In today’s episode Seth and Jay continue down the rabbit hole of coaching for lawyers and spend time with Tim McKey of Vista consulting.
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Transcript: Maximum Growth Live with Tim McKey
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 am one of your host Jay Ruane, CEO of firm flex social media marketing for lawyers as well as Ruane attorneys, a criminal defense and civil rights firm in Connecticut, and I am just in Connecticut. I’m not all over the place. But with me as always my friend sat down there, Del Boca Vista, Florida still, how’s the weather today surf? Raining looks like a little bit of
Unknown Speaker
rain and it’s the first rating a while.
Jay Ruane
So let me ask you this, or do you wish you were back home in DC at blue shark or Price Benowitz where you’ve got you know, your SEO firm and your law firm? Because they don’t have any rain now in that area.
Speaker 3
We got we got other issues in DC. I was gonna say yeah, blue shirts all virtual right now we, you know, our millennial crowd didn’t want to be in an office we in bullpen situations. And so we’re going to reconfigure post, you know, post COVID law firm itself, you know, it’s a mixed bag, but basically anybody who needs to be in the office needs to be in the office. But you know, I am clearly not one of those people.
Jay Ruane
You’re, you’re unnecessary at your law firm. But that’s okay. That’s okay. We’ve got a great show today. Seth, we’ve got another great guest. You know, all through January, we’ve been talking about coaching, the role of coaching, the role of consultants, how they can take your firm to the next level. And we’ve got a great guests and other great guests coming on the heels of Melissa Shanahan last week. But tell us a little bit about our guest today.
Speaker 3
Timothy is the founder of VISTA VISTA is sort of one of those great powerhouse consulting groups. It focuses mostly on the contingency world, Pei, med mal and things like that. But the what he talks about the fundamentals apply to everybody. He’s really big on figuring out what your why is what you’re what you’re growing for, why you know what you’re doing. And then once once he does that, they’re just they’re they’ve been big way ahead of the curve on KPIs. He’s had legendary partners with him over the years, putting Mickey love and others who have helped build firms, some with some from within our tribes, some outside, but some of the largest players in the country have gone to Tim and VISTA to help them build and grow their firms.
Jay Ruane
Yeah, I’m really excited about this, you know, plaintiffs pie is a little different from most other fee for service lawyers stuff, because on the fee for service stuff, you’re getting paid up front, you’ve got a little bit more of the sales thing that goes into it. But players pie is sort of its own little industry. And there’s a lot of consultants that were just on the plaintiffs pie. But the crazy thing about it is there’s stuff to be learned for the fee for service law firm from the plaintiffs pie world that I think you know, it crosses barriers. And when you’re not tapped into those people, and you’re not talking to those people, because you think that you don’t have much in common, you’re really missing out on some great lessons that you can learn about scale, about growth, about operations. And I think this is a great opportunity for us to talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 3
Yeah. And having in play in both of these worlds, what he talks about, as you said, he talks about the the you’ll hear about the intake of cases and getting more cases, and about getting more value for the cases, if you if you’re not in the pie space, listen to it from the point of view, you’re still getting in the cases. So that part applies no matter what. But instead of increasing the value, the thing I’ve been working about, we’re talking about internally, and I think we should talk about on future shows is how do you get the time to produce that widget down, you’re not going to increase the value of the case. But if you get a flat fee case, and you can do it more efficiently, you’ll be making more money and I want that to be a theme on future shows.
Jay Ruane
I love that. I love that. Okay, so what we’re going to do right now, folks is take a quick break, you’ll hear from our sponsors. Of course, we are always syndicated on the maximum lawyer media platform. You can catch us on the maximum lawyer podcast, you can catch us always on our own Facebook Live show, as well as our own standalone podcast. So there’s plenty of opportunity for you to follow us. But for now, folks, take a few moments hear from our sponsors. When we come back, you’ll hear from Tim McKee from VISTA in our max growth interview. You will be right back.
Speaker 4
The lawyers who will succeed in the next decade are the ones who are focusing on building their brands where people meet, and there is no place better to build your brand than on social media. With a firm like DIY social media plan, hundreds of lawyers like you are using social media to build their brand and become the one lawyer in their community that people know like and trust. By spending even just five minutes a day on social media marketing, you can engage with hundreds or 1000s of people in your local community who will need your services. By cultivating a network of followers, you build a book of business that you can market to the next decade and beyond. If you are looking for a solution to help you jumpstart your social media marketing, look no further than the DIY plan at get firm flex.com. The DIY was created by a small firm lawyer for people just like you helping you connect with local people online and build your brand and engage people in the topics they want to talk about all for under $100 a month. To find out more visit get firm flex.com.
Speaker 5
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 that says typically, throughout the time that we’ve been working with blue shark digital, our law firm, the Atlanta divorce law group grew over 14 100%
Jay Ruane
Seth and his team have years of experience in this area,
Speaker 6
blue shark is truly a part of the firm. So I don’t consider blue shark any different than the employees in my office.
Speaker 3
Sam, great to have you here, founder of VISTA consulting. Thank you for being with us.
Speaker 7
Thank you so much for inviting me, I’m excited to be here.
Speaker 3
You know, we’re doing a series with coaches. And I look at you as one of the leaders in the in the plaintiffs bar space. You’ve come inside our firm and many friends of mine, and really helped us put systems and metrics in place, many of which are ones that you told us we needed, but that it took years before we can actually get to the point that we could implement. Talk to us about that process you see inside of so many different firms. What is the process of sort of evaluating what people need, and giving them a roadmap as far as how they can go about starting to put those things in place?
