In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Noel Bagwell discuss:
- Prioritize profit over revenue
- Cultivating virtue and adaptability in leadership
- Rethinking traditional metrics
- Building resilience through self-awareness
Key Takeaways:
- Sustainable law firms focus on true profitability, not just top-line revenue, ensuring resources for reinvestment and owner compensation.
- Effective leaders build moral character, listen deeply, transform failure into feedback, and create psychologically safe environments while holding teams accountable.
- Billable hours are outdated; value-based, flat-fee, or subscription models paired with results-oriented KPIs align incentives with client outcomes and firm sustainability.
- Perseverance, reflection, and deliberate self-leadership are essential for navigating personal and professional challenges and for leading others effectively.
“Profit is what happens when you get everything else right.” — Noel Bagwell
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About Noel Bagwell: Noel Bagwell is the founder of Counsel & Clarity, where he helps leaders and organizations build resilient leadership, profitable legal relationships, and effective legal operations. His work focuses on supporting startups, growth-stage companies, and executives navigating complexity, change, and high-stakes decision-making.
Through Leadership Resilience Coaching, Noel works with leaders recovering from personal or professional setbacks, helping them rebuild capacity, strengthen self-leadership, and lead with clarity under pressure. His coaching emphasizes resilience, reflection, and sustainable performance rather than short-term fixes.
Noel also provides Legal Coaching and Services, guiding clients through complex legal challenges with a practical, business-aligned approach. He helps organizations better understand the legal landscape, make informed decisions, and create legal strategies that support long-term goals rather than reactive problem-solving.
In his Legal Operations Coaching, Noel partners with legal teams to optimize processes, streamline workflows, and improve how legal functions deliver value. By aligning operations with business priorities, he enables legal departments to become more efficient, effective, and strategically integrated.
Connect with Noel Bagwell:
Website: https://counselandclarity.com/home-page
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nbagwell3/
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
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Steve Fretzin [00:00]
Hey everybody, before we get to the show, I just want to share that after coaching 1000s of lawyers, I can tell you this, the best rainmakers rarely sell it all. In my upcoming live webinar, sales, free selling, I’ll break down exactly how lawyers attract clients naturally and consistently. You can go to fretzin.com/events, and please join us for this highly engaging hour on February 19, I hope to see you there and enjoy the show.
Narrator [00:33]
You’re listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin [00:55]
Hey everybody. Steve Fretzin, here and welcome back. It is the be that lawyer podcast. We are holy mackerel, 575, and about six years. So we are on a tear putting out incredible content for you the ambitious lawyer who’s interested in growing your law practice to being that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled Rainmaker. So guys, if you haven’t heard future rainmakers, is out. It’s rocking. If you’re looking for more direct advice from me to you on how to grow your law practice. Check out future rainmakers on all the major channels. And also, if you’re interested, I’ve got a YouTube channel, just type in Steve Fretzin and YouTube, and you’ll be quite busy, because there’s over 1000 videos there just for you. That’s enough about that. Enough about me. I’ve got Noel hanging out in the wing. How’s it going my friend?
Noel Bagwell [01:38]
Great. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.
Steve Fretzin [01:41]
Yeah. How was that networking group I had you kind of guessed at last week? Was that good for you?
Noel Bagwell [01:46]
Yeah, I always love meeting interesting people, and there were certainly a lot of high performing individuals there. But more importantly, they seemed very authentic and engaging and personable. So it wasn’t an intimidating space or an awkward space. It was really nice to be able to hear everybody talking about what’s going on with them and the value that they provide, and like making some real connections. And that happened. So that’s that’s good. I think I will be able to serve and be of benefit to people in the group. And so that made me happy.
Steve Fretzin [02:18]
Nice, nice, nice. Well, listen, man, I appreciate you being here. Let’s jump in with our quote of the show. It’s profit is what happens when you get everything else, right? Yvonne Chouinard, Fowler, Patagonia, so welcome to the show, and let’s tell us why that quote that seems like a really, really good one.
Noel Bagwell [02:36]
Yeah. So my firm has one legal service on the menu called profit from legal it does what it says on the tin. It helps growth stage companies and startups and small businesses to have a profitable relationship with their lawyer. And I tell my clients the core of that is to get all the things right in your business, because profit is what happens when you get everything else right. So our service helps you get everything else right? And thereby profit? Yeah, so it’s a we try to keep it simple, because business owners don’t have a lot of time, extra time, you know, you got to get to the point and make things happen.
