S2:E25: Execution Coach Dan Hurley

Today Seth and Jay chat with Dan Hurley, an execution coach who will talk about the things any business owner should do as they approach scaling up in their firm. Understanding why you are growing and how you are doing it. What things are you doing that are working and which one are not.

Dan’s company: www.stratecution.us

What is this Episode About?

  • What am I going to want onward?
  • What is a Scaling Up Business Advisor Coach?
  • How do you help people identify when they are the roadblock to their own firm’s growth?
  • How do you deal with employees who keep trying to pull you back into the business?
  • Why conflict is inevitable in nature and why it’s not a bad thing.
  • What are the three things you need to do to get started with your business?
  • What’s going on in other parts of the world.

Jay Ruane

Hello, hello, and welcome to another edition of maximum growth live. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane, CEO of Firm Flex your Social Media Marketing Agency for lawyers and finalize your automated daily accountability coach, as well as Ruane Attorneys, a civil rights and criminal offense practice in Connecticut. With me, as always my friend Seth price, Seth is the Founder and Managing Partner of Price Benowitz which is your DC Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina law firm as well as the founder of Blushark Digital SEO for law firms with clients all across the United States of America. Seth as normal, I want to see how you do you know, last Thursday, I forgot to say happy birthday. And I felt bad about it. Because I got so worked up in the show, I forgot I was always gonna sing happy birthday, and I did. So it’s a week late, but Happy birthday.

Seth Price

Thank you. It was a good birthday. You know, sadly, I spent my birthday was something I’ll just share here, a buddy of mine who’s you know, been a longtime partner at a big firm. You know, there are partners, he was one of the be partners really has struggled of late. And you know, new management comes in. And it just demonstrates what I love about what we built here with our audience is people who are taking control of their future, and that no one meeting can end a several-decade relationship and so it was definitely humbling to see a path taken where somebody, you know, really could use many of the things we talked about here, and didn’t hesitate for a bunch of reasons. It’s not their DNA, you know, they’re one of the people that you would be hiring. But it was sad at the same time. You know, I’d love to use it as sort of a springboard to see hey, can somebody like that be turned around in the entrepreneurial way?

Jay Ruane

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, we are the people who watch the show, the people who we interact with at conferences, we are definitely an outlier. We are not the norm because we’re thinking about the future in a particular way. And that actually comes to a topic that I want to talk to you a little bit about before we get to our speaker because I think there might be some synergies there. And it’s a little bit about, you know, defining who you are and where you want to go. You know, a lot of us get into this, practice, and hang our shingle. And we have this passion for growth, right? And it’s why it’s max growth live, we want to grow our practices. But I think there needs to be sort of almost a step back and identify, why are you growing? And what are you growing towards instead of just, you know, unfettered growth? I mean, you know, and I hate to use the analogy, but unbridled growth is not necessarily the best thing. In fact, that’s what cancer is, right? I mean, cancer is cells that are just replicating and going haywire. And they’re just growing to grow. And that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Seth Price

Totally agree that I’m probably more guilty of that than most at the same time. And it’s funny that I’m coming off a call with consultants this morning, we’re looking at the profitability of different groups. But to another extent, is there a certain value in throwing spaghetti at the wall in different areas, because you don’t know what will stick? And something you always talk about is things you wanted, 45 may not be the same as 50, you know, and something that I am seeing struggling with a little bit is employees who are workhorses at one point, they may shift as life shifts. And that’s a whole nother issue.

