But first, before we get into that discussion, this episode is brought to you by Rise25. And through Rise25, we help b2b businesses to get clients, referrals, and strategic partnerships with done-for-you podcasts and content marketing. You’re listening to a podcast right now. And so you better have a podcast as well. I tell everyone that they should, whether you work with us or not, or someone else, or do it on your own. The best relationships that have ever come to me have come because of the podcast. So I tell everyone all the time, they should do it. If you want to learn more, you can go to rise25media.com. All right, Elise I’m super excited to talk to you about this. Now, you know, you and I both went to law school, you went to a slightly better law school than me, Columbia. And, you know, so you go into the world of New York law, big law firms, for those of you who don’t know, it’s crazy cutthroat long hours. And, you know, clearly given what you do now, you help other law firms with business development and things like that. Cool, you must have to figure it out, right? Like, you know, from a couple of years into that experience, you figured out how you bring in clients, how to do business development? Oh, I see you kind of laughing here…
Elise Holtzman 3:23
I’m totally laughing at you. And nothing, nothing could be further from the truth. You know, I started practicing law. And you know, when you get to any law firm, especially a big law firm, they just want you to do the work, they want you to learn how to be a good lawyer, and they want you to grind out the hours because that’s how they get paid. And you know, especially in a market like New York, they’re paying very high salaries. So they need to get you to be focused on the work on your desk. And nobody ever mentioned business development to me, nobody talks about it, they don’t train on it, they don’t mention it in law school, they don’t mention much of anything in law school, as you well know, they don’t teach you how to, you know, they don’t teach you anything about financials of a business. They don’t teach you about, you know, managing an organization hiring and firing people managing up managing down none of that stuff. I mean, as you probably remember, they really don’t even teach you to run a case or a deal. So, you know, you get there and you’re supposed to kind of apprentice yourself to somebody and several somebodies and learn how to do it, but they don’t mention that stuff. You know, they don’t teach it in law school. They don’t teach it in law firms. You know, I never even occurred to me honestly, it wasn’t until I got out of the law and started getting involved in coaching that I realized how powerful you know, coaching and training could be for lawyers who want to achieve something, but there are no guideposts for them.
John Corcoran 4:43
Yeah. And why do you think that is in the legal profession in particular, seem very, it’s become very regimented, where it’s the people on the top the partners that are doing all the business development and sales, and then the low-level people that do all the work, or most of the work
Elise Holtzman 4:59
right. So I think there are a few reasons for it. First of all, the law has always been considered a profession, right? So if you picture you know, somebody’s kind of putting their nose in the air and being kind of snooty, and a little country club about the whole thing, you know, this is a venerable profession, it’s not a business, and that permeates the legal profession. And it’s only, you know, in the last couple of decades that people have started realizing that we need to talk about this as a business. Right? It’s sort of like a new legal economy came along, it wasn’t as simple as you know, you’re a lawyer, you’re smart, you do a good job, you live in a community where people know you, so they’re gonna hire you, law became much more of a business, you know, you’ve got these mega firms, they’re global, you know, even, even in a small town, you’ve got to be able to bring in clients. So there was kind of this snooty academic attitude from the law schools. And then, you know, most people went to law firms, and they were lifers, right? They stayed forever. And it’s not that way anymore, you know, there’s a lot less, there are a lot less people that actually make partner percentage-wise, you don’t make partner just because you’ve been there for a long time, and you’ve put in good work, and you’re loyal to the firm. There is a business component to it in some form, regardless of what you know, even if you don’t have business, already, you might have a specialty area where they think you’re going to be able to develop business. So I think that it’s just tradition, right? Old habits die hard. And so they don’t teach that stuff in law school. And, you know, there is some sort of, you know, top law schools that will say things like, well, we don’t want to become a trade school. Right, that somehow this selling thing is unseemly. And we’re all going to turn into the proverbial used car salesman. And then you know, when you get to a law firm, I mean, in fairness, that’s not the business, the law firm is in the business of serving their clients. They’re not in the education business, they’re not in the training business. And so you know, there’s always been this idea that the cream rises to the top. Well, that’s not always the case, particularly when the people that are coming in, don’t necessarily know what it takes to get where they want to go.
