In this episode, Seth and Jay talk about employee turnover – expected turnover, unanticipated turnover, firing employees and how to stay in front of changes in your workforce. Also Ryan reviews The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks
Hello, hello, and welcome to the Tuesday show of Maximum Growth Live. I’m your host, Jay Ruane, CEO of Firm Flex, social media marketing for lawyers. With me, as always, Seth Price over there. Seth, you are the CEO of BluShark Digital as well as the managing partner of Price Benowitz. How is your week going this week, Seth?
It is going well. I feel like we’re on this treadmill. I’m kind of over the COVID thing, I wish we could get back to the office, and I sit here seeing so much potential within the suburbs it seems like they’re moving, but the city is still not there, and I just, you know, I go with the emotional roller coaster, there are days I’m like, hey, I’m lucky that we’re still alive, and there are days when I’m like, man, we have so much opportunity, I can’t wait to get back to some semblance of normal.
Yeah, well, you know, one of the things that’s going to impact my semblance of normal is something called turnover. And last week, we had turnover in two positions in my office, and one of them was not anticipated, but at some point, we knew it was going to happen. The other one was absolutely necessary for the, for the benefit of the business. And I want to talk to you a little bit today about turnover because it’s something that not a lot of lawyers talk about regularly. You often see in the forums the question, when do I fire somebody? And I think if you’re asking that question, you already know the answer, you’re just looking for justification from other people, but, you know, we are of the philosophy of hire slow, fire fast, and you’ve heard that a lot of times, and a lot of people do that. Let me tell you what my situation was last week and we can talk a little bit about that. We had an intake team member who came on during COVID, and COVID has been a little bit of a challenge for us in training the intake people because you can’t just sit with them.
Right. Believe me, I get it. I just had a brunch on Saturday with three of our intake members who had I had never met in person. And they had never like, they’ve never worked out of the office, they’ve been hired during COVID. And it’s like that extra touch point, it’s not the same, the culture isn’t there. They don’t have, they don’t know the firm and the lawyers as well, so, they can’t sell as well. It’s, it’s frustrating, but continue.
Yeah, yeah, and that’s, and that really was the problem. And, and I think part of the problem was, we trained as best we could, using the old mindset of how to train somebody, and the new paradigm of people being remote requires a new way to approach training and we just didn’t implement it. So, I’m going to chalk this up to being a failure on my part for not training the person the right way and getting the right sort of mental attitude. I mean, she was, she’s a good person, she meant well but, you know, it’s one of these things we talked about, listen to the recordings, and six weeks, seven weeks in, we’re starting to see things that should not happen on day two or day three, and would have easily been caught if they were sitting next to somebody and after multiple instances of, no, you can’t do it that way, we just decided to part ways because that was the right thing to do.
Let me ask you a question, because, obviously, we struggle with this as well, with recent hires, you, there’s two issues, right? One is, are you doing your interviews in person? Because if they are virtual, you just lost a huge data point. The second is, how are you instilling any firm culture? This doesn’t sound like a cultural issue but it may be something on the front end. Is this something that maybe could have been picked up on the way in? We had a similar burnout in our intake team, and I’m not sure, you know, again, there’s, whether or not we’ve changed how we’re recruiting, we’re not getting the data points, whether people are breaking, the emotional roller coaster slams people at the bottom and they, they don’t recover. Or finally, you know, part of what’s great about the firm always amazed me, right? I started this firm with Dave to schmuck start a firm. Next thing, you pick a name, if you’re like, oh, it’s a thing. I always remember like, oh, Price Benowitz. I was like, just two random names we put together, but then, as soon as you say it’s a thing, it’s a thing. So, you’ve created a culture, then you’re sort of instilling values there. It is much harder to keep that stickiness together when you don’t have that tactile interaction. And so, you know, look, there’s turnover no matter what, you’re not going to be 100% on hiring, but I feel like we are struggling that much more during this time. The good news being that pre COVID the economy was such that if they decided they weren’t happy on one day, they could walk down the street and get 17 other jobs, that doesn’t appear to be the case right now. So, the good news is, I feel that some people that were on the bubble have, have doubled down and are giving much more sort of have a chance to the current job rather than saying, hey, you never know, I can go anywhere. And I feel like that that is the only positive I’m seeing in the other direction, that before, if you had an administrative person and they hit rock bottom, they could go out and get a waitering job. That doesn’t exist right now.
