Marketing your own law firm is an ongoing job for us entrepreneurs. A job that RizeUp Media has taken off owners plates, as they offer marketing services. In this episode Travis and Vaidas deep dive into the do’s and don’ts for lawyer websites. As well as short term and long term marketing strategies according to your firm’s needs. Let’s dive in!

1:12 RizeUp Media’s sweetspot and how they help lawyers market themselves!

2:47 What does this “help” look like for lawyers? 

4:28 Step one: you need to know your marketing need …

9:20  Lawyer websites done INCORRECTLY! 🫣

15:22 How different is better than better —- but what about the things that are similar on lawyers websites!?

19:40 Tips for people who need to get cases in the door right NOW!

Jim’s Hack: Use the app Read Wise which takes all your Kindle reader highlights and it will email them! Which is great to retrigger some of the thoughts that you had about the book you read. 

Travis’s Tip: Make sure you are tracking all of your different campaigns separately. You need to KNOW where your people are coming from.

Vaidas’s Tip: Answer the phone when it rings with a human! After all the work and money you’ve put into marketing make sure this next step is in place. As well as, know how your staff is interacting with your potential clients.

Tyson’s Tip: Use the Google Chrome extension called Checker Plus for Gmail. It allows you a quick peek into your email. You can send out a quick email or check a top priority email without getting sucked into email. 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube.

Connect with RizeUp Media:

Resources:

Resources: Helping Law Firms Scale Their Business with RizeUp Media

Speaker 1
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 isometrics What’s up Jimmy

Jim Hacking
Tyson, my friend, you know, the joys of running a law firm are eternal. It’s a series of ups and downs. You never know what’s going to happen. You try to plan you try to make things as good as they can be. But every now and then life throws you a curveball. It’s just an interesting, interesting ride.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, the I guess one of the things I like about is every day, it’s every day, every day is different for me every single day, I’ve got a very structured calendar, but still everything’s different. So you’re right, the ups and downs. But you know, what’s great about it is they’re great companies like rise of media that can make a big portion of our lives much easier. Ryza I just want to get off right off the bat, sorry about how appreciative we are Verizon media, they were our q1 mastermind sponsor, and people loved it. So thank you both Vitus and Travis, for that. It’s great. But I’ll let what whoever wants to take this first, but tell us about Ryza media and how it came to be.

Travis
Yeah, so my partners and I, we pretty much we have 23 full time employees. And basically, everybody here has at least 10 years of experience exclusively marketing with lawyers. And so we have about five years ago, I guess, like most folks thought, we can make the widget a little bit better than where we’re currently working. And so we we set off on a journey to hang your own shingle. And here we are to 300 clients later nationwide. And we set out to see if we could work with law firms and kind of roll up our sleeves and get in the trenches with them and help them scale their business. And everything we do is month a month. And we structured it that way. Because we figured number one, that’s how we want to be treated by our vendors. And number two, we figure if we’re competent at what we do, we don’t need long term contracts and knock on wood. Here we are four or five years later, and our retention rate is through the roof. And we like to think that we’re doing really good work and helping helping law firms really help scale the business, whether they’re a solo practitioner, just hanging a shingle themselves, or a bigger firm that has, you know, 2030 4050 years of combined experience. We like to think we’re a fit for them and anywhere in between.

Jim Hacking
That’s awesome. Tell us what it’s like, when you start working with a new client. What is the experience, like from the lawyer’s perspective,

Vaidas
you know, I tried to say, we’ve been doing this a long time, you’re 21 for me in helping law firms market themselves. So we tried to take a different approach of customizing solutions for each individual law firm and taking a look at you know, what their, what their goals are to accomplish, you know, where we came from, it was sort of almost Website in a Box, some little bit of customization, almost offering the same thing to everybody customize a little bit and then put it out there and hope it works. We look at it in a different way. And that’s why we we don’t do long term contracts, but it holds our feet to the fire to, to basically perform and, and get results for these clients. And the feedback that I’ve had since joining rise up is that they’ve been very impressed with our approach and how quickly we actually explain what we’re going to do for him also the trackability of the tool. So to answer your question, how do we begin, we do a lot of different things. We do everything from website design, social media, Google Local Service, ads, pay per click, all of those things, some of the clients we work with, we do everything for some of them only one piece of that, but we look at it as that kind of approach where depending on what your goals are, do you want more clients? Do you want to grow? Do you need a new website, a lot of firms actually they don’t even really know if what they’re doing is working or not. So when we dive into that analysis, that seems to be a really big help and even the firms that think they know a lot of times don’t so when we sort of exposed or maybe some weaknesses or some areas where they can actually go after new business that tends to move the needle a lot

Tyson Mutrux
you know whenever I first met both of you it was it was interesting because like you got a little swagger T I got I gotta admit Yeah little bit rise up Scott some swagger which I really like I liked that about you all, you all are confident about your business that I think it takes a lot of guts to say in this industry with a lot of picky clients. Let’s be honest, attorneys are really picky. Right? And they expect results which is which is reasonable, right? You spent a lot of money on digital marketing expect the return on your investment but I want to talk more about this month a month contract because no one else does that right there like yearly contract. If you’re locked in some of the companies, you don’t even own your own content, which is insane. So talk about, I guess the risk that you take with that, why why go month to month contract when no one no one else is doing it. Because that’s, that’s really interesting to me,

Travis
I didn’t really go back to when we, when we started launching this, we’re confident what we can do. And we weren’t trying to get firms to come on for a month, we want them on for years to come and grow with them. And, and what we’ve seen in what I think a lot of agencies don’t do is sit down with the firm’s that kind of piggyback on your question, Jim, is sit down with a firm and figure out what is it they’re trying to do. And as a business owner, myself, being in their shoes, make sure they’re utilizing the right tool, and utilize and make sure their expectations are set correctly. Like, you know, if you’re, when you’re doing a website, I don’t care what anybody tells you, that’s a long longer term approach, you got to be in. Even if you, you have a humongous budget, and you’re just starting out with a website, you’re not going to show up on the first page, 30 days, 60 days from now, there’s other tools like pay per click, or social media or local service ads and things of that nature, that will turn on like a light switch, that’s more of an instant gratification type of tool. And so sitting down with folks, and you know, depending on their practice area, like there’s a law firm, there’s a lawyer, they get through that, you know, if they do personal injury, for example, it’s a contingency based billing that they do, right. And so, you know, depending on the type of love that they do, like, for example, personal injury, you know, have they factored in? Have they thought it through that, how they get paid, it can with contingency, even if we were to, you know, I tell personal injury attorneys, even if I show up on the phone call with five car accident, clients over my shoulder, even if I handed it to him right there, right then in there, they’re still not seeing money on that for probably 612 months. So do they need or do they want a longer term strategy that’s going to take 612 months to build up, and then factor in clients are coming in. At that point, he may need to float your marketing first 1218 months, as opposed to using some of these other tools, where that gives them instant gratification, we get the phone ring in the next 3060 days, and get the cash flow going help them really scale the business. And I think we we take an approach of looking at it through their eyes and making sure they’ve thought this through and sharing what some experiences that we’ve had with some of the other firms that we work with, to make sure that they’re making the right decision. And what we found out is, if you’re doing that, and they have the right expectations, it doesn’t matter about the contract, you know, if we’re guiding them in the right way to where they’re able to, you know, get more clients, get more revenue, get more exposure, whatever their goals are, because we found that every firm between Vitus and I, we’ve worked with 1000s and 1000s of firms over the last couple of decades. And it doesn’t seem like I don’t know that we run into two firms that have the exact same goals. You know, they may have different types of cases, different geography, you know, how many cases they want to see come in the door. And so those are all factors that if you do if we do the right thing for the client on the front end, or you know, we’re in partnership with them, and the contracts don’t matter.

Vaidas
Yeah, and let me just add to that for a second. You know, we come from organization that required annual contracts, and if not longer for some of the products that we sold, and on numerous occasions, it becomes an issue if if they’re not happy with the results they’re getting, if they’re not getting what what they believe that they’re paying for, you know, we’re pretty much stuck, like we can try to make things right or whatever. But every firm that I talked to now, when we tell them that we don’t do contracts, I mean, their jaws almost on the floor, because they’ve all had that experience with somebody that, hey, sounded great when we started and maybe even worked in the beginning, but now they feel they’re getting nothing. And then they’re still stuck in some kind of long term contract. And when we tell them that, like, Hey, you can leave at any time, you know, 30 days notice you’re out the door, and that holds our feet to the fire to basically perform because we like Travis said, We don’t want you for a month, we want you for years. And it is such a response. And the reaction that we get from attorneys when we say that is like pretty serious. Like no one’s ever offered that and, and we don’t do it as a gimmick, we do it because we truly believe in the results that we get

Jim Hacking
changing gears a little bit. One of the best episodes most fun Tyson and I ever had on the podcast was a show that we did we called Wall firm website roulette. And we would I would yell out of town Tyson would yell out a practice area and then we google that in that town. And then we sort of critiqued the website. I think that would be a great content play for you guys just generally to do a show you could do a show just about that to show your expertise. But when you guys come across websites that you’re not affiliated with, what are the things that you spot most often that lawyers are doing incorrectly?

Travis
Yeah, I think I think the very first thing that we Look for or what anybody should look for, is can you tell within 510 seconds what the lawyer does, I can’t tell you how many times I’m preparing for a meeting someone approaches us and want wants to inquire about our services, and I jump on their website. And it takes me five or 10 minutes to figure it out. I gotta read through all their content just to figure out what they’re doing and what they do for law, what type of blog do they practice, right? You got to remember most the average person doesn’t realize how specialized lawyers are. Right? That’s why you ask any lawyer, you know, a personal injury lawyer, I’m Why do your friends and family call you for DUIs and divorces and contracts and things of that nature? And they always need Yes, and I go, you tell them everything’s given what you do, what type of law you practice, but they still call you when they run into an issue. And they go yes. So the average person doesn’t realize, especially how specialized most attorneys are, especially in the bigger markets, right. And so when they come to your website, they got to know within a split second, because people’s attention span in this day, and age phones, beeping and social media and all this, you know, 24 hour news cycle and things of that, gotta capture your attention right away. Because the biggest enemy is the backbone. If they don’t understand or don’t know what they do, if you’re not talking to their issue or problem, they’re going to hit the back button and go pick somebody else. So that I would say number one, that’s and that’s not anything technical or anything of that nature. But just priority number one is tell somebody what you do and make sure somebody knows what they what you do within a few seconds of getting to your website, and make sure they can contact you, you have a contact form, because most people are doing searches on things like this, as opposed to a desktop. So make sure you have your phone numbers at the top right, make sure there’s a contact form, just basic stuff, you don’t once again, it’s too easy for them to hit the back button, and go even if it’s referrals, forget it right. Every attorney will tell you, they do family law and I say hey, where do you send your you get a DUI leave where you send them, they’ll rattle off two or three names, right. And stats show that most people look at five to seven websites before they pick an attorney to call. So all those types of things, make it easy on them. Make sure your website is mobile friendly. Because that’s where it’s been this way for a few years. Now more people do searches on a phone than they do a desktop. So make sure let people know what you do right off the bat. And make sure that make it easy on them to to contact you. They’ll make it a you know, they’ll make it a maze for them to try to they gotta navigate your site just to find your phone number. That’s a big, big issue.

Vaidas
Yeah, let me kind of chime in on top of that is that, you know, every lawyer thinks every referral that comes to them, they get hired? Well, I would argue referrals come in twos or threes. So you’re getting compared to somebody, right? And there’s, I would say almost 100% chance that before they walk into your office, they’re gonna go to your website. So do you feel Mr. Attorney that your website represents you and why they should hire you and your expertise and all those things? And I had reactions are like, Oh, I wouldn’t send anybody to my website, you know, it’s too basic, or my, my niece did it for me, it’s just a business. So it’s like, you need your website to represent the same experience they had this is if they’re walking into the front office of your of your lobby, and having that experience. And so that sort of, you know, creates a like, wow, that’s definitely not what’s going on. That’s not all of them. But that seems to be your reaction. And so, you know, your website is their first impression of you. What does that say? It’s really important, and things that people can do that, that sort of differentiate, because, like Travis said, most people, they only need an attorney, when they need an attorney. They’re not versed and know a bunch of things. How are you different from everybody else that does what you do. And one of the big things that can help with that is having videos where they’re actually talking, you know, they hear us talking about maybe what their problem is, so they feel there’s almost a connection, because they actually hear you speak, it’s just not your photo on a website. So, so something like that. And then really the most important thing is and It shocks me to this day, how few attorneys have any clue if their website’s actually working or not. While the phone’s ringing, so I guess it’s working, you know, you’re getting kind of reporting. Yeah, but I don’t look at it, you know, and it’s like, wow, I mean, you’re spending however much money on this. You want to know, what’s actually delivering results and what isn’t. And one of the things that we do and rise up is, we have analytics that track every single phone call where it comes from, does it come from a Google ad? Does it come from your website? Does it come from a direct directory, does it come from a referral? So we can actually analyze that data and say, Hey, you’re spending this much money 50% of your of your clients are coming from this. So maybe we put a little more emphasis on that. So the analysis of the ROI is really important. And, and that’s what we try to, you know, to make clear that that’s trackable through what we offer

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Tyson Mutrux
So I want to ask you both. So the kind of want to juxtapose what Travis said about really getting the basics down, right, with something that always sticks with me with Sally Hogshead. She says, you know, different is better than better, right? And Vitus, he just kind of mentioned about like being different. But you go to some of these when you go to some websites, and it not necessarily attorney websites, but they are drastically different from what you’re used to see. So how much danger is there in having a very, very different website from what people are used to seeing. So if you go to like my website, you get the number, the top right corner. DMS is the same way. But it doesn’t really fit within that mold of different is better than better. So I’m just curious what your thoughts are on that.

Vaidas
Let me chime in real quick trap, and then I’ll let you take it. So we are coming head to having done this for a long time. There are analytics that tell you like what people navigate to on a homepage, right? So like, Where’s the phone number? Where’s the contact form? Is it clear what you do? So, I mean, there’s all sorts of heat maps that show you where people eyes go, and where what needs to be where, right the the navigation and those sorts of things. So there’s an element to the structure of the site that needs to be there. Because if that information is not there, you’re gonna have a failure. However, a lot of law firm websites think they all look the same, they’ve got the same imagery, they got all this stuff, we know that the firms that provide professional photography, for example, have their office of the of the lawyers versus using stock imagery that makes it that differentiates it right, it makes it personal. We’ve got some websites that are you know, I would say almost artwork, I mean, they’re they’re, they’re so different than everybody else. And I think on some level, that’s, that’s a positive, because it does make you stand out, it might turn some people off. But you know, there’s the argument that all of all legal websites look exactly the same. And if that’s the product that you’re producing, I would say that’s a problem, I would say that we’ve got hundreds of websites, and most cases, they all look very different. Because we’ve got a great team of designers that do stuff for us. And the involvement that we have with the clients that we work with and having them have input to what they want, what they like what they don’t like, versus hey, here’s two choices, pick a or b, and we’ll slap your name on it makes a big difference.

Travis
Yeah, I agree being a little bit different, or a lot different, as long as the two buys this point, from a structure standpoint, and that some of the things that from a marketing standpoint, we want on their like contact form or phone numbers and make sure that they understand who you are, make sure they you know, in show your reviews and, and have locations and things of that nature is great. And I also think having something a little bit different to that doesn’t look like everybody else is helpful. I mean, you attract who you are, right? Have your personality on your website. And you know, you’re not going to you’re not going to win every client, but you’re going to attract kind of your tribe, if you will, as we say in the marketing world. And so have that stand out. And no doubt, no doubt. I think that’s a way to go.

Vaidas
Yeah. So let me kind of say where that as an example, if I’m a criminal defense attorney, you know, most people that are accused of a crime, they don’t care if they like the attorney, they just want to know he’s good in the courtroom. And he gets results, right. So pardon the French, but I want a total jerk or guidance, I he’s not going to be my friend, I just want him to get me out of jail or whatever I’m being charged with family law is a little different, right? People know that they’re going to have to sit down if it’s going to be a divorce or custody thing that you’re going to get asked a lot of personal questions about, you know, your relationships and that sort of thing. With family law, it seems like they’re gonna want to be someone that they may actually have more of a relation to, because they’re gonna have to share some intimate details, right? Personal Injury, again, like I just want to know you when I don’t, I don’t have to like you, I just want to know you get results. So depending on the practice area, how you present yourself on the website, some of these lawyers have these big powerful arms crossed images, like look at me on great, I would argue the website’s really never about the attorney, I just like that the person just wants to know whatever they’re actually looking for, that you can get them the result that they’re looking for, whether it’s getting me out of jail, getting me money for a car wreck, give me my kids back. And that’s that’s the websites job is to present that in a way that makes you an obvious alternative to the other people they may be considering

Jim Hacking
my last question, every now and then we hear from a law firm owner who’s like, I need to get cases in quickly, like right now, like, what are the and then you know, like, people will say, Well, you got a great podcast, and I’m like, Yeah, but a podcast is a long play long play. So what tips do you have for people that need to get in a case or two sooner rather than later? How

Travis
to get kids in the door right away I think really depends on practice area. But from a 50,000 foot view, I think every I think every attorney out there is absolutely nuts not to have if they’re looking for more cases it is have a line in the water with Google Local Service ads. And what happened is is Google came out about two years ago, they’ve been doing this for contractors.

Vaidas
Real quick, just to clarify, because we don’t have a shared screen here. If you were to Google injury attorney, Phoenix, what those local service ads are, for people that are listening to this are the three photos that show up at the top above everything. Okay? Those are guaranteed phone calls from Google. So

Travis
yeah, so those three pictures at the top, that’s Google, they they’ve been doing this for, like I was saying plumbers and contractors, and so forth for years and years and years, they rolled them out to attorneys about two years ago. And it’s their new pay per call program. And it’s for even for the attorneys that are maybe listening or I’m totally risk averse, and don’t want to take a chance in marketing, this would be the product for you as well. And because you’re only paying when it when your phone actually rings, and when the phone calls come in, if they’re in the wrong practice area, or the wrong geography or if it’s a sales guy, or a bot or a current client, or any of those types of things, you can dispute that call and get your money back. And some of the value add that we run here, when we’re managing those is we have staff internally that listens to all those calls and send it sends in those disputes for you. But that is in many, many markets. Sometimes the ads don’t even show up. Because until you until three firms are signed up, you don’t even see those ads, when two firms show up or signed up, they show up on a cell phone. But if we’ve running into markets hack in Arizona and Phoenix right now there’s, there’s one or comp attorney signed up for this thing. And were just talking to a firm yesterday. And we’re like, you could be the king of the castle here and for the foreseeable future until other firms sign up. And so those right now, in my 15 years doing this, it’s the best piece of marketing I’ve seen in quite some time. Because Google, they run the world at this point, right? They took their new product, and they stuck to it at the very, very top and everything else when it’s pushed down. And and you’re able to see clients come in the door right away. And it’s not an even for another cool thing. For the smaller firms. It’s not like Pay Per Click where it’s just who has the deepest pockets who can bid the biggest bid per click with local service ads, it’s determined on location, it’s a turnaround reviews, so you got to do some legwork and get your clients to review you. And budget is certainly a consideration. But it’s not the only thing, you know that you can’t just throw 100 grand a week at this and think you’re gonna dominate like you can with PPC, this is a little bit more this a lot and that that frustrates the firms with huge war chest certainly. But it definitely gives the chance to everybody else that doesn’t have to compete dollar for dollar. If you need to do good work, you need to get good reviews. And so anyway, that would be no doubt that would be I would tell every law firm out there to at least get signed up. You can always pause it, things of that nature. But yeah, no doubt that would be the move that every attorney needs to do. Like yesterday, no question.

Vaidas
And to top off what Travis said, It’s shocking to me how many people I point those out to and I know what those are, that’s their pay per click thing. And it’s like actually, it’s not it’s not pay per click Pay Per Click has been around for a very long time, they just assume that it’s exactly the same thing. And it takes this big war chest of money to compete. Like Travis said, Google has put this above everything. It’s the top of the page on a cell phone, it’s the first thing that you see with two images versus three. And unlike everything else that you spend money on that is there to drive traffic to your website, or clicks or this sort of thing. This is guaranteed phone calls, the phone doesn’t ring. Google doesn’t charge anything. And if the if the wrong person calls you, it’s now your practice here is to get a refund. There’s not a better cost per client acquisition. that’s out there right now. We were actually talking to one of your members right now. And he’s like, I would take every dime I have and put it into that local service, local service ad program, because it’s the cheapest way I’m getting clients and he’s doing all these other things as well. So my tribe said, You need to at least sign up for it. It’s the best thing that’s out there right now. And it guarantees phone calls.

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. I think that that that by itself. It’s worth the price of admission to listen to this podcast. So very good. We do need to wrap things up though. Before I do. I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. Get involved there a lot of great information being shared. If you want a more high level conversation. Join us in the guild go to max law guild.com And you can come to one of our quarterly masterminds if that’s something you’d want you are interested in. And while you’re listening the rest of this episode if you get anything from these episodes if you will leave us a five star review help us spread the love to others. attorneys I need some help. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking
My hack of the week is a great little app. It’s called Read wise and what it does, I’m a big Kindle reader. And it’ll go through and it’ll find your highlights, and it’ll email you random highlights from books that you’ve read. And it’s great to retrigger some of the thoughts that you had about it. So I think it’s free or might be four bucks, but it’s super easy. And I get a little reminder of things that I thought before things that I wanted to follow up on and with undiagnosed ADHD, it’s really great for me. So that’s my hack of the week. Fellas, I gotta, I gotta run to my next meeting. I’m gonna let Tyson wrap up the show. Thanks so much for sponsoring the conference and for being on the show with us. Really appreciate it.

Vaidas
Thank you. Absolutely.

Tyson Mutrux
I see Joe. Hi, Travis, and Vitus, we always ask our guests to give us a tip or hack the week, it could be a bug, it could be a podcast, it could be a quote that you heard could be a business tip, whatever it might be, is Oh, girl, Travis first and invite a second. Give us a tip or a hack of the week,

Travis
track your marketing. If you don’t know where it’s coming from, how are you going to scale your business and make sure all the different campaigns if you’re not, if you don’t have a tracking number on all of your different campaigns, you don’t know where it’s coming from. And you don’t don’t know where when you should unplug something because it’s not working. And you don’t know where you should throw an extra dollar to and help yourself scale. So that is between tracking it and make sure you’re answering your phone, the average law firm answers about 60% of the phone calls that are coming into the firm. So if you can’t do it, hire somebody to do it. Or there’s very low cost cost answering services out there. That’ll that’ll plug that hole. But you can’t imagine how many calls that we hear from people on the internet are absolutely not leaving a voicemail. So make sure you do that. But I tell people if you do that, you’ll spend half the money on marketing get twice the result if you just do that,

Tyson Mutrux
but I said don’t have voicemail. Make sure it goes to a live person no matter what. So get rid of your voicemail. Amen. Crazy that you spent all that money on marketing, and then it just goes right in the trash. But anyways, Vitesse, you are up next. Yeah, I’m

Vaidas
gonna kind of piggyback on that a little bit. So whether it’s like you said voicemail is the death note, I mean, I get someone’s voicemail, I never leave a message, I would say on the same element, if someone calls your office and they get that Robo, hey, you’ve reached such and such law firm for such and such Donald What immediate hang up, like you have to have somebody answering the phone. So they’re talking to the human being, on that point, never leave a voicemail, and no one’s actually going to call you as a law firm if you get voicemails they’ve moved on. Okay, I can’t tell you how many examples I have of law firms that got a call on Friday night, they call them back Monday. And they just lost out on a huge case, because they’re not waiting two days, they want an immediate result there. And the other thing that you can do, and this is part of what we do with these local service ads, such as know what your staff is, how they’re interacting with your potential clients, you spent all this money on this marketing, and they call your law firm, what is what is their conversation, like? We use it as a as a training tool, a lot of times where we can listen to these phone calls. And we’ve, we’ve actually dialed up some law firms and said, Hey, I want you to listen to this phone call. Because I think you should probably know that this is how it’s being reacted to as far as when some people call it and it’s everything from me, this is an extreme example. But we literally had somebody that was in the ICU, after being hit by a drunk driver in a car wreck calling on their cell phone for the attorney. And the receptionist basically put them on hold and then said, hey, no one’s here. We’ll call you back. And we played that for the law firm. And Travis and I were both on this. So he’s laughing. And the guy basically was like, hang on a second. He called you know, it wasn’t to get her in trouble. But it was like, You can’t do that, you have to know that that kind of call requires immediate interaction with an attorney. Right? So simple things like that. It’s also a training tool where I’ve had people say, Oh, the attorney doesn’t have any time until March for her first appointment. And they’re like, I’m done. I’m going to, I can’t wait that long. So make sure that the person that is the first contact, or the first person they’re talking to law firm,

Tyson Mutrux
is a good one. Did that case sign up right away, and then you can get rid of it later if you don’t want it. So both those are great advice. My tip of the week, it’s the bane of my existence is email, not a fan of email at the end sucks. And one of that one of the hardest things about emails, once you open your email inbox, you’re kind of sucked into it. And there’s a tool of use Google Chrome, it’s called checker plus for Gmail. And I think that checker plus does it for Outlook too, if you want to use it, but it allows me to just kind of click on it, click on it right now and kind of see what’s in there really quick. But I need to address something or if I need to send a quick email without going into my email. I can do it because I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’ll need to send an email or go into my email to send it and then I get sucked into something else and I can’t stay In that, but check your plus for email here for Gmail is my tip of the week, Vitesse and Travis, thank you so much for Come on. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you for being sponsors. It allows us to put on events that are productive that are really good for our members. So thank you so much. Absolutely.

Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum liar.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.


Taking the leap into running your own law firm is scary. We know it! In today’s episode Jim and Tyson chat about the top six things they love about being a law firm owner and why they would never go back. 

If you are thinking of going off on your own and starting your own firm, or maybe you just need a pep talk to keep going the entrepreneur lawyer course — this episode is for you. It’s okay to be afraid of failing, but don’t let that stop you.

Listen in!

Episode Highlights:

1:55 – Number One: Autonomy & freedom! This is the top reason Jim and Tyson love being their own boss. To be able to leave the office at any time for any reason is the best part of owning a law firm. 

4:06 – Number Two:  Not having a boss! There is no one telling you what to do and we think this is a priceless reason to own a law firm. Add the joy back into your life by being your boss.

7:56 – Number Three: Knowing how much you make is directly tied to your work! This involves your ideas, your strategy, and how you implement them. NOT about working harder and faster. It’s a powerful mindset and energy that sets in after you get the first few clients, that it’s up to you to make happen.  

11:03 – Number Four: The creative and problem solving aspect of owning your own firm! You are the one that gets to spot issues (and have other people fix them) and this exercises a creative part of your brain and spirit. This freedom also comes with the caveat that you also get to make the decision to change your mind! 

13:56 – Number Five: We are building! Everyday that goes by we are building a business that we can watch shift and grow and evolve. 

16:53 – Number Six: Competing with yourself and always trying to up your game! You are always trying to improve all aspects of your law firm. Doing better than we did before, which is a huge motivation for continuing on. 

Jim’s Hack: Find yourself a good friend! It’s invaluable. 🎥 Watch the full video of Jim’s transformation and encouragement here.

Tyson’s Tip: Take the time to survey clients via a call or email. The data is invaluable. 

