6 Things We Love About Owning A Law Firm with Jim and Tyson 489

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Taking the leap into running your own law firm is scary. We know it! In today’s episode Jim and Tyson chat about the top six things they love about being a law firm owner and why they would never go back. 

If you are thinking of going off on your own and starting your own firm, or maybe you just need a pep talk to keep going the entrepreneur lawyer course — this episode is for you. It’s okay to be afraid of failing, but don’t let that stop you.

Listen in!

Episode Highlights:

1:55 – Number One: Autonomy & freedom! This is the top reason Jim and Tyson love being their own boss. To be able to leave the office at any time for any reason is the best part of owning a law firm. 

4:06 – Number Two:  Not having a boss! There is no one telling you what to do and we think this is a priceless reason to own a law firm. Add the joy back into your life by being your boss.

7:56 – Number Three: Knowing how much you make is directly tied to your work! This involves your ideas, your strategy, and how you implement them. NOT about working harder and faster. It’s a powerful mindset and energy that sets in after you get the first few clients, that it’s up to you to make happen.  

11:03 – Number Four: The creative and problem solving aspect of owning your own firm! You are the one that gets to spot issues (and have other people fix them) and this exercises a creative part of your brain and spirit. This freedom also comes with the caveat that you also get to make the decision to change your mind! 

13:56 – Number Five: We are building! Everyday that goes by we are building a business that we can watch shift and grow and evolve. 

16:53 – Number Six: Competing with yourself and always trying to up your game! You are always trying to improve all aspects of your law firm. Doing better than we did before, which is a huge motivation for continuing on. 

Jim’s Hack: Find yourself a good friend! It’s invaluable. 🎥 Watch the full video of Jim’s transformation and encouragement here.

Tyson’s Tip: Take the time to survey clients via a call or email. The data is invaluable. 

With these questions: 

  1. On average how do our clients feel about our communion. 
  2. On average, how do our clients feel about how we respond to their questions? 
  3. On average, how do our clients feel about the trustworthiness of the firm? 
  4. On average, how do our clients feel about the professionalism of the firm?

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube

🎧 Tune in to today’s episode and checkout the full show notes here. https://maximumlawyer.com/jimhackingtysonmutrux489

Podcast mentioned: Hidden Brain Podcast 

Resources:

Transcript: 6 Things We Love About Owning A Law Firm with Jim and Tyson

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. 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
Happy Valentine’s Day Tyson with a few weeks before but we’re recording now. And this episode’s coming out on the 14th of February. So we are talking about the things that we love as law firm owners.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I thought you’re really gonna pretend like it was Valentine’s Day. So I know we talked about this. And you You came up with a great topic for today because it is Valentine’s Day. But yeah, so you and I have not chatted on the podcast in a while you and I talk a lot outside of the podcast. But how have you been otherwise?

Jim Hacking
Good. We just spent two days in our annual planning meeting with our coach. And it has to have been the most comprehensive, well done two days that we’ve ever done. We had probably 20 of those big white sticky sheets with ideas and thoughts and SWOT analysis and rocks. And it was just fantastic. When we’re done. I mean, it’s a total roadmap for the year. So it was, it was our best one yet.

Tyson Mutrux
It’s incredible. We do a day we don’t do two days, someday we’ll talk about what you do during yours and what I do during my because I’m really curious to hear what you do for two days we and we get we have our jam sessions. But I do feel like ours are sort of crammed into one day. So I think we could probably easily do two days. But anyways, let’s get into our topic of the day. I think it’s a fun one. This is a Jim hacking specialists the six things I love about owning a law firm, that is such a great title. And number one, I get to go with number one mind. And we both have this, by the way, in fairness, I got my list together, he had a he came with the topic and I had to list before he did. And so but we both had this as number one. And that’s just the autonomy, that freedom that you get from owning a law firm. Like I’m at the point where I cannot imagine going and working for another person, another company, I just I don’t know how I would do it. I don’t know how I did it before to be completely honest with you. But to be able to leave the office at any time, for any reason, at any point is that is priceless. In my opinion, I could make substantially less and still be able to do that. And I’d be happy. I don’t know what your thoughts are on that, Jim. But it’s that piece alone. If you’re considering starting your own law firm, it’s worth the pay cut. If you do take a pay cut. Now I’ll talk about financial, a little bit of financial stuff later. Because I think it’s more fun and financially more rewarding. But the autonomy is the part that’s just for me the priceless part.

