236 | The Lawyer’s Edge with Elise Holtzman
Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. What
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Intro:you could hang out with successful women lawyers, ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more. Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Devina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve, and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love. Devina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of your dreams. Now here's Devina.
Davina:Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Devina Frederick, and my guest today is Elise Holtzman. Elise Holtzman is passionate about attorney success and happiness. She's a former practicing lawyer, professional coach and trainer, and the CEO of The Lawyer's Edge. The Lawyer's Edge works with law firms to help lawyers become better business developers and leaders.
Davina:In addition to hosting The Lawyer's Edge podcast and speaking frequently for law firms at bar associations, Elise is the creator of Lawyers Making Rain program and the Ignite Women's Business Development Accelerator. Elise earned a BA in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and her JD from Columbia Law School where she was a senior editor of Columbia Law Review and is now a vice president of the Columbia Law School Association. Prior to founding the Lawyer's Edge, Elise practiced law in New York City with an Amlaw one hundred firm, Freed, Frank, Morgan, and Lewis. So welcome, Elise. We're so happy to have you here.
Elise:Great to be here. Thank you. I'm doing wonderful. I'm so excited to be here with you today.
Davina:Good. I'm glad we were able to get it together. You and I have both been trying to get together for a while, I'm super excited that we finally were able to because I listened to your podcast. I love it. And, I'm glad I'm glad that you're here to talk about it today and so much more.
Davina:So why don't you start out by telling us kind of your journey into it, first of all, into being a lawyer? Like, were you one of these people that knew when you were a child that you wanted to be a lawyer? Like, I'm gonna grow up and be just like, you know, so and so, or was it something
Elise:that came later? Absolutely not. So it's funny that you should say that. I grew up in a family where education was prized above almost everything else. And so my parents who didn't come from any wealth or anything like that, they thought that the way to achieve anything in life was to be as highly educated as possible.
Elise:So I felt like my opportunity and my choices were essentially, you know, doctor or lawyer or something along those lines. And I chose doctor. I decided I was going to be a doctor. And I don't know, I guess I'm a little dense because I spent most of college taking everything you need to go to medical school with, right? Biology, chemistry, physics, physics was the bane of my existence.
Elise:And finally, along about that into the end of my junior year in college, which was when I would need to, you know, the fall started applying for medical school, I started thinking, I'm not sure this is such a great idea because I worked hard in those classes. I mean, I did okay, but I had to work really hard at it. And there were so many other things that came much more naturally to me and that I enjoyed. But for some reason I kept torturing myself over the sciences. And so ultimately I did shift gears kind of at the last second and decided that the skills that I have and the things that I think that I am good at and the things that I definitely knew I enjoyed would be found more likely in the law.
Elise:And so I did pivot and go to law school and graduated from law school and went straight into big law in New York City.
Davina:Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Tell me, first of all, I think that's absolutely fascinating that you started out doing everything for medical school because I can't imagine. I been terrible at that.
Elise:So I wish it had come more easily to me. I did love it. There was also back then, I had this idea that you could go to law school and in three years you were a lawyer. Right? You go to medical school, there are internships and there are residencies and you don't know where you're gonna wind up.
Elise:And as crazy as this sounds, this was back in the day where AIDS had become a thing. People did not know what to do about it. There was so much fear and misinformation going around. And I think that even my mom, I sort of remember my mom feeling like, well, I'm kind of glad that my daughter's not gonna have her hands in other people's blood on a regular basis because, so there were just a lot of things pushing me. I'm gonna wanna get married at some point and have a family.
Elise:Those were things that I wanted And I felt like it would take forever
Davina:for
Elise:And me to get so when you put all of that together, it seemed like law school was gonna be the best fit for me. And it turned out fortunately that it was, right? Not everybody likes being a lawyer and I actually loved being a lawyer.
Davina:Yeah, That was my next question for you was if it was a good decision. You found it was a good decision because a lot of people, go to law school, become lawyers, and then they realize, uh-oh, I've done the wrong thing, but it sounds like you made the right decision.
Elise:No. For me, it was great. Yeah. I I went I went to the law firm. I started doing commercial real estate transactions, at a big firm in Manhattan, and I I loved everything about it.
Elise:I mean, I love drafting the documents. I love negotiating documents. I loved being on a deal team. Back then all of our closings were in a room in person with a million people in there signing documents. It was very exciting.
Elise:We weren't signing them on DocuSign or whatever and just sending emails back and forth. There was that element of feeling like I was, you know, big man on campus getting involved in those things. So there was a lot of energy around it. I had wonderful mentors too, so I really enjoyed the whole experience.
Davina:Oh, that's wonderful. What like, what was the timeframe for this, for you working in a
Elise:business Yes. Law So, and then I could tell you about the part that I didn't like at all and how I wound up leaving the law. Because, you know, it's like, Elise, if you loved it so much, why are you not doing it anymore? So I graduated from law school in 1990 and I went straight into these two firms in New York. So the first firm I loved, it was like the deals were big, right?
Elise:They were on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. It was like big, heady sort of stuff. But I billed a two thousand six hundred hour year. Wow. Think about that for a minute.
Elise:Six hundred hours. Wow. Yeah. It was absolutely insane.
Davina:That's above the sort of usual thought that people have of 2,000 to 2,500 for Big Law.
