Most lawyers think more hours equal more success—but what if that belief is quietly destroying their performance? In this episode, you’ll learn how to borrow habits from elite athletes to protect your energy, sharpen your focus, and build high-performance routines that actually last.
In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Pete Leibman discuss:
- The myth of “work longer, perform better” in high-pressure careers
- Sleep, exercise, and nutrition as foundations of cognitive performance
- Adopting athlete-style pregame routines for legal work and business development
- Managing attention residue, distractions, and constant notifications
- Building sustainable, one-habit-at-a-time improvements and positive habit “dominoes”
Key Takeaways:
- Working beyond 50–60 hours a week often lowers the quality of your thinking and decision-making, especially when it replaces sleep, exercise, and recovery.
- Sleep, nutrition, and movement are non-negotiable foundations for anyone whose value comes from judgment, critical thinking, and focus.
- Elite performance is rarely an accident; it’s driven by intentional pregame routines and preparation that sharpen both body and mind before the “game” begins.
- Unmanaged task-switching and constant notifications create attention residue that scatters focus, increases errors, and raises stress levels.
- Sustainable change comes from choosing one specific habit at a time, reinforcing it until it becomes automatic, and then stacking the next positive behavior on top.
“In a career like the legal industry where you’re paid for your judgment and critical thinking and decision-making, it’s really hard to think clearly when you’re tired.” — Pete Leibman
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About Pete Leibman: Pete Leibman is a speaker and author who helps consultants, lawyers, and advisors build the energy, focus, and resilience to sustain high performance. He delivers keynotes, workshops, and webinars for leading consulting firms, law firms, and financial services firms.
Pete has written three books and more than 300 articles on high performance. His latest book is Stronger Advisor: High-Performance Habits for Consultants, Lawyers, and Advisors.
Pete previously worked at Heidrick & Struggles (H&S), one of the world’s premier human capital consulting firms. While at H&S, Pete helped professional services firms identify, recruit, and develop exceptional leaders and build high-performing organizations.
Connect with Pete Leibman:
Website: https://www.strongertalent.com/
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 [00:01]
Before we jump into today’s show, if you’ve been listening to the podcast or reading any of my books, the Be That Lawyer Community is clearly the next step for your growth and development as a rainmaker. Learn proven strategies, connect with ambitious lawyers just like you, and put new ideas into action. Check it out at bethatlawyer.com/community. Build your book, own your future, and be that lawyer.
Narrator [00:30]
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 is your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin [00:52]
Hey, everybody! Steve Fretzin here, and welcome to the Be That Lawyer Podcast. You are wondering, Steve, what do you do when you are not doing podcasts? I am working with lawyers all over the world, really in three categories. We’ve got the coaching and training, Sales-Free Selling model, classes, one-on-ones. It’s very intensive. It’s only for the most motivated and committed attorneys to apply for. We’ve got the Rainmaker Roundtables. If you’re crushing and you’re like, I don’t have anything to learn from Steve. I’m killing it, well, then join a Rainmaker Roundtable. You still might learn something, but mainly from your peers, people that are doing between $1 and $10 million, and they are there for you, managing firms and equity partners and all kinds of stuff. And then, of course, the Be That Lawyer Community, whether you’re a rainmaker, just starting out, you’re motivated to grow, that’s crowdsourcing with 100 rainmakers and business developers, as well as my content, networking, live events, and resources, and so much more. But that’s what I’m doing when I’m not busy helping you guys on the Be That Lawyer Podcast. So, with that, I want to say hello. Hey, Pete, how you doing, man?
Pete Leibman [01:56]
Hey, I’m doing well, Steve. Excited to be with you.
Steve Fretzin [01:58]
Hey, thanks for sitting through my commercial. You’re very patient as I went through all my junk. But I’m so excited to have you here. We we had a chat I don’t know a few weeks ago, and I was just so thrilled to to pick your brain and try to draw out the things that are going to help my my my my listening audience here to be that lawyer. So let’s start off with Jim Rohn. Jim Rohn, wow, this guy’s put out a ton of quotes. I always admire people that just they just spit out quotes like they’re nothing, but they’re they’re all impressive. You can’t hire someone to do push-ups for you. So like super simple, but there’s a lot of meaning behind that. So welcome to the show, and tell us why you love that quote.
