"Thinking Outside the Box" w/ Joshua Satterlee 187

This week on the show we have Josh Satterlee, a Doctor of Chiropractic, who we recently met at our Zapathon.

In today’s episode we’ll talk about standardizing systems, thinking outside the box into other industries, and having a growth mindset.

Hacking’s Hack:
Jim tells us about receiving a one-star review on Google. He shared the review on his firm’s Facebook page and in the Maximum Lawyer Facebook group and requested that anyone who has had a good experience to leave a positive review and was able to increase his five star reviews by 33 new reviews!

Tyson’s Tip:
Tyson is re-reading the book Scaling Up by Verne Harnish which he previously recommended. We often read these books and want to implement all of these new things with our team, but if you’ve got something you want people to adopt consider having them read it too so they can understand where it’s coming from and the context around it.

Josh’s Tip:
Josh’s tip for travel is to get a paper planner. Our phone calendars are good at reminders and keeping details but not good at time planning. Layout your schedule in the planner to get a better sense of time and travel that an app calendar doesn’t give you. Josh also recommends the TripIt: Travel Planner app to help with this!

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Don’t forget to sign up for MaxLawCon20!
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/maximum-lawyer-conference-2020-tickets- 62992819218

Thanks so much for listening to the show! If you want to know more about this and keep on maximizing your firm, please join our Facebook Group-Maximum Lawyer or like us on Facebook-Maximum Lawyer Conference and comment!

You can also go to MaximumLawyer.com or, if you’d prefer, email us at: [email protected]

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Run your law firm the right way.

This is The Maximum Lawyer Podcast.

Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Mutrux.

Let's partner up and maximize your firm.

Welcome to the show.

Jim: Welcome back to The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. I'm Jim Hacking. 

Tyson: I'm Tyson Mutrux. What's up, Jimmy?

Jim: Tyson, it's funny, we all got on the phone at the exact same time with our guest. It’s going to be a good show, I think.

Tyson: I am excited. It's been a good week. We're doing a Friday show which is fun. We don't do a lot of Friday morning shows but we've got a really fun guest for Friday morning, Josh Satterlee. He's a chiropractor.

Josh, how's it going, buddy?

Josh: Hey, buddy. It's going well. I'm excited to be here. As a chiropractor, I don't end up on many attorney podcasts. It's usually depositions that they record and then try and use against me so this will be great that this actually might promote me.

Jim: Well, it's great for us because we've known each other all of face-to-face, at least a week. We met at the Zapathon last week. I know that you and our friend, Kelsey Bratcher, have been friends for a while and that you're an old Infusionsoft guy like us.

Josh, why don't you tell a little bit about your practice, about how you got started in chiropracty and sort about the logistics of your firm these days?

Josh: Like Tyson said, Josh Satterlee. I'm out here in Las Vegas, Nevada, actually a little suburb called Henderson and went to chiropractic college. Actually, I went to college up in Montana, then moved back home to Southern California in 2002. I went to chiropractic college in 2003, graduated in ’06, and met this tall, beautiful woman who had everything I was looking for in a wife. She was tall, gorgeous, with a crushing amount of student loan debt so I decided to marry her. And then, we moved out to Las Vegas, set up a tiny little practice that was 800 square feet. Expanded, expanded, expanded, and ended up adding a gym to my practice, back in 2000--and, I think, 12. It's like 5000 square feet where you could get treated and then go right into the exercise portion, a lot of athletes and whatnot.

A couple years ago, my employees were like, “Hey, we want to work with a lot of different population pro athletes and whatnot.” I wanted to focus on more of the country club golfer. They were like, “Hey, would you ever consider selling this?” And so, I talked to my wife. At that moment, it was like the right thing for us to sell that.

I always have enjoyed teaching so I teach quite a bit. I consult quite a bit. Last year, I think was on the road 20 weekends teaching. We fill the gaps now with doing some record reviews and expert witness work for any cases that have chiropractic on them. All of that combined seems to fill up my schedule pretty well.

And then, the rest of the time, I raise my two little boys, six and 10 years old. They're doing some awesome things now. It's kind of getting fun. They're semi-independent as well so it's a perfect mix of all those things.

Tyson: Josh, you're a good example of someone that built a practice, because you worked on the practice, you were able to step outside of it. I guess, what was the key to that? A lot of people - lawyers, chiropractors, accountants, whatever it maybe, they dream of being able to do what you've done. What do you think is one of the keys to that?

