“Working on building a law firm takes as much, if not more, than actually doing law.”
In this episode Jim and Tyson take a listener’s question as a case study and try to help him out giving their advice, different perspectives and struggles of their own.
Planification. Strategy. Vision. Long term. Without it, you are pointlessly doing things.
If you have questions or topics you’d like us to cover, we’d be happy to have you on the show live as we record it or to do it through Facebook Group and/or Page.
Tyson’s Tip: A book. “The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM)” by Hal Elrod.
A lot of good takeaways.
Hacking’s Hack: A book. “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance” by Angela Duckworth.
About perseverance.
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Transcript: Grinding and Chasing – Case Study
Tyson Mutrux
It all starts with the vision or you want to call the strategy, or whatever you want to call it. I think that that’s the most important thing. I think, either vision strategy, whatever you want to call it, you have to start with that without that. You’re pointlessly doing things.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm, the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson nutrix. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. For back on the maximum lawyer podcast, I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m Tyson Mediatrix. Hey, Jimmy, how you doing?
Jim Hacking
Good today. Listen, I’m excited about today’s show, it’s good to get back and recording even though I got these guys across the street cutting up and then again, they’re making me mad. But hopefully the sound won’t be too distorted. And everyone will be able to enjoy the show.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah. And so I do want to say about the sound, we’re using a new conference line to record. And so if people have issues with it, let us know. If it’s better, let us know. We want to get some feedback from you to make sure we’re using the right recording equipment. So we want to make sure people give us some feedback, go to the Facebook page and give us some feedback on the sound quality because that way we can improve every single week and Jimmy your world a little bit in flux these days. I know we’re not going to talk about it completely today. But you got some issues going on. Right? Well, yeah,
Jim Hacking
President Trump has issued an executive order that affects a great percentage of my clients. And so we’re sort of exploring the possibilities. It’s been sort of a whirlwind weekend, I did a little YouTube video about it, or a Facebook Live group video about it. And it’s already got about 1600 views just from yesterday, I was sitting on my back porch and barbecuing, and I thought I would make a little video outlining what had happened and really gotten taken off. It’s been shared about 20 times and really gotten a lot of views. And so you never know what’s going to strike a chord with people. And that’s sort of one of the things we say with content all the time is you’re usually going to get wrong when you think that something is going to be a big, much passed around and viewed or listened to audio. And so I think that you just never know. And so that’s why you got to just keep creating content.
Tyson Mutrux
I think the scariest part of all of it is the fact that you’re in the backyard, barbecuing. I’m not sure when he anything. You barbecued. So that’s probably the scariest part of it all.
Jim Hacking
That was really funny because Amani had seasons, these chicken legs for the week. And she said, Okay, well you barbecue this today, and we’ll have it for dinner like on Tuesday. And she wasn’t home when they were finished. And the boys and Nora and I, I think there were 24 that we had and we had about six left. When she came home, she was not happy. I bet that Jays I guess a growing voice was pretty funny. And this week, we’re really excited about what we’re going to do on the show. So we have a new member joining the Facebook group this week. And if you if you’re not a member of our maximum lawyer, Facebook group, it’s really becoming quite the place to kick around ideas. And people are starting to post and contribute. And we’re really excited about that. And we got a new member. His name’s Phil Norman and a friend had referred him the shows a podcast and I’m going to read sort of through the chain to get you up to speed Tyson because I know you were out of town this weekend, and then we can talk about sort of the issues that will raise Okay, good. Alright, so our new members name is Wil Norman, and he says he’s from Cleveland, Ohio, and he’s in a two man firm. He and his partner have been practicing for about five years. They were army buddies, will practices on criminal defense, and his partner does the transactional work PII and business litigation. And he said that he had listened to our podcast, he’s listened to about 10 episodes of it, and that he also had read John Fisher’s book, The Power of a system online, so you get his mind, right. He’s, he’s learning. And he says that, listening to you guys, and reading John’s book is really refreshing. It’s like, it’s starting to click that they need to work on building a law firm as much if not more than actually doing law. And so I thought I’d pause there, get your thoughts on that. And then we can just sort of work our way through the posts and the chain on Facebook.