Today on the podcast Tyson sat down with MaxLawCon 2021 sponsor Get Staffed Up.
They talk a lot about freedom at Get Staffed Up. After several years in business, they discovered that they’re really in the business of helping other lawyers liberate themselves by delegating (way) more tasks, leading them to newfound freedom. Get Staffed Up challenges you to come up with ways that you can’t improve your life, and someone else’s life, by delegating the tasks you don’t want to do.
3:08 a better way to grow a business
4:02 the great resignation
6:35 how does this work
13:39 virtual assistants
16:00 data entry and invoicing
17:43 legal teams in 8 countries
Watch the interview here.
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Transcript: Delegate Your Way to Freedom w/ Brett Trembly
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.
Tyson Mutrux
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer podcast on new tricks. Jim is on assignment. Today we’ve got a pop up podcast with co founder Brett Trembley with get stepped up and gets stepped up was a sponsor of the conference. Brett, how you doing?
Brett Trembly
Man back home after a really fun conference last week. You guys did a great job.
Tyson Mutrux
Thanks. Appreciate that. But let’s talk about get stepped up. We’ll talk about the conference a little bit too, though. But tell us about I guess it start with you though, we’ll still get you for you to get staffed up. Tell us about your journey.
Brett Trembly
Sure. Law School and oh five, graduated oh eight worked at a small law firm. One or two attorneys very unhappy, unfulfilled always kind of knew I do my own thing. start my own firm in 2011. So actually, my 10th anniversary is coming up in like 10 days. And you know, started out like most people, high ambitions and things took off. After a few years, I started hiring people and then just relying on that sort of strategy of spending money before I had it, which is not easy to do. And it took me quite a few years to learn that and to get over my fear of failure as I learned that I had. And then look, things went really well with the law firm was growing. And I was in a place where I could maybe try a few different things. And a good buddy of mine, also an attorney, we used to meet monthly and do masterminds and he talked about having some people offshore and early 2018, we decided to start get staffed up and it’s been crazy fast, right? Ever since
Tyson Mutrux
she was talking about get stepped up. And I know you’ll do but not everybody knows what you do. So tell people what you do. I think it’s pretty obvious in the day, which means it’s a good day, but tell people what you do.
Brett Trembly
Right. So the three second version is we liberate lawyers with incredible offshore talent. And hopefully people say, Oh, that sounds cool. Like what does that mean? Right? The longer version is we’re helping lawyers and law firms realize what bigger companies have done for a long time. And which has slowly made its way to the smaller and professional services companies, which is you can find really great team members and grow your firm, virtually with full time people, right? Because there’s a difference between having a virtual assistant who’s like part time or project based or 10 hours a week, which that’s okay, too. But you can place full time people in important positions, administrative positions in your law firm, and grow that way. So you have some local staff and some, you know, offshore virtual staff. And the cost savings are incredible. And cost savings is like the audience’s lawyers, we get that right, because not every dollar that goes in goes our pocket. And a lot of times, most of it doesn’t, and it gets frustrating. So there’s a better way to grow a business. And that’s where your revenues grow. But your expenses don’t just keep right up with it. Right. It’s like one of them’s going up and the other is slowly going up. So what happens with the extra money, you do more marketing, you do more cases, you pay people better, you get the better attorneys, if someone has, let’s say seven offshore virtual assistants through us seven or eight, they’re saving tax and about a quarter of a million dollars a year on payroll, compared to if they had those seven people in house. So again, we talked about the great resignation. And some people have really good presentations at max law con about paying people more and coming up with creative ways to keep staff happy in 2021. And to me, I mean, we just kind of got lucky with the good timing. But we fit right in with that strategy of just being a smarter way to run a law firm.
Tyson Mutrux
You gave me a great segue. This is what I want to ask you next, like the grit resignation is a real thing. Right? Finding really good talent is a really tough thing right now. Is that affecting you overseas as well, whenever you’re trying to find talent? Or is that not the case?
