In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Lewis Landerholm discuss:
- Adapting to the changing law industry.
- Having the money conversations and asking for the business.
- Questioning and qualifying potential clients.
- Creating an org chart for a visual of where you are going (then fire yourself from as many positions as possible).
Key Takeaways:
- The fear of the unknown often hinders moving forward with a necessary hire.
- Every time you answer “I’ll do it” will keep you as a true solo. If you wish to scale and grow you must delegate and let go of certain tasks.
- Assign a monetary figure to everything you do. If it is under your pay grade, delegate it out. Assign a responsibility title to each to do and see what role you need to hire for first.
- Learn to ask for help. You do not and cannot know everything. You need other people to grow.
“The piece that really helped me the most at the beginning, was just understanding that I had to fill in the gaps of figuring out what I didn’t know. Because I knew there was a lot that I didn’t know. So it was the not letting my ego or other things get in the way of seeking out that information from other people, and looking for it in mentors and coaches.” — Lewis Landerholm
Thank you to our Sponsors!
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Episode References:
- Be That Lawyer Episode 263 with Marco Brown: https://www.fretzin.com/podcast/episodes/marco-brown-growing-your-firm-without-spending-a-dime/
- Book: Fans First by Jesse Cole – https://www.amazon.com/Fans-First-Change-Unforgettable-Experience/dp/154452921X
About Lewis Landerholm: Lewis Landerholm is the Founding Partner of Pacific Cascade Legal, a law firm that represents family law, bankruptcy, and personal injury clients throughout the Pacific Northwest. Lewis’s proclivity for business management and his desire to provide genuine support to families who are navigating difficult seasons and transitions have made him uniquely qualified to identify and deliver on the needs of clients and establish a successful firm that has become a household name throughout Oregon and Washington.
Connect with Lewis Landerholm:
Website: https://www.pacificcascadelegal.com/
Email: lewis@pacificcascadefamilylaw.com
Phone: 503-227-0200
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lewislanderholm/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pacificcascadelegal
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PacificCasLegal
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PacificCascadeLegal
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pacificcascadelegal/
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] Lewis Landerholm: So, okay. I, yeah, I’m overwhelmed. I have a lot of work to do. I could hire somebody. Number one, who do I hire first? And two, what work are they going to do? And then how am I going to manage that person so that they’re actually doing what I need to do? So trying, you know, that whole process is foreign to a lot of people and scary.
[00:00:21] Lewis Landerholm: And so. Well, a lot of times they just answer it with, well, I’ll do it.
[00:00:31] 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.
[00:00:53] Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, welcome to Be That Lawyer. I am Steve Fretzin your host, and I’m just so happy that you’re with us again today. We want to make sure that you’re not only, you know, getting the work done, the billable hours and all that stuff, but we want to make sure that you’re living the best life, that you’re building something you can be proud of.
[00:01:09] Steve Fretzin: And whether that’s a legacy or that’s revenue and that’s providing for your family, that’s all good stuff. So we really try to bring on the top experts, rainmakers, experts in marketing, business development, time management, to help you figure stuff out, maybe get some shortcuts, make less mistakes. If you’re hearing us for the first time, you’re not too familiar with Fretson, uh, what we do is only two things.
[00:01:32] Steve Fretzin: We either help ambitious attorneys to learn business development as a skill. It’s a learnable skill and work with them to help them, you know, put methodologies and plans and processes in place to grow their law practice in a more sustainable way. Usually pretty dramatic growth is what we’re looking for.
[00:01:48] Steve Fretzin: And then the other thing is we currently run five peer advisory round tables where you as a successful Rainmaker can collaborate in a confidential environment with other successful You know, million dollar plus, uh, book, you know, builders. So check us out online at frets and. com. I’ve got Louis waiting in the wings.
[00:02:05] Steve Fretzin: How’s it going, Louis? Well, it’s going well. How are you? All right. All right. Good to see you. I had a good little pre chat and I think we’re ready to rock and roll today. You are not only the founder of Pacific cascade legal, but you submitted a quote that was very near and dear to my heart because one of my favorite movies.
