Today Seth and Jay chat with Dan Hurley, an execution coach who will talk about the things any business owner should do as they approach scaling up in their firm.
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Transcript: Maximum Growth Live! with special guest Dan Hurley
Speaker 1
welcome to the podcast edition of maximum growth live. The number one program for lawyers who want to grow their practices. Each week, our hosts Seth price and Jay Ruane tackled the fundamental questions about how to grow the profit and profitability of your law firm. To watch the program live. Submit your questions and hear the latest episode tune in every Thursday at 3pm. Eastern on Facebook for our live show maximum growth live is a production of maximum lawyer media.
Jay Ruane
Hello, hello and welcome to another edition of maximum growth live. I’m one of your host Jay Ruane, CEO from flex your Social Media Marketing Agency for lawyers and finalize your automated daily accountability coach, as well as Ruane attorneys a civil rights and criminal offense practice in Connecticut with me as always my friend Seth price Seth is the Founder and Managing Partner of price Ben in which your DC Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina law firm as well as the founder of blue shark digital SEO for law firms with clients all across the United States of America. Seth as normal, I want to see how you do you know, last Thursday, I forgot to say happy birthday. And I felt bad about it. Because I got so worked up into the show. I forgot I was just gonna sing happy birthday. And I did. So it’s a week late, but Happy birthday
John Fisher
to the audience will thank you. It was definitely it was a good birthday. You know, sadly, I spent my birthday was something I’ll just share share here, buddy of mine who’s you know, been a longtime partner at a big firm, you know, their partners or partners, he was one of the be partners really has struggled of late. And you know, new management comes in. And it just demonstrates what I love about what we built here with our audience is people who are taking control of their future, and that no one meeting can end a several decade relationship that it’s and so it was definitely humbling to see a path taken where somebody, you know, really could use many of the things we talked about here and didn’t hesitate for a bunch of reasons. It’s not their DNA that they’re, you know, they’re one of the people that you would be hiring. But it was it was sad at the same time. You know, I’d love to use it as sort of a springboard to say, hey, can we can somebody like that be turned around in the entrepreneurial way?
Jay Ruane
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, it we are the people who watch the show, the people who we interact with at conferences, we are definitely a an outlier. We are we are not the norm because we’re thinking about the future in a particular way. And that actually comes to a topic that I want to talk to you a little bit about before we get to our speaker, because I think there might be some synergies there. And it’s a little bit about, you know, defining who you are and where you want to go. You know, a lot of us get into this, get into this, practice and hang our shingle. And we have this passion for growth, right? I mean, it’s why it’s max growth live, we want to grow our practices. But I think there needs to be sort of almost a step back and identify, why are you growing? And what are you growing towards instead of just, you know, unfettered growth? I mean, you know, and I hate to I hate to use the analogy, but unbridled growth is is not necessarily the best thing. In fact, that’s what cancer is, right? I mean, cancer is cells that are just replicating and going haywire. And they’re just growing to grow. And that’s not necessarily a good thing.
John Fisher
Will we agree, I’m probably more guilty of that than most at the same time. And it’s funny, I’m coming off a call with consultants this morning, we’re looking at profitability of different groups. But to another extent, is there a certain value of throwing spaghetti at the wall in different areas, because you don’t know what will stick? And something you always talk about is things you wanted 45 may not be the same as 50 isn’t, you know, and something that I am seeing struggling with a little bit is employees who are workhorses at one point, they may shift as life shifts. And that’s a whole nother issue.
