Podcast: Finding Your Limitless Potential with John Kormanik, Executive Attorney Coach

Russell Benaroya: Hey everyone, welcome to the Stride 2 Freedom podcast. My name is Russell Benaroya, and I’m the co-founder of Stride Services, a virtual back office, bookkeeping, and accounting firm serving hundreds of clients around the United States.

This podcast is designed to help small business owners focus on growth and innovation. In other words, focus on those things that inspired you to start your business in the first place. We call it your genius zone. We do our job on this podcast when business owners feel like they have the trust and confidence to build the right team of partners around them that will help them grow. Thanks for joining. Let’s go.

Hi, everyone, welcome back to another Stride 2 Freedom episode. I am your host, Russell Benaroya. I hope everyone is having a great day. You know, I have had coaches for a lot of my professional life. I mean, athletes have coaches.

When I think about my role as an entrepreneur, is that any different than wanting to become the best that you can be in your chosen pursuit, whether you’re an athlete, an entrepreneur, a musician, or whatever you do? It’s funny how we view coaches in a professional context. Sometimes we don’t even know that coaches exist, and are available in a professional context. What makes a good coach and what makes a great athlete?

Today, I’m excited to introduce you to John Kormanik, who is going to help provide some great visibility into what it means to be an exceptional coach. Hey, John.

John Kormanik: Hey, Russell. How are you?

Russell Benaroya: Great. Thank you so much for joining us today.

John Kormanik: Oh, it’s my pleasure. I’m happy to be here.

Russell Benaroya: John is the founding law partner at Kormanik & Sneed, a criminal defense, employment, and business attorney based in Boise, Idaho. But he’s also a coach. He’s a coach to help other attorneys build their business. That’s where we’re going to focus today with John.

I brought John on because I not only appreciated his focus on coaching attorneys specifically, and wanted to learn from him a bit more about that. But I was also impressed with how John found law as a career, after many years as a respiratory therapist and building a family in San Diego. It’s always great to learn from people that have made shifts in their life and put their life on a new trajectory and the implications of that. So, join me in welcoming John. John, let’s rock and roll.

John Kormanik: Sounds great. I’m ready to go. Speaking of rocking and rolling, if you hear the jackhammer in the background, the water company is outside my office here in Boise, Idaho, going to town.

Russell Benaroya: It’s part of that $2 trillion infrastructure plan, like let’s go. Let’s build. Okay, some serious stuff first. What do you like so much about doing Ironmans? You’ve done three, I understand. Do you have another one in you?

John Kormanik: I’ll take the first one first, and the second one second. What do I like so much about doing Ironmans? It’s the challenge. I like the challenge. I like to push myself further than I ever thought I could go. This photograph behind me is from the swim start at Ironman Coeur d’Alene in 2011. I am somewhere in that sea of neoprene getting ready to swim the 2.4 miles, bike the 112, and run the 26.2. There’s nothing quite like being at the start of that day and just being in the moment. That’s what I like best about it.

Do I have another one in me? Sure, I do. Whether I’ll do another one, I don’t know. But I certainly have another one in me. It’s all about choosing to do what you want to do and then choosing to focus on that and getting to the end. So, I do have another one in me. We’ll see.

Russell Benaroya: We could do a whole show on endurance events. As you may or may not know, I’m an avid ultra-marathoner, and I take great pleasure in the learning that comes from the struggle.

John Kormanik: Yeah.

Russell Benaroya: To that end, obviously training for an Ironman you get in great physical shape, but I’m curious if you could comment on how it helps your mental shape.

John Kormanik: Oh my goodness, I think the mental aspect of it is more pronounced than the physical aspect of it. I really do. Sure, your body gets tuned. You get used to being in discomfort. But the mental aspect of pushing past the discomfort and actually getting to the other side is one of the greatest gifts I think that athletes have. Whether they’re ultra-endurance athletes or someone who sets a goal and goes out to walk with their dog daily, being able to set a goal and kind of push through some discomfort, the magic, and the gift is really on the other side of that.

