Should Your New Hire Bring Their Own Leads? 497

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Summary:

01:39 Meet Jeremy and his law firm that he started in 2015 and a reset in 2019 

05:16 How did Jeremy get 20 referral sources?

06:31 Advice for people to ask for referrals?

09:01 Topic of the day – What is the right way to bring on and pay an associate? And the reality of owning a business 

13:28 Where does the fear of not hiring come from?

15:25 Using Profit First in your business

17:00 Should I expect an associate to bring leads of their own?! What associates want – and what you need to do …   

20:03 The first cycle of hiring and the fear that comes with it 

22:47 Subconsciously allowing our own capacity, to limit our business development activities 

27:00 Having incentives for your employees to work for you …

28:30 Start making “finding clients” a part of your week right now even before the associate is hired

Jim Hack: Read the book: The Third Door

Jeremy’s Tip: The Guild –  Read the book: The Power of One More  

Tyson’s Tip: For law firm owners that want to build a culture of learning – start a non-fiction book club like: Becoming Bulletproof  

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube. https://youtu.be/HRPQ9zLShaM

Connect with Jeremy:

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• Facebook 
• Linkedin 

Resources:

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Transcript: Should Your New Hire Bring Their Own Leads?

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. Welcome to the show.

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

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

Jim Hacking
Tyson. It’s so funny. We don’t do any recordings for weeks at a time. And then today we’re doing five or six, I like this model. But I do enjoy also spending the whole day with you

Tyson Mutrux
the same, it’s interesting. So the first show we did this is our third of the day. And the last one, we were guests. But the first one, you had to take a second to kind of remember how to say things because it’s been about a month. And so it is interesting how it works every time we do it. I like the way we do it. We can knock out a bunch of the day. And it’s easier for scheduling and everything. It is sometimes like I kind of miss talking to you. Luckily we have the Saturday show that we can talk to each other in the guild. So that helps supplement my knee.

Jim Hacking
I’m excited about our guests today, he raised an interesting question. And you and I were going to do a solo episode. And then I thought, Well, hey, why not just have him on to discuss his firm and its practice. He’s a member of The Guild. His name’s Jeremy Danielson, and we’re glad to have him. Welcome, Jeremy.

Jeremy Danilson
Thank you, Jason. I’m looking forward to the conversation. We can help other members of The Guild and other attorneys and I’m excited to be a part of it.

Tyson Mutrux
So Jeremy, before we get to that, though, tell people who you are what you do, and a little bit about your journey. All right.

Jeremy Danilson
Jeremy Danielson lives outside of Des Moines, Iowa and run a residential real estate transactions, law practice with my wife, I’d be considered the CEO, she’s the CEO. And we have two other team members as well. So started in 2015, and had a reset in 2019. For reasons we may or may not get into. And then it’s growing. Now it’s time to, we’ve got the systems and processes in place, it’s time to start growing.

Jim Hacking
But let’s get into the reset. That sounds intriguing. What happened?

Jeremy Danilson
Well, 2019, I probably learned one of the most valuable lessons as a business owner to diversify your referral sources. January 19, we lost our primary referral sources 85% of our business. So Sarah, and I had to make a really hard decision. It was just her right at the time, Sarah and my wife? Do we keep doing this building this thing that we’ve been working on for four years? Or start building it really? Or do I go get a job with another firm? And we made the hard decision start over basically. And now we probably have 18 to 20 referral sources? We’ve added two team members and red poised for a big year this year.

Jim Hacking
Jeremy, what was it like when you got that call that you’re losing the client? And then what did you do immediately? Because we actually had someone in the guild at the mastermind, I don’t know if you were in their group or not. But the exact same thing happened to them in the exact same kind of practice area. So any advice you would have for them as they’re in those weeks after you got that call? What advice would you have for them? Or what? What did you do?

Jeremy Danilson
Sarah and I we got on the phone with our coach, because I got 30 days notice from the client that they were taking the business to a bigger firm. So we had a little bit of the time, but we had to figure out how we were gonna get the message out that we were gonna stay in business that we wanted to help more people. And we probably initially started saying yes to more work outside of this niche for a small period of time, doing some wills doing some entity formation for real estate investors, and quickly learned we were able to keep it stable. But it was probably an initial focus right on marketing efforts just trying to get we did a postcard mailing campaign we did. That’s when we probably started our newsletters in earnest, just monthly newsletters, but just to start to get the word about us because we were tied so closely in our market to that one referral source we needed to show We’re an independent law firm that can help more than that one type of business that was really

Tyson Mutrux
the beginnings of getting that message out. I think this can be a really valuable lesson to listeners. So can you talk a little bit about how you got yourself into that bind? Because I think that might be the lesson that we’d like. Yeah, getting out of it’s one thing but talk about what led you to that bind?

