Today on the show we have Robert Hoglund, a graduate of Hamline University School of Law, owner of Hoglund, Chwialkowski & Mrozik, PLLC, a Social Security Disability Law Firm.
In today’s episode we’ll discuss the ethics of marketing and expanding your firm into new areas, phone consultations vs. in-person consultations, and splitting time between the firm and other businesses.
Hacking’s Hack:
Read 5AM Club- I’ve been getting up at 5 and its made a big change on my productivity and outlook.
Tyson’s Tip:
Transferwise. Transferwise lets you easily pay virtual assistants when you’re not going through Upwork or a similar platform.
Robert’s Tip:
Hold your attorneys accountable with data and coach them on their weak areas.
Keep your phone consults to 8-10 minutes-give them a reason to schedule an appointment.
Confirm appointments 1-3 business days from the call.
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Transcripts: Scaling to 200+ Employees with Robert Hoglund
Robert Hoglund
I’m very upfront I said, Look, it takes two to tango here. You know, I can deliver the goods but you’ve got to pick up the phone, answer that email, you know, on that first call, or, you know, immediately after that email comes in and set that as sets that appointment because in in the digital world, whether it’s PPC, you know, any other digital medium, if they’re leaving a message or otherwise, you’re so screwed, because they’ll just move on to the next ad. And the likelihood of you really met client backhand, historically, with our firm for anything we leave on the tables about 30%.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar, podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson Meatrix. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.
Jim Hacking
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And Ty’s. emetrics What’s up Jimmy Tyson, my
Jim Hacking
friend, it’s good. Good to talk to you. We had fun last night speaking to all those law students at St. Louis University, those kind souls are thinking about going out on their own and maybe one day opening up their own law firm.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, it’s always interesting. When we’re, whenever we’re speaking those classes. It was definitely a different audience than the than the one we spoke to, for Gary burgers thing. But you can tell the students that are there just to get credits and the ones that actually are there to learn to actually because they want to go out on their own. And so it was a lot of fun. I mean, I think we talked about this a little bit afterwards, we had an only an hour and we could have filled up a couple hours easily. So I don’t think I felt rushed. But I felt like we we had a lot more to add.
Robert Hoglund
But it was fun. I enjoyed it.
Jim Hacking
Well, it’s interesting that on the heels of that, at the end of our talk, we were discussing whether or not these law students should in fact go out on their own and start their own firm. And our guest today is Robert Hoagland. He started his firm shortly after graduating law school in 1990. He grew it to 38 attorneys and 200 staff members. It’s a Social Security, disability and consumer bankruptcy practice there. There have offices in five states, and they spend over $3 million a year on advertising, most of that pay per click. So we’re really excited to have Robert on the show, Robert, thanks for coming.
Robert Hoglund
Thank you, Tyson. Thank you, Jim. So
Tyson Mutrux
tell us a little bit about just your journey and how you got when from 1990 to where you are now. And just just a little bit more about that.
Robert Hoglund
Sure. Well, I grew up in Superior, Wisconsin, and went to University of Minnesota Duluth for my undergrad, I actually started as a pre med major. That didn’t, didn’t work out too well for me. But we had a very dear friend of the family who was an attorney. And I started doing some intern work for him. And, you know, kind of gotten a circle of attorneys in that area is a very prominent personal injury attorney. And one of the things I noticed is that most of the while the firm I work for, and most of the individuals, the other attorneys that he knew, were just not very good business people, and very good attorneys, but they really, you know, back in the day, at least in 1986 87, you know, really had little business acumen and I just saw an opportunity. I thought, you know, I’m gonna go to law school, and I’m gonna open my own practice, and I’m gonna treat it as a business. So I always tell myself, I’m a business person who just happens to have a license to practice law. So I graduated from UMD. I went to Amman law school, on graduation, opened my mouth up right out of law school with a small loan from my my parents who worked on the railroad up there in Superior, Wisconsin and started marketing. Gabrielle surely relative to back in the day, then it was a lot of newspaper and print Yellow Pages. And what really took me to the next level, and I was probably one of the first attorneys in the Minneapolis St. Paul area to open you know, multiple office locations. So I kind of brought the offices to the people so to speak. And the first few years out, you know, I went from an absolutely nobody to the third largest filer bankruptcies in the state of Minnesota based on this good business acumen and having those those office locations, which really garnered a lot of support for the marketing because you look local and close. And I traveled from office to office to office every day. That was that was kind of the beginning. Robert,
Jim Hacking
talk to us a little bit about how you expanded into five different states. I’m actually considering right now opening up an office my immigration practices here in St. Louis, and I’m thinking about opening an office in Chicago. I’d love one of the benefits of having this podcast is we get to talk to smart people like you who have done interesting things and I’d love to hear any tips or guidance you would have for me, as I’m thinking about opening that check out I go offense.
