David Schnurman: Building Resilience and Business Through Optimism and Action

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and David Schnurman discuss:

• Building a resilient mindset through optimism, reflection, and habit formation
• Lessons from career pivots and entrepreneurial problem-solving in the legal space
• Cultivating emotional regulation through gratitude, compassion, and non-judgment
• Embracing technology and AI to repurpose content and increase professional impact

Key Takeaways:

• Journaling and identifying recurring mindset blocks can help lawyers recognize patterns of imposter syndrome and emotional burnout, giving them the self-awareness and clarity needed to shift their thinking and take purposeful steps toward resilience.
• When faced with the sudden loss or burnout of a critical team member, initiating an honest, values-based conversation centered on purpose, mutual respect, and long-term impact can be the difference between salvaging a project or watching it collapse.
• Implementing a simple but consistent daily practice of writing down three gratitudes, avoiding all outward complaints for 21 days, and giving five genuine compliments can rewire your stress response and gradually create a more positive, grounded internal state.
• Delaying your instinct to judge setbacks as inherently negative by using the mantra “good thing, bad thing, who knows” allows you to stay emotionally balanced, maintain perspective, and remain open to positive outcomes that may not be immediately visible.

“If you compliment somebody else, and it’s authentic, it helps you get through the stress of the wave.” —  David Schnurman

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

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Episode References:

How Full Is Your Bucket? by Tom Rath & Don Clifton: https://www.amazon.com/How-Full-Your-Bucket-Rath/dp/1595620036

A Complaint Free World by Will Bowen: https://www.amazon.com/Complaint-Free-World-Complaining-Enjoying/dp/0770436390

About David Schnurman: David Schnurman is a seasoned entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, and author of The Fast Forward Mindset: How to Be Fearless & Focused to Accelerate Your Success. As the CEO of Lawline, a leading online education platform for attorneys, David scaled the company from startup to industry leader while developing a powerful framework for personal and professional growth. Through his work and writing, David empowers others to break out of their comfort zones, manage fear, and focus their energy on making a meaningful impact. He’s also a past president of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) New York Chapter and a passionate advocate for fearless leadership.

Connect with David Schnurman:

Website: https://www.lawline.com/

Book: The Fast Forward Mindset: https://www.ffwdmindset.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidschnurman/

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 there. It’s Steve Fretzin and I’ve got something big for you. If you’re a lawyer who’s serious about building your book of business, I’m hosting to be that lawyer live on July 24th. It’s a virtual event where the legal industry’s top rainmakers will be there to share real world secrets to their success.

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Narrator: You are 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 Reson, 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. Welcome back to the Be That Lawyer podcast. I’m. D Fretz and your host doing this over five years over, I don’t know, 520 episodes or something like that. [00:01:00] And this show is really all about you, the lawyer and living your best lawyer life and just make, how do you make it and. Be successful.

Have a great mindset, get the free time, build a business, whether you’re at solo or small firm or big firm, doesn’t matter. It’s all you inc. You need to do for you and take care of your clients and all the people around you. And this show covers a lot of that ground. And if you want to get it all in one place, you can also go to Amazon, grab the book on Amazon.

I’ve got over, I dunno, 55 star reviews. I know you’ll love it. And again, if you love the show, you’re gonna love the book. Alright. Oh, I’m exhausted already, Dave. We haven’t even started. Welcome buddy. How good to see you again. Good to see you. You earned the break. That

David Schnurman: was a really good intro.

Steve Fretzin: I was so happy to be on your show.

And and then of course we had to do the pod swap. You can’t, I don’t ever feel right doing someone’s show and then not, offering to have them on it. By the way, like I’m was super excited to have you on and I am. I know we’re gonna have a great time. We’re gonna help a lot of people today, so thanks for being here.

David Schnurman: It’s so funny, I just [00:02:00] learned the term pod swap ’cause I, we were talking, I was out with Matthew Kbu. Yeah. And I said, I was gonna be on your podcast. I was like, oh, you guys are doing a pod swap. I’m like, what’s that? He is like going to his podcast. I’m like, oh, okay. Yeah. That’s what we’re doing. So I will continue to try to do more pod swaps, so thank you.

