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What about a simple but essential asset that can skyrocket your firm's growth?! In this podcast episode, Tyson discusses the concept of the daily huddle and its benefits for law firms. 

He shares the three main components of an effective daily huddle: "What's up," "Daily metrics," and "Roadblocks." Emphasizing the importance of keeping the huddles brief, consistent, and action-oriented. Daily huddles can have a transformative impact on firms, regardless of their size. 

Try this quick connection point meeting idea, to save your firm a bunch of time. 

Episode Highlights:

  • 00:22 Implementing a daily huddle in law firms for effective communication and alignment
  • 02:50 The three main components of an effective huddle: what's up, daily metrics, and roadblocks
  • 04:29 Tips for making daily huddles efficient and productive, emphasizing the importance of keeping it brief, consistent, and action-oriented

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Resources:

Transcripts: Huddle Up: Mastering Effective Team Meetings

Speaker 1 (00:00:01) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the Maximum lawyer Podcast. Podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Metrics. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Tyson Mutrux (00:00:22) - Hey, everybody, It's Tyson again. And in today's quick episode, I'm going to be discussing an essential aspect that can skyrocket your firm's growth. Today, we're going to zero in on a powerful tool that's compact yet mighty. And we're talking about the daily huddle. Before I do get into that, if you do have any questions on anything that you want me to cover, if you have a topic you want me to cover, shoot me a text and I'll try to cover it on the Saturday show if I can get to it. Text me at (314) 501-9260. And if it's something I can cover, I'll do it. But what exactly is a daily huddle? Well, it's a concept from Vernon. Really good book. If you have not read it, definitely read it. Scaling up.

Tyson Mutrux (00:01:07) - And it's all about fast focused communication. You can think of it as a quick check in a touchpoint to align the team for the day's work. Some people call them stand up meetings, I think is a phrase that I've heard, but it's a really effective tool. You know, it was kind of funny because just the other day a friend of mine, Vernon Pacelli, he's an attorney that's been practicing law for, I think, four decades at this point. He's of counsel with our firm. And since he's of counsel, he doesn't participate in our huddles on a daily basis. But he was in the office the other day and he overheard the huddle. It was really kind of funny. He's like, Man, Tyson, this is just amazing. It's just so cool how you all work together and how you'll communicate. It was kind of funny because like, you know, back in the day, like we just never did things like that. And he's worked in big firms, he's worked in small firms.

Tyson Mutrux (00:01:55) - But it was a really cool perspective to hear him talking about it. But it is something that I will tell you. We didn't do early on, but it is something that is really, really important to our firm that can really be a game changer for many law firms. I highly recommend them. They enhance communication. They keep everyone aligned with with the vision of the firm, the goals of the firm, and they keep nudging you forward every single day so that your daily and your weekly and your quarterly and your yearly goals are all aligned and you keep moving them forward so that you're accomplishing those goals. So let's start a little bit about what an effective huddle would look like in Vernon's book and scaling up. He does talk about that. There's really three main components and I'm gonna talk about what we do. We do it slightly different, but there's three main components in there. They talk about what's up daily metrics and roadblocks and you know what's up is a quick overview of each team members main focus for the day.

Tyson Mutrux (00:02:50) - Daily metrics. Most people know what that is. That allows you to keep a pulse on your firm's key numbers. And we focus more on the quarterly KPI as opposed to like that one key number as opposed to everyone's metrics. We don't go into everyone's metrics, but we do focus on the one big one. And then the last part is roadblocks, and that's where team members, they fly any potential issues or bottlenecks. The way we do it is we keep it pretty simple. A win from yesterday. Okay. So it's similar to what they do because he talks about celebrating your wins. We do a win from yesterday, focus for the day and then at the end of after everyone's shared their win for the day from yesterday and then the focus for the day, we then get into stocks, which is a really powerful part where and this is for people that are resistant to doing the daily huddles or the stand up meetings. This is the part where it'll probably change your mind because those stocks, that's what's going to save you a bunch of time.

Tyson Mutrux (00:03:44) - It's going to save you a bunch of pain too, because you're able to very quickly identify things that need to be addressed fairly quickly. And you can do it right. Then you don't have to do, you know, phone calls back and forth, you know, do messages back and forth. It's addressed right there in the meeting, done over with. It's a really effective tool. Now, what are some ways that we can make sure that these daily huddles are efficient and productive? Because I think that's a complaint I get a lot from a lot of people is, well, they're concerned with, oh, you know, this is time out of my day, you know, and this is I don't have time to do it. You can do these in 10 to 15 minutes. That's what they're designed to be. You want to make sure you keep this thing brief. So I'll give you some tips that we use that I think are really gonna help you out. So keep it brief. The idea is to keep this thing 10 to 15 minutes.

Tyson Mutrux (00:04:29) - If you go over that, you're doing it probably wrong. These things should be boom, boom, boom. There should not be a lot of side discussion. You need to get it knocked out and that way people can get on with their days. But any longer, if you do go longer, you risk turning it into a full blown meeting, which is not the point, right? You want this to be a huddle and that's it. Consistency is another part of this. You're going to make sure that you're doing this at the exact same time every single day. Okay. That is really, really important. You got to create that rhythm. Bern. Harnish talks a lot about creating rhythms and you got to have a meeting rhythm, so you got to create that rhythm. You have that routine so that your team can count on it and they know when to show up and they know that you're going to show up every single day. The next thing is participation. These are not huddles where you just show up, little meetings where you show up and one person talks.

Tyson Mutrux (00:05:18) - This is something where everyone participates. It's absolutely crucial. Every single team member needs to have the opportunity, not only the opportunity they need to participate and they need to share. It's not something where they just have the opportunity they need to actually share. That's why going through those wins from the day before. And then also what your focus is for the day really important because they not only have the opportunity to talk, but they actually they do talk. They're forced to talk in a way in a good way, though. The next thing is keep it action oriented. All right. So the goal of a huddle is to understand what needs to be done and identify any obstacles. Okay. It's not the place for any lengthy conversations or discussions. If a conversation veers off, it's really important that you or whoever is running the meeting steps in, guides it back on, on track, and then says, Hey, this sounds like this is going to be something that takes a little bit longer once you discuss it after the meeting.

Tyson Mutrux (00:06:11) - Okay. Very, very easy, which leads to the next part. You want to make sure you have a strong leader that is running the huddles and it doesn't have to be you. Okay? It's just got to be someone that is a strong leader. And this is going to go a really long way of making sure that you're keeping the conversation moving and that you're keeping it on track. All right. So the next thing is focus on today. Okay. You're going to want to make sure you're focusing on today or at most that week. But the huddle is for discussing what's happening today. You're going to want to make sure that you're saving those discussions about long term projects or strategic goals for longer weekly or monthly meetings. Okay. Because again, you're creating those rhythms, so your team should be having other meetings as well. That way they're on track. So each of your firms are going to have separate teams or if you're a smaller one, maybe it's just you and someone else. These are still extremely effective for smaller teams.

Tyson Mutrux (00:07:01) - And when you implement these daily huddles, when they're implemented effectively, they can work wonders on your firm. I've seen firms become more connected, more responsive and more proactive by integrating these daily huddles in their routine. And as a result, what happens is they see massive, massive growth. I can't overstate this probably because this is how powerful it is. These are extremely powerful at growing your firm and really managing cases anyway. So if it's just you and an assistant and you've got five cases. Okay, great. Talk about those cases. That's fine. If you want to stay at a small firm, these are still going to be effective even if you're a smaller firm. But they're going to be really, really powerful as you start to scale your firm. All right. So hopefully you're going to embrace the power of the daily huddle. It's a very small investment of time that will pay big dividends in communication and aligning your team and making sure that everyone's productive. As always, though, I want to remember that it's about taking that first step.

Tyson Mutrux (00:08:01) - It may not be perfect. When you first started out, you might go along. That's okay, you might go short. It's fine, but it's better than standing still. So make sure that you give daily huddles a try even if you're resistant to it. And watch how they can transform your team's day. I promise you it's going to be effective. Here's to creating a powerful daily rhythm and unlocking the full potential of your law firm. Remember to check out next week's episode where I'm going to be discussing executive assistance. It's the executive assistant advantage amplifying your effectiveness and efficiency. Till then, remember, imperfect action will always beat perfect inaction. Take care.

Speaker 3 (00:08:42) - Are you ready to unlock your full growth potential, both professionally and personally? The Guild Maximum Lawyers Exclusive Community of Legal Entrepreneurs invites you to our upcoming in-person mastermind event in Miami, Florida. There's something truly extraordinary about the breakthroughs that occur when you're physically present working through your business and mindset challenges in real time. By attending our Mastermind, you'll engage in deep discussions, share experiences, and receive expert guidance from our coaches and fellow law firm owners who understand the unique challenges and opportunities within the legal industry.

Speaker 3 (00:09:16) - This collaborative atmosphere fuels creativity, accelerates problem solving, and stimulates innovative thinking. Investing in your personal and professional development through attending an in-person mastermind is an investment in yourself and in your future. The breakthroughs, knowledge and strategies you'll acquire are priceless assets that can transform your practice and propel you towards your goals. Visit max law events.com today to join the guild. Reserve your spot and secure your ticket at the best possible price.

Speaker 1 (00:09:45) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your host and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.


Let’s talk about what NOT to do when building your law firm because there are impactful lessons that can be learnt from failures, even more so than from sharing all the wins. That’s what MaxLawCon22 presenter Ty Shepherd who shares how to run your company with the wisdom of being prepared and the lessons learned from failures that he's seen while running his corporate bankruptcy firm.

Some lessons that Ty shares:

  • Learn from recessions 
  • Have a strong team to avoid blind spots
  • Warns against excessive debt accumulation 
  • Embrace failure as a learning opportunity

Ty firmly believes that failures are not the end, but rather opportunities for learning and growth. It’s important to share your mistakes and learn and grow from each other. 

Episode Highlights:

  • 02:02 Lessons learned from clients about how recessions can be opportunities for strong firms to gain market share
  • 04:41 When working well with team goes sideways
  • 06:27 Debt in service-based businesses
  • 09:16 Bankruptcy and failure can be opportunities for growth and learning
  • 11:37 Top tip for finances and the business owner

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Ty:

Resources:

Transcripts: Running a Company Ain’t Always Fun with Ty Shepherd

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - But in today's episode we're sharing a presentation from Max Lakhan 2022. Keep listening to hear Tai Shepherd as we share his talk. Running a company Ain't Always Fun Business Lessons from a Corporate Bankruptcy Practice. You can also head to the maximum Lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Let's get to it.

Speaker 2 (00:00:20) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the Maximum lawyer podcast. Podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Metrics. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Ty Shepherd (00:00:41) - Thank you all for coming here. And it's been a great week so far. You know, we have learned so much from so many speakers about how to overcome triumphs, about successes, about working through problems. And I just thought now that we're on Friday afternoon, we should take things down a notch. And I just want to talk to you about failure. So I'm dying. So I've done corporate bankruptcy for about ten years now, and in my practice it's focused on largely service businesses, a lot like law firms and in the 2 to $10 million of debt range.

Ty Shepherd (00:01:12) - So we're talking 3 to 15 in revenue, generally speaking. And with these clients, we've seen a lot of businesses that were led by charismatic leaders that build a business from nothing. It goes up and it grows and then something happens and it goes way down. And so through this, I feel like I have some perspective on what not to do. So hopefully let's talk about what not to do. So I have a theory about cases or theory about work we love. The stories on television Shows are about how I built this business, how I grew this. There's so many success stories out there, but we really don't talk about failure. But I don't think you really learn a lot from learning about successes. Steve Jobs might be great and have some quotes. He didn't have what to tell me, but when people talk about the things that go wrong in their business, the errors and issues, I think those have good lessons because you can look back and then reflect and think about what you did wrong.

Ty Shepherd (00:02:02) - So I really like this quote from Von Bismarck Only a fool learns from his own mistake. The wise man has been a mistakes of others. So what I wanted to do is give three lessons that I've learned from my clients and hopefully impart them for to help our practices out. First, key takeaway is that you will hear talks, conferences, television will talk about a coming recession. Is a recession? I don't know. Nobody knows. They've had them before. They've happened again. But the thing that I've seen coming out of the last recession coming into now is that recessions are opportunities. They are not distractions. It is easy to sell and easy to grow in a growing market, wider, more comfortable, more customers available, more opportunities. But when things contract, it's always the businesses that are best set up eat market share while the marginal players shrink. I think we've all seen this with Covid. Remember the lawyers who maybe thought this is going to be like 3 or 4 weeks, I'm going to shut down my practice and I'm going to write a book, take some time off.

Ty Shepherd (00:03:00) - Where are they now versus the people who double down and put effort in to growing their businesses? I have a client that reminds me of this principle, specifically this guy, Mike, in some ways would be what a lot of people would aspire to. He started a software business in his 20s, sold it to a national defense contractor, took those funds, rolled it over to residential, commercial real estate throughout the southeast, grew and grew and grew. He had over 1000 residential properties slowly living off of it. Till last recession, rates started to change. His lenders called his notes and we came in and we started working with him. Should have been an easy process of trying to renegotiate some of these contracts. The problem is, once we started getting in and doing due diligence, it wasn't just the debts that were the problem. Mike had a lot of problems in his business. Most of all, he did not trust his managers of his individual properties, didn't give them any authority to act. He kept all the notes himself, all the documents himself.

Ty Shepherd (00:03:53) - And despite being a software engineer, he had paper records. So with Mike's case, when we go to the lenders and try to present packages, it wasn't good. It was they're like, Who is this guy? We need to liquidate parts of this portfolio. We had to fire, sell some of his properties not because of the recession, but because Mike wasn't prepared for it. So now this Buffett quotes kind of fun is it's only when the tide goes out we discover who's been swimming naked. Mike was naked the whole time and just didn't know it. So again, first lesson to take from this is that recessions are opportunities. They strengthen strong firms and kill the weak. Second lesson that I've taken from these clients is that we all love growth. You're not here if you're not thinking about growth and opportunities. And there are so many books. Again, the whole purpose, you can walk around this conference, people talk about traction fractions, great fractions, a little bit of a dream because everyone wants to be the visionary.

Ty Shepherd (00:04:41) - No one wants to be the implementer. And that's a problem because like Tyson talked about earlier, our ideas kind of ain't shit without the team behind us to put them into action. I have one client in particular that I thought of who was a brilliant strategic mind. This guy Peter, had worked in management consulting. You can support for big brands. He built businesses and decided he wanted to do something on his own. His wife was a physician. They started their own practice with one doctor, one staff. The two of them grew it to two doctors, grew up for doctors, grew to eight. Doctors and support staff got it to five locations. The problem, though, with this guy was that he was a smart person. He was a jerk. He couldn't work with his people. He was demanding he would not do well with staff at all when it was just them in one location and he had his wife to kind of be this boundary between the other staff and him. It was okay.

Ty Shepherd (00:05:34) - She could smooth stuff over. However, once they grew a little bit and they got to four locations that she could not float to all those locations, it created a problem. Specifically, they had a charismatic doctor who didn't want to take this guy's shit anyone and left and took the client was with them, the patients, but left the debts and the locations. It was bad. They lost some of their locations and things could have been different because again, as Richard Feynman, we think first principles. You have to remember we are our own worst enemies. We are our own biggest advocates and critics, but we cannot see our own blind spots. So the lesson that I want to impart and thing to remember is that ideas are great. Take them, run with them, work with them. But at the same time, our ideas are somewhat limiting. We need a team behind us and we have to focus on that team and supporting that team. The third thing that I think is sometimes overlooked at a conference like this is that we are service based businesses.

Ty Shepherd (00:06:27) - We are in a position where we really don't necessarily rely on debt. So because we grow through basic relationships and people and leveraging people, the concept of debt is something that's just not talked about a lot. And so instead people default to an idea of like consumer debt. But the debt for your business and the debt on your car are not the same thing. Business. That's just fine. It's not a doesn't say anything other than it is an opportunity. But that's the thing to take away as well, is to remember that debt. It's like gasoline. It can grow your business. Or if there are problems, it can implode it. But here is like a joke that like judges, you like a mediator. You used to say a lot is how do you get to build a small fortune in real estate by starting with a large one? Because every developer has been through things like this before. And I had a client named Max who very successful is actually a lawyer because a lawyer had built his firm up and they had a great cash flow and he eventually bought a yacht in the Caribbean chartered jet.

Ty Shepherd (00:07:23) - And they are part pleasure, but they were also used as rental charters. Well, again, a unforeseen circumstance happened and hurricane in the Caribbean destroyed the yacht. So it wasn't in service and we were stuck with the yacht being in arbitration in Bermuda. And the insurance carrier rightly said, we'll wait you out. And they were like, we're going to drag this out. It happens, too. And the charter jet suddenly isn't as useful as it had been. And he had about $3.5 million of debt to service, and the firm couldn't keep up with it. So eventually it imploded. The insurance company were right there and they prevailed. And, well, we'd all went to seven and collapsed. His business was fine, but really he was someone who took on too much debt and frankly, too much vanity debt for the lifestyle and couldn't really keep up with it.

