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When your personality and your professional life do not align with who you are, it causes friction. In today’s episode Elise Buie is pointing out the strengths of embracing your unique qualities. What is the impact that your uniqueness will have? Professionally and personally?

Elise unpacks the effects of being your authentic self — and how that will uplevel your emotional intelligence as a leader. Listen in to this MaxLawCon presentation, if you are ready to dig deep into your authenticity and uncover it! 

Episode Highlights: 

01:48 When your personality doesn’t really match what it “takes” to run a law firm

04:06 When your inner critic is loud – How do you turn that into something positive and motivating for you? 

06:43 Lean into your authentic self?!

10:04 As a law firm owner, you have such a unique opportunity to model something different …

15:07 Getting into a owners mindset by …

16:35 What is that minimum standard of care!?

19:17 Being an emotionally intelligent leader

26:33 Treating people a different way than we are taught in law school 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here. 

Books Mentioned: 

➡️ Fair Play A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do 

 by Eve Rodsky

➡️The Fair Play Deck: A Couple’s Conversation Deck for Prioritizing What’s Important

By Eve Rodsky

➡️Find Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World by Eve Rodsky

➡️Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. by Brené Brown 

➡️Trust and Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others

by Stephen M.R. Covey

➡️Radical Candor: Fully Revised and Updated Edition: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean by Kim Scott

➡️ Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t by Simon Sinek 

Connect with Elise:

Resources:

Transcript: “Froo Froo” for the Win! 

Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from maxilla con 2020. To keep listening to hear Elise buoy, as we share her talk Frou Frou for the win, you can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Unknown Speaker
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.

Elise Buie
Welcome to the show. First, I just wanted to thank Jim and Tyson and Becca for having me speak today and also for having me do the masterminds this year, I’ve just really enjoyed getting to know everybody so much better. And the masterminds have been so powerful for me and all the things I’ve learned this community is so supportive. And as somebody who’s going to expire sooner, maybe it is amazing. I mean, having practice law for I guess more than two decades now. There’s not a more supportive community that I have ever been a part of. And I really want to thank I mean, and I really wish all of you would come together and thank Jim and Tyson for everything they’ve done.

Elise Buie
It’s just it’s really amazing. Most of you who know me well, personally, I mean, know, how truly geeked out I get on all the things kind of you know, Frou Frou and woowoo? I mean, I am one of those somebody said the other day something about like, I think it was a deeply feeling empath. I mean, and if that is not me, I do not know what it is. And so I mean, to be that type of person, and then also try to, you know, run a law firm and do all the things we do. They don’t always necessarily go together really well. And I mean, even coming up here and doing this, I mean, people who know me well, I mean, personally, I’m super gregarious, you know, really easy to talk to. And it’s all good. I mean, speaking in front of all of you, I mean, some major imposter syndrome steps in. And I mean, I’ve been listening to my nasty girl all morning, her name is Eloise, she talks to me in my head, and she talks smack a lot. I mean, she tells me some pretty bad things. You know, like, why would they want you to speak like, what do you know, you’ve got all this problems and your own firm, you know, how can you do this. And so really trying to master that and master imposter syndrome. And I think, I mean, really, for women, it is a, a very large issue that we suffer from. And I think that it is something that we all need to bring out and talk about and really try to get our heads around it. And one thing that I think of when I think of impostor syndrome, and actually, I wore my my famous outfit today just for this talk, because you’re probably wondering, why is she wearing those pants, but I wore this outfit because this outfit literally exemplifies the imposter syndrome to me, like my black baggy jacket, you know, I can hide in it. And it’s, you know, boring. And I mean, it goes with anything, you can put a black jacket with absolutely anything and you’re gonna be fine. So you don’t have to stand out, you don’t have to have a certain opinion. You can just blend my pants. On the other hand, you’re not blending with these, there are some of the strangest colors in these pants. And trust me, I have tried to find things that exactly match these pants. And it’s difficult, because they do stand out. I mean, to me, they’re joyful. They’re outspoken, they’re loud, they’re not going to blend with anything well, and so I can’t just have any opinion or any thought. I mean, I’m gonna have to stand on these crazy pants and I love to name things. So these are my hot mess pants. And they mean a lot to me, but they helped me lean in to my imposter syndrome. So when Eloise is telling me things like Elise, you need to blend more you need to be a more traditional law firm owner, you need to be a better sheep. She’s always telling me that that I need to be a better sheep because I am the worst sheep. Well, these pants teach me I don’t need to be any of those things instead, Eloise is actually pointing out my unique qualities. And my unique qualities are that I am loud, I am joyful. I am outspoken. I don’t blend well. And I’m not a good sheep. All those things make me an untraditional law firm owner they make me an untraditional mom. They’ve made me an untraditional person in many ways, but that’s okay. And to being able to lean in to those unique qualities has really been And one of the main things that I can say has catapulted our growth as a firm, and really myself personally learning to lean in to those unique qualities. And I think as lawyers, it is something we struggle with time and time again, I was talking to somebody this morning who’s starting law school, and I could not be more excited for her that she is starting law school. But one thing I was telling her is, oh, God, do not get wrapped up in the drama of law school. Like I mean, everyone wants to make you think you’re not good enough, you’re not this, you’re not smart enough, you didn’t read enough, you don’t do moot court good enough. I mean, the list goes on and on. And we kind of internalize that, and we all have such baggage around this. And I see it so much. In law firm owners, and kind of like Tyson was talking about having your ideas and being able to execute on them, they have to come from you. Like they have to be part of the authentic you. And really being in digging deep into your authenticity is such an important part. I think of everything we do here. And learning to be vulnerable in your authenticity and accepting that I mean, you might have your own hot mess pants. I mean, there are a few people in this room that I can think of that really have used fashion as part of their authenticity. Who can name one? Jim, can you name one? You Exactly? What about you, Jordan? Yep. I mean, it’s really fascinating to see how people’s authenticity can really come out and how powerful it is. And so I want to encourage all of us to think about how can we lean in to our authenticity in everything we do. So that it’s not just what you are maybe in your personal life, because let’s be serious, if you’re being authentic, you are the same person. You I mean, God forbid, I’m quoting my ex husband here, but I am, my ex husband has told me for however long I’ve known him, I can bring you to Burger King. And I can bring you to Commander’s Palace, and you’re the damn same in both places. That is being authentic. And being able to lean into that and know that, you know, the Burger King girl is the Commander’s Palace girl that allows you to drop away so much of the drama that is carried in typical impostor syndrome. And so the more authentic and vulnerable, we can be in everything we do, and especially as a firm owner, I mean, you’re probably thinking, What the hell does this have to do with running a law firm, it has everything to do with running your law firm. If you come to your team, your practice area, your colleagues, other professionals, and you’re coming as an authentic, vulnerable person who is embracing your authentic self, your team is completely revolutionized. They are committed, they are engaged, they are aligned, they’re curious. And with that, you can absolutely compel your team to truly reach down in themselves. And they themselves become authentic, vulnerable people and your team is just, I mean, it’s amazing to watch people where they are maximizing themselves, they are rising up, they are all working in an aligned fashion, for the vision of your firm. And I mean, it is, I think one of the most powerful things in the world. And it’s funny, I got introduced as the maximum mom, because the reality is, I mean, parenting is so much like this. I mean, if you can parent your children in a way where you’re authentic, and vulnerable, and you are curious about all of their skills and abilities and potential. I mean, you can rise up these humans. I mean, you might not recognize them. I mean, they might turn out completely different than you envision the perfect kid. But I mean, they are coming into their full potential and you are unleashing creativity and just brilliance on the world. And I think it is pretty cool. I do as a mom of four step mom of two, I got a lot of, you know, I want to put six brilliant people out in the world and it’s pretty impressive to see what can happen. But it requires so much work in embracing your own authenticity. Never ever and I think Tyson said this too. Don’t try to be somebody else. Like you can’t do it. You are the best version of you, but you can’t be anybody else. You’re just you. And another thing that is something and I know people who you know know me and follow me on social media have really been sick of hearing about it. But as law firm owners, I feel like we are in such a unique place. Because let’s face it, law firms are notorious for bad culture. This workaholic mentality people are stressed, overworked, burned out. As a law firm owner, you have such a unique opportunity to not only model something different, to provide a different environment, and to help grow the people in your law firm to look at it differently. We don’t all have to be overworked, stressed out and miserable. And one of the things that has come out recently, there’s a set of books, two books, one is called fair play, and one is called Finding Your unicorn space. They’re both written by a Harvard educated lawyer, Ed Brodsky. And they truly revolutionized my thinking. I mean, an as a mom, stepmom of six, I can tell you that life in our house was exceedingly busy learning, fair play is a book, I urge you all to read both books, and I know you guys are gonna be like, Okay, those are some pink looking books like I don’t know. But they are powerful. In especially if you are a guy, and if you are in a heterosexual relationship, I am urging you to read these books as a divorce attorney like it will help you save your marriage, it is impossible. I mean, this, it is impossible to hold resentment and desire in the same heart. marriages and relationships are destroyed every day, over the things that are occurring in homes. And specifically in the whole idea of the lack of equality in homes in the the situation where and I noticed stereotypical and some men obviously don’t do this, I do realize that but the stats are abundantly clear that women carry the bulk of the invisible workload in the home, women are sinking under this invisible workload. And we all know we all love data, what is not measured is never valued. And it never changes. If we do not measure what is happening in the home for our own families, but also for our teams. We are working with people every day who are living under horrible workloads, they are sinking, they are burned out, they are miserable, they don’t see an end in sight, being able to come into your home and use the Fair Play system, which is in fact a system just like we create in our law firms. We spend hundreds of dollars we hire people we’re executing all over the place to get systems in place. But we don’t do it in our homes. And our home is one of our most important places that we operate. The fairplay system is actually there’s a card game. I mean, there’s a deck of cards, it’s a game. So I mean, a lot, you can get guys involved, you know, they like card games. And if you want a deck of cards, just find me and I will get you a deck of cards, a lot of times they sell out, they’re really hard to come by. I have a huge stack of them in my house. I give them out every chance I get. But it is so powerful to understand how much is happening in our homes. It’s not that it’s not fair. It’s not well thought out. I mean, people in homes are doing things in these very inefficient ways, ways that we wouldn’t accept in our law firms at all. Where you’re constantly nagging somebody to do something, you’re reminding them over and over again. I mean, I think of soccer. I don’t know about you all, but I mean, my kids didn’t play soccer, so maybe I should use football. But you have a sport so many times. I mean, as a divorce attorney, I’ll hear a dad and he’ll tell me, Well, I picked up the kids from you know, football practice for years, you know, and I’m thinking, Whoa, great. I mean, get you a fucking award dude. And it’s like, Do you have any idea what went into getting your kid on the damn football team? Like, did you research the schools they were going to did you actually, you know, meet the coach. Did you go to the medical appointment? Did you make the medical appointment? Did you find the uniform? Did you order the uniform? Did you get your kid to try and on and then it was the wrong size? Did you return it? Did you get another one? Did you sign up for the email list? Did you do the carpool thing did you buy the coach’s gift. I mean, the list goes on and on of the amount of work that goes in to doing things and fairplay creates a system where you look at all these tasks and there’s 100 cards in here. I mean, it’s pretty daunting to think there’s 100 cards 40 of them are kid related. So if you are a family with children 40 cards are just for raising children and that is It’s pretty amazing. And like in our home, you look at 40 times six, we were looking at some serious cards. But learning to get what’s called an owner’s mindset, the thing that we all want for our teams, where people are looking at the conceptualizing the planning and the executing of these tasks, and you can’t in a home, split them up because it creates that situation where one person has to become the queen Nagar and relationships are destroyed. So I really just urge you to understand and read fairplay, it will revolutionize how you run your life. And even more importantly, it is going to revolutionize if you share it with your team. And there’s several people here who I’ve, you know, browbeat enough where they’ve read it and I have listened to how it has impacted them and their family and their teams. And it is just game changing. And so I encourage you,

Becca Eberhart
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Elise Buie
One of the things that is in fairplay is the whole idea of when you do a task, what is that minimum standard of care? Because again, that goes back to our law firms, when we’re looking at our own systems, what is the minimum standard of care that we expect? And how to run a case? And in our case of family law case or a personal injury? What do you expect your team to do? Why wouldn’t we have that same thing for our families, and as law firm owners, it is up to us to bring these things and help people so that our team members are operating not from a place of total depletion, but from a place of where things are fair, and they have the space they need. And that brings us to the whole idea of unicorn space. You wonder like, what is unicorn space? Again, I mean, taste, and I’m just picking on you today. I mean, it Tyson’s becoming a pilot isn’t the ultimate show of unicorn space, and taking the time to do something creative that he loves. And that brings him joy. I don’t know what it is. I mean, watching Tyson get its pilot’s license has been so inspirational to me. I mean, Doug is already signing up. But it’s pretty powerful to think. And to understand how that learning that creativity, that curiosity, I can’t imagine and I haven’t had the chance to ask Tyson this. But I can’t imagine what that has brought to his firm. Because having that space and that time to be that creative person and find your own unicorn space, and then share it with the world is really powerful as a leader. And if you in your firm are wanting to be an emotionally intelligent leader and help your team thrive, being able to explain and expand upon unicorn space, not only in your own life, your family’s life, but your team’s life. And these are such important things. And I cannot tell you I mean, I don’t know how much you all read and like are involved in all this stuff with you know, women and paid leave and childcare issues and women are burned out. I mean, like completely burned out. And if you are a law firm owner, and you have a woman in your office doing anything, you have a burned out employee, I can promise you, and anything you can do to put scaffolding and emotional intelligence support around that human is going to benefit your firm, it is going to benefit them and it is going to benefit everybody they come in contact with. And that brings me to the whole idea of being an emotionally intelligent leader. And that in my mind is one of the things as lawyers, we have pretty much missed the boat on like completely. I mean, they didn’t mention it in law school, like I don’t know, the boat sunk before it came to my law school. I don’t know but it was nowhere. And so people are just kind of in the really kind of old school way of like command and control leadership. You know, that kind of top down model. People talk about like motivating their employees, you know, you hear about carrots and sticks. There is not a human in this room. For sure, and there is not a human on this planet that wants to be led that way. They don’t want to be managed. They don’t want to be manipulated. People need to be LED systems and things need to be managed. And to lead people, you have to inspire them. You can’t motivate them. You have to inspire them to make change, and to do something and to take some action. I mean, so you have to think about emotionally intelligent leadership. Like I think of it like Brene Brown. So you think like dare to lead meets Steve Covey’s trust and inspire I don’t know exactly his book, I think it’s called trust and inspire leadership meets radical candor, because you got to have some radical candor thrown in there. meets Simon Synnex leaders eat last, you put all that together, read all of those books, dwell on him, kind of think of it like gumbo, put it all together, let it sit in marinate for hours. And that is what an emotionally intelligent leader looks like. And to be able to pull that off in a law firm, truly, will radically disrupt your entire law firm culture, it will not look the same again. Because if you can bring together the elements needed to be an emotionally intelligent leader, and really focus on what you need to be focused on, which is your people, your people are your greatest asset. I mean, just your people. And if you have owned a law firm for any length of time, I mean, I’ve been a law firm owner now for seven years. We have grown from you know, I started with me and to others. And I think as of yesterday, we’re at 56. So I’ve really had to learn people in the hole. I joke all the time, like people are sweet and stinky onions, I think of good Vidalia, Georgia, you know, in there, just onions. But learning to understand people and be able to navigate all the issues of people, is the key to everything it is the Frou Frou secret sauce of all the things is your people. And those of us that attended masterminds? I mean, I know I’ve been in many and listen to them. We all struggle with the people issues, every single one of us talks about it. And we talk about the struggles we have when somebody leaves or if there’s not good productivity, or how do we, you know, help this and help that we have got to be the leaders that we are all called to be, which is leaders that are inspiring our people to be aligned with our core values. And that looks like many different things. Because all of us have different core values, and all of us are going to want different kinds of people. But it is critical that you are honest with yourself, in your firm, when you’re looking for people and you’re hiring people. And you know, people I hear all the time, they’ll be like, Oh, yes, well, I put all these ads on Indeed, you know, and I, you know, I hired this person, and then I had to fire him three days later. And I’m like, Well, duh, of course you did. Like you don’t just put an ad on Indeed, and you know, do an interview, and then all of a sudden, you’ve got an aligned core value. A lot goes into the hiring of people. I mean, I can’t tell you how much we test, people get sick of our tests. We do a lot of personality testing, all kinds of things to understand, like, how do people operate. But I mean, understanding your people and how your people are going to come in and fit in your firm that you already have, is just so so so important. And I just cannot say enough, as law firm owners, the more we can educate ourselves and immerse ourselves in the psychology of people, we will benefit our law firms so much. I mean, the cost involved in the loss of people is so profound and listening to people talk about how they’ve, you know, fired or gotten rid of employee after employee after employee. I mean, it’s hard to stay upbeat and positive in the face of all that. And I think that if we would take a step back and realize this is an area as lawyers, we really haven’t been taught well, and I mean, understanding that, that it’s like a deficit in our education. I mean, that doesn’t mean we’re bad. It just means that it’s something we weren’t taught and we need to really, really reach out and learn because it is super, super important. And I think that coming into your law firm, and realizing that your goal as the owner of your law firm is to inspire others. into inspire people to be their best selves, that sometimes means those people are going to get off your bus. And they’re not going to be on your bus forever. And that’s okay. And I think, again, as law firm owners, we sometimes get caught up in that, again, they’re tight. And I’m picking on you again, the scarcity mindset of when somebody gets off the bus, sometimes we’re like, well, well, why are they leaving? Like, you know, we had a perfect job here, I don’t understand what’s wrong. I mean, it could be something they’re exploring, rather than actually looking at somebody leaving and thinking, how can you support that person in their next adventure? How can you be a sponsor, to that employee as they’re going to their next job? Can you help them find their next job? What can you do to help that person as they take their next step? I can assure you, those types of relationships are powerful, when those people are now at other places, other working environments, and they’re referring you cases, because you help them rather than, you know, had some bad attitude that they left and you are interested in their success in their future. I mean, I recently went out to wine and drinks with an ex employee. And just I mean, we spent five hours, absolutely having a grand old time. And she has referred me cases the whole time she’s been gone. It means something to make deeper connections with people and treat people in a way that makes sense, not like we are taught. I mean, we just are taught some really backwards skills in law school, when it comes to how we treat people. And I think when you think of emotionally intelligent leadership, I mean, you need to think about vulnerability, authenticity, caring, and service. I mean, I think sometimes as leaders, we forget the service piece, and that we as leaders, I mean, and you know, we could have a whole conversation about our country, and whether the leaders in our country have any idea what service looks like, but I mean, serving the people that are working in our firms should be one of our highest goals, in my opinion. And I mean, service can look like all kinds of things, it can be just connecting with your team, one on one finding out, what is their unicorn space? I mean, how many of you know your team members, unicorns, faces? I mean, how many of you encourage it, how many of you put dollars towards it, you know, so maybe this person, instead of giving them a cash bonus, you’re giving them a flying lesson, or, you know, maybe it’s somebody who’s an amazing cake baker, and you’re gonna give them, you know, cooking classes. I mean, there’s all kinds of things we can do to serve our team. And I think that we really have to look inward and think about service and think about how important it is to developing the kinds of firms that we want that are going to last through time, through recessions, through pandemics through hurricanes. When you have the type of office that focuses on authenticity, vulnerability, care and service, a pandemic isn’t going to mess that up. I mean, you’ve got this, you’re going to be able to pivot, you’re going to be able to do things differently. And you’re going to be fine. You’re going to withstand the storm. And I know a lot of us are thinking about what’s happening now, like a recession, people are talking about a recession coming. I mean, it’s time to really think about how do you shore up your firm, and in my world you shored up with a lot of that Frou Frou stuff and a lot of the human psychology, because people nowadays I mean, we are looking at a whole different world. I mean, people want to be connected, they want to have a passion. They want to follow something they can believe in, and they want to be inspired to do good work. And it really matters. Inspiration matters. And don’t pass up your opportunity as a leader of your law firm, to make a real change in the lives of the people who work with you, for you and around you. Because I mean, again, we look at our world around us making a difference in the people in your office. I mean, might be one of the most powerful legacies you leave. And so take advantage of it. And I think that’s all Thank you.

Just getting started in your own firm? Wanting to uplevel your firm and grow faster? Today’s episode has Jim and Tyson in the interview seat as they are guest’s on Kara Vaval podcast: Laptop Lifestyle Lawyer. Listen in as Tyson and Jim share their starting points of their firms, as well as the start of Maximum Lawyer Podcast and Group Coaching (the Guild) 

With their:

➡️ organic coaching growth and direction taken from what people wanted

➡️ to breaking up a law firm partnership 

➡️to going from broke to 50+ team in a now thriving company

Jim and Tyson are sharing all the gold nuggets here. Including their top three tips on how to move from starter firm to upping to your next level, best advice.  

Episode Highlights: 

06:39 Jim being a quick start nine from the Kolbe testing and why personality testing might have the answers for team members

10:19  Considering a partnership in owning a law firm?!  Here’s Tyson’s advice!

13:45 Serving law firm owners through community, coaching and conferences

19:42 Changing law firm owners lives by being in a positive mindset community and being vulnerable 

28:39 Beginner law firm owner — what are the top three growth tips for getting to the next level 

30:55 Fear is the thing that stop most people from taking the leap 

36:39 A streamlined process to identifying your support team 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube.

Connect with Kara:

Resources:

Transcript: 3 Firm Growth Tips to Go From Starter To Next Level

Unknown Speaker
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.

Kara Vaval
Welcome to the laptop lifestyle lawyer podcast. So excited to have you guys here. So I have Jim hacking and Tyson is it Metrix new tricks? New Tricks fantastic.

Tyson Mutrux
are lots of variations over the years. Oh, I’m

Kara Vaval
sure you know I have my first name is Kara, I get Cara. I get I get it all. So and my vowel it gets via Babel, so I know. Awesome. So Jim, I’m going to start with you. Give me your background. Tell the audience where you’re from your trajectory. Tom, share your journey with us. Everyone finds their story, hearing other people’s stories. And so tell me how you came about even starting the maximum warrior as well and let the people know who you are.

Jim Hacking
Got it. So my name is Jim. I’m an immigration lawyer in St. Louis. I’ve been practicing law now for 25 years. I’m old. I’ve been doing immigration. Thank you. I’ve been doing immigration since 22,007. I opened up my own law firm then and sort of farted around trying to do all different kinds of things. My wife is an immigrant. She’s originally from Egypt, we met in law school. And she was working at the law school. And so we had our insurance paid and our mortgage paid. And then I decided that I really, really, really, really wanted to open up my own law firm. She said, I’ve never heard about this, how is this something that you never mentioned, but I had what Michael Gerber calls the entrepreneurial seizure. And I was like, I got opened my own law firm. And I thought I would do law for immigrants that I would do car accidents for immigrants that I would do wills and estates for immigrants. And it became pretty clear quickly that the real need was in immigration. So I had hired a young lady who was originally from Bosnia. And she and I sort of taught ourselves immigration law. We grew from the two of us to then we had another attorney, and we kept growing and then eventually, my wife actually came and joined the firm back in 2016. And that’s when things really took off, because I’m a 10, Quickstart, and a three follow through. So I had all these great ideas, and she’s a one Quickstart and an A nine follow through. So she really brought balance to the Force brought balance to the firm. And then we’ve really taken off since then, at the current time, we’re recording this, we’re at about 55. Team members, we have nine Attorneys Offices in St. Louis, San Diego, in Washington, DC, and then Tyson and I, I taught a class at St. Louis University on how to run a law firm. And as I mentioned to him the other day, it was at a time when I was pretty much flat broke. And it was right around that time that I decided to just do immigration and niching down really helped. And so he started to maximum lawyer because we were having these great conversations after he had gone out on his own. And we decided to start recording them. And now it’s grown into a whole big thing, which I’m sure he’ll tell you about.

