Jordan Ostroff & Jeremy Baker: Scaling a Solo Law Firm Without Losing Your Life (Part 2)

The real challenges begin when your solo practice finally starts to take off. In this episode, you’ll learn how to manage growth, hire wisely, protect your time, and build a profitable, sustainable firm instead of drowning in low‑value work.

In this episode, Steve Fretzin, Jordan Ostroff, and Jeremy Baker discuss:

• Constraints and growing pains of a solo law firm
• Time management, delegation, and letting go
• Revenue vs. systems and when to build processes
• Finding clients through networks, content, and clear positioning
• Hiring strategy, vetting candidates, and building for profit

Key Takeaways:

• Growth brings new constraints, and the job of a solo is to constantly identify which constraint matters most right now and address it without creating a bigger problem elsewhere.
• Tracking time and ruthlessly eliminating low‑value tasks is essential; answering phones and doing your own books will keep you stuck in first gear.
• Revenue should come before heavy process-building, but documenting how you do things early makes onboarding future hires dramatically easier.
• Defining an ideal client and then going where those people already gather turns scattered marketing into focused, repeatable business development.
• Profitability and the kind of life you want should drive decisions about firm size, hiring, and practice areas—not what other lawyers around you are doing.

“The beauty of life is you get to make your own scorecard for 99% of things, so make sure you have the right scorecard.” —  Jordan Ostroff

Check out my new show, Be That Lawyer Coaches Corner, and get the strategies I use with my clients to win more business and love your career again.

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About Jordan Ostroff: Jordan Ostroff is the CEO of Driven Law and Carpe Diem Consulting. A former prosecutor and the first lawyer in his family, Jordan overcame $200,000 in early business debt to build a thriving, low-volume personal injury practice. Now the best-selling author of Love Your Law Firm, he works 20–25 hours a week, allowing him time for family and coaching other attorneys to achieve a similar high quality of life.

About Jeremy Baker: Jeremy Baker is a veteran construction attorney and litigator representing owners, developers, and design professionals. In his sixth year of solo practice, he specializes in cost-efficient solutions for issues like contract negotiation and sustainable design. While an experienced litigator in 30+ venues and dozens of arbitrations, Jeremy prioritizes dispute avoidance and alternative dispute resolution. An early proponent of the Guided Choice Dispute Resolution System, he provides strategic advocacy to resolve high-stakes claims without the need for traditional litigation.

Connect with Jordan Ostroff:

Website: https://www.legaleasemarketing.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-ostroff/

Connect with Jeremy Baker:

Website: https://designbuildlaw.com/

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

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, welcome to Be That Lawyer. I am Steve Fretzin, and for the last six years plus, and 600 episodes, I’ve been so honored and thrilled to be the host of this amazing show, bringing you incredible guests, rainmakers, top experts across the world, and in the field of legal, working to help create rainmakers and people that are working at the peak of their performance, and being that lawyer, confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker. Today, we’ve got part two of an amazing two-part series, Be the Lawyer Live, with Jordan Ostroff and Jeremy Baker, two good friends of mine who really know more about going solo than than really you know anyone else I know. So, I’m really excited. Uh, whether you’ve thought about it in the back of your head, you’re already pulling the trigger, or you’re already in it, I know you’re going to get a lot out of this episode today. Gentlemen, how are you doing?

 

Jeremy Baker  [01:37]

Glad to be here, Steve. Thanks so much.

 

Steve Fretzin  [01:38]

Absolutely, not you, Jordan. You’re not happy to be here.

 

Jordan Ostroff  [01:41]

I’m having a blast, man. And if you haven’t watched the last episode, go back. Yeah, I learned some stuff. So,

 

Steve Fretzin  [01:47]

yeah, if you missed, if you missed the last episode, go back and check out part one. We covered some good ground, really, about how do you think and execute leaving a firm or leaving a situation. What happens in the first 90 days when you get into your new firm, and what are the priorities and things you should be going through? We talked about, you know, money and revenue and overhead, and, and all these great topics. And now I want to continue that with now you’re in the thick, you’re in the thick of things, right? So, you’ve been, you’ve been on your own for six months, you’ve got some business rolling in, things are starting to pick up, that brings other challenges to the table. What are those challenges, and what should people be thinking when they start bringing in revenue and realizing, hey, I’m actually really busy right now. Jordan, why don’t we start with you?

