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Great businesses are built on great relationships. This show explores how trust, teamwork, and human connection fuel growth in a world shaped by disruption and technology. Through candid, lighthearted conversations with visionary leaders and entrepreneurs, we uncover how relationships create companies that thrive financially and make a positive impact on society.
BBR Show Pre-Lauch Convo - Rick Petry
Matt Stone: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Building Business Relationship Show. I'm Matt Stone, and before we officially launch in 2026, date to be announced, we're exploring what matters most when it comes to relationships in business. These early episodes are about testing ideas, learning from guests. And hearing what you think belongs in the conversation. So listen in, share your thoughts and help shape what this show becomes. And joining us today is a fantastic friend and guest and colleague named Rick Petry. Rick is a former trial lawyer turned award-winning adjunct law professor and certified Executive and performance neuroscience Coach. Rick spent nearly two decades in the trenches of courtrooms and boardrooms watching one brilliant attorney after another sacrifice their health, their relationships, and happiness in pursuit of success and fulfillment in the practice of law. Now he's on a mission to [00:01:00] help lawyers build sustainable, high performing practices without sacrificing their health, relationships, or love for the law by translating cutting edge neuroscience and performance research into practical lawyer-specific tools they can use immediately. Rick is a man on a mission with a purpose, and that's why I asked him to join me for a quick conversation in this pre-launch period. Thank you so much, Rick.
Rick Petry: Yeah. Thanks Matt. Thanks for inviting me. I'm, uh, happy to be here. I look forward to having a really good conversation with you today.
Matt Stone: Fantastic. Well, let's just dive in. 'cause you know what the first question's gonna be. It's what I ask everybody in these, pre-launch episodes. Looking back, what's a business relationship that has had a major impact on your career and, and probably also your life?
Rick Petry: Yeah, for me, that's a easy question to answer. It was really the person who was the dean of the law school that I attended. I was a guy who the odds would say would never get into law [00:02:00] school. And just met this guy sort of in a fluke. Uh, and we struck up a conversation 30 years ago that's still going today.
His name's Ray Kraus and that was really a, a turning point in my life and in my career. So I'm really grateful that, uh, that I met this man. And that he, uh, in fact, Matt, this, this will show you how cool the relationship was. When I decided I was going to get married, I asked him to be the officiant for the wedding.
He said, Rick, I'm not a pastor. I know I figured that out though. There's another way we can do it. And, and he said yes. So when I say he was a really, uh, important part of my life and career, that's part of the reason.
Matt Stone: You met Ray as a student, or did you meet him when you were applying?
Rick Petry: Yeah, I was still an undergrad student, what they would call in those days, a non-traditional student. I started college, stopped, and then went back and I was participating in a mock trial program, the [00:03:00] American Mock Trial Association. And we had a pretty good team and we wound up in St. Paul for the national competition. We won an award and the competition's in Minnesota in March or so, and as sometimes happens, it snowed on the day we were supposed to go back. So we ended up having to stay an extra day. My teammate said, oh, we're gonna go to the Mall of America. I don't want to do that.
I've already been there, done that, but I'm gonna go back over and see if I can talk to that guy that gave us the awards yesterday, who happened to be the dean. So I went over to the law school unannounced, no appointment, nothing, and said, Hey, I'm just wondering if I might be able to talk to this guy for a few minutes.
I'm an aspiring law student and maybe he can help me. And uh, we had a conversation that lasted for about 90 minutes, and at the end of it, he said you're exactly the kind of person we'd love to have at our law school. And that's how it all began.
Matt Stone: Wow. How did you know there was a real connection there? Was it an energy? Was it, [00:04:00] what was the moment when you realized, wow, this guy really not only sees me, but appreciates me?
Rick Petry: Yeah, good question. It, it started with that initial conversation and then once I got into school, he was the person that took some interest in me. For example, we go through the first semester, we get to around Thanksgiving and he reached out and said, Hey, I know you don't know anybody in town. Do you have a place to go for Thanksgiving?
I said, no, not really. He said, well, why don't you come over to our house, and join our family? And I thought, wow, that's pretty special, like, just from the beginning for him to say to a guy like me, little little guy from Spokane, Washington. You're the kind of person that we would like to have at our law school.
