Today Seth and Jay chat with John Nachazel – Co-Author of Fireproof and COO of Mike Morse Firm in Michigan about how a data driven mindset can help you scale.
Hello, Hello and welcome to another edition of maximum growth live. I am one of your host Jay Ruane CEO of Firm Flex, your Social Media Marketing Agency for lawyers, as well as managing partner of Ruane attorneys, a civil rights and criminal defense firm. And who knows what’s next firm and we’re gonna talk about that in a moment, in Connecticut. But with me, as always, my buddy over there, down in his Washington DC office, no longer working remote. It’s my man Seth Price, Seth is the Founder and Managing Partner of Price Benowitz, your DC, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina law firm handling PI criminal and family law. I think that’s it right now, as well as the founder of BluShark Digital, which is a SEO for law firms as well as other agency interests as well. So Seth, it’s been a while since we’ve been live together, we’ve had some replays the last couple of weeks, how you been the last couple of weeks?
It’s good, you know, the getting back to the offices is good. It is stressful. You know, you’re starting, it’s I you know, towards the end of this, we talked about getting in the band aid off or on remote. But I was seeing areas I didn’t love the extended display scenarios that are great. There, a lot of lawyers never coming back. And we talked about and proud and you’ll probably talk about reducing footprint and things along those lines. You know, BluShark is still all virtual, you know, we’re getting a space in the next month or two. But we did an off site for BluShark, we had 50 People for the day, if people flew in and weren’t local, we, it was awesome. And you forget that energy that is there. There’s a lot of dramas a lot of expense, but there’s a lot of benefits to being around each other.
Yeah, there definitely is. And you know, it’s funny, I’ve been back in the office now, somewhat consistently for the next last couple of weeks. And, you know, it’s still a little quiet. It’s not nearly what it used to be, you know, a lot more lights off than on. But I’m hoping that over the next couple of months, we get into a rhythm and more people are coming in, we’ve got a whole team on a civil rights cases, that is basically set themself up off site, because they had to work together before offices reopened. So once that, you know, summary judgment, time gets taken care of, they’ll come back in, and it’ll sort of, I think, raise the number of people in the office. And we’ll get back into a float. But I wanted to talk to you first thing about an issue that I’ve had recently. And it I don’t want to say came out of the clear blue sky, because there were rumblings of it. But we’ve talked about it, I just had my State of Connecticut legislature, wipe out an entire practice group, and destroy years of hard work, years of revenue, years of growth. And in about 14 months from now, everything that we’ve done in pardons, is going to just evaporate because they’re going to become automatic now. Whereas before we you’d have to file an application, that’s where we became a market maker, you know, our volume was was tremendous. But we made a lot of good money and did a lot of good for a lot of people. And so now I’m at the point where I need to start investigating what practice area is going to replace that because I need to build another practice area. And so I want to talk, I think we’re going to talk through on the show over the next couple of months.
We will over the weeks. But it’s funny because I spend much of COVID curtailing practice areas, we have a whole bunch of smaller ones. But you know, I woke up one morning and haven’t talked about this with Jim on their show, and realized that our immigration just wasn’t exciting from a profitability point of view. It wasn’t a passion. The person I had was heading back to the government and rather than retooling to do historical news, somebody, I turned the Jim and said, hey, you know this, what Why don’t you open DC office and, you know, buy select again, and this wasn’t the case for you because it was a profitable area. But being able to trim and look at things that may be less profitable, not the worst thing in the world as well. We talked a lot about during COVID About pivoting and opened other areas. But I feel that there’s there are times that that was contraction, but we’ve increased focus on noise, so much bandwidth to go around that we I think we have been very pleased and if not looked back on that. You know extricating something from your practice when it’s either not a passion or not exciting enough to the bottom line and that that effort could be better used with better multiples and other practice areas.
Yeah, it’s certainly something that’s going to be a challenge for us, you know, because we had any, you know, me and my love for systems. I you know, I really took all the things that I had learned in Berlin, my other practice areas, and really sort of built this, this expungement pardons practice from the ground up all systems base. I mean, it functioned really well. And it was it was it was probably I mean, it’s, I’m a little heartbroken to see it disappear. I know, I know it’s gonna be good.
As a digital marketer, you’ll be able to combine the sites and gain authority, you got the reviews? You mean, you’re gonna come out of this as a digital marketing point of view? In a really good space for your existing product lines? I have no doubt.
