In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Brian Glass discuss:
- Focusing on the client experience.
- Partnering with family in your law firm.
- Highest and best use of lawyers’ time for law firm success.
- The power of competition and accountability.
Key Takeaways:
- What gets in the way of lawyer business success is thinking the lawyer needs to be in the middle of everything in their practice.
- Identify and write down everything that is important to you – then reverse engineer your firm based on that criteria.
- Execute the good ideas and lessons learned from your peer groups. Having forced external accountability can help you to actually accomplish those goals.
- Give more power to your lieutenant – give them reins and responsibility, but also give them coaching and power to make decisions. You cannot do it all, especially if you are wanting to scale and grow.
“If you have a good enough team, and you have a large enough vision, you can give them these projects to go and run with. I don’t have to do it. I just have to have a big enough vision and create a fun enough and intellectually exciting enough place to work that attracts the kind of person that can go and execute on that for me.” — Brian Glass
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Episode References:
- Vivid Vision by Cameron Herold – https://www.amazon.com/Vivid-Vision-Remarkable-Aligning-Business/dp/161961877X
- My First Million: https://www.mfmpod.com/
About Brian Glass: Brian Glass is a personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. After a decade of practicing law across town from his dad, he joined Ben Glass Law in 2019 to run the auto accident section of the practice.
Brian’s greatest hits as a lawyer include a $3.4M medical malpractice verdict (2019), the record-setting settlement of a minor’s wrongful death case in Virginia ($5.5M in 2020), and the largest auto accident verdict in the state in 2022. ($3.4M in compensatory damages and $1M in punitive damages). He is highly skilled at distilling complex problems into simple, understandable solutions.
Brian runs Time Freedom for Lawyers, a podcast dedicated to teaching other lawyers and high-income professionals how to win back some of their time by running more efficient businesses, investing in real estate, and crafting the vision of their own perfect life.
Brian’s perfect life includes coaching his three boys in soccer, baseball, and whatever other athletic endeavor they want to pursue; travelling the world with his wife of 13 years; and competing in endurance events. Brian is a finisher of the Umstead 100 Mile Endurance Race, the Laurel Highlands 71 Miler, and about two dozen other ultramarathons. Lately, parenting has cut short his training timeline and he focuses on Crossfit and Spartan races, with a 2023 goal of traveling to Sparta, Greece to compete in the Spartan Race World Championships.
Connect with Brian Glass:
Website: https://greatlegalmarketing.com/
Website: https://benglasslaw.com/
Show: https://www.timefreedompod.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fairfaxpersonalinjury/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianglassesq/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greatlegalmarketing/
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Instagram: @fretzinsteve
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Steve Fretzin: Hey everyone, listen up real quick. Before we begin the show, I’d like to present my Be That Lawyer Challenge. If you’ve ever wondered how much more you could be making as an attorney, I challenge you to meet with me for 30 minutes to discuss your law firm. If I’m unable to identify ways to bring in more business for you, I’ll pay your hourly rate for our time together.
[00:00:19] Steve Fretzin: I’m just that confident. Go to Fretzin. com to accept this challenge and hope to meet you soon.
[00:00:29] 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.
[00:00:52] Steve Fretzin: Well, Hey everybody. Welcome to be that lawyer. I am Steve Fretzin. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. So happy that you’re here today to listen to all the things that you need to do to be that lawyer. Someone who’s confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker. I’m so, uh, wonderfully grateful to have Brian with the, uh, with me today.
[00:01:08] Steve Fretzin: How you doing Brian? I’m wonderful, Steve. Thank you. How are you? Good. I feel like I’m seeing a little too much of you. I don’t know if that’s possible. And if, if your wife feels the same way.
[00:01:19] Steve Fretzin: I did your podcast yesterday, then you’re back here today. You know, what’s funny. I was telling people about, and this was mentioned on a show a couple of shows ago about the, the benefit of having a podcast is the podcast exchange. Like sometimes it just works out where I can add value for your show. You can add value for my show.
[00:01:36] Steve Fretzin: And we’re exponentially like building out content because just having a podcast gives you a little bit of that. I don’t know what the word is, uh, savoir faire or something like that, but I don’t word at all. That no, that’s a new word. I just made that. I just made that word up. How about
[00:01:51] Brian Glass: that? No, I, but I, I like that.
