Cultivating a Positive Attitude to Manage a Law Firm with Erick Widman 491

After handling his wife’s immigration papers, lawyer Erick Widman had a fire lit in himself to niche down to family and business immigration. His law firm is now 10 years old, with all the ups and downs that come from being an entrepreneur and owning your own firm. 

One of the biggest challenges Erick faced was being unprepared for how difficult it would be to handle employees. And all of the coaching you have to do for the employees – and so Erick became a high performance coach. 

How do you manage people all day? How do you manage all the different personalities you work with? How do you come to grips with that (especially if you are an entrepreneur)? That and more is what we are talking about today. Let’s listen in. 

Episode Highlights:

02:00 Meet Erick where he was a part of the minority group in school, was an exchange student in Japan, and taught law in Hungary where he met his now wife. 

4:25 Experiences from Japan helping Erick become a better business owner. 

5:19 What’s your favorite part of owning a law firm? And what’s the least favorite part of owning your own law firm?

8:00 Managing people on your team better even when you are an introvert …  

9:54 Becoming a high performance coach started when Erick realized I don’t need to play the same game that other people are.

12:15 Reading the happiness advantage — training yourself to find the positive – becoming the positive person in your life and making the positive things come out!

13:35 What has been the biggest challenge for you when running your own firm? 

15:28 What most immigration lawyers don’t know about marketing and being an entrepreneur. 

18:02 Talking about vision – have you done the vision work for your firm? Have you placed value on that? 

Jim’s Hack: Read the book by Napoleon Hill “Think and Grow Rich” https://amzn.to/3ItdiSb – it’s a little woo woo and a little outdated but the central message makes it worth it. — and that message is — That  anything that we want to have happened has to begin as a thought and that the only changes  that happened in the world happened as a thought and our job is to keep that thought alive until it manifests itself into an action. 

Erick’s Tip: Watch the documentary “All or Nothing Arsenal” which has a soccer coach rally the leadership of a failing team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta3CLkX-bzk

Tyson’s Tip: Use an app to place the text on the bottom of the marketing video you created for social media called CapCut with a free and paid version. https://www.capcut.com/

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Transcript: Cultivating a Positive Attitude to Manage a Law Firm with Erick Widman

Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.

Tyson Mutrux
And I’m Tyson nutrix. What’s up, Jimmy?

Jim Hacking
Well, Tyson, I just got out of one of those meetings that you have as a law firm owner, where you just want to like put your hands on both sides of your head and squeeze as hard as you can. Because people are driving you crazy.

Tyson Mutrux
You want to talk about it, you want to use this as like a session on the couch. And now

Jim Hacking
maybe on Saturday, we can but it’s just sometimes it’s hard to know what the right thing to do is. Sometimes it’s things are very clear. But sometimes things are mushy. And it’s hard to figure out what the right thing to do is and different people are telling you different things. And they all are having good ideas. And you have to sort of, as George Bush said, be the decider. I’m the decider.

Tyson Mutrux
I’m gonna use an aviation analogy. It’s kind of like having like, you’ve got your your plane parked out on the tarmac, and you’re ready to go. But it’s tied down to get the wings tied down. So you can’t take off and you’re ready to take off I can, I can only just like see you being the plane wanting to go and take off, get on the runway and go. And there’s sort of the tie downs, not a negative way the tie downs serve a really, really good purpose. But it can sometimes hold you back a little bit.

Jim Hacking
I just want to get those big scissors and cut the tie downs. Yep, that’s exactly right. Well, let’s get to our guests today. It’s one of our all time favorite members of The Guild, he actually came up with the name of the guild, which is the guild ends. His name is Eric Woodman. He’s an immigration lawyer out of Oregon. Eric, welcome to the show.

Erick Widman
Thanks so much, guys. This is a real privilege to be here. And I love what you’re doing for the lawyer community.

Tyson Mutrux
I really want to come and see in Oregon, I’ve never been to Oregon. And I’ve wanted to go for a while. So I’ll come and see you sometime. But tell us about your journey and how you got to where you are now?

