Scott Mason: Rewriting Your Lawyer Story for Growth and Freedom

Trapped in a “successful” legal career that still feels miserable? In this episode, Scott Mason reveals how toxic myths, rigid roles, and fear-based stories quietly sabotage lawyers’ happiness, business development, and long-term success, and how to rewrite your narrative into a heroic one.

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Scott Mason discuss:

• Storytelling, symbolism, and the narratives lawyers live by
• The five “toxic myths” and how they trap attorneys
• Identity vs. role and redefining who you really are
• Mindset, risk-taking, and breaking through fear in business development
• Revenue diversification, near-death wake-up calls, and life lessons

Key Takeaways:

• The stories you tell yourself about business development, success, and your career become the symbolic scripts that ultimately define your identity and legacy.
• External validation and social expectations can trap lawyers in careers and lifestyles that look impressive on the outside but feel empty or misaligned on the inside.
• Confusing your professional role with your core identity creates fragility; separating the two opens space for growth, reinvention, and more authentic choices.
• Mindset work is not “optional” if you want sustainable business development. Unexamined myths around risk, failure, and sales can quietly sabotage your efforts.
• Overreliance on a single revenue stream or professional lane is dangerous; diversifying how you create value and income is both a business and a life-preservation strategy.

“You’re living out the ritual myth when you engage in behaviors or ways of being over and over and over again, even though they no longer serve you.” —  Scott Mason

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About Scott Mason: Scott Mason is an executive leadership coach, keynote speaker, and founder of My Freedom Rocks, where he specializes in helping attorneys and corporate leaders transform their careers by dislodging “toxic myths” and unlocking professional freedom. A graduate of Columbia Law School, he spent over 25 years working as an attorney and C-suite executive in the government and non-profit sectors, including serving as second-in-command of New York City’s central administrative law court, before successfully scaling and running a multi-city manufacturing company. Today, he channels his deep corporate, legal, and entrepreneurial experience into a signature, mythology-inspired coaching framework designed to catalyze personal charisma, build resilience, and ignite authentic leadership.

Connect with Scott Mason:

Website: https://www.myfreedomrocks.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Myth_Slayer

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

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]

Hey everybody, before we get to the show, just want to remind you that the Be That Lawyer community is up and running and rock and rolling. We have a lot of amazing business developer and rainmaking attorneys in there. We’ve got incredible content, courses, live events, and all kinds of ways to help you to be that lawyer. Check it out today at Be That lawyer.com/community And other than that, please enjoy the show.

 

Narrator  [00:29]

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  [00:51]

Hey everybody, Steve Fretzin here, and welcome to the Be That Lawyer podcast. Every single week, twice a week, we are here for you, helping you to be that lawyer, confident, organized, and the skilled rainmaker, you know, it’s just so much fun. I think the big issue lawyers have with business development is it’s not fun, it’s just a chore, it’s sales, it’s annoying, it’s I hate selling people stuff, it’s dirty, and I don’t think they figured out where the fun is. And this show brings that fun back. This show is where we enjoy not only talking about business development, but giving you ideas and ways of doing things that can make it enjoyable and sales free, which is the best part. I got Scott waiting the wing. Scott, it’s so good to see you, my friend. How are you?

 

Scott Mason  [01:30]

I am stoked. There is no one who is a better podcaster or who knows more about lawyer business development than you. So, it is always just a very special occasion to be on this show of all shows.

 

Steve Fretzin  [01:42]

Well, I guess you’re gonna have to come back real soon with that kind of attitude, my friend.

 

Scott Mason  [01:46]

Maybe every day,

 

Steve Fretzin  [01:48]

my ego is in check. Maybe we’ll put a vote, a question mark next to that. But listen, man, it’s just I don’t think the people that are listening right now realize the ride they’re about to go on with you and I today, but it’s going to be a show, it’s going to be a lot of fun, and if, if it’s underwhelming, that’s on you, everybody, not on us. I’ll just note that up front, man, but it’s great to have you back. It’s been too long, and I feel like sometimes when I don’t see someone like you for a long time, like I’m missing a good friend that I just haven’t kept in touch with, and I want to, like, you know, say that for shame, but I’m so happy that we’re together now, and we’re gonna make some magic. So, you up for the ride?