Speaker 1 (00:08:15) - Are you ready to unlock your full growth potential, both professionally and personally? The Guild Maximum Lawyers Exclusive Community of Legal Entrepreneurs invites you to our upcoming in-person mastermind event in Miami, Florida.

Speaker 1 (00:08:27) - There's something truly extraordinary about the breakthroughs that occur when you're physically present, working through your business and mindset challenges in real time. By attending our Mastermind, you'll engage in deep discussions, share experiences, and receive expert guidance from our coaches and fellow law firm owners who understand the unique challenges and opportunities within the legal industry. This collaborative atmosphere fuels creativity, accelerates problem solving, and stimulates innovative thinking. Investing in your personal and professional development through attending an in-person mastermind is an investment in yourself and in your future. The breakthroughs, knowledge and strategies you'll acquire are priceless assets that can transform your practice and propel you towards your goals. Visit max law events today to join the Guild. Reserve your spot and secure your ticket at the best possible price.

Ty Shepherd (00:09:16) - So again, think of that using a business context. I really think of it is it is rocket fuel. You can supercharge your business or it can really burn the whole thing down of an otherwise good, strong business. So now taking these three lessons together and sharing them with all of these people and something that has always been of interest to me is I think people are terrified by the idea of bankruptcy and the idea of failure.

Ty Shepherd (00:09:37) - However, each of these people, each of these lessons, they're all doing fine right now. They went through some tough times. We had to fight a war of attrition by developers still doing well with about a third of his properties. His lifestyle is just fine. The medical practice has grown again with a new management team in practice and my guys now just in a role that he won't piss everyone off and. Finally, the P.I. lawyer. She got funding and he's back at it. So the thing to take away and thing to remember is that we do not have the problems of capital intensive businesses like real estate developers. We have a monopoly granted to us by the state to practice law and to get monopolistic pricing relative to other industries. So the lesson that I take away and always want to interpret to put forward is like even if we blow up, even if things go bad, it's all right. We can get back on our feet. You can always get a job. So coming back to the Bismark quote, the key takeaway that I'd like to give all of you for coming out of this talk is that I see opportunities like this, conferences like this, as such an opportunity to meet people and to discuss and to share ideas.

Ty Shepherd (00:10:46) - But I would implore you focus not necessarily on the successes, but think about the mistakes. Think about your mistakes. You talk to people about their mistakes. I had to fire my mentor when I took over the law firm and I should have done it two years earlier because he was stealing from us. But I couldn't do it as a self-report to the bar. I would never have a partner again. And so that's a personal decision. But it's something that, at least for me, I had to learn the hard way how to deal with that. So coming out of this, I want to thank you all for coming and I hope you all will use this opportunity the remainder of the day today to meet, talk, discuss, share your mistakes, and hopefully learn and grow from each other. Thank you.

Speaker 4 (00:11:27) - Does anyone have any questions for Ty? We have a little more time left.

Speaker 2 (00:11:31) - If you want to.

Speaker 4 (00:11:32) - Share. What is one mistake that you made? We can learn from?

Ty Shepherd (00:11:37) - All right.

Ty Shepherd (00:11:37) - So what's one lesson that I've learned and I can share? So in addition to this, some other things that I'd say and maybe a little more practical, applicable, you know, we get pushed so hard in this practice sometimes to delegate and to get out of the finances. But something that I've seen that is endemic of business is theft. Whoever's doing your accounts payable and your accounts receivable should be separate people. If they are not, you have to assume they're stealing from you. I guarantee you there are people at this conference who've lost thousands of dollars and they won't talk about it. Maybe more. There are lawyers that get us barred every day, not for being bad lawyers, but being for sloppy with their trust accounts, for having favorite staff member dip in and the money disappears and then he or she's gone and they are left holding the bag. So first and foremost, trust your staff and delegate to your staff. But at the end of the day, it comes down to you and it is on you.

Ty Shepherd (00:12:27) - And when there's a problem, you will get burned and that person will be gone. On that nasty note, anything else?

Speaker 4 (00:12:34) - What lessons do you learn from being a bankruptcy lawyer that we can use to restructure our debt without going into bankruptcy? Bankruptcy? If we start to have a bonfire instead of our failure instead of reform?

Ty Shepherd (00:12:49) - Sure. So on both the consumer and business side, I think there's an assumption that if you miss a payment, it is the end of the world, especially with, say, your mortgage. They're going to want to take your house. And no mortgage company wants your house. Your mortgage note is securitized. It is wrapped up and it is sold to investors and large pension funds. All they want is money that the triggering event that we always see is the default payment. Lenders won't talk to us. We can't do anything until there's a default. But once there's a default, they come to the table. Depending on your leverage. Was the the it's like a JP Morgan or something like that, that it's like if you owe the bank $1 million, you have a problem.

Ty Shepherd (00:13:26) - If you owe the bank $1 billion, the bank has a problem. These are all negotiated relationships and they're all give and take. No creditor wants to own a law firm. The accounts receivable, they can't do it. They can't run it. So if there is a problem, you have leverage, you have power, but primarily power of your unsecured creditors in your secured as well. They'll take what they can, but there's always options inside and outside of bankruptcy. But we always start outside of bankruptcy and we file if we have to. And on the consumer side, there's less leverage with, say, your vehicles. Your house has some there's a lot of federal programs for modifications. But I would say that there is always options.

Speaker 4 (00:14:06) - What kind of good debt versus bad debt for business?

Ty Shepherd (00:14:10) - On the business side, the it depends. Law firms. It is hard. It is hard to finance a law firm. We're not doctors. Doctors can get loans basically on a broad basis because they don't really go through bankruptcy and a lot of them can make a lot of money.

Ty Shepherd (00:14:24) - However, in a law firm context right now, some of the best like ideally, you want your lending unsecured and you want it without a personal guarantee and no sophisticated investor ever going to give that to you. However, there are opportunities there, especially on the consumer side, with something like a HELOCs to pull money out invested in the business and you get, for instance, to the extent you take money out of your first $100,000 can be a deduction into the extent then put in business, you can get more business deductions on that. But the first place to start, almost everyone who has to bootstrap is with the personal lines of credit. And from there, with business growing, especially in services businesses, we have more little more options. You can get into hard money lending and other options that will at least make opportunities there. But knowing where you are and knowing your growth rate, we get back to this issue of what is good growth, what is bad growth, and also what can you service And like the pie lawyer who wanted to get into charter boats and such, it is hard to service 20% interest, for instance, on a hard money loan on a business that is not growing by 20%.

Ty Shepherd (00:15:33) - All right. Thanks a lot, y'all.

Speaker 2 (00:15:36) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content, go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

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In this podcast episode, Jim Hacking and Tyson Mutrux reflect on the seven-year journey of the Maximum Lawyer podcast. They discuss the evolution of the podcast, their early tips and hacks, and the impact of vulnerability and authenticity on their success. 

They highlight their favorite episodes and the therapeutic nature of the podcast. As well as emphasizing the importance of collective wisdom through their past guest, talking to each other and the Guild! 

Episode Highlights:

  • 01:55 The impressive milestone! 
  • 03:33 First guest and the strategy behind guests
  • 06:54 Favorite episodes 
  • 08:31 Limitless mindset 
  • 13:13 What the podcast has done for Jim and Tyson 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Resources:

Transcripts: Reflecting on Seven Years of Maximum Lawyer

Jimmy:
Welcome back to the Maximum Moir Podcast. I'm Jim Hacking.

Tyson:
And I'm Tyson Mutrix. What's up, Jimmy.

Jimmy:
How you doing buddy?

Tyson:
Good man. I'm feeling good. I went to the gym this morning, got my workout in, feeling good. You're fresh back from France, so that's awesome. How are you feeling?

Jimmy:
I was among your people in France.

Tyson:
Yeah, the Mutros, exactly.

Jimmy:
We chose exactly.

Tyson:
Did you go say

Jimmy:
Yeah,

Tyson:
hi?

Jimmy:
I did not we were we were in London for a week and France Paris for a week and now I'm in Des Moines, Iowa things, you know, just get more and more glorious I'm here for Norse softball tournament But we had a wonderful time all the kids came with us. We didn't kill each other There was some stressful moments including Right when we got to Paris, we finally it took us an hour to get our train passes for the week and we get on the train and we have all our bags. We look totally like tourists. And this guy comes up and the train's coming to a stop at the next stop and this guy comes up and he sort of starts to talk to me and then I feel in my left pocket some movement and I just go with my cat-like reflexes, I just go whack!

Tyson:
WACK

Jimmy:
And he had a partner trying to get my wallet and I whacked his hand and then the doors opened and the two of them jumped off the train.

Tyson:
Oh my gosh, did they get anything from you? Wow! I've

Jimmy:
Yeah.

Tyson:
always heard those stories.

Jimmy:
I mean, it was,

Tyson:
That's

Jimmy:
we

Tyson:
crazy.

Jimmy:
looked like total marks, I'm sure, but it was, I just felt a little tingle in my pocket and I was like, oh.

Tyson:
Well, hey, nice job, Ninja.

Jimmy:
Thanks.

Tyson:
Ninja Jim.

Jimmy:
Yeah.

Tyson:
Wow. So, that's incredible. Wow. Well, we're going to have a long talk about your trip because that sounds fun. But maybe we can talk about it on the Saturday show. But this is the anniversary episode. How about that?

Jimmy:
We have not missed a week in seven years.

Tyson:
That's incredible. It's

Jimmy:
It is

Tyson:
absolutely,

Jimmy:
incredible.

Tyson:
that is, I mean, I'm gonna pat ourselves on the back a little bit. Like that consistency is just incredible. That's amazing.

Jimmy:
Because there have been other things that have like filled filler, but we've actually had a new episode of new content every, every week for seven years. So what's seven times 52? That's like 350 episodes, just you and me.

Tyson:
That's incredible. So that's exciting. We're gonna talk a little bit about the journey today and then we're gonna talk about one thing we've learned. And I'm really curious to see what you came up with and how it compares to my one thing that we've learned. And so it's just one of those things, it's a weird thing to think about. Seven years is a really long time. I remember you started, so I started in my old office at 1717 Park and

Jimmy:
Thanks

Tyson:
it was a

Jimmy:
for

Tyson:
decent

Jimmy:
watching!

Tyson:
setup but you were set up in Webster Gros and you were, I remember the train always going off.

Jimmy:
and the jackhammers because they were doing some kind of construction and we were using what was that thing we used in the old days that Microsoft product for

Tyson:
We used Skype for a little bit.

Jimmy:
Skype yeah we had no idea what we were doing

Tyson:
And there

Jimmy:
yeah

Tyson:
are several episodes that we didn't hit the record button. And

Jimmy:
Oh, for

Tyson:
so

Jimmy:
sure.

Tyson:
those were just gone. I remember there was a couple where we were like, oh my gosh, that was so good.

Jimmy:
Yeah.

Tyson:
And we didn't hit the record button.

Jimmy:
Well, and you know, it didn't take us long to start having guests. I don't even remember who our first guest was. Do you? Was it John Fisher?

Tyson:
I think it was Jill Ullett, actually.

Jimmy:
Oh, that's funny.

Tyson:
I think it was the eighth episode, if I remember correctly. Someone's going to have to fact check us on

Jimmy:
Yeah.

Tyson:
this. We can say whatever. Yeah, it was John Fisher. It was John Fisher. It was our fifth episode. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know. Are you looking it up? Because

Jimmy:
You're gonna lick it up.

Tyson:
I think it was Jill Ullett and I think it was the eighth episode. I'm really curious to hear if I'm right about that, but

Jimmy:
Yeah.

Tyson:
we'll see. But what we did, I think we can… pulled by the curtain a little bit here. I mean, it's just so far removed. The idea was at the time, we start getting guests on and they start telling their people about it and the word sort of spreads and people, we spread by word of mouth and it turned out to be a pretty decent strategy the way it's worked out. Have you gotten

Jimmy:
Well,

Tyson:
to it?

Jimmy:
no, I didn't. It's because it's backwards. I can tell you what your first tip, your first tip of the week was, every day you should write five things to be done. The same with your week. At the end of the day in the week, they must be done. Small tasks are just fine, but write them down and get them done. This will keep you moving forward. Green pen for the completed task and red for the non-completed. You will hate to take out that red pen.

Tyson:
Yeah, I remember saying that. What was your first hack?

Jimmy:
Go and listen to Dean Jackson and Joe Polish talk about marketing. Go back and start from the beginning. There are lots of great podcasts about marketing, before unit, during unit, and after unit. You come upon them at different stages of your project, learn how to manage them. So, I mean, that's pretty funny.

Tyson:
That is, it's fairly consistent for, if you were looking at all of our tips and our hacks, fairly consistent when it comes to what we recommended. I'm assuming yours were more marketing and mindset, mine were more like nuts and bolts and operations minded.

Jimmy:
Yeah, I'm looking through, at least at first, we didn't keep track of the guest tips or hack. So the first one that mentions is episode 22. Lee, who's Lee?

Tyson:
Oh, is Lee Rosen?

Jimmy:
It must have been.

Tyson:
That was probably Lee Rosen, that's probably

Jimmy:
Yeah,

Tyson:
what

Jimmy:
because

Tyson:
that one

Jimmy:
it's

Tyson:
was.

Jimmy:
AI personal assistant. So it probably is, Lee. Yeah, so he wasn't our first guest, I don't

Tyson:
No,

Jimmy:
think.

Tyson:
no. You know what's interesting is who do you… This is a good question. Who do you think was our first big guest that you can remember?

Jimmy:
Well, one thing I remember was Will Norman. I remember I was sitting at softball practice or baseball practice, it would have been, for the boys, and we recorded that. That was like, we recorded that on like a Tuesday night, I remember. And that was our number one performing podcast episode for years. It might still be for all I know. And it was a long one too, because we broke it up into two episodes, I remember. And the first one was by far… the one that people listen to the most, and it was all about starting out from scratch, and Will was pretty vulnerable, I remember, on that episode, it's sort of about, you know, messing around with this versus turning it into a real business.

Tyson:
Yeah, the Will Norman episodes, because it was a two-part, I wouldn't call it a series, there were two episodes, because we had to do, it was so long, we split into two. And I don't know what struck a chord with people, but something did clearly, because if you were to look at the numbers, it was a massive spike at the time, where people really resonated with it. And it was maybe the fact that Will was just so vulnerable, but… It was like, he was just, he was very open in that episode. And he's a very genuine person anyways, but that was, it was weird because it just never made sense to me at the time. But I think looking back, it really did make sense that it was just because he was so vulnerable and honest and genuine.

Jimmy:
Well, and to our credit, I mean, so were we. I mean, I think that's really why people resonated with us is because we weren't just doing the Instagram version of running a law firm. We were talking about the hard shit, the personnel issues, the software issues, the mindset issues, the scheduling issues, the juggling issues, you know, all those things. I think that's really what resonated with people, and Will's episode certainly tapped into that.

Tyson:
Could you, can you think of what your favorite episode might be?

Jimmy:
Um, well, yes, I know what my favorite episode is. Do you know what,

Tyson:
Okay.

Jimmy:
do you know what my favorite episode is?

Tyson:
I don't know.

Jimmy:
It was, um, law firm roulette where we, we picked, we picked the website, website roulette, we picked the product or the practice area, we picked the town. We found some like estate planning lawyer from, I think it was Northern California who just had the worst 1999. version of a website and we just dissected it and we had a lot of fun.

Tyson:
But he was crushing it on the three pack though. I do remember that it just didn't compute, right? He had this terrible, terrible website but was killing it on the three pack. It was just so bizarre. And I think he had like one of those legacy websites that was just had been there for decades, you know, just.

Jimmy:
I think it was like content rich so it had like tons and tons of content, you know

Tyson:
but it was all early 90s website design, for sure. You know, it's funny, I was gonna say, I don't think I could think of what my favorite episode is because it's so many episodes. It is so hard to remember all the guests. It's hard to remember all the topics, but now that you say the website roulette, that is my favorite. We've talked about it for years about doing it again, and we need to do it again. We need to do a reboot.

Jimmy:
So what do you think? You asked me what was my biggest lesson, and I'm ready to answer that whenever you are, but what was your biggest lesson that you've learned in all these interviews, all this talking to people who are running their law firm?

Tyson:
I can't wait to hear what yours is. It's all about mindset. It's all mindset. And if you would have asked me on day one of starting this, I would have never gotten even close to that response. Where I started when we started this podcast and where I'm now, it's so different. The person I am is so different. I thought that was all Hocus Pocus stuff. And I was wrong, just completely wrong. Success is all about mindset. And it's, I think it's as simple as that. I think if you're going to break it down, that's what it does.

