Belle Walker: The Lawyer’s Guide to Delegation, Efficiency, and Sustainable Success

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Belle Walker discuss:

• Why law firms struggle with inefficiencies and miscommunication
• The impact of unclear roles and accountability gaps in law firms
• How legal technology and AI are changing law firm operations
• Why structured processes are essential for business growth and client satisfaction

Key Takeaways:

• Lawyers often assume their team understands their expectations, but without clear and explicit communication, misalignment can lead to inefficiencies, missed deadlines, and frustration for both staff and clients.
• Law firms aiming for maximum efficiency sometimes eliminate too much redundancy, making them less resilient when unexpected challenges arise, so finding the right balance between streamlining and maintaining flexibility is critical.
• Leveraging automation tools and legal technology can significantly reduce manual workload and improve accuracy, but firms must carefully assess their processes and ensure proper adoption to avoid resistance and implementation failures.
• Successfully implementing operational changes in a law firm requires leaders to communicate the ‘why’ behind the change, focusing on goals and benefits rather than simply dictating new processes, which helps secure team buy-in and long-term success.

“Documentation goes a long way, and the lawyers themselves don’t need to be the ones doing the documentation.” —  Belle Walker

Got a challenge growing your law practice? Email me at steve@fretzin.com with your toughest question, and I’ll answer it live on the show—anonymously, just using your first name!

Thank you to our Sponsors!

Rankings.io: https://rankings.io/

Rainmakers Roundtable: https://www.fretzin.com/lawyer-coaching-and-training/peer-advisory-groups/

Episode References: 

Perform To Win by Mark Powell & Jonathan Gifford: https://www.amazon.com/Perform-Win-Unlocking-Personal-Business/dp/1910649252

About Belle Walker: Belle Walker, Founder and CEO of Belleview Consulting, takes organizations from Friction to Function, recapturing lost efficiency and engagement for companies across industries. Now the international bestselling author of Generation Innovation and a TEDx speaker, Belle has also built several successful teams for HERE Technology, including one responsible for the quality of maps for autonomous vehicles, and received two patents. Belle’s career began at Google, building a nation-wide aerial photography operation, and she has led numerous different teams since. Belle holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from Harvard and a Systems Engineering master’s from the University of Southern California, where her research studied organizations as systems.

Connect with Belle Walker: 

Website: https://belleviewconsulting.com/

Email: belle@belleviewconsulting.com

Book: Generation Innovation: https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Innovation-Business-Journey-Success/dp/B0CP5RYFKH/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bellekwalker/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/belleview-consulting/

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

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

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Steve Fretzin: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. And before we get to the interview, I want to just take a moment to do our Q and a for the show. It’s a Steve from Portland, Oregon. He asks, I built a strong book of business, but find that my day is overwhelmed with the business. How do I continue to build without all the crazy hours?

That’s a phenomenal question. I think that’s a rainmaker conundrum is I’m doing so well at business development that I don’t know how to handle business. A couple of thoughts. Number one, you have to delegate. I know you believe, and everyone believes that. Only you can do the work or everyone just wants you.

The reality is that many people are very open to a team approach. And as long as they know you’re quarterbacking their deal, the fact that you’re handing it off to others is a no brainer. The other is consider things like cross marketing where you’re bringing in business for your partners, but you don’t actually have to do the work.

And that may be two ideas right there that’ll get you in a much better position, Steve. To continue building your book of business and not feel like all the work is on your plate. Hopefully that’s helpful to you and everyone else. And that’s it for today on the Q and A. Enjoy the [00:01:00] 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 Fretzin will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.

Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, it’s Steve Fretzin and welcome back. It is the Be That Lawyer with Fretzin podcast. And I hope you’re having a lovely day today. I am at the end of my day and Bell’s not, you’re only one 30, I’m at what, three 30. Some people would think 3. 30 is too early or 4 o’clock is too early to end a day.

If I could end my day at 3 o’clock every day, I would. Sometimes I do, especially on Fridays. But this show is not about ending your day early, although you could certainly get efficiencies that would allow for that. This show is about helping you to be that lawyer, confident, organized, and a skilled Rainmaker.

Belle, welcome back to the [00:02:00] show. This is your second time?

Belle Walker: This is my second time, and it is a delight to be back.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah, it’s a delight to have you back. Every time you come on. It’s just a wealth of knowledge. You’re so deep and entrenched in legal entrenched in things that lawyers hate, like process and organization and crap like that, that they don’t want to hear about, but we’re going to force it down your throat today anyway, everybody, because this is, it’s so hard to focus on.