[00:02:24] Steve Fretzin: Is money ball I love money ball I think you love money ball and the quote is adaptor die and so that must be kind of near and dear to your heart to so talk about that quote in that movie but then what does it mean to you in your life yeah I mean
[00:02:38] Lewis Landerholm: adaptor die is what I mean I believe business is right um.
[00:02:42] Lewis Landerholm: Business is constantly changing and from COVID to whatever else. And if you, um, if we can’t be nimble and we can’t adapt to the changing environment, then we go away. So, um, I mean, I love the movie. I just love, you know, the, um, Billy B character where he just says adapt or die and, you know, small market club.
[00:03:03] Lewis Landerholm: So. You know, from a, uh, you know, from a startup solo firm to taking on the more established firms in the area, you know, it’s always about trying to be ahead of the game and doing things before other people and, and, uh, changing and. Pivoting when you need
[00:03:20] Steve Fretzin: to. Yeah. You know, it’s funny. I did a poll on LinkedIn and I published then a graphic and gave people sort of the results, but it was, you know, what are you most concerned about with the future legal?
[00:03:30] Steve Fretzin: And is it AI and is it. You know, the, uh, non lawyer owned law firms and a couple of others and non lawyer owned law firms was a big concern. People are really worried that in certain States and, uh, at some point eventually, or maybe all around that there’ll be, you know, whether it’s folks like me, non lawyers or, or, or actually like big companies like Deloitte and others that are gonna, you know, be competing against the lawyers for business.
[00:03:53] Steve Fretzin: And, uh, that could be a real, that could be a real trick. So I think to your point, if we don’t adapt and, you know, then, you know, you might just get left in the dust. Yes, a hundred percent. So talk a little bit about your background, because I think it’s going to resonate with people and also be a really important lead into kind of our topic today, which is, you know, really, how do you scale up being a solo and then really getting that, you know, the business built out.
[00:04:18] Steve Fretzin: So you really have something behind you. So talk a little bit about kind of where you, where you started and where you’re coming from and where you are now. So
[00:04:26] Lewis Landerholm: my background, I will go back forever, but out of, uh, undergrad, I went into the corporate world. I was in sales management. Um, and so I sort of cut my teeth at a young professional age of managing people, managing sales process.
[00:04:43] Lewis Landerholm: Then after about eight, 10 years of that, I went back to law school and graduated. In a market where there weren’t a lot of positions available. And so, uh, had to, you know, I had to just start doing it. So on your strangle as a true solo and just started to, uh, you know, the marketing and that’s where they, and I knew, I knew I wanted to find somebody, a coach, somebody who could help me.
[00:05:11] Lewis Landerholm: Um, apply what I knew from the business world to the legal world. And so I, I engaged coaches very early on. Um, and really what I found out is that my background of sales background, um, I was really good at bringing clients in and I was really good at being able to, you know, talk to them about how to, you know, how to help them, how to, you know.
[00:05:34] Lewis Landerholm: In difficult times and being able to translate to that, you know, to them wanting to work with me to do the work. So, um, that’s really what my strength is. Um, I still manage really the sales process of the firm and I do almost all of the Oregon consults were in multiple States. And so I do that part of it because when I love it too, I’m good at it and I still can bring in a lot of clients, uh, to
[00:06:01] Steve Fretzin: the firm.
[00:06:01] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Was there one skill in particular that you worked with a coach on or that you identified in yourself that was really critical to saying, Hey, I got this, this, you know, thing in me that is bringing in clients or that is getting them to say yes. And, and what, what, what would you say is like one thing that you really feel that you were doing well, that, that helps to grow business.
