In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Brett Trembly discuss:
- Scheduling time off, not dropping agreements with yourself.
- The need to delegate to grow your firm.
- Tracking ALL of your time (not just the billable time).
- Getting over the mental minutia and the fear of hiring.
Key Takeaways:
- You are losing money every time you do a $10 job that you can pay someone else for when you charge way more than that per hour.
- Hiring a good executive assistant will free up enough time for you to double your output and double your income.
- Your first hire should be someone to delegate to so you can protect your time as a law firm owner and allow you to focus on what only you can do (and what you love to do).
- When you hire, you can use those employees to help build your training material and process and procedure manuals. But you need the hands-on deck before you can build those SOPs.
“You absolutely need to protect your time as the law firm owner more than anything else.” — Brett Trembly
Get a free copy of Steve’s book “Sales-Free Selling” here: http://www.fretzin.com/sales-free-selling
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Episode References:
- Sign up for the next BE THAT LAWYER: Marketing Mavericks – September 28th, 2023 – https://www.fretzin.com/blog/category/events/
- How I Built This with Guy Raz – https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/
About Brett Trembly:
Lawyer / Entrepreneur / Author / Delegation Expert
4 time Inc. 5000 Honoree (#67 in 2022 & 2 companies on the ranking)
Published Author: The Danger Zones
Adjunct professor Miami Law
40 employee team Trembly Law (12 attorneys)
150+ employee team Get Staffed Up
Connect with Brett Trembly:
Website: https://getstaffedup.com/fretzin
Book: http://24monthstofreedom.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bretttrembly/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/getstaffedup/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/btrembly
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Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
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Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!
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Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Brett Trembly: If you don’t have an assistant, you are an assistant and you absolutely need to protect your time as the law firm owner more than anything else. That’s the very first, most important hire you need to make.
[00:00:15] Narrator: You’re listening to Be That Lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here’s your host. Steve Fretzin.
[00:00:37] Steve Fretzin: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Be That Lawyer. I am Steve Fretzin, and I hope you’re having a wonderful day today. If you’re a longtime listener, I think we’re about 320 shows at this point, and you know, keep listening. My hope is that you get great value and tips and ideas every single time you flip on this show.
[00:00:54] Steve Fretzin: Don’t be shy about giving us a good review or sharing this with other lawyers at your firm, other lawyer friends of yours. We’re trying to continue to. You know, be a resource for everybody in legal. Today’s no different. We’ve got Brett here to talk to us about just everything, delegation and staffing and whatnot.
[00:01:09] Steve Fretzin: How you doing Brett?
[00:01:11] Brett Trembly: I’m fantastic, Steve. I’m glad to be back and thanks for having me.
[00:01:14] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And you’re going to help everybody be that lawyer, confident, organized, a skilled rainmaker. Absolutely. I had to throw that plug in there for my tagline. Okay. Um, and of course, Brett, we love to start with the quote of the show and I love this because it really does flow in with a lot of what I teach about people’s behaviors and actions and everything.
[00:01:32] Steve Fretzin: So it’s mood follows action. So talk to us, you know, first welcome the show. Second of all, man, talk to me a little bit about that quote and why that is your quote of the show.
[00:01:42] Brett Trembly: Yeah, um, there’s a book called Finding Ultra by a former, well, he’s still a lawyer, but, um, former D1 swimmer. And then he went through, like, alcoholism.
[00:01:52] Brett Trembly: And in his 40s, he found, um, he became a vegan and he, he got into ultra marathons, which is like just crazy and really good book. And he, he talked about mood follows action. So a lot of us sit there and we try to think our way through things. And I’m a big proponent of Thinking strategically about, about business, but day to day.
[00:02:14] Brett Trembly: I mean, you got to just move, you got to take action and, and correct your courses, you go instead of staying stagnant. So I think that works both in the micro and the macro. And I just really love that quote. Yeah, and I
[00:02:25] Steve Fretzin: think for me, it’s, it’s like, if you can, uh, take action first and let’s say it’s positive, like making your business development calls or hiring that first employee or doing something that’s been weighing down on you and you get it done, your attitude, your belief, your mood, everything rises.
