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Have you ever been frustrated with the traditional hiring process? Where gut feelings and limited information resulted in a measly 50% accuracy hire rate? What if we walked you step-by-step through a better way – that is not our own – But it’s based on the book called “Topgrading” by Bradford D. Smart, which dives even deeper into this topic.

In this podcast episode, Jim Hacking and Tyson Mutrux invite Kristen Weiss (from Tyson’s team) to discuss hiring practices and the top grading principles. Kristen shares her experience as a recruiter and the frustrations she faced before implementing the top grading process. 

A few key takeaways are:

the importance of involving multiple people in the hiring process

the importance of not rushing the process as hiring in haste can lead to wasted time, money, and resources 

automated emails that outline the steps and expectations

recruiting mentally tough individuals who were fully committed to the firm

the hiring process. And the best part? It works!

So, if you’re tired of making hiring mistakes and want to find the perfect fit for your team, we highly recommend giving this episode a listen and “see” the Topgrading hiring principles in action. Don’t forget to grab the book here! 

Book:

Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People, Revised and Updated Edition by Bradford D. Smart Ph.D.

Episode Highlights:

1:06 Kristen’s past experience as a recruiter and the frustrations she faced with hiring practices before implementing the top grading process

05:18 The importance of getting multiple perspectives in the hiring process and not relying solely on one person’s judgment

10:19 How to address potential employees’ questions about the slower hiring process

18:47 The hiring process, step-by-step, including the use of applications and telephone interviews to filter candidates

19:23 The detailed assessment that candidates receive after a 15-minute conversation, which tests their competency, attention to detail, and ability to follow instructions

20:27 After the video interview, candidates who move on to the next round undergo a mental toughness screening, which assesses their reactions in different situations

21:22 The unique approach of setting up appointments with past employers for reference checks to ensure they only speak about A-player candidates Watch the full video on YouTube here.

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Transcript: Finding the Best Fit for Your Firm

Jim Hacking:
And welcome back to the Maximo, no. Am I doing that right? Okay, all right, sorry. Ha ha. And welcome back to the Maximo Moore Podcast. I’m Jim Hacking.

Tyson Mutrux:
And I’m Tyson Mutrix. What’s up, Jimmy?

Jim Hacking:
I had to do that twice. It’s been a while since we’ve recorded an episode and I have different shows and I got to keep my intros straight.

Tyson Mutrux:
I can’t remember the last time you had to re-record an intro. That was fun to watch because I hadn’t seen you done it in a long time.

Jim Hacking:
Maybe we should just leave that in there, that was sort of funny.

Tyson Mutrux:
That was funny. I think today’s a fun one. It was something you wanted to do. I think part of it’s because of what you’re going through in your firm. So you want to, I guess, introduce the topic. We can jump right in.

Jim Hacking:Yeah, I’m sort of excited about today’s topic. I get to be the interviewer, and you and Kristen are gonna be the interviewees. Kristen Weiss, welcome to the show.

Kristen Weese:
Hey, Jim, thank you for having me today.

Jim Hacking:
Of course, we’re very glad to have you. So the reason that we’re having both of you on is to talk about your hiring practices. Tyson wants to do a little series on hiring and onboarding and all that good stuff. And specifically, we wanted to talk about the top grading principles, sort of the approach that you guys work with in screening candidates for hire, hiring candidates and all that good stuff. So really excited to have you on the show.

Kristen Weese:
Yeah, I’m excited too. This is something I’m definitely passionate about because I’ve been a recruiter in the past and not used the top grading process and then seen the difference. So it is something I’m excited about.

Jim Hacking:
nWell that’s great, so why don’t you introduce everybody, introduce yourself to everybody, maybe tell us a little bit about your background and then what your role is with Tyson’s firm.

Kristen Weese:
nYeah, absolutely. So before I joined Mutrix firm, I was in office management for a chiropractic office system. We had four offices. I did all the hiring, training, onboarding, all that good stuff for them. And it was very frustrating because you would spend so much time investing into these candidates or new hires just to have them either just never show back up or flop or come in 30 every morning and it was very frustrating. So when I joined the firm with Tyson, he said, hey, you should read this book. And then we began kind of fine tuning some of the things and concepts in there.

Jim Hacking:
Great. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about what life was before you had read that book and sort of the hiring at the chiropractic process. Like how did you do it? I mean, if it’s the way we do things around here, it’s like, oh crap, we need someone. Let’s hire someone as fast as we can. And then you’ve got a pulse. You’ve got a little experience. Hell, yes. Sign up. So talk to us a little bit about maybe going beyond that or what it was like before. So then we can figure out what it’s like now with Tyson.

Kristen Weese:
Yeah, absolutely. So it was very similar to that. And even still, I felt like I was really good at picking up on little nuances in candidates on that first conversation or only conversation because that’s how you in the past, you do one interview, you like them, you don’t like them, you think they can do it, move them through. So I felt like I was good at being able to tell, can they deliver? Are they genuine? All those things, but was still, still failing because that’s all I was going of was a gut feeling. Maybe a little bit of resume, maybe a couple of cold calls to their past employers, but that’s all it was, right? And then we were plugging them in because you need somebody when somebody, you know, leaves your office. You need somebody in a pinch, so get a few interviews scheduled and pick the best one was kind of the process before. And it was maybe 50% accurate.

Jim Hacking:
Tyson, tell everybody a little bit about what life was like for you before you came into contact with top grading and read the book.

Tyson Mutrux:
There we go. I had lost all visual of you all, so I’m going to do that. So I had to join in with another link, so give me a second.

Jim Hacking:
And then

Tyson Mutrux:
So

Jim Hacking:
clap again when you’re ready. That clap’s no good.

Tyson Mutrux:
it was, I feel like we had a process. It was a… Decent process I’ll let Kristen give the critique as to how good she thought the actual process was. I thought it was an okay process It was we did have some assessments that we had people go through at one point We even we had like you had a you know phone interview And then we had thrown in like a coffee or a lunch interview that we used to sort of see how people reacted with other people, but I know that we had made We’d made a couple bad hires because we did rush the process and we sort of forced things. It was not nearly as structured as we have it now. There’s things like this job scorecard, which we did not have in place that we’re using now that I think is very effective because we can compare sort of what we’re needing versus what the person’s attributes are. We can also use it in the hiring process, which is pretty nice. We can say, hey, here’s what your expectations are. which I think is a very handy thing. But it was not nearly as structured, I would say, as it is now. And we also have a lot of automation built in too, which we didn’t have either, which helps, I think, reduce some of Kristen’s, her workload on the hiring process.

Jim Hacking:
Kristen, before we hop into top grading itself, talk to us a little bit about your experience as a recruiter and the kinds of things you’ve noticed with employers if it’s sort of similar to the way that I described we’ve been doing it or the way that you described it at the chiropractic. What are some lessons or tips that you might have from that part of your experience?

Kristen Weese:
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is… First of all, your set of eyes, no matter how good, is never enough. You need to bring more people in on this process, whether that’s in the middle or at least by the end before you offer this candidate a job. You need to get more eyes in on it. You cannot be the sole recruiter because you are not gonna see everything. You’re bringing your experiences, your ways of thinking into the interview, into any conversation. That’s what we all do. So you have to bring someone else in. and I think is a huge thing for employers.

Jim Hacking:
All right, so I’m laughing to myself because, Tyson, you made a great hire with Kristen, right? So I mean, it’s interesting because I can tell right now she knows her stuff and just bringing her into your team was a great decision. Talk to us a little bit about what jumped out at you when you were hiring her and then maybe Kristen, you could talk a little bit about what the hiring or the interviewing process was from your perspective with Tyson.

Tyson Mutrux:
That’s an interesting question. I’m not sure I’ve ever asked Kristen about this, but what I mean What jumped out to us is what you’re seeing now and what you’re hearing now. That’s what jumped out to us. She clearly got it. She had a passion for what we were doing. We had told her what our plans were, and I think that that excited her. She demonstrated that excitement. And I’m pretty sure that our visions align for what we want for the firm, and that was very evident. And so it was really her presence where we talk about looking for energy. We’re looking for people with energy. that she can energize other people, she comes with energy and that’s really what we saw. But I’m more interested in what Kristen’s about to say about what the hiring process was for her to be honest with you.

Kristen Weese:
I actually have to jump off now, guys.

Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah

Kristen Weese:
Just kidding. No, from… the hiring I had done and then jumping into interviews and I had been where I was for four years so I hadn’t done the interview process in a long time. It actually struck out to me as a very long process and our process now is even longer so that’s kind of funny. But all good things, it was almost solely Tyson doing the hiring. I did a team interview there at the end where the senior attorney and COO jumped in too. maybe a couple others. But for the most part, it was me and Tyson and honestly, same thing with Tyson. It was just like having a conversation with a friend. I felt like we connected, he understood me, I understood him. And I mean, he kind of sold it for me, so.

Tyson Mutrux:
I do want to jump in there because that hiring process was different from what we had been doing for a few years because I had taken it over. The reason why is, and I had explained this to Kristin, I think I had explained it in the hiring process that we were looking for people that were mentally tough. We had gone a little too heavy on the emotional side. Right? And we were, we were looking for people that brought less emotion to the table and more just mental toughness that is, is, I think can be really hard to find. And, and so the reason why I was so involved at that stage when it comes to hiring Kristen is because we were looking for a very specific person and we were trying to shift things quite a bit. And so Kristen, will you talk about that part of it too? Because that was part of the plan.

Kristen Weese:
Yes, if I understand what you’re asking. I think that’s you had just begun to implement the top grading processes there because I did go through most of these steps and it was the top grading process is very much geared towards mental toughness making sure that you are a problem solver that you are going to come through at the end of the day that your feathers are not going to be ruffled over every change or every comment someone makes that doesn’t sit So that was very evident that that’s what you guys were looking for and I felt like I could deliver.

Jim Hacking:
All right, now we’re just about to dive in to top grading. And oh, I had a really good question, and now I forgot it. Damn it. Oh, I know. There we go. Haven’t had so much clapping on a show in a while. You mentioned, Kristen, the fact that you thought as a potential hire that going through Tyson’s process was rather slow. And with unemployment at record lows right now, at least one of the things I hear in my ear all the time is we can’t afford to wait for really good candidates because they’re just jumping ship to other places and we had someone who were just about ready to make an offer to the other day in about four days time. And. and even they had gone somewhere else. So what do you say to people who say that?

Kristen Weese:
You need to fight that urge with everything inside you to rush the process. I think that’s the biggest misconception in hiring and that’s what top grading has taught me. That you are costing yourself so much anguish, time and money and resources. to hire quickly. You can you cannot do that because you’re throwing all this energy, all this money into this person and then like you said they’re gonna the day before they’re gonna accept a different offer or they might be there for a couple weeks and find something better because they’re in this interview process right so they’re potentially speaking with other employers too. So if a better offer comes out they’re going to jump ship so do not do that.

Jim Hacking:
Do both of you have any words of wisdom or things for people to say? I mean, do you have to explain to potential employees why your process is sort of slower than others?

Kristen Weese:
Sometimes, every now and then, people will ask or kind of make a joke about it. Typically, those are not the people that you want, the people that are willing to go through the process and excited about it. So they have that first conversation with me, kind of like I did with Tyson. And then typically, they’re pumped about the opportunity to join the firm, right? So if you get someone that’s kind of complaining already about all the steps, do they really want to be here? Or are they resilient? You know?

Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah, and so something else is we explain the process in our emails. So we have an automated process where we actually explain to them what the next steps are, which I think is pretty helpful so that they know what’s coming up and they know what to expect and that they’re not just left in the dark. I think that’s pretty helpful.

Kristen Weese:
Absolutely.

Jim Hacking:
You’re listening to the Maximum Warrior podcast. Our guest today is Tyson Mutrix and Kristen Weiss. It’s an interesting show, a little bit of a mix up. We’re talking about top grading and onboarding and hiring people. So Tyson, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you were looking for when you picked up top grading and sort of how it changed your perspective.

Tyson Mutrux:
It is funny, I mean, the reason why I picked up top grading, and I don’t remember how I found out about it. I wish I could give credit to the person or the place that I heard it from. I might’ve just been searching, but really what I was looking for is I was looking for that, a way to find people that were more mentally tough, to be completely honest with you, that’s what it came down to, because we were very emotion heavy in the firm, very emotion heavy. and I really wanted to solve that problem. And that’s what I was looking for was, okay. And I knew that our process was already long. I did know that. And I was wanting to find ways to tweak it, to make it better. But the main thing I was looking for was to add that mental toughness element. And top grading does provide that. And it also provides a way of filtering out people that… We had had a couple hires. that were okay. Like they were okay, I would say, they were probably like a B, B minus player. And they were just okay. But then clearly they were not like, they weren’t in it for the long haul with us. And I wanted to reduce the amount of hires going forward that were like that. And I really wanted to hire those A players, which I feel like we have got a stable full of A players now, which is fantastic. It was a painful process to… to get through all that, to get to where we are now, but really what the genesis of it was, was to shift really the mental toughness of the firm as a whole.

Jim Hacking:
Well, that’s great because given the departures that we’ve had, I don’t know. It would be that painful for us here just because we’ve had a significant number of team members leave in the last month or so. So I think this might be a perfect time for us to start, you know, sort of diving into the principles and everything. So Kristen, tell us a little bit about top grading, sort of how you interpreted it. When you read it, how you interpreted it as you went through it as a hire, maybe Tyson’s first top hire, top grading hire. And then. sort of how you use it now in your role at the firm.

Kristen Weese:
Yeah, I think when I was first introduced to top grading, I’m gonna be honest, I looked at the book, I filmed through it and was like, this is gonna be a tough read. And for me, it was a tough read. It was not something that I just leisurely enjoyed reading. And the process in the book is very rigid. And he says, if you follow it, the more closely you can follow it, the better your rate will be, your success rate will be in hiring those A players that Tyson was talking about. We have fine-tuned his process to what fits our firm’s needs and I would encourage that because every company or firm is a different amount of employees, different needs, you know, all those factors I think come into play. So first reading it was a little intimidating because in my mind as a fairly new hire at the firm, I was thinking how strictly does Tyson want to follow this? principles and having that long process and making sure these people are that are coming into our firm are resilient are tough are they have a good head on their shoulders along with that emotional intelligence. I don’t think top grading throws that out the window completely but it is a much more balanced system in going through the process and actually getting to know your candidate as a person in all their strengths weaknesses all of them.

Jim Hacking:
Kyson.

Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah. So we were, I’d say we follow it mostly. I feel like top grading, we follow it for the most part. There is maybe the one we don’t do, we don’t do a, we have the interview where it’s basically the top grading interview, but that’s done more by Kristin. I think it’s done, it’s funny. They just hired someone and the only thing I ever did with it was I did a quick 30 minute team interview with them. And so I don’t know what all other steps that Kristin took, but I do know that we do most of them. I think the only one that we don’t fully do is I don’t think we do fully their top grading interview to a T like they do it. I know that there’s, I think can be several hours. We don’t do that. But for the most part, we follow everything else pretty darn closely and it does a really good job. It’s really effective at really filtering out the people we don’t. I think one of the most important parts is, or the most valuable parts, is filtering through all the job

Kristen Weese:
Thank

Tyson Mutrux:
applicants.

Kristen Weese:
you.

Tyson Mutrux:
You have them fill out the application, and many people just rely on the Indeed application. We actually have them fill out an application. It sends them a link. It’s all automated where they apply. We get all the details in Zoho Recruit. And then they’re sent to a new… page to fill out an application and that application allows us to go through several applicants fairly easily and rule them out and then pick the ones that Kristen wants to actually interview.

Jim Hacking:
So it’s not one of these things where it’s like, send us a FedEx with an insert in yellow paper with Greek letters every third paragraph. It’s nothing like that. You’re just talking about actually having them answer the questions that you need in order to run top grading effectively.

Tyson Mutrux:
Absolutely. And it’s just a web form, right? It just sends them to a form to fill out and it’s, it’s really easy to fill out. Cause we’re like, there’s additional information that we just don’t get from, from indeed. Like for example, I get like, this is a really basic one, but we’ll, we’ll list something with a salary range. And then what was happening early on is they didn’t, they would apply and then we’d get into the process and they’d be like, well, I want like a salary that’s like double what you’re listing it for. Like, well, what’d you apply for the job for? So now we make them put in like what their salary requirements are. And that’s like, we can go through very quickly now, okay, these people are, yes, we’re within our range, these people are not, and that’s just one thing, we’re looking for other things too, but you formulate this application, that way whenever they apply, you can see all the information you need, quickly go through it on our dashboard, and boom, if they fit, great, if they don’t, they don’t.

Jim Hacking:
I’m struck by how similar this is to the work that we did in figuring out what kind of clients we want to have In our firm and it seems like there’s some analogies there that I’m gonna want to play around with I’m if you see me looking at my phone It’s because I’m downloading the audible version and the Kindle version of the book right now So we’ve got a long way to go, but let’s let’s pretend that you have a posting for a senior personal injury lawyer and And I’m someone who’s, let’s say, three or four years out, I’ve been working in an insurance defense firm, and walk me through your whole process from the moment you post the position until the moment that I get hired, if you’re willing.

Kristen Weese:
can give it a shot. Let’s see if I can do it from memory. So you would get that application that Tyson was talking about and that actually helps weed through candidates really good. If they don’t complete one of the steps then you’re out right? You can’t follow directions. You’re not detail oriented. You don’t want it bad enough. So you get that application. It is very brief. So I mean three minutes I think it takes to submit. Very easy. Once I receive that, I’m like fit. So at that point I’m going to send you a request for a telephone interview and that telephone interview is only about 15 minutes. Occasionally they have gone shorter and or a couple minutes longer depending. So I’m always I think I think I’m very tactful and getting off the phone if it’s kind of a no-go from the get-go but I know for you Jim it would it would be a nail nail in the After that, you would receive an assessment from us, automated, I would push you through to the next round. And if I’m a sure thing about you, Jim, I’m gonna probably tell you on the phone, look out for this assessment from you. I do wanna move you on to the next round. And that assessment is quite long on purpose. I think it took me, I did it in two different days because I was like sleepy and falling asleep, but it took me at least an hour, I wanna say. It is a detailed assessment, and it asks you things like alphabetical order, you put things in numeric order and all those things are to see obviously are you competent but also are you detail-oriented are you paying attention and do you care are you just rushing through so you get that assessment and then at that point you will get a video interview and that would be with me and Amy who’s the COO and then if I move you on to the next round you’re gonna get a mental toughness screening and that’s more questions about how do you And then from there, we’re going to do our reference round. And so the thing that’s a little bit different about top grading references is that you’re not cold calling people off of a resume. You are setting up appointments with these past employers. And ideally, you want the candidate to set up that employee because the candidate is only going to or that past employer is only going to speak on behalf of an eight player candidate. Right. to meet with you, it’s because they probably have really great things to say about this person. So it’s not a waste of your time. You’re not cold calling, you’re actually reaching someone and you’re speaking to a quality employer that can actually give you insight about who this person is, right? So now you know how to lead this person if they were to join your firm. So the reference stage and then after that is that team interview that we talked about. So that, and then we consult and move along, send an offer letter if we want them.

Jim Hacking:
And then that’s awesome. Thank you, Kristen. Tyson,

Kristen Weese:
Yeah.

Jim Hacking:
what’s your level of involvement in those things that Kristen just walked us through?

Tyson Mutrux:
I do the 30 minute team interview and that’s it. I didn’t even, it’s funny, the last hire, I did that. So Kristen, Anthony and Amy were all yes votes. I hadn’t even put any input in because I don’t remember why I was doing something. Offer letter was already out the door. It was, and I said, I said, Kristen in Texas, like, you know what? That makes me so happy. It just makes me so happy. Cause like, I didn’t, I didn’t do, I didn’t do anything, but showed up for 30 minutes. She was a good candidate. Um, and so that was it. It was, it was it. So it was fantastic. Um, so that was it. It was, she’s made it very, very streamlined for me.

Jim Hacking:
This episode is brought to you by Bradford D. Smart, PhD. He’s the author of Top Grading. We should definitely get a kickback for this. If not, he should have at least given me that book for free that I just ordered, but maybe we’ll have to have him on the show.

Tyson Mutrux:
I agree. I think that Becca has reached out to him, so it would be great to have him on. I think it would be important to get his input. I think there are a lot of people that have questions about—because it’s very rigid, and I’ve heard a lot of people say, well, those don’t work these days, because the book’s 10 years old, and that doesn’t work these days. That’s BS. That’s total BS. People are just making more excuses. But I think to have him on would be great.

Jim Hacking:
Has the system let you down yet?