[00:01:54] Brian Glass: I’m able to come in and have conversations with, with people that either I don’t know, or who are already friends of mine and ask the kind of questions that never really come up in everyday life. So I’m excited
[00:02:03] Steve Fretzin: to dive in here. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s, uh, you know, it’s kind of funny just in a day’s switch to like flip hats and turn, turn the head around.
[00:02:11] Steve Fretzin: And now I get to interview you. So let’s start off as I love to do with the quote of the show. And you know, I think you and I are just on the same page, whether that’s Alex Hermosi, Napoleon Hill, like you’re clearly are a student of the game in a similar way than I am. And I always love to just talk shop with people, but that was the first sales book I ever read was thinking, go rich, grow rich.
[00:02:34] Steve Fretzin: And it really kind of blew my mind because at the time I didn’t really know much about anything. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So talk, and that’s Napoleon Hill. For those who don’t know Napoleon Hill, I mean. He’s a he’s I think he’s dead probably for a while. Uh, no.
[00:02:50] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, he’s dead. Um, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but brilliant writer. Uh, and, and just kind of like had a very different take on things. But anyway, what’s, what’s your thought on that quote?
[00:03:00] Brian Glass: Nothing has changed my life in the past couple of years more than leveling up my peer group and spending more time with people who are more successful than me.
[00:03:09] Brian Glass: Right? So the quote is you’re the average of the five people that you spend the most time around. And I think if you picture in your mind. The five people that you spend the most time around, you’re going to be right in the middle of them fitness wise, salary wise, net worth wise, happiness with your relationships with your wife and your kids, like we just tend to gravitate towards the middle of that.
[00:03:30] Brian Glass: And so. As much as you can shed the people who are bringing your average down and bring somebody into your circle who’s leveling you up, you’re gonna see your own life.
[00:03:41] Steve Fretzin: And hey, my friend Noel might be listening. Hey man, I’m bringing up your game, buddy. Just so you know. It’s not the quote. I thought you were gonna get rid of him.
[00:03:49] Steve Fretzin: I gotta, Noel, I’m sorry, you gotta go. He’s trying to get rid of himself. He goes on vacation, he keeps falling. And like breaking ribs and like, he just fell off a 12 foot like wall in a grease. Like he just keeps getting hurt on vacation. So it may be natural selection that, uh, my good friend, Noel ends up, uh, with a broken, with a broken head or something.
[00:04:08] Steve Fretzin: But I, I love that quote. And for me, it really does talk to the peer advisory world that, yeah, you get a bunch of, you know, eight, 10, 12, in my case, like successful attorneys together to talk shop. I mean, they’re learning from each other. They’re bringing up each other’s games. They’re, they’re just, they’re all going to perform at a higher level.
[00:04:26] Steve Fretzin: And I think also lawyers and tell me, cause you’re a lawyer, the competitiveness, um, not to win or beat other lawyers, but like the competitiveness in the group of like, Hey, these people are all hitting their numbers. I better hit my numbers and right. Leveling it up.
[00:04:39] Brian Glass: And so I think it goes both ways actually.
[00:04:42] Brian Glass: So I think if you’re around, if you, if you find yourself in a room. And this happens to me like at happy hour at bar CLE events where everybody’s complaining about their clients and their staff and my cases suck. You tend to complain my clients and my staff and my cases suck. But if you’re in a room where people are doing the opposite and they’re talking about these amazing results that they had last month and the case that they just signed up into the vacation that they’re taking their family on next quarter.
[00:05:11] Brian Glass: Like you tend to either talk, find those things in your life that are going really well. Thank you. Where the next time you’re going to be around that group, you’ve manufactured a couple of things in your life that you can talk about. And so I think it’s really important to note, you know, not only that, yes, lawyers are competitive and we’re hard charging.
[00:05:29] Brian Glass: When you’re in that downward spiral and everybody around you is negative, it is really hard to be the one voice who’s like, yeah, my life isn’t all that bad. And so just, just taking some stock and observing who it is that you’re spending time with, I think is, is integral to, you know, keeping yourself on track.
[00:05:45] Brian Glass: Yeah.
[00:05:46] Steve Fretzin: And, um, Brian, uh, it’s Brian glass, everybody. He’s the president of great legal marketing and also, uh, involved in his own law firm. Right. And so your dad’s law firm and you guys are partners. Yeah. We’re 50, 50 partners. Yep. Okay. Awesome. Awesome. And I heard about your dad years ago. He’s been in the coaching and marketing and legal game for a long time as well.
