In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Ral West discuss:
- The importance of measuring and tracking the right business metrics
- The challenges and necessity of delegation for growth
- Using automation and systems to save time and increase efficiency
- Identifying ideal clients and aligning business with long-term vision
Key Takeaways:
- Profitability isn’t guaranteed by high revenue alone; entrepreneurs must actively track expenses, understand their financial statements, and focus on the bottom line to ensure their business is truly making money rather than just looking successful.
- Delegation is not simply about handing off tasks but about providing clear instructions, defining the desired outcome, establishing feedback loops, and ensuring accountability so that the work supports long-term business growth without creating new inefficiencies.
- Leveraging automation, from bookkeeping software to AI tools that organize email, allows entrepreneurs to reclaim significant hours each week, reduce overwhelm, and free themselves to focus on higher-value activities that actually grow the business.
- Sustainable business growth requires entrepreneurs to deliberately define their ideal client persona, align services with long-term goals, and be disciplined enough to decline work that doesn’t fit, so their time and resources are invested where they matter most.
“You cannot grow your business if you don’t learn to delegate, and if you don’t learn to get some of these pieces off your shoulders.” — Ral West
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About Ral West: Ral West is a Visionary Business Leader and Systemization Expert who draws on over four decades of entrepreneurial experience in her newest endeavor, “Ral West Livin’ The Dream.” She teaches entrepreneurs how to be owners rather than operators of their businesses, creating both success and the freedom to live the life they deserve.
Through her online course and Mastermind program, Ral shares strategies refined from founding several companies, including one that achieved eight-digit annual revenue before being acquired by Alaska Airlines in 2008. With extensive experience in scaling businesses and mastering systemization, she excels at turning business theories into practical processes that drive transformation and sustained growth.
Ral and her husband split their time between Alaska and Hawaii when not traveling the world on new adventures.
Connect with Ral West:
Website: https://www.ralwest.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralwest/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/98796211/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ralwest & https://www.facebook.com/RalWestLTD
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rwestakmaui/ & https://www.instagram.com/ralwestltd
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Instagram: @fretzinsteve
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: [email protected]
Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Steve Fretzin [00:00]
Everybody, if you’re looking to make more money without burning yourself out, I’ve launched a brand new podcast just for you. It’s called be that lawyer Coach’s Corner. This is where I’m sharing real world tips on time management, marketing, client retention and much, much more episodes are up now. Go to be that lawyer Coach’s Corner wherever you listen. And by the way, enjoy the show today. You Steve,
Narrator [00:24]
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 [00:47]
Steve Fretzin, here and welcome to the be that lawyer podcast. We are here helping you to be that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled Rainmaker. And you know, listen, we’ve been doing this show for a while, and I hope that it’s really helping you grow your law practice. Get some different perspectives and some different skills and some actionable, tactical stuff that’s going to help you live the best lawyer’s life that is possible for you. And again, if you’re getting all of that, don’t be shy about checking out my YouTube channel. Steve Fretzin, I’ve got the books on Amazon, five of those suckers, writing for above the law. You can find me there. You can find me in legal verse, all kinds of cool stuff going on, and that’s about that. Let’s move on. I’ve got rel waiting in the wings. How are you? My friend? I’m doing great. Steve, thanks. Good to see you. Good to see you. Now, one of the this is something that I say to my clients all the time, and I’m I know I’m not the only coach that’s doing this, because it’s so critical, like tracking activity and tracking, having tracking systems in place to make sure that people are doing a, what they’re supposed to be doing, and then B, make you know, understanding and identifying where the gaps are, and trying to make those improvements. So the Peter Drucker quote of the show is, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. A, welcome to the show. And B, tell us why you love that quote so much.
Ral West [02:00]
Well, it’s so true. And you know, I’ve lived the opposite of that, where freewheeling, not measuring things or measuring the wrong thing, and then, you know, I got into trouble. And, you know, I mean, it’s really a simple thing, like I thought, I just, I’m not making money. This was way, way decades ago, when my very first business and I hired a consultant to help me, she looked all on my financials and said, No, you know how to make money. Your gross revenue shows that you just don’t know how to make a profit.
