Today on the podcast you can catch Seth Price and Jay Ruane on Maximum Growth Live with special guest Ken Hardison!
The Powerful Innovated Lawyers Marketing & Management Association (PILMMA) is the innovation of Kenneth L. Hardison, the senior partner of Hardison & Cochran, author, and the founder of Law Practice Advisor. Ken created PILMMA in order to fill the void of marketing and management resources available to attorneys.
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Transcript: Maximum Growth Live with special guest Ken Hardison
Unknown Speaker
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
Welcome welcome. Welcome to the Thursday September 3 edition of maximum growth live. I am your host Jay Ruane. I’m the owner of Ruane attorneys here in Connecticut, and the CEO of firm flex. And my friend over here is Seth price Managing Partner of Price Benowitz. In the DC Maryland, Virginia area and CEO of blue shark and we are maximum growth live as you know, if you’re with us today, maximum growth live is a weekly live Facebook show where we dive into all things relevant into growing your firm at scale. maximum growth live is sponsored by maximum lawyer media and the maximum of lawyer family. And I said I want to start this week by asking you what did you do to grow your firm this week?
Seth Price
You know, one of the things that I felt like is we are about to come out of Summer COVID Summer and in the guild this week. That’s what’s the one thing you’re doing I gotta say, I felt weird. I have felt guilty cuz I didn’t have one thing to me. It was getting everything firing on all cylinders. We’re no longer during the summer. We know what the new normal is we’re playing in it. It’s It’s good. It’s bad. It’s it is. And the idea that we have intake firing on all cylinders. We have marketing falling falling on. So the attorneys are now understand the obstacles they have and what they’re doing. And that as we look at numbers for September, October, November, assuming that something miraculous doesn’t happen, we now have a set of rules we’re playing with. And I feel like our responsibility is to sort of move out of what we did during panic beginning but now say, hey, for the foreseeable future, this is our normal, and we need to play with that set of rules.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of people have been waiting for it to just sort of bounce back to the way it was. And I don’t think you can predict that. So I think you got to deal with this is the new world. This is what I’m dealing with. And you got to move on from there. One thing I did this week to grow my firm and this is interesting. And I actually got the idea from something that we’re about to talk about is that I got an email shortly after I ordered my peloton bike. And it actually had me give a sliding scale and some feedback to them about the purchase portion of their process. And so I got the email I said, You know what? I’ve never really surveyed my clientele about you know, I asked him where did you find us? I asked him that type of thing. But I never really engaged with them that early on in sort of late the NPS, one to 10 scale, or how did my intake and client care team do? So this week, I actually scripted it out, added it to my my my onboarding campaign where six hours after we open the file, they’re gonna get a survey asking them how did our intaking and Client Care Team treat you during the intake process? And I think this is gonna help us give some feedback and I modeled it on my peloton bike Seth, do you have that picture for me of like, Alright, we’re gonna flash it up on the screen right now so people can see it. But this is setting on his peloton. So I think it’s great. I can’t wait to get my and then we’ll have to have a maximum growth live event where everyone that’s in our audience that has a peloton, we can all do a ride together. I think it’ll be a lot of fun.
Seth Price
But keeping it real, like I’ll tell you that with with those surveys, I’ve been working on rolling that out for our firm for months. And it’s just, you know, it’s glitchy it’s not there. It’s days away. It’s been days away for several weeks. And that’s part of that’s part of like running and growing a law firm is that as especially at scale as you use more complicated software’s some of the things that sound like they’re really easy, what they do is genius half the time when you finish, you know at a restaurant and you get a survey, they don’t care about what you’re saying. They just want to get you you know to remember them for a future not for the first survey but at the end they’re always looking to say hey, remember me as a referral source get a review out of it. And so the idea that they’re already peloton has already they do an amazing job, there’s their processes insane, but that the idea that they are already building their raving fans from that first moment is just remarkable.
Jay Ruane
Yeah, and you got to do that as well. And you know, this is a you know, we are all customer service firms, firms, and we just sell different types of legal services but we are in the customer service. his business, selling legal services. And I think that’s the way people should approach it. But we’ve got a great show today. We’ve got a lot of stuff on the back end of the show, where we’re going to talk about some stuff that’s coming up. So you definitely want to stick around and watch the whole show, because there’s some cool stuff that we’re going to talk about at the end. But first, we’re gonna talk a little bit about who’s coming on the show today. So, Seth, why don’t you tell us a little bit about our guests. And so we’ll be so our our viewers will know what’s in store,
Seth Price
can Hardison is one of the sort of Premier law firm consultancy, he’s built. tilma, which is an organization that started with personal injury firms, as he’s pivoting beyond that now. But the idea is, this is a guy, he’s a lawyer by training, he built a firm sold it built a firm sold it, who is really been very instrumental in helping lawyers figure out through masterminds through annual summits through his organization to figure out best practices and work on everything. That’s what we what drives me the non courtroom, the non practice of law. So let’s bring Ken in and get him going.
