Building Reputation and Opportunity as a Modern Lawyer 

Josh Hodges  [00:00]

If you’re not preparing to run your business, it’d be just like going to trial unprepared, and trial lawyers will never do that.

Narrator  [00:10]

You’re listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, we’ll take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin, hey everybody.

Steve Fretzin  [00:33]

Steve Fretzin, here and welcome back to the be that lawyer podcast. I am so thrilled that you’re here. You will not believe this, Josh, but I spoke to a lawyer in Luxembourg this morning. Luxembourg, what now, wait a second, Copenhagen. Oh my god. And they’re fans of the show. So, I mean, it’s amazing the reach of this podcast. And then obviously, when I hear that, I get, like, this subtle ego, you know, pet or smoothing over. But ultimately, what I love is that that we’re reaching people in the far outskirts of you know, of our lives in our world, compared to just Chicago or just the US. And I’m catching you as a hometown lawyer, right? So Cincinnati just outside,

Josh Hodges  [01:11]

yeah, Hamilton, Ohio. So it’s, uh, about 30 minutes north of Cincinnati, in between Cincinnati and day, I’d say,

Steve Fretzin  [01:17]

okay, okay, well, very cool. And were you always a John Mellencamp fan?

Josh Hodges  [01:21]

I don’t even know if I really am. I do like that one song, but a small town, yeah, you’re you had a questionnaire, and it said, what’s a good quote? Something about it. You know so well. I was

Steve Fretzin  [01:32]

born in a small town. I live in a small town. Probably die in a small town. Oh, those small communities,

Josh Hodges  [01:37]

yeah, it’s kind of fits my brand. I guess that’s why I put that down.

Steve Fretzin  [01:39]

Okay, all right. Like it. I like but it all like works together is that you put that on your website, but welcome to the show. You love that because you’re, you know, we had a great conversation, and I just was so impressed with you and and some of the things that you were sharing with me about how to build a law practice in a small town and take everybody back and give us your background. Josh Hodges, partner at Kruger and Hodges and welcome to the show, and give us your background.

Josh Hodges  [02:03]

Yeah, you said, like the two minute drill. I mean, I, you know, I didn’t do too well in high school. I guess we’ll start there. I didn’t think I’d be a lawyer. I didn’t even know if I’d go to college. Yeah, somewhere along the line, I got some jobs. You have some blue collar jobs, like most the guys my family, I worked in a couple factories third shift. Didn’t really love that. I didn’t hate it, you know, you got to make a living. But I did kind of realize I’m going to do something more. I started taking college classes part time when I was about 19. And then, you know, when you take classes part time takes a long time, you know. And I had a kid along the way too, in life and the house, so kind of chipped away at it. And I graduated with an undergrad degree when I was 29 so it took me a decade, but I was working all the way through a couple jobs at some points. But along that time, I, you know, when I was 19, I wasn’t too good to do when I started college. By the time I was 29 you know, I was grown. I had, you know, as a dad and taking things a lot more seriously, and I was getting good grades, and I started kind of like raising my sight. So maybe what I was capable of things I might not have thought I could have when I was young and decided I wanted to go wall school. I took the LSAT, did pretty good, got a scholarship over at Northern Kentucky across the river was about now, you know, not quite an hour from my house, and I just drove there, back every day for three years. Did the law school thing? Got out, and I did, you know, kind of crappy in high school, pretty good in college. I ended up doing really good in law school. I kind of got better as it supposedly was getting harder, but I think I was just more mature and more dialed in. I got a job in big law, the big law firm the Midwest, being a big law firm, at least. And, you know, I didn’t even know big law existed when I started while sweating, and that was really a thing. But, you know, the people at CHA and people my law school said it’s hard to get a job like that, so you got to take it. They give you one of those, you know. So I did it. Was good pay, and I learned some stuff. I did it for a couple years, but I just didn’t love it. And something was tugging at my heart to, like, kind of help normal people and run my own and run my own business. I kept getting calls from people I grew up with. I was the only attorney they knew, you know, and I knew they knew I’d want the law school. It was a big deal for people I grew up with it and and I could only take corporate cases or government cases where I was at so I just decided 2017 quit my job was pretty scary, the best, you know, best paying job I’d ever had, by a long shot. And I told my boss I was quitting. And to his credit, you know, I know he was upset, only there for not even quite two years, and they, you know, you invest a lot in your associates, but he was kind of like, you know, not loving it, and trying to talk me out of it a little bit. But I asked him, like, do you think it won’t work? And he looked me down and told me the truth. He said, No, I think you actually will make it work. You know that. So he wasn’t gonna lie to me. I’ll remember that. You know, you people, you know when you lead the right way and they still support you know, it’s kind of a he could have told me, No, it was an awful idea. And I’ve had people tell me it was awful idea to start a law firm. So you kind of remember the people believed in me. I do at least.

