What You Should Know About Creating Intentional Direction 493

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What are the challenges that lawyers are facing this year? What about the challenges that are the remnants of the pandemic?  What will the future of 2023 and beyond hold for law firm owners? These are some of the questions that Jim and Tyson answer as guest on Molly McGrath’s podcast Hire and Empower with Molly

Listen in! 

Episode Highlights: 

00:27 Where do you see an opportunity and best practices in the post pandemic world? 

04:04 What do you offer a team to grow themselves, and how to KEEP a team? 

09:25 What if you are afraid of the “virtual” team? You can’t see what they are doing!! 

12:49 When you can’t find an associate where you live, what do you do?

13:25 What happens when law firm owners don’t change their mindset 

15:37 What does it mean to be more effective as a law firm owner? Do this exercise… 

22:44 How do you get comfortable with letting go of tasks to a team – Tips from Jim and Tyson on how to let go. 

33:33 What does a successful lawyer look like?! 

Books Mentioned: 

Think and Grow Rich: The Original: An Official Publication of The Napoleon Hill Foundation https://amzn.to/3XXt5ND

Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching and Keeping the Best People https://amzn.to/3YYuCEv

Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders https://amzn.to/3EAkr0x

🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube.

Connect with Molly:

Resources:

Transcript: What You Should Know About Creating Intentional Direction

Speaker 1
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2
So yeah, what do you sing in 2023? Jim, and then I’ll go to you, Tyson. In regards to best practice approaches here in the post pandemic world, if

Jim Hacking
you will, we’re seeing a lot of opportunity. We are a growth mindset. Pair, we spend a lot of time thinking about the future. And I think that the future is bright for law firm owners, I think more and more people are venturing out on their own and trying to grow something that is bigger than themselves. I think that lawyers are starting to see that grind. And the way that they sort of soldiered through the pandemic is probably not how they want to live long term. And they’ve come to the realization that they need help they need community and they need to talk to other people who are like minded and growth oriented. And I think that the sky’s the limit.

Speaker 2
What do you see is like, I love that you said the grind the hustle, what have you and now it’s time for the power of the pause. People are saying, woof, I’m burned out, I’m exhausted. I can’t keep going at this pace, massive, massive growth in the legal space. And what are you seeing, you know, as the leveling out, so to speak, that you’re speaking about on your extraordinary podcast, your Facebook groups? What are you seeing, as, dare I say, the new normal?

Tyson Mutrux
I mean, I think that the the easy answer is that, you know, the pandemic changed the mindset of a lot of people. And they, they realized that whenever there was that pause, and there wasn’t a lot going on, they enjoyed that. And they didn’t like working for other people. So I think that that’s going to continue. But I mean, there were so many advances that had to happen for people to actually work and with being virtual, I mean, we’re like, I know that my office is that it’s a hybrid office, we’ve got two physical offices, but we’ve got the majority of our people are virtual, and people enjoy that. We give people that option. And most people choose the option to work from home. And so the workforce, for the most part wants to work from home, and you’re gonna have to see employer is going to have to actually abide by that otherwise, they’re not gonna be able to attract top talent. And that’s one of the things that Jim and I both are able to do is we’re able to attract top talent with by giving that as an option. So you’re gonna see a lot more of that. And I think that’s one of the the major drivers in that. But I mean, back to your original question, though, I think that it’s easy for a lot of people to say, okay, so what are we seeing in 2023? And we can talk about artificial intelligence and machine learning, which at GPT, we can talk about that. Yeah, that’s a massive thing. And there’s a massive opportunity there. But the thing that wins, and this is boring, Jim and I were just talking about it, the thing that wins is consistency. Overall, it doesn’t matter if you get your clients by sending a physical newsletter in the mail, as long as you’re consistent with it. So consistency is what’s effective. People like to latch on to oh my gosh, what’s what’s gonna happen? 2023 2024 2025 If you go back to 2022, the thing that one was consistency, that’s what it was. It’s always it’s consistency is undefeated.

