Joshua Wurtzel | How to Get Started as a Rainmaker – And Succeed!

Elise Holtzman: Hi, everyone. It's Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of The Lawyer's Edge Podcast, where I sit down with successful attorneys, legal marketing specialists, business leaders, and authors to talk about how lawyers and law firms can grow and sustain healthy, profitable businesses.

Hi everyone, it's Elise Holtzman, and I'm back with another episode of The Lawyer's Edge Podcast. 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 rain makers and supporting the retention and advancement of other women in the profession.

Early bird registration will be opening this fall for our 2025 Ignite cohorts. If you think you might be interested in participating or you want to sponsor a woman in your firm to enroll, learn more about Ignite and sign up for our registration alerts by visiting thelawyersedge.com/ignite.

I am so excited to welcome my guest today, Joshua Wurtzel, a commercial and real estate litigation attorney at Manhattan boutique law firm, Schlam Stone & Dolan. After graduating from Binghamton University and the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, where he was the valedictorian of his law school class, Josh began his career at Weil, Gotshal & Manges in 2013 in the firm Securities, Litigation and Corporate Governance Group.

In 2017, Josh moved to his current firm, Schlam Stone & Dolan, and has practiced transition to focus on complex commercial litigation more generally. Josh made partner in 2022 and is now a member of the firm's management committee in addition to heading up the firm's commercial real estate litigation practice.

Josh's real estate litigation practice focuses on representation of property owners in commercial leasing disputes, as well as representation of lenders and borrowers in commercial lending disputes.

His broader complex commercial litigation practice also focuses on business divorce, partnership disputes, fraud, and other tort claims, and claims for breach of contract. Josh and I met, I don't know how many years ago now, six or seven years ago, and I have had the pleasure of having Josh as a coaching client for a number of years. I've watched him grow from an associate just starting his business development efforts to a partner who is an experienced and successful rainmaker.

I asked Josh to join me as a guest to share his experiences with other lawyers who are interested in growing their own books of business and Josh was kind enough to accommodate me. Josh, welcome to The Lawyer's Edge.

Joshua Wurtzel: Good morning, thank you for having me.

Elise Holtzman: I'm thrilled to have you. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. Let's just dive into the beginning of your business development efforts. When, and I guess why, did you first decide that it was a good idea to try to start to develop your own book of business?

Joshua Wurtzel: I would say it was right when I joined Schlam Stone & Dolan. I mean, I started at a big firm, they don't really teach you how to develop business or encourage you to do it at a big firm. I started here in 2017 and it's just a different way of practicing outside of big firm practice.

I saw people bringing in business here and one of the pitches to me was, “We'll support you in trying to develop your own book of business.” I was pretty junior at the time. I think I was a fourth-year associate when I left a while.

So, it was a little bit daunting to get started and say, “Well, who's going to hire me? I've only done this a few times and I've only taken three depositions and I have never tried case and so on,” but I started off small, got bigger, and you start to get one case, two cases, three cases, and they start off small and as they grow, you get more and more confidence.

Elise Holtzman: Why even do it? Why not just say, "Look, I'm at a good firm. There's great work coming in, maybe something will come along that it's my matter, but I'm doing good work. I'm enjoying the work I'm doing. I'm going to keep doing it. I'm going to focus on my craft solely serving the clients”? Why even shift your approach and decide that you want to become a consistent business developer or a rainmaker?

Joshua Wurtzel: I think somebody early on told me that the key to really having professional independence and autonomy is to have your own clients. That really resonated with me. When I was leaving a big firm, I wanted to have more professional independence in that I wanted to manage my own deadlines and have more client interaction and go to court and things like that.

Those are the types of things that you think about when you're a more junior associate and you're leaving a big firm and what you're looking for in the next step. I used to tell people I wanted to be a real lawyer. That's what I thought being a real lawyer was, drafting your own briefs and going to court and so on.

Look, for plenty of people, that's where it ends. That's a great place for it to end. But if you're truly looking for that professional independence, professional economy, and I think probably professional satisfaction, it comes from really seeing a case from start to end and the start being you're the reason that the case comes into the firm.