[00:06:07] Steve Fretzin: Great legal marketing
[00:06:08] Brian Glass: is celebrating its 18th year this year.
[00:06:10] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. I think he beat me to the punch. I didn’t get into legal until about 2008, 2009, but I think I looked him up and I was, I think we actually may have had a conversation at one point just to kind of, I like to pick people’s brains when, like we were just talking about when they’re smarter than me and they know an industry better than me, like I’m, I’d be, you know, and people do that to me.
[00:06:29] Steve Fretzin: Like I get calls from people, lawyer coaches, like, Hey, I’m just getting into this game. What do I do? But give us a little bit of your background as a lawyer and then leading into, you know, getting into, into business with your dad and with great legal marketing and kind of that be that lawyer tipping point I love to pull out of people.
[00:06:45] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, great.
[00:06:45] Brian Glass: So I graduated law school in 2008 into the teeth of the great recession, right? And all of us who went to law school in that time went with the promise of 160, 000 a year starting salaries for knowing absolutely nothing about the law. And I didn’t get it. My first job out of law school, I was making 60, 000 a year working at a general practice firm.
[00:07:05] Brian Glass: I had absolutely no training and no education on what it was like to be a lawyer or to be in court. So I, I, I tell this story, but I was sworn in on Tuesday in the Virginia state bar. And on Wednesday, they sent me to court by myself to handle a criminal matter. I can’t imagine doing that to somebody. So it didn’t last very long there.
[00:07:23] Brian Glass: And you know, four months into my job there, I quit. I got a job as an auto accident injury lawyer, and I’ve been working in that space ever since. First decade of my career, I spent across town from my father, really in a competitive space. They weren’t doing kind of the volume practice that we were, but I was learning how to run and manage a large auto accident practice on the plaintiff side and make my own friends, make my own reputation, my own way of doing things.
[00:07:50] Brian Glass: And then in 2019, I left that firm and I came to join him and we quadrupled the revenue of the auto accident section within the last four years. Really streamline the practices of signing cases up, running them through the system. And, and focusing almost exclusively on client experience. So my thesis is all good injury lawyers are going to guide the case to about the same place.
[00:08:13] Brian Glass: Right? Within a 10 percent margin of error, probably. And so how can we do it as fast as possible? So the client gets their money faster. And how can we do it in a way their client actually knows what’s going on. Right? So our whole thing is client… Trust me, I know. Yeah. It’s all client, client education and making this the best customer service experience that you’ve ever had.
[00:08:33] Brian Glass: Not only from a law firm, but really from any professional services business that you come into contact with. And as a result of that, you know, we kind of lead the area in a number of five star Google reviews, and that’s, that’s what we trade on, is customer service. We don’t beat our chests about we’re the best lawyers in the world, because how, how the hell would you ever know?
[00:08:50] Brian Glass: But I do know that my team can provide a much better customer service than almost any lawyer, law firm in
[00:08:55] Steve Fretzin: Northern Virginia. Now, some sons of lawyers, and I am a son of a lawyer, and, and he never for a second thought I was going to go into law because just, it was just a different, he knew I had a different path, which is fine.
[00:09:07] Steve Fretzin: But the idea that I would work with my dad, um, and I love my dad, Larry the lawyer, everybody, but the idea of working with him would be like if I was a teenager again, coming home from a party and getting put on the cross for, you know, half an hour late at night. That’s how I’d feel every day. How is it, how did you come upon the decision to work with your father and, and what’s that been like?
[00:09:27] Steve Fretzin: It’s been
[00:09:29] Brian Glass: great. The thing that, that kept us from doing this
[00:09:33] Steve Fretzin: Why are you, why are you winking at me? Well, no,
[00:09:35] Brian Glass: the Just kidding, he’s not winking. The thing that kept us from doing it for so long was exactly that. It’s the thought that like, what if it sucks? But, you know, he runs an ERISA long term disability practice.
[00:09:47] Brian Glass: I run an auto accident practice. We don’t really do any cases together. We stay out of each other’s way. He’s good at a subset of things. I’m good at a subset of things and I don’t really have an opinion on his cases and he doesn’t have an opinion on mine. So that helps. Okay. But what brought us together, Steve, was really a confluence of like three things.