Jay Ruane
Yeah, so give me a second, I’m going to I’m going to set it up so that we can get him in here you’ll hear a couple words from our sponsors. And when we come back, we’ll have Ken Hardison and filma with us. So just give us a few seconds and we’ll be right back with you. Thanks, folks. The lawyers
Unknown Speaker
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Seth Price
We’re thrilled to have Ken here today Ken Hardison, friend mentor to many of us can not only build not one, but two law firms selling each of those and created tilma, an organization that has historically focused on personal injury lawyers, I think it’s pivoting beyond now. But the idea being focused on management and marketing of law firms, and something that I’ve found a home at. So welcome, Ken, thank you for being here.
Ken Hardison
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Well,
Seth Price
we Jay and I have spent the last several weeks talking to people not only about what’s going on during COVID, but how they can sort of deal with their law firm as a business. And the thing that we keep hearing are pivots that people are trying to take, and things they can do to be creative during this time. And Jay was just talking before we came on about how you’ve been particularly creative with Hilma, and how you’ve adjusted during this unusual time, you want to share with our audience a little bit about what you’ve done and how you’ve done it.
Ken Hardison
So, you know, when they were right when it happened, we were we were promoting our big event, we have a big annual event in June, that in New Orleans. And we were just setting record goals. I mean, it’s gonna be a bigger we’re expecting five, six lawyers. And when this happened, we just said you know, this is about time to be sailing, this is a time to be given. So what we what we we kind of surveyed our members, and found out what they were needing. And so what we created this whole COVID Resources Center, how to survive, you know, so we had, we would do a weekly webinar, we would put articles on there anything I found, that had to do with lawyers, but if it was about going remote, how to manage remote people, people, you know, the PPP loans, everything that was going on, about what you what you could do, what you couldn’t do, when we had a deal when they were kind of back what you needed to do or what you didn’t need to do. And we just pretty much gave it away and tried to kind of be a resource. And then with my masterminds you know, we usually meet lab three times a year, so we had to pivot and do them home Zoo. And if what we did too, because we saw that, here was the big deal. Everybody was rattled and scared and didn’t know what to do in like some do a pull up by Mark, because we have some members that do a lot of spin six figures a month in marketing, we got some that spent, you know, $5,000 to. But the deal is they didn’t know whether to back off, whether to double up. And everybody was kind of, you know, so we started doing weekly zoom meetings. And that seemed to be, we did it for like, I guess, 12 weeks, I kept doing them until there was hardly nobody showing. Everybody was getting back. And I said, you know, I thought it was probably this last eight weeks, but it lasted about 12 weeks. So we did all those things, we cancelled our bid, we put on a virtual internet domination bootcamp back in May, we give a big discount for that, because we felt like they’ll give it back and it didn’t cost that much to put it on. And then we’re doing this new event in October. law firm growth Maximizer go your law firm.com. If you’re interested, go here, grow your firm.com Excuse me grow your firm, calm, but doing those things. And then another thing I did was I got on the phone with a cold. I called I think and let me say I talked to but I called every member until about two and a half, three months, and just checked on him to see how we’re doing and see if there’s anything I can do for personally or professionally. And can
Seth Price
you seeing as you make those calls, and you’re speaking to everybody? That’s what I think one of the great things about what you do is you sort of have your you see into all these different firms. What have you seen generally for the firm’s that are excelling during this time? And what what, Jen? And what are you seeing for the firms that are struggling calling saying, hey, I need to help. Can you see any things that may be takeaways for people here of what the firms are doing? Right, what people are doing wrong?
Ken Hardison
Well, I think what I’ve seen is that this smart law firms didn’t go in and just fire everybody lay everybody off, they tried to hold on to good people. And they did start working remotely. And they started. The ones that are doing successful with it are the ones that have a whole lot of communication. And that’s at least once, if not twice a day. And it’s funny, I’ve been running Philmont remotely for three years. So we’ve been having we call it daily huddle every day, every day, less than about seven to 12 minutes. And then we have a weekly meeting that lasts about an hour. And then we’d have a monthly meeting that lasts about three or four hours. And so nothing really changed for film itself. But I got the law firms to buy into this the ones that I could, and the ones that did, they seem like they were doing a lot better. And then what I saw is that they were monitoring, but not really spying on their employees. And some of them were actually doing better. And then some of them were doing worse. And I think the ones that had kids home that were small or whatever were bothering them or they had a problem. And they can’t help that. So what they did, though, they tried to when when things started, they started bringing in people that weren’t doing this good. And then they left them ones because they wanted to space they need to space distance from the six foot this that stuff in their offices. So they had they couldn’t bring everybody back. And I think all of them looked you know limited to marketing. And it depends on where you at. And what you do was we had a lot of smart ones that were doing TV they were able to negotiate and get twice as much TV or twice as much radio for the same price. That’s even got billboard companies to give them extra three or four months on the contract. We had some that were negotiating their leases getting some kind of belong there, they were getting PPP loans. And then they would get them to call their clients and they had to discover new contracts. So they were getting people in their office a car home I had one lorry to call and picked up like six new cases. One week just by colonist Oh class is present class and just check it out. And if somebody went further and sent letters out to all their present class and Oh, claps let them know they’re here for and they picked up like 20 sub cases. Just because people you know what is it? They know? You care so that we’re the smart ones did that and Yeah, I think that was like, there was no some of the main major things. I mean, you know,