Russell Benaroya: I did not plant this question with you in advance, but I’m curious. If you were to do a TED Talk if you were invited to do a TED Talk, what would it be on? What would you want to talk about, or share?

John Kormanik: I think, if I were to do a TED Talk, I would focus on the limitless potential that we have as human beings. And the ability to, as I said, get past this comfort to explore what’s out there. We all have limitless potential, and the only true thing that stands in our way is our self. That’s what I would talk about.

Russell Benaroya: The delta, the difference between our, our mind telling us that we’re at our max and to stop, and our true potential of how much further we can go is, in fact, quite wide. You see that so poignantly, certainly in these endurance events. And is our entrepreneurial pursuit any different than one grand endurance event?

John Kormanik: Yeah, it’s really not. Our life is just a grand endurance event, right? I was thinking a couple of weeks ago, and writing. I try to write every day in the morning. I’m a big fan of morning pages. I was thinking about the Nike commercial from the ‘90s. The focus of it was there’s no finish line. There’s just no finish line. We keep on moving forward. We keep on doing things that we never thought we could do before.

I’m in a place in my life, and Russell I would imagine that you probably are too, that if you look back 30 years, there’s no way that I pictured myself where I am today. It wasn’t possible. But it’s the doing the things day in and day out that gets us to where we want to go.

Russell Benaroya: Great segue to talking about where you are, and not only in your practice of law but launching this coaching business. Tell me more about that. Why you got into it as a coach and the problem you thought could be solved.

John Kormanik: Yeah. You mentioned at the top of the show, I was in healthcare before I went to law school, and then I went to law school. So, I’ve been a person who’s oriented to service my whole adult life. It has to do with the home that I grew up in. My mother was a nurse. My oldest sister is a special education teacher. All of the kids are in some sort of service space in our adult lives.

As my legal career matured, I opened my law practice back in 2006 with two friends. Dear, dear friends of mine. Still dear, dear friends, all these years later. After being in business and the struggles of the Great Recession, and COVID and all of the things, we’re still really dear friends and we thought that we could do it better.

So, we opened our law practice, and I was the one who focused on the business aspect of it. I love the practice of law. I love being in the courtroom. People will say that I’m good at it. I don’t know that I’m that good. I continue to work at my craft. It’s why they call it the practice of law, right? We keep on trying to get better every day.

But as I did that, and I learned things, I saw the community around me of solo and small law firm owners, whether it be in Boise, Idaho, where I’m geographically based, or for people throughout the country when I would go to seminars and talk with them about their businesses and things like that. I saw a true need, just based on my interactions with people. A true need to help, to serve in that part of the world.

So, lawyers deserve a lot of love. They really do. We are a profession that has the ability to impact people’s lives on the ground today, by the things that we do. There’s not a whole lot of folks that you can say that about. Lawyers don’t get a lot of love. I know what it’s like to have a legally trained mind. I know what it’s like to struggle with the difference between the legally trained mind and risk avoidance, and the entrepreneurial mind and embracing risk as an opportunity.

So, I wanted to truly just help my brothers and sisters in the solo and small law firm space. So I decided that I was going to formalize my mentorship and leadership and coaching by becoming a certified professional coach and focusing on a new group of people to serve as the next chapter in my life.

Russell Benaroya: Attorneys often get a bad rap for not being great at business. Why is that the case? Is it how they view their organization as not really being a business, but a federation of independent attorneys. What’s the mindset?

John Kormanik: Yeah. Well, I think there are two key things with that. One is, lawyers are trained, as I just mentioned, to be risk-averse, right?

I’ll never forget a conversation that I had with a business client of mine, it was probably 10 years ago. I was having this conversation with them about this opportunity that they had. I was talking with them in such risk-reducing language, that they finally turned to me and said, “John, if I followed your advice, I’d be out of business. I just couldn’t do it. I have to take risks as a business owner.” That really stuck with me, and it will stick with me for the rest of my life. So, that’s one aspect of it is we’re trained to be risk-averse.

