Joe Giovannoli  

You’re listening to the Tip of the Law podcast where legal insights meet practical advice. In each episode, we bring you stories, insights and tips straight from the legal industry’s brightest minds. I’m your host, Joe Giovannoli, founder and CEO of 9Sail, and joining me today is Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle. Lynn is a revenue consultant at Nexl, where she focuses on enabling revenue operations and growth initiatives for law firms. Before joining Nexl in 2023, she co-founded a marketing consulting business helping firm leaders develop performance-based marketing and business development operations. As a former CMO, Lynn developed the first professional development operation for Cahill Gordon & Reindel. She also held key roles at Dentons and Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer, managing marketing functions for both defendant and plaintiff sides of the practice. Lynn is the president elect of the Legal Marketing Association’s Northeast chapter for 2024. Without further ado, let’s get started. 

So Lynn thanks for joining me today, I appreciate you taking the time.

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Oh, thank you for having me, Joe. I’m really happy to be here.

Joe Giovannoli  

Yeah, I’m very excited for this conversation. We did a little prep. But you know, we got a lot to talk about. So I thought we’d just jump right in. And not sure if you’ve heard the podcast before. But we asked everybody to tell our audience one interesting fact about themselves that people may not know, just to break the ice a little. So what’s your one interesting fact?

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Got it? Yeah, I am a personal trainer. I’m a certified functional strength coach. And I believe that exercise is a priority need for every human every day. And this principle almost got me fired. But that’s a story for another day.

Joe Giovannoli  

Yeah, that’s, that sounds like it could be an interesting story. But so, what made you, you know, get into that, like, was there something in life that you, you know, recognize that, you know, exercise was needed to be part of your routine? Like, what made you get into that?

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Yeah, that’s a really good question. I was a basketball player, which is interesting, because I was always very short for my age. But I was a really good basketball player, and I loved it. And somewhere around the age of 12, I realized that I always needed to be exercising. And a few years later, I actually got a fake ID to join a gym, because back then you had to be 18 to join a gym. So I had a cousin who you know, resembled, I resembled her. And she gave me her license. And he used that to enroll myself at a Gold’s Gym. 

Joe Giovannoli  

Wow. That’s dedication, risking it to go to the gym. All right.

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

I know, you don’t often hear that. And when I think back on it, I thought that was– I didn’t realize how different that was until years later. But– and back then, you know, not everyone went to the gym. And I used to tell my parents, I envision a day where eight out of 10 people go to the gym all the time. And they thought, you’re crazy. That’s never going to happen. No one goes to the gym. And fun fact, because I was female. My gym membership was $79 a year. Because there were so few of us at the time.

Joe Giovannoli  

Oh my gosh, wow. Okay. Yeah, that’s, that’s interesting. That’s interesting. And so what, if you weren’t a woman like, I guess there was a difference in fee?

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Yeah, so my brother and I went to the same gym, my brother was three years older than me. And we went to the same gym, and he paid $349 a year. And he would complain that my fee was so low. And I was one of five women at the time that lifted weights, you know, that put, I wasn’t a powerlifter, but lifted free weights. And, at that time, that was pretty unusual. So I had a discount because the gyms wanted to, they wanted to get memberships. And they had a difficult time doing that, for whatever reason at the time. It just wasn’t a big thing.

Joe Giovannoli  

Wow. So they reduced the price to add some diversity to their membership. That’s actually good.

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Yeah, I loved it. And I told my brother, “Well, you know, we pay more for dry cleaning and haircuts, so!”

Joe Giovannoli  

It evens out. That’s fun. 

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

I can’t explain why that’s the case or but, you know, you just have to have to live with it. Everything balances out.

Joe Giovannoli  

Yeah, that’s funny. That’s funny. Well, thank you for sharing that. It’s an interesting fact for sure. And something I– I’ve known you a long time. And we don’t think we ever really talked about that. So that’s good for me to learn too. But the way we did meet is through legal marketing, right? We have that in common and you have a lot of different various experiences even more so than I do. So. Let’s talk a little bit about your journey and legal marketing. Why first of all, why like what made you choose the industry of potential punishment in the marketing space?

