Weird Ken Burns; Benefits of Podcasting; and “Shitty Olympic Events”

Episode Notes

Transcript

Jared Correia: I’d like to take a moment to thank my mom for listening to every episode. Now, my mom is the real reason you’re listening to this show right now. But the sponsors have a little something to do with it as well. So, I’d like to thank our sponsors, too. Cleo, Alert Communications, Scorpion and Time Solve. Imagine billing day being the happiest day of the month instead of the day you dread. And nobody went to law school because they love drafting invoices for clients and chasing overdue bills. At Time Solve, our attorneys have the tools to achieve a 97% collection rate. That means more revenue for the same work and turning billing day into happy day. Learn more about how to get to your time and billing happy place at timesolve.com.

[Music]

Male: It’s a Legal Toolkit with Jared Correia.  With guest, Steve Fretzin around the City Olympic events and in a last gasp effort to restore the fad. Jared debuts as new Sea Shantie Team Death Metal Barbershop Quartet. But first, your host, Jared Correia.

Jared Correia: It’s the Legal Toolkit podcast folks. Sadly, this is not one of those situations where I have a toolbox full of delightful talking tools like Handy Manny.  Incidentally, Handy Manny theme song is a bop. Don’t add me. That’s right. I’m your host. Jared Correia. Richard Kern was unavailable. So, you’re stuck with me. I’m the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, a business management consulting service for attorneys and bar associations. Find Us online at redcavelegal.com. I’m the CEO of Gideon Software, Inc. We build chat bots so law firms can convert more leads and conversational document assembly tools so law firms can build documents faster and more accurately. You can find out more about Gideon at gideonlegal.com.

Before we get to our interview today with Steve Fretzin of Fretzin, Inc, I want to take a moment to talk about how I was on documentaries before they captured the popular Zeitgeist. Let me just tell you, Ken Burns is a really weird dude. But I probably didn’t have to tell you that. I mean, he lives in New Hampshire, produces documentaries for a living and looks like what would happen if Kermit the Frog and Kenny Rogers ventriloquist dummy made sweet, sweet love and had a baby. I met Ken Burns in person when he gave a presentation at my college which is also in New Hampshire. So, because this is happening in the early 2000s, I bought my DVD copy of the Civil War, the Holy Grail of documentary series in high hopes that he might sign it for me. That was not an easy task by the way. That motherfu-er is like 11 hours long, sells a lot of DVDs.

After the speech, I walked up to KB, handed him a Sharpie and asked him to sign my DVD set. So, you’re right. In the nexus of loserdom, I’m right up there with Ken Burns. I asked the documentary producer to sign my box set of DVDs. I’m not proud of it. Anyways, apparently this wasn’t a regular thing because Ken Burns looked totally bewildered but he dutifully took the Sharpie out of my hands and the DVD set as well and signed the front of the box set. And then, I reached out my hand to take it back and then he took a DVD out and signed it, the back and the front. Then, he signs all the other DVDs’ backs and fronts. There were six of them. He was writing pretty hard and he almost broke one of them. Then he lifted the box over one more time to see if there were any additional places he could sign and he was going for that little plastic thing that holds the individual DVDs. When I took the box back and said thanks, we’re probably good here. Then, he handed the individual DVDs back to me one by one, now, totally un useful. I mean, he’s really pawing at the back of these things, you know, where they play the reflected part. I honestly don’t know if he had ever seen a DVD before.

So, I’ve only gotten four autographs in my life. And while each story is unique in its own way, this one is absolutely the weirdest. Mostly, I just wanted to tell the story about how weird Ken Burns was when I met him, but I’m still a fan and I love pretty much everything he’s produced. I celebrate the guy’s entire catalog. My favorite is the Civil War, obviously. Baseball, phenomenal Jazz, great Vietnam War, amazing. The war about World War II, stupendous as is country music. Well, he probably got it by now. But even the short stuff, like not the 9/11, hour documentaries like the Roosevelts, an intimate history or Huey Long, those are fantastic also. I love to read. Now, I have a plenty of books on history, but I always find something new, some rare tidbit in Ken Burns’ stuff.

Now, Ken Burns was the OG of documentarians which I suppose makes me the OG of documentary watchers?

