In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Stuart Baum discuss:
- Developing positive habits for personal and professional success
- Overcoming bad habits that hinder productivity and growth
- The importance of accountability and structured systems in habit formation
- Strategies for effective business development and client engagement
Key Takeaways:
- Writing down commitments and follow-ups immediately after meetings, whether by texting yourself or using a note app, ensures accountability and helps avoid forgetting key tasks or names from conversations.
- Allocating two 30-minute blocks each week exclusively for business development activities, such as following up on leads or setting appointments, creates consistency and avoids the excuse of being too busy to prioritize growth.
- Using storytelling in conversations, focusing on concise, memorable anecdotes about solving client problems, engages potential clients better than overwhelming them with a long list of services.
- Establishing accountability partnerships, where colleagues or peers meet regularly to share progress and co-develop opportunities, adds structure to habit-building and prevents the temptation to delay important tasks.
“Not all habits work for all people, but some of it will work for you—pick the things that work for you and do it.” — Stuart Baum
Got a challenge growing your law practice? Email me at [email protected] with your toughest question, and I’ll answer it live on the show—anonymously, just using your first name!
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Rainmakers Roundtable: https://fretzin.com/lawyer-coaching-and-training/peer-advisory-groups/
Episode References:
If Books Could Kill Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-books-could-kill/id1651876897
About Stuart Baum: Stuart Baum is a Sales, Marketing & Customer Success consultant and coach with proven experience helping businesses develop and implement go-to-market (GTM) and client expansion/saturation processes to increase lead generation and sales, grow client profitability, and improve the overall sales and marketing culture. He sits on a number of corporate boards, serves as the board chair of a not-for-profit, and also writes children’s stories, which, along with writing activities and games, can be found at StuartStories.com.
Connect with Stuart Baum:
Website: https://largerpond.com/
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartbaum
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!
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Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
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, want to do our usual Q and a this is coming from Sean and Naperville, Illinois. And he asks, how do I find the right events for growing my network? A phenomenal question. I’m going to give you a very simple answer. You really want to go where the prospective clients and strategic partners are hanging out.
[00:00:19] Steve Fretzin: So if you’re in a state planner, anyone could be a client for you, but maybe you want to work with executives. You want to work with. Professionals you say you’re going to want to go to events where they are, or if you know that like good strategic partners for you are financial planners and divorce attorneys and CPAs, you’d want to go to events where those kinds of professionals hang out.
[00:00:37] Steve Fretzin: So I would say, you know, talk to people and figure out where the level of event is that you want to go. But really most importantly, think about where your targets are. Hopefully that helps you, Sean. To be that lawyer confident organized in a skilled rainmaker. Thanks everybody and enjoy the show
[00:00:55] 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 We’ll take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results Now here’s your host steve Fretzin
[00:01:16] Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, welcome to the be that lawyer with me Fredson podcast.
[00:01:21] Steve Fretzin: We are here for your listening amusement, pleasure, and education twice a week to help you be that lawyer, confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker. I have certain people in my life that I so enjoy. And every time we get together, I’m not, that’s the same. We’re like in hysterics laughing, but we always enjoy, we always have a good time.
[00:01:39] Steve Fretzin: The conversation always flows very freely. We have a lot in common. And today it’s Stuart and Stuart bomb. How you doing buddy?
[00:01:45] Stuart Baum: I’m doing great is that the bar to have this I hope you don’t disappoint
[00:01:48] Steve Fretzin: well I don’t think we will like the topic is such a rockstar topic and I’m gonna keep it a secret for a few more minutes.
[00:01:55] Steve Fretzin: But you know we got together two years ago for the podcast I think we rocked it out back in October of twenty twenty two and now we’re back again and. I’m just so much to cover because we both are working with lawyers and helping them with the marketing and business development all that fun stuff but I wanted to welcome you to the show and also I know that the last time you’re on the show your favorite quote was experiences what you get.
[00:02:18] Steve Fretzin: When you didn’t get what you wanted and that was like your favorite quote but today’s topic is going to be more about like business development habits and i wonder if there’s a quote that you have that’s more topical to what we’re going to talk about today
[00:02:31] Stuart Baum: absolutely i mean my favorite quote on this is the biggest lie i tell myself is that i will remember that later.
[00:02:37] Steve Fretzin: Is that I’ll remember that later. Yeah, and
[00:02:41] Stuart Baum: I seen like somebody put out like a tweet that was very similar to this a while ago and I would have used it for that as well as, you know, there are two really important things I learned in life. The second one is write everything down.
[00:02:54] Steve Fretzin: I was, I have to go back to the first cause it’s, I was like in my mind, I’m putting it down as the lie.
[00:02:58] Steve Fretzin: I tell myself is that I’m going to do it later. And that’s why
[00:03:01] Stuart Baum: I
[00:03:01] Steve Fretzin: tell
[00:03:02] Stuart Baum: myself is I will remember that later.