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

It’s all a matter of perspective, right? That’s a good question. It really was a happy accident. I started out– my first job out of college was at a company called Commerce Clearing House, which is a legal and scientific publisher. It was purchased by Wolters Kluwer while I was there. And that turned into longer than I thought, it was a six year journey. I had progressive success, I was consistently promoted. Three weeks after I started, I was promoted into the marketing department, I started out in the research department. And that led me up to become the second in command at this subsidiary company of CCH, which had been unprofitable for eight years. And my mandate, along with the folks I worked with the team I was on, was to turn that unprofitable company into a profitable company, which we did. And when I was there, I was really fortunate to be mentored by two very bright and accomplished people who are still in my life, Alan and Steve. And they helped me to develop the knowledge and the skill in legal services and legal operations, intellectual property law and marketing, because they– CCH was a technology provider to law lawyers and law firms. And Alan was a former USPTO examiner, and trademark lawyer, and Steve is a Wharton MBA, with a quick wit and a generous nature. And he’s one of those rare people who excels in nearly everything he tries the first time, and he has very high EQ. So both Allen and Steve, they both helped me find my professional footing, and gave me a love for legal services, technology, and marketing. So I’m really fortunate and grateful to call them friends. And I ended up working with Alan for another four years after CCH so I worked with him for close to 11 years. So once I found myself that far in, I really liked it and have been here ever since. I moved over to law firms after that, and worked in law firms for 17 years, and now I’m back in legal tack.

Joe Giovannoli  

Awesome, that’s awesome. So, and and when you made the transition into law firms for the 17 years, you know, what, what roles were you involved in? Like? What was your? What was your specialty when, you know, working with and working inside of law firms?

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Yeah, that’s a good question. So I started out handling the marketing for what is now known as Dentons. It was called Sonnenschein Nath and Rosenthal at the time, and handling, I was in charge of all of the marketing for the Northeast, so public relations, communications and business development. But I really excelled on the business development side and found myself in a specialized role there as a business development manager working on pursuits, both client development and business development. We had an internal group there at the time that was aligned in three ways. One, it was aligned across geography, because we had so many different offices. And then we were also aligned on the business development front. So we had a team that handled business development, I would handle it for Chicago when Chicago wasn’t available. California would handle it for us when we were asleep. So it worked out really well. And then the third way it was aligned was on a practice level. So we had a practice specialty, a marketing specialization, specialty. And then I had sort of an ops role where I managed the team in New York, New Jersey, Boston and Florida.

Joe Giovannoli  

Cool. Wow. So there was a lot going on in that role. And it sounds like you really had to spearhead a lot of that from start to finish.

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Yeah, and I had a really strong team, we had a strong CMO and the business development team was also very strong. So I learned a lot there. And then I moved on to Cahill, Gordon and Ryan Dell, they hadn’t had any marketing, professional marketing in their 86 year history when I joined them. So that was really an intriguing and beautiful opportunity, because, for a couple of reasons, but one is because it was a blank slate, they didn’t have anything at all. And so for me, the plus side of that was there. There were no bad habits. Right. And we could really focus on the high value areas first, and they needed so much so it was a very a really good opportunity. For a strong marketer who is able to take initiative, and the firm was, and is, as far as I know, so well managed. So it was really nice to work for such a well managed firm with such smart lawyers who had been there for long periods of time. So they knew each other really well. And that made business development a dream, because we didn’t have the databases that we have available today, at that time to actually get the information that marketers would want to help lawyers with their business pursuits.

Joe Giovannoli  

Wow. So now, Cahill, this brings up an interesting question. You said you, you made a comment that they didn’t really have marketing, you know, a strong marketing presence prior to your joining and you had some other folks obviously, in that marketing team. So would, in your opinion, was that kind of a little bit of a shift? Like the beginning of a shift for firms that maybe hadn’t historically marketed? Like, was that a timeframe that people now started paying attention to this thing called Marketing and within law firms? Or do you think that that was just unique to Cahill at the time that they really hadn’t had much of a marketing presence prior?