Speaker 2
I love that you talked about top talent, and people during the pandemic went ahead and hung their own shingle, what have you took stock, we all get forced to sit on our couch for a minute, and really take stock of our life or work or practice what we do where we work and serve our clients, the majority of our waking hours. And I for 26 years have served in the legal space and staffing and unemployment rate. We all know it I mean, especially with associated attorneys and paralegals under 2%. And what do you and I love it, use consistency. I love that you’re able to retain and maintain employees. I just want to hop on that one like what are you you’re offering virtual, you know, you’re having some fluidity and flexibility in your culture and your physical brick and mortar building, what have you. What else are y’all doing to to keep people because we need people, we need people to grow. We need people to be freed up to be the visionary as entrepreneur and grow the law firm and impact as many families as we can. What are you doing? Like I’m struggling I get my phone rings off the hook. I said another associate leave I just had another paralegal leave and in the struggles real right.

Jim Hacking
I want to get to that in just a second. First I want to talk about that time you mentioned on the couch and my therapist is a Buddhist and she’s very zen and very chill. And she when the pandemic first started during those first six weeks when we were all really at home, you know we were I mean? I was walking every day I was taking care of myself Life had slowed down and it was bad. Obviously, people were sick and dying. And there’s that whole piece of it. But for the people that weren’t affected in such a hard way, it was a great reset. And I’m reading right now thinking grow rich. And there’s a passage in there about how the depression in the 20s was a great reset. So I think we really did have sort of a once in a generation, opportunity for reset. And like with all things, it’s good and bad, it’s insightful, and it’s hard. It presents opportunities, and it presents difficulties. So I think as law firm owners, we really need to be cognizant of that we really need to see that, like you said, more people are willing to strike out on their own, where people are looking around and saying, why the heck am I staying here? What’s in it for me? What what where do I want to go? Why am I doing this a lot of self questioning and and that’s where my Buddhist therapists would be so happy that we’re actually having these conversations that we we didn’t have before because our routine got broken, right, our routine got broken. So that is, like I said, a good and a hard thing. Both things can be true. Now, what we’ve done when it comes to staffing is we’ve actually looked overseas. So right now our firm is sitting at around 53 People in St. Louis, which is where our headquarters are, we have about 18. So we have two attorneys in Ohio, and attorney in California Attorney in Virginia, we do immigration. So it’s federal, so it doesn’t really matter where people are. And it gives us flexibility to have an attorney in Oregon. And then we have a remote team in Argentina, which consists of our a lot of our call center team. We have paralegals down there who are actually lawyers in Argentina. So we’ve really had to be creative and think outside the box to try to find the talent and the people that we need to grow the firm, if I

Tyson Mutrux
can add on to that. Because it’s something that we’ve been using overseas talent for quite a while for the last 12 years, really. But I think that there’s a huge opportunity that you look remotely, not just overseas, but in the US. So we tested this out over the last now it’s been about a year, I think 11 months where we were testing out, same job ads, same everything same pay, but we made it more of a remote position across the country. And we’ve been able to attract talent for the same cost as what we’re paying people in St. Louis as sometimes cheaper. But they’re like top talent in different states. And because if you really look like for example, let’s say you’re a New York law firm, right, we’re not a New York law firm. But if you’re a New York law firm, you’re used to paying high high wages, right? But the reality is, if you look across the country, there’s a lot of sweet spots, for example, Alabama is one of those sweet spots where you can pick off top talent for a fraction of what you’re paying a New York person, right. It’s just that’s the reality of what it is. So I think looking at at home, or around the country, there’s a lot of opportunities, but you also have to be Jim is intentional with his hiring, we are intentional with our hiring, and you have to be intentional about it. Because what people do is they go, oh, I need a new person, let’s put up a job. And they give it no thought about who they’re bringing in, they give no thought they have no hiring process, you got to have a hiring process. So you’ve got to be deliberate with it. And don’t just put a person in a chair, you’ve got to think like, do they fit with the culture, culture is really, really important. And if you hire someone that that is really bad for your culture, it can be really toxic, and you’ve got to be in there is a chance for a reset at any time. I don’t know if you’ve read top grading, but we implemented top grading right around 10 months ago. And there you sort of have to kind of process people out and then so you can process people in. And that’s the nice way of putting it. But that’s when you start to implement things like that. And you get delivered with things. The dynamic of your firm is going to change but it’s you’re doing it deliberately.

Speaker 2
Wow. So I love that you put that comparison with putting remote and ads Jim goes overseas, you’re staying in the US may be a combo of two, this is what I’m hearing over and over again. So I tell lawyers when they call me there, maybe have old school rigid mindset that No, I want him in the office. I need them in the office and what’s followed after that statement. Because I don’t know what they’re doing. When if they’re not sitting in my office. Right? So I’d love to get your perspective. So you made a massive leap you 12 years in and going overseas staying in the US doesn’t matter regardless of it. How like how do you know what people are doing every day in that place and getting the KPIs is all the but buzzword in this day and age as well?