John Corcoran 7:05
Yeah, well, I want to dive into this topic of, you know, how you can teach or train or work with clients who come in with this background, the history that you just explained, but then to get them to, to spend the time and energy and attention that it takes to actually do business develop, to build relationships to get clients in the door. And that’s where I think it’s kind of a universal experience that listeners will find valuable, even if you’re not a lawyer, but you hit kind of a breaking point, right after the birth of your first child, you have a toddler. And you finally said, Enough is enough, you were on partner track, you’re on track to make a ton of money as a partner, but you also saw the writing on the wall and how many hours you’d have to work to bring us back to that period and what that experience was like, What was it like going? Did you go back to work with the toddler and kind of be there for a couple months? And you realize like this is not working?
Elise Holtzman 7:58
Yeah, I think I was there for almost two years after she was born. And look, I loved what I did, right? I’m one of these like nerdy people who just like the law so much. And there’s some definitely unhappy lawyers out there and people who go into different things, but I loved what I did, I did deals, I did commercial real estate transactions, it was just fun. But what happened was, when I went back to my firm, I was the most senior associate in the department. So I hadn’t I wasn’t old enough to be a partner and wasn’t that senior yet, but I was the most senior associate in the department. So you know that time was coming. So I was running a lot of deals on my own. And I went back to work part-time. Now part-time for a new york city, a big law lawyer was and in most cases, still is 40 hours a week. So you know, when you hear that you get a sense of what the expectations are, right? So part-time was 40 hours a week, and I was making 80% of my salary. And so I thought, okay, that seems fairly reasonable, I can make that happen. I mean, I think I would have been happier if it was a few less hours a week, but that wasn’t what they weren’t willing to do anything less than that. So Fine. 40 hours a week 80% of my salary, but because like most, you know, most professions, it wasn’t a wage, you know, I wasn’t making a particular wage, I wasn’t clocking in and clocking out, like you stay until the job gets done. And so I was working many, many more hours. And I happened to marry a lawyer who was doing the same thing at another firm, just in a different field. He was doing litigation and employment work. So it got to the point where there were just, it became untenable, the whole thing just became stressful. And you know, we never saw the baby and we never saw each other and, you know, we were eating at our desks and not exercising and not taking care of ourselves. And I just thought we were so young. And I just thought like, is this what it is? And in many ways, for me, it was what it was because I didn’t know there were no coaches. There were no sponsors. There were some mentors but there were not a lot of mentors. For a woman who wanted to have children and be a part At that time, so I kind of threw in the towel. I mean, I thought, well, I can’t do this anymore. So I’ll stop doing it and will kind of pull our family back together and make that a little bit more sane. And then I’ll figure out what I want to be when I grow up.
John Corcoran 10:13
And what was it like telling your family, telling your friends, telling your colleagues that you are going to walk away? Because I know, that is not an easy decision to make? And the firm wanted you to stay? Right?
Elise Holtzman 10:26
Yeah, for sure. And so, you know, for me, it felt like a failure. It felt like I hadn’t made a choice, right, it felt like the choice was taken away from me. And, and I say this, this is really important to note is that I wound up staying home with kids for a while, we wound up having two more kids, and I wound up staying home with them for a while. And I really felt at the time that I didn’t have a choice. And yet at the same time, I’m very well aware that most women do not have the choice from a financial perspective to stay home full time. So I was sort of alternately annoyed at the whole thing and grateful at the same time, right? Because for most women, they didn’t have that choice I did, because my husband was able to support us. But it did feel like a failure because I had worked so hard to get where I was going. And my parents had invested, you know, so much time, energy and, yes, money, they helped me to the extent they could to go to great schools and to get a law degree and all of that stuff. And so, you know, it was very hard for me to accept that this was what I was doing.
John Corcoran 11:28
Yeah. And at what point did you start moving towards business development? And also, how do you define the parameters around business development? Cuz it’s kind of an amorphous term for some people?
