Have you ever considered building a niche law practice? Ashley did just that and has found great success in her niche dental law practice. Ashley’s unique background as a former legal assistant turned attorney and touring musician has given her the confidence and skills to build relationships with clients and create great content for social media.

Ashley’s decision to pivot from litigation to a niche dental practice was driven by the pandemic and a desire to explore other areas of law. She took advantage of a regulatory sandbox in Utah and used social media and referrals to bring in clients. Ashley’s workshops with dental lenders, brokers, and CPAs have also been successful in bringing in clients.

Now, Ashley is looking to expand her dental practice around the country by hiring attorneys in other states to work as of counsel. Her niche dental law practice has been lucrative and has led to many referrals from lenders, brokers, and other professionals in the dental industry. 

If you’re considering building a niche law practice, take a page out of Ashley’s book and use social media and referrals to bring in clients. And don’t forget to create great content that showcases your expertise and builds relationships with clients.

02:17 Working as a paralegal for 10 years before attending law school 

05:28 Pivoting from litigation to a niche dental practice, including the challenges of working during the pandemic

08:15 Bringing in clients through social media and referrals

09:21 Niching into dental law practice

11:24 Utah’s regulatory sandbox, which allows non-lawyer ownership in law firms and sharing of referral fees

18:29 Expanding her practice around the country by working with attorneys in other states

19:15 Struggling with creating content 

Jim’s Hack: Using Pip Deck cards to come up with story structure. Pipdeck.com

Ashley’ s Tip: Email hack: Check your email 3 times a day for 30 mins each time. 

Tyson’s Tip: Bill.com for employee budgets – a credit card on steroids.

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Ashley:

Resources:

Transcript: Building a Lucrative Niche Dental Practice with Ashley Smith

Speaker 1
Run your law firm 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.

Jim Hacking
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer podcast. I am James Oliver hacking the third

Tyson Mutrux
hole that’s going on. I’m Tyson Mediatrix. I like the upbeat pneus that you have today. That’s great.

Jim Hacking
Well, when you’ve been recording all day, and you’re going to continue recording all day, you got to get pumped up and I just went for a nice walk. It’s cold here again, it was warm the other day it just dropped. So although it’s not like where our guest is in Utah, where I just heard they’re still getting pummeled with snow. My friend in Utah tells me that you might be able to ski on the Fourth of July. Yeah,

Tyson Mutrux
it’s looking like it this year. That is absolutely crazy. I had a call with someone yesterday, actually. That’s in Utah. And in the background, there was a snowy mountain. I’m like, Where the hell are you? He’s like, he’s like I’m in Utah. I’m like, Oh my gosh, wow. I was not used to that. That’s That’s crazy. So well, let’s introduce our guest today. It’s Ashley Garvey. Smith. It’s interesting. She has a really interesting story. She was a lily illegal assistant for 10 years before attending law school. I mean, how often do you see that that’s pretty incredible. In short, as a litigation attorney for several years, but discovered particularly during the pandemic, she adds in her bio that litigation was not her preferred practice area and 2020 actually took advantage of a unique opportunity led by the Utah Supreme Court called a regulatory sandbox in which certain relaxed regulations allowed applicants to provide innovative legal service models that might not be permitted under traditional rules. She took this opportunity to build a niche dental practice, which I’m really interested in talking more bags. I’ve heard about them during the mastermind, but she developed this dental related legal practice where she helps dentists transition their practices, which is a really cool thing. And I’m sure you’re going to talk more about that. So But another interesting thing is before becoming an attorney, Ashley was also a professional musician who toured with bands across the country. She loves to use her freedom as her own boss to travel with her husband and two boys. So very cool story. Ashley, welcome to the show. Thanks so

Ashley Smith
much for having me.

Jim Hacking
So Ashley, we were talking before we came on about the fact that you worked as a paralegal for 10 years or 11 years. And I did it for two before I went to law school, we were congratulating ourselves on what great lawyers former paralegals make. But talk to us about the experience of working in law firms before law school, how it made you a better law student, if it did, and then how it led to you becoming a lawyer.

Ashley Smith
Yeah, so I actually never had any intention of being in the law. I’m from a very small, very conservative town in Utah. And so frankly, I didn’t know any female lawyers, I didn’t know any lawyers, particularly any female lawyers. I didn’t even know any women who had a college degree. And so it just wasn’t on my radar. But I got married when I was about 20 years old. And my first husband passed away in a helicopter accident, almost two years after we had been married. And that experience, I mean, having a spouse or a child or you know, a loved one die. It does a couple of things. I think, first of all, it makes you realize life is really short. And so you have to do the things that you want to do. And I think the other thing it does is it makes you a little bit fearless. It’s like, hey, if I could overcome that, and I can go through that I can pretty much do anything. And so after that happened, I just thought, Well, I never had any intention of going to college or, you know, having a career. I just thought we just grew up and we were moms. And that’s what we did. And so I ended up going back to school after he passed away, I was actually going to be an English teacher. And while I was going to school, I got a job as a legal assistant at a litigation firm. And so while I was there, I started becoming very interested in the law. And frankly, I saw some attorneys come in and I thought, Well, if that guy can do this, then I can do this. And so, so I actually was a legal assistant for a while. And when I graduated college, when I got my degree, I actually ended up finding out that I so I met my second husband several years later, and my last year of college, I found out that I was pregnant with my first son. And I found out that the LSAT was on my due date. And so naively I just thought, well, I’ll just take the next LSAT, you know, the one two months after I’ll have a two month old and study for and take the LSAT. Well, that didn’t happen. And so about five or six years later, I finally ended up taking the LSAT so I was not a traditional student. I actually had two kids, when I decided to finally go to law school. Wow,

Tyson Mutrux
that’s incredible. I didn’t know much of that. So that’s interesting. And thank you for sharing that I want to talk about, man, there’s so many topics I want to talk about now, especially but let’s talk about the career choice, that career change you pivoted in? What were the factors that led to that. And I know that COVID had us doing a lot of internal thinking, right. But what were the other factors? And maybe that was the main factor. But what were the factors that you took into consideration said, I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m changing completely what I’m going to do. And you’re

Ashley Smith
talking specifically about, like when I finally was an attorney, and I chose to go from litigation, right. So during the pandemic, you know, Utah was a really strange political climate during that time. And so there were actually a lot of law firms that were still requiring people to come into the office and remote work just wasn’t an option for I wouldn’t even say just law firms, I think just some businesses in general. And I’m because you know, Utah is a very conservative state. I think, initially, it wasn’t taken very seriously. And so kids were out of school, and I had to find a way to homeschool my kids, and still go into the office every single day. And I had an hour long Well, it was a 45 minute long commute. And so I had to commute into the office, and still find a way to homeschool my kids. And on top of that, I just was realizing, you know, I was a professional musician. I was a performer for a lot of years. And so I thought, I’m gonna love litigation, I’m going to love standing up in court and performing. And you realize in litigation, it’s not so much about that. It’s more fighting with other attorneys, and trying to meet deadlines. And especially as an associate, it’s doing all the grunt work, you’re not doing a lot of performing in court, because you’re not the one that’s trying the cases. And so for me, it was a grind. And I had two kids, and I was trying to homeschool them and trying to be a litigator, learning how to do depositions. I mean, you guys do this now. And you know, the first time we had to do a deposition over zoom, and it was just such a disaster, and trying to do hearings over zoom. I mean, it was kind of nice, because you didn’t have to, you only had to dress halfway in order to do the hearings in the depositions. But it just was a grind. And it just didn’t jive with my personality. And so on top of that I worked for a very, it was a very traditional mid sized law firm, they didn’t even have a case management system, they didn’t have a document management system, there was no embracing new technology at all. And so it was really frustrating and new ways to practice law, they wouldn’t even let me do things on a flat fee basis. And so it was all hourly. And it just was really frustrating because I didn’t have a voice. And on top of that, I could see these innovative ways that we could practice the law that they weren’t embracing. And so finally, I just thought, you know, I’m bringing in so many clients to this firm, I wasn’t getting paid a commission on any of the clients I was bringing in. And I thought if I just open my own firm right now, I could make more money than I’m making at this firm.

Jim Hacking
So let’s talk about that. How were you bringing in clients? And how did you continue to bring in clients once you decided to go out on your own.

Ashley Smith
So I was bringing in clients, I feel like I’m pretty good at you know, interpersonal relationships and building relationships. So I wasn’t doing a lot of marketing. I mean, some of my marketing was, honestly Facebook posts and Instagram posts, but every time I would do an Instagram post or a Facebook post, I would have someone reach out and say, oh, I need your help with my business, or I need your help with my estate planning. So at the time, I was doing litigation, but I really also wanted to move toward business organizations and contract and estate planning. And so I was pretty good at putting posts out there on Instagram and Facebook. And then I would just get referrals. And so I was getting so many referrals that I had to turn them away because frankly, I was putting in so much time. But I wasn’t getting the benefit because I wasn’t getting any kind of commission from the law firm. And so I knew that I could draw in clients just based on my relationship and based on referrals. But as you know, once I actually started my law firm, and I wasn’t doing a lot of marketing, I realized there’s a lot more that I actually have to do in order to keep those clients coming in.

Tyson Mutrux
Alright, so let’s talk about this. That your dental. I don’t know what you call it. Dental law practice. Yeah, whatever the hell you call it, right. So tell people what that is. I think it’s a really clever niche. I really do and so tell people what it is.

Ashley Smith
So what I do is I help dentists buy and sell their dental practices. And then also I help them on the management side as well. You know, I help them manage their practices with just like their associate contracts and things like that. I don’t do any medical malpractice. So it’s really just on the business end. So I help them with the formation and I help them with the actual transition and the management And what I learned is it’s an actual industry, this dental transition industry is its own kind of microcosm. And so they want lawyers that have done dental transitions before, because there are some weird, specific nuances that once you learn those, they’re kind of similar across the board and all dental transitions. But in this industry, there are lenders, there are brokers, there are dental transition coaches, and they want to work with lawyers who know what they’re doing, too. And so during the pandemic, I had a friend approached me who is a dental buyer coach, I mean, that’s all he does. And he does really well. And he writes books on how to buy a dental practice. And so he approached me and he said, Hey, I have all of these clients that I have to refer to an attorney, you know, have you. And essentially, it’s just mergers and acquisitions. You know, it’s very similar with just weird dental nuances. And he said, I really want to refer them to someone who knows what they’re doing, and someone who has done this before. But I’d like a referral fee. Well, as we know, we can’t give referral fees to non lawyers for in most states, I mean, so in Utah, that was the case. But right around the pandemic, Utah implemented what they call a regulatory sandbox, where they started relaxing some of the rules you had to apply, and you had to tell them exactly what you were doing. And one of the rules that they were relaxing is you could have a non lawyer owner for your law firm, and they could own a majority or a minority, it didn’t really matter. But it was a way that you could share referral fees. And when they actually started that they actually were doing bear referral fees. So they were just saying, Hey, we’re gonna relax the rules so much that law firms, you can pay chiropractors, a referral fee. And they ended up finding out that was not a great idea. And so they reeled that back a little bit, and they said, Okay, instead of just bare referral fees, you have to have like some ownership in the actual law firm, or in the business, it didn’t even have to be a law firm. So you can have a law related business that’s not owned by lawyers. And the whole purpose of this regulatory sandbox was, initially, let’s provide access to justice for more people. And so what they started seeing was people wanted to do these, like divorce clinics, where you go in, and if it’s a, like a pretty amicable split, you have someone who is not an attorney, helping you fill out the documents. And then if you need an attorney, or you need a mediator, they work there in that clinic and in that business, and it’s the same thing for you know, criminal law, and things like that. And so they’re like, We really can be innovative here, you know, we can expand the way that we practice law, we can make it more innovative, we can implement technology. And so when I saw that opportunity, I thought, Well, I had this guy, he wants referral fees, he gets all of these clients. And on top of that, he can help coach my clients who are buying a dental practice. And in turn, you know, he owns 7% of my firm. So he gets 7% of the profits. And it works out great for both of us. Frankly,

Jim Hacking
I’m really struck by the fact that you were mentioning how conservative Utah is. And I guess I should have been more aware of that than I am. But I’m wondering, why do you think this happened there? Like, what was it there? And then also, what has been the reaction to you and your practice from other conservative Utah lawyers?

Ashley Smith
This is a great question. It was so interesting that Utah was the one that came out. So Arizona did this first. So instead of having a regulatory sandbox, Arizona just came out and said, Hey, you can have non lawyer owners for your law firm. So they didn’t even do like a regulatory sandbox where you had to apply, you can just do it in Arizona. And there is a specific judge here in Utah. And I mean, he leans not as conservative, his name is Justice humanists. And he doesn’t lean quite as conservative. And he really wanted to spearhead this effort. And so he got a group of people, and they call it like the innovative office. And they said, We want to be at the forefront of this. We think this is going to be the future of law practice. And let’s make Utah at the forefront of this. And so I think it was really him. And what I will say is, man attorneys didn’t like it. They did not like these attorneys in Utah, and there is still a lot of pushback, because they’re essentially saying this is just a way to, to give referral fees, without, you know, having some kind of ramifications. What I will say is I have to report quarterly to the Utah Supreme Court. And so, you know, I have these reports. They have a way of monitoring us. And so there’s a lot of oversight, and we’re still in this regulatory sandbox. So we’re being monitored, making sure that we’re I’m following the rules as far as what the regulatory sandbox requires. But man, I think in every, like Utah bar journal, there’s some article from some attorney who just hates the idea. And there’s still so much pushback on this. So

Tyson Mutrux
nI think it’s a fascinating thing going on right now. And I’m sure it’s gonna spread from state to state, and there’s gonna be different variations of it. But I think it was really smart of you to sort of jump in and take advantage of it. But I want to talk more about the niche part of your practice, though. So what have you found like, what’s your been your experience when it comes to niching down to such a narrow niche, it’s a very, very narrow niche. So what have you found when it comes to the toy business standpoint? Like what’s been your experience with it?

Ashley Smith
Yeah, and I want to say I was really resistant to niching down. And I have to tell you, I listened to maximum lawyer for probably a year before I joined the guild. And there were so many episodes where you talked about niching down. So I was resistant to it, because I thought, well, I can do estate planning, I can do business law, and then I can do these dental transitions. And what I found is I couldn’t focus on the dental transitions. But here’s the thing that dental transitions, they’re so much more lucrative than these other practice areas. Because it’s dentists, they’re willing to pay a little bit more because it’s a very, you know, dental transitions in itself is a very niche industry. And what I found is because I focus on it, I get referrals from the lenders, I get referrals from brokers, I get referrals from brokers who have been on the other side of the deal, because they’re like, you know, it was so easy to work with her because she knew what she was doing. And so most of my business is completely referral based, because I am in that industry, and I’m in that niche. And so, I’ve been able to kind of let go of some of the estate planning and some of the smaller bits like, Hey, will you draft this contract with me and it’s going to be like a $600 deal. And I, I mean, $600 deal compared to a $7,500 deal. It’s kind of a no brainer. So I’ve just found that as I’ve niched down, I can be in the industry. And so I put on workshops, where I’ll have, you know, older dentists who are thinking of selling their practice. And we do quarterly workshops, where I work with a dental lender, a dental broker, a dental CPA, and me as a dental attorney, and we put on these workshops, and I mean, it’s easy to get clients that way.

Becca Eberhart
The Guild is maximum lawyer’s 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 20, and 21st in Denver, Colorado, featuring hotseat sessions and personal coaching with renowned performance coach Jason Selke. 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 hotseat 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 early bird price, head to max law events.com to join now and reserve your spot at the upcoming guild mastermind.

Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast our guest today Ashley Garvey Smith, she’s a lawyer for dentists and for dentists selling their practices, actually, are you just practicing in Utah, you’re practicing around the country. So I’ve

Ashley Smith
actually expanded my practice around the country. And I have to say, this was because of Tyson. And because of this he recommended this is that I contact attorneys and other states and have them work as of counsel. And so I pay them their hourly rate to ensure that we’re complying with any state law. But this is transactional law. I mean, you know, a lot of times these contracts are going to look the same, there are going to be weird state nuances. There are also some where the dentist is selling their real estate. And so I need to have a real estate attorney in that state to help with the closing. But I’ve been able to expand there are some states I just won’t touch because I don’t want to mess with that. I don’t want to mess with their, you know, potential bar issues. So I’ve been able to work with clients in most states,

Jim Hacking
actually, how do you create content? I understand you get a lot of speaking engagements and talking to dentists and people in transition. But how are you actually creating content around this awesome niche of yours?

Ashley Smith
Well, I wish I could say I was really good at doing that. When it comes to doing videos. I mean, extremely self conscious. And so I have a really hard time putting myself out there. We’ve created an Instagram account, which is at the dental attorney. And I actually have just hired in fact, I just hired yesterday, a guy to help me with videos and so he’s going to come to my office next week and we’re going to do a bunch of videos to put on YouTube and my YouTube channel is at the dental attorney and same with tick tock which is the dental attorney, but I’m going to be honest there is not a lot of time I’m out there right now. And so I actually, I’m hiring him to help me with the videos. And then I’m actually hiring a like a social media and marketing manager, which I just got in contact with her today. And I have decided it’s time to actually spend the money to put good content out there. Because if I am going to expand into other states, it’s going to be important to be able to get good content out there. It’s I think it’s easy for me to get clients here in Utah. But since I’m expanding, putting good content out there is going to be essential. And I don’t think I can do it without someone who actually knows what they’re doing.

Tyson Mutrux
So I have somewhat of an odd question, maybe. Have you seen any benefit in your legal career from your musical career? Like from traveling around? Like, have you seen any benefits from that? I mean, I’m really curious about that.

Ashley Smith
Yeah, I think definitely, because it’s like I said, I was a performer, and I’m really good at relationships. One on one, I’m good at communicating one on one, like, Guys, I’m so insecure when it comes to doing videos, because it feels like I’m not talking to anybody, it just, it feels like I’m kind of speaking into the void. But being on stage, and playing music in front of 1000s of people has helped with the confidence. And so being able to go and just talk to people. And I think a lot of it also kind of stems from going through, like the death of a spouse where you’re like, you know, I went through that I can do anything, there’s really nothing that I can’t do. And I think sometimes we really hold ourselves back, we let fear get in the way because it’s like, oh, well, what if I fail? Well, nothing is guaranteed tomorrow is not guaranteed. And so the way I look at it is you just go out there and you just freakin do the thing.

Jim Hacking
One idea that I have. I mean, this seems like a perfect niche for a podcast. Like, if you could talk about legal issues that come up with dental practices, you could have that person, that’s your partner who’s an expert in selling practices, you could talk to former clients, potential clients, people that would refer you business, I just think and you could even do without video, and you have a great voice, you sound like a TV reporter to me. So thank you, I think it’d be well received. And you know, it’s not going to have a huge audience, but the people that watch it are really gonna love it.

Ashley Smith
nWell, you might be surprised to know, there are probably like five or six different podcasts out there that focus just on dental transitions. One of them is done by an attorney in Texas. And then actually my partner does have a podcast. And so we did one whole season that was just the legal aspect of dental transitions, which was like 10 episodes, but he has five seasons. And only one of those seasons focuses on the legal aspect of dental transitions. So I’ve thought about that a lot. And I think, honestly, now that I have this very nice microphone that both of you had recommended that I think I could probably do a podcast and start that as well. And now that I’ve hired other people to do some other things in the firm, I think ramping up, you know, it’s been two and a half years that I’ve been doing this, but now I’ve gotten to the point where I feel like I can do a little bit more marketing and put out good content that way. I love it.

Tyson Mutrux
All right, well, we are up against our time. So I’m gonna start to wrap things up. Before I do want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group go mad, go to facebook.com and search maximum lawyer and the search box and you’ll find the group. And then if you want a more high level conversation with people like Ashley, you can go to max law guild.com. 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. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week,

Jim Hacking
I hack of the week comes from a company called PIP decks and PIP decks makes these little boxes of cards and the cards help you come up with stories to tell about your practice. And so there it is, there it is. So we’re both Facebook. We’re clearly both Facebook and Instagram product purchasers. Because I got mine through Facebook from James Schramko. But it is helpful in helping you formulate the structure of a good story. And we’ve used it a few times and the content was well received.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I think it’s pretty cool. It’s kind of fun to be able to mix and match about the different ideas. And so it’s pretty cool. I recommend that as well. All right, Ashley, we always ask our guests to give a tip or a hack you got one for us.

Ashley Smith
I do this has been a game changer for me. And it’s an email hack. And my hack is you check your email three times a day, you give yourself 30 minutes to get to inbox zero and you don’t peruse you just quickly look at the email and respond. Don’t use your email as a to do list. But get to Inbox Zero even if it’s just replying and saying, hey, I’ll get to this. But I respond to every single email within 24 hours. And I do it at 10am 1pm and 5pm. And I’m at inbox zero by the end of the day.

Tyson Mutrux
I like it. It’s good. I would definitely support that. So that’s really good stuff. So my recommendation is it’s a financial product. The reason why I’m feeling uncomfortable about recommending is we use a company called bill.com. Now it’s called bill and they had a lot a lot of our payments for like like paper checks, electronic payments, all that kind of stuff. It’s pretty nice. They have this product called Divi, and allows you to set up multiple cards for your employees. And they’ll have budgets, you can give them budgets limits. And it gives you a lot of functionality. And I’ve had a couple of meetings with them. And we actually started using them. It’s actually pretty cool. And so it’s kind of like a credit card bill on steroids. And so it’s a really cool thing, a lot of functionality. So it’s something that we’ve been using for a short amount of time, but it’s still cool product. All right. Thank you so much, Ashley, really appreciate it. I’m glad people get to hear about your story. I learned some new things about yourself. It’s really cool. Thank you so much.

The post Building a Lucrative Niche Dental Practice with Ashley Smith appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

Are you looking to create a more cohesive and successful law firm? Ron Payne’s presentation at MaxLawCon 2022 sheds light on the importance of core values in guiding the direction of a law firm and creating a positive work environment.

Ron emphasizes that core values should be more than just words on a wall, but should be integrated into the hiring process and daily operations of the firm. He shares his own core values, which include honesty, respect, family first, teamwork, and lifelong learning. These values guide his hiring decisions and help him create a positive work environment.

Ron also discusses how he uses core values in his job ads to attract candidates who align with his values. This has resulted in more qualified candidates and better hires for his firm. He also advises being selective with clients, only working with those who align with the firm’s values and prioritize their family and children.

Ron reminds listeners that core values are an ongoing process of learning, innovating, and striving to be better. By incorporating core values into a law firm’s culture and operations, it can attract the right people to the team and create a more cohesive and successful firm.

So, what are your core values? Consider identifying your “why” and defining the qualities and values you admire in your team, colleagues, and clients. Run these values by your leadership team and incorporate feedback, but do not compromise on who you are as a firm. Start the journey towards a more successful law firm today!

Episode Highlight:

00:38 The importance of core values in law firms and how they can help improve the firm’s direction

04:10 The process of choosing core values that match personality and where you want to be in three years

06:09 The importance of honesty and respect in the workplace and how it can affect the firm’s success

10:35 How using firm’s core values in job ads to attract qualified candidates who aligned with the firm’s values

12:32 The importance of core values in law firms and how it affects the type of clients they take on

14:17 The importance of knowing your “why” and how it drives you to go to work every day

16:49 How to define core values by identifying the qualities and values you admire and what you don’t want to work with

18:40 The importance of incorporating core values in law firms and how to share them with the team

19:18 How he conducts team evaluations based on the core values of his law firm

19:59 Suggests ways to market the core values of a law firm to stand out from competitors

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Ron:

Resources:

Transcript: Core Values: The No BS version

Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2020. To keep listening to hear Ron Payne as we share his talk, core values, the no BS version, you can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video now to the episode.

Speaker 2
nRun your law firm 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.