[00:06:23] Steve Fretzin: Yeah,
[00:06:23] Lewis Landerholm: I think, well, I mean, with attorneys, I think the bottom line is asking for the business and not being afraid to have the money conversation, right? I’m very clear about this is how much these things cost and giving wide goalposts and helping them understand the ins and outs, but really just being very honest and straightforward and not trying to.
[00:06:44] Lewis Landerholm: You know, not trying to give a lot of legal speak and, and play a lot of, you know, games or hide the ball or whatever, and just being very upfront and honest with people. And, you know, if some people, they can’t afford what we provide, then we give them a lot of referrals. And so, you know, we give them referrals to go, we go seek help.
[00:07:03] Lewis Landerholm: So we just want to, we want to be able to help our potential clients as well as clients just have a very clear understanding of what the process looks
[00:07:11] Steve Fretzin: like. And I think a big part of that, and again, this is what I’m teaching every day, Lewis is, is, uh, questioning and qualifying, right? And so if you question people and you can identify their pain, you can identify their fear, you can identify like what’s going on, the urgency of it all, that’s a big part of it.
[00:07:27] Steve Fretzin: And then the second part of it is, how do we qualify their, the decision maker, their timeframe, and then of course, you know, the financial side of it and asking those questions that identifies, you know, 100, 000 out of the question where that’s what this is going to take for this. You know, multi business owner for a divorce, for example, then, you know, then, and, you know, and they don’t have that money or they’re close then, you know, maybe, yeah, the referred out, but I think that’s a big part of it.
[00:07:50] Steve Fretzin: Is that, is that kind of what you’ve seen as well?
[00:07:53] Lewis Landerholm: Oh, yeah, all the time. So it’s really urgency is a huge thing, especially in the divorcing world, because, you know, we, there’s, there’s not a lot of times where we legally tell somebody they need to do something. That’s more of when you’re ready. So it’s helping them just understand.
[00:08:07] Lewis Landerholm: What the, you know, what the downside of waiting potentially is, and then going through and helping them, you know, really figure out what their issues are, how we can help them from a, you know, sort of a broad, you know, broad strokes of how to, how the legal world can help their problem. And then, you know, the, the financial piece is really not just.
[00:08:29] Lewis Landerholm: This is how much money, but it’s a problem that we both solved together. And so I talked to the clients about like. You have, you don’t want to fire us. We don’t want to fire you. We want to make sure that we’re all on the same page. So that’s why we’re, you know, we send invoices every two weeks so that they can see everything that’s happening and, and really making that an open dialogue.
[00:08:48] Lewis Landerholm: And so people aren’t hiding the fact that they’re struggling or they can’t necessarily come up with a payment. So that way we can work with them and we can move them through the process without having to withdraw. So we want it to be just a very, you know, natural part.
[00:09:02] Steve Fretzin: It sounds like transparency is important.
[00:09:04] Steve Fretzin: Yes. And so talk to us a little bit about, you know, you, you, you were a solo and you see other solos out there and many of them would like to scale, like that’s their goal or their dream is to scale from being a solo to having their own firm with people, right? With, uh, with, with people that can do the work and let them, um, You know, own a business, for example, why do lawyers generally struggle with that transition of solo to running a small firm?
[00:09:31] Lewis Landerholm: I mean, I think number one, it’s the fear of, I mean, fear of unknown is always what holds that’s all right. I mean, whatever we’re doing. And so I think the, a lot of solos, number one, feel like they don’t know how they don’t know what they don’t know. So they don’t know. How to manage people, how to set people up for success.
[00:09:52] Lewis Landerholm: If they do hire somebody, the fear of payroll is real, you know, the having to meet an obligation like that, where other people rely on you for putting food in their family’s mouths is a legitimate, you know, fear factor for a lot of people. And I think it, it also boils down to. They don’t know how to define what somebody is going to do when they bring them on.
[00:10:18] Lewis Landerholm: So, okay, I, yeah, I’m overwhelmed. I have a lot of work to do. I could hire somebody. Number one, who do I hire first? And two, what work are they going to do? And then how am I going to manage that person so that they’re actually doing what I need to do? So trying, you know, that whole process is foreign to a lot of people and scary.