[00:02:44] Steve Fretzin: And if you don’t do it, it has the opposite effect, right? Then you’re going to feel kind of. Negative and the thing that people don’t realize to bread and I know you do, but other people don’t that when you break agreements with yourself, I’m going to lose weight. I’m going to work out today. I’m going to do business development in your subconscious.
[00:03:00] Steve Fretzin: It’s actually chipping away at your attitude at your belief at your mood and you don’t because you’re not hurting anybody else. You know, like, if I blew off this podcast and didn’t show up, you’d be like, what the heck, Steve, right? But because I’m just, it’s just me involved, then, then it’s like, I’m not hurting anybody, but I am.
[00:03:17] Steve Fretzin: I’m hurting me.
[00:03:18] Brett Trembly: Yeah, I love the way you put that, and it, it, we all need time off to recharge, but it should be scheduled time, not just like, you know what, I’m just gonna blow all these things off today, cause like you said. It will, it will chip away at our agreements with ourself. I really like the way you put that.
[00:03:33] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Thank you. And so Brett Tremblay, you are the CEO of get staffed up. You’re the author of the new book, 24 months to freedom. You’re someone I’ve known for a number of years and admired, and, uh, I’m actually a client of, of get staffed up. And we’ll talk about that later. How wonderful that’s been for me.
[00:03:50] Steve Fretzin: Um, but give us a little bit of your background and leading into your, you know, you’re running a law firm, you’re running get staffed up, uh, you know, give us the reader’s digest, but, but what’s, what’s going on?
[00:04:00] Brett Trembly: So, yeah, I, I went to university Miami school of law and I stuck around, not from Miami, but I just like, I love the area.
[00:04:08] Brett Trembly: So I, I worked at a small law firm for three years doing, I got a lot of courtroom experience. Then I cut out on my own about a month before I turned 30 and I, I spent, you know, now I’m 41. So I still have the law firm, Trembley law. We’ve, uh, 10 attorneys were here in Miami and we do business law and, you know, I love working with business owners and through my early struggles and then starting to figure out, you know, what I needed to get over myself personally, and then the actions that I needed to take in order to, to grow my firm.
[00:04:42] Brett Trembly: Which a lot of it was just hiring and stop doing everything myself and getting over that that fear, which is huge for me I figured out I’m not figured out right? There’s not only one blueprint or one way to do it I don’t have all the answers but I figured out for myself and I put together a roadmap for other people to follow that same game plan and it works and You know, so I’ve done that through growing my own my own firm And through growing get staffed up to, you know, almost 200 employees now.
[00:05:11] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, is that when it was there be that lawyer tipping point in when you did have a moment where you figured something out or where you started started the business and you took it to the next level, that kind of thing.
[00:05:25] Brett Trembly: I was on a beach in the Bahamas. On a vacation, which was paid for through a Rotary organization I was with, otherwise I couldn’t have afforded this, right?
[00:05:34] Brett Trembly: My daughter, my daughter was super young, I was about a year and a half into my law firm, and I was, first of all, I was working, right, not enjoying my vacation, and I know everybody can resonate with that, where you take your work with you, and it’s not a true vacation. And sometimes that’s, that’s, that’s necessary early on, but the goal is to get away from that, right?
[00:05:55] Brett Trembly: Delegating your way to freedom and hiring and not having the business own you, you know, not having a job, but being a, being a true owner and lawyer, which is possible. And not only was I working, I was, I was working on a new law firm called the Florida cannabis law firm. So I didn’t even have one successful law firm and I was distracting myself by trying to start something else.
[00:06:18] Brett Trembly: And it’s like, I had this epiphany where I just needed to go all in and what I was doing and focus. And I had, I just had to hire someone and, um, it still took me about a year to, to, to pull that trigger. But, um, yeah, that was the moment. Wow.
[00:06:34] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, the focus and, and I’ve started many businesses and, and, uh, realized, you know, maybe too late that I, you know, had a great idea, but ultimately it wasn’t a, my passion, my superpower, and most importantly, it wasn’t my focus.