 

Scott Mason  [02:23]

I am never up for a ride with Steve Fretzin, because you know how to make it tough in a good way, but I’m always up for the ride too.

 

Steve Fretzin  [02:31]

All right, all right, let’s do it. All right, let’s start off with a quote of the show, and that is Gene Wolfe, and he said, “We believe that we invent symbols, the truth is they invent us. All right, but we got to know what the heck that means, because I don’t know

 

Scott Mason  [02:44]

one of the things that I work with all of my clients on, and I am sure you, as a business development person, understand more than anyone, is the importance of stories in our lives, stories that we tell about our clients, stories that we tell about ourselves as professional stories that we tell about the business development process that we have or the approach that we take to business development. How we even approach the world and present as the world, whether as legal professionals or as people that are bringing in business stories only have meaning because on some level or another they’re sharing an allegory, they’re sharing a metaphor, the circumstances, the people, the story beats themselves are all symbolic, so people think many times when they are telling a story that they’re telling a truth or telling a description of something that happened for a particular reason that will help inform whoever it is that they’re speaking to, maybe a potential client, and help move them in a direction, and that is part of what storytelling does, but when we tell ourselves stories, or when we create the stories that we share with others, we’re making decisions about what that metaphor is going to be, what those story beats are going to look like, what those characters are, how we’re describing the story, all of those things are symbolic. The stories that we create that drive us then ultimately are what we become if you tell yourself a story enough, if you tell other people a story enough, if you shift that reality or pull a metaphorical meaning into the words that come out of your mouth, that’s ultimately what creates you and the legacy that you leave behind too, and that’s what that quote is all about.

 

Steve Fretzin  [04:42]

It’s funny because I have a friend who I grew up with, who’s a lawyer, and I kind of see him occasionally, and I mentioned, you know, they should be considering business development. He goes, “I would never do that. I think he’s told himself the story that business development is a dirty, dirty thing, and he would never lower himself. To that level in his, you know, very, you know, proud career, and I, you know, I can explain it to him 10 different ways, of the value and the benefit, and it’s really about solutions, it’s not about selling, it doesn’t matter, his story is so thick in his skull that it doesn’t matter, and I think that works in politics and people choosing sides and everything, you’re spot on with that.

 

Scott Mason  [05:21]

Yeah, it’s interesting. I have a podcast that I host as a coaching podcast. Literally, I take people that are potential clients and they identify a problem, and then we work through that problem, and I help them identify the narrative that they’re telling themselves, that is ultimately the root of the problem. We reframe the story so that it’s more heroic and has a better outcome for them, and then literally I have them leave with one action step, and I share all of this because the story that you mentioned tracks exactly what happened in that episode? In one of my episodes, it involved a man who was in the financial space. He grew up in a family that mostly consisted of highly credentialed professors, engineers, doctors, people like that, and they viewed sales people as sort of lower than a disreputable, quote unquote, profession to be part of, and so now, as an entrepreneur, he struggles to engage with selling because he views it as something that is beneath him, and the whole point of this episode was about getting him to rip that narrative up that he was telling himself, that was exactly this sounds like, or very close to what that lawyer was talking about, and it was amazing, because he reached out to me a few days after he did that podcast, and said that he had made 10 sales calls. Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [06:48]

well, Scott, I’m so excited you’re here. Everybody, you’re meeting Scott Mason for the first time. He is known as the Myth Slayer. He talks about all the toxic things that can bring people down, and again, the stories that we tell ourselves, and everything. How did you come to be, Scott? Give people a little overview, maybe a minute or two on that.

