Dillon Zwick: The Science of Relationships and Business Development for Lawyers

Most lawyers treat networking like a necessary evil, but what if you approached it as a science of human relationships instead of sales? In this episode, you’ll learn how to build a small, powerful circle of trusted relationships that drive referrals, opportunities, and long-term career security.

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Dillon Zwick discuss:

• The Harvard study on adult development and why relationships drive happiness
• How to reframe networking from “selling” to genuine relationship building
• Finding common ground and “natural affinities” to build trust
• Prioritizing and qualifying strategic partners using likability and referability
• Using systems, Dunbar’s numbers, and cadence to maintain a high-value network

Key Takeaways:

• Long-term health, happiness, and even business success are far more correlated with the quality of your relationships than with money, status, or genetics.
• Networking works best when it is treated as a relationship-building exercise rooted in curiosity and service, not as a pitch or sales event.
• Common ground, including shared background, interests, values, or experiences, is one of the fastest and most reliable ways to create authentic connection and trust.
• Because time is limited, you need to intentionally prioritize relationships based on both how much you genuinely like someone and how capable and inclined they are to create opportunities for others.
• A simple, consistent follow-up system and a realistic understanding of how many relationships you can truly maintain, based on Dunbar’s research, can ensure you are never forgotten and rarely without work.

“Relationships don’t happen just by happenstance. You have to invest in your relationships and the people around you to develop them.” —  Dillon Zwick

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About Dillon Zwick: Dillon has spent about 5 years in the field of corporate renewal with a background in heavy industrial design and manufacturing. Dillon’s primary team role has been finding opportunities, solving difficult problems, and figuring out whatever needs to get done. He has helped numerous client companies successfully work through the corporate restructuring process. In that capacity, he has worked closely with CEOs, CFOs, and their respective accounting staff to support cash-constrained situations, providing transparency and strategic analytical support to the restructuring process.

Dillon earned a B.S. in Biochemistry and a B.A. in History from the University of North Texas in 2011. He serves as President on the Turnaround Management Association – Central Texas chapter board, along with being a Director of the Association of Corporate Growth NextGen – Austin/San Antonio chapter board.

Connect with Dillon Zwick:

Website: https://meadowlarkadvisors.com/about/bio-dillon/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dillon-zwick/

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]

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Narrator  [01:11]

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, we’ll take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin, hey

 

Steve Fretzin  [01:33]

everybody, Steve Fretzin, here and welcome to the be that lawyer Podcast. I’m happy that you’re with us today. We’re sitting just over 600 shows Dillon in about six years. And I tell that to people, and they go, what? How is that even possible? Well, it is. We’ve done it, and we’re two shows a week now for over five years. So it really has been an incredible run. And I think the key is consistency, right? Whether it’s networking, relationships, podcasting, whatever you’re doing, you can just be consistent with it, right? Does that kind of the key with relationships?

 

Steve Fretzin  [02:03]

Yeah. I

 

Dillon Zwick  [02:04]

mean, that’s definitely what I’ve seen. You definitely have to stand in front of people and stay connected with the folks that matter most in your life,

 

Steve Fretzin  [02:10]

yeah. And I think your quote of the show Dillon is really apropos for that. It’s the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. I believe that’s Robert waldinger,

 

Dillon Zwick  [02:21]

yeah, exactly. So that comes from the Harvard study for adult development. It is the single longest longitudinal study ever undertaken. It’s past its 85th year, and it’s on its fourth different director. So what they had sought to do during that study was trying to figure out what kind of determines our health and happiness as we 80 get older. And as they were doing this study, they were trying to Tracy seeing, you know, individuals throughout their entire life, and now they’re in their second generation of people as well. And what they found, you know, it wasn’t genetics, you know, it wasn’t fame or fortune. It wasn’t how much you exercise or drink or smoke. It came down to your relationships, the quality of your relationships, and how many people do you have in your life that you trust to have your back, and how many people’s backs do you have? So that quote comes from that research

 

Steve Fretzin  [03:13]

well, and you know that quote also hits me in a special place, because I feel like people that just focus on money, or people that just focus on themselves and they don’t really give to friends or develop those relationships, they end up, I think, less happy, or they end up, you know, kind of alone and miserable, right? Because, like, money can’t buy you love or whatever the saying is, you know, it’s you know. That’s why you know, relationships with your spouse, relationships with your best friends and your family, the people your clients, the people that surround you, can make such a huge difference in your in how happy you are.

