In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Craig Goldenfarb. He explains us how having a business mindset and creating structures and systems is key to growing a successful firm.
“You can really maximize your scale and reproduce departments if you systematize most things in your office.”
Craig’s system that he could not live without is his “employee recognition system“: a structuralized procedure for making sure that all 50 people in his office feel cared for.
“The way I treat my people is the one system that’s most important to me.”
The marketing system that Craig thinks you should start doing today: Have lunch every day with someone who can help your business on a personal or professional level. You got to have interpersonal relationships.
Hacking’s Double Hack:
1. You should go to the 7 Figure Attorney Summit.
http://www.sevenfigureattorney.com/
Tyson’s Tip: Invest yourself. Masterminds, CLE’s, Events like the one Craig is hosting. Invest in your future.
Craig’s Tip: Time Block. Use time efficiently. If you can be disciplined enough to devote 2 hours a week to business stuff, you’ll be a success.
The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Partner up, and maximize your firm.
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Transcript: Craig Goldenfarb: Procedure to Profit; Creating Structures and Systems
Craig Goldenfarb
I think lawyers are resistant to creating system, because it takes time. And you have to edit it five times because we’re all type A, and it takes a lot of work. But then you realize the time you save, and not having to retrain. To hand someone a system is wonderful and it save time and then make your law firm more efficient. So you can really maximize your scale and reproduce department. If you systematize. Most things in your office,
Unknown Speaker
run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum layer podcast via podcast your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Unknown Speaker
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking,
Unknown Speaker
and I’m tasting music Jimmy we have an awesome guest today. Pretty cool. I’m gonna do a brief introduction of him, and I’m gonna let him introduce himself. His name is Craig Goldfarb. He is the owner and the founder of the law office of Craig Goldfarb. Also you present the seven figure attorney which is pretty awesome. You have 50 employees with your firm, you really have an awesome machine guy like you introduce yourself and let people know a little bit about you.
Craig Goldenfarb
Sure guy. Thanks for having me on. My name is Craig Goldfarb. I’m an attorney in West Palm Beach, Florida. That’s about an hour north of Miami on the East Coast. And I’ve been practicing as a plaintiff’s personal injury attorney for about 22 years. And I started playing SPI right out of law school. Amazingly, I never did defense. I started out in Miami for a few years and then moved up to West Palm Beach. I started my own law firm about 15 years ago in 2002, with one employee, and through what I call kind of a business mindset, I grew to where I am today, which is over 50 employees. I have six attorneys in house, including myself, and seven different departments. I like to say that I’m set up like a corporation, because that is how I am set up with departments and department heads that report to me. And I was mentored at an early age by another PII lawyer here in Florida, who really taught me at the same time how to run a business, and how to be a lawyer. So I really credit mentorship with my learning early on, and I grow about 20% a year, despite my wife requests that I stopped growing.
Jim Hacking
Greg, we’re really excited to have you on the show. We’re both trying to grow our firms. And I’m going through some growing pains right now. What do you think accounts for the fact that you have that growth mindset at the beginning? How did that get started? How do you go from one employee to four and then to 10? And then 50?
Craig Goldenfarb
Sure, I think the answer really is system. And it’s looking at your firm as a as an organism with different parts that needs to be set up so that everything that is repeated, becomes a system. And a lot of corporations run their companies like that. But most law firms don’t, they’ll retrain new employees over and over again without creating a system. And I think lawyers are resistant to creating systems, because it takes time. And you have to edit it five times, because we’re all type A, and it takes a lot of work. But then you realize the time you save, and not having to retrain to hand someone a system is wonderful. And it saves time and then makes your law firm more efficient. So you can really maximize your scale, and reproduce departments, if you systematize most things in your office.
Tyson Mutrux
Correct. That’s actually a really good segue into actually our topic of the day, our topic is procedure to profit creating structure and systems, which is something you’re going to talk about in your seven figure attorney Summit, which we’ll talk about a little bit later. But what’s your onboarding process for employees so that they know your systems?