Jim Hacking
And of course, that’s the big allure of going out on your own is the freedom and a lot of times people just trade a job for another person for a job for themselves. So they don’t really even have that freedom because they haven’t done enough work to give themselves the freedom by having other people do a lot of the work. But yeah, for sure the freedom. When you think about all the taekwondo events, you get to go to all the school concerts all the time with your family, all the setting the time that you’re on vacation, there’s just the freedom is obviously I think the number one thing that most law firm owners love about having a firm.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, and there are a you sort of hinted at this too. I mean, there’s freedom. But there’s also the parts where you’re not as free, where you don’t have one boss, you’ve got, you know, in some firms, hundreds of bosses where you get several clients that are an employees that are sort of breathing down your neck. And so with that freedom comes a lot of responsibility, so you got to balance the two.

Jim Hacking
Yeah, and you know, there’s obviously times where you do don’t get to set the entire agenda, but you’re gonna get so much more overall freedom by being out on your own than you would have otherwise. And that sort of gets me to my first one, Topic number two. And that’s a little bit different than what you put for Topic number one, and that is not having a boss, not having a boss. Now I’ve had really, really good bosses in my career. I’ve had really, really crappy bosses in my career. But the idea that I get to walk into this place to know that it’s mine, and that I set the agenda, and that there’s no one telling me what to do with the independent streak that I have and sort of the rebellious nature that I have. To me, there’s no substitute to not having a boss. You know, I’ve told you this before, but I’ve been approached several times by large law firms in St. Louis about bringing my immigration practice into their firm, and I don’t give it a moment’s thought because I don’t want to have to go to a committee To get my YouTube video approved, I don’t want to have to, you know, wait for three weeks for something to go by if I need something, I want to be able to move quickly. And not having a boss, I think, to me is even better than the lifestyle freedom that we get. It’s even better than that. For me. That’s such a

Tyson Mutrux
great point. Yeah. So Jim, I had, you know, this one of my first legal bosses, it was, if I brought in a case, right, I’d bring in a case and I would print a letter, and we had this process where you print the letter and stick it on top of this counter. And then one of the paralegals would put an envelope and send it out, right? Well, he would go and he would replace my letter with his letter, because my letter had my name on it, and his letter had his name on it. And it was like, so stupid, right? Like, like, I don’t have to deal with that anymore. Right? Like, cuz you’re right. You have good bosses, you have bad bosses, but the fact that I do not have one is so fantastic. Now, so it is good point. It’s not a freedom thing. It’s a would you say? Well, it’s, it’s almost like more like a mindset thing that you don’t have a boss.

Jim Hacking
Yeah. So for me, it’s actually that absence of actually feeling like somebody’s pushing on the back of my head, like, I honestly felt that way. Sometimes, my independent streak has grown as I’ve exercised that muscle. So what might have been a little bit of a spark of wanting to be independent and do my own thing, after I had what I thought was proper training, as a lawyer has really turned into something that I can’t imagine ever going back on,

Tyson Mutrux
you know, so this is somewhat related. I listen to this podcast, the hidden brain over the weekend, and they’re talking about how paying when you get paid to do something, it takes the joy out of it. And I wonder if part of what you’re talking about is like, you do this exact same work. But you just add the fact that let’s say you had 100% autonomy, but you add just the fact that you have boss, it removes the joy from it. I wonder if there’s any tie in there just by that one little thing, the concept, the whole idea in that podcast was about how you shouldn’t pay your children to do certain things. Like one of the easiest ways of removing joy from like athletes is like whenever they go in, they start getting paid to do it, if you’re an artist once you start getting paid for your art. So it’s a really interesting thing. But I do think if Well, I wonder if part of what you’re talking about is like just the you add that just the the title of someone above you, and boom, the joy is removed from it. I just wonder how much of that as part of it.

Jim Hacking
And you might have multiple people above you. Right. So when I first started in the mailroom at grain Ritter, you know, the thing I hated the most was when I would walk down the hall and somebody would say, oh, Jim, Hey, come here, I need you to do something like the randomness of it, the unpredictability of it. And you know, that’s part of what happens in a big firm is that things have to get fixed. And getting to be the one to say what you want to happen versus the one to be told what needs to happen by you is just invaluable.

Tyson Mutrux
I agree. Alright, let’s get on to number three. And I like the fact that I know that how much I make is directly tied to my work, right? And I want to make sure I’m very clear, I chose my wording carefully here. It’s not by how much I work, right. It’s it’s I said, I know that how much I make is directly tied to my work, not to how much I work. So that involves, right, my ideas, the strategies I implement. Part of it is yeah, how much I work. But I like the idea that how much I get paid is directly tied to me.

