In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Eric Schurke discuss:
- From a three man start-up to CEO of Moneypenny North America.
- The benefits of having a chat feature on your website.
- Tips and ideas for resolving inefficiencies in your law firm.
- Taking care of the people around you.
Key Takeaways:
- A lot of people don’t manage their websites. However, if you can get a chat monitored, it increases the engagement and traffic to your site, and increases those who will convert into a new intake client.
- Engaging a company, such as Moneypenny, to answer your phone or website chat can take the weight off your staff, allowing them to be transferred to a more productive, or even profitable, position.
- There are only 2 ways you can extend your hours 24/7 – extending your staff, or outsourcing and looking at automation.
- Your people are extremely valuable – it is all about listening, trust, and caring for those on your team.
“We save law firms time and money by answering their phones for them. If you look at that, and you try to take care of the people around you, that right there alone is just magic.” — Eric Schurke
Connect with Eric Schurke:
Website: https://www.moneypenny.com/us/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-schurke-b26920/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/moneypenny-usa/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifeatmoneypenny/?hl=en
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Moneypenny
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HelloMoneypennyUS
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
business, clients, people, answering, staff, lawyer, moneypenny, website, big, georgia aquarium, money, phone, pandemic, grew, law firms, engagement, technology, chat, day, sales
SPEAKERS
Narrator, Steve Fretzin, Eric Schurke
Eric Schurke [00:00]
And so it’s one of those odd little intangibles where it’s, you know, yeah, we save law firms time and money by answering their phones for them. But gosh, if you look at that, and you try and take care of the people around you, that right there alone is just magic.
Narrator [00:17]
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 [00:41]
Hey, everybody, welcome to be that lawyer. I am Steve Fretzin, your host. And wow, we’ve done a lot of episodes, I think we’re right around 140. And it’s just under two years. So that’s, that’s pretty crazy. And it’s all about helping you as the lawyer become efficient, to work smarter, not harder. We want you to have balanced, we want to make sure that you’re living living the life you want to live, you’re not a slave to the billable hour. And obviously getting your own book of business and improving efficiencies and doing kind of what’s best to control your career. That’s really what you want to be looking to do. And so as you know, I always have guests on here that are going to try to help make your life better to try to give you improvements, ideas, and sometimes technology that you may not even know exists, that could really make your life better. And I’ve got a guest today who’s going to really help out with that. He’s the CEO of money Penny North America. It’s Eric Shirky. How’re you doing, Eric?
[01:34]
I’m doing great. Thanks so much for having me, Steve. Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [01:36]
Thanks for coming on. And I appreciate you taking the time. And and I’d love to hear a little background on how you got into the business because you’re you’re in the sort of the call answering like automated website chat business. Right?
[01:50]
We are. That’s right. Yeah, I have been involved in this sector of business for almost 18 years now. So going back almost back to the early 2000s. I was actually pre wired prior to this. I was a golf pro. And then, yeah, long story. Well, we won’t get into that. But through a friend of a friend, we we actually started up one of the first companies to offer like virtual communications. And think of like a Google Voice type number where you had a phone number that could email you your messages and text you and things like that. So we we have these platforms going back decades, that we that we’ve been offering to law firms and small businesses, and eventually evolved into call answering and even live chat.
Steve Fretzin [02:28]
Okay, now the question that people want to know right now is, what were you shooting when you were a golf pro back in the day? And what are you shooting now?
[02:36]
Good question. So I you know, of course, back then it was pretty much a scratch and I picked it back up a little bit over the past few years. And I’m not quite there yet. But that’s my goal is to get back to that lunch. Are
Steve Fretzin [02:46]
you feeling good about it, though? Feeling good? They
[02:49]
are the putter is coming around? For sure. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I
Steve Fretzin [02:52]
would say I’m not a good golfer. But I’ve been playing playing for, you know, 40 years or something like that. And it’s, it’s just, it’s just, it’s the most frustrating yet enjoyable game that there is there’s nothing more frustrating and nothing more rewarding when you actually hit the right ball, right?
[03:07]
It’s all about just getting out there and kind of forgetting about work and all that stuff, and just hanging out with some good friends.
