In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Viki Johnston discuss:
- Navigating the transition from individual contributor to effective leader
- Developing communication skills that foster trust and clarity
- Understanding how mindset and self-awareness shape professional success
- Using behavioral tools to improve collaboration and team dynamics
Key Takeaways:
- Role-playing in training helps managers safely practice difficult conversations, allowing them to fail, debrief, and improve without real-world consequences.
- Poor listening is a critical leadership flaw; most people are merely waiting to talk instead of truly hearing others, especially in virtual settings.
- Paraphrasing not only shows active listening but also gives the speaker space to correct misunderstandings, reducing conflict and enhancing clarity.
- Undervaluing your services, often due to internal narratives or low self-worth, can hurt both your business and client relationships—a lesson learned after undercharging for years.
“We think we can multitask. We really can’t. We can’t think and listen to somebody at the same time.” — Viki Johnston
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About Viki Johnston: Viki Johnston is an entrepreneur, Training Consultant with over 25 years of her career dedicated to professional training. She designs and delivers soft skills classroom training that is customized to a client’s exact requirements, across a range of subjects. Her in-depth knowledge of Customer Service and Business Management allows Viki to provide an exceptionally high level of learning facilitation and consultancy across a wide range of industries.
Viki is British, a Master Practitioner of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), DiSC certified, and Certified in Applied Improvisation. She currently lives in Irvine, Southern California, with her husband and daughter. She is a self-confessed lifelong learner with a passion for helping others experience light bulb moments and achieve their own goals.
Connect with Viki Johnston:
Website: https://www.exelorate.com/
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikijohnston/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vikiajohnston
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exelorate2015/
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Instagram: @fretzinsteve
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: [email protected]
Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Steve Fretzin [00:04]
Hey everybody, Steve Fretzin here, and I hate fact that I’m promoting my book over and over again, but listen, it’s doing great, and I’d love for you to have a copy. Carl fix has been on the show a few times, and he has said about the book and my guess me, known in many circles as the lawyer whisperer, Steve succeeds where many others have failed having spent 30 plus years in private practice of law. I know this is a Herculean task, but Steve does it with Sincerity, honesty and integrity. Thank you, Carl and thank you everybody for being a loyal listener the show and grab a copy of the book on Amazon and be that lawyer.
Narrator [00:44]
You’re listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin [01:06]
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the be that lawyer podcast. I am Steve Fretzin, as the announcer mentioned, and wow, we are just on a clip here. Over 500 episodes, cranking out two a week, every single week, bringing you the best and brightest guests in the legal industry today is absolutely no different. Viki is waiting in the wings. How are you Viki?
Viki Johnston [01:25]
I’m very good. Thank you. Thanks for inviting me on.
Steve Fretzin [01:28]
You are so welcome, and I’m very excited about that. And I have to say, I’ve read a number of Albert Einstein quotes before, and yours, right off the bat. I’m like, I haven’t read that one, but that’s a really good one. I’ll give it to you, and then I want to hear your take on it. Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it was stupid. Welcome to the show and tell us a little bit about that quote and why that is your quote of the show.
Viki Johnston [01:52]
The reason I like that quote so much is because I think a lot of people judge themselves against other people’s ability, and that’s the worst place to start from, because everybody has a talent, everybody has something they’re good at, and everybody has something they’re not so good at. And we can’t all be the same. The joy of people are that we are all different. So we have to just look internally and say, Where are my skills? What am I good at? This person over here is amazing at this job. Great. Let me get them to help me be better, but not judging myself against that, because we will all spend the rest of our lives thinking, Well, I’m not good enough, and I kind of felt like that when I came out of school, so it resonates with me a lot.
Steve Fretzin [02:33]
Yeah, and I think we do spend a lot of time sort of looking to our left and our right and trying to see what everyone else is doing and what in comparing ourselves. I think there’s another quote about comparison is the ultimate something or other. It’s just like, I don’t remember the quote. It’s been on the show, though I should remember it. But basically, like, you’re just, it’s such a waste of time comparing yourself to others and worrying about what everyone else thinks and what everyone else is doing, instead of looking forward and really through and trying to really figure out your own path. Yeah, totally, yeah, right on. So everybody. Viki Johnston is the founder of accelerate. And how did we meet? We were connected by someone special. And now I’m, I know what’s wrong with my brain.
