Conversations on Law Firm Growth and Leadership

BluShark Digital  0:00  

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight’s spotlight shines on the rising stars of the legal world, where young firms, bold ideas, and smarter systems take center stage. Standing tall at the intersection of law and leadership, he’s the digital strategist, the legal growth architect, the man with the mic, make some noise for your host. This is Legal Currents with Will McCreight.

 

Will  0:28  

Welcome back to another episode of the Legal Currents podcast. Today we have Leah Miller joining us. Leah is phenomenal. We actually met out at PILMMA a couple months back, and have kind of built a relationship since then. She is absolutely somebody that I have been wanting to bring on. She is the founder of Firmly Profits. Leah, I will let you introduce yourself. Nobody will be able to do better than you, so I guess tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you guys do at Firmly Profits.

 

Leah Miller  1:00  

Awesome! Thanks for having me. I’m so excited. I love this. My name is Leah Miller. I started my career as a paralegal who wanted to be an office manager of a law firm one day, and I worked my way up to that pretty quickly when I was younger. And I ended up as a CFO slash firm administrator slash litigation paralegal of a personal injury firm for many many years, and about three and a half years ago, I went out on my own with Firmly Profits, and we offer bookkeeping and fractional CFO services for law firms. Started out on my own. I have a whole team with me now. We have our processes that we follow, the firmly profits processes, and my main goal in everything I do is to help law firm owners better understand their financials. I just want them to be confident in making operational and marketing decisions for their firm, and that starts with the finances. And so that’s why I love doing podcasts like this, so that I can reach all kinds of firm owners from the beginning to you know the ones that are fully established, just to help them kind of you know have more confidence in it.

 

Will  2:10  

Yeah, I love it. And one of the things that I really love about you, and you post about this a lot on LinkedIn, and is that you know you also very much understand the importance of the work-life balance component, right? And making sure that it is not just hey scale maximize profits, right? It is create that life that you want for yourself. And you know, I know that that maybe comes from a little bit of personal experience, right? Spending time with your kids and also doing a lot of the cool things, right? Like I know horse riding is a big thing for you, right? These days, so I’d love to hear a little bit about that as well, because I know these days, right? It’s it’s about creating that flexibility as well. I would love to hear more about your story there.

 

Leah Miller  2:51  

Awesome. Well, so part of the reason I left the firm, I never thought I would leave, and we, you know, during COVID times, we were home a lot, and I was home with my kids. I was working, but I was home with my kids, and I was like, you know, this is kind of nice. And then we went back to the office, and then two years later, our firm got hit by a hurricane, and so our firm flooded. I was home again for four months, and when we went back to the firm and we bought a building, I had about an hour commute, and I was, you know, I was like, “This is just not. It’s not what I want to do. It works for some people. It’s not what I want to do. And so that’s kind of when I went off on my own. In the three years I’ve had the business, you know, I’ve gone through stages where I’ve worked a lot, a lot, putting the kids to bed, working till 2o’clock in the morning, waking up at five a.m. to get work done, but I’ve really intentionally tried to find balance with that. Part of it is, you know, my husband stopped working his outside job two years ago. It was life changing for us as a family. He’s home now. He helps me with a lot of stuff, with the business, with the kids, all of that. And with that decision, I intentionally decided to grow the business slower. So because we needed his, you know, we needed more income when he quit his job, I was not able to hire, you know, somebody that I could have hired, or I couldn’t dump that extra money into marketing. So we made an intentional decision to grow the business a little slower than some of my counterparts do, and some of the people in masterminds that I’m in, you know, they they have completely different home situations. And so a year ago, because we both had really flexible jobs, we sold our house in Southwest Florida, and we bought a small farm. We have about 13 acres, just north of Tampa. And since then, you know we have horses and cows, and I ride horses with my kids all the time, and I’m very intentional with the time it takes. Now I’m going through a growth period with the business right now, so I’m working a lot more, but I’m still able to take the time to do the things and have the hobbies outside of my business and my kids. I wrote a post yesterday on LinkedIn about finding. Hobbies for myself because for the last three years my hobby has been my business and my kids, and so you know it’s an ever evolving process. And I think that goes back to I really want law firm owners and business owners to understand that your financials are personal to what you need to do. So you know law firms all the time are asking me, “What are the benchmarks? How much should I spend? What should I do? This and it’s like I can give you benchmarks all day. I love that, but at the same time, I want you to understand what your goals are because my goals in my business are completely different than some of my really good friends who are fractional CFO businesses who are doing three times as much revenue as I’m doing, but I’m intentionally deciding to do what works for me and my family.