[00:03:04] Steve Fretzin: I know, but I’m saying I’m turning it into my teenagers. What my teenager says, they’ll say, I’ll do it later, dad. And I know it’s not going to get done. There’s going to be at least three to four more times.
[00:03:15] Steve Fretzin: I’m going to have to get on and to get that little thing done that if he just got up and did it in the moment. Right, and I’m like a do it now, that’s my quote, like, do it now, like, knock it out.
[00:03:25] Stuart Baum: Yeah, and if there’s anything you’re going to get from this podcast on habits, it’s basically that. Just knock it out.
[00:03:30] Stuart Baum: Just do it now. Don’t kick it till later, because you know you’re not going to do it later, and then you won’t remember it anyway. How about this? See a dish, see a dish, wash a dish. See a dish, wash a dish. I
[00:03:39] Steve Fretzin: don’t walk by a dish and I just leave it. I don’t walk by and just say, someone else will clean that.
[00:03:44] Steve Fretzin: I see a dish, I wash a dish. I don’t know if somebody else wants to marry me because of that, but It goes in line with what we’re talking about today, which is how do we start structuring positive habits so that we can get not only our job done and our work done, but like live a better life. And I don’t think you can do it with the bad habit system.
[00:04:02] Steve Fretzin: Stuart, Hey, before we dive in, cause I know we’re going to just knock it out and straight through. Do you want to just go back and give a little bit about yourself and, you know, president of larger pond marketing and kind of how you came to be and working in legal and all that fun stuff?
[00:04:15] Stuart Baum: Yeah, I mean, so I started straight up in marketing and so it was basically in big agency overseas and I was a creative writer working on a new business and helping them sell new business and then when I moved to Chicago, I was working with a bunch of clients, I guess I’m marketing and sales and business development wasn’t going so well for some of those clients and I started giving them some tips.
[00:04:37] Stuart Baum: And one of them looked at me and said, without giving us tips, just do it. You’re now in charge of business development. And that was fun. And it was like, all right, I think I can do this. And then, and what I think was the relevant thing for this is then I sort of looked at all the good business developers I knew in my life, lawyers and other professional service people.
[00:04:54] Stuart Baum: And we’re like, what are you doing? Right. What is working for you? And they all sort of said that, you know, Oh, I don’t really have a plan. But when I sort of mapped out what they’re doing, They were all pretty much doing all the same things. They just came at it the hard way. And I thought, well, this is easy.
[00:05:08] Stuart Baum: I’m just going to meet with people and have them sort of do the cheat code at the beginning of their career, as opposed to after 10 or 12 years, and then maybe they can get to that corner office or get to partner faster. And it started to work. So that’s basically my career in a nutshell.
[00:05:21] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And I feel like we met right when I got into legal marketing.
[00:05:25] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Like 2008 and nine and you had been doing it for a while. And I was like, you were the kind of guy I was like the guru and the guy I was like, no, he doing saying I was noticed and someday I wish I could grow up and be Stewart, but And now we’re both a couple of gray haired old dogs and whatever, so.
[00:05:40] Stuart Baum: Yeah, and I hope there are people looking at us now going, I hope they could grow up to be them.
[00:05:45] Steve Fretzin: You know what, there are because there’s so many people that have flooded, lawyers in particular that have flooded into the coaching market now that we are now like the old, both of like the old dogs and they’re probably saying that because they’re, you know, they’re not late to the game because I think a good coach is still well needed.
[00:06:00] Steve Fretzin: And. You know, the competition that we have is aren’t lawyer coaches, it’s lawyer apathy, which you know,
[00:06:06] Stuart Baum: 100%. Yeah. It’s just, it’s lawyers not having a plan, not wanting to do it and thinking that the phone is going to ring if they just sit there long enough, but we know that’s not going to happen.
[00:06:14] Steve Fretzin: So, you know, it’s funny.
[00:06:15] Steve Fretzin: So we had like a check in call that we do every once in a while. And I was talking about the podcast and I said, You know, what do we want to talk about? Or you reached out to me and said, Hey, I’ve got an idea to talk about. And you said habits. And I’m like, I mean, I’m spending so much time with my clients on habits and time management.
[00:06:32] Steve Fretzin: Why that topic? Why now?
[00:06:34] Stuart Baum: Yeah. So I was listening to a podcast and I’ll just name the podcast. It’s called If Books Could Kill. And what they do is they look at the books that you get in the airport to get on the plane, and then they kind of rip them apart, both good, bad, and ugly, and their whole premise is that some of the stuff is good advice, some is not so good advice, and some is literally dangerous advice, if books could kill.
[00:06:53] Stuart Baum: So they did a podcast on the book Atomic Habit. And atomic habits aren’t those explosive habits. They’re the small little things that you need to do to be really successful in life. And it was a good conversation. It was a good podcast. And I was thinking about like, do I have those habits? Do I have good small habits or, you know, or should I do more?