Seth Price
you know, Ken, one of the things that we get asked a lot is, you know, you know, people start to say, Hey, I see this much revenue coming for this practice group. And people come to Jay and say, Hey, I’m thinking about pivoting into another practice area. Want to get your thoughts I remember I went to an early Hilma and realized about a third of the room was doing SSDI. And I was like, I gotta go do it. And built the website did it I realized it wasn’t for me and my my market, Mike, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. But the cost structure in an urban environment is not a good place to be, in my opinion, for an SSDI practice where you want lowest labor, lowest rent, what are your thoughts on when people come to you and say, hey, I want to expand my pie? What, you know, what, what type of advice do you have for somebody? Yeah,
Ken Hardison
well, I think you can expand it, but don’t go into a whole different practice here, you just kind of leech out at some of the leaders in your area, like I created a massive lawyer. And you just do general, maybe you want to really, because this is gonna really push some content out there about domestic violence, you know, when a plan that she has going on, right? He goes up when people stay with it, right. You know, if you’re a criminal lawyer, do expungements. I mean, that’s something that people, you know, if you’re a piano lawyer, you know, those be cars on roads. So there was many cohorts, that was the big deal for the lawyers. They were they were actually making money, but they won’t get the cases and they’re gonna feel it eight months from now, you know, maybe five months from now. But, you know, go into stuff, look at dog bark cases, look at swaybar bookcases, you know, look at motorcycle cases, because those guys go, right, they don’t give a shit what’s going on, right? So, so good to reach out in the A that you already did. But to, but to turn into, like, I want to go into bankruptcy because the economy is going bad. You know, you got to do that you better get by law firm, because to get up to speed, it’s just gonna be too much. Now, if you could go by a bankruptcy law firm, and you got the money, you can get a good deal. Maybe not a bad idea. But I don’t know if anybody’s gonna single right now because they made the money. Right? I mean, you know, so it’s always what supply and demand. But you know, I’ve been preaching that. I got a call yesterday I got I got a firm that’s trying to break into a new market, and they’re having problems. And so what they’re going to do is I’m going to drop by bottle on focus already got a good name there and absorb. And I think they will actually save money in the long run. And other dealers think about it. I’m a baby boomer, older baby boomers, as the last big deal, or lawyers are getting into retirement age, and some maybe not older retirement that shows how to headaches, NBS, or whatever, oh, you know what I’m saying? And great opportunity for some, a lot of lawyers out there by the law firms, make the personnel Council user good. We’ll do a transit transition that the guy or the girl that’s leaving, they make money you make money everybody used to when I first started when a lawyer, he just died and his practices died with him. I mean, there wasn’t a me that’s just the way it happened. Things have changed so much. I mean, so much now that there, there’s actually businesses out here to do nothing but broker law firms now. I mean, it’s the big is becoming a big business. I think it’d be more to the next five, seven years. I think you brokered one already this year back in when we did the deal last year, but we didn’t close it till February this year, right before the code. But he’s doing good. He’s actually doing good. I’m still working with him. You know, I helped him by helping with the money, but I helped him negotiate the deal. Good to some sources of muddy thought so that was a crazy, you know, not having to pay 20% interest, with luck from some of these hedge funds that like they like to do better stuff than more else six 7%.
Jay Ruane
Awesome. Can I actually have a question about that, you know, as someone who’s been in the position to sell your prior firms, and also assist lawyers with purchasing a firm, what are some of the things that a lawyer who’s thinking about getting into that purchasing of a firm to take over their business and expand that way? What are the things what are like the top three things that a lawyer should be looking for? When they are approached with the opportunity to buy a firm is it you know, current caseload is it you What is projected revenue? What are the things that at first, you know, you say, these are the things we need to know. And when you are positioning yourself to sell your firm, what did you do to make your firm attractive to an outside buy?
Ken Hardison
The number one thing, and most lawyers don’t believe me, the number one thing I will do they have a list. I’ve seen, I’ve seen corporations pay millions of dollars for other corporations just to get their list and then close the company there. If you’ve got a list of mailing lists, the current mailing list of all your prior clients email list, whether or not their content in them or not, if they you know, that is worth its weight in gold, in my opinion, because you could take everything from me just leaving my list. And I could have another firm up and going and flourishing within six months, I promise you. And I could do it very, pretty cheaply, too, with just emails and direct mails and stuff like that. But that would be the number one deal. The number two do would be to know what your reputation in the community is in top level lawyers, and then I will also be able to look into Google Plus Reviews. I mean, that’s gonna tell you most of what you need to know. And then I want to know, what is why are they wanting to sell? You know, is there something there? You know, is there something there I need to know about? Is this gotta get rid of get it done. If a child pornography, you know what I’m saying? I don’t want to buy a
Jay Ruane
t shirt.
Ken Hardison
list, but I don’t want about it.