Jeremy Danilson
Yeah, I graduated law school December of 11. And my first job was as a corporate counsel for a commercial real estate company. And I was there a couple years and made a decision to make a change from that firm, or that company because they weren’t growing. So I opened my own law firm understanding this referral sources can be my primary source of business, but I honestly I became content. I had enough business to create a job for myself, those first few years that started in 2015. After a couple of years, I was my wife got tired of seeing me work till midnight. So she started helping me in taking in so we had enough revenue to pay for take care of our family. But I didn’t challenge myself to diversify to help other people because I just assumed all of that business would always keep coming in for the rest of forever. I didn’t we didn’t do it when we lost the business. It wasn’t because of any No fault of our own. And that was probably the biggest assumption or mistake I made is if we did good work that we would keep getting that business. And that’s not always the case.

Jim Hacking
That’s an excellent point. So how did you then start beating the bushes to get up to 20 referral sources like you have now,

Jeremy Danilson
I think the one good thing that came out of those first four years is that we were really communicative as a real estate firm, which is communication is the most important in transactional work. And we had a good reputation with other attorneys, other closing agents in the market. So when we were able to get the message out that we were open for business and independent, people started taking chances on us. And really what we did, and I give Sarah a lot of credit for this, as she asked for business, one lender, and one loan officer took a chance on us and said, I still want to use this closing agent. But can we do our title work with you? I said, Absolutely. He wanted to work with local attorneys, his attorney was in a different part of the state. And he took a chance on us. And that allowed us to get some of that work. And then we could slowly start to pursue more leads sources like that. And it’s been a little bit at a time over those four years or so that we’ve just, you have to ask for the work, it’s not going to come to you magically. So it’s

Tyson Mutrux
really interesting that you bring this up because we did a a training, or weekly training in our firm last yesterday was about like, how can we generate referrals? Right, so how can employees generate referrals? It was a fun little presentation. But one of the tips that I had read somewhere was that, you know, making sure you ask for it. And for injury stuff. It’s pretty uncomfortable. I don’t know. It’s kind of it’s for me, it kind of feels weird to ask for referrals. Can you give some advice to people on like asking for referrals, like what that’s like, I mean, and I know my business is different than yours, but I’m sure we can still utilize that tool.

Jim Hacking
I think, oh,

Jeremy Danilson
credit where credit’s due to Sarah is better at that than I am. She is fearless when it comes to socializing, networking and asking people to help them. But her primary play is differentiating us telling these potential referral sources how we do things differently. Our number one focus is creating as the client experience, whether it’s for the loan officer for the realtor, for the closing agent for the buyer or seller. So tell them how we’re doing things differently from other law firms in the market. And because we’re doing things differently that makes a light bulb go off or that that piques their curiosity, and then they want to hear more. And that gives you an opportunity to have a more in depth conversation. So I think it’s important to show how you’re different or, or want to do things better than the traditional model in whatever area of practice you’re in.

Jim Hacking
As we segue into the question that you wanted to raise Jeremy, talk to us a little bit about how legal work gets completed at your firm.

Jeremy Danilson
So Danelle is our legal assistant, she is the voice of the firm. She’s our intake specialist, the first person that anybody talks to when they call, and we have everything run through our CRM. So from the time a person calls, they will talk to the nella five minutes after they call, they get an automatic text message that says thank you for reaching out, here’s a link to our five star reviews, but to see what some recent clients have said about us, but I think it’s important to show gratitude that they took a chance to call you to show the client that you want to earn their work that they’re lucky to get to talk to you. And then they also go through a funnel. Our goal when a potential new client comes in is to convert them have a sign engagement letter within a week. So we have email and text communication over that first week with an effort to get them on board. After that, then they whatever type of work it is, it’s always real estate transactions with buyer seller, they’ll funnel into a different pipeline within that same CRM, we don’t use a law practice management system, it’s all through the CRM to funnel them through specific stages where we have email snippets built out to where my entire team can run transactions, and only bring me in when the matter gets complicated, or there’s an actual legal question to answer. My invested time with clients on these flat fee transactions is probably a 20 minute meeting at the end of the process, because my entire team takes care of it from intake until closing.