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

I think it was at the end of that, that sort of phase. So I think it was more unique to K hill at the time. Okay, they marketed in an organized systematic fashion, right, so they didn’t have, they didn’t have a marketing team. The lawyers, the lawyers are very business development savvy, and very, very savvy on the marketing side. So of course, you know, they marketed, but they didn’t have a systematic way of engaging in their marketing, as other firms did at the time, so for instance, the first projects I worked on was the website, they simply, you know, had an HTML website, we really need to update our website. So that was the first project. And we moved to a database, object oriented system, you know, Todd Rengel, so yeah, Animus Rex helped us with that. So it was a big leap. We leapfrogged. That was probably the theme of my time there was to leapfrog technology to make giant gains in how we approached business development and marketing.

Joe Giovannoli  

Yeah, no, that’s, that’s really interesting. And that’s cool that you were part of that phase for, you know, a firm that, again, like you said, maybe performed more random acts of marketing, and there wasn’t really too much science behind it. And you know, you were part of the team that brought the science to that, which is great. But then fast forward even further, where we met, right, you were at Wilentz when we met, so, and you ran that show, right? So what, what did you draw from your past experiences into that role to have as much success as you did? Because you were super, super successful in everything that you were doing there. So what did you pull from, what experiences did you pull from and bring into your new role at Wilentz when you got there?

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Yeah, so that, Wilentz was really challenging. And then they have equal sized personal services practice and business services practice. So it’s like having in the way you mark it on each side is very, very different. So it was challenging from a throughput standpoint. And what was interesting about my experience there, with dealing with both sides of that marketing, was in a realization that I needed to become more agile, and, and I had to work faster. So the pace of marketing work was dramatically changing, everything was happening faster. And the team was relatively lean. That’s probably no surprise, most law firms operate with a relatively lean marketing team. And we had to satisfy both sides of the business. And that was really challenging. So at Wilentz, I kind of brought together all that I had learned along the way in all of the disciplines. I brought a sense of what kind of team I needed, and was able to foresee the specialized skills that were needed and able to assemble a team, upskill a team that would be better able to handle both sides of the marketing, and we also cross-trained the team. So we were able to function and execute the marketing at a pace that could, I’m not going to say we kept up because we didn’t, but was a vast improvement over what had been there previously. And I went back to school, and I learned the agile marketing methodology. And I took two intensive six month each courses from Agile Sherpas, which is a great outfit, and learned agile marketing fundamentals, and then agile marketing and leadership. And I brought what I could back to my team. And I didn’t call it agile or use any of the acronyms really. But what we did was we got together monthly, and we had a focused session that was kind of casual in nature. So it wasn’t focused on any work that we had to get done. But the theme was, how do we work smarter, not harder. And we would just spend some time trying to get more efficient as a team so that we could improve, kind of, our quality of our daily lives because it was fast paced.

Joe Giovannoli  

That’s a, that’s a lot. That’s it sounds like that was a major, major undertaking for you. And you last point on as you built, it sounds like you built that team from the ground up to right, you had to bring in the right resources.

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Yes, there was, you know, restructured the team, because that’s what was necessary at the time. And it included both upskilling and, and hiring some new folks as well. And we did, we built a pretty strong team, I’m not going to say that it was the right size team, because I do think it needed to be bigger. But we were able to satisfy the major pieces of our role. And I think that we vastly improved, kind of, the effectiveness and the services that we provided to our lawyers. But I’m not going to say that we were ahead of the game by any means– we weren’t. And I’m not taking away from the team by saying that either. We were all operating at kind of our peak performance and efficiency, at least most of the time. 

Joe Giovannoli  

That’s awesome. That makes you a good leader for even just saying that, too, so appreciate you taking me down into that. And I think you know, your experience in in-house legal has always really impressed me. That’s one of the reasons why you’ve always been somebody that I turned to when I have a question because you just have such a diverse background. And you really, like you roll up your sleeves, and you get into whatever it is that you’re doing, you get into it. 100%. So appreciate you taking us through that. I appreciate you taking us through that. Yeah, no, no, of course. So let’s pivot a little bit. I believe that everybody has a superpower. I always try to uncover this on every podcast recording that we do. It also happens to be one of my icebreaker conversation starters when meeting new people and needing something to talk about. So I’d like to know, what do you feel your superpower is?

