MaxLawCon 2 - Maximum Lawyer

Do you want to create a more successful law firm, where you are able to take home more money? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, speaker Brooke Lively shares her personal experience of firing her biggest client and the resulting financial struggles for her business.

Starting from scratch and building a successful business is a hard thing to achieve. Brooke talks about using the rule of thirds strategy to make her company a profitable one. The strategy involves the following: allocating a third of your revenue to paying salaries, a third to overhead and a third to profit.

1 | Salaries

When it comes to paying employees, it is best to design compensation packages that work for your firm.

Accountability within a law firm is so important. It moves work through a firm and can be used to dictate pay. One way to hold people accountable is helping them to create goals. Discussing goals will help employees understand what they want to accomplish. As an owner of a law firm, it is important to dedicate time with each employee on a weekly basis to speak through goals so that everyone is on track.

2 | Overhead

A lot of firms spend way too much money on marketing. Brooke speaks to how cutting the marketing budget is a great way to save money. One way to do this is to analyze the return on investment on all marketing channels for a firm each month. Whichever is the lowest that month is cut, which can save tens of thousands of dollars. Another way to save money is to review the monthly credit card bill to see what expenses have been neglected and therefore removed.

3 | Profit

As a firm owner, there are many things you can do for your profit. One thing is to monitor it every month, tracking the increase or decrease of profit. Another thing is to figure out your salary, distributions and personal finances monthly to make sure you are not only making what you deserve but are paying off your expenses.

Listen in to learn how to make your law firm more profitable!

Episode Highlights:

2:58 The rule of thirds
6:27 The importance of accountability in law firms
10:51 Your digital marketing budget
11:35 Exploration of the expenses and benefits of coaching
16:28 The importance of properly compensating law firm owners

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Brooke:

Resources:

Join the Guild Membership
Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer YouTube Channel
Follow us on Instagram
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Transcripts: From Panic to Profit: 3 Hidden Strategies Fast Growing Firms Use to Increase Profit

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - In today's episode, we're sharing a presentation from Max Lakhan 2022. Keep listening to hear Gary Falco's as we share his talk. How to win at intake. You can also head to the maximum Lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Speaker 2 (00:00:15) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast podcast. Your hosts Jim Hacking and Tyson Tricks. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:00:38) - Gary Falco is here. I'm going to make this. We're going to go fast. We're going to be loud. We're going to go fast. I'm going to give you as much information as possible to make sure that you can grow your firm appropriately, efficiently, effectively. Understand this. I should tell you why I understand this. I have spoken at many conferences, some of which have law firms that are pretty large, signing 4 or 500 cases a month, and some of which do have a law firms that are just getting started. Everything I said I'd say today, regardless of the size of your law firm, will help you do a better job at intake.

Speaker 3 (00:01:14) - My bio, I'm an attorney. I worked with a large law firm. I wrote a book on intake, have my own call center. I still get involved in cases where a co-counsel other law firms. This has become my career. And if you told me that in law school, I think you were crazy. I didn't never heard the word intake before, but something about the business of law and being an entrepreneur and wanting to fill the holes in a business really appealed to me. And here I am jumping all the way in. Okay, here are your keys to winning at intake. And we're going to get let's move this over here. We're going to get into each of these today very quickly. You need to know the mentality of a new claimant. You need to create a team of experts and advocates. The big one here, we need to remove the weight. I'll talk about that momentarily. We have to appreciate the competition, follow up aggressively, decide immediately. We need to make the process of signing a new client easy.

Speaker 3 (00:02:09) - We have to have a smooth client transition Once they become a client, the next steps and then we have to hold all of our teams, both internally and externally, accountable. Again, loud apology. It is not I'm not yelling at you. I am passionate about the topic. Let's start with the knowing the mentality of a new claimant in this day and age with how advanced we are with technology and the iPhone. We want them. When we want something, we want it now. I want to buy a new pair of shoes. I'm going to get them on the way to the airport. If I want to order Uber some food, Uber eats. I'm not waiting till I get home. I'm not stopping to pick it up. I could do it at the you know, when I'm waiting outside picking up my kids. Right. We want things immediately. And that's what wins, by the way. And I'll be repeating that sort of theme throughout the next 15 or so minutes. Speed wins there.

Speaker 3 (00:02:58) - A claimant's interest is highest when they first contact you. Okay? Which means that we have to be prepared to give them the response that they deserve and need to make them a client. Now, as every day their interest kind of decreases because distractions increase. You need to understand that that doesn't mean you stop following up. You just need to appreciate that that first time they reached out to you, if you're not throwing out every potential weapon in your favor to bring them in, you might be losing them to another another law firm. They're looking for reassurance, guys. You're looking for compassion, reassurance and confidence. Now, most of what most of my clients, when I consult law firms on intake or I speak on a stage, most of my law firms are personal injury law firms. But everything I'm saying could be adopted for other law firms as well. Here's what's interesting about it You never need a lawyer until you need a lawyer, and most of us will never need a lawyer. Most of us will never need a personal injury lawyer.

Speaker 3 (00:03:53) - If I asked you right now, I probably see about 50 or 60 people in the audience. Raise your hand if you ever needed a personal injury lawyer. You. I see. Two, three, four, five, maybe five. Hands up. Five hands. Right. That is less than 10% of the people in here. Which means that. And raise your hand if you need a personal injury lawyer twice in your life, raise your hand. One person needed it twice in their life. Which means that if you ever need a personal injury lawyer, you probably don't need it once in your life. You've never had those conversations, The ones that you're having internally in your office about all the legal issues and and the filing and the administrative and the fees. They don't know anything like that. They just want to know, Hey, can you help? So we've got to make sure that if we can give them that reassurance, Hey, Mrs. Johnson, you did the right thing by calling. We handle blank cases every single day.

Speaker 3 (00:04:39) - Perfect. Because I was nervous. I didn't know if you guys did this type of case. Boom, That's how you start the conversation. They don't believe that hiring an attorney is a priority, which is why it takes so long sometimes for them to even reach out. They talk to their family, they talk to their friends. They talk to their colleagues. They don't know that it's necessary. They just see the commercials and say, maybe it's a good idea, maybe it's not. We also have a bad reputation, unfortunately, guys, so we have to constantly go up against that. They don't want to be intimidated. Don't use the legalese on the conversation, the conversations. And they're looking for trust. Right. And the people that you have picking up the phone calls, they're the ones that have to create that trust. Two years, one mouth. Right. Do more listening than speaking. Answer their questions. They want to be reminded, even if it's been three or 4 or 5 weeks or months since they reached out to you.

Speaker 3 (00:05:26) - Keep reminding them only stop following up when they tell you or you go a significant period of time, which I talked about in a moment with radio silence. They're filled with anxiety. It's likely their first time they'll tell you if they're not interested. They'll even tell you why. Do not hesitate about asking why. I speak to the claimant. They say, You know what? I'm not going to go this route. May I ask you what happened? Oh, you're going to learn a lot of information. Maybe you're someone. Something. Somebody in your office said to them. Maybe another lawyer told them something that just isn't true. Ask them why. And they don't believe that their case is large enough for you. I cannot tell you how many times a claimant thinks that because they don't have a surgery where their arm was taken off and they got to somehow fix the arm, they think they see the commercials. They've got to have like a $27 Million case. I've seen those commercials. I don't have a $27 million case.

Speaker 3 (00:06:13) - I've just been to the doctor for the past year. Wait, that's exactly the type of case we handle. So they're not sure of that. Create a team of experts and advocates, which requires a strong initial training. I'm actually in the process, really excited about it. By the end of the summer, it'll be live where I have a virtual training and certification course for intake specialists. Receptionists of most. This one is for personal injury lawyers, but it's going to be tremendously impactful and valuable for your firm. They need continued training. Just like we get close, they need continued training about maybe the dialogue or the criteria has changed. I'm going fast. I only got a few more minutes here. Daily huddles, frequent internal meetings with attorney involvement. The more that they get to speak to attorneys about their job, the more valuable they feel. If you're creating this Chinese wall of intake over here, lawyers over there, and they don't even talk to each other, I'm telling you, it's a recipe for disaster.

Speaker 3 (00:07:05) - They need to talk to each other. They're going to feel like, Oh, the lawyer knows my name. These are the conversations. I've managed an intake department. I know this. The lawyer knows my name. He said, I did a good job at this intake. Oh, guys, I just learned that we don't want these type of cases because of A, B, C, D, and E, Right. Let the attorneys speak to their intake staff. Make sure they appreciate the intake staff. Too often, intake specialists are so nervous to speak to the attorneys about a case that they just tell the claimant. I don't think it's something we can help you out with. Can you imagine it's happening? I promise you it's happening. I'm not making it up. It's because they're scared. They're scared to say the wrong thing. They're scared that an attorney might yell at them. Right. Tell your attorneys how important they are to your firm. Recurring updates to your intake manual. If you don't have one, reach out to me.

Speaker 3 (00:07:47) - You need to have an intake manual. Give them respect and credit rewards and thank you's right This day and age, money is not enough, right? Hearing a thank you is so important, right? If they reach a certain goal, let them get a reward. That's fantastic. That's how you create a strong environment. Ask for their input. They are the boots on the ground. They know what's going on. Ask them, Hey, what's what are the challenges you're having right now? You'll be surprised what you're learning. Remove the weight. My biggest one, guys, In this day and age, I understand how important it is to have people speak on the phones. Okay. Not saying that's not important. You know, it's more important. What's number one? Number one, priority response time. Response time wins ten out of ten times. All right. You could be. The solo practitioner has never practiced law and picked up the call first. And you might win over Morgan and Morgan because they took five minutes.

Speaker 3 (00:08:39) - They don't know when someone calls you up, they don't know your resume. They don't know how many cases you resolve. Last year. They're not much money you made last year that not many lawyers are in your firm. They don't know what the budget is. All they know is they spoke with someone immediately and they were great in the phones. That's a huge plus. Makes you wonder why your intake staff are getting paid so little. But that's for another day, right? I mean, the response time Remove the weight from response time. Ring time. Here's a stat for you. I'm going to throw it out right now, guys. On average, 10% of your inbound calls are abandoned. Sorry, 10% of your inbound calls are banned. That means someone hung up midway through. On average, 20% of your inbound calls get picked up and more than 30s. Would you guys wait 30s if you needed a lawyer? I wouldn't. That's a problem in the industry. Remove the weight would transfer time.

Speaker 3 (00:09:27) - Let me get you to a lawyer. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Right. For two minutes until a lawyer picks up the phone. Got to remove that decision making. If we need to train our team to make decisions, we cannot have them say, Let me go ask the lawyer and get back to you or let me think about this or can you get that police report for me? We can't do it. We don't have the time. Time's not a luxury anymore. Competition is too intense. Train our staff to make decisions. Here's the best thing about decisions, guys. If you're a personal injury law firm specifically, and most other law firms as well, you could reject them after you retain them. Right? I have this thing in my book where I say it's better and I'm probably repeating myself. It's better to retain that investigate, then investigate than retain. You don't have time to investigate a matter if it meets criteria, you sign it up under review, pending considering investigating.

Speaker 3 (00:10:11) - That's what your CRMs are all saying you're doing. Don't do it. Remove that status. Don't even use it. It's just a black hole. Call back scheduled meetings. If I speak with a law firm that is still, Oh, I need to meet with them in person before I sign them. Well, I can't help you. Then. I can't help you. That's a problem. Remove the weight. Appreciate the competition. Let's start the assumption that the claimant reached out to two of the law firms. But before reaching out to yours. It's a competition. There's no way that your reputation, even your cousin, I mean, think about this. How many calls have you heard where someone says, I'm not going with you, I'm going with my cousin? Think about that from a from a different angle. They've always had their cousin, yet they still called you. Where's the loyalty to family? Right. Point is, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You're competing. The moment you think you're not competing, you lose.

Speaker 3 (00:11:03) - You are competing. So now what is your response? Like the like the doctor yesterday talked about? What's your response to resolve that? Right. I have to have better staff. I have to respond faster things of that nature. Is your staff more likable? They faster Are they selling better? Do they have accolades? Do they know about if you were on the top 50 firms in the history of law firms, they should know that if you resolved 4000 cases, they're all auto accidents last year. They should know that if you have a Harvard Law graduate, they should know that. Let them know about what to brag about for you. You're competing. Okay. Follow up aggressively said this before. Let's start with the assumption that we should not stop following up until the claimant tells us, Hey, Gary, please stop calling. Yes, sir. I'll call in again. You told me not to or we followed up for an extensive period of time without success or with radio silence and by extensive period of time, guys, I mean a few weeks.

Speaker 3 (00:11:58) - I don't mean four times. I don't mean four times. They could be on vacation. It bothers me when I go in and I work with a law firm and I talk about their follow up process and they tell me when they quit following up, I go, Come on, you know, they could be on vacation. Their grandmother could be sick. They could be they could have Covid. They could be there's a million things that could be distracting them where they don't realize that the priority is to hire a law firm just because you know it's a priority, just because, you know, you can get them three and a half times more money for their injury they can get on their own. Doesn't mean they know that, Right? Put yourself in their shoes. Ensure that your team is reviewing open leads on a daily basis. That's the most obvious thing here. And yet I have to put it in there. Make sure every open lead, regardless of the status, is being reviewed every single day.

Speaker 3 (00:12:47) - Every single day. I don't care how strong your your lead docket, your file vine, your smart advocate, your capital, whatever you're using, I don't care what it is, you got to review it every single day. Someone has to have that responsibility. And by the way, someone not hey intake staff of again, we have some people out here that have no intake staff. They have a receptionist. This is still valuable to you. We have some people out here that have 18 intake staff members out there. It can't be it's got to be a specific responsibility. You, Mary or John, I want you to review those open leads every single day. Example, five attempts in the first three days. That's not crazy. You should be following up on, let's say a web lead reaches out to you through your chat or through through a web inquiry. And oh, by the way, just to go, go back to the competition for a moment. How simple do you think it is when someone types out a summary in a web inquiry and then copies it and goes to three other websites, goes to the web inquiry and paste, submit, paste.

Speaker 3 (00:13:43) - Submit, paste. Submit. It's pretty easy. We all do it and could do it. Got to understand how competitive this is. Example minimum of three weeks of calls, texts and emails. If you're not using text messages, you're in trouble. You have to be using text messages. One of the companies that I'm involved with, what we do is do you know what I think is more valuable than Google? I was talking to someone last night about this. You know, it's more valuable than Google your phones, the contacts on your phone beat Google because you won't go to Google if you have an AC repair guy that's saved as AC repair guy, you're not going to Google for a painter. If you got a painter saved in your phone, you're not going to Google for a P.I. law firm. If you have personal injury law firms saved in your phone. But Gary, how do we do that? Easy. I could do it for you. I could tell you exactly how to do it.

Speaker 3 (00:14:30) - And this way, everything that comes into your firm gets your V card, and now they potentially become advocates. And now when they're in a group chat with their friends and their friend says, Anybody have a good lawyer? I do. Let me show you. Let me give you his contact information. I did it a few days ago for an electrician. For a painter a few months ago. I don't remember who the electrician was or the painter was, but I have them saved in my phone and I recommended them. Texting is a necessity. Make signing easy, right? Don't delay. Don't wait for in-person meetings. You have to use electronic signature. As long as you know your state and your field allow it, you have to use it. By the way, walk them through the electronic signature. None of this. Hey, I just sent it to you. Once you sign it, you'll become a client by. No, no, wait. Say to have ten more minutes on the conversation.