Pete Leibman [02:36]
Yeah, look, again, great to be with you and your listeners. And I think, look, there are a lot of applications for that quote from Jim Rohn. It’s not just about exercise, but the bottom line is it really speaks to personal discipline and accountability. And there are many behaviors that no one else can do for you. You can’t outsource them, you can’t delegate them, you can’t pay someone else to do it. Yeah. And I think especially in this world that we’re in with AI, which we’re all trying to figure out how we can leverage it to improve our lives and careers, and we all should. It’s a powerful tool. But look, there are many things that AI will never be able to do for you, and you know, many of the habits that I write and speak about, you know, would fall into that category, and I’m sure we’ll talk about a lot of that today.
Steve Fretzin [03:12]
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I just wrote an article for Above the Law, if anyone’s interested, about my experiences with tearing my rotator cuff. I have what’s called a global tear. Now, they just said it was a big tear. Then I went into into my doctor’s office. He goes, Oh, you have a global tear. I go, Oh, wow. Okay, I’m impressed by by the fancy words. But basically tore that in my in my bicep, and so I’ve been in PT right now for like 20 weeks. The discipline to go and the discipline to do it on my own, and you just can’t recover if you don’t have that type of discipline. Lose weight, get into better fitness, sleep, all the different things that define us. So everybody, Pete Leibman is the author of Stronger Advisor, and I would love for you to share your journey of how you came to be and and getting into helping lawyers and other professionals with high performance.
Pete Leibman [04:00]
Yeah, absolutely. So, I’ve always been fascinated by this topic of high performance, and especially as I’ve now moved into my 40s, especially interested in how do you sustain it, right? How do you sustain it over years and decades? So, my background, I grew up an athlete. I was a basketball player. I played briefly in high school and then in college, and that, you know, influenced a lot of my mindset. Wasn’t able to play professionally. To me, the next best thing was to work in pro sports, and then I worked in the NBA, so worked in pro sports for 5 years at the start of my career. Fast forwarding a bit, I then moved into professional services, where I worked at a global consulting firm called Heidrick & Struggles. For anyone who’s not familiar, it’s one of the world’s top executive search firms, similar to a law firm in many ways. In fact, I remember when I joined, one of the partners at the firm said, Hey, Pete, working here is a lot like working at a law firm. And that was probably his way of telling me it was not an easy place to work. Yeah. And it wasn’t. You know, it was an exceptional firm, but you had long hours, you had heavy workloads, serving many clients at one time, you’re pulled in a lot of directions, there’s a lot of pressure. And that was a big part of my motivation to write a book called Work Stronger that came out right before COVID, and then this latest book, Stronger Advisor. And it’s all about helping people in these demanding roles, whether they’re lawyers, consultants, accountants, bankers, anywhere where you’re really paid for advice, how do you show up at your best each day, and how do you sustain high performance over the long term?
Steve Fretzin [05:21]
Yeah. It’s, you know, lawyers they have, you know, they are athletes. They’re just not on the basketball court. They’re in the courtroom and they’re in their office, you know, using their brains at a level that, you know, most people would would only dream about. And I know my father, the late, great Larry Lawyer, Larry the lawyer, he was he was so incredibly thoughtful, and and I tell a story about giving him a 12-page purchase agreement for a condo I wanted, he had 14 pages of written notes and changes. And I was like that to think about every single angle of a contract to have that many changes on a 12-page contract just blew my mind. Of course, I asked him, Are they going to agree to this? He said, No, they’re not going to agree to any of it. So, I was like, Can I have my two hours back? But that’s a different part of the story. Let me ask you, what do you think is the biggest myth about high performance, especially for lawyers?