Once I started doing it and I started to have my own clients, I felt differently. I mean, look, every client who’s a client of the firm is very important. But when I first got those few clients that hired me specifically, I felt this obligation toward them. They came here for me, and that's a great feeling.

Look, it puts a lot of pressure on me, especially at the beginning. Well, I better not screw this up because the client hired me. They could have hired anybody else. I think once you get a taste for it and you start doing it, naturally it's the type of thing that you want to continue.

Elise Holtzman: You talked about this idea that it shifts how you look at the client. So how did that desire to build a book of business shift your approach, not only to your work, as you say, taking more ownership of it, not that you weren't doing a great job before, but taking more ownership of it? But also, how did it change your approach to relationships generally, or did it change your approach to relationships generally?

Joshua Wurtzel: I mean look, I think I handle whether I'm working on a case that I originate or somebody else originates, I think the way I handle it is the same way right. I really do the phrase from entourage, “Every client should be represented by every agent in the building.”

We are a single firm, and whether I bring in a client or someone else brings in a client, they're represented by the firm. They get the best of every element of the firm, and I expect my colleagues to treat the client that I bring in the same way that I do and vice versa, and I think that works very, very well here.

But I think there's this added level of ownership, there's this added level of responsibility. Probably one of the first cases I brought in, maybe not the very first, but one of the first cases that I brought in was the case that a few years ago went to trial. It was a long-running case, many years, went to trial. I felt this tremendous pressure to perform.

Look, I knew that we were right, and I knew that if we didn't succeed at trial, it was not because we weren't right, but because I didn't prove it. It was also a contingency case, so that added more pressure on behalf of the firm. This was a case that I brought in. The client had entrusted me to get them to where they ultimately wanted to be.

Fortunately, we were successful, but there's that added degree of pressure. There is something to be said for a client comes to specifically into that I have this problem and I need it solved. Can you be the guy? Can you be the person who does that? You say, "Yes."

A lot of lawyers will just take on cases, if it works out, if it doesn't work out, I think ultimately, you are there to solve a problem for the client. If you're going to accept the representation, you need to have a plan of how you're going to solve that problem.

I'll tell clients who call me up. I'll say, "Look, I don't think I can solve this for you. I don't think you can possibly win." They don't necessarily like to hear that, but if I don't think I can do something for them, then I'm certainly not helping them and I'm not helping my firm by going down a path.

It goes two ways. Lawyers, we're not a convenience store where customers just come and buy what they want. It's a two-way street. A client has to want to hire you and you have to agree to accept it. When you agree to accept the case, there's an added level of responsibility there.

Elise Holtzman: Let's go back to, from a practical perspective, how you got started. Presumably you didn't just stand outside on the street and, as you say, hope people would walk by and hire you, how did you go about acquiring your first clients? Was there a particular strategy that you employed or a particular activity in which you engaged? What worked for you in the beginning?

Joshua Wurtzel: I started out doing a networking group. I did BNI, Business Network International, and I was in that up until maybe about two years ago. I know different lawyers have different experiences. I had a great experience in BNI, had a great chapter, but I really felt that doing a networking group was a great way really to do two things. One is to try to get some business.

That's always the goal, make professional connections to people and then be able to refer to them things and schmooze with them and you go to lunch and dinners and different events and they get to know you and have confidence in you.

But the other thing that a networking group does, especially for someone like myself who was starting out and didn't really know anything from business development or networking is it teaches you how to formally network with people, and that's a skill and it's something that maybe you think, "Well, I'm outgoing. I can talk to people. I can do that," but it's a different skill and it's something that takes time.

It takes commitment. You really have to focus on it and drill down on it. But the networking group was my main way of learning how to network and how to develop business. Then the second thing was, Elise, you and I started working together shortly after I joined the firm.

I can't remember, I think I probably started BNI before you and I started working together, but it was within a few months and a very short time learning from you of how to do different things. It's more than just showing up to the meeting once a week and giving your 30-second spiel about following up and about doing this and when you go to a lunch, what should be the balance of business and personal talk and so on.

