Building a Culture of Success by Embracing Mistakes with David Neagle

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Grab David's Freebie: The 2-Step Mindset Hack to Reprogram Your Life for Success

Are you a law firm owner who is thinking about improving the culture of your firm? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, co-hosts Jim and Tyson welcome back David Neagle, a bestselling author and founder of a global consulting company. The discussion centers on fostering a culture of success within law firms.

For David, fostering a culture of success within law firms involves a mixture of different things. One of these things is for those in the legal field to understand that there are no mistakes, only lessons. Focusing on mistakes can make employees feel guilt and shame for doing something wrong. But, if a mistake is turned into a lesson, people are more likely to be open and trustworthy with what they do. Thus truly leads to a healthy and successful business.

The internal voice of a business owner can affect the culture of a firm. These voices can be fear or the ideas from friends and family. It is important to separate those voices to understand what you want for yourself and your business. Other people’s ideas can control how you think and view your success and can drive a wedge between you and success. David suggests to determine what it is that you want and make a decision to follow the voice that will get you there.

Take a listen to learn more from David Neagle!

Jim's Hack: Listen to the speech called “The Day You Turn Your Life Around” by Jim Rohn to help get your mindset right.

David Tip: Read Netflix CEO Reed Hastings’ book, which delves into how to step into your genius.

Tyson's Tip: Spot check core values with your team.

Episode Highlights:

• 5:07 The importance of embracing mistakes to foster a successful law firm culture
• 5:34 The need for law firm leaders to view mistakes as opportunities for learning
• 9:41 The process of shifting firm culture 
• 15:47 How individuals' internal voices affect their mindset and firm culture

Connect with David:

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• Youtube 

Resources:

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Transcripts: Building a Culture of Success by Embracing Mistakes with David Neagle

Jim (00:00.77)
Welcome back to the Maximum Lawyer Podcast. I'm Jim Hacking.

Tyson (00:04.388)
And I'm Testimutrix. What's up, Jimbo?

Jim (00:08.106)
Tyson, I'm excited. I don't know how many episodes we've recorded today, but I'm excited about ending the day with a bang with one of our favorite past guests. Everyone has always had great responses when he's been on the show, so I'm excited.

Tyson (00:22.488)
I am too. going to jump right in and David, forgive me if I don't give your full bio because I don't think, I don't really think you need much of an introduction to our audience for the most part, but I'll do the beginning of it. For those of you that don't know, David is a speaker, bestselling author, founder of the multi -million dollar global consulting company Life is Now Inc and host of the business daily news ranked podcast, The Successful Line.

So it's it's the host of the business daily news ranked podcast successful. Make sure you all know that the successful mind David welcome to the

David (00:51.613)
Hahaha

David (00:57.394)
Hey, thanks for having me guys. Pleasure to be

Jim (01:01.282)
David, you've been on the show many times before, but one thing we haven't talked about is I never knew you got in an accident on a dam.

David (01:08.084)
Yeah, that kind of started my whole redirect journey in life, so to speak. I did in September of 1989, I was water skiing on the Illinois River. I got separated from the boat and I got caught in the current and I got sucked through the dam in Marsales, Illinois. I was one of only two people at that time that survived going through

Jim (01:31.576)
how did that then lead into your transformation?

David (01:34.696)
Well, here's the thing. When I came out on the other side, I mean, thank God I had a life vest on because if I had not had a life vest on, I wouldn't have ever resurfaced. I literally thought I was dead once it sucked me in. I thought, that's it, it's over. But then I popped up out on the other side just before I was ready to black out. Like I was right on the edge and it sucked me back down again, tumbled me around.

It broke my back. had all these puncture wounds all over my body from whatever debris was on the other side of the dam. So I'm in this current and it took me around an island in the middle of the river. And as I went around this island, I reached up and grabbed a branch. And as I was holding onto this branch, I thought to myself, I've got to get out of here. If I don't get out of here, two miles down the river is another island in Ottawa, another dam in Ottawa, Illinois. I probably won't make that one. So

started to unbuckle my life vest and push this branch into the life vest and buckle around it because I had shredded my hands. I peeled them like an orange, both of my palms. So I'm hanging there and it was one of those kind of cry out to God moments. My son had just been born in June and I said, God, please show me how to turn this around. And as soon as I said that, his face flashed across the screen of my mind.

