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Calling all lawyers — you might relate to this episode — when you’ve had a team member call you out. This happened to Jim the other day and in this episode he and Tyson reflect on what happened and the falling out because of it. It’s probably not what you think.
It’s about numbers and it’s about keeping an eye on your firm’s roles. Are they all filled? Do you need more people? What kind of people? Jim and Tyson fill in the conversation around what they do for the team and the numbers they track as well. (And you should be tracking too!)
Let’s dive into today’s episode and wake up call.
Episode Highlights:
04:59 RSF (relentless solution focused) and putting Jim in the hot seat today!
07:29 When you have an entire system helping to sign up cases … this is what it looks like
09:28 Starting in January goals …
11:02 Going back to numbers you need to track … according to Jim.
13:45 Looking at season over season numbers
17:38 Hiring a director of sales?
Jim’s Hack: the Road Less Traveled by M Scott Peck M.D. Making the case that you need to be in therapy, like it’s really about doing that hard work. it’s a real clarion call to wake up and accept the fact that things are hard and then soldier on, hopefully with the help of someone that you can confide in and talk to and who’s gonna call you out on your shit.
Tyson’s Tip: Mindset shift: Ask the question of “What can I learn from this?” to open your mind to learning.
🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube.
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Transcript: Sorting Through Your Firm’s Numbers Before Setting Your Goals
Speaker 1
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m tasting mutex What’s up Jimmy Tyson, my
Jim Hacking
friend, how are you? You said you were a little bit flustered this morning run around a little bit crazy.
Tyson Mutrux
Well, I had the gym this morning, and then at the NormaTec food, so it took me a little bit longer to get here. But I was only only a few minutes late. So not too bad. We’re starting about on time, not quite on time, but almost in time. So how you doing?
Jim Hacking
We have another topic for recording later on today. And I’m changing it up at the last minute. And these are usually some of my favorite episodes when Jim is mad.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah. So Jim has a topic, right? We have this topic, we’re ready to go. And I’ve done some prep on it. And Jim says I want to change it at 801. And so I’m curious to see how this goes. You’re right. These are some of my favorites, too. So I’m curious to see how it goes. I’m sure it’ll be great.
Jim Hacking
I think he might relate. So you know, when you’ve had a team member with you from day one, it’s really a valuable asset. And the reason it’s valuable is because for the most part, if they’ve lasted with you for almost 15 years, you’re going to have to listen to them when they call you out. It doesn’t happen all that often. But it happened yesterday. Now let me just set the stage for yesterday. So I don’t know if you remember this book called Alexander and the no good, horrible, very bad day. It’s a great kids book.
Tyson Mutrux
Oh, of course. Yeah. I think there’s a movie too.
Jim Hacking
There is a movie. I think Steve Carell might be in it, I think. But in any event, I was having just such a day yesterday, I was trying to get to see my coach Charles, and there was all this traffic on Manchester. So I went to a side street, I went down Adams and then there was more construction there had to go around. Then I got stuck behind the train. I was almost late. And then so I’m rushing to get out of there to get to my massage. But my massage lady had only booked me through October and now it’s November. So she somebody else scheduled at my slot. And she’s also in the same building as my therapist. So I waited around for my therapist. And then I remembered that my therapist told me that this week, she was out of town. So it was like a totally busted day. And it all started because the night before my daughter was screaming at me about all of her teenage stuff. And so it just sort of like I had this black cloud like following me around like all day, and I was really crabby until about four o’clock. But the thing that made me crabby, this was before I left to go to see Charles, my coach, we were having our little same page meeting. So this is a monthly meeting of Amani Adela and Jim. And Jim has big plans for 2023. For the growth of the firm, we’re going to try to double the size of the firm, the gross revenue and all the other numbers that go along with that probably half don’t
Tyson Mutrux
broker go home baby girl, Brooklyn Hill.
Jim Hacking
So there’s some resistance around the office about that. But the moment of calling out was, Hey, Jim, you have these big plans to double the size of the firm. But let’s look at your numbers for the last 12 weeks. And Jim there’s a lot of red there. As far as new case, signups new case, signups, our weekly goal is to sign up 24 cases a week. And we’ve been averaging probably 1920. And, you know, I did a post in Max law this week about how people are always saying, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that, like I’m going to do and so it was like Adela, like I had nothing to say. I literally had nothing to say now that was the launching point to all the other problems that I had of not being able to get to Charles my therapist being gone and my massage lady being off and these are obviously firstworldproblems. But Wednesday is my day and Wednesday is my day to relax and recharge and think and so I this was totally out of left field. I totally didn’t see coming. And guess what? Amani, so next we’re going Yeah, yeah, look at you.
