In this episode, Jim and Tyson are one on one. First they will discuss about the podcast’s success this year. Then they will interview each other, check in and talk about where their practices are and what they have learnt since they started; going through their changes, successes, failures, achieved goals and struggles.
Exciting news! We have decided to have our very first Max Law Conference here in St. Louis in May, 2018. The venue: St. Louis University School of Law: Our Alma Mater. We are starting to line up speakers and it is going to be a great day and a half. Listen to the episode and get informed! We will have awesome speakers!
Hacking’s Hack: An episode of The Tim Ferriss Show: https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/
Terrific conversation. And in this episode they recommended a book.
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, by Dale Carnegie.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Stop-Worrying-Start-Living/dp/0671733354
Tyson’s Tip: Go back to the basics. Write 10 letters to 10 people and tell them how much you appreciate whatever they have done for you in 2017. That’s it.
Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/403473303374386/ or like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaximumLawyerPodcast/ and comment!
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Transcripts: Jim and Tyson: 2017’s Lessons Learnt and changes / 2018’s Goals and Challenges.
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. You’re back on the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m tasting matrix age me 2018. Man,
Jim Hacking
exciting. I think our listeners are going to be glad to hear from us. It hasn’t been you and I on a show by ourselves for quite some time.
Tyson Mutrux
I don’t know if excite is the right term for it. But I think that they may have some interest in hearing just from me and you. We’ve had a lot of guests coming on. And you had a really good idea that you know, me and you for the first episode of the year. So I think that’s a good idea. Thank you. It’s been a really long time since you and I have jumped on here at the same time. And actually a long time since you and I have recorded but just because we had so many of the cannons. So I’m pretty excited about it. You want to talk a little bit about what’s going on in just our podcast world. And then we’ll kind of do the introduction of the topic of the week.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, I was surprised to see the the number of episodes that we’ve had is climbing climbing and the number of people that are joining our Facebook group is climbing. I think there’s some really good discussions going on in the Facebook group. And it’s, it’s encouraging to see I think that it’s sort of taking on a life of its own. We’re getting to meet people, both those who we’ve had on his guests, and I had lunch with one of our buddies, Ryan last week from Atlanta, one of our listeners. So it’s become its own organic growing thing. And I think that’s exciting.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I think the greatest thing about this is we’ve done zero advertising. It’s we haven’t tried to monetize this. We haven’t tried to make any money off of it. And people really like it. I don’t know if these numbers hold up, but I’m pretty sure they do. Because I was looking at the numbers last week, I think our listeners are double what they were last year at this time. I’m pretty sure that that’s accurate. So that’s pretty awesome. I mean, the growth has been really cool. If you just look at a diagram of the growth of the number of listens and downloads, it’s it’s pretty awesome. It’s pretty exciting. The engagement shows that people are listening, they’re getting involved. They’re sharing information. I think that’s just awesome. I love seeing people share the information and get something out of it. I think just fantastic.
Jim Hacking
I think one of the things that helped the numbers grow is that I do you had a while back where you started posting some of the older episodes on Instagram, my intern Kent Richardson. He’s gone through, and he’s uploaded all of our podcast episodes into Meet Edgar, meet. Edgar is putting those out every three hours and all the episodes. And so I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but on my Twitter feed, I’m starting to get more engagement on Twitter. Thanks to that. And thanks to our friends, Mitch Jackson and Nick Richwine, who are very generous in their retweets and sharing the love with their followers that I really think that’s led to a big increase in we’re getting a lot of lawyer engagements. And I think that’s fun.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, definitely noticed it on Twitter. I’m not a big Twitter guy like you are I will go on there occasionally. I the reason why I go on Twitter is just to see what’s trending, you know, breaking news on Twitter, because it’s just interesting, because you get to see what’s trending. But I will check every time I’m on there. Just to see you know if there’s any mentions, and it’s really interesting to see like how I’ve done absolutely nothing mentioned on tweets so they can see the court, it’s in your right, it’s because what I was doing, I can’t remember I think I was thinking I was just doing never I was sharing him I was sharing them on LinkedIn primarily is what I was doing, because I had not been sharing that on that at all. And we definitely got only did the first 32 episodes, I think, and we saw a really strong increase in our numbers. After that, I need to do the rest of them. Because we have a lot more after that. But it’s just a different channel that people haven’t been getting us through. So I think it’s, it’s something very basic that we should have been doing all along. But it’s, you know, you and I just kind of started this as a couple of guys talking, sharing ideas and getting bringing guests on. So it’s not like we’ve been really trying to promote ourselves that much on it. But I think that that’s probably going to change in 2018. Now that we’re going to try and make money off of this, but we’re just gonna try and promote a little bit more just to spread the love around.