Jimmy:
Well, I think that, and this also brings up one of my favorite episodes, there's been one person, there's been one person who we interviewed on the day that he opened his law firm, and that was our friend Paul Yokobitis. And Paul Yokobitis puts the lie, you know, puts the, he can show based on what he's done that what you just said is true. That mindset is everything. Paul does not have a limiting mindset. He does not dwell in the negative. He does not accept any artificial caps on what it is that he's doing. He has a firm belief in what he wants to do. He's willing to try new things. He's definitely making sure that the numbers always make sense, which is something that I really respect in the way that he's been able to scale. Um, and so I think Paul, I mean, we've lots of people in the group and in the guild and in the big group who support the position that you just made. But I think Paul's like the perfect example of it because he's just lit the world on fire doing estate planning, which some would view as a commodity. in North Carolina. And he's done it in a way that allows him to have higher-end clients and lower-end clients. And it's just something else.

Tyson:
I just want to pause for a second. And I just love the fact that on the anniversary episode, you're sitting, and I think in an Airbnb, and you can hear the kids in the background yelling. I think it's fantastic.

Jimmy:
It's not my kids, I'm actually in a hotel. It's Nor's friend's little brother. He's screaming for his parents, yes.

Tyson:
Oh, gotcha. But I think it's just apropos. I just think it's so great. But back on track, from day one, Paul Yocobitis has had that killer, like that serial killer mindset, you know what I mean? Like when it comes to just laser focus on the job, right? And it's, I'm going to have a successful law firm. That's what I'm going to have. And he has had that. And it is a… He is, if you've ever talked to Paul, he's a very confident person. And that's a very good thing. Like that confidence in him is excellent. And he knows he's going to succeed and he knows he's going to win. And once you've convinced yourself that is true, you can't be stopped. Like you cannot be stopped. And that's how Paul is. And that's what we're talking about when it comes to mindset. Once you have that killer instinct and that killer mindset, I wouldn't call it a killer instinct because you can learn it, right? Once you have that killer mindset, You cannot be stopped. No, no, no way, no how.

Jimmy:
And it's been fun to watch. It's been fun to see people succeed. It's been fun to see people like Paul really take off. And obviously we don't take any of the credit for Paul, but we're certainly happy and cheering him on. And that sort of gets to what my biggest lesson is, is that, you know, I would say seven years ago, I viewed things a lot more simply, like things were, and you know how black and white I was

Tyson:
Oh

Jimmy:
back.

Tyson:
you were black and white as it can be man, there was zero gray in your world, holy

Jimmy:
This

Tyson:
hell.

Jimmy:
is the best thing ever. This is the worst. This fucking sucks. Like

Tyson:
That

Jimmy:
that,

Tyson:
person's terrible. That person's great.

Jimmy:
I hate that guy. I love that guy.

Tyson:
Yeah.

Jimmy:
Right. And through therapy and through this podcast, one of the things that I've learned is the power of the word and, and it's not but, but it's and. Like owning a law firm is great, and it's hard. owning a law firm can be lonely and you can develop a network of friends. You know, it's sort of the living in the gray area and being comfortable with the discomfort of running a law firm is really what I've learned is that it's not all great and it's not all bad. And that, you know, having, things like exercise or mentors or colleagues to bounce things off of really helps to. keep things in perspective and keep you going.

Tyson:
use the word therapy before this. I will say like the podcast has been pretty therapeutic. It's something that's allowed us to talk things through. There are days, I know there are days for me and I can guarantee it's the same thing for you where we started the podcast that day and we did not want to do it that morning. You know what I mean? Like we just didn't want to do it. By the time the episode was over, I was like, okay, I'm good. I'm good. You just kind of needed that 30 to 45 minutes of talking with someone, you know, just kind of talking it through. And I think that the, when you mentioned therapy, I'm like, oh, it was very therapeutic. I wonder if you realized any of that too.

Jimmy:
Oh, sure. I mean, you know, we're clearly not psychologists and we haven't been trained or anything. But

Tyson:
Not even close.

Jimmy:
but we've had breakthroughs on the podcast. We've had breakthroughs with people on the. hot seats in the guild and we've had people have big breakthroughs at the masterminds, right? And I think that's another great thing that this group has sort of helped me see is that I'll never forget a particular mastermind when one of our favorite guild members was in my group talking about how he just wants to bring in all the cases. And then he said, and let everybody else figure out how to handle all those cases. And I literally turned to him to my left and said, you're an asshole. Why would you do that to your people? And then like, as soon as it left my mouth, I realized that was me. Right? Like I was even worse. I was doing what he was saying out loud worse than he was doing. Right? And so, it's so much easier to see the mistakes that other people are making. And it's also, you know, you can get up to speed a whole lot faster by hearing other people's mistakes and how they overcome them. Like for instance, you know, Brian Mittman, not that he made a mistake, but he got whacked with that ransomware thing. So, you know, I know a lot of people, me included, made sure that we had processes in place to prevent, hopefully, anyone trying to take our data and holding it ransom. So just big and small. with the collective, you can learn things a whole lot faster and get up to speed a whole lot faster.

Tyson:
It's little things like that too. That… You think about all the just… Collective wisdom you think about the actual collective wisdom and I'm talking about when I'm talking about collective wisdom I think people overuse that term. I'm talking about like every episode We've collected just a little bit more wisdom every single time and that one is It's one of those things that you may never need it But I instantly went out and made sure I had that coverage You know what I mean? Like the whenever Brian Whitman talked about that. It was like, okay I've got to make sure I have that coverage because it's important now just a little side tip for everybody It is on many malpractice insurance policies nowadays. So just check your malpractice coverage because you may already have it, but you definitely wanna have that ransomware coverage. Yeah, it's been, I don't know, it's been a cool seven years, man. It's been a really, really cool seven years. I've really enjoyed it. I think that there are times where, like I said, it was just tough getting out of bed because sometimes we were recording these really early in the morning, but it's just been fun. I don't know about you, but I've enjoyed it.

Jimmy:
To me too, and I know you actually I think do this a little even more than I do It's it's those one-on-one conversations away from the podcast through the friends that we've made in the guild Especially but also in the big group and like I can picture right now while we're sitting here Five or six or ten conversations. I've had with a specific person about a specific topic And it's like burned into my brain. Like I know exactly where I was when I was talking to Jane in Miami about having to get rid of some person that was in her life. I don't remember the exact role the person had, but I just remember just being a sounding board for people and just listening to, oh, I can see what you're struggling with. I can see how that drives you crazy and just being able to participate in their greatness is a lot of fun.

Tyson:
That's so cool. I like that phrase, participate in their greatness, because you said it before, it's not because of us, a lot of these attorneys that have done such great things, but it's cool to be able to participate in their greatness. I think that that's a, I'm going to steal that, that's a great line. So all right, man, well, let's wrap things up, hopefully, of your hack ready before we wrap things up. You know what's funny, Jim, this is sort of impromptu, before I tease the rest of this stuff. This is the anniversary episode. Is this a good time to sort of tease that maybe we have something coming back next year? Is this a,

Jimmy:
Oh,

Tyson:
we can

Jimmy:
I don't

Tyson:
leave

Jimmy:
know

Tyson:
it

Jimmy:
about

Tyson:
very

Jimmy:
that.

Tyson:
vague.

Jimmy:
I

Tyson:
Okay.

Jimmy:
think the powers that be might get upset about that. But

Tyson:
Okay, well if she

Jimmy:
those

Tyson:
wants

Jimmy:
again.

Tyson:
to leave that in the episode she can, we'll uh, I'll clip this part of the episode and let her make the decision then.

Jimmy:
Those that can read between the lines might figure that out, but yes.

Tyson:
Exactly right. So, all right. So before we wrap things up, I do want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. Just great information being shared all the time. There's also Maximum Lawyer Referrals, so I go there on a regular basis, because if we want to refer a case out to people in another state, we do it on a regular basis. So if you do want to share referrals, go to Maximum Lawyer Referrals on Facebook. And if you want a more high-level conversation with amazing people like Jane and Brian Mittman, some other people, on here, Jane Mirrored, by the way, then join us in the guild. Go to maxlawguild.com and while you're listening to the rest of this episode, or if you've been a long-time listener and you really enjoy this podcast, if you give us a five-star review, it definitely does help spread the love. So please do so. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week?

Jimmy:
So we've talked many times on the show about the book Radical Candor, which is a great, great book. And I highly recommend it, but I was on a flight to Nashville I must have been going for work. I was getting sworn in to the Middle District of Tennessee and I ran into the husband of a friend of my wife and he is now a consultant and he was going down to have some hard conversations with a company that his people had taken over and He said that he makes everyone that works with him read this book called Crucial Conversations I don't know if you've read it It's actually, you have it, yeah,

Tyson:
Have it somewhere you help.

Jimmy:
it's about the mechanics of tough conversations and it's very practical in that it has a lot of tips. To me, one thing I've noticed lately is my anger rising during meetings and sort of how, like one, to have the wisdom to pay attention to that. and then to not necessarily act on that. And frankly, I hate to say it, the way this manifests itself is mostly me bickering with Imani in front of the rest of the team, which is not good. So I'm trying some of these skills, but the book itself is really good. It's very digestible and it's very practical. I liked Radical Candor, but I think I like this one a little better.

Tyson:
I think Radical Candor is better, but it doesn't matter. I think they're both extremely valuable books. I agree. That's a really good one. If you have to have tough conversations as a business owner, which you do because you're a business owner, you should read the book. It's a good one. For my tip of the week comes from actually Joe Rogan. And it's funny, for years I've been reading his books. would not watch or listen to Joe Rogan. I didn't like his stuff. And one day I was like, you know what? I'm gonna open my mind up a little bit and just listen to some of the stuff he has to say. And I heard this episode and he was talking about, and by the way, I know he's a controversial person. I don't care. But that's why I didn't listen to him for years.

Jimmy:
Take what you like and leave the rest. That's what they

Tyson:
Exactly.

Jimmy:
say.

Tyson:
That's exactly right. And that's what I did, right? So, and I opened my mind to it, and that's what I did. But I learned this really valuable lesson whenever he was talking about, there's this guy, this really influential guy in his life that was a pool player, right? And not a… It was not a great human being generally, but he said, Joe was talking about this thing that he did that was very, very valuable that helped him throughout his career. And the guy always, no matter what, always found a way to say something nice about anyone, even his enemies, right? And… He noticed it whenever he was all, the guy was always complimenting Joe, right? Always saying, hey, you were really good. And even though Joe knew he was not a good pool player, he would always, the guy would always say, hey, you know, you're a really good pool player, right? But Joe knew better, but it made him feel really good. And he said that every time he had this big match, I don't know what they call them in pool, but this big match against like this guy's, you know, number one, you know, enemy or whatever it would be, opponent, he would always, even if he said something bad about the person, he always found a way to say, but. He can really do this or he's really great at this. And I think that that's really important. It's a good way of flipping sort of your mindset in a moment. You know, I'm really pissed off right now with this person, but they do this really, really well. And I think that lesson is really, really important. And I've been trying to practice over the last week. It's something really hard to do, but I think if you can lock that down, I think it'll benefit you quite a bit. So that's my tip of the week.

Jimmy:
Please.

Tyson:
All right. Anything else, Jimmy?

Jimmy:
No, bud.

Tyson:
Alright, we got in under the wire too, so fantastic.

Jimmy:
Thanks.

Tyson:
It's been a fun seven years, man. Can't wait to do another seven with you, brother. Who knows what's going to be in seven years? AI is going to take over. So just kidding. See you, dude.

Jimmy:
Later. So.

Would you like a copy of Tyson's Executive Assistant's best calendar management tips? Text Calendar to+1 (314) 501-9260

Tackling the storm of emails, phone calls, and meetings? What if we could navigate the chaos and take control of your time instead of being controlled by your crazy calendar?!

In this episode, Tyson discusses the art of putting things on your calendar and shares the effective process his executive assistant, Elizabeth, has developed. 

He shares his four top techniques and the importance of managing time. (and how having an assistant can be beneficial in this regard) Tyson also mentions how to review and adjust the calendar daily to ensure tasks are completed efficiently, as well. 

Listen in!

Episode Highlights:

  • 01:10 Managing time effectively.
  • 03:39 Prioritization techniques
  • 06:03 Time management techniques.
  • 09:01 Improved client satisfaction and growth.

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Resources:

Transcripts: From Chaos to Clarity: The Art of Putting Things on the Calendar

Tyson:
Hey, it's Tyson and today I'm back with our first episode in our new Saturday series where I'm going to be talking about these quick… Hey, it's Dyson and today I am back. I'm really excited about this episode. It's our first episode in our Saturday series. It's the new episode series that we're doing where I'm gonna be talking about five minute episodes in five, in five quick minute episodes. No, ugh. Hey, it's Tyson and I'm super excited to be back because today is our first episode in our new Saturday series Where I'll be sharing quick five minute episodes with nothing but actionable content And today we're diving right into our first topic It's from chaos to clarity the art of putting things on your calendar And this is a really good one to start off with because just the other day I was talking to my executive assistant Elizabeth and we were talking about the process that she's put together for calendaring and getting things on my calendar and some of these things I was sort of already doing before But she's really created this effective process almost from scratch when it comes to getting things on my calendar And it's an amazing process she's made massive improvements when it comes to managing my time and it's really kind of cool because Now you don't have to do this if you don't have an executive assistant, but many of us do have assistants. You've got case managers, whatever it may be, people that you're working with on a regular basis. And basically our process is she gets things on the calendar, which I'm going to talk about some techniques for doing that later. And then every day what happens is we meet and she asks, okay, you had these things on your calendar for yesterday. Did you accomplish these? Okay. If not, she makes… sure that she can move things around. My calendar can, it moves a little bit. It doesn't move a lot every single day, but it does sometimes move a little bit if I don't get everything done, because sometimes just tasks take longer than what you expected. So she does a really good job of making sure she moves things around. But if you want to get a copy of that process, she actually was so excited about our process, the things that we do, that she put together a presentation and she's going to be teaching. the other attorneys and leaders in our firm the same process. It's really cool. And so she was really excited about it, and I am too. But if you want to get a copy of that, though, just shoot me a text. This is something new that I'm doing. So shoot me a text if you want to get a copy. I'll make sure you get a copy of it. But just text me at 314-501-9260. That's 314-501-9260. And you can get a copy of our process. But let's jump right into it when it comes to some things to some actual takeaways. Cause I understand that the legal field, it can be hectic. I used to do criminal defense. It's calmed down quite a bit since I only do personal injury. But I remember those days where it was just a whirlwind of deadlines and meetings and court dates and emails and client phone calls. It's just a storm that we're all sort of familiar with. But what if we can navigate through this storm from chaos. clarity and that's what we're talking about today because having a clear calendar it's not just about being neat it's about productivity it's about reducing stress improving focus and just that overall efficiency and if you can do that you're gonna be way better off you're gonna actually be able to spend time with your family each night which I'm sure many of you want to do you're gonna be able to do the fun things in life and not just be grinding at the office all day and it's really about taking control of your time rather than being controlled by it. And so let's look at some of the ways that we can achieve this control. I'm gonna talk about four techniques. Trust me, I know that there are more. If you wanna text me some more, you can text me. But these are the main four techniques that I think they come to mind. They're ones that are fairly easy to implement. And so let's talk a little bit about it. First is prioritization. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about the Eisenhower matrix. It's named after President Eisenhower. It's many people know about it, but really what you do, and think about it a little, a matrix, it helps you categorize your tasks on a daily basis based on their urgency and on their importance. If you kind of look at it and visualize this grid and you can Google it, it's online, you can easily find it. But I know Jim and I have talked about it before, but you take urgent and important tasks. Those are things that are done immediately. So let's take. you know, the scenario with Elizabeth. Let's say that there's something that comes up that is, you know, it's important and it's urgent. Okay, those are few and far between by the way, okay? Those, but those do happen. She modifies my calendar to make sure it fits in and you could do the same thing with yours, right? You can move things around once you get it on your calendar, but she moves things around. So urgent, important tasks, those are done immediately, okay? Important, but not urgent tasks are scheduled, okay? Those are scheduled for a later date. And that's what the important of meeting on a regular basis with your team is really, really important. That way you can figure out the items that are important and that way they don't become urgent because if you don't get them on the calendar, they become urgent items because you forgot about them. Okay. It's like, think of it as actually limitations. You don't want that to be an important and an urgent matter. You want to make sure that that's scheduled out so you're not having to deal with it. It doesn't become urgent. All right. Urgent but not important tasks, those are delegated. Okay, so those are things that not super important, but they are urgent. You can delegate those to someone and have those take care of them for you. And neither urgent nor important tasks, those are eliminated. You just get rid of those. Okay, that's why I definitely recommend you sit down, especially early on in starting your firm. Map out your day and what are you doing, and then get rid of the things that you shouldn't be doing. All right, so second, and I'm gonna be talking about time blocking in an episode all by itself. Okay, so there's gonna be a five minute episode just on time blocking. And so we are, I'm not gonna go into full detail about time blocking, but this is a technique that it's, it's about breaking your day into chunks of dedicated time for specific tasks. And that's something that Elizabeth does a really good job of for me, where she blocks out my time, she makes sure she gives me enough time for each one of these tasks. Always overestimate the time it's gonna need, you're gonna need for it because things happen and many times things take way longer than you think. that they're gonna take. So here's an example. What you can do is you can block out from like 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. You can do that for client meetings. I know some people, they'll block out entire days for client meetings and they won't do client meetings for the rest of the week. Whatever works for your schedule, okay? And then something else you could do is maybe from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. you can book that for case preparation. Make sure you fit in a lunch. Maybe do a lunch at one o'clock or whatever works for your schedule if you need to take lunch at noon. Think about those things too. So you're really thinking through your schedule. But by assigning these specific time slots for these tasks, you can then maintain your focus and limit those distractions, especially if you're sharing your calendar with the rest of your firm. It's a really easy way. People know, OK, for example, I'm looking at a time block on my calendar now where I've got a meeting with just me and our CTO Kashyap for it's from 9 AM to 1.35 tomorrow. So people know, OK, I'm going to be in that meeting, and I'm going to be focused only on that tomorrow. And so it's a good way to communicate that to your team as well without actually having to make an announcement. Kind of nice. All right, so the third technique is, I know you've heard me talk about this before, we use it a lot in the guild. It's the one thing principle. So you pick one major task each day or week, and you make it your primary focus. And we talked about it in the guild. All right, on Mondays, right? So what's the one thing each week that's gonna move your firm forward the most? Okay. And it's a really effective technique because, you know, it allows you to move the ball forward in accomplishing and achieving your vision. So you take that one major task each day or week, and then you make it your primary focus. And you eat that frog, you do that thing first. And it's not about tackling every task at once. It's about dedicating your energy to a significant task that will make a real difference. And the last one, because I know we're gonna go a little bit long on this one, but I hope you won't mind. But lastly, don't forget the power of technology. There's a lot of tools like Google Calendar, Asana, Todoist, many other apps that can help you manage your schedule with reminders and alerts or any other items that make it easy, make it easily viewable for you. So you have a nice overview of your week and they're often accessible from any device and that means you can stay organized, you don't really have any excuses. I will tell you something, there's something, a really cool feature that's in Google that really helps me where if you color code your time blocks, I can look at my calendar now and I've got a pretty good idea what I need to be doing this week based upon my color coding system. And we do share that color coding system in that process. So make sure you do text me because you can see our color coding system. But it does allow me, I can look, if I see a bunch of purple, I know that's max loss stuff. If I see a bunch of red, I know that's litigation stuff. So it does allow you to get a better grasp of your calendar just by quickly glancing at it. So don't forget that power of technology. It's a very powerful thing. And just another thing I'll say is, I do recommend also A World Without Email. It's by Cal Newport. Read that book, really powerful book. It'll allow you to sort of think through how to manage your time a little bit better as well. But the real magic though, it starts to happen when you start to implement these techniques. So don't just listen. and not take action, make sure you take action. But remember to start small, apply one technique at a time, and see how it works for you. Because not all of them will work for you, okay? These are the ones that work for me, but I think that if you, even if you take one of these techniques and apply it, I think it'll be very beneficial for you, okay? And let me tell you, there have been many law firms that Jim and I have talked to over the years, they've moved from that chaos to that clarity state where… they're using these techniques and these techniques only. They're effective, okay? And when they do that, they witness not only that increased productivity, but also that improved client satisfaction, that lower stress, they see growth in their firm, okay? So just to sum it up, the things we talked about were prioritizing using the Eisenhower matrix, blocking out your time, focusing on that one key task each day and each week, and then leveraging technology to manage your schedule. All right, so next week we're gonna be tackling another crucial topic, so make sure you join us. We're gonna be talking about team huddles and how to do team huddles best. And so I think you're gonna get a lot out of that one. Remember, taking imperfect action is better than taking no action at all. So start today, take that first step to bring clarity into your work day. Thanks for joining me, really appreciate it. And until next Saturday, here's to a future of clarity control. and ultimate success for your law firm.

