In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Amy Mariani discuss:
- Transitioning to mediation from another role.
- Getting efficient with networking.
- Providing value in networking and in connecting.
- Calendering in your business development tasks, not just your law related tasks.
Key Takeaways:
- Even if you have a large network, it takes time to grow and cultivate the relationships needed to grow your book of business.
- Be direct in asking for introductions. It may work, it may not, but there’s nothing to lose.
- Qualify your networking partners. Follow through is important for both you and the person you are trying to refer or introduce.
- Develop your business acumen. If you learn how to build your business (and treat your firm as if it is a business), you will be more successful and be in a better position to grow your own firm.
“You do need to get that networking going, that is going to be the most critical element of your success. You also have to establish that you are a subject matter expert.” — Amy Mariani
Connect with Amy Mariani:
Website: https://www.marianimediation.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarianiMediate
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-cashore-mariani/
Thank you to our Sponsors!
Legalese Marketing: https://legaleasemarketing.com/
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Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: The Ambitious Attorney: Your Guide to Doubling or Even Tripling Your Book of Business 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
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, business, lawyer, networking, attorneys, mediation, mediator, clients, firm, network, meet, introduction, folks, day, transition, years, grow, person, legalese, spend
SPEAKERS
Narrator, Amy Mariani, Steve Fretzin, Jordan Ostroff
Amy Mariani [00:00]
then you just have to get out there and bust your rear end, for lack of a better term, doing a lot of things that you probably don’t want to be doing. Lawyers are not natural networkers for the most part, you do need to get that networking going, that is going to be the most critical element of your success.
Narrator [00:21]
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, greater results. Now, here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin [00:43]
Hey, everybody, welcome to be that lawyer. I am Steve Fretzin, your host and I hope that you’re having a wonderful day today. Listen, it’s another opportunity to work together and think about your law practice and how to live that dream that you’ve always dreamed about. Being that lawyer someone who’s confident organized in a skilled Rainmaker. As you know, Fretzin does a few different things. We have an MBA style, training and coaching program that helps lawyers get to the next level whether you’re a solo and our big firm, any practice area doesn’t matter. I do not work with law firms, only individual attorneys that are highly motivated to grow. I also run currently five peer advisory groups. So if you’re already a successful attorney, you’re crushing it on the on the BD side, and you want to network and collaborate in a confidential environment with other successful attorneys. I’ve got the program for you. Our Rainmaker roundtables might be the trek get you off the island, puts you in a room with other successful people that talk shop on a regular basis. Lots of fun there and very tight knit group. But that’s enough about me and my stuff. I’m going to introduce Amy in a moment. I want to thank our sponsors money, Penny and legalese for being great partners. You’re going to hear about more about them later. So hang tight. And Amy was so kind and all first of all, Amy, welcome to the show. How are you? Thank you, I’m great. How are you? I’m good. I’ve got an we’re gonna get your background in details in a minute. But thank you for sending me this quote, I really found it interesting. There are three truths, my truth, your truth and the truth. That’s a Chinese proverb. Why did you submit that quote? And what does that mean to you?
Amy Mariani [02:22]
I submitted that quote, because it really helps us to understand that everything is about perspective, what I view is true. And what you view is true, maybe very different things. There’s one set of facts, how we interpret them, how we operate around them, are going to be different based on your life circumstances in mind. So I see that every day in my work, people come in and there’s there’s an event or an incident that occurred, and the way people perceive that event and incident is dramatically different.
Steve Fretzin [02:53]
Yeah, and that never happens in politics, though, right?
Amy Mariani [02:56]
Oh, no, never
Steve Fretzin [02:59]
have you sarcasm right away, just to get things kicked off right off the bat, right off the bat, oh, my God, a rabbit hole, we will not be going down. But But onto better and bigger things. So I like that too. And I agree that, you know, we all have our own perceptions about things. And you know, one of my biggest challenges is the perception of, of what is a successful lawyer, as a successful lawyer, someone who makes it rain and has lots of business and his or her own clients is a successful lawyer, someone who bills a lot hours, as it’s someone who gets to spend more time with their family then then work. I mean, everybody’s got a different perception of that, right?