Right. Yeah, that’s certainly something that a lot of those fallback positions are just not there anymore. And so that was a challenge for us, and it’s also a challenge, you know, when you lose somebody, even if it’s, it’s simple as a receptionist position, that’s going to increase the weight that other people have to carry until you can get that seat filled again.
And you won’t be able to get as many touches, people won’t be able to ¨Oh, that’s Dave¨, ¨Oh, that’s John¨, there’s, it’s like, you’re going to be much more myopic, in your view of the firm, and that’s, what I took away from brunch was they can learn about people through training. You will. We have a really in-depth training, we can give people bios, but I am now going to go back and do more zooms and videos to try to get that extra personal touch with these new people at the firm because they’ve joined the firm, that there have been in the building. I mean, they may have been there for a day or so of training, but, you know, it’s, it’s just such a different ethos that, you know, turnover is always an issue. I feel very proud of the fact we’ve gotten it down, and, you know, even though you may see X number of turnover a year, I always look at the list at the end of the year and say, who did we want to keep that we lost? And usually that number is pretty low. The next question is, how can you try to make less of those mistakes on the way in so that you don’t have that? I mean, there’s certain amount of turnover my firm, we want in the sense that there’s a training program for intake that goes in cycles through two years, assuming people don’t move into management, so we know that they’re turning over certain administrative positions, we’ll hire somebody who’s not going to be a lifer, who’s looking at law school for a paralegal spot, because we think we’re getting a skill set that at a caring that we can’t get otherwise. That said, that leads to a certain amount of turnover and right now, it’s one of those moments where a lot of people were jumping ship for law school that we’re thinking about a lot of money was thrown at them, it was a safe time to sort of get there and get it over with, and so, we probably had some extra people opt for law school where we might have had an extra year or two to wait, than we normally would like, hey, there no jobs coming out, I might as well use these years. That’s been a real sort of thumb on the scale for us.
Yeah, you know, so that was my first issue. The other issue that we had some turnover was, you know, within our marketing department. And I know I’m blessed that I have a marketing department, a lot of people outsource it to vendors, and that, you know, they aspire to that, but you got to remember, I’m 20 plus years into building this, and we had somebody who, you know, came to us, had a skill set. She’s phenomenal at what she does, but she had also come to us after going and getting a graduate degree in social work, which is where she has a lot of passion, right? And it’s been phenomenal having her at during this time of just unprecedented strife of health issues of civil rights issues. She’s really helped us amp up our social media, because she’s dialed in and tuned into how this is affecting people much more than I am, truly, but, but she’s decided to opt to get into, basically, her dream job she got, you know, she said to me, she’s like, I wouldn’t leave this job because I like what I’m doing but this is like if you talk to me, multiple years, I’ve said, If I could ever do a job, this would be it, and they came in, they found me. And so, what do you do? I mean, I’m not going to tell her to not fulfill her dream.