So okay, so let me ask you a question that right, so I’ve got the standalone brand. And it’s got about 155 star reviews, it’s it’s solid, it actually holds position zero for many of the search terms. I mean, we have the knowledge box, which is great. So do I combine that GMB listing with my main law firm listing and take my 200 list reviews up to 350? Overnight? Or do I take that and merge it with one of my secondary office GMB’s that have got like 50 and get that up to 200? Pretty quickly? What would you do in that situation Seth?
Great, great question. I think it depends where you are compared to the market for your main office, if you dominate the main office, at let’s say, you or the close competitor in less than 100 reviews. I don’t, I don’t remember last time I looked in Connecticut, if you are blowing away the competition, why? Five exit? I mean, to me, that’s not necessarily a good thing. I think when you go too far for the competition, it can look unreal, like not natural. Right? Guys, if you have a second office, and you can basically gift yourself a second office, not the worst thing in the world. So you know if your money office makes you the most, but your geography is such that a second office probably does you more than one mack daddy office. And that if you can put a second meaningful pin on the map that would do you as much or more good than maximizing the first but a conversation I’m sure we will have over the next couple of weeks and possibly right here.
Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, this is the kind of thing that that you and I have talked about for years, without people listening in on it. And now we’re just doing it live. So people can sort of see our thought process. And I’m sure I’ll fight you on some things, and you’ll fight me and others, but that’s what it’s all about, what issue are you dealing with? That, that we can help,
You know, the things that I’m looking at right now is I would what we talked about the sort of last time we were there expanding, you know, a, an overseas workforce to to sort of supplement what we’re doing. And trying to figure out how to get through recruiting quickly. I mean, the two biggest pain points and operation talked about this all the time, it’s recruiting, and it’s intake, we could wave a magic wand, those are the two areas outside of the substantive law practice that, you know, I’m taking marketing as a given because I feel like, you know, for us, it is solid, that the other the other leg here, like but making the phone ring, what you do with it, and then getting the talent in the right seats on the bus to do it. And to me, coming back, you know, again, this is nothing major, these are very doable, but we had sort of allowed certain people who were, you know, to go to move during Covid, Covid’s over, I don’t necessarily always want all those people remote. If we’re going to be back there certain things, who cares, right? If it’s independent lawyer, they can do their own work. But if it’s somebody who’s touching employees, there’s a certain amount of value of popping into offices and making sure everything’s okay, getting a pulse on things. Again, there are operations that are set up fully remotely, God bless them. But I think that is what I’m looking at right now, which is tweaking things to get back to hopefully the new new normal, which it may not be 100 cents on the dollar people sitting in your office. But for those connectors for the touch points, you know, taking your connect your touch points and bringing them back so that they are fully on board. So that it may be that the staff doesn’t all see each other there may be Tuesday, Thursday, people on Monday, Wednesday, Friday that people however it ends up working out or maybe some some mixture, but the people that will connect and keep the culture going, making sure that’s reinforced and not virtual, and making and that is the piece that I’ve worked on. So
Yeah, that that’s that’s a real challenge, you know, and, and one of the things that’s a challenge for me, and I’m gonna say something that I haven’t told anybody yet, but I actually have officially put a date on my calendar to be actually 100% out of the daily practice of law. And it’s something that I’ve been toying with, but I made it July 23rd of next year. So that I as of I have, I have a deadline for myself, because I want to get to a point where I am an owner and not in the daily practice of law and I’ll still do a still do the marketing stuff because I enjoy that. But I am not going to touch a client after July 23rd of next year. That’s my goal.
Look that is the best possible segway to our guests today. Right? Exactly. We have a gentleman who is John Knox Hazel, who is you know, really, he talks the talk about taking yourself out of what you think you’re best at or what you think you’re good at or what you like, and figuring out what can be delegated and making that happen. So I can’t wait to hear what John has to say, because this is what he speaks to, and that the whole POS system sort of works towards. So I’m curious to see your reaction to what you’re hearing him?
Yeah, it’s gonna be great. So why don’t we do this, folks, let’s take a quick break. And when we come back, we’ll have one of the co-authors of fireproof. John Nachazel here with us to talk all about his role in his firm and how he makes things different. We’ll be right back.
Hi, I’m Jay Ruane, one of the founders of firm flex and a practicing attorney for over 20 years. Anyone who knows me knows how my firm runs on the systems we create. And it has allowed us to flourish. Even in tough times. I spent years and hundreds of 1000s of dollars until I finally figured out a way to engage my audience and drive top of mind awareness with social media. And what did I do once I figured it all out, I built a system for it. And now you can put that system to work for you. You see, we took the hard part, creating the content and finding the images and made it foolproof. Every day you will have curated social media topics to post designed to make your firm constantly remind your audience about your firm, what you do, and how you can help. And the best part, you don’t even need to hire a dedicated social media person to do this for you. In fact, you don’t even need to hire anyone new. We design the system to make it easy for you to delegate to your receptionist, assistant or paralegal and have them execute solid social media for you in just five minutes a day. It’s like having a content writer, researcher and graphics designer at a fraction of the price it would cost to hire in house. Sign up today for the social super system and start building your brand where your clients already are on social media.