Tyson Mutrux
I love the work that you’ve done on that. That’s incredible. I think that if people just listen to that part of the episode and follow your advice on that, I think that it’s a lot of valuable information there. But let’s talk about what sort of brings you on to the episode or on the podcast. What is the topic that you brought up? And let’s let’s dig into it. All right,

Jeremy Danilson
so we have hired before legal assistant and paralegal and we hire our core values first. I feel like I can teach I’ve done every job within our firm. So I can teach anybody the skills to do that job. But you there’s a certain caliber, a quality person we want to join our team, then we’ve been successful in that in our first few hire external hires, non family member hires. It’s time and I’ve been thinking about this for over a year to hire an associate. And again, for the third time in a row, now I’ve got this pit in my stomach, can I afford it? Is that the right time to do it? And if we’re going to do it, I need to decide how we’re going to compensate that associate what are the right ways to bring on and pay an associate when it’s always going to feel uncomfortable to make additional financial commitments? It’s important to me whenever I make a promise to another family that we know we can keep that promise indefinitely. I don’t want to make a promise that we’re not prepared to keep

Jim Hacking
So one of the things that we talked about or that you raised and what piqued my interest was whether or not you should have that associate plan on bringing in business of their own. And so, before we get to that, though, I want to I just want to touch on my thoughts as far as the indefinite plan of paying them. I mean, I appreciate that loyalty in advance before you hire someone, but at the same time, what if you had hired someone, the 31st Day before you lost that 85% client, right? So you never know. So I think that, you know, wanting it to work, wanting to do everything to make it work, and being loyal to them and trying to set them up for success and having in your heart the intention of if I make this offer, that it’s going to work, I think that’s different than working with your spouse in lots of ways. But I don’t think you have to have that same level of loyalty, just because you never know what’s going to happen.

Jeremy Danilson
I think that’s fair in this. Fortunately, to date, I haven’t had to make a decision like that I’m realistic, and there’s nothing that will happen at some point, if I grow this firm the way I see it growing. And that’s the reality of running a business.

Jim Hacking
So just real quick, can you clarify, like how many cases are coming in, and then are they flat fee, I would imagine they’re flat fee. And it’s probably I would imagine a little bit of a higher volume.

Jeremy Danilson
So here’s the trick and where the anxiety comes from. And we touched on this in my mastermind last week, we have two more referral sources, one very large one in the queue ready to go that have committed, but the orders haven’t started coming in. There’s their launch in the program, February 10, and today’s February 2. So it’s uncomfortably because we don’t have the work right now, to make an offer, so to speak, until I see the order starts coming. I know we have a verbal commitment. And I have no reason to doubt that that new referral sources coming in the referral sources going to be a 60% increase in revenue, annual revenue, if they come in as promised. So I was willing, when I shared mastermind is I was willing to be the sacrificial lamb for a period of time to be overburdened with work, to get our financial picture to a place where I’m comfortable. But then I was quickly told that’s short sighted. And if I want to bring on an associate in three months, I need to start the hiring process now or earlier than now. So that’s probably a little more background to help fill in this picture. It’s that big referral source that’s coming that hasn’t shown up yet. But I want you to prepare for it.

Tyson Mutrux
So do you have enough work now, though? And I’m not sure if I’m 100% clear on this? Do you have enough work now to feed that attorney? The if you brought on a new one?

Jeremy Danilson
No, I can handle everything that’s coming in right now.

Jim Hacking
Today, that’s a different answer, it is a different answer. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean that an associate couldn’t do it. And you could go out and find 20 Other referral sources, spend your time doing that, if that’s what you want to do.

Jeremy Danilson
In the last six months, I’ve been for the first time we’ve started marketing, and I’ve started doing business development and presentations at conferences. And that’s been a lot of fun. These business development conversations, I think, is my highest value not in doing the reading the abstraction, doing the title commitments. I think getting to the place where I’m financially comfortable to transition in more in that direction. I think that’s just a scary moment, I’m going to have to swallow my fear and make that step. And in real estate transactions, winter is slower, it’s starting to pick up I think that would be an easier fear to swallow in March when I see all this stuff in the queue, as opposed to today when it’s always slow this time of year.