You know what, Jay, then you’re in good shape. You’re losing somebody only for their dream job, and God bless, but I think that as business owners, it’s important for us to not, you know, make the same mistake over and over again. When BluShark started, we had two amazing hires, one after the other, who were just lightyears ahead of anybody else that we hire during that period, and those people were great at their job, and I think each one made it six months or less because at some point, we’re in DC, it’s a very DC thing, but they either wanted to be on the hill, in the lobbying world, or something to do with government. I can’t, I can’t fix that. So, now, just like you’re looking at resumes to see how many years somebody is at a job, If somebody’s resume shows nothing but Hill jobs throughout college internships, and all they’re doing are internships on Capitol Hill in government, you know, while they can tell you to your face at an interview, I’m ready to leave. I don’t really want to take that chance anymore, and I want to find somebody who, because that is such a risk factor, that their dream job, the reason they’re coming to you is because their dream job is not available to them, the moment that it is, they’re gone, they’re gone. And so, you know, while I’d love to say, oh, I’m going to be, it’s going to be such a great environment that I’ll win them over, and these people are people I love, we’ve stayed in touch with some of them, but the fact of the matter is that your, that is such a risk factor. So, while you could get somebody who is one or two steps more dynamic than the other person, you’re choosing between looking at what the likely arc of that person is, almost like relationships, again, bring it back to dating. If you sit down and you meet somebody who’s super close to their parents, and the parents are in LA, and you’re on the East Coast, what are the odds that at some point in the near future, they’re going to be like, you know what, I’m back in LA. Now, you may bet it and say, you know what, they hate LA, they really don’t want to be there. Okay, you’re willing to take a chance, but if you’re not getting that thing, it’s just that they happen to have, you know, a job here that they’re happy with now, but that job is transferable, and you don’t want to be in LA, that’s, that’s a risk factor. And looking at it, what are the chances you’re going to be able to hold on to somebody, not a guarantee but you just don’t want deal breakers that are going to take somebody out who’s otherwise great. And it’s really frustrating because you feel like sometimes, you’re taking a watered-down application opportunity where you’d rather go for that person who’s, who’s badass, but, you know, that that’s less likely to stay long term. And look, that’s the frenetic pneus between sort of somebody who’s recently graduated, who’s, you know, you know, thinking about law school. We get these amazing couple years out of them versus lifers, and you go back and forth. We had a firm administrator who really got on me, he’s like, why aren’t you hiring lifers for the intake department? You wouldn’t have as much turnover, and I’m like, look, there’s an argument for that, there’s no there is, right? There’s less, but I’m a not sure how much less turnover, there is your costs are gonna go up dramatically, and you’re not going to have that passion, it’s going to… So, they’re very often no good answers, you hear me say that a lot, but I think that as long as you’re making an intelligent decision based on the track record you’ve seen in the past, like, learn from what you’ve seen, rather than ignoring and hoping.
Well, and, you know, one of the things that I want to talk to you a little bit about that farm administrator saying that is, you know, let’s take the NFL example for it, it’s probably not the best analogy, but it’s the one that springs to mind. You know, you’re the owner of the football team and you have people in the right place but, you know, NFL, you know, running backs, they’ve got a couple of years of solid production before it really drops off, right? Unless you’re a frequent Adrian Peterson or something like that, you know, because…
You’re, you’re putting a dagger through my heart right now.
But I would just say we’ve talked about it on the show. And, you know, everyone’s talking about fire gates. I’m saying, don’t fire gates, sell the team. You know, that’s, that’s my philosophy. But I could talk about…
Gary Vee, if he became become a fan of Gary Vee on them.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So, here’s, here’s my thought, you know, people liked the idea of having lifers, but there are roles in your business that can only, that may only be filled by people that are up there for 18 to 36 months, you know, and they turn over, and that’s okay. We don’t have to have the perspective that everyone who joins us is going to be with us for life. I mean, we’re going to be with each other for life because my name is on the door, your name is on the door, but other than that, people are going to come and go for a lot of different reasons, and your work is only a very small component of your entire life. And people may love your job, but family needs them to move or, you know, a spouse wants to take a different job and they have to switch things up. So, you know, I don’t think necessarily that you should bank on anybody being a lifer ever.