Viki Johnston [03:10]
So we met through a provisor meeting Coaches and Consultants. Yeah, we were, I think, in the same room, and we were like, Hey, we need to, yeah.
Steve Fretzin [03:18]
Yeah. So shout out to our provisors friends. And I’ve had so many coaches and consultants group members come on the show, and every single one of them, and like yourself, Viki just impresses, and really just is such an expert in their space that we’re able to just give 3456, takeaways. And now I’ve put that pressure on you, so you know, good luck. Okay, now you gotta live up. Yeah, I gotta live up to it. All right, that’s our goal for today. But before we go forward, let’s step back and give us a little understanding of your background and how you got into being, you know, kind of a leadership and communication expert.
Viki Johnston [03:52]
Yeah, so I guess it kind of goes back to that quote. So I left school at 16 in the UK, which wasn’t unusual. A lot of people at school at 60 those days that long ago, but really I left with no qualifications. I did very badly at school. I’m undiagnosed dyslexic. I kind of self diagnosed myself when my son was born and I could see that he was having challenges, I was like, oh, that’s kind of the same as me. So I was one of those that came out of school that said, Well, clearly I’m stupid. I’ve got no qualifications. I got no hope in having any kind of career, so I started work, and I got a job in a call center in a large career company, international career company, and I kind of figured things out really quickly that I was good at talking to people. So I wasn’t good at the academic side of things, but I was really good at talking to people, and I gradually moved up within the organization into a management position. Love, love. Love managing people. I love checking on their performance. I loved having interview conversations with people. I just love that whole connection and the way that we communicate with people. I did a sideway shift into our training function. Education, which at that time, they were putting a lot of money into development for us. So I was taught how to design training, how to work as a consultant in a training organization, even though it was kind of an interesting we were just internal consultants, but I learned how to really connect with my audience, and who are these people, and what do they really need, and how could I help them learn in the most effective way for them? And that was, that was, like, my favorite thing. And I left my corporate job 22 years ago, set myself up as an independent and I’ve been doing my own thing ever since.
Steve Fretzin [05:34]
So somebody’s listening to this and saying, very interesting story. What? So, what are you What’s your business now, like, what are you helping people accomplish in their businesses and their goals?
Viki Johnston [05:45]
Yeah. So my favorite thing really is working with a group of leaders. And my favorite leaders are the ones that have just been promoted to a manager, and now they’re like, Yay, not my manager. And then like, oh, hang on a minute, I’m a manager. What does that mean? Yeah. So they’re very motivated. They want to do well, but they don’t have the skill set. So then now they’re struggling a little bit with Well, now I have responsibility of people, and I don’t really understand how to do that, because I was one of them, and now I’m not one of them anymore, so I work with them. I’ll step in and I’ll run experiential type training, so it’s very hands on. It’s gamified. So we, you know, we do lots of activity, and I get them to really practice, and get into practicing skills around communication, and then really seeing, well, if I say this, and if I behave in this way, and if this is my body language, what’s the impact of that? And taking that learning back into the workplace and then allowing them to really step into their their role as a leader with some knowledge of, how do I do that? And also, how do I self reflect and go? That didn’t go quite so well.
Steve Fretzin [06:51]
It’s one of the most sort of undervalued aspects of life, is getting feedback and learning and improving. I feel like people are just wandering through a year of business development, a year of poor management communication, a year of maybe 10 years right, and not really stopping and saying, What did I do right? What did I do wrong? How can I improve? And I think without the help of coaches and mentors and advisors and people that can sort of see the label from the outside of the bottle, because you’re on the inside, very difficult to change and make and really get to the next level in anything, in any sport, in music, food business.
Viki Johnston [07:32]
Yeah, totally. And actually, what helps is I don’t manage people anymore, but I have so I’ve had that experience, and I’ve also made the mistakes in that so being able to step from the outside and say, hey, look, look at what you’re doing. How is that impacting what you’re doing? Are you getting the result that you want you know, or are you judging yourself by everybody else and saying, well, all these other people can manage, so I must be able to as well. You have your own skill set. And I realized that as a manager, that my skill wasn’t telling people what to do. It was connecting with people and finding out what they wanted so that I could help them be their best version.
