What happens when the pressure of practicing law gets so intense that you crawl under your desk just to get ten minutes of quiet? Tyson Mutrux sits down with Steven Lefkoff, founder of Lefkoff Law, to talk about the moment that changed how Steven thought about work, stress, and running a firm. Steven shares the weekly planning habits that help him manage the chaos, why he prioritizes an in-person team, and how he uses his office as an intentional part of his client experience.
Future-Proofing Your Law Firm with Brian Mittman
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Are you a business owner who is looking for advice for your company’s growth and success? In this engaging podcast episode, Tyson and guest, Brian Mittman delve into the intricacies of business leadership, decision-making, and strategies for growth and profitability.
Being a leader comes with needing to make tough decisions. For Brian, this includes understanding what the goal of a business is and what decisions need to be made to reach that goal. If the goal is to grow or make a lot of profit in a short amount of time, tough decisions like who to hire, who to let go and what aspects of the business need to change must be considered. Brian speaks to the need to map everything out in order to understand what needs to happen as time goes on.
For a business to be successful, it is important for a leader to properly succession plan. This involves looking 5, 10 or 20 years into the future and knowing what you want the business to look like. Who has the energy and drive to lead the business once the current boss retires? Who will need to be trained or mentored to take over that role one day? These are all questions that need to be considered for future growth and success.
Listen in to learn more!
Episode Highlights:
- 03:18 Past ExperiencesÂ
- 12:47 Growth PlansÂ
- 19:40 Transition of PartnershipÂ
- 25:29 Importance of PlanningÂ
- 51:30 Challenges of GrowthÂ
- 01:02:00 Salary Cap ExerciseÂ
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Transcripts: Future-Proofing Your Law Firm with Brian MittmanÂ
Speaker 1 00:00:02 This is maximum lawyer with your host, Tyson Matrix.
Tyson Mutrux 00:00:11 Brian, tell me about the acquisition.
Brian Mittman 00:00:15 Thanks for asking. Really excited. prior to, sitting down with you here, we are about to ink a deal, but it's it's done. to acquire a firm out on Long Island. I'm based out of, Westchester, New York and New York City. And about a, a year ago, I had run into a colleague. I hadn't seen her in a long time at an event. We were just kind of chit chatting, and somehow it came up and I jokingly said, well, when are you ready to retire? Let me know. And I got a.
Tyson Mutrux 00:00:46 Like, off the cuff.
Brian Mittman 00:00:47 Off the cuff, like, I she told me she had just turned 60 and I was like, what are you are you kidding me? You didn't just turn 60. And we were talking and I kind of off the cuff said it. And she called me shortly after that and said, were you serious? So let's have coffee.
Brian Mittman 00:01:02 And it took a little bit of time and I think it was more. I was ready for it. I've, I've haven't quite done an acquisition before. I was going into partnership with somebody previously who unfortunately had passed away. But with this, individual, she has a firm, she's a solo practice, had a couple like per diem attorneys working for a bunch of employees, had done very well for herself over the years. And two areas workers compensation, Social security. And I was really looking for something in Social Security. And that's her real, you know, forte and specialty. And we started talking and we were able to come to terms and she'll be, basically doing almost an earn out working for a period of time. And, you know, we'll be acquiring the name, acquiring, clients. Well, they have to sign, you know, sign up with us type of thing, but they're really her clients and it's really exciting.
Tyson Mutrux 00:02:00 What's the what's the process been like? from a from an emotional standpoint.
Brian Mittman 00:02:08 It's an interesting emotional process. And for me, it's interesting because my history so real quick and I tell this to my kids, hate this story. I say it too much. But basically back in law school and I just got my 30th anniversary from the New York State Bar, the New York State bar said, being an attorney.
Tyson Mutrux 00:02:30 It's a big number.
Brian Mittman 00:02:31 So I was like 30. And so I was in law school working for courts, literally a court state attorney hated the guy. And I quit one day and I'm out to dinner with my, in-laws. And I'm telling my father and he says, come work for me while you look for a job. And the joke is, I'm still looking for a job. So, you know, I started out in a family practice, so I learned a lot right away. within. Let's see. So 90, 1995. So, you know, by 2003 he was retiring. In fact, he had had another partner. He was trying to set up a deal with me and the other partner.
Brian Mittman 00:03:10 He ended up suing the other partner, kicking him out. So my first experience with having a partner was a lawsuit.
Tyson Mutrux 00:03:18 Wow.
Brian Mittman 00:03:18 So my only partner after that was my father in law, and I'm like, I'm never doing this crap again, you know, with a partner. So for years I've had different joint ventures and tried to do things. So this one was a little, you know, you know, second guessing myself. Do I really want to do this? How can I have more control? I like to be very fair, but at the same time, it's like I need to have some control. And also, I think I had also mentioned I had a partner or A2B partner who had passed away about four years ago. And, you know, we were just in the process of merging our practices. He had no employees, but had a big marketing background as an attorney. So this is the first one where I'm really bringing in some employees. We're bringing in a caseload and a more worker's compensation and a lot of Social Security cases, with the focus being to develop our Social Security practice.
Brian Mittman 00:04:13 And so I did a few things different this time. I took a little bit of time, but I also finally said to myself, enough is enough. let's really start talking terms. I also hired an attorney, so I have a business attorney, had great guys over the years, but I don't know if you've ever dealt with this, like in New York. These guys are just kind of old school. Here's how you do it. This and that. And I never felt they had that kind of entrepreneurial business mind.
Tyson Mutrux 00:04:44 Sure.
Brian Mittman 00:04:45 You know, they knew all the details. But I would call this attorney up and be like, oh, you know, I'm thinking about doing this in new Jersey or while. Can you do that? Well, that's why I'm asking you.
Tyson Mutrux 00:04:54 Yeah, that's why I'm calling you. Yeah, exactly.
Brian Mittman 00:04:56 I'm paying you $600 an hour. So I ended up actually finding a I will call her a fractional general counsel. she comes out of the general counsel world. She has a solo practice, and she advertises herself as basically like a fractional CFO or fractional in general counsel.
Tyson Mutrux 00:05:12 So when you said you hired an attorney, you weren't talking about just you hired an attorney for this temporary thing. You hired a fractional attorney that that could go on as long as she does a great job for forever.
Brian Mittman 00:05:25 So yeah, let me be clear. So I have the, the the practice I'm acquiring that attorney is coming and is going to be working for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But I hired a attorney and it was on a project basis, but I gave her a retainer. And before we even got this deal done, I had a couple little things that had to be done. I said, why am I doing it? And this was over the Christmas break. Yeah. And I felt kind of bad. I said, I feel so bad, but I'm getting pressure from this person. And we just got to kind of wrap this thing up. And she responded, not a problem. I'm working a couple hours a day, even though I'm away this and that. The next morning I wake up, I in my inbox.
Brian Mittman 00:06:02 I had this little agreement and her analysis of the little agreement, and I got it all signed off, got it all taken care of before the end of the year. I said, wow, having a real general counsel available is huge. Yeah, and it's a mistake I've made in the past where I try to negotiate or do things and if and that's not what I do, it's not what you do. I can read a contract, I can read a will, I can do certain things. But in my business I need that outside input. And the really cool thing was her name is Hayley. You know, one of the things that she did was in this other agreement I had, I had a, I had shared space with somebody and we were, you know, getting rid of the company we had created to share the space.
Tyson Mutrux 00:06:46 Because.
Brian Mittman 00:06:46 We we separated.
Tyson Mutrux 00:06:48 Smart move, by the way.
Brian Mittman 00:06:49 Yeah. Yes, I guess I can say this so I out Trump. Trump. And this is not political.
Brian Mittman 00:06:54 So basically we had this huge space.
Tyson Mutrux 00:06:56 Huge.
Brian Mittman 00:06:57 Huge. And I shared it with this other person.
Tyson Mutrux 00:07:00 The biggest space you've ever seen. Bigger than any space. Huge.
Brian Mittman 00:07:06 Oh, man. You tell me here. And, and, you know, we went our separate ways at around Covid, and what we ended up doing was we built a wall, but he took some extra space. So we built a wall. He took some of my extra space. I renegotiated my side of the lease. I found out he never renegotiated his side.
Tyson Mutrux 00:07:26 You.
Brian Mittman 00:07:26 Know. So build a wall. And the other guy paid for it.
Tyson Mutrux 00:07:31 So not too bad. Yeah, it's a good deal, you know.
Brian Mittman 00:07:33 So. But the point is, you know, we had this little we wanted an agreement and be done with it. And it was really nice to get a red line copy back where she said, you need these two things and these other four things just depends on how much you really want to fight it.
Brian Mittman 00:07:49 It's not a big deal. So we ended up at a great compromise. Got this thing done. So I'm using her for the term sheet, the asset and any like ethical issues surrounding this. And I'm excited because it's working out well. And I think in the future I know in the future a lot of things. Oh, you know, I'm going to go into an agreement with this attorney and, it's great to have half on board and it's worth every penny because you don't want to spend your time just.
