Steve Fretzin

Kevin Daisey (00:32)
All right, everyone. What’s up. Welcome to another recording of The Managing Partners Podcast. got a friend of mine. I’ve had him on the podcast at least once. And my business partner might’ve had you on as well. So this might be your third time on the show. Three times a charm. Maybe you’ll have some good content this time. Just kidding. Well, Steve welcome to show, man.

Steve Fretzin (00:45)
They say three times a charm.

Yeah, I screwed up the last two. I got a lot of making up to do. Maybe.

Kevin Daisey (00:56)
Thanks for coming back. Excited about today’s episode. ⁓

Steve Fretzin (00:57)
Thanks, Kevin.

Yeah, always a pleasure. And I just love everything you’re doing and kind of watching you closely and from a distance to see what’s next. You always got something popping up. So I was happy to see an invitation to come back and hopefully share some wisdom to help your audience. You figure out the whole business development side of things. Crap, you never learned in law school type of stuff.

Kevin Daisey (01:21)
yeah. I appreciate it. ⁓ yeah. Watch you see you on, on all the socials and it’s, I think it’s interesting how, you know, you meet people, you’ve met them, you’ve talked to them, and then you just kind of see them, see them around. might be another year before you talk to them again. So, but we try to stay in touch and keep up. So, yeah, excited to talk about that. ⁓ you know, for all the law firms out there listening here, the thing, Steve is he talked to some that are

They’ve started their firm. Some just started their firm and then some have been doing it for a decade or two decades. I see some of the same problems across every single one of those categories. and so, you know, bringing in new businesses, definitely one of those issues. just talked to a firm today. They’re down more than they ever have been. Car accident attorney out of, Wisconsin and, ⁓

They’re not sure what the problem is, you know, or what they should be working on or what they got to fix. So a lot to unpack. sure.

Steve Fretzin (02:11)
Might be a good, good strategic

introduction, Kevin, because one of the things that I do and jump in right in is, is evaluate, right? Evaluate. And the saying is it’s hard to see the label from inside the bottle. And so having you, myself, Erik, you know, people that are in marketing, business development, operations, whatever it is, the issue to have them, you know, ask a bunch of questions, identify what’s happened and look at things, you know, from a different perspective, you know, makes it can sometimes make you even if nobody

works with us, the fact that we’re able to identify gaps and issues and where there might be ⁓ kind of dents in the armor, I think is really helpful. And people don’t take advantage of that as maybe as often as they should.

Kevin Daisey (02:51)
Yeah. I mean, I always tell people, you know, I welcome, just a conversation or analysis anytime. ⁓ doesn’t mean you have to hire us or that even could hire us. I don’t care. you know, I was telling Steve really like I’m generally interested in business and it can be sent beside me on a plane and you have a pet store. ⁓ how does that work? You know, I want to know. but you know, talking to some of these, these law firms too, it’s, they kind of want to jump a little bit too fast and say,

What do you recommend? What do we got to fix? can we just switch over to you and you just fix it. So slow down. Let’s, let’s back up. I’m not going to show you anything on the screen. I’m not going to present a slide deck. I have a lot of questions for you though. And do you have time to answer these questions? Some are going be business questions, some are going to be financial questions, some are going to be a lot of things. What have you done? Where have you been? And.

Steve Fretzin (03:19)
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (03:38)
more about your firm, like, you know, the culture, the makeup of the firm. So there’s a lot of questions that go into it and, you know, not always that these, some of these firms want to spend the time or they just want the, no, I hire you, you, you fix. And those are not gonna get well.

Steve Fretzin (03:52)
You know, Kevin, it might be interesting

since you brought it up. I brought it up and then you backed up my bringing it up that business development and the idea or concept of a pitch meeting, which all lawyers know that term, where it implies sort of convincing, pitching, selling, talking that your point about asking questions and really getting down to the root of the problem is, is at the heart of what

sales should be and what takes the word sales out of sales. call it sales free selling. But when you make the entire engagement about the other person, about their needs and trying to identify their gaps and how deep the rabbit hole goes in their problems and pain and potential gain and the art of asking questions for most lawyers, they get it in a deposition. They get it in a trial and in, know, but in a

in a business development meeting, it sort of just loots or escapes them. And so maybe taking a few minutes to talk about what are good questions to ask or what’s the flow of questions when you’re meeting with a new general counsel, a new CEO, a new decision maker to keep control of the meeting, but also make sure you get the questions answered because that’s at the heart of not only what gets them to buy into you as a lawyer, but also think about this, you’re going to know a lot more.

Kevin Daisey (04:45)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Fretzin (05:07)
You’re going to know a lot more about what to present if you get to the point where you need to present.

Kevin Daisey (05:11)
100%. I love that. And the fact that, yeah, they’re good at it in certain situations, but not maybe talking to a new potential client or in that sales situation. And the thing is sales, like this is sales. So yeah, I would love to dive into,

Steve Fretzin (05:26)
I

like the greatest communicator of my friends in high school, but I couldn’t ask a question to a girl. I was super shy back then. So I don’t know, maybe there’s something to be said about how lawyers behave with certain types of people like clients and other folks, and then how it might be with a strategic partner. Again, it’s all a learned skill too. So I think there’s something to be said about taking a few minutes to just kind of educate. And again, if lawyers are listening and they have…

you know, 10 ideas and we give them 10. Well, you got 20 and you pick the best five.