Steve Fretzin [08:08]
Yeah, so I’m meeting with a client, and I’m reviewing their business development efforts. Okay? I’m looking at their journal that we create. I’m looking at their activity. We’re debriefing, and I observe that there’s a disconnect between steps that they should be hitting and what they actually did. And I’m having them role play and show me what they were doing. I we agree that a step was skip, we review it, we talk it through, and then I have them do it again with it. And that’s what I’m doing in my space, to make sure that the skills are not just being learned, but being internalized. How do you help people do that with communication?
Viki Johnston [08:45]
Yeah. So again, very similar. I love a good role play. Doesn’t go.
Steve Fretzin [08:49]
Nothing gets to the truth. Like a role play like you either can do it or you can’t do it, yeah, it’s real. It’s happening, and you learn a lot, yeah.
Viki Johnston [08:57]
And I can also cry on demand. So I love being that one. I’ve caught many people out before where they’re like, Oh, I’ll role play this with you. And I just played this character that completely crumbles and bursts into tears, and people are up, and then when we debrief it afterwards, they’re like, I could see that actually happening. I’m like, That’s exactly why you needed to be in that position, and you needed to do it in a safe environment. So mine is all about let’s screw up in the training room as many times as you possibly can. Let’s get it so wrong that we can pull it to pieces and help you build it back. So the next time you do it, you don’t make any of those mistakes, because there’s no consequence of you messing it up in this room. There’s no consequence of you making me cry. There’s a consequence of you making your employee cry, so let’s make sure that we can get to that when we’re in a safe environment. And I will say, I mean, that was kind of an extreme one. But I also like to make it kind of fun. I use some improv techniques where, you know, it’s just, we’re just having fun with it. They’re out of their normal work environment, the pressure. Is off. They don’t have to perform. So we get to, like, really see them and see how they communicate. And then we go, Well, that was really good, the way you did that. Yeah. How about we do this and make it even better?
Steve Fretzin [10:10]
All right, so let’s take that a little further. What are the top like, two or three mistakes that you see in communication and management with leaders, things that they’re just totally missing the boat on.
Viki Johnston [10:21]
One of the big things is listening. We don’t listen. We think we’re listening because we are in space with somebody and the other person is talking. And I have a colleague that I do some training with, and he uses this phrase, which I love, is like there are two forms of communication, one is talking and one is waiting to talk. So we’re not actually listening. We’re just waiting for this person to finish what they’re saying, and then we can jump in and say what we want to say.
Steve Fretzin [10:46]
You actually, can you repeat all that again? I was busy looking No, you’re just distracted not listening. Oh, I was looking at my email while you were talking.
Viki Johnston [10:53]
And that’s the other thing. We kind of pretend like, Oh yes, I can hear you, but I’m not really listening. Yeah, and yeah, these things, all these things, they’re all a distraction for us. Zoom is a nightmare when it comes to trying to communicate with people, because I could just be here doing my emails while I’m on camera.
Steve Fretzin [11:10]
Well, let me, let me give you a little insight of what I do. So I have a class that meets every Tuesday morning, and I’ve got a group of, you know, 10 to 12 lawyers from around the world, and I can see them all on the screen, and I can see when they start to drift off to their email. And I’ll go, you know, John, you want to answer that question. And John, I see John goalie goes, oh boy. And then they have to, like, suck it up in front of the group and be like, you know, I got distracted by any of my I’m like, I know.
Viki Johnston [11:38]
Just that one second that you are.
Steve Fretzin [11:41]
Bringing you back. Sorry, I didn’t call you out, but yes, so not listening, and you know, it really one thing that I think, too is important is to show that you’re listening, not just by being there, but repeating back what someone says and demonstrating that you’ve listened. Yeah, how does that, from your position, improve communication and improve relationships.