Steve Fretzin [03:11]
Yeah, I feel like people on a business and a personal level look at gross, they don’t always look at profit, and it’s a mistake, because you could do a million dollars, but you’re spending 1,000,001 right? Or you have a million dollars, but you’re spending 909 50. And like, what are you really bringing in to pay yourself? Or what are you bringing in from a standpoint of profit, to reinvest in the business, or or whatever? And I think that’s an area that lawyers, you know, I don’t know that they’re doing the numbers the right way. Is that pretty common?
Noel Bagwell [03:40]
For lawyers, I think focusing on profitability matters more than a an early stage startup that is following a strategy of just maximize revenue, because they’re building something that they hope will be proof of concept and will be scalable, that they can then sell. So they’re building it to sell. They’re not building it to run in an enduring way. And they’re, you know, their projections are, this will be sustainable when it hits critical mass. And we’re not trying to be profitable and sustainable in the first two, three years. We’re just trying to, you know, capture market share and all these other objectives that they have, because they really want to flip it quick. And so I think the focus on gross revenues has more to do with that strategy. But certainly, if you’ve got an enduring business like a law firm, you hope is not just you’re not building it rapidly to sell. I think profitability matters the most for those businesses that want to endure.
Steve Fretzin [04:32]
Yeah, it goes along with cash is king, and things that, you know, people would say in any M A deal everybody you’re hanging out with me and Noel Bagwell, he’s the founder of counsel and clarity feels like you have a lot of your hands in a lot of pots, like you you’ve gotten, like, multiple businesses, like you’re not someone that just sits back and, like, accepts what is you’re constantly looking to evolve and and change and improve and do things. So give us a little Reader’s Digest version on how you came to be in the different things you’re doing.
Noel Bagwell [04:59]
Yeah. Well, I originally started out wanting to be a minister. I went to seminary for a year, and left and worked in luxury property management. A couple of years before going to law school, I once had someone tell me that I switched teams, which I thought was pretty funny. Yeah, I like a good lawyer joke as much as the next person. And you know, I’ve always had a strong entrepreneurial bent. And so when I got to law school, I took, like, all the business law classes, all the things that are terrible for your GPA, like securities regulations and corporate finance. I’ve stayed away from the easier classes that people use to pad their GPA and stuff like that. And I just learned what I wanted to know needed to know in order to serve clients as an in house counsel, that was what I really wanted to do. And of course, the hiring market was terrible when I graduated from law school, still hadn’t really recovered from the oh eight crash, and so I just hung my shingle. I had a lawyer that I clerked for gave me a great job offer and opportunity, but I actually just hung my shingle and started building what is now Council and clarity. And we offer, like I said, just one thing on the menu. I will do other work by request, of course. So if someone comes to me and says, Will you do this? I’ll consider it. But we only offer our profit from legal service. That’s the only thing on the menu. And then we also started offering resilient leadership coaching under the same, you know, the same firm, the same brand, everything like that. A couple years ago, and I just the last thing, because I’ve been talking too long already, I feel the last thing is I just launched with a friend of mine an online digital publishing platform called Flickr press, which is really, really interesting. It’s family friendly. Like everything on there is family family friendly writing, and it’s aimed at not like people who have either a book that they’ve completely finished or is a work in progress that they’re publishing as a serial. And the magic of Flickr press is that it enables deeper collaboration between authors, publishers and the audience. So you can give very granular feedback, or broad spectrum feedback. As a reader on a work, authors can publish chapters of books and a B test them. So as the author is writing a book and publishing it at chapter at a time on the platform, they’re getting real time feedback from readers who buy the book basically a chapter at a time they spend a credit. And so it’s a really cool model for me. I’ve written several books, and I love the idea of being able to get that rapid feedback from readers in real time to know, you know, what’s marketable, what people are interested in reading. That’s always the hardest thing is, are you writing something people want to read. So I’m the chief legal officer for Flickr press, and I launched that with my friend McDonough you this year. And so that’s an exciting new venture, but yeah, hands in a few pies. Thanks for letting me share a little bit about that.
Steve Fretzin [07:54]
Yeah, sure, and I in one things that you mentioned earlier was just your work with leaders and helping people become better leaders. What, to your knowledge, makes, what makes a great leader?
Noel Bagwell [08:05]
Oh, man. So there are so many elements that have to come together to be a great leader.