Jay Ruane
Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s a big challenge, as sort of enters its teenage years, you will have employees that have been with you from the start. And you know, when you’re when you’re in your mid 20s or early 30s And you are starting out a firm, you may be in a personality or personal or social position that’s different, or your staff I’ve made it. And they, you know, for me, you know, I spent 25 to 36, focusing 100% on my business, I mean, I was really singularly focused, I barely dated. And then I said, Okay, got my business to where I want to be. Now it’s time for me to sort of settle down. I luckily found my wife and I started having kids right away and that type of thing. And then my priorities really changed it was how much time can I get out of the office and stay away and let this thing sort of run? And I have a feeling now that I’m, you know, 12 years into that, you know, I’m thinking, okay, 10 years from now, my kids will be basically all said, what, what am I going to want from 60? Onward? And how do I build the firm that I’m going to want to be part of, at 16. And get me to that point in a decade, so that I’m comfortable. And I have what I want, because my my desires that are going to be different than what they are right now. Right now, I’m happy, you know, I want to be able to get out at three o’clock, so I can meet my kids at the bus and get the Little League practice. But you know, 10 years from now, that’s not going to be an issue. So it’s really sort of a lot goes into this sort of vision. And and I don’t think there’s enough conversation about that in our in our community. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I’ll
John Fisher
just say, the good news is, you know, my, what I have to say, pales in comparison to our guest today, I think we should we should be bringing them out because that’s, you know, we’ve had Vern Harnish on, we know scaling up, we’ve seen his disciples whether it be traction or whether it be strategic coach, but you know, I until recently, I didn’t even know that there was a program, you know, that would help you sort of follow the scaling up philosophy and build that out. You know, I knew that there were ones for larger entrepreneurs out there that Vern orange had his Gazelle group, etc. But the idea that there are now coaches dedicated to where they are at attraction, other areas, you know, we got, we got somebody today, who can really dig deep into, you know, the Vern philosophy which you know, for my money is as good as anything out there as far as scaling and culture and, and how to run a business and scale boss.
Jay Ruane
Alright, so why don’t we do this? Why don’t we take a quick break? The guests that we’re going to have, who’s waiting patiently in the green room is DAN HURLEY, he is from strategy fusion, that’s the name of his company. And he’s been working with our Vern model for years and has really experienced with all of them, all the ones that you’ve just talked about, that we’ve had on the show, and I think we’re gonna have a really interesting conversation about, you know, the things that you need to do to sort of maximize and grow your firm. Not to borrow too liberally from our show title, but I think it’s going to be great conversation. So folks, sit back, relax, get a cup of coffee or wherever you need, because when we come back, we’re gonna have DAN HURLEY, we’re gonna talk more about scaling up your firm. We’ll be right back with more maximum growth live.
Becca Eberhart
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Speaker 5
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John Fisher
You Welcome, everybody. We’re back with DAN HURLEY, a scaling up business advisor. Welcome, Dad.
Unknown Speaker
Hey, good morning, gentlemen.
John Fisher
You know, we’ve had Vern Harnish on we talk a lot about the scaling up world. You know, I didn’t even know that you existed until not that recently. Tell me what exactly is a scaling up? Business Advisor coach, and how do you work with people?
Speaker 6
Well, scaling up business advisor, there’s over 200 of us worldwide. And what we do is we subscribe to Verne’s perspective on the scaling up performance platform. It’s a series of systems and processes associated with those systems as represented by tools that we use with an organization to assure that they’re addressing the critical issues associated with growth.
John Fisher
And, you know, for our listeners, we have a bunch of lawyers who are building and growing their law firms. You know, what are what are some of those things we you know, we’ve we’ve, we’ve talked to scaling up people, including Vern, we’ve got a bunch of talks with people in the traction world, a lot of our members may use Strategic Coach, how does what you do fit within within those sorts of different worlds, and many of whom have sort of been birthed by Vern.