Steve Fretzin [03:13]
Yeah. And that’s a problem, because we’re all so attached to our phones and attached to technology that we go on the golf course. And I see people constantly checking their phones, and kinda it’s like, Hey, man, put it down. Like, let’s, let’s try to enjoy the round.
[03:25]
Yeah, I have to say I’m a little bit guilty of that sometimes, but try to do my best to leave it at home.
Steve Fretzin [03:29]
Gotcha, gotcha. So how did you convert then from the golf from being a golf pro to getting into this technology? What sort of led you into the field? Well, it
[03:37]
was just one of those weird moments of fate. When you look back at it, I guess a friend of a friend was was starting up this business and there was just something about it, I could just tell that the technology was something that was missing. Not that I was in business at the time. But it was it was just this new concept. And again, it was it was kind of along the lines of like Google voice when it first came out. But this is well be well prior to that. And it just something registered, I said, Look, there’s something here. I’m going to take a leap of faith. And I just I quit the golf course. And I ended up working for this startup. And here I am today sitting here running the money pending North America. Now, were
Steve Fretzin [04:11]
you more on the technology side of things. Were you more on the sales side of things?
[04:14]
Oh my gosh, well, this was a true startup that was actually envision a an old ranch house. This is in Georgia, okay. And it was a ranch house. And if you lived in this area, you know, there’s these things called carports, where you can pull two cars into it and it’s open space. So one of the partners who had start started the company got MJ. I think he finished it off. I’m not sure it was to code. So there was like one window where this carport used to be and that was my first interview was actually at his house. He had a rack and a T one in his garage, or this finished, finished carport with one window and he just he showed me what he was doing and I was just blown away by and I said he’s he’s got something. Okay, so I’m gonna bite the bullet. And so I really had I had a business degree that degree in business from a small college in North Georgia. And the minor in Spanish. And you know, so I had that degree but honestly, when you when you do a startup and it’s three people out of a house, there is no one person does it and one person does sales, it was everything, from account setup to billing to support the sales. I mean, our business phone was a cordless phone. I mean, if that puts in perspective, so yeah, the cell phone or the we didn’t have cell phones back then I think there were there were the old school ones. But yeah, the sales line would ring we pick it up and throw it throw the cordless phone across the room, to the next guy, and they would they take over and it was just, but it was so much fun. You know, you look back to those days, there’s some of the funnest times I’ve ever had, just in business, because it’s that startup and you’re just you’re just scrapping for every client and every, every call matters. And we’re helping small businesses do it. And, you know, we quickly scaled up to nearly 10,000 clients over a period of about eight years. And then then it evolved into we had this knee where people kept asking us, you know, at the time, it was like more of like a voicemail solution or virtual phone number that we had like extensions. And over the years, in the years leading up to around 2010, we would have our clients ask us, Well, hey, can you answer my phone for me? And you know, they didn’t have enough time to do it. And they’re just overwhelmed. And we’re like, No, we don’t we don’t do that. And we got enough feedback and enough interest. And people just cut back asking us to answer their phones. We’re like, Okay, I think this is the next evolution of the business. And we started an answering service. And here we are today.
Steve Fretzin [06:23]
And it’s more than an answering service, right? Because that’s that’s part of it. But then, as I mentioned, when we first started that it’s also this this big, you know, you pop on someone’s website, and there’s a chatbot that comes up. And now you’re having this conversation with this bot who’s helping you with customer support, or he’s helping you with sales or helping you with that. And there’s that big aspect of what you’re doing, too.