Jim Hacking
Well, KPIs as you know, Molly are obviously very different than what are they doing? I don’t give a fuck what they’re doing. I don’t give a I mean, I see these people talking in the big group about you know, where do I get software so that I can see whether my VAs overseas are billing me for playing on Facebook. Listen, listen, this is a results economy. And for law firms, it’s about the result, I don’t want to be in the business of micromanaging them, I don’t want to be in the business of having to spy on them with some nanny cam, to make sure that they’re not screwing around, I don’t care if they’re screwing around, if they’re getting my work done, and they’re hitting my KPIs all as well. But this 1950s mentality of the factory, where I’m the overseer at the top of the factory, and I’m watching everybody on the assembly line, making sure that nobody’s taking a smoke break or, or, you know, checking, checking on their kids. I mean, I don’t care, I literally don’t care. And in fact, I want them to be well rounded people, I want them to be balanced people, I want them to come to work and be ready to work. And if they’re working at two in the morning because their kids are asleep. Or if they’re, you know, doing stuff on the weekend to catch up. As long as the work that I expect them to do, and that we’ve agreed upon, they’re responsible for. That’s just babysitting. That’s just bad management. If they think that they need to be able to micromanage on that level. That’s because they suck as business owners and law firm owners.

Speaker 2
Oh, my God, mic drop, right. I love it. That is phenomenal. I love it. This is a results driven economy. Yeah. Very, very different. What are they doing and KPIs? I love that distinction Jim Tyson want to get?

Tyson Mutrux
I think that Jim just hit the nail on the head. I mean, it’s, I laugh when people say Oh, but I gotta know what they’re doing. I gotta, I gotta have him in that chair. I gotta have. What are you talking about? No, no, you don’t? What? So you can go into their office and bother them. So you can get your coffee and have a little nice chit chat with no, you’re bothering them. They don’t want to be in your office, because you’re interrupting their work. And Jim’s absolutely right. If you’re hitting all your key numbers, I care about what our average fee is. And I care about the number of cases we settle. That’s pretty much all they care about, right. And if you’re doing those things, then great. But here’s the here’s the other thing, the same people that say that they need to micromanage and see everything and put the software’s on their computers and all that are the same ones that will leave the office early, that they’re not the ones putting in the work themselves. And that this is the Hey, asshole moment where they see you doing those things, and they don’t want to do the work either. If you’re not going to do the work, they’re not going to do the work. And so it’s amazing to me, it’s always the same people too. It’s the same lawyers that want to micromanage that don’t want to put in the work. They just want to try to Yeah, Jim go with that. Because you play when Jim puts up his finger. He’s,

Jim Hacking
I know, we had a hot seat a couple quarters ago, and one of our favorite members was there. And he was complaining about how he can’t find associates where he lives and people. And so he so he presents this issue, this problem that he’s having, he talks for five or 10 minutes, and then everyone gets to chime in for like 20 minutes. And people would say, Well, have you thought about remote workers? Oh, that doesn’t work in our model. Have you thought about part time attorneys or out of state attorneys? Oh, that doesn’t work for our model. So everything was that doesn’t work in our model? Well, listen, brother, maybe your model is not working. That’s maybe, maybe we need a new model.

Speaker 2
Oh, my goodness. Is this really weird? Like, talk to me? I know you’re having amazing conversations and your conferences on your podcast and your Facebook group and the guild? Is this like where we’re at right now for those firms for that brother that’s sitting in the hot seat and said, that won’t work for my model for my firm? What have you, what do you see if they do not truly take a look at the model? Take a look at the way they’re doing what they’re doing in their mindset around this? What do you have to say, is this a wave of where we’re headed with law firms in 2023? If you do not pivot, and I know that word is so abused, but what do you guys seem for the law firms that are going to be like, stick their heels into that mindset?

