In this episode, Steve Fretzin and David Neagle discuss:
- Why belief is the most important thing to your success.
- Getting around walls that make you seem stuck.
- How lawyers can overcome the struggle of negativity.
- The formula for solving your problems.
Key Takeaways:
- You don’t have a problem, you only create problems. What you see as a problem, just is. You give what is the meaning of problem.
- Be open to learning, be willing to learn, and take the steps to change.
- You do not have to be the smartest person in the room. You were never taught how to build a business, learn from those who do know how.
- We earn what we expect to earn.
“Most people stay stuck in their business because that’s where they’re comfortable. Even if they’re complaining and moaning about it, they understand the problems that they have and they deal with those problems every day. But it’s far scarier for them to try to blast ahead.” — David Neagle
Episode References:
Book: Working with the Law by Raymond Holliwell
Book: Trust by Iyanla Vanzant
Connect with David Neagle:
Website: https://davidneagle.com/
Show: https://successfulmindpodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thedavidneagle/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidneagle
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidNeagleCommunity
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/david_p_neagle/
Thank you to our Sponsors!
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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, problem, lawyer, hiring, business, started, life, david, attitude, book, thought, chicago, deal, money, driving, nagel, listening, behaviors, belief, real
SPEAKERS
Narrator, Steve Fretzin, MoneyPenny, Jordan Ostroff, Practice Panther, David Neagle
David Neagle [00:00]
Most people stay stuck in their business because that’s where they’re comfortable. Even if they’re complaining and moaning about it, that’s the real reason. They understand the problems that they have. They deal with those problems every day, but it’s far scarier for them to try to blast ahead.
Narrator [00:20]
You’re listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin [00:42]
Hey, everybody, welcome to be that lawyer hope you’re having just the most wonderful day. You know, it’s another wonderful opportunity to be that lawyer someone who’s competent, organized in a skilled Rainmaker. And again, if you haven’t had an opportunity to pick up any of my four books, just to let you know, we’ve got sales Free selling. We’ve got the attorneys networking handbook, the ambitious attorney and of course, legal business development isn’t rocket science, all available on Amazon, grab a copy. I think the Kindles are super cheap. The books are also not bad. And by the way, you can support my son’s 529. That’s where those proceeds are going. So if you want to send Andrew Fretzin to college, no pressure, no stress. Trust me, I’m doing fine without you without your book, money, everybody, but it doesn’t hurt so much appreciate your support, of course, lots of amazing takeaways and all those books. So check them out on Amazon or on my website. Very good. We’ve got an action packed show for you today. We’re going to rise you up. We’re going to take you to a new place today. I got David wait in the wings. How’s it going? David?
David Neagle [01:42]
Doing fantastic. Glad to be here.
Steve Fretzin [01:44]
Are you a David A Dave or a Davey? David? David, if somebody calls you David, you give him a look.
David Neagle [01:50]
Sometimes they even correct Uh huh.
Steve Fretzin [01:53]
Dave’s they want to be Dave. There’s David’s they gotta believe it’s true. I get it. All right. Well, I’m gonna I’m gonna call you Davey then just to mix things up now. Okay. You do that? In my family if you have the opportunity to end a name and an E, like Mikey, Scotty, Stevie, like, they just go for it. And that’s what everybody has to deal with. It’s very there’s a Chicago thing. It might be a Chicago thing. I never thought of it that way. But that’s sort of explain it. So we’re going to come back to you in a moment, David. I’ve got some sponsors to thank we got legalese. We got money Penny and we got of course, practice Panther. You’ll be hearing about them in a few minutes. David Nagel is the founder of life is now Inc. He’s an author. He’s a podcast success. This guy spends his entire world trying to help others to be their best versions. And I just want to start off David with your quote of the show, which is just believe. And that was said by the famous David Nagel,
David Neagle [02:48]
you great guy, that guy.
Steve Fretzin [02:50]
I hear he’s, that’s what he keeps telling me anyway. Welcome to the show, my friend. How’s it going?