[00:06:47] Steve Fretzin: Um, also quick, funny story. I, I went down to Mexico in time with my wife and some friends and I didn’t bring my phone like legitimately left my phone at home. So I wouldn’t work and I remember going to the buffet, you know, the buffets at the resorts and I come back to the table. And I sit down, I take a bite of my food, I look up and my wife and the two, and the couple that’s with us, they’re all looking down at their phones and I go, Oh my God, this is my luck, right?
[00:07:12] Steve Fretzin: I don’t bring my phone and then everybody’s looking down at their phones. But this is like, you know, 10 plus years ago, back when phones were as addicting as they are now. Um, well, really cool stuff. So, you know, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about because no, you’re running a staffing, you know, agency, a unique one.
[00:07:29] Steve Fretzin: I want to talk about that. But lawyers have a really hard time with delegation and it’s everyone has it. But lawyers in particular, I found don’t like to let go of things. And what are the things that that you’re seeing and the kind of the problems that lawyers have and why they can’t delegate, why they can’t?
[00:07:47] Brett Trembly: Yeah, well, it makes sense why lawyers have a hard time delegating the legal work, right? Because they’re like, that’s my name and that’s my reputation. And then, you know, and then at the same time, everybody knows that P. I. lawyer was like, rather sloppy, but really successful anyway. But anyway, you know, like lawyers, I think we.
[00:08:06] Brett Trembly: Are the type A’s were like, we’re cold, we’re smart. And then we like go to law school and we think that makes us smart. And then we take the bar exam, which we think, well, that makes us even smarter or proves that we’re smart. And like, we, we have this. You know, like if you tell kids, if you praise their effort, it’s better for them than if you say, oh, like, great job, you’re, you’re really smart because then people don’t want to be wrong and lawyers, you know, we have such a hard time being wrong, especially because you’re trying to win cases and be better that we just like our ego is so tied up and everything.
[00:08:42] Brett Trembly: But like when when you start thinking well, okay, but what do you know about sales? What do you know about marketing? What do you know about rain making right? Which is you know up your alley like what do you what do you know about hiring? What do you know about managing? What do you know about core value like you you you most lawyers?
[00:09:00] Brett Trembly: And I didn’t, you know, well, I had some business experience and I had leadership experience, but like, why would you not want to delegate and get help with those things, especially? And, and, you know, I, I just think a lot of lawyers have been high achievers, have been, been academically successful. And that can be, that could be misleading through life, you know, and it’s not a surprise when you see, you know, BNC students who aren’t so obsessed with getting the good grades.
[00:09:27] Brett Trembly: They’re able to just like take more action that that’s dissociated from their own ego. So, and that could not be everybody’s problem, but I had to get over myself. I had to, you know, I was reading Think and Grow Rich and really studying the the fear of failure. And I didn’t hire early on because I was I was terrified that If I hired someone and then I couldn’t pay them, that that was going to be this like big failure and I was going to be looked at like, Oh, look at this guy, you know, because if you’re a lawyer, you can start a law firm by just opening your laptop, grabbing a domain and be like, Hey, I’ve got my own law firm now, but you still really didn’t put yourself out there until you start trying to show the world that you’re, you want to grow and you want to be that lawyer, if that makes sense.
[00:10:14] Steve Fretzin: It makes a lot of sense to me. It’s my tagline. So, you know, right. But I think, I think what lawyers get into the habit of is it’s just easier. If I just get this done,
[00:10:26] Brett Trembly: that’s also part of it. You’re like, well, it’s going to take me X amount of time to explain and teach and coach. And I’d rather just do it myself.
[00:10:32] Brett Trembly: But what happens is if you want to get into like some of the math of doing things yourself, if you can pay somebody 10 to do a job, And you can charge 350 an hour, 300 an hour. You’re losing 50 every, every single 10 minutes. So you’re losing basically 250 every hour that you’re doing something yourself.
[00:10:53] Brett Trembly: And that’s a hard thing. Cause like you hear the math and then. Most people like, yeah, yeah, but I’ll do it later. I’ll still get to all the billable work. I’ll just do it later. So you’re working nights, you’re working, you know, weekends and, and you’re like, you, you, your brain doesn’t have a chance to decompress.