 

Scott Mason  [07:05]

I went to law school. I practiced for nearly 25 years in both traditional legal roles as well as in organizational executive roles. I was unhappy. I felt something was amiss the whole time, but I didn’t know quite what it was, and it kept frustrating me and holding me back. Ultimately, after a side road into a manufacturing company that I owned, I realized that entrepreneurialism was the right step for me, but it needed to be a sort of entrepreneurialism that helped people, that made their own growth and self-discovery process easier than mine had been, and I wanted to be there for those like lawyers that I could relate to, and who may have gone through the same problems I have. Greek myths are the allegory and the lens through which I have created a unique transformational process. Marrying that with the coaching methodology has created a space that no one else on the planet is occupying, and it’s given me a lot of incredible opportunity, like getting to talk to folks like you.

 

Steve Fretzin  [08:10]

Yeah, well, yeah, it’s a unique spin, and which is what makes it so interesting, because you know, I’ve got five ways of doing something, you’ve got five ways of doing something, we slap them together, and we’re given some great ways of doing things, but I know that part of a big part of business development and being a successful lawyer in today’s day and age is about growth, business development. I also think growth as a human being, but there are you talk about toxic myths people tell themselves, and what do you think of that? What are the most dangerous myths that you see lawyers believing, or where they get stuck and plateaued, they sabotage their ability to generate business or live a happy life.

 

Scott Mason  [08:49]

There are five patterns of thinking that I call the toxic myths. They each are rooted in a genre of Greek myths that corresponds to a behavior pattern set that people develop with regards to lawyers, in particular. The one that I see a lot is called the social myth. You’re living out the social myth when you make your decisions, or decide what course of action that you want to take or even define your mindset based on the perceived or real expectations of other people, and you can really see how that would play out with a lot of lawyers. First of all, Why do people go into law school in the first place? Why is the legal profession appealing? Well, it carries social currency. It pays well, which is a marker of success and value, right? It gives you power and authority in the world, and it also is something that can make you feel as though you are able to attract many. Rights attract entry into other sorts of activities or opportunities you may want in your life. The external validation that is at the root of these appeals behind the legal profession ultimately can end up being a trap for lawyers. If at the end of the day this didn’t end up being right for them, it can be too hard to admit they may be afraid of losing their friends, losing their thinking everyone’s got to look at them as though they’re ridiculous. They might even be afraid of losing their spouse, and that’s devastating when it comes to everything from business development to being a happy, truly self-actualized person.

 

Steve Fretzin  [10:36]

Okay, and which of the other five pillars would you say are the top things that you’re seeing on a regular basis with the folks you coach,

 

Scott Mason  [10:45]

so the other there are two that I see more or less frequently, particularly with regard to the folks in your audience. One is the ritual myth, you’re living out the ritual myth when you engage in behaviors or ways of being over and over and over again, even though they no longer serve you, and so an example of the ritual myth in the legal context is someone who goes to work every day, says I’m going to change, but they don’t, or they’re miserable, or they know things aren’t right, or they know that they need to learn business development, but they simply don’t. Why? Because that’s just something different than they’ve already done. Lawyers can be very averse to change, and the ritual myth is that defined. The other one that I would point to, that a lot of attorneys suffer from, is called the doomsday myth. You’re living out the doomsday myth when you believe that a risky action that you might not have taken before will automatically lead to some sort of personal or professional cataclysm, and a lot of lawyers feel, in addition to social censure or social disapproval that they might get, that they will fail, or that they will end up impoverished or they will have a whole other host of horribles if they really engage in a different way of being or heaven forbid switch their career or engage with being a lawyer in a radically different way

 

Steve Fretzin  [12:14]

yeah but even even in a small way I’m seeing lawyers struggle with something like their first LinkedIn post, right? That just the fear of, am I going to, what am I going to say, and is it going to be appropriate, and is it going to be too personal, not personal enough? Like, they just overthink it, then that perfectionist comes out as well. And so, like, but we know how habits are built, and we know, you know, what allows people to break through, and sometimes it’s having a coach, right, and sometimes it’s, it’s taking a risk, and I’d say I’m, I’m a big fan of risk. We can’t get anywhere in life without taking some risk. Take small risk. You don’t have to, you know, you don’t have to spend a million dollars and pay someone, you know, a million dollars to get you up on LinkedIn. Post something once a week, post something another the next week, try to get, you know, that’s just small things.