With these questions: 

  1. On average how do our clients feel about our communion. 
  2. On average, how do our clients feel about how we respond to their questions? 
  3. On average, how do our clients feel about the trustworthiness of the firm? 
  4. On average, how do our clients feel about the professionalism of the firm?

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube. 

🎧 Tune in to today’s episode and checkout the full show notes here. https://maximumlawyer.com/jimhackingtysonmutrux489

Podcast mentioned: Hidden Brain Podcast 

Resources:

Transcript: 6 Things We Love About Owning A Law Firm with Jim and Tyson

Speaker 1
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
Happy Valentine’s Day Tyson with a few weeks before but we’re recording now. And this episode’s coming out on the 14th of February. So we are talking about the things that we love as law firm owners.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I thought you’re really gonna pretend like it was Valentine’s Day. So I know we talked about this. And you You came up with a great topic for today because it is Valentine’s Day. But yeah, so you and I have not chatted on the podcast in a while you and I talk a lot outside of the podcast. But how have you been otherwise?

Jim Hacking
Good. We just spent two days in our annual planning meeting with our coach. And it has to have been the most comprehensive, well done two days that we’ve ever done. We had probably 20 of those big white sticky sheets with ideas and thoughts and SWOT analysis and rocks. And it was just fantastic. When we’re done. I mean, it’s a total roadmap for the year. So it was, it was our best one yet.

Tyson Mutrux
It’s incredible. We do a day we don’t do two days, someday we’ll talk about what you do during yours and what I do during my because I’m really curious to hear what you do for two days we and we get we have our jam sessions. But I do feel like ours are sort of crammed into one day. So I think we could probably easily do two days. But anyways, let’s get into our topic of the day. I think it’s a fun one. This is a Jim hacking specialists the six things I love about owning a law firm, that is such a great title. And number one, I get to go with number one mind. And we both have this, by the way, in fairness, I got my list together, he had a he came with the topic and I had to list before he did. And so but we both had this as number one. And that’s just the autonomy, that freedom that you get from owning a law firm. Like I’m at the point where I cannot imagine going and working for another person, another company, I just I don’t know how I would do it. I don’t know how I did it before to be completely honest with you. But to be able to leave the office at any time, for any reason, at any point is that is priceless. In my opinion, I could make substantially less and still be able to do that. And I’d be happy. I don’t know what your thoughts are on that, Jim. But it’s that piece alone. If you’re considering starting your own law firm, it’s worth the pay cut. If you do take a pay cut. Now I’ll talk about financial, a little bit of financial stuff later. Because I think it’s more fun and financially more rewarding. But the autonomy is the part that’s just for me the priceless part.

Jim Hacking
And of course, that’s the big allure of going out on your own is the freedom and a lot of times people just trade a job for another person for a job for themselves. So they don’t really even have that freedom because they haven’t done enough work to give themselves the freedom by having other people do a lot of the work. But yeah, for sure the freedom. When you think about all the taekwondo events, you get to go to all the school concerts all the time with your family, all the setting the time that you’re on vacation, there’s just the freedom is obviously I think the number one thing that most law firm owners love about having a firm.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, and there are a you sort of hinted at this too. I mean, there’s freedom. But there’s also the parts where you’re not as free, where you don’t have one boss, you’ve got, you know, in some firms, hundreds of bosses where you get several clients that are an employees that are sort of breathing down your neck. And so with that freedom comes a lot of responsibility, so you got to balance the two.

Jim Hacking
Yeah, and you know, there’s obviously times where you do don’t get to set the entire agenda, but you’re gonna get so much more overall freedom by being out on your own than you would have otherwise. And that sort of gets me to my first one, Topic number two. And that’s a little bit different than what you put for Topic number one, and that is not having a boss, not having a boss. Now I’ve had really, really good bosses in my career. I’ve had really, really crappy bosses in my career. But the idea that I get to walk into this place to know that it’s mine, and that I set the agenda, and that there’s no one telling me what to do with the independent streak that I have and sort of the rebellious nature that I have. To me, there’s no substitute to not having a boss. You know, I’ve told you this before, but I’ve been approached several times by large law firms in St. Louis about bringing my immigration practice into their firm, and I don’t give it a moment’s thought because I don’t want to have to go to a committee To get my YouTube video approved, I don’t want to have to, you know, wait for three weeks for something to go by if I need something, I want to be able to move quickly. And not having a boss, I think, to me is even better than the lifestyle freedom that we get. It’s even better than that. For me. That’s such a

Tyson Mutrux
great point. Yeah. So Jim, I had, you know, this one of my first legal bosses, it was, if I brought in a case, right, I’d bring in a case and I would print a letter, and we had this process where you print the letter and stick it on top of this counter. And then one of the paralegals would put an envelope and send it out, right? Well, he would go and he would replace my letter with his letter, because my letter had my name on it, and his letter had his name on it. And it was like, so stupid, right? Like, like, I don’t have to deal with that anymore. Right? Like, cuz you’re right. You have good bosses, you have bad bosses, but the fact that I do not have one is so fantastic. Now, so it is good point. It’s not a freedom thing. It’s a would you say? Well, it’s, it’s almost like more like a mindset thing that you don’t have a boss.

Jim Hacking
Yeah. So for me, it’s actually that absence of actually feeling like somebody’s pushing on the back of my head, like, I honestly felt that way. Sometimes, my independent streak has grown as I’ve exercised that muscle. So what might have been a little bit of a spark of wanting to be independent and do my own thing, after I had what I thought was proper training, as a lawyer has really turned into something that I can’t imagine ever going back on,

Tyson Mutrux
you know, so this is somewhat related. I listen to this podcast, the hidden brain over the weekend, and they’re talking about how paying when you get paid to do something, it takes the joy out of it. And I wonder if part of what you’re talking about is like, you do this exact same work. But you just add the fact that let’s say you had 100% autonomy, but you add just the fact that you have boss, it removes the joy from it. I wonder if there’s any tie in there just by that one little thing, the concept, the whole idea in that podcast was about how you shouldn’t pay your children to do certain things. Like one of the easiest ways of removing joy from like athletes is like whenever they go in, they start getting paid to do it, if you’re an artist once you start getting paid for your art. So it’s a really interesting thing. But I do think if Well, I wonder if part of what you’re talking about is like just the you add that just the the title of someone above you, and boom, the joy is removed from it. I just wonder how much of that as part of it.

Jim Hacking
And you might have multiple people above you. Right. So when I first started in the mailroom at grain Ritter, you know, the thing I hated the most was when I would walk down the hall and somebody would say, oh, Jim, Hey, come here, I need you to do something like the randomness of it, the unpredictability of it. And you know, that’s part of what happens in a big firm is that things have to get fixed. And getting to be the one to say what you want to happen versus the one to be told what needs to happen by you is just invaluable.

Tyson Mutrux
I agree. Alright, let’s get on to number three. And I like the fact that I know that how much I make is directly tied to my work, right? And I want to make sure I’m very clear, I chose my wording carefully here. It’s not by how much I work, right. It’s it’s I said, I know that how much I make is directly tied to my work, not to how much I work. So that involves, right, my ideas, the strategies I implement. Part of it is yeah, how much I work. But I like the idea that how much I get paid is directly tied to me.

Jim Hacking
Do you mean you love the idea? Because it’s Valentine’s

Tyson Mutrux
Day? I love the idea. Yes. I love the idea that how much I make is it’s directly tied back to my work, right? The things that I do, the strategies that I implement the work that I do, and I I like that idea. And again, it’s not how much I work to get how much I paid, I get paid. It’s my work is tied to what I get paid. And I really liked that.

Jim Hacking
I think it’s a powerful mindset. And when do you think you’ve started to notice it?

Tyson Mutrux
Oh, that’s a good I’d say probably pretty early on, I think once you start to get paid real money, and that’s the thing. It’s like, once you once you get that those first few clients, you you’re like, Oh, this is this is nice, right? I’m doing this work, and I’m getting this mate, there’s money for it. So pretty early on, I’d say what about you?

Jim Hacking
Well, yeah, I mean, I there’s just no substitute for when it’s on you. You know, so your back is up against the wall pretty much as soon as you start you have to make the phone ring you have to make production wheels turn and I mean, I trust myself better than I trust other people so yeah, there’s an energy that comes out of that that just isn’t there when you aren’t the owner I think

Tyson Mutrux
yeah, I and this is interesting because you didn’t present this idea until today and last night though I had this really is this is awesome feeling because I was talking to our buddy Mark hammer cuz I was I was on the phone with him and I had to go to the ATM to deposit some checks. He’s like checks, like, who writes checks these days like, well, we all get paid by insurance companies. And I had to write myself a check. But anyways, but it was really cool because I deposited the most checks I’ve ever deposited ever, in the history of the firm. Last night, it was so cool. It was just a cool feeling to be able to take that money to the bank, and deposit it. And there’s just a cool feeling. It’s just a fact that the work that we did as a firm in the firm is something that I’ve been building for over a decade now. And all just sort of ties together. And it’s such a cool feeling.

Jim Hacking
Of course, Mark’s a criminal defense lawyer, so he’s used to getting paid in big bags, oh, cash, that in

Tyson Mutrux
credit cards, he’s a big credit card person. And that’s that’s the way to go. Get that guaranteed money that they get the cash can be dangerous for a criminal defense attorney because it could be drug money. So you got to be a little bit careful. But little sidebar here. There isn’t a well known attorney over on the Illinois side, they got disbarred about a decade ago because he took a big bag of cash. And he knew his drug money. So you gotta be careful. But anyways, back on track to number four, Jimbo.

Jim Hacking
Alright, so number four, to me, it’s the creativity and problem solving aspect of owning your own firm. We touched on it just a little bit right there. But I am a creative person, I think of myself more as an artist than a laborer. And, you know, there’s a never ending font of things that need to be fixed when you own your own law firm, right. And so, I love the problem solving aspect of it, I love spotting issues, I’m really enjoying now spotting the issues and having other people fix them, right. But to me, I never would have exercised this part of my brain and my spirit, if I had stayed working for somebody else, because when it’s up to you, it’s up to you. And so that part of it, I really, really enjoy.

Tyson Mutrux
I do too. I like that creative process, as well. I liked what you put there, what you call it, the font, the font of it, that is such a, and I know exactly what you mean by the font of it, like the look the feel the energy from it, and that that is a really cool thing, and you get to shape it. And here’s the other part of it, you get to change it. If you want to change it, guess what, you get to change it. You don’t have to keep the same font that you had 12 years ago, and I’m not talking about the font of your letterhead, I’m talking about the font of your firm. I love that so much, Jim, I don’t know if you just came up with that. But that is amazing. Yeah, the fact that you’re able to shape that and mold it. It’s all you it’s just you can’t do that other firms. I trust me, I tried. Did you get a lot of pushback, right? You get a lot of pushback now? No, no, no, that’s we don’t do it that way. We do it this other way. But you get to make those decisions. And it’s nice bill to make those decisions. And you

Jim Hacking
get to make the tough calls. You know, there’s a lot of times where you’re trying to decide between two things, and you might be in unchartered territory. And I sort of liked that high wire act, I sort of liked that having maybe not necessarily a big net and not playing it safe. So it sort of feeds that part of me that likes a little bit of chaos.

Tyson Mutrux
So you shared that app with me this morning. And I listened to a Joe Rogan speech. And he talked about the importance of doing hard things. And he was talking about doing physically challenging things. But when he first started talking about I was thinking about how important it is to do difficult things in general. And there is another one of them was about, you should not be afraid to do great things and you should not be afraid to fail. And I really liked that too. And that’s there’s a by starting your own firm, you’re going out on a big high wire, and you’re really going big and you’re risking a lot of things, you’re risking your finances, you’re risking your time, you’re risking your career, you’re doing a lot, there’s a lot of risk, but you’re doing all of it for the massive amount of rewards that come with it. And that feeling is hard to shake.

Jim Hacking
For sure you want to go on to number five,

Tyson Mutrux
yet, let’s get on number five. For me, I’ve told this. So this before, if I weren’t an attorney, I think I’d probably be like an engineer because I like to build things. And I like to build, I get to build something when it comes to the firm. And many times we don’t think of firms as being something like building blocks, like you build. But every day that goes by every week that goes by every month, every year, every decade, you can see how your firm has changed and you can build it and it’s it’s kind of like a building or a house or whatever you want to call it. But you are building something. And it’s cool to see the things that we’ve built. And I was having this conversation earlier this week about an attorney are starting to they’re asking me, like, Why do you have a full time CTO? And I said, we’re doing cool shit, man. We’re doing some really cool shit. And we need someone that’s full time that can run those systems. And so it’s cool to be able to build things and I love the idea that I’m able to build them.

Jim Hacking
We started the podcast a little late today because my daughter overslept, and I had to drive her to school and When I was in the car, I was thinking about the six things that we love about owning a law firm. And when I thought about the three for you, the first one I came to was how much he liked building the systems. And you know how much better you are at it than I am. And I knew that that would be one that you picked, because I have seen you get really, really good and improve at that. So I think that that’s, if that’s something that you’re inclined to do. If you find yourself sort of drawn to tinkering, legal tinkering, or law, firm owning, tinkering, I think that that ownership of the firm might be for you. And I think it’s interesting that we’re having this conversation, because I think this episode is hopefully going to resonate with people that are thinking about going up on that tightrope.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I do think that this is definitely for those people that are on the fence about it, or they’ve been thinking about it for a while. And I often think about this prosecutor whenever I was, I did an externship in the prosecutor’s office. And I remember him talking to me about how he wanted to start his law firm. And he’s still there. He’s still in the prosecutor’s office. And it really saddens me, right, because he had all these really cool ideas that he wanted to implement. And he never took the leap. And I’m hoping that some of the things that we talk about encourages them to take that leap. You should send this kind of i should i part of me. Yeah, maybe I should they I think it’s because it’s never too late. Right. It’s not too late. But it would I think it would be hard for me to convince someone like that that’s been there now for probably 15. I don’t know if he’s been there 20 years, but 15 years that it, I think it’d be hard to convince someone like that, because they’re so entrenched. And they’re probably thinking about retirement and what they would lose and all that. But even with all that, I think that it’s the all of the benefits of starting a law firm. All of those outweigh, you know, being entrenched in that law firm and, and sucking it up for another two decades. I think it’s worth going out on your own. But Hi, Jimmy, let’s get to number six.

Jim Hacking
So that is competing with myself. So, you know, we just had our annual review, as I mentioned, and you know, we have our goals for next year. And we’re always trying to up our game. And I really appreciate that about owning the law firm is that we’re always trying to improve in all aspects of the firm. And, you know, back 1015 years ago, before Mike Tomlin was the coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, their coach was named Bill Cowher. And I remember it was either ESPN, the magazine, or Sports Illustrated had this cover story with Bill Cowher. And on the cover was two half pictures of his face. And he talked about in the interview about how he’s always thinking that there’s anti Bill Cowher out there somewhere competing with him, right. And so he’s got to do everything he can every day, to beat himself. And so I really liked that aspect of it. I really like the idea of, you know, doing better than we did before making things even more awesome, or all that kind of stuff, I really, really get that out of owning a law firm.

Tyson Mutrux
It’s interesting that really drives you you like having a boogie man to like force you. And here’s the thing, like, I don’t talk about as much, but I have so many chips on my shoulder. That really motivate me and I don’t talk about as I’m not as vocal about it as you but you are right. But here’s the thing, like you are more motivated, I think, internally by internal forces, not necessarily external forces. I think I’m more motivated by external forces than by internal forces. So you, you have to tell yourself that there isn’t a gym out there. But it’s really just gym, right? The anti gym. But I I tell myself about other people, like the doubters, right? That the real people. So I do think it’s interesting how you are motivated by those internal pressures that are more of the external type.

Jim Hacking
That’s an observation. I hadn’t thought about that.

Tyson Mutrux
And you, but it’s it is Buddy, I you, you do have the boogie man’s for sure. I do. All right. Well, let’s wrap things up. Unless you have anything else to say.

Jim Hacking
No, no, this was fun. I mean, you and I both know, the phone call. The phone call is, hey, Tyson. This is from somebody who works at a law firm. Hey, Tyson. Hey, Jim. I’m thinking about some things. And I was wondering if we could get lunch. And so you go to lunch. And you talk about a lot of these issues, you answer a lot of their questions about owning a law firm, you address sort of all the fears and those kinds of things. And then like that prosecutor buddy of yours, not much happens. And back, nothing happens. And there’s an attorney in Webster Groves, where our office used to be that I’m thinking of in particular, and I know that it’s scary, it’s scary. But this idea that anybody is safe from getting laid off, I think we’re going to see in the next six months is is really going to be put to the wayside. And I guess the last thing I would end this with is, I’d rather trust me or trust you to control our fates, then to leave that up to shitheads who don’t know anything more than I do or anything more than you do.

Tyson Mutrux
I like that. I do want to say this. It’s okay to be afraid of failing. But don’t let that stop you. Don’t let that stop you. It’s okay to be afraid. But But don’t let that stop you. All right, let’s wrap things up. Before I do. Before we get to our tip and our hack of the week. Let’s I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group, just search maximum lawyer, you’ll be able to find us there’s a maximum lawyer page and Max Miller group actually joined the group. And then there’s also the maximum lawyer guild if you want to join us there, it’s more high level conversation, go to max law guild.com. And then while you’re listening to the rest of this episode, if you don’t mind spreading the love by giving us a five star review, we would greatly appreciate it. Jimbo, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking
So for my hack of the week, it’s pretty simple. This morning, I texted you to thank you for supporting me in 75 hard and then my weight loss journey and for being such a good friend. And so my hack of the week is to find yourself a friend as good as Tyson is that the episode that we did with Charles and Angelo, my coach aired this week. And I’ll never forget how, at the end of the episode, you thanked him for helping me and helping your friend and how your voice choked up. And so I’m just grateful on this day of love for your friendship and the people. If you’re on your own, you need a sounding board, you need multiple sounding boards, and you can’t find one better than Tyson. So

Tyson Mutrux
that’s it. That’s very sweet of you. Jimbo, that’s awesome. Thank you. Mine is not as good as that. So we should have ended with that one. But mine is about serving clients. And we’ve been collecting data for now about three years Jimmy, and we do survey we survey our clients, we actually call the clients, we don’t send them a survey, we call the clients we have someone that’s not on their team call and serve the clients. And we ask these five questions. All right, actually, this is the we have them overall rate the firm. So that’s in the the question that we put in here is what is our average client satisfaction score? This is on our dashboard. I’m actually looking at our firm Dashboard right now. And then it’s on average, how do our clients feel about our communication? On average? How do our clients feel about how we respond to their questions? On average? How do our clients feel about the trustworthiness of the firm than on average? How do our clients feel about the professionalism of the firm? So we don’t ask them that way to the client, but we ask them those questions and our scores. And we wouldn’t know this. And we didn’t collect the data on the client satisfaction score. 9.47 I’m proud to say, client communication. Yeah. 8.89. So we got some work to do when it comes to client communication with 8.89. How do we respond to clients questions 9.2 for the trustworthiness of the firm, 9.46, and then the professionalism of the firm 9.72. And so that’s all it’s, it’s, it’s glad I’m glad we have this data, because now we can look at the trends over time to see are we trending upwards? Are we trending downwards? And I need to get that communication number into the nines? Because I mean, they it’s means that there’s that’s weighted against like, there’s a bunch of 10s. But there’s also that means there’s some lower numbers in there. And the reason why we are doing the surveys before we’re that is to identify from clients, like what are some issues like with that particular case, this gives us more that big picture data that we can look at, okay, we know when it comes to communication, we need to improve. And so gives us that bigger picture view. And so my advice to people is survey your clients, whether you do it with a phone call, I know it’s it’s very time intensive. We have a team that does it. It’s hard. It’s costly for us because we have to pay people to do it. But whether you do it that way or you send out a survey either way, you need to survey your clients, you know that information because it’s really important, and they’ll tell you how to improve. All right, Jimmy, that is my tip of the week. It was great talking to you as always, and I will talk to you in a couple hours.

Jim Hacking
Awesome, buddy. See ya see you.

Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your host and to access more content content, go to maximum liar.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

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.

Ready to get control of your demands and distractions? Then you need to meet today’s guest, Mridu Parikh. The founder of Life Is Organized, Mridu is a time management guru passionate about teaching business owners how to focus, get out of the weeds, and take back control of their day.

Her best-selling book, Accomplish It, and Productivity On Purpose podcast share simple strategies to ditch mental drama – from procrastination to perfectionism. Mridu’s teachings on mastering tasks and habits have been featured in The Huffington Post, Forbes, US News & World Report, and Real Simple.

When she’s not wrangling a list or schedule, you can usually find this former professional organizer turned productivity pro with her two teens and one husband in Nashville enjoying a Malbec

2:24 How Mridu started productivity and time management 

4:25 When you are ready to go for the week and you’re feeling super motivated but get hit with a problem in the office first thing Monday morning — What do you do?! 

6:05 How do you move into a more mindful morning routine? 

7:20 How much of the “ideal” morning routine is total nonsense? 

11:11 The top productivity tip to change someone from a super procrastinator to someone very efficient is … 

14:56 All about people being control freaks! And tips for letting go of the perfectionism 

17:15 Recommended productivity tools to help other people!  

19:07 Tips for the end of the day work routine

23:23 Managing the things that are out of your control and frustrating because it throws everything off 

Jim’s Hack: Set Loom at 1.7X for listening speed.

Mridu’s Tip: “What will make me feel most successful when my head hits the pillow tonight?” ask yourself this question everyday. And use a Timecube like this one to help you stay focused. 

Tyson’s Tip: Have an agenda for each meeting you have in the calendar invite. 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube. 

Connect with Mridu:

Resources:

Transcript: Productivity & Time Management For High Achievers With Mridu Parikh 488

Speaker 1
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 metrics. What’s up Jimmy?

Jim Hacking
Oh, Tyson, you know, I have a funny story for you, you know, I keep throwing out these measurements of weight loss and stuff. But money reminded me I thought that I lost my wedding ring. But it actually I was too fat to wear it. So now it finally fit. So now I have our original wedding band on it has a manies name written on it on the inside. So I’m pretty excited about that.

Tyson Mutrux
That’s really cool. Because I thought you were going to tell me that you’d lost so much weight that it fell off your hand and you’d lost it that way. But you actually it’s the reverse. You lost so much weight that you’re able to wear it again. That’s pretty darn cool. Yeah. Very cool. Well, congratulations, you’ve Alright, is it 70 pounds? Is that what it stereo? Or is it more than that? Now? It’s 70. Yep. That is incredible. It’s really interesting. The number of people and I’m sure you’ve gotten this because your results have been way, way better than my results since day. 175. Hard. But I have people reaching out to me, I’d say three, four times a week about it. I bet you’ve gotten a lot of people say hey, do what you think about 75 hard and I just say, Listen, if you’re thinking about it, you’re prepared to do it, do it.

Jim Hacking
I needed it for sure I needed it. It was a good wake up call. And it got me reset. And I’m really grateful that you suggested that I do it.

Tyson Mutrux
Well, it was suggested by Christopher Nikolay Santa Paula, goodbye, this. But yeah, a lot of other people that encouraged us. But let’s go ahead and get to our guest this week. It’s really Pareek and she is the founder of Life Is Organized. Marie Lu is a time management guru, passionate about teaching business owners how to focus, get out of the weeds and take back control of their day, or bestselling book accomplish it and productivity on purpose. Podcast shares, simple strategies to ditch mental drama from procrastination to perfectionism. Reduce teaching on mastering tasks and habits have been featured in the Huffington Post, Forbes US News, and World Report. And real simple radio. Welcome to the show.

Mridu Parikh
Thank you. And you nailed my name, Tyson. That was awesome. I appreciate that. And thanks for having me.

Jim Hacking
Matthew, we’re really glad to have you on how did you get started in this line of work of productivity? And maybe tell us a little bit about what led you to be here with us today?

Mridu Parikh
Yeah, well, many years ago, a lifetime ago, it seems like I had left the corporate world and my husband, I made a big move from New York City to Nashville, back when it was not the it city was not cool. And I had an opportunity to basically stay home for the first couple of years with my kids, which was great. But it wasn’t too long when I realized I’m losing my mind. And I just needed to do something else. So I went down this entrepreneurial path, and tried a few things and landed on Home Organizing at the time professional home organizing. So like a lot of business owners, I was working my tail off was spread too thin, just ended up feeling very scattered, exhausted, feeling like a failure a lot of times even resentful, because I was working really hard, but not getting the results that I was hoping that this great this business was going to bring me. And I would regularly think how is it possible that I am working this hard, putting in this many hours and still not getting what I want. So I just went down a personal like development path and started just learning all things productivity and time management. And after a lot of hits and misses, I discovered what worked for me, especially when I was really overloaded was like with the kids and building this business. And I pretty much just thought to myself, I can either go back to constantly being reactive and feeling behind or I could embrace these like new shifts and these structures that I started doing. And that’s what I did, but I really just went from feeling really defeated to completely on top of all my demands and distractions. And that’s when I also transitioned my business. So now I teach those skills to other time strapped top producers, business owners who want to take back control of their day to so they feel really good about what they get done and have the self worth that they deserve.

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. I’m gonna hit you with a hypothetical right off the bat. Yeah, let’s say it’s Monday morning, you had a wonderful weekend, you are pumped for the week, you are ready to go. You have all your goals set out for the week, you are ready to go and hit it and the first thing you walk into the office and you are hit with clients such and such as on the phone, she’s really really mad because of XY and Z and it derails your entire day. How do you deal with that? How do you get out of that rut?

Mridu Parikh
Alright, great question. And I so first of all I’d say before you even get to that office and deal with that client thing, what have you done to set up your morning, because if you have a good foundation, if you’re just like in a good mindset, and you’re feeling more calm and more relaxed, and on top of things, nothing’s going to change, like the client, right? They’re gonna be pissed off and things are gonna happen. But your reaction and the way you respond is really what’s going to change the entire situation. So prior to a video, when it’s it’s 8am, or 9am, looking at that email, what have you done that morning? Did you wake up? Was it was the first thing you do? Did you turn over and press snooze on the alarm clock? And just get on your phone and get on social media and start looking at the news and getting depressed and comparing yourself to everyone? Or did you maybe get up? Give yourself 20 minutes to go through your goals? Think about your calendar, have your coffee in peace? Maybe stretch, you know, like what is that look like? And that is 100% going to change the way that you react. So, you know, we can only change what’s in our control. And that’s what’s in our control. So I hope that answered that. But I would say first start with before that, because that’s what’s going to help you more than anything else.

Jim Hacking
So let’s say you’re not one of those people today. And you’d like to be one of those people, how do you move into a more mindful morning routine?

Mridu Parikh
Pick one thing, like one, the worst thing you could do is say, I’m going to change my entire routine was start waking up at 5am. And I’m going to get to the gym and I’m going to meditate and I’m going to journal them and my green juice like never gonna happen. In fact, I would say, pick a habit versus a routine, there’s a really big difference between a habit routine, I think a lot of a lot of us think oh, if I could just get into, you know, the morning, like I said, the exercise and the meditation all would be great. Well, that’s like six different habits you’re trying to put together, like, oh, I have to get into the habit of waking up earlier, to get in the habit of getting on my workout clothes, get into the habit of getting to the gym getting to you know, it’s all these habits to just pick one. So maybe the first one is, I’m gonna try to get into the habit of waking up 30 minutes earlier than I do today. And that’s the only thing when no matter I don’t even have to worry about what I do at that time. Just get into that, kind of feel good about it, master it, then add on another habit like okay, now I’m going to stretch in the morning and work it up that way. So that would be it, pick one, have your have your grand vision of what it wants to be. But don’t go for that right off the back. So I

Tyson Mutrux
love that answer. And I’ll tell you what. So I see all these Instagram posts and all these Tech Tech posts about how this is how you got to have this perfect morning and you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to meditate, and you’ve got to work out and you’ve got to read and you got to do all these different things. And then this morning, I see this post from Alex for Mozi. And he’s kind of this guy like, he’s pretty extreme. But he’s like, all of that is nonsense. Like what you need to do is like, like, who cares if you make your bed right, you start your morning off by focusing on the most important things. And that’s how you’re productive. So I wonder like, how much of this stuff is just nonsense in the mornings? Like what are the things that actually work? And what are the things that don’t work, you can just throw out the window.