Developing strong client relationships and client quality and work and build business development if you don’t have structure in place if you’re just winging it every day i don’t know too many lawyers that do that and are successful or happy or both yeah, we’ll hit the weeds on that, but we’ve got to start off with our quote of the show, Archimedes, good old friend of mine, give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world.

So tell us a little bit about why that quote, you’ve got thousands of quotes you could have chosen, that’s the one that stuck with.

Belle Walker: I like that one in particular because I really grew up only hearing the [00:03:00] give me a lever long enough and I can move the world version of that quote. It turns out if you don’t have the fulcrum, you just have a stick.

It’s not going to move anything. It’s not going to give you any leverage. And I really the processes, the staff, they are the fulcrums of your law firms, of the legal world. They’re also the fulcrum of any organization and really the heart of what I do. And I shaped an entire TEDx talk around this concept.

So I get pretty passionate about my fulcrums. Yeah. We’re nerding

Steve Fretzin: out about fulcrums for some reason. Yeah. But I get it. But I think you’re right. It’s the processes and the infrastructure and the people that make the world go round in a law firm. And I think if you don’t have that, then everything falls apart pretty quickly.

So everybody, Bill Walker is the founder, CEO of Bellevue Consulting. Give us a little bit of a flavor of your academic and business background because it’s quite extensive.

Belle Walker: Yeah, academically, I started out doing mechanical engineering at Harvard and then ended up at [00:04:00] USC doing systems engineering. But in between the two, I worked at Google doing project management and specifically building some pretty intense operations learning how to balance deficiency with safety, usually have physical safety concerns in the legal profession, but you do absolutely have compliance and governance issues that you do need to keep top of mind that can Get in the way of efficiency.

So that’s carried over well. And I have built teams for a whole bunch of large multinationals and smaller organizations and have been consulting the last few years in this process organizational space. And with particularly a lot of law firms and it’s been fun.

Steve Fretzin: There you go. All right. And so it’s really interesting that in the conversation I want to have today is, look, lawyers.

Are, academically, really high up on the food chain. And then when it comes to the business side and the operation side and the communication side, sometimes falling short, why do you feel like lawyers struggle with [00:05:00] the operational and the communication side of the business?

Belle Walker: Generalizations are always an adventure.

I, and so I think there’s a couple of most common reasons that I see pop up. The first one is the duh. Version where a lawyer is top of the food chain and just really smart and sees how all the pieces fit together and just expects everyone else does too. It’s a variation on the read my mind mentality, but I think a much more well intentioned version where they think it’s obvious.

They think the way things should be happening and should be working. Don’t need to be stated because they’re so clear and that’s actually often a reflection of that life experience of that intelligence and so really verbalizing and articulating those expectations make a huge difference the other most common thing is that it’s boring.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah i’m not a lawyer but guilty as charged is [00:06:00] boring i got walked through a demo today and some system and some technology and i was just like holy mackerel. I am not a details person at all stuff.

Belle Walker: Yeah, it is tough, but wherever possible, I always recommend if you can think of a metaphor that anchors you that you’re really passionate about, if you’re a sports person, really thinking through, do you want to operate more like a soccer team or more like a baseball team or more like a football team?

And yeah, There are nuances in how you think about your squads and who’s playing and who’s on the bench and what the specialties are that vary across different sports and how crucial any individual is. If you’re more of a music person do you run a jazz band? Do you have a symphony orchestra where everyone’s following sheet music in one conductor?

I personally like mechanical structures. There’s different ways to build those. It doesn’t matter what it is. What’s important is that you have a way of thinking about your organization and how you see your firm working together. And that metaphor and abstraction can really help other people click in and shortcut some of that [00:07:00] mental modeling.

Steve Fretzin: Okay. And so the firms that are currently in place, a 10 person firm, a 50 person firm, a 100 person firm and plus, Where are the breakdowns typically occurring that you’re running into? You’re in the weeds with these folks. Where are you seeing breakdowns where things like that you do would come in handy?

Belle Walker: Yeah, I see a lot of breakdowns in terms of the who does what, where the lawyer especially will think, okay, I’m taking care of the law. My staff is dealing with everything else, right? And they have that kind of mental, especially when you’re getting into that 10 person getting between 10 and 50, where I start to see that breakdown by 50, they’ve usually figured out.