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, I think it just, it’s just a maturation process of the show. I think that you’re right, we’re not out to you know, make a ton of money off this or anything. But I think that as the engagement grows, and as the interest grows, you know, thanks to our friend, Larry Weinstein, we got listed in the top 100 podcast, and I think that really helped boost give us a little boost and get some new listeners. And I think that just sort of where we’re at now is we’re starting to apply some of the things that we say law firms and lawyers should do to our own podcasts. And so to take those lessons that we’ve learned of our law firms and applying them to the podcast, you know, sort of gathering email addresses, you know, regular content sharing well on social as Mitch teaches, I think those are the kinds of things that as we sort of head towards the end of our second year is podcasting that we’re really going to see The thing gross more.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah. And Larry, he definitely deserves the majority of credit. There are other people that did submit it. And so thank you to those those people as well. And honestly, thanks to listeners just in general for spreading the word because it’s it’s been spreading by word of mouth for the most part, I mean, the Cleveland contingency alone, you know, they’ve spread and spread the wealth quite a bit when we have, I mean, literally listeners all over the world, I never would have imagined that it’s crazy to me, just to see the number of listeners, the people around the world that are just getting involved in, you know, improving their practices. It’s like, it’s frickin awesome. But I want you to introduce the idea that we teased at the end of last year. And it sounds like we’ve got some interest. So we’re going to do it. So you want to do it, announce it.
Jim Hacking
Yeah. So we have decided to have our very first Max law conference here in St. Louis, and 18th. In 2018. We’re really excited about it, we have a great venue at the St. Louis University School of Law, which is our alma mater, and we’ve got the space dedicated, and we’re starting to lineup guest speakers, and it’s going to be a great day and a half, it’s going to go all day Thursday, we anticipate people coming in Wednesday night, and then we’re going to catch a Cardinals game. As a group, that’s going to be an option for people that want to do that on Thursday night, and then we’ll do a half day. On Friday, we spent I think about two hours last Friday you and I can’t, the outline of the agenda and talking about our speakers and about the other things that we’ve got going on. So it’s going to be a great event.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, and just something that you and I were just sort of floating the idea around this for a little bit and kind of took off. And we got some really good people that have agreed to speak, you know, I don’t think we will release that list yet. But I think we’ve got some really good people they’re going to present, I just wanna make sure it’s clear that people know we’re not doing this to make money. This is not something this isn’t the purpose of it, the purpose is to really just spread the word and get better improves attorneys. Because the truth of the matter is, is you and I probably won’t make money off of it, it’s probably going to be a losing venture for us. But actually, sure, it’s, it’s not something where we’re trying to now capitalize on this, I think people need to know, our original goals are staying the same, we are doing this just because one, we like doing it, we like spreading love, and we like to learn and get better. And that’s a big part of it. The big part of this is that you and I have just learned a tremendous amount from this and grown a tremendous amount from this, from the listeners and from the guests. So that’s still the goal, nothing’s changed with that. And that’s part of the reason why we’ve done our part to keep the costs as low as possible, we were going to try and keep this at a very, very low amount, so people can afford to come. Because, you know, we’re all small firms for the most part. And so we want to keep this as affordable as possible. So people can actually take part in it. And we’ll also do our part. And we will we can’t actually stream as much of it as we can, we’ll illustrate all of it. But hopefully, we will be able to stream some of that. So I’m pretty excited about it. Yeah, I
Jim Hacking
think that it’s gonna be a nice blend, you know, you and I have both been the John Fisher’s mastermind experience, and that has such great value in in sort of taking that time out of your practice to sort of go to a dedicated spot with other lawyers who want to win and to bounce ideas off of them this, well, we have plans is going to be a little bit different. And I think it’s actually a nice complement to what John does, in that we’re going to have, you know, sort of best practices, we’re going to try to get former guests from the show, and other industry leaders to talk about the things that they do best. And I think that it’s just going to be an idea fast, I really think that the podcasts in the Facebook group have become a little laboratory of practical best practices. If that makes sense. I sort of like that practical best practices. Because, you know, so much of the ABA stuff, I think is sort of stuff dedicated to big firms. And I think that one of the reasons our podcast has gotten the traction that it has is because in a lot of ways, we’re talking about things that we do ourselves