What pieces do you need in place to start your law firm? What is the thought process and mindset that gets you to “take the leap”? What foundations would you need to get started?

In today’s episode Jim and Tyson are interviewing Josh Rohrscheib the new law firm owner and start up of Onward Injury Law. Josh started his own firm recently — and as he says in this interview there are so many great things about starting your own firm including starting with that blank canvas. Having the ability to take what you love to your new start up and leave what you don’t like.

This and more is what we are talking about today! So listen in.

Episode Highlights:

01:09 Josh’s big news – He started his own law firm with people that he loves working with and hiring one of his best friends as his marketing director!

02:00 The thought process about hiring a marketing director right out of the gate – which is – What if I could put someone with 40 hours behind them in this area that they are an expert in?!

04:15 The Genesis, thought process and planning to go out on your own and how being comfortable can be a crutch

06:44 When you are questioning your impact

08:32 How are you feeling, being 2 months into owning your own firm?

10:16 Decision making behind the naming the new firm – Onward Injury Law

12:29 The planning that went into the starting of the law firm

14:29 What’s it like starting out with a blank canvas?

16:11 What needs to take place for you to know that this was the right move

17:50 Having a mindset to focus on the good

Jim’s Hack: If you work out at the gym keep an eye out for the people that are working hard and give them a thumbs up.

Josh’s Tip: 1. TextExpander Course for lawyers 2. Lainer Trail Academy MasterClass: A three day masterclass for lawyer 3. ”This is Water” speech by David Wallance

Tyson Tip: Switchmail.com – The easiest way to securely send business mail online.

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Josh:

Resources:

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Building a firm and starting a firm is not easy! But what Bill is going to cover today is easy. It’s easy to learn. It’s easy to do. And it will have a disproportionate positive impact on your business. The reason this stuff works is that it goes to the core of any successful business, which is client happiness! That is at the core — If your clients are happy, they will go out and rave about your business and any people they talk to.

If those people need help in the same area in the future, they are the easiest leads to convert. Let’s think about client happiness in a different way. There are two components to client happiness.

  1. Objective
  2. Client expectations

This and more is what our podcast guest Bill Farias talks about today in this throwback MaxLawCon 22 presentation. Listen in!

Episode Highlights:

3:13 When what you get falls short of what you were promised! 

8:02 Not properly managing and meeting people’s expectations 

8:58 Using a formula to manage clients expectations 

10:25 Step 1 – If you do the work up front …

10:40 Step 2 – Humans want to make other people happy = Operations – Process – Costs 

14:12 How to get started and making a game plan

16:53 Tools

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here. 

Connect with Bill:

Resources:

Transcript: Managing Client Expectations to Create Raving Fans

Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2020. To keep listening to hear Bill Farias as we share his talk, managing client expectations to create raving fans, you can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video, let’s get to it.

Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Bill Farias
So this building affirms starting a firm managing a firm thing is not easy, right? Whether you are a solo looking to optimize the operation and profit. Or if you are looking to build a firm to the point that you can exit this stuff is not easy. But what we are going to cover today is easy. It’s easy to learn, it’s easy to implement. And it will have a disproportionate positive impact on your operation and your business. And the reason this stuff works is that it goes to the core of any successful business, which is client happiness, right? That is at the root. If your clients are happy, they will go out and rave about your business. And the people they talk to if those people need help in the same area in the future, they are the easiest leads to convert. I mean, you really have to blow the sales process to not land these people. And what I want to talk to you today about is to think about client happiness in a different way. There are two components to client happiness. One is we’ll call it objective. And I call it reality, which is what result is the client getting? What service are you delivering? And obviously, we should continue to improve in those areas, right? We want to deliver great service, we want to deliver great results. But the other area that’s very important and underrated and is more subjective, is client expectations. And it’s something we don’t pay a lot of attention to. So what kind of expectations are you creating when you are onboarding these people? Are you doing a good job of avoiding you and your staff doing a good job of avoiding inflating these people’s expectations? When there are key events or changes in the case? What are you doing to actively manage those expectations?

Bill Farias
These little girls here are my daughter’s Gabriella and Emma and I love them dearly. And these little girls absolutely love sugar. I mean, what kid doesn’t love sugar, but these kids especially love sugar. And they love particularly ice cream from this little shop called the ice cream barn in the small town of Swansea, Massachusetts. And this is the best ice cream I’ve ever had. I mean, they’ve won multiple awards for best ice cream in the state. And I think it’s the best ice cream in the world. And you are all very fortunate to not live near this place because this stuff is dangerously good. And so I thought I would be a good dad during that pandemic, that nightmare pandemic summer year of 2020. And everything was closed for a while. And shops and restaurants were starting to open back up. And so I thought I’d be a good dad and get some ice cream from the ice cream bar they had just opened up. And so I told my little girls, I’m going to the ice cream barn and we’re going to have some ice cream. And I’ve never seen them so happy they were jumping up and down. They were ecstatic, as happy as can be. And then, as happens more than I would like, I got a text from colleague and there was an emergency and I had to deal with it. And I had to deal with it right away. This couldn’t wait. And the ice cream barn was going to close in 20 minutes. And I had to sit down at a laptop and take care of this problem. And so I wasn’t going to make it and I felt terrible. So now I had to break the news to these kids that they were not getting ice cream from the best shop in the entire state. And so I was trying to think of a way to save this and what I thought of Was this at this time, in the summer of 2020, I had a pretty nasty Oreo habit. And my Oreo habit worked like this. I would sit down at the end of the day and I would watch sopranos for like the third time or Ozark and I would dunk my Oreos in milk and enjoy them. They were super chewy, delicious. And this got quickly out of control. One Oreo turned into three turned into six, and I had to kill the habit, but it was great while it lasted. So the point of this is that I had some Oreos in the pantry. And I had to hide these I’m embarrassed to say because they’d be gone if I don’t hide them. And then I wouldn’t have my Oreos for my shows. So I thought this is a nice tree, I will just offer them some Oreos. And so I said girls, I’m not going to be able to go to the ice cream barn. But I have some Oreos in the pantry and you’re free to enjoy the Oreos. And these kids were absolutely devastated. So any other time I would offer these kids Oreos, this is their second favorite treat, right the only thing they like more than Oreos is ice cream from the ice cream barn. So any other time I offer them Oreos, there was a similar reaction. They were very happy, ecstatic. But this time when they had the expectation to get ice cream from the best shop in the state, and the fallback was Oreos. They were devastated. And so what does this has to do with business? Well, in about 2018, I started listening to these two dudes named Jim and Tyson. And they were talking about treating a law firm like a business. And there were a lot of great ideas. And I thought the first thing I would do was very simple. Just reach out to clients and get feedback. How is it going? Do you have any suggestions. And the feedback that I got wasn’t great. So it took longer than I expected to get the case filed, the support amount was lower than I expected. We practice divorce and custody family law. It took too long to resolve the case, I thought I was getting more parenting time, I’m disappointed I didn’t get shared legal custody. And so the next move was to figure out why this was happening. And at the time, it was very easy to do. Because I was essentially the whole operation it was me and a legal assistant, I had all of the interaction with the clients. So I know what these people were hearing, I know inside out what was happening on the case. And the conclusion was that this had a lot less to do with the service that we were delivering, and the result the client was getting. In other words, I was very confident that I couldn’t have done anything to change the outcome, and that the service was good. The problem was, I was not properly setting and managing expectations. So these people’s expectations were inflated, and I didn’t meet them. And so we lost. So I have a formula that I think is very helpful to understand this, I didn’t invent this formula, I think you’ll find it online. And I believe it’s sort of a combination of Buddhism, and stoicism. I’m a big fan of psychology, by necessity. Back in 2005. When I was in law school, I was burning the candle at both ends, I burned myself out, had to take a leave hooked up with a couple of really good doctors, psychologists, and they gave me some great tools. And I’ve been a student of psychology since and by the way, Buddhism and stoicism are great. There are so many modern psychological principles that stem from those disciplines. So I highly recommend reading them. But what you see here is two clients, one client on the left one client on the right. And what you’ll see overall, when you look at this is that happiness sits in the gap between reality again, what’s happening, the result and the expectations. And so both got the same result. You see that’s reflected by the reality line up top. So they got the same result got the same level of service. The problem is that although the client on the left had expectations properly said and that worked out you have a happy client, manage expectations set well the client on the right not so much right inflated expectations and that person is unhappy. So same result, same level of service. One person is thrilled, the other is not happy is miserable. And we’ve experienced this many times ourselves clients that come from other attorneys, attorneys so and so told me this, and we’ve had cases where we believe the other side got a better result. But our client was happy. And the other side wasn’t solely based on the expectations that were set and the expectations that were not managed throughout the process. So what are the barriers to this? So number one, this actually takes work upfront to set, it’s very important to set these expectations with clients, it’s very important to train your staff on it. If you do the work upfront, it’s going to be much easier to manage this throughout the process. Number two, another psychological principle, which is that human beings naturally want to make other people happy right now. And so when you are appropriately setting and managing expectations, that often involves difficult conversations with people. And people just generally want to avoid that, right? They want to say something right now, that’s going to make the person happy. The problem is, you can do that. But if you’re not accurate, and you’re inflating expectations, you are paying the price down the road. So how does this work? You just tell everyone that you suck, and then everything you do beyond that is just gravy, and you’re good to go. So unfortunately, it’s just really not that simple. Don’t do that you’ll lose all your clients. So what areas do you target? Number one, operations. Your clients need to know how your operation works. What time do you open? What time do you close? What times are people available? How long does it take someone to get back to the person, they need to know how things work? Number two timeframes, they need to know how long it takes your firm to do certain things, how long it takes for any other entity that’s involved to do certain things. The courts courts are slow, these people need to know that otherwise, they’re going to think you are the problem. So you need to explain timeframes to clients. process. This is more of a 30,000 foot view. These people need to know what the client journey is going to look like from start to finish as best as you can explain it. And they need to know whether it’s going to be sequential, and predictable. They need to know like family law, divorce and custody, whether it might be all over the place, they need to have an idea of what the process is going to look like, costs. People hate talking about money, you need to talk about costs with clients. You need to talk about costs, even if there isn’t certainty, especially if there isn’t certainty use ranges. But you need to have these discussions

Becca Eberhart
is that Python is back if you’re new around here this APA THON is the OG automation workshop at this next exclusive guild event we’re partnering up with maximum lawyers good friend Kelsey Bratcher. To bring you a day and a half automation workshop. The idea of automation is simple, right? Identify a repeatable pattern of tasks and then use technology. So that business process can happen without you. But setting up that technology can be daunting, time consuming, and even have a steep learning curve. Join us in person and you’ll create automations on site that will start working for you before you even leave Austin, join the guild today and grab your ticket at max law events.com.

Bill Farias
And finally, results. And this is more geared toward what not to do be very, very careful about predicting results. All right, if you make predictions, if you say maybe probably, and it’s what someone really wants and their ultimate goal, if you are not accurate, you will pay the price that is all they will remember. So be very careful when you’re talking about results to clients. So what is the game plan? Number one, you need to set the expectations right you need to create the onboarding material, you need to make sure that you are having or your staff is having these conversations with clients to put these expectations in place, it is going to be much easier to manage them down the road. Number two pushing down expectations and you can think of this as sort of the other side of this coin is avoid inflating expectations. Okay. Again, use ranges use other tools that we’ll go over to make sure that expectations are pushed down. And finally managing and again this goes to a different points in the case certain things will happen and if you believe that it will benefit the client and your relation shipped to have a conversation about expectations and how they should change to remain consistent with the case that should happen, you need to actively manage the expectations throughout the case. So what are the limits to this? All right, there are limits. And number one is sales, okay? During the sales process, people want certainty, and they want to have confidence in you. So if you are going to drill down on expectations, during the sales process, they’ll go elsewhere, you’re not going to land that lead. The exception is, if there is a major expectation that you feel your firm will not be able to meet, then absolutely, you need to have that discussion, you do not want to onboard someone with an expectation you can’t meet because it’s going to be a nightmare. But generally stay away from drilling down on expectations during sales, you want to do it during onboarding, quality, this is the objective factor. All right, this is the result they are getting the service you are delivering the fact that you know that managing expectations has a significant impact on client happiness is not a license to suck. Alright, you have to continue to get better, you have to continue to work on getting your clients better results. And finally, integrity. So you want to push down and manage expectations. But you need to be honest with people. All right. So again, you can use ranges, one tool that I use is if there is a range, I will err on the side of caution on that range. So I keep the expectations down. But you do not want to misrepresent, obviously, I’m gonna go over some of the tools that I found helpful in setting and managing expectations. And these are all sort of related. So number one is uncertainty. I know in family law, I did criminal defense for a while. And there is plenty of uncertainty in those areas of practice. And I know there’s plenty of uncertainty in many areas of practice. And what you want to do is you want to use this to your advantage, okay, you want to talk to the client about it, and you want to help them understand this element of the law and the process. But you don’t want these people to lose confidence in you, right. So the way that you accomplish that is you focus them on the micro, okay, we believe that this is the best next step, we believe, based on our experience, this is what you should do, and focus them on that next step. Effort, Right, this is another one, this is what we are doing. This is what the staff is doing to move your case forward, focus them on the effort that you are making on their behalf. Time, time comes up again, because this is the most common complaint, I can’t tell you how many people come to me and say, I thought so and so was going to finish this by this time, it’s gone way over. This happens all the time. This happens all the time in law, it happens all the time in business in general, err on the side of caution when it comes to time, there is a general rule to add a third. So if you think it’s going to take two days, tell them it’s going to take three, you don’t have to follow that rule. But the bottom line is, like everything else we’ve been talking about, you want to under promise and over deliver on time, be very careful about your predictions on when things are going to get done. And finally, focus them back on integrity, right? You can go to the law firm down the street, and they’re going to tell you exactly what you want to hear. But we’re doing right by you. We are honest with you and transparent, and we’re telling you exactly like it is and they will appreciate that you are flipping using this uncertainty into these people trusting you. So what do you do with this? First of all, don’t assume that your staff knows this. I know some of you might be saying duh, obviously you want to under promise and over deliver. But again, you have that human element of people want to make other people happy. Right? So people don’t like to have difficult discussions and when you are properly setting and managing expectations, that involves difficult discussions. So just train them on this concept, this idea. And finally put a lot of effort into onboarding. Okay. So I found that people don’t like to read, I’ve tried this a million different ways. If you’re gonna give them a ton of stuff to read, they’re just not going to read it. So you need to be creative. You need to add videos, you need to add charts, you need to deliver it to them in a way that they are actually going to want to consume it and you want to put a bunch of time and effort into doing it upfront so that it’s much easier to manage the expectations throughout. So we have been doing this for some time and focusing on it. It’s something I continually bring up. We’ve been gathering net promoter scores from our clients for a while now. So nine and 10 are promoters they’re going out and telling other people about the service, anything below might be problematic. We have about 95% promoters. And I’m very confident that it has a lot to do with how we’re managing this issue. So if you take this seriously, if you train your staff on it, if you incorporate it into your process, you will be a long way toward optimizing client happiness, which is the single most effective way to create raving fans that will help you take your business to whatever level you want. That’s all I got. Time for questions? Anybody have any questions? So a net promoter score, Billy tercio was here earlier, she’s the one who taught me about it. But it is basically serving the clients and asking them on a scale from one to 10. How likely are you to promote our business? How likely are you to tell other people about our business, a nine or a 10 is a promoter, a seven or an eight is neutral. So they don’t really hate you. But they’re kind of on the fence. And then anything below seven is a real problem.

Unknown Speaker
Well, quite difficult to avoid really valid results, conversation when you are doing sales.

Bill Farias
Well, at first it was but now it’s sort of like second nature. And again, I use the tools that I highlighted. But absolutely, people want to hear what the result is going to be. And people want you to predict. And what you have to do is just not bite the bullet, unless you are 100% Certain, and I know you do criminal work. So this was just as much a problem in my criminal practice. I did that for about seven years, and you just can’t bite, right, you have to go back to there’s a lot of uncertainty, the judge has a ton of discretion, here’s what we are going to do. I’m confident these are the best next steps. So I stay completely away from predicting results. And I’m training my staff on it. In fact, I caught an email from an associate, coincidentally, about a week ago, and there was a hearing that didn’t go too well. And she emailed the client, you will probably end up getting shared custody, I saw that email. Don’t do that, right. Because you never know what can go wrong in many legal practice in many practice areas. So you have to avoid that at all costs. Again, people want to hear it. So your staff is going to want to make them happy. But I avoided at all costs. Yep. So we at first were doing it only at the end. Now we are doing it after major events. So if there is a key meeting, if there is an important hearing, we will send the NPSL because we want to know sooner rather than later whether there is an issue. So there is no exact number, but we are doing it far more frequently and implementing it earlier. The NPS. So we have a client service specialist, and we’re actually in the process of optimizing this some so that it can be more automated. But we have a client service specialist who collects this info, gets it into a spreadsheet, and then we can analyze it and take the necessary steps.

Unknown Speaker
To communicate with that person, we need to send it in the app.

Bill Farias
So we have a project management platform that allows all staff to see where the cases are at. And so the client service specialist knows we actually use monday.com, they go into monday.com. And they know, look, there’s a hearing coming up on Tuesday. So on Wednesday, we’re reaching out to the client, you’re sorry.

Unknown Speaker
A client comes to you or your clients, here’s my situation, what do you have?

Bill Farias
Know what I do is I give them a realistic range of possibilities. And I correct and I but the bottom line is I err on the side of caution even on the range, because that’s problematic, too. People are only going to hear the best case scenario and they will hold you to it. So be very careful even about the range. Marco

Bill Farias
people who don’t listen to reason and what we just get rid of them immediately. So we have a process to flag these people. And we accumulate this data and we give people the benefit of the doubt and Marco you do family law so you know very emotionally driven, right. So if they have a bad day, we can deal with it. If the data starts to accumulate, that it’s going to be a problem and it will be difficult to meet their expectations. They’re gone. And we do the you know, it’s not you, it’s me, we want, we want to find the best lawyer for you. So we just get rid of them. Well, we’ve been kind of on the fence about this. So I asked for the Google review at the end if the person is a promoter if it’s a nine or a 10. But we are actually thinking about sending it out when we get a favorable NPS. So if it’s after a great hearing, why not take advantage of that opportunity to say, Hey, can you please fill this out? Or can you please leave us a review? What we don’t want to do is ask multiple times. I’m not even sure if someone can do that. But we just want to be careful not to ask them multiple times. But I don’t I don’t have a problem with sending it out during the process. We haven’t done it yet. But that’s something we’re considering.

Unknown Speaker
Yes, over time, and then like, what’s your process that gets triggered by that? It’s like below which,

Bill Farias
yeah, so the NPS data is accumulated on a Google sheet. And it automatically spits out what the average is. And there is a breakdown of each individual person, and what the score was and the exact feedback. And then what happens is we have a system for identifying the anybody who gave us less than a nine. And automatically that sort of goes up the chain. So first, it goes to the paralegal and attorney, hey, here’s what’s going on client so and so is complaining about this. And then depending on what comes out of that, it’ll go up the chain to me, so that I can take a look at it, usually

Unknown Speaker
multiple times a client to see where they are different stages, or once you send them an either in the middle after major thing or at the end.

Bill Farias
Yeah. So that’s something that we’re also in the process of figuring out we have sent it out multiple times. I’m not sure what the best answer is to that. Certainly, I think whatever process you implement, needs to be geared toward capturing these issues consistently, right? You don’t want to do it just once at the beginning. What if things go south, three months down the road? So we’re earning on the side of sending it out regularly? All right. Thank you.

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Is it realistic for a law firm owner to strive for a law firm that runs without them? Jim and Tyson have changed their thinking around this topic of a law firm owner working towards the goal of being only in the owners box. 

Is this possible? It’s an interesting idea, however, we don’t think it’s really possible for a law firm owner to be in the owners box only and run a highly successful firm that you can scale. You probably could get most of the way there, but the nature of what we do requires that we be deeply integrated into the firm. 

There are some exceptions but not many in today’s world, and we don’t think it’s realistic to expect that you are going to be in the owners box and be able to just let the firm run itself. This and more is what Tyson and Jim discuss in today’s episode. 

Listen in!

Episode Highlights:

4:23 There are too many moving parts for you to be ONLY in the owners box 

5:56 When you are so disconnected from what you are running #yikes!

10:16 Your most valuable time is …

15:00 Looking for a reset button, and coming back with a fresh set of eye

Tysons Tip: Read The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself by John Jantsch 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube.

Resources:

Transcript: Should Your Law Firm Run Without You?

Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.

Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.

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

Jim Hacking
How are you? My brother?

Tyson Mutrux
Good. Are we talking in like soothing voices today? We can do soothing voices, we could, you know, I’m doing well, how are you?

Jim Hacking
I’m doing great. I’m doing great. I had a nice day yesterday, it was a little bit hectic. But I got my massage and got my time in with my therapist. And she and I both brought up the idea that maybe our time together is coming to an end. So that was it’s sort of threw me for a loop. But we were both dancing around it. It’s sort of a strange thing. So I’m playing in the possibilities. Is this feel like you’re getting broken up with kinda? No, I wouldn’t say that so much. I feel more like getting dropped off at college.

Tyson Mutrux
So Jason, and I, because I’ve worked with Jason before, right, Jason Selke. And then just like, the way it works, is he wants to train you to be able to just not need him anymore. And so I’ve gone through his like, I’ll call it a program once and then I’m we got two months left. And so like, I don’t know what’s like, I know what I did before. But like I don’t I kind of want to keep working with them. But it’s like, I am sort of coming to that end. So it’s you and I are both coming to the end of I think not relationships, but you’re coming to the end of the coaching that you’re getting and that I’m getting. So it’s interesting, are both sort of coming upon that. So how long have you seen her? And then how long do you plan on seeing her going forward?