Mridu Parikh
One of the biggest myths, I think, when you think of productivity is I think our initial reaction to it is that it’s doing more and doing it more efficiently and doing it faster. And the way that I’ve now that I’ve taught this for so long, I’ve taken so many clients to it and really the way I got myself out of the ruts and I was in was to throw that out the window and focus on productivity from an emotion. So to me productivity is an emotion you feel when you get the results you want. And if you get to do it in a way that’s more time efficient and more energy efficient. Fantastic. That’s like icing on the cake. But let’s just first start with how you feel. So you’re right if your morning if it feels completely stressful for you to have your green juice and meditate and journal you’re like that’s just not even making me feel great. Like I’m just all it’s doing is stressing me out. Don’t do it. Right feel what makes you feel really good is yeah, what I would if I had what would give me some control over my day today you mentioned Yeah, maybe I just pick up my top priority. Maybe I just plan out my morning the bed get the kids out the door without yelling at them. Like what is the emotion you want to feel and then start creating your day from there? Because I think that ultimately, we all everybody’s goal is to feel good. When it feels successful. You want to feel inspired, you want to wake up motivated, right? Instead of defeated, I failed again I have then you start going down all these self sabotaging thoughts about you’re not good enough. I’ll never catch up does she or he always does it better. So what are those feelings that want to feel and then how do you take one step that makes you that gets you towards that? And I can tell you usually 99% of the time it’s the thing you don’t do it is a thing you procrastinating it’s not jumping on social media. It’s not jumping into your email or your text. You’re doing that anyway. It’s not making you feel great, right? It’s usually that thing. So for me it is literally days just sitting by myself and having coffee in the morning and thinking through my day is like the number one gift that I can give myself. And the number one productivity tool for me because it’s gonna make me feel really good.

Jim Hacking
I’m holding my hand a supercomputer, also known as an iPhone, right? And I’m wondering, how would your message or tips be different if we were having this conversation 30 years ago?

Mridu Parikh
Oh, well, I think the strategy is exactly the same, right? I think that same kind of focusing on on your what’s going to make me feel really good, what can make me feel really accomplish using that as your guide post on your roadmap for the day, the difference is just the level of distractions we have right now. So it’s more than the tactical approach versus the strategy, right. So the tactically, turn those notifications off, just damn, just put your phone in another room. Like, it’s just, you know, we can’t focus, we can’t rely on willpower all the time. So that’s more tactical, but strategically, it’s, you know, maintaining focus, feeling really accomplished prioritizing your day that honestly doesn’t change. It’s more of the tactical things.

Tyson Mutrux
So that’s great. I want to ask you, and I don’t know how to ask this question, but hopefully, I can struggle through it. And you can give me an answer. But yeah, like, if there’s like one thing that you could tell people like, hey, you need to do this one thing like what would like it? It would like give you superpowers, almost like literally like, like, if you were to do this when because like I see these people pitching this crap all the time, right? But I’m talking about like, something that’s actually effective. That works like what would it be, that can change someone from like being like a super procrastinator, or someone who is not very efficient to like something like that? turns them into a rockstar?

Mridu Parikh
Yeah. Okay. So it’s essentially sort of what I was saying, but let’s just take it a step further. So go back to that. So here’s the question. I tell all my clients, I tell everyone, ask yourself, what action what one thing right will make me feel most successful when my head hits the pillow tonight? If you use that quest, if you ask yourself that question, put on a sticky note, answer that every day. And I would say the double whammy is one thing personally. And one thing professionally. Alright, so here’s the trick. It’s not what makes me feel really good, right? This minutes, because what might make you feel really good, right? This minute is getting on tick tock or getting on Instagram or something, right? What makes you feel really good when your head hits the pillow means at the end of the day today? What is that thing? And again, it’s typically something you procrastinate. So for me personally, when I had this goal was the thing I’m procrastinating I want to write a book for like, literally three years want to write a book, when I finally dedicated and said, I’ll do 30 minutes every day, no matter what. And for me first thing in the morning, who works best, whether I get five words down to 500 words down, that’s what’s going to make me feel best at the end of the day for me personally. So that’s what I committed to, right. So what happens nine months later, you have a book in your hand. And then professionally, for me, it will always I think will be like sales, networking, those kinds of things to build my business. And that always takes a backseat. It’s like the last thing that ever frickin happens. But now if it’s like, okay, 30 minutes a day. Can I do that first? Just that what does that mean? Turn? Not my phone, not my email and do that. What does that look like? Over a month? Right? That’s 25 days a week, 20 hours? Let’s say if you do put an hour to it a day, 20 hours a month? What can you what can anybody accomplish with a goal when you put in 20 deliberate, focused hours? It’s incredible. So if I do can live by that, if you can answer that question every day, and say, Can I just put an EP in our total maybe it’s 30 minutes personal, 30 minutes professional, you will honestly your life will change, you will skyrocket that gave

Tyson Mutrux
me goosebumps because I have my one thing for the day. But I don’t ask it that way. And it just like, I’m gonna change that. Because that’s fantastic. It just makes me feel good.

Mridu Parikh
Right? Right. And it taps into that emotional thing. So then when you go to bed, because what typically happens is we have whatever 2040 things on our to do list and you look at it and you’re like, Oh, I got easily I can get I can get these 10 or 20 done today, no problem, even though your schedule is packed, and you have appointments, and it’s you know, you have to run around and get your kids all the things are happening. But still, in your mind. There’s this gap and you believe I can get this all done. This is belief bias. So let’s say you have your 10 things on your list, you only get six done over the day, which is still pretty good because you have a million other things going on. What do you focus on when you’re in bed at night? Before you didn’t? That’s like all you can think about right? You just beat yourself up over it. So instead I’m saying just just forget that forget the 10 focus on the one yeah, you’re still gonna get to a whole bunch. Obviously, we’re all high achievers, you’re gonna get to some things. But if you have that one and you achieve that one, now you go to bed feeling like I’m a winner. I do what I say I’m gonna do right now. It’s like a confidence level and now you wake up in the morning, feeling much more inspired for that next day.

Jim Hacking
One of the topics that you write about and talk about often is people being control freaks. And with our audience being law firm owners, you know, lawyers like to try to control outcomes. Absolutely. Can you talk about any tips for letting go because we think it’s one of the things that holds our members back the most of wanting to micromanage and control every aspect of the firm’s operations.

Mridu Parikh
Absolutely work with a lot of lawyers, I got it, I feel like I should have been one sometimes in my life, because I am also a complete control freak, I would say, start with the lowest hanging fruit, there’s always low hanging fruit, there’s always simple ways to let go of things. Don’t start with the big, I’m going to let go of this, you know, this big process or this big system or handover all my billing or just whatever it is that’s holding you back to something as simple as possible. So it might be, you know, filing some of your paperwork. I know I’ve had I work with lawyers who that even that is like, I just nobody else can file the way I do, really, because probably, there’s a good chance they can or they’ll think of a better way, right? I also think we get so caught up in the way that we do it. Not only is it a democratic control, but it’s perfect. It’s the only way. And it’s amazing when somebody else brings their skills to the table, how much more ingenuity or creativity they can bring, or just a different perspective, and you’re like, oh, yeah, I’d never thought of doing it that way, that’s so much easier, it’s so much simpler, you know, and so start with that, and it’s like a muscle, right, you just got to do it over and over and over and over, until you get to something a little bit harder and a little bit harder and a little bit more. And there will be bumps in the way of course, people everything’s not gonna go exactly to how you want it. But you’ll also realize that even when things don’t go exactly how you want it, the whole world isn’t going to fall apart, your entire firm isn’t gonna, like you know, fall to pieces, you’re not all your clients aren’t going to leave, like, we tend to catastrophize a lot as control freaks, we can catastrophize to the enth degree because we’re like, always be our mind goes to worst case scenario. And that worst case, almost never happens. So, you know, slowly start giving up that control with the lowest hanging fruit, and then work your way up.

Tyson Mutrux
Are there any productivity tools that you might recommend? That might help people? I mean, maybe it’s I don’t know, an app or a website, whatever it may be. I mean, maybe a maybe a non technology tool, but something you might recommend to help boost productivity.

Mridu Parikh
Yeah. So when I think of productivity, again, time management, to me, it’s really less about managing all your time. But in this day and age, you mentioned, Jim, how is it different from 30 years ago, at this point, it’s distraction management. So it’s attention management. So if you can manage your attention better, you’re going to be more productive, like, it’s just going to be the simple byproduct without you having to worry about anything else. Don’t worry about all the apps don’t worry about all your project management tools, let’s just focus on our attention. So Oh, I’m so bummed I don’t have this here. I just left it downstairs. But I have this little cube. So talk about something non technology, it’s this cube. And obviously, it’s a cube is six sides. And you can just get them off Amazon, it literally is called I think it’s called a timer cube. And one side is 510 15 3060. And so for however long, you want to stay in focus, you just hit you just put down that side, you’re like, I just need to focus for 15 minutes, okay, that means I’m going to turn off my phone or just put it in my desk, I’m going to like, tell my assistant or you know, I’m not taking any calls, I’m gonna put a sign on the door, like, do those things be like, my thoughts cannot get in the way for 15 minutes, I was gonna do that. And you put the 15 minute thing and you work on that or you were like, I wanna do 20 Min. Or like, I just want to do five minutes, right? Again, you’re building it up, you’re building that muscle. I use this with my teenagers, I use it for me, I have, like I said, I always have one of my office. I was working downstairs today. I use it all the time. So don’t worry about all the apps and all those things. Start with the basics. We’re speaking

Jim Hacking
with Mary Sue Parakh today, and we’re really glad to have her, you know, I’m a morning person. I was texting Tyson at 430 this morning on my way to the gym. And I have a ton of energy in the morning. Any tips for the end of the day now, before I got on 75 hard and do my exercise and stuff that was when I would eat and sort of relax or reward myself. Any good tips for end of the day routines, like maybe before you go home from work

Mridu Parikh
before you go home from work. Okay, so yeah, well, it sounds like first of all, I want to commend you on your mornings, I don’t get up and I always like to say this because I am a productivity person, right, a pro whatever. And I do not get up at four or five in the morning. But I can tell we’ll still have a really productive day. So just want to let everyone know that for who doesn’t do that. You can set a really productive day not getting up super early, but I’m so glad that you do and that you make your morning so valuable and it sounds like you’re doing some of those really hard things in the morning. I know for me exercise would be the hardest thing. So one, just start there, like don’t leave those really, really, really hard things for you the things you always procrastinate the things that ever happened to the end of the day. So that’s the number one thing, just don’t. So if that’s what you’re doing right now figure out how can I switch that and work with my energy instead of against it? Like we’re fighting our energy and our willpower all day, right? Whether it’s like not picking up our phones, or dealing with our clients, like you don’t need to add another level of fighting that so first of all work with your energy and say, like, what do I need to get done in the morning. And then as far as the end of the day, I believe the best days, the most productive mornings, and most productive days, start the night before. So it’s the thinking that goes into the evening before. So let’s say you’re you’re about to leave work, I would just close up some loose ends in terms of, I mean, physically, maybe just clear off the papers on your desk. Some of the things you know, maybe it’s like, just plan your day. What is my top goal for tomorrow? What are my top three things I’ve got to get done? Jot it down on a on a sticky, don’t overcomplicate this, just think it through, right, when you’re at home at night, where if I have a meeting in the morning, what are the directions? Can I get it on ways? Do you know what am I going to wear? Do I need to pack up stuff for lunch? Like what is it that will help those few things that will make you successful for the next day is how I would think about the night. So when I think about my day, I have different kind of, I think of it in quarters almost or thirds at least. So maybe the morning is like like we were saying maybe for those activities that I don’t get to that I really need the energy and brain work for midday is generally for some more kind of creative work. For me, that’s just how my energy level works later in the afternoon is more mundane things, and in the evening is for prep and planning. So when I start thinking about my days and like a little bit more organized like this, it again kind of just gives me like a guidepost at night, like what are those things I can do to prep and plan for tomorrow? And by the way, put a little checklist of five things, just having a little checklist put on your phone, or put on your fridge? Or put your bedside table? You’re like, oh, wait, did I pick out my clothes? Did I do I know where I’m going in the morning? Did I check my calendar to see, do I have a meeting at 7am? Or drive at 9am? Like when’s my first you know, my first responsibility in the morning, did I pick you know, and it just like look at my calendar for the day. So I have this little checklist. And a really easy way that I do it is I put it on my phone, and it like pops up at 1030. And it’s so it’s a reminder, it’s like an event on my phone and in that in the description are my five things for my checklist. And so it’s just a little reminder to me before I go to bed Wait, did I just look at all these things because even though I’ve been doing this for a dozen years, I forget to do these basic things I forget to do them, I just another one I have is I like to put my skin a little bit personal here. But I like to put my workout clothes, like my yoga pants at the foot of my bed. So when I wake up, I put them on. And that just kind of gets me even if I don’t work out, it gets me in a more active kind of mindset in the morning. So but I forget there are so many nights, I forgot to go get them from my closet and put them there. But then I see it on my checklist and events there. So it just doesn’t matter how often you’re doing these things you could always use I think everyone can use that reinforcement.

Tyson Mutrux
That’s that’s really good. I have a must steal the one about work putting in my workout clothes. I’m not gonna put them on the on the end of my bed because I got OCD, but I’ll put them like on my dresser or something. So I can see. Here’s a question I have for you where, like I have a very structured week, like Jim can tell you like my week is extremely structured. But what happens especially with federal cases, because judges, federal judges like to just like, you know, say we’re having court on this day and not really ask you about it. Yeah. And so there’s some times where I don’t have an option as to when I can have court, we’re told when we kind of coordinate, it’s really frustrating to me. So do you have any tips on managing things like that? Because it’s it’s an annoying part of my week to be completely honest with you know, it doesn’t happen as often settle handles many cases. But it does happen. It’s frustrating. So getting tip sores.

Mridu Parikh
Yeah, no, it’s totally frustrated. Yeah, things pop up in the calendar, right, you’re like my caseload is it’s some it is just out of your control many times, right? Or even something personally, someone’s sick in the house or something happened, and you know, and that and that throws everything off. So I think the way to manage it, is to actually manage it and not deflect it and not pretend it’s not happening. I think that there’s a lot of us who be like, this thing popped up. So now it’s out of my control. So now my whole week has gone awry. So now I’ll just like you know, I’ll just be reacting all day and my week has blown up and I’ll just let things I’ll just deal with them as they come. I know for some reason. It’s like, yes, that happens. I got it like that day happens, but it seems to shut a lot of us down completely. Like there’s just a sense of I’ve given up everything’s out of my control. We’re actually yeah, that day came up. It wasn’t on your radar. It wasn’t you know, wasn’t in the plan. But if we get back to managing it and saying Okay, well, now this happened. And I take 10 minutes, five minutes to just just assess to be like, well, how does this impact everything else? Well, then maybe I have to switch everything I was gonna do today to tomorrow. And that has to push back other things. Or maybe I need to put up some different boundaries with my clients, or maybe I need to, you know, let my colleagues know that things are some changes are like, How can I react in a way that’s intentional and more deliberate? Versus this? Like, oh, my gosh, it’s all out of my control. There’s no way I’m all behind. On I understand that, because I’ve done it too. But it’s not helping. So actually does deal with it. And the second one, I don’t mean deal with it. When I say do that mean, look at your calendar, move things take that time, but it’s always going to come down to like, taking a little bit of time to think it through. And I’ll say the biggest thing I know, gosh, I definitely, you know, in any high achieving industry, especially, I mean, for lawyers are, you know, any high achievers, when you’re in the midst of chaos, when you’re in overwhelm, when everything’s being thrown at you, the most counterintuitive thing is to step back and be like, I just really liked to put some time to think about this right now. Like that’s completely opposite of what your brain is telling you what you’re like, and your neurology is telling you, it is telling you to it’s like the fight or flight like just get in there, put your head down, deal with it and do the staff. So where the practice comes in is having that awareness to pull yourself back and replan and reprioritize and rejigger things, because that investment of time will always give you more time. Always, always. But it’s so counterintuitive. So that’s what I will leave you with is like just remind ourselves that this investment of my time, although it seems like the worst plan right now is always going to give me more time and more clarity and more focus back.

Jim Hacking
That’s awesome. Me too. My favorite word that came out of today’s podcast. It’s a word that some people in my office like to do. It’s catastrophize. So I’m really excited about Castro position. And the Castro Pfizer’s in my office. So anyway, for our listeners who want to get a hold of you, what are all the best ways to contact you and your company?

Mridu Parikh
Yeah, well, I’m in all places Life Is Organized. Come on over to my website, I feel like that’s, you’ll get to know me really well. I’m on Instagram and Facebook Life Is Organized. But also it should since you’re listening to this, you’re probably a fan of podcasts. So come on over to the productivity on purpose podcast, it is geared towards women, business owners, but we can all take these tips are all universal. So come join me there. And I also have a book and you can find that over on my website as well.

Tyson Mutrux
Good stuff. All right, we are going to wrap things up before I do want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group, just go to Facebook and search maximum lawyer, you’ll be able to find us. If you want a more high level conversation, go to max law guild.com. We hope you’ll join us there. And while you’re listening to the rest of this episode, if you don’t mind giving us a five star review. Wherever you get your podcasts, we will greatly appreciate it. It really does help spread the love. And he gives this information to lawyers that really need it. So we hope you’ll help share that and tell a friend about us. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking
Well, you know, we spent a lot of time on here talking about loom and the value of asynchronous communication. I have a couple service providers who don’t really do phone calls, they just communicate to us with loom recordings, which I appreciate. And I came upon a little hack that helps with those. And that is loom allows you to set the speed that you’re listening to the Luma on. And if you set it at like 1.7 or 2.0, you can also turn on the transcript and you can read it while they’re talking. And you can get through it twice as fast.

Tyson Mutrux
I liked it a lot. I liked that whenever it comes out of your books too. Because you can just you can get a book that’s like 12 hours you can read it like six or seven or listen to in six or seven. So it’s good stuff. All right, Maria, I think I might have I feel like I’ve gotten your name right the entire time. Except for I tend to one time I got to run but and redo. We always ask our guests to give a tip or a hack of the week, do you and it could be a podcast, it could be a book, it could be a quote could be whatever. So do you have a tip or a heck for our listeners?

Mridu Parikh
Wow. Okay, so I’m actually going to I thought about this, I’m going to just reinforce what I said primarily because I think the things we need to hear need to be reinforced over and over and over again. And that’s how they they finally stick. So I’m gonna leave you with the question that question that you said, Tyson you’re gonna start using you know what will make me feel most successful when my head hits the pillow tonight. If you if you ask yourself that question every day, if you lead your day with that, if you commit to that, there’s no doubt in my mind, you will be more successful. You’ll get your results quicker sooner, and you will feel more productive.

Tyson Mutrux
I wrote it down twice because I didn’t get 100% right the first time so I’m glad you said it again. because it’s I was gonna ask you about it. So I’m glad you did. Because that’s, that’s great. It’s I’m changing what the question I asked myself. So that’s, that’s really, really good. I love it. That’s great. And this is in addition to the tip you gave about the timer, because I already have pulled up on Amazon over here. So I’m gonna get that as soon as we’re done. There’s some really cool ones on here too. And just people No, so really cool. I’m gonna spend like the next 30 minutes, like binging about timers, until I find the perfect one. But my tip of the week, it’s pretty simple. It’s good. It kind of goes with our episode when it comes to time management is have an agenda for your meetings, we have all of our meetings have agendas, like in the calendar invite. So when it comes to our our pod review meetings, when it comes to our leadership meetings, when it comes to our we have what we call it an administrative review meeting, we have agendas for all of them. And it really helps streamline things. So you don’t just show up, oh, what are we talking about today? It’s very, very structured. And it saves us a ton of time. So I really, really recommend agendas for your meetings, because especially for meetings, you’re not there. Because if you have these meetings and you don’t have an agenda, people are just going to waste time. They’re not because they’re meeting to waste time just because they don’t know what to do. So give them an agenda, have them follow it and it’ll help streamline things. But redo. Thank you so much for joining us. I really enjoyed this podcast as someone that likes to have a structured week and organize things. I really, really appreciate it. So thank you so much.

Mridu Parikh
Thanks for having this. This was a great questions. And I really, really appreciate you sharing me with your audience. I hope everyone walks away with some value.

Jim Hacking
I think they will. Thanks so much. I

Tyson Mutrux
had no doubt in my mind. Thank you, Marie. They’ll appreciate it.

Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content content, go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.


Where is your best dollar spent in marketing your law firm? What do you need to have in place before you get started? What are the biggest marketing mistakes lawyers need to be aware of? This and more is what our guest, Chris Casseday gives advice about on today’s podcast episode. 

Chris is the director of operations at GNGF. He specializes in creating strategic marketing plans for law firms across the country. Over the past decade, Chris has helped drive millions of dollars of revenue for clients and is a strategic marketing leader over 15 years of SEO and is Google ad certified. Seeing his client’s online presence and revenue growth motivates Chris to work with energy and passion every single day. 

Episode Highlights:

2:45 Meet Chris 

4:27 Where is the best dollar spent for the next 5 to 10 years? 

6:36 What are some of the things structurally that people need to be thinking about before marketing?

8:33 What is a marketing funnel with strategies and tactics that need to be thought through? 

10:32 How do you move the wrong people out of the funnel and why is this important?

11:37 Web 2.0? Is it a thing?

12:29 Let talk about the mindset of leading with value first …

15:00 What to use as a lead magnet? Is there something working now?

18:03 2 to 3 biggest mistakes that lawyers make in marketing …

20:06 Is Google getting worse?

22:16 The importance of small victories when marketing 

Jim’s Hack: So for my hack of the week, I want you to think like an Eagle Scout. They have to do a project. A project they can not do all by themselves.They have to get help. So ask yourself — Who can I get to help with this? What can I delegate and how can I get different people involved in the project? 

Chris’s Hack: Schedule your 2023 and beyond, from goals to marketing meeting, Then pull in help when you need to, but if you don’t schedule that meeting, it’s gonna be March before you know it, and you’re gonna be behind the eight ball and not reach your goals for 2023. Get it done! 

Tyson’s Tip:  Audit the potential new client experience from the leads perspective. How easy or difficult is it for them to reach out to you? I would assume that all of us will probably find that it’s not nearly as good as what we would hope. 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube. 

Connect with Chris:

Resources:

Transcript: How To Market Your Law Firm to Grow Your Revenue with Chris Casseday

Speaker 1
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. My name is Jim hacking.

Tyson Mutrux
And my name is Tyson nutrix. What’s up Jimmy?

Jim Hacking
Oh, just being a little silly. I was just sitting in the lunchroom with some of our team members. And I was telling them, we’re getting ready to move out of our space. And I was showing them how little space we had when we first moved in and how much we’ve expanded over the last five years. So it was I had them all surprised and laughing.

Tyson Mutrux
Pretty cool. How is the move coming along?

Jim Hacking
Oh, we’re just getting started. So we’re recording this right before Thanksgiving. And we’ll be moving December 16. So a couple of weeks, and we’re only moving 1.1 miles away. But you think it was like moving to Alaska or something,

Tyson Mutrux
I am watching your move with great interest, because my goal is to wait for some of these prices to go way down. I’m hoping to take advantage of the recession. I know that’s not a fantastic thing to say. But I’m hoping that some of the prices go down. And I because I’d like to see mo see how it goes with you and how smoothly it goes with you. And that’s something that maybe for 2023 or 2024. That may be one of our goals where we try to buy ourselves a building. So I think it’s a I think it’s a smart investment on your part. So I’m really curious to see how it goes.

Jim Hacking
Awesome. Well, you want to go ahead and introduce our guest today?

Tyson Mutrux
I absolutely do. Chris is the director of operations at GN GFE specializes in creating strategic marketing plans for law firms across the country. Over the past decade, Chris has helped drive millions of dollars of revenue for clients of GE mgf. Chris is a strategic marketing leader. And he has over 15 years of SEO and SEM experience. And is Google Ads certified. By the way, I’m reading this it is so far away from me on my screen. So it’s hard for me to read, but I’m getting through it seeing his clients online presence and revenue grow motivates Chris to working with energy and passion every single day. Chris Cassidy, welcome to the show. And you’ve been a friend of the show. You’ve been in the Facebook group for many, many years. It’s taken way too long to get you on. But welcome.

Chris Casseday
Thank you. Yeah, what an intro. Love it. Yeah, I have been I don’t know the exact number. But I know I’m sub 100 in the Facebook group, which is pretty cool.

Tyson Mutrux
I didn’t even know that. That’s impressive. That is very cool. Nice. Yeah,

Chris Casseday
I believed in the vision and I’ve stuck around. So love it.

Jim Hacking
Well, big points to you for that. So Chris, tell us a little bit about what g&g F is what your role is there and sort of how you’ve come to be in the sphere that you’re in?

Chris Casseday
Yeah. So I mean, G and Jeff has a marketing agency only for law firms, right? There’s plenty of us out there. We’re, you know, friendly competitors with a bunch of the ones that we all know, which is great, because, you know, we want lawyers to put money into marketing but not get, you know, that bad SEO stigma, you know, that is out there. Right. Sometimes people think lawyers have a bad stigma around them, SEO people do as well, for sure. So we’re trying to course correct that a little bit, you know, one client at a time, if you will. And my claim to fame is I was G and Jeff’s first employee 11 years ago. So I’ve seen a lot. You know, Jim, you’re talking with your team about how things are growing and moving. I’ve seen everything right, since day one. So it’s really cool to see. And it’s really cool to work with great clients. Right? So I’m the Director of Operations, I run all of our client operations team, which is not sales and marketing, but everything else pretty much. So once your g&g F client, my team is leading that strategy with you. And we do website design development, SEO, paid ads, Ott, you know, just anything digital is in our sweet spot, for sure. And we have clients all across the country and some in Canada.

Tyson Mutrux
So what I like about g&g F is you will kind of do a little bit of everything in a really, really good way of an effective way. And because there’s a lot of companies that just do SEO, or they just do paid ads. And so I do think it’s cool. It’s sort of an all in one solution. But I want to talk about all that stuff. I want to jump right in, I want to I want to hit you with some challenging questions, because I kind of want to know where we are headed in the next five to 10 years. I want to know if you if you will have an idea if you’ve got your thumb on the polls to kind of figure out where is the best dollar spent right now for the next five to 10 years?