 

Scott Mason  [13:02]

That LinkedIn example is so perfect because it has such a dramatic impact on your social and professional capital, and your ability to build business, and people really do get into the doomsday myth with that, as well as a little bit of the ritual myth. I’ve never done it before, so I’m uncomfortable just doing it. But think about it, how many millions of users are there on LinkedIn? How many people post every day, and how many people are going to laser focus on one little post that you did? Lawyers, almost by their nature, are going to think in a way that is mindful of consequences, and so 99.9% of lawyers are not going to put out something that’s going to cause them to be canceled or cause the whole world to put down, and you know what, you make a fool of yourself on LinkedIn, or you have stuff that’s cringe, so what? In a way, it can help you, it gives people talk now. Since posting on LinkedIn, I’ve had people accuse me of propagating false gods. They’ve ridiculed my hair, they’ve ridiculed my clothing style, all that sort of stuff. After a while, when you engage in risk, like what you’re talking about, you actually start to enjoy some of that, because it’s an opportunity to learn and grow.

 

Steve Fretzin  [14:18]

Yeah, yeah, we have to take risks, we have to make mistakes. I really enjoy when a client comes to me, and that’s one of the reasons I ask, you know, what’s your biggest mistake, and what you learned from it on this in this show, at the end of the show, because I think that’s really where the majority of growth is sitting. I guess another thing I had a question about, I remember you saying this before to me, something about identity versus role, and so, like, there might be some confusion between a lawyer’s identity and their role. How does that show up with someone you know that may have plateaued? What’s a practical step to separate the two, so that they can maybe start growing again?

 

Scott Mason  [14:55]

I literally will ask them to write out a. At lists, one is the list of things that define your role. So, let’s say you’re a general counsel, you might say walking into that office five days a week. It might mean it might include sitting and being a voice at, you know, in on before the board of directors or your executive team, it might be providing legal advice, it might be providing compliance training, or liaisoning with external counsel, a whole host of things. It might also mean working long hours, it might mean someone that presents in a certain way and is a pillar of the community. Okay, now what are you, as a matter of your entire life? What were you when you were five? Were you a general counsel or were you a kid playing in the sandbox? What will you be when you’re 80? You may well be a general counsel, but don’t bank on it. Hopefully, you will be someone who is hanging out with someone that you love, or your family members, maybe traveling or playing golf all day, or something like that. What are you when there’s when your boss has gone all together? Are you a husband or a wife? Are you a child of someone? Are you a bowler? Are you someone who likes to read crazy quotes, like the one you quoted for me at the top of the hour, are you someone that wears leather jackets or likes to walk around with a strap around your arm? Right, all those sorts of things are part of your identity. Role is temporarily limited within a certain period of your life. Every role ends, including that of the general counsel, including that of a lawyer. Your identity includes what exists with you after you die, too. And so I ask people to break out everything from the time they were a child till after they die. Where does the role overlap with the identity? And really, are you prepared to be that one dimensional once people see that a lot of times it can help them because they also see other skills or experiences that they have that they can bring in their role but they might have due to the tendency to just compartmentalize things not actually brought into the role maybe for instance you’re not that good with risk in your job as a general counsel but you engage with risk all the time in a sport that you play. Well, maybe you can start thinking that way sometime in the job, and it really helps people move along. And, of course, they have to start acting on it immediately.

 

Steve Fretzin  [17:31]

Yeah, yeah, I get that. And I guess you know, when I think about identity, you know, is it you’re a man of integrity or you’re a woman that’s funny, or is it that you’re a mother or a son, or whatever it might be. It’s a number of things. It’s not one thing. It’s not you’re just, you’re just this. There, you’re saying it’s a mix of things that make up someone’s identity.

 

Scott Mason  [17:53]

Identity is something that none of us can or would be without. If you have no identity, you might as well not exist. A role is merely a part. We all can exist without playing a part in a play, but we have to have something that grounds our fundamental existence.