No one had ever said anything like that to me, and then to invite me into his home, to join his family for Thanksgiving, you know, it was those kinds of things. And then it got even better because his mother was still living at the time. She's probably close to, [00:05:00] in her late seventies, maybe early eighties.
And I'd sit down by her feet and she'd say, why does a young guy like you wanna sit by a old lady like me? I said, I have a hunch that you know some things that I don't, and I'm, I'm hoping that maybe you would just share some of that with me. And she did. So those were the kinds of things that, you know, that I knew that here's a guy, he was a former lobbyist at the national level, now a law school dean, who cared enough about me to make sure that I had the place to go on a holiday.
That just meant the world to me.
Matt Stone: Wow. How has that relationship kind of shown up in your life directly and or indirectly throughout the years?
Rick Petry: Yeah, so I, I used him as a model for the way I wanted to live my life, especially as a professional. And so all these years later, in fact, I told him, you know, I, I, you handed me the baton and now I'm running with it. So I give back to others. Uh, whether it's college [00:06:00] students that aspire to go to law school, whether it's law students who are trying to find their way, and Matt, I'll be honest with you, at first, it seemed to be totally counterintuitive, right?
'Cause the traditional thinking is if you're gonna accomplish anything, you gotta do all these things for yourself and don't worry about other people. Well what I found is that I got more joy from helping these other people the same way that Ray helped me than almost anything else I had done in my life.
And so that's just the way that it plays out, and it's, it's just so fulfilling, so rewarding. It's a deep purpose and I just love it.
Matt Stone: I mean, the kindness, the, the presence, the generosity of that man, uh, has now borne itself out through you to how many people and how many people. Did he do that for, I mean, I, I can only imagine, um, how many people he's touched indirectly, you know, let alone directly, but indirectly through the people like you that he took an interest in.
Rick Petry: Oh yeah, it's gotta be well into the [00:07:00] thousands. It is a funny thing because you, you, you may not know directly the impact, like I have a friend, she says, you never touch someone so lightly that you don't leave a trace. And so the people that you know about, like Ray knows about me 'cause I make sure, I tell him all the time, but he doesn't necessarily know about all the people's lives that I've touched.
There's one that we're, we're sort of co-mentor now, uh, young man. He started on about the same spot I did. He was aspiring to go to law school. He was a college football player, almost made it to the NFL, but not quite. Played a little bit in Italy and then wound up here trying to go to law school and we clicked and now he's kind of become like a son to me.
Struggled a little bit at the beginning, but with a lot of love and some little extra support, he graduated, passed the bar, went right outta law school. Matt, you'll appreciate this. Went right outta law school into one of the largest medical manufacturing companies in the world, as in-house [00:08:00] counsel, and now he works for an NFL team.
So, you know, it's amazing what these relationships can do for people.
Matt Stone: It is. It is unbelievable, and especially when people can see you in an even better light than you can see yourself. They can see your potential beyond what your own limited view is.
Rick Petry: Yeah. Yeah,
Matt Stone: We can't be our fullest selves without these people who come into our lives and, and see us and see what we can be, what we
already are, and what we can be.
It's, it's incredible.
Rick Petry: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing too, you know, and I see this in the practice of law, I see it in law school, I see it in business, is that we are so driven by these quote unquote KPIs, you know, hardcore business metrics, that we lose sight of the fact that humans are social beings and we need to have other people in our lives in order for us to perform at our best.
And sometimes that just doesn't happen. It just, it, you know, people. Push that aside. So [00:09:00] that's, uh, you know, that's, that's, I've learned that throughout my life and so that's a part of the reason why I think relationships are so important to
Matt Stone: Yeah, absolutely. Let's land the plane When it comes to lawyering and relationships. Help us understand, you think of a lawyer as almost like a, a samurai in some ways, you know, but also very interdependent. I mean, what role do good relationships play in being an effective, healthy lawyer?
Rick Petry: I think it's absolutely critical. I think it's, it's important as a fundamental human need to have relationships. Um, you know, people like Maslow and, and others would call them deficiency needs. If you don't have those needs met, you can forget about doing the other things, sort of higher level things ' cause you'll get pulled back down into that.