David Neagle [02:57]
I’m done. It’s great. I’m really honored to be here. Looking forward to it. Yes,
Steve Fretzin [03:01]
everyone that comes on my show should be honored. That’s the first thing I just want to share with everybody. I’m honored that you’re with me today. And we’re going to just again, have such a wonderful a wonderful conversation. And talk to me about just believe why is that kind of your jam your statement, your quote,
David Neagle [03:16]
because I cheat because I had a real hard time in my early adult life. And I changed a couple of really small things. In my attitude that totally changed my results in my life in such a short period of time, it blew my mind. And I got I as I would it did was inspired me to really start to study to try to figure out how did this happen? How did I affect so much change, without having the tools without having the education I was a high school dropout at 17. And I went through this period that was really rough. I made a few small changes. As I began to study, I found out that those changes allowed me to change my belief system. And as my belief system changed, so did my results. So the speed at which I was creating my own success was only limited by how fast I was willing to change what I believed about the world or business or whatever it was that I was dealing with. So that’s where that came from. I became really fascinated with the word itself. believe we could talk about that later. But But it goes back 1000s of years, you know, it is different in different inclinations, depending on what time in history, you’re using the word.
Steve Fretzin [04:26]
Let me get your take on something because I have like this wheel that I use to kind of help people explain how change is created. And there’s three points on the wheel. One is belief in yourself. The other is attitude, having a positive attitude. And the third point of reference on that wheel is the word behaviors. Which do you think is the one that ultimately is the most important of the three if you had to pick one? Well, I think why
David Neagle [04:51]
I think it’s belief because I think all of them absolutely have to go together, right? You’re never going to do anything without all three of them. But the belief is what is what your mind is open to in the world, right attitude is how you’re going to show up. And obviously behaviors, behavior rights cause and effect. But if your mind is closed, then you get stuck within the minutiae of the problem that you think you have. And you don’t have a problem, you only create problems, right? So whatever you look at as a problem just is it doesn’t have any meaning to it unless you give it a meaning. And you’re gonna give it a meeting based on what you believe.
Steve Fretzin [05:29]
Okay, I usually I tend to float towards the word behaviors, but that’s generally with people that aren’t suits either so negative or so like, have such disbelief in themselves that they’re never going to accomplish anything. So it’s like, I think that if you if you can somehow work out how to do the right behaviors, that improves your belief in yourself and your attitude, and you kind of goes in a positive cycle. But I think you’re 100% you need all three, but I’m getting what you’re saying that without that belief to start with, if you’re not believing in anything, you’re not going to do the behaviors anyway. Right?
David Neagle [06:03]
Right. That’s right. And you know, and it’s an interesting little triad, you’ve got going there because I entered into my own success by a change in attitude. So familiar with attitude, behavior, then belief, right?
Steve Fretzin [06:16]
Attitude behavior, okay, you got your attitude in check, then you started doing the right things. And then that then drove the belief in yourself
David Neagle [06:23]
that, well, if I got a result that I didn’t, I never imagined that I would get. And that changed my belief of okay, a lot of different things. But if I look back, if you were to say, Well, what caused that change in the attitude, it was a total breakdown in my belief system, because everything that I that I thought that I knew I was finding out rapidly was not true. And I was ending up with horrific results in my life. So as that belief system began to break down, my mind was open to something else. So like I said, it’s all three of them. And I think that every person depending on what your own issue is, and how you’re coming at your business, you’re probably going to come through one of those channels based on where you are and what your observation is of of your issue.
Steve Fretzin [07:10]
Okay, well, let’s take that a step further, though, in the form of taking a step back, which is your background. So clearly, you’ve been through some things like you said, in your in your kind of early adulthood that, you know, must have been difficult. Let’s talk about your background. And let’s make sure we hit that V, that lawyer tipping point as we go along the journey. So kind of give us that Reader’s Digest version of your journey from where you were to where you are today.
