The Best Strategies for Running a Law Firm While Traveling with Brian Manning

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Are you a business owner who is struggling with taking a vacation? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, Jim and Tyson discuss law practice management with guest Bryan Manning, a political asylum lawyer who talks about fears of leaving a law firm in the hands of colleagues to take a well deserved vacation.

As a law firm owner, taking time for vacation can be stressful. This can be due to the anxiety of leaving work in the hands of colleagues or employees and not being sure if things will get done on time or effectively. Brian speaks to the things law firm owners should consider before vacation to ensure you are not stressing during a time they should be relaxing. It is important to tell your staff that you want limited communication while on vacation. This will allow teams to inquire about everything before vacation begins to mitigate any potential issues and ask important questions.

Having a competent leadership team is crucial to ensuring the necessary tasks are completed during a vacation. There needs to be people who can be trusted to tackle urgent issues when they come up. For Brian, he has 2 dedicated staff members who can fill in for him to not only take on the work but also act as a leader when other staff need support or guidance.

Take a listen to learn more!

Jim’s Hack: Have employees who complement your strengths. 

Brian’s Tip: Have non-attorney salespeople conduct consultations.

Tyson’s Tip: Use a feature on the iPhone 16 where you can pause a video and record when you are ready again.

Episode Highlights:

• 06:53 Emergency Protocols for Travel
• 09:42 Managing Staff Communication 
• 10:43 Mindset Before Travelling
• 14:35 Building a Leadership Team
• 17:20 Maintaining Boundaries While Away

Connect with Brian:

• Website 
• TikTok 
• Youtube 

Resources:

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• Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer YouTube Channel
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Transcripts: The Best Strategies for Running a Law Firm While Traveling with Brian Manning

Speaker 1 00:00:01 Run your law firm the right way. The right way.

Speaker 2 00:00:05 This is.

Speaker 1 00:00:06 The Maximum Lawyer podcast for podcast.

Speaker 2 00:00:10 Your hosts, Jim Hocking and Tyson Metrics. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Jim Hacking 00:00:23 Welcome back to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. I'm Jim Hacking.

Tyson Muturx 00:00:27 And I'm Tyson Metrics. What's up Jimbo.

Jim Hacking 00:00:30 Tyson it's been a strange week. You know in immigration land, if you apply for citizenship and you've been involved in prostitution, you can't become a US citizen. Or it might be hard. I've had two different people this week. I haven't talked about prostitution with a naturalization client in a really long time. I had a porn star who was worried that porn was prostitution, and then I had a lady who had a profile on a well-known escort service that she was on for seven months, but she claimed to never have had sex for money. So it's been an interesting week.

Tyson Muturx 00:01:02 So we all want to know now is porn prostitution? Is that considered I.

Jim Hacking 00:01:06 Think I turn it over to you.

Jim Hacking 00:01:07 I'm asking the general public. I discussed it on my show yesterday. Most people thought not, and I think there's probably a First Amendment problem there somewhere in there. But, you know, the the porn guy ended up hiring a different lawyer, so I didn't have to do much research on it.

Tyson Muturx 00:01:22 Well, I think if porn and prostitution were the same thing, this is the first time we've ever discussed anything like this on the show. then I think they would be treated the same, but they're not true to the same legally, so I can't imagine that they are the same. Wow, what an interesting thing. Let's introduce today's guest, Bryan Manning.

Jim Hacking 00:01:40 You didn't see that coming, did he, Brian?

Tyson Muturx 00:01:42 proud.

Brian Manning 00:01:42 To be here for a first. That's fun.

Tyson Muturx 00:01:44 Brian, what's your opinion on this very hot topic? Yeah.

Brian Manning 00:01:47 What you just said, Tyson. It's like, you know, it's not treated as prostitution for general purposes. I don't think so. Yeah, this should be good.

Jim Hacking 00:01:56 This guy said he saw it on Reddit before his interview. So when the officer kept asking him if he was involved in prostitution, he kept saying, no comment, no comment, no comment. So this case got denied because you can't say no comment at your naturalization interview. He thought that was going to save the day.