(00:05:07)

But in recent years, documentaries have exploded in popularity, especially true crime documentaries like Making a Murderer and Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness. There’s some obvious reasons why documentaries are involved right now.  For me, during a pandemic, it’s easier to cobble together programming using archived footage. And even outside of a pandemic, it’s still cheaper than filming a live action movie. And not to mention a lot of these documentaries lean hard into the Stranger Than Fiction category which people seem to love. Yes, it’s true.  Humans are fu–ed up. And although this stuff is cyclical, I hope that documentary craze is here stay for at least a little while longer. It suits me just fine.

But if you’re not a documentary person, don’t worry. I’ve got you. Here are five documentaries you should watch over the next 10 years to ensconce yourself in the drama, the pageantry. Yeah, I said 10 years. These things are really long. All right.  Number one, the Civil War, PBS, obvi. Next, The Men Who Built America, which is a fantastic History Channel documentary. It’s about Leland Stanford and Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford and JP Morgan. One of favorite documentaries ever. Long Shot on Netflix, is another one you should check out. This is just a crazy documentary about a guy who established an alibi in a murder investigation using footage from the TV show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is also good. So, check that out. Not a documentary however. Getting a Little Darker at Hillsborough from ESPN. This is like a super sad documentary about these soccer fans who died in a crash at a soccer stadium in the late 1980s. And let’s lighten things up a little bit. Number five is the Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese’s documentary about the band’s final show. And if you’re checking that out, make sure you watch for Van Morrison’s performance of Caravan. It is transcended. Caravan is an amazing song from the Moondance Album. And I may reserve this for another monologue at some point. But Side B, Side 2 when the sides existed on albums, Moondance is absolutely the best B-side of any album in my formed opinion; Come Running, Brand New Day, Everyone, These Dreams of You, Glad Tidings. Not necessarily in order. Good stuff. Check that out.

I do want you to know that I worked very hard not to include the five Ken Burns’ documentaries in this list. I kept it to one. You’re welcome. Now, before we talk to our guest, Steve Fretzin of Fretzin, Inc, about podcasting — yep, that’s right. We’re talking about podcasting on a podcast (00:07:42) and some of the worst Olympic sports ever. Let’s see what kind of data says Joshua Lennon has scraped up for you this week. That’s right. It’s the Clio Legal Trends Report minute up next.

Joshua Lenon: In 2020, 7% of legal professionals let go of their commercial office space in favor of maintaining a virtual practice and another 12% are unsure if they will keep their commercial office spaces in the future. I’m Joshua Lenon, Lawyer in Residence at Clio. There’s no question that beyond the pandemic, clients will still look for the convenience of remote meetings and online communication. Already, 56% of clients prefer video conferencing over a phone call. For lawyers, this presents a major opportunity to reduce overhead saving upwards of 10,000 dollars per lawyer and office expenditures. The cost savings here can both help with firm profits and be passed on to clients. To learn more about these opportunities and much more, for free, download Clio’s Legal Trends Report at clio.com/trends. That’s Clio, spelled C-L-I-O.

Jared Correia: Okay, it’s about time to get to the crispy crust of the deep-dish pizza. That is this podcast. But if you want thin crust pizza in Chicago, definitely go to Barnaby’s. Right, Steve?

Steve Fretzin: Yes. Barnaby’s is the bomb.

Jared Correia: Barnaby’s sounds amazing. I was just saying, next time I’m on Chicago, I’m going to hit it up. Let’s interview our guest. You’ve already heard from him. My guest today is Steve Fretzin who is the owner of Fretzin, Inc. and a business coach for lawyers. Steve, thanks for coming into the show.  I appreciate.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.

Jared Correia: Yeah. This will be fun. I like how you named your business after yourself. I don’t know if I ever told you this but I was thinking of doing the same thing when I started my consulting practice. I was going to call it Correia Counselor. But I just couldn’t do it. It sounded so cheesy. That was the right decision, right?

Steve Fretzin: Probably.

Jared Correia: Yeah.

Steve Fretzin: I mean, and just to share, I mean, my business was called originally Sales Results. And you know what lawyers don’t like?

Jared Correia: Sales.

Steve Fretzin: That’s it. So, I had attorneys walking around with my materials and they were getting funny looks on the train and they came back to me and said, hey, you know, we’re not liking your name anymore. I was like, okay, maybe I’ll have to come up with something different that isn’t so offensive to the delicate flowers.

