The Rainmaking Podcast

Every two weeks, the business development tactics top lawyers use are free at therainmakingmagazine.com ---------------------------------------- Nine out of ten lawyers score in the bottom half of resilience. That’s not an opinion — it’s 32 years of personality data from over 10,000 lawyers. Dr. Larry Richard is the researcher who found it, and he wrote the book on what to do about it. Dr. Larry R...

Every two weeks, the business development tactics top lawyers use are free at therainmakingmagazine.com ---------------------------------------- Most strategic alliances look perfect on paper. Six months in, they’re falling apart — and nobody knows why. Dr. Kyle Harkema is the author of Strategic Clarity: The Practical Method for Transforming Vision into Results and a scholar-practitioner with a d...

Every two weeks, the business development tactics top lawyers use are free at therainmakingmagazine.com ---------------------------------------- Corporate, finance, and real estate partners have a business development advantage most of them never fully leverage. Ryan Grelecki is here to change that. Ryan Grelecki is a global consultant and master GrowBIG® facilitator at Bunnell Idea Group — one of...

Every two weeks, the business development tactics top lawyers use are free at therainmakingmagazine.com ---------------------------------------- Most law firm mergers fail to deliver on their promise. Not because the financials were wrong — but because nobody did the cultural due diligence. Dr. Heidi Gardner is a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School, former Harvard Business School professor,...

Every two weeks, the business development tactics top lawyers use are free at therainmakingmagazine.com ---------------------------------------- Every year, around bonus and distribution season, law firm partners ask themselves the same question: is it time to make a move? In this solo cast, Scott Love — legal recruiter with 30+ years in the industry and specialist in corporate and finance partner...

Every two weeks, the business development tactics top lawyers use are free at therainmakingmagazine.com ---------------------------------------- You can have the best legal mind in the room and still lose the pitch. What separates the attorneys who win business from those who don't often has nothing to do with the quality of their work — and everything to do with how they show up. Paul Marchegiani...

Every two weeks, the business development tactics top lawyers use are free at therainmakingmagazine.com ---------------------------------------- Half of all lateral partner hires don't last. That's not a recruiting problem. It's a vetting, compensation, and integration problem — and most law firms are making the same mistakes at every stage. Shireen Hilal is the CEO of Maior and a former COO of a...

Most law firms say they want to cross-sell. Few have the internal foundation to actually make it happen. Rebecca Hnatowski is the founder of Edwards Advisory and a specialist in cross-selling strategy and lateral integration for law firms and professional services organizations. In this episode, she joins Scott Love to break down why cross-selling initiatives stall — and exactly what has to be in...

Everyone says trust matters. Kim Bohr can prove it — with data. Kim Bohr is President and CEO of SparkEffect and the researcher behind the State of Organizational Trust™ — a national study that shows trust directly impacts revenue, reputation, and retention. In this episode, Kim joins Scott Love to answer the question most leaders never think to ask: can trust actually be measured? And if so, what...

Most law firm leaders reject private equity on principle. But what if you could use the PE playbook to grow your firm — without taking a single dollar of outside money? Brad Blickstein is a legal industry futurist, founder of Blickstein Group, and author of What Would Private Equity Do? Unlocking Value in the Law Firm You Already Own. In this episode, Brad joins Scott Love to break down exactly wh...

Most professionals believe you have to know someone, like them, and trust them before you do business. Scott Love says only one of those is non-negotiable — and it's trust. In this solo cast, Scott Love — legal recruiter, host of The Rainmaking Podcast, and co-author of Rainmaker Confidential — breaks down what trust actually is, how to build it at scale, and why reframing your business as a "trus...

Most professionals hate the idea of selling. What if you didn't have to? Chris Papin has built a thriving multi-discipline practice as a JD, CPA, and insurance producer — without ever feeling like he's pitching. The secret is the trust economy: a system of intentionality, authenticity, and regularity that builds steady deal flow without pushing harder. Chris Papin is a licensed attorney, certified...