Tyson Muturx 00:02:10 Oh my gosh, that's crazy. Well, let's let's make sure we I give Brian the proper introduction. Brian Manning is a political asylum lawyer. He does immigration like Jimbo does. He started his law firm, Political Asylum Lawyers, in January 2020, after working for 11 years for the government's two main agencies for asylum and refugee affairs. Brian served for over two years at the Houston Asylum Office, including an asylum officer, as an asylum officer and a congressional liaison, which we'll get to more more of the stuff in a moment. I think that that gives you a pretty good idea as to to Brian's background, but Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian Manning 00:02:47 Thanks, guys. Really glad to be here.

Brian Manning 00:02:49 Long time fan. I was listening to you guys before I even like started my practice. Back when I was working for the government. I reached out to Jim like several years ago. So I think I've listened to probably every episode. So glad to be here.

Jim Hacking 00:03:02 Brian and I spoke more before he opened his firm than anyone I've ever spoken to. I remember specific conversations when Brian was thinking about making the leap and. But Brian, you've been on the show before, right?

Brian Manning 00:03:15 Yeah, it was like, I think my first month having my farm open, probably like in like February of 2020 right before Covid.

Jim Hacking 00:03:23 Awesome, great. So that's that'll be a nice little segue then into what we're going to talk about today, which is this awesome six week trip that you took outside the United States with your boys and your spouse. And we're able to run your firm. I want to get to all that, but talk to us for me, just for my own pleasure. If you remember, I was teasing you about this the other day.

Jim Hacking 00:03:44 What were your goals back then when you first started in specifically, I'm talking about you sort of had what I thought was like a cap on your goals and then talk to us about how you've sort of blown through that.

Brian Manning 00:03:55 Yeah. Jim, when you were my official business coach for a while there, it was like I was thinking, you know, I. I want things to be simple. Like, I just envisioned myself having, like, you know, maybe one associate, a couple paralegals, a support person, and, like, that's it. I don't, you know, I don't want to, like, try to grow bigger than that because it sounds hard. The people element sounds like a hassle and stressful. So I was like, you know, I can probably make decent money, but just keep it kind of small, but have some flexibility and just be good with that. But like what happened was over time, I started realizing like, wait a second, those stressors that I was worried about, yeah, they're true.

Brian Manning 00:04:30 Like it's like dealing with people in like your firm is is hard, but it's not really any harder than other kinds of stressors that come as you grow your business. And so I was like, listen, if I'm going to be stressed either way, I'm always I mean, I'm always going to be thinking about the business almost 24 over seven, right? It never goes away if I'm going to have that in my life. It's like, why not take advantage of the upside that comes with growth. And yeah, you have to deal with different problems. But you know, there's a saying different level, different devil such that, you know, you're you're always stressed. But the stress, the problems are changing. But at least on the other side, you can really take advantage of some of the benefits of growth if you're willing to scale your firm. And for me, it's like I was like, wait a second, you're telling me that I can make more money and actually do less of the stuff that I don't like and have more flexibility of both, like sort of time and geography, if I'm willing to leverage, you know, my time by hiring people and and growing, I became convinced that, you know, that you could do that just by seeing people who have done it and learning from people like you guys.

Brian Manning 00:05:33 And so I was like, why not try to grow? And so I've been pretty purposeful then, you know, the last few years about trying to do that. And yeah, I still have a lot of, you know, stress and problems, but they're just different kinds. And I've got more upside than I thought that I could have when I launched the firm, you know, almost five years ago.

Tyson Muturx 00:05:53 So it's interesting. I had coffee with Chris Rigby this morning. He's a he's a guild member, and we were talking about his two week vacation that he just took. He went to Istanbul and he went to Greece. And he was talking about how. And we had talked beforehand with him about like what to do prep wise. And it's interesting because we're going to be talking to you about your your six week vacation that you took. But I know he was very apprehensive about the trip and how things were going to go. And it was interesting because his second week, he had zero internet, so he was not able to like, communicate with the office.