Amy Mariani [03:38]
Very definitely. And you’ve just defined what I do every day as a mediator, we define interests when we sit down and talk in a mediation context. And that’s much the same with what you do you sit down and you talk about interests with your clients, you know, do you mind billing 20 to 23 2400 hours a year? Or do you really want to be able to catch your kids T ball games or soccer games? You can’t have both. And we’ve grown up, at least Gen Xers grew up thinking, Yeah, we could have it all. And we could do it all. And I think one of the reasons why so many of us are making career changes, you know, in our 40s and early 50s, is because we want a better quality of life compared to what going down that other rabbit hole of professional life can
Steve Fretzin [04:25]
often do to us. Yeah, and I think the pandemic certainly brought that to the forefront people realizing, you know, look, you know, this is a precious thing called life and we have one shot at it and, you know, do I you know, am I on my deathbed, do I if I just build more hours? You know, I don’t think anybody is on their deathbed saying that, right? It’s probably a bunch of regrets about how many hours you did end up billing and, and took took away the whole enjoyment of life unless of course, billing hours is your jam. So that all being said, Amy, let’s go back and take a look at your background. You’re based out of Boston.
Amy Mariani [04:55]
I am I’ve been in the Boston area since 92. Actually, when I moved here to go to law school.
Steve Fretzin [05:01]
Okay, okay, yeah, that’s a town I haven’t been to. And I really need to get there. I’ve got a bunch of relationships there. And I’m going to definitely have to do like this East Coast run at some point with my wife and son and get out there and check it out. And talk a little bit about your background as a trial attorney and then leading into starting a mediation, business or practice. Sure, I
Amy Mariani [05:20]
started practicing in the mid 90s. With a general firm that was about 50. Attorneys had a broad based practice corporate litigation, everything in between. I was one of the litigation Associates which basically meant that I did everything from personal injury to domestic relations to complex trial work on behalf of companies spent three years there decided I really love the courtroom moved on to a nationally recognized product liability defense firm, spent three years there really honed my trial skills there, and moved on to a labor and employment of Butea, actually, National Labor Employment firm, spent a few years there and realized, you know, something large, firm life is not for me, it’s not that I minded the hours, it’s that I wanted more control and autonomy over my work, which is something you just don’t get as a mid level associate at a major international firm. So I basically went and started doing some contract work for a few months and figured out Oh, I really enjoy this one place I’m contracting at, started working as counsel and couple years later, I was a named partner. So I did that until 2016, when I hung up the trial bag and started full time mediation, and how
Steve Fretzin [06:39]
how, what kind of confidence level did you have making that transition? Because that for many lawyers, that’s the scariest thing is how do I transition to mediation? How do I transition to legal tech to do something outside of of where I’ve been spending all my years?
Amy Mariani [06:56]
That’s a really great question. I was very confident in my skills. As a mediator, I was less confident in my skills as a business person. And that is still what I’m working on, you know, day in and day out, you can throw me 25 mediations. And I’ll probably settle 90% of them. But at the same time, am I 90%? Confident that I’m going to do the make the right business moves? And the answer to that question is, it’s taking me a long time to get to a point where I trust my instincts is a person in business. Yeah, and
Steve Fretzin [07:29]
I think there’s the there’s the legal side, right, of the competence of knowing that you’re good at what you do. And then you mentioned the business side. And that’s again, you know, they don’t teach that in law school, and you’re not going to learn that a law firm level. So, you know, people are hiring me and other coaches to get ahead and help ensure that things are gonna go smoothly, I just got off the phone with one of my clients, who’s loaded with now it’s funny, because he signed up with me, we haven’t even really gotten into the weeds on like working together. And he’s already like, flooded with business. I said, That’s how good I am. You just have to sign up with me and everything good will happen to you. And we had a good good old fashioned laugh. But he was he was he missed the class. And I was like, Alright, so there’s something going on, you’re obviously very busy. And we got on and we hashed out some of the business side issues that he’s having. And I gave him four really good ideas that he agreed, we need to work on and make some introductions for him to get some stuff off his plate, etc. But it’s the business side that really is sometimes the stickler for the attorneys. But you and I talked about your growth in that space, and really leveraging networking as one of the many business tools in your tool belt that you that you felt you really kind of excelled in after you got going in at a while, maybe let’s let’s talk about that.
Amy Mariani [08:45]
Sure. When I first thought about opening up my own mediation practice, I talked obviously to a bunch of people who’ve done something similar. And one thing that they told me that I didn’t really believe was that it takes about five years to develop a book of business and that it takes a tremendous amount of networking. And I thought to myself, Oh, you know, I’ve got to be big Rolodex, you know, I have to use a term that’s probably outdated for so what’s
Steve Fretzin [09:12]
a rolling neck is that like a phonebook.