Speaker 7
Well, I’ll use an analogy, I’ll use an analogy of a physical you know, if you go to the doctor, you get a physical and sometimes you know, a my knees hurting or my ankles hurting. But you haven’t may actually have an idea why it’s hurting. But without a doctor actually looking at everything and doing running some tests. If they don’t know whether, hey, you got a torn meniscus or your left leg shorter than your right leg or, you know, it can be anything. So we are pretty much sticklers with assessing before we start giving anyone advice to try to understand where you are, where you are in your firm’s in regard to I’ll use a word that may not be the exact right one but sophistication and regard to how are you managing today? Do you have a number of people that that help you manage? And we also look at what what phase you are in the lifecycle of a firm? Are you a startup? Are you a firm that needs a turnaround of some type? Are you looking to simply rely on a few things? Or are you sustaining success, I mean, you you’re all really doing really well. And you’re one of those that really wants to keep pushing that envelope. And by the way, we love that. You know, I think that even people in the first phase of startup, if they’re always looking for that next little acorn, if you will, next little nugget that that fruit on in the chop salad that’s really, really good. Those are the ones that we can have a lot of effect with. So assess, find out where the issues are, and then attack those issues in such a way that that give what we call early yardage. Because no one wants to work a long, long time and you finally get it. So we kind of arrange our work with our clients to see so that you can see progress. I mean, even if it’s very, very small thing. But once your team start saying hey, you know what they are, they’re not going to let this go. This is not a fly by night type things. They’re going to do it and we’re going to keep going. That’s where we find the success. So long winded answer to a short question.
Speaker 3
You’ve been way ahead of, you know, you were sort of way ahead of the curve. For many of us. I mean, there were established longtime firms with KPIs and digging into stuff that now at least with our community, we sort of spent much more time as our firms develop being able To dig into them, one of the things that I’ve seen is as the case management software has gotten more robust, that some of the things that before took act of God that you were pretty good at putting together are now more attainable to us mortal lawyers that are trying to put our firms in the best stead, you speak a little bit to that about where we are today, as far as what is available, I want to say off the shelf, but what are some of the based on some of the names, case management software’s? What and again, we could start with plaintiffs firms and then broaden the answer from there. But what’s available to people today that that might not have been if they sort of looked into software a decade ago?
Speaker 7
Well, a decade ago, just about everything was server based, you know, on premises there, the cool people say it’s on prem, you know, if you have a server on premises, and your electricity goes down or something like that, then then you’re kind of out of luck. But everything is seems to be migrating to the cloud, where you don’t have the type issues and people can work from it everywhere, which is great. You have apps on your phone, I’m picking up my phone. There. It’s easier today. But I will also say and this is not a slap in any way, shape, or form at the new are case management systems that that they are built to be what they say they are, which is case management systems, they are very good at that. Now, our plugin has been to help them become practice management systems, and some are better than others in now, adding those reports in there that you can get out and use to actually manage your parent, whether plaintiff or other type firm, that doesn’t matter. It’s we always say we want the data, we don’t necessarily have to be the people to provide it. So and lots of every firm is different. We’ve been in, as you said, a lot of firms, we have over 150 firms in the US and Canada, and not one of them that we walked in, we said this is a duplicate of x, because they’re all nuances. They’re different people tweaks on systems and processes. And what we’ve tried to do is just take those best practices, and meld them if you will, into a process of advising. But as still goes back to assessment until we know where the problem is, you know, we can’t really advise often say it’s like jello, sometimes we can push down over here, and that will come up over here. So that’s why that holistic approach, in our opinion, is a way to go. So case management systems, absolutely excited that the new ones are there, they are more robust. But your team still needs training on consistency. Because if you don’t put things in it consistently no matter what it says garbage in garbage out. verbiage, right? So being consistent, and then monitoring is is the way to go. And I’m gonna say one more thing I’m gonna shut up. It’s important to us that we look at two types of reports, the scoreboard reports, and then diagnostic reports. Now let’s give you a contrast. Scoreboard just means Hey, just what’s going on, we’re winning or losing, right? You know, our, our conversion ratio is 93% plus, but that does not tell us if Suzy is 99%. And Billy is 86%. Those are diagnostic reports. So digging in being able to say hey, we’re winning, but who’s blocking or tackling or not blocking or tackling and how can we coach them? That’s the the import of data.
Speaker 3
And I think a lot of things we touched on data and data out that I know we’ve struggled with is it’s one thing we’re finally getting those metrics in place, but then you’re looking at it, there’s a whole non sexy part, which is can you get your employees to get the data in in a disciplined way so that you can make the data that you then reflect upon, is meaningful, on the one hand, and I think the other thing is, there’s so much data, you know, a lot of us have been focused recently on traction and trying to get move on rocks. And I almost feel like do you look at data similarly that if you look at everything, you’ll get nowhere? Or is you know, are there certain pieces that you like should be first attempting to conquer before you attempt to broaden that so that you don’t, you know, keep spinning your wheels?