 

Steve Fretzin  [18:15]

But let me stop you for a second. So, please, someone dies, and I’m talking, I’m at the funeral, and I’m talking. Let’s say a friend of ours dies, and I’m sitting with you at the funeral, and I say, you know, John, you know, John was, was incredible. He was a man of deep integrity. Is that the identity, or is that the way I perceive his identity, or is that what I like my takeaway from, from this individual, not that he’s a lawyer, not that he’s a father, not that he’s, or is it? That’s my spin on what I believe his identity. Maybe he didn’t, he wouldn’t say that about himself. Just trying to kind of unpack this for a second.

 

Scott Mason  [18:49]

Yeah, look, there may be overlap in the case of attorneys. Integrity and honesty better be part of your role can and you should be disbarred, but it may go beyond that now, if you are in business, because there is no universal business code of ethics. There are people in the world of business, in sales itself, just being honest about this, that don’t necessarily view integrity as part of what they bring into them, into the role of business development or sales in their particular field, but outside of that, integrity may be something that they view as part of their larger identity. This may be a case, then again, whereas if you’re somehow not aligned within your role, it’s worth looking at your entire identity and importing some of those identity markers into the role.

 

Steve Fretzin  [19:43]

Yeah, hey everybody. Your next big client might call it 8pm on a Saturday night. The question is, who’s picking up with Lex reception? A real person answers every call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so you never miss a lead, no matter when they. Reach out, no AI agents, no voicemail, just professional legal literate receptionists representing your firm the right way around the clock. And right now, be that lawyer listeners get 250 off their first month. Visit www dot lex reception.com/partners/be that lawyer to claim your offer. That’s www dot lex reception.com/partners/v.lawyer Hey everybody, Steve Fretzin here. and@lawyer.com they don’t just market law firms, they help them grow from connecting millions of consumers to trusted lawyers to smarter intake and industry leading events, they’re building stronger connections across legal visibility intake events growth. That’s lawyer.com Check them out today 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@rankings.io today. How do you feel about people that appear to be very successful, but they’re really not happy, they’re miserable, burned out, but they’re the outer appearance that they put out there is, you know, they’re a rainmaker, or they’re, you know, the premier lawyer in their space, or whatever. What do you say to those? How do those people get out of, out of, out of, out of that rut and into something where they can be successful and happy?

 

Scott Mason  [21:40]

That’s really where we’re talking about these toxic myths, and that’s where it comes into play. Something has put them in a position, some internal story that they’ve told themselves has put them in a position where they have chased these external metrics or these external markers, and that’s worked for them, but if they’re not happy, or if it isn’t matched, look, the stories that we tell ourselves and the symbols that we adopt can either take us towards success or away from it. So, literally, with people like that, I would look at the narratives that they’re telling themselves that have taken them to have all of these markers figured out how they’re toxic. I have them name that toxic myth, call it out. Once you do that, you can’t run from it anymore. You have to face it. Then after that, I have them write a hero story. What would you do if you were like the ancient Greek heroes who had to change who and what they were inside fight external monsters symbolizing internal monsters overcome that, and then ultimately get the keys to the kingdom that they ultimately would lead. What would your hero story look like in real life without those toxic myths? I literally have them rip the toxic myths up and burn them on a fire, and I expect to see a video of that, and then once I do that, once we do that, right, we literally can get a sense as to, okay, now, where are you really going to go? What does your life vision look like? We put together a plan to begin to move them into action, and then, of course, they have to be held accountable during the rest of the coaching process to get there,

 

Steve Fretzin  [23:22]

yeah, you know, it’s interesting, I, I’m not a, like, a trained therapist, I have never gone through any professional training, my sister’s a therapist, and people never leave my sister because she’s very good at being a therapist, and they, they want to keep talking to her, but I play the role where it’s my identity, part of my identity as a lawyer therapist, because I have to deal with the head trash, and I have to deal with the internal shit that’s going on in order to get the best out of my clients. How do you, how do you help break people through when they have, you know, I feel feeling we’re going back to the going back to the, you know, back to the same theme here, but are there things that you do that help people? What would be an example of something you would, another thing you would help people do to get over something where they have, they’re stuck in their mindset.