 

Jordan Ostroff  [02:29]

Sure. So, having your own firm is a lot like water, you can drown or you can die of thirst. So, trying to find the right amount of problems, the right amount of cases, the right amount of bills, the right amount of staff, that’s where you’re really looking for, so I would say that six month mark, it’s probably hiring. I know this is something also Jeremy touched on quite a bit in some previous questions. I really think that’s the thing to do.

 

Steve Fretzin  [02:55]

Yeah, Jeremy,

 

Jeremy Baker  [02:57]

I think when you run a law firm, you bump up against a number of constraints, and they tend to change at different times, you know. Sometimes the constraint is you don’t have enough work, sometimes the constraint is you get too much work, sometimes you have too many people with not enough to do, sometimes you’ve got too few people. And so, for me, you know, it was a little bit of whack a mole after I sort of got stabilized. I leapt out of the large law firm with two clients, I did the six first six months on a credit card. I went to my network, I was able to dig myself out of the hole. Okay, now I’m now I’m working and I’m thinking of how I grow. It’s really figuring out what’s the most important constraint that you face, and like how do you deal with that in a way that doesn’t set you up immediately to face another constraint as soon as you solve the first problem,

 

Steve Fretzin  [03:41]

I mean, I have an answer that’s in line with what you two were saying. I have a feeling it’s starting to recognize where your strengths are, what your passion is, how you should be best using your time, and so you’re spending all of your time doing bookkeeping, you’re spending all of your time doing making copies of the copier for estate plans, or you’re out, you know, networking at BNI, and all these, you know, other types of places, and not getting anywhere with it, whatever it might be. I think it’s important for lawyers that are in big law and starting solos to track their time, and to really understand, how am I spending my time? What does an average day look like for me, and am I really doing the things that make that make me happy, or that are moving the needle the right way in the right direction. I think a lot of people hide, especially from business development, in things that keep them busy, or that keep them, you know, sort of in the weeds, instead of stepping out. And again, I think a lot of it has to do with letting go. Is that you guys agree with that? It’s like letting go is hard, and how do you get over that, Jordan?

 

Jordan Ostroff  [04:43]

That’s a really great question, because sometimes I still struggle with it. I think it’s here’s the thing for me, because at the beginning of opening your firm, you don’t have proof of concept, right? Like, now I can tell you I have staff that do things way better than me, but I didn’t have that on day one, and so, and I was. Probably also way too egotistical at the time, so I thought I was the best for everything. So I, at some point, I had the moment of just like, you know, what it’s not that important. This one email, this one thing, right? Like, handling the trial is the important part, the signing, finding the right marketing companies, the important part. Like, there’s only so much time, and I know Jeremy mentioned it in terms of constraints, like, I, the more you constrain yourself, the more you will be able to decide what’s worth you doing and what’s not. And then there are some things you just have to let go, even if it’s done worse than you, but let the right things go.

 

Steve Fretzin  [05:36]

Yeah, I love that, Jeremy.

 

Jeremy Baker  [05:38]

You know, there’s a whole bunch of stuff that lawyers shouldn’t do, you know. From day one, you shouldn’t do your own books, you shouldn’t answer your own phones. There’s, you know, just a whole bunch of stuff that the low-level tasks, it’s very easy to outsource, it’s very easy to set up systems. But the bigger point, I think, is, is that a lot of people, if you’re like me, you come out and you have more time than money, and you know how you gonna spend that time? You gonna spend that time doing a low-value, you know, task, you know, like answering your phone, or you’re gonna spend your time figuring out how to get some leverage and how to get more clients. And I’m always amazed when I hear the Cleo Legal Trends report comes out, and it’s got a shockingly low available hours per day per lawyer, and you know there are, you know, there’s no victims here, there’s only volunteers, you know, the people that are billing an hour or two a day have volunteered for that because they’re filling their time up with low-value tasks that should be outsourced, and so when you have more time than money, still invest in a bookkeeper, invest in someone to answer your phone, so that, like, you can take that time and you can build systems that are going to help you later when you’ve got more lawyers showing up at your firm or work on your marketing. So, right out of the gate, even if you don’t have a lot of money, resist the temptation to do the very low level things that you should never do, or you will be stuck in first gear forever.