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

I would love to answer it. But will you tell me your superpower after I tell you mine? Sure. Because I find it super interesting too. My superpower is my energy. And those who embrace my energy, I think kind of benefit from it. So energy with the ability to adapt and get the job done. Yep. So it makes sense.

Joe Giovannoli  

Yes, absolutely. Or definitely. I feel like you’re always on and I feel like you can direct that energy into whatever it is that you set your mind to and your energy goes there. Right. It’s all there. It’s all in. I totally, wholeheartedly agree with you on that for sure.

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

I think it tends to get a little intense at times, right, like an hour passes. How the heck did that happen?

Joe Giovannoli  

Yeah, yep, exactly. Actually, I’ve started setting a timer on my desk when I’m doing a task. I’m like, Okay, I’m gonna spend no more than 45 minutes on this because I have to get ready for the next thing. And that timer has been huge for me. And the second it goes off, I switch gears and I go to the next thing. You know, I’m like, Alright, I didn’t get through this, whatever. I’ll set up another time block for another time, but it’s time to move on. So I feel like you’ve always been really efficient with that. Whereas with me like this is, I’m trying to learn this skill. Because I’m a rabbit hole guy. I’m always going down the rabbit hole. I’m spending way too much time on something and then I look up and I’m like, Well, I’m late for this meeting or I didn’t do this. So I respect the heck out of that and that’s probably the exact answer I would have given for you as well knowing you as long as I have. 

So you asked what my superpower was. My superpower is the ability to connect people and connect dots pretty easily. It’s something that I never really realized was something that not everybody could do. And where I can sit in it, maybe it’s a problem that I’m hearing. And I can, you know, work through that problem and come up with some solutions, that knowing very little about the surrounding elements or things, but come up with some solutions that actually are relevant to the problem. And I also am very good at connecting people into situations that they might be able to help her solve, because I can, you know, I can read people, I can read a room. And what I can tell you, and I’ll share this, I don’t share this with many people. But I’m going to do it on a podcast. I actually have four sets of friends that are all married, that I introduced. And like their father’s speeches, I’ve been mentioned in all of those speeches. 

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle

Oh, that is a beautiful thing. 

Joe Giovannoli

So it’s, it’s something that I didn’t really realize was a skill that I had. And I actually honestly thought that everybody could do that. But my ability to actively listen and problem solve, even in the dating situation, is my superpower. 

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

I think that’s extraordinary. I mean, that’s huge. That’s a very, very big bonus to people’s lives that obviously is going to last for just so long, and you’ll always be a part of their story. You should learn how to officiate.

Joe Giovannoli  

I had one couple, I thought was going to ask me to do it. But they asked me to be the best man in the wedding instead. So I was like, Okay, I guess, I guess that works.

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

I bet it’ll happen. Just a  feeling. I won’t be surprised to hear that. That’s really cool. And I think it’s usable for folks to not sort of see your to maybe discount what comes to them automatically. But it makes it no less of a superpower. And that doesn’t surprise me. You know, knowing you, as I do, I think that’s a great thing to be a connector like that.

Joe Giovannoli  

Yeah, I do, I do really enjoy it. And it’s funny, I– kind of, in business, I sometimes hesitate, right? Because to refer somebody, you’re kind of staking your reputation on the referral. Right. So if you’re going to refer to a service provider or something like you have to feel confident in them. And there are just some times where I’m like, Man, I don’t want to mess up my relationship, because I don’t want, you know, by this person not doing things the way that I would do them or to the level I would do them. So sometimes they struggle internally with that, right or like, do I make the, do I help solve their problem with somebody, and I’m letting go of control of that. And that’s a personal thing for me, right? Like, it’s a personal pride, like, I want it to work out, I want to make a good recommendation, and I want to see success. So you know, I have to be very careful how and when I recommend somebody or do something, but I do get a lot of enjoyment out of it. 