(00:10:05)

Jared Correia: That’s what’s so cool about having a unique name. You can name anything after yourself?

Steve Fretzin: That’s it.

Jared Correia: Yeah. Lawyers hate sales. It’s totally true. Which is funny because lawyer have this notion that like, oh, there should be a bunch of people who are going to just walk off to me and be like, hey man, here’s a stack of cash. Can you do legal work for me? But we podcasted about that before. I don’t want to get into that again. That’s a fraud topic. I want to talk to you about podcasting. Are you game for that? You want to get it better?

Steve Fretzin: Yeah, sure. Let’s do it.

Jared Correia: All right. We didn’t talk about podcasting on a podcast. I think this is going to go well. You’ve got a podcast which is —

Steve Fretzin: I do. Yeah.

Jared Correia: And you’ve got like a super aggressive recording schedule. I don’t know how you do it. But I think you’re do an awesome job with the podcast. You got a lot of great guests. Can you talk a little bit about your podcast, why you started it, the focus you’ve taken, that kind of thing?

Steve Fretzin: Sure. Sure. So, the show is called Be That Lawyer and it’s a show that’s all about helping lawyers to do just that, be that lawyer; someone who’s confident, organized and a skilled rainmaker. And the concept is I bring on rainmakers, I bring on experts, I’ve had you on the show, Jared. I mean, anyone that has an expertise —

Jared Correia: Sometimes, you have experts, sometimes not, right?

Steve Fretzin: Sometimes, I do and then I also brought you on, right?

Jared Correia: Right. Right.

Steve Fretzin: But it’s really to give people tactical actionable things that they can do to grow their law practice, improve efficiencies, develop business. So, I’m bringing on podcast experts, I’m bringing on marketing experts, I’m bringing on efficiency experts, software, you know, the database management, practice management, software experts. Anyone that I can interview to get to the bottom of how to do things more efficiently to make more money and less time and get greater results. That’s really what the show is all about.

Jared Correia: Yeah. I like how you did Be That Lawyer. Sometimes, on this show, we do don’t be that lawyer.

Steve Fretzin: Don’t be that lawyer? Okay.

Jared Correia: Don’t be the lawyer who doesn’t understand technology, don’t be that lawyer. But if you want to learn how to be a good lawyer, listen to Steve’s podcast. So, why did you decide to do it? It seems like everybody has a podcast these days but like not everybody can stick to it, not everybody finds something that works for them. How did you decide to go this route and why do you think it’s been successful?

Steve Fretszin: Yeah. I think I had that hesitancy about, you know, doing something that everyone else is doing. But I’ve heard — so, I got into podcasts maybe just two or three years ago and really found myself listening while I was driving, while I was walking the dog, while I was doing all this stuff and I just started. Then, I started listening to some business ones and I guess I’m getting all these great ideas and tips. And I said, you know, maybe I could do one. But if I did one, what would it be and how would I get guests? And I don’t know any of this. So, the key for me was I got introduced to a producer, to a production company out of California, and they said, look, we’ll do the production, the editing, the this, the that, the other and all you have to do is essentially record a 30-minute show, send it to us and you’re out. And I said, said, well, that’s perfect.

Jared Correia: Yeah.

Steve Fretzin: Like I am super busy. I don’t have time to sit and try to figure out how to do any of this stuff. And that was really the key. And I just knew that it would be a way to help attorneys and give back with — you know, look, I’m working with a very small segment of the legal population. I mean, it’s a percentage of a percentage of a percentage which talk about, —

Jared Correia: Right.

Steve Fretzin:— you know, lawyers that are in private practice that are interested in business development and by the way, also, highly ambitious. Well, that’s not a great segment but that’s my segments.

Jared Correia: Right. Right  Mmm-hmm.

Steve Fretzin: So, I figured, let me do a program that could reach to a greater segment that might get value and they’re not going to become my clients but they’re going to be people that I’m helping and I can really add value in the legal community.