Tyson Muturx 00:06:26 He had a brand new interior assistant that was starting with him. So he was just they had just migrated to a new system. So a lot of things happening all at one time. And so it was pretty, he said. The first week was pretty laid back. The second week he was really stressed because he didn't have any internet. But when it comes to like getting ready for the six week trip that you went on, and I'd love to hear some of the details about that as well later on.

Brian Manning 00:06:53 But yeah, it was cool. Like so I'll say that for the first like ten days, I was on what I call like emergency only access, which is like for my team. Like don't even don't don't at me, you know, in our Google chat, like, don't, don't call me, don't text me, don't add me unless it's an emergency. And so what does that mean? Well, you have to define what an emergency means. So like I just worked up a document.

Brian Manning 00:07:13 I just sat down and tried to think through like, what are the things that like, I really want to know about if something happens such that, you know, I consider an emergency such that I'm going to like, check my phone once at night, every day, or maybe twice a day to see if I've got like an emergency access. I set up a special channel, kind of like a slack channel. We use Google Chat. They call them spaces. It's like emergencies. I told them to chat me there and to text my phone when I would check that a couple times a day for emergencies during my emergency only access time. But the key then is defining what an emergency is, right? So it's just sitting down and thinking through like, what are the things that if they break or come up, I really need to know about? Like if a, you know, examples are like if an employee quits, if someone if there's something happens that suggests we might get sued by someone if we miss a deadline, you know, just like big things.

Brian Manning 00:08:00 And I made a list and I try to give some examples of, you know, sort of gray area things of like this would be I would consider this an emergency, this thing, I would not just sort of give examples. And then, you know, I did this a couple times on shorter trips. And when I came back, I would sort of do a debrief with my with my leadership team of like, okay, you did contact me for this thing. You consider this to be an emergency. I agree. Good like and so like we'll like add that to the to the briefing sheet or to the, you know, the definition sheet of like, you know, this is an emergency or this thing was not this would not be. So just sort of like iterate and, you know, keep continuing to perfect it over time to where you've really got that sort of dialed in to where there are expectations back at the office around what is an emergency. So the first ten days of my trip of six weeks, I was on that like, and I got maybe one emergency chat that time, and it wasn't anything that took me more than 20 minutes to deal with.

Brian Manning 00:08:51 So that was great. And then after that, for the rest of the six weeks, I worked two hours a day, maybe just to sort of keep keep things moving. But yeah, the keys, I think for me are like having that emergency access only sort of definitions in place. But I mean, you can't do it. I don't think you can. You can't do it while being on emergency access only or like very, very limited work unless you have a good staff, right? I mean, you have to have people in place, and, you know, keeping the business running. And so I was thoughtful about that over the last couple of years and trying to get to this place where, like, I want to be able to go on vacation and trust that things are going to work well while I'm gone. And then I would have my staff, also my leadership team, like send me kind of briefing notes each day about like a couple of about, you know, key points that I should know about or key decisions that needed to be made.

Brian Manning 00:09:42 And I would just sort of work through that doing, you know, spending an hour a day on sort of communications like that. But then I would do like make some, you know, TikTok videos for an hour a day, so stuff like that. But yeah, it's, it's it takes some planning. It was a little bit daunting for my team. My leadership team was like like, oh, I don't know Brian. They were they were a little bit nervous about it, you know, as was I but like, it works. You can make it work. And it's just a matter of like deciding, I want to do this, and I'm going to try to lay some groundwork by setting expectations and talking through, you know, when you should contact me and you know who's going to be doing what in my absence. So with planning, you can, you know, you can keep sort of improving and having it be a hopefully a better experience each time you try it.

Tyson Muturx 00:10:26 Yeah. So I think that that's like those are great ground rules.