Steve Fretzin [08:10]
Top three. Top three attributes will make it easy for you.
Noel Bagwell [08:15]
I think the top three being a good listener, okay, sorry, good listener. A listen.
Steve Fretzin [08:19]
I Oh yeah. I’m just messing with you. That was my twisted sense of humor.
Noel Bagwell [08:24]
No, I, as I said it, I realized you were joking. Yeah. I’m not always the quickest on the uptake with that. You’re in the moment you try to come up with the answer, yeah. Give me our time. Yeah. The other so being a good listener, I think, always being in a mindset that’s not looking to punish people for making mistakes, but instead is looking to transform failure into feedback, so that constant commitment to learning, to creating an environment in which it’s safe to fail, where people know that within reason, they can be forgiven and given a chance to be better the next time, because a lot of times your greatest successes are built on your worst mistakes.
Steve Fretzin [09:06]
Yeah, well, that sounds like the end of our show, right? Like Noah’s mistake, like, this is this? That’s why we share those, because I think sometimes it’s the failures and the mistakes and the challenges that we overcome, to your point, define us, but also that’s how we become who we’re going to be. Right? I don’t think people can become their best versions without those kinds of things happening, and how they work through them and get help, or how they you know, like most people, don’t have coaches or consultants like you and I, but then they work with one, and it turns everything around, you know, hopefully they have the right ones and and then, you know, that becomes part of their sort of story of how they came to be, because, just like struggling on their own, may not have, they may have figured it out eventually, but maybe it takes 10 years instead of a year or two. Yeah, so listening is important, and then being in that mindset, the mindset of helping people not punish them, but to help them improve and. Make this a learning moment and that type of thing. What would be the last attribute you would mention is a important one.
Noel Bagwell [10:04]
Yeah, that that transmuting failure into feedback thing is huge. The last one is not, Oh, man. How do I want to phrase this? Because I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I don’t want to put this the wrong way, because it will trigger a lot of people. Okay, you must be a virtuous person. Virtue matters, and there is a real standard for moral virtue, and you cannot ignore that or set it aside or downplay it, or engage in relativism. You cannot be morally relativistic and a good leader, not even a good leader, much less a great leader.
Steve Fretzin [10:39]
Is that a long way of saying you need to be honest and sincere and have integrity.
Noel Bagwell [10:44]
Those are big part the integrity is not the be all, end of it, all of it, but it is a huge part of it. Integrity definitely is, I think you need to pursue virtue. There are lots of people that we look at in the world and we see like failures of leadership. And you know, we see them every day in politics and in the media and whatever. And we all know what Vice looks like, but it’s not enough to just have an absence of vice in your life. You can’t get rid of bad habits by just uprooting them and stopping doing things like anyone who’s ever tried smoke, you know, to stop smoking or some other you know, negative habit that you know that you can’t just stop a bad habit. You have to replace it with a good one. And just just like if you want to be a good leader, if you want to avoid all the vices that we associate with bad leadership, you have to embrace virtue. That’s the real antidote to each one of those. So if you want to be a good leader, you have to proactively pursue virtue. If you don’t do that, you won’t even be a good leader or a good person, much less a great one. And I’m, I’ll die on that hill.
Steve Fretzin [11:46]
Okay, okay. I love it. Really, really good feedback. And you know, there are obviously there. Every lawyer has said we didn’t learn this in law school, business development, marketing, leadership, you know, how to run a business, all these things. And so I think there are people who are successful rainmakers listening right now that are asked to be leaders, right? They say, hey, you’ve built a book of business. You know, clearly, you know you’re good at that. You should run this practice area. You should be the managing partner. You should run this thing. And they’re just incredibly different skills. So how do you circle that square with people that try to do it just off of their own experiences in life, versus maybe looking at it more like a learned skill?
Noel Bagwell [12:26]
Yeah, I think if you’re if you’re out there and you don’t have the skill set to be a leader, and you have enough integrity, honesty and self awareness to know that you should say no, you should say no, you should say no, I’m sorry I can’t do that, or the level up, right? Like, if you’re not, if you’re going to just do it on your own, like, as you presented the question, you know we have, I don’t have the skill set. I know I don’t have the skill set. I’m asked to do this. You should say no, or you should say, Hey, I am grateful for the opportunity, and I really appreciate your confidence in me and my ability to do this. Would you be willing to hire a leadership coach to help me to train, you know, to develop those skills. Because it’s not that I don’t think that I can do it. I believe that I am capable of becoming the person you want me to be. But right now, my skill set has been focused over here, and I actually really need these skills over here. I think people respect that. They respect the honesty, they respect the self awareness. And I know that that’s kind of a self serving recommendation, since I’m offering exactly that coaching that would be transformative in that way to people.