[00:10:39] Lewis Landerholm: And so. Well, a lot of times they just answer it with, well, I’ll do it. And you know, that just keeps you as a solo. Every time you answer, I’ll do it. Well, then it’s all point. Everything’s pointing back to you. And that’s a true, that’s a true
[00:10:53] Steve Fretzin: solo. Yeah, that’s the thing. I’ll do it. Right. So like I’m working with lawyers all the time on delegation and letting go.
[00:11:00] Steve Fretzin: And I think you’re right that it’s just so hard, but. Um, I was speaking to another friend of mine in the business and he was talking about how critical it is to, you know, make a list of all the things that you do in a day. And he suggested putting a number next to it. So this is a 50 an hour job. This is a 20 an hour job.
[00:11:18] Steve Fretzin: This is a 2, 000 job an hour and really start to identify like, you know, yes, it’s scary to let go and it’s scary to delegate, but ultimately. How many hours are you putting into stuff that’s under your pay grade, like way under your pay grade, like bookkeeping, I haven’t had a bookkeeper, I don’t think since day one, I don’t think I’ve ever done my own books.
[00:11:36] Steve Fretzin: I review them, I oversee them, but I’m not sending out invoices, I’m not doing that, you know, that, you know, looking, reading through my, uh, you know, bills and seeing like, you know, how everything, you know, works and putting it into the right boxes, that’s way under my pay grade. And I hope my bookkeeper’s not listening because she’s terrific, but…
[00:11:52] Steve Fretzin: You get the gist. Yeah. So what was your journey, talk about your journey from solo to, I, you have 10 offices. Is that, is that the case?
[00:12:01] Lewis Landerholm: We have something like that, seven to 10 offices, depending on, yeah, we have some smaller offices. We have some larger offices. Okay. Um, but yeah, we started as me by myself.
[00:12:12] Lewis Landerholm: And then have grown from there. I am the, the two tools that I use to be able to, to be able to do that was one, was an org chart, you know, the actual exercise of going through and building an org chart, even when I was the only person to understand who all of the people are that actually run a law firm.
[00:12:33] Lewis Landerholm: And if you’re putting your name on all of them, you’re still doing all of those things. So to your point about pay grade, I love doing it, you know, actually associating a dollar figure to it, because that makes it easier to sell yourself on why you should do it. Right. But the other piece was, so your friends list the way that he does it with dollar.
[00:12:51] Lewis Landerholm: What I would do is I did a list on Fridays for the following week, and I would list out everything that I had to do. And I would rate them in one who had to do it. So it wasn’t just an attorney had to do it, it was I had to do it was one level. Then it was an attorney can do it, any attorney, then there was a paralegal, legal assistant, receptionist, bookkeeper, admin, all the way down, right?
[00:13:17] Lewis Landerholm: And there was a listing of who those people were, receptionist, uh, was on that list, of course. And then it was also the priority level of all of those things for the next week. So it, it helped me to understand what was coming up, but it also started to build the, how much work was I doing in certain areas that I could, the most.
[00:13:37] Lewis Landerholm: The easiest low hanging fruit to go hire somebody who then would fix and basically make it so I didn’t have to do that work. And so it was visual. I could see if I had a lot of reception work that I was doing. Well, let’s hire a receptionist. I didn’t have the, as much of the fear to hire it because I was used to managing people so that I didn’t have that barrier to, to get over.
[00:14:00] Lewis Landerholm: That was the main tool that I used actually for the first, probably five years that helped me understand. I always talked about, I wanted to fire myself from the next role. What was I firing myself from next? Right. And so those things that are those nagging, I hate to do that would always get on the list.
[00:14:17] Lewis Landerholm: And then over time, I would, I would create the position that would fire myself from those jobs. And so with the org chart, mapping that out along with then figuring out what I was doing that I didn’t want to be doing, that then those put together allowed me to figure out, okay, that type of person would then take all of this off my plate.