The other aspect of it, I think you’re quite right. When we open a law firm, when somebody hangs their shingle out, we don’t think of it as a business. We think of it as a law firm, and that’s not the best way to think about it. Even if it’s a solo, a true solo, they have no desire to grow, that’s totally fine. That’s a wonderful space to be in. But unless you treat it like a business, it will be your life, as opposed to a portion of your life that allows you to live the way you want to.

So it’s both the mindset around risk and the mindset around not really understanding and realizing that you are an entrepreneur when you are a solo or small law firm, owner.

Russell Benaroya: What is the area of coaching where you find attorneys benefit the most from your guidance? Where do you get the most transformational influence?

John Kormanik: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. Again, as you said at the top of the show, most attorneys come to me wanting to grow their practice and get better at marketing and do things differently. So, we start with that.

When we get into the work, nine out of 10 of them really shine and make exponential growth. When we step back from the doing, and we explore what’s going on with them, their thinking, their mindset, their vision, their Simon Sinek, their why, that is where the magic happens.

Attorneys don’t necessarily realize that that’s going to be the case. So the transformation, the light switch that goes off in them when we’re doing the mindset work is transformational.

Russell Benaroya: What’s your framework for coaching? Do you come at your practice with an established rubric of how you engage clients?

John Kormanik: I have a general framework. The reason that I say it’s a general framework is because I’m very client-centric and client-focused. So, they get to drive the day-to-day agenda of our meetings. They bring something to the table every time. But my framework, I’m a vision-based, goal-driven practice.

I have attorneys. One of the first things I have them do is cast the someday vision for their life. I’m not a believer in work-life, because it’s all just our lives, right? It’s what we do. So, I have them cast a vision for where they want to be someday, and it’s got to be out there. It’s not, “Well, this is my five-year goal.” That’s not what it is. It is a “someday”.

For example, my vision is 13 years out. Thirteen years is no accident. That’s when I’m going to be 70 years old. So, I’ve cast my vision. I’ve written it down on my 70th birthday, what I anticipate my life looking like, from my business, from my family, from my friends, my geography, all of those things.

I have my clients do that, because that gives them a compass, a direction to go. Then we work on the goal-driven aspect of it. So if you want to be there, in your “someday”, then where do you reasonably have to be in five years to be able to make that possible?

So, we do that work and we do concrete work on, again, marketing. I have five clients who are very, very interested in growing their practice. I also have clients who are very, very interested in, for example, keeping a promise made to their family that they’re not going to work as hard this year as they did last year. They’ll be able to spend more time with them. We can do that. Lawyers can do that. It’s just figuring out how to get there.

The vision and setting the goals, chunking it down is the process that we go through. It’s the same thing as doing an Ironman, or an ultramarathon, right? You can’t complete it on your first step. But you can complete it if you take step after step after step.

Russell Benaroya: Do attorneys come to you with a “My house is on fire, I need help, there’s an urgency”? Or do they come to you not really knowing and you find yourself educating them and maybe evangelizing a little bit about the benefits of coaching that hadn’t been squarely on their radar?

John Kormanik: Yeah, it’s probably more of the latter.

Russell Benaroya: Okay.

John Kormanik: I say that simply because in the business world, in tech, and in the business world in general, executive and leadership coaching is embraced. If you read anything about Bill Gates, or Warren Buffett, or Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos, all of those men have coaches, and it’s the same for women. They all have them. They all understand the value of them.

The lawyers are a little bit behind in embracing that. I think that somewhat ties back to the fact that lawyers don’t really realize that they’re business people and they’re entrepreneurs. So they come to me, they’re like, “Listen, this is what’s going on. I’m really struggling. I don’t know how you can help me. But I know that you’re a small law firm owner. You’ve been doing it for a long time. You’re an attorney, so you know how I think. What can we do? How can you help me?”

Then I talk with them about the process that I use. It’s identifying the gap. It’s where they are today to where they want to be, and building a bridge, a nice solid bridge to get them to where they want to go.