Robert Hoglund
Oh, gosh. Yeah, that’s, that’s a big undertaking, you know, to move to another jurisdiction. Actually. You know, you want to have an office location there. Obviously, I suspect you meet with people meet with your clients face to face. Maybe you do phone consultations, I’m not sure everybody’s got their own gig. But you know, you have to when you go into a market totally unbranded. Coincidentally, we just opened up offices in St. Louis, for both bankruptcy and Social Security as of last January 9. And digital marketing can be a very good environment to move into a new market when you’re unbranded because a lot of people at least through that I found through pay per click or Google ads, or, you know, Google, my business listings, will use online advertising because they don’t have friends, relatives relationships, or make perhaps they don’t want to discuss that type of case with friends, relatives, or other relationships. So you know, digital marketing, marketing can be a huge amount of going in to a new market, a new jurisdiction, totally unbranded now, actually kind of stole my hack here I was gonna have at the end of the program, but you know, one thing you want to be really careful of, and 99% of attorneys don’t understand this, this is that, you know, you can go through all the, you know, legal hoops to make sure that you can practice in that area, you know, that you’re licensed in that, that in Illinois, for example, or otherwise, but you have to pay special attention to the professional ethics rules relative to advertising. And by that, I mean, some jurisdictions require that you have a license there. Some jurisdictions, your jurisdictions require that you have a physical office location, if you do do any advertising or marketing, you know, in this new market, there are certain rules or provisions relative to advertising, whether you have to, you know, submit advertising to the Board of Professional Responsibility before you issue it. Things of that nature. Have you looked into any of that? At all? No, I haven’t. Yeah, and, and most people think they just need to cover themselves relative to licensing or otherwise. And there’s a whole myriad of other rules you have to follow if you advertise, and I would assume if you’re going into a new market, that you’d be, you know, doing advertising or marketing, correct. Online, for sure. Yeah, exactly. So just read those rules very carefully. Anytime I move into a new market, I always hire an ethics attorney, to review my advertising or otherwise, it’s a very good investment. Because, you know, if you’ve got a good digital marketing agency, or you do it in house, and you go in and you start, you know, really kicking butt, it’s gonna raise eyebrows to a lot of your competitors who are already established there. And, you know, I’ve seen, you know, word complaints of that nature issue, because you’re, you’re going into new territory.
Jim Hacking
Does that makes sense? Yes, it’s something I hadn’t really thought through. So I appreciate that a lot. So I want to talk
Tyson Mutrux
just a little bit more about that. Because Jim and I talked a little bit last night, we had spoken to some law students, and we were talking about just how things have changed over the last 10 years of that signing clients up how most of what we do now is done via computer and over the phone. I guess you’ve probably leveraged that with with your as you open more practices and more states. Can you talk a little bit about how you all signed clients up? Do you do it in person do you do over the phone? How do you will do it
Robert Hoglund
a myriad of ways like our bankruptcy practice. Typically, I always like to meet or have my attorneys meet with clients face to face with the bankruptcy, there’s a lot of moving parts. And I want to get a good read on the client relative to whether they’re telling the truth or not, obviously, because that can be very disastrous. If you have a client that has a problem with that. We do do phone consultations with a lot of our bankruptcy clients, because we do cover the entire state of Minnesota. And some of these clients, you know, live 3456 hours away from the nearest office that we have. So in that case, we do do exceptions on phone consultations now. So our Social Security Disability practice, we did do home visits with clients. But as our practice grew, it just did not become economical. And what we put together are what we call mail packets out to our social security disability clients, and then they sign you know, the stand and sign back the retainer agreements. So that’s how we handle the signups for Social Security Disability. In the in the five states we have is mail packets,
Jim Hacking
not to us a little bit about the marketing mentoring that you do and your bio talks about you’ve worked with 30 Plus firms, helping them grow their firms. What kind of offers do you make or what kind of services do you provide?