Yes,

Steve Fretzin: I do a great, and then also the other one that I don’t, I didn’t come up with this but I’ll take credit for it, is a blog cast. What’s a blog cast? It’s the truncated version of, it’s the transcript brought into and created into an article. And so that’s a sort of a made up term for a blog.

That’s a podcast Blogcast. So there’s another one for you. You got two today. I’ll share one with you

David Schnurman: at the end, not through d at the end. I’m gonna share something with

Steve Fretzin: you guys. You gotta stay with us to the end so you can hear what David’s gonna share with me. Alright, so let’s talk about your quote of the show.

I’m very optimistic. People sometimes think I’m too optimistic and annoyingly but that’s. I am also a curmudgeon. I don’t know that’s how that plays in. So I’m like an optimistic curmudgeon is a term I’ve used for myself. That’s my old Jewish self, in some way. All right, here we go. Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.

Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. [00:03:00] So thanks for being here. And tell us a little bit about that quote.

David Schnurman: So that quote is from Helen Keller and my dad, wait a second. You

Steve Fretzin: need to tell say who Helen Keller is because anyone under. 30 may not even know who that is. Fair enough.

David Schnurman: Helen Keller was blind and deaf.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah.

David Schnurman: And accomplished so much in her life. And that is a quote that represents how she was able to accomplish so much being both blind and deaf throughout her life.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah.

David Schnurman: Great point. I just assume everybody knows who she is at this point, and I’m gonna be honest. That quote is something, actually my dad was one of his three quotes, and when somebody says it so much, it actually.

Seeps in into your, into what you do. And I’ve gotta tell you, he would say that throughout, when I was in college and in law school, he would say it all the time and I would hear it and go one in, one ear and out the other. It wasn’t until I was in entrepreneurship and I was building law line and we’d go through challenge after challenge, roadblock after roadblock.

I actually. Listen to it and looked at it and [00:04:00] dissected it. And because one of the reasons is I’m not very religious, right? I’m, it’s not something there. And no one optimism is a faith that leads to achievement. Faith. Like when people say, does God exist? There is no yes or no. There’s only a faith that God exists.

And so it hit me when I was dealing with the most challenging one. I can pick a dozen challenging situations, but in one situation where we had to fire somebody, I wasn’t sure if we should do it. I was like I don’t know if this is right or wrong. I’m like, oh, I don’t know. It’s faith. And if I have faith in what I’m gonna do, I have to be as faithful and being optimistic as somebody believes in God. And that to me was like, holy smokes, now I get it. And then with, without hope and confidence, nothing gets accomplished. And I’m telling you I heard that for five years before I actually heard it.

Yeah. So I hope somebody in this listening to this. It doesn’t have to go five years of hearing it all the time and actually understanding how it applies.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. I think the [00:05:00] greatest accomplishment in my life so far has been when I hear my son say something that I’ve said to him that many times and that it actually did seep through.

Because mostly it just seems like in the era out the other, and I was the same way. My father was all about. Accomplishment and doing, he grew up in the projects. They had nothing. They had to play softball because nobody could afford a mitt. That’s how poor they were. And when you achieve from that type and level of poverty and accomplish, like my father did, there’s a lot of lessons that, you want your teenage son to take in.

And anyway, I’m not joking about my greatest accomplishment, but it is something that I do a double take when he says something that I’ve said to him and I go, oh shit. He was listening.

David Schnurman: I’ll tell you this so much with, I have 16-year-old and 11-year-old boys and a 16-year-old girl. I don’t think they’re listening to anything I say.

And then every so often they’ll say something I’m like, oh, they are listening. Good. Yeah. Yeah, it’s

Steve Fretzin: happening. It’s like a squirrel in the back of their head rattling around or something. Listen, everybody, David Sherman is my newest friend. We’ve known each other a number of years, but I think, we’ve really come into really [00:06:00] getting to know each other through the pot swap and all that.