Tyson Muturx 00:10:29 I think that's fantastic. What was your what was your mindset leading up to it? I know you said you were a little stressed about it, but like, did you feel ready? Did you feel like you were going like everything was going to be okay or like, were you were you pretty apprehensive about it? I'm just curious. What?

Brian Manning 00:10:43 Yeah, I was I was nervous, like I had gone I'd gone for spring break this year for like maybe eight nights or something on this emergency only access. So I tried that before, but like the whole like six weeks and I was in I was in Kenya, Qatar and Greece, and I didn't have good internet access for some of those for some stints, some times during that. So I was I was pretty nervous about it. And, you know, it made for a pretty stressful month leading up to it to try to be like, oh, I got to get as much in place as I can, get some key work done, and just get everyone prepared in terms of knowing who's doing what while I'm gone.

Brian Manning 00:11:17 So it is. It does lead to some stress building up, building up to it.

Jim Hacking 00:11:22 Brian, where did you guys go and how did you handle the time zone difference?

Brian Manning 00:11:27 Started in Kenya. And did you know the safari thing for like we were there for like ten nights and then Qatar, like basically flying from Nairobi. We were we wanted to go to Greece and like it was either a connection between from through, Doha, Qatar or through Egypt. And my wife and I had been to Egypt before. We'd never been to Qatar. So like, let's go through there and there. Let's why not actually go there since we've never been there. So we stayed like 5 or 6 nights there on the way. So Qatar and then Greece and Greece, we went to a few different places. We're in Greece for like a month time difference. I mean, I didn't take any special measures for that. It's it's like depending on where you are in the world, right. Like, you know, that was I was I was East.

Brian Manning 00:12:05 So I was like ahead of us central time that I'm normally operating on as where the summer before I'd gone to like Tahiti and was like the opposite way. So it's it kind of either depending on where you are, it does make it sort of stressful to where like you wake up to a bunch of messages that you have to like, sort of sort through and some stressors that hit you very early in the morning or you wake up in your morning is chill, but then like late at night when you're like trying to go to bed, if you're checking your phone to eight, nine, ten, 11:00, it's like everyone's in full swing back at the office. So that can be a little bit tricky. But like, I mean, I just told my, my, my staff, like, you know, don't expect to hear from me except for, you know, probably between these set hours. And then I would try to communicate during those few hours of the day. You know, apart from sort of really important stuff, I would just fit that in whenever.

Brian Manning 00:12:51 But, you know, it's a sacrifice that it's like, it's okay if even though I'm, you know, I might be spending 40 minutes going back and forth on something at 9:30 p.m. in Greece, like, not ideal, but like I got to spend a month in Greece. So it's like it's okay.

Tyson Muturx 00:13:04 All right. So so tell us about favorite parts of the trip because I want to hear about the actual trip. We can get back to some of the business stuff.

Brian Manning 00:13:09 Yeah I mean Kenya is great. Super cool. My kids really like that whole safari thing a lot. You know, Qatar was a really fun surprise. Like, I've never I've never been to like, Dubai, but I picture that it's pretty much very similar to Dubai in that, like, it's like luxe, like everything in in Doha was just like super nice and new and like luxurious, which was interesting. So that was that was a really fun surprise. And then in, in Greece for part of that time, for about two of the four weeks we were there are my wife and I, all four of the parents met us there, so we were with them, which is fun.

Brian Manning 00:13:45 Good trip with the kids and stuff, but a lot of hand-holding. You know, the parents are a little older and haven't traveled so much. And so there's a lot of a lot of hand-holding. But it was good family time together. So yeah, it's it's great. Greece is my favorite country. I lived in Bulgaria for a couple of years, which borders Greece. And like we could drive there from degrees from Bulgaria like four hours and be like a good beach. So we kind of fell in love with it. And it's overall it's my favorite country. Paris is my favorite city, but Greece is my favorite country.

Jim Hacking 00:14:11 Brian talked to us about how whether anyone in the office sort of stepped up or has stepped up over time to make you feel comfortable being gone or make you happy when you got back.