Seth Price
I’ve been down this road a few times, you know, on smaller scale acquiring, but one of the things I’ve seen as I’ve tried to get bigger, and by a regional player in a geography just beyond mine has been unless somebody is sort of literally you get them at the moment before they’re about to collapse and pass away, you very often get unrealistic expectations of what the firm worth. And, you know, I find that I end up myself with the opportunities. I wish, I wish I could say that’d be more successful with this, of people who are literally on the way out, over bloated overhead, that you’re not going to be able to maintain files that are a mess, and that you end up with a huge headache. I really aspire to be at the other end where it’s a viable firm before the baby boomer you know, while they’re still around with what the rest of business does, like a three to five year buyout. That’s how the real world works the lawyer world and given what’s going on in Utah and Arizona, who knows, maybe we’re gonna see more of this and legal soon. But if you’ve any thoughts on how to get the timing so that you’re not knocking on doors were like, Yeah, sure, I’ll sell it to you for a price that’s silly, versus getting something where it’s defunct. And while you might get a decent deal, you’re gonna pay in sweat equity, cleaning up the mess.
Ken Hardison
What I do for lawyers that dentists do it again, is I’ll find out what community area geographic area they want, what kind of practice they want. And I just do a mass mailing maybe about three of them in a row, three months, and say, Listen, you know, and I do different angles on it, you know, when you’re targeted to headaches, whenever you have an exit strategy. And find somebody that wants to sell, don’t try to touch somebody and sell it to but just give them these things about you. What are you gonna do, maybe there’s a way I can, maybe I can help you hook you up with somebody that can take these words off of you to let you do what you want to do still make some money, because you know, protect your family, your estate, things like that. But you’re right. I mean, when I did, not the last one, but the one before like two years ago. We had to kiss a lot of the prints. Because everybody thought it’s like when you sell a house, you always think it’s worth more than frigates worth because it’s your house, my car, my house, it’s worth you don’t want I mean, you know, even
Seth Price
even more so than the house because it’s and whether or not revenue is irrelevant. It’s your people. It’s this whole thing that has nothing to do with, you know, numbers. And, you know, again, given that there’s that window where you need the motivated seller, clearly as we’re both saying you need somebody who’s motivated to sell, but not so motivated that there’s nothing left. I have a particular deal on the table right now in the immigration side. And the group is wound the firm down so much, that while the pricing is fine, the lifting the labor, the mental anguish for myself and staff would be so much that I’m not sure that juice is worth the squeeze.
Ken Hardison
Yeah. And that’s what you gotta Yeah, you got to look at it too. It’s like I say, why are they want to sell? I mean, they already weld it down. I mean, they got much to sell really, although I’ll tell you, I’ve did this back. This is years ago, this is back in the 80s. They had older lawyers there and Mark Kennedy, when they died, I’d go to their spouse by their phone numbers, and you might $500. And you know, what, why do you want that? Sort of popular number, whatever, but I want it because he’s our clients are several call him. You know, and I say, Well, no, this is law offices, but it’s not him. He’s deceased. But what can I help you with? I’d be like four or five of those in the 80s. Overall, your dad in town, and people thought I was crazy. But I mean, I thought it was I thought it was a smart deal. Deal. No, no, no, no, I
Seth Price
agree. I’ve tried 2.0 That was buying the URLs for those guys at it. It didn’t have I don’t think it was quite as successful generally. In the sense that the number was still coming. The older guys with URLs, the sights didn’t have that much traffic and there wasn’t there. But as we now we’re looking at boomers, they’ve had sites for a decade. And as Jay knows, on the marketing side, those crusty old domains, you can’t, you know, you put one of those out, we’re just joking the other day, a domain that I planted years ago and haven’t done anything to in years, I’m driving to the beach, and I tested my search on the way there and all of a sudden, the site I hadn’t touched in 10 years, was top of the SERPs. You know, it was like time to dust this one off. So when you can get those, again, the analogy to phone numbers can be very valuable.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, there’s something to be said for, you know, putting up a three page site now that you’re going to harvest in a decade. You know, get your ideas when we can, you brought up something, and I want to touch on it before we get too far off of it. And you talked about if I had to start from scratch with a list, you know, in six months, I could be profitable. And as we see some lawyers trying to pivot, or people who are striking out on their own, I think that’s something that that that you can provide some insight to? What, how long should it take for a practice to become profitable? Because so many people think, Hey, I’m gonna hang a shingle, and at the end of the first month, I’m gonna have money in my pocket. But you’ve seen a lot of these firms. What do you think is a reasonable amount of time? To get a firm from zero to? Okay, we actually have something here.
Ken Hardison
It depends on what type of practice you know, let me give you one extreme to the other. One of my mastermind members, she got in veterans disability, she lost $2 million. Before she started getting profitable. It took her four years, but now she’s killing it. Seven years in it, he’s killing it. I’m telling you, he killed it. But that was most large campaign, you know, what I’m saying? She had a very profitable security practice, to hang on to. Now security practice, it’s gonna take about three years. Because the case is take two years, you know, 18 months, two years. And you got to do PR press will take about, you know, a couple years.