[00:10:04] Brian Glass: So I was a partner at the firm where I was working and we made the decision to not expand our office space, not take over the suite next to us. We had a key employee who left, and then the third thing that happened was my wife, when she went into labor with our third child, had this really, really hard childbirth, and he was in the ICU, he was in the NICU for 10 or 11 days, and she ended up in the ICU for like 48 hours, and I came out of that experience thinking, okay, my dad is 60 now, and we’re foregoing this lease in the other firm, And if, if I don’t do it now, I might not get a chance to ever practice with them.
[00:10:44] Brian Glass: And so, you know, this was the perfect opportunity because it was not that bad of a transition out of my old firm. Um, they were taking on new space here at Ben Glass Law. And so that was just the perfect time for me to say, if I don’t do it now, I’m never going to do it.
[00:10:57] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And was there some feeling of, about him with a legacy that, that having you on board is better than not from a standpoint of legacy?
[00:11:07] Brian Glass: I don’t know that we thought terribly much about the
[00:11:10] Steve Fretzin: legacy. Okay. But now that I mentioned it,
[00:11:14] Brian Glass: no, I, you know, I don’t think legacy was, I think our whole thing was like, we don’t want it to ruin the father son relationship. Okay. And that’s what kept us from doing it for a long time. And, and in retrospect, like it’s been a whole, our relationship has been a whole lot stronger since I joined.
[00:11:26] Brian Glass: Because we’re spending so much time together working on building and not one business, but two businesses
[00:11:31] Steve Fretzin: together now. Yeah. And how does that transition into the great legal marketing business? Because you two are working closely on that too, or, or C yeah. How does that
[00:11:40] Brian Glass: play out? We, yeah, so we’re working closely in, in that also.
[00:11:44] Brian Glass: So I’m, you know, in EOS parlance, I’m the integrator now of both businesses. And my job is to take my dad’s vision and as a true visionary, like I get 25 ideas a week through seven different channels, email, text, fly by the office, put it in the Slack channel, like whatever. And so the job is to take all of those ideas, select the best ones and then put people to work on the best ones.
[00:12:08] Brian Glass: So that’s what we’ve been working on. And our whole thing in great legal marketing is like, you have to design the legal practice that works best for you and what works best. For me and my auto practice in Virginia, maybe it’s not the same for you with your workers comp practice in Nebraska. Right, but I can, if you give me the framework work, I can help guide you towards here’s the next three or four things that you should be spending your hours and your dollars on to get you closer to a practice that you actually enjoy going to work at on
[00:12:38] Steve Fretzin: Monday.
[00:12:38] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, and that’s a good segue to sort of the main topic and conversation I wanted to have with you, which is really around. Um, you know, lawyers struggle, not all, but many struggle with how to make a law practice into a real business. Like it’s just sort of like they’re running the, the, the law practice and, you know, and, and they’re starting to come around and see, and see that it’s a business, but making the transition to, to it being into a real business is I think that the challenge.
[00:13:06] Steve Fretzin: So where do you see a, you know, kind of the struggles that lawyers have that in, from
[00:13:10] Brian Glass: your experience? I think the largest struggle is that we have. No, you’re a lawyer because you’re a high achiever, right? Because you did well in high school, well enough to go to college. You did well in college, well enough to get into law school.
[00:13:23] Brian Glass: And so, so you’re naturally good at picking up. And learning a variety of different skills. And so then when you get out and you have your own small business, you want to be good at creating a website, designing a pay per click campaign. How do we answer the phones? How do we run through the sales process, which you and I talked about yesterday?
[00:13:43] Brian Glass: How do we work on cases? How, you know, what should my HR protocols be? I, you need to know like enough to know whether your accountant is telling you the truth or not. Right. And so the thing that gets in most lawyers way of success in creating a real business is the fact that the lawyer feels like they need to be central to all of those little things.
[00:14:05] Brian Glass: And the more that I have gotten out of every little thing, and the more that we have stopped trying to DIY all of that stuff. The better and better and better we’ve gotten. And so, you know, thinking about what’s the highest and best use of your time in terms of your effective hourly rate, it’s not in like ordering office supplies.
[00:14:25] Brian Glass: And, and it’s often not in hiring people off of Indeed. Like if you can find somebody to do that for you, given the criteria that you want to hire into. Your practice is going to take off and that’s what keeps lawyers back from from building real businesses Is we feel like we have to be central to
[00:14:41] Steve Fretzin: everything.
[00:14:42] Steve Fretzin: Yeah in delegation is the beast I mean, it’s if you’re thinking you have to do everything and you’re not delegating and you’re just doing every job I mean, how many hats are you wearing? When really, I think most lawyers should probably be wearing one or two hats. I don’t think anything more than that, then it’s, it’s, it’s probably too much.