Kevin Daisey (05:58)
I love it. I mean, it’s, you have the stigma around sales. It’s, you know, it’s, and then we can dive into some of your suggestions, but you know, selling a service, it should be, right? So I’m helping this person that needs this and I got to find out if I’m the one that service them or not. And, you know, so we got to dig deep to figure this out. If they end up being a client of mine,

That means I’m doing them a service, not that I sold them.

Steve Fretzin (06:28)
Yeah.

Array Digital (06:36)
Thank you for tuning into the show today. I have taken things to the next level and I’ve started the Managing Partners Mastermind. We’re a peer group of owners looking for connection, clarity, and growth strategies. So if you’re looking to grow your law firm and not do it alone, please consider joining the group. Spots are limited, so I ask for anyone to reach out to me directly through LinkedIn and we can set up a one-on-one call to make sure it’s a fit.

Now back to the show.

Steve Fretzin (07:06)
Well, it’s fun. It’s fun to buy. It doesn’t feel good to be sold to or to sell. Right. So that’s, that’s the big switch. And the mind shift has to happen for lawyers to realize that they are in the solutions business. That’s what lawyers do. If I had 10 lawyers in a room and I said, raise your hand, if you like to solve problems, every hand’s going up. But if I say, how many of you want to sell legal services, all the hands go down. But what is sales? Sales is helping someone solve a problem.

The problem is that that your client’s business is down. The law firm’s business is down 10, 20 % this year. So what do we need to do to identify why it’s down? What do we need to identify to, to identify their commitment to change the course of that future and direct them in a way that’s going to get it back up. Right. And are we the best people to help them with that? Is it a marketing issue? Is it an SEO issue? Is it a business development or sales issue?

Right? Maybe it’s operational. Maybe they don’t have the, bandwidth or the team to handle the business and they’ve been turning a business away for so long. There’s all kinds of reasons, but the way that I see questioning Kevin is, is, ⁓ a little bit like, ⁓ if we just think of like, someone that’s, that’s crawling along and then they get up and they slowly start to walk and then they lean into a jog and then a run and then a sprint. I think there’s a pro a progress of how we ask questions and when we ask questions.

Kevin Daisey (08:08)
intake.

Steve Fretzin (08:29)
that needs to be evolving as we meet with someone. So if you’re a prospective client for me as a lawyer, I don’t jump into, how much money did you lose last year? Or, you know, why did you call me? Like, I’m not gonna, you know, it sounds like you’ve got problems. How does that make you feel? Like, I mean, these are horrible questions that would never be, or shouldn’t never be asked at the beginning of a meeting. But if I can get some understanding and background about the firm, what they’ve been doing, what…

what they’re trying to accomplish, then the next question I might ask is, all right, so regarding growing the law practice, what are some of the challenges, frustrations, concerns that you’ve had and that you’re continuing to have? And then I zip my lip and I wait. And what I’m looking for is somewhere between three to five answers to that question. Because if it’s just one thing, like, we just don’t have a plan. Well, that may not be a good fit for me, because if that’s all they need is a plan, I’ll just help them with a plan.

Kevin Daisey (09:24)
Thank

Steve Fretzin (09:24)
I’m not going to charge them and I’m not going to get them involved in a, in a, you know, a program with me. Okay. But if I identify that the plan is just one of the symptoms, right? It’s a plan, ineffective business development across the board. They’re not leveraging their existing clients, past clients. They’re not cross-marketing effectively. And the list, the hits go on and on. And then that’s sort of now I’m walking, maybe starting into a jog. And then we can ask deeper questions like, why do you tell me more about this? Or why do you think this is happening?

How long has this been going on? Leaning into more of a run sprint question. What do you think this is costing your firm or how is it impacting you on a personal level? The fact that your numbers are down so much and you don’t have a solution for how to resolve that. If nothing changes, is that okay? Like if you go another two years like this, is that okay? Well, no, we’re gonna have to fire half of our team and then they start rattling off all the kind of the.

impacting things that will occur may occur if things don’t go in a better direction. Well, now we’re now what have we done? We started with, they’ve got a couple problems and where are we ending? Cost impact, pain, challenge, frustration, right? And when they verbalize that to you as the lawyer, right? Changes everything.

Kevin Daisey (10:33)
Right.

100%. 100%. It’s, yeah, I think.

And that’s the right way to handle this, is asking those questions, get them to speak up. I think, again, you got a lot of lawyers to come in hot with, I want a solution, fix this. Of course, for me, it’s all marketing stuff. So, a PPC company is not doing a job. You just take over and it’s like, whoa, let’s figure out what the problem is. It might not be the PPC company. We might not get this client because there might not be a PPC.