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, it sounds like he’s getting it. And I think that’s it’s important. At some point, we have to realize that this is a business and I know he sounds like he’s four and a half years in but it’s better late than never, I guess is the way to put it. You definitely always have to focus on on running a practice as a business, you got to make money otherwise, I mean, you have no clients to take care of. So that’s a big part of it. I sound like and I know we’re gonna go maybe get to this a little bit. So I know he had some other comments you were talking about. He may have some other planning issues that I want to talk about at some point, but it does seem like he’s got the bedrocks. He talks about building a law firm. I think he said he’s the worst building law firm. So sounds like he has the bones there.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, we talked a little bit after that about the E Myth and he’s read the E Myth revisited. He said I read it two years ago and he read the E Myth for lawyers and he said it completely changed his thinking about his business. But then he said I struggled tactically how to get from point A to point B and got stuck back just grinding and chasing where that’s really the name of the episode grinding and chasing.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, no kidding. And I think that that Actually, that part of it is an E, there’s an easy solution to that, whether you use the 12, a gear or some other method, it’s very easy to use. And I think what you have to do is, I think if you break it down, and you have, you have to start with a vision, though, and it’s something, he may have a vision, which is good in the first time, and he talks about building the law firm and everything else. So they need to make sure they do have a solid vision for the firm. And then, and I recommend the 12 weeks, but you can do whatever you want. Definitely don’t do a year do much shorter than that. But you break it down. And how it works is you take 12 weeks, and then what are your goals for those 12 weeks, I wouldn’t do more than three, one or two is much better. And what you do is you break down what you need to achieve those goals to achieve your vision. And it is very, if he hasn’t done so if you haven’t done so if listeners haven’t done so go to the toilet yours website. And there’s a math study guide you can use it actually really breaks it down for you, it makes it really easy to do. It’s dummy proof users answer the questions and unless you filled out, fill it in. But it really is about breaking things down piece by piece. So once you do you got I know you Jimmy, you’ve got your vision, I’ve got my vision. But once you have your vision in place, it’s really important. That’s the most important part of it, because then you sell your goals for each to a week is to get you to that vision, which is really, really big part of this. And then just back it up from there, you say, okay, in these next 12 weeks, what are the things I absolutely have to do to accomplish this goal. So that’s you write those down. And then each week, you list the things you need to do to achieve those tasks to then achieve that goal, to then get to your vision. It’s very, very simple, really, it’s just about sitting down and doing the planning process.
Jim Hacking
I think it’s so great, because you and will are both former army guys. And I thank you both for your service. And I think that it’s interesting that you Tyson especially are always on tactics. And I think that’s really, really good. And I oftentimes find myself drawn to the mindset stuff. But I think you’re right, once you get your mindset, right, and once you understand, you know, where you’re headed and what you’re looking for and sort of you view things in a different light, then then you can find the tactics that get you from point A to point B. And I think, I think that’s a good point,
Tyson Mutrux
we attach because we’re really important. But the thing is, though, you can’t do the tactics, without the long term vision, you have to have the strategy in place without the strategy, there is the tactics, or you’re just blindly doing things. And that’s, that’s nice of doing. Um, so it all starts with the vision or you want to call the strategy, or whatever you want to call it. I think that that’s the most important thing, I think, either vision strategy, whatever you want to call it, you have to start with that without that you’re pointlessly doing things. I love
Jim Hacking
that phrase grinding and chasing that we’ll use this because it’s such a seductive, alluring thing that you know, we always find ourselves just diving in, especially when things are hectic, like they are for me right now where you just want to dive in and do the work. And it’s hard to step back and find that space that you need to think on a higher level and to be working on instead of in the business,
Tyson Mutrux
it really is easy to get trapped into that, especially if you get into your email earlier in the day. If you if you start taking those unscheduled phone calls, it’s so easy to get trapped. I mean, and that’s why you really have to set aside time to do things. And you really have to plan your week out. And I didn’t, before I didn’t believe in that I just I used to do just the top five for the day in the week. And that would get me through and I didn’t do the unscheduled or I did the no unscheduled phone calls. That was a big part of it. And but until I actually started blocking out time for my week, that’s whenever I started to see the rapid growth. And that’s where I saw that can actually get so much more done in a week, when you do block your time. But I mean, it’s it’s easy to let someone else’s emergencies become your emergencies. And you have to sort of step back and just say, You know what, this isn’t my emergency, I can help but at the right time. And so I think you’ve got to have more respect for your own time.
