In this episode, Jim and Tyson will interview Michael Downey and go through his journey as an attorney from big firms to his own practice in legal ethics and the importance of marketing in this process.
Nitch down!
“If you go to a food court and you’re thinking I want some food, odds are if you are hungry of Pizza you are going to go to the pizza place Meanwhile, if there is a place that sells Hamburgers, Pizza, Mexican, etc., you probably gonna pass that place up cause you are gonna go the the focused practitioner.”
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelpdowney
https://www.downeylawgroup.com/
Hacking’s hack: A book from a Lawyer who also went out on his own. Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time Hardcover, by Keith Ferrazzi.
A great book on how to network and connect with people.
Michael’s tip: Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing Hardcover, by Harry Beckwith.
“What’s going on on the mind of someone who is looking to buy my services and then helping me understand better how to market to them and get them to hire me.”
Tyson’s tip: Think about this. If Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg tooked over you law firm, how would they run things differently?
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Transcripts: Michael Downey: Legal Journey
Michael Downey
The easy way to think about it is if you go to a food court, and you’re thinking I want some food, odds are if you’re hungry and you say, you know, I think I really want pizza today, you’re gonna go to the pizza place. And meanwhile, if there’s some place that sells pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, Mexican food, Chinese cetera, all in one spot, you’re probably going to pass that place up because you’re gonna go to the focus practitioner.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking,
Tyson Mutrux
and I’m tasting music. Jimmy we got a pretty cool guest that you found today. You want to do a little introduction of him?
Jim Hacking
Yeah. Our guest today is Michael Downing. Michael is the premier Legal Ethics go to attorney around the country. He has been the head of the ABA Legal Ethics Committee. He’s written numerous books on law practice management, we’re really lucky to have him on the show. Michael gives advice to attorneys around the country. He’s also a litigator. So he knows his way around the courtroom. He defends attorneys and bar complaints. He also makes lawyers sometimes accountable when they screw up. And he does that through impact litigation. And he really does a great job. So Michael, thank you for coming on the show.
Michael Downey
Absolutely. And I hate to do it, but I have to correct one minor thing. I was the chair of the law practice division of the ABA, there’s a legal ethics committee that I’ve actually never served on.
Jim Hacking
So Michael is very thorough, as you could just tell, and he’s very precise with his language. Whenever he and my wife gets together, they start spouting off rules and ethics decisions. And they really get into that stuff. And I thought it’d be great to have Michael on the show because Michael has been a big firm lawyer. And recently in the last couple of years, he went out on its own. So Michael, I wonder if it wouldn’t be who’ve us if you could tell us a little bit about your, your journey as an attorney since law school? Sure.
Michael Downey
Well, I graduated law school in 1998. And I clerked for a federal judge for a year and then entered the St. Louis office of a regional firm about 180 Lawyer firm left there and went to a small St. Louis based firm that had about 10 lawyers, and practice there for about eight years, and then joined a 450 lawyer firm, again, a regional office, and then left there and went to about a 220, lawyer, St. Louis based firm. And then finally in February of 2015, I decided to open my own practice. And since we’re going to talk about marketing today, a lot of those moves were actually sort of driven by my interests and how to market my practice. And so that’s certainly part of the the journey that I made.
Tyson Mutrux
Michael, how did you fall into the niche, or maybe you didn’t fall into the niche? Maybe you chose the niche that you’re doing with with defending attorneys and with ethics issues, and things like that? How did you get into that niche?
