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In Episode 56 of the “Law & Business” podcast, Anthony speaks to Jim Frawley of Bellwether (at bellwetherhub.com), an executive coach. Jim helps his clients with that a slight push, or a friendly face when they try something new. Whatever you want Jim and Bellwether to be, that’s what they can be. Don’t just talk about the next steps – take an actual step to getting it done.
Their topic is the hot-button issue is that as life is temporarily changed, our mindsets need to change. Jim loves to help people get stuff done. This can mean at the office, at home or in their community. It’s about getting motivated, disciplined individuals together to share ideas, learn from each other, and have fun. It is said that we are a result of the five people closest to us, so he wants to fish for those five that will challenge and help you improve the most.
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Anthony Verna: (00:04)
Welcome to the Law and Business podcast, the least creatively named podcast out there in podcast land. With me is Jim Frawley. How you doing, Jim?
Jim Frawley:
Fantastic day. I love being on such a creatively titled show.
Anthony Verna:
Thank you very much. And, Jim, you’re from Bellwether where you do a lot of business and executive coaching.
Jim Frawley:
Yeah, we work a lot with senior executives and teams and organizations and then we work a lot with small businesses on their strategic direction and figuring out what it is that they want to do to get to the next level.
Anthony Verna:
Excellent. Well, thank you for being on and for all of you out there who have forgotten what podcast you’re listening to, I’m Anthony Verna, managing partner at Verna Law. And so, Jim, a lot of businesses, of course, are adjusting to the current new normal. I hesitate a little bit to call it anything more than the current new normal because I think we’ll get back to normal at some point, even if it’s in three or four months, I think we’ll get back to normal. But, maybe that’s my positive thinking.
Jim Frawley:
Well, normal is subjective.
Anthony Verna:
Well, that’s true as well.
Jim Frawley:
It’s going to be interesting to see what that normal actually is.
Anthony Verna:
That’s true as well. So, from a coaching standpoint, the hot button items that your clients are coming to you about right now?
Jim Frawley:
Well, there are a lot of the small business owners, especially the ones who are sole proprietors…
Anthony Verna:
They’re probably freaking out and panicking…
Jim Frawley:
Incredibly and for good reason, right? Most sole proprietors can’t file for unemployment. Most sole proprietors, this is their sole income for their family. And business has just dried up overnight for a lot of them, other than the other businesses that are completely overwhelmed with the type of work. So, it’s really dependent on the type of business that you’re in and, and where you’re shaking out on it.
So, cashflow is obviously one of the big challenges that most of them are focused on, of course. But the other one that they’re really interested in, and the one that I like to talk to most of my clients about is remaining relevant. And one of the big tokens of advice I give to my clients is, while you may not have revenue coming in, there is still an opportunity to not be forgotten from a business perspective. So we want to make sure that, you know, people’s attention is everywhere right now how do you put your service and product front and center? It’s probably just noise at this point. So how do you do it? And you have to do it in a selfless way where you’re not trying to sell something because people aren’t really buying anything.
So how are you positioning your business to provide value for clients so that you are remembered when these things do get back to normal?
Anthony Verna:
It’s a little reminiscent of the advertising mantra of: if needing to advertise in good times is important, well, needing to advertise in bad times is twice as important.
Jim Frawley:
That’s right. That’s right. And look, if I’m buying your product, I have so many things going across my desk right now, I’m not paying attention to your pitch. And so advertising it and being specific and intentional in the way that you’re communicating your value, you’re not selling people right now while you’re advertising and showcasing your value. And there’s a bit of nuance in how you do that. I’m inundated with emails all the time about people trying to give me a discount and I’ll sell you this and I’m not interested in what you’re selling right now.
But we have to create that work and showcase value for people, so that they’re going to be calling you the tills open up a little bit later.
