James Rodgers: Rethinking Workplace Diversity for the Future

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and James Rodgers discuss:

• Evolution and confusion surrounding DEI in the workplace
• Human nature’s role in shaping workplace dynamics
• AI and automation as the next diversity challenge
• Managing generational differences in the workforce

Key Takeaways:

• DEI has repeatedly risen and fallen as activists and organizations redefine it, creating confusion over its true purpose.
• The next diversity challenge extends beyond human differences to integrating AI, robotics, and automation into the workforce.
• Instead of hiring based on identity markers like race or gender, leaders should prioritize missing perspectives that drive innovation and problem-solving.
• Effectively managing generational differences requires direct engagement with individuals rather than relying on broad assumptions about their work ethics or expectations.

“Forty years ago, the new reality was that there was going to be a new mix of human beings in the workplace. Now, the new reality is that there is going to be a mix of humans and non-human entities in the workplace.” —  James Rodgers

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Episode References: 

Behind The Human with Marc Champagne: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-human-with-marc-champagne/id1342231432

About James Rodgers: Dr. James O. Rodgers, known as “The Diversity Coach,” has spent 35+ years pioneering diversity management as a core enterprise discipline. Recognized as the #1 thought leader in the field, his books Managing Differently and Diversity Training That Generates Real Change are used in MBA programs and corporate initiatives worldwide. By blending sound management principles with practical diversity strategies, he emphasizes simplicity, pragmatism, and sustainability. He also coaches C-suite executives and directs the Executive Academy of ITSMF, preparing leaders of color for a changing world.

Connect with James Rodgers:  

Website: http://jamesorodgers.com/

Email: jora@thediversitycoach.com

Book: https://www.amazon.com/stores/James-O.-Rodgers/author/B001K7Y9WC

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesorodgers/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/51680091/admin/dashboard/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/james.rodgers.14661261/ & https://www.facebook.com/epiphanythebooks/

Connect with Steve Fretzin:

LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin

Twitter: @stevefretzin

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Website: Fretzin.com

Email: Steve@Fretzin.com

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Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Steve Fretzin: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody, before we get to the show, I want to just take a moment to do our audience Q and a, this one’s coming from Noel from DC. And he’s asking, I’ve been speaking on my subject for years and haven’t landed any business from it. How do I build brand while also generating new originations? And for those who don’t know in originations is new business.

So a couple of things. Number one is make sure that the places you’re speaking are useful, meaning they’re full of prospective clients and strategic partners. If you’re only speaking to people that are your peers that are looking for your free advice, that may be the first thing to take into consideration because you’re, they’re not going to send business.

They might send business your way, but they’re not going to do business with you. Number two is I would always recommend that people try to get a survey conducted at the end of a presentation that gets you feedback on the presentation, but also says at the last question could be something along the lines of do you have an interest in talking with me more about my services?

And those surveys get completed like any [00:01:00] survey would, but if you have 50 people in a room and five or six say, yes, I’m interested in talking with you, you may be able to follow up with five or six people that could do business with you. So it’s a very simple thing, but it isn’t being done for most speak engagements.

I always ask the person that invites me to speak. Can I do a survey? Can I ask these questions? Can you help me with that? Or is that on my own? And I always want them to say yes and try to get them to say yes, because that’s how we can actually follow up with people who. Have an interest in, and not just everybody who’s there to get free advice, which is great, but not helping for the business development right away.

Anyway, thanks Noel for the great question and enjoy the show. Everybody.

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 Brinson, we’ll take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here’s your host.[00:02:00]

Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, welcome back. It’s Steve Fretzin. I’m just so happy that you’re with us today. We have such an incredible lineup of guests that I’m so privileged to interview on this podcast. It just thrills me. And sometimes I’m lucky enough to get one back and today’s no different. Just so thrilled. If you guys are here on this show for the first time whether you’ve picked it up on above the law.

you’re Or just on your phone or any, from my endless marketing hopefully that you’re getting great takeaways and tips every single week, twice a week to be that lawyer. Someone who’s confident, organized and a skilled Rainmaker. I’ve got my buddy Jim here today. Hey Jim, how you doing? Hey, Steve, good to see you, my friend.