Kara Vaval
Awesome. Awesome. So Tyson, I’m gonna cut by the way I yet to pin the Quickstart nine Quickstart one, you’re gonna have to explain more of that. Because, you know, and I know that’s probably something having to do with maximum lawyer. And so yeah, I definitely want you to expand on that. But Tyson go ahead and introduce yourself.

Tyson Mutrux
Sure, yeah, my name is Tyson nutrix. I got a quite a bit of a different background than Jim does, Jim. And I think that’s part of my story. I’ve got two parents, neither one of them graduated from high school. And so my backgrounds just different, right. And so, but I did always have that bug, that entrepreneurial bug. And it was a little different, like Jim, like mine was sort of oozing Atomy Jim’s, I think he kind of concealed it a little bit, but mine was a little bit more using Atomy. And my, my dad whenever I was, you know, out of out of the house, and everything started a very successful business. And so he I think he always had that bug too. And I think he kind of pass it on to me, but during law school, I always knew I knew from the beginning, I wanted to start my own firm. So having that in mind. I took a lot of classes like Jim’s class while practice management. And Jim did a very smart thing. He brought people into his class, each each class to teach something new. And so Jim didn’t do all the teaching. He did some of the teaching, but then he brought in experts to come in and teach which I thought it was. It was a clever, it was a clever move, and especially knowing in hindsight, what was going on at the time. Smart was brilliant. It was but but I did I shaped all of my classes around sort of, okay, I want to start my own firm and then I had worked for a volume injury firm right out of law school, and then about a year later, a little quicker than what I expected. I started my own law firm. And that at the time was doing Criminal Defense and Personal Injury. And we talked about niching down all the time. I think if I were to go back and do it all over again, I probably would have just started started with personal injury. But the criminal offense allowed me to pay the bills. And it’s really interesting. We started the podcast, I think it was 2015. And Jim was right, we were, we were having these conversations all the time. He’s really good conversation. And we decided, hey, let’s record these things. We had a lot of false starts were with a lot of episodes that were lost into the ether that were never recorded, because we forgot to hit the record button. But we sort of you time’s up. So but we’ve never, we’ve not missed an episode. And since we started, every single week, we’ve put out a podcast. And that consistency has been pretty important to the growth of maximum lawyer, the the Guild and the conference and everything else. But but sort of back to my story. Like right now we’ve got I think we’re at 28. Team members, when it comes to our injury firm, it’s grown quite a bit in between there, I had a partnership that did not work out who lasted 18 months. But honestly, I think that that allowing that reset allowed me to push the reset button and rebuild. Everything was actually great for me and my firm. But I’ve grown more over the last four years, and I grow in the previous eight years combined. So it’s been pretty good. Yeah. And

Kara Vaval
it’s like, you know, you don’t start from scratch, you start from experience. So of course you add that to the mix, then it’s when you’re doing the do over or you know, the Picking up from where you left off. There’s so much already added value from the previous experience. So of course, so talk to me, I’m gonna jump back to you, Jim, about this nine Star 10 Star because why what is he talking about? Talk to us

Jim Hacking
about that. So for three years, I was in something called Strategic Coach, which is run by a fellow named Dan Sullivan up in Chicago and Toronto. And one of the things they have you do early on in the process is they ask you to take what’s called the Colby index, it’s Kolb II index. And it rates you on four things factfinder follow through Quickstart and implementers. So And the funny thing is, is when you receive your Colby score, everybody, no matter how different they are, they always get that always leads off with your perfect just the way you are. And so but then once you get into the details, it sort of scales you on those things, and a one isn’t bad, a 10 isn’t good. It’s just where you fall on the scale. So fact finders, you know, we have a lot of lawyers and paralegals in our office who are very high fact finders very high follow throughs. As you might imagine, Quickstart is sort of how eager or interested you are in starting new things. And so I am a 10 Quickstart, which is actually sort of rare. My wife has a one Quickstart, which is also sort of rare. But at our office, we have everybody take it, and it’s laminated, and it’s on the door to your office. So when someone’s going in to talk to Omani my wife. And when they want to talk to her about something they know, they’re reminded as they walk through the doorway, that she’s gonna want a lot of facts. And with them, when they come to see me they know that I’m gonna have like 12 ideas. I’m going to think all of them are great, and that they’re going to have to ask me for deadlines asked me for how to prioritize asked me those kinds of things. So the nice thing about the Colby index, and it cost like 50 bucks to do, the nice thing about it is that it gives everybody a language to talk about how they are and you are without there being any kind of like blame. Oh, well, of course, you would want me to write out more about that thing because you’re a high factfinder. And the funny thing is, is that we realized with Amani especially, she’s such a high Fact Finder, that she works really well with quickstarts because once she’s done her finding of facts, and made her decision, she just wants a quick start to go implement it, which is why she and I worked well together. And why her favorite team members that she’s worked with over time have been quickstarts her the worst time she ever had was she actually had a a 10 factfinder working for and all they did was fight because Amani they already decided what she wanted, and the other person wanted to go do her own thinking through of everything. So it’s, it’s really nice little tool.

Kara Vaval
That’s amazing. And I think like every entity should have something like that. So you know who you’re walking into. I mean, I’ve done the StrengthsFinder testing and those kinds of things, understanding where your strengths are and operating out of that and delegating the rest. So I know of that method, but the Kobe method sounds like it would just change the game for so many companies because it’s like, instead of having this assistant who just is not meshing with you, you know, just switch and go go get the other person who’s who matches you and isn’t that and everything you know in marriages and all types of finding out what we’re lationship really works because ultimately your work stems from the relationships that you’re operating out of as well, even within the confines of the job. So that’s, that’s very interesting. And I’m definitely going to, to share the link to this Colby test. Because, you know, I think there’s a lot of value there. And so Tyson, I’m gonna swing back to you. So you said that you went in a year after graduating, you decided to start your firm. And did you start the partnership right then? And there? That was just you in the beginning?

Tyson Mutrux
No, it was just me. In the beginning, it was me. And I think I went about six months. And I think if I hired my first part time employee, and kind of didn’t, I’d made some of the errors whenever it came to hiring at that point, but no, it was just me. And the partnership didn’t come about until 2017. So it was 2017 is whenever that came about, and then it ended in August of 2018. So very quick,

Kara Vaval
okay. And it was there a reason why because I’ve had, you know, I’ve been doing this for 14 years, I’ve had multiples of offers of partnership, and I’m just so afraid of them. It’s just like, I you know, I’m so me and how I do what I do, I’m I inject Kara 100%. And that’s even one of the ways that I encourage people to get into the laptop lifestyle lawyer type, you know, you know, delivery of legal services is you can just do it your way. You don’t have to try to be like, you know, like jammer, or Tyson. Just do your thing, figure out the unique thing about you that unique characteristics that would make you you and come out and bring that into the marketplace in the form of legal services. So how did you get pulled into that?

Tyson Mutrux
So I think it’s interesting. I don’t think anyone’s asked me that question. But the I think the main, what it really comes down to is the differences in vision, I think is what it was. And I think that going in, we probably we thought we had the same vision, we even sat down, we came up with the core values. It was funny, we started with core values. And then we never made we never advanced to like getting our mission and our vision and all that laid out we never did. But I think ultimately, that’s what it was. It’s just a difference in vision for the future. And I’d say for those 18 months, it’s one of the most stressed I’ve ever been, it really was. And I’m sure he was the same way where we felt like we were working for each other. And I remember the day that we’ve made the decision to end it. It was it was funny, like we were financially really well off. It was working really well financially for the two of us. And that was it was really bizarre, I think for a lot of people to understand is that well, it was it was you were making money. So what why why Joel split up. It’s just a difference in vision. And the day that we split up. I remember coming home and telling my wife, Amy about it. And we said that was date night, and we went to data and I told her I hadn’t told her on the way home. So I told her it didn’t she was like, she was frozen. I was like, honestly, I feel great.

Kara Vaval
I know, I’m frozen, too.

Tyson Mutrux
I told her it’s like I feel great. I guys, it’s this is actually going to work out well for both of us. And so it was in we the paperwork was all signed, and we split No, in a week, right? It was quick. I mean, it was like, boom, done, we’re moving on with our lives. And so both of us have the same or at the time, I don’t know, if he’s still use them. We used to have the same coach, executive coach Jason Selke. And it seems really solution focused. And I think we’re both solution focused. Hey, Alright, moving on. Let’s let’s get on to the next to the next chapter. And it was a net positive I think for both of us.

Kara Vaval
That’s wonderful. Okay, so So you got tempted because you thought the visions were the same. I have never been able to connect with someone that I feel has the same vision. They do. So maybe that’s why now let me ask you guys, so you decided to start your podcast with maximum lawyer and it was through the conversations, etc? And how did the conference has come about what because and I kind of also want you to touch on the coaching aspect Tyson because I’m you know, that’s what you guys provide is support and coaching and that kind of, you know, an environment for people to be able to come in and use your experience and wherewithal and coaching to grow right and it how important that is right to have someone who can be outside of your entity and, and give you feedback and give you shortcuts and nuggets and things of that nature. And so talk to me about that the podcast, of course being where it started, but how you guys develop the programs and the conferences, etc, that you have and what that does for attorneys.

Tyson Mutrux
Well, so I think you have to go through the full story, right? And if you think about the way you run your firms, you usually are offering something that your clients want, right? That’s what you’re you’re, you’re shaping your services around sort of what the clients want. And I’m really curious to see what what Jim says after what I say but that’s kind of where the podcast develops. So we went from the podcast and then we sort of Facebook group because we wanted a place to meet with all the all the listeners, right? Because we knew people were listening. But we wanted a place to meet them. That was Facebook, we had a Facebook group. And then after that, we’re like, hey, let’s meet these people in person, right? And because people were talking to, Hey, we should do a meet up somewhere, said, Hey, let’s account let’s have a conference. So it’s that we had a conference. So we started the conference. And then as it sort of snowballed, we got bigger and bigger and bigger. We said, Hey, let’s have this high, higher level conversation where we kind of we talked about the business side of things. And I’d say that our view on coaching is a little bit different than what a lot of people love. People think of a coach as, hey, you go and you get one person, that person is his Guru that tells you everything, we don’t really believe that I at least I don’t personally believe that I don’t think that there’s really a guru that can lead you to the promised land. And that’s why the guild is so great. Great. Jim came up with the name guilt, he came with the max blur to he’s, he’s good at generating names. He’s great. Really good. What’s great about the guild is you have all these,

Kara Vaval
I’m guessing is the 10 start, you know what? Exactly right. That’s where that comes from.

Tyson Mutrux
But the good but the guild is, is a, we have a lot of talented people that are willing to share, there are a lot of givers, right? A lot of givers that are willing to give more than they receive. And so it’s that it’s that rising tides, raise all boats kind of kind of a mindset. And it’s great. And so they answer your question, it’s sort of developed based on people’s needs, like what do people want. And as things have advanced, and there’s a something that Jim and I are doing in December, or we’re just going to meet with a limited number of Guild members. And we’re going to dig in for three days. And that has come about based on the needs of our guild members. And so each time we’ve had a new iteration, it’s based on the needs of our listeners of our members. And that’s where these these ideas come about. It’s in. So we, if people say, hey, we don’t want guild anymore, we’ll get rid of the guilt. That’s what it’ll be. But I don’t think that that will happen.

Kara Vaval
Yeah, so Jim, do you want to throw in someone that

Jim Hacking
Yeah, so I think Tyson and I tapped into something and thank God for the internet, because it wouldn’t have happened otherwise. And that is that I think owning a law firm can be lonely. And I say it all the time. Other than raising kids, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. So you know, and when you own the law firm, it’s different than being an employee of a law firm. And so even though you might work with 20, people, there are certain conversations that you can’t have with them. And what we did as we tapped into a space, that was growth mindset, and positive and supportive, as Tyson said, and that really allowed for connection around mutual goals, like, we had great fun kicking out assholes, people that were not a good fit, they were negative and sour. And, and it’s amazing, you can actually see people holding themselves back, right. And so all of what we’re trying to do is to unlock that greatness that people have inside themselves. And we do that in big ways and small ways to our first conference, our second conference, all of our conferences, have had lots of members of the of the big group or the guild up on stage, we gave them a platform, we gave them a way to connect, and we we built this community and when I was hearing Tyson explain it, it just struck me how organic it’s been to bring together people who like being a lawyer and or who like running a law firm and the others hurdles, yeah, there’s things to overcome. But at the end of the day, there’s still generally happy positive people.

Kara Vaval
And it’s so big that you know, you mentioned mindset, because that’s the game changer, isn’t it for pretty much how any of this stuff pans out for you, right? Because if the mindset is focused on problems and and you know, being buried in problems and being buried with your clients cases, instead of serving and instead of solution, it’s just a quick little shift. It’s not a big, you know, major overhaul, it’s just looking at it from, you know, I get to do this versus I have to do this. It’s just language, right,

Becca Eberhart
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Kara Vaval
Talk about what impact you’ve seen this maximum lawyer have on the guild members and you know, what is the change that it’s causing? Or how is it propelling because, you know, Tyson you were talking about how Jim had the law practice management course and All of that, that he was teaching. While most law schools don’t offer that most law schools do not offer any kind of how to start your own shop type of thing. It’s go to, you know, get the research thing done, get a job at a law firm, and hope to make partner or you know, there’s no real tools. I went to law school for three years, and I looked for the class and I never got it, I never found a way. And that’s why I created, you know, leap into your lifestyle, it was a way for me to help attorneys just do what I did. Because I set up shop straight out of law school, I was only working nine months with this attorney. And I started my firm and I did it virtual straight out, because I didn’t have the I didn’t have the funds to do the big office and the rat, and you know, it’s very unconventional COVID made everything that I’ve done, you know, look like it, this is the way to do it. Back then 14 years ago, you know, lawyers were looking at me like Are you really a lawyer doing it this way? So talk about that, because the listeners that we have here, they many of them have virtual firms, many of them are wanting to grow. But, you know, what does that look like? What does growth look like? What impact have you seen maximum lawyer have on your members talk about that?

Tyson Mutrux
There’s a lot wrapped up?

Kara Vaval
Questions. My questions are always that way. And it’s like good luck.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, well, this day answer your question directly. Like we’ve seen a massive amount of growth from Guild members, it’s the coolest thing to watch seeing them go from, she’s really struggling and crying to like excelling and making seven figures like that’s, it’s amazing to watch. But I want to go back to your first very first point. And it’s about the mindset, yes, it is simple. It is very simple, right is it is actually kind of like flipping on a switch. But it’s there’s the whole idea of like mood follows action, right? You’ve got to take the action. But some of the mindset problems are deeply ingrained in people. They’re deeply deeply ingrained, you’re talking about reversing several decades of a mindset. And so it is, we can say it’s simple, like flipping on a switch. But getting

Kara Vaval
like a switch that you’re like, trying to push that switch up, takes a while it’s Rusty.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, it’s like you if you didn’t work out for 30 years, and all of a sudden, you start to work out, you’ve got to, you’ve got to go slowly with it. And so, and same thing with mindset mindset is the exact same way, you got to be very, very, very, very deliberate about what you’re doing. And once you get there, the mood follows action, and you start to get some momentum and things start to pick up. And we see that with guild members. It’s really funny. So you, you’ll have people listen to the podcast, and they’ll talk to us or they’ll join the guild and like, they’re like, this is so different than anything else I’ve ever been in. Because there’s a lot of there’s a lot of groups out there, right? You name them, you can throw a rock and hit a dozen different groups that tell people how to run a law firm, but they’ve never done it before. Right? But what’s great about the guild is its people that are in the trenches, right that are doing it. But they’re also have a very positive mindset. And they say, Hey, like, and not every day is great like that not everybody is great. Do you have people that will come to the Guild, and they’ll post Oh, my gosh, I’ve had a really bad day. And then people jump in, be very supportive. But hey, now let’s take the steps to correct whatever whatever the issue is. And here’s how you fix it, right. And it could be as simple as, hey, Google shut down my Google My Business page, boom, contact this person, they’ll get you set up right away, you’ll be done in 12 hours, yada, yada, whatever it may be. But that is the that is the environment that is inside the guild. And so

Kara Vaval
here excuse I’m just going to interject is that the assholes that Jim kicked out, didn’t have that vulnerable space that they would access because the hold back or the you know, it’s not really embracing the fact that we all have shitty days, and it’s part of the process. And let’s talk about it and not let’s not act like and we always have it all together, because we don’t, right. And so there is no there is no holding back in that space. Totally true.

Tyson Mutrux
So true. And honestly, the that curating dirt early like that was very early on, Jim was right about that. Like we were very deliberate about who was allowed in and who was not allowed in. And if you were a jerk, guess what? You’re gone. And like, you didn’t get a second chance, right? You don’t get a second you’re gone. Like, once you show us who you are. You’re gone.

Kara Vaval
We believe you.

Tyson Mutrux
And Barbae. So that’s, that’s that’s the approach we’ve taken. But yeah, and because of that, there was funny, I will say this. So Jim, early on, I don’t know if Jim remembers this. Jim flipped the switch on maximum lawyer and it was a closed group initially, and then he opened it up, and people went nuts. And then so we like within an hour, we’re like, shut it back down. We’re like, Okay, we won’t do it again. Sorry. But people were very protective of the community and they still are having that community having that close space to be able to be open about things. Super, super important.

Kara Vaval
That’s awesome. Go ahead, Jim. You add on.

Jim Hacking
I think you know The thing that sort of makes our group different is that Tyson and I lead by example, by not being afraid to be vulnerable, like we talk about the really hard stuff, like, some of our best episodes are where I’m just sort of ranting about something that either is making me mad or that I’m struggling with. And I think it’s really bled into the group because like, about two months ago, a month and a half ago, one of our guild members who hadn’t seen in a while sent me a long email talking about all the struggles that they were having. And I anonymized it and read it to the guild we do at Tyson, I do a call every Saturday morning, at eight in the morning, and we just riff on stuff. And I read that letter anonymously. And the guild members like rose up in unison, and just were like, that was me people shot videos, that was me, I’ve been there I that exact thing happened me don’t feel isolated. Keep coming back. My son calls this a for lawyers. And I think that a lot of ways I’ve been a 12 step program for a long time. So I know a lot of ways I think there’s some truth to that.

Kara Vaval
I love it a for lawyers, don’t we need a place where we can just come in and say, you know that my name is? And I am? Right. I am a lawyer? And so with regards to like, the conferences, is it? Is it just a seminar style? Is it coaching style is that you know, these are the things you need to go do. And then you can you can see results from there. Talk more about that, and the guild and all of these programs, what do they entail?

Jim Hacking
So the the easy thing is the Facebook group. So there’s a Facebook group, there’s like 6000, law firm owners in there. And that’s just people there trading information all day long. And we recreated the guild because we weren’t being able to hear or have, you know, more in depth discussion. So we created the guild. And so that’s a different Facebook group. And that’s a paid group. And then we do a quarterly mastermind so once a quarter, we pick a cool city that Tyson and I want to go visit. And we say we’re gonna have the mat and Tyson loves Scottsdale, Arizona. So every January, we’re in Scottsdale, we’re going to be in Scottsdale and bring us you know, whoever wants to come 3040 People want to come, you’re in a hot seat in a room with other people all day. And then we do that for two days. And then now we have some training that goes along with it. And then, like Tyson said, in December, we’re gonna try something even more different with just like three or four law firm owners and we just work on their stuff for three full days. And then the conference. We actually didn’t do a conference where we did do a conference, this we’re not doing a conference this year. But we may be bringing it back next year. But the conference is Yeah, seminar style people. We had guest speakers, we had paid speakers, we had all kinds of stuff. So it was it was great.

Kara Vaval
Wonderful. And you have one coming up. You said in Miami, yeah, that’ll be in October, in October. So you have to give me that information. So I can share it as well.

Jim Hacking
But that’s why we’re in Austin. We’re doing an automation workshop in Austin in April, and then we’re in Boulder, Colorado, in the summer in July. And then in October, we’ll be in Miami.

Kara Vaval
Awesome. Awesome. So I will share all of that for our listeners and whoever’s interested and so that they can follow you guys as well. You’re on Facebook, you’re on. You’re on Instagram as well. The maximum warrior? Yep. We’re okay. Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux
So it’s funny you asked this, Jim had to think about I think because we don’t touch any of that stuff. That’s all done for us. So we it’s all just kind of pushed out to the world. Jim is

Kara Vaval
like, do we have that?

Jim Hacking
I’ve seen myself on our Instagram feed. So then I knew that we had one.

Kara Vaval
Okay, awesome. So my question for you. And really, it’s if so the whoever’s listening and where they are in their trajectory, if you could speak to your beginner self, right. Starting your firm and your I will take turn so start digging into your your thoughts on that. And you have your firm set up, you’re starting to get your clients and growing the best you know how to, if you had to share three growth tips to go from starter beginner to next level, whatever next level looked like for you when you are doing it, share that

Jim Hacking
Go fast. Go fast. hire for your weaknesses, hire the people that helped fill you out, and then create video and repurpose it. Those are my three.

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. So I would I would my it’s funny. I was wondering if you and I were gonna have the exact same ones. It’s really interesting, too. I want to point this out. Jim, Jim and I were talking about this before like, I am very forward thinking Jim is very backward thinking in a positive way he can he can go back and reflect. I sorted shut all that shit down. I just don’t even I just go for very forward thinking. So I did have to really kind of force myself to think about this. But I think it really is you go fast. You go fast because you You’re many times people don’t go fast out of fear. So you gotta shut that fear down, you just gotta go fast, you got to trust that it’s gonna work. So I would say go fast, I would, I would definitely echo that, I was gonna say my first one is actually gonna be higher. So go party going faster as continue to hire, don’t stop hiring always be hired, I think because that’s going to allow you to go super, super fast. And then whether I’m going to change a little bit what what Jim said, I’m going to say just continue to mark it like Don’t, don’t let that stop because where people plateau is they were talking about this with a guild member just two days ago, what happens is, is that you market a lot, the very, very beginning. And so you start to get a lot of momentum with cases, then you start to work on all those cases, and then you get stuck, right, you just get stuck. And then you stop marketing. And then you have what we call the dip. And so that’s what you want to avoid. You want to avoid that. And so you got to continue to market and higher market and higher market, higher market and higher, that’s going to allow you to go fast.

Kara Vaval
Awesome. And I definitely want you to expound on that fear. Because that is what stops most people from even taking the leap. And I talked about it because you know, I always I heard many moons ago that fear is false evidence appearing real. But that evidence that false evidence is so real, right? And you think you’re gonna fail, you think you’re gonna hire this person, and you’re gonna go broke because of anything? So many different thoughts, right? How do you and and obviously, that ties into mindset, right? It’s this whole believe you can type thing, but how do you deal with that? And how did you deal with that? Because many of our listeners had to overcome fear many times over in order to even be, you know, on their own, and you’ve had to do that, I’m sure. And so although you had the you did have the burning desire from day one. So I don’t know if you experienced that. But Can you expound on that?

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I mean, we talked about vision, but it’s really, you got to know what you want, like, you really got to know what you want, like, do I want to work for this guy who’s a real prick? And that has me work until eight o’clock every night? And then I don’t see my kids and my wife, do I want that? Or would I rather do all that work on trying to generate business and working on my own? And trying to build my own thing? Like, do I? Which of those do I want, right? Because that’s usually what the choices that was my choice was really what it was, Do I want to sort of build my own thing? Do I want to put all those hours in really building my thing as opposed to someone else’s thing? So you got to figure out what you want, like, what do you want? And continue to ask yourself that question? Well, what do I what do I really want? No, no, actually, what do I really, really want and figure that out? Once you figure that out? Well, other stuff can becomes easy. Like once you actually know i Yes, I do want to start my own farm. Okay. How do I get business? Let’s like you got to be proactive. And some of that fear might come from people that they start their firm, and then they don’t do anything like that. The worst thing you can do whenever you start your own firm is not do anything like you’ve got to be proactive. So I guess the answer your question, How did I get past it? I didn’t know what I wanted. And then I was I was very proactive about it. I was meeting with people all the time, I was really shaping every all of my activities around growing my business is what it was. And Jim was the same way. Like, he was one of the early adopters when it came to video. Like that’s how and I don’t want speak for Jim. But that’s how he did it. He knew what he wanted. And he recorded a bunch of video to get him to that point. But you gotta you just gotta it’s I think it starts with knowing what you want. It’s I think it really is that simple. Jim, can you touch on that?