Jared Correia: Well, that talks about the value of niching down, too, right? It’s okay if you have a smaller segment of the population. Nobody’s going to go out there and get every single person to buy their services. So, having a niche makes a ton of sense of focusing on that in a podcast. As I mentioned, you’ve had like a pretty aggressive recording schedule. Like how have you been able to keep that up? Because that’s — I think that’s one of the toughest things for people, is to decide to do like a weekly podcast let’s say and actually stick to doing it every week. How do you maintain that self-discipline?

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. The key has been that I continue to make and develop new relationships and leverage pass gas to get new guests. So, I’m constantly asking clients and guests and people like who else should be on the show, who else do you know that you think would be a successful person for me to interview that has a lot to say and is really good at what he or she does. And what happened was, I originally started out with a weekly show and I found myself getting so far ahead where I was saying, hey, you know we’re going to record, you know, in July and I’m going to put you out in, you know, October. Well, I don’t think people want to record a podcast in July and then hear about it in October. So, I actually moved to twice a week. Now, I don’t know if I can maintain that kind of rigorous schedule. But that’s what I’m doing and I’m way ahead. I mean, I think I’ve got like 10 or 12 in the bank at any given time.

(00:15:01)

So, it’s something that I enjoy doing and I think when you enjoy doing something, it makes it easier to focus on and stay on top of it. And so, that’s kind of what — I mean, I’ve already done two podcasts today before we’re recording this.

Jared Correia: You’re an animal.

Steve Fretzin: So, one was — and one was a woman in Tokyo. So, it was like 10:00 her time and like 7:30 my time. And then, a good friend of mine who’s a rainmaker at a firm. So, I’m not podcasted out. I mean, I just had so much fun to interview and to be interviewed and to go through this that you lose it. It feels like 5 minutes but it’s 30 minutes has passed before you even bat an eye.

Jared Correia: Right. So, if you kind of look at it as like a networking opportunity as well.

Steve Fretzin: Yes.

Jared Correia: That’s great motivator I think for attorneys.

Steve Fretzin: I’m meeting so many people. It’s off the charts, how many people I’m meeting.  Amazing people.

Jared Correia: That’s awesome. I want to come back to this benefits of podcasting in a second, but I want to come back to something you talked about before which is hiring somebody to help you out with this. I’m fortunate because we have a great team at Legal Toolkit network. Like Evan, the producer who you’ve met. He’s amazing.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah.

Jared Correia: Adam Lockwood is an engineer. He’s great. Lar Scaletti(ph) is pretty good. In terms of hiring somebody out, right? Like I think a lot of attorneys look at this and they say, well, I’m a perfectionist, I like to do things right and I do everything. So, I’m going to start a podcast.  It’s going to be a DIY podcast. Would you recommend people do that or would you have them take a look at hiring somebody to do the engineering work?

Steve Fretzin: The reality is that I’ve talked to a lot of people about starting their own podcast and each and every time I suggest they get an expert involved because, especially for lawyers, if that’s, you know, who were talking about, I mean, if you’re billing 300 to 700 dollars an hour and you’re spending your time editing and producing and putting graphics together and all, it’s just a major headache.

Jared Correia: Right.

Steve Fretzin: And it’s really not how you should be spending your time. So, I’m almost always pushing people that if you’re going to do it, get a professional team to help you. It really isn’t that expensive at the end of the day and the amount of exposure that it can get for you if you do it right can be absolutely phenomenal.

Jared Correia: Well, I talked to lawyers about this all the time. Like nobody that you’re going to hire by and large is going to charge more than you. So, instead of doing that, you can spend your time billing like the math is easy.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah.

Jared Correia: So, I think it’s great that you’ve brought that up. So, one of the things you talked about as we mentioned was the networking opportunities here kind of forcing you to reach out and talk to people. What other benefits have you found from podcasting since you’ve been into it?

Steve Fretzin: Well, if you think about it, if you’re interviewing a guest who has a sizable network, and that show comes out and say, hey, the show’s live and I’m going to promote it all over social media and all over my email, newsletter, etcetera; the other person does the same thing, right? And you’re getting all this exposure to new people that you never would have had previously. And so, it’s been amazing to not only interview people all over the world, but also all these relationships where, you know, they’re promoting, I’m promoting, we’re getting to know each other, we’re becoming friends. I’ll give you the best example I can give you, Jared.

Jared Correia: Okay.  I love stories.  Hit me.

