In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Steven Dimitt discuss:
- Why you need to niche down in order to grow and succeed.
- Transitioning your practice area and successfully rebranding.
- Focusing on relationships during a transition in your career.
- Broadening your business development.
Key Takeaways:
- When you focus on a niche, it brings credibility to you as a lawyer and comfort to your clients because they know you’re the best.
- Maintaining relationships and having conversations with people over time, making a transition is not going to be a surprise.
- Work with people you trust and it will allow you to maintain relationships, even as you focus only on the areas of law you want to focus on.
- As you maintain your business development, you’re going to be planting seeds and getting yourself into a position of freedom in your career.
“People are in different transitions in different times, whether it’s switching practice areas or the lifecycle of your career. We have some clients who used the same attorney for 40 years and he’s about to retire and now they need to find somebody else. You never know, so you just keep the contacts and it might be the right place at the right time.” — Steven Dimitt
Read more from Steve at Above the Law: AboveTheLaw.com/tag/Steve-Fretzin/
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Episode References:
- Charles Gillis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gillis/
- Seven Year Trap by Charles Gillis: https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Year-Trap-Observations-Partnership/dp/0692195661
- The Game by Alex Hormozi: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjkaUn6QNTZTd2rKxXdy-_I0JDHlwdy6j
About Steven Dimitt: Steven focuses on representing local, regional, and national commercial clients on matters relating to real estate, land use/zoning, and construction. Beginning with site selection and continuing throughout the construction, lease-up, and ultimate sale of the project after final completion, Steven deals heavily with all aspects of real estate development. Steven was previously a partner at one of the largest law firms in Texas. However, he moved to Platt Richmond to partner with other ex-big law attorneys to continue to provide high-quality service while being more cost-effective for his clients.
Connect with Steven Dimitt:
Website: https://plattrichmond.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-dimitt-52a13916/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/plattrichmond/
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
Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, before we get to the show, I just want to share that I’m now writing for Above the Law. If you enjoy this podcast, you might also enjoy my monthly columns. You can go to Above the Law and type my name into the magnifying glass in the top right corner to read my latest articles. Thanks and enjoy the show.
[00:00:21] Narrator: 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
[00:00:43] Steve Fretzin: Well, hey everybody welcome back to the be that lawyer with fretzin podcast so happy that you’re here You If you’re loving the show, please don’t be shy.
[00:00:51] Steve Fretzin: Please tell people about it. Spread the word, give us some good ratings. Let’s get this thing, keep this thing cooking, as they say. I’ve got Steven waiting in the wings. How you doing, Steven? Doing great. How are you? Doing okay. Doing okay. Down in Dallas, yeah? That is right. Down in hot Dallas right now. Hot Dallas.
[00:01:06] Steve Fretzin: What are you guys hitting these days? 100? It’s actually been pretty cool
[00:01:10] Steven Dimitt: lately, but yeah, that typical time of year, around 100.
[00:01:13] Steve Fretzin: Okay. All right. But that’s, that’s, you know, that’s what you pay for when you go down south. You’re going to deal with that a little bit and you get the better winners. That’s. And that’s the weather report on the be that lawyer podcast everybody.
[00:01:22] Steve Fretzin: So enjoy the shows all about weather and in different cities. So no, but really, really, yeah, really good. So there’s one movie that comes on, you know, Kate and I’m not like, like, I don’t have cable anymore. So it’s not like you used to be, but it used to like anytime it came on, I kind of had to watch it.
[00:01:39] Steve Fretzin: And that’s Shawshank. You is, are you the same way? Absolutely.
[00:01:44] Steven Dimitt: It’s one of those stop downs. You have to turn it on. But yeah, love the quote, you know, get busy living, get busy dying, especially with the it’s like a prison behind me where carbon out of the rehab. It’s a light industrial building, which is now our office.
[00:01:57] Steven Dimitt: So it looks like behind the picture back there, I’m slowly trying to get out of this place. Okay,
[00:02:03] Steve Fretzin: well, and that’s our core of the show by the way is get busy living or living or get busy dying and I, you know, it’s, I’ve actually in many people that are listening and probably had some kind of near death experience.
[00:02:14] Steve Fretzin: I definitely have. And the big takeaway is, look, you get one shot at this thing called life and you can either squander it and just like, you know, have a bunch of geez, I wish I had. Or you can get busy living and actually make your dreams happen and do what you want to do and enjoy things. And that’s a good lead into our topic today, but is that sort of your thought on that, on that quote as well, or do you have a different spin?
[00:02:38] Steven Dimitt: Yeah, no, exactly. One of those life’s too short. So, especially in the work context, you hate what you’re doing. You know, if you want to change it up and my dad said, the only thing that we’re certain about is time is going to keep going forward. And what are you doing at the end of that time, whether it’s going to law school or MBA or something else or changing your job.