Russell Benaroya: Great coaches hold their athletes accountable. What kind of accountability do you put in place with your clients?

John Kormanik: Again, I’ll analogize it to Serena Williams’s coach. Listen, Serena Williams knows how to play tennis. The woman can ball, right?

Russell Benaroya: Absolutely.

John Kormanik: But she has a coach because she gets in her own way. So, how do you hold someone accountable?

The way that I hold my lawyers accountable is to talk with them. If they say they’re going to do something, and they don’t do it, we talk about why that is. It can be as simple as, “Well, you know, the court calendar got crazy,” whatever. Fires happen. But if it happens continuously, if there’s something on the list that we create, and all my clients create their own action steps. If they’re stuck, I might give them suggestions that they can choose from, but I never tell someone, “You have to do this.”

They create their own action steps. So, I ask them, “Hey, listen, you thought that this was important. Do you still think it is?” “Yes, I do.” “Why do you think it is?” They’ll tell me why they think it is. Then I’ll be like, “Well, then why haven’t you done it?” We try and get under the surface of why they’re not taking forward action on it.

A lot of it oftentimes has to do with fear. Changing. Doing something differently than they’ve done before. So I understand all of that because I have been there. I know what it’s like to be afraid to say you want to do something, put it down in your planner and say, “This is what’s happening,” and then just not taking that first step.

Once we take the first step, we realize that there was nothing to be afraid of. It was just our brain saying, “Listen, the status quo was fine. Don’t change it. It’s uncomfortable.” So it’s helping them get through that way, and exploring with them what accountability they want.

The last thing on accountability, I will say is, because I’m a lawyer, because I’m trained, because I’m a business owner, all of those things, I think, allow me to at the end of the day, say essentially, “Come on, man. If you want to do something differently, let’s get it done.”

Russell Benaroya: What’s an experience you can share where you felt really good about the results that you were able to inspire in a client? What’s a scenario where you were like, “You know, that one didn’t go as well as I would have liked”? No judgement. Some things don’t work out exactly as you had planned.

John Kormanik: Yeah.

Russell Benaroya: I’m curious if you can juxtapose that.

John Kormanik: Yeah, I’m happy to. One moment in my coaching career that I’ll never forget, I had been working with a solo for about four weeks. We had done the foundational work. I do an attitudinal assessment called the Energy Leadership Index.

We had done the attitudinal assessment. We had begun to work on his vision. He had done his vision work. We were sitting one day, and he was talking about a networking meeting that he had had. He had gone to the networking meeting, and he did not share with the person he was with, one aspect of his practice.

He specifically told me that, and I said, “So, what is that about?” “Well, you know, I don’t do super complex cases in that area.” I said, “Okay, do you want to do super complex cases in that area?” He said, “No.” I said, “Okay. So, I’m still curious as to why you didn’t tell this other person at the networking meeting about this area of your practice,” and he said, “You know, I’m just not confident in it.” I said, “Okay, we can work on that if you want to.”

Then he stopped. It was at the very end of our meeting, and he stopped and he said, “You know what? That lack of confidence goes through everything that I do. Whether it’s that one area of law, or the ability to do something else at work or home, that lack of confidence goes through everything that I do.” He just stood there and was very, very quiet for about two minutes, which is a long time of silence.

Russell Benaroya: It is.

John Kormanik: He looked at me and said, “You know what, I never would have thought of that if we hadn’t been working together.” Listen, as a coach, that’s kind of the ultimate, right? So we began to work on his confidence. He came to me talking about business, doing those things, but we wound up working on how to build his confidence, create a routine for him. So, that was wonderful.

In a space that it hasn’t quite worked out, I will tell you that because of my evolution as a coach, that really doesn’t happen. Let me explain why, because people are going to say, “Oh, come on, John. Let’s be real.” Right? Let me tell you why.

