In today’s episode, Seth and Jay talk with Sara Khaki, owner of 2 different law firms in Atlanta about the reasoning behind opening 2 different firms and the challenges with marketing to 2 different socioeconomic groups. Click to get reminder for our 10 Growth Hacks for 2021 Event on October 15! https://www.facebook.com/events/365177488200283/
Hello, hello and welcome to another edition of Maximum Growth Live. I’m your host Jay Ruane with me as always Seth Price over there, Seth, how you doing this week?
Doing well putting up the good fight.
Yeah, exactly. You know, we’re still at it. You know, we’re six months into Maximum Growth Live now, which is amazing to think about it. And we are keeping at it, which is, I think everyone in our audience is doing the exact same thing. Of course, if you want to hear any of our back episodes, you can do it on the maximum growth live podcast, or the maximum lawyer podcast available on all major podcasting platforms. So Seth this week we have another phenomenal guest, we really hit it out of the park over the last couple of months and getting some guests and we have someone with us, who’s done it not once but twice. So tell us about our guest.
Well, Sara Khaki, one of my favorites, they based out of Atlanta, she is a force of nature, you know, she just had a third kid, she she has this awesome marriage with a husband who has his own entrepreneurial spirit. But she created a firm saw issues in that space, pivoted, left that firm there but started a second firm. It’s just an incredible story. And she herself, I see as an inspiration, the way she thinks about things, the way she evaluates culture and systems and all those things. They really is a sight to be seen and can’t wait to have this conversation.
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it. You know, we had a phenomenal show this past Tuesday. And this week, I think is going to blow the Tuesday show out. So why don’t we do this? Why don’t I take the cameras down. I’ll bring back Sara we will hear quickly from our sponsors. And then we come back, we’re going to have Sara Khaki, with us, and then we’re going to take it away, and I’m sure she’s got a lot to offer our audience. Sounds good. Sounds great. Awesome. See you in a minute.
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Hi, everybody, Jay here back with maximum growth live. So here’s the situation. As we were in commercial, I started messing with some of my cameras. And while I did that, I actually dropped Sara and set speed off of my screen, I’m going to be able to get them back. But I didn’t have enough time with coming out of the sponsor messages to be able to figure it out. So I’m going to go ahead and do the introduction for Sara. And then I’m going to figure out while I’m doing that, which buttons I need to press to get them to come back up on screen. I’m sorry for it. But sometimes when you’re doing a live show, you push the wrong button. And this is a perfect example of me doing that. So I apologize, said, Sara, I know you can hear me you just can’t see me. I’ll be with you shortly. But we’re going to talk about Sara. Let’s talk with Sara Khaki today. Sara actually has two different law firms. She’s got a social security disability firm and the Khaki law firm, but she also has the Atlanta divorce law group. And those are two different practices in two totally different practice areas. And we thought it’d be interesting to talk to Sara about that. So Sara, I know you can hear me, my first question to you is going to be why two different firms? I know you have the ability to build a firm, and I’ve thought about doing it myself. And the question is, do I build a whole nother firm? Or do I double down and focus on my core area of strength? Me being you know, ruin attorneys in Connecticut being a criminal defense firm? Do I focus all my attention on that until I’ve really maximized all the revenue out of that? Or do I set up a secondary firm like you’ve done? I’m sure you’ve got some insight as to why you you did it your way. I’m curious about it. I know Seth was his firm has just added on practice areas. So we find it really interesting what you’ve done. And so that’s my gonna be my first question for you. So if you could just give me a minute, I’m going to figure out how to bring you guys in. And you can maybe answer that question for me as our first question. Thanks. Hold on one second. I just need to hit a button here. And I’ll get you in.