Speaker 6
All right, what what I found in strategic planning over the number of years that I’ve been doing it 25 Plus, is that most organizations approach strategic strategic planning. From the perspective of we’ve got to fill a three ring binder. And that three ring binder will sit on a shelf for a year, at the end of the year, we pull it down, blow it off and find that we haven’t accomplished much of anything we’ve reacted to fires allowed ourselves to be sucked into the day to day aspects of our business. So our approach is more focused on strategic thinking. So let’s think strategically. And then let’s plan from an execution perspective. So the emphasis is more on getting it done, as opposed to spending all the time analyzing where we’re at where we’re going, those kinds of things. If I compare it to some of the other products out there that you mentioned, it’s much more comprehensive. And as I said, I’ve looked at all of them. And it’s funny to find that most of them are extracts of burns approach. You mentioned traction, Gino Wickman, was a scaling up coach when it was called Gizelle. And left the organization and focused on that zero to $5 million business, which is quite frankly, we’re scaling up at the time didn’t focus. You have Patrick caffeine and his organization of rhythm. You have Chima Lampi, with his great to excellent. You have a number of different systems out there and all of them have a tendency to be closed. Which means that there’s a prescriptive way of going about putting together strategy and execution. And burns approach is an open system. In other words, we use tools from many different people. In fact, I was just talking to Jamie about the hedgehog concept from Jim Collins. The flywheel from Jim Collins, Alec Osterwalder and his value proposition canvas. So we bring to bear a number of the tools. And I think that gets at the heart of the primary difference. A lot of what we do is focused on get very experienced coaches. Whereas most of the other systems out there you pay your fee. You get trained and specific things that they do and you’re not allowed to deviate.
Jay Ruane
So I have a question here. You know, one of the things that I think our audience struggles with frequently is the lack of business training and almost sort of law schools looked down on the business of law in for most lawyers, they are, they are taught down to when it comes to business operations because you know, the law schools like to position themselves as a as a profession, well above the little things like earning money, because they are they are in these I Every Tower’s but one of the biggest challenges for anybody who’s starting up a law firm and then trying to scale a law firm is that number one, they they lack some basic business knowledge. And number two, they have an incredible ego as to their own skill set. And one of the challenges that you and I talked to you before we came on the air here was this idea that would get you to a certain level at some point, the lawyer entrepreneur needs to almost get out of their own way, and, and bring in the talent that’s necessary to actually continue to grow their firm. Can we talk a little bit about that, as a coach? How do you help people identify when they are the roadblock or the bottleneck to their own firm’s growth?
Speaker 6
Well, typically very gently. Well, no one likes to be smacked in the face with, you know, you’re at a point where you breached unconscious incompetence, you don’t know what you don’t know, which is always a dangerous position to be in, right. So the relationship between the coach and the client is extremely important, much like the relationship that you have with your clients. And there are times when shovel upside the head is what’s needed, but you better have a whole lot of trust. And that client better have a whole lot of confidence in you. You know, it’s funny, I have a range of clients, some that would follow me into the earth through the gates of hell, and others that are constantly questioning me trying to figure out how I’m coming to the conclusions I’m coming to. And you use different approaches with different clients. For those egomaniacs, it typically results in questioning, people don’t like to be told. So there’s always questions about Okay, so you made this decision? What were you trying to achieve? What did you take into consideration when you made it? In fact, I had one client that when I walked through the door, he has a rule, you don’t start the conversation with the question. So it’s really different strokes, as Sly Stone said back in the 60s, different strokes for different folks, right?
Jay Ruane
Absolutely, absolutely. Can we talk a little bit about the role of passion in growing any business because, you know, one of the things one of the challenges that some people in our audience had was adding verticals, to their business during COVID, as a pure measure to sort of stay alive. And now, you know, 1618 months later, they find themselves handling a business that they don’t really want to be in. But, you know, in order to sort of reach the scales that I think people want to, I think there’s got to be a portion of you that is passionate about your business, writing money really doesn’t drive the majority of people, would you think that’s fair to say?
Speaker 6
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, I had an ongoing disagreement with the CEO of a very large corporation, who told me the purpose of a business was to make a profit. And I told him, Well, I think what you’ve done is you’ve confused the metric of success with success itself. Quite frankly, the purpose of any business is to attract and retain a customer or client. Now, the things that allow you to effectively run a business are how well you operate that business. And the metric that tells you you’ve been successful is profit has to the concept of passion. As you and I were discussing, I’m a big follower of Jim Collins, I think he’s a brilliant business mind. And Jim has this concept called the hedgehog concept. And it’s a really a Venn diagram made up of three spheres that overlap. And the first sphere is what you can be best in the world at. Okay, so what’s your capacitated to really do? Well, the second sphere is what are you most passionate about? Or that thing that you don’t need a catalyst to get you going? You just naturally migrate toward it. And then the third is how do you monetize that? Okay, how do you establish that metric and at the heart of that Where the overlap is between the three sphere is where we typically find your big, hairy, audacious goal. Okay, so it fits very nicely and explains the importance of something like passion. If you’re not passionate about it, as you and I talk, most challenges require an impetus to overcome a catalyst. And in the case of what it is that you choose to do from a business give that catalyst is really passion.