Michael Downey
Sure, well, I tell people there, there are basically three ways to build a niche practice. And I’m definitely one of them. One way is to inherit one where you go, and you work with a lawyer who does it and then you start doing whatever that practice is. The second way is to do a derivative practice. For example, if you’ve got someone who represents doctors and medical malpractice litigation, you say, I’m gonna represent doctors in their business disputes. And so you sort of move from that. The third way, actually, is to go ahead and just create your own. And I really did create my own. Actually, while I was in my clerkship, I met with the dean of one of the law schools where I had attended and I said I was kind of thinking about teaching. And he was very honest with me and said, with your credentials, if you really want to get a job at a good law school, you would be at benefit from focusing your teaching on an area where there was a need, and I said, Well, what are the needs, and he said, The Uniform Commercial Code, and legal ethics, and offer those two choices by far the more exciting one seemed to be legal ethics, I happen to have done some work as a summer associate in a couple of firms on legal ethics issues, and always thought they were interesting in Austin, who didn’t really seem like anyone focused on it. And so I started to focus, I actually ended up teaching a course for about a decade on legal ethics. I teach another class and I’m still teaching, but it’s actually a law firm practice. And once I got into it, I really found I liked it. And a lot of I think what I would talk about in general is picking a focus and then just continuing to work on that focus. And so for me with legal ethics, I tried a number of different focuses. But once I found that Lenin really liked it, and thought it was a viable focus, I really devoted a lot of time and energy to
Jim Hacking
it. Michael, when you’re teaching your class on law, practice management and on ethics, what are the messages that you’re given to your students about niching? Down? What do you tell them about the importance of that? How do you explain that to them?
Michael Downey
I really think it’s one of the absolute critical things that lawyers can do. The easy way to think about it as if you go to a food court, and you’re thinking I want some food. I’m sorry, if you’re hungry, and you say, you know, I think I really want pizza today, you’re gonna go to the pizza place. And meanwhile, if there’s someplace that sells pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, Mexican food, Chinese cetera, all in one spot, you’re probably going to pass that place up because you’re going to go to the focus practitioner. The other key is you want be at the front of the line if at all possible. For example, for Google searching, if someone Google searches for a legal ethics lawyer in Missouri, they’re going to find me very quickly because there aren’t very many of us. Instead, they do something like a personal injury attorney, I’m going to be competing with so many other people to get on that first screen of results for that second screen of results. So really, just as an initial thing, having that positioning of a focus really does help you even get noticed. The big thing also is that it then allows things like for, for me to have better case selection, we are very good. We know, when somebody walks in and says, we actually had literally a guy walk into our office about a week ago, who asked who around in our office fixed speeding tickets, and we said, we don’t do it, we get contacted about wills, we don’t do it, we could contact about a lot of stuff, it really helps us to say no to people, and to make sure we’re focused on the things where we think we can generate revenues. And beyond that, because of our specialty, we’re then able to typically get a premium rate, and to really know how to build our practice who our clients are going to be who’s going to pay for the work? And frankly, beyond that, I really enjoy it. So. And I think the last thing I would add there is that from a risk management perspective, which is a lot of what I do, having a focus is so much better for risk management than trying to do everything for everybody.
Tyson Mutrux
Like what is your most effective way of getting clients? Because you do have a very, very specific niche. And so I’m just curious, I’m assuming it’s referral based, but if it’s not referral based, what is it,
Michael Downey
it’s certainly a lot of referrals. The big thing, sort of the general principle that I really learned on marketing is that lawyers basically, when you engage in a business development activity, it’s going to accomplish some combination of two things. It’s going to help build your reputation, and it’s going to help build your relationships with people. And the reality is to get work, you have to build the relationships. So I’ve done actually, I’ve done more than 450 presentations on legal ethics. I’ve written 150 articles on legal ethics. But I know, the most effective thing for me to do to actually get work is to go out and meet people. And so things like when I go and do a presentation as to really make an effort to talk to people, when someone contacts me, I make an effort to follow up with them. Because those are the things they’re gonna build the relationships that then will generate work later. And it’s interesting. I mean, a lot of my work, frankly, comes from opposing counsel, it comes from other lawyers and matters. And I mean, as you said, a lot of it’s referral based, I have a lot of clients I’ve represented now for over a decade.