Elise:It was insane. I mean my health suffered. And listen, I was only in my 20s and my health was suffering. So imagine if I had been a few years older. And so I thought, well, this is crazy, right?
Elise:I've got to go do something else. And I'm also married to a Big Law lawyer. We met in law school. Actually, I'll tell you how we So we met. The way we met was we were cast together in the law school show to sing a love song.
Elise:And so we've got thirty two years of marriage under our belt. But anyway, we were both at big law firms trying to make our way. And the whole thing just got cuckoo. So I went to another like Amlaw fifty firm. I think it was like Amlaw four at the time.
Elise:People look at me like, what are you thinking? Right? That's like going from the fat to the fire. But the real estate practice was much smaller. The deals had fewer zeros at the end of them.
Elise:I was able to run a lot of the deals myself. They weren't my clients, but they were my deals. And that was great. And then we went and had a baby. And so I will point out that the baby is now 28 years old.
Elise:So this was a while ago. But the whole thing just became untenable. And they really weren't doing part time back then. And I didn't have women mentors and there were no women's initiatives and there are no women's bar associations. And I had wonderful mentors.
Elise:They were all men and they had stay at home wives. And I credit them with my success. They were phenomenal, and they wanted to get it, right? They wanted to get it, but they couldn't get it for obvious And so I went back to work part time. It was forty hours a week, Part Yeah, for 80% of my salary.
Elise:And the challenge of course was because I was the most senior associate in the practice group and I was running hundreds of millions of dollars of deals. Obviously all the lawyers who are listening to this know you don't punch a time clock when you're a lawyer. And so I just, I couldn't make it work. And there were, we had two shifts of babysitters and we had, you know, the daytime nanny, the nighttime nanny. We didn't see the baby and we just sat down and said, you know, this is untenable.
Elise:And so I left, I didn't know what else to do Honestly, I had looked around a little bit at in house. I wasn't thrilled. We couldn't afford to stay in Manhattan on one salary because I was actually making slightly more than my husband at the time because he was two years behind me in law school. You know, there was a lot of lockstep going on at the big firms, especially when you're an associate. And so we wound up moving across the river to New Jersey, which is where we've been ever since.
Elise:And I was home with the kids for a while, which was sort of funny for me, right? Because it wasn't so even my kids will say, you know, mom was born in a suit carrying a briefcase, right? They don't, They don't even totally get how I was a stay at home mom for ten years. And then about sixteen, I think it's sixteen years ago now, I started trying to figure out what am I gonna be when I grow up? And I thought about going back to the law because I did love it.
Elise:And at the same time, because I came out of Bid Law and because at the time I don't really think I understood so much about the world of small law firms, I understand it much better now because of the work I do. I really was afraid to let anybody quote unquote own me, right? At that point I had three kids. Our youngest has significant special needs. My husband commutes into Manhattan for all these years and works there.
Elise:So somebody needed to be holding down the fort. And I was a little concerned, a lot concerned about what it would mean if somebody else was telling me when I had to be there and when I could go home. And so I wound up going and doing a full year certificate program in executive coaching and leadership coaching. And then the following year started my own business, which is The Lawyer's Edge. And so for the past fifteen years, I've been working exclusively with lawyers and law firms on a variety of things, them grow and sustain healthy profitable practices.
Davina:Right. Right. So I have there's a lot to impact there. I think that a lot of women law firm owners listening to this would be shocked to hear or wish to hear your story and to really understand what that means because I coach a lot of women law firm owners who are younger, millennials and, you know, younger generations, and they have never worked in big law. And so to hear someone say two thousand six hundred hours a year, part time at forty hours, and really understand what it means to work in big law and how different it is from, starting your own law firm, out of law school and and what is required and everything.
Davina:So I I appreciate you sharing that. And also the time frame, because I think we take for granted these days this sort of flexibility that women have to be able to work virtually, to be able to start law firms and and have them set up the way that we they we want. It wasn't something in the nineties that women did. It wasn't something you went to work for a law firm, and here's the expectation of being a lawyer. And it's very much set up around, it's a a male patriarchal, you know, model, very traditional because everybody had wives that would take care of the kids and that kind of thing.
Davina:And so women entering it who didn't have wives to take care of everything, you know, were kind of ran up against this wall of does this really work for me or not? And people made different choices. Some said, yeah, I'm going all in. And oftentimes it was, sacrificing having families because of of that. So I know many women in the in the, in that time period chose not to have kids, not to have families for that reason because a career demanded more than that.
Elise:That's right. And it's funny because I look back at that time and it was a novelty in a sense, right? My law school class was a bit of an aberration. We were actually 50% women graduating in 1990. The classes on either side of me were about a third and that was a big deal.
Elise:And so there was a little bit of this sense of novelty. This is a new thing. Nobody really knew how to do it. And it was modeled on the old way because that's all anybody knew. And so, you know, it's easy to criticize.
Elise:I try not to criticize. I try to understand, right? And so I understand that these law firms were all put together by men. This is the way the world works. So then all of a sudden these women are coming in and I don't think they were quite sure what to do with us.
Elise:I mean, I even remember and you know, back in the day, you know, it was all skirt suits. Wore suit I jackets mean, don't even really remember wearing dresses back then. Was all, and I didn't wear, there's the blue suit with a little ribbon tie on Fortunately I was in Manhattan and we were at least fashion forward enough. I didn't do that. But I remember after I quote unquote retired from the law, my sister had also gone to law school.