Brett Trembly
The gray resignation, as far as we know, is a US problem, right? We’re the ones printing money, right? So we’re kicking the can down the road and in terms of the national debt, and people for Look, nobody wants to commute anymore. That part we get. And I don’t want to say spoiled because I don’t want to commute. I just think that’s just a development that’s not good or bad. But then other people don’t want to work and you know what, that’s okay, too. It’s like, people want to be entrepreneurs or they want to have at home jobs in their computer, you know, like stay at home moms, they want to do their own thing. That’s great. That’s people aren’t put on this world to work for you and me and everybody right like that. They have their own lives that they need to live overseas. You know, there’s not the same opportunity the same, you know, a lot People can’t just start a new business online and make money in months, two, three, and four. So we’re not seeing that at all. In fact, on average, we’ve built the type of machine Ties and More, we’re going to take annualize 200,000 applications for people that want to work with us and ultimately meet with you write with our clients who are lawyers.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s incredible. I just can’t imagine doing that. That’s incredible. That’s pretty cool. So are you done with a law firm now? Or do you still have a law firm open,
Brett Trembly
the law firm, still open is thought 10 attorneys, it’s Frank and I spent three years building out a leadership team, we use a system called traction, or EOS. And so our traction coach helped me create an owner’s box. So like traction parlance, instead of a CEO and CEO of a visionary integrator, I’m no longer even in the visionary seat, I’m in the owners box. So I still you know, I really care about the law firm. I was there yesterday doing stuff, communicating with the leadership team and the new visionary all the time, we still want it to grow. But because I’m not putting in the time to that firm, I can’t take out of it what I would if I was full time, right? So I’m not like raking it in from the firm either. But that’s okay. That’s the way we designed it. And so the attorneys they’re working hard are really benefiting the most right now, while I focus on gets stepped up.
Tyson Mutrux
Very cool. Love it. All right back to get stepped up. So if someone were to work with you, so let’s say I was gonna go to you and say, Hey, I need someone for medical records. I need someone to request medical records, I guess how does that work? So
Brett Trembly
we do full time only, as I’ve kind of alluded to, and we don’t have a long term contract. So if you start working with us, then for whatever reason, things don’t work out, then things don’t work out. But we don’t call it a sales call. We call it a decision making call, right? We get on the phone with you, we walk you through the whole process, you make a decision, I want to move forward, yes, no, you sign the contract, pay the one time startup fee, which pretty sure we start with discount going from Max Abad CON attendees. And then what we do is yes, we’re taking applications all the time, and we’re constantly building and we got boots on the ground and a bunch of countries. But out of all those people were filtering down to the less than the top 1%. So we’re going to place about 500. And maybe next year about 1000 bas with our clients. But again, that’s out of a huge number, that 200,000 number. So we’ve already narrowed it down through about 20 different steps and tests and interviews and English proficiency. So that we’ve we’re finding the best of the best. And that’s what we hang our hat on out of that pool that’s left, then it becomes an executive search, we have like software that helps match people. And depending on the interview we do with you, which is like the next touch point 45 minutes where we find out everything that you’re looking for and what position you’re trying to fill. Is it a traditional position like legal secretary, an executive assistant, a personal assistant, a receptionist, an intake coordinator? Or is it like happiness marketing? Or is it just like a jack of all trades, right, we then start placing people in front of you that we’ve already interviewed and vetted, and then you get to interview them, and give us thumbs up or down. If it’s thumbs down and move on. Next one, if it’s thumbs up, then we have a match. And we set a start date, and you’re off to the races with your new employee.
Tyson Mutrux
It’s quite incredible. Because one of the hardest things for us, because I’ve gone through this so many times is we usually hire people that are Upwork. It’s just easy for us. But it’s really, really, really difficult to sift through to see who’s good, who’s bad, because some of these vas, they hire companies to create profiles for them that looks spectacular, then you get them in your office, and they’re not good, right? So you I mean, that’s a lot of upfront work that you’ll have to do.
Brett Trembly
Yeah, so look, that’s where the value proposition comes in. Right? If you’re a solo attorney, and every penny matters to you, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, because I’ve been there. But if money is your number one thing, then the do it yourself model is basically the way you have to go. But as you start growing, and you start to value your time or your money, because spending a little bit to then put your time on something where you make a lot again, you know, just a smarter way to do it. That’s, you know, we’re where we come in, I call it the Bake Off method. So if you want a good graphic designer and Upwork, what you really need to do is hire eight, I’ll give all at the same project, pay him 50 bucks, and then take the top four, give them another project and then take the top two, same thing in younger number one and you have a backup, right that takes time. Time is money, as Tim Ferriss says in the four hour workweek. It’s going to take about seven tries before you find a good VA to do it yourself. I can argue that’s going to cost you more in the long run than going with us. But regardless, right? It’s not really a sales pitch. I still use off work there’s a time and a place for that type of V A but again, that’s not what we do. We’re about building your law firm through full time team members that just happen to be located in a different country.
Tyson Mutrux
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Tyson Mutrux
So let’s say that I chose someone that you pay. So you pick the perfect person to request medical records for me, I liked them. I say, Yes, I want to do them. Do I pay you? Do I pay them? Does it? How do you negotiate the fees? How’s all that work?