Jim Hacking
Oh, I think we’re going to wind it down relatively quickly. We’ve been together and we’ve done a lot of great work. No regrets at all since? Well, I was with her when I told her money that I was flat broke. So that was 2012. So it’s been 11 years. 12 years.

Tyson Mutrux
Wow. Wow, that is interesting. That’s awesome. Congratulation. I think they I think that I think congratulations are in order. That’s good. Yeah, let’s let’s Okay, well, let’s talk about the topic of

Jim Hacking
the week, we’re talking about winding things down or about moving on. And my question for you today, my brother is this. Is it realistic, in 2023, for a law firm owner, to strive for believe that they can have a law firm that runs without them, I’ve changed my thinking a little bit on it. And I’m still processing my thinking. So I thought it were a better place to talk it through them with you.

Tyson Mutrux
Alright, so we’ve had a person on the podcast, I’m not gonna mention who the person is, but I really liked the person. But when the person said that they are I think that they said that they’re in the owners box. And it kind of struck me as like, Ha, maybe this is possible. Like maybe that’s an interesting idea. Because you do see business owners in general, they own a business, but they’re not in the business. But then you have people like Elon Musk, who owns several but there’s like also like deeply intertwined with those businesses. I don’t however, think it’s really possible for a law firm owner to be in the owners box. I don’t not running a highly successful firm that you can scale. I don’t think so. I think you can get it most of the way with there. But I do think that the nature of what we do requires that we be deeply integrated into the firm. Now, that being said, I think there’s some exceptions. There are some exceptions, but you look at like, okay, Brian cave, I’ll be that’s the name of the firm anymore. But you know, like you said this before, like Mr. Bryan and Mr. Cave are no longer around, I don’t think and so they’re not running the firm. So I do think you can build something that can last however, like those guys are dead, I think I think they’re dead. But there is a Mr. Cave or Mr. Bryan, that is, it’s not their name, but they are still deeply intertwined to the business with the business right now. I don’t think so. I do not think so. Not in today’s world, we everyone has become a creator. That’s just the nature of the world that we live in. Everyone is now a creator, and you have to be to grow your firm. If it’s possible. It’s really hard as what I’m saying, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect that you are going to be in the owners box and be able to just let the firm run itself.

Jim Hacking
We spend a lot of time on this show sort of painting that as a noble goal. And that is an achievable goal. And so part of this is a bit of a mia culpa on my part, I don’t believe that that’s true anymore. I don’t think that a lot from owner can sit only in the owners box, there are too many moving parts. They’re going to lose your energy, your guidance, your experience, if you pull back to owner only so now I think and I think it’s sort of goes along with my general ideas about retirement, which is I don’t really want to retire. I just want to get to do the things that I want to do in the front. I play around where I want to play around, not do any of the things that I don’t want to do, make sure they’re being done well make sure they’re known by people who are good at that. But have a law firm that suits the life, I want the balance, I want the connections that I want, and not have to have all the things that I don’t want. So that I think is a big little shift. For me,

Tyson Mutrux
I am gonna pull back a little bit. But we said, we’ve sold the idea that you should be doing only the things that you’re the best at, I do think we’ve talked about that, I don’t think that we’ve really been the ones that have pushed, hey, you can only be in the owners box, like that’s a possibility. We’ve talked about it a little bit, I guess, as a possibility. But it is a very, very slim possibility that you can do that, I just don’t really think that you can actually have that as an expectation, because of what you said, if you pull back too far. Let me say what I’m back the next day without trying to reveal who I’m talking about. There is a person I know, that person runs a firm and that person for years talked about trying cases, and yada yada yada. But that person to this point is now had been two decades has not tried a case in two decades, talked about it a lot, and is so removed from reality, when it comes to how to resolve these cases and try cases that that person should no longer be running that firm. That is my belief, because that person is no longer like they’re not in the trenches, and you don’t have to be in the trenches, but they’re so disconnected from the trenches that they don’t really know how a modern firm operates. And um, that’s as far as I’ll go with who the who I’m talking about, cuz I don’t wanna reveal what I’m talking about. And I think that that’s kind of what you’re touching on is like, you have to understand, like how the laws work as a law firm owner like, because, for example, like a lot of our strategy as a law firm, right, is dictated around bad faith strategies. Okay, that’s what a lot of it the way we operate as a firm is greatly dictated around that a lot of our marketing strategy has to do with bad faith strategies, I have to understand bad faith strategies, or someone in my firm has to deeply understand it. Otherwise, it doesn’t work. The process doesn’t work. I’m assuming the same thing with you. You came up with a novel idea. I think it was novel at the time, we’re just gonna start suing the government to move these cases along. And I think a lot of people have adopted that same philosophy. You did that because you understand immigration law. If you’re in the owners box, you’re at some point because laws changed so much, especially for me with tort reform laws changed so much over time, that if you’re just in the 100 bucks, you’re going to be so disconnected that your strategies are no longer going to work.

Jim Hacking
I do think you’re right that we haven’t been out like selling it like some, you know, pie in the sky thing. But I will say, Tyson, that for me, it was a true north there was something that I was striving for something I was aiming for something that I thought was attainable. And now I’m not so sure. Now I’m not so sure a is it possible B isn’t what I want, right? So there’s sort of both of those things. Like, I’m really having fun right now spending 15 minutes a day, getting my leads team all pumped up and figuring out issues. And it’s again, it’s my little laboratory within the firm, right? And so I’m actually having fun. And I was talking to one of my coaches about this, Marty, about this idea that, you know, I’m back in Leeds and Oh, isn’t that bad. And oh, you know, it’s really good if I’m not only this really good if things can run on their own. And Marty just gently invited me to say, well, maybe you’re right where you’re supposed to be, maybe this is the best use of your 15 minutes a day, maybe this is, you know, you’re optimizing a department of almost 10 people, by spending 15 minutes a day, that’s a pretty good trade off. And it’s pretty good leverage where you might not be able to get all the way out now of that department. And maybe you can figure out strategies to keep things going the way you want them to go with you only being there 15 minutes a week, right. So those are all like noble things. But I really got into this whole thing of polishing the silver is bad going back and doing the things that I did before I should be past this, I should have beaten this, this should be better, and a whole lot of good stuff. And you know, I’m always yelling at people for talking about what they should be doing and shouldn’t be doing. And Marty just gave me a much better gentler place to be which is, you know, lead seem needy right now. It’s sort of like one of your kids need you now more than the other ones. And so he’s having trouble at school, you need to spend a little more time with Hudson and Emma’s getting ready to go get ready for this and was getting ready to go to her senior prom and she’s nervous about it and you got to get ready for that. So you know, you just go where you’re supposed to be and be happy where you’re at and things will work themselves out.

Becca Eberhart
Is that both on his back if you’re new around here, this app Athan is the OG automation workshop at this next exclusive guild event. We’re partnering up with maximum lawyers good friend Kelsey Bratcher to bring you a day and a half automation workshop. The idea of automation is simple, right? Identify a repeatable pattern of tasks and then use technology so that business process can happen without you but setting up that technology can be daunting, time consuming and even Have a steep learning curve, join us in person and you’ll create automations on site that will start working for you before you even leave Austin, join the guild today and grab your ticket at max law events.com

Tyson Mutrux
by your tone. Alright, so I’m going to ask you a couple questions. But before I do that, I don’t think what you’re talking about is polishing the silver I consider polishing the silver like, you know, taking out the trash, things like that. I was asking John the other day we had the hotseat yesterday or two days ago with John and I had asked him about his most valuable time, but the things he does, it’s most valuable the things that he does, it’s least valuable. And I would say that the least valuable activities are the polishing silver, what you’re doing with Lee’s team, I think that is it’s near, if not at the top of the most valuable activities, right? Because that’s where the business is. That’s where the money is coming in. So I wouldn’t consider that polishing the silver. I just think that that’s understanding your business and really doing the most valuable stuff. But here’s what I’m gonna ask you. Why did you start your law firm?

Jim Hacking
Well, before I do get to that, I do want to say that whenever I hear you say, before I do that, I’m like, Oh, he’s getting ready to talk about the guilt and about treating as a five star review. So you said it in the middle of the show, and I, I did a little bit of a start. Oh, before I do. Okay, so I have to get a

Tyson Mutrux
timeout real quick. I’m gonna let you think about this wasted for let’s do I’ve never done this before. Before you do that before you talk about it. If you don’t mind. While you’re listening to this episode, give us a five star review help help spread that love. Okay, help spread the love. All right, Jimmy, by the start tougher.

Jim Hacking
I think they call it a mid roll ad. Is that what that was? I think that was a mid roll.

Tyson Mutrux
So I told I think we should do these things called speed bumps, right? We call them speed bumps. They’re quick, three second hands like boom, in the middle of an episode, boom, boom, you say it really quick as a speed bump. And as the episode keeps going, I think it’s a great strategy, we should just start start putting in speed bumps.

Jim Hacking
I haven’t heard that phrase before. But Tim Ferriss does that there’s that little noise right before he goes to the ad and a little noise, it sounds almost like a speed bump or something electronic real quick to just sort of reset and let you know what the ad was. So that was great. So why did I start my law firm? I started my law firm, because I wanted to help people ease their suffering and to make some money.

Tyson Mutrux
Okay. And I want to invite other people to answer that question. Because here’s the second question. Is that why you still running your law firm?

Jim Hacking
Oh, yeah, on steroids. Like I’m helping lots of people. I’m making big impacts. I’m helping people bring their family members here, keep their family members here, get on the path to citizenship, help employers get the staffing and the team members that they need. It’s all very, very fulfilling, and right now employing 55 people. So we’re helping people, not only our clients, but the people that work with us. And so Oh, yeah, like 10x.

Tyson Mutrux
Here’s why I asked if the answer that question was No, at the second part of it, that I would say you need to adjust what you’re doing. But why would you want to be in the owners box? If that’s why you started your firm. That’s why you’re still doing it. And I’m not saying I’m saying that rhetorically. I’m not asking that question. But why don’t why people why they think that they need to be in that owners box. And if you’re enjoying what you’re doing, like you’re doing what you wanted to do at the beginning, you’re still doing it. Why would you want to change that? Like your why it would be so boring. I do think that like that would be so boring. Yeah, you’re okay, you’re in the owners box. Now, what are you gonna do? Well, you can do what you live, okay? If that’s if let’s say that you say, Well, okay, I’m if I’m in the owners box, then what I would do is I’d go out and start a not for profit charity, where whatever. Okay, what why aren’t you doing that now? Like, why isn’t that something you’re doing now? Like, don’t wait till that point, like start doing those things now? And why are you waiting on it? Maybe that’s your career path, not what you’re doing now. And that’s why I asked I think people should answer those questions like they need to figure that out. Because then you’re talking about regrets and 20 years. That’s what you’re talking about. If you don’t answer those questions. Now.

Jim Hacking
I think your points are well taken. I think that a lot of people aren’t deliberate enough and aren’t thinking enough about why they’re doing what they’re doing. I think it’s always good to reconnect and recalibrate. I think that you’re right. We don’t sell this pie in the sky idea that you’re going to be able to have a self managing firm. But I mean, you know, I went to Strategic Coach Dan Sullivan has a book called The self managing company, I transpose that into thinking we could have a self managing law firm, it’s actually something that’s been on our PTO for a while or something that I wanted. And I know there are a lot of people in the sort of lawyer coaching space, people who’ve never run a law firm people who’ve, you know, have law firms that make $120,000 a year holding themselves out as experts who paint this picture of sitting on a beach and having your law firm run itself and attend and I would say that I’ve gotten drawn into that. And you know me, I get so excited about things like that, that Oh, wouldn’t that be great? I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about this article I read a long time ago. So in the old days, there was a thing called ESPN, the magazine ESPN, the magazine, I don’t think is around anymore. It killed Sports Illustrated, it seems. Yeah. So there was an article and I’m gonna find it but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. And the premise of the article was that the best NFL coaches statistically They were ones who are coaching for the second time, the second time. So I think right now, I’m coaching the Leeds team for a second time. And I’m coaching the Leeds team that I have now versus the lead seam that I had eight years ago. And so it’s a totally different beast, a totally different thing. And I think that having gone through the experience, and learning the things that you learned, you just talked about this on an earlier podcast that we were just recording. And that was, I’ll let you tell the story. But coming back a second time with fresh eyes. And the part I really like the fresh canvas, where you can say, I want a lot more of that than I had before. And I don’t want a lot of that that I had before. Yeah, so

Tyson Mutrux
we were just interviewed by care of a vol. That’s VA VHL. And I was talking about whenever my partnership split up, and I’ve had that reset button, and I had that fresh canvas, and you’re so right. And that fully explains why the second time head coach, it works out so well because they can look back and say, okay, and a head coach is a perfect example. Because they’re going to a brand new team, they can bring the people that they want, they can just start with a fresh, like clean slate other than the players, right. That’s the it’s a little murkier, but for me, especially I had a fully I could use whatever software I wanted, I could hire whatever employees I wanted. It was a really nice, fresh start for me. And I was able to just reset everything and start from scratch. And I think that that’s true. I had never thought about it from that perspective. Jim, where you got your like a second time head coach? And let me ask you this, because I don’t know if it’s possible. But maybe it is, let’s say you’re a law firm owner, you’re five years in, and you’re just not happy with the way things are going? Is it reasonable to tell a law firm owner, hit the reset button? Get rid of everybody and start from scratch? Is that Is that reasonable?

Jim Hacking
Well, they have a great thing in the 12 steps. And that is take what you like and leave the rest. So I wouldn’t necessarily just fire everybody and then create a new blank canvas. But you can certainly get out a big piece of white paper and draw what it is that you want and start working towards that. And then looking at what you have and saying, comparing it to what you have now and where you want to get to are these the pieces that you need to get where you want to go. And you know, I was thinking about that article. And you know, Tony La Russa coached the Oakland A’s and he came to St. Louis, Dick for a meal lost the Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1980. And then he came to St. Louis. And I remember Dixie surrounded himself with like, really high caliber coaches. And so I think he definitely had a vision of what he wanted that second time around. So I think it’s so funny because I poo pooed vision for so long. But I think that having that vision of the law firm that you want, whether it’s a second go at it, or whether it’s, you know, transmogrifying while you’re in the middle of the process, I think it’s a little bit harder. But I think it’s certainly doable.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I was looking at this quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald, I think I’ve mentioned it before, but the quote, ends with it’s a longer quote. But the part that it ends with, I hope you live a life you’re proud of. And if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again. And I really liked that quote. So I’m gonna read it again, I hope you live a life you’re proud of. And if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again, you can take that principle when it comes to law firm owners to where you could, even if you can’t do a full reset, you can adjust things, and you can fix what you got, if that means cleaning house. But I hope people have the courage to start over again, if that’s where they are.

Jim Hacking
While I was giggling when we were being interviewed because we both had partnerships that didn’t go the way we wanted. And we both did get a second chance at sort of starting on our own again. And I think that that has really helped us I mean, it’s such a great place to play in with your mind because it frees you of the constructs of what you currently have. And so maybe to your question, you can’t necessarily just fire everybody and start all over. But maybe you can have a physical break a temporal break a, you know, like a geographic break for a while just to let you settle because so much of what we do is that snow globe all shook up. But if you sit and let the snow globe sit down and the snow drifts, then you can see much more clearly. And I think that’s really what the white canvas offers is that opportunity for clarity that when you’re worried about getting a set of interrogatory is out the door or collecting that last $2,500 from a recalcitrant client that when you’re all caught up in that stuff, the snowglobe is swirling, and you can’t really focus on the stuff that’s important to you.

Tyson Mutrux
I love the idea of the snow globe. That’s a really good on on the steel that we’re proud of. Yeah, that’s fantastic. Well,

Jim Hacking
this was a good episode. I enjoyed the talk. And I think that is something that we’ll continue to talk about and play with as law firm owners and as maximum lawyers.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah. And if anyone has, if there’s truly in the owners box, and they want to come on I’d love to talk to you, because I think you are a unicorn, I’d love to talk to you about it. Alright, let’s wrap things up. And again, before I do, will you please give us a five star review, if you don’t mind, it helps us spread the love to other law firm owners and really get it out to people because Apple, and wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps push us up in the rankings. So please do that. And if you want a more high level conversation, you can join us in the guild go to max law guild.com. You don’t have to start there. You can always go to the big Facebook group, it’s free to join. And there’s a lot of great people sharing, we got over 6000 members in the group. So if you’re looking for a answer to a question, join us there the question and the answer might be in there. Jimmy, what’s your pick of the week?

Jim Hacking
My hack of the week is that article from ESPN The Magazine, I will find it in time for our show notes. And I will share it whether we find it online or whether to ask I’m gonna go to the library and look it up on microfiche. We will do it but I will get that article for everyone. And that’ll be my hack of the week.

Tyson Mutrux
That’s really good one Jim. I like that. Hopefully you can share that. I always liked ESPN the magazine because like it was different. The shape, it was different than most magazines. It was like wider and shorter. But like the pictures and the imagery was fantastic. It’s really good magazine sucks. It’s not around anymore. I don’t think it is around anymore. But my book is we’re focusing on referrals this quarter. And we’re sort of as a, we’re creating a referral machine as what we’re doing inside the firm. And we’re we’re doing that by showing clients that referrals are an important thing. And employees are the we’re all talking about. It’s like this thing. It’s a hubbub. And so referrals is the focus. And the book I’m reading right now is the Referral Engine. I’m not through it. But it’s there’s a lot of great tools and resources inside of it’s by John Jantsch, which we had John on the podcast, if I remember correctly,

Jim Hacking
we did about duct tape marketing. We should have him on about that. I have it right over there. Yeah, I

Tyson Mutrux
agree. Good. If you’ve not read duct tape marketing, that’s like one of like the the tabs on your bookshelf, you should have that one if you’re new to marketing, but John Jantsch. He’s great. He’s a really good writer, but he’s got a great book, the Referral Engine, and it’s all about referrals. And so if referrals are something that you want to focus on, it’s one element of our business, and it’s something that we’re wanting to focus more on. And so it is the Referral Engine teaching your business to market itself. That’s really good. All right, Jimmy, great talking to you. Good topic. Had a lot of fun.

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When your personality and your professional life do not align with who you are, it causes friction. In today’s episode Elise Buie is pointing out the strengths of embracing your unique qualities. What is the impact that your uniqueness will have? Professionally and personally?

Elise unpacks the effects of being your authentic self — and how that will uplevel your emotional intelligence as a leader. Listen in to this MaxLawCon presentation, if you are ready to dig deep into your authenticity and uncover it! 

Episode Highlights: 

01:48 When your personality doesn’t really match what it “takes” to run a law firm

04:06 When your inner critic is loud – How do you turn that into something positive and motivating for you? 

06:43 Lean into your authentic self?!

10:04 As a law firm owner, you have such a unique opportunity to model something different …

15:07 Getting into a owners mindset by …

16:35 What is that minimum standard of care!?

19:17 Being an emotionally intelligent leader

26:33 Treating people a different way than we are taught in law school 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube here. 

Books Mentioned: 

➡️ Fair Play A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do 

 by Eve Rodsky

➡️The Fair Play Deck: A Couple’s Conversation Deck for Prioritizing What’s Important

By Eve Rodsky

➡️Find Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World by Eve Rodsky

➡️Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. by Brené Brown 

➡️Trust and Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others

by Stephen M.R. Covey

➡️Radical Candor: Fully Revised and Updated Edition: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean by Kim Scott

➡️ Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t by Simon Sinek 

Connect with Elise:

Resources:

Transcript: “Froo Froo” for the Win! 

Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from maxilla con 2020. To keep listening to hear Elise buoy, as we share her talk Frou Frou for the win, you can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar, podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.

Elise Buie
Welcome to the show. First, I just wanted to thank Jim and Tyson and Becca for having me speak today and also for having me do the masterminds this year, I’ve just really enjoyed getting to know everybody so much better. And the masterminds have been so powerful for me and all the things I’ve learned this community is so supportive. And as somebody who’s going to expire sooner, maybe it is amazing. I mean, having practice law for I guess more than two decades now. There’s not a more supportive community that I have ever been a part of. And I really want to thank I mean, and I really wish all of you would come together and thank Jim and Tyson for everything they’ve done.