So first of all, Jay, that’s such a good question. I really appreciate having the very honest and open forum to discuss that because I think people have made so many misconceptions about having two firms why I have two firms. And I’ve seen a lot of other people try it when, in my humble opinion, it’s not always a good idea. So I did have a social security disability for first a khaki law firm. And in 2016, Social Security in the summer of 2016, sort of freezing all attorneys fees, the political climate was very volatile with them freezing the budget, the the national budget, and Social Security, basically, for three months stop paying attorneys fees, a lot of smaller social security firms just went out of business, a lot of the big social security firms saw it as a huge opportunity opportunity, because they had all this operating cash that they could float through the next few months with. And they were scooping up the small firms that couldn’t handle it anymore, scooping up the clients, because in Social Security, it’s a three year lag time. You guys may know from PI, you have a pipeline that you build up. And then you hope that at some point, within 12 months or nine months, it starts, you know, producing cash. Well, Social Security is is a very, very painful one. And the fact that it’s a three year lag time. And if you want to get into it, it’s fantastic. Because it has some great natural barriers to entry for your competitors, which is a three year lag time, but you better go in with some operating cash in hand, or some other source of revenue coming in. I went in taking a big loan from my father in law, and my husband decided that he was going to run the whole household while we were just going to go in for three years and build this thing up. And we had a three year business plan. We had the cash flow forecast, we did all the things by the book the way you should yet, you’re still dealing with only having one client who pays you which is the US government, which is wonderful, because they’re going to pay you you know, they’re not going to go run away. And you know, to the Cayman Islands, they’re going to pay you at some point. But the all all the politics changes in President all these things is going to impact your practice area. And if for me, it really wasn’t matter Jay of do I close down the business at that point of bringing the second source of revenue, it was an absolute necessity to stay alive to bring in another source of revenue. Now, the great question is, Well, why didn’t you open up PI on the side? Why didn’t you do something else on the side? In the in the really the honest answer is I went for something that I was passionate about. And it was family law. I definitely could have opened up workers comp on the side, it was suggested to me I could have opened up PI on the side, I actually tried opening up bankruptcy on the side, I even bought the domain Atlanta Bankruptcy Law Group, I started turned some of our Social Security clients into bankruptcy clients by calling them because I was like, if we’re in financial pain, I know my clients are in financial pain over this. And it just did not gain momentum. And I think it’s a very, very important lesson for us to learn as entrepreneurs, because all three of us have a very strong entrepreneurial sense about us. And I think that in a lot of forms we’re in as entrepreneurs, we’re told that, you know, you can start a business in anything, right? It could be a hotdog stand, it could be a subway, or it could be a law firm, or it could be anything. What I learned in my personal experience was just just my experience is that if you don’t care about the product, you are not going to do a good job with it. That’s why that bankruptcy firm never gained any momentum. The bankruptcy firm could have actually had much better synergy with the social security firm, they could have lived in the same space, they could have shared more of the same staff because of software that lends itself to Social Security lends itself well to bankruptcy. The clientele could have shared the same lobby space and it wouldn’t have been an awkward interaction. But in marketing the marketing message the marketing mission could have been the same. But there was one thing missing which was my passion for bankruptcy my me wanting to have an opinion about it. And I think that is such a key for you know staying in your own lane. That’s why we tell people to stay in your own lane because something about what the lane you’re in called upon you and you call upon and you’re in it. And then getting shiny object syndrome with 50 other lanes, because other people are succeeding in them can be a fatal mistake, because you, it may just not be what you’re supposed to be doing. And I took a huge leap in going into family law, because I was passionate about it. But, you know, this is the Jay and Seth show. So I’m also going to give you the raw facts of it, the honest truth about it, if you are going to do something like this to survive, because my, my decision was from a place of survival, you should, in my opinion, go after a revenue source that diversifies how the revenues coming in PI and workers comp to me was more contingency. I didn’t want to add another contingency practice. Bankruptcy was more of chasing smaller margins. And that’s already what Social Security was, I didn’t want to do that. Family Law, when I ran the math was like, not only is it something that I love, and I’m passionate about, but you can make a much better margin per case, cash up front to grease the wheels than the other practice areas. I don’t, you don’t have to have $1 in your pocket to start the divorce firm.
I think it was sort of, you know, it was genius on a lot of levels. I mean, your history is written by the victors. But what I appreciate first digital marketing wise to have that second brand name, as you know, having a name with what you do in it, huge advantage digitally. So kudos to you if you probably didn’t know that going in. But regardless, it worked out really huge, huge advantage. Love the fact I mean, look, for myself, one of the areas I’ve tried to move into more, but family law, great cash, great demand, very hard to manage people within that. Family lawyers are a special breed, and I feel like you’re a special person that could help bring that together. But that is, you know, you’re going to you know, the money is there, how you get people to row in the same direction. And that I think is probably one of the hardest to do compared to other areas. Talk to me about your thoughts. When the idea you started a second firm, rather than – you had the Khaki firm, you could have just added another practice area, talk to us about the decision to make it a separate entity.