Steve Fretzin [02:32]
So this sounds like a lot of lawyers that are listening right now that are doing great. They got, you know, half a million, a million in and where’s the profit?
Ral West [02:40]
Yeah, so I needed to be looking at the bottom line and not just the top line. So I am very careful about that ever since then and so, and then that’s one of the things that I teach the entrepreneurs that I work with, too, is it, you know, it’s great to have a lot of statistics, a lot of measurements. And Peter Drucker is absolutely correct about that. You know, you can’t manage it, if you can’t measure it, but you need to know what to measure. You know, what is it that’s really going to move the needle for you by knowing what’s going on? Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [03:12]
But REL, I have a very good feeling we’re going to come back to that is one of the many questions I have lined up for you today. Let’s talk about you though for a moment, everybody. REL, West is the owner of REL West living the dream. Give us a little bit of a background on how you came to be.
Ral West [03:26]
Okay. Well, I was born in Seattle, Washington, but moved to Alaska in my mid 20s. This was like 1980 Yes, I started my own business shortly after moving to Alaska, and I was in Anchorage and met the guy across the hall. He started a business after picking my brain about tourism, because that was the industry that I was in, and we ended up getting married, ended up running that business together for 25 years, and grew it to eight digits in revenue, and then sold it to Alaska Airlines. So that’s the short story. Yeah, we’ve got a number of other business ventures along the way, both before and after we sold that business, and a couple of years ago, I decided to take some advice that I had received about, you know, route, you need to teach people all the things that you have learned in your 40 plus years as an entrepreneur and how you’ve managed To have this life. They tell me that we are living the dream. Yes, we are. And how do you do it? And how do you, you know, juggle your businesses and still go off on all your travels? And how do you manage it all?
Steve Fretzin [04:32]
Yeah, it’s a big mystery. So we have to explore inquiry minds. Want to know is a thing that’s a thing from the 80s? There you go. As long as we’re going back, we’ll take a trip back. National Inquirer, that’s right, all right, so let’s talk about problems, then solutions. So there are folks listening at big firms, small firms, solos and everything in between. I always say, no matter where you are at you Inc, you have a business under someone else’s umbrella, or you have your own umbrella, whatever. It might be, what are some of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make in their early years, or maybe that they just keep making and not changing or improving outside of measuring which we’re going to come back to? Well, that is one of the things that I knew. I separated it. I separate intentionally separated. Got me
Ral West [05:17]
so the next big mistake, and probably actually the first big mistake is trying to do everything themselves and running themselves into the ground. Yeah, just like, I can’t afford to hire any help, you know, so I have to do it all myself, or I don’t want to delegate this to anybody else. They’re not going to do it the way I want it to be done. So I have to do it myself, and they just get exhausted and overwhelmed, and, you know, out of shape and overweight and all the things that I was we had
Steve Fretzin [05:50]
time to pick up the snickery bars for lunch, though, but that’s not living the dream, right? It’s living a nightmare.