 

Steve Fretzin  [07:04]

Yeah, and shout out to Lex Reception, our sponsor, that has the way to not have to hire a receptionist. Don’t answer your phone, let someone do it. I mean, answer, have your phone answer, just not you. And by the way, the Be That Lawyer community that we mentioned in the last show has a massive resources list of trusted resources, so people that are looking for reception or looking for a virtual assistant company or looking for help with things can find vetted resources on the Be the Lawyer community. So be that lawyer.com/community Shameless promotion happening in real time just now. It just happened. Check that out, everybody. I can’t help myself. All right, here we go. So, I think you guys are spot on with that. It’s.. it really comes down to understanding your best use of time, and even, even like dropping practice areas, or saying no to things that you get invited to that aren’t the best use of your time, and there’s just so many different ways to like to take this limited and precious asset called time away from people, and so I think that’s really critical. And the other thing that I, you know, I’ve interviewed hundreds of rainmakers on this show, and put the book together, Be That Lawyer, 101 top Rainmaker secrets to growing the successful law practice. And one of the things that kept coming up repeatedly was delegation and process, having systems in place, Jordan, I think your book, you and Jeremy are both big process people, but what’s the balance between setting up processes and systems over six months or a year in business versus focusing on revenue?

 

Jordan Ostroff  [08:34]

I don’t think you need processes until right before somebody else is coming on board, you need revenue, and you need the revenue to afford the person and be able to have the time to put in the processes for them to execute on it.

 

Steve Fretzin  [08:48]

So, revenue then process is your go-to.

 

Jordan Ostroff  [08:51]

Yeah, cuz like, listen, we talked about this, you know, what are you hiding from? Like, if you’re going to sit down and go with Chat GPT to make an SOP for 15 minutes versus making that post on LinkedIn about what you do, if there’s nobody to give that process to, I’d rather you make the post and get the cases.

 

Jeremy Baker  [09:06]

Yeah, okay. Jeremy, I couldn’t agree more. You know, revenue first, clients first. But one of my regrets is not having a notepad at my desk, as I was, you know, a true solo for a year or so, just taking notes on how things should get done around there, because when I started to hire, I, you know, bring in some administrative people, I bring in some associates. Yeah, I had a burden of training them in a way that it could have been lightened a little bit had I been just scribbling down on a piece of paper, like, how do we do things around here? And then it doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but I wish that I had looked around the corner a little bit when I was Trusolo and put myself on a little bit of better footing for when the other employees showed up. Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [09:47]

really, really good. So, okay, the big question that people listening are going to have is, was there a specific direction or reliable that you found was a reliable source of clients? How did you. To go after and get that business, and then how did you make it repeatable instead of just a one off win here or there? Jeremy, why don’t we start with you on this

 

Jeremy Baker  [10:08]

one? Well, there have been different seasons, you know, when I left out on my own with two clients and I was incurring all this credit card debt, it was, you know, let my network know what I’m up to, and I, when I started in 2019 there weren’t a lot of lawyers that were doing this video the way that I was, and so video and LinkedIn was a great way for me to get the kind of positive attention from people in my network that I, you know, wanted to know what I was doing, and after I had stabilized, then I pivoted in organic search engine optimization direction, more videos, more content, you know, working with vendors, trying to have people that were looking for a lawyer like me land on my website. I’ve never done a whole lot with paid ads, just because the sort of client that I’m looking for, it would be easier, for example, I think my wife has an estate planning law firm, or she wanted to go the paid ads route from day one to get clients. I think it’s more viable, but you know, different seasons, and now that my network knows what I’m doing, and now that I’ve got the organic SEO reasonably dialed in, I’m actually toying with the idea of some paid ads in some new jurisdictions where I’m recently licensed, just to see what happens, so different seasons,

 

Steve Fretzin  [11:24]

yeah. And Jordan, how about you?

 

Jordan Ostroff  [11:25]

So this is one where the current state probably hurts. So I was a prosecutor, I went to a bunch of criminal defense attorneys that I had cases with that we had good relationships, and was like, hey, I want to leave, what do you think? And a ton of them gave me great advice. One of them was like, “Oh, I have office space, I will send you cases, you know, in exchange for a referral fee for the counties that I want to go to. And so I was like, “Oh, well, that’s a really good start. And I, so I have my number, I think, was 10 grand. I left october 5, and I was like, “Hey, I want to make 10 grand by the end of the year, because that would be more than my state attorney salary. And he sent me $11,000 worth of cases, three days in. I was like, “Oh, good, I’m, you know, done, sold. And so I used that to invest in some other stuff. And then I went back to everybody that I knew from law school that I hadn’t talked to in three years, or certainly didn’t have the relationship with, and was like, “Hey, I’m leaving. I left the state, you know. What are you doing? How do you get cases? What are you networking? And so some of them invited me to some different networking events, and other ones said, “Hey, you know, I’ve been sending all my criminal work to somebody else who hung their shingle right out of law school. Results have not been great, so let me try you out on the next batch, because you know, I handled 10,000 cases as a prosecutor before being a defense attorney on day one, and so they started sending them to me, and so you know, I had the office, you know, I was paying for the office to get cases at the beginning, and then I used the already existing connection, and then just built from those two things, so met more people in the office, met more people I went to law school with, met people at the events that they have invited me to, and really just expanded out the web of interconnected humanness. Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [13:00]

