This week, Seth and Jay talk with “The Jersey Boys” Rich Grungo and Bill Colarulo about building a law firm with the right focus and values. Then, they dive into how to keep your business moving forward when times get hard.
Hello, hello and welcome to another edition the Thursday, October 22nd edition of Maximum Growth Live. You know, Seth, I’ve been thinking about this- oh, by the way, I am Jay Ruane. CEO of- You know, I get so used to doing this. I see you so much. I forget that some people might be seeing us for the very first time but I’m CEO of FirmFlex social media marketing company, for lawyers, as well as Ruane Attorneys, a criminal defense civil rights firm here in Connecticut, and next to me down DC, Maryland, Virginia. Where are you? Are you in Maryland right now?Bethesda, Maryland, Seth Price, the CEO of BluShark Digital SEO for lawyers, as well as Price Benowitz. Seth, you know, we started this project, and there weren’t any leaves on the trees. And now I’m starting to lose leaves on the trees. Again, it’s been a while that we’ve been going at this thing, but it’s been a lot of fun.
It really, really has. And, you know, it’s funny, you know, we see things that we never thought would ever happen. I mean, part of the reason we started this, obviously, is we had more time on our hands without commuting. But you know, some of the things that you thought, hey, this is untouchable? Wood, you know, all of a sudden and breaking news that we’ve seen over the last couple of days, with Google and antitrust. To me, this could be a game changer, your take Jay.
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. I agree that Google owns a lot of the market, you know, 90% of searches start. And I think, for a lot of us in the law field. You know, our competitor isn’t necessarily the law firm down the street. It’s, it’s Google. That’s who we’re competing with online, to keep eyeballs on our website on our brand. And while I always have and I know you do have a lot of direct navigation to our websites, the majority of people find us through search through paid search, and now through local search ads. And Google really owns a lot of the ways to get here.
I mean, look, for my purposes. And my philosophy. Yeah, there’s no, there’s no second. You know, it’s like, if you were banned from Google, it’s not like you could build your business on Yahoo, you might get some cheap clicks, but it’s not meaningful traffic. And what we’ve seen, the LSA rollout that we’ve talked a lot about on the show, to me is just further of squeezing out more revenue with these, you know, eyeballs, which Google has found a place that they are definitive. So in certain sectors know, you could move your money to TV, which I guess you can in certain areas of law, and social. But given that search is so incredibly powerful, especially for something like criminal defense for yourself, that, you know, there really is no second place. And it’ll be interesting to see Google is going to fight it. They have some good two arguments that the reason that you don’t, you know, do you want to break something up is that it’s not a good user experience. But they’re, they’re gonna say, hey, people are getting a good result. What Why did? Why should anybody care? But I, you know, to me, I’ll take you back, I was speaking at a Florida PI event years ago. And there were a bunch of judges in the room, and I gave my presentation on SEO, these guys are like, What the heck is this? But they kept saying, like, why don’t you just, you know, you know, why don’t you just tell Google to do something else? Why don’t you sue Google. And this was these were judges, these were elected judges who were sitting there, sort of, you know, pushing the envelope in a way that just you know, everybody in the room was like, You can’t do that. Well, we’ll see if the Justice Department has any luck at moving the envelope and trying to, I don’t say level the playing field, but at least making sure that it is not as draconian as it could be getting to.
I mean, the reality is that you’re you’re savvy on technology. So who am I, I know, DuckDuckGo is out there. I know, other search engines exist, but I go to Google, because it’s probably going to give you the best results. And I know enough to be able to scroll through paid ads, if I don’t want a paid ad. But some of the time, you know, the paid ad that’s there solves my problem. And and I really need to be in a situation where I want to solve the problem. I don’t necessarily want to invest a lot of time in making that decision. You know, it’s really interesting to me with the LSA, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of phone calls that we’re getting off of our criminal stuff on LSA. I mean, we’re getting we are getting leads from them and we are converting
you were getting PPC leads before so the point not is no-
We’re getting on PPC on a lot on DUI. We weren’t as getting as many in the criminal and the criminal stuff is what’s really taken off
I have a question- This is one of those things like we got to, you got to look at the sausage making a little bit. I know the DUIs in general, very profitable widget for you. How much emphasis were you putting on the criminal PPC versus the DUI PPC?
I had I had a decent criminal PPC campaign that was built out by that vendor that I use years ago. And she would pop in every now and then and take a look at it and make some tweaks. So I mean, we were we were actively seeking out criminal cases on pay per click, and I feel, you know, my gut is telling me that the conversion rate on the LSAS for criminal is better.