Speaker 3 (00:15:17) - Hey, Mrs. Johnson just sent you a retainer. What I'm going to do right now in our agreement, by the way, use the word agreement. I hate the word retainer. Retainer. Scary. It's intimidating. This is an agreement. I'm doing work. I'm paying you. If I'm successful and doing my part. You're doing your work. You're hiring me. This is the agreement. Get the freaking word retainer out of your dictionary. When you're speaking with the claimant, it's scary. It it implies money up front. It implies blood sucking lawyer. It just does. Okay. Agreement. So, Mrs. Johnson, I just sent you our agreement. What I'm going to do right now is I'm going to stay in the phone, wait for you to sign it, so I can confirm for you that we received it. And now we can start working your case today. That's one call sign. That is the goal. Now, everything I'm telling you today, by the way, guys, it's gold standard stuff, right? Not everything I'm saying you're doing, but it should be the goal.

Speaker 3 (00:16:05) - It should be what you're striving for. It's what your competition is likely doing. Okay. Retain that. Investigator. I talked about that rather than investigate, then retain. Shorten your agreement. Right. You should not have a 13 page agreement. Who reads a 13 page agreement, right? Make it 1 or 2 if you can, and then have them sign other documents after they become a client. Don't say I'm going to throw everything out there so that I'm protected. You're going to lose out on signing clients. That's what you're going to do. Keep your intake packet simple. Don't put a questionnaire in there. Right. The conversation that your intake team has when they sign decide to sign up a claimant, that's the questionnaire. Then after they become signed and they become a client, now you want to go have them fill out a five page questionnaire. That's fine. They're clients. They're willing to do it. But if I got two if I'm a claimant and I got two different law firms I'm thinking about and one gives me just a three page agreement and one gives me a 13 page agreement, a five page questionnaire.

Speaker 3 (00:17:04) - I know who I'm choosing. I want to quick write speed. Speed matters. Okay, Smooth client transition. Now they become a client. The worst fear you should have now is which unfortunately we've all felt in the past is, Damn it, why do we lose that client that we signed? Because you can have a strong transition. You have to become a client text call, email, promotional material material. After they become a client, they should know who are they going to hear from next now that they become a client? When should they hear? How often is it? Once a week? Once a month? Once every few weeks when they hear via text or they hear via email will be a phone call? What do they have to do now? Give them some homework. Now you got to go to your doctors and you got to keep us updated. If the doctor says something new to you, right, give them homework. Make them feel like part of the agreement. Team Introduction. Here's who your attorney is.

Speaker 3 (00:17:51) - Here's your legal team. Here's who the legal assistant is. Here's your paralegal. Manage the expectations. How long this should take, right? We all feel comfortable when our expectations are managed. I think one of the great failures of relationships is the lack of managing expectations. We have an opportunity here where we just retain them. Now we can tell them what to expect. Really important. And by the way, it won't result in them calling every single day what's going on in my case? Because you told them you should hear from us about once a month normally, but we'll call you otherwise if we have some updates for you. Oh, great. Avoid regret. Don't give them reasons to regret their decision. Hold your team account accountable. I'm going to sift through this really quick. I want to you need to know certain percentages in your firm. You know, your conversion rate of all the leads that qualified, how many retained. That really tells you how the front end of your business is doing.

Speaker 3 (00:18:41) - I'll tell you right now, for an average PR law firm nationwide, it's around 70 to 75%. A strong law firm is close to 95. 98%. That firm I was telling you about before, 9400 cases per month in their state, they're at 98. 99%. Yes, they are. I promise you. Okay. You got to know your numbers. You got to know your lead response time. You have to know how many cases are retained, then rejected. It might have something to do with your criteria. You have to know how many abandoned calls you're getting so you can call them back. Retain the first call, sign up. Four seconds to go, guys. The clock is ticking. It's a competition. You can do this. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (00:19:22) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your host and to access more content, go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

Are you struggling in the intake process as a lawyer? Is your firm finding it hard to maintain clients? In this episode, attorney Gary Falkowitz shares his insights on how to win at intake.

Gary works with law firms to patch up the holes that exist and make firms better. Intake involves the process of when a potential client connects with a law firm. There are many steps to ensure the intake process is top tier.

1 | Clients

One of the many important things to consider when going through intake is understanding the mindset of a client. Living in a fast paced digital world, people want quick responses. If a firm wants a new client, that firm needs to be swift and respond as fast as possible. If not, the firm risks losing them to another law firm.

Clients seeking legal representation are usually dealing with heavy things. Whether it be an injury, criminal case or a divorce, no one wants a lawyer. With that said, make sure you are showing compassion and speaking to them in plain language. Many cannot understand legal jargon!

2 | Training

What makes intake a significant part of working with a client is the training process. It is important that those that work in a law firm are equipped with ongoing training to stay up to date on the intake process. Training can include how to respond to clients when they first reach out or how to run a successful intake call or meeting. Lawyers need to know how to make a decision on the fly, especially if a prospective client calls and wants a quick response. If the lawyer is up to date on the criteria, they should be able to know at that moment if the client can be represented.

3 | Follow Up

Following up during the intake process is where some clients actually make a decision on a law firm. Most times, potential clients are submitting inquiries to multiple firms just waiting on the first response. If a client emails an inquiry question, respond once and then follow up again. Most times, clients are juggling a lot of different priorities and that inquiry fell off their radar. The follow up might just be the thing that reminds them and pulls them in.

The best way to keep a client is having a strong transition. Once a client is signed, give them homework. Give them all the information they need to feel supported. Provide information materials about the firm, contact information for the team, what you as an attorney expect from them and vice versa. Managing expectations is key. You need to express what you need from them and they need to express what they as a client need from you.

Take a listen to learn more about how to have a successful intake process!

Episode Highlights:

2:09 Understanding the mindset of potential clients
3:53 The significance of training and ongoing education
9:27 Staff should be trained to make decisions
11:58 Law firms should continue following up
17:04 The importance of maintaining communication with clients

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Gary:

Website

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Transcripts: How to Win at Intake with Gary Falkowitz

Do you want to know how to grow a company to include the best people possible? In this episode, Adela Zepcan, the Director of People and Culture at a law firm, shares her insights on running a law firm effectively.

Living in a post-COVID world, many companies are struggling with employee retention and high turnover. This has been due to people quitting their jobs to pursue their passions or people leaving for opportunities for more remote work.

Working in HR means you are selling your culture and company to prospective employees. You are bringing everything to the table including the company’s values, missions and what they can offer someone. It is important to use your resources to find candidates whether it be using your connections or investing in trusted job sites.

It is important to create a cheat sheet when going through the process. Keep interview questions clear and to the point to get the best possible answers and make sure the questions match the job descriptions. When you are in the process of hiring, you need to ensure it is quick as many candidates don’t wait and will grab the first option they are given.

During the onboarding process, get your team members involved to assist in giving new employees the best experience. Make sure details like assets and accounts are set up in time and training or manuals are ready to go. If these aspects of onboarding are not prioritized, new employees can feel that companies don't value them or their time.

An employee stays with a company for an average of 2.8 years. When someone is leaving, it is crucial employees leave on a good note. Make sure to thank them for their time with the company, celebrate their accomplishments and wish them well on their new venture.

Ultimately, HR is all about people. It is all about how to attract, retain and grow your company.

Take a listen!

Episode Highlights:

2:18 The importance of tailoring job descriptions and investing in the right job posting platforms
4:22 Tips on pre-screening resumes and conducting phone screenings to identify top candidates
8:23 Don't miss out on good candidates
9:10 When reviewing resumes, consider candidates who may not have direct experience but have relevant skills or experiences. Ask behavioral questions that relate to the job
16:02 Tips on how to end an employee's service on a positive note, including thanking them, distributing work, and removing their presence from systems

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Resources:

Join the Guild Membership
Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer YouTube Channel
Follow us on Instagram
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Transcripts: The HR Process with Adela Zepcan

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - In today's episode, we're sharing a presentation from Max Lakhan 2022. Keep listening to hear Adela Zipkin as we share her talk the HR process. You can also head to the maximum Lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Let's get to it.

Speaker 2 (00:00:14) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the maximum lawyer. Podcast. Lawyer, podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Metrics. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:00:38) - All right. So today I'm going to tackle a and kind of how we have navigated our system. And thank you so much for the great introduction. So again, my name is Adela, and so my title is director of People and Culture. And what that essentially means, it's the glorified HR lady, right? And so I am going to show you, I think, a perfect system to run a law firm and kind of grow at an exponential rate. Right? We are on track for the third year in a row to triple our size, and that comes with its challenges, of course.

Speaker 3 (00:01:14) - But making sure that you are prepared for those challenges with the growth in mind and to be prepared to tackle this is it's going to be very important whether you are in the HR profession or you are just an attorney running a law firm, right? Because as small businesses or law firms, startups, we are expected to do everything right from start to finish without any mistakes. And hopefully I can show you kind of tricks and tips that we developed at our firm. So it's I kind of categorized it in four categories. It's not proper HR lingo. I will give you that. So I think of it as four categories my pre onboarding, onboarding, as well as the kind of employee life as well as onboarding, because onboarding is just as important as onboarding. So I will of course tackle the first one and that is how to fine train and keep your talent, especially in this current climate we're in, right? The great resignation Covid hitting us left and right, people wanting and needing to work remote. We have to kind of stay on top of it.

Speaker 3 (00:02:18) - And what I've realized in the last couple of years or in the past five years since I've been doing this is h.r. Is a sales role and you as running a law firm, being the manager, running the operations, whatever the case is, you are responsible in selling your company, you're responsible in selling your culture. So essentially I hunt for candidates just like you look for clients, I hunt or I sell my culture. I sell my companies values, our core values, our mission, my team. Just like you would pitch your services to your potential clients once you have that deciding factor, I think it's very, very important to recognize that distinction because when you're interviewing someone for a position, you have to make sure to sell and smile. And if you're not smiling, you're not doing a good job at interviewing this person. Right? So here's the kind of overall onboarding structure, right? You know, the job description, the resume, sifting, the interviews, screenings. I mean, I've heard companies where they do like five, six hour sessions of interviews.

Speaker 3 (00:03:27) - ET cetera. And that is not a good experience. And you wouldn't want your clients to go through that. So why would you want your employees or potential employees to go through that? So I created a cheat sheet. So this is my cheat sheet. So one of the big things you're going to have to do within the job description is tailor it to the big picture. It is not a to do list. It should never be a to do list of the job. It is the overall like what are the key components that this person needs to tackle? For me to be able to, you know, pass on the mantle of this position, make sure that where you're posting, you're getting your money's worth. A lot of times you're not going to get a lot of return on your investment when you post on these job sites. So if you have a niche, the one that works best for you and you get the best candidates, invest more money in that one than the other ones, right? So ours, for example, is indeed for our international and US hires indeed is the best platform.

Speaker 3 (00:04:22) - Our second best is LinkedIn. And really, honestly, it's word of mouth of employees. A lot of times I find great candidates from part time to full time gigs for our office just by reaching out to my current employees and saying, Hey, do you have anyone in mind that would do this job? And it helps. So as far as the pre screening, when you're reviewing the resume, I want you to think about like what are the key components that this person needs to do in this position and where does it resonate from experience versus knowledge? Like, am I hiring someone that is a five year experienced HR person or am I hiring someone that just graduated and I can't expect the person that just graduated to have five years of experience because they just graduated, right? So that's how you want to tailor that pre screening when you're reviewing and sifting through those resumes. But also keep in mind that sometimes people are really terrible at writing resumes, so you might miss out on really good applicants if they don't use the proper language or terminology.

Speaker 3 (00:05:22) - Now, what I find is the phone screening that we do pre after they pass the resumes, the phone screening tends to be eye opening and we developed a little script for it, which is on the next slide and I'll show you it. And that has been very, very helpful to. A sieve through your top candidates. And if I find that I'm not getting a lot of return from my indeed post, for example, and I got maybe five maybes in a in one Yes. That I'm kind of like I will pick a couple of those maybes and interview them as well. Right? Because my perception will always be biased because I'm going to look for the perfect candidate. And frankly, we're not all perfect, right? So we can't how can we expect someone that is just filling out a resume to be perfectly writing all the terminologies that you're looking for, Right. And then the secondary piece or like the last kind of interview that we do is phone screen or it's usually either in person if we can make it or a virtual video conference with either one of the owners, the manager, depending on what position I'm hiring for.

Speaker 3 (00:06:25) - Right. Try not to make it crowded. Don't make it lengthy. Smile. Tell your team to smile. That is interviewing. Prep them before they join this meeting and so they don't ask questions like So what you've been doing in the last five years, right? It's on my resume. Read it. So making sure that your team that is interviewing is, you know, eloquent, prepared, knows the little backstory is very, very helpful and is selling your culture to them at the same time. Right. Because it is a sales pitch and we need to be very clear about that. Then don't scare them. Right? Sometimes you get serious and passionate when you're talking about things and that can be very intimidating. I am at an interview and you're essentially yelling at me, right? In a sense. Right. It's intimidating. And that is the first experience that that person is going to see of your firm. So all smiles. Even if we're talking about a serious subject and a passionate subject, we got to stop, smile and be kind, right? And if you have a clear idea of who is the candidate.

Speaker 3 (00:07:29) - Right, like everyone on board that interviewed this candidate loved them. So the next step is hire them fast because they're not going to wait for you. They're going to move on to the next company, especially in this kind of climate we're in right now. This is a sample of my little cheat sheet or checklist that I go through when I interview candidates. And the reason I created it, not because I only asked these five, six questions every time, this is my go to point. If I'm having an off day and I'm not on my A-game, I can ask at least ask these five questions within the mindset of like, what am I looking for? Like, what is my immigration like? Are they invested in my company? Can I tell that they're invested in my company based on the questions they're answering? Right. The question tell me a little bit about yourself is gold Absolute gold, because it will let me know how well does this person interview? And it will also let me know how prepared they are for this interview.

Speaker 3 (00:08:23) - And sometimes people are just clicking right. It's it's easy to click on indeed and apply for a position if you have all your information already filled out. So sometimes people are doing that, but you want to try to engage, right? Just just as pushy as we can be when we try to sell something, we want to be as pushy when we're trying to obtain candidates. So if someone doesn't show up on their scheduled interview, I call them and say, Hey, it looks like you missed your interview. Would you like me to reschedule? Let's reschedule it for this time. Does that work for you? I am pushy because if I know that is a good candidate, I do not want to miss out. I don't know if we're going to have time to cover this, but essentially, I created this little script, right? So when you hopefully most of you guys have an assistant or a paralegal or a law clerk or, I don't know, front desk receptionist, whatever the case may be.

Speaker 3 (00:09:10) - And when you're looking for that position, you want them to do everything from answering the phones to all your necessities and needs. The job description assistant is very vague and in most cases it's all encompassing. A lot of things get thrown at an assistant position, so when I find myself reviewing resumes, I might pick a candidate who don't necessarily have assistant experience, even though my job post will say I need two years of experience y I'm going to review their history. If they volunteered somewhere, if they've worked on a big school project or, you know, the question that I tend to ask applicants is tell me a little bit about something that you've done that is not on your resume that might benefit you in this position. You'd be surprised how many candidates will tell me great examples of fitting in the category that they're playing for. So try to be inclusive. I tried to ask my six go to questions and I have like a cheat sheet of like 200 plus questions that I tend to use. But I depending on the position, you have to make sure that you're asking questions that correlate to the job and examples of behavioral examples, specifically of the job.