[00:14:59] Brian Glass: Just the mental load and the decision fatigue that you have by the end of the day of doing more than that, then, then how can you ever go and sit somewhere and come up with creative case ideas? Right? How, how can you maximize, in my case, the value of an auto accident case? If you’re bogged down in the email pinging every seven minutes and, and, you know, you’re taking inbound client phone calls and inbound adjuster phone calls.
[00:15:22] Brian Glass: You know, all day long, like you can’t do the deep work that’s required to maximize case value and to maximize your marketing systems and all
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[00:17:19] Steve Fretzin: out. And I know one of the things, and it’s come up on the show maybe once or twice over the last number of years, this concept of reverse engineering and what does that mean?
[00:17:31] Steve Fretzin: Because I think lawyers hear that and they don’t know what that means as it relates to building a practice of their dreams. Yeah. So
[00:17:39] Brian Glass: the first part of that question is what is the practice of your dreams? What do you want that to look like? And many lawyers, Steve, never think about that at all. I’m sure not the people that listen to this show, but as you talk to people for the first time, you recognize that it’s like showing fire to cavemen when you, you know, when you say you can have a practice that you actually like showing up to on Monday.
[00:18:00] Brian Glass: The thing is you have to go and figure out what are the characteristics of that practice and what do I want it to look like? For me, the book that changed my life the most in the last couple of years has been Vivid Vision by Cameron Harreld, which is the exercise of going and just writing down in a bullet point way to begin with, what are all the elements that you want in your life?
[00:18:20] Brian Glass: How much travel do you want? How much time do you want to spend with your kids? For me, I want to show up for all my kids coaching events. My boys are 10, 8, and 5 now. I want to be at every sporting event that I can. And so, okay, now that I know that. And now that I know how much money I want to make, I can now kind of reverse engineer.
[00:18:38] Brian Glass: I’ve only got eight working hours during the day. Here’s what my time needs to be worth. And so what kind of a practice do I have to build that attracts clients whose cases are worth that much money? And that’s the way that I’ve gone about thinking, like, number one, what is it that you want? But number two, how do we, how do we get there?
[00:18:56] Brian Glass: And the thing is, if you have a good enough team and you have a large enough vision, You can give them these projects that go on run with, you can give them the assignment of, I need a practice that generates X number of auto accident calls so that I can have X number of auto accident clients. Let’s have the marketing director go and figure that out.
[00:19:16] Brian Glass: I don’t have to do it. I just have to have a big enough vision and create a fun enough and intellectually exciting enough place to work that attracts the kind of person that can go and execute on that for me.
[00:19:27] Steve Fretzin: Well, and it’s, I had, I’ve had a, um, I mean, a number of conversations about partnerships too on the show in the last number of months.
[00:19:34] Steve Fretzin: And, uh, you know, that’s, that’s something too, is like, you know, who do you have around you that’s going to support, like you mentioned, you know, you’re the implementer, right? Or, you know, there’s ideas, people, there’s visionaries, there’s implementers, there’s people. And one of the things that came out in the, in the interview with, about partnerships was.
[00:19:49] Steve Fretzin: You know, one person’s generally going to be like the rainmaker and the visionary. And then one person’s going to be the one that’s actually like making all the, the, the cogs and the wheels turn and, you know, all work. And you shouldn’t have maybe two leading partners that both are doing that have the same skill sets.
[00:20:06] Steve Fretzin: Or
[00:20:06] Brian Glass: they think they have the same skill sets. What happens when you get, when you get two guys who think that they’re rainmakers and it turns out one of them really isn’t and neither one of them are excited about actually doing the manual labor in the cases. Well, that’s a recipe for
[00:20:21] Steve Fretzin: disaster. Right on, right on.
[00:20:24] Steve Fretzin: And, you know, you and I are both running mastermind groups. And some people would say, and we had this almost exact conversation on your show that, you know, why would you guys want to interview each other? Why would you, you know, want to, you know, be in a room with your competition? Isn’t he the enemy or she the enemy in that situation?
[00:20:40] Steve Fretzin: And we both kind of looked at each other and smiled and said, no, that’s not how this works. Um, and then the term coopetition came out and that type of thing, but talk about, talk about the value of masterminds. And I think you and I can go back and forth and kind of explain what we’re seeing, observing, and kind of hearing on a day to day basis that makes it such a unique experience for lawyers.