Kristen Weese:
I think full being candid, I’ve been here right about a year and we have made one probably poor hire. But I think if I was being honest, we probably jumped the gun and we hired somebody that we knew was not going to be an A player. I mean, I feel like we thought this person’s a solid B and she ended up not having that resilience to push through. First day we put her on the phone, she didn’t come back after that. So she stayed through training about a month and then left. than that I think we we have really excelled like Tyson said we have a great team.

Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah, I

Jim Hacking:
I

Tyson Mutrux:
do

Jim Hacking:
blame

Tyson Mutrux:
think,

Jim Hacking:
Tyson for that.

Tyson Mutrux:
yeah. You know, it’s funny, I don’t know where the breakdown was on that one. I think we were just, we were a little anxious to get someone in. And with, it goes back to really what you asked Kristen before, it’s like, don’t force it, like wait. You just need to wait, right? If you don’t have a candidate that’s an A player, just wait, it doesn’t matter. It’s worth waiting on because yeah, I mean, we spent a lot of time, a lot of effort. like money, you know, like getting the computer equipment, all of that out to her. It’s not a cheap process, and so waiting is the right way. And I think that that is the only one that we’ve had that’s been a, I wouldn’t say a failure. It was misguided maybe just a little bit.

Kristen Weese:
I think that the training too, the training time spent on her, our staff trained her. So that was pulling away from our legal teams, our clients essentially to get this person trained. So.

Jim Hacking:
Well, I think this was a great episode. I think people are going to find it very, very helpful. So thank you both for being on and for sharing your wisdom and the things that you’ve learned. And Kristen, I think Tyson, he’s always telling me what a great job you’re doing. So I’m grateful for that, for the support you’re giving my friend.

Kristen Weese:
Well, thank you, Jim. I appreciate you having me today.

Tyson Mutrux:
I just want to add two more things really quick. I just want to touch, you touched on the reference calls, which I think are very, very powerful. Don’t skip those. But I think, because we didn’t really talk about this much, Kristen, and I know we’re about at time, but job scorecards, I think that those are absolute crucial. Those are the baseline. Do you have any feedback you can give on that real quick?

Kristen Weese:
Yeah, really quick, I think it’s very important to have those job scorecards because when a candidate asks me, what are you looking for, I can clearly go and say these are the things we have to have or tell me a little bit about why you are, I don’t know, why you have this skill that we’ve got on our job scorecard because we’re looking for a very specific role and it helps keep me and the other leaders that help me higher focused on what we’re looking for for each role. So it’s important.

Jim Hacking:
Nice.

Tyson Mutrux:
All right, now I guess I got to go back to co-host mode and I almost dropped the ball, but we are going to wrap things up, Kristen. We want to be respectful of your time. Our huddle starts right now, so we do need to wrap things up. Before I do, I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. Just search Maximum Lawyer on Facebook. Join us there. If you’re interested in a more high-level conversation, join us in the Guild. Go to maxlawguild.com. It’s maxlawguild.com. meetings, we’ve got quarterly masterminds and other things that we do like the Zapathon that we just got done in Austin, and then we’ve got Denver and Miami coming up later this year which is gonna be great. Alright Jimmy, it is your time to give your Hack of the Week. What you got for us?

Jim Hacking:
Have you done Fireflies yet, Tyson?

n

Tyson Mutrux:
I have not done Fireflies.

Jim Hacking:My hack of the week is fireflies.ai. So this is a pretty cool little add-on that you can do to any of your meetings. I know a lot of people use Otter. I have not used Otter, but Fireflies is really sweet. It just adds itself to every Google Meet or Zoom call that you have. It transcribes it, but more importantly, it summarizes it. It covers the topics that are addressed in the meeting. We had a… We had one yesterday and I was surprised at how the AI was able to figure out exactly what we were talking about and and talked about the issues and everything. It was really sort of mind-blowing. So just started playing around with it, but I think it’s here to stay. It’s a lot of fun.

Tyson Mutrux:
I don’t think Kristen’s a fan of those, but she was kicking them all off yesterday on our, we use Otter, a bunch of people use Otter, so. But yeah, I’ve heard really, really good things. Everyone that I’ve heard talk about Firefly specifically recommends it, so very cool. All right, Kristen, I did give you a heads up this morning that we’re gonna ask for a tip or a hack from you, so what you got for us?

Kristen Weese:
Yeah, I think my biggest hack with hiring is go slow, slow down, and then my life hack is you have to take those few minutes to be quiet and still in the morning no matter what that means. If you’re doing yoga or just taking a few minutes to breathe, you have to do it, don’t run out the door. You’ll hate it later.

Tyson Mutrux:
Love it. I know Jim loves that. Jim’s a big, big fan of that quiet time, so very good. All right, so my tip of the week is a book that I’ve been talking about in the Guild for a few weeks. I can talk about it now on the podcast, A World Without Email by Cal Newport. It is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. It is fantastic. If you want, it’s not just about emails, so don’t worry about that, but it’s really about organizing your tasks in a way. that’s really effective and efficient for you and then also for, it would be for your firm as well. We’re changing many, many things in the firm based upon that. So I recommend that you check it out. Kristen, thank you for coming on. I really appreciate your willingness to do

Jim Hacking:
for

Tyson Mutrux:
this.

Jim Hacking:
sure.

Tyson Mutrux:
You were excited about doing this, which was great. So thank you so much.

Kristen Weese:
Absolutely. Thank you, Tyson. Thank you,

Jim Hacking:
Thanks

Kristen Weese:
Jim.

Jim Hacking:
guys. Nice to meet you, Kristen. Take care.

Kristen Weese:
Nice to meet you.

Jim Hacking:
nBye guys.

Tyson Mutrux:
see you both. Bye.

The post Finding the Best Fit for Your Firm appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

Are you overwhelmed by the amount of information bombarding you every day? In this episode, Brendan Ruane shares valuable design principles that can help you cut through the noise and convert potential clients. From keeping language simple to following familiar website design conventions, Brendan’s insights will revolutionize your approach to marketing. 

Discover how to optimize your website navigation, highlight important elements, and leverage the power of social proof. Tune in now and take your legal career to new heights!

Episode Highlights:

02:13 The importance of simplifying websites and marketing materials to avoid overwhelming users and cluttering up information

04:00 Design principles that convert: Jacob’s Law and familiarity in website design

09:05 Whittle down information to give users what they need to make decisions and take actions

14:02 Focus on the first two sections of your website as they receive the most attention from users

15:59 Use credible testimonials and videos from past clients to build trust and credibility with potential customers Watch the full video on YouTube here. 

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Transcript: Design Principles that Convert with Brendan Ruane

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) – So in today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max Lakhan 2022. Keep listening to hear Brendan Ruane as we share his talk. More leads same budget design principles that convert. 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 Metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:00:40) – Good morning, everybody. If anybody sees what I have in my hand here, is anyone know what this is going to be? Recognize these. So kush balls, these are something that people are familiar with, right? You’ve seen them back in the 90s. They were all over the place. You get them in different colors. So this is going to play into some of the things we’re going we’re talking about design principles that help to convert. First we want to talk about is zipf’s law. You hear a lot that people are lazy, right? Oh, these people are just lazy.

Speaker 3 (00:01:09) – They don’t really read it. They don’t do this. You know, they’re not really paying attention. It’s actually not true. If you look at this law, basically what it says is that every day we are so bombarded by information that we are reading the equivalent of The Hobbit every day. That’s just scrolling on social text messages. Websites are on everything like that. Think about how big one of those books is. So it’s not that people are lazy, it’s just that they’re overwhelmed with the information that you’re actually putting out there. So how can you take this and use this to your advantage? You want to make sure that you keep your language simple. You want it to be easy to digest. You don’t want to give people more than they need to actually do. One of these things is generally you hear you right at an eighth or ninth grade level. People who are more intelligent are just going to read faster and it will actually help you get more people to be able to comprehend your information, grouping things together in easily diagnosable chunks on your sites or on any marketing materials.

Speaker 3 (00:02:13) – Actually using can be helpful because people can see, Oh, this goes together, this is what I need to know and this is the information I need to get. Because in everything that we’re doing, we are taking information and trying to get somebody to take a specific action, whether that be fill out a form on your website, whether it be click to call, you’re trying to convey information to get those people to convert for you. If you’ll see the principle of least effort, you don’t want to overload these people. Make it as simple as possible. For far too many sites have too much going on when it comes to this. How many of you have a chat widget on your website? Show of hands Now when you have a chat widget, generally you have one like it’s in the bottom right hand corner on your page. Do you guys also have that one that’s on the left hand side, halfway down the middle of the page? It’s very common. I know N-gage has that where it’s on the left hand side and you have it down in the bottom corner.

Speaker 3 (00:03:05) – Now I understand. Oh, we want to get them to chat, but you’re just adding more and more layers over the top of the information that people are trying to actually get. You know, there are some ways you can do things in only putting that on the home page where you may not have really dense information. But when you get further down into pages that have information that people are trying to get, you don’t want to clutter it up. Not all designers are going to be amenable to you coming back to them and saying, hey, we need to take things away. We need to simplify our site because some designers can be very opinionated about their designs, but you’re going to find that it’s actually going to the more that you can simplify your site to make the information that you want to stand out the most in that particular page, you’re going to be better off. Jacobs Law. And in this one, this comes from Jacob Nielsen of the Nielsen Nieman Research Group. It’s a UX design research group.

Speaker 3 (00:04:00) – And this law basically states from people are on websites all the time, right? Everybody understands there’s basic things with a website. People are familiar with things that are on a website. This is something that could be familiar to you if you’re of a certain age. You saw crucibles, you know, when they were all the rage in the late 80s, early 90s. So something that is familiar to you. So what we want to do when it comes to designing sites, we don’t want things to necessarily be snowflakes. We don’t want them to be completely outliers. You don’t want something that breaks the mold. What I mean by this is everybody probably has a website where your logo is in the top left of your website when it loads, usually on the top right, you’ve got some kind of call to action, whether it be click to call, it says free consultation, something like that. And then you have your menu in the middle with the pages that people would get to. People understand that they read it left to right.

Speaker 3 (00:04:55) – Obviously in, you know, in Western countries you’re reading left to right if it was. Other countries would be right to left, But having your website design that way makes sense. The only reason to break that convention is for a very specific purpose. You want to keep that the same. It’s something that gives people comfort. People are always we’re programmed to find patterns. It’s just the way we’re wired. And so having something that looks different is jarring. It makes people uncomfortable. And the last thing you want to do is make people uncomfortable on your website. A really good example of when this rule is broken and it works is the New York Times website. If you’ve ever seen The New York Times website, The New York Times logo is dead center in the page. But there was a very specific reason why that was done when The New York Times first went online. They wanted the homepage, the hero section, the top section of the page above the fold to look as much like the physical newspaper as possible.

Speaker 3 (00:06:04) – And the masthead for The New York Times was the Times logo right in the middle of the newspaper. So there are times when you can break this rule, but it needs to be done for very specific reason. You don’t want to do something just to do something different because it may cost you familiarity with people. Users prefer that sites work the same way they prefer. Oh, I know this is where a menu is. I know if I click on the logo, it’ll bring me back to the homepage. There’s a lot of people out there that don’t know that on almost every website, if you click the logo, it will bring you back to the homepage. And it’s why a lot of people have a home link in their menu structure, whereas it’s sort of redundant because it’s usually right next to where the logo is. But it is something that some people put up there. Next, we want to talk about Hicks Law. This again goes back to keeping things simple, so I’m going to get a little interactive here.

Speaker 3 (00:07:07) – John Fisher What do you want to eat for dinner tonight? Well, that was very specific, but you surprised me with that one. But generally what happens is this If I said, Hey, what are we going to have for dinner tonight? You start thinking and like, okay, well, where are we going to go? Like we’re here, so where am I going to go? What options do we have? Are we going to go to a sports and get the pretzels and the nachos? Because, by the way, they’re pretty good. But are we going to go across the river and we’re going to go to Mission Taco or one of the places that are Changs or something that’s over there. One of the things with Hicks law is what you want to do is you want to give the least amount of options possible for somebody to make a decision. So if I said to you, Hey, we’re going to P.F. Chang’s for dinner after this and we’re only getting appetizers, it’s much easier for you and your mind to think, okay, what do I want to eat? That’s an appetizer that they would have at P.F. Chang’s.

Speaker 3 (00:08:04) – And you need to keep this in mind when it comes to your sites. You want to, you know, keep it simple, stupid. I’ve seen a ton of websites that when you go to their main menu structure, they’ll have, you know, practice areas and then other practice areas. They’ll have personal injury, criminal defense, trusted estates. And then under personal injury, they’ve got 14 other things and then they’ve got every subpage of that page. What you really want to do is you want to look at things and say, if somebody is coming to this website, what information do they need to get and where do I need to get them to? You don’t need to have the person who is concerned about a personal injury case say it’s a car accident. Case doesn’t need to see all of the other sub pages under criminal defense. They don’t need to see the trust and estate’s pages. So by having somebody have a limited scope of options and say, okay, I want to go to personal injury car accidents.

Speaker 3 (00:09:05) – So if they go to personal injury, they can click on that page, They can go to car accidents. Now, in the personal injuries silo of content, your menu can then have all of those different personal injury type cases that you may have, but you don’t need to show those necessarily on the home page to get somebody to get to that point. So you want to make sure that you’re not, again, overloading people with information. This goes back to the Zipf’s law. We see so much information, whittle it down to give them the things that they need to make the decisions that you want to take, the actions that you need them to take. It’s a principle of progressive exposure. So it’s like, okay, we’ve got these many options. Then from there you get these many options. Then from there you have these many options and it really cuts down on the clutter that’s on your site and it makes it much easier for people to navigate.

Speaker 1 (00:09:55) – The Gilda’s Maximum Lawyers community of legal entrepreneurs who are taking their business.

Speaker 1 (00:09:59) – And lives to the next level. As a guild member, you’re granted exclusive access to quarterly in-person events around the country. The next mastermind is coming up on July 20th and 21st in Denver, Colorado, featuring hot seat sessions and personal coaching with renowned performance coach Jason Selke. This event will give you the opportunity to work directly with Jason, who has helped countless high performing individuals and teams reach their full potential. During the hot seat sessions. You’ll gain valuable insights and learn strategies to help you overcome the challenges you’re facing in your practice. For a limited time. You can get your ticket at the lowest earlybird price head to max Lot events to join now and reserve your spot at the upcoming Guild mastermind.

Speaker 3 (00:10:43) – The next thing we’re going to talk about relates a lot to the design that’s actually on the site itself. And this is the principle of figure and ground. So anybody who was here last year saw the color theory presentation with the crazy colors that were, you know, on the screen and you were seeing things that weren’t there.

Speaker 3 (00:11:01) – And this is somewhat similar. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to throw the next slide up and I just want you to take a, you know, a couple seconds to just really look at it, because I’m going to have some questions for you guys after we’re done. So just take a look at this. It’s a pretty stock image. You can find it pretty much anywhere online. And this is considered this is using something called figure and ground. So in this image, how many of you guys see a vase or a table base? How many of you guys see two faces looking at one another? Okay. So in this one image, you can see two totally different things. Now, this accompanied with these principles, accompanied with that color theory that I talked about last year, You can use these things to make things really stand out on your page, which is using you positively. Or if you’re doing this incorrectly, you can make things shrink away and people not see that. If you wanted people to see two faces here, well, you’re making a mistake because with the shading and the way it’s done, some people are seeing a vase.

Speaker 3 (00:12:04) – So you want to keep that in mind when you’re actually getting into the relationship between what’s in the foreground, what’s in the background. This is where you can use, obviously, your call to action colors, but this is also where you can use different shades. You can use some drop shadows, things like that to really make the things that you want them to do to stand out. One of the things that is really common is in the middle of your copy on a page, you may have a call to action. Well, you want that to either be have a slightly different background color so it stands out from the page. You want to maybe drop shadow using those different aspects are really going to help you pinpoint the things, but you don’t want to use that all over the place. You don’t want to have that same color, you know, in your sidebar menus and have drop shadows there and all this other stuff you wanted to use it in using figure and ground in the places you really want certain things to pop out.

Speaker 3 (00:12:54) – Okay. So now next, this is probably the one that most of you guys have actually heard of before. The Pareto Principle. This is the, you know, the 8020 rule. It’s definitely something that most people, if you’ve been to any conference you’ve heard about. But one of the things that you need to keep in mind is that in studies online, 55% of searchers are spending their time above the fold. So the first half of the page when, you know, when the page loads and 75% of the time is actually spent on the top two sections. So keeping that in mind and using the 8020 rule, you realize, okay, well, I may have this very long homepage, but the section where I need to spend the majority of my time is in these top two sections. Because in these top two sections, it’s 75% of the time that is on the page. So you need to be really, really careful at what you put in those first two blocks on your websites. I see a lot of sites that have they’re not using it, the hero section and then the second section below it as effectively as possible.

Speaker 3 (00:14:02) – Those are your moneymakers. Those are where you want to have the basic information that you need to get across to somebody. Clear, concise, easy to find, get the whatever that page is trying to get across to somebody. That’s where you need to actually do it. In those top two sections, everything else is great. All that supporting information, the additional content is great, but you need to understand that the vast majority of people on a page are going to stay in those top two sections. And so if you were going to spend any time really tweaking things, those are the areas that you want to actually get into. So by focusing on those, you’re not going to get bogged down in overanalyze every little thing on your page. Like if there was something towards the bottom of your page and you’re like, Oh, we need to tweak this. We tweak that. It’s not going to be worth your time. You really want to focus on the things that are higher up on the page. Now, if there is something on your page that you know.

Speaker 3 (00:14:59) – From your metrics is converting. People say it’s a list, say you’re on the personal injury page and it’s a list of all the other car accidents, truck accidents, TBI, any of those things. If that’s where you’re getting a ton of clicks, you may want to take that section and move that section up on the page to the first or second section because you know that is your moneymaker section. Every site is going to be different. But all of the data suggests that the top two sections are where your most important information needs to be. The last thing I’m going to touch upon today is social proof. It’s funny, as people, we tend to be cautious. Even, you know, people here consider themselves risk takers. We tend to be cautious. And one of the things that you need to understand is that we’re much more likely to do something if we’ve seen someone else do it before, and if that person is somebody that we actually think is a credible person. This is the entire point of this conference.

Speaker 3 (00:15:59) – You guys are coming here as entrepreneurial attorneys to see and hear stories from other entrepreneurial attorneys who have done the thing before. And you guys are going to leave here with lists and lists. I mean, Seth’s going to have a list like 40 pages long of things he wants to implement in his firm. And it’s because you’ve seen people that you know, like and trust who are getting up here, who are telling you their experiences, who you’re talking to at dinner or at the cocktail hours and things like that, what they’ve implemented and how they’ve done it. You might have had all of these things on your to do list or somewhere in your mind that you wanted to do. But when you leave here on Friday, you’re going to be really amped up to get these things done, because now these people who are up here have given you this social proof. Okay, so how can you actually use this for yourselves, for your firm? Well, what you really want to look at is who you are actually using for your social proof on your site and how you are telling their stories.

Speaker 3 (00:17:04) – You know, text based reviews are great. Everybody needs them. But if you want to do things that are really effective to really drive home with people, the ability to do video and get reviews from past clients, that humanizes them, that actually tells their story and allows you then to make that connection with the person on your site. I know there’s a couple of you here that have these types of testimonials on your websites and they are extremely powerful because when you have somebody who can hear somebody else’s story, see themselves in that person, that person’s social proof of saying that you’re the lawyer to talk to you, you’re the one that you want to handle. That case is amplified even more. So keep in mind the people that you’re highlighting need to be people that people either inherently are going to place value in or you have to tell their story in a way that will allow them to build that value to your potential customer. That is it for today. I know everybody’s probably itching to get to lunch. If you have any questions or anything, you can email me.

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The post From Briefcase to Boom with Scott Rose appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

As an attorney, you work hard to build your practice and serve your clients. But have you considered what would happen if something were to happen to you? This is where succession planning comes in. 

In today’s episode, estate planning attorney Steven McClelland  shared his insights on the importance of having a succession plan in place. 

Here are five reasons why every lawyer needs a succession plan:

1. 1. Protect Your Clients: If you were to become incapacitated or pass away, what would happen to your clients? A succession plan ensures that your clients’ needs are taken care of and that their cases are transferred to another attorney who can provide them with the same level of service you did.
   2. Protect Your Employees: Your employees are an important part of your practice. A succession plan ensures that they are taken care of and that their jobs are secure in the event of your incapacity or death.
   3. Protect Your Family: A succession plan ensures that your family is taken care of and that your practice is passed down to them if that is your wish.
   4. Protect Your Reputation: Dumping all your files in a dumpster instead of properly disposing of them is not only unprofessional but can also damage your reputation. A succession plan ensures that your files are properly organized and that your reputation remains intact.
   5. Peace of Mind: Having a succession plan in place gives you peace of mind knowing that your practice will continue to thrive even if something were to happen to you.