Tyson Mutrux
Follow up with that, though. Yeah. Because you are beating around the bush, could you pull a trigger today and hire someone and be able to afford it for that person? And then free up your time to do the other work? So do you have the capability of doing that now,

Jeremy Danilson
financially, I don’t want to pay another attorney and myself today to do the work that’s being done today. I don’t feel comfortable today, to make that kind of a

Tyson Mutrux
gym. I’ll let you take a shot.

Jim Hacking
I understand that. I understand. Where does that come from? Where does that. I mean, I’m probably the opposite of you, Jeremy. So like, I’d be hiring this person, even without the 60% increase coming down the pike. I’m probably way too optimistic. My wife would tell you that I am. Right. So but with this train coming of future work, and as you said, you have no reason to think it’s not going to come. It’s going to take you six, eight weeks to hire somebody. So I guess when I was listening to you, in my mind when someone’s in that boat you’re in right now. And you said you were willing to be the sacrificial lamb and do a little bit of extra work to be extra busy for a while when you said that. It was an interesting thing to hear. But also I said to myself, well, it seems like when you’re in that position that Jeremy’s in, you either have to be ready to spend money or work more one or the other. Because if more works about to come, one of those two things has to happen. You either need to hire someone and maybe make a little bit less for a while, or you’re gonna have to do some more work and do it yourself. I’m always trying to find other people to do my work. And if you think that in the long run, you’re have three attorneys working for you, then I would just rather start that process sooner rather than later and get that train moving, because you’re gonna need that momentum. And you got a great thing coming of this new client that’s gonna, you know, be a big chunk of revenue for you. That’s just how I would handle it. But But not everybody’s like me.

Jeremy Danilson
Last piece of background and Tyson heard this last week, we went to proc we switch over to Profit First, say five months ago. And I try to be as transparent as possible to help as many people as possible today. Prior to that I was probably bleeding the firm dry with remember distributions, it’d be structured in that approach. And I love the consistency and the format or formula that profit first has given us but we haven’t reached our target percentages yet. And I feel like we need to be busy for a short period of time to get those target percentages on operating expenses, and owners compensation everything to where they need to be. That’s probably where my discomfort comfort comes from. And I’ve watched some of the associated Academy videos this week and looking at as an associate hires a law firm or lawyer extender, and the opportunity to actually be able to create more revenue for my firm will probably help us reach those target percentages faster. And I just probably just need to make the move. And I’ve got a candidate actually which we can get into also, prior to posting a job posting.

Tyson Mutrux
Alright, so I’m a little little hesitant to suggest this because I’ve never done this. But I wonder what your thoughts on you talk this through? What are your thoughts on making that offer, but making it with with being pretty open about it saying, Hey, I’m offering this to you, on the basis that we are expecting to this big clients going to come into this business? Yeah. Jim, is Jim shaking his head?

Jim Hacking
Well, so this gets to the ultimate issue that I want to talk to Jeremy about. And what I really

Tyson Mutrux
because I think being open about it is important, right? But I would also wouldn’t want to say it’s like hat Yeah, hire the person. And then in two months, you have to fire the person cuz you own the business. So I’m curious like, Okay, Jim, what, like, Where were you going with that? Because I’m well,

Jim Hacking
so this is what piqued my interest when Jeremy texted me the question and that is this in Jeremy’s question was about should I expect an associate to bring in business of their own? Right. And so, to me, this is a question that I used to talk to my father about all the time. So my father, sort of my role model, he didn’t finish high school, but he became the head of marketing at an architectural engineering firm. And then he left that architectural engineering firm and started a new one with an architect. And they grew that to 150 people, and they had offices in other cities just like I do, they grew to 150 people. And I would say, Dad, you know, you got that team in Philadelphia, aren’t you worried about them? Taking the office over and just cutting you guys out? And he said, Jimmy, you have to understand something. I said, What Eddie said, They’re not like us. They’re not like us. So associates don’t want to be told, Oh, it’s a shaky situation. I don’t know if the 60% business is going to come through, oh, hey, we want you to bring in business because we’re not sure what associates want. And what most employees want is stability, and the sure thing, and they’re not entrepreneurs, right? They’re not thinking like entrepreneurs, they want to clock in, clock out. They want to come to their job, they want stability. Now, there are some associates that do think entrepreneurial, but Ryan McKean can tell you, and others can tell you that those people tend to leave, right like so if they’re inclined that way. So I think you want to maximize the power of them wanting a sure thing, and you don’t want to do anything to de emphasize the stability of the firm. And I think you’d start off I agree with transparency. But that’s part of the burden of ownership is taking on that burden of holding that responsibility that the 60% might not come but Jeremy, I am 100% sure that if on a dime, you can go from having one client to 20. And you’ve got 21 Come in. And number 21 is as big as 18 or 17 of the ones you already have. I have every confidence that if you gave that associate the work from this new company and the new client and the work that you are doing yourself, then like you said, you’re gonna be on your highest value work and bringing in more business. I think the sky’s the limit

