Keep Your Star Players with Michael Urbina

Are you struggling to keep your star players in your law firm? In today’s episode Michael Urbina emphasizes the importance of keeping your firm’s star players by intentionally working through a few things with them. 

Such as:

• • Building genuine relationships with employees to creating a positive work environment

• • Working with your employees to see what makes them the most productive 

• • Finding out what motivates your star employees. What are their goals? 

What about involving employees in key decisions and providing them with a sense of control over their work-life balance? Firms could be open to alternative work arrangements, such as a four-day workweek or flexible hours, to accommodate their employees’ needs. By doing so, employees feel like they are a part of the firm and are more likely to buy into its vision.

If you’re having trouble retaining your top talent, take a cue from Michael and start investing in your employees today! Listen to episode 524 of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast for more of a deep dive into this topic. 

Episode Highlights:

03:50  The importance of understanding what motivates your star players and how to compensate them beyond just salary

05:57 The importance of offering benefits to employees and how it can affect the perception of the firm

10:00 The importance of flexibility in the workplace, including working from home, alternative schedules, and instituting a four-day workweek

12:02 The importance of being honest and transparent with employees about the firm’s goals and financial position

14:03 Valuing employees’ opinions and creating a comfortable environment for them to feel like they can talk to their employer

17:39 Opening the books to everyone in the firm, from leadership to the newest employee, during an end-of-year retreat

Watch the full video on YouTube here.

Connect with Michael:

• • Website
  • Instagram 
  • Facebook 
  • Linkedin
  • Youtube 
  • TikTok

Resources:

• • Join the Guild Membership
  • Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Youtube Channel
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Join the Facebook Group
  • Follow the Facebook Page
  • Follow us on LinkedIn

Transcript: Keep Your Star Players with Michael Urbina

Speaker 0 (00:00:01) – In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max Lock Con 2022. Keep listening to hear Michael Obina as we share his talk. Keep your star players. You can also head to the Maximum Lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video. Let’s get to it.

Speaker 1 (00:00:16) – Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is The Maximum Lawyer podcast. Maximum Lawyer podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Merix. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Michael Urbina (00:00:37) – If you haven’t watched Ted Lasso, you totally should not just because it’s hilarious, but because it actually has a lot to do with what I’m gonna talk about today, which is essentially a football coach in the United States takes a job to be a soccer coach in England, even though he has no idea about it. But his approach works because essentially he engages and motivates the stars of the team to kind of, you know, get to approach of working together and combine and, you know, be all happy go lucky, you know? So essentially what we’re gonna talk about today is keeping your stars and based on everything that’s happening right now in the, you know, marketplace. Everybody wants to talk about recruitment and how can I get people to work for me and how can I, you know, fill these positions. But I think another big problem is that there is all these problems with people in the positions because people are losing individuals and if you’re losing your individuals, you’re gonna have to then go to the recruiting market.

Michael Urbina (00:01:29) – So the best way to not have to recruit is to keep the good people that you already have. And if you don’t think that that’s a problem, I can tell you right now that in the last couple of days, almost every conversation from lawyers even, you know, within this particular community is like, Hey, so how do you try to hire people and recruit? They’re like, look at another law firm. Maybe someone is looking for an opportunity and you may want to think about stealing your competitors associates. So how do you stop that from happening to you? That’s essentially what we’re gonna talk about today. So briefly, these are part of my stars, okay, in our team. All right? Two of them are here today. My wife is here today and she’s not in the picture. My bad. I should have totally added that. I’ll probably pay for that later.

Michael Urbina (00:02:13) – So if anybody has extra room in their hotel room, please let me know cuz I might need your help late, okay? But essentially these are the people that have been with us for five years plus and I trust them blindly and everything that they do. I don’t second guess the things that they do. And it’s because not only do I give them the room to be themselves, but I try to make sure that they’re happy, that I, they have a good work-life balance and everything that we’re gonna talk about today, you know, I try to practice what we preach. So three critical keys to making sure that you keep your stars, you have to care about them. And I know that sounds like oh well of course I have to care about them, but no, no. If you look at it, and I actually Googled this before we came, one of the biggest reasons why people started quitting their jobs was during the pandemic.