Elise Buie
It’s just it’s really amazing. Most of you who know me well, personally, I mean, know, how truly geeked out I get on all the things kind of you know, Frou Frou and woowoo? I mean, I am one of those somebody said the other day something about like, I think it was a deeply feeling empath. I mean, and if that is not me, I do not know what it is. And so I mean, to be that type of person, and then also try to, you know, run a law firm and do all the things we do. They don’t always necessarily go together really well. And I mean, even coming up here and doing this, I mean, people who know me well, I mean, personally, I’m super gregarious, you know, really easy to talk to. And it’s all good. I mean, speaking in front of all of you, I mean, some major imposter syndrome steps in. And I mean, I’ve been listening to my nasty girl all morning, her name is Eloise, she talks to me in my head, and she talks smack a lot. I mean, she tells me some pretty bad things. You know, like, why would they want you to speak like, what do you know, you’ve got all this problems and your own firm, you know, how can you do this. And so really trying to master that and master imposter syndrome. And I think, I mean, really, for women, it is a, a very large issue that we suffer from. And I think that it is something that we all need to bring out and talk about and really try to get our heads around it. And one thing that I think of when I think of impostor syndrome, and actually, I wore my my famous outfit today just for this talk, because you’re probably wondering, why is she wearing those pants, but I wore this outfit because this outfit literally exemplifies the imposter syndrome to me, like my black baggy jacket, you know, I can hide in it. And it’s, you know, boring. And I mean, it goes with anything, you can put a black jacket with absolutely anything and you’re gonna be fine. So you don’t have to stand out, you don’t have to have a certain opinion. You can just blend my pants. On the other hand, you’re not blending with these, there are some of the strangest colors in these pants. And trust me, I have tried to find things that exactly match these pants. And it’s difficult, because they do stand out. I mean, to me, they’re joyful. They’re outspoken, they’re loud, they’re not going to blend with anything well, and so I can’t just have any opinion or any thought. I mean, I’m gonna have to stand on these crazy pants and I love to name things. So these are my hot mess pants. And they mean a lot to me, but they helped me lean in to my imposter syndrome. So when Eloise is telling me things like Elise, you need to blend more you need to be a more traditional law firm owner, you need to be a better sheep. She’s always telling me that that I need to be a better sheep because I am the worst sheep. Well, these pants teach me I don’t need to be any of those things instead, Eloise is actually pointing out my unique qualities. And my unique qualities are that I am loud, I am joyful. I am outspoken. I don’t blend well. And I’m not a good sheep. All those things make me an untraditional law firm owner they make me an untraditional mom. They’ve made me an untraditional person in many ways, but that’s okay. And to being able to lean in to those unique qualities has really been And one of the main things that I can say has catapulted our growth as a firm, and really myself personally learning to lean in to those unique qualities. And I think as lawyers, it is something we struggle with time and time again, I was talking to somebody this morning who’s starting law school, and I could not be more excited for her that she is starting law school. But one thing I was telling her is, oh, God, do not get wrapped up in the drama of law school. Like I mean, everyone wants to make you think you’re not good enough, you’re not this, you’re not smart enough, you didn’t read enough, you don’t do moot court good enough. I mean, the list goes on and on. And we kind of internalize that, and we all have such baggage around this. And I see it so much. In law firm owners, and kind of like Tyson was talking about having your ideas and being able to execute on them, they have to come from you. Like they have to be part of the authentic you. And really being in digging deep into your authenticity is such an important part. I think of everything we do here. And learning to be vulnerable in your authenticity and accepting that I mean, you might have your own hot mess pants. I mean, there are a few people in this room that I can think of that really have used fashion as part of their authenticity. Who can name one? Jim, can you name one? You Exactly? What about you, Jordan? Yep. I mean, it’s really fascinating to see how people’s authenticity can really come out and how powerful it is. And so I want to encourage all of us to think about how can we lean in to our authenticity in everything we do. So that it’s not just what you are maybe in your personal life, because let’s be serious, if you’re being authentic, you are the same person. You I mean, God forbid, I’m quoting my ex husband here, but I am, my ex husband has told me for however long I’ve known him, I can bring you to Burger King. And I can bring you to Commander’s Palace, and you’re the damn same in both places. That is being authentic. And being able to lean into that and know that, you know, the Burger King girl is the Commander’s Palace girl that allows you to drop away so much of the drama that is carried in typical impostor syndrome. And so the more authentic and vulnerable, we can be in everything we do, and especially as a firm owner, I mean, you’re probably thinking, What the hell does this have to do with running a law firm, it has everything to do with running your law firm. If you come to your team, your practice area, your colleagues, other professionals, and you’re coming as an authentic, vulnerable person who is embracing your authentic self, your team is completely revolutionized. They are committed, they are engaged, they are aligned, they’re curious. And with that, you can absolutely compel your team to truly reach down in themselves. And they themselves become authentic, vulnerable people and your team is just, I mean, it’s amazing to watch people where they are maximizing themselves, they are rising up, they are all working in an aligned fashion, for the vision of your firm. And I mean, it is, I think one of the most powerful things in the world. And it’s funny, I got introduced as the maximum mom, because the reality is, I mean, parenting is so much like this. I mean, if you can parent your children in a way where you’re authentic, and vulnerable, and you are curious about all of their skills and abilities and potential. I mean, you can rise up these humans. I mean, you might not recognize them. I mean, they might turn out completely different than you envision the perfect kid. But I mean, they are coming into their full potential and you are unleashing creativity and just brilliance on the world. And I think it is pretty cool. I do as a mom of four step mom of two, I got a lot of, you know, I want to put six brilliant people out in the world and it’s pretty impressive to see what can happen. But it requires so much work in embracing your own authenticity. Never ever and I think Tyson said this too. Don’t try to be somebody else. Like you can’t do it. You are the best version of you, but you can’t be anybody else. You’re just you. And another thing that is something and I know people who you know know me and follow me on social media have really been sick of hearing about it. But as law firm owners, I feel like we are in such a unique place. Because let’s face it, law firms are notorious for bad culture. This workaholic mentality people are stressed, overworked, burned out. As a law firm owner, you have such a unique opportunity to not only model something different, to provide a different environment, and to help grow the people in your law firm to look at it differently. We don’t all have to be overworked, stressed out and miserable. And one of the things that has come out recently, there’s a set of books, two books, one is called fair play, and one is called Finding Your unicorn space. They’re both written by a Harvard educated lawyer, Ed Brodsky. And they truly revolutionized my thinking. I mean, an as a mom, stepmom of six, I can tell you that life in our house was exceedingly busy learning, fair play is a book, I urge you all to read both books, and I know you guys are gonna be like, Okay, those are some pink looking books like I don’t know. But they are powerful. In especially if you are a guy, and if you are in a heterosexual relationship, I am urging you to read these books as a divorce attorney like it will help you save your marriage, it is impossible. I mean, this, it is impossible to hold resentment and desire in the same heart. marriages and relationships are destroyed every day, over the things that are occurring in homes. And specifically in the whole idea of the lack of equality in homes in the the situation where and I noticed stereotypical and some men obviously don’t do this, I do realize that but the stats are abundantly clear that women carry the bulk of the invisible workload in the home, women are sinking under this invisible workload. And we all know we all love data, what is not measured is never valued. And it never changes. If we do not measure what is happening in the home for our own families, but also for our teams. We are working with people every day who are living under horrible workloads, they are sinking, they are burned out, they are miserable, they don’t see an end in sight, being able to come into your home and use the Fair Play system, which is in fact a system just like we create in our law firms. We spend hundreds of dollars we hire people we’re executing all over the place to get systems in place. But we don’t do it in our homes. And our home is one of our most important places that we operate. The fairplay system is actually there’s a card game. I mean, there’s a deck of cards, it’s a game. So I mean, a lot, you can get guys involved, you know, they like card games. And if you want a deck of cards, just find me and I will get you a deck of cards, a lot of times they sell out, they’re really hard to come by. I have a huge stack of them in my house. I give them out every chance I get. But it is so powerful to understand how much is happening in our homes. It’s not that it’s not fair. It’s not well thought out. I mean, people in homes are doing things in these very inefficient ways, ways that we wouldn’t accept in our law firms at all. Where you’re constantly nagging somebody to do something, you’re reminding them over and over again. I mean, I think of soccer. I don’t know about you all, but I mean, my kids didn’t play soccer, so maybe I should use football. But you have a sport so many times. I mean, as a divorce attorney, I’ll hear a dad and he’ll tell me, Well, I picked up the kids from you know, football practice for years, you know, and I’m thinking, Whoa, great. I mean, get you a fucking award dude. And it’s like, Do you have any idea what went into getting your kid on the damn football team? Like, did you research the schools they were going to did you actually, you know, meet the coach. Did you go to the medical appointment? Did you make the medical appointment? Did you find the uniform? Did you order the uniform? Did you get your kid to try and on and then it was the wrong size? Did you return it? Did you get another one? Did you sign up for the email list? Did you do the carpool thing did you buy the coach’s gift. I mean, the list goes on and on of the amount of work that goes in to doing things and fairplay creates a system where you look at all these tasks and there’s 100 cards in here. I mean, it’s pretty daunting to think there’s 100 cards 40 of them are kid related. So if you are a family with children 40 cards are just for raising children and that is It’s pretty amazing. And like in our home, you look at 40 times six, we were looking at some serious cards. But learning to get what’s called an owner’s mindset, the thing that we all want for our teams, where people are looking at the conceptualizing the planning and the executing of these tasks, and you can’t in a home, split them up because it creates that situation where one person has to become the queen Nagar and relationships are destroyed. So I really just urge you to understand and read fairplay, it will revolutionize how you run your life. And even more importantly, it is going to revolutionize if you share it with your team. And there’s several people here who I’ve, you know, browbeat enough where they’ve read it and I have listened to how it has impacted them and their family and their teams. And it is just game changing. And so I encourage you,

Becca Eberhart
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Elise Buie
One of the things that is in fairplay is the whole idea of when you do a task, what is that minimum standard of care? Because again, that goes back to our law firms, when we’re looking at our own systems, what is the minimum standard of care that we expect? And how to run a case? And in our case of family law case or a personal injury? What do you expect your team to do? Why wouldn’t we have that same thing for our families, and as law firm owners, it is up to us to bring these things and help people so that our team members are operating not from a place of total depletion, but from a place of where things are fair, and they have the space they need. And that brings us to the whole idea of unicorn space. You wonder like, what is unicorn space? Again, I mean, taste, and I’m just picking on you today. I mean, it Tyson’s becoming a pilot isn’t the ultimate show of unicorn space, and taking the time to do something creative that he loves. And that brings him joy. I don’t know what it is. I mean, watching Tyson get its pilot’s license has been so inspirational to me. I mean, Doug is already signing up. But it’s pretty powerful to think. And to understand how that learning that creativity, that curiosity, I can’t imagine and I haven’t had the chance to ask Tyson this. But I can’t imagine what that has brought to his firm. Because having that space and that time to be that creative person and find your own unicorn space, and then share it with the world is really powerful as a leader. And if you in your firm are wanting to be an emotionally intelligent leader and help your team thrive, being able to explain and expand upon unicorn space, not only in your own life, your family’s life, but your team’s life. And these are such important things. And I cannot tell you I mean, I don’t know how much you all read and like are involved in all this stuff with you know, women and paid leave and childcare issues and women are burned out. I mean, like completely burned out. And if you are a law firm owner, and you have a woman in your office doing anything, you have a burned out employee, I can promise you, and anything you can do to put scaffolding and emotional intelligence support around that human is going to benefit your firm, it is going to benefit them and it is going to benefit everybody they come in contact with. And that brings me to the whole idea of being an emotionally intelligent leader. And that in my mind is one of the things as lawyers, we have pretty much missed the boat on like completely. I mean, they didn’t mention it in law school, like I don’t know, the boat sunk before it came to my law school. I don’t know but it was nowhere. And so people are just kind of in the really kind of old school way of like command and control leadership. You know, that kind of top down model. People talk about like motivating their employees, you know, you hear about carrots and sticks. There is not a human in this room. For sure, and there is not a human on this planet that wants to be led that way. They don’t want to be managed. They don’t want to be manipulated. People need to be LED systems and things need to be managed. And to lead people, you have to inspire them. You can’t motivate them. You have to inspire them to make change, and to do something and to take some action. I mean, so you have to think about emotionally intelligent leadership. Like I think of it like Brene Brown. So you think like dare to lead meets Steve Covey’s trust and inspire I don’t know exactly his book, I think it’s called trust and inspire leadership meets radical candor, because you got to have some radical candor thrown in there. meets Simon Synnex leaders eat last, you put all that together, read all of those books, dwell on him, kind of think of it like gumbo, put it all together, let it sit in marinate for hours. And that is what an emotionally intelligent leader looks like. And to be able to pull that off in a law firm, truly, will radically disrupt your entire law firm culture, it will not look the same again. Because if you can bring together the elements needed to be an emotionally intelligent leader, and really focus on what you need to be focused on, which is your people, your people are your greatest asset. I mean, just your people. And if you have owned a law firm for any length of time, I mean, I’ve been a law firm owner now for seven years. We have grown from you know, I started with me and to others. And I think as of yesterday, we’re at 56. So I’ve really had to learn people in the hole. I joke all the time, like people are sweet and stinky onions, I think of good Vidalia, Georgia, you know, in there, just onions. But learning to understand people and be able to navigate all the issues of people, is the key to everything it is the Frou Frou secret sauce of all the things is your people. And those of us that attended masterminds? I mean, I know I’ve been in many and listen to them. We all struggle with the people issues, every single one of us talks about it. And we talk about the struggles we have when somebody leaves or if there’s not good productivity, or how do we, you know, help this and help that we have got to be the leaders that we are all called to be, which is leaders that are inspiring our people to be aligned with our core values. And that looks like many different things. Because all of us have different core values, and all of us are going to want different kinds of people. But it is critical that you are honest with yourself, in your firm, when you’re looking for people and you’re hiring people. And you know, people I hear all the time, they’ll be like, Oh, yes, well, I put all these ads on Indeed, you know, and I, you know, I hired this person, and then I had to fire him three days later. And I’m like, Well, duh, of course you did. Like you don’t just put an ad on Indeed, and you know, do an interview, and then all of a sudden, you’ve got an aligned core value. A lot goes into the hiring of people. I mean, I can’t tell you how much we test, people get sick of our tests. We do a lot of personality testing, all kinds of things to understand, like, how do people operate. But I mean, understanding your people and how your people are going to come in and fit in your firm that you already have, is just so so so important. And I just cannot say enough, as law firm owners, the more we can educate ourselves and immerse ourselves in the psychology of people, we will benefit our law firms so much. I mean, the cost involved in the loss of people is so profound and listening to people talk about how they’ve, you know, fired or gotten rid of employee after employee after employee. I mean, it’s hard to stay upbeat and positive in the face of all that. And I think that if we would take a step back and realize this is an area as lawyers, we really haven’t been taught well, and I mean, understanding that, that it’s like a deficit in our education. I mean, that doesn’t mean we’re bad. It just means that it’s something we weren’t taught and we need to really, really reach out and learn because it is super, super important. And I think that coming into your law firm, and realizing that your goal as the owner of your law firm is to inspire others. into inspire people to be their best selves, that sometimes means those people are going to get off your bus. And they’re not going to be on your bus forever. And that’s okay. And I think, again, as law firm owners, we sometimes get caught up in that, again, they’re tight. And I’m picking on you again, the scarcity mindset of when somebody gets off the bus, sometimes we’re like, well, well, why are they leaving? Like, you know, we had a perfect job here, I don’t understand what’s wrong. I mean, it could be something they’re exploring, rather than actually looking at somebody leaving and thinking, how can you support that person in their next adventure? How can you be a sponsor, to that employee as they’re going to their next job? Can you help them find their next job? What can you do to help that person as they take their next step? I can assure you, those types of relationships are powerful, when those people are now at other places, other working environments, and they’re referring you cases, because you help them rather than, you know, had some bad attitude that they left and you are interested in their success in their future. I mean, I recently went out to wine and drinks with an ex employee. And just I mean, we spent five hours, absolutely having a grand old time. And she has referred me cases the whole time she’s been gone. It means something to make deeper connections with people and treat people in a way that makes sense, not like we are taught. I mean, we just are taught some really backwards skills in law school, when it comes to how we treat people. And I think when you think of emotionally intelligent leadership, I mean, you need to think about vulnerability, authenticity, caring, and service. I mean, I think sometimes as leaders, we forget the service piece, and that we as leaders, I mean, and you know, we could have a whole conversation about our country, and whether the leaders in our country have any idea what service looks like, but I mean, serving the people that are working in our firms should be one of our highest goals, in my opinion. And I mean, service can look like all kinds of things, it can be just connecting with your team, one on one finding out, what is their unicorn space? I mean, how many of you know your team members, unicorns, faces? I mean, how many of you encourage it, how many of you put dollars towards it, you know, so maybe this person, instead of giving them a cash bonus, you’re giving them a flying lesson, or, you know, maybe it’s somebody who’s an amazing cake baker, and you’re gonna give them, you know, cooking classes. I mean, there’s all kinds of things we can do to serve our team. And I think that we really have to look inward and think about service and think about how important it is to developing the kinds of firms that we want that are going to last through time, through recessions, through pandemics through hurricanes. When you have the type of office that focuses on authenticity, vulnerability, care and service, a pandemic isn’t going to mess that up. I mean, you’ve got this, you’re going to be able to pivot, you’re going to be able to do things differently. And you’re going to be fine. You’re going to withstand the storm. And I know a lot of us are thinking about what’s happening now, like a recession, people are talking about a recession coming. I mean, it’s time to really think about how do you shore up your firm, and in my world you shored up with a lot of that Frou Frou stuff and a lot of the human psychology, because people nowadays I mean, we are looking at a whole different world. I mean, people want to be connected, they want to have a passion. They want to follow something they can believe in, and they want to be inspired to do good work. And it really matters. Inspiration matters. And don’t pass up your opportunity as a leader of your law firm, to make a real change in the lives of the people who work with you, for you and around you. Because I mean, again, we look at our world around us making a difference in the people in your office. I mean, might be one of the most powerful legacies you leave. And so take advantage of it. And I think that’s all Thank you.

Just getting started in your own firm? Wanting to uplevel your firm and grow faster? Today’s episode has Jim and Tyson in the interview seat as they are guest’s on Kara Vaval podcast: Laptop Lifestyle Lawyer. Listen in as Tyson and Jim share their starting points of their firms, as well as the start of Maximum Lawyer Podcast and Group Coaching (the Guild) 

With their:

➡️ organic coaching growth and direction taken from what people wanted

➡️ to breaking up a law firm partnership 

➡️to going from broke to 50+ team in a now thriving company

Jim and Tyson are sharing all the gold nuggets here. Including their top three tips on how to move from starter firm to upping to your next level, best advice.  

Episode Highlights: 

06:39 Jim being a quick start nine from the Kolbe testing and why personality testing might have the answers for team members

10:19  Considering a partnership in owning a law firm?!  Here’s Tyson’s advice!

13:45 Serving law firm owners through community, coaching and conferences

19:42 Changing law firm owners lives by being in a positive mindset community and being vulnerable 

28:39 Beginner law firm owner — what are the top three growth tips for getting to the next level 

30:55 Fear is the thing that stop most people from taking the leap 

36:39 A streamlined process to identifying your support team 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube.

Connect with Kara:

Resources:

Transcript: 3 Firm Growth Tips to Go From Starter To Next Level

Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Kara Vaval
Welcome to the laptop lifestyle lawyer podcast. So excited to have you guys here. So I have Jim hacking and Tyson is it Metrix new tricks? New Tricks fantastic.

Tyson Mutrux
are lots of variations over the years. Oh, I’m

Kara Vaval
sure you know I have my first name is Kara, I get Cara. I get I get it all. So and my vowel it gets via Babel, so I know. Awesome. So Jim, I’m going to start with you. Give me your background. Tell the audience where you’re from your trajectory. Tom, share your journey with us. Everyone finds their story, hearing other people’s stories. And so tell me how you came about even starting the maximum warrior as well and let the people know who you are.

Jim Hacking
Got it. So my name is Jim. I’m an immigration lawyer in St. Louis. I’ve been practicing law now for 25 years. I’m old. I’ve been doing immigration. Thank you. I’ve been doing immigration since 22,007. I opened up my own law firm then and sort of farted around trying to do all different kinds of things. My wife is an immigrant. She’s originally from Egypt, we met in law school. And she was working at the law school. And so we had our insurance paid and our mortgage paid. And then I decided that I really, really, really, really wanted to open up my own law firm. She said, I’ve never heard about this, how is this something that you never mentioned, but I had what Michael Gerber calls the entrepreneurial seizure. And I was like, I got opened my own law firm. And I thought I would do law for immigrants that I would do car accidents for immigrants that I would do wills and estates for immigrants. And it became pretty clear quickly that the real need was in immigration. So I had hired a young lady who was originally from Bosnia. And she and I sort of taught ourselves immigration law. We grew from the two of us to then we had another attorney, and we kept growing and then eventually, my wife actually came and joined the firm back in 2016. And that’s when things really took off, because I’m a 10, Quickstart, and a three follow through. So I had all these great ideas, and she’s a one Quickstart and an A nine follow through. So she really brought balance to the Force brought balance to the firm. And then we’ve really taken off since then, at the current time, we’re recording this, we’re at about 55. Team members, we have nine Attorneys Offices in St. Louis, San Diego, in Washington, DC, and then Tyson and I, I taught a class at St. Louis University on how to run a law firm. And as I mentioned to him the other day, it was at a time when I was pretty much flat broke. And it was right around that time that I decided to just do immigration and niching down really helped. And so he started to maximum lawyer because we were having these great conversations after he had gone out on his own. And we decided to start recording them. And now it’s grown into a whole big thing, which I’m sure he’ll tell you about.

Kara Vaval
Awesome. Awesome. So Tyson, I’m gonna cut by the way I yet to pin the Quickstart nine Quickstart one, you’re gonna have to explain more of that. Because, you know, and I know that’s probably something having to do with maximum lawyer. And so yeah, I definitely want you to expand on that. But Tyson go ahead and introduce yourself.