Because I am client-centric and client-focused, I may have ideas in my head about where we should go. So in the past, if I’ve had interactions with clients or potential clients, and it hasn’t gone the way that I thought it should go, I would be disappointed. No matter how much we talk about not being tied to the outcome, listen, I’m a human being, right? Of course, of course.

But it clicked for me about a year ago now. It clicked for me. I was sitting with a client. She wanted to talk about something, and I really thought we should be talking about something else. I said to myself, I said, “Just let her drive. It’s okay. Just let her drive, John.” She drove, and we dealt with what she wanted to deal with for a few weeks. Then eventually, she came to me and she’s like, “You know what, now I’m ready to work on that stuff that you wanted to work on. Now I’m ready for that. Because now I recognize the importance of working on that other stuff.”

I was talking about creating an avatar client, and she’s like, “I just want to market.” I said, “Okay, we’ll get your marketing. We’ll get how you want to market, where your people are, where your referral sources are. We can work on all that work. That’s totally fine.” Then she came back to me, like, “I can’t market effectively unless I have my avatar, can I?” I said, “No, you really can’t.” It’s like, “Now I get it. Okay, let’s get to work on that.”

So it’s giving them the space to do the things that they feel are most important to them, and knowing that we’re eventually going to come to where everything is addressed. So when it hasn’t quite worked out, honestly, it’s been on me. Not ever on my client.

Russell Benaroya: At Stride, we call it context before content. If all we’re trying to do is solve the content problem without getting underneath what’s maybe driving some of those behaviors in content, we’ll never… There will always be more content. There will always be more problems, but it’s the context. So, I appreciate that.

I’ve done a bit of coaching myself as a coach. One of the things that I share with entrepreneurs is that I only want to work with them for 90 days. We can assess after 90 days if we want to continue together, but it’s really important for me that I don’t become an enabler for you. I’m projecting a little bit here, because when the roles were reversed, and I was a client, I found myself with a coach, feeling like, “Oh, no, I have a decision to make. I’m going to check with my coach before I make that decision.” So, I’m curious about how you think about the commitments that you make to the client and how long you want to work with them. What makes sense? How do you guide that?

John Kormanik: I will tell you that the minimum that I will work with a client is three months, 90 days. That’s the minimum. It’s because of what I just talked about, right? Attorneys, especially my people, I love them to death. I am one of them, and our default is action. “Let me take action, it’ll fix it. Let me take action, it’ll fix it.” And we keep on moving forward without just stopping and saying, “Okay. Really, what’s going on?”

So, three months is the minimum. I go up to six months. I do weekly calls with my folks. But after three months, it goes to every other week, because they don’t need me that much. We’ve done the foundational work. They’re working on bigger things on their end, and it takes them more time.

So, it’s either three months or six months. Anything less than three, I don’t think my clients get value, because they don’t get to where it is that they have the lightbulb moment. It’s the same across, I think, for the most part across the coaching industry is you have to work with someone for a while because there’s got to be a level of trust that’s earned. There’s got to be an openness that is realized, and it takes us a little bit of time as humans to get there.

Russell Benaroya: What have you learned about yourself as a coach? You see yourself a little bit in all of your clients. It’s a wonderful reflection back. I’m curious what you’ve taken away.

John Kormanik: I think the most important thing that I’ve taken away as a coach is my clients really, truly have inside them what it is that will lead them to their success, whatever their success is for them. Oftentimes, I forget that myself. That I have it inside of myself to get whatever success however I’ve defined success for me, however my wife and I have defined success for us. I have that inside myself.

My clients helped me realize that and keep that in mind every single day, and it’s the greatest gift that I get in return for connecting with people and walking beside them on their journey. It truly does pay exponential dividends for me.

Russell Benaroya: My business partner last week was responding to a comment I was making. He said to me, he said, “Hey, Russell, be the resolution that you seek. Be the resolution that you seek.” It is within me to drive the outcome that I want. Or maybe better said, it’s within me to drive the inputs that may result in the outcome that I want, but I control the inputs.

John Kormanik: That’s right. Put yourself in the place that will give you the highest opportunity for success, and see what happens.