What software is the best? Which credit card processor is the best? Which scheduling tool is the best? How are you managing projects? How does THIS software compare to THAT software?

And it's not just the best either. It's “What’s the best for our law firm?” 

Today we are joined by MaxLawCon22 speaker - Andrew Legrand - where he shares his process for choosing the “right” software. 

From researching the different pricing tiers to tracking all that you are researching, to tracking the expense of time  and management from your team. All this and more Andrew teaches in this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast. 

Listen in!

Episode Highlights:

01:18 The hidden costs of software, such as training, switching costs, and lost production time

04:22 A simple tool, for objectively evaluating different software options

08:58 The process of evaluating different software options

16:45 The importance of evaluating software features before switching

18:33 Brainstorming and evaluating project management software options to find the right fit for a firm's needs

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Andrew:

Resources:

Transcripts: How to Choose the Right Software for Your Law Firm with Andrew Legrand

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - But in today's episode we're sharing a presentation from Max Khan 2022. Keep listening to hear Andrew Legrand as we share his talk. How to choose the right Software for your law Firm. You can also head to the maximum Lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Speaker 2 (00:00:18) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking, and some new tricks. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show today.

Andrew Legrand (00:00:39) - My talk really stems from probably the most common question that I see asked on the Max Law Forum. It seems like at least once a week somebody on the Facebook group is asking some form of the question what software is the best? And I'm not just talking about Clio or File Vine, but it's a variety of it. So it's which credit card processor is the best? Which scheduling tool is the best? How are you managing projects? And it's not just the best either. It's how does this software compare to that software? And so I really built this talk just based on the idea that that seems like a very common question in all the various forms that that comes in.

Andrew Legrand (00:01:18) - So I want to introduce you all to a tool that I use to evaluate software and pick software that works really well for me as a business lawyer that charges on subscription. A lot of the legal software out there isn't really designed for a lawyer who's trying to do that kind of thing. It's built for contingency or hourly based practices, which isn't really us. So I had to figure out how do I find different software? And as a remote first law firm, we heavily leveraged software to make sure that we can be work from home and hybrid, and we've been doing that since well before that became popular a couple of years ago. So first, why is this important? And there's two main reasons I'll talk about. The first one is hidden costs versus actual costs of software. If we're evaluating software, it's really easy to go to a software pages website and click the pricing page and you see what the actual cost is. I'm going to use the iceberg analogy here to talk about that price of the software.

Andrew Legrand (00:02:16) - The actual cost of the software is just the tip of the iceberg. The hidden costs are everything else. It's much bigger. It's the training, it's the switching costs, it's converting data, it's data that you might lose in that conversion. It's the lost production time. It's the time that you spend demoing all the different software. So my argument essentially is that if you're able to pick the right software, the first time you can avoid this cost is going to be ongoing, the actual cost of the software. But this costs down here, the less you switch software, the lower these costs. These hidden costs of changing are actually going to be. The second reason it's a good idea is you want to find the right tool for the job. I renovated an old 110 year old house and I find that I'm constantly buying new tools for the job. And if anybody works on their car or likes woodworking or just does any sort of handiwork at all, then you know that the difference between having the right tool to do the thing and not having the right tool is an amazing difference, right? If you're trying to make a perfectly cut hole, it's really easy when you have a whole saw to do that if you don't have a whole saw.

Andrew Legrand (00:03:24) - This is really freaking complex to do. So if you have the right software to do what works well for your law firm, then I think it really makes sense to take the time to find the best software for it. The other thing that I want to point out in this slide is that we want to figure out not what the tool is, but what problem we're trying to solve. Right? I think we've all probably heard the saying that you don't buy a drill, you buy the hole. And a lot of times with with any sort of software, they're selling features. And I want to encourage you and I'll show you a little bit later on to not just think about the features of the software, but what problem are we trying to solve? Do I really want a drill or do I really want the hole? And then I work backwards from figuring out what size hole I want and what tools can help me build that hole. So I think a lot of lawyers look for software and what I can kind of consider to be the old way or what I'm calling at least here today, they buy whatever their friends say is good.

Andrew Legrand (00:04:22) - They buy something they saw at a trade show. They said their friend solved the problem. Or some young lawyer at Max Lakhan recommended it. But the point is, is, you know, we see these questions of which software is best, but it's missing the context of of best is relative what's best for a lawyer charging flat monthly fees and subscription and value pricing is not going to be the same thing for a lawyer who's doing contingency in trying to track their costs and how they're building that up over time and building settlement statements. So when people say which one is the best, I really feel like we need to dig into the context of best for what? What are we actually trying to solve. So. The new way is what I want to talk about today. And honestly, it's a really simple tool called a spreadsheet. And so I find that when I use a spreadsheet in this way, I have a really easy time of objectively figuring out what software works for me. So the way I do it is on the far left column.

Andrew Legrand (00:05:18) - I just list the name of the software, maybe make it a hyperlink to let me get to that website really easy, but I start to look for all the different software that claims to do whatever it is I'm trying to do. I think this is an example of I used Clio for a long time and I got annoyed that a lot of my clients have more than one company, believe it or not. And Clio had this just set thing that one person had to be with one company, and I was kept getting annoyed at the fact that I couldn't tag that client. A actually owns company A, B, C, and D, and it was a really weird situation. So I was like, I've got to find the new solution. And so spend a long time looking at this and these are all the different software products that I looked at to do it. And the first column is usable price. So not just the copy, this is the actual cost that I talked about earlier, but what is it going to cost us to run this software? So different software charges per users.

Andrew Legrand (00:06:12) - Sometimes it's, you know, X price up to ten users, sometimes it's one user. You know, there's a lot of different pricing schemes out there. So the first thing that's useful to do is just kind of equalize that and get it into some sort of annual or monthly or quarterly, but get the prices to where you're actually comparing apples to oranges on prices and what it's going to cost. And the next thing I want to do across the top and this is really kind of my quick and dirty notes, I didn't doctor this up for this talk, but across the top you want to write the features that you're looking for. And again, go back to that whole saw. What are the actual problems you're trying to solve? Some of you might want text messaging integration because your clients use text messaging a lot. Some of you are contingency and might want it to automatically generate a settlement statement. Some of you might have a really high volume and you want it to integrate with your CRM or you want the CRM inside of that.

Andrew Legrand (00:07:08) - Some people might want document automation, other people might use something like wealth counsel or the form tool or hot docs, or they already have their document automation in another system and a really robust format. So maybe that's not a feature you need. So across the top of the spreadsheet, just start writing down What are the different features you're looking for? In this particular case, for instance, I needed to be able to charge this is when we're still doing more hourly work, but we need a rates per user paralegals versus attorney rates for clients, rates for different projects. We were using Asana heavily for project management at the time and we wound up choosing this piece of software called Excel. So that doesn't have a lot of checkmarks, but I'll kind of explain why. And so we were using Asana. We wanted something that had an Asana integration. If you haven't used it, it's a lot like Monday.com. It's a it's a project management tool. Does it integrate with zero for accounting? Can we track expenses? We do a lot of filing our clients annual reports and just different kind of registration filings.

Andrew Legrand (00:08:05) - So we needed a way to do that. I wanted to track estimates versus actual. So because we're doing subscription and flat and value based pricing, I won in a way to build a project plan that said this is how much time it's going to take to do it and this is how much time we actually spent. So I could update our projections over time on how much effort it would take for us to do that. We needed time versus retainers, so our clients pay us a flat monthly fee and they might have multiple issues going on. So I needed to say, Hey, here's your billing arrangement with us, and then here's the multiple projects or issues we're tracking for you. We're helping you resolve some employment issue. We're helping you and your partners write an operating agreement. We're applying for your trademark. But it's all getting connected to that retainer over here. So I needed software that could do that. I wanted something that could do trust deposits and retainers, and then I wanted a really robust open API so that I could get my data out of there and really expand on it.

Andrew Legrand (00:08:58) - So you can see down here, it's I think typically what happens when I do this is I start going through things and sometimes you get to the spot where you just see, okay, something's too expensive. Other times you'll find out that the open API, I think in this case and the estimates were actual became two really key features as I was evaluating all these different pieces of software. And so, I mean, this took 2 or 3 months to build out. And what's nice about using this simple spreadsheet is that I'm not just kind of sitting there trialing software one week to another, and I don't spend a lot of time, Oh, should I switch or should I not switch? It creates an incredibly effective way to say, okay, I've evaluated all the software out there and these are the features that I'm looking for. And this has this, this doesn't have this. And it really helps me cut down on that time of evaluating software. This is a another one I did for a proposal software even further like previously older.

Andrew Legrand (00:09:53) - You could see I kind of I added conditional logic for coloring just if there was a why, it would be green if there was an. And for now it would be red. So in this version I was looking for software that would help me generate our proposals, something that would allow me to reuse scopes of work and say, this is included, this is not included. And I looked for, I think, 20 different pieces of software out there that claim to do engagement letters or proposals or scopes of work. And you can see it kind of evaluated some. And, you know, the usable price for some was $700 compared to under 100. I don't even think I figured out what Tinderbox was, but it was super expensive and I just wrote that. And so again, I wanted to figure out what was really key here in all this. And I think the Zapier integration became really important here. And then price kind of became a good one and then listing some of the cons. So again, this took a while to kind of investigate the softwares that are out there and figure out what was useful.

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Andrew Legrand (00:11:41) - The other thing I like about this technique does anyone else get the shiny object syndrome? Yeah, me too. So I use acuity scheduling for our scheduling tool and right now I'm kind of having there are some features that I want and there's a lot of other, you know, Calendly seems to be a lot faster.

Andrew Legrand (00:11:59) - There's a lot of other software is out there that have been what I would consider to be shiny objects. The other thing that this tool kind of does is really helps you objectify what you're looking for and what it solves. So I find that when I'm looking at another piece of software in the shiny object way, I can kind of evaluate that software and scratch that shiny object itch without actually committing to it. And then rather than spending a ton of time wondering, Oh, is that new piece of software going to work really well for me, I'm already evaluating it in this way and I'm able to shut it down. So for instance, I did it for scheduling recently and I was looking to change and it really came down to acuity meets most of my needs but didn't solve 1 or 2 problems I wanted it to solve. Well, when I looked at the other pieces of software I was just trading off. It was solving the problems that Acuity didn't solve, but it introduced new problems. That acuity did solve that.

Andrew Legrand (00:12:48) - The new software didn't. And then I've got a really great price on it, so I kind of just shut that down and have not looked at changing scheduling software in a long time. I think the other thing that this does is frankly, I love the fact that there's software marketed for lawyers, and I think that can be a good thing in some circumstances. But at the same time, these are three websites that have a plethora of software on them. You go back to the proposal software, and these are all things that none of them are marketed to lawyers, but they can all help us put together our engagement letters. And if you have complex engagement letters that you need to send out quickly and you need to regenerate and use templates, these are a lot of options, but none of these are specifically marketed for lawyers. So by using some of these different websites where you can find different pieces of software, you can actually try to find software that's not geared necessarily for lawyers. And it might be older, it might be better developed, it might be more mature, it might have a bigger user base, which means they have more revenue, which means they can develop it a little bit better.

Andrew Legrand (00:13:49) - So these are different websites I use to say, okay, I'm looking for a project management tool, let me go on Copter or G2 or get app and look for a project management tool. And then using these websites I'll start to build out this column A right here of what are the different softwares that do it and then start evaluating them over time. And maybe as complex as this looks, once you start doing it, it becomes really simple and really clear on, okay, that's a good piece of software that we want to use, and then you get that benefit of reducing your switching costs, reducing your training time, of having the tool to do a really good job. You know, people have talked about delivering great client expectations and using this and that sort of thing this week. Right. Well, if you have a better tool to do that, that's great. So finding the tools to do that really works. So where do I download this awesome tool? You know, people are like, Are you going to send us a spreadsheet? And I've decided that I don't really think that there's a tool to even download, right? It's just set up a new spreadsheet and figure out what piece of software you're evaluating.

Andrew Legrand (00:14:55) - Maybe you're evaluating tools for for payment processing. You're evaluating tools for scheduling, you're evaluating phone systems, right? Like people are always, oh, I'm upset at RingCentral. We'll look at next I'll look at eight by eight, look at dial pad look at this, that and the other. It becomes really overwhelming when people ask a question about what software? And there's 50 different responses with with 30 different answers out there. And so using a spreadsheet I have right now, I kind of keep about eight different spreadsheets. You know, this isn't something I delete and it's not something I revisit all the time, but when I feel like the software I'm using is lagging behind, or maybe I get that shiny object syndrome, it's really easy to kind of open this back up and look at my notes and start to evaluate, Hey, maybe now is it time to switch? So right now, for instance, our software stack is I mentioned Excel. It's a professional service automation tool requires a ton of customization that we do in-house, but it's not marketed to lawyers at all.