Tyson Mutrux
Sure, yeah, my name is Tyson nutrix. I got a quite a bit of a different background than Jim does, Jim. And I think that’s part of my story. I’ve got two parents, neither one of them graduated from high school. And so my backgrounds just different, right. And so, but I did always have that bug, that entrepreneurial bug. And it was a little different, like Jim, like mine was sort of oozing Atomy Jim’s, I think he kind of concealed it a little bit, but mine was a little bit more using Atomy. And my, my dad whenever I was, you know, out of out of the house, and everything started a very successful business. And so he I think he always had that bug too. And I think he kind of pass it on to me, but during law school, I always knew I knew from the beginning, I wanted to start my own firm. So having that in mind. I took a lot of classes like Jim’s class while practice management. And Jim did a very smart thing. He brought people into his class, each each class to teach something new. And so Jim didn’t do all the teaching. He did some of the teaching, but then he brought in experts to come in and teach which I thought it was. It was a clever, it was a clever move, and especially knowing in hindsight, what was going on at the time. Smart was brilliant. It was but but I did I shaped all of my classes around sort of, okay, I want to start my own firm and then I had worked for a volume injury firm right out of law school, and then about a year later, a little quicker than what I expected. I started my own law firm. And that at the time was doing Criminal Defense and Personal Injury. And we talked about niching down all the time. I think if I were to go back and do it all over again, I probably would have just started started with personal injury. But the criminal offense allowed me to pay the bills. And it’s really interesting. We started the podcast, I think it was 2015. And Jim was right, we were, we were having these conversations all the time. He’s really good conversation. And we decided, hey, let’s record these things. We had a lot of false starts were with a lot of episodes that were lost into the ether that were never recorded, because we forgot to hit the record button. But we sort of you time’s up. So but we’ve never, we’ve not missed an episode. And since we started, every single week, we’ve put out a podcast. And that consistency has been pretty important to the growth of maximum lawyer, the the Guild and the conference and everything else. But but sort of back to my story. Like right now we’ve got I think we’re at 28. Team members, when it comes to our injury firm, it’s grown quite a bit in between there, I had a partnership that did not work out who lasted 18 months. But honestly, I think that that allowing that reset allowed me to push the reset button and rebuild. Everything was actually great for me and my firm. But I’ve grown more over the last four years, and I grow in the previous eight years combined. So it’s been pretty good. Yeah. And

Kara Vaval
it’s like, you know, you don’t start from scratch, you start from experience. So of course you add that to the mix, then it’s when you’re doing the do over or you know, the Picking up from where you left off. There’s so much already added value from the previous experience. So of course, so talk to me, I’m gonna jump back to you, Jim, about this nine Star 10 Star because why what is he talking about? Talk to us

Jim Hacking
about that. So for three years, I was in something called Strategic Coach, which is run by a fellow named Dan Sullivan up in Chicago and Toronto. And one of the things they have you do early on in the process is they ask you to take what’s called the Colby index, it’s Kolb II index. And it rates you on four things factfinder follow through Quickstart and implementers. So And the funny thing is, is when you receive your Colby score, everybody, no matter how different they are, they always get that always leads off with your perfect just the way you are. And so but then once you get into the details, it sort of scales you on those things, and a one isn’t bad, a 10 isn’t good. It’s just where you fall on the scale. So fact finders, you know, we have a lot of lawyers and paralegals in our office who are very high fact finders very high follow throughs. As you might imagine, Quickstart is sort of how eager or interested you are in starting new things. And so I am a 10 Quickstart, which is actually sort of rare. My wife has a one Quickstart, which is also sort of rare. But at our office, we have everybody take it, and it’s laminated, and it’s on the door to your office. So when someone’s going in to talk to Omani my wife. And when they want to talk to her about something they know, they’re reminded as they walk through the doorway, that she’s gonna want a lot of facts. And with them, when they come to see me they know that I’m gonna have like 12 ideas. I’m going to think all of them are great, and that they’re going to have to ask me for deadlines asked me for how to prioritize asked me those kinds of things. So the nice thing about the Colby index, and it cost like 50 bucks to do, the nice thing about it is that it gives everybody a language to talk about how they are and you are without there being any kind of like blame. Oh, well, of course, you would want me to write out more about that thing because you’re a high factfinder. And the funny thing is, is that we realized with Amani especially, she’s such a high Fact Finder, that she works really well with quickstarts because once she’s done her finding of facts, and made her decision, she just wants a quick start to go implement it, which is why she and I worked well together. And why her favorite team members that she’s worked with over time have been quickstarts her the worst time she ever had was she actually had a a 10 factfinder working for and all they did was fight because Amani they already decided what she wanted, and the other person wanted to go do her own thinking through of everything. So it’s, it’s really nice little tool.

Kara Vaval
That’s amazing. And I think like every entity should have something like that. So you know who you’re walking into. I mean, I’ve done the StrengthsFinder testing and those kinds of things, understanding where your strengths are and operating out of that and delegating the rest. So I know of that method, but the Kobe method sounds like it would just change the game for so many companies because it’s like, instead of having this assistant who just is not meshing with you, you know, just switch and go go get the other person who’s who matches you and isn’t that and everything you know in marriages and all types of finding out what we’re lationship really works because ultimately your work stems from the relationships that you’re operating out of as well, even within the confines of the job. So that’s, that’s very interesting. And I’m definitely going to, to share the link to this Colby test. Because, you know, I think there’s a lot of value there. And so Tyson, I’m gonna swing back to you. So you said that you went in a year after graduating, you decided to start your firm. And did you start the partnership right then? And there? That was just you in the beginning?

Tyson Mutrux
No, it was just me. In the beginning, it was me. And I think I went about six months. And I think if I hired my first part time employee, and kind of didn’t, I’d made some of the errors whenever it came to hiring at that point, but no, it was just me. And the partnership didn’t come about until 2017. So it was 2017 is whenever that came about, and then it ended in August of 2018. So very quick,

Kara Vaval
okay. And it was there a reason why because I’ve had, you know, I’ve been doing this for 14 years, I’ve had multiples of offers of partnership, and I’m just so afraid of them. It’s just like, I you know, I’m so me and how I do what I do, I’m I inject Kara 100%. And that’s even one of the ways that I encourage people to get into the laptop lifestyle lawyer type, you know, you know, delivery of legal services is you can just do it your way. You don’t have to try to be like, you know, like jammer, or Tyson. Just do your thing, figure out the unique thing about you that unique characteristics that would make you you and come out and bring that into the marketplace in the form of legal services. So how did you get pulled into that?

Tyson Mutrux
So I think it’s interesting. I don’t think anyone’s asked me that question. But the I think the main, what it really comes down to is the differences in vision, I think is what it was. And I think that going in, we probably we thought we had the same vision, we even sat down, we came up with the core values. It was funny, we started with core values. And then we never made we never advanced to like getting our mission and our vision and all that laid out we never did. But I think ultimately, that’s what it was. It’s just a difference in vision for the future. And I’d say for those 18 months, it’s one of the most stressed I’ve ever been, it really was. And I’m sure he was the same way where we felt like we were working for each other. And I remember the day that we’ve made the decision to end it. It was it was funny, like we were financially really well off. It was working really well financially for the two of us. And that was it was really bizarre, I think for a lot of people to understand is that well, it was it was you were making money. So what why why Joel split up. It’s just a difference in vision. And the day that we split up. I remember coming home and telling my wife, Amy about it. And we said that was date night, and we went to data and I told her I hadn’t told her on the way home. So I told her it didn’t she was like, she was frozen. I was like, honestly, I feel great.

Kara Vaval
I know, I’m frozen, too.

Tyson Mutrux
I told her it’s like I feel great. I guys, it’s this is actually going to work out well for both of us. And so it was in we the paperwork was all signed, and we split No, in a week, right? It was quick. I mean, it was like, boom, done, we’re moving on with our lives. And so both of us have the same or at the time, I don’t know, if he’s still use them. We used to have the same coach, executive coach Jason Selke. And it seems really solution focused. And I think we’re both solution focused. Hey, Alright, moving on. Let’s let’s get on to the next to the next chapter. And it was a net positive I think for both of us.

Kara Vaval
That’s wonderful. Okay, so So you got tempted because you thought the visions were the same. I have never been able to connect with someone that I feel has the same vision. They do. So maybe that’s why now let me ask you guys, so you decided to start your podcast with maximum lawyer and it was through the conversations, etc? And how did the conference has come about what because and I kind of also want you to touch on the coaching aspect Tyson because I’m you know, that’s what you guys provide is support and coaching and that kind of, you know, an environment for people to be able to come in and use your experience and wherewithal and coaching to grow right and it how important that is right to have someone who can be outside of your entity and, and give you feedback and give you shortcuts and nuggets and things of that nature. And so talk to me about that the podcast, of course being where it started, but how you guys develop the programs and the conferences, etc, that you have and what that does for attorneys.

Tyson Mutrux
Well, so I think you have to go through the full story, right? And if you think about the way you run your firms, you usually are offering something that your clients want, right? That’s what you’re you’re, you’re shaping your services around sort of what the clients want. And I’m really curious to see what what Jim says after what I say but that’s kind of where the podcast develops. So we went from the podcast and then we sort of Facebook group because we wanted a place to meet with all the all the listeners, right? Because we knew people were listening. But we wanted a place to meet them. That was Facebook, we had a Facebook group. And then after that, we’re like, hey, let’s meet these people in person, right? And because people were talking to, Hey, we should do a meet up somewhere, said, Hey, let’s account let’s have a conference. So it’s that we had a conference. So we started the conference. And then as it sort of snowballed, we got bigger and bigger and bigger. We said, Hey, let’s have this high, higher level conversation where we kind of we talked about the business side of things. And I’d say that our view on coaching is a little bit different than what a lot of people love. People think of a coach as, hey, you go and you get one person, that person is his Guru that tells you everything, we don’t really believe that I at least I don’t personally believe that I don’t think that there’s really a guru that can lead you to the promised land. And that’s why the guild is so great. Great. Jim came up with the name guilt, he came with the max blur to he’s, he’s good at generating names. He’s great. Really good. What’s great about the guild is you have all these,

Kara Vaval
I’m guessing is the 10 start, you know what? Exactly right. That’s where that comes from.

Tyson Mutrux
But the good but the guild is, is a, we have a lot of talented people that are willing to share, there are a lot of givers, right? A lot of givers that are willing to give more than they receive. And so it’s that it’s that rising tides, raise all boats kind of kind of a mindset. And it’s great. And so they answer your question, it’s sort of developed based on people’s needs, like what do people want. And as things have advanced, and there’s a something that Jim and I are doing in December, or we’re just going to meet with a limited number of Guild members. And we’re going to dig in for three days. And that has come about based on the needs of our guild members. And so each time we’ve had a new iteration, it’s based on the needs of our listeners of our members. And that’s where these these ideas come about. It’s in. So we, if people say, hey, we don’t want guild anymore, we’ll get rid of the guilt. That’s what it’ll be. But I don’t think that that will happen.

Kara Vaval
Yeah, so Jim, do you want to throw in someone that

Jim Hacking
Yeah, so I think Tyson and I tapped into something and thank God for the internet, because it wouldn’t have happened otherwise. And that is that I think owning a law firm can be lonely. And I say it all the time. Other than raising kids, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. So you know, and when you own the law firm, it’s different than being an employee of a law firm. And so even though you might work with 20, people, there are certain conversations that you can’t have with them. And what we did as we tapped into a space, that was growth mindset, and positive and supportive, as Tyson said, and that really allowed for connection around mutual goals, like, we had great fun kicking out assholes, people that were not a good fit, they were negative and sour. And, and it’s amazing, you can actually see people holding themselves back, right. And so all of what we’re trying to do is to unlock that greatness that people have inside themselves. And we do that in big ways and small ways to our first conference, our second conference, all of our conferences, have had lots of members of the of the big group or the guild up on stage, we gave them a platform, we gave them a way to connect, and we we built this community and when I was hearing Tyson explain it, it just struck me how organic it’s been to bring together people who like being a lawyer and or who like running a law firm and the others hurdles, yeah, there’s things to overcome. But at the end of the day, there’s still generally happy positive people.

Kara Vaval
And it’s so big that you know, you mentioned mindset, because that’s the game changer, isn’t it for pretty much how any of this stuff pans out for you, right? Because if the mindset is focused on problems and and you know, being buried in problems and being buried with your clients cases, instead of serving and instead of solution, it’s just a quick little shift. It’s not a big, you know, major overhaul, it’s just looking at it from, you know, I get to do this versus I have to do this. It’s just language, right,

Becca Eberhart
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Kara Vaval
Talk about what impact you’ve seen this maximum lawyer have on the guild members and you know, what is the change that it’s causing? Or how is it propelling because, you know, Tyson you were talking about how Jim had the law practice management course and All of that, that he was teaching. While most law schools don’t offer that most law schools do not offer any kind of how to start your own shop type of thing. It’s go to, you know, get the research thing done, get a job at a law firm, and hope to make partner or you know, there’s no real tools. I went to law school for three years, and I looked for the class and I never got it, I never found a way. And that’s why I created, you know, leap into your lifestyle, it was a way for me to help attorneys just do what I did. Because I set up shop straight out of law school, I was only working nine months with this attorney. And I started my firm and I did it virtual straight out, because I didn’t have the I didn’t have the funds to do the big office and the rat, and you know, it’s very unconventional COVID made everything that I’ve done, you know, look like it, this is the way to do it. Back then 14 years ago, you know, lawyers were looking at me like Are you really a lawyer doing it this way? So talk about that, because the listeners that we have here, they many of them have virtual firms, many of them are wanting to grow. But, you know, what does that look like? What does growth look like? What impact have you seen maximum lawyer have on your members talk about that?

Tyson Mutrux
There’s a lot wrapped up?

Kara Vaval
Questions. My questions are always that way. And it’s like good luck.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, well, this day answer your question directly. Like we’ve seen a massive amount of growth from Guild members, it’s the coolest thing to watch seeing them go from, she’s really struggling and crying to like excelling and making seven figures like that’s, it’s amazing to watch. But I want to go back to your first very first point. And it’s about the mindset, yes, it is simple. It is very simple, right is it is actually kind of like flipping on a switch. But it’s there’s the whole idea of like mood follows action, right? You’ve got to take the action. But some of the mindset problems are deeply ingrained in people. They’re deeply deeply ingrained, you’re talking about reversing several decades of a mindset. And so it is, we can say it’s simple, like flipping on a switch. But getting

Kara Vaval
like a switch that you’re like, trying to push that switch up, takes a while it’s Rusty.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, it’s like you if you didn’t work out for 30 years, and all of a sudden, you start to work out, you’ve got to, you’ve got to go slowly with it. And so, and same thing with mindset mindset is the exact same way, you got to be very, very, very, very deliberate about what you’re doing. And once you get there, the mood follows action, and you start to get some momentum and things start to pick up. And we see that with guild members. It’s really funny. So you, you’ll have people listen to the podcast, and they’ll talk to us or they’ll join the guild and like, they’re like, this is so different than anything else I’ve ever been in. Because there’s a lot of there’s a lot of groups out there, right? You name them, you can throw a rock and hit a dozen different groups that tell people how to run a law firm, but they’ve never done it before. Right? But what’s great about the guild is its people that are in the trenches, right that are doing it. But they’re also have a very positive mindset. And they say, Hey, like, and not every day is great like that not everybody is great. Do you have people that will come to the Guild, and they’ll post Oh, my gosh, I’ve had a really bad day. And then people jump in, be very supportive. But hey, now let’s take the steps to correct whatever whatever the issue is. And here’s how you fix it, right. And it could be as simple as, hey, Google shut down my Google My Business page, boom, contact this person, they’ll get you set up right away, you’ll be done in 12 hours, yada, yada, whatever it may be. But that is the that is the environment that is inside the guild. And so

Kara Vaval
here excuse I’m just going to interject is that the assholes that Jim kicked out, didn’t have that vulnerable space that they would access because the hold back or the you know, it’s not really embracing the fact that we all have shitty days, and it’s part of the process. And let’s talk about it and not let’s not act like and we always have it all together, because we don’t, right. And so there is no there is no holding back in that space. Totally true.

Tyson Mutrux
So true. And honestly, the that curating dirt early like that was very early on, Jim was right about that. Like we were very deliberate about who was allowed in and who was not allowed in. And if you were a jerk, guess what? You’re gone. And like, you didn’t get a second chance, right? You don’t get a second you’re gone. Like, once you show us who you are. You’re gone.

Kara Vaval
We believe you.

Tyson Mutrux
And Barbae. So that’s, that’s that’s the approach we’ve taken. But yeah, and because of that, there was funny, I will say this. So Jim, early on, I don’t know if Jim remembers this. Jim flipped the switch on maximum lawyer and it was a closed group initially, and then he opened it up, and people went nuts. And then so we like within an hour, we’re like, shut it back down. We’re like, Okay, we won’t do it again. Sorry. But people were very protective of the community and they still are having that community having that close space to be able to be open about things. Super, super important.

Kara Vaval
That’s awesome. Go ahead, Jim. You add on.

Jim Hacking
I think you know The thing that sort of makes our group different is that Tyson and I lead by example, by not being afraid to be vulnerable, like we talk about the really hard stuff, like, some of our best episodes are where I’m just sort of ranting about something that either is making me mad or that I’m struggling with. And I think it’s really bled into the group because like, about two months ago, a month and a half ago, one of our guild members who hadn’t seen in a while sent me a long email talking about all the struggles that they were having. And I anonymized it and read it to the guild we do at Tyson, I do a call every Saturday morning, at eight in the morning, and we just riff on stuff. And I read that letter anonymously. And the guild members like rose up in unison, and just were like, that was me people shot videos, that was me, I’ve been there I that exact thing happened me don’t feel isolated. Keep coming back. My son calls this a for lawyers. And I think that a lot of ways I’ve been a 12 step program for a long time. So I know a lot of ways I think there’s some truth to that.

Kara Vaval
I love it a for lawyers, don’t we need a place where we can just come in and say, you know that my name is? And I am? Right. I am a lawyer? And so with regards to like, the conferences, is it? Is it just a seminar style? Is it coaching style is that you know, these are the things you need to go do. And then you can you can see results from there. Talk more about that, and the guild and all of these programs, what do they entail?

Jim Hacking
So the the easy thing is the Facebook group. So there’s a Facebook group, there’s like 6000, law firm owners in there. And that’s just people there trading information all day long. And we recreated the guild because we weren’t being able to hear or have, you know, more in depth discussion. So we created the guild. And so that’s a different Facebook group. And that’s a paid group. And then we do a quarterly mastermind so once a quarter, we pick a cool city that Tyson and I want to go visit. And we say we’re gonna have the mat and Tyson loves Scottsdale, Arizona. So every January, we’re in Scottsdale, we’re going to be in Scottsdale and bring us you know, whoever wants to come 3040 People want to come, you’re in a hot seat in a room with other people all day. And then we do that for two days. And then now we have some training that goes along with it. And then, like Tyson said, in December, we’re gonna try something even more different with just like three or four law firm owners and we just work on their stuff for three full days. And then the conference. We actually didn’t do a conference where we did do a conference, this we’re not doing a conference this year. But we may be bringing it back next year. But the conference is Yeah, seminar style people. We had guest speakers, we had paid speakers, we had all kinds of stuff. So it was it was great.

Kara Vaval
Wonderful. And you have one coming up. You said in Miami, yeah, that’ll be in October, in October. So you have to give me that information. So I can share it as well.

Jim Hacking
But that’s why we’re in Austin. We’re doing an automation workshop in Austin in April, and then we’re in Boulder, Colorado, in the summer in July. And then in October, we’ll be in Miami.

Kara Vaval
Awesome. Awesome. So I will share all of that for our listeners and whoever’s interested and so that they can follow you guys as well. You’re on Facebook, you’re on. You’re on Instagram as well. The maximum warrior? Yep. We’re okay. Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux
So it’s funny you asked this, Jim had to think about I think because we don’t touch any of that stuff. That’s all done for us. So we it’s all just kind of pushed out to the world. Jim is

Kara Vaval
like, do we have that?

Jim Hacking
I’ve seen myself on our Instagram feed. So then I knew that we had one.

Kara Vaval
Okay, awesome. So my question for you. And really, it’s if so the whoever’s listening and where they are in their trajectory, if you could speak to your beginner self, right. Starting your firm and your I will take turn so start digging into your your thoughts on that. And you have your firm set up, you’re starting to get your clients and growing the best you know how to, if you had to share three growth tips to go from starter beginner to next level, whatever next level looked like for you when you are doing it, share that

Jim Hacking
Go fast. Go fast. hire for your weaknesses, hire the people that helped fill you out, and then create video and repurpose it. Those are my three.

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. So I would I would my it’s funny. I was wondering if you and I were gonna have the exact same ones. It’s really interesting, too. I want to point this out. Jim, Jim and I were talking about this before like, I am very forward thinking Jim is very backward thinking in a positive way he can he can go back and reflect. I sorted shut all that shit down. I just don’t even I just go for very forward thinking. So I did have to really kind of force myself to think about this. But I think it really is you go fast. You go fast because you You’re many times people don’t go fast out of fear. So you gotta shut that fear down, you just gotta go fast, you got to trust that it’s gonna work. So I would say go fast, I would, I would definitely echo that, I was gonna say my first one is actually gonna be higher. So go party going faster as continue to hire, don’t stop hiring always be hired, I think because that’s going to allow you to go super, super fast. And then whether I’m going to change a little bit what what Jim said, I’m going to say just continue to mark it like Don’t, don’t let that stop because where people plateau is they were talking about this with a guild member just two days ago, what happens is, is that you market a lot, the very, very beginning. And so you start to get a lot of momentum with cases, then you start to work on all those cases, and then you get stuck, right, you just get stuck. And then you stop marketing. And then you have what we call the dip. And so that’s what you want to avoid. You want to avoid that. And so you got to continue to market and higher market and higher market, higher market and higher, that’s going to allow you to go fast.

