This week we have Jason Carpenter as a guest on the podcast! Jason is the Owner of The Law Office of Jason R Carpenter located in Harrisburg Pennsylvania.
Starting his firm right out of law school, Jason built his entire firm around using the latest technology to help clients and make metric driven decisions for the firm. With a never-ending desire to improve, Jason‘s firm is consistently revamping every system in the firm and focuses his time more to working “on” the business than “in” the business. Jason is proud to say that he does not have employees, as he hates that term, but refers to his staff as team members in order to foster a firm culture that is both positive and productive.
11:00 success is rented
11:44 3 day work week
14:10 flat fees
18:24 marketing tips
21:23 television sponsored content
29:00 geo targeting on Facebook
Watch the recording here.
Jim’s Hack: Book: Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers
Jason’s Tip: Business coaching to make sure your mindset is right.
Tyson’s Tip: Book: Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright
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Run your law firm the right way.
This is The Maximum Lawyer Podcast.
Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Mutrux.
Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Welcome to the show.
Jim: Welcome back to The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim Hacking.
Tyson: And I’m Tyson Mutrux. What’s up, Jimmy?
Jim: Tyson, how are you my friend?
Tyson: I am doing well. You, on the other hand, maybe not so much. You’ve got the vid but– no. I’m doing well. Thanks. I mean, it’s cold as hell but, otherwise, fine.
Jim: 23 today here in St. Louis. It’s a chilly, chilly day.
Tyson: Dude, I woke up, it was 17 freakin’ degrees. Like, what? Like, where did this come from? Like, it wasn’t even supposed to be this cold. It’s colder than what it was supposed to be.
Jim: It is cold. I’m excited about our guest today. Do you want to go ahead and introduce him?
Tyson: Yeah. Our guest today is Guild member, Jason Carpenter.
So, Jason, welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got to where you are now.
Jason: Well, thanks for having me, guys.
Jim, I’m so sorry to hear about having the ‘rona there, my friend. I know you mentioned earlier you had some symptoms. At least, we caught it.
My name is Jason R. Carpenter. I’m the founding owner of the Law Office of Jason R. Carpenter, based here in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I am licensed to practice in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
We are a family law firm. But I’m thinking, in 2021, of taking some personal injury cases and some criminal cases just to round out the portfolio. But we have the machine meant for family law. Later in the podcast, I’ll tell you a little bit about what we have.
Currently, we have two attorneys, other than myself. What’s interesting is I’m about to go to a third attorney, Lord willing, in a couple of weeks, because my assistant actually took this virtual bar here in Pennsylvania, where she had to stare at the camera the whole time and just, you know, watched it, to make sure she took it, and we’re going to find out in a couple weeks. So, we have a new attorney. And that’s pretty much as far as the firm goes.
Me, personally, I am born and raised in northern New Jersey. So, I consider myself a Jersey guy. My wife, Stacy, is an optometrist and very beautiful. So, you know, she’s easy on the eyes. They’re just going to be all these dad jokes. And although I don’the–
Tyson: That one’s awful. That was terrible. Keep going though [laughs].
Jason: Not a problem, you know. They’ll get better, hopefully.
But, luckily, I’m not a dad yet. But we just found out my wife is 14-weeks pregnant with my first one. So, yeah, I’m getting ready to actually be a dad. I’m a 20 – 25-year-long Rams fan. I know, you guys are St. Louis natives, sorry, if it’s a little sore. But started there right after like ’96 – ‘97 as a fan when Georgia Frontiere took them to St. Louis, had a stick with them, just had to keep my man card, keeping my team, and going from there.
But, Jim, I give you a lot of grief about the Jets. Being a North Jersey guy, my family– every North Jersey family picks Giants or Jets. And mine picked the Jets, so I just have to follow them. And I’m so sorry to hear what they’re doing this year, my friend. Hopefully, they get Lawrence in the draft.
As you mentioned, I’m a Guild member. You know, we’re a very close group of about a hundred. I seriously recommend, if you’re listening to this podcast, do it. Just yesterday, a Guild member mentioned something about their personal journey and everybody in the Guild just was behind her. And we did more than her business coach or his business coach, not to identify.