Seth Price
Frankly, it depends how you account for it, right? We’re not illegal space, you open a business, you capitalize it with X amount. You know, if you’re saying, you know, your SSDI cases come in a couple years later, your PII case come in a couple of years later, you still have all that expense for those two years. The first few cases are not making you profitable, a one that may be profitable in that month. But you know, how well are you capitalizing what you’re doing? And are you realistic for what the the horizon is to get to true profitability?
Ken Hardison
That’s something that I actually preach this now, probably more than I did. 10 years ago. You have gotten, most businesses fail because of lack of the lack of capitalization, all kinds of businesses, you know, they go within five years. You know, born hardest is a revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. But cash is key. If you don’t have the cash, you know, anybody that knows I’ve been through it. Where you you’re making money and you have to pay debt, but you ain’t got no damn money. It’s fine America. And I went through that. And let me tell you, it’s not fun when you got to write a check for three or $400,000. You only probably drew out cash out of 20,000. As to what I mean, because you’re having to pay these loan back. Like you say, you didn’t have that money up front, right? It’s got to catch up. So you got to pay it back. Get over but you’re still making profit on the book. but you’re not. It’s just circle. But yeah, but I mean, you know, so it takes a while. And that’s why I like that idea of maybe, if I was gonna go to a new practice area maybe trying to buy for, I think it’s a lot easier. But you got to be careful when you get an overpay. You got to make sure they got the list and why they’re selling it. And do it is you bad and fraud and why they’re selling and all those things. I mean, it’s easy under the scene, and it gets quicker to profits then just starting from scratch. I love that I started Social Security practice from scratch. After I sold my first firm, just to prove that I could build a firm for 6000 hours about marketing. And I did I had like 700 cases in like, two years, suspended up more than $6,000 a month on marketing. Yeah, but it was a lot of work to do a lot of grassroots stuff. But back then it was, you know, I sold it two years, but it’s still in profitable of how I made my profit by selling it. Because I really had started making money, I was losing money, you lost money the first two years. But I still make money. Because I sold it now, I made the decision that the margins were so thin that I was going to have to still have a set amount of games, I was gonna be 4000 cases. And I just didn’t want the headaches of all those people. Because security’s very intense labor, lawyers and staff. And I just didn’t want the headaches. So I stole it. But somebody like criminal, you get paid up front, I think the road there is a lot quicker than it would be like for a PR disability or somebody that’s already continuously you know, flat fees gonna go to get profitable quicker than anything else. But it depends on what your average fee is to you know, that’s that’s the that’s the big deal. I mean, for the most part, lawyers will charge enough just to be honest with you. And they’re scared, and they’re scared that they’re gonna lose the client. So they look toward him. And the truth is, it’s like I had this lawyer asked me at one of our bishops when he or she says, I’m domestic lawyer, and he says, I’m working United 60 hours a week. He’s making good money, but I’m just appraisal, he’s just dead. She said, What can I do? I said, how much you charge Rs. $300 and get to 600? Well, I’ll lose half my clients. I said, Absolutely, absolutely. I said, you work 30 hours and make just as much
Seth Price
your points well taken, whether it’s an exact one, but I’m a big believer in that the idea that if the rate is higher, you’re perceived by the community differently, we early on, on our criminal practice, as we move into white collar and the higher end federal, you would lose people if you didn’t have a higher number, the number you’re pegged at, if somebody is getting divorced, and they see a $300 an hour number that pegs you as a lawyer, it shouldn’t, but it does. And if you say I am a five or $600 an hour lawyer, look, realistically, you may have a sliding scale, say, oh, military discount, that’s 300, you know, you know, destitute mom, you know, we can you can get your pricing. So it’s not that much different. But you’re not going to get the higher end cases. You know, as I build out my firm with all the lawyers, I’ve always had like a high end criminal lawyer and then a lower end person who could do the cases where there’s less funds,
Jay Ruane
and below if price doesn’t really go to court.
Seth Price
So So the idea being that as you do that, when you’re talking that solo can the idea is almost like you have to wear two hats, because what that person is doing is they’re only getting the junior money. They’re not taking advantage of the fact that they also assuming that they have that that experience and gravitas that they could be that senior person at the higher level getting that in, you know, again, they could say I’m only there. But the idea that if you are one person, you don’t have associates yet the idea that you have to play both ends of it to be to be viable, or to be most profitable, I should say. Yeah. Okay.
Jay Ruane
So can you tell us a little bit about your October event because I know some of the people who are watching might be interested in that
Ken Hardison
something, you know, whatever Kobe, we had to kind of pivot okay. And so I’m doing something I’ve never done. I want to do an event this three days, like from 11 o’clock Eastern to five o’clock Eastern like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday that that gets the ticket. I can’t remember slug October 5. Thanks. Next things that will take that day, and it’s really going to be me, probably 90% of me, I’ve never done this before, usually bigger bits, we had three or four days, I might speak twice. And I just think, you know, whether I’m right or wrong, I think that people need me more now than ever, to be honest with you. So I want to share some stuff I’ve never seen before other than when people didn’t pay me 15 Or one on one consultation, but I feel like it’s time to help help lawyers out there in some only charge, like 497 If you’re a member appeal was 297. And I give 100% money back guarantee. Because, you know, my deal is, you don’t think it’s helping you I don’t deserve your money, right? I enjoy what I do. And if nobody’s ever gonna say that to get money, right? Because I just give me a damn money back. I don’t need it. That bad. You know what I mean?