 

Scott Mason  [24:11]

I’m going to interpret your question broadly, and then if I’m not quite hitting the mark, by all means.

 

Steve Fretzin  [24:18]

Well, let me, let me give it to you this way. A lawyer says to you, they say, Scott, I don’t have time for mindset work. I just need more clients. You know what? Do you say to them,

 

Scott Mason  [24:27]

if you’re going to work with me, it’s not going to be a shallow snap your finger, follow the system, and get it done. That’s not reality. We are going to go into depth. There is a process that I put in place that you’re expected to go into depth into there’s homework that you do. We discussed that at length. And look, I’m an attorney, I know how to ask questions, and I won’t sit there and ask you questions until you give an answer. Now, I do not believe in.. I am supporting. Supportive, encouraging. I like to be able to inspire my clients to bring out their best, but

 

Steve Fretzin  [25:07]

yeah, we got to put on some special boots.

 

Scott Mason  [25:09]

Exactly, exactly. Sometimes you people need to be held accountable, they need to be called out, the, you know, when they’re talking BS, and I have no problem whatsoever doing that, and if they are, that’s that, can be a pivot point. Either you do what you’re say you’re going to do, you hold yourself accountable, you, you, you know, you actually act and actually bring the truth, or we consider where this relationship is going to go. Yeah, I’ll tell you something interesting.

 

Steve Fretzin  [25:39]

Yeah, I’ll tell you something interesting, Scott. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, but I have an agreement with my clients where I list out what they’re going to get with me, right, the classes, the one on ones, the community, all the things that I provide, and what they’re going to, you know, this is this is the package they’re getting.

 

Scott Mason  [25:56]

Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [25:56]

and then what they don’t realize by telling them ahead of time is I’m going to give you a list of eight to 10 things that you need to sign, that you need to initial off on, that you’re going to do the work, you’re going to show up, you’re going to put your best foot forward, that you’re not going to quit when you’re challenged, right, and that you’re, and that you’re going to, you’re going to put a full effort into this, and I really get that high level of commitment verbally, and then I get it on paper, and I haven’t had to do this that often, but if somebody isn’t coming to my class or they’re just giving me excuses, I’ll pull that piece of paper out and I’ll say, “Look, we’re me, we got to meet, we got to look at this. You initialed all these, either we’re going to, you know, to get this done the right way, or we’re going to part ways, you know.

 

Scott Mason  [26:35]

I think that’s brilliant. My version of that is early on, within the first two sessions, I have them write a commitment document, document that I see again. They make that commitment, they hang it up on their wall, or by their desk, or by their computer. I expect to see a photo of that, and that’s the sort of thing I pull back onto them as well. You, we can bring a camel to the water, we can’t force it to drink. I don’t know about how your discovery process goes, but one other thing that I’ve learned, and I asked them also to make those similar commitments verbally during the final discovery call before I send over any contract, but really within 510, minutes of any initial discovery call, I want to find out, have you been involved in any self-improvement work at all, so far. Have you even read a book or gone to Toastmasters meetings, something like that, to indicate that you are someone who’s willing to engage with this sort of stuff and has a history of it? Because if you haven’t, the work that I do with them is too intensive to just sort of start from scratch. I do do anything like that.

 

Steve Fretzin  [27:40]

Yeah, I had a lawyer. I get, I get the 30 minutes I have with someone is so eye-opening. The situation is, you can’t read your label from inside the bottle, and so when they start, when I start asking questions, and I start identifying 125, 10 gaps where somebody may be doing a half a million or a million or more, and yet they still have a half a dozen or more gaps in, in how they’re, they’re not planned out, they’re not getting value from activities they’re doing, they’re not, you know, landing the size and shape and scope clients that they want to land. There’s a list of things that happen, and that’s the beginning of it, right. Then it’s how much deeper can I take it, and here’s the best part, Scott, I think you’re gonna like, I have to know what their, what their motivation is to change, and so I asked the guy the other day, and he goes, well, I could stay where I am, or I could, you know, or I could go up, you know, I’m doing fine right now, and I said, well, then that’s a problem, I said that I’m not a, you know, keep it the same guy, why would you want to invest time, money, energy with me to stay where you are, like, and I pushed him further and further, and eventually I got it. I got three or four motivations out of him that seemed very sincere, and what it did was it put some faith back in me that this is someone that I would work well with. I just need it, I just can’t move forward with someone unless I hear those words.