Tyson Mutrux 00:08:19 Yeah, I've never considered bringing on some sort of fractional legal counsel. I think that that's awesome. What is it like negotiating with someone that you are bringing into the fold? That that can be tricky. Yeah.
Brian Mittman 00:08:32 I mentioned before, you want to be there's a control issue, right? You want to have control and and rightly so, especially after 30 years of this I.
Tyson Mutrux 00:08:42 Really and they don't want to be controlled.
Brian Mittman 00:08:44 Most people don't want to be controlled. And you don't actually know what the other person really wants.
Brian Mittman 00:08:52 And this was an ARM arm's length transaction compared to in the past. You know, Mike, my buddy who had passed away, we over time, he was a consultant for us for years through our business coach. And then we decided we became friends. And then we're working together. I've had other people who I knew as friends and tried to bring in. You know, it just doesn't work. I think Chris Nicholson talked about that in his podcast episode, and this was an arm's length transaction. So part of me was trying to figure out, I know what I want, and I want to be tough negotiating, but at the same time, I don't want to lose the opportunity, even though I know other opportunities will come along. And I think overall, you know, looking at it, there are a couple pieces I probably could have been a little tougher on, and I think I did pretty well with some other pieces. And now it's, you know, kind of putting the, the, the, the, the screws to it or whatever they say.
Tyson Mutrux 00:10:00 Yeah. Well, it is interesting because, like, you could my guess is that you probably could have gotten a better deal. She probably could have gotten a better deal. But if you go too far in this arrangement, then it just all blows up, because there is the there is the part where there's the earn off and you got to work together. And if she if she pushes too hard or you push too hard, there's going to be a lot of resentment there. That's not going to make that relationship work very well.
Brian Mittman 00:10:26 Yeah. I think one of the important things is to also try to see it from their perspective. And I said to her at one time during the negotiation, I said, look, you have built an incredibly successful business. One of her things is she just didn't want to deal with the business aspect of it anymore. It was really making her nuts. She just. She loves working with clients, you know? That's fine. That's her, her, her thing.
Brian Mittman 00:10:54 But by any measurement, super successful. Right? She's, you know, had a building she built and bought a bigger building. Right. And, and and she has this whole practice going and she's done very well for herself. And, you know, as a woman in this business, I mean, tremendous in New York. Tremendous. And, you know, I don't want to just say, oh, you know, come work for me. And all of a sudden all that disappears, right? And I don't know what type of necessarily like, you know, ego or thoughts of the person, you know, she would have or was having about that. Right? Because, again, it's somewhat of an arm's length transaction. And, you know, we were doing our due diligence. We we went through the kind of the technical side. How many cases do you have? What's the average length? You know, a whole bunch of let's look at your contracts. Do you know of any liabilities? You know.
Brian Mittman 00:11:47 So we were going through a whole bunch of punch list items. Yeah, but it was more trying to figure out, you know, we we've never really worked together. So that's going to be a general challenge as well. Right? You're going from being your own boss to now working for somebody. Sure. and I, I said that to her outright at one point. I said, I said, you don't have to give me an answer now, but how do you feel about that? Think about it, because this is this is real.
Tyson Mutrux 00:12:16 You know, I asked someone earlier today, they had acquired a firm and they would not recommend doing it. And but I've always viewed acquiring firms as because they seem to have a bad experience with it. Right. But I've always seemed to a thought of it as like a really good way of of growing where you can work out these relations, these agreements with these. Maybe the attorney wants to leave the practice, maybe they want to retire. Maybe they just don't want to run the firm anymore.
Tyson Mutrux 00:12:47 I do think there's there's a really good opportunity to acquire firms and be really creative with it. And so I have you have you thought of this maybe as a way of growing in other ways?
Brian Mittman 00:13:00 I jokingly said, my CEO, Kathy, I jokingly said to her, I said, I know the ink is not dry yet, but who should we go after next?
Tyson Mutrux 00:13:08 yeah.
Brian Mittman 00:13:09 But in in all seriousness, you know, we had a we have a very specific, growth plan for this year and for the, for the future. And we spend a lot of time and money marketing trying to get, you know, organic growth, trying to do all the different, you know, things that we do. And this was the first time where if I looked at the numbers, if I would actually if we would take in as many side cases as we did last year. And then I add these cases that are coming in, I've hit my numbers, my growth numbers. So what I've challenged my my my chief growth officer, my marketing director to do is we know we have these cases coming in, but let's not consider those as part of our our core number for the moment.
Brian Mittman 00:14:00 Let's see what we can do. Can we hit the goals that we set based on what we're doing. Because if we do that now, all of a sudden, instead of having our 20% growth, we're going to have, you know, 35% growth. Yeah. In terms of the cases. So, you know, it's an interesting way to look at it. And I do think that, you know, acquisition it's acquisitions and interesting thing in our in our field. I have a great team that's helping me with this. In fact, I had done something like this bringing a very senior attorney in to help grow the business and do this certain part of the business, and basically made a very quick decision. Within a year, I ended the relationship. in fact, we still have a really good relationship, and we refer him a bunch of certain types of cases. Interesting, but internally such a non fit. And I promise my team that I would not be I would always be the ultimate decision maker.
Brian Mittman 00:14:59 But I am not going to, you know, ram something down their throat. And so they were very involved in this process as well, meeting, you know, the individual and her employees and saying, wow, this is somebody, you know, I think, you know, we can really work with. But the challenge, like any other challenge with, with a merger acquisition is, you know, you're bringing two cultures together.
Tyson Mutrux 00:15:21 Yeah.
Brian Mittman 00:15:22 Here it's a much smaller culture. So I think we can really monitor and pay attention to it. I don't know what the other, you know, you know, their acquisition deal was. But I'll have to listen to the podcast. But, stay tuned. Yeah. Stay tuned. But it is a it is a challenge because again, you make a lot of assumptions. And that goes back to the you want to plan for as much as possible but not over plan and sync the deal. Sure. So there's a there's a fine there's a fine balance there.
Tyson Mutrux 00:15:54 Yeah. Did you get the teams together before you, you know, put the deal together and everything just to see if it was a good fit. Yes. Yeah.
Brian Mittman 00:16:01 And in fact, I, since she's coming in specifically to my Social Security practice and really is going to be leading the charge there, I had her I had my whole team come in. She came in for the day. And even though I kind of led the initial meeting, I found some good excuses to get up and leave, like constantly. And I let the team just hang out all day and then I had a I had lunch with her and I got some great feedback. And then they spent the afternoon doing stuff. And then the next day I met with the team and got the feedback from them.
Tyson Mutrux 00:16:38 So it's a clever way of doing it so that they don't know you're doing it on purpose. Just, you know, just, oh, I gotta let me go. I gotta make a phone call real quick.
Brian Mittman 00:16:45 Sorry.
Tyson Mutrux 00:16:45 You know.
Brian Mittman 00:16:45 Yeah. Even though I make this whole thing about, like, you know, you shouldn't have your phone.
Tyson Mutrux 00:16:48 When.
Brian Mittman 00:16:49 You're.
Tyson Mutrux 00:16:49 In a meeting, but. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you gotta, like, I do think it's it's important that way. They're in like, this natural environment with each other. I think that's a good idea.
Brian Mittman 00:16:57 Yeah, you have to. I mean, they don't have to love each other or anything like that. But in particular, you know, they're going to be working together. Yeah. Yeah. I can't the, the, the last time I had done something like this I just assumed way too much. Right? I got sold a good bill of goods, as they say, and, and and I believed it all. And by the time it started going, it was too late. So this time around, it's been different.
Tyson Mutrux 00:17:25 So I do want to talk to you about the your, I guess, would you call it like an almost partnership your, with your with your partner because you've always I think you've always called him your partner, but had you, you never formalized an agreement.
Tyson Mutrux 00:17:37 Is that right?
Brian Mittman 00:17:37 So I own the practice 100%. Okay. I do have a senior attorney who I call a partner who's a contract attorney. A contract partner for better lack of a, a word. and, you know, that's a combination of whatever his salary is, plus some incentive plans around things to, you know, try to encourage him to either be a rainmaker or to, you know, look out for what's going well.
Tyson Mutrux 00:18:07 And I'm talking about the your friend that in a passing away. Oh, yeah. So was he ever formally your partner?
Brian Mittman 00:18:14 technically, no. So what happened was, believe it or not, we were going to this maximum lawyer event in Saint Louis in May of 2019.
Tyson Mutrux 00:18:24 Yeah.
Brian Mittman 00:18:24 And literally the day before, he called me and said he got these bad test results back and he has to go for more testing. So he didn't come to that event. And that's when he got diagnosed with cancer. And what we had been doing was again, he had this practice and we had already started what we would call our term sheet, you know, hey, what are the terms? How are we going to share? You have all these cases out there.