 

Dillon Zwick  [03:46]

Oh, 100% I mean, giving to others is a key source for determining our happiness as we age. So,

 

Steve Fretzin  [03:52]

yeah, awesome, awesome. Well, listen, we are locked and loaded and ready to go, everybody. We’ve got Dillon Zwick here, Senior Manager of Meadowlark advisors. I who connected us, varent, my good buddy, varent, yeah, Perian, shout out to varent. Amazing guy, great lawyer down in Austin, Texas. So we’ll shout out to him. How did you guys meet and then, and then, you know that I do want to get into your background a little bit and understand how you became so interested in relationships.

 

Dillon Zwick  [04:20]

Yeah. So I met Veron through provisors here in Austin. We’re in the same home group together, but I mean the story of myself, my background and how I got into relationships and doing business development work. So I went to college to study biochemistry and history of all things, you know, that makes perfect sense. And I thought I wanted to be a scientist. And so during my undergrad, I volunteered for a lab that was called the network of the Center for network neuroscience, where we grew mouse neurons on circuit boards and then did pharmacology and toxicology studies to see what would happen. But during that process, I learned the study of science and the actual practice of science are two very different things. You know, uh. Pain dries faster than science progresses, and I just did not have the Zen for that field of study. So after college, we kind of retooled and got into heavy industrial design and worked for a manufacturing firm in Dallas for several years. About two years into that, I kind of had figured it out, and went to my boss. I’m like, Okay, I think I gotta you know what’s next. And he’s like, Oh no, no, you kind of just do that for 30 years, and then you retire like, you know, this isn’t going to be a right fit. I need to start looking for what else I’m going to do after this. And so I was living in Dallas at the time. I came down to Austin for a conference that was going on, you know, went and was staying at a friend’s place that I’d known since college. Went to the conference, went to the after party on Sixth Street, and spent some hours there, came back to their place, you know, at two in the morning, basically. And I go into their workshop, and I see my friend there, and he, know, has a whiskey in one hand and a business plan in the other. You go, Hey, what? What you’re working on? And that proceeds to be a very long conversation. He tells me, the client that they’re working was the third largest carbon manufacturer in the US at the time out in Georgia, it was a family run operation. They had imported this extruder technology from Europe and was beat in the market for a good decade, and then the other folks caught up. It transferred from father to son. You had all these issues. They’re being kicked out by their bank. They’re doing bankruptcy prep. They’re running the issues that the board has filled with all these family members and extended family members, while doing a Lean Six Sigma implementation. Tried to turn this thing around, and I was just hooked, as you know, how do I get into this? Yeah, mostly not until stimulation that I had in years, and he had known me, trusted me, and because of that relationship, was willing to coach and said, you know, take these accounting classes, Do this, do that. And then six months later, I get a phone call that says, hey, I need you in Indianapolis tomorrow. Get on a plane. So I got on and never looked back. Oh, yeah, all right.

 

Steve Fretzin  [06:54]

And what about your fascination with relationships, obviously, being in provisors and I am, as well as a group leader here in Chicagoland, and shout out to all the provisors, buddies and friends. You know, obviously a huge part of networking and provisors is relationships. But you’ve taken it, I think, a little further,

 

Dillon Zwick  [07:12]

yeah. I mean, my fascination is like the relationships are kind of the foundation of everything. I got my career through relationships. You get a work through relationships, you know, we’re a 100% referral based business, and so without that, you know, I wouldn’t have opportunities in my life.

 

Steve Fretzin  [07:29]

Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [07:30]

so let’s talk a little bit about it. The, you know, business development for lawyers in particular, I think, has such a negative connotation. And it’s, it’s about selling. It’s about convincing. It’s about doing all these things that are considered dirty and nasty, because when we as human beings, as buyers of goods and services get sold too, right? It just feels awful, and we never want to put other people through that. And I think lawyers signed up to be lawyers, not to be business developers and marketers and branders. And so while some may develop relationships naturally, some find it very challenging, and they see it like, is this sales or is this relationship development like, what am I doing here? What’s your take on why they struggle with relationships and BD in general?