Andrew Legrand (00:15:49) - But it solved a lot of the problems that I wanted it to solve. We're using Zapier to connect a lot of stuff. We're using Xero for our accounting. We use RingCentral, we use acuity for scheduling, I think in all of our our entire software stack. And we have a lot of software, you know, we're remote first. We are heavily dependent on that. The only tool we use that's actually marketed specifically to lawyers is law. So by getting out of the mindset of let me use tools that are just marketed to me and marketed to me because I'm a lawyer and let me focus on the problems that I'm trying to solve in my business. I'm able to expand to the pieces of software that are out there and look to options that do what I need them to do, even though they might not be marketed to me. So that's it. It's a really simple tool. I've got actually four minutes left. Happy to answer any questions.

Speaker 1 (00:16:39) - Come on. Should you allow the screen when you saw before you realize, you know what, the software is not coming out, We need something else.

Andrew Legrand (00:16:45) - So I would kind of go back to that implementation costs. And if you're able to really dial down on that feature set that you're looking for, if you do this really well, you won't have to switch after a training period. So in my firm, we're only four people, so it's a little bit easier than maybe a 20 person firm. But I would say that if you're a bigger firm, maybe you have 1 or 2 people evaluating the software and they're figuring it out. So by figuring out what features you want and whether or not the software actually delivers those features, your switch should be much smoother because you shouldn't be figuring it out on the fly. And I think a lot of problems come because people switch without doing a really good job of evaluating software. And so instead of figuring it out on the front end and just again using the spreadsheet and what problems are we trying to solve, you're figuring that out on the fly, and then you wind up in a situation where you're doing training and people are, you know, it's not doing it right and you've got to switch back.

Andrew Legrand (00:17:40) - And that's where you get back to the iceberg and the hidden costs and how much it costs to train and adopt and then move back. And there's data loss in the middle and then clients are kind of in the lurch there. So part of the argument is don't do that, right? It's do a lot of good due diligence on the front end and then switch and it'll be much smoother. This software that we get, you'll get your Wow, okay. I need a product management software, right? So of course I got one of those sites I mentioned. So what I would what I would say is, so the Facebook group is not a bad place to ask that. Right. And so I guess the order of operations here is, hey, I want project management software. You can ask the Max Lau forum what are people using? And then go to the spreadsheet and just write down everything that everyone says, right? And then you can go down to these websites. They all have like similar features.

Andrew Legrand (00:18:33) - So if you're looking for project management and you use Monday.com, you know, you can go to Monday.com page on one of these sites and it'll show competitors and similar features. And then from there it's just a matter of making your list, right? So the first step of this process is really just brainstorming what are all the project management software is out there and then what features do I want? And then starting to evaluate them. So it does add a lot of time on the front end to the evaluation stage, but it eliminates the problem of switching and then figuring out it doesn't work in an implementation phase. Is there? Question Sure. So the question was, is there a rule of thumb about when you would start using a piece of software, the side right, by employees or revenue? I guess I have two. No, I don't really have a rule of thumb, but I have a couple of thoughts on that. Am I'm nerdy and techie and like this stuff, like building, like finding the right software and building it out is kind of a hobby to me.

Andrew Legrand (00:19:26) - I personally enjoy it, so I might do it a little bit earlier than I would. But my second thought is that I'm always trying to be the law firm that I want to be, and I'm building that road of where I want to go, not where I am today. Right? So if I know, I know that I need some sort of project management software, not necessarily a we need it, but I know that as our firm scales and gets bigger, we're going to be able to use that. So I guess my real answer here is I think if your vision is to get bigger and you think you'll need that software in the future, the best time to start using. It is now because it kind of goes back to the right tool for the job. If you find the right tool, if you find the whole saw to make the right tool, the software is going to help you get there rather than waiting until you're there and buying it. You can buy the tool earlier on, help it get you there.

Andrew Legrand (00:20:14) - And that way you're also learning how to use it in a smaller team. And rather than trying to adopt something with with more people and there's more training tool itself, that company is too small. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Not necessarily. I do worry about the I think AppSumo sells like $60 lifetime deals. I personally worry about that. Right. We're all business owners. I don't know how I could possibly expect you to continue developing an app for me when I'm paying you $60 one time. Like, that's just not going to happen. So not too much. I mean, at this point, I think there's a lot of if a company is new, I probably wouldn't use it for a mission critical function. But I would say that's kind of subjective. It kind of depends on what it is. You know, if it's text messaging on our website or website, chat is kind of new, right? So if there's a small company that's doing that, that might not be a mission critical function to me.

Andrew Legrand (00:21:03) - I might be okay with using a smaller company, whereas my main CRM practice management, my main like hub of information, I'm not going to switch to a new person right off the block. Thank you so much. Appreciate the time today.

Speaker 2 (00:21:15) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your host and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

Embarking on a journey of self-discovery and resilience has resulted in John Fritz niching down to focus entirely on probate law. The decision came after realizing the importance of specializing in one area. It's reduced stress and allows for scalable growth. 

Sometimes, it's about focusing your energy in one direction to truly make an impact. 

John has consistently looked for ways to optimize and enhance efficiency in his law firm. And while he’s encountered all the trials and errors from building out his own systems, he has succeeded in streamlining his operations. Adopting a “never-give-up” mindset has resulted in innovative systems and processes. 

Embrace the problem-solving spirit and become hyper efficient. Listen in on this episode where Jim and Tyson interview John all about his story. 

Episode Highlights:

02:07 Meet John Fritz

05:43 The passion for creating efficient systems and processes 

10:36 Narrowing down your law firm's focus 

19:01 Using automation tools to save time and streamline document processes

Jim’s Hack: Spend some time this week thinking and planning your marketing around, NOT your direct consumer but the people who know those people.

John’s Tip: Make a list of all the documents that you are creating from scratch in any given case, whether it's letters to clients, or forms you're filling out … make a master list of all the documents in that case and then see what data is going into each document. Can you consider adding some sort of document automation system onto these documents so it can spread the data across all your documents.

Tyson’s Tips: Try the Wonder Woman pose is (called the Power Pose) to get motivated, reduce cortisol and increase testosterone.

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with John:

Resources:

Transcript: Being Hyper Efficient with John Fritz 

Jimmy:
Welcome back to the Maximum Lawyer Podcast. I'm Jim Hacking.

Tyson:
And I'm Tyson Mutrix. What up, Jimmy?

Jimmy:
Tyson, my friend, I'm excited about our guest today. It's one of our favorite guild members. His name is John Fritz. He's an estate planning attorney from St. Louis MO. John, welcome to the show.

John Fritz:
Thanks for having me.

Tyson:
John, I'm excited to have you too. You're a local guy. You seem to be doing really, really well. Tell us though about your journey and how you got to where you are now and starting your firm.

John Fritz:
Yeah, so I came out of law school in 2011 and, you know, it was kind of a rough patch for lawyers getting jobs at that time. And after about six months of, you know, sending off resumes and doing that sort of thing, I landed a job over in Illinois at an insurance defense firm who specialized in toxic tort defense litigation. So… Tyson, you don't even do toxic tort, you know, on the plaintiff's side, but anyways. So I did that for about six years and kind of worked my way up the chain there and, you know, got a lot of extremely valuable experience on how to litigate cases on the defense side. So I was licensed in New York, still am licensed in New York, Illinois and Missouri. At some point in that kind of journey, I decided that I didn't want to depose people that were either sick or about to die for the rest of my life and kind of go that route. And I wanted more of a, I had that vision when I first decided to be a lawyer of being that person in the community who that was helping people. I mean, my work was extremely valuable what I was doing, but I was working for a Fortune 100 company overseas who just wanted to pay less money for cases. So decided that I needed to take a different route and my wife had said, you've kind of spoke about opening your own firm before, now's the time, it's either now or never. So I gave my notice about… two months later, found an office space, bought a computer, and just kind of opened the door up and started building a law firm, right? So, yeah, so we basically, you know, I started out doing a state planning work and plaintiff's personal injury work because I had the defense litigation background. And then, you know, ultimately added on probate work. And my journey lasted for about, up until the first of this year, so almost about five years I did all three practice areas. And at the first of this year, made a big change, partly because of you guys and just all the messaging from the guild about niching down and how important it is and profitable it can be. So decided to drop my estate planning practice and my personal injury practice and solely focus on scaling my probate practice.

Jimmy:
Well, so I guess I probably need to re-record that intro when I said you're an estate planning lawyer. I just went

John Fritz:
I'm sorry.

Jimmy:
off your website. Yeah, yeah. That's all good, people figure that out.

John Fritz:
No

Jimmy:
Well,

John Fritz:
worries.

Jimmy:
talk to us about that part of things. Like, I know a lot of people, especially when they go from the defense side to representing individuals, sometimes there's a real fear to do something different and maybe even a little bit of imposter syndrome. How did you… get around your mind of going, hey, I don't want, I mean, I get the part about not wanting to be deposing dying people, but how do you get to then say, I mean, I did it with immigration, but how do you just sort of declare I'm this new kind of lawyer?

John Fritz:
I mean, I think the declaration was easy. And, you know, I'm kind of the, my mindset is sometimes to my detriment is that I can learn to do anything and I can actually, I can learn it and I will become successful at it with time through trial and error. So I basically, you know, was starting out thinking, well, I know it's gonna take some time. So I kind of established expectations, okay. My first year is, I know what it's gonna look like. It's not gonna be, I'm not gonna step out and be, you know, and have all this business or be able to handle all this business my first year. The fear, I would say the fear was not really there for me. I wasn't afraid of going on that path because I had some, I had some leeway. You know, I wasn't, it would, my situation would have been a little bit different had, you know, had my family, me being the sole income in my family. So there was a lot of factors that made it easier for me to kind of go down that path and kind of learn it and do the trial and error. But the fear wasn't necessarily there, but the imposter syndrome for sure was there. And when it comes to starting from scratch with estate planning is what I kind of started with and learning estate planning from scratch. You have to put on the hat of I'm an estate planning attorney and I know how to do everything. And for me, that's, I don't like doing that. I mean, I don't like, I'm the type of person who, you know, I need to, I like to come across exactly how I am. And that's, so that was kind of tough for me to put on kind of that hat. But what I did was to kind of cope with it was, you know, I grabbed a couple of mentors, you know, I reached out to other lawyers. had a couple of mentors who were in the estate planning space, experts at what they were doing and reached out to them and said, hey, let's partner on cases so that I can learn from you. I'll send you all of my cases that are outside of my tiny little box that I know how to do right now. And then I can, you know, it's kind of a mutually beneficial relationship. So I feel like I dealt with the imposter syndrome by bringing on that mentor and using him. to help me learn but also as that support to if I need help I could turn to him.

Tyson:
You know what really strikes me about you is it's interesting. You've been doing this for 12 years, but you've really got a knack for systems and processes and automations, and you've really got it down. I mean, you even have products that you've created that automate things. It's quite impressive. Where does that come from? I mean, that's kind of crazy to me, like how you've picked that up so easily. Where does that come from? And then when it comes to those aspects of running your firm, what advice do you have to other lawyers that are just starting out on this journey?

John Fritz:
Yeah, so I mean the systems and processes, I don't know, I feel like that's something that I'm just really interested in, I'm really passionate about. And early on in my legal career when I was a defense lawyer, I never really had the chance to explore that creative side. It was always simply going to work, and everything was boilerplate. And once I started on my own, well, it's like, OK, well, we have to start creating now. We have to create a… some sort of process and you know, it's been an evolution. I would say, you know, it took me, you know it wasn't like oh, I'm just gonna build this amazing thing outside the box, you know, it took me years to build and But you know, I would say that just being passionate about you know having it all comes down to efficiency for me So I just have that ingrained in my blood of where I just I need to be hyper efficient And if something is inefficient, I can tell a detail in the process where, okay, this is what's slowing us down. How do we change it? How do we become more efficient? And more of a problem solving, but like I said, it's a lot of trial and error. I don't know how many errors I've made when it comes to processes or systems where you plug something in new and it does not work and you're like, okay, well, let's try again. But I think having the mentality of I'm never going to stop trying. until I figure out, you know, not the perfect equilibrium, but pretty close to it. And so constantly tweaking and just trying new things has been, you know, has been a strong suit of mine and has brought success when it comes to processes and systems.

Tyson:
All right, so you said something and it was alarming for me. A light bulb went off and it's just. my own internal stuff because we're going through processes now and streamlining things. You said something that when you were working at your other firm that it was boring, it was boilerplate. That was a little alarming for me because I'm like, oh my gosh, what are we doing in our firms that are making things boring for our people? What would your advice, I guess, be to people that have gotten bored in their jobs? How do we… How do we as law firm owners make it so that the jobs are not just boilerplate and boring?

John Fritz:
Yeah, so I mean, you had mentioned, obviously, building systems and processes and it's part of, and this kind of flows along with your question, but when it comes to the mundane-ness of the law firm, like what are people doing that they want to pull their hair out every single day because it's the same thing over and over, the repetitiveness. It really did not. you know, creating some of these automation systems within my firm did not stem out of, okay, how do I make my employees' jobs, you know, more or less mundane and less boilerplate, but more from a functionality standpoint of how do I reduce the amount of time that the attorney is actually spending on a file, right? And that's, and to get my time back, because that's what it all started from was I don't have enough time in the day to do all these things. So My advice would be for other law firm owners that have, it's kind of a two-fold where if it's, not just the mundane-ness of that, but also efficiency is reduce the boilerplate-ness of your law practice by, through automation or some sort of system or process. I mean, I know that my paralegal at my firm, when she started, we were in our early stages of building, I was in the early stages of building the automation for our. our probate documents. And it took about two years to build completely and I'm still tweaking it, but I could see it very easily where she would be sitting down and just filling out documents, the same document over and over, typing in the same information, right? And as that being one of those kind of boring, mundane topics or just tasks. And so… now through our automation, we've removed that from her job task of simply, it's just entering data in, here are all the documents for the entire case, then we can go on to other things, right, as opposed to, you know, basically being a data entry specialist for half the time.

Jimmy:
You're listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Our guest today, attorney John Fritz, he's made some shifts in his growing law firm. John, talk to us a little bit about what was the final straw that made you decide to narrow down to just probate and how did your team take it?

John Fritz:
Yeah, so the final straw was basically I was going in so many directions in a given week and listening to, I mean, watching other lawyers in the guild and just listening to some of the other lawyers in St. Louis and your guys' podcast about how important it is to niche down. I thought if there's something there, I should try it, right? I should give it a shot. But it was simply… One of the weeks I had leading up to that decision was, I was sending out discovery in a personal injury case on the plaintiff's side. I was doing, I had two or three estate plans, closings I was doing, and then I had three different probate cases that I had to prepare documents for and do that. And my mind was so all over the place, it was creating a lot of stress. And I just said, look, this is, one, it's not. I was trying to be good at three different things and trying to build three different law firms in one, and it just didn't make any sense. It took me longer than I would like to admit that it took me five years to realize that. But once I actually realized that, it was, I've taken away probably at least 50% of my stress that I was carrying before. And it's been absolutely phenomenal from a… from an ownership standpoint and also a scalability standpoint because trying to do three things at once or scale three different practice areas is impossible. It's hard enough to scale one.

Tyson:
All right, John, I want to shift gears just a little bit. Before the show, you said that you wanted to increase brand recognition. And I'm curious what that means. Like, what are you talking about when it comes to increasing brand recognition? Are you talking about you want to bring in more cases or you just want to be well known in the St. Louis area? What is that and where is that coming from?

John Fritz:
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's a combination of both. You know, when it comes to, you know, bringing in more cases is important for growth and growing the law practice, but, you know, probate is one of those areas where it's kind of the redheaded stepchild of the law for whatever reason, when it comes to, you know, a lot of lawyers say, oh, you know, I don't like, you know, they tack it on to either estate planning or this or that and. I absolutely love doing probate work. I love providing the value to the people who are, who had just lost a loved one. It's a really rewarding role to be able to help clients in that role. My goal is to increase my recognition as a firm to be the, I want to be the go-to law firm in Missouri, at least in St. Louis to start, when it comes to probates. so that people think, hey, there's a probate case, just like they might think of personal injury lawyers whenever they get in a car accident. I wanna be known as the probate guy in St. Louis, and that's what I'm doing right now to kind of build that brand recognition to not only add more cases, but to ultimately to have a bigger impact in the space, which quite frankly is, I think that we are state of the art when it comes to our systems and processes and. client experience for the probate side.

Jimmy:
So John, I think before you joined the guild, I did a training, I think Tyson was out of town or something, and I know that I had to do it sort of on the fly, but I remember the topic was, what practice area would I adopt if immigration went away? And I picked probate litigation. I think it's something that's very scalable. I think it's something that, like you, I had litigation experience. It's something that I could handle. It's not full-blown litigation, which I was happy to get away from. And most importantly, I think there's lots of attorneys who look for someone to send that one probate litigation matter they hear about a year. It's not, I mean, maybe you can come up with a steady stream of people. Maybe estate planning attorneys can do that. But I think it's highly referable. I think it's a great practice area. I think of the three that you had, you picked the right one. And I just think, I really think that what you're trying to do is very doable and I just wanted to say that.