Steve Fretzin: Well, this is the best example. I had a mindset of, if you’re a business development coach for lawyers, okay? And to say, how many there are, it’s hard to tell at this point, but there’s more and more every single year. And that’s fine, okay? But I saw them as competitors, right? So, I’m like, avoiding them.  I’m not interacting with them. I’m a — and I’ve now made probably 5 or 10 new friends, new relationships with people that do things very similar to me and it’s been amazing. We are giving each other feedback, we’re sharing ways of growing business together, we even have one like little coaching group that gets together a month and we give each other, you know, digestible feedback. It’s just been so eye-opening to that mindset of abundance that I think I had before but maybe not with people in my specific sector. And now, that’s changed. And I want to be friends with everybody and I think our enemy is Apathy; Lawyer Apathy. It’s not — we’re not competitors.  We’re competing against lawyers doing nothing and we all kind of agree on that.

Jared Correia: Yeah, I kind of have the same philosophy. That’s really cool. All right. So, I think we’ve answered this question turning it to should lawyers podcast.  Obviously, the answer seems to be yes. But I get this a lot when I talk to lawyers about podcasting. I’m like, you should tell they podcast. They’re like e your business consultant, your own technology company, you get to talk about cool stuff. I don’t. So, if I’m a lawyer, a practicing lawyer, like what would the content be? Like, what could I talk about? What could I do? What could my podcast be about that would actually be appealing to people? So, I think that’s an issue for a lot of lawyers.

Steven Fretzin: Well, I think that the, you know, you have to look at what’s out there and maybe there’s something missing in the sector, okay?

Jared Corriea: Right. Yeah.

Steven Fretzin: Number one. Number two, what are you passionate about? You know, what do you want to talk about? That’s going to be, you know, interesting to you. If you’re just talking about something that might be relevant to the world but it’s not interesting to you, you’re not going to keep it up. You’re going to be one of these shows that goes six months and then it’s done.

(00:20:03)

And then, the other thing is, you know, where could you find a lot of gas? Because if you have a show and it’s about interviewing guests and there’s, you know, 10 people that you can interview in the world, that’s probably not going to be a very good show either.

The other thing I was thinking about is do you really need to have a show about the law? Let’s say that your passion is baseball-ing.

Jared Correia: I answered, no.

Steven Fretzin: There you go. So, maybe your passion is baseball. If that’s the case, maybe you’re talking about baseball and that’s your show. It’s a baseball theme show and everybody gets to know that you’re a lawyer you become known as the guy, the baseball lawyer guy. That’s okay, too. So, I think you really have to consider what your passion is, what’s missing in the world that you could fill or maybe do something that does exist but do have a different spin on it either way; and it’s got to be interesting, right? Because no one’s going to — I turn off shows even like my wife and I, we watch Netflix and we watch all these things. If we can’t get through three episodes and want to continue, its done. And we’ve canceled shows very quickly because we’re just losing interest.

Jared Correia: Yeah. Absolutely. I think those are a lot of great points. We are about to run out of time on the interview segment here. But let me ask you, like, what are your like top three or so tips for lawyers who are going to start a podcast? What should they know? What should they be looking out for?

Steven Fretzin: I would say, number one, know your audience and do something really good for that segment; number one. Number two is absolutely get professional help to set it up, to help you come up with a title, to help you come up with the graphics, to set up the music, all the things that you should not be doing unless that’s your background or unless that’s your passion or something you’re interested in doing. You get that production on the back side. And then, the third is consider that a podcast is not only great for branding but it’s also great for networking, it’s great for meeting interesting people and developing out your relationships. And so, really focus on getting to know your guest, not just as the guest of the show, but as someone that could be really influential in your world from a business development perspective, from a marketing perspective, from a relationship perspective. I feel like I could go to Boston, I could go to DC, I could go to Tokyo and I’m going to have relationships there that I never would have had two years ago. And I could, you know, get taken to great, you know restaurants or whatever and have, you know, new experiences because I now have all these relationships I just didn’t have before.

Jared Correia: I got to ask you one more thing. So, sound quality, super important.  You got to have a badass mic to podcast. So, what are you using for a mic these days?