David Neagle [07:33]
Yeah, well, I mean, I think the problems really started when I was about 13. And my parents got divorced. So I was born and raised in Chicago, and from 76 to 78. We lived in Phoenix, my dad got transferred, and then my parents got divorced. So me and my brother moved back to Chicago with my mom, my dad stayed in Arizona, and she was really struggling. He wasn’t around much. We were kind of alone, um, you know, on the streets of Chicago trying to figure out life. And I wouldn’t say that I got hooked up with really bad people, because they weren’t. They were just people that were kind of working class. And that was the only information that they were ever given. So we were struggling at that level, I was a terrible student, as a kid, absolutely terrible. Nobody understood my learning style. And because of that, I was constantly failing. At 17, I quit, I was done. I had it, I couldn’t take it anymore. I walked away. And I decided I was going to go to work. And I started working. And I did that for a couple years. And then I thought to myself, I’ve got to get out of this city. I’ve got to figure out a way out. I didn’t know why that I felt that I just felt like I needed to get the hell out of there to get a different perspective or something in life. So I joined the Army. I spent a short period of time in Germany came home got married, started having kids asked me why I have no idea. I have no idea like I just started that’s what I thought, you know, fell in love have kids this Yeah, this is what you do. And I wake up really quick to the to the hard life realization that I do not have the ability to live up to that responsibility. I didn’t have the education. I didn’t have the skill sets. I didn’t have the employment ability. So I was driving a forklift and a truck on the weekends. Just trying to make ends meet and everything was falling apart as fast as it could it just, you know, once I came home, and I was on my own, where somebody wasn’t telling me what to do. My decisions were horrible. And and we went through, I woke up one morning, this was this is still a funny, funny thing and woke up one morning and I’m going to go go somewhere. And I came back in the house and I said to my wife, where’s our car? I said, we’re living in an apartment. I’m like, Where did you park the car? She’s like, it’s right outside the front door and like it’s not outside by the front door. She’s like, I’m telling you I went to the store last night. It’s outside the front door. I’m like, we’ll come show me because it’s not. So I go in the house. So this is serious. I think our cars stolen. So I call the police station and he says, What’s your name? And I tell him the name. He said, what’s the license number on the car? And I tell him, he says, we’ll be right back. He comes back. He goes, sir, your car wasn’t stolen, it was repossessed. And I was so disconnected from the reality of, of my responsibility and my actions. It was it was crazy, man. So the car gets repossessed, we can’t afford to live in the apartment we’re in, we have to leave in the middle of the night had to break the lease, because they wouldn’t let us out. We had to move all the way south down by Wilmington, Illinois, which is, you know, I don’t know what it’s like today. But back then it wasn’t that good. And that was the only place that we could afford to live. And I used to drive 56 miles up to while to go to work for key foods in Lyle. And that’s where I worked when I was driving the forklift. So that’s, you know, that was the journey. And if we were on food stamps, I drove a car that hit took a quart of oil to get to work and a quart of oil to get oh, it’s I mean, that was my real life, real life deal. He’s got a farm and fleet and buy oil in the case and put it in the back of the of my Ford wagon, just so I can get to work and get home every day.
Steve Fretzin [11:11]
Well, alright, so now I’m totally depressed and, you know, put my head in an oven. All right, well, I’m have the feeling that there’s some next thing that happens that maybe takes you in a different direction, because you wouldn’t be on my show if you were still driving a forklift. So lay it out as David.