Tyson Mutrux
Well, I don’t think it’s a pivot problem. I don’t think people need to think about pivoting. I think that they just need to stop and think because and I think it’s this is normal. I think it’s completely normal for people to like, I used to do criminal defense, right. And so it was very normal for me to have to get up in the morning, drive, you know, an hour to a court and then just drive around all frickin morning to different courthouses. And then in the afternoon, I’m meeting with clients, I’m going to do jail visits. And next thing you know, you’re on to the next day, and then the next day, the next day, and it’s easy to get stuck in that grind. And you’re sort of in this rut and you’re doing everyday and so the law firm owners, it’s a normal feeling to have that but the value comes whenever you kind of step back a little bit. You want to pivot in what you’re doing, but you do have to step back and think about where do I want this firm to go? Where’s my time best spent So I guess if there is a trend because there is what, right behind 2023 there’s private equity coming in to the legal space. Okay, it’s coming. It’s already in a few states. Yeah, it’s going to get more efficient, okay. And you’re gonna have a lot more competition over the next decade than what we add over the last decade. So you need to make your firms more efficient and get ready for it, because it’s coming. And people need to stop. And I think just having a pause, if the message is anything, it’s take a pause, and think about where you’re headed and with your firm. Another word you can use is be deliberate, right, be deliberate about what you’re doing.

Speaker 2
Efficiency. What did we talk about be more efficient? What does that mean for the two of you?

Jim Hacking
Well, Stephen Covey would say we begin with the end in mind, right? So what do we want? And what, you know, is there a difference between what we say what we want and what we’re actually working towards? Right? So I think if you want to talk about efficiency, you have to ask yourself, Okay, well, what is the final outcome? What, what’s the ideal experience for our team? How do we want to create our work product, and then look at all the ways that we can simplify it, that we can delegate it that we can have the person with the least amount of talent, doing the low level stuff, and the people with the higher talent doing the most important stuff. So many lawyers that we talked to spend their time doing $5 work, when they should be doing $50,000 work, right. And so I think that Tyson’s point that he just made about stopping and thinking is critical for law firm owners and 2023 and beyond, because we’re just so reactive, and so bouncy around, and so undisciplined that all that anger and vitriol we’re trying to impose on our staff, we should be focusing on ourselves and ask ourselves my favorite question from Jerry colonna, which is, how have we been complicit in creating the conditions that we say that we don’t want? And I think that’s just a really insightful question. Because it just forces you to take responsibility, everything at our firm is our fault. Anything that’s going wrong at our firm, it’s our fault. We are the only ones who have the power to change it. And so we can pitch all we want. But if we’re not doing the legwork, and like Tyson said, if our team doesn’t know that we’re in the trenches with them, they’re gonna be like, who’s had Asel? Who comes in every three days and yells at me? You know, I don’t have any loyalty to that person.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, and I’ll add to that, I mean, I think I think it’s simple exercise. I haven’t talked about this in a while. But a simple exercise that people can do that are sort of struggling is you just take, it’s really simple, right? you map out the case from start to finish. So if you do an injury case, from the moment that really the person gets in the crash, map out that experience for that client from start to the end of the case, and make it ideal, right, and you pick out all the benchmarks in there, and an injury case, its speed, and in most most practice areas, it’s speed, and you’re talking about efficiency. Okay, let’s get this thing fast. So like that, whatever that timeframe is, let’s try to shrink it down as much as possible. And it can be hard with injury cases, because it’s like you want to rush a case, but you can do things to make it more efficient. For example, medical records is a massive time suck for a lot of injury firms. And so what let’s let’s pick apart that part of the process, and how do we shrink that down and make it as fast as possible. So if you just go through the simple process of mapping out your case, like a timeline, start to finish and start to pick apart points where it’s slow, and you can, you can improve, and then you can’t, like make everything perfect, but over time, you can make it better. And just doing that little exercise will help you tremendously,

Speaker 2
as you said that I’m like, Wow, imagine doing that with your team and treating it like a mini workshop and having fun with it. And sitting down talking about being in the trenches with your team, talking about being deliberate talking about speed, talking about consistency, efficiency, and I love that efficiency, speed. I love this, especially with what is coming. I think a lot of attorneys don’t believe it. We’ve seen it in the dental space we’ve I mean, so I love that you said that of sitting down the pause, take a step back, take a case from cradle to grave. And as you’re saying that and bringing in your team, how about bringing your team to do that as well and for them to I hear from attorneys all the time you know, business will be great but for the employees nobody will step up and lead and Mike have you given them permission? Have you given them permission Have you enrolled them have you taken the pause and sat and taken a gaze from the beginning to the end for them to see Hey attorney Why are you doing that? Didn’t you hire me to do that? Can I step up and lead and a lot of times I think you know it’s it’s kind of a blessing and a curse if you will I hired these people and nobody you know will follow the process step up in all the complaints that they’re bitching about what have you but your employees our relationship? Have you given them any time attention feedback to even pour in them. Have you given them permission to lead? And or are you just white knuckling? Everything to Jim’s point? You know, the brain surgeon model that I’m the guru, I’m the guy is not scalable and sellable. Just real