Steven Fretzin: So, I have a little bit of an outdated — it’s probably three or four years old. It’s an Apogee mic and I originally bought it to interview managing partners in their offices, just like plug it into my iPhone and that’s where I started and then did 20 of those and then obviously just moved it to my mic stand here in my office for this. But the sound quality I think is so key. If there isn’t good sound quality in a podcast, I will shut it down. I will not spend 20 minutes, 10 minutes, listening to it because it’s just, it’s to me, the most important thing.

Jared Correia: Oh, without a doubt. Like I do the same thing. Like if it sounds like somebody is just yelling into a computer on Zoom, I’m out.

Steven Fretzin: Yeah.

Jared Correia: I have an older mic too but it still sounds pretty good. I’d like to think they’re broken it.

Steven Fretzin: Yeah. There you go. I like it.

Jared Correia: Steve, you sticking around for the next segment or —

Steven Fretzin: I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel about it. I got little butterflies. I got butterflies. Can you tell me what the topic is and then I can tell you if I’m leaving or staying?

Jared Correia: Oh, you’ll find out in a second.

Steven Fretzin: Okay. I guess I’m staying.

Jared Correia: Awesome. All right. Thank you. That was great. So, everybody, that was Steve Fretzin; superstar business coach for lawyers. Don’t worry. He may be back in a second. We’ll find out. We’ll just take one final sponsor break so you can hear more about what our sponsors can do for your law practice. Then, stay tuned for the rump roast. It’s even more subtle than the roast beast.

As the largest legal only call center in the U.S., Alert Communications helps law firms and legal marketing agencies with new client intake. Alert captures your response to all Leads 24/7, 365 as an extension of your firm in both Spanish and English. Alert uses proven intake methods customizing responses as needed which earns the trust of clients and improves client retention. To find out how Alert can help your law office, call 866-827-5568 or visit alertcommunications.com/ltn.

Now more than ever, an effective marketing strategy is one of the most important things your law firm can have and Scorpion can help. With nearly 20 years of experience serving legal industry, Scorpion has proven methods to help you get the high-value cases you deserve. Join thousands of attorneys across the country of turn to Scorpion for effective marketing and technology solutions.  For better way to grow your practice, visit scorpionlegal.com.

Welcome back.  It’s the rear end of the Legal Tool Kit.

(00:25:00)

The rump roast is a grab bag of short-form topics all of my choosin.  With the 2021 Tokyo Olympics having just ended, we’re going to play a game called Shitty Olympic Events. Steve? Are you ready?

Steve Fretzin: I can definitely that. I was worried, worried, worried. And now, I’m like, I know lots of shitty Tokyo events or Olympic events. So, I thinks we’re fine.

Jared Correia: Well, why don’t we do this, right? You tell me the worst event you’ve seen so far at the Tokyo Olympics and then we can get into my list.

Steve Fretzin: Now, I don’t want to get in trouble. I don’t want somebody with an arrow rifle coming after me. It’s a hint. I just gave it away.

Jared Correia: That’s fair.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. That’s pretty crazy.

Jared Correia: Are you ready to play? Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to name or describe an actual Olympic sport and it’s going to be your job to name it.

Steven Fretzin: All right. Let’s go for it.

Jared Correia: Two more things. Just to ramp up the degree of difficulty. These can be Summer or Winter Olympic events and they don’t have to be current Olympic events.

Steven Fretzin: Oh wow!

Jared Correia: All right. We’ll do the first one. Some of these I’ve taken from Wikipedia because I’m lazy. This sport combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. It’s treated as a race with contestants skiing through a cross-country trail whose distance is divided into shooting rounds. The shooting rounds are not timed per se but depending on the competition, missed shots result in extra distance or time being added to the contestant’s total. And I’ll be a good person and tell you that that’s a winter Olympics event. Shooting and skiing. What event is that?

Steven Fretzin: That is called skiing-shooting competition. I’m pretty sure that’s the technical term.

Jared Correia: Very close.

Steven Fretzin: Is that really like close?

Jared Correia: It’s very descriptive.

Steven Fretzin: Thank you. I just — I’ll just continue to repeat everything I hear from you and that’ll be the sport that it is now being. And they might actually change it. They might actually change the name due to my answer.

Jared Correia: I think they will. After hearing this — that’s actually called the biathlon.

Steven Fretzin: Oh my God.