Chris Casseday
Yeah, I mean, I think that we need to really look at the idea of funnel and branding and you know diversifying right which is the easy answer but some people miss it. Some people are like I need leads tomorrow I’m gonna put a bunch of money into Google ads. which will get you leads, right. But as soon as you stop the lead stop. So I think being balanced and really looking at what are your goals? And how are you going to get there, right. And not just having that quick Lightning in a Bottle approach. Anytime we come across a client that has that mindset, it’s usually set up for failure, right expectations aren’t going to get met, or random expectations are set or moved without you knowing, right? So the clients that are most successful today will probably still be successful in five to 10 years, if they have this mindset of building a brand, owning what you can, you know, which would be like not relying on paid directories or not relying on things that can change and the rug gets pulled out from under you, right? build that brand be diversified, in this case, do some paid ads, do some SEO, do podcast, write a book, you know, and figure out how that aligns? You know, Jimmy has a great presence on YouTube, right? Which drives, I don’t know, you put in the group like 40 something percent of leads or something, which is insane. That’s awesome. It’s not by accident, though. So I think really looking at the big picture. And doing these plans, right? Like, my big thing is like, what’s the next year gonna look like? But what’s the next three years kind of look like? What’s the next five years going to look like? What are our goals? Are we doing the right strategies to help get us there? Sometimes the stuff you’re doing today might not be the things you’re gonna be doing in five years? Probably not.

Jim Hacking
I love that idea, Chris, of figuring out, you know, building something substantive, that’s going to have value. And it’s gonna give you a good ROI, not in the next three weeks, but in 369 years, what are some of the things structurally that people need to be thinking about if they do want to, but let’s say I’m a relatively new, let’s say, I don’t know, estate planning lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I, I’ve been out on my own for two years, and I want to build a firm that has three lawyers, seven paralegals, a support staff system of another five or six, a little marketing team. If you’re that young lady or that young man, and you’re in that spot, what are the kinds of conversations that you’re having with those kinds of clients?

Chris Casseday
Yeah, I mean, we often have those type of conversations, which is deeper than marketing, right? Marketing can help support that and push that and expedite that. But those are conversations we have with our business. So naturally, we almost whether, you know, we should or not push that on to our clients that we work with, right? Like, what’s your goal? What’s it look like? And like, I feel like a typical marketing agency is probably not approaching it that way. They’re like, you’re paying for six blog posts, and we’re gonna do SEO and paid ads, hope you like it, you know, if our clients goal is I want to hire two attorneys. So I don’t do as much work and I want to be more of the visionary, how do we help get you there, right. And some of that is not going to be like, Oh, paigey, and Jeff to do more things. It’s like, let us use our expertise or our experience to help get you there, whatever that might be. So I feel like goals are important, but how you have those conversations with external vendors, if you will, I feel like doesn’t happen a lot. So I feel like sometimes the attorney or the firm might need to push that, you know, envelope a little bit like, here’s my goal, what are we gonna do to help get me there versus the reverse, right, like, Here, here’s the package you’re buying, you know, I don’t like when agencies or SEO providers sell the package, without that back and forth have that dialogue to say, like, Is this even what is going to help move you forward? You know, sometimes it’s not.

Tyson Mutrux
You used a word before that. Jim and I were talking about a few weeks ago, and it’s the word funnel. And Jim asked me, he said, What do you have? Like, what percentage of lawyers do you think actually know what a funnel is? And I I don’t remember what my response was, it’s pretty damn low. Jim’s guess was pretty damn low. Tell people what a funnel is, but what percentage you talk to lawyers all the time. So what percentage of lawyers actually know what a funnel is?

Chris Casseday
I mean, they know the concept of a funnel but not applied to marketing for sure. I would say it’s very low. You guys are spot on. Simply put, you know, there’s different stages of the funnel, right? You know, there’s going to be like a, at the top of the funnel, it’s wider awareness and people that are probably, in this case, not ready to hire you, you know, but you’re building familiarity. You’re building awareness, it’s top of mind awareness. As we get further and further down. In theory, those people are more ready to buy or more ready to become a client. It’s not an accident, though, that they just magically fall down. You know, so, once people are in your funnel, how are you moving the right people down? And how are you moving the right people out, you know, or the wrong people in this case out because it’s not the right time, or they’re going to be a bad client, whatever it might be. So there’s different strategies and tactics throughout the way you know of each stage of the funnel. Easy example is like a pay per click advertising bottom of the funnel right? Someone has a need, they don’t really care about your brand, you know, they are clicking, they did a search, if they see enough good things, they’re gonna hire you, you know, more top end thing is going to be, we want a lot of visibility, like we’re going to put a lot of educational content out there on YouTube. And some people are going to follow us and watch and then some of those people are going to come down the funnel, if they have, you know, a need to hire a lawyer, you know, so it’s visibility. And then knowing like, where people fall on what strategies fit within the funnel, primarily,

Jim Hacking
you mentioned something that I really struggled with, as related to my funnel, and that was moving people out of the funnel, I thought that I needed to keep everybody in the funnel, and that I needed to be paying attention to every single lead equally, as opposed. I know that sounds dumb, but as opposed to focusing on those that are serious about buying serious about hiring, serious about hiring, maybe now or in the next six months, I just thought that I needed to keep everyone there just on the off chance that they reached out. And when we started focusing on, you know, really following up with those that seem pretty interested. As simple as that sounds, that was a huge shift.

Chris Casseday
Yep, that’s a valid point. 100%, and you’re spot on with the assumption and most people have it have, I’ve gathered these people’s contact information in whatever way I don’t want to lose them, right, because there’s that off chance that it might turn into something. But that effort, whether it’s a little bit or a lot can probably be applied to the people that are closer, you know, to driving revenue for the firm, you know, at the bottom towards the bottom of the funnel. So, great awareness.

Tyson Mutrux
I want to shift gears a little bit because I’ve been hearing about Web 2.0. I think it frankly, is a bunch of hogwash. But I’m sure history will prove me wrong, which is fine. But I don’t get it. I don’t think that people are going to go on web 2.0 to get clients. But I wonder if that’s on your radar. And some of the you will are looking at monitoring and kind of what your thoughts are,

Chris Casseday
I mean, on the radar, but I think I’m skewing more towards where you’re at Tyson versus some of the, you know, the others that are all bought in, you know, who knows something could happen and mature and turn into something. But right now there’s so much going on, where we’re at, and so many clients that can be had and so much business that can be grown like an untapped resources and opportunities and this fear, that’s like, Let’s Let’s dominate this while we can, you know, because there’s so much opportunity. There really is.

Jim Hacking
Chris, one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on the show was, I mean, like you said, You’ve been in the group for a long time, you’re always adding a lot of value. There was a particular post by my friend Dan Schnur Bush about some struggles he was having with Google and you jumped right in and very kindly walked him through what the problem was that he’s having. Talk to us a little bit about that mindset, the mindset of, you know, I don’t know, if you’ve ever gotten any clients out of maximum lawyer, I hope you have. But, you know, that concept of leading with value, I think so many lawyers, like spend so much time thinking about how important they are and how great they are in talking about that, as opposed to, like answering people’s questions, or helping people out, or, you know, moving people along their journey. Talk to us a little bit about that. Well, yeah,

Chris Casseday
yeah, I mean, the example that Dan is a great one, you know, and he’s not a client, and it doesn’t matter. It’s just in that instance, I saw a someone in need and was freaking out. And for those that don’t know, as a website, DNS issue, email not working, just like put yourself in those shoes for a second, like, I don’t know what to do, you know, I’ve put that fire out 100 times over the past decade. So it was a three minute thing for me. And whether it’s three minutes or 30 minutes, I would have done it, you know, like because then that on the other side of the coin, I would want someone to do the same thing for me. So you know that old adage of you know, treat people the way you want to be treated? Yes, so true. But leading with value is huge and trying to help out and that’s why I love the maximum lawyer group, right? Like yes, we have gotten clients from it 100% But whenever I’m engaged with that in the group, that’s not my goal. And I feel like that’s the goal in general what the group is like we’re not selling like don’t sell if you’re selling like delete that post you know, you might be kicked out you guys probably kicked out some people in the day because that’s just not what it’s about. It’s a safe spot for marketers a smaller piece but then lawyers that like marketing to come together awesome, like the best group on Facebook that I’m in I think so. You know, I this is how I’ve always operated I’m a serial like entrepreneur I’ve built separate businesses I’ve helped build this business I’ve helped friends build businesses not related to legal like you name it like if I can help for five minutes and save someone hours a headache like that’s what gets me going you know?

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, we’ve we’ve kicked out hundreds of people and spent a lot of effort keeping out people that are you know, the marketing vultures the world but with led, let’s start with leading with value when it comes to attorneys, and let’s say websites, let’s do a website. Obviously, a lot of the information on there is leading with value. You’re providing that information. But it used to be that you would offer a lead magnet, like let’s say it was a book or something like that, you know. So when it comes to leading with value when it comes to lead magnets and all that, is there, is there something that’s working better over other things right now? Like whenever it used to be like a free book, I don’t think that’s a thing anymore. Like what’s working? Now?

Chris Casseday
It varies, but honestly, it comes down to like getting people where they want to go faster. If for this state planning example, it might literally be a webinar, right? There’s so much I can’t digest it all. I’m not gonna read your whole website, and even then, how does that apply to me? Hey, join this webinar, you can ask questions, q&a, whatever, it’s an hour of time, you know, webinar conversion rates super high, you know, 20 people attend, signed six people up whatever it might be, when we’re not thinking about that, or not thinking about like a lead magnet or something, just the way that the website is built and structured. Think about if someone you know, is in a car accident, if they come here, to your homepage, what’s the next step? You want them to take? You know, put yourself in their shoes? What’s the journey? Is it just call you? Or is it like, what obstacles do we need to overcome? Right? Are you the right law firm for the job? Do you have reviews? You know, do you have content that talks right about my specific situation? Are you you know, do I talk to the insurance company or not, you know, those those type of things, it really comes down to knowing the path that your prospective clients are going down and meeting them there and holding their hand right? Like, don’t just have a page one page on your site that says, Yeah, we do car accidents, you know, if you’re in one call us, it’s like, how can we meet them closer to where they’re at? You know, what questions do they have those type of things, you know, but easy, right? Like downloading, you know, a guide or a lead magnet or getting our free book, like, that’s great, great for branding, great for expertise, you know, credibility building, but how can you help them right now is I think the gap that we don’t want to lose. You know,

Jim Hacking
you’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast, our guest today, Chris Cassidy. He’s the director of operations for g&g F marketing. He’s an OG maximum lawyer member. And we’re glad to have him on the show today. Chris, if I were to ask you, what are the two or three biggest mistakes when it comes to marketing that you see lawyers make a while and law firms like ones that want to grow? What are some common mistakes? Or what I’d really like to know? What are some common mindset problems that people have?

Chris Casseday
Great question, I think they’re very intertwined. You know, like, I was just had another meeting right before this. And one theme that is consistent, that always pops up, you know, when we look at our clients, and I think it’s not just obviously unique to GGF, but unique to lawyers that are investing in marketing is, you make that decision at some point to say, I’m ready to invest in marketing, you know, I have my firm, I have a website that I’ve built myself or whatever it is, but I need help, you know, which is a smart decision, right? Just like, Hey, you can’t do this case, by yourself, you should hire an attorney, which is true, we all relate to that. I think the issue that some firms fall into is, this is a lot of money that I’m spending on marketing, say in the first year, and then if they don’t see the direct ROI, return on on that investment. Some are saying, This isn’t for me, you know, I gotta stop. And as a lot of people listening, and you guys probably know, you’re not gonna get that direct, you know, ROI, in this short time period, sometimes depending on what it is. So like website, content, SEO, some things take time. And it’s not like, you know, me as an SEO expert, saying that to like, Pat our numbers or say, we need more time to figure this out. Sometimes it’s just what it is, you know, you went to from nothing to whatever, 10 million views on YouTube over what series of years, right? It’s not like overnight. So what I don’t like to see is when lawyers jump off the ship too soon, and then get that bad taste in their mouth about marketing. And then never go back to it, you know, in that capacity. And it’s just like, what happens if you wouldn’t have jumped off, and you would have kept your foot on the gas. And then in year three, you know, you’re getting leads for $60. And they’re, you know, six figure car accident cases, you know, ROI easy. So like that’s, I’ve seen a lot of firms leap too soon and not, you know, lean into the positive KPIs and things that are moving in the right direction, just because the ROI isn’t there yet.

Tyson Mutrux
Chris, let me ask you about something. So I listened to over the weekend, a podcast, it’s Freakonomics Radio with Stephen Dubner and the podcast was is Google getting worse and they give the example in that podcast about plumbers whenever the Yellow Pages Is were really big and how they did the study. And they found that the worst plumbers are the ones that they would like to have like the a triple, you know, whatever plumbing and a one plumbing, but but they would get the most customers, right. And they were kind of analogizing that to how Google is sort of becoming where it’s almost the same thing. And I just want to get your thoughts generally on that and what you’re seeing.

Chris Casseday
I mean, you definitely have the equivalent, right. You know, nowadays with the Google My Business, or Google business profile people, you know, mashing up their business name, and you know, those type of things. I feel like it’s getting better. You know, there’s a patch there, where it was, like, you know, feels like every listing is spam in that capacity. So it’s still going to be there. It’s inevitable, I think Google is trying to combat it. Which, by the way, anything with Google My Business, or now Google business profile, like adding new locations, or things like it’s way harder to add things, you know, the days of the phone or the postcard, like, usually now, it’s like video verification, like, pull out your phone while you’re at your office show us, you know, we’re gonna get on with a live person. It’s like, whoa. So that goes to that point. I think Google’s doing what they can, but it’s just, it’s, it feels like the Wild Wild West, sometimes, you know, like, what’s next? And there’s going to be a new thing that people are going to spam and then it’s going to get, you know, reined in a little bit. But for the most part, I feel like it’s, it’s not as bad as it’s been. Hopefully, that’s a good thing.

Jim Hacking
Chris, one of the things that I’ve noticed with my SEO company that really makes me happy is they they focus on incremental improvements, just getting a click through rate or conversion rate just to go up 1% or half a percent. Can you talk about the importance of sort of small victories when it comes to marketing? Yeah,

Chris Casseday
yeah. I mean, the small victories are there, for a lot of firms or all of them, I think, they’re not easily realized, if you’re not a looking at the numbers or knowing how to interpret them, right? Like a click through rate is 3%. All right, 3%, sounds horrible, you know, oh, actually, no, 3% is great, you know, in this capacity, whatever it might be, right. So that’s where like the marketing agency, or whoever you’re working with, is going to have that, that color with it to say, like, we increased by half a percent on the on the surface, like, if I told my wife, it increased by half a percent, she’s like, What is like half a percent, that’s nothing. But in like marketing sense, depending on what it is, it’s like, that’s huge. Like, that’s, you know, 50, more clicks, and seven more leads, and two more clients huge. So, you know, to that end, like the idea of like, conversion rate optimization, I think is neglected. And the way that I will put that, in easier terms to understand is, say you have 500 people coming to your site, per week, or month, or whatever it is, say you convert, and walk, convert a lead, you know, 10% of those, which is healthy, really healthy. So you did a few tweaks that move that up from 10 to 11. What type of impact does that have for the year? You know, like, in one month, hey, we got, you know, three more leads, or whatever it is, for the year, we got 36 more leads, and we normally convert leads, add this percentage, you know, say it’s 30%, or whatever it is, wow, we made that one change. And we got five more clients from it. How do we do more of that? And, you know, it’s not just hope and pray that something happens, we make a change, monitor it, measure against it and say, Let’s do it again. You know, that work? So that’s in the grand scheme of things easy. It’s not, hey, we need to double traffic by in six months, which is a big ask, it’s how do we squeeze a little bit more from the traffic we’ve already worked really hard to get. So I think that’s something that gets lost. And that’s something that should be continually evaluated.

Tyson Mutrux
Love it. Great advice. All right, Chris, we are up against the time. So I am going to start to wrap things up before I do want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. Great people like Chris are in the Facebook group. And Chris, he’s always contributing. So we definitely appreciate your contribution, Chris. So join us there. If you want to more high level conversation, go to the guild, go to max law guild.com. We’d love to see you. And while you listen to the rest of this episode, if you don’t mind giving us a five star review. We would greatly appreciate it. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking
So for my hack of the week, I want you to think like an Eagle Scout. So when an Eagle Scout or someone who’s about ready to apply to be an Eagle Scout wants to complete it. They have to do a project and here’s the thing. They can’t do the project all by themselves, they have to get help. So for instance, we had a young man in our troop back when the boys were younger, who wanted to build a wooden walkway between the church part Looking like next to our school to the school because it was real muddy and everybody was tracking in mud. And so he had to find different people to help. He had to have someone sort of do the survey, he had to have someone do the design, and then he had to go figure out how to get the wood. And it was a much bigger project than just he himself Mason could pull off. So when you find yourself at your firm, you know, we talk all the time about how you don’t have to do everything yourself. But I think that thinking like an Eagle Scout is a good mindset. It’s like, who can I get to help with this? What can I delegate? And how can I get different people involved in the project overall?

Tyson Mutrux
Great advice. Your Bob never thought of it that way. So good stuff. Chris. You I’m assuming by now I know exactly what we’re going to ask you next. So what is your tip or hack of the week?

Chris Casseday
I would say it’s hack of the week. But it fits because it’s, you know, we’re getting close to the end of the year. So my hack of the week is schedule your 2023. And beyond goals slash marketing meeting, whatever you want to call it. You know, whether you use traction or EOS to guide things great. If not, have the meeting, get some stuff down to Jimmy’s point, pull in help when you need to. But if you don’t schedule that meeting, it’s going to be March before you know it and you’re going to be behind the eight ball and not reach your goals for 2023. You know, we still got time. We still got time before the end of the year. So let’s get it done.

Tyson Mutrux
It’s funny, we’ve not had a guest in a long time that’s regularly called Jim. Jimmy. I just love it. I just love it. So much. Really how it would be is yes, I love it. I love it. It’s like

Chris Casseday
sub 100. And of the group, I can do that. Maybe I just you know, yeah, maybe not. Next time. I can say Jim, but all right.

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. I absolutely love it. All right. So my tip of the week is to, I figured this was kind of fitting because we’re having you on here Chris is like audit your the potential new client experience from the legal perspective, right? So audit that and see what it’s like do like test it out yourself. So go to your website, tested out what it’s like to actually contact your firm. And another way of doing it is actually reaching out to some of your clients that have hired you ask them what the process was like. But then also ask some people that are friends of yours. Hey, go through the process. And you tell me what you think. And how easy or difficult is it for them to reach out to you. So audit that experience. And I’m assuming that all of us will probably find that it’s not nearly as good as what we would hope. So that is my tip of the week. Chris, thank you so much for coming on really early. Appreciate it. We’ll have to have you on some more because I think that your tidbits are fantastic.

Chris Casseday
Appreciate the opportunity. And yeah, I’m always, always game for it. You guys have built a great group so happy to contribute where I can for sure. Thanks, bud.

Tyson Mutrux
Sweet. Thanks, Chris.

Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your host and to access more content content, go to maximum liar.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.


What if you could grow your leads, following and relationships with clients using social media marketing that cost you nothing? That is what our guest on the show, Kathleen Martinez did with TikTok. 

Showing off her funny, controversial, and passion for immigration law, Kathleen has grown her TikTok following to over 800K+ by showing up consistently and being herself. 

In this episode she goes over tips and tricks she’s learned along the way of growing her TikTok following as a law firm owner. She also dives into an easy way you can get started today on social media. Including biggest marketing challenges and making sure you set up an easy funnel for your leads to reach you AFTER they watch your videos and consume your content. 

Listen in!

Episode Highlights: 

1:54 Meet Kathleen

2:58 How to be a full-time virtual law firm?! 

4:07 What would be your biggest challenge as a law firm owner?! Including the biggest mistakes on TikTok …

6:02 TikTok process from Kathleen … including a call to action  

10:38 How long until you see traction on TikTok

12:55 How to post on TikTok AND Instagram … 

13:46 Using TikTok as a funnel 

14:36 What’s upcoming in TikTok land?!  

16:23 TikTok as a search engine?! And will TikTok overtake YouTube 

18:57 Starting out on TikTok?! Listen to Kathleen’s first steps here … 

Jim’s Hack: Jerry Seinfeld quote from an interview that he gave with a Harvard business:

“It’s very important to know what you don’t like. A big part of innovation is saying, you know what I’m really sick of? For me, that was talk shows where music plays. Somebody walks out to a desk, shakes hands with the host and sits down. How are you? You look great. I’m also sick of people who are really there just to sell their show or. So what am I really sick of? Is a great place for innovation to begin.”

So I just love that we can ask ourselves “What’s something that’s annoying me or that I really don’t like?” and then go against the grain and do something else.

Kathleen’s Tip: Do not be afraid to not only use social media, BUT be yourself on it! There are no judges on TikTok, their just regular people who wanna get to know you as a person, also as a lawyer. So show up as “yourself!” 

Tyson’s Tip: A trick to “be yourself on social media” is to visualize yourself being yourself and being that positive presence, in front of the camera. It’s an effective and simple tool that I recommend.

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube. 

Connect with Kathleen:

Resources:

Transcript: Using TikTok As A Law Firm Owner with Kathleen Martinez

Speaker 1
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

Tyson Mutrux
Jim hacking and tasty metrics. What’s up, Jimmy?

Jim Hacking
Oh, Tyson. Good to see you again. And I heard that you had a little victory that you just found out about

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, really big case. exciting result we just got an appeal back we lost at the circuit level on a motion to dismiss which we completely disagreed with the judge’s decision and we just just moments ago got the appeal back the appellate court said nope, not so fast and it back down at Circuit Court. So we went on that really exciting because it’s a tragic case where the little little girl Madison was she end up dying and so I’m not gonna go into all the details but just because it is in still isn’t litigation little two year old girl. And I’m excited that I was able to to call the grandmother right before this podcast to tell her that they were going to really get some justice. So go after justice. So I’m just happy we’re gonna bill to get the chance to do it doesn’t mean we’re going to win, but at least we’re gonna have a chance to go after him. So

Jim Hacking
pretty excited about it. That’s great. You want to go ahead and introduce our guests for today’s show.

Tyson Mutrux
Absolutely. Our guest today is Kathleen Martinez. Kathleen is an attorney. She founded Martinez immigration. She received her bachelor’s degree from Mountain St. Mary’s University in Los Angeles, and her doctorate from Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego. She has been practicing for over five years and is proud to provide services to the immigrant community. Their mission is to reunite families easily. And effectively. Kathleen, welcome to the show.

Kathleen Martinez
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Jim Hacking
Kathleen, why don’t you go ahead and tell us a little bit about your journey to becoming a lawyer and then opening up your own firm?

Kathleen Martinez
Sure. Yeah. So I mean, I think I, like most lawyers found my path to a legal career in college. They’re like mock trial, moot court, all of that. So that’s when I really decided I wanted to kind of do that full time as an attorney. In law school, I did a few internships with immigration, family law, you know, I kind of wanted to find out what I wanted to do. And I really fell in love with immigration with my internship, specifically in an immigration firm. When I was licensed, I went straight into a family law practice, obviously, that was hectic at the least. And so I started helping my family law clients here in Texas with their immigration matters, because they didn’t want to hire somebody else. So I kind of trained myself in that worked for another immigration firm, and then decided I wanted to do that full time in the pandemic. Now, the pandemic was really why I started my own firm in a virtual format. So we’re entirely virtual, we do have a physical office, we just really don’t use it. Obviously, immigration is federal law. So it allows us to help clients in all 50 states virtually, with it

Tyson Mutrux
being a virtual firm, what are some of the challenges that you’ve faced? And how have you overcome them? Because it’s, it’s not the easiest thing to do in the world?

Kathleen Martinez
Yeah, I mean, I think mainly firms set up with my employees. So they all live all over the country. So our entire firm is like a cloud based system. Everything’s on Drive, everything’s on software, we have like 10 different software programs. Just the setup of that, and going from being trained as more of a traditional lawyer to more of a virtual lawyer was the hardest part. But I can safely say that after about two years, we kind of got a handle on it. And now all my paralegals are virtually trained. So I think that was the biggest challenge. But successfully, we’re over with that.

Jim Hacking
Kathleen, I practice with my spouse. And if she were here, she would ask you, how do you get your packets out? So that’s the actual paper production of USCIS. So paper heavy, how do you handle that being virtual,

Kathleen Martinez
we have a UPS account. So UPS power ups, they pick up the packages from me, and you know, my paralegals houses, they bring them to the clients client side, and they, you know, they review them and then UPS actually picks up the packets from my clients and Bails it off themselves to immigration. So it’s extremely convenient. My clients are happy about that part.

Tyson Mutrux
So I wonder, it sounds like you’ve got a firm that’s running well, that everything’s kind of running smoothly. What would you say your biggest challenges are as a law firm owner?

Kathleen Martinez
Oh, gosh, I mean, I think you know, the biggest challenge like I said earlier with, obviously the initial setup, I think any law firm owner, when you’re learning how to be an entrepreneur, and also marketing, marketing was probably the biggest challenge at first because as an associate attorney, you’re not trained on how to run a business you’re not trained on how to market and grow clients, you know, you’re kind of trained out in the more traditional model of you should just you know, have referrals coming out of the gate. So I really trained myself in a non traditional manner when it comes to tick tock so I do all my marketing on tick tock, it’s all free. It’s the best way to you know, obviously get clients right now as a business owner. So I think that was my biggest challenge as well as, you know, employees hiring the right employees when you’ve never met them physically when you can’t supervise them. And person all of it’s done virtually. So I think that was probably those two are my biggest challenges.

Jim Hacking
Awesome. Well, I’m glad you brought up tick tock, let’s talk about it. What mistakes do you see lawyers make when it comes to tick tock? I have a few ideas mostly about being boring. But besides that, what other myths? Yeah, so

Kathleen Martinez
I’m, yeah, I actually agree with that. See, I have a lot of lawyers who is on the side kind of training when it comes to tick tock and I see a lot of them trying to be boring and professional. I mean, for good reason. But it doesn’t grab the attention of the generation that is currently on tick tock, you have to be like other influencers, you have to grab their attention, you have to have clickbait titles, you have to be entertaining and funny because people don’t have the attention span to watch a 10 minute informational video with their hands crossed on your desk looking like your professional. So that’s the biggest mistake I see with lawyers is not trying to blend with the trends and be someone who a random person would want to stop their scrolling feed on and watch.

Tyson Mutrux
So walk us through your process because I we’ve had some some influencers on before. And everyone has a different process for when it comes to recording the editing, production, all that kind of stuff. So will you walk us through through your process so people have an idea as to how it works for you. Because it’s not as easy as just clipping a video posting on the internet. It’s, there’s a lot more to it.

Kathleen Martinez
Oh my gosh, it took me so long to kind of get the hang of it. It was definitely a learning curve. Yeah, I mean, Instagram and Facebook easier. You just make curated posts for your hire someone to do posts for you with information on it. But for tic toc. I mean, you actually have to yourself, be an entertaining person. You have to be funny, you have to be smart, you have to offer information in a way that grabs the attention of people. So how I did it is I actually hired someone from YouTube, who’s kind of a guru and influencer himself. He coached me specifically on how to make my videos TRENDING. But I have to, I still have to do a lot of research myself. So I mean, every day I’m on YouTube, as I get ready in the morning saying, which hashtags are trending? What are the most trending sounds right now? And how can I use that with immigrant content specifically, so I’ll use a trending sound, and then I’ll make it about how to get a green card. And I’ll just kind of curate it or tailor it to my content. So I typically film two days out of the week, and I’ll just take like, four hours each day, and I’ll film like maybe 3040 videos, and I’ll save them all drafts. So that way, I’m not wasting a lot of time filming. Obviously, at the beginning, it takes a long time to get the hang of it. But once you’re good at it, you know, it actually doesn’t take too much time. With immigration specifically, we’re obviously very dependent on news, because immigration is always changing. And so I’m always looking at the news that morning and seeing how I can update my followers on that as well.