And everything, it’s right at the top, it’s brand new, and it’s cheap. Now, you may feel differently, when the cost per call goes between three and $500. When it’s when it’s a whole bidding market, when you’re paying on a beta test for free. You loved PPC when it was 50 cents a click? Right. So, you know, we’re in a period right now. Avo? How much did you love Avo? Before they fully monetize, they’re, they’re above the fold. Right? It was great. There are people that we know, in Florida who just made entire businesses off avo. And then you know, so part of it is staying ahead of the curve, they are clearly looking at ways. And you said I think you summed it up well, before we get to our guests, you talked about Google being our competitor, they have essentially taken the LSAs and turned it into lead gen. So when you go to a conference, and some guy wants to sell you $300 leads, and you’re like, that’s crazy. That’s what it’s moving to that you’re gonna be buying your leads from Avo. And they’re, you know, smart enough where the market is going to set a price such that, you know, you’re we’ve done this and pay per click, they’re people that work for Google, you know, you get a two to one return on your on your PPC, hopefully you’re doing better. But there are a lot of times when you look at it, it’s pretty ugly, that you end up as Google as your partner.
Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s it, the one thing that we can say is that things are constantly changing when it comes to digital marketing, and you need to have your finger sort of, on the pulse, maybe not necessarily to go all in on LSA, maybe to dip your toes in a small practice area, or a small geographic footprint, but just to be active is I think, necessary, you know
because that’s where the eyeballs are right now. And until they change their process, they’ve already announced they’re going to but you know, right now, many markets don’t even have LSA, because three people have to be in the mix, they won’t show it until they have three people to show. So, you know, there are markets that I’m in that we can’t get it because we don’t have competitors in it yet. Right. So it is very much in its infancy. And you know, it is clear, that’s a place you want to be while it’s in infancy. The question is, is this just a short term pop, when you know, if you start having to pay, you know, $800 per traffic ticket to get those in the door? Is that a place you’re gonna want to be? It really depends. And that’s where, you know, PPC in many major markets priced people out. And the question is going to be where to where does LSA end up? Is it profitable? Or is it one of those things where the margins become really thin? That it’s just not that interesting? I just don’t know where it’s going to, you know, where we end up?
And you know, this, this adds an interesting question. And maybe it’s something that we can dive a little deeper into, on a Tuesday show where we get to have a little bit more of a conversation. And this and this is the question that came to my mind last night. What is the proper mix of a case generating resources? Should you be 50% digital marketing 50% referral? Should you be at 80/20 one way, 90/10? What’s the answer
Like a big, big fat depends, it depends on the practice area where you are in your practice, and your your level of aggressiveness. If you take the, you know, the sort of the biggest advertisers out there, yes, they want the referrals in great cases come from there. But you know, if you look at Morgan and Morgan, they made it by pushing a ton of media through TV, I’ve done it through digital, I wouldn’t have 40 lawyers, if I was not pushing things, we get tons of referrals, but not enough to keep 40 lawyers in 12 years, I wouldn’t have a 40 lawyer referral funnel. So it really is a question of like what you want. And if you stay solo, let’s say you said you know what, I’m getting rid of every lawyer in my shop, and it’s just me, you could probably feed a fair bit of yourself on just referrals and have maybe, you know, 25% to fill in the the slow times with digital media. So I think a lot of it has to do with what you want when I talked to people at BluShark about whether, you know, is SEO right for them. Part of it is if you’re a solo, and you’re grossing four to 500. Let’s say you’re grossing 500. In a criminal practice, that’s a lot. If you add to that, let’s say it’s a referral practice and then you add digital media to what you’re doing. You better hire additional staff, lawyers, in order to execute that work or you’re going to collapse, and it just doesn’t make you know, you have to figure out what you know where you are as far as resources to fulfill the work and what you want out of it. I think that’s that would probably be if I would give a short answer to your question about the mix, it really depends upon what you want. As far as growth, if you want growth, you’re gonna see a higher percentage of non referrals as you feed that engine. If you’re not- if you’re a lifestyle person, then you can get away with a much higher percentage of referral business.
Well, that Yeah, I mean, those are all things that you got to consider, the thing that really sort of jumps out to me is you’ve built this firm, 40 lawyers on the backbone of digital, but there’s been a significant financial investment into digital and I’m going to challenge anybody out there- Give me some comments down below, are you investing the same proportionally in referral marketing as you’re investing in digital marketing, because you and I both know, I can get a click for 175 or $500, from LSA, whatever it turns out to be, but uh, you take that same $500 Or, or, for me, you know, a couple $100,000 A year budget that I’m putting into digital, and I put that into referral, I could have a decent, you know, I’m out networking.
First of all, you’re a unicorn, right. You’re not normal. So let’s put it that way things happen to you. And Pete, they’re not that you’re the only unicorn out there. But that for the average person, if you sort of take everybody to dinner for criminal cases, I-my, my hypothesis is, it is very hard to build a blue collar meaning not white collar, but a blue collar criminal practice, simply on referrals. Time, you can build it, you can build reputation and be coming out of the prosecutor’s office. But generally, that is not an easy road. And if you spent all your time at BNI, and sweat equity and those would you get some, I’m sure you get some cases, but I don’t think enough to justify it compared to the money you’re putting into digital where people are going, they don’t want to talk to their friends and neighbors. Because that’s the problem. Depending in criminal, there’s a very large percentage of people that don’t want to go through somebody to get to you. They are going to come to you. That’s, you know, so again, as you move down the totem pole, let’s take a jump ball Trust and Estates practice, right? Meaning many more people are doing it through referrals, they are through digital. So yes, if you put the same amount of money into referral marketing and trust in the States versus digital, I could see that you could allocate it either way, potentially. But it really then depends on the person. Are they closer to the J. Ruane unicorn who can monetize stuff out of a cocktail party? Or are you going to be spinning your wheels, taking people wining and dining and not ending up with that stickiness that gets the referrals in the door?