Brian Manning 00:14:22 Yeah, that's a big part of it. I, I got pretty lucky with my first two hires. They've been with me. The first one I hired about a year and a half into my law firm, which is way too slow in retrospect.

Brian Manning 00:14:35 That's a huge mistake I should have hired much earlier. And the other one just a few months after her. And so those two are two of my leadership team people, and they're both excellent. And so one of them is my managing attorney. And the other is kind of like a CEO type, you know, just like basically in charge of all non-legal stuff. And so having those two that are just like super competent and really bought in to like the firm and the mission and stuff, that makes a huge difference. Like they, they really care about, like trying to build a good law firm, a good company. And so when you've got people like that, you know that, you know, that you can count on to keep things running well. And who have just demonstrated like good judgment, you know, that if something comes up like and you're not able to get to it because you're, you know, asleep in the middle of the night, wherever, it's like you having that confidence that you've got responsible people with good judgment in place is is really good.

Brian Manning 00:15:30 So yeah, part of it for me to have peace of mind is exactly that, Jim. It's having some leadership folks back in the office that I, that I like, truly trust and who are just very good and competent at what they do.

Tyson Muturx 00:15:43 Did anything go better than expected or worse than expected?

Brian Manning 00:15:47 You know, case signups went the went better than expected last summer when I was gone as well for like almost a month, two years or a year and a half ago that it was the same thing. It was like the case signups were higher, however, while I was gone. But that's kind of a product of our lag time of our sales cycle being like two and a half weeks or so from the consultation to when people sign like sort of the median such that like, I was, you know, busting my ass the month before I left, I was like, I gotta do a ton of consultations or we have to do a ton of consultations to since I'm going to be gone for a month, such that a lot of those came in while I was on vacation.

Brian Manning 00:16:22 So that's nice. When you're on vacation, like, oh yeah, K, signups are good last year, like, not this past summer with the one before. There was a big drop off that month that I came back because I had been the one doing the consultations. And so when I was on vacation, they just weren't getting done. Now that's a huge difference to this year, when this most recent summer where I am not the person who does the consultations. I do a few, but not I don't do many. So if you can keep that function moving while you're gone, if it's not dependent upon you, it frees you up massively to, you know, to be on vacation or at least to like work irregular hours and not have to worry about sitting in front of a computer with like, good lighting and good audio at a certain time to do, you know, video conference consultations, that sort of thing. So so getting that staff like the the consultations piece, moving that almost entirely off of my plate was a huge victory in terms of being able to do this, to be gone for quite a while with less stress this time around.

Jim Hacking 00:17:20 Brian, I think a lot of law firm owners set themselves up for vacation and think that they're going to leave everything to the team, but then they don't really do it right. They they sort of check back in. They they dabble, they stick their nose back in. And this is true just in regular delegation. So How have you been able to sort of maintain those boundaries, and how did you make sure that, I guess building it in ahead of time probably helped with that?

Brian Manning 00:17:45 Yeah, and yeah, it does. But then, you know, mindset of just like, what kind of law firm thinking about what kind of law firm do I want to have? Like like thinking in the, you know, a year from now, two years, five years from now, like, do I want to be able to be the guy who can the person who can really take like 30 days off with like no contact, emergency or emergency, only access, like, yeah, I want that and to work up to that.

Brian Manning 00:18:11 It's like I, I got to sort of start and train myself of like being disciplined for like, okay, let's go ten days emergency only access. And like Brian, be disciplined, be strong. Don't check your phone. Except for during those two times a day where you're going to check only for emergencies. You're not going to go into the other chats or emails. So you know, it's just mindset of like thinking, where do I want to get to in terms of what the law firm is going to look like and what it's going to mean for me and my freedom of time and flexible, you know, flexibility of time and and geography and then sort of being like, okay, baby steps to get there. Let's build up with more days and more days and more resolve to not check back in. But yeah, it's tempting. And of course, I still did it sometimes.