 

Dillon Zwick  [08:17]

Well, I think we all get into networking because we want to grow our businesses. And so it becomes really easy to fall in this trap to think that networking is a business development or our marketing exercise, except, you know, thinking that you have to be salesy, that you have to come up with your perfect pitches, and, you know, these great one pagers and really show credentials, except all those things don’t actually develop trust. Like networking is actually a relationship building exercise. It’s about showing genuine curiosity and others asking good questions and follow up questions, spending that time to get to know people, not just what they do, but who they are as people, and we develop those relationships and friendships, then work flows from there, but without that underlying emotional connection, you’re never going to get any work out of that situation.

 

Steve Fretzin  [09:08]

Yeah, so I, I’m of the ilk that you know you’re right, relationships are the key. And so people go on a network with the idea that there’s something in it for me and that I need to sell and that I need to get business from this. And so it’s like they’re going to the end of the story, but they haven’t read the whole beginning and middle of it. They just want to go right to the end, where I get business. I’m here. You know what I do, and you should trust me, and you should give me business. And there’s a whole story that has to happen before that. Where do people start with developing a relationship?

 

Dillon Zwick  [09:38]

I mean, it starts with you meet people in public places. Networking events are obviously great pillows to meet places. But then you kind of go through that process of getting to know folks sitting down, one on one, maybe a coffee, and trying to understand who this person is and whether there’s a potential for a relationship there. You know most people you meet, you’re just not going to develop a relationship with. I think I heard on previous episodes that you mentioned you need to meet 10 folks to meet those two that actually have potential for Link to develop. And that map holds true. And what I witnessed is okay, but once you filter out to find those 20% of individuals, then you should double down on those relationships. You know, periodically follow up. You know, after a certain point in time when you’re just spending more time with individuals, it becomes a lot, it looks a lot less like anything you would associate with networking, and eventually just looks like two buddies catching up over lunch, over drinks, maybe going to top golf or going for a hike. At that point in time, this very stressful thing or difficult thing actually just becomes very fluid and easy and a whole lot of fun.

 

Steve Fretzin  [10:43]

Yeah, there’s the development of trust, which I think happens on a there’s a couple different ways to do it, obviously making making the relationship about someone else as a starting point, right? It’s not about me telling my stories and my one upsmanship. I’m going to ask questions, I’m going to listen, I’m going to be in the moment with that person. Another thing that works really well to tie people together. And I want to hear your take on this is what I call natural affinities. It’s that common ground, right? So, you know varen, I know varet, that could be one. You’re improvisers. I’m improvisers. That could be another. You’re into golf. I love golf. And this is we could just sit and talk about, you know, the masters that just happened in this great, you know, wonderful game called golf. For example, it could be that I’ve got a, like, I was talking to a guy the other day. I saw that he’s got a big cat, like a big cat tower in the back of his screen, on Zoom. And he started telling me about his cats, like a cougar and all this, like, I’m not cat. It’s like a, like a real, real monster cat. Or thinks he thinks he is. And then, of course, I have Ozzy, you know, the maniac orange tabby here, and so that’s going to connect us in a way that you just don’t get from talking about the weather or traffic or, you know that. So what’s your take on on that, as far as how to build trust through common ground?

 

Dillon Zwick  [11:56]

Yeah, I mean, I’m really big into just following what the research says on human development and relationships, and one study in particular by Robin Dunbar, also known for Dunbar’s numbers, he digs into this a great deal that the more you have in common with people, the greater likely you are to develop a friendship. And so by his research, you only really need two points of common ground with somebody that can be very easy. Most anyone you meet, you might be able to obtain that but, yeah, fishing for those areas of common ground, the more you tend to like the other person, the more likely that is going to develop into a friendship. And so by his research, he’s looking at, right? Do you speak the same language or dialect? You know, that’s usually something you’ll always have in common with someone. What about education, right? Did you go to the same schools? Did you study the same things? Lawyers love talking to other lawyers. Doctors like hanging out with other doctors. Right? He’s also looking on at humor. You laugh at the same things and enjoy the same kind of jokes. Music is actually a really big one as well, like you listen to the same bands or the same concerts together. He’s also looking at things like political beliefs or social moral beliefs as well. Do you practice the same religion? Do you believe the same things also, like, did you grow up together or, like, in the same, you know, country, same city, same high school, you know, do you both visit the same restaurants and the same street sort of thing? So when you’re having these conversations with people just fishing for that common ground, can actually do a great deal to developing that relationship a lot further than, as you say, talking about sports or the weather or more superficial things.