Ral West [05:56]
We lived on fast food. Okay? So
Steve Fretzin [05:59]
we understand that doing everything is wrong. We understand that lawyers have a perfectionist mindset in many cases, and it’s just easier that they’ll say. It’s just easier if I do it myself without really thinking that they’re saying that about 10 or 20 different jobs that are all delegatable. How do you get your mind turned in the right way to begin to start delegating things away that aren’t really at your level of expertise and where your time is valued as opposed to being sort of
Ral West [06:29]
thrown away. Yeah, well, I think you said it, and that is that you have to, you have to work on your mind. It’s a mindset issue. First, you have to understand that there’s a proper way to delegate, and you can’t grow. You cannot grow your business if you don’t learn to delegate, and if you don’t learn to get some of these pieces off of your shoulders. But there is an art to delegating properly, and that involves very clearly spelling out not just what needs to be done, but what it looks like at the end? What is the end result that you want? And how do you get it there? And then you have to make sure that you follow through. You have to build in some feedback loops so that you don’t just, you know, drop it off on somebody else’s desk and then walk away and say, Okay, well, I’m done. I delegated it. Well, no wonder if you don’t get good results. You have to follow through, yeah. And I think if you do that, if you’re very, very, very clear at the outset as to what you want. And, you know, as we sort of talk about, like setting up snow fences, you know, we live in Alaska, so put the snow fences up on the road. And, you know, stay within the snow fences. And you don’t have to do it exactly the way I would do it, but the end result needs to be what I want, and it needs to be done in a timely fashion. You know when I need it to be done? So all of that needs to be laid out in advance, and then you follow through
Steve Fretzin [07:52]
the things that I think about, too is, what do I really enjoy and what do I really dislike? And I started my business 21 years ago, and right away. The first thing I did was gotta I got a bookkeeper. Right away, I go, Look, I want reports. I know how to read a P, L. I know how to read a balance sheet. I was a business coach before I started my own business, so I get that. I also know I don’t want to have to deal with going through my credit card statement and sending out invoices and all that junk. So like, right away I knew that, and that right away took a lot off my plate. And then you just start thinking about what else, and just keep saying what else, until you realize, look, I just got 25% of my time back. Now I can go on vacation. Now I can build more hours. Now I can, you know, go after, you know, new clients, because I have this gap of time, right?
Ral West [08:42]
So that’s part of it is like looking at what you don’t enjoy doing, but the other part of it is looking at the value of what it is that you’re doing. And one of those mottos that some people say is, if somebody else can do this, who’s worth? You know, 1015, $25, an hour, what are you worth? So should you really be mowing the lawn or cleaning your house, or, you know, doing anything that you could pay somebody else, much less money to do? Yeah, and really get all of that stuff off of your plate, even if you enjoy mowing the lawn, you know, don’t do it
Steve Fretzin [09:17]
something else. And listen, well, again, you have, but that’s, again, you have to weigh out like, Alright, enjoy more the lawn. That’s when I listen to Steve’s podcast. We don’t want to take that away, you know, things like that, but, or that’s your special quiet time away from everything and everybody. You got five screaming kids. You know, mowing the lawn can be the best thing, you know, for your sanity.
Ral West [09:36]
You’re saying the lawn mower drowns them out. I’m saying, I’m saying
Steve Fretzin [09:38]
it might. I’m saying it might so, but I get what you’re saying. So delegation really, really important. What’s, what are other mistakes that people are making is in trying to be more entrepreneurial?
Ral West [09:50]
Well, you know, delegation is just one form of leverage. So I really teach you know about using leverage. So another way to get leverage and get some of your time back, which is what we’re. Really addressing here is to use automation wherever you can. And there’s so much technology available today that can reduce the time that we spend on things that we have to do, like, Well, you mentioned bookkeeping is a great one to get off your desk, not your lap, and just managing email. You know, several months ago, I found that I was spending too much time just going through, you know, the hundreds of emails. And I found somebody who could set me up with an AI type of app that sorts my emails for me into separate folders. And so, like, I look at those folders, like, once a day, yeah? And I swear it has saved me hours every week, sometimes a couple hours a day.