[00:14:39] Lewis Landerholm: And then that opens up to the dollar point. You know, if you say, An hour’s a week that you’re not doing reception work. Well, you’ve just build, you know, if your hourly rate’s 200, you just build 2000 more dollars, you pay for that person on the week, they may be, you know, cost you 300 or 400 bucks. You’re up, you know, 1, 500 bucks after that, when you pay their taxes.
[00:15:00] Lewis Landerholm: So it, um, it was a, you know, easy, visible exercise that allowed me to step back. You know, they talk about working on the business, but even at the beginning of working on the business could be as simple as just doing an exercise like that. That allows you to look at it from a different viewpoint. You’re looking at it from an older point of view, not from an attorney in the weeds point of view.
[00:15:24] Lewis Landerholm: Yeah.
[00:15:25] Steve Fretzin: Okay, let’s take a quick break to talk about how Moneypenny is changing the game for lawyers who are losing business every day and may not even realize it. It’s impossible to provide amazing client service when you have phone trees, voicemail jail or untrained staff handling your phones. Every inbound call could be a new client to intake properly.
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[00:17:00] Steve Fretzin: com You know, the uh, the gentleman that I mentioned, you know, my friend that um, What’s the dollar son? I didn’t mention his name, but he was on the show on a month or two ago named Marco Brown. He’s got a family office in, uh, Salt Lake City. I’m going to connect you with him.
[00:17:16] Steve Fretzin: I think you got you two would hit it off pretty well. But, um, the other thing that he really that he really talks about that I find is absolutely intriguing is, uh, The mindset of I’m a lawyer. I’m a lawyer. I’m a lawyer. And then he talks about how he had to, like, convince himself. I run a law business. I run this business.
[00:17:34] Steve Fretzin: That’s my time. That’s that’s who I am. Not a lawyer. And it’s hard because lawyers are. So, and it’s interesting too, like in America, that’s how we define ourselves, I’m a coach, you’re a lawyer, and in other countries, they don’t do that, you know, it’s, I’m a father, I’m an artist, I’m a, you know, whenever it is, you know, but I think, you know, he, he said that mindset shift, mindset shift and of the, just titling yourself differently made a big difference for him.
[00:17:57] Steve Fretzin: Yes, I
[00:17:58] Lewis Landerholm: was sort of the opposite. I, um, I always wanted to be the owner and I wasn’t the, being an attorney was the vehicle to being the owner for me. So I was never tied to the, I need to be an attorney to do these things. I looked at it and I was always drawn to the business side of things as opposed to the, the law side of things.
[00:18:24] Lewis Landerholm: So that was an easy shift for me. It was, um, You know, it helped me, it helped me push and grow faster because I wasn’t necessarily like feeling like I had to do all the work myself. Um, But there were other challenges along the way.
[00:18:39] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, and you mentioned that the org chart and really understanding like, you know, you’re in the right seat for you and who else can do, you know, the other things.
[00:18:46] Steve Fretzin: And what you mentioned, there was one other really important point or tip about scaling. What was that? You remember? Um, I mean,
[00:18:55] Lewis Landerholm: I think it was the putting those two things together, but from a scaling standpoint. You know, the org chart really, you know, gave us the visual of where we were going. But then it was, then it was about, you know, being able to then, you know, grow from a geographical perspective.
[00:19:10] Lewis Landerholm: So putting the two together, uh, and then the, the, the drive, I mean, mine, and I sort of have an innate drive to fire myself from as many things on levels. You know, those things combined just sort of push things, um, you know, forward as. Uh, you know,
[00:19:29] Steve Fretzin: quickly. Okay, and there, and there, and this might go to what you already said, and if it did, we can move on.
[00:19:34] Steve Fretzin: I’ve got a bunch of other questions, but were there any unique attributes that, that have allowed you to be a successful owner of a thriving law firm, other, outside of the things you’ve shared already, or, those are, I don’t know if those are attributes so much as, as uh, sort of, you know, skills that you, that you brought to the table.