software that we use ourselves procedures in the office that we use ourselves, things that we really are tested, and that we really have a good handle on. And for the most part, we never have a financial stake in the kinds of things that we’re explaining to our listeners that we use. And so it really allows us to be sort of objective and fair. And Seth price always reminds me of that, that the reason he likes our show, is because you know, we don’t have a big old agenda. And you’re absolutely right that our goal our marching orders for Qantas to break even so if we break even or make a little on the back end to cover the expenses. I mean, you’ve been paying for the editing of this podcast for a year now. So if we can just sort of make that back and it’s, we’re gonna get as much out of it as everybody else. And for us, it’s just going to be fun to get everybody together to see all of our friends and a lot of the people who we’ve talked to on the show, and I think it’s just gonna be a great time.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, and I’m glad you talked about it being a complement to John Fisher’s mastermind, because it really is it’s, it’s, they’re not the same at all. They’re just a really good complement in with John’s it’s, it’s a very intimate setting where you’re, you’re really diving deep. And you’re, you’re kind of talking about deep dark secrets as you’re going through with your firm. And it’s a very confidential environment. So they’re what we’re doing is different. But John was really awesome, really awesome event, ours is going to be more of, we’re kind of some of this, it’s, it’s a mix between a conference and workshop where, you know, we were chatting with Willie immediately, he was talking about how he really liked an event where he can take something away, and actually, you know, apply those principles, and that’s kind of what we’re gonna try for, we’re gonna shoot for, Ken has some pretty good ideas, and we’ve got some pretty good ideas on actually, you know, breaking things down, and people can walk away with actually tangible things that they can actually use in their practices right away. And so, I don’t quite want to give those away yet. But we have some really cool ideas, I think, where people, whenever they leave St. Louis, in May, they’re going to hopefully really have gotten a lot out of it and take things that they’re going to be able to use immediately not down the road, not this, you know, theoretical thing that they can use, it’s an actual, they’re going to be able to use these things that they’ve created, or learned about in in during that one and a half days. So I think it’s gonna be awesome. I’m really excited about I know we’re, we’re gonna learn a lot about it. And the guests that we’ve had agreed to this point are just awesome. So pretty excited about it.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, I’m excited. I’ve already started working on one of my presentations, which is something that a lot of people have been asking us about is sort of how we do our YouTube videos. So we’re going to try to give some good instruction on that. And I think of the session you’d have planned and all of our guests, it’s just going to be a really good time. Plus, we’ll get to see some carnal baseball and it’ll be fun just to see everybody in May.
Tyson Mutrux
Can’t remember who they playing isn’t the Nationals. It’s the Philadelphia Phillies out the Phillies. Okay, gotcha. So it’s hopefully still be a good ballgame. And we should have the Nationals but it’s still gonna be a good game. So alright, Jimmy, let’s let’s get rolling. You want to introduce what we’re gonna talk about this week?
Jim Hacking
Yeah. So now as we’re steaming towards our seven years episode or so of the podcasts, and it is the end of the year and the start of the new year that we thought that it might be a good idea to just check in on both of us, you know, where our practices are, where we see things happening, I know, we’ve made some changes here on our end, and you’ve made some changes to so I thought that what we do is spend five or 10 minutes just interviewing each other, and talking about where we’re at, and sort of just checking in on what we’ve learned since we started and all that kind of stuff. Let’s do it. Alright, so since we started this podcast, you’ve taken on a partner, and you’ve obviously, expanded your practice. And I just think it’d be great for the group to hear sort of how that transition has gone. I know that you’re a big systems guy, and we talk about that a lot on the show sort of how that merging of two firms has gone?
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, that’s a good question. Alright, so we’ve had a pretty big shift and the practice one, we do 100% Personal Injury, now we’ve given up criminal defense completely, I still have some leftover cases that we’re in of trying probably two or three that will end up being trials, or to try to couple those this year. So as around five, and I’m kind of a three. So given up criminal completely, the dynamic of the firm is completely different. We’ve created divisions in the firm, we have a catastrophic loss department ClD. And then we have what’s called a missed divisions of your reptile fan, you know what that is, and that’s more of the minor impact soft tissue injuries, is really what it is, it’s the lower end injuries. And so the idea is that plan going forward, we’re hiring an associate to run the mist division, and Chris will be running the catastrophic loss department. So the goal is to have no more than 15 cases for cresc. And just throw really big cases, and then the rest of them will be run through the mists division. So that is a key difference in how I was doing things before, just because I didn’t have the human power to really run the firm that way, but that was one of the benefits of actually merging is actually be able to split the firm