Okay, so that that’s, that’s really interesting. I think it’s something that we’re going to be able to talk a little bit more about, you know, over the next couple of weeks and months, because I think it’s something that that is a conversation people need to have with themselves. And it really goes back to what is your vision and defining your vision early on where you want your practice to be. But we’ve got some guests today that are coming on. And you know, they’re interesting, because we met them through I guess a networking event I met them through a mastermind experience event where – Yeah. And so talk about who we are, who our guests are, we met them n a natural situation, so
Right and so look, we have a pair lawyers will introduce them after the break. And these are guys that started their own firm, as many people watching the show have wanted, they broke away one senior, one mid level attorney, and it’s been fascinating to watch the growth that they’ve had. Personal injury plaintiffs work where it’s on contingency means the money is not coming right away. You got to figure out a way to make sure that you’re funding these cases, staffing them, and the money is on the come. So you know, it has been a pleasure to watch the Jersey Boys and their trajectory of you know, we said we’re gonna do it we started with x, we added resources, we do you know, we’ve worked the cases and to me they are awesome success story of what a vision and hard work and executing on that vision will bring about.
Alright, so that’s awesome. So we’ll leave it at that. Let’s take a quick break when we come back. We’re gonna have as you call them, the Jersey Boys, and we’ll be right back with this edition of Max Growth Live. And we’re back. And we’re back with two phenomenal guys. I’ve got Rich Grungo, and Bill Colarulo. Here with us on the show, Seth why don’t you tell us about our friends.
Well, the Jersey Boys as I, as we have grown to know and love these guys, you know, we got to know him through John Fisher’s mastermind experience and watching what you’ve done with the practice, we have two things we’d like to talk to you about today. In our in our time with you, one, you guys came around, broke away from, you know, other shops to create your vision. So first, I want to hear so many people talk about it, you guys did it, you balanced it out with a partnership in a contingency practice, not easy to finance. First, I want to talk about that. And then secondly, something that Jay has been talking a lot about, we’ve had a lot of guests on about is starting a second practice area, whether you start a second firm or do it within your firm. And I know you guys have had a nice run with that. So to begin with, tell us a little bit about your story. How did you guys figure out, hey, we can build a better mousetrap and figure out how to put the pieces together. So why don’t you start off filling the blanks.
All right. Sounds good. Sounds good. So yeah, and originally Rich, and I met at a bigger firm, which was a shareholder, there, I was a first year associate, it was really my first job out of law school. So we were able to connect, there wasn’t the right place. For me, I was in an office doing research all day, which is not something I like if you know me, I need to be out and about. But Rich and I became really close. After that we became even closer as friends, which I think was was really important for us to decide to do this venture together was no, we had to really care about each other and trust one another with our lives. In fact, one of the jokes we made to each other, when we first decided to do this is we bury bodies together. Now, you know, that was kind of the joke because we’re so intertwined in every aspect of our lives. But you know, so you really got to make sure you’re doing it, if you’re gonna have a partner, it’s got to be someone that you trust, that you care about, that you really can share every aspect of your life with, because that’s really where we are. So we made that decision. Rich was a shareholder there, he’ll tell you more of his story. But he was getting conflicted out on a bunch of cases, because they were a bigger firm doing a lot of different types of areas of law. And they weren’t really set up to do contingency work. For me, I went to a small law firm, did all personal injury. They’re great guy, great firm. I learned a lot from him. But he was almost a victim of his own success in some ways, and that he never wanted to change. He didn’t want to do anything differently. You know, one of the things if you know us, we love social media, you know, we’re very big on social media. We’re on social media right now. Right? He wanted no parts of social media. So for me, whenever I would go to him with ideas about advertising or ways to do different things, but we even have a case management software, you know, so when I would go there it was had: we’re doing fine, you know, we’re doing okay. So I always knew that this was something, it wasn’t going to be long term for me, Rich actually approached me and said, Hey, I think it’s time for me to make my move. At the time, I’m thinking, I don’t know if I’m ready. You know, I was a little young. I don’t know if I’m ready to do it. But I did it because Richard is going to be the perfect partner for me. And now in hindsight, looking back, I wish I would have done it five years earlier. You know, you always wish you could have done it earlier. But you know, I’m happy that Rich was ready and kind of pushed me to do it a little earlier than I thought. So Rich, what did I miss there?
I got something to throw in Rich. So you’re like I get it, right? You’re a shareholder there, there are conflicts, that’s the ultimate time to leave. It’s one thing to have the hutzpah or balls to leave an existing shareholder position. It’s another to not just leave start your own thing. But say, You know what, I have enough. I have enough going on. I can see the vision, I can put a second mouth to feed with me. That’s not nothing.