Josh: I think one of the things is you just don't realize, it’s like talking to fish about water, what people say like, “Oh, you’ve got to work on your practice? It's so hard to separate that,” which is what was great.

I’ve got to say. Man, the Zapathon was incredible. I'm sure we're going to get to that because that totally shifted my mind about business. I luckily had hired some people that did a really good job of standardizing and systematizing things. And then, I ended up learning some systems, kind of, in continuing education. One of the biggest that I can remember is, chiropractors, we had front desk staff. We had strength coaches, rehab specialists, assistants. We all started using a unified language. No matter what the patient was going through, we all had a unified language, which might sound crazy to attorneys, but in the world of medicine, a lot of times there's tests that are, “Oh, do the Mutrux test or do this--“. We tried to get away from those things and go more to like, “Do the flexion, abduction, and external rotation tests” just getting the point where we're not using different words to describe the same thing, I think that helps quite a bit. That would be one of the largest moves that we made to kind of get it standardized and, therefore, package that.

Jim: How did you become such a systems guy? I know you were in Infusionsoft back in the days when Tyson and I were. Talk to us a little bit about your systemization journey.

Josh: Well, that's funny because, if you followed me around all day, you’d be like, “This guy’s-- he's crazy. There's no systems here.” I think that that like craziness led to me recognizing systems and you're being drawn to them. You realize how powerful they are.

For example, diagnostically, I use something called the SFMA (Selective Functional Movement Assessment). It was a big gobbledygook of words but what it really means is just follow a checklist, when that first person comes in first, to find out what's going on or are you missing anything? It's funny, if you go in any business that use the checklist on the front end, they end up getting so much - it's almost like compounding interest working for you, like these tiny little improvements that one out of every hundred cases, you catch the right thing or you end up, in our world, not treating an area that really is not going to produce fruit. It might feel good but just long-term it's not producing the results you want. And if you just follow that systemized format, it ends up helping show you what's really the big elephant here not getting distracted by the mice. Well, as soon as I started doing that, I was like, “Oh my God, I've been missing so much along the way.”

And then, I can't remember when I discovered Infusionsoft. The power of Infusionsoft is that the marketing is cool. I think even cooler than that is-- or any of these programs like marketing automation and whatnot is that they run the same process for you, every single time. Every single patient gets the intake paperwork. And then, every single patient gets a follow-up thank you email. And then every single patient gets this, which I want to do personally but I would forget it, or I'd be distracted, or if it was a hot wing night at the local pub, like you want to take off early and get out of there. Those systems really help you be a better operator.

Tyson: All right. Let's dig into the Zapathon a little bit because that gets into systems as well. I guess, let's just start with your feedback. What were your thoughts about the Zapathon?

Josh: Number one, I think, we’ve got to change the name to like office process improvement-athon. It just doesn't have a nice ring to it. The thing that got me was like-- all right, so you’ve got to remember I'm not-- you know, I don't know how law firms operate. We started out that first day and I was blown away with what my perception of how a law firm operated and what it really was.

The reason I wanted to go-- I listen to your guys' podcast and you guys touch on these ideas of like improving processes or different things. We do a lot of paperwork production, medical records review, and expert witness stuff. A lot of reports. That's why I was attracted. I was like, “Oh, then we'll make more efficient reports as we go through this and the zapps will help with that.” When I showed up and started talking to people, I cannot believe how many attorneys don't have a brick and mortar office. It was shocking to me. I figured 95% of you guys did. At the Zapathon, I would say maybe, what, half of the people in that room have a brick and mortar office.

I sat next to Elise. Elise was saying that like her crew, if they all showed up to the office, they wouldn't fit in the physical office. That totally blew me away.

And then, another thing that has nothing to do with zapping but just a principal issue, in chiropractic and I think like in dental, and almost every medical office I ever talked to, the biggest area of friction is intake paperwork. The patient shows up. You have them fill out some forms. Now, people are like, “I email it out. I send it. and then they come in with it all already filled out. The easiest way to reduce friction on that is make sure the patient has the information filled out before they ever show up.” I'm like, “Well, that's a lot of burden on a front desk staff and whatnot.” And when I sat in that room, I was like, “Oh my god, these people have solved it. This is genius. They hire something like Smith AI or-- I don't know. I can't remember some of the other ones. I remember that the name of was like have them call the person, have them answer the phone, have them do all that. You don't need to load up your office staff with that. Let your office staff be the warm, welcoming people that, when the people show up, they’re shaking hands and smiling and all the things you can't automate. Just those little changes, I was like, “Oh my god, I'm so glad that I came here because forget the zap part, the approach to business is so much different. These attorneys, they seem like they have it figured out.”