I have a bachelor’s degree from Florida International, down in Miami. And coming from Jersey, I went to undergrad in Florida International. I have my JD, I’ll tell you that. But, of course, I also have my JDHD where we learned a couple of podcasts ago. You know, so this is going to try to be focused but some people have said interviewing me is kind of like interviewing Robin Williams. I’m going to go on a tangent, but I’m going to try to pull it back here.
Like I said, Jersey, went down to FIU for my bachelor’s degree. Coming out from undergrad, I knew I wanted more. I knew. But I didn’t know what. And I just couldn’t find what. Looked at the GMAT for my MBA. Thought about being a tenured professor in economics just because I loved it so much. Even thought about taking the MCAT and just, you know, thought about it.
And my first job, out of undergrad, really cemented what I wanted to do and go to law school. I worked for a ladies’ footwear company. Does that mean I know anything about ladies’ fashion and ladies’ footwear? Not at all. Somebody tried to explain the difference between an open toe and Mary Jane and, as smart as I am, my brain turns off. But my job was the compliance officer there. My job entailed me, you know, making sure X amount of units got to a store but, at the same time, I had to make sure we had all our contracts in a row. I would have to review the contract, break it down. I’d also have to do something called chargebacks. Meaning, if a vendor wanted to charge us for not complying with the contract, my job was to formulate an argument, get the money. And I’m sitting there saying, “This is my favorite thing of the job. Why not law school?” So that’s where I was there.
So, I moved back up from Miami to Southern Jersey and decided to go to Widener Delaware. Now, called Delaware Law School. Upon graduation, my wife, Stacy, was from middle Pennsylvania, a place called Huntingdon County – Shade Gap. And we decided to put our roots down here in Harrisburg.
Coming out, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I got a few jobs. And one of the job listings during my search was for minimum wage, didn’t apply for the job, of course, but just to show the market was that soft at the time.
And my decision was, right out of law school, to go to open my own firm, it was always the plan to go solo, always. I just had that entrepreneurial bug which a lot of us absolutely have because we’re part of the Guild or Maximum Lawyer nation, if you just listened to the podcast, and just going out first. It was a miraculous thing and I loved it. Never looked back.
The one struggle I had, and I want to make sure to tell people, I started with family law. And the biggest problem I had was I decided to do Lee Rosen’s flat fee program. Now, what happened was I would set a price, not knowing the market, not knowing the work, say, “Your divorce is going to cost X.” Even though I tried to explain to clients, you’re going to pay more if we go to court, I still had that problem with collecting and all of that.
I’ve since moved to what Lee really does, a fixed fee where it says, “If you need this, you pay for this. You need this, you need to pay for this. You need a special relief petition, you pay. You’re going to court, you pay this” but it’s a set number. And we also allow the traditional hourly. But that’s kind of where we go with our practice.
The mission of my firm is to divorce efficiently and keep people happy, trying to get them that new life. You know, we know the five stages of grieving. And I’ll tell you the one thing I’ve always learned about divorces is one person’s heartbroken, one person’s not. Even the person heartbroken can be seeking the divorce. But it’s a universal law. Anybody practicing family law pretty much knows that. And we do things differently here. We have an idea of kids first.
In Pennsylvania, before you go into the divorce, the very first thing with custody is you’ll probably get in front of a conciliator within 30 or 45 days. So, it’s easier to say kids first. Matter of fact, that’s my Wi Fi password. You come in. Now, you can connect.
And transitioning to a little bit to letting you know where my mindset is right now, I want to share with people where I’m thinking. You know, I love being my firm’s CEO. I love the admin work. I looked at my to-do list today because one of my things I’ll tell people to go away with at the end of the podcast is daily planning. If you don’t know what your day is going to be, it’ll be everything but what you want it to be. Love being the CEO. Still got a few cases to keep my foot warm – my feet in the legal arena, but definitely not a full-time lawyer.