Jim Hacking
And so I think then the big question that we’ll get to in the post, and I think the thing that I wanted to talk about on the show today is, you know, how do you get started, let’s say that the scales have enlisted from your eyes, you’ve realized, for the first time that you are maybe the second time that you have been sort of running around like a chicken with your head cut off and you understand the importance of the things that we’re saying the things that John Fisher talks about the things that Michael Gerber wrote about an E Myth and let’s say that you’re now at that stage, try to remember, I mean, lucky for you, you caught it sort of early on, I’m not as bright as you and so it took me a little bit longer but I think that when you have that realization to then make the leap and how to like, I really view it as you know, using your elbows to to claim your space. How do you recommend that Will and his other lawyer friends that are like him, our listeners and and even us in general, how do you go from from where you are to where you want to be with that particular issue in mind,
Tyson Mutrux
I think what it is, is that we recognize that we need to do certain things, and we just don’t do them sometimes. And it’s easy for all of us to do, I’m guilty of it, you’re guilty of it. I’m really glad that we have recorded that you said that I’m smarter than you. So I want to make sure I cut that part out later on and, and use it against you. But I think that we really have to realize that we need to start doing things. And we just need to make the time for it. We make time for the things that are important to us. If you find yourself constantly picking up the phone call and returning phone calls, returning emails, you’re not getting anything done. At the end of the day, if you at the end of day are looking at your desk and say, dang it, I didn’t get anything done. It happens for three, four or five days in a row or eight weeks in a row or whatever it is, there’s an issue and because you’re not setting the time aside, you’re not allowing yourself time to do certain things. That’s why Brian Moran, he recommends you give yourself a three hour strategy block each week. And it sounds like a really long time. And it is, but it’s uninterrupted, completely uninterrupted. No phone calls, no text messages, no emails, nothing. I, for example, I locked my door, I put a sign on the door and everyone knows to leave me alone. My system, Kelsey knows to play defense. If anyone tries to come and knock on my door. They’re told to go away. It’s extremely important to me, and it should be explored important to you. And that planning is the bedrock for the week. I mean, everything that you will do for that week is determined in that planning session. So it’s extremely, extremely important. Extremely important. You just have to do it. I think that that’s the most important thing is what is Chet Holmes called Dog talk headed? What is it about being determined headed?
Jim Hacking
pigheaded? discipline and determination?
Tyson Mutrux
Absolutely. So that’s what you have to have. You absolutely have to have it and you just got to do it in no matter what. You got to put the rules in place, you got to follow up.
Jim Hacking
Well, Tyson, I may have said that you’re smarter than me. And that was sort of a humble brag. And you know, I wanted you to say, oh, no, clearly you’re smarter than me. But I think I think you’ve missed the mark. And, and I think that you’re jumping too far ahead. And you’re not remembering what it was like to be where we’ll is. And when I say that what I mean is that, I think we got to talk basically. So right now his wife, and a lot of our listeners lives are probably just running from court appearance to court appearance, new client intake to new client intake, phone calls, letters, emails, that whole thing. And I think tactically that to get from that point, you’ve got to start small, if you try to block out three hours or a day, or big, big chunks. I think that’s too much of a leap for most people. I think that we need to talk about just maybe even just an hour a day, for now, you know, or an hour every other day until we can really don’t, don’t you think that you sort of have to ease into it. And I mean, I absolutely think that one, you have to ease into it, too, I think you need to, like you said defend that hour that you take for yourself for the two hours, you need to defend it. Like nothing can be more important than that it has to be number one priority. And the other thing, I don’t know will what you Your situation is for you and your partner, but you have to have gatekeepers that can give you that space and protect you from the phone and protect you from emails and protect you from having to fill your calendar. If I spent all my time going back and forth with people setting appointments, I’d have no time to do anything else. On this episode, I’d encourage you, Tyson and me to to just sort of think small and like incremental steps.
Tyson Mutrux
Okay, so I sort of get what you’re saying, I’m not a big fan of easing into things, because I think it allows you to weasel your way out of them. But I take your point points taken. But if we’re gonna if I’m gonna give him some advice on, on really easing into it, I guess, is the the phone calls. Even if you don’t set aside, any time during the week for any planning, you can start with just not taking unscheduled phone calls. That alone is very, very hard to get used to, especially if you’re one of those people that picks up the phone every time a client calls mean that and that’s how I was before. And it was it was very easy for me to get caught up in the day to day activities, phone calls, whatever it was, it was very, very easy for me to do that to get caught up in that. But if he can start off if him and his partner can just stop by start by just returning phone calls. And a lot of times, you can start with two times during the day instead of one time like I do. Between 11 and 12 and four and five, that’s when you return your phone calls. That would be a great start. Because now what you’ve done is you’ve created two blocks of time, instead of having the entire eight hours of the day to refer to return and answer phone calls. If you do just 11 to 12 and four to five now you have two hours and maybe during that time, you’re also checking emails. So you’ve minimized your task changing, you’ve minimized Is all that effort you’re spending throughout the entire day answering phone calls. And so I think if you’re just going to start and you’re right, just from the basics, that’s the, that’s the number one tip I would give, hey,
Jim Hacking
I’m going to bring up something that I’ve been struggling with. And that is, I don’t really have a uniform time each week where I work on the finances of the firm, where I pay bills and stuff. It’s just sort of like when I find time I pay bills, and I sort of move money around and I don’t really spend that much time do you have a formal way of doing that, like a specific time each week or, you know, obviously, you know, we had Julia on the show, and she helps me with a lot of my bookkeeping stuff. But that’s one thing that I’d have been struggling with, it’s sort of I’m wondering if if I set aside one hour each week, at this specific time, I’m going to pay bills and, and do all things financial, I think that it’d be more efficient and to be like you just said with batching phone calls, I think, I think batching all of the things that we do emails and all that stuff is very helpful.
