TRP 332: When to Say No to Business with Gina Rubel

[00:00:10] You're listening to The Rainmaking Podcast, hosted by legal dealmaker, author, and professional speaker, Scott Love. You're listening to The Rainmaking Podcast, and my name is Scott Love. Thanks for joining me on the show. Have you ever had a client prospect that wanted to give you work, but it just didn't seem like the right fit? How do you know? How do you communicate that to them?

[00:00:37] We're going to answer those questions and more in our conversation with our expert today, Gina Rubel. Our topic title is When to Say No to Business. Now this is the first time we've actually had this topic on the show. It's definitely a good one. You're going to get some great ideas from my conversation with Gina today. Let me tell you who she is. Gina is the CEO and General Counsel of Furia Rubel Communications, which is a highly regarded legal marketing, litigation PR, and crisis communications agency serving law firms, their clients, and the

[00:01:07] legal industry and other organizations. Now, we talk about what she calls the red flags that you need to pay attention to when assessing prospective clients. Should you take that client or not? In fact, she's given us a download, and you can go to the show notes and download that directly, and that's something that's going to help you. Also, connect with her on LinkedIn. All of her information is on the show notes as well.

[00:01:29] This podcast is sponsored by SurePoint Legal Insights, formerly known as Leopard Solutions, turning legal intelligence into opportunity. The show is also sponsored by The Rain Making Magazine. Now, it's entirely complimentary. This is for intellectually driven, results-focused professionals that want to be the number one providers in their niches. Start your free subscription today. Go to therainmakingmagazine.com. Also, on August 19th at 1 p.m.

[00:01:59] Eastern time, I'm doing my first free complimentary half-hour webinar for partners in transactional practices. If you're a corporate finance or real estate partner, we're interviewing expert Ryan Grielecki in a live conversation about how you can maximize your deal flow. Ryan is a global business development consultant for lawyers with the Bundle Idea Group. Go to this link, go to rainmakingseminars.com, and you'll be able to register for that directly.

[00:02:28] I may, in fact, start doing this every other month or even a little bit more frequently based on feedback. So let me know if you get some value from that and how you'd like to have me help you in the future. Thanks for listening. I hope you get some great ideas from my conversation with Gina today. Hey, this is Scott Love with The Rain Making Podcast. Our special guest today is a repeat guest and a good friend, Gina Rubel. And we're talking about when to say no to business. Gina, thank you for coming back on the show. I'm excited to have you here. Thank you, Scott.

[00:02:57] It's always great to see you. Likewise. And so let's get right into it then. When to say no to business. My first question is why? Why would someone say no to business? Let's kind of start with that, Gina. Why not? You should always say no to business if it's not the right business. It's kind of like saying no to going on a date if you're not interested in dating someone. And I make light of it, but it's really a very good strategic business move not to take

[00:03:27] the wrong business. So there are many instances when to say no, but I'm not going to monopolize the conversation right at the beginning. Right, right. Let me dig into that. You say that it needs to be the right business. Tell me about that. What does that mean exactly? Well, I think your audience of the Rainmaking Podcast is predominantly, at least for this show, professional services, correct? Yeah, that's right. A hundred percent.

[00:03:53] So in professional services, sometimes it's because the client is asking for something that you don't do and otherwise would be malpractice if you tried to do it. Other times they don't truly value the services you bring to the table. So for example, could be a law firm where somebody thinks that your services should be worth

[00:04:20] $200 an hour and you're billing $750 an hour. That's not going to end well. Yeah, that's right. Other times it could be that culturally there's a misalignment. They want you to do things that ethically you wouldn't do. And other times it could be that your company or your team is at capacity and you can't do a hundred percent. You can't bring your best selves.

[00:04:50] And I refer to selves as whether you're a solo or a large institution. And other times it could be for conflict. So there are many times where you need to say no and should say no. And you will find that you will be more respected for saying no than not. So let me ask you this. Have you seen this in your work in working with law firms in the PR publicity world? Have you seen that happen before? All the time.

[00:05:17] In fact, I don't want to take credit as if I've always known that you should say no. I've had executive coaching over the years. And I recall one who said to me, no is a full sentence. And I thought, well, that sounds really abrupt. But the truth is, I did not know how to say no early on. And learning how to say no is one of the things that has helped set Furia Rubel up for the

[00:05:46] success it has seen in almost 25 years. Right. So I have seen it more often than not. And I can tell you it's probably something that happens weekly. So let's say you're advising someone on strategy. And I know you're not really a coach or you're an expert in your space in PR publicity. But let's say you have, and I know maybe you have consulted to firms on this as well.

[00:06:13] What advice would you give them if you're advising them on developing clarity with the type of work that they want and they want more of? What would you advise them to look for? Wow, that's a great question. And I'm not a coach. I will not profess to be a coach. But I am a leader and a strategist. And the reason I say leader is leading is different than managing. And to be a leader, you have to know how to say no. So I just want to say that first.