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Jeremy Danilson
I think I agree and it’s just it’s getting over that pit in my stomach again that I got over with the first few hires and those first few hires and make I think I don’t know if I have enough work for when I fill them up right away. And they’re the best decisions I’ve ever made. And it’s just the same cycle I’ve gone through twice before, but it feels bigger because it’s a first attorney hire other than myself.

Jim Hacking
What does your wife say? It’s interesting.

Jeremy Danilson
I came back from Guild and she’s helped me move this forward. As far as what we did this one potential candidate, I have been talking to you about three months on other business development concepts. We’re working on getting PDF abstracts across the state. And he’s helped us do engage that because he’s a former abstractor, I put a question in front of them said, Are you are you interested in becoming a contract attorney for us and helping on a part time basis? Are you more interested in becoming a full time team member we’ve worked, we’ve met twice before and have detailed conversations and he meets our core values. And he responded back saying he’s interested in being a full time team member. So now it’s time to put him in that funnel or process of what it looks like to decide if he’s the right candidate for this position. I’ve got I still gotta put him in front of my team. And we’ve got to go through the regular hiring process. I don’t want to bypass just because of a gut feeling, our hiring process and the decision making or decision matrix we have to go through to make sure he’s the right foot.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that never rush the hiring process. I’ve done it. Jim’s done it. It’s bad mistake. I think Jim’s done it. But real quick answer this question really quick. And I’m ask a follow up. What’s the turnaround time when it comes to getting money from one of these clients?

Jeremy Danilson
That’s it roughly 30 to 45 days. Okay, so we get paid at closing, okay. Like, if

Tyson Mutrux
they were me, if I were you like, Okay, I would be focusing all my time, because I can’t go out and generate car crashes, I can’t do it, right. But if I could, you better believe I would. So if I were you, in hiring this person is gonna be it’s gonna put some pressure on you. And I think it’s gonna be valuable pressure, hire the person, you spend all your damn time driving around that state generate business, like, that’s your job. Now you’re, you’re going to generate that business. And like, I would call that that client that you have a whale, right, that’s probably a whale. And maybe not all of them are going to be whales, but you’re gonna have some pretty damn big fish that you can, you can attract. And you can target. And it sounds like a lot of your business might be a lot of those lunches and coffees that you need to have and have shaken hands and all that I would be driving around the state trying to serve that business. If I were you, I think that there’s a lot of value in that.

Jeremy Danilson
I have to do that. Because my biggest flaws and business owner to date has been becoming content with whatever our position is at that time. And it would be really easy to be content right now with this new wheel coming in. Or even with one associate hire, I need to keep my foot on the pedal so that the 2019 mistake never happens again. Yeah, because

Tyson Mutrux
you have a track record of it. Right? That’s right, you got to get past that, because that was my when you first mentioned anything like this is the same problem, right? Like, you’re you’re putting yourself in the same situation. And you’ve got to find a way but put a bumpers to put up, put a wall around yourself put a moat around the firm. To prevent that from happening. Again,

Jeremy Danilson
I subconsciously allow my own capacity to limit our business development activities. And that’s, I recognize that now. And I can’t let it continue to happen.

Jim Hacking
I think that’s a great lesson from the episode. I mean, just the reliance, the I’m sure there’s a lot of lawyers listening, that are too reliant on one client or referral source. I’ve seen it time and time again, there was a lawyer in our office who was beholden to a senior partner for all of his business, and that senior partner abused the crap out of him. So, you know, anytime you’re out of whack, you know, and not having enough clients, it’s going to set yourself up for problems. So I think, I think that’s a great insight. And I think that no one’s going to know that better than you like you’ve learned that lesson. I don’t, I’m not worried about this new client coming in and giving you 60% of the business because you’re gonna go out and get 10 more. That’s why That’s how you beat that back.