You have to be specific and explicit about all what that other stuff is. And it’s been documented. It’s been allocated and assigned. When you’re 10 people, you’re just starting to hit that breaking point of the small team. There’s only one or two people doing all the stuff, so it’s pretty [00:08:00] clear. By 10, you have to start really having conversations and thinking through what has to happen and get it assigned.

Steve Fretzin: Okay, got it. And one of the things that I’m seeing a lot of is breakdown in communication between the lawyer and the paralegal, the lawyer and the partner and the associate of, either who’s doing what, or maybe the work isn’t coming back, like to the lawyer, to the senior partners then there’s generational gaps.

There’s all kinds of things going on that are putting an oil, a fly in the ointment, if you will.

Belle Walker: And one thing that I think can cause an extra layer of miscommunication and confusion is the tension between efficiency and resilience. And that’s, those are two buzzwords that have been really popular the last couple years.

And a lot of folks don’t realize that they are intention. And the more efficient and optimized you are, the less redundancy you have, right? And the less redundancy you have, the less resilient you are to blips and surprises and [00:09:00] hiccups in the road. And so I think that’s also one of the areas where communication tends to fall off.

You’re really trying to optimize and streamline and cut back on the meetings and cut back on the unnecessary chatter. And then those gaps, the generational gaps, the expertise gaps. Start to open up wider and wider when you have less of that communication. So I’m not advocating for absolute redundancy in all areas, but really being strategic and thinking through where are the areas where we’ve got a weakness and we need to be reinforcing with that communication.

Versus where are the areas where, yeah, things are running smoothly and we can maybe lean it out a little bit.

Steve Fretzin: Is part of it that there aren’t SOPs in place for people to know what they have to do each day to support the senior lawyer, the associates being supported by the paralegal and the admin staff, and how does that all play out with or without SOPs?

Belle Walker: I’m trying to figure out how to answer this in a way that will not make every [00:10:00] lawyer immediately just skip to the next episode. The short answer is documentation goes a long way and the lawyers themselves don’t need to be the ones doing the documentation. I think that’s also where a big hang up is people think it’s the lawyers are thinking it’s in my head.

And I don’t have time to get it out of my head and into a nice pretty document. And, so don’t write it, have that conversation, ask your team to document what they’re doing, especially if you’re bringing on new hires. Taking advantage of that onboarding ramp up process to have those folks create documentation as they’re ramping up.

It’s great for training and it goes a long way towards keeping the firm clear on what’s happening now.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. So how can lawyers then address the underlying causes of accountability gaps from their support staff? Because that’s Where things I think really affect the senior team is when their expectations aren’t being met.[00:11:00]

Belle Walker: I’m gonna start with something so cliche. It’s gonna make everyone roll their eyes and I apologize.

Steve Fretzin: So you already have them going to the next episode. Now you’ve got to

Belle Walker: roll their eyes. I know, but the Come on, Belle. Here’s the thing. This is not rocket science. This is not even complex constitutional law, right?

This is basic, it’s But a lot of people think it’s boring, but that doesn’t mean you get to ignore it.

Steve Fretzin: Right.

Belle Walker: And so you have to reframe accountability gaps as alignment opportunities. You have to look at that and say, someone is not stepping up and taking accountability. Chances are really good if you respect that individual, they’re trying.

And there is a misunderstanding there between. What you expect from them and what they think you want. And so if you can close that understanding gap, your accountability gap is almost certainly going to go away. And if you don’t respect them, you have a bigger problem that you probably want to focus on from a personnel perspective.

Rather than a process perspective.

Steve Fretzin: Have you had to do any [00:12:00] coaching or providing of advice of how to have that conversation? Cause that’s in some instances, the relationships tight, and you can just say, Hey, this is what I expect. And can you do that? In other cases, people are tiptoeing around because they’re concerned someone might get upset or leave or feel triggered or all the different things that are happening in our world right now.

Belle Walker: Yeah. I often, I recommend starting with walk me through what you’re trying to do. I know what I want.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Yeah.

Belle Walker: That’s not the gap you need to close, right? Like your understanding of your own head, that’s not a gap. And so starting by asking them to walk you through the things that they’re proud of accomplishing, the things that they think they’re doing really well, the things that they know that there’s a gap on can be a really valuable place to start because Even if it’s a tough conversation where they say, Hey, I do this really well.

And here’s why, and you can see, Oh, that’s not what I was looking for at all. You can have that conversation and say, Oh, you are doing A, B and C really well. Turns out what I need [00:13:00] is E, F and G. Right, nobody even needs D. We’ve skipped an entire letter. That’s how far off we were, but that tends to go over much better than when you say, No, you’re not doing this well.