[00:06:39] And what I would advise them would be to ask all the right questions at the beginning. So whatever service you're in, there's always a process of getting clarity with a prospective client or with an existing client with a matter. So for example, and the two are very different. So let's say, for example, it's a prospective client. What are the questions an accountant would ask? What are your goals and objectives?

[00:07:10] What is your timeline? Timeline can be a reason that you would say no, by the way. Because somebody comes to you with something that they deem is urgent, but their fire is not yours. And you may say, well, this isn't urgent. But they might know, I need this done right now. So if you don't have the bandwidth or you don't want to be in a relationship that everything is urgent all the time, then that would be a point of saying no.

[00:07:39] So what are their objectives? What is their timeline? Why me? Why are you reaching out to me or to us, a bigger entity? Getting alignment. I could give you an example where somebody said to us, well, I know you're great at getting media coverage and I want retribution against. And I went, whoa, we don't do retribution. That's a clear no.

[00:08:09] So another part of that evaluation is having a list of your red flags. I have quite a few of them. Tell me about that. What does the red flag mean? And how can we get clear on what our red flags are? Red flags can happen, often happen as a result of making mistakes. So, or learning along the way. It doesn't have to be a mistake. You just might learn.

[00:08:32] So for example, a red flag for me would be that we have a CMBDO in a company that is combative and has to control everything and doesn't want any relationship outside of the one that you hold with them. So because I say CMBDO, because we work with their marketing departments and then we serve their attorneys.

[00:09:01] But our job is always to make the marketing department look good. However, if we can't have conversations with the managing partners, then we can't actually do our job well. And so always being the gatekeeper and not allowing for a fully integrated process, a collaborative process would be a red flag. Not understanding the value of time. And I don't just mean billing time.

[00:09:29] I mean, well, this is urgent when it's not really urgent. And I understand that urgent is a perception, but I also do crisis and incident response. So there's a different level of urgency. So you have to rate that on a scale. Someone that doesn't want to take no for an answer when you say we're not the right fit, or this is a conflict.

[00:09:53] Or the old example I used to use maybe 15 years ago was everybody wants to be on Oprah. Right? Like that was the quintessential get me on Oprah. But you know this person's never going to have a story for Oprah. Or a red flag is I'm the best at what I do and not realizing there is real competition. Somebody saying, oh, I should be on Oprah or I should be on CNN.

[00:10:20] But they've never had any other media coverage and have no legacy gravitas for me to be able to pitch them to CNN. If I say me, I mean we, because I don't do media pitching very much anymore. Our team does. But that's there are these red flags. I had somebody recently say, I was shocked at how much senior marketing leaders make in law firms. I would never pay that much. I'm like, ooh.

[00:10:52] Red flag. You don't value what those people bring to the table. And there's a reason you don't value it. It's because you're not listening and you're not taking the time to understand. So red flags can be different depending on your business. A red flag for an accounting firm, and I go back to accounting firm, would be, well, I want you to teach me how to cook the books. Or I want you to teach me how to hide income. It could be a red flag.

[00:11:21] Now, that's not a red flag for me because nobody's going to ever ask me that. I'm not an accountant and that's why I hire one. So we could actually put these red flags into like a red flag checklist. Oh, can I ask you that same question? What would your red flags be? For me, well, I think kind of taking a page from your playbook, process and access. Do I have access to the leadership to be able to tell a good story? There's some firms I want to work with where I might not have that in the beginning, but I know I'm going to get to that at some point.

[00:11:51] If it's never a possibility, I'm just not going to work with them. I think another red flag for me is, are they really attractive? Do they have a story that's compelling? There's one firm that I talked with and I'd already done the search in that space and I knew they wouldn't be attractive. So I had to say no. I had to back off of that. And so I think we could, and I was taking notes here, Gina, in kind of a checklist. We could actually take what you said into a red flag checklist.

[00:12:18] But I think before we do that, why are these red flags? And one thing I want to ask you about are your values. Everything that you do stems from your core values on a personal level. And I'm kind of intuiting that, which translates into business because in business, well, it's not personal. Well, it's just business. Well, it is personal because it is business, especially when your name is on the door like yours is. So let me ask you this.

[00:12:45] As an owner of a highly regarded professional services firm doing business with other highly regarded visible professional services firms, what are the core values that you have that motivates you to succeed? And I think let's talk about that and come back to this checklist. How does that sound, Gina? That's easy. Number one is integrity. Yeah. Number two is transparency. Number three is working in a collaborative environment. And number four is respect.