Jim Hacking
I think most law firm owners being high fact finders are very loath to give up control. And the reason that they don’t want to give up control is because they are afraid of mistakes. And they’re convinced that only they can do 98% of the things that have to happen in the law firm. And so they keep from growing because they’re too scared to give up control. And then that mostly because they Oh my god, we can’t have a mistake, a mistake would be the worst thing ever. I became a lawyer try to punish people for their mistakes and to prevent them from making mistakes. And so they get all wrapped up in this control, control control. And man, I can hear it a mile away. I can hear it a mile away when someone’s a control bullshitter where they say, oh, yeah, I’m happy to delegate. But as soon as they have the opportunity, they take it all back. And then they get small again. And so I think the biggest hindrance to growth and to delegation is this reluctance to allow people to make mistakes, which of course, you can just use to improve your systems.

Kara Vaval
So you never had any hold back on hiring and just getting people involved. And I knew

Jim Hacking
very early, that there was a lot of stuff about being a lawyer or running a law firm that I didn’t like to do, and that I wasn’t very good at. So when I said earlier about hiring for your weaknesses, hiring for the stuff that you don’t want to do or that you’re not good at. I mean, that was my whole thing. So you a law firm owner can’t do everything. So find out what your strengths are. Find out what you like, do more of that and then let other people do that. stuff that they like, like, I hated sending out bills, I would finish a case and people hadn’t finished paying us. And I just didn’t like the invoicing, I didn’t like looking at the numbers. And I hired someone who came back later and told me I found my purpose in life chasing people down for money that they owe you, right? So that’s just not my bag. And there’s people out there who do those things that you don’t want to do.

Kara Vaval
Yes, and I absolutely love that you’re saying that. Because ultimately, I think that that’s what unlocked a lot for me, it was doing that StrengthsFinder test, really focusing on my strengths. And, you know, just maximizing the output in that space and understanding that if somebody can do it, you know, 85%, as good as I can do it, then I’ve hit a homerun and keeping them, you know, happy also, because people only give their 85% as good as what you would do if they’re happy to be there, and if they’re supported. And so I know that you talked about at the beginning, having those posters on the door, really recognizing people for their strengths, really recognizing people for their better space, I guess, to work from so can you add to that, and how that has changed the game for you in the hiring space? Because I think that, you know, being able to find the right fit. It’s a skill, it really is because especially if you’re you’re inundated with work and you’re just desperate to find help. Sometimes kissing a lot of frogs is part of the process. Do you have a streamlined process to identify your right? You know, your right support team.

Jim Hacking
Every year, the 30 teams in the NFL spend millions of dollars researching collegiate athletes, they do all kinds of testing, and they have a combine and they and my New York Jets thought that they had found their answer and Zach Wilson, and he’s been a complete and utter bust. So I believe in the value of testing, I believe in the value of inquiring and doing your due diligence. But I honestly believe that at the end of the day, you get lucky, you get lucky, you don’t know you can’t really test for hustle, you can look for it in an experience. But I think again, I see people hire one person, it doesn’t work out and they say oh, that’s never going to work. And they don’t try again. You just have to keep trying. And like Tyson said, one of the great benefits of hiring all the time is that you can find people, I honestly think that if you’re thinking about hiring a person you hire two, because probably only one of them’s gonna work out.

Kara Vaval
You’re shaking your head. Yes. Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux
I mean, it’s the whole it’s was the especially the last thing that Jim said, you want to hire slow fire fast that that is there for a reason, because you are gonna get it wrong. Like we have a of all the lawyers that I know, I may have the most intense hiring process, right. But there are times that we have gotten it wrong, right, we put through people going through a ton of assessments, and a ton of tests. And through the interview after interview, and most of the time, we do get it right. But we do get it wrong from time to time. And just because we get it wrong doesn’t mean that our whole process is jacked up and it over. There’s something wrong with us. It’s just that people like it, that’s, that’s part of the process too, like people lying to you, right? They they will lie to your face. And that’s why you got to have such an intense hiring process. But the point is, is that you’re gonna make mistakes with this, that doesn’t mean you should stop hiring. The answer is hiring, you just got to continue to do it.

Kara Vaval
Awesome. Guys, this was great. I definitely would love to have another conversation similar to this. Any words of wisdom you want to leave for our listeners? Because, you know, this has been you’ve given us quite a bit of golden nuggets, but I’m gonna just take turns any one golden nugget to leave and then we’re going to wrap up.

Jim Hacking
Sure. Yeah, mine would be to give yourself a break. Don’t be hard on yourself. Don’t be worried about the mistakes or the things that you wish you’d done differently. You can’t look backwards and too many people go into the future looking behind them. And like Tyson said, You got to be forward focused. And and, as he said, trying to solve problems.

Tyson Mutrux
It’s funny you say that? Uh, my first thought was, it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. Whatever your situation is, it’s going to be okay. And since since Jim was basically the same thing, I’ll say this, figure out what you want, like sit actually sit down and spend as much time as as necessary. So that’s hours or days or weeks or years, figuring out what you want actually take the quiet time to figure that out. Figure that out that way in 20 years, you don’t have a bunch of regrets that way. You 20 years you don’t think oh my gosh, I should have been a criminal defense attorney, not a personal injury attorney. Right. actually sit down and do the vision work. And once you’ve done that, a lot of the other stuff will just fall into Lesson you won’t worry about all the nonsense.

Kara Vaval
I love it. This was awesome Tyson nutrix. And Jim hacking with a maximum lawyer, thank you so much for gracing us with your time with your knowledge with all of your golden nuggets, we will have the link to your event that’s coming up in October out here in Miami and just give us all your other stuff. Also, you know, and encouraging everyone to go follow the maximum lawyer on all social media platforms and get involved with what they’re doing. Because that’s, that’s what it’s all about. My whole Mo is really spreading the word on where the resources are, where the communities are, where we can really, you know, support one another in chasing our individual dreams. Because, you know, we went there, to law school, invested the time paid the money did all of that. And we want to succeed at what we’re doing. And we want to serve our clients well, and we want to feed our families well, and we want to have the lifestyle and we want to, you know, do what we went to school to do and successfully carry that out. But like you said in the beginning, Jim, you know, it’s very lonely, when you don’t have community and just hustling and doing this alone and trying to figure it out. So I’m big on getting the support, getting the community connection, getting the coaching, getting whatever it is that you need, reading the books, doing the work, and then you know, really adding value onto yourself so that you can be of better service to the people that you deliver your services to. And so, again, gentlemen, thank you for your time. This was awesome. Until next time.

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If you want to become the visionary of your law firm, there is this whole “big relationships” responsibility that falls on your shoulders as the business owner. 

The three top ways to super charge your relationships and networking efforts are: 

➡️ being a giver

➡️ being a connector

➡️ being the go to expert of your area 

Listen in as Joey deep dives into each of these three ways you can network easily, with a mindset shift, and practical action steps to get started today!  

Episode Highlights:

01:45 Meet Joey 

03:16 There are three things that you need to become in order to be a better networker – Number one: you need to be a giver – look for reasons to give encouragement 

8:46 Number two: is to be a connector

12:25 Number three: be the go to expert in your space

15:00 There is a large responsibility that falls on your shoulder as a law firm owner so a way to help is to make those connections!

Book:

The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Acer

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube.

Connect with Joey:

Resources:

Transcript: Supercharge Your Networking with Joey Vitale

Unknown Speaker
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2020. To keep listening to hear joy, vitality, as we share his talk supercharged your networking, you can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Let’s get to it.

Unknown Speaker
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.

Joey Vitale
Let’s talk networking. Who here loves networking? I want you to stand up, stand up. If you love networking, stand up. I figured it would be a minority in the group. But look around. Those are the people who you can just kind of walk over to they’ll be nice to you, they’ll treat you well. Okay, you guys can sit down. If you hate networking, stand up. I know that’s uncomfortable. Okay, I’m with you. I’m with you. Okay, you can sit back down. So in today’s presentation, I want to talk working in a way that can help both groups or if you’re in the middle. If you love networking, I hope that I can give you some strategies here to amplify it even more. If you hate networking. Over the years, I’ve come up with a way of doing it myself, because I don’t really love networking either. That really works really well. And just to paint a picture of how I literally got here on this stage. About five years ago, I was working at a law firm here in St. Louis, typical courtroom litigation work. And after working there for about two years, I realized, I’m not very good at this. I took some personality tests, I learned that I’m what’s called an Enneagram, nine, or a peacemaker type. I don’t like to argue. So I’m in the minority of lawyers. And I’m like, Oh, it makes sense that I wouldn’t like this courtroom work. So I started looking around my wife and I moved to Chicago. And I was thinking, okay, maybe the more I’m meeting other attorneys, the more I’m seeing these people who are starting their own firms, I never thought that I would start my own firm. But when I decided to go out on my own, I realized I didn’t know anybody in this space. Luckily, I got connected with Tyson and Jim, very early on in my career. Five years later, again, Brooks is a great friend of mine couldn’t make it here. So they asked me to be here. And that is because of the power of networking. You see, networking is great. I think supercharging your networking is even better. And so here are three key strategies that I’ve used over the years to really take my networking up a few notches. And the reality is how to improve your networking. It’s not just a matter of doing things differently. I love that I follow Alexis his talk here, because it’s really about getting over impostor syndrome and being someone different. And so there are really three things that you need to become to be a better stronger networker. So I want to talk about these three ways of being and I’ll couple it all with some action tips for all of you. The first is you need to be a giver. Now that sounds great, right? Like, oh, yeah, I’m a lawyer. It’s in my nature to give to others to serve. Being a giver sounds great. We all want to be givers, not just takers. The problem is, it’s really easy and natural for us as human beings to be takers. It’s great to be giving, and you know, thinking about donations to give to and very, you know, just generous with your time when you feel like you have more than enough time and money. But when time is short, when you don’t have a lot of money, when the world kind of sucks. It’s hard to put yourself in a mental space of being a giver. I was wrestling this a few years ago, and I came across this really great book called The Happiness Advantage. It’s written by an author named Shaun Aker, and his story is really interesting, because he is a Harvard professor, quick show of hands. Anybody here Harvard grads? We won’t we might be a little jealous of you. Any any hand raises? None. Okay. So how many of you wanted to go to Harvard? Or would have loved to have gone to Harvard? Okay, we’re seeing some hands raised. What’s really interesting about this book is he talks about how so many of the students at Harvard were unhappy, like seriously unhappy. It got to the point where he created what is now the most famous course on campus. It’s all about happiness. And so he has these, these tenants that he teaches, and one of them that I just thought was really, really fascinating. When Is this distinction between rose colored glasses, and rose tinted glasses. And before you think that I’m going into woowoo space, this isn’t some like lady who got high and wrote a book. This is a Harvard professor. And he pointed out that, at the end of the day, it’s really impossible to wear completely clear glasses. As much as we’re devoted to finding the truth, it’s impossible for us to see the truth without interpreting it some way, there is always some sense of interpretation. So what he says is, don’t wear rose colored glasses, don’t try to always just be overwhelmingly the glass is half positive, try and see the world as clearly as you can. But there’s always going to be a tint to the glasses. So choose to make them rose tinted glasses. So to be a giver, it really helps. If you put on rose tinted glasses first, then the world changes, it becomes much easier to be a giver. So I was working on this and I figured out a way that worked really well for me to really put this into practice. And I call them my morning, giving Sprint’s so this is on my calendar for 30 minutes every morning, where I go on to my computer, and I do very intentional social media giving. So I’ll go on to Facebook, go to their birthday page, wish people happy birthdays, and then DMS, I’ll look for reasons to congratulate people on a milestone or give support if they have maybe some bad news to share just doing what I can to be a giver in those space. I say that because a lot of times, it’s hard to reconcile these two things of wanting to be a giver, and building routines and habits of giving. There’s this quote that I love that I’m going to tweak a bit here of we don’t rise to the level of our good intentions, we fall to the clarity on our calendar. So it’s really powerful to actually put into your calendar, what you’re going to do to be in a giving state. Now, you don’t have to raise your hand here, but but raise your hand if you like this idea of having like a giving sprint to your mornings are some time in the day or in the week. Okay, great. So I’d actually like you all to stand up. Because as Tyson said, ideas are great. Not if you don’t execute. So we’re all going to it again, you don’t have to stand up. But if you are I want you to find a buddy. You can couple off maybe find a three pair if you’d like. But I want you after I’m done talking to find each other and watch each other, put this in your calendar, a 30 minute window where you are going to be good, you can figure out what that means. But it’s going to be on your calendar. Okay, you can sit back down. So that’s way of being number one be a giver. And you can use those giving strategies

Unknown Speaker
is apathy on his back. If you’re new around here, the ZAP 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 the guild today and grab your ticket at max slot events.com.

Joey Vitale
Number two, it’s related but it’s a connector. You see, it’s really common when people are networking to think about oh, I want to see how many new leads I can get here. I want to see what relationships I can create changes the game when you go to or any event with an initial mindset of how many connections can I make? How can I be a connector instead of someone who’s receiving things. It really just changes the game of how you are a useful asset to those around you. Again, this is something that people hear they’re like, oh, yeah, I want to be a connector. I want to start connecting more people. There are a few things here that I mentioned. And I’ll get to a really great thing that you guys can put into action. One of the things that I love doing and people in my network know that I do this a lot is connection emails. So I really want to quickly want to cover how I do this and how I take it to a next level that people tell me works really well. You see a lot of people will make some type of a connection email, but they make two mistakes. Either they don’t really clarify why they’re making the connection. Or they make the people that they’re connecting have to spend a lot of time and work to actually connect or figure out why they’re being connected. it. So when you’re sending these connection emails, it’s great to clarify in the body of the email and the subject line. What’s going on here? Is this a referral? Is this a collaboration opportunity? What else is that. And if you can, also, if you’re referring someone, this works really well find that person’s Calendly page, and include that in the email, make it super easy. So they don’t have to go back and forth and find a time the person can just get on their calendar. If you’re looking for any templates on how to do that, let me know I have a few different versions of connection emails that I send all the time. Now, some of you might be thinking connection sounds great. But it also sounds like a lot of work. I know a lot of people. And recently, I was working with a business owner as a consulting client. And we were talking about this, he loved the idea of managing his connections, connecting them to each other. But he’s got a big business. And he knows tons of people. And he was like, How can I again, put this on my calendar, have a routine have a process so that I’m actually doing this, because there needs to be a process or else I’m not actually going to make all of these connections. And so we talked a little while we conversation went in some interesting directions. And then we talked about this area of science, of trot of tribe, data, tribe science, tribal studies, that have found that it’s really natural for us as human beings, to have great human connections and tribes at either 150 people or below. And after that point, it’s really hard to maintain these relationships. So instead of having this guy tried to stay on top of all of his 1000s of connections, we figured out who was top 150, people were, you know, that sounds like a lot, you can go with your top 100 Or your top 50 Doesn’t really matter it by the way, if you can’t think of your top 50 just meet people at this conference, and you’ll find them pretty quickly. But what’s great is when you really focus on connecting other people to your top 100, or top 50, or 150, and connecting them to each other, the rest of it kind of takes care of itself. So the pressure can be off, that can be a really great way to kind of hack this way of being in and show yourself as a connector. Which brings me to the third way of being for really supercharging the way that you are networking. And that is to be the go to expert. Now, as lawyers, and there are all types of talks happening here about how you can show up and be the expert in your space. There are all kinds of ways to do it, you can write a book, you can do a podcast or a live show, I want to highlight one way of being a go to expert that has meant a lot to me and totally changed the way that I do business. And that is through Facebook groups. So when I launched my my law firm, again, like I said, I really didn’t know that many people. But we figured out a really cool niche of a business owner client that we could serve, we started a Facebook group. And after a few months, we had 7000 members in the Facebook group. And there’s something really special about not only being seen as a go to expert, but being a leader in that space that really can kind of shortcut your way to being seen as that go to expert. And I want to follow what I preach here. Because Liz, can you come up. So Liz is on my team, she’s in my top 100 She’s probably in my top 10. Liz is a type of expert. And it’s really rare to find. But she’s a Facebook group and community expert. So she’s helped me and she helps other people in the room, make sure that they’re building a really great Facebook group, that they’re becoming that go to leader that they’re building a sense of community that they’re doing it in a strategic way, our firm has grown in ways that I can’t even imagine with the help of building our own group that makes my team and myself being seen as a leader in that space. If that sounds like something that your firm might be interested in, I’d love for you to meet Liz. So your action item here is to talk to Liz at some point in the conference if you’re interested. And she can help you clarify whether a Facebook group might make sense for your firm or not. Do you have anything to share? Thank you. She’s also a great photographer so she can take great like selfies or whatever. If you feel like you’re not good at taking pictures of yourself with other people. So that’s all that I have for you guys today. But those are the top again, it’s not about changing these little tips and tricks. If you really want to become the visionary that you want to be. This doesn’t get talked about a lot in traction, all these other books about business growth. But when it comes to being the visionary of your law firm, yes, you have to cast the vision And, but there’s this whole big relationships, responsibility that falls on your shoulders as the business owner. And I haven’t found any other, better ways of showing up and being to cultivate those bigger relationships than being a giver being a connector and being the go to expert. Thanks.

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.

When you reach that point in your business that you are ready to hire an associate — How do you make that decision? How do you make sure the payment is there? How can you make the process smooth?
 
What if you are worried about what you will do with your time after to make your hire? What will you do if you are not sure if you have full time work guaranteed? Do you ask your new hire to bring in new leads of their own?
 
This is what Jim and Tyson talk about and coach Jeremy through as he troubleshoots the next steps that he needs to take in his business as he scales up the work to more than he can handle, and hires an associate.
 
Listen in to Jeremy, Jim and Tyson as they walk through how Jeremy can avoid mistakes of the past, where 80% of his work was reliant on one client referral, and what Jeremy and his firm do now to make sure that his sources are well diversified and ready for his new hire.

Summary:

01:39 Meet Jeremy and his law firm that he started in 2015 and a reset in 2019 

05:16 How did Jeremy get 20 referral sources?

06:31 Advice for people to ask for referrals?

09:01 Topic of the day – What is the right way to bring on and pay an associate? And the reality of owning a business 

13:28 Where does the fear of not hiring come from?

15:25 Using Profit First in your business

17:00 Should I expect an associate to bring leads of their own?! What associates want – and what you need to do …   

20:03 The first cycle of hiring and the fear that comes with it 

22:47 Subconsciously allowing our own capacity, to limit our business development activities 

27:00 Having incentives for your employees to work for you …

28:30 Start making “finding clients” a part of your week right now even before the associate is hired

Jim Hack: Read the book: The Third Door

Jeremy’s Tip: The Guild –  Read the book: The Power of One More  

Tyson’s Tip: For law firm owners that want to build a culture of learning – start a non-fiction book club like: Becoming Bulletproof  

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube. https://youtu.be/HRPQ9zLShaM

Connect with Jeremy:

Resources:

Transcript: Should Your New Hire Bring Their Own Leads?

Unknown Speaker
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.

Tyson Mutrux
And I’m Tyson nutrix. What’s up Jimmy

Jim Hacking
Tyson. It’s so funny. We don’t do any recordings for weeks at a time. And then today we’re doing five or six, I like this model. But I do enjoy also spending the whole day with you

Tyson Mutrux
the same, it’s interesting. So the first show we did this is our third of the day. And the last one, we were guests. But the first one, you had to take a second to kind of remember how to say things because it’s been about a month. And so it is interesting how it works every time we do it. I like the way we do it. We can knock out a bunch of the day. And it’s easier for scheduling and everything. It is sometimes like I kind of miss talking to you. Luckily we have the Saturday show that we can talk to each other in the guild. So that helps supplement my knee.

Jim Hacking
I’m excited about our guests today, he raised an interesting question. And you and I were going to do a solo episode. And then I thought, Well, hey, why not just have him on to discuss his firm and its practice. He’s a member of The Guild. His name’s Jeremy Danielson, and we’re glad to have him. Welcome, Jeremy.

Jeremy Danilson
Thank you, Jason. I’m looking forward to the conversation. We can help other members of The Guild and other attorneys and I’m excited to be a part of it.

Tyson Mutrux
So Jeremy, before we get to that, though, tell people who you are what you do, and a little bit about your journey. All right.

Jeremy Danilson
Jeremy Danielson lives outside of Des Moines, Iowa and run a residential real estate transactions, law practice with my wife, I’d be considered the CEO, she’s the CEO. And we have two other team members as well. So started in 2015, and had a reset in 2019. For reasons we may or may not get into. And then it’s growing. Now it’s time to, we’ve got the systems and processes in place, it’s time to start growing.

Jim Hacking
But let’s get into the reset. That sounds intriguing. What happened?

Jeremy Danilson
Well, 2019, I probably learned one of the most valuable lessons as a business owner to diversify your referral sources. January 19, we lost our primary referral sources 85% of our business. So Sarah, and I had to make a really hard decision. It was just her right at the time, Sarah and my wife? Do we keep doing this building this thing that we’ve been working on for four years? Or start building it really? Or do I go get a job with another firm? And we made the hard decision start over basically. And now we probably have 18 to 20 referral sources? We’ve added two team members and red poised for a big year this year.

Jim Hacking
Jeremy, what was it like when you got that call that you’re losing the client? And then what did you do immediately? Because we actually had someone in the guild at the mastermind, I don’t know if you were in their group or not. But the exact same thing happened to them in the exact same kind of practice area. So any advice you would have for them as they’re in those weeks after you got that call? What advice would you have for them? Or what? What did you do?

Jeremy Danilson
Sarah and I we got on the phone with our coach, because I got 30 days notice from the client that they were taking the business to a bigger firm. So we had a little bit of the time, but we had to figure out how we were gonna get the message out that we were gonna stay in business that we wanted to help more people. And we probably initially started saying yes to more work outside of this niche for a small period of time, doing some wills doing some entity formation for real estate investors, and quickly learned we were able to keep it stable. But it was probably an initial focus right on marketing efforts just trying to get we did a postcard mailing campaign we did. That’s when we probably started our newsletters in earnest, just monthly newsletters, but just to start to get the word about us because we were tied so closely in our market to that one referral source we needed to show We’re an independent law firm that can help more than that one type of business that was really

Tyson Mutrux
the beginnings of getting that message out. I think this can be a really valuable lesson to listeners. So can you talk a little bit about how you got yourself into that bind? Because I think that might be the lesson that we’d like. Yeah, getting out of it’s one thing but talk about what led you to that bind?

Jeremy Danilson
Yeah, I graduated law school December of 11. And my first job was as a corporate counsel for a commercial real estate company. And I was there a couple years and made a decision to make a change from that firm, or that company because they weren’t growing. So I opened my own law firm understanding this referral sources can be my primary source of business, but I honestly I became content. I had enough business to create a job for myself, those first few years that started in 2015. After a couple of years, I was my wife got tired of seeing me work till midnight. So she started helping me in taking in so we had enough revenue to pay for take care of our family. But I didn’t challenge myself to diversify to help other people because I just assumed all of that business would always keep coming in for the rest of forever. I didn’t we didn’t do it when we lost the business. It wasn’t because of any No fault of our own. And that was probably the biggest assumption or mistake I made is if we did good work that we would keep getting that business. And that’s not always the case.