up that way. So we’re in the process of trying to find someone to run that Miss division. So that’s, that’s really interesting. We’ve had changes in staff where we, I mean, I had to do one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done that fire an employee and I just what made it so difficult is that she hadn’t done anything really wrong, she just wasn’t the right fit anymore. So for the people that say, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, just cut get rid of them. It’s easy to do kind of it’s your you’re out of your mind, it’s a really tough thing to do. So, let someone go someone’s been with me for a couple of years and it was just a tough decision, but it was a decision that had to be made and had to be done. So that’s where we are with the firm, basic firm setup with with regards to how the firm has gone sewer systems. I will say that the systems has been by far the most challenging part of it. What has multiple The difficulty was the fact that we got more cases than we anticipated, which is a good problem to have. But we had, I’m not gonna go over the actual numbers of what our goals were. But I’ll just tell you this, we tripled the number of cases we wanted to bring in which, whenever you triple A goal, it causes strains on firm that you just don’t, you don’t really anticipate. So we had two separate sets of systems. So Chris was on trial works. I was on Infusionsoft. And so having two separate firms merge into one firms essentially have three firms, it’s very difficult to merge those systems together. So whenever you are anticipating a potential merger or partnership, you have to take that stuff into consideration which we did with something that we had, we had anticipated, and we’ve spent a significant amount of time analyzing systems looking at systems and seeing what would be the best fit. And so what we’ve actually settled on is, we are switching both of our firms over to cloud blacks, which we’ve already switched over. And we’re using Infusionsoft on the back end, to bolster it. And so what I’m actually doing is in the we’re in the process of having, we’re gonna have a bridge basically built an API, which I won’t get into too many technical terms. But basically, some of the automation will be done by Infusionsoft and the actual housing, all the documents, and all the notes, everything else, the case management system will be cloud Lex. And if you’ve not heard of it or not used it, it’s actually pretty awesome. And it’s, when I say it’s completely cloud based, it’s completely cloud based. The all of the documents are stored inside of cloud Lex. And there’s certainly things where these other services where they take, and they held the documents in like Google Drive, or Dropbox, they’re actually housed inside of cloud Lex. And so you’re editing the documents instead of cloud, like you’re viewing the document. And so inside of cloud Lex, for example, one of the services, whenever you are editing a Word document, you have to download it, edit the document, and then re upload it. So like that, you can actually get an agreement with Microsoft Office where you can actually edit it right there, kind of like Google Docs works, it’s pretty awesome system, we really like it. And we’re gonna be able to really monitor and track our cases much better through it. So systems, it’s still been a struggle, just because we’re, our basic systems are still there. But we’re having to recreate them in a new system, if that makes sense. So that’s it’s been a challenge. But it’s my advice to anyone that is merging or partnering with another firm, it’s just patience, you have to anticipate these things, you have to anticipate these changes, which we did, we knew this was gonna be a long process. We’re only seven months in. And we anticipate this. So we didn’t fully expect to be completely integrated for a year. So we are still ahead of schedule, we’ve got the new system in place. It’s just now just a matter of implementing a lot of those things. So that’s where I am Jamie, I know that was a very long winded response that they think it was necessary. I’m sure I left out a bunch of stuff.
Jim Hacking
Where’s your mind at now? How do you feel? And how do you look at the future? What are your current thoughts on where Nutrafin is headed?
Tyson Mutrux
I’m extremely optimistic when it comes to the firm, I will tell you, I’m just really stressed out because of the fact that we are operating essentially three firms. And that that’s just because of the way our agreement was between the two of us it’s we’re wrapping up the old stuff and everything news going into the new firm. And so even though we have one big umbrella, we’re technically operating as three firms in a way and so that makes it look a little difficult. And, you know, you’re you’re trying to wrap up cases and work on the new cases. And, and while we are still trying to fall, get things to fall into place, it gets a little stressful. And we’re is we’re just the most stressful thing has been the success we’ve had with the cases we’ve gotten because we we really have, I’m not trying to toot our own horn, we’ve got we’ve got some really good cases, and they’re in our pipeline. And so it’s trying to make sure we keep our clients happy. It’s just it’s on top of her mind all the time. And so it can make things a little stressful. But me Christina will tell you I mean, we’re we’re elated as to how the firm is done. And we I can honestly tell you, we’re both very optimistic as to the future of the firm, just because of the way things are falling into place, the response we’ve had from our referral partners, things like that. We’re we’re really excited about it. That’s fantastic. Yes, it is.
Jim Hacking
So how is your role going to fit in? How are you going to be if Chris is going to be trying the big cases and you’re in hiring associate to do the MS cases? Where do you see your role in things?