Jim Hacking
Michael, tell us a little bit, have you sat down and figured out sort of who your avatar client is? Do you have a wide range of lawyers as clients? Or is there sort of a specific subset of lawyers that you you see a lot of,
Michael Downey
you know, I certainly have sort of ideal targets. And interestingly enough, you know, as as someone who teaches legal marketing, I really try hard to do the things that I tell people they should do. So in April this year, my firm, as you mentioned, open relatively recently, I opened my own firm in February of 2015. I sat down in April of 2017, and actually figured out where did all of my money come from, and I categorized all of my clients, which the interesting thing is when you have a practice like mine, it’s not just you know, lawyers, I have a legal ethics category, I have a fiduciary litigation category, I have a discipline and sanctions category. And each of those is different in my mind. And I then actually figured out where the money came from, and each of those categories. And looking at that there were certainly some things that I learned there were some groups that I realized, frankly, are payment risks for me. And if I do take on that work, I’ve got to make sure that I’ve got other ways to get paid, because they’re not very good at paying me. And I definitely know, who I think is my best target environment. And a lot of it is looking at the numbers and figure out who hires me. And frankly, I really liked those relationships. Most people come to me because their house is on fire, they’ve got a problem. They’ve gotten a disciplinary complaint, they’re being threatened with a lawsuit. And then what I really want is I want to be able to fix that problem for them efficiently and effectively. So they really feel they’ve gotten value from the relationship, that then they contact me about all of their future problems.
Tyson Mutrux
You probably deal with some of the most difficult clients on the face of the earth attorneys. So how do you how do you manage that the manage the expectations? How do you deal with the attorneys the things that they know everything? I mean, can you kind of talk about all of that just dealing with the attorney as a client?
Michael Downey
You know, it’s actually kind of a fascinating question. I was thinking this morning. The interesting thing is, I’m truly trying to sell shoes to the cobbler. But beyond that, it’s actually even more complicated because I’m trying to sell a service to lawyers that many lawyers don’t even know is out there. So when most lawyers have an ethics problem, they look it up themselves. And I can’t tell you, the number of times people have said to me, Oh, I didn’t even know there were lawyers that focused on that. So really, the answer is is yes, I deal with lots of difficult clients and beyond that I deal with a lot of difficult clients in very, very stressful and very important situations. I mean, I’ve literally helped people surrender their law licenses. I do a lot of discipline related work. And so part of it really, you know, the expectations are high but part of it also is that low ears do understand kind of what’s going on. And a lot of them recognize that uncomfortable situation that now they’re their clients. And frankly, I just, I really tried to communicate with them, I tried to reassure them. And I think one of the things that I really think is important is I really try to remember that they’re people. And so a lot of times, like on a discipline case, I’ll say to them things like, this is really, you know, we’re getting to the point where we’re discussing options, do you want to have your spouse on the call? I’ll talk to them about, okay, well, if this doesn’t go, Well, how are you going to support your family, and start to have those types of conversations, and to really make sure that not only am I helping their legal problem, but I’m really trying to get them either help with, or access to a lot of other resources they may need. So, you know, one of the reasons why I really became interested in law practice and work with the law practice management section and teach a course on law practice, is this notion that a good lawyer understands their clients business. And so I actually did graduate work in law firm management, and wrote a book on law for management and teach it. And a lot of that is really to try to help people understand how better to run their practice,
Jim Hacking
Michael, I don’t want to go too deep into the actual legal ethics part and the practice stuff, or what advice do you have to our listeners, who find themselves in a situation adverse to a client or where they’ve made a mistake? What are just some tips that you could give to our listeners, since we have so many lawyers listening?