Tyson Mutrux
This is probably one of my weakest points. But I do I use on Fridays, usually whenever I spend time on that, it’s it’s a little easier for me with personal injury stuff, I think, in my opinion, because as the case comes in, checks come in and checks go out. And I think it’s easier for me to do those. Whenever I was mostly criminal offense, it was much much harder. So I would spend Friday’s on sort of balancing all that out. And one of the biggest things and this may actually sound old school to some people. Something that I started doing about a year ago was was scanning in the receipts in Gino will enter them into a spreadsheet for us. And so all of our receipts are now scanned in and they’re saved. And so we don’t have big stock of receipts sitting in a box or anything so, and invoices, everything goes into a receipts folder, and they’re put in by month and year. That’s an easy thing that you can do. But I think that that actually seems a little old school.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, that’d be good. What other advice do you have for anyone else who’s sort of going through these same struggles?
Tyson Mutrux
Planning? I mean, I know that you’re you’re saying things small. But I think if you can learn early on that planning is ultimately the one of the most important things that you do. Running a firm and building a firm, I think it’s all about planning. And I think that you have to want to have the vision in place and then plan your way to get there. In FY I wish someone would have really emphasized that to me, at the earliest stages, because I would have been at a different stage in my career, if I would have planned a lot earlier. That sounds so simple to say. But it really is I’m telling you the planning part of it, it’s honestly, it’s one of the most enjoyable parts of my week. But it’s also seeing yourself get there along the way is one of the coolest things, it really is watching yourself. You’ve got your goals in place, and then achieving those goals. It’s got a huge motivating factor.
Jim Hacking
I agree. And along those lines will raise one other interesting question. And this is something that I I’ve talked to my team a lot about noon I’ve talked about. And he said, I think I would know much better how to build a firm from scratch. Now that I’ve learned a lot of this, but I already have a firm running. So how do I undo what I need to undo and put in place what I need to do? I think that’s such a great question. And, you know, the way I have phrased it around here, and I drive everybody crazy is how do we repair or improve the boat while we’re all rowing the boat? And it’s a constant struggle, I think I think that it’s really hard to do, I think that, you know, we’re sort of beating a dead horse here by talking about making the time, but I think that it has to be a priority. And if it’s not a priority for you, it’s not gonna be a priority for anyone else. And like you said, you’re just gonna sort of slack off on it. That is
Tyson Mutrux
so it’s such a good question. And it is such a I bet that that’s one of the biggest problems that people have that listen to this podcast, is is kind of direct patching the boat as you’re, as you’re going, I don’t think there’s an easy solution to that I think there is something important, everyone’s gonna buy in. As things as change happens, you got to get buy in from people from your employees, from your partners, so he suddenly he has a partner. Because without buy in, the fixes that you make won’t last very long. I’ve gone through that before in the past where we’ve tried to make some changes and just didn’t get buy in. And so that didn’t happen. So one thing that this is actually I stole an idea from you. Where we did, we’re doing the whole Chet Holmes program as a team is as opposed to just me doing it myself. And I can’t remember the name of it now. But we got such good buy in it’s great IT people are just, they’re a part of it. They’re a part of the building process. So maybe to get that buy in from people, you get their feedback from your employees and so that they’re a part of it. They’re part of the change process. So they don’t feel like you’re just coming in say, Hey, we’re doing this now. And there may be some resistance to that. But he’s so right though. It’s you you feel like you’re getting to a certain point and maybe you built up bad habits or bad procedures or bread bad whatever it is. You do have to set aside that time to fix that.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, and I think that you’re absolutely right about resistance and you know, obviously resistance is usually a good indication of where you need to be. So if you’re feeling resistance personally or if your team is giving you resistance, you know So, I have one person who’s been with me since we started Adele and she sort of rolls her eyes whenever I come up with one of my new plans, because follow through is not always my strongest suit. And so there’s definitely going to be times where if you don’t have buy in, if you don’t get everyone to agree that this is important, and to see the value in it, then it’s just going to be a lot of wasted energy, probably,
Tyson Mutrux
well, you just said something that’s really important. You’re not very good with the follow through, but it’s important you do have someone in your firm, probably a couple people in your firm, that are good with the follow through. One of them is Amani, right, Adela So, but you have two people that are good at the follow through. And I think that that’s a good point. If you don’t have those people in your life, you need to get them in your life, can you obviously recognize that problem that you don’t have to follow through? So you just got lucky with who you married, I guess, because she’s definitely one of those people that gets the job done.