Ad management problem, right? It could be very well likely a law firm problem on lots of different levels, right? Intake sales, things you’re talking about. And so instead of just blaming the other provider, you you have to take the time to dig that out. And for the lawyers listening to give your partners or like a, you know, Steve, the programs he runs or your other vendors, the courtesy and the time.

If they’re going to ask these questions, hopefully they do to participate in that. If you really want to solve your problems, you can’t just shortcut things or say, Hey, let me just hire another XYZ vendor to just take over and solve the problem. if they do, then the problem will probably persist and they just get your business for a short period of time. So.

Steve Fretzin (11:52)
Well,

again, I think that’s what identifies the word fit, right? Am I a fit for this client? Are they a fit for me? Do the problems that they have mirror what I resolve every day? And that could go for you or for a lawyer. A way to set up asking questions so that it’s not out of the blue and that it allows us to control the meaning, because as soon as a lawyer starts getting asked questions, right? Here’s my problem. You know, I need you to fix it. What are you going to do? What’s your strategy?

What do you charge? And they start getting into that. Now prescription is happening, but there hasn’t been a proper diagnosis yet. So the idea is that we need to set up with the prospective client, whether you’re me, you are, or a lawyer to set up in a game plan, to set up an agreement, an upfront agreement. It’s been called a lot of things, agendas, upfront agreements, but ultimately there, need to establish the game, the rules of engagement. so I would, I would,

say something like, you know, this is how much time we have the purpose of us meeting today. Kevin really see if there’s a good fit that we can work together. What I’d like to suggest is that we spend some time. If you’d allow to let me ask you some questions. And quite frankly, I asked some tough questions. That’s part of what I do as a coach. Are you going to be okay with that? You say, yes, I now have permission and direction to spend the majority of our time now asking you questions, which means this engagements about you, not me.

and I’m going to come in and make it about me later, but only after I know everything I need to know that there’s a fit. And this is another important word, the word qualify that you are or lawyer, for example, is qualified to work with me. We think it’s the other way around, but it’s actually not. Okay. Because I don’t want to chase somebody for six months or three months or anything, if they’re not a fit. And if I can identify that in the initial meeting or two, that they are not qualified, they don’t have the money.

Kevin Daisey (13:27)
the

Steve Fretzin (13:40)
They’re not the decision maker. They don’t have a real reasons to change. They’re just kicking tires, whatever it might be. It allows me to walk away, very quickly and stay friends. That’s cool. But ultimately not invested. Yeah. Not, not waste all the time that people tend to waste chasing after people for six months a year. In fact, I have clients come to me with a list of like 10 clients they’ve been chasing after for years. And I say, let’s just review each one individually. And it’s like, Nope, that one’s gone.

Kevin Daisey (13:49)
Maybe refer him to someone else.

Steve Fretzin (14:06)
That one, and it’s like the amount of weight that’s lifted off their shoulders because they felt they could never get rid of that opportunity because it could be so meaningful. could be a dream that it could happen, but I listen to everything that’s happened up to that point. They’re never going to use you. They’re never going to turn the business to you. Let’s move them out and invest your time with people who actually appreciate the brilliance of you as a lawyer or whatever it might be.

Kevin Daisey (14:31)
Yeah, that’s a good point. think, ⁓ yeah, for whatever reason, they made a decision why they don’t believe you’re a fit and you’re still chasing them. they’ve made that decision. It’s been harder to change their mind and do what you want to really. Probably not.

Steve Fretzin (14:43)
I just

sent out, I sent out five emails today, basically turning five lawyers away because they didn’t reply quickly enough to my advances to say, let’s work together. ⁓ working with me is it means taking action. And if somebody’s going to kick tires for a month, they’re not a good client for me. Cause guess what? We start working together and they’re not going to be coachable. They’re not going to take action on the things I’m suggesting. They don’t realize that I’m testing them, but I am. And I moved them to a no. Now, if they come back and fight for me,

I might give them a second chance. And that sounds crazy, right? Cause we’re all battling for business. And here I am kind of telling people to go away. And obviously I’ve built a nice business where I have the ability to do that, but still, ⁓ and you know, that’s, that’s giving me the best pick of the litter clients because I’m getting the clients that just want to crush it and kick ass. And they’re not going to wait a day or a month to figure it out. They want to hire me yesterday. They just need to walk through my hoops to figure out that, that this is the perfect fit is I want to figure out.

Kevin Daisey (15:39)
That’s amazing. love that. That’s the best place to be. And if you want to do good work for all your clients, you got to say no to those ones that are going to drain you, take your time, waste your time. Yeah. My interviews with a potential client are very similar. It’s a lot of check on where they’re at and their sophistication as a business owner and their history. How many agencies you work with and how many agencies have you worked with?

Steve Fretzin (16:00)
Yeah, history is really important.

Kevin Daisey (16:03)
⁓ six over how long? Six years. Okay. And then, well, what was your engagement like with them? What was your relationship like with them? How involved were you in monthly meetings and executing on things that they needed? And then you find out real quickly.