Speaker 3 (00:10:20) - So for example, if I'm going to do sales, tell me an example where you had to sell something. How do you go about selling it? I remember when I used to work at Oh, it used to be a shoe store. I think I was like 16. In the interview, the person handed me a shoe and said. Sell me the shoe. And that was my whole interview. I had to sell this person as a 16 year old a shoe. And I got that gig. And it was it was a great experience because it makes you think on your feet. So pushing behavioral questions to team members or potential applicants is going to be key. And then if it's a yes, do the basic stuff right? Background check, reference check, send the job offer, be human, called them and offer the job. Don't send them an email. It is impersonal and it does not set a good experience. And then of course, explain the onboarding process when you're offering the job to them.

Speaker 3 (00:11:14) - When I kind of set up this job offer, I'm already planning two weeks ahead of their first two weeks, right? I'm involving all the necessary team members that need to be playing a role in training this person up. And then if it's a no, notify the client or candidate that it is a no. Right. But pro tip, if you have a second runner up, say there was one team member that said, I didn't like this question, therefore I don't want this person, but I really like this other person. And so you pick your you pick the team member that interview the best, obviously. But if you have a second runner up, tell that person it's no for now. But if I have an opening, I'm going to reach out. I've gotten a lot of good candidates in the past couple of years by reaching out to my old interviews. So you've got to keep those lines of communication open. And then, of course, onboarding. When you're onboarding the team member, develop those two weeks, prepare them, create an agenda, create trainings, involve the rest of the team members, and of course, encourage, encourage and encourage communication.

Speaker 3 (00:12:16) - The first 90 days are going to be eye opening and, you know, culture shock because they have to learn a whole new company's lingo. ET cetera. Right. So you want to be on top of your game because the first 90 days they're going to be open and okay to ask those questions. After 90 days, they're not going to ask you what is X, Y and Z mean and how do I apply it to my job? And then it's going to bite you in the butt later on because we didn't onboard them properly. Right. So encourage communication. No question is a stupid question is always my go to. I also have a 30, 60, 90 developed in which we cover our core values. The get at one have capacity where we just analyze whether this person gets the job, actually wants the job and has the mental and physical capacity to do the job. And then we analyze their current initiatives like the last 30 days, essentially things we're going to work on the next 30 days and things we can tweak that they have already had exposure to.

Speaker 3 (00:13:12) - And then the best piece is the questions and concerns piece because it allows the candidate an open platform to or in this case, it's an employee to kind of tell us how the onboarding process is going. Have we sold them or have we overpromise something when we originally onboarded them? And I find that my sales pitch is usually on point and people say, Yep, it was exactly how you sold it to me in Dallas. So it works. And of course we're not done. Focus on the employee life. On average, an employee will stay with a company. This is a stat from like 2020, I think. So it's a little outdated and I'm sure it's dropped now since the great resignation. But it's 2.8 years is the average lifespan of an employee nowadays. So you want to make sure that you are kind of preparing for the future. So planning your engagement for the year, making sure that you're doing a quarterly pulse for the team members, your team check ins. I try to do a monthly check in with every single team member.

Speaker 3 (00:14:14) - We have managers do biweekly check ins. We do a yearly self-evaluation and of course we try to grow from within. So if I find that I have a job opening and one of my team members, I can train them up to be in this position, they might not. I'm going to get to keep that person a little longer since I've already invested 2.5 years with them. Right. And let me tell you, it costs a lot to replace so the next kind of thing, I used visuals and of course, I shared the PowerPoint with you guys in the app. So you definitely can look at these. But this is kind of how we do the biweekly check ins with the managers. And then another thing that we kind of do on the side two, and it's going to kind of go over this little picture, but this is like the unscheduled drop bys check ins, right, where you're just like passing by their office saying, Hey, how's it going? And you want to kind of fill out the employee, make sure that they're not too stressed.

Speaker 3 (00:15:06) - And if they have something that is heavy to, you know, like a big project that they're working on, that you can get them enough support to not feel overwhelmed. And then last but not least, don't forget, off boarding, try to make a checklist and stick to the checklist. Don't forget the off wording. It's key. Okay. And what happens when people off board or when a team member leaves, it becomes really sad and people get emotional and sometimes it feels like a betrayal. Right? You're leaving my company. I just invested so much time and. Money in you. And but we have to look at it in a positive and we also have to sell it to the rest of the team. Right. Someone is leaving to tackle on a better, you know, better rate of pay that I can't necessarily afford. Or maybe they're leaving to go finish law school a lot of times. One of the biggest reasons my team members leave is they're going back to law school or getting their doctorates or masters and X, Y and Z, and that is good.

Speaker 3 (00:16:02) - So that means once they finish school, they're going to come back to me, right? If I ended nicely, right. If we ended platonically and had a really nice parting, we celebrated their success and we celebrated the the work they did for us. So definitely making sure that you're thanking them for the service, making sure that you have a game plan for all the work that needs to be now distributed while you hire their replacement. Make sure that you remove their physical and virtual blueprint. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to see like someone's name pop on one of our programs that has been gone a year or longer. And then people are like, Well, who's that and why do you have such a high turnover rate? It's not high. It's just we haven't updated the system. So you want to make sure that the new people are present on the necessary applications and that the the rest of the former team is no longer visible, I guess. And then, of course, do the exit interview and try to analyze that exit interview with leadership to see what what we could have done better.

Speaker 3 (00:17:02) - And that's pretty much it.

Speaker 2 (00:17:06) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content content. Go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, guest speaker Brett Trembly shares valuable insights on time management and productivity for lawyers. He introduces the OI90 formula, a three-step business system consisting of office hours, an issue matrix, and a 90-minute weekly team meeting.

Brett shares the importance of protecting one's time and focusing on high-value tasks. He suggests implementing office hours for both team members and clients to minimize interruptions.

Additionally, he suggests using software tools to streamline operations. Brett's practical tips and strategies provide actionable steps for lawyers to improve efficiency and success in their practices.

Episode Highlights:

00:40 Introducing the OI90 formula and how it has been life-changing
3:00 The challenges of running a one-man show
8:43 The importance of spending time on high-value tasks
12:15 A three-step business system that includes office hours, issue matrix, and 90-minute weekly team meetings
15:58 Setting office hours to minimize interruptions and increase productivity
17:08 Determining when interruptions are allowed based on specific criteria
18:01 Running productive 90-minute weekly meetings to address issues and push the business forward

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Brett:

Resources:

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Transcripts: The OI90 Formula: A Massive Time Hack for Lawyers with Brett Trembly

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - In today's episode, we're sharing a presentation from Max Lakhan 2022. Keep listening to hear Brett Trembley as we share his talk. The I-90 Formula a massive time hack for lawyers. You can also head to the maximum Lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Let's get to it.

Speaker 2 (00:00:16) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the maximum lawyer. Podcast. Lawyer, podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Tricks. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:00:40) - So I'm just really glad to be here today. I would be remiss if I didn't think Jim and Tyson for having me and Becca for everything she does for this conference, the I-90 formula. Very excited to talk about this today. It has been life changing business, changing everything for me as as I've started to implement these things only a year and a half ago. I wish it had been a lot sooner. So it says three easy to implement tactics to eliminate work interruption. A massive and I am not exaggerating here a massive time hack for lawyers time hack.

Speaker 3 (00:01:12) - Why do we use hack? Everybody likes the word hack. It's going to save you so much time, which I hope you get that takeaway from this. So there we are already was introduced get staffed up and trembly law, which I'll weave in a little bit about, is sort of my journey. So why the why is always first Simon Sinek says start with why. Why do we want to save time? I think we can pretty much agree that being overwhelmed and really stressed sucks, right? Like that's that's not something anyone's going to argue with anyone like being stressed and having no time to spend with their family. Okay. I don't see any hands, but that's what happens a lot, a lot of us lawyers out of necessity when we start, but then just out of maybe not knowing what we didn't know or not taking the right action, we end up running a hot dog stand on the corner where the entire business is us. And if we're not there serving those hot dogs, then business isn't happening.

Speaker 3 (00:02:04) - There's no money coming in. You go on vacation. And it's even more stressful because. Because where's your next client going to come from? Your business essentially shuts down. And that was my story. I started Trembley Law in 2011, three years out of law school. I thought it was awesome. My first month got some new clients and friends brought in like ten grand and I thought I was rolling in the dough right That very first month, second month, about half that. My third month in business. January of 2012, I brought in $0 and the stress really kicked in. What am I doing? How am I going to solve this? You know, I just thought I would you know, I think I'm a good lawyer. Everybody thinks you're a good lawyer. I think I know what I'm doing right. I've been a high achiever. Let me just go and kick some butt. And it was two years of just getting in my own way, doing everything myself and all the hats. I was the hot dog stand on the corner.

Speaker 3 (00:03:00) - If I showed up and I worked hard, sometimes I could bring in the business. I hit a ceiling of about $9,000 a month. I just couldn't get over that and I couldn't figure out why. And it was really frustrating. So essentially, you don't lack time. You lack focus, thoughtfulness or clarity and not thoughtfulness. Like you're on thoughtful, but you don't take the time, as Glenn was talking about the mindfulness, to be more thoughtful about what you're doing or you lack clarity or you're just too busy to be less busy as we often say, you, I don't have time for this. I don't have time for that. I don't have time to hire. I don't have time to train. I don't have time to do more. And what it is, is a lack of focus not on your business, because I think we're all here because we work hard and we want more. But on specific tasks within your business that are going to push you to the next level. So in 2014, I finally hired someone double my law firm revenue the next month and I'll give myself credit.

Speaker 3 (00:04:01) - At this point I just rinse, repeat. And I started moving the needle and spending my time on areas that we're going to push my law firm forward. So the five entrepreneurial stages which which, by the way. So for my law firm, again, just me, myself and I when I started and now we have 12 attorneys, 36 total people, Inc 5000 lists two years in a row, definitely won't be on there this year. It's hard to maintain that, but I'm just saying that for the credibility that I've been through most of these stages, I am now at the point where I'm trying to do more and spread a message with my second company with Get Staffed Up, which is Delegate your way to freedom, right? Trying to kind of reach that influencer stage. But whatever stage you're in, we have something for you today. This this system oh, I 90 is going to help you regardless of the stage you're in. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. So the why should be clear because we want more.

Speaker 3 (00:04:58) - We want to do better. We want to have less stress. We just want to have a better life. So what what should I spend my time on if I'm not spending it on doing everything myself, answering my own emails, just constantly being a slave to my email, to the phone, to scheduling? I'm networking. I'm working really hard. Well, what should I spend my time on? Anybody heard of Perry Marshall or read any of Perry Marshall stuff? His book, 8020 Marketing, is one of the best business sales and marketing books I've ever read. A real guru in some of his other stuff, he talks about ten versus 100 versus 1000 versus 10,000. Dollar activities. And if you can read that, I'll read some of them for you. But essentially $10 an hour. Anybody still run their own errands? Right. Probably a lot of us doing expense reports, cold calling or emailing, talking to unqualified prospects. Right. Doing doing, setting up your own consultations instead of having them set up for you.

Speaker 3 (00:05:58) - This one, I love spelling everything perfectly. One time I got an email response from somebody who I had sent an email newsletter to is like, Well, if you can misspell a word, then certainly we're not going to use you. And I, you know, we're not all perfect. So I look up this lady, no employees got her dog on our website and I'm like, Man, I wish I could help this lady, but some people can't get out of their own way. But I was practicing mindfulness and I didn't respond with what I wanted to say, so. All right. So pushing ourselves to the next type of activities, right? I was just completely stuck in this column except for one hour per day on average, I could squeeze in for legal work. And if you're a true solo, that is the average amount of time that you will spend on legal work is one hour per day. And a lot of times those hours come on the weekends and at nights, right when you're already tired.

Speaker 3 (00:06:49) - So getting yourself to the if you're at ten, the 100 per $100 per hour activities such as creating marketing tests and experiences, managing pay per click campaigns, doing social media well, this is pretty rare. Outsourcing simple tasks. Customer follow up. Right? But how do you get there? Well, you've got to have someone else taking care of all of the $10 an hour tasks. Again, if you're running the hot dog stand and you start doing higher level like promoting, someone still has to be there to take care of the business. And that's the part that most people sort of like. I couldn't get over. I couldn't be convinced that I needed to take the step to hire somebody. But what do I spend my time on now? A thousand and $10,000 per hour task? Sure. Some of the other ones creep in, right? But instead of managing your pay per click campaigns for example, it's creating pay per click campaigns, judging your marketing materials. How much time do you think I spent on creating these slides? Zero.

Speaker 3 (00:07:49) - All right. That was a softball. I don't need to do my own slides anymore. Anyone have a marketing team that can do this stuff for you? So you can you can get out there and speak. You can get in front of different events organizations and still take care of all the other high level activities your business needs done, but you're not doing the lower level activities. All right. It's a great feeling. Anybody have business that's coming in? As you sit here today, your phones are being answered, Consultations are being scheduled. New clients are signing up. The legal work is getting done and you're getting paid again. Great feeling when you can get there. It doesn't happen overnight, but when you start focusing your time on just pushing yourself up the ladder, that's when it gets better and better. There's a quote here from Perry Marshall. I think it's on the next slide. When you move from doing $10 an hour to $10,000 per hour work, the least valuable minute in your day is worth $0.19.

Speaker 3 (00:08:43) - And the most valuable minute is $166 to you. Now, you're not going to. Maybe someday you'll get there, but you can't just say, I'm going to spend all day doing $10,000 an hour task. It doesn't really work that way, right? You're not going to be able to speak for eight hours a day. Essentially, you want to find yourself in the $1,000 an hour task. So there is this book, if you will. If you want to copy this book, you can go online and grab it if you want a free copy. I love sending this book to people. It's not my book. Someday, hopefully, I'll have my own book to send out. Right? I'm promoting Perry Marshall here, but he is so good and so clear of what he does. The book is called Detox Declutter and Dominate. If you text the word delegate to (833) 899-3272, we will send you a free copy. It is only about ten pages. It's mostly visual and it's mind blowing on how good it is.

Speaker 3 (00:09:35) - So again, just write this down and at the end there'll be a landing page where you can also grab it. But text the word delegate to (833) 899-3272. So we talk about this. This is a fun one for me. I tell my team, hey, I need a slide that shows the feast and famine when you spend time. I need to show like a guy or a girl working really hard on marketing and then you go to and then you make some sales and then you bring in the legal work and then you get paid and then your business grows. But the other ones go back down, right? Because now you're doing the legal work, but nobody's spending the time on the marketing and the sales. And so it's the feast or famine cycle. So anyway, that's what they came up with. So here, if you start hiring though, then marketing, right? You start doing better marketing. Well, you don't just move on and stop marketing because you've put systems and people in place. So then you bring in sales, you bring in legal and that's how your business starts going.