Yeah, no question. So you asked like, you know, how does this happen? How does it work? So we’ve gone in the last six years from three to 27 people, but it’s been smart growth. Why know you where you want to talk about growth, but it begins with a shared vision. And we both knew what we wanted to create, which was a firm focused on its people and its culture. And we shared that vision. And so together we have built and strategically planned for this growth, we’re not growing just to grow. But we’re working off a plan part of our growth and you want to talk about the other practice areas this has been planned for. And it turns out, you know, the right person came into our lives at the right time in this practice area, but also the COVID-19 forced us to start to think about diversifying, when all your intakes and MBAs drop because nobody’s leaving the house or slipping falls or whatever it may be. So our beginning starts with a shared vision and obviously right the right personality because we do flow together.
What were some of the early hires that you’re thankful you made, and which are ones in hindsight you wish you had made earlier?
So when we when we started, it was me Bill and a paralegal who was my right and my left arm. And it was one of the best things we ever did, because she is a great person. She knows her stuff, but she’s also loyal as the day is long. So using her to start as a springboard, she started to train all our additional younger hires- younger, more inexperienced hires. Ultimately, her name is Dawn, she is now a firm administrator, we made the difficult decision of taking her out of our pre litigation, she was running our pre litigation, and she was so good at knowing who we were, where we were going, how all the pieces fit together. We, during the beginning of COVID, let somebody go and elevated her to the firm administrator. So she has been one of our best hires from the beginning, because again, she shares our vision and our values.
What about things like accounting, or intake, you know, a girl, a firm administrator solves a lot of problems, right? Because it covers HR covers, helps with culture. But were there any other sort of positions along the way outside of just building your pre law team and your lit teams that were significant milestones for you?
You’re- Rich, I’ll take this real quick. You know, one of the things you asked early on was starting a contingency practice isn’t always easy because of the financial situation. So before we even opened our doors, one of the things we did is we got a great accountant, who we trust, and is a smart, bright guy. And we met with him for months before we even opened our law firm. In planning every single detail from a financial perspective, we looked at what we thought it was going to cost every single item of what our overhead was going to be. And then Rich took what his cases were that he was going to be bringing with him. The cases I thought I was going to be bringing with me, we put estimated values on them, we decided how much we were going to owe our current firm so that we could figure out from a cash flow perspective, okay, realistically, when are these cases going to settle? So that we could figure out what could we afford when we opened up our doors because neither Rich nor me, you know, love my parents to death, but they don’t have a ton of money. My dad’s a police officer, my mom’s a secretary- Rich comes from a similar background. So we needed to make sure we did this smart because we did not have a ton of money to try to grow the way we..
it’s a sobering experience to put together a personal financial statement. I didn’t even know what one was six years ago – now what we know it’s called, it’s certainly a sobering experience. But it was about planning and hiring the right financial consultant to have that plan in place. Another key another key addition, he’s an outsider, when we consider him part of really of who we are, because he’s still with us today.
You know, what I’ve gotten to know you guys, as Jay has in snapshots, right, different different masterminds, different events that we’ve gotten to meet up at. And it’s been neat, because I know that like, there was the excitement when you first started, there were some moments where you’re like, Man, this is touch and go. And there are moments where like, we’re crushing it. When you look back the thing that I always do want to bring to our audience, you know, one of the things so that if somebody else is about to do this, what did you wish you had known going in? You sounds like you did a really good job meeting with accountants. But what are the things you’re like, man, if we had done this upfront, it would have made it that much smoother.
Yeah. So what I will say, and I’m not kidding about this, I wish I would have met guys like you, Jay, John Fisher earlier. So you asked about keys to our success. We met you very early on in our journey. Seth and Jay. John Fisher is another one. And there’s a number of other individuals that we have met through networking that were critical to our development, particularly another individual was Craig Goldenfar who everybody knows well, he really sat us down and I asked him at dinner when we were down in Fort Lauderdale when we were I think a year out of starting the firm. What do you wish you did the same question you can ask me, he goes, I wish I hired my firm administrator sooner. That was the one mistake I made. So of course, at the top of our note was go back and hire firm administrator which we eventually did, but ultimately replaced it with this paralegal during this COVID time. So getting the right people like the phrase real quick, Seth is, you know, always looking around the room because if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room, and hanging out with you guys. We are definitely not the smartest people in the room. I assure you that Yeah. Awesome, Jay.
You guys. So you know, I was lucky enough to sort of be on this journey with you. I can remember at a mastermind where your your hot topic for the hot seat was you know, hiring you’re about to hire some some more staff, because you are going from a team of three to getting larger at that point. And one of the things that you’re talking about is the how COVID impacted the case flow into the office. But one of the things that we have talked about offline, not during the show yet, but I think it’s important to talk about is that you’re also thinking about the impact on the motor vehicle accident market, five years, 10 years, 15 years down the line as a way to sort of be prepared for it. Because a lot of lawyers think, well, whatever, you know, if you were to go back a year, a year ago, there’s not a lot of lawyers who would say, oh, there’s this pandemic that’s going to come and I need to be prepared for it. They would just be blissfully going along not really changing much. So let’s talk a little bit about your decision to sort of add practice areas that work well within your, you know, fighting for the underdog kind of mentality. Because I think that’s something that people want to hear, because you’ve decided to in house it and not set up a second or third firm, as some other lawyers have done?