[00:19:52] Lewis Landerholm: I mean, I think the, the piece that really helped me the most at the beginning was just understanding that I had to fill in the gaps of figuring out what I didn’t know, because I knew there was a lot that I didn’t know. So it was the, it was the, um, not letting my ego, not letting other things get in the way of the fact of seeking out that information from other people and, and, and looking for it.
[00:20:19] Lewis Landerholm: Ian. Mentors in coaches in all of these, you know, all of these places who are much better than, um, you know, that we are, um, and in surrounding ourselves with people who do their job better than, than we could ever do it and not trying to replicate that and seeking that out and not, you know, not worried that.
[00:20:40] Lewis Landerholm: Um, you know, I was saying, I don’t know that, but I’m going to go figure it out. And so, um, you know, that really helped from the very beginning and the mindset of just not having one of our core values is no ego. Um, because, you know, it’s like all the time, the question, you know, people ask questions of me and I’m like, I don’t know the answer to that, but I know how to find the answer and it’s okay not to know, and it’s okay not to.
[00:21:06] Lewis Landerholm: Um, you know, have all of the answers, but if you then can’t have these resources that you tap into and you know how to figure it out, then that’s really how everything works anyway.
[00:21:16] Steve Fretzin: And it sounds like, you know, what I keep hearing on this show over and over and again, I’m not trying to be like a shameless plug for my services, but I think mentors and coaches, it keeps coming up.
[00:21:26] Steve Fretzin: And I wonder why, well, I, again, I think there’s people that, uh, do just suffer silently with trying to figure it out themselves. And there is an ego. And it’s not something that where they’re willing to make an investment and they don’t either see value in it or they don’t see that it’s something that they need to pursue.
[00:21:44] Steve Fretzin: And then they just sit there for years and years, kind of on a hamster wheel, struggling with the same problems year after year. I just don’t understand the mindset. I don’t think I know for a fact I wouldn’t be where I am today without having a coach and mentor. So I just don’t understand what do you, what do you think is the mindset of people that, that, that are not willing to, to, to ask for help?
[00:22:05] Lewis Landerholm: I mean, I think one, there’s, you know, fixed mindsets, of course, where people think they just, I mean, I think specifically in the attorney world, people think. Oh, how difficult that can that be? I’ll figure it out. Right. It goes back to the, I’ll do that. Well, then if you’re answering, I’ll do that all the time.
[00:22:21] Lewis Landerholm: You tap out of your, you know, of your ability and your expertise, you know, we don’t go higher, you know, as a business owner, we don’t go hire a divorce firm. If we need a business attorney, we go to the expert. We go to the business attorney. Well, it’s the same, uh, being able to unlock your, um, your sort of that fixed mindset of saying like, Okay, there, I don’t know what I don’t know.
[00:22:44] Lewis Landerholm: And so I need to go find that information and don’t, and I think a big part of it is people just don’t know sometimes that there are these options out there and they think, Oh, that’s going to be too expensive. That’s going to be too difficult for me to do instead of picking up the phone and asking the question and figuring out if it’s too expensive or if it’s too difficult.
[00:23:02] Lewis Landerholm: And there are coaches for all different levels of. Uh, not just law firm, but any business. And so, uh, being able to tap into, um, that expertise has been huge. And it, um, it catapulted, you know, our firm every step of the way from, you know, Uh, zero to, you know, pushing 10 million and being able to, you know, really, you know, grow a firm and make a business that’s not, you know, that if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, the firm continues, you know, it’s, it’s a true business and it’s not a practice.
[00:23:35] Steve Fretzin: And the other, the other point is, you know, who, who ends up making more money and having the better life? Is it the attorney that’s doing 2000 plus hours a year? No business development or the one that’s actually building a couple of million dollar, but a dollar book of business maybe does a thousand hours a year, 1400.