Michael Downey
Sure. And and I will mention, I actually have an article coming out that the talks are actually just came out talking about how to deal with what you think is your own malpractice. But the big thing to realize is, you probably have an obligation actually to tell the client, but one of the things I think that often clients feel that lawyers don’t do is you need to own the problem. And beyond that, you need to try to fix the problem. So what I really try to teach people is, if you think you’ve made a mistake, analyze the situation, make sure you’ve actually made a mistake, figure out if you can come up with a solution to the mistake. And then what you’d love to do is say to the client, hey, we missed this deadline, we didn’t file this, we didn’t do this. But here’s how we’re going to fix it. And that’s obviously a better approach to it. The other thing is, don’t be afraid a lot of people are sort of hesitant to contact their legal malpractice insurer or broker, in general, they have a lot of resources that will actually help you deal with problems. And they’d rather find out about problems right away and then have them fester for a while. So if you do think you’ve made a mistake, if you need somebody to talk to Jim and said, I’m the National foremost expert, I would say that’s not really true there. There’s sort of a group of us out there who do this type of work. Don’t be afraid to reach out to a legal ethics lawyer, don’t be afraid to reach out to your insurer. And a lot of times they can talk you through things. It’s probably the first time you’ve ever seen whatever the problem is, it’s probably not the first time that someone like me has seen it. I did get a call last week where I said of the person, okay, you are going to be the weirdest call I’ve had this week. But that’s unusual.
Tyson Mutrux
Okay, Mike, I want to shift gears just a little bit back into the marketing arena. And can you talk about the benefits of teaching and actually, from a marketing standpoint, the benefits of teaching? Sure,
Michael Downey
I mean, the big thing I will say about teaching, frankly, at least from my experience is, when we go back to that that construct of reputation and relationships, it’s much more of a reputational thing than it is a relationship thing. So at least from my experience, teaching a class has been a lot of time and work, some good relationships, but not a huge business producer. That having been said, it really does help establish my credentials, as someone who knows a lot about the area. And frankly, it also really, particularly early in my time as a legal ethics lawyer forced me to really come to understand the rules, to spend a lot of time with them to understand how they fit together. So it really helped me become a master of, of what I do. But as an actual business generator, I didn’t think frankly, it was a huge, a huge source of business. And I think what I see a lot of lawyers doing, which I frankly, think is a bit of a mistake, is to teach outside the area where you want to develop business. You know, if you’re someone who says, Well, I’m really going to be a litigator, and you’re teaching a business law class at the community college, I just really don’t see a lot of value to that. And less, if you love teaching, if you say, you know, this is something I would do. Even though I realize I’m never going to get a client from it, I think it’s perfectly fine to do it. But I think often those types of situations really do lend themselves to someone teaching where they’re never going to get a client or they’re almost never going to
Jim Hacking
Michael, talk to us a little bit about when you were in that spot, and you decided to leave the big firm and go out on your own. What was your, your thought process? What did you do to get ready for it? And how have you found the adjustment?
Michael Downey
Sure. Well, the advantage that I had was I had actually been teaching law firm practice. And I left in February of 2015. I finished my year as the chair of the ABA law practice division in September of 2014. So in addition to being someone who had worked on my own practice a lot, I actually had a lot of resources so I could contact people and say, I’m thinking of using practice management software. Which one do you like those types of things? Well, I wasn’t certain I was going to leave a big firm but really by June or July of 2014, I had made the decision that I was going to leave. So I had a window of about seven months to get ready. And I talked to some people and kind of said, Okay, I’ve got, I’m going to do this, what should I work on. And what they