Jay Ruane
Great. Seth
John Fisher
may assure you know, one of the things a lot of our listeners and viewers sort of probably struggle with is where to start. What are some of the things you know, like, you know, there, we’ve had these amazing guests on we all know that we need more systems. Jay gets more excited than most about this. But yeah, he’s right. But where do you, you know, you a lot of people, they build a business, they’re at x point and they’re there, they’re now x plus three, you know, you know how, when you see people that end up embracing and working, whether it’s with you or anybody else, one of the things that you see people that or make make that lead well, and we’re the ones that would crash and burn when they pay for number of quarters or a year and don’t really get out of it what they could.
Speaker 6
Well, one of the things that I’m most interested in, in working with my clients, is what I call the six transmembrane transformational enablers. Okay, we all need to have certain enablers that make the whole issues of business simpler for us easier to overcome. And these enablers do that. I’ve developed these over a course of a number of years, I’ve been an executive coach worked with many CEOs. And the initial question I’ve asked, each of them gets at the heart of the first enabler, and that’s clarity. And the question is, what do you want? Sounds very simple. But if I asked each of you, at this point, in this conversation, what is it you want? You’d probably look at me and say, What do I want out of what? Right out of my business and my personal life? Out of you know, how I spend my money, my material goods? And quite frankly, the answer is yes. The clearer that you can be about what you want, the more likely it is you’re going to get it. So the first enablers clarity, you accomplish that it allows you to get the second enabler which is alignment. If you’re building an organization, there’s really not much more important than alignment, you want your team aligned on what it is you feel is important. That allows you then to move toward focus. You can’t be focused without alignment, you can’t achieve alignment without clarity. Okay, when you have those three in place, it’s time to start working on dedication, Dylan, diligence, and discipline, dedication to the business diligence about the way their business is conducted, and discipline in terms of all of the tasks that need to be completed to assure success. To those statistics, transformational enablers are absolutely critical in terms of getting started.
Jay Ruane
So I got a question for you. But one of the one of the challenges I have found in my, in my ability to scale up my my own firm, is that my outlook on life and my sort of perspective on things is markedly different from the people that I employ, not necessarily in worldview, as in, you know, for us as criminal defense lawyers that every life has value, and you shouldn’t be judged by your worst day. But more more on terms of I set tend to set, you know, audacious goals and want to march to them. And my employees want to be led. They don’t they don’t want to be the one who was out in front Making Moves. And I find it a challenge in in understanding their perspective, because I’ll give them a task and expect them to just go and accomplish it. And they they keep coming back to me saying be involved. We want to know we’re doing the right thing. And then I’m saying look, I’ve moved beyond that I’m going to something else. How How, how should the leaders deal with those types of challenges when the employees keep trying to pull you back into the business But your job, I guess, is to be the visionary. Are there roles in each functional business that should be sort of defined so that the business owner can say, okay, this person is going to do this, and I’m going to be able to sort of be the visionary. Does that kind of make sense? I’m, I’m struggling to sort of communicate it. But I feel like I keep getting pulled into the weeds. And that’s not my best use of time. But yet my employees, despite me giving them as much opportunity as I can, they constantly seek me out to be in the weeds with them. And despite me telling them, I don’t want to be there. Think just keep pulling me. I feel like Michael Corleone, every time I get out, they pull me back in.