Tyson Mutrux
Of course if money is, yeah, somebody has got to just stick that knife deep into the ribs. I know. It’s brutal.
Jim Hacking
It’s brutal. Now, I thought of you I thought of our friend Billy Mansky. I thought of flipping like a pancake and actually what happened was after my bust at attempt to see my therapist, I came back and I did my show. And I told everybody at the start of the show, how is grumpy and how is crabby and how I had this cloud hanging over me all day. And then I took calls from immigrants for an hour and it totally turned things around right and then I went to the gym this morning and I worked out Charles at five extra minutes on the treadmill and then I sat in the Steam Room and steamed it out. So I’m in a much better shape than I was before but man it was quite the wake up call.
Tyson Mutrux
Well I wonder I guess whenever you’re saying all these things I was thinking like well RS Sup man, relentless solution focus. Like that’s that’s kind of what my thing is. It’s weird. Like you kind of had these like things that were kind of on top of each other. And my guess is they kind of snowballed, because you were in that mindset a little bit, but I guess, let me I’m gonna put this kind of like we’re on the hot seat, right, Jim’s hot seat. Well, Jim, what can we do for you? Well, I
Jim Hacking
mean, so here’s the thing, my marketing director met with some members of the leads team to try to get to the bottom of this. And we’ve had a lot of changes over there. So one of the big changes that we made was, after I’d done my stuff with Gary Falco, it’s, we had three team members who were talking to leads initially, and you and I talked about this, they would talk to the lead, if it was the kind of case we wanted to handle, then they got to talk to a leads team member. And then if the leads the member, vetted them, and they were open to paying our fee and wanted to hire us, then they got to talk to the lawyer. So that was like three or four transfers, right? It could be for with Smith, and have you shorten that we got rid of the initial phone person, but the initial intake the CCD, people who aren’t as well trained as the leads team, and we’ve, so we got rid of that step. But what that’s resulted in is that the leads team has to take more time on each call, which is what we wanted. But there’s a cost to that. And the cost is that the total number of signups are down a little bit. And so that’s part of it. So when she was meeting with them, they were like, we just don’t want any more change, there’s been a lot of change in the department a lot of change in the firm. And you know, I’m sort of a change freak. And I’m always like bowling things up. And so we’re not going to change anything for the rest of the year. But at the same time, we’re actually hiring another leads attorney. So we’ll have to the biggest single factor in whether or not our Signups are up or down, or whether my lawyers are talking to lead on the phone, the less time lawyers spend talking to leads on the phone, the less cases we sign up. And we have a full time leads lawyer, we have a part time leads lawyer, and then we have backup from the lawyers that are actually doing legal work. Two of them are very active and happy to talk to leads to others sort of learning the hearts of the leads team members. And now it’s gotten to the point where the lead team members don’t even try to transfer to those two attorneys because they don’t pick up the phone. Right? So we’re going to deal with that on its own. But we’re also hiring another full time leads person leads lawyer, because that will help get those numbers up more than anything else.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s interesting. I’m, I’m a little worried that some people are going to interpret this episode as like the what you just said is that oh, well, then that proves my premise that only I can sign up the cases. And I don’t think that that’s at all what you’re saying here, right? Because like you have an entire system, you have an entire team surrounded around like setting up cases. So just because you’re listening to this, and you’re hearing what Jim saying about that the case has decreased whenever he has less attorneys on the phone. That is not he’s not saying that. That means you should be meeting with those clients, and that you should be talking to those clients. Right? You’re not saying that, please tell them. You’re not saying that.
Jim Hacking
I haven’t talked to a lead in months. Yeah, okay. Not me. Yeah, no, no, no, I’m not talking about me jumping back in and no, that’d be the last thing that I’d want to do. Right.