 

Will  5:45  

Yeah, and I think it’s incredible, you know, sitting in on masterminds and things like that myself. I know that sometimes it can feel like a competition, right? Like who has the biggest firm, who’s scaling the quickest, right? You know, whose profits are strongest, and I think that that is a fit for some people, right? And there’s nothing wrong with looking to grow and scale as ambitiously as possible. But in a lot of conversations that I have, a lot of the reasons why people go off on their own, right, are to establish that freedom. I would love to hear about conversations that you’ve had with folks, right? You know, when they’re trying to understand that balance a little early on, you know, what are some things that people could, you know, look for from a clarity standpoint, or what insight do you have to share that might help people with that decision?

 

Leah Miller  6:30  

So the first thing I always start with, no matter who I’m working with, is what do you personally need financially? So you know, if you can live off $5,000 a month, and that pays your bills. Or if you need $50,000 a month to pay your bills, you need to have that understanding first when you’re trying to figure out what you need from your firm. I have no judgment either way. Whatever you it is that you need, tell me. Let’s figure out how to do it. And so where that really kind of changes things is back to the benchmarks. You know, if you want to spend a certain amount, there’s a benchmark you want to spend 25 to 35% of your revenue on your wages for your people. I have some firms that are spending more than that. Specifically, a client that I worked with at one point, you know, she told me she needed to make $300,000 a year. As long as she was making that, she wanted to grow the firm and hire more people to do the work because she only wanted to work 30 hours a week, and so she had very set goals of she wanted to work this much a week and she wanted to make this much money, and so she hired more people. She was spending more of her revenue on people than what is the law firm benchmark, but she was meeting her personal goals for her firm, and so that’s where you have to have a really strong understanding of what do you need personally out of the firm, and then work backwards from there to set your goals and decide how much you need to spend on marketing, how quickly you need to grow, and things like that.

 

Will  8:01  

Yeah, it’s incredible. It’s incredible. And another thing that I would be really curious to hear your insights from, right? Like, let’s say you’re taking on a new client, right? You’re brought in. You’re going to support them. Let’s say fractional CFO, right? Where does your, I guess, audit start, right? Like, what are the first questions that you’re asking? Maybe beyond the ones that you just mentioned, or I guess, what’s the first thing that you’re looking at?

 

Leah Miller  8:23  

The first thing I’m looking at, so I can pull up financials and just see, you know, I can tell a lot from the financials. I’ve seen a lot of them. I can see, you know, where there’s inconsistencies and things like that. But then it really goes back to, okay, once we know your personal goals, what are your goals for the firm? How do you want to grow? I have some firms I’ve worked with. We’ve worked through some processes and things like that, and they’re like, “Hey, I don’t really want to grow anymore. And I’m like, “That’s great. If that, like, you don’t have to conquer the world. I have clients who want to conquer the world. They’re doing it, and I have clients who are very content with where they are. And so again, we go back to what are the goals for the firm, and then a lot of things that we get into are just you know financial processes and how to optimize what you already have. So a lot of law firm owners that I talk to that have been in business for 3040, years, okay, they’re like, I have never looked at a P and L before, and and they just you know there’s cash in the bank. They know they’re doing well. They can invest in the marketing things like that, and it works because there is such like the profit margin in law firms is a lot better than other industries. It works sometimes, but what I really like to dig into is just giving firm owners the confidence and saying, you know, when people like you come to them and like, hey, do you want to spend more on marketing? They’re like, actually, yes, because we have the data. We know that if we put this money in here, it’s going to give us this return, and so then we know when to hire more people. And so, when you have that planning, it just helps you be more confident in the decision. So then you can get the work-life balance and not be waking up at mid. On Saturday morning, wondering, oh my gosh, am I going to have enough for payroll? Because I just told Will that I can spend $20,000 more on marketing, and so that’s where we really optimize things.