[00:11:08] Brett Trembly: I’ve been there. I live that life. Don’t tell me that’s not true for a solo lawyer. It’s absolutely true. The average solo lawyer bills one to 1. 2 hours per day and collects about an hour of work per day. And when you hire someone, even like the first person you hire, a good executive assistant, and it can absolutely be virtual, will free up at least enough time for you to double your output, which is only two hours per day of billable work, and you’ll double your income.
[00:11:37] Brett Trembly: And that’s what’s so like, it’s simple, but very
[00:11:40] Steve Fretzin: powerful. I mean, maybe we come up with like a master list of that, that attorneys don’t realize that. And I always tell attorneys to track their time, not their billable hours, but their non billable hours. And, you know, when you look at the bookkeeping, first of all, that’s a huge, in my opinion, a huge no no, right?
[00:11:57] Steve Fretzin: Unless you’re just absolutely passionate about bookkeeping, in which case, you know, change jobs. So you got bookkeeping, you’ve got, you know, some form of phone answering, you’ve got some, you know, internal. Scheduling, you know, that someone that, you know, that, that you’re scheduling yourself, that could be, I mean, what are some of the other things that, that take up time where an admin can help and then we can move in, in a marketing.
[00:12:18] Brett Trembly: Well, so the book, 24 months of freedom, which you referenced, right? Yeah. I get a lot of really great feedback on this book and I know everyone thinks when you put something out there, it’s great. I put out two books. My first one I knew wasn’t that good. This one I’m very, very proud of. It takes you through sort of the, the psychological reasons why you need to hire these, these seven main positions and you kind of started going over them.
[00:12:43] Brett Trembly: So, you know, quickly your executive is, if you don’t have an assistant, you are an assistant and you absolutely need to protect your time as the law firm owner more than anything else. That’s the very first, most important hire you need to make. And then it’s someone to answer the phones and I go through all the reasons why you’re, you’re creating such a terrible impression for your firm.
[00:13:03] Brett Trembly: And you’re hurting yourself with having an answering service, you know, answering services should be backup. This should not be your main your main phone answering system. And then it’s marketing, which, like you said, we can get into. And then it’s intake. So the person answers your phone, but they need to pass that call off to somebody who can have a conversation and set the consultation and that should not be the person answering the phone.
[00:13:24] Brett Trembly: Um, and then it’s billing. And my favorite chapter is probably kind of some of the things you just alluded to, like bookkeeping billing, why we’re just crushing ourselves. We don’t get our invoices out on time. We feel bad when we finally send them, then we give major discounts because we, we didn’t invoice our client for six months.
[00:13:39] Brett Trembly: And then we sent him this big bill. We don’t track our time there. I wake, we don’t do it simultaneously and you absolutely lose just a huge percentage of your time. People, what you said, Steve is so true. We should track all our time. Including our non billable time. And you’d be like, holy, I cannot believe the way that I actually spend my day.
[00:14:00] Brett Trembly: People are just fighting fires, answering emails, fighting, responding, responding instead of controlling their day. And when you, when you read the 80, 20 rule, for example, it’s just mind blowing. Like there’s so many things we shouldn’t be doing ourselves. And then a legal assistant, obviously there’s more legal work that comes up.
[00:14:17] Brett Trembly: And then the last one is a client concierge. Like if you, a client happiness coordinator, if you really want to set your firm apart from others. So I go through the timeline. That’s why it’s 24 months of freedom. You make these seven hires over like an 18 to 24 month period. And that’s when you’re really living the freedom lawyers lifestyle, where you can take your vacations without bringing your work with you.
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[00:16:28] Steve Fretzin: mean, I just got back from, uh, Amsterdam and Paris for 10 days and my assistant handled everything. He responded to emails. He, you know, kept cranking out marketing. Like he was very supportive, even like gave me a lot of tips about Paris cause he had spent some time a year and a half there.
[00:16:44] Steve Fretzin: So I was even getting like good ideas from my assistant about Paris. The market, you know, marketing too is something, especially for, for solos and small firm lawyers that are doing the marketing, the LinkedIn, the social media, the video, the stuff they want to. Be active in promoting their firm and promoting themselves and they can’t they just can’t get to it and they don’t necessarily know how to edit a video and by the way that’s not the best use of someone’s time like my time editing video and and and getting um, you know, my my podcast, you know, put out and and and the all the all the things that go into it now.