I want, look, we’ve had some guests on the show Eddy Finkelstein, you know, by being in Newburgh, New York, yet he gets lifers, they stay around. He’s the smartest guy in the room. He’s figured out how to do that. You know, Keith Givens, dolt at Alabama, you know, he’s able to get stickiness that I can’t get into DC Metro and an affluent, you know, Connecticut suburb, it’s going to be a lot harder to keep that stickiness. So, you know, there are pieces of knowing what you’re dealing with, for me, on paralegals and saying the PI department, you know, I have the issue that we’re in the non-COVID time, that there’s at least a $5,000 expense to somebody coming from the suburbs into DC for commute before you get to time. And so, all of a sudden, you’re having a set salary at a point that makes it worth somebody to stay, and that is tough. You know, we have, again, I feel like you learn, we’ve grown, we’ve had as solid a team over the last year plus as we’ve ever had, but we’ve learned a bunch of lessons where somebody comes from the suburbs for more money, but realizes that there’s no free lunch, and all of a sudden, you know that, that, that commute becomes problematic. So, that’s why, and we’ve talked about this on the show, I think that I am hopeful that the new normal, which will include significantly more telecommuting, even if it’s not 100%, a much more liberal view towards it, multiple days as needed, that, that is going to allow for stickiness to prevent turnover that before the rubber would meet the road. If I were to chart departures, I got to think that about half the departures have come for some sort of commute related issue, and that when you’re able, and like some of its happenstance, you know, it could happen to you. So, a significant other move somewhere else, but the idea that, you know, you could take that off the table to a great degree, that anybody could do a commute one or two days a week, but five days a week is brutal, especially with young kids, that we’re going to be allowing that I am hopeful that the new normal create some additional stickiness that you might not have gotten in a pure commuting world.
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. I, you know, I live in a suburb of New York City, and all of the other parents in the neighborhood, both men and women, who have that morning, train into the city, have all been saying, I love this, I don’t want this to end, I’m getting two hours of my life back, I’m having dinner with my kids, instead of tucking them in in bed, and then going downstairs and eating a cold sandwich, they’re loving it. And I think business is going to change. But I want to talk a little bit about –. So, I want to talk about turnover among the lawyers in an office. And this is something that I’ve had to deal with you less so I think, and it’s because I have traditionally hired lawyers right out of law school. And I think that’s been a problem for me with turnover because they come out, they’re excited, they got their very first job. And they haven’t really seen the world. And then they get hit with being a lawyer and doing what’s necessary. And then after two years, two and a half years, they start thinking, okay, well, I need to change now. Because that’s my whole life has been two to three to four years. And then there’s a change. And it’s just sort of built into their DNA at that point that after three years, it’s time for them to move on to something else. And so, I’ve had a turnover of young lawyers, and they say, well, I don’t want to I don’t want to practice in your systems anymore. It’s time for me to get another job. Then they get to the other job. And they say, I had a pretty good, I didn’t realize how good I have it. But I can’t go back because I’ve already burned that bridge. How do you avoid the turnover of lawyers?
Well, look, I think you’ve hit something that I’ve focused on a lot. Our turnover has generally been in the less than three-year category. We’ve taken those chances as we were growing. I, aspirationally, want to hire lawyers third to 10th year, where they know what they’re doing, they’ve been through that they know what the gig is, and we’ve had a much higher success rate. The people that we have lost, if I were to put them into buckets, after, you know, who came from that third a 10th year period, would be PI lawyers from the defense side, they come to the plaintiff side, they’re like ¨No, I wasn’t sure with this. I thought I was going to drink the Kool Aid, I didn’t¨, and they go back. It could be criminal defense lawyers who come from the prosecutor’s office, you know, same type of thing, they come, they’re like, you know what, I don’t like the side of the aisle, I want to be back, and we’ve lost a couple that way. But I have found that if I go back and track all the lawyers that we have left, and I could say, I can count on less than a hand, the number of lawyers that I’ve not wanted to leave that have left, It’s pretty small. And, look, part of that comes down to something, and I was talking to Jim and Tyson about this, was that it comes down a lot to how you incentivize economically. And I’ve sort of, this is one of my sort of preachy type things that I see, and I’ve made the mistake. When you hire somebody, Jay, right out of law school, what are you paying them?