 

Will  10:11  

Yeah, and that’s a super fascinating, you know, insight into that conversation, especially these days, right? With all of the new tech that’s coming out, right? All of the new, you know, just marketing strategies, right? All the vendor support, you know. I know that a lot of firms will oftentimes feel confident in whether it be like a new tech solution, right, or a new marketing strategy, etc. But it also takes that little bit of risk, right, to invest in it before really the the benefits are shown. How does that conversation look on your guys’s end? Let’s say I come to you, I go, “Hey, I want to try, you know, this new tech software. How do you understand where the risk makes sense, right? How do you approach that piece of

 

Leah Miller  10:51  

it? A lot of times, I ask, “What is the goal? Because, you know, with tech and marketing and all of the vendors, and you’re in the coaching groups, and this person’s doing. There’s so much noise coming at us as business owners. I get it. I love spending money on all that stuff as a business owner, but there’s so much noise, and so a lot of times I’ll have people, and you know, they’ll ask to see a lot of reports, or they want to see this, or they want to do that, and they don’t know what they’re actually looking for or looking to do, and so I like to be the outside person and say, “Great, I have no problem with us spending the money on that, but what is the end goal? What are we trying to accomplish here? And is that keeping us towards those original goals we talked about? Now, I’m okay being flexible with goals because things change, but at the same time, is does this go back to our core values? Does this go back to our goals? Let’s just talk about it. I have no problem spending money on anything. I want us to be intentional about it and not just be grabbing the new thing every week because again, there’s so much noise. There’s so much sparkly things out there that I just want us to be intentional and have a conversation, and that’s where I come in because as a business owner, as you’re growing a business, it’s very lonely. You don’t have a lot of people you can talk to. You can’t talk to your staff about it sometimes and things like that. So I’m that person that can be the sounding board and say like, you know, I don’t agree with that. I don’t think that’s what you need right now. Let’s do these other things and work towards that.

 

Will  12:29  

You used the word sparkly there, and that reminds me of the term that I use, which is bright shiny object, right? Especially with AI and the buzzwords behind it. If you walk a conference floor, you will see 25 new things that you have never seen before, and they all are sounding like it’s the most incredible thing of all time. How often do you see firm owners bringing that sort of information back to you, and do you find that people fall trapped to that bright, shiny object syndrome?

 

Leah Miller  13:00  

All the time. It’s it’s a it’s something that happens all the time, and part of the problem is because of the way new softwares and things are kind of like so niche down. It’s not that expensive sometimes, right? Like it’s like oh, $3,000 here, $2,000 there, which isn’t a lot when you’re doing multiple millions of dollars a year, and so, but it adds up, and it takes you further away from your goal. And what happens is, if you’re not looking at your financials on a monthly basis, at least you get to the end of the year and you’re like, “Where’d all my cash go? Where’d the profit go? My revenue is up 30% over last year, and I made less money because you’re buying all you know the bright shiny things, and you’re not actually being super intentional with where you’re putting the money. And so I think that’s where you know the really expensive things they don’t fall prey to as easily. It’s the cheap things that you pile on, and they’re more expensive than the expensive things, and so it’s it’s all the time. It’s you know I have a lot of clients who are in some great coaching groups and masterminds, and they go to all the conferences, and I love it. I love that that is where the legal industry is going, and that there’s so much access that we have. But at the same time, they all come back and they’re like, “Hey, I saw this thing. Should I sign up for this? I’m like, “Actually, your cash is a little low this month. You know, we’re a contingency fee firm. We’re expecting a slower quarter. Let’s put it off. Let’s just like I keep telling people recently. I’m like, let’s just be boring for like three months with your financials. Let’s get on solid footing, especially firms that are smaller and just growing, we want to be a little boring at times.