But right now, I’m trying to transition to the McDonald’s concept. And two concepts there. McDonald’s is very fast on production, the lines, the way things are done. There’s efficiency, and it’s just remarkable. There’s there’s actually a movie that has somebody on a tennis court showing how they mapped out the maximum efficiency.
And then the other portion of what the McDonald’s that I want to incorporate is Mike Michalowicz, the author of many books, Pumpkin Plan, Clockwork, in one of his speeches that I heard, he was talking about the McDonald’s effect – how you’d walk into McDonald’s all the time. And, whenever he was in there, he would always ask for the owner of the location. Nobody ever said, “Okay, we know who this is.” We don’t know. We can’t tell you. One time somebody said, “Oh, he came last week to pick up the check.” Now I’m always going to want to practice a little bit but the idea is to not be day-to-day and just, maybe one week, just pick up a check is something I’m definitely trying to get to. I think we all are. Yeah, that is kind of where I’m trying to go.
I’m hitting a point now is I’m trying to figure out if I should change things in my firm, develop, or should I just let it be? I’m very fast on adapting new things. We make sure everybody who comes in takes the DISC test, D-I-S-C, to make sure that they’re able to keep up with my changes. Again, for the JDHD. It made me one of the most successful because, again, I can change and move on a dime if something’s not working.
Going from the 60-hour work weeks is something this whole turn into efficiency has but the mindset now, the people in my firm are saying, “Jason, just let it work. You know, you put the pieces together.” But I’m kind of like JJ Watt mentality where it says, success is never earned, it’s rented and rents do every day.” So, it’s always a constant fight now, but that’s kind of where I am.
What we are doing is Process Street for production. I love Process Street. I love checklists. Even me, who wrote the checklist, have trouble with keeping up and making sure we don’t miss a spot. I was actually considering buying dedicated tablets just for that so that they never miss anything. And that’s kind of where my firm is and my mindset with my firm.
And like I said, I have my baby girl coming in a couple of couple of months and my idea is to take care of her two days a week. So, having that McDonald’s effect, where I pick up the check, kind of is where I want to be so I can actually be the caretaker. Mr. Dad is, you know, a stay-at-home dad for about two days a week is what I would like to be. But in this Corona world, we can always work from home.
Jim: All right. Great.
So, that was a great introduction to your firm and your approach to things. Talk to us about when you first got started. When you come into a place like Harrisburg and have to build yourself out as a family lawyer, what advice can you give to members in the Guild or the big group who are thinking about going out on their own and launching themselves into a new practice area, in a new geographic area?
Jason: When you go out to a new geographic area, the first thing I would do is kind of survey the level of the marketing. Is it like Philadelphia or St. Louis where you have a lot of people who are smart in marketing, have a lot of Google reviews, have very tactical positions? Analyze the market, kind of like a Sun Tzu type thing.
But if you’re going to open a firm, after you figure out what your marketing target would be and your ideal client, I honestly am more of a back-end thinking at this moment of how to get production efficient. If you do it from the beginning, when you have almost no cases, it’s just going to make your practice like that.
Now, you guys have talked at length about how efficient your firms are. And it’s amazing. And, you know, if you’re doing it– well, it’s kind of like driving a car and trying to repair at 60 miles an hour. If you try to do this where we are, you know, we’re ahead of the curve and we’ve been doing it since we started. But if you’re trying to do it at the beginning, when you don’t have the huge caseload, you know setting up Process Street, setting up checklist, getting instructions on how to do something out of your head and putting it on paper, being a policy or procedure, will save you time, money, and absolutely make your life better and more profitable as you go.
Tyson: Jason, you mentioned something early on and I know what you’re talking about, but I want to dig into a little bit deeper because Lee Rosen talks about doing flat fees. I don’t do family law, so I don’t I don’t follow Lee Rosen as much as family law attorneys do, but I do follow him a little bit. But he does recommend flat fees. You’ve shifted away from just a straight, you know, here’s what a divorce costs. So, I would call it more of an ala carte model. Why did you switch from just the straight flat fees to what you’re doing now?