Speaker 7
To keep going with my sports analogy? Absolutely. Vince Lombardi walked in and said this is a football. So we start with basics, what are the basics and we’ve got, you know, with investing with younger firms, the reports that we like to get to to start with, if you will, and I could hit a few of those but it always it’s interesting that once the basics are in place, then the the quarterback which in this case being the owner of the managers of the firm, they Look at that and say, hey, if we can do this, we need to know this. And things begin to kind of spread out if you will, more and and they’re very custom. You know, we work with firms, again in the plaintiff world that are that are more referral type firms, we have high volume advertising firms, we have very boutique, targeted male Mau Mau type firms, different ones aren’t that and they, they still all need the basics. But those individual kind of one off type things are very customed, to the to the firm we’re working with.
Speaker 3
You know, before I head off to Jay, for some further questions that may go beyond sort of the personal injury experience. One of the things that I that I analogize to when you came into our firm years ago, it’s almost like bringing a therapist to a family and seeing all your dirty laundry, what are some of the obstacles that people have to get over in order to be able to open the kimono because they’re, you know, when you’re starting out? There’s so many things that you’re trying to spin together to get this off the ground? You know, what are some of the things where somebody who’s considering working with a consultant or coach that like, what are some of the things that like you don’t know what you don’t know? Where do you usually find that you can add the quickest value coming in and seeing what’s going on.
Speaker 7
I can, I can usually set we are we’re past that obstacle to entry if we’re there. Because you know, if someone is outside brave enough to let you know, a Yahoo like me, get their nose under their tent and start looking around, then they’re there. They’re pretty brave to begin with. And I’m not saying because it’s us, I’m saying because it’s any consultant, or any advisor from outside that comes in and look, we can only see what we can see you don’t know what you don’t know. You’re right. So once we’re past that, then it becomes a discussion. And from from our standpoint, where do we find the most yardage? Well, it’s interesting that one of the questions or very first questions we ask is, What do you want to be? You know, what, give me a vision of your firm? I mean, is it big? Is it small as a targeted, highly commercial advertising? Or is it using the client experience cycle as your, your American to attract or referrals, all those things? Once we find those out, then we can tailor you know, our work to there. But you know, generally? Well, it’s not generally, there’s no doubt, there’s only two ways to grow. I’ll say applying to firm which is get more cases and increase the value of the cases. Now, there’s a lot of other subsets of that, and we work on all of those. But first of all, we got to identify, you know, marketing in place. Okay, employees getting good conversions, when people are calling, are you converting them? You know, that’s the more cases part right? And then shifting right into case management, what are the systems and processes in place at a firm to add value to those firms having to those to those cases. So we are always, no matter what we’re talking about, if we cannot trace it back to one of those two areas of growth for the firm, then we’re not doing our job. We can get off on a little bit of subsets and all those kinds of things when we’re, if we’re talking about HR, for example, or having the right people in place, is your strategy. Right? You know, the strategy is kind of the what we’re going to do. And then we talk a lot about tactics, but if we don’t know your strategy, or tactics can be off and the tactics, meaning the how we do things, right. Infrastructure be the who. So there’s, there’s a lot of interplay, if you will, with the who, what and how. The why, obviously, is the big thing, which is the vision, but once we identify areas, that there are weak and our work is inherently critical, we we basically attack that and say, Okay, what is the issue? What are the problems? where are the bottlenecks, and we’re consultants, we’re not, we’re not subcontractor, so we don’t come in there and do the work, what we do is help you get a set of tools to help you with the systems and processes and coach your team. And with those reports that we talked about earlier, that’s simply an accountability system. And you mentioned something about getting your team to do things and once you get a mind shift of with your team that not only do I need to do the work as a team member of my team business type work of say a paralegal, you know, contacting your clients or getting met records or whatever that happens to be part of what there have to be judged on now is their their usage of our case management question and they consistency off because if we go to someone and say, hey, you know, we noticed that it will say our criteria is too Contact our clients every two weeks or whatever your criteria is. And we noticed that you haven’t been able to keep up with that. And as soon as someone says, Oh, I did it, but I didn’t write it down. Or I didn’t enter it, then all of a sudden light bulbs kind of go off with them that, hey, I’m being judged not only on what I do, but how I record it, because we can’t manage if we don’t have that data, we’re just guessing. So, anyway, another long winded answer. Jay,
Jay Ruane
you know, it’s really interesting to me that you talk about if you if you did it, and you didn’t write it down, it didn’t happen. You know, that’s, that’s a skill set that we often use in trial work, because when those records don’t reflect what we know, was done, but they didn’t write it down. Sometimes we can blow a hole through a witness’s testimony. So it’s something that certainly translates the law. One of the things that’s a challenge for a lot of people in our audience is that there really isn’t any traditional training for lawyers on how to run a business, we certainly don’t get it in law school, most of us, you know, have liberal arts style, undergraduate degrees, history, Poli Sci, English, that type of thing. So there really isn’t a strong background in business sense when it comes to lawyers. But you’ve had the opportunity to work with, you know, hundreds of lawyers in your time, what sort of skills are best to be developed by a lawyer who’s looking to grow his practice? Or her practice? What, you know, what, what are the skills that you come in, and you say, wow, you know how to do this. Awesome. Now, let’s amplify it.