Brett Trembly
So we have a monthly flat fee. So you would pay us right? And no taxes on top of that. No withholding all that. And then we handle all the backend stuff. So look, every country has different rules at different price points that a lot of different things going on. So we’re the employer record, meaning hopefully, we’re shielding you from any employer liability, and two, we’re doing the payroll, the withholding, the benefits, all that good stuff. That’s again, part of our ongoing services that we provide as well as a replacement guarantee. So when you do it yourself, and someone quits because everybody quits, right? I mean, this is like humans, this, this happens, you’re back to square one. When you’re with us, we have a replacement guarantee. So if somebody leaves or quits for any reason, then we go right back and move into the front line, and we’re presenting your new profiles, you know, within probably a week to 10 days.
Tyson Mutrux
I mean, that’s really, really good. I mean, that’s one of those things, it’s really, really tough. And it’s also for the people that don’t have VA, they don’t know that this is a problem. Whenever you hire VA, you solve a really big problem. The reason why I asked about the payment is because if you don’t go through a platform, if you don’t go through a company, like gets effed up, it’s really, really hard to pay people overseas, you can use things like transfer wise, sometimes you can figure it out through PayPal, but it’s really easy. It’s not as easy as just sending money to them. There are a lot of things that you’re doing it so that solves a big problem.
Brett Trembly
You know how many nightmares we’ve had growing this business? Because we didn’t know either, right? Like we had a few at work for us. We’re gonna start this company. Why is it so hard to move money to people? It’s insane. And then you figure out a method that works and then it doesn’t you get blocked or something happens? So yeah, it’s a it can be a
Tyson Mutrux
lot. Yeah, I’ve had a VA where the pay through transfer was in the past. And then it was weird. Like their country, they had two different currencies you could use, and one currency wasn’t working, the other currency was working. I was like, What is going on? This is the weirdest thing. So it is an absolute absolute nightmare. Are there any limits? Like for example, like we’re hiring a Chief Operating Officer? Do you find people at that level? Or is there sort of a cap?
Brett Trembly
Right now there’s a cap, we could, and I have a friend in Seattle that does kind of like, you know, they grow slower than us, right? Like, they just want to make really good want. Like it takes months and months. And they go through the whole like an executive search. Let’s say you’re hiring an attorney, and you got one of these firms, whatever. So the higher you go, then the more the pay is going to be the the more experience, the more savvy that person is going to be, the harder it is going to be to sort of pull them out of where they’re working. Now. There’s not just like CEOs sitting around with nothing to do if they’re good. They’re working. So yeah, we don’t do attorneys. We don’t do paralegals that say yes, someday we’re going to going to crack that paralegal nut and then it’s going to be game over right. And we don’t do you know, VP of ops and fractional chief marketing officers. were sticking to the pain points in most law firms that people just don’t stop. It’s not like we’re saying, hey, take the five people, the 10 people fire them and hire 10 people through us. Most attorneys just don’t fill those positions. It’s so exhausting to train and lose and then go through the whole process again. So we’re saying take all those things that either aren’t getting done in your business or that you’re doing yourself because if you don’t have an assistant you aren’t assistant free up your time, free up your attorneys time. Let your attorneys have a VA to help with their personal life and let them share one you know, make them more profitable and then figure out what to do from there and maybe with the money you hire a fractional CEO here stateside, for example.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, there are so many things you can use. I mean, one One tiny example that we do in our firm is we’ve got someone that codes documents and moves them into files, so they are scanned stateside, once they’re in a folder, they are coded and put into files by someone else. It saves us so much money each year, because there’s so many documents that come in through the mail, which is absurd to me still, but with still has to be dealt with so many medical records come through the mail. And we just don’t want our people we don’t have to pay a paralegal to do that. That is just a waste of money. So there’s things like that, think about all those things in your firm that you can do that for, and you can save yourself so much more money, and you make your people are happier, right? Like your paralegals, your receptionist, your attorneys, you’re making them happier.