Jared Correia: Which I am trying to train my kids for. I’m like, you know, you guys should do like these crazy events and maybe get a college scholarship out of this.

Steven Fretzin: I mean, when I find myself in a forest, Jared, and I’ve got skis on and a gun, I try to, you know, take down some heavy animals when I’m skiing and shooting in the wood.

Jared Correia: Right. I mean, why not? And who’s not skiing with a rifle these days?

Steven Fretzin: Who’s not doing that exact thing all the time? That’s common, especially in Chicago.

Jared Correia: I can do it in the summer.

Steven Fretzin: Yeah. That might be like a post-apocalyptic, you know, sport, right?  With zombies.

Jared Correia: It probably should be. All right. I got several more for you. So, hang in there.

Steven Fretzin: I’m one for one so far. So, keep them coming.

Jared Correia: Yeah. I’m counting that one. I’m counting that one.

Steven Fretzin: Yeah.

Jared Correia: Number two. A long-distance discipline within the sport of athletics. Although a foot race, it is different from running and that one foot must appear to be in contact with the ground at all times. This is assessed by race judges. What kind of event is that?

Steven Fretzin: That would be speed walking.

Jared Correia: Oh, yes. I’m going to give you that one.

Steven Fretzin: Yes!

Jared Correia: Technically, I guess it’s called race walking.

Steven Fretzin: Oh, for crying out loud. Come on.

Jared Correia: I’m going to give it to you.

Steven Fretzin: It’s speed walking. We all know that. You move your arms real fast, and other things, too.

Jared Correia: Right. Well, people have seen like the memes online with people like looking constipated and trying to walk in such a —

Steven Fretzin: Yeah. It’s like that last 10 seconds before you hit the bathroom after a bowl meal. Right. So, I think what that is —

Jared Correia: It’s the weirdest — it’s the weirdest sport.

Steven Correia: I’ve done that walk before and I’m not proud to admit it but I have made that walk a few times in my life.

Jared Correia: Right, like a price shooting again the extra pepperoni at Barnaby’s.

Steven Fretzin: That’s it.

Jared Correia: All right.

Steven Fretzin: Hey now. We don’t talk about Barnaby’s. That’s sacred.

Jared Correia: No. I’ve actually never been to Barnaby’s, Domino’s. All right. Number three. This event requires swimmers to dive off of a platform into the water and travel as far as they can in 60 seconds without moving any limbs.

Steven Fretzin: That’s a thing? That’s not synchronized platform diving which I’ve been watching.

Jared Correia: It’s the same platform diving.

Steven Fretzin: They jump off a platform and they can’t move?

Jared Correia: Yes. This was an actual thing. Do you want to hazard a guess?

Steven Fretzin: Yes. Dead men’s dive.

Jared Correia: That’s very close.

Steven Fretzin: Oooh.

Jared Correia: It’s called distance plunging.

Steven Fretzin: Oh, my Lord.

Jared Correia: This is an actual sport that was — 

Steven Fretzin: Is it still — no, it’s not now.

Jared Correia: No. The last one was — I kind of went a little deep catalog here.

Steven Fretzin: 1700 or something.

Jared Correia: 1904 Olympic of St. Louis.

Steven Fretzin: Oh. Whatever.

Jared Correia: You dive in the water and you just float. It’s like —

Steven Fretzin: Is it about not moving the dive and then into water or is it after you hit the water and you get knocked unconscious, you float life you’re dead and then you win?

Jared Correia: Pretty much. What a weird sport. Like I couldn’t believe this existed. Steve, I wanted to give you a couple easy ones to start with and then we’re going to get really weird.

Steven Fretzin: Okay.

Jared Correia: All right. Here’s the next one. In this event, ice skaters would draw intricate patterns into the ice, submit the designs to the judges to review and then complete those figures with their movements on the ice.

(00:30:00)

So, they would doodle on the ice and then follow that pattern around. That was actually an Olympic event. Do you know what it’s called?

Steven Fretzin: Doodle icing. Again, just like my first dance, right? I can pull these answers out, I will.

Jared Correia: All right. I have some history for you. Called special figures, right? And this is an actual event. Believe it or not, it was during the Summer Olympics in London in 1908. They held an ice-skating event during Summer Olympics for some weird reason. There are only three competitors. So, everybody meddled. And maybe the shittiest Olympic event ever.