Well, we start anywhere between 55 and 65.
Right. So, let’s take it back a step. They started as a law clerk third year, they’re making what, 40?
No, no. Law clerks third year making 25, $25 an hour. I’m sorry.
Well, there’s one right, which is close to 50, which is… So, they’re making 50 If they’re working full time by the end, so they’re on ramp is 45, 50, they pass the bar, and maybe they’re at 55, right?
Right.
Okay, I’m getting, every market is different, I’m just trying to follow along with you. Okay, a year in, what are they making? They’re now, they’re now a second year or two-year, second year.
60 or 62.
Okay. The problem is if they clerked with you, and they now have two and a half years at Ruane Attorneys on their resume, the market is seeing them worth 80, and it sucks but it’s true. And to me, that is the greatest sort of, I see at the PI space worse than any, peak criminal you get a little bit of time, I’m, but that, what I am seeing is that if they’re trained, God forbid it’s two years, but at least a year, by the time they could say, I’m a second year, and again, if you’ve given them trial work, if they’ve actually been in a courtroom, which is tough to do it without experience, but what I have found is, that is where our turnover is. And it’s sort of known turnover, because I hired the person at 50, 55, 60. I’m not making that mental, mental leap to 80, with rare exceptions, and we’ve started to do it because if we really want to keep somebody, they’re getting money. I need to get them from 80 and I need them at six figures sooner rather than later if that’s the guy I want to keep, but I know full well that if I have somebody that went 45, 50, 55, 60, there’s going to be a delta at some point where the market is going to appreciate them more than I do, because we know the flaws, we’re still training them. It’s the devil they don’t know on the outside, they need somebody they got to your training, boom, they can grab them and run, and they’ll pay 75 without thinking. And that is where I see a lot of law firms losing people, one of the reasons I advocate so much, when possible, harder on the plaintiff side, but I think easier on the criminal side to do things as a percentage of gross revenue, because otherwise you’re treating everybody the same. And the idea that when you get a rockstar, if you get a rockstar that’s producing $400,000 in revenue, they should be making six figures even if they’re a second year, to me, like, because they’re making you money, you have 300,000 off the top, you can put it towards overhead and marketing and profit, but that if you don’t, if you sort of say, you know what, I’m not paying that person six figures, I’m gonna keep them at 60, the market is going to correct and that person is going to leave. So, I think there are, when you look at attrition and turnover, some of it is avoidable If you can figure out what, what the most you could pay somebody is and stay profitable, rather than what is the least you, look, you’ll make more money on the bottom line for that year with the $60,000 person, but what is the cost of training the next $60,000 person?
Yeah, and that’s one of the things that’s been a challenge for me through this whole process is simply, you know, hiring, trying to hire somebody who’s got five to 10 years’ experience. They’ve already built their way of how they handle cases, and I am so system oriented that when I tried to bring those people in, I got them ignoring my system saying no, no, I know how to do this, and I said, no, no, we have a system, we do it this way so that we can, you know, our files look the same in every situation, and they get letters about this every way. There’s nothing worse to me than having an associate say, well, I just sort of explained it to them in the hallway and they took that deal. No, no, we paper our file, we have an offer letter, we do it this way.
But then you have, no, then your Acrobat. You have to, I mean, when I was Acrobat, they took no laterals. They brought everybody up there was the career pathway, they, they had, the letter was done this way, when there was a funeral, everybody walked in and processional the same way, like they had their way and you had no choice but to do it, that’s where it is. But if you don’t, if you don’t figure it, like, that if you’re going to do that, those people that learn your way have a value to you that if you don’t pony up, you’re gonna have them going out, in which case, it’s just gonna be the cost even greater to lose somebody because you’re not willing to take the lateral. I said, “You know what, I’ll give up on some of that.” And I find it, I have people with some wackadoodle ways of communicating with their clients, they’re great lawyers, and they communicate, but I have not been able to systematize nearly as much as you. I’ve had to sort of say, you know what, this is an amazing practitioner, I can’t replicate this person, because they care about their clients, they can sell, they are amazing practitioners, but they’re not going to drink the Kool Aid of paper in the exact same way. And so that, figure out where your breaking point is, what you can live with and what you can’t live with.