 

Steve Fretzin  [13:31]

Well, there’s, you know, developing relationships and making friends, kind of everywhere you go, another aspect of that I believe, and you’re gonna, you’re gonna love this and talk about it further is, I really believe that we need to put other people’s interests before ours. And so when you build a relationship, if you can be an active listener and you can identify a good connection, a good article, a good event, whatever it could be, where you can help somebody out and do a solid for someone else that doesn’t have to be in the first time. You meet them in five or 10 minutes, but if you can figure it out and maybe the first or second engagement by listening, and you really do well with CPAs, or you really do well with litigator attorneys, those are the people that refer you, and I know those people, and I can get you in front of one, like, without anything in return at this stage, just like, How can I pay it forward? I think that takes that trust a little further, and I don’t know that enough people are doing that.

 

Dillon Zwick  [14:28]

Yeah, I think relationships don’t happen just by happenstance, right? You have to invest in your relationships and the people around you to develop them, right? So yet, taking their best interest to hearts, investing in them, be it introductions or helping them out. Do they even need other personal things, right? Do they need a doctor recommendation? Does their kid need an internship? So it doesn’t have to be completely professional. It is this is a person you want to spend time with, and if you like spending time with that person, then why not do things to their benefit?

 

Steve Fretzin  [15:00]

It, Hey,

 

Steve Fretzin  [15:03]

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Dillon Zwick  [17:23]

Yeah. I mean, there’s only so many hours in the day, so we always have to prioritize which relationships are the most important to us. And I think it’s really easy to want to prioritize people who are theoretically our best referral sources and immediate economic payoff, but if somebody sees a lot of opportunities, but they don’t like you like they’re never going to send you a single thing ever. There’s no need to necessarily waste your time going down that rabbit hole. But the inverse is also true. If you like somebody or somebody cares about you, it doesn’t matter what they do as their profession. They’re going to try and find opportunities to benefit your career and get you involved. You know, I got one friend here in Austin who does evaluation work, which is downstream of what I do. So I wouldn’t ever expect a referral from them, ever, but because of who they are and because they care. You know, they put me on almost half a dozen speaking opportunities. Multiple of those have been in front of hundreds of business owners and help me marketed my business. So if you’re only focused on economic media economic return, you actually end up missing out on a whole lot of opportunities that could be available to you. So the way I kind of think about prioritization is kind of two characteristics. One is likability, right? Do you enjoy spending time with that person generally? Right? If that meeting’s on your calendar, are you actually looking forward to it? Or do you want to find any excuse to get out of it? Yeah. And one of the tests I use is the Saturday afternoon. You know, given an opportunity, would you spend time with this person on a Saturday afternoon? And if the answer is no, the likelihood of y’all ever doing business together decreases substantially.

 

Steve Fretzin  [18:56]

Yes. Dillon, can you, can you share five or 10 names of people you don’t want to spend time with anymore?

 

Dillon Zwick  [19:02]

Yeah, exactly. And then the other way I think about it, is referability, right? And that kind of breaks down into two attributes, one is attitude, and the other is skill. So attitude, are they a go giver? Are they trying to find opportunities to get other people involved, or are they just a taker, in which case nothing’s ever going to transpire, and then the second half of that equation is skill. Right? Just because somebody wants to get somebody else involved doesn’t mean they know to ask the right questions, create the right opportunities, or will actually generate anything. I had one relationship where I had invested some time into really like the guy enjoyed spending time with him. But then he had an opportunity to come across his desk where was going to be a perfect for me. And I said, Hey, well, can you make that introduction? And he goes, I’m just a vendor. Like, oh, okay, this isn’t, this isn’t going anywhere. Just let me think about how I want to allocate that time.