Jim Hacking
Definitely one of the things that I’ve played around with and tick tock is this issue of a call to action, like what are your best ways to get people to raise their hand after you know, commenting or interacting with you on tick tock and bringing them over into potentially being a client?

Kathleen Martinez
Yeah, so I mean, for me, and it’s specifically for immigration, all make very short videos with very cliffhanger texts, like Did you know that you could get a green card from being a victim or witness to a crime and that’s all I’ll say, I won’t give more information. And then all these people watch this tick tock and all what they’re like, wait, I know someone who was a witness to a crime, I had no idea could get a green card this way. I’m gonna call her and I’m gonna schedule a consultation. I also do a lot of live lives are so important for lawyers. So I’ll do like two to three lives a week where I’ll do kind of immigration q&a, obviously, people ask me very specific questions like how can I get a green card? And I’ll be like, I don’t know, you have to schedule a consultation with me. So I’ll give broad general answers and broad general texts on my Tiktok that’ll make them require them to schedule a consultation with me so that they can find out more information.

Tyson Mutrux
When we go live on platforms like Facebook or even YouTube, we use something called stream yard where it allows us to interact with people or we’re using it do you use anything like that when you go live on tick tock? Are you just kind of get your phone out and just start going live?

Kathleen Martinez
I just go live? Yeah, I’m pretty like bare bones about it. But yeah, I mean, I just go live, when my followers have both, you can look at your analytics. And they’re always like the most available around four or 5pm, as well as 8pm. So I’ll go there. And I’ll just do a one hour q&a. And that’s about it. And I have a link in my bio, where you can just directly schedule your own consultation. So it’s really nice. I’m just like, click the link in my bio, they do it themselves, that syncs to my calendar. So it’s the fastest definitely the fastest way to get consultations for my firm.

Jim Hacking
One of the things I talked to people about when it comes to tick tock in YouTube is you never really know which video is going to go viral or get more views. Do you have any sense as to what are some common characteristics of the ones that get the most views and like,

Kathleen Martinez
right, so I mean, you almost it’s very humbling because the algorithm changes every single month. So at the beginning of each month, tick tock will just switch up the algorithm and I’ll even throw Tiktok off and like pause the app for a few days for everybody. But all I actually I will research what trending video so I’ll use hashtags in my niche. So like every Monday I’ll look up those hashtags like immigration and documented, I’ll see the most trending video within my niche and I will literally just copy that video and make it a little bit more my own. So right now I’m note I just do my own research I’m noticing that like five to seven second videos are the biggest trend was long text because Tiktok really prioritizes watch time so like you have a chance of your video being watched 100% of it short. So if it’s five to seven seconds and you have a really long text and it takes them seven seconds to read it, the algorithm is going to push out your video, but I mean, it’s so humbling because it’s always changing right when I think I got it, it’ll change the next month.

Tyson Mutrux
Well, as soon as we get done, I’m doing what you just said. I’m gonna see what happens just to test it out. That’s very cool. How long did it take for you to start to get traction on Tik Tok? Because I’ll be honest with you like I’m doing well on Instagram, but I can’t get like on Instagram. We’re doing really well on reels but tick tock, I’m not getting any traction and there could be a variety of reasons but like how long did it take for you to get traction on Tik Tok?

Kathleen Martinez
You know, it’s a funny speaking of Instagram, I’ve noticed I used to ignore Instagram and now I noticed that they’re competing with Tik Tok. So their reels algorithm is actually better than Tik Tok. Right now, I’m doing better on Instagram at this point. But when it came to Tik Tok, I just made the craziest video possible. I did a video about how I was raised conservative and I went way left when I became an immigration attorney. And it just shocked people. So it was, I guess, seen as like, I don’t know controversial video kind of a shocker i Here I am, like extremely white woman talking about how I was raised conservative and privilege now how it went super left when I became an immigration attorney. And it just shocked people. I mean, I think that’s what initially put me on the algorithm and that I just started talking about how I like standing up for immigrants and misconceptions of immigrants. And I think people really liked seeing someone who looked like me and had my profile really stand up for undocumented immigrants, because that’s not very common on that app. But yeah, I mean, and then I heard him hired my coach and my coach really encouraged me to do the hashtag thing, do research, see, which is the most trending in my niche, copy it, make it my own, use the same hashtags, same sounds, and never actually participate in trends. So you see those trending videos and most often they’re not, they’re kind of stupid, but I’ll use the sound in that trend, and I’ll do something more specific to immigration.

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Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast, our guest today attorney Kathleen Martinez, she has a big following on tick tock. I’m gonna ask a very basic question because I don’t know the answer. So you said you you film your tic tac or you filmed during the day, a bunch of different videos. I honestly don’t know. How do you post on tick tock and post the same thing on Instagram? Is that possible? Or is that what you’re doing? Is that a dumb thing to do?

Kathleen Martinez
No, it’s a smart thing to do. No one has time to just, you know record individual posts for both platforms. What I do is I a website called naps tick SN AP ti K. Don’t use the app, use the website and you can download your tiktoks Without a watermark and repost on Instagram. I reposted on YouTube shorts as well because now YouTube is now competing with Tik Tok. Everyone wants to be Tik Tok. So that is like the biggest hack when it comes to posting on other platforms.

Tyson Mutrux
I love that I wonder how does it work when it comes to the lead gen and then getting them into your funnel? Because I get the idea of it generating leads. But I worry a little bit about having to actually deal with all these messages on a regular basis. So so how do you filter filter them into your funnel other than them scheduling a time to meet with you by through the link?

Kathleen Martinez
Yeah, so I mean, I do have a social media person like on my Instagram, just going through my DMs I just pay her to do that. But we have an automated message that’s like the best way to clear them out. So we have you know, basically anyone asking for immigration questions, she just clicks like respond automated response. And it has the link for them to schedule a consult. And that’s that either like turns them off that they don’t want to pay for it or it makes them schedules. That’s the fastest way to deal with them. But it is a lot of work. That’s why I literally hire someone to do it for me.

Jim Hacking
So what’s next for you? Where are things headed? What’s going to change and tick tock land? What should we be paying attention to?

Kathleen Martinez
Yeah, I mean, I mean, just in general for tick tock. I think the algorithm is constantly going to evolve. Tic tock right now I’m hearing is they’re trying to be more of a search engine so they’re trying to become the next YouTube if they haven’t already. So educational content as well as being entertaining too. Talk is actually starting to favor professionals and less relatable people. So they like doctors, they like lawyers. They’re over the influencer blogger stage of Instagram. They’re trying to get away from perfectly curated aesthetics. So people like us, it’s actually our prime right now, for Tiktok. And in regards to me, I mean, I think we’re just expanding, we’re a virtual firm. So we save a lot of money, all of my employees work from home, which is great, you know, and I think we’re just going to hire more and more and have more clients, which is really nice. But thanks to tick tock, I’ll never spend another dime on marketing, that’s for sure.

Tyson Mutrux
When it comes to the immigration practice, are you wanting to and I know that you, you can sort of practice anywhere, but are you wanting to sort of have like that national reach when it comes to your firm? Or do you want to make it sort of a regional practice?

Kathleen Martinez
We’re not regional at all. I mean, I think we have clients from Texas just because it’s a big state for immigrants, but we have clients all over the country. And that’s because of tick tock so not a lot of people actually know like, even in Texas who followed me on tick tock, so I’m constantly advertising live videos that I can help you with immigration in all 50 states, and then I’m virtual on the right consultations can be done over the phone or over the computer. So I think we’re already at the national level. We’ve talked about maybe wanting to be more regional, but there’s really no point with immigration, we don’t have to be so likely, I think we’re just gonna, you know, expand, but we already have that reach thanks to the internet.

Jim Hacking
One of my kids told me that young people use tic tac for a search engine. Is that true? And how does that work? That is

Kathleen Martinez
correct stop because they’re trying to become the new YouTube. So you know, I don’t know if you’ve noticed on recent videos, if you go to a trending video, you can go to mine, you’ll see on the top, it’ll say like immigration lawyer, I don’t put that there, tick tock does. So they’re trying to make your videos specific to search engines. So how you can do that better is a really long description, with keywords and keywords on your titles as well, and your hashtags, it’s so important to put massive broad keywords in there that people will search, it’s really just all about SEO. So if you could make their content specific to tiktoks, you know, philosophy and their goal of being a search engine, you’ll definitely get a way more vital and very fast.

Tyson Mutrux
Alright, I want to I want to get your bold prediction here. Because Jimmy is a I’d say for lawyers, at least a YouTube legend. And so do you think that Tiktok will overtake YouTube? Or do you think that YouTube will remain the leading search engine? So that’s when he gets your prediction on that?

Kathleen Martinez
Well, that’s funny, because I read this morning, that tick tock is now the leading search engine, but I’m not sure if that was correct. I was gonna ask you guys about that. Because, you know, obviously YouTube has a different a little bit more of a, you know, a different I guess, reach, you know, is longer, more informational videos. But with this new generation, I just don’t think the they have the attention span for long videos with a bunch of ads, and it irritates people to see a ton of ads on videos, or they’re just trying to get a quick video in the next one. So I think with Generation Z, even millennials and with our current attention spans, you know, I think tick tock, if not already will be deleting cert search engine for sure.

Tyson Mutrux
Jim, do you want to take a shot at that one? Well, I’ll

Jim Hacking
just tell you that it took me 10 years to get to like 55,000 subscribers, it took me six months to get the 30,000 followers on Tiktok. So yeah, that’s what that’s worth the algorithm and tic tac land is just, it’s like none other. It’s unbelievable.

Kathleen Martinez
Yeah. And it encourages people to go on tick tock because everyone wants a following. Everyone’s kind of selfish in their own right. So ever, you know, people joined to talk because they’re like, maybe I’ll get a following then they end up following you. The algorithm is just way, way better. Even YouTube shorts. The algorithm isn’t great. My shorts don’t get good views on there, just Instagram reels is finally competing with Tik Tok finally getting up there, but I think YouTube is losing its popularity and I don’t see it being extremely successful in the long run.

Jim Hacking
My daughter is in charge of our tic tac channel for the firm, and she’s helped me follow those trends and do all those things. I’m just wondering if she wants to become a tick tock or what advice do you have for her starting out?

Kathleen Martinez
Yeah, hashtags are huge to understand what your niche is. So if it’s a specific area of law, to be following the biggest creators on Tik Tok and to be copying their content, I’m we all do it all the immigration lawyers, we do the same content, we just copy each other and utilize trending sounds, and really pay attention to the algorithm. So if you see that something some video in your niche has like 5 million views, you need to be copying that right away using the same hashtags, same sound and implementing lives as much as possible to kind of nurture your current following.

Tyson Mutrux
I love this. I can’t wait to re listen to this episode because I’ve already gotten some tips from you that I’m gonna implement right away that we’re not doing so very good stuff. But we do need to wrap things up. We want to be respectful of your time. Before I do. I want to remind everyone to join us In the big Facebook group, and if you want a more high level conversation, go to max law guild.com And join us there. And while you’re listening to our tips and hacks of the week if you don’t mind giving us a five star review, we would greatly appreciate it help spread the love to other attorneys that need the help Kathleen before I go to Jim for his heck the week what is your handle so people can find you?

Kathleen Martinez
It is attorney Martinez just all one term, no capitals or anything like that.

Tyson Mutrux
That’s easy peasy. Love it man. Just lawyer Tyson. So it’s easy peasy. Jimmy, what’s your heavyweight?

Jim Hacking
So it’s surprising how many times I’ve cited Jerry Seinfeld is one of my hacks of the week. But this one gets to a great question on innovation and how to figure out where to go next. And it comes from an interview that he gave with the Harvard Business Review. And the reporter asked him how he came up with his show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. And here’s what Jerry said, it’s very important to know what you don’t like a big part of innovation is saying, You know what I’m really sick of, for me, that was talk shows where music plays somebody walks out to a desk, shakes hands with the host and sits down. How are you You look great. I’m also sick of people who are really there just to sell their show or product. So what am I really sick of is a great place for innovation to begin. So I just love that. And I thought that we as we walk through our days as lawyers, as parents as family members, you know, we can ask ourselves, what’s something that’s annoying me or that I really don’t like and then go against the grain and do something else.

Tyson Mutrux
I really liked it. I love love Jerry Seinfeld, I think he’s great. He’s, he’s like one of the only comedians that can make people laugh without, you know, getting, like cussing a bunch and getting into Yeah, a bunch of other things. A lot. Great stuff. Jimmy. All right, Kathleen. So we always ask our guests to give a tip or hack of the week. It could be a podcast, it could be an influencer. It could be a book could be whatever you got for us. Do you have a tip or a Hackworth?

Kathleen Martinez
I think it’s more broad. But for lawyers specifically, to not be afraid to not only use social media, but be yourself on it. I have a lot of lawyers who are clients of mine in my consulting firm that want that are afraid to use social media too afraid to be genuine, or to use social media in a fun way and not have fun with it. Don’t be afraid, you know, they’re not judges on tick tock. They’re just regular people who want to get to know you as a person. Also, as a lawyer,

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. Very good stuff. And I think my tip might help a little bit, at least with this. So I’ve met with Jason selkoe, a few weeks ago, and he’s, he’s my coach. And so he was, I was telling him like, I felt like I wasn’t being as present at home. And like, we’re like with our kids and everything. And he said, well, like whenever you go through your daily routine, like he’s got this 100 seconds to success, kind of a thing that you go through, somebody calls up, that’s what I’m calling it. And he says to like visualize yourself, being patient with your children and being present with your children. And it really is helpful. So that’s how it would help with when it comes to your tip is like, actually visualize yourself being yourself and being that positive presence in front of the camera or being whatever you want to be in front of that camera for people on Tik Tok, or YouTube or Instagram, whatever it is. So sort of visualize yourself and it really is effective. It’s a it’s a simple, simple tool that’s really, really effective. So I recommend it. Kathleen, thank you so much for joining us. Hopefully people will follow you at attorney Martinez. Lots of great information being shared here. So really appreciate it.

Kathleen Martinez
Thank you so much. Appreciate. Thank you for having me. So yeah, thanks.

Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your host and to access more content. Go to maximum liar.com Have a great week and catch you next time.

Becca Eberhart
Zap with 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

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Do you have a deep desire to travel the world? See different places? Most importantly, meet all the different people? For some people traveling the world is on their bucket list of what they will be doing when they retire.

Today’s podcast episode guest Don McClure took a different approach and sold his house, his cars, packed up his family and now slowly travels the world. All while running his own law firm. 

To hear:

➡️ Why he made this switch

➡️ What made him finally take a step towards this dream 

➡️ What his family all sold to get out of the US 

➡️ Where he is living now 

➡️ How is it physically possible to run a law firm that is stationed in a different time zone than you … Then listen in. 🎧

Episode Highlights:

1:05 Meet Don

5:31 When off on an adventure, what do you do with your house? And the office? And your cars? 

6:49 The decision making process: from law office to living aboard 

9:20 How clients are reacting to the BIG move – how do you tell them? 

11:34 Marketing your law firm while on a “World Tour” 

13:31 How do you deal with the finances and banking? 

14:48 Things that surprised Don from living a laptop lifestyle 

16:12 Favorite moments on the World Tour trip so far? 

17:30 What are some steps that people can do to get ready for a World Trip with the family. 

18:43 Challenges when traveling and practicing law

20:13 Was there any time that you wished you were in the States? And do you wish to move out of the States permanently? 

22:52 Coordinating with a team when you are in different time zones? 

Jim’s Hack: A Quote from Guy Kawasaki from Tim Ferris’s book, Tools of Titans: https://amzn.to/3Gk9yjB

“If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you are the asshole.” 

Don’s Tip: Listen to James Schramko and his one gem strategy where he talks about “Owning the Racetrack”. And with your business this means NOT building a platform on Facebook only, but what are the things you can control? Marketing to my past clients, my present clients, and even my future clients. Those are things that I can control: https://amzn.to/3ifoeIT

Tyson’s Tip: Use Cam.link: https://amzn.to/3Qg69a8 — to turn any camera device into a streaming device. It allows Tyson to connect his LUMIX camera to my computer with an HDMI cable and stream from his camera. Order, download and go for an easy tech double duty solution. 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube

Connect with Don:

Resources:

Transcripts: Slowly Travel The World While Running A Law Firm With Don McClure

Speaker 1
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, Jimbo?

Jim Hacking
Oh Tyson, I’m really excited about our guest today, I’ve been following him. And his adventures for about, I think more than a year now or almost a year. I’m sure he’ll fill us all in. He’s a good friend of ours, he came to the very first Max law con back in the day. And we’re big fans of him. His name is Dan McLaury. Don, welcome to the show.

Don McClure
Thank you for having me. I’m very excited about it

Tyson Mutrux
done. So this is very, very exciting, because you’ve had a chance to do something that many of us have dreamed of doing, but have never taken the leap. But before we get to that, let just tell people about who you are. And really what’s brought you to this journey.

Don McClure
I’ve been practicing for 29 years. I’m coming on 30 years next year. And I’ve done pretty much just about anything I’ve done family law, which I was just not for me. I’ve done criminal defense work, which I did love. And I did personal injury, which I still do now. And I love that a lot. So I’ve done a lot of different things, practice a lot of different kinds of law, I was practicing what I always call threshold law, if it came across the threshold, I would do it. And you know, one of the things I learned, especially going back to the original Max con days, the very first conference and before was to really niche down. And that is something that was hard to do. My clients are almost all Hispanic, they want me to be the lawyer doing everything for them. They have a lot of trust in me. And so it took a lot for me to you know, eat with my wife, y’all know it pretty well. We talked about it a lot. And it was hard decision to niche down because it was little scary to give up income from other areas. But it turned out to be a great decision and allowed me a lot more freedom. And so about seven years ago, I started reading books like Tim Ferriss Four Hour Workweek, not that I really expected four hours to be my workweek. But just the mindset, James Schramko there No, Jim listens to I wrote a book called work less, make more. And it got my, my thoughts going, my mindset was changing. I was thinking about, you know, technology, for example, file vine that I know, I don’t use to Tyson Tyson. But I put it all together. And I started making this plan in my head. And the one thing that was missing was itas approval, which is probably the most important thing. And I have been talking to her about it for a long time. And unfortunately, it was the pandemic, I think that really changed her mindset. Not that we never could do it before. But we wondered how we could do it, how we can still maintain contact with the clients. But with a pandemic happening, we realized we can go at home and the clients were okay with it. They just wanted to be kept updated. They’re okay with text, they didn’t have to meet in person, things changed the way you did business. And the other factor was unfortunately, we had a friend that passed away during the pandemic or due to COVID. And he had just retired, he worked so hard, made lots of money. He was a very good lawyer. And in the end, you know, he had been retired just for a few weeks, you know, when he passed away. And I think that made both of us euthanized feel that, you know, life is too short, you know, what can we do differently? How can we spend more time with the kids and have a lot more freedom?

Jim Hacking
So it’s funny, we went through stages where a lot of people talked about having a kid and then that was the impetus to starting a firm. Now we’re probably going to start getting to the stage where people are talking about, you know, winding down their firm or doing things adventurous like this. Why don’t you explain to our listeners done, what the adventure is that you and Edith have been on? Well, it’s

Don McClure
been almost two years. We’re about a year and a half right now. And we have originally my plan seven years ago was not as ambitious it was to move to Mexico where my wife was originally from. I was talking to litigate cases we do now we refer to somebody helps me litigate them. But I was able to fly back and forth from somewhere in Mexico to Euston which is not that far. But we decided really, Edith really wanted to travel more. So we decided to do that. I’m referring a lot of my cases out now. I do have three children. One of them just graduated college. She’s actually working for me and planning to go to law school next year. And then I have two other ones a 16 year old who’s in high school and a nine year old and they’re both doing real well. And one other thing about the pandemic was we realized that schooling can be done online. And the classes that Nathan is in he there actually he will have a regular high school diploma from Texas just like if he had attended school every day. So now we’re Working a lot we know I think people think we’re only on vacation. But really, we do work a lot, I get up early, the time difference is quite a bit, eight hours, where we are right now is in Romania. We’ve been all over Europe for the last year and a half. And we’re hoping to stay here until about June of next year when we have to go back for Nathan to take the AC t. So it’s been it’s been a lot of fun. But it’s a lot of work. And sometimes it’s exciting. And sometimes it’s just boring, just like being at home. But it’s been a great adventure.

Tyson Mutrux
I have some practical questions that I’m sure a lot of people have. Because I would love to do this. I think this is so awesome. What do you do with like your, like your pets and your car and your house? And like, how do you? How do you deal with things like that?

Don McClure
Well, for sure, you don’t have to go all extreme in like, like cars like we did. But we sold everything we had, except for what could fit into a storage container. And we sold our house, we sold our two cars, we were debt free, so didn’t have to worry about anything, I have an office with a friend that I don’t have to really pay anything, which is really nice. And so it allowed us to have a lot more freedom, not having all the liabilities, you know, a lot of deaths around your neck hanging there. And so it gave us that freedom to be able to do that. But it was scary to do all that. And I’m not saying we won’t have a home in the future that will go back to that will by I doubt it will be in Houston. But it’s allowed us so much freedom and, and so much adventure and in our kids to experience things that they never would do otherwise. And I think I realized, you know, during the pandemic, you know, time is very short. And I only have so much time with my kids over, they grow up and move on and what I want to do, how can I best serve them? And it’s just growing into this?

Jim Hacking
So walk us through the decision making process to try this? What were the fears that you had, what were the things that you were concerned about? What were the big stumbling blocks to letting this work?

Don McClure
Number one was to have the freedom to be able to move around. So for me, that meant I couldn’t do a litigation anymore. So that was the first thing I had to slowly start resolving or referring to somebody else. I also had to get all my technology ready to go for file vine, I have everything online. I don’t need papers anymore. So I’m pretty paperless. I could do you know, through zoom, any meetings, I really need to do automatic text and things like that with the clients. Good communication was definitely probably the most important thing, I miss not checking hands with the clients, I miss not seeing them looking in the eyes, you know, together in one room. But there’s so many more opportunities to I think clients are not really eager to drive. You know, when I was downtown downtown, to come meet with me or to come to my office, even when it was closer, I think that they still want to know who I am. And they want to get a sense of that personality. But they don’t have to meet with me, you know, in person. And I think that was the biggest stumbling block for me is realizing that, that, you know, they don’t have to do that. And they’re okay with that as long as they feel comfortable and have that trust. So I think those were the two biggest things I had to overcome. The other thing, especially for me, where a lot of my clients come from people that we’ve known a long time that could be family, they can be friends that can be former clients, things like that. And how do we stay relevant, because we were always doing things like charity events, we had one called selfies with Santa that we had four or 500 kids every year come to. We had other things we did for the community. And we were wondering, well, what’s going to happen now that we’re not around. And that has been tough. And that’s something we’re still working through. But what I realized when we came back, after a year, our first year, we came back into town. And even people that knew us very well. They seem to confuse that I was still practicing. You know, that was we were still doing personal injury law, that we’ve not retired, we’re not living off retirement. And that was kind of hit me in the face that we were not doing something right, because it is my responsibility in my job to make sure that our clients or potential clients existing or past know that we’re still out here, we’re still working, we’re still available for any type of call and to call us. So that’s something that we’re trying to address. Now.

Tyson Mutrux
That’s a great segue because I want to ask you about how clients are reacting to it. Because let me tell you something like whenever we moved our house from St. Louis to Columbia, and we’ve got the two offices and by far the bulk of our clients are in St. Louis. But I mean, I kind of kept it a secret for a long time because I was really worried about how clients were going to react. You’re not even in the same country. So how are clients reacting? Because you’re not hiding it? You are putting it all over social media. I think it’s great. I think it’s great marketing, by the way, but what is the reaction from clients and from referral partners?

Don McClure
I think that referral partners that’s tough. Almost all of our business does come from previous clients. I will say that almost everything we have, like 95% of what we do comes from clients. And when you already have a client’s trust, because of the way you’ve treated them before, of your interactions you’ve had with them in the past, I believe that when they have that kind of trust in you that trust transfers to the person that’s referred to you. And you get a bit of a bit of that trust automatically and you’re able to sign up clients, I don’t think they’re really concerned, I’m in another country, they’re really concerned, can I still communicate within the same Can I still, you know, given the same information that they wanted before, and if I can make them feel comfortable at that level, it’s the same as whether I’m next door or, you know, over in Romania, I don’t think they really care as long as they know that their case is being worked, and that they’re being contacted regularly, and that they have a sense of bonding with you even over the internet.

Becca Eberhart
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Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Our guest today is our good friend Don mccluer, Don and his wife, Edith are on a world tour running their law firm from throughout Europe and around the world. We’re really excited to have done on done I was gonna bring up that issue of marketing. And I know you guys have done some great social media stuff on this grand adventure. What are some ways that you’ve been able to leverage this fun trip into marketing channels?

Don McClure
Oh, that’s a great question. When you say marketing channels, do you mean for the law firm? Or do you mean for, for example, this is my shirt, I don’t know if you can see it, it says family abroad on it. And that’s our our logo, I don’t know where the camera is, there you go. And so we’ve created a website, we have a YouTube channel, we have a tic tock which are tic TOCs a lot of fun eat, it takes care of that. And we’re having a blog, and eventually I’d like to monetize that as well. So we’re pretty busy handling that portion. I don’t really expect to make money from this. But it’s kind of like a journal, we’re creating a journal that you know, will have the rest of our lives. And I think it has a lot of good information for people who want to do this. Maybe there are other professionals maybe not. But other families that are considering doing this can get an idea of what we do to make this work. And I can tell you that everything you know I’ve doing in family abroad are things that I’ve learned through Max con are the basic tenets of marketing that we’ve that we all talk about, that can be applied to all these different areas and not just law. And so I haven’t this is a great question. Because I’m wrestling with this very issue about how to do it. Do I want to even say more, that we’re traveling more and make it something about the traveling lawyer or doing that kind of thing? Or do I want to keep doing what I’m doing, which is I’m not hiding it. But people are not always knowing about it. They know that I’m remote, they don’t necessarily know that I’m always traveling everywhere around the world. And so that is something I really am trying to figure out what to do with.

Tyson Mutrux
I want to ask you, I guess so many questions about this. But I guess this one is like, how do you deal with things like finances? And because I have a lot of practical questions about this, but like, how do you deal with the finances? And like, how do you deal with banking and who handles your finances back at home? Like whenever a settlement check comes in? Like? Can you talk about that a little bit? I know we’re getting a little bit in the weeds. But I’m so curious about things like that.

Don McClure
Now, that’s a great question. I’m very fortunate to have a really good friend that does all my litigation for me that allows me to have an office, you know, in his office, who I get, I get all my mail goes there. And it’s somebody that I trust. And I can have somebody go and pick it up the mail too, but but they process for me any checks, he’s able to go to my bank, and he has a power of attorney so he can handle things. For me. It’s a great local bank, which is something that I wish I had learned earlier about is having a relationship with a banker. And that’s made a huge difference. So it’s very fortunate that he can go and make all these deposits for me, then everything else we do electronically. We used to write checks for clients, and I do miss that part of it where they will come in for the settlement. But now we do everything electronically. We do the electronic deposits that way. And so everything is done electronically. Edith pretty much handles all of that for me.