[00:23:53] Steve Fretzin: And, you know, actually has, you know, higher revenue and more money put away and probably has a lot more time off. Right.
[00:24:00] Lewis Landerholm: Yeah. I mean, it depends on your practice. Obviously it depends on how you do it, but, but yeah, the, uh, it should work that way. Yeah, we will need to get it to be probably all the nuts and bolts of profit and how many people you’re hiring growing too quickly sometimes and that can eat into profit.
[00:24:17] Lewis Landerholm: But in general, yeah, you’re gonna, you’re gonna grow your not only. Your revenue and your dollars, but you’re going to grow your, you know, just ability to go on a vacation, your happiness. And you’re going to also, you know, grow your influence because not only are you only able to help, you know, 50 people a year, you’re able to help hundreds, thousands of people a year because you’ve got.
[00:24:41] Lewis Landerholm: You know, you have more people doing that work
[00:24:45] Steve Fretzin: and what, are there any, um, either technologies, automations, or, or systems that you’re using that have helped you to free yourself up and delegate better, free yourself up from mundane things that you used to do. I mean, we have, I
[00:25:03] Lewis Landerholm: mean, at this point we have a whole suite of things that we use, you know, we still use Clio for case management, but.
[00:25:10] Lewis Landerholm: There’s a lot of integrations that, that work through, you know, through Clio. Really, I mean, at this point, I mean, I’m, I’m kind of spoiled at this point. I don’t really have to do much of the day to day other than I only look at email. I’ve got a calendar and I get reports from people. That’s about what I do.
[00:25:31] Lewis Landerholm: Um, and so, you know, but through the, along the way, I’m trying to think of, of what technology really was like unlocked certain things as we move forward. I mean, really just, I mean, we’ve, we’re all on zoom, we’re all on teams and we’re all on, um, you know, case management really helped a lot. Um, you know, marketing was really our sort of, you know, our sort of expertise compared to our competitors that were at the same level along the, along the way.
[00:26:01] Lewis Landerholm: So really, you know, getting a email. You know, drip marketing and all of that, that’s really what digging into marketing is really what catapulted us the most, the best.
[00:26:13] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, yeah. That doesn’t surprise me at all. That’s, you know, I think a combination of business development and marketing is a terrific way to make sure that you stay sustainable.
[00:26:23] Steve Fretzin: And again, then, you know, you can do less of it over time because you build up that momentum, uh, with it, any additional advice that you have for solos who are. Like in that pivotal moment where they, they can, you know, they have enough work where they should, they can hire an associate or they can bring in a paralegal or do something to kind of start to scale and start to build out.
[00:26:45] Steve Fretzin: I mean, I think
[00:26:46] Lewis Landerholm: the, the first thing is to, to really just figure out what do you want in five, 10 years, do you want to be still grinding every day, or do you want to have the ability to take a week off and not answer client emails and client, uh, you know, phone calls? You know, if you don’t have kids, think about, you know, when you have other people that you need to, you know, think about and being able to take an afternoon off and go to the ballpark and watch your kid play or, you know, whatever it is, whatever you’re interested in, if you can trade your time, you know, time is the only thing that we can’t buy more of.
[00:27:23] Lewis Landerholm: If we, well, that’s not necessarily true, but we can’t, there’s a finite resource, but the way that we buy more time is to pay people to do what we no longer have to do ourselves. And so being able to really monetize what that means for you as a person to no longer have to do those tasks, it starts to add up really fast.
[00:27:46] Lewis Landerholm: It’s eye opening and it’s a huge weight off your shoulders when, you know, things move without you having to be involved. My dream is just to always make money when I’m sleeping. And so that’s my, uh, that’s my goal eventually is to have that working in the, uh,
[00:28:03] Steve Fretzin: legal world. Yeah. And that’s sort of the definition of a real business once you’ve scaled.