Pete Leibman [06:11]
Absolutely. So the biggest myth when it comes to high performance is what I call the work-longer myth, and it’s that this myth that the longer you work, the better you’re going to perform. So, you know, you think about the legal industry. Look, long hours are are part of the deal. Hard work is part of the deal. That’s certainly, you know, something I want to make sure I’m clear on. But many lawyers, in particular, and the billable-hour model certainly plays a role, they buy into this thinking that, hey, the longer I work, the harder I work, the more I’m on, the better it’s going to be over the long term, and it it’s just not true. You know, there’s a lot of studies out there that have shown that once you start working more than 50 to 60 hours a week, the caliber of those hours goes down dramatically and that performance actually starts to decline when you’re working more than 50 to 60 hours a week. And there are many reasons why that’s the case. I think one of the big reasons why is what you have to give up. So if you’re working extremely long hours, you have to cut time somewhere else. And where do most people cut? Probably the number one area they cut out is sleep. And again, you think about a career like the legal industry where you’re paid for your judgment and critical thinking and decision-making, it’s really hard to think clearly when you’re tired. So that’s one area people cut. They also cut out on exercise. And when you think about exercise, you know, we all know that it’s going to make us stronger physically, but many people, many lawyers in particular, don’t fully understand the benefits that it provides mentally and psychologically. And if somebody wants to go really deep on this topic, I’ll give them a great book recommendation, a book called Spark. It’s written by John Ratey of Harvard Medical School, and it’s all about the mental and psychological benefits of exercise and how it can actually rewire and strengthen parts of your brain, how it can help you build psychological resilience. So again, people are cutting out sleep. They’re cutting out exercise. They’re cutting out time with friends and family. They’re cutting out meaningful hobbies. They’re cutting out all of these activities that serve a real powerful purpose. They help you show up at work at your best each day. So I think that’s the number one myth. Again, you got to work hard, but there comes a point where it actually becomes counterproductive if you’re just on 24/7.
Steve Fretzin [08:14]
Yeah, and in many cases, and you didn’t mention this, but I know it’s up there in the list, like, you know, fast food and easy food and quick food is usually not good food, and so I think there’s there’s what you put in your body and the battery that is our human bodies that and our brains that may also be a factor. You I mean, I always I look, I could be wrong, and you can tell me I’m I’m an idiot. I I exercise, I play sports, I do all this stuff, and recovering from this this rotator cuff thing, I’m now getting back into running on a court, and it’s amazing. I just feel so much better from that exertion and beating up on people, by the way. But ultimately, I always feel like it’s food. Like food is where people make the biggest mistake. How do you see food playing a role in this and play people playing at their highest level as well?
Pete Leibman [08:57]
Absolutely. I mean, the way you fuel yourself is critical, and there’s a lot of research that shows that a lot of the mental health problems that people experience, the anxiety, the depression, it’s largely linked to the food that we’re putting in our body. So there’s so many foods and drinks, right? It’s not just food; it could be sugary beverages as well. Those calories count. It completely impacts your psychology, your thought process, your ability to focus. So an analogy that I give people is exercise is kind of like, you know, the foundation, but you’re not going to really reap the benefits of exercise if you’re not eating well and sleeping. I mean, that’s what’s really going to help you get the returns from exercise. You got to recover outside of those workouts. And if you’re not well fueled, and you’re not sleeping enough, it’s great that you’re doing a workout, but you’re not really reaping those full benefits because you’re not recovering well.
Steve Fretzin [09:42]
Yeah. You know, you mentioned when we started this conversation about your career in pro sports, and was there lessons that you learned about about athletes that perform at the highest level that that you’ve done through your research that lawyers could apply to their own careers?