Yeah, let me get started by saying this day real quick. We had decided early on Bill and I with our shared vision, we don’t want to do hourly work. Okay, I worked at a big firm, I know about billable hours, I’ve never really done much of it. I didn’t want to do that. We wanted to do injury work, we wanted to do contingency work, obviously. And we knew that’s where we would begin. But when you talk about COVID and pivoting, we strategically planned we had so the area that we created during this COVID area was eployment law, employment discrimination, hostile work environment, all those things, we brought in the right people for that this was part of our strategic plan already, just the timing helped expedite it. And so two things I want to say before I let Bill talk was you talked about, you know, how you prepare for these things. The one book I will throw out there is Who Moved My Cheese, simple read, but it’s about preparing for these types of unexpected things- that cheese isn’t always going to be there, you know, intakes drop. And then the other thing was strategic planning. You know, nobody we didn’t learn in college, at least I didn’t, or in law school, how to strategically plan. We hired very early on a firm that actually worked with Starbucks, because I read the Starbucks book and then I traced it down to this other book called Growing Pains. I want to throw it out there because it was a was a huge book for me. Growing Pains by Eric Flamhops. He has a consulting firm. So years ago, we retained his firm to teach us how to strategically plan so we were knock on wood, right prepared in some respects, to start to diversify. But Bill will tell you why we wanted to diversify.
I’m goiing to ask a more more pointed question which is off of Jays, which is a lot of people are going through this, some people say you know what, we’re gonna keep it under one umbrella. That’s been my philosophy, one firm, I got enough headaches versus Hey, you’re known as a plaintiff’s motor vehicle firm. You know, how is that going to mix? Do you want to have a brand out there that simply employment discrimination? Did you? Was that a consideration? How did you guys decide to put it under the same umbrella versus a different flag?
So, like Rich said, you know, COVID, kind of sped this up a little bit. But this was already on our radar. And in fact, at the end of every year, we sit down and plan, and for 2020, we wanted to add an employment practice. So we knew we were doing it. And to answer your question, we felt that this practice area still flowed with our brand. You know, our motto, our mantra, we say is pray for peace prepare for trial, right? That’s what we say, really. And we felt that one wanting to only do contingency work, this falls under that category. Being a having a reputation and a brand of, of aggressive trial attorneys who could take a case all the way to the end, who didn’t fear going in front of a jury to hold responsible parties accountable. This flowed with that as well. And really, yes, we’re not doing just injury work anymore. But technically, these are people who have been harmed in some way by someone else. So we felt that the marketing was still relatively similar, it’s still relatively close to what we were doing before it’s not as if we just now started doing fan we all you know, now that would be understood and that will completely different. Right?
So the business development point of view, as well as the marketing point of view, that is always the discussion. We have a lot of discussions, one site versus two sites, you know, it is much, much easier you have authority, that site that you build now mean something, adding something in a lot easier than starting from scratch. The only question is, is there was there a consideration as to whether some people looking for that employment discrimination person, some are going to buy into that vision, like where the trial people that we’re going to, we’re gonna fight like hell? And some people were like, well, I want somebody who only does that. You know, it’s a tough one.
Well, and that’s why I think we when Richard said, we, we found someone who we think is, you know, a bonafide Rockstar of an attorney. What helps is That’s what her background is. So what we’re trying to really do here is, you know, the grumble Colorado brand is what it is. And now what we’ve done is we brought someone on who their entire career has been really dedicated to this employment discrimination practice. So hopefully, you don’t have that pushback from a client who says, Oh, wait, you guys are a personal injury firm. You know, look at the background of this attorney. And she- you talk to her one time, your soul, and then you feel confident that she knows what she’s doing. And she’s going to represent you the right way. So that was it was important that not only we added this practice area, but that we added an attorney that could back up exactly what you’re saying is the way- aren’t you guys an injury firm? No, no, you know, look who just joined us.