[00:07:11] Stuart Baum: And then as I was thinking about it, like finishing the drive, I was like, How much of my day spent with lawyers on business development is teaching them these small habits that are going to make them a lot more successful down the road and it’s a lot of time and there are a number of specific habits that I just like, okay, as we get started, here are some habits that you should have.
[00:07:29] Stuart Baum: And I’m thinking this would make a good podcast. Yeah, yeah, it does. Anyone listening can say, I’m going to steal that habit and will you be more successful? Period. Yes. Yeah. You will be more successful if you get a couple of good habits into your belt.
[00:07:43] Steve Fretzin: All right, let’s play a quick game. You’re up for a game, right?
[00:07:45] Stuart Baum: I was up for a game. I don’t know what the game is, so I’m not sure how to score. Let me know if it’s golf or basketball.
[00:07:50] Steve Fretzin: No, no, you have no clue where I’m going with this. That’s what makes it so fun. The game is called, What are the worst habits that we’re seeing right now? So let’s just go through. You do one, I’ll do one, and we’ll see how exhausted we are after two minutes of this.
[00:08:04] Steve Fretzin: But what’s like the habit that you’re seeing, the bad habit that you’re seeing? Hmm. That needs to be fixed and that you’re working with lawyers on, like what’s coming up that you go, that’s got to change.
[00:08:14] Stuart Baum: They don’t follow up fast enough.
[00:08:16] Steve Fretzin: They don’t follow up
[00:08:16] Stuart Baum: fast enough? They don’t follow up fast enough.
[00:08:18] Steve Fretzin: Yeah.
[00:08:18] Stuart Baum: Again, I don’t see a dish, I don’t wash the dish, I’ll wash the dish someday.
[00:08:23] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, I’ll get to it later. Okay. I would say one that I’m seeing on a regular basis is, you know, just straight up, you know, making time for business development. Like I’m so busy with the billable hour, like how do you expect me to Send emails and meet with people and all that and so, you know, there’s habits that need to be instilled for that and that, that one just keeps creeping up every day.
[00:08:43] Stuart Baum: Yeah, I was about to say that they don’t prioritize it. Okay, so I’ll do the third one then. Is they don’t know who they’re talking to before they start talking to them. They didn’t do the prep work.
[00:08:54] Steve Fretzin: Okay. Yeah, you’re not going to have a solid conversation and start off on the right foot without that. So that’s kind of a bad habit.
[00:09:01] Steve Fretzin: And I would say just, you know, random acts of marketing just, Oh, today I’m going to post something or just in the moment or today I’m like, there’s no planning ahead. Like that’s a habit of planning versus a habit of just randomness.
[00:09:13] Stuart Baum: Yeah, I’m going to do one more I don’t know how long we’re going to go.
[00:09:16] Stuart Baum: Maybe this is a podcast here and they don’t listen when other people talk. So they’re always waiting to have their say and here are my services and I’m going to give my elevator pitch next. And they miss the opportunity of really engaging.
[00:09:28] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. I’m going to double down on that one though, because it’s worse than that.
[00:09:33] Steve Fretzin: They believe, or have been led to believe that when they’re in an actual business development meeting with a prospective client that can engage them, that they need to talk the whole time. That they need to sell, they need to talk, they need to convince, they need to share rates, they need to Solving problems way ahead of things, that’s a bad habit.
[00:09:50] Steve Fretzin: I feel like there are horses I have to break, like in the old days you had to like break a horse to get it so you could ride it, and that’s how I feel like with some lawyers.
[00:09:57] Stuart Baum: I think I spent half my, half my time with lawyers breaking their bad habits and getting them back. At least say, look, that’s not working for you, so stop doing it.
[00:10:03] Stuart Baum: Try something else. This might not work for you, but we know the other one isn’t.
[00:10:07] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Well, let’s switch the game then to, we’re not really going to play a game at this point. It’s just going to be like, I just want to hear what your top three, like, habit hacks are. Like, what are you doing to help lawyers, And I’m happy to chime in because we’re both like in the mud on this to help them get better habits established.
[00:10:26] Stuart Baum: So I’m going to use your bad habit one and say that one of the hacks I give people all the time is go to your calendar and set two 30 minute meetings every week with yourself, do your follow ups and your appointment settings and to work on business development, set an agenda. And again, it’s this way, you know that I met a couple of really great people this week and I’ve got to follow up and I don’t have time.
[00:10:49] Stuart Baum: Well, you do have time because you’ve got 30 minutes on the clock tomorrow morning, whatever your time is, eight o’clock in the morning, nine 30 when you know you’re not busy and you knock it out and then you get it done and then you feel like that’s good. Now I can get on my life.
[00:11:02] Steve Fretzin: Yeah.