You’re the CEO of Lawline, you’re the author of Fast Forward Mindset, and give everybody a little bit of a, an opening as to how you came to be accomplishing so much.

David Schnurman: I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur. It’s been my aspiration since I was in high school. I would, or even in middle school, I would go into the staples and I would take a cart and I would put like a safe, a notepad, all these different things.

I would pretend like I had my own business and I would put ’em in a cart, and then I would just walk out. That was like, it was like a, it was so weird, but like I felt so good doing that. Yeah. And then I would read Entrepreneur magazine in college, yeah. The one, the magazine and in the back of the Entrepreneur magazine, it was all like the franchises you can buy and all different business ideas.

And then I moved on to business book and self-improvement books. And I just became, I called myself a Shah, a self-help addict.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah.

David Schnurman: And as a Shah I just kept going and going. And so I ended up thinking I was gonna graduate [00:07:00] college and make a million dollars from entrepreneurship. And my first job was $27,000 as a sales assistant.

Five years later I was still doing sales and moved up to sales. Then my third company, I realized, and then maybe it was like, I dunno, four companies. I’m like, oh man. I start talking to people who are like 15 years past me and there was a, their 10th sales job. My dad was a, an attorney, came from nothing.

He always wanted me an attorney. I never wanted to do it. As a result, I realized at that time maybe entrepreneurship wasn’t for me and being attorney for the next 20 years of my life made more sense than 20 years of sales roles. So that’s why I went to law school. In law school, I actually started a public access TV show my second year interviewing entrepreneurs.

My dad earlier in 1999 had started lawline as when Sealy became mandatory, but had stopped it two years later because of the dotcom crash and just he was ahead of his time. And I just had this aha moment, my third year of law school. Instead of interviewing [00:08:00] entrepreneurs, why don’t I interview attorneys?

Why don’t I take the name law line, turn those into CLE courses. And start selling on demand CLE courses my third year of law school. Wow. And amazing since that time we’ve served, it was 17 years ago, we just had our 10 million force. Wow. Completed on our

Steve Fretzin: website. Wow. That’s insane. That is so great.

It’s, it’s so funny, our backgrounds are so similar and I don’t know what it is about having a lawyer father, but and then the one, like both of them came from nothing. And I think for me it was appreciating the, money and just, I know remember like asking my dad, Larry, the lawyer for money.

I might as well just wanna poke my eyes out with the scissors. Oh my God. Like it was, to that point, he just saw money so differently than anyone else. So I was like if I mow the lawn, can you pay me? He is yeah, if you mow the lawn, I’ll give you $4 or I’ll give you $3. I’m like, great. That’ll take me an hour and a half.

And then, it’s just what else could I do to make money so I never have to go back to this guy and say, I need, I want money for McDonald’s, or I want money for a new pair. Even like shoes, like I had to buy my, I was [00:09:00] buying my own shoes. Because the shoes that he would get me would be, $2 and I wanted $20 shoes or, pumas or whatever they were at the time.

Is that your experience or different?

David Schnurman: Similar, but a little different. Okay. Similar in that in my dad’s eyes, my being spoiled was the worst thing in the world and he, when I was growing up, he had some success. His life history was, you have to have nothing in order to understand what it is to be successful.

And so it was always the joke where my friends, I wouldn’t even have like enough allowance or things like the joke that like, why does Dave not have enough to do any of this stuff? Yeah. And so it really did teach. So I’d never asked for anything, never expected anything. However, there is one big difference and I am super thankful and grateful for it while when it came to my own and I got.

Job at the Gap. I was working at the Gap. I was working at all these different, as an account, all these different things just to pay my own way. To your point, I worked at the Department of Corrections. I worked at different places as a part-time employee. The one area where they did invest in me and I’m super grateful for it is in my [00:10:00] education.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Because they saw value in that. They didn’t see value in the BS that we were trying to buy to keep up with our friends, but they saw value in education.