Seth Price
I was I went to your first event over a decade ago, and I remember seeing that offer, I’m like, if you’re gonna make that offer, you know, I’m in and over the years, have you actually more than a hand, more than two or three people ever come up to you for that?
Ken Hardison
00 11 years? But I expect that any day, you know, somebody’s gonna do it.
Seth Price
Right? You know, you’d be happy to do it. I tried to think of it that way. I wish we could 100% be this way with clients. Jay, I don’t know if you’re the same way. But your traffic matters, everything. I don’t think this was right. You did the work, you’ve earned it. But if somebody’s really not happy, you know, make that person happy.
Jay Ruane
I gotta tell you, that happened to me. Three weeks ago, we had that hurricane here knocked out power. I had a client who against my advice, opt to just start a hearing before I could get to internet access. And they went through the hearing, they got denied on their expungement, which is what they wanted. He called me up, he said, I’d like I’d like half my money back. I said, you’re getting 100% refund. I’m sorry that that happened. But it is what it is, you went forward against my advice. I’m just gonna refund you go with God have a nice day. And he actually wrote a nice review, and saying things didn’t go well. And I really respect this man’s integrity for just giving me all my money back when he definitely did a lot of work for me. So I think that helps people long term. But think of it as you’re not serving. This is one client, you’re serving your entire career. And we’re in this business for decades. You know, what you’re doing in 2020? can also impact you in 2040? You know, so? For sure, absolutely.
Ken Hardison
Absolutely. I mean, that’s what it’s all about banner, I really believe that marketing as we know, it is in a process of changing online and offline. I think it really is. When all my rather than boomers are going on, I think you’re going to see something completely different than what you see now. It’s gonna be really trust based relationship marketing, I think it’s gonna be so much more about that than it is about being on the first page of Google or, or, or being on TV or being on radio. I really believe that the really successful lawyers are gonna be the ones that really their past class or marketing for. I really believe that.
Jay Ruane
You say that now. And last week, we had Peter Shankman, and he talked all about it’s a customer service economy. And that’s really where things are at. So it’s interesting. You know, two people who haven’t heard each other speak are talking about the exact same thing, Seth?
Seth Price
No, I just look, I appreciate it. Ken, thank you so much for everything you’ve done for both myself and for the industry. We love having you here and hope to hope to have you back soon. But thank you for making the time today.
Ken Hardison
Well, thank you ppreciate.
Jay Ruane
Again, take it easy. We’ll see you in October.
Ken Hardison
They’ll be good. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker
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Unknown Speaker
Alright set so let’s talk about this because it came up during the interview with Ken I’m, I made a little bit of a joke, but it’s something that I think, you know, it’s it’s sort of a gut punch, right? And it’s that you’re not in court every day, like some of the lawyers in your firm. So let’s talk about that.
Seth Price
Right. And so from my point of view, I look at as a superpower, we had Peter Shankman talking about ADHD as a superpower. So, to me the idea that I’ve divided and conquered with somebody who loves to be in court, where I was good in court, I was six and over my legal career, but you know, but in my courtroom career, but that I feel that I have the ability to focus on things that we all speak about, the whole show is about, you know, growth, and marketing and operations. And the idea that you can sort of try to do both, and it’s funny things the ADHD is kicking in, but there been a lot of articles written and stories about women, can they have it all? Can you raise kids and have a full time career, and that was a very controversial column in the post, and you really can’t, you can’t be at the top of your career, and also fully be there for your kids along the way. Again, that’s that’s one sort of side piece that is out there. I’m sure there are examples that counter it. But these were very accomplished. People said, you really can’t, can’t do both. I believe at some level, it is very hard to do both at a law firm, that if you don’t want to be, you know, David is, you know, in court teaching at Harvard Law, you know, taking on cases, you just got that case of the person who is supposedly doing espionage for Russia, while within the military. I mean, like, you can’t be the Adel plus level practitioner, and also take care of everything else, unless you take certain steps or something’s gonna give. So to me, the fact that I have not put myself I’m guessing like a John Morgan is not in court on a day to day basis. And you had sort of had a pop culture reference, talking about the fact that this is not new. This is something you back in the 80s people were talking about. Yeah, it was,
Unknown Speaker