Jay Ruane

Yeah, I mean, that’s a big challenge, as sort of enters its teenage years, you will have employees that have been with you from the start. And, you know, when you’re in your mid-20s or early 30s, and you are starting out a firm, you may be in a personality or a personal or social position that’s different, or your staff may be and for me, you know, I spent 25 to 36, focusing 100% on my business, I mean, I was really singularly focused, I barely dated, and then I said, Okay, got my business to where I want to be. Now it’s time for me to sort of settle down. I luckily found my wife and I started having kids right away and that type of thing, and then my priorities right really changed it was, how much time can I get out of the office and stay away and let this thing sort of run? And I have a feeling now that I’m, you know, 12 years into that, you know, I’m thinking, okay, 10 years from now, my kids will be basically all set. What, what am I going to want from 60? Onward? And how do I build the firm that I’m going to want to be part of, at 60. And get me to that point in a decade, so that I’m comfortable, and I have what I want, because my desires that are going to be different than what they are right now, right now, I’m happy, you know, I want to be able to get out at three o’clock, so I can meet my kids at the bus and get the Little League practice. But you know, 10 years from now, that’s not going to be an issue. So it’s really sort of a lot that goes into this sort of vision. And I don’t think there’s enough conversation about that in our community. What are your thoughts on that?

Seth Price

Well, I have to say, the good news is, you know, what I have to say, pales in comparison to our guests today, I think we should we should be bringing them out because that’s, you know, we’ve had Vern Harnish on, we know scaling up, we’ve seen his disciples, whether it be traction or whether it be strategic coach, but you know, until recently, I didn’t even know that there was a program, you know, that would help you sort of follow the scaling up philosophy and build that out. You know, I knew that there were ones for larger entrepreneurs out there that Vern orange had his L Group, etc. But the idea that there are now coaches dedicated to where they are at the attraction, other areas, you know, we got somebody today, who can really dig deep into, you know, the Verne philosophy, which you know, for my money is as good as anything out there as far as scaling and culture and how to run a business and scale. Awesome.

Jay Ruane

Alright, so why don’t we do this? Why don’t we take a quick break? The guest that we’re going to have, who’s waiting patiently in the greenroom is Dan Hurley, he is from Strategy Fusion, that’s the name of his company. And he’s been working with Verne model for years, and has really experienced with all of them, all the ones that you’ve just talked about, that we’ve had on the show, and I think we’re gonna have a really interesting conversation about, you know, the things that you need to do to sort of maximize and grow your firm. Not to borrow too liberally from our show title, but I think it’s going to be a great conversation. So folks, sit back, relax, get a cup of coffee, or wherever you need because when we come back, we’re gonna have Dan Hurley, we’re gonna talk more about scaling up your firm, we’ll be right back with more maximum growth live.

Jay Ruane

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, thousands 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.

Speaker 3

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 by over 1400% 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 have my back

Seth Price

Welcome, everybody. We’re back with Dan Hurley, a scaling-up business advisor. Welcome, Dan.

Dan Hurley

Hey, good morning, gentlemen.

Seth Price

You know, we’ve had Vern Harnish on, we talk a lot about the scaling up world. You know, I didn’t even know that you existed until not that recently. Tell me what exactly is a scaling-up business advisor coach, and how do you work with people?

Dan Hurley

Well, a scaling up business advisor, there is over 200 of us worldwide. And what we do is we subscribe to Vern’s perspective on the scaling up performance platform. It’s a series of systems and processes associated with those systems as represented by tools that we use with an organization to assure that they’re addressing the critical issues associated with growth.

Seth Price

And, you know, for our listeners, we have a bunch of lawyers who are building and growing their law firms. You know, what are some of those things you know, we’ve talked to scaling up people, including Vern, we’ve got a bunch of talks with people in the traction world, a lot of our members may use Strategic Coach, how does what you do fit within those sorts of different worlds, and many of whom have sort of been birthed by Vern.