Steven Fretzin: Yeah, that didn’t stick.

Jared Correia: But wait, there’s more. Next event. In this event, skiers wear a harness attached to a horse. The horse is in the skiers, race around on a course on a frozen lake. Basically, this is a horse race with horses pulling dudes on skis.

Steven Fretzin: Okay. I like that.

Jared Correia: If you get this, I will be highly impressed.

Steven Fretzin: Do I have a few minutes to Google? No? I can’t Google?

Jared Correia: Sure. Yeah. Google away. Actually, no one Googles in this show which is great because it would be a pretty horrible podcast if we waited for people to Google.

Steven Fretzin: Yeah. So, give me 10, 15 seconds. Let me google it.

Jared Correia: I’m just going to what it is.

Steven Fretzin: All right. Tell me. Because that one’s way off base.

Jared Correia: It was called skijoring.

Steven Fretzin: Skijoring.

Jared Correia: S-K-I-J-O-R-I-N-G.  So, this this was even — this was cruel of me.  This was a demonstration sport during the 1928 Winter Olympics in Saint Moritz, Switzerland. So, basically, this is a sport that they were testing. It looks pretty cool.  But apparently people said it was really boring to watch.

Steven Fretzin: I mean, here’s the thought. Test it out before it’s in the Olympics.

Jared Correia: Yeah.

Steven Fretzin: Right?

Jared Correia: Yeah.

Steven Fretzin: And make sure that people are interested then add it to the Olympics like they did with skateboarding.

Jared Correia: Right. I don’t think people are necessarily clamoring for skijoring.

Steven Fretzin: No.

Jared Correia: But they might be now.

Steven Fretzin: I think actually now, it would be more interesting than back then because especially if they gave them guns, then there’s a whole other thing.

Jared Correia: Right. Right. You could have the biathlon version of skijoring.

Steven Fretzin: Biathlon?

Jared Correia: That I would watch.

Steven Fretzin: All right. Let’s do it.

Jared Correia: Last one. I got one more for you.

Steven Fretzin: Okay.

Jared Correia: In this event, a single swimmer makes motions in conjunction with a chosen musical piece.

Steven Fretzin: I want to say synchronized swimming.

Jared Correia: Correct.

Steven Fretzin: Yes!

Jared Correia: But solo synchronized.

Steven Fretzin: Solo.  Okay.

Jared Correia: This only lasted for three Olympics with the last event being held in the 1996 Atlanta Games. So, basically, it’s like synchronized swimming without other people.

Steven Fretzin: But I think isn’t part of what makes synchronized swimming interesting and by the way, not to me, is the fact that that with a lot of people doing it together, it looks interesting?

Jared Correia: Yeah. That’s the thing. I think people thought it was weird because like one person like water dancing. I feel like they should call this water dancing.  That’s what —

Steven Fretzin: Water dancing. That’s the name.  Yeah.

Jared Correia: All right. When I’m executive director of the Water Dancing Foundation of American two years, you know, it started here.

Steven Fretzin: Make a play.

Jared Correia: Steve. Hey, that was pretty good.

Steven Fretzin: Thanks, man. You know, I studied for this really hard.

Jared Correia: Oh, you totally did. You totally did. Yeah. 2021 Tokyo Olympics, were watching it live. So, Steve, thank you. You we’re great. I appreciate you coming on.

Steven Fretzin: Yeah. Thanks, Jared.

Jared Correia: If you want you find out more about Steven Fretzin and his business coaching services, visit fretzin.com.  That’s F-R-E-T-Z-I-N dot com. Now, for the 29 of you listening in Gulf, Illinois, our Spotify playlist for this week’s show is sports anthems. So, get your phone fingers ready. Sadly, we’re freshly out of show and even though Sea Shanties played out, I’ve ran out of time to debut my new Barbershop Death Metal Quartet, the eagles of the eagles of death metal. I guess we’ll just have to wait for my commentary on the concert tour DVD release.

That will do it for another episode of Legal Toolkit podcast with my 10-year-old little league team, will always be champions. No one can take that away from us despite the recent doping scandal.

[Music]

The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.

 

Podcast transcription by Tech-Synergy.com

Continue Reading