On top of that. You know, if you're gonna grow what they call a book of business, you're gonna have a number of clients. That's all driven by relationships. Some people would say it's driven by your, your lawyering skills and your ability to win [00:10:00] cases. Yeah, that matters too. But if you don't have relationships, you're not gonna get warm handoffs, you're not gonna get referrals, you're not gonna have all those things.
You're not gonna have team members, staff people, others that are going to help you, accomplish the things that you need to accomplish. So it's critically important. And one of the problems that I see is that people, again, forget about this fact that these are human beings doing things, practicing law, running businesses, whatever the case might be.
And when they don't have their needs met and they feel like there's a stigma, they can't talk about it, then they suffer in isolation.
Matt Stone: Yeah, absolutely. I, I remember early on when I started lawyering, some of the good relationships I formed were opposing counsel. You know?
Rick Petry: Yeah. And those are the great relationships, right?
Matt Stone: I know. Yeah.
Rick Petry: to get things done when you
Matt Stone: Right.
Rick Petry: over every doggone thing.
Matt Stone: Abs. Absolutely. You know, if you can work it out, you know,
it's also better for your [00:11:00] client, um, as long as you remain steadfastly a zealous advocate for your client, but also, have a good relationship with opposing counsel and of course, judges and all the staff around the judges.
Right? Not treating them like they're lesser than or somehow not important.
Like sometimes they're more important than anybody.
Right?
Rick Petry: That's who helps make things get done on the
Matt Stone: Yeah,
Rick Petry: Yeah,
Matt Stone: Yeah. You want your message to get to the judge. You might, might want, might not want to have an enemy there in the clerk's office.
Yeah.
Rick Petry: Yeah, I remember, you know, early in my career, I worked at a great big law firm and in those days they would make us learn how to dictate. And so you would have these little micro cassettes, and we had a word processing department, so at the end of the day, you'd drop it off and they had ladies down there that work all night.
If you had relationships with them, you'd get there the next morning. All your stuff would be ready. It would be pristine, proofread, ready to go if you didn't have good relationships with them, [00:12:00] well yeah, we're working on it. We, we haven't quite got to it yet, but just bear with us.
Matt Stone: Bottom of the pile.
Rick Petry: Ah, how about that
Matt Stone: Oh, I gotta go to lunch. Uh, so, so true, Rick. You've got tons of experience lawyering and, and now professing. I know you're working on a book. I won't tell anyone. You're, uh, helping so many people. So you've got a great perspective on this. What is it that we're not talking about publicly enough in terms of relationships that you think, what should be in the conversation and, and I'll just add onto that, what should we cover in this show that even if it's controversial, that we really need to cover? What kind of conversations should we be having? I guess that's what the question is.
Rick Petry: Yeah, I think it's the conversations that aren't being had, as you said, and what I mean by that, in today's world, in today's political [00:13:00] environment, if someone doesn't see things the way that you see it or that I see it or that somebody else sees it. So quickly, we often say, well, if you don't agree with me, I hate you.
They're like, what? What? Wait a minute. How, how do we go from a simple disagreement about whatever it might be to I hate you, and that you're, you know, you're othered, you're all these labels that people put on each other. Uh, that's not sustainable. That's simply not sustainable. Sometimes I think people, they take those positions thinking that, okay, if I stay with this long enough, I'm gonna get things my way.
And you might, but again, going back to where we started, you might for a little while, but you still need other people. We live in a global economy, everything is connected. We have this thing called the Internet and you can connect with people all over the world. And like it or not, we are all connected.
There's no getting around that. That's the world that we live [00:14:00] in. And so we need to start talking about how do we, how do we close these divisions? How do we find ways forward that work for everyone? And, and it's usually, you know, this from lawyering. It's not always gonna be the case that both sides walk away saying, I won.
But if we can get to a place where both sides say, you know what? This is workable. I, I can do this. That's our pathway forward. That's the pathway forward for humanity. That's the pathway forward for our country and for our world.
Matt Stone: Yeah, well put. We really need to be able to live with one another and accept that we have disagreements and, and connect at a human level and.
Rick Petry: yeah. Yeah,
Matt Stone: So often.
Rick Petry: don't see things
Matt Stone: Right.