[00:02:53] Steven Dimitt: So right there with you.
[00:02:55] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It sounds like we had two quotes of the show. We had the one from red and we got the one from your dad. So that’s correct. Do we, do we just When I’m coming up at the end, you got more, more quotes coming your way, everybody. So hang tight. We’ve got Stephen DeMitt is a partner at Plaid Richmond.
[00:03:13] Steve Fretzin: You work with Charles Gillis, who’s been on the show and he’s one of my favorite people and just, just the greatest guy. And, and I’m so happy that he introduced us and welcome to the show and, and give us a little background on on sort of your career leading into legal and what you’re up to.
[00:03:27] Steven Dimitt: Yeah, absolutely. Charles is great. Read a book, The Seven Year Trap. Yeah, The Seven Year Trap. Phenomenal. Terrific. So, you know, my journey kind of has changed and evolved over time. So I got out of law school in 2009. Great, great market. So the option was litigation or litigation, right? There was not a lot of deals being done.
[00:03:48] Steven Dimitt: So I went that route. I kind of the background of law school, just legal writing. I like that piece of it, but, but over time it kind of evolved. I found out, you know, naturally I’m not an adversarial fretzin. So it wasn’t more like a deal maker. And so over time, I wanted to transition my practice from litigation to now the transactional real estate construction development side.
[00:04:11] Steven Dimitt: So that’s what I do now. Now real estate construction development could have all those areas.
[00:04:16] Steve Fretzin: Okay. And I think we’re going to kind of lean into this a little bit. So there’s, there’s so many different practice areas. And you know, the old days of being a generalist where you could just say, Hey, I do everything.
[00:04:26] Steve Fretzin: What do you need? You know, that those days have kind of come and gone. And for a number of reasons, but mainly, you know, people are just not remembered for anything. If you’re trying to do everything. Right. Right.
[00:04:37] Steven Dimitt: No, exactly. It is the people with a social media posts where they’re expert in everything, which means you’re probably expert in nothing.
[00:04:43] Steven Dimitt: Yeah.
[00:04:44] Steve Fretzin: You know, my, my late father, Larry, the lawyer would, you know, he, he did really well in a lot of things. If it got over, if it got over his pay grade, he would firm it out. But, but I mean, he really was one of the last few generalists that could, you know, without being a country lawyer that could kind of do everything just was just super smart.
[00:05:01] Steve Fretzin: But I think today we, we are all niching down. We’re all figuring out like, what can we become great at doing in a particular area so that we are known for something. So talk about, you know, talk about the importance of, of having a niche and why that should resonate with lawyers. And they, they, you know, people that want to do, Hey, I do litigation.
[00:05:20] Steve Fretzin: I do transaction. They don’t want to give up a nickel to make a dollar.
[00:05:24] Steven Dimitt: Exactly. I mean, people, when they hire them, want to hire the best, right? Get the experts, somebody who is not kind of Googling before that, the call trying to figure out what’s going on. So they can do people in house or non lawyers can Google as quickly as we can to figure out Tidbits about the law.
[00:05:41] Steven Dimitt: So I think it adds credibility of getting into the issues. People hire you for reassurance or comfort in a specific issue, whether it’s big time litigation that the company or it’s I’m buying this big piece of property. They trust you with that transaction and they want to have confidence and it is selected.
[00:05:58] Steven Dimitt: So I think it gives them some comfort then go like, this is the person for this area.
[00:06:04] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, so I’m, I’m, I’ve got to have some brain surgery done. Not really. But I’ve decided I’m going to go with my general practitioner to kind of handle that surgery. Probably not a
[00:06:13] Steven Dimitt: great idea. That’s right.
[00:06:16] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. I mean, if I want a good malpractice suit to hand off to a lawyer, maybe that’s a great one to go.
[00:06:21] Steve Fretzin: But, you know, look, I think that there’s, there’s a lot of people, whether it was the recession of 2008, nine, whether it’s just, you know, The competitive space in the market or maybe it’s in a practice area that people don’t enjoy or they see a bigger future in another practice area that’s up and coming right that you have to consider at some point possibly transitioning your practice to another practice area and I think there’s a lot of fear and anxiety.
[00:06:46] Steve Fretzin: Around, you know, leaving something behind that you maybe spent five or 10 years on to go into something newer, but that may be what you have to do. So how would you kind of recommend and how did you do it to, to start to shift the tide?
[00:06:59] Steven Dimitt: Yeah, absolutely. I think what you said is right. I really tend to questions is why do you love something else?