[00:17:18] Steve Fretzin: Everything needs to be outsourced today so that you can focus on, and this goes back to the very beginning of our conversation, Brett, where is your superpower, where is your focus, where are your strengths? And billing five hundred an hour and getting up to five six hours a day versus one or two it’s gonna be a game changer and it relates to not only your happiness but also like how are you sucking money away how are you gonna pay for your kids five twenty nine plans how are you gonna take great vacations to europe you know every other year whatever you want to do so it’s all connected but it’s it’s you have to take a first step and.
[00:17:50] Steve Fretzin: Let me lead into this. This is a leading question. Uh, you know, for you, uh, no objection, no objection. Okay. It’s scary. It’s scary to hire. And it’s scary to delegate. How do lawyers get over the mental, you know, minutiae of that
[00:18:06] Brett Trembly: one of the tricks on this is it would be self serving, but I’ve lived that I know is when you think, man, I gotta, I gotta pay someone, you know, 40 grand, right?
[00:18:17] Brett Trembly: Because, you know, and that’s still not a lot of money for that person to live, but they’re young like I, I, I, my, my daughter’s friend or whatever it is when it’s, when it’s us based, you got to add 30 to 40% because it costs us to, to employ people. We have to match the taxes and all those things. Right. The financial piece of it for me was always so hard to swallow because I’m like, how many more cases do I got to bring in just to cover this for not to make more money.
[00:18:43] Brett Trembly: Right. But I’m like constantly saying. You know, revenue goes up 50, but expenses go up 15, you know, and, and it’s, it’s, it’s hard and it’s frustrating. So when you look offshore and you realize that just south of us in Latin America, we have this time zones, culture, English education, it just lines up so well, infrastructure, and you can find somebody who is.
[00:19:07] Brett Trembly: Really smart and appreciative to work and by using the, you know, the economic arbitrage as it’s called, you’re just doing something cheaper, you know, you have the ability to grow without rushing, like adding, like piling on the stress. And that was also stressful to me to hire early on when I thought I didn’t have the money.
[00:19:29] Brett Trembly: But the other thing is you usually have the amount of cases you’re just actually. You don’t have the time to work on, you know, and that, that’s why you can double overnight when you hire someone, because you, you actually, unless you only have one or two cases, like, or matters, you, you have the work there to do more.
[00:19:44] Steve Fretzin: Well, I think it’s not just the fear of the financial side and then, and not just the salary, but again, you have to, you know, include them in your profit sharing or the insurance or whatever it is that you are now having to do is a us based company. I think it’s also, you know, spending all your time training them and getting them up to speed and then just having them leave one day and three, four months in, they’re running a bunch of stuff and then they’re gone because you didn’t really know how to hire.
[00:20:11] Steve Fretzin: You really didn’t know how to train. Yes. Right. And so there’s that other, the soft side of it that, that I think a lot of lawyers are concerned about and say, you know what, that it’s just, I don’t want to go through that.
[00:20:21] Brett Trembly: It’s, there’s a lot like. I could take 30 minutes to answer this question, right? And
[00:20:27] Steve Fretzin: you’ve got 30 seconds.
[00:20:28] Brett Trembly: Go. I know the soft, the soft is, is such a big part of it. You have less chance of the scenario playing out that you just mentioned, right? And train them leaving. You have less of a chance of that offshore, but you know, I have, I have a ton of onshore employees and I sprinkle them in and, you know, it’s not only about hiring offshore, then it’s about providing more jobs locally as you grow.
[00:20:51] Brett Trembly: But the fear of. The time commitment, you know, there’s ways To learn like job descriptions have 5 to 7 duties, repeatable tasks that you’re all the 7 positions that I mentioned are responsible for at the beginning. They’re going to need more time. And then over time, you know, 2 months in 3 months in, they’ll be trained up.
[00:21:11] Brett Trembly: And you can ask that person to create a manual of what they do and everything they’ve learned so that when the next person comes in, you have training materials. Again, that’s why it’s such a long conversation because so many different things you can do and different tips and record things so that you don’t have to repeat yourself on Zoom.