[00:21:01] Brian Glass: And so on that coopetition base, like unless you and I own a hundred percent of the legal market. Which would be great. Yeah. We’re not competing over pieces of a pie, right? Yeah. You know, and in the, in the solo and small firm market, our clientele is probably a total of one, 1 percent between the two of us.
[00:21:21] Brian Glass: And so rate, you know, the more that I can get on shows like yours and you can get on shows like mine, the more that we’re doing to raise awareness for people like us. And then clients can select, lawyers can select Steve’s group is a better fit for me or Brian’s group is a better fit for me. And that’s all fine.
[00:21:36] Brian Glass: You asked the question about the, Oh, the value of mess. We get that. Yeah. So, so I think in the legal space, because lawyers are so competitive that you cannot go to your local bar event and get actual business advice because lawyers aren’t willing to be vulnerable with their competitors in the neighborhood, right?
[00:22:00] Brian Glass: I can’t go to a Virginia trial lawyers event. And be truly vulnerable about my marketing and the places where we’re not doing so well in the same way that I can go into a room of trial lawyers from across the country who are not in my backyard and help them and have them help me with marketing things.
[00:22:18] Brian Glass: So in our mastermind groups, we share information about vendors, like the thing that comes up all the time is who’s your 24 hour. Answering service. What do you like about them? What do you not like about them? Who’s your web vendor? What do you like about them? What do you not like about them? And lawyers, we just don’t share that stuff with people who are in our backyard, who are our natural competitors.
[00:22:38] Brian Glass: And again, back to the idea that unless you and I are occupying a hundred percent of the space, it really doesn’t matter. But I’m still hesitant to share that information with, you know, one of the other probably 200 injury lawyers in Fairfax County. But I’ll share it with people, you know, from across the country.
[00:22:53] Brian Glass: So I think that’s the, the real value is to be able to come and have a place, number one, where it’s okay to share your wins and it doesn’t sound like bragging, um, but number two, where it’s, where it’s okay to share the things that you’re not doing so well at and to get help with.
[00:23:07] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, I think, I think from my perspective, not too different than yours, that the sharing of ideas, number one, but, but even maybe more than that is.
[00:23:17] Steve Fretzin: I have a problem. My problem is this, you know, lawyer that works at my firm or my problem is I have this big opportunity that I want to go after and to get the feedback of eight, in my case, eight to 12 lawyers that are all playing, you know, the million dollar plus game to get, you know, to ask, they ask him a ton of questions.
[00:23:37] Steve Fretzin: They ferret out like what’s going on at the great detail. And then they get like 10 ideas from all these lawyers that just surround them with ideas. And then to say, all right, here are the best three that I think I can do, and I can do this in the next month, or I can do this by a certain time frame, and then to come back the next month and actually say, here’s what changed, here’s what I did.
[00:23:56] Steve Fretzin: I mean, there’s so much going, you know, to unpack there in this one little piece of the, of the group that I’m running, groups that I’m running. And I just think they’re just, their minds are blown that they have this great resource of these, of these, you know, 10 other, you know, you know, big brains that they can, that they can, you know, pick up that, that can pick them apart and then also, you know, help them succeed.
[00:24:17] Steve Fretzin: I
[00:24:18] Brian Glass: don’t know what it sounds like. You may be systematized as the accountability part. Right.
[00:24:22] Steve Fretzin: Well, the accountability, but the problem, the problem solving first, the accountability to take action, like you can give me great ideas, Brian, but if I’m not going to do anything with them, right, then, then what’s the kind of the point?
[00:24:34] Steve Fretzin: Well, why did we just spend a half an hour on you if you’re not going to do anything that is going to help you solve that problem? So I think it’s, it’s sort of a one, two punch. With, with No, that’s, yeah,
[00:24:46] Brian Glass: I think that’s exactly right. That the, there are a lot of, uh, groups in our industry. When you come into that room, you’re in the room one time with the same group and you never see ’em again.
[00:24:56] Brian Glass: You, and so to your point, you can get a great idea. And then never execute on me because you’re afraid or because you got back to the office and somebody who isn’t a loaner at the law firm said that thing is stupid or because you couldn’t translate it to the, to the, you know, to your employees in a way that they actually wanted to act on, but the groups that you and I are running.
[00:25:15] Brian Glass: You then have to come back in my case, in a quarter, and in your case in a month, and, and you have to say to the group, Hey, you know, we spent an hour of everybody’s time, right? And you got 12 firms in the room. That’s no, I don’t know, 10, 000 of brainpower. And we came up with this great solution, but I couldn’t convince my team to act on it.