Amy Mariani [09:14]
I kind of want one of those things. So But anyhow, I have a ton of contacts because I tried cases for 20 plus years. So you know, I know a lot of lawyers, I figured, okay, people know me, it’s gonna be really easy to transition. The people that I know out there to clients for my mediation services. Boy, was I wrong. It took a lot of work to cultivate those relationships and grow those relationships to get to the point where I was getting work from those relationships. And most interestingly, the bulk of my work is not from people that I encountered as a litigator, but from people that I’ve met as a mediator. So initially when I started out but it was probably 25 or 30 hours of networking for every hour of paid work I was actually getting, you know, now I’m down to five or six. But still, I see a directly translatable relationship between the amount of time on networking, say in December, and the volume of business I have on my calendar in in February or
Steve Fretzin [10:22]
March. And I’ll just add that one of the one of the things I work with my clients on every day is networking, best practices. And one of the problems that lawyers have with networking is they don’t really have their targets well defined who their end users are, and also who the best connectors are. So if they don’t have that, they just go out of network, meaning you just go out and meet people, and tell them what you do, and then hope that good things happen. And that takes a tremendous amount of time, way more than lawyers really want to invest. So I think I think it’s really important to just share that. If you’re a labor and employment, defense side attorney, okay, that you’ve got to understand not only the size, scope, shape, location of where the clients are, that you’re looking for the title, have that well defined, because you need to share that information. And then also, who are the best connectors to those actual individuals so that you’re meeting with people that have the most likelihood of being able to refer you or come across the types of of matters that you’re looking for. So is that kind of what you’re doing? Or what are some of the things that you’re that you were doing to kind of get efficient with networking?
Amy Mariani [11:33]
One of the things that I’ve done is really focus in on litigators, because 99% of my cases come to me from people who do trial work, right. So I’m looking at meeting labor and employment attorneys, I’m looking at meeting business litigation attorneys, I’m looking at meeting personal injury attorneys, I have cast a much broader scope before and realize that’s not where my work is coming from. So when I make strategic requests to meet people, it’s going to be somebody in one of those three categories. Unless it’s somebody who’s just an incredible connector of human beings, and and just knows everyone and has 10,000 people at their fingertips, and can call those people to mind. There are a few extraordinary folks out there like that. But you know, you’ve got to look to where is your work coming from already? And how do I get more of that? And I’m very direct, I will ask for introductions from people that think I’ve done good work and say, oh, you know, I’m looking to get introduced to more people who do the kind of work that you do. Do you have some folks that you think I should meet? And I will be very blunt and ask that question, and sometimes it pays off, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Jordan Ostroff [12:48]
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[13:10]
Hi, I’m Steph from Moneypenny. We’re trusted by leading law firms and attorneys to answer calls virtually professionally and brilliantly. Our high tech receptionist service enables us to route calls to your team’s wherever they’re working, and even recognize and prioritize calls based on whether they’re a repeat caller, a new client or a VIP. Claim your exclusive partner rates and Free Trial by quoting Fretzin today,
Steve Fretzin [13:39]
are there things that you’re doing in the one on one environment with a lawyer like a pie attorney, where you feel like that could be really beneficial to you from from your side? But what are there things that you’re trying to to do to help build that relationship or offer value from your side of things so that it’s more of a quid pro quo?
Amy Mariani [13:59]
There are a couple of things that I do. First of all, I like to connect people who may be able to benefit from knowing one another. So when I’m meeting with a personal injury attorney in Massachusetts, I have a pretty broad network. I may say, oh, you know, I know this fabulous person in California, who works on similar kinds of cases, would you like to meet that person? Because there’s always the opportunity for collaboration there. So if I’m making that introduction, I’m providing value to that individual. The other thing is, I often, I often serve as a sounding board for folks. So when they are thinking about using a mediator, and they aren’t sure who to use, I’m happy to sit down and talk about the names that are on the table that have been proposed by the other side and talk about the pros and cons of particular styles and the pros and cons of particular situations. You know, do we do a single day session? Do we do multiple day sessions? I’m happy to talk strategy with folks for free, not, you know, not permanently for free. But, you know, I’m having to do that once or twice, so that folks get a sense of how I think how I operate. And then they understand what kinds of cases I might be a good fit
Steve Fretzin [15:14]
for. Yeah. And I think sometimes people are confused that the the only reason to go out in network is to get business. And yeah, that’s a part of it. But it’s also, it’s a good analogy would be, I’ve got a chess board, but I don’t have any pieces on the chess board. So I can’t make any moves. But if I can start bringing in the right people to put on the chess boards, some are going to be pawns, and some are going to be, you know, the king and queen, and whoreson, all the different nights and all the different pieces, I can name them all. But then it’s about how we move them around. And if you don’t have the pieces to move around, it makes networking very challenging. So some of my clients want to like network and get business right away. And I go, No, it takes a little bit time because you don’t have any pieces on the board yet. But once you start meeting the CPA, the five lawyers, the financial planners, to whomever it is that you need to network with, then in there, then you’ve qualified that they’re the right ones in the sense that they’re trustworthy, they’re smart, they know their stuff, and they’ve got big networks, that’s when a lot of the magic can happen. And the game can can be can start to be played.