Tyson Mutrux
quick, sorry. We’re both getting worked up over this one. If that’s your model, right, I always I always think back to this. And I don’t know if this is true. I’ve heard about the story about Donald Rumsfeld, right. And Donald Rumsfeld whenever he was, whenever George Bush was, when that White House, what happened is, every morning, they call them snowflakes, right. And he had a bit sticky notes. And this is the story. So I’m just repeating the story that I heard. So he had these sticky notes, and people would be in an align every single morning, and he would hand out sticky notes, and you’d see them leave the White House, and they would call them snowflakes as they were leaving the White House. That is not a very efficient leadership model. Okay? That is if everything’s at the top, if that’s your leadership model, you’ve not given all of your team members that that permission, that authority to make decisions. And if you’re struggling, read the book, turn your ship around, right, turn the ship around, I think he’s the name of it, it is a great book where you need to empower your people it because that is extremely inefficient. If everything’s come up to the top and a lot, that’s how a lot of law firm owners are, because they are the lawyer of the law firm, they’re running the law firm, everything sort of runs through them. And it’s extremely inefficient. And so you’ve got to empower your people to make those small decisions, from the small decisions to the big decisions, they’ve got to be empowered to make mistakes, they’ve got to otherwise you’re going to be stuck in that rut for the next 30 years of your career.

Unknown Speaker
If you’re still in business, that’s the

Jim Hacking
cost of delegation, the cost of delegation is whether or not you’re comfortable letting them make mistakes, and not going nuts, not losing your shit. If if you I mean, obviously want to have safeguards. So there’s no malpractice but short of that, you’ve got to be comfortable in letting go, because so many of the people that we see struggle with delegations are the control freaks, who won’t let things go and won’t let people make mistakes. Obviously, we all know it, mistakes are the best way to learn. And as long as you’re not harming your client, and as long as you’re not, you know, downgrading the reputation of the firm within those boundaries, you got to give your team a lot of leeway. And you can always have safety nets or safeguards like, like a safeguard would be before something goes out, it’s reviewed by you or another attorney. But that doesn’t mean you have to be the one to put the paper in the printer. That doesn’t mean that you know if you can get your team to get it 85 90% of the way done the way you want it. Now for Tyson would say you got to get the way you want it all into a system. So they can do it almost 99%. But if you if you want that catch all for the first six months, do it and then eventually just let it go.

Speaker 2
Jim, how do you get comfortable but letting go I hear this from material like Yeah, yeah, that one time, I did let go and I got a bar complaint that one time, they’re always picking from their past or past experience of that one time, then I did not go not doing that again, you just

Jim Hacking
have to ask yourself, Do I really want to delegate? Or do I want a one person show I mean, that’s the the cost of business, the cost of having something bigger than yourself, the cost of having a firm with 53 people is you got to let go of a whole lot of stuff. And that just start off by letting go the things you hate to do and that you’re not good at, then let go the things that you don’t like to do that you are good at, and then let go of the things that you’re good at, and you’d like to do. And that’s that’s really the right mindset. And if you don’t, it’s fine. But don’t say that you want something else? And then not do it. That’s the cost of admission. Yes,

Unknown Speaker
Tyson want to get?

Tyson Mutrux
No, I agree with that. That what Jim just said is really important. Because people will tell us all the time that they want one thing and they really don’t they’re saying that they want that one thing because it’s cool, right? It’s they want this whatever it is, right? They they want to run a 100 person law firm and they really don’t they say it because it sounds cool. And they see other people saying that they want it. And if they really were to step back and think about what their vision is for their career, then they would realize, okay, that’s not what I really want. But to address your question, though, right? Okay, you can still say yeah, I did that one time and then this happened. I got a bar complaint. Let’s say that’s what it is. Okay,

Jim Hacking
I had a I had a bad hire and then they don’t want to ever hire someone again.