It’s so good to see you. I think we absolutely crushed our last podcast together. It was, maybe at the height of the diversity, equity, inclusion movement, and I had you on to talk about it, and I have you here for a different reason today the demise of it, I think, but we’re going to get into the weeds, I think, pretty heavily in that, but I just want to welcome you to the show, and let’s talk about your quote of the show.

Which I really find interesting. So it’s here. It is. It was a Bertrand Russell. Okay, the fact that an idea is [00:03:00] generally accepted as true is no indication that it’s not totally absurd. So welcome to the show and tell us about that quote. Why is that your quote of the show?

James Rodgers: Steve, for the longest, I’ve been frustrated with the direction of diversity.

Equity inclusion or whatever they’re calling it now. And now you know the history of it. They just changed letters once every five years, but just so they can. Yeah, I’ve been looking for who to blame for the madness that’s going on. And I started with diversity practitioners, chief diversity officers, and I moved on to CEOs.

And I finally landed on human nature. Human nature kind of latches on to what I call meme adoption. We think of memes as a new phenomenon because of the internet, memes have been around forever. Someone plants an idea in a culture and everybody latches on to it. They don’t ask questions. They don’t think about it.

They just say, if I’m part of this trap, this is what I have to believe. And so Bertrand Russell’s quote, you always think that [00:04:00] you’re inventing something, so I’m the first one that ever thought about this until I did a little search and found this quote. It says the fact that an idea is generally accepted.

As true that everybody is repeating it. Everybody is saying that’s the way to go is no indication that it’s not totally absurd. And the only way you find out that it is totally absurd is by backing up thinking, asking questions, making a rational assessment of what that quote unquote truth really means.

And does it really stack up to the facts on the table?

Steve Fretzin: Yeah, and I think with whether it’s social media or the media or just the political environment, which we’re not going to get into right too much, is this is like the new normal. And I don’t know that, and I’m concerned because critical thinking, I’m not saying the younger generation struggles with it, but.

Things have been made fairly easy for them. And so now when we talk about tough times and challenges, it’s, I think it’s even more, more difficult for the, millennials are now [00:05:00] becoming like, the promise children and the Gen Z’s are really, the ones that we’re seeing really struggling.

James Rodgers: Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. I think we, there’s a couple of things that happened in our society that we stopped teaching certain things. We stopped focusing on critical thinking. We start just passing information on in schools. And information, as does not produce learning. There’s a process that I teach in all of my classes.

About how adults learn. It begins with information. Of course, information comes in 99 percent of it goes right out the other ear. But the 1 percent that stays, I converted to knowledge. That’s interesting. That’s something I can use. But that knowledge then has to be converted to learning.

Learning means that I’m going to change my behavior. This is so profound for me that it’s going to affect how I show up in the world. And so Malcolm knows in his great book, The Adult Learner, laid that out for us and I’m finding it to be so true. So I don’t promote a lot of [00:06:00] information. I try to get, catch people where, what is your question?

I, I told people a lot of times, wisdom can’t be imposed. You really have to wait for the person to ask the question for you to answer it. That’s really what it’s about, is moving people to behavior change by getting them to learn what they need to learn in order to make that change.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And for everybody listening and already, interested in learning more and hearing more from my friend, Jim Rogers, he’s a principal at the Diversity Coach and give us a little background. People that missed the first episode we did a few years ago, tell us a little bit about your background, how you came to be and how you became an expert at DEI.

James Rodgers: Good. So what’s interesting in my being in this field is I’m an engineer by training. I have an engineering degree. I have an MBA and I also have a doctorate in management. So I come to this with a more of a practitioner’s point of view. I am not a social activist. I am not an HR guy. I am a business analyst.