Anthony Verna:
Yeah. I mean I feel as if the two emails I’m currently being inundated with as a consumer, are: Well, here’s how our company is adjusting to the COVID-19 pandemic, which for the most part, I don’t actually care about how your company is adjusting because I’m kind of assuming, well, you told your employees to go home and work from home and they’re probably employees that, you know, if you’re a bigger company, employees, you can have…
Jim Frawley:
Ideally we all have business continuity processes in place so that everybody should be working, providing the services that they can, right.
Anthony Verna:
And two, if you’re a product that I like, well chances are if I’m able to order you, well that hasn’t changed all that much either. And hopefully it comes to me and well, there are so many people in between when I bought it and my house that what you’ve done at your places, all that doesn’t matter all that much when it gets to my house. So yeah, a lot of these, these emails about right now, feel irrelevant.
Jim Frawley:
Yeah, there were, and you said it perfectly, you’re either already using it or you know you’re gonna you’re gonna use it in the future. Like the, the relationship’s already there. And so you’ve got it. So if you’re trying to build business right now with the new people, trying to get someone to focus on your, to try and build up new businesses is really the pie in the sky. It’s a very difficult thing to do.
Anthony Verna:
Sure. Let me analogize this with myself because I do that way too often. But I did a video blog about the fact that the intellectual property system is open. So my messaging from the very beginning has been, “Hi, we’re open because the courts, while you might not be able to walk into a court, if you’re a client of ours, your deadlines all apply and whether that court is a federal district court or whether it’s in the patent and trademark office, or whether your application is in the patent and trademark office, everybody’s working remotely and our system is still running.” So you can’t really turtle and hide right now if you’re one of our clients for example. That’s kinda been my steady message messaging to them.
Jim Frawley:
And it’s an important message to give because we’re so focused on isolating in our houses and our particular situation and how am I going to work from home? I’ve got kids running around the house and I’ve got deliverables to give to everything and we’re so focused on us. There is a big picture and when you take a step back from a macro perspective, yeah, the economy is slowing down, but lots of businesses are still going on and lots of people are still working. So there are still deadlines, there are still things that need to get done and things that will get done. The world is going on. We just need to look past our Twitter feeds in order to see that.
Anthony Verna: (07:10)
I appreciate the knock at Twitter right there.
Jim Frawley:
Well, don’t even get me started on Facebook, man. It’s going to be even crazier.
Anthony Verna:
While this business is hunkering down, is dealing with kids at home, what are some of the thoughts and ideas to keep that business not just front of mind, in their clients and customers, but how to keep that rolling? How to keep the business owners focus rolling?
Jim Frawley:
Yeah. This is new for a lot of people to be working from home. And so just thinking back to my experience when I first started working from home a few years ago, one of my biggest challenges wasn’t necessarily productivity. It wasn’t really, you know, I’m not a TV person or anything. I can focus on my work. My challenge was lack of social interaction. Okay. Which is a big challenge for everybody right now because we shouldn’t be isolated. Work gives us a lot of things. Yes. It gives us a paycheck for work. Gives us a sense of purpose. It gives us these micro interactions when we’re commuting into the office or we talked to people in the kitchen or we have our in-person meetings. It gives us a time management and a routine. So work really provides a lot of different things that we need to reincorporate into our lives at home. And the most important of those, in my opinion, is social micro-interactions. So if you have the ability to go out for a walk, if you have the ability to say hi to a few neighbors, keep the ten feet, whatever you have to do, we need to remember that we’re part of something bigger and we can’t just do that through a video screen.
So the big things for everybody is to focus on that mental health. Focus on…you know, depression’s a very real thing. But create that routine, create the micro-interactions and force yourself to get outside a little bit just to get that type of interaction.
Anthony Verna:
It is funny how many work friends I made, like when I first moved to New York City from Philly and my friends were at first for the most part work friends. And so it’s just funny with you talking about the social interactions that makes me reflect upon the fact that Hey, when I did work at bigger firms, I had work friends. And right now, I mean obviously my team are friends of mine. It works in that direction. I have other people affiliated with the firm that are friends of mine, but it is funny. It’s still isn’t quite the same because obviously I’m not running into them every day anyway. It’s not like we sit around at the copy machine or walking around the office or the jokes that I had. I did a lot of Eagles/Giants football jokes when I was working at big firms. So, I mean….