Tyson Mutrux
That’s that’s like the number one right? Okay. Well, what did you learn from that? Right? Why did you have the bad hire? What could you have done differently to catch some of those things? You can’t catch everything. Okay. It may have been that one thing that slipped through it’s usually not though it’s usually you didn’t have a hiring process in place. And so you just hired whomever and then you put them in a seat and they were terrible. And you didn’t know that because you didn’t ask the right questions, but just step back and assess Okay, well, why did these things happen? Okay, now what fail safes can we put in place what bumpers can we put in place to prevent it from happening again? That will allow How you to sort of step back, for example, we have one of our checklist items that we have for case managers case comes through. If the statute of limitations after the case of sign is less than 90 days out, that’s a big red flag for us when it pops up a red flag, and we say, we need to alert an attorney right away and address the issue. So you can put in failsafes, like that, so that you’re alerted? Is it 100%? Could someone just check that box off and say, Oh, no big deal, and someone blows a statute, I guess that’s, that’s, that’s fine. But that’s probably a hiring problem. You’re, that’s probably a management problem. That’s probably something else to step back and ask yourself why they happen. Put in things in place to help correct it. So it doesn’t happen again, and you’re fine. Did you get the step back, and you have to, you have to sort of trust the process a little bit.

Speaker 2
And getting clear. I love that, um, what you really want your all time I’ll get calls from attorneys that are contacting us for hiring and we’re in a path of growth, we’re going to attend next this year, blah, blah, blah, and like, no, why do you want that? Talk to me a little bit about it, because you don’t want to spend the money for it. You don’t want to pay your people, right? But they’re comparing yourself to so and so that they saw on the Facebook group or saw at a conference or what have you been like, God, this guy or gal, this practice has it all. And I love that you said Get really clear with yourself if you’re not willing to fail fast, and you’re not willing to get into action and be able to let go, that maybe that’s not the model for you. And just really getting clear with yourself right,

Becca Eberhart
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Speaker 2
max law events.com. So you all get to a point, obviously, you let go, you built very, very successful law firms. Talk to me about this passion project that you have with maximum lawyer, I know you’re doing a lot of amazing stuff to support attorneys in the legal space to grow their practice, using your model. And as the lab you all have proof of concept, tried, tested, proven. Talk to us about what you’re up to in regards to supporting law firms and lawyers.

Jim Hacking
So I’ve come to the conclusion that my purpose in life is to try to ease people suffering. And I do that as an immigration lawyer by helping people stay in the United States come to United States be joined with their family be protected. And I think that transfers right over to maximum lawyer. I mean, the whole thing started because Tyson and I were trying to figure things out. And we’re talking things through and I thought these are good conversations. And we thought this would make a good podcasts. So it started with that. And so you know, that lots of growth, lots of new opportunities and new connections that we’ve made with people. But for the most part, I think most law firm owners are suffering and they’re suffering in silence. And I think that’s why the Facebook group really grew was because it was a place where it was okay to have a growth mindset where, you know, we don’t allow any negativity in there. Like if people are bitching out they go right. Or if they’re spammy or self promotional, or if they if they’re just negative or harsh, out they go. So we wanted to create a place where people could talk about the hardships related to owning a law firm. And I say all the time in the group and in the guild that this shit is hard, other than raising kids growing a law firm is the hardest thing we’ll ever do. And so I think that that’s really what you call it a passion project. And I think I think it’s grown into that. And I think that both of us are sort of serious, and we spend time talking to law firm owners every week about the struggles that they’re having. And, you know, we created the group that we needed, we created that that community that we needed, and we and we’ve taught ourselves the lessons that we learned, like one of the great things about the podcast, Tyson shared a tic tac with us yesterday, and he has a cool little message about fear of missing out and I said let’s even get him on the podcast. So we get information that helps our firm and it’s always easier to see problems and other people than than in your own.

Speaker 2
Yeah, and your podcast. My goodness, it comes to my inbox. That is one podcast I’ve listened to every single week. I absolutely love it Tyson how about for you?