Speaker 7
Basically, it’s the management skills, it really is its management, working with people, I’ll come back to something you said about blowing a hole in something, if it’s not documented in trial, what we’ve noticed is a lot of times lawyers are very, very good at finding that hope, and finding what the issue is, what they’re not good at is find the solution to fix it. Because you don’t have to do that in trial, you just have to create doubt, you have to create, you know these things. And so, from our perspective, you know, what we’re, if we’re different in any ways, we’re always looking for that next best solution. And, you know, an attorney that hires us, for example, to come in and take a look at their business, when you have to determine fairly quickly, do they want to be a lawyer, lawyer, you know, when you’re working on cases and go to court? Or are you the guy who who knows how to do all that, but for lack of a better term has stepped out of that role into the manager leader role. And sometimes, you know, that’s a hard step to take. And I’m not saying that it’s right, any different, I would say the same thing about an automobile repair shop owner, you know, he started, because he was really good at pulling wrenches, and getting and diagnosing and all those things, but he’s so good, that he goes and opens up his own place. And then he’s got to deal with payroll, and Cindy Susie, answering the phone, and all of those things, and you get out of your skill set. So it’s just realizing what are determining what you’re good at and what you want to do. And that’s part of the discussion that we have going in, because we found lawyers who yes, I want to run my business, I want to do this, or you know what, I really enjoy the courtroom port part. So that we then say, okay, see, I’m an operations person, someone to do those things you don’t want to do? So going through these thought processes. And if you can’t tell this is the assessment part again, you know, we can’t just come in and say you need to do this, and you need to do that. Do that, by osmosis. There’s questions and thoughts that go into this and, and determining those things. So I hope I hit your question.
Jay Ruane
You did. And it’s interesting to me, because I think that’s one of the things that a person like you can sort of bring to the table is actually getting people to commit to what their vision is. And this is a conversation that Seth and I have had about my own practice and his practice, I think he’s insane to want to have 40 or 50 lawyers, because for me that vision, I, I definitely do not want that, you know, and Seth wants to pull me out of law, but I still like showing up to the courthouse every now and then. Because I like getting in the weeds, so to speak. But I don’t want to do it every day as a grind. So I think that’s a wonderful thing that a person like you can actually force a lawyer to sort of commit to and recognize that those ideals may change. You know where I am today. It may be different where I was 10 years ago, or where I’m going to be in 10 years and being able to sort of pivot is important. And the next My only other question for you before we turn it back over to Seth is going to be there is an adage that I’ve heard what got you here won’t get you there? And do you find that there’s a lot of sort of resistance from lawyers who have built essentially from nothing? And maybe you’ve gotten to, you know, low seven figures? To say, no, no, I can do this. I want to keep growing. When you say to them, Hey, look, if you want to get to the next level, these are your strategic hires. And they’re going to be doing things without your involvement. And the lawyer, typically, as lawyers do want to micromanage and want to control everything. How do you help lawyers get beyond that, so that they truly can grow? Because there are lawyers at the $200,000 mark, that are maxed out? And what’s going to get them to the next level is something else, just like there are lawyers at the 2 million, and at the $20 million revenue level that are maxed out? And what’s going to what’s gotten them there will get them to the next level? How do you break that ego of the lawyer to get them to embrace what’s truly necessary to go to the next level?
Speaker 7
Well, first of all, once again, they’ve invited me to come talk to them for some reason. And it’s up to me, to tactfully fan those things out, I am not trying to influence what they want to do, I’m just trying to find out what it is that they want to do. You know, a good friend of mine, Mickey love, who’s a saint who was a Theo, She now runs an advertising agency, she had she made a comment off the cuff one day, you have to let go to grow up. And you know, I’ve kind of taken that and, and I haven’t filmed it, I gave it to Mickey. But it’s, it’s true, to be able to really grow and scale. We can’t keep doing what we’re doing. There’s only so many yards of fence and I grew up in the country that we could build in a day, unless we had other people to help. That’s just just the way it goes. And again, there’s no different in in the legal industry. You can’t do everything you know, and some people can do more than others. And that’s, you know, we’re not trying to judge your productivity. What we do is say, where do you want to be that goes all the way back again to? What’s the vision? Do you want to have 40 lawyers or 52? Are, are you totally happy, where you are at five or six, or whatever the number is, just let us know. So we can help optimize you in that possession. We’re not judging what they want, we’re trying to number one determine and then optimize. And notice I didn’t say maximize, because maximize will kill people. If we’re trying to make the the last nickel out of everything, you know, my goal person who’s not to be the richest guy in the graveyard, I want to enjoy what I do want to help people get where they want to go first identifying what that is, because a lot of times we don’t think about it, I just want to grow. Well, we don’t think about what those steps are to get there. And you know, we we walk into law firms, and they’ll say I don’t think I’m making enough money for the work that I’m doing. And that may be true, because you’re not scaling well. And then we have have a whole different discussion. And we look at systems and processes. So I don’t want you to think that VISTA is the only folks out there that that can do this. It’s but it’s our thought process. It’s our it’s our Mo it’s in our blood to say what do you want? How can we build the roadmap and help you get there? What tools do you need? What people do you need? How’s it gonna work? And that’s, that’s just that’s our bag.
Jay Ruane
Boy, I’ll tell you that idea of that idea of maximizing will kill you is something that I think needs to be embraced by a lot of people in our audience, because, you know, you definitely do need to enjoy the joy this whole journey and trying to maximize everything. Really, mate may be a detriment. Seth, I know you have a follow up. What do you got? For us?