You are doing this well, and we need to shift and have you do this other thing just as well as you do what you’re doing now.

Steve Fretzin: And you, I’m going to go back to something you said earlier, cause I do use a lot of sports analogies and a lot of, food analogies making a pot of chili and following a recipe and that kind of stuff.

I really enjoy, and I’ve written articles where I use those kinds of analogies and I think they’re really, it really helps. It’s helpful. You mentioned, is this a baseball team? Is this a soccer team? Is there a model that you have recommended to law firms that they follow of a particular style of how to build a team?

Belle Walker: Honestly, no, because I’ve found that it really needs to come from the leaders, right? But they need to have that buy in for a lot of law firms. I do think that baseball is. Often [00:14:00] a good analogy, because if you don’t have a pitcher, nothing’s happening, right? If you don’t have a lawyer. Is that the person bringing

Steve Fretzin: in the business?

Belle Walker: I would say it’s the person delivering the business.

Steve Fretzin: Delivering the business. Okay.

Belle Walker: Practicing law. If you don’t have someone practicing law, you don’t have a law firm. Okay. All right. So

Steve Fretzin: you have to have someone practicing law. I was going to go for, you have to have someone bringing in the business, otherwise there’s nothing to practice.

So maybe one of them is the hitters. I don’t know. Maybe we’re.

Belle Walker: I was going to say the catcher

Steve Fretzin: or

Belle Walker: maybe the manager,

Steve Fretzin: maybe the manager,

Belle Walker: maybe the manager.

Steve Fretzin: And they’re the ones who are bringing in the talent, not just the manager, but the people that are the scouts, that are out finding the talent and bringing in the business.

Anyway, we’re going down a whole different story here, but how does it play? How does it play out?

Belle Walker: I think that conversation, you and I just had that little mini exchange is exactly the value of having these conversations, right? Because right off the bat, what we surfaced there. Is your focus, which anyone who listens to this podcast knows [00:15:00] is on business development and bringing folks in.

My focus is very much on how do we execute and deliver right off the bat. And the fact that each of us would center that picture role in a different place. We could have skipped so many hours of miscommunication and talking past each other just in realizing what we’re centering different things. And that’s how it plays out is you start with this potentially wildly different model, but then can very quickly zero in on a shared vision of what you’re trying to build.

And that makes it so much easier to then. Put the processes and structures in place to be successful with whatever model you land on.

Steve Fretzin: Got it. 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 in cases other law firm marketing agencies[00:16:00]

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? Learn If you’re a managing partner who’s looking to get off your lonely island and talk shop with America’s top rate makers, please go to my website, Fretzin. com and apply for membership today. Should lawyers then be thinking more critically about their businesses and how they’re structured from an organizational perspective?

Can you talk through that a little bit?

Belle Walker: I think that there’s a couple of different pieces, right? That metaphor is helpful. I think also being realistic about what your firm’s chaos tolerance. Is right. If you are not happy with where your firm is in terms of how efficiently you’re operating in terms of, [00:17:00] any aspect of day to day, you’re not going to snap your fingers and have everything be different tomorrow.

And so a lot of organizations will try to shift five things right off the bat, and you can’t. It’s just going to be a little chaotic for some time in the middle while you make that transition. And so if hey, we do chaos well, we thrive in that uncertainty, we’re going to power through. Awesome.

Turn those levers, push through. If that’s not how you and your team function, then you need to be patient and move it step by step. So there’s, what are you trying to build? Having that. People here and it’s being clear about how you’re going to get there and then like I started earlier on being strategic about where you do want to optimize and where you need that depth and reinforcement, right?

A client communications, if you’re not closing the loop, if you’re not following up on those leads that can feel like somewhere you really want to streamline and you don’t want to waste a bunch of time and money on that. And it has to happen. So you have to have some backups in [00:18:00] place to make sure that those balls are not getting dropped.

So it’s, I would say yes, being strategic in making sure you know what you’re trying to do, but also how you’re going to get there, having a clear vision and saying, great, so we’ll do that tomorrow. Not going to cut it.

Steve Fretzin: Got it. And then I’m bringing in another kind of angle to this, which is, there’s obviously legal tech and AI that is changing the game for how lawyers are structuring You know, their client relationships, how they’re structuring their intake, how they’re structuring, how they get work done.

How is that impacting your role and how you’re helping law firms with efficiency?