 

Steve Fretzin  [19:57]

Yeah. So really, what we’re doing is we’re really and I. Have a system for this, of course, and it sounds like you do as well of how do we effectively qualify people in or out? And I want to be clear that when I qualify someone out and I like them, they’re still in my network, they’re still a friend. There’s still someone I can go hang out with and have lunch with and all of that. But when we talk about our time and we talk about qualifying five to 10 players that you really want on your team, and that you can bring up slowly and methodically to make sure that they’re the right fit through the different qualifiers that you that you mentioned. You know, skill, likability, trustability, maybe they’re an authority in their space. Like, what are the things that we’re looking for to refer someone? And then also, do they have the referability back? And so that’s why, you know, we can’t do that with 100 people, right? Because if you have to refer a financial advisor, you can’t refer 10. You can maybe, you know, only refer two or three tops. And if that’s the case, then you know what? What’s the point of having 10? Unless you know that seven don’t care about being referred, they just need a good resource in you. That may be the case, right? So the qualification and how we move people up into that strategic partner Dream Team, I think, is critical. And most, most lawyers, most networkers, aren’t really thinking that strategically. They’re just out hustling and investing time. I mean, the time that, you know, two, 300 400 hours, sometimes a year, people are investing in networking and not really getting a good return. How do you suggest they get the best return for that time?

 

Dillon Zwick  [21:29]

Yeah, I mean, if you don’t have a lot of time, or if you’re trying to get a quick payoff, you know, we said first one is just prioritization, kind of weeding out those 80% that you realize aren’t going to go anywhere, and just focusing on that 20% which eliminates most of the timing you would need to spend. Beyond that, it just comes down to making sure you get remembered. And there’s research behind this. We don’t have to guess. So this comes back to studies done by Herman Evan house in the late 1800s he was the one of the very first scientists to methodically study our memories function and charted out kind of a rate of decay of our memories. Oh, he was testing himself on nonsense syllables and then trying to chart that out. But the same kind of applies for our personal relationships, right, like our strongest bonds decay the slowest, where all our weakest ties are going to decay the fastest. Right, despite that best efforts, you probably haven’t got that forgotten about that x you used to date over a decade ago, but you know the person you just met for coffee once today, you probably got a few months before they don’t remember that you exist. And so, based on his research, you can deploy a space repetition system using like an external memory device, like a CRM, or any sort of reminder system to make sure that you check in and reconnect with those people who matter most periodically. So you’re always kind of playing with those forgetting curves and never quite ever be completely forgotten. Personally, the way I deploy is a 469, month system. So if I have coffee with somebody today, four months later, I want to reconnect with them, and that isn’t always a catch up lunch or anything that can just be a simple introduction or something done to their benefit, but once I’ve done that, once or I now reconnect with them every six months, over lunch, drinks, whatever it may be, until a friendship forms, and then, in which case, it drops to nine. But there’s kind of that great paradox, right? The closer you are to someone, the more you like them, the more you’re going to find excuses to spend time with them, whether it’s sending referrals back and forth or just wanting to know how their life is going. And so they often never end up on that nine month list. So

 

Steve Fretzin  [23:34]

yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [23:35]

but I think there’s a like you said, a prioritization of if I have clients and strategic partners that are proven out. I’ve got to be in front of them, you know, pretty much all the time, a call, an email, a face to face, a newsletter, a social media post, commenting on theirs, something to like, continually be in front of those a level players, and then maybe it’s a little bit less for the B’s, people that have potential to be a strategic partner, but maybe aren’t there yet. They need to be nurtured along. And so your How are you staying in front of those folks might be a little less intensive than the the a group, and then the C’s might be, yeah, they’ll get my newsletter. They’ll see me on social and that’s kind of it. And so that way you’re not killing your time on 100 or 200 300 people, but you’re really focusing your energy on the A’s and somewhat on the B’s, with an understanding that that’s going to get you the most value for that, for the effort.

 

Dillon Zwick  [24:29]

Yeah. I mean, if you treat everyone on the same plane, you know you’re going to spend a lot of time again, not far at all. And it’s just not really worthwhile. It’s also it’s not going to be fun, right? You want to spend time with the people. You want to spend time if you want to work with people, you’ll with people you like. So just gravitate towards the thing that actually feels natural. Then it actually works out in the end. Imagine that,

 

Steve Fretzin  [24:50]

how do you transition relationships to strategic partnerships, to the development of business? Is there a little more structure around what. You’re doing and how you’re doing it than what most most people would have.