Tyson Mutrux
I’m just so people listening, I want to make sure that they’re not trying to interpret because they’ll hear what they want to hear. And that’s not what you’re saying that but it’s I’m still interested about, I guess what makes you think why do you know that the more attorney time on the phones means more signups? Is it just strictly numbers? Or is there something else,
Jim Hacking
we track the number of attorney qualified leads, we track the number of Miss transfers. So mis transfer means that someone gets put into a waiting queue to talk to someone or will call them back or something like that. If Miss transfers go up, or if attorney qualified cases go down, then signups two weeks later go down. So yeah, it’s all numbers.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah. And that’s the number I think is whenever I was talking to you, we started tracking that number, that transfer number and it was kind of a startling number to track. And so if you’re not tracking the number of transfer losses, then you’re you’re missing out on a lot of cases, there’s a big hole in your bucket. That’s that’s good. But so the whole time you’re talking I was kind of thinking like, well, you need more people. And so it sounds like you need more another attorney that you’re hiring as or do you need more help in the leads team? Or is it just an attorney?
Jim Hacking
Well, a couple of those people that were doing the initial transfers, we’ve moved them into the leads team, but their babies so they don’t really they’re just getting up to speed. So I think bringing in that lawyer and then the other thing is, starting in January, we’re gonna start doing like actual sales training, a morning huddle. We have goals for the team, but we’re gonna be more focused on that we’re lucky it’s not a cold call system. It’s not where people are calling people on their own trying to drum up businesses, people actually called us so we’re gonna start doing role playing, listening to calls, seeing how could we do things a little bit differently, a little bit better, a little bit faster. Our theme we’re having our retreat next week is stepping into our greatness every day. And if we’re going to go from 4 million to 8 million next year, then we need to have everybody step up at least one level in their role to do more to think better, to be more effective, more efficient, we really turned around the team satisfaction, we really drill down and know what people can handle, except in this one department. So I think if we can get this tweaked and fixed, that things are really going to really hum.
Tyson Mutrux
I’ve been watching, it’s funny how you’re kind of been on sales. I’ve been on sales, too. I’ve not yet conveyed it to the team, because I, we’ve had a lot of changes, too. And my team has been pushing back quite a bit like, Hey, we’ve had enough changes. So I’ve not added anything else. But I’ve been watching a bunch of the sales tiktoks. And it really is interesting. You can learn some really good tidbits, there’s some psychological tricks that you could use some little bitty just change a phrase that are pretty effective. I’m thinking that on our end, too, we’re going to see an increase in conversions once we implement some of that training. So I’m curious to see how that works with you. I want to go back to your numbers, though. So you said 24 a week? Where does that number come from? Are you is this something? Are you looking at year over year numbers? Are you? Is this just an aspirational number? Where’s that 24 come from?
Jim Hacking
It’s it’s sort of like 120% of two months ago, and also compared to, you know, this year, we wanted to make 4.2 We’re probably gonna hit 4.1. And so we reverse engineered, how many cases do we have to sign up? And, you know, we, we didn’t try to the divvied up for 12 months, we tried to, you know, have a little bit of a hockey stick. So that’s where that comes from. Okay.
Tyson Mutrux
Do you look at like year over year, like month versus month? Do you do that?
Jim Hacking
That’s just a joke. Yeah, we look at month over month, year over year, it’s just we’ve doubled every year. So it’s okay, we do it, but it’s completely different. And the format of how we do it is different. Well, and
Tyson Mutrux
the reason I’m asking is is so we know that around June, July, August, September, October, like we our numbers are a certain number, right? We know that? Because we track our numbers each year, October is a low month, it’s that there’s a dip, I don’t really know the answer to why that is. I think it may be because people are more people in school, I don’t know, there’s gonna be a lot of different reasons. I actually don’t I know that we see a massive spike in November. And I think that’s because of the weather changes. And so you’ll see more inclement weather, you see that in November, December, January, February. So you see that increased, but we see actual spike in November. And we know that because of year over year. So I wonder if there are any other trends you can identify from year over year numbers when it comes to if you’re looking at the different months. That way, you’re giving yourself a little more grace because I we know that October is a light month and so we don’t beat ourselves up because of that. But I just wonder if there’s some of that going on to
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Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. Our guest today is a crazy person, he happens to run a law firm. His name is Jim. And Jim brings his issues to Tyson once a week and we try to sort those out right here in real time. In answer to your question. Yeah, for sure. We have seasonal stuff. For some reason, February is always our busiest month, and then moving into April. I think that’s when tax returns come because remember, people are always giving us money to start. So like we always sign up a ton of cases on the third day of the month and the 18th day of the month. Right? I mean, we don’t necessarily sign them up. But that’s when people pay, which is when we count, we count when people have paid that’s the completion of the before unit is when they actually pay. That always happens on the third and the 18th of the month. So right after pay day. It’s interesting.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, when I did criminal defense, I remember around tax time was always a good time to get paid on cases. I was always it was funny, you would get a lot of warrant recalls. Because people were like, Oh, I got money to pay and then you get all the warrant recalls. And I bet if you looked at the court numbers to the property, the court numbers go up too. So it’s interesting how you can look at different things. But back to your problem. So Adela is upset. She’s saying Hey, Jim, you I guess what triggered the comment from Adela.