Pete Leibman [09:57]
Yeah, absolutely. I think the first one that comes to mind is the importance of a pregame routine. You know, you think about the world’s greatest athletes, whether it’s basketball players or tennis players or soccer players, you know, they don’t show up at their field of play, whether it’s a court or a hockey rink or a field, and just jump into it ice cold. They have a very deliberate, personalized routine that they go through before their game to warm up their body, to sharpen their focus, to get into the right state of mind. And if you think about, for any basketball fans out there, you think about today’s NBA, probably the best example of this is Steph Curry. So for anyone who’s not familiar, he’s one of the greatest players of all time, and one of the keys to his success is this incredibly meticulous pregame routine that he goes through. So fans actually get to the arena over an hour early just to watch him warm up, and it’s a real spectacle. And the reason he’s doing that, one of the reasons is because he’s trying to control what he can control. Now when his game begins, he’s competing against other elite athletes that are trying to throw him off of his game. He doesn’t have full control on the court, but he has 100% control over what he does before that game begins. So he goes through this routine that he’s optimized over time, and when that game begins, he’s completely locked in. His body’s warmed up, his focus is there, he’s in the right psychology, and he’s ready to perform at his best. So the takeaway for a lawyer or any high achiever is just like an elite athlete has a pregame routine before they start their work, you know, their game, you need to have some sort of pregame routine that you go through each morning, what I call a peak pregame ritual. And it’s a could be a 30 to 60-minute routine. There’s no single routine that everyone needs to follow. It’s personalized. What’s going to get you in the best state? We can talk about some examples. But some sort of process so that when you sit down at your place of work for the day, body feels good, you’re energized, you feel sharp mentally, you feel positive, and you’re ready to attack the day with the best energy and thought process that you can.
Steve Fretzin [11:54]
Yeah. And maybe even start the day with the toughest things you have to do because then the rest, it’s that eat that frog idea that you eat that frog early and get it out of your way because you know you’ve got you know, the rest of the day will just be Like, I used to do when I was doing Pilates, I always walked out of there. I hated going, by the way. But I went, I forced myself, and I remember the best part of my day was walking out of Pilates saying that, Hey, there’s nothing more There’s nothing that’s going to happen to me today that’s going to be harder than what I just went through with that routine. You know, they just put me through the mill. Also, I just want to mention, just to give the business development twist here, that before I meet with a new prospective client or attend a networking one-on-one, I do my research on them. I take notes. I prepare for that meeting. Questions I want to ask, things that might help me develop rapport, right? Because they’ve got three kids, I’ve got a kid, whatever might be, Michael Jordan with basketball, whatever, you know, we did together. The other thing that I work with my clients on is I have a one-pager, sort of what I call a cheat sheet, but it’s essentially the the system that I teach, sales-free selling, and it’s on one page. So they, before they go to a meeting, they can prepare by reviewing what they need to cover in the meeting to make sure they don’t pitch and sell and convince, but rather to build relationship, ask great questions, and qualify who they should be moving forward or who they should be moving out. And so I’m just saying like there can be a pregame ritual for business development, not just for the legal game of the work you have in front of you. So putting that out there.
Pete Leibman [13:23]
Absolutely. It speaks to preparation, right? And again, that’s another parallel. You think about athletes, I mean there’s so much preparation that goes in behind the scenes that nobody sees, for the most part. That’s why they’re elite.
Steve Fretzin [13:35]
Yep, awesome, man. So in the book Stronger Advisor, you talk about working with a clean paintbrush. What does that mean, and how can lawyers use that idea to improve the quality of their work?