there’s a type of, uh, there’s a name, and I can’t remember the name of the kind of an attorney where they just take anything that comes their way. They don’t even know the law, but they’ll just, like, if something comes their way, estate plan. I’ve never done a state plan, but estate plan, someone needs one, and I’ll just say yes and figure it out. And I’m not saying that’s a good thing to do, but I think that, that sometimes people, when they’re new in their own business, they kind of will take on anything that is reasonable. They’re not going to take on a big time litigation, but you know something that they, that seems, you know, easy enough. And they have skills. A question that came from our gallery, too, is if you have, like, you know, like Jordan, maybe this is for you, like you really, you’ve experienced in the law, but maybe it’s in government, or maybe it’s in some area that isn’t relevant to, you know, private practice. How do you decide what practice area to go in, or what? And then how do you build those skills? Like, how do you like.. I’m gonna do divorce, and I’ve never done a divorce, but that’s what I’m gonna do. And then how do I even like consider, like, getting up to date on that?

 

Jordan Ostroff  [14:00]

So that’s what I did. I was like, hey, I’m gonna do criminal defense. I know criminal prosecution. I don’t know anything about family law, but it’s, you know, close enough related. It was okay. Door law is terrible because I don’t know how you stay on top of everything, but for like one practice area, one edition, figure out how you can get paid to learn, so maybe you cover for an attorney that does that area of law. Maybe you know, you 1099 for them for 10 hours a week and take some of the overflow off of their, you know, maybe there’s a ton of ways for you to do this in a way where you get paid. So, you know, estate planning, there are a ton of firms looking for attorneys to draft their estate plan, or review the ones that are drafted, or sit down with clients, or go through the sales calls, or do follow-up calls to make the edits three years later. So, you know, if you find an attorney and say, ‘Hey, look, this is my plan, but 1020, hours a week at a stupid cheap rate, you’re going to get the best help you’re ever going to get for whatever period of time for me to learn. You’ll find people that say yes.

 

Steve Fretzin  [14:58]

Yeah, great, Jeremy. I,

 

Jeremy Baker  [15:00]

you know, it’s a bit of a theoretical question for me, because I’ve practiced the exact same kind of law for 20 years now, I’ve been doing the same thing since 2006 but I couldn’t agree more. No door law, because if you’re trying to, if you’re taking on matters that are not what you really are looking for, you’re gobbling up time that could be better spent pursuing the things that you really want, so it was a big part of my plan. Leaving the large law firm, I needed to know the financial side of things, you know what I’m going to spend, what I’m going to make, and have enough of a plan so that I wasn’t tempted to take on things that would gobble up the time that would have been better spent taking me to the next level, and I also think that you know, if you’re going to jump out and say that you’re open for business from a branding standpoint, if whatever people hear from you, then if you’re saying something different a year later, it’s not a great look, it’s not a great feeling, and so, and when I made a splash saying that I’ve just left a large law firm partnership to start my own firm, that was the.. I’ve never had a LinkedIn post that got more attention than that ever. So, you kind of have one shot at coming out, your grand, you know, announcement. And for me, the branding consistency, you know what I said on day one is exactly the same thing that I’m saying now, and I think that that helped me, because a lot of clients that might sign up with me this week have probably been looking at my videos for the last six years, and I think that a lot of people who maybe haven’t hired me yet made a decision a year or two ago that at some point in the future they might, and so consistent message branding, not having your to taking your eyes off what you where you want to go, and if you take on a lot of work that you’re not interested in, you know, just to kind of keep the lights on. I mean, you do what you got to do, but if you can avoid it, it’s the much better practice.