Jim: Well, I think that that goes to your perception of things, too. I think there's such value in going to see people from other industries and your willingness to show up and hang out with a bunch of non-chiropractors, I think, speaks to your open mindset. I think it also goes to those lessons from Dan Kennedy about how it's so important to just not do what everyone else is doing, to think outside the box, and to look for solutions outside your industry because if everyone's doing one thing, you should sort of do the opposite.

I think that's interesting to see your perspective as a non-lawyer in the room because, at the end of the day, we're all a logistics company. We're all trying to get a package from point A to point B. Your package is an injured person to a healthy person. Tyson’s package is an injured person to a compensated person. My package is a non-immigrant to an immigrant or whatever. I think that, seeing that from outside your own industry is one thing.

The other thing, I think, is that we really have a positive group. I think having people in the room who are positive, and collaborative, and helping each other, and honest and vulnerable, really helps set the mood for the event.

Josh: Yeah, I would agree with that last statement, especially the fact of in that room was the belief that I think was like a growth mindset, like, “Hey, we can figure this out. And we just need to ask enough questions and ask enough people in the room.” For example, I remember Melanie, whose name I can't remember, but she seems to be a wizard with systems. Some people had asked her about some aspect of Cleo. forgive me if I don't remember the names correctly. Anyway, so people are talking about Cleo and Melanie said, “You have to follow this step and that step.” Then, somebody else said, “I want it to do this and I don't know if it can do that.” I remember that person who was told, “Hey, I don't know if it can do that, talked to Kelsey. Kelsey had a different approach to it going, “Well, you just grab this and that and use a webhook.” But the answer was not, “Oh, no. You can't do that move on. No, just don't even try.” It was like, “There's probably a way of solving this. We’ve just got to ask enough people and click enough buttons and we'll find it.”

That last two hours, I don't know if you guys remember that, after lunch on day two. It was so cool to see people walking around like, “Ey, Tyson, I figured out that that Cleo thing. Hey, Jim, do you remember that [inaudible 00:11:21] we talked about? Oh, we’ve finally figured it out. Come check it out.” It was like kids showing off their art projects.

Tyson: I completely agree. It's really kind of funny. There was also that time whenever Kelsey had a really complicated solution to a problem and it was actually one of the beginners had a super simple solution to the problem and he said, “Oh my gosh. That's so much better.” 

Sometimes we think that the solution is so complicated. In reality, it's just the simple things. Sometimes it's just A to B instead of A to B to C to D to E and [inaudible 00:11:52]. And so, it's really kind of interesting to see how people's minds are different whenever they're approaching things.

Tell me zapps that you heard that were amazing, things that you've used in practice. I know, you [inaudible 00:12:08] was one of your zapps like 50 times already. Let's talk about some of the things you’ve built out and some of the other ideas that you like.

Josh: When you were saying the complicated solution and simple, I'm reminded I had a patient and his family has the astronaut pen. It’s this pen that like writes upside down in zero gravity environment back when the space shuttle was-- they have to take notes on these experiments they run. They spent something like a million dollars to figure out how to get a pen to write in a zero-gravity environment because the ink wouldn’t flow out of the ball. The funny part about that is the Russian space astronauts, they just used a pencil. Sometimes it can be pretty simple.

Anyways, so the zapps that I designed. Number one is, from all the feedback-- and again, this is like going to where your customer’s essentially hearing you and the other PI attorneys in the room, Tyson. It was surprising to me that every PI attorney had a medical records team or somebody in charge in their office of collecting medical records. I didn't perceive the problem to be that big, that chasing those medical records is a big deal for you guys. After talking to-- some things, I realized, you can set up an alert on a Google Drive folder. And if every case I had with an office had a Google Drive folder, we figured out that, so if I take your initial visit and once I finished documenting everything, download that as a PDF. If I move it into that Google Drive folder, it will automatically send an alert to your team saying, “Hey, there are new files in this folder. Go check it out.” That kind of solves two problems. Number one, you're not allowed to email medical records because email is not secure. And so, it eliminates the need to email. Although it sends an email, that's just an alert. The other thing is, if your team goes in and grabs those records, and then forgets where they are or something, they always have that file just to go back to. 