Robert Hoglund
Consulting Services? Much of it, I give away. I have Have Hoagland advertising and analytics, which is a digital advertising company, that I spun off a law firm because it’s worked. So you know, the digital advertising that we put together in house over the past 15 years, has grown our firm. So, so large and uncomfortably large, you know, it’s like a real stat that we keep turning up, you know, month after month on the growth. So it’s very comfortable growth. And in that respect, I saw a need for what I suspected was other law firms that went through the same poor results utilizing other digital advertising agencies. And as a result of that, I started helping other attorneys with their digital advertising. And then another opportunity spun off that where they needed a lot of consulting on practices, protocols, technology, etc. And so I have 30 or 40 other law firms that I that I consult with a lot of it, you know, they do the PPC program with us, most of that I give away, I probably shouldn’t, but I’ve got a great passion for growing other law firms, not just mine. And, again, we help them with data management practices, you know, tracking advertising, making sure that they know what pays what doesn’t. And that’s where I boy put the digital advertising company together to be extremely fact driven as far as results, because that’s the biggest hurdle that you’ll find, you know, looking for a digital advertising agency is that that transparency and those back driven results, most digital advertising agencies in the world will talk about how many clicks you got, or how many calls you got, or how many impressions how many people saw your ad, and that doesn’t pay the bills. And there is, you know, very simple cheap technology and practices and protocols where you can take you know, all of your venger vendors other than, you know, perhaps like radio or TV, and just super track that right down to client retained or, you know, appointment that and then you can figure out your return on marketing investment from there.
Tyson Mutrux
It’s funny, because you actually stole my next question that, Robert, because I was I was looking at the topics you you’d given us things that you can talk about, and that’s one of the things, you know, is my marketing working? And here’s how to find out. So you sort of you already addressed that. So there’s another one that I want to ask you, because one of your topics is top 10 Questions to Ask a marketing vendor, and what would you say? I don’t want you all 10. But like, what, what are a couple questions that you can ask a marketing vendor? Because we I mean, they’re calling us every single freaking day, they’re sending us emails? Yeah. The other content is contacting us via Facebook Messenger all the time. So what is what are just a couple of questions that you might ask that would kind of narrow out the ones that are aren’t worth hiring?
Robert Hoglund
Sure, um, yeah, kind of the buyer beware, the caveat emptor of that line of questioning really alludes to contract length. There’s so many companies that want, you know, six month or a year contract, you know, where we were month to month, like with our advertising agency. And because our results speak for themselves, and I’d be leery of any six month or one year contract. To me, that just tells you that, hey, we’re gonna hook you whether this works or not. exclusivity, that’s a big one, especially with Google AdWords, pay per click, because I can’t tell you how much of a conflict of interest that is for a company to represent you, your law firm, and then the guy down the street that does immigration law. And then the guy, you know, in the next county that ended does immigration law, and you’re all targeting the same audience. You know, who do you put on top? Who gets the best bids? Who gets the most attention? It’s a total conflict of interest. And unfortunately, most digital advertising companies will will not offer that exclusivity. And I think that’s so important management fee, they need to be very transparent about that. There are digital advertising agencies, or other advertising agencies, you know, not PPC or otherwise. But you know, directories or a myriad of other options you have online, that particular PPC, some are as low as 5%. Some are as high as 55%. But they don’t tell you. So you have to you have to ask that question and get that in writing from them. I mean, a good management fee, or a decent one, at least for for Google AdWords, or Bing, or PPC is somewhere between 15 and 22% is reasonable. Anything less than that, I’d be suspect anything more than that, it’d be very suspect that in anything more than than 22%, for example, you know, 3040 50 55% that’s going to eat and your ROI so bad. For example, on a digital advertising campaign or PPC campaign. If you have a $10,000 month budget for PPC and they’re charging you a 55% management fee, that means you’re only getting $4,500 of Google AdWords, the rest is going to vote digital advertising company Another one is transparency, which we touched on a little bit too. Because most all of all of advertising, again, short of radio, TV, maybe YouTube videos, things of that nature. You can set tracking numbers or email, you know, separate, you know, email addresses. So you should be able to super track the results of the contacts from a lot of these, these vendors or these advertising agencies. And again, what a lot of them hang their hat on and send you as reports and I just met with a client the other day, that’s not very important. They didn’t know how this ad vertising was performing. Because all I got is impressions and calls and clicks. I mean, are these marketing calls, I mean, we all know how many marketing calls we get on our cell phones every day or otherwise. So just you know, it’s just meaningless report that, let’s face it, if you weren’t very digitally savvy, maybe impressive, but it really doesn’t get down to the fact of the matter and super tracking these ads and making sure that you’re getting that ROI. And that this, this vendors working out for you.
