John Kormanik | Time Isn’t the Problem: How Lawyers Can Rethink Productivity

Elise Holtzman: Hi, everyone. It's Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of The Lawyer's Edge Podcast. Welcome back for another episode. Everyone listening knows lawyers are working harder than ever, chasing time, juggling tasks, grinding through endless to-do lists. But what if the real issue isn't time? We think it's time, but how we use it and, more importantly, where we direct our energy.

Today's guest is on a mission to flip the script about time. After decades practicing law, he now coaches attorneys on reframing their mindset, optimizing systems, and reclaiming their energy so they can lead with clarity and legacy, not exhaustion. In this conversation, we're going to examine the myths that keep lawyers stuck in execution mode and explore a better path to sustainable performance.

Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by the Ignite Women's Business Development Accelerator, a nine-month business development program created by women lawyers for women lawyers. Ignite is a carefully designed business development program containing content, coaching, and a community of like-minded women who are committed to becoming rainmakers and supporting the retention and advancement of other women in the profession. To learn more about Ignite, visit thelawyersedge.com/ignite.

I am delighted to welcome my guest today, John Kormanik, a certified professional coach and the author of Break the Law: A Story of a Reimagined Career and a Reclaimed Life. After more than 20 years as a trial lawyer, including roles as a deputy attorney general, law firm partner, and a firm owner, John now coaches attorneys on how to shift their mindset, design more sustainable systems, and lead with greater energy, purpose, and clarity. John, welcome to The Lawyer's Edge.

John Kormanik: Thanks for having me, Elise. It's great to be here.

Elise Holtzman: It is great to have you, John. This is a topic that I think every lawyer can relate to. As I said earlier, and as I know you see all the time, we are living our lives ruled by the almighty billable hour, even if we're using other kinds of billing systems. That can create burnout, exhaustion, and a whole host of other things for lawyers, to say nothing of what it does to impact the clients. So I want to start with what you often say about time management being a myth. Why is time management a myth? Why isn't time the real issue when lawyers are struggling with productivity?

John Kormanik: The issue or the picture that comes to my head every time someone says time management is the 60 Minutes stopwatch. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Time doesn't care. It's not against you. It's just agnostic. It doesn't stop. It just keeps on going.

Thirty seconds have gone by in our conversation. So when we talk about time, and a lot of lawyers come to me about time, time is not the issue. It just never is the issue because time is just this thing that is in the world. It keeps on moving forward. There's no pause button on it. It's agnostic towards you and your goals. Time is not the thing. It never has been, and it never will be.

We are, as lawyers, cognizant of the fact that words matter. Words matter. When we talk about time management, and look, there's a billion-dollar industry around time management. Go to Amazon and search for time management books. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of them. Go to your local bookstore, your local independent bookstore, and look at time management in the business section there. It is an industry, and it's just focused on the wrong thing.

Elise Holtzman: What do you think is the right thing?

John Kormanik: Decision-making, pure and simple. It is what you decide to put onto your—the visual that I use with all my clients and anybody who will listen is a pizza tin or a pizza stone. You have 168 hours in your week. That's what you have. Everybody has the same amount. It's what you decide to allow into that space, into that pizza tin, that enables you to either master your time or be a slave to it.

Elise Holtzman: I know you talked about the 20% rule as a way to escape the trap of being busy all the time. Probably most people have heard about the 80-20 rule. Is that what you're talking about here?

John Kormanik: It is what I'm talking about. Now it's, gosh, it's got to be 18 months ago. Let me just preface this by saying I read a lot. About 18 months ago, I read an article about Mark Zuckerberg. The article had everything to do with his carbon footprint and his private jet going back and forth to Hawaii from California, like five times in two days. The premise of the article was carbon footprint, but there was one sentence in there that really struck me and has stayed with me for 18 months.

Mark Zuckerberg's time is valued at $400,000 a minute. I believe all of our time is valued at $400,000 a minute or more. If we were to step back and think about it and look at it objectively, the time that we have, we don't know how much of it we have. I mean, this conversation could be my last conversation on the planet, and we can't make any more of it.