Steve Fretzin [10:43]
So that’s nice, because AI versus having, like an assistant or trusting someone to go through your sensitive, you know, and lawyers have confidentiality and things, so having an AI, you know, maybe an internal AI that isn’t, isn’t talking with the world, that helps you do that, that might be a great option, another one of my favorite time management consultants and coaches, Walt Hampton, who’s been on the show a few times, he has different email addresses, so like, one will be just for clients, and then maybe there’s one or two others that are for different kinds of people. And so the clients get him directly, and then other the other ones get his assistant, who then curates them and deals with them, schedules them, and leaves everything so off his plate, and knows him well enough to know what should go in the calendar and what
Ral West [11:30]
shouldn’t beautiful. Yeah, that’s great. I encourage because one of the other things I teach is systems. That sounds
Steve Fretzin [11:36]
like a fabulous system. That’s a good system. Yeah? It’s a good everybody should take note of that, yeah, but not everybody’s thinking about the idea that you could have multiple emails, you know? And I, I do that actually, with the automation of auto scheduling. So I’ve got frets and.com/you know, one thing, fretz.com/another, thing, and they’re ones for clients, ones for networking, ones for follow up, and they have different levels of access to my calendar clients have the most access, and then it goes down from there. And if I only want to do podcasts on, you know, Mondays and Fridays, well, then the podcast link is only going to allow for that. So that really allows you to create and curate your schedule the way you want it to be.
Ral West [12:18]
Too well, yes, I and I do the same thing. I set aside certain slots on my calendar for certain types of appointments and other slots for another type, and then the link that you send depends on what kind of appointment that is, yeah, so yeah, you can segregate your time that way. Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [12:42]
Hey. Pi attorneys, if you’re serious about scaling your firm, there’s one event you can’t afford to miss. Pim con 2025 happening October 5 through the eighth at the Phoenician resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. Pimcon isn’t your average legal conference. It’s an experience. Learn how to take your firm from good to goat with some of the biggest trailblazers in the PI space, including yours truly, as we share our elite marketing and brand building strategies. Tickets on sale [email protected] that’s p i m, c o n.org or just hit the link in the show notes. Your climb to the top starts at PIM con 2025 let’s go from good to go. Hey, be that lawyer friends. If you’re looking for smarter ways to grow your law practice and want to stay ahead of the curve in legal tech, business and strategy, then it’s time to check out legal verse media, the go to hub for lawyers who want more. This international platform connects you with global thought leaders through articles, podcasts, webinars and interactive forums that are shaping the future of law, explore everything with a free 14 day trial, including early access to tools peer discussions and a chance to build your brand as a thought leader. Don’t wait. Visit legalverse media.com and register for membership today. Hey everybody, it’s Steve Fretzin as the you know, I’m the host of the be that lawyer podcast, and if you’re serious about growing your law practice, let’s talk. I’ve coached hundreds of attorneys to build bigger books of business without selling, chasing or wasting time. This isn’t a sales pitch. It’s a real 30 minute strategy session to explore what’s possible for you in your practice. Just head over to fretzin.com and grab a time that works for you, and let’s make this your breakout year. Let me ask you this, do you have a tip or a trick for how to best qualify who to delegate to that could be a VA, an assistant, an associate, that’s paralegal. What are how do you find the people or get you know. How do you onboard them? Like, what are some keys to having a system of being able to delegate with confidence?
Ral West [14:48]
Okay, well, I do believe in using virtual assistants. I have one that’s fabulous, and I think I’m very lucky. I think that there’s all kinds of people out there that can do a good. Job. And I think a lot of times people say, Oh, you have to get the right person. And sometimes I think there’s just, there’s a lot of good people, but how you lead them and how you train them is going to be a key as to whether or not they’re a good person for you. So you have to take some responsibility to make sure that you’re laying out Well, one thing, what is the culture of your organization, and what do you stand for? What are your values? And make sure that these people understand it and are willing to buy into it. And you can ask right up front, okay, this is, you know, these are the rules. These are the principles by which we operate. Do you agree with those? Can you live with those? And so then, yeah, that way you can kind of weed out the ones that are just not a good fit. Yeah, but then making sure that you are able to teach them, train them, give them some some autonomy, some freedom, give them some incentives and some motivation. And then again, going back to how you delegate, it’s like, the more clear you are with your training, and the more clear your systems are, the more clear you have policies and procedures outlined, the better result you’re going to get from any person that you choose to delegate to. So I really kind of resist the idea that, Oh, you have to find the right person
Steve Fretzin [16:21]
or the perfect person, right? There is no perfect person. There might be a right person. There might be a good person. I think there’s some non negotiables that you need to write down in who’s going to be a VA for you, or who’s going to help you with things like looking through your email. That’s a you know, one of the things that they talk about in the show the bear in the kitchen is like, what are the non negotiables of how you’re going to run a kitchen and who’s going to work there? And that could be a part of the like for me, I need a virtual assistant who’s autonomous that can work without me having to babysit or having me on them all the time. And things get done. Things get done now is that day one? No, that’s not day one, right? Day one is training. Day two is training. You know, there’s things that have to go into it, right?