Steve Fretzin [13:33]
Is that something you do know? I’m wondering, no, yeah. So it could be, you know, the same thing somebody is a service partner, and is, is need equity. And they’re being asked, hey, they’re being told, you know, you need to know, grow business, to say, hey, look, I appreciate that. Can I look into coaching? Do you have resources? Or do Can you help me find resources? Or can I find resources on my own? And would you support me in that and see what they say? It just doesn’t, it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Noel Bagwell [14:00]
I think, any request, any request where the organization is asking the lawyer or the the business owner, whomever to, I know, wouldn’t be a business owner. I guess it would be, but, but the, you know, up and coming leader.
Steve Fretzin [14:13]
The law firm, is asking you to do something, and it’s beyond they should offer that. Yeah, they should, all should offer this, be open to hearing you ask for it, and again, I think, see how they respond. You know, there’s a lot of tells in understanding if leadership, and now we’re talking about not you being a leader, but other leaders. Are they being transparent? Are they being supportive? Are they, you know, the things that you mentioned earlier, you know about, about really being, you know, helpful and useful to you, in being, you know, a good listener, right? Yeah, they doing those things for you. They’re asking you for something.
Noel Bagwell [14:46]
Yeah, I think if someone is asking you to take on a new role, like that, a leadership role, then along with the request should come the offer of the support necessary to make sure that you’re successful in that role. And if you’re not seeing that early on, you don’t expect to see it later. If that’s not even baked into the cake from the beginning, it never will be, yeah. And if you need to be asking for the support, say, Yeah, sure. Like, it’s if someone you know puts you in the corner office, ask for the administrative assistant that comes with it. Don’t just be like, Thanks for the corner office. Now I have a great view at 10 times as much work and a, you know, little 5% raise or whatever they’re giving you to try to sweeten the deal, like it’s nice to be appreciated, it’s nice to feel the respect. It’s nice to have a title and kind of be jumped up a rung of the ladder. But if you don’t have the support of that, it might be one step forward and two steps back for you before you know it.
Steve Fretzin [15:40]
Yeah, 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 fretzin.com and grab a time that works for you. And let’s make this your breakout year. For folks that are listening, that are either interested in leadership positions or that are existing leadership positions, what are some things that they should be working on every day with their teams to get the most out of them? Because I’m feeling like a lot of leaders. I mean, I deal with leaders every day, managing partners, etc, and they’re just struggling with how they’re getting the most out of their people. What are some things that you work with leaders on that help get, you know, I’m not going to say generational, but just like you know, folks that you expect to have a certain work ethic, or that you expect to, you know, step up and do more, and they’re not, and they’re just in that challenge role or that challenged kind of situation. What are some things you work with them on to help them get through that?
Noel Bagwell [17:10]
I think accountability is really important, so you absolutely have to have some accountability, but you also need to listen to what your subordinates are saying, like, if you’re a senior vice president and you have a junior vice president under you, and they’re responsible for managing a team, and the team isn’t performing the way that the senior vice president wants them to right they need to go to the junior vice president and say, What do you think is the problem with Your team? And then really listen again, that that first skill of leadership. In my experience, many, if not most of them don’t really listen. They have a preconceived notion of what they want. They’re like, No excuses. I don’t want that. Just make it happen. And I’ve seen so many times that the junior vice president or junior partner or whatever will look up and go, Yeah, you don’t care really like and I’m just going to tell you what you want to hear, or I’m going to try to sanitize this, or I’m going to try to cover myself instead, what they should have is the safety to be able to say, look, I’ve got a team of six or seven people, and I need to fire half of them And and replace them, because they’re never going to they’re never going to perform the way that that they should. Their incentives aren’t aligned or whatever. So I think listening to your team and really absorbing the feedback and then being thoughtful and saying, Well, would you like to propose a solution, and then trying that, like testing out the different solutions and things like that, transform the failures of your team into feedback, but that’s not useful if you’re not listening to it, right?