 

Will  14:45  

Yeah, the sexy right approach is not always the smart

 

Leah Miller  14:50  

one. A

 

Will  14:50  

lot of what you’re saying reminds me of like the streaming subscriptions, right? You have your Netflix and your Hulu and your Disney Plus and your HBO and you know. None of them individually are anything crazy, but then all of a sudden you look every month and you go, “I’m paying for 15 streaming services, and that that makes a big chunk of things.

 

Leah Miller  15:11  

Yeah.

 

Will  15:12  

How do you approach long-term contracts when it comes to these situations? I’m sure that sometimes they exist, sometimes they don’t, and that’s definitely something I would imagine to be a part of the conversation. But I would love to hear your thoughts.

 

Leah Miller  15:27  

So I have always been against long-term contracts. My I don’t actually have a contract. Mine’s month to month that my clients have. I’m debating maybe changing that to a short-term contract. But when I was a firm administrator, there were many contracts that I had to get out of, and so I’ve never been a big fan of it. When it comes to marketing, for example, when we’re talking about increasing a marketing budget, because we’re trying to get to a certain benchmark of what we’re spending, but we can’t just throw an extra $20,000 right away. So it’s like we’re in. So what I always say is, let’s incrementally increase it. You know, three $5,000 a month when we’re talking about like trying to manage cash flow, and at the same time, don’t get into a long term contract because. And my biggest thing with that right now is everything is constantly changing. The legal industry is going to be completely different in two years. So to get into, which is different than what was going on 15 years ago, so to get into a two to five year contract on anything is crazy because you don’t know where you’re going to be in two years, and so I am very much against long-term contracts for that reason, and other vendors or service providers may not be happy with me saying that. But I just I think we’re going towards like you have to kind of be flexible.

 

Will  16:54  

I agree. You know, and and even with us, right? The majority of the firms that we work with, right, are month to month. But you know, at some of the like more entry level packages, they do come with that 12 month commitment, and I think it’s something that even myself, I encourage people right to consider that option with flexibility, right, where things are month to month, if nothing else, right, to establish that confidence, and I know that you know there are also places out there, not necessarily marketing-wise, but that look longer than that, right? Two to five years. To your point, it’s a very long time to be stuck in something, even if it’s a situation that’s working well, right? There’s just so many things that could happen. I don’t know what my life is going to look like a month from now, right? Let alone 12 months.

 

Leah Miller  17:41  

Yep.

 

Will  17:41  

Do you find that there’s ever financial incentives to be in that longer term contract?

 

Leah Miller  17:47  

There are at times, and I’m not against that. So that’s again, let’s be super intentional. I think one of my clients had a like overseas contractor through a company, and they gave us a discount if we paid 12 months ahead, and we were looking for tax strategies at the end of the year, and so we wanted to pay out a little bit more, and so we did. It was a service we were really happy with. It made sense financially. We had the cash to do it, and so we did it. So again, I’m not against those Situations, but I just want to be super intentional about what we’re doing with that, with the service providers. And you know, I get it from a service provider standpoint. I had a conversation with a fellow CFO who’s in a different industry, and her industry, the people in it are more apt to stick with you long term, and I know that law firm owners they are big on like what is working, and they you know if you’re working really well for them, they stick with you. But again, there’s so many options, and so I think from a service provider standpoint, we have to really put in good work for them to stick with us, and locking them into a contract to kind of force them to do that isn’t. I don’t think it’s the best move. Let’s do good work. And here’s where it comes down to: if if we’re not working well together, I don’t want to work with you anyway, and so you know I’m okay with parting ways if that if it’s not a collaborative relationship, and that’s as a service provider, I want to collaborate with all of my clients, and I want them to want to collaborate with me. I don’t just tell them what to do, and so if we’re not collaborating, then we don’t need to work together anymore.