you know, it’s the I used to watch la law, you know, when I was a kid, or 1314 years old, and there was a scene where all the guys and the women in the boardroom, were making fun of Douglas Bragman saying, you know, you’re not a lawyer, you know, you just run this place, but you don’t do what we do. And you know, he actually had a very unique approach to the case that they wound up adopting, and it won the case. And he was like, Look, I am a lawyer, I only do this so that you can do your job. I don’t want to be doing this. This isn’t what I signed up to do. I didn’t go to law school to do this. And it’s interesting, because you know, it’s something that we’ve talked about a bunch of times, you know, we see a lot of law firms grow. And they sort of hit a wall, right. And now, I’m looking at my own firm, I’m sure you’ve done some introspection, look at your own firm. And we’ve been able to grow because of who we are, because of my fascination with systems, because of the things that I put into place. But the things you the way you aggressively go at markets and that type of thing. And I wonder if there are people who are watching this who are thinking, I just want to be a lawyer, I don’t want I like, I like the idea of growth. But I like the idea of being a lawyer more. And for me, I you know, I’d love to get back to actually doing some legal stuff. But I can’t do that in my firm, because I’m the only one who can do what I can do. You know, about that I’ve
Seth Price
pushed you over the years saying, you know, your nares you’re not going to bring somebody in who’s as good as you on lawyering side. I’m gonna go to court, you’re gonna pick up cases and all that’s fair. But the question is, you can only do so much so well, what your what is that? What can you not outsource? But what can you add to? You know, I think one of the things I’m most proud of is early on a max law when I was on an early Maxwell episode with Jim and Tyson, somebody listened Dane Dane Phillips. And he’s like, he heard what we were doing. He’s like, I want to be part of this. And the idea was, it was exactly what you’re talking about. He loved going to court. But he didn’t want to run a firm he was sort of ready to be out on his own. And so to me, it is that segmentation where you can allow people to do what you want. And it’s fraught with peril, because let’s say you say I just want to be, I just want to be in in court and you find a local person who happens to want the opposite the odds of a business marriage working, probably not unlike a personal marriage, you know, there’s a very large failure rate. So again, what I’ve loved about price bento is the fact that we’ve been able to bring people on and work them into our system so they could have their own practice within our practice to actually practice and have intake and marketing and ops and everything else taken care of for them. The thing that I sort of look at as we talk to our many of our listeners who are like, Hey, how do I find that missing piece? You got to do one of two things, you either have to go out and buy it and hire somebody to do it. Or and that may not be cost effective. Or you got to bring somebody in with equity, who’s going to balance you out and pick your poison, right? You’re, you know, well, while you’re, you know, you have the lion’s share of what what the profitability of your firm is, but you have a lot on your shoulders. And the question is what’s right, and you have to figure out what’s right for you. And history is written by the victor, if you find the right partner, friend of mine locally with a large, digital creative agency, rolled up into a larger agency, he went from like two people to 100 employees to a huge roll up that will probably go public. And the idea is he found the right partners along the way. And history will be told by that how many people do we know that partner with somebody, it’s a disaster, it sets them back years? So if, if if you can either hire the right person? Or if if if you can partner with the right person and create something bigger, either as a great path, the question is, can you find something that actually will get there versus the rose colored glasses in the wish, and then you find out the reality after the honeymoon, that you really don’t have? What’s needed, or it’s not as synergistic or friendly situation,
Jay Ruane
what I find is, a lot of times, you find solos who wind up partnering up with another lawyer, and they partner up with that lawyer thinking, wow, this means that I’m not the one on calls on Saturday and Sunday anymore, or there’s going to be somebody else for me to, you know, to worry about splitting that rent with. And what they really are getting is another person and all of their problems that now they have to solve. So your problems go for 100%, yours to now 100%, yours and 50% of somebody else’s. So you’re really only adding work to yourself by adding a partner to the mix sometimes, if it’s not done with the right sort of introspection and vision. And this goes back to stuff that we’ve talked about in the past. And it really is, what is your vision for how you want to practice law, that should be your overarching decision. You know, there are a lot of law firms that have grown and scaled, because that is the vision of the partners who are making those decisions. But there are simply some that decide to stay and maybe they add one or two associates, maybe they add more staff, but they don’t want to necessarily get large to 40 lawyers, 60 lawyers, 100 lawyers and staff. Because that’s just not part of their vision, and they’ve made those concrete steps. I’m going to tell you right now, I’m happy where I’m at, I may, you know, I may add one or two staff I met may add one or two lawyers may subtract one or two lawyers, but I think I’ve decided to I’m maxed out I’m, you know, I’m nearing 50, I don’t want I don’t want to have to put in the effort to get to get huge. I just don’t think it’s for me, and and it’s taken a long time to come to that decision. So I’ve grown, but I think I’m gonna cap my own growth. Maybe not necessarily in profitability, but in size. That’s the way I’m looking at it.
Seth Price
If Vegas would take odds on it, I’d probably bet against it. But you know, meaning that we may not see the last of rolling attorneys in its expansion, but it’s another thing, I would say
Jay Ruane
Benowitz when they want to get into Connecticut, that’s what I’ll do.