Jim Frawley:
There’s only one right side to be on in that equation, by the way.
Anthony Verna:
Not the Giants.
Jim Frawley:
But anyway, it’s interesting is most of your work friends is because most of your life is work, right? You work eight to 10 to 12 hours a day. So that’s your 42 to 60 hours a week. Add on top of that, your hour commute each way. It’s another 10 hours and you’re looking at like 50 to 90 hours a week that you have to fill up.
And so that’s where you’re spending most of your time. It’s where you’re meeting most of your people. We’ve just put everybody at home. You’ve gained effectively if you, I don’t know what everyone’s commute is, but if you work, commute to the city, let’s say it’s an hour door to door, uh, you’ve just gained two hours in your day that you have to fill up. And the question is, how are you going to fill it? Are you filling it with work or are you filling it with what you need personally to get through your day to make yourself more productive? Is it a walk with just a half hour walk for social interaction? Or whatever it is that you kinda check out.
Anthony Verna:
My sister-in-law used to travel from here in Westchester all the way down to lower Manhattan so that, that was multiple train rides and a couple of times I would run into her going home cause I was never getting the 5:58 train into New York city the way she did.
Yeah, no, but there’d be times when I run into her going home and I would wind up saying hi to her commute friends. Like it was a fascinating phenomenon that I had never had before was the commute friend.
Jim Frawley:
Oh look at the 5:58 train or any of the early trains that I take in the morning, from my stop is these people, there are pockets of people I know some people will get on in the Scarsdale train station and they come with – I don’t know what game they play, but they set up a board among the four of them and they play this board game. It’s not like Risk, but it’s kind of a different level. I think, but your micro interactions and the same people, that same ticket taker every day, you get to know him or her, you get to know all of the same people that you recognize the same faces.
You’re part of a community, you’re part of something bigger. And that’s difficult to do and difficult to remember when you don’t leave your house.
Anthony Verna:
Right, but even as a business owner, I have those routines, the Tuesday morning group, the Thursday morning group, and like right now, my Tuesday morning group isn’t meeting and nobody in that particular group seems to want to, I shouldn’t say nobody, but very few people want to make that group turn into a virtual video conference group. So that one’s taking, taking time off. But you know, that was a routine that I have. And that routine is missing now.
Jim Frawley:
Yeah. And we have to find our new routines. So you’ve got your regular network. Most of our networking is done in person and that’s where networking is. But as you think about opportunities and change that’s going on right now and where we’re going to come out, I mean this could potentially be very reminiscent or very similar to what happened in 2008, 2009 we don’t know.
There’s a lot of uncertainty. The taking the time to implement in your routine. You can’t network in person but reaching out to the people either you work with or used to work with to keep up these relationships, that is going to put you light years ahead of anybody else as things come back to normal because the relationships that you have are the ones who are going to bring you business if you’re a business owner. They’re the ones who are going to get you a new job if you’re looking for a new job. And so maintaining and just wellness checks on all of these people just to say, “Hey, I’m still here. You’re still here. Is everything going on?” is just a good way for you to stay front and center. It’s a great way to, to add into that routine.
Anthony Verna:
Do you like the way a lot of people are doing virtual, a happy hour, video conferencing, happy hour?
Jim Frawley:
You know, one of my favorite hobbies is to judge people.
Anthony Verna: (14:37)
I don’t know that I’m asking you to judge people.
Jim Frawley:
That’s the way it is, but people seem to be enjoying it. Right? And if you could get a good group of four people and you’re checking in, you’re having a cocktail. Why not? I mean it’s great. It’s a good way to check in with people. It’s not going to fully replace the in-person kind of interaction stuff. But if it’s a more relaxed way for you to check in with other people and get your social fix, then I say go for it.