Pete Leibman [13:45]
Sure. So I’ll share a little bit of the science behind this concept, and then I’ll I’ll bring it back to the analogy. So there’s a business professor. Her name is Sophie Leroy, and she coined a term called attention residue. What she has discovered through her research, she’s looked at the impact of switching tasks. So she hasn’t looked at multitasking, you know trying to do two tasks at once. She’s looked at the impact of going from one task to the next. And what she has found is that if you’re not careful with these transitions, what ends up happening is you come to that next task or meeting or appointment, and your attention’s divided because you’re still somewhat thinking about what you were just working on. And what she’s found is that people who are not careful with these transitions, especially as the day goes on, they develop this really thick attention residue. They’re showing up. Their thinking’s not clear. Their attention’s really divided. They’re making more errors, stress, performance goes down. So you’ve got to be really careful with these transitions throughout the day. Again, especially in a career like the legal industry, where, you know, critical thinking is a big part of the deal. The analogy that I share with the paintbrush, you know, the origin of that, so my mother’s an art therapist, and she works with young children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And she uses art as a therapeutic tool to help them gain confidence and develop skills. So she’s always had a a passion for art. I have one brother. His name’s Matt. He’s a couple years younger than me. And when Matt and I were little kids, my mom liked to share this passion for us through painting. So every now and then, when the weather was bad and we’re stuck indoors, she’d bring us in the kitchen and she’d grab some paint and some brushes and some white paper, and she would cover the kitchen table with newspaper so we wouldn’t make a mess, and we would paint. And I always enjoyed it, but there was one part of it that always used to frustrate me as a little kid, and it’s that it was really difficult to keep that paintbrush clean. So if you dipped your paintbrush in one color and then you wanted to dip it in another color, you had to be very careful about that. You had to clean it off properly, or you’re going to quickly end up with a dirty brown paintbrush. And I think that’s a perfect analogy for anyone in the legal industry. If you’re not careful with the way you manage your attention throughout the day, your attention basically turns into a dirty brown paintbrush. So you need to be careful with these transitions and make sure that you’re cleaning off your paintbrush in between each one and showing up at that next task or meeting, you know, with your best attention.
Steve Fretzin [16:05]
Yeah, I love that, and it’s I think it’s very hard to do because multitasking and moving from task to task, that’s what they’re doing all day. One of my frustrations is, people that have alerts on their emails and and their phones ringing, and it’s just they can’t it’s not even switching from task to task, it’s the constant interruption of their day, and their brain work. Can you speak to that and and how how how much that can hurt someone in their performance?
Pete Leibman [16:31]
No, it’s disastrous. It’s disastrous not only for performance, but but mood and stress. And I’ll give you a quick study on that. So there was a study by UC Irvine that measured how often the average person who works in an office, so not just lawyers, people across industries, breaks their concentration in a typical hour at work. Now, you break your concentration either by switching tasks on your own, you think of something else and you just jump to it, or because of what you said, a a notification, a text, an email, phone call. They found the average person breaks their concentration just about every 3 minutes on average. That’s more than 19 times an hour, over 150 times a day. So, I mean, the impact of that is just it’s catastrophic. You can’t can’t get anything done, you know, your your attention is scattered. So, again, it’s a big challenge, and I think, you know, the antidote to that is to really be intentional about trying to carve out these distraction-free periods where, you know, we’re doing this podcast now, my cell phone is nowhere near me. I’m giving you my full attention, right? How effective would I be if I was sitting here, you know, skimming emails as we’re trying to talk? So you have to carve out these distraction-free periods where the cell phone’s away, the email’s turned off, the notifications are disabled, and you’re going to bring every ounce of attention that you have to whatever you’re working on. That’s when you’re going to do your your best work. That’s when you’re going to feel most engaged. That’s when you’re going to build relationships because people feel respected, because you’re giving them your attention. And then, you know, maybe that’s 30, 60, 90 minutes. Then if you need to to go back and check email or or notifications, do it. But man, you do not want to be just available on call 24/7.
Steve Fretzin [18:09]
Yeah. Yeah.
Pete Leibman [18:10]
There’s no way you’re going to perform at your best.
Steve Fretzin [18:12]
No, and and I think lawyers traditionally do a pretty bad job, I mean most people do, of setting expectations with clients and with their their cohorts at their office to say, you know, your call is important. I want to take it, you know, just so you know, I’ve got, you know, a full full, you know, day today or full day, and, you know, if you could do me a favor, just email me, and then I’ll get back to you within 24 hours, or I’ll get back to you as soon as my, you know, my day opens up, or I have I return emails between noon and [1:00] and [4:00] and [5:00], just so that you’re not constantly in your inbox all day long dealing with what may not even be urgent matters. Or maybe there’s a 911 that special alert that people have when something really has blown up. But it may not happen at all in a week, right? But Sure. people don’t do a good job of of setting expectations with people to so that they feel like they have to be on call. Like that’s a part responsiveness is important, but there’s a point where that responsiveness hurts your ability to actually be functional lawyer.