[00:11:02] Stuart Baum: I think that’s the habit that when people do it, I know that when I check in with them, whether it’s a week or two weeks or four weeks later, as long as they keep those times sacred, they’re going to get stuff done.
[00:11:13] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, I think the problem though is keeping the time sacred because if you’re crushed with your day and then the last thing is you see, hey, I’ve got a meeting with myself, then you can break that commitment to yourself much easier than you can break a commitment to someone else. Right. So that’s the kind of the rub with that.
[00:11:31] Steve Fretzin: And by the way, that habit, if someone can execute on it, game changer, because now they’ve got that scheduled that the hack, I would hack on your hack is
[00:11:40] Stuart Baum: hacking your
[00:11:40] Steve Fretzin: hack would be. And I’ve people have heard me talk about this on the show. So maybe it’s, it’s old school at this point, but. Get an accountability buddy, get someone else that cares about business development or a couple people and, and get together with them at that same time.
[00:11:54] Steve Fretzin: So you’re not just showing up for you, you’re showing up to work out with someone, your business development muscle for that week or twice a week or whatever it is that you need to do. And that way you’re going to feel that guilt of letting someone down versus letting yourself down, which people seem to have no problem with, but they should.
[00:12:12] Stuart Baum: So I do work on people to keep them sacred and put in at times where you’re not that Sometimes the morning before the, you know, before the bill, the opening bill is a good time to do it. I don’t want people Saturdays or Sundays. But to your point, another piece of advice I give them is similar to yours, is find an internal co owner and work with them.
[00:12:33] Stuart Baum: Set a half hour meeting with them and say, okay, the two of us are going to work together. It might be joint deal deals. It might be just best practices. It might be a, hey, do you know, or what should we work on together? But really have that half hour. Or that hour every couple of weeks where Steve and Stuart get together and go, all right, we’re basically going to, I call it co hunting session.
[00:12:53] Stuart Baum: Yep. The good thing is there are a lot of, you know, I got some clients that should be your clients, especially in legal. I mean, cross selling is easy when you talk about it with somebody else that has a complimentary service. And then you sit there and think, who else should my client meet that without them?
[00:13:09] Stuart Baum: And who else could I refer to my client that would be helpful to my client? And if I’m working with you, you’re like, I might not know somebody, but Steve might go, Oh, you know what? They should meet this person. That would be really helpful to their business. Now I’ve got two gold coins because you gave them one.
[00:13:23] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And I think the other thing that we need to add to this, and maybe you can put some color around it is. That it takes time to develop habits. You can’t just put something in your calendar day one and it’s a habit, right? That’s the beginning of something.
[00:13:37] Stuart Baum: Yeah. I mean, so there’s a term called habits thinking, which is something I really like and you know, the atomic habit book talks about this, but we all do it, right?
[00:13:46] Stuart Baum: We all know that if we want to floss our teeth, we put the floss right by the toothbrush because we’re going to brush our teeth every morning and every evening and then we’ll see it and we’ll do it. We put the medicine by breakfast or whatever it is that we sort of put one or two. So, and that means that when you do that one thing that you know you’re going to do, you then do the next thing.
[00:14:04] Stuart Baum: And then that habit, and there’s a bunch of examples of habit stacking, which is like if I’m, I set a meeting with Steve and I’m going to meet with him and say, Hey, let’s get together on this. Yeah. I’m going to like know that as soon as I set that meeting, the next thing I should do is take a look at his LinkedIn bio.
[00:14:19] Stuart Baum: What has changed? Look at his regular bio. What has changed? Take a look at what was our last meeting and because I wrote it down, right? I can know this is what we talked about in the last meeting. Oh, crud, I didn’t do the thing I was supposed to do because I wasn’t that great at it. But this thing refreshed.
[00:14:34] Stuart Baum: I come in and go, okay, hey, you know. Let’s talk about those. I got a couple things to talk about with you, and we’re going to talk a little bit later if we get to it, about telling stories, not services, because that’s also a good habit.
[00:14:46] Steve Fretzin: So what, and so let’s keep going. What’s another solution to poor habits that you are working on every day?
[00:14:54] Stuart Baum: What do you mean poor habits?
[00:14:55] Steve Fretzin: Like, no, no, poor habits that people, that lawyers have that you’re helping them with.
[00:14:59] Stuart Baum: It’s that they don’t really bullet out what they want to do, so they don’t really have a game plan. And so one of the, one of the things I say, I basically have this, you know, have your eight promoters.
[00:15:11] Stuart Baum: Know who your eight promoters are. Write down the list of the eight people that you can help, and that can help you, and keep them close. Have, you know, quarterly lunches with them. And then sit down with them every time. And if they’re the type of people that care about your career and you care about their career, and you’re sort of staying on top of things, that’s usually a really good lunch for you because they’ll refer you to people and you’ll refer them to people, but also you’ll, you’ll solve problems.