[00:25:36] Brian Glass: Right. So having that forced account, external accountability. Um, taking action on the good ideas when you come back. One of the things that I, that I like to do in our group is how people bring their number two with them, because it’s really hard, it’s really hard to be the one lawyer that goes back to the staff of 15 with the great idea, because it’s really exciting to you, but they’ve got 10 files on their desk that they have to get to.
[00:26:01] Brian Glass: And so having somebody else who can be your advocate. And help you and can help translate to them, I think is really powerful. Like, Hey, if, if we implement this idea and your caseload goes from 10 to 12, okay, that’s a temporary increase, but then we’re going to hire three more people and elevate you.
[00:26:19] Brian Glass: We’ll be able to pay you more and your life will be better. And, and we as, as visionaries, the people that are running the law firms, we’re often not good at that part. And so having your ally. Who can come back with you, sometimes it’s called a second in command COO, integrate or whatever, having that person that’s there in the room with you who can come back, I think is really powerful.
[00:26:43] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, and I think this is, you know, again, every, everybody’s got a different way of doing it and a different way, uh, and, and I would say like. My groups, the rainmaker round tables, the business development round tables. It’s definitely 70%, 80 percent marketing and business development and growth. And so we are spending some time on scaling the business and the operations of the business and some of the other things that go into building and scaling a firm, but that’s really not the theme.
[00:27:11] Steve Fretzin: The theme is definitely more about. How does the managing partner of a 30 person firm stop doing everything and focus on client development? Like how do we get that second to take the second role? And get that, let that managing partner, let that, you know, the rainmaker rain, make rain. And so I think that’s, that’s, you know, again, everybody’s got a different theme or different, you know, angle of what they’re really trying to accomplish with, with, you know, whether it’s coaching, you know, I’m a business development coach.
[00:27:40] Steve Fretzin: Somebody wants an executive coach or a scaling coach. That’s not me. I’ve got 10 that I can send them to. Right. So I think that’s, I
[00:27:48] Brian Glass: know that I’m curious and I know that it’s your show, but I’m, I do want to ask one question is your, your managing partner, who’s got 30 people under him and he wants his number two to elevate is that managing partner getting coaching for the number two,
[00:28:03] Steve Fretzin: getting coaching for the number two is probably not right.
[00:28:08] Steve Fretzin: In some cases, they’re trying to find a number two because they don’t have a number two. And so here’s an interesting thing to Brian, like. When you talk about number two, and why are we talking about number two? That just sounds weird. Just first of all. Okay. But, um, you’re talking about number two being here’s the different, like something interesting, like number two could be the COO.
[00:28:27] Steve Fretzin: That could be the person that’s running the firm and like managing the people and everything. We’re more talking about. How does a managing partner or a top rainmaker bring in a lieutenant? Okay. Meaning someone that could sort of manage the clients and, and allow that lawyer not to have to be doing all the lawyering with all these clients that they’ve made, that they’ve created so that they can continue to stay out there and grow business.
[00:28:53] Steve Fretzin: So there’s two different kinds of different number twos. And so we’re trying to figure out like, how do we get this, this rainmaker who’s doing 5 million a year. But is getting stymied by the business, you know, and by the clients that constantly need attention to stop doing all that low level attention work and focus on the high level quarterbacking and going out and getting more.
[00:29:16] Brian Glass: So I think it’s really two things, right? I think number one. It’s back to that issue of lawyers think that we have the solution to everything. And it’s, it’s giving the reins to number to your, to your Lieutenant to let him, let him or her operate in a way, you know, where you were there to catch them if they fall, but you’re letting them, you know, make the decision first.
[00:29:38] Brian Glass: And then I think, I think the second part, and the reason that I asked that question is we’re often afraid to get business or personal coaching. For our lieutenants because we’re afraid that if they get great they’re gonna go Somewhere else and take our clients and I think that’s backwards. Like, what if you never get them coaching and they stay and they suck, right?
[00:29:59] Brian Glass: Yeah, that is, that’s the, that’s the, then you’re stuck with this practice. You can’t scale
[00:30:02] Steve Fretzin: out of, yeah. So, you know, lots of decisions that lawyers have to make when they’re considering growth and scaling. And, and I think, you know, getting help from professionals, whether that’s you, me or others, uh, it’s becoming more common.