 

Scott Mason  [29:00]

I also coached people. It’s not my main focus area, but I do get clients who are looking to become more charismatic, and I recently had a similar conversation with a prospect like that, who claimed upfront that she wanted to engage with me because she wanted to form a nonprofit that she would be the CEO of, that would, it had a mission that was urgent and important, and she knew she needed to be able to stand up and speak in a way that was compelling and attention getting, and could galvanize people behind what she was trying to do, and she knew she didn’t have that skill set, and we, I went on during the discussion with her along the similar lines. How important is this to you? Well, this nonprofit means everything to me, and this is my life mission. And okay, and what is the what will happen if you don’t form this nonprofit? Well, I’ll be okay. I have a nine to five job, and what will happen if you. Are not able to be able to bring business or revenue into this nonprofit. Oh, I’ll be fine, I’ll just do my nine to five job. And perhaps it wasn’t a surprise when that conversation then went into, I mentioned Toastmasters a few minutes ago. Why should I hire you versus Toastmasters? Why would you go to Toastmasters as opposed to someone who’s going to do a bespoke program with you, who speaks internationally, right, who has a social media presence, who gets paid a lot of money to speak. You don’t, you don’t. Did

 

Steve Fretzin  [30:31]

you get free toast? I’ve heard about Toastmasters,

 

Steve Fretzin  [30:33]

free toast for government, Texas Toast.

 

Steve Fretzin  [30:36]

They got ride deli toast.

 

Scott Mason  [30:38]

She, I, well, we need to have a conversation about that, but anyway, it was a classic case where this was one where I knew ultimately it wasn’t going to work. Yeah, sometimes you can get to that real motivation behind people. Other times they think they want something, they may have a moment of inspiration, but are they someone that’s consistently engaged in a pattern of going beyond and doing what they need to, you and I are both similar in that respect, and the quality of the coaching, and as busy as you are, and the reputation that you have, of course, you’re not going to want to dither away on anyone that isn’t going to fully commit to your work.

 

Steve Fretzin  [31:16]

Yeah,

 

Scott Mason  [31:16]

that’s how

 

Steve Fretzin  [31:17]

you got rid of, but sometimes we, so look, I have limitations, and so do you, because we’re individual coaches working with, you know, a specific set number of people,

 

Scott Mason  [31:25]

right. The

 

Steve Fretzin  [31:25]

beauty is with the Be That Lawyer community is there’s people that are not ready for prime time, they’re not ready for me, they’re not ready for the investment of time, money, energy to take things to the next level, and I never, and other than my content, right, I never really had anything sound to give them, and now I do. You know, courses they can take live events, library catalog of content, networking with top rainmakers in a, in chat rooms, where it’s all about growth. And so I think there’s sometimes we have kind of come up with solutions that we didn’t realize we could do, but, but ultimately, you know, that’s sort of like a fallback to the real thing, but I think it’s still a very powerful tool. Let me ask you this question. We’ll wrap up on this. Scott, what’s Scott’s big mistake?