A succession plan is crucial for every lawyer. It ensures that your clients, employees, family, and reputation are protected and gives you peace of mind. So, take action today and create a succession plan that works for you and your practice. And be sure to check out the Maximum Lawyer podcast for more valuable insights and strategies to help you overcome challenges in your practice.

07:29 The importance of ending things properly.

09:22 72% of entrepreneurs do not have a succession plan

15:13 A checklist and key documents for succession planning, including a business power of attorney, agreement to close practice, and confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement. He offers to share these documents with listeners. Watch the full video on YouTube here.

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Transcript: The Last Billable Hour with Steven McClelland

Speaker 1 (00:00:00) – So in today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max Khan 2022. Keep listening to hear Steven McClelland as we share his talk the last billable hour, 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. Lawyer, podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

*Steven McClelland * (00:00:38) – This is succession planning. Before we jump into it, I am excited. I’m honored to speak. I want to tell you a little bit about myself. I’m originally from Kansas, so if you’re from the West Coast, you probably flew over my very beautiful home state and I’m now in Arkansas. On the screen is my beautiful wife. It took me three years to get a first date with her, three years. And finally I wore her down and she said, Sure, I’ll go on a date with you. And so it worked out.

*Steven McClelland * (00:01:12) – And as you can see, we have three daughters now, so it’s getting pretty serious and they are a ton a ton of fun. So I really when they were introducing me, I do spend a lot of time, as you know, the Tea parties and and all that fun stuff. So, yes, like Tyson, I got my private pilot’s license a couple of years ago. It’s been a lot of fun. It was kind of a fun, I guess, the unicorn space kind of thing to try something new and get around and see the world from a different perspective. Of course, my wife had a different perspective on that too, and was terrified by the idea of me flying. In fact, that really kind of got me into thinking about succession planning because, you know, you hear a lot of stories the last billable hour. So my wife was concerned. She she said, look, okay, you’re flying now, listen, what happens if the power goes out in your plane? And I thought that’s a pretty fair question.

*Steven McClelland * (00:02:07) – I said, well, I’ve learned this. The plane actually has this dual magneto system, so that doesn’t need it doesn’t need power. It can still operate if it if it doesn’t have power. And she goes, okay, well, what if the engine quits? And I said, okay, that’s a problem. Probably going to land the plane like every pilot has ever landed a plane. What goes up must come down. And and I said, Honey, a good landing is one you can walk away from. A great one is one. You can reuse the plane. Right. And so she didn’t find much comfort in that. And she said, look, I really think you need to think more about this from a succession planning. What would happen if you die? And I thought that’s fair. So that was kind of the the reason I thought I need I need to delve into this. I need to put together a plan. And I know succession planning is not that hot of a topic, right? It’s not something that we get excited about, right? Everyone’s here to learn how to grow their practice, their thinking about how to get more employees.

*Steven McClelland * (00:03:05) – Right? Vas efficiency, all that good stuff. But the truth is, Stephen Covey said you got to start with the end in mind. We do that when we implement a new system or a new app, and I can’t think of a more end than actually the end, right? And I was surprised by how much we actually spoke about death earlier in the discussion this morning. It’s something that we all have to address. And I guess as an estate planning attorney, we have far horizons, right? We are always thinking about contingencies and the what ifs. Right. That’s really what gets clients into the door. That’s what they appreciate, the fact that that we do have a plan. So here we are. It’s not to be morbid, but just to give some clarity on our lives, in our practice. If you do estate planning, this is just a great add on that you can share with your your clients. So here is a dumpster. In a lot of ways, my state is very, very unique.

*Steven McClelland * (00:04:00) – The attorneys, there is some glory that they simply die in the courtroom or die at their office. I don’t know if your states are like that, but we have people that just will not give it up. We had a gentleman in my community. He was an attorney and he was dying of cancer and was taking clients two weeks before he passed. This is just kind of a common thing I see. I don’t know all the reasons behind it, but I don’t want to be working in my 90s as another gentleman is. I think at some point you got to go on to different different pastures. So we’re going to talk about that particular succession plan. But I have to tell you, if we can go to the next slide, that the reason I am here is because of a succession plan. Many of us stand on the shoulders of giants that preceded us. It could have been a mentor. It could have been some other attorney that you worked for. And that is Jim there in the middle.

*Steven McClelland * (00:04:53) – He was the giant whose shoulders that I stood on. He brought me on in law school to do estate planning. Didn’t even know what state planning was when I was in law school, and he taught me everything he knew. And he had mentioned, well, I had this rare form of cancer that could come back in a few years. He said About 5 or 10 years. And sure enough, I remember the fall day. He came into the office. He said, Stephen, I just got back from the doctor and they said, My cancer has come back. It is terminal. And they gave him about a year to live. And so it’s a conversation that you have with someone but is hard to swallow, right, to how that works. And so he basically said to me, he said, look, I have a year left. I want to spend it with my family. I want to travel until I get sick. I don’t want to turn this over to you. All of it is yours.

*Steven McClelland * (00:05:45) – And that was we did the same practice area, but that was a lot to enter. Emotions to substitute counsel on all these cases, to send letters to the clients and his past clients. At that point, it really wasn’t really about me. It was about, you know, helping him, you know, transition. And for him, the ability to walk away, the ability for him to spend time with it was worth more than anything, right? The fact that he could do that, there was no amount of money I could have paid him for that. He just wanted time. That’s what he wanted. And I was able to do that. And one of the interesting things in the state of Arkansas, he sent a letter to the bar and said, look, I’m dying and I need to surrender my license. They wouldn’t allow that. They wanted him to go in front of a judge to declare that he was was dying. And and he brought that letter to me. This is ridiculous.

*Steven McClelland * (00:06:38) – I don’t have time to go see a judge to tell him I’m dying. Will you just send him a death certificate? And that’s what we ended up doing. It was kind of a weird system. I don’t know why they needed it, but in our state, that’s the way to do it. That he taught me how to say goodbye. Does that make sense? But I’ll never forget, on this day, on September 18th, 2020, my wife said, Hey, husband, can you take the crib and take it to the dumpster? We’re done having kids. And I was so elated after three daughters, I thought, that’s enough, right? And so I get to take this this crib and disassemble it and throw it away is very therapeutic for me to do that. And as I’m giving the utility bill to the lady, I see a woman. I thought I recognized her. I wasn’t quite sure, but it wasn’t until I got up to the dumpster. I looked inside and I saw all these banker’s boxes, like, what are these banker’s boxes doing in here? And I looked a little bit and some of them had toppled over.

*Steven McClelland * (00:07:29) – And I realized that this was all firm files from an attorney who was retiring and the check statements were out, you know, just duplicate checks and the client names. And I’m thinking, oh my goodness, if you were a thief, this would be a gold mine, right? This particular attorney did a lot of adoption work, which I think is pretty private information and dealt with a lot of kids. And I thought, this is terrible, right? We have things like shred it in Arkansas. Don’t think that we don’t have those kind of companies. They actually come to your office and do this for you. So I couldn’t understand why you would think she would know better. You know, how you end things does matter. And she was married to the judge in town. And I’m thinking, you guys have got to know better than this, right? But essentially what they did was they dumped all their files and they don’t even live in the state anymore. They just got out. Right. So to say this is bad is to say that Titanic sustained a little paint image, Right? This is not the way to run our practices.

*Steven McClelland * (00:08:27) – This is not the way to set up the next person for success.

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*Steven McClelland * (00:09:22) – Statistically speaking, a rocket lawyer did a study back in 2017 and found that 72% of entrepreneurs do not have succession plan. And I imagine that number is probably around the same amount of attorneys, right? We are so busy in our practices and doing things and we’re trying to implement new systems, right? That we forget about having a plan in case something dies.

*Steven McClelland * (00:09:49) – There’s a great quote. I worked for an attorney many years ago and he said this. He said, It’s not the practice of law, it’s the administration of law that’s difficult. That’s basically what maximum lawyer is. It’s the administration of law, not. Of practice of law that we need help with. Right? No one’s telling you how to file family law cases. It’s the administration. And and this is part of that administration component. There’s two main things you got to worry about. You got to worry about incapacity and death. Right? I don’t know which one is worse. I had a funeral director tell me it’s better to be seen than viewed. I don’t know if that’s true. But in this context, literally, as I was preparing this, one of the attorneys in town had some type of a stroke and ran off the road and hit a tree, had to be airlifted to a hospital. Right. And he was out for for three weeks. And he was a solo. I don’t know what his plan was, but you got to be careful.

*Steven McClelland * (00:10:44) – There is short term and long term disability that’s beyond the scope of this presentation. But those things can happen suddenly, right? Like an airplane falling out of the sky is pretty sudden. And like my partner, you know, he had some indication he had a year and a year goes by pretty quickly. The truth is, no one in this room knows when they’ve seen more sunsets than they’ll ever see. Right. We don’t know if had a crystal ball would be amazing. I tell you exactly what to do. Those expiration dates that were given to us, you just don’t know, right? So you got to have some type of plan as you’re planning. You got to prepare for four different individuals. The first is you got to think about your employees, right? Many of them have stuck with you. They’ve helped you. Some of them are associates. You know, their main concern is, do I still have a job? For me, one of the ways I try to set them up for success is to make sure that my payroll is set 3 or 4 months in the future.

*Steven McClelland * (00:11:42) – I like to do that because I’m lazy and I don’t like to do it every month, but it’s already set. So if I did die on the way home and they’re at least going to get paid for 3 or 4 months, I don’t know if they’ll they’ll actually work. But they got money coming in, right? So you got to have some income in the bank to do that. I don’t know if you’ve thought about this, but, you know, they’re going to have to find another job eventually. Right. Put a reference letter for him. You know, dear future employer, if you’re reading this, I’m sad to report that I’ve passed and cannot highly recommend so-and-so has been a great employee. Put that in your file so they have something. I mean, how impressive would that be to their new employer to know that was the reason why they left. Simple takes, you know, five minutes. Do it for all your employees. Your clients are also concerned, right? Because they have legal matters.

*Steven McClelland * (00:12:28) – They’ve paid your retainers. They have case files and confidentiality. So I mentioned in my bio, my wife’s a medical provider and very smart, very brilliant. But when it comes to law, she has zero interest, right? She would not even know where to begin. And having done a state planning now for ten years, talked to thousands of families, okay, the number one goals my clients have are I don’t want to leave a mess for my family. That’s their number one goal. And the number one thing that children say, you know, is I don’t even know where to start. Right. Is no plan. Those are the two scariest things to hear. I don’t know where to start. Right. So you got to think about your family for them. You got to think about how to make it simple. When I was a solo, I had an agreement with an attorney in town that he would take over my case files. Right. And I know the struggle is all of us think, well, that attorney doesn’t do as well as I do.

*Steven McClelland * (00:13:26) – Right? We all think that. And that kind of prevents us from reaching out to them, that no one could take care of the clients the way that we do. Right. But the truth is, cemeteries are full of irreplaceable attorneys, right? Your clients will go somewhere else. They will find somebody else. Right? So you’ve got to make sure that you have an attorney that can help with that transition, a process. Also, third parties. You got utility accounts, right? You got to pay them to keep the lights on. Right. And so our our firm uses one pass and we heard about it. I really like it because you can set up manage folders. And so for the utility accounts, they have all that information. They’ve got notes in there, so I can share that with them and updated as need be. Right. It’s just a great way if I die, they’ve got access to those things. So what can you do today? I think, number one philosophy, you got to impress upon your people to have all the files in such a way that if you died, if they died, that somebody could pick it up and be able to take that file and work it.

*Steven McClelland * (00:14:22) – Okay. And so encourage them not just to put notes in there, but the question is, what are we waiting on and are we waiting on a deadline or are we waiting, waiting on the court? Are we waiting on, you know, a client to get us something? So there’s something in there about how the the next step in the case file very, very important. Make sure your accounting is up to date so someone has access to to that information, list your utilities. You got to do that. Make sure all your hearings are on the calendar. I don’t know why, but but some some attorneys have different systems. And I’m like, you got to put it all in one place. Right? Because that that was helpful to me because when I. Filed motions for all the hearings that were said on my partner’s calendar is very simple to do that, right? I had access to his calendar. I already mentioned setting up a payroll 3 to 4 months. But the bottom line is it’s about mindset.

*Steven McClelland * (00:15:13) – It’s about talking about it, thinking about it and doing a plan. Many of us, the problem is we want a perfect plan before we do anything right. And a lot of times that just it doesn’t happen. So my advice is a good succession plan that is done is better than a perfect one that never gets done. Right. Don’t let your families be the ones who say, well, this is what dad or mom wanted, right? This is how they wanted it to go. Put it in writing. It takes a little bit of time. And so the key documents. So at the end of my next slide, I have a QR code where if you put your name and email address, I’ll email you my documents, redacted it. But of all these documents for you, okay. To give you a head start, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel here, but it is for informational purposes only. I’m not warranting it’s going to work in all states. But the first thing is a checklist.

*Steven McClelland * (00:16:06) – What does your family and in my case have an associate attorney? What are the first things that they have to do? Prioritize that for them. Break it down so they know who to call and they have that information. Okay. Number two, a business power of attorney. So if I have a stroke, very common in my family. Elder men have strokes when they’re 75. Right. So I’m probably not going to be flying a plane in my when I’m 75 have a business power of attorney so that my employee, my associate, she has access to the bank account, she has some access. We set up a separate firm expense account. But the main one, I’m the only one that’s on there. Okay. I foolishly asked. I asked the bank. I said no. Can I put a beneficiary on this business account like a pod? We do that a lot of times in estate planning. And she laughed at me and she said, Well, businesses don’t die. I thought, Oh, I didn’t think about that.

*Steven McClelland * (00:16:55) – So you’ve got to have a power of attorney. You’ve got to have documents that allow for your people to access that account. Okay. Agreement to close practice. This was important into December. Every year we’re cash basis, so we have to pay taxes on what’s in our account. Kind of stinks. But in January, you have retained earnings, right? And so I worked out an agreement with how much of that retained earnings is part of the buyout to my wife. Does that make sense? I didn’t want that all to just go to the firm. But there’s significant amount of money in there and I didn’t want that just to think, oh, that’s all yours, right? To have that buyout now, it’s not perfect, but the fact that my wife doesn’t have a bunch of grief, it was definitely worth it. I got a confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement and a letter from the attorney to clients, which is very helpful. I want to set up my associate for success. So there’s a letter that says, Hey, I have died.

*Steven McClelland * (00:17:47) – I have the utmost confidence in my associate and you’ll love working with her. And I appreciate you being a client. I can’t tell you a better way to set someone else up for success. So I thank you all for your good attention. I hope that helped. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. Last quote I have for you It’s not the load that breaks you, it’s how you carry it. And I love Maximum Lawyer because it teaches all of us how to carry that load just a little bit better. So don’t ever hesitate to reach out to me. Thanks.

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Have you ever wondered what it takes to start your own law firm? In this episode, guest Audra Doyle shares her journey from being an elementary music specialist to becoming an immigration lawyer and opening her own firm. Audra talks about the stress and high caseload at her previous job, but also the invaluable knowledge she gained from it. 

She also shares how she had to pivot during the pandemic to get more clients, including using social media platforms like TikTok — growing a massive following. Then losing her TikTok account … 

Audra shares her journey of losing her entire staff and starting over to build her team up again. But the most valuable lesson she shares is about mindset and staying focused on what is most important for the firm. No matter what happens.

Audra shares how she manages to stay positive through exercise, living in the moment, and setting boundaries. Tune in to learn more about the importance of mindset and how it can help you achieve your goals, even when you need to hit the restart button, again. 

Episode Highlight:

02:13 Audra talks about her journey from 2007 to 2019 when she opened up her firm

06:48 The stress and high caseload at the immigration firm, but also the invaluable knowledge Audra gained from it

12:95 Audra talks about her experience with posting on TikTok, losing her staff, and hiring new case managers instead of paralegals

18:46 Managing anxiety, including exercise and living in the moment, and the importance of setting boundaries

19:03 Audra shares her vision for her firm, including the goal of having a team that allows her to be the CEO and possibly hiring another attorney

20:27 Audra talks about the importance of mindset in running a law firm and how it affects the numbers

Jim’s Hack: Make a button on the homepage of your cell phone to open Pipedrive and check your numbers. Check numbers once a day – the more you check the more you make. 

Audra’s Tip: Answer common client questions in pre-made FAQ videos so all you have to do when a client emails a question is send then an email template with a video that answers the question for you – saving you time! 

Tyson’s Tip: Read the book “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” by Cal Newport

Watch the full video on YouTube here. 

Connect with Audra:

• • Website  
  • TikTok
  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
  • Youtube  

Resources:

• • Join the Guild Membership
  • Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Join the Facebook Group
  • Follow the Facebook Page
  • Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcript: Starting From Zero Again and Again with Audra Doyle

Jim Hacking:
And welcome back to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. I’m Jim Hacking.

Tyson Mutrux:
And I’m Tyson Mutrix, what’s up Jimmy!

Jim Hacking:
Oh well, you know Tyson, life is good. Summertime, summertime, my daughter just finished eighth grade today, it was her last day of school. The boys are, two of the three boys are home for the summer so life is good.

Tyson Mutrux:
It’s interesting to me because like our kids… They started summer school today. So they were out last week. And they’re not gonna go the whole summer, but we wanted to get Jackson especially acclimated to middle school because it’s a big deal. So they’re gonna go a couple days this week and then maybe a couple days next week and then periodically throughout the summer whenever we need a little bit of childcare coverage. But yeah, you’re right, life is good. It’s exciting.

Jim Hacking:
You want to go ahead and introduce our guest today?

Tyson Mutrux:
I absolutely do. I’m very excited about our guest. She is Audra Doyle, and she is the owner slash attorney of Doyle Law in Atlanta, Georgia. Open since 2019, her firm focuses on family and employment-based immigration law with a special focus on self-sponsored employment-based green card applications. Audra has been practicing immigration law since 2007 and is a recipient of the AILA Pro Bono Benefactor Award, and we’ll get into more later on. Audra, thank you and welcome to the show.

Audra Doyle:
Thank you so much. I’m thrilled to be here and hope you guys are doing well.

Jim Hacking:
Thanks, Audra. Hey Tyson, your mic is a little low. It’s like.

Tyson Mutrux:
Is that better?

Jim Hacking:
Much better, thanks.

Tyson Mutrux:
Oh, yeah. Thanks for letting me know.

Jim Hacking:
Sure. So, Ms. Audra,

Audra Doyle:
Yes.

Jim Hacking:
it’s great to have you on the show finally. It’s way overdue and Tyson and I have both found your positive nature and your sense of humor and your. Approach to life to be something that we really enjoy and we like we like having you in the guild and just hanging around But for those of our listeners who don’t know you Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that story from 2007 to 2019 when you opened up your firm?

Audra Doyle:
Absolutely. So yeah, 2007 became a lawyer and I knew halfway through law school that I wanted to practice immigration law. I specifically knew that the type of cases that were my favorite and I’m lucky enough to have been able to stay in that field the whole time, which is US immigration, family and employment based cases. Particularly, I enjoy working with folks who are sponsoring themselves. So scientists, entrepreneurs. artists, musicians, all those types of people that don’t have a job where they would be able to be sponsored by an employer. That is my niche. I just love it. And one thing that I love about immigration law is getting to meet so many interesting people from around the world. So it really does check all my boxes. So 2007, I started out with a boutique law firm, you know, had a high client load. downtown Atlanta, corporate job, and I was pretty burnt out by 2009. So the opportunity came for me to go back to a smaller law firm, smaller setting, where I had complete control, or I would say 90% complete control over the clients that I chose and the clients that I was gonna work with back into my niche again. And so I took that job in 09. My boss retired in 2019 and I actually purchased her law firm, which was wonderful because I purchased the goodwill of the firm. It was 20 years old by the time she retired. I had that wonderful client base. I had a Rolodex of connections and that really helped me to open my own law firm based on what I had already been doing with many of those clients. So from 2019 until now, It’s been Doyle Law and I have also really enjoyed being a firm owner. So I feel very lucky that I’ve been able to do things that I’m interested in and that I’m not bored with my job at all.

Tyson Mutrux:
So this is not your first career, this is your second career,

Audra Doyle:
Correct.

Tyson Mutrux:
so tell us about that, what’d you do before, and then what was the transition like?