 

Dillon Zwick  [25:03]

So the way I kind of conceive of things and create my systems actually goes back to Dunbar and his way of viewing the world. So Robin Dunbar, for those not familiar, is an evolutionary anthropologist who first posited that human beings can only have 150 meaningful relationships, and so based on his research, and it was probably more accurate to say not Dunbar’s number, but Dunbar’s numbers, because he’s charting out people as how close they are to you, right? So you have your intimates, you have close friends, best friends, good friends, and then simply friends. And that outer band is, you know, 100 potential folks. Everything outside of that are, you know, weak ties. Call it acquaintances, fans, followers, strangers, and so when I’m thinking about networking, the question is, who is this person? Relationship to me, right? And what are you optimizing for? Right? There’s plenty of people who have been very successful in optimizing for weak ties and acquaintances and racking that up into the 1000s, but I find my time best spent focusing on that outer band of friendships. You know, people call that different things, buddies, pals, associates, whatever you feel comfortable with. But that’s how I understand how to prioritize my time, is figure out who could potentially end up there and then spend all my time investing in those kinds of relationships. The other card I like about that is it just quantifies the answer, right? You don’t have to have 1000s. You just need 100 folks that you can take care of, and they have your best interest as part as well. Because I think if you develop that, then you’ll probably never want for work again.

 

Steve Fretzin  [26:35]

Yeah. I mean, I’m finding, also, as I’m aging, that I’m not like I had so many friends and so many groups of friends in different worlds and communities that as I’m getting older, it’s more important for me to have sort of a small group of really good friends, and then you know more friends and acquaintances out here. And of course, you know provisors And my clients and like, there’s a lot of love I have in my life. But as far as like, where I spend a lot of my time, it’s with a very small number of people. Is that fairly normal? I think, as people age,

 

Dillon Zwick  [27:06]

oh yeah. I mean, I’ve seen that as well. You realize you don’t want to deal with a lot of folks. You don’t want to be around until you stop around. Well,

 

Steve Fretzin  [27:13]

it’s not that I don’t want to be around them. I love everybody. It’s just, I think it takes a lot of effort and time to develop a strong relationship with someone new. Mean, it could take months or years, where I have people from my life that I really know I enjoy. They’re proven right? They’re proven entities, that when we go out for dinner, there’s going to be laughs, or that if I need a ride from the hospital, that they would be the one to call. Like, there’s things like that, where I think you just appreciate those close relationships, and it’s just harder to, like, bring new people into that inner circle, like it used to be.

 

Dillon Zwick  [27:47]

Yeah. I mean, there’s research about how long it takes for a friendships develop. You know, from going from first handshake to a friendship is a minimum of 10 hours together, by research, by Jeffrey Hall, but I mean, the average closer to 45 hours to develop, like, really close ties. We’re talking about the hundreds of hours together. So it’s quite the investment to put into somebody to pursue that. So yeah, and personally, I’m either introverted, so needing new folks is pretty draining. Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [28:15]

yeah, I’ll tell you what. I’m an extrovert, but as I’ve aged, I’ve kind of, like, put my time in. And so those big events that used to give me energy, now they sort of drain me. And so, you know, I’m great, like, this one on one, a couple people in a room, like, I’m you lamp shit on the head guy, right at the party. But when we get into, like, a big like, the provisors has their big holiday party, and I’m kind of giving away something here. But like, I strategically connect with all the people on LinkedIn before I attend to say, I can’t wait to see you. I hit those people at that event in an hour. It’s like over a two hour event, and I’m out the door in an hour, and I’ll strategically hit everybody I wanted to hit. Got introductions, whatever it was, and I’m Then I’m leaving without feeling that total I’m still drained after an hour, but not like I would be if I had to be on for two The other thing I love to do is just get all those people that I’m friends with, but they’re not in my close circle together. So like, when I do a provisors Like, I’m having a provisor social at my house, bourbon and brisket. So I’m bringing all of these provisors people into my home. They can see my where I live, and meet my animals, meet my wife, whatever it might be, and enjoy some, you know, delicious brisket that I made so and bourbon I bought. So that’s a way for me to sort of keep tight with all these people I really adore, without having to maybe spend time with them individually, not that I wouldn’t want to. But, you know, that’s again that’s going back to, like, how many, you know, people can I have in my inner circle?