Brian Mittman 00:18:44 I have all this stuff. And we had a, you know, we had done a whole bunch of stuff around and we started having an attorney get involved about, you know, by in over the by an, over a few years was, you know, he had, you know, he was a mass talk guy. He generated marketed cases and just gave them all out. So I was going to start sharing in things that existed prior to me coming in, okay, over the course of a few years. And then he was going to share in certain things. And, so we came, you know, we were coming to terms. Then he got really sick and it kind of morphed more into a what does it look like when I pass? So there was a buyout for his, his widow. So I technically own the firm. it's a Pennsylvania firm. I own the firm. I own the web. It's really the website assets and the clients that were in existence at the time. So.
Tyson Mutrux 00:19:40 So you end up. You end up. You did in a buying that part of the firm then I guess. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What was I mean, what was that like going through knowing what was going to be the likely outcome.
Brian Mittman 00:19:51 That's that sucked.
Tyson Mutrux 00:19:53 It's got to be I mean it sounds awful.
Brian Mittman 00:19:54 It was, it was it sucked on a lot of on so many levels. And, you know, there was the, emotional side for me of fuck, I finally got a guy who was like, you know, my brother from another mother. I mean, literally like, you know, I'm from Philadelphia originally. He's from Philly. He was maybe five, six years older than I am. And, you know, we had some people in the same circle. Yeah, but there was a common connection there, and there's just a lot about why I knew that partnership could work because of how we got involved into it, as he was a consultant originally, and then we grew closer together and understood how we worked, came up with these plans.
Brian Mittman 00:20:39 He was a crazy, crazy planner. I mean, beyond brilliant with numbers like he introduced me, my marketing director and a couple other team members to ways of looking at data. Yeah. Years ago.
Tyson Mutrux 00:20:55 You've always been good on data.
Brian Mittman 00:20:56 That I have never like if I, I thank you, ways of looking at data that have just like, you know, we still use today. It's like it's such easy things. Like he was a he was this genius with throughput. Did you ever, read, what his goldsmith's,
Tyson Mutrux 00:21:14 No.
Brian Mittman 00:21:15 Oh. What was the book? Oh my God. the the theories of the constraint theory. There's a constraint. Basically you identify in any process where the constraint is, you work on it, then another one will pop up and it's all about throughput. How quickly do you get the thing the widget through the system?
Tyson Mutrux 00:21:32 Okay.
Brian Mittman 00:21:32 And he was just a genius with that stuff. And so, you know, it's scribbling notes like mad and crazy. It's like, you know, when when he was getting more and more sick, he would be sending me, you know, images of all his notebooks.
Brian Mittman 00:21:49 And I'm just like, looking at his notebooks, going, who thinks this way? Yeah. You know, so, you know, and so that was, it was it was tough because you had somebody that really complimented you. And that happens.
Tyson Mutrux 00:22:01 So was he doing this to pass it on to you so that you had the information.
Brian Mittman 00:22:05 Now he just always done stuff.
Tyson Mutrux 00:22:06 Like.
Brian Mittman 00:22:06 That. Yeah. Really. Yeah. He made he made sure he passed it on. And it was funny because again, you know, he was really good with certain things. I was really good with other things. And you know, post his passing as things settle down. And then we got stuff worked out with his his widow and what we're going to do with the different things. We realized that, yeah, we had forgotten a bunch of things, you know, because, you know, we didn't have the attorney, we didn't have an attorney help us, you know, finalize certain things. It all worked out because we were all friends and we were able to make it work out.
Brian Mittman 00:22:35 But,
Tyson Mutrux 00:22:37 The all of the cases, I'm guessing the way it worked is, you know, after his passing, you had there's a certain amount of money, I guess. Did you? Was it just you you buy out and it's over, or were there cases that you had together that she ended up getting paid out on?
Brian Mittman 00:22:52 So. So the way we structured it was, you know, she was on our payroll for three years, and now for years there was a buyout. There's a buy in and a buyout. Right. So. So what happened was he was bringing in Mike was originally bringing in a a Huge backlog of cases plus potential future cases. And he was helping us build the attraction mechanism for our future cases. so, you know, there's a salary for him. And then we were doing a fee share, and then we had this kind of funky fee share, where in the first couple of years he got more from his cases, but eventually they evened out and we were 50 over 50 partners.
Brian Mittman 00:23:41 So when he passed away, the deal was, you know, we did a, a, a, a buyout to his widow, you know, our employee health care, stuff like that. And then there was a small value for the firm, which was an annual payment based really based on the website. and then for the cases that were in existence at the time that he passed, we had a deal in terms of how they were split up.
Tyson Mutrux 00:24:08 Gotcha. So was he like a friend. Was he like a best friend? Was he like a, you know, friend? Because there are. I do wonder, like how close of the relationship, how close of friends you really were. And the reason why I'm asking. I'm not saying you're not friends. I'm just. And whether or not you think, like having a partnership with, like, a best friend is, is a very good idea, or having like a a friend, but not necessarily like a best friend.
Brian Mittman 00:24:36 Yeah. you know, my Mike and I were.
Brian Mittman 00:24:39 We were good friends. Yeah. You know, I wouldn't say best friends, right? We had just really met. Yeah, sure. You know, Yeah. Maybe 2015. and so we had become very close from working together, a lot of shared values, things like that. So, you know, somewhere between a friend and a and a best friend, we definitely understood each other. yeah, we had our moments too, but we were able to talk about it and stuff like that. So coming into it was different than had I ever had a gone in with a, you know, good friend right out of, you know, law school or something like that.
Tyson Mutrux 00:25:16 Would now I do wonder, like, do you think it is a good idea to like go into like a partnership with a best friend? I because I feel like that would be really tough if you didn't work out.
Brian Mittman 00:25:29 Yeah. Having seen best friends break up. I think it comes back to the toughest thing for anything is having those conversations beforehand.
Brian Mittman 00:25:44 Yeah I always call it let's just do it and we'll stick it in the drawer. Right. It kind of sounds a little not quaint but like oh yeah okay. You know like, but at the same time, you know, having had a agreement with a friend, sharing space with the idea that we're going into business together, then realizing we weren't going into business, but we were still sharing space, and then we had to break that up. Planning it out way ahead of time. Yeah. Is. Hey, in case this doesn't work. Well, we can't cover all contingencies, and we don't necessarily want to. Here's what we want to do. For the most part, it's almost like a prenuptial, right? Yeah. You want to talk about maybe what you're going to do with kids, what you're going to do with the house, or, you know, things like that, and you don't want to talk about it. You don't want to think about it.
Tyson Mutrux 00:26:32 No.
Brian Mittman 00:26:33 But that's why there's a lot of attorneys in business, because, you know, people get divorced and the business divorce is no different.
Tyson Mutrux 00:26:41 Do you think it was an advantage, the fact this is such a weird question to ask, but do you think there was an advantage to crafting up an agreement, knowing that he was going to pass, or having a really good indication that he was going to pass because it forced you to think about all those things?
Brian Mittman 00:26:59 Yes. we started the agreement before we knew he was sick. Right. you know, we put it on hold for a little while, and then we're like, okay, we really got to do something. What I wish we had done is I kind of wish I had a general counsel.
Tyson Mutrux 00:27:12 Sure. Okay.
Brian Mittman 00:27:13 You know, like back then, because I could have said, what are all the what are the things? Here's what we want. Here's our business terms. Yeah, but what are the things we're not thinking about? Because a few of those things popped up. What? There was a discrepancy, for instance, between, what we agreed to pay his widow period of time and the period of time we were paying for medical.
Brian Mittman 00:27:37 Didn't even realize it. Oh, well, we took care of it all.
Tyson Mutrux 00:27:41 As I say, knowing you, I just did.
Brian Mittman 00:27:43 It was a non-issue, but it was still an issue. It's like an it was an unnecessary issue because I would have expected a general counsel to say, this is fine, but did you mean to do this? And if we meant to do it, that's one thing. If we didn't mean to do was like, oops, no, sorry. Yeah, I, I, I really think that, you know, Unfortunately. Right. Death has a way to, give some clarity. I, I, I read my Daily Stoic every day. I listen to a lot of my podcasts and really, you know, think about it, right? They say momentum Mori. Right? We're all mortal. And some people, more than others, really don't like to talk about or think about it. But you have to. And as you you know, I see why as you get older, you don't put up with shit from people.
Brian Mittman 00:28:34 Yeah. You know, my my wife and I, and I won't get into it at all. But we have a few things where we're sometimes even our kids are like, I can't believe you guys are like that. We're like, no toxic, no toxicity in our life. Sorry, guys.