Elise:She didn't love it and isn't doing it anymore. But she was at a firm and I met her in Manhattan one day because I had to go somewhere And she came to meet me and she was wearing a black pantsuit with open toed shoes. And it must have been like a Tuesday. Like it wasn't even a Friday. And I looked at her and I was like, what are you wearing?
Elise:I mean, this is how, ancient this is this story is, where how dare you wear open toed shoes to the office and how could you wear pants and it's not even on a Friday? And what if you had to see a client? So the world has changed. And yet obviously we know there are still challenges, But I think that it is good to sometimes remember, right, that even twenty five, thirty years ago, this is what was going on. So we're still kind
Davina:of new to this in some ways. Absolutely. You're talking about clothes in a law firm. I worked as a marketing manager for a large law firm, a large local law firm. And my first day being a marketing person, coming from a marketing world, not being an attorney at that time, I showed I showed up to work in a it was gorgeous.
Davina:It was a purple silk skirt suit, you know, that I wore. But it was so shocking because all the women lawyers all the women lawyers are wearing their black and their navy suits, and your skirts had to be below your knee and all that kind of stuff. So, I I definitely remember that. Alright. Moving on from fashion and talking about, your coaching.
Davina:So what made you so you decided to go into coaching because you decided you didn't wanna go back to law. It really wouldn't fit your lifestyle, and you were looking for something that that did. I wanna a lot of the work that you do is working with people, to become brain makers, business developers, leaders, in the practice. So I really wanna get into that area and talk about that because I think there's a lot of great information you could share with our audience in terms of that. So first, I wanna ask you to kind of define business development and brain making versus marketing.
Davina:I think a lot of people sort of conflate all of that and don't really understand there's a little bit of a distinction there. Can you sort of share that?
Elise:Absolutely. I love this question because it is really confusing, and I don't think that anybody necessarily has the quote unquote right answer. It's not necessarily black and white, but the way I break it down is that marketing is more of a one to many kind of pursuit, right? So if you're the marketing manager at a law firm or you're the chief marketing officer or something like that, you're concerned very much with how is the firm showing up in the marketplace? Are we visible?
Elise:And do people know what it is that we do and how we can deliver value? And so when I say one to many, I mean things where lots of people can come to it at the same time. It could be your firm's website. It could be materials that your firm is sending out to clients who demonstrate some kind of interest. It could be having a podcast where you feature different attorneys at the firm and they talk about some of the matters that they run up against.
Elise:It could be sponsoring events. A lot of law firms will sponsor events at bar associations or other charity events, those sorts of things so that the community knows that they exist. When I think about business development, I think more along the lines of what is it that an individual attorney is doing to do a couple of things. One, to grow relationships, right? People are hiring you typically on the basis of a relationship that you have with someone or a relationship that we could say uses the transit of property, right?
Elise:Like I know that Devina is a great lawyer and my friend needs somebody who can do what she does. So I'm gonna make that referral because I care about my friend. And my friend says, well, Elise cares about me, and she has a pretty decent head on her shoulder. So if she thinks Devina is great, Devina must be great. Right?
Elise:So it's developing relationships with your ultimate target market. Who are the people that can use your services and hire you directly, and also developing relationships with potential referral sources. It's also about growing your visibility as a leading authority or as an expert. And I'm just using the term expert. I know people, you know, in many jurisdictions, we're not allowed to call ourselves experts or specialists, but just for the sake of argument, do people understand that you're an expert in what you do?
Elise:So if you're a divorce lawyer, when people see you, do they go, Oh, I know her. She's a divorce lawyer and she works exclusively with men, for example, because some people do that. Right. Or she works exclusively with, you know, she does a lot of alternative dispute resolution, mediation, right, friendly divorce, that kind of stuff. And so do people know who you are and what you're capable of doing?
Elise:Because we get out there and people say, she's a lawyer. Great, you know, thud. Who knows? They don't necessarily know what you do. And so there are those two things that I think are very important, the relationship development, as well as raising your profile.
Elise:That can be through writing, could be through speaking, it could be through being on a podcast. So for example, I'm on your podcast today, and I'm raising my profile in the legal community so that people have a sense of who I am, what makes me tick, what I care about. I sit on panels all the time, I write articles frequently. So there are a combination of things that you personally can do as an individual to develop those relationships and to develop that top of mind awareness. And look, it's a Venn diagram, right?
Elise:So I'm not gonna say business development is a completely separate thing from marketing. It isn't, right? There's crossover there. So if I am giving a talk for a group of women lawyers, let's say, a talk at a law firm, that's one to many marketing in the sense that I'm talking to a lot of people. But those are pretty much the two things that I think distinguish marketing and business development.
Davina:Right. Right. And it could be if you're in a bigger law firm, business development could be about establishing relationships with certain people in organizations, large organizations to get that large organization as a client or something like that. Right?
Elise:Absolutely. So to your point, there's a woman out there who has a business and she calls herself a door opener. And what she does is she helps people connect with people in large companies. Because when you're trying to get a bigger organization as a client, you don't necessarily know who the decision maker is, right? There could be levels of people.
