Keynote Address: Building the Law Firm of Your Dreams

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Woo, it has been a minute.
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What's up guys?
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Welcome back to the show.
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Apologize for not getting anything out here.
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In like six or seven weeks I got back from our conference and really kind of hit a wall Back from the GLM summit and almost immediately straight out to Greece for a Spartan race, and time has just caught up with me.
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So I've had a hard time keeping up with recording interviews, getting shows out and running two businesses that actually make me money, because the podcast is really just a passion project.
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So I apologize for not getting something out to you recently.
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I'm gonna get a couple more episodes out through the course of December and then the idea is gonna be we're gonna ramp back up with interviews and be back on the regular schedule in January.
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So bear with me, but I did wanna get some stuff out to you.
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So today's show is one of the speeches that I gave at the Great Legal Marketing Summit in Orlando back in October.
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It's about how to craft the law firm of your dreams, and I think it's gonna hit you at the right time, because if you're listening to this, you're either a lawyer, a law firm owner, law student or a friend of mine, or somehow otherwise interested in business and you're probably, if you're interested in a show like this, thinking about your 2024 goals and starting to wrap up 2023, look over the horizon into 24.
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And I hope that this episode gives you some inspiration, gives you some things to think about, start setting you up for a strong 2024.
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One of my 2024 goals is to get myself a virtual assistant and a marketing assistant who can keep me on pace and make sure that the things are getting done so that these shows are getting out to you regularly.
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So, before we get into the show, one more offer for you.
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Great Legal Marketing members have already received these notes, but one of the things that we did after the summit is we had all of the notes of the 25 hours of audio and the 18 speakers professionally not transcribed but packaged into 186 pages of actionable notes.
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It's a pretty cool project and we're giving it away totally for free.
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So if you wanna pick up your copy of that, go to wwwglmsummitnotescom.
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Give me your email address, we'll give you the notes and I'll link that in the show description below.
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Okay, back to the show.
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Hope you enjoy.
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Who here can confidently say they have the law firm of their dreams right now?
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Not a single hand.
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One hand, john, and I know why John has the law firm of his dreams.
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John has no American employees.
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I don't think he's got a whole team of people in the Philippines and they call him Sir John every time he gets on a phone call with them.
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Who here knows what the law firm of their dreams looks like?
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Okay, couple of hands.
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Bill Biggs this morning said law firm of your dreams.
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Most lawyers think that means more clients, more money, and that's as far as we get with that right, and that doesn't give you the clarity to actually build the thing that you want.
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What you end up is that Ram Shackle set up cargo boxes for houses that he put up later, and I took a picture of that and I sent it to my wife, who's our HR director, and I said, yeah, we're doing this exact same thing.
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So we don't have it perfect either, but I got a pretty good idea of what it looks like for me.
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And it starts with this in your voice, in your head, you have three competing voices.
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Voice number one is your brain.
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Brain tells you what to do Turn left, turn right.
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Get back into the room on time, sit at a different table.
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When I come back into the room I noticed nobody is doing that.
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So thank you for that.
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Brain tells you what to do.
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Number two is your calling.
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Everybody here has a calling to do something.
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It may be in your law firm.
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You may be called to be the greatest estate planning lawyer in your city.
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You may be called to be the greatest trial lawyer in your state.
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I don't have that calling and I'll get into that in a minute.
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You may be called to provide a service that serves clients, or provide something that serves your team, or provide something that serves the greater legal community.
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That may be your calling.
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The problem with the calling is this the resistance that when you have these great goals and things that you want to achieve, there's a voice in your head that tells you to shut up because you can't do it, because it's too hard, because you're not going to like it if you get it anyway.
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Resistance job is to tell the calling to shut up to protect your ego, because if you don't put in all your effort to go after the thing that you were called to do and you fail, you could say well, it's because I didn't try very hard and your ego is protected.
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Resistance.
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How many people have read Stephen Pressfield's War of Art?
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Okay, great book talks about the process of writing.
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Translates to legal.
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And here's how it translates to legal.
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Who here sat down to look at a client file and then not look at the client file Because we get distracted by the 15 emails or the text messages or the social media or the phone rings, and then, next thing you know, client file is on your desk two weeks later and it's due tomorrow and we haven't done a great job at it.
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Right, I've done that.
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Resistance takes the form of procrastination.