Speaker 6
You know, I could spend an hour just talking about that. But let me hit a couple of what I think are the important responses to your question. And I think it starts with selection. You know, we we look at strategic thinking from four perspectives. And those four perspectives are people strategy, execution, and cash. And each of those perspectives have a question that has to be answered in order to achieve optimal effectiveness. For people that questionnaire is our all stakeholders. Now we’re talking all not just employees. So that also includes customers, suppliers, that community owners, are they happy and engaged? And would you rehire them enthusiastically? Okay, so when we’re selecting employees, it’s important that we operate from a position of clarity, there’s that word again. And that position of clarity in most businesses is typically described in what we call a job description. I am not an advocate of job descriptions, the typical focus of a job description, description is responsibilities. And, quite frankly, I don’t care what your responsibilities are, what I’m hiring you for as results. So should not be articulating expectations in terms of results. Okay, requirements and standards. So what do I expect in terms of a result from this particular role? And how will I measure that? So we select people based upon that, once we get those people in, we struggle with this concept of clarity, what do we want? You know, we encourage people in your positions to delegate. You can’t do it all. And if you think you can, then you’re practicing it at a minimum a mild form of delusion. Okay, so, in delegating, what we typically find is you tell someone, I need you to do this. And you’ll leave it at that. If you’re going to delegate you need to delegate based upon that expectation, what do I require of you? And how are we both going to know when it’s been accomplished when it’s been achieved? Okay, and then you keep a record of what it is you’ve delegated a look and growing my businesses early on, I found that I delegated so much, many times, I’d forget what I delegated three days ago, and forget to check on it. And sometimes it would get done sometimes it wouldn’t. Right. And the natural inclination was to go back and blame them. Yes.
John Fisher
We, this is a very common topic for us as well as for common ailment of our of our listeners, viewers, what are some of the best practices so that as you do that you should be delegating? What are some of the systems or techniques you’ve seen that work best to make sure that you do have accountability, and that it’s not set it and forget?
Speaker 6
While accountability is part of your execution system, right. It’s something that you set up front in terms of clarity of expectation. I have a performance model that I use, it was developed by a fella named Gary Rumbler out of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. And what Gary says is that 90 to 93% of all issues in organizations can be attributed to leadership because leadership is responsible for setting the expectations, putting people in situations to perform, providing a consequence for both positive and negative performance. And then issuing feedback. Okay,
John Fisher
I was trying so granular i and that look, I get that. But are there any things? I’m sure like, we have people out there, because what you just said resonates with me, I’m sure with Jay, where you set things in motion, you have your systems, but are there any systems that you have seen checks and balances? Because as a busy growing leader, you know, there are things that you sort of may put to people? Are there any sort of techniques or methodologies that have been more successful for leaders on the micro level to make sure that the different things they put forth? actually come back? At our NRA
Speaker 6
accomplished? Yeah, well, I, I think you’re not probably gonna like my answer. But I’ll give it to you anyway. And that is we have a saying, and that saying is delegate and do so effectively. If if that can’t be done, automate. Okay, whatever it is, you’re you’re trying to get done, automate it. And if that doesn’t work, look to eliminate it. Okay, so delegate automate, eliminate. And, quite frankly, from an accountability perspective, that’s a choice. You choose whether to hold someone accountable or not. So it’s really not a system issue. It’s a human issue. And most of my clients have problems holding people accountable. Whether it’s very clear.
John Fisher
Is it because they forget what they’ve delegated? Or is it because they just don’t have the backbone to hold somebody the feet to the fire and say, I need you to do this?
Speaker 6
Well, it’s probably a combination of both. I find that if you look at that, from the perspective of a continuum, it runs the runs the range of that continuum, I’ve got some clients who have a certain behavioral preference. Are you familiar with the disc instrumentation? Oh, yes. And that would be an S, right? On the far end, can you locus of control is external, not internal. So they’re all about others. And an taken to extreme that leads to a martyr syndrome, where I’ll throw myself on any sword, it’s really not your fault, I must have been unclear. I must have not given you what you needed kind of thing. I have clients that are like that to the other end of the spectrum, where, you know, the the beatings will continue until morale improves. So, you know, the, the point about accountability is, it’s a choice. And, you know, I was just talking to a client yesterday in your field of endeavor, and I said, you have a tendency to get what you accept. Okay, people are going to give you what you accept. And so if you don’t hold them accountable, they’re going to expect that they’re not going to be held accountable, and they’re gonna perform accordingly.