Elise:It's not necessarily easy to access that person. And so some of the people on law firm, a larger law firm marketing and business development teams are good at trying to help create those relationships so that they can open the door to have a conversation about whether this firm could be a good fit for the client.
Davina:Right. Right. One of my mentors, back when I was in marketing was a, her business was business development. She was not an attorney, but she helped to forge those relationships and introduce her law firm clients to some of the, you know, the airport authority and to some of these large construction companies and things like that. And so that was a really very different thing from what we think of as, marketing.
Davina:Anyway, so one of my mentors was, a business developer who helped to she was not an attorney, but she worked with law firms to help connect them to large clients like the airport authority or large construction companies or, you know, developers and things like that. And that was her role. And she was but she was not a market marketer like we think of marketing. Because I I think that's an important distinction, and it becomes more important the bigger a law firm gets. I think when you're a smaller law firm, it all sort of goes together because it's you.
Davina:If you're a solo, it's you doing the marketing. It's you doing the business development and everything. But I just wanted to make that sort of distinction so people kind of understand the difference.
Elise:And I'll just pipe in there for for one second. I just wanna Okay. Follow-up on that comment. So I think that true, right? And I also do work with some smaller firm layers, not so many solos anymore.
Elise:There was a time when I was working with a lot of solos because I was trying to not travel and stay close to home and all of that sort of thing. But, you know, your listeners, Devina, as you well know, they in many ways, they start out trying to do it all themselves. And so they're wearing three hats in the business, right? They've got to do the work. They've got to bring in the work and they've got to run the law firm.
Elise:And you're an expert at helping people figure out ways to let some of that stuff go so they can free themselves up for the highest and best use of their time. I do think that if you're sitting there and listening to this and saying, oh my God, I'm not doing all of this marketing stuff. My website isn't the best. And you know, I'm not out there sponsoring events and all of that sort of thing. That's not necessarily a good fit for you anyway, right?
Elise:You're your business. And at some point you can grow it beyond that. But certainly in the beginning it is about developing relationships. And that's certainly something you're probably doing already and you can continue doing. So this is something that bigger law firms will often do.
Elise:But look, I have a small business and you have a small business. So we're kind of doing these things ourselves, right? We understand that you can't do everything. And so whatever it is that is designed, one of the things that I often say to clients is where are your current clients coming from? Right?
Elise:To be very, very aware of where your current clients are coming from. Because even at the big firms, those marketing and business development specialists are not just going out into the world trying to beat the bushes for new clients. They spend a lot of time working very, very hard to maintain and nurture relationships with their existing clients. Right. And so one of the things that I think that smaller law firms can be doing is making sure that they're maintaining relationships with past and existing clients, making sure that they are keeping top of mind with those folks, because those are going to be your best referral sources if they're happy with the work that you're doing.
Elise:And I think there is a lot of pressure on lawyers to say, Oh gosh, I've got to go out and meet new clients. You may need to, right? Some of your listeners may have law firms where some of the work they do is kind of a one and done and they may never see that client again. But there's still great referral sources for your business. So there's a lot of opportunity there, even if you don't have a marketing staff that's three to five people deep.
Davina:Right. Right. Absolutely. So I wanna address, what do you what do you say to people who tell you they hate networking or they hate marketing or something like that? Because I know certainly, like, for instance, when I was working with a bigger law firm, there were some people who were just natural rainmakers.
Davina:And then there were some people who just wanted to be in the back room doing the work, and they didn't wanna go out and meet people and talk to people. And in a large law firm, your partner, you're you know, there's there somebody's working with you on a plan to get clients or nurture relationships. But if you're a small firm and there's just a few lawyers or, you know, you're the main one sort of responsible for for that And you hate marketing and you hate networking. How do you sort of work through that mindset with people and help them?
Elise:So you use the word mindset, and I do think that that's the starting point. For better or worse, many lawyers say the following. So I get the same objections all the time when it comes to business development and when it comes to networking. And they go along the following lines. I don't want to be a salesperson.
Elise:I don't like tooting my own horn. I don't like beating my chest and telling everyone how great I am. That's just not me. It's really uncomfortable for me. Or I'm an introvert, which you know, a lot of times they mean I'm shy or I don't like big receptions and big networking events.
Elise:I don't like to be the bright shiny object in the room. I'm not a natural networker. You know, my brother, geez, he's such a natural. He can just walk in and talk anybody and that's just not how I am. So I can't do this and I don't want to do this.
Elise:And so look, if you look at networking as an attempt to get something from someone, right? You're there to suck the money out of people's pockets because you need a client. It's understandable you would be turned off by it. I mean, you're a decent human being, right? You went into the law partly because you want to serve other people and be helpful to other people because maybe you're academically inclined and you're interested in this stuff.
Elise:And so it drives you. You're not there because if we wanted to be salespeople, we wouldn't have gone to law school. We would have gone into sales, right? And so we tend to be risk averse and it feels risky and it feels uncomfortable and it feels unseemly to be asking for business. So here's the good news.
Elise:That doesn't work anyway. Right? Selling yourself tooting your own horn, telling everybody how great you are making it all about you being pushy and salesy doesn't work anyway. It doesn't tend to attract people, it tends to repel them. So the good news is you don't have to do that in order to be successful.