Steve Fretzin (16:19)
Yeah, you just got outside of the landmines that you were gonna step in.

Kevin Daisey (16:24)
A hundred percent. you know, if you’re not asking those questions, you literally you’re setting yourself up for a bad experience for both sides. And you need to have, and I thought, you lawyers just thought time think about a client. You’re trying to bring on a client.

You need to bring that client on assuming all the way through the process that they can be a five star review and they refer you another client. And you need to build out your whole system like that. And that you don’t accept a bad client if you know, that’s not possible.

Steve Fretzin (16:47)
Well, but here’s the fit.

But here’s the dirty little secret to Kevin that lawyers don’t realize. You have to you have to be active in business development efforts and marketing efforts to get your pipeline filled with quality so you can pick the right clients instead of like you have one opportunity and if it goes away your heart sinks into your stomach or your begging trying to figure out how to get that that little piece of business in. And so we want to the easiest way to be successful in growing a law practice.

is to have a brand that everyone knows to have a full pipeline because you’ve been active with relationships and networking where you have, you know, five or 10 opportunities or more, you know, on the table at any given point so that you can move people to a know when they’re not qualified or when, when they are stalling out and you just need to move them to a know and close the file to see how they respond or whatever it is that your strategy is. And it’s the ones that only have one or two opportunities on the, on the

table that are just desperate and hanging on to those one or two. That’s not a great way to be.

Kevin Daisey (17:55)
Well, that is a hundred percent spot on. Yeah. If you don’t have a lot of opportunities, then you can’t be selective. You, you gotta stay afloat. have to pay bills. Right. So then you become reliant on whatever you’re getting and then your sales meetings become very bad because then they can smell that desperation. They can see, that you’re, that you’re desperate. And then you start to just bring on more.

Steve Fretzin (18:16)
Yeah. Lower your rates.

start making compromises, lowering the rates and doing things that are just gonna haunt you later. ⁓ for sure. Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (18:24)
They control the meeting. Hey Steve,

I’ll, you know, I’m not sure if you could drop that price, you know, by 200 bucks a month, you know, and then you’re like, crap. I guess I gotta, I gotta do it because you have no, you’re not in control. They’re running the.

Steve Fretzin (18:34)
Yeah.

Well, and then

they end, then they, then they have, again, they smell the blood in the water like a shark and they realize, Hey, this is someone that, you know, I can use and abuse. And, know, I think lawyers that have clients like that, whether they’re your clients or your partner’s clients, you really start to realize very quickly that this is, these are not the people you, these are not your people. You want to work with your people. Maybe that’s the next place to go is if you’re not, if you’re not in a position to interview and evaluate a number of different clients for you, you end up working with people you don’t really enjoy.

And that’s not, that’s not the long-term plan for, it shouldn’t be the long-term plan for lawyers to work with people that don’t enjoy people that don’t pay people that you have to have tough conversations with all the time. They don’t appreciate your work. That’s going to get old real quick. When people leave, leave the business of law, the practice of law or whatever. A lot of times it comes down to that. They’re just doing, they’re just not happy because the people that they’re surrounding themselves with aren’t their people.

Kevin Daisey (19:32)
I’m just thinking about, ⁓ your employees or your team. Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully you’re hiring people that you want to work with that are cultural fit that you enjoy being around. You know, why would your clients be any different? Right. ⁓ and your clients take a lot of your time and they want a lot of your time and, ⁓ why not have a bunch of clients that you enjoy the phone call that’s coming in for jumping on that meeting with them, working to solve their problem.

Steve Fretzin (19:44)
Yeah.

Yeah. I just stopped working Fridays about a month ago, a month and a half ago. And but here’s the here’s the here’s the rub. Here’s the rub. I love what I do. And so I’m meaning I’m telling my clients I’m not working on Fridays. But if you have something for me, if you need me, just give me a call. It’s I now I have a lunch. Now I have a couple of calls scheduled for Friday. And it’s it’s cool. I don’t have a tea time plan or anything. So.

Kevin Daisey (19:56)
So a hundred percent, yeah.

Hell yeah, that’s awesome.

Steve Fretzin (20:21)
It’s, you know, it’s nice not to schedule stuff on Friday, but to know that, that if I want to meet with someone or if they need me in a pinch and I enjoy the interaction, I enjoy, I just left a conference and this, this didn’t work the way I wanted, or I’m interviewing for a new, new, you know, new firm. And this is how the interview went. I want to be involved in, all those calls because I enjoy them. And that might be a sickness in mind, but it’s, but it’s, it’s my own sickness, but it’s that that’s the beauty of loving what you do. And that’s the beauty of, of. ⁓

of finding a coach, finding a lawyer that really cares about you and cares about the future of your business. I don’t know that all of us are like that or all coaches and marketing agencies and vendors are like that, but if you find the ones that are, that’s gonna be special. You’re not ⁓ gonna be leaving them too soon.

Kevin Daisey (21:04)
you

A hundred percent. Yeah. This is, you know, for me, love doing what I do with the podcast, the marketing, the clients, everything that I do.