[06:44]
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, the telephone answering, of course, is the core of the foundation of how the business was started. And again, the business I’m talking about the startup was pre money, Penny Moneypenny purchased our business through an acquisition about a year and a half ago, two years ago. And that’s how that’s how I’ve aligned with the money Penny group here in North America, but so that the phone answering, of course, is a core part of the business, but the live chat, wow, I mean, if you look at just the increase in traffic, during the pandemic, has nearly doubled or even tripled for some of our clients. And it’s just kind of a shift in, I think, different demographics of how people want to communicate. But yeah, to kind of give a little background on that, and what it is, I think everybody listening here today has been to a website of some sort, maybe you’re going to an auto dealer, for example. And you’re gonna go shopping for a car, there’s that little box in the bottom right screen that pops up. And again, you know, you can you can talk to a person in, you know, typically you can kind of tell it might be a bot or an automation sort of message that comes up from the very beginning and says, Hey, are you interested in service, interested in a new car, and you can engage with that chat bot. And if you start typing to it, it’ll then eventually pass you off to a person. And so what Moneypenny does, we provide that chat bot, we actually have the software that we put on our clients websites. And then we also provide the people behind it. So not only do we have the technology that we can place on our clients, websites, we also provide the people behind it, who then work with our like our legal clients, to get your your FAQs, your calendar, and all the questions that we might get on your behalf. And then our staff that are located in the UK, and the US can sit there 24 hours a day, and engage with your clients. And so it’s just an incredible solution to see how much that’s grown over the past three years, and then the pandemic has just exploded.
Steve Fretzin [08:30]
It’s interesting, because it used to just be mean, even a number of years ago that the Chatbot was there to help set up a meeting or to help set up some other kind of engagement. And now it’s doing almost the whole engagement. Like when you try to fix an Apple phone, like you’re not talking to somebody they just they want you just chat back and forth on your phone or on the website. Yeah,
[08:50]
I mean, there’s just so many things that I think drive that I mean, statistically, I mean, we’ve proven this out and it’s there’s so much value in this, if you look at just a website, if any of the listeners out there are familiar with like the Google Analytics, and you look into how much traffic is coming to your site, and we compare it we’ve done tons of studies on this with our clients where you compare a site that has chat on it, and then one that does not, you increase engagement by 15% and engagement, meaning they’re visiting buyer intent pages, or maybe they’re filling out a contact form, or maybe they’re looking at pricing, or they’re you know, they’re they’re engaging with the site 15% More than they do on a site without it. Okay, and then from that 15% increase in engagement and traffic, you’re gifting 36 We checked my stats, yeah, 36% of those will convert to a new lead or a new intake client. And so it just makes perfect sense. And it’s, you know, it’s extremely efficient. And then you look at, you know, we talk about the, you know, the different demographic, right, if you think about I mean, I’m kind of getting up here and age, I won’t share what that is, but I was younger, it’s younger than me. I
Steve Fretzin [09:55]
can tell you that. I didn’t grow up on
[09:57]
a cell phone, right. I grew up the classic telephone data Our phone and I in the living room, that was where he made your phone calls from and that it’s just that, you know, it’s kind of been, you know, in your DNA and where you grew up, but you think about even the generation that’s in there, the red 20s, the cell phone is all they know, the smartphones and the chat and the text is the preferred method of communication in and I think that, we recognize that and I think everybody should recognize that, that that’s the future consumer. Those are our future clients that are that want to behave that way. That’s how they want to communicate, because when it’s convenient to I can, I can multitask. And I can do be doing a live chat while I’m still. Maybe I’m working, you know, maybe I’m at home doing doing something, but I can also have that conversation going on in the background. So it’s not only convenient, but I mean, you really look at the demographic of the future consumer. That’s a preferred way to communicate through chat and text. Yeah, and I wonder,
Steve Fretzin [10:50]
I don’t know if there’s statistics on this. But you know, what percentage of law firms have that chatbot on their? On their website? I would have to say it’s very, unless maybe it’s personal injury, it’s probably very low. Is that a? Is that a fair assumption? Or? Yeah, I
[11:06]
don’t have anything different. That’s we have a pretty large client base. So we have 21,000 clients worldwide, a big segment segment of that, as legal we have a whole angle, we have a whole legal team, UK in the US, which, which is, you know, but as far as the statistics on how many of them use it, probably not enough. And I’m a little biased in saying that. But I think you’re right. But the stats just prove that that it’s just, it’s really makes perfect sense to do it. Just to have it on there to offer that. That alternative form of communication, that different channel that certain people want to use, and it also expands your hours. I mean, you’re really putting you’re putting your business on autopilot 24 hours a day, because we have people available 24/7 to feel those questions.