Audra Doyle:
Well, I asked my husband, hey, am I going to be allowed to tell the story of how I became a lawyer? He said, yeah, go ahead and tell them. Okay. So my husband and

Jim Hacking:
Thank

Audra Doyle:
I

Jim Hacking:
you.

Audra Doyle:
met in music school. We are both music majors and I was an elementary music specialist. So I have a specialist certification, taught elementary school music for five years, and that was my career. I knew it all along. That’s what I wanted to do. Well, two music teachers in the family is one too many. And we discovered quickly that with the school systems, we were never gonna be able to work even remotely close together. So one of us had to do something different. And one day for my birthday, he signed me up for the LSAT. And he gave me an LSAT study guide. So

Jim Hacking:
Wow.

Tyson Mutrux:
Oh, that’s fantastic.

Audra Doyle:
that is how that

Tyson Mutrux:
Yes.

Audra Doyle:
happened. He said, well, you never got around to signing up, so I just went ahead and signed up for you. Okay, fine. I’ll take the LSAT. So I passed, of course, and got into a few law schools. And another thing, here’s the thing about my life, never say never, right? So I said, oh, I’m never moving to Atlanta. I don’t want to live in the big city. Well, here I am. Because the next phase was, where am I going to go to law school? I got a scholarship to Georgia State University. So I had signed up for the University of Georgia. I called them. from my school that I was working at said, hey, I’ll bring you my deposit this afternoon. Round about lunchtime, I get an emergency phone call while I’m teaching. They’re like, Mrs. Doyle, you have an emergency call and run up the hall. So you know schools, the halls are very long. So, you know, going up the hall, it’s Georgia State. And they’re like, hello, we would like to offer you a full scholarship to come to Georgia State. So I laughed and thought it was a joke, but it was real. And that’s how I ended up in Atlanta. going to Georgia State and, you know, immigration law just kind of fell in my lap as well. I took an internship and discovered I loved it. So that’s my journey.

Tyson Mutrux:
That’s awesome.

Jim Hacking:
When you, that is an awesome story. Go ahead, we’re gonna add something, Audra.

Audra Doyle:
Yeah, I just said I’m not mad at him for signing me up for the LSAT.

Jim Hacking:
We had a friend in law school whose wife bought herself a red Mercedes without telling her husband. So I think signing someone up for the LSAT a little bit better than

Audra Doyle:
Yeah,

Jim Hacking:
that.

Audra Doyle:
absolutely.

Jim Hacking:
So talk to us about your life at that immigration firm that you were at, the big firm. What did you learn that you liked? And what did you learn that you wanted to do differently when you ever were to open your own

Audra Doyle:
Absolutely.

Jim Hacking:
firm?

Audra Doyle:
Well, I ended it on a good note, but as I said, the stress was just so much that I knew I could not make a career out of it. For employment-based immigration in the larger law firms, usually you’ll have customers who are big corporations and you’ll be dealing with, for example, working visas, you’re going to file 10 to 20 working visas, maybe in a month and So the caseload was very, very high. I also did not get to choose my caseload. So even though I, as a lawyer, would feel that the case was not strong enough, I was directed that I had to go make it happen. Even if the facts are bad, the law is not on our side, etc., that’s what the client wanted. So I felt like I was pretty constrained and what I could advise people to do and the types of cases that I thought were… good to be filed with immigration. And the hours were just really long as well. The commute was really long. And after a while, I was burnt out. Now, what I learned at that firm was invaluable. I discovered that I really like the technicalities of immigration law. It gave me a very, very deep well of knowledge. that I still use to this day. So I’m very thankful to have worked there and to have had that experience.

n

Tyson Mutrux:
Audra, what do you think now that you’ve got some years under

Audra Doyle:
Mm-hmm.

Tyson Mutrux:
your belt, like what do you think if you were to go back and do it all over again, what do you think you would have changed about how you’ve done things? If anything, maybe you’d be doing it the exact same way. I just wonder

Audra Doyle:
Hello.

Tyson Mutrux:
because now you’ve got some experience under your belt, right? So I just wonder what you’d change.

Audra Doyle:
I think one thing I would change is I would want to open my firm sooner than I did. I wish that I could have opened this firm maybe 2012 or 2013 instead of 2019. Because I feel like I’m just getting started, even though I’m in the middle of my career. I’m just getting started as a business owner three years in. And I feel like I would have been further in my career, in my business. you know, than if I had started earlier. So that’s one thing I would definitely change. As far as the field, I love it. One thing about being an immigration lawyer, it doesn’t translate very well to other things. So, you know, if I wanted to add a practice area, I think it would be, it would be a lot of work to go out and learn another practice area at this point.

Jim Hacking:
Audra, I was wondering if you’d be willing to share sort of where your clients come from and then if you could tell your TikTok story if you’re willing.

Audra Doyle:
Absolutely. And I have big news about the TikTok story. So I’ll share that at

Jim Hacking:
Nice.

Audra Doyle:
the end. Okay. So I would say it’s half and half at this point. My clients definitely are those referrals, all those relationships that I’ve made from the old firm. And then the other half, I have had to be really nimble. I have had to get savvy. And I started doing that in 2020 when business just about dried up. I had to… I had to pivot, figure out how to get clients because people were just not calling. So I decided, first thing was to post something on Facebook every day. Started doing that. Then I heard about TikTok and I saw these dancing lawyers on TikTok. That’s not me. You will never catch me dancing on TikTok. But I thought, you know what, I have something to say. I have information to share about how to get through this process. the right way, the wrong way, you know, do’s and don’ts of immigration. So I said, I can make a 15 second video. And it’s so easy. With your knowledge area, it is so easy. You could sit here and talk here for eight hours about what you know. And so it was easy for me to figure out how to break that down into a 15 minute clip, smile, be engaging, look at your clients. And I figured out that yes, I can do that. So I started posting one TikTok every day, one Facebook post. one TikTok and I dedicated myself to that. Jim, previously, while I was still at the old law firm, I had opened a YouTube channel. So that was already underway. So I noticed that my TikTok channel blew up. It was really amazing. I think I had like 65,000 followers on TikTok and then they shut my channel down. It was horrible. It was last fall. was receiving cold calls, about half of my cold calls were coming from TikTok. So that deep sixed my cold calls right there. It was really terrible. And I had to once again pivot. Um, so I opened up another channel. I figured out what was the problem. And I think it was putting my business phone number on the TikTok channel. So heads up everybody. I’m pretty sure that’s why they shut me down. They kept saying, you’re listing personal information. And I kept one. What are you talking about? And I’m pretty sure it was the phone number. So I have learned and I never post my phone number now on the TikTok videos. And so far I have not had another video taken down. But the big news is that as of last night, I’ve reached 10,000 followers on the new channel.

Jim Hacking:
Nice.

Audra Doyle:
So I’m so excited about that. It doesn’t mean anything, but it was just a personal goal to try and come back from zero. And it feels really good.

Jim Hacking:
You have such a great attitude though. It’s just, I mean, Tyson, we say it all the time, just Audra’s a very positive person and I think that story exhibits it nicely.

Audra Doyle:
Thank you. Thank you. There.

Tyson Mutrux:
That’s huge.

Audra Doyle:
And let me share with you. My life is not all hearts and flowers. I have, to be completely honest, I have dealt with anxiety. I’ve dealt with depression. And I’ve had to figure out, what do I need to do to help myself? So just sharing with everybody out there, if you’re seeing that you’re struggling in some way, it’s OK to go get help. And I’m coming from a family where that was taboo to even say that I need to go talk with someone. But it’s 2023, it’s not taboo anymore. And it has really helped me to grow as a person to seek that help.

Tyson Mutrux:
Well, I’m glad you said that because I am going to ask you about something tough that you did have to go through. And that’s if you’re comfortable talking about it is you losing your entire staff

Audra Doyle:
Yes. Yes.

Tyson Mutrux:
nin 2022 and going through that. So what was that like and how do you rebound from it? Because that’s not easy.

Audra Doyle:
That was pretty awful. It was pretty bad and it was shocking. I was not expecting it to happen. I had my paralegal, he was fully trained, he was amazing. And another law firm in town hired him away. I had my executive assistant who was also amazing, but her career is in the movies. And so she got a job at a movie studio. So I was like, of course, please go. The other one, she said, oh, my brother wants me to work with him. Of course, go with it. So each person, you know, it was nothing wrong with the firm because I wanted to see, you know, is there anything going on wrong here that’s making people leaving, but I truly don’t think there was. Life just happened. And it sucked really bad because I had to hire a whole new team starting in I think around April is when they all started. So I was starting from zero. And once again, it’s kind of like taking a step backwards. You know, you’ve got momentum in your firm. Everybody knows their job. Everybody knows how to do things. Everybody knows how to talk on the phone. To zero, nobody knows anything. So last year, for the whole year, I feel like I was training and getting people up to speed. And I think, Jim, you can speak to this. You know, training in immigration paralegal takes quite a while. So one thing I noticed, and I’ll talk about my team in a minute, is that In 2022, 2023, paralegals are very hard to find. I don’t know if you guys have experienced that, but boy, it is so hard to find good help. So I had to be very creative. I hired case managers instead of paralegals because I had to have somebody just doing the work, making the copies, printing the documents, drafting the forms. It’s like, okay, we can get some case managers in here. I’ll be handling the paralegal work and just try to make it work until I find a good paralegal. It never happened. I never found a qualified ready to go fully trained paralegal. So I in this winter spring 2023, I decided to change what I’m asking for. And I said I want to hire a case manager posted it on deed will train the goal is for you to become a paralegal. No experience necessary. I got so many applicants of people who want to be a paralegal. They have zero experience, no immigration experience. And I found a gem. But she had never been a paralegal. So my previous ad wasn’t working. She never applied. But she actually went to law school in Brazil. So I know she’s got the legal mind that I can train and turn her into a paralegal one day.

Jim Hacking:
We’ve had the exact same experience. We’ve run the same job posting, one as an admin, one as a paralegal, but the description is exactly the same. It’s the title of paralegal that puts people off because they think they need to have a paralegal certificate.

Audra Doyle:
Exactly. Yep. It was just a ghost town with applicants. And then I made the change, said, you know, we’ll train. You can start from zero. I just need to have somebody with the brain cells up there that can, you know, learn and grow and be willing to do some tough things with immigration. And I found somebody that I really hope is going to stay with me a long time.

Jim Hacking:
You’re listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Our guest today, Audra Doyle, immigration lawyer extraordinaire out of Atlanta. Audra, talk to us a little bit about your mindset. Like how, you talked about anxiety and depression and I think a lot of us have suffered from those kinds of things, but how do you sort of on a day-to-day basis keep yourself balanced and keep that positive attitude that we’ve seen for so long?

Audra Doyle:
trying a lot of different things. So if something’s not working for me, I know that I have to move on and try something different. So Jim, I actually took a note from you. Something that I started doing when I get home from work is I go get on the treadmill. Just take myself a nice 20 minute walk, decompress, and it really clears my head. So right now, exercise is something that is helping my mindset, helping me to stay grounded. Another thing that I try to… do a couple of things is I try to live in the moment. I’m not looking towards the future and worrying about what might happen tomorrow. I’m just focusing on what can I do today? What can I do in this moment to move myself forward, my firm forward? If I’m with my family, I’m in that moment with them. And I try to turn off the lawyer brain and the business owner brain. That’s very hard to do, but I really try to make a conscious effort to do that. The last thing that I learned through therapy and a lot of reading is I made boundaries for myself. I’m from Georgia. I am a woman. There I was taught that there are no boundaries and anything that anybody tells me to do, that’s what I need to go do, right? I was not, I don’t think I gave myself permission to say no. And these days I have boundaries. I know, you know, I can’t do everything. And I give myself permission to say no. to not take on difficult cases, to make sure clients are staying in their lane as we say, and it has just made my life a lot more peaceful.

Tyson Mutrux:
I love that. And again, I just love your positivity.

Audra Doyle:
Thank

Tyson Mutrux:
It’s

Audra Doyle:
you.

Tyson Mutrux:
always just great. So what’s on the horizon for you? Do you have these big grand plans of having this massive immigration firm or are you wanting to sort of stay smaller? What are your plans for the future?

Audra Doyle:
I have a really clear plan and vision, and I’ve been open since 2019 and I haven’t met it yet. So until I do that, I don’t want to make my vision any larger. So I want to have my firm to a place where I do not have to physically be here, telling everybody what to do all day long. That’s the goal. And now I feel like I have a team where I can start to really push towards that goal. And that will want to give myself more freedom. to be the finder and not the minder. And I remember that old podcast you guys did, those three things, finder, minder, grinder. So last year I was just grinding it out. This year I’m minding a lot more. And in the future I would like to be the CEO. I want to be looking over the firm and possibly even have an attorney to start signing the forms instead of me. Because if I’m the only attorney here, I’m never going to be able to let go of everything like I need to. So I think after this paralegal really takes off, the next hire for me should be another attorney.

Jim Hacking:
I know that you’re going to be joining us at the mastermind

Audra Doyle:
Yeah.

Jim Hacking:
in Denver and I’m excited about seeing you talk to us a little bit about your mindset when it comes to personal development Sort of joining the guild, you know mindset stuff like what? What what’s your frame of reference when it comes to trying to decide whether or not to do something like that?

Audra Doyle:
That’s a great question, Jim. And that is the reason I actually signed up for the Guild Mastermind in July, because I really debated, do I really need to go? Do I really need to work on my mindset with Dr. Selk? You know, oh, it’s not a technical guild thing. But I thought to myself, you know, honestly, if my mindset is not right, I can see the numbers go down every single time. And I’ve noticed that when I am the most focused, You know, I am good with myself. My firm functions at its best. So I thought, you know what, actually mindset for me seems to be what I need to focus on next. Because in this job, you can get lost in the day to day. I was telling Tyson, you know, before we started that today I had a bunch of mushrooms pop up. You know, you look out in the yard at night, there’s nothing, you look out one minute later, there’s mushrooms everywhere. Well, that’s how the day went. And so dealing with all those little issues has taken my mind off of what is on my calendar, what I need to be focusing on, making my YouTube video, new business development. And so if I can’t step back and see that and see, all right, I’m down here in the weeds, I need to step back again, and I need to stay focused on what is most important for this firm. and it is very easy for me to get off track. So hopefully this summer, I’m gonna find some more tools to help me.

Jim Hacking:
That’s going to be the clip that Becca is going to take off and put in the social feed.

Audra Doyle:
of the pressure.

Tyson Mutrux:
Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I love it. So it’s funny to say that about the mindset because I never would have believed it. I was like, there’s no way that it has that big of an effect. But since I’ve been working with Jason, it’s got a massive

Audra Doyle:
It,

Tyson Mutrux:
effect. It definitely starts with mindset

Audra Doyle:
yeah, and another

Tyson Mutrux:
completely.

Audra Doyle:
thing, you know, I’ll be open and honest, is procrastination. I think a lot of us procrastination goes hand in hand with anxiety over being perfect. And I definitely have that disease where I want it to be perfect. And then when I know it’s not gonna be perfect, or, you know, just is really hard to execute. So I’m looking for more tools to help me not, the good is better done. then the perfect is not done. And I really want to focus on those types of things with Dr. Silk this summer.

Tyson Mutrux:
Love it. I can’t

Audra Doyle:
Mm-hmm.

Tyson Mutrux:
wait. Well, we are at time, so we’re going to wrap things up. I’ve really enjoyed this. So this is great. It’s sad that we’re going to wrap things up, but I’ve really enjoyed it. So I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. There’s a lot of great information being shared on a daily basis, on an hourly basis. So join us there. If you’ve not, just go to Facebook, search Maximum Lawyer. If you want a higher level conversation, go to maxlawguild.com with people like Audra. MaxLawGuild.com and then you’ll have the opportunity once you’ve joined to join us at the Quarterly Masterminds and other things like Jason Selt coming in the next couple of months Nice little retreat out in Denver, which is awesome We also had the Zapathon and we’ve also had the video workshop that Jim put on which was amazing And so join us there go to MaxLawGuild.com and then while you’re listening to the rest of this episode If you’ll give us a five-star review, we will greatly appreciate it. Audra What’s actually I did it again Jimbo Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week? That’s twice today. Jim, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking:
Speaking of the guild, we had an interesting discussion in the guild the other day. It was one of the, I would say newer members, I think, was asking about how often law firm owners should be looking at their numbers. And different people chimed in. And just for what it’s worth, I have Pipe Drive set up so that I can keep track because I’m sort of responsible for signups and intake. And so I have it all tricked out so that I have it now. It’s just a button on my iPhone. I made the webpage a button in Safari so that I can look and see. Exactly what the numbers are as far as you know new new leads in how many contracts were sent how many were signed? How many people paid that day? So to me it’s it’s sort of at least once a day kind of a thing Where you need to be checking your numbers daily? I think and the more I will say this the more I’ve checked my numbers the more money I’ve made So I used to not want to check my numbers at all and say I’m not a numbers guy I don’t want to know about this stuff, but Certainly as you get bigger and bigger, you really got to start paying attention to this stuff because it can be really important for cash flow and other reasons.

Tyson Mutrux:
Everything you need to know is in the numbers. So I agree with you, Mba. All right, Audra, now it’s your turn. What is your tip or hack of the

Audra Doyle:
Okay,

Tyson Mutrux:
week?

Audra Doyle:
nthis is hopefully a very helpful tip to everyone. I got tired of answering the same questions all the time. So what I did was made a series of videos on YouTube and they’re unlisted, so they’re only for my clients, and it answers common questions. So a client will say, oh, I’ve got a biometrics appointment coming. What’s going on? What do I have to do? Click video done. And I have a template email. I put the video in there so they can read it, they can see it, they can hear it, and their question will be answered. And it has really reduced my time in answering those everyday questions.

Tyson Mutrux:
Love it. Very good stuff. Mine is from the book. I talked about the book. on the last episode, but this one’s from that book. It’s from Cal Newport, and it’s a way of reducing distractions and eruptions, making your day more efficient, and it’s a very simple thing. I don’t know if you all use Audra, if you use Slack or something like that. I think Jim, I think you use Slack, but I don’t know about you, but I bet you get a bunch of messages throughout the day. And so something we’ve started is, we just started this week, so we’re in the beginning stages of it, but we’re implementing office hours. has office

Audra Doyle:
Yes.

Tyson Mutrux:
hours and they’re at different times and they’re not at the same time. And so if someone needs something, they’ll hold on to their questions or comments or concerns and they’ll reach out to you during that time. And so I’m looking forward to it at the amount of distractions going down. I think will be awesome. And so it’s just a, I look forward to lower anxiety is what I’m looking forward to, but office hours.

Jim Hacking:
I was just wondering about this the other day. Do you know, like, could I say, like, from 10 to 12, everybody’s Slack is parked and idle, or, like, can we do that as a whole firm, or do what everybody has to do it individually?

Tyson Mutrux:
Um, I, I think you could do, I mean, you could do that if you wanted to, you can do whatever you want, but yeah, uh, I, I actually think that that’s a really smart idea there are, uh, there’s a, there’s a, uh, a strategy it’s called XP. I can’t remember what it stands for, but he talks about in the book where. Like. What they do is when they show up to work, they set eight hours. And they’re all coders. And so for them to be in Silicon Valley and only working 40 hours a week is actually quite low. But what they do is they come in, they lock in. Like they’re working from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. or whatever the hours are. And they’re not sending messages. If they wanna talk to someone, they actually have to go and physically walk over and talk to them. But it’s kind of what you’re talking about where they’ve like for a certain set of hours, in. And so yeah, you could absolutely do that. I think it would be harder for your leads team to do something like that because of calls coming in and all that. But I think for other teams, absolutely. They just lock in. They’re working for that time. There’s like zero interruptions. That’s good. So I think that’s a good question. But Audra, thank you so much for coming on. Really, really appreciate it. It’s always a pleasure talking

Audra Doyle:
Same.

Tyson Mutrux:
to you.

Audra Doyle:
I enjoyed this so much. Thank you guys for asking.

Jim Hacking:
Bye, Audra.

Audra Doyle:
Bye-bye.

Tyson Mutrux:
Absolutely. Bye, Audro.

Jim Hacking:
Bye, Tyson.

Tyson Mutrux:
See ya.

The post Starting From Zero Again and Again with Audra Doyle appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

Are you struggling to attract clients to your law firm? Are you finding it hard to stand out in a sea of competitors? Nicole Christie, a lawyer and one of the speakers at the MaxLawCon 22. Nicole has some advice for you: niche down!

Nicole shares her personal experience with starting her own law firm and struggling to be found on Google due to offering too many services. She emphasized the importance of niching down and becoming an expert in a specific area of law.