In this world today, if you want to grow your business, you want to grow your firm, you want to take on more cases and make a better impact. You have to have a digital blueprint. Statistically, throughout the time that we’ve been working with BluShark Digital, our law firm, the Atlanta divorce law group grew over 14 100% they truly understand where we’re headed, and how we want to get there. I have a team in BluShark Digital that I feel like has my back.
We’re thrilled to have John knock Hazel here. Welcome, John.
Thank you. It’s great to be here.
So John, in addition to being the CEO of one of the largest badass firms in Michigan, you have written the best seller fireproof, and you also as the king of lawyer EOS and have a group that does all these things now. We’re helping other law firms with with traction. My question for you is, you know, you’ve seen the inside of not just the firm that you’ve helped grow, but now a number of other ones. What did you know, when you look at law firms in general, what do lawyers not get that EOS can provide?
So I would say what they, what they don’t get are some of the business basics. So they they are so caught up in working up the case, and they get lost in working up the case. And they get so preoccupied with how busy they are and the onslaught of incoming work, that they don’t take the time to ask some of the basic questions such as where are we going? And who are we? What do we want to do? And how are we going to get there. They’re too often highly reactive, instead of making just deliberate choices and acting in a very deliberate manner towards what they want to accomplish.
You know, one of the things I was curious, I was lucky enough with John Fisher’s to hear you for a day and sort of give us a a kickoff for our own implementation. But one of the things before you chose ELS traction, what were the you know. Did you guys look at different models that were out there? Because one of the things that they talk about with this model is that it doesn’t play well with other methodologies. And you sort of got to pick something and go with it. How did you guys end up with this compared to some of the other options that are out there?
Yeah, so I have to, I have to plead ignorance on that one, to be honest with you so. So because Michael, Michael Morse, he is our visionary owner, founder. And he went out and he signed up with Gino directly, Gino Wickman, who is the author of traction and founder of Eos. And it was Gino that taught Michael that he needed an integrator. And Michael didn’t know what that was. And so he taught Michael, what that was. And he’d already had three of his meetings, they’d selected three members of his leadership team. And then he knew he needed an integrator and he ended up adding me so I just don’t know what other concepts he considered at the time to be honest.
Gotcha, did sort of dovetail something that Jay, we were talking about beforehand. As far as, you know, all the different roles that as a lawyer, entrepreneur, JL, I’ll toss to you because you you that was sort of something that was on your mind?
Yeah, you know, it’s one of the things that really is sort of interesting is as one of the things. Mike really came to you, from my understanding after he had had an operation, and it was running, and he was starting to want to get into the scale, but a lot of our audience, our solos, very small firms, sort of in the, you know, in the learning how to walk crawling and learning how to walk stage. And I’m starting to wonder, what can we learn that you guys have dealt with? And what can our audience learn about, you know, getting to the point of, of, of knowing how to integrate some of the ideas of the visionary, but not necessarily having the the the bandwidth to be able to bring somebody in at that at that position to be in that position? Full time? You know, what can you tell us about how, how new firms can have both a visionary and an integrator in themselves as they’re starting out?