David Neagle [11:28]
All right. So what starts happening is I’m thinking to myself, I realized that I had made bad decisions. But now I’m thinking to myself, How do I turn this around? Okay, I get it. I quit high school, I made a bunch of bad decisions, I need to turn it around, how do I turn this around. And my original thought was, I’m going to have to go back to school, get some kind of an education to be able to be qualified for any kind of a decent job that’s gonna allow me to turn it around. Big problem was, I didn’t have the time and the money to do it. I was working six and a half days a week, and I couldn’t pay the bills that we already had. So I’m trying to figure out every day I would sit down at lunch when I was at work, and I was trying to figure out what different ways to come up with making money. I was also asking people for help, like, tell me what you think I could do. And everybody would say the same damn thing. You shouldn’t have quit high school. And I was like, Well, I get that. Yeah, I understand. I made the mistake. And they said, just work really hard. I had one relative said, work as much overtime as you can. And I was doing that I was doing all of those things. But I hit a wall that I didn’t know how to get around. Now. My attitude was troubling. At the time, I was miserable. I was tired. I had some injuries that I was dealing with, from an accident that I had a couple of years beforehand. And I was getting in trouble at work because I wasn’t working to produce a good result. I was working to go home. So I really didn’t care about the quality of my work. And then one day, I went into work and I was reprimanded twice before I even punched it. So now I’m in the worst mindset that I think I had ever been in my life. I’m working. It’s freezing cold at Chicago. It’s wintertime. And I have this emotional breakdown. In the back of this trailer. I just start crying. I was put it with stalking food in Australia all fell over. And that was it. It was just like, the right I just started, I just start crying. I’m going God, show me something. I don’t help me get out of this. I don’t know what to do. And a voice in my head. I kid you not. So David, change your attitude. That was all I heard. And I thought, Okay, what does that mean that you got to realize it was so audible, it sounded like it was outside of my body. Right? It was really distinct. And I had never thought that before. So I thought, what is an attitude, and I did something that was really interesting. The guy that owned the company that I worked for, he started it in his garage, or so the story went, and he built it up into this enormous company that was responsible for most of the important foods that we got in the United States. And I thought what’s the difference between him and me from an attitude perspective, because I really didn’t know what an attitude was. And I thought, now just quit make this quicker. I thought this guy must have loved what he did. He must have done every job to the best of his ability. And I must have done a really good job. And he treats people with total respect, because I would see him walk around with other suits through through the warehouse showing him all of this innovative stuff that he had created. And I thought I’m gonna change those three things. And I’m going to do it for a year and see if anything changes. I’m going to act like I love what I do. I’m gonna do every job to the best of my ability, which nobody ever showed me how to do before. So I had to figure that out. And I’m going to treat people with total respect. And how I did that is an interesting story in and of itself, but let’s just say I did it immediately starting the next day. I did the very best that I could with it. In 30 days, my income tripled and went from 20 1000 a year with working all the overtime humanly possible to 62,000. And I sat back and I said, What did I just do? And everybody was like You got lucky. Like you man, you got lucky. You got you gotta stick with whatever you’re doing. I was now making more money than anybody in my family. And I thought, I need to learn what I did. Because if I could figure out exactly what it is that I did, I could change my entire life. And that began a journey of reading. I turned my car into a library because that point in time once once I got made that change, we were now a few months after that, obviously, we were able to buy our first house, which was up near Rockford. It was in Boone County was up near just by Belvedere here. And I drove from there to Lamont every day to go to work. Right. I mean, that was as I was driving. That’s a long drive. Yeah, it’s a long drive, but I couldn’t afford anything any closer. That was in a decent neighborhood. Back then, right? This is 1993. Right? Yeah. So instead of listening to music, or just the radio or whatever, I started getting books on tape. And I started getting biographies on tape. And I started listening to Tony Robbins tapes. I was listening to everything that I could possibly find to figure out what I had done. And one thing led to another, you know, you hear Robbins talks about he read this book, and he read, Think and Grow Rich, and he read, you know, so I started picking up all the books that I heard people recommending it eventually around 1996 97 led me to my mentor who was Bob Proctor. But everything in my life just kept getting better from that moment. It’s like somebody pulled the veil back in early 93. And everything began to change. And I started to see everything different. I started off as a truck driver in this company, where I was making 62,000 a year driving a truck. It was a fuel oil truck in Chicago. And when I left the company, I was in charge of expanding it across the United States. Seven years later. So I started at the bottom, I got no further education. I just kept self you know, self educating, becoming trying to be the best person I could be every day and with a hard work ethic. And that’s where that’s where it led me until I decided to want to start my own business in 1989.