I think it's a combination of putting myself in front of people initially and then learning once I'm in front of those people, what am I supposed to do? That doesn't necessarily come intuitively, and I don't think it came intuitively to me. I needed the coaching to get there.

Elise Holtzman: So what are some of the lessons that you think you've learned over the years now that you've been doing this in terms of developing relationships and turning those relationships into client business?

I mean, you've talked about this idea of taking care of the client once the client has signed on. I know you're very passionate about doing just that, which is one of the reasons I think your clients stay with you and refer to you.

What about the relationships before that ever happens? Going to these BNI-type events or networking events or meeting people at a bar association event or going out to lunch with people, what do you think has shifted for you in terms of having those conversations and developing those bonds with people?

Joshua Wurtzel: Trust. Trust is the number one reason why somebody refers you business, why somebody calls you in a networking group. The longer you're there, that increases the amount of trust that people have in you.

But trust is not just built over a period of time. You need time to build trust, but there are plenty of people that perhaps you've known for 10 or 20 years that you still might not trust or trust with an important business matter.

I think you have to find ways to get people to trust you and to instill trust, to have other people instill trust in you. Demonstrating expertise in a particular subject matter, being able to speak intelligently and passionately about a topic, I can't tell you how many times the BNI meeting goes on, and for 15, 20 minutes, people stay and schmooze after, and people will come up to me with just one-off legal questions, and they didn't know if I was the right person to ask them.

Sometimes I was, sometimes I wasn't, but those little five-minute interactions with people I knew were never going to hire me or couldn't hire me or couldn't hire me for that particular issue, but it built-up trust because somebody came to me with, "Well, this person screwed me out of 500 bucks here,” and in 30 seconds or 60 seconds, I could tell them, “Look, this is the way to think about it. This is what you should do," and so on.

Now the next time that person has an issue or somebody comes to them with an issue, they're thinking, "Well, that was fairly good advice that I got from Josh.” So now I think the way that I look to build trust has evolved over time. As you know, I do a lot of these videos on LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok, talking about different legal issues and topics that have come up, writing articles, giving presentations, CLEs, and so on.

It all adds to the degree of trust that other people will put in you. Then in my view, the best way of gaining someone's trust is you actually work with them, whether it's with a client or with a co-counsel or in some instances, that could be an adversary where they get to actually see you in action. That's the best type of interview that you can do with somebody that you're trying to build a relationship with to convince to trust you.

Elise Holtzman: You've mentioned a lot of different things that you're doing: the videos and lunches and group-type meetings. I'm going to want to get back to that in a few minutes because I think that it can start to sound like you're spending 99% of your time on business development and we know that lawyers don't have that kind of time so let's talk about that again in a few minutes.

But I'm curious first, what kinds of obstacles, if any, have come up for you that maybe have gotten in your way or annoyed you and maybe pushed you off track a little bit? What are some of the things that have cropped up? How did you get past those obstacles?

Joshua Wurtzel: Look, I think the biggest obstacle is being able to make time for this, because business development, very few people just go into work and the phone rings. We're not in a business where we advertise and put our names on park benches and buses.

You really have to spend the time doing it. It does conflict with, you've got a deadline, you've got a brief due on Friday. So should I go out to lunches and meet people and write articles or should I work on the brief?

Elise, you've told me, “Well, you're not going to get fired for not doing the lunches but there are going to be problems if you blow a deadline on a brief,” and so on. It's very easy to fall into the pattern of, “Well, look, I've got a lot of stuff to do and business development will kind of go to the end of the list.”

Being able to resist that, being able to resist that temptation and make time for business development and really make it a priority, I think is a huge obstacle because that is totally counterintuitive to how lawyers act and think, which is, “I've got this due on Tuesday, and I've got this call on Wednesday, and I've got this and that, and we book our whole calendars,” and you have to find a way to prioritize business development, and it's something I struggle with to this day.