Well, they’re going to have to be very deliberate. When I joined, I was employee number 28. And so Michael had already achieved a certain level of success and, and had some resources. But the some of the things just aren’t going to come naturally. There’s, there’s a rare, rare, rare person that that is good at being both a visionary and, and an integrator. And so what you have to do is, at a minimum is be aware of what your blind spots are, it is, you know, Michael Hill, he’s very self deprecating, so I’m sure he won’t mind me sharing that he, you know, he thought that he was the best trial attorney on the planet, he was the best check signer on the planet, he was the best at going to Costco to buy the office supplies, and did all of those things, because he was truly in fact, the greatest person on the planet for doing those things. And that makes no sense. You know, it’s not that he wasn’t operating in his sweet spot, you know, in his highest best use. And there were plenty of people that were better at these things. And so one is just being aware of it. And then when you’re aware of what your blind spot is, if you don’t embrace data, and there’s going to be tons of soloists out there that don’t understand the value of data. At least be aware of it. And try to try to fight that urge to just operate all on instinct in being reactive, because it it’s going to be out of control and you’re not going to be able to scale and you’re not going to understand what’s happening to you. So so, number one at a at a minimum is understand what your blind spots are and what your weaknesses are. And then look for someone in your organization or someone that you have access to. Maybe it’s your outside CPA, maybe it’s your secretary, maybe it’s your receptionist, maybe there’s somebody in your life that can compensate for your weaknesses because you absolutely have some. And if you lie to yourself about it, the only person you’re fooling it’s yourself. I’m terrible at a ton of things. Luckily, Michael happens to be fantastic at all of those. He is terrible at some things I happen to be strong in all those areas. So it’s, it’s, it’s be aware and then when you do go looking, look for your polar opposite. Don’t look for someone that is looking through the same lens as you and coming at getting to the same conclusions that you are because that that doesn’t make you any stronger. It doesn’t provide any value to just hear from somebody that happens to agree with you. But doesn’t doesn’t make it better and doesn’t challenge you.
So you know that you sort of laid out what worked there. I’m curious, as someone who’s dipping our toe into it and moving rocks and having more mission statements, etc, sort of checking off early boxes? What are some of the things? Was it all smooth sailing? Are there things that you wish you knew when you started, or hiccups along the way that we could help the audience sort of, hopefully navigate around or at least know that they may be coming?
Yeah. So I would say this that one of the hiccups along the way that I wish I would have been more thoughtful about was that lawyers are ,some of our best lawyers who are fantastic at trial, and they’re fantastic with clients, you would think that they have the intelligence and the people skills to manage people. And that’s not true. Some of them do. But a surprisingly small number of lawyers are actually good at managing people, even though they had what I thought were all the fundamental building block pieces, and a bunch of them just don’t enjoy it at all. And so we had people that we put in position to manage teams, and then they came to us, you know, after a year and a half or two and said “No More, please. I want I went to law school to be a lawyer not to be a manager”, and, and they weren’t enjoying it. And so we had to pivot and found those small number of people that happen to be great lawyers, yes, but also great managers of people and building a team, and having fewer teams that were larger, because we only had, you know, a handful of great managers in our presence.
You know, that seems to be one of the biggest challenges that Seth and I talk about frequently is, is finding the right people for the right job. But I want to go back to a thing that you talked about a little while ago, and that was, you know, relying on data more than instinct. And I and I think it would be important, I know you guys have the scorecards and that type of thing. Let’s talk a little bit about that for our audience so that they can truly understand the role that data plays in managing any organization, but specifically a lawyer organization. Because, you know, so much of what we do as trial lawyers is, do I pick this juror or that juror? Well, it’s a gut thing. I can’t say with specificity. You know, you know, when I put a number on a file on a PI file, do I want 75,000? Or do I want 95,000?It’s sort of a gut thing in in for most of our people that are listening, but talk a little bit about some of the metrics that you measure, and how you unpack that data to be able to make concrete decisions to move yourself forward.
So there’s so much there, let me let me go with one of the stories in the in the book that we talked about is in 2018, we projected I forecasted that we would finish the year at 160 million in disbursements. And that was higher than we’d ever done before. And I did it by looking at the average case value, the timing at which the cases actually ended up yielding money. And then the number of cases that we signed up. And so part of my thought process there is, is I’ll project out, here’s what we’re going to be and knowing then once I know the revenue, and that particular year is off by $1,700. So it was extremely precise. And the point of it is, and that was my best forecasts, I’m always within a percent, usually within one or two tenths of a percent. But I don’t add up the projections of what the attorneys predict on individual cases. And sum them instead, what I do is I take averages of what’s really actually happened. And I tell them, here’s what your docket is going to produce rather than asking them and I tell them if they’re doing a good job, rather than asking them if they’re doing a good job. And yes, there’s back and forth. And you know, you need facts. And there’s room for for the explanations and all but but it’s it’s it’s being thoughtful, it’s it’s, it’s now going through the year and knowing that we’re going to have 160 million, and then you make deliberate choices will How much do you want to allocate to marketing and advertising? How many people are we going to require in order in each area in order to achieve this and deliver this 160 million? How many cases are we going to sign up? So I’m looping a little bit, but let me let me try it this way. So, one of the other things that we do is I’ll ask Michael, you know, where do you want to go. And as an integrator, I’m not too concerned about where we want to go, do we want to get bigger? Do we want to get smaller? Do we just want to plateau? What do we want is he can tell me where he wants to be in three years. So in ELS, there’s a three year picture and a 10 year target. And I almost feel like it’s cheating in with our firm, because I know what our averages are. And I know how long it will take to bring in the cases. So when we lay out our three year picture in our 10 year target, it’s just math, I know, the more we spend in advertising, the more cases we’ll sign up. And I know how many cases we have to sign up in order to deliver that revenue. And so I just begin with the end in mind, and say, if we want to be at 200 million, then we have to do this, if we want to be at 110 million, then then here are the steps that we need to take. And it’s just going through a thoughtful, logical process.