The second thing is, you always want to stay top of mind. Well, if we're sending alerts with medical records, your paralegal or whoever's on your medical team, whose job it is to collect those records, their life is a whole lot easier because we're proactively alerting them. And also, they see our name of our clinic quite often and associate it with a positive experience. That was one that we started. And like all zapps, you’ve got to work with them. It’s not perfect. It was zapping too often which is why you got all those alerts, Tyson, but I think I have that solved.

The second one that I think might be the most powerful zap of all time, at least that's what I'm calling it internally. One of the things we like to do, when we do these medical record reviews, those typically are in the-- I don't know, maybe they're a couple thousand dollars’ worth of billing, right.

We want to make sure that process goes smoothly and we want to be appreciative of it. Anytime that we work with a new paralegal now, we have a zap setup so that we enter in the information about the case and who the associate or paralegal is. Then, it searches that paralegal off our database. If it's the first time we've ever worked with that paralegal, we have a zap set up that will fire off a thank you card from a company called rocket notes. Rocket notes, has a Zapier integration. It will fire off a thank you card and it'll have a $10 Starbucks card in there saying, “Hey, thanks a lot. We always like working with new people.” 

As I was talking to you, Tyson, and telling you about it, I realized, “I don't want to forget these people.” I went back in. It fires on the first. And then, on the seventh time we get a case from somebody, it fires off a different thank you card and a different gift just to say, “Hey, we appreciate it” because I think paralegals are like the unsung heroes of the legal world. Their names are not on the side of the building but they certainly seem to do a lot of the work. Keeping them happy keeps a lot of things happening. If we can just be known for appreciating the paralegals’ work and making their life easier by providing records, I think those two zaps are probably worth half a million dollars over the next five years.

Jim: I bet Tyson wishes that $10-gift card was the one that kept zapping over and over instead of boring old medical--

Tyson: Dam straight, that'd be great.

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Jim: We're back with Josh Satterlee. He's a chiropractor in Las Vegas.

Josh, what do you like most about being a chiropractor and running your office? What do you like least?

Josh: It sounds funny but one person in chiropractic college told me this. He said, the story of Jesus healing people, the story isn't Jesus wrote a script for him. The story is Jesus laid his hands upon him. I'm not claiming to be the Messiah or anything. I'm just saying it's pretty cool. When you learn, what you what you learn, it's pretty cool that I can get somebody better right now, with the tools I have, in the space that I'm at. I don't need a bunch of other stuff. Surgeons do great work but the amount of extra equipment and extra support they need to perform that great work is huge.

It is rewarding to me because I'm a QuickStart guy, I don't want to wait for all the follow up of films and nurses and hospital orders. I'm a QuickStart so chiropractic is perfect because I find out your problem right now, I can fix it right now. I don't have to worry about long term. Honestly, I want you to come back for follow up’s but I don't have to have a four-week lead up to when your procedure is.

In fact, at the Zapathon-- I can't remember. I think it was some guy who was asking about his low back pain and I could examine him right then, in the hotel room or in the space we're in. That's incredibly rewarding to me, to be able to help people right now and it fits well with the QuickStart.

What do I like least? I would think that all medical providers would tell you repayments. They're just getting harder and harder to get and more difficult. You’ve got to jump through more hoops. And then, I would say that I'm pretty progressive in the world of chiropractic. I think one of the things that drives me nuts is, when you work in the legal field, they always ask you, ”Is this like what is reasonable and customary for people in your industry, or the standard of care, or whatever?” I think like everybody. I'm sure I'm like, you know what they say, if you're with a group of peers, you have to realize, half of those people are below average and half of them are above. Which side are you on? I think I'm super progressive but I have to respect the fact that some of my colleagues might see things differently. That becomes a struggle sometimes where you're like, “I would’ve done it this way” and another chiropractor’s saying, “Well, I would’ve done it this way.” I never really realized that pressure until I started working around the legal field.

Tyson: Josh, you’ve built a practice that’s really successful because you're able to sell it. Do you regret doing that? Do you regret selling? is the question. 