Jim Hacking
That’s an excellent point. So how did you then start beating the bushes to get up to 20 referral sources like you have now,

Jeremy Danilson
I think the one good thing that came out of those first four years is that we were really communicative as a real estate firm, which is communication is the most important in transactional work. And we had a good reputation with other attorneys, other closing agents in the market. So when we were able to get the message out that we were open for business and independent, people started taking chances on us. And really what we did, and I give Sarah a lot of credit for this, as she asked for business, one lender, and one loan officer took a chance on us and said, I still want to use this closing agent. But can we do our title work with you? I said, Absolutely. He wanted to work with local attorneys, his attorney was in a different part of the state. And he took a chance on us. And that allowed us to get some of that work. And then we could slowly start to pursue more leads sources like that. And it’s been a little bit at a time over those four years or so that we’ve just, you have to ask for the work, it’s not going to come to you magically. So it’s

Tyson Mutrux
really interesting that you bring this up because we did a a training, or weekly training in our firm last yesterday was about like, how can we generate referrals? Right, so how can employees generate referrals? It was a fun little presentation. But one of the tips that I had read somewhere was that, you know, making sure you ask for it. And for injury stuff. It’s pretty uncomfortable. I don’t know. It’s kind of it’s for me, it kind of feels weird to ask for referrals. Can you give some advice to people on like asking for referrals, like what that’s like, I mean, and I know my business is different than yours, but I’m sure we can still utilize that tool.

Jim Hacking
I think, oh,

Jeremy Danilson
credit where credit’s due to Sarah is better at that than I am. She is fearless when it comes to socializing, networking and asking people to help them. But her primary play is differentiating us telling these potential referral sources how we do things differently. Our number one focus is creating as the client experience, whether it’s for the loan officer for the realtor, for the closing agent for the buyer or seller. So tell them how we’re doing things differently from other law firms in the market. And because we’re doing things differently that makes a light bulb go off or that that piques their curiosity, and then they want to hear more. And that gives you an opportunity to have a more in depth conversation. So I think it’s important to show how you’re different or, or want to do things better than the traditional model in whatever area of practice you’re in.

Jim Hacking
As we segue into the question that you wanted to raise Jeremy, talk to us a little bit about how legal work gets completed at your firm.

Jeremy Danilson
So Danelle is our legal assistant, she is the voice of the firm. She’s our intake specialist, the first person that anybody talks to when they call, and we have everything run through our CRM. So from the time a person calls, they will talk to the nella five minutes after they call, they get an automatic text message that says thank you for reaching out, here’s a link to our five star reviews, but to see what some recent clients have said about us, but I think it’s important to show gratitude that they took a chance to call you to show the client that you want to earn their work that they’re lucky to get to talk to you. And then they also go through a funnel. Our goal when a potential new client comes in is to convert them have a sign engagement letter within a week. So we have email and text communication over that first week with an effort to get them on board. After that, then they whatever type of work it is, it’s always real estate transactions with buyer seller, they’ll funnel into a different pipeline within that same CRM, we don’t use a law practice management system, it’s all through the CRM to funnel them through specific stages where we have email snippets built out to where my entire team can run transactions, and only bring me in when the matter gets complicated, or there’s an actual legal question to answer. My invested time with clients on these flat fee transactions is probably a 20 minute meeting at the end of the process, because my entire team takes care of it from intake until closing.

Tyson Mutrux
I love the work that you’ve done on that. That’s incredible. I think that if people just listen to that part of the episode and follow your advice on that, I think that it’s a lot of valuable information there. But let’s talk about what sort of brings you on to the episode or on the podcast. What is the topic that you brought up? And let’s let’s dig into it. All right,

Jeremy Danilson
so we have hired before legal assistant and paralegal and we hire our core values first. I feel like I can teach I’ve done every job within our firm. So I can teach anybody the skills to do that job. But you there’s a certain caliber, a quality person we want to join our team, then we’ve been successful in that in our first few hire external hires, non family member hires. It’s time and I’ve been thinking about this for over a year to hire an associate. And again, for the third time in a row, now I’ve got this pit in my stomach, can I afford it? Is that the right time to do it? And if we’re going to do it, I need to decide how we’re going to compensate that associate what are the right ways to bring on and pay an associate when it’s always going to feel uncomfortable to make additional financial commitments? It’s important to me whenever I make a promise to another family that we know we can keep that promise indefinitely. I don’t want to make a promise that we’re not prepared to keep

Jim Hacking
So one of the things that we talked about or that you raised and what piqued my interest was whether or not you should have that associate plan on bringing in business of their own. And so, before we get to that, though, I want to I just want to touch on my thoughts as far as the indefinite plan of paying them. I mean, I appreciate that loyalty in advance before you hire someone, but at the same time, what if you had hired someone, the 31st Day before you lost that 85% client, right? So you never know. So I think that, you know, wanting it to work, wanting to do everything to make it work, and being loyal to them and trying to set them up for success and having in your heart the intention of if I make this offer, that it’s going to work, I think that’s different than working with your spouse in lots of ways. But I don’t think you have to have that same level of loyalty, just because you never know what’s going to happen.

Jeremy Danilson
I think that’s fair in this. Fortunately, to date, I haven’t had to make a decision like that I’m realistic, and there’s nothing that will happen at some point, if I grow this firm the way I see it growing. And that’s the reality of running a business.

Jim Hacking
So just real quick, can you clarify, like how many cases are coming in, and then are they flat fee, I would imagine they’re flat fee. And it’s probably I would imagine a little bit of a higher volume.

Jeremy Danilson
So here’s the trick and where the anxiety comes from. And we touched on this in my mastermind last week, we have two more referral sources, one very large one in the queue ready to go that have committed, but the orders haven’t started coming in. There’s their launch in the program, February 10, and today’s February 2. So it’s uncomfortably because we don’t have the work right now, to make an offer, so to speak, until I see the order starts coming. I know we have a verbal commitment. And I have no reason to doubt that that new referral sources coming in the referral sources going to be a 60% increase in revenue, annual revenue, if they come in as promised. So I was willing, when I shared mastermind is I was willing to be the sacrificial lamb for a period of time to be overburdened with work, to get our financial picture to a place where I’m comfortable. But then I was quickly told that’s short sighted. And if I want to bring on an associate in three months, I need to start the hiring process now or earlier than now. So that’s probably a little more background to help fill in this picture. It’s that big referral source that’s coming that hasn’t shown up yet. But I want you to prepare for it.

Tyson Mutrux
So do you have enough work now, though? And I’m not sure if I’m 100% clear on this? Do you have enough work now to feed that attorney? The if you brought on a new one?

Jeremy Danilson
No, I can handle everything that’s coming in right now.

Jim Hacking
Today, that’s a different answer, it is a different answer. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean that an associate couldn’t do it. And you could go out and find 20 Other referral sources, spend your time doing that, if that’s what you want to do.

Jeremy Danilson
In the last six months, I’ve been for the first time we’ve started marketing, and I’ve started doing business development and presentations at conferences. And that’s been a lot of fun. These business development conversations, I think, is my highest value not in doing the reading the abstraction, doing the title commitments. I think getting to the place where I’m financially comfortable to transition in more in that direction. I think that’s just a scary moment, I’m going to have to swallow my fear and make that step. And in real estate transactions, winter is slower, it’s starting to pick up I think that would be an easier fear to swallow in March when I see all this stuff in the queue, as opposed to today when it’s always slow this time of year.

Tyson Mutrux
Follow up with that, though. Yeah. Because you are beating around the bush, could you pull a trigger today and hire someone and be able to afford it for that person? And then free up your time to do the other work? So do you have the capability of doing that now,

Jeremy Danilson
financially, I don’t want to pay another attorney and myself today to do the work that’s being done today. I don’t feel comfortable today, to make that kind of a

Tyson Mutrux
gym. I’ll let you take a shot.

Jim Hacking
I understand that. I understand. Where does that come from? Where does that. I mean, I’m probably the opposite of you, Jeremy. So like, I’d be hiring this person, even without the 60% increase coming down the pike. I’m probably way too optimistic. My wife would tell you that I am. Right. So but with this train coming of future work, and as you said, you have no reason to think it’s not going to come. It’s going to take you six, eight weeks to hire somebody. So I guess when I was listening to you, in my mind when someone’s in that boat you’re in right now. And you said you were willing to be the sacrificial lamb and do a little bit of extra work to be extra busy for a while when you said that. It was an interesting thing to hear. But also I said to myself, well, it seems like when you’re in that position that Jeremy’s in, you either have to be ready to spend money or work more one or the other. Because if more works about to come, one of those two things has to happen. You either need to hire someone and maybe make a little bit less for a while, or you’re gonna have to do some more work and do it yourself. I’m always trying to find other people to do my work. And if you think that in the long run, you’re have three attorneys working for you, then I would just rather start that process sooner rather than later and get that train moving, because you’re gonna need that momentum. And you got a great thing coming of this new client that’s gonna, you know, be a big chunk of revenue for you. That’s just how I would handle it. But But not everybody’s like me.

Jeremy Danilson
Last piece of background and Tyson heard this last week, we went to proc we switch over to Profit First, say five months ago. And I try to be as transparent as possible to help as many people as possible today. Prior to that I was probably bleeding the firm dry with remember distributions, it’d be structured in that approach. And I love the consistency and the format or formula that profit first has given us but we haven’t reached our target percentages yet. And I feel like we need to be busy for a short period of time to get those target percentages on operating expenses, and owners compensation everything to where they need to be. That’s probably where my discomfort comfort comes from. And I’ve watched some of the associated Academy videos this week and looking at as an associate hires a law firm or lawyer extender, and the opportunity to actually be able to create more revenue for my firm will probably help us reach those target percentages faster. And I just probably just need to make the move. And I’ve got a candidate actually which we can get into also, prior to posting a job posting.

Tyson Mutrux
Alright, so I’m a little little hesitant to suggest this because I’ve never done this. But I wonder what your thoughts on you talk this through? What are your thoughts on making that offer, but making it with with being pretty open about it saying, Hey, I’m offering this to you, on the basis that we are expecting to this big clients going to come into this business? Yeah. Jim, is Jim shaking his head?

Jim Hacking
Well, so this gets to the ultimate issue that I want to talk to Jeremy about. And what I really

Tyson Mutrux
because I think being open about it is important, right? But I would also wouldn’t want to say it’s like hat Yeah, hire the person. And then in two months, you have to fire the person cuz you own the business. So I’m curious like, Okay, Jim, what, like, Where were you going with that? Because I’m well,

Jim Hacking
so this is what piqued my interest when Jeremy texted me the question and that is this in Jeremy’s question was about should I expect an associate to bring in business of their own? Right. And so, to me, this is a question that I used to talk to my father about all the time. So my father, sort of my role model, he didn’t finish high school, but he became the head of marketing at an architectural engineering firm. And then he left that architectural engineering firm and started a new one with an architect. And they grew that to 150 people, and they had offices in other cities just like I do, they grew to 150 people. And I would say, Dad, you know, you got that team in Philadelphia, aren’t you worried about them? Taking the office over and just cutting you guys out? And he said, Jimmy, you have to understand something. I said, What Eddie said, They’re not like us. They’re not like us. So associates don’t want to be told, Oh, it’s a shaky situation. I don’t know if the 60% business is going to come through, oh, hey, we want you to bring in business because we’re not sure what associates want. And what most employees want is stability, and the sure thing, and they’re not entrepreneurs, right? They’re not thinking like entrepreneurs, they want to clock in, clock out. They want to come to their job, they want stability. Now, there are some associates that do think entrepreneurial, but Ryan McKean can tell you, and others can tell you that those people tend to leave, right like so if they’re inclined that way. So I think you want to maximize the power of them wanting a sure thing, and you don’t want to do anything to de emphasize the stability of the firm. And I think you’d start off I agree with transparency. But that’s part of the burden of ownership is taking on that burden of holding that responsibility that the 60% might not come but Jeremy, I am 100% sure that if on a dime, you can go from having one client to 20. And you’ve got 21 Come in. And number 21 is as big as 18 or 17 of the ones you already have. I have every confidence that if you gave that associate the work from this new company and the new client and the work that you are doing yourself, then like you said, you’re gonna be on your highest value work and bringing in more business. I think the sky’s the limit

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Jeremy Danilson
I think I agree and it’s just it’s getting over that pit in my stomach again that I got over with the first few hires and those first few hires and make I think I don’t know if I have enough work for when I fill them up right away. And they’re the best decisions I’ve ever made. And it’s just the same cycle I’ve gone through twice before, but it feels bigger because it’s a first attorney hire other than myself.

Jim Hacking
What does your wife say? It’s interesting.

Jeremy Danilson
I came back from Guild and she’s helped me move this forward. As far as what we did this one potential candidate, I have been talking to you about three months on other business development concepts. We’re working on getting PDF abstracts across the state. And he’s helped us do engage that because he’s a former abstractor, I put a question in front of them said, Are you are you interested in becoming a contract attorney for us and helping on a part time basis? Are you more interested in becoming a full time team member we’ve worked, we’ve met twice before and have detailed conversations and he meets our core values. And he responded back saying he’s interested in being a full time team member. So now it’s time to put him in that funnel or process of what it looks like to decide if he’s the right candidate for this position. I’ve got I still gotta put him in front of my team. And we’ve got to go through the regular hiring process. I don’t want to bypass just because of a gut feeling, our hiring process and the decision making or decision matrix we have to go through to make sure he’s the right foot.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that never rush the hiring process. I’ve done it. Jim’s done it. It’s bad mistake. I think Jim’s done it. But real quick answer this question really quick. And I’m ask a follow up. What’s the turnaround time when it comes to getting money from one of these clients?

Jeremy Danilson
That’s it roughly 30 to 45 days. Okay, so we get paid at closing, okay. Like, if

Tyson Mutrux
they were me, if I were you like, Okay, I would be focusing all my time, because I can’t go out and generate car crashes, I can’t do it, right. But if I could, you better believe I would. So if I were you, in hiring this person is gonna be it’s gonna put some pressure on you. And I think it’s gonna be valuable pressure, hire the person, you spend all your damn time driving around that state generate business, like, that’s your job. Now you’re, you’re going to generate that business. And like, I would call that that client that you have a whale, right, that’s probably a whale. And maybe not all of them are going to be whales, but you’re gonna have some pretty damn big fish that you can, you can attract. And you can target. And it sounds like a lot of your business might be a lot of those lunches and coffees that you need to have and have shaken hands and all that I would be driving around the state trying to serve that business. If I were you, I think that there’s a lot of value in that.

Jeremy Danilson
I have to do that. Because my biggest flaws and business owner to date has been becoming content with whatever our position is at that time. And it would be really easy to be content right now with this new wheel coming in. Or even with one associate hire, I need to keep my foot on the pedal so that the 2019 mistake never happens again. Yeah, because

Tyson Mutrux
you have a track record of it. Right? That’s right, you got to get past that, because that was my when you first mentioned anything like this is the same problem, right? Like, you’re you’re putting yourself in the same situation. And you’ve got to find a way but put a bumpers to put up, put a wall around yourself put a moat around the firm. To prevent that from happening. Again,

Jeremy Danilson
I subconsciously allow my own capacity to limit our business development activities. And that’s, I recognize that now. And I can’t let it continue to happen.

Jim Hacking
I think that’s a great lesson from the episode. I mean, just the reliance, the I’m sure there’s a lot of lawyers listening, that are too reliant on one client or referral source. I’ve seen it time and time again, there was a lawyer in our office who was beholden to a senior partner for all of his business, and that senior partner abused the crap out of him. So, you know, anytime you’re out of whack, you know, and not having enough clients, it’s going to set yourself up for problems. So I think, I think that’s a great insight. And I think that no one’s going to know that better than you like you’ve learned that lesson. I don’t, I’m not worried about this new client coming in and giving you 60% of the business because you’re gonna go out and get 10 more. That’s why That’s how you beat that back.

Jeremy Danilson
They agree 1,000%, we’ve done a lot of work over the last two years to be different and humbly better than every other law firm in the state. And now we just have to get that message out. So we can help more people in Iowa.

Tyson Mutrux
So we’ve we’ve talked a lot about this associate. So let’s let’s talk a little bit about what are you gonna do about it, right, so let’s talk about the hiring process and getting this person in the seat and actually getting them doing the work and what needs to take place over the next few months for you to successfully hire this person and get them up to speed so you can go out and do the valuable work.

Jeremy Danilson
So this first candidate, we need to put them in front of the team without me in the room to allow the team to evaluate their core values. And I believe they fit the core values, but I need to get feedback from the team. At least that’s what I’ve done in the past. And then we need to I need to draw out that process for an associate or compare it to my past processes for the paralegal legal system. But I have to write out what those next steps are to put them through this funnel or hiring process to for us both to get to a decision where it’s good for both the associates and for firm.

Jim Hacking
That’s great. That’s great. I do want to step back just real quick and hear from Tyson his thoughts on lawyers who expect associates to bring in business.

Tyson Mutrux
Oh, yeah, I guess we kind of we kind of buried the lead there. I do think you’re right, Jim, that if you hire People with the mindset, okay, I expect you to bring in a big bulk of the business, I think that you’re setting yourself up for failure, because those are generally the people that are very entrepreneurial. And they’re the ones that are really kind of setting it up so they can start their own shop. And there’s some value in having those people if you want, but I think for longevity, I think Jim’s right, I think you need to be looking for people that are a little bit more stable. But with that in mind, I think that you can build in tools to help it make it easier for people to refer cases to them or refer matters to them. That was the whole point of our meeting yesterday, or training yesterday at the firm about obtaining referrals, is making it easier for our employees to get referrals and, and creating that referral culture. So I think that you can you could do this in other ways, where you’re not saying, Hey, you must bring in X number of cases every single month. But I think that you can build that referral culture inside of your firm. And that would, that lets clients know, yeah, people refer us cases. And I think that there’s some value to that. But I do think it is a dangerous proposition, Jim, that if you if you make that like one of the main KPIs, you’re definitely set yourself up for failure, especially if based on your type of business. Let’s say that your associate brings in a whale, okay, they bring in a whale, what’s to stop them from just saying, bye, I’m gonna go take this whale over here, that’s plenty of money for me, because I’m gonna get plenty of business. And I don’t like to operate under that fear mindset. But you need to have enough of those whales enough those clients that that’s not gonna hurt you if it does happen.

Jeremy Danilson
I agree, I don’t think I need to expect a new associate to bring in business because that’s my highest value. So this will free me up to do more of that. I’m confident in that. Now,

Tyson Mutrux
I do think we need to have that open conversation, though, about what we’re talking about earlier today, Jim, but employees are like they’re after the panel after the pandemic, they’ve kind of had that reset, where they don’t feel as great about going and working in someone else’s office and making making money for someone else. So I do think that that we do kind of have to have that conversation about, you know, still incentivizing your employees for making money for bringing in cases, that’s something I do think you need to consider because people aren’t all about just working in someone else’s office anymore. There’s a lot of people that are starting new firms and new businesses, because they’re kind of sick of being in the grind.

Jim Hacking
I think it’s all about what the associates focus is going to be. Obviously, if you want to pay referral fees to attorneys who bring in a little bit of business, that’s great. But if you want them out there beating the bushes and signing up clients that just doesn’t do you much good in the long run.

Jeremy Danilson
I want them doing the legal work to free me up to go beat the bushes and shake hands and do presentations. Yep.

Tyson Mutrux
How are you feeling? Now Jeremy, like now that we’ve talked through a little bit, what are your thoughts like what’s on your mind,

Jeremy Danilson
I am feeling confident that I need to outline what the hiring process is going to be for this associate what their next steps are going to be so that I can get an email back to him and say, here’s the process, we’re going to go through, what is your desired timeline to be able to leave because he’s got the practices of his own. It’s very, it’s baby steps. And he’s only reopened about six months ago. But what is his transition look like? And what is our transition look like to be get him ready to work with us. And I’ve got to draw that out. So that I can take him through a defined process that feels really good and comfortable to him. So he so we present ourselves as organized and focused and capable of giving him the support that he needs to be successful in the practice of law,

Jim Hacking
I would spend a little bit of time Jeremy now, right now, I would build two or three hours into my week of pretending that the 60% client doesn’t come because you’re gonna feel more comfortable if you’re bringing in more business. So even now, just start making that part of your routine so that you’re not overly reliant on the client that may or may not come. And that your that’s going to help you feel better and more secure. And this decision you’re about to take. I like that

Jeremy Danilson
a lot. Yeah, focus time every week and keep that pedal to the metal, so to speak, and keep growing and looking for additional referral sources. That’s got to be in every week activity nada. When the when the plane flies by type thing.

Jim Hacking
well runs dry. Yep. All right, Jamie,

Tyson Mutrux
hopefully, you got some information from this. I really appreciate you being vulnerable too, because I think there’s some valuable lessons in here that for for new law firm owners and current law firm owners that that’s going to really help them out. But we’re going to wrap things up before I do. I want to remind everyone to join us in the Facebook group, just a lot of great activity every single day. If you want a more high level conversation with people like Jeremy, go to max law guild.com. And if you get value from these podcast and from the Facebook group, if you’ll leave us a five star review, we would so much appreciate it because it helps spread our love to other law firm owners that are in need. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking
My hack of the week comes from a friend of the show Joy vitality. It’s a book by a guy named Alex Vinayan called the third door it’s about this crazy college kid who decided that he wanted to sort of redo thinking grow rich, but by interviewing current entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and all this stuff, and he this is like a 20 year old kid. He went on prices, right? And he won on prices, right? And then he used the proceeds to sort of start this project. The story is really fun, the kids sort of crazy in the and the adventures that he had with different people that you know of it’s sort of eye opening, and I immediately bought it for my 20 year old son, and he’s enjoying it. So it’s a fun read. It’s called the third door. Lots of good little lessons in there.

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. That’s cool. I will check that out. Jeremy, you know the routine? Do you have a tip or a hack for us?

Jeremy Danilson
I do real quick. My willingness to be vulnerable today comes directly from my interaction with other guild members, everyone’s willingness to share is a huge opportunity to learn. And it’s been tremendous from my growth as a business owner over the last six months since joining my tip of the week is a book it’s called The Power of One more by Ed my let it is a mindset book, whether you’re trying to make a change in your life, or they’re going through something difficult when you’re you’re thinking about giving up just don’t focus on too far in the future, focus on what you can do today to keep going. So if you’re struggling with your firm, don’t quit today is a decision if you’re trying to quit drinking, don’t have a drink today, if you want to eat more healthy or exercise, what do you do today to succeed and that goal, just one day at a time, one thing at a time, one personal relationship at a time. And I had fallen back on that several times over the last year. And it’s been really helpful

Tyson Mutrux
because that a new book came out in the last year. Okay, I’ve not heard of it. So to check that one,

Jim Hacking
I hadn’t heard of it either. Jeremy mentioned, and then I just got an email from Andy for Sela and had my lead about this coaching that they have. So that’s really funny. Holy

Tyson Mutrux
hell. That’s crazy. What a coincidence. My tip of the week is for law firm owners that want to build a culture of learning in your firm. And something that is sort of naturally popped up in our firm is a book club. And so we’ve started a book club and our first book that we read, I picked the first book, and I said that it could not be a fiction book. And it had to be nonfiction and be sort of like self help. And so I chose becoming bulletproof, which is a fantastic book if you’ve not read it, and the book club has been so well received. And so we what we did is we bought the book for everybody if they wanted to audiobook, we got them audiobook if they wanted a Kindle book, we got a Kindle book, if they wanted a physical one, I use the physical one, we got everyone a physical book, and it was really well received. And then as funny when we first launched ours, I noticed that Ryan Ryan may have had his for a while Ron McCain. I don’t know when he started his but I noticed that they have one p star with a fiction book on letting people vote on the next book. So we’re going to read a book a month. It’s pretty exciting. And it’s just it’s kind of cool hearing people talking about it. We have a little book club meeting. It was a lot of fun. So I recommend doing that. Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on, man. Really, really appreciate it. Lots of fun talking to you.

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Feeling some days like an imposter? We get it! And feel it too. In today’s episode, taken from MaxLawCon 2022, our guest Alexis Austin is teaching us all about using that feeling of imposter syndrome and working with it to make your law firm a better business. 

Not only does Alexis go over HOW you can embrace this feeling that most of us don’t want to feel but she also goes over why it’s a good thing and what we can look for when we feel this way. Hint: it’s a red flag to investigate and improve an area on your business on what she call “the 3 Pillars.” Listen in!