Steve Fretzin [18:46]
Yeah, and maybe more. I was just thinking like, maybe, maybe they need more time. And I know that’s hard, because lawyers are challenged with time, but I feel like, you know that maybe that was one of my biggest mistakes as a manager, when I used to manage people, was, you know, lack of, like, regular, ongoing meetings and time and how’s it going, and really getting feedback and listening. I just wanted the job done the way I do it. And that’s not a great management kind of methodology.
Noel Bagwell [19:13]
No, it’s not. And you’re a lot of times you’re looking at the wrong metrics too. Yeah. So another thing is, you need to make sure, like, you need to check in with your team and say, Hey, these are the metrics that we’re using to measure success, and what success looks like. Should we even be looking at those metrics, or is there a more important KPI for success that we need to pivot towards? That changes? You know, the market changes. Everything’s dynamic. It’s evolving. So you need to sometimes rethink what good success looks like, and how are we defining that? Yeah, and a lot of people don’t. They’ll just, it’s just, you know, momentum forever.
Steve Fretzin [19:49]
I mean, what you’re doing is you’re talking about people taking a step back and really thinking about leadership and thinking about management and how they’re doing it and what they need to improve. And instead of just going through the motions of. Being the leader and hoping for the best, and that’s, I get it like, that’s what most people do. That’s not necessarily a recipe for success.
Noel Bagwell [20:08]
No, it’s terrible. It’s, it’s mindless. Tell us how you really feel? No, yeah, no, it well, it is terrible because it hurts people. And I see like, I have, I have, oh, man, okay, I’m not gonna open that can of worms I have seen okay.
Steve Fretzin [20:21]
For using names, but we do love horror stories of other people suffering.
Noel Bagwell [20:26]
No, I literally have seen good people passed over for promotions because they don’t fit the demographics and the optics and the criteria. It’s like, oh no. We want someone who looks this way or who projects this or that, and meanwhile, the like struggling middle management guy who’s the master of the spreadsheet and has all the metrics and knows what works and could really be an asset, gets passed over for promotion time after time, yeah, and he’s the one that they’re not listening to, and it’s very frustrating for him, and he’s sitting there beat down they’re not transforming the failures into feedback. And he’s just like, this is just momentum. It’s mindless. He said, a friend of mine said, all we need is mindful management, if the management was just mindful, if they were self aware. And I think that’s a great title for a book for somebody mindful management, where you’re applying some just like, hey, maybe you stop and think principles, just stop and think, and people are like, no time to stop. Gotta go breakneck pace, momentum, momentum and just over and over, just and just push, push, push. That’s how you burn people out. And if you would slow down a little bit and have some mindful management practices, your leadership would just be far and away better, and you’d be surprised what talent there is hidden in your organization that you haven’t listened to for years.
Steve Fretzin [21:45]
Yeah, an important word that you used a few minutes ago is accountability, and I feel like it’s a struggle, because we have so many employees that are virtual And granted, you can sort of see, you know, how many hours they’re billing or whatever, but maybe there’s more things that you’re looking to track and measure. What do you how do you suggest leaders and managers should hold people accountable in an age where, you know, everything’s virtual and AI and all the stuff is going down around us.
Noel Bagwell [22:13]
You mentioned how many hours they’re billing? What a stupid metric.
Steve Fretzin [22:17]
Well, that’s, I know it is, but it’s kind of important for the back to profit. I mean, that’s how the law firms make profit.
Noel Bagwell [22:23]
So, yeah, but that’s because their their model is a dinosaur model. Wow. All right, and AI is going to obliterate that. Clients don’t care about how long it took you to get something done. Well, clients care about that you got it done, that you did a good job. Yeah, the results, and that’s where the accountability is. It’s hard to argue with results and AI makes it easier than ever to quantify the value of the result produced. That’s the real power. That’s what a lot of people are not talking about, is how do we use having more data than ever before to really get clearer signals about the value of things? I mean, the billable hour was not always the top dog in in models or law firms. It used to be contingent fees. You know, when you flat fees and contingent fees were a really big thing, and then the billable hour came along and kind of took over and became dominant. But I think the pendulum is swifting or shifting back away from that, because now we have enough data points, and we can actually have the capability to look at them all and analyze them a little more responsibly to say, well, what is this work worth? And clients are increasingly expecting that, and they want you to charge them a value based fee, usually, if it’s a discrete, time bound job that you can get your head around. They want a flat fee, and if it’s ongoing work, then they want a subscription fee or something like that.