Now, do you ever have to like go to outside resources and say, like, statistically, in this greater area of Michigan, you know, with this population that we have, there’s going to be X number of accidents a year within, you know, a standard deviation. So I know that if I want to increase my revenue, 100 million, I may need to actually open an entirely new area, rather than just stay because the market with what I’m dealing with and competitors, and the law of averages aren’t necessarily going to be there to get me to the revenue that I want, is that something that you look to as well?
So, that that information is out there? I mean, I can look at accident report information and and look at those stats. But the surprising thing is the small number of cases that you know, when you consider how many accidents or how few lawsuits there actually are as a percentage. So what I found more interesting was that we’re the number two advertiser in our state, we spend the second most money, we happen to be the largest, but we’re the second largest spender, we have never hit diminishing returns. And that shocks me, but I know what it’s going to cost us to acquire a case. And I know that if we boost our ad spend by a million, that our number of cases that will sign up will go in, will still go up, it won’t diminish yet. So it’s kind of hilarious and easy to just know, this is how many cases we want to sign up every week. Okay, and I know our cost per case to acquire it. Now I know what our ad budget is. And I know we’re going to sign up these cases, and I know how much money is going to yield. So here’s how much money I have to play with in order to fund all of the overhead expenses and the team payroll and everything else that we need to accomplish and, you know, allow for a nice profit at the end as well.
It’s it’s interesting to me, you know, a lot of a lot of our audience that are smaller firms are thinking, wow, that commitment to that advertisement is such a risk. But it sounds to me, it’s less risky than the small firms that are just trying to eke by because they don’t really have a system in place to guarantee regular return of cases. They’re more hoping for those small referrals or, you know, the sponsoring a little league team and that type of thing. Whereas you’ve actually taken a science to it and saying, Hey, if we spend this much we get this much. It’s a lot more reliable for firms like yours.
It’s it’s, it’s funny, because I don’t know that I really thought about it that way. It’s such an interesting take on it. So it’s, you know, what’s more risky? Is it risky to spend that money on advertising? Or was it risky for so many years, for us to rely on getting cases from someone else as detailed work, and then we were at the whim of this person. And then magically, in one fell swoop and one quick meeting, the source of 70% of our cases just disappeared. And we had 40 employees that were trying to feed and provide for. And so we had no choice, but to go big on TV, or we’re going to have to let go of some of the 40 employees and so we just decided to go big and that was our only only chance to make it through so but now, now that we’ve made it through and we have that achievable, predictable income, we can never be fired again. Because we’re making the market. We’re controlling our own destiny, which feels a lot more secure than hoping, you know, do the best job you can for others and just hope that they see it. You know, in retrospect, that was a lot more risky than then fronting the money plus, you know, part of the part of the joy of it is, is when we stepped up and we did the advertising on our own, then we no longer got the worst cases, the leftover cases, instead, we were able to get the cream for ourselves, and our average case value went up immediately.
And you had mentioned something earlier, when you were talking about, you know, working with a visionary and sort of like, the more we do all those different things. They thought they were great at one of the things I think that lawyers are doing myself, you know, I love playing with travel. Like, that’s my like my advice, how do you get somebody to leave an area I get if it’s something like trying a case, you’re saying, hey, trying case first not all that that’s an issue, Jay, and I talk a lot about .Jay loves being in the courtroom and can justify it six different ways. But how do you sort of were as, as an implementer, present that in a way that gets people out of those areas that they may like to do and may not be bad at? They may know, sometimes they’re better people. But you know, how have you been successful at moving people, whether within this firm or other firms into areas that they might be a better resource for?