Yeah, it’s, it’s a real challenge. So, here’s another question. I want to talk to you about turnover, and this is something that it’s been suggested to me but I have my own perspective on it. Do you do exit interviews?
Great question. We do, even beyond my wishes. I have a head of HR, and he loves his exits in interviews, and we do them, and so, they are, they are there, I’m not always 100% sold on the value, sometimes we get stuff out of them, but I, look, in theory, they’re, they’re awesome, right? You get good data; I almost feel like it needs to be done. The exit interview itself creates dynamics that, and I remember doing an exit interview myself when I left law firm way back in the day, that there’s almost true, you want a real, you want not the emotional piece of that last day, you almost want to wait a week, I’m not just making this up off top my head, but the idea of what is really their feeling, not something that’s twisted in emotion that day. So, again, if there’s a red flag saying, hey, the managing partners are too difficult to deal with. Yeah, we want that, we want that data coming back to us, agreed, but there’s, you know, so what, what is your thought? Why don’t you like exit interviews?
Well, because what I have found is that they basically tell you what they think you want to hear and not necessarily the truth. You know, that, oh, why are you leaving? Well, I’m leaving because this is an opportunity for me. And so, they don’t, they don’t necessarily want to burn a bridge.
But that, to me, that’s not the, that’s not the, the exit interview, they’re leaving. To me is, what was their experience there? What could we do better? What could be improved? How can we make, not like we’re trying to keep them, and not that we want to know why they’re leaving, but what is their unvarnished feeling towards what was going on? And was there a manager that made their job really hard? Was management not supportive? You know, again, some stuff you’ll take with a grain of salt, you have to filter through this person, if the person is leaving because you’re firing them, because they didn’t show up to the job and they lied to you, you’re going to take that information from the exit interview with a grain of salt. That’s why I’m always like, but the idea is data points. And if you hear the same thing over and over again, you know, I know that I’ve changed my management style and my demeanor towards problems at the office based on feedback over time, and sometimes you got to hear it a dozen times before it gets to your thick noggin.
So, here’s something that I want to put out there for people, and this is something that I’ve toyed with, and I actually haven’t done it myself, but, you know, with the ubiquitousness of social media, it’s very easy to do, but one of the things that you can actually do in your firm is create an alumni association. And I’ve been, I’ve been thinking about doing this because like, for example, Jessica, who’s a young woman who’s a phenomenal attorney, and it was with me for about 18 months before she transitioned to the civil side. And I knew she was always going to go their way but when she was confronted with some criminal issues in court, in pressure, she, this woman stepped up and did the right, I mean, I am so impressed with her legal skills, and I’ve told her this, she got married this weekend, I’m gonna send her a bottle of champagne, you know, that type of thing. But I’m thinking there’s something there to put together all of my former associates, all my law clerks even support them and create a group for them, because they all are friendly, I see them engaging with each other, and sort of mind that Alumni Association for referrals back to us, sending them referrals in their new practices, because I want everybody who leaves me to succeed. I don’t, I don’t wish harm on anybody, because it reflects on me if they’re successful, I think.