[00:07:04] Steven Dimitt: I found out what I want to do. I love it. This sucks. I hate this. I just get me out, whatever. It’s a dying industry or future success. I remember when I was kind of a young lawyer, I did a little bit of insurance defense to one of the, you know, older lawyers at the times, like, Don’t do this.
[00:07:23] Steve Fretzin: Let me pull you aside
[00:07:24] Steven Dimitt: and whisper in your ear.
[00:07:24] Steven Dimitt: That’s, that’s right. So no, I think really you need to understand that you’re betting on yourself, right? This is not going to be easy. You will take a little bit of a step back to then take multiple steps forward of going, what do I want to do and really getting into it. And so for me personally, You know, it really was kind of a burn the boats.
[00:07:43] Steven Dimitt: Let’s go all in. So I came over, I was at a larger, you know, 400 plus person law firm partner over there and decided that, you know, made partner looked around and said, do I really want to be here? And so so my, my law school classmates started Platt Richmond. Let them take the hard part of starting it and yeah, it seemed successful.
[00:08:05] Steven Dimitt: So I decided to then jump in and had a conversation in a more entrepreneurial spirit. And decided to take a leap, come over, whatever here and focus more transition to real estate, land use, construction, transactional side. And great timing when I moved over from, you know, the salary partner, big firm job a week later, coming to a new firm.
[00:08:26] Steven Dimitt: COVID hits and I’m going, what the hell did I do of going, give that up to now at eat what you kill model at the new firm is this right? Or is it, is it not? And hindsight, thankfully, it was the best decision I made. It was great. But 1 of those really take away the safety net of going, look, you’re going to earn what you bring in.
[00:08:48] Steven Dimitt: You better go do it. And so that in connection with great people I work with who really share in the origination business efforts. Really just kind of have to dig into that new practice group or what are you getting into and become as much quickly as you can be the expert and start building out your, your relationships.
[00:09:07] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. So it’s really, it sounds like a three part step. One is sort of the. The, the research and the identification of the practice area that you want to move into, and you’re finding your why, as you said, okay. The second part is you have to learn it, right? You have to actually know what you’re talking about in that space.
[00:09:23] Steve Fretzin: And then the third thing is you need to then obviously go out and get business and bring it in. Unless again, your firm, you know, can feed you stuff because they have an excess of that particular type of work.
[00:09:33] Steven Dimitt: That’s, that’s exactly right. So yeah, I mean, I’m not big on that. You fake it till you make it.
[00:09:37] Steven Dimitt: So you can’t really learn and be authentic and genuine.Clients see that respect that have comfortably talked about before and choosing you. So, yeah, getting up to speed as quickly as you can.
[00:09:51] Steve Fretzin: So what, how, how do you, how did you approach, and I want to obviously share a little bit about some thoughts on how I approach things, but how did you approach business development to rebrand your practice?
[00:10:00] Steve Fretzin: Because when you realize, hey, I’ve got this new thing, I’ve got to get it out there, get the word out, but also I’ve got to actually bring in business.
[00:10:07] Steven Dimitt: Sure. I mean, and this is not new information really focusing on kind of relationships, right? Not just the transactional business, because I’m sure all the in house lawyers love the time where they changed the LinkedIn from a firm to in house.
[00:10:20] Steven Dimitt: And now they have all these new best friends coming in. Like, what the hell is this person? I’ve talked to you in years coming in. So it’s really, I think it’s not a shock to people. It’s like, you’re having this follow up, this meetings, this conversations, relationships with people over time. It’s not going to be like you’re coming out of the blue.
[00:10:37] Steven Dimitt: Hey, I see you’re in the real estate field. If you’ve kind of been in connection with them throughout the years, it’s great. But really for the non lawyers it’s letting people know what you do. I’m shocked how many people who are not attorneys who are clients or friends that just know I’m an attorney, which is great.
[00:10:54] Steven Dimitt: If it’s something that comes in, call me that that’s wonderful. But they’re like, I don’t know what the hell you do. So kind of letting people know what you do. And then Getting involved in, in this specific industry is great. And that’s not as big as like. Looking like you’re changing or making big changes that probably don’t know you you’re coming in new there were people who didn’t know you before as long as you have that kind of relationship you tell them the story of what happened most people were supportive and i want to support you going forward yeah
[00:11:24] Steve Fretzin: and i think there’s there’s something to be said too about.
[00:11:26] Steve Fretzin: You know something that’s new and shiny right like you have a reason to go back to your network and say hey that could be changing firms that can be changing practice areas but you have like hey i have something i need to talk to you about and i want to meet with you when you get to share it part of that exercise my hope would be.
[00:11:43] Steve Fretzin: Is that folks are thinking about our meeting with these people? Yes, I’m looking for business, but I also need to meet with them and figure out how can I add value for them, right? That’s sort of networking 101, but it gives you an opportunity to get back in front of people that you may have not seen in a number of years.