Tyson Mutrux 00:28:50 Doesn't say, do we need to clip this next section and send it to your wife to see if. What are you going to say after these words? I was really curious to hear what you were to say. the last thing about the acquisition. Yeah. Having gone through what you went through and being forced to think about some things you really didn't want to think about. Did that help you in crafting this this acquisition agreement?
Brian Mittman 00:29:12 Yes.
Tyson Mutrux 00:29:13 Yeah. Or I was wondering if maybe you just kind of, like, buried the old thing. Didn't want to think about it anymore because. Which some people do, you know, or if it did help, you know.
Brian Mittman 00:29:22 In fact, I think it slowed me down a little bit because I kept thinking of more things.
Tyson Mutrux 00:29:26 Oh, interesting.
Brian Mittman 00:29:27 You know, and that's where it's the paralysis by analysis. You don't want to overdo it, but then also you don't want to undo it. Right. And I'm actually waiting for the font. So we basically come up with a term sheet. And I gave it to my general counsel. And I said, by the way, here's some other things I've thought about that weren't part of the agreement. But do we have to address or not things like, you know, the bank account and what happens with, you know, we have receivables. Well, you know, when do the receivables become my receivables Wolves versus, you know, there's a lot of, you know, little, little nuance. And it's not a deal breaker. But these are things that even in the kind of negotiation we didn't necessarily talk about because it wasn't a I have a neighbor, a, a business neighbor on my fourth really, really nice guy, and he does some type of, online educational training type of stuff.
Brian Mittman 00:30:25 And he's been trying to sell his business now for a little over a year. And we're always talking business stuff. And, and, you know, he was doing his due diligence and he was like, fascinated because they hired a broker and all the stuff they were going through. And, and then they put out the RFP and they had they had two people, you know, come and, you know, do their due diligence. And they got like this close to an agreement and it fell through. And he was like, oh my God. I was like, hang in there. So he's now in his second round of doing it. But. in listening to all the kind of checklist items that he's going through, it got me thinking was like, well, I'd be an idiot not to do it. Sure. Right. Were you do yourself no favors. By just assuming or over trusting. This is business. I I it's embarrassing as anything, but I will tell a quick little story.
Brian Mittman 00:31:27 So I had a quote unquote friend who for about ten years sold me my copy machines.
Tyson Mutrux 00:31:35 Oh, no. Okay.
Brian Mittman 00:31:37 At least me, my copy machines.
Tyson Mutrux 00:31:38 Okay.
Brian Mittman 00:31:40 Let's just say after he absconded with about $100,000, from a deal that he cut for me and other people's money to Las Vegas and started his little shenanigans out there. got some of the money back, but I had to deal with two different. Leasing companies. And when I peeled everything back, that S.O.B., I mean, lie to my face like I played hockey with this guy, right? I mean, lied to my face, and I got taken, and I got taken because I was unfortunately too trusting. And there is nothing wrong from the business perspective, being a bit of a hard ass about contract terms for some stuff, the worst thing that somebody says is no, this is our contract. Take it or leave it, okay? Right. You know there's company, right? You know, the, what you get the phone company, some other things.
Brian Mittman 00:32:42 You're not negotiating crap with them, but you can always ask 100%. But you know what I learned? You know, in that particular lesson, like, seriously, You know, you don't have to go overboard. But at the same time, I want to make sure when I when, when the final papers are signed, that I am certainly covered and protected. And if the things work out in the way that they're supposed to work out, then everybody's going to be super happy.
Tyson Mutrux 00:33:12 Yeah, the people that are going to do that or the or they're going to be the ones that look me in the eye and they shake your hand and they're preying on your trust is what they're doing. But the ones that are going to respect, respect you the most, not do that are going to be the ones that are going to understand when you don't want to do that deal. Right. Like, like this isn't going to work out for me, but the ones that really they're going to take advantage of, you are the ones that are going to prey on you.
Tyson Mutrux 00:33:36 Trust in them.
Brian Mittman 00:33:37 You know, I'm glad you said that. I recently, tested a bunch of different AI systems, you know, for, for, like, some medical chronology stuff. And every single one of them was, you know, hey, you sign up, but you get a 21 day trial, a Seven day trial. You know, whatever it was. And we really tested them. And we picked one. Yeah. And then I told the other guy, sorry, you know, we're we're done. And one of the guys said, well, could you tell me, you know, you know why. What about it? You know, and I and he was so happy. I was just honest and straightforward with him. And that's what it is. Yeah. And and that's business. If somebody gets all upset and you know what? You better be scratching your head going, wait, what's going on here?
Tyson Mutrux 00:34:21 Who'd you go with?
Brian Mittman 00:34:23 right now we're using a thing called a super insight.
Brian Mittman 00:34:25 Why? Okay. interesting. The the fellow who created it, I, from everything I can tell, is a disabled veteran. And he created this to analyze VA disability cases because you can do different reports the VA disability report, Social Security disability report and a P.I. report.
Tyson Mutrux 00:34:43 What a beautiful what a beautiful idea.
Brian Mittman 00:34:44 And and it's tremendous because for our purposes again, we don't need what the Pi stuff is offering. We need basically the medical chronology, but there are certain things within Social Security, for instance, the listings, the the impairments, you know, and it's grouped that way. And my attorney who was testing it, she said to me, oh my God, I was in the hearing and the judge was giving me a hard time. And I just searched the document and boom, boom, boom. I said, judge, page 37, page two, 95. And we won the case. She goes, it was so easy as opposed to like, you know, looking at the judge's file and scrolling through and doing that.
Brian Mittman 00:35:25 So, you know, the generative AI stuff like that, it's going to be more and more super helpful.
Tyson Mutrux 00:35:31 Just wait till you hear the, the interview with Elliot. it's we talk about some, some cool things. he's got some good insights on it. Tell me about you. Bet you this I didn't I didn't know this. I don't know anything about the story. Tell me about the time you quit the when you left that firm. You mentioned you quit your job. Like what? What was that story?
Brian Mittman 00:35:53 So I worked. So I went to school. Brooklyn Law School and Brooklyn Law School is on the is on the corner of Drummond Street and Court Street. Court Street, because that's where all the courts are in Brooklyn. I worked for this P.I. firm, and I'll say the guy's name, Sandy Rubinstein. It was Rubinstein and Flatow. The reason I say the name is Sandy Rubinstein. If you follow the New York Post or any New York stuff, particularly from the 90s and early 2000, was like best buddies with Al Sharpton.
Brian Mittman 00:36:22 He had cornered the Haitian cabdriver market. Oh, no. So I worked in this absolute pit of a law firm back when I was in law school, and I had been there for about two years.
Tyson Mutrux 00:36:36 Cab drivers are some of the toughest people to deal with.
Brian Mittman 00:36:38 But he just was a high volume. It was a disgusting office. You know, it was all paper back in the day, obviously, but it was it was craziness one day and I've been there for about two years, and he had long hair and he was like this, and he has his suspenders and stuff, and I'd been there for like two years doing all this work, learning a bunch of stuff in law school. And he comes out one day and looks and goes, you sharpen this, he hands me a pencil.
Tyson Mutrux 00:37:05 I said, you're a lawyer.
Brian Mittman 00:37:07 I wasn't a lawyer.
Tyson Mutrux 00:37:07 But.
Brian Mittman 00:37:08 I sharpen the pencil, I give it to him and I walk into J, his partner at the time, Jay's office. Jay.
Brian Mittman 00:37:14 I quit and I walked it out. And that was the story. And I mean, the guy's his practice is still still going.
Tyson Mutrux 00:37:24 Well, how old is he now?
Brian Mittman 00:37:25 Well, he I don't think he practices too much. His other partner is is is still doing it. But man, I'll tell you I that actually turned me off from P.I. work. Really. Yeah. That and and then but you know, then I talked to my father in law and he, you know, he does worker's comp and I brought the Social Security into the practice and.
Tyson Mutrux 00:37:46 It's a definitely it's different. Like Pi, the people you did with with Pi are different than the people you deal with like comp or disability. They're just it's just different. We're built differently. It's just it's just how it is.
Brian Mittman 00:37:58 Oh listen my my my my oldest is API attorney. Now he's actually working for a friend of mine and he's doing a great job learning a ton. I had a tear in my eye. I went to his first trial.
Tyson Mutrux 00:38:11 Oh, nice. And he. But that was fun.
Brian Mittman 00:38:14 Oh, it was a blast. The opening statements are great, and I'm like, looking at the jury, you know, trying to see how they're, you know, gauging him. And and I'll probably pop a moment. so it was in Rockland County, which is a very defense oriented county. So he ended up with not only a plaintiffs verdict, but he absolutely slammed them. They got, 1.5 million.
Tyson Mutrux 00:38:35 Had a baby. That was his that was his first.
Brian Mittman 00:38:38 His first, you know, his the his partner in his firm second seeded it and did a lot of the motion work, but he he was up there cross-examining, doing all this stuff. It was it was awesome.