Viki Johnston [12:03]
So there’s a lot of stuff that paraphrasing does, and it helps us as much as it helps the other person that we’re communicating with, because in order to paraphrase effectively, you need to not be thinking about your own stuff. You can’t think. I know we think we can multitask. We really can’t. We can’t think and listen to somebody at the same time. They’ve done a whole load of studies where they’ve tried to get paid. To get people to do like do the alphabet and sums, all at the same time, and it doesn’t work, that our brain doesn’t work that way. So we have to just not be thinking. We have to be just totally in the moment, listening to what they’ve said, so that we can then verbalize back what we’ve heard. So there’s that, which is the first thing, the second thing it does for us, it allows us time to percolate the the answer. Sometimes, what happens is, somebody starts with a question and then we’re already thinking the answer before they’ve even finished. So the question may have flipped at the end, but we’ve only heard the first bit, so we answer the wrong part of the question, if we really listen, and then we can verbalize that back in a paraphrase and say, so you’re asking me, if this and this and this, we’re now able to work out the answer in our head as we are saying it. So there’s no breakdown of, Am I coming up with the right thing? I’m like, you’re asking me these questions, and my brain’s going, Oh, that’s what I need to do about these questions. So that gives us time to figure out the answer. And as you say, and the other thing is, for the other person, they feel like, oh, actually, yeah, you did hear me. You did. Those were the words that I was saying. And if somebody’s saying, I’m really frustrated about this, and you’re saying so I hear that you’re frustrated. Like, yes, I am frustrated. We’re helping them be heard. And that, in itself, breaks down a lot of conflict, because sometimes people just want to be heard, just want somebody, want somebody to vent at. They want, they want that kind of mirrored back at them so that they don’t feel so isolated and alone. And then finally, the last thing really it does for that person that you’re listening to, you’re repeating back and checking in, they know that you’ve listened, but they can also correct you. Sometimes, I don’t know if you’ve ever had that situation where you’ve said something out loud and somebody’s like, mirrored it back at you, and you’re like, No, I kind of didn’t mean it that way. It wasn’t how I meant it to come out. So that other person has the opportunity to go, Well, I think that was my question, but I think it’s more about this, actually. So now you’re really getting into a conversation. You’re not just like, a back and forward. Here’s a question, here’s an answer, here’s a question, here’s an answer. You’re having a conversation and understanding each other.
Steve Fretzin [14:26]
Well, and I think that’s so much more powerful than what might feel like an interview, right? Or just feel like a Q and A back and forth. So, and I also will, I don’t know this is not for every situation Viki, but for networking, like the networking that we do in provisors and for business development, for lawyers, it’s so important, in my opinion, to take notes when someone is sharing their problems, their challenges, their frustrations, how deep the rabbit hole goes, and you’re trying to remember all of that and the next question, and you know, everything else that’s going to happen in this meeting. Be very difficult to do. It’s like when I go to, and I’ve said this before on the show, like when I go to a restaurant and I’ve got, you know, an order that isn’t, you know, just, I’ll take the hamburger, right? Like, I have a special way I want it cooked certain type of cheese, all that, and they don’t write it down, and I know right away this is not going to come back, right? Yeah, pretty straight, pretty standard.
Viki Johnston [15:20]
That’s kind of how that happens. Yeah, yeah. And again. And the other thing about making notes, which, yes, is really important. The tricky part of that is when we’re doing this virtually, and you’re talking and I’ve got my head down and I’m making notes, yeah, you know, I still need to be able to maintain that communication with you. So there’s another skill aspect there around you, being able to say, so let me just paraphrase that. Did I get that right? Let me just make a note. Okay, paraphrase the next things. Did I get that right? Let me just make a note. So we have to be even more communicative now that we’re doing this virtually. You know, we have to be able to kind of say, you know, I’m not looking out the window, I’m looking at my second screen. You know, those kind of things. We have to let people know, because they’re not in our heads. They don’t know what we’re doing.