[00:21:28] Brett Trembly: You have a Zoom call, you make them record it, and they have to go back to the Zoom call instead of asking you. But again, that’s another fun and necessary, but it’s a rabbit hole.
[00:21:37] Steve Fretzin: And I’ve had all, I’ve had, you know, a time where I had 13 employees. I’ve had a time where I’ve had virtual assistants and everything in between.
[00:21:45] Steve Fretzin: And it definitely helps when, you know, you have the support of like an outside agency, like you have that can help me not only, you know, find the right people, but also, you know, just make sure that they get onboarded. They’re tracking their time. Like I don’t have to micromanage because I know I’ve got a team in place.
[00:22:01] Steve Fretzin: That’s helping me do it. The other side of it is if you are going to bring someone in. You know, I think you have to consider what jobs need to be done. You need to get organized with that. You need to get organized with how you’re going to bring that person in, how you’re going to train on board, how you’re going to set up the standard operating procedures, SOPs, whether it’s offshore or onshore, it doesn’t matter.
[00:22:24] Steve Fretzin: There’s, there’s still, you know, efforts that need to be put, but once you get that done once, you know, and it can be improved, but once you get it done once, that’s something that can be rinsed and repeated, um, different with different, um, employees.
[00:22:38] Brett Trembly: Well, you know, I’m, I really, uh, credibility matters to me and I make this point in my book, 24 months to fear.
[00:22:44] Brett Trembly: I don’t stay. Hire these seven positions and you’re vacationing in the Maldives for 50 weeks out of the year. That’s not accurate. It’s not true. If you make these positions, you give yourself the time freedom to take the next step, Steve, which is let me hire a firm administrator and get all of these procedures and policies put in place.
[00:23:05] Brett Trembly: Like, let me, you got to hustle your way into a point where then you can. Structure and systematize, right. But at least with hands on deck and some wherewithal and some bandwidth, you can have a firm that’s not just relying on you. It’s like you, you open the pizza shop and you’re, you’re a one man or woman shop.
[00:23:25] Brett Trembly: Like that’s not a good product. And it’s not a good life. What,
[00:23:29] Steve Fretzin: let me ask you this question. What’s the, for, for let’s say that it’s a solo, a solo practitioner making good money, but doing a lot of way too much, like working way too hard and all that, which again, first year, second year, third year solo.
[00:23:42] Steve Fretzin: What’s the first hire that you’re seeing people make? Is it marketing? Is it advert? Is it an admin assistant, office man? Like what, what are you seeing as kind of the first, first hire? Cause people wonder that. Yeah.
[00:23:53] Brett Trembly: You can call it personal assistant, executive assistant or admin assistant, but it’s, it’s the person who’s going to save you from yourself.
[00:24:01] Brett Trembly: Who’s gonna help prevent you from being a slave to your email all day. From being a slave to the phones all day. From taking calls that aren’t scheduled. To communicating with people. You just went on vacation and you had someone managing your email. People don’t get that concept. And it’s frus It’s not frustrating.
[00:24:19] Brett Trembly: It’s bewildering because it’s like, If you still had snail mail, It would be so intuitive that someone else opened your mail, And sorted it and responded. It’s just electronic. It’s just electronic now. Someone else can open it, read it to you, and you can dictate a response. Or, you know, delete 90% of the stuff that in snail mail would have been thrown in the trash anyway.
[00:24:43] Brett Trembly: It’s absolutely the personal executive assistant. And what a lot of, what a lot of like traditional sort of older lawyers still have is one employee who does everything. Answers the phone, they call him a paralegal, right? But they’re, but they’re doing everything for, and that person is not only swamped, but you’re beholden to that person.
[00:25:02] Brett Trembly: And if they leave, you’re, you’re in a world of
[00:25:05] Steve Fretzin: trouble. Yeah. Well, and I, I just want to take a moment to, to kind of mention, you know, uh, and give a shout out to my buddy Sergio, who’s, who’s lived down in Bogota, Colombia. And, you know, he’s my marketing guy through Get Staffed Up, uh, for, I want to say around six months now, maybe just under six months.