Ron Payne
So I’ve accomplished mission number one, I made it up the stairs. Nobody fell. Check. Number two, it’s Friday. It’s 214. Y’all are awake, and I’m awake. I remember last year by this time, I was like, All right, I don’t know what’s happening. They’re speaking on the stage. And I have no clue what they’re saying. So kudos for here. And I hope that this hour, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, and you’re like, I’ve got so many ideas that I don’t even know where I’m gonna start, I hope I can give you one little thing that you can take away with you. So the first thing I’m going to start with is just, you know, what are core values. So, core values are so important to me, because this time last year, I was like, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I need to improve things. And I don’t know where to start. I found traction, I found ELS. And I was like, Okay, there’s a roadmap, I’m gonna go with this. So all of my concepts that are here today, they arise out of Eos. There’s other methods. EOS is one method has worked really well for us. So the first thing is core value is what matters most to you. Now I’m in a single ownership situation. I had a partner he retired, it’s just me. And I took that opportunity. I said, What can I do to make the firm my own. And so as I was doing that, I said, what’s most important to me, and I could only come up with one, my family, nothing else matters. If you took away everything to me, as long as I have my wife and my two kids, I don’t care. You could burn it all down. I could do any job I’ve done on a dairy farm. So I literally shoveled shit. And I’ve worked in law firms at universities, I got to be on stage with Rascal Flatts during law school through a fluke of coincidences, and who knows who’s with a marching band to Greensboro Coliseum. So that was pretty awesome. I’ve done a lot of cool stuff. But if I’m with my wife and kids, I don’t care. Everything else is like an add on. So for me, core value number one family first. And in my mastermind this week, they said hey, buddy, we know your core value, you’re not following it. And I love that our guild will be like, Hey, we love you. You need to get back to your basics. This is my core value right there. My wife. And then my kiddos. They bring me joy, everything else whatever longer that I got them. Sure, like, Okay, I know what matters most to me, What can I do next? You’ve got to hire the right people, right? So if you’re like, Alright, I know I want to do this. What kind of people do you want to find? Who can I find? What am I looking for? There are two kinds of lawyers in my experience. overly simplified, of course, right? There are those who practice like, oh my god, it’s tomorrow, let’s get ready to go. And they just live in this perpetual state of tomorrow’s the deadline. Some of us made it through law school that way, and that’s okay. I have found for me, it will give me a coronary or a stroke, or both. If I’m around people like that, I’m just way too chill. I used to teach high school, yell at me, please, all you want. You’re not going to see me crack. If you see me in the corner crying, you know, it’s pretty bad now. So you’ve got to find people who fit what you’re looking for. Right? That doesn’t mean hire. You don’t hire you seven times over. Otherwise, you’ve got a personality problem. But also then the next thing, right, so we found that what do you want to exude it to your clients? Right? So before I got into core value, so the whole title, this was core values because I got into core values. I was like, that’s a bunch of BS. We’ve all done that. Right? You’re like that’s corporate speak. I worked at Walmart. They had core values. Sam Walton died, and that became Money, money and money. Also, who can we cut? What hours can we cut? What services can we cut? How can we not restock and still make money? That was Walmart After Sam Walton died? It was the strangest transformation I’ve ever seen in my life. And I was 16. So I was like, great. Core values. Sounds fantastic. Let’s have some corporate bullcrap. Well, after we did that, I was like, but you know what the book says this, everybody in the guild is like, oh, my gosh, core values. EOS EOS is amazing. And I read the book, and I was like, this seems pretty amazing. What I’m doing is not working. I should try something else. definition of insanity here. So after I chose my core values, I was like, Fine, I’m gonna give it a shot. And I spent like two months on core values. No, folks have asked me, How do you choose your core values? For me, I’m the single owner. So I said I need to pick values that match me. Where do I want my farm in three years? Because I don’t think all the people are the right people. So I shouldn’t be asking the wrong people where I want my firm to go right. So I pondered it and then after I chose it, all of a sudden were like going in the same direction. And it actually led Add. This can be painful. Like a lot of lessons we’ve learned at the mastermind in the conference, I lost an employee had been with me 10 years, she literally carried the firm. When I went through my divorce, her family adopted me when I was going through my divorce, invited me to Thanksgiving, invited me to Christmas, I still love her to death, I gave her a severance package that would make the financial advisors in the room cry, because she had been there for me didn’t care what it cost me, I was not giving her I gave her notice by giving her like a six month Good luck. Because it just didn’t fit anymore. We had grown apart, we weren’t rowing in the same direction, it hurt. But we weren’t on the same page anymore. Immediately after that, all of a sudden, we’re all rowing in the same direction. Because there was this one piece that was splintering everybody, every team meeting, you’ve got everybody looking at me and looking at the member who’s not on board with my core values. And that hurt. And I needed somebody to point it out to me. And then we did it. So after that we were all going on the same direction. So my core values, family first, my family, first, the whole oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on your children. It’s true, because if you don’t have any oxygen, you’re not going to be effective at helping your clients, you’re not going to be helping your team help your clients if you’re a multi member team. Our second one is honesty and respect. We’ve all worked with the lawyers who are full of crap. They don’t tell the truth. They don’t tell the truth in front of the judge. They don’t tell the truth in front of you. And you can’t trust anything and they’re negotiating with. I don’t respect that I don’t want to work with that. I don’t want them in my office. I don’t want them as clients. I don’t want them anywhere near me. So if you don’t have honesty and respect, and the other thing is I’ve worked with lawyers who are great lawyers, they are great in the courtroom, but they are just mean people. They’re jerks. They’re jerks from the moment they meet you, they’re better than you they know more than you and they will always win and it doesn’t matter what you do, you can go straight to hell. Okay, buddy, take a pill. It’s just the job, man. Like, at the end of the day, this is our work, we have to see each other again, can we not get along professionally, I don’t want them working for me, because I don’t want them exuding that to other attorneys. This is a small profession take care of each other. It’s a hard profession, take care of each other. I want them on my team. I don’t want the other ones on my team. Last but not least lifelong learners and innovators. That means we never stopped learning. When I was a student. Back in the days, I wanted to be nothing but a high school band director. So I got a call high school when I said I’m going to college, went to college and I became a band director. And so this always learning as a musician. You never play a good enough. I wanted to jump up yesterday with the trombones and there’s like, Hey, can I have one of those please, five minutes wouldn’t been as good, but little out of touch. But you’re always learning always getting better. Whether it’s CLS, you’re here. It’s Max law, we’re always getting a little bit better at whatever we’re weakest in. Those are the people I want on my team. If my paralegal is not asking me, Hey, I’m a little weak at this. And I’m not asking her Hey, what are we weak at? What can we do? How can we get a little bit better? Look, I can’t train somebody to be a good person. honesty and respect, I can’t teach you that if you don’t have that. This is not the company for you. I’m sure you’ll find a good home. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. But you’re not the right fit here. But I can teach you how to draft a demand letter, I can teach you how to enter your time into Clio. Even though I make that more complicated than I need to sometimes, right. But I can’t teach you to be a good person. So I want somebody who’s always willing to learn now, funny story after you set your core values. So I set these back in the fall of 2021. It’s 2020. Tonight. Yeah. So in 2021, we set our core values. We had our leadership meeting in April of 2022. And we decided, hey, we need another core value. We’re not talking about getting paid here. We should talk about getting paid. So that’s a great idea. I wholeheartedly agree. And so they said all right, we need to add another one. I said what’s that so what do you think? And my leadership team together came up with Success provides possibilities. Anybody ever worked at Panera and here, okay now, so Panera is is profit provides possibilities. Ironically, my office managers, a former Panera manager, I don’t know where the idea came from. But it was great. And the whole team was like, yes, we want that. But we don’t want to just we want it to be customer centric, too, right? So if we’re successful for you, you have the opportunity to close the door on that divorce, get that new house that we’ve just closed on know that your estate plan is good. And now it’s said and we’ll be able to revisit in a couple years. But at least if something happens today, God forbid and you walk out and get hit by a bus your family is protected. We have given you possibilities to now not worry about that move on with your future. And for us profit might look like better paychecks, better benefits, more work life flexibility, longer vacations, you get the idea. Right. So those are the things that we came up with. So at first when I rolled this out, I kid you not my team was like, oh boy, Daddy got ELS wondering how long that’s gonna last. We’ve all been there. You have no idea of the week. And they’re like I’m out. Check the Dorsia audios. And that was my team because I would come home from every Clio conference I went to and I was like, Oh, if we get this plugin, we can do this. And they were like, great. He’s not even going to show us how to use it Izzy. And it was true. It was it was honest criticism. So after Eos, they were like, Okay, we’ll see. But I knew that was coming because I had read the whole book. And so then after a month, I’m like talking about us. They’re like, Wait, he’s still talking about core values. Because the first thing I did is I went out The big speeches said, Hey, y’all, we’re gonna have core values this your core values. If you don’t like it, there’s the door. I’ll give you a severance. Have a nice day. And I said it really nice jokingly, but I was not joking. And the room was red. Right? So I’m one of them said, you know, I, okay, maybe not. But we will not going in the same direction. Once we got everybody on board. It was like, bam, we’re right there. We’re going in the same direction. Well, now we’ve got core values, how did I do anything with core values? Great, your team knows them, you’ve got to implement them. So I took a survey beforehand, a lot of you answered it, thank you. And it was like 90% of people had core values. And like 85%, were all you know, even using them. So I want to get more to the usage of them, since most people seem to have them. But when we started using them, we put them in our job ads, I will try to send out at least on the guild or on the page or get it to Beckett so they can include it in the resources from the presentation a copy of my last job ad from wise hire. But it says basically, are you family first, and this is the place for you? If you answer and I said Are you family first? Are you honest? Do you respect other people? And if you can answer hell yes to these three questions, then you should apply. All of a sudden, all of my job applications were people that lined up with me. It still it’s a paralegal job. So I need you to type the things I need you to talk to the clients I need. Right I please do paralegal things. So I don’t have to, but all of a sudden the people are getting, they walked in the door and my whole team was like I liked them. I like them. I like them. I don’t know who we’re going to hire now. And so we got to pick based on qualifications. And they came in knowing that we were the firm they wanted to be at because there’s plenty of job ads in my market right now for paralegals, but all of a sudden I was able to get like 20 applications, and I was able to hire for experience when I was looking for it, as opposed to like, well, either you get a whole bunch of unqualified ads or none. I got less ads but more qualified ads. So we had greater candidates and we had better hires.

Becca Eberhart
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Ron Payne
The other side of that is great. Now you’ve got team members, you’re all on the same page. The other part of this is clients. I also learned to go hey, if a client walks in, and they’re not family first and by family first, I don’t mean they treat their family, right. You know, in a Family Law that matters, right? If you do family law, family member family law function, awesome. So if they walk in and they’re not treating their family, right, they’re not putting their kids first they say I’m putting my kids first. But they really mean if I can screw my ex. That’s what I’m going for. Those are not the clients for us. Now there are lawyers in town who will take them I’m in a big market. I’m in the Greensboro, Winston Salem triad market, Greensboro, I think, in excess of one or 2 million folks. It’s a huge market. And don’t quote me on those statistics. I’m not the Census Bureau, but it’s a big market for us. But there’s like 100 attorneys there. And there’s like 50 family law attorneys in Forsyth County, which is where I primarily practice, there’s somebody else for you, there are plenty of people who will take your money and fight the fight and go all the way straight to the gates of hell. And that’s okay, that’s just not me. And if you want a lawyer who’s going to take somebody to that end, I’m not your guy, we will be frustrated, we will hate each other. And I will get a bad Google review at the end of that. And we don’t want that. So we found that, but the clients who buy into this, not only do they want me, they’re like whatever, Here, take it. Today. Actually, I had my first client hit $100,000 in legal expenses. And I’m not even working the case anymore. Because I’ve had it for five years. And I handed it off to our senior family law associate. Now, that client loves us. I tried to fire them. I said, Look, you’ve been with me for four years, your case is getting uglier. We should consider a switch of counsel fresh eyes, clear vision, and they were like, Nope, I want you I said it’s not gonna be me, it’s gonna be the guy I hire and they said, don’t care. I want your firm. That’s a huge compliment. And it’s because they know that I care about them. And I know they’re putting the kids first. And they know we will tell them if they’re not. And as that next part, right, that gave us clarity. So we’re getting into this and all of a sudden, our client goals are clear, my marketing is more clear than it’s ever been. Is it perfect? No. Also, let me just say, you know, I’ve got a billion things to work on. I’m here just like all of you and I am learning a million things. I’ve got my core values figured out. Now I can go to step two of the EOS process. It’s always learning, always innovating and always trying to be better. I’m not there yet. And if we ever get there, then that’s when I hit 3.5 million in the bank account and I’m out of here. I’ll be on a beach having a drink. See, maybe I’ll come speakers on my gotta hit three point 5,000,001st We got a few dozen years for that. So how do you find them? So first of all, what is your why? If you don’t get anything else from this and you don’t know what your first core value because you’re you’re like, what are my core values? And do they line up with me? What is your why? Why do you get up and go to work every morning? Yes, you get up and go to work for money. But all of the rest of you, you’ve got something beyond getting paid, that drives you to go to work every day. So what is your why? I get up for my wife, Jennifer, she’s my second wife. My first marriage ended in an unfortunate circumstance did not go the way I wanted to. And one day she said, I’m done with you. Three years of law school career changes, and six moves later. I understand that no, no hard feelings. Me and the mother in law didn’t get along anyways. Right? So then I don’t have any kids. I’m 3031. Unlike 34, by this time, I’m like, Oh, God, I’m never gonna have kids in my life. So failure, what am I going to do? And I took three months to go find myself. Then I met Jennifer. She is my rock, my saving grace. If anybody ever heard her, I will be. There is no law. I’m going to need some of the best criminal defense attorneys in the room because she is my rock. I love her. I would give it all for her. She said, Honey, stop it. We’re moving to Spain like Bye, love you. Right. And then we have two beautiful kids. One of those is my stepson. His dad’s not here with us anymore. That’s not just what happened. He made poor life choices. I’m his dad, I would do anything for him. My youngest, Aaron, I used to do family law and I had to get out of it. I heard a family law attorney and why did I hire a family law attorney? Because I was having those cases come in. And all I saw was my four year old he was one at the time. But they were telling me all my kid and DSS and all I’m seeing is my child like you’ve got a separation issue, buddy. Get out. So my why is clear. And I carry this with me everywhere I go. And even at my mastermind, they said hey, buddy, look at your mug. That’s your why isn’t I said it is? And they said are you doing that? And I was like, oh, okay, thanks. Asked for the hard advice and you shall receive. Secondly, what qualities? What advice do you admire the most? What are you looking for in your team? What are you looking for in your colleagues? What are you looking for in your family? What are you looking for in your clients? And then the flip side of that is if you’re like, I don’t know what to define as my values? Well, let’s let’s flip it on its head. What do you really not want to work with? And for me, it kind of manifested itself in both I want really honest people. But that came from having family law cases where people would consent to things in an email and then be like, No, I’d never consented that. Here’s your email. I’m filing a motion to have your whatever thrown out. And you go have the court and you’re like, hey, this is the thing he sent me via email, your honor. And the judge goes, Why are we here? Get out, dismissed. And I win. But I just spent $10,000 on my clients money arguing over something that we shouldn’t argue over the facts argue over the outcome. Yes. Why are we arguing on emotion? That means nothing. Why are we even here? Especially for those of you in family law, you know that there are those who will do that, right. So I wanted to start my core values with Well, what do I really not want to be around. So I don’t want to be around liars. I don’t want to be around cheats, I don’t want to be around when at all costs, doesn’t matter. The outcome is the only thing I will fight you to the death. Now there are times that you need to put on the battle armor and go in and raise the sword and hurrah. But that doesn’t have to be every day. If you always do that. I’m gonna count whatever he’s charging again. But if on the other hand, like I’m gonna pick on joey for a minute, because he’s a really a huge inspiration he shares so much with the guild. Joey is always happy. If Joey came to me upset about something I’m going to listen. I have never seen him angry. And I’m sure probably been angry once or twice. But I’ve never seen it if he’s upset. And it’s something that I’m going to listen to that because he’s mad. He’s usually pretty happy. If they’re always angry and throwing things you’re like, okay, whatever. I mean, yeah. Go at it. Have at it. So what are the things you can do next, find your values. When you find those values? What do you do next? Run them by your leadership team. incorporate feedback as you can listen, learn and don’t compromise who you are. If you’re the owner of the firm. It’s Yes. So let’s say your team has input. But if you’re like, oh, I don’t want that as my value then. No, no, that shall not be our value. But thank you, but say why? Right? Especially if it’s your leadership team, you’ve got to share that. When you’re ready. Run it by the entire team. And if it fits when it’s done, ship it out, share it with everybody, then all right, huzzah, we have core values, incorporate them front and center to your team. Now this is where I’m kind of at in my phase, no lie I’ve seen I think it was Alexis Austin’s she’s got the big poster that had her core values on it. She shared in the guilty. Yeah, I’m stealing that. And I’m going to do it one of these days. When I get to it on my issue list. It’s like 17th, but it’s going to happen. Right? incorporated in your team meetings. When we have one on ones. I ask how’s your family doing? How are you doing? You? Don’t I? I’m asking them in their evaluations. How are we doing it family first, and so I’ve got our sections for our team evaluations broken into three sections. You can guess what the three sections are? Right? Because I need to update them for the fourth core value. When we have team meetings, we have team evaluations and our job ads, I list our actual core values, I write them out I put the definition might as well go ahead and tell you who we are and what we are if you don’t want to apply here great and if you do then please also added bonus instead of getting 600 applications from anybody who hits apply all you get the ones who really want to work for you because they know more about you. Also, in my market there’s 50 family law attorneys in Forsyth and probably 100 in Greensboro. If you want to work at a family law firm there are plenty of opportunities or hire a family lawyer. What makes my firm different? And this is who I am. If you don’t like it, it’s cool. There’s others go. There’s a lot of great lawyers and time to hire one of them. And if you’re if you’re looking for me that cool, let’s work together. I’m excited about that. Get it on your website, get it in your advertising, getting your marketing, it’ll help yourself stand out. Why are you not just the other guy down the street? Well, thank you for hearing me out. Happy Friday, and hope you learned a lot and have safe travels home.

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Starting a law firm right after law school can seem like a daunting task, but Kevin Cheney, a personal injury attorney from Denver, Colorado, shows us that it is possible to build a successful practice with the right mindset and skill sets. On the latest episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, Kevin shares his journey of starting his own law firm and the challenges that came with it.

Here are some takeaways from the episode:

➡ Seek out mentors and have a high risk tolerance. Starting a law firm right after law school requires a lot of courage and risk-taking. Kevin emphasizes the importance of seeking out mentors who can guide you through the process and having a high risk tolerance to overcome challenges.

➡ Be comfortable with asking for business. Getting clients is the hardest and most important thing any law firm does. Kevin advises being comfortable with asking for business and networking to build a client base.

➡ Create a mission statement, vision statement, and core values for the firm. Kevin stresses the importance of involving all staff members in the process and constantly reevaluating the firm’s mission, vision, and core values to ensure they reflect the firm’s goals and values.

➡ Plan for growth. Kevin recommends creating a 10-year plan, a 5-year plan, and a 1-year plan, with a focus on the 10-year plan as success and growth compound over time. He suggests considering factors such as the number of staff and employees, practice areas, and offices, as well as the role of the firm’s leaders and their workload.

➡ Invest in the personal growth of employees. Kevin recommends investing in the personal growth of employees through initiatives such as a book club to achieve growth and success.

Listen in to this episode that provides valuable insights and tips for lawyers considering starting their own law firm right out of law school.

Episode Highlights:

01:55 Starting a law firm

04:40 The challenges of building a personal injury law practice and the necessary funds to handle cases effectively

07:04 Should you open a law firm right after law school?

09:55 The process of shifting roles in a law firm, the importance of focusing on the business for growth

15:10 The importance of creating a mission statement, vision statement, and core values for a law firm

21:56 The thing that’s holding you back from growth

Jim’s Hack: Light Comes Through: Buddhist Teachings on Awakening to Our Natural Intelligence by Dzigar Kongtrul

Kevin’s Tip: Invest in the personal growth of your team through a monthly bookclub.

Tyson’s Tip: Case Text: Meet your new AI legal assistant. Cocounsel does document review, legal research memos, deposition preparation, and contract analysis in minutes – with results you can trust.

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Kevin:

Resources: Starting a Law Firm Right Out Of School: Challenges and Opportunities

Transcript: Starting a Law Firm Right Out Of School: Challenges and Opportunities

Speaker 1
Run your law firm 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.

Jim Hacking
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking and Tyson Mediatrix What’s up Jimmy Tyson, my friend, how are you?

Tyson Mutrux
I am well, how are you doing?

Jim Hacking
I’m doing great. I’m doing great. I’m excited. We have one of our favorite guild members on the podcast today. His name is Kevin Chaney. He’s a personal injury attorney out of Denver, Colorado. He’s a great guy. And we’re really happy to have you. Thanks for coming on, Kevin.

Kevin Cheney
Ah, happy to be here, guys.

Tyson Mutrux
I was really excited to see that you were on the schedule for today. I’m really looking forward to talk to you. So I’ve been able to sit in on a guild mastermind with you and chat with you. And we do the same stuff. So it’s kind of fun to be able to talk to another injury lawyer so But tell people about your journey. And then how you came to form Chaney, deluzy. And Howard. Sure.

Kevin Cheney
So I went to law school wanting to become a public defender. That’s kind of always what interested me something I felt passionately about and kind of the mismatch and power discrepancies in our justice system. And so that was always kind of my plan, went to law school. My one year I ended up meeting my best friend and our partner, Tim Galluzzi, and we did mock trial together and kind of took all the same classes and just had a real ball. And my one else summer, I had an opportunity to work for a personal injury law firm in Denver and, and really enjoyed the work enjoy kind of holding powerful insurance companies to accountant when people are injured, and it was like, hey, you know, this would be really cool. And so I started talking with him. And we got this crazy idea that let’s just open up a law firm, as soon as we passed the bar, and most of our professors told us, we were crazy, you know, we should clerk go work somewhere else. But you know, we were like, I think this is what we want to do. And so when we graduated, pass the bar and opened up our law firm, that was seven years ago, last two months ago in February. And we started out doing about half criminal defense, half personal injury work. And over the last few years, we kind of transitioned away from criminal and had been doing exclusively Personal Injury now for about two and a half years here in Denver. And you know, our firms grown from starting out on my dining room table, we had no office, no website, no staff, you know, some really cheap business cards. And now we have a team of 12, and suite office, and it’s just been such an exciting and thrilling experience for us.

Jim Hacking
Alright, Kevin, so let’s talk about those first six months after you opened up your firm, and you hadn’t had a firm before. So what was that like, like having to learn it all on the fly?

Kevin Cheney
It was incredibly scary, but also just really thrilling to be out there working for ourselves. And, you know, we talk to other, you know, people that had graduated, had gotten jobs. And it was just such a different experience to be working for your name on the door, and to be responsible for that. I think one of the real keys to our success, though early on was our willingness to seek out mentors, we really had no idea what we were doing from a business perspective, from a legal perspective. You know, I didn’t know where I was supposed to file taxes. I didn’t know really anything. And we quickly found a group of lawyers, so in small, firm lawyers, during those early first six months, really the first year or two, and it was just a willingness to call people and ask people questions. And it’s really shocking to me how willing people are to share what they know, you know, if you just shoot an email or call somebody, and you’re like, hey, you know, I saw your name on the listserv, or I know you’re, you know, do what we want to do, like, can I take you out to coffee and pick your brain? And I’d say about 90% of people are down for that. And it was just really thrilling. But also, it’s kind of kind of scary time. And now those first six months, I want

Tyson Mutrux
to stay a little bit on this where like you do personal injury. And it’s really hard to do personal injury effectively. Like because when if you just start right out of law school, unless you’re gifted a bunch of money to build up a war chest to pay yourselves and then pay for case expenses. So how were you able to develop, I guess, the funds to build the practice that you have now because you have a you have a really successful law practice now that represents people that have been injured, so but it takes time to get to that point. So whenever you’re given this answer, I want you to think about the person that’s just starting out that says, hey, I want to do personal injury like so. Can you give some guidance on how to build up that war chest to handle these cases the right way?