John Fritz:
Well, I appreciate that. And so, yeah, we do, so our probate umbrella is, you know, my main focus is decedents of states. We have our litigation piece that I have, you know, a contract lawyer that does as well, but my main focus is decedents of states. So basically when somebody dies and their assets have to go through probate. And the majority of those cases are uncontested. Obviously we can re-handle and do handle the contested pieces and then the litigation pieces. But when it comes to the firm itself, our focus is getting people through that process and a lot of it is just simply filing documents with the court, forms with the court. And that's why we kind of built those processes to help assist with that.

Tyson:
Jim, I think that's a really good point because I can think of two probate lawyers in St. Louis that I refer to on a regular basis, just two. I could name dozens and dozens of criminal defense attorneys and personal injury attorneys and family law attorneys, but when it comes to probate litigation, I think that's right. But I'd say, John, what are the things that you are doing or the things that you know you need to be doing? to make sure that you are known as that probate lawyer in St. Louis.

John Fritz:
Yeah, I mean when it comes to the digital advertising space, I'm pretty well known at least when it comes to the Google searches and that sort of thing. But there's definitely a big hole in my brand strategy or marketing strategy going forward, which is video content. I know I need to do that. I know it's part of, it can be a huge… you know, driver of not only recognition, but also value when it comes to content for the general public to consume. So that's definitely one thing that was actually my one thing this week was to make one video of, you know, a probate video to edit ultimately to put out. So there's a lot of things I can be doing. And I think, you know, if I want to be known as the, as the, the probate guy in Missouri, I need to put out probably 10 to 100 fold of the content that I'm putting out now.

Jimmy:
Yeah, the way I always thought of it is that you need to convince the world that you're obsessed about that topic, like that's all that you think about. Even if you think about other things, like being omnipresent and you want to get to that point where when people think probate litigation, they think of John. The harder part is when they think of John to make them think probate. Like for me, everyone thinks immigration, right? That was my goal and it takes a shitload of content to do it.

John Fritz:
Yeah, and I understand that it's been one of those, I've hesitated to, just like a lot of people in the guild, and a lot of people in the guild have done amazing when it comes to forcing themselves to put that video content out, and I know both of you guys do it very well. It's, like I said, it's one of those things that I'm now at the point where I actually have, with a couple more staff members, I'm able to kind of free up some time. and to not be so much doing the legal work as opposed to spending more time, you know, basically in the marketing space.

Tyson:
All right, John, well, we are at our time, so I'm going to wrap things up. Before I do, I want to remind everyone to make sure you join us in the big Facebook group. There's a lot of great activity going on there. If you want a more high-level conversation with people like John Fritz. Go to maxlawguild.com and join us there. There's just a lot of great content being shared there as well. A lot of great knowledge too. It's an excellent place to be. And while you're listening to the rest of this episode, if you don't mind leaving us a five-star review, we would greatly appreciate it. It helps spread the love. Jimmy, what's your Hack of the Week?

Jimmy:
We all spend a lot of time thinking about direct to consumer marketing. How do we get a particular person to raise their hand, people who are in need of our legal services. We don't spend nearly as much time thinking about the people who know those people. So my hack of the week is to spend some time this week. thinking and drilling down and being creative, whatever practice area you have, who are the people that know the people that I want to represent? Spend some time on that. Devote a little bit more of your resources towards that. And I think you'll hit pay dirt.

Tyson:
I like it. It's great advice, Jimbo. All right, John, as you know, we always ask our guests to give a tip or hack of the week. What you got for us?

John Fritz:
Yeah, so my tip or hack of the week is to make a list of all the documents that you are creating from scratch in a given case, whether it's letters to clients, whether it's forms you're filling out. Just make a master list of all the documents in that case and then see what data is going into each document. Okay? So if it's the client's name, the client's address and… The client's birthday that's going across all the documents in your case, right, or most of them. Create some sort of, or at least consider adding some sort of document automation system onto it where you can input that data and it spreads it across all your documents to you. So, you know, I personally use something called Gavel. I think you guys actually had the CEO or the founder on here before. There's others out there. But just… Create a process or create a system where you're not doing data entry for every single document in the case, but that it'll spread it across all the documents. Or if you're using documents across multiple practice areas that are the same, automate those so that you're not having somebody spend that time. Because the small amount of time, it might be a few minutes or it might be 15, 20 minutes on a document. If you extrapolate that over all the documents that you're producing in a week or a month or a year it becomes a massive time spent

Tyson:
Love it. It's great advice. Good stuff. All right. So my tip of the week is actually a fun one. I think Jim might like this. I can't wait to see him do this, but it's, it's the wonder woman pose. That's

Jimmy:
Mm-hmm.

Tyson:
it's called the power pose. Okay. And I was listening to it was actually a Tik TOK. It was, Tony Robbins was talking about it, but apparently there's a lot of science behind it. So if you do that for two minutes straight, it, it increases confidence. It, It improves your body language, obviously. It reduces stress levels. It puts you in a better mood and then you get better performance as well. It like, there's a, there's a bunch of science that backs it up. It's the craziest thing though. Like just, just doing that Wonder Woman pose, um, for two minutes. And if I think you only have to do like, you know, once a week or whatever, but if you do that, um, there's a lot of health benefits to it and in men, there's some studies that say that it increases testosterone. It's kind of a, it's kind of a crazy thing, but, uh, When you get a chance if you listen this episode just kind of do it, you know Do it for two minutes and

Jimmy:
So like

Tyson:
see if it

Jimmy:
this?

Tyson:
see if it does

Jimmy:
Like

Tyson:
anything

Jimmy:
this?

Tyson:
for you No, like with your hands on your hips like that

Jimmy:
Oh,

Tyson:
one

Jimmy:
like that.

Tyson:
like

Jimmy:
Oh.

Tyson:
yeah like that

John Fritz:
It's hard to tell, you can't see it, the full pose

Tyson:
Yeah,

John Fritz:
with

Tyson:
yeah.

John Fritz:
the camera like

Tyson:
Yeah.

John Fritz:
this, you know?

Tyson:
Yeah, you got it like that. You know, like it's

John Fritz:
Okay,

Jimmy:
got

Tyson:
uh,

John Fritz:
here we go.

Tyson:
yeah,

Jimmy:
you.

Tyson:
so

Jimmy:
It's the groin thrusting that increases testosterone

Tyson:
Yeah

Jimmy:
apparently.

John Fritz:
Yeah.

Tyson:
Exactly. Yes. That's probably what it is. Actually. So yeah, so the Wonder Woman pose. It's a fun one All right, John, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. Thanks for your time, and sharing a lot of great information.

John Fritz:
Yeah, thanks so much for having me guys. You guys have been awesome in the guild and outside the guild. So I appreciate everything you guys do.

Jimmy:
Thanks, buddy.

In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer podcast, hosts Tyson Mutrux introduce a new series of Saturday episodes aimed at helping law firms succeed. These episodes will provide concise and actionable content to help law firms navigate challenges such as AI, automation, and content creation. Listeners can expect practical advice that can be implemented immediately, leading to tangible results. 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Resources:

Transcript: Bite-Sized Solutions for Law Firm Success

Speaker 1 (00:00:01) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the Maximum lawyer podcast. Podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Metrics. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:00:22) - Hey, everybody, It's Tyson and I'm excited to introduce our new Saturday episodes dedicated to helping you move your law firm forward with quick, actionable content. Every Saturday, a quick five minute episodes that will pack a punch. I'll be sharing valuable insights and strategies that will propel your firm forward to greater success. I think you're going to get a lot out of it, and I understand that we're facing unique challenges these days. You've got AI, you've got automation, everyone's a content creator and things are rapidly evolving. And that's why we're creating this series of concise episodes so that they're designed to provide you with actionable takeaways that can be implemented immediately. There's not going to be any fluff in these episodes. It's just going to be practical advice that are going to help make a real impact on your firm.

Speaker 2 (00:01:11) - And with these bite sized episodes, you're going to be able to consume this valuable information quickly and efficiently, and that's going to make it a lot easier for you to implement these strategies and experience these tangible results almost immediately. So get ready, buckle up, because we're really going to unlock your firm's potential and join me every Saturday. And together, let's pave the way for a future where your law firm not only keeps up, but leads the way. Our first episode, what I'm going to be doing is talking about from chaos to clarity, the art of putting things on your calendar. Until then, though, remember, imperfect action will always beat perfect in action. Take care.

Speaker 3 (00:01:53) - The Guild of Maximum Lawyers Community of legal entrepreneurs who are taking their businesses and lives to the next level. As a Guild member, you're granted exclusive access to quarterly in-person events around the country. The next mastermind is coming up on July 20th and 21st in Denver, Colorado, featuring hot seat sessions and personal coaching with renowned performance coach Jason Selke.

Speaker 3 (00:02:14) - This event will give you the opportunity to work directly with Jason, who has helped countless high performing individuals and teams reach their full potential. During the hot seat sessions. You'll gain valuable insights and learn strategies to help you overcome the challenges you're facing in your practice. For a limited time, you can get your ticket at the lowest earlybird price head to max law events to join now and reserve your spot at the upcoming Guild Mastermind.

Speaker 1 (00:02:40) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content, go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

Walt Disney, the visionary behind Disney World, had to keep his plans a secret to acquire the necessary land. This story serves as a reminder of the importance of dreaming beyond our current realities, believing in our values, daring to make a difference, and taking action. Disney's meticulous operational practices are a testament to their commitment to excellence. From nightly touch-up painting to replacing trees and shrubs, and even strategically placing trash cans every 30 feet, Disney leaves no stone unturned in maintaining its magical aura.

What about taking some of the best practices from Disney World and using it for our law firms? What would that look like? 

Creating a welcoming physical space for clients, considering factors like parking, accessibility, and physical comfort. What about understanding clients as individuals and showing genuine care and interest in their lives? This and more is what Tyson talks about in this MaxLawCon22 presentation episode. 

Episode Highlights:

  • 01:23 Walt Disney's four keys to success: dream beyond today's realities, believe in sound values, dare to make a difference, and go out and do the work
  • 03:57 Disney's meticulous operational practices, including nightly touch-up paint, replacing trees and shrubs, and maintaining cleanliness with trash cans every 30ft
  • 06:04 Creating a sense of belonging and comfort for clients, similar to the feeling of being at home at Disney World
  • 10:54 The importance of involving clients and allowing them to play an active role in their cases
  • 17:20 The importance of recognizing and rewarding clients for their wins and staying in communication with them
  • 19:18 Creating a unique and special experience for clients, emphasizing a sense of belonging and identity

Resources:

Transcript: What Kind of Mickey Mouse Operation is This? 

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - So in today's episode we're sharing a presentation from Max Lakhan 2022. Keep listening to hear Tyson metrics as we share his talk. What kind of Mickey Mouse operation is this? You can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Speaker 2 (00:00:18) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the Maximum layer podcast podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Tricks. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Tyson Mutrux (00:00:40) - I absolutely love Disney. Just raise their hands. And I know that many of you that are parents, have you heard that? Raise your hands. That song. Yeah. Get stuck in your head. How many of you have been to Disney World? Yeah, I mean, Disney is a marketing juggernaut, but operationally it is an operational masterpiece. What Disney is, it is 27,000 acres. That's how big that land is. And it's interesting because when Disney was building Disney World, he was constantly reminded of the mistake that he had made with Disneyland because the mistake that he made was not keeping it a secret what he was building.

Tyson Mutrux (00:01:23) - Because what had happened was, is he bought the little plot of land for Disneyland, and then people heard about it and then started buying up all the land around Disneyland. So he could not expand and actually build what he originally wanted to do with Disney World. He had teams that secretly went out shell company after shell company after shell company to go out and buy land. And he actually hired a former CIA agent to to actually do all the covert ops. It was a really interesting thing, what he did, to be able to build Disney World. And by the end, people started to get wind as to what he was doing and they started to buy up land and it probably cost them a little bit extra money. But overall, that 27,000 acres, roughly 43mi², he got it for fairly cheap. Right. It is just an operational masterpiece when it comes to Walt himself. He really had four keys to success. And it's in something that you've probably heard before, Dream, Believe, Dare Do.

Tyson Mutrux (00:02:28) - Have you heard that before? Dream, Believe, Dare do. And what he believed was is dream beyond the realities of today. Dream beyond the realities of today. He was a dreamer and many of you were dreamers, I do know that believe believe in sound values. Hopefully many of you, because you listen to Jim and I talked about this a lot, is having core values. Hopefully you thought about the core values, but believing in sound values. There is a reason why Walt Walt resisted selling alcohol in parks, right? He believed in sound values. He wanted the parks to be about family, okay? He wanted them to be about family. He had very sound values. Dare dare to make a difference. Be different. Right. Make a difference, really important. And then just go out and do it. Do go out and do the work. Right. I talked about execution yesterday. Go out and do the work, get it done. When I was talking about the masterpiece, operationally, what Disney is, I mean, I don't know what if many of you realize the things that they do on a daily basis to maintain those parks every single night they go around, there's a crew with touch up paint and every little knick is touched up with paint every single night.

Tyson Mutrux (00:03:57) - Not quarterly, not weekly, not yearly. It's every single night a crew goes out and does it. Another thing that they do is they go out and they replace trees and shrubs that need to be replaced every single night. And the reason why they do that is to make sure that it looks like opening day every day. That's one of their themes. They want to make sure it's opening day every day. When you've arrived at Disney for the first time, and I want you to think about those of you that have been think about your first visit and hopefully it was a very, very pleasant visit. And just think about how clean everything was and how just magical the feeling was. I just I'm thinking about it now and I just I get these chills because I just loved it so much. Every 30ft there's a trash can. I don't know if you realize that that's part of the reason why it's so clean. Every 30ft in a park is a trash can. And the reason why they did that is they for a long time, they were tracking people and they were saying, okay, at what point do people start to litter? And they realized 30ft.

Tyson Mutrux (00:05:04) - So they were looking at the data, they were collecting the data, they were looking at it, and they said, okay, this is something we need to do. Another thing is that every employee is responsible for picking up gum, and it's amazing. If you've been on Main Street USA, you don't see if you go to a lot of these theme parks, you'll see like little splotches of gum all over the park, right? Not in Disney. You do not see that if someone has happened to have dropped a piece of gum and someone has actually stepped on it, they scrub it up immediately and get it off the ground. They take meticulous detail. Something else that they do is they actually will they have a rule where there's no gum or peanuts sold on site. It's really interesting that you cannot find a pack of gum in all of Disney World. Just amazing. And I'm going to pull up my slides. And what you're going to notice is many of these are just pictures of me and my family.

Tyson Mutrux (00:06:04) - That's all these are these all these slides are going to be you're not going to have to write down a the notes on these slides. But there are some key points that I want to point out as to why Disney is so successful and some of the things that maybe you can do with your firms to make your firm successful. And the first is really a sense of place. Okay, A sense of place. And what I mean by that is a sense of belonging, right? When we arrive at Disney World, we feel like we belong. This is a picture of my coffee cup. We like to say at the Grand Floridian, it's right on the water. It's just wonderful. And we feel when we are there, we are at home. I think about this a lot of times when it comes to just handling cases and running the law firm. I think of Jim when it comes to immigrant home. Right. A lot of his clients feel like they are at home. We spend a lot of time with our people and how they talk to our clients, how they talk with our clients.

Tyson Mutrux (00:07:03) - We want our clients to feel very comfortable. They've got a place. Finally, we hear this all the time. We thought that attorneys were just jerks. We thought that they were selfish. We thought that they only cared about themselves. And you all make us feel like we are at home. So that's something I want you to focus on, finding a place for them. The next one is the sense of being special. So these are magic bands and the actual style of them has changed a little bit. I think this is the first time we went to Disney World and some of the pictures. You'll see how they changed a little bit. But whenever you're there, you feel special just because you're a customer. And if you kind of think through your case processes and what can you do for your clients to make them feel special just because they are one of your clients? One of the things that we do is they they are are people know to talk us up as attorneys, right? You know, Anthony Laramore is one of the best medical malpractice attorneys in the state of Missouri.

Tyson Mutrux (00:08:08) - You're going to be in really, really good hands with him. And when a client hears that all of that apprehension about actually hiring a lawyer and actually hiring this particular lawyer, it melts away. So think about the things that you can do in your firms to make your clients feel special. And maybe that's a John Fisher shocking all box. You know, maybe that's one of the things that you do think about the things that you can do to make them actually feel special just because they're a client. Another thing that is really, really special about Disney is the sense of community that they create. I would like to think that maximum lawyers done a pretty good job of building a community right? When you come to this conference, it is different than most conferences and it's funny to to explain it to somebody before they've been here. It's almost like trying to explain a cult. It's really hard to do sometimes. I'm sure that many of you have had that conversation. I've heard some of you talk about your spouses calling Max Law cold.