Ral West [17:05]
Ralph, onboarding is a huge thing, yeah, you know, have your onboarding set up as a system, you know, and have things somewhat automated in your onboarding. I mean, you could create videos these days. That’s really simple. Say, Okay, here’s how to do a particular task, and you just show them, you know, step by step, or have somebody else do the video. But there’s so many ways to set up your onboarding and your training so that it’s complete, and I think so many times that things go awry because something was lost in the communication, and somebody was not as clear as they should be. So yes, and I think that, you know, you just have to be cognizant of who you’re trusting and what you’re sharing true. But I think most people you know give them the benefit of the doubt.
Steve Fretzin [17:52]
Yeah, I mean, back background check, possibly talking with a couple of references, absolutely, just to hear someone say, you know, listen, this person worked for me for a year. I never had to question their work ethic, or I never had to question, you know, that their integrity, they worked hard, they helped me, you know, get from here to there. It just that just helps me feel good, that what I’m seeing on the paper, and that my gut about the person that says this is the right person is validated. And I think that even then, it may not go 100% the way you want, but it’s like your take. It’s like gambling in Vegas. Would you rather go in without knowing how to play blackjack or counting cards? One’s going to give you a much greater chance of success, right?
Ral West [18:34]
I mean, like, we have a lot of apartments, and we don’t just rent the apartments to just anyone. We do the background checks and the credit checks and all that sort of thing. And we did that with our employees, too. And then the other thing is that if it’s not going well, you need to address it right away, and you need to be clear about what is not going well and how this is what I lined out for you. This is what I said was expected. You’re not doing it. So here’s one more chance, and then you’re very clear about what the consequences will be if they don’t cut it. Yeah. And then you you weed them out as soon as it’s clear that it’s not the
Steve Fretzin [19:10]
right fit. Well, I’ve heard the saying in management, slow to hire, quick to fire. I’m not that way, which has been, I think, in some cases, to my detriment, I’m I hold on to people much longer than I should, but I also don’t have I only have one VA so, you know, I don’t have a team where I’m dealing with that in and out. But I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier about, you know, what needs to be measured and when your people are looking at the entrepreneurial experience and maybe the business isn’t going as well as they had hoped or planned. What are you looking to measure? How do you sort of start to help somebody realize the numbers or what they’re measuring and how it’s going to play out?
Ral West [19:50]
Well, one of the important things to measure, of course, is your revenue, and don’t forget the profit, but you have to keep track of your expenses. I mean, that’s that is what you. Makes it profit. At the bottom of the, you know, bottom of the PnL is that your expenses have to be less than your revenue. So monitor those expenses, make sure that you’ve got a good flow for your revenue. Are you doing the marketing that you need to be doing? And look at those marketing numbers in terms of whether it’s leads or whatever your particular business is doing to bring in new clients and make sure that that pipeline, it stays full, because if the pipeline starts to dry up, you know that eventually, that’s going to reflect in your bottom line.
Steve Fretzin [20:32]
So now you’re speaking my language. I’m all about not just filling the pipeline rail, but it’s really, for me, about quality. I mean, I used to be one of these guys that had the most full pipeline of anyone on the sales team back in the day, right? That was what my bosses wanted. That’s what I did, and it was a lot of chasing after junk. And so I think, you know, most attorneys would agree that if time is their most valuable asset, that we want to fill our pipeline, but we want to fill it with quality people. How do we qualify people forward and down and through, and how do we discount qualify people out in a way before they waste a lot of our time?