Most law firms know AI is changing their industry. Fewer know exactly where to start, what to avoid, or how to build a technology strategy that doesn't blow up mid-implementation. Eric Thurston is Executive Chairman of SurePoint Technologies — one of the most widely used legal technology platforms in the country — and a veteran software executive with more than 20 years of experience building and...

Posting on LinkedIn once isn't thought leadership. Speaking on one panel isn't thought leadership. Real thought leadership is a strategy — and most professionals have never been given a clear framework to build one. Bill Sherman is COO of Thought Leadership Leverage, co-host of the Leveraging Thought Leadership podcast, and lead co-author of The Thought Leadership Handbook — the book Scott calls t...

Private equity has moved through healthcare, dental, and accounting. Law firms are next — and the deals are already happening. But most law firm leaders don't fully understand the structure, the math, or the risks involved. TJ Henry is the co-founder and managing partner of Federate, a management services organization that launches, operates, and scales law firms. He's also one of the most knowled...

Scott Love has read thousands of law firm partner bios. Most of them are bad. Most of them read like word-for-word copies of every other attorney at every other firm — and they do nothing to compel a prospective client to pick up the phone. In this solo episode, Scott breaks down the five pillars of a high-performing online bio: the framework he's developed over 30+ years as a legal recruiter that...

The legal industry is about to change faster than most law firm leaders are prepared for. Private equity is coming. AI is already here. And the firms that keep doing things the way they've always been done are going to find themselves squeezed from both sides. Tim Keith is the CEO and founder of Propense AI, an AI-driven cross-selling and client intelligence platform built specifically for law fir...

Pressure is inevitable. But whether it contracts you or expands you — that's a choice. Dr. Emma Zia has spent nine years helping founders, executives, and high performers figure out which voice they're listening to, and how to change it. Emma is a high performance expert, author of Power Under Pressure, and holds a Doctorate in Metaphysical Science. She works with leaders at critical inflection po...

Research shows lawyers score below average in emotional intelligence compared to the general population. That gap is costing law firms talent, trust, and millions in preventable attrition. David Sarnoff is an ICF Certified Executive Coach, leadership trainer, and former attorney who founded Sarnoff Group LLC to do development work that actually sticks. He's also the co-author of Beyond the Courtro...

"No is a complete sentence." It took Gina Rubel years of executive coaching — and nearly 25 years of running a top legal PR firm — to fully believe that. In this episode, she makes the case for why. Gina Rubel is the CEO and General Counsel of Furia Rubel Communications, a nationally recognized legal marketing, litigation PR, and crisis communications agency. She joins Scott Love for the Rainmakin...

You think you know your brand. Your clients experience something else entirely — and that gap is costing you business. Paula Zirinsky is the founder of Zirinsky Strategy LLC and a marketing strategist with over four decades of experience helping law firms, professional services organizations, and global companies discover what their brand actually is — not what they assume it is. In this episode,...

Most law firms spend enormous resources attracting the right attorneys — but the executives running the business behind them are just as hard to find, and just as easy to lose. Ted French is the co-founder and president of ASG Legal Search and a 35-year veteran of the executive recruiting and staffing industry. Having previously built and sold Acclivity Healthcare — a firm that placed over 18,000...

What would your day look like if every part of it, from the moment you woke up to the moment you went to sleep, was actually working for you? Sarah Tetlow is a productivity consultant, trainer, speaker, and author of The Perfectly Productive Day. A repeat guest on the Rainmaking Podcast, Sarah is one of the leading voices in productivity for attorneys and professional services providers, helping l...

You don't need a massive audience to build authority in your niche. You just need the right 10 people listening — and a system to get in front of them consistently. Ben Mena is the founder of Select Source Solutions and host of The Elite Recruiter Podcast — the largest recruiting industry podcast with over 300 episodes and 700,000+ downloads. What started as a boredom project during COVID became a...

Most professionals know they need more high-value clients. What they don't have is a system to bring them in predictably — without cold pitching, diluting their brand, or spending all their time on marketing instead of client work. Esther Stewart is a Business Growth Strategist and founder of Cottn Owl. A former Fortune 500 finance associate, she spent eight years inside billion-dollar institution...