So what would happen if you treated your time as though it was worth $400,000 a minute? That's the question, right? We hear about the 80-20 rule, right? Twenty percent of your time focused in the appropriate way creates 80% of your results. My $400,000 a minute framework. There are all of these frameworks out there.

The reason that they're all the frameworks is because one of them is going to speak to you. One of them is going to create a change in your mind in how you think about time. They all talk about the same thing. You should focus on the stuff that you ought to focus on. What brings the most value to your firm, to your clients, to your life, you should focus on those things. All of the frameworks just get to that part of it.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah. To your point, people use different language for—I talk to my clients all the time about trying to figure out what is the highest and best use of your time, right? So if you're a partner at a law firm, if you're up at three o'clock in the morning proofreading documents, we know that that's definitely not the highest and best use of your time. But what is? And for each person, it's going to be something different.

There's also the terminology that's been used since I started practicing law, probably before that, and that was a very long time ago, which is work-life balance. You talk about work-life balance as being a myth. So talk to me a little bit about what you mean by that and what we should be thinking about instead of work-life balance.

John Kormanik: You and your listeners are going to realize that I have a lot of visuals in my head. I'm a visual thinker. When we talk about work-life balance, when that phrase is put out there in the world, I go back to the playground in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, where I grew up. There was a wooden plank that we called a teeter-totter or a seesaw, depending on where in the world you are.

We would always try to balance it. I would be on one end, and a friend or a sibling would be on the other end, and we tried to get it just so. Impossible. You can't. It's too much work. So honestly, when people talk about work-life balance, I just think it sets us up for failure, especially lawyers.

Here's what I mean by that. When I practiced, I had a 44-day federal white-collar criminal trial, 44 trial days, spanning two-plus months. In the month before and during that trial, there was no such thing as balance. There could not be. There could not be. I could not have all of the balls that I was responsible for, from the trial to managing the law firm to cultivating the relationships in my family with my wife and my daughter. That just wasn't really a thing if I was to serve the client in the way that I needed to serve the client and that they deserved, quite frankly.

So my family knew that, "Okay, Dad's going to be in trial. We know what that means. He's not going to be mowing the lawn. He's not really going to be walking the dog," except in the mornings when I wanted to, and then the evenings when I needed some quiet time, he's not going to be preparing dinners. There was not this thing.

So I think really the picture that I have in my mind is being at a sidewalk café in the heat of the summer. You're not going to order a steaming bowl of chili. It's just not going to be your thing. You're going to order a nice cool salad or a nice cool soup to really be in line with what you're experiencing in the day. It's the same thing in your practice, in your life.

What is the thing that you need to focus on right now? Is it taking a lot of your time? If it does, then you have to be able to put the other balls down, your personal life, whatever it is, right? You have to be able to put those down and then go back and pick them back up. So it's a seasonal thing for us. Not necessarily the seasons writ large, four seasons a year. It's what's in your space right now. If it's a 44-day jury trial, you have to be able to put the other stuff out to the side and remember to go back to it.

Elise Holtzman: I think that's the key too, is remembering to go back to it. Because I think some people get sucked into the vortex, if you will. Even when the adrenaline drops off or the matter is over, they don't necessarily remember that they have this life to go back to or other things to go back to.

John Kormanik: Yeah, 100%. Look, I'm super lucky. I've been married. It'll be 35 years coming up. I have an adult daughter. She's 31 years old. I have wonderful relationships with my wife and my daughter. It's because I focused on making sure the relationships were good, and I counted on them to say, "Hey, you know what? Don't forget about us. We're here. We're waiting for you. We're important."

It's very easy to let your practice govern because it's super comfortable for us. It's what we went to school for. It's what we're good at. So it's comfortable. You got to put that sometimes to the side to take care of other things in your life.