Erick Widman
Yes, yes, absolutely. I grew up in Northern California in Silicon Valley, and was in a pretty diverse environment. My high school, white kids were the minority. And some other formative events. For me, were going to Japan as an exchange student. So we’re connecting the dots here to me becoming an immigration lawyer eventually, but live as a family in Japan, went to UCLA was impacted by a number of things. They’re really diverse there, too. I didn’t like law school too much. But I loved realizing I didn’t have to do what everyone else was doing. And basically play a different game is what I realized. I went to Hungary, and met my wife there. I was teaching law at a college it was the best choice I ever made. So it was legit for my career. I met my wife. Now we live in Oregon and have three kids.

Jim Hacking
So tell us a little bit Eric, about your firm, the setup your team and sort of how things are going?

Erick Widman
Yes. So the firm has been in existence for 10 years. I started it after I was in house counsel for about five years at Philips electronics. So I’ve had some corporate experience, which which is good. I actually liked working there. So I could have seen myself as a in house counsel for the long term. But glad my wife and I wanted to be adventurous. We quit our corporate jobs in the Bay Area, super expensive. There. We moved to Hungary, again, where we lived for about two years. So from 2007 2009 or so. And then that’s when I started my firm, and just had clients that were finding me for both business immigration. And then more and more immigration clients kept coming. And it was a perfect fit, because I had handled my wife’s immigration paperwork. And I really enjoyed it. And I am fascinated by international relationships, in that you have one person from one country, someone else for another country and the cultural dynamics, the challenges and the richness that come so my firm for the last 10 years has focused mostly on family immigration, we’re doing more business immigration. Now I want to get to a point where about 5050 and we have a team of 10 people. I’m the only owner. We have two other attorneys, two remote staff and then but five legal assistants, Operations Director and paralegals.

Tyson Mutrux
So Eric, I find Japanese business practices just fascinating. I really do. I think it’s it’s really cool. I wonder if any of your experience in Japan has formed any of your experiences as a business owner?

Erick Widman
Yes. Yeah. And you know, it was great. And I did some contract negotiations with some big names when I was in house counsel. So I was negotiating. It was it was amazing. These Japanese lawyers have passed the New York bar. It’s It’s hard enough Americans surpass it right. Super smart guys. And they were extremely impressive, but the formality of it all, and my boss hit me under the table when I didn’t call A guy Yamamoto son, I had, I had to make sure it was sawn. And so yeah, that was fascinating. And it was also also intriguing that when Japanese and Chinese negotiate contracts, they use English for their agreements. I thought that was amazing what a like privilege time in history the Americans have.

Jim Hacking
So, Eric, talk to us a little bit about, you know, one of my favorite questions I always ask people is, what’s your favorite part of owning a law firm? And what’s the part of being an immigration lawyer or owning an immigration firm that you would like to have someone else do or that might not be your favorite part? Yes.

Erick Widman
So I like I’ve alluded to before, I did not like the law school game, in a sense, where seemed like I was destined to just be a cog in a machine or a lackey to some partner. And rates of alcoholism are super high with lawyers and unhappiness. So I was even wondering, do I want to practice law after law school, but then I realized through a combination of reading and seeing other people start their own firms, and in the diversity in the law, I was able to carve out something that I really love. And so I like entrepreneurship. I like immigrants, I like being able to serve clients and build a business and, and basically, there’s no limit to what we can do. But I was unprepared for how difficult it is to manage employees. And, and also just not having the right training as a business person for several years. And I think I underestimated the responsibility of taking on employees and what that’s like, it’s like having starting a family, where kids, so your knowledge is not perfect, right. But the coaching that you have to do and the responsibility you have is crucial. So I’ll tie this in with my theme. But I became a high performance coach, in large part because I needed to be a better manager.

Tyson Mutrux
It’s interesting, I guess, when was it that it first hits you like, oh, my gosh, this is really hard. Like, do you remember that moment?

Erick Widman
Yes, yeah, it was, again, it was my first employee. And for months, it was going great. And hiring my first legal assistant paralegal like you guys always recommend. It was great for the firm. It was it was a exponential positive impact. But then she was unhappy about some things. And it was the kind of unhappiness that was understandable in some ways, and actually realized that I’m probably a better manager and a lot of people but if she if someone is not being, if we’re not aligning the goals of the firm with her career goals, then people will be unhappy. And I love it. Somebody said to maximal your conference, it might have get forget with speaker, but we’re building a business, but the workers are building a career. And so they don’t care too much about our business in that way, at what, you know, our main goals, we need to genuinely care about their career growth. So that was helpful for me to figure out.