Here are five benefits of niching down your law firm:

1. 1. Build a Strong Reputation: By focusing on a specific area of law, you can become known as an expert in that field. This can help build your reputation and make it easier for clients to find yo
   2. Gain Referrals: Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool. When you become known for your expertise in a particular area of law, you are more likely to receive referrals from satisfied clients.
   3. Target Specific Groups: By narrowing down your area of practice, you can target specific groups of people who are more likely to need your services. For example, if you focus on immigration law, you can target immigrants and their families.
   4. Increase Sales: When you become known as an expert in your field, you can charge higher rates for your services. This can lead to increased sales and revenue for your law firm.
   5. Build Confidence: When you are an expert in your field, you are more confident in your abilities. This can translate to better client relationships and a more successful law practice.

Niching down your law firm can have a positive impact on your success. Don’t be afraid to focus on what you are good at and become known as an expert in your field. Master one area of marketing at a time and consider speaking engagements and free conferences as a way to get your name out there. Happy niching!

Episode Highlights:

00:38 Nicole, discusses the benefits of niching down in a law firm and shares her personal experience with finding her niche. She also provides examples of different niches within the legal field

09:04 Nicole discusses the benefits of finding a niche in the legal field and shares her personal experience

13:48 Tips on marketing a niche law firm, including leveraging social media, advertising to churches, and mastering one marketing strategy at a time Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Nicole:

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  • Youtube
  • Twitter

Resources:

• • Join the Guild Membership
  • Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Join the Facebook Group
  • Follow the Facebook Page
  • Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcripts: Niche Your Way to Notoriety with Nicole Christie

Speaker 1 (00:00:01) – In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max Lakhan 2022. Keep listening to hear Nicole Christie as we share her talk. Niche Your Way to Notoriety. 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.

Nicole Christie (00:00:38) – All right, so I say niche, but you’ll say niche. Okay. So we’re going to go forward. So I want to apologize. I had a lot of thoughts that came after this slide, so we’re going to pop through some of them. But today I want to talk to you about niching and we want you to get to a point where you can take your law firm from being this all and what do they call it, a jack of all trades, master of none, to actually niching down to something that can be lucrative for you.

Nicole Christie (00:01:05) – So when I started my law firm, I was all excited. Actually, I quit my job after working for this state for 20 something years. And the very next day I got up and said to myself, Are you crazy? You quit your job. What are you going to do now? And then I thought, Nope, I have a law firm. I’ve opened up my law firm, I can do this. So I decided to build my own website. I don’t recommend it, but, you know, I thought I don’t have a lot of fun, so let me just do what I can do. I got on Wix. I figured out quote SEO. I tried to do little links. I did what I could and I made it go live. And so I, you know, it made it go live. I did all the things that I needed to do in terms of getting connected with people. And then I decided to Google myself. And I want you all to share in this experience with me.

Nicole Christie (00:01:55) – So I want you to Google yourself. You can take out your phones. I know Jim said, don’t have them out, but just for this moment, take out your phones, go to Google. But I don’t want you to cheat. You need to search incognito. Google researches you. They know what you’re doing and know what you’re looking for. So I want you to look up incognito, search for your law firm type of area of law. I don’t want you to do your law firm name. Do the area of law. If you have multiple areas of law, pick the one that makes you the most revenue, the one that you enjoy the most, the one you’re known for. And I want you to Google yourself. So once you do that, just look up so I can know that you’ve done it. We do not have to share, so try it for your area. Also, the other key is try incognito for your particular area. Don’t do it here, but just for your particular area.

Nicole Christie (00:02:47) – I’m from Hartford, Connecticut, so I would look up DCF attorney, Hartford, Connecticut, Incognito, if you can do it. So when I did it, you know, again, I went on Wix and it said, you know, you’re alive, You can be found. And I Googled myself and I started scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and like, where am I? And I could not find myself granted. Yes, I did the website. And one of the things that that taught me is if I couldn’t find myself, my clients can’t find me either. So when people when you’re looking for whatever it is you want to buy, whatever the service is, you’re going through the Google search and buy a raise of hands. How many are going to hire somebody on the second page? None of us. We’re going to hire somebody from the first page. And it isn’t the easiest thing to get on the first page of Google where they’re at the top, where they’re at the bottom, where they’re in the middle.

Nicole Christie (00:03:46) – It is not the easiest thing, but one of the things that I discovered is that by narrowing down my areas of practice, I had probate, I had DCF, I was trying to do family, I was trying to do a couple of other things that was representing churches. I was doing a lot of things. And so last year I did this particular presentation and I didn’t get to finish, so I figured this would be part two. But I want to quickly go back over this. Some of us are doing law just in this way. So we represent Saint Louis. That’s your county, that’s your area of law. But some of us are literally driving to other counties. And I would just say that these are the counties represents other areas of law. So I’ll take Cass. We’re driving from Saint Louis to Cass sometimes in our brain, sometimes actually doing this, trying to do criminal law, because criminal law is where we think we have some more money. But yet we’ve opened up on doing estate planning and we keep doing this constantly.

Nicole Christie (00:04:44) – And what’s happening is that we take a lot of time, we take a lot of effort. And what I also find is that we don’t actually become good at any one thing. So I like what I call the county approach. We just looking at Saint Charles, we’re looking at these different counties and these are different sectors. So I don’t want you to think of niching as only one kind of case that you do. It can actually be an area of law. And also, we were talking about it in our mastermind group. It can also be people you can focus on a particular set of people actually read a book about marketing to churches. If you especially if you live in the Bible Belt. I remember driving to Texas and to visit some family and we got there on a Sunday. We went to the grocery store and I’m like, Where are we? I’m from the northeast, seven days a week. They’re all the same. We do everything every day of the week. And I looked around and there was no one in the grocery store.

Nicole Christie (00:05:36) – It was like I went to church. They all go to church. And that is a whole area that people don’t really tap into. So when I think about marketing and I think about niching, this is what I came up with. And I call it my DCF County doesn’t represent everything, but these different sections are all sections that I concentrate on. So it helps you to develop a real good elevator pitch when you can say, I help people dealing with DCF, I help people dealing with child protection, that’s it. But when you have five different areas of law, I help people dealing with real estate, then I do some business. You have lost me after the third one because at this point, I don’t know what you’re actually good at. I don’t know what you concentrate on. I don’t know if you can actually help me with my kind of case. When you niche down, now you become the expert. And it’s interesting. Not only will clients find you, but then other lawyers will find you to talk to you about it.

Nicole Christie (00:06:32) – That actually had lawyers say to me, you know what? Why don’t I just give this case to you? Because it’s too complicated. They don’t want to deal with DCF. DCF in our state is one of the largest entities to deal with. And so what I want to encourage you to do and think about your niche in terms of the big things that you can do with this one particular area of law, something that I don’t know. Does anyone here do business law in the area of construction? All right. So I met someone who does deconstruct and I didn’t realize that that was a whole business in and of itself. He’s the guy that breaks down everything. So when they’re getting ready to build on a particular land, he’ll go in and break it down or he’ll go into a building and gut it out. That’s a whole particular niche because he had waste issues to deal with. He had his issues to deal with, he had contractors to deal with. So you can actually develop a whole giant area of law when you think about your particular niche.

Nicole Christie (00:07:30) – So don’t be afraid and think if I niche down too far, I’m not going to make a lot of money. We doubled in our sales just by niching down. And for us right now, what we’re trying to do is be able to reach as many people work on our processes. But if you’re not worried about the kind of law, remember trying to do estate planning. And I took on a trust and I’m like, What am I doing? I don’t know about the act. And I just it was nerve wracking. But I can go into court the very next day on an order of temporary custody. Read the affidavit in five minutes and know exactly what I need to do. And it’s confidence building. Alexis just talked about imposter syndrome. It helps your imposter syndrome when you actually know what you’re talking about, because then now you’re not an imposter. You know exactly what you need to do.

Speaker 1 (00:08:16) – The Guild is maximum lawyers, community of legal entrepreneurs who are taking their businesses and lives to the next level.

Speaker 1 (00:08:22) – As a guild member, you’re granted exclusive access to quarterly in-person events around the country. The next mastermind is coming up on July 20th and 21st in Denver, Colorado, featuring hot seat sessions and personal coaching with renowned performance coach Jason Selke. This event will give you the opportunity to work directly with Jason, who has helped countless high performing individuals and teams reach their full potential. During the hot seat sessions. You’ll gain valuable insights and learn strategies to help you overcome the challenges you’re facing in your practice. For a limited time. You can get your ticket at the lowest earlybird price head to max law events to join now and reserve your spot at the upcoming Guild mastermind.

Nicole Christie (00:09:04) – And so where I left off last year is this is where I want to pick up. Now that you have figured out your world, you figured out your county. You want to actually try to stay within your county limits. Think about what it is that you do and don’t let people tell you, Oh, you should take on this other kind of case.

Nicole Christie (00:09:21) – Don’t you want the money? I had someone tell me, Don’t you want the money? No. If it’s going to make me not look good, I’m going to step into something I don’t know how to do. And I’m not going to do a good job. I’m telling you, your clients, they’re going to Google everything. I love when they tell me I’ve done my research. Where what law school did you go to? What law books did you read? But I did my research. Don’t you think? Actually, had I call them my co counsels. So you have your client, but then you have their relatives giving them all kinds of instructions. I call them this actually a secret co-counsel. And one of my secret co counsels told my client, well, you know, courts. Close down and judges go on vacation in the summer. I said, Honey, if the judge goes on vacation, there’s somebody else to come in in the place. And I know this court system. So when you have that confidence, you can go up against your co-counsel who are giving your client’s advice all behind your back.

Nicole Christie (00:10:16) – And so when you figure out your niche, don’t forget that list. And I remember when I started out with my law firm and I told people that I’m opening up my law firm, you know, was word of mouth. But I remember I had foot surgery and I knew I had to take two weeks off from work. And I planned it. I literally planned it. I did the foot surgery and I sat with my foot propped up and I just came up with names. I went through my phone, I text people, What’s your address? What’s your email? And I went through a list of names. Keep those names. Those are names that are going to help you. I still get cases from that original list, people who just know people who want to be supportive. Even your haters just put them on there. Well, you know, I don’t know how to do that law, but I think she can do it. I don’t care how they refer you. I don’t care if they put a little salt in what they have to say.

Nicole Christie (00:11:06) – But if they send the person over to you good enough and you can give them the thank you card with whatever salt you want to return. But I say return with the positivity because it’s not worth it. And there’s another section that what I decided to do after I did this list and at some point during Max Law and just doing with the actually listening to the podcast and hearing about doing YouTube videos, I started doing YouTube videos and you know, you set it up and I literally just use a webcam. I don’t have I bought all this equipment and I still don’t use it. I just use the webcam, but I make videos and I will sit down and talk about just what I know. And I loved when, you know, I’d asked him, what should I do? What should I say? Just talk about what you know. But if you are all over the place and you’re going from estate planning and you’re going to criminal and then you’re doing some business, you only know a little bit of all of those things.

Nicole Christie (00:11:57) – But if you concentrate in one particular area of law and one type of person, I met someone yesterday who does family law, but he only represents women who are in abusive relationships or married to narcissist. And I’m thinking with the narcissist movement, as I would call it, going on, he’s got business coming in day in and day out. So think about it in terms of where you can go, what kinds of things that you can do within that particular niche. And it also leads you to and I’ll just stop here to answer interject, it leads you to the types of people who deal with those kinds of laws. So for me, I do child protection. So that means I’ve gotten cases from social workers. You get to know court staff and court services officers. I had one call me and she personally said, I need to send you this case because I know you will do a good job. And also, when you niche down, that’s what ends up happening. You do a very good job for people.

Nicole Christie (00:12:54) – Then the word of mouth gets out. I also get to know nurses. You get to know doctors, you get to know teachers. So you think about your small little world, but there’s these people and you can actually target your marketing, your even your digital marketing to be able to land on pages that are people that are teachers, people that are doctors, people that are therapists, Because at some point in another and people think with child protection is, quote, a poor man’s kind of activity or, you know, type of case not true, because little Johnny, no matter if he lives in a mansion or he lives in an apartment complex, he’ll go to school and say, mommy drinks every night. And I am very scared. It doesn’t matter. DCF will go to whoever’s home, so don’t limit yourself. Think about the world of people that your clients will come in contact with. And so in doing the YouTube videos, I’ll talk about that. I’ll talk about what happens with a therapist.

Nicole Christie (00:13:48) – I’ll talk about what happens with a doctor. We also decided to branch out and do some cases with divorce. Dealing with DCF, people will use DCF as a weapon. So keep that in mind. And so lastly, and I’ll skip this one, think about social media. And again, if you keep that message in your mind constantly, you will be able to put that message out there. You’ll be able to have a focus. And one of the things that I found, my Google ads are incredibly cheap because I’m in Connecticut and I have a niche that very few people are going after. My Google ads are incredibly cheap. We did a display ad and they showed me and they actually showed me the graph. They said that it was like $0.07 or up to $0.10 a click because it’s DCF, it’s a narrow niche. So it’s another great way to try to leverage your marketing dollars when you do. Those clicks are very, very expensive. So I would consider niching down to maybe a group of people, niching down to maybe advertising to churches, especially if you do PE.

Nicole Christie (00:14:51) – If you get on the good side of a pastor, he will say, Oh, you need to hire attorney Christy. We like her. He’ll get up on the pulpit. And say we need to hire Attorney Christie. We like her and they’ll send that information out. And then pastors go to pastors conferences. Well, you know, we got a girl here. She does a really good job. You should give her a call and they will put your name out there for you, complete free advertising. And again, especially if you live in the Bible Belt, those are packed. Churches get in front of a mega-church, do a conference. If you do estate planning, do some free conferences and do some free speaking for churches, and that will help you get your name out. And also, if you’re going to do different types of either social media, whatever the areas are, try to master that first, try to master one at a time so you don’t leave yourself kind of half doing things If you want to start with doing speaking engagements, stick with that.

Nicole Christie (00:15:46) – If you want to start to do social media, stick with that. If you want to tackle Google ads, hire somebody and then stick with that. All right. So that is my time. So if you do need me in any way, shape or form, please give me a call and let me know. And I hope that you got something out of this. And please try your best to niche down. It is a great way to get your name out there. Thank you.

The post Niche Your Way to Notoriety with Nicole Christie appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

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Evelyn Ackah, a successful immigration attorney from Canada, joins Tyson and Jim to share her experience and advice for attorneys looking to start their own niche practice. Since starting her own firm, Evelyn has faced a variety of challenges and has come out on top. 

Here are some key takeaways:

• • Be Agile: When starting her firm, Evelyn had to make quick adjustments due to adopting twins on her own. She started her firm in just three weeks and had to juggle her personal and professional life. She emphasizes the need to be agile and make adjustments and tweaks to improve the business rather than throwing everything away and starting over.
  • Mindset Matters: Evelyn believes that mindset is critical in achieving success. She had to shift her mindset to overcome challenges in her business and become more optimistic. She encourages attorneys to adopt a mindset of an owner rather than an employee mindset.
  • Diversify Your Services: While Evelyn has a successful niche practice in immigration law, she also recognizes the need to offer complementary services such as wills and employment law to her clients. She suggests adding additional service offerings rather than branching out into unrelated areas.
  • Treat Your Practice Like Your Own Business: Evelyn encourages attorneys to build personal relationships with clients and own their files to develop a mindset of an owner rather than an employee. She also recommends taking advantage of the marketing and business development training provided by big firms to develop necessary skills for running a successful practice.

Overall, Evelyn’s experience and advice provide valuable insights for attorneys looking to start their own niche practice. Whether you are just starting out or looking to expand your services, Evelyn tips can help you achieve success. So take her advice and get started on your own journey today! Listen in!

Episode Highlights:

01:03 Starting her own law firm and practicing immigration law in Canada and the US

04:26 How COVID-19 has affected her cross-border immigration law practice and how she had to diversify her practice to recover from the decline

08:28 Practicing law in two different countries and how she hires a US attorney for green card and permanent residency applications

10:18 The day-to-day work, including team meetings, consultations, and business development

17:04 The impact of COVID-19 on her business and discusses the importance of diversification in practice areas

18:25 The importance of offering complimentary services to clients, such as wills and employment law, to insulate her business from ups and downs

20:20 Advising big law associates to treat their practice like their own business, building personal relationships and owning their files, to prepare for going out on their own

Jim’s Hack: Jim recommends the book “The First 90 Days” for a systematic approach to onboarding new employees beyond the first few days. 

Evelyn’s Tip: Use restream to reach all the social media platforms. 

Tyson’s Tip: Use Steve.ai, a website that generates animated videos by plugging in a script with a free version.

Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Evelyn:

• • Website 
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram 
  • Facebook
  • Twitter 
  • Youtube

Resources:

• • Join the Guild Membership
  • Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Join the Facebook Group
  • Follow the Facebook Page
  • Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcript: Building a Successful Law Firm in Two Countries with Evelyn Ackah

Jim Hacking:
Oh, Evelyn, it’s great to have you. Why don’t you go ahead and tell everybody a little bit about your experience since law school, what you did, and then when you started your firm, and then we can get into deeper issues.

Evelyn Ackah:
Sounds great. Well, I’ve been practicing law since 1999. I used to be a corporate lawyer in Toronto for a couple years and hated it. And I moved into corporate immigration at a big five accounting firm. And ever since I’ve been practicing Canadian and NAFTA US corporate and personal immigration law. And I became a partner at a big law firm and moved to Calgary, Alberta And then I started my law firm 12 years ago. When I had my children, it was necessary to do some adjustments, and so I started ACCA Business Immigration Law so I could have more flexibility and more time with my family.

Tyson Mutrux:
So we’ve heard this story quite a bit, where you’ve got someone that’s worked for a bigger firm and then they go and they do their own thing. So what’s that life change like?

Evelyn Ackah:
Oh wow, you’re doing everything yourself. I mean, having come from a global law firm and all of a sudden you’re doing your marketing, you’re doing your BD, it’s just a very different model. But I was always really entrepreneurial even in the big firm. And I marketed across the firm as well as externally. And so I knew already that I would be pretty successful because I already was doing a lot of those things, like my own firm. So it made it easier when I exited. Basically almost all my clients came with and I just opened my own door.

Jim Hacking:
nLet’s talk about those days leading up before you left your old firm and then the days right after you started. Talk to us about how that went. I’m sure it was a little bit stressful to see if the clients were gonna join you. Walk us through that if you could, Evelyn.

n

Evelyn Ackah:
Well, I think for me it was, I was adopting twins. It just happened to be on my own at the time and it was crazy. And I just, as soon as I was advised that I was going to be selected as an adoptive parent of like newborns, it was like, let’s make some changes quick. So I literally started my firm in three weeks. And so there wasn’t a lot of like planning. It was just kind of find a great space that was a shared office space and they had to do the notifications, you know, that the lawyers let them know where you’re leaving, all of that, and then it’s up to the clients. I wasn’t overly concerned because immigration is so specialized, as you know, Jim, that even if you’re in a big firm where they do corporate and litigation and everything else under the Sun and securities law, they only know you, and at the time, there were a very small number of immigration lawyers in that large firm, so I didn’t worry too much because I felt like a lot of them stayed the other sides of the practices that they were using, but they came with me for immigration. And so it was starting from nothing, boxes everywhere, hired my first paralegal probably within a month, and just kept going.

Tyson Mutrux:
So I’m really curious to see how things since like COVID has ended, how things have changed because I feel like in Canada, things stayed closed a little bit longer. Maybe I’m wrong about that. But how has that had an effect? And I also, I know very little about immigration, but I have heard that Canada is more restrictive when it comes to immigration than the United States. So

Evelyn Ackah:
Hmm.

Tyson Mutrux:
how has that affected your business since COVID, since

Evelyn Ackah:
Well,

Tyson Mutrux:
2020?

Evelyn Ackah:
you know me and you know what I’m kind of doing and why I’m in the Guild and how great it’s been for me so far, but COVID really hit me. And it was really a bit of a shock. I wasn’t expecting such a decline. The borders were closed and as a cross border, this is really what I call myself, a cross border lawyer, doing immigration into Canada from everywhere in the world and then doing into US just for Canadians. that’s not happening. So a lot of my corporate clients who were bringing executives and skilled workers to the US, that stopped and into Canada from the US that also stopped. So we were focused on a lot of things like permanent residence, criminality applications, things that were processed at the consulate but not at the port of entry and it really affected our practice. We went from our best year to a decline and then another decline and was the worst year, it finally hit us. So we’re in a rebuilding stage where now we’re having like a fabulous year, but I don’t even know how to explain it because the borders have been opened longer than the last few months, but it’s taken a while for us to recover from that and made me think about how to diversify my practice, what can I do to ensure this doesn’t happen again, that type of thing.