David Schnurman: Like when I say my dad had nothing, he, like his dad died when he was seven. He was the first one to go to college. He, when he went to law school, he barely made it in.

He drove a taxi throughout law school. Wow. Education transformed his life. I am, it’s interesting when I think about my kids in the future generations, how educational institutions, what kind of value they have. For our kids compared to what they did for us. And it is changing dynamic. Yeah. Yeah. And the cost is oh, it’s insane.

Outpaced inflation significantly. So it’s, yeah. Yeah. And

Steve Fretzin: I’ve got my son’s, I got him set up for the 5 29 and everything, and he’s all set to go to Colorado State in the fall and all that. Fantastic. My big, now the concern I have of is he gonna do well and be successful and all this, and what major?

Like now it’s all what jobs are gonna be around in four years, like now that my whole mind is flipped around so great. He becomes a lawyer or he becomes, someone, a consultant or he gets into [00:11:00] accounting and like those jobs, are they around in four years? That’s now this new concern that I have where, I think plumbers and electricians and now they have a far better hand potentially to be dealt because they’re using their hands and their brains at the same time.

David Schnurman: There’s no question. There’s more, in my opinion for most of the population, trade school is more valuable. Especially plumbers and electricians, like you can’t, AI at least today, cannot recreate that. Yeah. I struggle with the value of a four year liberal arts degree, or at a private school that costs, before scholarships or anything like that.

Yeah. All in $90,000.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah.

Yeah. That’s crazy. All right. We could spend the rest of our time having this conversation, but I would be remiss if I didn’t hit you up on. Getting some understanding about mindset and lawyers mindsets and when you interview, you meet you CLE, and there’s a challenge with lawyers having an optimistic and positive mindset, and I’m curious if you have any insights as to [00:12:00] why that is.

It’s not, and where do you wanna start? Yeah, no, I was gonna say it. It

David Schnurman: is definitely not, there’s no difference between mindset and lawyers and mindset and general. Okay. I’m, this

Steve Fretzin: show is for lawyers, so

David Schnurman: I was trying to be specific, but I just want look and there’s a pressure. There’s tremend, tremendous pressure first look.

Yes. Lawyers are people first. And that’s, I just wanted to set that tone. Yeah. Because I think it is important. I think what’s interesting about lawyers. They have self-selected them and have gone through at least four years additional education, at least past the bar. And so the level of dedication and commitment they’ve made, there is a higher stress level of being successful.

And and many large amount of loans and large amount of stress to do that. So certainly. You don’t want to fail. And the reason I hate to go this route because the cliche is like lawyers are taught that you have to be careful and you can’t take risks and all that stuff. That might be, that is true, but I would just say as a somebody who’s gone to law school, the fear of [00:13:00] failure is so real once you graduate for so many different reasons.

And for me, I and imposter syndrome and all that, like 97. Percent of people I’ve ever spoken from. And I said, do you have imposter syndrome? They raised their hand almost a hundred percent. And and some of them were imposters. A hundred percent, no, but seriously, it’s when I was growing the business and even today I was dealing with so much challenges, going from zero revenue to, to growing the business.

And I was just like, why is this so hard? Why can’t I do this? And I was like, stuck in what I did and what I real, what I started doing. Luckily, I journal every day and I start, and one day I printed out a thousand pages of journals and I, this is before ai, and I went through every journal to find the themes of what I was doing, and I took all my, I have a stack of like 50 self-help books, all my journals, and I have three coaches.

And I’m like, what is the themes of what’s going on here? And that’s where I started realizing the same things that I was [00:14:00] feeling. Lawyers feel, everyone feels. And, it’s the, it’s this, the most talked about thing is how to be more fearless and focused to get out of your comfort zone and stay out of there longer.

And there’s books that are a thousand pages. There’s books that 500 pages, everyone talks about it. I wanted to share it in a simplified way so that others can follow it. And by the way, the first public speaking. Event I did was in front of 500 attorneys at the Clio Conference, and afterwards, I’d say at least 30 to 40 of them came up to me.