To me that is to go off what you’re saying about marketing and branding. I really thought it was important that the Khaki law firm stays on its mission, which is guiding people who are no longer able to work through this technical process. And when I looked at my avatars, and we really had built these avatars of what do our A clients look like? To us, it was like, you know, Bob, the builder. He’s, you know, he’s a factory worker has worked in a factory all years, his life, he’s 55 plus years old, his education, his high school education. And he’s very prideful about his work history and has a great work ethic. He did not live in the same space in my lobby, and how my lobby was going to look just to give a small example of a lobby with, for instance, Claire Huxtable, who is the professional woman who’s super educated, probably has a doctorate underneath her belt is very particular has to have all her A’s, you know, eyes dotted and T’s crossed, I could not see them cross paths in our lobby, I could not see them, if we were to have a happy hour for our clients, that they would be mingling together. I could not see our website, speaking the same language to both of them, it would isolate one draw in one and I couldn’t see most importantly, the people that I would recruit, to come and work for us being able to relate to both of them. If I’m recruiting for Atlanta divorce law group, I’m looking for something completely different for a completely different tone, different sense of confidence, different level of empathy than what I’m looking for, when I hire somebody for the Khaki law firm.
No, it’s it’s really fascinating. Because Jay and I talked about this in any future Tuesday show, we’re going to actually have this as a discussion point about whether you use two websites to go after this, or you take the authority because Khaki law had age on it, which is really important in authority, it had your brand and Google loves brand. So it’s not nothing to split in two. But it’s worked really, really well for you. Some other piece of this, which, you know, the fact that I have to have, you know, intake, the idea that you have separate intake, separate accounting, separate all of those things, you lose a lot of economies of scale. Now I get it’s genius that you separated it because it’s a different ethos. I see it, my intake is together, but we have to have a separate person as primary on PI because the contingency cases need a very different ethos than the fee for service cases. But you’ve given up a lot of efficiencies, running two separate shops. Can you talk a little bit about what you’ve learned through that process? Are there things back office that you do combine behind the scenes, or is it really you know, there’s a there’s a concrete wall between them?
So initially because we were so cash poor when we started it we really started the divorce firm on the back of the social security firm. So I really went to my intake department at the social security firm, I went to my girl, Holly, who’s still with me and said, Hey, I need your help, you know, and I went to all everybody in our social security firm said, I need all of your help. We aren’t, we need to find a way to bring another source of cash. And yes, my law firm administrator and my intake assistant, they jumped in, we were ticked, we got a cell phone, just for the phone calls that were coming for the divorce. Yeah, literally, that was the divorce firm, we did not have a single employee that was really dedicated to the divorce firm, we were working things of of councils, contract attorneys, and myself and our intake assistant, we were making phone calls from the cell phone to leads, and we were taking leads, like at nighttime on the weekends, just trying to do anything to distinguish yourself from the competition, because that’s all we had was, we just gonna give it pour our time into it. Whereas the competition was probably established and comfortable with how they were managing their leads. And we were just going the extra mile every step of the way. And it got to the point where that became so much work that we didn’t want the Khaki law firm to suffer for it. So we brought in a second girl to do the leads with Holly. So now both of them were running the intake department for both firms. And my law firm administrator was running the pulse, was building policies and procedures and systems, basically taking what we had for the khaki law firm saying, what about this needs to be different for a social security firm. And that wasn’t all that much extra work other than for us to just be mindful of that this needs to be built first. So divorce firm, but a lot of that HR stuff, a lot of that infrastructure already there. We went to our vendors, and said, Hey, we’ve had a great relationship with you, we’d like to add another law firm on here, sort of like what we did with BluShark. And I think one of the biggest challenges is finding good vendors, that’s one have been one of our partner up with you. And once you find good ones that you feel like are a partner with you, the way we have with BluShark, that was kind of easy. I mean, it was great having that conversation with David and Seth, and then kind of, you know, navigating that water with me and doing that with every vendor was incredibly helpful. But there definitely came a point where the economies of scale were no longer there. We could not have clients coming into the khaki law firm with the logo, the khaki law firm, inside the lobby, and outside the building, it says the khaki law firm. And then they’re thinking that coming to the Atlanta Divorce law group, you know, once we started to get the traction, we had to move up, but we still were, you know, slow on spending, because we had just gone through this horrifying freeze and attorneys fees. So what did I do, I took that lobby and one wall was the Atlanta divorce law group logo, the other wall was the Khaki law firm logo, we would switch things out as much as we could in the conference room. You just work with what you have. And we knew the vision was for them to be in separate buildings, because the more I dived into the branding, and the pain point of the client and the marketing and really getting like us, you know, Seth said the ethos and watching my staff, I was like, this isn’t this isn’t going to work for too long, I just need to get it to a certain point financially. And then we separated them out. And they were for a long time up until literally a month ago sharing still the firm manager, the law firm manager. But we did separate out the intake team very early on, because it’s very obvious that there’s a completely separate conversation, you know, you’re talking to your veteran for the social security firm, and you’re cursing out the government with them, you’re getting mad at the government with them, you’re going there emotionally with them. And then on the next call, you have to sound very professional, very pleasant, and congratulate somebody on making this big decision to move on with their life and the divorce. So we had to change that up.