Kara Vaval
Awesome. And I definitely want you to expound on that fear. Because that is what stops most people from even taking the leap. And I talked about it because you know, I always I heard many moons ago that fear is false evidence appearing real. But that evidence that false evidence is so real, right? And you think you’re gonna fail, you think you’re gonna hire this person, and you’re gonna go broke because of anything? So many different thoughts, right? How do you and and obviously, that ties into mindset, right? It’s this whole believe you can type thing, but how do you deal with that? And how did you deal with that? Because many of our listeners had to overcome fear many times over in order to even be, you know, on their own, and you’ve had to do that, I’m sure. And so although you had the you did have the burning desire from day one. So I don’t know if you experienced that. But Can you expound on that?

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I mean, we talked about vision, but it’s really, you got to know what you want, like, you really got to know what you want, like, do I want to work for this guy who’s a real prick? And that has me work until eight o’clock every night? And then I don’t see my kids and my wife, do I want that? Or would I rather do all that work on trying to generate business and working on my own? And trying to build my own thing? Like, do I? Which of those do I want, right? Because that’s usually what the choices that was my choice was really what it was, Do I want to sort of build my own thing? Do I want to put all those hours in really building my thing as opposed to someone else’s thing? So you got to figure out what you want, like, what do you want? And continue to ask yourself that question? Well, what do I what do I really want? No, no, actually, what do I really, really want and figure that out? Once you figure that out? Well, other stuff can becomes easy. Like once you actually know i Yes, I do want to start my own farm. Okay. How do I get business? Let’s like you got to be proactive. And some of that fear might come from people that they start their firm, and then they don’t do anything like that. The worst thing you can do whenever you start your own firm is not do anything like you’ve got to be proactive. So I guess the answer your question, How did I get past it? I didn’t know what I wanted. And then I was I was very proactive about it. I was meeting with people all the time, I was really shaping every all of my activities around growing my business is what it was. And Jim was the same way. Like, he was one of the early adopters when it came to video. Like that’s how and I don’t want speak for Jim. But that’s how he did it. He knew what he wanted. And he recorded a bunch of video to get him to that point. But you gotta you just gotta it’s I think it starts with knowing what you want. It’s I think it really is that simple. Jim, can you touch on that?

Jim Hacking
I think most law firm owners being high fact finders are very loath to give up control. And the reason that they don’t want to give up control is because they are afraid of mistakes. And they’re convinced that only they can do 98% of the things that have to happen in the law firm. And so they keep from growing because they’re too scared to give up control. And then that mostly because they Oh my god, we can’t have a mistake, a mistake would be the worst thing ever. I became a lawyer try to punish people for their mistakes and to prevent them from making mistakes. And so they get all wrapped up in this control, control control. And man, I can hear it a mile away. I can hear it a mile away when someone’s a control bullshitter where they say, oh, yeah, I’m happy to delegate. But as soon as they have the opportunity, they take it all back. And then they get small again. And so I think the biggest hindrance to growth and to delegation is this reluctance to allow people to make mistakes, which of course, you can just use to improve your systems.

Kara Vaval
So you never had any hold back on hiring and just getting people involved. And I knew

Jim Hacking
very early, that there was a lot of stuff about being a lawyer or running a law firm that I didn’t like to do, and that I wasn’t very good at. So when I said earlier about hiring for your weaknesses, hiring for the stuff that you don’t want to do or that you’re not good at. I mean, that was my whole thing. So you a law firm owner can’t do everything. So find out what your strengths are. Find out what you like, do more of that and then let other people do that. stuff that they like, like, I hated sending out bills, I would finish a case and people hadn’t finished paying us. And I just didn’t like the invoicing, I didn’t like looking at the numbers. And I hired someone who came back later and told me I found my purpose in life chasing people down for money that they owe you, right? So that’s just not my bag. And there’s people out there who do those things that you don’t want to do.

Kara Vaval
Yes, and I absolutely love that you’re saying that. Because ultimately, I think that that’s what unlocked a lot for me, it was doing that StrengthsFinder test, really focusing on my strengths. And, you know, just maximizing the output in that space and understanding that if somebody can do it, you know, 85%, as good as I can do it, then I’ve hit a homerun and keeping them, you know, happy also, because people only give their 85% as good as what you would do if they’re happy to be there, and if they’re supported. And so I know that you talked about at the beginning, having those posters on the door, really recognizing people for their strengths, really recognizing people for their better space, I guess, to work from so can you add to that, and how that has changed the game for you in the hiring space? Because I think that, you know, being able to find the right fit. It’s a skill, it really is because especially if you’re you’re inundated with work and you’re just desperate to find help. Sometimes kissing a lot of frogs is part of the process. Do you have a streamlined process to identify your right? You know, your right support team.

Jim Hacking
Every year, the 30 teams in the NFL spend millions of dollars researching collegiate athletes, they do all kinds of testing, and they have a combine and they and my New York Jets thought that they had found their answer and Zach Wilson, and he’s been a complete and utter bust. So I believe in the value of testing, I believe in the value of inquiring and doing your due diligence. But I honestly believe that at the end of the day, you get lucky, you get lucky, you don’t know you can’t really test for hustle, you can look for it in an experience. But I think again, I see people hire one person, it doesn’t work out and they say oh, that’s never going to work. And they don’t try again. You just have to keep trying. And like Tyson said, one of the great benefits of hiring all the time is that you can find people, I honestly think that if you’re thinking about hiring a person you hire two, because probably only one of them’s gonna work out.

Kara Vaval
You’re shaking your head. Yes. Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux
I mean, it’s the whole it’s was the especially the last thing that Jim said, you want to hire slow fire fast that that is there for a reason, because you are gonna get it wrong. Like we have a of all the lawyers that I know, I may have the most intense hiring process, right. But there are times that we have gotten it wrong, right, we put through people going through a ton of assessments, and a ton of tests. And through the interview after interview, and most of the time, we do get it right. But we do get it wrong from time to time. And just because we get it wrong doesn’t mean that our whole process is jacked up and it over. There’s something wrong with us. It’s just that people like it, that’s, that’s part of the process too, like people lying to you, right? They they will lie to your face. And that’s why you got to have such an intense hiring process. But the point is, is that you’re gonna make mistakes with this, that doesn’t mean you should stop hiring. The answer is hiring, you just got to continue to do it.

Kara Vaval
Awesome. Guys, this was great. I definitely would love to have another conversation similar to this. Any words of wisdom you want to leave for our listeners? Because, you know, this has been you’ve given us quite a bit of golden nuggets, but I’m gonna just take turns any one golden nugget to leave and then we’re going to wrap up.

Jim Hacking
Sure. Yeah, mine would be to give yourself a break. Don’t be hard on yourself. Don’t be worried about the mistakes or the things that you wish you’d done differently. You can’t look backwards and too many people go into the future looking behind them. And like Tyson said, You got to be forward focused. And and, as he said, trying to solve problems.

Tyson Mutrux
It’s funny you say that? Uh, my first thought was, it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. Whatever your situation is, it’s going to be okay. And since since Jim was basically the same thing, I’ll say this, figure out what you want, like sit actually sit down and spend as much time as as necessary. So that’s hours or days or weeks or years, figuring out what you want actually take the quiet time to figure that out. Figure that out that way in 20 years, you don’t have a bunch of regrets that way. You 20 years you don’t think oh my gosh, I should have been a criminal defense attorney, not a personal injury attorney. Right. actually sit down and do the vision work. And once you’ve done that, a lot of the other stuff will just fall into Lesson you won’t worry about all the nonsense.

Kara Vaval
I love it. This was awesome Tyson nutrix. And Jim hacking with a maximum lawyer, thank you so much for gracing us with your time with your knowledge with all of your golden nuggets, we will have the link to your event that’s coming up in October out here in Miami and just give us all your other stuff. Also, you know, and encouraging everyone to go follow the maximum lawyer on all social media platforms and get involved with what they’re doing. Because that’s, that’s what it’s all about. My whole Mo is really spreading the word on where the resources are, where the communities are, where we can really, you know, support one another in chasing our individual dreams. Because, you know, we went there, to law school, invested the time paid the money did all of that. And we want to succeed at what we’re doing. And we want to serve our clients well, and we want to feed our families well, and we want to have the lifestyle and we want to, you know, do what we went to school to do and successfully carry that out. But like you said in the beginning, Jim, you know, it’s very lonely, when you don’t have community and just hustling and doing this alone and trying to figure it out. So I’m big on getting the support, getting the community connection, getting the coaching, getting whatever it is that you need, reading the books, doing the work, and then you know, really adding value onto yourself so that you can be of better service to the people that you deliver your services to. And so, again, gentlemen, thank you for your time. This was awesome. Until next time.

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If you want to become the visionary of your law firm, there is this whole “big relationships” responsibility that falls on your shoulders as the business owner. 

The three top ways to super charge your relationships and networking efforts are: 

➡️ being a giver

➡️ being a connector

➡️ being the go to expert of your area 

Listen in as Joey deep dives into each of these three ways you can network easily, with a mindset shift, and practical action steps to get started today!  

Episode Highlights:

01:45 Meet Joey 

03:16 There are three things that you need to become in order to be a better networker – Number one: you need to be a giver – look for reasons to give encouragement 

8:46 Number two: is to be a connector

12:25 Number three: be the go to expert in your space

15:00 There is a large responsibility that falls on your shoulder as a law firm owner so a way to help is to make those connections!

Book:

The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Acer

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube.

Connect with Joey:

Resources:

Transcript: Supercharge Your Networking with Joey Vitale

Unknown Speaker
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2020. To keep listening to hear joy, vitality, as we share his talk supercharged your networking, you can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Let’s get to it.

Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar, podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Joey Vitale
Let’s talk networking. Who here loves networking? I want you to stand up, stand up. If you love networking, stand up. I figured it would be a minority in the group. But look around. Those are the people who you can just kind of walk over to they’ll be nice to you, they’ll treat you well. Okay, you guys can sit down. If you hate networking, stand up. I know that’s uncomfortable. Okay, I’m with you. I’m with you. Okay, you can sit back down. So in today’s presentation, I want to talk working in a way that can help both groups or if you’re in the middle. If you love networking, I hope that I can give you some strategies here to amplify it even more. If you hate networking. Over the years, I’ve come up with a way of doing it myself, because I don’t really love networking either. That really works really well. And just to paint a picture of how I literally got here on this stage. About five years ago, I was working at a law firm here in St. Louis, typical courtroom litigation work. And after working there for about two years, I realized, I’m not very good at this. I took some personality tests, I learned that I’m what’s called an Enneagram, nine, or a peacemaker type. I don’t like to argue. So I’m in the minority of lawyers. And I’m like, Oh, it makes sense that I wouldn’t like this courtroom work. So I started looking around my wife and I moved to Chicago. And I was thinking, okay, maybe the more I’m meeting other attorneys, the more I’m seeing these people who are starting their own firms, I never thought that I would start my own firm. But when I decided to go out on my own, I realized I didn’t know anybody in this space. Luckily, I got connected with Tyson and Jim, very early on in my career. Five years later, again, Brooks is a great friend of mine couldn’t make it here. So they asked me to be here. And that is because of the power of networking. You see, networking is great. I think supercharging your networking is even better. And so here are three key strategies that I’ve used over the years to really take my networking up a few notches. And the reality is how to improve your networking. It’s not just a matter of doing things differently. I love that I follow Alexis his talk here, because it’s really about getting over impostor syndrome and being someone different. And so there are really three things that you need to become to be a better stronger networker. So I want to talk about these three ways of being and I’ll couple it all with some action tips for all of you. The first is you need to be a giver. Now that sounds great, right? Like, oh, yeah, I’m a lawyer. It’s in my nature to give to others to serve. Being a giver sounds great. We all want to be givers, not just takers. The problem is, it’s really easy and natural for us as human beings to be takers. It’s great to be giving, and you know, thinking about donations to give to and very, you know, just generous with your time when you feel like you have more than enough time and money. But when time is short, when you don’t have a lot of money, when the world kind of sucks. It’s hard to put yourself in a mental space of being a giver. I was wrestling this a few years ago, and I came across this really great book called The Happiness Advantage. It’s written by an author named Shaun Aker, and his story is really interesting, because he is a Harvard professor, quick show of hands. Anybody here Harvard grads? We won’t we might be a little jealous of you. Any any hand raises? None. Okay. So how many of you wanted to go to Harvard? Or would have loved to have gone to Harvard? Okay, we’re seeing some hands raised. What’s really interesting about this book is he talks about how so many of the students at Harvard were unhappy, like seriously unhappy. It got to the point where he created what is now the most famous course on campus. It’s all about happiness. And so he has these, these tenants that he teaches, and one of them that I just thought was really, really fascinating. When Is this distinction between rose colored glasses, and rose tinted glasses. And before you think that I’m going into woowoo space, this isn’t some like lady who got high and wrote a book. This is a Harvard professor. And he pointed out that, at the end of the day, it’s really impossible to wear completely clear glasses. As much as we’re devoted to finding the truth, it’s impossible for us to see the truth without interpreting it some way, there is always some sense of interpretation. So what he says is, don’t wear rose colored glasses, don’t try to always just be overwhelmingly the glass is half positive, try and see the world as clearly as you can. But there’s always going to be a tint to the glasses. So choose to make them rose tinted glasses. So to be a giver, it really helps. If you put on rose tinted glasses first, then the world changes, it becomes much easier to be a giver. So I was working on this and I figured out a way that worked really well for me to really put this into practice. And I call them my morning, giving Sprint’s so this is on my calendar for 30 minutes every morning, where I go on to my computer, and I do very intentional social media giving. So I’ll go on to Facebook, go to their birthday page, wish people happy birthdays, and then DMS, I’ll look for reasons to congratulate people on a milestone or give support if they have maybe some bad news to share just doing what I can to be a giver in those space. I say that because a lot of times, it’s hard to reconcile these two things of wanting to be a giver, and building routines and habits of giving. There’s this quote that I love that I’m going to tweak a bit here of we don’t rise to the level of our good intentions, we fall to the clarity on our calendar. So it’s really powerful to actually put into your calendar, what you’re going to do to be in a giving state. Now, you don’t have to raise your hand here, but but raise your hand if you like this idea of having like a giving sprint to your mornings are some time in the day or in the week. Okay, great. So I’d actually like you all to stand up. Because as Tyson said, ideas are great. Not if you don’t execute. So we’re all going to it again, you don’t have to stand up. But if you are I want you to find a buddy. You can couple off maybe find a three pair if you’d like. But I want you after I’m done talking to find each other and watch each other, put this in your calendar, a 30 minute window where you are going to be good, you can figure out what that means. But it’s going to be on your calendar. Okay, you can sit back down. So that’s way of being number one be a giver. And you can use those giving strategies

Unknown Speaker
is apathy on his back. If you’re new around here, the ZAP Athan is the OG automation workshop at this next exclusive guild event we’re partnering up with maximum lawyers good friend Kelsey Bratcher. To bring you a day and a half automation workshop. The idea of automation is simple, right? Identify a repeatable pattern of tasks and then use technology. So that business process can happen without you. But setting up that technology can be daunting, time consuming, and even have a steep learning curve. Join us in person and you’ll create automations on site that will start working for you before you even leave Austin, join the guild today and grab your ticket at max slot events.com.

Joey Vitale
Number two, it’s related but it’s a connector. You see, it’s really common when people are networking to think about oh, I want to see how many new leads I can get here. I want to see what relationships I can create changes the game when you go to or any event with an initial mindset of how many connections can I make? How can I be a connector instead of someone who’s receiving things. It really just changes the game of how you are a useful asset to those around you. Again, this is something that people hear they’re like, oh, yeah, I want to be a connector. I want to start connecting more people. There are a few things here that I mentioned. And I’ll get to a really great thing that you guys can put into action. One of the things that I love doing and people in my network know that I do this a lot is connection emails. So I really want to quickly want to cover how I do this and how I take it to a next level that people tell me works really well. You see a lot of people will make some type of a connection email, but they make two mistakes. Either they don’t really clarify why they’re making the connection. Or they make the people that they’re connecting have to spend a lot of time and work to actually connect or figure out why they’re being connected. it. So when you’re sending these connection emails, it’s great to clarify in the body of the email and the subject line. What’s going on here? Is this a referral? Is this a collaboration opportunity? What else is that. And if you can, also, if you’re referring someone, this works really well find that person’s Calendly page, and include that in the email, make it super easy. So they don’t have to go back and forth and find a time the person can just get on their calendar. If you’re looking for any templates on how to do that, let me know I have a few different versions of connection emails that I send all the time. Now, some of you might be thinking connection sounds great. But it also sounds like a lot of work. I know a lot of people. And recently, I was working with a business owner as a consulting client. And we were talking about this, he loved the idea of managing his connections, connecting them to each other. But he’s got a big business. And he knows tons of people. And he was like, How can I again, put this on my calendar, have a routine have a process so that I’m actually doing this, because there needs to be a process or else I’m not actually going to make all of these connections. And so we talked a little while we conversation went in some interesting directions. And then we talked about this area of science, of trot of tribe, data, tribe science, tribal studies, that have found that it’s really natural for us as human beings, to have great human connections and tribes at either 150 people or below. And after that point, it’s really hard to maintain these relationships. So instead of having this guy tried to stay on top of all of his 1000s of connections, we figured out who was top 150, people were, you know, that sounds like a lot, you can go with your top 100 Or your top 50 Doesn’t really matter it by the way, if you can’t think of your top 50 just meet people at this conference, and you’ll find them pretty quickly. But what’s great is when you really focus on connecting other people to your top 100, or top 50, or 150, and connecting them to each other, the rest of it kind of takes care of itself. So the pressure can be off, that can be a really great way to kind of hack this way of being in and show yourself as a connector. Which brings me to the third way of being for really supercharging the way that you are networking. And that is to be the go to expert. Now, as lawyers, and there are all types of talks happening here about how you can show up and be the expert in your space. There are all kinds of ways to do it, you can write a book, you can do a podcast or a live show, I want to highlight one way of being a go to expert that has meant a lot to me and totally changed the way that I do business. And that is through Facebook groups. So when I launched my my law firm, again, like I said, I really didn’t know that many people. But we figured out a really cool niche of a business owner client that we could serve, we started a Facebook group. And after a few months, we had 7000 members in the Facebook group. And there’s something really special about not only being seen as a go to expert, but being a leader in that space that really can kind of shortcut your way to being seen as that go to expert. And I want to follow what I preach here. Because Liz, can you come up. So Liz is on my team, she’s in my top 100 She’s probably in my top 10. Liz is a type of expert. And it’s really rare to find. But she’s a Facebook group and community expert. So she’s helped me and she helps other people in the room, make sure that they’re building a really great Facebook group, that they’re becoming that go to leader that they’re building a sense of community that they’re doing it in a strategic way, our firm has grown in ways that I can’t even imagine with the help of building our own group that makes my team and myself being seen as a leader in that space. If that sounds like something that your firm might be interested in, I’d love for you to meet Liz. So your action item here is to talk to Liz at some point in the conference if you’re interested. And she can help you clarify whether a Facebook group might make sense for your firm or not. Do you have anything to share? Thank you. She’s also a great photographer so she can take great like selfies or whatever. If you feel like you’re not good at taking pictures of yourself with other people. So that’s all that I have for you guys today. But those are the top again, it’s not about changing these little tips and tricks. If you really want to become the visionary that you want to be. This doesn’t get talked about a lot in traction, all these other books about business growth. But when it comes to being the visionary of your law firm, yes, you have to cast the vision And, but there’s this whole big relationships, responsibility that falls on your shoulders as the business owner. And I haven’t found any other, better ways of showing up and being to cultivate those bigger relationships than being a giver being a connector and being the go to expert. Thanks.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase using these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

When you reach that point in your business that you are ready to hire an associate — How do you make that decision? How do you make sure the payment is there? How can you make the process smooth?
 
What if you are worried about what you will do with your time after to make your hire? What will you do if you are not sure if you have full time work guaranteed? Do you ask your new hire to bring in new leads of their own?
 
This is what Jim and Tyson talk about and coach Jeremy through as he troubleshoots the next steps that he needs to take in his business as he scales up the work to more than he can handle, and hires an associate.
 
Listen in to Jeremy, Jim and Tyson as they walk through how Jeremy can avoid mistakes of the past, where 80% of his work was reliant on one client referral, and what Jeremy and his firm do now to make sure that his sources are well diversified and ready for his new hire.

Summary:

01:39 Meet Jeremy and his law firm that he started in 2015 and a reset in 2019 

05:16 How did Jeremy get 20 referral sources?

06:31 Advice for people to ask for referrals?

09:01 Topic of the day – What is the right way to bring on and pay an associate? And the reality of owning a business 

13:28 Where does the fear of not hiring come from?

15:25 Using Profit First in your business

17:00 Should I expect an associate to bring leads of their own?! What associates want – and what you need to do …   

20:03 The first cycle of hiring and the fear that comes with it 

22:47 Subconsciously allowing our own capacity, to limit our business development activities 

27:00 Having incentives for your employees to work for you …

28:30 Start making “finding clients” a part of your week right now even before the associate is hired

Jim Hack: Read the book: The Third Door

Jeremy’s Tip: The Guild –  Read the book: The Power of One More  

Tyson’s Tip: For law firm owners that want to build a culture of learning – start a non-fiction book club like: Becoming Bulletproof  

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube. https://youtu.be/HRPQ9zLShaM

Connect with Jeremy:

Resources:

Transcript: Should Your New Hire Bring Their Own Leads?

Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Jim Hacking
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.