Josh: Yeah, man. There's a lot of times where it's like you miss the interactions. The key to our business was the monthly recurring revenue off of the gym memberships. That starts out really low and then grows really big and it starts covering your electrical bill. And then, it starts covering your rent. And then it starts coming your payroll. It’s exciting. That was the long-term play.

In having a membership-based business, you end up with relationships with these people. You know about their anniversaries and their dog dying and all these different events. When you sell, it can be lonely, man. You go from interacting all day long with people and then you go to this kind of, “I’ve got to work out of a home office now and it's pretty lonely.”

As you guys can tell, I love being around people. I love talking. The walls at my office don't seem to talk as much as my clients and patients did. That probably drives me nuts the most. Sometimes I'll go to Starbucks and work there and whatnot. There are some other aspects like-- I don't know how to say it, you give up that wheel. You know, like, Jim Collins. Not as famous as Jim Hacking, by the way, but he did write a book that some people liked. Jim Collins said, “You get that flywheel turning.” Well, when you sell like you're getting rid of the flywheel so you just can't make it turn any faster. You can't do anything about it anymore. And that that decision is tough sometimes like, “Ah, I should’ve kept it and spun it up.”

Yeah, of course, there's regrets but life is very good right now. I think that teaching for me is super fulfilling and this has allowed me to teach a whole lot more, on the road, and at chiropractic college, and a few other places.

Jim: Well, we have a great chiropractic school here in St. Louis called Logan. You should come to St. Louis and teach here. We can put you up and it'd be fun to see ‘ya.

Josh: Yeah. Actually, I spoke there last year, right before I started listening to the The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Unfortunately, I didn't know about it. I mean, I know about Logan but I didn't know that. St. Louis was also the home of you guys. I'm actually coming out there in March to take a course. I remember, Jim, you said that some of the best dinners you've had have been from people visiting. I plan to hit you guys up and say, let's grab some dinner, while I'm there in St. Louis.

Jim: Awesome.

Hey, so, Josh, as an outsider, what mistakes do you see lawyers make in their marketing and then the running out their firms?

Josh: That's a great question. I would say, in the world of PI, I'll just talk about that. I remember when we first opened up, there was an attorney who, I think, would get the list of new licensees. He’d call them and stop by. He'd stop by and we sat and talked for half an hour. He was a very nice guy.

When I saw him like a year later, maybe two years later, and we hadn’t any interactions between then. I go to him, I'm like, “Hey” so it was very impressionable on me as a young doctor to have this lawyer come in. He was pretty prominent, a well-known dude in town. He shook my hand. And so, it was a big impression on me. I don't think it was the same magnitude of impression to him. It was just yet another chiropractor.

And so, a year or two later, when I shook his hand, it was like he never met me, you know, like he had never done that. I remember being like, “Oh, my god, how did you not remember? We had that special night a year ago where you came to my office and blah blah blah.” I think one thing-- in all businesses, but it's that [inaudible 00:23:14] marketing. If that guy really wanted my referrals, just periodically stopping by or calling me. Hell, I don't care, or a newsletter or anything to keep that relationship going. And then make sure that he's allowing me to send information back, so a text, “Hey, how's it going?” or an email, ” Hey, I was thinking about you.” That would have strengthened that relationship a ton. I was reminded of that at the Zapathon.

The other thing that I was shocked at, at the Zapathon, was that problem about the medical records for PI attorneys. I think that could really be solved by literally taking your paralegal and-- the attorney, the paralegal has to get the records, and had invited my front desk staff and myself to lunch. We just talk about the problem. I didn't realize how much of an issue that was for the attorneys. And here, they're hiring people to solve it. Payroll’s always your biggest expense and you're hiring a person. I think you could’ve solved it by just sitting down at lunch and saying, “Listen, we struggle to get medical records. That's the one thorn in our side. If you wouldn't mind keeping us in mind and sending those over, we would appreciate it.” I think that kind of approach would go a long way.

And, to your point, I think, Jim, of not having complicated solutions, that would have solved a whole lot of this technology that we're trying to build now with the zapps. Sometimes, just reaching out and letting your vendors or your customers know like, “Hey, this is an issue. How can we solve it?” is such an easy solution. In all businesses, I think, we forget to do that.