Steve Fretzin [17:19]
Okay, and in 1999 is that the business you’re in now? Or is that? Okay? Okay,
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Steve Fretzin [18:55]
And so was Bob instrumental in helping you to come up with like your own coaching business in a business where you can help others to have the right kind of mindset that you have or
David Neagle [19:05]
no not really. So I coached with him because he was the first person that could he actually was able to put information in an organized way that I could understand it. So he really taught me about mindset about changing all different kinds of things about success about how to make a lot of money. I was studying all this under him for a number of years before I really went out and did anything with it. And because I had been studying for almost seven years, he offered me the opportunity to facilitate one of his seminars. So I took him up on it and what I did it I realized that was my calling and I walked away from work, and I started my own company and that was the end of that.
Steve Fretzin [19:45]
Yeah, that’s it man. I once you find what you’re sort of meant to do, and I know for me I was coaching franchisees on how to grow their small franchises. And that was my favorite part of the job was speaking in front of them. Um, was helping coach them was, you know, taking them out by the hand to go into strip centers and help them with their marketing and coming up with creative ideas and stuff. And sure enough, then, you know, morphed into, you know, starting my own coaching business and doing it for myself helping others and our lawyers full time for the last 15 years or so. But it’s a crazy story and where you went and to where you are now, you know, obviously, night and day. And so the lawyers that listen to the show, I believe, are mostly motivated, high functioning, you know, very open minded folks. So what we want to do is we want to take what you’ve learned and kind of the lessons that you’re teaching and coaching people on? And how do lawyers get over the struggle of negativity, the struggle of the work, the billable hour, the self sabotage that might be going on that they don’t even realize it’s happening? How do they start to get their minds in a better place?
David Neagle [20:52]
The first thing is to drop the idea that they got to be the smartest person in the room. Right. So I have a tremendous amount of respect for lawyers, I’ve worked with many of them over the years in their businesses, and like almost any other professional, built into their schooling, is the confidence that they need to be the best. But they don’t learn they don’t teach them how to build a business, right. So it’s a, it’s a completely different animal. And a lot of times their own ego gets in the way of their own solution. That’s what I found, when I first started working with them. They couldn’t hear what it was that I was trying to tell them they had to be, they had to be the best, they had to be the smartest, whether that came from some paradigm in their childhood, or it was reinforced. When they actually went to school, this was a big problem that they were, they were having, once you got their mind open to that idea. I found out that they were able to carry out, the instructions are far faster and greater than most people could write because they had education, they could critically think, you know, they understood how to apply things that you were teaching them. So that one of the I think the biggest problems that we’re having today is that there’s been so much change that has happened in the world in the last three years. People are struggling just to adapt with what they think problems are. And they can’t decipher between what’s a real problem out there in the world. And what is just made up propaganda that is designed for whatever the hell it’s designed for. But it’s not actually a real problem. For instance, one of those things is that it’s difficult to hire good people right now. And it absolutely is not. But people believe it. So they actually have that experience, that that’s really a difficult thing. So you’re asking me, so I’m telling you, but that’s one of the main things that we see right now. And not just with attorneys, but with a lot of different companies. It’s just gotten out there that this is the issue. And the and that’s the problem that they think that they have. And once I show them that it’s not they hired the right people right away. Well,
Steve Fretzin [22:55]
and here’s the thing, too, like it might they might say that because it used to be they’d have 100 applicants, and maybe three were good. Now they have five applicants and three are good. They’re the same good applicants, but it’s not the same numbers maybe that they used to have? Well,
David Neagle [23:09]
that’s true. And the other thing about those numbers is are they hiring? Are they hiring top of scale for what it is they want? Yeah, many people have this false belief that they have to hire based on how much money their firm is making. And that’s absolutely not true, right? Because when you do that you set an expectation for your firm to keep making the same amount of money. We teach people, what do you like? What is your vision? What is it that you want to build for yourself, and then you want to go out and find the best people that you possibly can to work for you, but not where you’re struggling around the idea of money. If you create the need for your firm to earn more money, you will earn more money. And that sounds ridiculous to a lot of people. But I’ve been coaching people to do this for 24 years. It absolutely works. We earn what we expect to earn. That’s the real truth behind it.