Jim Hacking
Well, this is our st page meeting, which is where people get to come and say what they want and we actually the purpose of the same page meeting is that so when we meet with others, we present a united front and so this isn’t the kind of now here I am airing it in the public, but this isn’t the kind of thing that she’d want to call me out on And in front of the team, right. So that was it’s like a safer space mining. I have seen page meetings where we just go for a walk and sort of sort things out. So I think that she’s just being aware. I mean, it’s funny Adela really does get into my goals like she really gets excited about stuff and like she’s all in when you’re talking about buying a new building or expanding and you know, she’s, she’s never shied away from that. And that’s probably a little bit why it was a little bit surprising to me, because usually she was like, Yeah, Jim go right. Amani is much more likely to be No, no. So that was sort of a surprise. But I think that as mad as I was, and sort of still am stewing, obviously, it’s a great, valuable thing she did for me, which is, you know, and I told my director of marketing that this happened. And she said, Oh, she said, Oh, this is just fuel for you, Jim. I said, Oh, yeah. I said, Oh, you’re right. It is I said, because, you know, this is the kind of thing that gets my fire going, lar Clark used to tease me all the time and say, Jim, you know, Andrew has been signing up more cases than you. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, you haven’t been doing? And like, so it’s my competitive streak. It’s my I mean, just for the record, for the last three years, all I’ve heard about from operations is lead seems bringing us too many cases, we’re too busy, you need to slow down. Well, now for the first time, in the 15 year history, 14 year history of the firm, they’re saying they don’t have enough work, they need more work. Well guess what that mean? That’s like the worst that they’re gonna regret ever saying that. And I mean, in my mind, I’m like, I’m going to crush you, I’m going to crush you like, and so you know, that’s why I love that dichotomy between the people that are bringing in the business and the people that are working on the cases, because those lawyers that are working on the cases, they’re the ones dodging my leads team, right. And so this is great proof that this concept of separating out the two really works. And now I’m completely fired out. I mean, this is just what I need going into the retreat going into 2023. Like, and she knows it, she knows how to get me and how to get under my skin. It’s almost like a little sister
Tyson Mutrux
alias. She knows how to push your buttons. It sounds like you might need many two new leads attorneys that way you are it sounds like you’ve got the infrastructure built up already for the the handling of the cases. I wonder if you need two leads attorneys,
Jim Hacking
maybe maybe we’ll still have a halftime attorney. There’s the one attorney who’s doing half the time on lawsuits and effort. She was the first leads lawyer. So now. So we’ll have two and a half. So I think that’ll do us for a while. But this person that we interviewed is really stellar. So I’m excited. Hopefully, we’ll get him on board. And then we’re going to be golden.
Tyson Mutrux
Have you ever thought about the idea of of hiring a salesperson?
Jim Hacking
Yeah, that’s the thing. So not necessarily. Maybe me like a director of sales? Like somebody who’s like been in the sales field. And and all that. Yeah, yeah. I’ve been thinking about Yeah,
Tyson Mutrux
me too. I’ve got a buddy. He’s been in the sales industry for about 20 Something years, and he’s been trying to convince me to hire a because he does like big, like big time commercial sales. And like, I’m talking like, every time he makes a sale, it’s like millions of dollars. And I think I think it’d be so cool. And I don’t know, if his skills would transfer over. But and you, you and bill to pay him in the same way, like the whole commission model, you could do that with an attorney, I would love to find an attorney that is that’s great at sales and hire them and like just they generate sales, they go out and they meet with doctors, they set up new relationships, they do what a salesperson does, I think it would be awesome, just totally awesome.
Jim Hacking
If I had to rank the quality of the applicants we get and the level of interest that we get, there’s no job that we post in this office that gets more traction than a remote leads lawyer like so many lawyers who’ve done immigration, just jump at it because they’re like, I’m tired of dealing with the clients. They’re sort of like I used to be I want to just spot the issues, sign them up and get out and like you wouldn’t believe how much interest we have in this role.