Dan Hurley

All right, what I found in strategic planning over the number of years that I’ve been doing it 25 Plus, is that most organizations approach strategic planning. From the perspective, we’ve got to fill a three-ring binder. And that three-ring binder will sit on a shelf for a year, at the end of the year, we pull it down, blow it off and find that we haven’t accomplished much of anything we’ve reacted to fires and allowed ourselves to be sucked into the day to day aspects of our business. So our approach is more focused on strategic thinking. So let’s think strategically. And then let’s plan from an execution perspective. So the emphasis is more on getting it done, as opposed to spending all the time analyzing where we’re at where we’re going, those kinds of things. If I compare it to some of the other products out there that you mentioned, it’s much more comprehensive. And as I said, I’ve looked at all of them. And it’s funny to find that most of them are extracts of the burns approach. You mentioned traction, Gino Wickman, was a scaling-up coach when it was called Gizelle. And left the organization and focused on that zero to $5 million business, which is quite frankly, we’re scaling up at the time didn’t focus. You have Patrick’s caffeine and his organization of rhythm. You have Chima Lampi, with his great to excellent. You have a number of different systems out there. And all of them have a tendency to be closed. This means that there’s a prescriptive way of going about putting together strategy and execution. And its burns approach is an open system. In other words, we use tools for many different people. In fact, I was just talking to Jay about the hedgehog concept from Jim Collins. The flywheel from Jim Collins, Alec Osterwalder, and his value proposition canvas. So we bring to bear a number of the tools. And I think that gets at the heart of the primary difference. A lot of what we do is focused on getting very experienced coaches. Whereas most of the other systems out there you pay your fee. You get trained and specific things that they do and you’re not allowed to deviate.

Jay Ruane

So I have a question here. You know, one of the things that I think our audience struggles with frequently is the lack of business training and almost sort of law schools looked down on the business of law for most lawyers, they are taught down to when it comes to business operations because, you know, the law schools like to position themselves as a profession, well above the little things like earning money because they are in these ivory towers. But one of the biggest challenges for anybody who’s starting up a law firm and then trying to scale a law firm is that number one, they lack some basic business knowledge. And number two, they have an incredible ego as to their own skill set. And one of the challenges that you and I talked to you before we came on the air here was this idea that would get you to a certain level at some point, the lawyer entrepreneur needs to almost get out of their own way, and, and bring in the talent that’s necessary to actually continue to grow their firm. Can we talk a little bit about that, as a coach? How do you help people identify when they are the roadblock or the bottleneck to their own firm’s growth?

Dan Hurley

Well, typically very gently. What no one likes to be smacked in the face with, you know, you’re at a point where you’ve reached unconscious incompetence. You don’t know what you don’t know, which is always a dangerous position to be in, right? So the relationship between the coach and the client is extremely important, much like the relationship that you have with your clients. And there are times when a shovel upside the head is what’s needed, but you better have a whole lot of trust. And that client better have a whole lot of confidence in you. You know, it’s funny, I have a range of clients, some that would follow me into the or through the gates of hell, and others that are constantly questioning me trying to figure out how I’m coming to the conclusions I’m coming to. And you use different approaches with different clients. For those egomaniacs, it typically results in questioning, people don’t like to be told. So there are always questions about Okay, so you made this decision? What were you trying to achieve? What did you take into consideration when you made it? In fact, I had one client who when I walked through the door, he has a rule, you don’t start the conversation with a question. So it’s really different strokes, as Sly Stone said back in the 60s, different strokes for different folks, right?

Jay Ruane

Absolutely, absolutely. Can we talk a little bit about the role of passion in growing any business because, you know, one of the things one of the challenges that some people in our audience had was adding verticals, to their business during COVID, as a pure measure to sort of stay alive? And now, you know, 16,18 months later, they find themselves handling a business that they don’t really want to be in. But, you know, in order to sort of reach the scales that I think people want to, I think there’s got to be a portion of you that is passionate about your business, right? Money really doesn’t drive the majority of people, would you think that’s fair to say?