Tyson Mutrux 00:38:49 Oh, he's now he's happy.
Brian Mittman 00:38:50 But I'll tell you what's really funny. So we're waiting for it. So I, we're waiting for the verdict. So we go to the pub across the street. Right. We sit down and everybody gets beers, order some food, and all of a sudden the phone buzzes.
Brian Mittman 00:39:05 I guess the jury came in and had some questions, so they all got up and ran back and I go, I guess I'm paying for drinks, I guess.
Tyson Mutrux 00:39:11 So, you know what? If you or if you're going to be over there with them, that's that's the least you could do. Oh it was you had to be along for the ride. Yeah. That that's.
Brian Mittman 00:39:20 Awesome.
Tyson Mutrux 00:39:20 At what point did you brand to the disability guys.
Brian Mittman 00:39:25 I would say that has to go back to around 2010.
Tyson Mutrux 00:39:30 Well that was early on. I was earlier than.
Brian Mittman 00:39:32 Ten to 10 to 12. and our original logo was, you know, this is another real good point for anybody listening from a pure marketing perspective. If a marketing person is selling you an idea. Even if it's the greatest idea in the world. Sit on it. So I had this woman who created this great logo and Ozzy's magnifying glasses, and one of my partners, you know, he plays a clarinet. So it had a clarinet and it was like, really cool, you know, because you look into things really closely, right? Sold a great thing.
Brian Mittman 00:40:06 Nobody ever understood what the hell the logo was. And it was the most complicated logo to get onto shirts into. So then we morphed into, you know, Pep Boys, Manny, Moe and Jack. Yeah, yeah. So I always thought of the disability guys, the Pep Boys. Like, that's my idea, was always just like faces. Yeah. And then, we ended up with the most recent. We're probably a good five, six years into the most recent logo, which is, we call him Ted. I don't know why, but he's Ted, our little, our little guy who's a construction worker with the broken arm.
Tyson Mutrux 00:40:36 And I'm actually trying to visualize the Pep Boys, or so. Are they similar in, in, like, character design and all that now?
Brian Mittman 00:40:43 Manny. Mon. Jack. They were just these like,
Tyson Mutrux 00:40:45 I know you're talking about.
Brian Mittman 00:40:46 Yeah. Black outline faces. Yeah. Like three faces. Originally we thought, oh, we would just have faces. And it kind of morphed into.
Tyson Mutrux 00:40:53 So what do you call your your guy on yours, Ted? Ted. Why?
Brian Mittman 00:40:57 Ted I have no idea.
Tyson Mutrux 00:40:58 No idea.
Brian Mittman 00:40:58 And the really funny part is so, like, you know, in file volume, we have a test, project called Ted test. You know, Ted test, we just refer to him as Ted.
Tyson Mutrux 00:41:08 I like it. so you. There's a couple things I think of whenever I think of you. I think of numbers, which is interesting, because you're talking about your, partner. hum. Your partner as, like, being so big on numbers. But there's that part I think of you as, like branding, but also like processes, like, I feel like you're good at all of those things. Do you feel like you're good at all those things?
Brian Mittman 00:41:31 Well, I appreciate you saying that. I know that I'm good at them, but I don't feel all the time that I'm good at them. And I think, you know, I've I've heard you talk about this to us, right? Because you can always improve your processes.
Brian Mittman 00:41:41 You're always trying. And sometimes you have to take that moment and take a deep breath. And then you look around like, listen, I'm acquiring a law firm. There are processes there.
Tyson Mutrux 00:41:51 Yeah.
Brian Mittman 00:41:53 But the gap between my processes and those processes is pretty significant with certain things and not nothing negative about it. It's just that I like to and I've said this for years, here we are in Arizona. And right. You can have a non attorney ownership of a law firm. I've been trying to build this business now for at least the last five years as a business, so that when the time does come, I can be acquired if I want to. Right. Because what's going to happen is, you know, I'm sure there's some phenomenal lawyers and phenomenal firms, but when you take that to private equity or venture capital or whomever is investing, they're going to say, well, it's just your name in the cases. Here's the value. Oh, but I want much more. Why? Right.
Brian Mittman 00:42:39 You don't have a brand. You don't have processes in place, right? I want I want to be able to say I mean, it's old fashion, but say, hey, here's my three ring binder of how we do this, here's how we do this, right. And and it makes for such a different type of stress and decreased stress level. You know, the end of the year comes around. It's usually pretty super duper stressful for law firm business owners. There's stress there at the end of the year, but it's so different than what it was just a few years ago. We have so many things in place now. Right? I have, I we have we we brought on board a fractional CFO. We've had an online bookkeeping and accounting service for years now. we have our it. It's I can just things are together like right, right now people are scrambling to do 1099.
Tyson Mutrux 00:43:34 99. Absolutely. Yeah.
Brian Mittman 00:43:35 Okay. With our people are doing them and they say, oh, what about this, this and this? And we look and say, okay, do this, this and this, and.
Tyson Mutrux 00:43:42 Yeah, there should be someone doing that for you.
Brian Mittman 00:43:44 Like, that's hands.
Tyson Mutrux 00:43:44 Down what is what is the thing? If you look back at like three years ago, because it's nice like I can be at the office now, we were we were closed, you know, at the end of the year, which was great. It's so luckily I can do it now without a bunch of stress. But like, what is the thing that you can think of that's reduced the most stress for you over the last few years?
Brian Mittman 00:44:07 Getting the fiscal house in order, particularly the processes in the systems? Okay, that that hands down right. It doesn't take away the need to have to make the doughnuts right. Get the cases in, crank those cases out. But knowing what's going on and getting even more insight into it now. Right. Oh my God, numbers are down. Is it panic time or is it. What's going on? Right. And there's much more of the I'm not happy with this.
Brian Mittman 00:44:40 Let's figure out what's happening. And being able to be able to figure out that that's probably been the, the biggest boon to us. Getting second would be getting the systems for the actual legal work. It's always sharpening the right thing. Always, always. And, and then the, you know, biggest challenge we have right now and it's everybody does it's people.
Tyson Mutrux 00:45:06 That's the people's a tough one. let's so let's table that for a second. I want to come back to the people part of it. You've got a dashboard, right? Yes. And what is on your dashboard like, what are you what are the numbers that you're looking at?
Brian Mittman 00:45:21 The main numbers that we look at is we we have a annual revenue goal and we look at it as annual revenue goal, current revenue and the percentage against where we should be for the year. we have a sign case goal. So it's it's the revenue. It's the same. We have two revenue goals because we have a core business. And then we since I refer a lot of cases out and UPI attorneys are nice enough to send me checks.
Brian Mittman 00:45:48 What we do is we take a portion of that, and we attribute that to the business that everyone can kind of share in, in our incentive plan. But, you know, we don't control that other than we know what the average is for the last few years. You know, the new cases, we, we measure actually fiscally, we measure burn rate, how quickly we're burning through money. we, you know, I watch our debt, debt to equity ratio and our quick ratio, which is really the, you know, if we close up shop today is, you know, do we have enough liquidity to pay all our bills? And so that that tells us if we're saving money, building money.
Tyson Mutrux 00:46:28 You're the first lawyer I've talked to that has talked about that. That's that's interesting. The burn rate to I know some other like Kevin Cheney. I think he focuses on burn rate too. But you it's it's almost like you are operating at kind of like a startup, which is interesting.
Brian Mittman 00:46:44 You know, it's it's funny. I'm I'm at a business that is now 90 years old, 92 years old.
Tyson Mutrux 00:46:51 Right. So I'm, I'm aware of.
Brian Mittman 00:46:53 So, so 2023 is 100th anniversary. We're, we're we're taking suggestions for what type of big ass party we should have.
Tyson Mutrux 00:47:00 So okay. So and I do I do have that in the notes about being a 90 year old law firm. And like that's one of your proudest moments is like getting it into the 21st century. Not moments but accomplishments. Like how is it 90 years old? Like what is the who owned it before your father in law?
Brian Mittman 00:47:17 All right, so my stepfather in law, just to be clear.
Tyson Mutrux 00:47:20 Oh.
Brian Mittman 00:47:20 I'm sorry. Okay.
Tyson Mutrux 00:47:21 Step by step, father in law.
Brian Mittman 00:47:22 Yeah. So so my my, my wife's stepfather. So it was his father originally. So, yes, his name is Abraham. Okay, so Abraham founded the firm Abraham and Ruth. Very biblical.
Tyson Mutrux 00:47:34 Firm. Fun fact my dad wanted to name me Abraham, and my mom said, no freaking way.
Brian Mittman 00:47:39 So you ended up with Tyson?
Tyson Mutrux 00:47:40 I ended up with. Yes. Ross. Tyson? Yes. Okay, well, drastically different names.