Elise Holtzman 11:39
Yeah, so it’s really about sales and marketing, right? It’s like lawyers don’t like to say the word sell. So we use the word business development instead. And that’s where I think this really is applicable to all of your listeners, because it really just is about this idea of getting comfortable with the idea that, you know, you have something valuable to offer. And, you know, while there are people who will say, Oh, this thing sells itself. I mean, the fact is, we all know nothing sells itself. And so, you know, lawyers have had to come to the conclusion that business development, sales and marketing are important. But again, as you said, traditionally, it’s been you know, there are a couple people in the firm that bring in the clients and everybody else does the work. You know, in the law firm, we talked about finders, minders and grinders, right, so the finders bring the work, minders take care of the clients, and the grinders are the ones grinding out, you know, the documents and all that sort of thing. And the more junior people. And as with most businesses, the finders and I say this all the time for, you know, tend to be more equal than everybody else, right? They tend to get paid more, because they’re the ones bringing in the business, whether that’s the model we should be using or not that it certainly is the model and the law and, and many other professions as well. And so when I decided to get back into the workforce, I thought about going back to law, because I did love it. But as I said, I know, I had this very black and white vision that, oh, this isn’t going to work for me. And I’ve been home long enough that I don’t want somebody else telling me how many hours a week I have to work, I put enough pressure on myself. And I’m a hard worker without somebody else telling me, you know what time to show up and what time I can go home. Also, the third kid came along with special needs. So I felt when I wanted to be able to, you know, for all three of them be close to home. And we don’t have family around here. So I found out about coaching, I found out about executive coaching and leadership coaching. And it really felt like the right fit for me. So I was trained that way. And then it was like, great, you’re trained now what are you going to do with it? And, you know, I almost like to have this vision of myself sitting there with my mouth hanging open going? I don’t know, you know, all I know, is lawyers. And so I wound up devoting my practice to lawyers, but definitely did not start out in business development that was not really on my mind at the time.
John Corcoran 13:51
What were you doing first?
Elise Holtzman 13:53
When I was first doing it, I was talking to people about things like making a partner, you know, being intentional about career success, how to manage their careers. You know, for some people, it was things like, you know, delegation and time management, which I still do some work with. But I hadn’t really thought so much about the business development piece again, because it just wasn’t part of my experience, right? Nobody had ever really mentioned it to me. What happened was, this is utterly true. I selfishly know, I didn’t come from an entrepreneurial family. I came from, you know, a dad who was always with a company and my mom was a speech language pathologist and in a school system. So it was like, Oh, cool. Now I have my own business. I have no idea how to get clients. I have no idea how to do marketing. So I started like running all over the country going to conferences and reading books, and I was probably, you know, totally impossible because I was so hyper focused on learning as much as I could. And I realized that I had accidentally started helping my clients grow their own businesses.
John Corcoran 14:54
How did you accidentally it was just kind of giving them flippin ‘advice. And then yeah,
Elise Holtzman 14:58
You know, That’s exactly what happened, we will be talking and I and you know, it would be well, you know, if you could talk to this person and bring in this client, or you know, I’d like to bring in this client, but I don’t know what to do. So we will, we will talk about things like, you know, networking and how to network and how to talk to people, how to how to go into it with, you know, a giving nature so that you’re adding value for people and, you know, getting involved in, in raising your profile, you know, in the business community, or the legal community speaking, writing all of those sorts of things, because these were all the things that I was learning about. And I found it completely fascinating. So I don’t know, one day, it was sort of like the light bulb went on, like, Hello, you know, you actually know what you’re doing, you’re growing your business, you’re helping other people grow their businesses, this is something that everybody started asking me about, you know, I at one point, I think I had like seven workshops I had put together that I had listed, I do these seven different workshops, and 99 times out of 100, they were asking me for the business development content. So that’s when I started, you know, whittling away all the stuff that I mean, like with any business, you’ve got to give people, you know, what they need and want and, and what they what they’re buying what they want you to provide. And so that’s how my practice turned into, you know, largely business development. I do some other things as well.
John Corcoran 16:18
And we talked a bit about some of the psychological barriers that lawyers in particular as an industry have, because they view themselves as a highfalutin profession and don’t want to be, I don’t know, dragged down into the mud. I don’t know if that’s the right term for it. But how do you work with people and get them to see the value in the virtue of doing business development? How do you get them to get past that mindset?