Dan Hurley

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, I had an ongoing disagreement with the CEO of a very large corporation, who told me the purpose of a business was to make a profit. And I told him, Well, I think what you’ve done is you’ve confused the metric of success with success itself. Quite frankly, the purpose of any business is to attract and retain a customer or client. Now, the things that allow you to effectively run a business are how well you operate that business. And the metric that tells you you’ve been successful is profit has to the concept of passion. As you and I were discussing, I’m a big follower of Jim Collins, I think he’s a brilliant business mind. And Jim has this concept called the hedgehog concept. And it’s really a Venn diagram made up of three spheres that overlap. And the first sphere is what you can be best in the world that, so what’s your capacitated to really do? Well, the second sphere is what are you most passionate about. Or that thing that you don’t need a catalyst to get you going? You just naturally migrate toward it. And then the third is how do you monetize that? Okay, how do you establish that metric and at the heart Got that where the overlap is between the three-sphere is where we typically find your big, hairy, audacious goal. Okay, so it fits very nicely and explains the importance of something like passion. If you’re not passionate about it, as you and I talk, most challenges require an impetus to overcome a catalyst. And in the case of what it is that you choose to do from a business giving that catalyst is a real passion.

Seth Price

Sure you know, one of the things a lot of our listeners and viewers sort of probably struggle with is where to start. What are some of the things you know, like, you know, there, we’ve had these amazing guests on we all know that we need more systems, Jay gets more excited than most about this? But he’s right. But where do you, you know, a lot of people, they build a business, they’re at x point and they’re there, they’re now x plus three, you know how, when you see people that end up embracing and working, whether it’s with you or anybody else, one of the things that you see people that are made that leap well, and one of the ones that would crash and burn where they pay for a number of quarters or a year and don’t really get out of it what they could.

Dan Hurley

Well, one of the things that I’m most interested in, in working with my clients, is what I call the six transformational enablers. Okay, we all need to have certain enablers that make the whole issues of business simpler for us easier to overcome. And these enablers do that. I’ve developed these over a course of a number of years, I’ve been an executive coach and worked with many CEOs. And the initial question I’ve asked, each of them gets at the heart of the first enabler, and that’s clarity. And the question is, what do you want? Sounds very simple. But if I asked each of you, at this point, in this conversation, what is it you want? You’d probably look at me and say, What do I want out of what? Right out of my business out of my personal life? Out of you know, how I spend my money, my material goods? And quite frankly, the answer is yes. The clearer you can be about what you want, the more likely it is you’re going to get it. So the first enablers clarity, you accomplish that, it allows you to get the second enabler, which is alignment. If you’re building an organization, there’s really not much more important than alignment, you want your team aligned on what it is you feel is important. That allows you then to move toward focus. You can’t be focused without alignment, you can achieve alignment without clarity. Okay, when you have those three in place, it’s time to start working on dedication, diligence, and discipline, dedication to the business diligence about the way their business is conducted, and discipline in terms of all of the tasks that need to be completed to assure success. Those six transformational enablers are absolutely critical in terms of getting started.

Jay Ruane

So I got a question for you. But one of the challenges I have found in my ability to scale up my own firm is that my outlook on life and my sort of perspective on things are markedly different from the people that I employ. Not necessarily in worldview, as in, you know, for us as criminal defense lawyers that every life has value, and you shouldn’t be judged by your worst day. But more on the terms of I set tend to set, you know, audacious goals and want to march to them. And my employees want to be led. They don’t want to be the ones who were out in front of Making Moves. And I find it a challenge in understanding their perspective because I’ll give them a task and expect them to just go and accomplish it. And they keep coming back to me saying be involved. We want to know we’re doing the right thing. And I’m saying look, I’ve moved beyond that I’m going to something else. How should the leaders deal with those types of challenges when the employees keep trying to pull them back into the business, but your job, I guess, is to be the visionary? Are there roles in each functional business that should be sort of defined so that the business owner can say, okay, this person is going to do this? And I’m going to be able to sort of being visionary, does that kind of make sense of, I’m struggling to sort of communicate it. But I feel like I keep getting pulled into the weeds. And that’s not my best use of time. But yet my employees, despite me giving them as much opportunity as I can, constantly seek me out to be in the weeds with them. And despite me telling them, I don’t want to be there. Think just keep pulling me. I feel like Michael Corleone, every time I get out, they pull me back in.