Jim Hacking
Do you mean you love the idea? Because it’s Valentine’s

Tyson Mutrux
Day? I love the idea. Yes. I love the idea that how much I make is it’s directly tied back to my work, right? The things that I do, the strategies that I implement the work that I do, and I I like that idea. And again, it’s not how much I work to get how much I paid, I get paid. It’s my work is tied to what I get paid. And I really liked that.

Jim Hacking
I think it’s a powerful mindset. And when do you think you’ve started to notice it?

Tyson Mutrux
Oh, that’s a good I’d say probably pretty early on, I think once you start to get paid real money, and that’s the thing. It’s like, once you once you get that those first few clients, you you’re like, Oh, this is this is nice, right? I’m doing this work, and I’m getting this mate, there’s money for it. So pretty early on, I’d say what about you?

Jim Hacking
Well, yeah, I mean, I there’s just no substitute for when it’s on you. You know, so your back is up against the wall pretty much as soon as you start you have to make the phone ring you have to make production wheels turn and I mean, I trust myself better than I trust other people so yeah, there’s an energy that comes out of that that just isn’t there when you aren’t the owner I think

Tyson Mutrux
yeah, I and this is interesting because you didn’t present this idea until today and last night though I had this really is this is awesome feeling because I was talking to our buddy Mark hammer cuz I was I was on the phone with him and I had to go to the ATM to deposit some checks. He’s like checks, like, who writes checks these days like, well, we all get paid by insurance companies. And I had to write myself a check. But anyways, but it was really cool because I deposited the most checks I’ve ever deposited ever, in the history of the firm. Last night, it was so cool. It was just a cool feeling to be able to take that money to the bank, and deposit it. And there’s just a cool feeling. It’s just a fact that the work that we did as a firm in the firm is something that I’ve been building for over a decade now. And all just sort of ties together. And it’s such a cool feeling.

Jim Hacking
Of course, Mark’s a criminal defense lawyer, so he’s used to getting paid in big bags, oh, cash, that in

Tyson Mutrux
credit cards, he’s a big credit card person. And that’s that’s the way to go. Get that guaranteed money that they get the cash can be dangerous for a criminal defense attorney because it could be drug money. So you got to be a little bit careful. But little sidebar here. There isn’t a well known attorney over on the Illinois side, they got disbarred about a decade ago because he took a big bag of cash. And he knew his drug money. So you gotta be careful. But anyways, back on track to number four, Jimbo.

Jim Hacking
Alright, so number four, to me, it’s the creativity and problem solving aspect of owning your own firm. We touched on it just a little bit right there. But I am a creative person, I think of myself more as an artist than a laborer. And, you know, there’s a never ending font of things that need to be fixed when you own your own law firm, right. And so, I love the problem solving aspect of it, I love spotting issues, I’m really enjoying now spotting the issues and having other people fix them, right. But to me, I never would have exercised this part of my brain and my spirit, if I had stayed working for somebody else, because when it’s up to you, it’s up to you. And so that part of it, I really, really enjoy.

Tyson Mutrux
I do too. I like that creative process, as well. I liked what you put there, what you call it, the font, the font of it, that is such a, and I know exactly what you mean by the font of it, like the look the feel the energy from it, and that that is a really cool thing, and you get to shape it. And here’s the other part of it, you get to change it. If you want to change it, guess what, you get to change it. You don’t have to keep the same font that you had 12 years ago, and I’m not talking about the font of your letterhead, I’m talking about the font of your firm. I love that so much, Jim, I don’t know if you just came up with that. But that is amazing. Yeah, the fact that you’re able to shape that and mold it. It’s all you it’s just you can’t do that other firms. I trust me, I tried. Did you get a lot of pushback, right? You get a lot of pushback now? No, no, no, that’s we don’t do it that way. We do it this other way. But you get to make those decisions. And it’s nice bill to make those decisions. And you

Jim Hacking
get to make the tough calls. You know, there’s a lot of times where you’re trying to decide between two things, and you might be in unchartered territory. And I sort of liked that high wire act, I sort of liked that having maybe not necessarily a big net and not playing it safe. So it sort of feeds that part of me that likes a little bit of chaos.