Jim Hacking
Let’s talk about that and managing people peace. That’s something when I mentioned at the top of the show that I was squeezing my head and like a vise in my hands that was sort of leading to that. I mean, you know, I think I’m an introvert, a lot of lawyers are introverts and having to interact with employees are managed people all day can really be draining, especially if we like to think in our head and figure out cases. And then there’s all this personality that we have to manage. How have you sort of come to grips with that, Eric?

Erick Widman
Yeah, they, I remember getting great advice that if some of the things by building a law firm business, you can escape managing people or client or client interactions, you just have a different type of client or a different type of person problem or interaction. And so I basically embrace that if I’m not doing as much casework, like right now, I’ve still got to invest a huge amount of time and people relationships. And one of the toughest things is finding the balance between being the optimistic positive leader, but at the same time, keeping people in line having performance reviews where you’re tough on them. Hold holding people accountable. That’s, that’s a tough balance. And, and then, yeah, I hate getting the DM. About. I have a concern, right, or it’s the salary question or setting up the one on one meeting. But it’s mainly my fault, if I don’t proactively set up the one on one meetings to kind of preempt that. So that’s, that’s what I’m trying to get better at. I follow traction. It like, in large part, not as much as you guys you’ve probably released, Jim. But that’s been helpful structure.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I mean, it’s one of those things where like, just need people need a structure. It doesn’t matter. In most cases, what the structure is just a structure is pretty beneficial. But want to talk about the high performance coaching that you mentioned. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so

Erick Widman
so yeah. I realized that I don’t need to play the same game that other people are. So a key realization was I was always beating myself up comparing myself to all stars who have multimillion dollar firms faster than me, for example. And I realized that I was actually playing a different game intentionally when I first started my firm with little kids. And we invested into them. And I was not spending as much time on on marketing, I was doing more, spend more time with the family, and investing in them, which was great, but I didn’t connect the dots and realize that that’s a strategic choice. And it’s okay to have a different focus, play different game at different times of your life. And then I realized, because parenting is so hard, I’ve been reading coaching books here and there, and John Wooden, he was this famous UCLA coach, you’re familiar with him 10 championships. So I read his pyramid of success book, which is kind of simple. It was kind of trite, but super helpful for me when I realized like, I’m so demoralized, I don’t know what to do, I’ll go back to the foundation of this pyramid. And for me, you can write your own. I’ve had my team do this. What are those attributes that are most important for you for success in life. And for me, I realized it’s industriousness. I took that from John Wooden, it’s positivity and enthusiasm. So when I’m not sure of what to do, I just go alright, hardwork, positivity, enthusiasm, and we take it from there. And so it’s similar in some ways, my boys are in Boy Scouts. They define themselves with these words. So it’s a simple, but actually pretty effective coaching tool, high performance tool to look at that word, like if you were behaving brave or with courage, what would you do? And coaching is helping people step into that type of role, that type of thinking. And so the more I was learning about it, the more I liked it, and I was helping my kids and the team with that, too.

Jim Hacking
Thanks for the reminder, because my word this year is stretch. And I haven’t thought about the word stretch for a couple of days, even though I’ve been stretching at the gym, but I haven’t been putting it in my journal like I do. So I think that’s an interesting point about yourself that you made, Eric, because when I think of you, I certainly think of positivity, I think you’re a very optimistic fellow, you’re always very supportive of everyone else. And I’ve never really seen you get down or bummed out about stuff. And so where does that come from? For you?

Erick Widman
You know, my mom was a kind of a California hippie who was into positive psychology I and she always said, what, what was the positive thing to do, and we kind of made fun of her, it always sounded, she was also kindergarten teacher. So we were thinking like, Oh, this is just for little kids. But after reading The Happiness Advantage, highly recommend that to everyone read that. So it’s got the Harvard research backing it up, right and, and then when you’re able, just like a lawyer to to see two sides of the argument, recognize that our lizard brain is always focusing on the negative, but you can train yourself to find the positive and your life is way better as a result, not only personally, but then people follow you. And that’s, that’s what leadership is. So you could lawyers, in particular, we’re all smart enough to find out, you could focus on all that sucks. Or you could make a list of things that are bad, but you could also learn to make the positive things stand out. So yeah, with the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, that’s been crucial for me.