 

Steve Fretzin  [16:58]

Yeah, I guess my take on this is three things, all right. Number one, is there an area of law that you’re interested in, or that you’re passionate about, or that you think you would be good at doing, and your skills translate. Number one, okay. Number two is, is there a market for it, because if you’re, you want to get into some, you know, random small area of the law, very niche, and there’s no real business in your area of that, or there’s a ton of people doing it. Like, I don’t think that. I think you have to really look at the marketplace and see what, where the opportunities are. And then three, is it something you can make money doing? Because you could find lots of opportunity doing an area of law, but there’s no money in it. Then you know that’s a problematic as well. So I think really consider those three things. And then you know, I love what, what you guys said, and Jordan, your point about, you know, getting some free experience, or even getting paid to get some experience doing something, makes a ton of sense, right. 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, you 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/be that 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. Moving into something that I know you guys are both very passionate about, and have had challenges and successes, and that is around, you know, all right, I’ve got this business coming in, it’s six months in, a year in, whatever. Number one is, Who should be that first hire? How do you decide who the first hire is? It admin, marketing, paralegal, associate, okay. And then once you decide that, how do you.. what are some of the things that you need to really execute on to make sure that you get the right people in place, right? Right people on the bus, as they say. Jordan, what’s your take on that?

 

Jordan Ostroff  [19:53]

I have a very specific answer. Your first hire is not going to be specialized in any way, shape, or form, so if you have. A local law school hire a 1l or a 2l and walk them through the process with you, because not only will they be incredibly invested. Mine, Andrew Abreu, was my first hire. He was incredibly invested. I had almost nothing to give him structure wise. I had a ton of tasks. He ended up generating work for us while people asked him, ‘Hey, you’re in law school. What do we do about this? And he sent him over to me. And then, when he graduated, he was a lawyer at my firm, you know, having had several years of schooling for it. And so, I don’t think on day one I was like, ‘Hey, I want you to come here and work as a lawyer, but he was willing to do anything that I asked. Did a phenomenal job for a very cheap rate in a way that helps keep the firm afloat. And then, obviously, as you get more cash, then you start hiring people with experience, with more specialization, with all those needs, but you know, first hire is going to be a generalist. Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [20:51]

and Jeremy, you were so kind to share your big mistake in our last episode about, you know, a bad hire or two, and then in figuring some things out. What did you figure out that that’s made the difference for you in scaling your law practice.

 

Jeremy Baker  [21:04]

I started using personality assessments to try to understand how the people I hire want to be coached, how they like to learn, you know, what makes them tick, whether they would be a good fit. You know, I made my first few hires thinking I was good at it, because I’d been interviewing lawyers for 20 years at the large law firm, but the kind of people who are coming through the door there, you know, they were like me. I mean, when I started there, I would bill 12 hours a day and mop the floor of the bathroom at night, I wanted the job so bad. There’s a different kind of applicant that you get when you’re running a smaller firm, and so just deciding, do you like them, do you want to have beer with them, that’s not enough. The personality assessment route, I was the recipient of a number of those back in the day when I was an applicant, and I kind of thought, this is weird. What are these weird questions? Why are they putting me through this? I really felt put out, but when you really understand there’s quite a lot of science behind it, and I had in mind exactly what I was looking for, for a transactional lawyer, which was a different profile than a litigator, which is a different profile than the administrative person, and as soon as I started finding people that met what I was looking for, all of those people stuck long term, so having a little bit more of a thoughtful process around how to vet your candidates, I think, is really important. Which one do you like? I like the disc assessment.

 

Steve Fretzin  [22:32]

Disc assessment, you know, something people make a mistake on with disc assessment, too, is there’s a, there’s an assessment that goes along with it, called a work environment. I’ve been doing disc for over 22 years, by the way, of 1000s of people, and there’s a disc assessment, which is a behavioral assessment, and then there’s an associated test called the work environment. So, let’s say, Jeremy, we’re looking at a paralegal, okay? There’s specific skills that you’re looking for, behavior styles of that paralegal, that’s going to be a good fit for your like task master or organized or whatever might be, and the work environment is like, if the job could talk, this is what it would, who it’s looking for, and then you match up the work environment with the with the disc, you don’t always need that, but I’m just saying, like, that seems like a good way to punch, I did that recently for me with a marketing person, and it said that that it was me, that I’m the person I’m looking for. I was like, that’s not.. I needed someone else to take it with me, because I was.. I was on my own thinking, I just need to replicate myself, when in fact I don’t. I need someone that’s going to be able to work independently, and and be that task master, and be detail-oriented, because I’m not. So I like the idea of that, I also like the idea of projects before you bring someone in for marketing, paralegal, lawyer, pay them for it. I’m an advocate for that, but although I don’t think I did that in the last round, huh, shoot, but get see their work product, right? Like, see what they actually, when you give them an assignment, did they turn it on on time, did they, did they execute on the things that you wanted? Anything else regarding recruiting and hiring that you guys would suggest that you found to be successful? Jordan,