Tyson Mutrux
So it’s interesting. So that’s a good question. And I think most firms will have this like this is my case to try. I’m gonna try this case this is your case and try this is your case. We are switching to a trial team model where we are actually trying these cases of teams instead of trying them individually. And so for example, we will have once our our complete goal has really been fulfilled where we have set the firm up the way we want it to be we will have someone that just has liability experts don’t want to just as medical experts, things like that. And so it’ll be broken down like that. So we will be trying these cases in full and complete teams. So I will still be having a role when it comes to actually trying the cases. Now, Chris will be taking the lead on these larger cases. And on some of the smaller cases, I may take the lead on some smaller ones. And some of the bigger ones I made that that are still my cases, I probably remain the lead on those as well. But I think the main thing that people need to know as we’re trying these things as teams, though, but again, part of that does, my role in when it comes to day to day is, is going to be coming, I’m going to be stepping back a little bit, when it comes to actually, the day to day of handling these cases, I wouldn’t really call myself a CEO, but it’d be more of that role where I step out. And I’ll be sort of taking care of the firm as a whole, making sure things are moving in the right direction. And so that my role in that will really change quite a bit, which I’m excited about. Because that means I’m not going to handle all these day to day phone calls, you know, have received that demand yet, or my medical records that I’m treating, I won’t be handling those calls like I am now. So that’s where we’re headed, I will be stepping more healing Craig Goldfarb in a way where Craig Goldfarb is, you know, he’s like a CEO of his company, and he got a bunch of attorneys working for him and doing a lot of that work, it’s just kind of the way we’re headed, not in the same way, not the same setup, but in a very similar, similar manner.
Jim Hacking
That also sounds fantastic. And I know that’s where you wanted to be headed,
Tyson Mutrux
I want to talk about the importance of having a good partner, and having the right fit in, this would not work without the right partner. And the fact that he and I have the same vision is very important. And so that’s what has allowed this to happen, Chris and I had a very long phone call one day where we just talking about vision. And I don’t know how it really came up, I think I just said, You know what, like, I’m just gonna have to sort of, I’m at the start stepping, you know, outside of the day to day stuff. And he was, I can tell he was really relieved to hear that because I think he that’s what he wanted me to do. And it just took me some time to really accept that in a way. So, you know, he and I have been talking for a very long time about this, and, and really setting this up the right way. And so the fact that he and I have agreed to that and have the same vision is very, very important. So if you’re thinking about partnering, and you’re having that conversation with other people, those are the types of things you have to be comfortable with. And those are things that your your partner has to be comfortable with. So I definitely think you should think those things through. Alright, I
Jim Hacking
have one last question for you. And it’s one that you often ask our guests, and that is, what’s your biggest struggle or headache right now?
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, that is actually one of my favorite questions to you, you do learn quite a bit from it. Right now. It’s the migration of documents, not not the actual data, but actual documents from google drive over to cloud bucks. If you have a system like trial works, it’s not easy, but it’s easier because they can just send them they can do the migration for you. When it comes to because we were using Infusionsoft with the combination of Google Drive, they were able to migrate the data very easily, but you were they were not able to migrate the documents. So for all the documents and the files we have, we’re having to download as a zip drive each one of those files and then re upload them into the cloud Lex, which is very time consuming. So that is my biggest struggle right now. And I have actually think I’ve systemized that to where the point I’m gonna hire a virtual system to finish it up. But I really figured out myself first how to do it. And so in the in the coming weeks, that’s what we’re gonna do. We have some right now that does medical summaries. golshan. He’s very, very good. I think what I’m going to do I talked to him earlier today, I think he’s probably going to fulfill that need going forward. But can I figure it out first. So let’s say you’re struggling, you’re ready to go now? I’m ready, brother. All right. So give us an idea of where you are. You’ve added two years since we started, your wife has come on board, you’ve had a lot of changes, people leave people come. You have a team of interns now. Marketing is changing. You’re changing systems. So give us a really a rundown on how you’re doing.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, so 2018 brings a lot of exciting changes to the old hacking law practice, we’re really excited. We set our goal early in the year last year to try and hit 365 cases because it looked like we were opening about one a day and I am sad to report that we ended up for short, so we ended up with 361. So it was from 249, the year before. So that was a big big increase without much increase in staff my wife had been on by that point last year. So it was a lot of growth for us. And when I went to John Fisher’s mastermind group in Chicago, I had a couple of goals and one goal was to get my own personal caseload beneath 100 cases. And so I have succeeded with that. And so I’m handling a lot less cases and I’m not taking very many new cases at all. The only exception to that are the lawsuit cases that really only I can do and and those only last three or four months so other than that I’m really farming out a lot of work to my wife Imani and to Andrew, our associate. So that’s
Tyson Mutrux
gonna stop you right there. I and I will let you finish but I cannot let this go. Because just drive me crazy. It’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. You just said something that you tell people I tell people all the time that it’s not for you said it’s the only thing you can do. Why is it the only thing you can do?