 

Scott Mason  [32:07]

I mentioned speaking just a few minutes ago, when I first got into the coaching space, I got into it as an ancillary to another desire that I had, which was to pass the transformational message that I had on through speaking, and I love speaking, and people seem to enjoy hearing me speak, and so getting bookings has not been a particular challenge for me. I really targeted speaking as a significant revenue driver, along with coaching, but really was focusing on pushing that very, very hard up until perhaps just a couple of months after we did our prior podcast interview. Oh, of course, always want coaching clients, and I do well by them, and it was so much that it was becoming the dominant force in my revenue model. That sounds like it would be great, because I would – I’m doing – I was doing what I wanted to do, but literally one day out of the blue, I’ll predicate this by saying I’m an unusually healthy person. I eat extraordinarily healthy, my waistline is the same as it was in high school. I lift weights four times a week. I bicycle. I don’t even use the subway here in New York City. I bicycle or walk everywhere I go, including to the airport if necessary. And right, so I’m the sort of person that is unlikely to have what happened to have next. Literally out of the blue, I woke up one night feeling an ice pick stabbing at the base of my skull, even though there was no ice pick there. Within 10 days, I’d lost 20 pounds, I’d lost the ability to focus, I lost control of my body temperature, I stopped eating, I stopped drinking, I had pain literally over every inch of my body, and I woke up one day unable to walk, I was rushed to the hospital, and the first thing they asked my spouse in the emergency room was whether I, whether we lived in an apartment building with an elevator or some or a first floor, because they’re like, he may not walk again, and you just need to accept that, and it was a long time before I was able to walk at all, even though eventually, whatever, and this illness, no one knows what it was, and it, I was told if it hadn’t been for the fact that I am so physically fit, I would not have survived, survived this thing at all. I’ll never forget one of my clients came and saw me in the hospital, and he later told me you were lucid and everything, but I went home and told my wife I don’t think he’s coming out of there. Wow, and so I share all of this because it shined a light on a mistake that I had, which was building a revenue model or a proposed revenue. Trajectory that was dependent on conditions that could very easily end in the, in the snap of a finger. My entire speaking pipeline ended, nor did I have any idea when I could pick that up again, because I didn’t know if I would be able to walk. Yeah, and at the same time, coaching, while I was in the hospital, of course, all of my entire pipeline ended then, but at least my recurring clients were more than happy to pick up the minute I was better, so I had something. The lesson from that is what we want to do matters, but we need to make sure, as entrepreneurs, we have multiple revenue streams or multiple ways of ringing in our revenue, and don’t get too reliant on one that we may like or feel most comfortable with, because that can go in-person networking is something you need to be able to do, but if there’s another lockdown, you may not be able to do that, or you know, you, there may be certain activities with regards to your development that you aren’t able to, let’s say, you damage your hand, you can’t type well, you need to have something else that you’re doing to bring this stuff in. So, learn from that mistake. Don’t ever put all your eggs in your basket. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a solo business owner, we don’t have sick days, and it can happen to anyone. Something that you’re banking on can end in the snap. I’m lucky it came back, but there was no guarantee,

 

Steve Fretzin  [36:21]

but there’s a business lesson there, but I mean, I’m also someone who had a near-death experience, and I can tell you the lesson that I took away wasn’t a business lesson, it was a life lesson, which is you only have one shot at this thing, so whether it’s that you want to become a great rainmaker, a better father, better mother, better husband, wife, you want to enjoy life in different ways, travel, you know, don’t wait and get it done, and take care of yourself. You never know when something’s going to happen like that. But Scott, I appreciate you being on the show, man. Always a pleasure, always so interesting and different and unique, so many ways. I appreciate it. Have to take a moment, though, of course, to thank our wonderful sponsors: lawyer.com Lex Reception, Rankings IO, and Pimcon, all amazing fans of the show and sponsor the show. Also, want to just remind everybody, if you’re interested in checking out that Be That Lawyer community, you’re a motivated lawyer who wants to be in a room where it happens, as they say. Then you’re going to go to Be The lawyer.com/community And I want to say, thank you to Scott. Scott, thanks, man. I love you, man. You’re the best

 

Scott Mason  [37:23]

to say

 

Steve Fretzin  [37:24]

all right. And thank you, everybody, for hanging out for the last 30 and change. Hopefully, you got, you know, a lot of great takeaways from today, and it’s being your best self, living your best life, and being that lawyer, confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker. Take care, everybody. Be safe and well. We will talk again very soon.

 

Narrator  [37:45]

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.