And it gave me like this extra energy that came out of nowhere because I was exhausted trying to swim against the current to get to shore. And I was really fit in those days. And as I was hanging from that, said, you know, I don't know. At that point in my life, I felt very lost. It was a high school dropout. It was not going anywhere. We were going through a bankruptcy. It was just a really bad time. It couldn't hold a job. And I was asking God, said, if

Let me live today. I'll figure out whatever this is whatever my problem is and I said literally said this I'll spend the rest of my life teaching other people and I don't know where that came from. I hadn't been thinking about that prior to this It was not a thought in my mind Anyway, long story short they they pulled me out out of a river rescue came up. They pulled me out I had broken my back it took a while for me to heal and get back to work But that started me asking a new

David (03:56.55)
in my mind and the question was, why am I here? I'm not here to do all these mistakes and play small and I'm here to do something. What is that? And I kept asking that question and as long and during through the process of asking that question, I started making slightly better decisions until one day I made a significant decision, which is a whole nother story. It's the one where I was on the forklift and I tripled my income in a month. And I'm like, there's something going on here,

I do take it all the way back to just a few years before that in 89 when I went through, excuse me, that dam and I started refocusing my life in some direction. I didn't know where I was going, but I started asking different questions. I was a young guy, I was in my 20s, I think it was 22, no, what was I, I was about 23 when I went through the dam.

You know, nobody my age was asking questions like that, especially not from the part of Chicago I was from. It was all about survival. So that's really what started

Tyson (05:04.248)
It's a hell of a story. I have heard that story before. It's a hell of a story. They should make a movie out of it, actually, is what they should do. So the reason why we wanted to have you on is to talk about how to create a culture of success to propel your firm forward. And one of the things you'd mentioned to us before was just about mistakes and how some people are,

David (05:10.467)
I've heard that before.

Tyson (05:29.616)
Many people are punished for mistakes, but I guess what advice would you give to law firm leaders looking to create a culture of success by maybe embracing those mistakes?

David (05:42.644)
Yeah, that's a great question. So I believe that there are no mistakes in life, there's only lessons. And when you use the word mistake, it's intrinsically attached to shame and guilt in the lives of most individuals. So they beat themselves up internally, they do damage to their own self -esteem. For some people, it becomes paralyzing because that becomes the dominant influence over their thinking and they don't get out of it.

And the other thing that it does is that because of wherever you find shame and guilt in somebody's processing psychological processing These are people that will lie and keep secrets. It just goes hand -in -hand. mean shame is you don't want somebody to know What you just did your you're highly embarrassed. You're shameful for what you've done So if you can keep that a secret most people will When you when you if you have that problem in your firmer enter any

You don't have somebody that is fully functioning and participating in the advancement of where everybody's going together so Many years ago. We took the idea that Because I was teaching this I wasn't necessarily practicing it as much in my own company But we still tolerated mistakes well, but we literally changed the narrative like there's no mistakes. There's only lessons we I learned a tremendous amount from Reed Hastings book

The Netflix book, right? Like I really love the philosophy of the way he started and built that company and we were going to view everything as This is something that's necessary to move us forward We're not going to shame and guilt anybody nor ourselves and we're going to give an open platform to learn From that and it changed Everything within the dynamic of the company at the time for us it did and then I started doing it with my clients and it did the It did the same thing, you know and almost everybody

that we would train with this would adopt it. Some people would self -select out because it just wasn't not part of their moral standard, if you could believe that. But when it comes to revealing secrets, that's a very powerful thing in the personal background of the average individual because everybody carries them. And the only reason we carry them is because we process through a filter of shame and

Jim (08:10.552)
So David, I practice with my spouse and she's pretty close to a perfectionist and she does not like mistakes and she has high standards for the team. So how can you help me reframe that with her in a way that keeps her happy? Because she's always worried about losing our law license, which I understand is important, but also creating a culture that's sort of more understanding

or growth oriented when it comes to changing the way we do things.