Episode Highlights:

02:44 Flip the script on your imposter feeling syndrome and trade your resource for this … 

04:17 The three pillars of your business and how to hone in …

05:40 The first p – Product as legal services 

07:51 The 2nd pillar – People and what they care about; flexibility, workspace and non-attorney to name a few …

11:16 The 3rd pillar – the Process … let’s make it easier! 

Links Mentioned: 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube. 

Connect with Alexis:

Resources:

Transcript: Using Imposter Syndrome To Your Advantage with Alexis Austin

Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2022. To keep listening to hear Alexis Austin as we share her talk, using imposter syndrome to your advantage in the three P’s of business. 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 metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Alexis Austin
Hi, good morning, everyone. I think it’s a little ironic that they will put me up as the first breakout when I’m talking about impostor syndrome way to feed into it, Jim, thank you so much for that. I’m here to talk to you all about making sure that you are using your imposter syndrome as your secret weapon rather than your dirty little secret. And disclaimer, this is for people who want to run a business that happens to provide legal services. So if you’re wanting to learn anything about the law, don’t talk to me go somewhere else. Alright, let’s dive right in. Show hands who here has felt like an imposter before? If anyone is not raising their hand? I’m calling you out because you’re in posturing right now. Everyone, at some point in their life has always felt more felt like an imposter in some way. You know, when I first came to max law con three years ago, I thought that I was the dumbest person in the room, people were throwing around these acronyms like KPIs and ROIs and MPT, I’m like, I don’t know what this is. It’s like the military. So when I was sitting in there, and I was listening to all this, one of the things that most impressed me, even though I didn’t know a whole lot, was how vulnerable people were being and just kind of opening up about their law practice. So in keeping in that, I want to be very vulnerable with you guys and let you know, I feel like an impostor right now. I’m shaking all over. I’m very nervous. So if I fall on my face, please just laugh it off. It’s part of the show. While the while we’re going through this, I do want to also open up and tell you, it’s okay to be an impostor. Embrace it. This is our secret weapon. So I’m gonna embrace it hardcore. And tell you some of the stories I was telling myself while I was preparing these slides. It’s gonna be real vulnerable. This is what I think someone who talks at max law con looks like if you guys don’t know, this is Olivia Pope. She is my spirit animal. She’s a powerhouse. She’s got a white hat, her matching outfit, she’s exuding confidence. And then while I was building these slides, this is what I feel like I am. But we’re gonna talk about how we deal with these feelings of impostor syndrome. So even if we look like at with a fancy hat on, we can still have a uber successful law firm practice. So one of my favorite quotes comes from the law man, Bill Romanski. He tells us to flip it like a pancake. When you’re dealing with something, you just flip the script and that’s what I want to do today is we’re gonna flip the script on your impostor feelings syndromes. Our goal as legal entrepreneurs is not to be the jack of all trades. Rather, our goal is to trade our resources for the jacks or the Benjamins. So one of the things that I’ve noticed is when people are talking about impostor syndrome, I’m so glad that Elise talked right before I did, because she was bringing out these feelings of impostor syndrome that we all deal with. But I’ve noticed people kind of talk about it in hushed tones. It’s like in The Guild, you’re talking to someone Oh, yeah, I also have some imposter syndrome. But it’s kind of kept hush hush. And we treat it like our dirty little secret. But what if, instead of it being your dirty little secret, it was actually your secret weapon. My favorite TV show in the whole world. Michael Scott, who is a sage, when it comes to business advice, says that your weaknesses are actually your strengths. Now, there’s a famous quote, it’s been attributed to a lot of people. The idea is that if you are the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. So I guarantee you, I’m in the right room right now. But once we are looking at that, from a perspective of how we grow our firm, the idea is, if you admit what you don’t know, that’s the first step to exponentially growing your law firm. So our job as legal entrepreneurs is not to know everything about our firm or know everything there is to know our job is to accumulate a wealth of knowledge to make sure our firm is operating at its highest and best level. So let’s talk about how using this imposter syndrome works in the three pillars of a business. Now, you may be familiar with this, if not, this has talked about extensively in that TV show the profit but the pillars of a business generally can be thought of as three categories, your product, your people and your process. So if your goal is to build a thriving law practice that runs as a business, you have to be the business owner before you even feel ready to do that, know that you’re not the smartest person in the room and that is completely fine. Once you learn how to really zero in and hone in on your imposter syndrome thoughts. Then you have the target for how you improve and the next area of growth. So what we’re going to do is over the next few minutes here, we’re going to look at how we use the imposter syndrome to our advantage and the three P’s of business for us. We’re looking at the product as legal services that people are our attorneys, our legal staff, and In the process of this system and processes, and it’s me, I’ve got to throw in a little bit of woowoo. Because the whoo is my favorite thing. All it takes to run a successful law firm is acknowledging your vulnerability, and then using that vulnerability to find creative solutions to fill the gaps in your own knowledge. So let’s look at how we do this. Here’s some impostor syndrome thoughts that you may have. Now, most people who open a law firm, generally they’re pretty solid on the product, because they think, Oh, well, I’m an excellent person in criminal law, I can go run a business, no problem. So I’m not gonna spend too much time on this. But just for a couple of people, if you’re just starting out, or if you’re opening a new practice area, let’s analyze some of these imposter syndromes and see how we can target them in to actually fill in the holes in our business. So if your thought is, well, I don’t have the legal expertise. Number one, most likely you do because you went to law school, that’s all you really need to know. And if you’re Kim Kardashian, you don’t even need that. You can fill in this hole with things like CLAS, which is the traditional route, or you could do things I’m going to use criminal law as an example because that’s what I know. If you say, Well, I don’t know all of criminal law, but I know DUIs niche down, just focus in on that one thing that you can do really well. The other thing is, there are a number of resources, especially in this group, in particular for how you build a practice, a couple of books come to mind. Dustin coons wrote a fantastic book on how to practice criminal law and do your processes and procedures and what to expect. John Fisher wrote a great book on building a PII practice, read these books, gain this information and knowledge for yourself, because plagiarism is encouraged in legal world. The other thing is you can team up with more experienced attorneys to learn if you’re having an impostor thought like you don’t have the time to do all the legal research. First of all, as a legal entrepreneur, time should never be your issue. That’s just a lie that you’re telling yourself. If you’re looking for different things, you can always use law clerk dot legal, there’s a lot of good resources on there. You can use contract attorneys, for example, when I first opened my firm, I had nothing. So I brought in some attorneys who were looking for work and said, Look, I can’t pay you a W two, but I can give you a contract where you get 2530 33% of the cases you work, I’ll pay you 299 You go do this work, let’s make it happen. There are always creative solutions to building out these problems. You can also do things hiring law students, law students are gold. They are so desperate to learn. They’re so desperate to work hard, and they come up with some really creative things

Becca Eberhart
is apathy 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 the guild today and grab your ticket at max law events.com.

Alexis Austin
Looking now at the pillar of people, these are some impostor syndrome thoughts that people may have. So let’s just hit these again, I’m going to try to talk as fast as I can, because I’ve got a lot of slides. And I like to say a lot. But if you’re talking about money, we were talking just about that earlier, if your issue is money. First of all, it’s never money, time and money are never the issue. The issue is you’re not thinking creatively enough to figure out how to fill this imposter syndrome hole. So in today’s market, a lot of people when I was just talking with Elise about this a few minutes ago, people don’t care as much about salaries as they do flexibility, appreciation of their time, different environments. You don’t have to limit yourself either to just your geographic area. Now with COVID opening things up, you can do all kinds of work with other people from across the country. I also really encourage people when you’re looking at the people that are non attorney, people in your firm look for non traditional hires, you do not have to use a paralegal with 25 years experience. Go to Chili’s, get a server who knows how to deal with the customers after she spills a whole bunch of lemonade on them and can still make them super happy. And that person is going to be a rockstar paralegal for you. Once you train her on your systems and processes and cost maybe a third as much, she’s also going to one it a lot more and work a lot harder. The other way to do it super easy. Increase your prices, I guarantee most of you are not charging enough for the services that you offer. Test it out, say hey, this is what our price is just see what people say. If you are exuding that confidence that you know you have and if you’re not fake it till you make it because imposter syndrome is going to be used for your secret weapon in that way too. You can increase your prices and then you’ve got the revenue to bring on more people. Now, if your thought is, I’m not a good manager, I’m not a good manager. I’m just gonna tell you guys that right now. There are a couple of things you can do. Number one, you can learn, which is always a great idea. A lot of people in our group here like to follow the Eos, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, it’s from the book traction. The partner book to that is rocket fuel, pick it up great read, it’s really helpful. If you’re like me, and you say, No, I really don’t want to manage then you just get your fiance to join you in the law firm and then he can run it for you super easy. But really what you can do is you can bring in promote from within you can say okay, I have this paralegal who’s doing a fantastic job she has experienced managing. I’ll have her managing the staff. Another thing you can do is bringing in outside help. So things like fractional C suite members are really helpful. I utilize a fractional CMO. Shout out to my man out there. I also have a fractional CFO that way you can bring in the C suite bringing the knowledge of other people have experts in that area. So you don’t have to know everything about the finances. Speaking of finances, if you’re saying I have no idea how to balance the books, or how to market, you don’t have to, one of the best things that you can do is look for people who are specialists in that area. Encourage them to come into your firm, find creative ways to bring these people in, and then you’re going to have the experts in the field working in your firm. Again, maximum lawyer is a great place to find these people to put in a big group ask for help. That’s how I found all my people. You can also look at different companies. There are a whole bunch of different companies out there that offer fractional services for marketing, you can look at technology to do this. Some of my favorite marketing technologies are HootSuite and buffer. You just put it in there, schedule it out. And then your social media is scheduled out for the next week or a month you don’t have to think about it. I was super easy tip. If you’re looking for marketing, get a millennial who’s in school who loves social media, who knows what they’re doing, just give him a couple dollars a day and say hey, run with this, they’re gonna love it needed up. And then you’ve got great marketing that speaks to a key demographic, the millennials who no one understands even if you are one. If you’re concerned about processes, the systems the woowoo, those kinds of imposter thoughts. Let’s knock through these really quickly. If your imposter thought is saying, Okay, I don’t know how to use technology, you don’t have to. All you have to do is either have access to YouTube because you can learn all kinds of information on YouTube. You can work with someone who understands systems. Kelsey Bratcher is one of the guys that I really think is excellent at this. He’s going to be talking later on at the conference. But you can also do your own kind of integration. Zapier is my favorite product out there ever. It connects everything to everything is pretty easy. Even for a lawyer to understand you can connect all these systems together. You can also hire contractors, these are some great websites Upwork and Fiverr. You can go on and hire people to do one offs to build out a system I had someone on Upwork build me out a KPI dashboard once I learned what that acronym meant. And it’s really really helpful just for one offs. There are ways to do it. Even if you don’t have a full time system manager. If your impostor thought is why don’t believe I’m going to have the success that other people are having. This is a gem. Woo, woo moment. Follow Jim, follow everything he talks about in the podcast, listen to podcasts all the time. The biggest hindrance to your success is believing this crap like Lisa was talking about earlier, her inner Eloise, you don’t have to listen to that you can say okay, this is where my imposter thought is leading me. I’m now pinpointing this and saying, Okay, this is my target for where I’m gonna grow. When I first up my business, and even now, every single morning, I do an hour of self development, I’m listening to books, podcasts, whatever, it takes me an hour from waking up, to getting out to my car to get ready. So I might as well use that time wisely. Even if you don’t retain it all it’s going to sink in and really start to settle on your brain. All right, if your thought is I have no idea where to start. Tada, you start here, you look and say, Where am I most uncomfortable? What is the thing that I have the most insecurity about, and that’s the thing you fix. The beauty with the imposter syndrome being used as your secret weapon is you don’t have to know everything. All you have to do is have enough vulnerability with yourself to say okay, I know that this is an issue instead of just dreading it, I’m going to jump in there and fix it. Also some helpful books, there are a number of helpful books that kind of get you started on this process. If you don’t know where to start, My favorites are traction and E Myth. Any of Michael Gerber’s books are great, but E Myth, not the E Myth. For attorneys. It’s not as good just regular old E Myth or E Myth revisited. Just get in dig in there and really embrace this, you’ve got to confront and own your imposter syndrome every single time you find an area where you feel uncomfortable, because that is your next area for growth. That is where you are subconsciously pointing yourself to really explode your business. Now, I want you to think about not being the keeper of all knowledge. Number one, my team is so tired of me saying this. But I always say well, what if I’m hit by a bus, you might get hit by a bus. It’s super morbid, but Jim did a great job being morbid this morning. So I’m going to keep that going. If you get hit by a bus, your law firm can still survive. You don’t want to be the keeper of the knowledge, you want to be the keeper of the people who have the knowledge. So if you give me pushback, and you say, Okay, that’s great, Alexis, way to go. But what if these people steal all my stuff? Who cares? You did it first, you did it better, you’re always gonna have a different take. The other thing is, if you’re doing this appropriately, and you’re pinpointing these areas, what I want you to do is I want you to concentrate on finding an expert in that area. So if you’re finding an expert in marketing, an expert in finance, an expert in bookkeeping, no single one of them on their own, can build the law firm, you were the one that owns all these experts. And I don’t mean owning them like the person but you’re owning the ideas that they’re developing. So you are the reason that they are all coming together. As long as you’re siloing out your experts, you’re going to have a successful law firm, and people aren’t gonna be able to just run off with your ideas because you’ve created a collection of experts in your firm. So here’s my challenge to you if you’re here at max law 2022. I’m assuming you want to be a successful business owner, not just a solo attorney who’s dragging In all the time never getting any kind of traction. You can spend years struggling to figure out everything that you need to know you can come to conference after conference, read everything in the world. Or you can realize that your imposter syndrome is actually your secret weapon for success. So do you want to be the smartest person in the room or the most successful? Here’s another point, I really want to point out. If you are going to take my advice, which I strongly suggest you do, and you hire all these smart people, don’t go micromanaging them. This is my favorite quote from Steve Jobs. If you’re going to hire all of these people, and you’re going to have them building this law firm of your dreams, don’t then go in and tell the smart people what to do. You hire smart people, because they’re smarter than you. Because you’re embracing the imposter syndrome. And you want to make sure that you have people who understand what’s going on much more than you. Our goal as law firm owners is to be the dumbest person in the room. So if you take one thing away from this talk, I want you to really think about anytime you’re feeling like an imposter, that’s a golden opportunity for you to find that expert to plug that hole. And it doesn’t have to be someone that you pay on a W two basis. There are a number of different ways that you can find people to plug the holes and make sure that you have your firm moving towards success without you having to know everything. I know this was really a quick and dirty kind of jumping and figuring out ideas. The key thing is to look at, here’s where I’m feeling, lack, here’s where I don’t feel comfortable. That then is the immediate area where you need to work. I’m always happy as well to give you any information help me figure anything out, like how to build this cool QR code. Because those are needs. It’s a QR code, you go to QR code or something like that. I have to look it up. You just look free QR code and input your information. This one is actually it’s called Hi Hello, you pay for it as an app, you can do an annual thing or you can do a free one. You get on your and your new information. If you want your cool face in it, you have to pay for it. If you want just a regular code, it’s free. Alrighty, thank you guys so much for your time.

Speaker 2
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com Have a great week and catch you next time.

People share their struggles here in the Guild and we want to have space on the show today for people going through a struggle right now! BUT, while we empathize and encourage each other, we don’t want the work to stop there. We want high expectations and problem solving space made to work through the struggles as well. So let’s talk about holding these two truths here on the show today. Listen in if you are having a hard time running your law firm today.  

Episode Highlights:

04:11 When sharing your struggles — there is power into admitting you have a weakness. But let’s not lose sight of our goals.

06:18 Remember that social media is not real! 

07:13 It’s harder when you have young kids … 

08:53 There are fake coaches out there, that make business seem easy 

11:20 Getting the momentum going because you have so much going on you don’t know what to do first

13:34 How to push yourself BUT not be to hard on yourself …

16:14 Looking forward to the goal that you want to achieve and how THAT is tied to the daily tasks = you’ve got to think this through 

17:54 You need to prioritize what you are doing everyday and hack the white space …

Jim’s Hack: Social media isn’t bad and it’s okay to consume it, but why not use it as motivation to create a piece of content and post it … And THEN go look at social media Like a reward after the work.

Tyson’s Tip: Give yourself a pouting deadline – So if you make a mistake, if you screw something up, give yourself a certain amount of time to pout about it. And then once that time passes, you move on. Athletes use this in both wins and losses, so you can use this too. 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube. 

Resources:

Transcript: How To Push Yourself To Excel Without Beating Yourself Up

Unknown Speaker
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 ROI Podcast. I’m Jim hacking

Tyson Mutrux
and try some new tricks. What’s up, Jimbo?

Jim Hacking
Well, Tyson, we’ve had an interesting week. We’ve had an interesting month we’re recording this right at the end of January. My mother in law, my wife’s mother passed away. The firm kept going. The firm was very supportive of Imani and me. So it’s really something to be said, when the business can operate without you for a sustained period of time.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, absolutely. And obviously, thoughts and prayers go out to you and your family. It’s I know, it’s been tough on Amani, it was somewhat unexpected, as well. So I know it’s been tough, but it is nice that you’ve built a business that can run itself without the two key players. So that’s kudos to you. I know. It’s been tough. But kudos to you and Imani for, for building that?

Jim Hacking
I mean, yeah, it’s very instructive, because we say a lot of times all the different reasons why you want to make the firm bigger than yourself. But that’s this is one that now you know, my dad passed away in December of 21. And now money’s mom in January of 23. So 13 months apart, and the firm just kept going. So it’s a lesson for everybody. And it should be a real focus for people.

Tyson Mutrux
Well, and I also think it’s sort of instructive, the topic that you came up with today. And I wonder how much of the topic was sort of shaped by what you’ve been going through?

Jim Hacking
Well, it’s interesting that you raised that it’s probably true. But really where this topic came from today was a conversation that started in the guild over the weekend, where one of our members had shared with me some of the struggles that they were having. And then it just sort of opened up the floodgates where everybody felt that they could share problems that they were having vulnerability. And it was, it’s been a great time in the guild this last week. And it’s not because of any chest pounding, it’s much more the opposite, that there’s a lot of people sharing about their struggles. And so we certainly want to have space in the guild and on this show, and in the Facebook group for people to share their struggles. But I don’t want to then just give everyone a pass and not have high expectations. And that’s how I arrived at the topic for today.

Tyson Mutrux
I gotta say, I could not be prouder of the guild with this the way they rallied around this guild member over the last week. It’s quite incredible. I get several messages from people about like, wow, like, just amazing. But yes, so the topic, let me get to the topic, how to push yourself to excel without beating yourself up. If you don’t mind. I just want to kind of say something off right off the bat. Is it okay, and then I’ll kind of let you jump in a little bit more about your thoughts on this. But I want to start by saying like, I think that we need to start with the assumption that we’re going to fail at things, right. I think we need to start with that assumption. Now, I don’t think that should be your main focus. But I think we should start with the assumption that you’re going to fail at things. And not only is that, okay, I would say I would encourage failure. Okay, I would, I would encourage failure. Because the more you fail, the more that that is going to lead success. That means that you are if you go back to the Man in the Arena, quote, is really, that you are in the arena, that means that you are in the arena that you are taking the risks, that you’re actually fighting the fight, because the people that don’t fail are the ones that aren’t taking the risks. And so I think that we need to encourage failure, I think is a good thing. And I think it’s a positive thing. I don’t think it’s a negative thing, like most people do. So I want to start with that. And then I’m gonna let you go back to the topic of how to push yourself to excel without beating yourself up.

Jim Hacking
I had an alternative title, but I changed it. And that was how to shoot for the stars without shooting yourself in the head. But being sensitive to the fact that we have a problem with suicide in the legal community. I didn’t want to be that blunt about it. But yeah, I mean, it was a real ebb and flow because I was really, really glad that people were talking about their struggles. And, you know, one of my favorite talks I’ve ever given was when I talked about the fact that in 2012, I was broke, and I had to confess it to my wife and how I kept putting it off and how that admission really led to the firm that we have today. So I think there’s great power in admitting weakness, or you know, the step one and the 12 steps is to admit that you have a problem. And so I think that’s great, but I don’t want to also lose sight of our goals and our aspirations. And I think there’s a balance to it. And that’s really how I got to the topic. And, you know, I had sort of jokingly said that maybe on Fridays we need to have a loss of the week. And I’ve heard stories about people with their kids who Have dinner, either once a week or every day, just say, what’s one thing you tried and failed that today just to make it blend das normal to experience failure? And I think it’s a great mindset.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I’m a little hesitant with with going that far with it. I’m a little hesitant about that the idea of celebrating wins is really to build the confidence up and to show like, hey, like, Yeah, you did something today, right? You did accomplish something today, because I do think that’s where a lot of the problems come with people, they start to beat themselves up too much. Right? Where all they do is they focus on the negative, right? And maybe with your point, maybe I wonder what Jason would say about this Jason self? Who would be like, if you were just to take a moment a day and say, Okay, what did I fail at? How do I get better? Like, because there is a part of sort of some of the exercises he that? He has me do where, you know, okay, what’s something I want to improve upon? And so it’s not like a loss, but okay, what’s something I want to improve upon? And then how to, then I affect that improvement, like, so I go through that exercise a little bit. So I’m not really saying, you know, what’s my loss, but I’m still saying, hey, I need to improve on something. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with acknowledging our wounds, because I think that that is important part of the process. But I will stop short of saying we should maybe pick out a loss a day, I will say that Well,

Jim Hacking
I was thinking too, that a big chunk of this, I believe, in the big group in the guild, too, is that social media is not real,

Tyson Mutrux
not real at all, man, like, yes, not at all, gosh, it’s not real. So the

Jim Hacking
things that people are sharing while they’re sharing their successes, and those are great, and people are happy to hear about them. But as shown by this week, it was the power of admitting the weakness and admitting the struggle that really let I mean, people were making their own videos to the person that sent me that email, right, they were just going on and on about things that they had struggled with and trying to be supportive. I mean, the messages in the comments to our Saturday morning talk where we discussed this topic, were some of the best ones that we’ve had. So you gotta remember that people are only putting their wins on Facebook, they don’t put when they yell at their kids, hey, I yelled at my kids three times today. Right. And this particular member who raised the issue, that issue of kids, too, is so important, because I don’t think that I could have gotten my firm to where I am. Now. If my kids were still really little, I just think that there’s such a brain fog and such a focus on your kids. And rightfully so, when they’re very young, and they need a lot of help and support that. Anything you got going it’s bonus. It’s gravy, like, you know, just do your best and keep on going.