Anthony Verna:
For the business owner who’s worried about cashflow and, yeah, I’ll certainly say that I’ve noticed a couple clients turtling. I mean I have a bit of a carrot and stick situation because I can say, “Well, you’ve got a deadline and you lose intellectual property if your deadlines are not particularly met or at least you lose a filing fee.”
So I’ve got the carrot and stick, but not every business owner has that. So for those business owners worrying about cashflow and worrying about the business, how are you helping them focus on the fact that hey, they’re still here. Their business can still continue and they’re worried about cashflow, but that part’s temporary.
Jim Frawley:
It’s a heavy question because everybody’s in a different situation. Depending on your level of cashflow needs, the conversation kind of changes. But what I would say to someone who doesn’t have new business coming in, this is a lot of opportunity. If you don’t have work right now, your job is create work. If work isn’t filling your day, you can find things to do and so we all get into business for a certain reason.
Whatever that reason is is completely up to you. I got into coaching because I like to help people. It sounds cheesy, but that’s the way that it is and you do it.
Anthony Verna:
Cheesy answers are acceptable here.
Jim Frawley:
They’re acceptable. That’s right. And so what I’m doing now, my focus is, yeah, I’ve got my clients and I’m meeting with my clients virtually and everything else, but this is an opportunity for me to help people. And so while jobs are changing, functions are changing and everything is changing, when you keep your focus on your why you got into business, you can then find additional things to do. It goes back to finding value and thinking hard about what are you doing to provide value. Outside of that, there’s all these administrative things that you’ve wanted to do, how much can you do to say that? When was the last time you have day to do website?
Is the language up to date on your website? Have you filed your taxes? This is a good time to just keep busy while we’re waiting to see what everything else is happening. And then you start to think about that reason you got into doing whatever it is that you’re doing and how can you pivot it in the short term. So if you are a writer and nobody’s hiring you to do writing, where else can you write? And maybe you can focus on writing a book. Can you write some blog posts for somebody else? Can you edit communications for people who are trying to reach out to clients and need communications work? There are all kinds of different ways. The challenges and the difficult part and the thing that we don’t like is that it’s hard and nobody likes to do hard things.
And it’s as blunt as I can be. That’s what sucks about this is that we have to figure out difficult ways to pivot. And some of the things may be a little shots to the ego. But we have to find the work and there is work out there. We just have to look for it and we can’t be too proud to do it. And when things get back to normal, this goes into our quiver of things that we’ve learned and things that we can draw on from experience that we can showcase off to clients later.
Anthony Verna:
You know, one of the items that I’ve done and now while I’ve been busy because I litigate. So I have had work to do. But one of the things that I’ve done on my off time is I went into the backend of my website cause there are a couple, I won’t say errors, but mistakes that SEO calculations don’t seem to search engine optimization calculations don’t seem to like, and I went into the back end and I just started fixing them.
I was kind of surprised how quickly some of my keyword ranking went up after I fixed those errors. So what I was, one of the things that I started to do when I was like, well, I don’t feel like moving from one big project to the next. So, instead of taking two hours to do nothing, what can I do to be productive still? So I started working on the backend of my website.
Jim Frawley:
And that’s a perfect example. I mean, when we think about whatever types of business we do, our circles are pretty small because we operate in the same circles all the time. So when we’re doing these normal little circles, you know, whatever networking groups you do are in front of the same people. We’ve got the same types of clients and we go around circle, circle, circle, same communities, same commuting, right? We’ve got our community friends, everything else. We’ve got our little, our little bubbles. This is an excellent time to pop that bubble. And you know, changing your SEO and trying to get in front of new people in different types of ways. That’s, you know, this is a perfect time to do something like that. And when you’re looking and you have another two hour block, if you want to fix the SEO on my website, I would love you to do that.
There’s your side gig. I just got you one. I don’t know that I’m that good, but but that is one of the things that working on. That was one of my 2020 goals anyway. And my website has gone straight up in the last few months. But, that was one of the things. And there’s one other really tedious task that I haven’t done on the website that I need to do.