Kevin Cheney
Absolutely. And you’re spot on, right in order to really be successful in personal injury law. You need the funds to be able to go toe to toe with the insurance company. When we started out. We had $5,000 in our bank account and essentially nothing. I think that you really have two options or a few different options. One, you either need to have money going in. So you’ve worked for another firm you’ve saved up and you’ve got some personal savings or something like that. So that’s kind of one option. Option two is you need to have either collateral in your home equity in your home and able to kind of access a line of credit. Or the third option is you really need to have a second practice area, I think, in the US, at least for the first couple of years. And that’s really what enabled us to do it. So the fact that we were doing criminal defense, we were getting revenue in every month. And you know, we got a little bit fortunate, we got a couple of, you know, now I would say they’re on the smaller side, but at the time like that, we’d get some settlements and be like, Oh, my gosh, like we just made $10,000. It’s crazy. But when you don’t have many expenses, or really any overhead, you know, that can be a lot. The other thing that we did with our first personal injury case that went to trial was we co counsel with a larger firm, we just didn’t have the 2030 $40,000 it would take to get that thing across the finish line. So we called up a midsize firm that we’d really respected somebody that had been a mentor to us. And we’re like, Hey, can we bring you in, we’ll do all the legwork, we’ll learn from you on some trial strategy, and you can fund the case. And you know, we’ll do a fee split. And so I think realistically, if you want to do personal injury only, and you’re not going to have steady revenue, you might not have any revenue for six, nine months a year, you need a substantial savings, or you need a line of credit, otherwise, you’re going to be forced to take really poor settlements, because you’re going to need the money. And you’re gonna say, well, we might as well settle and you could have gotten twice or three times as much as trial. And that’s not fair to your client. And it’s not fair for other personal injury lawyers who are then going to be, you know, cited to that case. So we only paid so and so 25 on a case like that. So

Jim Hacking
Tyson and I are often asked Kevin, whether or not people should open up a law firm right after law school, having been one of the few people who pulled it off. Two questions. One, where do you fall on that debate? And two, what skill sets would you say are necessary for people that want to try it?

Kevin Cheney
Absolutely. So. So I think that there’s too many people that basically say, you should never do it. And I don’t agree with that. I do think that you should go into opening a law firm with eyes wide open about what the realistic expectations are, you know, I don’t think it’s for everyone. I think that the overwhelming majority of people would benefit from getting a little experience building up some savings, making a dent in their student loans, and things like that. But that being said, I absolutely think that it’s possible, I think the first thing I would recommend is really wanting to open up a firm by choice. You know, I think there are some people that really struggle to find jobs. And so they kind of don’t know what they’re really wanting to do. And so they you know, kind of open up a firm by default. And I think most of those firms fail, I do think there are some qualities that someone needs to really possess before opening up a firm and certainly one right out of law school, I think you need a high risk tolerance, you have to go into it understanding that there is a real chance that you will fail, that you will essentially have no money, not be able to make payroll and not be able to keep the lights on and you will essentially have no choice but to go back and get a job. And for some people, that’s just an unacceptable amount of risk. The second thing is that you need to understand that getting clients is the hardest and most important thing that any firm does. And you can be the best lawyer in the world. But if you can’t get business in the door, it’s not going to matter. And so people that feel comfortable networking, people that feel comfortable sharing about their jobs and their roles on social media, and you know, asking people for clients, people that feel comfortable going into a party of their friends and being like, Guys, I’m opening up a law firm, do any of you need any of these legal services, you know, people that feel comfortable asking for business, I think is really important. And then I think the third quality is you have to have confidence, right? If you go into it thinking you’re going to fail, thinking that you’re not going to be able to do it, it may not be for you, at least not in those early stages. But I think if you have a combination of those three, I also would say that the earlier you decide to do it, the better. We decided at the very start of our 12 year that we wanted to open up a firm. And we essentially had two years of free marketing, where we would tell all of our classmates, all of our teachers, like we’re opening up a law firm or opening up a law firm. And we actually had a few people that needed lawyers at the end of our three year that essentially just waited four months for us to pass the bar. And so we had a few cases kind of on deck. I think if you decide, you know, a month before you’re going to open it up that you would it would be a little bit harder to do without kind of that marketing runway.

Tyson Mutrux
I think that’s great advice. We talk a little bit about what your role is now with the firm and then how that has shifted since you launched the firm.

Kevin Cheney
Absolutely. So and I really think that this answer is guided by what You want your firm to look like and also what you want your own personal life to look like in relation to that firm? You know, because I don’t think there’s really a right answer for us. We were very growth minded, you know, we’re not 100% Sure, we want to become like a giant TV advertising firm. But we know that we want to employ 3040 50 people one day, we know, we probably want to be in multiple states. And so the reality was for that type of growth, we needed somebody who essentially worked on the business, you know, 80 90% of the time, at least. And so about a year and a half ago, we made that switch. And I stopped taking cases, I think, right now, I think I maybe have two cases on my docket, and I essentially run the firm, full time, you know, I manage the employees design the processes, and lead up the marketing efforts oversee our director of marketing. And I am here to answer questions about cases, I’d say, you know, I spent about an hour a day just answering questions from staff and Associates and things like that. And that really shifted, when we first started out, you know, we were doing kind of everything. And for those first few years, we essentially each had our own docket. And as we got staff, we would kind of use them sporadically. And it was actually listening to Craig golden, five present and looking at his file line template that really was like, we need to streamline and standardize how we’re doing these. And so that’s when we decided to break our firm up into teams. And so now we have a pre litigation team. And that’s all they do. And as soon as a case decides we need to file, it gets transferred to a completely different team who only does litigation every single day. And it was through that process that I was like, You know what, it’s going to be hard for me, I’m going to miss the practice of law. And, you know, my long term plan, I would like to in three, four or five years really consider hiring a CEO or COO to essentially run the firm. And I might go back to litigating cases, but for now, to really achieve the growth that we want. If you’re only working on the firm or in the on the business 10 20% of the time, you’re just not going to get that growth, like it’s just not enough time to do it. And so you know, you got to make those hard choices. If you have partners, you got to discuss who’s going to do what, but if you want maximum growth, I would recommend, you know, getting out of in the business as quickly as possible to really focus on the business.

Jim Hacking
And Kevin, following up on that. How did you and your partners decide that that was going to be your role? And how did you come to terms with that? Because I know so many lawyers go, Oh, my God, I can’t believe I wouldn’t get to do depositions anymore, or when you get to do trial anymore. So how was it for you individually? And how was that conversation that you had with your partners? Great question.

Kevin Cheney
So I think there’s a few things that kind of go into it, I was very fortunate in that my partner was my best friend. We had worked together on mock trial, numerous mock trials, and moot court competitions, we took all the same classes we studied for the bar together, we had developed, I think a lot of trust, this was not a person I met later, and kind of had to take a leap of faith with this was somebody that I knew I could, you know, run through fire and would take a bullet for. So I think that that honesty allowed us to have some conversations, but there were still some tough conversations. I mean, it was tough for me to be like, you know, litigating cases being in the courtroom, like, that’s the most fun that I have. And I knew that making this choice was going to require me to sacrifice that. On the flip side, my partner, I think, you know, also envisioned himself as a firm owner and kind of making the decisions. And I think he had to be like, the, you know, we’re still partners, right? We still meet as like a board, if you will, and kind of talk about things, but day to day decisions, you know, he gives me his input, and then yields to my decision as a managing partner. And I think that that was a lot of sacrifice for him. And we talked about, you know, how that would be easiest, right? Like, Hey, make sure you’re always soliciting my input, you know, make sure we kind of meet weekly or every other week and kind of go through some of the big decisions. And so you know, it really, I tried to make him feel like an equal partner, you know, which he is in equity as much as possible. And on the flip side, you know, he brings me in to kind of second chair a case every now and then as for trial, and, you know, we kind of have worked through that. But I think that, you know, success requires sacrifice, whether it’s running a marathon, you got to put in the time, the sweat and the tears. And if you want something bad enough, you sometimes have to be willing to give up the good things. And I’ve had to give up, you know, at least in the short term and medium term, my dream of kind of being a top trial attorney, because somebody had to run this business and my skill set, I think, ultimately translated into that. And so we both made sacrifices, and some days I miss it. I mean, I really do, but the proof is in the pudding and the success that we’ve had reaffirms the you know, I think our choice almost every day, I think

Tyson Mutrux
it’s great that you had all those insanely you’ve had a lot of like tough conversations, and that’s great. I want to shift gears a little bit, but I want to sort of stay on the same thing when it comes to stay on the same page when it comes to like future planning and the vision and then implementing a vision and coming up with a vision and core values and a mission statement, all that kind of stuff. So what was that process like for you? Have you been gone through that process?

Kevin Cheney
We have, we have a mission statement vision statement and a set of core values. I wish we had probably started it earlier. And we did it about two and a half years ago is kind of when we really started getting into it, you know, with the mission and core values. It wasn’t just my partner and I, we looped in all of our staff. And I think that’s incredibly important for people, right, you can’t create a mission from the top down, you can’t create core values from the top down, right, you need to talk to the people that are actually doing the work the people that make up your firm, and see what our kind of joint mission is. And we’ve got a little bit lucky in that, because we started the firm as kind of best friends, we’ve kind of had that mentality with everyone that we’ve hired, you know, we’re very team collaborative approach from the way that we do bonuses to the way that we make decisions in the firm, like, we just always stress that we are a team, we’re in this together, we sink or swim together. And let’s all be rowing in the same direction, the vision statement was a little bit different. And, you know, with personal injury law, there’s just so many different ways that you can go, right, like you can try to be a firm that has, you know, 1000 2000 cases and be on billboards and TV, you can be a firm that maybe only has 10 cases, but every one of them is worth a million dollars, you can niche down, you can do general and there’s just so many that you can stay in one state, you can expand to other states. And so, you know, my partner and I had some overlapping vision, but we had some real differences on where we thought the firm could go. And it took a lot of frank conversations. And it also took a lot of, you know, kind of doodling out what the firm would look like. And so I always tell people, I was just talking, I was just doing a presentation for a local bar association on law firm management, I tell people to do a 10 year plan, a five year plan and a one year plan. And think about the 10 year plan, because of the way that success and growth kind of compounds like in five years, you’re not going to be halfway to your 10 year plan, right? Like you’re probably not going to be halfway to like year seven, and then you get that compounding effect and kind of get there. But kind of talk about what it looks like. How many staff do you have? How many employees do you have? What practice areas do you have? How many offices do you have? And also, what’s your role? In the firm? How many hours a week? Are you working? Are you taking cases are you only managing people, and then we kind of worked backwards, but it was a lot of just kind of trial and error. And really in some and again, sacrifice, I think on both of our parts. And we eventually kind of arrived on this melded vision. And then we looped in the rest of the team. And we’re like, Guys, this is what we’re thinking, what do you guys think? And they’re like, oh, that sounds awesome. And we’ve kind of really run with that, you know, over the last, I’d say about a year and a half was going to be really finalized or not finalized. But it’s never done, right. Like you should be constantly reevaluating, like, is this still the mission? Is this still the vision? Does this still reflect our core values, because it’s not like you write it once, throw it in a drawer and never look at it. You know, we have all of our mission, vision and core values blown up right above our water cooler. There you see them every time you go get water or use the fridge. You know, we talk about it in team meetings. We try to use it to make decisions and really work with it as much as possible. I think if you’re going to try to get everything out of it.

Becca Eberhart
The Guild is 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 20 and 21st in Denver, Colorado, featuring hotseat sessions and personal coaching with renowned performance coach Jason Selke. 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 hotseat 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 early bird price, head to max law events.com to join now and reserve your spot at the upcoming guild mastermind.

Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast our guest today, Kevin Chaney. He’s the managing partner of his personal injury firm in Denver, which he started right out of law school. Let’s talk about growth. And Tyson touched on maybe where the future is. But do you and your partners have like a vision as to how big you want to be maybe how you don’t want to be so big? I mean, what are your thoughts on that? And I loved what you said that somebody has to sort of give up the practice of law sooner rather than later and focus on growth of that as a goal.

Kevin Cheney
Yeah, we do have a vision, you know, and it goes 10 years out. We’re still relatively young, you know, I’m 34. And so, you know, 10 years is certainly not the end of my career. But our goal is to go from 12 to 50 people in the next 10 years. We made some big decisions. You know, one of the I was more up into kind of a billboard TV advertising firm, my partner was really firm against that. And we kind of had those discussions and decided that that at least for now, that was not going to be the path that we went down that we were going to refrain from billboards and TV, we do have a plan that we want to be in at least two or three states, our vision is to be the premier personal injury law firm in the Rocky Mountain region. And so that kind of has defined the you know, what our goals are. And then we’ve set like I said, a five year kind of goal and a one year goal on you know, we want to continue to increase revenue, we had a 2022 was our best year yet, we essentially doubled, we became a seven figure law firm in 2021. But we doubled revenue from 2021 to 2022. It wasn’t realistic, you want to be realistic. And your goal is to double again, in 2022 to 2023. But we didn’t want it we were looking for about a 30% increase. It’s a tough goal. But I think it’s an achievable one, personal injury is a little bit harder to estimate than other types of law. Because, you know, there are I mean, this year alone so far, I think we’ve lost $90,000. But we have a lot of big cases kind of coming in the last part of the year. And so it’s a little harder to estimate revenue and profit in a personal injury law firm. But I think you’ve got to have goals that are realistic and attainable. And then we kind of had a path to get them. And so for example, the big thing that we felt we needed to kind of continue that growth was to hire a full time marketing director. Somebody who runs our social media, meets with referral sources, organizes speaking events, handles all of our creative, you make sure we’re shooting tick tock videos, all of that. And so that was the big thing that we implemented, we hired him right at the end of 2022, we’re already seeing a lot more interaction with our firm, we’re getting more calls. And so having you’re picking a growth metric, and then figuring out how you’re going to get there. And oftentimes, it’s hiring somebody, right? Like that’s, I think one of the biggest things that hold people back in the law firm world is they’re scared of hiring, they’re scared of that salary. They’re scared of bringing on another expense. But if you’re growth minded, like you just can’t do it alone, right? Like you just don’t have enough hours in the day. And so often when I meet with law firm people, and I’m listening to what the issues they’re having, or even in the masterminds like almost my advice always like you need to hire somebody, right? Like another lawyer, another staff, a marketer, a clo, like hiring somebody is oftentimes the solution to a lot of problems.

Tyson Mutrux
So true. I think if you’re listening to this right now, you need to go back about two minutes and re listen to that about two or three times because there’s a lot of great information in that little bitty segment. So rewind, listen to that again, that’s really good. All right, we do need to wrap things up. Before I do, I want to remind everyone, if you want to join us in the big Facebook group, go to Facebook, search for maximum lawyer and you can find us there. Also, if you want more high level conversation with people like Kevin go to max law guild DICOM. He’s a wonderful Gillean. And if you don’t mind leaving us a five star review. While you’re listening to the tips in the hacks. Please give us a five star review. We would greatly appreciate it. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week,

Jim Hacking
I was just laughing to myself because our two most recent guests, Kevin, and the one we just recorded earlier today, James James said that most law firm problems can be solved by making more money. Kevin said most law firm problems can be solved by hiring more people. And they are both right. I think those are the keys to success, making more money and having more team members. My hack of the week is a book, it is called light comes through. It’s about awakening to our natural intelligence. I’m about halfway through it, it goes over each of the emotions that we experience and sort of how we can come to terms with those emotions and sort of keep our sanity. It’s a wonderful little book. Again, it’s called light comes through. And it’s about awakening to our natural intelligence.

Tyson Mutrux
nLove it good stuff. Alright, Kevin, you know, the routine by now what is your tip or hack of the week,

Kevin Cheney
I might say part of the hack of the week is to invest in the personal growth of your employees. We implemented this at the end of last year where we started a book club, where we basically picked a self help is kind of the cliche term, but books that I think help in personal growth. And we said, hey, no requirement that you do this, but we’ll buy anyone a copy, we’re going to walk off to ours. In about two or three months, we’re going to order a bunch of pizza. And we’re just going to chat about this. And we our first book was atomic habits by James clear, which I’m sure somebody has talked about, and one of the best habit books ever written. And we’ve just had, it’s been so great for the employees. And even now, you know, a month or two after that people still talk to me, we’re talking about processes. They’re like, Oh, I’m gonna habit stack that or, you know, I really just need to get in the habit of doing that. So it’s not only helped the business, but they’re implementing it in their personal lives. And in the age of Uber competitiveness, right. Like the fact is that employees continue to have all of the leverage in this market with how low unemployment is. It’s just another thing that you can do to say, I not only want you to do the best for me, but I want to be the best for you, and we hope that you’re an employee for life, which is, which is our mantra and CGH everyone who works here, I hope you stay for the rest of your life.

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. We started our book club a few months ago, too, and it’s fantastic. It really is helpful. So I echo everything you said. Alright, so my tip of the week is case text. So if you’ve not checked out case, text, it is amazing. It’s powered by artificial intelligence. And they’ve got something called it’s a new thing called co counsel. And you can actually plug in your facts about your case. And it will come up with deposition questions for you like it gives you like where you can download and everything, it gives you the topics, and then it generates the questions, you can add your own topics, and it’ll generate questions for you. It’s amazing. It will write legal memos for you. You can upload documents to it, and it will summarize the documents, medical records, contracts, whatever. It is amazing. So I highly recommend it. Go to case text. Check them out. Kevin, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. I really enjoyed discussing this with you. And I wish we had more time but unfortunately Dell but great having you on. Well, thanks

The post Starting a Law Firm Right Out Of School: Challenges and Opportunities appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

Are you a lawyer looking to build a million-dollar law firm? Devon Slovsky’s presentation on “Zero to 1 Million” provides valuable insights and practical tips on how to grow your firm. In her talk, Devon emphasizes the importance of having the right mindset and overcoming fear to take risks.

She encourages listeners to implement good standard practices and warns that the bootstrapping early success is not sustainable in the long term, so there is a shift needed to uplevel

Devon also stresses the importance of systematizing processes and improving management skills to serve a wider client base. She advises on two basic tools to build out early in your law firm: a chart of accounts and a firm budget. Having these tools in place, even for small firms, will be essential for future growth and making accurate projections.

Moreover, Devon shares some surprising things that financially improved her business, including hiring a professional accountant and having organized books and financial records. She also encourages paying yourself a market wage and providing benefits like health insurance, short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance for your staff.

So, if you’re ready to take your law firm to the next level, take a cue from Devon and start implementing these valuable tips today.

Episode Highlights:

03:54 The importance of being prepared to pay market prices when starting a law firm

06:09 The importance of paying yourself a market salary

07:43 Building a detailed budget and chart of accounts early on

10:53 Finding your firm’s natural billing rhythm

14:12 Hiring an expensive professional accountant

15:07 Market wage and the mindset shift that came with it

15:50 Adding health insurance, short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance benefits for your staff

18:06 Starting with new clients to change their expectations

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Devon:

Resources:

Transcript: Zero to 1 (Million) with Devon Slovensky

Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2020. To keep listening to hear Devin slawinski as we share her talk zero to 1 million, you can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Let’s get to it.

Speaker 2
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Devon Slovensky
I’m here to talk to you about growing your law firm and the foundation’s particularly people who are in the maybe 100,000 $200,000 range are the steps that they need to implement in order to get themselves on track to build a million dollar law firm. And I’m going to share some hard won lessons that I’ve learned while I grow my firm. I think there’s also going to be a few nuggets in here for people who’ve broken the seven figure barrier as well and some good practices. So let’s get started. So I’ll tell you a little bit about me. So I practice family law and about 95% family law when I don’t get you know, squirrel distracted by something else that seems you know, interesting. I’m in a small Metropolitan Statistical Area in southwestern Virginia, and my firm has what I call 3.1 attorneys right now, including myself, I’m an accidental law firm owner, I’ll tell you a little bit about my story as to where I got where I am today in a few minutes. My goal for you today is to reframe your mindset. Because I will tell you, four years ago, when I started my firm in a kind of unexpected way, I was terrified, I was really scared, I didn’t know if I’d be able to make it. I had other lawyers in my market that I saw were struggling financially. And I had another older firm lawyer who I trusted tell me you will barely make 20 or $30,000 a year out on the streets. And I was scared. So anyways, I want to instill that mindset. With you all that you can do this, if it’s something you choose to do, I also want to give you a couple of tools for the road as well. So we’ll move on from there. So I saw a great movie dune on the way over and I want to take a second I want to talk about fear. So we all deal with fear. I think there’s sort of three personality types when it comes to fear. You know, there are people who just don’t experience fear. Okay? Have you on that Paul? Yolk abiertas, I swear that that man is not scared of a damn thing. You know, he just goes headlong into anything. Then there are other lawyers, maybe lawyers in your Bar Association, lawyers that are, you know, terrified, they’re down on their luck. And they’re scared that they don’t do anything about it. Okay. And then there are other people who are scared, and they act in spite of it. And I think I’m one of those people. And if you’re that kind of person, I want to speak to you today. And I hope I can encourage you if you’re trying to grow your firm that you can make this happen. So I have some good news for you. Okay, this charted territory, you may recognize my title zero to 1 million in parentheses as a play on Peter TEALS. Book zero to one. Peter Thiel talks about revolutionising technology and creating new markets and all of this stuff that you know, you have to do to be successful in his realm of software. As much as I like tech law is different. So many of us need to stop reinventing the wheel and just implement some good standard practices to get where we want to go. Use your creative energy for how you’re going to serve your clients and come up with legal theories. And stop wasting your energy trying to figure out how you’re going to do billing and budget and all of that stuff, get that done, and save your energy to serve your clients. So a couple things I want you to know, as you’re preparing to grow, I want you to understand that this is going to happen. How many people when you started your firm? Did you have a true believer come with you? Did you have a spouse say I’m gonna help you start your firm and I’m gonna take a paycheck cut and I’m gonna come help you. Or you had a secretary come over and they were willing to work for $10 an hour for a while. Or maybe your 15 year old kids is like all the answer the phones in the summer for you? Well, you get booted up, did anybody have a true believer help them out when they started their firm? I had a true believer. I had a great legal secretary come over with me. And three weeks after I started my firm, she had an unfortunate fall and how to brain injury. So fortunately, she’s doing okay right now, but she was unable to work and I lost that person I was really counting on to help me start my firm. So whether it happens sooner or later, the true believers and the special discounts and the really cheap rent that you get as a firm owner, it’s not going to be there. You need to be prepared that you will have to pay market prices. You are not going to win success as a law firm owner by finding a lot of cheap deals to string together. You need to understand that mindset at the beginning so that you can prepare your prices to be able to reflect what you’re going to need to be spending in order to provide the service. So I want you to be really aware of that, because so much of us have early success by bootstrapping our business. And we need to know that’s not going to be a sustainable model in the long term, even though it’s a wonderful way to start your business. It’s what I did as well, you’re gonna have to improve your management skills. This isn’t a talk on management, but you’re gonna have to do that. But something else that I think we don’t realize is another reason we can be so successful as early entrepreneurs, is because we’re so into it. We love what we do. We want to serve our clients, we want to show that we’re better than other attorneys. And the reason for the way we think we do that is by texting constantly with our clients, by emailing and being pinged all the time. That’s not scalable, you can’t run a firm that way. So you’re gonna have to think as to how you’re going to systematize so that you can continue to serve a wider client base, and still get good quality customer service. I want to talk about some financial things to be aware of as you’re growing your firm. So I love Greg Crabtree, if you’re in the Maxwell guild, you’re going to hear me preach Greg Crabtree all day long. But Greg Crabtree tells us that so many entrepreneurs are underpaying themselves. So I asked you what is happening in your business. If you are not paying yourself a market salary, you don’t have truth in your business. Your books do not reflect what’s really going on in your business. You don’t know if you’re running an unprofitable firm, when you are not paying yourself a market salary. So I’d advise you to go and find comparable salaries, make sure that you know what that salary is. And your goal needs to be to get yourself to a market salary. Within 18 months. I waited too long. I waited way too long to do it. But I can tell you magic started to happen in my business. When I started paying myself a market rate salaries like I suddenly took my business more seriously, in a way I didn’t realize thinking about Jim earlier today, you know, we can sometimes be so patient as entrepreneurs to a detriment, you know, well, I’ll catch my salary up later, I’ll catch my salary up later, you need a hard deadline. And I asked you to write that deadline down right now. If you’re not paying yourself a market salary, you’re going to find out what it is. And you’re going to write down when are you going to start paying yourself that salary so you can have truth in your business. You can know if you’re truly running a profitable firm. That means paying yourself a market wage and paying yourself owner distributions. So another reason pay yourself a market wage, even the most people are under paying some of you are not taking w two salaries. And I’m not going to give you accounting advice. But if you’re doing all distributions, you might have an issue with the IRS, it’s going to be expensive to wrap up. So keep an eye out on that. I want to talk about two parts of your toolset to really basic parts of your toolset to build out early. So you’re going to need your chart of accounts and you’re going to need your firm budget. And if you’re at $200,000, and you want to be at a million and you think you know, I’m small, it’s just me right now I kind of know everything that’s going in and out, do it anyways, take the time right now to build out a detailed budget and Chart of Accounts. Because having those tools are going to be things that you build out on in the future. So my budget reviews take a lot less time now than they used to, because they built out a lot of detail. And once you hit about 300k in revenue, you’re gonna be able to start making predictions based on everything that’s gonna go on your phone, you’ll have enough data that it’s just not chaos anymore. We all go through the chaos phase of startup, and you’re starting to be able to recognize patterns when you hit 300k. This is a sample of my chart of accounts. In the speaker notes, I’ve got a chart of accounts in there, I encourage you to have a really detailed chart of accounts, everything that we spend money on is that our chart of accounts. And again, there’s Google links in the notes to my charts of accounts. But you can see these are totally broken out in huge details. Then my bookkeeper knows which expense goes where which expense isn’t mandatory? Or do which is the voluntary bar to why do we have that? Why don’t you bother to break that out? Well, we’re doing well financially, and I’m happy with where we are. But worst case scenario, I know I can cut those voluntary barges if I have to. So we’ve broken everything out we’ve made it really easy for a bookkeeper to work with us and categorize everything properly. We’ve also got codes that tell us whether our costs are variable costs, fixed cost or set variable costs. So we can pull reports and know exactly what’s happening and all the different elements of our business. I’ve put a budget of kind of blurted out if you want to see a real firm’s number, you’re going to have to go to credit golden farms seminar. I haven’t done that. But I’m not ready to show my books to people, but I’ve blurred out my budget. My budget works with my chart of accounts so that I can pull Profit and Loss well, not just profit and loss statements, but my budget ference reports and know how much I’m off based on my projections because my chart of accounts is so detailed. I know one if we’ve missed an expense and forgotten to pay something, but we also know down to the letter where we’re not accounting for things and where we are and we review it every quarter and I update these budgets every quarter, and they end up Being really remarkably accurate and help us make good projections.