 

Will  19:42  

Yeah, that fit that fit is so important, right? And everything. That’s an interesting point that you bring up. You know, I’d love to hear more from you about what your valuation process looks like, right? What is what is a strong like firm for you to work with? What what qualities are you looking for out of a firm to? Determine if you’re the right fit for them.

 

Leah Miller  20:02  

Yeah. So the biggest, yeah. So the biggest thing is, I want to work with firms that want growth. And again, if you are not looking to grow, now we have the bookkeeping side of our firm, and so we can handle bookkeeping for anybody. But on the CFO side, on people that I’m really working with one-on-one, it’s are you looking to grow? Because if you’re not looking to grow and you’re really confident where you are, you know I’ve had clients offboard where they’re like, “Hey, we’re good. We’ve got the processes. We’re not looking for growth. So growth-minded, a big one. Collaboration. I do not come in and wave a magic wand and fix all the financial stuff. I need you to take responsibility for the finances. Know how it works. You don’t have to do the things. I’m not asking you to do bookkeeping. I’m not asking you to put together the spreadsheets, but I want you to understand the process and want to take ownership of the finances so that we can collaborate. And then for the CFO side of things, most of the firms I’m working with are doing 2 million and up to 20 25 million. You know, there’s a wide range there. It’s obviously a higher dollar, you know, subscription service, and so it’s the firms that are you know doing more. The smaller firms that I work with, you know, on the bookkeeping side of things, I can work with startups all the way up, and so I can kind of help people in that as well. But yeah, it’s my biggest thing outside of how much money you’re making is I want you to collaborate and I want you to take ownership of your finances.

 

Will  21:32  

Yeah, what does that ownership process look like? It is

 

Leah Miller  21:36  

reviewing the finances at least once a month. So I’ve had clients where I can’t even get them to meet with me. They’ll pay me. They don’t meet with me. Nothing’s going to change unless you’re reviewing it, and then I want you to take action. And so you know, a lot of times I work with founder-led firms or firms that have two to three partners at the most because I want to work with the people who can make changes, and so I don’t want to just review the finances in the past. I want us to talk about what’s coming up in the future. I want you to understand when I tell you you’re spending 60% of your revenue on your wages, what that means, and I explain it. I tell you, I want you to understand, you know how that looks operationally for your firm, and then I want you to start making operational and marketing decisions based on the finances. And so, a lot of times when firms are first starting out or they’re growing, it’s you’re figuring out the operations and the marketing, and the finances kind of like come along for the ride. I want us to look at the finances and make decisions based on those, based on our goals, and so that’s what the ownership looks like. Again, I’m not asking you to go into QuickBooks. If you have, if you want to see a report, ask me for it. I’ll send it to you. I have a client just asked me for a report this morning. I know he knows how to log into QuickBooks, but he asked me for it, and that’s fine. That I’m okay with. I just want you to understand what it is and want to understand. If you don’t understand now, I want you to want to understand. And so, as we work together, we can collaborate.

 

Will  23:12  

I see so many similarities with the way that I like to approach things in that same way. These days, I’m very hesitant to partner up with somebody who I don’t have that confidence is at least going to be meeting with us on a monthly basis, right? And at least going to be able to take some of the things that we can’t do on our end, right, and make sure that it’s top of mind for them, right, or build out a process for them. And that’s one of the biggest things that we find as well, right? If that doesn’t exist, you know, it puts us in a tough spot. I imagine it puts you in a tough spot as well. With that in mind, I would love to hear, like, what does success look like? What should a firm, you know, look for out of a you know fractional CMO, CFO, or bookkeeping, you know, support? I guess what is the ideal outcome?