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

It makes a lot of sense. It’s a, to some extent, it’s a reflection on you. So I’m not surprised to hear that that would be a concern. And sometimes it’s, you know, you’re committed to the process and not the outcome. But I am, I completely understand what you need, you need to have a certain, you know, respect and faith in the folks that you’re recommending. And also, there’s the question of you know, it was someone could be super qualified, but just not the right fit for one reason or another. So, yeah, it makes sense. Absolutely. Yeah.

Joe Giovannoli  

So thank you for turning that around on me. That’s never happened.

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Maybe I’m a new superpower emergent.

Joe Giovannoli  

There you go. But you know, your superpower of energy, I want to kind of redirect out a little bit, right. So, you know, we know Thomson Reuters puts together a state of the firm, you know, they put together a state of the firm report. And client collaboration was something that was really prevalent there, it was, it was definitely in the mix. And you know, that in and of itself takes a lot of focus energy for firms to identify that this is an area that they want to work on and spend time on. And I know that it’s something that you have to definitely put some time and effort into and your energy into. So can we talk a little bit about client collaboration, and you know, what you feel the state of client collaboration is in law firms today.

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Yeah, I mean, I’m hearing more about it. I’m seeing more about internal collaboration within firms. I think it goes hand in hand with the sector based marketing approach. And also the need to innovate, right, to solve tomorrow’s problems today for your clients. So the survey, this year’s survey, which is the state of the legal marketing and business development profession that’s put out by Thomson Reuters, shows us that 70% of respondents to their survey have seen a rise in collaboration in their firms. And I just celebrate that, I think it’s a really good signal. You know, from a legal solution standpoint, it’s hard to get perspective and clarity when working in silos. But 70% have seen a rise, I think it’s great news for the legal sector. And evidence shows that when lawyers collaborate client service scores increase along with revenues. And it’s also worth pointing out that in the same survey, the top components of what they say, and I’m using air quotes here, “very effective business development.” The top responses were client visits, education, that is education of clients, pitches and proposals and client feedback. And the greatest challenge that the survey respondents said they face in their firm is lack of lawyer engagement in business development, the same time the spend among the buyers of legal services is down. So when you put the picture together, you know, collaboration is very exciting. And I would expect to see that increase in next year’s survey. But that remains to be seen.

Joe Giovannoli  

Now, do you think that this is a real concerted effort that these firms are making? 

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle

I do.

Joe Giovannoli

Okay, for the firms– the 30% of firms that didn’t respond that they saw an increase? What do you think that they’re doing? Or why do you think that they’re doing it the way that they are, you know, they’re not necessarily able to respond, “Oh, we’ve seen an increase in the collaboration,” like, are they actively choosing not to? Do they not know what to do– what’s your take on that? 

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

I think it’s a good question. I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that, at least in a qualitative way. I think that certainly Heidi Gardner’s books, Smart Collaboration, and she just came out with another book, Smarter Collaboration. And the rise in sector based marketing, I think is both of those are contributing to that decisive increase, you know, this, this focus, the decision to put a focus on internal collaboration, I think the need is likely to be greater among firms that are geographically dispersed and have offices in different jurisdictions, because having an institutional clients that have needs that cross jurisdictions, and that are cross disciplinary across different practice areas, in and of itself creates a need for more collaboration. So that likely factors in but there’s a whole host of factors as to why that would be the case. And some of it may just be the maturity of the firm’s business development initiative, which I think is inconsistent, you know, from firm to firm for various reasons. Do they have a business development initiative, for instance? Yeah, so that would be, that would be a whole nother podcast, but I think there’s a host of reasons, but certainly, sector based marketing is something that requires more collaboration. 

Joe Giovannoli  

So how do you think that they could, how do you think they could easily solve this problem? Right? So I would identify this as a problem if they’re not seeing an uptick in client and collaboration internally, if they’re not focused on this, I see that as a problem. What thing– it’s easy to say, just focus on it right, but like, what actionable things can they do? And I feel like we’re gonna get a little bit into our tip here. But what actionable things do you think the date a firm could do to make this make this a priority?

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Yeah, well, I think it’s all a matter of strategy and priorities. So I’m doing sort of a strategic exercise to look at how the firm is and where it is now and where the firm wants to grow and how that growth is going to happen is going to be something that’s going to determine the what and the how. But I think you were referring to the five whys of change management. So we could jump to that if you want to.