[00:15:37] Steve Fretzin: And that’s
[00:15:38] Stuart Baum: what I do a lot. I actually make the clients write down the eight people and then how can you help them? And if you can’t, you know, let them know.
[00:15:46] Steve Fretzin: Well, and I think there’s also some planning involved in that in the sense of I’m meeting with you. I know that you want to work with certain types of attorneys or certain types of people and I’m making a list of who I can connect you with before we even meet, right?
[00:16:01] Steve Fretzin: Or I’m going through your LinkedIn to look at contacts. That you know that I might want to know so that I’m prepared to help you help me because if you’re really a promoter, you don’t have a problem with me doing that and I would do it. I’ve done it for you or I would do it for you. So, I mean, there’s a mutual, you know, sense of giving and helping with those promoters that you’re not going to get with everybody.
[00:16:23] Stuart Baum: Yeah, and you can’t make a thousand people happy. You can’t be that supportive to a thousand people. So one of the things that, one of the stories I tell a lot is, you know, when you go to Vegas and you put a dollar in a slot machine and it comes up bars across, you walk away from it because the odds of it coming bars across again is very, you know, it’s not going to happen for like another thousand quarters.
[00:16:43] Stuart Baum: But if you and I meet and it’s bars across, we help each other out, like I’m going to go back and say, okay. Let’s work together and we can help each other some more. So the people that are your promoters are going to be bars across a lot. And so I think that’s a mistake people make is that they think that in order to be successful they need to add hundreds more people to their network and they really should be better to the very few people in their network where they can be the most helpful to than can be supportive to them.
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[00:17:30] Steve Fretzin: io today. Hey everybody, Steve Fretzin here. Man, I thought I was a good marketer, but maybe not. Lawyers have been approaching me asking, what’s the Rainmakers Roundtable? Well, I tell them this is a special place created exclusively for rainmaking lawyers to continue their journey of prosperity. Our program is unique as every member has a significant book of business and is motivated to grow it year after year.
[00:17:54] Steve Fretzin: Where else does this exist? If you’re a managing partner who’s looking to get off your lonely island and talk shopping, With America’s top rate makers, please go to my website, Fretzin. com and apply for membership today. Is there a habit that you teach people around follow up? You mentioned earlier that follow up is a big problem.
[00:18:14] Steve Fretzin: They’re just getting buried in their day and then to go back and follow up with people they’ve met or stay in touch. How do you help them do that?
[00:18:21] Stuart Baum: Well, they’re in that 30 minutes that you have every twice a week. Ah,
[00:18:26] Steve Fretzin: the old 30 minutes, yes.
[00:18:27] Stuart Baum: Yeah, it’s like, and again, it’s, I’ve seen people do 10 minutes.
[00:18:29] Stuart Baum: I’ve seen people struggle to keep them sacred. And again, it also comes down to the write it down. Like if you and I have lunch, I’m going to leave that lunch and say, okay, what did I promise Steve? And I’m going to write, I’m going to get on my phone, I’m going to type out, I promised him this. I have this habit of texting things to myself.
[00:18:46] Stuart Baum: So I’ll text it to myself, and then I’ll have that, you know, when you look at your text, you’ll see that one. I know that there’s a thing I have to do. And then I won’t, to either wash it, see a dishwasher dish. I won’t allow myself to undo that one until I do it. And while I might have a lot of unread emails, the thing that gets me crazy is having unanswered texts.
[00:19:06] Stuart Baum: Even if it’s from myself. So
[00:19:08] Steve Fretzin: I’m kind of gaming myself. I never think about it, but I never have unanswered texts. That’s for some reason, that’s for me, that’s automatic. Get a text and, but with emails, it, right? There’s all different levels and all different very variances of importance. And texts, for some reason, they’re all important.
[00:19:26] Steve Fretzin: Not really, but I guess that’s just a mental thing.
[00:19:29] Stuart Baum: I don’t know, when you look at your phone, it tells you how many unread emails you have. And some of the times it’s a big number, but unread texts? It’s a manageable number, and it feels like you can knock that out.
[00:19:40] Steve Fretzin: What are we doing to help lawyers with better email habits?
[00:19:44] Steve Fretzin: So, I’m at a zero inbox every day, and that’s a getting things done. I
[00:19:48] Stuart Baum: want to be you
[00:19:49] Steve Fretzin: It’s, I mean, I’ve been a getting things done David Allen student and teacher for now for, I don’t know, 18 years. And, I don’t know that I would sleep well if I had a, you know, unanswered email. So Getting to a zero inbox.
[00:20:03] Steve Fretzin: It is a is a thing. I’m doing it, I’m getting my clients to do it. But there’s habits that have to be in, you know, that have to be set up for that.
[00:20:12] Stuart Baum: Well that is definitely a trick that you have and you can coach though I probably can’t coach, and maybe this is a little bit, I coach to coach. Yeah. You can coach a, but, or maybe this is a little bit of a, do you eat all your own dog food and so Yeah, that eat dog food.