Becca Eberhart
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Devon Slovensky
So what I want you to do once you have the tools correct, is I want you to find your firm’s natural rhythm. I asked a bunch of you in the poll how often you bill and the most common denominator was every month. And I think that’s maybe because it’s hard to build. I think that’s maybe why we do that. And kudos to you if you’re billing regularly every month because I think I once when I opened my firm’s shame on me hate to admit it, I went six months without billing. So we don’t do that anymore. But my firm’s natural rhythm is two weeks. And I can tell you why. I think it’s 75% of people who get a paycheck in the United States are paid every two weeks in some states, you have to do that. That’s what gussto does. So that’s what we pay. And we have so much insight into our business when our billing cycle runs with our payroll cycle, your number one expense is you build a firm, even if you’re solo, your number one expense should be payroll, because you need to be getting paid. And you should probably be a W two employee if your that’s what your accountant tells you. So your number one expense should be payroll. So now you have a nice consistent rhythm with your payroll, and your billing practices lining up together. At the same time. I’ve been religiously billing every two weeks, for a year and a half. Now it’s dramatically improved my business. Now we know more quickly when people are behind. You know, I was talking to my husband right before this talk. And you could go $64,000 in the hole on a case if you bill 160 uncompensated hours that 40 hours a week. So we cut that risk in half a little bit by billing every two weeks. So anyways, I highly recommend changing your billing period. Bad billing practices are going to give you bad cashflow people are going to be upset about their bills are going to be higher, we’ve just had so much lower accounts receivable when we bill every two weeks and we know when to get out of a case, we’ve got our eyes on the case every two weeks knowing if it’s time to get out, I will give you a warning. If you’re going to implement flat fees, you’ve got to have a good plan for your cash flow. Because one thing that can happen is you get all that money and operating upfront, you’ve got to make sure that you’re going to have the staff capacity at the end of that case to continue to service the case. So just something to keep in the back of your head. Some attorneys take that money and sort of set it in a fake trust account if it’s considered earned, that they don’t take until the end of the case. But it’s really important. If you’re relying on staff to finish these cases, you’ve got to make sure that you can fund these cases at the end of them. I also highly recommend that what you do is you make a billing goal for every period. Except for my budget. When I think of monthly I think of my revenue goals. My billing targets my marketing goals, I think of them in two weeks sprints, and I have it all charted out. So I know how many leads we’re expecting to get how many consults we’re hoping to book and how many hours we’re hoping to bill every two weeks. And I have that charted out for the whole year. And I highly encourage you to implement that practice. So what do you do to course correct? You know, you’ve charted this course, we figured out how we’re going to cross no man’s land and how we’re going to build a business, not just a law firm, you’re going to have to course correct. So you’re going to get in there every quarter, you’re going to recognize the new expenses, you’re going to correct your Chart of Accounts, and you’re going to protect what’s going to happen next quarter. I will tell you my projections have gotten increasingly more accurate, the more I’ve been doing this, they were thin $10,000 Last year working with my accountant, and then you’re going to do a major budget overhaul every year. So and I think that’s pretty self explanatory. So I want to share with you just a few things that I’ve done that it’s financially improve my business that some were a little surprising. One of the first things I did it I hired an expensive professional accountant who gets it early in my business probably earlier than I needed her but I have very organized books and financial records and I know what my expenses are. My profit and loss statements speak a lot of truth and help me make decisions about my business in which segments of my business are more profitable than others. Your ordinary bookkeeper isn’t going to be able to do this. You need to hire somebody who is not just a rearview mirror accountant. You need to hire somebody who’s front facing And to do your accounting and set you up in a position where you can start making projections. Based on what’s happened in the past, I started paying myself a market wage. And I’m going to go ahead and give you guys a little bonus tidbit to one thing that really changed. My mindset was my husband, who’s here in the back, we rented a house for a really, really long time, even though we could probably afford to buy one. And when we stepped up to the plate and finally bought a house, I think that was a great mindset shift for us, you know, instead of just hiding out and being afraid, you know, will we be able to continue to do this, we stepped into it and said, we’re going to do this, we’re going to make it work. And I think that’s been such an important mindset shift for us. And it goes hand in hand, with paying yourself a market wage. I’ve added benefits, I was terrified to add health insurance, I thought, Oh, my goodness, this is gonna be an out of control costs. What will this do? I did that over a year ago, and I’ve never looked back, you know, it’s always worked out, it’s never been the burden that I was so scared of it being I also ended up adding short term disability, long term disability and life insurance benefits for my staff. And I really encourage you to do so I’ve talked to too many lawyers who have had to make really tough decisions about very ill staff members, and what the right thing to do is and in light of their inability to work, so if that’s one takeaway, I’d highly recommend you doing that for your staff. And then the big plunge I took earlier this year is I hired a highly compensated trial attorney who is going to be our lead trial attorney and hopefully take some cases off my plate, we’re getting my caseload offloaded to him and his caseload really built up. And that’s been a scary investment. But it’s been worthwhile, and it’s finally paying off. So those are my tips for growing your law firm getting yourself $2 million in revenue, there’s a sample budget, I have already filled out your revenue targets, which are at $3,333 a month on the budget. But it’s up to you to come up with what your fill in numbers are to get there in the budget. So there’s a template for you. And I want to point you to some good resources. So we’ve got my Greg Crabtree book, talk about him all the time, simple numbers, just so many words of wisdom, if you can understand the labor efficiency ratio that he talks about in there, it’s going to really help you manage your firm. But that’s a more advanced topic. I did not realize that Brooke was speaking tomorrow. So Brooke lively is here. And she wrote the book panics, profit has some really good KPIs and talks to you about managing data, she actually informed me, they’re giving free downloads of that right now out in the hallway. So anyways, that was a nice, pleasant surprise, you can go get that book in five minutes if you want to. And then I also want to direct you to no man’s land, we are growing companies fail so that you can make sure that you’re building the infrastructure so that your business can scale as you grow, because your business needs are going to change dramatically when you move from solo to affirm that’s more systematized. So thanks. It looks like I’ve got just another minute or so to answer some questions. So right there, you get

Speaker 4
a major pain point over service for client happiness. You mentioned about systems that will be there to drive the system?

Devon Slovensky
Well, I think you’ve got to start with a new clients you on board and you’ve got to change their expectations. From the beginning, I think it’s really hard to retrain old Doc’s they don’t learn new tricks, but then you’ve got to invest some time moving forward about how you’re going to communicate with these people. So you know, we have tons of scripted emails in our email system that people can use and reuse. And we’ve even automated some of those things sent out at certain times in cases. And that’s been a huge value, Jordan.

Devon Slovensky
Know, so I mean, it does kind of mess a little bit with the monthly numbers that you look at. And you kind of have to readjust that when you’re looking at your budget, which I’ve not found a way to build a budget in two week increments. But you know, you have 26 periods every year, regardless of you know, even though some months will have three in it.

Unknown Speaker
Give me by paying yourself market wage, I’m

Devon Slovensky
sure. So if you were what I think of a market wage is, I don’t really think of it as what you would pay somebody else to do the management, I think the true substitute is what would you pay another attorney to do high level attorney work at your firm? I think that’s the substitution value

Unknown Speaker
lower than what

Devon Slovensky
I’ve been paying myself much less than market wage. I’ve been, you know, doing the, you know, let’s you know, there’s a time I paid myself minimum wage. So you know, when you don’t have truth in your business when you do that. So all right, well, I will get off the stage. If anybody has any other questions, let me know. Thank you all.

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Are you struggling to grow your business? Do you find yourself getting stuck in negative thought patterns that hinder your progress? In this episode, entrepreneur and bestselling author James Ashford shares his insights on how to improve your mindset and achieve business success. Here are five tips inspired by his interview:

➡ Have a dream and a goal that is beyond your means: According to James, having a big dream and a goal that seems impossible can push you to do better and achieve more.

➡ Simplify your business: James suggests automating processes, outsourcing non-core tasks, and creating a culture of autonomy to help you focus on the key things that need to be done.

➡ Focus on delivering exceptional experiences to your customers: By focusing on results rather than just delivering services, you can stand out from the competition and command higher fees.

➡Let go of past negative experiences and surround yourself with positive influences: James emphasizes the importance of rewiring your core belief system to improve your results and achieve success.

➡ Block out distractions and focus on the task at hand: To achieve big outcomes in short timeframes, James suggests ignoring everyone and being comfortable with being ignorant to people during times of absolute focus.

By adopting these tips and focusing on improving your mindset, you can overcome challenges and achieve success in your business. So, what are you waiting for? Start implementing these tips today and see the results for yourself!

Episode Highlights:

02:01 Meet James, successes and fails

07:08 When you do not have the right systems and people in place

07:47 When you spread resources too thinly

10:39 How a scarcity mindset can lead to undermining

11:35 The importance of simplifying a business

16:17 The challenges of running a professional services business

21:52 Helping firms increase their fees

24:50 The importance of working on your mindset

Jim’s Hack: Pick an anthem of the day song to listen over and over to help you focus.

James Tip: achieving big outcomes in short timeframes: ignoring everyone and blocking everything else out.

Tyson Tip: book “Make Your Bed” by Admiral William McRaven, which offers tips on how small things can change your life and maybe the world. Speech at graduation of Texas on YouTube

Books:

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with James:

Resources:

Transcript: Simplifying Your Business for Better Results with James Ashford

Speaker 1
Run your law firm 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

Jim Hacking
to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking and

Tyson Mutrux
Tyson nutrix What’s up, Jimmy?

Jim Hacking
Oh Tyson. I’m really excited about our guest today. This harkens back to our old Infusionsoft days, we were in iKON at their conference in Phoenix. And I heard a great presentation by a guy from Great Britain named James Ashford James was speaking our language he was he advises and coaches and, and suggest ways to improve for people in the accountancy business in Great Britain. He’s written two great books, selling to serve right as the first one, and untapped as the second one and untapped as the one we’re going to talk about today. But James was very kind to have breakfast with me that morning after his presentation, and we became friends on Facebook. He’s also quite the comedian. One of my favorite things about James is he plays tricks on his wife. And one of my favorite ones was, there’s a video on Facebook, James is up on the second floor of his house and his wife is downstairs and she’s bringing in the groceries and she keeps closing the trunk of the car. And then he clicks to open it so it keeps popping back up. It’s hilarious. So James, welcome to the show.

James Ashford
Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me. Great. See you guys in there. Yeah, of all the videos, all the educational, wonderful content I’ve ever produced. That’s the one video that kind of gets more likes than anything else.

Tyson Mutrux
Fantastic. And that’s how it goes. Sometimes it’s kind of crazy. Well, James, it’s nice to meet you. Can you share a little bit about your journey on when it comes to becoming the founder of goproposal? And also a best selling author and sort of how your insights you think will will apply to the legal industry?

James Ashford
Yeah, sure. So it’s kind of a lot of questions that Tyson so if I go off track, please pull me back. I usually

Tyson Mutrux
go a little simpler, but I figured I’d go low. I figured you could handle it. Yeah, that’s

James Ashford
cool. Cool. So I always wanted to set up my own business, I don’t quite know where that thought came from. I think I kind of had relatives like an uncle and an auntie when I was younger, that had their own business, relatively small businesses, but they kind of seem to be happier and had nicer cars and did cooler things than my family did. So I think I always associated a level of financial freedom with setting up a business, I tried various things over the years, and nothing really took off the ground, did many jobs, and then eventually, kind of in the middle of the last recession, with one child on the way, decided to the way to financial freedom was to set up my own business. And I create a marketing agency. And it was good, you know, it creates some income. But you know, when you set up any business, you’re an expert on your craft. But there’s kind of a million other things that you’re an absolute amateur app, and you desperately trying to learn all of these other things, right. And one of the big failings I had was I didn’t have the finance function in place properly into that business, and unknowingly, we were heading kind of over a cliff. And we ended up going over and kind of cause huge problems for myself and my family, I split with my wife at the time. And I put ourself in a compromising position financially. And I then started, you know, I picked up the pieces again. And funnily enough, last night, we’ve just moved house just temporarily while we had some work done on the house, and I found my notebooks. And I was just flicking through just to kind of remind myself of that time. And after that, I had the weight of been underground of that business. And I just started to learn, like the way out was to start learning and I found all my notebooks of all the books I was reading at the time. And I wasn’t just kind of making notes on books, I was studying, like I was finding the best people in the world. How do I kind of where do I get this information from? And I just went on this reprogramming of my belief system. And then I started attending conferences and courses and at some point on that journey, Jim, that’s where kind of we met. And then in the books, and it wasn’t straight away. I did an autopsy of my previous business. Why went under why I felt in that moment was me accepting, I blamed a lot of people or blamed a lot of things. I think up until that point, I heard a great phrase earlier today, blame thrower. I think it was a blame thrower, right. And I accepted responsibility for all of my failings and in all the problems that caused and then I started to kind of move forward and grow forward. I did a really introspective of what was important to me, what does a great life look like what I want to stop doing? What are my core principles moving forward. And then in the middle of the book, I’ve written life changes here. And then a little bit later on, I wrote out my 5 million pound plan, and I turned things around. And what I realized Tyson was sometimes when you’re kind of buried under the way and you feel beneath the earth, and you feel like you’ve been buried, you can also reinterpret that as you’ve been planted, and I grew out of that and that and kind of set up your proposal and achieved quite rapid success in a short space of time. And somebody said, You’ve been an overnight success. And I said, Yeah, but you’ve no idea how long that night was like it was a long night, like 10 years. So kind of that’s my quick journey

Jim Hacking
That’s awesome. James, where does that come from? Like, internally? Where did that come from? You I mean, you talk in your book, and we see it a lot with law firm owners about people that are just stuck and that are feeling frustrated. They’re not happy with their life. But not everybody. Does that hard work that you did in the book is full of a lot of the examples of the people that you studied. What was it about you that allowed that to even happen?

James Ashford
I think I’ve been really looking at this reason, because I’ve been, I’ve started to go back into colleges and talk to college students to kind of try and map out my journey. So I’m doing more of an introspective at the moment, I think it’s two forces at work. One is you have to have a dream and a goal. That’s way beyond your means that way beyond your capabilities that you have no, right. So you have no right to have. And if you shared it with people, people would kind of pull it down because they think you’re crazy to even think that big do you need that. And then the other component that you need need is a complete sense of inadequacy, and feeling that you’re no good, and that you need to do better. And it’s kind of those two forces at work, this this huge dream that you’re heading towards, and this thing that’s pushing you as well, which is I need to do better, I need to do more. And I think it was those two things in place. But I’d like to think Jim, at that point was I lacked focus. And I remember meeting this guy at the time. And he said, she’s kind of one of the sparks, but goproposal. And he said, I don’t know how you’re not a millionaire yet. I’m like, I know, it’s doing my head in as well. He said, You’re either full of ship, and I’ve just not spotted it yet, or you’ve just not stuck to one thing for long enough. And I said, I hope it’s that. And he said, I’ll help you to stick to it. And that was it.

Tyson Mutrux
So I want to back up a little bit when you’re telling me your story when it comes to when things are sort of falling apart? Right. And it was right before your your rebirth. And so what was going on? What were the things that you were doing? Because I think this is a really valuable lesson for law firm owners like to sort of get back on course, and what were the things that we were doing in your business in your life that were derailing you.

James Ashford
So I had this vision of what a business should be. And you have this vision of what success looks like because you’ve watched Dragon’s Den or in the in the US Shark Tank, and you’ve watched the apprentice and you’ve read, you know, Richard Branson’s book and whatever, various books, right. So you have this vision, and then you get into business and you don’t actually have a business, you have a job very often, you know, because you don’t have the systems in place. You don’t have the right people, you don’t know how to recruit the right people, you don’t have to delegate properly, you get in their way, you don’t know how to allow people to flourish, all of these failings that you have to learn. And so you have a job, a tough job. And it’s not this thing that you thought it was going to be. And so I started to look elsewhere and started to spread myself quite thinly. And so I thought, well, this isn’t the business that I thought it was going to be to maybe it’s over here, or maybe it’s with this venture and this idea. So I had kind of multiple things going on. But what I was doing, I was spreading my resource, really, really thinly placing lots of bets, but they were kind of, you know, the bets were too thin, and that they just went were never going to pay off. I didn’t have a grasp of the finances, I didn’t invest enough into that finance function, I didn’t understand enough about marketing, you know, if you’re unable, this, this causes so many problems in business, if you’re unable to attract your dream customers, and to get them in and to command a high fee that causes nearly every other problem downwind of that, right? Because let’s say you go speak to a firm, law firm, accounting firm, whatever, what’s your biggest challenge car, get the right staff, you just can’t get them. I can’t get them anywhere. It’s like you can if you can afford to pay them enough. So why can’t you afford to pay them enough? Because you’re not charging high enough fees, you’re not attracting enough of your dream customers, you’re doing too much work for free. And so what I’m interested in is how do you trace those issues back? Because very often, you’re dealing with the surface issues taste and all the time everyone’s trying to deal with the surface issues, because they’re not aware of the core issues. What my studies took me into is, what are the core issues? What connects all businesses, what drives all businesses? What’s the purpose of every single business? And how do you achieve that? And that was the bit that was missing.

Jim Hacking
So I want to switch to the book now because this is a nice segue right into the book because this is certainly a main theme of untapped. And so I have a slightly unusual way of doing books. So I get the audio version and the Kindle version. I listen and I outline the Kindle itself. And James’s audio version is fun because he does it himself. And he does like Gary Vee does these little aside. So he’ll be read and read and reading and then we’ll tell a little side story and then we’ll come back so I recommend getting both but in that point that you’re talking about about the fundamental problem with most law firms or accountancy firms is that they aren’t charging enough is so key and you said in the book, there are only three ways you can improve your profit margin, which is to reduce overheads, improve efficiencies or increased prices. And you talked about how people often focus on reducing overheads and how that that really comes from a scare City mindset. Can you talk about that, James?

James Ashford
Yeah, sure. So the primary function of any businesses to make money, and we’ve all read, or perhaps you’ve already Simon cynics start with why, and that’s beautiful, right? I want to change the world, I want to, you know, improve employment in my area and reduce homelessness, whatever it is that you want to do your reason why it’s beautiful, that’s going to get you out of bed in the morning. But the primary function of the business is to make money because without that, you can’t do all any of those things that you want to do. And so the only ways that we can make money is to get more customers, or to give more value to the customers that you’ve already got. And then beyond that, the way to keep more of that money is to improve your profit margin, which is you just outlined there, Jim, those three areas there. And what people do is they become fearful. They listen to everything that’s going on, especially what’s happening in the world right now. Okay? They believe in this recessive mindset. They’re starting to retreat, because we’re facing economic hardship. They’re believing everything we’re hearing in the news, they’re passing that information on to their clients as well. They’re talking about it over and over again. And so that switches them into scarcity mindset, which says, I haven’t got enough, and there isn’t enough. And so that’s when they start to reduce their overheads. And they actually then start to undermine their ability to do all of the other things.

Tyson Mutrux
So you talk about simplifying the business, automating processes, outsourcing non core tasks, and then creating a culture of autonomy. When we talk about simplifying the business. I really liked that one. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I think that is an overlooked part of it. And Jim, like you mentioned, Infusionsoft, like whenever Jim first built out his Infusionsoft, he made it really, really complicated. And he couldn’t even use it. Yeah. So we talked about that aspect of things.

James Ashford
It’s quite interesting that when people get in Infusionsoft, and then they kind of got this bad nickname of confusion soft, and then they’ve tried to rebrand it as keep, rather than challenge what the real issue is, which is what happens is, the reason why you get into that position is because your processes are confusing in the first place, right? So you get this automation technology, and you take your flawed, complicated processes, and you try and shoehorn it into this tech and doesn’t work, then you blame the tech and just bring it back like you’ve overcomplicated the business in the first place. And there’s so many things that pull you in different directions. There’s a really good book called, I’m gonna get the name wrong now. But I think it’s called to lens of the pool. And it was a swimmer, and a swimming coach. And for years he was struggling. And what it boiled down to is when he was swimming, so he was swimming, his race was 100 meters, and he was swimming in a 50 meter pool. And what happened was, he realized that he was trying to achieve so many things, he was trying to win the race, he was trying to beat his competitor, he was trying to get gold. He was trying to appeal to the fans, he was trying to do all these things, were distracting him. And he said, It took them years to figure out that the only thing you had to do was to swim to length of the pool as fast as he could. That was it. And he said, It seems so simple now. But that was his goal. And the moment you realize that your goal is now what are all the other things that we that contribute to swimming to length of the pool as fast as you can. And that’s what we need to do in business. And to my mind, it’s about finding what your TrueNorth is, which for me is always in the service of your clients in the service of your existing clients. If ever I’ve been lost in business and thinking, what direction do I go in? What’s the most important thing now? I always bring myself back to who do we already have this working with us? That trust us? That Lycos that’s given us money? How can we serve them more? How can we deliver a better experience to those people? How can we have a greater impact on their lives? That’s always been my TrueNorth not trying to get more customers or anything like that. It’s always bringing it back to that that’s always been my to length of the pool. And if you can’t define that, there’s so many things you can get distracted with. And when you focus on those things, and people become really busy, right? It’s an easy question. Is it a busy? Yeah, am I really busy, right? It’s a crap question. Everyone’s busy. If you’re busy on the wrong things, you’ve been lazy, and no one likes to hear that. But if you’re busy in yourself, it’s because you’re choosing to avoid the key thing that you need to do right now, which may be going back to your existing clients and having a difficult conversation with them. We avoid these difficult conversations because we’re scared of who we might hear the truth, but it’s in those truthful conversations that we can find out how to deliver more impact to our clients.