Pete Leibman [19:11]
Absolutely, and I’ll give you one quick example. That’s a great point, I think setting expectations. So I was speaking with with one group of lawyers and one of the members in the group shared a great example where she has her assistant come in and get her if something’s urgent, right? So she’s going to disable all the notifications or email so she can focus intensely, and she has this backup where, hey, if something if there’s a something I got to deal with right away, then my assistant is monitoring all that to come in and get me. But I think it’s it’s setting expectations. You know, people don’t they don’t have to have a response within 30 seconds most of the time, and, you know, what we can do to to try to carve out these distraction-free periods, that’s when you’re going to do your best work and that’s what clients want.
Steve Fretzin [19:50]
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Pete Leibman [22:07]
Yeah. Well, I think first of all, I’d say start with one change. I think one of the reasons why people get overwhelmed or changes don’t last, and it’s it’s a lot of times with high achievers, we want to we want to take on so much at one time, but then it becomes unsustainable. So what I would encourage people to do, regardless of how they feel, whether they think they’re already firing on all cylinders or they feel totally overwhelmed right now, identify one behavior. And I call this stronger habit of the month. So it is one specific behavior, something you want to start doing or stop doing every day or most days. And you put all of your attention and effort into that one change, you know, over the next month. And it might become a habit sooner or later than than 30 days, but a month is a good time frame. And then whenever that starts to feel automatic, you just add on the next change. And it’s a very sustainable approach. You’re building in one change at a time. But if you think about that over the course of the year, I mean, if you were able to incorporate 5, 10, 12 changes into your life and career, think about the impact that could have over time. So just one change at a time. Pick one thing that you want to work on whenever that starts to feel relatively automatic, whether sooner or later than a month, and you layer in the next change. And it’s a much more sustainable way to try to improve.
Steve Fretzin [23:25]
You know, a hidden secret in what you’re saying that you didn’t get to, but but as soon as I say it, you’re going to be like, Of course, is that there’s a number of things that generate results for people. Attitude is one, having a good attitude, belief in yourself, and behaviors, and all three of them could be the way through to get results. I personally, as a coach for 25 years, have found that if I can get someone to start taking positive behaviors, changing and and doing positive behaviors, getting out emails to get meetings or setting time aside for working out or eating healthy, whatever it might be that we need to accomplish together, that when you start doing those positive behaviors, your attitude, your belief, everything in that cycle of positivity goes the right way. By the way, the other thing happens. You don’t send out the emails. You don’t do BD. You let six months go by. You haven’t posted on LinkedIn, and you had planned to do that. Now you’ve got a negative cycle of habits, or negative cycle because you’re doing negative behaviors. Yes?
Pete Leibman [24:24]
Absolutely. And I would give another analogy to to piggyback on that. You know, we often think of a habit as this isolated behavior that has no impact on anything else, and I think we really need to think about habits as like a row of dominoes. So it’s like if you do that one good habit, it just everything else kind of follows. If you have a bad habit, everything else kind of follows. So we need to think about habits not as isolated behaviors, but as interconnected behaviors that impact each other. And there’s this real flywheel effect, so you get that morning workout in, then you’re probably more productive, and you probably eat better, then you probably sleep better, and it it just kind of snowballs, or it goes the other way. People have poor habits, so start with one change, then layer in the next one and the next one. And again, in a short period of time, you can end up in a real different path.
Steve Fretzin [25:14]
Yeah, saying, I’m going to change my whole life—that’s extremely scary and difficult and and hard. But when you break it into manageable pieces, one habit a month, you know, changing something, maybe removing. So I was drinking maybe too much bourbon, like I got into bourbon for a while, and I was just like every night I’m having my bourbon and whatever. And I realized like, you know, I’m just kind of in a in a funk then every evening. And so now I’m I’m like maybe it’s once a week on a weekend and I’m out like at a restaurant, and I, but I had to get rid of that negative habit. And it just started with saying, you know, Do I need this? Is this is this adding anything to me in my evening? And the answer is really no, it wasn’t. Absolutely. I just I just was enjoying the taste for a minute, and then I realized, you know, maybe drinking drinking a little more. So one final question, Pete. What’s your big mistake?