David (08:45.108)
Because you will never go beyond the level of the person setting the standard, which would be you or your wife in that scenario. People will only be able to live up to what your standard is and you never engage their genius, or rarely do you engage their genius. A person will engage their genius when they're completely engaged and they feel that they have the free flow form of bringing ideas to the table. Now, this doesn't mean

people run off willy -nilly doing whatever it is that they want, right? I mean, there's operating standard and procedure, there's understanding in the legal platform of what's allowed and what's not allowed. But when we're talking about day -to -day operations, setting visions and goals for individual areas of a business or the firm

What can they do to make that better? We need people thinking. We need people open to thinking, even if they don't immediate apply it, but bring it to you as a suggestion for what it is that they want to do. If we don't allow them to try, then we rely only on our own genius and we never get there on our own. We need people thinking that are in the field, that are touching customers, that are working within, and we want them fully involved, you know, so that…

They have an emotional stake in what's happening, not just, gotta keep my job

Tyson (10:16.456)
So David, our firm went over, has gone through a culture shift over the last 18 months to two years and was not easy, but it also required that we replace many of the people that we had before. And I don't know if that's the right way or not, but for people that are looking to change the shift or shift the way their firm culture is currently, where would you point people to start? Like how would you recommend that they

start the change.

David (10:48.59)
Well, the idea would be for the owners of the firm to go away together, create a vision for where you're going, right? A really solid vision, even if it's only for a few years. And then once you get that fettered out so that it's very understandable, you bring it back to the team and you begin to sell the team on that vision. And this is where you'll have people that either have buy -in or they self -select out in that process.

when you present it to them, the idea is where do you see yourself in this vision, right? So not where do I see you in this vision, where do you see yourself in this vision? How does this vision help you attain your goals and your dreams and the things that you want for your life and your family? And if they're not 100 % in, they're 100 % out, which is a great position to be in because then you know what you've got to work with.

And you can hire the A players that you need if people do self -select out. And some do. Some get to a point where they're like, this is as far as I want to grow. I don't really want to grow anymore. And where you're going is not what's comfortable for me. And you give them the room and the idea that they can select out if they want to. When we first did it, we had people self -select out of our company.

with most of the companies that I've worked with, there's always a person here or there that does. I've never seen like a mass exodus or anything, but I know of a mass exodus. So, know, Gary Vaynerchuk is? Yeah. So before COVID, I was doing some, I had Gary as a guest on the podcast. We were doing some work with him and we were with him up in New York and he told us a story about when he sat down with his brother.

Tyson (12:22.992)
of course, yeah.

David (12:38.016)
really kind of redirect the vision of VaynerMedia and they literally had to let go of about a hundred and twenty people because What they really and they only had about two hundred and forty people in the business at the time Because the first hundred and twenty that batch of people they came in they were all friends family So on and so forth that helped them there were bodies that could get work done, but they realized they hit a plateau

And now they needed talent and they needed to be able to pay for that talent. that they, I mean, I got nervous when he told me how many people he let go. But like what a courageous thing to do to be able to take himself to the next level. But it was the vision that did that. Him and his brother sat down and said, we're never gonna get where we wanna go with this batch of folks. They got us this far, but there's no way they can come to the next level because they don't have what we need to get there.

Jim (13:35.97)
David, that's great. And when you were talking about the shame and blame that sort of goes along with people's baggage of, you know, how maybe how their parents treated them making mistakes. One thing we've noticed with some of our younger lawyers is they have a hard time admitting they made a mistake. How can we make it safer for them or easier for them to just sort of come to

You know, obviously, a lot of times we ask them to come with a solution, but how can we give them that space to sort of have those conversations?

David (14:07.892)
So the idea would be to let them know that there's not a negative ramification on a first time mistake. So here's the idea. There's a difference between a mistake and negligence. There's a big difference. If I'm working for you and I'm trying to do the best that I can and I screw something up and I've been well trained, that's a mistake. Here was my intention, this is what I was trying to do, I made an error.