Jim Hacking
Alright, so I think that’s a good show for today. I think we really appreciate people reaching out to us on the Facebook group. And I think that if you have questions or things you’d like us to cover, we’d be happy to have you on live as we record the show, or to do it through Facebook, this just seemed like a good opportunity for us to sort of jump right in, and to address some of the issues that our listeners are are thinking about. So you want to go ahead with your tip of the week, Tyson.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, before I get to it, I do want to say I feel like I was a little preachy today. But there’s a reason washer, I feel I feel I feel very strong about the whole 12 week year, the whole process, I think it’s a life changing process. I’ve spoken about it before. So whenever I talk about it, all the credit goes to Brian Moran, but they truly believe it. I truly believe in it. I think it’s a great, great way of getting things done. I’ve seen tremendous results from it. And I want other people to get those same results. So when I talked about it, I’m more passionate about it. So that’s why I don’t mean to be preachy, I’ve got my issues, too. We all do so. But with that, I’ve got my tip of the week, and it is a book called Miracle Morning. And I’m going to warn people, it gets a little hokey at times, at times, I felt like I was listening to an infomercial. But because I’ve actually listened to it, I didn’t read it. But it’s really good about it’s about getting up early in the morning and getting things done and getting your day started off on the right foot that in that in a 10 second nutshell is what it is, you are going to have to put up with some of that other stuff. It’s just he mentioned the movie, The Secret and things like that. And so if you’re not into that, just you have to wade through some of it. There’s a lot of good takeaways in it. It’s not a very long book, it’s pretty short, but it’s a good one. And I know you’ve read it before Jimmy but it’s so it’s good. Just make sure that you’re at the deal with some of that other stuff.
Jim Hacking
Well, you know, I’m on the food side, I like that stuff a little bit more than you do. But even I found that book to be a little bit too fufu I think the the overall theme of it. And when I was listening to it, I was all over that 5am star and everything. I think that there’s a lot of good to be learned from it. And you know, that’s what I think should always be our approach with any book that we read, or any podcasts that we listen to is sort of the old a saying of take what you like and leave the rest. And so I think that you can learn a lot from you can learn a lot from a dummy. And you can learn a lot from smart people like people that write that book, The what’s his name? How Elrod I think how he’s pretty good. And speaking of books, that’s my hack of the week. So last night, my eldest son and I went to the Father Son banquet at his high school. And Mike Mussina, the Cardinals manager was the Speaker and I was very interested to hear him and I thought he was just going to be like a typical jock talking about baseball analogies. But Tyson my man, he would like our podcast, I think he he mentioned a bunch of different books, including start with why and mindset. And the last one he he mentioned was when I just gotten on audiobooks. And it’s called Grit by Angela Duckworth. And it’s about sort of what perseverance what it takes to persevere. And what I decided to do was listen to it in the car each day when I take my son, Ismail to school. So we have about 20 minutes each way. And so we’re gonna make our way through that book. And it’s about sort of the intestinal fortitude that it takes to sort of soldier through things. And she starts off by talking about West Point of all places, and sort of all the studies that they’ve done to try to figure out who’s going to make it through West Point. And it’s a really good book. I’m excited about it. Yeah, you
Tyson Mutrux
mentioned start with wild, that’ll just be a bonus one right there. I think that was by Simon Sinek. Start with was a pretty good book. It’s, I don’t I don’t think there’s a lot a whole lot of action items in there. But I think it’s a good book to get you started thinking about your vision. I don’t know about you, but the vision was sort of hard for me to start with. Right. So your I will maybe I was just so used to be thinking tactically and strategically. And start with wise not necessarily about that. But it’s about thinking big picture about what what’s your purpose, like, why do you do things? And so I think that’s a really good one to start with if you want to start to develop your vision.
Jim Hacking
All right. Well, we certainly covered a lot of ground today. I think it was a good show, and I look forward to talking to you next week. We’re going to rerecord an episode that we did which caused us to switch our audio systems with our buddy Gary Burger. And we’ll have him on the show soon. So we look forward to talking to you next time.