[00:11:59] Steve Fretzin: Maybe even those GCs you talked about earlier, right? Cause with something new and shiny to say, but also you have to, you also have to step back and listen and take it in and try to figure out where, where you can connect them.
[00:12:10] Steven Dimitt: Absolutely. That’s right. And you’re nailing the head back, adding value and having this kind of genuine conversations and, and people want to be supportive.
[00:12:18] Steven Dimitt: You know, Hey, there’s new opportunity. How can I introduce you to somebody in your network developers in my world or brokers or things like that. People want to, want to help you out.
[00:12:29] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, I think another important part of this is when you change practice areas, you have an entirely new direction of and in targets that need to be identified.
[00:12:39] Steve Fretzin: So just as a quick example, I know like real estate like let’s just say residential real estate lawyers that they tend to then fall into estate planning Okay, because I think a lot of the this there’s a lot of the same connectors in those two spaces But when you move into one from litigation to transaction or whatever, you might have totally different targets Did you find that to be the case?
[00:13:00] Steven Dimitt: I did one of those I think I want I knew what I wanted to do for a while and just You Didn’t pull the trigger. So I was involved in some real estate industry groups for a long time, kind of as the litigator, it’s hard to kind of get into the deal work. So I was kind of on, on the sidelines and knew a lot of the players.
[00:13:17] Steven Dimitt: But like you said, kind of switching formally over to more of the transactional side, I was able to reconnect with those people and have conversations about, you know, I’m really in your world. I wanted to be, but now we can actually do some business together was, was a good way of kind of reconnecting with them.
[00:13:32] Steven Dimitt: Like you said,
[00:13:33] Steve Fretzin: Do you do you find that there are certain types of either lawyers or other consultants or people that are best for you that you have identified that can, you know, get you, get you that the real estate deals maybe more frequently than other people. I
[00:13:50] Steven Dimitt: mean, brokers are great. They’re, they see a lot of deals coming in.
[00:13:53] Steven Dimitt: You always see them on the the closing sheet, but good Lawrence versus making a ton of money. On the commercial side and the residential side, but you don’t see how many kind of misses them out. So they give them a hard time where we as lawyers bill by the hour or kind of slogging through that sometimes, but no, they’re great.
[00:14:09] Steven Dimitt: They’re going to referral source. Definitely people who are actually in the industry are ideal, obviously. But yeah, there’s people living on the outside of whether it’s a But state planning CPAs that are involved in the business side of, you know, with people, they’ve been great resources. People that specialize in a particular area, criminal law, family law, and that’s all they do.
[00:14:29] Steven Dimitt: You know, if you have a, you’re a full service shop, like I’m at, usually you take care of most of the issues with a client. It says ones where it’s a boutique that they’re great to, to be referral source as well.
[00:14:41] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And so as you, as you move your practice from one area to another, how are you sort of protecting the, you know, the, sort of the relationship because you’ve been doing one thing for so long and you’re moving to another, but you have people that know you for something.
[00:14:59] Steve Fretzin: How do you protect it? That relationship so that they will continue to either send work your way or think of you in a positive light when you’re kind of moving out of the things you’ve been doing.
[00:15:09] Steven Dimitt: Yeah, I think it’s good. I mean, it’s easier if you work in a place full service firm where they do everything and you can slowly make the transition over and.
[00:15:16] Steven Dimitt: Give the baton, you know, I’m bad at keeping all holding on to litigation because competitive side, let’s, let’s go get them out again. So I’m doing the best to introduce them with connecting them with other people in the firm and being able to let them run with that relationship. So, you know, some firms.
[00:15:32] Steven Dimitt: They can’t, they have a hard time getting clients and they hold on to them with dear, dear life and don’t screw this up. I don’t, I don’t think that’s, that’s helpful or valuable to the client or a good way to, to grow your business. So if you had people you trust, you can bring them, they can take care of that piece and then allow you to focus on the part you want to focus on.
[00:15:51] Steven Dimitt: I think that’s great. Across the board.
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[00:17:38] Steve Fretzin: At fretzin, we use Get Staffed Up for Marketing Person and you know how good our marketing is. Learn more at getstaffedup. com slash be that lawyer. Yeah, and we talk a lot on the show about the transferal of trust and that there are people that, Want to keep their claws and everything and they’re never gonna let go and then there’s people that want to just do business development and like the faster they can let go of the bill will our that client and inform it to someone else maybe keep the relationship but not be in the mix of getting all the phone calls and doing all the work and all that.