Tyson Mutrux
So other than hiring, let’s get away from that person or managing people what what would you say has been the biggest challenge that you’ve faced in growing your firm?

Erick Widman
I think for Yeah, this is a personal growth issue for me, is not marketing as I should. And and one of the reasons I joined the guild is to learn to not be self conscious, and just to get out of my own way, and not to worry about what people think on social media. And I could be much further along if I was more intentional about putting myself out there. And just sharing helpful things, immigration law, there’s an endless amount of helpful info to prepare to share with people. So if I did that more, and I didn’t care, what I thought people were even thinking about, and no one no one even cares, while people how often they show up or look goofy or whatever. So I think marketing is a key challenge for me finding the time to carve that out. And I’m glad that McGill we’re doing this 60 day challenge because I need to build that habit. So I’m on track guys that’s good,

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Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Our guest today is immigration lawyer extraordinaire and Gildan. Number one, Eric Whitman. Eric talked to us a little bit about what most immigration lawyers don’t know, like, what are blind spots that immigration lawyers have, in particular, when it comes to marketing or building, like you said, an entrepreneurial system?

Erick Widman
Yes. So I would start with a practical issue with accounting, where I know that a number of immigration lawyers in particular are so concerned with this nuts and bolts issue, take the money earned upon receipt and spend it and put themselves in kind of a Ponzi scheme scenario. And it’s not good. And and instead, it’s better and healthier, to earn that money through through milestones as you complete the work. So right now, Oregon still allows earned upon receipt, but that’s gonna be changing soon. Half the states roughly allow you to do that. So there can be a false sense of security, that, Oh, I’m I’m profitable, I’m really killing it. Look, I’ve got $80,000 in the bank. But that’s really not your your money, when even if it’s legally operating in your operating account. So on a practical level, by forcing yourself to earn it, and then transfer it to your operating account. That’s, that’s huge. That will also push you and your team to be more productive. And finding, finding those minimum targets. That’s something I’ve experimented with I also experimented with a and for several years use the commission system that could work. But overall, the entrepreneurial type of people who liked the commission, can leave start their own firms. Because I think only realized recently isn’t a book of business. Basically, taking from your existing firm, the existing clients.

Tyson Mutrux
We meet, I feel like I’m, you’ve caught me on that one. I will say what you mean on that?

Erick Widman
What when, when an attorney talks about yeah, I’ve got this book of business that’s transportable, and they’re not a partner. That typically means I think you’re an associate who’s able to leave with with clients and go to a new firm.

Tyson Mutrux
Gotcha. Okay. No question. I agree with that. Yeah, absolutely. If you, it makes you more powerful, it gives you more power. If you are an associate any of you have that book of business, I do get that. I think that that makes complete sense. And we got to Jim and I kind of talked about that earlier about if if one of your associates does have a big book of business, it gives them that mobility, which could cause a problem for you. But I want to ask you about something else, I want to shift gears a little bit, I want to talk about vision a little bit. And I just wonder, like someone like you, if you’ve done like the vision work to figure out where you are headed with your firm? And what value you place on that?

Erick Widman
Yeah. So I definitely think it’s crucial to figure out your Why think about longer term, what you want to do. And I think for the three of us who are more inclined this way, the visionary versus the the executor, the the the integrator, I’m more of the visionary. So but it’s important to do the work. And what I’ve done, I’ve looked ahead five or 10 years ago, the painted picture, from my corporate days, I’ve realized that I would love to build an international company. So if I kind of my life work where, you know, doesn’t doesn’t have to be huge multinational, that’s not realistic, but in a sense of having multiple offices, and focusing on global mobility, that would be really meaningful. So it’ll be both immigration, but it’s not so consumer focused. And we still need to get five star Google reviews. But right now, I feel like I want to be more like the company that kind of shrugs off the, again, not ignoring the bad feedback. But a lot of businesses don’t really care if if customer a B or C is really upset, but I’m I’m the vision that I’m excited about is helping people achieve their full potential by living globally. So that’s the statement I came up with for for myself. And for me, I’ve been able to live globally I’ve lived abroad, it’s enriched my life. Usually I found my love the love of my life, my life partner in another country. That happens a lot for for those. So my mission is to help people live globally in this way and it can be an Americans going abroad. So right now we’re mainly doing inbound immigration exclusively at this point, but we want to do outbound immigration to and help doctors without borders, get people into Nigeria, that type of thing.