Jim Frawley:
And you know what, the more bored we get, the more tedious these things become. It’s odd. You know, when we had the most time in the world, we don’t want to do the boring things. We just want to sit in front of the TV and that’s why it never gets done.
Anthony Verna: (20:56)
I’m not going to disagree with that statement at all. Bizarre thing, isn’t it?
Anthony Verna:
But even like from a regular work standpoint, yesterday I had just filed a response to the opposing counsel in this one case filed a motion asking the court to vacate the judgment. I’ll let you guess which one of us won and which one of us lost on the judgment.
Jim Frawley:
And, the Giants fan.
Anthony Verna:
I don’t think he’s a Giants fan, but first off, his first problem was that the court yelled at him for not serving it on me properly. Or at least not telling the court that he served it on me properly. He even made a second mistake after his loss. And I’m sitting there and I’m looking at this and I’m like, this is such a simple response to put together.
And I mean, it’ll take time to do. But from a mental standpoint, it really wasn’t all that difficult. And I just kept staring at it and staring at it and staring at it, and I finally, you know, got it in. It was work. It was billable. It was billable hours. It was work, but it wasn’t the most difficult thing I had to do and I just kept putting it off. And I was doing other actually much more difficult work instead of that. Right.
Jim Frawley:
And it’s odd how we could procrastinate the things that we’re always thinking about it. So it’s this cloud over our head that we know we have to do and we just don’t want to do it. And then when we’re bored or we don’t have other things to do, we just don’t want to get up off our butts and do it anyway.
Our brain’s funny like that, but that goes back to the conversation on routine and everything else. You know, saying I have to work for this set hour, do this thing done, and then you go away and you do whatever you want, then you come back. Maybe it’s two set hours, whatever it is. It’s setting your time aside and having that routine will help you get through all those, those little things that you want to get done.
Anthony Verna:
Speaking how about how we dress as we’re now working at home? Is that as an important part of the routine?
Jim Frawley:
It depends on who you talk to. You’re talking to the wrong person. I like to wear a bathing suit every day. And people who know me know that I wear, cause I work from home a lot and if I’m not meeting a client and I don’t have to wear a suit, I will literally put on a bathing suit and a button down shirt because it’s comfortable. I like to think I’m living in Hawaii, but I’m not. And there is a balance. I think that there are some people who do really, really well with the routine of getting ready in the morning, getting prepared, putting a suit on, or work clothes or whatever it is that you want to do. And then there are others who want to be comfortable as they’re doing their work. I think it depends on the type of work that you have to do. I do think getting dressed puts you in a certain type of professional mindset. But that’s going to be bespoke to you and what you need to accomplish that day. If you find that you’re not being productive for a few days and that’s because you’re in your pajama pants and everything else, maybe you do need a shock to go in a, take a nice big shower, do your hair, do everything, put on your full work gear and set yourself up to do some productive work, then that’s that.
That may help some of your mindset and your productivity, for sure.
Anthony Verna:
Jim, let me thank you here and end on any wrap-up advice that you might have for everybody who’s now working at home and who is feeling that change.
Jim Frawley:
My father used to always say flexibility is our greatest strength. So we are adaptable people. There are problems and there are circumstances and we could fix problems, what circumstances we have to respond to. And this, a lot of what we’re dealing with is just a circumstance that we have to respond to. So when we think about the stress of what we’re dealing with and everything else, know that a lot of it we really can’t solve. And we have to focus on, on the hand that’s in front of us right now. And how are we looking at the chips that are on the table and what are the best next steps that we can do day to day. And at the end of this, hopefully we will have a lot of good lessons that we can draw on for future business.
Anthony Verna:
Jim, thank you very much. Jim Frawley, whose website is at bellwetherhub.com and thank you so much again for coming on.
Jim Frawley:
Anthony, thank you. And I loved being here and I appreciate the chat.
Anthony Verna:
So do I and for all of you listening? Don’t forget if you’re listening on your iOS Apple device, don’t forget to rate it. Five stars, please. Five stars. Thanks very much for listening and we’ll see you next time.
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