Speaker 3 (00:10:28) - I think we all know this intuitively, but for some of you who are like me, it really needs to be hammered home that it is possible you can do it. And the what again is. Is what you need to spend your time on. So going back to the five stages, if you're a hustler, you know, you've got maybe, maybe none, maybe 1 or 2 people. You just got to you need that personal assistant to take care of all of the things that are getting in the way of you going to higher level activities like legal work, for example, on average, what, $3,350 an hour? We should be pushing ourselves to do as much until we can hire attorneys of that type of work and get rid of all the other things that get in our way. Experimenter You've got about five people. You're starting to to figure yourself out how to hire, who you want to bring in, what your message is, your culture, your core values, right? And you keep growing your team, you become a visionary.

Speaker 3 (00:11:20) - So you're just dictating this big nice picture and you're selling it. You start to set up systems because you want to scale, and then you start scaling and you turn into an influencer. Now, the problem is, as most of you have found out, when you start hiring and you start bringing people on board, you want to delegate and you want to get rid of things. But are things always done perfectly for you every time you just find those great team members? No, it doesn't work that way. It takes time. You got to train, You got to have again, create more and more systems. You got to give feedback and you have to grow. So even though you're pushing yourself up through the levels of entrepreneurship as a business owner, as a law firm owner, trying to get to the because every lawyer has a message, right? I think every lawyer really deep down wants to get to the place where they are shouting from the rooftops about what immigration should be because you're the best, most passionate immigration attorney or criminal law.

Speaker 3 (00:12:15) - You know what the legal system should look like. And, you know, getting stuck with all these people who need your time and not creating those time barriers is, in my experience, what holds a lot of people back. So you don't have to only work on your business to grow. You can work in your business, but it's focusing on the right types of activities and then protecting your time. So let's talk about protecting our time then the I-90 formula. This is just a three step sort of, you know, business system that we came up with. A lot of it is taken traction. Anybody use iOS or traction out there? I see a few hands. Just a phenomenal, unbelievable system for running your business. But it's not a cure all. It's not going to do everything for you. You're still going to need those mentors, those guides. They're going to go deep on the people and the systems. But the other parts of your business, you you're you're going to need resources for.

Speaker 3 (00:13:08) - So always for office hours is for issue matrix and 90 is for the 90 minute weekly team meeting or departmental meetings. And let's go through those office hours. Anybody remember office hours in law school? You went and you sat outside of your professor's door. You try to get there 30 minutes ahead of time, but there was already 15 of the same people who were there every Tuesday or Thursday, and they were always in front of you. And they all seem to get the good grades, right. Nobody's bitter. It's the same concept. And it's unfortunate that it took me so long to figure out how much time this can save. One of the biggest time sucks in our business is scheduling small meetings. I've got some time here. Email back and forth. Go to my link. Well, my my calendly link has 15 minutes, so sometimes people cancel. Now you're waiting and then you only you only need five minutes, but you schedule the 15 minutes anyway. It's just such a pain. And to me that's why office hours are just so mind blowing.

Speaker 3 (00:14:10) - You can hold office hours with your team every day if you want, but normally 1 or 2 days per week for one hour and it's a set time. And when you're ready, your assistant sends a message to the team and says, Jean's office hours are open. Team, go ahead and run in there. So what does it look like? Somebody goes to your office hours and they're in the waiting room. Host will let you in soon. Hold office hours on Zoom or virtually even if you're back full time and everyone's in your office because you don't want people getting up and walking around the hall and waiting for your time and knocking and who's next virtually is just makes it so easy. Someone's in the waiting room, right? And this is what it looks like. You let someone in, for example, this is one of our office hours talking to Juanita, one of our associate marketing, our associate marketing director, handling an issue. You can see up here, these are all, I don't know, five, six, seven people in the waiting room.

Speaker 3 (00:15:01) - You know, they're doing their work just waiting for you. That's the point is, if your office hours start at one and you can't get to some people to 145 or 150, they're doing their work, their screens open, and it's not a time waste for them either. You need someone else and you bring in Oh, I need to talk to Joe and Juanita about something we're all working on together, so I'm going to let them in at the same time, and then I'm going to finish my work with them and I'm going to move on and let the next person in. It will save you hours and scheduling and hours on the wasted time going back and forth. Boom. Next issue, next issue, next issue, Next person needs you. Next person needs you. The best part of this, though, is that instead of people interrupting your time. And interruptions are what kill our productivity is business owners. And as lawyers, instead of interrupting you every time you're you're maybe you're handling legal work, maybe you're writing a brief, maybe you're coming up with a great argument.

Speaker 3 (00:15:58) - You're preparing for trial, whatever it is, Right? Maybe you just need mindfulness and headspace and people interrupt. They need your time. And it's so frustrating because it's such a productivity killer. They will not waste their time trying to interrupt you and your time will not be interrupted if you have set office hours. One of my favorite responses now, when people send me a text or a message again, I don't have those things open all the time is I respond with two words. Office hours. I'm training my people to not interrupt me unless you need to be interrupted. So on the issues matrix, this is very particular per firm, right? These are the issues that if you answer yes to any of these issues, if your team does, they will be allowed to interrupt you. Again, you adjust these according to you. These are just some examples. Will this influence a single purchase of $10,000 or more? Will this improve our systems, impact more than $10,000 of sales or affect our reputation? By me not answering right away, will we lose out on 5000 or more dollars as the question already been directed to everybody else who can potentially answer this question? Because that's really running up the ladder the way it should be.

Speaker 3 (00:17:08) - One of my favorite not on here, but for us it's can this wait to the 90 minute weekly meeting? Right. Which I'm going to talk about next. These are the things that will help guide. You can't just say, don't talk to me in offsite because what if there's a media opportunity? I almost missed out on being on the news one time because somebody couldn't get in touch with me. Right. Thankfully, we work that out. There are times where you want to be interrupted. VIP client gets client calls. You probably want to be interrupted. And by the way, speaking of clients, you can also set office hours for your clients so that you train your staff to tell your clients, Hey, from 1 to 2 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays, LC makes calls to her clients. Will you be available during that time this Wednesday? Good. She'll probably call you around 105 110. So they're waiting for you and they expect your call, but they're not calling you and interrupting you. I know it sounds funny.

Speaker 3 (00:18:01) - I lot of my clients would like that. If you're very courteous about it and you explain why, it can be very, very powerful. So what is the 90 minute team meeting? If you raise your hand, if you've read traction, if you use EOS, you will recognize this. But to me, how you run your meetings is how you run your firm. And when you see tweets and memes about, oh, you know, meetings are terrible and the people who like meetings don't like getting things done. When you run meetings the right way, it becomes really a powerful way to push your business forward. I cannot imagine running a business without 90 minutes meetings every week per department or if you're not quite big enough for the entire team. So a typical meeting agenda, five minutes. Good news. Personal good news business. It's a check in, right? You're just you're just getting into the meeting. Five minutes, reviewing your KPIs or your scorecard. If you need ten leads a week and you've gotten you've gotten seven, that's probably still a green.

Speaker 3 (00:18:54) - But if it's five, four, three, that's a red indicator. And you start seeing red, you start to notice issues that jump out at you. This is a great way to keep in touch with the high level numbers at your business you need to look at every week. The next one is reviewing your rocks or your objectives for that quarter. Five minutes on track, Off track. You're setting issues, employee headlines or customer headlines. Something big happening next. Five minutes, the following five minutes. You're reviewing your to do's from the prior week. And then the 60 minutes is you're solving issues. You have employee leave and you open their desk and you just find like, what on earth were they doing with this stuff? You can't even believe all of the things in their desk that they were hiding or not talking about. We had one time somebody mouse was working in the not working for like six months and they just never told us. And I was like, You know what? I'm going to own that one because we didn't give them an opportunity.

Speaker 3 (00:19:45) - This is pre 90 minute set weekly meetings where people could come and you give them an opportunity to bring up issues and present them to you so you can help or your leaders or the department chairs or your senior attorneys, whoever it is, can help solve the issues to move the business forward. And the last five, you're basically rating the meeting. So the best part about traction to me is the software. You don't even need an iOS coach to use traction. But if you use traction tools or 90 IO, the software is so good and so helpful for your business, that will be a big one for you. That's again, Traction tools or 90 IO. I have no affiliation with either. I just love them very much and I think they're amazing. Again, you can scan this QR code. We have a resource. We will upload this presentation. And and also give you there's some other things on there. And that's it. Again, I want to thank my time's up. I want to thank Jim and Tyson and just encourage you that if you put in safeguards and you and you protect your time and then you focus on higher level activities, that's how your business will grow.

Speaker 3 (00:20:56) - And hopefully you will start to realize your dreams. That's all my time. Thank you guys so much.

Speaker 2 (00:21:03) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content, go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

Are you looking for growth in your business? Did the pandemic cause a slow down? In this episode, Adam Rossen shared his experience in growing a law firm. He speaks to how the pandemic caused a decrease in business, but how adopting a few new habits and new ways of working, turned his business into a success again.

In order to get his business back to how it was pre-pandemic, Adam double downed on marketing his business. He focused on internet marketing projects and revamping his website.

When you run your own business, wearing too many hats can be an issue. It can even lead to you becoming overwhelmed and burnt out. Adam mentions how during his quest to make his business successful again, he was doing all the bookkeeping and office management for the business. This took him away from the real work. From this, Adam speaks on learning how to delegate tasks, hire the right people and hold yourself accountable.

When searching for new people to join a business, it is crucial to develop a streamlined hiring process. It's important to be smart in your hiring. Don't overanalyze everything but focus on those who are the right fit for your company.

Forecasting can be a helpful way to predict what your business will look like in a few months or years. If your business is set to grow, it could be an indicator you will need to hire people to support that growth. Being proactive is a great way to get ahead.

A mix of the right team and hard work will lead to increased success and revenue.

Every challenge is a new opportunity to grow and learn!

Listen in.

Episode Highlights:

2:11 Significant law firm growth
9:17 The experience with the hiring process and how they streamline it
10:09 The importance of taking action in business decisions, but also being smart and not getting caught up in chasing new ideas without careful consideration
13:09 The process of letting go of control in various aspects of their business, such as bookkeeping and office management, in order to grow and scale their firm
19:34 The goal of becoming a data-driven firm and the need for another lawyer

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Adam:

Resources:

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Transcripts: You're Just a Highly Paid Bookkeeper with Adam Rossen

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - In today's episode, we're sharing a presentation from Max Con 2022. Keep listening to hear Adam Rossen as we share his talk. You're just a highly paid bookkeeper. What I learned at Max Law Guild and what I've done about it. You can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Speaker 2 (00:00:19) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the maximum layer podcast layer podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Metrics. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:00:42) - Hi, everybody. Thank you, Jane. So, you know, I thought about this topic or when when Jim and Tyson asked for speakers. I'm like, what could I speak about? Right? And I was really thinking about it. And I had such a transformational time at last year's Guild Day that I wanted to bring that experience to everybody here because it really was. So let me give you a little bit of background about me in the firm so that way you can know kind of where I was at.

Speaker 3 (00:01:09) - The mindset that I was at in October of 2021. And of course, we're going to talk about what happened there, what I've done since, and we'll talk about what some of you guys can do and should do when we leave here. Right. Because this everybody can anybody can come here, have a great time, get all this great information. But what happens when you leave? So for me, we do criminal and DUI defense in South Florida. Our main office is located in Fort Lauderdale. And right at the beginning of the pandemic, we had grown from 4 to 6 total people, which was a big jump in employees to go from that 4 to 6 range. And we had three employees at the time who were with us less than 90 days. And especially in criminal defense, if people aren't out partying, having a good time, doing messed up things, we're not really in business. So we went from about 12, 13 new clients a month pre-COVID to April 20th 20 to 3, and I believe May we had five, right? So everything for us shut down.

Speaker 3 (00:02:11) - Luckily, we live in Florida and we opened up pretty quickly. But what I did was and I talked about this on my Max Law podcast a few months ago, so I won't go into so much detail. But what we did is we doubled down on all of our marketing. We did all of these Internet marketing projects, all of these referral projects. We revamped our whole website, we had all of these marketing initiatives. So and what that did is that led to 2021 being a year of tremendous growth. I didn't lay anybody off or do anything. You know, I like the core and I like the newbies that we had. So we just double and triple down. And 2021 was a huge year of growth. So we went from six employees January 20th, 21 to 12. By October, we went from two lawyers to five. We hired three lawyers from January to August of 2021. And, you know, for a small firm, I mean, I really I think for any firm, but especially for people like us, that's huge, massive growth.

Speaker 3 (00:03:09) - We two and a half X Star business in revenue, you know literally like snap of the fingers few months it was crazy. So in my mind I'm on the plane in October coming here and I don't know if I'm like if you guys are like me, but I love being alone in some in a metal tube with shawl over just being in my thoughts, writing things down. I have the remarkable and I love keeping everything there. Or it could be a notepad and just being left alone to my thoughts and being energized that I'm going to a conference or I'm coming back from a conference and I'm there and my whole remarkable is all filled up. 12 to 20. That's the next step of growth. How do I go from 12 to 20? What does that look like in people? What does that look like in revenue? Blah, blah, blah. Right? And I'm like, That's going to be my guild day. I'm going to come in and that's going to be my issue. Growth, growth, growth, growth, growth.

Speaker 3 (00:04:03) - So we get there and I have this guy as our leader. Okay, raise your hand if you were here last year at the conference, do you remember the Nerds or Weirdos speech? Right. Well, who's this? This. This is a weirdo. This is King weirdo. Okay. And he was there with us, and he was our group leader. And it was the Guild Day. Last year was amazing for me. I went second and I get up there and I'm roaring and ready to go. But in the few days before I came here, I was stressed. I was frustrated, and that frustration immediately came out instead of the plans for growth. Well, part of the plans for growth. But it was really that frustration. And I'm sitting there like, yeah, you know, I had to write all these damn checks before I got here and I had to do this with HR and this with management, and I had to create a new ad and, you know, all this stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:04:57) - And everybody kind of looked at me and especially Jim, but everybody in the group was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, dude, who's doing your books? It's like me. And they're like, What? You're talking about going from 12 to 20 employees and you're doing your own books. Who's your office manager? I'm like, I'm a shitty office manager. That's me, right? And they're like, What's wrong with you? You're crazy. You're completely focused in the wrong things. Right? And it was great because the entire time everybody was piling on, but in a good way, in a very good way, in a place of trying to help. And what we came up with. Right. You know, Jim basically said for the next two days, every time I see you and occasionally on stage, I'm just going to say, hey, Adam, you hire a bookkeeper yet? I'm going to hold you a. All right. That's the most important thing that that happened is that I had a group that was there.

Speaker 3 (00:05:48) - Not to say, Adam, you're great. We love you. You're my friend. You're this. Right? But to say, Whoa, dude, I barely know you. I know you a little bit. Some people are like, I just met you today, but I can see outside that you're a little misguided, right? I can see from outside that situation. And I'm sure all of us have had that, you know, with our friends and family when we're able to step outside of it. And I really thought about it long and hard and I was just like, okay, well, like, you guys are right. You know, you guys are right. And so anybody heard of Pearson's law here? No. Yes, maybe so. Pearson. I forget his first name. You can look it up on Google. I think he was a mathematician. But one of the things that he did is Pearson's law, which is when performance is measured, it improves, but when it's measured and reported, performance improves exponentially.