Ral West [21:09]
Well, how you know, how clear Are you on the type of clients that you want, and how clear Are you on what your service really is? And you can craft a statement as to your ideal customer, and then get your customers to match that. Yeah, that description. And yes, I was just talking to one of my mastermind people the other day about other certain clients that are not right for the future of her business. She could do this work, but it’s not going to get her business to where she wants it to be, so she has to learn to say no. And, you know, that’s a lesson. Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [21:43]
So how do you start to figure out who you want as your client? What’s the process you put clients through to figure out like their buyer persona?
Ral West [21:51]
Well, each each client, of course, has their own. I mean, it’s unique. There’s a company that I work with that helped me to develop my what they call brand DNA, just, what are you? Who are you? What are you selling? What are you really providing? Who do you want to sell it to? And you know, what is that person? What is it that ideal client persona look like? And really get a feel for their personality, age, you know, all the demographics, all the psychographics, even, you know, you can get very particular about it. So it really comes down to, like, planning. How much planning do you put into getting the right clients? Or do you just wait to see who shows up at the door?
Steve Fretzin [22:34]
Yeah, I had a young lawyer, and when I say young, like higher 40s to my 55 and he was like, I just don’t want to I go, what’s your motivation? He goes, I don’t want to be a service partner. You like the rest of my career. Like there’s two paths. One is to be a service partner and just do everyone’s work. Another is to build your own book of business, take control of your career and move up the ladder to equity partner and have you know, a real say in how your 50s and 60s are going to go. And he was 100% on board with that, and all the reasons why that is a direction that’s meaningful to him, but I needed him to verbalize that. I needed him to I could tell him, that’s what it’s all about, right? I’m doing that now, but it was important for him to verbalize that to me, and for me to hear him say it, because if I’m going to work with him as a client, I need to know this is real and that someone’s going to perform. How do you get the best performance out of the people that the entrepreneurs that you work with?
Ral West [23:30]
Well, that’s actually, that’s a tough question. I mean, I just look at each person and look at what they’re trying to accomplish with their lives and with their business. And I don’t you know, you just bring out the best in people and look at what is it that motivates them? I like to know what everybody’s Why is why? You know, what is it that you’re really wanting here? And I start with what’s your vision for your future, and then get them pointed in the direction of where they really want to go, yeah, and then I think everything flows from that. I think when you’re talking about, like, what kind of business a particular attorney wants to go for, I mean, I think that you have to go back within and say, what is it that you’re really motivated by? What is it that you’re seeing 20 years down the road, or 30 years down the road, where do you want to be? And so what is it that’s going to get you there? And I think that’s how you get everybody to find the best path for themselves, yeah, be a little introspective,
Steve Fretzin [24:30]
yeah, and then maybe work backwards from where they are, where they want to be, to where they are now. And then the path becomes more visual. Yes.
Ral West [24:38]
I mean, that’s really what I encourage people to do is, you know, yeah, look forward and then figure out what are the steps that you’re going to take to get there. Because it is always, you know, one step at a time. And by the way,
Steve Fretzin [24:50]
I mean, that’s maybe a plug, not just for you and I, but for coaches and profession consultants around the globe, that that’s what we do. I mean, we are the people who you. You know, help others to accomplish their dreams and live the dream and be their best selves and all that. And if you find the right coach and that the right fit, that can help you see that path forward in that future and work and realize they can help work it backwards with a plan systems, whatever it might be that’s going to be a big part of how maybe you make that big step forward, as opposed to staying in the mud where you are,
Ral West [25:25]
right and, you know, helping them see what is blocking them too. I mean, each of us do have certain mental blocks that sometimes we need to just kind of blast through or just gently push aside. You know? Why is it that you never want to do that? You know? Yeah, there’s that. But I think, you know, each person is so unique, and you just have to work with each individual, yeah, and find out what’s what their brilliance is, yeah.