Russell Benaroya: John, is there a question that you wish people asked you about your coaching business or your practice or your evolution as a professional human and a change of your career trajectory? Is there a question that you wish people asked that they don’t, but you wish they would? ,

John Kormanik: I’m a fairly open book. So, I think it would be nice for people to ask me, “You’re now into your third career as an adult. Why is that? Why are you changing?” The first one was over a decade. The second one was over two. If I live right, and I continue to exercise and do the things that I need to do the third one, heck, maybe over three decades. Who knows, right?

Russell Benaroya: Yeah. Yeah.

John Kormanik: So, “Why is that? What drives you to change?” I think, would be a question that would be very interesting, for many reasons. But one of them is to have me reflect on it, and really think about it and provide an answer to that question, because it’s not something that I’ve explored myself.

Russell Benaroya: Do you want to share what comes to mind for you, as you reflect on that question?

John Kormanik: Yeah, I’m happy to. As I was always talking about it in my brain. I was like, “Really, John, why? Why is that?” I think it has a lot to do with my core values. I’ve taken the time to sit and figure out what my core values are.

It’s no surprise that my number one core value is service. For a lot of people, especially lawyers, one of their core values is service. The second one is success. I think maybe part of why I change is like, “Okay, what’s the next success look like for me?” The third one is adventure. So my top three are service, success, and adventure, and I think a lot of it has to do with adventure.

It’s a great, big, beautiful, wide-open world out there and I just want to see what’s in it. I think that’s why the changes, right? When I went from healthcare to being an attorney, first of all, when I was in healthcare, I moved from New Jersey to Southern California, San Diego without knowing this soul. Packed all my belongings up into my car and went. That’s adventure.

When I decided to go to law school, I was married. I had a two-year-old. I had a mortgage. It may have seemed reckless to some to give up a good career in health care, but I’m like, “No, this is what I want to do. This is an adventure. Let’s see what happens.” We moved to Boise because of that and made a whole new group of friends.

Now with coaching, I’m, again, meeting and connecting with people all over the world. Not just all over the country. All over the world. It feeds my sense of adventure, I think. So that’s why the changes.

Russell Benaroya: Awesome. What came to mind for me, as you were talking, was a thirst for learning and a thirst for continuous improvement. That curiosity, that willingness to forage into the unknown and have the confidence that, “Hey, I’m going to figure this out,” open up that big, bold, beautiful world that you talked about. Awesome.

John Kormanik: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. So many people don’t take the first step, but taking the first step really opens the door. Just take that first step, and you’ll see what’s out there.

Russell Benaroya: If somebody wanted to take that first step and connect with you, do you have a website for your coaching business? How do people get in touch with you?

John Kormanik: So of course, I’m on LinkedIn. It’s JKormanik19.

Russell Benaroya: Yeah.

John Kormanik: I have a website. It’s just my name. It’s JohnRKormanik.com.

Russell Benaroya: Yeah.

John Kormanik: Those are the two places that you can find me most. I have, quite frankly, taking a hiatus from other social media, simply because I want to focus on the people that I’m serving, and not the drama in the world. So I’m on LinkedIn, and you can find me on my website.

Russell Benaroya: Awesome.

John Kormanik: Of course, you can email me. It’s John@JohnRKormanik.com. I’m happy to connect.

Russell Benaroya: Great. We’ll put that in the show notes. John, thank you so much for spending time with me today and for the Stride 2 Freedom podcast community. I was super excited to have you on.

I shared this with you the first time we spoke. I appreciate your customer segment focus, your desire to serve, and your willingness to explore a new trajectory in your life. And the way in which you bring that commitment, that passion, that curiosity to clients who themselves are trying to grow their business, and sometimes feel a little bit stuck. Both professionally and, as is very often the case, personally. Context before content. So, I really appreciate you being here with us.

John Kormanik: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Russell Benaroya: All right. Thanks so much, everybody. We’ll look forward to the next episode of the Stride 2 Freedom podcast. Have a great week. Bye.