Tyson Mutrux
You mentioned on Saturday, it’s like you’re in a fog, because it really I mean, and I brought this up to like Monday, right? We had taekwondo. We had Cub Scouts, and we had gymnastics all on one day, right? And that’s after working a full day. And it is, so you’re like coordinating schedules. And like I had these intentions of getting some work done. And I didn’t get anything done. I didn’t get anything done. After five o’clock. It was all family time, which is completely fine. But I thought I was gonna have all this time. At the end of the day, I was sad. I just like laid in bed. I’m like, Okay, I’m not trying anything. I’m just gonna go straight to bed. And that’s okay. They do think it’s okay. But it is, especially people with kids. It is tough. It is really tough. And it’s also easy to look at some of the people without kids and like seeing oh my gosh, they’re doing all these amazing things. But again, remember, like they don’t have kids. It isn’t Adam yet. It is interesting to watch people on social media, if you like kind of like look at their progression of like before kids and then kids, and how things change quite a bit. And it’s almost like the brakes get put on a little bit. We’re like, Oh, thanks. Thanks. That used to be but and that’s okay. That’s how life is. And we were talking about this before how I want to dress this too, because I you see these coaches, right? And they talk about oh, you got to maximum performance, yada yada yada, they talk, they try to make it sound like it’s so easy. And 99% of these coaches, 99% of them have never run a law firm. They’ve never run a business. They decide, oh, I want to be a coach. I want to be the coach. And I want to I want to tell these people that are actually in the trenches how to do it, and they’ve never done it before and that that drives me nuts because they tried to oversimplify things. And it puts added pressure on law firm owners, it just puts unneeded added pressure and unrealistic pressure because you’ve got these Yahoo’s that are trying to they try to make themselves gurus they don’t what the hell they’re talking about. They don’t know what it’s like to be in the trenches. Yeah, their experience

Jim Hacking
is advising law firm owners how to run a law firm and they’ve never done it themselves. Yeah, I think that’s a good point. But I also think that point you made is a good one, that there’s just that fakeness and, you know, when you’re looking at a screen and you’re scrolling through, your brain is just getting all these hits of things that you shouldn’t be thinking about or saying, oh, I should be doing that I should be doing that I should be doing that. And then you just start beating yourself up over it. So I think that, you know, a slightly better approach might be to ask yourself, what do I want? What do I want for me? What do I want from my family, which I want my firm to look like. And I love Jason’s example, at the conference where you know, what’s one little step and so, on Monday, I was really encouraging people for their one thing to think small to like, what you need to get some momentum, you know, when you’re in that stuck place where the number was, that’s a really, really hard place to be. So I’ve actually been texting them everyday, this week, just talking to them about little bitty things, just little bitty improvements, because it’s so hard to see people that you perceive to be ahead of you. And you want to compare, you know, comparison is such an insidious thing, especially for certain personality types, you know, we’re sort of a hard charging, we’re going to make an outcome occur, mentality with lawyers, a lot of lawyers sort of operate that way, I’m going to make something happen. And they can do it really well in their cases. And then they don’t see it transferring over immediately in the running of the firm. And then that just allows that self doubt to creep in. And then it’s just a bad spiral.

Tyson Mutrux
To that point, we talked a little bit about getting that momentum on Saturday. And I use the example of Dave Ramsey, because where he teaches a you’re supposed to start, like with the small debts and build the momentum, right, which it’s actually counterintuitive. What you’re supposed to do logically is start with the big debts and pay those off, right and get those done. But he says to start with the small debts, so you can build that momentum. I think it’s called like a Debt Snowball or something like that. I don’t know. I don’t know the exact term that is work. And is also what you’re talking about. It’s a little opposite from what we normally talked about when it comes to Okay, getting your vision in place and make sure you get your 10 year goal, your B hag, okay, and what are your quarterly rocks and focusing on those, it’s a little counterintuitive to that. But if you are struggling, I think it makes sense to get that task Snowball or whatever you want to call it started, start with some small things, build up the momentum, start from that place, it’s far better to do that than it is to not do anything. And because there’s that paralysis that you’ll face. And we’ve all been there, you know, you’ve been there. I’ve been there where you’ve got so much going on that you don’t know what to do, right. And so sometimes you just stepping out of that for a moment and say, I’m just going to put one foot in front of the other one step at a time. What’s the one thing I can do right now to help make this better? That’s adjacent something. So what’s the one thing I can do right now just put one foot in front of the other and start, it doesn’t have to be a big thing. Just start on something small like you’re talking about? I think that that’s a really important thing. But once you’ve got that momentum going, it’s time to transition over to the bigger stuff and focusing on the bigger things, but you’ve got to get it going

Unknown Speaker
is that Python is back if you’re new around here, the ZAP 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 the guild today and grab your ticket at max law events.com.

Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. It’s a solo episode just Jim and Tyson, we’re talking about how to walk that line between pushing yourself and not being too hard on yourself. And speaking of transition, let’s transition to that very question. Tyson. How do you walk that line?

Tyson Mutrux
Well, to me it is a consistency. I think it’s a Hollaback consistency is what it is. And it’s starting and doing putting the vision work. And figuring out those big things, those the big things that we want to accomplish as a firm as an individual. So figuring out my vision, figuring out the B hag for the firm, and then as a firm, figure out what our quarterly goals are. And then once I’ve got that, then I know what I’ve got to do every single day to hit those and just be consistent. And it’s I talked about this a lot on Twitter and LinkedIn. Consistency is boring. But consistency is how you win. And just being consistent. The podcast, our podcast, we’ve been consistent for seven years or eight years, whatever it is, I don’t know what how many years it is at this point. Right? We have been consistent. There have been podcasts that have come and gone. It was inconsistent, right? And I think that above all else, whether it’s good or bad, right? You could do mediocre work, but if you’re consistent, you’ll win as you just have it so I think success has a lot to do with just being consistent.

Jim Hacking
You know, I love I love the whole mindset there that you just displayed. I also think

Unknown Speaker
that you have to have a go All, push yourself

Jim Hacking
towards that goal, do everything you can to get towards that goal, but humbly accept that the path isn’t going to be the exact way that you’ve outlined it like there’s going to be fits and starts, there’s gonna be times where you’re in a state of flow things are going, there will be times where things really suck. I mean, I say, I say all the time in the guild about how hard it is to run a law firm and how hard it is to grow a law firm. So you have your TrueNorth, you have what you want to work on, you do your best, and you let go the results to me, that’s the thing, you’ve got to let go of the results. You can’t say to yourself, if I do this, x will happen. You have to say, if I want x to happen, I’ll do my best to get there. I don’t know exactly how I’m gonna get there, I hope to get there. If I don’t get there, I want to get really damn close. But, you know, always be forward looking. So many people go into the future, looking in the rearview mirror and thinking about all the things that came before, I think you just do your best. And then you take your kids to Cub Scouts, and to Taekwondo, and then you go to bed, and then you get up the next day, to your point about consistency. You just do it again. And I know it’s easier said than done to just not think that way. But I think that there has to be some humility here. And there has to be some letting go.

Tyson Mutrux
I think your point is extremely important. And I want to tie these two together. Now, this is a good segue, because looking forward right at those goals that you have, like is really, really important, and making sure that they’re tied to those daily activities that you do every single day. Extremely important. And one of the mistakes you see people make is I want to make a million dollars this year, right? They say I want to make a million dollars. Okay, well, great. That’s fantastic. How are you gonna do it? Right? What are you going to do every single day, every single week, every single month to get to that million dollars? How are you going to do that, because you can look at that million dollars, and not change anything else, and nothing’s gonna happen, you’re not going to get to a million dollars, and you’re gonna get extremely disappointed by not accomplishing that goal. And it’s because you’re not tying your daily activities to it. So you’ve got to think this through this is not something that Jim and Tyson can tell you what you need to do on every single step. These are things that you need to be doing, you know, if you’re an estate planning attorney, you probably need to be doing webinars, or you probably need to be doing, I don’t know, if SEO works for estate planning attorneys, it probably does. But you need to maybe be writing a blog post every day, or you need to be doing a video a day, there’s a billion different ways of getting cases, right. So doing one or two things consistently, every single day will get you those cases, you got to do those things. And so you got to figure out what those things are, tie that to the million dollars and do those every single day and do them. If you miss a day or two, that’s fine, that’s completely fine. Again, like we talked about before failures, fine, it happens, you get exhausted you some that emergency pops up, but get back on the horse and keep doing them. But tying that end goal looking forward, have make sure you have that because that’s important, but also tying it to your daily activities. Super important as well.

Jim Hacking
I also think it’s really important to understand that you can’t do everything, and you have to prioritize. And so, you know, speaking of that humility piece, you know, there’s only so many hours in the day, there’s only so much you can do. And if you spend all your time scrolling through your phone, looking at all the other cool things everyone else is doing. Number one, it gets you off your path and off your goals, too. It’s a waste of time, and three is just gonna, especially if you’re like many of our members with either diagnosed or undiagnosed ADHD, you’re just going to be looking at that shiny object and saying, Man, I should be doing that, man, I should be doing that. And then if you put on top of that, oh, I’m bad for not doing that. Then it’s just it’s a fait accompli? You’re screwed.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, social media, you stay off of it unless you’re using it for business. I think Becca put it the the the other day when we were talking or we’re all texting, she said something to us about, like used to basically should only be on social media. If you’re posting something or if you’re doing research as all you’re doing. Like if you’re doing like marketing research, that’s the only reason why you should really be on it. Because otherwise, it’s a total time suck. And someone else I use this as a tip a few weeks ago, I think is where like attacking the whitespace where inevitably meetings will will end short, right? That meetings will end faster than what your than what you’re expecting, or you’ll have additional time. So instead of getting on your phone and scrolling, don’t do that, use that time to have a little side checklist of things that you can knock off. And let’s say that you gym, you’ve got you’ve got to write an email to a teacher for one of your kids or something like that, right? Okay, that’s on your kind of side list over here. They’re not like super important things, but they’re things you got to get done. Okay, attack that whitespace on your calendar, and knock out that email in that free time instead of getting on your phone. So things like that, where you tack that whitespace you’re not going to be wasting your time on the phone because many of the disappointments we all face is because we wasted time on something. So stop wasting the time and try to keep your time focused. And for the people that do have the ADHD or the Undiagnosed ADHD. Having that as a backup plan is what I think will be really, really helpful for

Jim Hacking
you. I don’t know where I heard this. But somewhere along the line I heard if you’re consuming social media content, you’re losing money. If you’re creating social media content, you’re making money. So you know, if people spent as much time creating content as they did consuming it, they’d be a whole lot better off.

Tyson Mutrux
I like that. That is excellent. That is, I don’t know who said it. I think I heard that too. I don’t know if you said it. You might have even come up with it. I don’t know. But it was. That’s really good. Hi, Jimmy. I think we’ve talked about this topic enough. Hopefully, we’ve given people some little tidbits that little takeaways that they can use to be a little bit more efficient with their schedule, and to really get track of their goals, get on track of their goals and know that failure is fine. It happens. It’s okay. But to stay on track. But before I wrap things up, I want to remind everyone to make sure you go to the big Facebook group. Join us there a lot of great information being shared always. And if you want a more high level conversation, can’t stress the guilt enough Max law guild.com. Check it out. This last week, one of the best weeks ever, if not the best week, credible week, rallying around a member. That’s what it’s about great community. And then while you’re listening to the rest of this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, if you get something from it, we hope that you will give us a five star review to help spread that love. Jimmy, what’s your

Jim Hacking
week? Well, we were talking about social media. So my hack is related to that. And that is this that social media isn’t bad. It’s okay to consume social media, I don’t want to be like a Puritan or something. But what you could do is say to yourself, Okay, before I go look at social media, I’m going to create a piece of content. And it doesn’t have to be high tech, it doesn’t have to be super complicated. Just pull your phone, make it tick, tock, put it up there. And then go and look at social media like sort of put the reward after the work, sort of like having dessert after

Tyson Mutrux
dinner. I like it, I’m going to use this tip of the week for because it’s related to our topic is put a deadline for your pouting. Okay, so if you make a mistake, if you screw something up, give yourself a certain amount of time to pout about it. And then once that time passes, you move on. And I think it’s a good little trick you can use to get over it, you know, I mean, just get over it. until five o’clock tonight, I’m gonna give myself a chance to kind of just digest what just happened. And after five o’clock, I’m moving on to the next thing. athletes use this at something both in wins and losses, too. You can do this with wins too. So you don’t you’re not celebrating a win for too long. Where like in a loss or winning a football game, they’ll say, you know, we’ll give ourselves so tomorrow and then after tomorrow on to the next game. And I think it’s a valuable little tool you can use to just get over it and move on. I Jimbo, as always, it’s a pleasure. love talking to you. This has been one of my favorite episodes. To be completely honest with you. I think it was a it’s something people need to hear. And so I enjoyed it. Good stuff, brother. Alright, see Jimbo.


Your ideas are worth millions of dollars! You have so much that you could do! But is this true? Sure, maybe your ideas are WORTH millions … but they will never make you a cent if they are not executed. Execution is the key to any great idea. 

In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max Lock Con 2022 with Tyson speaking about the topic of “Why Your Ideas Don’t Matter”. Not only does he go over what to do with your ideas and the process you should put your ideas through in order to see if you should act on them – but he also gives you tips and tricks to work through the execution phase of your ideas … which is key to making you those millions. 

Grab your notepad and pen and get ready to be inspired. 

Resources:

01:00 Having an idea box that makes you millions? 

04:35 Lawrence Barnet is a great story of a great idea —That turned out to be a really bad idea that ended up causing deaths … similarly one of your GREAT ideas could cause the destruction of your law firm 

06:47 We spend all this time in the area of having ideas – we should take one or two ideas and focus on the execution stage 

07:23 What do you do when you have an idea? Create a battle plan 

08:19 Battle plan roadmap 

09:43 Put it on your calendar – instead of trying to fit it in here and there. 

11:43 Follow ideas that you have a passion for – make sure you are thinking them through 

13:55 Improve an existing idea – and focus on the execution of it 

15:09 Share your idea

16:46 Act now! 

🎧 Tune in to today’s episode and checkout the full show notes.

🎥 Watch the full video.

Resources:

Transcript: Your Ideas Don’t Matter with Tyson Mutrux

Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2020. To keep listening to hear Tyson nutrix as we share his talk, your ideas don’t matter. 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 liar podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson Meatrix. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Tyson Mutrux
Well, Amy’s bring up the case, I do want to thank file vine, they’re our title sponsor. And this would not happen without them, I promise you. So I want to make sure that I think them if you don’t have filed by and if you do have five on make sure you go and visit them because it’s really, really important. What’s in that box is actually worth millions of dollars. Actually, what’s in that box could potentially be worth billions of dollars. You’ll see what’s in the box. Anyway, all right. I thought you might. So what’s in this box are maybe my best ideas. Not all my ideas. But I’ve been collecting ideas since the 90s. I was teenager at the time. But there’s a lot of great ideas in here that can make you millions of dollars, millions. I actually have only shown a few individuals ever what’s inside those books. It’s very personal to me. Do you all want to peek inside a couple pages? Yeah, okay, good. Well, this is one of my favorite ideas. Hover grips. Okay, there’s suction cups that whenever you go into the bathroom, I’m a germaphobe. So you have to sit on the toilet seat. You suction yourself the the handles to the stall walls, and you hovered over the toilet seats. If you think I’m nuts, these exist, okay. There are a lot of different variations. I had this idea in the 90s, though, I’m telling you, it’s a great idea. It’s a million dollar idea. Next thing is a window sill barbeque grill, okay? These are by me these I’m not making this up. These are real notes from a long time ago. As an injury lawyer, it makes me cringe when it comes to think about liability. And I actually didn’t think this thing would ever exist. I found so many windowsill barbecue drills on the internet, it shocked me. So you can get one for $185 If you want another million dollar idea. This next one. It’s a dog dryer. Okay, who here has a dog? Okay, so whenever you don’t ever do it, Amy does it. But whenever you shampoo the dog, they get all wet and they shake and it’s just a mess, and you’re gonna wait forever for them to dry off. Well, these, this is perforated on the bottom. And so the air blows up and it dries up the dog. It’s basically a cage is what it is. This is actually one that’s for about $3,000 really expensive. It’s another just great idea that’s in my books, right? This is one of my favorites, though it is the radio telephone. And this is whenever I used to work at State Farm. As an intern, I literally stuffed envelopes is what I did. And so what I would do is I would wear these headphones, and it would be attached to a radio and I’d actually listen to FM radio on it. But my note on this was really funny for people at work, who want to listen to radio but want to look like they’re working. So you can basically just sit on the phone and just listen to radio all day. The terrible idea, obviously, but all these ideas are terrible ideas. And over the next couple of days and even yesterday, probably you know you’re getting a lot of ideas, you’re going to hear about file VI, which is fantastic case status, fantastic. You’re going to hear people talking about you should hire this person or you should fire that person, or this is what you should do. You should do SEO because that’s gonna get you the most clients or you know, the best strategy is referrals. That’s how you build a practice is on referrals. Okay, you’re gonna get a lot of these ideas. None of those ideas matter, though. None of them do. None of the ideas in this box matter. Not a single one of them. But really, why is that? The little story about a dentist by the name of Lawrence Barnett. Lawrence had this idea. He’s sitting around and said, You know what, I want to create this yard game. What you do is it’s a metal object. It’s got a sharpened on it when you throw it up in the air, and it comes back down into a little circle. And as you can see, kids played with this story well This caused three deaths and children and 6000 injuries, very serious injuries, he was a very bad idea, okay. And part of the problem is that many of you will come up with these ideas, or you’ll hear these ideas, you will take them back to your firms. And you will, you’ll start the destruction process of your firm. And what you’ll do is, and I know this is gonna resonate with some of you, every year, you’re gonna change your systems, and you’re gonna change them again, and again, and something else is going to change. Okay? And it’s very, very costly to your firm’s these ideas are very, very bad. Okay? You need to think about these ideas before you take them back. And part of the problem is that you are trying to come up with an idea for a problem that does not exist in your firm. Today, you’re trying to come up with a solution to a problem that does not exist. Okay? It’s really, really important, because you’re gonna get a lot of great ideas, and many of them will be great for you. Maybe they won’t be great for you. And I wanted to get to this one a little bit later. Because the obvious answer as to why ideas don’t matter is it’s the execution that doesn’t matter. And this is a quote from Steve Jobs. To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They’re just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions. So what if what’s in these books is worth millions. It’s the execution that really is worth the billions. It’s nothing else. It’s not the ideas. And what many of us do, and I’m including myself in this is that we spend all our time this little squiggly area, we just generate ideas, and we drive our people nuts. We just drive them absolutely batty. And I’m seeing heads nod, because you know, what I’m talking about. And the reality is, is that we should take one or two really, really good ideas, or even mediocre ideas, or even honestly, bad ideas, sometimes just focus on the execution stage. And that is where you’re going to make your money is executing. So and I’m not Pooh poohing ideas, I have ideas all the time I drive my people nuts. But what do you do whenever you have an idea, you need to focus on the execution. Focus on the execution. Take a couple of the ideas from the next couple of days and focus on executing one or two of those, you need to have a battle plan. And I chose battle plan intentionally because I don’t know if you know this, but tomorrow is the 80th anniversary of my math is right of the Battle of Midway. And it took a lot of planning to do. I love watching world war two documentaries. It’s fascinating that some of the things that they did, they took inflatable tanks and trucks and they took them to Midway. It was just an amazing plan. They had a plan. And it was actually a terrible idea what they were going to do. But they executed the plan brilliantly. They had a plan. So you need an idea battle plan. And I’m gonna give you some tips. First, the first thing you need to do when you hear an idea and you think you’re going to implement it, you need to define your goals. What do you want to accomplish with this? I do. Then research the idea. If you do these two things, just define your your goals, and then research it, you’re going to filter out about 99% of your bad ideas. You’re going to get rid of them. You get past that. Now you start outlining your tasks, you start assigning those to your team, then set aside the necessary resources for it. Okay, that’s the execution part of it. You’ll notice there’s only two of these that are actually the idea phase. The rest of it’s the actual execution phase of this. The most important part

Becca Eberhart
is that Python is 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 the guild today and grab your ticket at max slot events.com.

Tyson Mutrux
So the guild members hear me talk about this all the time. You should put it on your calendar. That’s right, you should put it on your calendar. I’m gonna show you this picture. I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I’m a pilot. Have I mentioned that before because I’m a pilot. This is the designated pilot examiner I felt like garbage that day, my allergies were awful. But I became a pilot that day. And I went back and looked because it took a little bit longer than I’d anticipated to actually get my pilot’s certificate. And if you look down here, this is for July and August of last year, I had put in 20 flight hours, and it’s based on harvest time, it’s not the actual time you spent out there at the airport, you only get credit for the time that the engine is on. And I was on a really good clip, I was on a pace of getting my certificate by last year’s conference in October. And if you look at my calendar, I was getting up at 530 and 6am, three days a week to knock it out. I’d set aside the time to do it. It was something I really wanted to do. And then around September, the firm got really, really busy. And if you look in October and November, I put in only 8.7 hours. And I was really curious because I wanted to see if I had it on my calendar. And I had three dates on my calendar. I had no dates in November, not one day, that does not mean I wasn’t flying, what I was doing was I was trying to fit it in here and there. It’s the things we do on a daily basis where I’m going to do that. I’m going to do that. While do it tomorrow. No, okay, I didn’t get it. I’ll do it on Friday. I know I’m promised, I promised myself on Friday, I’m going to set aside the time, I’m going to do it during my lunch break. And what happens you go to lunch with with some friends and you skip it again, right? It’s gotta go on your calendar. Another part of this when it comes to ideas, you need to follow the ideas that you have a passion for. This is another idea I had it was a dog hair floor vacuum, okay. And what it was is it was it would go on the floorboards are under a bed. And for those of you that dogs it essentially just suck all the the vacuum, so you wouldn’t have the vacuum every day. And he might have a golden retriever. They shed like crazy. And there’s a lot of here. So that’s where the idea came from. But as you can see, this is actually the start of a mindmap. Okay, there’s only one little thing on it. This is about 2006 or seven, whenever I decided I was going to going to be actually said I was gonna become a lawyer before that. But whenever I was starting to go to law school, oh seven, and this was the elements of a law firm. This is just one sheet. This one is on a website. Okay. I clearly had a passion for this. There’s a little section of my blog, the website that it was going to be local legal gossip was the idea. I had a lot of different ideas. And I’m only going to show you a few I get page after page after page of this, you think I was a maniac. Here’s another one on free upgrades for clients that I was going to give to people. That was just a bunch of crazy stuff. Here’s one when it comes to advertising. This is just one page on advertising a bunch of different ideas on that. But I clearly had a passion for it. I didn’t have a passion for hover grips, I didn’t have a passion for dog dryers just wasn’t for me. Another thing and this is a really interesting quote, and it’s something I just recently heard. Make sure you’re not selling trombone oil. This is from Michael Eiger, he had gotten this advice from a former boss of his. And he says avoid getting into the business of manufacturing trombone oil, you may become the greatest trombone oil manufacturer in the world. But in the end, the world only consumes a few quarts of trombone oil a year. So when you come up with these ideas, make sure you’re thinking them through, make sure that you’re solving a problem, because you might just be going down the trombone wheel route. And there’s really no benefit to it. Another thing is you can improve on existing ideas. So you may have had an idea that you started years ago in your firm, maybe it’s a software that you’ve been paying for for three years that you’ve done nothing with. Anybody know who this guy is, I will be really, really impressed if you do. This is Thomas Love user luck. Anybody know what he did? Now that you’ve heard the name, he invented the mp3 player. I bet you’ve heard of this guy, Steve Jobs. And what he took was he took an idea that someone else had, and he focused on the execution part of it. He did it really, really, really well. As you probably know what company invented this Outback Steakhouse, anybody else? Wrong. It was actually Russell’s Marina grill. But the founder of Outback he had worked there and said, I’m going to make this better. And I’m going to make a steakhouse around it. He took an existing idea and he executed it really, really, really, really well. steaks are not great, but bloomin onions amazing. Here’s the other thing too. And this is I don’t really want to talk about this whole lot. But there’s a whole scarcity mindset too with ideas. And I think part of our profession too, is we like to hold on to ideas, because we don’t want other people to use them, which I think is kind of sad. But if you don’t do something with your idea, people will actually eventually invent it. This is an idea that I had a long, I think it was like, this is probably like 98, like professional job finder, or maybe it is probably 2000. It was a professional job finder, it was a listing of jobs, you could list you know, your, what’s your licenses are your developments, there is a ranking system, which I don’t know if I’ve seen yet. But I’m sure you’ve heard of indeed, and LinkedIn and all that. I mean, this is that was the idea, right? And 2002, guess what happens? LinkedIn is created. So people will come up with the idea, if you don’t execute on it, you need to execute on the idea, if you’re really passionate about it, I started talking about a second ago, but talking about sharing your ideas, really, your great idea, it means absolutely nothing if no one knows about it, or if you don’t do anything with it, if you have a really good idea, like I think that the world would be a far better place, if you share that with someone that’s actually going to execute on it. Okay, don’t hold on to those I get so many ideas on here that are actually really are good ideas that I’ve done nothing with, that I really should tell people about. Because they really are some really good ideas in there that you could you could make millions of dollars on, but I haven’t executed on it. This now I will tell you, this is gonna be this next part will be really, really hard for me to get through. I’m gonna try to but it relates really, really well with what Jim was talking about. It’s really, really important to act now. This is and I’m going to not look at the screen because it probably made me cry. The this is my sergeant first sergeant in the Army rollin Thompson. In March he was

Tyson Mutrux
he was I don’t get emotional, as you’ll probably know, he was murdered by his actual his stepson. And rollin is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, just a genuine human being. And I know that he and his wife, Amy had lots of plans, they had so many plans for each other. If you read there’s a section in his in this Facebook post as well, I put it in there were, but we still needed you here. As they still needed each other. They had things they wanted to do with each other. And what I want for you. I’ll go back to that picture in a second. But what I wanted, I want your ideas to matter. I do want them to matter. A you have got so many great ideas, I want you to execute on those ideas. I don’t want them to sit in a box, I don’t want to sit on them to sit in a notepad with nothing going on with him, I want you to execute on those. Because I’m sure that if you were to think about you being on your deathbed, or if you open that card, and it tells you what your expiration date is. I’m sure there are ideas that in your head that you would have a lot of regret on not executing on them. And so please think about that. If you have something you want to do, please do it. Okay, please, please do it. I don’t want you to have that regret when you’re on your deathbed. Please, please, please make your ideas matter. Thank you.