Elise Holtzman: So we've been talking a little bit about some of these myths that time management is a myth because everybody gets the same 24-7 that everybody else does. So it's a question of what you're doing with it, which is how I typically put it. We're talking about work-life balance also being a myth. What do you think are some of the other, if any, lies, let's say, that we tell ourselves or that we've allowed the profession to tell us or just the work world to tell us about how we're supposed to be behaving as lawyers or what we're supposed to be achieving?

John Kormanik: Yeah. You know, just look around. You can look at any platform or news article, magazine article. I have to grind all the time to be successful. The work has to feel heavy. It doesn't have to feel heavy. The difference between grind and grit—and lawyers are naturally gritty people—the difference between grind and grit is passion. Are you passionate about the things that you're doing?

If you're passionate about them, then it's not heavy. It may take a lot of your time and you're purposely putting it in your 168-hour week, but it's not heavy. It doesn't have to feel heavy to be successful.

I'm working with a client right now. It's fascinating. She started a law firm as a true solo. Now she's got 40 people working for her. This whole concept of what is work? Well, work is different now. Work has to be different for you now. So it doesn't have to feel heavy. It can feel empowering and enlightening. So that's number one. I have to grind all the time to be successful. If you're in that space, you're going to burn out.

Number two, if I'm not busy, I'm lazy. We kind of talked about this. What gets into my 168-hour week? I think if you are busy, you're lazy because you're not making the decisions that you need to make. It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to say no to potential clients. I get it. I was there and I am there now in my coaching business. I say no to people more than I say yes. It's very uncomfortable. And I'm very careful about being busy just for busy sakes, because it feels good. Oh, I'm doing stuff. Yeah, but are you doing the right stuff? So that's number two.

Number three, and this is a big one. I coach clients all over the world, and this is particular to lawyers and other high-functioning professionals, I have to be available 24/7. It's a killer. "Oh, but my clients expect it." I had a conversation with a lawyer in Israel. Everybody gets my WhatsApp number. The doctors hand out their WhatsApp numbers. Accountants hand up their WhatsApp numbers. I said, "How does that affect your life when you're not working? How does that affect you?" Well, I'm always working. That's a problem.

There are two people on the planet who I'm available 24/7 to. I've already mentioned them, my wife and my daughter. That's it. There is nobody else. There hasn't been for quite a long time because of the fact that we have to be able to turn it off. We have to build a container. We have to build boundaries. We have to be really good at keeping them. So I have to be available 24/7 is one of the lies.

Another lie is money will make you happy. That is the arrival fallacy. Anytime you find yourself saying, "Well, I'll be happy when," that's the arrival fallacy. Ask yourself, when you've said that in the past and you've got to the thing, look, we're all high achievers here, all of us. I know that. When you got to the thing, were you happy? Of course not. You know you weren't.

You did the thing, and then you were on to the next thing. You did the thing that you were afraid to do, that you thought would be really hard. Then you finished it, and you look back and you're like, "Oh, that wasn't too bad." Then you looked at the next mountain. You looked at the next hill to climb.

The arrival fallacy is just that. It's a fallacy. I'll be happy when. Money is not going to make you happy. Now, I will say, I am not someone who says you should give it all away. You should go sit on the top of a mountain and contemplate the meaning of the universe. Money is important to me. Don't get me wrong. It's important, but it doesn't create that happiness in and of itself. I can do things with the money. I can create memories with the money. That's what it's about for me, at least.

The fifth one, and this is really prevalent, and for lawyers specifically, asking for help is a weakness. As attorneys, no matter if you're transactional, a litigator, or a trial attorney, we have this armor that we put on every day. We have to know the answer. We have to be on. We have to, we have to, we have to. It's exhausting, is what it is.

Every single C-suite executive at a Fortune 50 company has someone like you or me on their team. That is just a fact. They recognize that they can't achieve their full potential on their own. Lawyers think that asking for help is a weakness. It's actually a sign of strength. It's a sign of strength.