[00:18:10] Steve Fretzin: And so how that do you have a strategy of how you train or that you use that how you transition that so that it so that you didn’t lose a client, you know, if you if you didn’t have to,
[00:18:21] Steven Dimitt: yeah, I think what you said. So as you’re transitioning, I think you’re gonna find a lot more that. At least initially you need to have, but you’re the, you’re the boots on the ground, you’re in the weeds because you’re learning a new practice area or expanding your depth of, of knowledge or experience.
[00:18:36] Steven Dimitt: And so and over time you can continue to hand it off to other people and maybe be more of the business developer role, but I mean, you’re really trying, you need the reps to be able to, To give them better advice and then over time, build out your team of associates, other people. But I think, I think it comes down to just credibility, right?
[00:18:53] Steven Dimitt: So what, make sure whatever you’re doing, that you’re excellent at that. And so that the person you work with is like, they’re solid. They, they know what they’re talking about. I, I totally trust them. So when you move to a new, new segment, new practice area, they, they’ll trust you again. And like, you are the one who you dig into the weeds, you know, what’s going on in the practice area.
[00:19:15] Steven Dimitt: And I saw that same level of trust.
[00:19:18] Steve Fretzin: Yeah.
[00:19:18] Steven Dimitt: It’s a, it’s a people, I think, where do you have, you know, like you said, for their beginning, the generalist which is, yeah, it’s, it’s kind of dying is especially in with social media where we see somebody’s Instagram posts and they have, they do everything DWI family law.
[00:19:32] Steven Dimitt: Now I’m the real estate expert or I’m bet the company litigation, like they don’t know. And so, I mean, that takes away the trust for somebody else to go in. What, what do you do? So I think just being the expert in whatever field you’re in is super helpful.
[00:19:46] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, we we’ve we’ve heard on the show the riches are in the niches That’s a big part of it.
[00:19:52] Steve Fretzin: So let me ask you a little bit too about just your business development acumen. I mean, what are, what are like the top two or three things that you’re doing to bring in business? You know, whether that was in, in the past or in the future or in your current situation, what are a couple of, a couple of best practices that you could share with my audience that would be helpful to them?
[00:20:10] Steven Dimitt: Yeah, I think we, you know, one of those are kind of, at least for us, hunting packs, right? So what we do is typically it’s going to be, on real estate. It’s also there’s a corporate piece. So we’ll go with the, my corporate partners to get together with a great new client and take them out and show them that we can address all their needs.
[00:20:25] Steven Dimitt: And so I think once you get a client who is great and the ideal client is just maintaining that relationship, adding value, which everybody says, but really like it kind of digging and caring about their business. Speaker 2 But I think really it’s A lot of it also is a numbers game, right? So over time, by now, how more successful you seem to be in business development and things start coming back to you, but it’s a lot of getting out there and doing it and then finding the people who are the connectors who really want to help other people out.
[00:20:56] Steven Dimitt: And then running with that. And some of that, I mean, I saw one of the articles you wrote recently is like, how do you know when to get out of, out of this, this area? And so. Some of that is just trial and error, going, I’ve been doing this for so long and beating my head against the wall, this is not working.
[00:21:12] Steve Fretzin: And
[00:21:12] Steven Dimitt: the more you do that, the more you can see the writing is on the wall by when to pull out sooner rather than later.
[00:21:17] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, I mean, there’s people that stay in things way too long. That could be a charity, a board, going to conferences year after year after year. I don’t tell people to quit right away.
[00:21:27] Steve Fretzin: What I try, what I try to tell people is, hey, make some, make some, you know, figure some things out. What’s working, what’s not, fix what isn’t working. If you’re looking to get business, business out of a conference and you’re not, then you need to do something different. So try something different plan ahead, you know, talk to different people, have different targets, whatever.
[00:21:44] Steve Fretzin: And if that doesn’t work and it just ends up being, this is this, these are all the people that are my competitors or whatever, whatever. Yeah you need to quit you need to stop and that there’s i grew up you know is it jet x with with a baby boomer father you know larry the lawyer tough tough as nails.
[00:22:00] Steve Fretzin: And it was like don’t quit don’t give up never quit and i was like that’s how i always was i realized. After a while like no quitting can be a very good thing saying no to things can be very very healthy to do because we have such a limited amount of time. If you do a business development you’re trying to do everything and continue everything you’re gonna find yourself.
[00:22:19] Steve Fretzin: Just buried in, in time wasting activities.
[00:22:23] Steven Dimitt: Absolutely. My, my third quotes, which I’m sure my partner, Bill Richards, somebody else is is, is ride your way, right? Bono, what do you like to do and do that? There’s limited time. I have two little kids. So. You want to do something business development, what do you like to do is go do that invite clients on you have to go shoot steep, do that you want to be a bourbon tasting, we’ll do those events and bring them on.