Dan Hurley

You know, I could spend an hour just talking about that. But let me hit a couple of what I think are the important responses to your question. And I think it starts with selection. You know, we look at strategic thinking from four perspectives. And those four perspectives, are people, strategy, execution, and cash. And each of those perspectives has a question that has to be answered in order to achieve optimal effectiveness. For people that question there is, are all stakeholders now we’re talking all not just employees. So that also includes customers, suppliers, the community, and owners, are they happy and engaged? And would you rehire them enthusiastically? So when we’re selecting employees, it’s important that we operate from a position of clarity, there’s that word again. And that position of clarity in most businesses is typically described in what we call a job description. I am not an advocate of job descriptions, the typical focus of a job description is responsibilities. And, quite frankly, I don’t care what your responsibilities are, what I’m hiring you for as results. So should not be articulating expectations in terms of results. Okay, requirements and standards. So what do I expect in terms of a result from this particular role? And how will I measure that? So we select people based upon that, once we get those people in, we struggle with this concept of clarity, what do we want? You know, we encourage people in your positions to delegate. You can’t do it all. And if you think you can, then you’re practicing it at a minimum a mild form of delusion. Okay, so, in delegating, what we typically find is you tell someone, I need you to do this. And you’ll leave it at that. If you’re going to delegate you need to delegate based upon that expectation, what do I require of you? And how are we both going to know when it’s been accomplished when it’s been achieved? Okay, and then you keep a record of what it is you’ve delegated a look and growing my businesses early on, I found that I delegated so much, many times, I’d forget what I delegated three days ago, and forget to check on it. And sometimes it would get done sometimes it wouldn’t. Right. And the natural inclination was to go back and blame them. Yes.

Seth Price

This is a very common topic for us, as well as for common ailments of our listeners, and viewers, what are some of the best practices so that as you do that you should be delegating? What are some of the systems or techniques you’ve seen that work best to make sure that you do have accountability and that it’s not set it and forget it?

Dan Hurley

While accountability is part of your execution system, right? It’s something that you set up front in terms of clarity of expectation. I have a performance model that I use that was developed by a fella named Gary Rumbler out of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. And what Gary says is that 90 to 93% of all issues in organizations can be attributed to leadership because leadership is responsible for setting those expectations, putting people in situations to perform, providing a consequence for both positive and negative performance, and then issuing feedback.

Seth Price

I was so granular and that look, I get that. But are there any things? I’m sure like, we have people out there because what you just said resonates with me, I’m sure with Jay, where you set things in motion, you have your systems, but are there any systems that you have seen checks and balances? Because as a busy growing leader, you know, there are things that you sort of may put to people? Are there any sort of techniques or methodologies that have been more successful for leaders on the micro level to make sure that the different things they put forth? actually, come back at our NRA accomplished?

Dan Hurley

Yeah, well, I think you’re not probably gonna like my answer. But I’ll give it to you anyway. And that is we have a saying, and that saying is to delegate and do so effectively. If that can’t be done, automate. Okay, whatever it is, you’re trying to get done, automate it. And if that doesn’t work, look to eliminate it. Okay, so delegate automate, eliminate. And, quite frankly, from an accountability perspective, that’s a choice. You choose whether to hold someone accountable or not. So it’s really not a system issue. It’s a human issue. And most of my clients have problems holding people accountable. Whether it’s very unclear.

Seth Price

Is it because they forget what they’ve delegated? Or is it because they just don’t have the backbone to hold somebody the feet to the fire and say, I need you to do this?

Dan Hurley

Well, it’s probably a combination of both. I find that if you look at that, from the perspective of a continuum, it runs the range of that continuum, I’ve got some clients who have a certain behavioral preference. Are you familiar with disc instrumentation? Oh, yes. And that would be an S, right? On the far end, the locus of control is external, not internal, so they’re all about others. And taken to an extreme that leads to a martyr syndrome, where I’ll throw myself on any sword, it’s really not your fault, I must have been unclear. I must have not given you what you needed kind of thing. I have clients that are like that to the other end of the spectrum, where, you know, the beatings will continue until morale improves. So, you know, the point about accountability is, it’s a choice. And, you know, I was just talking to a client yesterday in your field of endeavor, and I said, you have a tendency to get what you accept. Okay, people are going to give you what you accept. And so if you don’t hold them accountable, they’re going to expect that they’re not going to be held accountable, and they’re going to perform accordingly.