Jim Hacking
Well, that’s a good point. It’s because all the marketing and everything about the lawsuit. I mean, Andrews never filed a federal lawsuit in Amman, he hasn’t been in federal court in 20 years or 18 years. So in theory, other people can do it. And, and I have automated a lot of the the production of The Washington service and everything. But yeah, that’s definitely something that I could give up more of. But what I’m saying is right now I’m the only one who knows how to do those. So everything but those I’m giving to everybody else. So I see what you’re saying. And it’s a point well taken. I didn’t mean to drag my fingernails across the chalkboard, but I consider myself duly slapped on the wrist. So I’m sorry for that.
Tyson Mutrux
My apologies continue on.
Jim Hacking
It’s all good. It’s a good point and a good learning lesson. So one was to get my caseload down, which we’ve done. Another was to try to hit my numbers on the cases. And the other one was, when I went to the mastermind, everyone was shocked that, believe it or not typing and you’ll die when I tell you this. So when we do a set of forms, we do them manually. So we download the latest form off of the internet, and we prepare it from USCIS website, a new every single time. So that means that if you’re submitting a case with six sets of forms that somebody’s typing in, James Oh, hacking the third 109 100 Manchester Road on every form, plus all the clients information. So the other big change that we’ve made is, you know, I’ve been banging my head for three years convinced that I could build an immigration law practice on the backs of Infusionsoft. And we’ve decided to finally concede that battle. And what we’ve done is we’ve signed up with Cleo for during unit. So we’re like you, we’re still going to use Infusionsoft to supplement Clio and specifically with the marketing in the before unit, and in the follow up after unit. But for the during unit we’re going all in on Clio. And the reason we picked Clio is because it has a API that allows it to interface with another company that was created by an immigration attorney, a guy named James from Holland, Michigan, and he has built on top of Clio a way to do all the immigration forms. So we started doing our forms now where you fill it all the information into a database once and then it prepares all the forms once the data is in there properly. So Never again will I have to, or any of us have to prepare forms from scratch. So to scale that many cases that quickly without any new software, because the software just coming online right now was really hard and tiring. And so I think that with this new software, we’re going to be able to increase our efficiency, we’re gonna be able to cut down on our mistakes. And so we’re really excited about that.
Tyson Mutrux
It’s a really interesting that you weren’t already since you were using Kelsey that you’re already using something like web merge things web merge, where you when you automate the document, it’ll actually fill in those on those fillable PDFs. That’s really interesting to me that you had more done that before. And I’m actually shocked that you’re manually having to go to the website, download it, and then and then implement or forms because I can only imagine that did you have a lot of like human error on with those forms?
Jim Hacking
We had some but the reason for that the main problem that we had was that USCIS on their forms creates a barcode that changes for each letter or, or thing that you type into the form, it has this master barcode at the bottom that they scan in when you send them the paper form. So we could have used web form or something else to create the PDF, but it wouldn’t have had that barcode, which means USCIS couldn’t have read them. And so this guy that we’ve partnered up with through Clio, he has cracked that code. I don’t know how he did it. We were literally calling Adobe trying to figure out how to do it. And I just said, Look, why am I trying to recreate this thing that’s already out there. And that’s sort of why we shifted that we always thought that we could crack the Adobe PDF code, but we weren’t able to. And that’s really one of the reasons why we were sort of slow to adopt Clio.
Tyson Mutrux
Really incredible. Wow, nice.
Jim Hacking
Alright, so on the social media side, I’ve been really excited to have Kent working with us for the last two months. He’s really, we’ve got our first content calendar. We are using Meet Edgar a lot to push out all of our content, not just for maximum lawyer, but also for the firm. We’ve got it set up now so that when I put up a new YouTube video, it then puts it into Meet Edgar for later, dissemination. And for those of you don’t know, Meet Edgar is a thing where you can preload all of your tweets in your social media posts, LinkedIn, Facebook, all that stuff. And then it’ll just do it sort of on a calendar. It sort of does a round robin where it takes up posts and repost them and you can you can make it as detailed as you want it Pretty great thing. And so we’ve really boosted that. He’s really helped me with my podcast, he edits the audio podcast, the new one, which is the Immigration Answers show. And so I really have very little to do with that other than to record it. We’ve also been digging into our YouTube Analytics. And I think that when we meet a name, show everybody what we’ve been up to, we’re gonna knock everybody’s socks off. But I basically haven’t added much YouTube content for the last five or six weeks. And in those five or six weeks, we have 300 new subscribers to our YouTube channel. So it’s sort of crazy. So now we’re going all in on YouTube, we’re gonna rip the audio off the YouTube to do the podcast. We’re gonna do less emphasis on the podcast, and we’re gonna do more emphasis on YouTube. We’re going to follow Mitch Jackson’s advice to supplement our in studio YouTube videos with a lot more handheld iPhone type videos, because those I posted one from Tampa about two months ago, and it already has a couple 1000 views. So it’s really crazy what those, you know, small smartphone videos have done. So we’re sort of all in on YouTube and videos in particular. Yeah, I
Tyson Mutrux
hope people are listening to that point. Because it’s, you know, everyone’s trying to sell you polished videos and everything else. That’s not how it is the most watched and listened to videos are the ones that are rough around the edges. So we try to polish up your videos. I think that that’s a great point.