You and I talk about it regularly, and some of your suggestions I've adopted, others that I don't think totally work for me, and I think it's really unique to each person. Another obstacle I think is always questioning, “Have I hit a glass ceiling?”

What worked for me seven years ago when I first started trying to develop business, what got me to the first level is not necessarily what got me to the second level, which might not get me to the next level and so on. Constantly, it's very easy to fall to get complacent and say, "Look, I'm just going to keep doing what I've been doing. I've lunch with the same people, do the same networking group, write an article or two a year."

If you want to continue to get to the next level, and this is something I'm always worried about, and I raise with you all the time is really constantly questioning “Is what I'm doing now the thing I should be doing to get to the next level, or is it just the thing I've been doing for the last however many years and it worked and it'll continue to work, but it's not going to move the ball forward?”

I think pushing yourself to be uncomfortable and constantly step out of your comfort zone to continue to progress is definitely another option, one again, something I continue to focus on. I think really everybody that I know that really generates business successfully, it's something that they focus on and struggle with as well.

Elise Holtzman: What are some of the things that you've changed over time? You mentioned that you started with BNI and you started small. If you can even remember back to the beginning of your business development journey, what are some of the things you've done differently in the last few years as you've made that transition from someone who didn't have any business to someone who now has a nice book of business but wants to continue to grow it?

Joshua Wurtzel: I mean, early on I was very focused on networking groups. BNI and there have been others over time and I think that was a great way to get started to meet people. I did very well in BNI and I did it up until a couple of years ago.

As I've gotten more and more feet in the door, in different doors, I think the focus has changed a little bit to rather than just meet as many people as I can, to focus on quality of interaction, quality of relationship, and really to dig in. When you first get started, you have no track record. But once you have a track record, the focus changes to what's working.

Where are most of my cases coming from? What types of people are referring them? What types of matters are they? How can I get more of those matters? I think once you have that track record, you start to shift the focus. So, BNI was great to get that first step to develop the track record.

Now I think, and again, I'm not in BNI, but I'm in USA 500, which is another networking group, I think the focus for me is to change a little bit from “Let me just join all these networking groups and try to meet people in networking environments to try to develop relationships that I have with people from my past firm, from people that I've worked with, from adversaries, and some of my best referrals have come from adversaries.”

I think it's a great compliment, but you don't necessarily think about it at the time, but trying to develop and foster those relationships. I think I've shifted a little bit in the way that I think about writing articles, and I've done a lot of these social media videos, and that's really just been over the last couple of months.

But I think that, again, it's not necessarily, for me, it's shifted from getting in front of as many people as I can to trying to increase the quality of the interactions that I'm having with the people that I am already in front of, or maybe look to get in front of new people, but with a little bit more precision.

Elise Holtzman: What I'm hearing here, and you and I have talked about it as you say, is intentionality, and strategy. It's not just getting out there and meeting as many people as possible, but who are the right kinds of people for me to be meeting? Who are the people that I really am grateful for and have a nice relationship with? How do I nurture those relationships, and deliver value to them in some way?

That intentionality takes time and it takes effort. Again, I think this goes back to this idea that most lawyers, certainly lawyers in private practice who are interested in business development are driven by the almighty billable hour. Even if you are in a practice that's somewhat contingency-based or all contingency-based, time is money.

Do you make time for business development? Do you find time for business development? How do you focus on that strategy and how do you maintain that intentionality when things get really busy for you?

Joshua Wurtzel: When things get busy, it's very hard. When things are less busy, which they often never are, it's always busy, I always try to make it a priority. Look, when I'm on trial, I'm not going to lunches. I might not be doing videos and so on, but I tend to focus on things that perhaps you get the most bang for your buck.

If I don't necessarily have time to go out and do multiple lunches a week, I might be able to write an article, do a couple of videos, speak on a panel, or something like that. It's hard to make time, but once I've gotten started, hey, it's fun. It's fun to try to get out there.

I think writing briefs and attending oral arguments and strategizing, that stuff is fun too. That's just being a litigation nerd. But getting out there and being able to speak to people and we call it trying to generate business, but what you're really doing is you're developing relationships, so that's fun.