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I love it. I just love it kind of thinking about how the it’s all sort of progressed because it started just me and Jim you know a bunch of false starts with a podcast on camera. Well, we started on what was what did we start recording on Jim? It was the Skype Skype Yeah, we started recording on Skype we had there are so many episodes that we forgot to press record, you know? And then you kind of fast forward like yeah, okay, sorry than a Facebook Rupe and then you got the podcast, and then the conference and the guild. And it’s just kind of cool to think about how it’s progressed, it’s progressed with our law firms, too. It’s grown with our law firm law firms, which is a pretty cool part of it as well. And I think it’s cool to kind of listen to some of the old episodes, like some of the advice that we gave them versus what we what we’d give now we’ve, we’ve learned so much, it’s just as valuable to me and Jim as it as everyone else. Because we get to learn as we’re talking to all these amazing people, like, we had some amazing talents on the podcast, and there’s just really incredible to do. But then if you kind of go to like the Gil, like I kind of pinch myself every day, you know, but like, oh, it’s amazing being in such a wonderful group of human beings and attorneys and successful attorneys, and you kind of a spectrum of people that are sort of just starting out, and then people that are doing just truly amazing things in the legal space. And it’s so cool to be able to be around those people. It’s just, it’s incredible. Talk to us about the guild. Yeah. So the guild is what I say is on the podcast, you know, if you want a more high level conversation, join us in the guild, Max, I’ll go back out. And then that’s exactly what I say on the podcast. And it’s, it really is it’s a great community of I’d say, in the in the entire legal space, probably the top 5% of all attorneys, like they’re just really, really good people, great attorneys that really are about improvement and helping each other. And the great thing is, is most people they give more than they take which is which is a rare trait to have right? To find someone willing to give more than they are, then it’ll take but you know, we’ve got quarterly masterminds with training sessions as well that are mixing their their their two day events throughout the country. Like for example, we just got back from Scottsdale, then we’ve got Austin and then Boulder and then Miami to wrap up the year. So really cool things Jim just did an amazing workshop on on video and they can share because Jim’s got I don’t know how many freakin views on YouTube, ours. And it’s it’s it’s quite incredible. And then we’ve got hot seats we do. We’ve got training sessions that we do and weekly accountability calls. And it’s just the most important part of those is community and we had a gym mission earlier. But we had a member that was sort of struggling last week. And the rallying around him this week has been just incredible, just incredible. And they don’t even know who the person is, right? They don’t know what the person is, but they were the comments, the videos, the just the showing of like, Hey, we’ve got your back was was quite incredible. So it’s just it’s a great group of people.

Speaker 2
What I love about what you said successful attorneys successful lawyers in the definition of success is just not money in the bank. It’s just not bodies in the building, so to speak. And when I hear from you and Jim that I really think distinguishes your organization, the work that you all are doing, it’s not about the billable hour, it’s not about tracking time, it’s not about more money, and there’s so many organizations out there that yeah, they buy on paper, these law firms, I mean, so successful, more money than they ever could have imagined more impact than they ever could imagine. But they’re just so broken. They’re angry all the time. They hate their employees are constantly bitching about their employees, what have you, they have all this money, they have all this success, all the building satellite offices, all the things that are on paper, make your definition of success. But I would love for you all just to kind of tie a bow on this. What success mean for you when you talk about successful lawyers because there’s something different there is absolutely something different in in our listeners, I’m going to put all the links all the show notes at Facebook group and I’ll have you guys mentioned that there’s something different about what the two of you are, you know, before we started recording, I just like given your 75 part episode that the two of you did together the vulnerability there the transparency I mean, it’s it’s just a different vibe they the two of you, I’d love to hear what success truly what the definition of success means for each of you.

Jim Hacking
My son calls the guild AAA for lawyers. I’ve been told Tyson that but that’s you’re doing lawyer a again. You know, I have read the big book and I’m I’m in the 12 step world for a long time. So we definitely bring some of that vibe to it. But I really do think it’s about finding that connection and giving people permission to make mistakes to acknowledge the struggle to talk about the hard things. Success for me is having an impact. If it’s helping an immigrant if it’s helping a lawyer, if it’s helping people like when we do our hot seats will tell people well, you can come on and talk about whatever you want. And you know when people get on and talk about, you know how to become more efficient or how to run an SEO campaign. I’m like, boo boo hiss. I like it when we’re digging around in the dirt talking about the hard stuff. And that’s really where the connection rises. One time. We were doing a hot seat in some But he talked about their long history of problems with drinking and and that unlocked three other people to talk about things that they were struggling with just at that moment. And that to me, when that happens, that makes all this work that we’re doing for the maximum lawyer community worthwhile.