Belle Walker: Honestly, I’m loving the opportunities for automation, for being able Some of this minutiae, it turns out, even the best paralegals and administrative staff don’t always love having to copy this and paste it there and click that and So being able to make it so that if I do one thing, that eight more things that always have to happen can just happen on their own, is huge.

[00:19:00] And a lot of case management platforms are getting really solid with the automation that they’re having in place with some of the templating that they’re doing. It can take a little bit of a learning curve to get that automation working for you, but I found that it’s really worth it and can cut back on a lot of this miscommunication because.

Once that system is in place, the system will keep going until you tell it to do something else. That can also be a problem when you’re ready for change, but until then, it is fabulous.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah, really cool. I’m, and I’ve got all these new legal tech companies that want to, get on the podcast and everything.

And I say we can’t really talk too much about your stuff, but let’s, we’ll get into it at some point. But I wanted to talk about, if it’s, client, how to continue to maintain and develop client relationships. And there’s a software for that now that connects with LinkedIn and all that kind of stuff.

That’s all great. Because it’s these so many areas that are being, that are slipping through the cracks because of how busy lawyers are. They continue to be busier than I think I’ve ever seen them in, 17 years I’ve been in this space. [00:20:00] Kudos to AI and, to the legal tech world continue to make lawyers lives better.

Any other tips that you can provide about how to either improve internal communications or operations that lawyers that are listening, whether they’re at a big firm or small firm, could really apply? And do is a part of a takeaway from this podcast.

Belle Walker: I think the last piece is just to make sure that you’re on, that you have a clear vision of who’s on your team, right?

Let’s go back to that baseball metaphor and say, you’ve got a well rounded set of folks out on the field. If you have a great outfielder and you ask them to go play catcher, they may or may not do a great job there. And so if you now have an opening for an outfielder, don’t hire a catcher and stick them out there, right?

Being aware of the diversity of needs and roles and making sure that you’re matching your team to that, I think is going to help a lot. At the same time, you do need to then also [00:21:00] speak to all those different personalities and areas of expertise. So it’s going to, I don’t have an easy answer here. It’s do the work now.

Cause it will make your life easier down the line. Yeah. Having that communication upfront will streamline and save you a lot of stress down the road.

Steve Fretzin: Okay and let’s say that i want to as a managing partner small firm for example i want to put sop standard operating procedures i want to put operational things in place and i’m getting pushback from my team because it involves a software that’s new that they’re not comfortable with how do i implement.

My goals as a leader on a team that wants to, see me successful and see the firm successful and, have job security, but change is hard.

Belle Walker: Yeah, I think you said the magic word in there. It’s the goals. Often I see in those change scenarios, people are focusing on the technology and they’re focusing on this minutia of well, but you won’t have to click these three [00:22:00] buttons.

And the person’s I don’t have to click those three buttons, but I don’t know any of the other 50 buttons. Now you’ve changed everything being able to go back and say, why are you pushing this change through? What is it you’re trying to accomplish? Getting everyone on board with those outcomes.

And then helping each of them see how this change supports those outcomes and makes their lives better, then they’re going to be ready to learn about those clicks that they need to do.

Steve Fretzin: If

Belle Walker: you jump straight to the, now we’re doing it this way, folks aren’t going to come along.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah, dictating this is how it’s going to go from now on and then wonder why people weren’t on board with it.

Belle Walker: Yep.

Steve Fretzin: No, makes perfect sense. Let’s also transition to another kind of area here. Do you have a case study or do you have a good example of a recent project that you worked on where firm was struggling in a particular area? Because I think it’s hard for people to understand. Sometimes your value and how great you are, what you do until they [00:23:00] hear an example of it.

Belle Walker: A recent one, not so much because I’m just coming back from maternity leave.

Steve Fretzin: Okay.

Belle Walker: Been a minute, but I, my favorite example in the legal area was a firm that when we looked into their invoicing process, they had their partners reviewing the full set of invoices. To summarize three different times minimum and often four or five different times and that minimize their errors, but it was using a ton of partner time.

And when we took a step back and looked at what they were actually looking for, where those mistakes were. We were able to drop it down to one full review and then only have them review invoices that had been modified or changed and that ended up saving them multiple hours for every partner every month.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah, so it’s really about you going in and auditing how they’re running everything day to day, finding those inefficiencies and then streamlining to get them saving time, making money, doing what [00:24:00] they’re supposed to be doing.

Belle Walker: At the weeds level. And I would say at the top level coming right back to what we said, really working with them to figure out what are the pain points both for themselves and for their staff.