Joe Giovannoli  

Yeah, I’d love to, I’d love to talk about it. Because I think, you know, when we were chatting right before this, like, I’m super interested in that, and I’d love to, I’d love to talk about it. So, you know, your tip, right, is about this exercise. Why don’t you share a little bit about it? 

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Yes, so it’s the five whys of change management. It’s a root cause analysis technique that is used to help identify the underlying reasons for a problem or a challenge that’s related to organizational change. And so it helps you find the root cause by asking why it happened five times. So the idea is that each time you ask the question and respond to the question, it leads to a deeper level of understanding and reveals a fundamental cause. So if we want to take, say, in this survey, the top– the greatest challenge is lack of lawyer engagement in BD and marketing, why is lawyer engagement a top challenge at my law firm? Well, because lawyers aren’t carving out the time to participate in business development.

Joe Giovannoli  

And why and why are they not blocking out that time?

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Because they don’t feel confident or prepared to engage in business development activities on a consistent basis. And they find it too hard to get the information that they need in a timely manner. And why is that? Because we struggle to get them the insights they need to engage in business development in a consistent way.

Joe Giovannoli  

And why is that? 

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Because it’s a time-consuming process to get them the information they need to feel prepared and connected to their colleagues. And the external people in their professional networks. And our team, our marketing team is just not big enough to satisfy the collective needs across the firm across our offices.

Joe Giovannoli  

And the final why is that?

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Because we don’t have a database system that makes it easy for our lawyers to get the information that they need to collaborate with one another to participate in business development consistently and with confidence. And our team is not big enough to satisfy the demand that we face. So the root cause– the solution is– we need a solution that is both easy for the lawyers to use and delivers the relationship intelligence and insights they need, when they need them. Yeah.

Joe Giovannoli  

And it’s, it’s so interesting, right? So you call it the five whys, and I’ve seen this in a couple of other settings in marketing related situations where you’re trying to figure out how to build what you’re building a campaign around, why you’re building that campaign, and why the people that are investing in this, you know, service or whatever, that you’re building a campaign for– why they would invest. So the why, why, why, why why I’ve seen this go actually even well beyond the five, right, is running aground on the whys, right? Like, if you can’t, it doesn’t make sense to ask why you have officially gotten to the, to the basic things into the center of why you’re doing what you’re doing. But I love the five, right, because it really forces you to be succinct with like, let’s make sure we truly get to the root cause of this and the root reason, and in that example, that you just used, right, data and don’t have the team to support it. Okay, great. So it sounds like we need to figure out a way to supplement that externally. If we don’t have the people internally, we may need to supplement that externally to build the system and make it easy for the team to actual the team, we have to actually interact and use it. So it’s useful.

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Yes, or to provide something that the lawyers themselves will use. And so that in and of itself helps you focus your team on certain pursuits and focuses the lawyers on what they need, for instance, maybe on a day to day basis, but when an RFP comes in, you know, they need a specialized team. That’s part of the marketing organization to help them to prepare the response because, you know, let’s face it, those are really big projects in and of themselves. But having clarity, I think is what is the point you were making, and it’s really powerful to have the clarity, that is easily understood across all levels of the organization, all stakeholders, executive sponsors, influencers and and really across the whole supply chain, even externally so clarity, I think is the is the focus there and clarity can be really helpful in terms of prioritizing and focusing your efforts on organizational change.

Joe Giovannoli  

And this tip that you just gave, which, thank you, because I think that the example made it very clear and very obvious how to implement this. But this tip could really be used in any facet of any business is applicable everywhere, you know, but specifically in law firms’ decision making, or, like I mentioned earlier, you know, building out a marketing program or marketing campaign, investing in, you know, something for the firm, you know, if you just use the five whys as a example of, you know, decision making, you know, every decision should be able to be very clearly justified in a second that you run into something that’s wishy-washy as to why why you’re doing it. Maybe it’s a time to take a pause and think about, okay, want or need, right, I, I talked to people all the time about wanting versus needing something, right. Do I want to do something? And if I want to do it, why do I want to do it? But if I need something, then it should be very clear to get to the end of the line and say, oh, I need this because it, it’s going to impact this and it’s going to make this difference. Right? Versus oh, I want to do it because I want to see what happens. And I have a hunch and whatever, right? Like making making any business decision. Nine times out of 10 should be based on a need not a want. 