Tyson Mutrux
So you shared that app with me this morning. And I listened to a Joe Rogan speech. And he talked about the importance of doing hard things. And he was talking about doing physically challenging things. But when he first started talking about I was thinking about how important it is to do difficult things in general. And there is another one of them was about, you should not be afraid to do great things and you should not be afraid to fail. And I really liked that too. And that’s there’s a by starting your own firm, you’re going out on a big high wire, and you’re really going big and you’re risking a lot of things, you’re risking your finances, you’re risking your time, you’re risking your career, you’re doing a lot, there’s a lot of risk, but you’re doing all of it for the massive amount of rewards that come with it. And that feeling is hard to shake.

Jim Hacking
For sure you want to go on to number five,

Tyson Mutrux
yet, let’s get on number five. For me, I’ve told this. So this before, if I weren’t an attorney, I think I’d probably be like an engineer because I like to build things. And I like to build, I get to build something when it comes to the firm. And many times we don’t think of firms as being something like building blocks, like you build. But every day that goes by every week that goes by every month, every year, every decade, you can see how your firm has changed and you can build it and it’s it’s kind of like a building or a house or whatever you want to call it. But you are building something. And it’s cool to see the things that we’ve built. And I was having this conversation earlier this week about an attorney are starting to they’re asking me, like, Why do you have a full time CTO? And I said, we’re doing cool shit, man. We’re doing some really cool shit. And we need someone that’s full time that can run those systems. And so it’s cool to be able to build things and I love the idea that I’m able to build them.

Jim Hacking
We started the podcast a little late today because my daughter overslept, and I had to drive her to school and When I was in the car, I was thinking about the six things that we love about owning a law firm. And when I thought about the three for you, the first one I came to was how much he liked building the systems. And you know how much better you are at it than I am. And I knew that that would be one that you picked, because I have seen you get really, really good and improve at that. So I think that that’s, if that’s something that you’re inclined to do. If you find yourself sort of drawn to tinkering, legal tinkering, or law, firm owning, tinkering, I think that that ownership of the firm might be for you. And I think it’s interesting that we’re having this conversation, because I think this episode is hopefully going to resonate with people that are thinking about going up on that tightrope.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I do think that this is definitely for those people that are on the fence about it, or they’ve been thinking about it for a while. And I often think about this prosecutor whenever I was, I did an externship in the prosecutor’s office. And I remember him talking to me about how he wanted to start his law firm. And he’s still there. He’s still in the prosecutor’s office. And it really saddens me, right, because he had all these really cool ideas that he wanted to implement. And he never took the leap. And I’m hoping that some of the things that we talk about encourages them to take that leap. You should send this kind of i should i part of me. Yeah, maybe I should they I think it’s because it’s never too late. Right. It’s not too late. But it would I think it would be hard for me to convince someone like that that’s been there now for probably 15. I don’t know if he’s been there 20 years, but 15 years that it, I think it’d be hard to convince someone like that, because they’re so entrenched. And they’re probably thinking about retirement and what they would lose and all that. But even with all that, I think that it’s the all of the benefits of starting a law firm. All of those outweigh, you know, being entrenched in that law firm and, and sucking it up for another two decades. I think it’s worth going out on your own. But Hi, Jimmy, let’s get to number six.

Jim Hacking
So that is competing with myself. So, you know, we just had our annual review, as I mentioned, and you know, we have our goals for next year. And we’re always trying to up our game. And I really appreciate that about owning the law firm is that we’re always trying to improve in all aspects of the firm. And, you know, back 1015 years ago, before Mike Tomlin was the coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, their coach was named Bill Cowher. And I remember it was either ESPN, the magazine, or Sports Illustrated had this cover story with Bill Cowher. And on the cover was two half pictures of his face. And he talked about in the interview about how he’s always thinking that there’s anti Bill Cowher out there somewhere competing with him, right. And so he’s got to do everything he can every day, to beat himself. And so I really liked that aspect of it. I really like the idea of, you know, doing better than we did before making things even more awesome, or all that kind of stuff, I really, really get that out of owning a law firm.

Tyson Mutrux
It’s interesting that really drives you you like having a boogie man to like force you. And here’s the thing, like, I don’t talk about as much, but I have so many chips on my shoulder. That really motivate me and I don’t talk about as I’m not as vocal about it as you but you are right. But here’s the thing, like you are more motivated, I think, internally by internal forces, not necessarily external forces. I think I’m more motivated by external forces than by internal forces. So you, you have to tell yourself that there isn’t a gym out there. But it’s really just gym, right? The anti gym. But I I tell myself about other people, like the doubters, right? That the real people. So I do think it’s interesting how you are motivated by those internal pressures that are more of the external type.

Jim Hacking
That’s an observation. I hadn’t thought about that.