Speaker 3
It sounds like you there’s a two part, there’s almost like a business shrink part. And then once you sort of set what the mishegoss is where they want to be, which very often can be different between partners. And as you alluded to a moment ago, Jay, that that can change by the decade. Two questions. One, do you ever anticipate based you’ve done this long enough that somebody gives you an answer if it’s a 45 year old client saying okay, you say this now, but is this really going to be what you want in five or 10 years based on your very young kids now and it can be based on a bunch of factors can you tell if you’ve done this long enough now, but even though people do tell him what you want, what they want you to take him at face value, I’m sure that you sort of have seen that curve that while you may want to grind at one point that there’s a point where people do wish to take their foot off the gas pedal and how do you sort of plan accordingly so that there’s structure in place to allow people to do that
Speaker 7
I’m I haven’t got the clairvoyance the down to 100% yet but sometimes you get the feeling. You know, they’re very hard charging people out there sometimes that that Oh, are, you know, I’m 60 years old that are that are younger than me that and I get it I was there. And I don’t my goals are not quite the same. I don’t think anybody says if you’ve talked to me at 14 or 2434, I mean, these things change, but we talk about them. And we say, okay, can you see that, that you may change later, but let’s get you there, we will make that decision. So, again, it’s, it’s, I’m an old tax guy, you know, CPA by training. And we always say we work with the laws as they are now. We can’t really necessarily anticipate everything that’s going to be coming. We do the best we can’t. But you know, we want to work with what’s there now. But that doesn’t mean set that we don’t look into the future and say, you know, that’s probably going to change or whatever. But the one thing that is consistent, and it’s a pleasing thing for us is that lawyers really want to do a good job for the client. And the beauty and I’ll say of plaintiff firms, in most cases is the better the the client does, the better the lawyer does. It’s just it’s it’s a tit for tat a ying and yang type thing, which I really dig. I want to say one other thing that I’m more of the strategy guy with our group, we have a group of Morocco thoroughbreds that are operational tacticians, that once we get along with them, they’re not all about tactics. But once we get that direction, they are really good at saying, Hey, these are the tools. And this is the training. And this user reports. And this is how we’re gonna, you know, and it’s just, it’s like the Green Bay sweep, you know, you’re gonna block here and you’re gonna block here, you can go out here, but look, we tossed the ball back, they’re gonna run the daylight. So we, we kind of work our methods like that.
Speaker 3
You know, we have a lot of listeners and viewers and group guests like a Michael McCrady. For the guests. He’s a listener who have sophisticated firms, and you’ve worked with them in the past. But we also have a lot of a lot of viewers and listeners that are much earlier on the curve, using the youth having seen the inside of 150 plus firms, what are some of the mistakes that people make? So sort of like you don’t know what you don’t know, what are some of the things that the bigger sort of obstacles that if you wish that people knew earlier on, so by the time they get ready for you, they sort of have smoothed out some of those things, give me you know, two or three things that you wish people focused on sooner rather than later.
Speaker 7
I think it’s the Michael Gerber wrote a book, the E Myth, which is about
Unknown Speaker
he was just a guest a couple of weeks ago on the show.
Speaker 7
Look, I read his book, I think it was in 92, or three, I can’t remember I want to get that wrong. But it changed my life. Because it It told me that I didn’t have to build every yard of that fence that I was talking about that if I want, you know, if I want, then I need to think past what I’m going to do. You know, when I sit down at my desk, as the leader of the firm, our leader of any business, it’s thinking past that going in there and working hard is really great. But you should always I call what goes to does, sometimes it’s going to grab people by the hair, and we pull them up out of that, that ditch and we say okay, are we really digging in the direction you want to go? You’re digging, like, hell, you’re you’re going, but is it the right direction? And I think I don’t think it’s it’s just an openness to that. And once it’s explained, I haven’t had anybody said that stupid. There are anything like that. It’s just that sometimes we’re also busy digging, that we’re not sometimes we get off track. And that’s what I mean, again, we hope it’s VISTA that you call to take a look. But, but that’s what coaches do. It’s like anything else. You know, the Michael Jordan had coaches, every you know, every great athlete, every, every great business had mentors and coaches. And we’ve just been lucky enough to see a lot and said, you know, don’t do that if you step in that you can’t take it off your shoe. So we need to go this direction. So, so that’s it, there’s, there’s not anything really frustrating. So if
Speaker 3
you’re frustrated, I’m talking to somebody who’s got, they may not be ready for a full Vista engagement, what are the things you wish that people thought about and maybe started working on? Just, you know, they’re digging, they they may, they may realize they need to put a team together. But as they do that, like we saw you, you know, on our journey, and realized, hey, we had to make a bunch of different changes. There was good stuff going on. But these are the things we wanted to tweak. What are some of those things that if people did before they got to the point that they were retaining you, it would be really great for them to start thinking about those those themes in general part probably I take it as what do you want? That’s obviously I’m hearing that loud and clear. But are there things as far as the or rigor in which you bring things on mentioned, operations directors, what are some of those things that if you want to get to the point where you can fully take advantage of what VISTA has to offer, that you may want to start putting these things in place, so that you, you know, have more in place more more for you to work with, rather than saying, hey, this would be great to get in place.
Speaker 7
I think it’s simply systems and processes in every functional area of your business, you know, it is it.
Unknown Speaker
I’m sorry, accepting it.
Speaker 3
Obviously, you don’t know J. Well, but J is Mr. Systems. That’s what he professes. He lives he breathes. That is what we talked about, we talk about here on a weekly basis.