Jeremy Danilson
They agree 1,000%, we’ve done a lot of work over the last two years to be different and humbly better than every other law firm in the state. And now we just have to get that message out. So we can help more people in Iowa.

Tyson Mutrux
So we’ve we’ve talked a lot about this associate. So let’s let’s talk a little bit about what are you gonna do about it, right, so let’s talk about the hiring process and getting this person in the seat and actually getting them doing the work and what needs to take place over the next few months for you to successfully hire this person and get them up to speed so you can go out and do the valuable work.

Jeremy Danilson
So this first candidate, we need to put them in front of the team without me in the room to allow the team to evaluate their core values. And I believe they fit the core values, but I need to get feedback from the team. At least that’s what I’ve done in the past. And then we need to I need to draw out that process for an associate or compare it to my past processes for the paralegal legal system. But I have to write out what those next steps are to put them through this funnel or hiring process to for us both to get to a decision where it’s good for both the associates and for firm.

Jim Hacking
That’s great. That’s great. I do want to step back just real quick and hear from Tyson his thoughts on lawyers who expect associates to bring in business.

Tyson Mutrux
Oh, yeah, I guess we kind of we kind of buried the lead there. I do think you’re right, Jim, that if you hire People with the mindset, okay, I expect you to bring in a big bulk of the business, I think that you’re setting yourself up for failure, because those are generally the people that are very entrepreneurial. And they’re the ones that are really kind of setting it up so they can start their own shop. And there’s some value in having those people if you want, but I think for longevity, I think Jim’s right, I think you need to be looking for people that are a little bit more stable. But with that in mind, I think that you can build in tools to help it make it easier for people to refer cases to them or refer matters to them. That was the whole point of our meeting yesterday, or training yesterday at the firm about obtaining referrals, is making it easier for our employees to get referrals and, and creating that referral culture. So I think that you can you could do this in other ways, where you’re not saying, Hey, you must bring in X number of cases every single month. But I think that you can build that referral culture inside of your firm. And that would, that lets clients know, yeah, people refer us cases. And I think that there’s some value to that. But I do think it is a dangerous proposition, Jim, that if you if you make that like one of the main KPIs, you’re definitely set yourself up for failure, especially if based on your type of business. Let’s say that your associate brings in a whale, okay, they bring in a whale, what’s to stop them from just saying, bye, I’m gonna go take this whale over here, that’s plenty of money for me, because I’m gonna get plenty of business. And I don’t like to operate under that fear mindset. But you need to have enough of those whales enough those clients that that’s not gonna hurt you if it does happen.

Jeremy Danilson
I agree, I don’t think I need to expect a new associate to bring in business because that’s my highest value. So this will free me up to do more of that. I’m confident in that. Now,

Tyson Mutrux
I do think we need to have that open conversation, though, about what we’re talking about earlier today, Jim, but employees are like they’re after the panel after the pandemic, they’ve kind of had that reset, where they don’t feel as great about going and working in someone else’s office and making making money for someone else. So I do think that that we do kind of have to have that conversation about, you know, still incentivizing your employees for making money for bringing in cases, that’s something I do think you need to consider because people aren’t all about just working in someone else’s office anymore. There’s a lot of people that are starting new firms and new businesses, because they’re kind of sick of being in the grind.

Jim Hacking
I think it’s all about what the associates focus is going to be. Obviously, if you want to pay referral fees to attorneys who bring in a little bit of business, that’s great. But if you want them out there beating the bushes and signing up clients that just doesn’t do you much good in the long run.

Jeremy Danilson
I want them doing the legal work to free me up to go beat the bushes and shake hands and do presentations. Yep.