Speaker 3 (00:06:38) - And this is something that my team now knows the whole firm knows Pearson's law because I tell it to him twice a month. We talk about that and being at that group and having the accountability right of, Hey, Adam, you know, I'm going to see you in January in Phoenix. You better have a bookkeeper and an office manager by then. And me going, Oh, crap, I don't want to be that guy. Right. Who's bringing up the same issues or who didn't take action. And for me, that was a huge motivator. Well, let alone the motivator of I want to build a better firm, not just a bigger firm, but a better firm. Right? That that makes my life happier, that makes my employees lives happier. But just sometimes you need that external kick in the butt. That's what that did for me. That was really the power of of the mastermind, the guild, and being in a room full of like, really smart people, you know, it really helps.

Speaker 3 (00:07:34) - So what did I do about it? So I left. I went home and I'm on the plane and I'm planning all these things out. So there's two things I did immediately. The bookkeeper was really important, but I didn't think that was my number one big issue. I thought the office manager, especially at our level, right. 12 people. It was unwieldy, right? So but I started on both. So I went to who did I go to? Right? You know, you guys know what kinetic energy is, right? Okay. It's very hard to get started from scratch. So I went to the Max Law Group when I was in with my guild members in our guild group. I got information and referrals from them. So I interviewed bookkeepers and I wrote the ad for an office manager. I didn't write it from scratch. I got it from one of the people in the guild. They said, Hey, Adam, I'll give it to you now, make it your own. And I did.

Speaker 3 (00:08:24) - So I took it. I tweaked it. I made it my own right. So I had help writing the job. AD one of the people in the group that had them, I have these great 25 pre screening questionnaire that really helped me weed out the fakers from the good candidates. And I said, Amazing. I've never even thought about that. That's going to save me a ton of time. So I got that from the Guild, right. And I got again, bookkeeper referrals as well. And the platforms, you know, before I had only used really. Indeed, sometimes I'd mess around on LinkedIn and when I was there they mentioned wise hire. Wise hire was fantastic. You get a free disk profile. So not only did we get disk profiles for people who were interviewing, but I put my entire team through the free disk profiles and I think if you buy it on your own, they're like 30 or 40 bucks a pop. So I looked at Wisehart and I was like, All right, 200 a month.

Speaker 3 (00:09:17) - This is a no brainer. They had a cool Kanban board view which just helped me organize everything. So that's the way I did it. We had 100 applicants, right? So part of the reason that I hated the hiring process and I was like, this is the last position that I will ever directly be 100% involved in hiring, right? That was also part of this hit, 100 applicants. So, you know, some of us can know what we need to do, but there's that mental block of, oh my God, there's so much work involved, How can I do this? And then you're just sinking in quicksand, right? So because I have this help and because I have this plan and because I was so motivated to fix it and have this be my forever last employee hire that I am 100% involved in, you know, we did it the right way. We went we had our top 60. You know, I whittled it down to a top 60. I gave the 25 questionnaire.

Speaker 3 (00:10:09) - Only 15 people answered and I was like, dancing in the streets. I'm like, fantastic. I only have to really deeply look at 15 people. So my managing partner and I, because at this point I'm pretty much out of being a lawyer, continuing to get out and. We went through all the 15 and we put them into categories and we had our top three and we go, the interview process starts there with three. And if we are having trouble, then we'll go to the next three, right? Luckily it went very well. We had our top three went very well and we hired our top candidate and Malene is now our firm administrator and she's doing an amazing job with the firm and we hired her in November. So I went quick, but I also went smart. And if you remember yesterday morning, Tyson talked about kind of taking action. Right. But then Jim before that, I think talked a little bit about like, whoa, slow your roll a little bit, right? Because we come here and we get some sometimes like shiny object syndrome and we get so excited because there's so many cool technology out there from all the vendors and this plan and that plan.

Speaker 3 (00:11:14) - Right. I think what they said works together. It's kind of a combination. You want to take action, you want to move you, but you want to be smart about it. Too many of us, the people that go to these conferences, we just were like and especially myself, sometimes my brain, I'm just like a squirrel or a hamster running on that wheel and just chasing the new thing. So we can't do that, right? We have to take action. We can't just always be thinking and conceptualizing, but it has to be smart. And luckily I screw it up all the time. But this time I got it right. Then we moved on to Bookkeeper. It was a mix of some referrals. Some people I found online, the Max law community, but I didn't want to overanalyze it. It's a bookkeeper, right? But it was important for me because we were going to try to revamp some of our processes and procedures with bookkeeping, criminal defense when we're running. Now, we're at about 32 to 35 new clients a month.

Speaker 3 (00:12:09) - You know, that's 400 a year with plans to double. So and most of our clients are on payment plans, so we needed it to be done right. But we interviewed three. We picked the best one. Now we have a bookkeeper. And you know what? Now my bookkeeper is Jim's bookkeeper. She was the best one. Not because of Jim, but because we interviewed three and we loved her. And she was the exact person I was looking for, the person that dreams about Kubo and about SKUs and about all those things. So we and based on last year's presentation, for those of you who are here about Jim's presentation about SKUs was kind of mind boggling to me. It was just like, wow, like, wait a minute, your lower revenue cases are actually your higher profit cases. That gives you clear direction on marketing, on sales, on what may be the legal product, the legal operations team that you need to service more of the high profit rather than the high fee, Right.

Speaker 3 (00:13:09) - So now we're starting we're not done with it, but we've begun that process because for me, you know, big sex cases and DUI manslaughter cases could be great, but the price has to be the fee has to be right when we're doing our flat fee versus churn them and burn them. Domestic violence cases, that could be over and done very quickly. Right. So we're trying to figure that now for us. Where are we now? Right Where am I now? You know, it's about letting go. Some of us, most of us, especially myself, it's all about wanting control. Not from a bad way, but from just a way of, hey, I can do this, I know this, I can do this better than myself, especially even with the bookkeeping. I've heard a million of horror stories about people getting ripped off embezzled. I can't let that go. Well, because, you know, if I want to grow to where I say I want to grow, then we have to let go.

Speaker 3 (00:14:07) - Luckily for me, which might be different from you guys, I was actually pretty good at letting go of the legal work because my lawyers are amazing. I'm a good lawyer too, but they're amazing and I trust them. But for me, it's I've let go of bookkeeping. I've let go of the office management and the HR and the hiring. I'm still involved in the final stages of hiring. Right. But I'm not doing any of the beginning stuff and I have more to let go intake, right? And some of those other things. And we run on iOS and traction. So having that accountability chart has been fantastic. So where do you all of us, where do we go from here? We've taken the time to purchase the flight to tell everybody we're away If we're a litigator, to tell the judges I'm unavailable, right? To be away from our team, to learn to meet people, network, build our businesses. But what do we do? So we have five core values at our firm.

Speaker 3 (00:15:05) - We have animals with each one. I think it's pretty cool. And so core value number three for us is take action, right? And the animal is the frog from the book. Eat that frog if you're familiar with it or read it. It's a very good book. Basically, you wake up and if you got ten tasks, don't do the nine easy ones do the one hardest. One Don't confuse activity with accomplishment. And that's what we tell our team all the time. Don't confuse activity with accomplishment. Right? It's about leaving here and saying, All right, this is the one thing. The two things no more that are going to make a difference in my firm and my business in my life, in my family's life, because all of those things trickle down. And it's about accountability, right? Who really in your life is going to hold you accountable? You know, that's why. Right? I went to Phoenix. I was here on whatever day it was Wednesday. I flew in Tuesday came Wednesday for the Guild Day.

Speaker 3 (00:16:03) - And we had a whole host of other issues. And luckily there were people in my group on Wednesday that remembered my talk from October. So now they can see some of the transitions and some of the things. So that's what it's about. So I strongly urge each and every person here when you're in that zone, leaving, right, drinking from a fire hose, coming to this conference, pick those 1 or 2 things, commit to it smartly. Right. Okay. Let everything else go and then get someone to hold you accountable. Because for me, like I said before, I was not showing up to Phoenix and going to be that guy. Right. There were some. People without talking about what happens in the master mind, right? Because it's all confidential. But as I'm sitting there, there were some people on Wednesday that I said to myself, I go, he or she, they'll be back at the next one and they're not going to do a damn thing. They're not going to take any action because the issue is mindset, not the strategy or the tactic.

Speaker 3 (00:17:06) - Right. And I have those those thoughts, at least with a few people on Wednesday. And I have those thoughts sometimes with myself. So my big urge, my big ask, my big takeaway for you guys is make sure you're in the right mindset. Pick one thing and take action and have somebody there to hold you accountable because you wouldn't be here, right, Unless you wanted to grow your firm. Personal and professional development. Right? To build a better firm for you, your employees, your family and your clients. Right. Clients are part of the team as well. That's all I have. This is my version of what Alexis is. Cool little thing. We're doing those now too, and it has all our YouTube, social media, all that stuff. I love talking to people. I love helping. If there's any questions, I think we have two minutes. I wanted to go kind of slow and just tell you guys my journey from there till now.

Speaker 1 (00:18:00) - Are you ready to unlock your full growth potential, both professionally and personally? The Guild Maximum Lawyers Exclusive Community of Legal Entrepreneurs invites you to our upcoming in-person mastermind event in Miami, Florida.

Speaker 1 (00:18:12) - There's something truly extraordinary about the breakthroughs that occur when you're physically present, working through your business and mindset challenges in real time. By attending our Mastermind, you'll engage in deep discussions, share experiences, and receive expert guidance from our coaches and fellow law firm owners who understand the unique challenges and opportunities within the legal industry. This collaborative atmosphere fuels creativity, accelerates problem solving, and stimulates innovative thinking. Investing in your personal and professional development through attending an in-person mastermind is an investment in yourself and in your future. The breakthroughs, knowledge and strategies you'll acquire are priceless assets that can transform your practice and propel you towards your goals. Visit Maxwell events.com today to join the guild, reserve your spot and secure your ticket at the best possible price.

Speaker 3 (00:19:06) - We had, it just it skyrocketed. So because we were in Florida. So by June, July, we were kind of back to normal with our 13 ish clients a month. August, I think we had 18, September we had 22, October we had 25. And I was just and the firm at the time, it was two lawyers, right? And I was like, shit, Like the stuff that we're doing is kind of working when everybody else put their head in the sand.

Speaker 3 (00:19:34) - When we had criminal lawyers, you know, bought an RV, drove around the country, which is super cool and fun. And I was jealous of that in some ways. But they weren't. They just put their head in their sand and gave up. We were working, grinding. So before you knew it, it was just skyrocketing. And then I'm like, we need we need one more. So and I'm not One of the things I'm committing to getting better at is the numbers, the metrics. We want to have a data driven firm. Okay? That's that's our goal. We're not there yet, but knowing we need another lawyer. So we hired another lawyer in January and we're before we knew it, more cases, more cases. Once we hit January, for whatever reason, we bumped up another revenue level. It just jumped, skyrocketed again. And we're like, all right, if we're on by by May, we're going to another one. May I reached out to the number two candidate from for the January hire.

Speaker 3 (00:20:21) - She was ready to come on board. Boom. She started in June. And then what happened with us is we had a unicorn come available, one of the best criminal defense lawyers in South Florida, lifelong public defender, career PD. She got disenfranchised. And I said, you know what? I don't even care if we can afford it or need it. I will take that out of my own take home because she's going to be the one to get me out of law. And you don't get a unicorn like this ever. And I said, screw it. And then we just kept going. So, you know, not the best way, Right? But it was it was carefully considered and thought and looked at numbers and everything. You know, just we're trying to get better at that. That at least help and a lot of it trial and error and using EOS. Now we're trying to forecast. So now in our EOS scorecard, we're looking at every week cases in, cases out. And it's like if we're averaging three new cases per week, well then you know what? That's 39.

Speaker 3 (00:21:14) - At the next quarter, that's going to be 80. If we're plus 80 and six months, that means we're going to need another lawyer in six months. So now we're trying to look at it like that, you know, but in forecast. But back then, we had no idea. With all my lawyers. I mean, look, the good news, the criminal lawyer, especially if you've been a ten year PD, you're not making a ton of money. You're a great lawyer usually, and you're not making a ton of money. So we made sure to give them, you know, a big bump. But then we also the way we do it, because our intake is just the way we do it, we're trying to make it better. We have attorneys on call nights and weekends every week that we rotate so they get 10% of what they sign up nights and weekends only. And we did that purposely so we can build in. So maybe the next level would be to give them 10% of everything they sign up.

Speaker 3 (00:21:55) - But we didn't want to give them that right away. And I can tell you we've had lawyers make a lot of money with our signups. We incentivize them on referrals that they bring in as well, you know. But yeah, but but we give them a nice base too, because I wanted people, especially the lawyers, if they're leaving the safety and security of the government, I want them to be invested and have the safety and security of us. So we've also now we do a guaranteed 7.5% to to 10.5% with a pension plan, a 401 K and A and a profit plan two. So they're pretty good. I think that's it. So thank you, guys. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (00:22:33) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

In this podcast episode, guest speaker Darcel Lobo shares her insights on how to effectively run a law firm in under 25 hours per week. She stresses the importance of gaining control over one's time and shares her own strategies for achieving work-life balance.

Darcel discusses the importance of delegating tasks that are not the best use of your time and setting boundaries with staff, clients, and family. She also suggests easy wins like managing email notifications and sticking to a set schedule.

Overall, Darcel's approach offers valuable tips for lawyers to become more efficient and reclaim control over their time.

Episode Highlights:

00:40 Darcel strategies for running a law firm in under 25 hours per week
03:03 How she plans her workweek, including non-negotiable time off on Fridays
07:47 The benefits of transitioning her practice to flat fees
10:46 The importance of setting boundaries with staff, clients, and family
12:50 The need to respect the boundaries you set for yourself, such as work hours and client selection, to maintain work-life balance
14:34 Provides tips on managing email and phone calls to minimize distractions

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Darcel:

Resources:

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Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcripts: How To Run Your Law Firm Under 25 Hours Per Week with Darcel Lobo

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - So in today's episode, we're sharing a presentation from Max Khan 2022. Keep listening to hear Darcel Lobo as we share her talk. How to Run Your Law Firm in under 25 hours per week. You can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Speaker 2 (00:00:18) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Tricks. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:00:40) - What I'm talking about is how to run your law firm under 25 hours per week. That is what I do at about 23 hours per week currently at my firm. My number one priority when I open my own law firm was to get control of my time. That was my number one priority. I had two small kids there currently 12 to 9, Lucy and Max, I'm married. And so that was why I decided to go out on my own, my team, from my law firm to kind of give you a perspective.

Speaker 3 (00:01:10) - There's three of us. So is me, my full time paralegal, the My VA. And then we outsource support with virtual receptionist and bookkeeping and things like that. And so if for you if 25 hours a week sounds like there's no way I could do that, that's not practical for me. I think that there's still going to be some tips here that you can take away to at least shave some time off your workweek and to become more efficient, even if we're taking just 5 or 10% of your workweek, if you're working 50, 60 hours a week, we can knock five hours off of that. We can start there to kind of help you be more efficient in your law firm and regain some control over your time. So why does it matter? Again, I wouldn't sell though, so I can be more my own priority in my own life before going out my own, I really felt like I was being stretched in a million different directions. I was an attorney to my clients. I was someone's employee.