Jay Ruane
You know, it’s interesting that you bring that up. It’s similar, because I think the nature of some lawyers, you know, and this is something that’s interesting, it’s happening in my personal life with, with some extended family members going through a divorce. And, and I’m looking at it from an outsider’s perspective. And I’m saying, you know, there’s going to be conflict, but you know, the people and the other extended family members, they live their lives trying to avoid conflict. Whereas I, as an attorney, understand, there’s always going to be conflict, I can have a conflict with some of my best friends. And it has nothing to do with with how I feel about the person. Conflict is inevitable in nature. And I think part of the problem with being a lawyer entrepreneur, in this situation is that you might come to a problem with delegation and see it immediately as an opportunity for conflict with a subordinate, because you’re comfortable with conflict, and you’re comfortable with it, but they are not. And so conflict to you is not something that’s necessarily a bad thing, but he can really hamper your business. If the people you have in it, that are trying to, you know, shut down in the face of conflict. You think that’s a fair way to sort of read the weeds the situation
Speaker 6
Yeah, you know, as I, as I looked at the whole issue of conflict, I think there are societal norms that we’ve adopted over a period of years. That has moved us to the point where if you think of conflict, it’s really a continuum, right? In my mind, it starts with contention. Now, contention is healthy. We have a mild disagreement, you have a perspective I do. And what we try to do is work with each other to come to a common understanding, we move from contention, if we’re unsuccessful there to confrontation, we’re now we’re a little more aggressive around the language, we use our body language, the way we use our body to support our messaging, maybe intonation, Cadence, those kinds of things. And if that doesn’t work, then we move to what we know as conflict, which is really, you know, your your hands around my throat, and, you know, mine around maybe your shirt. But our societal norms have led us to believe that that whole continuum is conflict. So in essence, what it’s done is it’s made contention, which is healthy, in organizations, sort of an unacceptable practice. So I think what you’re describing is this whole societal norm that anytime you disagree, that’s conflict, and it’s not.
Jay Ruane
Yeah, you know, that’s, I think that’s a huge takeaway for our audience, that inevitably, when you’re trying to grow your practice, when you’re trying to grow your firm, there’s going to be contention, and that’s a good thing. And it’s a positive thing. Because it’s through that you can have breakthroughs that can elevate you above your competition and take you to a new level. And if it devolves into conflict, that isn’t necessarily something that you can get a benefit from. But if you can thrive through the contention, you can really take yourself to another level. So my last question for you, before we send it back to Seth, to wrap it up, is is a little bit about, you know, when you first approach a new client, someone who you’re going to help you sort of get to that next level, is there something that they have to focus on first, like if someone were to call you up and say, I want to, I want to, I want to start being coached by you, I want to get to that next level. And I’ve already been able to sit down and do this, what would help somebody who’s coming into your method of, of helping them scale up? What what should they do before they call you? Is there something that can make a difference, to get them to the right place to be able to be helped by you, because I got a feeling there’s some people who call you up that are just complete messes. And you have to sort of you it takes you, you know, three or four hours.
John Fisher
I’ll put this as my comment, because I want to let him answer but I get it because I hate when I call a consultant. And they give me what I call the low hanging fruit that I should have just done before Jays asked what are the prerequisites. So you don’t walk in, not waste your time, but we get to the heart of the matter, rather than the stuff that really should be self work that’s done. You could say, do these three or four things before you call me so we can get to the year?
Jay Ruane
That matters?