Steve Fretzin [11:49]
I tried it years ago, and it didn’t really work well for me, but I think maybe it was before it’s time. I mean, we’re going back maybe seven to 10 years. Yeah, I mean, the last seven to 10 years, it’s come around quite a bit.
[12:01]
I think the you know, if you look at it, it, it feels like it would be complicated to set up. Because you know, a lot of people don’t manage their websites, that’s something that, you know, if you’re, if you have a law practice, you’re pretty darn busy doing what you need to do. And only things you can do. So managing a website, isn’t that that common of a thing, potentially, for most of our clients. So it feels like it’s one of the things that is far out, there will be complicated to set up. But that’s the great thing, you know, the we we own the software, and when we set up our legal clients with this, you have an account manager, and it’s really just a little piece of code that we slap on your website, and we get access to it, and then you’re up and running. So it’s it’s a very simple setup, but I think that might be part of the reasons why it hasn’t been adopted as much as we think it should, just from that, that kind of feel scary, that it’s too technical to set up.
Steve Fretzin [12:49]
Right. So let’s get into the weeds a little bit about the efficiencies that law firms have, and in what are some of the things that you work with them on and help resolve as it relates to improving this and obviously, we’re talking about, you know, the chat, you know, in in, you know, the response of calling the let’s let’s let’s get into into some of those tips and ideas, and let’s, let’s, let’s help some of the some of my audience, lawyer, you know, the lawyers, my audience, you know, I get some get some some some free ideas.
[13:17]
Yeah, totally. I mean, I think it really all boils down to when we speak too early with clients, and we’ve had so many conversations over the last year that things have changed so much is the fact that there’s just not enough time in the day. And that’s always been the case, even going back 10 years, when people started asking us to answer their phones for him. There was a reason for that. And it’s just that there’s not enough time of the day to do everything. And then you have you know, for for your listeners that might be in trials or in court. You know, there’s such a backlog right now, it’s just created almost chaos and so that, that one thing there alone is where a company like Moneypenny can come in and and really take the weight off of your team. And you know what we found that, in this in this time, were staffing and we can talk about that a little bit too. We all know that staffing is a problem when we need to, we need to retain our staff, and keep them engaged and keep them happy. But what we’ve what we found is through the pandemic, rather than lay staff off, they’ve started to outsource tasks to Moneypenny, such as phone answering, like, we can answer your phone 24 hours a day, take appointments, take messages, transfer calls through to you, and we take that weight off, that might have been a full time job for one of the staff members or even more than one, and then they can repurpose that staff member to a more productive, even profitable position where they could be doing work that maybe is more billable hours, right, or paralegal type work rather than have someone sit there and wait for the phone to ring set appointments and do organizational tasks. That’s it’s all about saving time at the end of the day. And that’s, that’s never been different. I mean, that’s been the entire benefit of a company like Moneypenny since we’ve started, but I just think it’s been highlighted even more over the past year and a half because you know, you look at If the nine to five, and this is kind of what you and I were talking about here a minute ago, where we got on was the nine to five work week. I don’t know that it’s dead. But I certainly think it’s fading. And we have to all recognize that that’s changed. And you know, the only reason the nine to five, in my opinion, the only reason the nine to five work week worked is because everybody was on with it, right? Everybody was on board. And that was just what it was, you clocked in at nine and five o’clock, you go home, and you were done with work. But now that you’ve got 50% or more of the worldwide population working from home, and probably never coming back. And the corporations and these big companies are promoting that, you know, they don’t they don’t really care about when you work, it’s about the are you producing, right? Are you getting the job done. So now you’ve got consumers and you’re at our clients and our illegals, illegal listeners, clients, maybe working odd hours, and then they’re gonna, they’re gonna want to speak to you maybe at 10 o’clock at night, because they side decided they could work late in the day, or maybe they got up at 6am, I want to have an early day out. So there is no traditional nine to five anymore, from what we’re hearing from our clients and what we see. And it just raises the need to extend hours, almost 24/7.