Tyson Mutrux (00:09:10) - I think it's kind of funny, but that community is really, really important. What can you do in your firms to build that community? Another thing that they do is exclusivity, right? You can you let them see you let your customers see what they can have access to, but they can't have access to it unless they upgrade to it. And many of these things, I'm not going to give you all the answers. I'm just going to give you some ideas and you all need to go back and think about them. What are some things that you can do to build that community that also have that little. Bit of exclusivity out there to upgrade. And those of you that have those subscription services, it can be a little bit easier for you, right? A little bit easier for you. If I were to do immigration, I think maybe what you could do is you could do an upcharge for certain select services, you could do things like that. Again, I don't have all the answers, but that is something that Disney does really, really well.

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Tyson Mutrux (00:10:54) - This other part this is one of my favorite parts is engagement. They do engagement, involvement, active roles and active participation. And clients want to usually take a part in their cases. They want to have an active role. Now, there are sometimes some people that say, I'm going to pay you, you do the rest of the work and that's fine.

Tyson Mutrux (00:11:19) - But many times they want to have an active role and was something that Disney does. This is my daughter and she is dressed up. Who is this? Who's this Princess Bell, right? She's dressed up like Belle. And we went into this room inside the castle and we got to walk around and they got to play roles. This is my son, Jackson, and he's got to play the role of the horse. Philip So Jackson got to play the role of Phillipe. We paid to do this, but we were a part of the show, right? We paid to come in there, but we got to be part of it. So what can you do in your firms to have your clients a part of the process, have them play a role in the process, be involved in the process? It's a really, really important. Another thing that Disney does really, really well is if you are a regular customer, they reward you. Now, this is not necessarily a reward, but if you look down, there's the lanyard and see the little pins, something that many, many people that go to Disney World do is they will go every single year and they will put pin after pin after pin and they'll have the year on there that they've been.

Tyson Mutrux (00:12:33) - Does anybody in here do that? Yes. Yeah, we got we got a couple people do it. And what can you do in your firm to reward your clients now I don't know how many of you actually have a some sort of practice where you might have a returning client. Right. So and I don't know what you can do in your practices to actually do that, but you can reward them. It's not like a coffee program where you can stamp a card or whatever, but you should think about things that you can do to reward your clients for coming back. Another thing that they do really well, and we talk about this and Ryan McCain talks about this all the time is when it comes to employee culture, right? Having that really tight knit culture, making sure it's a culture where people want to join your firm. This is my son, Hudson. He's wearing a goofy hat. This is my daughter, Emma. She's wearing another hat. She's she's got Disney clothes all over her. But it's having that culture where customers want to promote you, right? Having that great customer client culture where they want to talk about you.

Tyson Mutrux (00:13:34) - And it can be really, really easy sometimes to just think of our clients as numbers. I went through that phase and about 4 or 5 years ago we redid everything because clients were turning into a number to us. Okay, how much money are they going to make us on this case? So it's and what we did is we went back, we went to the drawing board and we started to think of our clients as actual human beings and asking them, how have these injuries affected your lives, asking them about the hobbies that they do on a daily basis. You know, what's your religion? Okay. And the reason why we know that. Have you missed church? Have you missed all the activities that come along with attending your church? Okay. One of my clients, she was an artist. She had injured her shoulder. She's retired. The only thing that she cared about in the entire world was painting for six months. She could not paint. Okay? That was a significant impact to her.

Tyson Mutrux (00:14:27) - Think about how you can support your your customers. Your clients support that culture critic great culture where because you're caring about them as a human being, they're going to go out and talk about you, right? They're going to want to put on your firm shirt. They're going to want to put on the firm. Add and say how great you are. Another thing is, is that Disney does really, really well, is creating physical spaces where you can go. And it's a talking point. This is one where they have a sign with a photographer set up and you go and you stand there, they take a photo and you don't know what's going to be below you. They just say, Hey, make this face. And then in your app shows it pops up this picture and it's a cool little activity that you can do. They also have other photo opportunities, another picture of Emma, another picture of Jackson, where you can go and you can take photographs. And it's a fun little thing, right? These physical spaces.

Tyson Mutrux (00:15:23) - And the reason why I brought this up is think about your offices. Think about whenever a client comes in and what their experience is like, what do they experience. This is something that is an afterthought for most of us. It's something that we don't think about. Who is the first person that they're going to talk to? What's the first thing that they're going to see when they're parking at your building? Where are they going to park? Are they are they going to have street parking or are they going to have what parking is parking free? Is it paid? If you've got garage parking whenever they come upstairs, are you going to stamp their ticket? All of these things think about these physical spaces and how it affects your clients lives. For us, we cannot be in any building that has stairs only. There's just it's just not a building we can be in. We have injured clients many times. They're on crutches. Many times they're in a wheelchair. We have to have physical spaces that make sense for our clients.

Tyson Mutrux (00:16:16) - So this is something that you want to think through, think it through what works for your clients and maybe for some of you that if you do trademarks or if you do immigration, where someone comes to the United States and it's they've actually become a US citizen, you create physical spaces for your clients whenever they get a settlement check, right? Create spaces for them to be happy and then really think about it as a photo opportunity. You can you can create spaces for a photo opportunity recognition. Okay, This is the next thing. And this picture really has nothing to do with recognition except for I like that his hands are up in the air. This is again, Jackson. Recognize your clients for their wins. And I'm not talking about necessarily your wins in the courtroom or your wins for something they did on their case. Recognize your clients whenever something's going on in their lives, Something that we do really, really well in our firm is whenever something happens, whether it's something good or bad, we will send them either a care package where we will send them a card, whatever it may be, and it goes a very long way to building that goodwill with our clients.

Tyson Mutrux (00:17:20) - Because how many of you, every once in a while have an angry client, raise your hands. Okay. How much easier is it to have a conversation with that angry client when you've sent them a care package over the last few months? Pretty damn easy. They're going to give you a little bit of grace. So recognize your clients, know your clients. That's part of it, too, is understanding who your clients are. No what's going on with their lives in their lives, staying in communication with them and then recognizing them for it. And then the last one I want to go over again, just a picture. It's just a picture. It's just me and my family. It has nearly nothing to do with my presentation other than this. There is a Mickey in here and I think on this one, just Mickey, do you know what they call employees at Disney? They're cast members, right? There is a very specific proprietary language that they have at Disney in having that language inside your firm is important.

Tyson Mutrux (00:18:21) - And I want to point that out to you, because we have things like we theme everything. And that's something that Disney does really, really well, is they theme everything. So we do things like we've got these pre deposition calls. We have them called Fact-Finding calls, we have injury impact calls, we theme a bunch of different things. And we do that both internally so people know what things are. But then also this so clients know what they are and what to expect. And they look at them as look at them as benchmarks. In their case, we call our people peeps, right? So we've got that proprietary language where we call our people peeps. They've got passion, they've got energy. They get they energize other people, they execute, they have edge their peeps. That's why we call them peeps. So having that own proprietary language is something that Disney does really, really well, that you can apply to your firms as well. That also helps with that firm culture. So I'm going to leave you with this.

Tyson Mutrux (00:19:18) - We got 40s, so pretty good on time. I want you to go out. I want you to think about these things. I'm going to read them off really quick again, see how you can apply them to your firm sense of place, sense of being special because you're a client. Having communities and membership for engagement, involvement, active roles and active participation. Five Reward your clients. Six Have a great. Like culture seven Having physical spaces for your clients and understanding how those affect your clients. Eight Recognition Recognize your clients and nine having that proprietary language. So I'll leave you with this go out dream believe, dare do. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:20:06) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase using these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Have you ever been frustrated with the traditional hiring process? Where gut feelings and limited information resulted in a measly 50% accuracy hire rate? What if we walked you step-by-step through a better way – that is not our own – But it’s based on the book called “Topgrading” by Bradford D. Smart, which dives even deeper into this topic.

In this podcast episode, Jim Hacking and Tyson Mutrux invite Kristen Weiss (from Tyson’s team) to discuss hiring practices and the top grading principles. Kristen shares her experience as a recruiter and the frustrations she faced before implementing the top grading process. 

A few key takeaways are:

➡ the importance of involving multiple people in the hiring process

➡the importance of not rushing the process as hiring in haste can lead to wasted time, money, and resources 

➡automated emails that outline the steps and expectations

➡ recruiting mentally tough individuals who were fully committed to the firm

➡the hiring process. And the best part? It works!

So, if you’re tired of making hiring mistakes and want to find the perfect fit for your team, we highly recommend giving this episode a listen and “see” the Topgrading hiring principles in action. Don’t forget to grab the book here! 

Book:

Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People, Revised and Updated Edition by Bradford D. Smart Ph.D.

Episode Highlights:

1:06 Kristen’s past experience as a recruiter and the frustrations she faced with hiring practices before implementing the top grading process

05:18 The importance of getting multiple perspectives in the hiring process and not relying solely on one person’s judgment

10:19 How to address potential employees’ questions about the slower hiring process

18:47 The hiring process, step-by-step, including the use of applications and telephone interviews to filter candidates

19:23 The detailed assessment that candidates receive after a 15-minute conversation, which tests their competency, attention to detail, and ability to follow instructions

20:27 After the video interview, candidates who move on to the next round undergo a mental toughness screening, which assesses their reactions in different situations

21:22 The unique approach of setting up appointments with past employers for reference checks to ensure they only speak about A-player candidates 🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Resources:

Transcript: Finding the Best Fit for Your Firm

Jim Hacking:
And welcome back to the Maximo, no. Am I doing that right? Okay, all right, sorry. Ha ha. And welcome back to the Maximo Moore Podcast. I’m Jim Hacking.

Tyson Mutrux:
And I’m Tyson Mutrix. What’s up, Jimmy?

Jim Hacking:
I had to do that twice. It’s been a while since we’ve recorded an episode and I have different shows and I got to keep my intros straight.

Tyson Mutrux:
I can’t remember the last time you had to re-record an intro. That was fun to watch because I hadn’t seen you done it in a long time.

Jim Hacking:
Maybe we should just leave that in there, that was sort of funny.

Tyson Mutrux:
That was funny. I think today’s a fun one. It was something you wanted to do. I think part of it’s because of what you’re going through in your firm. So you want to, I guess, introduce the topic. We can jump right in.

Jim Hacking:Yeah, I’m sort of excited about today’s topic. I get to be the interviewer, and you and Kristen are gonna be the interviewees. Kristen Weiss, welcome to the show.

Kristen Weese:
Hey, Jim, thank you for having me today.

Jim Hacking:
Of course, we’re very glad to have you. So the reason that we’re having both of you on is to talk about your hiring practices. Tyson wants to do a little series on hiring and onboarding and all that good stuff. And specifically, we wanted to talk about the top grading principles, sort of the approach that you guys work with in screening candidates for hire, hiring candidates and all that good stuff. So really excited to have you on the show.

Kristen Weese:
Yeah, I’m excited too. This is something I’m definitely passionate about because I’ve been a recruiter in the past and not used the top grading process and then seen the difference. So it is something I’m excited about.

Jim Hacking:
nWell that’s great, so why don’t you introduce everybody, introduce yourself to everybody, maybe tell us a little bit about your background and then what your role is with Tyson’s firm.

Kristen Weese:
nYeah, absolutely. So before I joined Mutrix firm, I was in office management for a chiropractic office system. We had four offices. I did all the hiring, training, onboarding, all that good stuff for them. And it was very frustrating because you would spend so much time investing into these candidates or new hires just to have them either just never show back up or flop or come in 30 every morning and it was very frustrating. So when I joined the firm with Tyson, he said, hey, you should read this book. And then we began kind of fine tuning some of the things and concepts in there.

Jim Hacking:
Great. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about what life was before you had read that book and sort of the hiring at the chiropractic process. Like how did you do it? I mean, if it’s the way we do things around here, it’s like, oh crap, we need someone. Let’s hire someone as fast as we can. And then you’ve got a pulse. You’ve got a little experience. Hell, yes. Sign up. So talk to us a little bit about maybe going beyond that or what it was like before. So then we can figure out what it’s like now with Tyson.

Kristen Weese:
Yeah, absolutely. So it was very similar to that. And even still, I felt like I was really good at picking up on little nuances in candidates on that first conversation or only conversation because that’s how you in the past, you do one interview, you like them, you don’t like them, you think they can do it, move them through. So I felt like I was good at being able to tell, can they deliver? Are they genuine? All those things, but was still, still failing because that’s all I was going of was a gut feeling. Maybe a little bit of resume, maybe a couple of cold calls to their past employers, but that’s all it was, right? And then we were plugging them in because you need somebody when somebody, you know, leaves your office. You need somebody in a pinch, so get a few interviews scheduled and pick the best one was kind of the process before. And it was maybe 50% accurate.

Jim Hacking:
Tyson, tell everybody a little bit about what life was like for you before you came into contact with top grading and read the book.

Tyson Mutrux:
There we go. I had lost all visual of you all, so I’m going to do that. So I had to join in with another link, so give me a second.

Jim Hacking:
And then

Tyson Mutrux:
So

Jim Hacking:
clap again when you’re ready. That clap’s no good.

Tyson Mutrux:
it was, I feel like we had a process. It was a… Decent process I’ll let Kristen give the critique as to how good she thought the actual process was. I thought it was an okay process It was we did have some assessments that we had people go through at one point We even we had like you had a you know phone interview And then we had thrown in like a coffee or a lunch interview that we used to sort of see how people reacted with other people, but I know that we had made We’d made a couple bad hires because we did rush the process and we sort of forced things. It was not nearly as structured as we have it now. There’s things like this job scorecard, which we did not have in place that we’re using now that I think is very effective because we can compare sort of what we’re needing versus what the person’s attributes are. We can also use it in the hiring process, which is pretty nice. We can say, hey, here’s what your expectations are. which I think is a very handy thing. But it was not nearly as structured, I would say, as it is now. And we also have a lot of automation built in too, which we didn’t have either, which helps, I think, reduce some of Kristen’s, her workload on the hiring process.

Jim Hacking:
Kristen, before we hop into top grading itself, talk to us a little bit about your experience as a recruiter and the kinds of things you’ve noticed with employers if it’s sort of similar to the way that I described we’ve been doing it or the way that you described it at the chiropractic. What are some lessons or tips that you might have from that part of your experience?

Kristen Weese:
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is… First of all, your set of eyes, no matter how good, is never enough. You need to bring more people in on this process, whether that’s in the middle or at least by the end before you offer this candidate a job. You need to get more eyes in on it. You cannot be the sole recruiter because you are not gonna see everything. You’re bringing your experiences, your ways of thinking into the interview, into any conversation. That’s what we all do. So you have to bring someone else in. and I think is a huge thing for employers.

Jim Hacking:
All right, so I’m laughing to myself because, Tyson, you made a great hire with Kristen, right? So I mean, it’s interesting because I can tell right now she knows her stuff and just bringing her into your team was a great decision. Talk to us a little bit about what jumped out at you when you were hiring her and then maybe Kristen, you could talk a little bit about what the hiring or the interviewing process was from your perspective with Tyson.

Tyson Mutrux:
That’s an interesting question. I’m not sure I’ve ever asked Kristen about this, but what I mean What jumped out to us is what you’re seeing now and what you’re hearing now. That’s what jumped out to us. She clearly got it. She had a passion for what we were doing. We had told her what our plans were, and I think that that excited her. She demonstrated that excitement. And I’m pretty sure that our visions align for what we want for the firm, and that was very evident. And so it was really her presence where we talk about looking for energy. We’re looking for people with energy. that she can energize other people, she comes with energy and that’s really what we saw. But I’m more interested in what Kristen’s about to say about what the hiring process was for her to be honest with you.

Kristen Weese:
I actually have to jump off now, guys.

Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah

Kristen Weese:
Just kidding. No, from… the hiring I had done and then jumping into interviews and I had been where I was for four years so I hadn’t done the interview process in a long time. It actually struck out to me as a very long process and our process now is even longer so that’s kind of funny. But all good things, it was almost solely Tyson doing the hiring. I did a team interview there at the end where the senior attorney and COO jumped in too. maybe a couple others. But for the most part, it was me and Tyson and honestly, same thing with Tyson. It was just like having a conversation with a friend. I felt like we connected, he understood me, I understood him. And I mean, he kind of sold it for me, so.

Tyson Mutrux:
I do want to jump in there because that hiring process was different from what we had been doing for a few years because I had taken it over. The reason why is, and I had explained this to Kristin, I think I had explained it in the hiring process that we were looking for people that were mentally tough. We had gone a little too heavy on the emotional side. Right? And we were, we were looking for people that brought less emotion to the table and more just mental toughness that is, is, I think can be really hard to find. And, and so the reason why I was so involved at that stage when it comes to hiring Kristen is because we were looking for a very specific person and we were trying to shift things quite a bit. And so Kristen, will you talk about that part of it too? Because that was part of the plan.