[00:13:16] And presenting ourselves in those ways as well as working with business partners that present themselves that way. So the respect has to go both ways. Yeah, that's right. And that's something that you've obviously thought about before. You didn't just think, well, let me see, what are those values? I mean, that's something that you've obviously put some time into before. We have core values on our website.

[00:13:41] I mean, there's a longer list, but those are the four that come to mind very quickly. And I mean, integrity is a non-starter. Yeah. You have to have that. Well, and the thing is, integrity touches everything we do. It touches our how we bill if we're in a billable, an hourly relationship, tracking time. It includes giving descriptions of that time.

[00:14:12] It includes saying no when no is the right thing to say. And, you know, it just brings us right back to that topic. Integrity is everything. And I think if we took what you mentioned, and this would be the advice we'd give to the people listening to the show. And within our company, the Attorney Search Group, our core values are transparency, process, creativity, and attention to detail.

[00:14:38] And so I think if somebody thinks, even if you're a practitioner, a person listening, you're a practitioner in a bigger firm, you still have a business within a business. You have to think in terms of what are your business's core values. And many times you can take, if you're a professional services provider, you own personal core values and bring that to the business because it's really what it is. It's you doing that work. So let me kind of go through this checklist so far in terms of red flags, Gina. You talked about the integrity has to be there.

[00:15:08] The leadership has to be there. These are people that understand what leadership is because in your world, in terms of public relations, it's very personal. And if the leadership isn't there, there will be a disconnect in the congruence of that message. And so also you mentioned having realistic expectations, making sure that they have the right culture within their organization, which kind of ties in with leadership.

[00:15:35] You also mentioned the process expectations have to be there. And in my world, that's a big part as well. And then also in terms of timeline, if they have timeline expectations. Are there any other red flags that you think we should put on here, Gina? Well, again, can we do the work? You know, there's many. And, you know, can we do the work with the expertise that we have? Can we do the work with the team that we have? Does this require another team member?

[00:16:05] Can we say, I like this. I just learned this at the College of Law Practice Management Fellows, our conference. They had, we did a program where they brought in a team that did improv. And we had to practice saying yes and. And I've always said yes and, but I'm trying to get even better at it. And what I mean by that is sometimes a red flag doesn't have to mean no.

[00:16:34] It could be yes, I'd love to do that work. And I'm available in three months or we're available in three months. So in other words, the timing, is it really urgent or can we do it a little bit later? And it's still no now, but it's a yes and. So there's another way to look at that. But other red flags, I want to clarify something. Culture doesn't have to be exactly the same either.

[00:17:04] There does have to be the respect from one another's culture. And that's different. I don't have the same culture as every company out there. But for example, fury and ruble is not motivated primarily by profit. We are motivated by doing a great job. And as a result of doing a great job, having profits follow.

[00:17:30] If a company is only motivated by profit and are going to do anything they can to get there, that's a problem for us. So you see there's different levels and it comes down to having some clarity. You're not valuing what you bring to the table or seeing professional services like yours or ours as tactical versus strategic.

[00:17:55] That would be okay with the right partner as long as we're clear that they're looking for a tactical approach and not a strategic approach. Right. And we all have to be clear on that. So that gets down to the clarity and the transparency that are both our core values, that transparency.

[00:18:15] You know, conflict is always a red flag, but it's not so much a red flag as it is an ethical reason or a reason within integrity to say no. Right. And I'm sure there are many others. I'd have to go. Actually, we have our vice president of strategic development, Jennifer Simpson Carr, probably has a list that we've discussed over the years because I don't do our business development anymore.

[00:18:43] So she's the one who feels those all the time. But we say, no, it's not just about new business. It could be about attending an event. It's also understanding, for example, I had a client that was filing a complaint and I asked, how soon do you want to do this? And they said, as soon as possible. I said, okay, well, it needs to be done on a Friday for these various reasons. I can't get into those.

[00:19:12] And it needs to be done on a Friday around three o'clock. And as a result of that, I'm not available next Friday because my son's coming home from Japan. And if I'm working on this because it's litigation comms and there's a lot of risk involved with this particular litigation, we're going to do it in two days unless you want to wait for two weeks. Because my no was I am not working next Friday when my son is coming home from Japan.

[00:19:42] I'm not passing this off to a teammate. So are you willing to work with me and I'll stay up very late to get this done tonight? And they're like, yes, can we do it that way? That's great. So again, it's just the no isn't always about saying no to business. It's just being clear. And that my transparency was very respected. I mean, this is a longstanding client with a great deal of trust both ways.

[00:20:08] So I just say that where no isn't only about taking on the business. It's also about another red flag is it makes me think when somebody isn't willing to hear your advice. Yeah, right. That's interesting. I like that. What would you call that? How would you categorize that? Like teachability or advisable, I guess? I don't know if I have one word for it. I think it's respecting your advice. Yeah, right. It's like going to the doctor and saying, doctor, I want to lose weight.