Amy Mariani [16:14]
Exactly. And one of the ways that I provide value is in those connections. You know, my network is not just lawyers, that’s where I spend the vast majority of my time and effort in cultivating relationships. But I know a ton of CPAs. I know a ton of insurance folks, I know a ton of other people who may have value to a business owner who has a conflict, or to a lawyer who may need to establish good relationships for that business person.
Steve Fretzin [16:44]
And by the way, they’re not all created equal. I mean, I’ve met, you know, 50 financial planners in the last 20 years, trust me, they’re not all created equal. I mean, most of them probably aren’t even in the financial planning game anymore, right? Because how long do they last? So we want to we want to meet people that are that are potentially that we can add value for that can add value for us, we also need to spend some time qualifying not just that they’re good at what they do, but that they have a network to draw from. And by the way, this is like the biggest one that I harp on regularly, do they have the capacity and ability to actually follow through, because it’s one thing to take to make a commitment, it’s another one to follow the commitment. And that’s where networking sometimes goes south, people can talk a big game. But when it actually comes to putting their fingers on a keyboard and making an introduction, or picking up a phone and making call making an introduction the right way, most people fail. And I hate to put it like that, because I’m generally an optimist. But I’ve also realist about networking, that most people talk a big game and then don’t have the capacity or the ability to follow through, which is super frustrating.
Amy Mariani [17:52]
I completely agree with that, Stephen, I’ve actually found that I’m better at networking, when I have the ability to follow through immediately. And I’m not at a cocktail party where I’ve just said, Oh, I know the perfect person for you to meet. But I don’t have an opportunity to write that down or create some way to remind myself that I want to introduce these two people. So for example, if you when I get off the call today, and I think to myself, Oh, Steve really needs to meet John, I’m going to send that email within five minutes of getting off off of the call with you. Because that way it’s top of mind, and it gets done. And the introduction is made in a way that shows you that I valued the importance of the time we spent together.
Steve Fretzin [18:39]
Yeah, that’s it’s so critical. And I mean, that’s why phones are so great. And I mean, there’s a lot of negatives with phones, and we’re all seriously addicted to them. However, the idea that if you’re at a party and someone, you say you’re going to do something for somebody, throw it in as a task, bro, it is an appointment with yourself that I just did. So the guy that I just mentioned, that’s a client of mine, I have to make to inform introductions for him one to a real estate attorney, who’s going to take some real estate office by an another to a paralegal, virtual paralegal friend of mine, who who’s going to help set him up with an estate planning paralegal. And I immediately put it in my calendar to handle this afternoon, when I know I have a free moment to do so because I’m gonna have to put some energy into those introductions to kind of qualify them for my for my client. But that’s what we have to do to make sure that we don’t drop the ball. dropping the ball in networking is a death sentence, especially if you do it over and over again, with different people, you’re not going to be invited back to the party. So we really need to consider how we can commit to things say things out loud, and then actually do them and get get that resolved. Otherwise, things bad things happen.
Amy Mariani [19:49]
I agree. I walk around with my phone and take notes all day. My reminders list in my tasks list are my lifeblood. God helped me if the Go down, because a lot of stuff is going to get to get left by the wayside. Because that’s where it lives.
Steve Fretzin [20:06]
Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. And then once we get the right strategic partners, the right referral partners in place, and we need to, you know, make sure that they don’t go away, we want to make sure that they don’t start referring other mediators, other sales coaches, whatever we want to say, how do you do that? How do you keep in touch with your best and brightest, the ones that are, you know, your, your lifeline for for regular occurring business.