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Yes. And I use need and preference. This is my preference to do it this way for this reason, but I don’t need to do it this way. Which again, comes into the adaptability piece of it, okay, this is a preference, not a need. And these are the parameters, so how am I going to, you know, regroup and go in this direction. But I have used the whys in my personal life as well. Like looking to make a change in my career, or my life, I’ve made a big change. For instance, right before I joined Wilentz, I moved. I used to live in the New York City area for 25 years, and I made a big move farther away. And I did that for lifestyle reasons. So I had, you know, the five whys in my personal life for sure.

Joe Giovannoli  

Yeah.

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

So you’re right, you can really adapt it. But the more clarity you get, I think the more you can focus, and it’s so hard, you know, an agile methodology. It’s called context switching. So, in terms of multitasking, there’s a difference between, you know, people say, “Can you really multitask? Is that some, is that a thing? Are you able to do that?” Well, we have, you know, I find it so difficult in terms of context switching within, say, a 10 minute period, you’re thinking about five different projects, that takes you longer over a period of time to get to the clarity, and to get to what you need to have done. So using those time segments with the timer that you mentioned earlier, is something I also do that and having focused time, to me is much more powerful. We’ve been talking now for, you know, 40 minutes, how many notifications if you didn’t put focus on your devices, how many notifications have come through in the last 40 minutes?

Joe Giovannoli  

Oh, yeah, hundreds, hundreds, hundreds, hundreds? Yeah, exactly. And by the way, that was probably one of the best updates– we both use Apple products, I know because we just talked about it, but that’s one of the best things that they ever did is put focus time on devices because you can actually do things and block out everything else, right. We live in a world where everything– immediate response and, you know, immediacy is almost required by people or expected by people right, and now that is at the detriment of you protecting and owning your time. I’m very big on owning my time. This is a whole nother conversation but like I drive to and from the city because I own my time, right? I’m not beholden to a train schedule. I’m in control of driving the car, right? I am in control of all of those factors. I own my time, I like to own my time. And some days I get screwed. And it takes me three hours to drive home because I live on Long Island. But some days it doesn’t. And I’m very happy because the train schedule was delayed two hours or whatever. So all that to say, focus is so important. Putting your energy as you said, your superpower putting your energy into the things that matter to you and putting the energy into the things that deserve the energy on disturbed. I think that that’s, I think it’s so important. 

So we’re going to take a quick break here. We just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge our sponsor for the Tip of the Law podcast, 9Sail. 9Sail is a law firm-focused digital marketing agency specializing in providing lead generation and awareness building services such as SEO, paid search, content creation and digital public relations. Grow your firm with 9Sail. Lynn, any final comments before we wrap up?

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

No, no, it was a very enjoyable conversation though. Thank you.

Joe Giovannoli  

Yes. Oh, thank you. I took down a whole bunch of notes as you were talking because I just had– the ideas were flowing and I love conversations like this, yours and my conversations are always fantastic. I always leave so energized. So thank you. Thank you, keep being who you are. And thanks for being part of my network and my life, and I’m sad I’m not seeing you at the– we’re recording this right before the annual conference. I’m sad that I’m not seeing you there but I am looking forward to seeing you in person at a LMA event soon. 

Lynn Tellefsen-Stehle  

Well, thank you for being so gracious to me too. And keep being you as well. Thank you, you’re a gift to the legal marketing community.

Joe Giovannoli  

Thank you so much. That means a lot. Well and to our audience, thank you so much. You’ve just listened to the Tip of the Law. Tune in next week for our next episode. Take care. Thank you for tuning in to the Tip of the Law podcast hosted by Joe Giovannoli. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to subscribe to Tip of the Law and leave us a comment wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. You’ve been listening to Tip of the Law.