Jim Hacking
Yeah. And then procedure wise, we had our firm retreat, where we shut down the office for a full day, and we all got together away from the office. And we came up with our tagline or we’re working on our mission statement, but our tagline and our sort of our focus, it sounds very simple. It’s only four words. And it does sound a little bit like the plaintiff’s Personal Injury stuff. But I think when you drill down to it, it sort of summarizes exactly what our mindset is, as distinguished from a lot of immigration attorneys. Here it is it’s we fight for immigrants, we fight for immigrants. And so we’re working with Joey Vitaliy to trademark that. We’re gonna start putting in all of our marketing stuff. And we really think it sort of shows our team approach. It shows our mindset where a lot of people just try to get along with immigration. And we view immigration as a full Bloodsport just like litigation. And we bring sort of that litigators mindset to immigration where we’re not coming hand in hand. But instead, we’re just ready to kick them in the teeth and go from there. And so I think that we’re going to have a lot of fun implementing that over the course of the next year.
Tyson Mutrux
How did you come up with that? Is it I mean, what was the process you used? Well, we
Jim Hacking
listened to sort of the things, the strengths that we felt about our firm the things that we you know, the attributes or things that made us different. And, you know, one is, you know, obviously, all we do is immigration. So, you know, we fight for immigrants, and we only fight for immigrants. So that’s where that comes from fighting is sort of, you know, I had a lot of non violent words, but sort of forceful, impactful words and fight was the one that just sort of we distilled down to, and then we, we is really, because we use a team approach. And we’re really collaborative here. And we really try to talk about our cases together with each other. And, you know, most immigration attorneys for the most part, practice by themselves. And so the we sort of the fact that we have three attorneys, and you know, four or five support staff. And so I think that that sort of Telegraph’s and summarizes what we’re after.
Tyson Mutrux
I’m interested. So the thing that you and I subscribe to a while ago with Jim Manning, the Chet Holmes international stuff. Do you implement any of that stuff in your little getaway is? Or is? Is this just stuff that you’re coming up with on your own?
Jim Hacking
Yeah, so we did use some of the stuff from Chet Holmes. In fact, the team has all read the first four or five chapters of it. And we go, we’ve been going over those chapters, what we do when we have our retreats each time, and this is really one of our most instructive things that I think we got from Chet was we asked, you know, sort of, what should we stop doing? What should we keep doing, and which we do better? That took up an hour and a half, two hours of the day. And that’s what we start off with every time. I first gave a little history of the firm, which was fun, because we’re on our 10 year anniversary this year. And so I sort of gave a little history starting back from when I wanted to start the firm and why I started the firm. And, you know, you forget that a lot of people who are new, don’t really know those stories. So to hear these stories of, you know, the struggles that are dealt with, I had when we were in a little office the size of my current office, and it was just you and I and the phone would ring and she’d say, Hold on, I’ll put you on, I’ll get to Mr. Hackney. And to put them on hold. And she didn’t say across the room, Jim, the phones for you. And so I pick it up, you know, so to hear where we’ve come from, you know, handling, you know, maybe 40 cases that first year to handling as many as we’re handling now and with a team of like seven people. It’s fun for them to hear that. And we just segue from that right into the questions that I talked about just a minute ago.
Tyson Mutrux
All right, so we’re getting close to time actually, we’re well past time, but we’ll sort of wrap this thing up. So I guess what are your goals for 2018?
Jim Hacking
You know, I’m a member of Mitch Jackson’s legal minds mastermind group and Mitch asked us from the beach on a video to describe what our ONE WORD is for 2018. That’s funny when you asked me that, I lost it momentarily, and I had to go look it back up. But it’s process. So for me it’s process. That’s what we’re focused on this year, we’re really going to drill down on the during unit, trying to handle around the same amount of cases or maybe some more cases through greater and an increased efficiency, having a database of our clients data and not having to reinvent the wheel for each and every case. That’s really what our main goal is. And along those lines, I sat down, I put a post up on the group, Sunday about sort of what our KPIs or key performance indicators are going to be for the year. I don’t know if you get a chance to see that. But I had fun, I have all that data spread out in all these different places. But this month, we’re certainly going to try at least for one month to see what happens when we gather all the data about our webpage, our phones, our processes our caseload, we’re really going to try to have it all in one area, and then sort of see where that leads, what information can be gleaned from that. And I’m really excited about sort of having all that in in one place.