Jim Hacking
Dan, tell us some things that surprised you about this, like what are some things that you just never saw coming in or hadn’t thought about that surprised you with this

Don McClure
process? I think I was most surprised Is that? Well, there are a lot of other people who are thinking about doing something similar. And, you know, I do feel like I’m inspiring somebody, you know, really makes this very worthwhile. Because just a few years ago, I didn’t really understand how how doable this really is. And so I think that’s probably that made, the biggest impact on me is to see that I’m following through on something I really wanted to do, even though it’s not the norm, and to have to settle my mind, you know, about what is success to me, compared to what the norm is to be successful? And am I okay with being myself and being my true self and doing these things, knowing that I could fall flat on my face, and knowing that it still could happen? I don’t know. But it was been so worth the risk of doing these things. Because I don’t think there really could be anything better for me to be doing right now with my life than what I’m doing. And I can, I don’t know how many times in my life, I’ve been able to say that pretty rarely. So I’m very happy with where I am right now that I took a chance, and that we’re still taking a chance. And Edith and I are walking through this together. And so I don’t know. It just surprised me about being an inspiration for others, because I never really thought that I would be in that situation.

Tyson Mutrux
What are some of your favorite moments on the trip so far?

Don McClure
By far it’s meeting other people. Like we’ve seen some beautiful places to go to Arctic talk, I’ll plug you know, you can go find out the most beautiful landscape, Switzerland, best beaches, Greece, all these other places. They’re all wonderful. And I love seeing the culture, I love seeing the different religions and opening up my mind and opening up my kids minds. But meeting people has been absolutely the best aspect of our trip, meeting people from all walks of life. You know, just Sunday night, a few days ago we are we had dinner with the host of who owns this Airbnb we’re at in, in Romania, we’ve become friends with just by accident of other people. For example, in France, we met a couple there, and we kept up with him on social media, they found out that we are going to Italy, while she is from Sicily, my dad is having a 50 year wedding anniversary with my mom, you have to come. So we flew down to Sicily for the party at their house. And it was the best thing ever. And so truly meeting other people and really getting to know them. And part of what we’re doing is trying to slow travel where we stay somewhere for a month to actually try to get to know some people see what the locals are like. And that’s been a great part of the adventure for sure is meeting other people

Jim Hacking
done, I definitely think a lot of people are going to find this to be very motivating. What are some steps that people can do to get ready for something like this?

Don McClure
First, I’m not sure that every practice area could do this, if I was still doing family law or criminal defense, or, you know, you have to be going to court, if you plan on litigating, I think you still can do it. If you did something like I was originally thinking about, you know, being in Mexico, so we’re close by Canada, you know, or somewhere else in the states even, you know, you can do that and fly back and forth. Because normally, you know, when your settings are, you can batch them all for one week, for example, then go back home for the other week or two and then come back and forth. And now with Zoom, you can do a lot things from your house as well. But technology is your friend, that’s hard for me to say because I struggle with it, I wrestle with it. But I had to do that, because that’s allowed me to have the freedom that I have now. So the steps are mindset number one, you know, that make sure if you’re married, that your spouse is, is on board with you, because nothing’s going to happen without that. Make sure that technology is ready for you. And then just you have to take the step of faith. And you know, it’s okay, if you as long as you make that step, whatever happens after that point doesn’t really matter. You know, as long as you’re fulfilling what you really want and trying to do. Everything else work out. Okay,

Tyson Mutrux
Don, what are some of the challenges that you face or the mistakes that you’ve made along the way during this process?

Don McClure
The biggest mistake I think I’ve made is not really keeping up with my clients like I should have, I’m talking about nurturing past clients. I’m talking about nurturing and educating current clients and, and so we used to always have, we had our monthly newsletter that we sent out, I’m not doing that anymore, but I am gonna go start doing my electronic newsletter again, I stopped doing calendars for a little while that was a mistake the calendars. Some of them I know get thrown away, but other ones are sitting up and you know, kitchens, my clients kitchens are in the closets or wherever they have them there with my name on it. I’m gonna start doing some regular mailings. Today, for example, we’re sending out little pies to every one of my existing clients. For Halloween, we sent out like 20 packages to former clients that refer me business and I just want to make sure they know Hey, I’m still out here. I’m still relevant. We’re here to help you call us for anything. And even if I can’t help you with it myself, we’ll find you a good lawyer to take care of it. I will still want to be their legal hub. So the biggest mistake I’ve made was really not keeping up with the marketing that got me to the place where I was where I could do all of these great things. I just kind of stopped and that was a big mistake.

Tyson Mutrux
I Got to say that’s not what I expected you to say. So that’s really interesting to me that that’s where you went with that. So that’s really, really interesting. It’s a good lesson for everybody, but like not taking the foot off the gas.

Don McClure
Yes, exactly. That’s hard to admit to.

Jim Hacking
Don, have there been any instances where you wished for your law firm sake, that you are inside the United States.

Don McClure
Now, I can’t think of one thing that I’ve missed by traveling that if I ever felt like, we couldn’t do my client, the best job possible, because I’m traveling, I definitely wouldn’t be there would not be traveling or would not be practicing law, I think it’s really important that I still have the highest standard for myself, I know that I want to do the best job for my clients, and not just for my clients, but I want to do it because I want to feel good about what I do. So I really can’t think of one thing that’s changed, other than wanting to meet with them still face to face, shaking their hands, you know, when they when they hire me and telling them telling me everything’s gonna be okay. And doing those things. You want to do a person. But other than that, I really feel like, there’s nothing I miss by being out of the country.

Tyson Mutrux
So our good friend, Jim Hart, he moved out of the country, I don’t know, all within last few months, which is really interesting was shocking to me. Like they he doesn’t even speak the language. I think he moved to Spain or something like that. Oh, we’re exactly removed. But Portugal, Portugal, I say we moved to Portugal and didn’t even speak the language I thought is so fascinating. But during this time that you’ve been out of the country, have you thought hey, maybe we should we should move out of the country? Move out

Don McClure
of the country? Permanently? Yes, yeah.

Tyson Mutrux
permanently, like Yeah, like, like, and like what places have enticed you the most?

Don McClure
Well, I’m gonna go meet with Jim Hart in January, because after we leave Romania, we go to Vienna, we’re gonna hit some Christmas markets from our Wi Fi in Prague. And then we fly to a beautiful island called Madeira, which is closer to Africa, but it’s part of Portugal. And then we’re gonna see Jim over in Lisbon, and Portugal have never been there. But Portugal will be definitely be on my top of the list of places to go. It’s one of the safest countries in the world, they have really good programs for people to move there, like like us, with a minimal amount of income per month. So it’s a very, it’s a very doable country, and the people there that’s probably very friendly and very welcoming. Spain would be another place that definitely would be on my list, Mexico, for us would probably be the highest, because that’s where it’s from, and we would love to explore more of Mexico. But those are the three countries I would definitely consider. There are other ones that that allow you to come stay for up to a year, for example, Albania, or the country of Georgia, which probably nobody really hears about. But there’s lots of places you can go, you know, either temporarily or to get a permanent residency, there’s so many options. And some of it has to do with money, the more money you have, you can get to certain programs. Other ones are just about having at least a minimum amount of money per month, and the doors open for you.

Jim Hacking
You mentioned Don getting up early in the morning and sort of connecting with your team here in the States. I’m wondering logistically, like how does that work? Do you go to some other room? Do you go downstairs? Like how do you do your work without the distractions of family life?

Don McClure
It’s tough, but it depends where I’m at, for example, we were in Cyprus, I would go every day to a co working space. It was so great, because it was inspiring to me to see other people I was the oldest one there by far. The younger people, you know, opening all sorts of kind of businesses, software out anything, you can name it there, they’re from Russia, from Ukraine, they’re sitting next to each other, you know, they’re, you know, they’re there to create their businesses, whatever it is. And that was awesome to have that experience here in Romania. We’re very rural. We’re in Transylvania, we’re in the in the mountain area. And so there’s really no place for me to go unless I want to drive somewhere for two hours. So it makes it tougher. Now, I still get up really early, but y’all are eight hours behind us. So for example, right now, it’s 530 here, and y’all are eight hours behind me 930. And so in the mornings, I get up early, I usually work on things before anybody wakes up. Like Edith, for example. She stays up real late, she’ll be up to like two, three in the morning here this time, you know, have serving our clients, which is at 5pm. And Euston is midnight here. And so she’s able to take the later shift. I do get up early, I work on things before by wakes up when it’s quieter. I also work on the family abroad things and then about what is you know, nine in the morning and usin I do call my team we talk about what’s going to happen with the day and we work together on projects and tasks. And it’s doable with eight hours difference. We’re thinking about going to Southeast Asia next that’s 12 hours difference. I don’t know how that’s gonna work, but, you know, definitely, I’ve had to learn not to be such a micromanager. That was a big issue for me. I’m trying to learn that it’s okay not to be there from nine to five I can have some flexibility with that should be a benefit of trust with my staff. And so there’s something that I’ve had to overcome was my need to micromanage and let that go knowing that the work is getting done.

Tyson Mutrux
This is so incredible. I’m so excited for you, we’re gonna go ahead and wrap up. I want to be respectful of your time. But this is I’m just so happy for you and eat it. This is so, so awesome. So hopefully you’ll tell Edith hello for us. I do want to wrap things up. Before I do. I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. Don is in the big Facebook group. So join us there and you say hello to him. But if you want a more high level conversation than what’s in the bigger group, go to max law guild DICOM. And we’d love to see you there. And while you’re listening to the rest of this episode, please, if you don’t mind, give us a five star review. We would greatly appreciate it up spread the love to people that need it. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking
Usually I give a big introduction and explanation of my hacks but I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to give it to you straight. This comes from Guy Kawasaki. And he stumbled upon this quote, while reading Tim Ferriss book Tools of Titans. Here’s the quote. If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole

Tyson Mutrux
truth. Wow. Jim, let me ask you do you run into hassles all day? You know, Larry, get that. That’s fantastic. Do we attribute that quote to

Jim Hacking
Guy Kawasaki quoting Tools of Titans? So after go through tools, and then figure out who actually said it? I like

Tyson Mutrux
it, that is really good. Don Kliewer, you know, the routine? Do you have a tip or a hack for us?

Don McClure
I do. I’m gonna go back to James Schramko. He’s, he’s a great marketer. And if you’d like to listen to Australian people, and he makes it better, but he has all sorts of entrepreneurs on his program, but the one strategy that he talks about the most was is owning the racetrack. And that means don’t put all your eggs with Facebook platform that you don’t control everything or YouTube or other things. Mostly, it’s your website. But I also think about owning my race, track the things I can control the most of marketing to my past clients, my present clients, and even my future clients. Those are things that I can control those, that’s my race track. That’s where I can control everything so that no matter what happens, I’m always gonna win.

Tyson Mutrux
I love the race track analogy. That’s really good. Excellent stuff. All right. So my tip of the week is funny, cuz I’m not using it on this podcast. But some of you may be wondering, how do we connect our cameras to our computers whenever we record these, and right now I’m actually using camo to use my phone as my camera instead of my webcam, but I use cam link. It’s for my actual camera. It’s hard. It’s not zooming in on this, but it’s called cam link. And it’s a little device that allows me to connect my Lumix camera to my computer, because not all cameras have the built in software to do that. So if you have a camera that doesn’t have the built in software, I just run an HDMI cable from my camera to through the cam link into my computer and allows me it’s really simple. It’s the size of a fire stick. And it’s really easy to do to use the software’s it just basically, if you download it, it automatically uses it for you. Pretty easy to do. So if you ever wanting to do that to us, kimly. Don, thank you so much for coming on. This is such a cool thing to watch such a cool journey. I don’t know when you plan on ending the journey. But I wish you the best of luck and safe travels from now on till you come back.

Don McClure
Thank you very much. I appreciate both of y’all all that you have done for me. And I can tell you that all my good friends that I still have are a lot of them are part of Max con. I mean, it’s the massive lawyer has been a great resource for me. I have to have mentors there. I found people to mentor and it’s a wonderful resource, and it’s a great bunch of people to be involved with.

Jim Hacking
Thanks, buddy. All right.

Tyson Mutrux
Thanks, John. Appreciate it. Bye bye.

Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum liar.com Have a great week and catch you next time.

Unknown Speaker
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Let’s talk about running a law firm but instead of talking about running it the “right” way — let’s talk about what NOT to do and the mistakes that Jim and Tyson have made. 

Here are six mistakes that cost them financially that they wish they could go back and fix. Hopefully you find this helpful and hopefully you can shortcut some of these mistakes to save yourself the financial headache. 

Mistakes of: 

➡️ Starting your own firm and not knowing your first hire

➡️ Riding a financial roller coaster ride of “rich” to “broke” 

➡️ Confusing people with your marketing message 

➡️ Hesitating with hiring a team 

➡️ Being the #allthethingslawyer

Episode Highlights:

2:57  Set up your books and hire a bookkeeper on day one … DO NOT WAIT! 

5:48 Niche down as much as you can as early as possible

8:18 Let go of the niches that your heart is not in, it’s not worth hanging on and screws up your marketing with mixed messages about what you do

11:26 Waiting too long to hire a team of people to help move the firm forward 

15:26 Know your numbers. What numbers are important? What numbers aren’t important?  What do the important numbers mean to you and your firm, both in the short term and the long term? 

18:16 Not paying yourself a salary 

Jim’s Hack: Read a book called Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday. 

Tyson’s Tip: Need a pump up of motivation? Go to YouTube and search “I Want More Levels with Kevin Hart.” 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube.

Resources:

Transcript: The 6 Worst Financial Mistakes That You Can Make as a Lawyer

Speaker 1
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 try some new tricks. What’s up, Jimmy?

Jim Hacking
Oh, Tyson, I think there might be a day of mourning for half of my team. On the day we’re recording this, Argentina played Saudi Arabia at four in the morning in the World Cup. And the anticipated number of goals that Saudi Arabia was supposed to score was point one, four, and they score to a one two to one. Ooh, ouch.

Tyson Mutrux
Well, you know, I mean, I’m not a big soccer guru. I don’t really know a whole lot about soccer. But it does not seem like us. Tying Wales was probably a good result. But maybe I’m wrong about that. Do you know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing?

Jim Hacking
Well, it draws better than a loss, you do get one point for a draw. So as long as the United States beats Iran, and the normal course of things happen with Wales in England, meaning England when the goal is to be second, England should go and we should be second to get out of this first round. But Argentina, I mean, that’s one of the hugest upsets ever in the World Cup.

Tyson Mutrux
And Argentina seems like I’ve heard them a lot in the World Cup. So did they win it a couple of like the last World Cup?

Jim Hacking
No, last time was France. They have won it many times. But I don’t know. They’re one of the they in Brazil, or certainly the odds on favorite.

Tyson Mutrux
This shows how little I know about soccer. I know very, very little but anywho,

Jim Hacking
I was gonna say I know something you know a lot about and that’s running a law firm. So let’s talk about that instead.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah. So let’s, let’s rock and roll. So today, we’re going to talk about our three worst financial mistakes. So it’s, it is a, it’s a really positive one for this week. But I you know, I think the ones we’re going to talk about, I do think they’re going to be helpful for people. I think that it’s funny because I chose different ones from you, even though mine probably would have overlapped with yours a little bit more. But I chose some additional ones. But I think yours is the number one for either one of us. So you want to start with that.

Jim Hacking
Yeah, and just so that everybody understands, the reason we’re doing this is, you know, obviously, you learn a lot by hearing what Tyson and I do well, and we love to pound on our chest and point out all of our wins. But to me, there’s just no substitute to hearing the mistakes that people made. And hopefully you can shortcut some of these, especially this first one. And so I was glad to put it on the list. Because if there’s anybody listening to this episode, before they’ve started their firm, to me, this is like the number one thing whenever anybody gets in the big group and Facebook and says, Hey, I’m getting ready to start my own firm, what’s your best piece of advice, I always lead with this. And it’s from my biggest mistake, which was not setting up my books, and hiring a bookkeeper on day one, this has caused me untold amounts of discomfort, pain, whatever you want to call it. But not having the book set up at the beginning, I am not in any way shape, or form and attention to detail kind of guy. And so you know, I could keep it up for a while because I treated it like I had my checkbook. But after a while, you know, we were missing categories. We weren’t keeping track of our spending. And the biggest thing was, it’s that little, you know, refund a 53 cents, or the one little thing that is off, that just totally screws up your books moving forward. And you’ve got to set it up properly at the beginning, so that you’re really ready for success.

Tyson Mutrux
No question. And it’s even more important, whenever you’re doing things like taking, you’re doing a retainer, and then you’re billing off the retainer, it’s extremely important. If you’re doing personal injury, it’s extremely important that because you have to track all these different accounts. And so each one of the clients gets a separate account, and it gets really, really complicated. And as your firm begins to grow, it gets even more and more complicated. And the longer you delay, the more complicated it’s going to be. And the more expensive it’s going to be for you to hire that bookkeeper, because they’re gonna see your tangled mess, and they’re gonna have to untangle it, and it’s gonna cost a lot of money. So just bite the bullet now. And over the long run, that’s gonna save you 10s of 1000s of dollars, probably, wouldn’t you say Jimmy? 10s of 1000s of dollars, if not more,

Jim Hacking
yeah, and it’s not going to cost you that much to get it set up properly at the beginning. We have a bookkeeper now who’s very strict. And you’re right when she came in to try to clean things up. It was a huge mess. And she’s done that for many members of The Guild and of regular maximum lawyer, but it’s much easier to hire her or someone like her to set it up properly at the beginning. And then the next part is making sure that you attribute things properly. You’re absolutely right about you know, you have you don’t have one bank account. You have your trust account. You have your operating account, but then you actually have an account for every client, right and so just say with like You’re cases where you’re getting big settlement checks, and you’re paying money out if you get off 16 cents or $16 or $1,600. You know, that’s a big thing. And then of course, do you ever bounce a check out of your trust that’s causing you an automatic bar inquiry right out of the bat?

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, that’s obviously something no one wants. So if you’re just starting out, especially just spend a few $100 to get the bookkeeper, it’s totally worth it. There are plenty of virtual bookkeepers that you can get. There are plenty of options. Even QuickBooks now online, they don’t work for Persinger firms, just so you will know. But they do have a built in service that does the bookkeeping for you. And if you’re a smaller firm that has like just does criminal defense, I think it might work for you or family law. So something to look into, for as an option for you that might be a little bit cheaper. Let’s get to number two, Jimmy, and it’s mine. And mine is not focusing on personal injury sooner. I’ve it was a huge financial mistake, because it is cost me I don’t know how many injury cases over the years because I became known as a criminal defense lawyer very early on, even though I knew way more about personal injury, because my background was in personal injury. And even though whenever I did get rid of criminal defense, it was a huge revenue stream that it just cut off. I’ve made way more money to recoup those losses since then, and by done it sooner, I would have been known as a personal injury lawyer for 12 years as opposed to now probably seven years because there’s a lot of people that viewed me as a criminal defense attorney that were just sending me criminal cases and they weren’t sending me injury cases. But now they are the moral of the story is niched down as much as you can, as early as possible. And we understand they’re the people that want to, you know, have a few different practice areas because of the you know, you want to bring in the revenue. But I promise you, everyone I talked to you, the more you niche down, the more money people make. And Jim yours is similar to that on your are number three, it’s very similar. So I don’t know if you want to roll into that as well. Or if you want to add on to number two, let’s go

Jim Hacking
back in our time machine. Tyson nutrix, he’s humming along he has his criminal defense practice. He’s trying to start a personal injury practice. What was the biggest hurdle or hurdles that kept you from letting go at that particular time?

Tyson Mutrux
Golden handcuffs? No question. Because we were early on paper clay for criminal defense, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. There were not a lot of people in St. Louis doing it whenever I first did it. So I could pick up clients. In no time, it was very easy to get criminal defense clients, even from an SEO standpoint, it was pretty easy. So I was getting we had a very steady stream of revenue that were that was coming in. And what it was doing, it was strangling the injury practice, I had plenty of injury cases, but I wasn’t able to move those cases along. So if they if I were to pinpoint one thing that prevented me from doing it was just golden handcuffs. And I what I was doing was I was blinded, my long term vision was being blinded by that money, it was being brought in up front. And it happens all of us were like, Oh, this is fantastic. This is good. But my at the time, my vision was not locked down. It was not as strong as it is now. And so I just saw the money. And I was like, Oh, this is great. And it prevented me from really moving forward when it comes to my long term vision.

Jim Hacking
So we’re going to start calling these 345. And six, just to be clear, because we keep bouncing over who’s first, who’s second. So for me, our third collective mistake. And that’s the opposite of what you did. And that is that I kept doing PII longer than I should have. So maybe it’s sort of the same thing. It’s just the different practice area. But my heart wasn’t in personal injury, I did not like doing discovery, I did not like doing depositions, it was keeping the lights on. And I wasn’t really good at it. And I didn’t have good systems, I wasn’t able to develop those systems. Because back then in stage one, we were just trying to keep the lights on. And it made it really hard for me to focus I remember, somebody came to see me his father had died in a truck accident. And I should have just referred it to Gary or to you or to or to John Simon. And instead I tried to sign it up, and then I didn’t have any credibility. It was a case way too big for me, I wouldn’t have had the resources even to put into it. So I just wasn’t doing anyone a good service by keeping on to that. I realized sort of doing soft tissue stuff, that I could make the same amount of money on a soft tissue case in a immigration case that I could systematize and that Adela could do most of so it really hindered my ability to make the firm the way that I wanted and more importantly, no one was beating down their door to hire Jim hacking to be their personal injury lawyer right like immigration. There was what Gary Halbert would call a starving crowd. There was a need there was the phone was ringing. There were people that had been helped by us that wanted to recommend us to other people. It was just it was just so hard for me to let go of it. And it just affected so many things. My marketing was off because I was trying to market One things and my website was a mess. And it just for so many reasons holding on to that for as long as I did really led me down to some bad financial places, and it was only the desperation of Boy, this isn’t working like I need to do something differently. And that was to niche down and focus. I did it out of desperation, more than than anything else.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, the marketing is a big one, I struggled really big time with the marketing because it was really easy to shoot a criminal defense video and then shoot a injury video, and then criminal defense blog posts and the injury blog post. And it was really sure it’s very confusing for people, whenever we put it on social media, like what does this guy even do? You know, here’s something else you just said. And like you, you as the immigration lawyer, Jim, you can handle a soft tissue case and get, you know, the same amount you’d get for whatever other kind of case you get you handle, right. But if you had referred that same case over to me or Gary, we would have gotten substantially more money for that case, and you would have probably gotten the same amount of money for doing no work. And that’s, that’s one of those other things where if you just refer the case out, you, let’s say you don’t get a referral fee, you’ll get more referrals. That’s that’s another part of it, you’ll get more referrals on your practice area. But if you’re referring at the injury stuff, you’re gonna get paid just as much probably as if you would have just held on to the case yourself. So like, let that sink in. Because what Jim’s getting it was getting on soft tissue, we’re getting way more than that. And so that’s another lesson for people. Alright, let’s get into number four. And this is one, I went way too long with this one, and it’s waiting too long to hire a team. Alright, I’m not saying hiring, I’m sorry, I’m talking about actually focusing on a team of people that will help move the firm forward. And I went for the longest time you know, just me and a legal assistant or a paralegal, whatever you want to call them, in one way too long with that, and we weren’t able to move cases. And then we hired two legal assistants. And it still was not enough. But once I started, okay, I’m having an office administrator with time we call them an office manager, we’re going to have a triple C, we’re going to have a case manager, we’re going to have all we’re gonna have a receptionist having all these people. Once I figured that out, our growth just it rapidly happened. And they’re having a team so focusing on the team, not just hiring an individual or two that have an actual team in place. Really, really important to grow with if you want to grow into a stage 234 type of buffer.

Becca Eberhart
Think Gildas maximum lawyers community of lawyer entrepreneurs who are taking their businesses and lives to the next level. As a guild member, you will build relationships be held accountable, and learn strategies specifically designed to get you unstuck and accelerate your plan for growth. Members are also granted exclusive access to masterminds hosted around the country four times per year. And in 2023, we’ve added a half day workshop to each mastermind, where you’ll learn new skills while working on improving systems and aspects of your personal firm. Then take the hot seat on day two and work through your most pressing challenge. It’s all inside the guild to learn more visit Max law guild.com.

Jim Hacking
You know, I’ve never really heard you or anyone else put it that way, the difference between hiring one person and building a team like and it’s so funny because so many of our members Guild and otherwise get hung up on just hiring that one person, when they’re not even thinking about what could a team do? Like? Like maybe just people should just put to the side the money involved? And I know that’s easier said than done. But think to yourself, if I had a team, what would it look like? And what would they do? And how would it make things better? You know, so often when we hear people talking about building a team or hiring people, it’s always about the cost. It’s always about how much it’s going to cost instead of thinking about what is this investment going to do for me, you know, if you look at somebody like Paul, Yoko bitis, who, you know, knew right away, what he wanted to do what he didn’t want to do, and started building that team early on, I think those that experienced the growth, it’s always the building of the team first than the growth even though that sounds counterintuitive.

Tyson Mutrux
There’s another level to this too. And I woke up to it whenever Ryan Anderson spoke at max law Con this year. And it was last year, when he was talking about the executive team building a rockstar executive team. Now you’re I mean, you’re in that’s something that we’re working on now is building out the executive team. It’s no longer just the team that you’re building, because we’ve got the teams built out. But now you’re talking about a team that is a team of high performers, that it’s going to be like throwing gasoline on to the fire. And that that really motivates me right now. But that’s that’s an advanced step. But frankly, I think if I were to put sort of a four B on this, or for a, it would be waiting too long to hire the executive team. Because hiring the executive team, we’re already sort of shifting into that. And I can see the benefits of that already. So if you’re at that point, if you’re saying, Oh, well, I already have my team, well focus on the executive team because you’re going to start to propel your firm even faster.

Jim Hacking
We just promoted to our team members up to the leadership team. So now we’ve gone from three to five and it’s been Huge brings up more issues, but it also brings up more issues. Right? Like so it’s, it’s a good thing, it’s a good thing and, and, to your point, I’m really feeling like, unbelievably there needs to be another layer in our firm, right? Like, we’re about to have a, they’re gonna they’re gonna have teams that they’re running in a in a serious way and, and it’s pushing me to be a better law firm owner and to develop new skills.

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. Alright, so let’s get to number five Jimbo.

Jim Hacking
All right, so anyone who talked to me the first 10 years I owned a firm, they would hear me sort of giggle he, I’m not a numbers guy, I don’t really know my numbers, he, I don’t really look at my books, because, you know, I’m a history major, they don’t teach you numbers in law school. And, and I don’t really like to look at the numbers, and I don’t really understand it all. And I just want to go sign up more cases, or I just want to go help more people. That is total bullshit. Like saying that to yourself, is irresponsible. It’s actually irresponsible. And I would say immoral to the people that are relying on you that if you aren’t willing to educate yourself, and to develop those new skills, and to learn what numbers are important, what numbers aren’t important, then you’re really setting yourself up for failure. But more importantly, you’re letting your team down. Because if you’re not looking at the numbers, and you don’t have someone and I’m not saying you have to actually do the mechanical work of tracking the numbers, I’m just saying, You need to understand what the numbers are, what the important numbers are, what the important numbers mean that you and your firm both in the short term and the long term. And you’re abdicating a tremendous amount of responsibility for the health and safety of the firm. If you’re not willing to learn the skills that you need to run a business.