Speaker 7
Well, it’s scalable, right, and here’s best practices, and then there’s better practices, but also J, I hope you look for that innovation. And that’s the a lot of times what we can bring, because sometimes we can get in a rut with those systems and processes, right? You bet. You can chop a tree down with a hammer. It’s just not effective or efficient. Right. So what is that? Did you know that there’s an axe? Did you know now there’s a chainsaw? Did you know now there’s a big trick? Carter? Did you you know, these are the things that I think we can get so tied up. And so it’s looking at systems all the way from? What’s our marketing system? You know, is it is it digital? Is it billable? Is it what area and it doesn’t? You know, whatever it is, but what is your system? And are you tracking the success of those systems? And then looking at okay, well, if we’re marketing and our say the phone’s ringing, which really is a probably an old way to say that we’ve got leads coming in now. So we’ve got leads coming in now? are we capturing the ones that meet our firm’s criteria? are we capturing those to get them to clients? And then you track that data? So if there’s one word I would say, it’s data. And but it then it’s, it’s hard to say data without the right workflow, to get accurate data and for your team to buy in, and understand the importance in sometimes. Sometimes it’s better to have people from the outside and do that. That’s all I can say. Because, you know, it’s like, my older daughter played tennis in college, my younger daughter played volleyball, I didn’t know much about volleyball, but I can coach tennis, I can help her. But a lot of times she needed a coach, that wasn’t me, that someone that can say, hey, you know what, this is what I’ve seen out there from coaching all these people. And this is what works. And those are the things that mean something is that self serving, maybe so but it’s the truth. I’ve seen it in action. Right? Yeah.
Jay Ruane
Yeah, no, I mean, I really liked some of the things that you’re talking about here, I think there’s a lot of takeaways for our audience in that it really is, you know, number one, you have to have an identity of where your identification of where you want to be, before you start really building towards that. And bringing in and outside sources, one of the things that you just said is, especially when you’re dealing with the personalities of lawyers in an office, there’s an element of ego that goes with it, whether or not you’re a solo with the solo with some associates with you, you’ve got some contract partners, or some profit partners, or even Equity Partners, you’re going to be dealing with a lot of different personalities and a lot of different approaches to the business. And bringing in someone like yourself, takes away the personal interaction part of it, and makes it a little more objective, even though you’re bringing your subjective skill set to it. It’s it’s an outside, there’s kind of clinical, not that you’re not passionate about it. But it sort of removes the personality from decisions that have to be made. And I think that’s something that our audience can really gain from, from this conversation is that sometimes the third party can help you move to the next level, simply because you are taking the emotion out of critical business decisions. And that’s how good businesses can operate. Don’t you think?
Speaker 7
One of the things one of the questions we asked when we get there to firms of really any size, you know, are there any sacred cows here, and I’ll tell you what I mean by that, and you may know, or there are people here that you know, for whatever reason may not be the most productive in their area, but they’re gonna be here forever. It’s my aunt. It’s my book or whatever it is, and it could be and what I’m not gonna say that there’s not a plan for sacred cows, we just want to put them in a pasture that doesn’t hurt the flow of the of the entire herd okay. But we need to know those things. And again, we got a firm and that that there is a person there that that that is not the best at the job that they do, but they are the glue in the earned, that is the rah rah person, there’s an intrinsic value to this particular person that, that the objective objectively, we cannot measure it. And I’ll go as far as to say, in a lot of ways that the things that are most objective in our lives are probably the most important. And I’ll give you an example. How much do you love your wife? Don’t say a seven ever? Okay, it’s about a seven, you know, okay. It’s hard to objectify a lot of things. You know, passion is one of the things and, you know, Mike Singletary should have never been a good linebacker for for the look for the bears. can’t measure his heart. So it’s the same way. But you can ask questions and found out. And that’s, that’s what’s fun for us. It really is,
Speaker 3
I finally, this is a big moment, I finally got to put a label on a very valuable team employee that I realized is now a sacred cow, I did not I did not understand, you just I’ve now seen the light, you know, they may make mistakes, and they may not be the best at what they do. And they may not be the fastest, but they are glue. And that, you know, the clients love them, and the team loves them. And it’s a sort of an important character in that place. And it, it’s bizarre, because when you sit there and you’re sort of looking at it, when you you know, if you work with VISTA, you’re gonna see the metrics and that person’s not going to come in first on efficiency. But there’s, there’s extra extrinsic pieces there for sure.
Speaker 7
Right. And and as I see, when I what I meant, when I put them in a in a in a pasture where they can hurt you is have some systems around them that will double check those things and fix it. So again, it’s hard to, you know, hey, we want a players in every position, right? And we all do. But there’s a bell curve out there that a lot, you know, it’s just reality. And we’re not, you know, we want the highest a player, the highest level player we can get. But, you know, everyone is just simply not an A player. So how can we get those systems and have them understand the play, so they can play very well with the team. And that’s a unique skill set to be able to recognize those things. And sometimes we get too close to them. But quite honestly, we have to back up. I mean, I have mentors, I have people that I call and say, am I thinking about this? Right? We call it sanity checks, investor, you know, let me I need a sanity check.