Some people hate it but if you like doing it, it certainly makes it easier to make time for it. Look, I'm looking for windows when I come into the office and try to make a couple of videos before I start working or I'll do something at night. You have to just put it on the calendar.

You told me—and I'm not great at doing this—but you told me to do a business development power hour where you put in 60 minutes on the calendar and just focus on business development and sending out emails, LinkedIn, and so on.

I also have a fairly long commute from Long Island. I have some time on the train for things like LinkedIn and posts and so on. I don't have a great answer while I do this on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:00 to 1:00. It's not like that.

But I recognize that the return on doing those types of things, while it might not be linear, I think it's very significant for me personally, for the firm, and you take the concept of universalism, if everyone just focused on billing time, then at some point, there wouldn't be any matters to build time too. I think having that mindset and knowing that it's something that needs to be done allows you, even if it's not necessarily an emergency, it forces you to fit it in.

Elise Holtzman: You mentioned a couple of things, mindset, and you mentioned that business development is often not linear. It's not like I put in this effort today and three days from now or a week from now, I'm going to get a client out of it.

How do you maintain momentum in the times when you feel like you're putting in effort and you're not necessarily seeing that immediate linear type of result? How do you shift your mindset to keep yourself going?

Joshua Wurtzel: I mean, it's hard. It goes back to law school where you're studying, especially the first year you're studying, you don't know if you're doing it right. What are other people doing? Then my first semester, I did well. I said, “Well, I must have done something right. Let me just continue doing everything that I was doing and replicating, and I actually get the same results.”

It can be discouraging, but once you have confidence in yourself and you know that what you're doing is ultimately working, you can say, “Well, look, I spent a ton of time trying to work on business development in the last 90 days, and I don't have anything to show for it, and that's frustrating.”

But if you know in the back of your mind this is the right thing to do, you can have that self-assurance that ultimately it will pan out and ultimately it will get there. The people at the firm will say, “Oh, I saw you've run a new case. That's great.” I would say, “I didn't do anything to bring in the new case today. The bringing in the new case today was the result of relationships, of different things that I did two years ago.”

Look, I think a lot of times, and certainly now it's shifting for me a bit, doing good work is also what helps to bring in new cases. People refer things to you because they know you and that's great. But at the end of the day, a lot of referrals come from former adversaries, former co-counsels, former clients, and people that you've worked with and have seen you in action.

The best advertising that you can do is not advertising at all, it's what you're hired to do. That doesn't mean don't network, don't go out and try to meet people because I think you do need both but doing a good job and proving your worth is ultimately the reason that people are going to hire you. Maybe not the reason that someone will call you, but the reason that someone will hire you.

Elise Holtzman: I'm glad you mentioned that because I do think it's important to note that doing good work is not the only answer. There are a lot of lawyers you and I know who do really exceptional work or really good work and the phone isn't necessarily ringing. They're not necessarily getting the calls and they're not necessarily bringing in the matters.

There's that combination of doing the good work. You can't just be out there networking and talking to people. If you're not doing good work, you're not going to get the business. You're not going to have that trust that you mentioned before. I think it's a combination and you're doing both of those things.

Another question I have for you is about internal relationships. How about building a team around you that can help you? Because when you start bringing in business, all of a sudden, you're not just focused on, as you say, the work on your desk. Now you've got to pay attention to the whole matter. It may be that you can't do all the work yourself.

What do you think about that? Because I remember when you and I first started talking about that and I started seeing you bringing in business, I said, “Josh, you got to start building a team around you,” and I say this with love and respect, you were a little bit like, “Yeah, blah, blah, I don't want to talk about that. I just want to keep bringing in business.”

Then I got a phone call one day that was something along the lines of, “Okay, I'm starting to see why you might have said that a couple of months ago.” Talk to me a little bit about what you have to do internally to make this business development effort work.