Jason: So, we did the flat fee early in my practice and it almost killed my practice. I would set a price, get half the money up, and then put the person on a monthly payment cycle for X amount on their credit cards. What I realized I was doing is I’m not an attorney. I’m not a law firm. I’m a bank. You know, if they can’t go get financing and get money from somebody who does this all day and manages and analyzes the risk. Why am I doing it? Why am I giving them the numbers?
So, answering your question, I started with one price. You know, if there was a special relief petition, something like, you know, exclusive possession, our version of getting the marital home itself or something along the lines of a hearing, that would be included in the flat fee. And even if it wasn’t, when we kind of tried to change that, a lot of clients would balk at that because they thought it was a flat fee.
We decided, about late 2019 to start in early 2020, just purely hourly because family law, if you do flat and tell people flat, about 95% of them will just act normal but that other 5%, the Pareto principle kicks in, you know, 80/20. But that 5% will take about 80% of your time. And you’re just going to be ringing up your time and not getting the same money – you’re not getting the efficiencies.
The fixed fee is still a hybrid between the two. And I’ve seen it practiced in quite a few other firms and it’s successful because you do keep with it. And the fact that we’ve done so many cases, almost in the thousands now, we know this is really what the time is going to be. And that’s what the problem was when I started. I guessed without having any type of market research or knowing the numbers and said, “I think it’s about this.” And sometimes that would be way below market rate. And I had no clue. I had a huge list of clients. They all paid upfront. And it was kind of like take more clients on to keep the bills going. And it was kind of a point where I hit.
But my assistant, Ariana, who just took the bar, as I was saying earlier, came in, phenomenal. We’ve gotten most of those people happy clients not just left the firm, happy clients and referral sources, potentially, in the future. Which is also key to people starting out, just make sure you get word of mouth– you the best internet marketing in the world. And I’m going to go over some of what I’ve done in 2020, marketing-wise, I think that’s going to help the group the most. But yeah, I would say that’s kind of where I would say the flat fees, hourly and fixed. And we still give people the choice.
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Jim: All right, Jason. So, as we’re now standing at the gateway of 2021, you had some marketing tips from 2020 that worked well for you. I thought you might want to share a few of those with the group.
Jason: Absolutely. Time permitting, I’ll kind of tell you where I’m going to with 2021. But, you know, that’s going back to not setting too many things, and changing too many things, and letting things run with the systems.
I’m kind of like a rainmaker now. My job is to bring ‘em in the door. We don’t do chat online because we’ve found it not to be very good in family law but I’m thinking about it. And since we’re going to be flirting in 2021 with taking PI cases, on your recommendation, Jim, I might start taking chat on my website. But yeah, we’re thinking about taking criminal and personal injury in 2021.
Backtracking to 2020, I didn’t realize at the time it was going to be that funny. But I have a billboard with oops on it, O-O-P-S, of course. The second O actually is an engagement ring. That has stuck out. I can’t find– every potential client says, “Oh, you’re that guy.” You know, they all love the idea. We have small models in our office and that really helps with conversions. I didn’t realize it was going to be that funny. I’ve been at CLEs and judges have made sure they grabbed me and said, “That’s really funny.” But it’s also memorable, easy. It could be taken in a second and somebody driving past can do it. But I’d say, if you get a billboard, you know, don’t put your face on it, just make it catchy and catch the right concept.
Short story on that, like I said, my wife’s pregnant. We were at the first semester ultrasound– excuse me, first trimester ultrasound. I make that mistake common. And the obstetrician came in the room, made some comment about having to cite the law. “You know, I have to do this per the law.” I said, “Oh, God, darn lawyers.” I always make that a joke. Kind of like the Shakespearean “kill all the lawyers.” Of course, that means the inverse because we’re too pivotal to society and most people don’t know that. But going back to the story, he’s like, “Wait a minute, you’re an attorney?” I’m like, “Yes. You know, Carpenter. I’m a divorce attorney.” He goes, “Wait a minute. The billboard?” “Yeah, that’s me.” “Oh, man. I love that. I drive past it at work. You know, it’s really good. And, you know, I’m just– you know, very good idea.” And my wife’s sitting there going, “Oh, my God” because it looked like a little bit of fanfare. So, it definitely improved my ego a little bit, but the billboard served its purpose.