Steve Fretzin [24:04]
Yeah, there’s a lot of truth to you know, and this is a Brian Tracy for going back to the old tapes that listen to right, you are what you think about most of the time, and I don’t even even know that that was his. But it’s we spend so much time thinking about negative things, thinking about poor hiring, thinking about, you know what we have to pay, that that’s where we live, that’s where we’re comfortable. And that’s not necessarily the place we need to be to to be successful.
David Neagle [24:29]
That’s right. That’s right, that, you know, people run businesses like the same way they were trained to go to work for somebody else. In other words, the working class middle class, somebody comes from that ideology in their mindset, and they want to go out and be a business owner or entrepreneur. One thing that they usually don’t understand is the value systems completely different. And their value system and their beliefs determine how they actually see the world that they’re entering into, which then determines their added Like we talked about their work ethic, the way that they the way that they do things with how they treat people, and how fast they actually expand. You know, many people get into business and they find out. Wow, all I really did was create a job for myself, right? Do I actually have a business that meets my needs, and I really absolutely love waking up in the morning and going, I cannot believe that I get to do this every day.
Steve Fretzin [25:27]
And what they don’t realize too is that you can decide what job you want that you enjoy within a law firm, you could be the billable hour guy or gal, if you enjoy that you can be the marketing person, if you enjoy that you can be the manager, if you enjoy that, or CEO, you know, you pick the role. And if you hate all of them, then get out of it. Go do some take your your solutions mentality, you know, your ability to to be, you know, able to solve problems, right and go find something else to do with that brain.
David Neagle [25:56]
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I mean, life is too short to not don’t get to do what you love to do, you know?
Steve Fretzin [26:03]
So let’s take it to. So number one is like, I were talking about how lawyers need to get over overhead. And so enjoying what you do. Yes. Believing in yourself and believing in the vision? Yes. Okay. And what other tips do they need to kind of what kind of other parts of the mind they need to work to make sure they’re in a positive direction. And then let’s say that we get them there, then what takes people to the next level, like a completely different level, like you hit? And I feel like I’ve hit it like I was at a level that was very good. I’ve always been very happy. The last two years, though I’ve been I feel like I’m going to another level as far as what I’m doing and how I’m helping people. But also my own business has just been been raging. So that’s, you know, how do we get how do people get there?
David Neagle [26:47]
Well, I think one of the best things that a person can do is to take like three, three by five cards, and put them down in front of them and take the biggest problem that they have in their business and write that problem out distinctly on one card. And then on another card, write down their own name. And on the third card, write down what they believe about the problem that they have in their business, and separate them and just keep them in front of them. So that those three cards are separated, the idea is, let’s separate ourselves from the problem and how we’re giving meaning to this problem in our mind, so that we can actually see the truth. The problem itself just is, however it’s behaving in our life is because of the meaning that we’re giving to it, right. And that can be a lot of different things, right? That could be cost, it could be money, it could be what’s happening in the industry, it could be what’s happening with court systems, it like you name it, it runs the gamut, whatever it is. But in order for that problem, to behave in the way that it’s behaving, you have to give a specific meaning to it. When you learn that you’re the one that’s giving the problem, the problem, and you change the meaning that problem will change. And it’ll change immediately. It does not take a long time to do this. Most people stay stuck in their business, because that’s where they’re comfortable. Even if they’re complaining and moaning about it. That’s the real reason. They understand the problems that they have. They deal with those problems every day. But it’s far scarier for them to try to blast ahead, you know, in where they really would love to be versus staying within those problems everyday. There’s a lot of reasons behind that.
Steve Fretzin [28:30]
I feel like you’re you’re speaking my I mean, Business Development for lawyers is one of their top angst issues problems they don’t want to deal with. So my my experience has been 55 10% of the lawyers openly actively want to address it and deal with it. The other 90% hide under their desk, and they’re busy, billable hour handling, making up other problems given themselves busy things to do that are better or more easy for them to deal with than business development. Because as you know, that’s not they were never trained in law school at the law firm level. And it’s a big kind of beast to manage, I mean, to say I’m gonna go from a half a million a year to a million or to go from nothing to something that’s scary.