And I think if I’m not mistaken, we’ve had a conversation about this. This also is how you got into doing more worker’s comp, you found a lawyer who could join you who had experience doing that type of thing. And so it wasn’t that you set out and said, we’re going to do motor vehicle accidents and workers comp, the opportunity sort of came about and you jumped at that opportunity is that what-
Jay, we’re in the service industry, right? This is what we do. And so we’re a client centric firm. So when you have somebody call you up and say, Listen, we can only handle the third party, but not the workers comp, and not the hostile work environment, you lose that relationship. So when we found the right person who can handle the workers comp, Michael Lloyd, who also is just a phenomenal man, we said we’ve got to find a way to work him in. And then when we found Erika Domingo, who does the employment work, we said now is the time, but we had been planning Jay, and you had asked this earlier, we had been looking at our number of motor vehicle cases. And that technology, you know, every new car, you get a safer rate for society, bad for plaintiff’s personal injury attorneys who only do MVAs but we knew what percentage of our cases are MVAs. And we’re not looking one or two years, we’re looking at our five year plan, which is we need less MVA cases, maybe we do more product cases, but we need- the cars are going to be safer, there’s going to be less accidents, again, great for society, not so great for us. So this employment was on our radar. And as Bill said, once we found the right person-
We said I don’t know if you remember, Seth, we were at a mastermind in Chicago. And this was long before COVID-19. And, you know, I brought it up to for discussion is Hey, what are you guys thinking about driverless cars, because this is something that scares the hell out of rich. And I because we know if we’re going to do this for the next 20-30 years, we can’t just hang our hat being 70% Auto because these are gonna go away. And someone’s like, Oh, that’s so long away. And I think it was Seth or Jay said, look out the window at the sign that’s going up. And there was actually a Tesla dealership being put out right outside the window. We’re like, you know, it’s common. It’s common. So that’s the reason we put this into our into our strategic plan of, hey, we got to start to diversify, because at one point, we were up over 70% auto. And we weren’t anticipating a pandemic, nobody was. But it just highlighted the fact that, hey, this is why we needed to diversify, we can’t afford to have an entire practice area dry up like that, with no contingency plans
To go after these people, your cells, or did you have- Did you have a plan to go after these things that fell into your lap? Was there a recruitment process or there’s just networking
so far the employment for the employment practice, we put feelers out, you know, we were putting feelers out, we were letting everybody know, hey, look, we’re we’re looking to add the right person for this employment practice. And luckily, across the hall from us, there’s a bankruptcy attorney who’s a great friend. And he’s the one who said, hey, look, I think this person, they may be available. And I’ll let them know you guys are looking. And then we talked to them. And it just it worked out, thankfully, that it was it was the right person. So we were putting feelers out there. And we were letting everybody know, we’re looking to get into it. And like anything else-
So let me as important said, this is important when you talk about, you know, our decision to grow. And to take this chance, you know, we talk about shooting bullets or shooting cannonballs, cannon balls are big risks, you know, you’re really sticking your neck out. We shot bullets with this. And what I mean by that is, when we first started talking to this attorney that eventually came on board, we hired her as a consultant to help us start to develop our practice helped us start to develop our systems, because at the time in light of the transitions of COVID, she wasn’t ready to commit to the relationship full time.
But the Dick Cheney effect on your search committee.
Yeah. So that she was actually going if she wasn’t going to be ready when we needed her, she was going to help us find the right person. We got to the end of the process created in our case management system, the auto tests, the questions, they ask on intake, everything, and she says, I’m ready to talk. Yeah. And I said, you know, we got to…
-fee agreements and the pleading. So yeah, when she was ready, we were ready. We had our whole system set up and we use File lines. So we had file lines set up with the auto 10 asking and everything with regard to employment cases.
And that’s before you even had a single employment case coming through any marketing, right? It’s like you had built out you you invested. You know, it’s like, it’s like getting that prospect that you know that that high school baseball player and saying, I’m gonna bring them up through AAA, and teach them the game the right way, so that they can be a stellar picture at 22-23
What you guys just talked about, I think it was last week on your program about having people you’re considering hiring come and sit for the day, or, you know, come today or do whatever, well as bringing her in as a consultant, one, we got the learner skills to we got to interact with her personally. And that was it. We knew we needed her and it was just going to be a matter of time.
Anyway, to me, it’s the dating analogy, right? If she you know, it was like if you brought somebody in the first day and said, Hey, you want to get married? They think you’re crazy. You had with all for that dating period.
Rich did propose…
To be the director, she’s like, well, well…
No. And when it worked out, that’s a great story. But that’s some of the things that I personally struggle with, you know, we talked about what you know, having shadow days and always be recruiting, I have a number of areas I would like to build into, I’d love to have, you know, in northern Virginia family law practice that, you know, I have the marketing in place, I have everything there of office space and just haven’t found the right person. One of the things that- I that I see that hard during the pandemic, is it’s hard to get those touch points you bring somebody to your office, they feel the culture, I don’t know how much on lockdown you are, but you come through our office its a ghost town, they can see the bones of it, but they don’t see that that life and energy, which really helps bring people in and so just wonder during this you made this pivot during- Now granted, you would, you’d planted seeds and it was not a one and done interview and they’re in. But have you made any adjustments as far as how you are getting to know people for filling open positions or growth during the pandemic?