Tyson Mutrux
How are you feeling? Now Jeremy, like now that we’ve talked through a little bit, what are your thoughts like what’s on your mind,

Jeremy Danilson
I am feeling confident that I need to outline what the hiring process is going to be for this associate what their next steps are going to be so that I can get an email back to him and say, here’s the process, we’re going to go through, what is your desired timeline to be able to leave because he’s got the practices of his own. It’s very, it’s baby steps. And he’s only reopened about six months ago. But what is his transition look like? And what is our transition look like to be get him ready to work with us. And I’ve got to draw that out. So that I can take him through a defined process that feels really good and comfortable to him. So he so we present ourselves as organized and focused and capable of giving him the support that he needs to be successful in the practice of law,

Jim Hacking
I would spend a little bit of time Jeremy now, right now, I would build two or three hours into my week of pretending that the 60% client doesn’t come because you’re gonna feel more comfortable if you’re bringing in more business. So even now, just start making that part of your routine so that you’re not overly reliant on the client that may or may not come. And that your that’s going to help you feel better and more secure. And this decision you’re about to take. I like that

Jeremy Danilson
a lot. Yeah, focus time every week and keep that pedal to the metal, so to speak, and keep growing and looking for additional referral sources. That’s got to be in every week activity nada. When the when the plane flies by type thing.

Jim Hacking
well runs dry. Yep. All right, Jamie,

Tyson Mutrux
hopefully, you got some information from this. I really appreciate you being vulnerable too, because I think there’s some valuable lessons in here that for for new law firm owners and current law firm owners that that’s going to really help them out. But we’re going to wrap things up before I do. I want to remind everyone to join us in the Facebook group, just a lot of great activity every single day. If you want a more high level conversation with people like Jeremy, go to max law guild.com. And if you get value from these podcast and from the Facebook group, if you’ll leave us a five star review, we would so much appreciate it because it helps spread our love to other law firm owners that are in need. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking
My hack of the week comes from a friend of the show Joy vitality. It’s a book by a guy named Alex Vinayan called the third door it’s about this crazy college kid who decided that he wanted to sort of redo thinking grow rich, but by interviewing current entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and all this stuff, and he this is like a 20 year old kid. He went on prices, right? And he won on prices, right? And then he used the proceeds to sort of start this project. The story is really fun, the kids sort of crazy in the and the adventures that he had with different people that you know of it’s sort of eye opening, and I immediately bought it for my 20 year old son, and he’s enjoying it. So it’s a fun read. It’s called the third door. Lots of good little lessons in there.

Tyson Mutrux
I love it. That’s cool. I will check that out. Jeremy, you know the routine? Do you have a tip or a hack for us?

Jeremy Danilson
I do real quick. My willingness to be vulnerable today comes directly from my interaction with other guild members, everyone’s willingness to share is a huge opportunity to learn. And it’s been tremendous from my growth as a business owner over the last six months since joining my tip of the week is a book it’s called The Power of One more by Ed my let it is a mindset book, whether you’re trying to make a change in your life, or they’re going through something difficult when you’re you’re thinking about giving up just don’t focus on too far in the future, focus on what you can do today to keep going. So if you’re struggling with your firm, don’t quit today is a decision if you’re trying to quit drinking, don’t have a drink today, if you want to eat more healthy or exercise, what do you do today to succeed and that goal, just one day at a time, one thing at a time, one personal relationship at a time. And I had fallen back on that several times over the last year. And it’s been really helpful

Tyson Mutrux
because that a new book came out in the last year. Okay, I’ve not heard of it. So to check that one,

Jim Hacking
I hadn’t heard of it either. Jeremy mentioned, and then I just got an email from Andy for Sela and had my lead about this coaching that they have. So that’s really funny. Holy

Tyson Mutrux
hell. That’s crazy. What a coincidence. My tip of the week is for law firm owners that want to build a culture of learning in your firm. And something that is sort of naturally popped up in our firm is a book club. And so we’ve started a book club and our first book that we read, I picked the first book, and I said that it could not be a fiction book. And it had to be nonfiction and be sort of like self help. And so I chose becoming bulletproof, which is a fantastic book if you’ve not read it, and the book club has been so well received. And so we what we did is we bought the book for everybody if they wanted to audiobook, we got them audiobook if they wanted a Kindle book, we got a Kindle book, if they wanted a physical one, I use the physical one, we got everyone a physical book, and it was really well received. And then as funny when we first launched ours, I noticed that Ryan Ryan may have had his for a while Ron McCain. I don’t know when he started his but I noticed that they have one p star with a fiction book on letting people vote on the next book. So we’re going to read a book a month. It’s pretty exciting. And it’s just it’s kind of cool hearing people talking about it. We have a little book club meeting. It was a lot of fun. So I recommend doing that. Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on, man. Really, really appreciate it. Lots of fun talking to you.