[00:25:21] Steve Fretzin: So, you know, I’m getting compliments, Brett, like constantly about my LinkedIn, my Instagram, my newsletters, my events, you know, frets, and how are you putting out all this amazing content? And yes, I do create content, but I needed someone in place to manage me and manage all my stuff, right? And, and so I think if I had someone locally in Chicago working for me full time doing this, probably in the 60, 000 range, plus Benefits and everything else and I’m getting that for a fraction and by the way, not an employee of mine.
[00:25:55] Steve Fretzin: They’re your employee. I don’t pay insurance. I don’t have to pay, you know, and I do send him bonuses by the way. And I, you guys have a way of doing that. And I’ve been trying to make sure he understands how valued he is and want to continue to give him incentive to, to keep working hard for me. But I mean, as long as this continues down the path that it’s going, it’s.
[00:26:13] Steve Fretzin: Taking my business, my brand, my marketing efforts to an entirely different level. Cause I think I was going more part time before that. And I wasn’t really getting everything I needed. Um, so just want to put it out there, like how, what a game changer hits been for me to know that I’ve got someone in my corner that I can just dump all kinds of cool stuff on and just know that it’s coming back to me.
[00:26:36] Steve Fretzin: Maybe not perfect every time. Um, certainly when he started, I had to, you know, train him and work him through it, kind of. Micro manage a little bit till he now he’s like me he’s like a mini me he talks like me walks like me and all this and it’s really been it’s been an amazing transformation
[00:26:52] Brett Trembly: I love that you said that I love the feedback and it really makes me feel amazing that we’ve been able to.
[00:26:58] Brett Trembly: You know, like I knew I would like this business when we set it up five years ago, but the best part of the business, you know, I wanted to help people. I wanted to help lawyers, but really the best part has been all the lives we’ve changed in Latin America, like people who are now stable incomes, predictable incomes, they can.
[00:27:14] Brett Trembly: buy houses, get married, have kids. It’s been fantastic. Um, by the way, we have, we have full maternity leave replacement. So we give you someone new for four months. If your person, you know, goes on maternity leave, but don’t being able to dump that, that, like, I actually liked that you use that term because you’re a high energy guy.
[00:27:32] Brett Trembly: I respect that, you know, I’m the same way. Even if you’re not in like our minds, probably think about marketing, marketing, marketing, but you know, your business needs, it needs marketing. It needs sales. You gotta be able to just give someone that stuff, or it’ll just sit there on your mental shelf for months and months.
[00:27:50] Brett Trembly: And then years and not get done because you’re just not going to have this magical free time to go do all your marketing and then your marketing is going to be inconsistent, you know, and it doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be good and it needs to get done.
[00:28:03] Steve Fretzin: And, and so again, it’s, it’s, it’s business development, marketing, you know, things that, that are helping advance, you know, my company, my business and, and, and everything.
[00:28:12] Steve Fretzin: And just, just knowing that I’ve got a partner in that, I try to. Lift him up and let him know man you know you’re you’re part of the company you know i know you know you’re with get stepped up but ultimately like i wanted to feel and know that. How much I value his, his, um, efforts and what he’s doing to help me build something.
[00:28:28] Steve Fretzin: And I will, you know, as long as he wants to stay with me and continues to produce what he’s producing, you know, he has a home here. Um, so really, really great stuff, man. I, um, I just, uh, I’m so impressed with your model and what you’ve done and the quality of the people that, um, that you are helping lawyers all over the country to get offshore.
[00:28:48] Steve Fretzin: Um, let’s move to though our game changing podcast. It’s kind of our last segment of the show as we wrap up and that I believe yours is how I built this and, uh, tell us a little bit about that podcast. Who, who is it and what’s that about?
[00:29:02] Brett Trembly: Yeah, it’s by a guy named guy Roz and he, you know, he, he, it’s a slower paced podcast and it’s anywhere from an hour to two, but.
[00:29:10] Brett Trembly: He will, he gets, you know, really good guests on there, you know, guys who have built and sold, you know, breweries or, you know, like a lot, a lot of the successful people you see like on shark tank, but then he’ll get them into his lab, if you will, and really dissect how they built what they built, man, as a, as a business guy, just love hearing the background of this, because people had.