I apologize for the error, let's sit down and figure out how we can do it right or better next time. However, if I'm operating from negligence and I'm not self -assessing what's going on, I'm not holding myself personally accountable for my own work, that's a much different situation. And generally what happens is that you know about that before they do. So

usually having a face -to -face meeting with them about what's with the issues that are going on the idea of There's there's free room to make mistakes is not something that you just toss into the mix It's something that's constructed into the company you decide you're gonna do it you create a vision you bring everybody in you sell them on the vision you have the people that are gonna stay the people that are gonna go and then you talk about this idea of We're

to do the best that we can, need everybody in their genius to do that and mistakes are going to happen. So what we want to do is look at mistakes as lessons to grow, which means that you have to be 100 % responsible for your mistake. We're not going to fire you, we're not going to tag your pay or whatever because you made a mistake, but part of that responsibility is that when you've made one, that you come to us with it first to let us know if you catch it first so that we can sit down and figure out what went wrong.

so that we can do something different. So you're training them on literally how do I process this mistake? And then I've had to do some side training with people sometimes where it's like a mistake doesn't mean you're a bad person. Because in the example that you're giving me, that's an internalization from childhood, right? They have to cover the mistake because something would go bad if they found out. They did not have the freedom to make an error.

David (16:26.484)
and then have somebody help them correct thinking or behavior or learning new values or whatever it is, skill set, maybe it was a skill set error, they were immediately went 100 miles an hour into some kind of punishment or embarrassment or shame around it. Now, if somebody did that with me as a child, the first thing that I would do is try to hide something the next time that I screw something up. And then that becomes a lifelong pattern.

Tyson (16:54.152)
Yeah, GMO is a great question, that's a great answer too David, because that's something that I've seen quite a bit too. I want to read you something that you posted in August of 23 on Facebook and it's the voice that you listen to is the voice that you believe and I wonder how do you think that that internal voice affects the culture of the firm?

David (17:22.814)
for the individual or for the collective.

Tyson (17:25.734)
Yeah, so as the business owner, your internal voice, so that voice, the voice that you're listening to is the voice that you believe. So whether it's a positive internal voice, a negative internal voice, tell me or explain how that affects the rest of the firm. Because sometimes I talk about this how an attitude is kind of like germs, right? It's easy to pass it on, whether it's positive or negative.

David (17:50.42)
That's good, I like

Tyson (17:54.342)
So do wonder what your thoughts are on that when it comes to, because we do talk to a lot of attorneys that are in different situations. They could have a pretty positive mindset, they could have a really negative mindset. So what is your view on that, that internal voice and how it might affect the rest of the culture in your firm?

David (18:14.718)
Okay, so here's when it comes to the voice in our head, I try to teach people this idea so that they can separate what the voice is. First of all, I categorize them into three separate voices. You have you, which would be you knowing you, your higher self or whatever your belief in God would be. That's one voice. The second voice would be fear. And now fear is not a bad thing.

If you understand what fear is and what it is that you're going to do with it. And generally fear tells you what not to do. It gives you warning of some kind. And then the third voice is others, which is anybody else from your past that's replaying a voice in your head. When a person hears a voice in their head, I ask them to isolate it and name it. Who is that person or what is the voice? Is it you? Is it fear? Is it others? If it's others, who? Who is the person?

Because the negative things that you'll hear inside your head are never you. It's always somebody else's voice. It was internalized and programmed as a child. So you'll be like, yeah, that's my mom's voice, or that's my dad's voice, or that was my football coach's voice, or whoever it is that it might be. Now here's the, let me just explain fear really quick. First of all, fear is not a bad thing. It's biological, it's prehistorical.

It's in the reptilian part of the brain. But the idea is that because we have an intellect and consciousness, when we recognize fear, we're supposed to say, okay, I see fear. Like my fear detector's holding up a red flag and saying something's wrong here. Now I'm supposed to bring my intellect in and determine what the truth is around it, right? Providing that it's not the kind of fear like where somebody's gonna jump you with a gun or something, you know, like there's a tiger in the bush. That's different. That's the fight, flight, or freeze idea.