Kristen Weese:
Yes, if I understand what you’re asking. I think that’s you had just begun to implement the top grading processes there because I did go through most of these steps and it was the top grading process is very much geared towards mental toughness making sure that you are a problem solver that you are going to come through at the end of the day that your feathers are not going to be ruffled over every change or every comment someone makes that doesn’t sit So that was very evident that that’s what you guys were looking for and I felt like I could deliver.

Jim Hacking:
All right, now we’re just about to dive in to top grading. And oh, I had a really good question, and now I forgot it. Damn it. Oh, I know. There we go. Haven’t had so much clapping on a show in a while. You mentioned, Kristen, the fact that you thought as a potential hire that going through Tyson’s process was rather slow. And with unemployment at record lows right now, at least one of the things I hear in my ear all the time is we can’t afford to wait for really good candidates because they’re just jumping ship to other places and we had someone who were just about ready to make an offer to the other day in about four days time. And. and even they had gone somewhere else. So what do you say to people who say that?

Kristen Weese:
You need to fight that urge with everything inside you to rush the process. I think that’s the biggest misconception in hiring and that’s what top grading has taught me. That you are costing yourself so much anguish, time and money and resources. to hire quickly. You can you cannot do that because you’re throwing all this energy, all this money into this person and then like you said they’re gonna the day before they’re gonna accept a different offer or they might be there for a couple weeks and find something better because they’re in this interview process right so they’re potentially speaking with other employers too. So if a better offer comes out they’re going to jump ship so do not do that.

Jim Hacking:
Do both of you have any words of wisdom or things for people to say? I mean, do you have to explain to potential employees why your process is sort of slower than others?

Kristen Weese:
Sometimes, every now and then, people will ask or kind of make a joke about it. Typically, those are not the people that you want, the people that are willing to go through the process and excited about it. So they have that first conversation with me, kind of like I did with Tyson. And then typically, they’re pumped about the opportunity to join the firm, right? So if you get someone that’s kind of complaining already about all the steps, do they really want to be here? Or are they resilient? You know?

Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah, and so something else is we explain the process in our emails. So we have an automated process where we actually explain to them what the next steps are, which I think is pretty helpful so that they know what’s coming up and they know what to expect and that they’re not just left in the dark. I think that’s pretty helpful.

Kristen Weese:
Absolutely.

Jim Hacking:
You’re listening to the Maximum Warrior podcast. Our guest today is Tyson Mutrix and Kristen Weiss. It’s an interesting show, a little bit of a mix up. We’re talking about top grading and onboarding and hiring people. So Tyson, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you were looking for when you picked up top grading and sort of how it changed your perspective.

Tyson Mutrux:
It is funny, I mean, the reason why I picked up top grading, and I don’t remember how I found out about it. I wish I could give credit to the person or the place that I heard it from. I might’ve just been searching, but really what I was looking for is I was looking for that, a way to find people that were more mentally tough, to be completely honest with you, that’s what it came down to, because we were very emotion heavy in the firm, very emotion heavy. and I really wanted to solve that problem. And that’s what I was looking for was, okay. And I knew that our process was already long. I did know that. And I was wanting to find ways to tweak it, to make it better. But the main thing I was looking for was to add that mental toughness element. And top grading does provide that. And it also provides a way of filtering out people that… We had had a couple hires. that were okay. Like they were okay, I would say, they were probably like a B, B minus player. And they were just okay. But then clearly they were not like, they weren’t in it for the long haul with us. And I wanted to reduce the amount of hires going forward that were like that. And I really wanted to hire those A players, which I feel like we have got a stable full of A players now, which is fantastic. It was a painful process to… to get through all that, to get to where we are now, but really what the genesis of it was, was to shift really the mental toughness of the firm as a whole.

Jim Hacking:
Well, that’s great because given the departures that we’ve had, I don’t know. It would be that painful for us here just because we’ve had a significant number of team members leave in the last month or so. So I think this might be a perfect time for us to start, you know, sort of diving into the principles and everything. So Kristen, tell us a little bit about top grading, sort of how you interpreted it. When you read it, how you interpreted it as you went through it as a hire, maybe Tyson’s first top hire, top grading hire. And then. sort of how you use it now in your role at the firm.

Kristen Weese:
Yeah, I think when I was first introduced to top grading, I’m gonna be honest, I looked at the book, I filmed through it and was like, this is gonna be a tough read. And for me, it was a tough read. It was not something that I just leisurely enjoyed reading. And the process in the book is very rigid. And he says, if you follow it, the more closely you can follow it, the better your rate will be, your success rate will be in hiring those A players that Tyson was talking about. We have fine-tuned his process to what fits our firm’s needs and I would encourage that because every company or firm is a different amount of employees, different needs, you know, all those factors I think come into play. So first reading it was a little intimidating because in my mind as a fairly new hire at the firm, I was thinking how strictly does Tyson want to follow this? principles and having that long process and making sure these people are that are coming into our firm are resilient are tough are they have a good head on their shoulders along with that emotional intelligence. I don’t think top grading throws that out the window completely but it is a much more balanced system in going through the process and actually getting to know your candidate as a person in all their strengths weaknesses all of them.

Jim Hacking:
Kyson.

Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah. So we were, I’d say we follow it mostly. I feel like top grading, we follow it for the most part. There is maybe the one we don’t do, we don’t do a, we have the interview where it’s basically the top grading interview, but that’s done more by Kristin. I think it’s done, it’s funny. They just hired someone and the only thing I ever did with it was I did a quick 30 minute team interview with them. And so I don’t know what all other steps that Kristin took, but I do know that we do most of them. I think the only one that we don’t fully do is I don’t think we do fully their top grading interview to a T like they do it. I know that there’s, I think can be several hours. We don’t do that. But for the most part, we follow everything else pretty darn closely and it does a really good job. It’s really effective at really filtering out the people we don’t. I think one of the most important parts is, or the most valuable parts, is filtering through all the job

Kristen Weese:
Thank

Tyson Mutrux:
applicants.

Kristen Weese:
you.

Tyson Mutrux:
You have them fill out the application, and many people just rely on the Indeed application. We actually have them fill out an application. It sends them a link. It’s all automated where they apply. We get all the details in Zoho Recruit. And then they’re sent to a new… page to fill out an application and that application allows us to go through several applicants fairly easily and rule them out and then pick the ones that Kristen wants to actually interview.

Jim Hacking:
So it’s not one of these things where it’s like, send us a FedEx with an insert in yellow paper with Greek letters every third paragraph. It’s nothing like that. You’re just talking about actually having them answer the questions that you need in order to run top grading effectively.

Tyson Mutrux:
Absolutely. And it’s just a web form, right? It just sends them to a form to fill out and it’s, it’s really easy to fill out. Cause we’re like, there’s additional information that we just don’t get from, from indeed. Like for example, I get like, this is a really basic one, but we’ll, we’ll list something with a salary range. And then what was happening early on is they didn’t, they would apply and then we’d get into the process and they’d be like, well, I want like a salary that’s like double what you’re listing it for. Like, well, what’d you apply for the job for? So now we make them put in like what their salary requirements are. And that’s like, we can go through very quickly now, okay, these people are, yes, we’re within our range, these people are not, and that’s just one thing, we’re looking for other things too, but you formulate this application, that way whenever they apply, you can see all the information you need, quickly go through it on our dashboard, and boom, if they fit, great, if they don’t, they don’t.

Jim Hacking:
I’m struck by how similar this is to the work that we did in figuring out what kind of clients we want to have In our firm and it seems like there’s some analogies there that I’m gonna want to play around with I’m if you see me looking at my phone It’s because I’m downloading the audible version and the Kindle version of the book right now So we’ve got a long way to go, but let’s let’s pretend that you have a posting for a senior personal injury lawyer and And I’m someone who’s, let’s say, three or four years out, I’ve been working in an insurance defense firm, and walk me through your whole process from the moment you post the position until the moment that I get hired, if you’re willing.

Kristen Weese:
can give it a shot. Let’s see if I can do it from memory. So you would get that application that Tyson was talking about and that actually helps weed through candidates really good. If they don’t complete one of the steps then you’re out right? You can’t follow directions. You’re not detail oriented. You don’t want it bad enough. So you get that application. It is very brief. So I mean three minutes I think it takes to submit. Very easy. Once I receive that, I’m like fit. So at that point I’m going to send you a request for a telephone interview and that telephone interview is only about 15 minutes. Occasionally they have gone shorter and or a couple minutes longer depending. So I’m always I think I think I’m very tactful and getting off the phone if it’s kind of a no-go from the get-go but I know for you Jim it would it would be a nail nail in the After that, you would receive an assessment from us, automated, I would push you through to the next round. And if I’m a sure thing about you, Jim, I’m gonna probably tell you on the phone, look out for this assessment from you. I do wanna move you on to the next round. And that assessment is quite long on purpose. I think it took me, I did it in two different days because I was like sleepy and falling asleep, but it took me at least an hour, I wanna say. It is a detailed assessment, and it asks you things like alphabetical order, you put things in numeric order and all those things are to see obviously are you competent but also are you detail-oriented are you paying attention and do you care are you just rushing through so you get that assessment and then at that point you will get a video interview and that would be with me and Amy who’s the COO and then if I move you on to the next round you’re gonna get a mental toughness screening and that’s more questions about how do you And then from there, we’re going to do our reference round. And so the thing that’s a little bit different about top grading references is that you’re not cold calling people off of a resume. You are setting up appointments with these past employers. And ideally, you want the candidate to set up that employee because the candidate is only going to or that past employer is only going to speak on behalf of an eight player candidate. Right. to meet with you, it’s because they probably have really great things to say about this person. So it’s not a waste of your time. You’re not cold calling, you’re actually reaching someone and you’re speaking to a quality employer that can actually give you insight about who this person is, right? So now you know how to lead this person if they were to join your firm. So the reference stage and then after that is that team interview that we talked about. So that, and then we consult and move along, send an offer letter if we want them.

Jim Hacking:
And then that’s awesome. Thank you, Kristen. Tyson,

Kristen Weese:
Yeah.

Jim Hacking:
what’s your level of involvement in those things that Kristen just walked us through?

Tyson Mutrux:
I do the 30 minute team interview and that’s it. I didn’t even, it’s funny, the last hire, I did that. So Kristen, Anthony and Amy were all yes votes. I hadn’t even put any input in because I don’t remember why I was doing something. Offer letter was already out the door. It was, and I said, I said, Kristen in Texas, like, you know what? That makes me so happy. It just makes me so happy. Cause like, I didn’t, I didn’t do, I didn’t do anything, but showed up for 30 minutes. She was a good candidate. Um, and so that was it. It was, it was it. So it was fantastic. Um, so that was it. It was, she’s made it very, very streamlined for me.

Jim Hacking:
This episode is brought to you by Bradford D. Smart, PhD. He’s the author of Top Grading. We should definitely get a kickback for this. If not, he should have at least given me that book for free that I just ordered, but maybe we’ll have to have him on the show.

Tyson Mutrux:
I agree. I think that Becca has reached out to him, so it would be great to have him on. I think it would be important to get his input. I think there are a lot of people that have questions about—because it’s very rigid, and I’ve heard a lot of people say, well, those don’t work these days, because the book’s 10 years old, and that doesn’t work these days. That’s BS. That’s total BS. People are just making more excuses. But I think to have him on would be great.

Jim Hacking:
Has the system let you down yet?

Kristen Weese:
I think full being candid, I’ve been here right about a year and we have made one probably poor hire. But I think if I was being honest, we probably jumped the gun and we hired somebody that we knew was not going to be an A player. I mean, I feel like we thought this person’s a solid B and she ended up not having that resilience to push through. First day we put her on the phone, she didn’t come back after that. So she stayed through training about a month and then left. than that I think we we have really excelled like Tyson said we have a great team.

Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah, I

Jim Hacking:
I

Tyson Mutrux:
do

Jim Hacking:
blame

Tyson Mutrux:
think,

Jim Hacking:
Tyson for that.

Tyson Mutrux:
yeah. You know, it’s funny, I don’t know where the breakdown was on that one. I think we were just, we were a little anxious to get someone in. And with, it goes back to really what you asked Kristen before, it’s like, don’t force it, like wait. You just need to wait, right? If you don’t have a candidate that’s an A player, just wait, it doesn’t matter. It’s worth waiting on because yeah, I mean, we spent a lot of time, a lot of effort. like money, you know, like getting the computer equipment, all of that out to her. It’s not a cheap process, and so waiting is the right way. And I think that that is the only one that we’ve had that’s been a, I wouldn’t say a failure. It was misguided maybe just a little bit.

Kristen Weese:
I think that the training too, the training time spent on her, our staff trained her. So that was pulling away from our legal teams, our clients essentially to get this person trained. So.

Jim Hacking:
Well, I think this was a great episode. I think people are going to find it very, very helpful. So thank you both for being on and for sharing your wisdom and the things that you’ve learned. And Kristen, I think Tyson, he’s always telling me what a great job you’re doing. So I’m grateful for that, for the support you’re giving my friend.

Kristen Weese:
Well, thank you, Jim. I appreciate you having me today.

Tyson Mutrux:
I just want to add two more things really quick. I just want to touch, you touched on the reference calls, which I think are very, very powerful. Don’t skip those. But I think, because we didn’t really talk about this much, Kristen, and I know we’re about at time, but job scorecards, I think that those are absolute crucial. Those are the baseline. Do you have any feedback you can give on that real quick?

Kristen Weese:
Yeah, really quick, I think it’s very important to have those job scorecards because when a candidate asks me, what are you looking for, I can clearly go and say these are the things we have to have or tell me a little bit about why you are, I don’t know, why you have this skill that we’ve got on our job scorecard because we’re looking for a very specific role and it helps keep me and the other leaders that help me higher focused on what we’re looking for for each role. So it’s important.

Jim Hacking:
Nice.

Tyson Mutrux:
All right, now I guess I got to go back to co-host mode and I almost dropped the ball, but we are going to wrap things up, Kristen. We want to be respectful of your time. Our huddle starts right now, so we do need to wrap things up. Before I do, I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. Just search Maximum Lawyer on Facebook. Join us there. If you’re interested in a more high-level conversation, join us in the Guild. Go to maxlawguild.com. It’s maxlawguild.com. meetings, we’ve got quarterly masterminds and other things that we do like the Zapathon that we just got done in Austin, and then we’ve got Denver and Miami coming up later this year which is gonna be great. Alright Jimmy, it is your time to give your Hack of the Week. What you got for us?

Jim Hacking:
Have you done Fireflies yet, Tyson?

n

Tyson Mutrux:
I have not done Fireflies.

Jim Hacking:My hack of the week is fireflies.ai. So this is a pretty cool little add-on that you can do to any of your meetings. I know a lot of people use Otter. I have not used Otter, but Fireflies is really sweet. It just adds itself to every Google Meet or Zoom call that you have. It transcribes it, but more importantly, it summarizes it. It covers the topics that are addressed in the meeting. We had a… We had one yesterday and I was surprised at how the AI was able to figure out exactly what we were talking about and and talked about the issues and everything. It was really sort of mind-blowing. So just started playing around with it, but I think it’s here to stay. It’s a lot of fun.

Tyson Mutrux:
I don’t think Kristen’s a fan of those, but she was kicking them all off yesterday on our, we use Otter, a bunch of people use Otter, so. But yeah, I’ve heard really, really good things. Everyone that I’ve heard talk about Firefly specifically recommends it, so very cool. All right, Kristen, I did give you a heads up this morning that we’re gonna ask for a tip or a hack from you, so what you got for us?

Kristen Weese:
Yeah, I think my biggest hack with hiring is go slow, slow down, and then my life hack is you have to take those few minutes to be quiet and still in the morning no matter what that means. If you’re doing yoga or just taking a few minutes to breathe, you have to do it, don’t run out the door. You’ll hate it later.

Tyson Mutrux:
Love it. I know Jim loves that. Jim’s a big, big fan of that quiet time, so very good. All right, so my tip of the week is a book that I’ve been talking about in the Guild for a few weeks. I can talk about it now on the podcast, A World Without Email by Cal Newport. It is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. It is fantastic. If you want, it’s not just about emails, so don’t worry about that, but it’s really about organizing your tasks in a way. that’s really effective and efficient for you and then also for, it would be for your firm as well. We’re changing many, many things in the firm based upon that. So I recommend that you check it out. Kristen, thank you for coming on. I really appreciate your willingness to do

Jim Hacking:
for

Tyson Mutrux:
this.

Jim Hacking:
sure.

Tyson Mutrux:
You were excited about doing this, which was great. So thank you so much.

Kristen Weese:
Absolutely. Thank you, Tyson. Thank you,

Jim Hacking:
Thanks

Kristen Weese:
Jim.

Jim Hacking:
guys. Nice to meet you, Kristen. Take care.

Kristen Weese:
Nice to meet you.

Jim Hacking:
nBye guys.

Tyson Mutrux:
see you both. Bye.

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