But one thing that I that made me think of this during the pandemic, I have like eight different practice areas under one firm and I try to market it both ways. So I try to be Sara but not as successful and that I do blend those ethos together which is not good at dilutes. But it’s funny during the pandemic, we’ve gone to team meetings on a weekly basis that we’re not always there, but I’ve also segmented them into different groups so that it might just be Virginia criminal. And that the idea is as you do that when you address your team, one of the advantages I think is that everything you say is relevant to that group. Whereas when you do if you had a two practice group and you’re talking, it waters down the message because you can rah rah from the top but when it comes to pointed, you know tactical things half the people are tuned out when you talk about you know your your fee for service and half are sort of spot on and so I find that that was you know, it’s a lot more work for you is what I’ve found, but that you’re able to create two things that have solid foundations to grow in the future. Jay, you had some questions I want to make sure you had time to ask.
Yeah, so the thing that I really am concerned about, well not concerned about is, is this the end? Right? Or has now you’ve seen, okay, I’ve got SSDI it continues to work family law really taking off, or do you see yourself at the helm of seven different practices? Or would you say, okay, so now I’ve got the fee for service on the divorce side, I’ve got the contingency. Now, if I’m gonna get out, I’m gonna go do something outside of law, or maybe do some coaching myself? Where does this does it end with just two? Or do you see yourself saying, hey, now they’ve got the systems going in? And I’ll follow up with another question after this. But where do you see yourself going over the next decade?
It’s a great question. And you know, my answer to that has varied throughout the years. I remember that when the Atlanta divorce law group started hitting the seven figure mark, I kind of got a little bit of that sense of like, I got this figured out. I got it. I got that little sense of like, too cool for school that, you know, I’ve got this now, what am I going to do next sort of feeling? I don’t think I had gotten kicked hard enough yet with growing something beyond that.
We arranged for Coronavirus to come in and hit.
Exactly. But yeah. So I mean, I think I actually was really thinking like, what’s next for me sort of thought? And I think we, to be very honest, you know, there’s definitely points where you get that sense where you’ve arrived, and then you get kicked so hard. You’re like, oh, no, no, no, no, I’m still in the plane. And I so I had a moment of that. And I was thinking about workers comp. And I actually added workers comp for a little bit to our social security firm. And I wasn’t going to start a third firm, I was just going to add it to the Khaki law firm as another skew as another menu item. And very, when we started actually taking in cases actually got an attorney in there. But within three months, I could very quickly see that my eye was coming off the ball on the Social Security, and it was coming off the ball in the divorce. And I realized, like, I haven’t even like, reached nearly the potential of either one of those firms. And I still have not. And I think at the end of the day, here’s how I make that decision. I’m really not interested in starting a third firm. And I’m not interested in adding any practice areas. Today. That’s what I’ll just say today. And the reason for that is the social security firm, it makes sense that I started the divorce firm at that point, because every dollar I put into the social security firm, it was going to take me three years to see $5 out of that, or you know, $2 out of that whatever the margins may be, in the divorce firm, every dollar that I take out of the divorce firm and don’t invest in it invest somewhere else, that is literally next month that I could produce, you know, a $20, for me, and that’s why I always look at that I’m like, where could that dollar? If I take that dollar out of investing in my current assets? Am I gonna get that same return somewhere else? And how much headache do I have to put into it? So it has to be something that’s like a deep spiritual calling almost, for me to go and say I have to go and invest in this third business. I am very, very moved right now by how much more opportunity there is for us in both firms. I really would love to take Social Security to more of a national level. I don’t think that firm hasn’t even begun to reach, you know, taste its real potential. And same thing with the divorce firm, I think that we’ve done an amazing job branding happily ever after divorce. And we’re not, we’re not even the biggest game in the Atlanta market. You know, there’s still so many more ahead of us. And I think we should be right there at the top with how differently we do things and how different our philosophy is some very moved to do that. I do, of course, I’m still an entrepreneur at heart. I do engage in other ventures, but they’re more like a project here and there. My good friend and I, Lee Hayward and I, we did a branding workshop for a whole year where we had five different branding workshops for attorneys and other professionals on how to brand themselves and that sort of thing. And I love those projects. But I’m not about to take money out of either one of my assets and put them in somewhere else where I don’t know what the return is when there’s still so much more I can do with my margins in growth in the other two firms.