Craig Goldenfarb
Well, it starts with the interview itself. When we talk to employees, I frankly asked him you know, I do a lot of the interviews of the department heads now not the other staff. But we actually asked him if you know their personality type if their type A organized, we ask them magic questions like What is your closet look like at home, you know, to see if they have their all their stuff color organized. You know, we asked a few what we call it the secret question as to see what type of personality they have. Because we really focus a lot on organizational so our onboarding process starts at the interview and asking them some questions about how they conduct their workflow. You know, if you send out a letter, do you diary 30 days for a response or you just think you’re gonna remember how do you diary it? What is your existence system and existence system is either your to do list or you’re on your computer or your handwritten to do lists. But so we asked about existence systems and if people don’t have one, either for their personal life or for their office life, that’s a big red flag. So our onboarding process for systems starts with figuring out if they’re the type of person who likes systems.
Unknown Speaker
Craig, how do you find time during the day while you’re practicing law and managing the firm to actually keep building new systems. Well, luckily,
Craig Goldenfarb
about 10 years ago, I realized that being a trial lawyer was going to kill me at an early age. And I made a transition from trial lawyer to entrepreneur, business owner. And I decided that my skill sets while I was a tech, but trial lawyer, I really thought that I would be more efficient in becoming a business owner primarily. So one of the things I talked about in my lectures is, where do you want to be on the the linear line between technician, which is I want to be a lawyer 100% of the time, and entrepreneur, which is that I don’t want to be a lawyer any percent of the time, but I just want to be a businessman. And once you figure that out, if you if you have the luxury of being able to place yourself where you want to be, and I decided I wanted to be a lawyer about 10% of the time and a businessman about 90% of the time. So at that point, my firm was small. But I kind of knew that that was my goal. So I hired good lawyers. And I realized that I needed to pay the money to hire lawyers to do the law. And then I shifted into designing systems, and reproducible pods within my law firm, so that I could run the business.
Unknown Speaker
Some of the questions we get are, how do you fix the boat while you’re still in it? You know, that’s a big problem that people have. So what’s a system that failed for you and that you’ve had to fix? And how did you fix the problem?
Craig Goldenfarb
Well, I think one of the systems that failed was my hiring process. And the first five or 10 years of my career, I was hiring based, mostly unexperienced. And I realized, strangely enough that that was a mistake, experience should be in the top five. But experience is maybe third, we hire based mostly on personality type, character, and then maybe experience would be third. A great example is my marketing director, I mean, great guy who’s been with me several years and turned into a superstar. But he didn’t have a lot of legal experience. But what I realized many years ago is that the skills for marketing director may be differentiated between the product and the product. And this situation is legal services, get my marketing director came in with so many skills, that I knew they’d be transferable into the legal sector. So he had been at a law firm a very brief time. But his skillset was so great in marketing that I realized that experience with law was fifth on the list for this young man. And he turned into a superstar. So I think the system that broke down for me was hiring based on the wrong criteria. And once I realized I was doing that I really changed things. About 10 years ago,
Unknown Speaker
we’re talking with Craig golden Farb, Attorney from West Palm Beach, Florida, he’s getting ready to present his seven figure attorney Summit is coming up in March. And we’re excited about that. Craig, when you meet with attorneys and talk to them about the importance of systems, what kind of pushback do you get back? What resistance do you find attorneys have, or misconceptions they have about about the work involved in creating systems?
Craig Goldenfarb
It’s really funny. That’s a great question. So when I lecture, I realized that law school didn’t teach us anything about anything having to do with business at all. And that lawyers develop a sense of arrogance, that if you’re a great lawyer, the clients will come. And doctors are often the same way. And they think that word of mouth is going to make them successful. And that’s not just a fallacy. And the arrogance of lawyers is what causes the pushback of why they think that it’s beneath them to view their law firm as a business instead of as a profession. So if you can get rid of the arrogance of I’m a professional, I’m not a businessman, then you can break down your own barriers to forming systems within your office. So the greatest pushback I get, honestly, is a mindset that was caused by law school, which is you’re better than everybody else. And if you’re great, your business will do great, and that’s just flat out wrong.
Unknown Speaker
So Chris, you’re gonna think about this, and maybe for a second, but what’s the one system in your firm that you could not live without?