Steve Fretzin [16:03]
Yep, right on with proven SEO and digital marketing strategies that drive actual clients to your firm, rankings.io, prides itself on proof, not promises. Mentality, the best firms hire rankings.io. When they want rankings, traffic and cases, other law firm marketing agencies can’t deliver. Get more rankings, get cases and schedule a free [email protected] today. Hey everybody. It’s Steve Fretzin as the you know, I’m the host of the be that lawyer podcast, and if you’re serious about growing your law practice, let’s talk. I’ve coached hundreds of attorneys to build bigger books of business without selling chasing or wasting time. This isn’t a sales pitch. It’s a real 30 minute strategy session to explore what’s possible for you in your practice. Just head over to fretzin.com and grab a time that works for you, and let’s make this your breakout year. Now, something that you and I have in common, and I’m in common from the standpoint of, I know 10% and you know 100% is NLP, which is Neuro Linguistic Programming. Most people don’t know anything about that. They might have heard a term like mirroring. But how does NLP, and a knowledge of it, help with communication in the office, with prospects, with anybody you’re interacting with?
Viki Johnston [17:21]
Yeah, so I was the same as you, actually, and I’ve known about NLP. It’s been around for a long time. It’s not a new thing, and I’ve been using things like mirroring body language, verbal language, but for a long time. And then about six years ago, I went with a friend to an NLP weekend, and I just went because she was interested, like, I’ll come for more support. But it just, the more I got into this particular program, it blew my mind, just the amount of power that we have in our own internal thoughts that I hadn’t really got into I might I was really only just touching the surface. So for me, the power of nlps and neuro linguistic programming. It is about the programming we have in our head, and most of that we have no idea is even there, the way that we respond to things, so the triggers that we have, they’re all internalized. And it could be I work with people doing presentation skills training, and often people I couldn’t possibly get out there and speak well, why not? Where? Why? You know we’re not. There’s no saber toothed tiger in the room here. Now you’re perfectly safe standing up here talking is because they’ve internalized a dialog in their head. But maybe when they were very young, they were told just to sit quietly and let the adults talk. Or something has happened, and not in a no traumatic way, but something has happened to them that they have internalized in a dialog, and that now becomes part of their subconscious response to things. And we go over and over that in our head, so every time we say I couldn’t possibly do that, we’re just reinforcing that message that we’ve already got, that we couldn’t possibly do that thing. So it opened up so much possibility for me when I realized the power of that internal voice that we have. I’ve always known about the power of the external voice, but that internal voice has a bigger impact on everything than I had even considered until I went down that road.
Steve Fretzin [19:16]
Yeah, internal voice mindset. They’re, you know, kissing cousins, if you will, and without having a positive mindset, without, you know, really being in a position to communicate effectively, or having the fear of communicating really, you know, hurt your chances of getting business, of building relationships, of managing people effectively. So it all comes around. Do you remember that statistic that came out a long time ago, like only 7% of communication is verbal. I think it was. I think that was changed recently.
Viki Johnston [19:47]
Yeah, well, that’s kind of the old school of thought. I still go with that because I still think, you know you can use words. We now know that all the different forms of communication we have, I could send you a text message and you have to enter. Put everything around those words, you have to decide, you know, what kind of mood was I in when I sent it? Was I joking? Was I angry? You know, when I complaining about something you’re having to create. So what would be the 93% of communication I didn’t give you with that text message? You’re having to establish what that is without anything else for me, and that’s where communication breaks down a lot, because we assume that the person that sent me that email in capitals was shouting at me. We don’t assume that, oh, maybe their caps lock got locked on and they didn’t notice, or maybe they’re just trying to make a point.
Steve Fretzin [20:36]
Or maybe they’re just lazy and they don’t want to have to deal with caps.
Viki Johnston [20:41]
Exactly. Yeah. It can be multiple reasons why those things happen, but we always think everybody thinks like me. So therefore, if I think this is what they meant, then that’s what they meant, yeah? And you know, we judge people by their behavior, and we judge ourselves by our intention. So it’s completely different.
Steve Fretzin [21:00]
Yeah, another great tool that you’re involved in that I’ve been doing for, I’ll just put a number and say, 22 years has been disc assessments, and I used to do this for a lot of different companies. Now I just do it internally for my clients, because Know thyself, right? So know how you’re communicating, Do’s, Don’ts, what how you like to be communicated on and otherwise. And then I’m also sort of teaching my clients, this is why you’re not communicating well with this partner or this client or this prospect, because they’re different than you, and you’re being you and they’re being them. And it’s not necessarily making things very run very smoothly. Like I’m an extrovert, experiential type person, and I’m dealing with an introvert who just wants to, you know, tell me what the you know, wants to put the code together or whatever. And I’m like, Yeah, that’s not for me. What have you learned from disc? And what is that? What teach you? What does this stand for? And then what does it teach us about human behavior?