Rick Petry: think it's beautiful. I think having all those various perspectives are the things that help us find better pathways forward. Right? We have lots of things to consider, but just to say, well, you know, you see it this way, I see it another way.
Therefore, I hate you. That doesn't get us very far.
Matt Stone: And actually in a [00:15:00] way, our legal system at its best is built on a pillar of an adversarial system that was meant to bring out the best because of the adversarial nature of it. That because you've got opposition, you're going to pressure test it from all sides. It doesn't always work out well, okay, we don't have rose colored glasses here, but ideally when we can have our disagreements in the open and bring in facts that we can agree on, and then argue about the meaning of those facts or how the law might apply to those facts, instead of arguing about whether or not it's a fact at all,
Rick Petry: Yeah.
Matt Stone: uh, or denying that it's a fact, you know, then.
Rick Petry: Yeah,
Matt Stone: To me, my legal education, experience plays into seeing our current moment through that lens.
Rick Petry: Yeah. And I think too, Matt, that you know, in today's world where so many people, especially some of the younger people, get their news via social media. Well, you don't know if that's accurate or if it's not accurate, and if you just, you know, grab onto [00:16:00] that as the truth, it's so easy to be misled and there are people out there that will definitely take advantage of that.
They will mislead people on purpose. Um, you know, throw sand in your face gets you all mixed up and confused. And always, if you look underneath that, there's a different agenda. They're trying to keep you distracted for a variety of reasons, but underneath there they've got some agenda that is going to benefit them, and if you use some sort of critical thinking, you can get past a lot of that. But a lot of times people don't take the time or they don't have the skills to do that. So that's another thing that I think would be very beneficial.
Matt Stone: You might recall from law school if you, your law school was like mine. You know, we said bias is always relevant,
Rick Petry: Absolutely.
Matt Stone: And the bias of a social media platform where their incent, I would say bias and monetary, uh, incentive
Rick Petry: Yeah.
Matt Stone: is right there with [00:17:00] it. Right.
So
Rick Petry: In a Capitalist society, follow the money.
Matt Stone: follow. Yeah.
Rick Petry: yeah, it'll, it'll lead you to what's really going on very frequently.
Matt Stone: Follow the money.
Yeah.
They gotta keep your eyeballs on the platform. So they do whatever they can do to keep you on it and it may
not be healthy for you or anyone
else. yeah.
Rick Petry: a whole nother thing. Getting people addicted to dopamine and all these things. That's a, yeah, that's another conversation for a different day.
Matt Stone: You got that right.
You got that right.
Alright, one final quick rapid fire question, which is, you know a little bit about the show and what we're doing and uh, we're planning something that's entertaining, not just, not just your standard podcast. This is a show. Right. But I wanna know, Rick, from what you know already from the little tease I've given you behind the scenes and here, what excites you most about the launch of this show next year?
Rick Petry: Frankly, simply that it's happening, man. I'm really happy for you, that you're bringing this show to the [00:18:00] world and encouraging people to have these kinds of conversations that, that usually aren't had. I mean, I, I think that's super exciting. I think that the more we have these kind of conversations, especially in the business context, and the more people understand how people function, like we're learning a lot from the field of neuroscience, positive psychology, all these places that, you know, small pockets of a geek on it, but, many people just aren't aware of it. So I think that's super exciting. You can bring that type of stuff to the show. I think it would be just outta sight. It would have a geek like me addicted. I'd be watching it every time.
Matt Stone: I want you more than addicted. I want you on the panel discussions when we have that.
Rick Petry: Oh, I'd be honored to do
Matt Stone: Yeah?
All right. For our hot topic segments and
you better bring it buddy. You better. I know you
will. You gotta bring the fire.
Rick Petry: go, baby. Let's go.
Matt Stone: Alright Rick, thank you so much. And I want to thank all of our listeners and watchers because we are on YouTube and this is a video based show, so please do feel free to watch this thing [00:19:00] as well. Thank you for listening and watching to the Building Business Relationship Show, this pre-launch episode, and this phase is all about discovery. So if something sparked your interest, I'd love to hear from you, share your thoughts, ideas, or guest suggestions, and help us shape the conversations that come, and of course, subscribe so you'll be the very first to know when we officially launch Rick. Thanks again.
Rick Petry: Thank you, Matt.
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