 

Jordan Ostroff  [24:10]

I want to add, what questions do they ask you when you give them that project? I think the project’s great. I want them to have some sort of targeted question, and then I want to know how long it takes them to put this together. So, obviously, you know, I like telling them, ‘Hey, I’ll pay you up to, let’s say, it’s a marketing plan, I’ll pay you up to 10 hours for this marketing plan. What questions do you have for me? You know, and then seeing it, and then, how many hours did you take? And so, if the person tells you, ‘Hey, it took exactly 10 hours, I think they’re probably full of it. If they tell you it took them two hours, then they’re probably, they may not be putting in the amount of effort that you want. If they tell you, ‘Hey, it took 15 hours, but just pay me for 10, then they might be slow in performance for you. So, are you blown away, but with what they put together? But yeah, I just.. I don’t.. I don’t think you know what somebody is going to be like working with until you work with them, and a project becomes a much lower. Were stakes way to do it. Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [25:02]

I also like background checks and references. I know that the references can sometimes be a loaded, you know, loaded question, but I still like to check them. I stole, you know, if somebody says, you know, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t hire him again, or, or, you know, I really can’t talk, you know, too much in depth about it. Well, that kind of gives your answer in many ways, and then you can go back and ask some questions. Jeremy, any final points on this?

 

Jeremy Baker  [25:27]

You know, I think one of the biggest mistakes that I made as I took in all kinds of advice from all kinds of people, and I listened to podcasts and went to masterminds, and was failing to focus on profit. You know, profit and revenue are not the same thing, and I think that all your decisions, from, you know, what you’re going to do out of the gate, who you’re going to hire, I think you really got to look at it through the lens of, you know, the bottom line, and is this going to be the most profitable move that you can make. Sometimes you hear people in a discussion about, oh, you want to, how big do you want to get, or do you want to just stay solo? When you hear people say, ‘Oh, it’s okay if you want to stay solo, it’s a lifestyle, whatever. What I missed when I came out is I had a vision for a firm where I’m thinking maybe like half dozen lawyers in a couple years, and then maybe a dozen, maybe same number of support staff, because I thought that that would mean profitability, and I didn’t really think about what was the most efficient machine that I could build to create profit, and I built a law firm that would have been great to stamp out estate plans, or, you know, do a whole bunch of other kinds of work, but not the most profitable configuration for the work that I had, so Who do you hire first? Do you want to be small? Do you want to be big? I think you’ll look at it through the lens of profitability, and if somebody says, “I just want to be a solo, I almost kind of want to say, just out of curiosity, I mean, I wonder, like, could you be a little bit bigger profitably without much inconvenience to you, and people who said they want to be really big, you know, kind of want to say, like, is there a way to be very profitable and be smaller, and so, um, there’s a lot of nuance there.

 

Steve Fretzin  [27:12]

Yeah, I mean, my, my thought was, when I started getting big eyes, I mentioned earlier, I ran like four businesses, I think my overhead was 35 grand, I had three offices. It was, it was really a bit crazy, and I just kind of realized, I think, at one point, you know, a, I’m not, I’m not enjoying this. Number one, number two is, I’m now a professional babysitter, I’m babysitting everybody. It never really occurred to me that I could have brought in somebody like a COO, or or somebody that would have, like, handled all of the babysitting, and let me just go out and build business. I didn’t, again, I didn’t know that at the time, but now I know that that, but I also like the idea of sometimes staying small and highly profitable, like if you’re a lawyer, and then you can bring in 750 a year, delegate the crap out of everything you can, and you’re making, you know, 600 a year, that’s a lot of money, right, and you’re taking vacations, you’re doing all this stuff. So, I mean, I think you got to kind of weigh out like what you really want. This is where Jordan comes in with, like, a lawyer’s life, right? Like, you got to figure out, like, what do you want your life to be, not this is what everyone else is doing, so this is what I have to do.