Steve Fretzin (21:15)
Well, like you mentioned to me,

talking business, you just, you’ll be on a plane and someone’s got a, you know, a pet store and you want to hear about, what they’re charging for kibble and the kind of profit and, know, how do they manage the inventory or whatever. it’s just interest. Business is interesting to you and to me, but you know, some people it’s not.

Kevin Daisey (21:29)
100%.

Well, I mean, that’s for me, you know, selling seed before we’re recording is, ⁓ marketing is not necessarily my passion. Like talking about SEO, I love doing that. I can, I can talk a lot. my people are way smarter. just listen to what they tell me. I love the business side of it. And so I’ve, I worked that into everything we do here and understanding the business of the law firm.

And I, know, there, there, sometimes they’re kind like, well, why don’t you ask me more questions about my SEO or my specific marketing thing? It’s like, well, we’re not there yet. You know, I got to understand the business, how sophisticated you are in your business. Do you track your numbers? How’s your intake? You know, what’s your past history with marketing agencies? How do you communicate all these things? Like that’s how we can figure out, you know, if we’re a fit and how we can fix the problem.

And you know, that’s just, that’s just the way you got to be. So not everyone’s like that. I don’t think, ⁓ I was off this Monday and Tuesday to your Friday, your Friday off Fridays. So Monday and Tuesday took off, ended up not going out of town. So me and my wife stayed local cause the kids are going back to school and she took the whole week off. I was like, yeah, I’ll give you two days. Well, my wife doesn’t get up super early where she’s, she was off all week.

Steve Fretzin (22:26)
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (22:41)
She wanted to sleep in my kids definitely don’t get up early because they’re in summer break still. So I worked till one o’clock, 1 PM every day, Monday and Tuesday, but I was off all day. So, you know.

Steve Fretzin (22:47)
because they’re kids.

Yeah. Yeah.

That’s it. That’s it. but I mean, getting back, getting back to business development a little bit, I think, I think the lawyers that are listening need to understand that business develop for many lawyers, whether you’re running a law practice or you’re a lawyer at a law practice that that it’s you, Inc. It’s your business under the umbrella that you’re in and that business development for many attorneys is at the root of

Kevin Daisey (22:55)
But I didn’t have to.

Steve Fretzin (23:20)
having and owning that freedom, the control, the freedom, the independence, the finances, everything can come back. You you obviously have to perform the work or have other people perform the work and you’ve got widgets to make and those need to happen. But it’s the selling of the legal services that, you know, when I talk about like, what is be that lawyer? What do you mean that lawyer? Well, it’s the lawyer that’s bringing in all the business. Everybody’s looking up to that individual.

because that’s the person that we all want to emulate and admire, then it’s not about them being a great lawyer. It’s not about them being a great manager of people. Those things can happen too. But somebody’s got to bring in the business, bring in the bacon. And that’s where business development really comes in. It’s like getting to your first half a million or a million or building out a law firm without good business development etiquette. It’s very challenging.

Kevin Daisey (24:09)
Well, you know, to your point, a full pipeline of qualified leads will solve a lot of problems.

Steve Fretzin (24:16)
Yeah, it sure takes a lot of pressure off. you where’s my next meal coming from all the way to, know, how are we going to do better than last year? Last year was our best year. How are we going to do? And by the way, I’m not putting this out there to be a fear monger, but is everything okay right now in the world? Like, I don’t think so. I think I can’t remember a time in my life, 55 years on this planet where things have been less uncertain, less clear. And we’re just sort of waiting to see like what’s going to happen.

I think some people are prepared for the worst and other people aren’t, but I wouldn’t want to be someone living check to check right now. I’ll tell you that much, know, people that make a million dollars a year and spend a million dollars a year, they better start thinking about, you know, what’s going to be like in six months or a year when, when, you know, beef prices has doubled and farmers are, you you can’t get your, you know, food is going to go up and insane them. I want, you know, it’s, it’s some crazy, scary stuff going on.

Kevin Daisey (25:06)
Yeah, AI.

You got AI taking over stuff. got.

Steve Fretzin (25:10)
AI, what’s going

to happen there? Where are the jobs? Like it’s just, it’s just this unknown place, but it’s not like we haven’t had recessions before that we haven’t dealt with difficult times before. I we had went through COVID not that long ago. That was messed up, right? But, but I feel like people are just like businesses as usual and it’s not. in six months from now, people are going to be regretting that it makes some pretty significant decisions today.

Kevin Daisey (25:34)
Yeah. I mean, to Steve’s, if you can get good at business development, good at networking, good at sales, you’re going to have no problem anywhere you go. If you stay a lawyer or not, um, it’s just a good skill to have. It’s a good thing to have in everyday life. It’s not just, it’s not just signing up a client or whatever it’s, it’s with everything you do. Right. It’s having good conversations, asking good questions so that you can come up with a solution with us. Family.

your wife or spouse or whatever. It’s all sales at the end of the day. You know, if you have an agenda, Steve, to try to get an outcome, you’re selling. You’re making your case. You’re trying to figure out a solution. And at the end of day, that’s, that’s all selling. So.