 

Leah Miller  23:59  

So I want you to have complete transparency in your financials, and that means so on a bookkeeping side, we do bookkeeping on a weekly basis because I want you to be able to look. I mean, my clients can look in their financials this week and see what they’re doing. You know, the first half of the month. So I want up to date financials. I want you to have that available to you. On the CFO side, I just want you to be confident in making decisions. It doesn’t mean working with me doesn’t mean there’s never going to be a cash flow issue again. So I work with a lot of contingency fee firms, and it’s just the nature of the business. Now I do strongly believe that we can stabilize cash flow in a contingency firm if we’re spending the right amount on marketing and our intake is working, and we’re clicking along. But I just want you to be confident in the decisions you’re making, and so that’s what success looks like. Now, do I have clients where their net profit is up 100 over the last year working with me? Yes, I like we are having great success. I need to do some. Studies we are having great success, but what success to me really looks like is a law firm owner knowing what their financials say, knowing what data it shows, and how to apply that to the operations. So, one of my biggest things is what’s your break-even point? How much do you need to make a month just to be in the black? And a lot of firm owners can’t tell you that off the top of their head. We we put together that number and they are shocked. I want you to know what that means, and I want you to know then how many cases you need to settle to cover that, or how many cases need to come in for you to have the growth you need. And so success to me looks like understanding and confidence in what the financials can show you.

 

Will  25:40  

Yeah, tell me about about this number, 109,320. Does that mean anything to you? Is that potentially a number that I believe it maybe in PILMMA? You mentioned that number around like

 

Leah Miller  25:56  

It’s possible.

 

Will  25:56  

like revenue per month. Maybe maybe.

 

Leah Miller  25:59  

Oh I probably did. So, if you, I probably talked about that, like break even number. So, I want you to know if it takes $109,000 to run your firm, what does that look like on how many cases you need to settle? So, if your average case value is $10,000 a case. then you know you need to settle 11 cases a month to cover your break even or whatever that looks like, and then from there, what we can do is we can then say for growth for next year because in a contingency fee firm, cases you bring in today are cases that see revenue in 12 to 18 months, right? And so, on the marketing side of things, if we’re settling 10 cases a month now to break even, if we want sustained growth, we need to be bringing in more cases than we’re settling. So we need to be signing up 15 new cases a month, and so that’s how we do the long-term sustained growth, and that’s how we know what we need to be looking at. And so, if you know what you have now and what you need in the future, then you can go to your service providers and say, “Hey, Will, I need to be signing 15 cases a month. What does that look like? You know, how many leads do we need? Okay, we need 25 leads a month to sign 15 cases to then settle 10 cases, and so that’s where we can continue building on it and know and have the confidence that if we’re settling 10 cases a month, then we’re covering our break even, right? And then when we settle bigger cases, because there’s one off cases that settle for more, then you have more profit, you have more money to play with, and things like that. So that’s where I just want you to understand what it takes to run your firm, and then know what it’s going to take to run your firm in the future.

 

Will  27:52  

Yeah, yeah, and it’s it’s stuff that’s very I know firsthand in my conversations, right? They are not always questions that we get you know the answer to right, and that’s something for us, right? Even the the lack of information there can can make a marketing agency hesitant, right, to really partner up because it makes that success piece difficult.

 

Leah Miller  28:11  

Yeah, yeah.

 

Will  28:12  

Tell me about about your experience as a paralegal and how that maybe helped you along your journey. I know just internally with the firm, right, but then also as you stepped into your current or opened up firmly profits,

 