Michael Urbina (00:02:56) – Their quote was, my boss doesn’t care about me, period. It wasn’t necessarily that they were getting underpaid and whatnot. And if you’re bored by my talk, you can actually Google it right now and you’ll see that the first thing that pops up is low pay. But all the other reports are like, you know, the culture sucks. You know, like my boss doesn’t care about me. It’s literally a bunch of other things that it’s not just pay, sure we’ll talk about pay and that’s an important part of it, but there’s a lot more to go than just if you’re paying someone well enough or not. The other thing you have to think about is find out what they really care about. I have some of the stars that are here that are not really driven by money. They want more time off, they want flexibility. I have an employee that literally lift an hour from us and the minute we’re able to get a new location and she was able to cut her commute to seven minutes, she was like, I don’t care if you cut my pay as long as I can just be here, I’m happy with that instead.

Michael Urbina (00:03:50) – A lot of times we assume that’s like, oh no, just pay them more. Just pay them more. No, you have to really dig deep and find out exactly what it is that drives them what it is that keeps them happy, you know? And the last thing is find out how they’re most productive. And I think that’s a key part also because sometimes you have someone a star that is fantastic at their job and you might think like, Hey, this person might be a good fit for a different position or a higher position or a promotion and then you move them up without necessarily gauging their interests or durability. And I’m telling you from experience, we have one of our stars who is not here today by the way, so that’s why I’m gonna talk about it. Essentially we try to move her up into a different position and that was not her thing, but we didn’t actually address it with her.

Michael Urbina (00:04:29) – This was years ago. We didn’t address it with her like, Hey, we’re thinking about doing this. How do you feel about it? De are you okay with it? Instead we’re just like, we love you, you’re great, you’re gonna move up to this. And all of a sudden her productivity just went way down because that was not her thing. So you can’t try to fit, you know, a square peg in a round hole if it doesn’t work. So you have to really figure out what are their goals, what are they really motivated by? Maybe they like doing something menial, but that’s crucial to what you need to do. Okay? So just keep those things in mind. So we’re gonna talk about five things that I think are very important to make sure that you keep your stars engaged in your firm. Like I said, we have to talk about salary.

Michael Urbina (00:05:06) – Why? Because at the end of the day, people need to live, right? And unfortunately over the last couple years salaries requirements have gone up because there’s more demand for people. All these other individuals, all these other firms are having to, you know, fork out more money to be competitive. My proposal to you is that yes, salaries are important, getting paid as important, but that’s not the only thing. So sometimes people are like, well I don’t have the cash to be able to pay this person on all this money. You know, that’s fine. Then think about other things that you can offer that can compensate for the fact that you may not be able to pay someone high six figures or whatever the situation is. I will however, encourage you to rethink what you think is the average salary. Cuz a lot of times you have conversations with people and they’re like, yeah, I mean like an average salary for an attorney start is like $45,000 and like in 2000 maybe you put in 2022.

Michael Urbina (00:05:57) – It’s all very different also your market. We’re in Atlanta, very different situation versus you know, some towns in Texas, even here in Missouri was looking at it yesterday. It’s very different. So you have to consider at least what’s the average, you don’t necessarily have to go above the average if you have a well-rounded package. Now the other option is you can give bonuses, you can do incentive plans, you can actually engage them in your firm’s goals and give them as an incentive like hey we hit our goals, this is what you get. So you actually get them to buy into the program and vice versa. You actually get them a little extra cash as you go. So meaning you win, they win. Okay? The other thing is benefits in 2022, if you don’t have some type of benefits, you’re gonna get a one star and people are gonna talk about the fact that you are either cheap or you’re not really caring about your people or you’re not genuine.

Michael Urbina (00:06:48) – Okay? If you can’t afford a super robust benefits package, that’s fine, but there’s also a lot of different options and a lot of different things and I just list some of them there that you can look at that may not cost you an arm and a leg, you just have to shop around. Health insurance, it is expensive but we talked about it yesterday actually. Some people like to give a stipend because they think it’ll be better for them. The problem is that there’s that feeling of security from the applicants that are like, I’d rather just get the health insurance versus the stipend because it just gives me that sense of security, you know, and control all over the situation. And unfortunately let’s face a lot of people, you give them a stipend, they’re not gonna go buy health insurance, they’ll go buy something else, they’ll put it into like their YouTube channel thinking that they’re gonna be influencers and they won’t pay for the health insurance.