So those are the five things that get in our way. I say us because we're lawyers here. They get in our way, and they make it so we're not able to achieve our full potential. We are not able to serve our clients to our highest and best level, really at the level that they deserve for the investment they're making in us. We're not able to be present in the world in the way that we ought to be.

Elise Holtzman: I have my thoughts on where these myths come from and how we as lawyers adopt them lock, stock, and barrel and live our lives on the basis of those myths. I'm curious what you think. Why do you think that lawyers buy into these myths?

John Kormanik: Well, I think it starts at boot camp, which is law school. We are broken. The theory of law school for me is the same as boot camp for the Marines at Camp Pendleton by where I used to live in San Diego or the Air Force or the Army, whatever it is. They break you down to build you up.

So the culture, because most, at least practical law school professors, have practiced out in the world. They know what it's like and they try to prepare their graduates to get jobs in the law because that looks good for the law schools. But 90 percent of our graduates get hired in the first six months. That's great for the law school. It's very important for the lawyers. But it starts there. It starts in law school.

Then we get into law firms, or if we're doing it on our own, we are out in the community. This is just the message that we hear. Look, it's a grind. I heard it yesterday. You know, it's, "John, you have to grind." Okay, I guess if that's what you say, but I don't think it's true. I know that you believe it, but I don't think it's true. So I think it's just prevalent in the culture.

The hope that I have is the new generations coming into the law. They're not buying it. They don't buy it. That's a leadership problem for folks like me and folks of my age. I'm a boomer. So folks like me and whatever the next generation is, millennials or whoever, it's a leadership problem for us because we don't understand. But that's the gift that the younger lawyers are bringing into the space, I think.

Elise Holtzman: I work with personality tools, and I work with generational differences in the work that I do with lawyers and law firms. So I agree with you. The younger generation, the younger millennials, Gen Z, they're coming in with different expectations because of what they see boomers and Gen X doing.

So it is a leadership challenge. I get the senior lawyers all the time complaining to me about the junior lawyers. They don't have a fire in the belly, and they just don't want it the way we did and all of that sort of thing. It's understandable that they might feel that way, but it's also understandable that the younger generations would feel the way they do based on what they've gone through in their lives and what they see their parents and grandparents doing. So there's a lot of education that it makes sense to have on both sides.

I also know, based on research, but certainly my own anecdotal evidence, and I know you see this as well, that we self-select into law school. So what you say about law school is 100% true. I actually think it starts before that because there are certain personality types that tend to show up in the law over and over. We tend to be intense, and we tend to be goal-oriented. We like structure, and we like checking off boxes.

Then we get to the law firm. I will never forget when I started at my first law firm, which was a Biglaw firm in New York City, a Wall Street law firm. We use all of this as a badge of honor. It's like, "Oh, well, I billed this many hours this weekend. Oh, I pulled all-nighters." We get rewards for that, like psychological rewards, because we're somehow seen, or at least we were back then, as you say, it's changing, as superheroes. We were the super lawyers, we were the ones who were working so hard. So first of all, that has burned a lot of people out. It's caused a lot of people to leave the law. And to your point, the younger generation isn't totally buying it.

So you talk about making decisions, and you talk about shifting energy, managing energy instead of managing time. So let's talk a little bit about what you mean by that and how you see that energy management, which sounds a little woo-woo. I think it's sometimes hard and I think it probably isn't, but it sounds a little woo-woo. Sometimes, as coaches, we need to access that in order to help our clients with practical change. What's an example maybe of managing your energy and how that changes the decisions you make about how you're using your time?

John Kormanik: Yeah. Look, anytime I use the word energy, I coach just lawyers, right? Those are the only people I coach. Outstanding, high-performing, law firm-owning lawyers. I say energy, and I see it in their eyes. Like, oh boy, here we go. So energy is nothing more than your attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs. It is the story that you tell yourself around the thing, whether it's communicating with an associate or the associate communicating with the partner, talking with a client, whatever it is.