Leah Miller  28:24  

so as a paralegal, I think my biggest selling point with what I’m doing now is I know how a firm works, and so I I can understand what is needed in a firm from a paralegal standpoint, or a firm like a firm administrator standpoint, I’m not coming in and saying like cut all this stuff to make the to make the profit work, right? I’m coming in and saying like I understand the process, I understand what needs to be done, but like do these other things, and so I think that’s where my experience in a firm is. I can understand the dynamics. It’s not just money, right? And so I can work with everybody in the firm to understand their needs because you can tell a paralegal every day of the week, “Hey, you have got to get 20 demands out a month, and then they’ll come back and say, “But what about this? And what about that? And then I understand that. I understand how long it takes to get a lien, you know, figured out at the end of a case. I understand what the process looks like, and so I am able to see it as a whole because the financials on their own mean nothing, the financials need to drive the operations and marketing. And so, if you don’t understand operations and marketing in a law firm, the financials on their own won’t help you with growth. You’ve got to understand all of it, and not that I know the nitty gritty of the marketing. Like I. Don’t know the difference between the LSA and all of that stuff, but like I know when something’s wrong, right? So I can look at intake, I can look at leads, and I can say, based on the financials, something’s wrong with the marketing. Go talk to your people, or let me talk to them and ask them what’s wrong. And so, and same with operations, I can you know? And people push back, and they’re like, “Well, we can’t get that much done. We’re at capacity. I’m like, “Are you? Are you really? Because I’ve done it, and so you know, I’ve even had people are like, “Well, it takes 60 days to figure out the Medicare lien. I’m like, “It does, and I’ll give you that. But at the same time, are you doing these other things first to try to get the time like faster? And they’re like, “Oh, maybe, maybe not. And so I’m like, “I’ve done it. I know. So don’t don’t tell me it’s not possible because I know it’s possible.

 

Will  30:49  

Yeah. What what is what would you say is the most common misconception a new firm that you’re working with, right, or somebody just firms in general that they believe to be true, but you know, you’ve seen time and time again may not always be the case.

 

Leah Miller  31:04  

I think you know, a lot of times it’s like they just they don’t know what is like they’re just not paying attention to the data and all of that, right? So they’re just not looking at what’s happening, and they’re not looking to the future. They’re kind of looking in the past and all of that. And so I think a lot of times, like we just need to drive things with the data more than anything, and they’re just not doing a lot of that. So

 

Will  31:35  

no, I I totally agree. Totally agree. Okay, couple rapid fire questions to wrap us up. First one being, did I see that you maybe rebranded at some point? 

 

Leah Miller  31:46  

L&M

 

Will  31:47  

Financial, you know, tell me about that story.

 

Leah Miller  31:50  

So this was going to be like a side hustle, and I wasn’t going to quit my job for a long time, and so L and M is my initials, and it’s terrible because it’s like out of order from the alphabet, so I rebranded a year in. It was terrible. I’m still like I still use my L and M email address sometimes, and now I have a Friendly Profits email address, and I’m still having issues with that. I’m glad I did it when I did, but it was a like a horrible like experience. So, but Firmly Profits is so much better than L and M, so it needed to be done. But yeah, I did not like the rebranding process.

 

Will  32:34  

I was curious because when I when I kind of picked up on that, I was wondering how much of it maybe was due to just the name itself, right? But also, how much of it was due to your own growing and scaling, right? Do you find that every time somebody comes in, they expect to work with you exclusively?

 

Leah Miller  32:51  

So that’s where I’m struggling right now. I’m not struggling, but I’m making the shift where I’m going to be hiring a fractional CFO, and so I’m not going to be doing all the work. Same with the bookkeeping. That part I passed off a long time ago. But yes, so I’m trying to not be just the only person doing the work anymore because you can’t scale past where you are, and so that is where a lot of what I’m talking about now is the firmly profits process. I have a process. I do the same thing for everybody. I have put that down on paper now and done all of that. And so, yes, that was you know I wanted to scale past me, and so my name in it wasn’t the best,

 

Will  33:34  

which I’m sure a lot of the listeners can relate to. Right, something we see all the time. There are certain decisions early on that you know are important to make if you have that goal of growth of scaling, right? Of all those. Last two questions for you, right? First one: If I were a brand new attorney, let’s say I’m a criminal attorney, right, or a personal injury attorney, and I’m trying to understand what that first one to two years should look like, right? What should I be thinking about going into it?