 

Jordan Ostroff  [28:17]

Yeah, I mean, that, that’s my pushback, is I don’t know, it may end up being profitability, but I think you’re looking for what do you want out of the longest time horizon you can rationally picture, you need profit to get there, you need profit to stay in the game, so it may end up being profitability. I just, you know, not everybody wants to herd cats, or maybe that’s not profitable, or maybe it is, or you know, whatever it looks like, the beauty of life is you get to make your own scorecard for 99% of things, so make sure you have the right scorecard.

 

Steve Fretzin  [28:48]

Yeah, it’s a great place to wrap up and get to our final second round of this question of big mistakes. Jordan, you mentioned the last episode, a big mistake. What’s another big mistake that you made that you came out better on the other end,

 

Jordan Ostroff  [29:01]

so I’m gonna answer your question, and it’ll address Kate Brownlee’s great question. Most successful strategy to get in front of your target clients. My mistake was not knowing who my target client was, because I think all marketing can be successful – it’s who is going to see it, and so you know, I don’t think there’s a specific most successful strategy to give you the example, though. Like, for me, I liked working with first-time offenders at the local college because I could handle the administrative side of them not getting kicked out of school with the criminal case. Turns out I was also going to a bunch of fraternities and sororities and giving them free presentations on how not to get arrested. Did not connect the dots that those things were the same thing until our fellow friend Greg Eisenberg was like that’s why that stuff works, you know. Be do more of that. So I think the most successful strategy or biggest mistake are together, find your ideal client, figure out where they are, who they go to, who they talk to, and then be those places and in front of those people.

 

Steve Fretzin  [29:59]

Yeah, and that’s where go. Business development plan, or just a plan in general, will come in because you’re not scatter shot everywhere, trying to be everything to everybody all the time. You’re really, you’re like more of a rifle than a shotgun. Jeremy,

 

Jeremy Baker  [30:12]

yeah, I think that probably the biggest mistake that I’ve made in the 25 years or so that I’ve been a lawyer is I labored under a delusion for most of that time that there were certain people out there that had magic ability to get business and others who didn’t, and there’s a little bit of that sort of mythology in some of these large law firms where you tend to have a bunch of rainmakers and then a lot more people doing the work for them, and I walked around thinking that I just didn’t have whatever it was that you know attracted clients, and when I left out on my own, I thought it’s going to be really hard to get clients, but it’s going to be really easy to hire people who are going to want to join me in what I’m doing, and that was just dead wrong on both fronts. There is, while there are certain rainmakers that have gifts, I think anyone can do it. I wish I realized that more quickly, it wasn’t as hard as I thought to get clients, but getting the right kind of talent in my firm to help to service them was really hard. So I basically was completely wrong on both counts, and I wish that I just got it gotten started a little more quickly rather than walking around with this idea in my head that I was just not one of those people who could develop business.

 

Steve Fretzin  [31:24]

Yeah, excellent, excellent guys. Appreciate you guys so much. Take a moment, thank our sponsors again, Lex Reception and lawyers.com Rankings IO, and Pimcon, all awesome, awesome partners of the show. And, of course, check out Be That Lawyer community again, if you’re, you’re interested in growth, interested in business development, you’re listening to the show for a reason, and for 699 899 whatever the heck it is, for an entire year to have that type of collaboration with other attorneys, resources, video library courses, live events, all at your fingertips, pretty sweetheart deal, if I do say so myself. So, check that out, everybody. Jordan, people want to get in touch with you, learn more about how to live the lawyer’s life. What’s the best digits?

 

Jordan Ostroff  [32:07]

jordanostroff.com o s t r o f f.

 

Steve Fretzin  [32:11]

Awesome, and Jeremy,

 

Jeremy Baker  [32:12]

Steve, I’ve documented my journey over the last 10 years at Operation palmtree.com where I’ve got 50 videos or so, some of them 1012 minutes long, where I basically am putting out there free everything I wish I could have found back in the day when I was trying to figure out answers to this. So Operation Palm tree.com is a great way to get in touch with me,

 

Steve Fretzin  [32:34]

and I appreciate you sending me some of those videos. I had a chance to look them over there, they’re first class, first rate. So well done, sir. I want to thank you, gentlemen. I want to thank everybody that’s listening live right now, and I want to thank you, our Be That Lawyer audience, for hanging out with us twice a week, every week to Be That Lawyer, confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker. Take care, everybody, be safe and well, and we will talk again so very soon.

 

Narrator  [33:00]

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.