Jay Ruane

You know, it’s interesting that you bring that up. It’s similar because I think the nature of some lawyers, you know, and this is something that’s interesting, it’s happening in my personal life with, with some extended family members going through a divorce. And, I’m looking at it from an outsider’s perspective. And I’m saying, you know, there’s going to be conflict, but you know, the people and the other extended family members, they live their lives trying to avoid conflict. Whereas I, as an attorney, understand, there’s always going to be conflict, I can have a conflict with some of my best friends. And it has nothing to do with how I feel about the person. Conflict is inevitable in nature. And I think part of the problem with being a lawyer-entrepreneur, in this situation is that you might come to a problem with the delegation and see it immediately as an opportunity for conflict with a subordinate, because you’re comfortable with conflict, and you’re comfortable with it, but they are not. And so conflict to you is not something that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it can really hamper your business. If the people you have in it, that are trying to, you know, shut down in the face of conflict. Do you think that’s a fair way to sort of read the situation?

Dan Hurley

Yeah, you know, as I, as I looked at the whole issue of conflict, I think there are societal norms that we’ve adopted over a period of years. That has moved us to the point where if you think of conflict, it’s really a continuum, right? In my mind, it starts with contention. Now, contention is healthy. We have a mild disagreement, you have a perspective I do. And what we try to do is work with each other to come to a common understanding, we move from contention, if we’re unsuccessful there to confrontation, we’re now we’re a little more aggressive around the language, we use our body language, the way we use our body to support our messaging, maybe intonation, Cadence, those kinds of things. And if that doesn’t work, then we move to what we know as conflict, which is really, you know, your hands around my throat, and, you know, mine around maybe your shirt. But our societal norms have led us to believe that the whole continuum is in conflict. So in essence, what it’s done is it’s made contention, which is healthy, in organizations, sort of unacceptable practice. So I think what you’re describing is this whole societal norm that anytime you disagree, that’s conflict, and it’s not.

Jay Ruane

Yeah, you know, that’s, I think that’s a huge takeaway for our audience, that inevitably, when you’re trying to grow your practice when you’re trying to grow your firm, there’s going to be contention, and that’s a good thing. And that’s a positive thing. Because it’s through that you can have breakthroughs that can elevate you above your competition and take you to a new level. And if it devolves into conflict, that isn’t necessarily something that you can get benefit from. But if you can thrive through the contention, you can really take yourself to another level. So my last question for you, before we send it back to Seth, to wrap it up, it is a little bit about, you know, when you first approach a new client, someone who you’re going to help you sort of getting to that next level, is there something that they have to focus on first like if someone were to call you up and say, I want to start being coached by you, I want to get to that next level. And I’ve already been able to sit down and do this, what would help somebody who’s coming into your method of helping them scale up? What should they do before they call you? Is there something that can make a difference, to get them to the right place to be able to be helped by you, because I got a feeling there are some people who call you up that are just complete messes? And you have to sort of you it takes you, you know, three or four?

Seth Price

I’ll put this as my comment because I want to let him answer but I get it because I hate when I call a consultant. And they give me what I call the low-hanging fruit that I should have just done before Jays asked what are the prerequisites. So you don’t walk in, not waste your time, but we get to the heart of the matter, rather than the stuff that really should be self-work that’s done. You could say, do these three or four things before you call me so we can get to it.

Jay Ruane

Yeah, stuff that matters.