really recommended to me was to get my contact list in order. And because I did so much writing to try to get the articles that I had published in order, so I went ahead and organize those two groups of things, to really have the resources available. And then really sort of started the process, I had lunch with a couple of people before I found my office space actually rented office space that never went on the market, I replaced somebody else who was in here, because I wanted to be within walking distance my house, and really gradually sort of built out my practice, what I tended to do in hiring people to help me was I either went to the national expert, or I went to the local, local, local, I wanted to be able to see the person walk into the person, my print shop is located a block from my office, my graphic designer, is somebody that we have kids in the same scout troop, you know, there’s a lot of resources like that, where I really drew upon those types of people, and definitely had a vision of kind of what I wanted to do. And the big thing for me, frankly, one of the big drivers of leaving the big firm was that my practice didn’t necessarily fit well, in a big firm, because I have, my practice really thrives on a lot of small clients. And the big firm, they really want the bigger leveraged engagement, where someone’s going to pay 300,000 500,000 A million dollars in legal fees, which for most lawyers and law firms just isn’t even feasible. So I really saw this is an opportunity to really focus all of my marketing resources on the people that I wanted to bring in as clients. And I couldn’t make decisions based upon how to develop my practice. And so really, that was kind of what I built. The other thing I will say is that because I had a good amount of lead time, and because there were things going on, like, you know, I was publishing articles, every month or two, no matter what I started to write the articles and publish, that I would want to have when I actually started my own firm, so that I could then have those resources available. And so I kind of quietly built in those types of resources. And then the last thing, frankly, sort of an interesting thing is, I knew for a long time that lawyers are very active on social media, particularly on LinkedIn. And so I had very consciously built a huge, at least, by my perspective, a huge network of people on LinkedIn, and saw that as an easy way to have initial communications with potential clients. And so I have about almost 2500 connections on LinkedIn. And most of those are lawyers practicing in the air and the geographic area where I’m located. And so LinkedIn for me became a viable way to very inexpensively get a message out.
Tyson Mutrux
Michael, what do you think has been the most effective marketing tool used?
Michael Downey
The big lesson that you always hear that people have to see a name eight to 10 times before it sticks, I would actually say that, frankly, the fact that I do a lot of things a lot of the time, it’s actually probably the most effective. Part of the reason I say that is, you know, I’ve often said, I can do a seminar for a room of 10 people and gets for clients, I can do a seminar to a room of 1000 people and get no clients. On the other hand, I can do the program for 1000 people and get five clients, I just sometimes you just don’t know. And people have to have that need, and I can’t put that need in their pocket. But having done the amount of communications that I’ve done with the writing the speaking etc, I’m getting to the point where people, even people that may not know who I am and aren’t looking for me are starting to see that name. So when they do go online and say, Hey, I need help with this. They’re going to recognize the name. Or they reach out to other people and say, I’ve got this problem, and someone says the person you need to call is Mike Downey. And then that the person who is originally looking for the help says, you know, I remember I went to his CLE one time, you know, where I read some of his articles, he seems very knowledgeable. And I think that really helps people contact me is that they, they feel that level of comfort that they have because I’ve been around them. And I think it’s also important. I think that paid advertising really has a place for some practices. If I were trying to have certain types of law practice, I would pay for advertising, I made a conscious decision really not to advertise. And part of that, again, is a lot of lawyers, I think, looked down on lawyers who do advertise. And so I made a conscious decision not to pay to do a lot of advertising.