Jim Hacking:
I think sometimes as law firm owners were a little slow to react and I’m wondering when was it that you realized during that three year period you just discussed that something was wrong.

Evelyn Ackah:
Oh, I knew pretty quick and I spent so much time and money in marketing. Whereas a lot of law firms and lawyers were just like retreating and just like, oh my God, we’re going to die and we’re closing shop. And especially in immigration, at least in Canada, people were really freaked out. People were leaving or they were shutting their doors or whatever. I was spending more money on marketing. I was trying to make sure we could be found. I was pushing harder. It was just incredible because I wasn’t getting the kind of results I would normally from that kind of a financial and time investment. And that’s what was really frustrating. It was like, what’s happening? I couldn’t control it. I didn’t understand what was taking place. And it was unprecedented. So I didn’t really know what else I could do except keep hustling, keep working harder, and marketing everywhere.

Tyson Mutrux:
So every time I’ve talked to you, it seems like you have a really good positive team environment. And so what do you… And maybe I’m wrong, but it definitely does seem like that. So what do you do in the firm to make sure you foster that sort of environment?

Evelyn Ackah:
Well, I can’t say it’s perfect, you know, being an owner is challenging ups and downs. And sometimes I’ve made bad hiring decisions, for sure. I’ve learned over 12 years. So for me, I really want to find people who get it, who understand that this is a business and that I’m here to help them grow and learn. And they’re also here to learn from me and to help contribute to the success of the firm. And so really a big team focused approach. as I recognize somebody doesn’t have that mentality, you have to make decisions. I don’t want anything to impact the group. Right now there are about 12 or 13 of us and everybody is very supportive of each other. We work hard, we can count on each other and that’s really important to me that they take ownership of their roles and the firm. So it’s not perfect. I’ve spent a lot of time and money on team retreats and books and development for everybody and for myself as a leader. but I think it’s a constant work in progress. And as the firm, one thing I’ve learned over the years is the firm does as well as the leader is doing and that everything comes back to me. And so no matter how much personal work and self-help and reading and courses and training, at the end of the day, my attitude, my presence, my behavior, my expectations of myself impact everybody else and the quality of the firm. So mindset is really, really important.

Jim Hacking:
That’s awesome. Talk to us a little bit about the experience of practicing law in two different countries. I mean, that’s, I think some people will freak out about practicing in more than one state. Talk to us about what it’s been like practicing under the jurisdictions of two different systems.

Evelyn Ackah:
I love it. I mean, I just, I think it’s kind of, again, I was working at a big accounting firm and we were helping global companies cross the border. And when I need to, of course, I hire, I bring on a U.S. attorney. I don’t do any green card, anything permanent that needs to be submitted into the government centers, we don’t do. But what I love about being able to do port of entry work is that you get your answer right away. So as somebody on a quick start for Colby, I like to know that I can finish an application if my team does it in two days, the person’s got their work permit, I feel a sense of accomplishment and I’m happy and move on to the next. So I like the port of entry because you’re not dealing with as much bureaucracy, you’re not waiting months and months and years for a decision. And it also allows you to prepare your clients and give them that confidence that you’re on call. text me as long as the officers are good with that at the border if there’s a problem and I can get involved and advocate if needed for them right then and there. So they feel confidence knowing that I’m available if needed. So it’s been really interesting. I mean, I should do my US bar. It’s one of those, I’m going to do it. Then the kids came. It’s like, oh, I’m going to do it. And now there are 12 and I’m like, oh my God. I literally just have to write one exam in Massachusetts and I would be an attorney. in the US, so unless it becomes urgent or critical, I’m happy being a member of ALA, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and doing Canadian immigration. It works for me.

Tyson Mutrux:
You know, it’s funny, as much as I’ve talked to you, I still don’t think I’ve got a really good grasp on what your day-to-day looks like. So what does your day-to-day look like? How much of inside the business stuff are you doing versus on the business?

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah, that’s a good question. I’m really working hard to get out of the day to day. And we actually have a family trip planned to Africa, to Ghana in a couple months for two and a half, three weeks and we’re preparing for that now. I wanna make sure people will be able to do it all without me. So I would say my day to day is mostly spent doing team meetings. We do huddles with our remote team and in office team And so my goal, one of the things I want to really think about is how can I remove myself from doing them at all? And I do have the highest conversion rate, but it’s also, it takes time and I don’t want to be responsible to be doing them all. So my days are probably, I would say, 30% reviewing, signing off on applications, and the rest is business development, marketing activity, and what else? And consultations.

Jim Hacking:
You’re listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Our guest today is business immigration lawyer, Evelyn Acca. We’re so happy to have her with us. Just as an aside, if I tell my son Yusuf that you’re going to Ghana, he’s gonna wanna go with you. That’s high on his list of places he wants to visit.

Evelyn Ackah:
We’ll take him.

Jim Hacking:
Yeah, he would

Evelyn Ackah:
My

Jim Hacking:
love

Evelyn Ackah:
husband

Jim Hacking:
it.

Evelyn Ackah:
is coming for the first time and he’s going to be one of the few white people there that my kids, when we first went, they were like, we saw three white people the whole month we were here. So

Jim Hacking:
Right.

Evelyn Ackah:
it’s so, and they were seven. So it’ll be fun. It’ll be a fun trip.

Jim Hacking:
That’s fantastic. So it’s been fun to watch. You’ve been in the guild for a while now, but not too terribly long. And it’s, it’s great to see the difference between where you were when you came and where you are now. And you were excited to post about your great first quarter of 2023 in the guild the other

Evelyn Ackah:
Thank

Jim Hacking:
day.

Evelyn Ackah:
you.

Jim Hacking:
Can you talk a little bit about that part of the journey?

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah, I mean, I think mindset really plays a big part. And I was starting to get a little down on things that weren’t working. You know, you’re like, you’re doing all these things and it’s not working, and you’re like, what else can I do? And so I joined the guild, I think, in like the summer, late summer of 2022, and it’s been great. I mean, it’s just a wonderful, positive group of people, really supportive. And I think I just had to shift my mindset tweaking things as opposed to like throwing it all away and starting over. So the biggest thing I’ve done, I think has made a big difference, is improved our intake. We’ve got, we use Lomatics and we finally got it all done working automated and that’s a big time investment. So I spent a lot of time last year getting that up and running fully and then we have our two and a half client engagement people. They’ve been great. And then the other thing we did was really focus on SEO because at Accolaw, We’ve got tons and tons of content. And so paid ads like Google, PPC, whatever, wasn’t working. And I was spending lots of money every month and nothing was really… Those were not really capturing the leads we needed. And so the SEO changes we’ve made over the last few months have been really critical. They’ve moved us up in many, many markets, which has led to more people finding us and allowing us to help more people with immigration.

Tyson Mutrux:
So you mentioned mindset and how much do you think of our success and how we do things and how we run our firms has to do with mindset? Is it a small thing or is it a big thing? And I don’t want to lead you too much on that. Maybe it’s not a big thing to you, but I am curious because you said you kind of got over that a little bit. So what is it about mindset and how do you think it has an impact on what we do?

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah, I think it’s really important. I think I was just starting to get kind of down about the last challenging couple years. And it starts to just be a part of your personality almost a little bit, right? And so I think being optimistic and seeing success again and feeling like, okay, we’re back on track. But I think mindset is probably like 75, 80% of it. I really do. And even though I felt like I was being positive, they were still apart, and it was like, oh, but the border, oh, you know, COVID, oh, COVID, COVID. And it was just felt like this crutch or this reason to be excusing what had occurred. And when I finally just let that go and I said, forget that, let it go. We can’t keep talking about COVID anymore. That’s not the reason what things are not working. And so just slowly kind of building up and building out of that, crawling out of it, really seemed to help. and tweaks really that we needed to make that has really affected how the whole team is feeling about how we’re doing. We’re having our team quarterly retreat next week and it’s gonna be great. We’re gonna be talking about the quarter, what worked, what didn’t work, getting ideas from the team, we’ve been doing a presentation with our HR consultant on communication across the team, making sure we know how to deal with conflict. If we don’t agree how we communicate and let it go, I don’t you don’t want people to hold on to things because we’re gonna get bigger and so we need to kind of come up with agreeing to our standards of communication that work for everybody. So Yeah, I just I think mindset is critical and the team’s mindset has to also be on par with the leaders mindset

Jim Hacking:
I think you generally have a very positive attitude. I love talking to you. You get me pumped up talking about being a lawyer and about running the law firm. I’ve loved having you in the group. And I just think that the sky’s the limit for you. So my question though is, if you could go back now to March 15th, 2020, when that to me, that’s the date that COVID really hit. That’s when I knew about COVID being a real thing. We were, of all things, we were scheduled to take a family trip to China that spring break

Evelyn Ackah:
Wow.

Jim Hacking:
that and then we had to cancel a trip to Disneyland. So if you could go back to March of 2020 and whisper in your ear what would you tell yourself?

Evelyn Ackah:
Hmm, that’s a good question. I think I would just tell myself it’ll all work out. And probably pivot. I felt like I pivoted quickly. I mean people were working at home, boom, because we already had remote people working. We have technology. That was not an issue. I think I would tell myself maybe let’s look at another practice area sooner than later. I would think about diversification. law, should we bring in a tax person? Those are the complementary practices to my practice. Usually, should we do wills in estates? Like, I think I should have considered maybe a little bit faster. I mean, nobody knew how long we think it’s a few months, and then it’s, you know. But I think it really made me think about what else I could have been doing to help our clients more, as opposed to kind of freaking out about COVID and what the impacts were to the border. you

Tyson Mutrux:
nSo I want to talk a little bit more about the diversification part of it. So generally, and maybe I don’t understand what you mean by it, but generally that goes contrary to what Jim and I recommend when it comes to niching down, right?

Evelyn Ackah:
Mm-hmm.

Tyson Mutrux:
That means you’re probably adding on additional product offerings or service offerings. So tell us what your thought process is on this, because I want to get it from your perspective. Because here’s the thing. You may be 100 percent right that that’s what you need to do. I’m just curious. I want to hear more about it.

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah, well I feel like, of course I love what I do and I wouldn’t be doing it for 23, 24 years if I didn’t, but this experience, yes we need foreign workers, we need workers. Canada and the US, we clearly need highly skilled, educated people and there’s an aging population. Everybody thinks I’m going to be swamped forever and that would be great if I was swamped and busy doing immigration. But I do think one of the things I think about is what else can we provide to our clients when they come to Canada or the US. So things like, do they have a will now that they’re in Canada? They bought a house, they have children. So just kind of complimentary supports, not to take away, because I am very much like you, you need to niche. And I niched really quickly. I loved it, and that was clear. But I feel like I don’t necessarily have to do it. But right now, we already have a wills associate who’s working on contract. So we’re starting to market that practice to help our existing clients who don’t have a Canadian will, for instance. Employment law, a lot of times you bring people and something happens and they need to talk to an employment lawyer, I refer those out. Perhaps that’s another contracted, you know, of council relationship. Again, I’m not trying to do more, but I’m trying to be able to offer more to clients and also help us insulate ourselves a little bit from the ups and downs. And that’s kind of what I’m thinking about.

Jim Hacking:
Evelyn, one of the things that we talk about a lot on this show, as you know, is going out on your own and that there are a lot of people who are afraid to do that. And a lot of people are, though, in traditional fields that sort of lend themselves to going out on your own. And I think the greatest reluctance that I’ve seen so far from people wanting to go out on their own are ones who are at big firms. There’s a lot of perks to being in a big firm. There’s a lot of

Evelyn Ackah:
Okay.

Jim Hacking:
financial stability and support that you get. who maybe are listening or have heard or are thinking about going out on their own, what advice would you have for those people?

Evelyn Ackah:nI think you need to treat, I mean for me I was already in niche practice in a big firm and I was a senior associate and then I made partner and I think I treated my clients and my practice like my own little firm in a big firm. And I think it’s really important if you’re in a big firm that you treat it like it’s your own business. And that really helped me because I marketed across the firm, I marketed externally. internationally, Evelyn did Canadian immigration law, you know, and created work. And when you help a lawyer, you save their client’s butt or whatever. They love you forever because you have come through, you know, and that’s what leads to the, you’re basically marketing and business developing internally. So I feel like big law associates should be thinking about their work like it’s their own and building those personal relationships, making sure they’re the ones that talk to the client. They’re the ones that meet the client. practice area and that they own the file, like they treat it like it’s their own. I think that mindset really helps because you’re going to be doing that on your own and so you might as well start sooner. And that’s one of the areas that I love about immigration, things I loved was unlike corporate law where you needed tons of people and you didn’t really have autonomy, with immigration law I had a lot of autonomy as an associate. I literally, nobody knew what I was doing, very rarely. You know, maybe there’s one or two other lawyers across the whole firm. I owned the file, I had autonomy. I could come and work as late as I needed one day and I could go home early the next because I wasn’t on a deal with 20 other associates. So there’s a lot of freedom in that and that’s why I think people should niche in the big firm. Figure that out. You know, not just be a general corporate lawyer, figure out your niche and then it gives you more autonomy and it makes it easy, I think, to be more portable.

Tyson Mutrux:
you button wouldn’t work.

Evelyn Ackah:
Hehehe

Tyson Mutrux:
So, all right. So, Jim and I know an attorney and she’s, her name is Debbie Champion. She worked for a firm in St. Louis that long ago had a bunch of people left, right? And then people are getting laid off afterwards. And she left with the group that took the bulk of the business. And I wonder if you’ve got any advice or if any war stories when it comes to, and I really want you to speak to like that introverted attorney. It’s like, well, I don’t need to bring in my own business. I just want to, and I don’t want to work on that side of things. What advice would you have to that attorney? Because I 100% agree with you, but I think there is that attorney that says, well, I just don’t want to do that.

n

Evelyn Ackah:
I don’t know what to say to that person because I think that you’re really working as an employee and less like an owner. And even as a junior associate and a senior associate, I acted like an owner. And I think that’s really important. The partners saw me even sometimes saving their clients’ butts and they were like, whoa. And so they were treating me earlier like a partner because I operated that way. and whatever was important to them, the numbers, the hours, whatever, those became important to me. And I think you can’t just sit there and look to be fed and keep your head down. Those are the people sometimes that are the first to go because you’re not indispensable from a business development perspective. So even if you’re an introvert, what I love about big firms is they give you so much training on marketing, business development, all of those things to make sure etiquette, whatever, how to dress, so that you know how to go out and be appropriate and to be able to represent them well. So I feel like you should be taking advantage of all of that. Otherwise you’re going to be somebody who’s a grinder or somebody in the back mining, but those are the people that I think go first when there is a, you know, a downsizing, unfortunately.

Tyson Mutrux:
nout and thanks for that. I just want to make sure people heard that from someone that’s done it before because I think it’s an important thing. But, well, Evelyn, this is great. I’d love to be able to continue talking to you. I do want to be respectful of your time. So we’re going to begin to wrap things up. Before we do, I want to make sure that I remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. Go to Facebook, search Maximum Lawyer and join us there. And then if you want a more high-level conversation with wonderful people like Evelyn, go to maxlawguild.com and mind giving us a five-star review. Wherever you get your podcasts, we would greatly appreciate it. It helps spread the love. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking:
I think we as law firm owners do a varying degree of successful job of onboarding new people. And this book, The First 90 Days, is one that Adela has used and we’ve used it with our leadership team on sort of onboarding beyond the first three days. You know, I think a lot of people might do some training, then they shadow for a day or two, and then they say, okay, go swim. And this book really sort of sets out a systematic way of making sure that you get that training that Evelyn was just talking about, that whatever training you want your team to have, that that you’re being sort of more purposeful about it, more systematic about it.

Tyson Mutrux:
I love it. It’s good advice. All right, Evelyn, we always ask our guests to give a tip or heck of the week. What you got for us?

Evelyn Ackah:
Oh, goodness, I wasn’t as ready for this, I think. One thing I really love is Restream. And I moved away from StreamYard to Restream probably a few months ago. And what I love about it is it lets me do LinkedIn Lives, it goes to every social platform at the same time. It’s really easy. And so we’ve been using that and moved away from the other ones. So people might wanna check it out. It’s not very expensive, kind of get out a little bit more without having to repackage anything and and make sure that everybody can find you on social media.

Tyson Mutrux:
It’s funny, I have a restream and I have not used it. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever used it. And I got it whenever it was… It was like one of those websites where you like, when they first launched it and like you have like a license forever. I have a license, I don’t pay every month.

Evelyn Ackah:
Thanks for watching!

Tyson Mutrux:
And it’s so it’s basically free now and I don’t use it. So maybe I need to look into it more. So you think it’s better than StreamYard?

Evelyn Ackah:
I do. I mean, I’ve been seeing some of the little challenges that have been coming up with you guys in Streamy Art and I think I suggested it. So you might want to try it and see.

Tyson Mutrux:
Okay,

Evelyn Ackah:
Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux:
I’m going to have to play around with it. I’ve got basically a free one, so I’ll give

Evelyn Ackah:
nI’m gonna

Tyson Mutrux:
it

Evelyn Ackah:
ngo.

n

Tyson Mutrux:
a shot. But mine, my tip of the week is it’s steve.ai. And I don’t know if you’ll have seen this, but you can create really easy animated videos or videos in general just by plugging in the transcript. It’s steve.ai. And there’s a free version. I was playing around with the free version. You can upgrade to premium to remove the branding and stuff, but it’s really cool. in a script and then it took, I don’t know, 45 seconds. I plugged in the script and it generated an animated video that people spent a lot of money on. It’s really interesting. No, it’s

The post Diversify, Adapt, and Thrive: Strategies for Building a Resilient Law Practice with Evelyn Ackah appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

Are you struggling to keep your star players in your law firm? In today’s episode Michael Urbina emphasizes the importance of keeping your firm’s star players by intentionally working through a few things with them. 

Such as:

• • Building genuine relationships with employees to creating a positive work environment

• • Working with your employees to see what makes them the most productive 

• • Finding out what motivates your star employees. What are their goals? 

What about involving employees in key decisions and providing them with a sense of control over their work-life balance? Firms could be open to alternative work arrangements, such as a four-day workweek or flexible hours, to accommodate their employees’ needs. By doing so, employees feel like they are a part of the firm and are more likely to buy into its vision.

If you’re having trouble retaining your top talent, take a cue from Michael and start investing in your employees today! Listen to episode 524 of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast for more of a deep dive into this topic. 

Episode Highlights:

03:50  The importance of understanding what motivates your star players and how to compensate them beyond just salary

05:57 The importance of offering benefits to employees and how it can affect the perception of the firm

10:00 The importance of flexibility in the workplace, including working from home, alternative schedules, and instituting a four-day workweek

12:02 The importance of being honest and transparent with employees about the firm’s goals and financial position

14:03 Valuing employees’ opinions and creating a comfortable environment for them to feel like they can talk to their employer

17:39 Opening the books to everyone in the firm, from leadership to the newest employee, during an end-of-year retreat

Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Michael:

• • Website
  • Instagram 
  • Facebook 
  • Linkedin
  • Youtube 
  • TikTok

Resources:

• • Join the Guild Membership
  • Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Join the Facebook Group
  • Follow the Facebook Page
  • Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcript: Keep Your Star Players with Michael Urbina

Speaker 0 (00:00:01) – In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max Lock Con 2022. Keep listening to hear Michael Obina as we share his talk. Keep your star players. You can also head to the Maximum Lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Let’s get to it.

Speaker 1 (00:00:16) – Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is The Maximum Lawyer podcast. Maximum Lawyer podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Merix. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Michael Urbina (00:00:37) – If you haven’t watched Ted Lasso, you totally should not just because it’s hilarious, but because it actually has a lot to do with what I’m gonna talk about today, which is essentially a football coach in the United States takes a job to be a soccer coach in England, even though he has no idea about it. But his approach works because essentially he engages and motivates the stars of the team to kind of, you know, get to approach of working together and combine and, you know, be all happy go lucky, you know? So essentially what we’re gonna talk about today is keeping your stars and based on everything that’s happening right now in the, you know, marketplace. Everybody wants to talk about recruitment and how can I get people to work for me and how can I, you know, fill these positions. But I think another big problem is that there is all these problems with people in the positions because people are losing individuals and if you’re losing your individuals, you’re gonna have to then go to the recruiting market.

Michael Urbina (00:01:29) – So the best way to not have to recruit is to keep the good people that you already have. And if you don’t think that that’s a problem, I can tell you right now that in the last couple of days, almost every conversation from lawyers even, you know, within this particular community is like, Hey, so how do you try to hire people and recruit? They’re like, look at another law firm. Maybe someone is looking for an opportunity and you may want to think about stealing your competitors associates. So how do you stop that from happening to you? That’s essentially what we’re gonna talk about today. So briefly, these are part of my stars, okay, in our team. All right? Two of them are here today. My wife is here today and she’s not in the picture. My bad. I should have totally added that. I’ll probably pay for that later.