Speaker 3 (00:02:04) - As a mom, I was a spouse. I was doing all these things. And before going out on my own, I really kind of felt like I wasn't doing any of it very well. I really felt like I was just being stretched in a million different directions and I was trying to fill everyone else's glass with my own empty cup. And so going out on my own will allow me to kind of get control over my schedule and to put myself on my own list of priorities. So not every week is perfect. Not every week is exactly 23 hours, but that's what we plan for at my office. My team knows what my calendar looks like and how to plan things, how to schedule things. And I can plan things for myself and my family around that schedule, knowing what my work week is going to look like. There's some things that we have that are non-negotiables for me, such as for Fridays. I don't work past 12. Today's an exception, but generally speaking, in my firm, 12:00 laptop shut down.

Speaker 3 (00:03:03) - I'm not texting, I'm not emailing, I'm not doing phone calls. I'm done at 12:00. That's a non-negotiable for me. I'm also my schedule. I have by my house. It's like a four mile trail that's been really important to me to be able to go out and do that. I go do that three mornings a week. So before I even gotten to work, before I opened my computer and answered emails, I'm able to do things like that for myself, to take care of myself so I can in turn take care of those around me, my clients, my staff, my family, things like that. So you want to make sure that you're fitting yourself into your own schedule, which before I went out on my own, I wasn't doing. So are you on your own list of priorities when I talked about the last slide and why it's important to me, I was talking about the things that I do for myself. But had you asked me that question 5 or 6 years ago, I wasn't on my own list of priorities.

Speaker 3 (00:04:00) - I wasn't in my top five, I wasn't in my top ten. I was just very focused on taking care of everyone else. And again, I think I really realized since going out on my own how important it is to take care of myself so I can take care of others. So I want to make sure that you are doing that for yourself as well, so that you can be the best attorney. You can be the best parent, you can be the best spouse for those around you by focusing on yourself also. So instead of just talking kind of abstractly in big picture, I want to kind of walk you through what my typical workweek actually looks like. This is how we plan my work week. It's not always perfect. Sometimes things come up, sometimes as a court hearing that, you know, I can't control that schedule. But when we're planning my work week, my staff are scheduling appointments for me, this is what we're looking at. So Monday, I'm about 10 to 4. You'll notice I don't start till ten.

Speaker 3 (00:04:55) - Most days I take my kids to school in the morning. That's a priority for me. So I start a little bit. Later again. Sometimes I'll have a court hearing at 9:00, but not too often. So Monday, 10 to 4 is when I'm doing my in-person appointments, my consultations, getting legal work done. Tuesday, we're about 10 to 3. I'm doing legal work and our team meeting is every Tuesday. That's a non-negotiable. If you're not doing team meetings weekly, you certainly should be doing so. Even if you're a true solo and it's just yourself, you should be walking through your case list and keeping track of what's going on with all of your cases. So that's done every Tuesday at my office. Wednesday is a half day. I kind of need a break on Mondays because I stacked my appointments back to back. It's pretty exhausting. So by Wednesday, I need a little bit of a break. So Wednesday we're doing 10 to 1 From me, I'm doing legal work and then content creation, like creating videos for the firm's YouTube page and things like that.

Speaker 3 (00:05:47) - Wednesdays are My Day is also to make those Costco runs, do grocery shopping, things like that, because I hate doing it on the weekends. So that's a Wednesday for me. Thursdays are staff client signings with my practice. I do estate planning and so we have to do a lot of things with what signings? I can't do everything through DocuSign, and so me and my paralegal are in the office together, witnessing documents, doing wills, doing trusts, things like that. And so that's a pretty full day for me as well as far as being stacked with my client appointments. And then Fridays I keep like I'm not doing legal work on Fridays. I'm cutting out my email inbox, making sure I'm getting caught up on those emails, handling things, handling housekeeping matters. So this is kind of a run through of what my work week looks like and how I schedule things for my work week and how we plan for my work week. And this allows me to know when planning my schedule and my kids have activities and they have field trips for sports, knowing that I have this to, generally speaking, to rely on and to fall back on.

Speaker 3 (00:06:51) - As far as my schedule, again, aside from those things that I can't control, like sometimes court hearings that are assigned to me, but generally speaking, I can control those as well and schedule those to fit inside my work week. I think a big one is this notion that working more will equal more money, and I strongly disagree with that. I don't think working more makes you a better lawyer. I don't think working more makes you more successful. I don't think that those things are equal. I think it does lead to burnout and dissatisfaction and just being unhappy with your practice. And so this is my quick pitch for flat fees. If you're not doing flat fees, if you're doing hourly work, for me to be able to have this schedule that I just went over with you, it was so important that I moved my practice areas all over the flat fee. Previously I was probably about 5050, flat fee and hourly. And so there was a few things that I felt like there's no way I can make this flat fee.

Speaker 3 (00:07:47) - It has to be hourly. But I really sat down my team and we went through the practice areas and for me, my probate practice was the one that I felt like, I don't know how to make this flat fee. It has to be hourly because there's so many variables sometimes in these cases. But we really sat down and went through it and worked through different stages of the probate process and what things can happen. And we actually have a flat fee for our probate that we actually have broken down by stages in the probate process. And so that's been a big one to allow me to have the flexibility while still having the income coming into the office, but being able to reduce my work week. And so getting control of my schedule aside from just giving me my time back and making myself a priority in my own firm, has also allowed me to get away from that billable hour, which has been a big one for me and for the firm.

Speaker 1 (00:08:36) - Are you ready to unlock your full growth potential, both professionally and personally? The Guild Maximum Lawyers Exclusive Community of Legal Entrepreneurs invites you to our upcoming in-person mastermind event in Miami, Florida.

Speaker 1 (00:08:49) - There's something truly extraordinary about the breakthroughs that occur when you're physically present, working through your business and mindset challenges in real time. By attending our Mastermind, you'll engage in deep discussions, share experiences, and receive expert guidance from our coaches and fellow law firm owners who understand the unique challenges and opportunities within the legal industry. This collaborative atmosphere fuels creativity, accelerates problem solving, and stimulates innovative thinking. Investing in your personal and professional development through attending an in-person mastermind is an investment in yourself and in your future. The breakthroughs, knowledge and strategies you'll acquire are priceless assets that can transform your practice and propel you towards your goals. Visit Maxwell events.com today to join the guild, reserve your spot and secure your ticket at the best possible price.

Speaker 3 (00:09:37) - So we all have things that we're doing as the attorney, as the owner of the law firm that we should not be doing some of these things. Could be your billings. You're going to move the flat fee. We can get away from billing. But even like your bookkeeping, your payroll, answering the phones, these are all things that are not the highest and best use of your time.

Speaker 3 (00:09:57) - And so when looking at your time and looking at. Your team. You want to look at the things that you're doing that you can get off your plate and delegate to someone else because it's not the best use of your time. And it's time you to your office for more hours than may be necessary. And so for me, I'm always working on this. I'm always trying to figure out what can be done to become more efficient. And I'd just say you're the one thing that I'm working on is my email inbox and handing that off to my VA. I haven't been able to do that yet or commit to that yet, but I know that that's a big one to forget for me to free up my time because it's not the highest or best use of my time to be going through my email, filtering out spam and responding to things that don't actually need my response or forwarding them to someone else to respond. And so that's a big one for me that I need to work on and I'm trying to implement at my firm.

Speaker 3 (00:10:46) - But there's always something that we can be working on in the firm. And so the first step is to sit down and identify kind of what's going on, what changes need to be made and what can you do to help you and to help your team as well. So I can't really talk about making yourself a priority and reducing your work week without talking about setting boundaries for yourself and for those around you. So let's start with your staff. I think the biggest one is the constant interruptions, especially if you are working in person with staff in your office. I fully support having an open door policy, but there needs to be some boundaries. There needs to be some limitations. There cannot be a continuous barrage of emails and questions and topping their head and understanding the few quick minutes. That's not an effective use of your time. You can't focus on what you need to do if you're constantly being interrupted by staff. So you should set aside certain times on whether that's daily or however whatever the frequency that you think that you need for your team.

Speaker 3 (00:11:47) - But eliminating those constant interruptions to your work, then your productivity will help you to focus and get work done a lot sooner with your clients. It's really the biggest one to me is the communication as a setting that up in the very beginning when you're talking to them, when they're hiring you. As far as the expectations, as far as response time to phone calls, to emails, to having documents back to them, letting them know up front what that time frame can look like and what to expect so that they don't have any expectations that you're going to do something quicker than what you can actually commit to with your family. I work hybrid. My team works hybrid where we're in office a few days and working from home a few days at home. I have a full home office with the door on it, but mommy's home and they don't always respect that while Mommy is home. I'm working and I need to focus on work. And so that's been a big one for my kids who are nine and 12 now and through the past two years is, yes, mommy's home, but mommy's working.

Speaker 3 (00:12:50) - And so setting those boundaries with your family so that when I'm done with work, I can be done with work and focus on them and not be at family dinner, on my phone, checking emails or responding to text. You want to be able to shut that down and focus on your family. But it needs to work both ways, between with your family and then with work. And then I think the biggest one I put it on here last, but I think it's the most important one is yourself. I think we can be the biggest offenders of breaking our own boundaries. You have to respect your own boundaries, whatever those are that you put in place. So if you decide that you want to start working half day on Friday at 12 or 1:00, you need to shut that computer down and respect that your own time. If you decided what clients are red flags when they contact your office, you can't and then break your own boundary and take them on because of what the fee may be or who referred them.

Speaker 3 (00:13:41) - If they're a red flag and you've decided these are red flags, I'm not taking these kinds of clients. You need to respect that boundary that you set for yourself and not take that client on. So I think there's a lot of areas where we can set boundaries and make sure that we're respecting our own boundaries and that those around us respect our boundaries so we can then in turn be more efficient and be more productive in our firms and so what are we working towards? For me, my list is, you know, becoming your own priority, doing the things that you want to do, having happier clients, because I think being a happier lawyer makes for happier clients and also doing the things that you want to do and enjoying the work that you do. You know, so many times with burnout and with not having control of your schedule, working too many hours or not really having a good grasp or handle on things, things can kind of spiral and you don't enjoy the work anymore. You don't have the same passion and maybe that you once did.

Speaker 3 (00:14:34) - And so having your schedule under control, having your calendar under control, I think really helps allow you to make yourself a priority so that you can still continue to enjoy the work that you do and the clients that you serve. So I want to take away with some easy wins. I think the first one is your email in managing your email and deciding when you're going to check your email on my laptop, I turned off the little notification bar. That comes up in the bottom right hand corner is too much of a distraction for me to see like, oh, what this person sent me, What's going on Now everybody can wait until you decided to check your email if that's going to be, you know, twice a day or once an hour, whatever those guidelines you're going to put in place for yourself as far as when you're going to check your email. But you don't need your email going off 24 over seven and alerting you because people can wait a few hours for a response from you. And again, it allows you to get whatever you're working on and get that done so much more quicker because you're not being interrupted by that distraction.

Speaker 3 (00:15:33) - Same with phone calls. When someone calls the office, they should not expect to get you on the phone immediately. You should set aside time for when you're going to return phone calls. For me, that's in the afternoon. And so if someone calls the office, hopefully my team can just handle it and I don't actually need to return the phone call. But if I do need to return a phone call, it's going to be in the afternoon probably around 2 or 3:00, somewhere in that time frame. I cannot be constantly interrupted by phone calls because the distraction, if I'm working on, you know, a motion for someone and I've got to take a phone call and then get back into the groove that I was in and working on that motion, I lost a lot of time there. And so I think it's much more efficient to handle phone calls in a block at a time. You know, again, setting aside, you know, a certain hour of the day or half hour of the day to return phone calls and not be constantly interrupted by the phones.

Speaker 3 (00:16:23) - And then along the same line is blocking out time for getting legal work done. If you've got an eight hour workday and you're trying to get some legal work done, but you're constantly interrupted by the phones, by the emails, by staff, by whatever's going on, it's going to take you so much more time to get that work done versus if you had a three hour block of time that you cut out and just committed to getting that legal work done. You could have it done so much faster and so much more efficient. I find that that works great for me. And so that's how I handle getting my legal work done or having client appointments is blocking out that time and sticking to that time block that I have set out for myself. So that's about it for me, that's kind of my work week, what it looks like, what my 25 hour workweek looks like again, is not always perfect, but this is how we plan for it. This is how I schedule it and my team knows my calendar looks like as well when they're planning things for me also.

Speaker 3 (00:17:15) - So thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:17:21) - Thanks. Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your host and to access more content content. Go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

Looking for a powerful tool to enhance your lawyering skills? Join us as we explore the concept of mindfulness with Gwin Stewart in this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast! 🎙️In this episode, Gwin delivers her MaxLawCon22 presentation on mindfulness as a lawyer's greatest tool. Gwin introduces the concept of mindfulness, leaning into the importance of being present, accepting reality, and maintaining focus.

Gwin discusses the three aspects of the mind:

✨ activity

✨ stillness

✨ awareness — but don’t forget the need for balance!

Gwin also deep dives into the drawbacks of mindlessness as well as practical tips on how to keep incorporating mindfulness into daily life. Including an impromptu test and see how to practice mindfulness through an exercise that you can do right now!