Steve Fretzin  [04:36]

I love that. And I went to my best friend and I said, I’m opening up a business development, coaching business, and I’m leaving this company and all this, and he was like, you’re an idiot. That’s the dumbest thing. And every time I see him, he’s still in this job that he’s not happy and unsatisfied, not an entrepreneur. Never has been, never will be. And I could see the look on his face like, you know, a, he knows he’s wrong, that he was wrong about me, and B, you know, he regrets that he ever said anything. Because it’s just you take a chance on yourself. And I think when you have a family and a house, and you have the there’s something to be said about pressure and the idea that you don’t really have a choice, like you just burned the ship behind you, and now you’re in this new land, and you got to kind of make it work. Is that sort of how you felt?

Josh Hodges  [05:16]

Yeah. I mean, I knew I had to make it work, but it got a lot worse before it got better. You know, as life tends to do, sometimes when I quit the job, you know, my wife had a government job, and it wasn’t, you know, high salary or anything, but it was like a nice little salary and good benefits and steady. So I knew we had that to fall back on. Why I got the firm going, because you never know, you know how hard this is going to be. Is something new. I kind of believed that could get it going. But within a few months, we had our second child, and she was really sick. She had genetic disorder, and we’re in the hospital for like, four weeks straight. They didn’t know what’s wrong with her. My wife had to quit her job take care of her. So then I was really like, kind of like, oh crap, you know, if we want my kids sick, that’s all I’m really worried about. But I also, I have to make some money here and this, you know, or am I gonna have to, or it’s gonna bust. So put the like, extra pressure on me. I won’t leave people hanging. My daughter’s doing no good. I mean, we, we had her, they said they didn’t think she’d walk or talk. And now I just got, I get notifications on my phone that she gets in trouble class talking too much. So she, she’s doing pretty good. She never stops talking. But it was hard, and, you know, and it but it did put the pressure on me, like there was no chance of failure. It was either I was going to make it work or I was going to have to go back and get a job for someone else. I didn’t want to do that, and really just became super determined to make it work. And thank God, you know it did. It has worked thus far.

Steve Fretzin  [06:37]

Do you remember, Josh, how you muscled through? Like, was there a specific thing that you did to drive up business and to get things going, because that’s, there’s a normal start to a business, and then there’s the pressure that you were under, and did you have to rely on something to try to, like, move the needle?

Josh Hodges  [06:53]

I mean, it wasn’t just one thing. And I would say that to anyone wanting to start a business, like, you know, you can’t have all your eggs at one basket. I was doing everything i i started reading everything I could get my hands on about legal, marketing list. I’ve listened to every podcast out there, all the episode it’s still due to this day, anyone that I know that is halfway decent read every book, every article you know about websites, SEO, whatever, tried to figure out how to get all that off the ground. I didn’t have much money to get it going, and I was going in personal injuries, which what I wanted to do. And that’s the most competitive field. So, I mean, it was, it was kind of crazy. Well, it

Steve Fretzin  [07:25]

also takes time. It also takes time to get the money in. You can’t get, you’re not getting, necessarily, retainers,

Josh Hodges  [07:30]