Tyson Mutrux
I agree with all of that. I’m very proud of the work that we’ve done, the work that we’ve done to help other lawyers, and I mean, every podcasts been absolutely amazing. No, but that’s, that’s part of life. Right. But the, I think it’s amazing to kind of look back and see the effect that we’ve had on the profession, and I’m very proud of that. But definition of success. I mean, for me, it’s really simple. Like, whenever I’m like a grandpa, or my kids, are they kind of talking about the stories that they had as a kid? Are they happy about their childhoods? And are they are they happy to have me as their father and, and to be the grandfather of their children, because that is something that we lose sight of. And it’s very simple for me, like, I want to have that, right, I want to have those relationships with my kids or strong bonds. And I do that the vehicle for that’s the law firm, right, and I demonstrate for them the hard work that it takes, and the dedication to your profession and to your craft. And I I show that by by being a successful lawyer and showing that I really care about the thing, the work that I do, and that you need to find something that you’re proud of doing and something that you’re you’re happy with doing and that it’s okay that if you’re if you don’t like your profession, that you can switch professions, you know, passing on those life lessons to them. That’s success to me, and everyone’s got their own definition of success. You’re so right about that. Gemini, we have maximum Laura, minimum time, it’s a little course that we have that we put together for guild members and it we talked about you can be a stage 1234, law, lawyer, whatever you want to be if you want to be a one lawyer work, little shop, and just do trademarks. And that’s all you want to do. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If you want to be that big time lawyer that has you know, 1000s of cases and puts up bunch of billboards, there’s nothing wrong with that. Choose whatever you want to be and go after that and be be okay with that. And if and you get halfway through it, and you decide that’s not for me, it’s okay to change. It’s okay to change that. And change your vision, your vision over over the years is going to change. That’s fine. You don’t have to stick to it, you can always hit that reset button.

Speaker 2
I love that. And then love your definition of success Tyson bringing in your adult children and grandchildren When have you because at the end of the day, you’re modeling in at the law firm. And I always say this to my clients when they come, you know their definition of success. It’s great that you’re modeling a law firm, but when you bring it home and your kids get the stressed out crappy version of you, right? No, it’s not an either or conversation. It’s an and and wherever you go, there you are. So really bringing that doing great work in the legal space serving families, serving your clients serving, you know, being a phenomenal leader to your employees as well. And then your kids seeing that and bringing it home to your family as well. It’s great, because so many lawyers, you know, they’re resentful, they’re missing their kids soccer, they’re missing everything. And when they are home, they’re not present, thundering silence, the, you know, the anxiety just pulsing through their veins. I always say you’re responsible for the energy, you bring in the room and you leave in the room. And when your kids, they’re feeling it, they’re feeling it. They’re like, yeah, Dad’s driving a Lambo, Dad’s you know, got the big building or what have you, but boy, boy, I can feel it. Wow. So all right, tell us what you guys are up to tell our attorney listeners that we have here how they can stay connected with you all if they’re not already.

Tyson Mutrux
The easiest way they could stay in touch with us is listen to the podcast. But also if you go to Facebook, we have a 6000 member Facebook group that is phenomenon. Okay, just search maximum lawyer and you can join us there. There’s a few questions you’ll get you’ll answer but we don’t allow spammers. So if you if you’re a spammer dark complainers,

Speaker 2
pitchers know, pitchers punch in our bit.

Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, join us there. And then we always recommend that you start there, right. But if you are a member of that group, and you want to join us in the guild, Maxwell guild.com is also another place to join us.

Speaker 2
Is there an open enrollment time for The Guild application process?

Tyson Mutrux
It is I mean, it is open enrollment kind of thing. We’ve talked about capping and we’ve talked about putting it where we have certain times but we haven’t done that at this point. But it is open roll enrollment at this point.

Speaker 2
Great. Excellent. Well, I am so completely honored, completely honored, keep up the amazing work and being legal leaders, leading legal leaders, the work that you’re doing on your podcast, the guests that you all have the diverse conversations, the real raw, honest conversations that you’re having. They’re making a massive, massive difference I’ve been in Lagos space for 26 years and I’m really passionate on the employee side of creating intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs world and thank you for all the work you’re doing with the attorneys. Thanks, Molly. Yes.

Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer but stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum liar.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

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