Speaker 3
My final question is that I’ve seen internally and I saw this a snapshot when you gave us give us 360. And, you know, when you start at Jay and I talked about this, you know, you may have people on the bus, and you just alluded to it, who may not be the ideal people. And there’s a bunch of reasons for that. Right? You may not know better, you may not be able to have the gravitas to attract a better talent. You may not be paying up who knows. But how do you sort of when you’re on that journey? And you see and you sort of like, you know, in one sense, the duck printer, you have to put on blinders to this is why God I’m working with it. But I’ve been able to see as a snapshot like today, our team infinitely better than what we had five years ago and infinitely better than when we first started. How do you sort of know, when it’s time to upgrade? It’s not a sacred cow? Are there times when somebody’s not that, like, I look back at sort of the, you know, the president of GE, who had, you know, his theory of the bottom 10% Every year, you know, pushing it up? How do you advise people in a in a law firm practice to do that, because a lot of us wait for that person just to drop out through natural attrition. But I found that when, when possible the upbringing, you obviously want to train and motivate not have people fall to the bottom. But how What’s your philosophy as far as upgrading the team along the journey?
Speaker 7
I’ll give you two and you’re gonna like this two systems. Two things to do here that I think will help a lot. One is is more subjective than the other? It’s, you know, every year, I think you should do a performance attitude analysis on every team member. And, you know, whatever their performance is, if it’s if it’s a objective metric to look at that objective metric, if it’s subjected, how do you feel if you Oh, that’s what subject it is. But the attitude part is very important. If they’ve got the low performance, bad attitude, that’s the ones that probably should not be on your team. But that’s just in one system two is if you think you have a perform a team member that is not performing well, then I propose you should before you start looking at them, ask yourself three questions. Have I given them the tools to do their job? Because I train them on those tools? And have I clearly explained the expectations of them? A lot of times we do one and two and we forget explain the expectation. So they have no target. Okay. So so if you Got someone you think’s performing? under par? Okay? And you then look at yourself and say I’ve given them the tools. I’ve trained them. They know what the expectations are. There’s only two reasons then why they’re not performing. Okay? They’re either unwilling or unable. Okay? And if they’re unwilling, many examine the attitude, if they’re simply unable and their attitude is really good, I propose that we try to find another place on your bus, if they’re giving it their all and there simply cannot get there. And if not, unfortunately, you have to free up their future. And that’s not something that we we take lightly at all. You have what I what I don’t like, is someone underperforming. And we come in, we realize, well, heck, they don’t have the tools. They don’t they haven’t been trained, and they have no idea what your true metrics are for them to achieve. And we think they’re underperforming. I hope that helps a little bit in how I look, that’s great.
Jay Ruane
I love the line free up your future.
Speaker 3
Right. But I think there are a couple of things, like you said, so the next last question, but because one of the things that I’ve seen as you as you talk about that there are two things that come to mind. One is people become, there’s institutional knowledge that’s gained, and you end up like their value goes up, even though some of those things aren’t there. And I as I think about this, and you know, again, in a perfect world, you do that you said something that will give you two things to talk about. One is that and the second is we and I don’t know whether as a firm, when we have people that are underperforming, and we’re doing a poor man’s version of your analysis, right? And we say, okay, if not right there, but we try to find a different seat. We’ve had a very bad track record of getting those to be successful, some horrible, some mediocre, but never great. Is there, you know, and you do because you like the person and plus you need talent in other places are, you know, are people that are? Do you find that people can successfully relocate people? I mean, again, there’s always an exception, but statistically, is it a statistically, is it a likelihood that’s going to work? Or are you basically doing a slow exit? First? And then secondly, the second last piece of what I addressed there, as far as institutional knowledge, and how you balance that when you have somebody underperforming.
Speaker 7
I don’t like the idea of a slow exit the no, we want to, if someone truly has has a great attitude, but for some reason cannot perform in the spot that they’re in number one, I would have to go back before that, how are they hired? How are they owned, boarded? You know, those are systems J, you know, and somehow, we must have missed something. If we’ve gotten someone in a position that is performing poorly, if we’ve done all the things we need to do. But if you’ve done that, and for whatever reason something has caused them to not perform well. And we need to ask the questions. Why is something going on in your life? You know, is there there’s things and I believe that’s our responsibility as leaders and owners to find those things out, you know, because there are different I call them yardsticks, you know, money is one yardstick. The right word is not happiness, which contentment is the one that I really like, I am perpetually positively discontent. And what does that mean? It means that I, I’m pretty happy with where I am, but I know I could be better. I know, I could do better. I know, I could lead better. I know I could, whatever better. Okay, but can you move those people I’ve seen it work. Now I’ve seen it not work too. So. But I thought on the side have always given us a shot. And then you know, again, you get them in a new position, you have to go through that same process. And if they are incompetent at that, and I’m not using incompetent in a totally bad way here, they’re just can’t do the job, then, you know, they have to free up their future and find them someplace where they can do well. And we can do everything we can with the firms and people that we work with to help them find that place. Because sometimes it’s just not a fit. I hate it because that because that means we screwed up and hiring and onboarding. And what you have one more part of that, and I forgot what it was
Speaker 3
just a balance. There are times when I’d love to upgrade. But then the personal stock rise is based on institutional knowledge. Now if I was a genius of systems like Jay, maybe I wouldn’t be as wedded to somebody with institutional knowledge but there’s still value especially in the planners practice where you know, it just, you know, there’s nothing that beats knowing a firm’s culture, identity personalities, clients, and you sort of you end up becoming stuck with somebody who may be subpar but has, but has you because they’ve been there over time.