Jim Hacking
Remember, what would you say right now? Is the state of law firms, small law firms? How do you think do you think people are struggling? Do you think people are doing well? Are people receptive to the marketing that you’re suggesting? And, and, you know, Tyson and I are always wondering, we spend our time trying to talk to the people that already get it, or we try to bring in new people who don’t get it? Where do you fall on that?
Robert Hoglund
I think a lot of them get it, they just not, they just don’t know how to get there. I think the biggest problem that I have with sole proprietors and dealing with them is that, you know, when you’re driving, anytime you do any marketing, or anytime I do any marketing for any of my clients, I always tell my client, I’m very upfront I said, Look, it takes two to tango here, you know, I can deliver the goods, but you’ve got to pick up the phone, answer that email, you know, on that first call, or, you know, immediately after that email comes in and set that as sets that appointment, because in the digital world, whether it’s PPC, you know, any other digital medium, if, if, if they’re leaving a message or otherwise, you’re so screwed, because they’ll just move on to the next ad. And the likelihood of you reaching that client backhand, historically, with our firm for anything, we leave on the tables about 30%. It just destroys your ROI. So what I what I did seeing opportunities, I have a huge call center for my own law firm, we manage about 6000 inbound outbound calls a day, you know, just for our law firm, is, anytime a sole proprietor comes on board, relative to the digital advertising that we do, I always ask them, you know, very sternly, but politely utilize our call center, because without it, it’s just it’s a disaster in the making. And I don’t even know if I can help you because I’ve just, you know, when I first started the agency and went down that road a couple of times with firms and it was just just a disaster because as a sole proprietor, you can’t be everywhere at once. And oftentimes you have staff that is not you know, very well first are trained, or, you know, they’ve you’ve got a paralegal, they’re taking new intakes, but at the same time, that paralegal has, you know, 10, other, you know, job descriptions, and oftentimes, they don’t give a lot of credence to, you know, grabbing that call when it comes in. But that’s probably the, you know, one of the bigger issues that I spot is a lot of the sole proprietors or otherwise try to do too much. Robert, what
Tyson Mutrux
would you say what percentage you we do think you spend on the law firm, like actually practicing it, if any? Or maybe you just manage the practice, but then and then what percentage of percentage? Would you say that you work on the advertising agency? And then which one do you prefer doing more?
Robert Hoglund
I can tell you which one is more stressful right off the top. Anytime I take on a firm I treated likes my own. So now I have got, you know, 120 law firms, not just one. And that’s very stressful. Because I treat all those law firms like they’re my own. But I probably spend probably about 10%, on on the law firm management, I haven’t practiced law in about 15 years. Just turn that over to other folks who, who helped me with that. And then probably about 90%, on the advertising agency.
Jim Hacking
And how’s it going? How are firms doing? What kind of successes have you had what what would be like a success story that you could share with our
Robert Hoglund
listeners? Well, I have a client in California. I just recently onboard in the last few months. I was most of our client bases, or the advertising agency is by referrals. And he is referred to us by one of our clients. And he was you know, a bit skeptical about joining our firm because he was very happy with how his yellow page company was using for Yellow Pages also did his pay per click campaign. And interestingly enough through conversation, I found out that company had recorded all the phone calls that were coming in for the past six months off his campaign, which he was spending about $6,000 a month on. And they said, they said, Michael, why don’t you turn those recordings over to me, I said, I’ll have one of my staff, go through them and just listen to see how this business is performing. So we listened to all the calls. And F in doing the math on the number of appointments that he was setting just appointments was about 1200 bucks per appointment. And, which is for his practice area, you should be at about $175 per appointment. And I was pretty convincing, and after, you know, offering those fact based results on his past, advertising at $1,200 An appointment and now we’ve opened up his campaign, and he’s getting about 150 to 175 and appointment, which I mean, that’s gonna put another 100 150,000 a year in his pocket net profit.