Tyson Mutrux
And I’m Tyson nutrix. What’s up Jimmy

Jim Hacking
Tyson. It’s so funny. We don’t do any recordings for weeks at a time. And then today we’re doing five or six, I like this model. But I do enjoy also spending the whole day with you

Tyson Mutrux
the same, it’s interesting. So the first show we did this is our third of the day. And the last one, we were guests. But the first one, you had to take a second to kind of remember how to say things because it’s been about a month. And so it is interesting how it works every time we do it. I like the way we do it. We can knock out a bunch of the day. And it’s easier for scheduling and everything. It is sometimes like I kind of miss talking to you. Luckily we have the Saturday show that we can talk to each other in the guild. So that helps supplement my knee.

Jim Hacking
I’m excited about our guests today, he raised an interesting question. And you and I were going to do a solo episode. And then I thought, Well, hey, why not just have him on to discuss his firm and its practice. He’s a member of The Guild. His name’s Jeremy Danielson, and we’re glad to have him. Welcome, Jeremy.

Jeremy Danilson
Thank you, Jason. I’m looking forward to the conversation. We can help other members of The Guild and other attorneys and I’m excited to be a part of it.

Tyson Mutrux
So Jeremy, before we get to that, though, tell people who you are what you do, and a little bit about your journey. All right.

Jeremy Danilson
Jeremy Danielson lives outside of Des Moines, Iowa and run a residential real estate transactions, law practice with my wife, I’d be considered the CEO, she’s the CEO. And we have two other team members as well. So started in 2015, and had a reset in 2019. For reasons we may or may not get into. And then it’s growing. Now it’s time to, we’ve got the systems and processes in place, it’s time to start growing.

Jim Hacking
But let’s get into the reset. That sounds intriguing. What happened?

Jeremy Danilson
Well, 2019, I probably learned one of the most valuable lessons as a business owner to diversify your referral sources. January 19, we lost our primary referral sources 85% of our business. So Sarah, and I had to make a really hard decision. It was just her right at the time, Sarah and my wife? Do we keep doing this building this thing that we’ve been working on for four years? Or start building it really? Or do I go get a job with another firm? And we made the hard decision start over basically. And now we probably have 18 to 20 referral sources? We’ve added two team members and red poised for a big year this year.

Jim Hacking
Jeremy, what was it like when you got that call that you’re losing the client? And then what did you do immediately? Because we actually had someone in the guild at the mastermind, I don’t know if you were in their group or not. But the exact same thing happened to them in the exact same kind of practice area. So any advice you would have for them as they’re in those weeks after you got that call? What advice would you have for them? Or what? What did you do?

Jeremy Danilson
Sarah and I we got on the phone with our coach, because I got 30 days notice from the client that they were taking the business to a bigger firm. So we had a little bit of the time, but we had to figure out how we were gonna get the message out that we were gonna stay in business that we wanted to help more people. And we probably initially started saying yes to more work outside of this niche for a small period of time, doing some wills doing some entity formation for real estate investors, and quickly learned we were able to keep it stable. But it was probably an initial focus right on marketing efforts just trying to get we did a postcard mailing campaign we did. That’s when we probably started our newsletters in earnest, just monthly newsletters, but just to start to get the word about us because we were tied so closely in our market to that one referral source we needed to show We’re an independent law firm that can help more than that one type of business that was really

Tyson Mutrux
the beginnings of getting that message out. I think this can be a really valuable lesson to listeners. So can you talk a little bit about how you got yourself into that bind? Because I think that might be the lesson that we’d like. Yeah, getting out of it’s one thing but talk about what led you to that bind?

Jeremy Danilson
Yeah, I graduated law school December of 11. And my first job was as a corporate counsel for a commercial real estate company. And I was there a couple years and made a decision to make a change from that firm, or that company because they weren’t growing. So I opened my own law firm understanding this referral sources can be my primary source of business, but I honestly I became content. I had enough business to create a job for myself, those first few years that started in 2015. After a couple of years, I was my wife got tired of seeing me work till midnight. So she started helping me in taking in so we had enough revenue to pay for take care of our family. But I didn’t challenge myself to diversify to help other people because I just assumed all of that business would always keep coming in for the rest of forever. I didn’t we didn’t do it when we lost the business. It wasn’t because of any No fault of our own. And that was probably the biggest assumption or mistake I made is if we did good work that we would keep getting that business. And that’s not always the case.

Jim Hacking
That’s an excellent point. So how did you then start beating the bushes to get up to 20 referral sources like you have now,

Jeremy Danilson
I think the one good thing that came out of those first four years is that we were really communicative as a real estate firm, which is communication is the most important in transactional work. And we had a good reputation with other attorneys, other closing agents in the market. So when we were able to get the message out that we were open for business and independent, people started taking chances on us. And really what we did, and I give Sarah a lot of credit for this, as she asked for business, one lender, and one loan officer took a chance on us and said, I still want to use this closing agent. But can we do our title work with you? I said, Absolutely. He wanted to work with local attorneys, his attorney was in a different part of the state. And he took a chance on us. And that allowed us to get some of that work. And then we could slowly start to pursue more leads sources like that. And it’s been a little bit at a time over those four years or so that we’ve just, you have to ask for the work, it’s not going to come to you magically. So it’s

Tyson Mutrux
really interesting that you bring this up because we did a a training, or weekly training in our firm last yesterday was about like, how can we generate referrals? Right, so how can employees generate referrals? It was a fun little presentation. But one of the tips that I had read somewhere was that, you know, making sure you ask for it. And for injury stuff. It’s pretty uncomfortable. I don’t know. It’s kind of it’s for me, it kind of feels weird to ask for referrals. Can you give some advice to people on like asking for referrals, like what that’s like, I mean, and I know my business is different than yours, but I’m sure we can still utilize that tool.

Jim Hacking
I think, oh,

Jeremy Danilson
credit where credit’s due to Sarah is better at that than I am. She is fearless when it comes to socializing, networking and asking people to help them. But her primary play is differentiating us telling these potential referral sources how we do things differently. Our number one focus is creating as the client experience, whether it’s for the loan officer for the realtor, for the closing agent for the buyer or seller. So tell them how we’re doing things differently from other law firms in the market. And because we’re doing things differently that makes a light bulb go off or that that piques their curiosity, and then they want to hear more. And that gives you an opportunity to have a more in depth conversation. So I think it’s important to show how you’re different or, or want to do things better than the traditional model in whatever area of practice you’re in.

Jim Hacking
As we segue into the question that you wanted to raise Jeremy, talk to us a little bit about how legal work gets completed at your firm.

Jeremy Danilson
So Danelle is our legal assistant, she is the voice of the firm. She’s our intake specialist, the first person that anybody talks to when they call, and we have everything run through our CRM. So from the time a person calls, they will talk to the nella five minutes after they call, they get an automatic text message that says thank you for reaching out, here’s a link to our five star reviews, but to see what some recent clients have said about us, but I think it’s important to show gratitude that they took a chance to call you to show the client that you want to earn their work that they’re lucky to get to talk to you. And then they also go through a funnel. Our goal when a potential new client comes in is to convert them have a sign engagement letter within a week. So we have email and text communication over that first week with an effort to get them on board. After that, then they whatever type of work it is, it’s always real estate transactions with buyer seller, they’ll funnel into a different pipeline within that same CRM, we don’t use a law practice management system, it’s all through the CRM to funnel them through specific stages where we have email snippets built out to where my entire team can run transactions, and only bring me in when the matter gets complicated, or there’s an actual legal question to answer. My invested time with clients on these flat fee transactions is probably a 20 minute meeting at the end of the process, because my entire team takes care of it from intake until closing.

Tyson Mutrux
I love the work that you’ve done on that. That’s incredible. I think that if people just listen to that part of the episode and follow your advice on that, I think that it’s a lot of valuable information there. But let’s talk about what sort of brings you on to the episode or on the podcast. What is the topic that you brought up? And let’s let’s dig into it. All right,

Jeremy Danilson
so we have hired before legal assistant and paralegal and we hire our core values first. I feel like I can teach I’ve done every job within our firm. So I can teach anybody the skills to do that job. But you there’s a certain caliber, a quality person we want to join our team, then we’ve been successful in that in our first few hire external hires, non family member hires. It’s time and I’ve been thinking about this for over a year to hire an associate. And again, for the third time in a row, now I’ve got this pit in my stomach, can I afford it? Is that the right time to do it? And if we’re going to do it, I need to decide how we’re going to compensate that associate what are the right ways to bring on and pay an associate when it’s always going to feel uncomfortable to make additional financial commitments? It’s important to me whenever I make a promise to another family that we know we can keep that promise indefinitely. I don’t want to make a promise that we’re not prepared to keep

Jim Hacking
So one of the things that we talked about or that you raised and what piqued my interest was whether or not you should have that associate plan on bringing in business of their own. And so, before we get to that, though, I want to I just want to touch on my thoughts as far as the indefinite plan of paying them. I mean, I appreciate that loyalty in advance before you hire someone, but at the same time, what if you had hired someone, the 31st Day before you lost that 85% client, right? So you never know. So I think that, you know, wanting it to work, wanting to do everything to make it work, and being loyal to them and trying to set them up for success and having in your heart the intention of if I make this offer, that it’s going to work, I think that’s different than working with your spouse in lots of ways. But I don’t think you have to have that same level of loyalty, just because you never know what’s going to happen.

Jeremy Danilson
I think that’s fair in this. Fortunately, to date, I haven’t had to make a decision like that I’m realistic, and there’s nothing that will happen at some point, if I grow this firm the way I see it growing. And that’s the reality of running a business.

Jim Hacking
So just real quick, can you clarify, like how many cases are coming in, and then are they flat fee, I would imagine they’re flat fee. And it’s probably I would imagine a little bit of a higher volume.

Jeremy Danilson
So here’s the trick and where the anxiety comes from. And we touched on this in my mastermind last week, we have two more referral sources, one very large one in the queue ready to go that have committed, but the orders haven’t started coming in. There’s their launch in the program, February 10, and today’s February 2. So it’s uncomfortably because we don’t have the work right now, to make an offer, so to speak, until I see the order starts coming. I know we have a verbal commitment. And I have no reason to doubt that that new referral sources coming in the referral sources going to be a 60% increase in revenue, annual revenue, if they come in as promised. So I was willing, when I shared mastermind is I was willing to be the sacrificial lamb for a period of time to be overburdened with work, to get our financial picture to a place where I’m comfortable. But then I was quickly told that’s short sighted. And if I want to bring on an associate in three months, I need to start the hiring process now or earlier than now. So that’s probably a little more background to help fill in this picture. It’s that big referral source that’s coming that hasn’t shown up yet. But I want you to prepare for it.

Tyson Mutrux
So do you have enough work now, though? And I’m not sure if I’m 100% clear on this? Do you have enough work now to feed that attorney? The if you brought on a new one?

Jeremy Danilson
No, I can handle everything that’s coming in right now.

Jim Hacking
Today, that’s a different answer, it is a different answer. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean that an associate couldn’t do it. And you could go out and find 20 Other referral sources, spend your time doing that, if that’s what you want to do.

Jeremy Danilson
In the last six months, I’ve been for the first time we’ve started marketing, and I’ve started doing business development and presentations at conferences. And that’s been a lot of fun. These business development conversations, I think, is my highest value not in doing the reading the abstraction, doing the title commitments. I think getting to the place where I’m financially comfortable to transition in more in that direction. I think that’s just a scary moment, I’m going to have to swallow my fear and make that step. And in real estate transactions, winter is slower, it’s starting to pick up I think that would be an easier fear to swallow in March when I see all this stuff in the queue, as opposed to today when it’s always slow this time of year.

Tyson Mutrux
Follow up with that, though. Yeah. Because you are beating around the bush, could you pull a trigger today and hire someone and be able to afford it for that person? And then free up your time to do the other work? So do you have the capability of doing that now,

Jeremy Danilson
financially, I don’t want to pay another attorney and myself today to do the work that’s being done today. I don’t feel comfortable today, to make that kind of a

Tyson Mutrux
gym. I’ll let you take a shot.

Jim Hacking
I understand that. I understand. Where does that come from? Where does that. I mean, I’m probably the opposite of you, Jeremy. So like, I’d be hiring this person, even without the 60% increase coming down the pike. I’m probably way too optimistic. My wife would tell you that I am. Right. So but with this train coming of future work, and as you said, you have no reason to think it’s not going to come. It’s going to take you six, eight weeks to hire somebody. So I guess when I was listening to you, in my mind when someone’s in that boat you’re in right now. And you said you were willing to be the sacrificial lamb and do a little bit of extra work to be extra busy for a while when you said that. It was an interesting thing to hear. But also I said to myself, well, it seems like when you’re in that position that Jeremy’s in, you either have to be ready to spend money or work more one or the other. Because if more works about to come, one of those two things has to happen. You either need to hire someone and maybe make a little bit less for a while, or you’re gonna have to do some more work and do it yourself. I’m always trying to find other people to do my work. And if you think that in the long run, you’re have three attorneys working for you, then I would just rather start that process sooner rather than later and get that train moving, because you’re gonna need that momentum. And you got a great thing coming of this new client that’s gonna, you know, be a big chunk of revenue for you. That’s just how I would handle it. But But not everybody’s like me.

Jeremy Danilson
Last piece of background and Tyson heard this last week, we went to proc we switch over to Profit First, say five months ago. And I try to be as transparent as possible to help as many people as possible today. Prior to that I was probably bleeding the firm dry with remember distributions, it’d be structured in that approach. And I love the consistency and the format or formula that profit first has given us but we haven’t reached our target percentages yet. And I feel like we need to be busy for a short period of time to get those target percentages on operating expenses, and owners compensation everything to where they need to be. That’s probably where my discomfort comfort comes from. And I’ve watched some of the associated Academy videos this week and looking at as an associate hires a law firm or lawyer extender, and the opportunity to actually be able to create more revenue for my firm will probably help us reach those target percentages faster. And I just probably just need to make the move. And I’ve got a candidate actually which we can get into also, prior to posting a job posting.

Tyson Mutrux
Alright, so I’m a little little hesitant to suggest this because I’ve never done this. But I wonder what your thoughts on you talk this through? What are your thoughts on making that offer, but making it with with being pretty open about it saying, Hey, I’m offering this to you, on the basis that we are expecting to this big clients going to come into this business? Yeah. Jim, is Jim shaking his head?

Jim Hacking
Well, so this gets to the ultimate issue that I want to talk to Jeremy about. And what I really

Tyson Mutrux
because I think being open about it is important, right? But I would also wouldn’t want to say it’s like hat Yeah, hire the person. And then in two months, you have to fire the person cuz you own the business. So I’m curious like, Okay, Jim, what, like, Where were you going with that? Because I’m well,

Jim Hacking
so this is what piqued my interest when Jeremy texted me the question and that is this in Jeremy’s question was about should I expect an associate to bring in business of their own? Right. And so, to me, this is a question that I used to talk to my father about all the time. So my father, sort of my role model, he didn’t finish high school, but he became the head of marketing at an architectural engineering firm. And then he left that architectural engineering firm and started a new one with an architect. And they grew that to 150 people, and they had offices in other cities just like I do, they grew to 150 people. And I would say, Dad, you know, you got that team in Philadelphia, aren’t you worried about them? Taking the office over and just cutting you guys out? And he said, Jimmy, you have to understand something. I said, What Eddie said, They’re not like us. They’re not like us. So associates don’t want to be told, Oh, it’s a shaky situation. I don’t know if the 60% business is going to come through, oh, hey, we want you to bring in business because we’re not sure what associates want. And what most employees want is stability, and the sure thing, and they’re not entrepreneurs, right? They’re not thinking like entrepreneurs, they want to clock in, clock out. They want to come to their job, they want stability. Now, there are some associates that do think entrepreneurial, but Ryan McKean can tell you, and others can tell you that those people tend to leave, right like so if they’re inclined that way. So I think you want to maximize the power of them wanting a sure thing, and you don’t want to do anything to de emphasize the stability of the firm. And I think you’d start off I agree with transparency. But that’s part of the burden of ownership is taking on that burden of holding that responsibility that the 60% might not come but Jeremy, I am 100% sure that if on a dime, you can go from having one client to 20. And you’ve got 21 Come in. And number 21 is as big as 18 or 17 of the ones you already have. I have every confidence that if you gave that associate the work from this new company and the new client and the work that you are doing yourself, then like you said, you’re gonna be on your highest value work and bringing in more business. I think the sky’s the limit

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Jeremy Danilson
I think I agree and it’s just it’s getting over that pit in my stomach again that I got over with the first few hires and those first few hires and make I think I don’t know if I have enough work for when I fill them up right away. And they’re the best decisions I’ve ever made. And it’s just the same cycle I’ve gone through twice before, but it feels bigger because it’s a first attorney hire other than myself.

Jim Hacking
What does your wife say? It’s interesting.

Jeremy Danilson
I came back from Guild and she’s helped me move this forward. As far as what we did this one potential candidate, I have been talking to you about three months on other business development concepts. We’re working on getting PDF abstracts across the state. And he’s helped us do engage that because he’s a former abstractor, I put a question in front of them said, Are you are you interested in becoming a contract attorney for us and helping on a part time basis? Are you more interested in becoming a full time team member we’ve worked, we’ve met twice before and have detailed conversations and he meets our core values. And he responded back saying he’s interested in being a full time team member. So now it’s time to put him in that funnel or process of what it looks like to decide if he’s the right candidate for this position. I’ve got I still gotta put him in front of my team. And we’ve got to go through the regular hiring process. I don’t want to bypass just because of a gut feeling, our hiring process and the decision making or decision matrix we have to go through to make sure he’s the right foot.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that never rush the hiring process. I’ve done it. Jim’s done it. It’s bad mistake. I think Jim’s done it. But real quick answer this question really quick. And I’m ask a follow up. What’s the turnaround time when it comes to getting money from one of these clients?

Jeremy Danilson
That’s it roughly 30 to 45 days. Okay, so we get paid at closing, okay. Like, if

Tyson Mutrux
they were me, if I were you like, Okay, I would be focusing all my time, because I can’t go out and generate car crashes, I can’t do it, right. But if I could, you better believe I would. So if I were you, in hiring this person is gonna be it’s gonna put some pressure on you. And I think it’s gonna be valuable pressure, hire the person, you spend all your damn time driving around that state generate business, like, that’s your job. Now you’re, you’re going to generate that business. And like, I would call that that client that you have a whale, right, that’s probably a whale. And maybe not all of them are going to be whales, but you’re gonna have some pretty damn big fish that you can, you can attract. And you can target. And it sounds like a lot of your business might be a lot of those lunches and coffees that you need to have and have shaken hands and all that I would be driving around the state trying to serve that business. If I were you, I think that there’s a lot of value in that.

Jeremy Danilson
I have to do that. Because my biggest flaws and business owner to date has been becoming content with whatever our position is at that time. And it would be really easy to be content right now with this new wheel coming in. Or even with one associate hire, I need to keep my foot on the pedal so that the 2019 mistake never happens again. Yeah, because

Tyson Mutrux
you have a track record of it. Right? That’s right, you got to get past that, because that was my when you first mentioned anything like this is the same problem, right? Like, you’re you’re putting yourself in the same situation. And you’ve got to find a way but put a bumpers to put up, put a wall around yourself put a moat around the firm. To prevent that from happening. Again,

Jeremy Danilson
I subconsciously allow my own capacity to limit our business development activities. And that’s, I recognize that now. And I can’t let it continue to happen.

Jim Hacking
I think that’s a great lesson from the episode. I mean, just the reliance, the I’m sure there’s a lot of lawyers listening, that are too reliant on one client or referral source. I’ve seen it time and time again, there was a lawyer in our office who was beholden to a senior partner for all of his business, and that senior partner abused the crap out of him. So, you know, anytime you’re out of whack, you know, and not having enough clients, it’s going to set yourself up for problems. So I think, I think that’s a great insight. And I think that no one’s going to know that better than you like you’ve learned that lesson. I don’t, I’m not worried about this new client coming in and giving you 60% of the business because you’re gonna go out and get 10 more. That’s why That’s how you beat that back.

Jeremy Danilson
They agree 1,000%, we’ve done a lot of work over the last two years to be different and humbly better than every other law firm in the state. And now we just have to get that message out. So we can help more people in Iowa.

Tyson Mutrux
So we’ve we’ve talked a lot about this associate. So let’s let’s talk a little bit about what are you gonna do about it, right, so let’s talk about the hiring process and getting this person in the seat and actually getting them doing the work and what needs to take place over the next few months for you to successfully hire this person and get them up to speed so you can go out and do the valuable work.

Jeremy Danilson
So this first candidate, we need to put them in front of the team without me in the room to allow the team to evaluate their core values. And I believe they fit the core values, but I need to get feedback from the team. At least that’s what I’ve done in the past. And then we need to I need to draw out that process for an associate or compare it to my past processes for the paralegal legal system. But I have to write out what those next steps are to put them through this funnel or hiring process to for us both to get to a decision where it’s good for both the associates and for firm.

Jim Hacking
That’s great. That’s great. I do want to step back just real quick and hear from Tyson his thoughts on lawyers who expect associates to bring in business.

Tyson Mutrux
Oh, yeah, I guess we kind of we kind of buried the lead there. I do think you’re right, Jim, that if you hire People with the mindset, okay, I expect you to bring in a big bulk of the business, I think that you’re setting yourself up for failure, because those are generally the people that are very entrepreneurial. And they’re the ones that are really kind of setting it up so they can start their own shop. And there’s some value in having those people if you want, but I think for longevity, I think Jim’s right, I think you need to be looking for people that are a little bit more stable. But with that in mind, I think that you can build in tools to help it make it easier for people to refer cases to them or refer matters to them. That was the whole point of our meeting yesterday, or training yesterday at the firm about obtaining referrals, is making it easier for our employees to get referrals and, and creating that referral culture. So I think that you can you could do this in other ways, where you’re not saying, Hey, you must bring in X number of cases every single month. But I think that you can build that referral culture inside of your firm. And that would, that lets clients know, yeah, people refer us cases. And I think that there’s some value to that. But I do think it is a dangerous proposition, Jim, that if you if you make that like one of the main KPIs, you’re definitely set yourself up for failure, especially if based on your type of business. Let’s say that your associate brings in a whale, okay, they bring in a whale, what’s to stop them from just saying, bye, I’m gonna go take this whale over here, that’s plenty of money for me, because I’m gonna get plenty of business. And I don’t like to operate under that fear mindset. But you need to have enough of those whales enough those clients that that’s not gonna hurt you if it does happen.