That was the most impactful thing that they had at the conference because they want to use it in their practice.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah.

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Hey everybody, it’s Steve Fretzin in as the, I’m the host of the Be That Lawyer Podcast, and if you’re serious about growing your law practice, let’s talk. I’ve coached hundreds of attorneys to build bigger books of business without selling, chasing, or wasting time. This isn’t a sales pitch, it’s a real 30 minute.

Strategy session to explore what’s possible for you in your practice. Just head over to Fretzin.com and grab a time that works for you and let’s make this your breakout year. And I don’t know that we can. Be successful or accomplish things or grow a book of business or grow a business or [00:16:00] live a great life without having that sort of fast forward mindset or having a mindset of success and abundance.

And how do people transition from being negative or having fear or just worrying all the time and feeling stressed out to that open place of what the future could be.

David Schnurman: There’s so many different techniques. We’ll

Steve Fretzin: give two or three suggestions. Totally.

David Schnurman: So I’m gonna share five things that I do.

So the most important thing you need to do is take action to get outta your comfort zone. Let’s assume, and there’s 10 things you can do there, but I’m not gonna go there right now. Okay? Okay. Let’s assume you’ve taken action, you’ve got outta your comfort zone, because we all can do that to some degree without plan.

And we get there. But once we’re out, we’re like, oh my God, what do I do? And so there’s five things that I do that it’s backed up by research and it’s, and so many things, and these are all probably cliches that you’ve heard before. They’re cliches ’cause they’re true. The, one of the first things that I started doing was, okay I’m stressed out right now.

How do I relieve this stress? Okay, so first there’s the basics is you write three things you’re grateful [00:17:00] for. I’m, I started 10 years ago, a group on Facebook called 90 Days to Gratitude. It was a challenge to be gratitude for 90 days in a row. We had 5,000 people join it. 10 years later, there’s still people doing their gratitude every single day.

Yeah. And when you can’t, it’s hard to be grateful and stress at the same time. You can’t smile and frown at the same time. Second thing this is a little bit harder, but don’t complain. There’s another book called A Point Free World. Have you heard of it? No. Okay. They had a challenge doing 21 days.

Complain free. Wow. You can’t complain for trying to, you can in your head. You can. You just can’t do it out for it. Okay. I tried it. What am my wife and I gonna talk about? You don’t realize until you start doing it, the weather, the traffic, whatever. As soon as you complain, the challenge starts all over.

Yeah. Usually it takes somebody seven months to get through the,

Steve Fretzin: you have

David Schnurman: to

Steve Fretzin: start

David Schnurman: over. I only got through two months. Oh wow. But I hear what I can tell you. That’s amazing. Maybe it wasn’t even, but I can tell you even getting through a week. People look at you differently when you complain less and you feel differently about yourself just getting that far, like [00:18:00] seven days or whatever it was.

Over the two months, I completely transformed my thinking. And then the last thing I’ll share, ’cause there’s not enough time to share ’em all, and this is a good one. Have you ever heard of the book? How Full Is Your Bucket Now? How Full Is Your Bucket? Okay. It’s such a good book. It was meant as a children’s book, but then they adopted it for adults.

And let ask you, when I. What do you think is the best way to fill your bucket?

Steve Fretzin: What is the best way to fill my bucket? Is this referencing like the rocks and the pebbles in the sand and the water? Is that where we’re going with this? Take care of the big things first? Don’t, that’s a different analogy.

Okay. This is how to give yourself energy fill bucket. It’s how to give yourself energy, positive energy. Okay. It’s gonna be, love putting love out there. Time with family health and wellness. Like taking care of my clients. Like making sure other people are successful. Yeah.

How do I help others?