Yeah, so you said something said the word culture, it is the key to our existence. It is our number one strategic asset, and your culture, whether it’s yours or anyone else cannot be duplicated. So we have been growing focused on our culture and our values. And so you ask, how do you figure out in this new world? Well, Zoom has been pretty dang effective. You know, you can have all your faces in a meeting in front of you, if you’re in a conference room, you can’t look at 10 faces at one time 20 faces at one time and be zoomed in, and then get to see things in the back of their house and know they have two cats or two dogs, or whatever they got, you know, whatever the issues they’re dealing with, but you know, when you like somebody, you know when somebody is you know, the person that you are, and that’s how we really have the number one character we look for is whether they fit our values if they fit our values, then we’ll look at your skill set sounds
Like a Jersey boy analogy can be taken from the storyline with this…
One of the things with our culture, like what you’re saying is our strategic asset but not having people here in the office especially, we hired eight new people during COVID-19- which is which is crazy. And thankfully, all eight have really bought into the culture and bought into the values and they live in they breathe it it’s really not- not all of us ever being in and I think the way we’ve done it is really to two things. One is yes using zoom for our meetings, but every Friday morning, we do an office wide meeting and well- Rich and I really try to do with that meeting is keep the energy up I mean you come into that meeting when you sign in it starts at 9:15- People come in early we got music blasting through zoom, we got you know music blasting we got people going and you ever been to like Tony Robbins or somebody, they got music going they got the energy going so we have that music goal and we try to get people in you know- Rich and I may not be feeling it every Friday but we’re going to put it on you know we’re going to have that energy we’re going to be joking around with our people trying to let them see that this is not just a dry, boring place where we come in we clock in we clock out trying to keep the energy up. And then another trick this was Rich’s idea, we stole it from Shake Shack and if you guys know Shake Shack, of course they have a team Facebook page. We have a team Facebook page just for our team members. What that has done for the- the office itself the connections because now people are sharing to each other pictures of their kids pictures of the their you know you may not want to be friends with everybody you work with on social, but what this team page allows you to do is you don’t have to be friends they don’t see everything they don’t see if you’re posting political stuff. They don’t see that stuff. But they’re seeing what you just want to share with this team page. And it’s been great you got people sharing when they’re out with their kids or you know, something happened with their daughter or their husbands so it allows us to connect on a different level even though we’re not here in the office together.
I love that. I think that’s great. I mean I love- I love what you guys are doing on social I know I’m I’m the social guy, says the antisocial guy. But I love the stuff that you’re doing. And I think I think it’s great. So, you know, the team Facebook page is certainly something that we might.
Still that that’s awesome. You know, one of the things we’ve always talked about is an alumni page as we’ve grown and people move on, but I feel like you know, very often we we are, and there was a point where Facebook was pushing a product for this. It where you could have this as it as an engine, I don’t think it ever got the legs, but it sounds like you guys made your own. And that’s awesome. Jay, you got a final question?
So okay, so now, you know, things are looking up, you’re diversifying again, that now do- are you guys already talking about, you know, 2025 and where your firm’s going to be? Are you still doing that sort of advanced strategic thinking? You know, is that something that’s still part of your planning? Or, you know, now that you’ve made it to where you want to be now it’s really focused on the weeds will tell, tell me about, you know, your future and what you’re doing to get there?
Yeah, so so, you know, we work off of this phrase, If it ain’t broke, break it, you know, and again, we’re looking at everything we strategically plan. So we have quarterly off site meetings, the leadership but but also, then we have a end of the year strategic planning session off site may be challenging this year as a result of COVID. But for us here in Jersey, we go to Atlantic City, we spend two days with an agenda. And we strategically plan, basically, as I told you on how we learned to do it from an expert. And so we will look at all these things, we have a couple other ideas we didn’t execute on this year, and then we’ll put them to the top of the list for next year. So we were not done changing. We’re not done growing, we’ll take a look at everything. But we were able to check a lot move, you know, and I’m sure you guys have heard the phrase rocks from the traction boats, we were able to lose move a lot of rocks this year, we’ve been very fortunate in this climate-
And who so our viewers know who participates in that strategic planning? is? I mean, obviously, it’s you too. But who else do you involve in that?
So we invited the head of the departments with- so we have a pre litigation department, we have a marketing department, we have the firm administrator and Bill and myself. So it depends, but this year, it’ll probably be five or six people. And then very importantly, as transparent as we can be. We take those rocks, those goals, and we take them back to our Friday meeting. And we show everybody, this is what we’re trying to do. Now, again, there’s a limit to transparency, we don’t go through every number, right, but we certainly let them know, for example, we want to try to get X amount more of nursing home cases or employment cases, we want to reduce the amount of NVA cases compared to other cases, we want to get that percentage lower. We’d like to up our Google percentages, you know, more cases from Google love cases from other attorneys, but would prefer them come through Google because there’s no referral-
Quick question. When you’re when you’re doing that facilitated or non facilitated meetings means you have an outsider come in or you do this yourself?
We’re doing it ourselves based on what we learned. It’s then we have an agenda. There are breaks worked into the agenda, we stick to the agenda. And the bottom line is this will be the third or fourth year of us doing an annual retreat. And I think it’s made all the difference.
Real quick Seth, I mean, so Rich just mentioned real quick at the end and I think it’s extremely important and we’ve gotten positive feedback on it is- after we do every quarter, those meetings, at that Friday meeting I was telling you about we put together a presentation where we present all of the rocks from last quarter what was moved, and then all of the rocks for the next quarter so that everybody here understands the vision that we all are working towards it, as opposed to you know, no one knowing what’s going on except for leadership. Oh, I didn’t realize we were doing that. You know, so we make sure everybody has invested adds to the culture to everybody feels like they are a part of it. It’s not just rich and I at the top telling them what’s going on. We’re all a part of this in trying to move those rocks. So I think it’s important to be as transparent as you can.