Episode Highlights:

02:31 The three aspects of the mind: activity, stillness, and awareness, and how they contribute to our overall well-being
06:26 The negative effects of mindlessness
11:58 Learn how to practice mindfulness by focusing on your breath and noticing your thoughts and feelings, which can lead to relaxation, calmness, and improved focus.
16:14 What to expect at first
21:47 10 minutes a day
25:05 Benefits: Mindfulness practice requires courage to face and accept the things we don't like, broadens our perspective, and provides correct data points

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Resources:

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Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer YouTube Channel
Follow us on Instagram
Join the Facebook Group
Follow the Facebook Page
Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcripts: Mindfulness: A Lawyer's Greatest Tool with Gwin Stewart

*Gwin Stewart * (00:00:00) - But in today's episode we're sharing a presentation from Khan 2022. Keep listening to hear Gwen Stewart as we share her talk. Mindfulness A Lawyer's Greatest tool. You can also head to the maximum Lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Speaker 2 (00:00:17) - Run your law firm the right Way. The right way. This is the Maximum lawyer podcast podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Metrics. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:00:39) - It sounds like I have more than 168 hours in my week, and I'm going to share with each and every one of you how I do that. So you too can do that. But before we get started, I want to take a moment to thank all the people who got us here Tyson, Jim, Becca, the AV folks, the people on the back side that we don't even know about. This has been an enormous project that takes forever to get it off the ground. And it has happened. It has materialized. They, in Tyson's words, have just done it.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:01:11) - Also, I want to take a moment to recognize that you all got here. I know that's a big deal. You have firms and families and clients and stuff going on in your lives that is difficult for you to take some time and get yourselves here. So congratulations. You made it. Okay, so I'm going to talk today about mindfulness. That's been a big word in our country. The last, I don't know, a couple decades. Who has heard the word mindfulness? Let me see. Maybe who has not heard the word mindfulness. All right. So even though in America we have been talking about mindfulness for only, I don't know, 20 ish years. Let me express that it has been around for thousands of years. It is a tried and true method. Once you know how to practice mindfulness, you too can garner the wisdom of what's been around for thousands of years. It's a little confusing mindfulness, at least whenever I go looking at the books or I don't go to a bookstore anymore, I go to Amazon or I go to whatever my thing is and I look in mindfulness, there is mindfulness of all mindfulness of eating, mindfulness of parenting.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:02:31) - There's a mindfulness for everything. But I'm going to teach you and talk today about the quintessential mindfulness, and that is mindfulness of mind. So in order to do that, let's talk first about what is the mind, which, by the way, it is not the brain. The brain is a pure the mind. Well, we can't talk about that today. The mind is not the brain, but the mind has three aspects. It's there is activity. There is stillness and then there is awareness of activity and stillness. Now I'm going to suggest that every single one of us, and I know every one of you I talked to many, many, many attorneys. You are well skilled, well versed, well tooled in the activity of mind. This is where we do all the things like thinking and planning and organizing and researching and considering and remembering. This is the stuff that we do. And when we do it all well, at the end of the day, we tick off all the boxes, we get little dopamine hits, we feel good about what we've done and also our clients feel good about what we've done and we get things moving forward.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:03:54) - This is activity, but it's only one area of the brain, my friends. And because most of us don't know that the other two areas exist. We're kind of like. You know, a little lopsided. So stillness is a very natural, innate part of what our mind can do. But we the words that describe stillness are things like samadhi, nirvana, luminous emptiness. Anybody heard any of those words? Yes. Okay. And does anybody know what they mean? Because I have been searching for quite a while. What does this feel like to be in luminous emptiness? It feels like peace. Yes, it feels like peace. But the tricky thing is we can't get to peace by activity. But we don't know that. So we keep being active to try to get to peace. So. I think we know what activity is. We know what stillness is. Let's talk a little bit about what awareness is. This is where mindfulness hangs out. It means that we are in the present. So I can't be mindful of what I'm going to eat for dinner because that's later.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:05:15) - I can be mindful right now of standing on this stage, seeing all of your faces talking to you. That's my current mindfulness, so it has to be present. It also needs to be accepting. Now, that's a tough one because most of us have preferences. We like certain things. We don't like certain things. I'll get back to that in a minute. So it needs to be accepting of whatever is happening at the moment in reality. And the third item is that it needs to if we're going to practice mindfulness, we need to have a kind of a focus. We could say an object and when our mind goes somewhere else, because it will, we just recognize and come back. And I'm going to say more about that, so don't worry. Three items be what presence, be what accepting and be what focused. Don't drift. Okay, So let me talk a minute about mindlessness, because that's what we've all been doing for eons. In fact, we're born into a very odd situation.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:06:26) - We are the most dependent mammals on the planet, and we know this right? Like little birds can be in a nest and they go fly within days or weeks or something. All the other mammals can sort of get up and get themselves out. But we have to hang around with caregivers for years. And so what that creates in our nervous systems, in our DNA, is a process by which we look outside of ourselves all the time for information. You know, I'm hungry. I need a nap. I need to be picked up, cared for. We can see how that works. Now, the problem with that you can probably recognize is that if we are looking outside of ourselves to figure out what's going on in here, we're actually looking at the effect to determine the cause that's backwards. That is an inaccurate data point, because if I look out and I am looking at all of you, I look out and I see some people looking at me. I see some people on your phones. I see some people writing.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:07:36) - I could say I could interpret that to be their not liking what I'm saying. I must be saying something wrong. Is that true? No. Maybe it means you're studying for the bar. Maybe it means you have an emergency. Maybe it means your knee hurts. But if I look at you and I try to gather information about me, I've begun a trend in my data point that is inaccurate. And that, of course, wastes a lot of time. We only have who knows how many hours we have each week. 168. That is my favorite number. 168. No more, no less. I have been trying forever to create more time. I can't do that. So I decided to practice mindfulness instead. All right. So I want to say another couple of things about mindlessness, and then we're going to move on. Mindlessness can feel like a lot of activity because we have preferences. We have things that we hold close, we have things that we push away. And the problem with that system is it's not sustainable.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:08:43) - And in fact, when we push away all the things we don't like over and over and over and over and over and over for months and years and decades, then it becomes overwhelming. And guess what we do at that point? Anybody have a theory? Shut down? What else? Escape. I know you've done other things. I will say them for you because I can appreciate you might be embarrassed. So this is when we get overwhelmed and we do things like drink and shop and eat and exercise and look at porn and did I say exercise? And we do all the things for a little reprieve. Now, the consequences later might really suck. We get the credit card bill. We have a partner that finds out about infidelity. We wake up hungover. Our ability to manifest in our job decreases, but we're willing to kick that can down the road because we want a little break. Right. And we all do this. This is not a moral deficit. This is not an issue about your character.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:09:55) - This is because, my friends, you don't know that you actually have access to peace. You already have it. You just don't know how to do it. So back to mindlessness. It can sometimes feel like a lot of activity. Like we're checking the boxes, we're getting stuff done. It can feel like a lot of I'm floating on top of things and they're all going to fall apart. It can feel like disconnection from self. It can feel like something isn't quite working. It can also feel like this is great. I'm a rock star. So, for example, right now, how many of you today have recognized that you're walking around in air? Probably none. And why is that? Because we don't have that contrast. If I would flood this room right now with water and we wouldn't have air, we would recognize immediately. Right. It's the contrast. So let's talk about the contrast to this sort of lifestyle of mindlessness. Are you ready to unlock your full growth potential, both professionally and personally? The Guild Maximum Lawyers Exclusive Community of Legal Entrepreneurs invites you to our upcoming.

Speaker 3 (00:11:07) - In-person mastermind event in Miami, Florida. There's something truly extraordinary about the breakthroughs that occur when you're physically present, working through your business and mindset challenges in real time. By attending our Mastermind, you'll engage in deep discussions, share experiences, and receive expert guidance from our coaches and fellow law firm owners who understand the unique challenges and opportunities within the legal industry. This collaborative atmosphere fuels creativity, accelerates problem solving, and stimulates innovative thinking. Investing in your personal and professional development through attending an in-person mastermind is an investment in yourself and in your future. The breakthroughs, knowledge and strategies you'll acquire are priceless assets that can transform your practice and propel you towards your goals. Visit Max law events today to join the Guild, reserve your spot and secure your ticket at the best possible price.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:11:58) - I'm going to teach you right now how to practice mindfulness, and then we're going to come back and talk about it a little bit longer. So take maybe a good posture. And by that, I mean, if I were sitting down right now, I would sit with my feet flat on the ground.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:12:15) - And you don't have to be super rigid about this. There's nothing I ever talk about that is super rigid. But you can sit with your feet flat on the ground so your body can be comfortable, kind of put your hands on your thighs. You can do this with your eyes open or closed. It doesn't really matter. Whatever you're comfortable with. And I'm going to actually do this with you. I'm going to kind of lean on this for a moment. See, I can already feel the peace in my system because I practice this every day. So eyes open or closed. Take a moment right now and notice inside of your body what you might be. Thinking about good thoughts. Bad thoughts. It doesn't matter. Just notice what they are, because we're kind of working at the top of that triangle. We're not we don't really care what the activity is. What we're doing is noticing it. So notice your thoughts. Allow them to be present. Allow yourself to accept them. Now notice feelings that can include emotions, sensations in the physical body.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:13:25) - Again, noticing, accepting. You could be bored. Totally fine. You could be ecstatic. Totally fine. And now with precision, let's place our attention on our breath. This can be at the nostrils, maybe the chest expanding and collapsing. The diaphragm doesn't matter. Just pick a place and stay right there. And the mind will go away. It will drift. It will be snagged by something. When that happens, no biggie. We notice. We bring our mind back to the breath. Sit like this for a moment. Things inside your system might change. Totally fine. We just noticed. Something comes up that you like, don't hold on to it. Something arises that you don't like. No need to push it away. We can even imagine that we're at the bottom of a big body of water, maybe a lake or an ocean or a pond. And we can see all the weather up above. We can see the sun or the rain, but we're not really affected by it down below.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:14:56) - Be in that peaceful, calm state of stillness. Okay, let's come back now into the activity of mind and let's do a quick. Anybody want to share a word or two about what you might have experienced or what you did experience? Actually, anything that you want to express. In that short snippet of stillness and not really stillness, but mindfulness of potential stillness, Calm. Relaxed. Nice. Who could use a little more relaxation in this world? Who could use a little more calm in this world? Okay. What else? Focused. Anybody need a little more focus in your life, in your practice, in your law practice and your family life? What else? Slowed down. Now we only have 168 actual hours. And yet if we can have the experience of those 168 slowing down, might that be worth it? I know for me, a lot of times it is. What else? I'm not hearing anything on the sort of negative side. Like, did anybody wonder if you were doing it right? Yes.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:16:14) - Perfect. I'm so glad you said that. So that is often what happens when we start to quiet our mind. And that's why people say things like, Oh, my business practice doesn't work. It made me worse. All right. So who here has ever had a puppy that you've tried to train? Yes. Now, when I had puppies, they were as big as me. And so when they didn't do the right thing, there was no ability for me to, like, pick them up and move them. I had to train them. And when I tried to make them sit and stay, what did they do? They got up and left. And then I'd say, sit and stay. They'd get up and leave. It goes on and on and on and on. And so exactly what you expressed is kind of like we have to train our minds to sit and stay kind of like a puppy. And in the beginning, it gets a little rebellious because remember, it has been doing activity 24 seven.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:17:15) - Oh, by the way, our mind doesn't quit being active walrus sleep. It keeps going, which is why we're completely depleted and exhausted because we are 24 seven on overload all the time. So in the beginning, when we try to shape or train our mind to not be active, it will rebel. It will say, Oh, I've been gone for three days and my clients and my this and my that, and it will say, Let's don't do this mindfulness practice. Let's just go do the things. And we also get a great dopamine hit when we do the things. So. That's why a lot of us don't practice mindfulness. It's hard. It's actually quite a rebellious type of experience. To say I'm not going to do the things now. I mean, we all do the things, but we can't do them all the time. And I can assure you that if we take a few minutes and practice this kind of thing, all the things will be much better for it. We'll be better for it.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:18:24) - We'll have moments of calm, of peace, of relaxation, a realizing that we're not just a machine trying to churn out more stuff. So the other thing that this does, this mindfulness business is when we learn how to look internally at ourselves and we realized, hey, so here's an example. Every day in my office at about 330 or 4, I work all day. I meet with people around 330 or 4. I decide it's the perfect time to have a piece of chocolate. And, you know, I didn't really think about it. I just eat the chocolate. And then one day I thought, Huh, I wonder why I do that. What's that about? Let me bring some mindfulness to that. Let me be curious about what I'm doing. Now, the reality is it's probably not that big of a deal, except that my chocolate budget is, you know, outrageous. And if I want to try to lose weight, that doesn't help. So I have to be sort of conscious of what I'm doing.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:19:25) - So I started examining what happens at 330 or 4, why am I reaching for this? And I realized it's because I'm kind of tired and I'm also kind of feeling like I need a break and I deserve a treat. Anybody else ever had those experiences I deserve? I think living in our consumer, materialistic driven society, we all get told a gazillion times every day that we deserve this or that or whatever. And then guess what? They brainwash us and we go buy it. You deserve those shoes. You deserve that trip. You deserve this. Whatever. Fill in the blank. Well, for me, at 330 or 4, I thought I deserved a piece of chocolate. So then when I realized actually what I need is, I don't know, a little pep of energy and maybe to recognize that I've been working really hard, then I can give myself those in a different way. So a way that doesn't, you know, increase my calories or increase my chocolate budget. I mean, this is a pretty silly example because it's not that big of a deal.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:20:37) - But there are other examples that we all have. And if you look in your lives, you can find them. So practicing mindfulness gives us accurate data points. Now, I know that as attorneys, you all value accuracy, you value time and providing services for your clients in the way That's correct for them. You don't want to go down a trail of something that's not right because you didn't get the right data point. If you practice mindfulness, you can understand your internal landscape. You can know when you're off and when you're on. You can know when you are correct. So just like everything this is, they call it a practice because you have to practice. So who knows how to do bicep curls? Yep. Okay. And who does? Right. And I know how to do bicep curls. If I want big biceps, I can't just know how to do it. I also can't just, you know, on like, Saturday, do 20 bicep curls and think that's going to work. So the solution is what I'm going to propose, what I'm going to suggest for you.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:21:47) - If you think this is interesting, worth investigating for yourselves is that you practice this on your own. You could pick a time, morning or evening. It doesn't really matter. Whatever works in your life, maybe ten minutes a day. Set your phone to be a timer so that you don't have to look at it. What happens when we look at our phone is we activate the activity part of our mind and then the mindfulness part and the stillness part is nowhere to be found. So put your phone away. Set the timer. Bring yourself into a posture. Check in with thoughts. Check in with feelings. Bring your attention to the breath and just sit there. You'll get bored. Your knee will hurt. You'll think of all the things you need to be doing. No big deal. When that happens, you go. You could label it. You could say, Oh, this is thinking and just come back to the breath. And over time, you will become more and more confident in your own data points, the correctness of your life.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:22:54) - You won't be pushed and pulled by the things you like and don't like your blindspots. We all have them. Your blind spots will fade away. Because you're actually dealing with reality. See, this is the thing. When we have these this push and pull. We have gotten really smart. Like, look at the world we live in. If I'm cold, I just put on a jacket. If I'm hot, I take it off. If I'm hungry, I get food right. We know how to accommodate our lack of comfort so we never have to engage with realizing actually what's going on. When we know what's going on, we have a bigger view of reality and we can manage that better. So a couple other things. You can practice this ten minutes a day. I'd say make a commitment. Everybody here is pretty disciplined. Otherwise you would not have gotten through what you've gotten through undergrad law school. Having a law practice starting your own was thinking about starting your own firms, being part of the guild, all the things that you do.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:24:06) - You couldn't do that without discipline. So apply that tool here ten minutes a day. After a couple of weeks. If you feel interested, you could increase that to 15 minutes a day. So in the 12 step community, like an Alcoholics Anonymous, they say, when do you need a meeting? When do you need to go to an AA meeting? Does anybody know the answer to this? Okay, I'll say it so you don't have to when you plan to go to a meeting, when you didn't plan to go to a meeting and when all hell breaks loose. So when do you practice mindfulness? When you plan to practice mindfulness? When you plan to practice mindfulness. But something got in the way and is really, really busy. And when all hell is breaking loose, it will be the best ten minutes you will spend in your day. All right. So a couple cautionary statements. This is not for the faint of heart. It requires an incredible amount of bravery to have this sort of a practice.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:25:05) - Why? Because we have to meet all the crap that we don't like in our lives. We meet it about ourselves. We meet it about our partners. We meet it about the world we meet about our kids. We needed about everything. All this stuff we don't like. We meet it and we accept it. So it requires some courage. It will broaden your world. It will take out your blind spots. It will give you correct data points, all of those. That's why I call it the most valuable tool. You're here learning all kinds of tools this few days. And those are all incredibly great tools, but they're in the realm of activity. You also need to understand that there's two other aspects of your mind, and I think you deserve to be able to access and utilize all three parts of your mind. So I wish you well. If anybody has a question about this or you get into it and something goes awry or whatever happens, you just get yourself in a pickle. Please reach out to me and ask.

*Gwin Stewart * (00:26:11) - And if you do that, let me know that you were here. So I'll have the context of what we talked about. Thank you very much. Have a great rest of your conference. I appreciate your time.