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Resistance takes the form of self-doubt.
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Is anybody in here three hours?
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You don't have to raise your hands for this, I'm just curious is there's anybody in here three hours into this event that feels like they don't belong, feels like this is all over my head and I can't do it right?
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That would be self-doubt.
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That's resistance, telling you not to try very hard.
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Lastly, resistance takes the form of other people.
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My goal for you is that you are so fired up by the end of these three days that you go back to your team and you say we're going to do this, this, this and this.
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You tell your spouse I'm going to be the best in the world at whatever it is for you, and my hope for you is that you don't get the response that many, many of us get, which is what makes you think you can do that.
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If you ever watch crabs in a bucket, you put one crab in a bucket, that crab can make its way out, but if you see more than one crab in a bucket, when that crab gets up to the top, somebody else pulls them down.
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That's resistance from outside forces, and you can protect yourself against the resistance and pursue your calling by doing a couple of things.
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You can create systems.
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You can delegate.
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This is my favorite form.
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If I know something needs to be done, I tell somebody else to do it it's great being the owner, because then it gets done.
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Or I tell them to schedule it for me, right, because then it gets scheduled.
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Then I don't have to go through the process of calling the client and setting it up by email and doing all that, but it gets done because I know that my fear in my head might prevent me from doing it, so I go around that fear.
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You can also protect against the resistance by guarding your mind against negative thoughts, by not hanging out with lawyers and staff that tell you you can't do it Exactly what Bill was talking about this morning or this earlier this afternoon by not allowing our teams to say things like soft tissue and I couldn't work at his firm because I say soft tissue all the time Right?
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Or you can protect against the resistance by finding something that's worth failing at.
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Finding something that's a big enough goal for you that is fun to run at.
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For you, it might be a big number, it might be a big case, it might be a change in the law in your state.
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This is my favorite protection against the resistance it's finding something to fail at and telling people about it.
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First time I ran a marathon what I do?
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I put it on the calendar.
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I told people about it.
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The first time I ran an ultramarathon, didn't think I could do it.
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Put it on the calendar, told people about it.
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First time I ran a 100 mile race exact same thing when the lottery.
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It went right on my Facebook page, right With the date.
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Hold me accountable to doing the training, finishing it and showing up on race day.
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So at the end of the summit, what I want you to do and to have is everything that you need to set some big goal.
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I was told I'm not supposed to curse, but I get excited about this.
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If something comes out, I apologize in advance.
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I want you to set a big, big goal, to find your calling, or to find the guts to stand up to the resistance.
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If you already know what your calling is and I would love it if, before you go home, you came up to me and you told me what your calling is, so that I can help hold you accountable to it here's what vision is going to do for you.
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Vision is going to provide you a framework for decision making, attract, inspire and motivate your team and provide you a catalyst for growth and stability.
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If you have a clear vision for your law firm, I promise you will thrive in 2024 and beyond, and so my question for you is this does your vision inspire anybody?
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I don't mean to insult you if it doesn't, but I want you to have a vision that you can tell people and they go.
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That's awesome.
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That's what I want to work for you.
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I tell this story a lot.
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I rip off and duplicate things from other people all the time.
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If you were looking for good, inspiring job ads that go.
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I want to work there.
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Look at Chrisp Video's occupation page.
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Look at their want ads.
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I want to work for Chrisp.
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It looks like an awesome place to work by the way that they write their ads.
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But the question I think is more important is does your vision inspire the most important person?
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Are you excited to get up and go to work for you?
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And if you're not, let's fix that, because nothing messes up your Friday more than realizing that it's Wednesday.
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How many?
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I'm 40 this year.
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How many people are 40 or older?
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Okay, you're not gonna like what's coming next.
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If you're 40, 50% of your Wednesdays are gone.
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72% of your future Wednesdays are gonna be spent at work.
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25% of your future Wednesdays come after your 70.
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Okay, I'm using 80 because that's the average age statistically.
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Mike was he you this morning that said you were gonna live to 140.
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That's awesome, Good for you.
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Most lawyers, with our health, with our stress, the way that we eat, the way that we don't sleep, the way that we drink 80 80 is optimistic, and if you aren't pumped to go to work for you, you know why the hell would anybody else be.
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And so the question is what kind of a lawyer do you need to become To make yourself excited to go to work and to attract the talent that's excited to come and work for you.