Michael Urbina (00:07:33) – So you guiding them along that way creates, you know, a certain level of security in them. 401ks, pension plans, those things are not as expensive as you think it might be. I was actually kind of shocked when we started shopping around looking. I was like, this is not that bad. It can be, you can find some people, will absolutely destroy your budget, but you can also find ways that it’s something you can offer employees, keep them happy at the same time. Not necessarily break the bank and not have to create this insane payroll for yourself. PTO expense accounts and gas and things like that. There’s an ongoing trend right now with unlimited pto, right? And there’s a lot of firms that are moving that way. A lot of businesses that are moving that way. I’m not saying that you have to do that, but it, a lot of times people are like, well we give, like I’ll use, there’s this nonprofit in Georgia that’s like you get 10 days PTO after a year of work.

Michael Urbina (00:08:21) – Nobody wants to wait a year to get 10 days off. Like you have to really reevaluate that because everyone is moving to give unlimited or some sense of extra PTL days. So you really have to think about whether you’re offering a PT os competitive or not. We actually did something that I had no idea was gonna work out this beautifully, but years ago for our attorneys, because we have to move around so much for courts, I was like, the firm will pay for your gas and guess what? You might think that I’m an idiot now because gas prices are high. But guess who’s happy that they don’t have to pay for gas. Our attorneys. And at the end of the day, it’s a fraction really of everything that’s happening. But they’re happy that they don’t have to worry about that. And it’s not just to go to court. I’m like if you have to fill up your tank, you fill it up with your expense account period. But that little thing alone is like, okay, I save a lot of money on gas on that part. I may not get paid a million dollars a year but I get this incentive. You know,

Speaker 0 (00:09:11) – The guild is maximum lawyers community of legal entrepreneurs who are taking their businesses and lives to the next level as a guild member. Your granted exclusive access to quarterly in-person events around the country. The next mastermind is coming up on July 20th and 21st in Denver, Colorado featuring hot seat sessions and personal coaching with renowned performance coach Jason Silk. This event will give you the opportunity to work directly with Jason who has helped countless high performing individuals and teams reach their full potential during the hot seat sessions. You’ll gain valuable insights and learn strategies to help you overcome the challenges you are facing in your practice. For a limited time. You can get your ticket at the lowest early bird price. Head to max law events.com to join now and reserve your spot at the upcoming guild mastermind.

Michael Urbina (00:10:00) – And then you have work-life balance, which brings us to point number three. Okay? Flexibility is not just about working from home and anyone that thinks that working from home doesn’t work, it may not work for certain individuals, it may not be a situation that you wanna do all the time, but you cannot sit here with a straight face because during 2020, Maxim lawyer kept doing all, you know these meetings virtually we completely shut down our practice for three months and everyone worked from home and we actually grew substantially during that time. We talked about Alexis, you know, growing during 2020 as well. We can talk about stories all day about people that grew while working from home. So we cannot use that as a crutch saying, well work from home doesn’t work. It may not be ideal for every single one of your employees, but you have to find an alternative.

Michael Urbina (00:10:44) – It may be that you let them come in two hours earlier and leave two hours, you know, earlier in the afternoon so they can go pick up their kids or whatever the situation may be. Another thing that we do that I can’t take credit for that was my wife’s idea was that we instituted a four day work week. So essentially we divide the office and two teams, some people have Monday off, some people have Friday off and those four days that they work, they work 10 hours, they complete their 40 hours, they have a three day weekend every weekend plus their pto. And every time I talk about this I always get like these faces like that sucks.

Speaker 0 (00:11:17) – They love it

Michael Urbina (00:11:18) – And they’re super productive. Absolutely super productive. So it may not be something you can institute immediately, but you should think about something like that in terms of providing them the flexibility of work-life balance. Because if you do the Google search that I told you, the number one thing that you’re gonna find aside from culture is work-life balance. So people will sacrifice, you know, a little bit of salary to be able to actually enjoy their life a little more. And I can tell you a story that there’s actually, you know, another competitor if you wanna call it from where we are, that it used to be the go-to where everybody wanted to go. But because the work-life balance has become unbearable in that place, people are turning down high six figure offers. Cause they’re like, yeah you guys work us to death. We’d rather go somewhere else than get paid less.