Yeah, this has been awesome and I think that anybody who is looking to leave a firm and do it themselves- this is as good a roadmap as you’re gonna get. I’d ask as my as my final wrap up question to each of you: we get more- more of our listeners are in a position where they’ve either just left or thinking about leaving talk like what are your words of wisdom to them? A lot of it’s been laid out here but Rich, you know, speaking directly to that person who’s sitting there scared a little unsure. What are you- what are your direct messages?
Fear is expected. It doesn’t go away. As you continue to hire you still wake up with the elephant on your chest. Its just the nature of what we do when we take chances but what I would say is number one, don’t hesitate to call people like myself up you know you if you have a question and I can help please call me. I learned from John Fisher and guys like you: give, give, give and don’t look for anything in return. So whatever I can get back to anybody I will. And I really attribute that because just watching John Fisher work, but the bottom line, they can call us. But one thing I would say is find groups like John Fisher Masterminds, or Maximum Lawyer, where you are networking with experts like you and Jay. Because again, I think all these ideas, all these things we’re doing, we picked up at these meetings or from books recommended at these meetings, because everybody stands on somebody else’s shoulders, there’s no question.
Bill, you get the last word.
I so two things. One, if you’re hesitant or you’re scared, if you can’t bet on yourself, really, who can you bet on? I mean, that’s the way we looked at it is, what are we waiting for? We believe in ourselves, let’s do this. Yes, it’s going to be stressful. But we believe in ourselves, you know, but secondly, one of the things would be systems now, that’s probably going to make Rich laugh, because it wasn’t until we went to that first Mastermind group, where I fully understood and appreciated the value of having strong systems in place. When we first opened, coming from the firm I came from, although I had ideas on marketing and different things I wanted to do, I used to say to Rich, and this is funny, I’ll never lived this one down. Oh, I don’t need systems. Right?
I punched, I punched the filing cabinet.
That’s what I thought when we opened up this firm. And it wasn’t until we went to that first mastermind group where I heard other people like you and Craig talking about their systems, where literally, it was like a lightbulb like, oh my god, you know, this isn’t a small mom and pop law firm where yeah, I’m going to just do everything myself, like we’re running this like a business. And we need strong systems. And I did a complete 180 after that. And really, when you first open, start working on your systems before you even open the door, start working on your systems. It’s amazing to me looking back six years ago that I really thought I didn’t need systems, I actually said that. That’s embarrassing, but it’s the truth. So work on your systems is the most important thing that you can do.
And that’s really something you can do before you leave. You know, before you can identify the things that work in your current firm at first systems and the things that don’t work, because you’ve seen where the problems are. So that’s really a great jumping off point. If someone’s considering leaving, you know, start start identifying those things that are going to work for you in the next iteration. So I love that.
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for making the time today. It’s so good to see you guys. Again…
It can work the worst part of COVID has been that all these things are getting cancelled, we would have probably seen each other three or four times. If this COVID thing hadn’t happened, we would have had a bunch of seminars to get together. So that’s right. Again, we will write again, guys. Thank you.
Guys, thanks so much. We’ll see you soon hopefully.
Well, Seth, you know, I got a smile on my face, because I got to hang out with rich and Bill for almost an hour. I mean, we went longer than expected. But boy, that was a lot of fun.
There it really was, those guys are inspirational to see them. And like Look there, they sort of were very transparent. Well, they did a lot of stuff right going in, they made they made pivots. I love the Facebook group for the firm, I’m going to put that in place. I love the idea that they’re disciplined about those quarterly meetings and those annual meetings and sharing that information back and bring energy. You know, I felt like we’ve done a good job during COVID of leveraging zoom, but leveraging zoom with energy that that’s a that’s a nice touch..
Yeah. I mean, those guys, those guys are great just at what they do. And, you know, to have seen them on this journey. Seen, you know, the peaks and the valleys, you know, when they start questioning themselves when things aren’t going right, and they grit it out in the in the successes is absolutely they’ve earned every bit of it. So, you know, very, very happy with everything that they’ve done. My biggest takeaway is that, you know, they’re still continuing with the strategic planning, even in a down year when it’d be very easy to say, alright, let’s just put it off till next year, they’re still planning on doing it. I’m going to reach out to rich get a copy of that agenda that they use, because I think it’s something that we can actually improve our own processes here. So I Just just another phenomenal week. Really great with the software stuff we did on Tuesday. This show obviously spending time with rich and Bill was phenomenal. So I think we should cut it short here and the show for the week. Great stuff and I guess be ready for next week for another phenomenal week of Max Growth Live. Sounds good to you? Alright. So for myself, Jay Ruane CEO FirmFlex for Seth Price. Over there CEO of BluShark Digital. We are MAX Growth Live. We’re available anywhere you can hear your podcasts both on the Maximum Lawyer podcast and our own podcast. And of course, you can always watch our show live on our Facebook page. In the meantime, we’re gonna sign off for now. Have a great weekend. And we will see you next week. On another edition- the Tuesday edition of Max growth live now off to watch tonight’s debate. We’ll see you later. Bye.
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