Jeremy Danilson
I agree, I don’t think I need to expect a new associate to bring in business because that’s my highest value. So this will free me up to do more of that. I’m confident in that. Now,

Tyson Mutrux
I do think we need to have that open conversation, though, about what we’re talking about earlier today, Jim, but employees are like they’re after the panel after the pandemic, they’ve kind of had that reset, where they don’t feel as great about going and working in someone else’s office and making making money for someone else. So I do think that that we do kind of have to have that conversation about, you know, still incentivizing your employees for making money for bringing in cases, that’s something I do think you need to consider because people aren’t all about just working in someone else’s office anymore. There’s a lot of people that are starting new firms and new businesses, because they’re kind of sick of being in the grind.

Jim Hacking
I think it’s all about what the associates focus is going to be. Obviously, if you want to pay referral fees to attorneys who bring in a little bit of business, that’s great. But if you want them out there beating the bushes and signing up clients that just doesn’t do you much good in the long run.

Jeremy Danilson
I want them doing the legal work to free me up to go beat the bushes and shake hands and do presentations. Yep.

Tyson Mutrux
How are you feeling? Now Jeremy, like now that we’ve talked through a little bit, what are your thoughts like what’s on your mind,

Jeremy Danilson
I am feeling confident that I need to outline what the hiring process is going to be for this associate what their next steps are going to be so that I can get an email back to him and say, here’s the process, we’re going to go through, what is your desired timeline to be able to leave because he’s got the practices of his own. It’s very, it’s baby steps. And he’s only reopened about six months ago. But what is his transition look like? And what is our transition look like to be get him ready to work with us. And I’ve got to draw that out. So that I can take him through a defined process that feels really good and comfortable to him. So he so we present ourselves as organized and focused and capable of giving him the support that he needs to be successful in the practice of law,

Jim Hacking
I would spend a little bit of time Jeremy now, right now, I would build two or three hours into my week of pretending that the 60% client doesn’t come because you’re gonna feel more comfortable if you’re bringing in more business. So even now, just start making that part of your routine so that you’re not overly reliant on the client that may or may not come. And that your that’s going to help you feel better and more secure. And this decision you’re about to take. I like that

Jeremy Danilson
a lot. Yeah, focus time every week and keep that pedal to the metal, so to speak, and keep growing and looking for additional referral sources. That’s got to be in every week activity nada. When the when the plane flies by type thing.

Jim Hacking
well runs dry. Yep. All right, Jamie,

Tyson Mutrux
hopefully, you got some information from this. I really appreciate you being vulnerable too, because I think there’s some valuable lessons in here that for for new law firm owners and current law firm owners that that’s going to really help them out. But we’re going to wrap things up before I do. I want to remind everyone to join us in the Facebook group, just a lot of great activity every single day. If you want a more high level conversation with people like Jeremy, go to max law guild.com. And if you get value from these podcast and from the Facebook group, if you’ll leave us a five star review, we would so much appreciate it because it helps spread our love to other law firm owners that are in need. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking
My hack of the week comes from a friend of the show Joy vitality. It’s a book by a guy named Alex Vinayan called the third door it’s about this crazy college kid who decided that he wanted to sort of redo thinking grow rich, but by interviewing current entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and all this stuff, and he this is like a 20 year old kid. He went on prices, right? And he won on prices, right? And then he used the proceeds to sort of start this project. The story is really fun, the kids sort of crazy in the and the adventures that he had with different people that you know of it’s sort of eye opening, and I immediately bought it for my 20 year old son, and he’s enjoying it. So it’s a fun read. It’s called the third door. Lots of good little lessons in there.

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. That’s cool. I will check that out. Jeremy, you know the routine? Do you have a tip or a hack for us?

Jeremy Danilson
I do real quick. My willingness to be vulnerable today comes directly from my interaction with other guild members, everyone’s willingness to share is a huge opportunity to learn. And it’s been tremendous from my growth as a business owner over the last six months since joining my tip of the week is a book it’s called The Power of One more by Ed my let it is a mindset book, whether you’re trying to make a change in your life, or they’re going through something difficult when you’re you’re thinking about giving up just don’t focus on too far in the future, focus on what you can do today to keep going. So if you’re struggling with your firm, don’t quit today is a decision if you’re trying to quit drinking, don’t have a drink today, if you want to eat more healthy or exercise, what do you do today to succeed and that goal, just one day at a time, one thing at a time, one personal relationship at a time. And I had fallen back on that several times over the last year. And it’s been really helpful

Tyson Mutrux
because that a new book came out in the last year. Okay, I’ve not heard of it. So to check that one,

Jim Hacking
I hadn’t heard of it either. Jeremy mentioned, and then I just got an email from Andy for Sela and had my lead about this coaching that they have. So that’s really funny. Holy

Tyson Mutrux
hell. That’s crazy. What a coincidence. My tip of the week is for law firm owners that want to build a culture of learning in your firm. And something that is sort of naturally popped up in our firm is a book club. And so we’ve started a book club and our first book that we read, I picked the first book, and I said that it could not be a fiction book. And it had to be nonfiction and be sort of like self help. And so I chose becoming bulletproof, which is a fantastic book if you’ve not read it, and the book club has been so well received. And so we what we did is we bought the book for everybody if they wanted to audiobook, we got them audiobook if they wanted a Kindle book, we got a Kindle book, if they wanted a physical one, I use the physical one, we got everyone a physical book, and it was really well received. And then as funny when we first launched ours, I noticed that Ryan Ryan may have had his for a while Ron McCain. I don’t know when he started his but I noticed that they have one p star with a fiction book on letting people vote on the next book. So we’re going to read a book a month. It’s pretty exciting. And it’s just it’s kind of cool hearing people talking about it. We have a little book club meeting. It was a lot of fun. So I recommend doing that. Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on, man. Really, really appreciate it. Lots of fun talking to you.

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Feeling some days like an imposter? We get it! And feel it too. In today’s episode, taken from MaxLawCon 2022, our guest Alexis Austin is teaching us all about using that feeling of imposter syndrome and working with it to make your law firm a better business. 

Not only does Alexis go over HOW you can embrace this feeling that most of us don’t want to feel but she also goes over why it’s a good thing and what we can look for when we feel this way. Hint: it’s a red flag to investigate and improve an area on your business on what she call “the 3 Pillars.” Listen in!

Episode Highlights:

02:44 Flip the script on your imposter feeling syndrome and trade your resource for this … 

04:17 The three pillars of your business and how to hone in …

05:40 The first p – Product as legal services 

07:51 The 2nd pillar – People and what they care about; flexibility, workspace and non-attorney to name a few …

11:16 The 3rd pillar – the Process … let’s make it easier! 

Links Mentioned: 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube. 

Connect with Alexis:

Resources:

Transcript: Using Imposter Syndrome To Your Advantage with Alexis Austin

Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max law con 2022. To keep listening to hear Alexis Austin as we share her talk, using imposter syndrome to your advantage in the three P’s of business. You can also head to the maximum lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Now to the episode.

Speaker 2
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Alexis Austin
Hi, good morning, everyone. I think it’s a little ironic that they will put me up as the first breakout when I’m talking about impostor syndrome way to feed into it, Jim, thank you so much for that. I’m here to talk to you all about making sure that you are using your imposter syndrome as your secret weapon rather than your dirty little secret. And disclaimer, this is for people who want to run a business that happens to provide legal services. So if you’re wanting to learn anything about the law, don’t talk to me go somewhere else. Alright, let’s dive right in. Show hands who here has felt like an imposter before? If anyone is not raising their hand? I’m calling you out because you’re in posturing right now. Everyone, at some point in their life has always felt more felt like an imposter in some way. You know, when I first came to max law con three years ago, I thought that I was the dumbest person in the room, people were throwing around these acronyms like KPIs and ROIs and MPT, I’m like, I don’t know what this is. It’s like the military. So when I was sitting in there, and I was listening to all this, one of the things that most impressed me, even though I didn’t know a whole lot, was how vulnerable people were being and just kind of opening up about their law practice. So in keeping in that, I want to be very vulnerable with you guys and let you know, I feel like an impostor right now. I’m shaking all over. I’m very nervous. So if I fall on my face, please just laugh it off. It’s part of the show. While the while we’re going through this, I do want to also open up and tell you, it’s okay to be an impostor. Embrace it. This is our secret weapon. So I’m gonna embrace it hardcore. And tell you some of the stories I was telling myself while I was preparing these slides. It’s gonna be real vulnerable. This is what I think someone who talks at max law con looks like if you guys don’t know, this is Olivia Pope. She is my spirit animal. She’s a powerhouse. She’s got a white hat, her matching outfit, she’s exuding confidence. And then while I was building these slides, this is what I feel like I am. But we’re gonna talk about how we deal with these feelings of impostor syndrome. So even if we look like at with a fancy hat on, we can still have a uber successful law firm practice. So one of my favorite quotes comes from the law man, Bill Romanski. He tells us to flip it like a pancake. When you’re dealing with something, you just flip the script and that’s what I want to do today is we’re gonna flip the script on your impostor feelings syndromes. Our goal as legal entrepreneurs is not to be the jack of all trades. Rather, our goal is to trade our resources for the jacks or the Benjamins. So one of the things that I’ve noticed is when people are talking about impostor syndrome, I’m so glad that Elise talked right before I did, because she was bringing out these feelings of impostor syndrome that we all deal with. But I’ve noticed people kind of talk about it in hushed tones. It’s like in The Guild, you’re talking to someone Oh, yeah, I also have some imposter syndrome. But it’s kind of kept hush hush. And we treat it like our dirty little secret. But what if, instead of it being your dirty little secret, it was actually your secret weapon. My favorite TV show in the whole world. Michael Scott, who is a sage, when it comes to business advice, says that your weaknesses are actually your strengths. Now, there’s a famous quote, it’s been attributed to a lot of people. The idea is that if you are the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. So I guarantee you, I’m in the right room right now. But once we are looking at that, from a perspective of how we grow our firm, the idea is, if you admit what you don’t know, that’s the first step to exponentially growing your law firm. So our job as legal entrepreneurs is not to know everything about our firm or know everything there is to know our job is to accumulate a wealth of knowledge to make sure our firm is operating at its highest and best level. So let’s talk about how using this imposter syndrome works in the three pillars of a business. Now, you may be familiar with this, if not, this has talked about extensively in that TV show the profit but the pillars of a business generally can be thought of as three categories, your product, your people and your process. So if your goal is to build a thriving law practice that runs as a business, you have to be the business owner before you even feel ready to do that, know that you’re not the smartest person in the room and that is completely fine. Once you learn how to really zero in and hone in on your imposter syndrome thoughts. Then you have the target for how you improve and the next area of growth. So what we’re going to do is over the next few minutes here, we’re going to look at how we use the imposter syndrome to our advantage and the three P’s of business for us. We’re looking at the product as legal services that people are our attorneys, our legal staff, and In the process of this system and processes, and it’s me, I’ve got to throw in a little bit of woowoo. Because the whoo is my favorite thing. All it takes to run a successful law firm is acknowledging your vulnerability, and then using that vulnerability to find creative solutions to fill the gaps in your own knowledge. So let’s look at how we do this. Here’s some impostor syndrome thoughts that you may have. Now, most people who open a law firm, generally they’re pretty solid on the product, because they think, Oh, well, I’m an excellent person in criminal law, I can go run a business, no problem. So I’m not gonna spend too much time on this. But just for a couple of people, if you’re just starting out, or if you’re opening a new practice area, let’s analyze some of these imposter syndromes and see how we can target them in to actually fill in the holes in our business. So if your thought is, well, I don’t have the legal expertise. Number one, most likely you do because you went to law school, that’s all you really need to know. And if you’re Kim Kardashian, you don’t even need that. You can fill in this hole with things like CLAS, which is the traditional route, or you could do things I’m going to use criminal law as an example because that’s what I know. If you say, Well, I don’t know all of criminal law, but I know DUIs niche down, just focus in on that one thing that you can do really well. The other thing is, there are a number of resources, especially in this group, in particular for how you build a practice, a couple of books come to mind. Dustin coons wrote a fantastic book on how to practice criminal law and do your processes and procedures and what to expect. John Fisher wrote a great book on building a PII practice, read these books, gain this information and knowledge for yourself, because plagiarism is encouraged in legal world. The other thing is you can team up with more experienced attorneys to learn if you’re having an impostor thought like you don’t have the time to do all the legal research. First of all, as a legal entrepreneur, time should never be your issue. That’s just a lie that you’re telling yourself. If you’re looking for different things, you can always use law clerk dot legal, there’s a lot of good resources on there. You can use contract attorneys, for example, when I first opened my firm, I had nothing. So I brought in some attorneys who were looking for work and said, Look, I can’t pay you a W two, but I can give you a contract where you get 2530 33% of the cases you work, I’ll pay you 299 You go do this work, let’s make it happen. There are always creative solutions to building out these problems. You can also do things hiring law students, law students are gold. They are so desperate to learn. They’re so desperate to work hard, and they come up with some really creative things

Becca Eberhart
is apathy on his back if you’re new around here, this app Athan is the OG automation workshop at this next exclusive guild event, we’re partnering up with maximum lawyers good friend Kelsey Bratcher. To bring you a day and a half automation workshop. The idea of automation is simple, right? Identify a repeatable pattern of tasks and then use technology. So that business process can happen without you. But setting up that technology can be daunting, time consuming, and even have a steep learning curve. Join us in person and you’ll create automations on site that will start working for you before you even leave Austin, join the guild today and grab your ticket at max law events.com.

Alexis Austin
Looking now at the pillar of people, these are some impostor syndrome thoughts that people may have. So let’s just hit these again, I’m going to try to talk as fast as I can, because I’ve got a lot of slides. And I like to say a lot. But if you’re talking about money, we were talking just about that earlier, if your issue is money. First of all, it’s never money, time and money are never the issue. The issue is you’re not thinking creatively enough to figure out how to fill this imposter syndrome hole. So in today’s market, a lot of people when I was just talking with Elise about this a few minutes ago, people don’t care as much about salaries as they do flexibility, appreciation of their time, different environments. You don’t have to limit yourself either to just your geographic area. Now with COVID opening things up, you can do all kinds of work with other people from across the country. I also really encourage people when you’re looking at the people that are non attorney, people in your firm look for non traditional hires, you do not have to use a paralegal with 25 years experience. Go to Chili’s, get a server who knows how to deal with the customers after she spills a whole bunch of lemonade on them and can still make them super happy. And that person is going to be a rockstar paralegal for you. Once you train her on your systems and processes and cost maybe a third as much, she’s also going to one it a lot more and work a lot harder. The other way to do it super easy. Increase your prices, I guarantee most of you are not charging enough for the services that you offer. Test it out, say hey, this is what our price is just see what people say. If you are exuding that confidence that you know you have and if you’re not fake it till you make it because imposter syndrome is going to be used for your secret weapon in that way too. You can increase your prices and then you’ve got the revenue to bring on more people. Now, if your thought is, I’m not a good manager, I’m not a good manager. I’m just gonna tell you guys that right now. There are a couple of things you can do. Number one, you can learn, which is always a great idea. A lot of people in our group here like to follow the Eos, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, it’s from the book traction. The partner book to that is rocket fuel, pick it up great read, it’s really helpful. If you’re like me, and you say, No, I really don’t want to manage then you just get your fiance to join you in the law firm and then he can run it for you super easy. But really what you can do is you can bring in promote from within you can say okay, I have this paralegal who’s doing a fantastic job she has experienced managing. I’ll have her managing the staff. Another thing you can do is bringing in outside help. So things like fractional C suite members are really helpful. I utilize a fractional CMO. Shout out to my man out there. I also have a fractional CFO that way you can bring in the C suite bringing the knowledge of other people have experts in that area. So you don’t have to know everything about the finances. Speaking of finances, if you’re saying I have no idea how to balance the books, or how to market, you don’t have to, one of the best things that you can do is look for people who are specialists in that area. Encourage them to come into your firm, find creative ways to bring these people in, and then you’re going to have the experts in the field working in your firm. Again, maximum lawyer is a great place to find these people to put in a big group ask for help. That’s how I found all my people. You can also look at different companies. There are a whole bunch of different companies out there that offer fractional services for marketing, you can look at technology to do this. Some of my favorite marketing technologies are HootSuite and buffer. You just put it in there, schedule it out. And then your social media is scheduled out for the next week or a month you don’t have to think about it. I was super easy tip. If you’re looking for marketing, get a millennial who’s in school who loves social media, who knows what they’re doing, just give him a couple dollars a day and say hey, run with this, they’re gonna love it needed up. And then you’ve got great marketing that speaks to a key demographic, the millennials who no one understands even if you are one. If you’re concerned about processes, the systems the woowoo, those kinds of imposter thoughts. Let’s knock through these really quickly. If your imposter thought is saying, Okay, I don’t know how to use technology, you don’t have to. All you have to do is either have access to YouTube because you can learn all kinds of information on YouTube. You can work with someone who understands systems. Kelsey Bratcher is one of the guys that I really think is excellent at this. He’s going to be talking later on at the conference. But you can also do your own kind of integration. Zapier is my favorite product out there ever. It connects everything to everything is pretty easy. Even for a lawyer to understand you can connect all these systems together. You can also hire contractors, these are some great websites Upwork and Fiverr. You can go on and hire people to do one offs to build out a system I had someone on Upwork build me out a KPI dashboard once I learned what that acronym meant. And it’s really really helpful just for one offs. There are ways to do it. Even if you don’t have a full time system manager. If your impostor thought is why don’t believe I’m going to have the success that other people are having. This is a gem. Woo, woo moment. Follow Jim, follow everything he talks about in the podcast, listen to podcasts all the time. The biggest hindrance to your success is believing this crap like Lisa was talking about earlier, her inner Eloise, you don’t have to listen to that you can say okay, this is where my imposter thought is leading me. I’m now pinpointing this and saying, Okay, this is my target for where I’m gonna grow. When I first up my business, and even now, every single morning, I do an hour of self development, I’m listening to books, podcasts, whatever, it takes me an hour from waking up, to getting out to my car to get ready. So I might as well use that time wisely. Even if you don’t retain it all it’s going to sink in and really start to settle on your brain. All right, if your thought is I have no idea where to start. Tada, you start here, you look and say, Where am I most uncomfortable? What is the thing that I have the most insecurity about, and that’s the thing you fix. The beauty with the imposter syndrome being used as your secret weapon is you don’t have to know everything. All you have to do is have enough vulnerability with yourself to say okay, I know that this is an issue instead of just dreading it, I’m going to jump in there and fix it. Also some helpful books, there are a number of helpful books that kind of get you started on this process. If you don’t know where to start, My favorites are traction and E Myth. Any of Michael Gerber’s books are great, but E Myth, not the E Myth. For attorneys. It’s not as good just regular old E Myth or E Myth revisited. Just get in dig in there and really embrace this, you’ve got to confront and own your imposter syndrome every single time you find an area where you feel uncomfortable, because that is your next area for growth. That is where you are subconsciously pointing yourself to really explode your business. Now, I want you to think about not being the keeper of all knowledge. Number one, my team is so tired of me saying this. But I always say well, what if I’m hit by a bus, you might get hit by a bus. It’s super morbid, but Jim did a great job being morbid this morning. So I’m going to keep that going. If you get hit by a bus, your law firm can still survive. You don’t want to be the keeper of the knowledge, you want to be the keeper of the people who have the knowledge. So if you give me pushback, and you say, Okay, that’s great, Alexis, way to go. But what if these people steal all my stuff? Who cares? You did it first, you did it better, you’re always gonna have a different take. The other thing is, if you’re doing this appropriately, and you’re pinpointing these areas, what I want you to do is I want you to concentrate on finding an expert in that area. So if you’re finding an expert in marketing, an expert in finance, an expert in bookkeeping, no single one of them on their own, can build the law firm, you were the one that owns all these experts. And I don’t mean owning them like the person but you’re owning the ideas that they’re developing. So you are the reason that they are all coming together. As long as you’re siloing out your experts, you’re going to have a successful law firm, and people aren’t gonna be able to just run off with your ideas because you’ve created a collection of experts in your firm. So here’s my challenge to you if you’re here at max law 2022. I’m assuming you want to be a successful business owner, not just a solo attorney who’s dragging In all the time never getting any kind of traction. You can spend years struggling to figure out everything that you need to know you can come to conference after conference, read everything in the world. Or you can realize that your imposter syndrome is actually your secret weapon for success. So do you want to be the smartest person in the room or the most successful? Here’s another point, I really want to point out. If you are going to take my advice, which I strongly suggest you do, and you hire all these smart people, don’t go micromanaging them. This is my favorite quote from Steve Jobs. If you’re going to hire all of these people, and you’re going to have them building this law firm of your dreams, don’t then go in and tell the smart people what to do. You hire smart people, because they’re smarter than you. Because you’re embracing the imposter syndrome. And you want to make sure that you have people who understand what’s going on much more than you. Our goal as law firm owners is to be the dumbest person in the room. So if you take one thing away from this talk, I want you to really think about anytime you’re feeling like an imposter, that’s a golden opportunity for you to find that expert to plug that hole. And it doesn’t have to be someone that you pay on a W two basis. There are a number of different ways that you can find people to plug the holes and make sure that you have your firm moving towards success without you having to know everything. I know this was really a quick and dirty kind of jumping and figuring out ideas. The key thing is to look at, here’s where I’m feeling, lack, here’s where I don’t feel comfortable. That then is the immediate area where you need to work. I’m always happy as well to give you any information help me figure anything out, like how to build this cool QR code. Because those are needs. It’s a QR code, you go to QR code or something like that. I have to look it up. You just look free QR code and input your information. This one is actually it’s called Hi Hello, you pay for it as an app, you can do an annual thing or you can do a free one. You get on your and your new information. If you want your cool face in it, you have to pay for it. If you want just a regular code, it’s free. Alrighty, thank you guys so much for your time.