yeah, yeah. I did criminal up front, just to kind of make some money to keep the bills paid and keep the marketing machine going. And I did have fun doing that, but the goal was always pi. That’s what I had experience with prior and that’s what I was a civil defense attorney at the big firm. I mean, I remember sitting on the floor at the hospital like my daughter was sick. I was just sitting on the ground with my laptop out, and I was on Upwork, hiring some guy in Pakistan to help me build a website, because that’s all I could afford, and we were building it together. Shout out to Todd here. The funny thing is, I still, you know, he doesn’t hand him my main website anymore, but I do a little thing where I kind of get back to nonprofits, if I see their websites really bad, I’ll pay him to fix one up for him and make it nice. And they’re well, they’re real thankful, and it gives he’s been helping me, you know, a couple times a year on something like that, since I very first started. So it’s kind of cool, yeah. And just, you know, doing a good job for the clients you have, meeting as many people as you can and just be It’s like a mix of being patient that it takes while to work sometimes, but also being urgent at the same time. Like I was patient for results, but I wasn’t patient on, like, getting out there and getting after and before you knew it, you know, I had a handful cases, and then I had a dozen, and then then I had too many. I couldn’t even do them myself. I had to hire other people. And it kind of, you know, kind of a bit, I’d say I’ve been like, you know, lucky that it worked. But I also, know, I mean, I was up Lolly nights every weekend morning writing content myself. Before there was AI to write your website, I was writing my own website, content, just on my website or on my own word, you know, Doc, every morning on the weekends. Then I started leaning really heavy into social media, probably about 2019, 2020, not because I wanted to, because I felt like I needed to. And that was what was going to be the future, if not the present, you know. And I was determined to figure it out. I didn’t. It wasn’t easy to figure that out. I’ve put so much time at work into figuring that out, and I don’t know that you ever completely figured out, or it’s never over, but it’s like practicing all kind of it’s always changing.

Steve Fretzin  [09:22]

But Josh, what I’m picking up on is two things that I think lawyers really need to hear and just take in. Number one is whether you’re under stress or you’re not under stress, you knew that you had to be a student of the game. You couldn’t just figure it out on your own. You had to read and listen and watch and take in as much as you could. Which is why people listening to this podcast and why, you know, I’m creating content, helping along with, you know, Chris early and all the other people that I’m friends with that are helping the legal community. And so you you recognize that you needed to learn all these things. And the second thing is, you took action. You said, You know what this is? You know, this is how things work. I actually have to go out and get business. And so, solos, yes. Then there’s big law, and then there’s everything in between. And I think some people are so busy with Bill hours, are so busy taking orders from everybody above them, that was kind of your life, right, the first couple years, that they can’t even see clearly of even if you’re at a big firm, that you need to tech to get control and have your own business under the umbrella. Do you see people that you worked with that you knew, that are still in their grind, or have they gotten out of it?

Josh Hodges  [10:25]

I think that’s most people. Most lawyers are that. Yeah, they wait. I was just telling my associate today, if you wait until you’re not busy or things slow down to start networking, you will retire one day, and it never will occur. And that’s just how it is. You have to get out there and you have to in, like you said, you know, when you’re stressed, what are you going to do? It’s the same like in law school or undergrad, if you have a big test and you’re stressed about it, what’s the best way to handle that? To me, it was like, Well, I better study more. That’s all I can control it. Like I’ll be as prepared as I can. Same as if you got a trial. I’ve had trials, and you get nervous when you go to court, but the up, and you can’t get that to go to way. But if you know, you read everything 10 times and thought about your opening and whatever you’re going to do, you will feel a little bit better. And it’s the same with getting business. If you know, preparing to get businesses, you had to go educate myself. There’s not as many local mentors in small towns to show you how to get business, because everybody does a little bit different way. They don’t teach you how to do it in school, and you know, you have to. I think a young attorney, sometimes they’re always looking for mentors. Everyone knows that they need a mentor. Usually they find a mentor that’s good at being a lawyer, that’s good. I’ve got those you need. Those you need to also find a business person that’s good at getting clients. And it might be a lawyer. It might not even be a lawyer. Sometimes it might be. I have multiple I have just people that know how to run a business. You know my account, you know people you can ask questions to. And if you’re not preparing to run your business, it’d be just like going to trial unprepared. And trial lawyers will never do that. But I know many trial lawyers and people that are great lawyers, that go about the business of law unprepared. And it’s to me, it doesn’t make sense. I know I just knew better. I don’t know why I knew better. I think I just inherently knew that’s not good. And and I saw people struggling, a lot of lawyers, you know, they struggle and they stress themselves out unnecessarily to them, and I didn’t want to do that.