Brett Trembly
I mean, I should hire you, you know, not that you’d work for me. But like, you’re speaking my language here, you’re gonna not only save so much money, but sometimes when we’d like an office manager gets involved, they feel a little threatened. But if it’s presented in the right way, it’s like these people are going to help do all the tasks that you don’t want to do what paralegal wants to sit there and code all day prior or do data entry. Those are the first things look, and get me out a little high horse here. But attorneys, we hate invoicing, we hate invoicing, you know, not continuous departments. But the rest of us, that’s how we get paid to send an invoice. And yet we hate it. So it goes on forever. And ARS like there’s some mental hang up, I hate it, it was one of the first things I got rid of, why not hire a billing clerk am 1850 a month, which is nothing full time, let them help make your time entries look better. So what we do is we have all of our instead of going in, we use rocket Mater, right? Most people use Cleal. But instead of going into each matter every time and entering point one and point five, keep it on an Excel spreadsheet at the end of the day, save it and you’re done. Someone else goes in populates all the data entry runs invoices, you check them real quick sends them out collects, I mean, that’s the perfect position to start with, for example.
Tyson Mutrux
So we do have a question. Dan Myers has a few questions. You sort of already addressed this. But just in case, we didn’t cover all of them. Dan wants to know, how do you handle employment laws and compliance for attorneys where the assistants are in offshore locations? Who takes care of Legal Compliance? Are they all true independent contractors or employees?
Brett Trembly
So we take care of like get staffed up is the employer, right? And so we’re in I think, eight countries, and we have sort of legal teams in these countries with entity setup to handle all that stuff. So you know, there’s been, again, we’re not four years old yet, but there’s been a lot of just legwork and groundwork put in to make sure that we’re handling all these things. Now, that said, Some people prefer to be paid as independent contractors. So yes, some people are independent contractors, some are employees. That’s kind of a mixed bag for us right now. And not that it’s relevant. But we’re kind of moving to a new model soon. So but that’s like all backend stuff, right? You know, we negotiate that the salary. And, frankly, we’re trying to pay people more than other people, because we don’t want the turnover for you. And we want the best of the best. So yeah, we handle all that.
Tyson Mutrux
So I do have a question. When it comes to things like case management systems, we use File vine, someone else might use case peer, someone else might use Clio, who’s responsible for the training and things like that? Is that something that we would be responsible for? Is that something that you will take care of? How does that work? The training? Yeah, like, obviously, there’s gonna be some training where we have to train them on our system. But like, specifically, when it comes to case management systems, Are you only going to go try and find someone that already has experience with file line? Or is it something you all are going to train them on file vine? Or is it something where we would train them on file? But
Brett Trembly
it’s a great question. And it’s an important question. I can’t imagine more than like one person at a 6 billion or six and a half billion, maybe like one or two or three people living in another country that have experience with like Clio and file line and these types of things, right? We’re not finding a paralegal that year from day one. And a lot of people ask for this, but if they like really think about it, come on, guys. It doesn’t exist. The unicorn just don’t exist when you’re not going to find someone from day one, who’s trained and who changes your law firm and like you set it and forget it. Now, you want to pay me 10 times as much you and I can cut a deal. And I’ll train someone, right. Yeah, that’s a very expensive, heavy duty lifting. So because every law firm is so different, and their systems and some use Outlook and some use, you know, Google Suite and some use, like you said, file buying and Clio and everything else, we can’t train, you know, anyone there onshore or offshore to work in your law firm. What we do is we have what we call a university that we put our people through in order to ever even start being considered for placement with one of our clients. You know, we have a graduation process like they have to prove to us that they’re going to be able to work So we’re teaching the basics, but what we tell our clients is we’re finding energetic, hardworking, talented people that are educated, but they’re raw, like, you’re gonna have to train them just like you would any other person in your firm. So I want people to think of this as insourcing, not outsourcing, you’re not giving away your work to another company. That company is bringing someone in like a recruiter to help work on your team. So they’re your team member full time, 40 hours a week, you train them there in your morning, huddles there in your annual parties, hopefully, you add a virtual element, you know, monthly gatherings the more you treat people virtually just like team members, but you can’t see him in person, the better off that your firm will be
Tyson Mutrux
not a great answer. That was a perfect answer. Like I gave you a softball, it was good. These questions. So and that’s all I’m trying to ask you a question I figured that other people might have we are at time. So how do people get in touch with you if they want to hire get stepped up or at least get more information
Brett Trembly
definitely get staffed up.com We have a contact us now or you know, hire now button on like every part of our website. So get snapped up.com If you’re gonna fill out requests for like contact info, just put in there Max lock ons, you can get your discount, because I’m 90% sure we still have that running. If not, I know a guy mentioned this podcast and we’ll we’ll do something for you.
Tyson Mutrux
Very cool. Hey, Brad, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks so much for supporting the conference. We appreciate it we would not have been able to put on the conference and the word for sponsors like us. So thank you so much.
Brett Trembly
Thank you. You guys had a great time and I appreciate being on take care you too.
Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your host and to access more content, go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.