Tyson: You're right that that's what lawyers should do. And I think a lot of us should do. We have done that. The main problem that we've seen is that every-- they know one streamline system for them providing records to us. You can fax them to us. You can mail them to us. It sounds like [inaudible 00:25:08] has their own portal. There's all these different portals. The smaller providers, yeah, you can have those conversations. With the bigger ones, you can't. 

I'll be honest with you. Our favorite doctor is the slowest at getting them to us and we drop off pizzas and donuts all the time and have conversations regularly. They're just overworked and they just don't have the systems internally built up. But they're such a good doctor, I'm not going to [inaudible 00:25:32] to them. There's a lot of different factors that go into it.

I like your solution. I'm actually going to suggest your solution to them, to see if they'll start adopting it because that would make it so much easier on them because right now, what they're doing is-- and this is a good lesson for all doctors, all PI lawyers should share this idea - your idea, with everyone is get a Google Drive account, scan them into that folder, and you're done. Instead of them having to sit down, package them, freakin’ put them in the mail  - because that's what a lot of the smaller ones, they'll go pack you up in the mail and mail them out instead of just scanning them and sending them over to us. Emailing them is not always an option either. That's why just simply up [inaudible 00:26:15] because of the size of the file. Simply uploading them to Google Drive, like you did, and then they get alert. That's a great freakin’ solution, so that's [inaudible 00:26:25] a fantastic idea for a lot of people. 

You're really young guy. What are you going to do for the next 30 years of your career? Are you going to keep doing what you're doing? Do you have other ambition? What’s your thoughts?

Josh: I'm not that young, dude. It's just my stunning good looks, I guess, Tyson, you know. But don't worry. I mean, Elise couldn't take her eyes off of me [inaudible 00:26:46].

Tyson: Hey, man, you're not that good looking, okay? You're not that good looking.

Josh: When Elise was sitting next to me, she just wouldn't stop hitting on me, just the entire Zapathon.

Tyson: Hey, Elise, if you're listening, you have to verify this because I don't believe Josh.

Josh: No, no, no. We don't need any verifications. Just take me but she was, all right?

No. But did you know Elise's husband is like Jacques Cousteau, essentially? He like commands all these marine research vessels or something. She was telling me this crazy story. You have to be grateful for this world we live in. You have to be. I was reminded of that, Elisa saying that she's in New Zealand, talking to a client and there's something wrong. She just goes onto her phone and like uses Google Docs and moved something into Google Drive to give her assistant permission or something and, from New Zealand, took care of a client issue over the phone and over the web. I'm like, “What a world we live in. This is so different.”

I don't know if you guys remember this but I'm going to guess like, when you're in law school, if you had a group project and you’d name the file FinalLaw435Report.word/Tysonapproval/Jimfinal.final/final. It's like we don't have to play that game anymore of like this ridiculous, “Which finalized report are you looking at? Is that the one I sent this afternoon? No, I sent it yesterday.” At the Zapathon, we were talking about like real-time updates to these things which is just incredible world.

Anyways, I was blown away by Elise’s story of being in New Zealand and solving a problem on her phone which, like, you got to be grateful for that.

What am I going to do for the rest of my career? I think, was your question.

Tyson: Yeah, man. 

Josh: I'm working with the university and a group to develop a different approach to clinics. There are some legal issues run into and then there are some--

We're basically trying to develop a better setup for clinics, going forward, for chiropractic clinics that kind of expand what they can do and what they can offer. And then, integrate. I think it's like the 737 max, ridiculous as it sounds. The problem with the max, the reasons falling out of the skies, you took a product that was designed in the 60’s and keep upgrading it but that only lasts so long.

What I was inspired at the freakin’ Zapathon was, ”What if you just started from white paper? Like, “Oh, I'm going to have a secretary at the front of the office?” And it's like, “Really? Do you need that? Or, could you start with a service? Could you have a service be your secretary?”

Here's a crazy thought, as a consumer, what if you walked into your doctor's office, and no matter what the doctor was - no matter what specialty, from the time you walked in, to the time you're being seen by the physician was five minutes or less? I'm saying on the first visit, five minutes or less. No paperwork. No nothing. At that Zapathon, it was the first time I really saw that as a possibility, so just totally redesigning that experience. It's incredibly exciting and the world is expanding but there's a lot of steps between here and having a bunch of those clinics. We're kind of chipping away at that.