Jim Hacking
So is that where the future lies for your firm is that I know that’s in the name of your firm? Is that sort of one of the long term goals? And what would that look like from a a role of the law firm? Like, what would your role be in a situation like that?

Erick Widman
Yeah, so I’m excited. I don’t know if I’ll remain or be a CEO. Longer term by I could, but I would love to do business development and build relationships, and set up another office in Europe live there. So a lot of relationship building, laying the structure, the foundation division for, for things, more marketing, to to make this happen to do business development with companies, and maybe secure an account, multiple accounts over time, that are great for recurring revenue. So I, I see that happening, in addition to growing the consumer focus business,

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. This is good stuff. I think I can probably pick your brain on a lot of things all day. But we do need to begin to wrap things up. Before I do, I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group, let a great information being shared on a daily basis, sometimes hourly basis or more. And then if you want a more high level conversation with people like Eric, Eric is in the guild, he’s like Jim said guilty. And number one, he came over the name guilty, and which is pretty awesome. If you want more high level conversation, join us in the guild, go to max law guild.com. And while you’re listening the rest of this episode, if you don’t mind giving us a five star review. We would greatly appreciate it. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week.

Jim Hacking
So this is probably a hack. That’s a long time coming. But I’ve actually been afraid to read this book. And when I say afraid, I mean, I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it. I’m still not sure if I’m ready for it. It’s one that many people have heard about. It’s by Napoleon Hill, it’s called Thinking grow rich. And when I say that I was worried about it or nervous about it as it’s a pretty intense book. And it’s a little bit woowoo. It’s a little bit out there. And it’s a little bit dated. But I honestly think that it came to me to read now at the right time, like I was ready to receive it. I think that if some people read it, if I’d read it 10 years ago, it would have gone way over my head, I was not ready for it. But I think that central message, which is that, that anything that we want to have happen has to begin as a thought, and that the only changes that happened in the world began as a thought. And that our job in part is to keep that thought alive until it becomes manifest in action. There’s so many great lessons in the book, I was looking up one. But there’s just so many great lessons in the book, that even if some of it goes over your head, or even if you find a chapter that you think is just way out there, at its core, it’s just a great roadmap for philosophy of life and for philosophy of growth, and a growth mindset. I mean, Napoleon Hill was talking about this stuff right after the depression. And there was a section in there today that I read where he was talking about the depression being a great reset. And of course, we were going through and on maybe on the back end of a great reset. So I think the book, although it’s almost 100 years old is timely. And I would say you can get a copy of it for free the copyright ran a long time ago. Just get it and just wait until it tells you to read it like get the book. Wait until the book tells you to read it and then just play around with it and see if it’s something that’s resonating if you start to read it and start to seem weird, close it and come back to it later.

Tyson Mutrux
It’s interesting advices it is good advice. I read it a long time ago and I should probably honestly come back to it. But that’s a good one Jimbo. Alright Eric, you know the routine we always ask our guests to give a tip or a hack of the week what you got for us.

Erick Widman
Yes, I highly recommend you watch the documentary all or nothing arsenal. I’m a soccer fan. Even if you’re not a soccer fan, you will be amazed at how to coach who I love. McHale Arteta has to overcome basically rally people. It’s a lesson in leadership behind the scenes, they’re losing game after game. And then how does he face them and rally them. So it was excellent.

Tyson Mutrux
That’s good. I’ll check that out. Mine is gonna be so different from the two of you. I don’t know if a lot of if you will have seen but like on Instagram and Tiktok. There’s, you see people with videos and to get the words go along the bottom of it. There’s a really easy app you can using there’s there’s a paid and a free version, but the free version will get you where you need to go and just uses AI I think, but it will just put those words in there for you. And it’s really, really easy. So if you’re struggling with doing that, and you don’t want to send it off to an editor and have them type it all out. You can just use something like cap cut, and it makes it really easy. Alright, Eric, thank you so much for coming on. We really, really appreciate it. It’s been a lot less. It’s been a blast and I like to hear your story.

Erick Widman
Thanks so much, guys. Definitely appreciate it. Thanks, man.