Speaker 6
Yeah, well, um, you know, we talked about it earlier. First and foremost, you really need to get clear on what you want. And I mean, what result Do you want to see? So many people call it a vision? Right? I don’t really care what you call it, just describe what it is you want. What’s this look like when you’re done? If you can identify specific things that you want to see, that’s wonderful because when I walk in, I typically find that they really don’t know what they want. And we have to spend an inordinate amount of time and you know, as you know, your business is no different than mine Time is money. an inordinate amount of time trying to figure that out. So first and foremost, figure out what you want. If you’re going to start working on something that we might continue to work on work on the core. Understand your why, what’s your purpose? My particular purpose is to effectuate extraordinary results by creating conditions for success that drives everything I do. Okay, so I’m all about creating opportunities for you to be successful. So your purpose, your values, what are the guidelines, the principles that guide your business? That if manipulated would require you to do To terminate a relationship, whether it’s an employee or a client, okay, what do you want to achieve? What’s that B hag? And how far out is it? You know, in some cases, I have clients that are preparing to exit the business, right? And they’re looking at a five to eight year horizon, while they’re very different than the 35 year old who’s planning on being in business for the next 25 years. Right. So if you do those three things, actually four things with clarity, you’re off to a very good start, I can then step in and say, okay, you’ve got a good piece of it done, I understand what you want to achieve. I’m clear on how best to go about that and where to start now. And we can get off to a much more efficient and effective start.
John Fisher
Elizabeth, this is great. Dan, thank you so much for your time, we’ll be sure to put a link to to your organization in the in the comments. And, you know, the insights have been invaluable. Thank you so much, which I we will be back soon with more of Max growth live.
Speaker 7
In this world today. If you want to grow your business, you want to grow your firm, you want to take on more cases and make a better impact. You have to have a digital blueprint, statistically, throughout the time that we’ve been working with blue shark digital, our law firm, the Atlanta divorce law group, over 14 100%,
Jay Ruane
Seth and his team have years of experience in this
Speaker 8
area, blue shark is truly a part of the firm. So I don’t consider blue shark any different than the employees in my office. Well, that
Jay Ruane
was another phenomenal conversation. I mean, I gotta tell ya, like I said, I took notes. And it’s rare on these conversations, that I take as many notes as I did today. But a couple of things jumped out at me. And one, first and foremost, when you’re talking about the whole delegation thing, there was a bit of a clarity of delegation, which I think is something that maybe I need to work on, in my own firm. What were your takeaways?
John Fisher
You know, for me, I know for myself, and we see this in much of life, whether it be business sales, dating, whatever it is that rule of threes, and I feel like, the more time that I spend in the Virgin universe, you know, understanding and hearing different ways of it being presented, that each of those takeaways, the takeaways are the same that we’ve been talking about, but getting you to think about, okay, with what I have right now, how could I start implementing some of these? You know, to me, that was a valuable use of time.
Jay Ruane
Yeah, and the other thing I really liked was defining jobs. As as what the results were going to be, rather than the responsibilities, I’m actually going to go back, I’ve decided to take it upon myself, I probably should delegate it. But look at each one of our job descriptions in our office and rephrase them away from responsibilities to results so that there is clarity there for the people that are coming into those roles. Because I think that’s, that’s interesting. And that whole thing about the Venn diagram, you know, what you love, what you can monetize and what you can be best that, I think is something that all of us here, should really consider as they’re trying to set forth their vision. And finally, I really loved his accountability thing. I mean, I know I recently watched finalized because I needed help with with accountability and daily accountability, coaching. And that’s certainly something that you need to find whatever trick it is to make sure that to hold you accountable to do the things that are necessary to move yourself forward. But this is, this has been a great a great conversation. I really, I really enjoyed this one. I got a lot of good stuff out of it. I’m sure we go back and listen to the podcast a few times, just to make sure that I’m pulling everything out of it. What else you got excited for in the future? I mean, we’re, we’re heading into Labor Day. Schools are back in kids or kids are out of the house for the most part during the day. We haven’t been quarantined yet, have you guys been pouring? We got another we got
John Fisher
another week. So we’re still with the kids for a week and it’s coming up. It’s, it’s, by the time I’m trying to think for me what I would say the piece and it dovetails down on the personal on the business side and sort of why my mind didn’t didn’t quite transition. Well, from your comment is, you know, as we’ve added overseas labor to help each department, I think that has forced us to get more granular about what people do because when you’re forced to delegate work from from an existing employee, I think that that has made us better and focused people in what they’re doing that much more. And so it’s I didn’t realize this would be a benefit of that, but that by being Then people on to support existing operations at the firm, it forced the existing employees to become more focused in what they were doing. And I’ve, that’s been a huge, unexpected a positive outcome of adding additional tangential labor.