So I started off my career as an executive on a fast track executive program, made it to top [00:07:00] management, and at some point in time Was given new orders by the boss upstairs and said, you need to leave this. I got something else for you to do. I stepped out on that and began my management consulting.

I started off as a good engineer doing total quality management, some good geeky stuff. But then I went and met with one of my old friends in the corporation that I love. And she said, Jim does this new thing out here called diversity. And I think you really need to take a look at it because your business orientation could really add a lot of value to that.

And I said, oh, that diversity, that sounds like affirmative action and race. That’s not what I do. Somebody else does that. That’s not what I do. But I met Roosevelt Thomas. Who was the father of the diversity movement. He lived right here in my community. We spent a lot of time together. I got to understand his philosophy.

I even expanded on his philosophy and I found that there is absolute value in learning to manage a new reality. That new reality [00:08:00] is the workplace is going to be made up of different types of people boom. What a revelation. And now that we’ve got that revelation, we have to shift our thinking, our knowledge base, our skill base, in order to get world class results from that new mix of people.

And I say mix on purpose, because the definition of diversity is not black, gay, and female. The definition of diversity is the collective mix, which includes all archetypes of humankind. And the minute we get that, understand that, we’ll stop making the stupid mistakes that we’re making now of assigning the wrong motive to diversity movement, adding letters, thinking that’s cleverly going to somehow change the process or the outcomes that we get.

So that’s really how I got to be. This is really about being a thoughtful engineering oriented business oriented person who saw some value. And the idea of managing a new [00:09:00] reality.

Steve Fretzin: Now, one of the most profound things that you said in the episode we did together last time was. That an organization needs to have a reason to have D.

I. not just do it because that’s what everyone’s saying you need to do and I’ve got I’ve actually repeated that a few times and then people look at me like I’m insane because they’re like, yeah, you’re a white guy saying you don’t need D. I. and. I was just quoting my friend, Jim Rogers, who basically said no, why first, so welcome to my world.

Steve, you’re

James Rodgers: a black guy and you say you don’t need the,

Steve Fretzin: yeah, all right two peas in a pod, I guess the, so talk about where things were even a few months ago and where things are. And what do you think contributed to the demise of it? I know you mentioned just human behavior, but let’s just play that back a little bit and take us forward.

James Rodgers: Let me give you a little ancient history first. Forty years ago, when the diversity movement started, people talk about it starting way back in the civil rights movement. We did not. It started in the mid 80s. [00:10:00] When Dr. Roosevelt Thomas noticed that there was a study that said the makeup of the workplace was going to be increasingly diverse, with more women, more immigrants, more people of color, more openly gay people, all of these categories of people that we were not used to managing.

And Dr. Roosevelt Thomas’s response to that is say, Hey, we’re not used to it. We need to catch up. We need to upgrade our skills. We need a new process and new knowledge base, a new attitude about the people at work. So that was the beginning of diversity management. In the early years, it was adopted by 250 major CEOs of Fortune 500 companies who said that’s exactly what we need, that’s the opportunity for us to address a vexing and tough problem in a way that fits the way we do things, a business oriented doing thing.

And so we got results. We start seeing companies coming out with better products and having better situations for their employees. But then, unfortunately, a good idea [00:11:00] adopted by people with money, you’re going to get a lot of people who latch on to it. So people in the civil rights movement, from the feminist movement, from the ableist movement, ageism, all of that start calling their work diversity.

And once you do that, you introduce confusion. So when we say the word diversity, the first question that pops in your mind, that no one ever asked, by the way, what do you mean by diversity? We just assume that it’s, you should know, so you better not ask. And everybody, I used to do this when I was, and I’m going to start speaking again.

I used to do this, I asked people, give me four or five people to define diversity for me. And in a room of 100 people, I get 200 different definitions. None of them agree. They don’t know. They just know that. If I’m on the right is something that I’m again, if I’m on the left is something that I have to be for.

But what is it? No one knows. So what’s happened recently is that’s when people talk about, oh, ain’t it [00:12:00] awful that they’re killing diversity. This is the 6th time diversity has died. I talked to young young practitioners and said, Oh man, this is the first, this is, we were on a roll, and all of a sudden they’re killing it.