[00:28:08] Steve Fretzin: Um, Really great stuff. I so appreciate that Lewis. And, um, I want to wrap things up today with, um, your game changing book. And this is one that hasn’t been mentioned on the show. And I, I just was excited to have you talk a little bit about Fans First. Talk to that. What’s the, what’s that book about?
[00:28:24] Lewis Landerholm: Yeah.
[00:28:24] Lewis Landerholm: So Fans First, it’s by Jesse Cole. Jesse Cole is the owner of the, uh, Savannah Bananas. And for those of you who don’t know, or aren’t sports fans, Well, sports is my big thing I do outside of, uh, outside of work, but the Savannah Bananas is a minor league team down in Savannah, Georgia, that basically does everything opposite of what baseball is.
[00:28:46] Lewis Landerholm: It’s they have their own baseball, their own, it’s fast, it’s fan, the fan experience is what it is. They dress up in yellow tuxedos, they, you know, the food and the alcohol. In your tickets, so they just make it about having a blast at the ballpark. The book is really about how to apply that and, and have raving fans about any business and your law firm and really doing things differently to then put fan, put your clients, put your fans first.
[00:29:18] Lewis Landerholm: So that way they want to refer their, you know, their people back to you, you know, Savannah and bananas are sold out for like two years in advance at this point, they’ve got waiting and it’s all, you know, I mean, minor league baseball does not have sellout and they just have created this whole following.
[00:29:34] Lewis Landerholm: And now they’re traveling throughout the country. It’s just, it’s a great read, great energy coming through the pages that are just a fun.
[00:29:42] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Well, everybody check out fans first. I think you’ll, you’ll enjoy it. I’m definitely going to be YouTube being some, uh, videos of the Savannah bananas, just so I can see what you’re talking about.
[00:29:53] Steve Fretzin: Cause I think I may have seen a clip of them dancing in the, in the outfield, but I want to, I want to get a couple more clips. If people want to get in touch with you, Lewis, and reach out to you, either to refer you, you know, uh, family work or anything like that, what, what are some of the best ways to reach you?
[00:30:09] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, easiest
[00:30:09] Lewis Landerholm: way or, you know, phone number, obviously, uh, 503 227 0200. From an email standpoint, I have a couple of them, but, uh, the easiest one is just Lewis at Pacific Cascade. That one’s a Pacific Cascade family law. com. That’s an easy way to get
[00:30:29] Steve Fretzin: hold of me awesome awesome and i appreciate you being on the show and what we before we wrap up i also want to thank our sponsors of course legalese helping to you know get the marketing and software training off your back and just take care of that for you money penny of course.
[00:30:45] Steve Fretzin: Not only on your website with live chat, but also answering your phones. And so you don’t have to hire a receptionist with money, penny, and of course, practice Panther, the easiest way to set up shop and get, uh, get scaled up, uh, with a, with a software system there. So they’re fantastic, uh, friends of the show.
[00:31:03] Steve Fretzin: Lewis, awesome, man. Thank you so much for being on the show. I mean, so many great takeaways and things that lawyers that are really interested in scaling can lean into. And even the ones that I think are currently scaled up or have 10 employees or anything can, can take a lot away from this conversation.
[00:31:18] Steve Fretzin: So really great. Yeah, you’re welcome. Yeah, appreciate it. And everybody, thank you for spending some time with Lewis and I today. I hope you got some great takeaways. I’ve got my usual page of notes and, uh, You know, I’ve got a bunch of things we’re going to throw up on the, uh, you know, on the social media with, uh, the conversation today with Lewis.
[00:31:35] Steve Fretzin: Uh, again, if you’re a fan of the show, please don’t be shy about giving us a nice review or five stars on your phone. And uh, remember this show, as you know, it’s all about helping you be that lawyer, someone who’s confident, organized and a skilled rainmaker. Take care, everybody. Be safe, be well, and we’ll talk again soon.
[00:31:54] Narrator: Thanks for listening to Be That Lawyer. Life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website Fretzin. com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.