Brian Mittman 00:47:45 so Abraham founded the firm in 1933. So we we do a, I did a behind the scenes at Disney years ago when I was in a, in a non-lawyer marketing group. And I suggest anybody if you do it, you go down to Disney and it's like, maybe we'll do it.
Tyson Mutrux 00:47:59 I've heard it's amazing. It's a great idea.
Brian Mittman 00:48:01 Unbelievable really is an amazing thing. And they talked about traditions and they really pump up new people about the traditions of the. And so it got really got me thinking. And I do a traditions presentation and I try to do it live for all of our onboarding. And I have the original casebook from 1933.
Tyson Mutrux 00:48:23 And you're kidding.
Brian Mittman 00:48:24 The handwriting is Ruth Markoff, who died in 1985. Because I have stuff from her all the way into the 80s, and there's a really cool connection there. So they founded this firm back in the 30s, and by the 50s they were doing really, really well.
Brian Mittman 00:48:40 I think they even at one point they had a P.I. component. They had a bunch of stuff. the building I started practicing in 401 Broadway, just south of Canal Street. They had an opportunity in the 50s to buy the building. Now, there's a lot of money back then. Like $25,000.
Tyson Mutrux 00:48:57 Back. Now.
Brian Mittman 00:48:59 Let's just say I probably wouldn't be sitting here.
Tyson Mutrux 00:49:03 Yeah, yeah, I bet.
Brian Mittman 00:49:06 or I would be sitting here talking about different things. and then my father in law got involved, and his father passed away fairly young in like, 1970. He took, you know, took over with a bunch of partners. And then by the time I came in in the 90s, they were really focused just on the workers comp. In fact, this is how kind of the life cycle of things. So that's why I like the idea. You know, they said I kind of look at like a startup, right? Because there there's a this guy adds this does this whole thing about the life cycle of businesses.
Brian Mittman 00:49:41 It's a bell curve and they get ossified and they die out and, you know, whatever it is, and you're always trying to kind of stay right there in the prime. And by the time I came in, they only did worker's comp. They were renting to a Social security attorney who taught me, yeah, you know, stuff. And we had always want and I was like, why don't we do Social Security as well? Why is he renting from us? Because one of the partners got mad that he was taking cases from other, like, comp attorneys.
Tyson Mutrux 00:50:10 Oh, geez. And competition.
Brian Mittman 00:50:12 They were charging him. It wasn't a lot of money, but comparatively they were charging him so much money. He was basically like paying the rent for this office space.
Tyson Mutrux 00:50:20 Wow.
Brian Mittman 00:50:21 And like, that was so small minded.
Tyson Mutrux 00:50:23 Very, very small minded.
Brian Mittman 00:50:24 Because after after, you know, so that partner leaves and my father in law, retires and 911 or he retired after 911, but not 911 happens.
Brian Mittman 00:50:32 And we you know, we did the smart thing and we moved further downtown. there were a lot of incentives. but when we moved, this attorney wouldn't move with us. And so that's really when we started getting into the Social Security piece. But coming back to what you're asking is, you know, all these years, I kind of came in, I got this an amazing education as a young attorney, real behind the scenes stuff from my father in law. Yeah, really, really behind the scenes stuff. So I knew a lot more by the time I was 30 than most guys and gals would know before. They're like 40, 45 in terms of how the business is run and working your way up through it. And then in 2007, I moved I, we were downtown, I was like, I have four young kids, like, what am I doing? And the quick story was, I had a friend who had a building up in White Plains and I just sublease my space, moved up to White Plains.
Brian Mittman 00:51:30 The next year was the crash. Thank God I had a sublet and I was out of there and, and and, you know, the the rest is history. But it was at that point that I started getting involved in really marketing and trying to get more cases and beginning to look at this as a business and, and, and what it's like. So I treat it I try to treat it like it's a, it's a startup. And getting to that more mature level because, you know, you don't want to grow too fast, but you don't want to grow too small. I've been through it. I've grown fast. Where oh my God, we're doing so well and I'll throw money everywhere. And then, like the next year, my accountant says this and this, I'm like, what's going on? You know, I'm paying my father in law off and I wasn't taking a salary.
Tyson Mutrux 00:52:14 Wow.
Brian Mittman 00:52:15 Stuff like that. You know, stuff like that over the years. And I was like, I'm not doing this anymore.
Brian Mittman 00:52:20 So that's where definitely by about 2010, we were like, okay, what's going on here? Let's but there's a lot of good DNA and we're still dealing with what I call a lot of kind of mutated bad DNA.
Tyson Mutrux 00:52:34 Like what?
Brian Mittman 00:52:35 Just little ways things people think sometimes in terms of how they handle things. Even though we have certain processes in place. I have a lot of employees that have been with us a long time. So they, you know, learned from the old the old team.
Tyson Mutrux 00:52:51 Well, okay, so this is a good segue into like circling back into hiring and people and stuff. How you're not the only attorney that I've talked to that is that's trying to get the firm out of the stone ages into the new ages. And, that's got to be really tough. So how do you deal with that and how do you get in the right people into the firm with and then melding with the old people without having them have the bad habits.
Brian Mittman 00:53:21 Well, I think one of the most difficult things is realizing when you have to say goodbye and actually say goodbye to a really important key old school player.
Brian Mittman 00:53:36 So my office manager until 2013, not that I remember. September 7th, 2013.
Tyson Mutrux 00:53:44 Yeah. That's stuck. It's imprinted. Where is it tattooed on you?
Brian Mittman 00:53:48 She at that point was with the firm almost 30 years.
Tyson Mutrux 00:53:52 Ago.
Brian Mittman 00:53:53 And she actually taught me a lot. And she was phenomenal, wonderful person cares and cared so deeply. But I'd come back from an event, I'd be like, okay, we're going to go do this. And I would go, absolutely. And then she turn around and do whatever the hell she wanted to do. And it took a while for me to realize that's what was holding me back. You know? You know, I was like, why isn't this working? You know, you know, and trying all this stuff. so.
Tyson Mutrux 00:54:20 You think she was like that? Why do you think she would sound like she was like a cheerleader, but then not do it?
Brian Mittman 00:54:25 I think it's, you know, partly, you know, I know more than he does.
Brian Mittman 00:54:30 I don't like that afraid of change. And I think the afraid of change piece is the tough part. For those folks that have been with you a long time. Some people are built to change and modify, and other people, you know, they'll change a little bit, but then snap back to the way they were doing things.
Tyson Mutrux 00:54:46 Have you watched or listened to my recent episode about toxic employees?
Brian Mittman 00:54:49 No, but that is on the list.
Tyson Mutrux 00:54:51 because I, by the way, the YouTube commenters don't like it. Becca asked me if I if I wanted to delete them. I'm like, no, I like it. Let's keep them on there. The but I think it's typically employees that are probably commenting. But because I was wondering if, they if this particular If this particular employee has the traits that I talk about. So I am curious if you would you go listen to it if it's if it sounds familiar to you at all. Did she ever tell you how great she was?
Brian Mittman 00:55:23 She wasn't quite like that.
Brian Mittman 00:55:24 Sometimes there was some that I do. I have gotten that from some people.
Tyson Mutrux 00:55:28 Yeah.
Brian Mittman 00:55:29 You know, we've done a lot of the disc assessments in the office.
Tyson Mutrux 00:55:31 You love disc. Yeah.
Brian Mittman 00:55:33 And we we we we we, we trained a certain way and, and we pull our hair out going, what is it? How are we even attracting people like this? Like we're just putting a freaking ad out there. How are we? You know, is it the nature of what we do as a business? Maybe it is. so we're now kind of, you know, we we have a potential hire now. And I said to, Kath, I said, look, I said, we like this one person. It works for us. They have their own issues, but we like this stuff about them. Let's compare that person to this new person's disc. Because if it's close enough, then we're going to get somebody more like him as opposed to somebody like to saw the person.
Tyson Mutrux 00:56:15 Yeah, we do that other assessment.
Tyson Mutrux 00:56:16 I can't think of the name of it.
Brian Mittman 00:56:18 the Minnesota, I don't.
Tyson Mutrux 00:56:20 Know, whatever the other one is, it's, it's Jim and I talked about forever. I always forget it. I was about to ask Amy what it is, but we use it, and I was looking at all the common trends. It was funny because we were we were talking about like, what you're attracting. We had not been analyzing it from like, okay, like what do they have in common, like for these different positions? We just hadn't been doing that. Like when it comes to like the numbers, but that wasn't looked at as like, wow, these are all matching up. All the ones that were good hires were in this category. All the ones that were bad hires were. In this case, it was like, wow, so you really can break it down and and like, oh wow, this, this will work for us or this won't work for us.
Brian Mittman 00:56:57 Yeah. One thing we're trying now is we've we've made some jobs scorecards and we're and we're actually building some assessments of what we think is the right an employee for that job role.