Tyson Mutrux
I remember long ago and ever used to say, Well, I’m not a numbers guy. I’m not a numbers guy, I always made me cringe. Because like, at the top level, it’s all numbers. It really is all numbers. It’s the revenue numbers. It’s the profit numbers. It’s those numbers, right? But it’s also like the KPI numbers, you know, like, What’s your average fee, things like that, that are really, really important. And so I’m glad that you’ve come around. I don’t know what what moment you finally came around to this gym. But I do remember early on you billing Well, I’m just not a numbers person. I’m not a numbers person. But at some point, it did click. And it’s funny because like I have seen the way you talk about your firm change substantially because it’s numbers and you’ve seen your growth. Let me actually let me ask you, since you started to shift and focus on the numbers, what kind of growth Have you seen since you’ve started that?

Jim Hacking
So that was back in 2012, when I had no money left in the bank, and I talked about this at max law con a few years ago, and I had to tell them money that we didn’t have any money, and that I hadn’t really been doing a good job of paying attention to the numbers. And she came to the office every Friday for a year and a half while we sorted out the numbers. Right. So that’s so now you’re talking 2014 2015, that’s when he really started seeing traction. That was the entree to her actually joining the firm. And since then we’ve had you know, 100% or more growth every year since then.

Tyson Mutrux
I love the use of the word entree, right? That’s really good. Nice. i Let’s get to number six, which is not paying myself a salary. I went a few years and did not pay myself a salary. You know, those, those criminal defense checks, they’d come in those injury cases would come in, I’d deposit that and I’d pay myself a big chunk. And I would just strangle my firm and the cashflow roller coaster was real. The ups and the downs and oh my gosh, where’d all my money go? Okay, I’ve got I’m rich. I got a bunch of money. Oh, my gosh, where’d my money go? Oh, my gosh, I’m rich. Where’d my money go? And then but once I started to pay myself a salary, everything started to level off. It was way, way better. Once I adopted Prophet first, it was even way better. But it’s one of the things where if you’re not paying yourself a salary, I know. I asked. Well, that’s one of the first questions I asked whenever people are in the hot seat. Now, Jimbo, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed that by asking quite a bit. And I asked this of young lawyers all the time, like are you paying yourself a salary. And there’s a lot of experienced lawyers that to this day who are not paying themselves a salary, they’re just taking drawers. And it is a huge mistake, because you’re it’s a huge cash flow problem. So you need to start paying yourself a salary if you’re not doing that. For those

Jim Hacking
of you who are not in the guild, twice a month, I sit and I do what’s called a hot seat where someone can come and sit and present their issues that they want to try to improve on. And we sort of go into when we tried to keep it pretty intense and pretty. Like we really want to dig in and get to core issues. We don’t try not to talk about like SEO strategies or things like that. But for the last, I’d say five or six months, at least once of the one a month of those hot seats. There’s this moment where Tyson started nodding, and he’s not thing. And he’s like, and you can see it in his face. Oh, yeah, I figured it out. And it’s usually that people are starving their firms by treating their operating account like an ATM. And there’s very little discipline. I mean, you and I used to take pictures of cheques and fat stacks of cash and send them back to each other, I would send those to Imani all the time to tell her how great I’m doing, right. But if you’re really doing great, you’re paying yourself a salary, you’re treating it like a business. It’s not an it’s it’s not a financial extension of your personal bank account. And you probably even need to think about making it hard to transfer money from operating to your house fun just so that you are mindful of it. But it’s just so easy when you don’t have any checks or balances. And you don’t have anybody looking over your shoulder to just do whatever the f you want. And that’s really just not a good way to run your firm, and especially your firm finances.

Tyson Mutrux
Love it. Hi Jimbo, we do you need to wrap things up, I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. Lots of great just information be shared always there. And then if you want a higher level conversation, go to the guild go to max law guild.com. We would love to see you there. You’ll get to experience all of our trainings all of our maximum lawyer and minimum time course, we hope you will join us and then while you’re listening to our tips and our hacks of the week, if you’ll give us a five star review, we would greatly appreciate it to help spread love to other lawyers that need some help. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week hack of

Jim Hacking
the week is that you should read a book called stillness is the key by Ryan Holiday. So Ryan Holiday is a Tim Ferriss guy, he spends a lot of time talking about the Stoics and ancient philosophies and sort of applying them to modern day. So now he’s just taking issue by issue, things that the stoics read. Yeah, he wrote the daily stoic and the stillness is the key is really good. Because it talks about especially now in 2020 to 2023 when life is so hectic that the need for stillness. And there’s a chapter that I really enjoyed. And it told the story of Napoleon Bonaparte. So Napoleon had a rule that his assistant couldn’t open his mail for three weeks, the assistant couldn’t open the mail for three weeks. And the reason for that is because three weeks later Napoleon like to look at the mail and laugh at about all the suppose it problems that had solved themselves, while he ignored the mail. Now, we get those letters now, in email form, all these emergencies of the day, where they’re probably clamoring for Napoleon or you to jump in and fix. And obviously, there’s a certain category of things that have to be fixed. I’m not saying that. But what would happen if you didn’t look at your email for three weeks, right? Like, I mean, I don’t look at my email at all now. But if you if you didn’t look at your email for three weeks, how much of the things that are in there would solve themselves? And if not, if not, then that that’s probably a tell that you’re doing too much inside your firm.

Tyson Mutrux
It’s great. I like that, you know, Jim’s not advocating to ignore your email, just have someone check it for you. So just a disclaimer for you there Jimmy, you get somebody complaining, hey, I ignored my email for three weeks. And now I get sued for not saying that. All right. So mine is and by the way, there’s the daily stoic, I recommend it. I’ve got it right here on my shelf, and I just grabbed it. And there’s every day there’s a new quote that he lists and then he interprets it. And my tip of the week is I just want people to google or Go to YouTube or go to Tik Tok and search. I want more levels, Kevin Hart. And it is I love it. It’s a he’s being interviewed by Joe Rogan. And he’s talking about how, like, once you change your mindset, new levels are opened up. And then when you change your your mindset, again, new levels open up and you can you can get more levels if you just change your mindset. And I love it so much. I’ve been listening to it every single day, it will pump you up. So if you need to pump me up and go check it out. I promise you, you’ll like it. It is so good. It’s a 32nd clip, but I just like listened to it on repeat. It’s so great. And he’s Kevin Hart. Don’t people know don’t know this. Like he’s obviously a comedian and an actor, but he does a lot of things business wise. And he’s doing some big things. He’s kind of like the rock, just on a smaller level. I meant that on purpose. Because He’s so tiny. But anyways,

Jim Hacking
that’s an awesome tip. I’m gonna go find it reminds me there’s a little clip of Arnold Schwarzenegger where he’s talking about how no one ever believed in him. And he goes, I never listened to those losers. And I listened to that I never listened to those losers all the time. Like it just I listened to it like four times a week. It just makes me Wow,

Tyson Mutrux
it’s so that’s so good. I’m gonna check that one out now. All right, Jimmy. It’s been good. I will talk to you later. Have a good one, everybody. Peace.

Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content content, go to maximum lawyer.com Have a great week and catch Next time

If you’ve been around Maximum Lawyer for a hot minute you may have seen and heard about Jim’s health transform this past year. Losing 75+lbs in the last four months with the coaching help of our guest today, Charles D’Angelo. 

Charles knows first hand what it’s like to feel stuck, once weighing 360lbs as a bullied teen. He took charge of his own life, dropped 160lbs, and for the last two decades has been on a mission to help others reclaim theirs. 

His unique coaching program focuses on changing your mindset so that you can change your life. It’s recognizing that you have to set aside blame and excuses, and ask yourself the question “How am I gonna move forward?”

Listen to this episode where Charles shares the first three steps you can take today to start making changes in your life for the future you want. Which will uplevel everything. Your home life, work life and everything in between. 

Let’s dive in. 

Episode Highlights: 

01:50 Charles journey from a 360lbs teenager to a decision to life changing result

03:53  Charles’s unique approach to a healthy life 

08:01 How to get people motivated to change … The core issue is NOT what you think

12:10 Helping other helpers become more effective and more efficient 

16:37 Let talk about negative self-talk …

19:43 Why you really need someone you can trust to talk to … a.k.a sanity is best outsourced.

21:26 Cool tools that Charles would recommend to people … and it’s not what you think 

Jim’s Hack: Sweat, sweat, sweat. That 5:00 AM on the treadmill. That is you telling yourself, you’re a priority! 

Charles Tip: Step one: Write down all the things that you’d like to see happen in your life. Step two: Go through and label each item on your list with how many years it will take you this creates a vision for your life. Step three: Start reading about the topics of the plans on your vision list to shorten the time it takes to get you there. 

Tyson Tips: In the Apple watch, when in the, fitness app, you can turn your dial whenever, you’re running and it shows you what zone you’re in especially handy if you want to do some zone two training, 

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube

Connect with Charles:

Resources:

Transcript: Uplevel Your Health, Uplevel Your Life With Charles D’Angelo

Speaker 1
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

Jim Hacking
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
Tyson? My friend. I’m very excited. We have a very special guest on today’s show. And I’m excited to introduce him to you guys just met off camera.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I’m very excited about this. We’ve been watching your transformation, and we’re gonna get to talk to the guy that’s behind that transformation. So I’m pretty excited. I know that you’ve been really amped up about this for a while.

Jim Hacking
Let me go ahead and give you a formal introduction. It’s renowned weight loss coach Charles DeAngelo. He’s going to help you take charge of your life in 2023. He knows firsthand what it’s like to feel stuck once weighing 360 pounds as a bullied teen I’ll pull up a photo in a minute of Charles from before and after he took charge of his own life dropped 160 pounds and for the last two decades has been on a mission to help others reclaim theirs. His focus changed your mindset and you can change your life. He’s a best selling author, endorsed by the likes of President Bill Clinton, Richard Simmons, Angela Bassett, and our very own US Senator Claire McCaskill. That’s who inspired me to reach out to Charles along with a friend of mine who had worked with Charles and has kept her weight off for several years. Recently, actor and comedian Tom Arnold shared how Charles helped him lose 80 pounds all via zoom, Charles will be featured with Tom in the January edition of Men’s Health magazine, while he’s not a doctor or therapist, scores of medical professionals from across the country credit him for helping them turn their lives around through his unique coaching program. Charles, welcome to the show.

Unknown Speaker
It’s my pleasure, gentlemen.

Tyson Mutrux
So Charles, I want to hear this story. So tell us the journey that you’ve taken to this point, because this is this is super exciting. Yeah. So

Charles D’Angelo
as a teenager, as Jim said, I was 360 pounds, doing the simplest of things, getting up a flight of just four stairs, was challenging for me, I had a size 5456 inch waist, I always felt like an outsider, I had a very difficult home life, my mother struggled with alcoholism, and prescription drug addiction. My father was a very, very hard working man, both were both very well intentioned people. But they both had their own issues. And so I was bred in a cauldron of difficulty. And I could have been the king of excuses. And when I hit 17 years old, and I recognize that if my life was going to be different, it was going to be because I was going to be different. It wasn’t going to be the circumstances were going to change or my mother was going to change or the neighborhood I lived in was going to be different. It was going to be up to me, only then did my life really start to change. And I made it my mission. One day, at 17 years old, after going to a gym and being turned away with cash, I went to a local gym, I’d saved up money to join an effort to make changes thinking that the gym was a place to really take charge of the issues that I needed to address at that time thinking that really was it was changing my physiology, that changed my life, I was turned away because I didn’t have a credit card. And I went home. And I fell into the bed just totally upset and despairing not thinking that change was going to be possible because I had the courage to actually face my fear, go into a place I was afraid of being bullied and teased. And I was rejected in a sense. And I looked up at the ceiling, and tears started coming down my face and cheeks because I was so upset, I felt so lonely, I was just about to give up on my life. And I said to God that if he would just help me become what I called normal, I would commit my life to a life of service. And I never thought in my wildest dreams, that I would be used to help other people reclaim their health, from their habits, in the sense of they have these last two decades.

Jim Hacking
Charles, I know that when I reached out to you that I was feeling pretty desperate myself. And can you talk a little bit about what you’re able to do with people like when they come to you in such desperate straits and sort of how you help. It really is that mindset shift that we talked about in the introduction,

Speaker 4
I think that the first thing a person has to do is recognize that their biography doesn’t have to be their destiny, that no matter what your history is, no matter what trigger it is, no matter what your background, what your limitations, what challenges you’ve had, none of those things have to determine how today or tomorrow or next week is going to look. Ultimately your choices are going to determine those things. But in order to start to shape yourself and shape your choices in a way that actually helps you move forward, you have to know what you’re after. And so often we grew up in an environment of almost unconscious limitation, whether there are things we pick up from our parents, things we pick up from our peers. Again, most of the people we spend time with as young people are very well intentioned, but the things we grew up with leave an indelible imprint on us whether or not we’re aware of it. A lot of the work is recognizing what are those beliefs that you’ve been either consciously or unconsciously guiding your life by, that have kept you from really maximizing your capacity to have the life you both desire, and you deserve. So with a client like you, Jim, the first thing we need to sit down and look at is, what do you really want. And often, when I ask a person, this, they’ll tell me what they don’t want, I don’t want to wake up and feel so lousy every day, I don’t want to be afraid to be in a picture. I don’t want to be afraid to present in front of a group of colleagues. So if you don’t know, if you’re listening, if you don’t know what you want, just ask yourself, what don’t I want and take the opposite of it. And once you get a really high resolution image of what you’re after a really clear, really compelling, vivid image of the things that you want. The next step you need to think about is, what are the reasons for those things. You know, the way is easy when you have a strong why it’s difficult to do things when you don’t know why you’re doing them. And so having both the clear illustration of how magnificent how awesome how invigorating life can really be and feel, by having that picture of how it’s going to be independent of whatever you were told as a young person, or whatever your environment made you believe was going to be your future, really expanding what you think is possible for yourself, expanding that vision. And when a person comes to me, I’ve spent a lot of time creating an environment in my offices that help people see beyond whatever their limitations might be. I mean, I was turning 60 pounds, you know, I came from a very, very challenging background, family of very modest means. But I went on, as you said, help lots of people and have lots of success. But the achievement isn’t really what it’s all about. It’s really about finding meaning in your life. And that’s where that y comes in. I mean, why is it that you want to change your life, and it can’t just be? Well, I want to I want to fit into a smaller size pants, because as you were talking about Jim and one of the podcasts I listened to that you and Tyson did, you know, this has been a struggle for you, that you’ve wrestled with for a very, very long time as it is for most people, recidivism in weight loss is astronomical. What that means to a lay person is most people that lose the type of weight that Jim has lost in my program will go on to regain it all back within two years, following disconnection from whatever the approach or program are coached that they’re working with. So it’s really a point of shifting your philosophy. Yes, you have to have a strategy. And I certainly give my clients a very precise, clear, well defined set of principles, here’s what you’re supposed to do with food, here’s what you’re gonna do with exercise. So a person leaves every single meeting, knowing exactly what to do with both food and exercise. But the glue that holds all that together is both a philosophy and a set of behaviors kind of a momentum that is centered around moving towards what you want, and moving away from the things that you really know that you want to stay away from.

Tyson Mutrux
So Charles, like all of that makes complete sense to me, right? Like, I am one of those people that you you give me a set of rules. I’m gonna follow those rules. I’m gonna stick to it. I know Jim is not always that way. I know that Jim is like many, many people were like Jim’s been dealing with weight issues. There’s no as long as I’ve known him, it’s been something for him. He’s been working on it. It’s been he’s been dealing with his entire life. But something has shifted, you have turned on a switch in him over the last four months or so. And you’ve done that with several other clients. Like giving the rules are one thing, but like getting them to shift gears is another thing. They’ve got to make their own decision to do that. So how are you able to be so effective at doing that? Because I’ve never seen Jim so motivated before. So how have you done that?

Speaker 4
Well, first off, I appreciate you know, the flattery but it’s not really necessary because it’s absolutely the antithesis of what I strive to hear a client say I don’t want to be given that degree of credit, because the reality is, while people offer me that type of validation all the time and that type of appreciation. The reality is Jim has done the work. Jim made the decision to take full responsibility for his choices. And it’s not so much you know, how I turn that switch on. It’s really about helping a person look at their weight, not as the problem it certainly is a problem as Jim has found it to be over his life. But I look at it as more a symptom. It is not the core issue. What’s the core issue for most of us, regardless of whatever the presenting challenges, it’s really what it looks like loving ourselves and I don’t say that in a cliched sense. I mean, love is a verb. The way I define love would be paying attention to yourself, showing yourself appreciation, offering yourself a degree of acceptance of the things that as men and women, okay, but I deal a lot with men that struggle with this specific issue. A lot of men unnecessarily carry Around burdens of shame, about sensitivity, about feeling afraid about how to deal with their own sadness because they grew up with a concept or a construct of what a real man ought to be like that they have to have some type of archetypal definition that if they don’t fit in, well, then they have something to be ashamed of or embarrassed about, or they’re deficient, or inadequate. And so a lot of what helps clients to make enormous progress is meeting with someone, whether it be me or someone else, who helps them better understand themselves in such a way that they no longer are unexpected of themselves, that they recognize they’re as human as the next person. And we all have our insecurities. We all have our frailties, but we all have our gifts, and we all have our graces as well. So that acceptance is a big part of it. There’s also an aspect of learning how to really show yourself space for feelings, making allowance for whatever it is that you’re feeling, not pushing it aside, not acting as if it’s not there. So when you do that, when you start to show yourself attention, appreciation, affection, acceptance, and you make room for your feelings, no longer you find it necessary to turn to a substance in Jim’s case, like food, or my former case, to distract yourself to console yourself to almost create a straw man issue. You know, all of us use certain things to give us a sense of certainty. And food for many people, unfortunately, provides them with that delusion that, well, I know when I eat, that, it’s going to change how I feel. The trouble is, the thought isn’t complete, it changes how you feel, but at the sacrifice of the future you really want. And so by being mindful by being much more conscious of what you want, and recognizing the things you’re going to need to do to close the gap between where you are and where you want to get there, you’re much more likely to continually make progress. And once you start making progress, as you and I were talking about before we started this interview, once you start to get hooked on progress, and you get out of that defeat world, so many people find themselves in your hope to in a positive sense.

Jim Hacking
For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of visiting Charles’s office, it’s literally one of the coolest places I’ve ever been. It’s in the basement of this building in South St. Louis, it doesn’t look like much on the outside. But when you get into the office, there are pictures and posters and statues of all kinds of people that Charles has worked with. It’s really, really inspiring. And Charles, I know that you’ve worked with a lot of physicians, and that actually physicians have hired you to help them with weight loss. And I wonder, do you think that your experience as someone who was weighing 360 pounds, gives you separate insights that they probably don’t teach in medical school?

Speaker 4
Well, I think that each of us one of my favorite ways of helping other helpers become more effective, and more efficient, and maximize their own set of gifts is recognizing, helping them recognize that they’re best positioned to help the former version of themselves. Just like what you guys are doing. Think about it. What are you guys spending your time doing? You’re trying to help other attorneys maximize their practice? Well, who do you think you’re really teaching? What you’re learning as much as you’re teaching and who you’re really teaching as a former version of who you were? I mean, you’re trying to educate someone who’s tuned into this right now, in an effort to expedite their progress and their process, you’re essentially collapsing what it might have taken each of you a decade to learn, that they can learn in days. And so yes, of course, my personal experience, you know, having once had the chance to be the king of excuses, gives me a unique insight into both the suffering, but also the joy that comes with accepting full responsibility for your life, giving up the hope. And this is a real mature spiritual path that ain’t giving up the hope that someone’s going to start doing for you what only you ought to and can do for yourself. That’s what real maturity looks like. That’s what being a full adult looks like. Is is recognizing, I’m going to set aside blame. I’m not going to blame my parents for the way my my life’s turned out. It doesn’t mean that in any way. You’re legitimizing the abuse, or you’re saying that, that trauma or anything that was okay, no, it’s not at all saying that. It’s same with all that being the case. All those things that have happened to me, the question you start to ask yourself as a healthy adult is, how am I going to move forward? You’re no longer trying to change your past. You’re saying yes to it. Yes, this happened. And given that, how am I going to move forward? Most of my clients issues, Jim, aren’t around the domain of competence. I deal with incredibly brilliant people, world leading physicians, people who are high achievers. It’s not about competency. It’s about learning enough about themselves and their own patterns, to be able to be consistent doing what they know, you know, I’m not stepping over the line here because I listened to you talk about your process with me publicly. And you mentioned that you had started and then you found yourself falling back on old habits. Yep. But it wasn’t long after, what did you decide to do?

Jim Hacking
I came back.

Speaker 4
But what was it for you that made you decide, you are worth it, that you decided, I’m going to put myself first again, I’m not going to accept this as permanent defeat.

Jim Hacking
i It was you in the back of my head and the things that you had said to me during our time together, and that was that I lost my focus that I was looking at outside strawman, as you said, and that I wasn’t taking responsibility for myself, in other words, that you had

Speaker 4
the power to change, for sure. So I think that that’s what makes a difference. For people. It’s, it’s there is no magic pill, there is no secret to this, it’s it’s really about being consistent as it certainly doesn’t sound sexy, saying that. But the truth is, if you want change to happen, it’s a result of small, good choices over time. And the reassuring part of that is failures the same way. failure isn’t a person, failure is an event. So when a person is why I’m a failure, no, you’re not failures in the experience. And it’s something that’s caused by a series of traces. And if you don’t want that to be the case, you need to make certain that you’re much more conscious of the choices you’re making. And if you need help with that, you seek out someone that can kind of as I said, collapse, the length of time it would take to learn and get the pattern and be held accountable to that, to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

Tyson Mutrux
I’m loving all this, let me ask you some that about negative self talk, and how much of this has to do with negative self talk and changing that because I have, I have noticed some of the ways that Jim talks to himself and talks about himself. And it’s been much more positive over the last few, three to four or five months. And really, honestly, Jim, it will probably tell you he’s had a shift in his mindset over probably the last five, six years, just kind of the way he approaches things in general, he’s much, much calmer person by having I’ve noticed more positive self talk. So how much of this has to do with some of that negative self talk, though,

Speaker 4
a lot of it because you have to think about what is it that influences your choices, it’s not just what’s available to you. I mean, we all have impulses every single day, none of us can hope to eliminate the impulses that would drive us to destruction. But we have to become mature enough and have enough a reverence for who we are as people and enough love for ourselves, to be able to notice those impulses, mindfully not judge ourselves as bad people for having them. And while we admit them to ourselves, and we allow ourselves to acknowledge them, we act in spite of them. So you might have thoughts that will lead you down a path of totally sabotaging whatever efforts you’re striving to make, we all have that part of ourselves, we never get rid of that part of ourselves. The work is learning how to acknowledge that part of yourself as a very vital, critical aspect of who you are as a person, not trying to eliminate it, but rather embrace it. Because there’s always a positive side to even the shadow aspects of who we are as people. So what you want to notice when you hear all these negative messages coming up, is they likely didn’t originate from you. But now they are in you. Now they are your voice. And so you can make a choice, you can make a choice to recognize that these are things that you picked up. They are not organic to you. You know, they’re limiting beliefs that were positive to you for a variety of reasons. It’s not all that important that you understand why or necessarily even who gave them to you. What’s important is that you notice they’re there. And they’re they’re completely and utterly irrational and they’re limited.

Becca Eberhart
Thank you all this maximum lawyers community of lawyer entrepreneurs who are taking their businesses and lives to the next level. As a guild member, you will build relationships be held accountable, and learn strategies specifically designed to get you unstuck and accelerate your plan for growth. Members are also granted exclusive access to masterminds hosted around the country four times per year. And in 2023, we’ve added a half day workshop to each mastermind, where you’ll learn new skills while working on improving systems and aspects of your personal farm. Then take the hot seat on day two and work through your most pressing challenge. It’s all inside the guild. To learn more visit Max log guild.com.

Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast our guest today Charles D’Angelo weight loss coach and personal trainer in person. Let me let me say

Unknown Speaker
you can say whatever you want.

Jim Hacking
Yeah, so Charles helps people fix their shit. I’ll say that, including me and Charles Charles has helped me lose 75 pounds in the last four or five months. And I want Charles to say that you’re a fair coach and a tough coach. Which, and there are times where I say things to Charles, that I believe to be true. It might be some of those self limiting beliefs that Tyson was mentioning. And you’ll sit there and look at me. And you don’t say anything right away, you process it. And then you, you often say things like, is that true? Or I’m not sure about that or you restate or reframe what I’m saying, from a coaching standpoint, What’s your philosophy as far as that interaction that you have with people like me when they are saying things that might be a little bit kooky? As you said,

Speaker 4
I don’t think anything that you’ve ever said to the gym, or anything any client says to me is kooky. First off, I think that it’s really important that we give ourselves an opportunity with someone that we trust, someone that we believe is objective, someone we believe, and have experienced to reinforce humbly, who’s non judgmental, who’s there, in an effort to serve the healthy part of ourselves, that we let ourselves hear what we’re actually thinking. I think that’s critical. You know, it’s been often said, sanity is best outsourced, we all can get into our heads very easily. So it’s important to have someone that you soundboard with whether it’s a coach, whether it’s a therapist, whether it’s your spouse, at times, someone that you can just process, what it is you’re thinking, and often what happens and frankly, the most effective method of change is when a person comes to realize themselves, the rationality of whatever it is, they’ve been telling themselves.

Tyson Mutrux
So Charles, I have an in the weeds question, I’ll acknowledge that. So I like things like this, like this blood pressure cuff, like my watch, I’ve been doing like some some zone to training with my watch, I like doing that stuff. Or there’s some cool tools that you might recommend for people to help them with their health and their fitness.

Speaker 4
I think that the most effective thing is a good relationship with someone who’s going to keep you honest, and keep you accountable. You know, technology, the way that you just described, offers all sorts of different gadgets, different gizmos that we can get into. And we can really, that for many people kind of blows their hair back, they love it. For other people, it’s really unhelpful because it puts the accent on the wrong thing. In other words, it puts the accent on the outcome rather than the process. And so if a person is constantly monitoring, for example, the weight on the scale, they’re stepping on the scale every day, well, there’s going to be many days, where the weight isn’t for any particular reason, going the direction they should expect it to. Because the body is a living organism, it doesn’t work in the linear path that way. And if you’re evaluating yourself, and you’re you’re evaluating your worth, and you’re evaluating your success, via one metric, I think you’re setting yourself up for a lot of unnecessary frustration. So I think the best idea is to have a relationship with someone who can help you process what it is you’re measuring, who can help you stay apprised of all the different aspects of your life, that while one aspect might be trailing behind for any number of reasons, helps remind you of all the other things that you’re moving toward, and that you’re making wonderful strides with, independent of that one area that might be limited.

Jim Hacking
Charles, we mentioned in the intro that you worked with Tom Arnold via zoom, and I know that you’ve actually helped some maximum lawyers via zoom, can you just talk real quickly how that works, and then let people know how they can get a hold of you?

Speaker 4
Yeah, so a person just needs to go to my website, Charles de angelo.com. Anyone you read about listen to watch, whether they’re an actor, whether they’re an attorney, whether they’re a teenager, every single person works with me one on one. So the first step is just having the courage to give yourself a chance to actually talk about what’s on your mind. And we sit down for 1520 minutes, and determine whether or not it’s an appropriate fit. If we agree that it is we’ll determine the length of time. And I see people both in person here in St. Louis, but I have clients all over the world as far as Australia and Greece. And I have found that people have just as much success in a different room, breathe in different air as those that are sitting in my office.