Steve Fretzin [16:17]
It doesn’t mean that you have to be available at 10 o’clock at night, but at least the phones getting answered, there’s someone to talk to them and and maybe set up that meeting that could happen the next day.
[16:26]
Yeah, I mean, that’s it, there’s only two ways there’s only two ways you can extend your hours 24/7. And you, you can either hire more staff and extend your hours and never sleep. Or you can outsource and look at automation, Outsourcing Things like telephone answering Outsourcing Live Chat, and other digital tools that we have the mobile app, and seamlessly integrate into that I mean, our our agents can be there 24 hours a day and integrate right into a CRM, or a contact form and capture that lead and intake. And it’ll feed right into you so that you have it the next morning. You know, I think we’ve all probably done this at one point, if we’re out shopping for I don’t know, let’s say your your water heater breaks in the middle of the night, you know, you’re going to start calling around because you want it fixed. The first person that answers is usually more likely to get that business. And so just by extending the hours and knowing that consumers are maybe shopping at different times a day now, that’s you’re just kind of creating that security blanket for your business and only going to increase your leads.
Steve Fretzin [17:29]
And I think for many lawyers, it’s similar in the sense that if I’m looking for a lawyer, and let’s say it’s, you know, for a DUI, or let’s say it’s for an injury or something that happened when I don’t have a referral. Yeah, I don’t want to sit and talk to three, four or five lawyers or have to leave messages for that many I want I want to get on and get it done. Yeah, right. Yeah,
[17:48]
it is. I mean, that’s just that’s typical in any sales environment. It’s the speed of response. First, the first one that gets it’s usually going to get the deal. And it’s really no different in any any sales environment, whether it is
Steve Fretzin [18:02]
but even but even for but Eric even for the for the big corporate attorney who’s doing multimillion dollar deals, and they’ve got a general counsel who has a question, to be able to feel that you know, and not go to voicemail, I think it can be can be critical, because that, that that client could be producing, you know, $500 million a year in revenue, and you want to be responsive yet you don’t want to be available, you know, all the time for that person. But you want to seem like you are?
[18:28]
Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. It’s that it’s that when there isn’t an element of just that, that visibility, that perception that you are there 24/7. And we act as an extension of your team. And I think that’s what makes Moneypenny different is that you know, on our model, more of a, an outsourced receptionist service, because we we do work in teams, where each of our individual clients gets their own dedicated receptionist, and you know their name, and they’re there for you. And with the way our technology works, it actually routes the majority of the calls to your dedicated receptionist, and then they work in small teams so that your dedicated receptionist can’t answer the phone, it’ll roll over to a small team of three or four other people. And so they get that familiarity with your business and your callers. And they get to know you on a on a more personal level. And that’s that added touch that that really separates us from a traditional answering service where we’re more of a high touch, professional and reception service.
Steve Fretzin [19:20]
Gotcha. Gotcha. And what are some other efficiencies that you that you talk to lawyers about on a regular
[19:25]
basis? Well, it’s the same thing. The time, of course, is the number one thing. I mean, scheduling appointments is another another big one, you know, those, those are probably the two key ones. I mean, we can’t be there. But you know, we’re just we’re taking that heavy load off their back so that they can do the things only they can do when when they’re in court or they’re in trials or in hearings or just in day to day meetings. The other efficiencies, I don’t know that it’s an efficiency is like if you go back to the staffing and trying to retain staff, that creates a huge burden on businesses right now all over the world. And I think ever But he’s feeling it. And if you can, if you can somehow put a patch that hole in the bucket where you’ve got all these, these people looking to poach other staff and recruiters are out there and headhunters trying to steal staff members from other other businesses, it really goes back to trying to treat your staff well and and engage them and, and rethinking how you how you look at the well being of your existing staff. And you know, there’s a lot of things there you think about like the mental health, like, that’s a big topic right now. And it’s a serious topic, where you’ve got a lot of burnout, and people working from home and, you know, financial burdens. And so what we’ve done is a lot of mental health assistance and yoga and food and snacks, and, and those are all great benefits to any employee, right? Those are, those are fantastic things that that we’ve done, and we have all sorts of other great benefits that