deciding what to sprint after next. So I think that’s the thing, and it and it is. You know, it’s hard to say it’s a mistake, but it genuinely is a mistake. It’s taken me way too long to realize this. You know, I would have grown my business much faster if I’d, ironically delegated more earlier and spent more time doing the doing the big thinking.
Steve Fretzin [27:08]
Yeah, I think for the the leaders and the folks who are the sort of the visionaries of the company, it’s it delegation has to happen even at the highest level, because the lack of time to think or have that, like individual retreat or team retreat, and where you just, like, put thought into like, where am I? Where am I going? What’s next? What’s going to help me to be successful in 2026 and right now, for all the lawyers listening like this, is the time to start planning up and to start thinking about who’s supporting you. How are you going to get where you need to go? Whether it’s delegation with Noel, whether it’s, it’s coaching, whether it’s hiring the right people, or just, you know, just, you know, getting more out of the people you have. You can’t, you know, you can’t go back and put the toothpaste back in the tube, right? So all you can do is move forward with it. So let’s take a moment. Thank our amazing sponsors. First of all, I want to just mention, you know, one of the sponsors is me, and it’s a future rainmakers podcast. So if you’re looking for more of a direct me to you type of experience on a podcast that’s future Rainmaker. So check that out, everybody. Of course, law her podcast with Sonya, crushing it for women and just a great all around time to listen to that and rankings. IO, our friends, Chris Dreyer and his team, amazing group over there helping their clients get more out of their marketing. So Noel, people want to get in touch with you. They want to check out job rack. They’ve heard great things. Love hearing you on the show. How do they get in touch with you to start delegating? You know, away their you know their difficult jobs.
Noel Andrews [28:36]
Best bet, head to jobrack.com. I It’s a very take a very kind of helpful and friendly approach. You can book a call. We’ll kind of hop on a call and chat through but yeah, jobrack.com, everything you need, and then get
Steve Fretzin [28:45]
in touch through there. Yeah, fantastic. Well, thanks, man. I mean, not only do I appreciate you coming on the show, but giving me, giving me a little direct coaching, because I tell people like, I I’m a fantastic coach. I’ve got nothing but confidence in my coaching, but I’ve known for 20 years I’m kind of a bad manager. I’m not a great manager, which is why I tell people up front, I’m not managing you. You need to manage me. And my hope is that that happens and and that’s a work in progress always. But just appreciate you so much. And I really do hope that people take to heart what you shared today, and they do reach out, because I think there’s a lot of people that could use your help. Thanks. Steve. Really enjoyed it good to chat. Fantastic. And hey, thank you everybody for hanging out with Noel and I for the last 30 again, hopefully you’re getting more off your plate in 2026 than 2025, this is the way to run a business. Now, you can’t do it all yourself. You got to figure out and make that list and get things delegated away. So everybody take heed and take action. Thanks. Everybody take care of be well, be safe. We’ll talk again real soon.
Narrator [29:51]
Thanks for listening to be that loyal, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit. Steve’s website, fredson.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.