Yeah, I guess it’s getting that going through the delegate and elevate exercises, as EOS has laid out. And it’s really just getting people to understand everybody can get there, you know, even if they come into it with the idea that they’re the greatest on the world at every single task, you can get them to pretty quickly acknowledge that, that’s, that’s probably not true. And then it’s simply teaching them that you’re there to help them do the stuff that they love, and are great at all the time. And we want to take away the stuff that’s beneath you that is that you don’t enjoy that, that isn’t your unique ability he gets its, let’s get rid of that. So you know, it’s going to people and saying, I’m working with you, I’m not commanding you I am I’m here to help you and I, if you’re honest with me and we work together, then we can take away some of the things that you really hate. So that you can spend a greater percentage of your time doing the things that you love. I mean, it’s it’s generally a pretty easy conversation, you know, and sometimes they have, you know, whether you want to call it a sacred cow or whatever, that but they, they have things that they don’t want to give up. And you just have to press them that, you know, they’re going to cap their earnings, they’re going to cap their ability to, to do the stuff that they love, if they busy up their schedule with this nonsense, that somebody else that’s less expensive can do. And somebody that actually loves doing these things. And so many so many attorneys think that they’re doing somebody a favor, by doing the stuff that they hate to do, because everybody hates to do these things. And that’s just not true. For everything that an attorney hates to do. Somebody is out there, that just loves it. That’s what they thrive on. And I want to do it all day long. It’s an energy creator for them, not an energy sucker. So you know, they exist, you just have to, you know, work through it.
It reminds me of my brother in law. He loves firing people. That’s because he figures that if I’m, if I’m firing somebody, I’m making the organization better, right. And so that’s his thing. He’s like, I like to come in and say, We don’t need these people. Let’s get rid of them and make the organization better. And I know a lot of people struggle with that firing decision, because they get too wrapped up in the emotion of it. And that’s certainly there. Before we get to set. Before we get to your last question. I want to ask a question or John about systems because as everybody knows, I’m a systems based guy, I love documenting systems, that type of thing in organizations such as yours with that size. Obviously systems play a big role. And it’s important for people to follow the systems that you have in place. How do you guys have your systems documented in that office? Do you use an online wiki? Do you have binders? How do you get somebody who’s new into the office to understand, hey, we do things one way and it’s the law firm way and that’s the way we want to do it across the board no matter what position you’re in, how do you guys implement systems?
So I’d say two things. One is that we we embrace the idea that less is more and that having a very simplified process documented clearly and continuously updated, is the key. If you have, if you have 100 page manual, it’s going to take forever to create can be really expensive to create, and no one will ever look at it. And our goal is to do it in about three to five pages. So it’s there. So the process is documented. And then that’s part of the onboarding training plan. When someone comes in there, someone goes through that with them. But I think the most important thing that we do is we take those processes and we embed them into our practice management software. We happen to use case pacer for practice management software, we use lead docket on the front end, and we use business first for our accounting system. But we put those, we put in safeguards, like in Case Pacer, we have business rules that when a request for complaint is submitted, then automatically a tickler is created for someone at X amount of time for that request for complaint to be done or for that complaint to be drafted. Then when someone completes that automatically then another one is created is now we need to file it. Once that data is put in and it’s ticked done automatically. It’s okay now we need to service it, we need to serve it. So it’s it’s making it so that all you have to do that the processes are embedded into your software, you show up, you look at the screen and you do what the screen tells you to do. And you have guardrails that don’t allow you to deviate. And then we’re looking at the metrics. We’re sucking the data out of the practice management system and putting together reports so that we can mined for things that are an inch, we go an inch deep, a mile wide, and we’re just hunting for bombs. And then when we find a bomb, we go in and we teach and we correct and and explain what’s going on.
I love it, Seth.
Yeah. So to me, my last question was, you know, I felt like when I met you originally, and you were sort of like you crushed it. You wrote this book, I felt similar like what I had done this for price panels, I figured out digital marketing for Price Benelux and Blushark was invented. And it was like, Okay, how do we do this for others normally, like we did it for this group, but you had your thumbprint done that you are a full time employee doing it. Now? What are the some of the things that you’ve learned? Because you don’t control every facet of the firm’s you’re now consulting with? It’s a different environment? What are some of the takeaways now that you’ve seen the inside of a couple dozen? Different shops? And you’re sort of seeing, I don’t want to say environment, you don’t fully control? Yeah. Talk to me about that, that that world now you’ve seen the inside of many places?
Yeah. So I guess here’s one of the things I love this is exactly on target pre assessed, but it’s a it’s a point I want to make anyway, is that, that I feel that, for me as an integrator, one of the things that has allowed me to be successful for Mike Morse is that I don’t have to have it my way. I just want a deliberate decision. And that’s all I asked for when I’m out there working with a fireproof client is I am teaching them I’m sharing them my insight. I don’t have to be right, I just have to, I have to provoke thought, and force them to make a deliberate choice. And making sure that they’ve considered the outcomes and the ramifications of their choice and tell them where I have experienced and say, Yeah, we went down that road. And that was a mistake because of XY and Z. But ultimately, this is your choice. I’m not trying to get them to do things exactly the way that we do it. I’m trying to, to lend the benefit of our experience. But then ultimately, I never crossed over a fine line. I’m not running their law firm. I’m merely offering advice and teaching.