Michael Urbina (00:12:02) – And some of those attorneys came to work with us. So because we provide something different. You know, the other thing I want to talk about is creating a buying culture with your team. And once you offer those benefits, once you really rethink about being genuine about your work-life balance, how do you make sure that you maintain that buy-in from your team? Cause it’s not a, it can’t all be a gift. There has to be some kind of, you know, return in terms of how the firm is going forward. And what I’ll challenge it is, is that you need to be brutally honest about everything. And I mean everything like think as gross as it sounds, open kimono, like you have to be super honest about where your firm is positioned, what your, all your goals are and everything that is going on with regards to your firm.

Michael Urbina (00:12:45) – If you have a leadership team like we do, we talk about this on a weekly basis as to where we’re at. Are we hitting our revenue goals? Are we hitting all other goals? And that sounds terrifying, the fact that you’re gonna open your books and do a presentation about what went out and what. But think about this way, if you don’t give your team a roadmap as to why you’re asking them to buy in to hey we should get more Google reviews. Hey we should, you know, I need you to make sure that we get those NPS scores in. Like then if you don’t tell them why that’s important, if you don’t show them why the firm will do better unless you open the kimono, you know, to them it’s just like, oh my boss is just being greedy. Oh I don’t understand why I need to do this.

Michael Urbina (00:13:26) – You need to be like, this is the reality of the situation. Yeah we’re doing good. However, if you want to grow with us and continue to be provided opportunities to grow, this is where we need to go. But if you just tell them for the sake of telling us like, hey, we need 400 Google reviews by the end of the year. Why they don’t know that, they don’t understand why that’s important. So you need to be brutally honest to be open and a lot of people will think, well they’re gonna leave not if you did everything else that we talked about cuz you’re being honest, you’re not hiding the ball and you’re being generous in the way of what you try to offer them. So that creates loyalty. Involve them in key decisions. A lot of times people are like, hey this and this is happening with such employee, what do you think?

Michael Urbina (00:14:03) – I’m like, I’ll leave it up to you if it’s something that I don’t feel super strong about, give them the opportunity to make decisions. Vice versa. If you’re gonna make decisions, like if we’re gonna change something in the firm, a system, you know, a program, whatever, it’d be like, hey I’m thinking of doing this. What do you think? You know, when we changed our SEO company and our marketing company was like, you guys, I’m thinking about doing this. What do you guys think about this? And sometimes they’re gonna give you value to make sure that you understand your position, but more importantly they feel like they’re a part of your firm and they buy in because you are valuing their opinion. They’re not just a pawn or a cog in the whole situation. You know? And again, the same thing is with our leadership team.

Michael Urbina (00:14:44) – They’re here, they were here last year. It’s not like I’m afraid like oh they’re gonna learn stuff and they’re gonna do their own thing. Why If we can build it together and you’re like super, you know, like you legitimately mean what you say. There’s no reason that you know, you should have that fear. Okay. And the last point I wanted to make is personal and business relationship development. Say my wife is in this one so I’m not totally in the doghouse, you know, but you have to create, you know, like I said at the beginning, a genuine relationship with your employees. You don’t have to be best friends, that’s not what I’m saying. But you have to create a situation where they feel comfortable with you. Where if there’s a problem that they have that they honestly feel like, hey I can talk to Michael about this and I know he’ll understand X, y, z, you know, and I’m not gonna take anything personal.

Michael Urbina (00:15:28) – It’s just a situation where you have to really address things as they go. And I also have a saying like, you know, my parents run a business and they love to hire their friends to be, you know, their workers. People feel different about that. I do, I have the opportunity that I don’t believe in hiring family, but except for my wife she just, she she, she comes with the firm is the fact that there’s nothing in the rule book that says that you cannot have, you know, a friendship or a personal relationship with your employees after they become, you know, your workers. And some of you may be making faces like, oh that’s a bad idea. Not really. Again, if you create that same level playing field, if you’re open about your situation and you open about yourself and you’re truly genuine, there’s really nothing now don’t go doing crazy illegal things that will get you sued.