I love that. So you know, one of the things, I’ve done a lot of things well in my law firm, one of the things I’ve done least well is what you seem to have done very well, which is somehow corralling family law lawyers to work together. Those of us that knew Lee Rosen, he had a pretty interesting model back in North Carolina for years. You know, Jay and I both, you know, broke into this with criminal where, again, not easy, but there are a lot of people that just want to go to court and be left alone and out of the business component. So one of the areas that I’m looking to you as somebody who like, not what am I doing wrong, but like, talk to me about how the scaling of a family firm, where you need to be able to incentivize people to make them better off with you than being on their own, and better off with you than being with the competition. Talk to me about some of the techniques you’ve used, because getting the seven figures there is not nothing and that you have so many personalities. That’s the thing about family law that crushes me is that not only are the family law lawyers, special people, but they every day have to deal with opposing counsel, opposing counsels clients, their own clients, it’s really a very emotional practice area, what have you done to be successful in scaling that on an HR point of view?
Yeah, and I think that that is probably been our biggest challenge as well. And I, quite frankly, think we could grow a lot faster if I was willing to give up a little bit on what I’m specifically looking for when I’m hiring a little bit on culture, but I’m not willing to give up on culture, and I’m not willing to give up on the personality I’m looking for. So there’s been a lot of resumes that come my way that we’re painfully looking for more attorneys right there. And we’ve gone through three months that we haven’t, you know, found the right person. So I think that, I don’t know if I have the right answer, because I think there’s other guys out there that might be able to grow faster than me, because they are hiring a lot faster. But I’m really slow to hire attorneys. And one of that, so what are we doing that we’ve kept our attorneys and you know, kept them engaged in their superstars and not they haven’t gone out on their own? Well, I think that them feeling like we’re on a mission has really helped. Because divorce attorneys, they get burnt out really, really easily because of all the reasons you described there are basically holding on so much baggage from so many different levels, right? They’re holding on the baggage of the client, the opposing counsel. And there’s just so much drama that they have to listen to. And we do a lot as far as constantly talking about the mission of happily ever after divorce to them. And what does it mean? Why is this different than just providing a divorce decree to the client and giving them forums to express that. So for instance, you look to your attorneys and see what are they good at what, do they enjoy to do outside of the actual delivering the legal services, because these are the reasons I find that they’re going to leave you for, it’s not always going to be money. For instance, our litigation manager loves public forums to speak at so I find ways for her to give CLE we put money into promoting webinars for her. She does an amazing job doing Facebook Live’s. And that gives her an outlet to express herself and I don’t do anything to hinder her from going and originating on her own, we actually give incentives for our attorneys to originate. You don’t have to be a partner to originate. Any attorney of ours that originates, we give them 10% of whatever they collect, or the firm collects, even if they don’t work the case, and somebody else in the firm works the case. We have another attorney that does a fantastic job at networking, whatever networking group she wants to join, we pay for that, she goes out and networks. Now I have a lot of colleagues of mine and other firms and other forums that tells me I’m crazy because you’re basically not letting them be dependent upon you to go and work you know, to learn how to bring in work. You’re teaching them how to rainmake. And my philosophy is, I’m not going to live in fear of that, I’m just not, I’m going to do everything as much as I can to build a culture, to build a leadership that they feel that is so strong and so good that they think twice about leaving, and that they enjoy being part of, you know, a superstar team. And within that team, they get to go and express themselves and find ways to make additional income. So that, you know, they don’t, it’s not as appetizing to go out on your own and giving them support staff, as the really strong support staff, I think also really minimizes the risk of them leaving you because they really think to themselves, am I going to have somebody to take care of the intake for me like this? Am I going to have somebody, an amazing paralegal on my own? If you just spoil them to death with those things, and I think they’re gonna think twice about going out on their own.