Dan Hurley

Yeah, well, you know, we talked about it earlier. First and foremost, you really need to get clear on what you want. And I mean, what result do you want to see? So many people call it a vision? Right? I don’t really care what you call it, just describe what it is you want. What’s this look like when you’re done? If you can identify specific things that you want to see, that’s wonderful because when I walk in, I typically find that they really don’t know what they want. And we have to spend an inordinate amount of time and you know, as you know, your business is no different than mine Time is money. an inordinate amount of time trying to figure that out. So first and foremost, figure out what you want. If you’re going to start working on something that we might continue to work on work on the core. Understand your why, what’s your purpose? My particular purpose is to effectuate extraordinary results by creating conditions for success that drive everything I do. Okay, so I’m all about creating opportunities for you to be successful. So your purpose, your values, what are the guidelines, the principles that guide your business? That if manipulated would require you to To terminate a relationship, whether it’s an employee or a client, okay, what do you want to achieve? What’s that B hag? And how far out is it? You know, in some cases, I have clients that are preparing to exit the business, right? And they’re looking at a five to eight-year horizon, while they’re very different than the 35-year-old who’s planning on being in business for the next 25 years. Right. So if you do those three things, actually four things with clarity, you’re off to a very good start, I can then step in and say, okay, you’ve got a good piece of it done, I understand what you want to achieve. I’m clear on how best to go about that, and where to start now. And we can get off to a much more efficient and effective start.

Seth Price

This is great. Dan, thank you so much for your time, we’ll be sure to put a link to your organization in the comments. And, you know, the insights have been invaluable. Thank you so much, we will be back soon, with more of Max growth live.

Jay Ruane

Well, Seth, that was another phenomenal conversation. I mean, I gotta tell ya, like I said, I took notes. And it’s rare on these conversations, that I take as many notes as I did today. But a couple of things jumped out at me. And one, first and foremost, when you’re talking about the whole delegation thing, there was a bit of clarity of delegation, which I think is something that maybe I need to work on, at my own firm. What were your takeaways?

Seth Price

You know, for me, I know for myself, and we see this in much of life, whether it be business sales, dating, whatever it is that rule of threes, and I feel like, the more time that I spend in the Vern universe, you know, understanding and hearing different ways of it being presented, that each of those takeaways, the takeaways are the same that we’ve been talking about, but getting you to think about, okay, with what I have right now, how could I start implementing some of these? You know, to me, that was a valuable use of time.

Jay Ruane

Yeah, and the other thing I really liked was defining jobs. As what the results were going to be, rather than the responsibilities, I’m actually going to go back, I’ve decided to take it upon myself, and I probably should delegate it. But look at each one of our job descriptions in our office and rephrase them away from responsibilities to results so that there is clarity there for the people that are coming into those roles. Because I think that’s, that’s interesting. And that whole thing about the Venn diagram, you know, what you love, what you can monetize, and what you can be best that, I think is something that all of us here, should really consider as they’re trying to set forth their vision. And finally, I really loved his adaptability thing. I mean, I know I recently watched finalized that the because I needed help with accountability and daily accountability coaching. And that’s certainly something that you need to find whatever trick it is to make sure that to hold you accountable to do the things that are necessary to move forward. But this is, this has been a great conversation. I really, really enjoyed this one. I got a lot of good stuff out of it. I’m sure I’ll go back and listen to the podcast a few times. Just to make sure that I’m pulling everything out of it. What else have you got excited about in the future? I mean, we’re heading into Labor Day. Schools are back in kids or kids are out of the house for the most part during the day. We haven’t been quarantined yet, have you guys been quarantning?

Seth Price

We got another we got another week. So we’re still with the kids for a week and it’s coming up. It’s, by the time I’m trying to think for me what I would say the piece and it dovetails down on the person on the business out of sort of why my mind didn’t quite transition well, from your comment is, you know, as we’ve added overseas labor to help each department, I think that has forced us to get more granular about what people do because when you’re forced to delegate work from an existing employee, I think that that has made us better and focused people in what they’re doing that much more. And so it’s I didn’t realize this would be a benefit of that, but that by bringing people on to support existing In operations at the firm, it forced the existing employees to become more focused in what they were doing. And that’s been a huge, unexpected positive outcome of adding additional tangential labor.