Amy Mariani [20:33]
I’m very lucky in that a lot of my recurring business comes from a one or two networks that I’m involved with. And those networks tend to congregate on a regular basis. Okay, so I’m seeing them regularly. For the folks who are outside of those networks. That’s where that’s for me going to be an area of growth, I hope this year, so I’m establishing a better social media presence on LinkedIn. That’s, you know, plan, one part of my plans for this year are to do that. And then the other thing is just dropping notes and sending information that is valuable. So if I have worked with a person on a Labor and Employment case, and I see something interesting in the in the negotiation realm, related to labor and employment, I will drop them a quick note just attaching, Hey, I saw this article thought you might be interested in, you know, pertains to x that we were talking about recently, just to let people know that they’re top of mind.
Steve Fretzin [21:28]
I mean, that’s really helpful being in a position to get together with your best referral sources on a regular basis, not having to schedule it individually, you can just show up and they’re there. And you guys can rehash and talk and talk shop. If you’re listening to this, and you’re in, that’s one of the struggles you have is I have people that have referred me business, but I do a really bad job of keeping in touch with them. Something that I would suggest to just to add on to this is come up with an ABC list of strategic partners who are your A listers, who your B listers, and who are your C listers and come up with a regular reoccurring couple things that you can do for those folks. So the A’s might get more than the bees, the bees more than the C’s. But the A’s let’s say there’s only five of them. Maybe it’s a it’s a monthly call, maybe it’s a monthly coffee, a monthly meeting a quarterly coffee, something that keeps you top of mind and in front of them on a regular basis, the bees maybe get a little bit less, but still front facing the C’s, maybe just get your LinkedIn posts, but that way, and then make it a part of your calendar so that every 15th of the month, that’s when you’re going to take an hour to reach out to those folks, send them an article, do something proactive to stay stay top of mind, figure out a connection for them. That’s what’s going to win the day when it comes to keeping partnerships close and tight versus not talking with them for six months and then wondering why they went away and they’re not referring you anymore. It was your fault. You know, sorry, sorry for the bad news. So we do have to have some calendaring and some type of either an Excel spreadsheet or something that keeps things top of mind. Otherwise, we sometimes get caught up in the work and we
Amy Mariani [23:06]
forget. And that’s such a great point. One of the biggest struggles that I had in establishing my business, as opposed to my mediations was making sure I was calendaring in all of the time that I needed for my administrative tasks for my marketing tasks, for my networking tasks. And now I actually build my calendar, not around my mediations, but around those critical things that are necessary for me to land the mediations so that I can continue to have a functioning business. Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [23:38]
And let’s let’s let’s wrap it up on we’ve got plenty of time. So when I say wrap it up, I don’t mean like in a minute but but the idea that you took a risk, you took a shot at transitioning from the high pressure, World of of trial, work in litigation, into opening up a mediation practice. And there are attorneys that that’s their dream situation is to is to be able to build a business around mediation, build a business around legal tech, some other passion where they can leverage and harness the skills from being a lawyer for 20 years or whatever it is into something else to talk to that and how that how that’s gone for you and maybe give some advice to the lawyers listening that have that in their in their future.
Amy Mariani [24:21]
The first thing is be a business person first. And that’s a mistake I made I didn’t think about planning out my business plan. I did not have a business and marketing plan solidly in place. And that’s a mistake I made so it probably delayed my ability to really get to where I wanted to be by a couple of years. So definitely sit down with somebody like Steve or somebody else who can help you design a business plan and no, this is what I need my projected revenue to be this is what I need my projected marketing budget to be. This is this is all of the numbers and how they need to look. Take a really critical look at your resources, and how long can you live off of savings, are you in a position where you don’t have to worry about health insurance or, you know, you’ve got a partner who is able to sustain your day to day expenses, while you grow your business, these are all really critical pieces to think about. Once you’ve decided that, yes, I can make a financial goal of this, then you just have to get out there and bust your rear end, for lack of a better term, doing a lot of things that you probably don’t want to be doing. Lawyers are not natural networkers for the most part, you do need to get that networking going, that is going to be the most critical element of your success, you also have to establish that you are a subject matter expert. So you can’t just say, Oh, I tried cases for a bunch of years, I’m going to be a great mediator, I can tell you, that’s not necessarily the case. As I said earlier, most of my work does not come from people who knew me as a litigator, it comes from people who know me as a mediator. So you do have to think about how am I going to distinguish myself in the marketplace? How am I going to be different from other people providing mediation services, or whatever the services happen to be? Find your target market, and keep going back to the well for the people who are likely to give you the business? Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [26:17]
So there’s a bunch of moving parts there. But I think one that you mentioned that’s really important is, you know, get your business acumen up, get your business development acumen up, I mean, when you have confidence that you could run a business, or that you can build business, the likelihood that you’re going to be successful when you move make that move are much, much greater. Right. So I would say, you know, this is not a plug for my services, it could be for anyone out there, there’s plenty people that can help you whether it’s internal or external, that if you learn how to build business, if you learn how to go out and get clients and set up a mini business plan for yourself and treat, even if you’re at a big firm or a mid market firm, its skill you Inc, it’s still you incorporate a year that you’re the business, the fact that you’ve got this umbrella of a firm around you is is you know, that’s nice. But that’s, that’s, that’s not the you’re, you’re the business. And so then the idea is that you can build your own book of business, build your own network. And then when you decide that you want to move on either to a different firm or on your own or to a different business altogether, the confidence level, the connectivity, the clients, you can bring with whatever it might be, it’s all there. But if you’re just someone billing hours, and just kind of going through the numbers, and I think we started off this conversation with the 20 to 23 2400 hours a year, and you don’t have that business experience, or networking experience and acumen much more challenging to make that kind of a move.