Steve Fretzin [23:47]
So if I have an assistant who is billing me for 40 hours of work, but he’s doing it in 20 hours, should I care like as long as that work gets done in 20 hours and it’s the max work that I asked for, is that the way we should be thinking about it? Or should we be paying that person for 20 hours because they’re doing the job in 20 hours?
Noel Bagwell [24:06]
I don’t believe in trading time for dollars, unless you have no other choice. And so philosophically, as a principal, I’m not going to say that in any particular granular use case. I mean, there’s always going to be the exception to produce the rule or whatever, right? Yeah. So I don’t, I don’t care about that in terms of generalities. In general, you should not trade time for dollars unless you have no other way to price your services. But that alone should signal to you that you’re in a low information state, and you probably need to get better information. Yeah, if you’re trading time for dollars, you’re that is an information poor mindset, and you need to fix it.
Steve Fretzin [24:43]
Yeah, there’s a thing I spoke about on the show, and I saw it a while ago. Someone paid a million dollars for a logo, and it was going to take like, three or four months to do in a team, and they’re going to run it through, you know, test groups and all this stuff, and then someone figured out the best logo possible for that brand, and they did it in 15. Minutes, and it’s, you know, million dollars for either do you care? And people are like, I want, I want all that work and that 30, you know, three months of work with the team and all this, because then I’m getting my value. But in reality, like, you’re to your point, like, what does it really matter if it’s a million dollars and you get the perfect logo, or it takes all that time and effort and money and energy, and you get the same logo out of it, doesn’t, you know, wouldn’t you rather just have it today versus three months from now?
Noel Bagwell [25:24]
I would hire 15 minutes guy every single time. Yeah, 100 out of 100 times. And the rest of that messing around, just faffing about, really, is ego. Yeah, it’s ego. And, well, my time is the birth this.
Steve Fretzin [25:38]
And while you’re trying to demonstrate value, like, look at all the people we put on, and look at all the brain work, and look at all the revisions, and look at all this like effort that that that’s the value for the million dollars you’re paying. And I think that’s how you know, a lot of people perceive it as like, what is value, what’s the effort put in? But the reality is, like, what do we all really care about? It was said earlier, like results.
Noel Bagwell [25:59]
My response to that is okay, Cracker Barrel.
Steve Fretzin [26:03]
Right, right? They spent, well, I know what they spent on that logo. What a waste of money, right?
Noel Bagwell [26:08]
Yeah, yeah. They brought a buddy of mine said they brought back the cracker and the barrel. And I love that, because I love Cracker Barrel. I’m like, three minutes from one, and I’m like, Man, that’s old school, and that’s, we need to keep it. That’s my go to I love Cracker Barrel. And, you know, everybody was incensed that they changed everything and and rightfully so. And look at all the money they wasted on all that focus group, focus testing, design stuff, and we’re going to do all of this garbage. And nobody wanted it. The customers didn’t want it. And you know what, just putting that out to a group of, you know, actual people, real people who aren’t consultants being paid to tell you what you want to hear. Putting that out for in 15 minutes, they could have told you that was a terrible decision. Just put it on Facebook. Hey guys, we’re thinking of changing the logo. Everyone would have been like.
Steve Fretzin [26:53]
I mean, it’s the equivalent of McDonald’s changing their logo at this point. Like, golden arches. You don’t, you don’t mess in Mercedes. You don’t mess with the with that logo. Like, that’s, that’s a do that touch situation? Yeah, hey, man, listen, we got to wrap up. I appreciate everything you’ve shared so far, but we also need to know what’s Noel’s big mistake?
Noel Bagwell [27:09]
Well, I don’t know if it’s a mistake, but certainly was a challenge, like a setback. Okay, is I? I spent a lot of my life not having the depth of self awareness that I really needed to be successful in my interpersonal relationships. I don’t think that was really my fault, because it turns out that I’m on the autism spectrum, and I also have a high IQ, and I’ve been using a lot of my cognitive power to try to mask a lot of my autistic traits for all of my life, and it’s extremely draining. It’s extremely exhausting to try to show up and and project normal when your brain’s going a million miles an hour and you’re tracking all these other things and also dealing with sensory overload and missing social cues, like me not realizing right away that you were joking earlier. I’m sneaky that. So yeah, well, no, it’s just that’s that’s me. It’s like, well, I missed it. That’s what happens. And I think can not giving up, was how I overcame that, not like it could be really easy to get burned out, overwhelmed.