Tyson Mutrux
Like it, Jesse, you know, if and I don’t know where you said you were going to put it. But there is a cool service called clip folio. It’s an app and a website. And this is a clip folio with a que I talked about before on the podcast, it’s a very cool way of putting it on the dashboard. And it’s just in case you want to visualize it, like on a computer or something like that, you can easily do that with a clip folio. So that’s a good way of doing it. But I let’s wrap things up here. And let’s before we get to our tips and our hacks for the week, I do want to remind everybody yo to the Facebook page, get involved in the discussion, people sharing really good ideas on there, so and presenting problems that they’ve got. And I think that that’s great as a community when we’re able to help each other out. That’s fantastic. But also go to wherever you get your podcasts, whether it’s iTunes or Stitcher or somewhere else. Give us a five star review. If you liked this podcast, especially if you’ve listened on this one to this point, you probably do. So if you don’t mind just taking a couple of minutes at the end of this. And just given us a reason. Also subscribe to the podcast. I think that may help us. So Jimmy, what is your hack the week
Jim Hacking
before I get to my hack of the week, let me just say that I enjoyed it just being you and I love having our guests and we have some good guests lined up for upcoming episodes. But I do really enjoy these you know, when I listened to I love marketing with Dean Jackson and Joe Polish I’m always most excited about when those two get together and talk because I think a lot of time, you just end up hearing from their guests. And so this was fun for me to be together with you today.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I enjoy. It’s fun. Whenever you and I are on here we can go back and forth. And you know, we don’t have to be a stuffy with a guest. Sometimes we have you know, questions we ask the guests that it’s a little more formal that you and I can have a little more banter back and forth. I have a lot of fun with that.
Jim Hacking
Alright, so remember, I also wanted to start mentioning some of our reviews of our podcasts. And so I’m going to read one of the new ones that we got it from our friend Ryan McKean. He gives it five stars calls it the best, I both consume and produce a lot of wall business content. This is the only podcast in the genre that I subscribe to. There’s gold in these episodes. So that’s really nice from Ryan
Tyson Mutrux
was really nice. And Ryan is I’ll tell you what Ryan is just a very generous person with this time. And I just a really good guy. So you know, I encourage you to reach out to Ryan and say hi to him. And he’s just a wealth of information.
Jim Hacking
Yeah. And I got to meet him last week, we had lunch together. So that was that was great. And so without further ado, my hack of the week, I listened to the Tim Ferriss experiment, Tim Ferriss podcasts, off and on. I don’t always listen to it. But there was an episode a couple weeks ago, with a former NFL player named Terry Crews. It’s a it’s a two hour chat that they had in New York City. And we’ll put a link to it in the show notes. It was terrific. And I think that as we move into the new year, and we talk about looking at our life and our goals, it was just it’s really, it really an amazing episode because you get to hear from Tim and you get to hear from Terry, it was great. And in that episode, they recommended a short little book by a fellow Missouri native Dale Carnegie, I didn’t know that Dale was from Missouri. But Dale has another book, not how to win friends and influence people. But it’s How to Stop Worrying and start living. And I’m about halfway through it. It’s a short read, but it’s a great book it’s dated, but the examples and the ideas on how to just sort of let go of worry, living in the moment and focusing on the things that you can change. It’s a great book. So I recommend both of those things.
Tyson Mutrux
You know, the stop worrying one is recommended by someone else either on our Facebook group or John Fisher’s mess from experience one of the two and I have it on my queue. I just haven’t started reading it yet. So I was wondering, it must be a good book. Most people have recommended it so I’m gonna check it out. And finally actually read it. Alright, so my tip of the week since this is a New Year 2018 First steps of the mind is going to be going back to the basics. And here’s what I want you to though I already sent out one of mine this week, don’t just sit down to 10 pieces of paper out, write 10 letters to 10 people and tell them how much you appreciate whatever they have done for you in 2017. That’s a solid tip as to sit down and just tell them, you know, how maybe they’ve changed your life, how they’ve helped you out how they’ve made you happy, whatever it may be, sit down, write those 10 letters, it can be the referral partner, it can be to your wife, your husband can be to a friend, whatever it may be, just sit down and write that letter. And even if it’s just a blank piece of paper and write on there, being a special doesn’t have to be a card to do that. Think about how that may affect you, if you were to receive that from someone. And I think that if they really think about it, you understand how much of an impact you’re going to have on that person. Or those people whenever they get those letters. So send out your letters. And I think you’re gonna be able to make a positive impact on someone else’s life. But believe me, that’s a great