I’ve seen a couple like, yes, and my feelings, I look at Morgan Lewis, I was with Oberlin, got bought by, could become a coach, and so, technically, I’m now a Morgan Lewis alumni. They invited me to a networking in Yogo virtual workout the other day, I thought was the funniest thing ever. I’ve been to their cocktail hour, so I love the fact that they are keeping that network. And we do that informally, people come back to our, our semiannual rooftop parties, you know, friends of the firm, they, they, we send holiday gifts to them, so yes, I have found, this is probably a topic for one of our next Tuesday’s, is that we have two categories I put people in. There are people when they leave that they burn the ships, you know, using the Columbus days, you know, analogy, and that there are people that the only way they get by is to do it, to me it’s foolish, I get more phone calls after people leave saying hey, what’s the skinny, like we talked, we talked, we find, maybe the final talking point on turnover, I’ll turn into this, which is when we had Jack Newton on from Cleal, he said something which was big takeaway for me is, you know, stop worrying about who they give you as references. Of course, those are good. Spend your time figuring out who they really worked for and who you can get to, I did that somebody who was amazing on paper, turns out when I got through to their boss for two times before I was able to get the screen skinny that, I, that was a poisonous situation, we dodged a huge bullet. So, to me, you know, what, bring this all the way back, doing the stuff outside the box but knowing that a certain number of people that leave you, the only way they get through life is sort of saying, hey, that was the place, you know, people leave, they either loved it or they hate it. I don’t see a lot of in between, and I think some of it is just what drives people. One of my favorite associates when she was with us and hit us were associate but she was amazing with us, but the only way she could get out was to put her own shingle out, and sort of it took a lot of years before we rekindled the friendship but that, that was what drove her, she needed that fire in the belly, criminal defense lawyers need somebody to drive them. And I think that that is why like, this, you know, idea that is a panacea, this amazing alumni group speaking to people like handle and the law manual Mansky. They said, like, I remember they were many years ahead of me, and they would have people leaving under dubious circumstances to compete across the street. And we’ve talked about on the show, I think it’s worthy of more time, but how do you balance, balance that you want to stay in great touch with everybody, but sometimes people need a bit, have a leash to sort of like have that sort of independence? Hopefully, you can then bring them back under the tent over time, is my wish.
Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve had people leave, ostensibly to say, you know, and I know, they’re muttering under their breath. All right, I’m leaving, I’m gonna crush rule eight, I’m gonna go right at him, and then, you know, a year, six years, sixteen, eight teen months later, they’re saying, boy, man, you taught me a lot. But there’s a lot that goes into running one of these firms, and I didn’t realize how much you actually, how much work you actually had to do. So, then they start to see all that we do, I don’t want to say, oh, you make it look easy, because I know you work really hard at making it look easy, but there’s a lot of late nights and early mornings and a lot of work that goes into building any sort of operation. When you have that turnover, you can feel like you failed, but recognize that, you know, your firm is a living, breathing thing, just like anybody else, and they’re going to be built to like come into it, and people that leave at different points. And I mean, last year, a year and a half ago, or two years ago now, I had someone leave and come back within a week. You know, it came back, hey, elevated to a management, you know, doing everything right, because, you know, I think he got the perspective of I saw what was out there and realized, no, no, I knew I was in the right place and I needed to get back there as quickly as possible.
He didn’t burn down the house on the way out the door.
No, no.
That’s the difference.
Yeah, that’s the difference. Okay, so, this is, this is a great conversation, because turnover is something that happens and really all you ever hear about is should I fire somebody, should I not fire somebody, but there’s a lot that goes into it. So, I’m glad we sort of unpacked that and did it, but what we’re gonna do now is we’re gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we’re gonna have Ryan McKean with another book review on his segment, just book it. So, hang tight, folks, we’ll be right back.