Steve Fretzin (26:16)
Yeah.

mean, the concept of sales-free selling in that book, I wrote that book like 12 years ago as a parable. So if anybody’s interested, it’s about a coach named Scott. I’ll give you a little secret. It’s me. And three clients that work with him and he kind of, you get a really good flavor for what it’s like to work with a coach. What it’s like to work with me. But most importantly, it talks about the philosophy and the steps of sales-free selling. So business development as a process where you don’t have to pitch and convince and sell.

It’s really more about how do we walk a buyer through a buying decision to a win-win outcome? Is that, is that a fit and we’re to work together or is it that they’re not qualified or there isn’t a fit and we can move them to a no or they can move us to a no fine. But we know why a lot of times the frustration in business development is, that we, we, we, you know, we’ll think about it. We’ll get back to you. let you know, and they don’t, and you have $10,000 a month on the line or a hundred thousand dollar matter on the line.

And you’re just wondering why they’re not responding to you. You want to have a system where you know why it’s not a fit and you can move it to a no without wondering and hoping that they’re going to come back or having to chase. And that’s something that lawyers don’t realize there’s a system that does that. You just don’t have that information because you haven’t read it or seen it or heard it, or it’s just, it’s just foreign to you at this stage, but that’s, that’s a process that’s going to be a much, much more efficient play than.

Kevin Daisey (27:12)
posted.

Steve Fretzin (27:36)
You know, we pitched the crap out of this firm and man, they loved us. I could tell they loved us. And then, you know, three months later, you’re going, where did they go? Why? I don’t get it. I’m scratching my head. And there’s a lot of reasons why they’re not with you. You just don’t know any of them. That’s a problem. It’s not a good feeling.

Kevin Daisey (27:51)
It’s not a good feeling. You don’t

know what you don’t know, right?

Steve Fretzin (27:54)
Right. And so the goal is to know everything is to get as much in from to build a kind of trust with a prospective client where they’re willing to open up and share what’s really going on under the hood. And they’re willing to let you control the meeting in a way to figure out at the end of the meeting, is this a go forward? That doesn’t mean signing them up, but it’s the next step potentially. Right. Or should we just end this and why let’s talk about it? I just like my fees are not nothing.

Right? I’m charging a premium because I’ve been doing this for, you know, 22 years and I’m getting great results from my clients. you know, if somebody doesn’t have the money or the wherewithal, let’s figure it out that, that, you know, and move it to a no. I’ll guess what? I will stay your friend. I will stay a resource. I will send you books. I will lead you into events. I’m running. will be any, anything I can, but you’re not going to be in my program because then, cause not everyone’s paying their fair share, just like working with a lawyer.

Kevin Daisey (28:33)
Yeah ⁓

Steve Fretzin (28:49)
working with Kevin, right? I you’re not the cheapest guy on the block. You shouldn’t be, but there’s a, there’s a paywall to get, get into Kevin’s world.

Kevin Daisey (28:53)
No, yeah, that’s-

It’s huge. It’s just, you know, a hundred percent, you know, and getting to that no saves them time, saves you time, and then allows you to refer them or send them the books or, know.

Steve Fretzin (28:58)
That’s huge!

Yeah, right. You just nailed it. You just nailed

it. I’m I’ve got, I’ve got a dozen lawyer coach friends that I know are solid. And when someone isn’t a good fit for me, I really do my best to like, who else can I get you in front of? Because, you know, you still need help. It just may not be me.

Kevin Daisey (29:27)
And the same with us, like, here’s what I tell people when I’m presenting a proposal to them. We’ve done the questions, we figured out what’s going on, but, there’s some degree, but I, but I find out that they just don’t have the budget. Let’s just say that I’m like, listen, I’m to tell you what you need to do regardless. So numbers aside, it is what it is because this is your situation. This is the size of your firm, your location, your market. This is what you need to do. The work is the work.

Whether or not you can hire us to do it. It doesn’t matter. You got to do internal on yourself or hire someone else that’s more affordable. But this is the stuff that has to be done. I’m not going to tell you what. Anything that I don’t believe needs to be done. So you can take my word for what needs to be done, but you can’t afford us to do it. Here’s, you know,

Steve Fretzin (30:11)
Well, Kevin, mean, there’s

willing and there’s able, right? I mean, if somebody isn’t able to pay, I get it. Like, look, you’re gonna have to make a decision. You’re gonna pay me or are gonna feed your kids? I’d say feed your kids. Now, if you pay me, I you make more money to feed your kids better food or longer food, teach someone to fish, right? But that’s hard to do. Now we’re getting into chicken egg territory, right? And the other piece of it is able. Like there are people who have tons of money, but they’re willing to say, should say, not able.

where they’re able to pay, they just can’t get over the fee or they just can’t, they just, they just don’t see the value or whatever it might be. And they’re just not willing to make that investment. That’s okay too. But you have to have someone that’s willing and able for this to actually work and move someone forward. So I think lawyers generally do a bad job of qualifying on the financial side. In many ways, that’s a reason why they might lose business because they’re not really understanding the willingness and ability for someone to pay.

and that they’re okay with your fees. You’re a thousand an hour. They’ve been paying 400 an hour and you’re wondering where they went. Well, I’ll tell you where they went. They went to a firm that’s 500 an hour, not a thousand because you didn’t do any qualification to understand what their willingness and ability to pay is.