Jim: This has been a great call. For my last question, I want to know, do chiropractic schools do as bad a job of teaching chiropractors how to run a chiropractic office as law schools do for lawyers?

Josh: I don't know. Obviously, I haven’t been to law school but we use the abstinence program. They just don't teach about business so, you know, like I would imagine they do. You don't see a lot of wildly successful chiropractors. I think it's the same as lawyers, like there's a lot of them working 60-hour weeks to make an okay living but there's something about being your own boss that is just so rewarding.

Tyson: Such a good line. I'm going to steal that. 

All right, we do need to wrap things up. Before we do. I want to remind everyone, go to the Facebook group, get engaged there. Get involved. Remember to sign up for MaxLawCon 2020. The lineup is amazing. It's just going to be killer, Jimmy. This con is going to be freakin’ awesome. If you were--

Josh: Hey, let me--

Tyson: Yes. Jump in, Josh. Go ahead.

Josh: Let me ask you about that. It's called MaxLawCon. The Zapathon was supposedly for attorneys but, man, I think 85% of it could’ve been used in any professional services office. There were accountants in the room, attorneys, chiropractors. I could imagine that a dentist could’ve used a lot of things. Is MaxLawCon similar? Like, is it just general business stuff that works for almost any professional service, it's just being overwhelmed by attorneys or is it worth a guy like me going?

Jim: We pride ourselves on not doing CLE at the conference. It's not continuing legal education. It's all stuff that would be easily transferable, just like the [inaudible 00:31:28], just like the Zapathon. Don't you think, Tyson?

Tyson: Oh, absolutely. I'd say 100% of it would apply to any other practice area or any other industry, whether you're selling widgets, whether you're an accountant, whether you're a chiropractor. It doesn't matter. If you're running a business, this conference would work for anyone. It just happens to be a group of lawyers that are in the room.

We actually had a well-known surgeon in St. Louis come to the last conference. I'm not going to mention his name but he came last year. I'm sure he got a lot out of it, too. So yeah, it's for everybody.

Jim: At the Zapathon, there were a couple of times where it wasn't an attorney in the room. It’s like their office manager or paralegal. I would say that-- I don't know if you guys had time to interact with those people but they certainly had a lot of clarity about truly how the business operates and where the pressure points are because they're not in the law part of it. They're in the operations. I'm not trying to pimp the conference but I wonder if that would be advantageous for those offices. Because, in the world of chiropractic, there's a seminar - the biggest seminar is called Parker Seminars. They have a track for doctors. They have a track for your assistants. That track includes like billing, reporting, working with offices, supporting the moneymakers, as what does Joe Polish-- or no, Dean Jackson, it's like, “Here's the cow but we need a team to milk it and produce the cheese.” So, having those people in the room. I was impressed by the paralegals, and legal secretaries, and office managers that were in at the Zapathon because they didn't have all the baggage of, “I'm an attorney so I need to keep this-- I need to be nice to everybody.” They were like, “No, no, no. That person owes us money, we need to zap him a bill like, “Pay up.” That's all it is.

Tyson: I’d say the biggest firms, and the most successful firms, that are actually in our group - not all of them sent a representative but I'd say the majority of those firms sent someone that's on the operations side, in whatever capacity it might be. I definitely think that a lot of them sent someone because it is a different perspective. That's for sure. I think it’s a great point because there's a lot of people that-- like us lawyers, we've got that lawyer brain sometimes and it's hard to step outside of it. You're right, those operations people, they’re operations-minded, and so they're like, “Yeah, we need to get paid.” It's all about getting paid. And so, that, I think, is a good point.

All right, so I'm going to move on. Jimbo, what's your hack of the week?

Jim: The other day, somebody left me a one-star review? She was offended that we charge for our consults. And so, instead of just taking it and sort of just asking Google to take it down, what I did was is I shared it on our Facebook homepage for the firm and on our Facebook group, which has about 1300 members in there. At the time, I posted that one-star review, we had 204 reviews. As of the recording of this podcast, we had 237 five-star reviews or 236. We got 33 more reviews from that one negative review. I think if the review isn't too inflammatory or makes you look too bad that you can use that to your advantage and turn it into positive reviews from the friends of your business. I think that most people, when you ask them, “Hey, would you mind posting a review?” They're sort of not interested but, when they think they're helping you, it makes a big difference.