Brian Mittman 00:57:10 And then we're going to take the potential new hires disc and compare it to that one.
Tyson Mutrux 00:57:17 Yeah. I like that idea.
Brian Mittman 00:57:19 And the other thing is to use in the compare like, okay, you know, even if this person is whatever CNS, they're going to be working with this person, let's see how they actually interact. You know, what the interaction is going to be like because we need them working with this person.
Tyson Mutrux 00:57:31 Do you use the job scorecards in the interview process?
Brian Mittman 00:57:35 We try.
Tyson Mutrux 00:57:35 To yeah. Like usually when we not use it, when we do bring it up, when we talk about it, they the candidates seem to like it because they know what their expectations are. Yeah. And that's, that's really that's that's part is really helpful. You also know like okay like what do we want this person to do. Like you actually think it through.
Brian Mittman 00:57:52 Well that that's the thing is you can't just say oh well we know what they're going to do. Oh we know what a well no you don't I, I always have this fight with a friend of mine where he always complains about this one employee who comes in late and I'm like, have you told them they need to be here? They should know.
Tyson Mutrux 00:58:10 Then you can't complain about it.
Brian Mittman 00:58:11 I said, well, they should know, but they don't. So why don't you tell them, right. You know, if you spell out and then it and this is a stress reliever right now when a person is giving you a hard time or you're having a hard time with the person, you can say, let's sit down. These are the five things you agreed to. You kill them. Killing it on number one, three and four. What's going on with two and five?
Tyson Mutrux 00:58:32 Absolutely.
Brian Mittman 00:58:33 And and it makes the process of trying to help them improve. If you do want to keep them on so much better, it's like, okay, around this thing, what's the one thing we're going to do?
Tyson Mutrux 00:58:44 Yeah.
Brian Mittman 00:58:45 This month to work on this thing.
Tyson Mutrux 00:58:47 Yeah. I mean there's a there's a ton of benefits to it. And the it's especially true with like it probably doesn't apply to you with, with your firm. But there are if someone is coming in late it it might be because I'll call the the old regime.
Tyson Mutrux 00:59:01 You know where maybe there was other leadership in the firm. That's like they were okay with you. Come in at 9:00. When? When your expectations are 830. And so they may not know.
Brian Mittman 00:59:11 And it's also behavior, right. Your our behavior what we tolerate and don't tolerate. You know, you hear people say, oh if you tolerate the crap then the A players get upset and forgetting the labels. If you're tolerating certain things, all the other kids know.
Tyson Mutrux 00:59:23 It.
Brian Mittman 00:59:24 Right? I have four kids, you know, they can play my wife and I like a fiddle. Yeah, right. And and and so can your employees, right? They just know they see what's going on.
Tyson Mutrux 00:59:36 When it comes to, like, changing gears from kind of like the old guard to the new garden where you made that, that switch where you kind of get your financial house in order and all that. Was there some triggering factor that said, we've got to do this now? Like was there some big event that happened that made you make that decision?
Brian Mittman 00:59:57 So I brought my leadership team to Denver, Colorado in 2018 for a scaling up summit.
Brian Mittman 01:00:05 Vern Harnish has.
Tyson Mutrux 01:00:06 You and I both love scaling up.
Brian Mittman 01:00:08 Scaling up. It's the one I picked. I'll just say that there's so many methods and systems out there. Just pick one and go deep.
Tyson Mutrux 01:00:16 Yep.
Brian Mittman 01:00:16 And prior to that, we rented a workspace and they had these great big glass whiteboard walls. And we had had a phenomenal year the year prior. And we were drowning in 2018. And we sat down and we worked with our business coach and tried to really map out what the hell is going on. Who should we let go? Who should we keep? What are we really doing? What are the numbers we're trying to look at? My friend Mike had just now begun getting involved with us and more and more of this stuff. And I remember mapping this all out, and we came back and we made some tough decisions and some tough decisions were made for us and we turned things around. And that was really the pivot point because it was the team together. It was the first time that my my leadership team together, and there were five of us had really made some decisions, talked it out like adults.
Tyson Mutrux 01:01:18 Yeah.
Brian Mittman 01:01:20 and then, you know, we followed it up with the summit for the scaling up, which kind of just tied stuff together and was like, really cool. and that was really that was really the pivot point that I, that I can think back on, because that leadership team is still there, and they have grown and matured so much since that time. in fact, one of the individuals had said to me, she goes, remember, you know, the wall. She said, I know we we made certain decisions and I'm fine with it. But boy, what if we had done that.
Tyson Mutrux 01:01:50 Well.
Brian Mittman 01:01:50 And I had I said to her, I said, well, you know, you I go, you don't boast often, but you're 100% right. Yeah. That was a very interesting one. The wall, the wall. There's a lot of walls in my life.
Tyson Mutrux 01:02:00 But, you know, that is that is interesting though. Like but I mean it was definitely impact she had it had an impact on her.
Tyson Mutrux 01:02:07 have you ever heard me talking about I don't know if I've mentioned on the podcast about how Amy and I went through this exercise where we said if we were going to reduce the firm down to this number, like, who would we pick? Have I talked about that?
Brian Mittman 01:02:18 No, I don't call you.
Tyson Mutrux 01:02:19 It was a very interesting exercise where we didn't we were in a position where we had to lay people off, but it was, just an interesting thought exercise that I wanted to go through where I said, okay, let's say that we wanted because I was looking. I wanted to say, okay. I think what started this is I wanted to increase our profit percentage is what I was wanting to do, and I was trying to figure out what are ways we can do it. And I was like, well, what if we did this exercise? We we actually did it at a date night. We where I was like.
Brian Mittman 01:02:44 Oh, you're.
Tyson Mutrux 01:02:44 A hot date. Exactly. So and I said, well, what if we picked and I don't remember the number, but it was almost like a draft where I said, I'll go first, or actually, I said, you can go first.
Tyson Mutrux 01:02:54 And then I went. So we went back and forth and we picked we set the number and we went back and forth and we saw what was left over and we were like, oh, interesting. It was very insightful.
Brian Mittman 01:03:06 So I like the language you just use because one of my favorite little things to use, and we don't use it enough, is basically, a salary cap. We create a little salary cap.
Tyson Mutrux 01:03:19 Oh, interesting.
Brian Mittman 01:03:20 Right. So, hey, look, here's here's the max. Here's, you know, the way we did was like, hey, here's the max revenue and here's the expenses and here's this. And what's left over is salary.
Tyson Mutrux 01:03:32 Yeah.
Brian Mittman 01:03:33 And and it's very helpful because I would challenge you not just to do it on the negative side, I spoken to my CFO about this because we've finally gotten our little teams together and we're figuring out profitability and break evens and stuff. is go the other way. I say to myself, what would it be like if the minimum salary in my firm was $100,000.
Brian Mittman 01:03:57 What if the file clerk's getting $100,000? Right? If you let's blue sky it.
Tyson Mutrux 01:04:02 Yeah.
Brian Mittman 01:04:02 What would we need to generate to get our 20% profitability?
Tyson Mutrux 01:04:07 Sure.
Brian Mittman 01:04:09 And and whatever. And the only thing you're doing is you're just forget whether it's realistic or not for the moment. You can look in and say, oh my God, if we weren't going to get rid of anybody and we loved everybody we had. In order for me to get to that point, this is the number we would need.
Tyson Mutrux 01:04:26 That that is. So that's another thought exercise. Now I have to go through.
Brian Mittman 01:04:30 Or think about is like, well, we'll still reduce people, but let's say we're not going to reduce salary. We're doubling everybody's salary, right? You know, you do certain things. I mean, at some point people will get used to a number. But again, if you have specific expectations, right. You precision a friend of ours always talks about precision, Yeah, right. Then you can really get to a point where you can do that.
Brian Mittman 01:04:58 You can say, What does this look like? If I'm doing it, you know, this way. Why?
Tyson Mutrux 01:05:04 Yeah. What I like about this, too, is a lot of times I'll hear people, you know, sitting in this chair, or maybe, like in one of the masterminds where, like, someone talks about the revenue that they want to bring in, but they've not really thought about, okay, how many cases do they actually have to settle or how many new estate plans do they have the packages? Do they actually have to do to get to that? And I think if they were to do that, they might realize that number is not really reasonable or my number is way too low and I need to be thinking about it at a much higher number.
Brian Mittman 01:05:33 I when things we try to break down for the team is when when we give them a new a new revenue number, try to break it down. Say, you know compared to what you did, that's only $12,000 more a week.
Tyson Mutrux 01:05:45 Yeah.
Brian Mittman 01:05:46 And that's it. Yeah. You know, you know, you say to them, oh, $240,000 like, oh my God, how am I going to do that? Oh, you know, it's $8,000 a week. Well, it's not a big deal.