Kevin Daisey (31:23)
Yeah. And then the, you know, them understanding why they should pay more.

Steve Fretzin (31:28)
Yeah.

What’s the value proposition? So I’m paying a thousand an hour, but guess what? The work’s going to be done three times faster than the 400 an hour because that was a country lawyer. We’re a big firm and we have that. have access to get it done in short form. So maybe you end up not paying more if you do, but you get a much better result. mean, there’s, telling someone what the outcome is going to be and selling them on the outcome of what they’re going to get, right? You and I both know that’s hard to do and it’s maybe something that shouldn’t be done.

because we can’t predict fully. ⁓ They have to sort of come to the mindset that I see the value in this, I see where I could go with this, I believe in this, other people have seen results with this, then I can make the decision. I have clients talk with one or two of my past clients for two reasons. Before they hire me, before we engage. Number one is,

Kevin Daisey (32:00)
Yeah.

I like that.

Steve Fretzin (32:19)
I want them to hear not from me, but from other lawyers, what the return on investment is and what they can get if they put their heart and soul into a program like mine. The other thing is, guess what? I’m back to this, Kevin. I get feedback from my client. This would be a great client for you, Steve, or this person rescheduled with three times, or I don’t think they’re really gonna, they’re gonna take action on the stuff. I have some concerns. Thank you for telling me that. That feedback is so critical.

for me to push back on that individual lawyer or to just move the lawyer to a no and save myself the trouble of dealing with a problem client or a client who’s not going to execute because I’m in this to win. I’m in this to get big results. if that’s, the, but the player is the player, I’m the coach, right? Right. You’re, you’re doing the work for your clients. You have to perform. I I’m on the sidelines yelling at the players. It’s a little different setup.

Kevin Daisey (33:10)
Yeah. Well, but at the same time, know, willing and able, right? So we could have plenty of prospects that are able to pay, but not willing to put in the time on the firm side.

Steve Fretzin (33:19)
Right on. Yeah.

I noticed I got into marketing for a few years and I got out of it very quickly because I started to realize, you know, it was like pulling teeth to get them to send me a blog or to send me their website revisions or the stuff that just I thought was like, no brainer. I’ll get this done for you in a month. The website done for you in a month. No, not the case.

Kevin Daisey (33:36)
Yeah. Improve their intake.

Yeah. Improves your intake. You’re dropping calls or sending leads, but you’re not filling up, filing up fast enough or, their sales stock, their business development is not good. There’s a lot we can’t control. ⁓ but we lean a lot more into that stuff because if that’s broken, we, we, we hit a wall at some point we can’t do more. So, those are all really good stuff.

Steve Fretzin (33:44)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (33:58)
You know, ⁓ super important for law firms or lawyers, think quick story. Most of my firms that we work with Steve are obviously established firms with many lawyers. ⁓ they hire us to their marketing. So don’t interact with, ⁓ individual lawyers inside a firm very often, but I was brought into a firm by a friend of mine who’s the head of marketing. They’re a general practice firm.

He’s like, Hey, would you come just talk to my lawyers? got like 30 lawyers that are signed up. I go to the conference room and talk to them. And before that, the marketing guy goes, yes, I have this one lawyer who has his own website. He’s got a Google business profile. He blogs, he’s on social media. He’s doing SEO, but he works for the firm. He’s not an owner. He’s just an individual inside the firm. I want to try to get my other lawyers.

to do even a little bit of what he’s doing. They all have their own budget for marketing. And I said, okay, that’s weird. Different anyway. And so I go speak to these folks and I prepared a whole presentation starting at like the basics networking, you know, business development stuff that you would be talking about. And it went all the way to like more technical stuff, SEO and blah, blah. Well, so I sampled the room first.

And I said, who here has, the wrong website. None of them. Who here has Facebook or does social media or LinkedIn? None of them. Who here has, like, I was like running out of things. was like, who here has a plan once a month for networking? Nobody. No one raised their hand. You all have a marketing budget that the firm is providing to you.

And the more money you bring in, higher that budget gets. And so I, my whole presentation, I just had to sit there and scrap almost the whole thing and just talk to them and say, you need to be networking every week. What are you doing to make time for it? Blah, blah, blah. Just going through the basics, LinkedIn basics. So I had to kind of like change my talk up. And so what I did, said, all right, what lawyer in the firm makes them brings in the most money?

Steve Fretzin (35:38)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Daisey (35:54)
And they mentioned the guy that was not even at the room. He didn’t attend.

Steve Fretzin (35:58)
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (36:00)
So I said, so he’s not here. He has all the things that I was talking about that you should do. And he’s the highest performing lawyer in the firm.