[00:29:34] Brett Trembly: An idea, and then they had struggles, and then they had more struggles, and then they had breakthroughs, and it’s just, you know, I, I, I, I enjoy that podcast, like on a long walk or bike ride or something, it’s, it’s great.
[00:29:46] Steve Fretzin: You need to get on the show, have you been on the show?
[00:29:49] Brett Trembly: I, no, I, I, look. I’m, I’m, I’m confident guy, but I’m also an honest guy.
[00:29:54] Brett Trembly: Like he, he’s getting people who are, have like famous businesses and that kind of stuff. Maybe one day let’s, well, all right.
[00:30:01] Steve Fretzin: Maybe it’s just a matter of asking. I don’t know. You know, where do things have happened? Um, right. If, um, so great having you on, um, as we wrap up, I want to thank our sponsors. Of course, websites.
[00:30:19] Steve Fretzin: Get visible who’s just cranking out the marketing and helping people really build up their marketing and their brands. And of course, we’ve got overtured outlaws helping do that ethical fee sharing. So, um, they’re just solid if you’re looking to, you know, give out business and take in business and have all that managed all the fee sharing managed for you.
[00:30:38] Steve Fretzin: Ethically, they do that. And if you’re interested in grabbing a copy of Sales Free Selling, it’s probably going to be wrapping up that promotion, but you can go to fretson. com slash sales dash free dash selling to pick up a copy of that book and understand what the methodology of Sales Free Selling is all about.
[00:30:55] Steve Fretzin: I know that would be helpful. Brett, thank you. If people want to get in touch with you and, and, uh, they want to pick up your book, uh, 24 months to freedom. They want to get in touch with you for, um, get staffed up because they’re thinking, Hey, this might be the thing that I need to do to finally get off my duff and, and get someone in here to help me.
[00:31:13] Steve Fretzin: And again, not have that a high overhead. Um, what the, what, what are the best ways for them to reach you
[00:31:18] Brett Trembly: and your company? Yeah, perfect. So, Getstaffedup. com slash fretson. We have a special landing page for your listeners. Um, there’s a link to grab the book and also a discount in case anybody does want to work with us.
[00:31:33] Brett Trembly: Just through coming through you. Um, you know, that’ll happen for them. And yeah, getstaffedup. com slash fretson. If you want Um, find me on LinkedIn. I’ve never had, I’ve had a few people say, Hey, I listened to you on a podcast. That’s always a great feeling and I’m happy to connect and chat with people on LinkedIn.
[00:31:52] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, really, really great. And then is your book up on Amazon? Where do people get
[00:31:55] Brett Trembly: that? Yeah, well, so on the landing page we have, getthefthug. com slash fretson, there’s a nice big link to grab the book. You just click on it, they get it on Amazon.
[00:32:06] Steve Fretzin: Okay, 24 months to freedom everybody. Brett, thank you so much, man.
[00:32:10] Steve Fretzin: I really appreciate our friendship and our relationship. And of course, you know, being a client of yours and, uh, and, uh, you know, it just, it’s been a, it’s been a blessing. And, um, I’m just so happy that I have you back on the show.
[00:32:22] Brett Trembly: Absolutely. Steve, I right back at you. I really enjoy just knowing you and being around you and, um, let’s keep it up, man.
[00:32:30] Steve Fretzin: Very cool. And Hey, if you want to be that lawyer, like, uh, Brad and like myself, I guess I’m not a lawyer, but I’m, I’m that guy be that guy, uh, you’re going to want to, you know, continue to. Listen to the show, you know, pick up books, um, that help you to improve your life, improve your law practice. Um, there’s just a lot of information out there.
[00:32:48] Steve Fretzin: And if you’re just kind of hanging out in your computer and billing hours and keeping your head down, um, you’re just not going to ever get out of that, out of, out of your own way for that. So I recommend that you will look to be that lawyer. Someone who’s confident, organized and a skilled rainmaker.
[00:33:00] Steve Fretzin: Take care of everybody. Be safe, be well. We will talk again very soon.
[00:33:08] Narrator: Thanks for listening to Be That Lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website Fretzin. com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.