Jim Hacking
Michael, you and I had a conversation a few weeks ago, and that really stuck with me. And he made a comment that I’ve thought about a lot. And I’ve actually had three other attorneys say it to me in the last two or three weeks, and that is that, you know, we were talking about being busy. And you said to me that you wished that you could clone yourself. And I certainly understand the sentiment I think most of our listeners would and what kind of things have you done to try obviously, you can’t call yourself yet. But what kinds of things have you done to try to clone yourself or what kind of systems have you put into place to sort of delegate and replicate yourself as much as you can
Michael Downey
cheer well, and part of the sauce so you know a lot of people talk about they read and love the lawyering myth and those types of things. And that’s never really been my interest. I actually like having a practice where I deal with Most of the clients and have those relationships. At my best, I sell a very high level personalized service. You know, when when people are really in trouble, they don’t want the associate. So certainly in how I hire the people that I look to hire, the way that I try to train them, I do a lot of internal things. I certainly look to try to have my younger lawyers develop the expertise and and part of the thing that I really say to people, it probably wasn’t actually the context of going on vacation, I need to have it that when I’m not there, my number two is able to answer a lot of the questions that people have. And one of the really important things about my practice to realize is, every person who calls my firm has some knowledge of my subject area, because everybody had to have taken the MPRA. So really, what we have to provide them is a level of knowledge that’s way above the average person. And it’s a challenge, it’s I certainly wouldn’t say it’s the perfect thing, I’m certainly still working with it. But that’s something I really recognize is the need to develop that expertise. And, frankly, and it really comes down to realizing that it’s going to take my time and my resources to help develop that expertise. The big concern that a lot of lawyers have is that in training your junior person, you’re training your competition, because they may leave and steal your clients. And that’s a reality. And it’s something that that certainly I think about and wonder about, I think the people I work with are really good people, I think we would try to negotiate something more than, you know, stealing all the clients in the middle of the night. But it’s certainly something that I struggle with. You know,
Tyson Mutrux
that’s a really interesting point, like when I am hopefully we can dive into that a little bit more, because I’ve had an Associates, I know Jim’s has Associates, and I think that’s always on top of my mind is you know, we’re going to train them, they’re gonna leave, we’re gonna start their own firm, we just created a competitor. But what, what have you done? Or what do you think is important that could keep your associates in house and not leave and stay and grow with the firm?
Michael Downey
You know, I think one of the things I would really recommend to people, and I’ll, you had mentioned as it was coming on you be prepared to recommend some resources in there. One of the big things I would tell lawyers, if you really want to make your practice better read resources outside of just the legal practice. There’s a book by Daniel Pink called derive that talks about how do people find their jobs rewarding. And really, he talks about that people need three things to have a rewarding job. And one of the things that I like about the three things is that in general, law firms are horrible, providing most of them, at least to younger lawyers, they want to have autonomy, they want to have the ability to control their own life, control their own day, decide where they’re going to spend their time and their resources, they want to have expertise. And they also want to have purpose, the sense that what they’re doing is making the world a better place. And so really, that’s something that I really try to work with my younger lawyers on. And part of it also is even, and this is I have a new lawyer who’s working with me who had never had this experience before, but I really try to give a client matter to a young lawyer. So when I bring a new matter in, where I’m gonna have somebody else work on it, I start that team and I try to maintain that team. And so the person gets a much better sense of ownership of the case, and also sees how it progresses, I could bounce back and forth between the two people and have you know, one do one project one to the next on a matter. But then they never really get the mastery of that case. And they also don’t get the relationships. And I think it’s also important for people to have contact with the client. My personal belief is that the better and more rewarding people feel about their jobs, the more likely they are to treat their boss well when they’re walking out the door. And the last thing I mentioned that sort of interesting, another huge mistake lawyers make is that Daniel Pink really talks about the compensation is not a driver for good performance. And it’s interesting because they even talk about what sort of bonuses are the most effective. And it’s an interesting thought process. But you have to pay fairly. But paying top of market really doesn’t get you a big advantage other than sort of the public relations side of things, which is not really where I’m aiming to devote a lot of my resources. So I try to make sure I compensate my people fair, but then I really try to make sure I give them the respect and the opportunities for autonomy and expertise, and purpose that frankly, are going to make their job more rewarding.
Jim Hacking
We’re talking with Michael Downey, legal ethics and law practice management expert, Michael, obviously, you studied this topic a lot before you went out on your own what has been the biggest surprise for you over the course of the past two years having gone out on your own?
Michael Downey
You know, I think that the most interesting as somebody who wrote a book on it, and I’m actually in the process of revising the book, the biggest thing, frankly, was I don’t think I had a real appreciation for cash flow. And so that is certainly something I have really learned the do the work, get the bills out, get the bills paid, keep the money flowing in. I actually track how many days on average, it’s been between payments. So I like I like to watch a lot of weird things like that. And this year, I’ve done a much better job of getting out small bills quickly. And part of that really is to manage the cash flow. I don’t think I appreciate how much that would be an issue. The one thing I did know and I was how much work it really is to run a practice. And I think that’s another big thing but one of the things That’s what I tell people is, it is a lot of work. But it’s also really important. And a lot of the clients I’m dealing with are people who have shorted their practice and in particular, not paid as much attention to their trust account as they should. And it’s, it’s one of those things where a few hours at the front end is far better than all the hours spent with me and disciplinary counsel at the back end.