Amy Mariani [27:43]
Very definitely. And I was one of those 20 to 2300, our associates, and I was networking at the same time doing a lot of Bar Association work and everything. But it was scattershot. I didn’t have a tactical approach to it. So all of the hard work that I was doing did not end up paying the dividends that I wanted it to in the way I wanted it to pay them.
Steve Fretzin [28:04]
Yeah. So I think you know, we we’ve covered some ground as relates to networking and some best practices there. And then making that transition, any kind of final words of advice for lawyers who are considering, hey, now may be the right time to make a move, because the way the industry is the way the economy is, and just just going off on my own or doing something unique. Maybe the timing is right, I have a lot of
Amy Mariani [28:29]
great conversations with people who have done it, learn from their experiences, and plan, plan, plan, have a have a six month plan, have a two year plan, have a five year plan. I’m just wrapping up, you know, my first five year plan, I have phase two, which is five to 10 years coming up, you have to continually have that planning process going on.
Steve Fretzin [28:51]
Yeah, and I love what you’re saying about talking to other people that have done it, because that’s going to give you confidence that you can replicate that emulate that or it’s going to be like, I’m nowhere near where this person was when they made that transition. I maybe I need to stay in this for a few more years. And you know, build it out and then maybe the transition might make more sense. So just being smart about when maybe the timing of it might be as important as anything. I agree. 100%. Yeah. So people want to reach out to you for mediation, they want to reach out to you to learn more about your business, Amy, how do they get in touch? The easiest way is
Amy Mariani [29:25]
to start off by going to my website, which is Mariani mediation.com. My telephone number and email address are there. I’m also on LinkedIn. So feel free to reach out to me there. I do generally respond to messages on LinkedIn and emails within 24 hours. So I’d love to chat with anybody who has questions. I’m always happy to share my experiences.
Steve Fretzin [29:46]
Okay. And we know we know that people in business and lawyers and both like to learn from people. I also like to learn from books and we’ve got a game changing book that you’ve referred into me called Getting to Yes, you want to just take a minute And on that
Amy Mariani [30:01]
getting to yes is one of the best books out there about negotiation because it teaches you how to separate your interests from your positions. And that’s a critical distinction and learning how to talk to other people, and really get to where you want them to go. So getting to yes is really all about learning the skills to have other people think that your brilliant idea is really theirs.
Steve Fretzin [30:29]
Yeah, terrific. Terrific. Well, thanks for being on the show and sharing your wisdom. And, again, I think you’re probably, you know, inspiring some people that are listening to to make a move or to understand what they’ve got to build before they make a move. So I think, really important topic to cover and I appreciate you coming on the show and talking to me.
Amy Mariani [30:47]
My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah,
Steve Fretzin [30:49]
absolutely. Hey, everybody, again, you know, great show opportunity to learn things and take some notes. If you really enjoy the show. Please don’t be shy about giving us some positive reviews on on your phone or any of the podcasts platforms that you’re picking it up on. And also just a shout out if you’ve got a rainmaker at your firm if you’ve got a friend who’s a rainmaker doing 510 plus million dollars a year and you know with selfmade please send me an email steve@fretzin.com I’d love to talk with that person loving introduction get them on the show. And I’m looking to to bring on more people that can talk to how they did it, how they built it and get that information out to you so could be valuable to everybody. Again, all about being that lawyer someone who’s competent, organized and a skilled Rainmaker. Take care everybody be safe be well, we’ll talk again soon.
Narrator [31:42]
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