Joshua Wurtzel: Well, it's a lot easier when you have a great team and you have people that you can rely on, which I absolutely do here. It's a lot easier to bring somebody into a matter from the outset when you trust them and rely on them. I have the people that I have that relationship with and that I trust.

I look to get them involved early on. I think that's a tremendous net positive for the client because a lot of clients might call me, but as I said before, they're hiring the firm. The firm is not just one person, it's not just two people. They get the benefit of, I’m fortunate being at a firm where I think we do have a lot of expertise in a lot of different areas.

I'm not a criminal lawyer, but I've got partners who are white-collar criminal attorneys, and I'm not a transactional lawyer, but I have partners who are transactional attorneys and I'm not an employment attorney, but we have people here who do employment work.

If somebody calls me with an issue, I can go to other people and bring them in. But I think what you were asking about is a little bit more about delegating and not feeling like you're doing all the work yourself. When people used to hire me initially, I felt like, “Well, they're hiring me, they should get me. I should do all the work and have my hands in every single thing.” That works at the beginning, but it certainly doesn't work as you start to progress.

It's not good for the client because if I'm busy with one thing and I can't get to something else, if I'm the only person doing it, then it's got to wait for me. The benefit of being at a firm that's got a few dozen lawyers, and certainly a bigger firm even more so, is that we do have that depth and we do have that bandwidth.

Once I started, Elise, it wasn't one phone call, it was probably a hundred phone calls, maybe not a hundred but nearly a dozen phone calls when you're telling me, “You've got to get other people involved, you've got to bring people in,” and I poo-pooed it, but ultimately, once I started doing that, I started to see how much better things would go in terms of the speed at which things got done. Also, the fact that now the client can rely, not just on me, but can rely on somebody else who has a tremendous skill set.

I learned how to work with more junior people and sometimes more senior people as well in terms of, I'll be involved. I like to be very involved in the matters or some people, a matter comes in, if they never hear about it again, they're happy. That doesn't work for me.

I like to be involved at every step of the way, but I also am cognizant of how I shouldn't necessarily be doing certain things. It's not cost-effective and it makes more sense for someone else to do it. Once you have that flow of being able to work with other people and to rely on them and to trust them, you can then trust them to do X, Y, and Z, and I'll then review it, we'll talk about strategy and so on, but I think it makes very much better team environment and it also I think benefits the client tremendously.

Elise Holtzman: It benefits you as a rainmaker because it does free your time up for the highest and best use, which is doing the higher level legal work and also maintaining those relationships with clients and contacts.

I also like that you talked about this idea that your style is not necessarily somebody else's style. That there's not a one-size-fits-all approach to business development or to taking care of a client. I think that that's trusting yourself.

You talked a lot about trust, but it's trusting yourself and trusting the process because you also mentioned this idea of I may do all of this business development type stuff for a year or two and not see the results of it right away. I can't say that okay, I developed a client three days ago and now it's my client.

I like the idea of expanding that trust to your own style. What was that like for you? Because you look around and I know you have fantastic colleagues that you have tremendous respect for, what was it like for you just making up your mind that you were going to do things your own way, that you had your style, that even though there are other people you could look to, that maybe developing your own style was the way to go?

Joshua Wurtzel: Seeing other people who do things that work and then don't work, I think that's really all it is. There are some people in my firm who are great lawyers, great rainmakers, and I watch what they do. I think some of what they do is great. Other things that they do are either not so great or maybe it's great for them but not great for me and it's trial and error. You screw up 10 times before you get it right but once you get it right and realize what works, I think it puts you in a much better position.

Elise Holtzman: What advice would you give to associates, counsel, junior partners who are looking to build their own books of business and perhaps move up the ranks in terms of some leadership positions?

Joshua Wurtzel: Look, I think the coaching, and this is, I suppose, a little bit of a plug for you, Elise, but certainly the coaching, I think, is important. It's like personal training. There was a time when I was in shape and I didn't need a personal trainer, but now, sure, I know the exercises, I know what to do, but the personal trainer forces me to do it and also tells me when I'm screwing it up or tells me to change things and so on.