Jay Ruane
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. Last week, we had, we had David Hassel, from 15, five on and I actually went out with my team, and we actually created a, a weekly question just to our overseas people. Because, you know, there’s stuff going on that, you know, we might not necessarily know of, or think of, one of the things a hurricane hit Honduras this week. And that caused some some disruptions, and one of my VAs oversee staffers, wherever you want to call them, had some issues with resources for food in their town, and that she actually put on the weekly report that that was a challenge for her this week. And I didn’t even know it or think of it because, you know, I’ll watch the today’s show, Al Roker will tell me that something’s going on in Oklahoma brain. If I had people in Oklahoma, it would matter. But I have no idea what’s going on weather wise, or, or culturally in other parts of the world. But I need to know that stuff. Because I have people there now. And so that’s why it was great getting stuff from David last week. And, you know, I said, Oh, I gotta, I gotta start thinking about this stuff. And when I sent that out, and I started getting responses, I got a couple of DMS, directly from my overseas people saying, Thank you for thinking about me, thank you for engaging with me like this, because it shows me that I’m really part of this team. And that’s what I like, you know, I want them thinking team first.
John Fisher
Absolutely. And so, you know, it cost me some money. But I bought licenses for all over over overseas people after that, with the same concept. It’s, you know, the law firm, we’ve been using it for staff. And the question is, do we include the attorneys into it not cheap. But do we allow them to be able to give the high fives and make this interactive? You know, again, like anything else, there are so few things we can do to improve morale and culture. That this this seems like, especially in this disassociated world that we now live in that try to double down on it. Yeah, I
Jay Ruane
mean, if you if you have any number of employees that are not, you know, in your office, I can’t speak more highly of having that type of engagement platform, or product or some something along those lines that you can do. I mean, I’ll be honest with you, I started off, I read about 15, five in the in Ink Magazine, I signed up for a trial took their questions, and I created using a Wufu form and a an a Gmail auto responder, I created a simple free version of it. Because I wanted to, I couldn’t afford the spend at the time now I can so it’s, it’s even better.
John Fisher
The question is, and we see this all the time, right? i I’m sure torn, it’s not as real money. At the same time, if the engagement is higher using a polished VAs platform, is that worth it?
Jay Ruane
Absolutely. You know, the thing that’s crazy about it, and I’ll say this, and then I’ll wrap up, because I know we’re going long here is that when COVID hit, you know, one of the questions that we have is one great idea. And what’s that great idea that we can implement to make our business better and that type of thing. I actually had the time and I went through and I went back through like 2000 questionnaires, just clicking through and reading the great ideas. And we were able to implement, you know, like 20 or 30 of them, sometimes it was doing certain things changing the way we approach things, stuff that, you know, two years ago didn’t seem relevant. But it was an idea and somebody gave it to now all of a sudden, we have the time we have the opportunity, and it seems more appropriate. So So you know, that data that you’re collecting now could have value the next time we have a pandemic folks, which I hope isn’t for another 100 years but who knows things happen. Something else could happen, you know, five years from now that we’re we’re suffering through so you know, a master data that you can use but said I think we’re gonna leave it right now for for this week. What another great show. Thank you for being with me. Of course, if you want to follow set, you can follow him on his YouTube page, or follow blue shark digital where he has the SEO insider, a great way for you to keep up on what’s going on in the world of digital marketing. If you want to catch up with me, you can check me out at finalise FIM l i z e.com. Or through my agency get firm flex.com. Of course, if you love to talk about systems like I do, we talked a little bit about it during the show. Please join our growing growing Systemising your law firm for growth Facebook group Brooks like 400 people changing ideas talking about systems they can implement and it’s a great way to sort of engage with people that are talking about the things You need to scale up your firm. But with that said, I’ll leave you. I’ll see you next week. Have a fantastic Labor Day weekend, and anything else you need to add?
Unknown Speaker
Have a great weekend.
Jay Ruane
Have a great weekend, folks. We’ll see you next week. Bye for now.
Speaker 1
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