Viki Johnston [21:55]
Yeah. So for me, disc is such a fascinating tool, and there are lots of tools that’s just really one of them where I like to use disc is more of a who are your team? So, so I and I’ll, let’s categorize it into the different you know, are they a task focused person, or are they a people focus person? So you’ve got your DS and your CS that are just into the detail, then you’ve got your eyes and your S’s, which all about people, and then you have fast and slow people. So you’ve got your conscientious people and your, you know, the people that want to just check in with everybody and make sure they’re sensitive people, is everybody, okay, I’m going to go in really slowly. Or you’ve got your, probably, you’re an eye like, like me or a D, and you’re just like, No, let’s just get this done. Come on, everybody. We were talking about role plays. I mean, that’s like, that’s such an I thing to do. Come on, anybody come up and do a role play. So, but what I like to do is not necessarily get them to focus on themselves. I talk to them from a team aspect. Who do you have in your team? How many C’s Do you have? How many D’s Do you know? Or maybe you’re the only D, which is normally what happens in a leadership position. So what do these other people need from you? And yeah, this might be your preferred style, but how are you going to be able to adapt? And I like to think about leadership as being a bit of a chameleon in that I don’t want people to change their personality or, you know, I’m going to become more sensitive like, Well, no, it’s not who you are, but just recognize that other people are more sensitive. So you might just need to adapt your style with that person in order to get the best thing from that person. And then somebody else is going to come along and they’ll be different again. So what do they need from you? So I love it from a team aspect, who do I have? What do they need?
Steve Fretzin [23:40]
Yeah, I’ve done a ton of that for teams, and it really does help for them to understand how everyone else is built differently. And the rule when I was growing up was treat people the way you want to be treated. We kind of all grew up with that, and what this sort of tells us is treat people the way they want to be treated. And so the idea that I’m going to, you know, talk big picture with someone who wants the detail, or someone that wants to I had a guy, again, try to explain to me how he’s going to code my website. I was like, buddy, you just stop right there. I don’t care at all how you code my website. When’s it gonna get done and what’s it gonna do? Right? What’s it gonna do for me? And, like, that’s it. He was like, Oh. I was like, oh, sorry, you know, but I think the better we become at communicating, whether it’s Neuro Linguistic Programming, whether it’s disc which is dominance influencing steadiness and compliance, whether it’s it’s just how we get better at communicating. It’s really kind of the key to great management, leadership.
Viki Johnston [24:39]
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more, and it’s all relationships. So there’s the NLP journey for me wasn’t just about my career, it was me or the whole person. You know, how do I communicate with my kids and my husband and my family, and how you do one thing is how you do everything. So if we can think about and I’m probably better at. Communicating with my clients than I am with my husband. To be fair, he should know me by now but.
Steve Fretzin [25:06]
I’ll tell you something funny that was on my desk when I did it when, you know, 20 something years ago, I did my own disc, and I was, you know, engaged at the time, and all of that. And I remember showing my fiance Lisa at the time. You know, the do’s and don’ts of communication with Steve Fretzin. And one of the don’ts is, don’t give him your opinion unless he asked for it. And she looked at that, and she looked at me, and she goes, I don’t think so. I said, All right, I guess you know, but she did. She did give me the benefit. She goes like, this is what she’ll do. She goes, you probably don’t want my opinion on this subject, but if you do, let me know. And I was like, well, all right, now I have an option. Of course. I always have to say yes, but that’s besides, that’s marriage 101 so.
Viki Johnston [25:43]
Of course, yeah, that you have to agree with your wife?
Steve Fretzin [25:47]
Yes, right? Marriage, 101 yes. Yeah, exactly, yeah. All right. So let’s wrap this up with a new segment called Viki’s big mistake. And what is something that happened in your career that you would say was a big mistake, but you learned something really extraordinary from it.