Tyson Mutrux
Robert, I want you to I want you to settle a dispute that Jim and I have, and I’m not going to tell you who has what position. But we had a question last night about whether it’s law students should start their practice right out of law school? Or should they work for a couple of years and then start their practice? What is your view on this?
Robert Hoglund
Well, that’s interesting, because I can take a I mean, that’s, that’s, there’s a lot of it depends. You know, I guess, maybe a better way to start is what is what in my opinion, would be to take for somebody to open their own shop, you know, right out of out of law school, I think one is a capital. Most people that open their own shop right out of law school don’t have enough capital to have the proper amount of, you know, staffing or marketing or advertising or otherwise, to build that up. So they can you know, generate revenue which pays for the bills, I see that as being a huge issue. business acumen, you know, how good or how good a business person are? They know, do they know marketing? Do they know where to turn to get that marketing? And, you know, not get screwed? For lack of better terms? That’s a very good question. I wish I had a an answer for that. And then nutshell, I think it’s capital and business acumen, if they haven’t, I mean, obviously went to law school, they know how to practice law to some extent, and can utilize resources, you know, if nothing else, you know, help them at least from the beginning, you know, muddle through cases, for lack of better terms. But, again, I just think it comes down to business acumen. And you know, this is not an based on individual, the individual. So you really would have to look at the person not necessarily have an opinion, you know, broad base, whether it’s a good idea or not. Does that make sense?
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, does I wanted a more definitive answer, though, so I could show Jim that I was right, but it’s an acceptable answer.
Jim Hacking
For lawyers who might not have that business acumen. What What tips or suggestions do you have for people on sort of getting up to speed and running a firm or thinking like an I mean, I love what you let off the call with when you said that you thought of yourself as an entrepreneur who has a law license, I think most of our listeners, a lot of our listeners get that. And I think that that’s the right mindset.
Robert Hoglund
I think good bit of business acumen relative to a practice is to have good protocols, good sales abilities, not just selling your client, but you know, selling, selling your law firm, being likeable, clients hire you because you like them, not be afraid to ask your peers questions, you know, your competitors or otherwise, or investigate what they’re doing. A lot of it is not reinventing the wheel, you know, find out what your competitors are doing. Copy that and do it a little bit better. And then you’re ahead of the game. A lot of it is you know, relative to marketing, making sure you track your, your marketing right down to the, you know, cost per lead or your ROI off of each, you know, marketing vendor individually. I think that’s very important. And that’s kind of it in a nutshell, you know, relative to the business acumen protocols, data, you know, planning, business planning, having the capital protocols that are for all to follow through with, you know, whatever business model, a business plan that you put together. And that’s, you know, that kind of gets back to full proprietors. You know, your previous question is, you know, just easy steps to convert, you know, marketing leads to paying clients. You know, the biggest thing is, learn it when somebody calls pick up Phone, return that email right away. You know, make sure that you’re tracking those numbers. The, you know, don’t be afraid to ask for the appointment, you know, and don’t say, Oh, well think about it and call me back later, while they’ve already thought about it, that’s where they’re reaching out to you. You set that appointment. And when you’re on the phone with people, you always want to use, attorneys have the biggest problem trying to preach the law to clients over the phone. And that’s not necessarily what clients are ready for when they’re calling to schedule an appointment or to meet with somebody, you know, they want to hear about your law firm, and what you can do for them, not, you know, legal treatises, you always keep those those those phone consults very short, eight to 12 minutes, you know, not less, not more, otherwise, you’re giving them too much information. In other words, you don’t want to answer necessarily all their questions on the phone, because then they’ve taken you’ve taken the need of them meeting with you off the table. And then confirming appointments, you always want to confirm, you know, follow up calls, texts, emails, what have you. And then, you know, another component of, you know, by these steps convert American leads into paying clients is you set that appointment all within one to three business days, you know, you don’t want that out to longer otherwise, you’re giving the client the chance to thinking too much about their situation. And perhaps they found alternative means or otherwise. Does that help?