So, if anybody wants to do it, keep it short, keep it memorable. And, you know, use it in your market. Just don’t put your name or something like, “We have 20 years experience.”
Another thing I did was, I was on television, we have something called Good Morning, Pennsylvania here at a local affiliate. And what they did was, I would love to have it been free, and based upon, you know, celebrity or, you know, authority in the market, which I do have, but this was paid television appearances. So, I’d tell listeners, “Talk to one of the affiliates for your ABC, NBC. See if you can pay for a sponsored content spot and you’ll actually get television.” Now, I know some people converted for it. But the best thing I’m going to do in 2021, is chop that up very small videos on Facebook, or on my website, and I get a lot of traffic on YouTube as well. I would call the local TV station and see if you can get– it cost me about $500 a spot.
I was part of the Richard James Group. This is not a plug in any means by it. But one of the things that he really preaches is the book, write a book to position yourself as an authority. Again, I didn’t realize how powerful it would be. I didn’t actually even write a lot of the book. I had it outsourced to law clerk, the third-party service, and then kind of edited as I go. But I wrote the book– a book, A Roadmap to Your New Life. It cost me $4 per book, so I just hand it out. And it’s just a great marketing tool, great conversion.
John Fisher has a book, this is The Power of a System, I believe that’s the title. He mentioned that it’s the ultimate calling card because who throws away a book? Your business card? They’ll throw away it in a minute, you know, and never think about it. A book, they don’t throw away. And that helps cement you, both as an authority.
We’ve tried Facebook, not very great results. We’re now switching to Andy Stickel’s program, seeing if that can help. He has amazing results. A lot of, you know, in the Guild and we’re going to move that. But we didn’t have a lot of success doing that.
But the biggest thing I would say– and, Jim, you hit the nail on the head with your six- or was it seven-part intake, and then quite a bit you did with phones. Another phrase that I’ve heard is “fix the phones, fix your firm”. And I have an 11-step script that has everything.
Now, of course, if somebody mentions I’ve been cheated on or something like that, my people are instructed to go, “Oh, my” and go off script just because you have to have humanity with this. But they pivot back to the script and make sure they hit every point, selling points and things of that nature. But I would say one of our biggest– it’s not necessarily marketing but it’s starting to change from marketing to– I call it PNC (potential new client), where they’re touching your firm. And if you don’t do that well, intake’s going to be a problem. Definitely.
That’s some of the things I’ve done well. The billboard, the book. You know, we’ve tried LSAs. LSAs, most people don’t even know what those are. You know, we’re still seeing a lot of data come in and see if they’re great. I’ve heard Guild members who are killing it with them. I’ve heard people who just think it’s a bunk lead system where nothing’s coming out but, you know, definitely something good.
Tyson: So, Jason, let’s talk a little bit about what you’re going to be doing in 2021. So, this is going to drop on January 19. So, the people who are listening to this, they’re not watching it in the Guild. It’s January 19. So, tell us what you’re going to be doing in 2021, from a marketing perspective.
Jason: Well, I’m in a unique position right now. And we all are– you know, depending on where you are, may or may not be. We are, you know, recording this before January. And as we speak, even– like you said, Jim, unfortunately, has the pandemic virus that’s going on. It’s at a high level and we’re considering– a lot of places are considering lockdowns. Or, if you’re in Southern California or places in California or New Mexico, you’ve already been locked down by the time this comes out.
The first lockdown caught me completely by surprise. The Friday before because Monday, the 23rd. In March, the governor, Governor Wolf, here in Pennsylvania, put the stay-at-home order to start with. The Friday before, the leader of my firm, Amy, came in and sat down with me and asked me what my Corona plan was. Now, I kind of thought she was talking about happy hour at that point. You know, honestly, I didn’t know what the heck she– I heard the virus, I just didn’t realize it was that serious. And shortly, after that, I created a plan – early March, early April, about 15 to 20 things I had to get done. And that’s why I’m in the position today of don’t mix too much of my systems, let a lot of that go.