Speaker 2
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com Have a great week and catch you next time.

People share their struggles here in the Guild and we want to have space on the show today for people going through a struggle right now! BUT, while we empathize and encourage each other, we don’t want the work to stop there. We want high expectations and problem solving space made to work through the struggles as well. So let’s talk about holding these two truths here on the show today. Listen in if you are having a hard time running your law firm today.  

Episode Highlights:

04:11 When sharing your struggles — there is power into admitting you have a weakness. But let’s not lose sight of our goals.

06:18 Remember that social media is not real! 

07:13 It’s harder when you have young kids … 

08:53 There are fake coaches out there, that make business seem easy 

11:20 Getting the momentum going because you have so much going on you don’t know what to do first

13:34 How to push yourself BUT not be to hard on yourself …

16:14 Looking forward to the goal that you want to achieve and how THAT is tied to the daily tasks = you’ve got to think this through 

17:54 You need to prioritize what you are doing everyday and hack the white space …

Jim’s Hack: Social media isn’t bad and it’s okay to consume it, but why not use it as motivation to create a piece of content and post it … And THEN go look at social media Like a reward after the work.

Tyson’s Tip: Give yourself a pouting deadline – So if you make a mistake, if you screw something up, give yourself a certain amount of time to pout about it. And then once that time passes, you move on. Athletes use this in both wins and losses, so you can use this too. 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube. 

Resources:

Transcript: How To Push Yourself To Excel Without Beating Yourself Up

Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.

Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum ROI Podcast. I’m Jim hacking

Tyson Mutrux
and try some new tricks. What’s up, Jimbo?

Jim Hacking
Well, Tyson, we’ve had an interesting week. We’ve had an interesting month we’re recording this right at the end of January. My mother in law, my wife’s mother passed away. The firm kept going. The firm was very supportive of Imani and me. So it’s really something to be said, when the business can operate without you for a sustained period of time.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, absolutely. And obviously, thoughts and prayers go out to you and your family. It’s I know, it’s been tough on Amani, it was somewhat unexpected, as well. So I know it’s been tough, but it is nice that you’ve built a business that can run itself without the two key players. So that’s kudos to you. I know. It’s been tough. But kudos to you and Imani for, for building that?

Jim Hacking
I mean, yeah, it’s very instructive, because we say a lot of times all the different reasons why you want to make the firm bigger than yourself. But that’s this is one that now you know, my dad passed away in December of 21. And now money’s mom in January of 23. So 13 months apart, and the firm just kept going. So it’s a lesson for everybody. And it should be a real focus for people.

Tyson Mutrux
Well, and I also think it’s sort of instructive, the topic that you came up with today. And I wonder how much of the topic was sort of shaped by what you’ve been going through?

Jim Hacking
Well, it’s interesting that you raised that it’s probably true. But really where this topic came from today was a conversation that started in the guild over the weekend, where one of our members had shared with me some of the struggles that they were having. And then it just sort of opened up the floodgates where everybody felt that they could share problems that they were having vulnerability. And it was, it’s been a great time in the guild this last week. And it’s not because of any chest pounding, it’s much more the opposite, that there’s a lot of people sharing about their struggles. And so we certainly want to have space in the guild and on this show, and in the Facebook group for people to share their struggles. But I don’t want to then just give everyone a pass and not have high expectations. And that’s how I arrived at the topic for today.

Tyson Mutrux
I gotta say, I could not be prouder of the guild with this the way they rallied around this guild member over the last week. It’s quite incredible. I get several messages from people about like, wow, like, just amazing. But yes, so the topic, let me get to the topic, how to push yourself to excel without beating yourself up. If you don’t mind. I just want to kind of say something off right off the bat. Is it okay, and then I’ll kind of let you jump in a little bit more about your thoughts on this. But I want to start by saying like, I think that we need to start with the assumption that we’re going to fail at things, right. I think we need to start with that assumption. Now, I don’t think that should be your main focus. But I think we should start with the assumption that you’re going to fail at things. And not only is that, okay, I would say I would encourage failure. Okay, I would, I would encourage failure. Because the more you fail, the more that that is going to lead success. That means that you are if you go back to the Man in the Arena, quote, is really, that you are in the arena, that means that you are in the arena that you are taking the risks, that you’re actually fighting the fight, because the people that don’t fail are the ones that aren’t taking the risks. And so I think that we need to encourage failure, I think is a good thing. And I think it’s a positive thing. I don’t think it’s a negative thing, like most people do. So I want to start with that. And then I’m gonna let you go back to the topic of how to push yourself to excel without beating yourself up.

Jim Hacking
I had an alternative title, but I changed it. And that was how to shoot for the stars without shooting yourself in the head. But being sensitive to the fact that we have a problem with suicide in the legal community. I didn’t want to be that blunt about it. But yeah, I mean, it was a real ebb and flow because I was really, really glad that people were talking about their struggles. And, you know, one of my favorite talks I’ve ever given was when I talked about the fact that in 2012, I was broke, and I had to confess it to my wife and how I kept putting it off and how that admission really led to the firm that we have today. So I think there’s great power in admitting weakness, or you know, the step one and the 12 steps is to admit that you have a problem. And so I think that’s great, but I don’t want to also lose sight of our goals and our aspirations. And I think there’s a balance to it. And that’s really how I got to the topic. And, you know, I had sort of jokingly said that maybe on Fridays we need to have a loss of the week. And I’ve heard stories about people with their kids who Have dinner, either once a week or every day, just say, what’s one thing you tried and failed that today just to make it blend das normal to experience failure? And I think it’s a great mindset.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I’m a little hesitant with with going that far with it. I’m a little hesitant about that the idea of celebrating wins is really to build the confidence up and to show like, hey, like, Yeah, you did something today, right? You did accomplish something today, because I do think that’s where a lot of the problems come with people, they start to beat themselves up too much. Right? Where all they do is they focus on the negative, right? And maybe with your point, maybe I wonder what Jason would say about this Jason self? Who would be like, if you were just to take a moment a day and say, Okay, what did I fail at? How do I get better? Like, because there is a part of sort of some of the exercises he that? He has me do where, you know, okay, what’s something I want to improve upon? And so it’s not like a loss, but okay, what’s something I want to improve upon? And then how to, then I affect that improvement, like, so I go through that exercise a little bit. So I’m not really saying, you know, what’s my loss, but I’m still saying, hey, I need to improve on something. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with acknowledging our wounds, because I think that that is important part of the process. But I will stop short of saying we should maybe pick out a loss a day, I will say that Well,

Jim Hacking
I was thinking too, that a big chunk of this, I believe, in the big group in the guild, too, is that social media is not real,

Tyson Mutrux
not real at all, man, like, yes, not at all, gosh, it’s not real. So the

Jim Hacking
things that people are sharing while they’re sharing their successes, and those are great, and people are happy to hear about them. But as shown by this week, it was the power of admitting the weakness and admitting the struggle that really let I mean, people were making their own videos to the person that sent me that email, right, they were just going on and on about things that they had struggled with and trying to be supportive. I mean, the messages in the comments to our Saturday morning talk where we discussed this topic, were some of the best ones that we’ve had. So you gotta remember that people are only putting their wins on Facebook, they don’t put when they yell at their kids, hey, I yelled at my kids three times today. Right. And this particular member who raised the issue, that issue of kids, too, is so important, because I don’t think that I could have gotten my firm to where I am. Now. If my kids were still really little, I just think that there’s such a brain fog and such a focus on your kids. And rightfully so, when they’re very young, and they need a lot of help and support that. Anything you got going it’s bonus. It’s gravy, like, you know, just do your best and keep on going.

Tyson Mutrux
You mentioned on Saturday, it’s like you’re in a fog, because it really I mean, and I brought this up to like Monday, right? We had taekwondo. We had Cub Scouts, and we had gymnastics all on one day, right? And that’s after working a full day. And it is, so you’re like coordinating schedules. And like I had these intentions of getting some work done. And I didn’t get anything done. I didn’t get anything done. After five o’clock. It was all family time, which is completely fine. But I thought I was gonna have all this time. At the end of the day, I was sad. I just like laid in bed. I’m like, Okay, I’m not trying anything. I’m just gonna go straight to bed. And that’s okay. They do think it’s okay. But it is, especially people with kids. It is tough. It is really tough. And it’s also easy to look at some of the people without kids and like seeing oh my gosh, they’re doing all these amazing things. But again, remember, like they don’t have kids. It isn’t Adam yet. It is interesting to watch people on social media, if you like kind of like look at their progression of like before kids and then kids, and how things change quite a bit. And it’s almost like the brakes get put on a little bit. We’re like, Oh, thanks. Thanks. That used to be but and that’s okay. That’s how life is. And we were talking about this before how I want to dress this too, because I you see these coaches, right? And they talk about oh, you got to maximum performance, yada yada yada, they talk, they try to make it sound like it’s so easy. And 99% of these coaches, 99% of them have never run a law firm. They’ve never run a business. They decide, oh, I want to be a coach. I want to be the coach. And I want to I want to tell these people that are actually in the trenches how to do it, and they’ve never done it before and that that drives me nuts because they tried to oversimplify things. And it puts added pressure on law firm owners, it just puts unneeded added pressure and unrealistic pressure because you’ve got these Yahoo’s that are trying to they try to make themselves gurus they don’t what the hell they’re talking about. They don’t know what it’s like to be in the trenches. Yeah, their experience

Jim Hacking
is advising law firm owners how to run a law firm and they’ve never done it themselves. Yeah, I think that’s a good point. But I also think that point you made is a good one, that there’s just that fakeness and, you know, when you’re looking at a screen and you’re scrolling through, your brain is just getting all these hits of things that you shouldn’t be thinking about or saying, oh, I should be doing that I should be doing that I should be doing that. And then you just start beating yourself up over it. So I think that, you know, a slightly better approach might be to ask yourself, what do I want? What do I want for me? What do I want from my family, which I want my firm to look like. And I love Jason’s example, at the conference where you know, what’s one little step and so, on Monday, I was really encouraging people for their one thing to think small to like, what you need to get some momentum, you know, when you’re in that stuck place where the number was, that’s a really, really hard place to be. So I’ve actually been texting them everyday, this week, just talking to them about little bitty things, just little bitty improvements, because it’s so hard to see people that you perceive to be ahead of you. And you want to compare, you know, comparison is such an insidious thing, especially for certain personality types, you know, we’re sort of a hard charging, we’re going to make an outcome occur, mentality with lawyers, a lot of lawyers sort of operate that way, I’m going to make something happen. And they can do it really well in their cases. And then they don’t see it transferring over immediately in the running of the firm. And then that just allows that self doubt to creep in. And then it’s just a bad spiral.

Tyson Mutrux
To that point, we talked a little bit about getting that momentum on Saturday. And I use the example of Dave Ramsey, because where he teaches a you’re supposed to start, like with the small debts and build the momentum, right, which it’s actually counterintuitive. What you’re supposed to do logically is start with the big debts and pay those off, right and get those done. But he says to start with the small debts, so you can build that momentum. I think it’s called like a Debt Snowball or something like that. I don’t know. I don’t know the exact term that is work. And is also what you’re talking about. It’s a little opposite from what we normally talked about when it comes to Okay, getting your vision in place and make sure you get your 10 year goal, your B hag, okay, and what are your quarterly rocks and focusing on those, it’s a little counterintuitive to that. But if you are struggling, I think it makes sense to get that task Snowball or whatever you want to call it started, start with some small things, build up the momentum, start from that place, it’s far better to do that than it is to not do anything. And because there’s that paralysis that you’ll face. And we’ve all been there, you know, you’ve been there. I’ve been there where you’ve got so much going on that you don’t know what to do, right. And so sometimes you just stepping out of that for a moment and say, I’m just going to put one foot in front of the other one step at a time. What’s the one thing I can do right now to help make this better? That’s adjacent something. So what’s the one thing I can do right now just put one foot in front of the other and start, it doesn’t have to be a big thing. Just start on something small like you’re talking about? I think that that’s a really important thing. But once you’ve got that momentum going, it’s time to transition over to the bigger stuff and focusing on the bigger things, but you’ve got to get it going

Unknown Speaker
is that Python is back if you’re new around here, the ZAP Athan is the OG automation workshop at this next exclusive guild event. We’re partnering up with maximum lawyers good friend Kelsey Bratcher. To bring you a day and a half automation workshop. The idea of automation is simple, right? Identify a repeatable pattern of tasks and then use technology so that business process can happen without you. But setting up that technology can be daunting, time consuming, and even have a steep learning curve. Join us in person and you’ll create automations on site that will start working for you before you even leave Austin, join the guild today and grab your ticket at max law events.com.

Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. It’s a solo episode just Jim and Tyson, we’re talking about how to walk that line between pushing yourself and not being too hard on yourself. And speaking of transition, let’s transition to that very question. Tyson. How do you walk that line?

Tyson Mutrux
Well, to me it is a consistency. I think it’s a Hollaback consistency is what it is. And it’s starting and doing putting the vision work. And figuring out those big things, those the big things that we want to accomplish as a firm as an individual. So figuring out my vision, figuring out the B hag for the firm, and then as a firm, figure out what our quarterly goals are. And then once I’ve got that, then I know what I’ve got to do every single day to hit those and just be consistent. And it’s I talked about this a lot on Twitter and LinkedIn. Consistency is boring. But consistency is how you win. And just being consistent. The podcast, our podcast, we’ve been consistent for seven years or eight years, whatever it is, I don’t know what how many years it is at this point. Right? We have been consistent. There have been podcasts that have come and gone. It was inconsistent, right? And I think that above all else, whether it’s good or bad, right? You could do mediocre work, but if you’re consistent, you’ll win as you just have it so I think success has a lot to do with just being consistent.

Jim Hacking
You know, I love I love the whole mindset there that you just displayed. I also think

Unknown Speaker
that you have to have a go All, push yourself

Jim Hacking
towards that goal, do everything you can to get towards that goal, but humbly accept that the path isn’t going to be the exact way that you’ve outlined it like there’s going to be fits and starts, there’s gonna be times where you’re in a state of flow things are going, there will be times where things really suck. I mean, I say, I say all the time in the guild about how hard it is to run a law firm and how hard it is to grow a law firm. So you have your TrueNorth, you have what you want to work on, you do your best, and you let go the results to me, that’s the thing, you’ve got to let go of the results. You can’t say to yourself, if I do this, x will happen. You have to say, if I want x to happen, I’ll do my best to get there. I don’t know exactly how I’m gonna get there, I hope to get there. If I don’t get there, I want to get really damn close. But, you know, always be forward looking. So many people go into the future, looking in the rearview mirror and thinking about all the things that came before, I think you just do your best. And then you take your kids to Cub Scouts, and to Taekwondo, and then you go to bed, and then you get up the next day, to your point about consistency. You just do it again. And I know it’s easier said than done to just not think that way. But I think that there has to be some humility here. And there has to be some letting go.

Tyson Mutrux
I think your point is extremely important. And I want to tie these two together. Now, this is a good segue, because looking forward right at those goals that you have, like is really, really important, and making sure that they’re tied to those daily activities that you do every single day. Extremely important. And one of the mistakes you see people make is I want to make a million dollars this year, right? They say I want to make a million dollars. Okay, well, great. That’s fantastic. How are you gonna do it? Right? What are you going to do every single day, every single week, every single month to get to that million dollars? How are you going to do that, because you can look at that million dollars, and not change anything else, and nothing’s gonna happen, you’re not going to get to a million dollars, and you’re gonna get extremely disappointed by not accomplishing that goal. And it’s because you’re not tying your daily activities to it. So you’ve got to think this through this is not something that Jim and Tyson can tell you what you need to do on every single step. These are things that you need to be doing, you know, if you’re an estate planning attorney, you probably need to be doing webinars, or you probably need to be doing, I don’t know, if SEO works for estate planning attorneys, it probably does. But you need to maybe be writing a blog post every day, or you need to be doing a video a day, there’s a billion different ways of getting cases, right. So doing one or two things consistently, every single day will get you those cases, you got to do those things. And so you got to figure out what those things are, tie that to the million dollars and do those every single day and do them. If you miss a day or two, that’s fine, that’s completely fine. Again, like we talked about before failures, fine, it happens, you get exhausted you some that emergency pops up, but get back on the horse and keep doing them. But tying that end goal looking forward, have make sure you have that because that’s important, but also tying it to your daily activities. Super important as well.

Jim Hacking
I also think it’s really important to understand that you can’t do everything, and you have to prioritize. And so, you know, speaking of that humility piece, you know, there’s only so many hours in the day, there’s only so much you can do. And if you spend all your time scrolling through your phone, looking at all the other cool things everyone else is doing. Number one, it gets you off your path and off your goals, too. It’s a waste of time, and three is just gonna, especially if you’re like many of our members with either diagnosed or undiagnosed ADHD, you’re just going to be looking at that shiny object and saying, Man, I should be doing that, man, I should be doing that. And then if you put on top of that, oh, I’m bad for not doing that. Then it’s just it’s a fait accompli? You’re screwed.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, social media, you stay off of it unless you’re using it for business. I think Becca put it the the the other day when we were talking or we’re all texting, she said something to us about, like used to basically should only be on social media. If you’re posting something or if you’re doing research as all you’re doing. Like if you’re doing like marketing research, that’s the only reason why you should really be on it. Because otherwise, it’s a total time suck. And someone else I use this as a tip a few weeks ago, I think is where like attacking the whitespace where inevitably meetings will will end short, right? That meetings will end faster than what your than what you’re expecting, or you’ll have additional time. So instead of getting on your phone and scrolling, don’t do that, use that time to have a little side checklist of things that you can knock off. And let’s say that you gym, you’ve got you’ve got to write an email to a teacher for one of your kids or something like that, right? Okay, that’s on your kind of side list over here. They’re not like super important things, but they’re things you got to get done. Okay, attack that whitespace on your calendar, and knock out that email in that free time instead of getting on your phone. So things like that, where you tack that whitespace you’re not going to be wasting your time on the phone because many of the disappointments we all face is because we wasted time on something. So stop wasting the time and try to keep your time focused. And for the people that do have the ADHD or the Undiagnosed ADHD. Having that as a backup plan is what I think will be really, really helpful for

Jim Hacking
you. I don’t know where I heard this. But somewhere along the line I heard if you’re consuming social media content, you’re losing money. If you’re creating social media content, you’re making money. So you know, if people spent as much time creating content as they did consuming it, they’d be a whole lot better off.

Tyson Mutrux
I like that. That is excellent. That is, I don’t know who said it. I think I heard that too. I don’t know if you said it. You might have even come up with it. I don’t know. But it was. That’s really good. Hi, Jimmy. I think we’ve talked about this topic enough. Hopefully, we’ve given people some little tidbits that little takeaways that they can use to be a little bit more efficient with their schedule, and to really get track of their goals, get on track of their goals and know that failure is fine. It happens. It’s okay. But to stay on track. But before I wrap things up, I want to remind everyone to make sure you go to the big Facebook group. Join us there a lot of great information being shared always. And if you want a more high level conversation, can’t stress the guilt enough Max law guild.com. Check it out. This last week, one of the best weeks ever, if not the best week, credible week, rallying around a member. That’s what it’s about great community. And then while you’re listening to the rest of this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, if you get something from it, we hope that you will give us a five star review to help spread that love. Jimmy, what’s your

Jim Hacking
week? Well, we were talking about social media. So my hack is related to that. And that is this that social media isn’t bad. It’s okay to consume social media, I don’t want to be like a Puritan or something. But what you could do is say to yourself, Okay, before I go look at social media, I’m going to create a piece of content. And it doesn’t have to be high tech, it doesn’t have to be super complicated. Just pull your phone, make it tick, tock, put it up there. And then go and look at social media like sort of put the reward after the work, sort of like having dessert after

Tyson Mutrux
dinner. I like it, I’m going to use this tip of the week for because it’s related to our topic is put a deadline for your pouting. Okay, so if you make a mistake, if you screw something up, give yourself a certain amount of time to pout about it. And then once that time passes, you move on. And I think it’s a good little trick you can use to get over it, you know, I mean, just get over it. until five o’clock tonight, I’m gonna give myself a chance to kind of just digest what just happened. And after five o’clock, I’m moving on to the next thing. athletes use this at something both in wins and losses, too. You can do this with wins too. So you don’t you’re not celebrating a win for too long. Where like in a loss or winning a football game, they’ll say, you know, we’ll give ourselves so tomorrow and then after tomorrow on to the next game. And I think it’s a valuable little tool you can use to just get over it and move on. I Jimbo, as always, it’s a pleasure. love talking to you. This has been one of my favorite episodes. To be completely honest with you. I think it was a it’s something people need to hear. And so I enjoyed it. Good stuff, brother. Alright, see Jimbo.

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