Jim Hacking
Yeah, I think it does. And I think it’s gonna be valuable for all of our listeners. So thanks for
Robert Hoglund
that. Oh, no worries. Yeah, I mean, I could get into that for an hour just how to set appointments and, you know, hit those emotional triggers. I mean, that’s the whole topic of discussion in itself is, you know, converting those clients that reached out to you to, you know, you can’t hire somebody unless they show up for the appointment. Right? Pretty hard to do that.
Tyson Mutrux
Robert, we should let you, we should put you, Marlon Schillinger. And Eric Kaufman in a room and let you all nerd out on conversing on intake. Because I think you’re gonna have a lot of a lot of fun. They will, they would say that they love talking about it. So all the all the connect the three of you, but my question is a little bit different. So there’s a lot of firms in that listen to this podcast, and that that are in our Facebook group, that are in growth mode, there’s a lot that are just completely content with staying where they are and sort of having a smaller, firm and handling those cases, which is completely fine. Some are in growth mode. My firm is in growth mode. And I’d say that this is probably the most challenging time that my firm has had. Because it you your your overhead is increasing. And you’re you’re hiring more people. And so there’s a lot going on a lot of moving parts. What is your advice, just in general about getting past that to get to that bigger firm, you’ve gotten to yet 38 employees? And that’s pretty good sized firms. So how do you get past that growth hump? To get to that established larger firm?
Robert Hoglund
Well, one, again, is capital to make sure you you know, you can you can, you know, that you’re capitalized enough to make that growth spurt stick. And really data data is so important. For example, you know, we practice Social Security Disability Law in Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, and, and each one of those markets we treat almost as a separate entity relative to performance of revenues or otherwise and expenses. Because not every you know, and I would assume are you talking about, and I’ll just use this as a hypothetical as far as you know, going to another state because you know, that’s where you’re heading. So, you want to keep you want to keep all the overhead expenses revenue separate, because every jurisdiction is going to perform a little bit different, some will be better than others, just like Google Adword programs, every, every geographic area you going to is going to have a different ROI at the end of the day. So my my biggest piece of advice was to is to be very data driven, when you expand what you expand into what those costs are, what those expenses what the revenues are, what you know, the amount of clients coming in your accounts receivable, the key traffic because not all jurisdictions are going to be good. There’ll be different you’d be surprised. I’ve gone into jurisdictions I thought would be awesome. And they’re okay. There’s ones I’ve gone into that I thought would be okay, are good and they’ve been just phenomenal. You know, St. Louis being one of them. Does that help?
Tyson Mutrux
Oh, for sure. Absolutely. In the the tip on separating the revenues and expenses, all that by state is I think that’s something I overlooked. too. So I think that that’s I think it’s great advice. No, no worries. All right. So
Jim Hacking
last question, along the same lines is growth is working with associates. And one of the things that we’ve been talking about here in the office and sort of bouncing back and forth, we’ve grown from two and a half attorneys to five attorneys in the last year and a half. And so when in doing that, how do you and I’m not a strong manager, how do you suggest we sort of keep track of what associates are working on, and how busy they are or how not busy they are?