David Schnurman: You’re a pro, Steve. Okay. And I’m gonna, you’re a pro. Okay. Most people. The first thing they start thinking about is okay, I have to be positive for myself and I have to take action, and I have to not be, [00:19:00] and I have to be fearless and I have to do all these things. And the best way to fill your bucket, you’re absolutely 100% right, is to fill somebody else’s bucket.

Because if, when, for example, like you’re a great podcaster, Steve, like you, you’re great. You understand it. The two seconds, the half a second before I complimented you in my mind, I felt good because I knew you were gonna feel good. And so it’s the simplest thing when you compliment somebody else and it’s authentic.

It helps you get through the stress of the wave. When you do those three things, when you’re stressful, you will feel better afterwards. Here’s a really good exercise. You can take five pennies, put them in your left side of your pocket. By the end of the day, you have to do five compliments, and then you gotta put them in your right side of the pocket.

You know when you’re complimenting that person, you’re doing it just for the exercise and you see how good they feel.

You feel amazing by way, dad? Yeah. Yeah. The stress that you’re feeling from getting outta your comfort zone is a little bit less,

Steve Fretzin: and I’ll say this, no joke, and we’re back to the dads again, getting a compliment outta Larry, the lawyer.

It was like [00:20:00] pulling teeth. It was always criticism. It was never compliment. And so I have that in me. And so I have to really, I had to really work. And think about it and like, how do I, I need to compliment my wife on a, every dinner she makes, I compliment her, and I’m not being, I’m not, bull crapping or shitting or whatever you wanna say, but I’m, this was a delicious dinner and thank you.

And this was, you’re amazing. And that’s not natural for me. I have, I had to work on myself to do that. I love the five pennies. That’s fantastic.

David Schnurman: I just, read it in a book. But I, but it’s, but

Steve Fretzin: sharing it and getting it out there totally. I, with

David Schnurman: my,

Steve Fretzin: I’m a, my people

David Schnurman: share. Yeah. And I gotta give my dad credit, as you can see from that quote.

He is an optimist. He’s turning 80 next month. Wow. And he always gave positive reinforcement to me and my sister. And there’s nothing as because you didn’t get it as much, there’s nothing better than your parents believing in you, giving you compliments. Having your back, regardless of what you do.

And to some degree, when, because he was, [00:21:00] his dad died when he was seven. It was a broken home and it was just him and his mom. His other older siblings had left. She called him, his name is Alan. She called him my Alan. Because she would talk about him so much. My Alan this, my Alan that, and she, he always said he became who he was because she had such confidence in him.

And so I’m constantly trying to reinforce that even though my, I’m a parent of teenagers now who like, sometimes, they push back too hard. It’s, I’m so proud of them. Yeah. They’re all three and my 11-year-old, they’re, I’m so proud of what they do and I try to tell ’em as much as possible.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. My son is playing summer Fest, which is like the biggest Wisconsin Music Festival in, whatever in the year. And he’s gonna be up on stage playing electric guitar in front of, hundreds. That’s awesome. Maybe thousands of people, whatever. And I’m over there. I can’t wait to get out there and see him on stage and just, rocking and.

He’s got the long hair and he’s playing up the role and he’s on stage with a presence. And man, just nothing makes me prouder. I, we all have those, proud papa moments, but watching him progress and thrive in with music, which is something I’ve always loved [00:22:00] since I was a kid.

David Schnurman: Yeah.

Steve Fretzin: And the fact that he loves the music that I made him listen to eighties rock journey, foreigner, and getting into Metallica and all that.

Really cool. Yep. Rock stuff. And that’s what he loves to play. It. It just fills me up.

David Schnurman: Awesome.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Really good. So what, let’s give one more tip before we wrap up the show. What’s one other thing that really helps attorneys who are maybe struggling with either bad things or just a bad thing that happened?

How do they get past it?

David Schnurman: One of the most important things, or you can do when something happens, and this go, this is goes back thousands of years. It’s related to stoicism. It’s related to Buddhism is not label a situation as good or bad after it happens. It’s too easy to think that you ma like you, you said like you’ve made a mistake.