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. All right, we are going to wrap things up, because I know Jim’s got a live show that you all are gonna go over to and do that. Before I do. I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. We’re going live there right now and into the guild. So if you want to join us, there’s a lot of great information being shared on a daily basis. And if you want a more high level conversation, join us in the guild go to max law guild.com. And while you’re listening the rest of this episode if you don’t mind, leaving us a five star review wherever you get your podcast, we would greatly appreciate it because it spread the love. And I’m sure there’s a lot of people that would love to listen to this episode because it impacts a lot of people. So that would be wonderful. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking
My hack of the we comes from Charles and that is sweat, sweat. So I start every day on the treadmill. Charles either is increasing the pitch or the speed or the distance and there’s no substitute to just that sweating for 45 minutes and I mean I got off today and I was I was dripping in sweat. So it’s a game changer to get those toxins and the water out of your body. It just really has helped my whole mentality and everything else starts with that. That 5am on the treadmill.

Speaker 4
Something that you It’s something that you’re putting ahead of everything else. So unconsciously you’re telling yourself you’re a priority, right when you get out of bed.

Tyson Mutrux
That’s good stuff. My trainer recommends it and he like they have a sauna. And he always says I should get the sun, like drill quick, Charles thumbs up or down on saunas, guttered, gerbil,

Speaker 4
my best friend, my best friend swears by doing what he calls contrast sessions, which is he gets in a sauna and isn’t there for 10 or 15 minutes, and then has a cold shower, and then gets in the sauna again, and has a cold shower again. And he swears that it’s been life changing for him. So I’m a very pragmatic person, I’d say Tyson, if it seems to be helping you keep with it.

Tyson Mutrux
Love it. Really good stuff. All right, Charles, we always ask our guests to give a tip or hack of the week, what you got for us,

Speaker 4
I would say the most important thing a person can do is take some time after listening to this, and take out a piece of paper and take out a pen and relentlessly start to just flow and put on all the things that you’d like to see happen in your life the next, I’d say 10 years, and don’t limit yourself, you know, how would you like your health to look? How would you like to relationships, maybe you want a relationship, maybe you’re not even in a relationship and you’ve always wanted one, but you didn’t think was possible. Maybe her parents were divorced, you thought relationships always are painful. And and in such a way, maybe you want to have a bigger home, maybe you want more financial security, maybe you want to take what it is you feel passionate about and spread to the world, maybe it’s you want to you want to take your message to someone of influence, whatever it is, but the whole point is, right, if given this time of year, write it with the spirit of writing a Christmas list. You know, when you’re a little kid, you don’t limit what you’re willing to put on your Christmas list, you put whatever it is, you know, you want a pony you want to ponies, whatever you don’t think is it possible, and write that all down. And then after you’ve really exhausted yourself, by write all that down, go through and put next to each item, the number of years you think it would take you to achieve it. So would it be a one year goal? Would it be a three year goal? Would it be a five year goal? Would it be a 10 year goal and go through into that and then said better luck. And once you do that, you’ve created and taken the first step of a vision for yourself that you can start to work toward, I think so many people are going through life without a specific aim. And if you start to define your aims, you’re going to find that your brain will sort reality in such a way to move you in the direction of the thing you’re focused on. The key is having a well defined focus. And I’d also encourage people to feed their minds as much as you guys both do. And I do. You know, reading is a lost art. You know, there are people who have spent their life being successful and be wonderful, wonderful contributors to society. And they’ve synthesized everything into a book that you can buy or get for free at the library. So I would say start reading. You know, if there’s someone you really admire, and someone you really aspire to be like, you can have a conversation with them in a sense, by reading their work, those two things would be wonderful steps and moving towards a brighter future.

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. Really good stuff. Great advice. For my tip of the week, I’m gonna I’m gonna go back to my watch for a second. So cover your ears for a second Charles. And in the interest of health, I’m gonna I’m gonna give a tip for when it comes to health. So I’ve been kind of getting into the zone to training lately. And so it’s really interested me but I stumbled out whenever I was going on for a run a few nights ago, I noticed that on the Apple Watch, when in the in the fitness app, you can actually turn your dial whenever you’re running. And it shows you what zone you’re in whenever you’re running. And it’s really cool. So it allowed me to stay in zone two Now, are there some glitches in some flaws that yeah, it’s it’s not as great as one that you’d wear on your chest, but still good enough. And I really like it. So if you’re into running and if you want to do some zone two training, it’s pretty cool. So I highly recommend it. So very good stuff. Charles, thank you so much for coming on. This has been really, really good. Thank you for working with Jimmy. He’s been a lot healthier, a lot, a lot happier, I’ve noticed. And so helping out. Thanks for helping out my friend. I will say just that it’s been a huge boost to him. So I really appreciate it. You’re welcome.

Unknown Speaker
My pleasure, guys. Thanks, guys. See you guys.

Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer but stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content content, go to maximum liar.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

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Ever thought about buying or selling a law practice?! Our guest on the podcast today, Tom Lenfestey, helps lawyers buy and sell law practices. Law firm real-estate anyone?! 

It’s a topic that people ask us about all the time and it’s interesting because one thing we always hear people say is, “I wanna sell my firm. I’m gonna make it to some name that doesn’t have MY name in it.” It’s like the branding and naming is the afterthought to what your end goal with your law firm is. 

If you are opening a law firm, what’s your exit strategy? This and more is what we talk about in today’s episode. Listen in!

Episode Highlights:

  • 01:30 Meet Tom and hear how he got started in the Law Practice Exchange
  • 04:15 Why it doesn’t work for lawyers to sell their practice and just walk out the door, like a dentist
  • 05:50 What mistakes do lawyers make at the beginning when they found their firm AND what structural naming issues pop up when people want to get out.
      • Tom’s advice:
        • ➡️ Have clean financials
        • ➡️ Set up a firm brand that is apart from you
        • ➡️ Build out your systems
        • ➡️ Train your people
        • ➡️ Train and operate people on those systems
  • 10:35 How do you tell people you are selling your law firm practice? 
  • 13:26 What should people that are thinking about taking over a practice of another think about and ask about?
  • 17:13 What are some red flags you want to look for when you are thinking about acquiring a law firm?
  • 20:13 What is it like to work with Tom and his team to brokerage a deal and acquire a law firm 

Jim’s Hack: Find what motivates you! For me its reading books that get me fired up, like: “The 12 Week Year” or “Zone To Win”. You got to fill your brain with positive and idea generating material. 

Tom’s Tip: Read the book: “Built to Sell”: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You by John Warrillow.

Tyson’s Tip: Read the book: “Measuring what Matters” By John Doerr. It’s about how to track things in your business. What you should and shouldn’t track.  

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube.

Connect with Tom:

Resources:

Transcript: Plan Your Exit From Your Law Firm with Tom Lenfestey

Speaker 1
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 and Tyson metrics.

Tyson Mutrux
What’s up Jimmy

Jim Hacking
Tyson, my friend, I just got back from my walk. It’s early November. It’s sunny outside, it was beautiful out. I had a nice chat. While we were talking. Becca was telling me all the things that I’m screwing up, which is always fun to hear. And I had fun talking to her and to you.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, the weather is I mean, this is fantastic. This must be what it’s like to live in like San Diego, because this has just been amazing for Missouri. In mid November, I guess early November. It’s been fantastic. Well, let’s

Jim Hacking
get straight to our guests. I’m very excited to have him on the show. His name is Tom Lenfest. D, he helps lawyers sell. And by law practices. It’s a topic that people ask us about all the time. Usually, it’s interesting, because earlier today, we had someone talking about changing the name of your firm. So you’re talking about branding and naming. And then the one thing I always hear people say is I want to sell my firm, I’m going to make it to some name that doesn’t have my name in it. So Tom, we’re glad to have you with us. Welcome to the show.

Tom Lenfestey
Yeah, thank you for having me.

Tyson Mutrux
So Tom, you founded the law practice exchange in 2013. So that’s, that’s really interesting. But tell us you really about your journey, how you got into that? And then really what’s going on with you today?

Tom Lenfestey
Yeah, absolutely. So by background, you know, I’m an attorney, CPA, and I was in the transactional world. And doing a lot of, you know, planning, succession planning, wills, trusts, other planning for a lot of professionals. So a lot of other dentists CPAs. And as I tell everybody, my journey with the law, practice exchange really started back then I would love to say, out of like, this passion, or, like, I’m going to change the profession, but I really think it was more of jealousy, that what I was doing was helping a lot of other you know, professional business owners, these dentists, they CPAs, you know, doctors, other specialists plan for their exit and help to transact and monetize the value that they had built. And I really just started to ponder why or who was helping lawyers do this. And so then it became my market mission to create the marketplace for helping really, you know, Cielos, to small firms, small ownership groups, buy and sell law firms. And so that’s really what we started back in 2013, again, just trying to provide the same opportunity that I felt other professionals had figured it out, and laws different, and I thought we could do it. And we’ve been on the path to really build that marketplace since to create, you know, continuation plans for lawyers, so allowing them to exit while their practice to keep going and allow them to monetize the value that they built in the process.

Jim Hacking
time you say lawyers are different law firms are different. Tell us why please.

Tom Lenfestey
Yeah, I think so many law firms that we see traditionally, especially you know, of a certain generation, right, if we’re talking about attorneys, or law firms that are retiring, so much has been built around their personal brand. And so they are the personal value they have of that heavy referral network, they haven’t focused as much on the firm as a business, as maybe, you know, the current generation is or, you know, hopefully, a lot of your guys listeners, a lot of your mastermind, your guild members, you know, to do that. But overall, we have to transition that over time. So what I tell people is what we do our transition based sales, they’re really not throw the keys and walk out the door. That’s a rarity in our world, some of our plaintiff practices, some of our practices can definitely do that. They build more of that firm brand, that firm, you know, operations. But so many of our, you know, small practitioners, they need time to kind of introduce and attach their brand to who their successor is. So that’s a little bit different than some of our dentists to get, you know, cash out at closing, you know, walk out the door a week later or anything else. But we figured out a great process to do it. It’s just a little bit different. It works well for lawyers.

Tyson Mutrux
Why do you think that that doesn’t work for lawyers because I’ve always wondered that myself, like, I hear these dentists all the time selling their practice, and then someone else takes over like I’ve got a friend of ours, she’s a dental technician and she works for a dentist and then it was purchased by another dentist and then you know, purchase to get and it’s it’s just to me like you we should build do the same thing as attorney so why why is that different?

Tom Lenfestey
Yeah, I think it is because of that either that personal network, you know, dental specialties, like if you go to like an endodontist and orthodontist in it, they operate very similar to you know, a lot of lawyers where they’re referral based, and so they’re similar. They have to kind of transition, you know, over time introduced, you know, kind of preserve those opportunities, but I do think Tyson it’s It’s the nature of where we’ve been as a profession of kind of building our, our law firm as an extension of us, versus building it really as a separate business. And I mean, I know that’s what you guys talk a lot about is, you know, focusing on that business that is not about just you, but is really a business to serve clients to build operations to build marketing to build systems. And I think the more we do that, I think there’s a shift, right, so we see that shift already in certain practice areas, with certain types of firms. And you know, we’re hopeful over the next 1020 years, we’ll even see more of it. So, again, jealousy is a powerful thing we can catch up to those other professions, we’re usually behind on technology, we’re usually behind on marketing. But as we get there, you know, it opens up other opportunities, like transactions where we will be able to, you know, throw the keys to somebody and walk out the door.

Jim Hacking
Here’s the question I asked myself all the time, Tom, what mistakes do lawyers make? At the beginning, when they’re founding their firm, a lot of people that listen to this show, have either just started their firm or about to start their firm, might be a few years in, talked to us about what structural naming whatever other issues that you see come up five, seven years later, when someone wants to get out?

Tom Lenfestey
Yeah, absolutely. So you were just mentioning when we opened up about the, you know, having your personal name, and do you rebrand that, or anything else to a community or something that’s not attached to your identity. If you’re starting your firm today, then I would definitely suggest I’m a big believer in trade names, right? Filing those trade names with the State Bar, if you have to, or some states don’t require it, you know, just file it with your county or state. But you know, detaching, right. Even the big firms figured out, you know, a few years ago, that 18 names on a law firm header really didn’t move the needle, right. So most of them have collapsed to one name or two names. And it’s really to focus on that firm brand. You know, overall, it’s if the brand is you, it’s going to be harder to transition that to somebody else, if they see you as aging and retiring. Exiting. Right, the fear is, oh, you know, there goes, you know, Jim, and he is the firm, right, to a different degree of if you created something that is, you know, XYZ immigration law, you know, that is a little bit easier to say, Who is the attorney, right, that you don’t know as much. And I think that’s a lot of again, when we go back to comparable on dental accounting practices, others, you know, they have taken over those brands now, you don’t see as much, you know, Joe Smith, DDS, you see, you know, downtown Dental, you see these different things that are easier to kind of replace those owners. So I would say that’s one thing I would look at. The other is to really look at, you know, data, which for us, it is some of our lawyers, again, different times different structures, different focus, but we do a heavy Data Dive, not just financials, but on other metrics, the first question any buyer is going to ask is Where do the clients come from, right. And if you don’t really know where that is, and you can’t prove, you know, the history of that, that’s going to be a hard practice, you know, to get a buyer comfortable with, especially one that you may be want, you know, more cash at closing, you know, less earnout, or performance payment or otherwise. So, I would say making sure your firm does have the data, you’re tracking everything that includes clean financials, you know, the overall aspect of running your firm for Max tax breaks, it’s good for you, but also, it’s really tough. I mean, we’ve had lawyers that have come to us with, you know, again, negative or no income each and every year. And they say, Yes, I look at the revenue, right, I’m doing $4 million in revenue, it’s all buried in there and travel expense, and this and everything else. And the hard fact of it is, is we can’t get a lender to finance you know, probably that practice because it’s a flat net income practice, buyers are going to be less trustworthy of you know that so clean financials, having the right data, setting up a firm brand that is apart from you. And then overall if you’re going to do it and this is repetitive to what I think you guys talk about and you know, have the community talk about a lot is, you know, it is build systems, train people and train and operate people on those systems instead of you really be in the hub of everything. And you know, everything we do I said is transition by sales. Well if you make the transition plan easier, right of what your role is where responsibilities are, I can bring more buyers I can bring better terms to the table because essentially buyers will see that as a true business that has less risk of you department right you know you are less needed less valuable everything else but as somebody starting out new you guys know this that’s hard to say Oh, I’m gonna make myself not needed right away. But it is something to look at, you know, making the right hires developing those right process everything along the way so that you all have an exit option, right? You’re building towards that exit option, just like any other business or good planning, like if you’re opening up law firm, what’s your strategy? Are you doing it to maximize income? And then you’re just going to shut it down? Are you going to build value over time and have partners to it? Are you going to focus on building it up, and then cashing out one day? Right, equity starting to move in Arizona and Utah, I mean, you know, wherever you are, whatever practice you know, there’s a potential for, you know, that pay day or another lawyer coming in or law firm. So you should know what your exit strategy is, and try to build towards that.

Tyson Mutrux
So let’s say that Jim, he’s like, I’m done. I want to I want to get out of this practice. I don’t want to do immigration anymore. How does he get the word out the people that’s like, to me, like, I don’t ever see law firm for sale? You know, I think I’ve seen it one time, and I heard it through a text message chain. So like, how do you like, get the word out about it?

Tom Lenfestey
Yeah. So that’s part of the importance of where I thought, you know, the confidential marketplace of, you know, having brokerage for law firms, right, providing those options. So, you know, Jim’s looking for that nobody in the market should really know. I mean, if you go to, you know, our website, now we have, you know, 1015 public listings, we have another 30 Private listings behind the scenes, right. And that, again, just because of confidentiality looking for the right, buyer, anything else, the overall goal is to keep it confidential. And then it’s the outreach, if you are looking to go on your own, though, we tell everybody, you know, depending on the size of the practice everything else look around, you know, you’ve may have done a transaction, or a case with, you know, a younger generation attorney or next year with like, you know, with somebody that you’re like, damn, they’re a good attorney, they’re a good business owner of their firm, or maybe they’re unhappy at their current firm, and they’d want to be my successor over here. So a lot of it is just looking around to see that otherwise, legal insurers are a great asset for us because they get calls from attorneys that are saying, hey, look, I want to retire in the next few years, what do I need to do? And they have a great database, the Bar Association’s your guy’s Association, right as far as the members and getting the word out there the hard part is really cracking that egg open and so that’s why we operate so much on you know, hey, here’s a listing you know, you go to our website look, but you would never know it’s gyms for right and once we enter qualified potential buyer get confidentiality agreement signed. So as a service as a broker, a lot of times that’s our main purpose is to keep things quiet, while looking for the right strategic opportunity.

Becca Eberhart
Thank you all this maximum lawyers community of lawyer entrepreneurs who are taking their businesses and lives to the next level. As a guild member, you will build relationships be held accountable, and learn strategies specifically designed to get you unstuck and accelerate your plan for growth. Members are also granted exclusive access to masterminds hosted around the country four times per year. And in 2023, we’ve added a half day workshop to each mastermind, where you’ll learn new skills while working on improving systems and aspects of your personal firm. Then take the hot seat on day two and work through your most pressing challenge. It’s all inside the guild to learn more visit Max law guild.com.

Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Our guest today is Tom Lenfest. D are talking about brokerages of law firms. And Tom What should people that are thinking about taking over the practice of another? What should they be thinking about for their due diligence? Is there is there a playbook on how best to do it about the right questions to ask the right reports to run like what should people be thinking about when they’re the one doing the acquiring? Yeah, if

Tom Lenfestey
you’re looking to acquire practice, first thing is, you know, baseline Are you ready to take on that practice, the responsibilities, the roles, everything else, you know, revenue growth sounds great. And again, if it’s marketing growth, and it comes in waves or anything else, but if you’re going to acquire a million dollar practice and you’re doing a million dollars, you’re talking about doubling your responsibility doubling, you know, that aspect is you’re really ready to do that. So that’s what I’d say first, second is definitely culture to really know the attorney know their team, if you’re going to look at acquiring that to make sure it is going to be a good fit. And the third piece is it is a financial gain. If you go into it without really running that, you know, projected return on investment analysis or projected cash flow. And I’ll give an example. We were basically engaged referred over to an attorney Personal Injury Attorney fully is like like I want to buy a practice I was approached by another just business broker who’s helping this attorney you know, two towns over sell their personal injury practice. And so we looked at that. The difference though, on this one is our attorney the buyer co counsels, you know, all of their litigation, right. So their fee structure their net It looks a lot different than this other attorney who does all of their own litigation. And so what we really worked through with that buyer prospect is to say, look, this practice that you’re taking over potentially would be paying for looks different under your platform, right? Because you’re gonna bring in this case, that’s $100,000, you know, potential fee to you. And if it’s gotta go to litigation, you split that 5050. To him, it’s 100,000. To you, it’s going to be 50,000. Right. And so it’s really looking at, you know, that mesh of does it really work from a return on investment, from a financial model, we tell a lot of our sellers that we work with that a lot of times the offer depends on the buyer model, right, the buyer structure and everything else, because our models for selling buying are all over the place, right, depending on the practice and everything else. But overall, a lot does depend on that, because just in that situation, to that buyer that we were dealing with that practice is less valuable, because they choose to take a higher expense and CO counsel litigation cases, if you’re a five year PII attorney in a leaving another firm, and you want to go in and work all those cases, that practice has a higher value to you, right, because you can go try all those cases and do that you’re gonna make that money that that seller was making. So a little bit of that I would make sure again, you’re ready, your firm’s ready or anything else, because it’s not easy to run law firms, right. And if you’re going to double your growth, and double, you know, hopefully your management, everything that comes with it, just be ready. And then you know, second and third culture, and then make sure you really run that financial to make sure it’s a good fit for you. So that’s a lot of what we do to make sure buyer and seller deals work, we run deals that are going to work for both. Not that they’re gonna be like, Hey, here’s the number and we’ve never tested it. Like lawyers don’t always like numbers, you know, the CPA side of me likes numbers. But I do think it’s really important to digest that show that framework, test any purchase terms, any models so that everybody feels comfortable, like, hey, yeah, this is going to work for both going forward, it’s going to be a success.

Tyson Mutrux
I’ve got a similar question to what Jim asked you, it’s kind of the opposite of that in what are some red flags that you should be looking out for whenever you’re looking to acquire business? Because I mean, maybe the financials look good and everything, but like, what are some of those landmines that you might be looking out for?

Tom Lenfestey
Yeah, I would say, you know, number one is, you know, look to the valuation, the biggest mistake we see in outside valuations, of course, we believe our valuations are the best. But you know, that’s, you know, almost 10 years of doing this as transactions, our valuations are for market approaches, right? So we are valuing goodwill. But what we see a lot in outside valuations is they forget that a lot of attorneys produce a lot of the revenues, right, they do a lot of the legal work in the firm’s, and that has to be counted, that’s a negative hit in a lot of firms to their overall value. And so we looked at that valuation, don’t just take it for, you know, again, what the statement is, or anything else, we’re still in a pretty conservative valuation metric for law firms. I mean, on an earnings multiple, like an adjusted earnings multiple, we’re somewhere between two and three and a half our bigger firms break that number and kind of go beyond the most firms are somewhere in there. So if you see an earnings, and somebody’s asking you for five times in earnings, like red flag, right, look at that, and see why it is and really run that return on investment. The other is, as I kind of mentioned already, if they don’t know where their clients come from, you know, stop, really only do that deal. Probably if it is some kind of, you know, merger Joinder of counsel relationship where you’re going to pay on a percentage over time or otherwise. And then, you know, I really think the third is, you know, red flags are thinking internally as well. Even though a lot of attorneys some play up how hard they work, some play down how hard they work, but it’s really, could you step into their shoes, right? Could you step into this attorney this seller shoes and do what they do? Or do you have somebody on your team or people on your team that you can divvy that up for? Because that’s the overall piece? The fourth one that I would say is, you know, I call it would you like to take them to lunch? These are transition based sales. So overall, if you’re looking at something that this person is going to have to help, you know, introduce referral sources, transition clients, right, you know, anything of that nature. Do you like them enough to take them to lunch on a weekly basis? Could you work with the seller on that? And it seems like a simple question, but overall, you’re going to be working with them and you want to make sure you have a communication, ease with them to basically, you know, work through those different questions, work through that and make sure it happens. If you look at somebody and you say, I don’t know if I really like him. And it is a transition based exchange. Don’t do it, right because the communication will break down quickly that Transition Plan with most practices is the key to success. And if you can’t implement that, right, because there’s a communication breakdown, or just culture breakdown or otherwise, you know, don’t do the deal.

Jim Hacking
I would love to know what it’s like to work with you and your team. Do you consult even before someone’s thinking about acquiring a practice? Do you help them go out and find the practices? What does it look like, in that realm?

Tom Lenfestey
Again, absolutely. So we help you know, again, sellers looking for their continuation, their exit strategies, we consult with, you know, everybody that you can go through, go to our website and schedule a call, we’ll do a discovery call, see if we can help you now or in the future, or whatever your direction is. But from the seller side, we really look at it as you can add your listing to our website, if you want to kind of go you know, the list it yourself process, or we can help you on a full brokerage service platform. So we offer kind of both of those opportunities to that we believe in our process, our team, everything else, but for some practices, they want to test the market. And so we offer that as well, we have our buyer database, we of course are trying to drive this is really the marketplace. So to the buyer side also, again, great place to come, you know, look through, we can present any opportunities that we currently have in market or that we would have, we also have certain buyers that have engaged us to really go on a search. And so will actively go and, you know, search for practices for them to acquire, those may be specific practice areas, geographic regions, otherwise, that we’re really trying to play matchmaker, but just from the buyer side, in those capacities. So our overall mission is really to make more of these deals come together. And so anyway, we can do that, you know, from helping in the process, helping in the valuation knowledge, helping them to deal terms or structuring, we’re happy to do so whether you’re a seller or a buyer, or just need some strategic planning on valuation, you know, internal succession or otherwise,

Tyson Mutrux
it’s great, because we have a lot of guests that we interview on here, as you as you know, and like, you can tell, you know, what the hell you’re talking about Tom, so this is great. So I’m hoping that if people are thinking about selling their firm or buying a firm, I hope that they hire you. If someone is looking to hire you, how do they get in touch with you?

Tom Lenfestey
Yeah, absolutely. So you can visit us at the law, practice exchange.com That’s the law practice exchange.com You can call us 919-789-1931. We’re on all the socials. While most of the social sir, I can’t keep up with all of them. But from that standpoint, but yeah, the law, practice, exchange that calm, you know, go there, we have some good resources for you to go through. We’re happy to have a discovery call with you see if we can help you times that you know, that aspect of when the time is right for everybody. So, you know, overall, just look at that. But feel free to learn and know more. So when the time is right, you can move forward.

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. All right, we do want to be respectful of your time. So we’re going to wrap things up. Before I do, I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group, if you’re interested in that, you know, discussing marketing ideas, business ideas, whatever it may be with other attorneys, just search maximum lawyer in Facebook, and you’ll find us if you’re interested in a more high level conversation, join us in the guild, go to max law guild.com. And you’ll find out more information about that. And while you’re listening to the rest of this episode, if you don’t mind leaving us a five star review, we would greatly appreciate it. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week,

Jim Hacking
my hack is find what motivates you so my wife and my son loves a tease me they say that I keep buying the same book all over and over and over that they’re all like you, oh, you are the 12 week year rezoned when they say, Dad, you just get the same book over and over. But these books get me fired up, they get me motivated. When I’m on the treadmill, I’m reading, I’m trying to listen to stuff that’s gonna get me motivated. And you gotta fill your brain with positive and idea generating material. Now, there is definitely a time for quiet and for reflection. I’m down with that. But I find it really helpful to be listening or reading a couple books at a time different ideas will come to me. And even though my wife and son think it’s pretty funny that most of my books have similar titles. They’re not all the same. I’m getting good ideas left and right. So I encourage everyone to do the same.

Tyson Mutrux
I think most of the books are the same, that it’s just the repetition. You’re just, you know, it’s over and over and over again. It’s finally sinking in. So but there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s good. All right, Tom, we always ask our guests to give a tip or a hack of the week once you get for us.

Tom Lenfestey
Yeah, absolutely. It’s probably been mentioned on the podcast before otherwise. But my tip on that book for would be go rebuilt to sell. Right? If you haven’t read it before by John Warrillow. It’s a great easy read. It’s also a concept that maybe this is a combined hacker Tip of the Week. Focus on the business, right focus on growth on marketing the business, not you personally and delegate and elevate another good book there from the traction aspect, but do that but build us out John Marlowe.

Tyson Mutrux
So phenomenal book. I think Jim recommended that to me a decade ago such a good book. So really good stuff. Absolutely. Another book for everybody just get your bookshelves ready. And this one is on measuring what matters. It is by John Doerr. And it’s how about this for a subheading, how Google Bondo and the Gates Foundation rocked the world with OKRs. So if you if you want to know how to track things i We hear all the time, like, hey, and what what should I track? What should I track, yada, yada, yada, read this book, it’ll give you that basic overview that you did on what you should track and what you shouldn’t track. And if you want to sell your firm, maybe you could take these numbers and then hand them off to Tom and he can help you sell your firm. But Tom, thank you so much for joining us really, really appreciate this. I really enjoyed this podcast. So thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely.

Tom Lenfestey
Thank you for having me.

Jim Hacking
Thanks, Tom.

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