Tyson Muturx 00:18:48 Were you able to get to the point where you kind of have like a clear mind where you like? Because, you know, we get so stuck in the day to day sometimes that it was just like, we're just thinking about that.

Tyson Muturx 00:18:56 I mean, were you able to step away enough from the business where you, you felt like you you got to relax and you kind of cleared your mind a little bit?

Brian Manning 00:19:03 Yeah. I've, you know, I've found that for me, it takes maybe six or 7 or 8 nights of, like, not working to really be like, oh, to get to get to that different headspace, you know, where you feel like you're not obsessing about the business 24 over seven. So yeah, I did, especially when I had that in emergency only access in Kenya, I had enough time there to get to where I really felt like, okay, I'm not I'm hardly thinking about it at all, which is nice and we all need that. But it's hard to get. And, you know, maybe for some people it's like they just a long weekend away is enough to, like, really recharge and and get in that different headspace that is just really sort of cathartic and healthy. But for me, it takes it takes longer.

Brian Manning 00:19:43 It takes like, I don't know, 6 or 8 nights or something.

Jim Hacking 00:19:46 I think that's a really good point. And I've said this before, is there's just such a huge difference with basically 0% responsibility or 0% work versus 1% responsibility or 1% work when, yeah, when you when you leave a little gray area there, there's just so much opportunity for mischief, either for people to give you too much stuff that you don't want or for you to take in too much stuff that you don't want.

Brian Manning 00:20:09 Yeah, yeah, totally. If you can like go to like less than 1%, it's it's to me I agree it feels like a different sort of headspace to be in that's much healthier and just better for you.

Jim Hacking 00:20:21 How was it when you came back.

Speaker 6 00:20:24 Good. Yeah.

Brian Manning 00:20:25 I mean, because, you know, there was no major fires or anything. And like I said, case signups were good. So like you. So I came back feeling, you know, pretty good. And I didn't have a huge drop off this year because, you know, I wasn't the one doing consultations.

Brian Manning 00:20:39 So they kept going in my absence. So it was good. You know, I, I worry a little bit about the stress that it puts on the team, you know. So like coming back I'm thinking like oh are they holding it against me. Are they sort of, you know, especially my leadership team. It's like, are they are they thinking it's not fair that Brian gets to go take off this much time when you know no one else can? So I feel I feel a little bit of discomfort around that. But I, I'm trying to tell myself that, like, that's a perk. That's that's an owner perk that, you know, is a fair exchange for like the risk and hassle and stress that you take on as a business owner. So yeah, I had a little bit I had a little bit of like returning guilt over the difficult position that I put people in. But, you know, it is what it is.

Tyson Muturx 00:21:27 Did you miss work at all?

Brian Manning 00:21:29 It's one of those things where it's like Kind of like going back to school after the summer break, you know? It's like, yeah, you're glad to be back for like, at least a week or so to see everyone and just, like, feel like you're.

Brian Manning 00:21:40 Oh, getting back in that routine sounds kind of nice. It feels kind of good. But then after a few days, it kind of wears off, you know? So that's kind of how I was like, no, I didn't miss it while I was away, really. I wasn't like, oh, I wish I was working. And then when I got back, I was excited to be back. But then it was like, you know, a few days in, just like school, it's like, oh, it feels like you're already, you know, pretty quickly back in the grind. But but I'll say, you know, getting a really good break like we were talking about earlier of more than just like a few days where you really get to that different headspace. I feel like you do get a little bit of a boost, still get a boost from that. That lasts for, you know, some weeks or a month or two where you feel like, oh, I know I just came off of a long vacation, like, like I should be rested.

Brian Manning 00:22:18 So I feel like I am rested. So I feel like you, you gained something from that, or at least, you know, a few weeks when you get back from a good trip like that.