What I’m kind of saying for 2021. We don’t know where it’s going. I think the nation’s foremost medical expert has put it on a good track that there will be lock downs and there will be positive now. Some people think that’s Dr. Fauci. To me, I think that’s Dr. Carpenter, my wife, and, like every married man, she’s right. We’re in this situation.
But I’ve already made my plan. And a lot of what I’ve spoken about marketing or– excuse me, a will speak about in 2021 marketing, we’re setting up now. So, I tell people, “Listen, the Guild’s even better because it’s the people who are just that efficient and it’s some of the best lawyers in this whole country. But even if you’re part of the main group, you know, help start planning your 2021 now.” I know people want to finish 2020 strong, do your 2021 now. And if we get another lockdown, you’re just going to have downtime to do this and, you know, plan through.
You know, luckily, for me, a lot of the plan is this marketing. So, I’ll get a jump on it where other people will be in July of 2021 trying to do figuring out that was. But since I have the plan, I kind of have a rough outline already. And, you know, I think you have to make personal goals, as well as professional goals or else you’ll be working for your firm, not your firm working for you.
As I mentioned, I’m having a baby girl. And one of the things I want to do is work two days from home to be a caretaker for her. So, personally, that’s my goal.
Again, we’re starting with Andy Stickel and kind of doing his videos for Facebook. One of the best things we’re doing is–
You know, Tyson, obviously you have a law degree and a very intelligent person. Jim, same thing. I just explained to you what fixed fees were and we had to go back a little bit. And that’s, of course, for the listeners. But to explain it, so the layperson would have no clue. What we did was we hired an animation studio where it kind of has a video where it’s drawing and explaining the difference between hourly and fixed fee to them in a video that’s about three minutes. And you just go over it as a voiceover and things of that nature. And anybody who wants it, as soon as it’s ready, because it’s being produced, can explain that. And you know, you try to do it face to face, people are just going to tune out. We found out, they watch a video with constant motion in it, because, again, the hand’s drawing a lot of these things on, they’ll keep attention of it. But that’s a great idea.
Going back to Andy, for a second, he does everything for every client differently. But we’re going to try to do some geo targeting with her Facebook. A good example is our local prison. One of the things we’ll have a blog post is the five things you do after you’ve gotten arrested. What you can do is target a one-mile radius around an address and then draw a bunch of exclusion zones around it. So, you’re literally targeting one building. If you’re a PI attorney, you can do a hospital. If you’re an elder law attorney, you can do a rehab center. Family law– I still haven’t figured out what to do with family law. I don’t want to really go into marriage counseling therapists but, you know, it’s not as simple as that. But we will try to go into those areas. And all that you’re doing is educating. It’s actually not sales. It’s helping clients because what you’re doing is just putting content. Even if they never talk to you or hire another attorney, you’re helping somebody.
You know, we’re trying to do webinars as well. We’re trying to see if we put on Facebook, see if people come. I hear great success with those. With family law, I’ve not seen people– I’ve not heard of great success but, hey, it may be possible.
I know, Jim, you were talking– you have a couple of videos from the Guild on YouTube content. And, you know, we just plan to do a hundred of those. One of the biggest things we’ll be doing is videos explaining the process because all great coaching services – you map the client experience. Let them never have a guess of what’s going on. If you shoot a video, and explain, “Hey, this is the next step. This is where it goes.” Even if you want to do a quick tailoring to one and shoot a video individually, that’s fine, and that’s even a higher level of service. For us, though, we’re just going to have a generic one where we send out and explain the process.
But the biggest thing that I’m doing for 2021 is– and every listener– I mean, my inbox can be crazy and I’ll figure out what to do with it because we have, what, 3500 or 4000 listeners or members in the Facebook group. The Guild, 120.
Lee Rosen, again, to pivot back to him, is have coffees, have lunch. I’ve had a lot of conversations with attorneys in The Guild and outside of the Guild, how to form practice. I don’t care if you have a business transaction and I have a family law – you have a personal injury and I have a family law, just go down the list of practice areas. The amount of problems you have and similar to me is probably 80% to 90%.