Pete Leibman [26:02]
My big mistake. So I would say it’s not an isolated event; it’s more of a theme, and it’s that earlier in my career I did not make sleep a priority. And I’ll share with you when I interview high performers and I ask them how their habits have evolved over time and what they wish they had started doing sooner, one of the most common answers people give is making sleep a top priority. Yeah. You know, and and look, you can get by, you know, many people are getting by with insufficient sleep. They’re using coffee, or energy drinks, or sugar, you know, to get through the day. But it’s all this artificial energy. We don’t feel good physically. It’s not steady. So I think that was a great lesson for me. It’s something that’s become a huge priority, especially the last 5 years, and I would say, for many people, that’s a great place to start is how can you improve not just the amount of sleep you’re getting, but the quality of sleep, and really being intentional about making that a priority, trying to get to bed earlier, you know, what you’re doing and not doing before bed, so it it sets you up for good sleep. It is such a game-changer physically and mentally, and for many people would be a great place to start.
Steve Fretzin [27:07]
Yeah. I found the best way for me to go to sleep is it accomplishes one thing and it doesn’t accomplish another, is I I I start reading a book. I get about two pages in, I pass out. So I never finish that book, and I never remember what I read, because it’s all at the end of the at the end of the night at the night when I’m ready to go sleep. So I I never the bad news is I never finish a book, right, at night, but the good news is it knocks me out like really fast. Well, you never you never want to
Pete Leibman [27:31]
tell an you never want to tell an author that their book helps put you to sleep.
Steve Fretzin [27:35]
Right, that’s fair. Well, I I haven’t said that about your book, so there we go. It’s usually some kind of nonfiction, or or a biography, or something I’m reading that about the Civil War, something that’ll do it. Yeah, that’s true. Absolutely. Hey, let’s take a moment. Thank our incredible sponsors. of course, PIMCon, the amazing Personal Injury Mastermind conference coming up. Get get in while you can. It’s coming up fast. Lawyer.com, great directory, and, of course, LEX Reception. We just talked about not getting distracted and interrupted by answering your phone. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be answered. Have a professional answer your phone and get it done right, and then you get the message, and you can call them back as soon as you as soon as you have time blocked out. Amazing. Pete, people want to get in touch with you. They want to get your book Stronger Advisor. What are the digits?
Pete Leibman [28:19]
Yeah, well, the best place to go would be strongertalent.com. They can learn about my speaking programs. They can also learn about the book, and I have a free newsletter on high performance. They’re also welcome to email me, [email protected], or connect with me on LinkedIn. And yeah, would love to hear from any of your listeners.
Steve Fretzin [28:35]
Yeah, really fantastic. Well, thanks for coming on the show, sharing your wisdom. I mean, this is like it’s almost like how do you get anything done, like how do you run a marathon if you don’t take a first step? And I feel like what you’re talking about today is really about the first step. Like we have to just decide, like this is important. Like these are the batteries. This is like how are we going to perform and and be the best lawyer, best human, best father, best whatever we can be? And you got to have that first step, and I think what you’re talking about today really aligns with that. So thanks for coming on.
Pete Leibman [29:06]
Absolutely. Yeah, thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun.
Steve Fretzin [29:09]
Yeah, yeah, fantastic. And thank you, everybody, for hanging out with us on the Be That Lawyer podcast for the last 30. Hopefully, you got a bunch of takeaways. I mean, I’ve got my usual page of notes and and some really interesting things I’m going to take into account in my life and and and make make my life better. And hopefully you guys are learning every single week, twice a week from this show to build that book and own that future and be that lawyer. Take care, everybody. Be safe and well. We’ll talk again very soon.
Narrator [29:37]
Thanks for listening to Be That Lawyer, life-changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, fretzin.com, for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.