 

Dillon Zwick  [29:38]

Yeah, I think the less time it looks like networking, the better results you’re going to have, and the more time it is just socializing with amongst friends, you’re going to get a great return on that. So that sounds like an amazing event.

 

Steve Fretzin  [29:49]

Well, yeah, I’m excited about it. And I don’t know that my wife is, but I am. Anyway, let’s go to what matters most, Dillon, which is what’s Dillon’s big mistake?

 

Dillon Zwick  [29:57]

Yeah. So before I got into. Consulting. I was working at that manufacturing firm. It was my first job out of college, and I had my very first mentor there, and he gave me this amazing piece of a life. Advice is that, you know, careers are very long. You know you can be competitors one day and co workers the next. You know, different jobs come and go, but job security is always knowing you have another job. You know, as like any good protege, I completely ignored that advice, yeah.

 

Dillon Zwick  [30:27]

And so not long after me was able to make the transition to consulting and basically overnight my hourly compensation quadruple. You know, those first six months I was on top of the world, the things were amazing. And then that first project came to an end, and in my defense, I thought I had done the proper due diligence of the feast famine cycles that are typical of consulting in our profession. And apparently not well enough, because it was those much dragged on between cases I started to run into that problems that the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent, not a pleasurable experience, would not recommend to anyone. And so a few options on the table. That’s when I began networking. You know, as a very introverted person with social anxiety, you know, a perfect fit for networking. That’s how things turned out. You know, luckily for me, a couple months later, the work arrives, everything’s fine, but at that point in time, I had learned the lesson, except this time the hard way you know job security is knowing you have another job

 

Steve Fretzin  [31:26]

well, and then the lawyers listening. You know that you know people at your firm, or know people in your life that are in house or that are service based partners, and they’re not doing anything that you’re doing. They’re not doing any networking. They’re just sitting back, doing their job, billing their hours, going home, and they don’t realize that next job is going to happen through a network. It’s not going to happen through a resume, or that you know how you succeed and get business and clients, is going to happen through a network, not through osmosis. So it all, it all, this all comes full circle. I appreciate you sharing that. Let’s take a moment. Thank our amazing sponsors, of course, Lex reception, we’ve got lawyer.com pimcon coming up in October, with Chris dryer and his gang at rankings, IO. And of course, if you haven’t heard about the new be that lawyer community, you’re going to want to check that out. It’s been up for a little bit now and again, collaborating with growth minded attorneys. Content like you can’t believe. More video, more audio, articles, books, everything you need to take in to be that lawyer, and then, of course, access to me via networking events and coaches corners and things like that. So really good stuff. Dillon, people want to get in touch with you. They want to hear more about metal arc advisors. What are the digits?

 

Dillon Zwick  [32:37]

Yeah. Just hit me up on LinkedIn and send me a message. I respond to everything there,

 

Steve Fretzin  [32:41]

yeah, and all the information in the show notes as well. Thanks for coming on. I mean, this is a topic that we kind of dabble in, you know, in around as we go through other topics, but to just go right into relationships, I think, is really a special a special topic for today and special topic for my audience. I appreciate you coming on the show, sharing your wisdom, your research, and looking at it from a very analytical point of view, but also from a very human point of view. I think it really, really means a lot.

 

Dillon Zwick  [33:08]

Yeah, thanks for having

 

Steve Fretzin  [33:09]

My pleasure, my pleasure, man. And thank you everybody for hanging out with Dillon and I for the last 30 hopefully you got two or three, really good 510, I don’t know you know how many takeaways you’re going to get, but as many as we shared, you should be thinking about writing down and trying to execute on things that are going to help you to be that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled Rainmaker, take care, everybody, be safe and well, and we will talk again soon.

 

Narrator  [33:36]

Thanks for listening to be that loyal, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, fredson.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.