Why were we looking at the invoicing in the first place? Because the partners had no idea how invoices were being processed, what was happening. So I was actually there to document it and then see if we could find any opportunities while we were. Add it. And so the goal was for the partners to know how money was working in their firm.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Nice. Let’s wrap things up a little bit with our game changing book. This is one I want to say I’ve heard before, but I’m not placing it and who wrote it, so it’s performed to win. Is that Mark Powell?

Belle Walker: I believe so. Yeah. Okay. And I love that book. It’s one of the narrative business books. So it’s a story and it really ties together dance and performing arts with business concepts.

So coming back to that idea of metaphors to really show how you can lean into these more [00:25:00] creative elements and really bring them to bear in the business context.

Steve Fretzin: Okay. Got it. Would you consider it a parable? Cool.

Belle Walker: Yes.

Steve Fretzin: Okay. And by the way, people don’t know this, but my first book, Sales Free Selling, I originally was going to just write the book as a how to book, like I do most of my books.

And a friend of mine who was a very successful client of mine, who’s not a lawyer, this is before I worked with lawyers or when I started doing it, he was like You need to write a story and write about yourself as the coach and then working with some people. And he used another book and it’s not popping into my head right now.

You probably would know it, but it was written as a parable. That was a business book. And I was like, the goal. Yeah. The goal. Thank you. I knew, you’d know it. I knew, you’d know it. Nerd, me too, but it really, I think reads very well and reads very easily. I, take these three clients on, bring them into this class like I teach now and have for 20 plus years.

And at the end of the book, though, I did a role play where I pretend to be a lawyer. And walk [00:26:00] through my entire sales free selling process with a perspective client and in a role play sense. In fact, I just told a client of mine today, I was like, you need to just read the end of the book. I know I want you to read the whole book, but just read the end because he’s got one of these meetings coming up and I want him to run it.

As closely to the system as possible. And he just started working with me, see how that goes. But anyway, that’s a great, I enjoy reading books like that because it’s just a, you’re reading a story and there’s, good and evil. I’m

Belle Walker: biased towards it too. I have my own book. Generation Innovation is written the same.

Is it?

Steve Fretzin: Oh, really? Okay. Generation Innovation, everybody. What? Tell us about that.

Belle Walker: So that one, it’s a story of a mother and a daughter. The mother is a dentist, has her own practice and is approaching a crossroads, deciding if she’s going to retire. The daughter is just starting up a tech company that helps people who need to move their houses.

And pretty much each chapter, there’s a business basic concept that both of them need to tackle in their different contexts and they see how the challenges are the same and the solutions can support each other in these wildly different contexts because [00:27:00] some things apply to everybody.

Steve Fretzin: I love it. Okay.

Look at us writing books and parables and all kinds of fun stuff. So listen, let’s wrap up with their sponsors. I want to thank the Lawhurst podcast. Amazing. Sonja Palmer continuing to crank out amazing podcasts. And of course, PIMCON, if you’re a personal injury attorney and you want to go to the number one conference of the year that’s in October.

You can check that out on our show notes and all that. If people want to get in touch with you, Bell, they want to go from friction to function. They want to work with you. What’s the best way for them to reach you?

Belle Walker: Bellevue Consulting, it’s B E L E V I E W, because it’s my view of the world, bellevueconsulting.

com or find me on LinkedIn, bellwalker.

Steve Fretzin: Awesome. Thanks for coming back and sharing your wisdom. And again, look, if I could talk business development or I could talk operations and process, I’m always going to go to business development. I have to have a well rounded show. And I think the world of you.

Those two points put them together and I had to have you back. So I just appreciate you coming on and doing what you do best, which is sharing all this great advice and wisdom. [00:28:00]

Belle Walker: Thanks so much for having me. It is always a pleasure and I always learn something.

Steve Fretzin: Okay. Awesome. Me too. And that’s part of it.

And hopefully everybody listening, you guys did too. If again, you’re not really understanding that a business, law is the business of law. And part of that is structure and organization and operation and process. And no, it’s not always the most fun and exciting thing for all of us, but it’s necessary.

And I used to be a total feather on the wind. I tell people this all the time, and I’m highly organized now. And I don’t think if I was as disorganized as I used to be, I would be where I am today, which is more successful than I was, years ago. Anyway, that’s it. Bell. Take care. Thanks everybody. Be safe.

Be well. We’ll talk again soon.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to be that 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 [00:29:00] development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.