Tyson: Whenever I thought you did that, I think that's a brilliant idea. It really was a good idea.

I've got a one-star review from a guy that I've never represented before and there’s no comment. It's just a one-star which I think either is a loved one of a competitor or something like that because I don't know who the guy is. I'm thinking about stealing your idea and doing the exact same thing. Actually, I'm probably going to do that before this podcast goes live so I’d beat everybody else to the punch. I think it’s that good of an idea.

All right, Josh. Do you have a tip or a hack for us?

Josh: Absolutely. It's kind of a two-parter. I travel a lot. I know that some folks listening to this travel a lot. My tips for travel, get a paper planner and, in the month view, layout your trips and everything because sometimes our phone calendar is good at reminders and keeping details but it's not good, I think, at time planning - about the concept of time. I think a paper planner does a great job of that. I was laying out my travel schedule and I realized I wasn't going to be home for any weekends in the month of March. You know, I have two young boys, I want to spend time with them. I had to modify some things but I really didn't realize that until I laid it all out on that month-long planner. I would recommend a paper planner to everybody when you're trying get the concept of time, and travel, and everything.

The second part of that is an app called TripIt, like trip T-R-I-P and then it, I-T. What TripIt does is, once you log in, it’ll type in all of your travel reservations, and plans, and everything, and make an itinerary for you based upon that. It'll pull in all your Marriott reservations, or Hilton, or Budget rent-a-car, or Southwest flights, all that stuff and put it in a format so that when you look at it, you can see how your trip’s going to go. So, like when you guys are doing the Zapathon, it would say, “This day, fly into Phoenix. Stay at the Sheraton Wrigleyville. 8:00 AM, It would start with the Zapathon days. And then, it’d also say like rent a car or travel to Sedona. You’ll have dinner at this restaurant in Sedona.” It lays all that out in a format.

It's really great because it also will bring up conflicts. I had one where it's like I supposedly had an appointment at 2:30 in the afternoon in Kansas City and I was renting a car at 3:30. It kind of flags you like, “Are you sure that's right because that would be pretty tough to pull off?” And so, you can fix things like that. It's an app called TripIt. I think it does a really good job, if you travel a lot, of pulling in all your reservations, all your things. It’ll actually pull the confirmation numbers in there, too, so you just need one app to manage all of those.

Tyson: That’s epic, actually. A really good, great tip.

Jim, you travel a ton so you might want to steal that tip. That’s a pretty good one. 

My tip is this. I recommended the book Scaling Up by Verne Harnish a while ago. I'm re-reading it and it occurred to me that some of what we do is we will read these books and we will want to implement all these policies, and our employees and staff are like, “Where the hell are these ideas coming from? They might be a good idea, but we don't even know why he's deciding to do this.” I guarantee everyone who’s listening to this, this probably rings a bell with you.

Here's my tip. If you've got something that you want people to adopt, consider having them read it, whatever it is that you read. I'm taking portions of this book because we're going to start adopting some of these policies. It's actually very, very similar to Traction, the Scaling Up book is. It's not identical but it's similar. I'm taking portions of it and I'm having the team read it so that they understand why we're doing certain things. I think that's going to help us adopt some of these things that we're going to be doing. The tip is, if you want people to adopt things, have them read up on it just like you did so they understand it.

All right, Josh. It's been a lot of fun. I'm glad you came on. You have talked about the Zapathon, about your business, and it's just been fun getting to know you, so thanks for coming on.

Josh: Hey, it's my pleasure, man. I feel like people are going to-- what do they say? You are the amalgamation of the five people you hang out with. Well, now I'm going to be a little bit more of a legal mind just because I'm around two geniuses like yourselves.

Jim: Ah. 

Josh: Thanks, guys.

Tyson: Oh, stop it. Keep going but stop. Keep going. No.

Josh: Sorry, two legal geniuses that are good looking, fill a room up with people who just want to hear them speak. I'm sure incredible husbands, amazing fathers, titans of industry. What do they call that? Legal czars. It's an honor.

Tyson: Man, [inaudible 00:39:08] come on every single week. You'll have to come on every week but--

All right, guys, we'll see you. Have a good one.

Josh: Thanks. 

Thanks for listening to The Maximum Lawyer Podcast.

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Have a great week and catch you next time.