Like, I don’t know what else to tell you guys.

Steve Fretzin (36:11)
Yeah, case case case closed, you know, right? We just we just saw we just saw the mystery, you know. Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (36:14)
So that happened not, was a, that was recently and it’s a very

big successful firm, but,

Steve Fretzin (36:22)
I Kevin, one

of the reasons I don’t work with law firms anymore, I gave up law firms about five years ago, was because they wanted me to come in and solve their problems and the problems that you just mentioned with this 30 person firm. And that is they’re trying to get their people to do something they don’t want to do. And there’s probably 5 % of the legal population that actively wants to and is performing business development and marketing on a regular basis, plan, execution.

And those are the people you think you and I are looking for. We’re looking for the people that get it and are openly active and open to new ideas and directions. And they would give me 10 lawyers, a firm would give me 10 lawyers and there’d be one superstar, rock star that would do everything I said and would kill it. There’d be one or two that were like, this makes sense. They’d get the plan. They’d start doing some good activity. There’d be seven that just can’t wait to get back to their desk to bill hours again.

And so here I am working, getting paid for 10 people, really working with three and everybody loved it. Everybody talked, said great things and it’s wonderful. I don’t care about accolades. I care about results. And I just decide, I’m like, you know what? I talk firms out of spending money on business development training all the time. I go, look, you want to throw money away. I’ve got a great idea for you. Pay for 20 year people to go through business development.

Kevin Daisey (37:24)
Your results.

Steve Fretzin (37:38)
because you’re going to spend a hundred grand or whatever, and you’re not going to get jack out of it other than maybe a couple of people. Send me one or two. Let’s talk about who your best one or two are. And I’ve got a number of firms around the country that that’s what they do. They just send me their one or two best and brightest, the ones that want to make equity, they’re motivated. And I still evaluate the junk out of those folks because I’m not going to work with just anybody as you have picked up on.

Kevin Daisey (38:02)
That’s clear.

Steve Fretzin (38:03)
I yeah, but there was one guy, he was like, he’s all full of himself and he’s this big shot in the, in the cannabis space and he’s got this going on and that going on. was like, yeah, your ego is so big and you know, just cause you know, he’s got $5 million. So of course, you know, he’s the greatest thing, but I’m like, the reason they want to do it because cannabis is kind not going away. It’s way down. So he’s going to go from a $5 million book to a two and a half million dollar book pretty quickly. If he doesn’t take some dramatic action, but the ego was such that he’s never going to take coaching from me. And.

you know, that’s why it’s so important going back to sort of the beginning of our conversation, you know, to identify the fit and to fully evaluate people before you engage. so anyway, but that’s, that that’s at the heart of what business development’s all about. It’s, it’s about finding the perfect fit and getting in front of enough qualified people and then finding that fit. And, and then I think it’d just be a happier lawyer.

Kevin Daisey (38:52)
100 % 100%. I love it. We’re on the same page for sure Steve. So, well, I appreciate you coming on and share today. If, if you’re listening, you don’t know Steve, you don’t follow Steve. I’d be surprised, but check him out.

Steve Fretzin (39:04)
Sure loss. No, I’m just kidding.

But look, I’ve got the Be That Lawyer podcast. I’ve got five books on Amazon. The most recent one, Be That Lawyer, 101 Top Rainmaker Secrets to Growing a Successful Law Practice. I think Erik was in there, was in the book. It’s one of the chapters. It’s 100 chapters of top lawyers sharing their best tips and secrets. I write for Above the Law, so I’ve got a monthly column, maybe sometimes twice a month, and they put up my podcast videos. So.

Kevin Daisey (39:18)
I think he might have been.

I see those

come out.

Steve Fretzin (39:30)
you

know, lots of great ways to get to know me and I’m on LinkedIn, obviously.

Kevin Daisey (39:34)
Yeah, there’s no, no shortage of ways to find Steve. ⁓ I see his content on a daily basis, whether or not he knows it. Yeah. No, definitely not. Never too much. That’s the other thing, put out content. There’s never like the think that someone that might’ve seen it, every single piece of content and they’re annoyed by it. That’s crazy. A small percentage of your followers see anything you post. So you got to post often. So.

Steve Fretzin (39:40)
Maybe too much, right? I’m starting to think maybe too much content. Is that a thing? No, okay. Okay.

Kevin Daisey (39:59)
Steve, I appreciate it, man. Please reach out to Steve, y’all, if you got any questions at all. He’s got so much information on how to grow your firm, how to grow as a lawyer, if you’re a solo or internal to a firm. So please connect with him. Steve, thanks so much. Anything else you want to share before we go?

Steve Fretzin (40:15)
Thanks, Kevin.

Hey, no, man, just I’m just so appreciative of being on your show and being able to have this conversation and maybe enlighten a few folks on what’s going on out there. But just blessed to be in the position I’m in to help people in the way I do and that that we could collaborate. Thanks, man.

Kevin Daisey (40:33)
I appreciate everyone. See you in the next episode and thank you for tuning in as always. We’ll see you soon.