That’s funny. I have a thought. But, Jay, what’s you got? You got a question?
Yeah. So I have a question. You know, building a practice and building a secondary practice, you know, one of the things that we often talk about on this show and in other forums is the role of systems and how systems really do, take. And you alluded to it a little earlier, when you talked about your firm manager sort of said, what systems are we using with the SSDI firm? What can we translate over to make it work? Tell me about the role of systems in both firms as someone who has started multiple firms. How important is that to you? Where do you think you should have your focus early on in the process for building systems? Because I think that people need to hear that stuff.
Yeah, systems are huge, systems are very important. But I would never hinder growth because of systems. That’s just one, and I would also say that culture is more important than systems, because you can have the most amazing systems, but bad culture, the system’s gonna go to crap. And nobody’s going to work within that system. But I think some of the most important systems for me personally have been a marketing systems and client management systems. So what I mean by client management, well, in Social Security, it really is from A to Z from the time you take the case, all the way to the case comes to an end. And family law, it’s a little bit more, you have to be create a lot more flexibility. But for our social security firm, for instance, we build systems within our software that triggers everything from, okay, from the moment the client calls the office, the lead calls the office, there is a system for how it’s handled, how the glide path happens all the way to the end, where we ask for that Google review. Whereas in the divorce firm, these are all compartmentalized because once things get to legal, we have really led, eased up on the systems a lot more, because in the early days, we found that that was actually one way we were going to lose our legal staff, because they felt that, hey, you got to let us think for myself, you got to let me run, you know, run my case, the way I want to run my case. So my big thing on the systems is, I mean, I can if there’s a specific system you want me to speak about, I will. But I’m very careful about advocating systems too much for the guys that are right now in a growth mode, because what I find is that we, you should just go out and hustle and market, if you want to build something up. Getting lost in the systems, it could really, you know, deprive you of where you should, what you should be doing right now.
I could, that’s so funny, because Jay has been advocating for systems for a long time. And I am clearly, I was on the wrong side of the curve. Like I’ve waited too long. We had manuals, but we didn’t take it as seriously. But I think there’s something there, I think it’s worth a further discussion, maybe be even beyond the show with the idea of when can systems hurt you in the sense that there’s a lot of positive, right, somebody leaves you can plug him in. But if you’re innovating in growing, can the systems restrict you in some way? Because it doesn’t allow you to invent, you know, so that when you look at like, you know, the famous story of Starbucks and the frappuccino, it was somebody going working outside the system that created a drink that became 10% of their revenue. So the idea is, where are the, where when, when the system’s absolutely needed? And where like, when do you say, you know, we want that flexibility. For me intake is one of those places I’ve really struggled with in that, we have a system, we’re in Salesforce, we use – we go through it, but I want to make sure that the people interacting on the phone are trained and empowered to go beyond that system, when needed. And it’s not it’s not easy. Jay, I love you because Jay is sort of, you know, master of all systems. And I’ve, you know, yes, yes, and yes, but when to, you know, deviate around that?
Well, I think Sara makes a really good point. And it’s really a combination of systems and culture. And if you have a culture of people who know that they can go beyond the system, that’s going to really going to put you in a position to really take advantage of the strengths and talents of your team. Because the last thing you want is a staff member to say, well, the system says I stopped, so I just stopped. And I don’t have the ability to think and that comes down to hiring. I mean, a lot of people say, Well, I like to hire the, you know, the lowest person possible who can execute on that task, which is great, if it’s a grind position, but for a lot of what we do, there’s a level of touch that’s necessary. You know, it’s like, you’re like, like in any you know, professional sport or anything else. Or even a barbecue you know, you put your hand over the grill and you feel the coals and you say, okay, now’s the right time to put the meat on the coals. You know, there’s a level of touch that’s necessary I think for your, for your business, for your firm, to move forward. And if you’re going to simply rely on systems, then you’re going to wind up with people just stopping and you’re not going to get it to the next level. That’s my perspective on it.