Craig Goldenfarb
I was prepared for the question. And that’s a great question. And you’d be surprised by the answer. The system in my firm that I could not live without is what I call my employee recognition system. And it’s a structure alized procedure for making sure that all 50 people in my office feel cared for. And I have about 20 or 25 elements to that. And the reason I’ve done this, in studying through the last 20 years about why people work is that money is certainly in the top five, but it’s not usually number one. People want to feel a part of something. People want to trust their boss respect their boss. They want to feel like work is a is a palace is a place where they’re honored and respected and listened to. So I’ve developed with my wonderful office administrator, an employee happiness survey. We have a dream manager program that comes from a great book called The Dream manager. Are, we have at least 10 firm events of various cost and duration during the year. We have team member the month, we have parking spaces given to team member the month, I could go on and on, we have over 20 or 25 systems in place for making our employees feel a part of something. And that leads to incredible loyalty, incredible dedication. But more importantly, it leads to an incredible work product, which is that you don’t have to worry about them being on their cell phones, or taking two hour lunch breaks, if they really feel like they belong at work. So the way I treat my people, is the one system that’s most important to me.
Unknown Speaker
That’s a great answer. Great answer. And I think it’s good for all of our listeners and for Tyson and myself to hear for taking care of our clients or our employees, our team for sure. Craig, do you have a system for creating systems is that one of the things that you’re going to
Craig Goldenfarb
cover at the summit? It is and I do have a system for creating systems. And the key to that is one of the hardest things we have to do, which is time blocking. So I’m a member of a group called Atticus, which is probably the largest lawyer coaching company in the country. And what Atticus taught me was the importance of time blocking, which is you take time during the week that is dedicated towards certain things. And it’s a pretty simple concept, but very hard for lawyers to actually implement. So for instance, if I’m working on a procedure manual, or a section of a procedure manual, I will set that aside with the people I’m working with. Every Wednesday, between three and four o’clock. Nobody’s interrupting us, we’re working on that procedure manual. So the system for creating systems is basically setting aside certain amounts of time in manageable chunks. So there’s never an excuse as to why you didn’t get to it. Because as lawyers, we’re all frantic, we’re all busy. But if that’s uninterruptible time, every week, or every two weeks, or whatever time you want to make time blocking is the key to getting things done. Especially when we’ve all got mounds of stuff on our desk and tons of projects we want to work on.
Unknown Speaker
Pretty we have some more questions. But before I get to that, I want to make sure we fully plug your son I know we’ve talked about it, I want to make sure people know how to find it. It’s called the seven figure attorney Summit. It’s happening on March 16 2017. In West Palm Beach, Florida, it’s a half day seminar. It’s for solo and small firms, people that want to learn the tips and advice, a business management, marketing, legal services, things have people that would like to listen to this podcast, it’s from one of the biggest personal injury firms, your firm in South Florida. So it’s only $299, go to seven figure attorney.com. It’s a very small investment for what you’re going to get out of it. So this is just a small taste. But I’ll let you talk about it more later. But my next question would be for you is what the marketing system that you think our listeners should start employing today,
Craig Goldenfarb
I’ll start with one that’s very cheap. And what I have done for 20 years is, I make sure I have lunch every day with someone that might help my business on a personal level or on a professional level. So I don’t take my lawyers out to lunch that much, because I spend plenty of time with them. So I have a person in charge at my office of setting up lunches, and I’m booked for the next two months, not because I’m so important, but because I want to make sure that my lunches are used efficiently, and that every lunch is important. And as someone who could help get me cases or helped me in my career, or just for me to continue an existing relationship. So there’s a lot of lawyers who work through lunch. And I am a big proponent of not doing that. The value of getting out of the office mentally and emotionally, is tremendous. The value of getting away from behind your desk is tremendous for your health, you know, I go out and try to eat something healthy, if possible. But I go out every day for at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half. And it’s with a doctor or a lawyer or a vendor, or someone important to me as a new relationship or as a an existing relationship. And that is a cheap way, especially if you split lunch. These days, I always treat. But I started out where you know, you split the cost of lunch, you go out you get to know somebody. And there are several studies that show that it takes someone seven touches or seven interpersonal connections before person trusts you. So the one time lunch is an absolute losing proposition. So the reason I’m so busy with lunches is I believe that I’ve got to touch them several times and get to know them. So I know their kids names. I know what they do. I know what their hobbies are, after several lunches. And that’s the kind of relationship that is enduring and genuine and produces good things, whether it’s referrals or friendship, or leading you to other referral sources. So the one marketing system that solos should do is be absolutely militant in setting up whether it’s lunch or if you’re single, maybe drinks their dinner. But you’ve got to have interpersonal relationships.