Michael Urbina (00:16:10) – But you know, make sure that you try to be open and honest and provide a situation for them that they feel, you know, like they can grow in your firm. That they have opportunities and that more importantly there’s really not much out there that will be offered to them that will be different or they may want to look for other opportunities, you know, and if they do, you wish them well cuz you never know, they might try to go somewhere else and come back in like a week. Okay, the last thing and I’m kind of jealous of Alexis that thought about putting a picture of Michael Scott and I’m totally gonna change some of the words here. So where it says, would I rather be fear or loved easy? Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love and scratch the me I will put my firm. Okay. And that’s all I got for you guys. Any questions? Promise?

Speaker 4 (00:16:56) – Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:16:58) – When you went to a four day work meeting, uh, did you share the hours so that they still work like 40 hours or

Michael Urbina (00:17:05) – So? We did shift the hours. We went from doing a nine to five to doing an eight to six so they could do the 10 hours completely. The beautiful part of that additional was the fact that we actually had extended hours that we didn’t have before but we weren’t overworking anyone so everybody got an extra day but the firm was open longer, clients were happier, the firm was happier. It worked out. In

Speaker 5 (00:17:25) – Terms of opening your books, uh, to your, uh, I I think you mentioned your leadership team, right? Do you do the same for your associates?

Michael Urbina (00:17:35) – For everybody? For everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Everyone.

Speaker 5 (00:17:38) – Gotcha.

Michael Urbina (00:17:39) – From me all the way down to the last person that joined the firm and we don’t do it like on a month to month for the entire firm. We do like a end of the year retreat. We’re like this is where we ended up, this is where we’re gonna be next year. And we share with them, you know, key facts as we go. But we can’t do that same level of, you know, dissecting all the time cuz it’s just too time consuming. But we do a two day retreat at the end of the year where we literally just dissect everything. This is how much it went in y’all snacks, this is how much you win. And you know this because it’s important for them to understand that all that money that we’re making is not going to my pocket or to my boat or anything like that. It’s going to making sure this project continues to hum along. I

Speaker 5 (00:18:19) – Agree with pretty much everything that you said. I was just gonna know if you’re trying to figure out um, you know, what to pay some of your staff or um, attorneys. Obviously every market is different but Colorado recently passed a law that requires every job at to post a full salary range and benefits like on on the ad. So if you go out to like Indeed or any of ’em and look into Colorado market, you can see what pretty much every firm, Penn, pretty much everybody. And then you kind of try to adjust for your market.

Michael Urbina (00:18:47) – Yeah, I think that’s critical because especially nowadays people don’t like to post a range. But then sometimes you see people that do, they’re like, I’m looking for an attorney, I’m looking to pay between 30 and 50,000 for five years of experience. Nobody’s then they’re like, I don’t know why nobody’s applying. You’re ad . That’s why.

Speaker 5 (00:19:04) – What kind of professional development do you do for

Michael Urbina (00:19:06) – Your team? So we have a coach. She not only meets with me individually, she also meets with our leadership team. She is actually aware of everything that’s happening within our firm. She gives us ideas of things that we can do with them as well. We do our own research and kind of between the leadership team like designate like hey, so we want to do this kind of like every other month we’ll do some kind of team building thing. They went cooking like a, what was it called? Like team building with taste or something and they all cooked meals and competed about it. I couldn’t go without something else, but we did bowling. Like we always try to find things that align with our core values but something that’s fun for them and they understand that it has a purpose. So we do that at least every other month.

Michael Urbina (00:19:44) – Aside from talking about goals and things like that. Yeah, so we use RingCentral, which you may or may not like it, hate it, whatever. For us it works. We have different channels obviously just like Slack. I feel like it’s a little bit easier cuz it connects to our phone system. And because we also have a hybrid team, we have substantially large overseas team that works virtually. It’s easier for them to connect and like they can pick up the calls and transfer in within the system. For us it’s working. I’m not complaining and we’re probably gonna stick to it, but we just communicate everything through there. But we also have like a overall firm channel and then we have like an in-person employees channel. So it’s like when it’s a message specifically for the people in house, then we tell them. So we try to make sure that everybody gets constantly communicated, everything that’s happening and if so-and-so is leaving, I mean we just say it, Hey, so-and-so no longer works with us. We wish them well. Like don’t hide it, just say it. Thank you guys.

Speaker 1 (00:20:41) – Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Maximum Lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your host and to access more content, go to maximum com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

The post Keep Your Star Players with Michael Urbina appeared first on Maximum Lawyer.