Tyson Mutrux
And you, but it’s it is Buddy, I you, you do have the boogie man’s for sure. I do. All right. Well, let’s wrap things up. Unless you have anything else to say.

Jim Hacking
No, no, this was fun. I mean, you and I both know, the phone call. The phone call is, hey, Tyson. This is from somebody who works at a law firm. Hey, Tyson. Hey, Jim. I’m thinking about some things. And I was wondering if we could get lunch. And so you go to lunch. And you talk about a lot of these issues, you answer a lot of their questions about owning a law firm, you address sort of all the fears and those kinds of things. And then like that prosecutor buddy of yours, not much happens. And back, nothing happens. And there’s an attorney in Webster Groves, where our office used to be that I’m thinking of in particular, and I know that it’s scary, it’s scary. But this idea that anybody is safe from getting laid off, I think we’re going to see in the next six months is is really going to be put to the wayside. And I guess the last thing I would end this with is, I’d rather trust me or trust you to control our fates, then to leave that up to shitheads who don’t know anything more than I do or anything more than you do.

Tyson Mutrux
I like that. I do want to say this. It’s okay to be afraid of failing. But don’t let that stop you. Don’t let that stop you. It’s okay to be afraid. But But don’t let that stop you. All right, let’s wrap things up. Before I do. Before we get to our tip and our hack of the week. Let’s I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group, just search maximum lawyer, you’ll be able to find us there’s a maximum lawyer page and Max Miller group actually joined the group. And then there’s also the maximum lawyer guild if you want to join us there, it’s more high level conversation, go to max law guild.com. And then while you’re listening to the rest of this episode, if you don’t mind spreading the love by giving us a five star review, we would greatly appreciate it. Jimbo, what’s your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking
So for my hack of the week, it’s pretty simple. This morning, I texted you to thank you for supporting me in 75 hard and then my weight loss journey and for being such a good friend. And so my hack of the week is to find yourself a friend as good as Tyson is that the episode that we did with Charles and Angelo, my coach aired this week. And I’ll never forget how, at the end of the episode, you thanked him for helping me and helping your friend and how your voice choked up. And so I’m just grateful on this day of love for your friendship and the people. If you’re on your own, you need a sounding board, you need multiple sounding boards, and you can’t find one better than Tyson. So

Tyson Mutrux
that’s it. That’s very sweet of you. Jimbo, that’s awesome. Thank you. Mine is not as good as that. So we should have ended with that one. But mine is about serving clients. And we’ve been collecting data for now about three years Jimmy, and we do survey we survey our clients, we actually call the clients, we don’t send them a survey, we call the clients we have someone that’s not on their team call and serve the clients. And we ask these five questions. All right, actually, this is the we have them overall rate the firm. So that’s in the the question that we put in here is what is our average client satisfaction score? This is on our dashboard. I’m actually looking at our firm Dashboard right now. And then it’s on average, how do our clients feel about our communication? On average? How do our clients feel about how we respond to their questions? On average? How do our clients feel about the trustworthiness of the firm than on average? How do our clients feel about the professionalism of the firm? So we don’t ask them that way to the client, but we ask them those questions and our scores. And we wouldn’t know this. And we didn’t collect the data on the client satisfaction score. 9.47 I’m proud to say, client communication. Yeah. 8.89. So we got some work to do when it comes to client communication with 8.89. How do we respond to clients questions 9.2 for the trustworthiness of the firm, 9.46, and then the professionalism of the firm 9.72. And so that’s all it’s, it’s, it’s glad I’m glad we have this data, because now we can look at the trends over time to see are we trending upwards? Are we trending downwards? And I need to get that communication number into the nines? Because I mean, they it’s means that there’s that’s weighted against like, there’s a bunch of 10s. But there’s also that means there’s some lower numbers in there. And the reason why we are doing the surveys before we’re that is to identify from clients, like what are some issues like with that particular case, this gives us more that big picture data that we can look at, okay, we know when it comes to communication, we need to improve. And so gives us that bigger picture view. And so my advice to people is survey your clients, whether you do it with a phone call, I know it’s it’s very time intensive. We have a team that does it. It’s hard. It’s costly for us because we have to pay people to do it. But whether you do it that way or you send out a survey either way, you need to survey your clients, you know that information because it’s really important, and they’ll tell you how to improve. All right, Jimmy, that is my tip of the week. It was great talking to you as always, and I will talk to you in a couple hours.

Jim Hacking
Awesome, buddy. See ya see you.

Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your host and to access more content content, go to maximum liar.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

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