Steve Fretzin  [12:12]

And there’s a lot of a lot of lawyers, whether you’re in big law or you’re solar in between, that are on an island. They’re siloed out. They don’t have a community around them. They don’t have a way to sort of crowd source ideas and solve problems and everything. Now, there are consultants and coaches and people you can engage. But I think lawyers really enjoy learning from other lawyers, especially ones that have had the hard knocks and have been there. People know, I think, pretty well that I run, you know, these rain my Rainmaker roundtables, and you get eight to 10 managing partners and Equity Partners and people that are great business developers and marketers and operation operators. They have systems and the gaps in their games where they’re not not as good as someone else. Well, that’s where you leverage the team. You leverage the other folks in the room. And I love facilitating those and watching the interaction, the engagement between, you know, a group of high profile folks. And so I think whether you join a group or whether you have a coach consultant, I think still find meant to your point, find mentors, find people that can take you under their wing and help you with things that maybe they’ve done or maybe they’ve already made the mistakes, and they can save you from, you know, repeating, you know, history, like they, you know, like, instead of just moving forward with the right resource or the right

Josh Hodges  [13:25]

action, yeah? And I think it can really go two ways, you know, like, if you find a mentor that’s 20 years old or new, yeah, they’re going to have a lot of stuff they can teach you, but sometimes it’s good for them too. There’s some stuff that even a first or second year lawyer can teach a third year lawyer, and especially with, like, you know, computer usage and technology things like that, yeah, all that stuff. And I think it keeps, uh, I like, you know, now I’m too old yet. I’m 42 but I like meeting uh, lawyers straight out in their 20s, because, you know, it keeps you fresh and key, and also keeps me excited, like, because they’re, they’re so wide eyed and, like, possible, you know, and it’s easy to get semi lawyers get jaded and negative over time. And I don’t ever want to get like that. And I think if you hang out with people that are like that, they’ll kind of pull you down. And everybody knows that you’re like the average of the handful people you hang out with. So I like, you know, I like having a diverse, you know, group of people that I communicate with, you know, young attorneys, old attorneys, people in other states that we don’t compete with, that are happy to share with you the world. You know, there’s really no excuse other than just being lazy or not wanting to do it, from finding people that can help you out, and you could help out, because online, there’s so many groups, I mean, not just the masterminds that are official. You can just get online and meet people. I do it all the time. Just email people cold and they’ll email you back. Imagine that,

Steve Fretzin  [14:36]

yeah, or LinkedIn, I know that’s a big, you know, big in place, you know. And you know, if there’s someone that you think is really special and you you want to emulate them, you want to learn from them, and they’re they’re top in your space, but maybe in a different community or state. And you know, they’re posting on LinkedIn, you know what? Just start commenting kindly and with with authenticity about their posts. You know this is important to me, because. Does, or I really get this in my I’m in the same area, in this other town, and whatever. And eventually you become a little bit like a friend to them, sort of online, supporting their brand and supporting their posts. And then, you know, you can reach out and say, you know, hey, I’ve been following you. I think you’re terrific. I’d love to meet you. I’d love to talk with you, or whatever. What are they going to say? Go, screw yourself. I mean, that’s not likely. And by the way, if they say that, well that Well, that tells you everything you need to know, yeah, and it’s fun, but Right? But the more likely outcome is going to be 100%

Josh Hodges  [15:27]

Yeah, yeah. And I do that all the time, and almost everyone gets back to you, and if they don’t, oh, well, you know, they probably missed it. They probably it’s not personal. You know, sometimes people get busy. I miss a message here and there too. Everyone does, but that you got to be, you know, shooting your shot, or taking slings or whatever you’re never going to get on base. And it’s amazing how it builds over time, too. I think a lot of people, I’ll speak to you, you’re talking about LinkedIn, you know, social media in general. So many attorneys don’t treat social media out they should, in my opinion. You know, this is just my opinion, but a lot of people, I think, get impatient with it. I see them post for two, three months, and then they quit. And why did they quit? Probably because they didn’t get a boatload of cases that they wanted to get. And that’s just not how it works. It’s not how networking works in real life either. Could you imagine, like telling one of your mentors, you know, it’s 2030, years older than you, like, Well, Bob, I networked real hard for three months, and I’m not rich yet, so it doesn’t work. They would have laughed you out in the 870s or 80s. They would have probably thrown you out of the firm if you said that. It’s the same day, like it. And I’m not saying everybody needs to be on social media. I think you should. I think you’re leaving opportunities on the table if you’re not, but if you’re going to do it, it has to be a lifestyle like I know that I’m going to be posting videos until they invent something better than that, you know. And it’s going to post one about every day, and I’m not going to stop doing it, because for two weeks, I might not have got a call. Because it’s not all about getting clients. I get a lot of employees that put in for jobs because they see me online and they seem like, oh, he seems that’s more important than the case. Sometimes, you know, it’s speaking engagements also just, hey everybody.