Jim Hacking 00:22:26 I think this whole episode has been a answer to the question I'm about to ask you, but I'm going to ask you anyway. What do you say to the law firm owners who think, oh, I could never do this. I could never make it six weeks without my firm. My firm would grind to a halt or, you know, we wouldn't sign ups would go way down and we wouldn't have any money left when I got back.

Brian Manning 00:22:47 I think it's it's really about deciding, like, what you want. Like, if you want. That's cool. If you don't, if you if you don't have any interest in this stuff that we're talking about today. But if like you do want to be able to check out of your law firm for several weeks at a time, it's really about deciding that you want that first of all, getting clear on, you know, yes, I want that.

Brian Manning 00:23:07 And if you do, then it's working backward to like, okay, how do I achieve that? And I think that as you think through that, my mindset is really important. Understanding that like, as with all sort of change or anything that's a little bit unknown, it's going to feel a little bit scary and it's going to feel a little bit hard to be like, oh, but you know, things will not run as well without me and that'll be bad. And it'll be. That's. That feels scary. It's like recognizing that you have this sort of fear of something that is a little bit unknown and new to you, and recognizing that that's perfectly normal, but that if you just sort of push through that and get on the other side of that hump, it's probably going to work out and you're probably going to be very, very glad that you did. So it's like if you want to do it, you got to just resolve that. Like, I'm going to at least start. Sure, small if you want, but like be very intentional and purposeful about putting some things in place in terms of people that can keep things moving while you're gone and like actual plans like the, you know, the policy of, like, when do you contact me for emergencies in place and, and mapping out ahead of time, like who is doing what you know, for for us like none of this.

Brian Manning 00:24:12 I'm not super organized. We're the firm is four and a half, almost five years old, and we're still working to get organized and professionalized. Like that's been my real focus this last year is like trying to have like, a real business instead of just a law firm. And it took me, you know, a couple of years, three years, probably to get to the point where we even had like actual workflows for our sort of core case types of like tasking of who does, you know, exactly what step and by when. And I think it would be really hard to go on like a to check out for quite a while without having those kinds of systems in place. Policies, procedures and systems. You know, they say systems run a business and people run systems. And like, you got to have the people. You gotta have the systems, and you got to have the people that can still be there running the systems and making sure the policies and procedures are executed against while you're gone.

Brian Manning 00:25:02 So it does take some, you know, sort of institutional framework work to put those things in place. But like even someone with, you know, one staff member, it's like you can still do it and just start small for, you know, and just be gone for four days with emergency only access and just build up.

Tyson Muturx 00:25:20 Brian, I think I think that's a you gave incredible advice. I think at the very beginning you also gave like a lot of great tips on how to really set this up. Set yourself up for success whenever you take any vacation, but especially a longer one. We are going to start to wrap things up though. If people want to reach out to you, how do they get in touch with you? Brian.

Brian Manning 00:25:38 Thanks. So my first my email is great Brian. My first is my first name, Brian. And then at its kind of long political asylum lawyers. Com Brian at political asylum lawyers.com.

Tyson Muturx 00:25:52 Love it. All right. We are going to wrap things up if you could while we're doing this.

Tyson Muturx 00:25:57 We would love it if you could give us a five star review wherever you get your podcast. It really does help us spread the love to lawyers all over the world that want to listen to getting better with their law firms, and we are going to get to our tips and hacks in the week in a moment. Before I do that though, if you want to join us on the big Facebook group, just go to Facebook and search Maximum Lawyer. If you want to join the guild, go to Max Law guild.com and you can join us there. You'll be able to see us in Vegas if you want to go to Vegas. I believe there might be a couple tickets left. I'm not 100% sure, but go to Maxwell guild.com. You should be able to find information about that as well. Jimmy, what's your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking 00:26:35 We celebrated my assistant's third anniversary with us this week. She's been with me for now, three years and she really keeps me on track. I'm a low follow through, and she's an eight follow through on The Colbys.