Speaker 2
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.

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What are the challenges that lawyers are facing this year? What about the challenges that are the remnants of the pandemic?  What will the future of 2023 and beyond hold for law firm owners? These are some of the questions that Jim and Tyson answer as guest on Molly McGrath’s podcast Hire and Empower with Molly

Listen in! 

Episode Highlights: 

00:27 Where do you see an opportunity and best practices in the post pandemic world? 

04:04 What do you offer a team to grow themselves, and how to KEEP a team? 

09:25 What if you are afraid of the “virtual” team? You can’t see what they are doing!! 

12:49 When you can’t find an associate where you live, what do you do?

13:25 What happens when law firm owners don’t change their mindset 

15:37 What does it mean to be more effective as a law firm owner? Do this exercise… 

22:44 How do you get comfortable with letting go of tasks to a team – Tips from Jim and Tyson on how to let go. 

33:33 What does a successful lawyer look like?! 

Books Mentioned: 

Think and Grow Rich: The Original: An Official Publication of The Napoleon Hill Foundation https://amzn.to/3XXt5ND

Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching and Keeping the Best People https://amzn.to/3YYuCEv

Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders https://amzn.to/3EAkr0x

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube.

Connect with Molly:

Resources:

Transcript: What You Should Know About Creating Intentional Direction

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.

Speaker 2
So yeah, what do you sing in 2023? Jim, and then I’ll go to you, Tyson. In regards to best practice approaches here in the post pandemic world, if

Jim Hacking
you will, we’re seeing a lot of opportunity. We are a growth mindset. Pair, we spend a lot of time thinking about the future. And I think that the future is bright for law firm owners, I think more and more people are venturing out on their own and trying to grow something that is bigger than themselves. I think that lawyers are starting to see that grind. And the way that they sort of soldiered through the pandemic is probably not how they want to live long term. And they’ve come to the realization that they need help they need community and they need to talk to other people who are like minded and growth oriented. And I think that the sky’s the limit.

Speaker 2
What do you see is like, I love that you said the grind the hustle, what have you and now it’s time for the power of the pause. People are saying, woof, I’m burned out, I’m exhausted. I can’t keep going at this pace, massive, massive growth in the legal space. And what are you seeing, you know, as the leveling out, so to speak, that you’re speaking about on your extraordinary podcast, your Facebook groups? What are you seeing, as, dare I say, the new normal?

Tyson Mutrux
I mean, I think that the the easy answer is that, you know, the pandemic changed the mindset of a lot of people. And they, they realized that whenever there was that pause, and there wasn’t a lot going on, they enjoyed that. And they didn’t like working for other people. So I think that that’s going to continue. But I mean, there were so many advances that had to happen for people to actually work and with being virtual, I mean, we’re like, I know that my office is that it’s a hybrid office, we’ve got two physical offices, but we’ve got the majority of our people are virtual, and people enjoy that. We give people that option. And most people choose the option to work from home. And so the workforce, for the most part wants to work from home, and you’re gonna have to see employer is going to have to actually abide by that otherwise, they’re not gonna be able to attract top talent. And that’s one of the things that Jim and I both are able to do is we’re able to attract top talent with by giving that as an option. So you’re gonna see a lot more of that. And I think that’s one of the the major drivers in that. But I mean, back to your original question, though, I think that it’s easy for a lot of people to say, okay, so what are we seeing in 2023? And we can talk about artificial intelligence and machine learning, which at GPT, we can talk about that. Yeah, that’s a massive thing. And there’s a massive opportunity there. But the thing that wins, and this is boring, Jim and I were just talking about it, the thing that wins is consistency. Overall, it doesn’t matter if you get your clients by sending a physical newsletter in the mail, as long as you’re consistent with it. So consistency is what’s effective. People like to latch on to oh my gosh, what’s what’s gonna happen? 2023 2024 2025 If you go back to 2022, the thing that one was consistency, that’s what it was. It’s always it’s consistency is undefeated.

Speaker 2
I love that you talked about top talent, and people during the pandemic went ahead and hung their own shingle, what have you took stock, we all get forced to sit on our couch for a minute, and really take stock of our life or work or practice what we do where we work and serve our clients, the majority of our waking hours. And I for 26 years have served in the legal space and staffing and unemployment rate. We all know it I mean, especially with associated attorneys and paralegals under 2%. And what do you and I love it, use consistency. I love that you’re able to retain and maintain employees. I just want to hop on that one like what are you you’re offering virtual, you know, you’re having some fluidity and flexibility in your culture and your physical brick and mortar building, what have you. What else are y’all doing to to keep people because we need people, we need people to grow. We need people to be freed up to be the visionary as entrepreneur and grow the law firm and impact as many families as we can. What are you doing? Like I’m struggling I get my phone rings off the hook. I said another associate leave I just had another paralegal leave and in the struggles real right.

Jim Hacking
I want to get to that in just a second. First I want to talk about that time you mentioned on the couch and my therapist is a Buddhist and she’s very zen and very chill. And she when the pandemic first started during those first six weeks when we were all really at home, you know we were I mean? I was walking every day I was taking care of myself Life had slowed down and it was bad. Obviously, people were sick and dying. And there’s that whole piece of it. But for the people that weren’t affected in such a hard way, it was a great reset. And I’m reading right now thinking grow rich. And there’s a passage in there about how the depression in the 20s was a great reset. So I think we really did have sort of a once in a generation, opportunity for reset. And like with all things, it’s good and bad, it’s insightful, and it’s hard. It presents opportunities, and it presents difficulties. So I think as law firm owners, we really need to be cognizant of that we really need to see that, like you said, more people are willing to strike out on their own, where people are looking around and saying, why the heck am I staying here? What’s in it for me? What what where do I want to go? Why am I doing this a lot of self questioning and and that’s where my Buddhist therapists would be so happy that we’re actually having these conversations that we we didn’t have before because our routine got broken, right, our routine got broken. So that is, like I said, a good and a hard thing. Both things can be true. Now, what we’ve done when it comes to staffing is we’ve actually looked overseas. So right now our firm is sitting at around 53 People in St. Louis, which is where our headquarters are, we have about 18. So we have two attorneys in Ohio, and attorney in California Attorney in Virginia, we do immigration. So it’s federal, so it doesn’t really matter where people are. And it gives us flexibility to have an attorney in Oregon. And then we have a remote team in Argentina, which consists of our a lot of our call center team. We have paralegals down there who are actually lawyers in Argentina. So we’ve really had to be creative and think outside the box to try to find the talent and the people that we need to grow the firm, if I

Tyson Mutrux
can add on to that. Because it’s something that we’ve been using overseas talent for quite a while for the last 12 years, really. But I think that there’s a huge opportunity that you look remotely, not just overseas, but in the US. So we tested this out over the last now it’s been about a year, I think 11 months where we were testing out, same job ads, same everything same pay, but we made it more of a remote position across the country. And we’ve been able to attract talent for the same cost as what we’re paying people in St. Louis as sometimes cheaper. But they’re like top talent in different states. And because if you really look like for example, let’s say you’re a New York law firm, right, we’re not a New York law firm. But if you’re a New York law firm, you’re used to paying high high wages, right? But the reality is, if you look across the country, there’s a lot of sweet spots, for example, Alabama is one of those sweet spots where you can pick off top talent for a fraction of what you’re paying a New York person, right. It’s just that’s the reality of what it is. So I think looking at at home, or around the country, there’s a lot of opportunities, but you also have to be Jim is intentional with his hiring, we are intentional with our hiring, and you have to be intentional about it. Because what people do is they go, oh, I need a new person, let’s put up a job. And they give it no thought about who they’re bringing in, they give no thought they have no hiring process, you got to have a hiring process. So you’ve got to be deliberate with it. And don’t just put a person in a chair, you’ve got to think like, do they fit with the culture, culture is really, really important. And if you hire someone that that is really bad for your culture, it can be really toxic, and you’ve got to be in there is a chance for a reset at any time. I don’t know if you’ve read top grading, but we implemented top grading right around 10 months ago. And there you sort of have to kind of process people out and then so you can process people in. And that’s the nice way of putting it. But that’s when you start to implement things like that. And you get delivered with things. The dynamic of your firm is going to change but it’s you’re doing it deliberately.

Speaker 2
Wow. So I love that you put that comparison with putting remote and ads Jim goes overseas, you’re staying in the US may be a combo of two, this is what I’m hearing over and over again. So I tell lawyers when they call me there, maybe have old school rigid mindset that No, I want him in the office. I need them in the office and what’s followed after that statement. Because I don’t know what they’re doing. When if they’re not sitting in my office. Right? So I’d love to get your perspective. So you made a massive leap you 12 years in and going overseas staying in the US doesn’t matter regardless of it. How like how do you know what people are doing every day in that place and getting the KPIs is all the but buzzword in this day and age as well?

Jim Hacking
Well, KPIs as you know, Molly are obviously very different than what are they doing? I don’t give a fuck what they’re doing. I don’t give a I mean, I see these people talking in the big group about you know, where do I get software so that I can see whether my VAs overseas are billing me for playing on Facebook. Listen, listen, this is a results economy. And for law firms, it’s about the result, I don’t want to be in the business of micromanaging them, I don’t want to be in the business of having to spy on them with some nanny cam, to make sure that they’re not screwing around, I don’t care if they’re screwing around, if they’re getting my work done, and they’re hitting my KPIs all as well. But this 1950s mentality of the factory, where I’m the overseer at the top of the factory, and I’m watching everybody on the assembly line, making sure that nobody’s taking a smoke break or, or, you know, checking, checking on their kids. I mean, I don’t care, I literally don’t care. And in fact, I want them to be well rounded people, I want them to be balanced people, I want them to come to work and be ready to work. And if they’re working at two in the morning because their kids are asleep. Or if they’re, you know, doing stuff on the weekend to catch up. As long as the work that I expect them to do, and that we’ve agreed upon, they’re responsible for. That’s just babysitting. That’s just bad management. If they think that they need to be able to micromanage on that level. That’s because they suck as business owners and law firm owners.

Speaker 2
Oh, my God, mic drop, right. I love it. That is phenomenal. I love it. This is a results driven economy. Yeah. Very, very different. What are they doing and KPIs? I love that distinction Jim Tyson want to get?

Tyson Mutrux
I think that Jim just hit the nail on the head. I mean, it’s, I laugh when people say Oh, but I gotta know what they’re doing. I gotta, I gotta have him in that chair. I gotta have. What are you talking about? No, no, you don’t? What? So you can go into their office and bother them. So you can get your coffee and have a little nice chit chat with no, you’re bothering them. They don’t want to be in your office, because you’re interrupting their work. And Jim’s absolutely right. If you’re hitting all your key numbers, I care about what our average fee is. And I care about the number of cases we settle. That’s pretty much all they care about, right. And if you’re doing those things, then great. But here’s the here’s the other thing, the same people that say that they need to micromanage and see everything and put the software’s on their computers and all that are the same ones that will leave the office early, that they’re not the ones putting in the work themselves. And that this is the Hey, asshole moment where they see you doing those things, and they don’t want to do the work either. If you’re not going to do the work, they’re not going to do the work. And so it’s amazing to me, it’s always the same people too. It’s the same lawyers that want to micromanage that don’t want to put in the work. They just want to try to Yeah, Jim go with that. Because you play when Jim puts up his finger. He’s,

Jim Hacking
I know, we had a hot seat a couple quarters ago, and one of our favorite members was there. And he was complaining about how he can’t find associates where he lives and people. And so he so he presents this issue, this problem that he’s having, he talks for five or 10 minutes, and then everyone gets to chime in for like 20 minutes. And people would say, Well, have you thought about remote workers? Oh, that doesn’t work in our model. Have you thought about part time attorneys or out of state attorneys? Oh, that doesn’t work for our model. So everything was that doesn’t work in our model? Well, listen, brother, maybe your model is not working. That’s maybe, maybe we need a new model.

Speaker 2
Oh, my goodness. Is this really weird? Like, talk to me? I know you’re having amazing conversations and your conferences on your podcast and your Facebook group and the guild? Is this like where we’re at right now for those firms for that brother that’s sitting in the hot seat and said, that won’t work for my model for my firm? What have you, what do you see if they do not truly take a look at the model? Take a look at the way they’re doing what they’re doing in their mindset around this? What do you have to say, is this a wave of where we’re headed with law firms in 2023? If you do not pivot, and I know that word is so abused, but what do you guys seem for the law firms that are going to be like, stick their heels into that mindset?

Tyson Mutrux
Well, I don’t think it’s a pivot problem. I don’t think people need to think about pivoting. I think that they just need to stop and think because and I think it’s this is normal. I think it’s completely normal for people to like, I used to do criminal defense, right. And so it was very normal for me to have to get up in the morning, drive, you know, an hour to a court and then just drive around all frickin morning to different courthouses. And then in the afternoon, I’m meeting with clients, I’m going to do jail visits. And next thing you know, you’re on to the next day, and then the next day, the next day, and it’s easy to get stuck in that grind. And you’re sort of in this rut and you’re doing everyday and so the law firm owners, it’s a normal feeling to have that but the value comes whenever you kind of step back a little bit. You want to pivot in what you’re doing, but you do have to step back and think about where do I want this firm to go? Where’s my time best spent So I guess if there is a trend because there is what, right behind 2023 there’s private equity coming in to the legal space. Okay, it’s coming. It’s already in a few states. Yeah, it’s going to get more efficient, okay. And you’re gonna have a lot more competition over the next decade than what we add over the last decade. So you need to make your firms more efficient and get ready for it, because it’s coming. And people need to stop. And I think just having a pause, if the message is anything, it’s take a pause, and think about where you’re headed and with your firm. Another word you can use is be deliberate, right, be deliberate about what you’re doing.

Speaker 2
Efficiency. What did we talk about be more efficient? What does that mean for the two of you?

Jim Hacking
Well, Stephen Covey would say we begin with the end in mind, right? So what do we want? And what, you know, is there a difference between what we say what we want and what we’re actually working towards? Right? So I think if you want to talk about efficiency, you have to ask yourself, Okay, well, what is the final outcome? What, what’s the ideal experience for our team? How do we want to create our work product, and then look at all the ways that we can simplify it, that we can delegate it that we can have the person with the least amount of talent, doing the low level stuff, and the people with the higher talent doing the most important stuff. So many lawyers that we talked to spend their time doing $5 work, when they should be doing $50,000 work, right. And so I think that Tyson’s point that he just made about stopping and thinking is critical for law firm owners and 2023 and beyond, because we’re just so reactive, and so bouncy around, and so undisciplined that all that anger and vitriol we’re trying to impose on our staff, we should be focusing on ourselves and ask ourselves my favorite question from Jerry colonna, which is, how have we been complicit in creating the conditions that we say that we don’t want? And I think that’s just a really insightful question. Because it just forces you to take responsibility, everything at our firm is our fault. Anything that’s going wrong at our firm, it’s our fault. We are the only ones who have the power to change it. And so we can pitch all we want. But if we’re not doing the legwork, and like Tyson said, if our team doesn’t know that we’re in the trenches with them, they’re gonna be like, who’s had Asel? Who comes in every three days and yells at me? You know, I don’t have any loyalty to that person.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, and I’ll add to that, I mean, I think I think it’s simple exercise. I haven’t talked about this in a while. But a simple exercise that people can do that are sort of struggling is you just take, it’s really simple, right? you map out the case from start to finish. So if you do an injury case, from the moment that really the person gets in the crash, map out that experience for that client from start to the end of the case, and make it ideal, right, and you pick out all the benchmarks in there, and an injury case, its speed, and in most most practice areas, it’s speed, and you’re talking about efficiency. Okay, let’s get this thing fast. So like that, whatever that timeframe is, let’s try to shrink it down as much as possible. And it can be hard with injury cases, because it’s like you want to rush a case, but you can do things to make it more efficient. For example, medical records is a massive time suck for a lot of injury firms. And so what let’s let’s pick apart that part of the process, and how do we shrink that down and make it as fast as possible. So if you just go through the simple process of mapping out your case, like a timeline, start to finish and start to pick apart points where it’s slow, and you can, you can improve, and then you can’t, like make everything perfect, but over time, you can make it better. And just doing that little exercise will help you tremendously,

Speaker 2
as you said that I’m like, Wow, imagine doing that with your team and treating it like a mini workshop and having fun with it. And sitting down talking about being in the trenches with your team, talking about being deliberate talking about speed, talking about consistency, efficiency, and I love that efficiency, speed. I love this, especially with what is coming. I think a lot of attorneys don’t believe it. We’ve seen it in the dental space we’ve I mean, so I love that you said that of sitting down the pause, take a step back, take a case from cradle to grave. And as you’re saying that and bringing in your team, how about bringing your team to do that as well and for them to I hear from attorneys all the time you know, business will be great but for the employees nobody will step up and lead and Mike have you given them permission? Have you given them permission Have you enrolled them have you taken the pause and sat and taken a gaze from the beginning to the end for them to see Hey attorney Why are you doing that? Didn’t you hire me to do that? Can I step up and lead and a lot of times I think you know it’s it’s kind of a blessing and a curse if you will I hired these people and nobody you know will follow the process step up in all the complaints that they’re bitching about what have you but your employees our relationship? Have you given them any time attention feedback to even pour in them. Have you given them permission to lead? And or are you just white knuckling? Everything to Jim’s point? You know, the brain surgeon model that I’m the guru, I’m the guy is not scalable and sellable. Just real

Tyson Mutrux
quick, sorry. We’re both getting worked up over this one. If that’s your model, right, I always I always think back to this. And I don’t know if this is true. I’ve heard about the story about Donald Rumsfeld, right. And Donald Rumsfeld whenever he was, whenever George Bush was, when that White House, what happened is, every morning, they call them snowflakes, right. And he had a bit sticky notes. And this is the story. So I’m just repeating the story that I heard. So he had these sticky notes, and people would be in an align every single morning, and he would hand out sticky notes, and you’d see them leave the White House, and they would call them snowflakes as they were leaving the White House. That is not a very efficient leadership model. Okay? That is if everything’s at the top, if that’s your leadership model, you’ve not given all of your team members that that permission, that authority to make decisions. And if you’re struggling, read the book, turn your ship around, right, turn the ship around, I think he’s the name of it, it is a great book where you need to empower your people it because that is extremely inefficient. If everything’s come up to the top and a lot, that’s how a lot of law firm owners are, because they are the lawyer of the law firm, they’re running the law firm, everything sort of runs through them. And it’s extremely inefficient. And so you’ve got to empower your people to make those small decisions, from the small decisions to the big decisions, they’ve got to be empowered to make mistakes, they’ve got to otherwise you’re going to be stuck in that rut for the next 30 years of your career.

Unknown Speaker
If you’re still in business, that’s the

Jim Hacking
cost of delegation, the cost of delegation is whether or not you’re comfortable letting them make mistakes, and not going nuts, not losing your shit. If if you I mean, obviously want to have safeguards. So there’s no malpractice but short of that, you’ve got to be comfortable in letting go, because so many of the people that we see struggle with delegations are the control freaks, who won’t let things go and won’t let people make mistakes. Obviously, we all know it, mistakes are the best way to learn. And as long as you’re not harming your client, and as long as you’re not, you know, downgrading the reputation of the firm within those boundaries, you got to give your team a lot of leeway. And you can always have safety nets or safeguards like, like a safeguard would be before something goes out, it’s reviewed by you or another attorney. But that doesn’t mean you have to be the one to put the paper in the printer. That doesn’t mean that you know if you can get your team to get it 85 90% of the way done the way you want it. Now for Tyson would say you got to get the way you want it all into a system. So they can do it almost 99%. But if you if you want that catch all for the first six months, do it and then eventually just let it go.

Speaker 2
Jim, how do you get comfortable but letting go I hear this from material like Yeah, yeah, that one time, I did let go and I got a bar complaint that one time, they’re always picking from their past or past experience of that one time, then I did not go not doing that again, you just

Jim Hacking
have to ask yourself, Do I really want to delegate? Or do I want a one person show I mean, that’s the the cost of business, the cost of having something bigger than yourself, the cost of having a firm with 53 people is you got to let go of a whole lot of stuff. And that just start off by letting go the things you hate to do and that you’re not good at, then let go the things that you don’t like to do that you are good at, and then let go of the things that you’re good at, and you’d like to do. And that’s that’s really the right mindset. And if you don’t, it’s fine. But don’t say that you want something else? And then not do it. That’s the cost of admission. Yes,

Unknown Speaker
Tyson want to get?

Tyson Mutrux
No, I agree with that. That what Jim just said is really important. Because people will tell us all the time that they want one thing and they really don’t they’re saying that they want that one thing because it’s cool, right? It’s they want this whatever it is, right? They they want to run a 100 person law firm and they really don’t they say it because it sounds cool. And they see other people saying that they want it. And if they really were to step back and think about what their vision is for their career, then they would realize, okay, that’s not what I really want. But to address your question, though, right? Okay, you can still say yeah, I did that one time and then this happened. I got a bar complaint. Let’s say that’s what it is. Okay,

Jim Hacking
I had a I had a bad hire and then they don’t want to ever hire someone again.

Tyson Mutrux
That’s that’s like the number one right? Okay. Well, what did you learn from that? Right? Why did you have the bad hire? What could you have done differently to catch some of those things? You can’t catch everything. Okay. It may have been that one thing that slipped through it’s usually not though it’s usually you didn’t have a hiring process in place. And so you just hired whomever and then you put them in a seat and they were terrible. And you didn’t know that because you didn’t ask the right questions, but just step back and assess Okay, well, why did these things happen? Okay, now what fail safes can we put in place what bumpers can we put in place to prevent it from happening again? That will allow How you to sort of step back, for example, we have one of our checklist items that we have for case managers case comes through. If the statute of limitations after the case of sign is less than 90 days out, that’s a big red flag for us when it pops up a red flag, and we say, we need to alert an attorney right away and address the issue. So you can put in failsafes, like that, so that you’re alerted? Is it 100%? Could someone just check that box off and say, Oh, no big deal, and someone blows a statute, I guess that’s, that’s, that’s fine. But that’s probably a hiring problem. You’re, that’s probably a management problem. That’s probably something else to step back and ask yourself why they happen. Put in things in place to help correct it. So it doesn’t happen again, and you’re fine. Did you get the step back, and you have to, you have to sort of trust the process a little bit.

Speaker 2
And getting clear. I love that, um, what you really want your all time I’ll get calls from attorneys that are contacting us for hiring and we’re in a path of growth, we’re going to attend next this year, blah, blah, blah, and like, no, why do you want that? Talk to me a little bit about it, because you don’t want to spend the money for it. You don’t want to pay your people, right? But they’re comparing yourself to so and so that they saw on the Facebook group or saw at a conference or what have you been like, God, this guy or gal, this practice has it all. And I love that you said Get really clear with yourself if you’re not willing to fail fast, and you’re not willing to get into action and be able to let go, that maybe that’s not the model for you. And just really getting clear with yourself right,

Becca Eberhart
is that Python is back if you’re new around here, the ZAP 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 the guild today and grab your ticket at

Speaker 2
max law events.com. So you all get to a point, obviously, you let go, you built very, very successful law firms. Talk to me about this passion project that you have with maximum lawyer, I know you’re doing a lot of amazing stuff to support attorneys in the legal space to grow their practice, using your model. And as the lab you all have proof of concept, tried, tested, proven. Talk to us about what you’re up to in regards to supporting law firms and lawyers.