Steve Fretzin  [16:58]

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. Hey everybody, it’s Steve Fretzin as the you know, I’m the host of the be that lawyer podcast, and if you’re serious about growing your law practice, let’s talk. I’ve coached hundreds of attorneys to build bigger books of business without selling chasing or wasting time. This isn’t a sales pitch. It’s a real 30 minute strategy session to explore what’s possible for you in your practice. Just head over to fretzin.com and grab a time that works for you. And let’s make this your breakout year. You know, an angle that people don’t even think about is, you know what? Let’s just take a moment and forget about what’s in it. For me, let’s take a moment and just just forget that I’m doing video because I want business and I’m looking for something from people, and let’s just take it as you know, what I have something special to offer. I have information, advice, thoughts, things that people would benefit from. And I want to try to help more people. And I’m going to put out content that’s valuable to the people that are in and around my community and around my area of practice, whatever it might be, employment law, and you’re putting out all this great information about employment law and things you gotta, as an entrepreneur, be careful of as a business owner, whatever it might be, and stop thinking, I gotta do it because this is what Steve said to do, or what Joe’s Josh said to do, or or because I need business in a month. Let’s just break it down into, let’s, let’s be authentic, and let’s just try to put out content that’s valuable. Then just sit back and, you know, see what happens. It takes a year. It takes a year. You can’t, you know, Rome wasn’t building that whole thing. So, you know, give yourself some time, but maybe think about doing it for the right reasons instead of the selfish reasons.

Josh Hodges  [19:18]

Yeah, and I kind of always kind of look at social media and real in life and old school networking, how they are very similar. I think people tend to think they’re very different, like I was talking before, real networking in life, real life in person, takes time. Social media takes time, just like you said a lot of people, and I don’t think they do it on purpose. They do it because they’re self conscious when I hear people talk about social media, or they think if I’m doing good, or someone’s doing good, or someone’s doing good on social media, and they’re asking me questions. Usually, their questions revolve about, you know, when do you post, or what do you post, or how do you add it? Or, you know, this, this, this, it’s all about what I what their need to do. That’s not how real networking, if you go to a networking event, only thinking about what you’re going to say or the stories you got, or what you’re going to get from it, or what kind. Mind you’re going to talk or who you’re going to talk to. That’s not how good networkers operate. Good networkers operate in real life. Like you said, they think about service first. Who? How? Who can I connect this guy with? Oh, I know this lady. She does something. Maybe they should connect people who are connectors. They end up doing really well in real life. Social media is the same. So if you, if you think about helping others first, that’s the key, and it’s more fun. And so I we’ve really leaned into this. I have a videographer, and we post a video, a free we do a highlight of a business or nonprofit in a small town around our area every day, and we post it every day on my Facebook page. We’d call it their around town minute. I’m not even in it. My brand’s in the corner says around town of the hometown lawyer, but it’s about today. I posted one about a cabinet shop in the small town north of day yesterday, it was a lady that made so, you know, it’s all sorts of stuff. It’s kind of fun. I’ve done it with to truck drivers and everything on the sun. And it’s people who are just normal people that don’t get a little shout out. So I give them a shout out on my platform. And people, you know, think lawyers are jerks, but they look at mine, they’re like, That guy’s kind of just given every day. He does more videos for other people. He does for himself. And I’m sure most people, yeah, it does help my marketing force. It does. I think it does. I can’t always prove it, but I mean, even if it doesn’t, I’m okay with it, because I know that I’m helping a lot of people, and I’m making friends, and that’s how you should be in life. And if you people that are givers, you know you’ll get enough, and it comes around. I promise

Steve Fretzin  [21:22]

it works out. You know, I want to kind of move away and move in, not moving too far from the subject. But there’s a book I read years ago, many, many years ago, Blue Ocean Strategy. And I’m not going to, you know, say anything super positive or super negative about it, other than sometimes a book gives you everything you need in the title. This might be it, because blue blows strategy is, you know, the ocean is bloodied red, with with, you know, with competition, go where the blue ocean is. And you and I both live, you know, 2030, miles from the big cities. And some people think, Hey, I got to go into the big city. That’s where the business is. That’s where, you know, all happens. And there’s people that sit back and go, You know what? Everybody’s although, I mean, I could go on La Salle Street in Chicago, throw a rock and hit a lawyer. I’ve tried that a few times. No, not really, but, you know, but then, you know, you live in the burbs and then, or in, you know, in the country, or whatever it might be, and there’s a whole ton of business out there. And so I’m curious how you made a decision to move and really focus on the small town and build up a small town brand, and what that’s been like?