I said, nothing new here. After that first wave, diversity got to be a dirty word, and then something happened socially, and we picked it up again, a worse version, and then it died. And then another version came along, and it died. This is just the sixth time that this has happened. And it’s all because people don’t listen to people like me to say, Hey, folks, wet back up.

This is not that difficult. It’s a simple, elegant, practical, logical process of managing enterprises so that you get better results. There’s a new reality. Let’s face it and let’s get ourselves prepared for it. Unfortunately, the political and social activists always win. They have the loudest voices and the biggest platform.

And when they have an agenda, even if they’re using your language and misusing it and perverting it, their [00:13:00] meme is going to win in the marketplace. As I told someone recently, I said Dr. Rogers, you really need to get out there and tell people that. I said, I can’t scream loud enough to be heard over all that noise.

I have to find other ways, like coming on the Steve Preston show to talk to intelligent people and say, hey, folks, what you’re doing is crazy. There is a better way, and it’s called diversity management. Let me, I’m

Steve Fretzin: going to throw a weird one at you. I’m not going to say the name of the organization, but there’s an organization that I involve myself with where they really put forward DEI as a really big and big part of their business.

And I’m not saying right or wrong. I just want to get your take on it. You’re the expert. And basically it was saying, go out and find black and Latino and women, people for these white male groups and let’s get diversity. And that was their, that’s their DEI initiative, right or wrong.

James Rodgers: Wrong. When you’re looking for anything, membership, employees, whatever, your first question is What perspective is missing on my team?

[00:14:00] And you go and recruit for that. Don’t go and recruit for Brown skin or female gender or gay sexual orientation, you recruit for perspective and you group for perspective because we want a person on this team that will help us solve problems better. That will help us to predict better. That will help us produce more innovation.

We’re a good team right now. We could be better if we had different perspectives. People who come at it from the standpoint of, there’s history and, the outcomes, adverse outcomes and all of that, they’re not being thoughtful. I’m just inviting them to think, what is the real outcome you want?

You want productive teams. You want better outcomes for those teams. And you’re not going to get that by artificially saying, we need to have more brown skin people or more female people or more white men. None of that makes sense if you think about it.

Steve Fretzin: And that was, your logic resonates with me.

And then when I see people that aren’t following that logic, I’m not like [00:15:00] Someone who’s going to, rock the boat, but I’m just going to step back and let people do what they do and say, Hey, that’s probably not going to impact me. Just what I did with proven SEO and digital marketing strategies that drive actual clients to your firm rankings.

io prides itself on proof, not promises mentality. The best firms hire rankings. io when they want rankings, traffic, and cases. Other law firm marketing agencies can’t deliver. Get more rankings, get cases, and schedule a free consultation at Rankings. io today. Hey everybody, Steve Fretzin here. Man, I thought I was a good marketer, but maybe not.

Lawyers have been approaching me asking, What’s the Rainmakers Roundtable? I tell them this is a special place created exclusively for rainmaking lawyers to continue their journey of prosperity. Our program is unique as every member has a significant book of business and is motivated to grow it year after year.

Where else does this exist? If you’re a managing partner who’s looking to get off your lonely island and talk shop with America’s top Rainmakers, please go to my website, Fretzin. [00:16:00] com and apply for membership today. So then what are some new initiatives that you’re leading that help navigate these new changes?

Cause now people are thinking, all right, so DI is dead or it’s, another death. It’s a sixth one. And what do we need to do then to navigate the changes? Because of this, it’s, Law firms that have, these initiatives that whether they’re right or wrong or confused, they need to start making some different decisions.

James Rodgers: Yeah. I was contacted by a reporter for a major magazine and he asked me that question and I said, with the demise of it creates an opportunity for us to get out of this perpetual do loop of arguing about something that neither side understands. One of the things that I’m promoting right now is, and I started this last year, long before the tech companies got wind of it, is this whole idea of AI, IOT robots, machines.