Speaker 7
I say that this that is a subjective case by case. I don’t think I can give you In a rock solid rule on that, I’ve seen it. And, you know, a lot of times people, we want rock solid rules, and there just aren’t any for these very subjective things. But that’s their hard subjective things are just harder. But that doesn’t mean we should not attack them, try to understand them, and then make a well informed decision in that case. And that’s, that’s not what we argue for what we don’t like to see is these knee jerk reactions without going through the thought process. And we I could, I could go to get off on another tangent about being self aware, and emotionally intelligent, and how you recognize these things about yourself, which are, which are important to leaders, and not to make those knee jerk to slow down. Let’s Let’s think this through. So not a good answer. But
Speaker 3
this has been great. I appreciate personally, the way you pushed me to elevate my practice. And I know you’ve done it for a lot of friends and mentors of mine, like, you know, like Richard Harris, and others. So thank you for coming and sharing your wisdom with us. We look forward to seeing you having impact in the future. Thank you so much.
Speaker 7
You guys are very welcome. But I do have to say, again, it’s not just me, I have a team behind me that is unbelievably better than me. And they push me and that’s what’s cool. So that’s what you want, by the way is to get a team build a team that pushes you. So I’m lucky enough to be there. So thank you lots. That’s a
Jay Ruane
good leader, right? They’re giving it to all those team. That’s phenomenal. Thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate it. Have a wonderful afternoon.
Unknown Speaker
You’re very welcome. Thank you guys. Anytime.
Becca Eberhart
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Jay Ruane
Well set, you know I am slowly getting to the point where I’m thinking that it’s time for me to engage a culture consulting or somebody to help us take it to the next level. Because not to say that we’ve stagnated I mean, we’ve gotten to where I’m comfortable, I’m happy with revenue. I mean, I’m not happy with COVID revenue, but I’m happy I was happy with revenue beforehand, I knew there was opportunity for growth. But I think you know, some of the things that I heard from Melissa, and now from Tim, is I need to be purposefully mindful of what I can do over the next couple of years to really get me to a point of the vision that’s in my head. And I need to make sure that I share that vision with my the other lawyers in my office, what were your takeaways from the conversation?
Speaker 3
Well, like I known the process, I’ve used it I’ve had, you know, seen people many steps ahead of me that have have leveraged it all add an extra piece of value. But wait, there’s more. So not only is he great at figuring out what you want, and then helping with KPIs and systems, but the thing that I thought that was really unique that they do is they actually come to the firm didn’t even talk about this, and interview your staff and your management and figure out what you have almost like an inventory and you think you know, what you have, you know, you’re not, you know, hopefully way way off. But there are strengths and weaknesses that are really important that are sitting right beneath all of our noses. And one of the things that I thought was great about my my work with them, was having them come in and giving me sort of an undercover boss type thing. You know, like where you’re, you’re basically figuring out what people are saying when you’re not there. And, you know, to me, that was very valuable it was it was transparent. They were telling them why they were doing it. But it’s amazing, just asking people their opinions with a third party, what you can extract and the valuable information you can have about figuring out what what is solid to build on and where you really need to quit work. And
Jay Ruane
yeah, and I love that phrase free up your future. It’s a it’s a nicer way to tell somebody that they’re fired. And it’s definitely something that you can think about. And I like the idea of having somebody do an interview with your staff to see where they’re very their very own versus vision is because I think, you know, if you’re growing your firm, and you’ve got a good talented, you know, some a players or B plus player, lawyers on your team, and your vision and their vision, don’t align. They may exit and then you’re losing all of that talent and all that institutional knowledge like he talks about. And I think that’s something that you need to you know, start having those those not necessarily uncomfortable conversations, but for for certain types of people like myself. Those are are uncomfortable conversations. I don’t like to dig deep with people. It’s not my nature. You know, I’ll talk to you about business all day long. But I don’t want to talk about your hopes and your dreams, because doesn’t really interest me. It’s my personality. It’s not who I am. But this is some really good stuff. And I’m definitely going to rewatch it. Because there’s a couple of things that I want to implement with my team. And just start planning for as we come out of this COVID stuff to really make sure that I’ve got things dialed in, because like I said, you know, 13 weeks comes pretty quickly. 12 weeks comes pretty quickly, and then the whole first quarter is done. And so if you don’t have, you know, concrete planning for these things, it’s easy to overlook them and just push them off and push them off and push them off. And that’s not good for your business. All right. So Seth, I think we’re gonna leave with that. What do you say? Sounds good. All right. Another great week, folks here on maximum growth live. As always, you can always check us out live here every Thursday 3pm. Eastern on our live Facebook show. Our podcast is also available on any standalone podcast platform, Google, Amazon, Apple podcasts, it’s all there Spotify as well. And you could always catch us indicated in the maximum lawyer media family, but for now I am Jay Ruane, affirm flex, see a search and search engine optimization. That’s that guy over there that says price. You know, it’s a long day. He gotta give me a break. But he’s blue shark. I’m firm flex. I should get myself a blue. I got the front flex behind me over here. But I gotta get myself a blue shark hat. Maybe you guys can send me up one and we’ll wear matching hats next week. Seth, what do you say? Sounds good. All right. Cool, folks. Thanks for being with us. I am Jay Ruane. He is Seth price. We’re Max growth live. Thanks so much, and we’ll see you next week. Bye for now.
Speaker 1
Thank you for listening to maximum growth live. Please remember to subscribe to our podcast for the latest episodes and tune in live on Facebook every Thursday for our live show. For more information visit maximum growth live on Facebook or maximum lawyer.com And be sure to share us with your friends.