[00:22:46] Steven Dimitt: And from the real estate side, which easier from the dealmaking is put the deal together, right? You have your, your insurance person, your title, your broker and have an event together and then they go out, we need a lawyer for this deal. How about, how about you? So I think just kind of putting people together is always, is always good.
[00:23:04] Steve Fretzin: Yeah i mean connecting i think just be a connector to me and whatever you’re doing whether you’re networking you’re meeting with your clients anything you can do and i was talking about this with bill for now on a show a few weeks ago and, yeah we got into a pretty heavy that we’re doing it we’re almost doing it inherently like it’s just a part of us like when i meet with someone like you know what are they doing what are they looking for, and then who do i know that’s gonna connect the dots for them and if you’re just spending your time going around and doing that you’re kind of spreading a lot of nice seeds, Around your farming and in the likelihood that it’s going to come back your way goes up exponentially.
[00:23:38] Steven Dimitt: 100%. I think transition the mindset of like, I need to get this client. I can’t lose them. Zero sum game. So it’s really going, look, there’s stuff worked out there for everybody. And I’m going to, I’m going to try to help you out as I can. And now I’m, it’ll come back to me eventually. And it does.
[00:23:53] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And there’s people that you wouldn’t.
[00:23:56] Steve Fretzin: You know, you can have the attitude that, you know, look, I know this, this, this company or this general counsel, they’re, they have a lawyer. I mean, they’re, they’re not doing this on their own, so why would they need me? So I’m not gonna bother, you know, so I have a client call me up. He got a meeting with the IT guy at a major corporation and he was asking questions and the guy just basically admitted that the, the, the group that was doing their trademark stuff, you know, that, that, that was kind of screwing up.
[00:24:23] Steve Fretzin: Like they were doing great and it was just like in an opportunity open i was like why aren’t there a dozen law firms and lawyers. Hitting this person up for that business and they just aren’t they’re just, he’s just, he’s just suffering in silence with this existing firm that was underwhelming. And so it was like, you know, these are the kinds of things that we just don’t realize are out there and they are
[00:24:44] Steven Dimitt: absolutely.
[00:24:44] Steven Dimitt: I mean, I think people are different transitions at different times, whether it’s switching practice areas we talked about or or life cycle of your career. They have some clients where they use the same attorney. For 40 years and he’s about to retire and they need to find somebody else. And that’s great.
[00:25:00] Steven Dimitt: And you never know. So you, you gotta just keep the, those contacts and might be the right place at the right time.
[00:25:05] Steve Fretzin: The best, the best example is a client of mine and good friend John Malones. He was on the show a long time ago, but he, he’s in, he’s not a lawyer, believe it or not. He’s a commercial real estate guy with a, with a, with a mega company.
[00:25:17] Steve Fretzin: And the thing about commercial real estate folks, and you know this because you work with them now, is, is, they may spend 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 years building relationships with people because sometimes leases go on for 10 years, right, so they have to be there at the moment a year or two before that lease comes up to start preparing and getting it, and so they gotta, they gotta, you know, Lay the groundwork and they’ve got to put the seeds down and all that for many many years and we all want instant gratification and I get that but I think there’s also situations that happen because you’re in the right place in the right time and there’s also ones where you need to kind of sit on it for a while and continue to add value over time and then three years later something changes and then you’re in the lead.
[00:25:59] Steven Dimitt: No, absolutely. And if you want to say top of mind as well, if somebody, nobody looks at the second page of Google. Right. And so as long as you’re staying with those contacts and touches, you don’t know when that opportunity is going to hit.
[00:26:12] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Really great. So let me ask you this question. There are lawyers, and I think you’ve got this business development mindset that, that I’m not going to put an exact figure to it, but let’s just say the 80 20 rule, right?
[00:26:24] Steve Fretzin: The, you know, the Pareto principle where, you know, 20 percent of the attorneys are really going after business and are like business development. They get business development and how important that is in their career and 80 percent don’t. Why do you think that is? I’m, cause I, I know my, I kind of have my answer, but I, but I want to hear what you have to say.
[00:26:40] Steven Dimitt: A lot of it’s here just by nature. Someone in the profession, right? You have a typical nerd who wants to crunch, read the books and who’s just focused on their craft or they’re digging into the weeds of something and not really taking a step back of going how do I build a business? Right? How do I broaden this?
[00:26:56] Steven Dimitt: Because if I knew when you have the clients, it is so much better than working for somebody else’s clients. And you’re a lot more invested in. And it means more of like, you’re a part of their business as well. But I think a little bit of that is trying to, like we said before, hold on. If you have a few, let’s hold on to those.
[00:27:15] Steven Dimitt: Or it depends where you are. So if you had a big firm, multi, you know, international firm where your rates are a thousand an hour. There are only so many clients that can afford that. And so they’re going to hold on to those clients they have and everybody else, you’re just kind of a service partner.