[00:17:00] Being a part of the workforce. Being physically a part of the workforce, I work next to another human being who’s not like me. So we have to get used to each other. But now I’m going to be working right next to a machine and a agent that’s making some of the decisions and also doing some of the wrote repetitive work on my team.

I’ve got to learn how to deal that. Yeah. I got a thing called the new diversity mix. Now, what that creates for us. It’s an opportunity to move to the new reality. 40 years ago. The new reality was, there’s going to be a new mix of human beings in the workplace. Now, the new reality is there’s going to be a mix of humans and non human entities in the workplace.

The same technology that we use to deal with that first problem is the same technology we need to use to deal with this second problem. It is called diversity management. It is calling upskilling yourself is calling increasing your knowledge and shifting your attitude about [00:18:00] how work is done. So that’s really what I’m promoting.

I started with technology. People primarily Steve, because they’re the ones who understand that when I said you’re going to be working with machines. They wouldn’t push back and say, Oh, no, that’s futuristic. That’s science fiction. They know that it is true as we speak. It is true as we speak. And so we still have to adjust to that new reality.

And fortunately, Dr. Thomas put on the table and I expanded a technology. I call it a technology. It’s a way of looking at the management function so that you can adapt to whatever entities show up in your workplace. Workplace dynamics is a function of who shows up in your workplace. And if you’re able to utilize all of that talent and all of that capability, To get world class results.

That is the bottom line. That is what you’re looking for. I

Steve Fretzin: mean, that’s really what all businesses want is they want fluid, profitable [00:19:00] businesses. That’s what everybody’s out for at the end of the day. And the things that get confused with DEI and that can confused with lack of process or management and all that is where many of them fall apart.

What actionable steps can leaders and lawyers take to salvage the intent, if not the language of diversity and inclusion?

James Rodgers: I’m glad you put it that way. Salvage the intent. Don’t worry about the language. The language is irrelevant. But see, I’ve gone through this with something I call language roulette.

In the diversity movement, there has been. We started with managing diversity. We converted it to diversity management. Then we added inclusion, diversity, and inclusion. Then other people said that’s missing some pieces. What about belonging? What about acceptance? What about, and so we started seeing people managing the Office of diversity was the office of D-E-I-B-D-E-A-I-B-D-E-B-I plus, and all of that stuff.

That’s foolishness. What we ought to do is focus on the intent. [00:20:00] Nietzsche said the most fundamental form of human stupidity is forgetting what we were trying to do in the first place. So we do stupid stuff because we don’t do our homework and say why don’t we start the diversity movement?

Diversity happened first. We didn’t get a choice about diversity. What we do get a choice about is, are we going to manage it? Are we going to respond to it? Are we going to adapt to the fact that the workplace, society is changing, the makeup of folks around us is changing, and now we have to deal with the fact that in addition to humans, we’re going to have non sentient beings working with us in the workplace.

What leaders can do is stop sitting on the sideline and actually get personally involved in the intent. So that they don’t make decisions. I have to say, unfortunately, and I know a lot of really smart chief diversity offices, head of global diversity, and they have done nothing but ruin the field. What I mean by that is.

The C. [00:21:00] E. O. chooses them for the wrong reasons, and then they do the work in the wrong way. So the C. E. O. If you’re going to be a leader, you have to leave. You have to say, okay, this is how I’m going to run this enterprise. This is how we’re going to manage our people. This is how we’re going to respond to the fact of diversity.

And AI diversity in the workplace. This is what throwing the gauntlet down. This is how we’re going to do it. So social activists, you may disagree with me. You’re fine with your disagreement, but this is what we’re going to do. That’s what we call leadership. Leadership is firm and decisive. And clear as clarity, the only thing a leader requires is vulnerability enough to say, I’m clear about where we’re going.

But I can’t get there without your help. So that’s how you engage people as a leader to get them to say. Do you believe in where we’re going and how are we going to get there? Good. I need your help. Let’s go. Let’s get it done.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah.