[00:20:24] Stuart Baum: That would be dog food of mine that I would not eat. ’cause. I can’t promise that in a zero inbox at the end of the
[00:20:31] Steve Fretzin: well, I’m not going to promise it for the lawyers. I promise it for myself. I can’t promise the lawyers, but here’s the thing. You’ve got 500 on an open emails. You either you or your assistant or a combination have to go through and you’ve got to put them into categories of priority.
[00:20:47] Steve Fretzin: Get it done. Now, something that’s going to take some time and you’ve got to put thought into it and that you’ve got to defer those and schedule time for those. And then there’s a bunch of trash. Okay. And you gotta just work that down and work it down over a period of whatever a couple weeks until you get to the zero inbox.
[00:21:03] Steve Fretzin: Then once you get there, you can’t go back. You have to either have scheduled time during the day, morning, afternoon, evening to go through emails to make sure that you, and I’m also a big proponent of, and I don’t do this fully, but to have an assistant or have someone that you trust, Go through your emails and get rid of the ones or respond to the ones as you for the basic ones.
[00:21:25] Steve Fretzin: Hey Stuart, I want to meet with you and you say sure and they’re setting that up. I don’t have to touch it. It’s just you end up in my calendar, right? So there’s things like that I think get trapped and obviously the very important client ones, you know, need to be handled with kick gloves.
[00:21:39] Stuart Baum: Yeah, no, I think that’s great advice.
[00:21:41] Stuart Baum: It’s a great habit. To have, it’s not one I have, but I think, and you know, when I talk to people about habits, they all look at me and they say the same thing, not all habits work for all people. And so I think the caveat to all of this stuff is not all of this is going to work for all people, but some of it will work for you.
[00:21:58] Stuart Baum: So pick the things that work for you and do it. So I can’t promise a zero inbox to myself. But I can certainly promise that I set up time where I will do follow ups every single week. So, you know, you will get a follow up, you will get an email. And one of my tricks is when you offer people times, offer them two times, not a laundry list of times.
[00:22:24] Stuart Baum: Because two times is they’ll pick one or the other they’re in their calendar and you got to hit you offer them 15. That feels like work. So that little hack, that’s about a habit.
[00:22:33] Steve Fretzin: And I’m huge auto scheduler fan, like person. So I talked to someone recently who is not a fan of it. She’s like, Oh, you’re giving me work to do by giving me your calendar.
[00:22:42] Steve Fretzin: You’re giving me work to do. And I’m just going to put this out there. I’ve been doing this now for a few years. We’re talking about thousands and thousands of auto scheduling links that I’ve sent out. On one hand, I can tell you how many times I’ve gotten pushback on that. And I just find that there’s nothing more efficient for my day and for the person that I’m trying to schedule time with because they can just go in and within a minute figure out the time, click a button, put their email in and it’s done and we’re done with it.
[00:23:12] Steve Fretzin: We can move on with our lives. I think some of it, Stuart is the language, you have to say something like, you know, I know how busy we both are to avoid the back and forth that happens with your scheduling. Here’s my auto scheduler to help facilitate this. If you want to do something more direct, we can certainly do that as well.
[00:23:31] Steve Fretzin: So that way you’re kind of covering your bases.
[00:23:35] Stuart Baum: Yeah, I mean, I used to be somebody that didn’t like when people sent me those auto schedulers, and now I’ve become someone who loves when people send those to me. Yeah. Because I can, you know, one and done. Yeah. Right? Yeah. One and done. Just lock it down. So, again, I don’t use that.
[00:23:49] Stuart Baum: I’m like sitting there like, I don’t do anything, apparently. I don’t use that, but I appreciate when people do. But
[00:23:55] Steve Fretzin: just look, if we’re trying to, if part of habits is saving time, I mean why are we setting up habits, right? Because we want to save, we want to do things more efficiently and we want to achieve and it’s very hard to do that without having a cereal.
[00:24:08] Steve Fretzin: You cannot lose weight if you don’t have discipline and habits about eating or working out, like it just doesn’t happen. Unless you had a certain metabolism or something like that. But with business development and lawyers, if you don’t have positive habits, I think you’re really in a pickle. It’s funny that you mentioned working
[00:24:25] Stuart Baum: out because.
[00:24:27] Stuart Baum: I will ask my clients, do you have a workout schedule that you adhere to every single week? Like a religion? And if they say yes, I’m like, we’re going to do really well together. And they’re like, why? I said, because I’m in shape. It’s like, well, you’ll have more energy and yes, because we do know that good workout habits give you more energy.
[00:24:46] Stuart Baum: But also it’s like, You prioritize the things that are important. So if I can get into your head and say, this business development is important, then I know I’m going to get my 30 minute meetings and they’re going to keep them sacred. And they’ll know that if it gets pushed for some reason, business travel or a call from, you know, managing partners, as you got to work on this thing now that they’ll then set it for later.