we provide to our staff. But if you think about it, you take it up a level, what does it really look like to engage an employee to where they really want to go the extra mile, and they don’t want to leave your business, because if they leave your business, now you’re really in a pickle, right? You’ve got these huge inefficiencies, and now your time is even compounded more. And so that’s why I’m going here, when I think it’s so important that you look at staff engagement and how we, how we protect our best people, which are really the business and, you know, taking it up a level from beyond benefits of just well being which are great. But, you know, taking a little bit of extra time to get to know your people on a personal level is what we found to work really well. And what I mean is talking rather than going to the coffee room and saying, Hey, how’s it going and just pass it on, and knowing their name, you know, we have so many people that work for us. But if you really take 10 to 15 minutes to get to know somebody, find out what their pet’s name is, what’s their kid’s name, you know, what’s their, what are they like to do on the weekends, and then you start to have these conversations, you’d be amazed at the trust that builds with your staff. And then all of a sudden, one day, they’re going to come in and start talking to you about some things that are maybe going on in their world outside of work. And, you know, maybe, maybe they need assistance with getting, they can’t come to work because their car’s broken. Or maybe Maybe they had a Death of the Family or maybe there’s there’s something going on that you as the business owner can actually do for them. And and in, you know, you can get their car repaired for them, you can actually have a life changing moment for them. And that’s what builds true trust and builds true engagement, when you’re just on that personal level with them. And you can more than just buy them food and snacks and yoga, you can actually have a life altering change for them, which isn’t going to cost you a whole lot of money, right? It might cost $500 to repair that car. But you’ve probably got an employee for life. You know, we had, you know, we’ve had, you know, we’ve had incidents like that, where we’ve, we’ve helped people out with their rent, and they’d have a place to sleep and you just it’s that’s the right thing to do. But that’s what we talked about to staff engagement. And then you start to see that discretion, yet Discretionary Effort rise, and now you’re getting even more productive production out of the staff that maybe was performing at 80%. And now they’re 100%. And so it’s one of those odd little intangibles where it’s, you know, yeah, we save law firms time and money by answering their phones for them. But gosh, if you look at that, and you try and take care of the people around you, that right there alone is just magic.
Steve Fretzin [23:11]
And I don’t know that it’s happening enough. And I think, you know, we’re talking about, you know, chat chats on, on websites, and in call answering and things that you do every day. But to flip that into talk about culture and to talk about how how important that is today more maybe more than ever, that we have to step up and take care of our people and take care of our employees and make sure that they feel not only needed needed but wanted and appreciated. And if you’re not doing that, I think you’re really missing the boat on on how to retain people because you know, there’s there’s an epidemic going on right now. Pandemic and and epidemic and pandemic that has caused the epidemic of of people not working. And people getting getting moved around from job job people looking for other jobs because they’re not feeling appreciated. So I think there’s a lesson there that we all need to really listen closely to because it’s it’s it’s game changing when you lose in a bad way when you lose key people, attorneys that are doing millions of dollars of work, and they’re going to another firm because you didn’t say how was your day? Or because you didn’t look to have a cultural moment with them
[24:16]
over over the years. Yeah, it’s just about trust and listening I think but yeah, I mean it’s it is it’s it’s one of those things where it’s our our people are so valuable. It’s it’s far less costly to the business to try and retain your best people then try and hire a new one that you know may not be you know, take six months to get them up to speed.
Steve Fretzin [24:35]
Well, there are good stuff man and let’s let’s flip over to the three best let’s hear about where you are from which is Duluth, Georgia, where the where you live, is that where you’re from to?
[24:45]
Well, no. So our new this is actually our new headquarters and in the US is in Duluth, Georgia we just built out for what is it? 30 No 28,000 square feet and Duluth, Georgia. That’s our new office warehouse style open concept amazing office. Students on our website moneypenny.com. You want to check it out? I actually reside about 30 minutes north of there on a big lake in the area called Lake Lanier. Okay. Okay.
Steve Fretzin [25:09]
And what is so I’m going to come visit you and I’m gonna take you out for a great meal and where are but I don’t know the area. So where are you taking me? I’ll treat.