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Hi, it’s Ryan McKean here with this week’s episode, just book it, and I’m really excited to talk about this book. This book is called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, and in the big leap, he talks about upper limit problems and how we face these problems all day long, and you see this play out a lot in the maximum lawyer Facebook group, I see it play out in my own life, where we know maybe what it is that we should be doing. We know the actions that will bring us closer to happiness, bring us more financial success, allow us to help more people and to live our value and to show our value to the world, and yet we don’t take those actions. And sometimes those actions are simple, and sometimes they’re complicated, but a lot of what Gay Hendricks talks about is in between the ears. So, the big leap deals with self-limiting beliefs, and really, what a self-limiting belief is at its core that Hendricks discusses is that you know you are limiting yourself because you are fundamentally flawed and afraid of happiness, that we are blocking the happiness loop in our life. And, you know, they’re, they’re, Gay Hendricks in his book argues that happiness is unlimited, and that we should seek happiness and, and feel it, and, you know, there are a number of ways in which we sabotage happiness, which could be worry, which could be, and you see this too, I’ve seen it in our own business where things are going really well and yet people get really stressed out at that point because they are sabotaging their upper limit. They’re hitting that upper limit belief that they are somehow not deserving of this happiness. You know, we can self-sabotage in a number of other ways. We can criticize others, being critical of others as a way of projection and dealing with that self-limiting belief, we can, we can deflect, we can argue with others, and these are all ways to self-sabotage our happiness. And what Gay Hendricks argues is when you’re starting to feel that you need to, you know, in his book he talks about, like, if you have a ball in your hand, you need to recognize that and you need to drop that ball, you need to drop that ball of worry and ask how this situation is going to lead you to greater happiness. And, you know, it’s profound when you start thinking that our brains are limiting ourselves, and limiting our enjoyment of happiness, because at some fundamental level, we believe that we do not deserve success or success is fleeting, in general, you know, one of the other points that he makes in this book that is a self-limiting belief, is the belief that, you know, time is an external thing, and he talks about living on Einstein Time, and Einstein believed that time was relative. And so, what, what, you know, and he makes this point in the book, where, you know, if you have your finger on a hot stove and it’s on the hot stove for a minute, it’s going to feel like it’s an hour, an eternity, and that’s the way that we are processing our time in between, in between our years, or if you are out at like maximum lawyer conference, and you are having dinner with friends, and it is, the conversation is great, you’re having a lot of fun, you’re gonna lose track of time, and, you know, hours are going to feel like minutes, and it’s all going to go way, way too fast. And he talks about really focusing on those activities, you being in control of your time, and focusing on those activities that are forced upon you, like with your finger being on the stove, but are rather activities that give you energy like that dinner with friends, which really gets to his final point, which is that we, in order to just, you know, experience more happiness, should really be working in our zone of genius. He talks about working in zone of competence, which is something we’re good at, and it’s comfortable, but he talks about zone of genius, and he really says, you know, this is something that gets taught a lot in, you know, Strategic Coach, but when he talks about zone genius, he’s asked these questions, you know, what do, what do I most love doing? What work do I do that doesn’t seem like work? In my work, what produces the highest ratio of abundance and satisfaction to the amount of time spent? And what is my unique ability, and, you know, he advocates getting really, really specific with these things, and really operating within your zone of genius. And we all have it, and we all, yes, we are forced to do things that are outside of our zone of genius, but the quicker you can say no to those activities, the more you’re going to unlock the happiness that you deserve, and you’re not going to live in this world of self-limiting beliefs that you have to do work that you hate, or that you dislike, you know, like Einstein said, with the finger on the stove. So, I highly recommend this book. I think it’s, I think in some ways, it’s, it’s a little bit simple, in some ways, it’s very complicated, but I think we all deal with these issues of self-limiting beliefs no matter what stage of this game you’re at, whether you’re just starting out or you’re running a 500-person firm, you’re all dealing with these varying degrees of varying levels of self-limiting beliefs, and I think the real key in it is to recognize that. So, thank you so much. I hope you enjoy this book, check it out.
Okay, Seth, great review by Ryan. Phenomenal stuff about turnover. This is a great week. We’re gonna let it go right there. We just want to let everybody know tune in on Thursday for our Thursday edition of maximum growth live where we go over our 10 growth hacks for 2021. It’s a show not to be missed. I’ll talk to you then, Seth, sounds good?
Sounds great.
Awesome. He’s Seth Price, I am Jay Ruane. We are Max Growth Live. Thanks, and we’ll see you on Thursday, folks.
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