So just take energy and think attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs. If you don't think that you have attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs about everything, then you're just lying to yourself, and that's okay. You can go on about your business. But I know that the listeners to this podcast in particular understand that.

It's all about the soundtrack that's in your head. So when I talk about managing or mastering your energy, it is really all about whether you have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. It's about how you view the situation. It's about whether you react or respond. It's about all this stuff that's out there.

I'll put it in a context that hopefully everyone will understand. Before I went to law school, I worked in healthcare. I was a registered respiratory therapist. I worked initially at Columbia Presbyterian in New York City when the AIDS epidemic was first coming about in the early 80s. Then I worked at a trauma unit in San Diego. In both of those instances, I have seen things that 99.9% of the people on the planet have never seen and never will and don't want to, quite honestly.

I could be standing, you and I could be standing shoulder to shoulder, and see a traumatic event on the street. We will react very differently to it simply because of my background and your background. So when we recognize that, we know that we have the power and the autonomy to change what story we're telling ourselves about the thing that we have to do. I will have clients talk to me all the time about, "Well, John, I have to have a difficult conversation."

The questions that I ask them around that go along the lines of something like this: Do you have a sore throat? "Oh, no, no, my throat's fine. I'm feeling okay." "All right. Have you been to the dentist?" "No, no, no. I haven't been to the dentist." There's nothing physically challenging about the conversation. Okay, then it's not a hard conversation. It's just a conversation that you're making hard in your head. So let's talk about what you're thinking about with regard to the conversation. Let's talk about that because that is managing your energy or mastering your energy.

It's an opportunity. Do you view it as an opportunity to grow as a leader? Even as an associate, talking to a partner, the associate is a leader in a lot of different ways. Are you viewing it as a leader? Are you viewing it as someone who has no control? It all depends on how you think about things.

Elise Holtzman: What do you say to someone who says, "John, you just don't get it. I have so many things that people expect of me. There's only one of me. I can't do all of this stuff. I'm going to die trying, but I just can't seem to do all of it. I'm exhausted. You say that I can manage my energy, and you say that I can make decisions, but I don't have the last word on all of this stuff. Somebody else gives me assignments or even I'm a senior partner, but I still answer to the client," what do you say to those folks who understandably may be feeling overwhelmed? Are there small things or routines or things that they can do that can help them navigate what they consider to be their reality?

John Kormanik: 100%. The first thing I say is, "I get it. You're right. You can't do it all. You can't. It's not physically possible to do it all. So let's talk about where you can have ownership." If you say, "I can't have ownership because I'm not the last word in the firm, I have partners, and we're running this thing together, and I don't have the last word," okay, I get that. I do. Where do you have ownership? Step back and think about where in your life you have ownership.

I'll give you an example from me. I have a morning routine. It is never interrupted. It is always done before I start my workday. Always. Period. Full stop. I get up very early in the morning. I go to bed very early at night, but I get up very early in the morning to have the time that I need to have to do the things that I truly own. Number one is journaling. I write three pages every morning, borrowing from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. I write three pages of free thought.

I have never been a journaler in my whole life. I'm going to be 62 in a couple of weeks. I did not start journaling until two and a half years ago. If I'm being honest, the first six months, I kind of mailed it in. I would cheat. I would go, "Oh, I don't need to do three pages today. I don't need to do that." Then I built the habit. I think the one thing, if I were to give one nugget to folks who are listening to this about ownership, owning the stuff, is do something that is for you. Do something that is for you and own it.

We all have to become the type of people who keep promises to themselves for themselves. Those are the hardest promises to keep. That's why we have workout partners. That's why we have accountability checks. We have this stuff because we're really good. I will tell you, I will never miss, I will never drop a promise that I make to somebody else, ever. I just won't do it. The promises to me, whether it's a time block for strategic thinking or for self-care, exercise, whatever it is, yeah, I'll get to that later. The client is more important. Well, none of it happens without you. None of it.

So figure out what you can control today. What can you control today? And begin controlling that. Then you'll be surprised as that starts to creep into the rest of your life.