Elise:If you focus on how can I deliver value? How can I be helpful to other people? That's really what relationship development is all about. And that's even what it's about when you're trying to raise your profile as a leading authority in your field. You're delivering pieces of knowledge the way you and I are talking today, way I know you do on your podcast with all of your listeners on a regular basis, just getting on there and chatting with them about something that can be helpful to them.
Elise:Not telling them how great you are and you should come hire me and I'm going to take all your money. You're just saying, hey, here's how I can be helpful to you. So if you can reframe the things that are bothering you about the idea of networking and being visible in your community, as a way of genuinely helping other people being curious about what's going on for them, what makes them tick, I think it's going to really take the pressure off of you. When people understand that you're a good person, when they have a sense of what you do and how you serve your clients, when the time comes many of them are going to show up and they're going to say can you help me with this? And so I think that there's also this idea that business developers are born either you have it or you don't.
Elise:And I see this in terms of every size where somebody will say, oh, well, know, Devina, don't I mean, she's a great lawyer, but I don't ever think she's going to be a rainmaker. She just doesn't seem to have what it takes. She doesn't have the fire in the belly. And I call baloney on that. I could call it something else, but I'll call it baloney.
Elise:So I call baloney on that because I have seen that when the mindset shifts happens for people and people see how they can do it in a way that aligns with who they are personally, it can work. So most lawyers are actually introverts. Research shows that that most lawyers are introverts. Introverts are not necessarily people who are shy, you can absolutely enjoy a networking event, but they tend to be more energized by and get to recharge by what with what's going on in their head rather than being around other people all the time, it can be very energy sucking for them. Plenty of lawyers who are introverts have tremendous books of business.
Elise:It's simply a matter of understanding what the principles of business development are. And so that's at a 20,000 foot view, let's say. Then coming into a more granular view of who am I, right? What makes me tip? What are my strengths?
Elise:What do I love to do? What are my, you know, what's my geography? What's my practice area? How can I deliver value? And crafting a business development, MO plan focus in a way that makes sense from a strategy and tactics perspective, but makes sense from a personality and who you are perspective.
Davina:Right.
Elise:And you do both of those things.
Davina:Yeah. I think a lot of people have it in their mind. I have to become something I'm not. And I also think that sometimes people think networking going to a networking event, let's say, whether it's a a charitable event or a chamber meeting or whatever, that they think I have to go to this specific type of event, a, which is I mean, you can network if you're a soccer mom. You can network there.
Davina:You know? It depends on the nature of your practice. But, also, they think, like, I've got to go get business at this networking event as opposed to I'm going to this networking event to show up as a human to interact with other humans and forge relationships and get to know people. That, the purpose of an event is not to go snag a client at an event or It's something like not transactional.
Elise:It's not like, hi, I met you last night and tomorrow morning you're gonna call me and hire me. Now, I'm not saying that can't happen. It can absolutely happen. But what you're doing is you're setting a foundation in place. And so when relationship I talk development, I talk about two things, nurturing and growing.
Elise:So nurturing is nurturing those relationships with people that you already have. You already have, most people already have a robust network. They just don't really think about it that way. Right. You have family, you have friends, you have people you know from a charitable organization that you're involved with.
Elise:You have people you know from your kid's school, and then you have people that you know in business, right, in other aspects of your life. Maybe you're involved in a hobby or something like that. And so nurturing those relationships and checking in with people on a regular basis is important. And then growing relationships, adding people to your network over time. You said something about, now I have to pause for a second because I had something reasonably intelligent that I was going to say.
Elise:Oh, the other thing to keep in mind is that this is not a one and done sort of a thing. This is consistency is key. It takes time to develop relationships. When you meet someone, they're not always ready to hire a lawyer, right? Or they're not, they don't need to- They don't have a present need.
Elise:They don't have a present need. And so when people think of this as a one and done, I think it's a mistake because this is something that happens over time. Now for large practices, like there's a guy that I went to law school with who was at a huge Amlaw one 100 firm. I don't even understand what this guy does for a living. It is so complicated involving financial stuff that in a million years they would never be able to explain to me.
Elise:What he was saying to me is his runway for meeting somebody in an organization and then potentially having them call him for a matter is about eighteen months to two years. And the reason for that is that the matters are enormous and they're highly sophisticated. They don't have a need plus they don't know this guy and they don't trust him yet. In smaller firms, depending on the kind of work you do, that runway can be a lot smaller, but it's a rinse and repeat, right? It may take a shorter time for you to get a client.
Elise:But if you, the minute you stop networking, minute you stop connecting with people, somebody else steps up, people forget about you. It's just human nature. Nobody means anything by it. But we tend to forget, know, how you like if you'll run into somebody on the street somewhere, you're like, Oh my god, I haven't seen you in like a year, we still let's get together for lunch. It's not that you didn't care about that person.
Elise:It's just that you haven't had top of mind awareness with them and haven't had a reason to connect with them. So making sure that you're nurturing and growing relationships on an ongoing basis, and not thinking about it as I do this thing and tomorrow this other outcome happens. It happens over time. You're gonna plant a lot of seeds and there are things that are going to bloom and they might not always come from where you thought it was gonna come from, but it
Davina:will come. Right. Absolutely. I want to shift gears a little bit and ask you how because I have a lot of questions, and I know we have a limited amount of time, so I wanna cover a lot of things. How do you think the law firm marketing business development has changed since the pandemic?