Speaker 2 (00:26:22) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content, go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

Walt Disney, the visionary behind Disney World, had to keep his plans a secret to acquire the necessary land. This story serves as a reminder of the importance of dreaming beyond our current realities, believing in our values, daring to make a difference, and taking action. Disney's meticulous operational practices are a testament to their commitment to excellence. From nightly touch-up painting to replacing trees and shrubs, and even strategically placing trash cans every 30 feet, Disney leaves no stone unturned in maintaining its magical aura.

What about taking some of the best practices from Disney World and using it for our law firms? What would that look like?

Creating a welcoming physical space for clients, considering factors like parking, accessibility, and physical comfort. What about understanding clients as individuals and showing genuine care and interest in their lives? This and more is what Tyson talks about in this MaxLawCon22 presentation episode.

Episode Highlights:

01:23 Walt Disney's four keys to success: dream beyond today's realities, believe in sound values, dare to make a difference, and go out and do the work
03:57 Disney's meticulous operational practices, including nightly touch-up paint, replacing trees and shrubs, and maintaining cleanliness with trash cans every 30ft
06:04 Creating a sense of belonging and comfort for clients, similar to the feeling of being at home at Disney World
10:54 The importance of involving clients and allowing them to play an active role in their cases
17:20 The importance of recognizing and rewarding clients for their wins and staying in communication with them
19:18 Creating a unique and special experience for clients, emphasizing a sense of belonging and identity

Resources:

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Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
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Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcript: What Kind of Mickey Mouse Operation is This?

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - So in today's episode we're sharing a presentation from Max Lakhan 2022. Keep listening to hear Tyson metrics as we share his talk. What kind of Mickey Mouse operation is this? You can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Speaker 2 (00:00:18) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the Maximum layer podcast podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Tricks. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Tyson Mutrux (00:00:40) - I absolutely love Disney. Just raise their hands. And I know that many of you that are parents, have you heard that? Raise your hands. That song. Yeah. Get stuck in your head. How many of you have been to Disney World? Yeah, I mean, Disney is a marketing juggernaut, but operationally it is an operational masterpiece. What Disney is, it is 27,000 acres. That's how big that land is. And it's interesting because when Disney was building Disney World, he was constantly reminded of the mistake that he had made with Disneyland because the mistake that he made was not keeping it a secret what he was building.

Tyson Mutrux (00:01:23) - Because what had happened was, is he bought the little plot of land for Disneyland, and then people heard about it and then started buying up all the land around Disneyland. So he could not expand and actually build what he originally wanted to do with Disney World. He had teams that secretly went out shell company after shell company after shell company to go out and buy land. And he actually hired a former CIA agent to to actually do all the covert ops. It was a really interesting thing, what he did, to be able to build Disney World. And by the end, people started to get wind as to what he was doing and they started to buy up land and it probably cost them a little bit extra money. But overall, that 27,000 acres, roughly 43mi², he got it for fairly cheap. Right. It is just an operational masterpiece when it comes to Walt himself. He really had four keys to success. And it's in something that you've probably heard before, Dream, Believe, Dare Do.

Tyson Mutrux (00:02:28) - Have you heard that before? Dream, Believe, Dare do. And what he believed was is dream beyond the realities of today. Dream beyond the realities of today. He was a dreamer and many of you were dreamers, I do know that believe believe in sound values. Hopefully many of you, because you listen to Jim and I talked about this a lot, is having core values. Hopefully you thought about the core values, but believing in sound values. There is a reason why Walt Walt resisted selling alcohol in parks, right? He believed in sound values. He wanted the parks to be about family, okay? He wanted them to be about family. He had very sound values. Dare dare to make a difference. Be different. Right. Make a difference, really important. And then just go out and do it. Do go out and do the work. Right. I talked about execution yesterday. Go out and do the work, get it done. When I was talking about the masterpiece, operationally, what Disney is, I mean, I don't know what if many of you realize the things that they do on a daily basis to maintain those parks every single night they go around, there's a crew with touch up paint and every little knick is touched up with paint every single night.

Tyson Mutrux (00:03:57) - Not quarterly, not weekly, not yearly. It's every single night a crew goes out and does it. Another thing that they do is they go out and they replace trees and shrubs that need to be replaced every single night. And the reason why they do that is to make sure that it looks like opening day every day. That's one of their themes. They want to make sure it's opening day every day. When you've arrived at Disney for the first time, and I want you to think about those of you that have been think about your first visit and hopefully it was a very, very pleasant visit. And just think about how clean everything was and how just magical the feeling was. I just I'm thinking about it now and I just I get these chills because I just loved it so much. Every 30ft there's a trash can. I don't know if you realize that that's part of the reason why it's so clean. Every 30ft in a park is a trash can. And the reason why they did that is they for a long time, they were tracking people and they were saying, okay, at what point do people start to litter? And they realized 30ft.

Tyson Mutrux (00:05:04) - So they were looking at the data, they were collecting the data, they were looking at it, and they said, okay, this is something we need to do. Another thing is that every employee is responsible for picking up gum, and it's amazing. If you've been on Main Street USA, you don't see if you go to a lot of these theme parks, you'll see like little splotches of gum all over the park, right? Not in Disney. You do not see that if someone has happened to have dropped a piece of gum and someone has actually stepped on it, they scrub it up immediately and get it off the ground. They take meticulous detail. Something else that they do is they actually will they have a rule where there's no gum or peanuts sold on site. It's really interesting that you cannot find a pack of gum in all of Disney World. Just amazing. And I'm going to pull up my slides. And what you're going to notice is many of these are just pictures of me and my family.

Tyson Mutrux (00:06:04) - That's all these are these all these slides are going to be you're not going to have to write down a the notes on these slides. But there are some key points that I want to point out as to why Disney is so successful and some of the things that maybe you can do with your firms to make your firm successful. And the first is really a sense of place. Okay, A sense of place. And what I mean by that is a sense of belonging, right? When we arrive at Disney World, we feel like we belong. This is a picture of my coffee cup. We like to say at the Grand Floridian, it's right on the water. It's just wonderful. And we feel when we are there, we are at home. I think about this a lot of times when it comes to just handling cases and running the law firm. I think of Jim when it comes to immigrant home. Right. A lot of his clients feel like they are at home. We spend a lot of time with our people and how they talk to our clients, how they talk with our clients.

Tyson Mutrux (00:07:03) - We want our clients to feel very comfortable. They've got a place. Finally, we hear this all the time. We thought that attorneys were just jerks. We thought that they were selfish. We thought that they only cared about themselves. And you all make us feel like we are at home. So that's something I want you to focus on, finding a place for them. The next one is the sense of being special. So these are magic bands and the actual style of them has changed a little bit. I think this is the first time we went to Disney World and some of the pictures. You'll see how they changed a little bit. But whenever you're there, you feel special just because you're a customer. And if you kind of think through your case processes and what can you do for your clients to make them feel special just because they are one of your clients? One of the things that we do is they they are are people know to talk us up as attorneys, right? You know, Anthony Laramore is one of the best medical malpractice attorneys in the state of Missouri.

Tyson Mutrux (00:08:08) - You're going to be in really, really good hands with him. And when a client hears that all of that apprehension about actually hiring a lawyer and actually hiring this particular lawyer, it melts away. So think about the things that you can do in your firms to make your clients feel special. And maybe that's a John Fisher shocking all box. You know, maybe that's one of the things that you do think about the things that you can do to make them actually feel special just because they're a client. Another thing that is really, really special about Disney is the sense of community that they create. I would like to think that maximum lawyers done a pretty good job of building a community right? When you come to this conference, it is different than most conferences and it's funny to to explain it to somebody before they've been here. It's almost like trying to explain a cult. It's really hard to do sometimes. I'm sure that many of you have had that conversation. I've heard some of you talk about your spouses calling Max Law cold.

Tyson Mutrux (00:09:10) - I think it's kind of funny, but that community is really, really important. What can you do in your firms to build that community? Another thing that they do is exclusivity, right? You can you let them see you let your customers see what they can have access to, but they can't have access to it unless they upgrade to it. And many of these things, I'm not going to give you all the answers. I'm just going to give you some ideas and you all need to go back and think about them. What are some things that you can do to build that community that also have that little. Bit of exclusivity out there to upgrade. And those of you that have those subscription services, it can be a little bit easier for you, right? A little bit easier for you. If I were to do immigration, I think maybe what you could do is you could do an upcharge for certain select services, you could do things like that. Again, I don't have all the answers, but that is something that Disney does really, really well.

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Tyson Mutrux (00:10:54) - This other part this is one of my favorite parts is engagement. They do engagement, involvement, active roles and active participation. And clients want to usually take a part in their cases. They want to have an active role. Now, there are sometimes some people that say, I'm going to pay you, you do the rest of the work and that's fine.

Tyson Mutrux (00:11:19) - But many times they want to have an active role and was something that Disney does. This is my daughter and she is dressed up. Who is this? Who's this Princess Bell, right? She's dressed up like Belle. And we went into this room inside the castle and we got to walk around and they got to play roles. This is my son, Jackson, and he's got to play the role of the horse. Philip So Jackson got to play the role of Phillipe. We paid to do this, but we were a part of the show, right? We paid to come in there, but we got to be part of it. So what can you do in your firms to have your clients a part of the process, have them play a role in the process, be involved in the process? It's a really, really important. Another thing that Disney does really, really well is if you are a regular customer, they reward you. Now, this is not necessarily a reward, but if you look down, there's the lanyard and see the little pins, something that many, many people that go to Disney World do is they will go every single year and they will put pin after pin after pin and they'll have the year on there that they've been.

Tyson Mutrux (00:12:33) - Does anybody in here do that? Yes. Yeah, we got we got a couple people do it. And what can you do in your firm to reward your clients now I don't know how many of you actually have a some sort of practice where you might have a returning client. Right. So and I don't know what you can do in your practices to actually do that, but you can reward them. It's not like a coffee program where you can stamp a card or whatever, but you should think about things that you can do to reward your clients for coming back. Another thing that they do really well, and we talk about this and Ryan McCain talks about this all the time is when it comes to employee culture, right? Having that really tight knit culture, making sure it's a culture where people want to join your firm. This is my son, Hudson. He's wearing a goofy hat. This is my daughter, Emma. She's wearing another hat. She's she's got Disney clothes all over her. But it's having that culture where customers want to promote you, right? Having that great customer client culture where they want to talk about you.

Tyson Mutrux (00:13:34) - And it can be really, really easy sometimes to just think of our clients as numbers. I went through that phase and about 4 or 5 years ago we redid everything because clients were turning into a number to us. Okay, how much money are they going to make us on this case? So it's and what we did is we went back, we went to the drawing board and we started to think of our clients as actual human beings and asking them, how have these injuries affected your lives, asking them about the hobbies that they do on a daily basis. You know, what's your religion? Okay. And the reason why we know that. Have you missed church? Have you missed all the activities that come along with attending your church? Okay. One of my clients, she was an artist. She had injured her shoulder. She's retired. The only thing that she cared about in the entire world was painting for six months. She could not paint. Okay? That was a significant impact to her.

Tyson Mutrux (00:14:27) - Think about how you can support your your customers. Your clients support that culture critic great culture where because you're caring about them as a human being, they're going to go out and talk about you, right? They're going to want to put on your firm shirt. They're going to want to put on the firm. Add and say how great you are. Another thing is, is that Disney does really, really well, is creating physical spaces where you can go. And it's a talking point. This is one where they have a sign with a photographer set up and you go and you stand there, they take a photo and you don't know what's going to be below you. They just say, Hey, make this face. And then in your app shows it pops up this picture and it's a cool little activity that you can do. They also have other photo opportunities, another picture of Emma, another picture of Jackson, where you can go and you can take photographs. And it's a fun little thing, right? These physical spaces.

Tyson Mutrux (00:15:23) - And the reason why I brought this up is think about your offices. Think about whenever a client comes in and what their experience is like, what do they experience. This is something that is an afterthought for most of us. It's something that we don't think about. Who is the first person that they're going to talk to? What's the first thing that they're going to see when they're parking at your building? Where are they going to park? Are they are they going to have street parking or are they going to have what parking is parking free? Is it paid? If you've got garage parking whenever they come upstairs, are you going to stamp their ticket? All of these things think about these physical spaces and how it affects your clients lives. For us, we cannot be in any building that has stairs only. There's just it's just not a building we can be in. We have injured clients many times. They're on crutches. Many times they're in a wheelchair. We have to have physical spaces that make sense for our clients.

Tyson Mutrux (00:16:16) - So this is something that you want to think through, think it through what works for your clients and maybe for some of you that if you do trademarks or if you do immigration, where someone comes to the United States and it's they've actually become a US citizen, you create physical spaces for your clients whenever they get a settlement check, right? Create spaces for them to be happy and then really think about it as a photo opportunity. You can you can create spaces for a photo opportunity recognition. Okay, This is the next thing. And this picture really has nothing to do with recognition except for I like that his hands are up in the air. This is again, Jackson. Recognize your clients for their wins. And I'm not talking about necessarily your wins in the courtroom or your wins for something they did on their case. Recognize your clients whenever something's going on in their lives, Something that we do really, really well in our firm is whenever something happens, whether it's something good or bad, we will send them either a care package where we will send them a card, whatever it may be, and it goes a very long way to building that goodwill with our clients.

Tyson Mutrux (00:17:20) - Because how many of you, every once in a while have an angry client, raise your hands. Okay. How much easier is it to have a conversation with that angry client when you've sent them a care package over the last few months? Pretty damn easy. They're going to give you a little bit of grace. So recognize your clients, know your clients. That's part of it, too, is understanding who your clients are. No what's going on with their lives in their lives, staying in communication with them and then recognizing them for it. And then the last one I want to go over again, just a picture. It's just a picture. It's just me and my family. It has nearly nothing to do with my presentation other than this. There is a Mickey in here and I think on this one, just Mickey, do you know what they call employees at Disney? They're cast members, right? There is a very specific proprietary language that they have at Disney in having that language inside your firm is important.

Tyson Mutrux (00:18:21) - And I want to point that out to you, because we have things like we theme everything. And that's something that Disney does really, really well, is they theme everything. So we do things like we've got these pre deposition calls. We have them called Fact-Finding calls, we have injury impact calls, we theme a bunch of different things. And we do that both internally so people know what things are. But then also this so clients know what they are and what to expect. And they look at them as look at them as benchmarks. In their case, we call our people peeps, right? So we've got that proprietary language where we call our people peeps. They've got passion, they've got energy. They get they energize other people, they execute, they have edge their peeps. That's why we call them peeps. So having that own proprietary language is something that Disney does really, really well, that you can apply to your firms as well. That also helps with that firm culture. So I'm going to leave you with this.

Tyson Mutrux (00:19:18) - We got 40s, so pretty good on time. I want you to go out. I want you to think about these things. I'm going to read them off really quick again, see how you can apply them to your firm sense of place, sense of being special because you're a client. Having communities and membership for engagement, involvement, active roles and active participation. Five Reward your clients. Six Have a great. Like culture seven Having physical spaces for your clients and understanding how those affect your clients. Eight Recognition Recognize your clients and nine having that proprietary language. So I'll leave you with this go out dream believe, dare do. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:20:06) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

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