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Because you can't blame Linda at the front desk for not asking for Google reviews once a week if she doesn't like you.
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You can't blame Susie in intake for not signing cases and not convincing Whoever's calling that you were the best lawyer for their case if she thinks you are not.
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Tell me, can you be nervous?
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Good, and if you can get all that right and you can create an inspiring vision for yourself and for your team, you're gonna have a catalyst for growth and stability.
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Simon Sinek's got this concept called the Golden Circle.
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He's got a famous speech called start with why, and I think he gets it wrong.
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I think start with why is right, but then he goes into the how and the what.
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The process is the second most important.
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The results is the third most important.
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I think yes, start with why, and I think most law firms Get why Wrong.
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And you've if you've been around Ben and I for a little bit, you know what's coming next.
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Most law firms say something like justice, hounding the insurance companies, fighting the bad guys, standing up for the little guy and I Just think it's hollow for 99% of law firms.
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And so I pulled our mask to my members and I said what, what is your why in your law firm?
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And here's what we got Mike Monofordi.
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He's in a state planning lawyer providing peace of mind.
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Adam Ross and helping good people when bad things happen so they can achieve their best future.
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And Lloyd bourgeois solving problems for the disabled and injured by listening and communicating with empathy and kicking the other side's ass.
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And I'll suggest for you, for Lloyd, kicking the other side's ass is the more important part of the why.
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Right, because Lloyd's a competitor For Adam helping people good people when bad things happen in the music criminal defense lawyer in Florida.
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If you know anything about Adam, that is a true resonating why for him and for Mike, helping people provide peace of mind is in a state planer.
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That's what you offer as an estate.
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It's not draft the best will, it's not keep up with all the law, it's providing peace of mind.
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So when something happens to you or to your family, we know they're gonna be taken care of.
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Can I be real with you guys for a minute?
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My why has nothing to do with auto injury law I happen to be good at it.
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I Don't love it.
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I don't love talking to adjusters, I don't love talking to clients, and so for me it's about building a team that does and extracting myself out of that space.
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Because, just like I said I I couldn't work for bill because I I call clients whiners all the time, and that's something I need to fix when I get back to the office.
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Okay, the other thing that occurred to me in the last couple years and I thought it was pandemic hangover at first, but I now I don't think it is.
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It's Just not all that fun to me anymore to try cases.
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The first time I settled a million dollar case, it was over the moon.
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Second time, I was pretty happy.
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First time I got a multi-million dollar verdict, it was pretty good.
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I had the largest verdict in the state.
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Last year I had a $4.3 million drunk driving auto accident case.
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It excited me for about three hours and I recognized that it's not fighting cases, it's not fighting insurance companies.
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For me it's this it's helping people thrive.
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So this is our guiding purpose at the law firm it's helping people thrive, and that comes in three forms.
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Number one Ben and I, because if we aren't happy to go to work for us.
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Why would anybody else be?
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Number two, the team.
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I want to have a team whose dreams we can support and inspire and help them thrive.
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And number three, our clients.
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Because if we are happy and the team is happy, then of course our clients are going to be well taken care of.
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And having that vision for the firm gives us a framework to make decisions with, because if I know what I want to say yes to, or I want my clients to thrive and I want my team to thrive and be happy, I know what I have to say no to.
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I can't have asshole clients.
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I can't tolerate people that are mean to my staff.
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I've only got 24 hours in a day, so we can't take every case.
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We can't be for everybody.
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This is the next one.
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Your team will appreciate.
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If you can craft a vision and reduce their whiplash, then you don't come back from these conferences and go we got to do this and then do this, and then do this and then do this, because when that happens they just wait two weeks for you to forget about it.
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Lastly, when you've given the team the vision and the direction and the goals, they can make decisions for you and you don't have decision fatigue because they're coming to you for every $12 decision that's in the law firm, and so goals that flow from our purpose of building a law firm where people can thrive are these I want to elevate all my team members to their highest and best uses.
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The story that we tell the most about this is about Susie, who's our director of happiness.
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Susie started as an administrative assistant.
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She was not good at it.
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She did not like conflict.
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She did not like telling doctors offices that we'd asked for the record seven times and could you please send them to us.
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She did not like fighting with insurance adjusters.
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Susie liked making people happy, so we moved her under director of happiness position.
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We said make all the clients happy, and she did that.