[25:18]
All right right down the street from our office and conveniently located on the third floor of the Gwinnett County Chamber of Commerce, which were also members. When a county is a great county here in Georgia. Frankie Steakhouse. It is an old style, classic big dark rooms, big oak tables and just Hillerich steaks gotta go there.
Steve Fretzin [25:37]
That’s it. Okay, how
[25:38]
do you take your steak? Medium rare,
Steve Fretzin [25:40]
medium rare. All right, that is the right answer. Okay. And then what types of things and you can you can cast a bigger net, you know, maybe within an hour, hour and a half of where you are but what’s what’s the attraction? What’s, what’s the thing I have to see?
[25:55]
I would say there’s no, you know, we’re only about 45 minutes from Atlanta. So probably one of the coolest things and you could spend all day there is the Georgia Aquarium. I haven’t been to a lot of aquariums but I’ve been to that one and a few others and hands down it’s it’s just incredible. I mean, it’s such a an awesome experience, whether you got family or kids or just a date out with your with your significant other. You gotta go the Georgia Aquarium that comes that comes to mind.
Steve Fretzin [26:19]
Okay, yeah, my son is a big fishing guy, fish guy even catching fish. He wants to see fish. So we would come and do that for sure. And then what are the locals, you and your wife and people in your area? What are you guys into?
[26:32]
You know, right now over the last year, I think it was everybody just wanted to try and get outside and do something. So it’s, it’s really interesting to see, there’s a ton of microbrews like craft breweries popping up. And all every little small town has to have at least two or three microbrews. And then what we’ll do is we’ll have food trucks come up to it, you can have a couple of beers and walk around and everybody’s got their dogs outside. And it’s just a casual kind of thing that’s really gotten popular in the area. And I think it’s it’s just that and being outside. It’s just been such a big, big part of everybody’s life, no matter where you’re at in the city.
Steve Fretzin [27:03]
That’s pretty cool, though. I like that concept of the microbrew. And then then the food trucks outside, especially the food trucks are good. But that’s just an easy way to grab them grab a meal and have some beers and hang out with your dog and your family.
[27:15]
Absolutely. It’s great times.
Steve Fretzin [27:17]
Very cool. Very cool. So money, Penny if people want to reach out to learn more to get that chatbot on their on their, on their website, or they want to talk about the efficiencies that they learned in the show. How do they reach out? What’s the best way for them to get in touch?
[27:32]
Yeah, absolutely. The best way is just going to be your right to our website, which is money penny.com and several options to get a hold of us, of course, give us a call or you can use our chat bot and somebody right there our team will answer it right away.
Steve Fretzin [27:45]
Did the company have to have to pay some special trademark money for the name Moneypenny franchise?
[27:55]
No, that’s, that’s not something that, you know, we don’t really we don’t really go there. It’s one of those things where you know, it’s just synonymous with great. Somebody being there for you, when you can’t be there. I love that. And so that’s, that’s my answer.
Steve Fretzin [28:11]
Okay. I think that’s a great answer, by the way. And that’s it. That’s and that’s what you know, that’s, that’s who’s always there for James right as money.
[28:16]
We’re always there for our clients. Very cool. Very cool. Well,
Steve Fretzin [28:19]
listen, Eric, this has been wonderful. I appreciate you coming on the show and taking your valuable time to help give some advice and tips and thoughts to my listeners. And, you know, just just thanks again.
[28:30]
Thank you so much, Steve. Great to be here.
Steve Fretzin [28:31]
I appreciate it. Yeah, and everybody listen to some great ideas here about efficiency, time getting, you’re getting some of the some of the, the, you know, kind of low level work of answering phones and being really specific about how you set appointments. And again, your time is so valuable. And then of course, the cultural and staffing concepts that Eric mentioned. So, listen, you know, take take note and be that lawyer someone who’s competent, organized skilled Rainmaker, you know, this is these are the little things that you can do to help improve you know, your life and your career as a lawyer. So, I appreciate you spending some time with Eric tonight today. Take care be well be safe. We’ll talk again soon.
Narrator [29:15]
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