Josh Hodges  [22:24]

Well, I mean, I kind of got lucky, to be honest, because I lived in Hamilton, Ohio, and it’s, it’s a, it’s not a real small town, but it’s not a big city. It’s like, small enough where you probably haven’t heard of if you’re not from here, but big enough where there’s quite a few people. So there’s like 65,000 people here. It’s the 10th biggest city in Ohio. So it’s like a decent, you know, nobody’s count for top 10 that we bounce back and forth, I think 10th and 11th. But so it wasn’t like a tiny town. There was some stuff going on here. But when I looked at, you know, Cincinnati, a county way or Dayton accounting north, there’s a lot more people there, but there’s a ton more lawyers. And if you just do the math, you know, like, like you said, in Chicago, how many personal injury lawyers from Chicago? I probably 1000s, 1000s. But, and I don’t know Chicago, Illinois enough. Is there a town somewhere in Illinois that has like, 60 or 50 or 45,000 that only others? There’s suburbs in

Steve Fretzin  [23:13]

every direction, right? But it’s and then if you go even further out, then you start getting into some kind of grouping of small towns where you’re going to be in that 3040, 50. And, you know, maybe there’s 100 residents, 100,000 residents within, you know, 20 miles.

Josh Hodges  [23:27]

Yeah, so, like, I’ve done the math, like in Cincinnati, there’s like, one attorney for every 300 people. But in some counties, I know either one attorney for every 16 titled. But then people will tell me, do you have to be in the big city to make money. And they’re like, prove, you know, I know Matt mass hard for lawyers, but like, and I’m not, I didn’t even get the calculus. I think I got the business statistics as high as I got in college. But I know that one in 1600 is more rare than one in three of them. Now the issue, there are issues with small town practice. If you’re one in 1600 but there’s only 10,000 people there, you’re still going to need a bigger population of people if you’re going to be any sort of niche practice. But you know, if you have a car and you want to drive to five or six rural counties in Illinois, and they each have 20 or 30,000 people, and then you got 150,000 people. That ain’t that small town? No, you know like and if you’re the only one or two of a certain type of lawyer there you can do, all right. I remember when I was in law school, kind of first gave me the idea that it was possible. Was I read a was an ABA article came out probably 2012 2013 whenever I was in school, it was about, it was titled something, the last lawyer in Iowa, some kind of click bait. But it was one county in Iowa that had one lawyer left, and he had a good practice, but he was eight years old. He was making good money, but he didn’t. No one wanted to take it over, yeah, and there was no one to give it. No one to give it to, and the farmers wouldn’t have to drive to a county over to find any and I was just always kind of remembered that in the back of my mind. And so when I want to do entry wall, a lot of people said you can’t do it in a small town. I just didn’t really believe. And then we kind of proved that you could. And people from big cities sometimes will still, I still get cases in. The cities that are around me that are bigger,

Steve Fretzin  [25:02]

like hundreds of mile and you’re not in the middle of a desert, like you’re you’re 30 miles outside of Cincinnati, right?

Josh Hodges  [25:07]

So it’s yeah, like I can get downtown that fast. And so a lot of people that live in Cincinnati, they might, if they live on the north side of town, they can get to my town easier than get downtown any and this is where I was from. This is where I knew I’ve been living here my whole life. So people that I went to kindergarten with, you know, hire me, you know, it. So it was a good start for me. But then we started branching out in other towns. And, you know, the hard part, you know, the smart part I did was, okay, I’m gonna start these small town offices and hire people in these towns where there’s no injury lawyers. And we did get cases that way. The, you know, the entrepreneur me, that was the good part. We sometimes you run before you think it through. The bad part was, how am I ever going to find paralegals and people with experience in these towns if there’s no lawyers like this there? And that was, I had to really work become, you know, good at recruiting and get tacked to where people can work hybrid sometimes, and develop a training system so I could hire a smart individual in one of these more rural communities that maybe had no legal experience, but train them up and get them to where they need to be, and that that is not as fun as marketing. For me, that was, that was hard work, and I hired consultants, and I hired more team and hired a full time trainer. So it’s not all. You know, one of my mentors would tell me that, though having no cases is bad, but only thing worse is that in too many cases, it’s rough