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Now she's in our referral management position.
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We make all of our referral people happy.
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You know what happens when you do that.
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64% of our cases and 75% of our dollars come from referrals.
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Number two deliver A plus customer service.
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I want my clients to thrive, and so what I focus on with my staff is not chase the last 1%, but make the customer service an experience that's actually worth leaving.
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The Google Review about you can incentivize your team all you want with $25, $100 bonus awards, but if you're not actually delivering an A plus customer experience, why would anybody leave you that review and put their name alongside a review of your law firm?
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Number three our goal is to triple our revenue again within three years.
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We did it from the time that I started in 2019 at the firm to 2023.
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I guess that's four years, and we set a goal again with our EOS implementer to triple it again in the next five years.
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And then world domination, because why not?
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All right.
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So once you've figured out your why, second question I don't think is the how or the what.
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It's who do you want to serve?
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And you serve two people.
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You serve your clients and you serve your team.
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I haven't seen Brett today.
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I had Brett on my podcast a couple of weeks ago and I love this quote from him your team is not here to make your lives better so that you can go to the beach and do nothing, as they are here to make your life better only insofar as you are also making their lives better.
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And if you get the team right, then the clients are taking care of on their own and so defining the kind of practice that you want to have.
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Here's the exercise that I went through.
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I don't have a personal injury practice.
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I help smart, well-insured Virginians when they're hurt in auto accidents that require surgery.
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I help them to maximize their recovery from the insurance company so that they can get back to their lives, and I tell clients all the time because I get questions about what do I do?
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What will maximize their recovery?
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What's the best course of treatment?
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Should I take time off of work?
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Should I not?
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I don't know, bro.
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Get back to your life.
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Do that.
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Get back.
00:18:54.807 --> 00:18:56.911
Don't go sit on the couch and whine.
00:18:56.911 --> 00:19:03.509
Get back to doing the things that you need to do and then let's figure out what you need to do and what support we need to give you so that you can do that.
00:19:04.164 --> 00:19:05.811
Ben doesn't have an LTD practice.
00:19:05.811 --> 00:19:16.969
He helps doctors, lawyers and C-suite executives when their long-term disability insurance claims have been denied, helps them tell their stories to skeptical insurance companies so that they can restore their financial security.
00:19:16.969 --> 00:19:19.491
Lastly, glm doesn't have a law firm coaching business.
00:19:19.491 --> 00:19:35.688
We help entrepreneurial solo and small firm law lawyers when they figure out the traditional bar doesn't have any answers to their problems so that they can build real businesses that serve them and their families' needs.
00:19:35.688 --> 00:19:42.464
So what you see here clearly defined group of people that were helping For me smart, well-insured Virginians.
00:19:42.766 --> 00:19:44.271
I want you to be smart because I want you to listen to me.
00:19:44.271 --> 00:19:53.048
I want you to be well-insured because I want to be able to get a good recovery for you and for our firm when something happens to them, when they're hurting auto accidents that require surgery.
00:19:53.048 --> 00:20:01.594
I'm not interested in the soft tissue cases, sorry, bill Brian is interested in only in surgery cases.
00:20:01.594 --> 00:20:03.833
My team handles other kinds of cases.
00:20:03.833 --> 00:20:04.867
That's what I want.
00:20:04.867 --> 00:20:09.271
You want to have your vision crafted so that you could say that's it.
00:20:09.271 --> 00:20:14.236
That's what I want, so that they can get back to their lives.
00:20:14.964 --> 00:20:17.392
What is the result that we're achieving for our clients?
00:20:17.392 --> 00:20:24.353
Same thing Doctors, lawyers, c-suite executive that's the who when the bad thing happens, so that they're.
00:20:24.353 --> 00:20:39.191
And so I'd invite you, before the week is over, to do this exercise on your own Very specific type of person, very specific type of problem, and then the relief that you deliver.
00:20:39.191 --> 00:20:48.329
And then this drives all of our marketing, because we're talking about the relief, we're selling the vacation, we're not selling the trip there.
00:20:48.329 --> 00:20:51.451
Right, people who are looking for an auto accident lawyer?
00:20:51.451 --> 00:20:53.208
They don't care.
00:20:53.208 --> 00:20:59.435
Get the medical records, review the medical records, run them through a system, send a demand.
00:20:59.435 --> 00:21:00.529
They don't care about all that.