Becca Eberhart
The Guild is 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 20 and 21st in Denver, Colorado, featuring hotseat sessions and personal coaching with renowned performance coach Jason Selke. 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 hotseat sessions you’ll gain valuable insights and learn strategies to help you overcome the challenges you’re facing in your practice. This for a limited time, you can get your ticket at the lowest early bird price, head to max law events.com to join now and reserve your spot at the upcoming guild mastermind.

Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Our guest today is James Ashford. He’s the author of the great new book called untapped. He helps accountancy firms in the United Kingdom, make more money and live better lives. James, as you’ve met with literally hundreds of accountancy firms, what are the things that still surprised you? Or what are the things that you see over and over again, that are holding these accountancy firm owners back?

James Ashford
Yeah, so the challenge with all kinds of professional service businesses, so law firms, accountancy firms, is that it’s hard for them to put their hand up and say, I don’t know how to run a successful business, right? If you’re a plumber, or a builder or hairdresser, and you start out in business, and you find it tough in your struggle, and you can say, Hey, I’ve no idea how to do this, like how do I improve my finances? How do I improve my marketing, whatever? The moment, you’re in a professional services industries, like you feel this expectation that you should know how to run a business, like you’re a professional service, what are you talking about, you should know how to do this. So it’s hard for an accountant to put their hands up and say, I don’t know how to make money, I don’t know how to charge the right fee. I don’t know how to do this stuff. Because the expectation is that they should know. But in their training, when you look at their training, they’re not trained in how to do this. In all of these professional services business, if you trace the history back of them in the UK, I’ve been told it’s like in America, in the UK, accountant 30 years ago, were not allowed to market and advertise their services, it was against the law, they couldn’t do it, right. So to be able to market and sell their services is a relatively new thing. And the other thing that causes accountants and lawyers, it’s the same problem is that there are accountants and lawyers, so they think like accountants and lawyers. So accountants are always looking for what’s wrong, lawyers are always looking for what’s wrong, okay, that makes them great lawyers and great accountants problem, you then put them into a business, and you’re trying to help them to improve and to grow, develop their processes. And the first thing they think of is, what’s wrong? What’s gonna go wrong with this. So like, I try and help accountants with their pricing. And I say, Listen, it’s not going to be perfect. You know, pricing is never sold, it’s only ever tuned. So you have to be comfortable with Starting with version one, and getting to version 1.1. And version 1.2. Like, I don’t know what software My iPhone is up to now, but 15.6, let’s say, right, they didn’t wait to get to 15.6. Before they launched it, they launched version one, and then got to version 1.1 1.2. Accounting lawyers don’t like that, because they focus on what’s wrong with this, versus what could go right with this.

Tyson Mutrux
I really like that. So I’ve got a potentially complicated question. So I think raising prices is always a really good one, like focusing on that is a really, really good one. We tell lawyers that all the time, we always talk a lot about technology. But I think there’s an elephant in the room we need to talk about and that’s when it comes to artificial intelligence and the way things have changed recently, quite a bit over the last few months. So how do you think that that’s going to affect things when it comes to outsourcing because I mean, a lot of the things that we typically have outsource can now we can actually bring back in house because we don’t need outsource it because many of those things can be taken care of when it comes to AI. So how do you think that that might affect pricing strategies? how it might affect outsourcing in the future? Can you talk a little bit about that?

James Ashford
It’s a really interesting question. And I think it comes down to what the law firm or the accounting firm have been focusing on for all these years, right. So if they’re just focusing on the client and delivering the service, so effectively acting fairly robotically, then there is a great chance that they’re going to be replaced by robots, okay, if they are human centered, and heart centered, and person first centered, so I was very closely involved with an accounting firm here. And I implemented a principle which was person first client second, which was you’ve got to treat the person first, not the client, and I learned this from my friend who’s a PT physiotherapist in the UK now we trained for the PTs in the US, and PT is quite interesting because physiotherapist sell time for money effectively, okay, like lawyers do, like accountants do. And what they’re going to do is switch it to results, right. So what happens is, if you’ve got a bad back, you’re in your physio, and they all ask you the same question. Hey, Tyson, how long have you had the back pain? Whereabouts it her? What type of pain is there? What makes it worse, etc. Right? The treating the patient, they’re not treating the person the way the conversation should go is Hey, Tyson, before we get on to your back, can you tell me what this back pain is preventing you from doing? Well? I used to go run in I used to do CrossFit. I’m like gardening, I’m a tango dancer, etc. Okay, so you’re looking to kind of get back tango dancing and you’ll Okay, that’s what you’re trying to do. Now. Let’s talk about your back and the pain that’s preventing you from doing that is person first client second. What lawyers and accountants typically do and physiotherapists is They want to get it back to their skill set, they want to get it back to where they feel comfortable, because they’re fearful of talking to people as humans. So when I first started working with this accounting firm, what I said is, look, you’re trying to you’re talking about bookkeeping services, you’re talking about management accounts and annual accounts, I don’t give a shit about any of that, I want to move closer to my children school, so they can play with their friends, I want my wife to leave a job because she got a really tough gig. And I want to be able to take my kids to and from school every day. And if you don’t know that, because you’ve not had that conversation with me, there is no way you can be given the most value to me that you possibly can. And professional services are all guilty of it. And now, what’s happening is chat GPT. And all of these, an AI is exposing the fact that people have been able to operate at a low level for so long, that’s what it’s exposing, it’s not threatening the industry, it’s going to shake the industry up and allow those human centered firms to absolutely crush him moving forward.

Jim Hacking
All right now, that’s an awesome answer and great advice. And I want to get to the heart of the book, which is about raising fees. And James, I want you to know that the book had a profound effect on me, we’ve now built out a system so that every quarter, we are raising our fees every quarter, that’s great, and we’re going to use a duck sort of across the board. So marketing, you’ll be able to use it intake, we’ll use it because they’ll have a deadline coming up. And then it’s going to help our cash flow. And I think we waited too long to raise our fees. So the book couldn’t have come at a better time for me personally, but talk to us about the mindset that you see with people when they’re resistant to raising their fees. And then sort of what of that turns out to be bullshit in their head versus things that are real. And then the successes that they see. I mean, your book is full of success story after success story of people who listen to you who use go proposal, who increased their fees, and sort of really turned their companies that had been struggling around.

James Ashford
So if I just give a bit of background where it came from, it was just kind of half after COVID. So kind of, again, economic uncertainty. And accountants like lawyers were looking to reduce their fees. And goproposal is a piece of software that enables firms to sell their services more profitably. And we have a very active community. And someone in there, our standard level fee of our product is 120 pounds a month. And then we have a lower level at 60 pounds a month. But you’re restricted to how many proposals you can get out the door and somebody who’s having a go in the community saying I shouldn’t, you know, it’s, I don’t have to pay that extra 60 pounds a month to be able to, you know, send out more proposals what’s going on, I got really annoyed. I’m like, What are you talking about? Like, you only have to kind of increase the fee of three clients, and you’ve covered the cost. Why are you even thinking in this way, and I got really annoyed. And then I stopped myself and I thought hang on a minute, I’ve not done enough to help these people to switch from scarcity, thinking and get into an abundant mindset to believe that there is enough and that you can get more and that you deserve more to earn it. So I said, Look, I’ll tell you what, I’ll take 50 firms, and if you make 20% profit margin, if I can help you to increase your fees for existing clients by 300 pounds a month that will cover the cost of the increase the life of the product, do you all agree? So I took these 50 firms, and within 30 days had increased their collective revenue by over half a million pound, right. So that’s an average of 830 pounds increase in fees from existing clients doing nothing weird, no crazy sales technique, just straightforward, logical conversations, I thought I’d flipped it, I thought maybe I’ve got just 50 Random firms that happen to be on the precipice of growing their fees anyway, took another 50 firms and repeat the process with them a month later, again, 30 days, they will increase our fees by over half a million pounds. And all I did was I just went back through my journey in terms of what I had done to get my mindset in the right place. And what we want, Jim is we want to improve the results we’re getting in our life. That’s ultimately what we’re trying to do, we want to improve these results. But in order to improve the results, we have to change our actions, the thing that’s driving the actions that you’re taking are your feelings, your feelings are ultimately controlling your actions. And the underlying thing that is controlling your feelings is your core belief system. You have to rewire your core belief system, which is a super, super hard thing to do nothing you can enter in lightly. Jim Rohn talks about this, you have to work harder on yourself than on your business. And that’s exactly what he’s talking about. You have to rewire that core belief system. And so when I went back to the first question, you asked me about the journey that I went on, I had to do that it was an immersive experience. You have to surround yourself with the right people. You have to get deep into that learning to improve that that mindset is a super, super hard thing to do. But ultimately, if you don’t do that, you will always bring forward bullshit excuses. I could lay out perfect a gym, I could map out and I do this the exact steps that you need to take to go and increase those fees. It’s very, very logical. But if you are coupled to things in your past that are holding you back, if you are surrounded by negative thinking people, if you constantly consume the news, if you don’t invest in your own development, you will never buy into those things. So we have to work on our mindset. I don’t know if I answered your question there. We just went off on a rant. Jim, I apologize.

Jim Hacking
It was awesome. I wanted the rant. The rant was great.

Tyson Mutrux
That was great. I think the length of focus on mindsets perfect spot on, I do want to ask you a question. Because I think that raising rates is the right way to go. I am curious, I’m in a contingency fee business. So I represent injury clients. And we we actually charge more than most firms we charge, like, a lot of firms will charge a third right 33.33% We charge 35%. Right. And then on premises liability cases, we charge 38%. Then like med mal, we charge 40%. So I mean, that’s pretty standard across the board when it comes to most firms, except for most like we’re like, you know, a third and then if you file suit, it goes to 40%. So I wonder what pricing strategies you might recommend? Like, would you recommend that maybe a firm like mine, okay, no, instead of 35 is 30%, and then set a 40% 42%? Like, what are your thoughts and stuff like that we’re in whenever it is, in an industry when it’s pretty standard? What those rates? Are?

James Ashford
You didn’t give me a warning about how complicated that question was going to be Tyson. But that is a much more complicated, I

Tyson Mutrux
apologize, you can pass it if you want

James Ashford
to know I won’t do I’ll do my very best to answer it. The only way you know, the most you can charge for something is what Jim was talking about before, which is to keep increasing your prices. And see at which point is people stop paying it. That is the only actual way you can do it. What most people do is they look towards the competitor. And they think like you brought some thinking that is which is the fact that that’s it. You said the word that’s a standard pricing. Therefore, you now think that you have to conform to that standard pricing. There’s a road not too far from where I live. And if I start a one that sells cars, and you could see the first few cars as a Kia Garriage, there’s a Renault Garriage, the Peugeot Garriage. And you could think that this is standard pricing, right? But then you get to the Audi Garriage. Then there’s a ranger of a garage. And there’s a Porsche Garriage. Right. And then also, it’s not standard. It’s not standard. So what’s happening differently along there, what’s the experience that people are getting, and people don’t talk about this. So we talk about Systemising our business. And the reason why we want to systemize is that we can scale it so that it can run consistently so that we can bring team members in, etc. But the ultimate reason to systemize a business is to provide incredible experiences for our customers. And the moment you start to move into experiences. That’s when prices can really start to go up. But here’s the irony of it all. You can’t get into experiences until you charge enough to allow you to be able to deliver a level of service that your clients actually want to pay for. Right. So you have to unravel that. There’s a hotel near here that we go to a couple of hours away from where I live. It’s the number one hotel in the UK got voted last year. You turn up there, you get greeted at the gate. They take your name you drive down a crunchy drive. You get there, they get up Mr. Ashford, they know who you are, because the people at the gate have already rang down to say that Mr. Ashfords arrived, they take you out that you hand them your keys. Leave your case in the car, there’s a champagne reception waiting for you like the experiences incredible. Like what you pay for a night there is ridiculous. So you can tell what’s the standard fee of a hotel room. There isn’t a standard fee, the moment you start to get into providing incredible experiences because the experiences you provide will change the way that your clients are made to feel. And your clients will remember how you made them feel long after they’ve forgotten what you’ve done for them.

Jim Hacking
Alright, so I had another question. But I remembered when you were just talking right now, James, my absolute favorite story from the book and I think it’d be a great way for us to end and that is when procrastinating James Ashford waited till the last minute to make his valentine day reservation at the restaurant. If you could tell that story, I think it’d be a great way for us to wrap up because to me, it demonstrates something we talked about here a lot based on our friend Jason Selke, relentless solution focused, you just focus on finding a solution. And I can’t think of a story that fits that better than that Valentine’s Day story. That’s cool.

James Ashford
Thank you. Yeah. So it brings a lot of things in this is about being resourceful. Most people will blame resources or lack of resources as to why they can’t achieve what they want to achieve. But you’ve got to be resourceful. And you’ve got to be unreasonable. And you’ve got to be relentless. And I think one thing that I’ve always been very good at Jim is thinking this is the outcome that I’m going to achieve by this date. And I’m going to find a way my first reaction is I’m going to find a way and if I can’t find a way I’m going to make away and if I can’t make away, I’m going to get people around me who can help me to make away but either way, I’m coming through it over it or around it. And you have to have that mindset in business. So the story you’re telling is it was there’s a I live in a small town. There’s not a lot of very good restaurants but there’s there was one really cool restaurant called the room rooms and they started serving some great Eat food and the become quite renowned in the town. And it was Valentine’s Day was Valentine’s Day on the Saturday. It was now the Wednesday and my wife had said, Have you booked the room rooms yet? And I said no should outsource it. So she rang the the guys called the inn. And she had it on loudspeaker and she said, Hi, I want to book a table for Saturday for Valentine’s Day. And I could just hear him laughing on the phone. And I’m thinking, this is not a good sign. Oh, he’s like, we’ve been booked up since last year. Like you got no, I’m really sorry, like coming to see us later. So she came off the phone gave me a bit of a rollicking, and I said all sorts it. So it now got to Friday, and I realized that not sorted it and I was sat in a shopping mall carpark. So I rang up, and I said, Hey, you spend my wife on Wednesday? I just wondered if kind of any tables had come free, how many cancellations? He said we’ve got some really sorry, we just have no room at all. We’ve we’ve fully booked. And I said okay, can I just ask, what is it an issue of like, Is it is it an issue of tables? Because we have a small table? I could we could arrive early. I could bring it bring a couple of chairs. We could squeeze in upstairs. He said no, no. He says we’re, we’re just a really small restaurant upstairs. There is there is just isn’t the room. I said okay. I said, Well, what about downstairs? It’s all that’s the bar area that says Ya know that but I mean, you can fit us in somewhere we can just sit in the corner is cool. He said No, it’s for drinking only. That’s an even smaller area. All right. I says you’ve got a courtyard out back. I said, Is there any chance we could sit out there? He said, It’s February. It’s freezing. I says, Okay, is there any way you could make it warmer out there? It’s well, I guess I could put a fire basket outside or something like that. He said, But it’s dark. I said, Okay. Could you make it lighter? He said, Well, we’ve got some fairy lights in the back and we could hang those and stuff. I said, brilliant. What time could we have the table for? And he said, Come at 830 and have it all set up for you. Right. So I came off the phone around. Around back yesterday. I’ve got a table book that the room rooms Saturday night? Should How did you book that? I can’t tell you I’ve just sorted it. I thought if I tell her we sit in outside, it’s game over. Right. So anyway, returned, agreed on it took us out back. And this is huge courtyard right in the middle a bit. There was a fire basket fire going fairy lights all around third blankets. The candles in the middle. It was exquisite. It was like some celebrities are turned up. Like people were coming out and said who are you like how have you managed to get this table? I’m a big deal, right? Anyway. So we had we had the meal, my wife lived there. And then it was great story, right. And what I think about that is many of the people have rang that restaurant, I was the only person that got that table. Because I was committed to my goal. I wasn’t afraid of my feelings. I wasn’t afraid of feeling embarrassed. I wasn’t afraid of being rejected. I was committed to that goal. Three months later went back to the restaurant, the guy greeted, as they recognize me said, let me show you out here. He took us out back. He built an outside eating area with five tables and increase the covers of that restaurant by 50%. With the tables a year later, went back for my niece’s birthday went back, he says you’ve got to come and see this now. He’s got an outdoor bar outside, he’s got a stage area, double the size of his dining area. And I like to think that I was the person that sparked that off, because I was unreasonable. There’s a great quote by George Bernard Shaw, which is the reasonable man will adapt himself to the world, the Unreasonable Man will attempt to adapt the world to Himself. Therefore, all progress is dependent upon the Unreasonable Man. Awesome.

Tyson Mutrux
That’s great. That is absolutely wonderful. So very powerful, telling a great story and amazing quote, that’s great. So thanks so much, James. I even feel better wrapping it up. Now I just want to keep going. That’s so wonderful. But we do we do need to be respectful of your time. So before we wrap things up, I do want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. If you want more information on maximum lawyers search, maximum lawyer and Facebook and if you want a more high level conversation, go to max law guild.com. We’d love to have you there. But a great information being shared there are high level expertise being shared. And then while you’re listening to this episode, hearing our tips and our hacks of the week, if you’ll give us a five star review, we will greatly appreciate it. Jimmy What’s your Hagley

Jim Hacking
so I have many reasons to think that I have undiagnosed ADHD, but one of them is my hack of the day, which is that I pick an anthem of the day I usually pick a song on the way to work. And then I listened to that same song all day. I can’t usually listen to music with words on it when I’m working. But if it’s the same song over and over, for some reason, that just really helps me focus. And I think it’s on the people. My tribe is just picking a song. It can be a song that gets you pumped up, man, for me, it usually is. And that’s something that has really helped settle my mind down and helped me focus when I’m working.

Tyson Mutrux
I like that, ya know, you’ve mentioned that before that you like listening to songs over and over again. I think it’s kind of it’s kind of crazy, but that’s cool. All right. So James, we always ask our guests to give a tip or hack of the week. It could be a book it could be a podcast, could be a website, could be a quote could be a tip, whatever. Before I ask you for that though. I always have this impression that all Brits are Formula One fans, so is that true? Not me.

James Ashford
I don’t have time for sports. I don’t have time for anything. Like, if I can just get through a week and get my work done and get my kids roughly in the right place where they need to be, I feel like I’ve achieved something, you know,

Tyson Mutrux
I’m with you. I know. I do like Formula One. But as I was just curious, okay, but do you have a tip or Hackworth

James Ashford
the tip? So I’ve had some big deadlines this week. So I go on holiday, coming to Mexico on next week, and then flying over to Phoenix to give a talk, Phoenix, that’s gonna be cool. So I’ve had some big deadlines have been helping a friend of mine to get a book published and to get it out the door and it’s all been finished today. The only way I can get deadlines done like that to achieve big outcomes in short timeframes is just to ignore everybody. Like I just, I don’t reply to emails, I don’t respond to text messages. I don’t return phone calls, not even I don’t even tell them. I’m busy. Like, I don’t care. Like, because the moment you kind of say, I’m just busy. Yeah, can you just speak for five minutes, I don’t even want to get into that. So I’m comfortable with being ignorant to people in times of absolute focus. And if you can’t feel comfortable doing that, and blocking everything else out, like your life depends on it, you’ll always struggle to hit those deadlines.

Tyson Mutrux
I think that’s absolutely beautiful. I’m sure that you’ve just stressed a lot of people out. I do. I do think it’s absolutely beautiful. So that’s really good. So my tip of the week is a book and it’s the name of it’s make your bed, little things that can change your life and maybe the world. And it’s by Admiral William McRaven. Really, really good book. If you don’t have time to read it, it’s a small book, you can actually sit down and read in one setting. But if you just Google it, and he actually has a really good speech that he gives at a graduation at University of Texas, it covers the same things. But it’s a it’s a really good, really good speech. I read a really good book too. So highly recommend it. James, thanks so much for coming on. This has been a lot of fun, and just a lot of great information you shared. So thank you so much.

James Ashford
Thank you guys. I love the work that you’re doing. Jim, we’ve been friends for a while online and version we have met. But I just think the fact that you know what you’re trying to bring to your industry. And the fact that you’re making these contributions and helping to kind of elevate your industry is a wonderful thing, but your community through this work. So thank you.

The post Simplifying Your Business for Better Results with James Ashford appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

If you’re a law firm owner looking to create a firm that doesn’t require your constant presence, take a page out of Jordan’s book and start implementing the strategies he talks about in this episode, today. This podcast episode is a presentation from MaxLawCon22 about running a law firm that doesn’t require the owner’s constant presence. Jordan, shares his experiences, processes, and strategies for creating a successful law firm that allows for remote work and delegation of tasks.

He emphasizes the benefits of having more family time and empowering his team in his absence and also discusses the importance of:

➡Creating standardized processes and procedures

➡Delegating tasks to specific team members

➡Implementing marketing strategies to grow the business.

With hard work and dedication, you can achieve a work-life balance that allows you to focus on what matters most, all while growing your business and serving your clients to the best of your ability. Enjoy!

Episode Highlights:

03:19 Taking a 14-Month road trip

04:46 Jordan describes his weekly schedule, including meetings, networking, and social media, and how he prioritizes his to-do list

06:45 The benefits and drawbacks of running a law firm remotely, including more family time and team empowerment

09:38 Process for training employees remotely, including screen recording and transcribing procedures

12:49 Difficulties of networking and childcare while running a law firm from the road

14:09 Start with the most time-consuming tasks

17:06 Marketing strategies, including recording videos, social media, re-engagement, and advertising

20:31 Outsource marketing tasks

🎥 Watch the full video here.

Connect with Jordan:

Resources:

Transcript: Driven, How I Ran My Companies From the Road with Jordan Ostroff

Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2020. To keep listening to hear Jordan Ostroff as we share his talk driven how I ran my companies from the road over the last year, you can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Let’s get to it.

Speaker 2
Run your law firm 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.