Understood and taken it one step further. So you have seen that not everybody thinks the way you guys do our has, what are some of the insights that you’ve learned Gen turtles are like crowdsource your wisdom now that you’ve seen all these different firms, strengths and weaknesses? What are the what are the strengths that have made people more successful? isn’t the only time that you’ve had this is organise this organization versus ones that seem to struggle?
That’s a great question. So I would say I would say, you know, I guess what I want to I want to tell you is that it’s data and the people that that are using data, just have a better understanding of what’s going on and that they they They are able to really be more thoughtful and more confident and more secure with their decisions. And then then I guess I also want to go with I just feel like the ones that some of them struggle with identifying issues, that there’s a mentality of, you know, Seth, Seth is here. So I can’t tell Seth some that there’s an issue in his firm. And Seth has created this environment where if you tell me my baby is ugly, then I’m going to be mad at you. And I will, there will be retribution for this great offense. So whereas other good healthy organizations are looking at it, as every time you identify an issue, you’re genuinely identifying an opportunity to improve, and that they, you know, one of the interesting things that I’ve learned recently is that the military, the US military believes that the number one leadership trait, the most important for predicting good leadership is, humility. And I see that with these leaders that that say, I don’t have all the answers. I made this mistake this week, I made this other mistake last week. And when you when you set that tone, it allows for healthier communication, where you can very candidly discuss the things that are holding you back. And you don’t if you if you think that you’re fooling people, that you’re perfect. You’re not, you’re only fooling yourself. And if you show some humility, and invite people in because you don’t have all the answers, then they want to help you if you let them
also, so I think, Jay, I figured it out. Your next venture is just like Gordon Ramsay goes into the restaurants that need to turn around, you’re gonna have your own reality show where you you go law firm, a law firm and uncovered the dirt turned it around.
I think that’d be fun. Let’s put together a dream team. And we could do it. I think this would be very cool,
man. All right.
Well, there you go.
Thank you so much. All right. Thanks. I had a great time.
Thank you so much for being with before we let you go tell everybody here who will have some links to it. But tell us a little bit about the book and where they can find it.
Sure. Best place to find it is on Amazon. Otherwise, you can go to fireproof performance.com and find it there. And I think you can order it right there. I’m sure you can order it right there on the website fireproof performance.com.
Well, I’ve read it twice. And I thought it was great book. So I really definitely think people should, should should pick it up when they get a chance to if they haven’t had a chance to read it yet, for sure. Maybe you can get us sign my copy, I’ll send you my Kindle. And you can send it the site and send it back.
If you would accept it, then I’ll just send it.
Awesome. Thank you so much, John, thank you for being with us today, folks. And we’ll be right back with more maximum growth live.
Well said, I mean listening to John, you know, the great thing about John is that he’s not a lawyer. So he doesn’t come to it with all of the biases that you and I might have, that our colleagues might have. When we’re evaluating business decisions. He is a pure businessman. And I think it shows in the conversation that we’ve had, but also shows him how far he has been able to grow that Moore’s firm. What were your thoughts?
Well, I was I was so smile on the inside. I’m curious to see whether the date said at the beginning of the show for Jay Ruane will happen. Because I know we talk a lot people do what they like to do you and I have had this conversation at nauseam, you know, you have a bunch of excuses, some legit some dog legit for why you’ve kept yourself so much in day to day. And I personally, am excited to see what Jay Ruane could do with that additional bandwidth. It’s amazing what you do even with yourself in day to day, but the the sky’s the limit. If you if you figure that piece out. I don’t think you’re that far away. Frankly.
No, I don’t I don’t think I am either. But you know, listening to John talk about you know, taking away the things that you don’t necessarily love. You know, I’ve been able to shed a lot of those duties over the years and focus on there’s some things that I still do. I mean, there’s no The reason why I should be the one doing payroll, but yet I do it every Monday just because I’m the one.