Steve Fretzin  [26:22]

when you can’t service what you bring in. And there’s, there’s a lot of going on right now, and just associates that are at a loss right now in some areas, and it’s been challenging to find good paralegals, and it’s kind of happening and, you know, but, but again, this is this, you know, the earth is flat. And there’s, there’s, you know, virtual paralegals, there’s interim paralegals and Associates and stuff. So there’s, there’s more options, but, but I think, I think, you know, a lot of lawyers have to start thinking, and you know, about how they, how they start marketing and planning and just dev ing to as a recruiter. I think there’s the selling of services, and then there’s maybe the selling of the firm and selling of the job to try to, you know, demonstrate, you know, there’s people that could be, you know, that would want to work with you and for you. Hey, man, we got to wrap up. Let me ask you this. Okay, it’s Josh’s big mistake.

Josh Hodges  [27:10]

I think I know you make a bunch along the way, but I try not to dwell on too much. Keep moving. Try to learn. But you know, one thing I would say that a lot of people are guilty of is when you find when someone kind of shows you what they’re bad at, and you try to keep saving them and rehabilitating them, you know. And it just never has worked for me, it ends up, you know, it makes it worse and just drags it out. You know, someone can’t, and you’ve trained them, and you’ve tried and you you know, and they can’t get a job done. Sometimes you’re hard and you’re too nice. I know everyone thinks lawyers are we’re so tough and we’re sharks and we’re jerks. That’s not been my experience. Most attorneys don’t really like holding their team account, and that’s from the ownership and even associates that have secretaries and stuff. We’re a little bit soft on people, and I’m all about like being friendly to people and giving everyone a chance, but that sometimes you got to be realistic. And if someone you know, you know, you can only move them around and try to save their you know, their role so much. Sometimes people just have to go and find something else that they’re better at. And honestly, I think sometimes the relief I had had to do that a ton. I hadn’t had a ton of turnover, but sometimes you got to do it. It’s not fun, and delaying it never makes it better, makes it hard. That’s the next mistake. I’ve delayed it.

Steve Fretzin  [28:18]

I’m on board with you 100% it’s one of the reasons I don’t have employees anymore. The because I just, I just, I love people, and I love giving everybody the benefit of doubt, and then you get walked all over. So I’m a tough coach, but I’m not a tough manager. And I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned a lot. I’m beating up my VA on a pretty regular basis, sorry to tell you, he knows. But ultimately, I’m just more demand on demanding because I want things done a certain way. And you know, he’s been with me long enough to know, like, what that is, and so I should expect more out of him. And I think he gets it. Hey, real quick, before we wrap up, I want to take a moment thank our wonderful sponsors, of course, lawyer.com, rankings, io, running the most amazing conference of the year in pimcon. Have you been a pimcon? Yeah. Well, last year, oh, yeah, okay, I was there. You see me up on there with, with Chris early, yeah, with the podcast, yeah. Podcast panel. Oh, man, that was fun. He loves you. I love this conference. It was good. It was good. Of course, the legal broadcasting company, we are syndicated everybody. And if you’re interested in starting a podcast, you need production, you need editing, you need all the all the fixings, and you want to be in a network of other legal podcasts. Check out the legal broadcast company, and of course, future rainmakers. If you guys don’t know this, be that lawyer has a sister. The sister is called Future rainmakers. And so check out that show. It’s a podcast on all the major channels. It’s a little more direct me talking to you and sharing things that I do and help how I help lawyers, but that’s really it, Josh, people want to get in touch with you. They want to network with you. What are the best ways for them to reach out?

Josh Hodges  [29:48]

Yeah, just on social media. You know, whether it’s Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, it’s the hometown lawyer, the website’s the hometown lawyers with an ask.com I’m on LinkedIn, just Josh, Josh or Joshua Hodges, I post. They’re pretty regular. So yeah, reach out. I love talking shop with people, helping people out. If I can, getting some help myself every now and then, going to hurt. So any of those things, I’m open. All right,

Steve Fretzin  [30:09]

absolute pleasure having you on the show, man. I appreciate you. And hey everybody, thank you for hanging out with with Josh and I for a little bit here. You know, listen, we’ve had ups and downs. We’ve gone all the way around with this and and hopefully you got some good takeaways and some good thoughts. So be that Lord everybody, confident, organized in a skilled Rainmaker. Thanks again, and we’ll talk soon.

Narrator  [30:32]

Thanks for listening to be that loyal, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, fredson.com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal, business development and marketing trends, for more information and important links about today’s episode. Check out today’s show notes.