Robert Hoglund
Yeah, that’s, that’s, again, the, you know, a good client database management system, you can set up and we do this with our bankruptcy attorneys with our social security disability attorneys, what their caseload is, what their close rate is, you know, how many clients they retain how many clients they lose. Game of Social Security, we look individually at the attorneys what their win rate is. And, you know, we compare that to the jurisdiction here, they’re in because, like, with the Social Security Administration, there Lunars are Oh, Jose column, awesome office of hearing and disability appeals, where the judges, you know, may be pretty harsh in one area and not harsh another and we compare the attorneys performance on win loss, you know, relative to the judges that are, you know, in those particular areas, it’s accountability is really the question, how do I make sure that my attorneys are doing the best they can, that you’re getting the most out of them. And a lot of it is data, that data will relate to the accountability of their tasks or job descriptions. And how you solve that, and how we’ve done that, you know, opening offices in St. Louis, with these attorneys is, is you have protocols, you get the data, you have meetings to see if that data substantiates, you know, whatever protocols or marching orders you have for the attorneys, and you just keep repeating that until you feel you know, at least once every week or two or three, then once every month. And then once every couple months, when you feel comfortable, you know that that attorney is performing to the best of their ability and due to you know, your expectation, but a lot of it is data. Our bankruptcy attorneys, we have data on how many people they meet with out of those people they’ve been with how many they retain out of those people who retain how many actual, you know, bankruptcies get filed. And boy, I learned my lesson on that. And that was about, you know, probably 10 years ago, and an associate attorney just love the guy to death greatest person in the world. But once we started keeping this data, you know, this guy was probably costing me 20 grand a month, and I didn’t even know it. So like I said, I really learned my lesson on that. And we’ve got that data very close to our hip ever since. Unfortunately, that attorneys not with our law firm anymore. Hopefully that helps out a little bit.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, that’s exactly what I was asking about. Thank
Robert Hoglund
you. That attorney accountability is so important. And I’ve experienced a lot of this with my advertising clients who asked me this all the time. And, you know, they found out the same. They went through the same experience I did once they kept the data. But that’s all I’m good. Awesome. All right, Robert.
Tyson Mutrux
So we do need to wrap things up. Before I do. I want to remind everyone to go to the Facebook group get involved there. There’s a lot of great information being shared all the time. And if you don’t mind taking a couple minutes right now, hitting pause or listening while you’re giving the review. But if you will stop and give us a five star review on iTunes or wherever get your podcasts, we would really appreciate it. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week.
Jim Hacking
So I told you the other day, I’ve been reading this book, it’s called the 5am club. It’s by Robin Sharma. It’s a little bit woowoo. But it has gotten my butt out of bed at five in the morning each day this week. And the days seem to have slowed down. I don’t seem as stressed out, I get more stuff done by 730 or eight than I do pretty much the rest of the day. So I’ve been exercising each morning and again up at five and it’s made a great difference in my Outlook.
Tyson Mutrux
Nice, very good, very good. And I’m sure that a lot of people that do get up early and work out they probably experienced the same thing. So alright, Robert, so I know that Jim stole your tip of the week, but do you have another one for us?
Robert Hoglund
I do just leaving off with the attorney that’s no longer with our firm. And, you know, that’s that’s the exception, not the rule. I mean, we did try coaching this attorney into, you know, meeting our expectations. It didn’t work, but with the accountability and data that we have in the attorneys. You’ll always find attorneys that have little weak spots and you can’t fix what you don’t know is broke. So if you do have that data on your attorneys performance. And their, you know, might have one attorney there’s a problem retaining clients. That that’s a huge boon. And you’ll you’ll have much happier staff, associate attorneys knowing that you know, they’re performing right to what your expectations and you’ll have better profit margins. So that’s that’s my hack. Tip.
Tyson Mutrux
love it love it. All right, so my tip of the week and I was searching to see if I given some before because I’m actually kind of surprised it doesn’t look like a have for those of you that use virtual assistants in other countries and you can use it stateside to, but a really helpful website and app they’ve got an app and a website is TransferWise. And if I’ve given this tip to you already, well, I’m giving it to you again, I don’t think I did I searched through and I don’t see it. But TransferWise really allows you to easily pay virtual assistants, if you don’t go through a service like Upwork. And so because if you’re using Upwork, they’ll handle all the money. But sometimes you’ll have virtual assistants that you pay outside, especially if someone recommends a freelancer to you, you know, figure out how to pay them. And because it’s some countries, you can’t use PayPal. So TransferWise is a really, really easy way of transferring money from one currency to another. And I’d say probably 90% of of countries are on there. So in all the major countries that usually have virtual assistants are going to be on there. So that is my tip of the week. Robert, thank you so much for coming on. It’s been a lot of fun. Thank you so much.
Robert Hoglund
You’re welcome. Thank you, Tyson. Thank you, Jim. And thank you everyone. I hope you got a lot out of that.
Jim Hacking
Take care. That was great. Robert, what’s the best way for people to get a hold of you.
Robert Hoglund
Rob Hoagland at Hogan law.com If anybody has any questions, anytime, I’m always more than welcome to lend a helping hand and that’s our ob HOGL U N. D. At Hoagland law.com. Thanks shots every week. Yep, thank you, Y’all take care.