00:21:00.529 --> 00:21:02.451
They want to know what kind of relief you're providing them.
00:21:02.451 --> 00:21:07.672
So all of our marketing now talks to the relief that they're going to get after they hire us.
00:21:09.605 --> 00:21:11.111
How do most law firms market?
00:21:11.111 --> 00:21:18.152
They take this I-Help message and they go to all these different places, and that's a good start.
00:21:18.152 --> 00:21:25.729
What would your marketing look like if all of those places talked about you?
00:21:25.729 --> 00:21:29.586
How do we get all those places to talk about you?
00:21:29.586 --> 00:21:33.795
Let somebody else tell our stories.
00:21:33.795 --> 00:21:43.795
Have you ever been in a community Facebook page where somebody's been in a car crash and they're asking about a lawyer and there's one name that comes up over and over and over and over again.
00:21:43.795 --> 00:21:45.702
Do you know why that is?
00:21:45.702 --> 00:21:51.605
It's not because they're the best lawyer, it's because they've got a good story that somebody else is telling.
00:21:51.605 --> 00:22:04.784
So in Northern Virginia there's a woman that runs an all-woman law firm and her whole thing is I only hire female lawyers who've had families and who do you think the mom's Facebook pages recommend?
00:22:04.784 --> 00:22:08.021
Right, because that story resonates with them.
00:22:08.021 --> 00:22:15.702
So how do we get all the people to tell our stories by hiring to core values.
00:22:18.258 --> 00:22:32.384
So in our law firm and this has gone through a number of iterations If you were here last year, you saw that we had six we dropped empathy Because I'm not all that empathetic and I was getting low scores on this.
00:22:32.384 --> 00:22:35.795
That's not actually the answer, but it's kind of close.
00:22:35.795 --> 00:22:49.508
So our core values are humbly confident, continuous self-improvement, positive and optimistic, proactive and above and beyond, and every person who comes through our hiring process gets scored on these either a plus, a plus, minus or a minus.
00:22:49.508 --> 00:22:52.242
If you have two minuses, you don't get a job.
00:22:52.242 --> 00:23:03.326
Every person in our review process goes through this semi-annually, in addition to the criteria of can you do the job, how are you performing on this grid?
00:23:03.326 --> 00:23:13.665
Every time we're talking about somebody week in and week out in our level 10 meetings in the law firm, in our leadership meetings in the law firm, by the third week that we're talking about, we got to talk about this.
00:23:13.665 --> 00:23:24.864
Maybe they're not a core values fit and maybe, if they are, maybe if they're getting all checks, maybe we have a core value that we haven't identified yet.
00:23:24.864 --> 00:23:33.981
That needs to be added to this list so that we can continue to recruit the kinds of people who are going to take care of our clients in a way that our clients will then go and tell our stories.
00:23:39.125 --> 00:23:40.548
I need you to set a big enough goal.
00:23:40.548 --> 00:23:51.724
I need you to set a goal that inspires your team and that you are scared of, that makes your palms sweat, and that's the what.
00:23:51.724 --> 00:23:55.746
So again, I talked to our accelerated level firms and here's the goals.
00:23:55.746 --> 00:24:00.775
Greg Dupont is in a state planning and financial advising firm.
00:24:00.775 --> 00:24:02.461
Greg's going to be talking tomorrow morning.
00:24:02.461 --> 00:24:10.748
His goal is to impact a million lives at a solo, and Greg's not a solo, but at a small law firm.
00:24:10.748 --> 00:24:11.795
That's a big number.
00:24:11.795 --> 00:24:20.051
Michelle Lawain and Michelle got an award from Jay earlier helped 50,000 injured workers achieve the best possible result.
00:24:20.051 --> 00:24:20.734
That's a big number.
00:24:20.734 --> 00:24:22.742
That's an inspiring number.
00:24:22.742 --> 00:24:30.483
Scott Snellig's had 2,500 injury victims, with annually increasing average case value, and what I love about that is that he's bolted on.
00:24:30.483 --> 00:24:33.795
I want these cases to be worth more and more every year.
00:24:33.795 --> 00:24:44.144
And Lloyd and Lindy 10X our law firm and the thing that you notice about this not only does it make you your hands sweat, but it's the kind of goal you probably can't achieve today.