Before I throw it to Sara that just made me think of something. So I feel like as the economy got stronger and unemployment got lower, J pounding on systems became more and more enticing and that our ability to get rock stars shrunk. Sara right now we have a very, the unemployment has gone back up, the economy is not in great shape, you have the ability to obtain some really strong talent. Have you leveraged any of that? Because that’s what I think Jay is talking about when you do get those rock stars, the systems are there and they’re there for a purpose. They were more, were they more important a few months ago, and now not that you don’t want systems, but that if you get the people, as Jay was just alluding to, that you can fit into your culture that you can have them elevate beyond a formal systemized approach?
I really think it depends, because and that’s such a lawyer, answer. I have found people that I’ve recruited superstars that I’ve recruited that their love language is systems. And I have to actually use our systems to leverage the positioning of our firm to recruit them and attract them to bring them in. And I have also found people who found the love language is freedom, right? And for them, I have to say, listen, our culture is that, you know, we have these systems in place. But one of our core values is challenging the status quo. I mean, that is actually on our website that is actually written on our walls that are one of our core values is to check that respectfully challenge the status quo. And part of that means challenge our system. But the rule is, you have to give us a solution, you have to come up with an alternative solution if you’re going to challenge the system. And for some people you know, some of our litigators that we want to track that is a definite love language. I think it’s important when you, you know, that you have a superstar, whether it’s in your team or outside of your team, somebody you want to recruit. Let them speak to you, find out why they’re even interested and attracted, and just shut up and listen. And this is very hard for me to shut up and listen, because I’m always like, Oh, I found a superstar, I gotta sell, sell, sell, and get them to come in, and my husband’s like, just shut up and listen, I’m not gonna tell you what it’s going to take for them to come. And when I listen, I actually hear some people say, their love language is systems, it’s Excel spreadsheets, it’s that security of knowing what’s going to happen next. And then there’s some that are feeling like they’ve been completely constrained, and an operation that is so big, and so stale, and it won’t move. And it’s, you know, the Titanic hitting for the iceberg and it can’t even shift quickly enough. And that’s what’s you know, this economy has done to some of the firms that are so tied up in their systems and the way they’ve done things that they can’t even pivot. And you know, and as we grow and get bigger, and how do we build a culture that can pivot with the systems it has. But one thing I have learned from having staff that are superstars that have a systems love language, and the ones that have more of a challenge, or love language, is that friction that the two teams create is actually where the magic happens. That’s where all the fire happens when you have a, you know, I’ve read plenty of leadership books and business books. It’s really resonated in these books that when you have a team staff meeting, and you have half of the team saying, well, this is how we’ve done it, and the other team saying, well, you know, let’s jump into the pool even if we don’t know if there’s any water in it, and these guys butt heads, if you can be the leader over that conversation and find the jewels out of that, I think that’s where the growth happens. But you need both, and you need to have both conversations.
I love that. I love that. I think that’s really, really a big takeaway for the people who are watching this is that you really have to find the areas where you can get that synergy, right, something more coming out of two things. And that’s your skill set as an entrepreneur and as a lawyer to tap into that and really take advantage of everything that you’ve put together. And you’ve done a phenomenal job doing it Sara, I’m so impressed.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it.
Absolutely. I mean, I usually am watching you guys and learning from you, I’m very honored to be on here. And thank both of you for everything you’re doing for the community.
And so I might reach out to you because maybe I’ll start up an SSDI firm. I’ve been thinking about that.
Well, Jay, I’ll just hopefully the audience is amused by this. But I have my SSDI story. I’ve told you. I was at the second or third Pilma in Atlanta. And I’m sitting there, I walk into the room, and like half the rooms, all personal injury lawyers, half the people from around the country, we’re doing this thing, what is this SSDI I had no idea what it was. I had never heard of it before. This is like a decade ago. So on the next break, I run out of the room, I call the office and I say hey, we need an SSDI site, you know, build a SSDI site, didn’t even know what it did. But so by that evening that we had an SSDI site. I went home and started you know, putting it together. And you know what I found was we got ourselves optimized. We were number one in DC for SSDI. But one of the things about and you alluded to it before, Sara, it’s a three year incubation period. And that it is a flat, it’s fixed fees, you don’t, you’re not gonna hit a homerun on it. It’s a lots of singles and maybe some doubles. And the idea is that the cost structure you have is so, so important. So I had set there, and we had like, gotten nice offices in downtown DC. And we were sort of like building this firm. And it’s like, it’s very tough when you have certain infrastructure costs. Some of the guys that we’ve seen who have been most successful at it, have gotten themselves out of downtown and have found relatively inexpensive labor in order to effectuate this because you’re not getting you know, you the same whether you’re sitting in Beverly Hills, or you’re sitting in the distant suburbs of Atlanta, you know, you’re getting the same amount for each client. And that if you’re, if you end up with cost, right, anyway, so I ended up, you know, passing the practice off and seeing that as one I wasn’t passionate about it, my cost structure was messed up. But, so impressed that you figured out a way to make it work for you.