But for general fears, because we're only born with two fears, all other fears are programmed. And then you isolate what it is and you determine whether it's a fear or not. But ultimately what gives you the voice is your internal voice. We're yes, we're going to do this. No, we're not going to do that. We have to watch out for this. I mean, that's where you start to bring your intellect into the conversation. Now, when we're talking about your voice versus others voices,

David (20:43.316)
This was where the most important part of the change goes. If you find out you're listening to the voices of others in your head, you're not taking full authority for your own life. So, now this sounds wild to a lot of people, but when you begin to think about it, you realize the impactful truth that's behind it. For the first 20 years or so of our life, everybody had authority over us. We had to ask for permission for things. People told us where to be, what to do, how to dress.

going to school. It was always somebody else of authority in our mind. So all of those other voices get a representation in our mind of an authority above our

In today's culture and for the last little while, we've gotten away from the idea of significant rites of passage that other indigenous tribes around the world practiced to let a person completely step into their adult male or female of who they really were, not just to prove that they were now an adult, but to take ownership of it and to be given the responsibility of it. They then have the authority

The that they're an adult it became a conscious application in their life We don't do that with kids anymore or very little of it. So we kind of meld into adulthood We know consciously where the adult were responsible But what we don't realize is that there's still voices of authority that are taking over their process of the way that we think When you can separate that and you realize

this negative voice or this other voice that's telling you what to do is not you, you can step in consciously with your own intellect and say, no, I'm not listening to that voice. And then you ask yourself the most important question of your life always, which is, what do I want? Because that will always move you in the direction that you want to go. Now, even if you don't know what it is at the moment, that's where you stay. What do I

David (22:50.91)
Because what you want will get you out of the situation or build upon what you're doing or take you to the next level. Usually voices of the negative kind are coming from somebody else and they're backward in nature. It's not something that's healthy, nor does it lend to us making good decisions in the future. So we do have to, at the time that we live in, that humanity's in now, we need to remember and remind ourselves

We're the ones in authority of our own destiny in life. And even if it's down to the micro level of that destiny, your family, your children, your spouse, the firm itself, and consciously hold that position so that you're asking you what you want and you're not hearing another voice in your head tell you what you should want or shouldn't

Jim (23:45.912)
Tyson and I recorded a whole episode once of this show and it was called What Do I Want? And we asked it, what do I want? What do I want? What do I want? And what do I want? Right? Like emphasizing each of the four words totally has a different tone to it. So why does determining what it is that you want help spur action, David?

David (23:56.468)
Yeah.

David (24:09.288)
Because most people are raised hearing that they can't have what they want. And if we will just admit to ourselves what we do want, everything in our life is going to the destination of why we're here. That's what I believe. I believe we're all here for a purpose. That purpose existed before we got here. And yet we're never taught how to recognize what it is. And very simple.

The way that we learn to find it and recognize it is by honoring what we actually want in life and taking action on that. that, yes, in the beginning it sounds almost like a greedy, selfish idea, but when you're coming from a place of consciousness and you're applying it, it's not. What it's doing is it's opening the doors to your genius, why you're here, what you're supposed to do. It really gives you direction. know, every other form of life,

has instinctual direction. It doesn't wonder what it is, why it's here, what it's gonna do, where the food's gonna come from tomorrow. It just does the same thing every day. But our greatest power is our ability to choose. So like when you said about listening to other people's voices, if you're choosing from what you want, not only are you going after what you want, so you have the energy to do that, you have the discipline built in to do that,

It's something that you want to do so you don't have to make yourself do it. It allows you to have a much more exuberant attitude about what you're doing because you're buying in yourself. You're acknowledging what it is that your soul is really here to do.

Tyson (25:53.616)
I that David. We could probably talk to you for the next three hours but we want to be respectful of time so I'm going to start to wrap things up. I've learned a lot already and I think a lot of people are going to get a lot of great things out of this episode but before I do, I know that you've got a lot going on in your life so if people want to get in touch with you or work with you in some capacity, how do they get in touch with you? What's the best way?