[00:25:06] Stuart Baum: Cause they’re going to feel bad to themselves at the end of the day. If they don’t have that, then I’m going to have to work on the habit of keeping their habits.
[00:25:15] Steve Fretzin: The habit of keeping habits, everybody. The habit of keeping habits. So let’s go back for a moment to something else that was brought up you know, 15 minutes ago, and that was about lawyers the habit of talking too much, talking through meetings, and dominating the conversation.
[00:25:29] Steve Fretzin: Talk about that, why it’s a problem, and what you’re talking to lawyers about to help them break that bad habit.
[00:25:34] Stuart Baum: So I’ve also run sales teams, and we know that the best attributes a salesperson can have is two ears. And it’s the expression is listen to sale, don’t talk to sale. And that you’re not learning anything when you are talking or, you know, when your mouth is opening, you’re open, you’re not learning anything.
[00:25:53] Stuart Baum: And it is a hard habit to break. And I will, you know, throw a little under the bus here because they’re kind of the worst at that. And I was like, that’s it. I mean, Laura’s like, yeah, every Laura’s like, like podcast.
[00:26:05] Steve Fretzin: We just lost our entire listenership. Thanks a lot. Oh, well,
[00:26:08] Stuart Baum: I’m hoping that for your next one, but, and so it’s the, you know, and this is why it’s like, one of the things I think I teed this up at the earlier is tell stories, not services.
[00:26:18] Stuart Baum: So, you don’t want someone to come and say, we do these 14 things, and let me list all these 14 things and all that. Have these little stories, and we’ll get to the habit of getting those stories in a few minutes. But have these little stories, and before you meet somebody, think, what stories can I tell that person today?
[00:26:32] Stuart Baum: What problems did I solve that might be interesting to this person? That’s what It’s a short story, and you know, I always, when I work with my lawyer and coach lawyers, it’s like, keep it about 120 seconds, 102 minutes for that story. Don’t tell more than two or three stories. Now you’re talking about six to eight minutes of your hour lunch or your half hour drink or whatever.
[00:26:52] Stuart Baum: And that’s okay. And people will remember the stories. They’re not going to remember the 30 services that you listed out with all the sub bullets and other people working on it, they’ll remember that interesting way that you fix something or that you help somebody, or you turn something around or just, I don’t know, the passion behind the stories and two months from now, and they see something else or like.
[00:27:14] Stuart Baum: Well, Steve told the story that seems to fit here, or close enough that, Hey Steve, I remember the story I told. They’re not like, they’re not going to listen to your hundreds of services or remember one of them. They’re not. Because bluntly all lawyers do exactly the same thing in everybody’s mind, until they have a problem.
[00:27:31] Steve Fretzin: Well, it sounds like that I don’t know if it’s Simon Sinek that was like, start with why like people want to hear why you’re right. He’s amazing. Like why you do something, not all the things you do. So talk about, you know, what got you into it, why you’re passionate about it, what, what motivates you and people are going to remember that much more than a bunch of services for sure.
[00:27:49] Stuart Baum: Yeah, and I think one of the things that does motivate a lot, a lot of people, lawyers especially, and here’s where I’ll get our listeners back, lawyers really like to help people. They really like to solve problems and put that person on a higher stair and a better, more secure place. So, and here’s a habit, is when you’re talking to a client and they ask you for some counsel and you give them counsel, instead of saying, great, that was good, I’ll go log my billable hours or free advice because it was as a friend, put the phone down.
[00:28:17] Stuart Baum: Take a second and write down what was the issue, what was your solution, and a couple bullets on that, and that becomes the story. And if you have, you know, 10 or 12 of those at the end of the month, first of all, what an amazing blog that would be for you for anybody. And also then you can look through those and say, okay, which of these stories that I think will resonate with Steve, if I’m meeting him a couple of weeks and say, Steve, this interesting thing happened.
[00:28:40] Stuart Baum: And you’re like, oh, you’re solving problems for clients and you’re excited about it. And that kind of is the why, because that’s showing the why as opposed to telling the why. Yeah. So again, back to the write it down folks.
[00:28:52] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, so critical and, and I’ll be in a networking meeting where we’re like, like running a networking session with a bunch of people and no one has any.
[00:29:00] Steve Fretzin: Pen and paper, I go, you guys are going to remember all this and you guys are going to, how are you going to write, think of a name and keep a name for that you’re thinking about for someone else when we go back to the, you know, from the small group to the main group or whatever it might be. And they all kind of looked at me like, oh shit, he’s right.
[00:29:14] Steve Fretzin: Like, I’m not going to remember that.
[00:29:17] Stuart Baum: How many times have you been coaching somebody and they say, oh, I went to this event and I met these two great people. And they didn’t remember their name or what they even talked about. I think we talked, it was like, if you just took two seconds to type it in your phone before you talk to the next person, or while you have a drink or just saying, we’ll sit over here for a second, do a text, you will remember forever.