 

Leah Miller  34:03  

I think in the beginning, it’s track. Start tracking the data now. Start with your accounting software. Do all of that stuff right from the beginning, and then know what you need personally. So I have grown my business knowing this is what I need, this is how much I need to be making to hire this next person, and so you can like make decisions with the data from a small standpoint early

 

Will  34:31  

1. I I love that because the answer that you gave is not purely about $1 sign, right? Like it truly is about that personal piece, which is so important. And then last piece. I know that a lot of there’s a lot of debate at times around like how much split you should have in certain like categories within the firm. You know how much should be in payroll, how much should be in marketing, right? Where would you suggest people start?

 

Leah Miller  34:54  

So for marketing for long term sustained growth, you need to be between 10 and 15. That’s not doable for firms just starting out, and so I encourage you to just start somewhere with what can fit into your budget, and then from there incrementally increase it. Find service provider partners who can work within your budget, and the conversation that I have with a lot of marketing companies is, I know you want me to give you $20,000 a month to use. What’s the minimum to make a difference? And there’s a number there to say there’s a minimum to make a difference. So there,

 

Will  35:33  

there always is, and and look, oftentimes the I think it’s the the responsibility of the agency to say, hey, this is not enough for that goal, right? And you know, ultimately, I find one of the biggest pitfalls a lot of firms fall into is is where they they fall into this gray area where they’re spending, you know, a sizable amount, but not enough to really put yourself in that position to, you know, feel confident in the outcome that you can expect. And you know, that’s something I’m sure you run into frequently as well.

 

Leah Miller  36:02  

Yeah, and I think it’s just having an understanding of what that looks like is the most important part. And talking to your agency and saying like, “Hey, I can’t get there right now. Our goal is to get there. What makes sense for me in this moment? And the biggest takeaway I’ve been seeing recently is like the personal branding and being active in your community and things like that. So there’s things that you can do, or you can get on LinkedIn. So there’s things that you can do to get to that point, but just have an understanding of what is needed to get you to your goal, and then decide how, like, if you can live personally off less money to put more into your marketing, then maybe you’ll have faster growth. But if that’s not possible, just know that there’s ways to grow without that in this moment, and make sure you’re working with service providers who want to help educate and collaborate with you, and not just say, “Oh, if you can’t give me 25,000, I can’t work with you, which is great if that’s what they want. But there are people out there who can help you in different budgets.

 

Will  37:08  

Yeah, and you know what? If if it was all about the budget at the end of the day, right? Morgan and Morgan would be like winning every single market, right? They’d be winning every single area, and so there’s much more to it than that. That’s a great segue, right? Because obviously, the person to talk to, right, is is you, right? And you’re somebody who can help people with those questions. Tell everyone a little bit more about how they can get in touch with you, where they can connect with you, and perhaps where they could even learn from you. Because you you have great content on LinkedIn. I think it’s super helpful.

 

Leah Miller  37:39  

Yes. So LinkedIn, I direct everybody there. I try to post, you know, tidbits and tricks and stuff like that, and so you can learn as much as possible from there. I do free consultations to let you know how I can help you. So firmlyprofits.com, you can schedule that, and I’ll let you know, like, hey, based on your revenue, you know, bookkeeping makes sense right now. This is how I can help you there, and things like that. But yeah, LinkedIn is my favorite place to connect, and I’ll check with people in DMs and things like that about different stuff I post.

 

Will  38:10  

So we met. So we started chatting, right? I think we’re going into film. So, Leah, appreciate you taking the time to join. Anything that you’d like to leave the audience with?

 

Leah Miller  38:18  

No, I my biggest thing is just review your financials and start looking at the trends. And I think if you start looking at that every month, you’ll start seeing a difference in your firm.

 

Will  38:27  

I couldn’t agree more. All right. Well, we appreciate it. Thanks so much. Definitely encourage everybody to reach out. And thanks for joining us for another episode of the Legal Currents podcast.

 

Leah Miller  38:38  

Thanks for having me.