Tyson Mutrux 01:05:58 Another fun one is just to look at your revenues. And then because I, I just don't care about revenue I don't revenues. Doesn't matter. Profit matters is really what matters. By going and looking at the revenues and just playing with, okay, what can you do to increase that profit by a certain amount and like see where your bloat is because you got to like think about how many areas of bloat there are. And you start to look at everything, look at all your financial documents and think, oh, I can my profit could go by up by this, this many more, hundreds of thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars.
Brian Mittman 01:06:28 Just one of the things I work with, with the CFO is they have their formula for basically a third or third or third type.
Brian Mittman 01:06:33 Right? Yeah. maybe 40% in the business we're in. But they break out the profitability side as owners comp and profit. Right. Because we put a lot of things to our business that come out of the business but are really straight to us. Right? Right. But you need to account for that to know how well you really are doing. Trust me. You have, what, three kids?
Tyson Mutrux 01:06:53 Yeah, three are three kids.
Brian Mittman 01:06:54 Yeah. So my four kids are still on my cell phone plan.
Tyson Mutrux 01:06:58 So they'll be chips in a few years, so not to worry about that.
Brian Mittman 01:07:01 yeah, I'll be paying for that. So, but but, you know, it's important. That's it's a phenomenal exercise because it is about profitability. It's like, oh, do we want to just increase revenue 10% or what if revenue only goes up 5%, but we increase profit by 20%, right. You know, do we really need this or that or you know, we're talking how do we get that $100,000 base salary out there? Well this is what we would really need.
Brian Mittman 01:07:30 in fact, one of the things that we did with the acquisition was we did a breakeven analysis and said, okay, once we reach this number plus 15%, then we were going to do a profit share as kind of part of the base. But the 15% was I was building in the profit that I want for the firm. Right. And I'm more than happy to share the pennies, the dollars after that number. But if we don't reach that number, I don't want to be sharing in no, you know, in something. And I've made that mistake in the past.
Tyson Mutrux 01:08:01 So I think we've all made that mistake of of overpaying or mis paying where you're paying. Yeah. Mis pay. I made that up. I don't know, I definitely don't that's a word. But where you are and it's all with good intentions where your bonus structure is incorrect, your your commissions are incorrect. You're you're just giving away. You're giving away. Money is what your ends up end up doing. Yeah. So yeah we got so this is a this is an exclusive.
Tyson Mutrux 01:08:26 The kids get to come in. You'll come in and sit down if you want. the the so we brought the kids with us and Yeah. To this one. They, they actually get to watch us do the interview. And at the end of the, at the end of the show. So this is, this is fun. This is fun for me because we wanted to bring them out and let them kind of see what daddy does with these shows, which is which is kind of fun.
Brian Mittman 01:08:44 They're good shows. Even though you know you don't do a family podcast.
Tyson Mutrux 01:08:47 You don't do.
Brian Mittman 01:08:47 Not. Oh, he's podcasting again.
Tyson Mutrux 01:08:49 Exactly. You know. yeah. This is a perfect time. All the compliments you gave early on is. Yeah, it was a perfect time in front of my kids just about how great the episode is about everything.
Brian Mittman 01:09:00 Oh, my God, the episodes have been phenomenal. especially the ones where you talk about the kids.
Tyson Mutrux 01:09:05 It's exactly, exactly right. so if you were to think about the next five years for the disability guys.
Tyson Mutrux 01:09:13 Yep. Okay. what word would you use for what your plans are for the disability, guys? One word.
Brian Mittman 01:09:24 It's the three.
Tyson Mutrux 01:09:25 Words you gotta give me one. You can give me the three, but.
Brian Mittman 01:09:28 Give me the give it to you as a acronym BPG.
Tyson Mutrux 01:09:30 Okay.
Brian Mittman 01:09:31 Beneficial profitable growth okay. That is our driving strategy. We are going to have profitable growth. We're going to have growth. It's going to be profitable. But it has to be beneficial and that is benefiting the community, benefiting ourselves and benefiting what we, you know, what we do and who we do things for because, there's a lot of ways to make money, but there's some ways that are not as nice as others. just internally, you know, we used to represent uninsured employers for years.
Tyson Mutrux 01:10:03 All right. Oh, that sounds awful.
Brian Mittman 01:10:04 And it was awful because I would say one out of ten were really deserving of good representation because they just screwed up. The other nine were horrible. Like, just I hated it.
Brian Mittman 01:10:15 And I said, you know what? It's not worth the money. Even though it was cash up front, it's not worth the money. and that's it has to be beneficial to what we do in terms of helping people. So the disability guys, we are the choice for all disability and injury legal needs, and that's our focus.
Tyson Mutrux 01:10:32 Do you ever have any intentions to make it a national firm? Yes. Okay. Tell me more about that.
Brian Mittman 01:10:39 You know we're we're we're trying to figure out the model. At first the model was maybe some type of franchise model, but really it's going to be more of probably a regional growth and then a national growth. I, I do have a vision in five years to be sponsoring at least a sports team somewhere. we are leaning heavily towards Paralympics and some disability related because we are the disability guys, after all.
Tyson Mutrux 01:11:05 Smart idea. so it's a brilliant idea.
Brian Mittman 01:11:08 So we're we're we're working on that. In fact, I am a golfer, so we're actually getting involved with the Metropolitan Golf Association this year for their adaptive golf.
Brian Mittman 01:11:18 but I'm also really into some reason I'm just, like, obsessed with, like, para biking. Yeah. so I have a couple of leads in over there and just, you know, it fits with who we are. We love being involved in the community, but, you know, that's a little bit of the ego, but I would, you know, love to go to a stadium or an arena or something. And there the disability guys are sponsoring, you know, the event and not just because I want my name up there, but I think it's I can see that as a a brand. Right, right.
Tyson Mutrux 01:11:49 I mean, the moment I heard that name, I instantly loved it. It is a catchy name. And then you add the cute little Ted, you know, on the, you know, yeah, on, on the logo. And it is memorable. I like it. Who came up with Ted?
Brian Mittman 01:12:05 you know, we had hired a, we had gone through morphed through some different, logos and, and one of them was it was kind of a cartoon of me with helping with some people.
Brian Mittman 01:12:17 Again, it was so expensive to put it on the shirt. And we hired a company that we liked the work that they did, and they gave us a whole bunch of different things, and we actually had people vote on it in the office. And then we ended up with Ted.
Tyson Mutrux 01:12:29 I like it. Well, who designed it? I guess. So that company that put it together for you, I gotcha. Yeah. okay, so the last thing I want to ask you about the wrap is. So you want to you want to get this thing to a national firm. what's what's the one thing over the next, you know, so many years to before you get to that point that you need to focus on to make sure that that happens, people say more.
Brian Mittman 01:12:53 It's really about clarity, alignment and focus. And we're getting our message clear. We're getting people aligned. We're getting our focus there. But you need the people to execute, you know, part of my succession planning for the future I do vision my son coming into the business.
Brian Mittman 01:13:09 depending on what happens with non attorney ownership affects, you know, some stuff as well. But getting the right people that have the energy and the drive and to to to want to make this happen, I, I vision myself as the you know, the chairman of the board. Right. Coming in, Joe, meeting with him. What do what do you guys. You know. It's interesting. Right? You hear a lot. And you've spoken about on your podcast before about, oh, you have to be a CEO. Act like nobody knows what a CEO is or how to act like it or whatever might be in terms of how we're educated. Right. And one thing that's missing from all that is one of the CEO's jobs, aside from being the face of the company and driving the strategy and making sure things and resources are in place, is there also the liaison with the board of directors? We don't have a board of directors. Right. So I see myself as being part of a board of directors for this enterprise.
Brian Mittman 01:14:09 And I can see my son, I can see some other people there and coming in and making sure they get what they need or pushing them a bit more and, doing it a lot sooner than what it took me to.
Tyson Mutrux 01:14:19 Does this mean that pie is in the future for the firm?
Brian Mittman 01:14:23 it is not off the table. I definitely. And and in the right way, too. It's like I've been around enough. Really intelligent and smart and successful people talking about your dad and, and others. And I can I can absolutely see that as a piece of the puzzle, especially if, you know, I like the idea of a niche focused and then, you know, referring a lot out just as a general business. Yeah. You know.
Tyson Mutrux 01:14:54 It is kind of nice. Yeah. That that part is, is the firms that do that. It's a, it's a I think it's a cool concept. I think it's, I think it's kind of hard. I wouldn't say it's hard to pull off.
Tyson Mutrux 01:15:03 It's just a it's not something I would.
Brian Mittman 01:15:05 It takes a different skill set than running a 100%. Yeah. Practice.
Tyson Mutrux 01:15:10 All right Brian. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. I loved having you as the last guest. I told you that before. Just because, like you have, you bring an energy to it, and it just kind of. It was a great ending on this note, so I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 01:15:20 Thank you.
Speaker 5 01:15:24 Thank you.
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