Tyson Mutrux
Michael, thanks for coming on here. This
Michael Downey
has been really great, you’ve provided a lot of great information, we let people know how they can find you are the easiest two places to find me. As I mentioned, I’m very active on LinkedIn. So if you look up Michael Downey, Legal Ethics lawyer on LinkedIn, you will quickly find me. The second place where I’m most active is Downey law group.com, which is firm website, which we’re about to roll out a new one, but it’s still one of the best places to find me.
Jim Hacking
It’s been a great episode, Michael, I think I really think you need to have your own podcast, I think you’d be great. I think it would be really a great way for you to subtly market yourself. And I think a lot of lawyers would listen. And I think even if you just recorded the talk that you give and cut it up into podcasts that would make for a great show much less. If you spent 25 minutes a week interviewing lawyers or talking to lawyers or doing it, I think it’d be a great thing for you. But my hack of the week. This is one of my favorite books. I’m meeting with a new lawyer today for lunch. He went out on his own just in June, and it’s called Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. We’ve never talked about it on the show. But it’s just a great book on how to network and connect with people and how networking. And being available to people is actually more important than being the best lawyer in town. It’s a book I read a long time ago, I’ve read it twice since and I recommend it highly. Never Eat Alone by Keith Rousey.
Tyson Mutrux
By Mike, before we get to yours, I do want to remind everyone to make sure you check us out on Facebook, as to join the Facebook group, there’s a lot of good conversation going on there. Also make sure to give us a five star review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. It really does help us out. We appreciate it. But Michael, I understand you have some resources you want to share. So what’s your tip of the week?
Michael Downey
Sure. The one that I wanted to recommend, which is another one of those classics that seems to get missed a lot is a book called selling the invisible, which talks about selling of services, not just legal services, but I thought it was sort of a fascinating exploration of what’s going on in the mindset of someone who’s looking to buy my services, and then helping me really understand how better to market to them and get them to hire me to do their work. So it’s selling the invisible by Harry Beckwith.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s perfect. And my tip of the week, it’s more of a mindset shift than anything else. And John Fisher posted on mastermind experience yesterday and he said, If Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and camera, you said someone else moved in to your law firm and took over? How would they run things differently? And it’s really interesting, it really kind of took me aback for a second I was I didn’t really think about that. And so I think my challenge is to people to to think about that same question. So if someone like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg took over your firm, how would they run it differently than you? And so, right away to me, I thought, You know what, I mean? They wouldn’t practice law, and they would just run the law firm. So I think that that if you think about it like that someone that’s really knowledgeable people that are really they’re they’re billionaires, you know, how would they run things differently? I think it may shift, how you’re going to run things. So that’s my challenge everyone for this week is just change your mindset and think about how they would do things if they were on your firm, guys, it’s been a great pockets, you have any else you want to ask?
Jim Hacking
I was just gonna say that those guys took over your law firm, the first thing they would do is fire you. So that’d be an easy fall.
Tyson Mutrux
Navy drill.
Michael Downey
And I just want to say that Tim and Tyson, thank you very much for asking me to come on. I’m happy to talk to your listeners. I appreciate the time we spent together.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, thanks for coming on. I agree with Jim, you need a podcast I think especially for for attorneys, Legal Ethics, you talk. I mean, there’s a bunch of attorneys that listen to your podcast, and you’re great that you you really are great, you present well. So I think I encourage you to do a podcast. Well, thank you. Thanks, guys. Thank you have the week. Take care everyone.