David (26:21.012)
Well, the best way for them to learn anything about us is to go to the successful mind podcast. Cause they can sample us there. They hear what we do. Everything's free. There's, there's no charge. They can learn a tremendous amount. and I believe Tia gave you a link that's lifeisnowing .com forward slash PG thatch maximum lawyer. That's for a handout. it's called, that we're all born to be a success. It's a free download.

they could pull off and they could take a look through that. That's a great place to start because it asks that question, what do you want?

Tyson (26:58.584)
And we'll have that in the show notes too, so for anyone that doesn't want to try to write that down, we'll…

David (27:03.165)
Yeah, don't try to write that

Tyson (27:04.642)
We'll make sure it's in the show notes for you. All right, we're going to wrap things up before I do. you're interested in Maxim Lawyer and being part of our community, we would love to have you in the big Facebook group. Just search Maxim Lawyer on Facebook and you'll be able to find us. There's also a Facebook page and then there's also the guild that you might see on there. And that's for our membership group and it's maxlawguild .com if you're interested in the membership group. We would love to have you in there.

we would ask that you please provide us, give us a five star review if you've gotten something from this episode or any of the other episodes. It does help spread the love to other lawyers because we're here to make sure that they get better. They are better at marketing their firms, getting more clients, doing a better job, being healthier. So if you could give us a five star review, we'd really appreciate it. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week?

Jim (27:58.978)
I know David's a big fan of Jim Rohn and I've noticed on Amazon there's a lot more Jim Rohn content than there used to be. So I've been listening the last couple days to the day that turns your life around, but anytime you can spend listening to Jim Rohn and getting your mindset right is good. And Amazon has a lot more of that Nightingale Conan stuff than they used to. So it's really easy to check it out on there.

Tyson (28:23.303)
Very cool. It's weird that you mentioned Jim Rohn because I saw a post about him today. It like a long post about it. read it. that's just interesting that you brought it up. David, we always ask our guests to give a tip or a hack. Could be a book, could be a podcast, could be a quote, you name it. What do you have for us?

David (28:42.868)
Well, one of the things that I mentioned here in the conversation was the Reed Hastings Netflix book. It really, you know, the crux of the love and the cooperation that's within the way he strategically built that company is something that's brand new to the world. I mean, there's been some copying of it since he wrote it, but that's the original as far as I'm concerned. And talk about helping you understand the power of your own mistakes and attempting to try.

and step into your genius. I think it's a great book to start

David (29:19.144)
You're muted.

Tyson (29:22.93)
What a rookie move. That's very good, David. Thanks for sharing that. So this morning, I ran into Josh Evans. He's a guild member, and we were chatting a little bit. then afterwards, we had a quick coffee with each other between podcast episodes. there were some words that were printed and taped to his laptop. And I said, what is that?

So those are our core values. And I said, that's interesting. he apparently, his laptop had broken, so he was using his paralegal's laptop. And he apparently asked them, basically spot checks them on core values. And so she has got to the point where she's taped it to her laptop so she knows the answer right away. And the tip is that he'll give them prizes when they get things like that right. I thought it was an interesting idea. We don't do things like that. But I do think it's an interesting idea if he spot checks them on things like that and they get it right, they get a prize.

I thought that was a cool idea, so I figured I'd pass it on to people. was a cool little thing, yeah, absolutely. I think it was also cool of her to think, hey, I might get asked this again, so I'll take it my laptop. But David, as always, pleasure talking to you. I can't wait to have you on again. It's always fun, and hopefully people will reach out to you, start listening to your podcast if they want to hear more from you.

David (30:19.934)
That's awesome.

Jim (30:22.126)
That's great.

David (30:26.481)
Yes, for sure.

David (30:39.422)
Thanks guys, thank you very much. Good seeing

Jim (30:40.408)
Thanks, David. Good seeing you guys.

Tyson (30:42.962)
Thanks David. See you Jimbo.