00:24:44.144 --> 00:24:50.546
You need to grow into the kind of lawyer who is worthy of those kinds of achievements.
00:24:52.075 --> 00:24:57.546
The problem with most goal setting is that most people choose incremental goals.
00:24:57.546 --> 00:25:05.541
For example, most financial advice which I think is bad is aimed at saving, especially early in your career.
00:25:05.541 --> 00:25:08.483
You can only save your way to zero, right?
00:25:08.483 --> 00:25:12.645
If I save $1,000 and I put it in the S&P next year, what's it worth?
00:25:12.645 --> 00:25:15.001
Historically $1,100.
00:25:15.001 --> 00:25:25.079
But if I take my $1,000 and I go invest it in me and I get an ROI in me and my skills, what's it worth the next year?
00:25:25.079 --> 00:25:26.298
Probably 10,000.
00:25:26.298 --> 00:25:28.320
And the year after that another 10.
00:25:28.320 --> 00:25:29.861
And the year after that, another 10.
00:25:32.434 --> 00:25:39.838
Any marketing method that you choose to execute on will probably add 10% and incremental goals.
00:25:39.838 --> 00:25:43.142
They're eventually going to get you there.
00:25:43.142 --> 00:25:54.461
But the problem with them is that this leads to if I just make another 10%, if I just make another $100,000, and the goalposts keep moving down the line.
00:25:54.461 --> 00:25:56.799
I'm gonna invite you to try this instead.
00:25:56.799 --> 00:25:57.603
The 10X approach.
00:25:57.603 --> 00:26:00.258
So we gave this book to our accelerated members earlier in the year.
00:26:01.634 --> 00:26:15.423
That Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan's book, which is a masterpiece, and the challenge in that book is 10X is easier than 2X, because if you're trying to achieve a 2X goal, you can get there by working harder.
00:26:15.423 --> 00:26:24.721
You can work twice as hard, you can spend twice as much money on marketing, you can go to twice as many seminars, but at 10X you've actually got to work less.
00:26:24.721 --> 00:26:31.480
If I'm gonna make 10 times as much money next year as I did last year, I've got to do fewer things.
00:26:31.480 --> 00:26:34.904
I've got to work on fewer cases that are worth more money.
00:26:34.904 --> 00:26:36.641
I've got to work only on the big stuff.
00:26:36.641 --> 00:26:40.284
There are many, many paths to doubling your revenue.
00:26:40.284 --> 00:26:49.561
There are few paths to 10Xing your revenue, and so that sharpens the lens by giving you fewer things to look at and to work on.
00:26:50.134 --> 00:26:53.721
And when you do that, you move close to the center of this.
00:26:53.721 --> 00:26:55.719
Anybody ever seen an icky guy before?
00:26:55.719 --> 00:26:57.805
Mike, of course.
00:26:57.805 --> 00:27:04.921
So Japanese concept the center of what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs and what you can get paid for.
00:27:04.921 --> 00:27:17.584
And if you can move your nine to five job into the center of those things, you would be excited to show up to work for you every single day.
00:27:22.255 --> 00:27:35.920
In the way to get there is division, something that's 10X, because either you let's see, I can't read my thing Because if you don't scale your firm and scale your margins, you'll never be able to focus only on the things that you love.
00:27:35.920 --> 00:27:42.439
You're going to have to keep focusing on the things that are on the outskirts, that you aren't the best at, that you don't like doing.
00:27:42.439 --> 00:27:47.202
But what happens when you scale up from being a true solo to a supported solo to?
00:27:47.202 --> 00:27:50.800
I've hired my first associate, so I'm extracting myself from the legal.
00:27:50.800 --> 00:27:52.738
If you want to, okay, you don't have to.
00:27:53.914 --> 00:27:55.842
Not everybody in this room is going to be on the same path.
00:27:55.842 --> 00:27:57.981
Some people will want to pull out of the legal.
00:27:57.981 --> 00:28:01.220
Some people will never want to pull out of the legal, and there's nothing wrong with either path.
00:28:01.220 --> 00:28:09.597
Where I want to get to is out of the legal and having employees that are finding their own icky guy in my firm.
00:28:09.597 --> 00:28:12.281
I don't want to be the only one who's happy.
00:28:12.281 --> 00:28:21.123
I want to create an environment where everybody is working on their highest and best use and everybody has somebody under them that's also working on their highest and best use.