Michael Urbina (00:02:13) – So if anybody has extra room in their hotel room, please let me know cuz I might need your help late, okay? But essentially these are the people that have been with us for five years plus and I trust them blindly and everything that they do. I don’t second guess the things that they do. And it’s because not only do I give them the room to be themselves, but I try to make sure that they’re happy, that I, they have a good work-life balance and everything that we’re gonna talk about today, you know, I try to practice what we preach. So three critical keys to making sure that you keep your stars, you have to care about them. And I know that sounds like oh well of course I have to care about them, but no, no. If you look at it, and I actually Googled this before we came, one of the biggest reasons why people started quitting their jobs was during the pandemic.

Michael Urbina (00:02:56) – Their quote was, my boss doesn’t care about me, period. It wasn’t necessarily that they were getting underpaid and whatnot. And if you’re bored by my talk, you can actually Google it right now and you’ll see that the first thing that pops up is low pay. But all the other reports are like, you know, the culture sucks. You know, like my boss doesn’t care about me. It’s literally a bunch of other things that it’s not just pay, sure we’ll talk about pay and that’s an important part of it, but there’s a lot more to go than just if you’re paying someone well enough or not. The other thing you have to think about is find out what they really care about. I have some of the stars that are here that are not really driven by money. They want more time off, they want flexibility. I have an employee that literally lift an hour from us and the minute we’re able to get a new location and she was able to cut her commute to seven minutes, she was like, I don’t care if you cut my pay as long as I can just be here, I’m happy with that instead.

Michael Urbina (00:03:50) – A lot of times we assume that’s like, oh no, just pay them more. Just pay them more. No, you have to really dig deep and find out exactly what it is that drives them what it is that keeps them happy, you know? And the last thing is find out how they’re most productive. And I think that’s a key part also because sometimes you have someone a star that is fantastic at their job and you might think like, Hey, this person might be a good fit for a different position or a higher position or a promotion and then you move them up without necessarily gauging their interests or durability. And I’m telling you from experience, we have one of our stars who is not here today by the way, so that’s why I’m gonna talk about it. Essentially we try to move her up into a different position and that was not her thing, but we didn’t actually address it with her.

Michael Urbina (00:04:29) – This was years ago. We didn’t address it with her like, Hey, we’re thinking about doing this. How do you feel about it? De are you okay with it? Instead we’re just like, we love you, you’re great, you’re gonna move up to this. And all of a sudden her productivity just went way down because that was not her thing. So you can’t try to fit, you know, a square peg in a round hole if it doesn’t work. So you have to really figure out what are their goals, what are they really motivated by? Maybe they like doing something menial, but that’s crucial to what you need to do. Okay? So just keep those things in mind. So we’re gonna talk about five things that I think are very important to make sure that you keep your stars engaged in your firm. Like I said, we have to talk about salary.

Michael Urbina (00:05:06) – Why? Because at the end of the day, people need to live, right? And unfortunately over the last couple years salaries requirements have gone up because there’s more demand for people. All these other individuals, all these other firms are having to, you know, fork out more money to be competitive. My proposal to you is that yes, salaries are important, getting paid as important, but that’s not the only thing. So sometimes people are like, well I don’t have the cash to be able to pay this person on all this money. You know, that’s fine. Then think about other things that you can offer that can compensate for the fact that you may not be able to pay someone high six figures or whatever the situation is. I will however, encourage you to rethink what you think is the average salary. Cuz a lot of times you have conversations with people and they’re like, yeah, I mean like an average salary for an attorney start is like $45,000 and like in 2000 maybe you put in 2022.

Michael Urbina (00:05:57) – It’s all very different also your market. We’re in Atlanta, very different situation versus you know, some towns in Texas, even here in Missouri was looking at it yesterday. It’s very different. So you have to consider at least what’s the average, you don’t necessarily have to go above the average if you have a well-rounded package. Now the other option is you can give bonuses, you can do incentive plans, you can actually engage them in your firm’s goals and give them as an incentive like hey we hit our goals, this is what you get. So you actually get them to buy into the program and vice versa. You actually get them a little extra cash as you go. So meaning you win, they win. Okay? The other thing is benefits in 2022, if you don’t have some type of benefits, you’re gonna get a one star and people are gonna talk about the fact that you are either cheap or you’re not really caring about your people or you’re not genuine.

Michael Urbina (00:06:48) – Okay? If you can’t afford a super robust benefits package, that’s fine, but there’s also a lot of different options and a lot of different things and I just list some of them there that you can look at that may not cost you an arm and a leg, you just have to shop around. Health insurance, it is expensive but we talked about it yesterday actually. Some people like to give a stipend because they think it’ll be better for them. The problem is that there’s that feeling of security from the applicants that are like, I’d rather just get the health insurance versus the stipend because it just gives me that sense of security, you know, and control all over the situation. And unfortunately let’s face a lot of people, you give them a stipend, they’re not gonna go buy health insurance, they’ll go buy something else, they’ll put it into like their YouTube channel thinking that they’re gonna be influencers and they won’t pay for the health insurance.

Michael Urbina (00:07:33) – So you guiding them along that way creates, you know, a certain level of security in them. 401ks, pension plans, those things are not as expensive as you think it might be. I was actually kind of shocked when we started shopping around looking. I was like, this is not that bad. It can be, you can find some people, will absolutely destroy your budget, but you can also find ways that it’s something you can offer employees, keep them happy at the same time. Not necessarily break the bank and not have to create this insane payroll for yourself. PTO expense accounts and gas and things like that. There’s an ongoing trend right now with unlimited pto, right? And there’s a lot of firms that are moving that way. A lot of businesses that are moving that way. I’m not saying that you have to do that, but it, a lot of times people are like, well we give, like I’ll use, there’s this nonprofit in Georgia that’s like you get 10 days PTO after a year of work.

Michael Urbina (00:08:21) – Nobody wants to wait a year to get 10 days off. Like you have to really reevaluate that because everyone is moving to give unlimited or some sense of extra PTL days. So you really have to think about whether you’re offering a PT os competitive or not. We actually did something that I had no idea was gonna work out this beautifully, but years ago for our attorneys, because we have to move around so much for courts, I was like, the firm will pay for your gas and guess what? You might think that I’m an idiot now because gas prices are high. But guess who’s happy that they don’t have to pay for gas. Our attorneys. And at the end of the day, it’s a fraction really of everything that’s happening. But they’re happy that they don’t have to worry about that. And it’s not just to go to court. I’m like if you have to fill up your tank, you fill it up with your expense account period. But that little thing alone is like, okay, I save a lot of money on gas on that part. I may not get paid a million dollars a year but I get this incentive. You know,

Speaker 0 (00:09:11) – The guild is maximum lawyers community of legal entrepreneurs who are taking their businesses and lives to the next level as a guild member. Your granted exclusive access to quarterly in-person events around the country. The next mastermind is coming up on July 20th and 21st in Denver, Colorado featuring hot seat sessions and personal coaching with renowned performance coach Jason Silk. This event will give you the opportunity to work directly with Jason who has helped countless high performing individuals and teams reach their full potential during the hot seat sessions. You’ll gain valuable insights and learn strategies to help you overcome the challenges you are facing in your practice. For a limited time. You can get your ticket at the lowest early bird price. Head to max law events.com to join now and reserve your spot at the upcoming guild mastermind.

Michael Urbina (00:10:00) – And then you have work-life balance, which brings us to point number three. Okay? Flexibility is not just about working from home and anyone that thinks that working from home doesn’t work, it may not work for certain individuals, it may not be a situation that you wanna do all the time, but you cannot sit here with a straight face because during 2020, Maxim lawyer kept doing all, you know these meetings virtually we completely shut down our practice for three months and everyone worked from home and we actually grew substantially during that time. We talked about Alexis, you know, growing during 2020 as well. We can talk about stories all day about people that grew while working from home. So we cannot use that as a crutch saying, well work from home doesn’t work. It may not be ideal for every single one of your employees, but you have to find an alternative.

Michael Urbina (00:10:44) – It may be that you let them come in two hours earlier and leave two hours, you know, earlier in the afternoon so they can go pick up their kids or whatever the situation may be. Another thing that we do that I can’t take credit for that was my wife’s idea was that we instituted a four day work week. So essentially we divide the office and two teams, some people have Monday off, some people have Friday off and those four days that they work, they work 10 hours, they complete their 40 hours, they have a three day weekend every weekend plus their pto. And every time I talk about this I always get like these faces like that sucks.

Speaker 0 (00:11:17) – They love it

Michael Urbina (00:11:18) – And they’re super productive. Absolutely super productive. So it may not be something you can institute immediately, but you should think about something like that in terms of providing them the flexibility of work-life balance. Because if you do the Google search that I told you, the number one thing that you’re gonna find aside from culture is work-life balance. So people will sacrifice, you know, a little bit of salary to be able to actually enjoy their life a little more. And I can tell you a story that there’s actually, you know, another competitor if you wanna call it from where we are, that it used to be the go-to where everybody wanted to go. But because the work-life balance has become unbearable in that place, people are turning down high six figure offers. Cause they’re like, yeah you guys work us to death. We’d rather go somewhere else than get paid less.

Michael Urbina (00:12:02) – And some of those attorneys came to work with us. So because we provide something different. You know, the other thing I want to talk about is creating a buying culture with your team. And once you offer those benefits, once you really rethink about being genuine about your work-life balance, how do you make sure that you maintain that buy-in from your team? Cause it’s not a, it can’t all be a gift. There has to be some kind of, you know, return in terms of how the firm is going forward. And what I’ll challenge it is, is that you need to be brutally honest about everything. And I mean everything like think as gross as it sounds, open kimono, like you have to be super honest about where your firm is positioned, what your, all your goals are and everything that is going on with regards to your firm.

Michael Urbina (00:12:45) – If you have a leadership team like we do, we talk about this on a weekly basis as to where we’re at. Are we hitting our revenue goals? Are we hitting all other goals? And that sounds terrifying, the fact that you’re gonna open your books and do a presentation about what went out and what. But think about this way, if you don’t give your team a roadmap as to why you’re asking them to buy in to hey we should get more Google reviews. Hey we should, you know, I need you to make sure that we get those NPS scores in. Like then if you don’t tell them why that’s important, if you don’t show them why the firm will do better unless you open the kimono, you know, to them it’s just like, oh my boss is just being greedy. Oh I don’t understand why I need to do this.

Michael Urbina (00:13:26) – You need to be like, this is the reality of the situation. Yeah we’re doing good. However, if you want to grow with us and continue to be provided opportunities to grow, this is where we need to go. But if you just tell them for the sake of telling us like, hey, we need 400 Google reviews by the end of the year. Why they don’t know that, they don’t understand why that’s important. So you need to be brutally honest to be open and a lot of people will think, well they’re gonna leave not if you did everything else that we talked about cuz you’re being honest, you’re not hiding the ball and you’re being generous in the way of what you try to offer them. So that creates loyalty. Involve them in key decisions. A lot of times people are like, hey this and this is happening with such employee, what do you think?

Michael Urbina (00:14:03) – I’m like, I’ll leave it up to you if it’s something that I don’t feel super strong about, give them the opportunity to make decisions. Vice versa. If you’re gonna make decisions, like if we’re gonna change something in the firm, a system, you know, a program, whatever, it’d be like, hey I’m thinking of doing this. What do you think? You know, when we changed our SEO company and our marketing company was like, you guys, I’m thinking about doing this. What do you guys think about this? And sometimes they’re gonna give you value to make sure that you understand your position, but more importantly they feel like they’re a part of your firm and they buy in because you are valuing their opinion. They’re not just a pawn or a cog in the whole situation. You know? And again, the same thing is with our leadership team.

Michael Urbina (00:14:44) – They’re here, they were here last year. It’s not like I’m afraid like oh they’re gonna learn stuff and they’re gonna do their own thing. Why If we can build it together and you’re like super, you know, like you legitimately mean what you say. There’s no reason that you know, you should have that fear. Okay. And the last point I wanted to make is personal and business relationship development. Say my wife is in this one so I’m not totally in the doghouse, you know, but you have to create, you know, like I said at the beginning, a genuine relationship with your employees. You don’t have to be best friends, that’s not what I’m saying. But you have to create a situation where they feel comfortable with you. Where if there’s a problem that they have that they honestly feel like, hey I can talk to Michael about this and I know he’ll understand X, y, z, you know, and I’m not gonna take anything personal.

Michael Urbina (00:15:28) – It’s just a situation where you have to really address things as they go. And I also have a saying like, you know, my parents run a business and they love to hire their friends to be, you know, their workers. People feel different about that. I do, I have the opportunity that I don’t believe in hiring family, but except for my wife she just, she she, she comes with the firm is the fact that there’s nothing in the rule book that says that you cannot have, you know, a friendship or a personal relationship with your employees after they become, you know, your workers. And some of you may be making faces like, oh that’s a bad idea. Not really. Again, if you create that same level playing field, if you’re open about your situation and you open about yourself and you’re truly genuine, there’s really nothing now don’t go doing crazy illegal things that will get you sued.

Michael Urbina (00:16:10) – But you know, make sure that you try to be open and honest and provide a situation for them that they feel, you know, like they can grow in your firm. That they have opportunities and that more importantly there’s really not much out there that will be offered to them that will be different or they may want to look for other opportunities, you know, and if they do, you wish them well cuz you never know, they might try to go somewhere else and come back in like a week. Okay, the last thing and I’m kind of jealous of Alexis that thought about putting a picture of Michael Scott and I’m totally gonna change some of the words here. So where it says, would I rather be fear or loved easy? Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love and scratch the me I will put my firm. Okay. And that’s all I got for you guys. Any questions? Promise?

Speaker 4 (00:16:56) – Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:16:58) – When you went to a four day work meeting, uh, did you share the hours so that they still work like 40 hours or

Michael Urbina (00:17:05) – So? We did shift the hours. We went from doing a nine to five to doing an eight to six so they could do the 10 hours completely. The beautiful part of that additional was the fact that we actually had extended hours that we didn’t have before but we weren’t overworking anyone so everybody got an extra day but the firm was open longer, clients were happier, the firm was happier. It worked out. In

Speaker 5 (00:17:25) – Terms of opening your books, uh, to your, uh, I I think you mentioned your leadership team, right? Do you do the same for your associates?

Michael Urbina (00:17:35) – For everybody? For everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone.

Speaker 5 (00:17:38) – Gotcha.

Michael Urbina (00:17:39) – From me all the way down to the last person that joined the firm and we don’t do it like on a month to month for the entire firm. We do like a end of the year retreat. We’re like this is where we ended up, this is where we’re gonna be next year. And we share with them, you know, key facts as we go. But we can’t do that same level of, you know, dissecting all the time cuz it’s just too time consuming. But we do a two day retreat at the end of the year where we literally just dissect everything. This is how much it went in y’all snacks, this is how much you win. And you know this because it’s important for them to understand that all that money that we’re making is not going to my pocket or to my boat or anything like that. It’s going to making sure this project continues to hum along. I

Speaker 5 (00:18:19) – Agree with pretty much everything that you said. I was just gonna know if you’re trying to figure out um, you know, what to pay some of your staff or um, attorneys. Obviously every market is different but Colorado recently passed a law that requires every job at to post a full salary range and benefits like on on the ad. So if you go out to like Indeed or any of ’em and look into Colorado market, you can see what pretty much every firm, Penn, pretty much everybody. And then you kind of try to adjust for your market.

Michael Urbina (00:18:47) – Yeah, I think that’s critical because especially nowadays people don’t like to post a range. But then sometimes you see people that do, they’re like, I’m looking for an attorney, I’m looking to pay between 30 and 50,000 for five years of experience. Nobody’s then they’re like, I don’t know why nobody’s applying. You’re ad . That’s why.

Speaker 5 (00:19:04) – What kind of professional development do you do for

Michael Urbina (00:19:06) – Your team? So we have a coach. She not only meets with me individually, she also meets with our leadership team. She is actually aware of everything that’s happening within our firm. She gives us ideas of things that we can do with them as well. We do our own research and kind of between the leadership team like designate like hey, so we want to do this kind of like every other month we’ll do some kind of team building thing. They went cooking like a, what was it called? Like team building with taste or something and they all cooked meals and competed about it. I couldn’t go without something else, but we did bowling. Like we always try to find things that align with our core values but something that’s fun for them and they understand that it has a purpose. So we do that at least every other month.

Michael Urbina (00:19:44) – Aside from talking about goals and things like that. Yeah, so we use RingCentral, which you may or may not like it, hate it, whatever. For us it works. We have different channels obviously just like Slack. I feel like it’s a little bit easier cuz it connects to our phone system. And because we also have a hybrid team, we have substantially large overseas team that works virtually. It’s easier for them to connect and like they can pick up the calls and transfer in within the system. For us it’s working. I’m not complaining and we’re probably gonna stick to it, but we just communicate everything through there. But we also have like a overall firm channel and then we have like an in-person employees channel. So it’s like when it’s a message specifically for the people in house, then we tell them. So we try to make sure that everybody gets constantly communicated, everything that’s happening and if so-and-so is leaving, I mean we just say it, Hey, so-and-so no longer works with us. We wish them well. Like don’t hide it, just say it. Thank you guys.

Speaker 1 (00:20:41) – Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Maximum Lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your host and to access more content, go to maximum com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

The post Keep Your Star Players with Michael Urbina appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.

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As a law firm, managing emails can be a daunting task. With multiple team members receiving and responding to emails, it’s easy for information to get lost in someone’s inbox. In this episode,  Jim and Tyson discuss the challenges of email management and offer tips and tools to streamline the process.

One of the ideas proposed was routing all emails through one person in the firm, similar to a receptionist. While this may help with team communication, it could also create a full-time job and raise scalability concerns. 

Jim’s Hack: Mindset shift: Don’t be too quick to jump out of a team. Exit teams slowly. 

Tyson’s Tip: The hosts also recommend the book “A World Without Email” by Cal Newport for more tips on improving email management. By finding ways to streamline email management, your law firm can avoid information silos and work more efficiently.

06:49 What if you route all emails through one person in a law firm? 

08:12 The problem of having one person responsible for emails and the benefits of using team inboxes

13:29 Tips on how to streamline emails, including setting up filters and reporting spam

16:03 The problems with routing emails through Filevine and the benefits of using Zoho Team Inbox for email management

Watch the full video on YouTube here. 

Resources:

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Transcript: Email Management in Your Law Firm?

Speaker 0 (00:00:01) – Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Maximum Lawyer podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Merix. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome, do the show.

Jim Hacking (00:00:22) – Welcome back to The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim Hacking,

Tyson Mutrux (00:00:25) – And I’m Tyson Mu. Well, what’s up Jimmy? You got your baseball, you got your St. Louis Cardinals garon, which is fantastic. I like it. It’s good.

Jim Hacking (00:00:33) – Even though they’re neither fantastic nor likable, they’re in the basement. There was actually booing at Bush Stadium last night, which freaking never happens. That

Tyson Mutrux (00:00:42) – Never happens.

Jim Hacking (00:00:43) – The team’s a mess. Nolan Anado looks completely lost. I think the coaches all need to be frog marched down Market Street. I think that this team had a lot of potential. They got no pitching over the off season, and they’ve driven it into the ground. You

Tyson Mutrux (00:00:58) – Know, the weird thing about baseball though, you, you can switch things up really quickly and things can just turn on a dime.

Jim Hacking (00:01:04) – I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie The Natural, but when the nights were really bad, they brought in the sports psychologist or some equivalent kind of a quack. And I just remember he stood up in front of the team and he goes, losing is a disease as contagious as syphilis. And then they would show clips of the Knights playing poorly. And, and that’s what I think the Cardinals are going through. And I think there’s a metaphor for us in owning a law firm with it. I’ve been thinking about it that, you know, sometimes you get in that funk and then it seems like the funk piles up on each other. And you know, I was talking to my therapist yesterday about all the stuff that piled up on me the last couple weeks, and it, it is like, dude, there’s 10 things. There’s 10 things.

Jim Hacking (00:01:44) – My house is under attack. We’re renovating the whole house. We just got done with Ramadan. We’ve got all these things that we could, you know, we had to let someone, we, we parted ways with someone here at the firm. And just like, if you let all that stuff pile up, you can really get into a nasty rut that can be hard to get out of. And I, I feel like I’m coming out of it, but man, it can feel just like that clip in the movie where it’s just like, you just can’t catch a break.