Unknown Speaker
That’s a great tip. And it’s so tempting to just sit behind the desk, see how many more emails I can reply to or more packages and get out the door. So I totally get that, Craig, we are coming up towards the end of the show. So we have a few more questions. And one thing that we sort of fall into a trap around here is when we work on systems, it’s sort of an ebb and flow, we do it when we’re not busy. And then when we get busy, we sort of fall away from doing systems. And then we also sort of struggle with how granular to get in creating a system, I made a flowchart. I’m an immigration attorney, and I made a flowchart of the steps that have to happen in order to get someone from overseas to the United States and to have an actual green card. And when we counted it up, it was about 70 steps. And so my paralegal sort of said, well, this is sort of crazy. I know all these things, I’m just going to do it, I’m not going to use the checklist. So how do you deal with that kind of thing?
Craig Goldenfarb
Well, what I do is, when I meet with my department heads to set up a system, I go over the outline, because, frankly, now, I’m not as familiar with how to file a lawsuit. And, you know, I have no idea how to file a lawsuit right now, no clue. But the litigation Secretary knows how to file a lawsuit. So I give the outline of the structure to the department head, and then let them create the granular part of it does need to be granular. My litigation law sheet procedure is 20 pages long. But all I did is I was set in on the first meeting with my litigation manager, a lawyer, and we set out the structure. And then after the structure, I said, you go to work with your litigation attorneys and your litigation teams, and create all the granular parts of it, I’m done, because I created the structure along with him. So after you create that structure, you can then delegate and get out of the way. And it’s really difficult for us as lawyers to get out of the way. But the more we get out of the way of of our people, the better they do, and the more decision making abilities and powers they develop. So it does need to be granular. But the granulation does not need to be created by you. Awesome.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, this is really awesome stuff. Craig, this has been really good. I do have a really a more vision type question for you. Because you’ve been really, really successful. But what’s your vision for your firm going forward?
Craig Goldenfarb
Well, I found that as I’ve grown, that the more visible I am in the community, the better my reputation continues to grow, the better my law firm does. So I’ve expanded into doing a few other things, I just started a charity that is related to an area of law I do, where we’re giving free defibrillator sets, things in the airport that save your life if you had a heart attack. So I do an area of law related to that. It’s a niche. So I started as a charity, and we’re raising 10s of 1000s of dollars to give free defibrillators to youth sports clubs. So that lives can be saved as someone has a heart attack. So I’ve met through that organizations, hundreds of people that I would have never met. So it’s really going outside your comfort zone and doing something that’s related to your business, but not related to your business. It’s starting a charity. I also have started a lecture series that we were talking about earlier that I’m going to do on March 16 of this year, to educate other lawyers. And once you become known as an educator, and someone who’s giving advice to others, word spreads. So you know, some of us write books, I’ve written books, I’ve lectured, I educate, but I’m really putting that into the next phase, which is to educate lawyers of every type about business system. And then I’ve also taken some leadership positions in the community, which is most cities have a leadership organization or future leaders organizations. So I’ve started to become active in those. And you’d be surprised at the quality of people you meet, and how that just expands your influence within the community. And how many people know you from different sectors. As lawyers, we are so myopic, and we meet just lawyers. And that’s such a loss because we’ve got skills that we can offer to other areas, other sectors of society. And I started to realize that in the last few years,
Unknown Speaker
Craig, that’s fantastic. I want to do a little rip off that one. And then we’ll get to our tips for the end of the show. Your law firm is called the Law Offices of Craig Goldfarb. And I’m wondering how do you handle client expectations who come in and they say, Where’s Craig, I want Craig to be my lawyer.