00:28:21.123 --> 00:28:23.281
And the world is huge.
00:28:23.281 --> 00:28:24.084
Right?
00:28:24.084 --> 00:28:26.982
There's somebody out there that wants to request medical records all day.
00:28:26.982 --> 00:28:27.443
It's not me.
00:28:27.443 --> 00:28:39.336
There's somebody out there that wants to review chiropractic charts it's not me, but you can find somebody that wants to do that Where's Tom?
00:28:39.336 --> 00:28:41.861
I told you this was on here.
00:28:45.135 --> 00:28:52.122
All right, you will never get to your big goal if you are distracted by energy vampires on your team.
00:28:52.122 --> 00:29:06.317
You ever been to a meeting, leadership meeting, meeting at your law firm, discuss something heavy, leave the meeting and you're immediately texting somebody else who's on the leadership team about somebody who is in a room with you.
00:29:06.317 --> 00:29:09.759
Yeah, I heard a couple of chuckles there.
00:29:09.759 --> 00:29:16.405
And you're probably picturing in your head the person at your firm who does this to you, right?
00:29:16.405 --> 00:29:18.461
The person who saps your energy and drains you.
00:29:19.395 --> 00:29:30.683
It's a problem of transparency first, because it's your job as the leader to talk to them about the problem, say, hey, here's where I want to go, here's where I want this firm to go, and I don't feel like we're achieving it together.
00:29:30.683 --> 00:29:43.933
And the same thing exists with every other member of your firm, because if you're talking about the same people over and over and over again, it's preventing you from getting to your 10x goal.
00:29:43.933 --> 00:29:51.980
So, for instance, if I'm doing my people analyzer and I'm picking on Lauren because she can take it, and Lauren is humbly confident, but she's not continuously self-improving.
00:29:51.980 --> 00:29:54.402
She's kind of sort of positive and optimistic.
00:29:54.402 --> 00:30:01.787
She's not proactive and she doesn't go above and beyond, and I'm like what the hell are you humbly confident about you could take it.
00:30:01.787 --> 00:30:23.548
So here's what I want you to do Go home and talk with your team about this, find their unique abilities and the things that they actually want to do, from 9 to 5, and figure out if you can support it within the structure of your law firm, and if you can, awesome.
00:30:24.380 --> 00:30:50.586
If you can't, your obligation is to help them move on in their lives so that you can move on in your firm, because the longer you tolerate somebody who's a seven or a C plus in your business, the more unhappy you're going to be, the more unhappy they're going to be, and five years down the line, you want to make the progress that you would make if you just ripped the bandaid off and move on.
00:30:50.586 --> 00:31:03.726
And figure out where these people, if they have goals that you can support, can elevate and delegate, where can they get rid of that quadrant of things that they don't like doing and that they're not the best at?
00:31:03.726 --> 00:31:30.105
How can we build a business that supports, that moves them up, provides enough clients and provides enough revenue to hire somebody in underneath them, and think about how you can grow a whole team of leaders, because if you have a whole team of leaders that's following your vision, you don't have to make all of the decisions and it's going to free you up to move on only to the highest and best use of your own time and the most critical decisions in your firms.
00:31:30.105 --> 00:31:36.000
You caught what's missing how?
00:31:36.000 --> 00:31:46.336
Because if you have what, who and why, clearly defined, the how it takes care of itself.
00:31:47.338 --> 00:31:54.032
Brandon Osterbine asked me yesterday morning about VAs.
00:31:54.032 --> 00:32:00.243
So we have a VA in the Philippines who's requesting our medical records, and Brandon had a question about well, are they?
00:32:00.243 --> 00:32:01.509
Do they have access to your server?
00:32:01.509 --> 00:32:02.182
How does that work?
00:32:02.182 --> 00:32:05.446
And I had to think about it for a minute and it occurred to me.
00:32:05.446 --> 00:32:07.102
I don't even know.
00:32:07.102 --> 00:32:09.384
You know why I don't know?
00:32:09.384 --> 00:32:18.811
Because I trust Lisa to make that decision for me and I trust Lisa to do the research and protect the firm so that I don't even have to think about it.
00:32:18.811 --> 00:32:23.388
You know we're talking about what's the mechanism for sending the thing out and how does he get out?
00:32:23.388 --> 00:32:24.009
I don't even know.