[00:30:17] Steve Fretzin: That it used to be, but still not enough. I still think there’s lawyers that not only want to do everything, but also think they can figure everything out. And eventually they do and they, they, they may or may, they may not. But you know, my whole thought is like, Hey, if you could shave years off of doing X, Y and Z, you know, and you have to put a little time and money in, is that really a bad, bad decision?
[00:30:37] Steve Fretzin: No, it’s usually a good decision. Especially if you find the right, the right person to help. So, um, Brian, really great stuff, man. So let’s move into your game changing podcast. It’s called My First Million. Talk about that. Just the
[00:30:50] Brian Glass: podcast that I’ve, I’ve been into lately. These guys bring on, and mostly e commerce kind of guys.
[00:30:56] Brian Glass: Um, but they’re, they’re, I can’t even think of the guys who run the podcast. So,
[00:31:01] Steve Fretzin: uh, well, people can look it up. My First Million is kind of a cool
[00:31:04] Brian Glass: name. Yeah, check, check it out. You know, I, I, I do kind of in and out of binging on, um, Various entrepreneurial podcasts. Almost none of them are in the legal space.
[00:31:13] Brian Glass: Alex Ramosi’s podcast is very good. We talked about that. Yeah. My first million. Yeah, that’s my, that’s my recommendation.
[00:31:19] Steve Fretzin: Okay. Well, we’ll have people check it out in, uh, as we wrap things up, everybody want to just thank our sponsors. Of course, overture. law helping, uh, to, you know, allow you to ethically fee share so you can send stuff out and get stuff back around the country and not have to deal with the details of it.
[00:31:35] Steve Fretzin: We’ve got get staffed up another get company. Uh, who’s helping on the digital side, and of course. Uh, oh no, get, sorry, duh, that’s GetVisible. They’re the digital marketing guys. GetStaffedUp is the ones who help with getting you that full time admin, that full time marketing, someone that’s gonna, but not be an employee, which is crazy good because you’re paying half the, half the price and you’re not dealing with the 401ks or any of that stuff, which I personally like.
[00:32:00] Steve Fretzin: And, uh, my guy Sergio’s with GetStaffedUp and he’s doing a great job. Anybody that knows my marketing knows I’m rocking it and that’s a lot due to Sergio. So, shout out to those sponsors. And, um, if people want to get in touch with you, Brian, to hear more about great legal marketing, what’s the best, uh, what are the best digits?
[00:32:17] Steve Fretzin: Oh, yes.
[00:32:19] Brian Glass: That’s where I’m most active socially. And then great legal marketing. com if you want to know more about solo small, we’re in the solo and small law firm space for folks that have consumer facing practices.
[00:32:32] Steve Fretzin: Okay. Beautiful. Beautiful. And, um, Hey man, thanks. This was not only fun and I, and we, we started off like talking before we hit record that how fast these go by.
[00:32:42] Steve Fretzin: Did this go by pretty fast? This is so fast. It just frickin flew. It just
[00:32:47] Brian Glass: went by fast until you asked me about the podcast that I couldn’t remember. Nah, it’s…
[00:32:53] Steve Fretzin: That’s okay. I honestly, there’s a couple that I, there’s one that I, that I, I listened to and I regularly forget the name, but I listened to it every single week and it’s on advertising and marketing.
[00:33:02] Steve Fretzin: And so right now, if you ask me, I did, I’m blanking. So that it happens. It happens. Well, anyway, very, very cool stuff, man. And, uh, I appreciate you spending some time and sharing your wisdom and, uh, Everybody, thank you so much for spending time with Brian and I today. Hopefully you got some good tips and takeaways and some thoughts.
[00:33:18] Steve Fretzin: And, you know, I think he and I both are, are bought in and, and totally absorbed in this, in this peer advisory concept. And if you want to check it out, you can go to fretson. com. You know, Brian just gave, you know, greatlegalmarketing. com and just kind of check them out. You know, they’re, they’re not for everybody, but for the people that want to Really get into the, into the place where you can be listened to and understood and not judged and have a collaboration.
[00:33:43] Steve Fretzin: I think it’s a great way to go. Um, and thank you all for being that lawyer, someone who’s confident, organized and a skilled rainmaker. Take care, everybody. Be safe, be well. We will talk again soon.
[00:33:56] 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 developments. Development and marketing trends for more information and important links about today’s episode check out today’s show
[00:34:19] Steve Fretzin: notes