Davina:Or do you think it has? I mean, what kind of shifts have you noticed?
Elise:I think that there, as with everything, there's good and bad. I think what's amazing that's happened in the pandemic is that people think nothing now of getting on a Zoom call and meeting people God knows where. I now have a client in Portugal and I was on a Zoom call with him the other day and he was sitting in their offices in the country of Angola because of some crazy thing going on there. So he needed to spend a few weeks there. And I thought, Angola, I mean, God bless Angolans, but it's not like I think about Angola, but here I am having a new It's friend contact amazing.
Elise:And so I think that in many ways it's leveled the playing field because especially if you are a woman who is taking care of kids or you're taking care of your parents or whatever it may be, you can be more flexible. You don't feel like you have to in today's world, you don't necessarily have to get on an airplane to meet somebody in another state or another jurisdiction or even 45 away. So I think that getting to know people has become easier than ever. At the same time, people do love being in person. And I think that people are getting more and more into that.
Elise:But I think that out of sight, out of mind applies regardless of whether we're seeing somebody on the teleconference or we're seeing somebody in person. I think that the fundamentals of business development and marketing haven't changed. It's just a question of how we do it. So I think that there's a lot of opportunity there to see people online. But I think being in person, there's something special about that.
Elise:When you're able to shake somebody's hand and say hello to them and just hang out and chitchat in more, I guess, a less formal way. I also think that, more organic. And I also think that, I'm really losing it today. I'm really sorry. Something else.
Davina:No
Elise:worries. I'm not usually this bad. They asked me about marketing opportunities online. Oh, I know what I was saying. I also think that the legal world has become more competitive.
Elise:There are so many lawyers out there, right? We know this. There are 1,300,000 lawyers in this country. And because the pandemic leveled the playing field, because websites are so easy to create, because video is so easy to create, because there's so much social media out there and people are using it, I think it is more important than ever to be visible. It doesn't mean that you need to be recording audios every five minutes.
Elise:You're practicing law, you're running a law firm, you're incredibly busy already. But I think that doing a little bit of this, being able to be visible to people, there's an expectation now that they're going to get to know you a little bit before they call. And whether that's a podcast that you're on that you post on your website, or you have your own podcast, or you just do a couple of brief videos to say, hey, this is what our practice is about, or this is one of the things that we noticed that women who are going through divorce are challenged with, you're offering them a little bit of who you are and you're offering them a little bit of advice and what we call quote unquote thought leadership, right? Kind of hate that terminology because I always said, well, it's not like I thought up something new, But it's really more about letting people know who you are. And because the marketplace has that expectation now, I think that it gives you both the opportunity and a little bit the- Obligation necessity, maybe the obligation to do a little bit more of that so that people can really get a sense of who you are.
Davina:Yeah. I was gonna one of my questions is gonna be about social media and how social media sort of fits into business development. Because what I find is a lot of it I also focus on sort of personality and, you know, doing something that fits you and your personality when it comes to business development. And some people are out there on social media all day, every day doing you know, showing their whole life's journey on social media. And it works really well for them because it comes to them naturally.
Davina:They're probably people who are born with phones in their hand. And so it's just a natural extension. And then I have other people are like, oh my gosh, Tavina, have I got to do have I got to do this? Because I don't wanna see and I find like, I'm in my late fifties, and I find women of a certain age, we don't wanna do it anymore. We don't wanna be, you know, with a camera all the time.
Davina:I remember my social media manager was like, you know, take take a video of yourself in the morning with your coffee on the balcony while you're on vacation. I'm like, I'm not camera ready Exactly. In the morning when I'm on vacation. I'm sorry. I'm not.
Davina:So, I mean, there's certainly a difference in that. But I think to your to your point, it's really about there's a certain expectation now that people get to see you, hear your voice before they ever meet you in person?
Elise:I do think it's important. I have noticed look, this is anecdotal evidence. It's not like I've done any research on this, but I have noticed that when I get up in front of a room and speak to people and, you know, I'm like this. I'm very I am who I am. I'm very casual.
Elise:I like to have fun with the audience. I'm not just a talking head because who the heck wants to listen to that? I like to get the audience engaged. I have found that when I do that, I definitely get an influx of clients because people feel like they know me. Right?
Elise:If people don't have any sense of you, if they have no experience of you, it's harder for them to make a decision. You're sitting in your office, you know you do great work, your clients know you do great work, but they have no way of knowing that. Also, do they like you? Are they going to be able, you know, if they're going through a difficult challenge in their life, or they're going through something exciting, they're creating a business, or they're doing their first big deal or whatever it may be, are they going to want to be in the trenches with you? And so I have noticed that having my own podcast, being on other podcasts, I was on somebody's LinkedIn Live once those kinds of things, people feel like they know me, even though they don't know me, because they hear my voice and they hear my personality and they hear me sometimes make fun of myself or whatever it is.
Elise:They say, Oh, you know what, I can work with Elise. Now, there may be people who listen to me and they think you are the most annoying person I've ever heard of in my entire life. I have absolutely no interest in working with you. And you know what? That's awesome.
Elise:Because they should be able to choose the person who's a great fit for them. And all of us in marketing should literally want to be repelling. I mean, not in a yucky way, but in a literal way, repelling the people who are not a good fit for us. You're a divorce lawyer, you may go out there and somebody can say, God, she's not the divorce lawyer for me because she's not scorched earth. I don't wanna I wanna scorched earth divorce lawyer.