Yeah, I know what was the Costco buyer rights like, you know,
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me like I liked loggin was saying, I’m paying these people for doing the work that I’ve generated. And I don’t know, maybe it’s an ego thing. You know, it’s literally just going, it takes five minutes, but that’s five minutes, I can be doing something else that better moves the firm forward. And so I have to get out of my own way. That’s the message that I got from today’s get out of your own way. And nobody in the office that I worked with here, can come up with the crazy ideas. And now you know, I have to replace an entire practice group and all the revenue that comes from it, I really need to focus on that, that needs to be my primary focus to make the firm go. So you know, that’s, that’s my, hopefully next year, we’ll be doing a show and I’ll be able to say, yep, as of tomorrow, I’m out. You know, so July 23 2022, I’m going to be 100% out. And I did that, because it’s the day before he turned 50. And I know I got to I got to spend your 50th birthday with you. And so this may not be as much fun as we had in Vegas, Seth, but it’ll, it’ll certainly be meaningful, that’s for sure.
That that is awesome, we will, we will certainly have something that says to that. And, you know, one of the things I think on future episodes, that in doing these things and realizing for me both figuring out what we need in person versus away for you mutually other practice groups. I feel like if any of our audience members have any thoughts on resources, potentially even outside of the legal arena, on HR recruiting, I think that that is one of those areas that there’s so much opportunity isn’t talked a lot about, and that those processes of how to bring candidates through and getting them to the team is one that will be a continued conversation over the next few weeks.
Yeah, I definitely think it’s, it’s, I’m telling you 22 years of my practice, getting the right people in has always been my challenge. And, you know, if you know, my dating history, you know, I don’t necessarily pick the right person, you know, I lucked out with my wife and
but you but over time your decisions towards like, you get better with time, and, but part of it is like I can look at BluShark we start off, we couldn’t get in people, you had to sort of like hope that you got somebody from the local school have nothing else to do. We are you know, I just sat on an off site the other day with people from like UVA, Michigan, Northwestern, I mean, it’s, you know, as you put that out there, and you sort of figure out a way that people want to be there, and those as part of the conversation, not only the process of getting it through, but how do you position the firm in a way that talent wants to be there. It’s a it’s definitely a challenge. And one that we can spend a lot of time talking about
it is it is and even in a small firm in a small area, you know, you want to position yourself as the go to people for something and be known for excellence. So you don’t necessarily need to be a national firm, to really want to bring in the right people that are local. But you know, we can talk about this for hours. And I don’t want to do that Seth. There’s a lot of things that people should know. Number one, if you want to catch this show on a replay, you can listen to the maximum growth live podcast available wherever podcasts are available, even on Spotify, Apple, Google, wherever you go for that. You can also catch us syndicated every week on the maximum lawyer podcast. They catch us up with their feed. And there’s some great stuff on there. The other thing I want to talk about, please be sure to come see set. And me and a whole host of other people who will be speaking live this year in October at Max Law Con, you can find out more information at max law con.com or maximum lawyer.com. It is a phenomenal, phenomenal seminar. Seth, I know you’ve been to the other two that have gone on this one. The lineup of speakers has been announced. And we don’t have time to go through everybody right now. But it’s just
speakers are the least of it. Nothing away from speakers present company included. But the the group and the esprit de corps of the crowd that’s there. And both helping myself and watching young firms grow. It is it is really a great learning and sharing environment. So I really encourage people to consider it.
Yeah, please do. Please come. And if you do settle by you a bottle of water, and you can hang out with him and just get a few minutes just chatting up with Seth. He is the most network person in that place for sure. I’ll be hiding in a corner, because I’m an introvert but Seth will be networking with everybody. And he had been sued somewhere. Well, people don’t know that I was Santa. But anyway, Seth also has a phenomenal thing going on his Blushark page, which is his SEO Insider. If you want to catch up on the hottest topics in digital marketing, be sure to tune into SEO Insider. It’s a recurring show that he has where he interviews the movers. As the shakers and the moneymakers in digital marketing, and you could learn some really great nuggets. As you know, digital marketing is always changing. And so he covers the list topics to keep you up to speed on what’s going on. And if you are anything like me or even a third like me and you love systems and you love growing your firm, please join my Systemising your law firm for growth Facebook group, we’re almost at 300 members right now, every week I’m posting 2,3,4 different systems that people can cut, paste, apply into their firm, and we’re getting a lot of good feedback. So I’d love to have you in the group with us where we can talk about great systems that you can implement to make your firm move faster, smarter and better for you. So that’s gonna be it for it Seth. Thank you so much for being with me today. It’s great to be back live with you and doing a show like this and having John as a guest was was was a knockout. Very, very happy with this week. So anything else you need to say, Seth? Are we covered at all?
Let’s do it again next week.
Let’s do it again next week. Alright folks, that’s gonna be it for us it for us here at maximum growth live. Bye for now.
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