[00:29:40] Steve Fretzin: You know, the other thing I’m in this habit is generated, you know, through me and through my program, I’ll just share briefly is you know, I’m teaching sales, free selling. And in sales free selling and that methodology, it doesn’t allow for pitching, convincing, and solving. Those are not parts of what I teach.
[00:30:00] Steve Fretzin: It’s relationship building, it’s questioning, it’s qualifying, it’s, it’s empathy and understanding. So in a meeting like that, you’re learning all you can learn. You’re qualifying that everybody’s a good fit and you’re getting all the details of what you should present Before you actually present, so it’s like a proper diagnosis before prescription, right?
[00:30:21] Steve Fretzin: And so, so it ends up being that, you know, Pareto principle, the 80 20 rule, because you’re really only talking 80 or 20 percent of the time, and it’s asking questions, it’s clarifying that you, what you heard, it’s, you know, you know, and maybe it’s, it’s peppering in a story or something, that’s okay. But ultimately those are habits that I think are hard to build unless you study business development and what the top coaches like you and I and others are doing, because otherwise you just don’t know that you shouldn’t go in and just charge in with solving and showing how smart you are and talking through the whole thing.
[00:30:54] Stuart Baum: Yeah, absolutely. Again, listen to sale, right? I mean, the smartest person in the room is the one that listens the most. Yeah, because if I’m telling my issues to you and you ask, but tell me a little more and how did that work out for you? Or what did you try to do? Or that type of stuff. I’m like, this is a really smart guy.
[00:31:11] Stuart Baum: And what you’re really doing is just prompting me to tell you more, tell you more, tell you more. And then when that happens, I’m like, okay, he seems to understand. Now, what do you think I should do here? It’s like, all right, well, let me tell you a story. There’s somebody else that’s something similar. And this is how I helped them.
[00:31:26] Stuart Baum: Don’t know if it’s going to work for you. And you’re like, Okay. Let’s talk about that. Yeah. But right. If I come in and start giving you, you know, a white paper and 15 minutes about the solution to it, you’re just like, well, that’s not for me. And I’m bored. And I’m thinking about, you know, what I’ve been buying away home for dinner, all the dishes that are piling up in my sink because I didn’t just do the dishes.
[00:31:47] Stuart Baum: Right. We’re going to talk about dishes the whole time. No,
[00:31:49] Steve Fretzin: I mean, let’s, that’s, that’s a part two. Everybody’s going to be the dishes conversation. We’re going to talk about dishes. But we are going to wrap up on that point not the dish point, but on the, on just the general concept of, you know, look, habits aren’t easy to create and sustain.
[00:32:04] Steve Fretzin: However, when you get a good one and you do sustain it, wow, what a, what a game changer in your life and your career. So, you know, take heed. And I think atomic habits, getting things done, coaching, accountability, but I mean, so many takeaways from today. And then the game changing podcast, you mentioned, if books can kill.
[00:32:21] Steve Fretzin: We talked about that earlier if people want to get in touch with you, Stuart, they want to hear more about larger pond marketing, what are the best ways for them to reach you?
[00:32:29] Stuart Baum: They can send me an email at Stuart at larger pond. com or go to my LinkedIn profile, Stuart Bellman, and just message me.
[00:32:36] Steve Fretzin: Awesome.
[00:32:36] Stuart Baum: Awesome.
[00:32:37] Steve Fretzin: And we’ll wrap up thanking our sponsors, the podcast law, her, which if you’re a woman looking to get ahead as a lawyer, that’s the podcast you want to listen to. In addition to this one. And of course, rankings IO working with you know, agency working with law firms all over the world to help develop marketing and, and get those leads in the door and lock them up.
[00:32:56] Steve Fretzin: Awesome Stewart. Thanks so much, man. I I’m glad we’re able to get back together and and talk about habits and, and share, you know, combined wisdom with with my audience today, man, appreciate you.
[00:33:05] Stuart Baum: Yeah, no, it was fun. And I appreciate, I appreciate the conversation and I’m going to take a look at my inbox and feel a little bit sad, but I am also somebody that when I do a dish, see a dish, I do a dish, right?
[00:33:16] Stuart Baum: There is no dishes in the sink ever. So at least I have that habit.
[00:33:20] Steve Fretzin: That was a really good look. We’re all works in progress, right? We’re all trying to get better. So there’s no, there’s no stopping that. Thank you, Stuart. And thank you everybody for hanging out with us today on the be that lawyer with Fretzin podcast.
[00:33:30] Steve Fretzin: We are here for you to be that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled rainmaker. Take care of everybody. Be safe. Be well. We will talk again very soon.
[00:33:43] Narrator: Thanks for listening. To be that loyal, 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.