David Neagle [29:11]
It is very much so you know, go ahead, go I was
Steve Fretzin [29:15]
gonna ask you about the index cards, again, the three by five cards. So can you give as clear of an example of what those cards would say and how someone could use because I think that tip is really unique and simple and easy for someone to execute. So you know, let’s say the problem is you know that in their mind, it’s again hiring like they just need that new associate to take the work off their plate, okay? It’s because it legit or not, let’s figure it out. So what are written on those cards? So that lawyer listening could say, You know what, I have a problem. I’m going to use this technique on my own today.
David Neagle [29:51]
Okay, I’ll give you a real life story that we just did about a month ago with a female attorney that is a client of ours. She came to us and then and her problem was, she did not have good health, like the people that she was hiring. They were not they were not good. They’re just, they just were not at that level to help her take her business. To the next place, people would quit. People would complain, they weren’t doing the job. She had to write her down. I’m constantly so I had her do this exercise. And when she separated it, I said to her write the problem down distinctly. And basically, she wrote, I can’t find good people. That was the way she saw the problem. And I said, Okay, what meaning are you giving to this? And she said, I can’t afford to hire the right people. People don’t want to do what I tell them to do. People they should know what to do. That was one of the things she really believed that they should know without being told what to do. And I there were a couple others, but I can’t remember exactly. Oh, what we just talked about. There’s not enough good people out there. So I had her write that on that center card. And I said, No, let me ask you a question. What you really want us to take this problem, make it so that you’re hiring good people? Yes. And she said yes. I said, Is it true that there’s good people out there? And she’s like, Well, I’m not sure. I said, Is it true that there’s other firms hiring good people that other firms have good people that are working for them? And she said, yeah, that’s, that’s true. I said, Okay, so these people exist. I said, you what I want you to see is that this center card, the way that you’re viewing the problem, this is your formula for hiring people, because you believe this, this is what you look for. And then when you find these people, you say, this is now look, see, I’m right. This is what the problem is. I said, so actually you want to be you actually want to be more right than you want to be successful. If you change the meanings that you’re giving to this problem. And you hire from the new way that you’re giving meaning to it, you will eradicate that problem instantly. She’s I think she’s hired three people in the last month. And it’s been fantastic at her business, like the people, they’re completely different level of what she was doing. But she had changed the the limits in how she saw that she was actually hiring those individuals.
Steve Fretzin [32:14]
Yeah, it’s, it’s so much a mindset issue. And you notice, if you look at all the successful, you know, rainmakers, or the successful marketers, the successful people, the CEOs that have made it, you know, it’s almost always about their mindset, it’s almost always about that they’ve imagined it, and they’ve dreamed it, and then they’re, they’re moving in the right direction. And then whatever’s in their way, they just, you know, they just walk around or move through.
David Neagle [32:39]
You know, another thing is that a lot of what I have found, and be interested to see if you’ve seen the same thing, a lot of people don’t understand their own leadership style. Yeah. You know, and if you don’t understand your own leadership style, you don’t understand the positive and negatives that go with it. And you don’t know how to hire people that compliment you. Right, that seems that also seems to be a big deal. Can you hire people that actually complement you? Where you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room?
Steve Fretzin [33:07]
Well, most of the best leaders hire the smart people smarter than them. I mean, that’s, that’s the reality. And that’s, that’s, that’s how you have a great team. That’s how you build a great company. If you’re smarter than everybody that’s not necessarily the recipe. Right? You know, yeah. But I think it’s I think it’s all just so interesting in how our minds get in the way and our brains get in the way of our success. And we sometimes we just have to get some help from a coach get some help from a mentor, whether that’s a Bob Proctor, whether that’s a Dave, David Nagel, what a C Fretzin, whatever it might be. This is the kind of stuff that you know, people actually need. I mean, there’s a reason that, you know, therapists are so successful in this world, because you know, people need to talk and figure some stuff out. Yeah, absolutely. Well, listen, we’ve got two Game Changing books. I said, David, let’s keep it to one. You said no, we must have two. So we have no even say that, but there are two. So we’ve got very interesting and two that have never been mentioned on the show yet. So so far. So working with the law, which I immediately thought was a law textbook, but it’s not so what tell tell us about that book.