Elise Holtzman 16:48
Right, so I think as far as the value itself of engaging in sales and marketing, I think people see the value, right, because they do understand that the people in their firms who are the rainmakers, who are able to bring in the business are the people that have the power to, you know, call the shots in their own career, make decisions, they are involved in the leadership of the firm, they make the most money. What it then comes down to is, sometimes there’s a distaste for it. And there’s also a lack of confidence. It’s like, well, that’s great, but I couldn’t do that, right? So there’s a mindset shift that has to happen. And people have to kind of look at themselves and figure out what are the obstacles that are getting in your way. So you know, for every coach, I mean, there’s so many people out there doing coaching, some of them are really terrific. And for any coach, you’ve got to be looking at the obstacles and having the client acknowledge what these obstacles are, some of them are going to be external obstacles. I don’t know how to do this, right, or they think it’s an external obstacle, because they don’t have time. And so there are things that they need to learn, they need to understand what the principles of sales and marketing business development are, they need to be able to work it into their schedules. A lot of it, though, is the internal obstacles. It’s like, well, I’m an introvert, and, you know, I couldn’t possibly develop business. Well, that’s not true. I don’t have time to develop business. Well, the person in your firm who’s bringing in $10 million a year of business, or whatever it is, that has the same 24 seven that you do. So, you know, he or she has managed to figure it out, you can figure it out, too. There are people who are perfectionists, right, they’re worried about how they’re going to come across talking to people, they’re afraid to be on camera, they don’t think they’re good writers, right? There are so many things that they’re telling themselves. And so what I try to do with people is to help debunk these ideas that they have in their heads, and help them get a few wins under their belts, so that they can actually see and they have evidence for. Now I do sound like a lawyer, they have evidence for this idea that they can make it happen. Right? And they don’t have to do it the way somebody else does it. They can do it in a way that makes sense for them.
John Corcoran 18:59
I love that idea of getting wins. Give me an example of what that looks like. How do you get someone to get an early win?
Elise Holtzman 19:05
Yeah, so for some, some people think that a win and I this is a myth, I also debunk right away. Some people think that a win is I brought in a client. That is not where we start if those that’s the only win, we’re going to go for a long time. Yeah, it’s a really high bar, because this is one of those, you know, to use a cliche, this really is a marathon, not a sprint, you know, you’re not going to go out there and shake hands with somebody and have one conversation and probably have them as a tremendous client for the rest of your life. It doesn’t typically work that way, where you’re not going to write an article and all of a sudden people are banging down your door because they’ve got to hire you. So it takes time to develop relationships and to have a body of work if you know what workshops or articles or whatever. So an early win could be something as simple as setting up. You know, a lunch or a coffee or a zoom call with somebody that you met. At a conference last month, it could be as simple as picking, figuring out what your specialty area is, you know, believe it or not in the legal profession, as you know, in some places, we’re not actually allowed to refer to ourselves as specialists or experts. But, you know, pick the area that you’re going to focus on, are your copyright lawyer, are you an employment lawyer? Are you a hedge fund lawyer, and really narrow that down and make some decisions about, you know, this is the area that I’m going to concentrate in so that I can hang out with people who could be good clients or referral sources. For me, it can be something very, very simple. And so you start to see people move in the right direction. And when they’re getting these small wins, when they’re moving in the right direction, they start to realize that they’re capable of doing this that it’s like, again, another cliche, it’s like, when they look at the whole elephant, it looks completely undoable. They look at the guy in their firm who has, you know, a huge book of business, and they’re like, Oh, my God, I could never do that. Well, we’re not talking about you having a huge book of business. Right now. We’re talking about you setting up three, zoom up, you know, coffees with people.
John Corcoran 21:05
Yeah, yeah. Right. So
Elise Holtzman 21:07
breaking it into smaller pieces.
John Corcoran 21:08
I love that. What about you mentioned a little bit earlier about the objection of not having enough time? I know, that’s a big objection for people. So what do you say to people who use that as an example, as an objection.