00:32:24.009 --> 00:32:25.292
It's not my job to know.
00:32:25.292 --> 00:32:30.041
It's my job to put people with greater skill sets than I have into positions where they can succeed.
00:32:30.041 --> 00:32:34.145
My friends from Hona are here.
00:32:34.145 --> 00:32:39.029
Hona is the Domino's Pizza Tracker for your legal case.
00:32:39.029 --> 00:32:40.092
It's a great product.
00:32:40.092 --> 00:32:42.587
I'm going to be introducing Manny a little bit later today.
00:32:43.019 --> 00:32:46.608
My paralegal, tammy, set up all of our all of our interface.
00:32:46.608 --> 00:33:02.025
She wrote all of the copy for all of the FAQs, got us to shoot videos for the clients for every step of the auto accident case, because if I had to do it, the resistance would have prevented me for three months from doing it and it never would have gotten done.
00:33:02.025 --> 00:33:05.906
Everyone has the exact same thing in the LTD side.
00:33:05.906 --> 00:33:10.750
We have cases now that we're signing and that are going all the way through the process.
00:33:10.750 --> 00:33:20.561
We have a second year associate who's making decisions on what kind of cases we can take and who's delegated that to our intake team, because we've got a really clearly defined deal box.
00:33:20.561 --> 00:33:24.243
Here's the people we can help, here's the people we can't help.
00:33:24.243 --> 00:33:35.412
This little subset of people bring their questions to me, because if I ask five questions it'll flip out or it'll flip in, but otherwise you guys can make all those decisions.
00:33:35.412 --> 00:33:39.349
You don't need us involved in intake and signing off on every single case.
00:33:41.482 --> 00:33:42.605
All right, are you ready for the bad news?
00:33:42.605 --> 00:33:55.911
The biggest hurdle in all of this and the biggest thing that needs to change in order for you to attract the kind of employees that you want and the kind of clients that you want.
00:33:55.911 --> 00:33:58.660
Anybody have any idea what it is.
00:33:58.660 --> 00:34:03.080
It's you, it's us Lawyers.
00:34:03.080 --> 00:34:04.325
We find problems.
00:34:04.325 --> 00:34:07.446
We think that we are geniuses.
00:34:08.742 --> 00:34:10.989
We were good in high school, which got us to college.
00:34:10.989 --> 00:34:12.847
We were good in college, which got us to law school.
00:34:12.847 --> 00:34:19.670
We're good in law school, which let us pass the bar that prevents us from thinking that anybody else could do our jobs.
00:34:19.670 --> 00:34:31.713
But if we get people clear direction and we empower them to make decisions and we correct them when they go off course, then of course they can do 90% of what we're doing.
00:34:31.713 --> 00:34:37.666
And this isn't saying let them do legal work or let them make legal decisions or let them give legal advice to clients None of that.
00:34:37.666 --> 00:34:43.902
But most of what we do especially as an auto accident lawyer on a day-to-day basis, a lot of it is not legal.
00:34:45.481 --> 00:34:46.505
All right, are you ready for the good news?
00:34:49.340 --> 00:34:58.429
Everything that you need in order to change the kind of lawyer that can attract those team members and attract those clients is right here in this room.
00:34:59.760 --> 00:35:14.686
It's the people who are at the tables with you, the folks wearing the hero and the icon accelerated mastermind badges and it's the people outside the room who can provide you the technical SEO, the Google paper, click, the LSA, all of that stuff that you don't have to learn.
00:35:15.179 --> 00:35:16.164
You don't have to learn any of it.
00:35:16.164 --> 00:35:17.503
It's who, not how.
00:35:17.503 --> 00:35:30.286
Let's find good partners and move ourselves along so that we're not the ones with our feet being held to the fire, but at the end of the day, nobody's going to come into your office, sit down with your team and explain the vision to you.
00:35:30.286 --> 00:35:43.929
That has to be you, it has to come from you, and what holds people back is the fear that when they get back to the office and we tell our team what vision we want to achieve, nobody's going to get on the bus.
00:35:43.929 --> 00:36:06.010
So let's write a vision that's compelling enough that we either attract the kind of people that we want and repel the kind of people that we don't want, and when you choose to start, the lawyers in this room and in this tribe and the hand selected vendors out there in this hallway are going to be there to help you.
00:36:06.010 --> 00:36:07.628
Thanks, guys.