Steve Fretzin [28:13]
No, I’m gonna interrupt you for a second. I don’t think it was just that, because you shared with me when we initially met, like you did some pretty exhaustive study and testing, right? Like, you didn’t just, like, figure it out, and what do you like, you went into, like, I’m going to get this thing figured out, and you spent a lot of effort and time and money on it.
Noel Bagwell [28:30]
Yeah, I did. I mean, but, but I could have just laid down and died in one particular case. Literally, I could have just, you know, I collapsed once, because I had a pretty traumatic experience, and I collapsed, and I could have just laid there and died, and I didn’t. I got back up. I surrounded myself with a team of people who helped me to recover, and I learned a lot of lessons. I committed four and a half hours a day to personal growth and self improvement, and I did go, you know, hire two different clinical psychologists to test me and just make sure, you know, like, what’s going on in there and and so I put in, as you say, the time, the effort, the money, and ended up writing a book over the course of about two, two and a half years, called lead again, a modern guide to resilience. And it contains the lessons that I use to rebuild myself as a leader, focusing first on principles of self leadership. And you know, I don’t think you can really lead anyone else effectively until you lead yourself. And so the book is about building resilience and being able to lead again in your own life and then in your in other spheres, your family, your corporate life, etc, and so I put all of the stuff that I learned in rebuilding myself into the book. And so that was that was useful and valuable, but not giving up is hard. And I met a young lady named Laura a couple of years ago, and she said something in the course of our conversations that stuck with me. For years, she said, it’s hard to be a person. And I at the time, when I heard that, I thought, how trite, how silly. Like, what’s the alternative? You’re going to be a dog or a tree? I mean, of course, you’re going to be a person. But the more it stuck with me, the more I realized so many people are just on autopilot that they’re not a fully self actualized person. They’re not, you know, reaching for the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, right? They’re not looking for a connection to the transcendental life or anything like that. And it’s hard to be a full person, and it’s easy to give up on that, and it’s easy to make excuses and rationalize your laziness or whatever. But keep going, do the work. Persevere. Be self aware. Yeah, persevere and be self aware.
Steve Fretzin [30:45]
But I think, Matthew, you said it, but you said it, learning, improving, understanding yourself. You know, they say, you know, know that know thyself. I think there’s a lot of a lot of internalization that we need to do to to get to know ourselves, so that we can, you know, make those, make the fixes as we go. Hey, man, I want to thank you so much for being for being on the show. Take a moment to thank our sponsors, lawyer.com rankings, io, and, of course, the law her podcast and Nola. People want to get in touch with you. They want to hear more about counsel and clarity, the new business that you’ve got cooking. What are the best digits?
Noel Bagwell [31:17]
Hit up counsel and clarity.com. C, O, U, N, SEL and clarity, calm and hit me up on LinkedIn, I’m an easy guy to get a hold of.
Steve Fretzin [31:25]
It’s like, no, be not an old bag. Well, that the case.
Noel Bagwell [31:30]
On LinkedIn, it’s in slash n bag, well, three is the URL. So it’s linkedin.com/in/n, bag, well, three on LinkedIn, I’m Noel Noel Bagwell. There aren’t that many Noel bagwells out there. My name is a little bit weird, so I’m easy to find. If you want to find me, you can.
Steve Fretzin [31:47]
Well, fantastic man. Thanks again for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom. A lot of great takeaways, whether you’re a leader, whether you’re dealing with leaders, future leader, whatever it might be, and just you know how to be a person, how to be human, and lots of great things that you shared today. So thanks so much, man.
Noel Bagwell [32:03]
It was a lot of fun, and I hope you found it valuable. I really appreciate the opportunity.
Steve Fretzin [32:07]
But yeah, no. I mean, I have my typical page of notes. We’re going to come up with some great, you know, video clips based on this, because some of the things you said were absolutely brilliant. Man. I mean, everything you said was brilliant, but there’s a few that I point that I specifically wrote down that I just let go. Definitely have to share that. And hey, just want to thank you, everybody for hanging out with Noel and I for the last 30 and change. You know, look, it’s not easy to be a leader. It’s not easy to make improvements in your life, but this is what it’s all about. And as I can attest, you get one shot at this thing. So make it happen. Make it work. Be that lawyer. Everybody. Take care. Be safe. Be well. We will talk again soon.
Narrator [32:42]
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.