And maybe we’re gonna talk about that at the end and say, oh my God, this is the worst thing in the world. And we label things I think [00:23:00] 10 times more bad than we label it good. And as soon as you label it bad, you experience it as bad. We all know the hero’s journey, the E two Hollywood story back in the days where it’s like great, then gets really bad, then gets even better.

It’s not over until it’s over. And I, we have both, I’m sure, seen that so many times in our lives. Oh yeah. When you think something’s bad, it actually is the best thing that happened to you. And so that’s what I would just say is do not, there’s a phrase, good thing, bad thing. Who knows? I use that when something has happened out of my control.

And I use that when I’m trying to make a tough decision and I don’t know if it’s the right decision or the wrong decision. I literally say, good thing, bad thing, who knows? And I use that to give me the confidence to either make the decision or to realize. That, okay, that wasn’t the result I expected. But it doesn’t necessarily make it a bad result.

Steve Fretzin: One of the reasons that they tell us as parents not to, bulldozer [00:24:00] our kids and just plow ahead for them and do everything for them, is because they need the challenge and they need the difficulties into fail. Like we had, I had a life full of failure and hardship and difficulty. Not as much as somebody, in Africa starving to death.

But for someone who, growing up in the North shore of Chicago. Bad grades or not, am I gonna get into college? Am I gonna, how am I gonna make this work? Bad sales, jobs, all that kind of stuff. And I think we need to have those struggles because otherwise, how do we know what, like you have to have the villain, otherwise, how do you know what’s good?

David Schnurman: It gives you a good came at us, who was one of my coaches. She said The bad things that happen or the bad things that go give you contrast. To when the good things happen. Yeah. So if you don’t have that, you don’t have that contrast. And imagine your life was all good. Everything you did was perfect.

It gets boring. I’ll just, one real thing on that is I can’t tell you how many successful entrepreneurs I know, and I was actually with one yesterday who sold their business and this person sold their business for a [00:25:00] significant amount of money. And after he sold his business and put his money in a fund and they’re investing it.

He is so depressed right now because he’s not sure what to do. Yeah. With what he wants to do. And it’s just interesting, you think you know what the end result is or where you wanna end up and now like he is trying to figure out what that next step is. Yeah. So like the journey, the journey is just something important to realize.

There is the end of the rainbow where you’re thinking doesn’t always necessarily get to you where you want.

Steve Fretzin: And it’s not always about money. I wanna have money for a number of reasons, but I’m, but I know a lot of people that are incredibly wealthy and depressed and unhappy and miserable and all of that.

Yeah. Alright, let’s wrap it up with David’s big mistake. What’s what happened to you? And this is right, we just set this up perfectly in the last couple minutes.

David Schnurman: Lots of mistakes. One that looked like it almost was going to tank the company was when, I don’t know, this is. I say 10 years ago, it’s probably longer.[00:26:00]

I keep thinking we’re like, whatever. But let’s say over 10 years ago, we built our website originally on what we, what was called back in the day, spaghetti code. And that means there was no frameworks, there’s no structure. It’s add one developer, they build this, that, and as we grew pretty quickly.

But what happened was every time we tried to update one part of the site, the other part of the site would crash. And we had to make a decision. Either we were just gonna. Keep fixing it on top of it, or we had to build a whole new website. We decided, I got a presentation. We decided to build a whole new website.

I was told it would take six months. It ended up taking almost a year and a half. Wow. Through that time, every single developer ended up quitting, including the person who was the head of the team and wanted to. Gave me the proposal ’cause it was such a hard project and it was too much.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah.

David Schnurman: And we already invested all his time in it.

The site was doing charitable and I just thought you don’t have a website, you’re not in business. And he was leaving. We went for a walk around the block. I said to [00:27:00] him, look, I, you leaving now before that you’ve completed this site, you’re missing a really key highlight to your career.

And I was like, if you could stay three more months. Which ended up turning to six months. But if you can take three more months, it’s not a lot for you, but it means everything to Lawline and it’ll then be a great thing for your career. ’cause you’ll finish the job. And we made a deal and he stayed and it ended up being six months and he did it, and then it worked out okay.