Jim Hacking
So I’ve come to the conclusion that my purpose in life is to try to ease people suffering. And I do that as an immigration lawyer by helping people stay in the United States come to United States be joined with their family be protected. And I think that transfers right over to maximum lawyer. I mean, the whole thing started because Tyson and I were trying to figure things out. And we’re talking things through and I thought these are good conversations. And we thought this would make a good podcasts. So it started with that. And so you know, that lots of growth, lots of new opportunities and new connections that we’ve made with people. But for the most part, I think most law firm owners are suffering and they’re suffering in silence. And I think that’s why the Facebook group really grew was because it was a place where it was okay to have a growth mindset where, you know, we don’t allow any negativity in there. Like if people are bitching out they go right. Or if they’re spammy or self promotional, or if they if they’re just negative or harsh, out they go. So we wanted to create a place where people could talk about the hardships related to owning a law firm. And I say all the time in the group and in the guild that this shit is hard, other than raising kids growing a law firm is the hardest thing we’ll ever do. And so I think that that’s really what you call it a passion project. And I think I think it’s grown into that. And I think that both of us are sort of serious, and we spend time talking to law firm owners every week about the struggles that they’re having. And, you know, we created the group that we needed, we created that that community that we needed, and we and we’ve taught ourselves the lessons that we learned, like one of the great things about the podcast, Tyson shared a tic tac with us yesterday, and he has a cool little message about fear of missing out and I said let’s even get him on the podcast. So we get information that helps our firm and it’s always easier to see problems and other people than than in your own.

Speaker 2
Yeah, and your podcast. My goodness, it comes to my inbox. That is one podcast I’ve listened to every single week. I absolutely love it Tyson how about for you?

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I love it. I just love it kind of thinking about how the it’s all sort of progressed because it started just me and Jim you know a bunch of false starts with a podcast on camera. Well, we started on what was what did we start recording on Jim? It was the Skype Skype Yeah, we started recording on Skype we had there are so many episodes that we forgot to press record, you know? And then you kind of fast forward like yeah, okay, sorry than a Facebook Rupe and then you got the podcast, and then the conference and the guild. And it’s just kind of cool to think about how it’s progressed, it’s progressed with our law firms, too. It’s grown with our law firm law firms, which is a pretty cool part of it as well. And I think it’s cool to kind of listen to some of the old episodes, like some of the advice that we gave them versus what we what we’d give now we’ve, we’ve learned so much, it’s just as valuable to me and Jim as it as everyone else. Because we get to learn as we’re talking to all these amazing people, like, we had some amazing talents on the podcast, and there’s just really incredible to do. But then if you kind of go to like the Gil, like I kind of pinch myself every day, you know, but like, oh, it’s amazing being in such a wonderful group of human beings and attorneys and successful attorneys, and you kind of a spectrum of people that are sort of just starting out, and then people that are doing just truly amazing things in the legal space. And it’s so cool to be able to be around those people. It’s just, it’s incredible. Talk to us about the guild. Yeah. So the guild is what I say is on the podcast, you know, if you want a more high level conversation, join us in the guild, Max, I’ll go back out. And then that’s exactly what I say on the podcast. And it’s, it really is it’s a great community of I’d say, in the in the entire legal space, probably the top 5% of all attorneys, like they’re just really, really good people, great attorneys that really are about improvement and helping each other. And the great thing is, is most people they give more than they take which is which is a rare trait to have right? To find someone willing to give more than they are, then it’ll take but you know, we’ve got quarterly masterminds with training sessions as well that are mixing their their their two day events throughout the country. Like for example, we just got back from Scottsdale, then we’ve got Austin and then Boulder and then Miami to wrap up the year. So really cool things Jim just did an amazing workshop on on video and they can share because Jim’s got I don’t know how many freakin views on YouTube, ours. And it’s it’s it’s quite incredible. And then we’ve got hot seats we do. We’ve got training sessions that we do and weekly accountability calls. And it’s just the most important part of those is community and we had a gym mission earlier. But we had a member that was sort of struggling last week. And the rallying around him this week has been just incredible, just incredible. And they don’t even know who the person is, right? They don’t know what the person is, but they were the comments, the videos, the just the showing of like, Hey, we’ve got your back was was quite incredible. So it’s just it’s a great group of people.

Speaker 2
What I love about what you said successful attorneys successful lawyers in the definition of success is just not money in the bank. It’s just not bodies in the building, so to speak. And when I hear from you and Jim that I really think distinguishes your organization, the work that you all are doing, it’s not about the billable hour, it’s not about tracking time, it’s not about more money, and there’s so many organizations out there that yeah, they buy on paper, these law firms, I mean, so successful, more money than they ever could have imagined more impact than they ever could imagine. But they’re just so broken. They’re angry all the time. They hate their employees are constantly bitching about their employees, what have you, they have all this money, they have all this success, all the building satellite offices, all the things that are on paper, make your definition of success. But I would love for you all just to kind of tie a bow on this. What success mean for you when you talk about successful lawyers because there’s something different there is absolutely something different in in our listeners, I’m going to put all the links all the show notes at Facebook group and I’ll have you guys mentioned that there’s something different about what the two of you are, you know, before we started recording, I just like given your 75 part episode that the two of you did together the vulnerability there the transparency I mean, it’s it’s just a different vibe they the two of you, I’d love to hear what success truly what the definition of success means for each of you.

Jim Hacking
My son calls the guild AAA for lawyers. I’ve been told Tyson that but that’s you’re doing lawyer a again. You know, I have read the big book and I’m I’m in the 12 step world for a long time. So we definitely bring some of that vibe to it. But I really do think it’s about finding that connection and giving people permission to make mistakes to acknowledge the struggle to talk about the hard things. Success for me is having an impact. If it’s helping an immigrant if it’s helping a lawyer, if it’s helping people like when we do our hot seats will tell people well, you can come on and talk about whatever you want. And you know when people get on and talk about, you know how to become more efficient or how to run an SEO campaign. I’m like, boo boo hiss. I like it when we’re digging around in the dirt talking about the hard stuff. And that’s really where the connection rises. One time. We were doing a hot seat in some But he talked about their long history of problems with drinking and and that unlocked three other people to talk about things that they were struggling with just at that moment. And that to me, when that happens, that makes all this work that we’re doing for the maximum lawyer community worthwhile.

Tyson Mutrux
I agree with all of that. I’m very proud of the work that we’ve done, the work that we’ve done to help other lawyers, and I mean, every podcasts been absolutely amazing. No, but that’s, that’s part of life. Right. But the, I think it’s amazing to kind of look back and see the effect that we’ve had on the profession, and I’m very proud of that. But definition of success. I mean, for me, it’s really simple. Like, whenever I’m like a grandpa, or my kids, are they kind of talking about the stories that they had as a kid? Are they happy about their childhoods? And are they are they happy to have me as their father and, and to be the grandfather of their children, because that is something that we lose sight of. And it’s very simple for me, like, I want to have that, right, I want to have those relationships with my kids or strong bonds. And I do that the vehicle for that’s the law firm, right, and I demonstrate for them the hard work that it takes, and the dedication to your profession and to your craft. And I I show that by by being a successful lawyer and showing that I really care about the thing, the work that I do, and that you need to find something that you’re proud of doing and something that you’re you’re happy with doing and that it’s okay that if you’re if you don’t like your profession, that you can switch professions, you know, passing on those life lessons to them. That’s success to me, and everyone’s got their own definition of success. You’re so right about that. Gemini, we have maximum Laura, minimum time, it’s a little course that we have that we put together for guild members and it we talked about you can be a stage 1234, law, lawyer, whatever you want to be if you want to be a one lawyer work, little shop, and just do trademarks. And that’s all you want to do. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If you want to be that big time lawyer that has you know, 1000s of cases and puts up bunch of billboards, there’s nothing wrong with that. Choose whatever you want to be and go after that and be be okay with that. And if and you get halfway through it, and you decide that’s not for me, it’s okay to change. It’s okay to change that. And change your vision, your vision over over the years is going to change. That’s fine. You don’t have to stick to it, you can always hit that reset button.

Speaker 2
I love that. And then love your definition of success Tyson bringing in your adult children and grandchildren When have you because at the end of the day, you’re modeling in at the law firm. And I always say this to my clients when they come, you know their definition of success. It’s great that you’re modeling a law firm, but when you bring it home and your kids get the stressed out crappy version of you, right? No, it’s not an either or conversation. It’s an and and wherever you go, there you are. So really bringing that doing great work in the legal space serving families, serving your clients serving, you know, being a phenomenal leader to your employees as well. And then your kids seeing that and bringing it home to your family as well. It’s great, because so many lawyers, you know, they’re resentful, they’re missing their kids soccer, they’re missing everything. And when they are home, they’re not present, thundering silence, the, you know, the anxiety just pulsing through their veins. I always say you’re responsible for the energy, you bring in the room and you leave in the room. And when your kids, they’re feeling it, they’re feeling it. They’re like, yeah, Dad’s driving a Lambo, Dad’s you know, got the big building or what have you, but boy, boy, I can feel it. Wow. So all right, tell us what you guys are up to tell our attorney listeners that we have here how they can stay connected with you all if they’re not already.

Tyson Mutrux
The easiest way they could stay in touch with us is listen to the podcast. But also if you go to Facebook, we have a 6000 member Facebook group that is phenomenon. Okay, just search maximum lawyer and you can join us there. There’s a few questions you’ll get you’ll answer but we don’t allow spammers. So if you if you’re a spammer dark complainers,

Speaker 2
pitchers know, pitchers punch in our bit.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, join us there. And then we always recommend that you start there, right. But if you are a member of that group, and you want to join us in the guild, Maxwell guild.com is also another place to join us.

Speaker 2
Is there an open enrollment time for The Guild application process?

Tyson Mutrux
It is I mean, it is open enrollment kind of thing. We’ve talked about capping and we’ve talked about putting it where we have certain times but we haven’t done that at this point. But it is open roll enrollment at this point.

Speaker 2
Great. Excellent. Well, I am so completely honored, completely honored, keep up the amazing work and being legal leaders, leading legal leaders, the work that you’re doing on your podcast, the guests that you all have the diverse conversations, the real raw, honest conversations that you’re having. They’re making a massive, massive difference I’ve been in Lagos space for 26 years and I’m really passionate on the employee side of creating intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs world and thank you for all the work you’re doing with the attorneys. Thanks, Molly. Yes.

Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer but stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum liar.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

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

What if you knew the day that you were going to die? What if you gave your life your best shot because you knew that your time was limited? What would you do differently? What would you change in your law firm? Who would you call to make sure you talked to today? 

In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max Law Con 2022, where Jim gives his talk – “Why are you waiting?” Which encourages you to live today with the mindset of your finite time and asking the important question of how would you change what you do today? 

How would that encourage you to make decisions and say “No.” to certain things? How would it make you step up and say “Yes!” to other things a lot  quicker. What is important to you? 

Listen to this episode and be encouraged to move forward fearlessly. 

Episode Highlights:

2:00 Being present and in the moment

7:20 Let’s talk about saying yes and how every decisions is effected

9:30 We are a limited amount of time — Suppose this is the last year? the last day?  What would you do and who would you call? Why would you not do it today?

Remember that everything you are doing is important but remember that you only have one shot at your business, your life, your family  so give it your all and make it the best that you can. 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube. 

Jim’s Hack: Read Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Resources:

Transcript: Why Are You Waiting with Jim Hacking

Unknown Speaker
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2020. To keep listening to hear Jim hacking as we share his talk, why are you waiting, you can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now let’s get to it.

Jim Hacking
Start close in. Don’t take the second step, or the third, start with the first thing close in the step you don’t want to take. Start with the ground you know, the pale ground beneath your feet, your own way to begin the conversation. Start with your own question. Give up on other people’s questions. Don’t let them smother something simple.

Unknown Speaker
To hear another’s voice, follow your own

Jim Hacking
voice. To hear another’s voice. Follow your own voice. Wait until that voice becomes a private ear that can really listen to another. Start right now. Take a small step you can call your own. Don’t follow someone else’s heroics. Be humble and focused, start close in, don’t mistake that other for your own.

Unknown Speaker
Start close in, don’t take the second step, or the third, start with the first thing close in the step you don’t want to take. That’s a poem by David White. And I

Jim Hacking
share it with you today to encourage all of us for the next two days, to be present to be here in the moment, with your friends, with your colleagues, all yearning to improve, all wanting to get better. I love this picture of Tiger Woods. If you can see, everybody is filming with their phones, except for the one fellow with a beer in his hand. He’s in the moment. He’s enjoying it. So I just put my phone away, I would encourage you to the extent that you can to put your phone away as much as you can, during this conference, I want you to be right here.

Unknown Speaker
Right now.

Jim Hacking
This is really, really hard to do all the time. It’s especially hard to do in 2022. And we can spend a lot of our time reminiscing on the past, I heard once that people with depression are focused on the past, and people with anxiety are focused on the future. So I encourage you, not just today, but throughout the conference. And as you leave, too. Don’t be asking yourself remember that one time, or thinking about wait until I get over there. My daughter Nora is famous for saying what are we going to do tomorrow?

Unknown Speaker
What are we going to do tomorrow. And I have found myself

Jim Hacking
sometimes doing what I call pre emptive living like getting so ready for tomorrow. That’s good. It’s good to plan. But we lose sight of the fact of being in the moment of being where we are. And so I think we have to operate on two tracks. The first track is looking to the future, and doing all the things that you’re going to hear about for the next few days about trying to improve things. But there is a real place for space, and to be here. Now this is gonna be a theme you’re going to hear throughout the conference. For me, one of the things that have really helped me with that is meditation. So most days, I’ll wake up in the morning early, and I’ll meditate just for 10 or 12 minutes. There are apps for that headspace is great. There are other free you can do all the free meditation in the world. And it’s really, really helped me to stay in the moment and to be a lot more grounded. And a lot Schiller, when riding that roller coaster of owning a law firm. One of the people that I’ve learned from is a guy named Jack Kornfield. And during my meditation, one of the things that he encouraged us to do is to just listen to what comes into our brain. When you’re quiet. You have lots of thoughts. And instead of chasing after those thoughts, you can name it. You can just say, oh, that’s anxiety, or oh, that’s worry, or oh, that’s me thinking about what’s for dinner tomorrow night. Just name it and let it go and just sort of let there be a parade of thoughts as you go through Pema Chodron talks about how thoughts are really just opinions. You know that we are so convinced at times that our thoughts are real and that everything we’re saying is 100% gospel fact, when in reality most things are just an opinion, and things that we think in our lives that are the worst things ever turned out to be really great for us, and vice versa. So Jack Kornfield talks about naming those emotions as they come through. So let’s be present together, I’m going to ask everyone to stand up for just a minute.

Unknown Speaker
And we’re going to take three breaths,

Jim Hacking
three breaths. And so let me show you how we’re going to do it. So stand with your, your feet, sort of at shoulder width, and stand straight and tall as if there’s a string in the center of your head, pulling straight up. And we’re going to lace our fingers, I’m going to practice at once, I’ll show you, okay, so I’m going to breathe in, and then pause, and then breathe out. Okay, and we’re going to do this three times. And the first time that we do it, we’re going to be thinking about ourselves, right ourselves. So

Unknown Speaker
we’re going to lace our fingers. Breathe in all the

Jim Hacking
worries, all that stress, all the things that are keeping us up at night, all the things that are making us sad, breathe it in. And breathe out joy and peace and serenity.

Unknown Speaker
Okay, now, for the second time,

Jim Hacking
we’re gonna do this to everyone in the room. And I know that there are people in this room who are suffering, and are having a hard time, and are really trying to do better and be better. And there are people who are sad, we had our mastermind for The Guild yesterday, and there are people who are really struggling, and really sad. So for this breath, we’re going to breathe in for all the suffering in the room. And we’re going to breathe out peace and love and serenity to each of them ready.

Unknown Speaker
All right now, for the last one, we’re going to do it for the world, right. And

Jim Hacking
so we’re going to think of our minds and the space that we’re taking all this in. And we have unlimited capacity to take in all the pain and suffering for the whole world. We’re going to breathe it in here. And then we’re going to breathe it out. And we’re going to send love and peace to all the people in Texas who are suffering everyone across the world who’s sad, who are really having a hard time. Ready. Last one.

Unknown Speaker
In Oh, thank you, everybody. Thanks for indulging me on that. All right. Now, now we’re gonna talk about saying yes, saying yes. And

Jim Hacking
every decision that we make is a sacrifice. Every decision that we make as a sacrifice, when we decide something, we’re deciding against many other choices.

Unknown Speaker
And the word decide comes from the

Jim Hacking
Latin decider, A and side is the important part of that word. And that’s to cut off. So we have words like suicide, homicide, genocide decide. So I really want you to focus on making decisions this week. And it’s okay that every decision that we make, we’re cutting off other opportunities, perhaps forever, when we marry a spouse, we’re saying to the rest of the world, I don’t want to marry you, I want to marry this person. And that makes that relationship that much more important. As business owners and law firm owners, we have to understand that we have limits, we can’t do everything. I really started to love this word finitude, which is the state of having limits or bounds. And there’s a real freedom and power and just acknowledging that we can’t do everything. So you’re going to hear lots of ideas. Over the next few days, you’re going to make pages and pages of list of things to do. I’m going to encourage you to do less, to do less, and to make better decisions. And to spend more time in your thinking chair with your notebook. Figuring shit out, instead of just doing things

Unknown Speaker
is apathy 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 the guild today and grab your ticket at max slot events.com.

Jim Hacking
We have a limited amount of time we have a limited amount of time as family members,

Unknown Speaker
law firm owners, human beings. I read a great book

Jim Hacking
down in the Dominican Republic this holiday break called 4000 weeks by Oliver Berkman. And that’s about what we get. If you live on average, you get about 4000 weeks. So every week that goes by, you know I’m 52 So I’ve had 52 times 52 weeks. So I think if you read that book, that you’ll see that there’s some really great lessons in there about the power of acknowledging that we don’t have unlimited capacity. So when I grew up, I grew up Catholic. And we spent a lot of time talking about death, a lot of time talking about death. So this was the hallway of the church where I would serve mass. And that little door down there is where you would go in to get ready. And you would have to walk by Jesus every day. And he was like this with his bloody rib. And it was scary as hell. But we talked about death a lot, a lot about death. When I was in fifth grade, or so my father and I, on Easter weekend, we had to take a movie Back to Blockbuster Video. And we were going up the hill from our house. And I said, Dad, did we actually bring the tape I think we might have forgotten it. So he pulled over, we were digging around, it had fallen in the back of the of the back seat. And then we went back up the hill, we got to the hill, the light turned red. And right at this moment, this motorcycle comes flying up the hill. And it hits these two old guys car and it drives the motorcycle came out the trunk. And my dad and I jumped out. And I was like 11. And there’s this dead guy there. Right. So I’ve always been thinking about and close to death. A couple years later, my father was in Lake of the Ozarks at the age of 41. And he had a massive heart attack. He took five nitroglycerin, trying to get his heart rate back. They defy him on the outside of a helicopter up to St. Louis University Hospital. And he had a quintuple bypass back when bypasses like they just stopped using pig vessels. And they just started using his own right. So I saw my dad who was like strong and built decks with by himself and he was just all muscle, he was completely weak as his chest plate was cut open. And so we were always worried about my dad dying. So that was when he was 41. That was in September of 81. In April of, of 82, I started having seizures, my hand would lock and my knees would lock and I would fall down. And then eventually they got worse and worse. And my parents thought that I had a brain tumor. So I spent two weeks in children’s hospital. And nobody knew what was wrong with me. For those of you who’ve heard me speak before, I think it was related to that incident that happened to me when I was a child. And I think that was all sort of psychosomatic stuff, because eventually outgrew it. But for two weeks there, I was getting spinal taps and all kinds of tests. And I thought I was going to die. So that was when I was 12. Later on in life, I changed religions and it became a Muslim. And in the slum, when somebody dies, the family members bury the body, right. And they wrap them in a white shroud. And so when my wife’s father and brother passed away, I participated in that ceremony. And it’s very powerful. It’s very powerful. And in Islam, also you have to get the body in the ground

Unknown Speaker
within the next day. So again, death around

Jim Hacking
wonderful book by a guy named Steven Levine called a year to live he and his wife administered treatment and palliative care to AIDS patients throughout the 80s and 90s. And he wrote this book called a year to live and he asked, suppose this was the last week I suppose this was the last day. Who would you call? What would you say? Why are you waiting? So when I read this book, I thought to myself, Boy, wouldn’t it be interesting if we all came with an expiration date? If we all had on maybe on our heel? Our expiration date if we knew the day that we were going to expire? And then I thought or wouldn’t it be interesting if somebody in a science fictiony kind of way came up with a machine that would tell you when you were going to pass away? Like you would know the date and the one thought I had a result those people would get to go first in line at Disney World, right because they only had a couple of days left. This is my friend Paul pesante. He was a mentor of mine, a lawyer, a law firm owner, very successful gotten multimillion dollar verdicts. On December 8 2014. Paul took his own life. His expiration date was December 8 2014. My wife’s good friend Rhonda Williams was the Assistant General Counsel at a company called SAVVIS. She was on her way downtown. She went out to her car. She was 41 years old, and she dropped dead right in the parking lot. This is Tyson’s old boss at Brown. He also took his life in October of 2020. So Tyson and I both have bosses and mentors who ended up taking their own life. Molly Bowman was a classmate of my wife and mine. And on my birthday, my 40th birthday, she sent me a message on Facebook at around 415 In the afternoon, wishing me a happy birthday and she said I hope this is your best year yet. So for those of you who I’ve wished Happy Birthday to, I always say I hope this is your best year yet because of Molly. About an hour later she has a quick trip I’m filling up her car with gas and some guy hopped up on any freezer something ran her over, and she died on her way to go pick up her kids from daycare. This last fall, Randy Gauri was the year behind me in law school. He was a multi multimillionaire

Unknown Speaker
offense, bestest litigation.

Jim Hacking
They named the whole lobby of the law school after him, he was younger than me. And two years ago, right after New Year’s, some crazy guy came into his house and killed him in front of his kid.

Unknown Speaker
And this is my dad. So

Jim Hacking
I do think that sometimes I work out some of my issues on stage. So I apologize for that. But this is my dad. And I told you, my dad had that heart attack in 1981, he lived another 40 years. And when I gave his eulogy last year, I was really grateful for the fact that we had received another 40 years with my dad, I mean, to think that his bypass lasted 40 years is unbelievable. And my dad had been sick. He had turned 80 in June. And luckily, we all got to tell him how much we loved him. I had everyone in the family wrote him a poem or a story about him. And we all read it to him. And then, as he got closer to death, the day before he died, and all of his kids, all of his grandkids, except for two, who attended by FaceTime, we all got to talk to him throughout the day, he was awake and asleep, awake and asleep. And he passed away the next day,

Unknown Speaker
at the age of 80. And

Jim Hacking
that was a really beautiful thing. And I hope that we all get that opportunity. Which brings me to the fact that we all have our own expiration date. And I’m trying not to be too morbid, but I did do something. So my sister Omer and I randomly generated dates in the future. And you have a date in the future, you don’t have to open it. I suggest you might not want to open it. But there is a date in the envelope in front of you. You can choose to open it, you can choose not to open it, I’m pretty sure and hopeful that the dates aren’t correct, right. But we did some in the next 20 years, some of the next 30 years and some of the next 40 or 50 years. So I offer that to you as a simple thought experiment, to remember that everything we’re doing is important, but we only have one shot at this life. So I want you to do everything you can to build the best practice, build the best life, build the best family that you can, and love everyone that you come across. Thanks, everybody.

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