Jordan Ostroff
Welcome to the show. So I know I always love this group. And I couldn’t put my finger on it till just now the fact that everybody’s sitting in the back means we have none of those stupid gunners from law school that knew every answer, right? Like that’s the group that this is. So this is driven running a law firm that doesn’t need you. So for those of you that don’t know, since the last one, I have been on the road. I’ve been back in Orlando, which is where my offices for maybe five or six weeks since October. And we’re gonna go through why and how you can do that. I’m not telling you that you have to get on the road and do a 14 month road trip. But ultimately, it’s how to have a law firm that doesn’t need you on the day Today’s how to make a law firm in which you are in a central. So we’ll start there, we’ll talk about us I’ll do a day in the life. I’ll show you what my weekly calendar looks like go over our processes, our marketing and how you get started, should you want something similar. So if you are in essential to your firm, guess what you get to work less. But also you get to work on what you want to work on. If you don’t have to be the one answering every phone call. If you don’t have to be the one doing every console. If you don’t have to be the one doing all the legal work, you get the opportunity to focus on those more serious tasks, the $10,000 an hour tasks like Brett talked about, you get more time for your life, because you’re not at the mercy of every issue of every client of every emergency that comes up. You get to have a business and not just a job. I want to be clear, there is nothing wrong with being a lawyer who does all the legal work at your firm in any way, shape or form. Just know that’s a job. That’s not a business because if God forbid anything happens to you, the business can go on. And you get a third way to grow revenue. If you are hourly. Basically, the only way you have to make more money is either work more time or charge more. If you’re a flat fee, you can work more, you can charge more or you can make your stuff happen faster. But if you are essential to your business, you can grow by scaling by hiring other attorneys. If you can generate enough work for three other lawyers, you can hire those lawyers to do it and make more money if you can get to generate an offer a fourth or fifth or sixth or seventh. So this is me. I am 34 years old. I like Disc Golf, hiking, Pina Coladas getting caught in the rain, etc. This is my wife, who’s on the trip. I’m not allowed to tell you her age. And we have our son with us who’s also on my T shirt who’s four years old. I think my kids favorite part of this entire seven month so far road trip has been the one week that my wife’s parents spent with us, regardless of anything else. And I think he would rather spend time with them than travel around the country. But so be it. Also though he is keeping track of how many different states he’s peed on a tree in. So we are up to eight states. So this is where we did. We left Orlando the week before the last Max law con, we went up to Atlanta, we dropped him off with one of my sister in laws and flew up here. So then from there, we went to Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Hawaii. And now we’re back in California, which is crazy to think that in seven months, we’ve seen like a third of the country. When this is over, it’ll be about 1415 months, we will have seen like maybe 25 states. So the country is a gigantic place. And the best part is I’ve worked from all of those are two days a week. From all those places, there is no need for you to be in your office. There’s no need for you to be 20 minutes from your office. If you get the right systems processes people in place, you can be anywhere. To be honest, the hardest place to get consistent Wi Fi has been California for whatever reason, did not think that would be the problem. We were in Hot Springs, Arkansas. But apparently California has been the biggest Wi Fi issue. All right. So why did we do this part of it was because of the pandemic, one for the way Florida’s handled it two from the way the court system has a lot, a lot more virtual stuff. Another one was my kid, he turned four over this trip. So we will get back. He will do the second semester of pre K into kindergarten. And then Greg rents my house so we’re like a company town over at legalese. But anyway, so that’s why we did this trip. So now I want to get into the part where I talk about my day like this is what I’m actually doing for the most part every week. I pretty much only work Mondays and Thursdays. So Monday I do a modified level 10 us meeting I think the tagline of this one has been EOS or traction. We’ve talked about it a ton. So we do that for an hour. Then we have a very similar meeting at legalese for an hour and a half. We go over everything. I will try to do some sort of networking. Obviously if I’m in Orlando, it’s a lunch if I’m not, it might be talking with people on social doing zoom meetings, whatever it is along those lines, then Monday afternoons, I do consults for legalese, not for my law firm, I do a live show for each. And I do presentations sort of like this not as cool, I don’t get to be on a real stage, I get to stare at a computer in a hotel or Airbnb somewhere. And then Thursdays, I do a mastermind for an hour in the morning, I do my to do list. So Tyson talked about getting your to do list on your calendar. I’m a huge fan of it. But because I’m not as organized, this is how I do it. So I schedule an hour and a half every week for my to do list, I get to the stuff on my to do list at the end of that hour and a half, I prioritize the next week. So rather than scheduling each individual task on my calendar, I have them in order to have the hour and a half put in. To be honest, I don’t think you’re ever going to finish your to do list, you’re always going to have things on it. And you have to be okay with that. It has to be liberating. So for me, instead of being worried about having 75 things I want to get to, I know that I have an hour and a half of my week on my calendar every week to get to them. And it makes me less freaked out about it the other 168 hours of the week, like we learned something along those lines. So then we do a social media meeting slash content creation, another networking, some sort of lunch or virtual thing. And then again, back to the consults the live show presentations. Other than that, all I do is fuck around on social media, in some sort of idea. But ultimately, I want people to remember where we are and that we still exist. A huge thing that we do, I’ll talk about a little bit later, I share a ton of client testimonials, because I know a lot of my referral sources by this point know that we’re on the road all the time. My wife and I are the two attorneys at the firm. Even though I don’t have an illegal work for about four years, I want them to know that the work is still being done correctly. So this is my child’s day, really tough. He gets to do, I don’t know some sort of book, he gets to play, hang out, eat, he has seen, I don’t know 30 Different zoos, peed on all the different trees, etc. And then I want to talk about the pros and cons. And really, these are the pros and cons for us from the trip. But for you from not being in the office all the time, you get more family time or time that you can put in for whatever you want. Now there are pros and cons to having more family time. I’ll admit that earlier this week, my kid referred to my wife as a fucking stupid idiot lawyer. So next year, you can come to my TED talk on how to raise children. But But no, but honestly, it has given us so much family time to get to know each other through a pandemic through whatever the new normal will be, etc. The part that’s really important that I didn’t expect was the team empowerment. So before this trip, I was working about four days a week. And that helped empower my team, but honestly with us not there. It is amazing to me the things that they have figured out how to do. And we had good systems in place beforehand, they’ve gotten that much better. But the lack of opportunity for them to just call us and get an answer has forced them to be empowered to solve problems. One of the best ones. So again, you saw my schedule, I’m doing like two hours a week for my firm, definitively other than networking. We were on a cruise ship, the internet went out on the cruise ship, we couldn’t do the meeting. So guess what my team did the meeting recorded it and sent it to me. So when the internet came back on, I can see what happened shoot out two or three emails on some stuff to follow up. Would they have done that if I was there? No, because I would have done it. But ultimately, they were empowered to do what they knew had to happen in that time without me and honestly probably did a better job than I do at the meeting. I think they were more honest with each other with what they were sharing. Obviously, with it being recorded for me to say. So delegating, if you want to remove any sort of mental block on giving things to other people, just don’t be there or just know how many limit hours you have, it makes it that much easier to delegate because what happens is you start seeing where you’re the bottleneck, you start seeing where you saying yes to everything, or doing all the work yourself or doing all the consults is holding up all of your team members from doing their job. And that gets you to delegate in a way that actually makes it easier for them. One of my staff members like genuinely, like cries disappointed that we are leaving every time we leave. But she does a fantastic job with everything she has to do whether we’re there or not. If I’m in the office, we share a wall. If I’m not in the office, we’re 2000 miles apart, and it makes no difference on her job. And then training. Not being in the office has made me so much better at training people how to do things. If you take nothing else from this presentation. This is how Jordan Ostroff says you should be doing your processes, policies, procedures, whatever you want to call them, you should do them screen recorded, you should walk yourself doing it in a way that is recorded the way you want it done. You should send that video over to the person who is delegating it. And we use otter.ai Something to transcribe it. If you want to use Rev you can have it transcribed. So now it’s in video and it’s written out. Have them do it whatever number of times, five times, three times 10 times they don’t care. Let you know what feedback. What do they think they can do better having run through it a few times. Talk about that, confirm it and then they do it. They record it They upload it to Tetra or Google Drive. Wherever your policies procedures are stored, with the recording with the transcript, and it’s there. And really that takes 10 seconds extra on my end to click loom. When I’m doing something, it takes an extra 20 minutes to have that conversation. But we haven’t done standardized and consistent. And even for things that take five minutes here and there, you know, five minutes a day times five days a week, times, 50 weeks a year times 20 years at the firm will be open, it adds up so quickly, in something that takes a minimal amount of my time to make sure everybody else can do it correctly. And don’t get me wrong, you will have to update systems. That’s what that EOS level 10 meeting is, that’s what Kanban boards are, that’s what negative client feedback is for, like you will find out when a system is no longer working. But in terms of building it. That’s my two cents on how to do it, especially when you’re virtual. But even when I go back, I’ll still do it that way. As opposed to talking through it this way. If somebody’s a visual learner or an audio learner, they want to read it. They’ve got all the options right there. They’ve got the screen shares, they’ve got the passwords, they’ve got the walkthrough, they’ve got the transcript, etc.

Becca Eberhart
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Jordan Ostroff
So what’s harder, we’re normally in Orlando and East Coast. Being here one hour behind no difference being two hours behind not a huge deal being three hours behind frickin impossible. I don’t know why. But that 930 meeting that 630 in the morning is tough. At 730 in the morning, it was totally fine. I have no idea in person networking. And honestly the thing that I’ve come to learn about that I have referral sources that send us fewer things when we are gone. Because ultimately they realize their business wouldn’t run as smoothly without them. So they think it’s happening here. Whereas the referral sources I have that run really successful businesses instead of having really good jobs refer more stuff to us, knowing how I’m not going to screw it up, knowing how it’s going to be handled better. So one of the things we’ve done for networking, not being there has been sending people postcards, especially when it something that means something to them. We had friends who went to Hawaii for their honeymoon, we send them postcards from Hawaii, we had friends who met in Phoenix, we send them postcards from Phoenix, really something that mattered to them, for the people that I know run businesses and understand and appreciate that everything will run smoothly. For the people that don’t think their business could run as well without them. So think we have a problem. There’s not much you can do. That’s on them. So just be aware of that as some issue. Childcare, childcare is harder. So I work Mondays and Thursdays, like you saw, for the most part, my wife works Tuesdays and Fridays, we usually travel Wednesdays and Saturdays. So we’ll do about three or four days in the different cities. But at the same time, I get to spend more time with my kid than anybody I know. And other than when he’s cursing out my wife. He’s hilarious, we have a ton of fun. You can follow him on social media, etc. The other one that I didn’t expect to be so hard logistics when we’re back in Orlando, it’s actually harder to be in Orlando than it is not from where we are. We leave one car on the road. We fly back. So we were driving with a Jeep Cherokee, no RV, we said Airbnbs and hotels. So we leave the Jeep in the other airport. We fly back, it says there. So now both of us in Orlando with one vehicle. And we get booked for things more frequently. So weirdly, Being home is more complicated than being on the road. When we go back to having two cars, it probably won’t. But for those you that are in Florida, like we have no public transportation. So it is what it is. All right. So we talked about how to do the processes. But if you are interested in being an essential to your firm, where do you start? This is my thought process on it. You start with what you do the most. Why? Because you want the thing that will free up the most amount of your time. At the very beginning of this time is the most important thing for you to utilize to be in essential. So the things that hold up the most of your time are the things that you systematize and delegate first, whether that’s to automation, whether that’s outsourcing, whether that’s hiring somebody, whether it’s another lawyer or paralegal and intake person, whatever, save yourself the most time first. So that way you have the time to use as you go down the list. So second becomes the things that are most important. Why? Because I don’t want you to rush them. If you do the most simple Certain things first from delegation, you’re gonna rush getting them off your plate. Instead, you do the things that save you the most time and you have extra time to spend on the ones that are the most important to get delegated. So you can delegate them correctly. Then once you have an idea of the systems that you want in place, that’s when I would start looking for programs for automation, for outsourcing for time tracking, for case management, whatever it is, if you have those in place now awesome. Don’t get rid of them to do this, if you don’t have any in place, make sure you have the systems in place first. That way, you’ll know like the 10 features you really need out of a program. You know, if you hate billing, really boiled down to how you want your billing to run, really look at what the issues are, and then really find the program that addresses your issues in the way that makes the most sense. So then you get to carve out the actions each team member takes, you’ve got the system down, now it’s delegating it to a specific person, you got it saved online as a manual. And most importantly, put someone in charge of it, someone who is not you. So for the example I gave and how we do all of our policies and procedures, it goes to the person taking it over. And then in my case, Andrea at my office is in charge of Tetra. So now I have two people, the person who’s getting it needs to get it set up. Andrew needs to make sure it’s there. And it’s there correctly, I get two sets of eyes on it. And then in our next Monday meeting for an hour, we talk about what were the policies and procedures are they in there, it’ll be a task that we’ll do week to week, like traction talks about protip edit processes. when needed. Lawyers like to tinker, don’t tinker. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There are things and on a scale of one to 10. There are things in your firm that are like a two or three or four. Work on those. You’re things that are seven and eight out of 10 Don’t mess around trying to get them to nine or 10s. Because as you address the more serious bottlenecks you have more time more money, more cases more energy to make those more and more specific. Make sense? All right. So in terms of marketing, obviously, we talked about referrals a little bit. From a search engine standpoint, it’s really easy to record video everywhere. I’m recording this presentation right now phone, camera, whatever. It’s really easy to do that no matter where you are. Thank God, this would have been way more difficult without an iPhone. It’s really easy to be on social media from anywhere. And honestly, you have to look at the most common times that your people are on and understand as you move timezones, it changes the time. If you have clients nationwide, it’s not a big deal. But for Orlando, if most people are on Facebook, over lunch, that’s 12 o’clock. If I’m in California, that’s 9am you have to think about how you accommodate those things, reengagement so my firm for every two cases gets one either a client comes back for repeat business, or they refer somebody else. So we have a newsletter that we do for them, we have social media for them. And then we also host events when we’re in town. So my birthday is on Cinco de Maya, we do a Cinco de Mayo event every year or a safe demo event this year because that was Friday. And then of course advertising, advertising doesn’t matter where you are. So internally for my team last Halloween, three of my team members dressed up as Jake from State Farm, the Geico Gecko and Flo from progressive, it was hilarious. We hate them. But they dressed up and then made jokes from the stuff we’ve heard from insurance adjusters over the last year, hilarious for PII attorneys. So they’re doing intake, my wife still does the consults, but they are doing everything else related to intake, including scheduling those consults, they’re obviously doing legal support. And I promise you the most fun thing is when one of your staff members can get like $100,000 policy limit on a case that you didn’t talk to at all, super cool, based upon having great policies, procedures, client service, huge thing for people that are in the office that are there more consistently, you got to make sure you have people that have great client service. So pro tip, one of your KPIs, I think should be tracking the number of five star reviews you get on Google that mention your employees by name, because by looking for five star reviews, that means they did a great job. They did it quickly, they managed expectations and exceeded those expectations. I don’t want to track how many phone calls they received. So they rush people through. I don’t want to track how much work they send out. So they rush through it. I don’t want to track if there’s no spelling mistakes, or they spend too much time I want to track the impact it has on clients by looking at this five star reviews. And then my team does a really good job on social media content. So for all the stupid days that makes sense to our brand, national burger day, whatever, they will go get their favorite burgers, we’ll record it with an internal team, etc. And then have that posted. While we’re on the road wherever we are. For us. My wife has the consultations for the law firm about 80% of them. I do the consultations for legal ease about 80% of them. We do a lot of the networking from a virtual standpoint, we do the HR and hiring on the law firm Greg does the HR and hiring on legalese. We are talent for a lot of the content will focus on some of the stuff we’re in town more specifically, but honestly me walking in a park with my kid and recording is a lot more engaging than me talking on stage. So for our ideal client from a law firm standpoint, as a blue collar, teacher, cop realtor, it’s a little bit better than the high produce stuff on stage. So it’s cool for us to do walking, and then we’ll do feedback and approvals for everything. Or Right. So from legalese agency from outsource marketing from an in house marketing team, whatever it looks, you really want ideation and topics. You want to not be responsible for that. Probably regardless, certainly, if you’re trying to travel on the road, you need help on content production in some manner, social calendaring, awesome, super helpful. Maintaining your website, maintaining your CRM, super helpful. I’m a huge fan of a CRM. We could talk about that later. And then obviously overseeing the advertising because that doesn’t need to be me. They’ll have videos of me that they can advertise on. Okay, cool. Thank you all.

The post Driven, How I Ran My Companies From the Road with Jordan Ostroff appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

Are you tired of the same old methods of communication in the workplace? Do you find it difficult to express your stress levels or workload to your boss? Look no further than the “red yellow green” system!

Jim and Tyson, hosts of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, discuss the benefits of this simple yet effective tool. By rating yourself on a scale of red (over capacity and stressed), yellow (pulled in several directions), or green (everything is good), you can communicate your current state to your team without feeling the need to filter or explain.

One of the real powers of the system is the pause between when the question is asked and when the employee answers. It allows for a revealing question and answer into what’s going on in their life if they choose to share. This system helps reveal problems in the machine and helps leaders address issues quickly.

The hosts emphasize the importance of digging deeper if someone reports being in the red, and checking in on their well-being outside of work as well. They also suggest using the system in one-on-one meetings or team meetings, but not necessarily in daily huddles.

The “red yellow green” system promotes a positive work culture and addresses employee needs. It’s a simple tool that allows for connection and helps introverts and high fact finders connect with others. So next time you’re feeling overwhelmed or pulled in several directions, use the “red yellow green” system to communicate your needs effectively.

08:36 The ‘Red Yellow Green’ system, which is a simple tool for checking in employees’ emotional well-being and workload capacity.

15:33 Digging into Red Jim explains that if an employee reports being in the red zone during a Red Yellow Green check-in, it’s important to follow up with them separately to address their concerns.

16:22 ‘Red Yellow Green’ system in their office, which allows employees to share where they are at in an honest way without feeling the need to necessarily filter or explain.

22:31 The importance of checking in on whatever that thing is that is important, whether it be work, health, or family, on a regular basis to avoid getting skewed.

Jim’s Hack:The benefits of fasting, not for religious reasons but for body and focus reasons, as it is a great tool to use if you have a hard day coming up or need to be at your best.

Tyson Tip: The importance of checking in on a regular basis: work, exercise, fun, family.

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Resources:

Transcript: How to Use ‘Red, Yellow, Green’ to Check in on Employee Well-being

Speaker 1
Run your law firm 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.

Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer podcast Tyson. My friend, how are you? This is the first recording of the day that which means it’s the first recording of the month. We haven’t recorded one on one in quite some time. I’m looking forward to spending a little time with you today. How are things at your firm? How are things going? How are you feeling?

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, things are I feel like things are going really well. Revenues are looking really good. From a firm standpoint like a our people I think are we have the right people in place right now. We’ve gotten we’re approach actually, I think we’re right at a year now since we’ve implemented top grading. So we’ve sort of processed people that process people in kind of a thing, some intentional turnover. And although that process can be a little bit painful, not necessarily the processing out, but just the implementation of it. Obviously, the processing out part of it, it’s not easy, but I feel like that process is put to really positioned us and a place that’s going to really throw gasoline on the fire. And I’m really excited about that. It’s like I wake up every morning when I go to work. I’m really excited about the people we have in place. And that’s a pretty awesome feeling. And so yeah, that’s going well. And from a personal standpoint, the kids are getting more into more and more activity since so that’s getting a little more hectic, you’ve I think you’ve kind of gotten past that hump. I’m approaching the hump. You’ve met the hump yet. So it’s been quite a hectic on a weekly basis when it comes to basketball, soccer, taekwondo, and then now baseball is starting. So we’re at this point where luckily, basketball just ended. But now at the same time, we have Taekwondo, soccer, and baseball all at the same time. So and that’s Oh, and ever at gymnastics. So it’s been it’s been crazy. But yeah,

Jim Hacking
I remember those days, that’s a hectic life, but it’s a full life and you’ll miss it as soon as it’s gone. I mean, we’re down to nor now. So when my son leaves for college in the fall, we’ll just have Nora at home, and she’s all softball all the time, she’ll probably do basketball, too. But I remember running those schedules with all those different kids. I mean, you have to micromanage that stuff down to the nanosecond to get it all to work together. I mean, luckily, you have two healthy parents and two vehicles that were unwell. So it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of together time I drive by places now that I used to hang out with the kid and miss them finally, so enjoy it stay in the moment when you have all those times with them.

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. It’s good advice. Yeah, we’re gonna lean on my mom last night, take hats into socks, because it just, it wasn’t gonna work out otherwise, what’s going on

Jim Hacking
nwith you, though? Well, let’s see, we had our firm off site with leadership on Monday. And that followed Friday’s off site with you and Becca for maximum lawyer. So you know, those are always interesting. And I always have different reactions to offsites, I think that they’re really powerful. A lot of times afterwards, I have a little bit of, I wouldn’t say depression, but sadness, because we’re not where I want to be, it’s great to go over all the successes and all the things that you’ve accomplished. But at the same time, you can see the horizon. And it often feels like of course, you can’t ever reach the horizon. But it often feels like you’re never going to get there. And that, you know, you’re sometimes talking about things again, that you’ve talked about before issues come back up, or you know, just you see where things are, and you see him in a new light and you talk it through, it’s very energizing having those meetings with everybody. But at the same time, I always have a bit of a letdown sort of like after going to a conference. But overall, the firm is doing great, we’re up 50% year over year for the quarter. And things are rockin and rollin in most departments, I’m looking, I took all the sticky, white, huge post it notes that we have, and they’re all up on the wall now, because I’m literally gonna sit here like some serial killer and stare at them for a while and sort of just let the energy of the day come to me and sort of remember the conversations and the things that we’re focused on. I think we came up with some good rocks. But I think there’s some other things that the notes are saying to me, I just need to pull them out and, and sort of flesh those out and see what I’m going to be working on this quarter because I’ve been spending a lot of time with the intake team. And we came up with a lot of good solutions. The intake team has turned things around for the most part. Now we’re going to implement some changes that we want to see in the department. And then I’m going to be moving off to look at other things to fix that sort of my role these days. Is Mr. Tinker, Mr. Fix Mr. Come in and hear things and say, Well, why are you doing it like that? And maybe this is a faster way,

Tyson Mutrux
says a couple of things I want to address before we get into our topic. I think the idea that you’re never going to the horizon. I think that’s true. And I think we need to sort of accept that because we can’t solve everything at one time. You just can’t and that Whether there’s the importance of the rocks, and every quarter, pushing yourself towards accomplishing those rocks, and you’re making, the focus should be on the progress not necessarily on the horizon, but on the progress taking you towards the horizon. But I think people’s understanding, like you’re not going to fix it all at one time, there’s always gonna be something that you need to quote unquote, fix. The other thing is, is like you said something interesting. I mean, we think we should do an episode about our work environment. So you were talking about how you were going to sort of, you’re going to be staring at those and just kind of let it soak in or whatever. I think that there’s something to that. And I think that we can probably set up our work environment to better suit our roles. And so for your years of setup for your role, mindset for my role, but I think that there are certain ways that we could maybe even bring on an expert to talk about that I’m sure that there’s some there’s an expert in everything these days. So I think it’d be kind of cool to have someone come on and talk about setting up your work environment that’s best suited for your position with the company.

Jim Hacking
And that’s a great idea. So let’s talk real quickly if we can about the guild, you know, I was really excited. The quarter ended last Friday, which happened to be the day that we were meeting with Becca to plan out the next quarter for us in our mastermind, you know, by the time this episode aired, we will have just completed a very successful automation session down in Austin, automation in Austin. And we will be writing a high off that after seeing all of our friends in the guild who wanted to work with Kelsey and with us on figuring out how to do things through automation in their firm. That’ll be exciting. But I was just heartened by the fact on Friday night and Saturday morning, we just had guild member after guild member talking about hitting their highest quarter ever having all kinds of financial success, life success, easing the workload for themselves and for their teammates. It was just, it was just really heartening. And I think I think that we really come up with a good model for the guild, I think that you know, so many of these groups that you know, want to be your coach and all this stuff, I think a lot of this stuff is is pretty common sense. And you just need a place to be with other people who are like minded and growth minded and, and want to improve. But I don’t know that you need much more than that. I think that what we offer with the four masterminds and then the other things that we have going on the trainings and check ins that it for a lot of people, it’s the right amount of oversight, I don’t know that you need like a full time coach breathing down your neck or telling you that you suck or whatever it is that that they do when they give away for Tesla’s or all these other rigamarole. They do to get butts in the seats at their conferences, I think we’ve really gotten to a point where we’re able to give enough support to the law firm owners that need it. And we can talk tough to people when they need to hear it. It was stark seeing the success after success after success. And then we even had some members talk about things that they were struggling with, which is of course, my favorite topic, your favorite topic. And when we really shine is when people are struggling. And we can talk about the things that we’ve seen that have worked or improved.