[00:27:27] Steven Dimitt: And so if you’re in a position or a firm or a place or business where you have flexibility and you’re at a good kind of market position, definitely get out there and meet people and, and bring them in because it’s, it’s easier than it seems. Once you start doing it, it becomes a habit and a practice.
[00:27:44] Steven Dimitt: Like I said, there’s lots of reps. You’ll start getting calls and for people going, how’d you get my name? And they’ll mentioned John and I, who the hell’s John? I don’t know, John, but that’s great. And so it, a lot of it is just, it’s timed and as. You get more well into the industry, people will start calling you more.
[00:28:01] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Well, and again, you know, as, as, you know, I’ve been doing business development coaching for lawyers for about 17 years and the reality is that I can only work with people who are motivated and open minded to change and to, to try to make improvements. And, and everyone else, again, I’m putting out, you know, this podcast, and I’ve got videos on YouTube, and I’ve got my Above the Law, I’m writing for Above the Law, you know, I’ve got the books, you know, four books, new audio books out, I mean, all this stuff I’m doing for the masses, with the idea that there’s only 10 percent that are going to actually reach out and want to talk to a coach, whether it’s me or some of the friends I have in the coaching space, but, It really does come down to, I think you most lawyers have that, that whether it’s coming to Jesus moment or draw a line in the sand moment where they go, look, I figured this out.
[00:28:45] Steve Fretzin: I’m never going to make equity or I’m never going to get really control over my career without having a book of business and I’m either going to do it on my own and figure it out or I’m going to work with someone that knows more than me. One way or the other, you know, I’d rather see that happen at someone in their thirties than someone in their fifties or sixties, which I see more frequently than I’d like to admit.
[00:29:06] Steven Dimitt: What do you think? I mean, you see all this, you have a lot more than I do. What keeps them from doing that? The 80%. What do you think keeps them from broadening out their kind of risk or what do you think it is?
[00:29:15] Steve Fretzin: Well, there’s a lot of reasons. Business development is hard. It’s scary. It takes time. It takes effort.
[00:29:22] Steve Fretzin: Putting something off that takes effort. All right. So someone that has, you know, 50 pounds to drop. It’s just hard if you know it’s just hard everything’s against you to to drop that weight or to become great at a sport or to start taking up a new you know hey i’m gonna i’m fifty four years old and i’m gonna be a superstar guitar player and i must learn the guitar fifty four it’s just hard right.
[00:29:45] Steve Fretzin: And you have all these other things pulling your attention you got two kids right i think michael and sadie and and and you’ve got you know this life and then you got the billable hour and you got all these things pulling your attention and on top of that we’re saying go get business. I think that just scares the Dickens out of most lawyers.
[00:30:01] Steve Fretzin: They’d rather just keep their head down. I’m going to go after that next year. And we know what that means, right? This is not going to happen. So then it’s year after year, and then it’s sort of like weighs on them. And, you know, Hey, I’m actually, I had a pretty good year, made good money. You know, I’ll just, I’ll just hold off another year.
[00:30:16] Steve Fretzin: So for some people that’s worked out, I mean, there are people that do that year after year, they retire, they stop law. They made plenty of money, right? They got their 401k kids college paid for and all that. And then there’s a lot of other people that are, you know, Solos and that have had to go out on their own and take extreme measures because that lack of book of business affected them negatively and they’re in kind of a bad place.
[00:30:38] Steve Fretzin: So that’s, that’s what I’m, that was a very long answer to your question, but it, but that’s kind of what I’m seeing, Steven, that, that and it frustrates me to no end because we, you and I both know this is how important this is. Charles writes about it in the seven year trap and it, but, but how do we, how do we, you know, you can lead the horse to water.
[00:30:57] Steve Fretzin: That’s about as far as you can, you know, go with it sometimes.
[00:31:00] Steven Dimitt: Yeah, there’s a big shot for business development, right? So it is a long, long time. And what Charles says in his book too, I think planting those seeds and getting into a position that you can do to have freedom to do what you want is, is ideal.
[00:31:14] Steve Fretzin: One of the things I really do try to get lawyers to do though, through the content I create and things like that is, You don’t have to go from a hundred thousand in origination to a million right just say hey can i get from a hundred thousand to a hundred fifty next year to two hundred next year and can i just send out you know one or two emails a week to get meetings can i what’s the little baby steps that you can take that at least start getting it’s like i’m getting back to the fifty and i apologize to everybody that’s fifty pounds overweight overweight more than it should be and we all have a you know a couple to lose but you You know it’s like you don’t have to lose fifty pounds you what you have to do is you have to lose two right and you have to just slowly pick away and chip away at something that seems monumental and scary and business developments the same way you don’t have to push all your chips in.