Jim Hacking 00:26:47 So having someone who complements your strengths, who brings their own strengths to the table, that sort of helps with your blind spots has been invaluable. She got so much done this week that would have sat on my plate or my desk for weeks, and there were even things that I needed to do that she got me to do much faster and much more completely than I would have if I were sort of left to my own devices. So find someone who complements your strengths.

Tyson Muturx 00:27:17 You know, it is always really fascinating to me. Whenever, like a person clicks into place like a Lego, like just right And you're like, it just everything feels so much better and like, everything gets done and you're like, wow, that's perfect. So that's. I just love that feeling. That's cool. great for you, Jimbo. All right, Brian, you've done this before. You were on episode 203. So anybody wants to find that no upper limit was that one? It's a really good episode, but you know the routine.

Tyson Muturx 00:27:44 What tip or hack do you have for us?

Brian Manning 00:27:47 Thank you. Before I say that, let me just express my appreciation for maximum lawyer for both of you guys, Jim and Tyson and for the Guild as well. Those things have all been hugely helpful to me in my my law firm. So thank you for all the work that you guys do and for everyone in the community for all the support. So thanks, Brian. I really, really benefit from it. have a non attorney sales person do your consultations. This has been a game changer for me. I know this has come up in discussions in podcasts and stuff from time to time, but I decided to go all in and hire real salespeople, like actual salespeople that have like done sales for several years. Not just like, oh, I worked at a call center or whatever, like actual sales. It's just a completely different mindset than you get with an attorney. An attorney just doesn't have the sort of the mindset to like, go out and make sales.

Brian Manning 00:28:38 So, you know, I think lawyers are they tend to think like, oh, it's it's it's it's law. So it has to be a lawyer doing this. There's no rule against selling legal services. As a non-lawyer you can't give legal advice, but you can sell legal services. So like I don't I don't talk to most people that that sign up with our firm, most clients, they come just through talking to a non attorney sales person and like like the one that I I've got two coming on right now and then I've got one that's been with me for like four months. And she's like awesome. She's like way better than the guy that I had doing him who's a lawyer and better than me. So that's my tip.

Tyson Muturx 00:29:15 I think what we have to do is have you back on to do that topic by itself, because I think people would really like to hear that part of it, because I know that we have non attorney people that but they're not sales. They don't have experience in sales.

Tyson Muturx 00:29:28 Some of them have actually most of them have experience in marketing but not necessarily sales. So I would like to hear more about that. I know that Jim doesn't hire necessarily salespeople either, but I think that that's it's something that I have definitely tinkered with. I've got a really good friend who's a salesperson. I've just been a little bit afraid of hiring a really good friend as a to work for the firm, especially a role that I've never hired for before. So but I would like to I would love to test it out. I've got a lot of ideas about it, so and I'd love to ask you about it. We're at the have you back on to talk about that?

Speaker 7 00:29:58 It'd be great.

Tyson Muturx 00:29:59 My tip of the week. I don't know if it's as cool as yours, but I got the new iPhone 14 Pro Max and there's a new feature on the whatever on the camera that you can actually pause your video. I don't know if you all you. I'm sure you all probably haven't been in the middle of a video and something happens where you would like to pause it, but you can't.

Tyson Muturx 00:30:19 You have to like, stop the video and then record a separate video and then piece them together. You can actually pause the video and then start recording again when you're ready again, which I think is a really cool feature. That is. Yeah. So for anyone it's and it's, it's not a part of I have the 14. It's I have them both. I've looked side by side. It wasn't an operating system update. It's just on the new phone. There's a lot of other cool features too that are on the new one, but it's pretty interesting. So you all should check it out. All right. Brian, thanks so much for coming on. Appreciate it. Love sharing. A lot of great advice you gave. I can't wait to talk to you about the next topic too, but really cool. Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 7 00:30:55 Appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Pleasure.

Jim Hacking 00:30:56 Appreciate it. Thanks, Brian. Bye, guys.

Speaker 2 00:31:01 Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your host and to access more content go to Maximum lawyer.com.

Speaker 2 00:31:13 Have a great week and catch you next time.