Elise Holtzman 21:24
So it is probably the most common objection I get, because it’s also when people feel uncomfortable with something and they lack confidence, and they don’t know how to do it. A great way to go is I’m so busy. And in many professions, you know, particularly in big cities, and particularly in, you know, some of the financial professions, you know, working crazy hours is a badge of honor. So you just get to say, you don’t understand how important I am and how busy I am, I just can’t fit this in. And so what I say is a couple things. First of all, you find time for doing the things that are most important to you, you find time for, you know, hopefully taking care of your your health and taking care of your family, making sure the bills get paid, making sure you feed the kids and the dog, you know, you find ways to fit that stuff into your life. And it might be a little crazy sometimes, but you do it. When you make anything a priority, whether it’s going to the gym or or business development, you can actually build something into your calendar, and keep the appointment with yourself and make it happen. So it could be, you know, sometimes I ask people to just commit between now and the next time I talk to you in a couple of weeks, to put one hour of business development time into your calendar, it could be two half hour, little power hours or little power half hours, the amount that you can get done in 30 minutes or an hour is mind boggling when you’re focused on it, you know, turn off the phone, close the door, unless somebody is dying, bleeding or needs to go to the emergency room as I used to say to my kids, you know, focus on that. And people are usually willing to put something small into their calendar like that. And the other thing I tell people is, look, you got to change your job description, right? You’re not just a lawyer anymore, or you’re not, you know, if it’s outside the legal profession, you’re not just a lawyer anymore, you’re not just an accountant anymore, you’re not just a consultant anymore, you are in the business of marketing your services, that is actually part of your job description. And when you shift the mindset that this is part of your job description. Now all of a sudden, it’s like, oh, well, I have time for that. That’s part of my job. Like that’s a really important part of my job.
John Corcoran 23:24
Ya know, what, just in the legal profession there’s a billable hour billable hour requirement for most lawyers. Right, right lawyers. And so some firms, they maybe would incentivize that kind of behavior by allowing them to count those hours others maybe not, how much does that play into it becoming a barrier for you?
Elise Holtzman 23:47
I think that’s huge, right? The legal profession, you know, particularly those who are not doing plaintiffs work, right, because a lot of that work is contingency based. But the majority of lawyers that I work with are working on a billable hour. And you know, bonuses are determined by billable hours, your compensation is determined by busy billable hours, whether you’re considered partner material or a good associate, you know, it is dependent on that stuff. So that’s pretty hard to get past that that mindset that it’s the be all, in the end, all it’s hard to get past law firms that allow they have like a billable number for sales, marketing and business development for lawyers are incentivizing their people to do it because they’re showing that this is something that not only is a good idea, but that we take seriously at this firm that you’re actually going to be rewarded for it. It might be you know, we’ll consider up to 200 hours a year. As part of your bonus. You know, you can’t be doing business development all the time, every minute, you’ve got to actually build ours and serve clients, but they give a certain number of hours that they will take into account when it’s bonus time. And I think that law firms can have such an impact on their own bottom line by creating interest kernel cultures that support this sort of thing. rather than waiting until somebody has been practicing law for 10 years, and they want to be a partner, or, you know, same thing could be at an accounting firm or consulting firm, saying, Hey, you know, yeah, you’ve been here for a long time you do good work, you know, we consider you for partner, but where’s your business?
John Corcoran 25:19
How do they create that culture, though? How do you instill that, especially earlier on?
Elise Holtzman 25:24
Yeah, so there are a lot of different ways you can do it. I think that first of all, talking to lawyers about it from the very beginning, I mean, even in interviews, finding out from them, you know, are they willing to do something like this? Is this something that they’d be excited about, you know, particularly if someone taught them how to do it, right, because they’re not most of them are going to come in, unless they’ve had sales experience in the past, you know, giving some training, especially when they’re Junior not and tell them you are not expected to bring in business however, we really want you to retain the relationships you have, nurture those relationships, and grow them over time. So get someone to help them understand that don’t get so busy working, that you forget about all the people you went to law school with, you know, because the Joker you sat next to in law school is going to wind up becoming General Counsel of some company. And, you know, if you develop that relationship and retain that relationship over time, he or she may well come to you for the business. So I think at every stage of growth and development, and everyone in any profession, or entrepreneurship, or whatever, can learn something about the process of business development, not put pressure on them, but encourage them and train them and have it be talked about. And again, to your point, you know, building it, building it into the billable hours, and making sure that you know, they get rewarded for effort, and not just results.
John Corcoran 26:48
And let’s talk about that. So you mentioned earlier, like building into your schedule, 30 minutes or 60 minutes to do business development. And if I’m hearing that, and I’m, you know, a business owner, whether in the law or not, or not even a business owner, I mean, you could be an attorney of counsel, or it could be you know, associate or something like that listening to this. What would I do? What would be a good use of my time in that 30 to 60 minutes? What do you tell them to do?