[00:32:03] Steve Fretzin: If you can just get started doing having some good habits and some positive habits so
[00:32:08] Steven Dimitt: absolutely that’s right
[00:32:10] Steve Fretzin: yeah and get inspired which is a great lead in steven to our game changing book. Of the game and I am a big Alex Ramos fan. I think we talked about that in our last I think we did in our last visit, but talk to me about the game and Alex Ramos and why, why do you, why you put that down as your kind of your game changing book?
[00:32:30] Steven Dimitt: Yeah, no, he’s great. I think just gives like the practical advice. I think of his book for most recent book about kind of getting leads. Is is terrific. It’s just what, how do you do it from a step by step approach of just kind of practical and not just totally theoretical on somebody who makes it easy to understand and digest and kind of no bullshit and and here’s how you do it.
[00:32:53] Steven Dimitt: So that approach is great. Some people. When it’s, it is more theoretical and, you know, go look in the mirror and say, you’re going to make it clients. Well, you need to go do it. Right. And so if you’re having to prime and prep for three hours a day to get ready to go do your work and do your breathing and cold plunge and all that, it’s like, I’m going to kick your ass while I just go do it.
[00:33:13] Steven Dimitt: And so a lot of that is just putting in the hard work and being strategic and, and, and insightful and. And be purposeful and intentional with business development and getting clients.
[00:33:22] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And he’s, he’s really excellent. The a million dollar offer and the game. And I think what he does on his podcast, if you check out Alex Hermosi podcast, he does his audio books on the podcast.
[00:33:34] Steve Fretzin: So you can get them for free and just be on, just listening to his podcast, getting inspired, look, you don’t have to have a hundred million dollar. Business, right? Not everybody’s going to do that or be built for that, but you know, it’s all about picking up ideas, you know, picking up ideas for me, from Alex, from anybody that’s writing and speaking and giving content that’s going to help you to, to be successful.
[00:33:56] Steve Fretzin: And then you can decide if you want to make a bigger investment in a coach or an advisor, someone to work with. But ultimately I think it’s, it’s just, you know, you just have to start learning from people that know more than you. If I want to be a lawyer and there’s a, someone who’s been doing it for 30 years I go, I don’t need that.
[00:34:11] Steve Fretzin: Well, that’s just stupid, right? You want to learn from the people that are smarter and that have done it before you. It’s just a faster way to learn. Absolutely. They’re going, here, here’s the path to do it. They’ve done the hard work. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Like you glomming on to a firm that already started, right?
[00:34:26] Steve Fretzin: Easier than starting it yourself. You’re right. It
[00:34:29] Steven Dimitt: used to start from square one. You gotta take the hard part. I’ll come in later. Yeah, you
[00:34:32] Steve Fretzin: guys do that. I’ll be there in no time flat, right? Absolutely. All right. Well, Stephen, fantastic, man. As we wrap up, I want to thank our wonderful sponsors, of course our friends over at Rankings.
[00:34:42] Steve Fretzin: io with the big PIMCON conference coming up which is great for PI attorneys. We’ve got law Maddox on the automation and we got get staffed up, helping you delegate away to freedom. If people want to get in touch with you, Steven, they want to talk to you about either your practice or about you know, your new practicer in the real estate space.
[00:35:02] Steve Fretzin: What, what are the best ways for them to reach you?
[00:35:05] Steven Dimitt: Yeah. Just Steven Demick one M two T’s on LinkedIn is the best. You see, we see my kids go on, on Instagram or Facebook, but yeah, either website, reach out to you directly. Flat richmond. com. Or LinkedIn shoot me a, shoot me a message.
[00:35:20] Steve Fretzin: All right. Well, we’ll wrap up on that.
[00:35:21] Steve Fretzin: And please, please tell Charles. I said, hello. He’s one of my favorite people and I, I just appreciate him and his mindset about how he wants to really help the legal industry in a similar fashion that I do. Leave the place better than we found it, I guess is the another quote. Anyway, thanks. Thanks again, Stephen.
[00:35:37] Steve Fretzin: I appreciate you coming on and sharing some wisdom with us.
[00:35:39] Steven Dimitt: Thanks Steve. Appreciate it. It’s a great,
[00:35:41] Steve Fretzin: yeah, yeah, absolutely. And hey, hey. Thank you everybody for spending time with Steve and I today. We got a Steven and a Steve, occasional Stevie. We won’t say who that is. And listen, it’s all about helping you to be that lawyer, confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker.
[00:35:54] Steve Fretzin: Take care, everybody. Be safe. Be well. Talk again soon.
[00:36:01] Narrator: 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.