Seth Price
Lead up with Pb nr. So we you know, when one of the things you mentioned was people look at business partners. So that’s could be a topic for an entire show is how do you find a business partner, right, and a lot of life a lot of business life, I relate back to dating and probably get myself sued at some point, because I use it with employees, whether it’s recruiting, it’s the same dating, whether it’s clients an intake, it’s, you know, it’s all about that dating dance. And I feel that very often, when I look at how people choose to be law partners, you see really dysfunctional courtship going on, where you know, somebody, but it’s sort of like being friends with somebody and then deciding to get married, and not having those tough decisions, whether in the personal side, it might be What religion are you or your Can I live with your your in law is going to drive me so crazy, it’s going to end the marriage? Do we want to have kids how many like all those decisions, and I see those hard questions that really need to be asked along the lines of what you were just talking about, which is what do you want? You know, are you interested in doing working in this part of it? Is it actually synergistic? Or is the two people talking about what they want? So two things happen? You get into the marriage, let’s assume that it’s good for a moment. But two things happen. One is what people say they want isn’t always what they want, which sucks is true. In the personal side. It’s true. You know, every profile that when I when I dated, people love their family and love to travel and you find out that they can’t stand their family and hate hate leaving their home. You know, that what people say is not necessarily actually what they believe. But secondly, people change so that you’re in this marriage now with somebody, and things happen, their marriage breaks up, there’s a substance abuse issue, their marriage, their marriage is good and their family grows, and they want more time at home. All of those things are such variables. And that not that look, if you thought about it too much, you’d never do anything. But thinking about it smartly, knowing all of those variables, and asking at least the threshold first questions, Jay, that you referred to a moment ago, so that you have an idea, are we both getting something that complements each other, versus two people that want to be the frontman, and you hear this a lot, who don’t want to practice and want to focus on marketing, if you have two people that are aspiring to do the same thing? You’re no better off than you were before?
Jay Ruane
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, I get into this debate, sometimes with my wife, she’s gonna hate the fact that I’m gonna bring it up. But, you know, she has a tendency to try to maintain relationships for you know, 2030 years. And I said, you know, some of those relationships, you became friends with those people merely because you lived in close proximity to them, not necessarily, because you had a lot in common with them. And so you now that you’re older, and wiser, and you’re, I want to say set in your ways, but you sort of decided certain things about your life, those friends may not necessarily be true friends anymore, if they ever truly were. And that’s something that I think you got to look into. You know, it’s nice when you’re undergoing the shelling of the daily practice of law when you’re being fired upon to have somebody else in the foxhole with you. It’s a whole nother thing that when the shelling is done, you know, is this somebody that you can actually spend some time with and build something with. And I think that’s something that we got to keep talking about, because we want to remind people that that’s something that they have to talk about. But once again, says we are we’re going to be overtime, if you didn’t know that it happens almost every week, except for when we have Shankman who goes a million miles an hour, but we’re going to be overtime, for sure. So you want to leave it with this, I got a couple of things to talk about. First off, if you want to take this on the go, you can subscribe to our podcast, it’s available on all of the podcasting platforms. Or you can get us through the maximum lawyer podcast. As you know, we are sponsored by maximum lawyer media, as well as my firm, firm flex and Seth’s firm’s blue shark. But we have been working on a bunch of things for you guys in the coming weeks. And I think it’s going to be some cool stuff. So we’ve got a new segment that’s going to air next week. Let’s book it with Ryan McCain says, you know, Ryan, so tell me what you think he’s gonna bring to the next year?
Seth Price
Well, look, what we’re trying to do is, have some fun and breed be bring as much value as possible. So Ryan is just a great innovative attorney, who is also bridging the gap between amazing practitioner and creatively running a firm and building it out. It’s just awesome to watch in action. And the idea that he’s going to do something which I am dying for, which is to basically do a deep dive on a book a week, I don’t always have time to read all those books, but I’d love to sort of be inspired, get enough takeaways from him figure out which ones I want to spend my time on, you know, reading fully, but I can’t wait to have Ryan and create different segments. So let us know what it is you’re interested in. And if there’s a particular book you want Ryan to to focus on or something that topic for the show, bring it to us, but I’ll leave Jay with this. You know, I’m closer to your to your wife in the sense of I hold on to people for many, many years. But it is interesting that while I do it for myself, when I’m out there, and I see over the COVID period, and you watch people’s social interactions from a distance, you do see it’s fascinating when you do see relationships that are out there easier to see in others than in yourself that are really dysfunctional. But I’ve just stood the test of time. And II The analogy can be brought to the business world. It’s not dissimilar there are relationships in the business world that are you know, that were served a purpose for a long period of time. But if sort of outlive that, and you have that loyalty piece, you’re not going to give up true friends over that. But very often as I think you were alluding to, where where the friendship really has devolved, and it’s really just an obligation. It’s a much tougher, tougher thing and maybe a future discussion for us here.
Jay Ruane
Yeah, I think that’d be a great thing to talk about. And the other thing, before we go, we are bringing back our hot seats. We’ve done some a couple of weeks ago. And if you’re interested in being in a hot seat, and let us know down below in the comments, because we’d love to have you talk through your growth problems, see what we can do to help you out. We’ll bring you on a show. And we’ll give you some unbiased free advice and see if we can help you get to the next level because that’s what we’re here all about at maximum growth live. So with that, we’re going to end this show this week. I am Jamie Wayne, he is Seth price over there. Thank you so much for being with us. And we’ll see you again next Thursday on another edition of maximum growth live. Bye for now.
Unknown Speaker
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