Elise Holtzman: I have many similar conversations, as you can imagine, with my clients, because obviously, you and I are both working exclusively with lawyers and law firms. In addition to not respecting their own time, if you put a power hour, let's say, on the calendar to do something that's going to help advance your career or your goals or whatever it may be, many times lawyers look at that and they go, "Oh, that's just for me. I don't need to do that." To your point, we keep promises to other people, but we don't keep them to ourselves.

Another thing that I see happening over and over again, and I suspect you see the same thing, is that lawyers have a harder time delegating to other people and building a team around them than I think other folks do. The idea is, the mantra is, if I want something done right, I have to do it myself. I know that you talk to your clients about this. What do you think helps lawyers move from this solo operator mindset to the idea of a leader, which all that really means is somebody who is marshalling people and resources to get something done rather than doing it herself?

John Kormanik: Right. Well, number one, I think the younger generations are going to bring this more and more into play because they've grown up in a "gig economy," where they are super comfortable leveraging other people and their talents. I will tell everyone, and I know that you say the same thing, it is totally understandable that you struggle, that lawyers struggle with that. Our name is our currency. Period. Full stop. Our reputation is everything. If that gets diminished or sullied in any way, shape, or form, it costs us money. So I get it.

The thing that I tell them though, is you cannot be the best at everything. You can't do it. Look at Olympic athletes. Do you think Michael Phelps was the best in the gym doing his weight training? Of course not. He was the best in the pool, and he had other people taking care of stuff for him where he wasn't good at. Look at any professional athlete. They have financial advisors. They have batting coaches for baseball. I'm a big baseball fan. Go Padres.

Elise Holtzman: Well, remember when Michael Jordan decided to try to play baseball, and everybody went, "Oh my God, he's not so good at baseball." Well, what did you expect?

John Kormanik: Yeah. He's not so good at baseball. What did you expect? Of course he's not. If he had dedicated his life to it, could he have been? Sure. Sure. But that wasn't where his passion was. He's like, "Oh, let me try this. Let me play around a little bit." That's fine. We should all do that.

So for that mindset of, "If I want something done right, I need to do it myself," you bump up against the reality that that is going to limit your success, period. You have to sit back and think, "What do I want and how do I get there?" You know, Dan Sullivan wrote a book, Who Not How. I am still working on that. This is what I eat, sleep, and talk about all day, every day. It's still really hard for me because of the soundtrack in my head. If I want something done right, I need to do it myself. That is just not true. It's just not true.

There are some things that that is accurate for. Most of it, no. So, in your law practice, if there is something that you're stumbling upon that is a repeatable thing, you have to ask yourself, "Who can do this better than me? Who has the time? Who has the passion? Because I'm not passionate about this thing. Who has the ability that can do it better than me?" Because there are thousands of people out there who can do it better than you. Millions.

Elise Holtzman: There are so many great examples of that where lawyers do free up their time because they find somebody else who is passionate about it and is better at it and loves to do it. By the way, does it at a lower billable rate than they do, which is where all the work should go. So there are people that have their core genius. You as a lawyer have your core genius. There are other people out there who have a different core genius. Maybe it's research. Maybe it's bookkeeping. Maybe it's managing people. Maybe it's marketing. Whatever it is.

The best thing that ever happened to me, because can I do bookkeeping? Sure. If I knock myself out and spend time at it. By the way, I hate it. So when I finally hired a bookkeeper, I think the clouds opened and the angels started to sing, and everything in my life got better. There's also the issue of being willing to train. Lawyers also, I find sometimes, well, it's going to take me too long. I'll just do it myself. Well, add that up over a period of years. It's not a cost, it's an investment.

So that's a drum that I know you beat as well. I'm constantly beating that drum of making an investment of time and energy. Yes, sometimes money to train somebody to do something exactly the way you want it done so you don't have to do it again in the future.