I think the coaching really is very similar to that and having that professional guidance of what you should do and how you should do it. But I think that the way to start is really just get out there. Go to events, meet people, join a networking group. That's an easy thing to do at the outset if you've never done business development before.

It doesn't matter whether you're a junior associate or you've been practicing for 30 years, join a networking group. It forces you out of your comfort zone. It necessarily puts you in a place where you have to talk to other people, you have to try to interact in a way that you maybe haven't done before.

Once you start to put yourself out there, then you see, “Look, this person I really like and this person I could do without.” You start to see what works. Again, it doesn't have to be a networking group to start, but I think if you're looking for a way to get out there, the networking group, rather than dipping a toe in, it forces you to jump in with both feet.

Elise Holtzman: You mentioned the coaching and I just want to remind you of something. I don't know if you remember this story, but when I first started working with your firm, somebody in leadership basically said something along the lines of, "Oh, well, Josh has that, what lawyers like to call fire in the belly. He wants to get out there and develop business, so he doesn't need coaching. It's all these other people who aren't interested in doing it that we need to get coaching for."

I pushed against that idea. I'm curious for you, when somebody's interested in coaching and they're considered to be almost a natural at it, what do you think the benefit of coaching is for somebody like that, somebody like you?

Joshua Wurtzel: Well, I'm glad you did. I think that was totally wrong. The person who said that, to say, “Well, somebody's good at” brings me back to the example, I played baseball in high school so the question always was you got two guys running to first base, and they get there at the exact same time. One has great form, the other has a terrible form, which one do you want?

The answer is you want the guy with bad form because you can coach him and teach him. Once you improve his form, he's going to be better than the guy who had the perfect form. I think I attribute a lot of what I do today to working with you and to the coaching and to the professional guidance.

Look, there are plenty of people who are rainmakers and go out and develop business and have all these great relationships, and they've never had any coaching and so on. But I think it's the same reason why do we take LSAT prep courses and SAT prep courses. It helps you substantially. Sure, you can do well without having coaching, without having tutoring, without having personal training, but it gives you a much greater chance of succeeding.

Elise Holtzman: I'm just going to say one last thing about that as we start to wrap up here, which is that you can have all the coaching in the world, but if you're not open to it, then it's not going to get you anywhere. So I've had clients over the years who were kind of open to it, but they're not really taking action on it.

So if you do find, I'm just talking to the audience here, if you find a coach, and you decide to work with a coach, your openness to the process, your willingness to take action and try things and see what works and see what doesn't work is key to the process.

Even if you have the world's best coach, and I hope you do, you've got to be open to it. So, Josh, I'm glad that you see coaching as being valuable. I think it's just important to point out that it is a two-way street. Coaching really is a partnership between the coach and the client.

As we wrap up our time here together today, I want to ask you a question 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 growing your own book of business, especially given the pressure to bill hours and take care of clients, what's a principle or piece of advice that may seem really obvious to you, but you think is important for aspiring rainmakers to hear?

Joshua Wurtzel: Well, I'm not sure I'm an expert at anything, but you have to believe in yourself and you have to have that self-confidence. People are looking to hire a lawyer, want to hire a lawyer who believes in them, and you can't believe in somebody else if you don't believe in yourself.

Look, I think I've been fortunate to have some great mentors who have really taught me how to be a good lawyer. Once you feel competent in your own abilities to be a good lawyer, that's when you can start to sell yourself to somebody else. Once you can sell yourself to somebody else with confidence, then they're going to believe that you're competent in their case, and that's really where it comes.

But it starts with your confidence in yourself and your own ability, because why should anyone else believe in you if you don't? And it takes time, and that's why it's harder to do this as a more junior attorney, because you don't have that confidence in yourself.

You have to build that confidence, and the only way to build that confidence really is to do good work and have good mentors and surround yourself with good people and to learn.

Elise Holtzman: Great advice, thank you. Josh, thanks so much for being here today. Always a pleasure to talk to you and a pleasure to have you on the show. I want to thank our listeners for tuning in. 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.

Thank you for tuning in. 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.