Elise Holtzman 27:13
Right, so sometimes you’re going to be taking action, and I’ll get back to that in a minute. You know, you’re going to be emailing people or setting up coffees or going out to lunch, or writing an article or, you know, uh, you know, talking to organizations that you might be able to speak for going to events. Sometimes it’s just planning, like sitting down and thinking to yourself, who is my target client? Right? Who is my target customer? could be an entrepreneur with a completely different sort of business? Or who is my target client? Who do I want to be calling me and referring, right? Where do my, where does my business come from? I mean, I ask people this question, to the extent you have business now, where does it come from? Many times, they have no idea. Well, right. And so there are software programs, where when you do client intake, you can list where it came from. And you can actually download that into a sheet where you say, well, 60% of my business comes from referrals from other lawyers or 20% of my business comes from, you know, prior customers to whom I sold, you know, cute leashes for my, for my dog, for their dog or whatever, so that you know where it’s coming from, and then you know, who to focus on. Another thing to do is make a list of your contacts, and actually have it all in one place. So you can keep track of who you’re connecting with on a regular basis. You know, there may be people who are great sources for you and great people to be connecting with, but you kind of forget about them, because you’re not keeping it all in one spot. And then maybe making you know, an A list and a B list. Who are the people that I want to connect with in the next six months? And who can I wait on a little bit,
John Corcoran 28:46
then? So we’re talking about, like, what you would do if you had 30 minutes or 60 minutes? And the next question beyond that is how do you make it a habit? How do you make it a pattern? How do you make sure that this is something that you don’t just do once and you keep on doing? Obviously, you hire a coach, like yourself to hold you accountable. But
Elise Holtzman 29:04
there’s a lot out there about habits. And you know, the best coach in the world probably has some bad habits too. I mean, I’m, you know, a perfect example of someone who is sort of, you know, serially building up my exercise routine, and then forgetting about it for a while. So, you know, nobody’s perfect, and nobody, everybody has something that they wish they could be better at in terms of their habits. First of all, having a coach is great. And I mean, obviously, I’ve got skin in the game here, but having a coach is great. I have my own coach. I have a couple of coaches. Actually, John, you’re one of them, right? Because you’ve helped me with the podcast. The fact of the matter is, I would not have gotten the podcast off the ground if you hadn’t helped me with it. And it’s been one of the best things that I’ve done for my business. You know, it’s still early in the game. But I’m already really doing well with that. I also have just a general coach for my business, who is a complete Rockstar. One of the reasons that I have other people helping me is because they hold me accountable, not to them, but to myself, right. So that’s what I’m doing with my clients that they’re not accountable to me they’re accountable to themselves and to their goals and to the things that they said they wanted to do. Now, if for some reason, you don’t want to coach or you’re early on in your business, and you don’t feel that you have the, you know, the financial ability to find a coach for yourself, you can find somebody else to help you with this. So you can have a friend and create your own little accountability partnership, right? So you can have a friend who is, you know, maybe in a completely different business or profession, where you meet every couple of weeks on the phone, it can be 15 minutes or a half hour and you talk about, you know, what have you accomplished that you committed to? And what’s gotten in your way, what Haven’t you accomplished that you still want to accomplish? And how can I be helpful to you and getting that done? What’s standing in your way?
John Corcoran 30:50
That’s great. That’s great. Yeah. And I, for many years, actually, I had an accountability partner, I met with him every week, we would meet for like, 10 minutes. And it was, it was great, like, really good. Good Practice. I’ve recommended it to a lot of people, then he went to law school, actually. So we’re not doing anymore. Well, we’re getting a little low on time. And I want to wrap up with two questions that I always ask. And I realized, usually with my guests, I warned them beforehand, I forgot to warn you. So special privilege, you get to do it without me having warned you, but I think you’ll be okay. So the first question is, I’m a big fan of gratitude. And when you look at your peers or others in your industry, it could be other people that are coaches, or it could be maybe even CMOS are people in a coaching line of work at a law firm or in the legal industry? Who do you admire? Who do you respect? Who are you grateful for?