James Rodgers: I see the [00:22:00] same thing because lawyers have great influence in with clients and within organizations that they work with.

And if they equip themselves with this type of simple statement of the fact, they can help their clients to thrive.

Steve Fretzin: I want to go back to something we, I brought up just tangentially earlier, which was about the new kids on the block. How many generations do we have working together in a workforce?

It’s four, maybe five in some instances, and they’re, some lawyers never retire. They’re nineties out there. Just crank it out. But like in fortune magazine, there was something about bosses are firing Gen Z grads just month after hiring them. And it’s just I think. Five or 10 years ago, it was the Gen X and older complaining about the millennials.

And now I think even the millennials are like these Gen Zs today. So how does that play a role in, recruiting for perspective or from diversity standpoint, and how do we manage people that are just, they’re built, not the same way that the older generations are built?

James Rodgers: You’re going to be surprised at this answer.

What we need to [00:23:00] do is remember, say we have these young kids coming in and they’re fired up and hopped up and they want this and they want that. I remember somebody like that. It was called me. Guilty as charged, Jim. Guilty as charged. I’m telling you, we make it like it’s all about this new generation that just, no, this new generation is like you until we learn that there is a process.

There’s a way that we get things done. This is how it is work. We are open to, and in fact, invite your perspective and your point of view, but here is what has worked. So at least consider this as you think about what you expect out of your work experience. I think we just have to again, the whole vision of diversity.

Is to help all humankind to relate to all humankind. And be more productive in the workplace. So that means an older person has to get used to a younger person. How do you do that? You sit down and talk to them. And you don’t ask them your generation. You ask, Bob, [00:24:00] what do you want in work? How can I help you get that?

What do I do that gets in the way of you being at your best? What can I do to help you be at your best? Simple questions like that is called good management. And if we practice that, all this generational nonsense will go away.

Steve Fretzin: I think it’s also you’ve got to look at what the job requires and you have to interview to that job.

If you’re looking for someone that’s going to, put the heart and soul into something and they’re saying, Hey, what time is lunch? And, I don’t work on Fridays and I’m going to work from home every day. That’s not someone you hire if you need them in the office working 50, 60 hours a week or whatever it is.

Be smart about it. And again, I think that’s going to be, there’s always the, they can always do YouTube stuff, right? So there’s a backup plan for the Gen Z. Now I’m just messing with you guys. I look, I actually find that some of the Gen Z’s are some of the most ambitious and coachable hungry people I’ve ever met.

They’re, I had a couple of kids come and move a couch out of my house yesterday. There’s this young man who’s at Michigan state. He’s [00:25:00] got a crew here locally in my area that comes into, and they get a truck and they take away, they couldn’t have been more pleasant, complimentary, hardworking.

What else can we do for you? Earning money. It’s, that’s what we’re looking for in our kids. And these kids, my wife even said, wow, what a nice, what a sweet group of kids. I was like, yeah, this is what, no they’re there. We just have to look. We have to maybe filter through some of the, the tick tock videos and YouTube.

James Rodgers: We filter out what’s right in front of us. There are many examples of what you just talked about. I coach people at all age levels. I don’t find them to be that different. We all want the same things. Maybe we come at it for a different state. Young kids are technology savvy before they even hit the workplace and some of us older guys have to work at that.

But the fundamental human nature is still the same, and if you are smart about selecting, you’ll select for the right attributes and not get hung up on the fact that this is a young person [00:26:00] and you know how they are. That is a phrase that I used to use in my training all the time. That’s what hangs us up.

You don’t know how they are until you sit and talk to them and find out how they are. The generation does not tell you who they are.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. I have a friend who observed me being difficult with my teenager and being disciplining him and just not giving in. He’s gonna, he crashed his car into another car.

Nobody got hurt, but nobody was in the car. He only hits inanimate objects, by the way. He never gets in accidents with people, but he’s got to pay for it. And he’s wow. And normally, some, just okay, insurance will pay for it. And we’re going to pay, but he’s going to pay the deductible and he’s going to pay his insurance moving forward.