Steve Fretzin [25:56]
Well, yeah, what’s their brilliance? And what’s their head trash? And how do we get rid of the head trash and lean to the brilliance. That’s awesome. That’s exactly the way. There’s a so here’s a big announcement, everybody. I had a great segment at the end of these shows called someone’s big mistake. I made a big mistake in changing the name to failing forward because the votes are in. People want it to be the big mistake.
Ral West [26:18]
So, Ralph, what’s your big mistake? Oh, God, where do I start?
Steve Fretzin [26:24]
I could say the same thing, right? And there’s a lot of different answers I could give you, but let’s pick one, and we’ll
Ral West [26:29]
go with I think that the biggest mistakes plural that I’ve made had to do with not clearly seeing the end game of a particular decision, mostly like investment types decisions where, like, I had an idea as to how this was going to work out, and it looked great, but I didn’t count for the worst case scenario. And when that worst case scenario ended up happening, I was like, oh,
Steve Fretzin [26:56]
yeah, that was not expecting that. And then, yeah, what’s the learn? The lesson learned that you What are you doing differently now to avoid those kinds of missteps,
Ral West [27:06]
more homework, more due diligence, you know, ask more questions. Dig a little deeper into the what if, what if that happens? And what if that happens, you know, the downside, and take, really, take a much serious, more serious look at what the downside could be and not all be all, you know. Pollyanna, yeah, this looks wonderful,
Steve Fretzin [27:26]
right, right? Well, and I think the beauty of mistakes are the lessons learned and what we take away, and how we change our behavior, how we change our mindsets to go about things a different way. And that’s ultimately, you know, why they’re why we have to fail, or why we have to make mistakes? And it sounds like, you know, you and I have both been very successful from the life lessons. We just hope that the mistakes aren’t too big, right? We’re trying to make smaller mistakes as we go right.
Ral West [27:53]
And you can’t let the mistakes make you stop moving forward, yeah, and you have to keep, keep trying. And so, you know, yes, you’ll probably make more mistakes. Hopefully you don’t make the same ones, right? Don’t let them freeze you in your tracks, you know? And say, Oh God, I can’t take any action, because that could be a big mistake again. Like, yeah, no, no, just go for it, yeah.
Steve Fretzin [28:13]
Well, that’s a great, great way to wrap things up. Let’s take a moment, of course, to thank our wonderful sponsors. We’ve got legal verse. If you guys want to check out legal verse, media.com Great website. Become a member, and you’re going to find great content, great lawyers to network with international spin, really, really cool stuff. Of course, pimcon, coming up in October, 1 class. Pi experience. You want to grow your personal injury firm. This is the place to be. I think you know, we’re coming up close to it. So get your tickets now. And of course, check out the law her podcast with Sonia Palmer. Fantastic podcast. Ral. People want to get in touch with you. They want to hear more about how to live the dream. What are the digits? How do they get in touch with you?
Ral West [28:52]
And it’s very easy. REL West, just like on the screen, there just R, a, l, W, E, S, t.com, you’ll also find me on LinkedIn and YouTube, and please subscribe to my YouTube channel, subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter, and visit my website and check out my mastermind.
Steve Fretzin [29:11]
Fantastic, fantastic. All right. Well, thank you so much. I’m glad that we were able to get get this cook, and I know I think I had to reschedule on you once or twice, and I apologize for that. I’m happy that we’re able to knock this out. You’ve been an absolute pleasure, as I knew you would be. And let’s keep in the loop together, and let’s make sure when this comes out, you know, in the next month or so, that we, you know, give it some juice, and really, you know, make sure people get the opportunity to hear it. Fantastic. Let’s do it. Thank you. Thank you, and thank you everybody for hanging out with Raul and I for the last 30 minutes. You know, look, you can be that successful. You can be that entrepreneur, and you can be that lawyer. It just takes some planning, some execution, right mindset, systems, but there are a lot of people doing it, and you’re just as smart as they are, so make some good decisions, and you’ll get there. So that’s all for today. Everybody. Take care, be safe, be well, and we will talk again. Soon.
Narrator [30:04]
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.