Tyson Mutrux
It really is the epitome of the rising tide raises all boats, I really think it is and you’re right about I think some of it is just common sense, right. And some of this every once awhile, you just need a little bit of a kick in the butt, which we provide. And sometimes you actually need help. And so and the people that need it, they get what they need when they need it is kind of the way it works is and so if your stroke was on the you know, we throw you on the hot seat, okay, let’s figure out what the problem is, if you need something to, you know, group setting to sort of dig in on things well, yet we’ve got the masterminds and then with those quarterly masterminds, we now added the learning component where you learn something pretty cool. And like for example, like Boulder, we’re bringing in adjacent Selke and Jason sucks in to speak out in Boulder. So I think that there’s a lot of cool things and the expertise of other guild members is also just awesome too. So So at rising tides but anyways, let’s let’s transition into our our topic of the day. And that’s this topic of red, yellow, green, which you brought it up during our quarterly off site for maximum lawyer. And you had mentioned it to me before I thought was a really cool idea. And then we used it, we implemented it for our off site last week. And it’s funny because I’m going to read something to you about so I’m kind of teasing a little bit I’m gonna let you explain it was but I’m gonna read something to you that are one of our team members that because I we talked about implementing it earlier this week. So I told our team that we’re gonna implement it. And I get this message. I think this is why our peeps often brag about our work culture. I think all on the leadership team are emotionally intelligent in ways we have a desire to improve as well, where we see deficiencies in ourselves lead by example. It is very rare. I get a complaint here. We are doing something right. And it was in response specifically to us starting to implement the red yellow green system. And I think it is a it’s a really cool thing. I even have watched some YouTube videos on it now because I want to do it the right way. So talk about what it is why you use it when you use it. I think it’s an extremely valuable way Checking in on employees.

Jim Hacking
So it’s great for several reasons. So you know, we’ve used a lot of traction principals in our firm, you’ve used a lot of scaling up principals in your firm. And I think that they do a really great job of helping you run an efficient and growing company that from the company’s point of view, those systems are very, very good, at least with traction, I feel like there’s a a person hood, a humanity part that’s missing. And Amani and I both had been coached through a company called reboot for a while, which is pretty woowoo. And pretty emotional. So to me, the balance of the two is really nice. But this concept of red, yellow, and green came to me from my coach, Marty Janowitz. And from reboot itself, we’ve used it at the weekend retreat boot camp that I went to, and we’ve used, I use it with Marty, just when I check in, and we use it here at the firm whenever we start a meeting. So it works really well if you’re on a one on one meeting, if you’re in a team meeting, or if you’re even in a hole for a meeting, well just ask people to check in. And it’s a pretty powerful tool, the best thing about it is it’s super simple. So even someone who’s busy or you know, you don’t need you don’t need much technology at all. You don’t need to memorize anything, you just need to sort of ask a question. And the question is, you know, how are you doing on a scale of red, yellow and green? So, you know, there’s a little bit of education read is that I’m over capacity, I’m feeling completely stressed, most of the time spent, burnt out, stressed out, that’s sort of red, yellow is getting my job done, I’m feeling pretty pulled in several directions, at capacity or just over capacity. And then green is things are good, everything looks good, I feel good things are going well. And so after you ask the team member, how they’re doing, or after you have the team check in on how they’re doing as a whole. Then the next question is, well, what can we do to get you from red to yellow? What can we do to get you from yellow to green? Or the question is, what’s making you read what’s making you yellow? And then figuring out what are the things that we can do? It allows for a really quick implementation. It allows for really honest feedback. We did this a couple weeks ago, we had a team meeting with all the paralegals. So that’s 12 people. And this is a group that Jim me that I don’t spend much time with. And I was running the meeting and the people that wanted me to have the meeting Andrew and Amany were saying to me, no, no, we don’t have time. We don’t have time to do red, yellow or green, because there’s 12 people and we’ve got a lot of stuff we need to tell them. Well, all 12 paralegals, all 12 said they were yellow, and I heard it myself. And I heard it from their mouths, and I felt that it was completely heartfelt. I didn’t feel like anybody was bullshitting, or jivin. I thought it was just straight, legit talk and that became the centerpiece of our off site this week. I mean, it’d be really focused and drill down on that, to try to get to that and I think even Andrew and Amani were struck by how powerful that was, and how we really needed to do something.

Becca Eberhart
The Guild is 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 20, and 21st in Denver, Colorado, featuring hotseat sessions and personal coaching with renowned performance coach Jason Selke. 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 early bird price, head to max law events.com to join now and reserve your spot at the upcoming guild mastermind.

Tyson Mutrux
I’ve got some specific questions about it. We have a daily huddle. Right, we try to keep it at right around 15 minutes total. And it’s as you grow. It’s been really actually been really hard. Like yesterday’s went 30 minutes, right? Because just because we had to drill out some things. But would you use it on a daily huddle? Like every daily I feel like that’s too much, but because that feels like it’s just kind of overkill. So what are your thoughts on that?

Jim Hacking
So my team, we meet every day for 1520 minutes? I don’t think it would work well then. I think if you have one on ones with people in between, that’s good. And then we would do our L 10. Or our training on Fridays and that’s an hour and we would start either of those with red, yellow, green.

Tyson Mutrux
Gotcha. Talk about the time whenever Adela said black. And where was that in your the timeframe of whenever you started using red yellow green.

Jim Hacking
That was at a time where Adela was pretty frustrated. She didn’t have the support she needed. She was basically running two departments and still trying to fulfill her HR role. And she was burning the midnight oil she gets in these phases where she really obsesses about getting something done. So she was trying to get a good data set for one of the departments and get it into Google Data Studio. And so this sort of been a year and a half after we started using red, yellow, green, this wasn’t that long ago, it was about six months ago,

Tyson Mutrux
in a situation where they’re red, like, how do you how much do you dig in? I mean, how much is like some of these meetings? Like you don’t want to if I’m assuming if you get some of this as black or red? I mean, you’re limited on time with these meetings. So how much do you dig in on these? Or do you just say, Okay, let’s address this later? Yeah, I

Jim Hacking
mean, one thing to keep in mind, too, I think that it’s important as red, yellow, green is effective for where they are at the moment. But another good sort of side question is, generally over the last week, since the last time we checked, how often have you been red? Or how often have you been yellow, because even yellow can mask some times of red, right? And you want to sort of drill down because they might have just woken up happy that day, but they might genuinely be yellow. So you want to know about that. So I would say if an individual said in front of a group that they were red, I would encourage the leader to talk to that team member separately, shortly after the call. All right,

Tyson Mutrux
I’m sure I’m gonna get questions about this from people. So I’m gonna ask you, like, whenever they give this back, are they taught? Are they thinking about how they are when it comes to business? When whenever it’s personal life all the above? Like, what perspective? Are they looking at it through?

Jim Hacking
That’s a great question. And it reminded me of one other thing I wanted to add is that the the real power of red, yellow, green comes in that pause between when you ask and when they answer. So in other words, sometimes it’s good to hear exactly what comes out of their mouth very spur of the moment. Sometimes it’s good to let them take a breath, and actually check in and see where they’re at. I think that’s where the real power comes in. Because it’s such a simple question. It just lets you say in one word, where you’re at, and then share it. And so either either way is good. If they say right away, if they pause, it’s just what’s supposed to happen. People might say, and have said many times, you know, as far as work goes, I’m yellow, green, trending towards green. But I’ve got this situation, my mom is sick, and I have to go to the hospital every other night after work, and that’s making me red or making me yellow. So it’s a revealing question that way too, because it’s sort of a sideways question and answer into what’s going on in their life, if that’s something they choose to share.

Tyson Mutrux
And with this red, yellow green system, what’s the goal? Like, what are you? What are you trying to accomplish? Both from a firm standpoint? And then from their standpoint, what are they trying to accomplish by by saying what they’re what they are or what when it comes to their color?

Jim Hacking
Well, in our office, we have a lot of people who don’t necessarily like confrontation. So sort of like Colby gives us the language, we need to talk about people’s personality differences. Red, yellow, green, lets us share where we’re at, in an honest way, without feeling the need to necessarily filter or explain, you can say as much or as little as you want. Some people just say, I’m yellow. And that’s it. And that’s all they want to say. And that’s okay, too. So I think the real goal is to fill that gap that traction doesn’t offer, which is the human side that you might have a really efficient machine, but the people running it have all the other stresses of life, and it lets you connect to wherever that is and wherever they’re at. Yeah, that’s

Tyson Mutrux
a really good point. Because you and I’ve had this discussion before, and you talked about how you didn’t feel traction had that really that person component. And I’d say that’s mostly true with scaling up scaling up does have, and this is dirt where you something you would do during like a quarterly offside or quarterly meeting is they’ve got this sheet that you go through, and they kind of goes through goals. And it’s really tough for that individual. And it could be their personal and professional goals. And you go through like, okay, like, what are your financial goals? Like, what do you like for my like your family members? Like, what are some relationships that you want to rekindle all that like, so it’s really interesting that they have that component. But there’s no follow up to that unless you have like some sort of system in place when it comes to blanking on the name of that, or that tool? Yeah. Yeah. So there’s really no follow up on it. Because the dream manager programs without thinking, unless you have some sort of dream manager program, there’s really no follow up unless you build it out. So but you’re totally right about that. But another question I have is, what’s the feedback you’ve gotten from employees? And I want to hear from about the employees, not the leadership side of things, the employee side of things, I think

Jim Hacking
people recognize the power of it. I think that they’ve gotten used to it. It’s part of the culture. I think they feel heard more, I think it’s a real fast forward button to getting to where people actually are and, and it helps reveal problems in the in the machine, it helps reveal when people are too stressed. I mean, when you have all 12 fairly will tell you that you’re yellow, that’s pretty stark. And that’s something that needs to be addressed pretty quickly, because people aren’t going to operate on yellow for far too long of a whole department is that’s a real issue.

Tyson Mutrux
Nailed it. And then real quick leadership side of things. How have they responded to it?

Jim Hacking
Well, it’s just such a simple tool, and it’s it’s pretty elegant, you know? It’s just if I didn’t say this earlier, we have some introverts both on leadership and in the team itself, we have a lot of high fact finders a lot of people that just want to put their head down and do their work. So it does just even a little bit of a crack, allow for some connection for people that might not necessarily find that to be their strong suit.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, that’s what I loved about it was just the simplicity of it. That was soon as you said, like, Oh, this is amazing. Alright, Jamie, let’s wrap things up. We’re getting close to time. So before I do, I just want to remind everyone, if you want to join us when to get more information, go to the big Facebook groups, go to Facebook and search maximum lawyer a lot of great information. If you want a more high level conversation and want to learn a lot more, go to max law guild.com, we’d love to have you a lot of great members in there that are willing to share a lot of their secrets. So be happy to have you there. And then while you’re listening the rest of this episode, if you don’t mind, give us a five star review, we would greatly appreciate it. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week.

Jim Hacking
So as we record this, we’re about halfway through Ramadan, and I’m fasting every day. And I’m just going to give a plug for fasting not for religious reasons. But just for body reasons. And for focus reasons. To me, fasting is a great tool to use. If you have a hard day coming up if you need to be at your best. Or if you need to really focus seems counterintuitive that you would turn your attention quickly to the food that’s missing or the water that’s missing. And of course you can fast with water. But it’s just really a nice way to come completely in the moment and it slows your day down. At least it slows my day down and helps me to sort of just go with the flow, I mellow out a little bit more than I used to I used to be very crabby, as evidenced by Ramadan, Jim. But the act of fasting itself is used for health reasons for psychological reasons for religious reasons. Whatever the reasons are. Fasting itself is a pretty powerful tool when you really need to be at your best,

Tyson Mutrux
I am switching my tip, I had a different tip, I’ll use it later, it’s going to be in relation to yours then. So I want to talk about the importance. The tip is the importance of checking in, you need to make sure that you are checking in whatever on whatever that thing is you need to check on on those things that are important. We give you an example. So three weeks ago, I got taped, so I was, you know, go to the gym. And they they’re supposed to take me once a month. And I’ve kind of skipped last three months. And I go in and I get taped and my weights been going up. But we’ve been intentional. So I had lost a bunch of weight intentionally. And then now it’s we’re like focus on building muscle. Well, I go in and my body fat percentage has gone up 3% I had been telling myself a lie whenever it says on the scale every day that my weight was going up because I was building muscle. And I was ignoring the fact that I was eating a bunch of snacks and desserts in between. And I wasn’t focusing on things. And so I have reversed that over the last three weeks. And I’ve used I actually one of the tools I’ve used and I’ve used it quite often over the last couple years is that intermittent fasting, it’s not full on, you know, fasting for the full day. But I mean, I’ll fast for 18 hours sometimes. And it is something that you once you’ve done it a few times you can get get into a flow of things. And it’s actually not nearly as hard as what people think. But it would be much harder to do Ramadan for me, but doing the intermittent fasting, it’s very effective. The point though, is to check in on whatever that thing is. It doesn’t have to be your health. It could be could be work, it could be your kids, whatever, whatever you’re tracking, that’s important. Check in on those things on a regular basis. Don’t go three months, do it monthly, do it weekly or do it whatever schedule makes sense for you. Because otherwise you’ll get a skew and then you’re gonna have to make these massive attempts to get back to where you were. So that’s my tip of the week. Alright, Jimbo, it’s a good one.

Jim Hacking
Good stuff, buddy. I’ll talk to you soon.

Tyson Mutrux
I see brother later.

Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content content, go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

The post How to Use ‘Red, Yellow, Green’ to Check in on Employee Well-being appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

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.

As a lawyer, the pressure to succeed and maintain a certain level of professionalism can be overwhelming. The recent suicide of a fellow attorney who was publicly called out in a Facebook group for being disbarred is a stark reminder of the need for mental health awareness and self-care in the legal profession.

In addition to the stress of practicing law, running a law firm, and paying off student debt, it’s important to recognize the need to charge a fair price for legal services to avoid undervaluing one’s services.

But what about the adversarial nature of the profession? Why do attorneys feel the need to be so aggressive towards each other? It’s important to resist the urge to pass on negative information about other attorneys and instead reach out with kindness and support.

At the end of the day, mental health and fairness should be at the forefront of every legal practice. Let’s strive for growth and success while also taking care of ourselves and each other.

Episode Highlights:

04:30 How suicide can be prevented by reaching out to those in need.

08:58 The differences in how each state handles bar complaints and the surprising automatic bar complaint for malpractice

10:19 Undervaluing one’s worth, and the importance of making a viable living

19:50 Being kind and supportive to fellow attorneys, even if they have been disbarred or suspended

Jim’s Hack: Book by Dr. Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan 10x Is Easier than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less

Tyson’s Tip: Be kind to each other.

The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals in the United States. Call 988. https://988lifeline.org

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Resources:

Transcript: The Stress of Practicing Law: How it Affects Attorneys’ Mental Health

Speaker 1
Run your law firm 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.

Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.

Tyson Mutrux
And I’m Tyson mutex. What up?

Jim Hacking
Tyson? It’s good to be with you. It’s a Friday recording for our Saturday call with the guild members. And we’re actually recording a podcast episode. It’s an important topic that I wanted to share, not just with our guild members, but also with the maximum lawyer community as well. And so we’ve decided to use our Saturday time to record a podcast.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah. And when you sent the text about this thing, I was both like angered and sad and like, I was very angry about it. I was disturbed. I was saddened, it was just it stuck with me for a couple days. I even texted you later. I’m like, That news really bothers me like so. So I’ll let you That’s enough teasing of it, I guess. But yeah, it’s it’s really important. So go ahead.

Jim Hacking
So this time last week, Tyson and Kelsey were wrapping up a totally kick ass mastermind. It was really great because I had to do very little they did all the work that made it great for me. And more importantly, it was great for our members. So we did a mastermind on automation. We called it zap Athan to and basically, Kelsey and Tyson blew everybody’s brain about all the things that you could do with automation. And Tyson’s last segment was all about AI stuff and creepy robots talking as humans. But anyway, the whole thing was great. It was really great. And it was time for me to leave it was ie the end of Ramadan. So I was trying to make it back Friday night. So I left right at the end a little bit early. And I was in the car heading to the airport. And I saw this post in a Facebook group. So I was in a Facebook group called nerdy immigration lawyers. And this is basically, you know, like a group where there were hundreds of members where people would just say, Oh, I’ve got a 42 V cancellation. And I’ve never done one before. Anybody have any suggestions, stuff like that? Well, there’s been a longtime member in the group, a very flamboyant guy, he just got married about two years ago, he was 36. And somebody from his home state, pops into the Facebook group, and says, Hey, you guys need to kick out this member right away, because he just got disbarred. And apparently, and so I immediately messaged him, because this is a friend I’ve never met. But friend that we’ve talked to, before I’ve sent him cases for interview in his home state that I couldn’t handle. And it reminded Well, I’ll tell you a story about it later. But I saw the message, I was very upset by the message I faced with messaged him to say, Hey, dude, is there anything I can do to help Is everything okay? And then the next morning, when I woke up, there was a post from his wife of two years, they had a stepdaughter with her two, that he had killed himself, and that he had this issue with a bar. I don’t know whether he was disbarred or not. I don’t know anything about that. But clearly, there was some kind of issue with the bar. And then this other attorney from his home state decided to make it public. And to call him out in the group, which I would say, this group meant a whole lot more to him than it did to me like he was, he was one of these guys who would go out drinking and eating steak dinners whenever he was in another channel with other members from the group. So he was much more invested in the group that I was actually I left the group because I’ve had it with that stuff. But the post was apparently up for 26 minutes, and his wife specifically cited it as the precipitating factor in tipping him towards suicide. So in a way, to me it seemed a lot like these high school bullying cases where Mean Girls or mean boys, you know, gang up on on a classmate, and then something bad happens to the classmate. I think it happened in St. Charles, a couple years ago to a girl. I think her name was Megan. But anyway, really tragic, really sad. His wife said, they had plans for this weekend to travel, he thinks it was very much an impulsive thing. And I was just really, really upset about it about the whole thing. And so, you know, we often talk about how hard the practice of law is, we often talk about suicide on here. So I wanted to bring that up with you and just talk it through with everybody

Tyson Mutrux
having handled multiple suicide cases at this point now, well, people don’t really realize like, so just if you kind of look at the I guess the science part of it is that the research on this specific topic is that it is a very, for the most part a very impulsive thing. There’s a small segment of society that they’re probably going to do it no matter what. Okay, because like just their makeup, the chemical makeup, but most of the time if you can get past that first 48 to 72 hours, they’ll get past it. It’ll never attempt it. They may think about it, but I’ve never actually attempted. So this is something this is a scenario where he finds out that Friday. So his desire to do that is at its maximum. And then he sees this Facebook post, which then just piles on. And so it’s a shame because I wish someone could have instead, like you would have been more of reaching out to him as opposed to piling on it. And if I think that, for those of you listening to this, we’re going to see disbarred minutes for the rest of our careers. They happen on a regular basis. And I hope that most people instead of piling on instead of saying silent, if you know the person, reach out to them and comfort them, because it sucks. It’s a terrible thing. Life will go on. It’s obviously something he did not want for his career. But I think we can all agree we don’t want people going out and killing themselves because of something like that. There’s more to life than than practicing law. I wish more people would have been like you, Jim, and actually reached out to him instead of that person that posted. I don’t know, if they’ve still kept that post up. It’s It was disgusting to me whenever you told me about it, but just kicking someone while they’re down. It’s just not my style, and just not how I am I just tragic. I feel like I kind of hear it too much to where like, people say, Hey, do you hear about such and such you hear about such and such? And so it I never just I never really participate in those conversations. I don’t know about you, but it’s just, it’s just sad. Well, there’s

Jim Hacking
lots of ways I could go with this. So yesterday, I had an immigration interview and the US citizen spouse, I told her what happened, because she’s a nurse on on a psych ward, where people get committed and stuff. And she said, just what you said that the research shows that it can be very impulsive. And she said that for people that are in that state, she very quickly listed it she said, You got to get this is what you got to get out of the house. Guns, sharps, which I guess it’d be like razors and knives and things, pills, and whatever else. So I didn’t realize that it was that impulsive. I mean, I know that there’s some people who like plan it out. And that but yeah, so that was really upsetting. You know, the other thing, you so the group has sort of rallied, and I’ve never told you this, I don’t think before but there’s a thing in immigration law that actually didn’t apply in this case. But if an immigrant suffers a mistake by an immigration lawyer, and they want to set it aside, like in the deportation setting, typically is where you see it. The immigration rules require that a bar complaint be fired filed against the lawyer. Oh, my gosh, yeah. So I want screwed up a case, the attorney that took over the case for me, actually worked with me to try to avoid filing the bar complaint, but it’s a requirement. And it’s something that really causes a lot of people a lot of stress. Like I said, it didn’t necessarily apply in this case. But in order to get your client any kind of relief, you have to file a bar complaint. And so the group is sort of taking that on, because that’s a purely political thing. Biden’s attorney general could undo that with a stroke of a pen, I think. So that’s just one thing. I mean, the practice of law is already stressful enough. And of course, if you commit malpractice, there’s a cause of action. And I’m not saying people shouldn’t file bar complaints when there is a viable problem. But it’s just to require that in every single case, you’re just automatically increasing the stress level a lot. So what the group has done is they’re they’re trying to move, there’s a petition going on all this stuff that try to put pressure on the administration to do away with that.

Tyson Mutrux
That’s really disheartening to be honest with you, because I do think I feel like I always sort of had this like feeling of like an axe hanging over my head. Like if like someone in the firm screws something up, like, I’m the guy that owns the firm, I feel like that is always a source of stress for me, to be honest with you, because it always worries me like some like that’s gonna happen, where someone screws something up, and then it all sort of falls back on me. And, I mean, that would that sucks. I mean, that’s just, it is I’ve seen for example, I’ve seen a couple of departments lately where I’m like, wow, that is crazy. Like that. It’s it doesn’t seem like it takes a whole lot. And those are Missouri attorneys that I’ve seen that for but the from state to state is different, like so especially for immigration, it’s a little surprising because, like, that’s something you can do across the country. But I hear like some states are very lenient. Some states like I’ve spoken to an attorney. I’m not gonna mention the state or the practice area, but I spoken to Attorney where they mentioned that they’ve received multiple bar complaints but that’s just something that happens in their state. And so I’m like, what like to me like that’s terrifying, you know, I mean, like, but like, so like from state to state is handled differently. So for automatic bar complaint that’s, it’s really surprising just because how each state handles it. So definitely.

Becca Eberhart
The Guild is 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 20, and 21st in Denver, Colorado, featuring hotseat sessions and personal coaching with renowned performance coach Jason Selke. 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 Until during the hotseat 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 early bird price, head to max law events.com to join now and reserve your spot at the upcoming guild mastermind.