Viki Johnston [26:02]
Yeah, so I guess, I mean, I’ve had my own business for 22 years, and I have moved countries. So in on all those times I’ve been running my business, I’ve also been moving so I’ve been restarting and restarting and restarting. And after probably about the fourth time of restarting my business, I suddenly realized that I and it actually came through an NLP program that I was working on that I didn’t value the monetary cost of what what I’m doing. So I realized that the value of money wasn’t like, high up for me. So I was doing a lot of stuff for free. I was undercutting myself. Because people say, Oh, could you help me with that? And I’d be like, okay, okay, I’ll do that. And then I realized that, you know, I’m not charging what I’m worth. It actually doesn’t help anybody else, either, because they, you know, maybe they are not feeling like they’re getting what their money’s worth, or, you know, I’m not actually giving them the value. So there was a lesson for me there around, how much do I charge for what I do?
Steve Fretzin [27:05]
Yeah, I think that’s so important that there, and there are lawyers listening right now that are under charging what they should be. My father, the late great Larry the lawyer. He was walking in the city after he retired, and he was approached by someone, a woman, and she said, Larry, Larry, are you he was a client of his. Are you practicing? Oh, my God, are you practicing? He goes, No, no, I’m retired. I’m just in the city for this, that and the other. And she goes, Oh my God, you were the best lawyer I ever had. And, God, were you cheap? And it’s like, boom, head explode. Are you kidding me? And I think my father had confusion about fairness and what his value was. And so I think we have to take a really close look at what what we’re providing, our value and our experience, and how that all plays out. What is the market bear? And we’ve got to look at what our rates are. And I’ve helped a lot of lawyers jack up their rates to where they should be, as opposed to where they were, where they’re, you know, 20 to 50% underneath, you know, where they really should be to compete. So really, really good lesson there for everybody. Let’s take a moment and just thank our wonderful sponsors. Of course, pimcon coming up in October in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona, with my friend Chris dryer. You’re going to want to check that out, especially if you’re in PI that’s the way to go. And of course, the law her podcast with Sonya Palmer, terrific podcast, really working with, you know, inspiring women all over and want to just mention the new be that lawyer. 101 top Rainmaker secrets to growing a successful law practice on Amazon. Grab a copy. If you love this show, you’re going to love the book, because it is taken from the show, the best Rainmaker tips that you’ve heard from the Show All in one book, Viki so wonderful having if people want to get in touch with you, they want to hear more about accelerate. What’s the best way to reach you?
Viki Johnston [28:51]
So you can check out my website. I mentioned earlier, I’m diagnosed dyslexic, so I spell accelerate in a very quirky way, E, X, E, L, O, R, A, T, E, so you can check out my website. You can also email me. It’s Viky, V i k, [email protected], I would love to hear if you all find me on LinkedIn, I’m always there too. Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [29:11]
There we go. And it’s V i k, i, so that’s a nice way to spell Viki.
Viki Johnston [29:14]
Yeah. See, quirky.
Steve Fretzin [29:18]
Quirky. That’s the way to go. Thank you so much. This was wonderful. I can just, you know, I mentioned at the beginning, you know, 3456, takeaways. And we, I think we hit that, you know, that Mark 100% so I just want to, you know, tell you how much I appreciate you coming on the show. Shout out to provisors, coaches and consultants continuing to provide value for me and for my show. And I hope that there’s more that we can do together beyond the show today.
Viki Johnston [29:39]
Yeah, I’d love to.
Steve Fretzin [29:40]
Awesome cheers. Okay, are you a cheers person?
Viki Johnston [29:43]
Of course, yeah. All right, a glass of wine.
Steve Fretzin [29:49]
Wonderful. Well, thank you Viki, and thank you everybody for hanging out with us today on the be that lawyer podcast, helping you to be that lawyer, confident, organized in a skilled Rainmaker. Take care of Be safe. Be well. We’ll talk again soon.
Narrator [30:04]
Thanks for listening to be that loyal, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, fredson.com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends for more information and important links about today’s episode. Check out today’s show notes.