What I would say is meet with people. I’m going to offer to meet with everybody, family law across the nation, just sit down, 15 – 20 minutes. I do it with coffee most mornings. Again, bringing it back to Jersey, the coffee reference, just how it comes out. But sitting down with people, both referral sources and non-referral sources, you will learn so much in your mindset that you don’t even know.
Keep in mind. Really, what we do is we fix problems that clients don’t even know they have most of the time. Same thing. If you don’t know what you can do in 2021, just simply talking to another fair member and, you know, a lot of Guild members – not to keep plugging this but, you know, Max Law 2021’s coming down the pike and, hey, don’t forget it’s in a casino. Very fun time. But a lot of us do talk like that.
And, you know, even if you’re not, just reach out to somebody in your network, if they’re a personal injury and you’re family law, they’re going to have leads to give you. But the biggest thing is to start developing relationships. Who knows, I might want to run for office one day and having connections through the Chamber of Commerce or something like that would help. But at the same time, I just build my practice.
These are kind of what I’m taking for 2021. But, again, once I have more time, hey, I might think of other things. But those are some of where I’m going with the firm.
Tyson: I love it.
So, for those of you that are– it’s 2021 and you’re listening to this, and you don’t have your marketing plan, now you do. Now, you have a good little starter plan, if you want to steal some of Jason’s ideas.
All right, so we do need to wrap things up. We are over time which is completely fine. But I do want to remind everyone to go to the Facebook group, get involved there. If you want to join us in The Guild, like Jason said, it’s a really great group of people and really high-level people. So, join us there, maxlawguild.com.
Also, while you’re listening to the rest of this episode, if you don’t mind just taking a couple seconds leaving us a five-star review, it definitely makes a difference.
Jimmy, what is your hack of the week?
Jim: So, some time ago, I came across a guy named Derek Sivers. He’s a very interesting fellow. He started this company called CD Baby, back in the day, where he would actually mail out CDs. He sold new CDs and he made a ton of money. It eventually became a CD clearinghouse so that tells you how long he’s been on the internet. He has a website called Sive.rs. So, it’s S-I-V-E-.-R-S. He has a podcast. He’s a very interesting thinker. He lives in New Zealand. And he’s got a new book out, which I just picked up. It’s called Hell Yeah or No: What’s worth doing. So, it’s about figuring out how to focus on the important things. And it’s terrific. So, I highly recommend it to our listeners.
Tyson: Yeah. He’s been on I Love Marketing, I believe. He’s a really interesting person. I haven’t seen that book, but I definitely recommend listening to that episode because it’s really good. But interesting person, for sure.
All right, Jason. So, you know the routine. You’ve been listening for a while now. So, what is your tip or hack of the week?
Jason: My hack is business coaching. If you’re a million-plus, you have to go and get your mindset right. And I’m not talking about talking to somebody in your practice. I have a business coach who has nothing to do with law but, every week, he just positions my head to make sure that I’m the CEO. Yeah, it would cost a little bit. I’m not talking about a coaching service of all those talking about just you focused. And I think that most elite players in the country have their own person just to make sure their headspace, day in and day out, is in the right spot. So, business coaching.
Tyson: Love it. It’s great advice. Really good advice.
My tip of the week is a book. It’s one that was actually recommended to me and Jim which is a coach that we had actually hired, Robert Strom, and it’s called Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build A Thriving Organization. It’s by Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fisher-Wright. A really good book, just about using tribes to improve your organization. A lot of it’s just small little tips – some of them seem sort of obvious and some of them not so obvious. But it is a really, really cool group. And he actually recommended it for us, for Max Law. It’s a great read. So, that’s my tip of the week.
Jason, thanks so much for coming on. I think the people who’ll listen to this are going to get a lot of great little tidbits from this, so thank you so much.
Jason: Thank you for having me, gentlemen. Look forward to seeing you guys in Max Law Con 2021.
Tyson: Absolutely. See you, gents.
Thanks for listening to The Maximum Lawyer Podcast.
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