[00:20:36] And they say, OK, you need to exercise and you need to get off sugar. And you say, OK, but I don't want to exercise and I don't want to get off sugar. And they're like, well, you're not a candidate for GLP-1. So, you know, the doctor can only go so far, right? So if you're the one giving the counsel to the client or the prospect and they're not willing to take it, now that's going to be a problem. Right. So let me ask you this. I think that's great advice, by the way.

[00:21:00] I like the fact that we've put that down, someone taking our advice or respecting my advice as part of our red flag qualifiers. And I think just kind of summarizing what we said so far, putting this in a box, writing down all these different red flag checklist items. I think first going to one's core values and getting real clear and articulating what are your core values in business and making sure that you honor those core values, then getting those red flags together.

[00:21:28] So, you know what an opportunity looks like that qualifies it. Yes, let's keep it moving forward. No, it's just not the right fit. Let's say we find a client, a client prospect, and we have to tell them no. What have you done in the past where here's a prospective client, you haven't done any work with them, and there's too many things that just don't fit what's important to you on the red flag checklist here. How would you tell them no? Oh, gosh, it's easy.

[00:21:56] As my former coach once said, no is a one-word sentence. We're not available at this time to support you. Yeah, okay, good. You don't need to explain it. No, no, that's good. I like that. And that's okay. Now, you may find that you do want to explain it. It's really a choice. We're not available right now because we have a conflict, because we represent a competitor.

[00:22:22] And depending on whether or not you're allowed to mention that competitor name publicly, that's, you know, your contractual relationship is okay. But I don't ever necessarily give a reason unless I feel it's the right thing in the moment. So, for example, we got an RFP from an AMLAW 20 firm, and they gave us two weeks.

[00:22:47] It was last summer, and those two weeks were in the window of the summer holidays. And we couldn't get it done. There was just, we didn't have the bandwidth. I had people on vacation. It literally 10 days, and it was a very good RFP, well-written, but we want to do it right.

[00:23:09] We said, thank you, but we're going to bow out gracefully because we don't have the ability to complete it within your 10 business days. And I don't ask my team to work weekends, period. They came back and said, okay, can we give you another week extension? And we said yes. So, think about, it's not no doesn't always have to end in no, but we were willing to say no because they didn't give us enough time.

[00:23:39] You know, in those two weeks, there was a holiday, a paid federal holiday. So, it's not even really two weeks. And I don't require my team to work weekends. The only time we work weekends is on a crisis. And so... That's interesting that they kind of flexed to what you mentioned. What does that tell you about how they think about you? I felt very respected and heard. Yeah. That's great. So, if they said, okay, then I'd realize that time is what's more important to them. They're judging you on time.

[00:24:09] They want it done quickly. Probably isn't the right prospect for us. And so, that's kind of a fishing expedition. And I was just being honest. I was having integrity and saying there's no way... Integrity and transparency. There's no way we can get this done in this amount of time. We tried. Weren't able to do it. And they said, well, you know what? We're going to get... Would it be okay? Can you get it to us by X date? And it was a lovely conversation. And this is through a procurement department. Wow.

[00:24:38] So, I felt very respected. I felt very heard. And I was very proud because I was a little like, oh, I don't want to say no to this. It's a really good opportunity. I really, really like this, the CMBDO. Really like to work with them. But it's just not right right now. I can't stay up another night. Well, Gina, this is an insightful conversation. And I want to thank you for being on our show.

[00:25:04] But before we go, if you could summarize three action steps people can take to really implement these ideas, what would those be, Gina? So, first is know your core values. Who you are. Know who you are. Number two is define who the right types of clients are for you. And number three is have a really solid red flag list and follow it. Yeah, that's great. I like that. That just sums it up so nicely, Gina. Thank you for being on the show.

[00:25:34] And then tell our listeners, what is it that your company does that you'd like for them to know about? Well, thank you for asking, Scott. Furia Rubel is a full-service public relations and strategic planning agency. We help business-to-business companies meet their goals and expectations, which really just means it's retaining clients and talent and acquiring clients and talent.

[00:26:01] And when I say talent, I mean from the perception perspective, not from the recruiting perspective. In other words, telling your story in a way that other people will want to come, will want to stay working for you or to come work for you. This is great. Gina, thank you so much for being on the show. We're going to put all of your contact information on the show notes. So if somebody wants to reach out to you directly, just go to the show notes. You'll be able to connect with Gina directly. Thank you. Gina, thanks for being on the show.

[00:26:31] And I look forward to having you on here in the future. Thank you for having me, Scott. Thank you for listening to The Rainmaking Podcast. For more information about our recruiting services for international law firms, visit our website at attorneysearchgroup.com. To inquire about having Scott speak at your next convention, conference, sales meeting, or executive retreat, visit therainmakingpodcast.com.