Elise:Well, god bless America. Let him go somewhere else because he's you're not a good fit for that person, and you probably don't want that client anyway.
Davina:Yeah. One of my favorite, sort of thoughts around that is that you're not if you're coach Woods told me, if you are not repelling the wrong people, your attraction your marketing attraction is not strong enough. You have to have a point of view in in in this day and age and put it out there because that's gonna make you a much stronger attractor of people who are meant to be in your tribe, meant to be in your sphere, in your circle. I wanna touch on this. This is something I I saw on your LinkedIn, and this made me think of this question, is what do you think the differences are there differences with between women and men in terms of business development and rainmaking?
Davina:And I know you discussed that, and I loved your sort of section on LinkedIn where you talked about that. So I wanted to get into that just a little bit with you.
Elise:I talk about that a lot because over the last few years I have been focusing more on programming for women and business development for women. And what I say about business development for women is that I say, is there a difference? Is there a difference when it comes to business development for men and women? And the answer is absolutely not. They are exactly the same thing.
Elise:The principles of business development are exactly the same regardless of whether you're a man and a woman. At the same time, 100% yes, there's a difference, right? So it's no and yes. So I mentioned the 20,000 foot view of business development, what works and what doesn't. And so I have these three pillars of business development.
Elise:And so I think, and I mentioned a couple of them, the relationship development, the visible expertise. The third one is more about developing certain leadership skills, like the three T's of leadership. I talk about time, thoughts and team. And so what's different for women, though, is we were socialized differently than men. So we show up differently.
Elise:Are there differences between men and women? Of course there are. We know there are. Some of them are hardwired and some of them are societal. For many women, there are confidence issues.
Elise:Doesn't mean they should have confidence issues. They're doing exceptional work. They're very good at what they do. They serve their clients extremely well. But we have been socialized to be perfect.
Elise:And if we don't get it perfect, we think there's something wrong with us. So there's a book written by a woman named Reshma Saojani called Brave Not Perfect. She also has a TED talk on the topic. And the idea is that girls are socialized to be polite and get good grades and always, you know, nails are clean and your shoes have to match the dress and you have to say yes to everybody because you have to be helpful because we're helpful helpers and caretakers. Whereas boys are socialized to jump off the top of the monkey bars and get dirty and take risks and even break the rules sometimes because after all boys will be boys.
Elise:In short, they're socialized to be brave and we're socialized to be perfect. Perfectionism works really well for us when we're young because we dot those I's and we cross those T's and the teachers love us and the professors love us and the partners love us and all of that sort of thing. It starts getting old when you start moving into a leadership position. So when you're a woman running your own law firm, to the extent that you have perfectionistic tendencies, many of those are now starting to get in your way. And this is just what I across the board and I can speak for myself as well, right?
Elise:So every woman is different, but this is sort of broad strokes. So we are socialized to be perfect. We're socialized to be helpers and say yes to everybody. What that means is that many women are completely overloading themselves. They're on 86 committees, they're running the PTA, they're running the charity event, they're running their law firm.
Elise:If somebody doesn't want to do something in their law firm, or they have a time deadline that they can't meet, then you jump in and you do it for them. Why should I spend money on hiring an assistant or a director of anything or an office manager? Because after all, that's money that could be going to my children and I can do it all myself. And so the thing is that, why is this relevant to business development? A couple of reasons.
Elise:First of all, we feel like we don't know how to get started. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I don't do it right? What if I try it and I don't get a client right away? What if someone does think I'm too pushy?
Elise:Because after all women are pushy, right? We're not supposed to be pushy and that's a terrible thing. So there are all of the all of this, what I would call what coaches will often call head trash, or gremlins, These thoughts that go on inside your head that stop you in their tracks. So what I see is that because of our socialization, women tend to hold themselves back. And they say, well, I'm not gonna be pushy and I'm not gonna tell that person that I wanna work with them because that would be unseemly.
Elise:Whereas a guy would say, Devina, this is a great conversation. And you know what, that thing you mentioned, I think I could really be helpful for you. Would you like to talk about the possibility of working together? Women go, I can't do that. Oh my God.
Davina:It sounds so easy when you say it like that. Yeah, And what
Elise:would people think? So we tend to unintentionally or, you know, not a criticism, just an observation. We tend to get in our own way. Going back to this idea. So there's the idea of not being pushy, saying the wrong thing, not being, you know, not being an elegant person or, you know, coming across as needy or pushy, which we don't have to do.
Elise:Then there's the again, the idea of freeing up time for business development. For goodness sakes, you're running a firm. That is a job in itself. Now you're doing legal work. That in a job is itself.
Elise:And now you're supposed to go out and bring in the business for the firm. That's also a job in itself. So the thing is, if you're saying yes to everybody else, you are saying no to yourself. Yourself. And And as women, we do feel that we have to say yes to everybody else.
Elise:We have to always say yes. No is a complete sentence or no, thank you is a complete sentence. Right? But we're not taught that. And so that's very hard sometimes for women to give up.