Jay Ruane

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. Last week, we had, we had David Hassel, from 15, five on and I actually went out with my team, and we actually created a weekly question just for our overseas people. Because, you know, there’s stuff going on that, you know, we might not necessarily know of, or think of, one of the things a hurricane hit Honduras this week. And that caused some disruptions, and one of my VAs oversee staffers, wherever you want to call them, had some issues with resources for food in their town, and she actually put on the weekly report that that was a challenge for her this week. And I didn’t even know it or think of it because, you know, I’ll watch today’s show, Al Roker will tell me that something’s going on in Oklahoma brain. If I had people in Oklahoma, it would matter. But I have no idea what’s going on weather-wise, or, culturally in other parts of the world. But I need to know that stuff. Because I have people there now. And so that’s why it was great getting stuff from David last week. And, you know, I said, Oh, I gotta start thinking about this stuff. And when I sent that out, and I started getting responses, I got a couple of DMS, directly from my overseas people saying, Thank you for thinking about me, thank you for engaging with me like this. Because it shows me that I’m really part of this team. And that’s what I like, you know, I want them thinking team first.

Seth Price

Absolutely. And so, you know, it cost me some money, but bought licenses for all overseas people after that, with the same concept. It’s the law firm, we’ve been using it for staff. And the question is, do we include the attorneys in it? Not cheap. But do we allow them to be able to give the high fives and make this interactive? No, again, like anything else, there are so few things we can do to improve morale and culture. That this seems like, especially in this disassociated world that we now live in that tries to double down on it.

Jay Ruane

Yeah, I mean, if you have any number of employees that are not, you know, in your office, I can’t speak more highly of having that type of engagement platform, or product or something along those lines that you can do. I mean, I’ll be honest with you, I started off, I read about 15, five in the in Ink Magazine, I signed up for a trial took their questions, and I created using a Wufu form and a Gmail autoresponder, I created a simple free version of it. Because I wanted to, I couldn’t afford to spend at the time now I can so it’s even better.

Seth Price

The question is, we see this all the time, right? I I’m sort of torn, it’s not as real money. At the same time, if the engagement is higher using a polished VAs platform, is that worth it?

Jay Ruane

Absolutely. You know, the thing that’s crazy about it, and I’ll say this, and then I’ll wrap up, because I know we’re going long here is that when COVID hit, you know, one of the questions that we have is one great idea. And what’s that great idea that we can implement to make our business better and that type of thing? I actually had the time and I went through and I went back through like 2000 questionnaires, just clicking through and reading the great ideas. And we were able to implement, you know, like 20 or 30 of them, sometimes it was doing certain things, changing the way we approach things, stuff that, you know, two years ago didn’t seem relevant. But it was an idea and somebody gave it to now all of a sudden, we have the time we have the opportunity, and it seems more appropriate. So you know, that data that you’re collecting now could have value. The next time we have a pandemic folks, which I hope isn’t for another 100 years, but who knows things happen. Something else could happen, you know, five years from now that we’re suffering through so you know, a master data that you can use but set I think we’re gonna leave it right now for this week. What another great show. Thank you for being with me. Of course, if you want to follow set, you can follow him on his YouTube page, or follow BluShark Digital where he has the SEO insider, a great way for you to keep up on what’s going on in the world of digital marketing. If you want to catch up with me, you can check me out at finalize, FIM l i z e.com or through my agency get firm flex.com. Of course, if you love to talk about systems like I do, we talked a little bit about it during the show. Please join our growing, growing Systemising your law firm for growth Facebook group brought like 400 people changing ideas and talking about systems they can implement. And it’s a great way to sort of engage with people that are talking about the things you need to scale up your firm but with Next up, I’ll leave you I’ll see you next week have a fantastic Labor Day weekend and anything else you need to add

Seth Price

Have a great weekend

Jay Ruane

Have a great weekend folks we’ll see you next week bye for now

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