Elise Holtzman 31:48
In my industry, there are two people that come to mind. They are both former practicing lawyers, who also became coaches and consultants. And, you know, some of the work that they do is the same kind of work that I do. And some of them do something slightly different. One of them is John Mitchell, who’s known as the purple coach, for a long list of reasons. And, you know, he, he’s great. I mean, he and I are very, very different. And so we’ve been able to kind of call each other out on our garbage. You know, he opened some doors for me, introduced me to some people, got me involved with the Leadership Council on legal diversity, which has been a wonderful experience for me. I’ve met so many great people through him. So you know, I adore him. He’s terrific. And the other is Carrie Fletcher. So Carrie Fletcher, you know, was also a lawyer. As I said, she worked at Harvard for a long time, she went and you know, she’s just too smart and driven, she went and got a business degree at London Business School, like a strategy degree recently. And we’ve become very close friends, I met her through LC LD as well. What I love about her is that she is just so, she’s so warm and kind and funny. It’s just fun to talk to her. And she also, you know, this is kind of a tough group, we were sort of The Three Musketeers. And so we’re pretty tough on each other, but in a loving way. And sometimes you need that, right? You need somebody who will call you out on your garbage and make fun of you, you know, in a loving way, like not to hurt you. But just to be like, yeah, you know what, I know your shtick, and I’m not believing any of it. And so I’m really grateful to both of them. were very supportive of one another, we learn from each other, there’s really no competition between us. And I’m grateful for that. Because sometimes you just have a dumb question. And particularly when you’re in your own business, I mean, this is one of the things that I have in common, you know, with the entrepreneurs who listen to your podcasts, I’m in my own business. I didn’t come from an entrepreneurial family, and sometimes I just have nobody to ask my dumb questions to. And so those two have always been there for me. So great. Yeah,
John Corcoran 33:47
I can relate to that not coming from an entrepreneurial family and just kind of feeling like, it really never goes away. But kind of feeling like I’m new to this. I was, you know, no matter how long you’ve been doing it, right. Final question. So let’s pretend we’re an awards banquet, much like the Oscars or the Emmys at Tony’s. You’re being awarded a lifetime achievement for everything you’ve done up until this point, what we all want to know is, what do you think? So not just family, but who are the colleagues? Who are the friends or the mentors or the peers? Who are the partners? Who are the fellow associates where the law school classmates? Who are the people that you would acknowledge in your remarks?
Elise Holtzman 34:24
So I guess because you didn’t ask me this before I know, I really, I know it’s not supposed to be family, but it really for me, it would be my family. You know, I’ve had great professors and I’ve had great friends in the legal industry and in the coaching consulting industry, and, you know, John Kerry would definitely be on my list. But I have been so ridiculously fortunate and I talked about gratitude, to have parents who just, you know, everything I am is because of my parents, essentially. I mean, they really they pushed me they supported me and they’ve always been Been there, you know, even now it’s like I can’t imagine, you know, for people who have lost their parents will understand this, I can’t imagine a time when I wouldn’t need or want my parents around because they’ve always been so helpful to me. Also, I would have to say, my husband, I mean, I totally won the husband jackpot. We’ve been married for 29 years now, we just celebrated 29 years. And again, really fortunate just because I have a complete partner, who, you know, has this delusion that I’m capable of doing anything that I want to do, and he thinks I’m funny for some reason. So, you know, all of that is really great. And those are the people that, you know, would be on my mind. If I were fortunate enough to get a Lifetime Achievement Award.
John Corcoran 35:41
Excellent. The Lawyer’s Edge. Where can people go to learn more about you or to connect with you?
Elise Holtzman 35:45
So you can go to my website, which is thelawyersedge.com. You can track me down on LinkedIn, Elise Holtzman, and you know, you can sign up for my podcast, I would love to have you listen to the podcast where you know, I bring in lots of guests who have really fabulous things to say, that are applicable to lawyers, but not you know, also applicable to other people, as you mentioned.
John Corcoran 36:05
Absolutely. Go check it out on iTunes, apple, podcast, Stitcher, any of those different platforms, whatever you prefer. Go check it out. Elise, thanks so much.
Elise Holtzman 36:14
Thank you, John.
Outro 36:15
Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.