So that’s what a mean dad or geez, what a that’s so much discipline. No. This is what needs to happen. I think because, they need obstacles in front of them in order to, what life is. They get into the workforce and they’ve never had obstacles that they’re going to have a boss.

That’s going to put them through a wall. Hey, Jim, we got to wrap up, man. But I still appreciate this. Let’s talk about your game changing podcast. I think you mentioned you were on this one recently [00:27:00] behind the human podcast.

James Rodgers: Yeah, it was from a new friend of mine, Mark Champagne, up in Canada. He wrote a book called The Personal Socrates.

And what he does is he interviews people who have solid life philosophies, and he tries to learn from everybody’s philosophy. And as you and I have talked for a long time, I have a way of looking at the world in which is informs even my work in diversity and allows me to love all people, et cetera, et cetera.

And so he interviewed me on that, and I read his book and I know some other people that he’s talked to. So I’m really intrigued by the idea of many years ago. I put down in my journal. Why am I here as a person? And I concluded I’m here to collect wisdom and then dispense it to people who need it. I think wisdom is so important in how we navigate life.

It goes beyond knowledge, goes beyond information. Wisdom is the simplest way to navigate the difficult times of life. So I found myself as [00:28:00] a purveyor of wisdom. So I found his program to be quite interesting because there’s nothing new under the sun. I read his book and every time he said, Oh yeah, that’s absolutely true because I have lived it.

But the fact that other people have caught it and codified it is also encouraging to know that we as a human species, we will probably survive.

Steve Fretzin: I hope so. We got a lot of writing on it. Really cool. I’ll check that out. Also, if anybody wants to hear my initial interview with Jim a few years ago, it’s episode 132, we’re coming up on 500 Jim.

Can you believe that? Oh my goodness. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it’s really exciting. And we’re we’re syndicated with Above the Law now that started and Really cool stuff. Let’s go ahead and take a moment to thank our sponsors. Of course, the law, her podcast check that out with Sonia.

She’s amazing. And rankings IO and the PymCon conference is coming up in October. And I think you can pre register for that. Everybody, if you want to go to PymCon, it’s. Like a first class experience. Everyone that goes, the reason he’s doing it again is because everybody had such an unbelievable [00:29:00] experience.

Otherwise I don’t think Chris would have done it again, but it’s coming back because it was so successful. Hey, Jim, if people want to get in touch with you, they want to talk to you, learn more from you, interview you, whatever it might be, what are the best ways for them to reach out?

James Rodgers: One of those two primary ways through my website, jamesorogers.

com. Roger spelled with the D R O G R S. And also, I’m very active on LinkedIn. So if you go to my LinkedIn page, james O. Rogers, I believe it is. You’re phoning me.

Steve Fretzin: What’s LinkedIn? My first

James Rodgers: time.

Steve Fretzin: Nah, I’m just kidding. I’m just busting. I’m all over LinkedIn.

James Rodgers: People Funny little site, that Yeah.

Steve Fretzin: Cute little

James Rodgers: site. It’s like Facebook.

Steve Fretzin: It’s like Facebook, but a thousand times better. Listen, man, such a pleasure. I just can’t tell you how much I appreciate you coming back on the show, sharing your wisdom and helping us all get a grip around what’s been going on, whether you’re at a firm or your work, you run a firm.

I think this kind of information is going to be critical to how you proceed forward. So thanks again, and let’s keep in the loop. We got blog casts. I think our blog cast came out not too long ago, which was a the written version of our initial [00:30:00] interview. And of course now things have changed considerably, we’ll have to do another blog cast and put that out.

But thanks again, man. Appreciate you. Dave. I’m very proud of you. Keep doing what you’re doing. Thank you. I will. And everybody else should be proud of me too, because what I’m doing is putting together Amazing guests every single week, twice a week to help you be that lawyer, confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker.

Take care, everybody be safe. Be well. We will talk again soon.

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.