Craig Goldenfarb
We’ve developed a system to handle that frequent request. And I wouldn’t say we make it tough for them to meet me, because I don’t want to want them to think it’s tough, but they have to go through some channels in order to sort of, I wouldn’t say qualified because that sounds sort of arrogant, but we make sure they get introduced early on to their team. And their team does not include me because we have so many clients and people really want comfort and they want trust. So if they become comfortable and trusting of the lawyer that’s working on their case, and it is the lawyer And the paralegal that’s working on their case. If we ask them to hold off on their request, and they can meet me in a few weeks, then what happens is that we go ahead and set the appointment. And 99% of the time, they cancel it. Because at that point, they’re so comfortable with the lawyer handling their case. And the paralegal that’s handling their case that they think it’s a waste of their own time. So it’s about a 1% gets through, or want to get through, but it’s a decision that they end up coming to on their own. If we block them from meeting me, they’re going to be angry. If we lead them down the path of the fact that they don’t need to meet me anymore, then they’re going to be satisfied.
Unknown Speaker
That is such a good answer. Yeah, it really is. Because Jimmy, this is something that we started in the last few weeks where we started introducing everybody on the team so that not everybody wanted to speak to me all the time. So what Craig’s saying is great introduced the team, it has been a huge reduction, that amount of time I’ve had to actually deal with with clients. So that’s, that’s great. All right. So I have
Unknown Speaker
sort of two hacks this week. Number one is you should go to the seven figure attorney summit, I have signed up, I’m putting my money where my mouth is my kids are on spring break that week. So the Friday before we’re going to drive down to Tampa to get some Yankee spring training, then we’re going to go see the Orioles. And then we’re going to head over to West Palm Beach to attend the seven figure attorney Summit, then we’re going to catch the Cardinals. I Roger Dean stadium. So I’m really excited about that. I encourage everyone including you, my brother Tyson to attend the seven figure attorneys Summit. My actual hack of the week is a great book that I’ve been listening to by Salim Ismail it’s called exponential organizations, why new organizations are 10 times better, faster and cheaper than yours and what to do about it. It’s a great little book. He’s one of the directors of Singularity University with Peter Diamandis, it has a lot of big picture views on where the future is headed. And when you think about your law practice in a way that’s going to grow exponentially instead of linearly, it really sort of opens you up to think differently.
Unknown Speaker
That’s really good. And my tip actually fits in with this episode with what you’re saying as well as in my tip is invest in yourself. Some of the best money I’ve spent, as a owner of my law firm is investing myself going to the mastermind experience, paying for a really good CLE is going to marketing CLAS or events like Craig’s got I haven’t got to his but I’m trying to work some things right and actually go to his, but invest in yourself because it’s some of the best money you can really spend your your future. So you need to spend the money, go to seven figure attorney.com Register for Craig’s event, go to mastermind experience with John Fisher, do those types of things, because that’s what’s going to be the jumping off point for your firm to really to really grow. And Craig with that, we always ask our guests to give a tip of the week. So what do you have for us,
Craig Goldenfarb
I think my biggest tip is to time block. My first time blocking experience was 20 years ago, when someone told me that Friday afternoons, nobody does anything. And when I was young, I guess that was true, I’d go out and have a beer with my friends on Friday afternoon. But what I decided to do instead of that was between three and five o’clock on Friday afternoons, I would not allow myself to do any legal work, I would do only business work. And I did that for about five years. And that’s the time when you set up lunches when you do those little marketing projects. When you write a marketing letter or a blog or, or something that has nothing to do with any file you have. And I found that those two hours made me more money. And it made me more successful than the other 38 hours of the typical work week for a five year time period. So if you can be disciplined enough to devote two hours a week to business stuff, whatever that stuff is, you’ll be a success.
Unknown Speaker
This episode was chock full of great content, so many great ideas. I have sort of fallen off having lunches with people. And I need to get back to doing that because that is a great source of referrals and connections and sort of mutually helping each other out. Craig, thanks so much for joining us. And I look forward to meeting you down in West Palm Beach.
Craig Goldenfarb
Absolutely, guys. Thanks for having me on the
Unknown Speaker
show. Thanks, Greg. And hopefully I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. Again, it’s on March 16. Go to seven figure attorney.com is only $299. It’s in West Palm Beach, Florida, which is a great time to go down to Florida and spend some time that I guess really courageous, probably no bad time to go down there but register for the event go down there. It’d be well worth your money. And Craig, thanks again for coming on the show.