Tyson Mutrux (00:02:10) – You gave me a wonderful segue into something I gotta bring up, but I’m, I’m gonna ruin the segue. I don’t care. But I know what you mean because the, as you know, I’ve been sick since like last week and I missed two days of work. Like I’ve never missed two days of work. And it, like, it had me down like I was sleeping and it was like a lot of sleep. But, um, it is one of those things like when you’re laying in bed for that long, you’re like, you just think about all these things feel like he’s just piling on top of you. It can be tough sometimes, but the other thing way I was gonna ruin your segue is of all the teams, our two boys, all right, of, of all the teams that they got assigned the names, do you know what teams they got? Baseball teams they got?

Jim Hacking (00:02:48) – Oh yeah, the Yankees.

Tyson Mutrux (00:02:50) – Yes. Jackson’s team. The Yankees.

Jim Hacking (00:02:52) – Who would be the other one? The

Tyson Mutrux (00:02:53) – Worst of all The

Jim Hacking (00:02:54) – Cubs?

Tyson Mutrux (00:02:55) – Yes, the Cubs. We got the two. We got the two that you want. It’s just, we got both of them. So Yankees and Cubs, like, gosh dang it. But both of ’em seem like they’re pretty good, so I’ll take it, I guess. Anyways,

Jim Hacking (00:03:07) – That’s funny. When I coached, when the kids were really little, the first time I coached ’em, they were the tigers. So when I ordered their hat, I got ’em a D but the D didn’t look like the Detroit hat. And it just looked like a dumb D and everyone was like, these are the tigers. Why do you have a D on their hat? So my son loves to tease me about that.

Tyson Mutrux (00:03:24) – I like it. It’s good. I went to one of the last Detroit Tigers games. I don’t think it was the last, but in the old Tiger Stadium. It was so cool. We sat in left field when the ball would go up. You couldn’t see, you couldn’t see the ball. It was so, it was like that. It was just such a poorly designed stadium. It was really cool. If any of you listeners have ever been to it, you know how cool it’s, cause like, all these like triple Deckers, you know, it was really cool. But people were like ripping chairs up. People were ripping things off of the chairs like it was, cuz they were about to, they were gonna destroy it like a week after that. So

Jim Hacking (00:03:53) – I saw a game there, I was by myself. I went to a screenwriting conference, if you can believe that. And I bought a ticket and I was in the third row, but it was the first two rows go down underneath the ground level. So in the third row, my eyes were at the level of the feet of the first basement. It was the craziest thing. It, I’ll never see a game like that again. It was bizarre.

Tyson Mutrux (00:04:16) – It was weird. That one’s weird. And then Oakland, I went, I, I went, I saw a game by myself in Oakland and it was awful. The worst. It is the absolute worst. I saw one in Minnesota, the old twin stadium. That one was awful. Not nearly as bad as Oakland though.

Jim Hacking (00:04:31) – The real worst one is the Tampa Bay, the juice box. It’s the worst. It’s a multi-use place. It’s rusty, it’s gross. It’s not good. That’s

Tyson Mutrux (00:04:40) – Crazy. All right, let’s move on to I, the thing I gotta bring up. So when this airs, this is June 13th and our next in-Person Guild event. I wanna make sure I, I mentioned this because prices go up in about a week. The the next in-person guild event is Thursday, July 20th, and Friday July 21st at Venture X in Denver, Colorado. And the reason why we, we wanna make sure we mention this because that’s why you gave me a perfect segue. We’re kicking off the workshop. It’s led by performance coach Jason Celt. He’s kicking off the event. He’s not gonna be there the entire time, but he’s kicking off the event and it’s gonna be followed by a mastermind where each member is gonna be able to take a hot seat. It’s gonna be a, a really, really cool event. Last chance early bird tickets are on sale through June 30th. Prices gonna is is currently 1197. It will then go up to 1597. So make sure you get your tickets. Go to maxilla events.com. Maxilla events.com. Well

Jim Hacking (00:05:42) – That is a great segue because the St. Louis Cardinals need to bring Jason Salt back. They don’t need to bring that guy saying that losing is a disease as contagious as syphilis. They need Jason Cel back to bring some mental toughness to that team because they are not mentally tough.

Tyson Mutrux (00:05:56) – I am curious to see if that would change things that would be interesting that he was their performance coach the last time they won the World Series. So,

Jim Hacking (00:06:05) – Last two

Tyson Mutrux (00:06:05) – Times. Last two times. Exactly. So, I mean, I don’t know if that’s something that Jason would want. He seems like he’s doing all right by himself now. But, um, all right, let’s get to the topic of the day. All right, so let me give you the framework cause I wanted to talk, talk this through with you. Cause I wanna give what your thoughts are. I put an idea into the Guild, oh, last week I think. And here’s the idea. And this is not a now a new idea, right? This is not something that I came up with. This is just an idea. We use team inboxes now and frankly, I, the teams don’t like using it. They like using their own email. And my post in the guild was basically, what are your thoughts on routing? All emails. Okay. All emails through one person. Okay.

Tyson Mutrux (00:06:49) – All emails. Like you do a receptionist, okay, you treat it like you would do a receptionist and then that receptionist then routes things through, tasks could be created or whatever. That was the question. I got a lot of interesting feedback. A lot of people do things that are very similar. There’s a lot of different apps apparently don’t allow you to do that. I know that we could do that with, with Zoho, Zoho, uh, team inbox. We could do that. You could set tasks right there from within Zo and it’d be easy to do. But I’m also reading this book, which I’m gonna, it’s, it’s near my tip of the week, you know, spoiler alert. But it’s a world with that email. It’s by Cal Newport. You may have already read it. I know you’re a huge Cal Newport fan, but I want to talk through the way we do email because it is a huge burden every single day. And so I just wanna get your thoughts on ways we could redo email.

Jim Hacking (00:07:36) – Okay, that sounds like a good topic.

Tyson Mutrux (00:07:38) – All right. So I personally would love the idea of actually, I personally love the idea of the team inboxes where everyone sort of gets all the information for their team. It’s sort of difficult when it comes to court notifications because when you do that, you get, like if you have three people on a team, I guess you only have one attorney. But if you have two attorneys assigned to the case, then you would get the notifications would go into different team inboxes. And that’s kind of, that part’s kind of frustrating. But ultimately I think it would, I would love for all email to go through in one place. I just, that might be like a full-time job by itself just doing that.

Jim Hacking (00:08:10) – Why do you want all the email to go through one place?

Tyson Mutrux (00:08:12) – That way there’s one person that’s accountable for it that can then assign tasks based upon it. Here’s one of the major issues that I’ve seen, especially when it comes to attorneys leaving. So discovery comes through that person’s email. Okay? If that person does not then move it into the file, like they should have, or let’s say that they haven’t even left, let’s say they’re still with the firm, they’ve not added it to the file and we’ve got a deadline coming up and a case manager’s trying to work on the discovery. Hey, where’s the discovery? Hey, I can’t get a hold of such and such. Um, cuz they’re in court today. The deadline’s in two days and I really need to start working on this. It gets sort of locked into that email. And if you have it in more of a team setting, it’s gonna allow, whether that’s in one email or in like multiple team inboxes, more people are gonna have access to it. That way it’s not locked away in one person’s email or just the fact that there’s communications with adjusters or attorneys on negotiations. If that note has not been added to the file, that’s a problem. So I’m trying to solve the information being locked away in one person’s inbox where people can’t get to it.

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Jim Hacking (00:10:06) – So, I mean, first of all, I think File Vine does a great job with the dedicated case address to make sure that that doesn’t happen. So once everybody gets used to using that email address, it’s like a blind CC into the file. And the problem is therefore mostly solved. I’m worried about relieving everybody of that responsibility when all it really takes is yelling at them until they do it every time. Right? So I just think, I mean, how would this work? You’re saying that it, it’s not a cc matter, a cc email, it’s the actual communication goes through some gatekeeper.

Tyson Mutrux (00:10:43) – You could set these up where when you send the outgoing email, it looks like it’s from you. So there would on outgoing email, it’s, there’s no problem.

Jim Hacking (00:10:52) – One of you and I are trying to settle a case over email over the course of a day. I mean, I gotta go find it each time it comes in. Well

Tyson Mutrux (00:10:59) – See this is, I’m, that’s why I’m glad we’re talking this through. This is the

Jim Hacking (00:11:02) – Dumbest plan I’ve ever heard.

Tyson Mutrux (00:11:03) – So the centralized one wouldn’t work in, in the team inbox. It would work actually, cuz it’s, you’ve only have a few people that are assigned to that team inbox and that’s what we have currently where Yeah, you just go on the team inbox, it’s right there. So it’s not like it’s the cent. I That’s a good point with the, that’s a huge flaw though, with that team inbox. It’s a really good point. So, so I’m, that’s why I wanna talk this through. So this is good. I

Jim Hacking (00:11:23) – Often come back in our firm to this analogy that I, I don’t know where I picked it up, but you know like have you ever heard that thing, like if you’re in a restaurant and somebody’s choking or there’s a fire, like you don’t say, hey somebody call the police. You point to one person and you say, lady, you call the police dude, you get a towel for their head. Dude you do this like when no one is responsible, ultimately responsible, you know, there’s big problems, right? So I think that I understand the problem that you’re having, but let’s say you have one attorney who’s hoarding attachments in their email, that’s a problem. I just don’t know that the solution is the right one. That’s what I’m saying.

Tyson Mutrux (00:12:03) – I think that’s a good point and I have heard that before and I think that that’s right. The counterpoint to that would be is that there would be one person, one person assigned to it. But I think that that the centralized inbox, it seems like it’s a really monumental task. It’s rethinking things so much. I don’t know if it’s doable. It sounds like there’s a lot of people in the guild that do do that by a lot. About five to 10. It’s sort of this response that look like people actually do it. I would love to see how they do it cuz I, the one point that you gave me already is a really good point. Like, here’s

Jim Hacking (00:12:34) – Another one. How many team members do you have?

Tyson Mutrux (00:12:36) – I think we’re a total 24.

Jim Hacking (00:12:38) – And how many emails on average would each team member receive in a given day?

Tyson Mutrux (00:12:42) – A bunch. I don’t know. I know I personally get, I dunno, it’s like one 20 or something like that. It’s crazy.

Jim Hacking (00:12:47) – So say a hundred now you probably get more than most people, but let’s say somewhere between 50 and a hundred. So let’s say 75 times 24 people that’s in one day. I don’t think this is a scalable plan. I think you’re gonna set yourself up for some real problems later on because even if the person is working their ass off and using automation as much as they can, you’re talking about a torrent of email. I just don’t know how this scales. I think if it’s, if it’s a one attorney and their paralegal and maybe an admin, yeah, maybe. But beyond that, I mean we have 55 team members, you know, and we have email in all different kinds of places. I just think it’s really important that you find a better way.

Tyson Mutrux (00:13:29) – No, I, I agree. So let’s take the, the centralized inbox and let’s scrap that idea for a second. Cause I do wanna see how other people do it. Cause I, I’m not convinced that that’s the way of doing it either. I do wanna give people some pointers on like sort of streamlining their emails because we all do get a bunch of emails because I think hearing us brainstorming this idea might be helpful. But I think also give them some takeaways too. But most of us use Gmail as like our, we use Google Workplace You do too as well, right? Yep. I do want to tell people like if you all get regular emails, you can set up filters and if you find yourself forwarding emails to certain email addresses on a regular basis, which that does, I mean you can actually set up filters, uh, that will catch those emails and automatically do things with them and then archive ’em so you don’t have to worry about it or delete ’em.

Tyson Mutrux (00:14:12) – So just keep that in mind. I uh, I don’t do this with you as Jim, but some people I subscribe, they put me on their list of emails and I didn’t really subscribe for it. It’s just subscribe to it. I don’t wanna read ’em. So I just have them automatically deleted instead of subscribe to it just so I don’t hurt their feelings. But so like there’s things like you can do, like things like that with filters too, I think. I think it’s a really easy way of, of minimizing your inbox and doing things that you wanna do with them. But let’s change gears with Team Inbox because wait, can

Jim Hacking (00:14:41) – I just see something real quick about that? Besides unsubscribing is I’ve been reporting people for spam because if, if like the people that drive me the crazy the most are AVO reps. They’re the worst. Head hunters are really bad and, and I, I think they have multiple email addresses and they send me all this stuff all the time. And then I gave money to the D N C one time and they’ve sold my email address, 8,000. I get an email from every candidate everywhere across the country and I just knock ’em as spam if I didn’t sign up for it. I’m not, I mean that’s the best way to keep it out of the email in the future.

Tyson Mutrux (00:15:14) – It’s a really good point. I’ve been doing that too fairly recently. I, I held off for many, many years not reporting to spam, just unsubscribing and like I just got sick of it because it is, they they just, it’s the email like, hey,

Jim Hacking (00:15:28) – Got a minute.

Tyson Mutrux (00:15:29) – Yeah, you got a minute? Yeah. Quick question. Podcast guests all the freaking time. And it’s just them cuz they get paid to do it, right? They get paid to promote it and then they’ll email me five times, Hey, did you see my previous email? Hey, did you see my previous email? Yeah, that’s the worst. And I’m like, okay, now, now you’re spammed. Okay. That’s what you are. So that’s, yeah, that’s a good one. Yeah. And and for, for those of you that have not heard our previous episodes on like actually having a VA that handles your email inbox and all that, you should check that out. But alright, so let’s switch over to Team Inboxes. It sounds like you’ll don’t use any form of team inbox, right? No,

Jim Hacking (00:16:01) – Other than the feed and file Vine. Okay,

Tyson Mutrux (00:16:03) – Let me tell you the problem with file by fee. When it comes to this, the email, there’s two major problems that I have with it. One, it’s the formatting. If I were to cc the file on it and if I needed to print that email off, cuz like sometimes we do like, for like bad faith like setups, we need to print off that email and it looks, these look official, it doesn’t look very good inside of File Vine. If you try to do that, that is a problem. And then the other one is, is that when e when those emails, it doesn’t solve the problem whenever those emails come in because they’re not CC’d and we’ve had attorneys where they’ll, they’ll say, Hey, uh, I saw that your client’s email was on was you know, CC’d I removed it from this thread. And so we, that’s, that’s a fairly common thing that we see when we try to cc the file.

Tyson Mutrux (00:16:48) – It does happen quite a bit. I wanna get your thoughts on though, addressing one little issue we have. So the team inbox is fantastic, it’s great, uh, from my perspective, but we do have hesitation when it comes to adoption. The good thing about Team Inbox is that you can cc the team inbox whenever you want to. You can email out whenever you’re emailing out. So for example, like Red team mf injury.com is one of the team inboxes. So if I’ve got that for Red team, those emails can come into Red team, you know, court notifications can come into Red Team and if I want to email Jim Hacking, I can just say it’s from Tyson mf injury.com and then whenever they reply to it, it’ll actually come to my email and not the red team email. And that is a, it’s a haunted little thing.

Tyson Mutrux (00:17:30) – Another cool thing is too is that whenever there’s a lot of cool things about it, like, but if I send the email and it’s from the red team inbox and then it, they respond to it, I get alerted the other team people, uh, on the team don’t get alerted, which is kind of cool. Where I’m, I I know it’s for me the problem is, is like people, they seem to seem to really like their Google email. So do you have any suggestions on adoption, getting people to adopt it because it is a fantastic product. It gives you a lot of options. There’s a lot of features on, on Zoho team invites and I just wonder what your thoughts are on, on getting that adoption. It is a valuable tool. Well, I just want to, I want to increase adoption. So

Jim Hacking (00:18:06) – You yourself are on teams right now, you’re a participant in a team or two?

Tyson Mutrux (00:18:10) – Yeah, so I can jump in cause I’ve got admin rights. I can jump into multiple emails or team inboxes if we need to.

Jim Hacking (00:18:16) – Okay, so let’s say Anthony Anthony’s on a team or two,

Tyson Mutrux (00:18:19) – He’s on one, he’s on green team mf.com. It’s that one inbox.

Jim Hacking (00:18:22) – So does that mean that every email that comes to Green Team Anthony sees

Tyson Mutrux (00:18:27) – In that team inbox Yes.

Jim Hacking (00:18:28) – Even ones that aren’t addressed to him?

Tyson Mutrux (00:18:31) – Correct.

Jim Hacking (00:18:32) – So now Anthony’s checking emails that don’t apply to him.

Tyson Mutrux (00:18:35) – Yeah, but I, what I would optimally, I think what I’d want is, is that the case manager is in charge of reviewing it and then assign them out. And so one person is responsible for that inbox and not, and that’s not how we’re doing it currently, just so we’re clear. But one person is responsible for that inbox and then we would probably have it as the case manager.

Jim Hacking (00:18:53) – And then I guess the point I’m trying to make is what percentage of time are people spending looking at other people’s emails inside the group?

Tyson Mutrux (00:18:59) – Probably not a whole lot because they’re all, they’re all team related because they’re all the people on that team. You, you have three people on that team that are, that are assigned to that inbox. You got a litigation assistant, you’ve got a case manager, and then you got an attorney. That’s it. So they’re all related to cases like that are on that team.

Jim Hacking (00:19:15) – But like if the legal assistant is setting up a depo time with a client, does the lawyer then see all those emails?

Tyson Mutrux (00:19:24) – Currently? Yes. Optimally no. Like, so what would happen is, is that that would be dealt with by the case manager and then it’s tagged to that client. So then it’s archived and we’ll never see it. And you can also, you can assign emails. So I Jim, if you were like on my team, I can assign that email to you and then you won’t see the other ones. You can just look at the ones that are only assigned to you. So if I go into that team inbox, you don’t have to look at all the other emails. I can go, okay, I only wanna see the ones that are assigned. It’s just a tab, boom click assigned to me, boom. These are my emails that I need to address and nothing else

Jim Hacking (00:19:55) – And that means to get those team emails that have been assigned to me. That’s not happening in Gmail. That’s happening somewhere else.

Tyson Mutrux (00:20:01) – It’s happening in Zoho team inbox. Yeah.

Jim Hacking (00:20:03) – And that’s part of the headache of getting the adoption that you wonder about.

Tyson Mutrux (00:20:07) – Yeah, I think what it would take is us switching over almost completely. And that’s a big problem.

Jim Hacking (00:20:11) – I wonder if you’re not creating more work by trying to create less work, it seems, I think at the very least right now it seems like a push, if not a little more extra work. I mean, what’s the big problem with letting adult people handle their own email and then notifying people when they need to?

Tyson Mutrux (00:20:28) – It’s just the information being locked away is what it is. Um, not everyone on the team knowing go what’s going on with the file because it’s in that person’s email, they don’t make a note on it or they don’t cc the file or the doc,

Jim Hacking (00:20:39) – Why don’t you lose your shit the next time that happens and make a mockery of everybody involved who did not upload the documents to where it belongs and say, if this happens again, you’re all fired. Because

Tyson Mutrux (00:20:50) – That’s not my style style. I need to bring Jim Hacken

Jim Hacking (00:20:53) – Yours in mine. I’m teasing, but you know what I mean. I mean it seems like you’re taking on this monumental task to solve a relatively minor problem that could be solved with a little bit of coaching and a little bit of guidance.

Tyson Mutrux (00:21:04) – Okay. Uh, feedback. Tegan, I’ll love to talk this through a little bit more. We do need to wrap things up cause both of you, you and I both have huddles, uh, coming up so we can talk more about this later. I appreciate the combo. Before I wrap things up, I wanna remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. A lot of great information being shared there. Uh, if you want a more high level conversation, join us in the guild. Go to max law guild.com if you wanna join us in Denver and then later this year in Miami. And then our own little retreat that we have, roll teaser there, max law events.com. You can join us there as well. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking (00:21:40) – You know, I’m a 10 quick start and I love to get excited and jumping on to next things. Don’t be too quick to jump out of a team. Don’t be too quick to abdicate responsibility or connection to a team. I’ve spent the last 90 days or four months with my intake team and I have a connection with them that I haven’t had in a really long time. I’m gonna be much slower in how I exit this time than I was the last time. And I just think that it’s easy to sort of adopt this mindset that, oh, well this thing’s humming along so I can go over here and go do other stuff. But I think across our firm right now in every department, we’re seeing that sort of the leaders of those departments need to be a little bit more connected than I thought. So be deliberate and be thoughtful in how you let go of connection in whatever department you’re responsible for.

Tyson Mutrux (00:22:31) – I love it. That’s good advice. And then I already mentioned this, but my tip of the week is a world without email reimagining work in an age of communication overload by Cal Newport. So check it out. Hi Jimmy. See you brother. Bye bud.

Speaker 0 (00:22:44) – Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Maximum Lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your host and to access more content, go to maximum lawyer.com com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

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