David Neagle [34:12]
It’s really a it’s a book that teaches you how to critically think, based on universal principles, right? seven basic universal principles that exist in everything right, from science to business to religion, they exist with everything but it’s actually teaches you how to think in a way that’s productive, so that you, you seriously learn how to critically think in a way that’s not just philosophical, but you actually get real results.
Steve Fretzin [34:43]
Okay, you can actually make decisions based on that critical thinking exercises. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, how do we accomplish things if we don’t prioritize and get things out of our way and put things in our you know that so we have a clear path. I love that And then the other one is trust book called trust. Is that Alonso
David Neagle [35:04]
Milania, Milania and ZAN. Yeah, just that it’s an amazing book that I came across a few years ago. And like I was telling you earlier, I don’t know how this is not a constant bestseller it is one of the most phenomenal self help books that I’ve ever read. It’s a meaty book. And it’s probably like, if I was going to write my top five books that was that would always be in the top five. And the reason is, is this, she deals with an issue that most people don’t realize they have a problem with. And that’s self trust. Because if you can’t you pointed out if you can’t learn to trust yourself, you don’t know how to trust life, you don’t know how to trust people, you don’t know how to trust God or spirit, if you believe in that, because you’re constantly defaulting on your own trust. She shows how that got broken down as a child and how to rebuild it for yourself. Because if you look at it like this, if I know that I can trust myself to follow through on what I want, and what I decide there’s nothing that I can’t accomplish. But as you well know, it’s not that people fail by some outside reason, it’s that the outside reason causes come to the only determination and that’s that they have to quit, right? I’ve never met anybody that’s failed, other than the reason that for what ever they were looking at within the problems or the resources of their business, they actually decided to quit. Yeah, yeah. Being able to trust to see yourself through a problem to come out the other side. And working with the law, it points out that you can’t have a problem without a solution. Right? It’s the opposite side, everything, there’s a polarity in the universe, everything has an opposite side, you can’t have a problem without a solution. They’re actually one in the same. So you only see the problem when you’re focused on the problem. But if you learn how to focus on the solution, you can easily find the solution to the biggest problems. So that doesn’t have to take a long time. Yeah,
Steve Fretzin [36:58]
really great stuff. David, thank you so much for being on the show. If people want to get in touch with you, what’s the best way for them to reach out
David Neagle [37:05]
the successful mind podcast? That would be the best way they could find out all about me by going there? My website is David nagel.com. It’s no mystery. And you know, check us out for your cup of tea, then, you know, let us know. And awesome,
Steve Fretzin [37:17]
man, thank you so much, again, just for being on the show, sharing your wisdom, your story. I mean, it’s, you know, I wish I could say I mean, I’ve been through some things, but I’ve never been through what you’ve been through man. That was I only laugh because it’s just it’s just, you know, maybe that’s the discomfort of it. But it’s quite frankly, it’s remarkable and to have that epiphany and to turn things around the way you did and then to spend your whole life to help others credibly noble and in so welcome.
David Neagle [37:45]
Thank you very much. I appreciate it. It’s been a lot of fun to be in here.
Steve Fretzin [37:48]
Yeah. Awesome. And thank you everybody for spending some time with David and I today on the show, be that lawyer and I don’t know about you guys, but I think you should grab those three by five cards and start making some lists of problems because I think he’s got a really great solution. That’s one of I’m sure 1000s of things that he works on with people but ultimately, you know, we got to some time Smart Start with the small things and helping you to be that lawyer someone who’s confident organized in a skilled Rainmaker. Take care everybody, be safe, be well, and we’ll talk again soon.
Narrator [38:20]
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