Jim Hacking
One of our guild members today said that he had received a random audit of his trust notice account from the bar and he had to submit, like within X amount of days, a complete audit of it for no reason, anyway. But one other little angle to all this, when I first referred this attorney to cover an interview for me, so that involves prepping the clients which maybe takes an hour and then going to USCIS handled the interview and coming back. And I said to him, Hey, buddy, what would you charge my clients to do? This interview goes? Well, I don’t know. $200 $300. And I was like, What the? They said, You’re gonna charge them 1000. And they gladly paid it, right? They gladly paid it. And you know, what he ultimately got in trouble for was for commingling funds. And as soon as I told them about the bar complaint that was hurt. Yes. And I just have to think to myself, you know, when you undervalue your worth, and when you don’t charge enough, not saying that that led directly to this, but you can see, you can see a path where it sort of led to it. So you know, making sure that you’re making a viable living is really important for lots of reasons, including your mental health. So I think the work that we you and I do here all the time to empower law firm owners to be their best and to charge more and to make more, I think that’s all part of being a healthy person. And, you know, maybe my mistake wasn’t reaching out too late when I saw this message, but really trying to coach him more earlier about making more money.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I think that many people, they’ll charge less, because they’re worried about losing the case. Like that’s like the, like not getting them to sign on with you. Like, I think that’s predominantly what the reason is, because they would they need the money, I wish people would stick to it. Because for example, like what you said, like, Okay, you should be charging 1000 bucks, not like, if you would have been charging, let’s say you charge 200 bucks, it would take five of those same interviews, to get the same amount for that $1,000, and you’re just gonna do a better job, you’re not, you’re taking less cases, you’re gonna be doing a better job because you’re being more prepared. So it’s interesting, because you do get a lot of, there’s someone in the big Facebook group a couple of weeks ago, and I was I just I felt like not even just like, I’m gonna engage with this person, but they were basically accusing us that we were overcharging our clients like, to everybody I’m talking to or for, right, it was on contingency, contingency stuff, you know, it was a critique of the profession as a whole. So someone had made a post about fees. And then this attorney posted in a comment about like, how, you know, attorneys as a whole, we charge too much money, that we’re greedy, and all that yada, yada yada. And so I just, I’m not gonna engage in it. But it was just like, like, there’s a reason why we Okay, so not everybody had all of their law school paid for, okay, so they there’s an immense expense that comes to it. And not not everyone came from a background where their parents can pay for their law school. So some people have to pay back their student loans. And so it’s an expensive thing, and they chose to go do this thing. And now they’re expecting to be rewarded for it by getting a salary that is commensurate with their both their experience and their training. So I do think that it’s imperative that we as a profession, we do charge enough and for the people that cannot afford it, which that is there is that contingent? You? Okay? Take on pro bono cases if you want to. I encourage that if you are one of those people that feels guilty about how much you charge, okay, take on pro bono cases take on those cases, but there’s also several legal services across the country that are there for that purpose. Oh, there are other alternatives, but you don’t have to be that charity to to all of your clients to put you in a position that puts you in a massive predicament because it sounds like so he if he’s commingling as funds, he’s mixing his client money with his money, which means he probably overpaid himself or something like that. I I guess I don’t really understand how it would work in immigration, because with immigration you I guess you get paid on a fee. He did things other than immigration. Oh, gotcha. Okay, then. That would explain it then as like, okay. Because if it was just immigration, I’m not really sure how that works. But anyways, so he probably got in a position where he just overstretched himself.

Jim Hacking
Alright, so let’s change subjects up a little bit. So that post was only up for 26 minutes. It was taken down before anybody knew what happened. The attorney got kicked out of the group and the attorney is now being vilified by everyone who stayed in the group and just across social media, so I’m really frustrated with social media out of this whole story, but it was really interesting. Then everyone started piling on Her the attorney who did this and I was like Jesus Christ, you guys trying to do it all. I’m gonna do it all again. I mean, what the hell? So she left the group and I’m sure I’m sure she feels terrible. And I’m sure there’s nothing that any other lawyer piling on, it’s going to accomplish. So I guess one question I had for you is, do you think there’s a cause of action by the wife against that lawyer for that? Or is it just is there a causation problem, like, too many intervening factors?

Tyson Mutrux
Well, it’s always gonna be a causation problem. It’s gonna depend highly on the state. Like, we’ve got a couple of them, though, like one of the major major cases was it was against the school, there was a policy violated when it comes to that. I guess there could be depending on the state, like there are some like anti bullying statutes across the country that would allow it. And so it depends. It’s a potentially it would probably have to be a cause of action that set us set out via statute. You could also do I guess you could do if I’m thinking this through a little bit. Let’s just say this was a Missouri, I guess, we you could sue. It would be a tough one, though. Because like, the reason why it’s so tough, and specifically in this one is because you had it happen, the bar made their decision. And then I don’t know if he did it the same day or the next day, but it was the same day. I think the causation part of would be it would probably kill that case, just because you don’t know if that was a tipping point or not. The Facebook post sounds like it was his wife’s Facebook post, but you could prove prove causation. I guess you could, but I think recovery is going to be the issue.

Jim Hacking
Well, I wonder if my purchase would cover? Probably not, probably not.

Tyson Mutrux
But like, I mean, if you don’t have like a general liability insurance, you’d have that or an umbrella.

Jim Hacking
It’s just really sad situation. And so the interesting thing for me is like, I was in sort of Nora softball mode all weekend, and then I had a really nice workout on Monday, and I was walking down the stairs, and I had my headsets on and Phil Collins, that drumming song came on. And then somebody had messaged that they were going to sit Shiva for this attorney. And they’re inviting people to come to their state for that. And I just totally broke down. That’s when I put that post in the big group about just being kind to each other. Like I totally, I was in the Steam Room. I just started crying. And I didn’t realize that it hit me and I was feeling guilty. Like I should have message earlier. Of course, it’s not about me. It’s nothing to do with me. And I’m glad that I did message, you know that day. But man, it really messed me up for a little while. Like, it’s, I don’t know if it’s survivor’s guilt or whatever, but I just it just really messed me up.

Tyson Mutrux
It’s weird. Like I I mean, I can I can tell that affected you because like, you wouldn’t normally send a text about something like that. But like, it was weird for like me, like, I just there was something about it just pissed me off. Like I couldn’t, I couldn’t stop think about it for a few days. I only know that guy like you like, uh, you know, I don’t even know it like, and I was just like, this aggravates me so freakin much. Like, it, like made me think all these things I was like, This is what people hate about attorneys. Like, you know, like, I’m just like, it’s just like going off in my head. You know, like, I didn’t have any way to talk to you about it. You know, I didn’t want to mention it to Amy. So I brought up the AMI about it’s just, like, aggravated me so much. I just wish we were like, wish we were nicer to to each other just generally, like there’s, I had this, this conversation with a defense attorney about just generally like, the way things have been trending lately, and I don’t know what, what it is. But things have been trending and like to like, very adversarial, not someone adversarial, like very adversarial. And it’s there’s no point in it. Like, I’ll give you an example. I had to go I did drive to Court yesterday on a case yesterday morning, on a case where the we wanted to with our client is has been put in prison. Okay, it’s a it’s an injury case. So we can’t really do discovery because she’s in prison. So I wanted to voluntarily dismiss the case. So the prick attorney sent knew that my client was unavailable. So send us a request for admissions Right? Like just to try to just stick it in my client just to try to so she was trying to get a request for admissions. That way we’d run out of time that we wouldn’t be able to dismiss the case without prejudice because like in Illinois, you got a request and the judge granted Missouri can dismiss it so but we had to go up freakin hearing on whether or not I can dismiss my case in Illinois, just because she they would not consent to it. It just it things like that. Like Like seriously, like, is your firm that desperate that you need to Bill? Are you just a real dickhead? You know what I mean? With whichever it is when you stop beating your wife? Yes, yes. Is it just oh, gosh, like, it seems like that. Why, like, why do we do that to each other? Like, it just it just doesn’t make sense. It’s not easy for them. It’s not easy for us. Yep. It’s been kind of therapeutic for me. Yeah, he’s sort of worked out some stuff. Yeah. All right. Good. Well, let me remind everyone to go to the Facebook join us there. There’s a lot of great information if you do see something in the big group. Be polite, please be polite, be nice to each other. And while you’re listening to the rest of this episode, if you don’t mind leaving us a five star review. Wherever you get your podcast, we would greatly appreciate it. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking
Dr. Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan have a new book out and everybody’s sending it to me. So Imani got me a copy. And my buddy Chipman actually sent me a draft copy of it that he got from Strategic Coach. So I started it. And that’s a theory that I’ve studied a lot from Dan. And basically, he’s arguing that it’s as easy or easier to grow 10x And it is to x. And so, you know, I can’t read those books too often. And I have to read them slowly. Because otherwise I make everybody crazy around here and and start making grand declarations like I did last December. I’m the

Tyson Mutrux
same way. So like, I actually hesitate to read a book like that, because it’s like, you start to go off the rails with like, every day, oh my god, we’re gonna do all these things. And next, you know, everyone’s like, pissed off at you. So don’t want to do that. So mine, um, just kind of stick with the theme of the episode here and I’m gonna give the tip of the day if you hear something bad about an attorney, just reach out to the attorney be supportive. Yeah, they may have they may not be in the profession anymore, or they may be suspended from the profession for sure. Reach out, be kind. There’s no point like, if you don’t think that they’ve already like rethought many of their decisions. You’re wrong, you know, you don’t need to pile on so reach out to them. Resist the urge to want to pass on the information to someone else. Hey, did you did you see such and such got disbarred, like, don’t pass it along. So that is my tip of the week. So Jimmy, be a great weekend, dude. Thanks, brother. You too. Thanks, man. Thanks, everybody.

Speaker 1
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.

The post The Stress of Practicing Law: How it Affects Attorneys’ Mental Health 513 appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

In a world where technology is rapidly changing the way we live our lives, it’s no surprise that the legal profession is also evolving. In a MaxLawCon 22 presentation, Ryan McKeen talks about the future of law and how lawyers can stay ahead of the curve.

The key to success in the legal profession is to focus on:

➡ efficiency and organization

➡ acquiring online real estate

➡ well-organized tech stack with data at your fingertips

Just like in a game of chess, lawyers need to think several moves ahead and anticipate what their next move will need to be for their law firms. The demand for legal services will only increase as society becomes more complex, with lawyers embracing change and experimenting with new approaches —- we can stay ahead of the curve.

So, are you playing checkers or chess? The legal profession is changing, and it’s up to lawyers to adapt and evolve. With the right mindset and a focus on efficiency, the future looks bright.

Episode Highlights:

01:26 Efficiency is the macro trend

06:35 Consolidation is a macro trend

08:33 Are lawyers safe?

10:04 The role of lawyers in the future

12:26 Building your brand

16:12 Efficiency in the legal profession

17:08 Opportunities for law firms

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here. https://youtu.be/r-DmgwvT1Mg

Connect with Ryan:

Resources:

Transcript: Are You Playing Checkers or Chess? The Future of Law

Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2020. To keep listening to hear Ryan McCain, as we share his talk, are you playing checkers or chess where the practice of law is headed, you can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Speaker 2
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson nutrix. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Ryan
So this winter Tyson and Jim they call me and they say, Hey, Ryan, we want you to come and talk at max law. He said, Okay, what do you want me to talk about? We want you to talk about the future of law. I’m like, Okay, well, that’s a big topic. And you have 20 minutes, okay. And you’ve got to give your audience three takeaways. And I’m like, Alright, I’m down for this challenge. And this has been of all the talks, I’ve given the hardest one, to write and to think about and to work through. And I’m grateful just, I’ve even had the process of doing this, and of being here and engaging in this way. So first, we’re going to start with where we are headed. And as I prepared this talk, I started looking and thinking and thinking like, well, like, what’s going on in Utah? What are they doing in Australia? What are they doing in California? What’s going on in Billy state of Arizona. And I was like, No, I’m like, that’s like, 10,000 foot level, like, that’s even a little too granular for where it is I want this talk to be. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, that is a symptom, like not a cost, that is a symptom of much larger trends. The biggest trend in any of our lives has been the trend to eliminate inefficiency, our lives have become more and more efficient over time in every single respect. I mean, the simple act of checking into a hotel is easier checking out getting a flight, getting a car to the hotel, getting food, everything now is simpler than it was last time we gathered even in October, and it’s going to be simpler at the next maximum lawyer conference next year. So efficiency in the elimination of inefficiency is the macro trend of our lifetime. And, you know, I was I had the good fortune of attending legal acts with Ryan and file Viny of this great conversation with Alexis Ohanian, one of the co founders of Reddit, and he said, Look, you know, where this is headed, is ultimately like, you’re going to, you know, snap your fingers and say, I need an estate plan and, you know, web 3.0 and Bitcoin, it’s going to organize your finances in a way that’s most optimal, and you’re going to have an estate plan. But he’s like, you know, the good news is for lawyers, like lawyers aren’t going to go away, the need for connection is not going to go away. And that’s like, way down the road. We got a long ways to go there. And so I started thinking, I’m like, Well, where else has things like this played out? And I thought, Look, I’m half Italian. My grandparents are all Italian. I’m actually an Italian citizen. I’m getting my passport soon. So I’m pretty excited about that. And I have a Jogye I have a Jogye. It’s my it’s my, my wife’s grandfather who’s polish, and the judge is no longer with us. And George was a pharmacist. And so judge in the 1940s started a pharmacy called Southwood pharmacy, he served the Southwood section of my hometown in Enfield, Connecticut. And he was in business for about 60 years, and he was a pharmacist. And like many of us, his experience was analogous like because he was both the pharmacist filling scripts and in those days, he had to like make compounds and scales and all that stuff that he would he would talk about endlessly. And he also had to run a business. He had to do books. I lived in the southwest area when I grew up and I would walk to his store and they had a soda fountain. And that was a real treat to get soda. So that’s how he did he built a community based business. He showed up for his community. He showed up for his church, and people knew and loved him and he served and served his community. And he made a living for himself and he made an impact in his community. And in about 2000 He got approached by CVS when CBS was already in town, but our town had like a CVS or Walgreens. And then we had like five local pharmacies like maybe your town was like this. We had Thompsonville pharmacy and hazard Ville pharmacy and Southwood pharmacy and they all started about the same time. And CVS said, Look, we want to buy you, we want to buy you for $3 million. And George was proud, foolish and proud and stubborn, and judge would rather at that time in 2000, he would have rather died on his feet and lived on his knees. And he told CVS No, I’m not taking your $3 million not taking it, I just can’t do it. I’m basically too proud of what it is that I’ve done. 10 years later, Josh showed the CVS, he sold for 600,000. He had lost 80% of what they had initially offered, not even factoring in the time value of money. And I thought to myself, Mike, yeah, you know, what, I feel like the legal profession is sort of like judge was maybe in like, 1995, like we’re in a place, and we’re about to be in another place. And it’s going to change in ways that are going to be hard to predict. Anybody who can say with certainty, how 50 Different states are going to regulate the legal profession. I mean, you’re better than me, because it’s going to play out in different ways. But I think the big trend is going to be towards efficiency. And, you know, ultimately, here, when you think about things, when you think about another macro trend in this in this world that we live in, it is consolidation. In preparing for this, I mean, the number of airlines across all of our lifetimes, has shrank. I mean, two thirds of US beef is made by just three companies at three different plants, Marco Brown was talking about how all the chicken is in Iowa, made in farms in Iowa. And that’s where all of our chicken comes in. You can see the reduction in number of banks from 14,019 94, to 4037. I mean, smartphone companies, everybody in this room, as you know, Verizon and AT and T or T Mobile, Sprint, whatever they call it today. And you also see a trend of restaurants coming in. And this plays out big time, especially in the medical profession today, I would say, as an injury lawyer, one of the things that we deal with their various medical providers day in and day out, even as recently as 10 years ago, there were many different independent providers of medical care, it was a very fragmented market, you had rockville hospital, you had St. Francis Hospital, you had Hartford Hospital, you had Manchester Memorial, you had different entities. And what has happened in the time that in the past 10 years, and really in the past five years and accelerated more in the past to to the point there’s now litigation, we basically in our state of Connecticut have about three health care providers. We have Yale, Hartford Hospital and Trinity, and we may only have to Trinity may get bought or something. That’s what they’re in litigation about. But that consolidation is a macro trend. And I do not think the legal space is immune from any of this, right? I don’t, I don’t think that we’re, we’re special guests, we have different regulations that may protect us in various ways. But these are the trends. And you know, one of the things that I think about with maximum lawyer and with the maximum lawyer group, in particular, and I’ve said this to Tyson in gym, I feel like this whole group, and this community in particular, is absolutely crowdsourcing, the best practices for small firms in the country. And we as a collective are communicating, talking, sharing what’s working, what is not, what vendors to use, what conferences to go to. And we are Unlocking Potential in ways that has not been unlocked before like this, this is a unique group, where you have a lot of open source information that flows generously through it, and we all benefit from it. And I feel like in some ways, like we’re we’re like guinea pigs in a way we are the pioneers, we are the ones who are out there who are pushing the envelope who are trying new things, and who are experimenting and getting results and also building data as as to what it is that we are doing. So I think the good news is is like everybody in this room is going to be okay. Everybody in this room is going to be more than okay. And people who recognize this and sees this are going to be fantastically okay. And so I don’t think I mean lawyers are not going to go away, like the need for legal services is only going to increase over the course of our life. I mean, Ryan mentioned this at legal X. I mean, even when I graduated law school, like there was no cryptocurrency law. There was no you know, social media law Tiktok law, there’s all as society changes and becomes more complicated, the demand for lawyers goes up, so you’re always going to be okay.

Becca Eberhart
Is that both on his back if you’re new around here, this app Athan is the OG automation workshop at this next exclusive guild event we’re partnering up with maximum lawyers good friend Kelsey Bratcher to bring you a day and a half automation workshop. The idea of automation is simple, right? Identify a repeatable pattern of tasks and then use technology so that business process can happen without you. But setting up that technology can be daunting, time consuming, and even have a steep learning curve. Join us in person and you’ll create automations on site that will start working for you before you even leave Austin join niggled today and grab your ticket at max law events.com.

Ryan
So that brings me back to Josh, it brings me back to the medical profession as a whole, like, what is the role here for lawyers? And then what can we do now? Is the question. So I think the role for lawyers is what the role for doctors and pharmacists has been, which is last mile delivery services. If you think of a logistics train, if Mike Whelan is in the room, like last mile delivery, Amazon can pretty much easily more easily move packages across country, from Long Beach to Hartford, Connecticut, but they always have issues with getting the product from their warehouse to your door. And they do this in a variety of ways with contractors, vendors, their own employees. And the same thing is true with like medicine, most doctors in our area now work for Hartford healthcare, or Yale. And what they do is they just do surgeries, they just operate. And that is, from an economic perspective, the most efficient thing possible to happen. They aren’t worrying about marketing. I know Bill various that said, like, I talked to him yesterday, and he said, like this stuff is hard. Running a business, being a lawyer doing both trying to grow maybe as a solo to maybe have a few employees are maybe a few more, this is really hard work. And it’s pretty inefficient. And you are trained specifically to do things. And the more you do with just that thing, the more you’re going to produce the more efficiency that there is in the market. So I think is what I think happens here is like, Look, if you if you are in, you’re going to have the potential to sort of freelance almost like you would a DoorDash or Uber where you’re just like, hey, I’m going to take gigs, and I’m going to work. And I’m going to do this, and I’m going to go on, I think that that’s all, there’s always going to be a need for that. Because these companies that will come in, I think it will look a lot like healthcare are going to need those services, they’re going to need those people, they’re going to need those skills, and they’re going to need that knowledge. So if you’re like, hey, I don’t want to build an empire, I don’t want to be Billy, like I want to I want to practice law, like there’s going to be a definite role for you. But I also think you have a real choice. Because these companies that will come in, they’re going to want to buy the like CVS did to judge, they’re going to want to buy you because if nothing else, it gets competition out of the way. Because it accelerates CVS is growth. I mean, CVS was always going to win the battle against Southwood pharmacy, like there was no question. But they could win it faster, if he had gotten out. And they would have taken the other pharmacist on, they wanted to take the pharmacists on to work at CVS, and they would have paid him money to do so. So you know, if you’re if you’re looking at this moment, what you shouldn’t be looking at doing, especially to me, is what I mean, this is branding, and Billy gave you a whole thing on branding. And that’s, that’s great. I’m not gonna go too far into it. But what you shouldn’t be doing is you should be acquiring real estate, you should look out there right now. And you should say maybe this is the last best opportunity of all of our lives to grab some real beachfront real estate, whether it’s on Tik Tok, whether it’s on Google, whether it is it is in your community, it is branding, it is getting out there, getting your face out there, and getting your name out there. So people search for you. Because we are in a world, I’m in the personal injury world where at this point in 2022, if you want more clients, you just pay more money, it is pay to play for leads, the more money you pay, the more your phone will ring. But branding is something that is valuable and transcends that and getting your name out there. So if you know for us, you know we’re Connecticut trial firm, which to me is pretty easy to remember, but not easy enough. So what we did is we are we’re co branding, we a campaign called CTF wins Connecticut trial firm wins. Okay. And and that’s going to be co branded with us and we’re working on rolling that out. We are going to look you know, trademarks are another thing that you should be looking into because trademarks are saleable. Phone numbers, we’ve got 877 CTF wins. So we’re looking to get that real estate and build brand around that in a way that simply connects with the consumer. And the reason why is we want to ultimately sell that hopefully, I mean, I’m not going to be Josh, I’m not going to be the one who is telling CVS No, what I’m going to say is I want more I want more and here’s why you’re going to pay me more because I have a brand. I have inbound people know my name, people know my firm. Here’s what our 800 number gets for calls. Here’s what our website gets for clicks. And to me, you know, we’ve got our CTF wins thing up here but to me like build that brand wherever you can, and it doesn’t have to be on tick tock like you should not leave this room thinking that you have to build on tick tock I know, Courtney and Bill I don’t know if you’re in this room are you know they’re Minnesota Construction Law, like get in front of The Minnesota construction workers, the business owners, those who are out there building, think about your circle and getting out there and getting the name in your community. However it is that you define that community, Josh to find his community as Southwood part of Enfield, Connecticut, that was his community, get out there and figure out what your circle is, maybe it’s all of Arizona, maybe if you’re Sandy, it’s Vegas, maybe it’s multiple states, but wherever it is, define your community in brand to it narrowly, and very, very, very specifically. And yet, the biggest asset, you know, that you’re going to have to sell, because branding takes a lot of time and money, you should have your data in order, you should be looking at software that can organize your data, even if it is not immediately useful to you right now. Even if you have no way of accessing it, even if you don’t have a chief financial officer, making sure that you have clean data, and you have data at your fingertips, that is going to be something that if somebody is looking to buy you, CVS comes to town for you, then that is going to be something that they look for having your systems and your tech stack in order and operating. Again, that is last mile knowledge that is going to be extremely valuable. These companies that will come in I don’t like the way you say like the legal deregulation doesn’t matter. I think that that’s inevitable. But I also think it can be done in other ways. Marketing, we see this an injury, like there are firms that just come in and just mark it and then they refer out all their cases, that is a thing that happens. And they can generate those cases, but they still need the systems to run them in Connecticut or Minneapolis, or Colorado or wherever you are, they need those systems. So those systems need to be written down, they need to be clear, and those things are going to be extremely valuable as you look to sell. And in so I don’t. So what I’m saying is it could be you know, as as we looked on, as I say CVS, it doesn’t have to be like a national law firm, it could be one of your law firms in your state gets a lot of traction or two of them get a lot of traction. And they essentially become Hartford healthcare and Gale or in your market like that could happen. Or there could be marketing companies that come in, or there could even be, you know, back office companies that are in there running maybe your intake and your books and your data and your tech stack and doing all those things. Well, you simply service the clients. So I think I think all of these models are possible. I think all of them are more efficient than our current fragmented system, I think that there’s always going to be needs that will not be met. And so there will be people who will be unaffected, you know, there will be time will standstill in some areas of practice that just aren’t scalable, and are necessary, and tech will not touch. But I think you need to be looking at this opportunity as an opportunity. And if you want to double down and build now’s the time, it’s only going to get harder. I mean, I’ll share a story. I started my firm and I had a I had a blog and like that’s what like launched me in a way. And in like 2007 Eight, I just write whatever I felt like, and I get like a million views a year on my website, just me I had no SEO, you can’t do that today. Like you can write to your heart’s content, you can’t do that today. And these windows are getting smaller and smaller and smaller your window on tick tock or reals, your window in your community, your ability to brand are all going to get more expensive over time as the markets coalesce and change. And as bigger money comes in, because how many Max law sessions could be cancelled. If you had more money. Like if you just had more money, and you could buy the vendors, you could get the software, you could hire the people. And that’s where I think the private money comes in. So I’ve got 35 seconds left. anybody has a question? That’s great. If not, thank you. Oh, personal injury. That being the highest margin that you’re seeing that you’re seeing the creation of national firms, you’re seeing mass marketing, you’re seeing the John Morgan’s of the world like absolutely personal injury. But I think I mean, I think other areas of practice that are that are, you know, you know, certainly family law, immigration, estate planning. I think all of those things are possible for this. I mean, you’re seeing an even a state plan. I don’t do it, but you have like wealth counsel, and you have different software’s that are running in the background. We’re out of time. All right. Thank you.

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