But if he had left when he said he was gonna leave, we were really in a tough pickle.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. But I think that from what I’m getting from this, the takeaway is, you have to have these tough conversations and you have to try to. Whether it’s a partnership or whether it’s an employee or whatever, it’s like you need to get to some conclusion and figure out how to move things forward.

And it sounds like you did that and without that conversation he just says, see ya and leaves you in the lurch. And then what, this is you’re in a different situation.

David Schnurman: And he came from trust and respect. Yeah. We had a close relationship, but he was just physically and mentally burnt out.

That’s, he was, at the end of the day, he was trying to protect his own health, which I totally [00:28:00] understood. Listen, man, I just sneezed. Do you want me to share that one tip for you? Oh, yeah. Give the tip and then we’ll wrap up. This is a good tip for you too. I started trying this out and I’ll share the prompt with you.

Because I’ve done podcasts and I’m like, how do I get more value outta the podcast? I went to Claude, and then I created a prompt that actually created a webpage and created an interactive quiz from the transcript that gives a 10 question quiz, and I’ll do it for yours and I’ll actually share it with you of the transcript of what you discussed and it with Claude now it builds a website.

I saw a code in front of me, did the questions. You choose the right answer. It says yes, and it actually publishes the webpage. That to me was and took five minutes. Wow. That would, in the past, you’d have to hire somebody. You or you have to look through the whole transcript. You have to, so it’s a quiz on

Steve Fretzin: what?

On what happened and did you, what you get away, what did you get outta the podcast?

David Schnurman: It was

Steve Fretzin: like the 10 key

David Schnurman: points of the podcast.

Steve Fretzin: But it’ll, it’s a quiz.

David Schnurman: Not as, yeah. Alright, we’ll do that off online. It’s in multiple choice. It’s gonna blow. It’s a multiple choice quiz. Literally takes three minutes. Oh my God, that’s so many.

I’m gonna [00:29:00] send it to you after this. Okay. And you can share it on social media if you want. Yeah.

Steve Fretzin: I want everybody quizzed on this. I want you to tell me, answer a question about, my father and how he saw money or, anyway, I’ll some random, I’ll do your podcast with me.

David Schnurman: It was, you said a lot of good things.

So there you go. There. So anyone you go, anyone, any attorney can use that in helping themselves learn. And of course, on Law Line, we are always implementing new technologies. This is something we’re looking at. We also have an AI assistant and things like that.

Steve Fretzin: Awesome. All right, man. Let’s take a moment.

Thank our sponsors. I will be at PIM Con in October in Scottsdale, Arizona at the Venetian. Check that out at pimcon.org. I wanna check out the Law, her podcast with Sonya Palmer. She’s crushing it, and David, people wanna, they know about Law Line, but let’s give out the digits and tell people to, to get on it.

David Schnurman: Yeah. So obviously lawline.com. We have a year subscription for 20 now, I think there’s a 2100 hours of content. It’s only $299 for the year. We have everything you can need. We have a hundred hours of just AI [00:30:00] content. Right now. We have learning tracks and everything is cly credited, approved, and every state that it’s mandatory.

And yeah, we’re just happy to help you in your journey of continuing legal education, but most importantly in your career growth path. Amazing.

Steve Fretzin: Thank you. Thanks for hanging out and having this we were not all over the place, but we just covered a lot of ground and on a personal and a business level.

And appreciate you doing the pod swap with me. And I just feel like there’s a lot more that we can do together, so I’m looking forward to the future. Me too. Yeah. Thanks again. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you. And thank you everybody for hanging out with David and I for about. 30 minutes or so. I’m not gonna go and recap everything we covered, but holy mackerel, a lot of great stuff there, especially about getting your mind in the right place to live your best lawyer’s life, which as is what this show’s all about.

All right, everybody, take care. Be safe, be well. We will talk again very 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 today’s show notes.