Tyson Mutrux
I mean, that’s a little surprising to me, to be honest with you, because I figured it would not be a great, you wouldn’t get a lot of people because it’s I feel like there’s such a small number of like small percentage of attorneys that would actually fit that mold, like, so do you feel that the number of applicants that apply, you have a large percentage of people that actually would fit that mold, because I just don’t feel like that there’d be much of a match there when it comes to attorneys?
Jim Hacking
Well, except that most lawyers, especially most immigration lawyers, will have spent some time in their career talking to new clients, like they know what it means they might not be the best salesperson in the world. But they certainly have the background of signing cases up. If you haven’t been signing cases up then you’re not even going to be on our radar. Right. So this one of the people that we talked to like he spent four hours every day talking to leads like he was in charge of signing up cases for the firm. He was also doing legal work, but the attractiveness I think really skyrocketed after COVID because people just want to work from home and and it’s a pretty I wouldn’t say an easy gig but it’s fun. and
Tyson Mutrux
says, This is fascinating. Hi, are we do you need to wrap things up? We’re getting close to time. Any final words, Jimbo?
Jim Hacking
Well, you know, I’m just here to spread the love. Tell everybody how great it is owning a law firm, how even after 15 years, when you hold yourself out on this podcast and elsewhere, talking about all the things that you think, you know, there’s always opportunity to improve, always opportunity to get punched in the mouth, always the opportunity to be surprised by something that happens. And you just got to go with it, listen to it, take what you like and leave the rest and you know, giddy up.
Tyson Mutrux
And because I’m changing my one thing, I think that that’s, that’s good advice. That’s good advice, my tip of the week, so I’m gonna do that. Yeah. All right. Let’s wrap things up. Before I do want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group, Jim, and I’ve been posting more in the big Facebook group, Jim has been posting more than I have. But I think we’re sharing some good nuggets. So join us there. There’s a lot of great information being shared by everyone. If you want a more high level conversation, join us in the guild Maxwell guild.com. And while you’re listening to the rest of this episode, if you don’t mind giving us a five star review. It helps spread the love, we would appreciate it. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week,
Jim Hacking
life is difficult. So begins the book, the road less traveled by M Scott Peck. I read this book in high school, I read it again in my 20s. And I’m reading it now for the third time and it’s the world’s best book, I think on making the case that you need to be in therapy. Like, it’s really about doing that hard work. Like I don’t even like to read it that much. Like I read it for a while and then I go away from it. Because it’s just so hard and so raw about why we really need to do this work on ourselves. And I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself. But man, it’s a real clarion call to wake up and accept the fact that things are hard. And then soldier on hopefully with the help of someone that you can confide in and talk to and who’s gonna call you out on your shit.
Tyson Mutrux
Love it. That’s really good. So Jim, remember that guy that had that Infusionsoft company? I think you hired him to he came in. He comes and speaks he’s spoken at icon you’re gonna talk about oh, Brad Martin. No, Brad Martin up. Hey,
Jim Hacking
that’s your boy. Yeah, so
Tyson Mutrux
I like him a lot. But you and you’re talking about that a little bit earlier. Your last word, when he speaks he talks about he always has this, like, shows these like to like plateaus. Like you’re you’re on one side, and you’re trying to get to the other side. And everyone’s well, you and I will encounter someone and either we’ll talk to them because they’ll need help. Or we’ll have him on the podcast and we’ll be struggling. And then about three months later, they like know everything. I mean, like they, they and like they are so closed off. They’ve I know everything I’ve got this all figured out. And I just feel like that that’s really the wrong mindset. And back to Brad Martin no camera, the exact phrase he uses, but instead of going into his presentations, he starts by with us because he says instead of coming in here and saying, Okay, I already know that ask the question of like, what can I learn from this? Like, what can I learn? Like, even if you’ve already seen the exact same presentation, what can I learn from this presentation this time? What did I maybe miss last time? So no matter what the situation, go into it? Here’s my tip, ask the question. What can I learn from this? Because going in with the mindset, like I already know, all this stuff. It’s really, it doesn’t help you at all, like how does that help you? So you’re already there? Ask yourself, you know, what can I learn from this? I think it’s pretty beneficial. So I think by flipping it a little bit, you’ve opened your mind to learning and that’s that’s pretty important. All right, Jimmy, you and I got a long day ahead of us with with episode recording, so I’m looking forward to it. Have a wonderful day. Thanks, brother. See you too.
Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.