John Kormanik: Yes, 100%. Look, if it's a one-off thing, fine. Go ahead and do it. I challenge you, though, is it truly a one-off thing? There's going to be enough similarity across the span of time where it's something that is a delegatable, however you say that word. It's a thing that you should hand off. You ought to hand it off. It goes back to what we talked about before. If your time was valued at $400,000 a minute, would you be doing the thing?

That's the question. People get hung up in this $400,000 a minute. Well, if my bank account was that, if my bank account was like Zuckerberg's, that's not what I'm talking about. My bank account is not like Zuckerberg's. My mindset of $400,000 a minute is getting there. I had a client, gosh, this is a couple of months ago now. Excellent, excellent lawyer, world-class. He said, "Well it's only five minutes." I said, "That's $2 million. Five minutes at $400,000 a minute is $2 million of your time. What do you think about that?" Oh, well, if you put it that way, that's the way it is. You have to value your time above everything else, above everything else.

Elise Holtzman: Well, and that's all we have, is the time.

John Kormanik: Yes.

Elise Holtzman: John, as we wrap up our time together today, I want to ask you a question that I ask all of my guests at the end of the show. There's a phenomenon called the curse of knowledge, where experts sometimes forget that what is so obvious and natural to them is not at all obvious to other people. When it comes to helping lawyers maximize both productivity and satisfaction, what's a principle or piece of advice that may seem obvious to you but is important for people to hear?

John Kormanik: What you do is hard. That's it. What you do is hard. It doesn't become not hard because you've done it. It may become easier for you, but it doesn't become not hard as a thing. This thing, writing a contract or a complex trust or a brief or whatever it is. It's just objectively hard in the world. You are highly trained. You are highly skilled. You do something and it becomes easy for you. It doesn't mean that it's easy. It just becomes less hard for you. So remember, give yourself grace. The stuff that you do day in and day out is hard.

Remember that when you're feeling tired, when you're feeling like, what's the point? When you're feeling like, "Gosh, I just want to go back to being a true solo." If you've built a firm, oh, it was so much easier. You know, I had a conversation not too long ago with a different client and he said, "My wife said, I should just go back to being a solo. Super successful personal injury lawyer, seven figures, all the things." His wife said, "You should just go back to being a solo." He looked at her and he said, "Do you remember what that was like? Do you remember me answering the phone in the middle of the night?" Your heart will change, but it's always hard. Just remember that and give yourself some credit for what it is that you do every day.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, I love that. You know what that reminds me of, John? Because even if it's hard, hopefully you feel that it's worthwhile. If you don't, that's another conversation. But remembering that it's hard, remembering to give yourself some grace, and then deciding that it's still worth doing. What it reminds me of is raising children.

John Kormanik: Yeah.

Elise Holtzman: When I had three little ones and they couldn't do anything for themselves, I used to think, "Oh my God, this is going to get so much easier, so much easier because they're going to be able to go to the bathroom by themselves and tie their shoes and do all the things." Then, as you know, because you mentioned that you're a parent, the type of hard that it is changes.

John Kormanik: Yes.

Elise Holtzman: But the hard part doesn't change. So I think that anybody who is a parent, that's a good analogy for what you're talking about. In parenting, to have to give yourself that grace, and in lawyering, to have to give yourself that grace as well. You're doing the best you can. You're working really hard. You're delivering so much value to your kids. You're delivering so much value to your clients. But it doesn't make it easy.

John Kormanik: Yeah. The other thing to remember, this is really important, the hard is going to change over time as your business evolves and as you evolve. As Nike said back in the 80s, there is no finish line. You're built for this. I know that your listeners, you're listening to this, you are built for this. Just recognize, okay, the hard is going to evolve. The things that challenge me are going to evolve over time. Continue to be challenged. Continue to grow. Continue to give yourself grace.

Elise Holtzman: Love it. Thanks, John, for being here. This has been a great conversation. I really appreciate your time. I want to thank our listeners for tuning in as well. If you've enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, rate, and review us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We'll see you next time.