Elise:What will people think of me if I say, no, I can't sit on that committee to save the baby seals or whatever it may be, because then we just feel guilty. And so I think there's a lot of this stuff that we carry around with us that gets in our way when it comes to business development. It's not because we're not capable and it's not because we're not hardworking and it's not because we're doing anything wrong. It's simply because of the way we've been taught. And so I do think that when we have those conversations about things like imposter syndrome, about things like confidence and perfectionism, and what will people think of me and what would my mother or father think of me, you know, being a little bit assertive or whatever, I think that we can help move the needle for ourselves and our women colleagues at the bar.
Davina:Yeah. I mean, I I I there's this is probably a topic that we could spend an hour on, and I know we don't have much time, but I I it is it is a I say I'm having the same problem that you were having, losing my thought. It is a, there is such there is a difference between men and women, and I think it sort of, comes around into the do it all category. Like, I have to do it all and do it perfectly and not and being so hard on ourselves. And this is especially true of high achieving women because high achieving women, we put a lot on ourselves, and we feel that we have to be the ones to do to get.
Davina:And when you're running a law firm and when you're responsible for making sure that law firm has business coming in, adding that on top of practicing law can feel overwhelming because you're like, there just aren't enough hours in the day to do it all. And I think that's where the mindset shift needs to occur, that this isn't about you being the doer as much as it is about you being the leader and ensuring that that things are getting done, but it doesn't have to be you doing the doing for all things. So even with even with even in terms of, business development, if you're leading a team and you're involving other people in your team in in the business development aspect, it doesn't all have to come down to you. So I think A couple
Elise:I'm sorry. Go ahead.
Davina:No. Go ahead.
Elise:Just a couple quick things that a woman leader of her own law firm can do very simple stuff that look, that we also have trouble delegating. And it's, let me go back. We have trouble delegating, not just because we're women, right? And we've been told we have to do everything ourselves, but because we're lawyers and we tend to show up with a similar personality type. And that similar personality type is I get stuff done, I check off boxes, I can get it done faster and quicker than everybody else.
Elise:It has to be done my way. Not because we're megalomaniacs, but because we're competent and we know how to get the job done. And problem solvers. We're problem solvers. And so we have trouble delegating to other people.
Elise:But just as a quick example, let's say you are a woman, you're running your own firm, and you have an assistant who works with you. If you want to get more focused on business development and be more intentional about business development, which is what I encourage people to do, You can have your assistant schedule business development power hours on your calendar and hold your feet to the fire. And when you say, oh, I can blow that off and go do this other thing, your assistant says, no, this is your time for business developments on your calendar. Let's schedule Susie on another time because you have a slot over here and we can do that. Number two, your assistant can help you figure out where do you wanna hang out, right?
Elise:You can't do everything. So when you know your who, right? Who your target clients are, who your target referral sources are, your what, what it is you do for them and your where, where it is those people hang out and you can develop relationships with them, she can help schedule things for you. Let her schedule the lunches, let her schedule which conferences or happy hours or networking events you're going to go to. Let her post some things on LinkedIn or Facebook or wherever it is that your clients hang out.
Elise:There are things that she can be doing for you that you don't have to do yourself. Now, is she going to do it perfectly? Maybe, maybe not. But sometimes done is better than perfect. And in this situation, I think done is better than perfect.
Elise:So you don't have to, we're not talking about abdication. We're talking about delegation, right? Those are two very different things. But I think that making sure that there are people to help you is critical. And I'll just give you a quick example.
Elise:Up until a few years ago, I was really doing everything myself in my business. When I got really serious about growing my business when my kids were out of the house and all that sort of thing, I finally said, listen, this is ridiculous. I have an amazing assistant. I have a director of operations. She is a fractional director of operations.
Elise:She works for other people as well. And then I have another young woman who does some stuff with me to help me just get my podcast taken care of properly. And so being able to delegate those things and training those people on those things frees me up to do the things that are going to help me grow my practice, such as talking to you today.
Davina:Right. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Alright.
Davina:Before we end, what do you think the biggest mistake is that people make, when they when they say, you know, I'm gonna I've gotta get serious about business development, and they're trying to develop their business development plan and get into that. What do you think the biggest mistake is that they make?
Elise:The business the biggest mistake I see people making when it comes to getting started or really committing to business development is not taking the time to plan and ask themselves some pointed questions in advance. What winds up happening is to go, okay, I'm going to go out there, I'm going to get myself out there and they start getting involved in what I call scattershot marketing. And so the goal is to be intentional, but also to be focused. Not everybody is a good client for you. And you can't spend your time with everybody.
Elise:One of the things so as I mentioned before, the who, what and where I think that doing that activity, who are my target clients and referral sources, what do I do for them? And where do they hang out? And when I say hang out, mean, do they get their information? Where do they go to conferences? Where do they learn?
Elise:Where do they hobnob with other people in their industry, let's say, or in the legal industry? Once you have that, you can then figure out from there where you're going to invest your time, money and energy in business development. But if you start doing things before that, you do wind up engaging in scattershot marketing, which depletes your time, money, and energy and also doesn't tend to deliver results.
Davina:That's wonderful. That's a wonderful answer. So we're gonna bring it to a close on that, answer today. And Elise, I've really enjoyed conversation. I love spending this time talking shop with you about our favorite subjects.
Davina:So I appreciate you being here with me.
Elise:Thank you for having me. It's been such a pleasure.
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