Well, I mean, Jay, you should do it. You love systems, social security firms also run on systems more than anything. You could really geek out on our social security systems.
Awesome. I like the sound of that. Cool. Thank you so much, Sara. Thank you for being with us. Really appreciate it.
Thanks guys.
Well Seth, just a phenomenal conversation. I love spending time with Sara. And everything that we learned there was just awesome. You know, there’s nothing else you can say, what were your thoughts?
No, I just thought the way she evaluates things and just watching the brain spin in real time, it was just a treat and an inspiration. I feel like I took things that she gave me there that I want to bring back to my team. And that sort of figuring out what makes somebody tick, something I probably don’t do enough of that I sort of say, hey, here’s our here’s our formula fit into it. And the fact that she’s trying to figure out what makes different people tick systems versus freedom, you know, really, really fascinating.
Yeah, you know, that’s something that’s really interesting. The other thing that I thought was interesting was, and a lot of people in our audience have talked about during Coronavirus, being able to make a pivot, right. And I think she had a really good metric for figuring out where to pivot to and she will look at one was a contingency fee basis. So she didn’t want to bring another contingency, she wanted to go from fee for service. And I think that’s really sort of an interesting way to approach it. You know, I know some people who, you know, had a family law practice that was fee for service, and then decided to add another fee for service trust in estates type thing. Or we saw people who had a PI practice, who maybe were not necessarily impacted as much. Besides that they wanted to add another source of revenue, because they see coming down the line 18 months from now, there’s gonna be an issue with their pipeline of PI settlements and verdicts, because of the impact on society over the last six months. And it’s really sort of an interesting way to sort of, sort of judge where to get into it next. And I thought she had a very, very smart way of approaching that when she did do it. And it’s caused me to think, okay, if I’m going, you know, where should I go next? How should I get into the next area to build my business?
That was a mirror of what I looked at, right? I had criminal great cash flow, had payment plans because we had scaled, the payment plans allowed us to have continuous cash flow. But moving to the contingency side, adding PI and med mal was that sort of balance. And I think that as people look at where they want to pivot, if they do want to pivot, figuring something that diversifies them, I think is very strong and synergies are important. And she went way beyond that, not just like best business practice, anything where you can leverage economies of scale, whether it be office space, whether it be human resources, she went above and beyond to separate it, that’s not easy. And that for many people, they won’t have that luxury. And again, I mentioned it during the interview, I’ll say it again, which is strategically from a digital marketing point of view. It’s a heck of a lot easier to add something to a site, there’s not a lot more cost, just add some content. And basically, it’ll allows you that flexibility to build without a lot of additional marketing firepower particularly organically. That said, what she did seems to have been a vision, she knew what she was doing, and that sometimes you need that separation in order to really have those teams independently functioning and firing to create those independent revenue streams.
You know, something came up with a conversation with Sara. And I think it’s something that we should talk about this coming Tuesday, right. And it’s the difference between, you know, just bolting on a new practice area to your existing brand, or building a whole separate brand, like Sara did. And there’s a lot of points that go into it. Price Beno has been very successful adding on practice groups, right. My firm, we tend to build separate brands. So I think that’s an idea that maybe we should discuss a little bit more in detail as to why you did certain things and why I did certain things next Tuesday, on our show, because I think it’s something that a lot of people are contemplating, and they don’t necessarily know all the calculations that go into making those decisions. Sara really sort of teed up the conversation, but if you’d like, maybe we can talk about that next Tuesday. What do you think?
That’d be great.
All right, fantastic. So we’re gonna end the show here now, folks, this has been another wonderful Thursday sitting with you. I am Jay Ruane, and he is Seth price. You can check us out on all the major podcasting platforms, as well as in the maximum lawyer podcast. We’re syndicated through them. Maximum growth live is a production of maximum lawyer media. We are so happy to be with you, Seth, I hope you have a phenomenal weekend with your family. Enjoy the nice weather while we have it. And we’ll see you now on Tuesday on the Tuesday show of maximum growth live. Bye for now, folks.
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